Transcription
It is now my pleasure to introduce our keynote speaker for today, Arthur Brooks. Thank you. Thank you so very much, President Minis. And thank you to all of you from the to the board of directors of Benedicting College, the faculty and staff, and especially the students, and most especially those of you in beanies. I am delighted to be with you. That's a lot of beanies. And I'm so happy for all of you. Looking forward to the next four years of what you can expect. Thank you so much to the to Benedicting College for selecting my book uh build a life you want as something for an all school read. That's what I write about which is the science of human happiness. And that's what I want to bring you a little bit of today.
When people ask me what I do for a living, I tell them I teach at the Harvard Business School. and they suppose that I must teach something that sounds business-like, finance, accounting, management, and I say, "No, I teach happiness." And they think I'm lying. That doesn't sound like a business-like topic, but it is. Why? Because the the real business of life is about being the best person that you can be. And what you want to accumulate is not money or power or the fortune of the earth. It's love and happiness grounded in your Catholic faith. And that's what I teach. That's what I write about. That's what I've been teaching for a long time. That's what I'm passionate about. My personal mission is to lift people up and bring them together in bonds of happiness and love using science and ideas. And I want you to understand a little bit more about that today. Why? Because for those of you who are just starting out your college journey, I have a I have a project for you. I want you to be a happier person four years from now. And you can be. In the next 20 minutes, I'm going to tell you how. It doesn't mean you're going to be happier every day. There's going to be exams. But you can be a significantly happier person in four years. And by the end of my remarks, I'm not just going to tell you how. I'm going to tell you why. Hint, it's not about you. It's about the people that you can lead as a Catholic missionary with your joy.
Now, on my first day of class, it's uh it's a wonderful class that I teach at the Harvard Business School. I actually have two sections of 90. So, I teach 180 MBA students who are on average 28 years old, a little older than you, 10 years older than you. Um I also have 400 on the waiting list and there's an illegal Zoom link to my class they think I don't know about. because people want to be happier. It's pretty obvious. And on the first day of class, I start with a I start with a question to my students. They think I'm there to give them the answers. No, no, no. I'm there to give them the questions. And I say, and here's how I do it. We have a tradition at Harvard, which I hope you don't have here at Benedicting College. It's called cold calling. Do you do cold calling? You know what that is? That's when you you have a class, a brand new, fresh class, and you pick somebody out of the class, and you make them answer a question whether they're ready to or not. It makes them intensely unhappy. Trust me. But this is what I do on the first day of class. I say, "You're taking the happiness class, and it was hard to get into the happiness class. You must know what happiness is." And then I cold call somebody. What is it? And they all say the same thing. Uh um it's like deer in the headlights. Um, I can't quite put words to it, but I know it when I feel it. Okay. And the next person always says something like, "It's how I feel when I'm with the people that I love." Or or, "It's the feeling I get when I'm doing what I truly what I truly enjoy." And I say, "That's beautiful. That's poetic. That's wrong. And that's good news."
Here's the big piece of news for my students and the big piece of news for all of us. Happiness isn't a feeling. Now, that's good news because a lot of people go through life hoping that they'll feel happy tomorrow. Just hope that happiness comes and sit on your will come and sit on your your shoulder like a butterfly. And if it doesn't, well, try again tomorrow. Hope for the best. You don't have to live that way. Happiness is not a feeling anymore than the smell of your turkey is your Thanksgiving dinner. The smell of the turkey is evidence of dinner. The feeling is evidence of happiness. Happiness is something tangible, something real, something you can get better at and understand. That's what I want to talk about. And then I want to give you the strategy for getting better at it and sharing.
Now, the right definition of happiness, well, by the way, the right definition of your Thanksgiving dinner, given the fact that it's not the the smell, well, it could be a list of ingredients or dishes, but if you're a scientist like me, you'd say Thanksgiving dinner is like all food is a combination of protein, carbohydrates, and fat. That's a list of macronutrients. And I use that as an example because that's the same idea behind happiness. Happiness has three macronutrients. These are the things that you need to be paying attention to and get good at. Okay, here's your strategy. You need to be better at enjoyment, satisfaction, and meaning. Those are the three parts of human happiness. And none of you is good at all three. That's another piece of good news, by the way, because what it means is you can't be perfectly happy. You wouldn't want to be perfectly happy. That would mean you don't have negative emotions and experiences, which means you're dead. Now, now, which by the way, as Christian people, we believe that will bring true happiness, unremitting happiness, permanent happiness, but we're not ready for it yet. On earth, there are negative emotions and experiences. What you can be is not perfectly happy. You can be happier and you get it by pursuing enjoyment, satisfaction, and meaning. So, let me define them and let give me let me give you a strategy. your project for the next four years. The thing to really focus on as you go through your classes and your life and you spend your time and you make your friends. Okay.
Now, let's start with enjoyment. Everybody thinks they know what it is, but they don't. People mistake enjoyment for pleasure. And that's one of the big problems in our world today is this confusion. Pleasure is an animal phenomenon. It starts in a part of the brain called the lbic system. That's a console of tissue that was developed. It was evolved between 2 and 40 million years ago. You have it in common with all of the mammals. You this this is where you produce your feelings. So when my students say when anybody says I want to have more good feelings and and and fewer bad feelings, I say wrong. There's no such thing as bad feelings. You have emotions that are produced by your lyic system and it's just a bunch of information about what's going on around you. When you sense that there's a threat, you have negative emotions and that's your alert. That's your alarm that you should avoid those things. That's all it is. It's nothing to be especially uh depressed about. On the contrary, it means your brain is working the way it's supposed to. And when you have positive emotions, it means that you have sense that something's an opportunity and you want to approach it. That's great. Don't get too worked up about your emotions, however. And that's all pleasure is is it fits into that scheme of limbic activity. That's the reason that people you've met who their life strategy is to feel good all the time, as much pleasure as possible, it never ends well, does it? That road leads to addiction and subjugation. That leads to degradation.
Now, I'm not against pleasure. On the contrary, I'm a Catholic. We believe in feeling good too, right? That's not exactly part of the religion, but we're not against things that feel good. We're against the strategy of living only to feel good. See, here's what we want to do. Take pleasure and add two things and then it will become part of happiness. Here are the two things. People and memory. Pleasure plus people plus memory. That's enjoyment. Because that's not just this lyic system, that animal thing. Then it moves the experience of these pleasures into the preffrontal cortex, the the human part of your brain right behind your forehead. That's where you can manage your pleasures and they don't manage you. And you can remember the experiences so they can continue to enrich your life. Enjoyment is truly part of happiness. So here's the rule over the next four years. You want to enjoy your life. Here's the rule. If there's something that gives you pleasure, and we all have our thing that we like more than others, and if it can be addictive, which many things can, even innocent seeming things like food and the internet, if you're using it alone, you're using it wrong. That's the rule. It's not a perfect rule. There are lots of things that bring pleasure that you can do alone, like saying your prayers and walking in the woods. They're not addictive. This is the way to think about it. To be social, to do things with love, to use your brain, and to manage your pleasures. This will bring more happiness. And that's part one.
Part two is satisfaction. Satisfaction is a weird part of human happiness. Here's the definition. Satisfaction is the joy that you get from an accomplishment after struggle. Only humans want to struggle. No other creature wants to struggle. My dog Chucho is a good boy. Very good boy. But he does not want to suffer for his rewards. He would eat lying down if he could. He's a lazy boy. But you, no, no, no, no, no, no. You will not get sweetness from your accomplishments unless they're hard. And the more that you lean into that, the happier person you're going to be. That's what it comes down to. That's why when you were a kid, you know, your parents tried to teach you that lesson. You should delay your gratifications so that when you get your goals, they'll be sweeter. That's what your parents taught you. Here's how they taught you that. You were coming home from a sports game practice or little league, whatever your thing was, and you drove past the Dairy Queen and you started you started pestering your mom. Hey, mom. So, stop. Let's get ice cream. We won today. We should get ice cream. And your mom says, "No, it's 4:30 in the afternoon." You said, "So?" And your mom said, "It'll spoil your dinner." And you said, "So?" And then she lied to you. Right? Here's what she said. "It's not good for you. You need to eat a healthy dinner." That's not untrue, but that's not the point. Here's what mom was trying to teach you. I want you to come to dinner hungry and then you'll enjoy it and learn a lesson. Your mom wanted you to suffer. Yeah. She didn't want to say that. But it's true. She knew that when you learned in your 11-year-old brain that if you were hungry at dinner time, dinner was great. And then you were going to take that lesson and apply it to the rest of your life and go to a really great college in Aerson, Kansas, and you were going to study really hard and do the work and delay your gratifications, and that was going to be sweet. And then the rest of your life was going to be a bunch of goals like that, and that was going to be great, too. That's a real mystery how that works, but it's true.
The mystery gets even deeper with satisfaction when you get that thing that you want. When you get that job or that diploma or that raise or that relationship or that house or that car because you think that satisfaction will last forever, but of course it doesn't. the Rolling Stones, the great rock band from before my time. As a matter of fact, they're still playing because they're like a hundred at this point. Their their most famous song is I can't get no satisfaction, but I try and I try and I try. That's actually wrong. The problem in life is you can't keep no satisfaction. Right? That's the the curse, the tyranny of happiness is thinking that when you get these earthly rewards, the money, the power, the pleasure, the fame, the millionth Instagram follower, whatever your thing is, that then you'll enjoy it forever. But of course, you don't. And so, you run and run and run and run and run and you run for the rest of your life. But I have the solution to that that I want you to start thinking about today and for the rest of your life. I've got the loophole for satisfaction at last. It's the Catholic loophole. Here's how it works. Your satisfaction is not just about having more. More of all of it. Your satisfaction is all the things that you have divided by what you want. Halves divided by wants. And so what you need is not just to have more for the rest of your life. It's also to manage what you want in this life. You need not just to have more strategy. You need a want less strategy, which is what the Bible has taught us forever. And by the way, so has every good philosophical and religious tradition all throughout the world. Manage yourself, manage your wants, and your satisfaction will rise. That's number two.
Now, the biggie, meaning you can go a long time without enjoyment. You're self-disciplined people. You wouldn't be here if you weren't. You can go a long time without satisfaction. You already know how to delay your gratifications and such, but I defy you to go 10 minutes without understanding the meaning of your life and to be a happy person. And that, my friends, that's the crisis of our time. I've got the data on this. People ask me constantly why this big explosion of depression and anxiety among young adults. The number one predictor is saying, "I don't know the meaning of my life." Why is it now a big problem? Well, because we're using our brains in the wrong way. When you spend all day and all night looking at screens and using technology, you literally push your brain to focus on activity in the left hemisphere. That is the hemisphere that does not deal with questions of meaning. You want to find the meaning of your life, you need to live in the right hemisphere of the brain. And I want to give you the way to do it right now. I mean, to begin with, yeah, put down your phone. Thank you, by the way. I don't see any phones out right now. I'm getting a call. Just kidding. So, how do you get to the right side of your brain? Here's one way to do it today. And here's the here's the first thing I want you to do today before you end the day. Ask two questions. These are deep questions, complex questions, philosophical questions. You're not going to have immediate answers, but you'll use the part of your brain that you need to discover and understand the meaning of your life. Question number one, why am I alive? Why am I alive? Now, it might be, who created me? And I think we all kind of agree on that. But it might be for what purpose? Why am I alive? What am I here to do? This is what you get to discover here. Second question is harder. Harder for people your age, easier for people my age. For what would I give my life right now? For what would I die happily right now? The wrong answer is nothing or I don't know. The right answer, well, that's the path of discovery. What would you give your life for? Huh? For those of you who are my age, some of you are here. What else besides your kids and grandkids? What else? There should be something else. I challenge all of us to answer this question. When I see people grappling with those questions, I see a miracle unfold of happiness and meaning.
My own sons and daughter have gone through this. My son, I have my my sons are 27 and 25. My daughter's 22. And my 25-year-old son, a couple of you know him here, he went to a Catholic school in PTOAC, Maryland called the Heights. It's an Opus Day school, an excellent school. And he was not a star student. As a matter of fact, um we got constant calls from the headmaster of the Heights. His name is Carlos. For those of you who might have met my son, Carlos Brooks, Google him. You'll find all sorts of troubling material. And the headmaster would call and say, "Carlos didn't come to exams today. Carlos got a D in math. Carlos might fail history. Carlos is probably not going to graduate with his class. And finally, my wife, she was an optimist. She said, "At least we know he's not cheating." And he wasn't even having fun. That was the problem. So before he before he left high school, I challenged him to answer those two questions. I said, "Son, what are you gonna do to answer the questions? Why am I alive? That's your business plan for what am I willing to die?" And he came back with a kind of a formulaic example. I'm going to find a college and play some sports. And I said, 'I don't believe it. I don't believe you're ready. Try again. He was indignant with me. He says, "My life, Dad." And I said, "Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah." But I had the same life. Don't don't let anybody lie to you. When I was 18 years old, I wasn't ready to go to college. And I went to college and I did a poor job and I dropped my a bunch of required classes and I was invited to pursue my excellence outside the college. I mean, dropped out, kicked out, splitting hairs at this point, right? It took me a while to get it done. I came back in my late 20s, as a matter of fact, when I finished my my my college experience. I didn't have the experience that you're embarking on because I wasn't ready to be one of you. And neither was Carlos. So, I said, "What are you going to do to find the answers to your questions?" And he came up with a different plan. He he went away and he worked at a on a farm for a little over a year in Graangeville, Idaho. Did hard work. And then he joined the Marine Corps. That was the second part of his business plan. And my son, that was the hardest thing my son ever did. He went to boot camp at Paris Island, South Carolina. He went to Camp Leune for his infantry training. And then he joined the scout sniper platoon. Hardest thing he ever did. Huh. Scary job. Not for him. He's a knucklehead. For me, it's his dad. I don't know where he is. Can't track his phone. He comes back after a month. I say, "Where were you?" He says, "I can't tell you, Dad, but it was hot." Yeah. Yeah. But when he gone out after four years at age 23, this is my point. My son had answers. He had the kind of answers he could have gotten had he been one of you here. My son at 23 was a married man and his first son was born that year. You will know them by their fruits. You know, the most transgressive thing that you can do in our culture today is get married young and have children and to practice your faith. That is standing up to the culture. That is being yourself. That is to be a rugged individualist in this culture. And that's what you're learning that you can be at a wonderful place like that. It took my son the Marine Corps to help him figure that out. And and it took the Marine Corps to give him these answers. Why are you alive? Carlos says to, "I'm alive because God made me to serve others." I said, "Well, Carlos, for what would you give your life?" That's the easiest question ever for the Catholic Church, for my family, for my fellow Marines, and for the United States of America. Boom. That's my boy. You deserve answers to those questions, and you get to figure it out here. This is the This is the ground for doing it. I know you're going to study your courses and do your major and get ready to go into the workforce, but this is really what it's all about is to finding the the answers to those two questions. That's what college is actually all about. And that's exciting. That's an adventure.
Now, if you're ready for it, here's what to pay attention to. See, I've done the research on the happiest people, and that means the people who have the most enjoyment, satisfaction, and meaning in their lives. What do they all do? What do they have in common? What are their habits every single day? It turns out, I mean, I could give you a thousand habits, but they wouldn't matter. They'd be trivial. There's only four that matter. This is your happiness investment plan. And by the way, fellow old people on this side, this is your investment plan, too. We can all use a touchup. Here are the things to pay attention to, right? Number one, all happy people are serious about their family life. They just are. Now, wh why is that not obvious? Here's why. One in six Americans today is not talking to a family member because of politics. I kid you not. Now, don't let that be you. When you hate somebody, family or friends for that matter, because of politics, you've been productized by the culture, the the political and media establishment have used you because when you hate, somebody else is profiting and it's not you. Don't let that happen to you. Family first.
Second. Second is friendship. One of the saddest things that I see because I work with CEOs and industrialists and entrepreneurs and successful people all day. They're the loneliest people I've ever met. They just are. They're lonely. Not because they don't have people around them. They're not isolated. It's because and they have a lot of friends. The problem is that they have a lot of deal friends. Not that many real friends. And you know the difference between real and deal by the way. Want to know the difference? Deal friends are useful. They're useful people. Real friends are useless. You need useless people. And they're sitting around you right now. They're extremely useless. I don't mean worthless. They're not that. But this is the thing. A lot of people on this side don't have enough useless people in their life. Cultivate your useless friends whom you actually only love and don't let it get away. That's a big part of the project of getting happier between now and graduation day.
Number three is your work. Is your work. Now, there's a lot of ways that work can be described. I'm not one of those people who say it's like going someplace and getting a check. There's a lot of place a lot of ways to work. Raising a family is work. Going to a job is work. Being a volunteer is work. There's a lot of ways to do it. But what they have in common to bring you joy is simply two things. You earn your success by creating value through your merit and hard work and personal responsibility, which you will do here over the next four years. And second, and more importantly, you serve other people with your work because people need you. That's what to look for when you're out in the workforce or when you're simply taking care of your family is earning your success and serving others. Then you'll find joy. That's number three.
And number four, number four. Well, I left the one that you know, I could have talked a lot more about it, but Father Robert did a beautiful homaly at the mass and he said all there needs to say and that's your faith. This is the place for your faith to grow. This is the best possible incubator for you to become the Catholic person that you're supposed to be and carry it with you for the rest of your life because trust me as a scientist that is the going to be the source of your happiness on your worst day. The more you have, the more you develop it right now, the more you're going to carry it for the rest of your life. And I have the data on this. People ask me all the time, you know, professor, why are you why are you so serious about your Catholic faith? Because I'm serious about wanting to be a a happier person. I'm a selfish man. And this is one of the ways that never fails. The more that you pay attention to the work of the soul, the happier you'll be. Father said in the homaly, "Be holy." And I say, "Be happy." And it's the same thing. They're equivalent. They lead to the same place if you do it right and understand each one.
So, so that's your strategy. Now, one quick thing. You don't have to remember family, friendship, work, and faith. It's all one thing. It's all love. love of our Lord, love of your friends, love of your family, and love to everybody in the whole world through the way that you sanctify your ordinary work. You don't know what to do. Love more is what it comes down to.
And this brings me to my last point. Why? Why? You know, people say, "I feel so selfish just thinking about my own happiness." Wrong. Wrong. You're missionaries. And by that I mean all of you and me too. But you know what Catholic missionaries do? They don't knock on doors that much. I actually have missionaries on both sides of my family. Evangelical Christian missionaries on both sides of my family. My grandfather was the head of the mission school for the Navajo Nation in in New Mexico where where my father was born. And my father my grandfather said, you know, he was a funny guy. And my grandfather said, "You know words that no human has ever spoken." I said, "No, no, grandpa. What?" He said, "Good news. There's missionaries on the porch, right? Pretend we're not home." Yeah. And and that's why we do it differently. We're service missionaries. We teach people. We heal people. But do you know the real apostulate of the mission that's your life? It's when people just want to follow you because there's something about you. They just want to follow you. And what are they going to follow? Political anger. Nope. Nope. They're not going to follow that. They're insults, lots of time in the internet. None of that. What are they going to follow? They're going to follow your happiness because they're going to want that. That's what people find magnetic. Do you want to be a Catholic missionary? I hope so. Me, too. You have an obligation to work on your happiness so that you will magnetize yourself and the world will follow you. Where will they follow you? They'll follow you toward faith, family, friends, and work. And they will get happier. And guess what? And guess what else? If they really follow your life and you're really doing these things, they might just follow you to heaven. And that's the goal. Join me in that. This is your project. This is your adventure. This is the privilege of studying for the next four years at Benedicting College and I am privileged to start it off with you today. God bless you and thank you.
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