The Megyn Kelly Show - The Keys to Happiness, Embracing Weakness, and the Importance of Friendship, with Arthur Brooks

00:00:00.440 Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, your home for open, honest, and provocative conversations.

00:00:11.720 Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show.

00:00:15.920 Are you happy? According to recent polls, you're not. You aren't. And we're going to fix it.

00:00:22.640 Today could be politics, our culture, the pandemic, or something else.

00:00:27.660 But happiness is feeling like it's in short supply these days, and you are not the only one who may be experiencing that reality.

00:00:35.740 My guest today, however, would like us to rethink what it means to be happy and what it means to feel satisfied and successful.

00:00:43.940 He is an expert on the subject of happiness and teaches at Harvard on this very thing in a class that you cannot get into.

00:00:51.380 No one can get into it. They line up to get those 180 seats, and it's very tough to get in for a good reason.

00:00:58.560 But you're going to get them for free today. You don't have to sign up or get into Harvard.

00:01:01.740 You're going to talk to Arthur Brooks through me right now.

00:01:04.700 He's a best-selling author. He's a columnist for The Atlantic.

00:01:07.620 He used to run conservative think tank AEI, and now he, as I said, is a professor at Harvard.

00:01:13.300 More importantly, he used to be a professor at Syracuse, which is the Harvard of upstate New York.

00:01:17.080 His new book is called From Strength to Strength, Finding Success, Happiness, and Deep Purpose in the Second Half of Life.

00:01:27.580 He's here with me now. Welcome, Arthur. So great to have you.

00:01:30.800 Thank you, Megan. Wonderful to be with you. Thank you for your interest and happiness.

00:01:34.400 Yes, very much so. And I mean, like you, I eventually concluded it probably wouldn't mean living in Syracuse where they only get 100 days of sun a year.

00:01:43.800 Just 100. The people are great. The weather, not so much.

00:01:48.620 Yeah, well, they give away houses for free. There's that, right?

00:01:51.020 Oh. So, yeah, that could make you happy.

00:01:54.960 Yeah, absolutely.

00:01:56.440 But no, it's true. And interesting, there's this whole, believe it or not, there's research on happiness and sunshine.

00:02:01.360 And only a small percentage of the people will really be bummed out by not having enough sunshine.

00:02:06.520 And this is one of the mistakes people make by moving to California.

00:02:09.160 You know, I'm going to be happy with the sun. Well, that'll wear off after six months and the taxes are forever.

00:02:15.200 Is that right? I thought like the Pacific Northwest, there was a reason that coffee was invented there because people needed to pick me up because of the dreary weather.

00:02:21.780 Is that not true?

00:02:23.300 It's like it's there's a lot of hypotheses about that.

00:02:25.700 I actually grew up in Seattle walking distance from the first Starbucks.

00:02:29.480 So I've been hopelessly addicted to caffeine since I was in eighth grade.

00:02:33.180 So so I'm I'm I'm not an impartial witness on that one.

00:02:36.580 OK, people wherever you live are happy and unhappy here in the United States and probably in a lot of places, increasingly unhappy in today's day and age.

00:02:44.900 It's been a rough couple of years for the world and certainly here in America.

00:02:49.800 So let's just start with a little bit of your background because you didn't wake up an expert on happiness.

00:02:54.940 As I said, you were I remember when you were at AEI from which we got the unbelievable Mark Thiessen and I made him a star night after night on the Kelly file.

00:03:03.980 You did. You did. I mean, people recognize him in the airport, but they don't come up to him and say, I love you.

00:03:09.060 They come up to him and say, I love Megyn Kelly.

00:03:11.100 He was so great because he used to come on. He was so nervous with a little clipboard and he would read off his clipboard.

00:03:17.820 And, you know, Roger Ailes, who had very little patience for people developing on TV who weren't like blondes with long legs, would say, what are we putting him on TV for?

00:03:26.140 And I would say, be patient. He's going to be amazing. He's brilliant.

00:03:29.240 And I was right. 100 percent right.

00:03:32.700 And he's not a sex symbol. That's for sure.

00:03:35.040 You know, but for some one never knows.

00:03:37.880 I hate to disparage, Mark, you know, there's there's beauty and nerdiness.

00:03:42.800 Yeah, well, we're hoping because you got me for two hours today.

00:03:45.480 So let's look for the happiness and beauty and nerdiness, shall we?

00:03:49.080 It's funny because I I've I've seen you in interviews.

00:03:52.020 I've listened to you.

00:03:53.440 You write about yourself in this book like you are 88.

00:03:57.780 You're I think you're 57.

00:03:59.360 I realize you're sort of looking at and it's not just about back half of the life.

00:04:03.920 It's you know, it's about happiness in general as well.

00:04:06.020 And but it's also about planning for happiness in the back half.

00:04:09.120 And I guess, you know, life expectancy not generally being 114.

00:04:13.940 You know, I think it's fair to say you're in the back half.

00:04:16.120 I'm 51. So I think it's probably fair to say I'm in the back half.

00:04:19.040 But I'm at the very beginning of the back half.

00:04:21.160 God willing. Yeah.

00:04:22.300 But I mean, it's interesting to hear yourself talk about yourself like you're so much older than you are about decline beginning and you wrestling with it.

00:04:30.200 So have you really been feeling that?

00:04:31.920 Well, the interesting thing about it is that it's not that I feel old.

00:04:35.580 On the contrary, I'm physically in better shape than I was when I was in my mid 30s.

00:04:39.220 I feel physically better than I really that I ever have in my life.

00:04:42.820 And the truth is, according to the, you know, the statistical tables from the life insurance organizations, the companies that sell me life insurance, I have equal odds of living to 95.

00:04:53.060 So what that says is basically I've got almost probably or at least 50, 50, I've got at least 40 years left.

00:04:59.140 But here's the interesting thing about it is I'm doing research on on happiness in the second half of life.

00:05:04.040 You find that you get basically two success curves.

00:05:07.720 And a lot of people, they have this early curve in their 20s and 30s where they get really good at their jobs and very, very skillful.

00:05:13.820 But those skills, they tend to decline in your late 30s and 40s and you get another success curve in your 50s and 60s, which is a different set of skills.

00:05:22.920 The problem is that a lot of people sense that decline.

00:05:25.720 The way that they sense is they get less interested in their job.

00:05:28.480 They get kind of burnt out a little bit.

00:05:30.880 And it's very frustrating for them.

00:05:32.540 They start to feel old even when they're not because they don't actually know that there's this big bonanza of happiness and success that if they choose to look for it and grab it, it's right there for them.

00:05:43.820 You just have to sit down and be conscious about coming up with a plan for nurturing this second curve, which you write about in the book.

00:05:50.760 I love that.

00:05:51.540 So the second half and the second whatever, 50, 40 years can be even better than the first in terms of success and satisfaction and indeed happiness.

00:05:58.720 But before we get to that, let's start with the definition, right?

00:06:02.600 Like what is happiness?

00:06:04.780 Yeah.

00:06:05.120 A lot of people, and this is the first question that I ask for my Harvard Business School MBA students, the first question I ask them on the first day of class is what is happiness?

00:06:12.840 And one by one, they talk about feelings.

00:06:15.780 And this is a very common thing, especially in modern America or modern life.

00:06:19.260 What's happiness?

00:06:19.840 It's feelings.

00:06:20.260 But that's actually obviously wrong.

00:06:22.540 I mean, if I said, hey, Megan, what's Thanksgiving dinner?

00:06:24.940 You wouldn't talk about the smell of the dinner.

00:06:27.720 That's one part of it.

00:06:29.020 That's a secondary condition of it.

00:06:31.940 You know, the turkey is not the smell of the turkey.

00:06:34.740 And the happiness is not the feelings from the happiness.

00:06:37.840 Happiness is something a lot more tangible than that.

00:06:39.940 Now, people have been writing about it philosophically for millennia, of course, but only in the last 30 years have we been able to kind of nail down what the parts of happiness are.

00:06:48.580 And so basically, here's the definition.

00:06:50.880 Happiness has, just as food has macronutrients, protein, carbohydrates, and fat that you need in balance and abundance to get proper nutrition, there are three parts of happiness.

00:07:02.320 If you're going to feel happy, you need three things.

00:07:04.540 You need enjoyment in your life, you need satisfaction in what you're doing, and you need purpose in your life.

00:07:11.400 And if you don't have all three of these things, you're simply not going to be happy.

00:07:14.420 Those are the happiness macronutrients.

00:07:16.360 And so those are the three big areas that we study in my field as social scientists and neuroscientists.

00:07:21.460 We're looking at what brings enjoyment, what can actually give you lasting satisfaction, and what is the root of meaning and purpose in life?

00:07:28.600 Those are the big questions.

00:07:29.600 And the answer overall, I'll start with sort of, we won't bury the lead in reading your book, is love.

00:07:37.040 I mean, that's number one, relationships and love, having love in your life.

00:07:42.120 Absolutely.

00:07:42.960 As a matter of fact, it's interesting, you know, when in the New Testament, Jesus is asked by a Pharisee, it's like, sum up the Ten Commandments.

00:07:50.920 It's a hard thing to remember.

00:07:52.540 Ten is a lot to remember, right?

00:07:53.780 And so he says, love the Lord your God with all your soul and all your might and all your heart and all your strength, and love your neighbor as yourself.

00:07:59.600 Love and love.

00:08:00.720 And then later, 300 years later, St. Augustine was asked, you know, the great saint, he was asked, you know, even those two, boil it down.

00:08:08.500 And he said, I don't know, love and do what you will.

00:08:12.360 Now, that's the secret to a good life.

00:08:14.340 You can only remember, there's a lot of details.

00:08:16.080 Like, I write books that say, like in this book, Strength to Strength, it gives you the seven habits that the happiest people have who are old.

00:08:23.820 When people get, the people who get happier as they get older do these seven things.

00:08:28.240 That's in the book, okay.

00:08:29.400 But if you can only remember one, it's love.

00:08:31.440 If you can only remember to do one thing, it's give more love so that you will get more love.

00:08:36.820 Okay.

00:08:37.300 Now, let's break down those three components of happiness, though.

00:08:39.940 Enjoyment.

00:08:40.380 I feel like we get that, right?

00:08:41.680 Like, what do you enjoy doing?

00:08:43.300 It could be watching TV.

00:08:44.320 It could be listening to a podcast.

00:08:45.600 It could be skydiving.

00:08:47.360 It could be walking, right?

00:08:49.380 Anything.

00:08:49.920 The things that you feel pleasure while doing, right?

00:08:52.900 Does that sum up number one?

00:08:53.820 Except that it's more, it's sort of, sort of.

00:08:55.560 It's actually a little bit more complicated than that.

00:08:57.700 Pleasure and enjoyment are not the same thing.

00:09:00.700 Pleasure is kind of an animal thing.

00:09:02.560 It's an actual reaction to outside stimuli.

00:09:06.120 So a little bit of grain alcohol gives you pleasure.

00:09:08.920 Vegetating on the couch in front of some mindless show on Netflix can give you pleasure.

00:09:13.780 But if you want enjoyment, it requires some elevation.

00:09:15.800 The reason that your show can bring enjoyment, whereas vegetating on the couch in front of

00:09:21.620 something mindless brings pleasure, but not enjoyment, is because people have to think

00:09:25.120 when they're listening to your show.

00:09:26.620 And when you add your education, your interest, your curiosity to the source of pleasure, then

00:09:32.840 it becomes enjoyment because it actually makes it permanent.

00:09:36.360 Here's the deal.

00:09:37.160 With pleasure, you're stimulating a part of the brain called the limbic system.

00:09:40.320 It's part of this, like, tissue in the back of your brain.

00:09:42.460 Very automatic.

00:09:43.100 Every animal has it, or every sentient animal has it.

00:09:46.700 But we have something in addition called the prefrontal cortex, the big meaty lobes of

00:09:50.660 the brain.

00:09:51.460 And when you have enjoyment, it means you're conscious of the pleasure and you're cultivating

00:09:55.760 the pleasure with your human brain.

00:09:58.380 And that makes it into a source of happiness.

00:10:00.280 It requires work.

00:10:02.240 Well, that's interesting.

00:10:02.720 So if trying to cheer somebody up who has fallen into a funk, it's not as easy as, like, get

00:10:08.400 off up off the couch and let's go, like, see a movie together.

00:10:12.540 You might think about at least layering in something that will cross over into more enjoyment and

00:10:19.160 not so much just pure pleasure for the person, something that gets their mind stimulated and

00:10:23.080 gets them a little bit more actively involved.

00:10:26.100 Absolutely.

00:10:26.760 If you're finding that you're kind of bored with your life and you're just kind of hanging

00:10:30.180 around and you're doing these easy things that always brought you pleasure, learn more.

00:10:34.980 One of the things that the happiest people have when they get older is they have a continuously

00:10:39.700 kind of active mind.

00:10:41.360 They read a lot.

00:10:42.880 They like to watch documentary films.

00:10:45.580 They listen to things that kind of challenge them.

00:10:47.660 They look for friends who are different than they are.

00:10:50.060 Instead of getting drunk, they learn about fine wine because that actually requires some

00:10:54.060 elevation.

00:10:54.460 Instead of, you know, listening to something mindless on the radio, they listen to your show because

00:10:59.200 you actually talk about elevated topics.

00:11:01.460 That's what happy older people have in common is enjoyment, not just pleasure.

00:11:05.320 Okay.

00:11:05.520 So the, and then the second component is satisfaction.

00:11:09.000 What does that mean?

00:11:09.900 Expand on that.

00:11:11.160 Yeah.

00:11:11.820 Satisfaction is the joy you get for meeting a goal, for a job well done, for earning your

00:11:17.180 success.

00:11:17.640 You know, we all have goals.

00:11:18.860 We all have things that we want.

00:11:20.360 You know, for some people, they're crazy goals.

00:11:21.820 Like I hope I hit the lottery.

00:11:23.000 But for most of us, it's a reward in return for our hard effort, for our, you know, hard

00:11:29.220 work that's, that pays off.

00:11:30.840 The problem is that you can't keep satisfaction.

00:11:34.320 Mick Jagger and Rolling Stones, his most famous song, which by the way, you know, I'm no spring

00:11:38.720 chicken.

00:11:39.000 And that song came out when I was one year old and he's still singing it.

00:11:43.120 You know, it's like, he's still croaking it out.

00:11:45.060 I can't get no satisfactions.

00:11:47.200 Unbelievable.

00:11:47.500 And, uh, but, and it's, it's sort of true, except that actually it's not quite accurate.

00:11:52.200 You can get satisfaction.

00:11:53.380 The problem is you can't keep no satisfaction because it's, as we say, it's evanescent.

00:11:58.040 It's, it's just dissolves that it kind of disappears really quickly.

00:12:01.320 And there's a whole brain science literature that explains this.

00:12:04.540 Your brain doesn't want you to be permanently satisfied because you'd stop striving.

00:12:09.080 Your brain actually gets this satisfaction, this burst of joy and, and, and, and, in response

00:12:15.180 to, or in return for a goal that you've satisfied, but then you can't keep the satisfaction because

00:12:19.960 you have to be ready for the next set of circumstances.

00:12:22.060 And so people who don't understand that they get on this treadmill of satisfaction of, of

00:12:27.460 getting a little, what we call dopamine is a little neuro chemical in your brain that

00:12:31.640 gives you this feeling of elation to get the hit and get the hit and get the hit.

00:12:35.800 We become kind of like monkeys on cocaine for success after success, after success.

00:12:40.380 And we always kind of wonder why, oh, this is going to be great when I finally get the

00:12:44.840 car and you get the car in a month later, like, it's just a car.

00:12:47.760 Well, that's because satisfaction, you can get it, but you can't keep it.

00:12:51.520 So you need better techniques for actually doing things that bring you lasting satisfaction,

00:12:56.460 which is once again, one of the things I write about in the book, what do happy old

00:13:00.020 people have?

00:13:00.900 They look for their satisfaction in the places that are permanent, as opposed to the things

00:13:05.440 that are temporary.

00:13:06.140 This is taking me back to when I used to practice law and I practiced for about 10 years and

00:13:13.420 really burnt out.

00:13:14.880 And I was about to make partner at Jones Day, which is a great firm, loved it.

00:13:19.120 It was the brass ring, loved my colleagues, knew I couldn't do it.

00:13:22.580 Like I knew I couldn't do it for one more day because I was completely burnt out.

00:13:25.440 But somebody asked me, you know, what is it you don't like about it?

00:13:27.800 In addition to just being, and I know you cover this at length and have prior to writing

00:13:31.560 the book, a workaholic in that job, because it was required of me.

00:13:34.820 Um, the highs of winning were nowhere near the lows of losing.

00:13:41.800 Like the, the joy you'd feel about winning a big case or a big motion didn't come close

00:13:46.140 to the nonstop pain of, of losing a case or screwing something up.

00:13:52.340 It just there, it, it was so totally unfulfilling in that way too.

00:13:56.400 And I, in the end, I just knew it had to go.

00:13:59.020 Yeah.

00:13:59.500 You know, this is an interesting thing.

00:14:00.780 There's a whole phenomenon in psychology.

00:14:03.180 It's called the hedonic treadmill.

00:14:04.900 And it's just a fancy name for a really easy idea.

00:14:07.760 The whole thing is that you're looking for satisfaction, but you're running on a treadmill

00:14:10.400 and the treadmill is running as fast as you are in reverse.

00:14:13.640 So you always think you're going to get ahead, but you don't.

00:14:16.180 And as soon as you get an inch ahead, you come right back.

00:14:19.320 And that's that whole thing of resetting in your brain, the whole thing.

00:14:22.560 Well, the problem is that the more you do that, the more some evil guy in the corner

00:14:26.920 of the gym is turning up the speed on that treadmill.

00:14:29.860 So you've got to run faster and faster to stay in place.

00:14:32.200 And then what happens is what happened to you at the law firm, which is that you stop running

00:14:36.180 out of ambition, think you're going to get ahead.

00:14:38.020 You start running out of fear about falling behind or, or God forbid face planting on the

00:14:42.800 back of the treadmill, which is, you know, what happens if you suddenly stop on a treadmill

00:14:46.120 and that's a really bad situation to be in.

00:14:48.880 You learned it really good and early, and that's fantastic.

00:14:51.320 I mean, 110 hours as a law associate or whatever you had to work a week that will burn you out

00:14:55.980 like crazy.

00:14:56.900 But a lot of people don't quite figure it out until it's a little bit later than it should

00:15:01.900 be in their lives.

00:15:03.080 I mean, you actually found your passion explaining ideas, helping people, lifting people up.

00:15:08.820 Not everybody finds that so early.

00:15:10.920 Well, and that's, that's, that leads us to the third, I don't know, contingent quotient part

00:15:16.420 of happiness, which is purpose.

00:15:17.680 It's not enough to have enjoyment, have great relationships, have things that are meaningful

00:15:22.640 to you that stimulate the mind and to be satisfied with what you're doing and your approach and

00:15:27.260 the people you've surrounded yourself with and all of that.

00:15:29.120 If there's no sense of meaning, sense of purpose that comes back to haunt you.

00:15:34.920 Absolutely.

00:15:35.640 Purpose is the purpose or meaning is really the most metaphysical of these macronutrients

00:15:41.240 and happiness.

00:15:42.000 And, and for many people, it's the hardest to attain.

00:15:44.020 The reason is because this has a real paradox, a kind of a contradiction inside it.

00:15:51.100 Purpose and meaning, if I ask anybody who's listening to us or you or me, you know, when

00:15:54.820 did you really figure out what you were made of?

00:15:56.760 What made you resilient?

00:15:58.080 What gave you the most growth?

00:15:59.180 You wouldn't be like, I don't know, that week at Disney World.

00:16:03.340 No, no, no, no, no.

00:16:04.140 You talk about something really hard that happened to you.

00:16:05.780 Somebody who you love who died, a scare, a professional setback, a heartbreak, you know,

00:16:11.380 somebody you were in love with who broke up with you.

00:16:13.140 This is what people talk about, what my students talk about, what we all talk about.

00:16:16.920 Now, we don't want those things, but here's the thing.

00:16:19.800 When it comes to pain and suffering, we need them.

00:16:22.340 We need sacrifice.

00:16:23.560 We need challenge because we simply won't have meaning in our lives unless we're able to

00:16:29.340 actually see what we're made of, to live through the trying times, to have the full set

00:16:33.420 of experiences, good and bad in our lives.

00:16:36.000 The biggest mistake that I see that young people make today, that people, my students

00:16:39.620 make today, people in their 20s, is that they've been told, it's kind of like the opposite of

00:16:43.580 the 60s.

00:16:44.500 When I was a little kid, you know, I was really little.

00:16:48.020 I mean, I'm not, I'm way past, I'm way younger than the hippie generation, but the hippies used

00:16:52.020 to say, I remember because my dad was derisive and he didn't like this at all.

00:16:55.280 If it feels good, do it.

00:16:57.720 Today, the anthem is not that.

00:17:00.540 It's more like, if it feels bad, get rid of it, fight it.

00:17:05.080 You got to live in a constant state of good feelings.

00:17:08.180 It's this psychological hedonism, you know, run from one good feeling to another, run,

00:17:13.220 run, and try to avoid at all costs feeling bad.

00:17:17.160 Well, here's the paradox of that, Megan.

00:17:19.000 If you try to never feel bad, you're not going to actually find meaning and purpose in

00:17:23.620 your life, and therefore, you're not going to get that source of happiness.

00:17:27.380 Happiness requires meaning.

00:17:28.460 Meaning requires suffering.

00:17:30.640 Suffering brings unhappiness.

00:17:32.820 So if you dedicate your life to never being unhappy, you will paradoxically actually avoid

00:17:37.380 happiness.

00:17:38.580 This is so interesting.

00:17:40.140 This is helpful for me as a mother, because of course, my kids are still young and I look

00:17:43.680 at them thinking, maybe I will be the one who gets them through life without any heartache.

00:17:49.560 Maybe somehow, and you know, you know, it's a joke, but of course, when it actually starts

00:17:55.200 coming in to your child in particular, it hurts more than it hurts when it happens to

00:17:59.440 you.

00:18:00.000 But you're kind of making the case that, and I know this inherently, you should welcome

00:18:04.720 it.

00:18:05.060 Like you should, every time a challenge comes their way, even if it's painful, you should

00:18:09.920 welcome it.

00:18:11.140 Yeah, for sure.

00:18:11.820 And as they get older, it's, you know, my kids are a little bit older than yours.

00:18:14.340 My kids are 23, 21, and 18.

00:18:16.780 And they've got adult problems.

00:18:18.580 My oldest son, he's engaged.

00:18:20.360 My middle son, he's a forward deployed combat Marine.

00:18:23.680 Wow.

00:18:23.940 And my little girl is a freshman in college in Spain.

00:18:27.300 She made a run for the border after COVID.

00:18:29.900 And, and she's living in a, I mean, it's not a completely foreign country.

00:18:33.020 Her mother is Spanish.

00:18:34.180 I mean, my wife is Spanish.

00:18:35.680 She speaks full of Spanish, but, but it's still, it's, it's, you know, she's 5,000 miles

00:18:40.400 away from her parents.

00:18:41.800 And, and so my kids are in these situations and I want to, I want to talk to them every

00:18:46.300 day.

00:18:46.580 I want to counsel them on every situation.

00:18:48.220 I want to take away that the sacrifice and the suffering that they're getting.

00:18:52.020 And in the case of my middle son, I mean, he's a Marine.

00:18:54.820 You don't know.

00:18:55.780 I mean, this is suffering at a different level than most of us are.

00:18:58.980 He's, he, he would die for America and, and, and you're afraid, but you can't take those

00:19:05.060 things away because they deserve to be fully alive.

00:19:07.720 Your children deserve to actually be alive and to get to this point in their life when

00:19:12.580 we're gone, where, where they can say, I've had a full range of experiences.

00:19:16.500 And the reason that my life has meaning is because my parents didn't protect me from every

00:19:21.860 challenge, every conflict, every hardship, every, every heartbreak.

00:19:26.080 This is one of the reasons that, that people in their twenties are a third less likely than

00:19:30.460 when you and I were in our twenties to fall in love.

00:19:32.900 They're a third less likely to be married, a third less likely to be living together.

00:19:36.440 They're a third less likely to do the things that people do with romantic love.

00:19:40.500 And part of the reason is because they have more fear, fear of rejection.

00:19:44.140 And one of the reasons they have fear of rejection is they've been protected from, from hardship

00:19:48.480 by their parents.

00:19:50.980 But can I ask you, so I've, I have understood that great challenges in my own life or those

00:19:55.160 of the people I love will lead to strength and resilience and some wisdom if, if handled

00:20:00.980 well, I mean, I I've known that, but I never, until I read your words concluded, it will

00:20:06.720 make you happier, right?

00:20:08.140 Like it will give meaning to your life.

00:20:10.540 So can you just sort of split that hair for me?

00:20:13.320 Like, how do we go?

00:20:14.120 I get being stronger and all that, but like, how does it, how does having trauma create meaning

00:20:20.660 in your life?

00:20:22.660 So trauma is an interesting thing because it actually has a clinical definition to it.

00:20:26.800 And psychologists talk about this a lot.

00:20:28.360 We talk and we hear about post-traumatic stress disorder constantly.

00:20:32.080 And, and it's no joke.

00:20:33.520 I mean, people who go through war, people who see terrific violence, people who've been abused

00:20:37.220 and in abusive relationships, they can have a lot of post-traumatic stress, but most people

00:20:42.400 who suffer from great trauma wind up having net, net growth in their lives.

00:20:46.380 And they look back on the sources of their trauma and they see the growth that they've

00:20:50.380 experienced.

00:20:50.800 They find that their relationships are deeper.

00:20:53.100 The experience of love for them is more vivid.

00:20:55.880 They find that they're more likely to be in touch with their spiritual lives, much more

00:21:00.240 than before the trauma.

00:21:01.460 They also have this weird superpower.

00:21:03.520 You know, people who have outrun a cancer, for example, they have the superpower of not

00:21:08.940 caring what other people think.

00:21:10.780 You know, when, when, when you get hammered by something like that, you're like, I don't

00:21:13.860 care anymore.

00:21:14.700 Yeah.

00:21:14.900 You can't, you can't hurt me.

00:21:16.100 Yeah.

00:21:16.380 I beat cancer.

00:21:17.180 You can't hurt me anymore.

00:21:18.200 And this happens a lot to people.

00:21:19.880 And those things, this incredible source of strength that people get.

00:21:23.180 I talk to people who after trauma, they say, I just can't be bothered by the fact that it's

00:21:29.360 raining.

00:21:29.860 I can't be bothered by the fact that I got a nasty email from something because life is

00:21:34.580 short.

00:21:34.960 And I want to concentrate on all the things that I hold dear and that I actually love.

00:21:39.360 This is an example of how suffering it can and usually does bring out the best in us.

00:21:45.300 Right.

00:21:45.760 Gives you a new sense of perspective.

00:21:47.160 It, as a Brit Hume one said to me, uh, he was speaking about getting older.

00:21:51.280 It applies in, uh, you would agree with that.

00:21:53.240 I know, but also to, you know, difficulties, your give a shit meter changes.

00:21:56.880 That's what he said.

00:21:57.760 Give a shit meter just changes the more challenges you have.

00:22:01.100 Yeah.

00:22:01.520 This is a great thing also about that.

00:22:02.980 You find that one of the great secrets to the happiness and you find that most people

00:22:07.300 between early fifties, your age and 70 is that almost everybody gets happier during that period.

00:22:13.500 And one of the reasons is that you, without even quite realizing it, you realize that,

00:22:18.420 that when something hurts your feelings or something gives you negative, basic emotions,

00:22:22.100 like anger, disgust or sadness or fear that, you know, intuitively is not going to, not

00:22:27.180 going to last.

00:22:27.780 See young people think when they're feeling sad, I'm going to feel sad forever.

00:22:31.620 Well, no, you're not next week.

00:22:33.220 It's going to be a lot better than the week after that.

00:22:34.760 You're practically not going to remember this for most things.

00:22:37.880 Old people kind of intuitively know that and they get a head start on feeling better.

00:22:41.800 So basically what they say is like, somebody just flipped me off in traffic or insulted

00:22:45.620 me at work or, or rejected my manuscript or whatever.

00:22:49.560 Right.

00:22:49.740 Somebody sent me a nasty tweet because they didn't like me on Megyn Kelly's show.

00:22:54.020 Well, guess what?

00:22:54.520 I'm going to be like, yeah, that kind of hurts my feelings, but in 10 minutes, I'm going to

00:22:57.640 have forgotten it.

00:22:58.280 So I'm going to get a head start on forgetting it right now.

00:23:00.180 That's one of the constellations of age.

00:23:02.780 I love that when, when I've, you know, upset people on Twitter, it makes me happy.

00:23:06.540 That does make me happy.

00:23:08.300 I got in your head.

00:23:10.160 You shouldn't have let me there, but you didn't say thing.

00:23:11.920 Like if somebody beeps at me on the road, honks, like in a nasty way, I always just smile

00:23:15.580 and wave at them like, Oh, thank God.

00:23:17.240 Hi.

00:23:17.860 As if I've missed it.

00:23:18.520 I know that you wave at them.

00:23:19.920 There's like, Oh my God, I accidentally just honked at Megyn Kelly.

00:23:22.940 That's actually what they're thinking.

00:23:25.060 Maybe, maybe not.

00:23:26.620 Either way makes me happy just to show them like, hi, couldn't care less.

00:23:30.500 Uh, there's so much more to talk about.

00:23:31.740 I want to talk about that, that thing, workaholism and how bad it is for your happiness.

00:23:37.500 We are chasing the wrong goals, people more with Arthur right after this.

00:23:42.160 Don't go away.

00:23:45.580 There's a reason people become more workaholics and it's, I think it's related to what you

00:23:54.520 write in the book is called the striver's curse and the, the chasing of these false idols.

00:24:00.660 Also a story from, you know, the beginning of time that we continue to not learn the lesson

00:24:05.220 on, but people start out in earnest, you know, the land of the free, the American dream.

00:24:09.640 We can do anything.

00:24:10.620 We can build a career.

00:24:11.640 We can be successful.

00:24:12.640 We can spike the ball in the end zone.

00:24:14.300 We can have that moment.

00:24:15.540 If we would just work a little harder, get a little bit more success, and then we'll

00:24:19.140 have that moment.

00:24:19.900 I don't know what the moment looks like different for every person, but you know, maybe it's

00:24:23.920 actually spiking the balls, Tom Brady.

00:24:25.680 Maybe it's Paul Newman with another Oscar, you know, back in his day.

00:24:28.860 What you tell me, how do people get lured in to the striver's curse?

00:24:34.260 Yeah.

00:24:34.400 Your brain wants you to think that this is the case.

00:24:37.320 Here's the key point.

00:24:38.600 Like this, it took me years to figure out lots.

00:24:40.860 I mean, I, I mean, I suffered through a doctoral dissertation on this stuff, Megan.

00:24:45.580 Mother nature doesn't care if you're happy.

00:24:47.580 Mother nature just wants you to pass on your genes.

00:24:50.340 That's basically our job is to actually be happy.

00:24:53.560 I mean, this is the thing.

00:24:54.400 It's, it's quite interesting.

00:24:55.400 You know, people will say, how can you be religious?

00:24:57.540 If people have these terrible, evil, natural tendencies, I think that's why I'm religious.

00:25:03.060 That's why I'm a Catholic is because I want to be in charge.

00:25:06.680 And I actually think that, you know, nature might push me in one direction, but God wants

00:25:11.460 me to have free will and do something else.

00:25:13.000 Okay.

00:25:13.180 Now maybe people who are listening to us aren't religious.

00:25:15.580 It doesn't matter.

00:25:16.520 We're talking about your free will to be the master of your life is what it comes down

00:25:20.820 to.

00:25:21.380 Your brain says, you know how you're going to get satisfaction?

00:25:24.640 It's like a, it's like a trick.

00:25:26.340 Look, I'm going to make you a run on the treadmill and run on the treadmill.

00:25:29.540 And I'm going to tell you year after year after year that sooner or later, you're going

00:25:33.280 to get there.

00:25:33.840 Now you're looking down at the, at the, at the, the, the band that's turning under your

00:25:36.920 feet.

00:25:37.120 You're like, I don't think so.

00:25:38.600 I kind of did, but you know, my brain is telling me I'm actually going to get there.

00:25:41.800 So run, run, run, run, run.

00:25:43.120 That's an unexamined life.

00:25:45.120 Here's the key.

00:25:45.800 We actually have to be in charge and say, yeah, I realize that I keep having these tendencies.

00:25:50.720 I have these, you know, the, the, the, the great medieval philosophers would say there's

00:25:54.400 four idols in life.

00:25:56.240 They look kind of God-like because they have this, they're so attractive, right?

00:26:00.880 They are money, power, pleasure, and fame.

00:26:04.660 And fame doesn't necessarily mean you want to be famous.

00:26:06.760 It means prestige.

00:26:07.540 It means the admiration of other people, which we all want to be admired by other people.

00:26:11.340 And those things, those lures will make you run and run and run.

00:26:15.720 And they promise satisfaction, but they're liars.

00:26:19.780 And sooner or later, the sooner we figure that out by actually saying, no, I refuse.

00:26:24.660 Like money's great, but only if it's an instrument to something more important to serve other people,

00:26:29.780 to support your family, to support the relationships and the love in your life.

00:26:33.640 Only then can it be a conduit to your satisfaction.

00:26:37.040 If it's the object of your satisfaction or your power or your pleasure or your,

00:26:41.560 the admiration of other people, you will be frustrated because you will never get there.

00:26:45.660 And most people wind up running on that treadmill and never quite figuring it out

00:26:50.520 and wondering why they didn't get the satisfaction that they were seeking.

00:26:54.420 How did that happen?

00:26:55.120 I want to get to the others as well, but let's stay on money for a minute.

00:26:57.300 How do we get to the place?

00:26:58.600 Because, you know, I'm thinking about advertisements when you watch television.

00:27:01.740 They don't usually show rich people on yachts.

00:27:05.240 They usually show families snuggling into the couch together.

00:27:08.960 So I don't think this is a situation like the magazines and the girls getting

00:27:12.140 anorexia back in the 80s and the 90s or Instagram and, you know,

00:27:15.840 manipulating you in a negative way today.

00:27:18.100 I feel like the media actually knows to prize relationships and the hearth and coziness and so on.

00:27:24.300 Not news media, but you know what I'm saying?

00:27:26.260 So we must be doing it.

00:27:27.720 We in the school system, in the home,

00:27:30.140 we must be sending our children in America, because not every country is like this,

00:27:34.680 the message that money is something to idolize.

00:27:38.640 Yeah, for sure.

00:27:39.320 I mean, as part of our culture, it's very easy for that to happen.

00:27:43.180 And the biggest problem is that we have less and less of a culture that creates the good values.

00:27:49.000 I mean, some people, I mean, they'll say, oh, the problem is capitalism.

00:27:51.760 The problem is the free enterprise system.

00:27:53.380 Well, capitalism is an accelerant for materialism because it's so good at creating material prosperity,

00:27:58.980 to be sure, but it's not capitalism's fault.

00:28:01.340 I mean, it's not your car's fault that you drove drunk.

00:28:04.780 I mean, the problem is that you did the wrong thing.

00:28:07.740 And when we have the love in our lives, when we form the families, when we have a right

00:28:11.680 relationship with our spiritual lives, when we have real friends, not just deal friends,

00:28:17.000 then we're going to have the basis on which we can layer on an economic system.

00:28:20.200 When we can go out to work, when we can search for our daily bread, but it won't occupy us

00:28:25.200 as the be-all and end-all, then our brains can't lie to us quite so much by saying there's

00:28:30.320 an emptiness in me.

00:28:31.560 How am I going to fill it?

00:28:32.320 Oh, I don't know.

00:28:32.780 I'll make some more money.

00:28:33.820 I know.

00:28:34.240 I'll try to get more internet followers, more followers on Twitter.

00:28:37.600 Then I'll finally feel good.

00:28:39.660 That's run, run, run, run, run, run and never get there.

00:28:42.800 So it's interesting.

00:28:43.260 I've talked before about the would-be Hollywood stars who moved to Hollywood in hopes of becoming

00:28:48.300 famous, rich, famous, glamorous, thinking this will solve.

00:28:52.100 I mean, a lot of the folks who choose that as their profession have an emptiness inside

00:28:55.780 and they're seeking to fill it and they think that those things will fill it, you know, that

00:28:59.840 if you have the life of a Tom Cruise, everything will be great.

00:29:02.960 And this is why we see so much unhappiness from this crowd because it doesn't fill it.

00:29:07.400 They learn the hard way.

00:29:08.500 It fills nothing.

00:29:09.800 It's something to do.

00:29:10.780 It doesn't fill the voids that make up who you are.

00:29:15.480 But you're saying it's not just the Hollywood folks.

00:29:21.240 It can be all of us.

00:29:23.140 It can be the tech giant.

00:29:24.140 It can be the news anchor.

00:29:25.480 It can be the truck driver pursuing these false idols.

00:29:29.560 It could be more money or the next promotion or just a little bit more work to make you

00:29:33.780 feel a little bit better, a little bit harder working than the next guy.

00:29:37.220 I don't know if you'd say it's pointless, but it certainly doesn't lead to happiness.

00:29:41.140 You're absolutely right.

00:29:42.100 And furthermore, it actually leads to unhappiness because you're distracting yourself from the

00:29:46.820 things that matter.

00:29:47.460 So here's the right way to think about it.

00:29:49.520 Your brain wants you to chase four things.

00:29:52.420 I talked about it before.

00:29:53.480 And what you need to do is for your heart and your mind to reorient you to four different

00:29:59.160 things.

00:30:00.220 So and these are the habits of people who are really, really happy.

00:30:03.280 These are the things that are completely in our control.

00:30:05.160 So the four idols are, as I mentioned before, money, power, pleasure, and honor or fame or

00:30:12.140 prestige.

00:30:13.320 OK, now those things are not bad, but they're really destructive when they are the end, when

00:30:18.480 they are the intrinsic thing that we're seeking as opposed to being instrumental.

00:30:22.140 So money can help you support your family.

00:30:26.280 Power is something that you can use for great good if you're a virtuous person.

00:30:29.500 Pleasure leavens heavy days for sure and can be part of it's an element of satisfaction

00:30:35.520 and fame, the admiration of other people.

00:30:37.980 I mean, look how you're using the fact that you're admired and you have a lot of prestige.

00:30:41.520 You're using it to lift people up, Megan.

00:30:43.440 That's really meritorious.

00:30:45.000 But if the fame per se becomes the goal, then it becomes a huge problem.

00:30:49.740 You will be miserable.

00:30:51.840 This is what we need to do.

00:30:52.920 And this is the best thing about being human.

00:30:54.800 You don't have to just live in your lizard brain.

00:30:56.520 You don't have to live according to your impulses and your desires and your attachments.

00:31:01.500 You don't have to like my dog, Chucho.

00:31:03.520 He just lives according to what's next, right?

00:31:06.240 But I can do better than that.

00:31:08.140 I can say, aha, money, power, pleasure, honor.

00:31:10.640 Those things are manipulating me.

00:31:12.800 Here are the big four.

00:31:14.020 Here are the things that all happy people have in abundance and balance.

00:31:18.200 They have faith and family and friendship and work in which they feel like they're earning

00:31:25.060 their success and they're serving other people.

00:31:27.120 Now, faith, by that, I don't mean my faith.

00:31:29.080 I recommend it.

00:31:29.940 But the truth is, anything that gets you out of the rhythm of focusing exclusively on yourself,

00:31:35.680 my money, my job, my possession, my car, it's so boring.

00:31:41.100 You've got to get the big view on things, the big wisdom on things.

00:31:44.620 When you're really interested in the bigger picture, as the Dalai Lama says, remember,

00:31:49.020 joy comes when you remember that you're a one in seven billion, is what he says.

00:31:52.880 It's not that you're insignificant, it's just that you're part of something much bigger than

00:31:55.780 yourself, which is interesting.

00:31:57.120 Family life, friendship, work that serves other people, faith, family, friends, and work.

00:32:01.560 That's your good four.

00:32:02.780 Every time you feel tempted, actually reorient yourself in this direction and you will find

00:32:08.620 your happiness rising remarkably.

00:32:12.140 You want people to be conscious about how they approach all of this.

00:32:15.880 You should sit down and say, all right, how am I going to spend my week?

00:32:19.320 And how did I spend today?

00:32:22.500 Did I make time for my kids?

00:32:24.300 Did I make time for my friends?

00:32:26.200 Did I?

00:32:26.600 And you can't necessarily do it every day.

00:32:28.280 I understand that's how things go.

00:32:29.600 But too many days will go by and too many weeks will go by and then months and years of

00:32:34.320 you not nurturing those things, which hurts those people and yourself without that conscious

00:32:40.420 commitment to doing so.

00:32:42.500 Yeah, absolutely.

00:32:43.080 I mean, the unexamined life, as Socrates says, is not worth living.

00:32:48.700 And I don't know if it's not worth living, but I do know that the unexamined life is only

00:32:53.080 through sheer luck going to lead you to happiness.

00:32:56.300 You know, the truth is we all can't.

00:32:58.480 I'm not going to say everybody can be perfectly happy, but we all can be a lot happier by doing

00:33:02.620 the work.

00:33:03.280 And doing the work means thinking about your habits.

00:33:06.200 That's the number one thing.

00:33:07.780 Habits are way more important than goals.

00:33:09.540 People are always like, I got to have good goals.

00:33:11.000 I got to have a bucket list.

00:33:11.840 Wrong.

00:33:12.700 You need good habits every single day.

00:33:15.320 And that means doing an inventory at the end of your day.

00:33:17.860 Exactly.

00:33:18.280 This is what I do every night.

00:33:19.280 And I say, did I serve my faith?

00:33:21.660 You know, did I say my prayers?

00:33:22.960 Did I do the things that I need to do to cultivate my spiritual life?

00:33:26.440 Did I spend time thinking about and serving my family, my family life?

00:33:31.200 You know, and not just my immediate family, my adult children and my wife.

00:33:35.480 And I do that for sure.

00:33:37.420 But did I do enough of that?

00:33:38.960 Did I actually serve my family in the right way?

00:33:42.840 Third, it's like, am I cultivating my friendships?

00:33:46.160 Like, I mean, it's like we all have really busy lives.

00:33:48.320 It's very easy, especially for people in their 50s, to have all deal friends, no real friends.

00:33:53.280 But real friends take time.

00:33:54.600 They actually take work.

00:33:55.500 That's the reason you can't have more than, you know, five to seven really close friends

00:33:59.280 because it's just too time consuming.

00:34:00.960 But you got to have some and more than just your spouse.

00:34:04.460 It's very important.

00:34:05.740 And you got to cultivate those friendships.

00:34:07.040 And finally, you say, did my work truly serve other people?

00:34:10.480 Do I believe that I lifted people up with my work?

00:34:13.040 Now, sometimes it's easy.

00:34:15.020 I mean, people are writing to you all day long for sure saying, Megan, I loved your show.

00:34:19.020 You really helped me.

00:34:19.900 I see life in a new way.

00:34:21.320 Other people might be very indirect.

00:34:22.740 Let's say you're a bank deregulator or something like that.

00:34:26.140 But you can, with a little bit of serious thought, think about how you can serve other

00:34:30.380 people.

00:34:30.840 Do your inventory about your faith, family, friends, and work at the end of the day and

00:34:35.260 watch your satisfaction start to grow.

00:34:38.380 I'm just thinking, you know, when I was doing the Kelly file, there were definitely a lot of

00:34:42.440 people who loved the show and would send me notes like that.

00:34:45.480 But I didn't feel that sense of meaning.

00:34:48.320 I felt like I was in the outrage stoking business and the setup of those shows, which is really

00:34:53.620 only 38 minutes of content an hour because of the ads, doesn't allow time for meaningful

00:34:58.480 conversations.

00:34:59.360 You know, you got to get up and down on a segment quickly.

00:35:01.620 And it's rare that you actually get true meaning out of it.

00:35:04.380 It can happen, but it's the exception, not the rule.

00:35:06.860 It was one of my great frustrations.

00:35:08.360 You know, I knew I could be doing more and more that would make me happy and that would

00:35:13.320 make my audience happier.

00:35:14.380 And that's one of the great meanings, purposes I found in the job that I'm doing now, right?

00:35:20.980 Like, you know, real conversations like this.

00:35:23.280 How would you and I have had this conversation in three minutes?

00:35:26.100 It would have been empty and have no calories.

00:35:29.540 And we both would have walked away a bit wanting, as would the audience have.

00:35:33.480 I think that's right.

00:35:34.680 And this is one of the great things that, you know, that we've been able to achieve

00:35:37.860 in the technological era of the podcast, for example.

00:35:40.340 So long form conversations are something that everybody just assumed nobody had the attention

00:35:46.320 span for, you know, that we're all like goldfish at this point.

00:35:49.620 You know, after three seconds, we're all, you know, on to the next thing.

00:35:52.520 But that's actually not true.

00:35:54.240 Podcasts are unbelievably popular precisely because they're long form conversations that

00:35:58.460 go into depth.

00:35:59.320 You know, you and I are not talking about this like a PhD dissertation.

00:36:02.360 I mean, we're not talking about, you know, the really scientific brain science stuff that

00:36:06.820 I discuss with my class or in my research.

00:36:08.940 We're talking about why it matters and how people can use it in their lives.

00:36:12.480 And that takes some time, just like anything else.

00:36:14.960 You know, people, you can't have a three second relationship with somebody.

00:36:17.880 You need the time to develop the relationship.

00:36:20.000 And, you know, this is a perfect example of how fulfilling it is to go deep.

00:36:24.520 Like my wife always says, you know, we've moved around.

00:36:26.540 We moved 19 times in the last 30 years because, you know, we, I'm not in the witness protection

00:36:30.840 program, by the way.

00:36:31.540 So, and, um, and, and when we move into a place, the way that we actually become comfortable

00:36:38.100 quickly is by pretending we've lived there 10 years.

00:36:41.040 So the second week we're there, we'll invite somebody to our house for dinner.

00:36:44.980 And then we have a real conversation.

00:36:46.720 And my wife calls it go deep or go home.

00:36:49.520 Right.

00:36:50.260 I mean, we're not going to talk about trivialities and dumb stuff.

00:36:52.800 It's like, I'm going to ask you about, you know, how you worship and your relationship

00:36:56.900 with your children and whether you had a, you, you grew up in a place that you liked and

00:37:01.400 why, and we're going to learn about each other.

00:37:04.160 Oh, I love that.

00:37:05.340 Yes.

00:37:05.680 I'll, I accept.

00:37:06.540 I'll be there.

00:37:07.480 Doug and I will come.

00:37:10.460 Boston's not that far away.

00:37:11.520 You've got to be someplace in Massachusetts.

00:37:12.620 Not that far away.

00:37:13.100 You're welcome in my, in medium Massachusetts in my, in my happy home.

00:37:16.700 We can make it happen.

00:37:17.460 All right.

00:37:17.580 So let me back up on a couple of those though.

00:37:19.400 Uh, friendships.

00:37:20.860 I've heard you talk about this.

00:37:21.880 This is an area in which I could use some help.

00:37:23.960 I'm going to be honest, not very good at nurturing them.

00:37:26.900 And it's for some of the reasons you talk about, you know, I, I've overwhelmed my life

00:37:30.340 with all these other demands.

00:37:32.040 You know, I've got three relatively young kids and I've got a great marriage and I've

00:37:35.260 got a great job and I nurture all those things.

00:37:37.620 And then everything else falls off, right?

00:37:39.560 From exercise to friendships is there sort of, for me, next tier down in terms of immediate

00:37:44.180 priority.

00:37:44.860 But you say you got to change that, that they need to be first tier.

00:37:49.540 So let's get into friendships and why they matter so much.

00:37:52.840 Right.

00:37:53.220 Right.

00:37:53.420 So friendships are, are something that for strivers, for very, for people who are working

00:37:57.920 really hard and doesn't necessarily mean that you have the, the level of notoriety that

00:38:02.840 you have where people recognize you on the street.

00:38:04.900 That's not what I'm talking about with strivers.

00:38:06.360 I'm talking about people who are, we're, you know, doing their job.

00:38:08.980 And part of that means that if you're a lot of people think that if I'm not, you know,

00:38:13.560 giving everything to my job and all the rest to my family, that I'm cheating somebody,

00:38:17.760 I'm cheating my employer and cheating myself.

00:38:19.580 I'm cheating my family.

00:38:20.800 Well, you really are cheating yourself, um, by doing what you're doing.

00:38:26.360 And this is really hard for me too, Megan.

00:38:28.640 So when I say I'm looking in the mirror and giving myself this advice, you know, the truth

00:38:31.860 is, as a happiness researcher, it's actually me search, not research.

00:38:35.800 I want the answers.

00:38:37.000 I mean, it's like, I'm like a surgeon taking out my own appendix every day here.

00:38:40.700 So it's, this is, I mean, I have, you know, really deep relationships, really deep platonic,

00:38:47.320 you know, friendships, philia, as the Greeks called it, the love of others as friends.

00:38:52.040 It's hard for me.

00:38:53.300 You know, I don't have that much time.

00:38:54.440 I've been working 12 hour days for many, many years because I love my work.

00:38:59.500 I'm obsessed with my work.

00:39:00.760 I mean, I get, like, I get to do this.

00:39:02.040 I get to, this is, this is, you and I are working right now.

00:39:04.200 It's the craziest thing ever.

00:39:05.620 I mean, it's like, it's bliss, right?

00:39:07.840 But, but, you know, what's left over, what's left over is for, you know, the people that

00:39:12.360 you're living with and, and maybe going to the gym or church and, and then, you know,

00:39:16.260 it's pretty dry.

00:39:17.200 You have to carve off a different part of your life for that and making sure that you're

00:39:21.280 having at least some contact every day.

00:39:23.260 And then thinking about the two or three people outside your family that you want to know more

00:39:27.740 about, that you want to give more time to and figuring out how to do it.

00:39:31.000 And a couple of years ago, when I was doing research for the book that we're talking

00:39:34.060 about here, I recognized that this was the key thing, the key practice of people who

00:39:38.900 grow old and happy that I just wasn't cultivating.

00:39:41.980 I was on the wrong track.

00:39:43.560 And so I started cultivating my friendships and I have two or three really close friends.

00:39:48.180 I mean, the guy I consider my closest friend, he lives in Atlanta.

00:39:51.080 I live in Boston.

00:39:52.200 I've known him for many years.

00:39:54.100 We do, we've done business stuff together, but we don't really need to.

00:39:57.300 Aristotle called the perfect friendship, the friendship where you have a mutual love for

00:40:01.900 a third thing.

00:40:02.720 So you don't need, the other person is sort of cosmically useless to you.

00:40:07.060 You don't need that person to put your career forward.

00:40:09.820 It's not, it's not, he's not useful.

00:40:11.600 He's not excessively useful to, I just love him.

00:40:13.600 And so we make a point.

00:40:15.140 We talk one or two times every week.

00:40:17.160 We don't, we don't talk about, we occasionally talk about stuff that's going on in our professional

00:40:21.160 lives.

00:40:21.560 And, you know, he's a big entrepreneur and I'm a college professor and, but we don't talk

00:40:25.660 about that.

00:40:26.200 We talk about our families.

00:40:27.060 We talk about things that we're thinking about.

00:40:28.780 We're talking about things that are bothering us.

00:40:31.000 And that's really what is very, very important to cultivate.

00:40:34.480 If we want to grow old in a happier and a healthier way.

00:40:37.420 You know, I'm going to, I'm going to mention my friend Donna from law school because she's

00:40:42.800 probably listening to this, but she and I reconnected.

00:40:46.100 She's from my hometown and she still lives there.

00:40:48.060 And I, you know, visit my mom up there, but we reconnected after 20 years of not seeing

00:40:52.760 each other.

00:40:53.180 And we were so close in law school.

00:40:54.520 I was there for the birth of her daughter and she got me through a lot.

00:40:57.120 And we reconnected one time up by my mom's and then we started sort of, I don't know,

00:41:03.380 this is going to sound weird, but like a text friendship.

00:41:06.680 Um, and you know, you might think that that doesn't, that's not good, but it's great.

00:41:12.100 And I look forward, like when I see, you know, I get that dopamine flow when I see her name

00:41:17.280 pop up and we have these deep, meaningful texts and it can come out of the blue.

00:41:21.140 It can, I can pick up just, oh my God, you know, this, and it doesn't need any setup.

00:41:24.980 It doesn't need it, you know, like, you know, there's no buildup and I'll get a deep, meaningful

00:41:28.400 text back.

00:41:29.600 And for whatever reason, you know, we're both busy professionals and so on.

00:41:33.420 It's working.

00:41:34.360 It's become such an important piece of my, my, my life.

00:41:38.540 Right.

00:41:38.840 It's like, so you kind of, you can nurture it in, I think, a number of ways.

00:41:43.340 Absolutely.

00:41:43.940 There's lots of ways to win this thing.

00:41:46.040 The only way to lose it is by not doing it at all.

00:41:48.740 And, and in considering at some point it will just happen naturally.

00:41:51.720 Look, I'm going to have good friends.

00:41:52.720 It happens spontaneously.

00:41:53.400 No, here's the thing.

00:41:54.980 The craziest thing is that when it comes to almost every element of happiness, the biggest

00:41:59.120 mistake people think make is thinking that just by wishing for it, it might come or that

00:42:04.440 it's serendipity, that it's just kind of good luck.

00:42:07.420 And that's not true.

00:42:08.400 I mean, if somebody asked you and said, Hey Megan, I want to learn more math.

00:42:11.480 I wish I knew more math.

00:42:13.180 You'd say, well, pick up a math book, buddy.

00:42:15.780 You know, you got to do the work.

00:42:18.260 And there's so much information out there.

00:42:20.860 Look, you can read the ancient Greek stoic philosophers.

00:42:24.320 You can read the new Testament.

00:42:26.200 You can read the medievals and you can read modern social science.

00:42:29.320 And there's all kinds of information about out there.

00:42:31.700 I mean, my book is my books.

00:42:33.720 The things that I write, the classes that I teach are dedicated to trying to bring this

00:42:37.280 information to people.

00:42:38.860 But you've got to do the work.

00:42:40.800 You know, you've got to buy a ticket if you want to win a lottery.

00:42:43.740 I hate, hate the t-shirt slash sweatshirt.

00:42:47.520 Choose happiness.

00:42:48.560 I hate it because it's just so pointless.

00:42:51.180 It's like, what does that mean?

00:42:53.160 If you're depressed or you're sad, you can't just say, today I resolved to be happy.

00:42:57.780 That's not how it works.

00:42:59.000 But what you're saying is, okay, fine.

00:43:02.200 That overall messaging, there could be something there.

00:43:05.080 But you actually do need real points of attack.

00:43:08.920 Like there are ways you can meaningfully change your life, your approach to life that don't

00:43:13.460 involve reading a thousand pages a day.

00:43:15.720 That like these small changes you can make in terms of your priorities and what you make

00:43:18.740 time for that day after day, we'll just build it.

00:43:21.980 You'll get yourself there.

00:43:24.220 Absolutely.

00:43:24.720 You got to build a system.

00:43:25.600 I mean, it's not a single choice.

00:43:28.220 It's like, ah, you know what I did yesterday morning?

00:43:30.360 The big thing is I chose unhappiness.

00:43:32.000 I mean, nobody does that.

00:43:32.980 That's idiotic.

00:43:33.720 It's like, yeah, well, I mean, a lot of people act like they do, but that's a different matter.

00:43:37.800 You know, that's actually known as politics, right?

00:43:40.420 I'm going to choose unhappiness today and bring misery to hell around me.

00:43:43.500 But the key thing is you got to have a system that works and having a system that works requires

00:43:48.760 some information.

00:43:50.060 You don't have to study it like I do.

00:43:51.620 You don't have to teach it like I do.

00:43:52.980 It's actually pretty easy.

00:43:54.700 When I say, remember faith, family, friends, and work, anybody can remember that.

00:43:59.640 And if you're finding that you're unsatisfied and you're unhappy because you're chasing

00:44:02.760 the wrong things, then torque your habits back in the right direction.

00:44:06.280 And almost every area of happiness has these ideas.

00:44:10.220 You know, it's like, do I feel lonely, but I'm in a crowd?

00:44:13.280 It's because you got all deal friends.

00:44:14.600 You don't have enough real friends.

00:44:16.120 That's an easy thing to remember under the circumstances.

00:44:18.780 And I've heard you short form that with a real friend, the person you can call up to

00:44:21.880 in the morning crying.

00:44:22.620 Exactly right.

00:44:24.400 And a deal friend is somebody who's like, who is this?

00:44:27.340 Right, exactly.

00:44:28.460 And once you lose, once you, I mean, this happened to me when I left, I left Fox on my own.

00:44:33.460 People think I got fired from Fox.

00:44:34.760 I did not get fired from Fox.

00:44:35.880 Things were going very well for me there.

00:44:37.280 I left to go to NBC.

00:44:38.800 That's his other ball of glass.

00:44:39.700 I remember that was a big deal.

00:44:41.240 But that was a big coup.

00:44:42.940 It was a big, it was a very big deal.

00:44:45.120 And it, NBC didn't make me happy, but my life today is much happier than it's ever been.

00:44:48.760 But I will say, having been in that like powerful position on Fox News and then gone to NBC and

00:44:54.740 then having a couple of years off and people saying terrible things about me, you do find

00:44:58.320 out who your true friends are, right?

00:44:59.500 The people, and I never really gave much thought to it.

00:45:01.820 It's like, oh, whatever.

00:45:02.600 But you do find out like in retrospect, oh, who are the glommers?

00:45:05.280 Who are the people who are just trying to be around me because I was in the prime time

00:45:08.140 of Fox News?

00:45:09.280 So that's a blessing, right?

00:45:10.320 It's a blessing to figure out like, oh, great.

00:45:12.400 I got rid of the glommers.

00:45:13.620 And can I tell you something even more irritating?

00:45:15.360 Arthur, they come back.

00:45:16.200 And like, now that I'm back on the air, it's like, then they come back and it's so fun ignoring

00:45:19.620 them.

00:45:20.760 Yeah.

00:45:21.000 It's like, it's like Megan, I always believed in you.

00:45:23.020 It's like weird because I didn't hear from you during those two years.

00:45:26.160 So strange.

00:45:27.460 Or it's actually interesting.

00:45:28.580 I see this in politics.

00:45:29.420 I'll go ahead.

00:45:30.180 Yeah.

00:45:30.380 Standby.

00:45:30.720 Because I got to, I got to squeeze in a break here and then we'll come back and I want

00:45:34.080 to hit the faith thing too.

00:45:35.020 Because this is, faith means more than you think it means.

00:45:38.480 More with Arthur right after this break.

00:45:40.960 Don't go away.

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00:45:43.640 Sirius XM Triumph channel 111 at noon east.

00:45:46.920 Full video show and clips by subscribing to our YouTube channel, youtube.com slash Megan

00:45:50.420 Kelly, or the podcast is always available.

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00:45:58.560 for free.

00:45:59.580 And there you will find more than our full archives with more than 260 shows.

00:46:03.120 And we get tons of downloads of the archives every day.

00:46:06.000 People dig in the archives, which I appreciate.

00:46:07.560 Let's pick it back up on one of those pillars, family, friendship, faith, and meaningful work.

00:46:19.480 Faith.

00:46:20.180 Faith doesn't necessarily have to mean start going to church again.

00:46:23.980 It could.

00:46:25.060 And you've made the point that like there are actual real ways that you can get yourself

00:46:28.780 back into a religion you may have followed in your childhood or what have you.

00:46:32.160 But it could also be much more expansive than that.

00:46:34.740 Explain.

00:46:35.820 Yeah, for sure.

00:46:36.420 So, you know, I've studied this an awful lot.

00:46:38.360 And one of the things that you find is that people who say that they have a faith or a

00:46:41.160 spiritual life or a very strong sense of life's meaning philosophically, they're just much

00:46:46.280 happier on average.

00:46:47.840 And they're calmer.

00:46:49.180 They have more peace than people who don't have this.

00:46:51.700 And you can say basically, okay, well, you're fooling yourself, but there's really something

00:46:56.280 there that we just can't deny it.

00:46:58.800 Now, I look at it and I don't find that my own Catholic faith is inherently better for that

00:47:03.380 happiness than the Jewish faith or the Buddhist faith or for that matter, atheism married to

00:47:09.360 a real sense of meditative practice and a real sense of what life's purpose, the life's

00:47:14.340 secrets might be about.

00:47:15.880 But this is about basically, and again, this is not to say who's right.

00:47:19.680 You know, it's to say actually the effect on happiness, two different questions.

00:47:22.460 And what you find is that when people don't have a sense of faith or spirituality, a meditative

00:47:28.320 or prayer practice, or even just a practice of learning about the big secrets of life, you

00:47:33.980 know, trying to study, you know, the ancient Greek philosophers, whatever it happens to

00:47:37.460 be, they're too focused on their little world.

00:47:40.480 And it's horribly, horribly boring.

00:47:43.460 I mean, it's like if I said, hey, Megan, I got this great show I've been watching on Netflix

00:47:46.720 and you got to go watch the first episode.

00:47:49.040 You're going to love it.

00:47:49.640 You might say, okay, Arthur's a pretty clever guy.

00:47:51.400 I'm going to go watch that.

00:47:52.300 You go watch it.

00:47:52.820 You come back the next day and I say, July, you say, I really loved it.

00:47:55.460 You say, okay, today, go home, watch the same episode over again.

00:47:58.200 You say, what are you, crazy?

00:47:59.540 And now if I said, you need to watch that episode every day for the rest of your life,

00:48:03.600 you'd say, that's misery.

00:48:05.140 Well, that's kind of what it is.

00:48:06.460 It's like your life is this TV show that has a lot of monotony.

00:48:11.400 All of us, no matter how exciting your life is, you're obsessed with it, but it's really

00:48:15.740 not that interesting in a lot of ways.

00:48:17.680 You need relief.

00:48:18.820 And one of the ways to get that is actually to cultivate your spiritual life.

00:48:23.340 You write about mindfulness.

00:48:24.620 That's a big buzzword these days.

00:48:27.100 But one of the things you wrote about, which actually I agreed with, I was like, you know,

00:48:31.100 I never really thought about it like that.

00:48:32.860 It was mindfulness, short form, living in the moment, not obsessing like, what happened?

00:48:37.220 Why didn't I take that other job?

00:48:39.100 Why didn't I go to that other school?

00:48:40.360 Why didn't I marry this other person?

00:48:41.560 And, you know, people obsess over what they did or what they didn't do or why their life

00:48:44.980 is the way it is instead of like taking the walk in the woods with their kids and enjoying

00:48:49.240 looking at them, being joyful and smelling the fresh air and like literally enjoying

00:48:53.580 the moment you are in.

00:48:55.600 But you you raise the opposite side of that as well.

00:48:58.640 It also means not obsessing about obsessing about tomorrow, not worrying about the future,

00:49:02.600 not thinking like, what do I have to do to get ahead?

00:49:04.440 Like that's you're supposed to sort of close out the back and the front to be in the actual

00:49:09.300 moment that you're in.

00:49:11.420 That's right.

00:49:12.000 And a lot of people think that a spiritual path means that you're thinking constantly

00:49:15.060 about heaven.

00:49:16.060 Yeah, that's actually not right.

00:49:17.620 Even religions that believe in a very distinct sense of heaven, the main benefit that people

00:49:22.260 actually get from their spiritual and religious lives is that it makes the present more

00:49:26.360 meaningful.

00:49:27.640 It helps us to accentuate the loves in our life that it puts things into proper perspective

00:49:32.800 right now.

00:49:33.560 Now, we are the way that we talk about in my business is thinking about the future.

00:49:38.220 It's called there's a special word for it's called prospection.

00:49:40.380 It's like we have to put a fancy word on everything.

00:49:42.440 That's how we get tenure.

00:49:43.520 But the bottom line is that living in the future is this uniquely human thing that people

00:49:48.300 can do.

00:49:49.020 My dog can't do it.

00:49:50.260 My dog is very, very mindful.

00:49:52.280 You know, it's like, see the cookie, eat the cookie, right?

00:49:55.260 That's and little kids, they tend to be very mindful because they actually don't have

00:49:58.640 the brain circuitry form such that they can be highly prospective or live in prospection.

00:50:02.760 But if you take an average adult, the average adult, you put them in a functional MRI machine

00:50:08.080 and you say, think about nothing.

00:50:10.220 Literally, we have experiments to do this.

00:50:12.220 And their mind starts to wander to what they call the default mode network, just to the

00:50:16.760 natural kind of place where your mind goes.

00:50:19.040 And it's in the part of the brain associated with thinking about the future.

00:50:22.640 That's what we do.

00:50:23.740 30% to 50% of your time is thinking about the future.

00:50:27.200 That's a big problem.

00:50:28.720 Because when you're in the future, you're kind of not alive now in a very real sense.

00:50:33.420 It's kind of like being so sentimental.

00:50:35.480 You're always thinking about the past.

00:50:36.740 Look, you're alive now.

00:50:38.220 I know some people who are spending 80% of their time planning the future, 10% thinking

00:50:42.940 about the past.

00:50:43.660 And they're only kind of alive right now.

00:50:46.160 If, for example, I'll give you a more concrete example.

00:50:48.620 You go on vacation.

00:50:49.380 You're like, this is a beautiful place.

00:50:51.600 I'm going to snap pictures every three seconds and put them on Instagram.

00:50:55.340 What you're doing is you're thinking about the future, somebody looking at your Instagram

00:50:59.220 post and envying or admiring your vacation, or you looking at your pictures later so that

00:51:05.160 you can enjoy them in the future when they are the past.

00:51:08.300 Well, guess what you missed?

00:51:09.920 You just missed your vacation.

00:51:11.540 And you will be less happy if you miss your life.

00:51:15.120 This is how you wrote it in the book, which I loved.

00:51:16.600 I have this like circled and underlined and highlighted.

00:51:20.880 Fulfillment cannot come when the present moment is little more than a struggle to bear in order

00:51:26.960 to attain the future, because that future is destined to become nothing more than the

00:51:31.880 struggle of a new present.

00:51:33.100 And the glorious end state never arrives.

00:51:36.740 The focus must be on the walk that is life with its string of present moments.

00:51:43.020 Oh, I love that.

00:51:44.760 The focus must be on the walk that is life with its string of present moments.

00:51:51.380 Oh, I love that, Arthur.

00:51:52.520 That's exactly right.

00:51:54.240 Thank you, Megan.

00:51:55.240 I wrote that because I struggle with that.

00:52:00.100 I'm not going to lie.

00:52:01.140 I've been living in the future my whole life.

00:52:03.760 I'm always thinking, what's next?

00:52:05.060 What's next?

00:52:05.500 I've had four completely different careers.

00:52:07.520 And it's fun, and it's truly an adventure, I have to say, but I've been missing too much

00:52:14.420 of my life.

00:52:15.020 And so when I retired, as you mentioned before, I was the head of a think tank in Washington,

00:52:19.100 D.C., and it's a wonderful job, and I loved it.

00:52:21.160 And I stepped out when I was 55 years old, and I said, you know what?

00:52:25.020 Like, I've been doing the research I'm talking about in this book.

00:52:27.620 And I said, I'm going to eat my own cooking here.

00:52:29.920 And I have the evidence that I'm missing my life by thinking too much in the future.

00:52:34.860 So I went on a walk.

00:52:36.680 And when I say I went on a walk, I went on a walk.

00:52:39.240 Many of the people watching and listening to us right now, they know Martin Sheen's famous

00:52:43.780 movie, The Way, which is about him walking this ancient trail, the Camino de Santiago

00:52:49.580 in northern Spain, walking across northern Spain.

00:52:52.920 And I did that.

00:52:54.620 I did that after I stepped down.

00:52:56.740 I didn't do the whole thing because the whole thing is 800 kilometers, 500 miles.

00:53:01.340 And I didn't have enough time.

00:53:02.720 I didn't have 33 days to do it.

00:53:03.980 But I did eight straight days.

00:53:05.400 I walked 100 miles.

00:53:07.760 And you got to be present when you're walking 100 miles because it's unbelievably boring,

00:53:11.720 but it's unbelievably fulfilling.

00:53:13.480 And you're just, I got the chops.

00:53:15.620 I got the flavor for it.

00:53:16.900 And I never, the weirdest thing is I came home and I never stopped walking.

00:53:19.680 I never stopped.

00:53:20.780 You know, I take long walks.

00:53:22.220 I never like a walk guy.

00:53:23.440 I'm like the weird walk guy in the neighborhood.

00:53:25.480 Like, who's the walking guy, right?

00:53:27.220 It's like, it's Brooks.

00:53:28.240 Neighborhood watch.

00:53:29.060 Because I'm still on, I'm on my Camino.

00:53:32.140 And when I walk, this is kind of the walking prayer.

00:53:35.320 The Buddhists talk about the walking meditation.

00:53:37.720 This is the string of present moments.

00:53:39.700 And this is how I remember my string of present moments is by getting up and going out.

00:53:44.800 And no devices, no devices.

00:53:46.740 Sometimes I pray, but I'm always thinking about what am I seeing right now?

00:53:50.840 And I'm telling you, it's a thrill.

00:53:53.240 And I never got that thrill before of being alive right now.

00:53:57.760 Okay.

00:53:57.920 So, and this is not a bring the room down moment, but the book also advocates thinking about death.

00:54:03.460 So there are some points in getting happy that require you to think about the future.

00:54:07.320 We talked about sort of sitting down, going into the week and being mindful about nurturing

00:54:10.320 the things that are going to bring you happiness or your relationship with your kids,

00:54:13.920 with your spouse, with your friends, with your faith and so on.

00:54:16.720 Um, but you all also argue that we need to think about death.

00:54:21.720 We need to accept death and we need to stare right in the face and come to grips with the

00:54:26.800 fact that it's going to get us.

00:54:28.080 And what does that mean?

00:54:29.100 So can you expand on that?

00:54:31.380 Yeah, sure.

00:54:32.340 Um, one of the key things that people often understand is that everybody wants more love,

00:54:37.760 but what actually prevents love is love's opposite and love's opposite is not hate.

00:54:44.060 Love's opposite is fear.

00:54:45.680 Now, all of the ancient philosophers talked about that, but modern psychology shows that

00:54:50.080 as well.

00:54:50.980 The, the, the, the most important negative emotion is fear.

00:54:54.420 It takes up the most brain tissue.

00:54:56.040 The most important positive emotion is love.

00:54:57.880 So they're opposites from each other.

00:54:59.760 The main reason people don't have enough love in their life is because they have fear.

00:55:03.840 They're blocked by fear of rejection.

00:55:05.700 They're blocked by fear of the future.

00:55:07.380 They're blocked by fear of what might happen to them.

00:55:09.780 And the result of that is that it leaves them unable to be fully available to what's going

00:55:15.180 on in the world around them.

00:55:16.220 So one of the things that I recommend is that, that we, we, we think very deeply about the

00:55:21.640 things that we're afraid of.

00:55:22.820 You know, I'm afraid of failure.

00:55:23.960 Like most people are afraid of failure.

00:55:25.900 I'm afraid of being forgotten.

00:55:27.720 I'm afraid of being irrelevant.

00:55:29.200 Most of my fears are pride.

00:55:30.500 A lot of people are really afraid of death or not actually literal death.

00:55:34.480 A lot of people are afraid of their career ending or the admiration of other people stopping.

00:55:39.580 That's a form of death.

00:55:40.760 That's kind of like, I'm still alive, but I'm walking dead.

00:55:43.600 And so one of the things that I recommend is basically the, the oldest advice there's

00:55:47.520 ever been.

00:55:48.260 If you are truly afraid of something, you need to look it in the face.

00:55:52.140 You need to take it on and it will become ordinary and the fear will vanish.

00:55:56.880 It's just, it's just like, it's like magic.

00:55:58.880 It's the most amazing thing.

00:55:59.660 Now, again, there's a ton of research behind this with controlled experiments and human

00:56:04.660 subjects and all this stuff.

00:56:06.180 It actually kind of makes sense.

00:56:08.140 If you go to a psychiatrist and say, I am morbidly afraid of snakes, they're going to

00:56:13.260 show you pictures of snakes, not because they're sadistic and want to freak you out, but because

00:56:17.140 you need exposure therapy.

00:56:19.020 If you're afraid of flying, the first thing you'll do is you'll walk, you'll drive by the

00:56:22.480 airport and then you'll go into the airport and then you'll look at an airplane and you will

00:56:26.160 gradually actually make it more ordinary.

00:56:28.080 If you're afraid of death or something like death, the end of something, you need to expose

00:56:33.980 yourself to it.

00:56:34.800 So I actually, there's a very famous Buddhist meditation called the Maranasati meditation

00:56:39.380 from, from Southern Asia that where people will think about themselves in various states

00:56:43.980 of death and decline and decay.

00:56:46.080 And it sounds really morbid and really gross, but when people do that, they conquer the fear

00:56:52.300 of this inevitable thing.

00:56:53.940 And, and only when you conquer the fear of death, can you truly be alive?

00:56:58.900 Hmm.

00:56:59.740 I would say I'm not afraid of death.

00:57:01.980 Um, I, I worry about dying too soon and, you know, leaving my kids, right?

00:57:06.840 Like I, I don't worry for myself about crossing over.

00:57:09.300 I worry about premature death.

00:57:11.900 And of course this happened in my family.

00:57:13.380 I lost my dad when I was 15 to a sudden heart attack.

00:57:16.120 You know, I don't want my kids to have to grow up without me.

00:57:18.680 So I have that fear.

00:57:19.700 And I, I just don't know any way of resolving that, you know, it's like, there's no positive

00:57:24.880 spin you can put on such a thing where, Oh, it'll be a benefit benefit for them.

00:57:28.420 You know, like it would be a horrible tragedy.

00:57:30.620 No, it's not good.

00:57:31.100 It's not good, Megan.

00:57:32.120 It's not good if it happens.

00:57:33.160 But the key thing is it's much, much worse.

00:57:35.120 If it's a phantasm, it's much worse.

00:57:37.780 If it's a ghost that haunts you, if it's something that you say, I probably won't die

00:57:42.900 and my kids will grow up.

00:57:44.040 And, and when I'm old, I'll be dandling my 10th grandchild on my knee.

00:57:47.860 It's probably true, Megan.

00:57:49.280 But if it isn't, if it isn't true, you have to know kind of what it looks like and what it

00:57:54.160 would mean.

00:57:54.620 And the only way to do that is to take it out of the realm of the ghosts that will

00:57:58.140 haunt you and bring it into the realm of the real and say, I look, we will deal with

00:58:03.180 this in point of fact, we will deal with this.

00:58:05.640 And then it's not scary anymore.

00:58:07.100 Well, it dovetails in with what I was saying in the tease earlier, which is you want people

00:58:11.880 to get very honest about their weaknesses, about their weaknesses.

00:58:18.820 Don't deny them, embrace them, put them out there, be public about them even.

00:58:24.100 I mean, you know, for most people, they're like, this is crazy talk.

00:58:27.400 Talk about weakness and it's important to our happiness.

00:58:32.440 It's, it's the most counterintuitive thing because, you know, we look, we all know that.

00:58:36.680 I mean, and that, and the thing about it is in this celebrity obsessed culture, I mean,

00:58:40.360 it's like how many people, when, when something that you didn't like in your career happened

00:58:44.540 to you, were people talking about it in public.

00:58:47.100 And that's because people are funny that way.

00:58:49.480 I mean, people enjoy the misfortune of others and especially the misfortune of the fortunate.

00:58:53.980 It's a, it's a kind of a bad thing about the human character.

00:58:57.580 And so the result of it is that we have this tendency to think, okay, well then hide the

00:59:01.420 bad things, hide the aging, hide the, you know, the misfortune, hide the setbacks, hide

00:59:06.740 the weaknesses.

00:59:08.260 Well, that turns out to be a really terrible strategy.

00:59:10.360 Number one, because hiding things, it's not your authentic self.

00:59:12.780 And you'll always be uncomfortable.

00:59:14.240 The second thing is that what you need the most is love.

00:59:17.400 And the best way for you to get love is to connect with other people and your strengths

00:59:21.660 don't connect you to other people.

00:59:23.180 It's like, you know how I can really, I can really make strength, you know, make people

00:59:27.440 feel like they're one with me and, and, and love me as another individual talking about

00:59:32.160 all the things I'm good at.

00:59:33.760 Say, oh yeah, no, my career is going, I got a book on the bestseller list.

00:59:37.380 You can relate to me.

00:59:38.620 No.

00:59:38.860 Just got into Mensa.

00:59:40.540 Yeah.

00:59:40.920 I just got into Mensa.

00:59:41.960 It's like, I just got measured with the highest IQ in my neighborhood.

00:59:44.980 This is not relatable.

00:59:46.280 You know, it's like, so I tell my students, for example, you want to relate to ordinary

00:59:49.400 people.

00:59:50.080 Don't say that you went to Harvard in the first five minutes.

00:59:52.860 There's this whole joke that there's three identities that you know about in the first

00:59:56.580 five minutes of meeting a person, Harvard graduate, Marine and vegan.

01:00:00.920 Right.

01:00:01.420 And it's good because they have to tell you, right.

01:00:04.540 That's so true.

01:00:05.560 The key thing is if it's a strength, it's not, it's great.

01:00:08.240 It's meritorious.

01:00:09.060 Congratulations.

01:00:09.560 Good for you, but it's not relatable.

01:00:11.920 There's a lot of cases of this.

01:00:13.140 It's really interesting.

01:00:13.900 You know, you talk, uh, Stephen Colbert, he talks often about the fact that the worst

01:00:18.360 thing that ever happened to him was when his, it was when his brother and father died in

01:00:21.720 a plane crash when he was 12 years old.

01:00:23.880 And he talks about how that, that really made him who he is.

01:00:26.860 And it was a source of tremendous sadness.

01:00:29.280 He's not talking about that as a, as a source of glory.

01:00:31.840 He talks about how that weakness made him the person that he is.

01:00:34.980 And, and that in point of fact, this incredibly famous and successful person has to go through

01:00:39.820 the same tube that we all do.

01:00:42.220 Megan Kelly has the same sadness as any other, as any listener to this program, you know,

01:00:48.020 that we all have to work for the people who love us.

01:00:50.180 And when we hide these things, we hide them from ourselves.

01:00:52.940 A very, very close friend of mine, he's, he's, he got extremely wealthy because he's

01:00:57.840 clever and hardworking and entrepreneurial.

01:00:59.380 And, and I asked him, what's the biggest mistake you made in your thought about getting

01:01:04.540 rich?

01:01:05.400 And I can talk to him this way because we're really close friends.

01:01:07.380 And he said, thinking that my problems were going to go away.

01:01:11.080 And I said, what do you mean?

01:01:12.140 He said, it turns out when you have $800 million, it's possible your wife still doesn't love

01:01:17.000 you and she's not going to love you because of the $800 million.

01:01:20.340 And so unless you're in touch with your weaknesses, and by the way, unless you share your weaknesses,

01:01:25.040 you're not going to make authentic human connection with other people.

01:01:27.880 Mm-hmm.

01:01:28.780 It's not about getting rid of the weaknesses.

01:01:30.980 It's about defanging them.

01:01:33.240 Totally.

01:01:33.800 It's the phantasm of the fear of death.

01:01:35.800 It's the same idea.

01:01:37.260 You know, St. Paul, the apostle, he always, he, you know, by the way, the greatest entrepreneur

01:01:42.360 in history, you know, we talk about, you know, Steve Jobs or someone who's phenomenal

01:01:46.840 and the iPhone, which is great, but let's just see how many iPhones are out there in the

01:01:50.180 year 4,000, shall we?

01:01:51.660 I mean, it's like St. Paul, he was like this entrepreneurial guy creating, basically building

01:01:59.080 this theology around this religion, and it's lasted this incredible test of time.

01:02:04.460 And how did he sell it?

01:02:05.840 He sell it by saying, there's a thorn in my flesh and in my weakness, I find my strength.

01:02:10.560 That's a terrible pitch.

01:02:12.500 That's like saying, look, I'm weak.

01:02:14.940 I'm sad.

01:02:16.420 Nobody's following me.

01:02:17.680 I feel horrible.

01:02:18.440 Hey, want to join?

01:02:19.660 It's like, this is the worst pitch ever, right?

01:02:22.760 And yet, look, 2 billion Christians, 2,000 years later.

01:02:26.460 It's so true.

01:02:27.360 Gosh, it's scary for people to do, but all the messages to us are to do the opposite of

01:02:32.100 all these things.

01:02:32.760 You know what I mean?

01:02:33.080 Like work hard, make a lot of money, be strong, all those things.

01:02:38.840 And then we look around and say, why are we so unhappy?

01:02:40.680 My God, we're so unhappy.

01:02:41.340 I'll just switch jobs.

01:02:42.240 Maybe I'll switch jobs.

01:02:43.400 And then you bring all the same baggage.

01:02:45.000 You don't change anything else about your life.

01:02:46.480 Maybe you free up some free time, but you probably spend it working.

01:02:49.780 You probably just study at home, what have you.

01:02:52.440 Or we do probably one of the worst things you can possibly do, which is go on Twitter,

01:02:57.160 go on social media, which is totally mindless and a terrible fill-in for the real relationships

01:03:03.080 that we need to foster love, to foster well-being, to foster happiness.

01:03:08.260 Absolutely.

01:03:09.060 And by the way, everybody knows that's true.

01:03:13.360 Not everybody knows why, that exactly the example that you gave, the mistakes that we

01:03:18.560 make, one of them right now is that we use social media as a substitute for real human

01:03:23.420 interaction.

01:03:24.100 During the coronavirus epidemic, there was an explosion for people who were lonely of looking

01:03:28.580 at social media.

01:03:29.820 It's the junk food of social life.

01:03:31.760 Just as eating burgers and fries and milkshakes every time you're hungry will blow up your

01:03:37.140 calories, but it won't give you the nutrients that you need, thus leaving you hungry and

01:03:42.060 getting too many calories.

01:03:43.340 Social media does that because it starves you of something called oxytocin.

01:03:47.680 This is a brain chemical produced by the brain.

01:03:50.160 So you remember when your children were born and you first made eye contact with them and

01:03:53.880 it was like the 4th of July going off inside your head, that was oxytocin.

01:03:58.680 And we need eye contact and touch with other individuals so that we can get oxytocin, which

01:04:03.860 is so intensely pleasurable and links us to other people.

01:04:07.160 When we're lonely, we try to get it any place we can and we look for it in social media and

01:04:12.420 we get none of it.

01:04:13.520 And so it's kind of like empty calories that we get again and again and again.

01:04:17.040 And if we do it, God forbid, if even we can see people, we don't because it's easier to

01:04:22.360 look at Twitter, Instagram or TikTok or something.

01:04:25.120 We're just basically walking into a vortex of loneliness.

01:04:30.360 It is easier for a lot of people, especially people who are introverted and they feel connected

01:04:34.440 when they go on there like, oh, here's this person who says nice things about my tweets

01:04:37.580 or who posts about whatever on Facebook, things that I find appealing to the detriment of the

01:04:43.420 real living world around them.

01:04:44.800 And so I think it absolutely can become a defense mechanism for people who are not as

01:04:48.660 extroverted or out there or socially adept as they'd like to be.

01:04:53.300 Absolutely.

01:04:54.000 And a lot of people do this.

01:04:55.000 They also do it when they're tired.

01:04:57.200 They do it when they're more lonely.

01:04:58.600 One of the interesting things about loneliness, there's such an epidemic of loneliness in this

01:05:02.540 country, is that it actually inhibits your ability to do the right thing.

01:05:07.240 It actually inhibits the prefrontal cortex of the brain, your executive center, for you to

01:05:12.080 make really good decisions for your own care.

01:05:14.560 So one of the things when people are really lonely, they do, they cocoon, they buy themselves

01:05:19.760 and they'll like lie on the couch and, you know, open a Haagen-Dazs and watch Netflix.

01:05:24.140 That's the worst thing to do when you're lonely.

01:05:26.160 You should call a friend, go outside, take a bike ride, talk to other people.

01:05:30.860 And the other thing that they'll, instead of talking to other people when they're feeling

01:05:34.380 lonely, they'll actually go on social media because it's much, much easier.

01:05:37.100 But that's an inhibition of your own natural ability to take care of yourself.

01:05:41.480 So one of the things that I recommend to my students, I recommend to everybody, is when

01:05:45.140 you're feeling lonely, use an opposite signal strategy.

01:05:49.440 Do the opposite of what you feel like doing at that particular moment.

01:05:52.980 If you want to cocoon, don't.

01:05:54.820 If you want to lie on the couch, exercise.

01:05:57.080 If you want to cut yourself off from other people, call your mother.

01:06:00.340 That's actually the right strategy when you feel lonely.

01:06:02.800 That's like me when I'm trying to figure out directions.

01:06:04.340 That's what I do, just because it's the opposite.

01:06:06.280 Whatever my instincts are telling me to do, do the opposite.

01:06:08.760 It works.

01:06:09.440 Well, actually, and your husband, when he wants directions, the first thing he does is he

01:06:12.800 says, I won't ask for directions.

01:06:14.720 He needs an opposite signal strategy.

01:06:16.560 Ask for directions.

01:06:18.000 Oh, my God.

01:06:18.460 I heard the funniest comedy bit once.

01:06:19.940 I can't remember who did it.

01:06:20.960 But they were talking about this difference between men and women.

01:06:24.400 And they were like, ladies, if you want your husband to give you exactly what you want

01:06:27.700 in the sack, you've got to tell him.

01:06:29.700 You've got to volunteer to your husband exactly what you want and the way you want it.

01:06:33.480 And then she was making the point, this comedian, like they won't even ask for directions to

01:06:38.260 get on the highway.

01:06:39.920 They're not going to ask for directions down south in Rio, if you know what I'm saying.

01:06:44.860 Yeah.

01:06:45.320 Yeah, that's right.

01:06:46.220 It's like, if you want to know what to do in bed, look to the GPS.

01:06:49.620 Wait, that's different.

01:06:50.400 That's like, it's the wrong metaphor.

01:06:53.140 Waze cannot help you in there.

01:06:56.100 All right.

01:06:57.100 Let's turn the page to the elderly.

01:06:59.260 And by that, I mean, you and me.

01:07:02.700 So second half.

01:07:04.640 By 50, you get your AARP card, right?

01:07:07.280 No, isn't it 55?

01:07:08.140 Remember getting your AARP card?

01:07:09.260 I thought it was 55.

01:07:10.100 Did they lower it?

01:07:11.360 It's 50.

01:07:12.180 It's 50.

01:07:12.840 I'm telling you.

01:07:13.620 I'm 57.

01:07:14.520 I feel much physical.

01:07:16.240 I'm in better physical shape than when I was 37.

01:07:18.800 The trouble is, I look in the mirror and I'm like, whoa, you know, who's that guy?

01:07:22.800 So, yeah, but, you know, but you're honest about like everyone, you know, from the sort

01:07:27.800 of mid 40s point forward is probably on like a little bit more of a decline in terms of

01:07:33.940 mental acuity, sharpness and so on than when they were 35.

01:07:37.820 And I love the example.

01:07:38.620 I mean, you bring it home when you talk about the tech industry.

01:07:40.900 I mean, that's that cap that encapsulates exactly what happens to you.

01:07:44.560 The reason why they're all so young.

01:07:47.240 Right.

01:07:48.040 No, absolutely.

01:07:48.620 Part of it is this obsession with youth, but part of it is the fact that entrepreneurial

01:07:53.060 ability, it tends to peak in your early 30s for lots of reasons.

01:07:57.800 This gets back to this whole idea.

01:07:59.320 You get two success curves and your first success curve is kind of your entrepreneurial

01:08:02.780 success curve where you're figuring out new problems faster than other people.

01:08:07.160 The second success curve is what you get in your 50s and 60s is your wisdom curve where

01:08:12.000 you can figure out what things mean.

01:08:14.180 Now, an interesting thing about the tech industry is it's dominated by young people, but it's

01:08:18.480 not dominated by wisdom.

01:08:20.600 I was giving a talk at a big tech firm in Northern California.

01:08:24.440 I mean, this is what I do for a living.

01:08:26.700 It's great.

01:08:27.380 I get to ride around in an airplane and go and talk to people.

01:08:30.640 It's the best life ever for me.

01:08:32.120 And I was giving this speech in this tech firm and they were talking about diversity in their

01:08:36.580 industry, which is really important.

01:08:37.780 They want more minorities and women who are in engineering.

01:08:39.960 I think it's super important.

01:08:41.000 I agree.

01:08:41.880 And then I said, but speaking of diversity, how many old people work here?

01:08:44.820 They're like, you mean over 30?

01:08:45.980 I said, you punk, are you kidding me?

01:08:49.120 And that's actually the problem with the tech industry in America today and all around the

01:08:53.600 world is that you don't have enough people on their second curve who are very wise, who've

01:08:58.840 been through the school of hard knocks.

01:09:00.960 This is a big problem.

01:09:02.560 And my view is one of the movements that I'm hoping to start in the coming year is an aftermarket

01:09:08.600 labor movement for over 70 executives.

01:09:11.040 The truth is, if you want to be a successful company that can innovate, but at the same

01:09:15.160 time not make stupid errors, every company is at least one over 70 executive in the C-suite.

01:09:21.840 We should be cruising for the best executives who are over 70 who can say, oh, I've seen that

01:09:27.460 20 times before.

01:09:28.300 Trust me.

01:09:28.640 If you do that, it's like putting your finger in the light socket.

01:09:31.480 Because what's going on in the tech industry, they've gone in social media, for example,

01:09:34.960 they've gone from the most admired sector in entrepreneurial America to like the least

01:09:40.200 in 15 years.

01:09:41.720 Right.

01:09:41.920 And the reason is because they've made every mistake that no over 70 person would ever make.

01:09:47.580 So fascinating.

01:09:49.060 So, I mean, a lot of people are dealing with this.

01:09:51.220 Like a lot of people are wondering, is it time to get depressed?

01:09:54.880 Right.

01:09:55.060 Like, is the best behind me or the best years of my life behind me?

01:09:58.260 And I've heard you talk about how if you ask your students at Harvard, you know, what do

01:10:01.660 you think life's going to be like in the average age is 27 in 10 years?

01:10:05.080 They say, it's great.

01:10:05.660 By 37, I have my life figured out.

01:10:07.220 At 47, what do you think?

01:10:08.200 Great.

01:10:08.520 I'm going to have money.

01:10:09.340 But what about 77?

01:10:12.340 And Arthur is pushing back on that, believe it or not.

01:10:16.260 Right.

01:10:16.700 Why he says you might actually enjoy 77, perhaps even more than you than you enjoyed 37.

01:10:22.120 That's where we're going to pick it up right after this.

01:10:23.940 Then Arthur Brooks will stay and take your calls.

01:10:27.400 It's like office hours at Harvard, but you don't have to pay for it.

01:10:30.360 You get to do it right now.

01:10:31.660 Okay, Arthur, let's talk about the back half and the difference between, I want to get

01:10:41.660 it right, fluid intelligence and crystallized intelligence.

01:10:46.260 Yeah.

01:10:46.660 So this is a real revelation.

01:10:48.700 When I started this research project, I was asking this question.

01:10:51.600 It was about eight years ago.

01:10:53.160 And, you know, I'm a trained social scientist.

01:10:55.320 I study human behavior.

01:10:56.620 But, you know, I'd really never, really never thought about what the dynamics of trying to

01:11:00.960 get happier as you get older are.

01:11:03.640 So trying to bring the best science to bear.

01:11:05.500 What I did was I went out and I looked at the happiest people who are old and who had

01:11:09.520 gotten happier as they got older and tried to see what they did.

01:11:12.320 I mean, that's a pretty normal thing to do.

01:11:14.140 I interviewed a lot of people.

01:11:15.300 I looked at a lot of data.

01:11:16.340 I read a lot of studies on it.

01:11:17.540 And I was really shocked.

01:11:18.940 One thing that I noticed that shocked me the most is that the most successful people early

01:11:23.520 on in life were not the happiest people later in life.

01:11:26.240 On the contrary, this is what I call the striver's curse.

01:11:29.740 And by this, I don't mean rich and famous people.

01:11:31.740 That's not what I mean.

01:11:32.380 I mean, people who've just tried to do a lot with their lives.

01:11:35.160 They've tried to, with a lot of merit and hard work and personal responsibility, they've

01:11:38.480 tried to get ahead.

01:11:40.160 You know, they're strivers.

01:11:41.600 And you find that these people that they, they have a lot of success in what they do.

01:11:46.000 They work hard.

01:11:46.940 They do well in their jobs, their respect in their communities, and they do better through

01:11:50.040 the twenties and thirties.

01:11:51.020 But things kind of start to slip in their forties and fifties, even though they've got all of

01:11:54.960 their mental acuity and they're even in good health.

01:11:57.620 Something's weird.

01:11:58.460 They just get less interested in their jobs.

01:12:00.000 They don't like it.

01:12:00.660 And, and a lot of them spend the rest of their lives kind of wishing for the old glories.

01:12:05.380 They kind of wait it out and they tend to be very frustrated as they get older.

01:12:08.860 What they don't know is that there's a second curve of success.

01:12:13.760 Now, the first period when you're successful in your life, in any profession, that's based

01:12:17.560 on what psychologists call fluid intelligence.

01:12:20.140 That's your analytic capacity.

01:12:22.000 That's kind of your version of your Elon Musk brain, where you invent stuff, you think of

01:12:26.680 stuff, you can work harder, you have tons of energy, but later, and it tends to actually

01:12:31.180 start going down in your late thirties and three or forties really fast.

01:12:34.140 But there's this second wind that people get called the crystallized intelligence curve.

01:12:38.860 That's their wisdom, their ability to understand why things are the way they are and their

01:12:43.900 ability to explain it to others.

01:12:45.640 So that's your Dalai Lama brain.

01:12:47.620 That's your master teacher.

01:12:49.380 Your professor brain comes around.

01:12:50.940 You don't have to become a professor.

01:12:52.540 You just have to start doing what favors that to mentor other people, to teach other people,

01:12:57.120 to create teams.

01:12:58.720 If you're a sole proprietor CEO early on, lead teams of people later on, move from Elon Musk

01:13:06.000 to the Dalai Lama, whatever that means in your life.

01:13:08.440 And if you do that, that's the first big practice of people who have actually discovered that

01:13:13.160 jump from one curve to another in terms of what they're dedicating their life to, which

01:13:17.320 by the way, is so joyful because the second curve is about love.

01:13:20.720 The second curve is about serving other people and sharing with other people and teaching other

01:13:24.660 people.

01:13:25.160 It's really the best.

01:13:26.560 And if people who learn that, they just get happier and happier and happier.

01:13:31.500 All right.

01:13:31.620 So how does that work as a practical matter?

01:13:33.760 Because I think about my own life.

01:13:35.360 I'm in a job where both of those skills, both of those curves are useful.

01:13:40.140 I mean, wisdom would certainly be useful in the current position I'm in, and I've got

01:13:43.000 some.

01:13:44.400 But the linear thinking and all that, that's sort of what got me here.

01:13:47.740 And I still feel it in abundance.

01:13:48.760 But if you're the CEO of a big corporation, or if you're at a hedge fund, you know, and

01:13:55.160 you're thinking about this, do you have to leave?

01:13:58.040 Do you have to like go into academia?

01:13:59.940 Like, can you continue doing those jobs?

01:14:02.380 Or let's take it even to, you know, like, how about people who are waiting tables or driving

01:14:07.260 trucks?

01:14:07.680 Like, how are they supposed to move into, I just dispense wisdom now?

01:14:13.020 Yeah, the first, well, the first curve is I'm going to be a star.

01:14:16.680 The second curve is I'm going to make other people stars.

01:14:20.000 That's really what it comes down to.

01:14:21.320 So if you're, let's just, you're running some sort of a financial services firm.

01:14:25.900 Early on, you're picking the stocks.

01:14:27.880 You're creating a strategy.

01:14:29.360 You have fast thinking.

01:14:30.980 You have clever ideas that nobody else can come up with.

01:14:33.760 Later on, you need to hire the hot shots, to teach them the ropes, to be the coach, to

01:14:39.260 be the mentor to them.

01:14:40.860 And in so doing, they'll be doing what they do really well.

01:14:43.480 You'll be doing what you really do really well.

01:14:45.460 But if you try to keep up with the kids, oh my goodness, that's really a frustrating

01:14:49.780 thing.

01:14:50.120 So if you look at journalism, for example, you find that journalists and, you know,

01:14:54.460 people in the media business, early on, they're really good at, you know, sussing stuff out

01:15:00.860 faster than other people, coming up with stories that other people wouldn't be able to come

01:15:04.560 up with.

01:15:05.260 Later on, they're like great teachers.

01:15:07.860 So what are you doing here in this program with me, Megan?

01:15:10.120 Now, you're still young, but you're going to get better and better and better at this.

01:15:13.540 And you're already good at it, which is that you're, you're talking to this guy who teaches

01:15:17.820 happiness at Harvard and you're molding this conversation so that all the listeners can

01:15:23.120 understand it and benefit from it.

01:15:25.240 You're the teacher.

01:15:26.040 You're the tour guide.

01:15:27.220 You're the trail boss of this, which is crystallized intelligence.

01:15:31.240 Hmm.

01:15:31.660 I like that.

01:15:32.340 Okay.

01:15:32.620 That this is helpful.

01:15:33.340 Like where this is going.

01:15:35.480 So how long can it be a boon to you?

01:15:38.500 I mean, is it true that really you could enjoy 77 more than 47?

01:15:42.860 Oh yeah.

01:15:43.480 You really find this.

01:15:44.580 And so it's quite interesting.

01:15:45.920 So people who are in crystallized intelligence professions, like historians, you got to know

01:15:51.320 a lot and be able to explain a lot of disparate ideas to people concisely.

01:15:55.680 So they'll buy your books.

01:15:56.980 David McCullough, the greatest historian and maybe in American history, 88.

01:16:01.460 You know, the thing is that what we find is historians have only done half their work

01:16:06.420 by age 65 and the better half of the second half.

01:16:09.720 So if you want to have a lot of crystallized intelligence, you got to take care of your

01:16:12.420 health because your best years can come much later and all of us control our, our skills

01:16:17.660 and our ideas.

01:16:18.440 Now you have to not be prideful because prideful people are always trying to get back their

01:16:23.720 past glories, things that they used to be good at.

01:16:26.120 It's kind of like, you know, that, that famous movie, Napoleon Dynamite that has uncle Rico,

01:16:30.720 uncle Rico, who's like pretending he's on his, the last play of the football game from high

01:16:35.120 school.

01:16:35.300 And he's like 45 years old, you know, people who are doing that you're living in the past.

01:16:39.740 You're going to be miserable.

01:16:40.980 You're actually never going to be able to, to get back those past glories.

01:16:44.580 And you're missing some of your best years, your teaching years, your coaching years, your

01:16:48.880 mentoring years, your sharing years is really what that's all about.

01:16:52.300 So what I talk about in the book, and I give step-by-step instructions in the book about how

01:16:56.060 to get on your second curve, no matter where you are.

01:16:59.340 And it's, by the way, it's never too late.

01:17:01.300 And, and the best part of all is that you can stay really high on that in your seventies

01:17:06.040 and eighties, and even your nineties, as long as you've got your marbles.

01:17:08.520 And as long as you've got the right kind of health, you can be at your most successful

01:17:13.240 and happiest at the, literally the last years of your life.

01:17:17.220 Well, hopefully, I mean, one of the things just on a basic level is that hopefully that wisdom

01:17:20.200 you're gaining has brought you to realize the folly of, of prizing these idols we talked

01:17:26.160 about earlier.

01:17:26.640 You know, that you can have all the money in the world, you can have fame, you can have

01:17:30.100 all these material things, and it doesn't make you happy.

01:17:32.800 It doesn't.

01:17:33.300 I mean, abject poverty can make you very unhappy.

01:17:35.880 I mean, I think that's true.

01:17:36.860 Not being able to pay your bills every month is a stressor that I've had.

01:17:39.620 And I know it's awful.

01:17:40.560 So having money definitely alleviates a bunch of that, but I've had all that other stuff

01:17:44.600 too, you know, and it doesn't make you happy.

01:17:46.200 It has to come from someplace else.

01:17:48.100 So hopefully you've learned that as a, as a lesson, as sort of a life, you know, plan.

01:17:53.160 But then there's about, then there's having to set out about doing it, right?

01:17:57.100 You've neglected these relationships.

01:17:58.600 You haven't built up these skills.

01:18:00.100 You've been the workaholic.

01:18:01.560 And so you look around and maybe you don't have love in your life.

01:18:04.500 Maybe you don't have a lot of friends in your life.

01:18:05.840 Maybe you don't have faith in your life.

01:18:07.280 Where to begin?

01:18:09.160 Yeah.

01:18:09.660 Well, to begin with, you begin, you have to get after it because no matter what, if you wait,

01:18:14.320 then it just takes that much longer and starting almost any place brings tremendous rewards.

01:18:18.700 By the way, you said something that reminded me that's really important that it's so wise,

01:18:22.860 what you just said that, that money doesn't bring happiness, but it can lower unhappiness.

01:18:26.200 And that's actually true.

01:18:27.760 Happiness and unhappiness are not opposites.

01:18:29.980 They're actually processed in different parts of the brain.

01:18:33.060 And one of the things that we make a mistake of thinking is that early on in your life,

01:18:36.480 when you don't have very much money and you get a little bit money, more money and you

01:18:39.360 feel better, you think, ah, money's making me happy.

01:18:41.820 Well, you get to a point, it's actually lowering your unhappiness.

01:18:45.560 You get to a point where that stops and you chase that feeling for the rest of your life,

01:18:49.600 which is why we get on this treadmill.

01:18:51.440 Why we, our brain is lying to us.

01:18:53.220 Our brain is fooling us because of our early experiences.

01:18:56.880 Now with all the things that we're talking about, remember being happy is a skill.

01:19:01.580 Being happy takes work, but there's information out there for all of us.

01:19:06.200 This is, I write books so that people can understand exactly what these things are.

01:19:09.800 And it's literally, Megan, it's changed my life.

01:19:13.360 I am remarkably happier than I was five years ago.

01:19:16.720 And the reason is because I actually ate my own cooking.

01:19:20.300 I mean, I don't just write these books.

01:19:22.780 I actually try to take my own advice and I'm finding that I'm repairing my relationships.

01:19:26.200 I'm walking my spiritual path.

01:19:28.320 I'm breaking my success addiction.

01:19:30.500 I'm firmly getting on my second curve.

01:19:32.840 I'm acknowledging my weaknesses without shame, without embarrassment.

01:19:36.520 I'm thinking about the inevitabilities, even these things that are unpleasant to me.

01:19:40.720 And I'm telling you, I've never felt this way before.

01:19:44.040 I know you write about the importance of the arts and how everybody says, oh, sure, I like the arts.

01:19:49.320 But when you actually look at the numbers, they don't go to the arts.

01:19:53.020 They don't actually take in the arts.

01:19:54.260 They may like it in theory.

01:19:55.200 Can you talk a little bit about that?

01:19:57.980 Because I do feel like, I'm just going to say it, like a cultural wasteland.

01:20:04.420 I don't remember the last time I went to a museum.

01:20:08.300 It's even hard just to read for pleasure.

01:20:10.460 I always read something that is nonfiction.

01:20:13.920 So I feel like I'm advancing my brain or my skills or my job.

01:20:16.200 And you make a strong argument that all that other stuff is important and actually does advance your job and your work and your wholeness as a human being way more than just being studious and making sure you have the latest history book.

01:20:28.740 Yeah, that's absolutely right.

01:20:29.700 You know, there's a very strong tendency to think that all of the aesthetic stuff, it's a nice to have.

01:20:34.820 And that if you want to be a good worker, you want to have your nose to the grindstone, you have to do these non-aesthetic things.

01:20:40.940 And a lot of people actually think that way and have been trained to think that way.

01:20:45.080 But that's actually not consistent with the research.

01:20:48.020 The research shows that the more we consume beauty, the actual more clearly we see the world, the more effective we are, even in our day-to-day jobs.

01:20:57.300 We need a lot of beauty in our lives.

01:20:59.540 And there's a lot of ways to get it.

01:21:01.000 There's some specific and very particular properties to music, actually.

01:21:04.940 And part of the reason for this is that we absorb music in different parts of our brain than we do the logical exercises that we undertake.

01:21:11.960 So you're reading a lot of nonfiction.

01:21:14.180 You know, I read research, tons of it.

01:21:15.780 I have to write a weekly column in The Atlantic.

01:21:17.960 I read, you know, 15 or 20 long-haired academic journal articles every week.

01:21:21.660 It's very easy for me to be like, I'm exhausted.

01:21:24.080 I don't want to read a book.

01:21:25.700 I don't want to do something, you know, that's words on the page, right?

01:21:30.220 But that could be a mistake.

01:21:31.460 Like, it's also the case that even if you are exhausted from that, there are other ways to get beauty into your life visually.

01:21:38.380 If you're going to read something, read poetry.

01:21:41.140 A lot of people haven't read poetry since they were literally, since they were in high school, and they remember really liking it, you know?

01:21:47.240 Read Shakespeare's 29th sonnet, you know, which is the most beautiful, maybe the most beautiful love poem ever written.

01:21:56.600 You know, the idea that no matter, it basically says no matter how poor, how unhappy I can possibly be by the world's events, that just thinking on thee, and then I scorn the wealth of kings.

01:22:12.180 I mean, it's just the beauty that is in ordinary life actually used in language.

01:22:15.520 Or listen to the music that you truly love, but be present when you do it, and your brain will improve, your attention will increase, and you'll find that you're actually more effective, not less effective, in the ordinary day-to-day duties.

01:22:29.620 My God, I literally am listening to podcasts in the shower.

01:22:33.100 Maybe I should turn on some music here or there.

01:22:35.680 But I love them.

01:22:36.360 I know.

01:22:37.120 It's not just to stay up on my job.

01:22:38.660 I love them.

01:22:39.220 I'm like a news junkie.

01:22:40.380 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

01:22:42.040 Well, part of it is you actually, it's clear.

01:22:44.940 I mean, one has only to watch one hour of Megyn Kelly to know that you love your job.

01:22:49.320 You actually really, really like doing what you do.

01:22:51.780 Not every day and not every way, and certainly not under all circumstances.

01:22:56.640 I mean, you've had good work situations and bad work situations like everybody, right?

01:23:00.800 And once again, everybody has to remember that no matter how well you're doing or how much notoriety you have, you still go through the slings and arrows of normal emotional ups and downs, to be sure.

01:23:09.480 But you love what you do, and that's beautiful.

01:23:11.840 It's a beautiful gift to be able to actually like your job.

01:23:15.180 And 80% of Americans, actually 89% of Americans, say they like or love their jobs.

01:23:20.220 So it's not true that everybody's going through drudgery.

01:23:23.700 Librarians love their jobs.

01:23:24.800 Bus drivers love their jobs.

01:23:26.120 My son, the Marine, loves his job.

01:23:28.060 My other son, the middle school math teacher, loves his job.

01:23:32.980 I mean, this is a very normal thing.

01:23:34.320 And even if you just like it, that's a real blessing, to be sure.

01:23:36.780 But you also need a break.

01:23:38.380 Your brain needs a break.

01:23:39.620 Your brain needs music.

01:23:40.840 Your brain needs beauty.

01:23:41.780 Your brain needs art.

01:23:42.840 And your heart needs these things as well.

01:23:44.900 That makes such perfect sense.

01:23:46.340 I'm prioritizing this today.

01:23:47.480 Was it the 29th, Shakespeare's 29th sonnet?

01:23:50.180 Was that what you said?

01:23:50.800 29th sonnet.

01:23:51.740 Yeah.

01:23:52.000 That's right.

01:23:52.780 Beautiful, beautiful.

01:23:53.680 Yeah.

01:23:53.960 I make my students read it in my happiness class.

01:23:56.380 Now, there's also the problem of, you know, for lack of a better term, having real problems

01:24:03.340 in your life, you know, whether it's a bad diagnosis or, you know, something, whatever

01:24:08.980 you suddenly you're facing bankruptcy, how to how to handle that.

01:24:14.360 And that if you don't mind, I'm going to I'm going to bring in a caller because I can

01:24:16.920 see sort of some headlines of what's on their mind.

01:24:19.860 And there's one of our listeners, Sue in Pennsylvania.

01:24:22.420 She's she's got a situation.

01:24:23.840 That's a that's a real thing may not be that easy for her to get to the happy place.

01:24:28.600 So how are you?

01:24:29.360 And what's your question for Arthur?

01:24:32.500 I guess I just wanted some advice on I am a 24 seven caregiver to my son who has severe

01:24:40.320 disabilities and there is no break.

01:24:42.480 I'm in.

01:24:43.120 I guess, you know, I try to find beauty through him.

01:24:47.960 Like, I'll take him on a walk every day and put him in the wheelchair, push him around.

01:24:52.800 But it's really hard.

01:24:55.200 And I understand trying to see beauty, but there's just no time for you.

01:25:02.100 Sue.

01:25:03.660 Yeah.

01:25:04.140 So I'm so sorry to hear that.

01:25:05.520 And I know you love your son, which is why you do this.

01:25:08.420 You're not doing this out of obligation.

01:25:09.720 You're doing this out of love.

01:25:10.840 It's an act of love, isn't it?

01:25:13.620 Yeah.

01:25:14.340 Yeah.

01:25:15.400 Absolutely.

01:25:16.340 So, Sue, do you have a do you have a strong religious faith?

01:25:20.720 I actually I lost my faith when they wouldn't give him his communion.

01:25:26.820 But up recent, I started again.

01:25:29.360 And it is helpful.

01:25:30.240 Like, I try to read every night a little bit about, you know, it's Bible related.

01:25:38.060 It's Catholic Catholicism.

01:25:39.880 But you're a Catholic.

01:25:40.380 I try.

01:25:40.980 You're a Catholic like me.

01:25:42.000 Right.

01:25:42.860 And it's hard, you know, because it's, you know, the difficulties of everyday life, they

01:25:47.500 can obscure a lot of the things that that the clergy will talk about.

01:25:52.360 And they say, well, walk a mile in my shoes, Father, walk a mile in my shoes.

01:25:55.900 I completely understand that.

01:25:57.640 But there's one important thing that's really that that that your Catholic faith and that

01:26:02.060 many religious faiths that they have in common in times of tremendous hardship, which is

01:26:07.580 that these these trials, they're not for nothing.

01:26:12.240 These trials actually have meaning.

01:26:14.040 And one of the things that that people have recommended to me and that I've seen be really

01:26:18.620 effective is to start each day.

01:26:21.460 If you're a Roman Catholic, for example, to say, I am going to I am going to join the

01:26:27.120 suffering that I see this day to the suffering of Jesus, my Savior.

01:26:33.400 And in so doing, I am going to be part of trying to lift up the whole world.

01:26:38.060 This is the cosmic significance of this.

01:26:40.200 And it's not successful every day.

01:26:42.500 But the truth of the matter, Sue, is that your suffering has meaning.

01:26:46.620 Your suffering is is truly metaphysically meaningful.

01:26:50.380 You truly are helping the world in this way.

01:26:52.980 There's so much suffering in the world.

01:26:54.640 And and you know what?

01:26:55.860 There's so many suffering people in this world and you're burying part of it.

01:26:59.640 You're doing your part for some of the suffering is that's in this world.

01:27:03.620 And that's a very, very beautiful thing.

01:27:06.540 Yeah.

01:27:06.940 Man, Sue, you're quite a woman.

01:27:08.380 Thank you for for calling in and for sharing that with us.

01:27:12.060 All the best.

01:27:12.840 I think I will both say a prayer for you and your son.

01:27:16.040 Thank you.

01:27:16.680 Thank you for what you're doing.

01:27:17.800 And we'll pray for you and we'll pray for your son.

01:27:20.280 What about it, Arthur?

01:27:21.420 So, you know, you get a bad diagnosis, right?

01:27:23.500 Like something like that, like you're going to be facing a period of unhappiness in all

01:27:28.760 likelihood.

01:27:29.580 So do these techniques work in those situations or is it basically just a matter of raising

01:27:34.860 the floor of your overall happiness so that when disaster strikes, you're just better

01:27:38.540 able to cope.

01:27:40.800 You're going to it's just one of the things people ask me to say.

01:27:44.040 I always talk about the meaning behind suffering.

01:27:45.760 People say, oh, I should go suffer.

01:27:46.960 Right.

01:27:47.140 No, no, no.

01:27:47.800 Trust me.

01:27:48.440 Suffering will find you.

01:27:49.960 Yes.

01:27:50.360 Because it does find us.

01:27:51.840 Some people suffer more than others, to be sure.

01:27:53.840 But every life has suffering.

01:27:55.560 And the mistake is actually trying desperately at all costs to avoid it.

01:27:59.340 Because by the time it does find you, inevitably, it will be that much worse because you'll have

01:28:02.840 no resiliency.

01:28:04.580 You'll have no strength to actually deal with the suffering.

01:28:07.520 To begin with, we have to give ourselves permission to suffer, to say, look, this isn't

01:28:13.060 this diagnosis.

01:28:14.260 The doctor said, I just got your test results.

01:28:16.120 You need to come into my office.

01:28:18.000 You're going to suffer from this.

01:28:19.520 It's perfectly normal.

01:28:21.040 And give yourself permission to do so.

01:28:22.520 You don't have to go home whistling a happy tune.

01:28:25.100 You're not made of stone.

01:28:26.360 That's a perfectly normal thing.

01:28:28.540 But then to start asking yourself this, what am I going to learn from this?

01:28:32.240 I talk to young people a lot.

01:28:34.080 And they don't get a terminal cancer diagnosis.

01:28:36.480 And they're not the permanent caregiver for somebody like Sue.

01:28:39.460 But they do suffer.

01:28:40.900 And a lot of it is because they'll have a misbegotten romantic relationship.

01:28:44.560 And they'll have their hearts broken.

01:28:46.000 I mean, this is a very, very common thing.

01:28:48.480 And one of the things that I recommend is that we keep kind of a journal of our sufferings.

01:28:55.220 We keep kind of a journal of the pain that we feel in our lives.

01:28:58.500 And we write down actually how we're feeling.

01:29:01.320 In so doing, we actually can manage it much, much better.

01:29:04.760 But more importantly, with a little bit of distance from it, after time, we can then write,

01:29:09.280 what did I learn from this?

01:29:10.860 What did I learn from this suffering?

01:29:12.520 What am I learning from this pain?

01:29:15.140 And at that remove, you find that as your life progresses, you look back in your journal

01:29:19.760 and you say, when that thing happened, I learned this.

01:29:23.040 And I'm benefiting from it right now.

01:29:24.860 And you know what?

01:29:25.500 I'm going to be learning something from this experience as well.

01:29:27.860 A very close friend of mine who was diagnosed with terminal cancer really taught this to

01:29:32.480 me.

01:29:32.900 And he lived past his diagnosis, but the doctor said, there's a wolf at the door.

01:29:38.020 Sooner or later, he's going to get in.

01:29:39.180 And he did get in.

01:29:40.760 The wolf did get in.

01:29:41.680 He did pass away from this after a certain point.

01:29:44.040 But he lived every year of the rest of his life remembering that this suffering that he

01:29:50.480 had and the fear that he had, it actually had meaning for him.

01:29:53.600 He savored every minute more as a result of it.

01:29:57.900 I know you write in the book that you ask your students, how many Thanksgivings do you

01:30:01.260 have left?

01:30:02.580 And I was like, and for me, but I ask myself that, not that.

01:30:07.280 I always say how many autumns left because fall is so beautiful with the change of colors

01:30:10.880 in the Northeast.

01:30:11.540 I've always grown up loving it.

01:30:13.300 And it is a good way to reset, right?

01:30:16.940 Am I doing the things I want to be doing?

01:30:19.720 Am I going to be okay if I get bad news with how I've chosen to live my life so far?

01:30:26.220 Yeah, for sure.

01:30:27.300 For sure.

01:30:27.740 I mean, the Thanksgiving question, the reason that I put that in the book is because it's

01:30:32.680 very important to focus on the time that we have left so that we can use the time that

01:30:36.600 we have left.

01:30:37.940 And it's not as many as, I mean, it's not infinite.

01:30:42.120 And so never act as if your life is infinite.

01:30:45.040 You know, never act as if your day is infinite for that matter.

01:30:48.020 And that doesn't mean you need to fill every nook and cranny with work.

01:30:50.500 You need to fill every nook and cranny with consciousness, with a sense that there is meaning

01:30:56.220 and we should be doing things that have meaning.

01:30:58.840 And it's interesting, you know, when I think about it, I wrote that down because, you know,

01:31:01.980 if I live like my parents did, I'm 57, my number is probably nine, nine, Megan.

01:31:10.980 That's not very many, is it?

01:31:12.340 Right?

01:31:13.040 I better enjoy these Thanksgivings.

01:31:15.780 And you will.

01:31:17.140 And I hope our audience will enjoy theirs and make sure of it, right?

01:31:21.600 By buying the book, by giving some thought to it, by prioritizing this, right?

01:31:26.900 The happiness is achievable.

01:31:28.340 It's not an attitude.

01:31:29.200 It's a sum of your life choices and you can make better ones starting now.

01:31:35.800 Arthur, so interesting.

01:31:37.140 My gosh.

01:31:37.820 I mean, I think AEI, think tank, head of it.

01:31:40.520 I'm thinking like, you know, conservative talking head.

01:31:42.880 So, so much more than that.

01:31:44.820 And we didn't even touch politics today.

01:31:46.800 I'm so glad you changed your career path in the way you did and love talking to you.

01:31:51.380 Good luck with all of it.

01:31:52.360 Thank you, Megan.

01:31:52.960 Thank you for this beautiful show.

01:31:54.260 And thank you for the service you're providing to me and millions of other people.

01:31:57.660 Oh, God bless.

01:31:58.540 I'll see you at Sunday, Mass.

01:31:59.920 The book is called From Strength to Strength, Finding Success, Happiness and Deep Purpose

01:32:04.780 in the Second Half of Life.

01:32:07.980 Go get it right now.

01:32:08.900 BNN.com.

01:32:09.860 I want to create discussion.

01:32:10.760 Don't you love Arthur?

01:32:11.740 He's so insightful.

01:32:13.020 And tomorrow we have more insight coming your way.

01:32:15.840 Thanks to the guys from The Ruthless Podcast who are back with us.

01:32:19.840 We have a lot to talk about with them.

01:32:21.040 Did you see the news?

01:32:21.720 The update on the CNN, Jeff Zucker, Alison Golis thing.

01:32:24.420 I predicted she would be gone.

01:32:27.020 And within two weeks, yeah, she's gone now, too, with The New York Times dropping a bombshell

01:32:30.320 last night.

01:32:31.480 Some more information.

01:32:32.500 We'll get to it all.

01:32:33.520 That and everything.

01:32:34.900 And in the meantime, download the show.

01:32:36.360 Follow us on YouTube.

01:32:37.440 And we'll talk tomorrow.

01:32:40.900 Thanks for listening to The Megyn Kelly Show.

01:32:42.780 No BS, no agenda, and no fear.

The Megyn Kelly Show - February 16, 2022

The Keys to Happiness, Embracing Weakness, and the Importance of Friendship, with Arthur Brooks ｜ Ep. 263

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