Happiness Expert: Get These People OUT Of Your Life | Arthur Brooks

Choose happiness. I see that on people's bumper stickers and I feel like ramming my car. You need unhappiness and your suffering is a very sacred thing.

What is the secret to happiness? World renowned happiness expert, Harvard professor and best selling author Arthur Brooks shares exactly that on our episode.

Happiness isn't just a thing that you flip a switch.

One day I'm kind of happy, one day I'm not so happy. Do you think we can actually control our happiness?

You could say that the secret to happiness is.

That's fascinating.

This knowledge is actually burdensome.

We have to hide this.

Do you and your entire audience now special power.

Is it true that one of the keys to happiness is are you happy? Or are you stressed, worried, a little anxious? Turns out since the 90s, the data says we are more unhappy every single year. But what if everything that we've been told about our mind and happiness is wrong? What if instead there is a formula for being just peaceful, happy? World renowned happiness expert, Harvard professor and best selling author with Oprah Winfrey, Arthur Brooks shares exactly that on our episode. If you want to find happiness, real love, and if you want to be able to spot a narcissist a mile away, today we give you the happiness formula. Is it important to be happy?

It is. Everybody wants to be happy. Beer than they currently are. Now one of the mistakes that they make is thinking that they can be somehow cosmically happy, which isn't true at least this side of heaven. And part of the reason for it is that we're not built to be perfectly happy. We have negative emotions because they keep us safe and alive. Fear, anger, disgust and sadness. These are defense mechanisms. They're signals that something is not right around us, which is why we have negative emotions. And so they're very, very important for our protection. And we need negative experiences because that's how we learn and grow. I mean, you write about this a lot. I mean, the experiences that people actually have in their daily lives is how they learn. And so if you were perfectly happy, you'd be in danger and not learning. And that's a bad situation to be in. So perfect happiness is not the goal, but happierness really is. The goal is getting happier by learning how the science works, learning how to manage yourself, changing your habits, sharing ideas with others. And that's really what my work's all about. It's happierness.

Is there any correlation between being happier and healthier?

There is some. And it depends what we mean by healthier, for sure. Mentally healthier, Absolutely. One of the greatest sources of unhappiness is mood disorder. Mood disorder, meaning generalized anxiety and clinical depression. This is a hugely important problem, especially for people under 35 today. We've all heard about the explosion of mood disorders, especially since the coronavirus epidemic, and the onset of the overuse and misuse of screens in people's lives. And so the result of that is that this is the number one thing that's pushing up unhappiness. Now, this is a distinction that matters because happiness and unhappiness are not opposites. They're largely governed in different hemispheres of the brain. As a matter of fact, so to say, if I got rid of the screens and had fewer aggravations and mood disorders, I would be happier. That's wrong. You'd be less happy. Unhappy. So that's a really important thing to keep in mind. And I try to make that distinction a lot in my teaching.

What do you mean? It's in two different centers of the brain. This is like your prefrontal cortex and your. What. Where does happiness versus unhappiness live?

Well, we're talking about mood. That's largely a limbic phenomenon. So the limbic system is sort of the second part of your brain. The first part of your brain, often called the reptilian brain, is the part of your brain that senses stimuli around you below your level of consciousness. That's in your brain stem and cerebellum, et cetera, that says, you know what the air temperature is and the. You know, the light and whether somebody who is with you is a threat to you. And that's. You're not paying attention to that. Your body is, but you're not, because it would distract you too much. That sends these signals to the limbic system, which was developed between 2 and 40 million years ago. We have this in common with all of the mammals. It's also known as the paleo mammalian brain to neuroscientists. And the limbic system of the brain creates emotions. Emotions are the universal language of humanity. We do have an actual language that we all speak. It's not Esperanto, it's emotions. And we all have the same emotions. Fear, anger, disgust, and sadness are the four basic negative emotions. Joy, interest, and surprise are the basic positive emotions. And we all have those seven emotions. That's the universal language. And those signals to us are you've picked up some stimulus that says something should be either avoided or approached. And so you get negative or positive emotions as a result of that. That's all they are, is Just that particular information. And what you find is that different parts of the limbic system govern these different moods. And so the negative emotions, they're largely. And again, these are newer studies and it's somewhat contested neuroscience. We see more activity in the right side of the brain when people are experiencing negative emotions. And that governs the left side of the body. So it's interesting when you see little kids. I live with one of my grandsons now, and he's little. I mean, he doesn't. He's managed by his limbic system. He's not being managed by the prefrontal cortex, the executive centers of his brain yet. Because he's not even two when he falls down or something, which he does a lot because, you know, he's not that coordinated. You don't know if the waterworks are coming, but you can see a little twitch on the left side of his face if he's about to cry, because that means the right side of his brain. Fear, anger, disgust and sadness are especially active. And that gives you a premonition of what's going to come. A little twitch in the left side of his face, then he starts to cry.

That's fascinating.

Yeah, yeah. So watch the left side of people's faces when you're talking to them and they will not be able to involuntarily control the activity. Slight twitches, a little bit more left face activity when they're experiencing negative emotions when you're talking to them. It's a good tell with your husband.

Wow. So I'm gonna tell him. I'm not gonna tell him.

I just gave you special powers. You and your entire audience now have special powers. He listens though, right?

No, we have to hide this. Yeah. So. So if I'm talking to somebody and they. Let's say I'm talking to somebody and they think poorly of me, or they are having a thought where they. They don't believe me in a second. Might that sometimes show as a twitch.

On your left or. Here's generally how you'll see it. It'll be like this. People are watching us on YouTube. They can see this. I'll have to describe it for people just listening to us. Oh, yeah. You notice that it's easier to scrunch up the left side of your face than the right side of your face.

Yeah, it is.

And the reason is because you have more practice doing that. The muscles are. They're more accustomed. So when you're concentrating on something, it's not going very well. You're in traffic you're more likely to have a kind of an asymmetric little grimace where you favor the left side of your face. And when somebody's listening to you and they're doing this, that means that left side of the face is going. That means the right side of the brain is more active. Again, this is contested because everything in neuroscience is contested. And I'm sure some five neuroscientists are listening to us going, oh no, the new paper in this. But this is what a lot of the work that's been going on, especially at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, has been talking about. These asymmetric brain activities that correspond to negative and positive emotions.

You're going to give me a complex now. I'm going to be watching everybody's left eye to see if they believe me or not.

I know this knowledge is actually burdensome.

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We can manage our emotions. So you can't control your happiness directly, but you can manage your emotions and you can adopt habits through proper understanding that will give you a greater frequency of emotional control and the emotions that are more that are both appropriate to the situation and those that you choose, which is really important thing to do. So the whole point is I can't make myself happy all the time. Choose happiness. I see that on people's bumper Stickers. And I feel like ramming my car into that because, sorry, I mean, you need unhappiness and your suffering is very sacred thing. It's an incredibly important and beautiful thing. As a matter of fact. However, you can manage your emotions much, much more than you currently do. Almost everybody can. And the way to do that is by training your, your prefrontal cortex, which is the most human part of your brain. This is the bumper of tissue, 30% of your brain by weight behind your forehead. That's all of your conscious stuff is going on in that part of the brain, training it to understand your limbic system and to react according to the way that you want to as opposed to the way that you feel. Now that's a whole set of techniques, self management techniques called metacognition, which sounds really fancy, but just thinking about, thinking real consciousness about your emotions and then reasoning about your emotions gives you unbelievable amounts of managerial control where you can decide, yeah, I don't want that emotion because I don't think it's actually appropriate. I'm just feeling it because, you know, I'm an animal. But I've decided that I'm not going to act according to it. You can choose gratitude over resentment. You can choose humor over sadness. You can do a lot of emotional substitution on the basis of this. You can also wait when you're feeling a negative emotion so you're not reactive. Your grandma probably said, Cody, count to 10 before you, when you're angry, before you answer that she was telling you to be metacognitive. The reason is because you were letting your prefrontal cortex catch up. Your limbic system is fast, your prefrontal cortex is slow. Let your prefrontal cortex catch up and you can manage a lot of your negative emotions. Use them in an appropriate way. React the way that you want to, you'll get a lot happier.

So let's put that into practice. Let's say you're in a fight with your husband.

Totally hypothetical, weird. I mean, I don't actually have a.

Husband, so yeah, I do. So let's say you're in a fight with your significant other and you're mad and your gut reaction is to go at them.

Right.

What is a practice? To slow down anger or to control your mood?

Yeah, so there's a lot. Almost anytime that people give advice to couples, they're inadvertently giving them advice on metacognition. So for example, if you're, if you're quarreling a lot with your partner and you go to somebody who gives you advice on. One of the things that they'll say is when you're having a quarrel or you're feeling really, really angry, say to your partner, I want to talk about this, but I don't want to talk about it right now because I'm really mad. That's called a hot hedonic state. Or you're really. You have lots of strong negative emotions right now. I want to talk about it later. Can we talk about this after dinner? And you make a. You put a pin in it, and by the time you get there, you're in a cool hedonic state. You can actually talk about it. And you're highly metacognitive at that particular point. That's a way to do that. Another way to do it is when you're actually having an argument and your partner says something you don't like, you stop, you think about it, and then you say is what you're trying to say, and then you paraphrase what your partner's just said. All you've done is given yourself time to catch up to your own limbic system. You're not trying to placate your partner. You're trying to placate your limbic system is what it comes down to. You're being less animal, and you're being more human, and these are all kinds of ways to do that.

That's so useful. Also, I think there is something really nice about named frameworks. I could 1000% see me talking to Chris, and I am on a. What did you call? I'm hot? Hedonically.

I'm in a hot hedonic state. Right.

I'm in a hot hedonic state. Right.

He's like, awesome. No, no, no. It sounds good. It's not.

I'm excited about this. Yeah, not great. That's really useful.

Yeah, totally.

Because I feel like therapy, too, is not specific enough as supposed. You know, when you go, at least some of our therapists, they give you these things that you should do. Like, yeah, pause, take a breath. But if you back it up with the research and data, I at least find that I'm more likely to use it. I'm like, oh, well, that makes sense. It's actually me hijacking this. It's not about the other person. Let's not go all the way back to the first time that he did something wrong 17 years ago.

Yeah. It's because you're a student and you actually want understanding. But most people get the best. They get the best response from therapy. When the therapy is a teacher to you, about you, that's helping you to get a PhD in codiness. Right. That's really important that you actually have this self understanding. The more that you're learning about yourself from therapy, the more likely it is to have a, to have a beneficial impact for the long term. When somebody just wants to solve your problems or give you hacks, run the other way. That's just not very helpful and it's certainly not enduring is how this works. And this is one of the reasons that I do the work that I do. I'm teaching people about themselves. That's what I really want. You want the secret to happiness? Understand yourself, understand the science such that you can change your own habits and do so very, very aware and awake. And then the last part is most important, which is go teach it to others. The way that you get a happier world is by creating a generation of happiness teachers. That's my movement. That's what I really want to do.

Interesting.

Yeah. My class at Harvard is called Leadership and Happiness. And on the first day of class, I say this is the first day in your elite training to become a happiness teacher like me in business. Because they're all MBAs, they're all going to run businesses and they want to be managers. But great managers are teachers.

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We'll take the laundry rinse. It's time to be great. What is the secret to happiness?

So there isn't a single secret to happiness. Because happiness isn't just a thing that you flip a switch, you don't become happy. You could say that the secret to happiness is understanding the methods toward happierness. It's a whole Lot of self knowledge and a commitment to actually practice and live life in a different way is how it comes about. If there were a secret to happiness, we'd know it. I'd be selling, would be going like hotcakes on Amazon.

We'd be on your plane.

Yeah, totally. We would be, we would be doing.

This thing, podcasts on your plane.

That's right. But I wouldn't have been the one to find it. It would have been found a long time ago. This is the thing that people think they want and it's really, really elusive because there isn't a switch. Happiness is a multi dimensional phenomenon. That's not a fundamentally, it's a combination. You and I have talked about this in the past of enjoyment, satisfaction and meaning, which is a whole, you know, vast literature and set of techniques. It's actually a journey, it's an incredible adventure. And that's how I see it. That's what I really want, is I want a generation of Americans who are suffering a lot to see it as an opportunity to actually make their hobby their, their, their avocation. The search for happiness around the science based on this, because it's so fun and interesting.

And you have said before that you actually are not natural state happy.

Yeah, yeah, that's actually why I got into this business in the first place. I'm a behavioral scientist and for years and years I did work that I thought was useful. I mean, I did work on beauty, I did work on charity, but I found that I gravitated toward the big question that I had, which is how can I be a happier person? It's me search as opposed to just research. Because I come from gloomy stock and about 50% of your baseline mood levels is genetic. We know this from identical twins that were separated at birth and given personality tests as twins at about age 40. There's tons of interesting papers on this. And you can even see these pairs of identical twins that didn't know they had twins and are reunited. It's on YouTube, it's a beautiful thing. And when they're given personality tests, it turns out that a lot of their personalities are genetic, including about half of their happiness. So their baseline mood level. And so, you know, your mother literally made you unhappy. So you gotta change your habits. And part of changing your habits is changing your knowledge. And for me, man, I mean, I suffer through a PhD in social science as a social scientist, so I gotta use it for something that's really, really important for what the world really wants, starting with what I really want. And that's how I wound up in this business.

It's interesting because now that I've done the podcast and you know, have been in the circles I've been for a minute, I've met a lot of professors. Yeah, they don't seem that happy on average. I mean, I, like, I've said it to his face and we're buddies enough so I think I can say it. Like, I remember having Scott Galloway on the podcast and I was like, God, you're exactly what I thought you were gonna be. You are not a happy dude. And he's like, no, I'm baseline not happy. I'm like, will you laugh today on this? And he's like, probably not because we've talked about it. And I was like, so, so all this stuff that you do that you kind of make these self deprecating jokes about, like this is your steady state. It's, it's kind of where you want to be. I was wondering, you know, is there a connection or a correlation between intelligence and unhappiness? Are you smarter when you're, if you're smarter, are you more unhappy?

Yeah, no, there is, there actually isn't very much correlation at all between cognitive ability and happiness. There are some correlations with education and, and happiness and unhappiness. And so what you find is that people, when they get more education from high school through college, they tend to get happier. And part of the reason is because they have, their lives tend to be more equilibrated, they tend to have more opportunities. And so probably they're not getting happier. Probably they're eliminating, eliminate eliminable sources of unhappiness, which is really what's going on. So their well being is rising on the unhappiness side, not the happiness side. And then when people hang around graduate school for long enough, their unhappiness starts to rise again.

Interesting.

Yeah. And it might actually be a selection effect. You might find that a lot of people who are sort of discontented with the world, they tend to self select into the graduate school environment is what you find. But really happy people, one of the things that they do, they gravitate toward just opportunity. I bet more people are reading, you know, Main Street Millionaire who are naturally happy people. Why? Because they're optimists. You know, optimists tend to be entrepreneurs. They're the people who see something much better in the future. Whereas, you know, a lot of people, especially social scientists, they don't have an especially sunny view of human nature. They tend to think that everything is socially constructed. They tend to be very non religious. And we find that non religious people tend to be less happy than religious people because they don't think that there's something big and good and beautiful that lies in store for all of us if we live. Right. And so the result is that there isn't that kind of optimism that you typically see and probably the people that you're hanging around with a lot more.

That's fascinating because if you think about it, we talked about this before with this, your dark triad, and how a lot of our leaders today are dark triad, this narcissistic tendency and this sort of real pessimism mixed with darkness. And then if we have that same phenomenon happening with those we deem experts, AKA academics, we've let some of the leaders and biggest minds that drive, I don't know, almost every decision we make in a society as connected as we are today be driven by maybe pessimistic, unhappy people.

Well, certainly pessimists. There's a lot of pessimists in that. So there's two different phenomena that we're looking at here. So you refer to the dark triad, which is this combination of narcissism, Machiavellianism and psychopathy. In other words, it's all about me. I'm willing to hurt you and I feel no remorse when I do. And if you're above average on those three, and there's really good tests, you can, on my website, you can take that, the test for the dark triad@arthurbrooks.com, totally free. Take it for a friend, take it for a potential romantic partner, right? And if you're above average, which isn't to say that you're an axe murderer, but to be just above the population average across all three, then you're going to be in about 7% of the population, you'll be deemed a dark triad, which has certain characteristics that are just not favorable to leadership and not helpful to other people. I mean, don't work for one, don't marry one. I mean, you don't want that is the way that that works. And we have an environment these days where a lot of people in media and especially in politics are tending toward the dark triad. And for a series of weird cultural circumstances, we're rewarding them. They tend to be bullies. And the result is that even though we don't like bullies particularly, we like bullies on our side when we're afraid of the bullies on the other side. And so you go through these periods where dark triads are rewarded, especially if they're intelligent, we see that less among intellectuals. I don't know very many dark triads in academia. I actually don't see it very often.

Why?

Well, part of it is just. It's not. It's harder to be rewarded under those circumstances because, you know, megalomania in academia, where you're being rewarded by your colleagues and lifted up by others and tenure committees, and it just doesn't. It's not an ecosystem that rewards that very much like politics, where politics. If. If this is the right moment and you're a maniac, you're going to win. Yeah, right. But in academia, if you're a maniac, people are gonna be like, no, but you can be. You can. You can be pessimistic, to be sure. Now, in academia, there are lots of dark triads. They just don't happen to be faculty. Mostly they're activists, most of these. And there's a really interesting papers that we've seen recently. The dark triads. They're disproportionately social activists. These are people that want to fire up other people with anger and fear. I want to make you angry and afraid. I want you to be aggrieved. I want you to feel like a victim, because then I can conscript you into my war. And that's a classic dark triad move. So if you go on campuses or any place and you see people who are really shrill activists trying to tell young people that they should be afraid and they should be angry about whatever cause du jour that we're finding, you're very likely to find a dark triad at the head of that movement.

That's fascinating. Yeah. You know, I think it's interesting some of the moves Elon is theoretically making for Twitter, trying to make it kinder. We'll see if that works. So far, so not good.

It's a very wild west environment out there.

It is. But I think this is such a good barometer to have, because a lot of times, what do people say these days? Everybody's good. Are there bad people? No, they aren't. We're all just trying to figure it out. We figure it out at different stages. And if I've seen one thing from being on the Internet, is there are some really unhappy people who want you to be unhappy too, for sure. And you should just acknowledge that.

Tons of dark triads on social media in particular, and because it rewards dark triad behavior, rewards anonymity, it rewards trolling, it rewards. Actually, it's a more of A dark tetrad is what we find which adds a fourth characteristic, which is sadism. And so when you get the motive behind it being I want your pain, that's a really nasty business. And that's what we find a whole lot. And there's a whole, there's a very interesting paper called Trolls Just want to have fun that talks about the fact that you, you tend to see psychopathic sadistic behavior in an anonymous social media activity. So one of the things that, that you know, people on a first date should do as a barometer whether or not you're accidentally getting involved with a dark triad personality is to say, do you like to post anonymously on the Internet? Because the answer is yes. You're overwhelmingly likely to be talking to a dark triad. You're overwhelmingly likely to be talking to a pathological personality, somebody who really likes to stir up trouble and hurt other people. And social media lends itself to that. So if you spend too much time on, on X or any of these platforms, you're going to think that the whole world's burning down. And the reason is because 7% of the population is over represented there. It's like the prison population. I heard one estimate that's hard for me to evaluate that 85% of the prison population is dark triad. It's just that they tend to make really, really stupid decisions and that's why in hurting other people, they wind up in prison, they engage in criminal activity. Social media is like prison that it's an over representation of these pathological personalities that want to stir you up, hurt you, exploit you, take your stuff, make you mad, freak you out, whatever it happens to be.

And they get off on it.

It's just wild. Delete the app. I recommend that everybody go on a social media cleanse very regularly. So you can understand that the ordinary world, the non social media world is actually pretty good.

And it's much more real.

It's real life.

Yeah.

You know, and some people actually don't want real life because it's so boring compared to prison.

Yeah, I mean it certainly is like a little heroin hit when you get on the Internet.

I've met people who, who spent, you know, 20, 30 years in prison and really struggle when they come out because real life is just so slow moving and boring. Yeah.

And they want to go back in.

That's like somebody who can't stand and not be on X. Yeah, I've had.

A few of them actually. So let's say that you're a young person and you don't want to date a narcissist or a dark triad.

And you don't, unless you're a narcissist. Actually, you want somebody who's not, because then you can exploit.

Interesting.

Yeah, yeah.

So how would you make sure that's not who you're dating? What are three or four things you could do?

Yeah. So you. It's a. I've written an awful lot about these particular characteristics and I have screens and things that you should actually be paying attention to. But the whole point is understanding what that constellation actually is. So narcissists, especially narcissists, who are also Machiavellian and somewhat psychopathic, they present unbelievably well. If you're getting love bombed by somebody, that's very likely a dark triad.

What is love bombing?

And that's basically moving on you super fast. Sending you chocolates, sending you flowers, you know, it's just, I love you so much from the very beginning. If they're moving too quickly into the zone of trying to sweep you off your feet, that's always what dark triads do.

Why?

Because they show really well and they pray. This is, generally speaking, a gendered phenomenon. So these are dark triad. Men do this and they have almost a perfect detector for a syndrome called hemophilia in women, which is. It can happen in men too. It's most likely women. Not hemophilia, which is a blood disorder, hemophilia without the H, which is women who fall in love really quickly. And it's a pretty common phenomenon. There's a bunch of literature on this. And so dark triads, they have a sixth sense for emophilic women, and they'll just love bomb them and within a week be practically moving in together and then draining their bank accounts and cheating on them and treating them really horribly. Knowledge is power. So I've worked with lots and lots of young women about this, talking to them about what you should be looking out for in yourself and in others. And we talk about the brain science of how this works. If you're emo philic, you're going through this neurochemical cascade of falling in love much more quickly than the average person. So that cascade is. It starts off, the ignition, starts with the sex hormones, with attraction, actually comes from testosterone and estrogen. Then this goes into the anticipation and euphoria phase, which is a lot about norepinephrine and dopamine. Then it goes into bonding to the other person where serotonin levels fall. So a part of the brain called the ventral lateral prefrontal cortex becomes highly active. This is almost indistinguishable from clinical depression because you're ruminating on the other person. This is when you send 100 text messages like a moron and feel humiliated. Never know that's because of the. Because when you're falling in love, you'll do weird stuff. And that's because your serotonin levels are low. And what you really want in the end is the imprinting, the bonding on each other with oxytocin, which is this bonding hormone, also known as the love molecule. And you go through this process, and it usually takes a certain amount of time, and if you sync up in that and you're falling in love, it's great. But if you're going through this in hours and the other person is going through it in days and weeks, it's a problem. And if the other person isn't going through it at all, they're just trying to exploit you. It's a big problem. Unless you've got this knowledge, is what it comes down to. So recognizing the characteristics of narcissists is really important. They're going to be trying to sweep you off your feet. They're also. They. It's interesting because they have all these tells, narcissists. They. Everything's about them. Right. You know, the average, by the way, the average number of questions asked by a man on a first date, according to my colleague Allison Woodbrooks at hbs, Zero.

No way.

Yeah. That's the average of the median number of questions asked by a man on a first date with a woman. Yeah. Yeah. So if on the second and third date you're still not getting any questions about you, you get a narcissist. That's a big tell.

That's a good one.

They're just not curious about you. It's not like they were raised by wolves. They just literally don't care about you. And if you're the only one, if it's asymmetric in that way and those types of things, if they're. They're talking an awful lot about the people who've done bad things to them, if they have a persecution complex, if they tend to feel victimized, if you've noticed that they've moved around a lot because they haven't been able to hold a job, all of these are dark triad tells.

That's such good intel. Especially the question part, because I think I had a few interactions with one. One in business and one in personal relationship, but the personal one I remember being so enamored by the human, like, very charismatic.

Totally. They show so well.

They show so well. And I think there was that love bombing thing going on. And then simultaneously I was so in it, I was just like, wow, the stories you're telling and the things that have happened and oh, they did that to you. How could they have done that to you? And then if I look back, probably I didn't share much of anything. Yeah, that's right. So that's a great tell.

Totally. And when you think about it, what the narcissist wants is, wants you to fall in love with him, wants you. He's not going to fall in love with you. He wants you to fall in love with him. He wants, or she wants an asymmetric relationship. That's the nature of it. And so if things are asymmetric and they look, they're asymmetric on purpose, you gotta dark try it.

Wow. Why can a narcissist ever fall in love? Can you change a narcissist?

It's not clear. And part of the biggest problem is we can have lots of pathologies and we can't change because we want to. The problem is that narcissists don't want to change. The problem is not that you can't change them, the problem is that you actually need them to buy into the process. And if they don't, because they don't want to change, you're not going to change them involuntarily, you're just not going to. And so I actually haven't seen cases in the literature or in my own work of a dark triad actually becoming not a dark triad.

Wow. So how do you, I guess you just don't date them. Yeah. What do you do?

Avoid them. Avoid them, Avoid them. Just avoid them as much as you possibly get. Don't marry them, don't date them, don't hire them. Right. And if it turns out you do hire them, fire them. Right. And again, now's the moment, right now. Because most of the in industry today, in American business today, bosses all know who their troublemakers are. All your activists in the workforce. These are disproportionately dark triads. The ones who are blowing up your slack channel saying the boss is a racist, assuming that you're not a racist. I mean, don't be a racist, right? But people who are just basically attacking you and trying to gin up all sorts of ill will, these are dark triads. Get rid of your dark triads. Because by the way, they're Also unproductive. They're also not good workers because they're doing things for themselves, are selfish and nobody wants to work with them. They're making everybody miserable around them. So even if they're ringleaders, they seem popular. They aren't. And the greatest sigh of relief you're going to hear is when you actually do the hard work, the boss work of saying bye bye. And now is the time I think in American business when you're going to be more able to do that in the past because we've just gone through this horrible period of bullying in American business where everybody's beleaguered and everybody's afraid and they're afraid of these dark triad types actually in the workplace. So don't date them, don't marry them, don't hire them, don't have them working for you if you know who they are. If you've made that mistake already, don't vote for them.

Yeah, that might be hard when everybody is one. You want to run for president? I think I asked you that last.

Time and you're like, no thanks, I'm not at our. Try it. But it's funny because we kind of get what we deserve. That was. Remember Ed Koch? Remember who he was, you know, the mayor of New York. And he was a super popular mayor of New York. But you know, like all of them, they go past their poll date and then they wind up getting, getting killed by the voters. And so he finally loses his race for. And he's a super funny guy. He was hilarious. And he says in his press conference, the people of New York have spoken and now they're going to pay.

That's not good.

I know, it's awesome. You know, it's so funny. And so it was a joke kinda, right? Kinda, kinda. And so this is the thing. If we're a self governing people and if we keep voting for these dark triads, well, look in the mirror, guys. You don't like what's going on in our country, then stop voting for people that you think are gonna be good bullies. Don't vote for somebody who's simply your walking middle finger.

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Wow. Yeah, that's true. Well, we'll have to see what happens in the next go round.

We'll just, you know, hopes and prayers, thoughts and prayers, a little pray. Yeah, but.

But you know, I think one thing that you're doing to push back on all of this, if we can't control the people on high, we have to be able to control ourselves. That's all that we can really do at the end of the day.

Totally. And that's a business principle that you talk about in your book. This is an incredibly important business principle. You know that there's a difference between people who say I can manage myself, that my entrepreneurial endeavor, my enterprise is me, and my small business is an extension of my self management. As opposed to people like, sure hope my next boss isn't a jerk. Sure hope I like my job more than I liked my last job. Don't go through life as a victim, for Pete's sake.

Yeah, I think that's the hardest part and the thing that we have to obsess on a little bit. You know, I was, you know, you, you run. I always mess this up. The Happiness Institute.

So I have the, the leadership and Happiness Lab at the leadership and lab every time I.

There's the Happiness Institute for the books. Every time I say it.

Yeah. No, so we have an organization that organizes my, you know, writing and speaking and media. And then inside Harvard, I have a lab on research about how to teach happiness, how people learn the skills of greater happiness.

So a lab. There is like a research lab. It's just like Andrew Huberman might have a biology lab at Stanford.

It's just a lot less developed and as small. It's an artisanal organization.

I like a little bohemian spot at Harvard.

Yeah, yeah, totally. It's a little bit of Austin right inside of Harvard.

Exactly. I mean, people wouldn't believe that except that you have arguably one of the most popular classes, if not the most popular elective at Harvard, which is actually about love and happiness.

Right.

We were talking before and you know, I think, is it true that one of the keys to happiness is love.

Happiness is love. So it's almost, it's almost an identity. It's, it's almost a one to one correspondence is what we actually find. So yeah, so the class that I teach at the Harvard Business School is called Leadership and Happiness. And it's an MBA class. It's a very popular elective. It starts actually, we're taping this a week and a half before the class actually starts. So I'm developing. Every year I develop it new and I'm looking at the roster and it's completely jammed. I have 400 in the waiting list or something like that. It's a thrill to actually do it. But the main point that I tell them is that really it comes down to happiness. At the end of the day, getting greater happiness really has everything. The hygiene, the technique has everything to do with the love in your life is what it comes down to. I'll give you an example. So there's this 85 year longitudinal study called the Harvard Study of Adult Development. You've heard about it before. It's been. Harvard researchers have been fielding a survey with the same sample of people for 85 years. So they can see what are they doing, how happy are they, how healthy are they, how are their relationships, etc. Etc. And it's a good representative sample. Started off as just Harvard students in the late 1930s and it contained, you know, JFK was in the original sample, the Boston Strangler was in the original sample, etc. And then they. I know. Then they branched out to a group of people who didn't go to college. And then they can, then they, then they use. They brought in spouses and children so that it's really demographically representative at this point. And they know what people do over the course of their life that leads them to wind up as happy, healthy people. So the healthy ones are diet, exercise, smoking and drinking or smoking or smoking and substances these days. It was drinking in the old days. But it would be all of the euphorics that are really bad for you. Despite what we like to think, almost any euphoric that you use to change your consciousness is a neurotoxin. And it's bad for you if it makes you feel high. It's a neurotoxin. That's what it comes down to.

Do we have any studies and data on mushrooms? This is like the mushroom capital of the world.

I know. And that's not a euphoric. Euphoric per se. It's not exact. It doesn't Work in exactly the same way. It's not like, you know, getting an awesome buzz.

No. Sometimes it sucks.

I don't know.

Yeah, it's like, you're not doing mushrooms at Harvard.

I'm old enough to be like, oh, no. You know, I missed so many things. I'm glad I missed. I missed dating apps. I missed, you know, oh, man, it's so awesome to be married, you know, 33 years. And so people, you know, that is very under.

That is an underrated line, actually. People like, how could you be married for 33 years? I'm like, how could you not? I'd be a mess right now.

Oh, my gosh.

If I had to be out there dating random people.

Dating. I know, guys my age dating, it's a nightmare.

That's tough. Worse for women, though. I think women, like, if I was dating right now and then I'm not going to say how you. But let's say I was like, older. That's real tough. Men get silvery and like, you know, silver fox. Nobody goes, you know what? That woman, she's so beautifully rugged looking.

You know, it's not like it's, it's, you know, it's, it's. That's a big part of my class, by the way. It's called, the most popular unit of my class called Falling in love and staying in love.

Oh, let's talk about that.

That's the module in the class that really, I mean, my students are. They're trained killers. In business, they're like, you know, Sicilian Mafia assassins. In business, they're the best. But nobody ever taught them about what really matters in the business of life, which is love, you know, and they don't. And there's technique that really matters, and there's science that you can actually really use. And so that's the most important thing. And, and one of the things that I talk to them about is, you know, what's the range? How do you want to set up your relationships? And so I often use business terms, and an immature startup often doesn't work. Getting married at 18 or 19 is usually a little bit too young. But waiting too long and trying to do a merger, that's a problem too. And then after that, when it's much older, then you're in the realm of acquisitions and hostile takeovers. And that's really a bad situation for stable marriages. What you want is a mature startup, and so you want to actually have a little bit of experience. But you find that people from about 25 to 32, that's the kind of the range where people are most likely to have successful relationships because they're a startup. They're not merging to fully formed lives and careers. And there's all kinds of interesting data about what that looks like. What does a startup together look like? And it's like one bank account is what that looks like. As a very practical matter, if you're a merger, one of the tells of being a merger is you have separate finances. And that's not a good predictor of actually of growing together. Because here's the thing you're going to change over the course of your life. Happy couples change together, and happy couples that are changing together are the ones who started together. So they're flexible and they stay see their own desires and tastes and views reflected in the other person. They're kind of one mind. It's kind of the hive mind of the startup. That's why, you know, people who grow up together and start businesses together are often really successful.

So are you more likely to have a successful marriage if you are a certain age?

Yeah, you are, you are. And the answer is not at a certain age now. It's when the relationship started. It's really, really hard. And so there's some pretty interesting data. For example, if men over 30 who've never either cohabitated or been married, they have a 1 in 3 likelihood of a substance abuse disorder. Yeah, there's a reason that they've not been domesticated. That's what it comes down to. And that's why women find if they're not married, when they're in their 30s, they're often like, God, the guy's my age who've never been married. And so then now I'm talking of way older guys who are divorced. And that's one of the reasons that you see these asymmetries that actually age, asymmetries that actually often happen. And so these are just empirical regularities. I mean, not good or bad. No judgment unless, I mean, everybody makes their own judgment about that. But those are the empirical regularities that we often see. So again, it's the startup mentality. My kids got married super young. I mean, my sons got married at 22 and 23, had their first children at 23 and 24. I mean, raise them Catholic, they go to Catholic stuff. But what we find is that it's mid-20s, 25, 26, 27 to about 32. That's kind of the magic zone where people have enough experience, they know themselves, they've made mistakes, they've Learned from their mistakes. It's like their early startup experience that didn't work out and you know, the early failures in the startup world and then. But they're not jaded. Right. And so they're not scarred and certainly they're not. They're, they're, they're willing to hitch up with somebody else and become hive mind.

Yeah, it does. I mean, we have a couple of friends here in Austin that just, you know, jokingly love them, but we called them, we called them the Lost boys because they would just like kind of never age. Right.

They'd want to stay kind of a Peter Pan deal.

That's what it is. Peter Pan.

Yeah.

Yeah. And so they, and they're wonderful humans, but.

And they probably don't have a substance use disorder, but they're having a hard time growing up.

They are. And you know, and because they're relatively reasonable humans, you know, business people. Business kicks you in the teeth constantly. So I think it's harder to be completely unreasonable if you're running a business. You just get gut checked constantly. But, you know, these guys in particular, you know, I would introduce them to a guy, you know, a girl and, Or a woman. And I remember one of the times I'm like, what is wrong with you? That that was the way that you thought that interacting was appropriate. They're like, well, that's what I do with all of my buddies. I'm like, not the same thing. So I do think it's not very popular to say that it's quite hard when you're fully matured to compromise with another fully matured human.

It's hard to do. I mean, you've got your own, your own style of living, you've got your own technique of interacting with other people. Indeed. And you become less flex, quite frankly. And you know, for a lot of men, women are different than men and they don't fully experience that because they don't grow up together. I mean, I've been with my wife since we were. I was 24 and she was 25, and. And we grew up together.

Yeah.

You know, I don't understand adult life without my wife. It's just that's. There's certain, there's the way that things. I, I perceive the world in no small part through the brain of my wife.

Are people happier when they're married?

Yes. Now, this requires that you not have a terrible marriage. And so what you find is that people are both happier and unhappier when they're married because the small percentage of marriages that are completely dysfunctional, but still together. That's misery. I mean, that kind of tension with daggers drawn is just awful. But most people are not in that situation. And these people tend to be happier. You find that especially true. I mean, for the longest time, they used to say that there was early data that turns out to not have been replicated very well, that men are happier when they're married than women are, that marriage is good for men, but it's not good for women. That's wrong. It's good for both. It's really, really good for both. Especially if at the right time, you're a merger. I mean, you're a startup, and you grow up together and understand yourself as a unit, as a fighting force. Iron sharpens iron.

Very true. Yeah. Are there any quotes in the Bible about, like, quarrelsome men? I always hear the quote of, like, there's nothing worse than a quarrelsome wife or something like that.

That's Proverbs. Yeah, yeah. And Proverbs and. But then again, then it. Then it's followed by Proverbs 31. It talks about that eulogizes the virtuous woman who, you know, who helps the man prosper in all that he does and who's like a growing vine. And, you know, and that's. And then, of course, that's the. The proverb that's cited every. On Shabbos, every by. By Orthodox Jews every Friday night, you know, that eulogizing, you know, the beautiful, wonderful wife who, you know, makes the world go around.

Okay, so we get the positive and the negative.

We do. We certainly do. And most of the rest of the Bible is about men behaving badly, so.

Okay, thank you. That makes me feel better. We don't say husband explicitly.

No, no. It's just. It's like you don't even need to talk about the husband experience. It's just kind of the whole panoply of male. Of male behavior.

Yeah. Why do you think that so many people. Why do you think so many young men are attracted to the Andrew Tate model of connection and love and lack of connection with women today?

Well, we're in a particularly pathological period in American history where relationships aren't forming, which is a real problem. And this happens from time to time. We tend to go in and out of cycle, in and out of relationship cycle, where it's funny, it's kind of like this is the opposite of the sexual revolution. This is the antisexual revolution, where people are not. Are not pairing up in. In either, you know, a Bad way, Depending on your morals or a good way. There's just what you find is that people about half as likely to be married in their 20s, they're less likely to be cohabitating, they're less likely to be having sex, they're less likely to say they're in love than ever before. And that leads to just an unbelievable amount of loneliness. And it has a lot to do with how we technologically intermediate relationships. I mean, dating apps are horrible for lots and lots of men, because what dating apps do is that they adjudicate their relationships based on these characteristics that you actually can't get information on electronically or in an abbreviated form. I'm not quite making sense. Here's basically what it comes down to. If you actually have to meet somebody, you meet an actual person, you're more likely to be attracted to somebody who's not in the 10% most obviously attractive portion of the population. If you're only looking at somebody's dating profile, then what you're going to find is, for a whole bunch of reasons that researchers have looked into, 80% of the overtures toward men go to 10% of the male population, and those are not the right guys. Those are a lot of dark triads. The dark triads are the ones who show the best in every format, including in dating profiles. And so the result of that is that lots of men are left behind. Lots of men are lonely, Lots of men are, and just really hostile and angry. A lot of guys are really lashing out because men need love, and so they just conclude that the problem is women.

Interesting.

Yeah.

When the problem is really the format.

The problem is the format. The problem is the culture. The problem is the activism that has turned men and women against each other, that have made men and women hostile and suspicious and afraid of each other, because that's actually fed into this kind of goofy culture war that we've got going on right now. I mean, and the truth of the matter is that it's gonna change. The fever's gonna break, and people are gonna start falling in love again. But in the meantime, you have a lot of casualties of this culture war. And some of the casualties are lonely men and women.

So what do you tell young men at Harvard who want to meet somebody.

To get serious about it? To be as serious about the formation of your family as you are about the formation of your company? That dating is not entertainment. Dating is auditioning. You're auditioning for the role of husband. And that means not very many second dates, not very many second Dates, because, you know, second dates are mostly entertainment. And if the audition doesn't go well, then do everybody a favor. You know, you're not doing her any favor by, you know, by. Unless she's just into the entertainment experience as well. But if they're like, I'm really frustrated by this, and one of the ways that I'll do this is I'll say, let's look at the crystal ball. Think of yourself in five years, and you're remarkably happier than you are right now. Like, 25% happier than you are right now.

Wow.

My students are, on average 28 years old. Imagine you're 33 and you're 25% happier. Tell me the five reasons why, in order. Number one is, I'm married to somebody I'm in love with. Number two is, my family is under control. Number three is. Or my family situation is resolved. Number three is I know my spiritual path. Something like that. And then like, 4 and 5 are, I have a really great job and I'm making a lot of money. That's never one and two. Never wanted to. People, even at the Harvard Business School, that's not one and two. They care about love. That's what they want. I say, okay, are you taking one and two seriously? Like, kind of leaving it up to chance? Well, let's talk about how to treat it with the same seriousness as you do your business life.

Fascinating. And what's the advice to a young woman who wants.

It's the same advice, because people are people. It's what it comes down to. And let's talk about. Because, again, the world is not going to push you to fall in love. The world's gonna push you to make money. The world is gonna push you to be successful. Homo economicus. Go out there and get a job and make a bunch of money and be successful. Congratulations. Now you must be happy. And people are like, I'm so lovely. I'm so lovely. I'm working 110 hours in an investment bank, and I'm making bank, and I cry myself to sleep over half a bottle of wine.

What?

That's not good. And the reason is because nobody's spoken to them honestly and seriously about the problem of love and how to get it and how to manage it. And this is not something that has to be left up to chance. On the contrary, we need better technique.

Do young men ever say to you, but I just want to date around, I just want to have lots of sex with lots of people. And I think that'll make me happy.

People don't self select into the environment of my office hours in my class to come say that.

Do you think they think it?

I mean, I think that certainly there are bros who think that way, but that's not the way. Fundamentally people are wired. By the time people are thinking seriously about their happiness, they recognize that that is, that's a kind of an immature way of seeing life. Now I get how evolution works. I get how the evolutionary imperatives are different for biological females and males where women have a much greater investment in offspring. And so the result is they're much choosier with mates. And this is the way that it would be. I mean, David Buss here at UT Austin. Have you had him on your show before?

No.

He's phenomenal. He's an evolutionary psychologist who does the absolute best work on gender differences in mating patterns.

Amazing.

He's phenomenal as his work. I don't know him. I just, I'm a super fan of his research. And it makes perfect sense that you'd see that women would be, Men would especially younger men would tend to be more promiscuous when they're younger as a result of biological imperatives. But we're not subject exclusively to our biological imperatives. We have a divinity within. We have an ample prefrontal cortex that can help us make executive decisions that don't just go with the limbic system that says ah, mates. If I do that a lot, maybe I have, have 75 children. I mean it's like nobody wants that and you don't actually have to live according to that. And, and so the result of it is particularly by the time that, that you know, I'm meeting a lot of young people, they're, they recognize look that they've got impulses and they've got tendencies and a lot of them have a past, but they want something better. And what they want is to live in that spark of divinity that's within. And that spark of divinity actually comes along with, with long term commitments to, and the hive mind of the couple and the love that actually, the cosmic love that actually comes from forming a family. And you form a family the day that you, that you link up permanently with your, with your beloved.

I was reading a study the other day that Nordic countries are the happiest countries in the world. Is that true? And why?

Yeah.

No.

So those are studies that come from. I mean this is the craziest thing. This is such a misuse of data. So, and there's a, there's a, there's a reason that we do these studies. And the reason is because the people who do these studies want us all to be Northern European social democracies. These are basically people who don't want the wild, wild west of American individualism to reign supreme any place. And so what do we want? We want people to live like bees. And so what they do is they find a way to say, yeah, well, I went to Denmark and I asked a thousand people in Denmark how happy they were, and they said, yeah, I'm pretty content. And so they said, see, that's the happiest country, so we should all be like, Denmark.

Wow. So it actually has this. So this study has a social steering.

Yeah, to be fair, nobody's ever said that's why we're trying to do this. And so this is a little bit ad hominem on my part. And so I, you know, I. I apologize for that, but that's what's happening. Interesting. So imagine that we wanted to see who's got the best music, which country's got the best music. I'm going to go to 100 countries and I'm going to field a questionnaire with a. For a thousand randomly selected human participants. We're gonna answer the question, how much do we like. Do you like your local music? And then based on who likes music the most that's the best music in the world, you say, well, that's the dumbest thing. That's how they're measuring countries. Happiness is doing that.

That's very dumb. Also, having categorically met a lot of Nordic people, doesn't check out.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's like, if you talk to. And I've actually, I shot a documentary, Brazil.

If you said Brazil, I might, I might buy that, actually.

I know. And so, you know, I've. I've asked names, I've asked the, you know, the speaker of the Danish parliament, you know, what's the deal? And they're like, that stuff, they roll their eyes at these studies and they say, look, we're quite contented. And I'm like, I don't want contented. I'm like you. I'm a small business owner. I want adventure, I want opportunity. That, by the way, that's the reason my grandparents got on a boat from Denmark and came to the United States, because they're like, this is boring. You know, there's a word in. And again, I got nothing against the Danes. God love them. I mean, they're. My family are Danes. Right. But there's a word in Danish. You've heard this word, hygge. H Y G G E. Hygge. It means. It's, it's, it's actually, you can't translate it. It means something like the cozy conviviality of the company of your friends on a comfortable couch or something like that.

Right.

It's like naturally, Friday, with your friends on your comfy couch, shooting the breeze. It's comfort is what they want. I'm like, I don't want Hygge. I want, I want the West. I want the frontier. I want the adventure. That's why my grandparents booked it and went to South Dakota and started a farm. Right. That's why they were orphans. They were first grade, educated, illiterate orphans, the wrong religion, and they came to the United States and they built a life. And so, and so what that suggests is that I got nothing against Denmark, but don't give me Denmark, give me America, man. That's what I want. And the people in Denmark who want America should come to America.

Exactly. What about the fact that they list South Korea as like the unhappiest country?

That's just because that's how they answer the question. There's lots of. So Russians, for example, they. I was lecturing on this at Moscow State University and somebody explained to me that in, in Russian, it's bad luck to say you're happy because it's going to turn on you. Well, okay then. Then you can't trust data on that.

That makes sense if you've ever met a Russian. They're not going to talk about the joyfulness.

No. It's like, are you happy? It's like, I'm doomed if I say yes.

So they normally say I'm doomed. Nothing matters and we all die.

Yeah. Yeah.

Which is very Russian philosophy. You read a little bit of Russian existentialism and you're probably right there.

Yeah. And so people answer happiness questions and that the word for happiness is translated in different ways. And so the Romance languages, it's felicitous from, from Latin. Is that like the felicitousness. Felicitat is. Is means something different than in all the Germanic languages, where, for example, in, in German, the word for happiness is gluck, which literally means luck. In English, happiness comes from the Middle English word hop and hop means luck. And so the German, the Germanic languages like English and Danish and Swedish and Norwegian, etc. We're always talking about, sure hope it's good tomorrow. And in the Romance Languages, it's like, party, baby. This episode is Brought to you by State Farm.

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The trucks too kind of, you know. And so the result is how are you going to compare these concepts? I mean across countries. You can compare people in countries over time. That's legit. I do that all the time. For looking at happiness trends inside populations, you can look at individuals all day long. But I don't, I don't compare countries. I don't think it's a, I don't think it's, it's a legitimate empirical thing to do.

That was actually a very convincing argument. What about in, last time we talked, we were on this happiness trend that was not very positive in the States.

Actually all over the world.

But yeah, what, what is hap? Are we globally getting less happy?

Yeah, so there are exceptions. There are countries that are getting happier and what you find is that for example, sub Saharan Africa is getting happier because they're in the, they're actually, their well being levels are rising because economic development is eliminating lots of sources of basic unhappiness that you would find in any deeply impoverished populations. So that's really where a lot of the action is right now in terms of global well being. And again, wiping out poverty and economic development and abundant energy and all these types of things are super important for lowering avoidable sources of unhappiness in developed countries. The story is a little bit different because we've gotten past this point and now we have a lot of these cultural trends that are giving us a climate of falling happiness and then a bunch of storms. So the climate of happiness is based on faith, family, friendship and work and the attitude toward work, which is the pillars of the happiest life for individuals. But it works in society too. And religiosity is in decline, family formation is in decline, loneliness is increasing, especially as we Mediate relationships through technology. And people have a less healthy relationship toward their work than they did in the past, especially young people. And so that's why we sort of tick down half a percentage point a year in happiness in the United States and most of the West. Then we have storms like the coronavirus epidemic where people are still not going back to where they were and seeing each other in person. I mean, rates of person to person friendship are still way below where they were in 2019. And you know, less oxytocin, less eye contact, less touch trouble, political polarization, which is a nasty business for happiness. When you're being, when activists and politicians are telling you you have to hate somebody for what they believe, you're the one who has the hot coal in her hand to throw at somebody else. That's a, that's a Buddhist concept, is to pick up a hot coal throw that somebody else is like hating. And, and last but not least, of course is you know what's going on with social media and dating apps and you know how technology is actually has ripped us apart.

Yeah. You kind of single handedly changed my view on having negative feelings towards others online, which is, I mean it was. Took one conversation with you, which is probably why they call you the CEO whisperer, but it was, it was essentially like every time you're fixating on people being negative towards you online or on somebody hating and you're not sending them love that is on you, you are grabbing the hot coal. And I don't know why that seems maybe like common sense, like, oh yeah, of course I've heard that before. My grandmother said it. But for some reason when you said it to me, it stuck. And from that point forward, I've really materially changed the way I think about negative people online. And I'm so much fucking happier.

Oh, much happier. It's just incredible. But there's a reason, by the way, that Cody and Arthur and everybody else, why their brains naturally fixate on that. You have literally more brain tissue dedicated to threats than you do to opportunities. And that's how the Sanchez has made it out of the Pleistocene, is by being very, very attuned to threats is to be more resentful and suspicious and fearful and angry than grateful and peaceful and loving. I mean that threats are something you better pay attention to or they're going to be really, really lethal. And so your brain is developed to actually look at that. The blinking pixel of the hostile person, the person who's not, who's smiling sweetly at you from across the room, but the person who's frowning angrily at you, that gets your attention, because that could be a big problem once you get out on the street, right? And that's what's going on. And we have a tendency with technologically mediated relationships like social media, to treat them as if they were in person relationships, as actual threats. So the way to deal with that is perception and attention. So perception is understanding what's really going on, and attention is what you decide to pay attention to. And you have control over both your perception and your attention. Understanding what's actually going on in your brain and in the brain of the other person on the other side there gives you enormous power to be a happier person and, by the way, to also be a more successful person.

Knowledge is essentially power, incredible power. You know, I had a couple friends that go that went through really tough things online. Like there were kind of personalities. One was Sriram, who got into it in Twitter. They, you know, he's Indian, you know, born that way. And he said a couple comments about H1B visas that were taken six ways from Sunday. And he was sort of in this storm and epicenter of hate on Twitter. And knowing him as I do personally, he's a lovely man who really cares about this country and wants good things for it. And we may agree or disagree with his beliefs, which is totally fine. But what was interesting was when I was talking to him, having been on the other end of when people hate you on the Internet before, I said, I'm curious, did it feel like a physical threat? Because I remember the first time it happened to me, not to his extent, but it felt visceral, like, almost like, you know, when you get an adrenal spike and you can feel it, you get tingly. Is that true? Does our brain process things that happen to us online as if it is in person and threatening?

For sure. So what happens is that you see something. It stimulates your optic nerve, is processed for what you're reading online in the occipital lobe of your brain, sending a signal to your amygdala, which is the fear and anger part of the limbic system of the brain, stimulating a signal that goes through the hypothalamus to the pituitary gland in your brain, then sending a signal to your adrenal glands, which sit above your kidneys, which will start to spit out epinephrine adrenaline. And this happens in 74 milliseconds. Then if you're in that zone, 20 minutes later, you get cortisol coming in behind it. Which is supposed to keep you in a hypervigilant state so that you can actually stay ahead of the cheetah that wants to come and eat you or whatever it happens to be. Now in this case, it's stupid nonsense, AKA Twitter, but, but your brain is still registering it as, as if it's actually a predator, meaning that you still got this adrenaline that, that set you up for hyper vigilance and then the cortisol, which is keeping you awake and by the way also suppressing your immune system because you don't want to be worrying about other little things when you need to be super vigilant about these particular predators. And that's when you can't sleep because you're not supposed to be able to sleep when you might get eaten. And you start treating it as if it were the kind of threat that it actually isn't. But that's how your system was created. This is a mismatch between our biological, our evolutionary environment and our technological environment. We were not built for Twitter, we were built for the savannah. And our body still acts as if it were. And so all of these threats, the only way you can combat this, number one, is by, by checking out, by saying I'm not going to play or is through understanding and self management. That's the only way you can deal with this. Otherwise you will be miserable if you're in public life.

It's so good. There were two other questions I was curious on with you. One is I read a study that said it was from the study because I really should quote these. And we're going to do it. Maybe you'll know it. Okay, I'll find it afterwards for you. It was. Oh, it was done by Oracle and the study said that 45% of people have not felt true happiness for more than two years and 25% don't know or have forgotten what it means to feel truly happy. Do you think that's true?

Well, it's hard to know because I actually haven't seen, I've seen those data, but I haven't seen time series, so I don't know longitudinally. I strongly suspect that if you went back years, people would be saying the same thing that people. And part of the reason is just because retrospectively we think about our happiness in particular ways that people think about how their life is. They think about what ideal happiness would be and then wish they could have it even though they actually can't. So a lot of this has to do with a misunderstanding of happiness as opposed to a True reflection of how happy we are. So reality about what happiness is and the experiences that we can have is really, really important, as it turns out. So when I talk to people about what it is, what their habits are, the mistakes that they've made, then they will retrospectively start to understand their own past in a different way. And by the way, you can edit your past, because when you understand your past in reality, it can turn out that, like, oh, yeah, no, I hate Thanksgiving. Why do you hate Thanksgiving? Well, you know, I had all these experiences when I was a kid. My mother's always crying and Thanksgiving and, well, let's go back and talk about what was really going on in Thanksgiving. And you edit your past. You remember things in a different way. The episodic memories are actually stored in the hippocampus of the brain, and you reassemble them de novo every time you think about it. And you reassemble them in a different way with new knowledge. You're editing your past in a more accurate way than you've done, and then you can actually start to get different answers on those types of questions.

So that would be like, you would go back to those Thanksgivings and say, you know, mom was really stressed because she was struggling with this and she cried, but she always tried to hide it from us. So, like, she was actually looking out.

For us on Thanksgiving, and mom was awesome. And so you go back and you think not about Thanksgiving as a source of bitter memories, but one of sadness about what your mom was going through because you loved your mom. And that's an entirely different framing, and it's probably more accurate, as a matter of fact, because you're looking at your mom with some empathy as opposed to looking back on how it was, you know, little Cody, it was mom. And, you know, it's really interesting because once you reframe it with respect to the suffering that other people are having as opposed to the suffering that you remember, that's a really, really important edit that. That almost everybody can engage in. And again, that's been largely overlooked by the. By the therapy industrial complex that wants you to relive your trauma. No, no, no, no, no, no. You need to re frame and understand your trauma, understanding that you probably weren't the person who was suffering the most. This can then stimulate the compassion that is at the core of your soul, making you a happier person and a better person today.

So when we're going back and looking at our trauma, are we often turning ourselves into a victim?

Yeah. Happens all the time. Absolutely. Because you're reliving it, you're reliving it, you're reliving it and you're being encouraged to actually be resentful about it and to. And, I mean, I get it, I get it. That's a normal thing to do, but that's not really a very healthy thing to do at all.

Wow, it's so interesting. We're going to make this about me. This is my therapy session with Arthur today.

You got it.

This is great. But it's funny because we had a therapist that we were. We've been using for a while, and I felt like we were doing a decent amount of that. We were going back to a thing and then we were being asked, how do we feel? How does that feel in our body? How did we feel about that? How did we feel at that time? And at some point I was just like, listen, we're kind of having the same issues. We're having these same situations. Nothing's changing. Why the fuck do we keep doing the same thing if it's not actually making any change? That seems unreasonable, but I'd never thought about it from that perspective. Instead, could we go back and instead of saying, like, this was so sad. This was so sad that this happened, what other story could we tell ourselves about that?

Because it wasn't accurate and you don't.

Get a medal for being the biggest victim, you know?

Right. Generally speaking, when you think about a past, that's difficult for you, and you go back and review it, do it where you're not the star, don't be the star of your trauma. Go back and look at the other people who are involved and actually think compassionately about the suffering of the other players in that drama. And in so doing, you'll get out of the psychodrama. The psychodrama is so deleterious because it's just so. Just so boring. And me. And me. And me. And me. And me. I'm telling you, it's so hard to get out of. I starred in all my dreams last night. It was so boring and tedious.

It is true.

And you can actually. You have the privilege of being able to go back and reconstruct the psychodrama in a way where you didn't have a starring role, where you had a role as somebody who was watching and somebody who now, with the wisdom of the years, is understanding it in a particularly different way. And it's just. It can be. It can really change your life a lot.

You've actually been around and friends with a bunch of famous People, celebrities, presidents, Oprah. Does fame make you happy or unhappy?

Fame is one of the four. According to Aristotle, vis a vis St Thomas Aquinas, there are four idols and everybody falls prey to one of these idols. St. Thomas Aquinas was an incredible social scientist before his time. These idols, in other words, according to him, were substitutes for God, but have divine characteristics. And people use them even though they're idolatrous because religion is inconvenient. Lots of rules, many one sided conversations, so it seems. And so people will fall prey to their idol. And the four idols are money, power, pleasure and fame. Those are the four idols. It's an almost exhaustive list. And fame can mean prestige, it can mean admiration, it can be very local. I want to be well known among these people, right? In academia, it's always wanting to be known as the expert in your field. They don't care. You don't want to be Internet famous if you're in a sociology department at Harvard, but you want all the sociologists at the American Sociological association to think you're big cheese. So money, power, pleasure and fame, fame is the only one of those you can only ever be happy in spite of. Now this is important, right? Because you have a biological imperative to get more notoriety. You want more people in the caves around you to know who you are, as opposed to you knowing who they are, because then you're going to be higher. That means you're higher in the, in the hierarchy of a kin based society. We are at a tropical kin based hierarchical species, Homo sapiens. We still are. We can get beyond the tropical part because we invented coats. But man, we're not going to get above the tribal part, the hierarchical part, the kin based part. And so we want to rise in the hierarchy. There's a natural imperative to rise in the hierarchy. You want to do that. That's why you have two cars instead of one and a flashier watch than you need. And all this stuff, you want to peacock in a particular way. You spend more time in the gym than you would need to otherwise. Because you want to rise in the hierarchy. Whether you admit it to yourself or not, that's what's going on. So that's an important thing to keep in mind because then when you outstrip the number of people who could know who you are, because we live in the world of the Internet, when millions of people are going to know who you are, you're gonna be like, I love that, that feels so awesome, but I'm so empty and cry myself to sleep. What's that all about? And what's going on is that you're mismatched with your evolutionary tendencies and the technological reality that we live in. That's why Lady Gaga says that fame is prison and that John Milton says that it leads us to live laborious days ways it's because you want it, but it makes you miserable, bottom line. And it only very well adjusted people can cope with it. Oprah Winfrey is one of them, by the way. She's one of the only people I've met in all of my work. And I deal with a lot of people who are very much in the public eye. Who is the exactly the same person in public as she is in private? Exactly. So when we're on tour and we're in front of thousands of people, or when it's just me and Oprah at her dinner table in Montecito, California, is the same person?

Same, same.

Cause she understands fame, she understands the purpose of fame. And she's not distorted by fame, but it's very unusual.

So do you think that you can't be happy and chase after the four idols?

So to chase after the four idols, it depends on what we mean by that. But if that's your goal, you won't be happy if that's your final goal. All money, power and pleasure and fame are intermediate goals so that you can do more important things. There's nothing wrong with money. I got nothing against money, but if money is your goal, you're going to be unhappy. If I'm going to make money because I want to do this, this, that and the other thing. Fine, now I'm listening, right? I want pleasure because I want to add it to people in memory and make it enjoyment. And that's part of happiness in my life. I want power, not per se, but because with power I can do these wonderful things. So for example, you wouldn't say power, but you say I want the influence that actually comes from being a decision maker by being the mayor of Austin or something like that. And you can say, okay, you want to be mayor of Austin, you want power? Why? Because I want to do this and this and this and this and this and help people in their lives. And fame is I want the people who can use this. And Oprah Winfrey is in this group, but others too, George W. Bush, people that I know who are great human beings. It's like that admiration. Humans are mimetic. They mimic other people. And with the notoriety that I have, I can refract these people into a better life. If they see me and they admire me and they follow me and I'm doing good things for my community, I'm living an upright life, I'm following the Lord, whatever your thing is. And they do that because of the admiration they have for you. Dynamite. Yeah, dynamite.

Interesting. You know, it's. I guess it's a tool versus a trophy. Like how do you see it?

Yeah, yeah. It's always, it's never, it's never more than an intermediate goal if you want to be a happy person.

That actually makes a lot of sense. And, and I think, you know, I've seen it. We were just talking about the book, right? And I hit the New York Times bestseller. And I remember one of my employees, Lindsay, who's like a lovely human. She would be. What are your archetypes again that you have@arthurbooks.com?

Oh, the archetypes of the affect profiles. The mad scientist, the cheerleader.

Cheerleader.

The poet and the judge.

She was a self assigned cheerleader.

High positive affect, low negative affect, which is to say high positive mood, low negative mood. Intensity.

That's Lindsay. And anyway, so she asked when we hit the New York Times, she was like, she came down very excited. She was like, how do you feel? And I was like, zero different. I feel absolutely nothing inside one way or the other. The only thing that I thought was interesting is then maybe the mission gets out. And then I did have like a moment where I was like, that's fucking.

That's awesome.

Like I get to say I'm a New York Times bestselling author.

That's kind of you're that forever.

That's cool. I guess going back to the longevity of a thing. So there was a moment. So, you know, if I'm honest, even in the things we do, there's definitely part of it that is so short term endorphin chasing, really fun. But then I hope there's something a little bit bigger with it, which is kind of why when we talk about our company here, I have never really liked the idea of us just teaching people how to get money in finance.

Right.

Because man then like, what kind of tool are we giving people to do what with? That's like handing out AK47s and not doing anything to protect maybe how people might use them one way or the other. But it's interesting to think that way. Okay, I want to close out with maybe one last question, which is let's try it on for a size for a second. Is there any way for money to buy you happiness? This episode is brought to you by Netflix from the creator of Homeland. Claire Danes and Matthew Rhys star in the new Netflix series the Beast in Me as ruthless rivals whose shared darkness will set them on a collision course with fatal consequences. The Beast in Me is a riveting psychological cat and mouse story about guilt, justice and doubt. You will not want to miss this. The Beast in Me is now playing only on Netflix. So you're about to make a trade based on a friend's text. But which u do you listen to is it we could buy a house in Tulum, get optioning those options, we could lose everything. Or let's do a little research, get your head in the trade and make the investment decision that's right for you. Learn more@finra.org TradeSmart.

Does money buy happiness? Ah, the eternal question. And everybody knows the conventional answer, which is no. And everybody knows the conventional response, which is let me find out. Right, exactly. So first you have to ask yourself, why is it that everybody knows it won't, but they still want to try it and they can't stop themselves. And that has everything to do with the accumulation of resources. This is what gets us back to evolution. I want more money than I need because in showing that I have more resources than is necessary for me, I'm going to attract mate and I'm more likely to survive the winter. I can store up more, you know, buffalo jerky and animal skins and flints in my cave and that's going to get me more mates and I'm going to be able to survive the winter. And isn't that great? That's the reason you want excess resources. That's why you want five watches instead of one. That's really, really what it comes down to. Now we know because we listen to grandma and we kind of know that that fifth watch, you know, it's sort of awesome. But then you're going to kind of forget about it and, and you're going to keep running and running and running and running. And that's a real source of frustration that people have. But there are ways to buy happiness now to begin with, more money early on. And there's a bunch of studies on this that shows that when you have more money, when you're poor, then your wellbeing does rise. And the reason is not because of happiness, it's because it lowers unhappiness. So early on, if you're, and we all, you know, when we were almost all of us every listening to us, when you're really young and you really lack resources I mean, I went six years with no health care as a young man. And it was, you know, I had. I didn't go to the dentist from 19 to 25. And then when I went to the dentist at 25, he filled 12 cavities, and I felt a lot better.

Oh, my God.

So you can say money bought happiness, but it didn't. Money lowered the source of unhappiness. And in my brain, I put two and two together and said, more money, feel better. And so you chase that the rest of your life. That's one of the reasons that you keep doing that is habitual behavior on the basis of these patterns that we make. But there are ways, it turns out, that you can get higher. Well, being at any phase of life with money, just don't do the one thing that you want to do. So there's five things you can do with money. Okay, this is very much a Cody Sanchez part of the conversation, isn't it? Number one, you can buy stuff, right? We've already talked about that. Number two, you can buy experiences. Number three, you can buy time. Number four, you can give it away. And number five, you can save it. Those are the exhaustive possibilities of what you can do with money. Two through five bring happiness. One doesn't. One is what you biologically have an imperative to do is to go accumulate stuff more, you know, more of everything, more of everything that shows that you're a successful person to yourself. However, if you buy experiences and experience these things with people that you love, you get happier. If you buy time and don't fritter it away, that you use it for your own edification or for the relationships in your life, you get happier. If you give your money to things that you're really passionate about, you get happier. And if you save your money, you get way happier. Saving money is one of the ways that you can buy happiness. Now, again, you can get to a certain point where you have, you know, $10 billion and you're a miser. And that's not what I'm talking about. But conversely, by the way, spending money that you don't have on consumption, you know, running up your credit card to buy, you know, for. To pay for your vacation. That is one of the best ways to get unhappier because you're not making progress, you're making regress. And all of human happiness comes from progress. Savings feels like progress. Debt is terrible for happiness, except for mortgages. Interesting, because mortgages actually make a little bit more progress in owning your home than rent but that doesn't count as debt.

Do you think that's why the Bible and so many religious books say that debt is bad?

Well, they say debt is bad because there were injunctions, religious injunctions against usury. And part of the reason for that is in biblical times, if you, if you lent money to interest, the interest rate would be about 80%. And so it was, it was extremely exploitative. It was only in the modern sort of Anglo Saxon system of finance, only in the past 500 years have interest rates become non usurious, have become non exploitative. So the idea of the 5% interest rate was unthinkable in biblical times. And so that's more why they're talking about it really is to subjugate somebody else's to lend money and interest.

Interesting. So everything was like a high interest loan shark.

It was all, it was all the mafia, you know, basically. And people who did that were people who were preying on people who were so desperate they would take an 80% loan.

Oh, wow.

Yeah, that's, that's, that's really, really what they're talking about. They weren't talking about, you know, I think I'll actually buy the, the hut next door and, and rent it out. And I think it's a good rental property or, you know, as you would talk about, it's like, I, I'm gonna go get a Laundromat.

You know, that was not on the docket.

Vending machines. Yeah, so that's not what they were talking about in those circumstances.

Also, we need to talk about your 12 different cavities while you're drinking Diet Coke.

I know.

Well, I mean, is this your one vice?

Yeah, I, I, you know, I'm, yeah, I'm a pretty acidic character. I don't drink alcohol. I don't, I don't run around, stay out late.

You look pretty jacked. You look like you're getting fit.

I'm, I've been, I've been working out every day for 30 years.

The Harvard professor with biceps.

It's the only, it's the, it's. I'm trying to stay alive, Cody.

I like it. That's, that's good for the, the pursuit of academic excellence. The last thing I want to talk about. We're going to talk about this earlier in it too, when I, when I give you a little intro because I think you are one of the most beautiful writers that I've ever read.

Thank you.

Yeah, I remember.

That's kind of you. I appreciate that a lot.

It's True speakers and writers. I remember when I first read one of your columns. This was at the New Yorker, right?

No, the Atlantic.

The Atlantic. I always mess those two up.

Yeah.

And you know how you would take a subject that was really, really, I don't know, something I would never imagine talking about, such as, let's say, Hegel. Right. And you would talk about it in a way that was so moving, but also easy to understand. Complex topics, really simplified in a way that you want to get lost in a philosophy newsletter, which would be hard. Now you have a new newsletter that's more accessible for everybody@arthurbrooks.com.

Yeah, exactly right.

Tell me about one of your favorite articles that you've written lately. And then everybody should go and sign up. I don't say that often, not like we need more emails, but this one is. Is beautiful, as is all your writing.

Thanks, I appreciate that an awful lot. It means a lot to me that you say that. Because that's why I'm doing the writing, is because I want people to have a good experience when they're reading it. To learn a lot, but also to get some, some pleasure from it. Interest is one of the basic positive human emotions. People are always looking to learn something. But if learning is unpleasant because it's too impenetrable in language, for example, then it takes away the positive emotion. As a happiness guy, it's very important that people enjoy reading my words, or listening to my words for that matter. That's one of the reasons I take such care in thinking about it this way. Every week in my newsletter comes out 9 o' clock Monday morning. I talk about something that somebody has written to me to ask. And you know, I get like you, I get 12 or 15 emails a day from people who. They have real questions from different walks of life. So I'm talking about real issues based on problems that we can then turn into opportunities to get happier, to get better, to have more love in our lives, to be healthier and more fulfilled. And so last week, for example, I've been thinking about this an awful lot, is my own tendency to fall into something suboptimal patterns of work. I love my work, which is great, but the truth is that. And I don't even believe in work life balance. Work life balance is complete nonsense because it suggests that work is not part of your life. There's a separation between your work and your life. Your work should be part of your life. That should be work life integration. But when work takes over because it becomes such an obsession, something you're thinking about day and night. It can become really unhealthy because it starts to displace your love relationship. It becomes the relationship per se. So talking about work as a relationship is what I was talking about. And that's the essence of workaholism. A secondary addiction to the success addiction that many strivers feel. People who follow your work, they're all strivers. If you're not a striver, you're not going to read your books and not going to be following your podcast. But the result of that, it can turn into a pathology in which we objectify ourselves. And I talk a lot about the psychology, even the neuroscience of what goes into that. And then to start seeing how other parts of your life can be developed and make progress in those other parts of your life that will then cross fertilize what you're actually trying to do with your work so you can become a happier person and a more effective person. So the big techniques for doing that, it's just what I've written about, and it's an example of what that newsletter is all about. In between three and 500 words.

Yeah. Beautiful. All right, well, you guys should all go subscribe. Arthur Brooks on all the socials. I listen to you a lot on Instagram and certainly your newsletter. Thank you so much for being here.

Thank you. Kody, congratulations on the bestseller. I know, I know you don't care, but still, it's kind of cool.

No, I care. I can't pretend I'm that cool. I just, you know, sometimes you think you're gonna get it and then you'll feel something like I'm.

I know, I know.

You know, Lindsay, that's. She had this camera in front of my face. She's like, how do you feel? And I'm like, I feel nothing inside. I don't really, you know, am I dead inside? What happened? And I. That was a weird phenomenon.

I know, I know. And part of the problem is that there's a ratchet to it. You're like, was it number one?

How do you know me so well.

Of course, because that's how humans are.

Jordan Peterson beat me out that week.

Jordan Peterson beat you? You number two?

Yeah. Yeah. Well, actually, I was number. We were number maybe three or four, because number three was Snoop Dogg. So I got beat by like, Jordan Peterson, Snoop Dogg. And I was like, you know what? If we gotta lose to a couple people, I'll take this.

Yeah, you know, it's. It's phenomenal that your first. Your first shot out of the cannon. And you're getting in the top five, the New York Times bestsellers. I tell you, that's very unusual. But here's the best news. Now you got room to grow in book two.

Yeah, don't say that. Now I'm gonna get back on my not hot hedonic treadmill, but I'm get back on the hedonic treadmill and I'm gonna. I'm gonna be motoring for book two.

Yeah, I know. And then you'll just be ratcheted up completely in this state of.

And then I'll have to listen to your newsletter about how to chill. Chill the fuck out.

Exactly right. And then. And then if it doesn't beat the next book, it'll be really disappointing. And it will teach you a very important life lesson.

Oh, God.

And then you'll say something like, yeah, but the right people read it.

Exactly. I will say that I will have a lot of self rationalization, which I'm excellent.

I've been an author for many years. I have. I have this library of rationalizations.

Listen, that's how we keep going and doing the unreasonable things.

Exactly right. You got to get from one end of the day to another.

That's right. Okay. I want to do something we've never done before. Okay, we're going to give you a postcard. This is something new. And on the postcard, we want you to write a little message to young Arthur Brooks. What would you share with him today that you don't mind sharing on the Internet? Because we'll have you read it afterwards. So don't tell us your Social Security number, but maybe something that you can take a few minutes to. To think about before we share with all our readers. We'll let you have a few minutes to write it, however long you need, and then you just open the door when you're done. Deal?

Deal.

All right, Arthur, back to you.

So I thought about, you know, the patterns of my behavior over the course of my life, and I don't. I'm not young. I feel young. I feel your age, but I'm not, you know, I'm 60 years old, so I've seen a whole lot. And I look at the good things that have happened and. And I look at the pathologies, and I think back to what could I have told myself when I was, I don't know, early on in my career? For example, I started my career at 19 when I dropped out of college and became a professional classical musician. And I was a real striver. I mean, I was practicing from the time I was nine years old. I was practicing many hours a day. And I wanted to be the number one French horn player in the world all the way through my 20s. And then when that didn't work out, I left. And I went to college in my late 20s and then graduate school. And then I wanted to be the number one researcher in my field and to get tenure earlier than absolutely anybody else. And then when I left that I became the president of a think tank in Washington D.C. and I wanted to raise more money than anybody ever had and have the number one think tank in the world. You see a pattern film.

And you did both of those too.

And the one thing that I missed, that I wished I had known so that I could have been a happier person, but a person that had more equilibrated relationships. And I could have made life a lot easier on my wife and the people who love me if I had known one thing, which is that my worth as a person is not related to my level of accomplishment in the world fundamentally, for whatever reason. And this is certainly not my parents fault, but this is the pathology of the striver. And a lot of people who are watching us is this belief that I'm not lovable unless I'm admirable, unless I'm doing something that people actually admire, then there's no reason to love me. And this has a. This has deep, this has deep metaphysical roots. You know, people who believe this often will believe that God can't love me unless I'm good enough, unless I'm virtuous enough, that my wife can't love me unless I'm an abundant enough provider, that I can't really have any friends unless it's on the basis of their admiration for me as a person because of what I'm actually doing in the world. And that's just not right. That wasn't right for me. It wasn't right then, it isn't right now. And I would have been a fundamentally happier person had I understood that. Would I have done the same things? No. But I think I could have been a better husband. I certainly would have been a more present father than the one who kept working that 14th hour instead of the first hour with my kids. And I think that today I would have a perspective on life that I could use, that would be firsthand really helpful to others as well.

That's beautiful. Thank you, Arthur.

Thank you, Cody.