Harvard Professor's 4-Step Method to Find Your Purpose | Dr. Arthur Brooks

Meaning is the key. Meaning is the most important macronutrient in happiness. Meaning is the protein of happiness. I'm a professor of happiness. You might ask yourself, how can somebody be a professor of a feeling? The truth is that it's so much more than that, and yet most people don't know that. The truth is that you should get happier as you get older, but you have to know the technique for doing so. Harvard Professor, PhD, social scientist, and columnist for The Atlantic, the great Dr. Arthur Brooks. Transcend your instincts. That's when you can actually become the better man, the better woman. That's why some of the most successful people in the world are not happy. So if you understand that your psychology is just biology, you have a lot more power over that. Which is really important. Money, power, pleasure, and fame. Those are the things that you think are going to bring you the ultimate happiness, but they lead you away from ultimately finding the meaning of your life. Which is, what is it that you found that those people who are, they're already successful, highly intelligent? If you found that they have a different relationship with happiness compared to the average person? This is the interesting thing. We, what's up guys, and welcome back to First Things Thirst. We have Arthur Brooks in the building today. How are you doing? I'm great. How are you? Very good. Great to be with you in beautiful Dubai. Yeah. What do you think of it so far? I love it. It's about the sixth or seventh time I've been here. Okay. And you always think when you come to Dubai, so why don't I live here? You obviously thought that. And couldn't come up with a, a worthwhile answer instead. Yeah. Well, I, I think I traveled it about five times before I thought, yeah, I'm going to go. I'm going to give it a try for an extended period of time. I'm still here. Five years in. Five years in. Yeah. Yeah. And people always ask me like, am I going to continue to stay here? I don't know. We'll see. It depends on whether or not I'm happy being here or not. Yeah. Exactly. Right. And there's a lot of factors that come into that. The beautiful thing about a, a relatively flat world is you've got choices. Your grandfather was going to live in Leeds and not leave. Right. Yeah. And his father and his father, etcetera, etcetera. But you have the, you know, the mobility that pre-generations didn't have, which is an, an incredible blessing. You can decide. You can, I, I think I'm going to go live in Marrakech. I'm going to go live in, you know, wherever. Plus you have a mobile career. People are going to watch you from all over the world. People are watching us from every corner of the the world that's got internet right now. We could be in Dubai, or who knows, we could be in your apartment in Leeds. Yeah. Hopefully not though. Hope you don't have to go back there. But yeah, I think, uh, for me, which is being an eye-opener is having that freedom and that choice. Yeah. And, um, I mean, although I am here now, if there was for whatever reason a need for me to move and relocate, I can do that very easily. And I like the fact that I have that peace of mind knowing that if it was an option I wanted to take, I could do it. I think a lot of people struggled with the fact that they, for whatever reason, they're too anchored to a specific destination, which prevents them from being able to move. Part of that's a mindset. Part of that is the not understanding your life is an entrepreneurial enterprise. Everybody watching us is an entrepreneur. I mean, that, that the enterprises themselves incorporated, and they're the founder, they're the startup guy, girl, they're, they're, they're in charge of that, and they don't see it as such. They're going to live in, in a way that's pretty suboptimal. But if you see yourself as the entrepreneur of your enterprise, as the founder of your enterprise, then you're going to actually treat your life as such. I'm going to make decisions that are, you know, looking for a great adventure that where I'm willing to take risk, where I want outsized returns. And that's a, that's a, that's a way of living that I find very attractive. I've tried to live my whole life that way, and I try to encourage my students to live that way. That's why the reason I talk about, I teach happiness is because the currency of your life is not money. The currency of your life, startup, is love and happiness. Do you know how to get rich in that? Well, that's why I do my work. Yeah. How, how did you transition into that? Because you, uh, you were a professional musician before you got into, to, yeah, teaching. That's right. So when I was in my 20s, I was a, a professional classical musician. So I, I started that when I was 19. I left college unceremoniously, was invited to leave college for not doing the work, which is a, you know, time-honored tradition. And then I spent all my 20s on the road. So I was a traveling, playing chamber music, and later I did a couple of years with a jazz guitar player named Charlie Byrd. Then I wound up in the Barcelona Orchestra. I went, I was living in New York at the time. I moved to Barcelona. I chased a girl because I fell in love with a girl in Barcelona. Went there, took a job in the City Orchestra of Barcelona. I did that for, I like what you do. If I'm an entrepreneur, man. And, uh, and I know you have a lot of links to Spain and a lot of love of Spain as well, and all things Spanish. And, and it was great. I got married in Spain, started my family there. Then wound up back in college by correspondence and did that while I was still playing as a musician. Finally wound up in graduate school and did my PhD, became a behavioral scientist, and and moved on to becoming a university professor. Then I was a CEO for a while, for about 11 years, as a matter of fact. And now I'm CEO of of a big think tank in Washington DC called the American Enterprise Institute, dedicated to, you know, creating greater opportunity, an opportunity society all around the world is the whole idea of that place. An idea company, effectively. And, and did that for more than a decade. And then, and then stepped back when I was in my mid-50s and took a professorship at Harvard, where I'm teaching the science of happiness to the next generational leaders. What is it that you find so, so fascinating about happiness? It's what everybody wants, but what nobody understands. It's the weirdest thing in the world. What everybody wants, almost nobody actually understands. And so the hypothesis is that you can understand it. It's not ineffable. It's not some nebulous thing that can't be understood, never achieved. On the contrary, you'll never be happy, but you can be happier by understanding the science and changing practices in your life. And I had the skills as a behavioral scientist, adding a lot more neuroscience and philosophy to what I was doing. I was able to build a body of science that I could actually teach at one of the greatest universities in the world and actually see how it was affecting people's lives. And when I started to see it was having an effect on my life and theirs, that's when I started to expand it as sort of a public educator out to bigger parts of the world, even right here to Dubai. So you're teaching at one of the best universities. I'd imagine you're probably getting some, We think the best. Yeah. You're getting some of the smartest students in the world. They're great. Who are listening to what you have to say? Yeah. These are business students, by the way. They're business graduate students. So these are MBA students. On average, 28 years old. These people are going to be the Masters of the Universe, but they can't afford to be miserable sobs because nobody wants to work for a miserable person. And they're starting to figure out that maybe money, power, admiration of other people is not the secret of happiness, which I know that you've thought about an awful lot. I mean, you've, you mean people follow you from all over the world. That's not the secret of your happiness either. No. You actually need the actual secrets based on the actual science and engaging in in the habits that work. MH. What, what is it that you found? Those people who are, they're already successful, highly intelligent. Have you found that they have a different relationship with happiness compared to the average person? They're not necessarily happier. This is the interesting thing. We, we are, we, we believe, and by the way, this isn't, this is not a problem of capitalism or the culture. This is Mother Nature. We are Homo sapiens are a kin-based, hierarchical, tropical species. Now, we can get around a lot of that. We're in a warm place right now, but I can, you know, live in Boston or Washington DC because we've developed coats. So I can get rid of the tropical part if I want. I mean, there's, Leeds is not exactly, you know, palm trees. No. But we're never going to get away from hierarchical and kin-based. And so all of our instincts are to rise in your kin group, to be higher in the hierarchy. And that means you're going to accumulate the rewards that are apparent to others to show that you have excess resources. That's the reason you don't want one watch, you want five watches. You do not need five watches. You want five watches because that shows excess resources, which is going to raise you in the esteem of other people, so that you'll get more mates and more resources. Mmm. More resources on top of the excess resources that you already have. These are our impulses from Mother Nature. But Mother Nature does not care if you're happy. She couldn't care less. That's not a, that's not part of evolutionary fitness. Is happiness? It's just resource acquisition and gene propagation. That's all of our impulses. And to get beyond that is, is that's the divine part of human nature. To be able to transcend your instincts. That's when you can actually become the better man, the better woman, than than what Mother Nature's got in store for you. That's what I teach. Okay. That's why some of the most successful people in the world, in worldly terms, are not happy because they never figured that out. Yeah. I, that seems to be quite apparent. And even I ask myself the question sometimes, is there anyone who I would trade lives with? And there's very, very few people that I would want to do that with. Is there anybody at this point now? I don't think there is. Yeah. I, I'm very content with the person that I am. I mean, I might compare myself to some other people who have a pretty good lifestyle. I think the most important thing for me, which I've realized, is to have this freedom to do what it is that I want to do and to live a good life. Like, I think I've realized that I actually don't really care that much about making as much money as possible or being as famous as I can possibly be. If anything, like, I probably found that happy medium now where I can get recognized, and maybe I'm getting like recognition from the people who I'd actually want to get recognition from. Right. But it's not getting to the point where it's preventing me from walking outside, ordering a coffee, and just sitting in the sun and enjoying it. Right. Like the moment that I'm unable to do that because I'm too famous would start to get to me. Well, fame is funny because I've actually studied fame. And you know, we're on YouTube right now, and YouTube has actually completely changed the game for fame because people can be famous beyond the wildest dreams of anybody not very many years ago. I mean, think about it. In the year, I don't know, 1800, the Pope in Rome could walk down the street in Paris unrecognized because there were no photographs, nobody knew what the Pope actually looked like. And, and so the result of it was that fame was a very relative thing. Now, you're going to be somebody who simply gets famous for being famous. I mean, you have an actual thing that you're doing to bring better health, you know, bring a better life to people because you actually have a product. But you don't even need a product, and people can recognize you all over the place. And what that's done is it's gone outside the bounds of what cognitively we can manage. So Mother Nature says, get more famous, get more famous, which means rise in your kin group of 30 people. And you're well-known to millions and millions of people. That actually will make you unhappier. Fame in today's world is the only one of the world's rewards. They can only ever be happy in spite of, not ever because of. That's super heavy. You can't also be happy, very happy, because of extra money, except in the case that you use it in a very productive way. Right. And, and so your point that you don't care about getting much richer, the truth is that you've already experienced at the age of 34, which is phenomenal, that there's nothing in the mall that you could get today that you would care about in a year. Yeah. Nothing. Literally nothing. And so that recognition, well, kind of weird, actually. It's sort of frustrating in its way. It means you have to look to higher order things now. Actually sitting in the sun with a cup of coffee isn't a lower order, minor satisfaction. On the contrary, that's a little bit of divinity right there. That's an uplink to what really, really matters. The ultimate source of happiness comes over the course of a lifetime. And the reason you should never want to change your life with anybody else's is progress toward the true divine, the true source of deep satisfaction is the things that actually matter. And when you can tap into that, you can be free of these worldly rewards. You're shackled to the idea that once I finally get enough billions, once I finally get enough fame, I'll feel it. That's when you're the road to the, the true happiness that you really seek. Is there an age where it becomes apparent? Because I feel like if you're a teenager or if you're in your 20s, you don't really know what it is that you want or what's going to make you happy. And I think from, from my experience, from the more things that I've done, the more that I've just reflected upon what it is that I've enjoyed, what brings me happiness, and so on. I've to realize, okay, yeah, everything's starting to make a little bit more sense now. That's a great thing by getting older, actually. And, and I had no idea in my 20s because I was just chasing, chasing, chasing. I wanted to be the world's greatest French horn player in my 20s. And then I realized that wasn't going to happen. So I changed. And I always had this, you know, tremendous worldly ambitions. I'm a striver, like you. And I've been striving, striving. I've never worked less than a 60-hour week in my whole life. I'm sure neither have you. And I, I don't know. I, I do like my leisure time. When you're in, yeah. But even then, you're on, cuz the cycles are going, right? Idea, idea, idea, idea. Strivers got to strive. Well, I, I think, um, this is, we kind of getting onto the topic of hedonism. I, in my, in 2020 and 2021, especially 2020, I said to myself, I was turning 30. I just wanted to have the best summer I could possibly have and do all the things which I wanted to do because throughout my 20s, I worked a lot and I felt like there was, I didn't really enjoy the fruits of my labor when I was in my 20s. So I was like, okay, let me just, I guess I saw as like a mini retirement for a couple of months where I take a step back, do all the things I wanted to do, or at least do all the things that I thought would make me happy. Right. And then I realized after doing that, you know, two summers in a row, like, okay, this really does not make me happy. Like, there's too much of doing nothing, too much of going to the beach, too much of like going to parties, spending time with the guys, and, you know, having, you know, multiple partners or whatever it is. That did not make me happy. It's pretty boring, actually. Yeah. It gets boring quick. Yeah. But it's weird though, because you could have told me, or somebody could have told me, Mike, that's not going to make you happy. Right. But I still would have done it. No, you want to do it, experience it for yourself. And now you know. Yeah. Now you actually know. That's the key thing. So what happens typically to people as they go through their 30s and 40s? They start looking more for meaning. Meaning is the key. Meaning is the deep source of, is, is the most important macronutrient in happiness. Meaning is the protein of happiness. So meaning is one of three elements of basic happiness. So it, it works just like food. The protein, carbohydrates, and fat. Enjoyment, satisfaction, and meaning. Those are the three things that you actually need. And the deepest and most important of those is meaning. What's the meaning of my life? What's the why of my life? That's not apparent in your 20s. I mean, you can have a theory about it, basically, but it's going to evolve because you need to, you need to live for a long time. You need to experience a lot of things. You need to do a whole lot of deep thinking and make a whole lot of mistakes. And the people who get happier as they get older are the ones who actually are serious about the search for meaning. The ones who aren't happy are the ones who stay on the things that won't bring them a sense of meaning, namely money, power, pleasure, and fame. Those are the things that you think are going to bring you the ultimate happiness, but they lead you away from ultimately finding the meaning of your life, which is coherence. Why do things happen the way they do? Yeah. Purpose. What are my goals and direction? And significance. Why am I alive? Looking for the answers to those deep, deep, deep questions, which by the way, you get a little window on when you've got the coffee and you're sitting in the sun. Yeah. That was that moment of insight. Why do I like that? Why do I like that? I don't know. You almost can't articulate why you like that. That's because you're getting a little spark of the divine in those moments because those are a little bit of illumination about these meaning questions. And that's the goal. Yeah. I just got back from a, a trip to Egypt where I was, I mean, Cairo is a hectic, crazy place. But seeing the pyramids is interesting. It's unbelievable. But when, have you been to Luxor? I've not been to Luxor. Been to Giza. Yeah. Luxor was incredible. Like, if anything, better than the pyramids, they say, because the, the tombs are just incredible. And these things were made like over 3,000 years ago. Yeah. And I came back from that trip like so curious and almost obsessed about the, you know, past civilizations and what their life was like and like, what the, the purpose of life is, which is something I, I mean, if I had gone and done that trip 10 years ago, I would be like, okay, yeah, nice. This is interesting. Like, I'd rather just go on a party trip. But as I've got older, the, the types of trips that I'm taking and the way it's making me think is, uh, has changed a lot. Well, you're looking for the, so you go to a place that, look, or and it's a big tourist destination, nonetheless. You're asking these fundamental kind of why questions. So you see, if you go to the pyramids in Giza, for example, or or any place in ancient Egypt, that stuff is so old that when we look at Cleopatra, who ruled Egypt, she was born in what, 79 BC? Mmm. The, the pyramids were older for her than she is to us. Yeah. That's how old the pyramids are. Right. Okay. So let's go back to Cleopatra. Was on the same quest, human quest, that we are to find why. And she didn't find it because she was looking in these earthly idols. Go back another 2,500 years or 2,000 years plus, and you go back to the people who built the pyramids. These were monuments to their own greatness because they were looking for meaning. They didn't find it either. These are the ultimate quests that, that we're on. These are supernatural, even metaphysical questions that we're really all about. And that's the promise of what decades and decades of life can actually bring us is the opportunity to, to walk that path. That's how we get happier as we get older, is not falling into those traps. Yeah. But how do we, how do we go about finding meaning and purpose? I mean, I'm sure this is a question you get asked a lot, and I'm asking myself that same question. But I feel like with what I'm doing now, uh, with, whether it's the stuff relating to the fitness and physique, I feel like, okay, maybe I'm helping to motivate people, inspire people to get in shape. Right. Maybe with this, you know, I'm helping people to, you know, open their eyes or give them some sort of belief that they can go and take this, do the journey, or do the thing that they've been thinking about doing. But, you know, there may be a lot of people who, they don't have that presence on social media, or, you know, maybe they're working a job where they don't feel like it's very fulfilling. What advice would you give to them? So, yeah, so I mean, a lot, so a couple of things to think about to begin with. What you're doing is really important. Why? Because an integrated lifestyle requires a healthy body, a healthy mind, and a healthy soul. That's really important. And these are the three legs of the stool, ultimately, that you, you, you can't be without if you want to be an integrated person. To make progress. Human happiness comes from progress. So what you're doing with health and fitness is critically important. It has a lot, there's a lot of brain science behind this. Most notably, what fitness and, and health having them on point, which is super important to me. I mean, I've been, I've been in the gym for 30 years, and, and I feel better at 60 than I did when I was 25. And that's possible. That's really good. And, and what it does is it allows me to, to manage my, what's called negative affect. We all have negative emotions. They're super important. You should not try to eliminate them. You should not try to tamp them down and get rid of them. There's, there's nothing, there's no evidence there's something wrong with anybody listening to us because they have, they have sadness and anxiety. That's part of life. You need to learn to manage them. The best single way to manage them. Let's say the worst is drugs and alcohol. Right. Pornography and excessive internet use. That stuff is soothing behavior, terrible, terrible for your mental health. What's good for your mental health is getting into the gym. That's good for your mental health. That's basic maintenance of mind and body. That's super important. That's something everyone can do. Everybody can do. Everybody can make progress doing that. But when I talk to people about how to make actual progress along the lines of trying to find meaning, um, this is where the science starts to get really, really interesting. So I can say what meaning is, coherence and purpose and significance, all the stuff that I've talked about. But the techniques for doing that elude a lot of people. Here's basically how it works. For you to, to make a sense of life, to find the why, you need to be able to ask the big questions. That's impossible if you're never bored. That's an important concept, right? So if you go back to, what did your grandfather do for a living? He worked in the Air Force. Oh, was he a pilot? Yeah, he was a pilot. He used to fly planes. That's pretty cool. What did he do when he wasn't a pilot? Was he in, work in a factory? Was a mail carrier? Something ordinary, right? Yeah. Something ordinary. Yeah. Yeah. He was bored a lot. Yeah. He was bored a lot. His mind got to wander a lot. We are built. Homo sapiens are built to have our minds wander all the time. That uses a part of the brain or a set of structures in the brain. There's four structures in the brain that make up the default mode network. That switches on when you're thinking about nothing, when you're, when your mind is actually wandering, when you're bored. We don't like to be bored. So here's a funny thing. Your grandfather didn't like to be bored, but was he going to do? There was no, you know, there was no phone. There's nothing to do. I mean, when he was actually doing his work, if you were plowing a field or working in a factory all day long, you were just, it was just your thoughts. That was engaging your default mode network. And that's the part of, that's the structures in the brain that have to work such that you can think about the meaning of your life. Now, that's probably why your grandfather never said, I don't know the meaning of my life. He didn't have that complaint because he was actually doing the work. He didn't know he's doing the work, but he was. Now, we have created anti-boredom machines. Right. We're, you and I are part of the anti-boredom machine right now. Yeah. There's a lot of people who are, you know, in the car going, ah, man, what should I listen to? Oh, yeah, Mike's podcast, awesome. And they're, and they're listening to us right now because they're trying to get rid of boredom. Good, because this is nutritious stuff. We're, we're doing public education right now. But if not, then they're going to let the, the YouTube algorithm feed them a bunch of shorts. One that prevents you from going into the default mode network. Number one thing that people need to do is to be bored more. That's the most important thing that people can actually do. Drive without any stimulus. Work out without any stimulus. Great thing about working out, by the way, especially if you're doing resistance, is you're drawing a lot of, uh, you're, you're raising your blood pressure while you're doing lifts and actually, and, and blood flow into your muscles, which is going to induce more activity in your default mode network on its own. That's the reason that you have your best ideas in the gym if you're not listening to anything. Yeah. You notice this? Yeah. But the, the problem with that, I've tried it. Yeah. I have realized the combination of gym and my favorite music makes me extremely happy. Yeah. I know. And it makes me really enjoy the session. No, I get it. So you take away the music, I would still go to the gym, but it would feel more like work. I know. But you need to do it. This is one of the things I recommend. So I have a protocol that I recommend to a lot of people that are feeling really aimless in their life, which is: Get up before dawn. Because if you're getting up when the sun is warm, you've wasted some of the best hours of the day. This is called the Brahma Muhurta in ancient Vedic thinking, which means the Creator's time. Uh, a Muhurta is 48 minutes in ancient Hindu wisdom. So it's an hour and 36 minutes before dawn. That's before dawn, right? Get it before dawn. I know. And the neuroscience, the, that's when I get up. It's 4:30, unless I'm 9 hours off because I'm in Dubai. Yeah. Yeah. So, um, the, the good thing about that, according to neuroscience, is that you're much more creative, you're much more focused if you get up before dawn. There's a whole bunch of physiological mechanisms that are that are instigated when you get up before significantly before dawn. First thing you do is you beat it up, and you beat it up without stimulus. So you're getting into the gym, you're doing. Now, a lot of people have never actually worked out and have not done any exercise. So the first protocols I ask people to walk for an hour without devices, just to get your body moving. But for anybody who's listening to us, there's nobody watching or listening to us right now who's not a gym rat who's going to, I mean, this is, there are a lot of people who go to the gym that listen to this. Yeah. Totally. I mean, this is, which is great. So they don't need actually the beginner protocol. You can actually, you know, get into the gym 4:45 to 5:45, whatever it happens to be, whatever, you know, your results may vary. But the whole point is, and, and let your mind wander when you're doing that. Let your mind wander. Let your mind take you where your mind is supposed to go. And then actually is to work on the soul part of it with meditation or worship or whatever, whatever your, that thing actually reading the Stoic masters, whatever it is. And only then administer psycho-stimulants, aka, drink caffeine, drink coffee. Yeah. And then start your day. By the way, that optimizes your creative, your creative potential. You'll get three to four hours of very, very strong concentration of dopamine in the prefrontal cortex, which gives you focus and creativity and will make you extremely productive. But you will have started your day with questions of meaning. Yeah. And that's how you start. That's how you get the jump on, on actually solving the issues of, what's my life all about, man? I've heard, I've heard you say this before, and I thought, hang on, okay, so it's quite easy for me to do. I can just wake up, go walk along this beach. I have my little route which I do. And when he said, do it without any devices, I thought, ah, yeah, because that, that's going to drastically affect what that walk is going to be like. Either I'm going to be blasting myself with music or listening to a podcast, or just going through my phone, versus being forced to be listening to my thoughts. Pres. Yeah. You need to actually have presence, and you need to let your default mode network take you where you need to go synaptically, so you can actually be considering questions that don't have answers. That's really what the default mode network is doing. Is taking you to big questions that, that you, the big questions of life don't have answers, they only have understanding. You know, so, you know, somebody would, if you ask me, my wife's name is Esther. We've been married 33 years. I love my wife. You say, why do you love your wife? Anything I told you would sound stupid and trite, would trivialize it. I understand it, but I don't have answers. That's an understanding that you get. But it actually requires that you allow your brain to gain understanding. And you won't get it if you turn on the anti-machine. Huge, a huge problem in our society today. Could you also say the same if you're constantly surrounded by people that you're not getting that alone time? Yeah, because this is one thing which I've noticed. I think there was a massive shift for me where throughout my time in university, I was living with people. I was living with like six guys. It was lots of fun, but it was like we were constantly with each other. Then after that, I continued to stay in Newcastle. I was living with people, so I realized there wasn't really much opportunity for me to get time to myself to think, to read, listen to a podcast, even though podcasts weren't really that big back in the day. I still didn't have that alone time. And the biggest shift for me where everything started to change and my career started to basically blow up was when I moved to London. And that was 26 years old. It was the first time that I lived by myself. So I moved down there, moved into, uh, at the time, an apartment which I couldn't afford, but that obviously motivated me to work. But it was my first experience of being like alone and not necessarily having like a group of friends in London right now. I found that was amazing because all of a sudden I was having all of this alone time for me to think and reflect and sort of plan where it is that I wanted to go. I could do all my work uninterrupted, and it was amazing. But on the flip side, it was, I don't think I'd prepared myself for what it would actually feel like. And I should have made more of an effort to actually still have some social life, uh, in the balance, right? Because it went from one end to the complete opposite to much. Yeah. It's too much for sure. You got the benefit of it, but you also paid up a pretty heavy price because, you know, you need, uh, friends in your life. You need relationships. This is one of the reasons that people get so depressed and really alienated from their lives when they're working on Zoom now. The, the, the neurophysiology of this is pretty straightforward. We have a neuropeptide in the brain called oxytocin. You've heard of this? This is also known as the love molecule. You get it from eye contact and touch. This is why this is a much more effective conversation that we're having in person as opposed to if we were doing it on Zoom. And people who are living by themselves and on Zoom all the time, they get no oxytocin. Then they start to find that they, they're struggling with insomnia, they're trying, they're eating too many high-glycemic carbohydrates, and all of this kind of thing is because they're actually not getting enough of, you know, their neurochemistry is off. And so if you go from one end to the other, if you have, you know, too much stimulus and too much social life, you're not going to have enough alone time, so your default mode network is never being instigated. Yeah. Then you go to being by yourself all the time, you don't have enough oxytocin. This is, you know, in ancient times, we would have a, you know, enough boredom when we were out in the fields and enough family time when we were back in the cave. I never understood it because this is when I was doing online coaching and I was probably speaking to like four people at least every day, so having conversations. But I was like, why does it still feel like something's missing? It's the worst. Wor. Because your brain was craving oxytocin. Yeah. And, and it's like, H, I don't know. I don't, this doesn't feel right. People will move someplace where they think is going to be really, really great, and then, and then commute virtually, and then wonder why they're getting unhappier despite all the fact that all their dreams came true. That's why. Because you actually need humans in the right dose. Yeah. Yeah. That's right. I think now, even though I do, I mean, I'm, I'd probably say I'm more introverted than extroverted, for sure. Are you? Yeah. Even though if, if you watch my YouTube videos and obviously doing what I'm doing, you would probably think a really extroverted guy. But I've had to, I've really had to force myself to come out of my shell to go down that path. Introverts act like extroverts. The question is, where do you get your energy? When you're, if you're at a party, if you're exhausted when you come back, versus you can't sleep when you come back from the party. No, I'm, uh, I recharge when I'm by myself. But I notice that when I'm by myself for too long, that feels weird. It's all balance. It's all balance is what it comes down to. Yeah. So there's a lot that you can do. I mean, people are watching us, you know, how do you get more of the, you know, alone time while having properly ordered relationships? One of the things that I recommend a lot, if you ever heard of the Camino de Santiago? You know what that is? That's a, that's a walk across Northern Spain that people have been doing for 1100 years. This is an ancient walk from the French border with Spain all the way to Santiago de Compostela. Mmm. And it's, it's 800 kilometers. You walk the whole thing in 33 days. Just meet tons of people, but most of the day you're by yourself, just thinking. Mmm. No headphones. And, and you can make huge, huge, huge progress and really reset the balance of people with boredom and silence and talking. That's a great idea. I, I had a friend, he, one of my best friends, um, used to work for me. And, uh, one of his biggest problems was he hated being alone. Like, whenever he was alone, he would, I don't know, I couldn't understand why he was so uncomfortable being alone, but he hated it. So he always, he always needed to be around people, or he always needed to be with his partner. And I said to him, I was like, if, if you're constantly with other people, you're not getting that time you need for yourself to reflect, to think, and to, to do whatever it is that you're supposed to do. And he's just gone through this transition now where he has, he's gone to Bali by himself. He's in a relationship, but it's like the first time he's done a trip without her. And all of a sudden, everything is just going amazing for him. And he's now, for the first time, super happy and content being by himself. Yeah. So I think that's progress. People have probably heard this before, but to, you need to become happy by yourself instead of looking or relying upon other people to provide you with that happiness. Yeah. No, for sure. And the way to do that is to actually go away by yourself. Yeah. And, and, and it's lousy at first, and then it becomes good. You have to get used to it. So some people will say, um, a lot of people who are very successful, they have trouble in their marriage because they travel so much. And then when you dig a little bit, it turns out they travel so much because they're uncomfortable being at home with their partner. Right. So for, and it's the same thing with yourself. You know, for a lot of people, they don't like being alone because they don't like having the company of themselves because they don't like themselves very much, or they don't know themselves very well. And the only way to do that is to get to know yourself. Yeah. And so you push through it. You got to push through the discomfort that comes from aloneness. And I mean, there's really funny experiments on this where when people who are not used to being bored, when you make them bored, it freaks them out. So there's a great study that, there's a guy that, um, I work with at Harvard named Dan Gilbert, who's a really famous psychologist. He's done great work on happiness. And he did this experiment where he would put people in a room alone with nothing to do except one button. They could push, and if they push the button, they get a painful electric shock. And they have to sit there for 15 minutes doing nothing. And you found that like 80% of the people press the button and give themselves shocks. And one guy in 15 minutes pressed the button 190 times. That's a much, hated that. Was your friend? Yeah. That's your friend. It's like, ah, it's better than being bored. That's better than being the default mode network and being alone with my thoughts. For, for those people who do travel and like, for myself as well, someone who has relocated to a different country. There's not much that I really miss from home, apart from family. Yeah. And I know I've recently been back to the UK. We had a big family reunion, and I almost forgot like how happy I am when I'm sort of reunited with my family. Yeah. And it is, it is a struggle to, to be with them as much as I would like to when we are living so far apart. So, I mean, is, is there any advice for, uh, people who have relocated away from their family to try and, you know, keep that family connection there? Yeah, it's, well, to begin with, keep the family connection. And I made that mistake. You know, so before, you know, the tools of communication became as developed as they are, when I was in my 20s, I moved to Spain and I lived in Spain for years. And there were times when I didn't go home for a year and I didn't see my parents. I'm from the West Coast in the United States. So it's 9 hours off. It's far from Seattle by the Canadian border is my hometown. And, and I didn't talk to him very much. I talked to my, I probably talked to my parents, it was expensive. I talked to him maybe once a month on the phone. That was back when there was long distance. Mmm. There was no, only landlines. And, and, and so the result was I kind of lost contact. And I always thought to myself, I'd like to get to know them better. My mother was an artist, my father was a mathematician. They were very interesting people. And, um, and then they died. And I, you know, young. And I missed it because I just didn't, I didn't pay attention because I kind of let the time click by. So your observation that staying in touch is really important is the most important observation because when it's a priority, you will actually serve the priority. That's super important. Now, you live far apart. What does that mean? That means you got to spend real resources and make sure you're seeing them in person three or four times a year. Yeah. That's really not once a year, not once every two years. And at least once a week, you're talking to your parents on FaceTime so you can actually see their eyes. Yeah. You can actually see their faces. You can see them getting older. That's really, that's a big one. If you haven't seen them for a year and you go back, you're like, whoa. Yeah. Totally, totally. And, and, and it's for them too, you know. Now, and, you know, I, I've made life decisions on the basis of, you. I was living in Boston for the last 5 years because my university is in Boston. But I moved my principal residence to Northern Virginia. I have a company there. Um, I'm commuting back to Boston. But most importantly, my adult kids live there, and my grandkids live there. And I'm not going to commute to see my grandchildren. No, I'm not going to do that. I'm not going to make that mistake. You have to prioritize it and use your resources in a way that actually shows what your values are. Yeah. Yeah. I think I'm, I'm looking the sense now that it's not going to be that damaging for my resources to travel back. I mean, obviously, I've got to a point now where I can travel business class, and that makes me very happy. It's easier. A lot easier. It's a lot easier. So, I mean, for people who don't have the resources, it's probably going to be a little bit more difficult. But I really don't have an excuse. Like, I can, everything's online. I work online. I've got the money to pay for the flight. So, yeah. And if you're not that far from London, I mean, what's the, what's the flight? 6 hours? If so, if I were to go to, I'm based in Leeds, I would fly back to Manchester, which would be, I think, just under 8 hours. Yeah. No big deal. Yeah. It's no big deal. It's like me going to Los Angeles from Washington DC. Yeah. It's not, it's not a big deal. There's no good reason. It's a 4-hour time difference. It's, it's the world is flat enough, and the planes go every single day, and you just got to prioritize it. The problem is that time slips away. So, yeah, I want to do that. Yeah. I want to do that. Then you don't. So you have to make sure that, I mean, this is one of the key components of a truly entrepreneurial life. What's important to me? What are the rewards? What am I trying to maximize? What are my goals in order? And then serving those particular goals, making sure that you're not letting the urgent crowd out the truly important things in your life. Just the same thing when you're running a business. It's like, yeah, I know people are calling about that particular thing, and I forgot about what's actually raising the revenue for a company that makes me make payroll. You would do that. You're a bad business person if you do that. Yeah. But people do that with their lives all the.

Time and so making sure that your priorities are written down, they're clear, they're cleared your head, and you're serving them. That's how you you can make sure that these don't these things don't escape you, get away from you.

Well, how, how do you not become overly obsessed with making money if you are an entrepreneur? Because obviously the goal is you want to make more money, you want to see progress. I mean, you can make more monies, you can hire more people, right? You can obviously pay your existing staff, right? But can you fall into the trap of just constantly obsessing over making more and more and more and more? That's the scoreboard.

So, you know, I've done a lot of studies on the the entrepreneurial mindset and the entrepreneurial orientation. People with very high in entrepreneurial orientation, EO, we call it in in the vernacular, guys like you, they care about the scoreboard because you want some objective metric that shows how things are going. And you can kind of feel it and all that, but you can you can kind of feel it all the way in, you know, into bankruptcy.

And so watching the numbers go up is is actually showing you that you are creating more value. More value to whom? To the clients, to the people who are actually demanding the product. That's the ultimate test in the free enterprise system of whether or not you're creating value for somebody in somebody's life. So, I mean, there are other metrics as well. How many YouTube subscribers you've got, which is a pretty handy metric. But but ultimately, are people putting their their scarce resources behind your product? That's what entrepreneurs care about.

Entrepreneurs are not more materialistic than other people. They're not more greedy or money-grubbing than other people. They're not. But they love the scoreboard because they're metrics-driven individuals, is the way that that works. But you can't be shackled to the metric because if that's the case, then you'll find that it's extremely unsatisfying. You're not doing the things that actually create the most transcendental value, the things that actually serve your values. Yeah, you just find that you're making more and more money if things are going well.

So the way to do this is to think, okay, what are my priorities? Once again, it gets back to priorities. And I'll tell you, in my own business, this is how it works as an example. Our team, we sit down and we say, okay, what do we really care about? You should have multiple metrics. You should know what they are. You should put them in order. And you shouldn't do anything that breaks the order of the metrics. It's an order of operations. What's most important? And so anything that doesn't do that, we don't do. Second most important, third most important, fourth most important. You don't get the order wrong. And you make sure that you don't leave out something above what you're looking at.

Okay, so here's basically an example. Number one for us is glorify God. Number two is serve people, serve other people. Number three is have an adventure. Number four is make money. That's how my business works right now. It's very, I'm very privileged. Earlier in my life, my endeavors couldn't actually put money forth. I get it because, you know, I had to pay rent, I had to buy food, I had to do all that stuff. There's a time where, man, I was just paycheck to paycheck when I was in my early 20s and I was trying to make it as a musician. It was it was not easy. And I wouldn't, I didn't have this kind of a privilege.

But but now, here's the here's the whole point. If something is just money, but it's not serving other people adequately, we don't do it. Right? If it's no fun, we're not going to do it. It's not a fun adventure. And, you know, for me, you know, I'm Catholic. It's it's like, if it doesn't serve God, then glorify God, then forget about it. And you got to have those particular metrics. You got to have them in order. And you have to interrogate what you're actually trying to do with respect to your prioritized uh uh goals and and making sure that they're in the correct order. And being honest and and being held to account by other people in the operation who know what the order is too. Say, hey boss, you're just doing that for the money.

Yeah, but what do you mean by glorify God? So so Christian people have a have a a concept of what glorifying God really is all about. And partly that is to be is to be an open witness to what your beliefs are without embarrassment, without in it. What it comes down to, so Christianity is a religion that's that's largely based on, you know, spreading ideas that are great for people, not just to get into heaven, but to have a better life. And you do that through friendship and and admiration. And when people admire what you do and they find out that you're a believer, they're like, huh, maybe that's not dumb. Maybe that's not antiquated. Maybe that's not just grandma's thing. Maybe that's something that's actually worth looking at. And in so doing, they can improve their life. And you share the goodness, you share the joy, you share the happiness that can actually come. Glorifying God is is lifting other people up into a transcendent truth, is the way that that comes about.

Now, of course, not everybody watching us or believers, or certainly not all Christians, but that's just those that just happen to be my my viewpoint. And so glorifying God is sharing the goodness that actually comes from My Religion with other people without without any embarrassment and making it natural and not making it weird.

I'm technically Christian, but I most Brits are. Yeah. Um, but I think my journey's been more of a spiritual one. Yeah. And that's a great entry point. You know, that's a great entry point. And and one of the greatest things about the why in your life is actually being on a transcendent journey of complete openness to actually figuring it out, figuring out what it is that that that your beliefs are. And you have to have time and space to be able to do that. And that's great. That's great.

You know, have you got more religious as you got older? Yeah, almost everybody does. Almost everybody does. Why is that? Close to death? Like, oh, it's like, hope something's coming next. Yeah. Uh, yeah. We die early in my in my in my family too. So my dad died at 66. So, um, I'm kind of hoping that's not. Well, you look, you look good. I go into a coughing fit and die on you know, die right here on the set. Like, how ironic.

Why do people get more religious? They get older. One of the reasons is because the the journey of of asking why starts to lead you to more of these questions of illumination and and and to the great transcendent. And what you find is that so there's there's there's a lot of research on this, as you can imagine, a lot of behavioral science research on this. You find that when people raised in really religious homes, they don't question it when they're kids. They start to question it as teenagers. So in in a questioning period, then there tends to be a rejection period in one's 20s. And the reason is because religion has a lot, I mean, religion, like technical religions, not just spirituality, but but, you know, rules, lots of rules, a lot of one-sided conversations with God. It's not entirely clear that he exists. And and by the way, a lot of thought and and wisdom and and teaching about goodness. And there's a lot of badness in the world. And that's really inconsistent. So people in the 20s will say, it's like, you talk about the merciful God and all that, but look around you, man, that just that's inconsistent with the whole thing.

People tend in the 30s and 40s to start coming back to it for two basic reasons. Number one is life is messy. And you get a lot more comfortable in your 30s and especially in your 40s with things that don't make sense. It's like, yeah, it's just the way it is. It's the way it is. There's a lot I don't understand. There's a lot that doesn't make sense. And if I'm going to try to tie everything up neatly with a bow, I'm going to be living under a bridge with a long beard and a sign. You know, I know those guys. I don't want to be one of those guys.

Number two is you have children. And and you don't have, it's not religion because it's a good way of enforcing rules. That's not it at all. But you say like, there is something I cannot explain in the way that I love that child. When your first child was born, you're like, there's something going on here I can't explain. This is mystical. This is metaphysical. And you say, now I understand what I learned when I was a child about my relationship with God.

I've talked about this with, I've had great Hindu teachers. I go to India a lot. And I've had great Hindu gurus who I've studied with to understand, you know, the cosmology of, you know, these teachings. I have an 11-year relationship with the Dalai Lama. I've been working very, very intensively and very closely with the Dalai Lama for a long time. So this is not just the Christian religion. They, those guys seem to figured out. The Kic religions are different than the Abrahamic religions. But the relationship to the supernatural is one that's ineffable. It defies words. And one of the best ways that you can understand that for the first time is the ineffable supernatural relationship that you have with your child. Yeah. And when your child is born, you're like, oh, oh. And then your child is two and she's awful. And and then she's lying in bed and she's asleep. And you're going, I love her so much. And you're like, that's how God loves me. And you, you really, really understand it for the first time. It's it's an applied kind of learning. And and so these are the two. Life is messy, I can deal with that. And there is true love in the universe that I can't explain. These are the two reasons that people tend to get more religious in their 30s and 40s.

Okay, is have you, from everything that you've learned, noticed that there are certain people from certain communities or different, uh, geographical locations in the world? Is there any explanation why some people are happier than others? For example, um, there's a lot of Filipino people that work here. Yeah. And they are, from what I've seen, just the happiest people ever. And I never really understood why. Yeah, yeah.

So there's a lot of studies about the happiest countries. And those studies are no good because, you know, they're they're mostly propaganda that that says that, you know, Denmark and Finland and Sweden and Norway and the, you know, northern European social democracies are what we should all be. Yeah, you're in Dubai as an entrepreneur and not in Copenhagen for a reason. You know, this. You want to, you want to be in an environment that allows you to succeed beyond your wildest dreams because you're an entrepreneurial guy, is the way. There are different kinds of people. I got nothing against the Danish. My my grandparents were immigrants from Denmark. And but they left for a reason. You know, the truth is, different strokes is the way that this comes about. So the comparisons of happiness between countries don't stand up. But there are other, other, there there are cultures that have different priorities. So some are more contented, some are more cheerful, is what we see. So the outer expression doesn't necessarily betray what's actually going on into the surface. So there are cultures of people that are just really cheerful people. They're really cheerful. So people go like, um, yeah, man, I go to Burundi and people are so cheerful, but they're poor. What's going on? But I have the data that really show that it hurts somebody when they have a child who dies of a preventable disease or a caloric deficit. The same in Burundi as it does in in London. Yeah. And and so the, the way that people express is very different than the affect that people have in their souls. So that's one of the things that's really worth keeping in mind. People are people, is the way that this works. And we're, you know, we have different personalities for sure. And different cultures and different character that that depends on the cultures that we live in. But but our, you know, the inner workings of our brains are pretty much all the same. Every place.

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Is there a, like, a universal income amount which kind of optimizes happiness? I love that question. I was training as an economist. I thought about this a lot. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I train. I've thought about this a lot. So that's the money and happiness question. And there's, there's this is in dispute, right? So the the famous paper on this was written by by, uh, uh, Deon, Angus Deon and and and Daniel Kahneman. And this was a, what, what's the level of money that is enough paper? And it showed that $75,000 a year is where happiness flattens out. In other words, happiness goes up to $75,000 a year. And again, you're thinking, London, $75,000 a year? Or, you know, uh, Tacoma, Washington? Or Bali? Bali, exactly. And and so that's a problem, for sure. But the main thing that that paper pointed out is that well-being stops going up after a certain point. M. That's what it showed. Okay, here's the thing. Well-being is a mixture of happiness and unhappiness. What money does at relatively low levels is it eliminates sources of unhappiness. Unhappiness doesn't work the same way as happiness. It's actually processed in a different hemisphere of the brain. Unhappy emotions and different part of parts of the limbic system of the brain. And what will happen is that you get these unhappy or negative emotions when you have problems like, my child is hungry, or I can't pay my rent, or I'm chronically stressed. And a little bit of money eliminates those sources of unhappiness. So your well-being goes up. But it tops out really fast. Yeah. You don't need very much money for it to top out. After that, you find out your well-being doesn't go up very much. On the contrary, your stress tends to start going up.

More money, more problems. More money, more problems. But there's actually, there's five ways to spend money. And how you spend it is what really matters. This, so this is where the information comes in. This like news we can all use. You naturally want to buy more stuff because you want to rise in the hierarchy by displaying expendable resources because Mother Nature wants you to have 75 children or whatever, right? And you don't want that, but that's what Mother Nature wants you to want. So I'm going to have a nice car, I'm going to have a better, I'm, you know, three apartments, I'm going to do, you know, whatever it happens to be. So you want to buy stuff thinking you're going to be happier. That's wrong. That's wrong.

The four ways to use money that will actually make you a happier person: Number one is to buy experiences with people you love. Yeah. Number two, buy time and spend it with people that you love. So have somebody cut your grass, but don't fritter away the time on Instagram. You know, spend it with the people that you love doing something meaningful. Right? Or by the way, being bored, being alone, so your default mode network is kicking into gear. Number three, give it away to something you're passionate about. Help something or someone that really matters. And number four, or save it. Saving reliably raises happiness because it's a metric of progress. So saving money is the same thing. You as an entrepreneur, you have a huge payday from a deal that you make. You're like, I love that. Why? Because you've made progress. You put points on the board. The best way that anybody listening and watching us right now can put points on the board is to have money going up in your bank account. The worst way for you to do something that's going to make you happier is by going into debt for consumption. That's craziness for happiness because you've actually gone back behind the line of scrimmage and you're 20 yards behind. And I'm using American football language at this point, but you people understand that. And and that will make you unhappier for something you won't care about in a month, like some consumer thing that you won't care about in a month. But you're paying off a car you can't afford five years from now. It's all dented up and you're still making payments on it. That's craziness. Don't do it. Just don't do it. That will make you unhappier reliably because it'll set you back in the points.

Did you ever go through a phase of excessive spending? I never had enough money and my credit was so bad I couldn't get a credit card that would actually allow me to do that. But but also, you know, my my dad was a very thrifty guy and he had, you know, you you learn, you learn parents is, you know, this is a lot. Most of the people watching us, your your core demographic is like men in their 20s, right? 20s, 30s. Yeah. So a lot of them don't have kids yet. M. Here's the optimal parenting advice. Take this from a grandfather. Right? It doesn't matter what you say. All that matters is what they see. That's it. If you want your kids to grow up and go to church, have them see you on your knees on Sunday. That's all that matters. Does not matter what you say. But if you're the strongest person they've ever seen, and you'd take, you'd bow the knee to no man, but you're on your knees in front of a greater power, and the little dude sees that. Yeah, that's going to make a big difference in his development. Your son or daughter's development, for sure. Okay, that's one example. Here's another example. I never saw my father going into debt for anything ever. I said, why? Why not? He said, because debt is slavery. That's that's the that's the lesson I actually got from my father. And it really had a big impact on me. So the result is, I don't even like having a credit card. He's debit card, right? I don't want. And and again, I don't have a mortgage. You know, I just, because you, life has treated me really, really well. I'm in a very privileged position to be financially independent at this point in my life. And not everybody can. But even, even when I wasn't, I didn't have, I never, I've never run a credit card balance one month in my entire life. Not once. Not even in my 20s, because it was, it made me intensely uncomfortable because I saw my dad. Yeah, he was a very thrifty guy. It's funny, cuz I, I living here, I see a lot of people who are coming into money for the first time. And they get caught up in that sort of phase of just spending, spending on silly things like, uh, you know, tables at the club, or beach club, supercars, you know, watches, whatever, designer clothes, things like that. And I just think, I mean, I, part of me has been there for for a short period of time. I think luckily, because I didn't really come into money until my late 20s, I kind of, I understood a little bit more about what I like and what I don't like. And I, I realized pretty quickly that I like experiences. And to this day, I spend a lot of my money on travel and experiencing new things. But for those people who are in like the early 20s, you don't really understand that much. I see them get caught up in that that path of they think it's going to make them happier. And then they wonder why they feel hollow inside, is the way that that works.

I mean, money, money is, we live in an incredibly blessed time because of the free enterprise system, because of democracy, because of all the things that have made it possible for us to have this unbelievable prosperity. That's great. But to think that that prosperity per se is going to buy happiness, that's wrong. All it does is it facilitates our ability to live in a way that we can seek more transcendent things. And that's the thing that's the the point that can't be squandered and shouldn't be wasted. I mean, money's fine. I got nothing against it. It's great. I'm glad there are rich people. I'm glad people are inventing things. The whole point is don't be attached to it. You know, satisfaction doesn't come from having more. It comes from wanting less. Your real satisfaction is all the things that you have divided by all the things that you want. Haves divided by wants. Having more, having more, having more is a very inefficient way because you're working the numerator of the satisfaction equation. But working the denominator is much better because the denominator will take you reliably into higher levels of satisfaction if you want less. That's important.

It's funny because, you know, I have zero discomfort with nice things in the world and beautiful things. And last week, I was recording a program on television, um, in Barcelona, in one of the Barcelona television stations. And and I was talking about this, like the secret, it was in Catalan, so it didn't actually didn't go too viral in the United States. And it was, it's the question is not having more, it's wanting less. It's being less attached. And it goes on Instagram. And in the comments, people are like, have you noticed that this guy's wearing a Hoer [Laughter] Monaco? It's a beautiful watch. But I only have one. Yeah. And and the whole point is, okay, the whole point is, do I love it? Yeah. The point is, does it matter? Not that much. Just a little bit. It's all a question of what your values and priorities are. Yeah. And I guess changing your desires, yeah, is important. And that means prioritizing your desires. That means knowing what your order of operations is, one, two, three, four. And then living according to those, just as you would your with your company, living your life according to the the three or the four, whatever that, whatever those things are.

I think Naval said, uh, a desire is a promise you make yourself to be unhappy until you get what it is that you want. But if you're the type of person just that has all these really bad desires, yeah, then that's not going to end well. Yeah. So you, how do you go about changing your desires? Or is it just coming to the realization that wanting these things is not going to make you happy? Yeah.

Well, it's these are instrumental goods. Money, power, pleasure, and fame, which are the four idols. Those were according to Thomas Aquinas, who was who was who was talking about a so in in the Summa Theologica of St. Thomas Aquinas, the Dominican monk in Paris in 1265, wrote the Summa, which was really bringing Aristotle to what was then a modern audience. No, Aristotle was not known in those days. Everybody's a Platonist. And and Aquinas said, no, no, no, the better is is Plato's pupil, Aristotle. And he's got this stuff is gold. And so he he introduced it to the modern audience at that time. And one of the things he introduced was the idols in modern life. You want to be happy, you think you're going to be happy from these four things, but you're wrong. And they were, and it's incredibly a drit social science. Money, power, pleasure, and honor. Honor is a funny word in English. I have two kids in the military, in the US Marine Corps. They serve with honor. Right? That's not what we mean. Honor means honor me. Honor me. That means fame or prestige or position or admiration. That's what honor means. And so that's one of the idols. That's the worst of them, by the way. I have a game I play with my students. By the way, I saw, I saw, I did with Chris William. Oh, what's my idol? You want to play? Yeah, okay. Yeah, okay. And and people can play along with us right now, with the studio audience can play along with us right now. So these are the four idols: money, power, pleasure, fame, according to Aquinas. And modern social science, behavioral scientists, each one of us has one of those idols that, as you correctly point out, is a disordered desire. Not because there's anything wrong with those things, there's nothing immoral about those things, but because they're incomplete for your happiness. They're intermediate goals. It's question, the question is, what do you use your money for? Not why do you, is money the ultimate goal? What do you use your fame for? To refract it toward the higher good. So when people admire Mike, what do they see in you? And they try to emulate and they become better as a result, healthier, stronger. That's great. You have to use the admiration for a certain thing. Okay. But if you follow the idol as a goal per se, every bad decision you're going to make in your life, you're going to chart it back to that idol, guaranteed. If you're, if money is your thing, every time you cut a corner, you and you get in trouble with the tax guy, or you feel a little bit bad about a deal that you made, it'll be because, yeah, I chased money again because I did that thing. So knowing your idol gives you power over yourself. That's why. And everybody's got one, right? We all like all of them, but everybody's got one in particular.

So here's how, what's my idol works. As you've seen with, I do with Chris, or I do with my classes too, by the way. I make them play, um, you don't say what your idol is, you say what your idol isn't. Okay? You take them away one by one because you know, we're, you know, with certain things, we can live without. So of the four, money, power, and pleasure, and fame, if you were to get rid of one, by which I mean, not having none of it, but having this the average amount across the population, right? So when I say, if you got rid of money, it would mean you're a middle-class guy. Yeah, right? If you got rid of fame, the people who know you, or your friends and family, that's it, right? Okay. Which one do you care the least about? And then you get rid of and become truly average on on one of these four idols. Think power. How come I don't think I care for it? You don't like having power over people. What that tells me as a behavioral scientist is you don't like people having power over you. That I hate that. Yeah. That's why because when I remember whenever I had my earlier jobs, when I had a boss, hated that. And you were a rebellious guy. Not rebellious, just I didn't like being told what to do. I know. And when people call you boss, it probably makes you uncomfortable. It feels even passive aggressive, right? Yeah. Don't call me boss, because it's your, it's your psyche. And you're s. Yeah. So and generally speaking, people who don't like having power over others, don't like people having power over them. They don't like power dynamics per se. So you're an anti-Nietzsche in the world of power. Nietzsche said that the love of power animates all men. M. He said that's it's all about. Now, of course, I don't believe that. I think love animates everything. Nietzsche said that it is is power that animates everything. And you're living proof that that is not the case for all people, including a lot of successful people. Most entrepreneurs will say what you just said. Okay, that's a classic say. Okay. So you have an average amount of power in your life. Good. And you're actually just as happy. There's three left: money, pleasure, and fame. Which do you get rid of next? So if I got rid of fame, I would just have an average amount of fame, or just be a normal person. Yeah, be a normal guy, like your dad. I'd probably get rid of, you know, I'll probably get rid of the money. How come? Because because I think I've realized now, if I have, if I can have enough money to just do what I want, yeah, to travel and and live a life that I want to live, that's enough. I don't have aspirations of having like all these materialistic things or, you know, buying more and more and more. I don't think I've realized that that's not what is. You figured out at the relatively tender age of 30 that there's not that much cool stuff that money can buy that you care that much about. Yeah, right? Now, again, most people never get to the point where they figure that out. M. And so they just imagine that if they had a lot more money than they have. I just saw data, by the way, on graduates of the of the Stanford Business School Graduate School of Business. And what you find is that they make a lot of money. And and it turns out that there's zero correlation between money and well-being level among the graduates. But the number one thing that they believe is that they'd be a lot happier if they made a lot more money. Yeah. So this is not just for people who don't have very much money. This is true for almost everybody. That that illusion exists. You've gotten beyond that. Congratulations. You've gotten beyond one of the greatest illusions about happiness at a very young age. That's terrific.

But now the downside. There's two left. And you care about these things: pleasure and pleasure and honor. Pleasure and honor. Now, again, to get rid of one of these things is not to say that you become utterly obscure, known by no one. No, people who care and love you, they know you. And to get rid of pleasure doesn't mean that you have, you don't feel good ever. It just means that you're not seeking the the pleasure-filled experiences as much as you currently do or as much as motivates you at the current moment. So what you get rid of next, pleasure or honor? What be honor. Yeah. You, you'd be a normal guy. I think I, I like, I really enjoy doing the things that I just want to do. And I feel like a lot of the things which I'm doing at the moment is so that I can, like, if I want to earn more money, it's not so I can buy more things. I want to earn more money so I can have more time, right? So that I can maybe hire people to do the things that I don't want to do, so that I have all the time in the world to do the things that I really want to do, whether that might be to go travel somewhere, spend time with the people that I want to spend time with, have a new experience. Yeah, yeah.

So what, that there's nothing disordered about that, by the way. There's nothing even remotely disordered about that. What that is, as information for you as you go forward to make sure that it doesn't actually turn into a series of decisions that could be not to your advantage. So, for example, people who ordinarily where the idol is pleasure, they will often struggle with relationships. They'll struggle because the pleasure that actually comes from an immediate relationship will trump the work that actually comes from your soul finding your soulmate. Right? See what I'm saying? And so that's what you got to keep your eye on because you don't want to be my age and go, I was in love with her, but pleasure, I let it get away. See what I'm saying? That's that's something I'm dealing with. Of course. Yeah. Very normal. Very, very normal. And that's power. Is having that information and say, look, that's my idol. That's I'm always going to look. Sometimes it's really, really well-ordered. I want to have these experiences with people that I love in places that are wonderful. That's great. There's nothing disordered about that at all. But if you say, yeah, but I don't want to miss, I don't want to miss that moment of something that feels so good and so nice. It is because what you'll do is you'll make short-term decisions as opposed to long-term investments in your personal life in ways that you never would in your business decision-making. Knowing your idol gives you power. For me, it's honor. For me, it's honor. So I'm right with you on power. No, no, don't care. Don't even like it. Money, no. There's nothing that's that cool. If I could, I would own zero houses. I would have no real estate. I would, you know, nothing. But I, I live in the world and I have a family and, you know, M. H. Um, and pleasure, okay, it's okay, right? But honor, I mean, but it's my weak suit. It's my weak point. Yeah. Knowing that's power for me. I think I probably would have a different answer in 10 years' time or 20 years' time. You might. You might. And so it's actually worth reviewing this. Um, every year on my birthday, I review this every year. Yeah. I put together the micronutrients of my happiness. I rank myself on dozens of metrics that I've that I put together over the years to see where I'm making progress and and set a strategic plan for myself for the for the year ahead.

I, I think for me, I've, I've realized that this is a very sort of narrow window in my life where there is very little responsibility. Right? There's no kids. You know, there's no immediate dependence like this. There's this total freedom, which is not going to last forever, because I do want to have kids at some point, pretty soon, because, you know, I'm not getting any younger. Well, you don't want to be, you know, have little kids when you're my age. Yeah, yeah, exactly. So having grandkids at my age is the best. Yeah, yeah. So I think the reason why I've said pleasure at the moment is because that is a priority at this point in my life. Like, let me just do all the things that I wanted to do so that when, you know, maybe 10 years' time, I don't look back and think, oh, you know, I should have done that when I had the opportunity to do it. Right? But that can actually shackle you. That mentality can shackle you because it's always a short-term, short-term, short-term, short-term, short-term. Yeah. People who live paycheck to paycheck to paycheck, despite earning a decent amount of money, are doing more or less the same thing with their with their income. You know, they're saying, I'm, I'm going to do, I, I don't want to miss out on anything right now. I don't want to miss out, so I'm going to grab it. But you're always in the short term. It's like, in the long term, I'm going to be dead. No, no, no, no, no. That's not how you run your business. You have a successful business because you don't let short-term, you know, go for shiny things get in the way of your long-term goals. And it's the same thing for your life. Your life is an enterprise. Is you, if you, you, you, you fit back from, you know, 40 years from now, 20 years from now, 10 years from now, five years from now, one year from now, now, what do I do now? That's actually going to get me where I want to go. And and those are the those are the happiness decisions that you'll never, you'll never repudiate when you get to my age, trust me. You're not going to be looking back and say, that girl sure seemed like a lot of fun at that club in Ibiza that I passed on because I was in love with that other woman. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. You're going to be glad you passed. Yeah, because that gave you more happy years with a person who is the love of your life. Yes, that's important.

Yeah, the, this, this is one of the things I talk about with with young guys. The sooner you get married, the sooner you get to be with the love of your life, the more years you get with the love of your life. M. That's satisfaction. But you, yeah, you have to trust your instinct to know that this person is the one. Well, because you can get too caught up on these chemical, you know, reactions that are going on in your brain. Like, I've, this is interesting because I have sometimes got, uh, misinformed or confused about the the holiday romance experience. Because, you know, I'm sure you've had some holiday romances. We go, yeah. When you think back, that you, you've had this holiday romance. You come back home to reality and you're like, oh my God, like that was amazing. Like, everything was perfect. Yeah. But you think all of those experiences were down to that person. Yeah. Like they are the person that made you feel that way. But it's actually not, when you think about it. It's a combination of things. It's the location that you're at. You're in a new place. You're on an adventure. The weather was amazing. Yeah. You, um, we're doing loads of new things with a a new person. Like everything was novel. And you, you know, probably I wasn't doing any work at the time. Like, so of course, it's like a holiday. And I would come back and think that, oh my God, this person is the one because they're making me feel this way. Yeah. And then I would pursue that. And then when we would spend more time in just like normal scenarios, or I would keep going back to that location where it starts to become more normal, the novelty would wear off. And then I would start to kind of understand my feelings a little bit more and get to know them a little bit more. Because of course, with the holiday romance, you see the best version of them. You're not seeing their all their imperfections. Like you've seen the very best of them. So the more you get to know them, the more you start to see their imperfections. And then you're like, oh, okay, I had this wrong.

Well, it's a human, it's a person. Yeah. This, it's a person, not not a, you know, a cartoon character. So the way that the human brain works for human mating is that there's a neurochemical cascade that happens. Um, it starts off with attraction. And attraction is largely mediated by sex hormones, by by testosterone and estrogen. And that's where it, you know, you're attracted to somebody quickly when you meet somebody. And you continue to be attracted to that person. That's when it goes into the second tier of the cascade. That's with neuroadrenaline or norepinephrine and dopamine. Dopamine gives you a sense of anticipation. And neuroadrenaline gives you a sense of euphoria. And that's the holiday experience. That's actually what you're getting. It's just, it's, I mean, psychology is all biology is what it comes down to. And that's in the seven days together in Ibiza. That's when that's going on. The next step is is serotonin. And serotonin drops in the brain. We all have talked about serotonin-mediated depression. Which in the in the in the chemical, um, the brain chemical theory of depression, the whole idea is that serotonin is inadequate. What's really going on is that that there's a part of your brain called a ventrolateral prefrontal cortex, which which is in charge of rumination. You know, when you're feeling sad and you're thinking about sad things and regret, that's it's an overactive ventrolateral prefrontal cortex. And that's associated with low levels of serotonin in the brain. And that's why when you take a like Prozac or a selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor, that raises the the level of serotonin and the synapses in your brain such that the ventrolateral prefrontal cortex is less active and you don't ruminate as much. When you're falling in love, the third step is that you get a drop in serotonin. So you will ruminate on the other person, right? That's when you're, that's when you're bonding to the other person. That's what falling in love really is. That's when you're falling in love. And it's like, I send a 100 text messages in an hour. What's wrong with it? Not how I behave. Uh-uh. That's because your ventrolateral prefrontal cortex is in charge and it's ruminating too much. That's also one of the reasons that people often say when they take drugs that raise your level of serotonin, it's harder to fall in love. It's one of the reasons, right? It's also harder to do creative stuff, is what they find. Then the last part is is oxytocin. When oxytocin, which is a bonding hormone, which that person becomes your kin. That's where you really want to get in the in the falling in love experience. And that just doesn't happen in that week in Ibiza. You just don't have time to do it, is the way that that works. And so the really cosmic part of it is going one, attraction, two, euphoria and anticipation, three, bonding, four, connection. And that's when you actually become one, is is through the oxytocin. The goal of a of a, a love relationship, a romantic relationship, a pair bond that can last a lifetime, is that you become best friends by about five years. Yeah, that's really, really what you're trying to do. And that goes through a whole bunch of bumps along the way. But that has to get started and has to go through the cycle. And if it's just like, Ibiza, Ibiza, Ibiza, all you're doing is, you're basically starting it and stopping it, starting it and stopping it. You can never get go down the cycle the way that we're designed to go through the cycle. Yeah, so you can get to the best friendship, the companionate love, which still has passion, which is really one of the, is reliably actually, according to the data, the most happiness-provoking part of an average person's life.

I've often thought in reflecting upon my past relationships, I've asked myself, am I a happier person if I'm single or if I'm in a relationship? And what I've, I've kind of realized is when I'm in a relationship, when there's the highs, the highs are really high. Yeah. But when there's the lows, the row, the lows are really low. It's a crazy emotional roller coaster sometimes. I mean, obviously, just dependent upon the partner and how many arguments are going to have. Um, but when I'm single, I, I still, I have some highs and I have some lows, but it's more constant. It's, it's less extreme with the volatility, right? And sometimes I think, you know, I just prefer being single because sometimes when I'm in a relationship, emotionally, it's very exhausting. And it can be very distracting, right? You know, say, for example, I have a, you have a very important podcast to do. And then you get a call from your partner. You know, she's upset about something. Maybe she has good reason to be upset about it, or maybe it's, is something that you posted on Instagram, 9% social media related. And then you're just like, oh my God, like you can't help but be distracted. You can't be not affected by the mood that they're in. And like, it rubs off on you. Like if they're unhappy, you're going to be unhappy. So you'll, you try to make them happy, you know, because you want them to be happy. But also them being happy makes you happy as well. Yeah, yeah.

You feel like you can't afford it because, um, what you're doing is so incredibly important. But the enterprise of your life doesn't have just benefits, it has tons of costs. And romantic love, which is the most important investment that you're going to make, is your partner, is your spouse. That has tons of costs. It just does. Yeah. And then you have to learn, which every man or woman does learn, how to bear up the costs. Now, you're figuring out along the way, whether

Or not that this is too C. This kind of this particular partner is too costly, you know, for you because that just means it's a bad match and you can't actually live together. And you know, I'm married to a Spaniard, so trust me, I know what volatility is. Feisty, yeah. I mean, fighting is just a basic form of communication in Spain, you know. And the first five years of my marriage was like daggers drawn, you know. In our 20s, it was like, "Why is she yelling at me? She's yelling at me again. She's always yelling at me. Make it stop." You know, I'm an American.

Were you together, or was there long distance? No, no. Well, for, yeah, we met in France, actually, at a music festival in France. She was a musician too. She was a rock and roll singer and played the trumpet. And, you know, she was living a whole scene. And then we moved. I was living in New York and she was living in Barcelona. And then I took a job in the Barcelona Orchestra after a year, so we wouldn't be apart.

So you had a year doing the long distance? She came to see me in New York. I came. You know, we had, neither of us had any money. And we were struggling to actually see each other a little bit. And the only way we're going to be able to be together, we didn't speak the same language. She didn't speak a word of English, and I didn't speak a word of Spanish or Catalan. And so the result was that, you know, we were, who knows how we communicated. We were 24.

Yeah, I've been there before. It's funny how you can actually communicate without talking, somehow. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's it. Feels. But it is. It's like there's kind of a limit to how deep the conversation can, you know, when you're writing essays on the translator. Up. I know, which didn't exist, yeah, in 1988. You know, um, and our communication has marginally improved in the past 35 years. It's still a marriage, you know.

And then I moved to Barcelona. I took a job in the orchestra so I could, you know, because I had this belief, this belief because I'm an entrepreneur. I had a belief and I went all in. Super, super all in. Very, very foolish decision. My parents are like, "Okay, good luck to you. Good luck, son. You're doing this because of a girl?" It's like, "How well do you know her?" It's like, you know, it's, "She seems awesome. I can't speak your language. How old are you?" Then I was 24. I moved to Barcelona when I was 25. Um, I closed the deal at 27. Took me two years to close the deal. And, uh, and we've been married 33 years. Three kids. That's that's that's an amazing story. I mean, it's, you got to go all in. I mean, it's like, you understand, everybody watching us understands, if you're not going all in, just...

Well, I think a lot of people don't understand that. I mean, I, but your, I mean, it's like, live your life. I mean, you take some risks. Don't be a baby. Yeah. You know, don't be, I mean, risk-averse, really. You get one life, you know? I mean, it's like entrepreneurs on average have 3.8 failures before their first big success. If you transpose that to the most entrepreneurial thing you're going to do, which is your romantic partnership, you should have 3.8 heartbreaking failures where you're crushed so you can learn before your first big success. Get out there, man. Get your heart stomped on, you know? Fail more. It should be a, a passing that every man has to go through. You have to have at least one heartbreak. You got to know what it feels like. One's not enough. I mean, like, give it a go and make a mistake. I mean, does it really matter? No.

Sometimes I actually miss, like, how fired up you can be after a heartbreak. Yeah. You know, when you're like, "Man, she's going to regret that decision. I'm going to go to the gym. I'm going to get in the best shape possible. I'm going to focus on myself." Cuz I had one breakup with me because I don't think I had my finances in order. Yeah. She, I couldn't provide her with the things that she wanted. And she was five years older than me, so she'd already experienced it. I was like, "Damn, I can't like, can't give her these things she wants." And she obviously, she went to find somebody who could give her that. And that fired me up like nothing has ever fired me up before. And I kind of miss it a little bit. I'm like, "Man, I need to, I need to stop feeling like that." And if you're watching right now, we're in Dubai in his apartment. He made it. Bet you're...

[Laughter] Sorry. What advice would you say to some people who, whether they're in a relationship or maybe it's a friend, and they, they're really trying to make this person happy, but they always seem to have this negative, defeatist attitude where they're pessimistic, glasses always half-empty, uh, approach or mindset to life? Do you, do you give up on those kind of people, or do you, do you try and make an effort to kind of show them the light?

Well, it sort of depends on on what the nature of the relationship is. If you've been married 20 years and your partner's depressed, you got to, you know, that person is you, and you work together as a team, and you try to bring the team up. And so you help somebody. I mean, when somebody's down, the other one, you know, takes the load. That's what you do. That's what a partnership is all about. And that's one of the great things about life is being responsible not just for yourself, but for somebody else. That's a beautiful thing. It's a wonderful thing. That's why family life is so unbelievably enriching. And that's your partner as well. And, you know, I talk to people all the time, it's like, "Oh man, I mean, I can't handle it anymore." Well, that's you. That's not just her. Yeah, that's you too. And that's a, and you have to see that as one of the great privileges of being in a relationship.

And when you're not married or something, you might actually be with a chronically negative person. You have to make a decision about whether or not that's a good investment, whether or not that person actually is for you. There's going to be a reason if they're chronically depressed with you, and you're, you've been together for two months or six months or something, that this might, this might be a Clarion call. This is not your partner. Yeah. With your friends, you do the best that you can, and that really depends on the nature of the friendship. So you have to assess the, what, what the, what the relationship is, and what the investment is that you have with the other person, and whether or not that person is truly part of you or not.

Mmm. Well, what would you say to the statement, "Depression isn't real"?

So, depression is real. And there's, there's a bunch of different theories about what that is. But the whole important thing to keep in mind to begin with is that it's not, it's not a binary switch. Any of the things that we talk about with maladies or, you know, emotional health, they're all dials, not switches. We're all depressed. We're all anxious. We all have OCD. We all have ADHD. We all have these things. The question is, how high is it turned up, and how well are you managing it? So, to, if you go to a doctor and the doctor says, "You have depression. If you take this, you will not have depression." That's wrong. You know, all this is is a, a state of nature where with the activation of your, the limbic system of your brain. So, for example, we all have a ventrolateral prefrontal cortex that's being activated by levels of serotonin. As far as neuroscientists are aware, we all have a, you know, a sadness, you know, social pain, which is mediated by a part of the brain called the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex. It's active. It just is. For some people, the amplitude is turned up really, really high, and they don't know how to manage it. They need to know how to manage it. But the idea that some people have depression and some people don't is just wrong. It's just incorrect. So I wouldn't, you know, I, you know, I, I rebel against the idea that depression is not real. I think depression is universal. As a matter of fact, I just think that a lot of people are able to manage it in such a way that it can become fruitful and part of the walk through life. You need negative emotions. You need negative experiences. This is part of life on Earth, man. And you won't learn and grow. You won't be able to protect yourself and survive and thrive if you don't have these things. The question is, for everybody who's listening and watching, how do you manage your negative emotions so they don't manage you? Yeah, that's what it comes down to.

Yeah, I mean, I've got to the point now where if I am feeling that way, then I'll ask myself, "Okay, so why am I feeling this way?" I all I do is ask myself why a couple of times, and it's like, "Okay, there's the answer." But I feel like there is still sometimes you just wake up and you just have one of those days. Yeah. And I think that's more so maybe just relating to it. It could be something you ate or the way you slept. Totally. Like, I think one thing that's, I, I had to say yesterday, for some reason, yesterday I was just, no matter what I could do, I couldn't kind of pull myself out of this rut. And, uh, I think mostly down to the fact that, um, wasn't, I don't think I had a good sleep. So I was just like, "Let's just get on with the day and then just try and get a good night's sleep." And if you can sort out your sleep, especially if you have a good sleep, like if I have done some sleeps which are like eight hours and the deep and the REM sleep has been really high, you literally feel like you've woken up and taken a limitless pill. Yeah. Like you feel like, "Oh my God, you have this natural high." Yeah. That's right. But it's, it's annoying because I'm like, "I want to feel like this every day." Yeah, yeah. It's hard to chase that.

Yeah. So if you understand that your psychology is just biology, you have a lot more power over that, which is really important. So, yeah, for sure. I mean, you get up and, and, and biologically, you're not in your optimal state, you're going to feel it emotionally. If you try to separate your emotions from your physical life, you're making a mistake. If you say, "Okay, I feel crummy. What's the deal?" Now you've practiced. You're practicing. When you say, "Why am I feeling this?" This is an interrogation of your own emotions. This is a technique called metacognition. A way to do that is through Vasanā meditation, which is this insight meditation. You're trying to understand yourself. And that's moving the experience of your emotions from the limbic system of the brain, which is very automatic. It's between two and 40 million years ago. I mean, squirrels have a limbic system. It just creates emotions. Emotions are nothing more than information about what's going on around you, whether it's threats or opportunities. To give your limbic system time to send the experience of these emotions to your prefrontal cortex, the part of your brain behind your forehead, that's where you're experiencing things cognitively.

Well, um, um, um, this executive function of your brain, you're conscious of these things where you can actually manage what's going on. To do that, you have to be aware. And you do that by interrogation, journal your emotions, prayers of petition, insight meditation, just exactly what you're doing. That's super important. And when you wake up, you've had a crummy sleep, you say, "Didn't sleep well." Which, by the way, for me is like all the time. I'm a terrible sleeper, worst sleeper. That's why I have protocols that make me more aware of what's going on and reset my basic biology as much as I possibly can. And that's one of the things I recommend to everybody is through self-interrogation, metacognition, and physical protocols such that your basic biology is not managing you emotionally, you're managing it. Yeah. And you've got that power.

Yeah. And as well, diet and exercise is so important. First thing of the day. I, um, I've gone through periods where I would experiment with the "If It Fits Your Macros," where you don't really take into account the quality of the food that you're consuming. It's just as long as you hit the numbers, the calories, protein, carbs, fats, it shouldn't matter. Like, you can still kind of transform your physique. And you can, yeah, but it's definitely not the healthiest way to go about it. And if you're eating garbage, it makes you feel like garbage. 100% for sure. To the point where you'll be depressed, and then you kind of have cravings for more garbage. It's like you're changing the gut microbiome in your stomach. Mmm. And it's quite, it's a difficult trap to get out of. I think from people that usually have like an unhealthy diet, the first couple of days of making that transition is really difficult. Because they're, they're just so used to eating the foods which they would usually eat, and their body's almost craving it. But when they can get out of that and then just eat clean, or cleaner, you know, that automatically they just start feeling amazing. Yeah. And it's, it's, I've realized how powerful it is now where you could literally put like a big slice of cheesecake in front of me. Of course, I would love to eat that because I love cheesecake.

Is that your thing? I have a sweet tooth. You're a sweet tooth and you like sweets with fat? Yes. See, everybody craves either salt with fat or sweet with fat. See, if you're, if you're the savory crisps kind of french fries sort of guy, or if you're the cheesecake guy. See, obviously I like both. Like, I'm a sucker for a good burger. But I noticed that if I have a burger, I'm satisfied. I don't have cravings for more burger. Like, I'm pretty content. But the dessert and the sugar is a slippery slope because that does not end. Like the sugar is so powerful that you can keep continuing to eat it. You'll have a slice of cheesecake, be like, "I want another slice of cheesecake." So I understand that if I'm going to pick one or the other, I go for the savory because I can control it. Right. The dessert, I can't control it. Like, if I get a taste of it, it's game over. It escalates, escalates.

Yeah. Know that's that's actually evolved. That's an evolved thing where if you would get something sweet, you would want to eat as much of it as possible because that's an incredibly concentrated source of calories. And you want to, you're going to eat that until every banana's gone from that tree because the lean times are coming. Yeah. And so the problem is that that's, you know, every 7-Eleven. Mmm. Is full of, you know, the bananas. But even worse. And so you can escalate all day long and you can just, you know, it can get completely out of control. That's what people do. So your brain chemistry has been evolved to to make you want more and more and more to have addictive tendencies. That's all based on the learning networks that come from dopamine. Yeah. And everybody knows about dopamine today. But dopamine basically says, you think about something that you really like, it gives you this, this little burst of anticipation. Dopamine doesn't give you pleasure. It gives you anticipation of pleasure. And it sets you in search of that thing. It sets you on. And, you know, sets you, you know, to go downstairs at midnight to go to the 7-Eleven because what you want a candy bar or something like that. Like, what's wrong with me? Well, that's your, your brain is working the same way now as it did in the Pleistocene. Is the way that that worked, which is really important to understand. So what you've just demonstrated is a, is a level of self-management that people need to have. This is how my brain works. I know this is my tendency. I'm not going to fall prey to it. Also, after you have fallen prey to it and you're really, really an addict, you actually have to change your brain chemistry. And you do that through rehabilitation. You actually change your habitual behavior such that your dopamine levels are not, you know, spiking all the time because you're thinking of Milky Way bars at 11:00 PM or whatever, whatever your thing is.

Is there a correlation between body fat percentage and happiness? Uh, yeah, actually there is, believe it or not. So, I, I have looked at this and, and it doesn't really favor me or you. Oh, what's your body fat? You're six, six, five. No, no. I, where do you sit? I would say, um, so I'm 95 kg. I'm probably realistically spending the majority of the time between 11, 12% body fat. 11, 12. Offseason or you don't have a season? I'm very consistent there. Probably will be periods where it dips, yeah, but it doesn't stay at that level for too long a period of time because, first of all, this, it's harder to maintain. Yeah. And, um, it doesn't really bring me a huge amount of benefit. You look leaner than than 12. Yeah. You look leaner than 12. There's a lot of, it's to do with the proportion of, uh, where you're stowing that body fat. So if you looked at me front on, I look very lean, but I stow a lot of fat in my back. Oh, my thighs. Okay. Yeah. So you actually, so you have lower abs at 12% body fat, which is very unusual. I'm lucky in that sense because the distribution of body fat is where I want it to be. Yeah, yeah. But some people, like, they just have like completely diced legs, but they really struggle to get the abs out. Yeah, yeah. For sure. And the most people, most men after 30, if they have lower abs, are going to be unhappy. That's very interesting. Yeah, yeah. Because their, their body fat has to be below seven to see lower abs. For me to see lower abs, I have to be at six. Yeah. It's got the veins coming out as well. That's like, of the source of happiness is ab-ins. I mean, think how twisted that is, you know, as a, you know, a way of trying to measure your happinesses in terms of your vascularity. Once upon a time, I thought the level of my success was related to how lean I was. So the leaner I was, the more successful I would be. I mean, it's just like that, this crazy orthorexia. And it's just, but I mean, there's a reason, by the way, that people who go on on serious diets, if you, if you try to lose a lot of weight, there's a 30% chance you're going to wind up with an eating disorder. Yeah. That's high. And eating disorders are no joke. They'll screw up your life. They'll screw up your health. And that, what the reason is, because they're making progress. And the progress is making them happy. And when they hit their goal, when you hit your weight goal, your reward is never getting to eat what you like ever again for the rest of your life. Which is pretty crummy. And so they keep going, and they keep going, saying it's like, "Sooner or later, I'm going to feel really happy. Sooner or later, I'm going to feel really happy." And they get too thin, and they get gaunt, and they get that kind of empty look. They have the death face. Yeah. And it's impossible to live with them because you're, you're going to hate your life. You're going to hate everybody. You're going to want to beat somebody up. You get below 6% body fat, like, "I want the whole world to die." Yeah. It's terrible. You know, anybody's experimenting, you think you're superior to everyone else because you're making all these, like, the choices are like this, the sensible choices. And you know, they're just like gluttons and pigs eating all this junk. You like inferior people. Yeah. And it's, it's, it's really terrible because you're not supposed to be this way. You're, you're, you're so you're evolved to not be that low in body fat. Being that low in body fat says you're in trouble. Emergency. Like, this is DEFCON 5. Time to, time to, you know, get some food in you. Eat anything, even non-food items. And so you're, if, if you get to the point where you're, while you're eating breakfast, you're already thinking about lunch, right? Which happens when you get to really low body fat. You're thinking about food all the time. That's because you're evolved to do that. That's the whole point. So all by way of saying, yeah, there is a correlation between, you know, body fat and happiness. Now, what you find is that the happiest men are on average 25 pounds overweight. Now, this is not because a certain amount of body fat makes you happy inherently. That's not what the studies show. It's because they live relaxed lives. Yeah. They're living a relaxed life. They're generally married. They generally have families. They're not obese. They're not obese. They've got a gentlemanly punch, which is, by the way, not healthy because subcutaneous abdominal fat is highly correlated with a whole lot of metabolic problems, as you know, really well. I mean, we, we've, you know, we've learned this over the past 25 years that having a gut is a bad thing to have. You know, it's not, it's not good for you. I mean, not being diced is not necessarily good for you either. But, but that's not, but for happiness, that's what's correlated with a relaxed lifestyle. Yeah. That leaves people to be the happiest. Now, I'm not going to do it. I'm not going to do it. I'm not going to get 25 pounds overweight. I'm going to be looking out for my, going to keep my diet and exercise on point because I don't want that. My wife wouldn't care. She wouldn't care at all. Yeah, because they don't care when they love you. Yeah. They, and you're like, "This is actually something that guys find when they get really in good shape for the first time." They think somehow, in their twisted men minds, that women start queuing up. And the only people who compliment you are other guys. It's very true. That's one thing. I, when I got to the real extremes of, uh, muscle mass and low body fat percentage, it just put a lot of women off. They were like, "What's wrong with them? It's too much. He's got weird priorities." Yeah. You would have maybe like the gym girls who were obsessed with that kind of thing. They liked it because they're weird too. Yeah. Yes, yes. So, um, yeah, I found my sort of happy medium where I can look lean, not completely diced, but look lean, and I have flexibility. Yeah. Like, I know, uh, it's just mainly a case of just not overeating. Yeah. If you just don't overeat, then it reduces your chances of getting fat. And then you don't have to restrict yourself to get the body fat down again. Yeah. Keep, I mean, it's just a b, some basic, basic, basic, basic rules. I mean, this is the stuff that you're teaching people. It's, keep your calories at a normal level by not eating when you're not hungry, not eating late at night, you know, not doing these dumb things that will escalate you into high calorie loads. Eating enough protein, one pound per body weight. If you, if you like the American, the weird weights and measures that we have in America, right? 1.6, um, grams per kilogram or something like that. Yeah, yeah. That's and, uh, recommended. And then, and just making sure that you understand what your escalation foods are, you know, the things that are actually going to spike your dopamine. They're going to keep, keep your brain chemistry in the right place. And then don't, you don't need to count your calories if you do these, these types of things. You're going to be in. And then, by the way, in the holidays, you're going to gain three or four pounds. And then after the holidays, two weeks, you eat a little bit less, and it goes away. Yeah. And life is okay.

What have you noticed over the past couple years with the the rise of social media and people's level of happiness? I mean, we can talk about obviously in the fitness space, you know, a lot of guys, I don't know if it's worse for guys or for women, but you know, if you're constantly scrolling down, you're seeing all these guys who are in unbelievable shape. Like, it's probably not going to make you feel great. You know, particularly the quote, "comparison is the thief of joy." If you're constantly comparing yourself to all these diced people on social media, you're probably not going to feel great about yourself. Same thing for, for, for women, especially with all these apps now. I mean, the amount of filters that women are using to make themselves look as attractive as possible is just giving this kind of false reality of what looking like a woman should be like. So what have you, what have you noticed with these changes over time and what could people do to kind of protect themselves?

It's, it's bad, is the bottom line. And you shouldn't be spending time on social media comparing yourself to somebody else and following people that you, you know, you don't know, but you wish you were more like them. Should be using social media for learning. That's what it should be for. You know, follow people who are teaching you something that's affirming and useful in your life. Follow more philosophers and follow fewer influencers. Yeah. That's what it comes down to. Keep following me. Well, you're teaching them something. You're an educator. You're a public educator. Is your point? Yeah. You know, you're not influencing people just because it's like, "Hey, everybody, look at my abs." It's like, "Here's so you can diet and exercise so you can be a healthier, happier, better version of yourself." And so if it's public education, it's worthwhile. That's the whole point. And they'll aspire. Given the fact that it would be very off-brand if it'd be very off-brand if I, for example, somebody saw me in an airport being a jerk. Be extremely off-brand if I were, or somebody saw me in the street corner weeping or something that would, you know, you know, like, "Wasn't that Brooks, the guy on the internet on happiness?" I was like, "No, it wasn't me. It was Stanley Tucci. There's a guy who looks like me." So that's important. And you actually have to, you know, uphold the standards that you're actually asking other people to try to attain for their good. That's the whole point. As long as you have love for them and they're good in mind, then it's completely legitimate. If it's, "Look at me because I'm better than you," then it's a problem. And making sure that we're shying away from people that are all in the comparison business. They're miserable. Yeah. They're miserable. I mean, I, you know, I know, you know, a million fitness influencers. I know thousands of them. And a lot of them are just miserable individuals. They're hungry all the time. They're angry all the time. You know, they're, they're going from photo shoot to photo shoot. And you're seeing the best version of themselves, but they can't even live up. They're comparing themselves to the very pinnacle version of themselves and miserable about it. That's the bottom line. It's a huge problem. And if you're comparing yourself to a person who's actually secretly miserable but looking like they're having fun in Bali, well, that's a heck of a way to live. That's not good. Obviously, that's an unhealthy lifestyle. So stop comparing yourself to people for the sake of comparison. Learn, not compare. That's critical. Social media does three really dangerous things to people. It leads to social comparison, invidious social comparison. It leads to loneliness because people are having more fun than you with more interesting people than you. You know, and it leads to hatred because it fires you up in the US versus them tribal mentality. And those are those three things are really bad. Social media should be used really for two things: communication and learning. That's when it's really useful. It's communication and learning. So, you know, the platforms that make it possible for you to reach actual human friends of yours in creative ways. Good. Mmm. Good. Don't substitute for the in-person. Ever complement the in-person relationships. And learn as much as you can. That's when YouTube is a miracle. Yeah. I mean, I have a son who's a sniper in the Marine Corps, just got out. And he's not a reader. I don't think he owns a book. But he knows everything because he watches guys like you. And he's diced to his socks and knows a lot. He can, you know, rewire his house and do all this stuff. Why? Because he's been completely educated while on deployment from YouTube, which is a wonderful learning tool. If you're scrolling, comparing yourself to other people, watching a ton of political or activist content, looking at people having a way more fun time than you, you're just, you're, you're wasting your life. And social media is making you worse off.

What do you think of, uh, I think it's in Australia, they've banned social media for people under the age of 16?

That's a good idea. I recommend that. I think it's a good idea. So John Haidt at New York University wrote "The Anxious Generation," that brand new book about the deleterious, um, um, impacts of social media on mental health, especially for adolescents and young adults. And he strongly recommends it. The data supports his ideas. Mmm. Yeah. For sure. That's a good idea. You got to live life in real life.

You know, I mean, I've experienced it myself. Like, I think we all get caught up in the trap of just, I will go on social media to do something, and then I get distracted, and then I'm doom scrolling for 15, 20 minutes, and then I just feel like, uh, well, what have you done for that 15 or 20 minutes? And by the way, for some people, it's three or four hours. Is you've missed going into your default mode network, which is productive cycles where you use your brain to interrogate questions of meaning. And you'd come out of that going, "Huh, I had this idea. I had this. I made this connection. Something feels more right." As opposed to, "Why do I feel empty? What's that weird hollowness that I feel?" That was the lack of default mode network in your life that you just spent because you're looking at, you know, it's like, it's funny because, you know, I have Instagram. I don't have like a huge Instagram following, quarter million people, something like that. But when I look at it, it's like it feeds me things that apparently I linger on, right? For some reason, I get videos of raccoons doing things because they got those little fingers that kind of, it's like, like eating things. And, you know, people who keep raccoons as, apparently I'm all about raccoons. I had no idea, right? You could be sent one video and then you would engage with it, maybe you like it, and then all of a sudden, unfortunately, it's not young girls, you know, it's raccoons. That's weirder. Anyway. So, but the whole point is, I'll look at that, I go, "Huh, crazy." And this, and the reason is because it's, it's, it's slot machine brain timing. Hmmm. Yeah. Next thing you know, it's four o'clock in the morning on the casino floor. That's the way it's supposed to work. That's the way the algorithms are set up to make your brain work that way. And that machine will keep you out of brain activity that you actually need to find the meaning of your life. Mmm.

What have you got, plan for next year? What's coming up?

It's going to be a big year. So I've got great classes. I've got a class starting in "The Science of Happiness" at the Harvard Business School in January, which is phenomenal. They've got 180 registered. I think there's 400 on the waiting list, which is great. If this year's like last year, there might be an illegal Zoom link. They think I don't know about. Harvard's a great place. My students are wonderful. Um, so that's coming up. Uh, I have, we're working on a TV project. We'll see where that goes. I'm talking to, we're probably going to launch a new podcast in March on "The Art and Science of Happiness." Nice. Which will be the only podcast of its type. And I can't wait for that. Um, really. I imagine you'll have a lot of connections where you can just pull them up and say, "Hey, let's do a podcast." Yeah. The way it's going to work, it's going to be more, it's going to start off with, you know, people, an ordinary person with an ordinary problem. And then I'm going to talk about the science. I'm going to lecture on the science of it that people can actually use. And then I'm going to have call-ins. I'm going to do it like an old-school show. Yeah. That's, that's, that's the way that that's going to look. Um, we had a few projects with, you know, a few pretty interesting companies coming up. And I'm writing a new book on "The Meaning of Life and How to Find It." That'll launch in the beginning of '26. So '25 is a big media year, and '26 is going to be a big book year. And in the meantime, I'm on the road about 48 weeks a year, spreading the gospel about love and happiness and how to lift each other up and come together as a society as best we can.

You're doing a good job. I could imagine you probably feel as though you've got a whole lot of purpose doing what you're doing. That's great. Business is good for love and happiness. Yeah. And for people who, I mean, you've, you've wrote a number of books. Where should they start? Like, what's the first one they should get stuck into?

The latest book that I wrote, I co-authored it with Oprah Winfrey, and it's called "Build the Life You Want." Um, which is, we, it was published in 2023. It's a, it's a basic first, uh, first course in the science of happiness, written in a way that non-scientists can read it. But you can dig, you can go down the rabbit hole as far as you want. This book that we're looking at here was in 2022. This is "How to Get Happier as the Years Go By in Your Life." A lot of people think, "Ah, you know, you, I was able to do things that I can't do athletically, even intellectually." The truth is that you should get happier as you get older, but you have to know the technique for doing so. That's what that book is about. So any, either the last two books, either "Build a Life You Want" or "From Strength to Strength" (the blue book and the green book), look at that way on Amazon. Either way is a good place to start. My website, ArthurBrooks.com, is one-stop shopping. I have a column every week in The Atlantic on the science of happiness on a different topic every single week, based on questions that people actually ask me. I get, you know, dozens of emails, you know, every day from people asking really ordinary questions that have could have extraordinary impacts in their life. And that's an opportunity to talk about that too. And there's a ton of content on YouTube. Thank God for YouTube, right? Yeah. Yeah. Oh, yeah. I don't know what we're doing without YouTube. It's changed our lives. Yeah. Amazing. Yeah. Arthur Brooks, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you very much for your time. Thank you.