Latest / The David Rubenstein Show / Arthur C. Brooks

Transcript

Arthur C. Brooks · The David Rubenstein Show

0:03
Speaker 1: When one thinks of the Harvard Business School, one thinks
0:06
Speaker 1: of strategy, investments, technology. But actually one of the most
0:10
Speaker 1: popular professors of the Harvard Business School now is Arthur Brooks,
0:13
Speaker 1: who teaches the course on Happiness. I had a chance
0:16
Speaker 1: recently to sit down with Arthur to talk about how
0:18
Speaker 1: he became a leading expert on happiness and how he
0:21
Speaker 1: came to write a book on the subject with Oprah Winfrey.
0:25
Speaker 1: So you are a professor at Harvard and you're teaching,
0:29
Speaker 1: among other things, happiness. Can you really teach happiness? Because
0:33
Speaker 1: this happiness something you kind were born with or maybe
0:36
Speaker 1: you acquire in life. But in a course, can you
0:37
Speaker 1: really learn how to be happy?
0:39
Speaker 2: Well, you can learn how to pursue happiness through basically
0:43
Speaker 2: three mechanisms. Number One, you need to understand what it
0:46
Speaker 2: is and what the science says about it, which is
0:48
Speaker 2: contrary to a lot of what we hear growing up.
0:51
Speaker 2: Most people have a lot of misconceptions about happiness. You
0:53
Speaker 2: have to change some habits, change your life a little bit,
0:56
Speaker 2: and then you have to teach it to other people
0:57
Speaker 2: to become responsible for it, which is like anything else.
1:00
Speaker 2: If you want to become a good golfer, you have
1:02
Speaker 2: to understand golf. You have to play golf. And it's
1:04
Speaker 2: even better if you explain golf to somebody and then
1:06
Speaker 2: you that's the algorithm basically for getting better at any subject.
1:10
Speaker 1: I suppose I am a grumpy person by nature?
1:13
Speaker 2: Is this true?
1:14
Speaker 1: Well, I'm just just assume I'm a grumpy person by nature.
1:17
Speaker 2: Find you lovely?
1:18
Speaker 1: Okay, And let's suppose I take your course. Am I
1:21
Speaker 1: going to go from being grumpy to happy by virtual
1:24
Speaker 1: of taking a course?
1:25
Speaker 2: No? And this is really not just about emotional transformation.
1:28
Speaker 2: One of the things that my students learn is emotional
1:31
Speaker 2: self management. Emotions are are misunderstood by almost everybody. They
1:35
Speaker 2: think about good feelings and bad feelings. There are no
1:38
Speaker 2: such thing. Emotions are nothing more than reactions to stimuli
1:43
Speaker 2: that we have sensed by our primitive brains turned into
1:46
Speaker 2: the universal language of emotions.
1:48
Speaker 1: Fear.
1:48
Speaker 2: Anger discussed sadness, interest, joy, etc. In the limbic system
1:52
Speaker 2: of the brain to give us a signal about what's
1:54
Speaker 2: going on. If you have particularly acute negative emotionality, which
1:58
Speaker 2: is called negative aff high negative affect, and by the way,
2:02
Speaker 2: people watching Bloomberg tend to have high negative affect. How
2:05
Speaker 2: do I know this. Twenty five percent of the population
2:07
Speaker 2: has especially high positive and negative effect. They're high affect people,
2:12
Speaker 2: sixty five percent of CEOs and entrepreneurs. So this is
2:15
Speaker 2: one of the things that a lot of people watching us. Yeah,
2:17
Speaker 2: you're still going to be grumpy, but you're going to
2:19
Speaker 2: understand the meaning of the grumpiness and use it to
2:22
Speaker 2: learn and grow in life.
2:23
Speaker 1: Is there anything more important in the end than happiness?
2:27
Speaker 2: That's a debate that philosophers and scientists have been having
2:31
Speaker 2: for millennia. As a matter of fact, him Aristotle talked
2:35
Speaker 2: about that. Thomas Aquinas in twelve sixty five said, does
2:39
Speaker 2: anybody desire anything other than happiness? I say that he
2:42
Speaker 2: does not. But it depends on what happiness means. And
2:45
Speaker 2: so if you're thinking about it as a positive feeling,
2:48
Speaker 2: then there are lots of things that are more important
2:50
Speaker 2: than that, if you define it correctly. Maybe not.
2:52
Speaker 1: In a sentence that's been called the most famous sentence
2:55
Speaker 1: in the English language written by Thomas Jefferson and the
2:57
Speaker 1: Declaration Deependance, he ends it by saying that what people
3:00
Speaker 1: should want is life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
3:04
Speaker 1: He didn't really define happiness. But are you surprised or
3:07
Speaker 1: are you surprised that he would put pursuit of happiness
3:10
Speaker 1: is among the most important things in the world.
3:12
Speaker 2: Is revolutionary. As a matter of fact, it's those words
3:15
Speaker 2: were cribbed from the Virginia Declaration of Rights written by
3:18
Speaker 2: George Mason some years earlier, and Mason talked about in
3:21
Speaker 2: the Virginia Declaration about life, liberty, and the pursuit of property. Well,
3:26
Speaker 2: almost certainly in a conversation with Benjamin Franklin. We don't
3:29
Speaker 2: know for sure, but this is the supposition, because Benjamin
3:31
Speaker 2: Franklin is behind all of this interesting and sort of
3:34
Speaker 2: subversive language about the new American Republic. He's substituted in
3:38
Speaker 2: this pursuit of happiness, in this idea that you are
3:42
Speaker 2: the captain of your own destiny in this new nation.
3:45
Speaker 2: You get to define what this means and then go
3:47
Speaker 2: after it. And we're going to be about opportunity without
3:50
Speaker 2: any guarantees. And by the way, that's the country I
3:53
Speaker 2: still want to live in.
3:54
Speaker 1: One are the key elements to being happy? And I
3:56
Speaker 1: suppose I'm a person who wants to be happy? What
3:58
Speaker 1: are the key things that make somebody happy?
4:00
Speaker 2: Stop thinking it's a feeling. It's not a feeling. People
4:04
Speaker 2: will define it as I can't quite put words to it,
4:06
Speaker 2: but I know and I feel it. No, you can't.
4:08
Speaker 2: Feelings are evidence that your limbic system is working properly,
4:12
Speaker 2: and you can have a lot of negative emotions and
4:14
Speaker 2: be a very happy person. In the same way, by
4:17
Speaker 2: the way that the smell of your turkey is not
4:19
Speaker 2: your Thanksgiving dinner. Feelings are evidence of happiness. They are
4:23
Speaker 2: not happiness itself, and so stop looking for feelings number one.
4:27
Speaker 2: Number two, figure out what happiness actually is. So if
4:30
Speaker 2: I say, what is your Thanksgiving dinner? There's lots of
4:32
Speaker 2: ways to define that, but one way is protein, carbohydrates,
4:35
Speaker 2: and fat. Those are macro nutrients. That's a decomposition of
4:38
Speaker 2: all food for better longevity and health, which is another
4:41
Speaker 2: big interest in area of research of mine. So what
4:44
Speaker 2: are the macro nutrients of happiness? They are enjoyment, satisfaction,
4:48
Speaker 2: and meaning. Those are the three things to pursue go.
4:51
Speaker 1: Through each one. Enjoyment. What does enjoyment mean?
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Speaker 2: Enjoyment is not pleasure. That's a big mistake that people
4:56
Speaker 2: often make, which is just feeling good. That's a limbic phenomenon.
4:58
Speaker 2: It's parts of your ventral tegmntal area and the ventral
5:02
Speaker 2: stratum are tapped to make you feel good. That's not it.
5:05
Speaker 2: If you're looking for that is your life's goal, you'll
5:07
Speaker 2: wind up in rehab if you're lucky. What enjoyment is
5:12
Speaker 2: is it takes pleasure. It adds two things to make
5:15
Speaker 2: them fully conscious and mediated by the prefilled loal cortext
5:18
Speaker 2: pleasure plus people plus memory. That's what you want, and
5:22
Speaker 2: that's the kind of life you need. You need to
5:24
Speaker 2: be able to manage your pleasures in a way that's
5:26
Speaker 2: social and memorable so that you can have a life
5:29
Speaker 2: that's in an ongoing way, something that you consider to
5:32
Speaker 2: be enjoyable. That's the macroninturiant Number one, all right. Number
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Speaker 2: two is what satisfaction. Satisfaction is the joy that you
5:38
Speaker 2: get from an accomplishment after struggle. You've struggled a lot.
5:42
Speaker 2: I mean, you've had a lot of ups and downs
5:44
Speaker 2: over the course of your career. But the great source
5:46
Speaker 2: of satisfaction is after all that struggle. The sweetness came
5:49
Speaker 2: with all the stuff that Carlisle's done, all the stuff
5:51
Speaker 2: that this show has done. But if it actually had
5:54
Speaker 2: been easy, it wouldn't be sweet, which is one of
5:56
Speaker 2: the funny things about humanity. My dog doesn't want to
5:58
Speaker 2: struggle for his rewards, eat lying down if he could.
6:02
Speaker 2: We on the other hand, you know, when I go
6:03
Speaker 2: to a great entrepreneur like you, and if I were
6:06
Speaker 2: doing the interview and you were the interview e, and
6:08
Speaker 2: I said, okay, tell me the secrets to all this,
6:10
Speaker 2: you'd tell me hard things that had happened, and setbacks
6:13
Speaker 2: that had happened, and disappointments that had happened. Because the hardness,
6:16
Speaker 2: the difficulty, the suffering is actually part of the sweetness.
6:18
Speaker 2: That's satisfaction.
6:19
Speaker 1: What's the third element, meaning, And that's the big one.
6:22
Speaker 2: That's the next book that I'm writing. It's called The
6:24
Speaker 2: Meaning of Your Life, the Finding Purpose in an age
6:28
Speaker 2: of emptiness, because that's the crisis of today for particularly
6:32
Speaker 2: for adults hundred thirty five, is that their life feels
6:35
Speaker 2: empty and meaningless. And this is what lies behind the
6:38
Speaker 2: mental health crisis.
6:39
Speaker 1: Now you've written that younger people today are not as
6:42
Speaker 1: happy as their parents were. That's part because of social
6:46
Speaker 1: media and things like that makes people isolated.
6:49
Speaker 2: So it's a complicated thing. But there's basically a climate
6:52
Speaker 2: and weather problem that we find and I don't mean
6:54
Speaker 2: that literally. The climate of happiness is all about faith
6:58
Speaker 2: and philosophy and life, about family, life, about friendship, and
7:01
Speaker 2: about seeing your life as a calling. Your work is
7:03
Speaker 2: a calling that is meaningful and serves other people, and
7:06
Speaker 2: all of those have been in a client That's the
7:08
Speaker 2: climate of happiness has been ticking down since about nineteen ninety.
7:11
Speaker 2: Then the weather, the hurricanes, and happiness have been really threefold.
7:15
Speaker 2: Number one was the advent of social media and screens
7:18
Speaker 2: in everybody's lives in two thousand and eight, twenty nine,
7:20
Speaker 2: twenty ten, which has done just raised absolute havoc in
7:24
Speaker 2: the brains of everybody under thirty five years old. That's
7:27
Speaker 2: what my New Meaning book is about, is about how
7:29
Speaker 2: we use our brains differently, and it's vacating the parts
7:33
Speaker 2: of our brain that we need to assess questions of meaning.
7:36
Speaker 2: The second is polarization, where baby boomers have tried to
7:40
Speaker 2: conscript young adults into their culture war, particularly on campuses.
7:44
Speaker 2: You should feel aggrieved, You're a victim. Everybody's trying to
7:47
Speaker 2: ruin the world. You need to be angry and afraid
7:50
Speaker 2: and last but not least, of course, is what happened
7:52
Speaker 2: with the really misbegotten reaction to the coronavirus epidemic, which
7:55
Speaker 2: is to send everybody home, make sure that people don't
7:58
Speaker 2: interact socially. And that was cat for happiness.
8:00
Speaker 1: And then you wrote a book on happiness.
8:03
Speaker 2: During the coronavirus epidemic. It was it was my it
8:05
Speaker 2: was my COVID project.
8:07
Speaker 1: That was Strength to Strength, from strength to.
8:08
Speaker 2: Strength, which comes from the eighty fourth psalm Michel del
8:12
Speaker 2: Kail and Hebrew, may you go from strength to strength,
8:14
Speaker 2: which is an ancient Judaic blessing, of.
8:15
Speaker 1: Course, and it became a number one New York Times bestseller.
8:19
Speaker 2: Yeah, that was unexpected.
8:20
Speaker 1: So somebody calls you about this. She read the book
8:24
Speaker 1: and said, why don't we do a book together. That
8:28
Speaker 1: was Oprah Winfrey.
8:29
Speaker 2: That was Oprah Winfrey.
8:30
Speaker 1: Had you ever met her before?
8:31
Speaker 2: No? No, no. And what happened was that she was
8:33
Speaker 2: reading my column during the coronavirus epidemic every Thursday in
8:36
Speaker 2: the Atlantic and she never left her place in Montecita,
8:40
Speaker 2: California for a couple of years. But she was learning
8:42
Speaker 2: and reading. She's a voracious reader. And she said she
8:45
Speaker 2: was learning a lot from it. She wanted to meet
8:47
Speaker 2: that guy. So when the book came out from Strength
8:48
Speaker 2: to Strength in February of twenty twenty two, she literally
8:52
Speaker 2: read it on the first day and called me, hell, oh,
8:54
Speaker 2: this is Oprah Winfrey. And I said and I said, yeah,
8:57
Speaker 2: and this is Batman. I mean, turned out it was
8:59
Speaker 2: Oprah Winfrey.
9:00
Speaker 1: The book came out, and it also was a number
9:01
Speaker 1: one New York Times bestseller. Yeah, and its title is.
9:06
Speaker 2: It's Build the Life you want, The Art and Science
9:08
Speaker 2: of getting Happier.
9:09
Speaker 1: So you have another book coming out very shortly, probably
9:12
Speaker 1: by the time this airs, it'll be out The Happiness Files.
9:14
Speaker 1: What is that about?
9:15
Speaker 2: That's an edited volume of my thirty five most popular
9:18
Speaker 2: columns in the Atlantic about work and life. So the
9:21
Speaker 2: whole idea it's being put out by the Harvard Business
9:23
Speaker 2: Review Press, is that your life is a startup. That's
9:27
Speaker 2: the most important enterprise. People think of a company as
9:29
Speaker 2: a startup, but that's just an extension of who you
9:31
Speaker 2: are as a person. It's a cultural phenomenon and a
9:34
Speaker 2: behavioral phenomenon. As a matter of fact. The way to
9:36
Speaker 2: think about it, if to live the best life, is
9:38
Speaker 2: to say you, David incorporated your startup. The enterprise is
9:43
Speaker 2: your life, and that means you need to take risk
9:46
Speaker 2: appropriately and search and be in search of the true fortune,
9:50
Speaker 2: which is love and happiness. If you treat it your
9:52
Speaker 2: life like a startup, your life gets better and it
9:54
Speaker 2: becomes more successful. And it's thirty five essays that talk
9:57
Speaker 2: about exactly how to do that. Every chapter. It's intended
10:00
Speaker 2: to be read over about a month, because it about
10:02
Speaker 2: thirty five essays, and each chapter gives you the science,
10:05
Speaker 2: the idea, and the science, and then it says, do
10:07
Speaker 2: these three things, which is about behavioral change, all of them.
10:10
Speaker 2: I have tried every column I write. I'm ten weeks
10:13
Speaker 2: ahead on my Atlantic column, and I'm trying all the
10:16
Speaker 2: things that I suggest to make sure that there's sound.
10:18
Speaker 2: I'm my own guinea pig. And if it doesn't work,
10:20
Speaker 2: I don't write it, I don't publish it.
10:22
Speaker 1: How does somebody who's an expert on happiness grow into that?
10:26
Speaker 1: Let's talk about your background for a moment. So where
10:28
Speaker 1: were you born?
10:29
Speaker 2: Spoke Anne Washington?
10:30
Speaker 1: And what did your parents do?
10:32
Speaker 2: My father was a lifelong college professor. He was a mathematician,
10:35
Speaker 2: a PhD biostatistician, so he was a quant guy.
10:39
Speaker 1: And your mother what did she do?
10:40
Speaker 2: She was an artist. My mother was a good amateur
10:42
Speaker 2: musician and serious about that, but really she was a
10:46
Speaker 2: watercolorist of some renowned in the Pacific Northwest.
10:49
Speaker 1: And when you were growing up, did you say, I
10:51
Speaker 1: want to be an expert on happiness or what did
10:53
Speaker 1: you want to do as a boy?
10:54
Speaker 2: I wanted to be the world's greatest front shorn player.
10:56
Speaker 2: That's what I wanted. I was naturally good at music,
10:58
Speaker 2: and I learned this by about the age of four.
11:00
Speaker 2: I learned to read music before I learned to read words,
11:02
Speaker 2: and I had a natural aptitude for it. Started on
11:05
Speaker 2: piano at four, after a little bit of violin, and
11:08
Speaker 2: then by eight I started the French horn. I was
11:10
Speaker 2: really good at it. I got a lot of acclamation,
11:13
Speaker 2: I got some praise and appreciation from my parents, and
11:16
Speaker 2: I realized I like getting attention from adults, positive attention
11:19
Speaker 2: from adults. So I stuck with it.
11:20
Speaker 1: And did people say, this guy is going to be
11:22
Speaker 1: one of the great French horn players of all time.
11:24
Speaker 2: Well, I certainly hoped so, and a lot of people
11:28
Speaker 2: had a lot of faith that I had a tremendous
11:30
Speaker 2: amount of potential so I was going to go to
11:32
Speaker 2: conservatory and then go pro. That was the idea.
11:34
Speaker 1: So you graduate from high school and you said to
11:36
Speaker 1: your parents, I guess I'm not going to college. I'm
11:38
Speaker 1: going to go be a French horn player. What did
11:40
Speaker 1: your academic father say.
11:41
Speaker 2: Well, I went to college for a year. I went
11:43
Speaker 2: to the California Institute of the Arts. So I was
11:45
Speaker 2: going to study with my teacher, somebody I had met
11:47
Speaker 2: in previous summers, a great frenchhorn player, one of the
11:50
Speaker 2: great soloists of the time. And it didn't really work out.
11:54
Speaker 2: It turns out to the right strategy for college is
11:57
Speaker 2: not to drop all your required classes. Tried to tell
12:00
Speaker 2: my kids that at this point, but the result is
12:02
Speaker 2: I was well dropped out, kicked out, splitting hairs at
12:05
Speaker 2: this point. I made it ten months, all.
12:07
Speaker 1: Right, you made it ten months. Then need to say
12:09
Speaker 1: to your parents, guess what, I'm going to be a
12:10
Speaker 1: French worn player for life.
12:12
Speaker 2: Yeah. So I was actually transferring to the Curtis Institute
12:14
Speaker 2: of Music in Philadelphia, which is sort of the elite
12:16
Speaker 2: music conservatory, and I was very very lucky to get
12:18
Speaker 2: a spot.
12:19
Speaker 1: Great place.
12:19
Speaker 2: It is a great place, and during the summer before
12:22
Speaker 2: I was going to go there, I was playing at
12:23
Speaker 2: the Marlborough Music Festival with Rudolph Serkin and some of
12:26
Speaker 2: the great chamber musicians at the time, and I was
12:29
Speaker 2: offered a job playing chamber music with a brass quintet
12:32
Speaker 2: out of Maryland, and so I took the job instead
12:34
Speaker 2: of going back to school and went pro nineteen.
12:37
Speaker 1: And then you ultimately moved to Spain.
12:39
Speaker 2: Yeah, so I was on tour. I did that for
12:41
Speaker 2: about six years, making very little money but having a
12:43
Speaker 2: great time and learning a lot. I also toured for
12:45
Speaker 2: a couple of years during that time with a great
12:47
Speaker 2: jazz guitar player named Charlie Bird, who was, you know,
12:50
Speaker 2: the original American originator of the bossa nova style, et cetera.
12:54
Speaker 2: So I was on a concert tour playing chamber music
12:56
Speaker 2: in the Burgundy region of France in the summer of
12:59
Speaker 2: nineteen eighty eight and I met a girl who was
13:01
Speaker 2: also was studying music and actually at a concert. I
13:05
Speaker 2: was playing the concert and there was a girl in
13:06
Speaker 2: the front row smiling at me, and I thought, well,
13:09
Speaker 2: that's not normal. I should check that out. So afterward
13:11
Speaker 2: I introduced myself. Turned out she didn't speak a word
13:13
Speaker 2: of English, and she wasn't French. Turns out she was
13:16
Speaker 2: Spanish Catalan as a matter of fact, from Barcelona. I
13:19
Speaker 2: learned that not a word of English, we didn't know
13:21
Speaker 2: a word in common. So I did the right thing
13:23
Speaker 2: and asked her out. And how did you know if
13:26
Speaker 2: she said yes? I well, because I got a translator
13:29
Speaker 2: said yeah, she'd love to have dinner with you. And
13:30
Speaker 2: so that was an odd dinner, full of gesticulations and
13:33
Speaker 2: hand gestures, etc. But we were twenty four years old.
13:36
Speaker 2: And then I went home and I called my dad
13:39
Speaker 2: and I said, I think I met the girl I'm
13:40
Speaker 2: going to marry. And he said, really, that's great, can't
13:44
Speaker 2: wait to meet her. I said, I have some difficulties here.
13:47
Speaker 2: I mean, she doesn't speak a word of English, she
13:49
Speaker 2: doesn't live in the United States, and she has no
13:51
Speaker 2: idea we're going to get married. He said, well, you
13:53
Speaker 2: better get a plan, son, and so I did. I
13:55
Speaker 2: was living in New York at the time, barely making
13:57
Speaker 2: against meet, and I started looking at different opportunities, and
14:02
Speaker 2: through sheer serendipity, I was offered a couple of months
14:04
Speaker 2: later a job in the Barcelona Symphony as the associate
14:07
Speaker 2: principal French horn and I said, ah, sign from God.
14:10
Speaker 2: I moved to Barcelona and worked on closing the deal. Still,
14:13
Speaker 2: it took me two years to convince her though, David, So.
14:15
Speaker 1: Did you get married two years later or something? Yeah?
14:17
Speaker 2: Yeah, two years later. It took me. I was you know,
14:19
Speaker 2: I had to work on it a long time. After all,
14:20
Speaker 2: Europeans are very modern and they don't believe in marriage,
14:23
Speaker 2: so it took it took a good deal of convincing.
14:26
Speaker 1: I should point out, you're still married to her. Yeah,
14:29
Speaker 1: it is now married.
14:30
Speaker 2: Thirty four, thirty four or parents of three in a
14:34
Speaker 2: couple of months, grandparents of four.
14:36
Speaker 1: Is having a relationship with another person more likely to
14:40
Speaker 1: produce happiness or more likely to produce divorce?
14:43
Speaker 2: Well, it it depends on the relationship. Your results may vary.
14:46
Speaker 2: As they say in the in the you know, the
14:47
Speaker 2: ads for financial products and pharmaceuticals. The truth is that
14:51
Speaker 2: a good marriage is the single biggest predictor of the
14:53
Speaker 2: happiest possible life. But a bad marriage works in the
14:56
Speaker 2: other direction, to be sure, and so that's why it's
14:59
Speaker 2: that's the most important investment decision anybody watching us will
15:02
Speaker 2: ever make.
15:03
Speaker 1: Where did you start teaching academically.
15:05
Speaker 2: I started in Georgia State. So I finished my PhD
15:07
Speaker 2: in nineteen ninety eight, and Georgia State University in Atlanta
15:09
Speaker 2: was the first place that hired me, and I did
15:11
Speaker 2: three years there, and then I moved to Syracuse, which
15:14
Speaker 2: was in public policy, was and arguably still as the
15:18
Speaker 2: top school in public policy.
15:19
Speaker 1: In the company. Maxwell School, the Maxwell School exactly right,
15:21
Speaker 1: So you teach there for ten years.
15:22
Speaker 2: I taught there for I taught it, Georgia State for
15:25
Speaker 2: three and Syracuse for seven and a half.
15:27
Speaker 1: Seven okay, so ten years as an academic, ten and
15:29
Speaker 1: a half years Maxwell. Then somebody decides to they want
15:33
Speaker 1: you to be the head of AEI. But why would
15:36
Speaker 1: you be qualified to be the head of the American
15:38
Speaker 1: Enterprise SINS too?
15:39
Speaker 2: I was not qualified and I was clearly not qualified
15:41
Speaker 2: for that job, and it was I was sort of
15:42
Speaker 2: the last chance saloon, I think, for the board of
15:44
Speaker 2: directors that the American enterprisingers to do. At the time,
15:46
Speaker 2: I was a visiting scholar at AI, and I had
15:49
Speaker 2: always aspired to do more. AI is the greatest thing
15:51
Speaker 2: tank in America. It's based on the idea that the
15:54
Speaker 2: free enterprise system has done more to lift people up
15:56
Speaker 2: from the margins of society than any other single idea
15:59
Speaker 2: in history, and that the United States at its best
16:03
Speaker 2: is a gift to the world.
16:04
Speaker 1: All Right, So you took that job, you became the CEO,
16:06
Speaker 1: and you stayed there for ten.
16:07
Speaker 2: Years eleven almost a lot of ten and a half.
16:09
Speaker 1: So after eleven years you say, Okay, I now want
16:11
Speaker 1: to do something else. Why do you decide to do
16:13
Speaker 1: something else after eleven years is going very well?
16:16
Speaker 2: I had figured out by that time that my career
16:18
Speaker 2: is best when I take it down to the studs
16:20
Speaker 2: every decade and start again. That's when I'm most interested.
16:22
Speaker 2: That's when I can funge the skills that i've as
16:25
Speaker 2: a leader, as a professional, as a person in my soul.
16:28
Speaker 2: I can take them to the next thing and do
16:29
Speaker 2: really well with a lot of inspiration.
16:31
Speaker 1: Most people, before they leave a job, they already have
16:34
Speaker 1: another job lined up. Yeah, you left AI when you
16:37
Speaker 1: were at the top of your game, but you didn't
16:39
Speaker 1: have anything lined up.
16:40
Speaker 2: Not really. I mean I had some ideas, maybe I'll
16:42
Speaker 2: go back to academia. But the whole point is basically this.
16:45
Speaker 2: I had a heart to heart conversation one of my
16:47
Speaker 2: best friends is your partner Dan Dan Yellow at Carlisle
16:50
Speaker 2: and I said to him, look, I'm feeling a little
16:52
Speaker 2: I'm mitching a little bit. I'm thinking about new things.
16:54
Speaker 2: And how do you think about your career as a CEO?
16:58
Speaker 2: How do you think about finishing your career as a CEO?
17:00
Speaker 2: I was fifty five years old, fifty four years old
17:02
Speaker 2: at the time. And he said he thought about it,
17:04
Speaker 2: and he said something very wise to me that's probably
17:06
Speaker 2: useful for people watching us right now. He says, when
17:08
Speaker 2: it comes to ending, finishing up as a leader, especially
17:12
Speaker 2: as a business leader, you've got two choices. You can
17:15
Speaker 2: leave before you're ready, or you can leave on somebody
17:17
Speaker 2: else's terms. You choose, choose wisely. And I thought to myself, Yep,
17:22
Speaker 2: I'm not ready, and that means it's time to go.
17:24
Speaker 1: What did you teach initially at Harvard?
17:26
Speaker 2: So I came in and I taught in the first
17:28
Speaker 2: semester of the Kennedy School nonprofit management, which is something
17:31
Speaker 2: that I've taught a lot about. I've written a textbook
17:33
Speaker 2: on that, and that's really about how to create societal change,
17:37
Speaker 2: how to create a better society in the basis of
17:39
Speaker 2: non governmental, nonprofit activity, but it's really about how you're
17:42
Speaker 2: going to transform society outside of the world of government
17:45
Speaker 2: or for profit businesses. And that went really well. But
17:48
Speaker 2: then when I went over across the river to the
17:50
Speaker 2: Business School for my first semester there in the spring,
17:52
Speaker 2: I introduced I created a class called Leadership and Happiness,
17:56
Speaker 2: and that really took off because that was where my
17:58
Speaker 2: heart was.
17:58
Speaker 1: You're teaching this course and all of a sudden, people
18:01
Speaker 1: by word of mouth say this guy is interesting and
18:03
Speaker 1: maybe we can learn how to be happier, and so
18:05
Speaker 1: the class goes from a few people to a lot
18:08
Speaker 1: of people. Right.
18:08
Speaker 2: Yeah, we filled it the first time. I think we
18:10
Speaker 2: had seventy two people as a full class the first time,
18:13
Speaker 2: but it was clear that even by the second year
18:15
Speaker 2: we could fill two sections of ninety even with a
18:17
Speaker 2: waiting list, because it's a different kind of class than
18:20
Speaker 2: what they typically get. On the first day of class,
18:21
Speaker 2: I say, look, you think that if you have money, power, pleasure,
18:25
Speaker 2: and fame, then you'll get happiness for free, and it's
18:28
Speaker 2: a lie, and you know it. The right solution is
18:31
Speaker 2: for you to search for happiness and then you'll have
18:33
Speaker 2: the success that you truly crave. That's what this class
18:36
Speaker 2: is all about.
18:37
Speaker 1: But if you are a person who's an expert on happiness,
18:41
Speaker 1: you can't ever be grumpy. I mean, if you ever
18:43
Speaker 1: get in fights with people because you're not in a
18:45
Speaker 1: good mood, or you have to be happy all the time.
18:47
Speaker 2: Well, one of the reasons that I study happiness is
18:49
Speaker 2: I want to lash myself to the mast. I want
18:51
Speaker 2: to hold myself accountable to be the person that I
18:52
Speaker 2: want to be. Not that I'll have to be happy
18:54
Speaker 2: happy all the time, but it's not right for me
18:57
Speaker 2: to display my own happiness in such a way that
19:00
Speaker 2: brings other people down. That's an unethical thing to do. So,
19:03
Speaker 2: you know, being a jerk in an airport. That's truly
19:05
Speaker 2: off brand for me, and it's something that I try
19:07
Speaker 2: to make sure that I never do. Well. Being is
19:10
Speaker 2: a combination of happiness and unhappiness, and they're not opposites.
19:16
Speaker 2: They're actually mediated in different parts of the brain because
19:19
Speaker 2: they have different purposes. My problem is not low happiness.
19:23
Speaker 2: My problem is high unhappiness, which is often the case
19:26
Speaker 2: with people in my line of work. For that matter,
19:28
Speaker 2: your line of work. So for me, my particular challenge
19:31
Speaker 2: is making sure that I'm very serious about managing my
19:35
Speaker 2: negative affect every single day, and I do that with
19:37
Speaker 2: the science that I've been studying over the past well decades.
19:40
Speaker 1: At this point, do you ever get mad and somebody
19:42
Speaker 1: just yell and lose your temper or you don't do that?
19:45
Speaker 2: Well, I don't do that very often, and part of
19:47
Speaker 2: that is because I've learned how to manage my limbic
19:49
Speaker 2: system so it doesn't manage me. That's getting as much
19:51
Speaker 2: space as I can between what I feel and what
19:54
Speaker 2: I do. That's called metacognition.
19:56
Speaker 1: Many people put themselves forward as leaders. Presumably they want
20:01
Speaker 1: to be a leader because it makes them happy to
20:03
Speaker 1: be a leader rather than a follower. But how do
20:06
Speaker 1: you define leadership and as leadership if you have, it
20:09
Speaker 1: make you happier than if you're a follower.
20:11
Speaker 2: So that's a good question, and it's a complicated question
20:14
Speaker 2: because there are a lot of leaders in business who
20:16
Speaker 2: are actually unhappier after they ascend to the corner office.
20:20
Speaker 2: I see this constantly. The number one emotion that people
20:24
Speaker 2: feel in the first two years as a brand new
20:26
Speaker 2: CEO's anger, which is not what people expect. It's like,
20:29
Speaker 2: you know, hey, man, if I get the CEO job,
20:31
Speaker 2: I'm finally going to have achieved everything I've always wanted.
20:33
Speaker 2: And it turns out that it's really really tough for
20:36
Speaker 2: the most talented people in the country in the economy.
20:40
Speaker 2: They will never be lifted to the level of incompetence.
20:43
Speaker 2: There is no Peter principle. There's kind of a striver
20:46
Speaker 2: Peter principle next to it, which is that they will
20:49
Speaker 2: be if they let themselves be lifted up to the
20:51
Speaker 2: level of unhappiness because they go beyond what they really
20:55
Speaker 2: enjoy doing where they can get flow. And being a
20:57
Speaker 2: leader is hard because there's rarely flow. It is a
21:00
Speaker 2: service profession. Leadership is about lifting people up. That's what
21:05
Speaker 2: it's all about, and earning it because you've lifted other
21:07
Speaker 2: people up to become their best selves.
21:09
Speaker 1: So if I say to somebody, I've just interviewed Arthur Brooks,
21:12
Speaker 1: I spend forty five minutes with him, and somebody says,
21:15
Speaker 1: I don't have time to watch it. Give me the
21:17
Speaker 1: one minute version. How can I be happy?
21:19
Speaker 2: So the world says that for you to be happy,
21:21
Speaker 2: and this is based on mother nature. This is not capitalism.
21:24
Speaker 2: Mother nature doesn't care if you're happy. So she imposes
21:26
Speaker 2: this on you. She says, for you to have the
21:28
Speaker 2: best life, you need to love things, get a lot
21:31
Speaker 2: of them, use people. They're there for your advancement and comforts,
21:34
Speaker 2: and worship yourself because you're the center of the universe.
21:36
Speaker 2: That's what the world tells you. That's what your nature
21:38
Speaker 2: tells you. That's wrong. Happiness comes from changing the verbs
21:41
Speaker 2: and the nouns. The right happiness formula and this is
21:44
Speaker 2: scientifically validated. But because we've talked about it in this show,
21:47
Speaker 2: is number one. Love people, use things, and worship the
21:51
Speaker 2: divine as you understand it. And if you do that,
21:54
Speaker 2: you're on the right track.
21:55
Speaker 1: Why do you decide to go to Harvard among all
21:57
Speaker 1: these things you probably had available to you.
21:58
Speaker 2: Well, you know, academia is my natural home. I wanted
22:02
Speaker 2: to go back and do something that was going to
22:03
Speaker 2: be really positive and meaningful for society, and so that
22:07
Speaker 2: required what we Catholic people call discernment, and discernment is
22:11
Speaker 2: this or discernment of spirits, is trying to figure out
22:13
Speaker 2: what's what you're meant to do to actually find out
22:15
Speaker 2: you're calling. And there's an ancient way of doing this.
22:17
Speaker 2: There's a technique for doing this that people watching us
22:20
Speaker 2: can can do whether they're Catholic or not religious or
22:22
Speaker 2: not as a matter of fact, and that's called a pilgrimage.
22:25
Speaker 2: So the whole idea is if you walk a long
22:27
Speaker 2: way when you have a single question, you're more likely
22:30
Speaker 2: to find it. There's actually science behind with this is sound.
22:33
Speaker 2: I walk the community Santiago in the summer of twenty
22:36
Speaker 2: nineteen after I left AI, and by the time I
22:39
Speaker 2: finished walking a few hundred miles, I wrote a mission
22:42
Speaker 2: statement for myself, which is, as a behavioral scientist, I'm
22:45
Speaker 2: going to spend the rest of my life lifting people
22:47
Speaker 2: up and bringing them together in bonds of happiness and
22:49
Speaker 2: love using science and ideas. And so that's what I
22:52
Speaker 2: decided to do at Harvard.
22:53
Speaker 1: What is next for you? What next world do you
22:55
Speaker 1: want to conquer?
22:56
Speaker 2: So this is a good question, and at this point
22:58
Speaker 2: in my life there's a little bit less central planning,
23:00
Speaker 2: there's a lot more serendipity. I'm thinking about the opportunities
23:03
Speaker 2: that come my way to live up to my mission.
23:04
Speaker 2: My mission is to lift people up and bring them
23:06
Speaker 2: together in bonds and happiness and love using my skills
23:09
Speaker 2: science and ideas. So if there's an opportunity for me
23:12
Speaker 2: to do that at scale, I want to do it.
23:14
Speaker 2: I want a billion people to understand the happiness science.
23:17
Speaker 2: That's what I want. That's what changes the world is
23:19
Speaker 2: when people have aspirations for their own life, for something better.
23:22
Speaker 2: The reason that the United States is such a great country,
23:25
Speaker 2: is such a successful countries because people had personal aspiration
23:28
Speaker 2: for something better for their own lives. And that's what
23:30
Speaker 2: I want, that entrepreneurial notion that I can build a
23:33
Speaker 2: life with greater happiness, and I have to find David,
23:36
Speaker 2: this is my challenge. I have to find better and
23:38
Speaker 2: better ways to scale this.
23:41
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening to hear more of my interviews. You
23:43
Speaker 1: can subscribe and download my podcast on Spotify, Apple, or
23:47
Speaker 1: wherever you listen.