Speaker 1: Today, we're welcoming back Arthur Brooks. It's been it's been decades since
Arthur's been on. He's a Harvard professor, Ph.D., social scientist, bestselling author,
writes at The Atlantic. And the latest book is From Strength to Strength Finding Success,
Happiness and Deep Purpose. In the second half of life, which you'll at some point in
the next decade you will enter, I guess. Speaker 4: Well, yeah, if I'm not in the second
half of life now, he's going to be living at least 160 years. And that I don't know.
I got the data seems unlikely. Speaker 1: Well, you know, aspirationally
in the Jewish faith, we say 120, you know. So. So 60.
Speaker 4: Yeah. Yeah. You live to 120. And by the title of the book, by the way, is Nicholas
Howell for the 84th Psalm. May you go from strength to strength. That's from the title
of the book comes from. Speaker 1: That's. Well, there's some there's
really something for everyone. I mean, let's zoom out a little bit. The mindfulness space,
the happiness hacking space, you know, it's become so riddled with newsletters, self-help
books, hacks, the top three, the best ten, you know, all these sort of different things.
And I get that they're all kind of pointing to what it seems to me is that a lot of people
are experiencing some kind of fundamental absence of something. And there's different
ways that we can deal with that, either by sort of workshopping and hacking. For some,
it's finding religion or higher purpose or faith or whatever the case may be. What's
your overall assessment of how this space has become so huge in the last ten years?
Speaker 4: Well, to begin with, it's the reason that we haven't mastered it. I mean, look,
we all want to be happy and we're not. So obviously there's something wrong here. And
part of the reason is because Mother Nature is just lying to us all, all the time. The
biggest mistake that we all make is thinking that if we actually get what we want, we'll
be happy. That's completely incorrect. And that's based on the false assumption that
Mother Nature cares. If you're happy, say it. Mother Nature is encouraging you to accumulate
money and power and pleasure and fame. And therefore. And since you want to be happy
and you want those things, you make the connection of thinking. If I get those things, I'm going
to be happy. Well, that's Mother Nature's joke. She basically wants you to pass on your
genes, David. She wants you to have 75 children by getting as rich and famous as possible.
She does not care. She doesn't care at all whether you're happy. And that's the big mistake
that we make. The truth is that being happy requires that we do things that are contrary
to our basic nature a lot. And most people don't know how to do that, and most people
don't want to do that. And that's the reason that we still haven't mastered the art.
Speaker 1: Does this relate in some way to the concept of the hidden treadmill, where
you identify what you think is sort of like an end point at which you will achieve some
level of happiness or satisfaction. Then you get there and it turns out it doesn't really
look the same now that I'm here and you kind of move goalposts is that related to this
same desire that that maybe is not not what we think it is.
Speaker 4: Very much so. Happiness basically comes from three things. There's sort of three
macronutrients and happiness kind of like food is protein, carbohydrates and fat. Happiness
is enjoyment, meaning and satisfaction. Those are the three parts of happiness you have
to have all three and all three are hard. All three actually require work and they require
habits, not hacks. They require that you take these things seriously that require knowledge.
And and so the last of those satisfaction is the one that you're talking about. Satisfaction
is the joy that you got from a job well done or getting a reward that you really wanted.
Mother Nature tells you that if you get that thing, that the joy that you get is going
to last forever. So Mick Jagger sings I can't get no satisfaction. But I try and I try and
I try. Now, the truth is that you can get satisfaction. The problem is that you can't
keep satisfaction. That's what you call the hypnotic treadmill. The science behind that
is a thing called homeostasis. That's where the brain always goes back to its baseline.
So if you're in your body just too by the way, if your pulse goes up after being on
the treadmill and then after you get off, it goes back down to your pulse, your regular
pulse rate. That's so you don't die. That's homeostasis. But emotionally, our homeostasis
means we can't stay out of our groove by being happier than normal because we won't be ready
for the next set of circumstances. In the Pleistocene, we'd be somebody lunge fast if
we weren't ready to react emotionally to the next set of circumstances. That's homeostasis,
but we don't know it because Mother Nature is lying to us and saying that new car smell
is going to last forever, that the sunshine in California is going to make you happy forever,
that that new romance is going to give you a thrill forever. That my students at the
Harvard Business School, when they get that great job, it's going to be awesome forever
because they got all this money. Now you'll like it when you hear about the raise, but
you won't even care about it when it hurts. You hit your check because of the, I think,
treadmill. So you need to hack that. You need new habits to get beyond that. And that's
what I write about in my in the work that I do look that self-improvement. Is not very
scientific. If you really want to be happier, you got to do habits. You got to do the work.
And you have to share it with other people. You need to become a real student of this
stuff, and then you truly can be happier. Speaker 1: You mentioned there's so many of
these different instances that can be kind of delved into more and researched more. One
about the idea of if I moved to a place with better weather, I'll just I'll be happier
year round because when I'm there for a little bit, it seems so great. There's a bunch of
interesting work on that. And one study I read says that it is true for like a couple
of years and then it just kind of becomes the status quo and then it almost starts to
become interesting to think about places that have seasons that have winter, and all of
a sudden that kind of becomes more appealing. There's also the counterfactual of of in terms
of self-reported happiness, places with pretty crummy weather and cold temperatures are regularly
at the top of self-reported happiness as well. Which should make us. It should make us say
what? I guess. Speaker 4: Yeah. I mean, nobody says I want
to move to Denmark for the weather. Right. But Denmark comes out on top of these happiness
scales and comparisons of people in different countries. Now, those actual comparisons are
nonsense because you can't really compare people in different countries who have different
cultures, but you can compare people within regions. And indeed you find that in a lot
of places like the Upper Midwest, people actually are they tend to be just as happier or happier
than people in California. And the main reason is because weather isn't what brings you happiness.
What brings you happiness is your faith or life philosophy, your transcendent self sense
of what, what, what the world is all about, whether it's religious or not, your family
life, your friendships and work that serves other people. In other words, it's all about
love. And in a lot of places in the upper Midwest, they have better communities and
healthier families than they have in places in Southern California. The key thing to keep
in mind is your brain says to get that unless you have seasonal affective disorder or something,
I'm talking about people who don't. And it's only about seven or 8% of people have that.
But if you don't have that, your brain's saying you'll be happier in the sunshine and you
will enjoy it. Of course. I mean, I live in Southern California periodically throughout
my life, but the real happiness bump that comes from happiness will wear off in six
months and the taxes are forever. So choose wisely.
Speaker 1: Well, so that's where your former professional conservative career comes out,
for sure. Which, by the way, I want to I want to link back to all of all of this in a bit.
So what are you talking about? There are things that you can do to kind of hack these tendencies,
for lack of a better term. So what are they? Speaker 4: Well, so the key thing is it's
again, it's not hacks, it's habits, habits. The important thing to keep in mind because
everybody wants a shortcut and the world is all about hacks. You know, I'm going to I'm
going to hack into somebody's system. I'm going to hack my metabolism. I'm going to
you know, I'm going to hack my sleep and all that. And almost anybody who's promising you
hacks is selling you a bill of goods. Anything that's really going to do good for you requires
that you change your life. You're going to change your you change the way that you live.
You know, you can't hack your way because what you're going to do is quickly lose weight
on some weird diet and get all the way back and then some if you really want to be healthier
anyway, you know, all that people kind of know about that. So that's the key thing to
keep in mind. The for happiness habits, as I mentioned before, are faith, family, friendship
and work that serves other people. And so those are the things really to be spending
time on now to make sure people have different metabolisms. You know, I talked about the
three macronutrients, but there's also metabolism. So, David, you and I, you might just be a
naturally happier person than me because 50% of your baseline happiness is genetic. You
know, I don't want it to be true, but that's very important information because that's
why your habits are that much more important to sort of epigenetically help you to express
greater happiness notwithstanding your genes. A quarter of your happiness is circumstantial,
but because of homeostasis of the head on a treadmill, the circumstances don't last
good and bad. You know, even a bad things happen to you almost always that will wear
away pretty quickly. And the good things will too. The quarter that really matters is the
four habits. So the first one is the faith thing. And again that your results may vary.
You got to figure out what that means to you. If you're not a traditionally religious person,
then what we're talking about is a transcendent view of life. Everybody needs to understand
their values and live according to them. People need a contemplative practice. People need
to them to to to surround themselves with literature. That's that's why, for example,
so I recommend that people read I don't care, the stoic philosophers or the holy books or
just something smart 15 minutes a day that they engage in a practice of of nature or
prayer or meditation, and that they actually think very clearly about their values so they
can get that first pillar, that faith pillar in order. Right. Family life is unbelievably
important. I mean, I'm sure you join me in regretting the fact that one in six Americans
is not talking to a family member today because of politics, which is just it's just like
stepping over $100 bills to get to Nickles. Man, right. It is insanity to do that. I know.
And Marge is the pain because she at Thanksgiving, she can't stop talking about Trump but. Man.
If you call it margin 2 a.m. with the crisis, she's picking up the phone and all your buddies
on whatever the democracy underground, they're like, who are you? That's important that we
keep that in mind. And then when we talk about about friendships, I mean, people can't see
us right now, but I'm wearing a t shirt that says real friends, big deal friends. And,
you know, for the strivers out there, the super strivers, it's all deal. No real. We
got to get that in order. And finally, your work. I mean, we all work, and most Americans
like their jobs well enough. The key thing to loving your job and having it bring joy
to you is not I mean, it's got to pay well enough. Obviously, you've got to pay your
rent, but it's all about earning your success and serving other people. And that's where
it really comes in. And so it's the love of the divine, whatever that means to you, a
love of your family, love of your friends, and loving others of your work. Love, love,
love and love. You know. Speaker 1: If people didn't know you're your
back story, I think the way you talk about these issues, people would be surprised that
you were sort of like professional right winger for a while running the American Enterprise
Institute. And, you know, people check out our conversation 15 years ago or however however
long ago it was. They might be surprised to hearing you talk this way. Is that wrong or
do you find that what you're doing now does appeal more to people on the political left
than the right? Speaker 4: It appeals to everybody because
everybody wants to be happy. You know, I have a completely non partizan audience and I write
for The Atlantic and, you know, I'm personal. I mean, look, everybody's got their political
views. And one of the biggest problems that we have for happiness is America. In America
is we're too identified. Our identities are too political. I mean, David, you and I have,
you know, 95% in common. And the 5% that's not is a bunch of political views. It would
be relatively trivialized if you were pulling me out of a burning car. Absolutely. You know,
it's super important that we not get too hung up on these types of things. And furthermore,
that we can love and respect each other, not despite or political differences, but because
of our political differences. As far as I'm concerned, the most interesting people are
the ones who disagree with me, not the ones who agree with me on every matter. I mean,
none of my kids vote like me. I don't care. I mean, it's like all three of my kids voted
for Trump, you know? And so. Speaker 1: Is that true?
Speaker 4: Oh, yeah. It's not my thing, but it's it's, you know, let's bring it on. Give
me your reasons. I want to hear it is the whole thing. Like we got to love it more is
the bottom line. Speaker 1: I think that makes sense to a lot
of people. I think where it becomes more difficult is when the differences are directly hostile
to who we feel we are, right? So differences between me and a white nationalist, for example.
Oh, okay. I mean, it start we start to get, I think in to that maybe it's less common,
fortunately, but those differences are harder to overcome.
Speaker 4: They're harder to overcome. But we're having a tendency today because we're
being manipulated by people who are making a big buck on our hatred and us thinking that
the differences of ideology are actually in differences of the of existence. And that's
a big problem. We have, you know, somebody who disagrees with the way that I live my
life is not denying my right to exist. Those are two very different things. And the problem
is we become too disengaged from our common story and too, I think, involved in our differing
identities. Identities are like, I'm this and you're not. So you're not in my in-group,
you're in my outgroup. And, you know, you and I, as I said before, have a 90 something
percent overlapping common story that is the basis of our brotherhood. Sure. I mean, you
and I are just I mean, it's super important that we see each other as as, you know, with
equal dignity, radically. And then if you disagree with me really strongly about something
that's not my denying your right to exist. And yet a lot of scholars, a lot of politicians
are trying to effectively a lot of let me put not too fine a point on it. A lot of people
my age, a lot of baby boomers are trying to conscript a lot of child soldiers into their
culture war by convincing a lot of young people to be really hateful and afraid of people
who say one particular thing or who have particular moral views as if they wanted you dead, which
isn't true on the right or the left. Speaker 1: Yeah, I generally tend to agree
with that. I think that where we get into a riskier space is when we minimize that.
There's lots of people out there who maybe they don't want to deny your right to exist.
Like maybe they're not talking about killing those with whom they disagree, but they want
to deny them basic rights. And then there's a question as to where do you draw the line
as to when are these just casual differences which we can easily overcome?
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, no, for sure. And you know, if somebody wants to deny your basic
rights, you can see that on both sides constantly. But I saw our our our Senator Elizabeth Warren,
talking about crisis pregnancy centers last week saying we need to shut them all down.
You know, and you could take that and say, oh, therefore, under the circumstances, there's
nothing for us to talk about. We need to break away as a nation. There's no way that we can
live together or we can say, you know, people say these. Things they talk in this particular
way. Elizabeth Warren actually is a good senator who wants to represent me. She does a lot
of things that are right and not taking the most radical thing that somebody says and
interpreting it in the most radical way possible. We've got to be more charitable to each other.
The bottom line, I think. Speaker 1: That is a hard, hard for me to
disagree with, that's for sure. We've been speaking with Arthur Brooks. His latest book
is From Strength to Strength Finding Success, Happiness and Deep Purpose in the Second Half
of Life. Arthur, great speaking to you again. I really appreciate it.
Speaker 4: You too, neighbor. You know, we're both Massachusetts natives, although I know
our audience is far and wide. You're reaching even outside American borders these days,
aren't you? Speaker 1: These days, yes. And there are
many people in Scotland resisting it. I will tell you, we're not. No, I'm kidding. Yeah,
we are. We are. And mostly U.S.. I'm sorry, English speaking countries, but big in Germany,
I will tell you. Speaker 4: That's great to hear. I'm glad
to hear it. Congratulations on your success. You deserve it.