This Past Weekend with Theo Von - #695 - Happiness Expert Dr. Arthur Brooks

00:00:00.000 Today's guest is an author and a social scientist.

00:00:03.460 He's a professor at Vanderbilt and a senior fellow at the Harvard Business School, known

00:00:09.380 for his popular class, Leadership and Happiness.

00:00:12.880 He's here discussing his new book, The Meaning of Your Life, which is available now.

00:00:18.740 I had a great time with today's guest, Dr. Arthur Brooks.

00:00:30.000 Well, the whole idea of Jesus carrying the cross, that has this incredible imagery,

00:00:43.260 that idea that each one of us has to take up our cross and carry it. I mean, you woke up heavy

00:00:47.320 today. You were carrying your cross. And that has meaning. And the whole modern therapeutic

00:00:53.920 culture says, Theo, you got to get rid of that feeling. That's a pathology. No, it's not. It's

00:00:57.920 an opportunity. That's what that is. That means something. And then we can actually kind of get

00:01:02.520 to the deep meaning of what that is. That can actually help you learn and grow. Amen. And to

00:01:07.160 say, man, there's suffering today. Okay, bring it on. Put me in coach. Right. Right. Arthur C. Brooks,

00:01:15.460 thank you so much for joining us. I know that you are an author, a social scientist,

00:01:20.940 and a professor. Is that fair to say? That's right. And I've been teaching the last seven

00:01:25.360 years full-time at harvard and i just i just switched down to vanderbilt here in nashville

00:01:29.220 tennessee where we're taping this today nice welcome yeah thank you you have a new book uh

00:01:33.780 the meaning of your life finding purpose in an age of emptiness um and one thing that i even

00:01:40.200 just loved about the title is it's the meaning of your life right it's not like this this huge

00:01:46.320 thing of like oh the meaning of life yeah everybody has the same meaning to life and i'm gonna lay it

00:01:50.360 you no right i want to lead you to find the meaning of your life right yeah i'm a trail boss

00:01:56.200 i'm a sherpa in this book and it's basically the brain science and behavioral science that shows

00:02:00.680 that all of us when we use our brains right and we stop doing a bunch of dumb things and we start

00:02:06.360 doing a bunch of old things old-fashioned things that that we can find the meaning of our lives

00:02:12.040 and i'm not gonna tell you what it is because i don't know i mean some days i don't know what the

00:02:14.760 the meaning of my life is yeah i mean i'm on this journey myself because i'm like beaten up and

00:02:20.140 suffering too yeah right amen bro yeah yeah even today it was just like man i was like praying

00:02:26.820 right before i like probably 11 minutes ago i was praying i was just like what were you praying

00:02:30.360 i was just like god just let me have some confidence in myself yeah you know let me

00:02:34.520 have some peace today yeah um let me not feel this pressure uh that i everything has to be perfect

00:02:42.140 and that this person that I don't know what I'm doing, you know?

00:02:48.360 You know, it's funny because-

00:02:49.840 So a little more agency.

00:02:50.920 I think I was just looking for a little bit more real agency

00:02:53.140 and not just like a frenetic energy.

00:02:56.100 Like, you know, I'm going to have another coffee and I'll be ready.

00:02:58.900 Yeah, and I'll be all set.

00:02:59.860 Yeah.

00:03:00.200 But there's, you know, whatever, two, three million people,

00:03:02.460 whoever who watched this episode of the show,

00:03:04.280 the assumption is, and this is a huge thing for them to understand,

00:03:07.500 they think if I had Theo Vaughn's life, it would be so awesome

00:03:11.020 and everything would be good.

00:03:12.680 That's a lie.

00:03:13.660 That isn't true.

00:03:14.540 That's not how life works at all.

00:03:16.480 You know, it's like we say in my business,

00:03:18.800 woe be to the man whose dreams come true

00:03:21.440 and he finds he had the wrong dreams.

00:03:24.820 Because you always have the wrong dreams.

00:03:26.760 You know, you always think if I hit the lottery,

00:03:28.600 but we know people who hit the lottery,

00:03:29.940 they wind up miserable.

00:03:32.540 It's a huge problem.

00:03:33.820 I mean, in people who,

00:03:35.280 where their worldly dreams come true,

00:03:36.640 it's a big burden.

00:03:38.040 It's a big problem.

00:03:39.240 The stakes get higher.

00:03:40.240 And then the guy was like, I'm not going to hit the lottery.

00:03:42.700 I'm not going to be CEO.

00:03:43.600 I'm not going to be a billionaire.

00:03:44.620 Okay, whatever.

00:03:45.740 I guess I'll just go to the park and play with my kid.

00:03:49.180 He hit the lottery.

00:03:50.280 He won.

00:03:50.980 He won.

00:03:51.620 He won.

00:03:52.440 And then you got to figure, okay, all right, well, the die is cast.

00:03:56.500 Theo Vaughn is Theo Vaughn.

00:03:57.380 Arthur Brooks is Arthur Brooks.

00:03:58.440 Good.

00:03:59.220 So what are we going to do with it?

00:04:00.340 What are we going to do with it?

00:04:01.060 And the only thing that we can do on the day that's heavy is go love somebody else,

00:04:05.640 is to go serve somebody else.

00:04:07.480 That's all there is.

00:04:09.200 Amen, man.

00:04:09.720 And yeah, even when you came in and you just asked me what was going on, like genuinely, man, I just appreciated that, you know?

00:04:14.840 Sometimes it's what I need.

00:04:15.900 Like last time I was even calling my brother, like, and he was busy with his kids, but I just wanted to have a moment where he, like, you know, just, like, told me everything was going to be okay.

00:04:24.100 You know, this funny thing, there's this Catholic saint from the year 13-something.

00:04:30.320 She's the first woman ever published in English.

00:04:33.080 Her name is St. Julianna of Norwich, and that, like, there's a—

00:04:35.720 St. Julianna of Norwich?

00:04:36.840 Of Norwich in Great Britain.

00:04:38.920 And these troops, these enemies were closing in, and it was a huge thing.

00:04:44.280 And she wrote in her journal, all will be well, and all will be well, and all manner of things shall be well.

00:04:51.740 You got to have faith, right?

00:04:53.720 And you got to offer up the suffering.

00:04:55.800 You have to say, I'm going to love somebody right now, and then all will be well.

00:05:00.060 What does it mean for it to be well?

00:05:01.500 That I won't actually have any discomfort or suffering or heaviness anymore?

00:05:04.380 No, because that's your lot, man.

00:05:06.040 I mean, there's suffering in your life.

00:05:08.920 Yeah, and there's suffering everywhere.

00:05:10.360 And there's so much, there's a ton of suffering

00:05:12.200 and a lot of that is part of life.

00:05:15.200 It is, and it's actually weird

00:05:16.900 because that's one of the things I study

00:05:18.720 is that people who have a lot of suffering,

00:05:21.640 they have a lot of meaning too.

00:05:23.940 They have a deep sense of life's meaning.

00:05:26.920 You get like 90 years to figure out

00:05:29.180 how to live with your suffering.

00:05:31.320 If you're lucky.

00:05:33.360 Oh, that's so interesting, man.

00:05:36.120 Yeah, it's interesting

00:05:38.760 that um that your book came into my life at this moment you know um a lot of times i've had a fear

00:05:46.860 of missing out recently like i have a lot of fomo but even more so it's become a fear of missing out

00:05:52.740 on myself you know it's not like i keep thinking i'm missing this game that i'm seeing or i'm

00:05:59.220 missing these people doing this and there's some of that but it's there's this deeper thing that

00:06:04.100 feels to me sometimes like, man, I'm missing out on some opportunity of me or something deeper.

00:06:13.040 There's something deeper and you can't get it. You can't quite get it. Right. And I can't quite,

00:06:16.660 you can't focus in on it. You don't, it's like, what is it? And then you're distracted and then

00:06:20.300 it goes away and it's like, oh, I missed it again. Yeah. Another day won't by. Yeah. That feeling.

00:06:24.580 Yes. And so what made you write this book now? So I teach classes on the science of happiness.

00:06:31.080 So the past seven years, I've been full-time teaching a class on the science of happiness

00:06:34.540 at Harvard, and it's super popular.

00:06:36.880 It's like the most popular elective at the Harvard Business School.

00:06:39.360 So I have hundreds of people on the waiting list for this thing because they want to be

00:06:42.340 happier.

00:06:42.780 They know how to make money, but they know how to be successful.

00:06:46.060 But they don't know that the ultimate startup is your life, that you're the CEO of the enterprise

00:06:51.360 of you incorporated, and you're responsible for it.

00:06:54.040 And that means taking risks where you should in return for explosive rewards.

00:06:59.040 But how are they denominated? 0.99

00:07:00.480 Not money or power or pleasure or fame or Instagram followers, anything stupid. 0.68

00:07:05.200 No, it's love and happiness.

00:07:07.740 And people don't know how to get that.

00:07:08.960 So I've been talking about that.

00:07:10.240 So scientifically, happiness isn't a feeling at all.

00:07:13.380 Feelings are evidence of happiness.

00:07:15.220 Kind of like the smell of the turkey is evidence of your Thanksgiving dinner.

00:07:18.520 Okay, so the smell of the turkey is evidence of the Thanksgiving dinner.

00:07:22.580 That's right.

00:07:22.960 And your feelings of happiness are evidence of happiness.

00:07:25.720 Okay.

00:07:26.040 So don't ever go for feelings.

00:07:27.540 big mistake that everybody makes

00:07:29.100 in trying to find something big in their lives.

00:07:30.640 It's like, I want that feeling.

00:07:31.760 I hope I feel happier tomorrow.

00:07:33.100 Big mistake.

00:07:34.440 Your feelings lie all,

00:07:36.480 when you woke up this morning and you didn't,

00:07:38.180 I woke up this morning, I felt bad too.

00:07:40.200 And you're like, is God here?

00:07:44.840 And, you know, okay, get it back.

00:07:47.220 If I actually said, okay, my feelings are authentic,

00:07:50.180 I would have really questioned a lot of things in my life,

00:07:52.800 but my feelings are the activity,

00:07:54.800 or biochemical activity in my brain,

00:07:58.140 in the limbic system of my brain.

00:07:59.680 It's a bunch of signals saying

00:08:01.840 that there's threats and opportunities.

00:08:03.140 That's all emotions are.

00:08:04.540 And they lie constantly.

00:08:06.100 They lie constantly?

00:08:07.600 Constantly.

00:08:08.160 Your feelings are not to be trusted.

00:08:10.120 Now, they're worth listening to,

00:08:11.820 but don't trust them as the authentic truth. 1.00

00:08:13.780 The problem with a lot of young people today

00:08:14.920 is a lot of young adults today

00:08:15.940 are told that the only thing authentic about them

00:08:18.260 are their feelings,

00:08:19.000 which is why all that safe spaces

00:08:20.860 and I'm offended

00:08:22.780 and all that nonsense,

00:08:25.060 that's based on the feelings-based culture, 0.88

00:08:26.920 which is a culture of lies.

00:08:28.320 That's what it comes down to.

00:08:29.780 And so what do we want to look for

00:08:31.380 if it's not feelings?

00:08:32.140 We want to look for something that's really tangible.

00:08:33.960 Sort of the macros when you're trying to eat, right?

00:08:36.340 Protein, carbohydrates, and fat.

00:08:38.200 That's food.

00:08:39.760 Happiness has three macronutrients.

00:08:41.980 The things that we really got to go for

00:08:43.600 are enjoyment to enjoy our lives.

00:08:45.700 Not the same thing as pleasure.

00:08:47.040 I've made that mistake.

00:08:48.500 There's a reason I drink zero alcohol today

00:08:50.860 is because I made the mistake of confusing pleasure and enjoyment.

00:08:54.200 Yeah, I've done that a lot.

00:08:55.060 Yeah, for sure.

00:08:55.880 I mean, anybody who's been addicted, they know exactly what that's all about.

00:08:59.580 Pleasure is not the road to happiness.

00:09:01.180 Pleasure is the road to rehab.

00:09:02.840 Now, there's nothing wrong with pleasure, but it's incomplete.

00:09:06.460 You've got to add people and memory to it so you can manage your pleasures

00:09:09.840 and they don't manage you.

00:09:10.900 That's enjoyment.

00:09:12.240 The second macronutrient is satisfaction,

00:09:15.180 and that's the joy of an accomplishment with struggle.

00:09:17.880 Okay, so the first one is?

00:09:19.200 Enjoyment.

00:09:19.680 Enjoyment?

00:09:20.100 Not pleasure, enjoyment.

00:09:21.160 Not pleasure, enjoyment.

00:09:22.220 And the difference between those two one more time?

00:09:23.740 Is pleasure plus people plus memory equals enjoyment.

00:09:27.140 Okay.

00:09:27.400 So it's got to be conscious and memorable.

00:09:29.660 So that's why when you're doing something really pleasurable

00:09:32.300 and you're doing it alone, you're probably doing it wrong.

00:09:34.560 Got it.

00:09:35.080 That's why people are so critically important.

00:09:37.100 You almost never really enjoy, if it's not addictive,

00:09:39.660 like walking in the woods or saying your prayers, good.

00:09:42.700 But anything that actually is pleasurable,

00:09:44.480 like what you eat, what you look at, what you use,

00:09:48.060 if you're, that's the reason that, you know, that a beer company doesn't do an ad, uh, you know,

00:09:53.740 a beer ad for a dude alone in his apartment, pounding a 12 pack. It's like, that doesn't

00:09:58.880 look good in the ad. And the reason is because it's pleasure, not enjoyment. They show the guy

00:10:03.680 with his buddies, right? Because it's pleasure, it's beer, plus people he loves, plus memories

00:10:09.380 that they're making together. That's enjoyment. Got it. That's the recipe. So the first one is

00:10:13.280 enjoyment, right? And you'll get enjoyment if you include other people. Yeah. And making a memory.

00:10:17.940 So it's really conscious.

00:10:19.180 Got it.

00:10:19.480 So that you can, you can, enjoyment is permanent.

00:10:21.880 And when you remember it as permanent, you know, it's like when I, when I was a kid,

00:10:25.740 you know, my mom was a good cook and, and we had Thanksgiving at our house every year,

00:10:29.260 just like all of us did.

00:10:30.220 Right.

00:10:30.540 You probably did too.

00:10:31.460 And every year we'd open up the oven and it'd be a beautiful turkey.

00:10:35.080 My dad was like, get the camera.

00:10:36.900 And we would take a, it's like, we have 30 turkeys in the same oven and we don't even,

00:10:41.080 but the whole point was he was trying to make it memorable.

00:10:43.420 And that's what Thanksgiving dinner was all about.

00:10:45.360 That's your life.

00:10:46.040 so it's like yeah yeah there's going to be pleasure but if you start doing something for

00:10:50.220 pleasure and you take it away from people and memories you're going to be an addict right so

00:10:55.260 if you're just sitting in your apartment just playing with your turkey or whatever yeah exactly

00:10:58.640 right or if you're sitting in your apartment all alone you're isolated and you're gaming

00:11:02.720 right or or you're looking at pornography because nobody looks at pornography with a bunch of

00:11:07.660 friends yeah you know all these things are so bad right you know that's the reason they're so bad

00:11:12.440 because they take pleasure away from it

00:11:14.400 and they make them not part of enjoyment,

00:11:16.000 which means they lead to addiction, not to happiness.

00:11:18.340 But we feel like that's not the truth, right?

00:11:20.740 Yeah, because your brain, your ancient brain,

00:11:23.000 which is the same as it was 250,000 years ago, lies to you.

00:11:26.560 And all your brain cares about

00:11:27.940 is you actually getting these rewards

00:11:29.800 that will make you more likely to get mates,

00:11:32.060 more likely to get calories, more likely to survive. 1.00

00:11:34.660 Mother Nature, she doesn't care if you're happy. 1.00

00:11:37.300 She doesn't care at all. 1.00

00:11:38.100 And so she'll lie to you 1.00

00:11:39.460 and make you follow your animal impulses.

00:11:42.060 Got it.

00:11:42.200 And so all the stuff that we're really good at today, you know, opiates, alcohol, or pornography, all it is is a way to supercharge the impulses, the animal impulses that we naturally have.

00:11:53.840 So it's kind of a hijacking of those.

00:11:55.440 Completely.

00:11:55.920 Right.

00:11:56.160 And there's a much more dense and meaningful way to get those.

00:12:00.040 Yes, for sure.

00:12:00.880 And the way to get that such that it's deeply fulfilling but not addictive is to make sure that you're getting, you know, the experience the way that it was intended.

00:12:10.640 So don't like refine it.

00:12:12.720 I mean, we have natural endorphins in our brain

00:12:14.960 so that when we get injured,

00:12:16.080 we're actually able to function

00:12:17.220 and run away from the predator

00:12:18.580 and not be completely debilitated by the pain.

00:12:20.680 That's what endorphins are for.

00:12:22.260 Well, when we figure out chemically

00:12:23.860 what they're all about in the brain

00:12:24.980 and then we refine them and produce them,

00:12:27.000 they turn into fentanyl.

00:12:28.600 I mean, that's what heroin is.

00:12:30.740 That's what opiates are.

00:12:32.880 Pornography, it shears off the physical aspect 1.00

00:12:36.980 of a sexual relationship between people who are in love

00:12:39.420 and it, all it does is it just preserves that particular part is the fentanyl. It's fentanyl

00:12:44.380 for sex. Right. And that's the reason it's like wiener fentanyl or whatever. It's just super 0.89

00:12:49.160 addictive. Yeah. It's a, it's supposed to be addictive. Right. So they're just high. So a

00:12:53.380 lot of that is the hijacking of just a simple moment to kind of trick your system. That's

00:12:58.180 right. And so if you make it social and memorable, you'll go to the real thing. Got it. Right. That's

00:13:02.580 what it comes down to. Then it's enjoyment. And that enjoyment is a beautiful part of life.

00:13:06.180 that's a beautiful part of life but any of us who've actually really really struggled with

00:13:10.620 addictive behavior it's because we got that wrong got it right and some people are genetically more

00:13:15.740 more prone to that than other people did you have alcoholism in your family yeah we got it

00:13:20.020 yeah so do we yeah it's a brooks disease is it yeah for sure yeah

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00:17:37.160 What's the second macronutrient of happiness? Satisfaction. Now, satisfaction is the joy

00:17:43.660 you get from an accomplishment with struggle. And this is super weird because only homo sapiens

00:17:48.820 want to suffer. We want to suffer for our accomplishments because that's how we know

00:17:52.860 what they're worth. Okay. So only homo sapiens want to suffer. Yeah. My dog doesn't want to

00:17:56.900 struggle for his rewards. He'd eat lying down, right? They want the easiest path to absolutely

00:18:02.580 everything because they don't have moral aspirations. But you and I, we don't know

00:18:07.740 if something is actually worthwhile unless we gave something up for it. And that's why struggle

00:18:11.960 is so critically important. And that's why we teach our kids, good things come to those who

00:18:15.580 wait. Defer your gratifications. Don't eat before dinner. Study really, really hard even though

00:18:21.620 you're not going to like it so you can get good grades because then you learn this lesson that

00:18:25.460 things are, that the reward is way sweeter. The accomplishment is meaningful to you when you've

00:18:30.760 actually struggled for it. And that's one of the biggest problems that we have today is we're

00:18:33.800 teaching people that struggle and sacrifice is stupid. That all that does is it ruins the sense 0.99

00:18:39.560 of accomplishment that people got. Where are we teaching that at or where are you seeing a lot of

00:18:43.780 this being taught? I see this taught with a sort of the immediate gratification that comes around

00:18:47.840 from tech and social media for sure. But also in the therapeutic, the therapeutic industrial culture

00:18:53.120 that we've got that says that if you're suffering from something, it's evidence that there's a

00:18:56.640 pathology. That's wrong. I mean, I teach my students, it's like, you're studying at Harvard.

00:19:00.540 If you're not depressed and anxious, you need therapy. It's hard, and you're doing a hard

00:19:04.960 thing on purpose. Of course, you're suffering. Good. I mean, I don't go to the gym, and you don't

00:19:09.000 go to the gym going, this is going to feel so good. No, it's going to hurt. That's kind of the

00:19:13.860 point. But life is a gym. You put yourself in front of hard things, and you're going to suffer

00:19:20.300 for those hard things because you want the sweetness that comes as a reward for what

00:19:24.320 you get in, in, in, in return for the struggle is what it comes down to.

00:19:28.160 Yeah. Yeah. It feels like sometime, some point along the way, we forgot the value of the

00:19:33.540 squeeze is what makes us love the juice.

00:19:37.340 Totally. And that's absolutely the case. It's so funny that we actually, we, we, we fail

00:19:42.640 to realize this kind of thing, but in, in, in a culture of immediate gratification, we're

00:19:47.440 not going to have any struggling. And so we start to lose the reps. We start to lose the ability.

00:19:52.740 We get in kind of a doom loop where I don't suffer. And so I'm no longer able to suffer.

00:19:57.960 And so I try less to suffer. And what happens is I get less and less and less and less satisfaction

00:20:02.020 from life. Life is just like, yeah, whatever. Why should I even try? And you find that people

00:20:07.700 are just like not striving in the same way that they would have before because they can actually

00:20:12.040 get a payoff without any struggle and they don't want the struggle naturally. But that's the wrong

00:20:16.100 approach. It's funny because, again, the animal impulses lie. The animal impulses lie. Mother

00:20:21.100 nature lies all the time. And she says the easy path is the best path because 250,000 years ago,

00:20:27.320 all of humanity lived in bands of hunter-gatherers of 30 to 50 individuals. And if you could actually

00:20:33.280 sit down and not work, better, because you're saving your energy. If you could get more calories,

00:20:38.460 get them, right, under all circumstances. But that's not the case today. And so the result is

00:20:43.360 we actually have to put friction back into our lives

00:20:45.700 and not listen to Mother Nature who says,

00:20:47.980 take the easy path.

00:20:48.760 Don't take the easy path.

00:20:49.780 Take the hard path.

00:20:50.680 And this is one of the things that we find.

00:20:52.180 I talk to a lot of young men.

00:20:53.460 I mean, I get tons of unsolicited email from young guys.

00:20:57.540 I just graduated from college.

00:20:59.040 I got nothing to do.

00:21:00.740 I'm living with my mom.

00:21:02.020 I'm having a hard time finding a job

00:21:03.380 or even looking for a job.

00:21:04.840 I'm smoking a lot of weed.

00:21:06.640 I'm gaming all the time.

00:21:08.480 You know, what do I do?

00:21:09.540 And my answer is always go do a hard thing.

00:21:12.860 You know, even if it's a hard thing,

00:21:13.940 it's like get up before dawn every day for the next month.

00:21:17.360 Your life will change.

00:21:18.280 I mean, if the sun is up every day,

00:21:20.100 when you get up, you've lost the first battle, right?

00:21:22.680 And there's a whole bunch of neuroscience on this too.

00:21:25.080 It talks about productivity and focus and happiness.

00:21:27.420 The Indians call that the Brahma Muhurta,

00:21:30.080 which in Sanskrit means the creator's time.

00:21:33.000 Brahma Muhurta?

00:21:34.040 B-R-A-H-M-A-M-U-H-U-R-T-A, Brahma Muhurta.

00:21:41.240 Bring that up and keep that other page open for me.

00:21:43.180 I do want to read that really fast.

00:21:44.520 There you go.

00:21:45.200 The time of Brahma or the creator's time.

00:21:48.140 It's the sacred pre-dawn window in Vedic tradition in Ayurveda.

00:21:51.860 Yeah.

00:21:52.440 And I learned this.

00:21:53.440 I go to India a lot.

00:21:54.840 But when I go to India, I have Hindu teachers in the south of India.

00:21:58.340 I've also worked for the last 13 years with the Dalai Lama, which has been really, really

00:22:02.440 helpful for me.

00:22:03.380 But the result of it is I've been able to incorporate a lot of that Vedic physics, all

00:22:07.400 that, you know, ancient Indian wisdom into my own work as a scientist in the West, as a Catholic,

00:22:12.360 maybe a better Catholic. That's fascinating. And I find that so many of the faiths overlap in a lot

00:22:20.280 of ways with some of the core principles. Many of the same core principles, many differences,

00:22:25.900 of course. And not so much in some of their lore and truths to the faiths themselves, but in the

00:22:32.420 principles. For sure. And a lot of the things, you know, the intense love for the divine,

00:22:36.420 the search for life's deepest meaning and different ways to actually do that. I've learned

00:22:40.740 a tremendous amount about my own prayer life by actually sitting in meditation with the Tibetan

00:22:45.880 Buddhist monks, even though I'm not a Buddhist. I'm not a, no, I'm not a, and the Dalai Lama is

00:22:50.220 not a Catholic, but we've shared these ideas with each other an awful lot. And he's a man of great

00:22:55.220 wisdom and love and compassion. And it's made me, I think it's made me a better Christian man.

00:23:00.300 Amen. Yeah.

00:23:01.480 Well, even when Bishop Barron was on,

00:23:05.060 he was talking about how he would sit in front of this statue in the morning

00:23:08.820 and just repeat a mantra for a long time.

00:23:10.760 Right.

00:23:11.060 I remember how long.

00:23:11.620 That's his holy hour.

00:23:12.520 Right.

00:23:12.860 Which is what the Indians call the Brahma Mukhurta.

00:23:15.580 Oh, I didn't even know exactly that it brings us back to that.

00:23:17.700 Yeah.

00:23:18.440 But when he was saying that, I was like, oh, well, that's just meditation, right?

00:23:22.800 It's like creating a pattern within yourself.

00:23:25.420 It's a lot of so much is action, right?

00:23:27.520 It's like when I'm sitting sedentary and when I'm just scrolling on my phone,

00:23:31.020 when I'm just doing things that are sedentary,

00:23:32.560 I'm just stuck in my thoughts, it's not action.

00:23:35.280 And action, when I can put action with something,

00:23:39.740 I don't know, it creates a lot more meaning.

00:23:41.620 I'm noticing for me in my own life,

00:23:42.840 even that's why I notice in my gratitude list,

00:23:45.080 it's like, well, let me create even a visual action with it.

00:23:48.380 If I am sitting here kind of in a meditative state

00:23:50.680 and writing out things I'm grateful for,

00:23:52.880 like if I'm thinking, oh, I'm so grateful for my sister,

00:23:55.660 then I will think of things, of active moments

00:23:58.680 where I've seen her smile or seen her like laugh or joke she tells. So it's just like,

00:24:03.880 even if I'm just remembering actions or attaching actions to thoughts, it just helps make things

00:24:11.100 more real. For sure. Look, I mean, it's like an unsupervised mind is a dangerous business,

00:24:16.740 right? And the whole thing about actually disciplining the mind first thing in the

00:24:20.780 morning comes a lot along with disciplining the body. That's why I recommend to all of my students

00:24:26.200 that have morning protocols and doing something that you know is going to set yourself up for

00:24:31.540 success. Because I wake up and unsupervised, I'm like, I'm all alone. You know that feeling

00:24:37.840 where you wake up and you're like, it's real dark. It's in here.

00:24:42.060 Oh, yeah. I feel like a missing person.

00:24:43.780 You feel like you've been in deep space all night long and that there's a profound

00:24:51.400 aloneness to it, right? Well, if I don't create a little bit of structure and create some points

00:24:56.960 of structure, then it's just one big whatever. It's a sunrise and sunset of whatever.

00:25:07.180 That's exactly right. That's exactly right. You have to put together the architecture

00:25:10.880 to be the person that you want to be. Right. A lot of my life is filled with a lot of

00:25:16.460 stimulation though, where it's like things look fun. You get to go do all these fun things and

00:25:20.120 it is fun, but it's like, um, it's distraction. It's a lot of it is distraction, even though it's

00:25:25.480 great. Um, it is distraction in the end from, um, just my relationship with me and, and, and maybe

00:25:32.360 what more do I want for myself? Um, like in a human sense or I don't know, it's just, yeah,

00:25:38.180 it's a distraction, uh, from my relationship with myself and, and what things might be very

00:25:45.080 important to me that I'm putting on the side, uh, just because, um, I'm, cause it's, some things

00:25:50.840 are fun. Um, I want to read what the, uh, can you bring that up with the, um, the Veda, the bar,

00:25:57.420 do you say it? The Brahma Mahorta? Yeah. Um, Brahma Mahorta, uh, is a sacred pre-dawn period

00:26:06.500 in Vedic tradition and Ayurvedic practice. Um, let me see. And traditions highlighted by teachers

00:26:12.780 like sad guru it is considered a time when an individual can act as a creator of their own

00:26:17.880 state of mind and energy so yeah it's like um it's like swabbing your decks washing your decks

00:26:23.200 seeing what's going on yeah and preparing yourself yeah oh when i have those days where i get up

00:26:27.940 and i'm popping and i get to my meeting and i get my workout done dude by 9 30 i am the king

00:26:35.440 yeah anything's possible um but your brain chemistry is not the same every day when you

00:26:41.160 wake up i mean so i have to take control of it yeah yeah so that's right that's why you got to

00:26:45.240 have protocols that actually would get you back to a baseline reliably get you back to a baseline

00:26:49.340 you're not gonna be perfect i mean i slept like garbage last night yes i mean i was sleeping it 0.96

00:26:53.400 up yeah i mean i'm on tour like a damn farm animal or whatever oh man that's like a farm animal in 0.71

00:26:59.440 the city you know it's like that old joke i slept i slept like a baby every two hours i woke up 0.98

00:27:05.980 crying. And reaching out for, for breasts or whatever. It's bad. You know, I'm on tour every,

00:27:12.480 almost every week, 48 weeks a year. Are you? Yeah. And you're like, I'm traveling and speaking.

00:27:17.320 Yeah. Speaking, speaking, speaking to media. So I'm doing speaking to media because there's,

00:27:20.600 you know, a lot of people want to hear about happiness, but the result of it is, you know,

00:27:23.340 I'm not with my wife. I'm, I'm, I'm in hotels and you know, it's okay, but it's kind of lonely.

00:27:30.640 Oh yeah. But you got to have a protocol so you can become human again. I wanted to come see

00:27:35.680 you today i'm super pumped to come see you today i gotta be my best self right right and you were

00:27:40.780 thinking about that even we haven't met before and you're like and and so the protocols actually

00:27:45.640 that we can actually have the discipline it's funny because you know there's this guy uh admiral

00:27:49.840 mcraven remember he gave that famous speech called make your bed remember this a few years ago like

00:27:54.760 2005 bring him up because i feel like um william mcraven he was uh jordan peterson kind of became

00:28:00.780 the guy that did that yeah yeah for sure he gave a speech this guy gave a speech at the university

00:28:05.200 of Texas at Austin called Make Your Bed. And the whole point was you want to get started on

00:28:10.360 something good. That was have a protocol that's practical and specific that will set you on the

00:28:15.980 right path. Now, making your bed is great, but the whole point that we're talking about here is like

00:28:19.320 make your bed in a metaphysical sense, like really good things. Get up, pump the iron,

00:28:25.200 go to mass, say your prayers, do your gratitude list, you know, do the things you actually need

00:28:29.860 to do to get your brain and this neurophysiologically into the right possible space, notwithstanding 0.68

00:28:36.000 the fact that you slept like garbage, you went to sleep feeling sad, you woke up feeling 0.62

00:28:40.380 a lack of the presence of God, and, you know, the biology isn't there for you, so you got 0.96

00:28:45.500 to have a way to get it back.

00:28:46.840 Yeah.

00:28:47.640 Yeah.

00:28:48.140 It says right here, if you want to change the world, start off by making your bed.

00:28:50.860 If you have a miserable day, you will come home to a bed that is made, that you made,

00:28:54.520 and a made bed gives you encouragement that tomorrow will be better.

00:28:57.720 It's a metaphor.

00:28:58.660 I agree.

00:28:59.120 It's a metaphor.

00:28:59.440 It's just getting up.

00:29:00.140 It's like getting up.

00:29:00.960 I go in the kitchen.

00:29:01.800 A lot of times I'll leave my dishes out from dinner.

00:29:03.960 And so then in the morning, the first thing I'll go do is go and put them up, start the dishwasher.

00:29:07.620 It's like, that's the first thing.

00:29:09.020 Then I'll, and I keep earplugs in too for the first like probably 90 minutes of the day.

00:29:14.140 Do you look at your phone in the first hour?

00:29:15.920 Dude, if I do, I wait until I'm rolling my legs out.

00:29:18.620 There's usually like probably about 50 minutes that I've been awake and then I'll respond to texts.

00:29:22.360 Yeah.

00:29:22.680 But it's just for communication.

00:29:24.480 Yeah.

00:29:24.700 I recommend actually the whole first 60 minutes without the device.

00:29:28.980 Yeah.

00:29:29.060 for neurocognitive programming and if you don't do that if you actually don't you'll you'll be

00:29:34.260 better focused and you'll have better mood and productivity for the whole day because you won't

00:29:38.580 get the hijack you know this it's the kind of thing where it's like okay if you can go the whole

00:29:43.460 when you're when things are really really rough if you do a bad habit in the first hour you're

00:29:47.460 going to do it for the rest of the day and the whole day is written off right but if you don't

00:29:50.900 do it for the first hour of the day you're programmed your path dependent toward the better

00:29:54.420 yourself. And so one of the things that we all should actually do is don't look at it in the

00:29:59.460 first hour. I mean, look at it. Nothing's on fire in the business. Okay. Then not for the first hour

00:30:04.420 while you eat, because your brain actually wants you to eat with other people. And if you have

00:30:09.520 your phone on the table, it interrupts the neurochemicals that you need to connect to the

00:30:13.060 other person. And then last hour of the day. So you're looking at a real physical book. You're

00:30:17.720 not getting blue light. If you're, you know, people who are watching us who live with somebody

00:30:21.480 else like a spouse or you know somebody they love they can connect with them better that's really

00:30:25.720 just those three things it'll change your life yeah oh well i mean i i was even thinking last

00:30:31.540 night i was reading your book before i was going to sleep and i was looking i was thinking like

00:30:35.020 there there's certainly been times where i will replace my sense of self like with a sense of

00:30:41.640 screen right yeah it's like how i feel that's a simulation that's the matrix right that's what

00:30:47.060 And there's actually, we know how that affects the brain.

00:30:49.540 So your brain has two hemispheres, the left and the right.

00:30:53.080 The left hemisphere is what you're using when you're looking at tech.

00:30:56.600 That's a simulation of the experiences in the right hemisphere, which is all like love

00:31:01.040 and mystery and meaning.

00:31:02.880 And so dating on the apps is a simulation of actual courting.

00:31:08.100 Your social media is an actual simulation of friendship.

00:31:11.720 Gaming is a simulation of actual real life accomplishment.

00:31:15.400 And we're living in a simulation.

00:31:17.060 That's what the whole thing is, like, zzz, zzz, zzz, and your brain knows the difference.

00:31:20.920 So that's why it feels more like a simulation, because everything that was once more tangible and interactive and actually human, we are simulating it now.

00:31:29.240 Exactly right.

00:31:29.820 So when people say we're living in a simulation, some people think it's like, oh, everything is a computer and it's gigabytes and everything.

00:31:36.460 No, that's not what I mean.

00:31:37.060 That's not what you mean.

00:31:37.700 We're simulating in real life love.

00:31:40.320 Right, so that's what we're simulating.

00:31:41.560 And that's why we feel like we're living in a simulation.

00:31:43.220 Yeah, because in that way, it's truly like a literal simulation.

00:31:46.980 Not like Elon Musk says,

00:31:48.700 there's a 90% chance that this is a simulation run by aliens.

00:31:52.480 I don't know.

00:31:53.100 Right.

00:31:53.380 I don't know.

00:31:54.160 But this is simulating what our brains really want,

00:31:57.780 which is we're made for you.

00:31:59.700 There's a reason we're not doing this on Riverside.

00:32:01.520 There's a reason we're not doing this online,

00:32:02.720 like a Zoom right now,

00:32:03.620 because we're having a human connection right now

00:32:05.580 that we can't get otherwise.

00:32:07.140 It would be a simulated conversation between Theo and Arthur

00:32:09.980 if we actually did it online.

00:32:11.960 Right.

00:32:12.240 And it wouldn't be as good.

00:32:13.180 Right.

00:32:13.620 Because it would be a left brain simulation

00:32:15.360 for the right brain connection between friends got it and this is super important for me to even

00:32:20.060 just just make sure i'm clear on so because a lot of people here you hear stuff like that elon says

00:32:24.300 and you see all these things like we're living in a simulation and like you know i was on uh you

00:32:28.880 know i was on 70 brims of my friends and i could see the numbers at the on the you know in the light

00:32:34.960 on the wall like you hear a lot of that right like you hear a lot that and but as we're seeing hearing

00:32:41.060 seeing like clips saying this and hearing this in our world if at the same time we are simulating

00:32:47.520 things that are very real like instead of meeting somebody and having to ask them out and having a

00:32:51.820 real moment with them you are just swiping left or right that's right that's why it feels that way

00:32:57.200 when we hear those when we hear those things saying we're living in this like in the matrix

00:33:01.160 that's why it feels that way right it's a digital curve fit for the thing you actually want to see

00:33:06.020 I want to experience.

00:33:07.540 Got it.

00:33:07.920 You're getting a virtual experience instead of a real experience.

00:33:11.180 Got it.

00:33:11.720 And one thing that I really loved about your book is when you say that one thing that cannot be simulated is meaning.

00:33:20.080 And that's the third macronutrient of happiness, and that's the hard one.

00:33:23.100 Oh, right there, bro.

00:33:24.060 Is that how you pulled up at that?

00:33:25.260 Nice, nice.

00:33:26.020 See that collaboration?

00:33:27.900 Let's go.

00:33:29.300 So meaning is the third macronutrient, and that's the hardest.

00:33:33.020 That's what's missing today.

00:33:34.280 So before we go down it, so just tell me the first two again.

00:33:37.700 Enjoyment, satisfaction.

00:33:39.380 And those are the macronutrients of happiness.

00:33:41.240 The first two macronutrients.

00:33:42.560 There's three.

00:33:43.360 Because remember, food is protein, carbohydrates, and fat.

00:33:46.540 Happiness has three also.

00:33:48.180 Got it.

00:33:48.340 It's not, it's a coincidence, right?

00:33:51.200 So enjoyment, super important.

00:33:53.160 You got to enjoy your life.

00:33:54.100 Satisfaction.

00:33:54.720 That's like you got to take a deep sense of satisfaction in your accomplishments for sure,

00:33:59.200 which means you got to have stuff to do.

00:34:00.700 Goals, direction, progress.

00:34:02.140 and the third the hard one is the meaning of life because that's the why of your existence

00:34:08.120 you hid that third one yeah that's the why and that's the one i didn't ah that's so hard to write

00:34:13.880 about because it's so philosophical so it turns out that the meaning of life the fact that we

00:34:19.300 have walked into since 2008 i've been i've been keeping data on this forever okay that since 2008

00:34:24.600 people have been progressively more and more likely to say my life feels meaningless that's

00:34:29.140 not coincidentally when we started to actually have screens take over our individual lives.

00:34:34.560 Why? Because that's when we started to walk into the matrix. That's when our brains started to

00:34:38.580 work differently. Right. A sense of screen, not a sense of self. Yeah. And so that meaning of life,

00:34:43.800 that lies behind the explosions and depression and anxiety and loneliness that we actually see.

00:34:50.080 I mean, you read the news. It's like, okay, why are so many young people depressed and anxious?

00:34:53.460 And depression is up by three X since 2008 for people under 30. Oh, one out of six people are

00:34:58.740 on antidepressants it's it's insane and a higher percentage of that uh in college for sure and

00:35:04.080 actually here's the weird part theo is that ordinarily you see mental suffering for people

00:35:08.280 who have less privilege and less education it's more likely if you have education have high levels

00:35:13.480 of education gone to college wait to say that again so people that have more uh education more

00:35:18.400 that have have more years of education are more likely to be depressed and they're more likely to

00:35:23.360 be anxious. So depression, 3X. That makes me feel pretty good. I know, man. Well, that's-

00:35:29.120 We went to college, but still. So look, there's still a way out of all this.

00:35:32.980 Yeah, yeah. So anxiety's up by 2X. So everybody's like, okay, it's because the boomers made all

00:35:38.700 the houses really super expensive and we're wrecking the environment. There's too much 0.99

00:35:42.040 income inequality. That's all nonsense. Those might be problems. Everybody's got to decide

00:35:46.540 for themselves whether those are problems, but they're not new problems. There's nothing new

00:35:50.720 about the fact that, you know,

00:35:51.940 something's wrong with the environment

00:35:53.180 or stuff is getting expensive.

00:35:55.240 There's, I mean, I kind of remember,

00:35:57.420 I remember the 70s.

00:35:58.680 It was way worse.

00:35:59.820 Everything was way worse.

00:36:01.460 You had to roll up your windows

00:36:02.780 when you drove through LA

00:36:03.800 because it was too smoggy.

00:36:05.740 And, you know-

00:36:06.460 That's a good point.

00:36:07.260 18% inflation.

00:36:10.000 Well, even if you go back to feudal times,

00:36:11.740 it's like-

00:36:12.280 Way worse.

00:36:12.860 You could be walking down the street 0.99

00:36:13.840 and somebody would shit out their window 0.99

00:36:15.680 and it would hit you. 0.99

00:36:16.420 I know, it's like, yeah,

00:36:17.420 a third of the population died

00:36:18.360 of the bubonic plague.

00:36:19.700 Bummer.

00:36:20.720 Right? No, good old days.

00:36:22.260 What are you talking about?

00:36:23.480 Because I will romanticize stuff like, oh, it was so, you know.

00:36:26.300 Oh, so good.

00:36:27.180 My son got a blister and he died of sepsis.

00:36:30.400 I'm like, what?

00:36:31.380 I'm like, uh-oh, toothache, you're going to die. 0.74

00:36:34.400 Yeah, dude.

00:36:34.940 You'd have three or four funerals a week to go to.

00:36:37.000 Oh, yeah, completely.

00:36:37.740 And, you know, half your kids would die.

00:36:39.580 Yeah.

00:36:39.800 I mean, it's like, look at us.

00:36:40.700 Abraham Lincoln, the president, Abraham Lincoln,

00:36:42.860 all three of his kids died by the age of, like, 22.

00:36:45.160 Well, one of them was playing, no, that was Calvin Coolidge.

00:36:47.880 His son was playing tennis at the White House.

00:36:50.080 forgot his socks, I kid you not,

00:36:52.300 got a blister on the back of his heel

00:36:54.340 and died of an infection.

00:36:56.220 The president's socks.

00:36:57.500 So romanticizing the old days is completely absurd.

00:37:01.740 We're bringing it up.

00:37:03.440 Silent Cal.

00:37:04.460 Calvin Coolidge's younger son, Calvin Coolidge Jr.

00:37:09.340 On June 30th, 1924, Calvin Jr. played lawn tennis

00:37:12.320 on the White House Southgrounds with his brother John

00:37:14.280 without wearing socks, a blister formed on his toe.

00:37:17.060 He was moved to Walter Reed Army Hospital

00:37:18.840 where doctors could not stop the infection

00:37:20.580 because antibiotics like penicillin

00:37:22.380 had not yet been discovered or made available.

00:37:25.960 He passed away.

00:37:26.900 Wow.

00:37:27.240 And people are like, oh man, old days were so much.

00:37:29.600 No, that's actually wrong.

00:37:31.280 The reason that we have this explosion of depression and anxiety

00:37:33.900 is because people don't know the meaning of their life

00:37:35.340 and they're not even looking

00:37:36.300 and they're paralyzed from looking

00:37:38.240 because they're using their brains wrong

00:37:39.880 because they're staring at the screen all day long.

00:37:42.160 And before we go too much deeper,

00:37:43.560 can you define meaning for people?

00:37:45.920 Yeah, for sure.

00:37:46.360 Because it sounds so philosophical.

00:37:47.960 It's like a New Yorker cartoon.

00:37:49.580 What's the meaning of life, right?

00:37:51.140 Right.

00:37:51.640 And this is also about what's, yeah.

00:37:53.620 But the book, what I did love again, and I'll reiterate it, is that it's your meaning, right?

00:37:58.580 Right.

00:37:59.060 You're right.

00:37:59.420 Exactly right.

00:38:00.000 And it's the answer to three big why questions in your life.

00:38:03.500 So we'll go through the big three why questions.

00:38:06.160 So meaning answers three big why questions.

00:38:08.440 Yeah, because meaning is always about the why of life.

00:38:10.020 Have you had Simon Sinek on your show before?

00:38:11.980 Do you know who he is?

00:38:13.420 Simon Sinek, he wrote a book called Start With Why.

00:38:15.940 We've not had.

00:38:16.600 He's fantastic.

00:38:17.760 And why is fundamentally about meaning.

00:38:19.720 It's like, why?

00:38:20.760 You know those days when you wake up, it's dark.

00:38:22.960 Simon Sinek, he's great.

00:38:24.080 I've been working with him for years.

00:38:25.600 And you're like, why?

00:38:26.960 Lord, why?

00:38:28.180 Right?

00:38:28.540 That's a meaning.

00:38:29.380 That's a cry for meaning, right?

00:38:31.020 The first big why question is, why does all this stuff happen?

00:38:35.860 That's, you know, that's called coherence.

00:38:37.480 You got to have some sort of a theory about why things happen the way that they do.

00:38:40.140 I believe that things happen the way they do because of the mind of God

00:38:42.600 and because of the laws of science.

00:38:44.620 And those things work together.

00:38:46.180 That's my coherence theory.

00:38:47.860 That's my why about why things happen the way they do.

00:38:51.060 Paranoid conspiracy theories are a way to find coherence.

00:38:55.740 It's like because shadowy forces are doing things behind the scenes, right?

00:38:58.560 But that's a why.

00:38:59.320 That's number one.

00:39:01.280 But any of those are okay.

00:39:02.920 You just have to have a why?

00:39:04.100 You got to have a why that actually makes sense to you, that you actually believe,

00:39:07.540 that you think actually kind of holds water is the way this works.

00:39:11.220 But we used to have a news, kind of a news system, I feel like, in America.

00:39:16.000 or it used to feel like we had a new system in america that we believed and trusted so i feel

00:39:21.380 like when that sort of dissolved then it made probably the why a lot it made coherence worse

00:39:26.900 it made it made coherence a big problem for people coherence a big problem because you

00:39:30.940 that's a huge thing you don't know what is real anymore why things are happening yeah why are

00:39:35.660 these things happening it's like well well the the the mainstream media said and you're like yeah

00:39:41.000 right. Yeah. Right. Yeah. The last thing I'm going to trust is them. They're like, you know,

00:39:44.880 it's obfuscation and, you know, it's like biased, whatever, for sure. It's a big problem. Right. I

00:39:50.680 mean, I think we all understand that at this point. And, and by the way, that's going to lead

00:39:54.180 to good things. You know, it's like, I do a lot of mainstream media and we all do a lot of

00:39:58.160 mainstream media. I think it's actually getting better as a result of the fact that people are

00:40:01.900 more skeptical at this point, but it hurts in the meantime, because it ruins the sense of

00:40:07.240 coherence, the through line about why things are happening the way that they are. That's number

00:40:11.400 one. Right. So that's one of the issues that why we're having trouble with meaning right now is

00:40:14.760 because things feel incoherent. You don't know who you can trust. You just don't know who you

00:40:19.680 can trust. The second is purpose, which is why am I doing what I'm doing? And that's the question

00:40:25.340 you started with today. It's like, why am I doing this? I mean, it's got to be perfect, but why?

00:40:31.240 You know, that means goals, direction, and the ability to make progress. 0.94

00:40:36.700 And when life feels futile, like this is dumb, 0.91

00:40:39.940 that means that you're lacking a sense of purpose. 0.97

00:40:42.400 You're lacking a sense of direction in your life.

00:40:44.680 And, you know, it's funny because experiments on like undergraduate students in college

00:40:47.900 shows that you can dramatically raise their sense of meaning and happiness

00:40:51.200 by giving them an arbitrary goal, which gives them more purpose.

00:40:55.120 Like you're getting a B minus in calculus.

00:40:57.260 We're going to get a B plus for you in calculus.

00:40:59.340 And you set them up on a protocol, which is why the morning protocols we talked about.

00:41:03.480 As a professor, you mean?

00:41:04.480 Yeah, as a professor.

00:41:05.360 Like campus counseling will do this an awful lot.

00:41:07.340 We're going to raise your grade by one full letter grade.

00:41:10.280 And just that gives them a sense of purpose.

00:41:12.380 And they start getting more disciplined.

00:41:15.100 They start getting happier.

00:41:16.660 You mean you're going to raise the goal of their grade?

00:41:18.760 Yeah, they need a goal.

00:41:20.680 And that gives them a sense of purpose. 0.63

00:41:21.780 Even like an arbitrary, dumb little purpose like that really helps people an awful lot.

00:41:26.380 Are there easy ways for us to do that for ourselves?

00:41:28.960 Yeah, to set, you know, basic goals about ways

00:41:31.440 in small ways you want to get better.

00:41:33.660 Okay.

00:41:33.980 I want to get, so, you know, for example,

00:41:35.900 purpose in recovery is one day at a time.

00:41:38.940 It's like today I'm not going to drink.

00:41:40.880 Yeah.

00:41:41.460 And that's a doable goal.

00:41:42.880 And that gives you a sense of purpose.

00:41:44.540 Now that's, you need more than that,

00:41:46.680 but that's really super helpful.

00:41:48.700 Right. That's a huge thing.

00:41:49.820 It's like people say, I can't,

00:41:51.380 oh, I don't get to drink for the rest of my life.

00:41:52.720 I don't know if you get to drink for the rest of your life.

00:41:54.480 I'm just saying you can't, like, can you not drink for today?

00:41:57.920 Yeah, exactly.

00:41:58.360 And, you know, there's a funny thing in my world.

00:42:00.700 You know, we ask a lot, for example, what is the psychology behind the fact that diets always fail?

00:42:06.680 So almost any diet works, low-fat, low-carb, low-whatever, man.

00:42:11.820 I mean, it's like fasting, keto, caveman, whatever.

00:42:15.440 Yeah, sleep and beauty diet, having a tapeworm.

00:42:18.200 They all work, but they don't work in the long run.

00:42:21.080 Now, the reason they all work in the short run is you can make it today, not eating what you want, because the scale is going to go down.

00:42:27.340 but when you hit your goal the reward is never getting to eat what you like ever again for the

00:42:31.840 rest of your life congratulations that's a big problem that just destroys purpose oh yeah purpose

00:42:37.220 is everything you just don't have any more goals you don't have any more direction you can't make

00:42:40.960 any more progress and so it's obliterated it's depressing as a matter of fact people hit their

00:42:45.420 goals and get really really depressed and like eat a whole cake yeah oh yeah dude somebody sent

00:42:51.860 me a cake dude and bro did you eat the whole cake i didn't plan on it dude but i woke up in the

00:42:58.880 middle of the night i wasn't doing well and i ate half that bro i ate it standing up what kind of

00:43:03.580 cake was it i don't even know dude it was dark and it was i ate it standing up arthur oh yeah

00:43:10.320 yeah no i'm not i mean who is that it's me too but then i was so jacked up on sugar i couldn't

00:43:15.480 sleep i know now i'm furious with myself now i go buy a vape dude now you're full of self-loathing

00:43:20.760 Oh, now it's 4 a.m., dude.

00:43:23.620 And I'm like, I can't live like this anymore.

00:43:26.660 You know, here's the irony.

00:43:27.740 It's like, there's like 200 people that are listening to this conversation right now at

00:43:31.600 three o'clock in the morning, standing up, eating a cake.

00:43:34.220 It is true, bro.

00:43:35.920 Yeah.

00:43:36.320 And honestly, and somehow I'm envious of them.

00:43:39.880 No, I get it.

00:43:40.920 You know, so this is a, you know, that's the problem with progress.

00:43:43.680 That's progress.

00:43:44.340 You know, progress means that you actually make goals and they're achievable goals and

00:43:47.680 you know what they are.

00:43:48.440 and that's one of the big parts of meaning in life purpose is part of meaning in life okay and and

00:43:54.020 but so that's why you're doing what you're doing got it because that's my purpose for today at

00:43:58.400 least yeah for today at least now it doesn't have to be like i want to be president of the united

00:44:02.920 states i want to save seven million children now it might be as simple as i'm going to be kind to

00:44:10.240 my wife today i am going to do one good act for somebody today i'm going to love somebody who

00:44:15.780 needs my love today yeah including myself yep sometimes yep that's a big one dude exactly

00:44:20.680 right i'm not gonna eat that cake tonight yeah i'm gonna we'll see yeah we'll see it's like don't

00:44:26.960 send theo a cake folks we'll do yeah and when people send a cake i can't even and sometimes

00:44:32.260 i'll even curse them or whatever i know i know i'll curse them i think they're doing something

00:44:36.420 so good for you but you have no impulse control the middle of the night that's when your willpower 0.93

00:44:40.000 is gone dude i eat freaking 17 peanut butter cups one night that sounds so good i ate 17

00:44:45.300 peanut butter cups one night in my 40s oh yeah don't look i'm in my 60s so it doesn't get better

00:44:52.680 thanks art you guys know i love acorns the financial app where you can invest your spare

00:44:59.920 change from transactions into the market and grow it over time well they're trying a new idea i want

00:45:07.260 to tell you about and it's pretty cool it's called invest my tips if you're someone who gets tips as

00:45:14.340 part of your job, like a hairstylist or a tattoo artist or a mover, you can set up an Acorns

00:45:21.460 account, get a QR code, then customers scan that to tip you. Whatever they tip gets invested for

00:45:30.100 you immediately. Plus, it adds up. $15 a day invested over 40 years could grow to around $1

00:45:37.880 million. And if you're the customer, you don't even need an account of your own.

00:45:43.140 Tipping is as simple as it is today, except now your tip helps someone save for their

00:45:48.480 future.

00:45:49.760 So now I'm thinking about all the jobs out there where you could use this.

00:45:53.960 Maybe somebody rakes your yard up and bam, you tip them, hit that QR code, help build

00:45:59.940 their future.

00:46:01.040 Or maybe somebody is delivering ice to your house.

00:46:05.040 You got a warm house and you need some ice.

00:46:08.580 and then you hit them with that QR code tip.

00:46:13.840 Or it could even be your grandmother. 0.99

00:46:16.080 She hits you with that healthy hug, bam, bless her bank account.

00:46:21.400 So let's give a shout out to everyone working for tips out there.

00:46:24.960 The people part of our community that we trust and come back to time after time.

00:46:29.980 Next time you tip someone, ask if they have the ACORNS code.

00:46:34.560 Help the people you trust in your community to not just get through the week,

00:46:38.240 but build for their future with acorns invest my tips you can sign up for it yourself at acorns.com

00:46:46.360 slash theo dash tips paid non-client endorsement compensation provides incentive to positively

00:46:51.500 promote acorns investing involves risk acorns advisors llc and sec registered investment

00:46:54.340 advisor view important disclosure at acorns.com slash theo and so that is the second um question

00:46:59.840 the second why question is uh why am i doing the things that i'm doing right and if you ask

00:47:05.380 yourself that question you'll be able to establish some sense of purpose with your

00:47:08.140 That's right.

00:47:08.620 That's right.

00:47:08.960 If you basically say, I am doing what I'm doing because X, Y, Z, because I want to lose some weight, because I want to get better grades, because I want to be a more loving person, because I want to get to the end of the day not having used alcohol.

00:47:20.920 Right.

00:47:21.320 Right?

00:47:21.640 That's the person that I want to be.

00:47:23.620 And you got to see that better person, that better version of yourself.

00:47:26.620 Say, that's me at the end of the day going, yep, still not drinking.

00:47:31.220 That's good.

00:47:32.160 So to visualize it too will help you.

00:47:33.800 Super important.

00:47:34.680 Super important.

00:47:35.380 That visualization is, I mean, that's how this idea of manifestation actually works.

00:47:39.980 There's nothing, no gears in the universe that are turning.

00:47:42.400 Although I do believe in the power of prayer.

00:47:44.260 I do honestly believe, I believe that it's a good thing to say, what is, I'm going to

00:47:50.180 visualize 11 p.m. Theo going to sleep, not having done the things he didn't want to do.

00:47:57.340 And now I'm going to pray that God will give me the strength and grace to become that person.

00:48:01.480 that's how purpose that's how you can you can bring purpose you know to your real life that

00:48:06.680 even feels cool when you say it i mean i feel like there's a sense of um say that one more time say

00:48:11.620 that part okay so you got purpose means you got goals and direction and your goal your direction

00:48:16.040 is toward a goal that is something good right it's got to be something tangible something you

00:48:21.800 can actually put a pin in not something like the universe is perfect right or i want to be a

00:48:27.140 Millionaire, jillionaire.

00:48:28.940 Yeah, it's just, no, no, it's something really tangible,

00:48:33.140 something really meaningful to you.

00:48:34.500 And it might be something as simple as,

00:48:36.600 at the end of this day, I will not have done this,

00:48:39.040 and I will have done that.

00:48:40.540 And I'm going to imagine myself at the end of the day

00:48:42.720 and how I'm going to feel when that has actually come true.

00:48:45.880 And visualize that actually you understanding yourself

00:48:49.020 as having achieved that goal.

00:48:50.760 Nothing audacious, nothing that somebody else

00:48:52.980 would be like, holy mackerel, you did that in one day?

00:48:55.700 Right.

00:48:55.980 no it's something realistic so i would just think like okay so today if i make it to bed like

00:49:01.660 like um tonight i would like to make it to bed by 10 p.m right yeah so that could be my thing

00:49:05.820 sober stone cold sober stone cold sober having worked out having done my job having done a good

00:49:10.860 podcast having you know fed my body in the right way having had a couple of conversations and told

00:49:15.900 a couple of people i love them but now is that stacking too much on or you think that's an okay

00:49:20.220 basic day that's a good basic day okay good yeah because you've actually fed your needs got it body

00:49:25.580 soul work relationships in a very in a very you know very modest way got it you know you can call

00:49:31.980 63 people and say i love you right called a couple of buddies checked in yeah listen to them

00:49:37.740 and then you figure it out and then and then you say okay but and i really want that i see myself

00:49:41.980 doing that and then you then you get help and the way that you a good way to get help is say lord

00:49:47.180 help me make it to that point help me make it to that point yeah help me it's like be with me until

00:49:51.100 10 p.m. tonight when I'm looking back on that in this way. I like that. So, God, help me get to

00:49:56.020 10 p.m. tonight. I would like to be able to make it through my day healthily. I'd like to be able

00:49:59.800 to take care of my body, my mind, and my soul. I'd like to be able to be of service to others.

00:50:05.240 Show me examples of ways I can do that. And I would like to get to bed sober, and I would like

00:50:11.160 to get to bed at a decent time tonight. Please be with me until I can get there. Yeah, there's an

00:50:15.780 ancient, ancient, ancient Catholic prayer that a lot of priests will pray, and they'll say,

00:50:21.100 Night has no terror for me, sleeping under God's wings.

00:50:25.880 Right?

00:50:26.740 Dang, boy, that's the freaking holiday end of the Lord, brother. 0.95

00:50:29.600 Yeah, it's too good. 0.95

00:50:30.460 It's so good.

00:50:31.260 It's so good.

00:50:31.800 It's nice.

00:50:32.340 And the last of the why questions is, why does my life matter?

00:50:36.460 Why does my life matter?

00:50:37.800 And to whom?

00:50:39.040 And to whom?

00:50:39.800 Yeah, and to whom.

00:50:40.820 Because it has to matter to someone.

00:50:42.080 It's like, why does my life matter?

00:50:43.240 It's going to be like, because, you know, something cosmic?

00:50:46.900 No, it's because my mom loves me, because my friends care about me,

00:50:51.100 because God is somebody who's taking care of me?

00:50:54.960 That's the significance question.

00:50:56.720 And you got to have an answer to that.

00:50:57.760 And a lot of people today, they're like,

00:50:58.820 I don't know why my life matters

00:51:00.340 and I don't know to whom my life matters.

00:51:02.760 Establishing that is critically important.

00:51:04.500 If you don't know, that's going to be a problem.

00:51:06.440 So significance is the answer to the question,

00:51:08.820 why does my life matter and to whom?

00:51:10.800 That's right.

00:51:11.380 That's right.

00:51:11.940 And that's getting harder and harder to answer,

00:51:13.660 especially when we're mediating our relationships

00:51:15.540 through screens.

00:51:17.080 It's like, why does my life matter to whom?

00:51:19.600 and if it's like all the people I'm dealing with over the entire course of the day are 12 hours

00:51:24.700 through social media, I'm not quite sure that my life does matter. Why does that, why does this so

00:51:30.320 much create this? Oh, because this is a simulation and it's not real. Exactly right. It's very hard

00:51:36.160 for me to deny, for us to deny each other that we matter to each other right now because we're

00:51:40.080 looking into each other's eyes and we're brothers right now. Right. That's the way life's supposed

00:51:45.000 to work. Got it. But if I'm looking at, you know, it's like, hey, Theo, like text, text, text, text,

00:51:49.100 I don't know.

00:51:50.200 I don't know what else you're doing.

00:51:51.540 I don't even know if it's you. 0.95

00:51:53.220 Oh, that's the craziest. 0.76

00:51:54.140 Uh-huh.

00:51:54.660 And that's how the simulation works.

00:51:56.380 Is it real?

00:51:57.080 Is it not real?

00:51:58.500 That matrix effect actually destroys significance.

00:52:03.160 Our brain is not made to,

00:52:05.180 and there's a lot of neurochemistry to this.

00:52:06.900 There's a neuropeptide in the brain called oxytocin.

00:52:10.180 You ever heard of oxytocin?

00:52:11.400 Oh, yeah.

00:52:11.700 Yeah, yeah.

00:52:12.260 It's the love molecule.

00:52:13.360 And it's how we connect with each other,

00:52:14.980 how you connect with your baby,

00:52:16.140 how you connect with your friends,

00:52:17.160 how people who are loved connect with each other

00:52:19.740 very, very deeply for deep friendship.

00:52:21.660 Okay.

00:52:22.060 You don't get it through a screen.

00:52:23.280 Almost nothing, almost nothing.

00:52:25.180 And so neurochemically, we're not getting the link

00:52:27.820 that we're evolved to actually get

00:52:30.060 to connect with each other as human beings,

00:52:32.040 and that destroys the sense of significance.

00:52:34.360 And is that true?

00:52:35.060 Bring that up.

00:52:36.200 Oxytocin?

00:52:36.940 Yeah.

00:52:38.340 Oxytocin, a natural peptide hormone and neuropeptide.

00:52:42.540 It's often nicknamed the love hormone or cuddle hormone.

00:52:46.080 It influences social recognition, trust, romantic attachment, and mother-infant bonding.

00:52:52.740 Wow.

00:52:53.200 And the new research on Zoom screen, for example, we wanted to know during COVID,

00:52:57.880 how much do we actually get when we're disconnected and we're talking on FaceTime and Skype and over the Zoom screen?

00:53:03.940 And the answer is not very much.

00:53:05.720 When prolonged social isolation settles in, the body's hormonal systems undergo a profound shift.

00:53:11.580 social isolation essentially hijacks the oxytocin system by driving down its baseline production

00:53:19.380 and allowing stress hormones to dominate the brain so that comes from social isolation so it uh it

00:53:27.380 hijacks the oxytocin system by driving down its baseline production and allowing stress hormones

00:53:31.800 to dominate the brain so not only do you have lower oxytocin but when you're only on screens

00:53:37.540 and not in person.

00:53:38.440 When you're only on screens

00:53:39.200 and not in person.

00:53:40.540 But scientifically,

00:53:41.720 it allows more stress in.

00:53:43.380 For sure.

00:53:43.980 I mean, basically,

00:53:44.780 that space man's going to get filled by something.

00:53:48.140 But so the enemies are at the gates

00:53:49.400 and we're the gate,

00:53:52.280 we're the enemies and the gates.

00:53:53.680 Yeah.

00:53:54.040 Did Bishop Barron,

00:53:55.400 Bishop B,

00:53:55.880 when he's on the show,

00:53:56.460 did he teach you the St. Michael prayer?

00:54:00.880 This is a great prayer.

00:54:02.360 So St. Michael the Archangel

00:54:03.420 is one of the three archangels

00:54:04.600 in the Old Testament.

00:54:05.440 and he's believed by Catholics to actually fight the devil.

00:54:09.820 But that's how he talks about it.

00:54:10.780 St. Michael the Archangel, defend us in battle.

00:54:13.400 Be our protection against the wickedness and snares of the devil.

00:54:16.560 May God rebuke him, we humbly pray, and do thou, O Prince of the Heavenly Host.

00:54:22.440 And it talks about cast into hell Satan who prowls about the world seeking the ruin of souls.

00:54:29.680 Okay, good manly stuff, right?

00:54:31.400 We need that right now.

00:54:32.300 We need that right now.

00:54:33.120 But look, okay, even if people are watching us,

00:54:35.700 they don't believe literally in Satan.

00:54:37.300 They don't believe in the hijacking of souls.

00:54:39.120 They don't believe in all this stuff.

00:54:40.300 There are problems out there.

00:54:41.720 And you need the sword and shield.

00:54:43.740 Yeah.

00:54:44.120 You need the defense.

00:54:45.420 Oh, Satan is lurking, bro.

00:54:47.480 Satan these days has cleats on, dude.

00:54:49.620 Yeah.

00:54:50.040 He is active, bro.

00:54:51.920 That is the realest thing.

00:54:53.620 That's become more real than ever.

00:54:55.640 And you're just like,

00:54:56.480 if you're looking at your phone all day long,

00:54:58.040 you're wandering into battle unarmed and naked.

00:55:01.440 Yeah.

00:55:01.660 That's what you're doing.

00:55:03.120 It's like, good luck to you.

00:55:04.240 And most who, like a lot of like the,

00:55:06.800 it's just, it's, there's a lot of ill out there

00:55:10.120 that's coming through the phone

00:55:11.440 and it's designed, it's designed to ruin you.

00:55:17.720 I think a lot of it is it's designed to ruin you.

00:55:20.000 I think that more than anything else

00:55:21.780 is designed to leave you vulnerable.

00:55:24.100 It's designed to disarm you.

00:55:26.180 It's designed to leave you completely defenseless.

00:55:30.400 The devil is here and it's like.

00:55:31.780 and that ruins a sense of significance the whole i just gets back to who loves me why does my life

00:55:39.040 matter and to whom and it's like i don't know zoom zoom zoom zoom no no so people who are isolated

00:55:45.800 get this so we talked about this a little bit before isolation right why isolation is so

00:55:51.180 critically important this is why all of this leads to loneliness is because of isolation

00:55:54.840 not because of solitude and so just so we're just so we're just so i'm making sure that we're locked

00:55:58.860 in here and how this is how does how is this affecting significance so significance is why

00:56:04.100 your life matters and to whom it's all about love it's all about the people who value you people who

00:56:09.400 love you people who care about you and one of the main people needs to be you gotta be you and and

00:56:14.220 a lot of you gets um a lot of you gets hijacked when um when we're on our screens and we're not

00:56:21.960 actually on ourself yeah it's almost as if you lost yourself that you don't know yourself you're

00:56:27.520 So it's a funny thing.

00:56:28.800 So I'll say to people, okay, put down your phone

00:56:31.680 for the first hour of the day. 0.87

00:56:32.520 Do the Brahma Muhurta, that first hour, 0.53

00:56:34.840 starting 48 minutes before dawn,

00:56:38.280 and go for that walk without your device,

00:56:40.500 without headphones, just hearing the crunch of gravel

00:56:43.700 beneath your feet and watching the sun come up.

00:56:45.820 You will know you, because you're gonna be with you.

00:56:48.960 Right.

00:56:49.800 But if you're not, I mean, it's like,

00:56:51.280 so there's a Vietnamese Buddhist monk

00:56:54.760 who died two years ago

00:56:55.840 named Thich Nhat Hanh.

00:56:57.720 Very, very...

00:56:58.500 Thich Nhat Hanh?

00:56:59.200 Thich Nhat Hanh.

00:56:59.780 Have you heard of him?

00:57:00.480 Nuh-uh.

00:57:00.900 Yeah, he had the,

00:57:02.280 you know, 0.96

00:57:02.500 the plum village movement, 0.86

00:57:03.940 which was a lot of Westerners

00:57:05.160 actually got into it.

00:57:05.980 Thich Nhat Hanh. 0.82

00:57:06.560 Ripped Thich Nhat. 0.99

00:57:07.440 Yeah, yeah. 0.59

00:57:08.000 He was,

00:57:09.040 and he wrote,

00:57:09.940 his most famous book

00:57:10.880 was called

00:57:11.220 The Miracle of Mindfulness

00:57:12.580 that starts off

00:57:13.780 with this description

00:57:14.540 of washing the dishes.

00:57:16.380 And when you're washing the dishes,

00:57:17.540 you should be washing the dishes

00:57:19.020 and thinking about

00:57:20.160 washing the dishes

00:57:20.700 and fully present

00:57:21.460 while you're washing the dishes.

00:57:22.280 Because if you don't,

00:57:24.040 you're not there.

00:57:24.760 you're missing your life and we're missing our lives and you're missing your life so if you're

00:57:29.760 really not missing your life in that first hour of the day you're there for you you care about you

00:57:36.940 you're fully showing up is what it comes down to if while washing dishes we think only of the cup

00:57:42.540 of tea that awaits us thus hurrying to get the dishes out of the way as if they were a nuisance

00:57:47.140 then we are not washing the dishes to wash the dishes what's more we're not alive during the

00:57:54.520 time we're washing the dishes it's the thing isn't it yeah it's just about being like having

00:57:59.540 a sense of presence um before we move forward uh how let's uh can how can we tie a bow on uh

00:58:06.360 significance so significant to lock it down to say okay i if i'm with if i'm with somebody who

00:58:13.440 if I'm with my wife and, and every time I'm with her, she's scrolling her phone.

00:58:18.300 She's not actually with me. And I don't know if she loves me. Right. And that's,

00:58:22.800 that destroys my sense of significance. If every time I'm by myself, I'm scrolling my phone,

00:58:27.740 I'm not with me. Right. And I'm not even significant to me. That's, and that's what

00:58:34.520 it feels like right now. Sure does. You just start to feel like this. Who am I? I'm, I'm nothing.

00:58:41.420 I'm a simulation of me.

00:58:43.680 Right.

00:58:44.680 That's super heavy when you think about it.

00:58:47.460 I don't want to be a simulation of me.

00:58:48.900 I want to be me.

00:58:49.700 Right.

00:58:50.060 Right. 0.76

00:58:50.300 I mean, for all the problems that I've actually gotten, all the dumb stuff that I've actually,

00:58:54.060 I want to, at least I get one life.

00:58:56.380 Why am I missing it?

00:58:58.020 You know, why am I simulating it?

00:59:00.200 Why am I running it like some sort of weird blooper reel?

00:59:03.340 What's the deal? 1.00

00:59:04.380 How stupid is that? 1.00

00:59:05.640 What am I trying to distract myself from? 1.00

00:59:08.180 And the answer is, I don't, I don't know.

00:59:10.460 i don't know i'm just doing it and that's no way to live no it's no way to live and it's i mean i

00:59:16.460 it's certainly it's where i find myself a lot of times it's like um and also i don't even notice

00:59:21.680 how it just happens over and over again and the main it's just like oh it's just another rerun

00:59:27.280 of the same like me finding these little things that i feel like meant something and they don't

00:59:31.880 and then i just keep going it's a doom loop actually it's and what the problem is that

00:59:35.420 were very bad at boredom. And, you know, life until relatively recently was pretty boring.

00:59:41.220 Your great-grandfather, they were plowing fields three generations ago, right?

00:59:44.800 Oh, I'm sure, dude. They used to smoke, I know.

00:59:47.100 Yeah. And they were-

00:59:48.400 You got to grow it.

00:59:48.800 And they were, and, you know, moment to moment, your great-great-grandfather was basically looking 0.98

00:59:54.660 at a mule's butt. 0.99

00:59:55.760 Yeah. 1.00

00:59:56.200 Right? No headphones, no podcast, not even yours or mine, right?

01:00:00.040 Yeah.

01:00:00.380 But his life wasn't boring.

01:00:02.680 Now, you can wipe out every moment of boredom,

01:00:06.740 moment to moment over the course of your life,

01:00:08.300 but life is profoundly boring.

01:00:10.860 See, this is the thing, man.

01:00:11.860 This is the irony.

01:00:12.560 If you try to wipe out your boredom moment to moment,

01:00:14.900 your life is going to be grindingly boring.

01:00:17.800 That's the irony of life.

01:00:19.080 If you're not going to be alive, you're going to be dead.

01:00:22.360 That's what happens.

01:00:23.420 And we're missing out on being alive.

01:00:24.900 We're zombies.

01:00:25.540 We're walking dead.

01:00:26.080 And so the things that we can do are we can find some coherence,

01:00:30.380 right? Find things that make sense to us, that we believe in, that are sure to us. And sometimes

01:00:34.080 if you can't find those in the media, you have to find those in personal relationships and like,

01:00:39.660 just things that are very sure to you, right? Your spiritual life.

01:00:42.760 Your spiritual life. Super important because that's, man, that gets real, real fast.

01:00:46.620 Yeah. If you're basically like, if you're going to like before at that 10 p.m. hour,

01:00:51.040 you're down on your knees, life gets real very fast. Yeah. Yeah. And a lot of people it's like,

01:00:56.040 what yeah like my grandfather yep like your grandfather and sometimes it's like people will

01:01:02.180 say like um or people will say to me like man i just want to help other people people say that

01:01:08.140 a lot of times and and i think about that a lot too and it's like but one one way i think that

01:01:13.100 we can do that is by praying for others it's like giving of myself and my energy and my time with

01:01:19.800 god it's like me wanting to focus that onto someone else for sure that's a that's an ancient

01:01:25.080 truth, what you just articulated. Yeah, for sure. I mean, the monastic tradition is that the monks

01:01:30.560 and the nuns that would be cloistered, meaning that they never go out, their whole job was

01:01:35.440 praying for others. Wow. Full-time, man, full-time praying for other people because we believe,

01:01:40.800 you know, Christians believe that intercessory prayer is a real thing, that intercessory prayer

01:01:45.520 actually works. Intercessory? Intercessory prayer. You're interceding for somebody else. You're 0.68

01:01:50.240 Asking God for something for them is what it comes down to.

01:01:53.380 That's super powerful.

01:01:54.860 Now, I don't know.

01:01:55.940 And how long do they pray for?

01:01:56.900 It's for all the time?

01:01:57.660 Yeah, yeah, like a lot of the day.

01:01:59.920 Oh, my God.

01:02:00.060 And what do you even have for lunch during that or whatever?

01:02:02.040 I know.

01:02:02.460 It's like eating a corn dog and praying for Theo Vaughn.

01:02:06.280 Yeah, dude.

01:02:07.120 Are you just over there praying for Kyle Larson or something?

01:02:11.700 I know.

01:02:12.140 You're just having chips on your life.

01:02:13.580 No, but it's like, and it's funny because, you know,

01:02:16.180 I know a lot of lay people, you know,

01:02:18.380 who are not living in religious communities

01:02:19.960 who will have a list of people they pray for

01:02:21.840 every single morning

01:02:22.560 and actually start their day

01:02:24.220 praying for a list of other people.

01:02:26.000 And I try to do that too.

01:02:26.880 I try to pray for other people every single day

01:02:28.660 and people who,

01:02:29.260 and then the last one was I was like,

01:02:31.040 and Lord, I'm praying for all the people

01:02:32.440 who asked me to pray for them,

01:02:33.480 but I forgot.

01:02:35.480 Yeah, you got to bundle it.

01:02:37.280 You got to bundle it.

01:02:38.320 Sometimes you have to bundle it, man.

01:02:39.500 I know, but that's really powerful.

01:02:41.240 And God gets that prayer and he's like,

01:02:42.440 oh God, I got that one again.

01:02:43.780 This one bundled.

01:02:44.740 I know, it's like, it's lame.

01:02:46.360 but that's a big deal what you just said that's a real that's a real thing so that's the first

01:02:53.360 one is having things that are creating coherence for yourself right things that really help you

01:02:58.040 understand why things happen in the world got it right the second is making sure that you've got

01:03:02.280 direction in your life and the third thing is knowing who loves you and why got it that's and

01:03:06.920 if you do that you've got meaning now here's a test to see that kind of bundles all that stuff

01:03:11.140 together and it's really scientifically validated i've been giving this test for 30 years it is

01:03:14.920 It's very scientifically validated.

01:03:16.680 Yeah, so in other words, we've tested all this stuff.

01:03:18.540 It's in a lot of research, et cetera.

01:03:19.920 Those three, the why questions, are super scientifically validated.

01:03:23.480 Got it.

01:03:23.720 There's a guy named Mike Steger, who's a psychologist in Colorado.

01:03:27.900 And he's published books and academic journal articles on why this works, et cetera.

01:03:33.080 Okay.

01:03:33.740 But I have a two-question exam that I give my students to see where they are on that

01:03:37.780 that makes it easier.

01:03:39.100 And if they're struggling, then they don't need to look for the meaning of life.

01:03:42.700 they need to look for the answers to these two questions okay question number one is why are you

01:03:47.620 alive and and the way to answer that is like who made me or for what reason maker and mission okay

01:03:53.940 so and and and by the way you can't google that so wait why are you alive why are you alive i mean

01:03:58.600 why are you walking the earth and that's a question i need to ask myself when and you you need to

01:04:02.840 start contemplating that question and maybe thinking about it during your holy hour first

01:04:07.540 thing in the morning when you're out for that walk is thinking why am i alive who did create

01:04:11.700 me? And for what purpose am I alive? Because here's the thing. You have been created for a

01:04:15.960 purpose. Absolutely. But it's obscured, especially on the hard mornings. Like that's when it's hard

01:04:22.160 because that's when old scratch is bothering you. When the devil starts winning too. Old scratch.

01:04:28.240 Is that the devil? Yeah. What the heck? You're from Louisiana, aren't you? Yeah, dude. That's an

01:04:34.740 old Catholic Louisiana deal. Old scratch. Old scratch. Not bad, right? God. Yeah. When he's 0.82

01:04:39.920 got his little pitchfork out and he's distracting you from the things that matter. So, okay, who

01:04:45.420 created me and for what purpose? And let's give that some thought. Second question is, what would

01:04:50.480 I die for right now, happily? It's a funny thing, because two of my kids are US Marines. Two of my

01:04:56.720 three kids are Marines. And one of the things that you find is when people come out of combat

01:05:01.520 roles in the military, that they're, and they can have problems, right? I mean, there's PTSD and

01:05:07.120 you know, all this stuff. But they're happier because they have answers, especially to that

01:05:12.100 second question. You know, my son was a scout sniper in the Marine Corps. That's a hard job.

01:05:17.220 That's a, that's a, an elite job. And, and I said, so what would you die for after he came out of

01:05:22.340 the Marines? 23, married with a kid, right? He said, easy. I sent a contract with the government

01:05:28.160 for that question. You know, I would die for my faith and family, obviously, but I would die for

01:05:32.540 my fellow Marines in the United States of America.

01:05:34.960 Boom.

01:05:35.600 So he had his answer.

01:05:36.420 Mic drop.

01:05:36.700 He had an answer.

01:05:37.460 And he was fundamentally happier

01:05:39.800 because that was defining of his sense of meaning in life,

01:05:42.800 whether he was thinking about meaning

01:05:43.920 and all this esoteric, psychological-

01:05:46.720 Or whatever he had-

01:05:47.460 Neuroscience nonsense.

01:05:48.400 He had something foundational.

01:05:49.680 Foundational.

01:05:50.200 It's like, why are you alive?

01:05:52.760 Carlos says, because God made me to serve others.

01:05:54.900 Carlos who?

01:05:55.600 Carlos Brooks, my son.

01:05:56.820 Oh, that's his name?

01:05:57.840 Yeah.

01:05:58.240 Oh, shout out Carlos Brooks.

01:05:59.320 Bring up a picture of him.

01:06:00.660 Good old Carlos Brooks.

01:06:01.320 Is he on the internet?

01:06:03.100 There he is.

01:06:03.780 That's him?

01:06:04.340 That's him.

01:06:05.400 Jeepers, dude.

01:06:06.600 That's my son.

01:06:07.540 Bro, if he's freaking, bro, if he's mowing the lawn with that.

01:06:10.380 I know.

01:06:11.840 Yeah, tell him that's awesome.

01:06:13.720 Yeah, that's right.

01:06:14.440 Thank you for your service, sir.

01:06:15.240 Absolutely.

01:06:15.780 And his little sister now is an officer in the Marine Corps.

01:06:18.180 She's a second lieutenant out of K-Bay, Hawaii right now.

01:06:21.820 Ooh, that's a beautiful place to be for her, huh?

01:06:23.740 She's 4'11", he's 6'5".

01:06:25.740 So he...

01:06:27.460 And he has to salute her because she's an officer.

01:06:30.400 Really?

01:06:31.320 Well, he's not active duty, but he gave her her first salute.

01:06:35.580 That was a very beautiful moment.

01:06:37.040 He gave her her first salute?

01:06:38.060 Yep, as an officer.

01:06:39.280 She was commissioned a year ago in Providence, Rhode Island,

01:06:43.620 after she graduated from college,

01:06:44.660 and she took her first salute from her older brother.

01:06:46.840 Oh, that's awesome, man.

01:06:47.880 It was really great, but, you know, he's got answers to his questions.

01:06:50.800 Why are you alive?

01:06:51.840 Because God made me to serve others.

01:06:53.300 Right.

01:06:53.700 For what would you give your life?

01:06:55.100 For my faith family, for fellow Marines in the United States of America.

01:06:58.620 There it is.

01:06:59.660 There it is.

01:07:00.160 First salute.

01:07:01.320 Oh, that's cool, dude.

01:07:05.100 That's beautiful, dude.

01:07:06.360 Yeah.

01:07:07.080 Yeah, yeah.

01:07:07.660 And what is her name?

01:07:08.720 Marina.

01:07:09.440 Marina.

01:07:10.080 Marina.

01:07:10.540 She was born in Fuzhou, China.

01:07:15.460 We adopted her in 2004 at the age of 16 months.

01:07:19.100 She had been abandoned at 12 hours old.

01:07:20.940 Nuh-uh.

01:07:21.600 On a park bench in China.

01:07:24.540 Aw. 0.69

01:07:25.020 Parking.

01:07:25.400 No, it was good, man. 1.00

01:07:26.400 She's tough.

01:07:28.440 Yeah, look.

01:07:29.540 I mean, look.

01:07:29.860 if you spend a night out in a park i've slept in some parks dude you know what i'm saying

01:07:34.400 at 12 hours old hey not at 12 hours bro but maybe she's she's tough as nails man she's tough as

01:07:40.880 she's so strong and so good and she loves me and i love her blessings thank you for your service

01:07:45.920 yeah marina um my baby my baby forever yeah huh and lethal lethal babies yeah that's what that's 0.63

01:07:55.680 we need more of. We need more lethal babies. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But that's why people in the 1.00

01:08:00.480 military, by the way, and that's one of the things that I recommend to a lot of young men

01:08:03.220 who have no answers to these questions. I recommend the military. Yeah. Because the

01:08:07.740 military helps you find answers to these questions. Just adding structure to yourself

01:08:12.220 because things can get really unstructured. Yeah. You know, things can get extremely unstructured.

01:08:17.100 Yeah. And for you and me too. I mean, who knows if we would have been better off.

01:08:20.940 Dude, when I leave out of here, I could go, you know what I'm saying? There's nothing.

01:08:23.720 it's just me that's going to keep me going for the rest of the day like there's things you know

01:08:28.040 I have responsibilities to my co-workers and and we'll do some stuff together but it's like

01:08:32.140 yeah it's and I'm sure it's the same for a lot of people it's like um yeah they have to be the

01:08:37.640 ones to keep themselves going um and I think if I can create more of a relationship with myself

01:08:43.660 then it's more of there's something to keep going right because otherwise you can fall and I'm just

01:08:50.060 this sort of like thing. I'm this repeating thing. So thinking about those questions is critical

01:08:55.740 because what that does is it opens up your brain so that meaning of your life will find you. It's

01:09:01.380 the cheat code. Okay. So I want to say those again. And those questions are. The questions

01:09:04.900 are number one, why are you alive? Like who made you for what purpose? Why are you alive?

01:09:10.200 Like, why are you walking the earth? I don't know. Random. Right now it's more than that.

01:09:14.740 But if you don't think about it, and again, it might take years. Right. But you have to plant

01:09:19.540 seeds that's another thing about talking with yourself and having a relationship with yourself

01:09:22.320 i noticed for me it's like it's it'll plant a little seed i'll start something and it might

01:09:28.180 not be anything for a little bit that's right and then it'll come back around when i have some space

01:09:32.380 or when i have some peace or when i'm at rested it's like oh okay that's right that's right that's

01:09:37.880 right and your brain will do a lot of the work for you that's right and you know that has been

01:09:42.080 fundamental to my life i mean there are different points of my life when i felt very desperate

01:09:46.440 really lost as a matter of fact. And by the way, that doesn't stop. I mean, the last time I was

01:09:51.020 very desperate, I was 55. I was retiring from this big job. I was super burnt out. I didn't

01:09:56.580 know what I was doing. And so I went on a pilgrimage. I walked hundreds of miles across

01:10:02.340 Northern Spain. I was going to say a pill. No, pilgrimage. But that's how things have

01:10:07.700 changed right there. It used to be people would go on a pilgrimage. Now they go on a pill.

01:10:13.120 I recommend the pilgrimage. And, and I just thought, you know, why am I alive? And for what

01:10:17.300 would I give my life? Why am I alive? And for what would I give my life? Why am I alive? And

01:10:20.600 for what will I give my life? It's a tough thing to answer kind of. It is. It is. And sometimes

01:10:25.280 you just have an understanding, a deep understanding of it. And you ask for the

01:10:28.240 grace, if you're religious to, to get, to put this, put the understanding of these questions

01:10:32.320 on my heart, put these that like grant me this wisdom. And so, so that's something I could ask

01:10:37.320 God to do. Cause it's like, I don't even know if I know those answers. Yeah, I know. And, and,

01:10:41.420 And for sure, of course, I mean, it's hard.

01:10:43.920 I mean, and those answers change over the course of your life, for sure.

01:10:46.860 But that led me to, I mean, now, I mean, my purpose, my mission is to lift people up and bring them together in bonds of happiness and love using science and ideas.

01:10:57.740 Okay.

01:10:58.100 That's my mission in life.

01:10:59.600 I came up with that on the pilgrimage.

01:11:01.680 Wow.

01:11:01.880 Asking those questions.

01:11:03.240 You know, and I feel like that information was granted to me because I was in the space to actually get that.

01:11:08.440 But if you don't, if it's like, you know the way to not be in the space?

01:11:11.420 I mean, and hours pass and days pass and, and, and your life passes.

01:11:20.060 Okay. So I want to say those again. Uh, those questions are number one, ask yourself, why am

01:11:25.860 I alive? So why am I alive? And how do we ask ourselves it? Cause you don't want to ask yourself

01:11:30.020 in a way that's negative, that puts you into a negative space. Not as if, you know, I might as

01:11:33.560 well be dead, but I'm alive. There's a reason. Right. And I want to know what it is. And the

01:11:38.460 Two parts are who created me, and number two is for what purpose.

01:11:43.240 Now, that doesn't have to be religious like me or you.

01:11:45.860 We do our own thing, right?

01:11:47.940 I like my way.

01:11:49.400 Yeah.

01:11:49.680 But there's got to be an answer to that.

01:11:51.460 There's got to be an answer to that.

01:11:52.900 But the second one is, you know, like this, it gets real fast when you say, for what would I die?

01:11:59.640 Like what, because a lot of people are like, I don't know why I'm alive, and I don't have any idea what I'd die for.

01:12:06.380 What a way to live.

01:12:07.060 How the hell would I live?

01:12:08.460 right right because if you don't have something you would die for then uh then what are you living

01:12:13.020 for right so correct right there's not a real purpose so and i think some of us have some basic

01:12:18.240 things right like you if you have a family or if you have children those will give you some

01:12:22.180 some severe purpose sometimes it could be work if you have a work that you're passionate about

01:12:26.840 and you feel like it's helping the world if you have kids most people would die for their kids

01:12:30.660 yeah most people really would die for their kids um would you die for your friends would you die

01:12:34.600 for your country? Would you die for your faith? Would you die for your ideas? Would you die for

01:12:38.540 a stranger? I mean, it's really worth thinking about that, right? Because I don't know. I don't

01:12:45.260 know. But there's sometimes when I feel more like I would, but the act of doing that, what that does

01:12:51.600 is as a scientific matter, is that it opens up the aperture to meaning by actually activating the

01:12:57.600 right hemisphere of your brain. So it opens up the aperture to meaning by opening up the right

01:13:02.000 side of your right hemisphere of your brain which is where meaning is calculated this is where we

01:13:07.040 this is where we process issues of meaning okay is in the right side of our brain that's where

01:13:11.640 intuition happens mystery love happiness all the stuff that the why questions of life wow like you

01:13:17.240 know the how to and what is what you're doing all day long you know you're doing your podcast and

01:13:20.400 it's a really technical thing and you got all these stuff all these you know how to and what

01:13:23.880 questions that's your left brain but it's going to be really depressing if you don't ask the why

01:13:28.640 question first. Why am I doing the podcast? Why am I doing that podcast? And the answer is to help

01:13:33.940 a whole bunch of people, to entertain and help people, right? Because I want to make my living.

01:13:39.080 Yeah. And those are, that's really important. Why is way more important. All the important stuff is

01:13:42.920 on the right. All the technical stuff is on the left and people are on the left side. Anytime

01:13:47.900 you're looking at your phone, you're on the left side. Got it. Well, we've also, all of our,

01:13:52.940 the owners of so many of these, uh, tech companies and a lot of these sort of tech oligarchs,

01:14:00.360 and I'm not blaming things, but it's like, they are all left. They seem very left brain-ish.

01:14:07.340 Yeah. There, yeah, there's, there's just all these tech lords and a lot of, there's a lot of like,

01:14:11.880 you know, these tech lords nowadays, people say that term, but, uh, they all have sort of this,

01:14:17.520 you know, it feels a lot of times like an autism, like where they don't know how to create,

01:14:21.660 like they're trying to connect us more than ever right but it's not working right and i don't even

01:14:28.040 know if some of them possess you know i believe a lot of them have like an autism like a tectism

01:14:32.260 or whatever and that they don't even know how to process they're just going to keep trying it's 0.99

01:14:37.700 like they're just trying to like find the exact formula it's like motherfucker it's a hug yeah 0.99

01:14:43.600 you know i'm saying it's there's two equations like four equations your two arms and my two 0.98

01:14:48.840 It's like, there's not, you know what I'm saying?

01:14:50.720 I do.

01:14:51.120 I do.

01:14:51.600 I know exactly what you're saying.

01:14:52.580 And one of the biggest problems that we have,

01:14:54.800 and if you back up a couple of hundred years to,

01:14:57.060 they talk about the enlightenment.

01:14:58.540 The enlightenment was this idea

01:15:00.100 that there's a solution to every human problem,

01:15:02.640 that science is going to come up

01:15:04.060 with a solution to every problem.

01:15:05.460 That was a belief in the enlightenment,

01:15:07.360 that kind of a religion of scientism.

01:15:09.940 It's completely wrong.

01:15:11.260 Okay.

01:15:11.460 It's completely wrong.

01:15:12.580 And it has everything to do with the fact

01:15:14.040 that scientism and science and technological solutions

01:15:16.860 are the solutions to complicated problems,

01:15:20.260 not the complexities of the right hemisphere,

01:15:22.240 which is all the why stuff,

01:15:23.520 the things you can understand,

01:15:24.820 but you can't solve.

01:15:26.420 I'll give you an example.

01:15:27.580 All of your human relationships,

01:15:29.680 they're not complicated problems

01:15:30.940 like writing software

01:15:32.260 or putting together a jet engine

01:15:33.680 or even building a toaster.

01:15:35.380 Your relationships are complex problems

01:15:37.600 that you'll never solve,

01:15:38.660 but they're easy to understand.

01:15:40.300 Okay, say that stuff again.

01:15:41.480 So complicated problems

01:15:43.160 that tech is really good at solving

01:15:44.860 are problems that are hard to figure out,

01:15:47.720 but once you do, they're solved.

01:15:50.160 That's not the same as complex problems,

01:15:52.800 which are really easy to understand and impossible to solve.

01:15:56.140 My marriage is incredibly complex.

01:15:58.120 It's my most complex problem.

01:16:00.080 Right, love is a complex problem.

01:16:01.580 Because it's completely, it's like, you know,

01:16:02.940 your cat is a complex problem.

01:16:04.820 That's why you love your cat.

01:16:05.520 Right, fatherhood, being a child, all these things.

01:16:07.240 Yeah, but a mechanical cat is a complicated problem,

01:16:09.160 which is why you don't love your mechanical cat, right?

01:16:12.280 And so if the tech guys and the whole culture are saying there's a complicated technological solution to all of our deep human needs, they're going to keep giving us mechanical cats.

01:16:22.740 And that's why we feel so empty when we spend all day scrolling is because there's one mechanical cat after the other, and we want a real cat.

01:16:30.220 That's what it comes down to.

01:16:31.580 Who don't want a little cat? 0.96

01:16:32.860 Cat's warm.

01:16:33.880 You don't know what it's going to do.

01:16:35.380 It's alive.

01:16:36.400 It's a creature.

01:16:37.600 Oh, yeah.

01:16:38.520 And the machine, it's like, it approximates a cat.

01:16:41.840 It doesn't poop.

01:16:43.020 No litter box.

01:16:44.040 Right. 1.00

01:16:44.380 Don't have to feed it.

01:16:45.360 You just kind of plug it in.

01:16:47.040 It's better than a cat.

01:16:47.960 No, it's completely inadequate.

01:16:50.100 Right.

01:16:50.580 It's totally inadequate.

01:16:51.860 And so all of these tech solutions.

01:16:54.160 So yeah, social media is going to wipe out loneliness.

01:16:57.580 Every hour you spend on social media, you will get lonelier because your brain knows the difference.

01:17:03.180 It's like social media, which has its place and is not going away, and it can do a lot of good.

01:17:08.960 but it's basically the junk food of our social lives.

01:17:12.780 You know, if you're really hungry

01:17:13.740 and you're coming home from a gig

01:17:14.780 and you pass like a fast food place

01:17:17.580 and you're like, yeah, it's going to be good.

01:17:19.960 And you stop in and it is good, right?

01:17:22.680 You get all your calories,

01:17:23.960 but you get hungry really fast later

01:17:25.640 because it doesn't meet your nutrient needs.

01:17:28.040 And so you can binge and get both malnourished

01:17:31.160 and obese at the same time.

01:17:33.220 If you eat stuff that's high in calories

01:17:35.200 and low in nutrients,

01:17:36.580 Social media is high in calories and low in nutrients.

01:17:39.480 Yeah.

01:17:40.020 Which means that we'll binge it and get lonelier and lonelier and lonelier.

01:17:42.760 Our soul just has a lot of fat on it.

01:17:44.420 And the reason is because it's a simulation of what we actually want.

01:17:46.840 Wow.

01:17:47.060 Fast food is a simulation for the nutrient-dense foods that our bodies need.

01:17:51.100 So why can't we quit it right now?

01:17:53.000 What's going on?

01:17:53.880 Because we're super addicted.

01:17:55.240 Okay, got it.

01:17:55.920 So we are addicted, but also there's this element of the devil is creating it.

01:18:01.080 It feels like they are sharpening the spear every single day.

01:18:05.800 Yeah, well, it's also, here's an interesting thing.

01:18:07.880 So you've dealt with, you know,

01:18:08.800 we understand how addiction to substances work.

01:18:11.500 Oh, yeah.

01:18:12.180 Substance addiction is always the solution to a problem

01:18:15.380 that winds up creating a catastrophe.

01:18:17.940 Okay, wait, so substance abuse, substance addiction.

01:18:21.180 Yeah, is always a solution to a problem.

01:18:23.860 It's always a solution to a problem.

01:18:24.840 But it always creates a bigger problem.

01:18:26.160 But it always creates a bigger problem.

01:18:27.220 So for example, people who are anxious are in danger.

01:18:30.720 Everybody watching us who has,

01:18:32.360 not clinical and, you know, generalized anxiety,

01:18:34.560 who has an anxious job, who's an anxious person.

01:18:37.700 Yeah, like real anxiety, like something, you know, like.

01:18:39.780 Which is unfocused fear.

01:18:41.440 Right.

01:18:41.760 Right, that's anxiety.

01:18:42.720 You're in danger for alcohol abuse.

01:18:44.880 And there's a reason for that.

01:18:45.880 We actually understand that you're, the alcohol,

01:18:48.780 I mean, anxiety, it stimulates the amygdala,

01:18:51.840 which is the part of your brain for fight or flight.

01:18:54.080 And you don't like it, right?

01:18:55.920 And it's chronic and it's uncomfortable.

01:18:57.840 You'll cut the connection with your conscious brain,

01:19:00.440 with your prefrontal cortex, with alcohol.

01:19:03.100 Alcohol snips that connection.

01:19:04.740 So you're stressed out, but you don't know it.

01:19:06.560 And that's the reason that when you're really stressed out,

01:19:08.540 like really stressed out, two drinks and you're a new man.

01:19:11.100 And then another six drinks and you're the best version of yourself.

01:19:14.460 And then after that, you don't remember anything.

01:19:16.320 So the problem with that is that then it will rebound.

01:19:19.480 It will create a much bigger problem with escalation

01:19:21.420 and all the things that we understand that are attendant on that.

01:19:24.780 If you're lonely, opiates solve that problem because they feel like love.

01:19:30.060 Opiates feel like love.

01:19:31.300 And they hit some of the same receptors as oxytocin, as a matter of fact.

01:19:34.840 The problem is that they create addiction and destroy your relationships in the end.

01:19:38.760 The reason that we're using social media addictively is because we hate boredom.

01:19:43.200 It's boring.

01:19:44.480 And it wipes out boredom.

01:19:46.360 But what it does is it creates the most boring possible life.

01:19:50.800 That's the irony.

01:19:51.820 It's just like alcohol.

01:19:53.420 Right.

01:19:53.700 It's like I'm feeling stressed out.

01:19:55.360 And so I wipe out momentary stress.

01:19:57.640 And all I get is like the most stressed out, horrible life ever.

01:20:01.300 yeah that's it's the same thing we're wiping out a little problem we're creating a catastrophe

01:20:05.280 that's how old scratch works by the way right that's the devil the devil's active here's the

01:20:12.020 thing about it too so funny nobody says the secret to my happiness is social media just like nobody

01:20:18.280 says you know the secret of my happiness meth right like words never uttered yeah and a lot of people

01:20:25.000 use meth yeah dude yeah i never got to use it i never i don't think i would have liked it i don't

01:20:30.580 like doing a lot of 0.98

01:20:32.120 auto body type of shit. 0.99

01:20:35.020 Yeah, it's actually more addictive 0.99

01:20:36.520 than cocaine because it actually boosts

01:20:39.000 it's the substance that we know of

01:20:40.620 that boosts dopamine the most.

01:20:42.960 Crystal meth is a 10x

01:20:44.780 of your dopamine. Dang.

01:20:47.020 It's like supercharged.

01:20:49.100 Dude, it's crazy they gave it like

01:20:50.420 crystal meth. They gave it as like a kind of a

01:20:52.440 cool name to have overall.

01:20:54.300 You know?

01:20:56.380 So that's the problem with tech.

01:20:58.100 Yeah, I don't know if I feel like there's a

01:21:00.300 solution there is there is there absolutely is but it requires commitment we don't need you know

01:21:06.180 a massive 12-step program i don't think for social media what we need is is people to it's funny

01:21:12.180 because when people stop using they there's three things that they always do right and they stop

01:21:16.760 using number one is that they get pissed that's the first thing that happens get pissed off this

01:21:23.720 thing is is is ruining my life this thing is sucking out my soul and i don't want to live

01:21:28.980 this way and it's not right they get angry you got to get mad enough you know that feeling right

01:21:33.220 so you have to get upset that you're using this you got to get furious you need to be in a rage

01:21:37.640 about that like when yeah like what kind of bottom do people have to hit like i'm saying do you need

01:21:42.180 to sit you know like people's bottoms are different so set with alcohol abuse 70 of people who stop

01:21:48.180 using stop using before they hit rock bottom and have to go to rehab amen so 70 this is really

01:21:53.660 really good news i never went to rehab yeah i never went never had to go to rehab but boy was

01:21:58.000 my life a mess. And so I, but it wasn't, I was in the 70%. I could have, I could have taken that

01:22:02.780 elevator down many more floors. Yeah. Right. So most people, but I, I was so mad. I was so mad

01:22:08.880 at what it was doing to my life, what it was doing, my marriage, what it was doing to my

01:22:11.920 relationship with God. It was tearing me, it was tearing apart my relationships. And I wasn't going

01:22:17.060 to put up with this step one. Step two is actually understanding the science of what's actually

01:22:22.180 going on sufficiently that you can actually engage in what the medical intervention that's

01:22:27.760 appropriate, right? I mean, you actually have to do something about it, do something tangible about

01:22:33.020 it, which might involve a 12-step program, but usually it has to do with like going to the doctor

01:22:36.700 and saying, I got a problem here. For alcoholism, you mean. Yeah, or alcoholism or any drug abuse or

01:22:40.900 any addiction, by the way. Are you talking about addiction to screen too? That is, it's really

01:22:44.760 important that we actually have an intervention. You know, the second step is actually intervening

01:22:49.180 and changing our behavior. Okay. So the first step is hitting a bottom, recognize it, getting

01:22:52.980 angry getting angry the second is intervening in the process of using so you have to intervene

01:22:57.920 for yourself yep and the third is you got to live in a new way you got to live in a new way i mean

01:23:02.860 it's like you got to get new friends and and you know it's funny because one thing that alcoholics

01:23:07.620 always do that's really interesting is they try to go to step three first and they'll like move

01:23:12.760 hey man if i move then all these stimuli all these kind of loser friends that i've got like that it

01:23:17.960 never works because you didn't do one and two right you didn't do actually the the you didn't

01:23:22.760 get mad enough and you didn't actually intervene. But then you do have to live in a new way. And so

01:23:27.860 that's what we need to do with these screen addictions. People need to say, I'm tired of

01:23:32.340 this sucking out my soul. I'm tired of this actually taking over my life. I'm tired of missing

01:23:36.800 my life. And I feel like you almost hope you hit a rock bottom with it. You know, I heard my friend

01:23:42.060 Jay the other day shared at a meeting. He's like, and this was about addiction, like in drug and

01:23:47.500 alcohol, but not screen addiction. But he just said rock bottom is when you break your own heart.

01:23:51.720 and i thought that that was pretty profound it was like deep disappointment yes you and how like

01:23:57.960 and like will we get there where we are like we're just fed up we're like this isn't feeding

01:24:04.800 anything anymore these are just empty calories yes um for a desperate we will because people do

01:24:10.620 and then we will and we do and it turns out that the second part of the intervention is easier

01:24:15.220 much easier so the first one is uh is uh acknowledging i got a big problem the second

01:24:20.700 is an intervention and the intervention it turns out there's just those three steps that science

01:24:24.680 based things that we talked about before first hour meals last hour that in 42 days your life

01:24:31.060 is different so what are you saying you're going to that will help you stay off your screen yeah

01:24:34.620 it'll make it so that when you use your screen you're using it as a tool and you're not using

01:24:38.580 it as a way to actually pacify yourself you're not using it to hypnotize yourself you're not

01:24:42.780 using it to miss your life got it so it's not the kind of thing where you won't think of it

01:24:46.460 every single moment so if you don't use it the first hour of the day after about it takes about

01:24:50.120 six weeks. Most, and that's a rule of thumb, your results may vary, right? It might be less,

01:24:54.780 it might be more. But the whole point is a few weeks. And what you'll find is that you won't

01:24:58.580 think of it all the time when you're not doing something else. Like when you're waiting at the

01:25:02.260 light, light's kind of taking a long time. It's like, right. That's because you don't want your

01:25:06.720 mind to wander. You want to keep the mind wandering. It's called the default mode network

01:25:10.840 in your brain. You want to keep it off. That mind wandering is really uncomfortable. And that's why

01:25:16.280 we do it right okay you won't you'll get out of the habit of distracting yourself all the time

01:25:20.840 which is important you'll also get more oxytocin because you're eating with other people and you're

01:25:26.620 not having your phone on the table we're evolved to eat with other people so you're saying that

01:25:31.080 the actual intervention for self is spending time with yourself in the morning right have an

01:25:35.220 experience for an hour uh eat together with others eat together with others no phone even on the

01:25:40.200 table with no phone on the table so you're engaging in humanity um and you have a connection

01:25:44.380 and then the last hour of the day and the phone should never be in the bedroom got it never if

01:25:49.300 it's the last hour in the first hour you don't have it you don't need it in the bedroom it's

01:25:52.420 plugged in downstairs yeah the phone in your bed you're supposed to have your spouse in there i

01:25:56.700 know i know people that'll sleep with their phone and won't even sleep with their own spouse well

01:26:00.260 i know people who are you know it's like the saddest thing is a spouse you know two spouses

01:26:03.540 lying in their beds you know scrolling their individual instagram until they fall unconscious 0.98

01:26:08.320 and they don't even like each other's shit it's they're not even laughing at each other's funny 1.00

01:26:12.820 memes dude that's the worst bro you're like in there your wife posts something you're like 0.99

01:26:17.200 it's not funny yeah so it's it's yeah no it's sad actually and so i mean you can save a ton

01:26:23.060 of marriages if you just have like read to each other from a real book and then stare into each

01:26:27.760 other's eyes for oxytocin nighty night man you'll wake up more in love than you would sleep but you

01:26:33.740 won't you're missing your marriage it's it's just those three things that's the intervention and

01:26:39.580 then you got to live in a new way where you're actually engaging in life and love and beauty

01:26:45.200 and pain and life right if there's something on the side it's like say you have something on the

01:26:49.800 scale it's heavy right like it's like oh this thing's too heavy for me i'm tired of this like

01:26:53.580 feeling checked out i'm tired of this phone addiction i'm tired of this like it could be

01:26:57.840 alcohol whatever it is whatever this thing is you have to put something on the other side of the

01:27:01.560 scale so you can't you have to replace it kind of with something you got to do it otherwise you know

01:27:05.220 what i mean i'm sure you know what a dry drunk is right yeah a dry i mean for everybody doesn't

01:27:09.560 No, a dry drunk is somebody who doesn't replace the alcohol

01:27:12.900 with something that's positive.

01:27:14.180 They don't get to the bottom of what you're actually trying

01:27:16.800 to, the need that you're trying to meet.

01:27:18.960 Right.

01:27:19.800 I mean, remember, you use alcohol abusively

01:27:23.020 because you're trying to solve a problem.

01:27:24.980 So you get rid of the alcohol without solving the problem.

01:27:27.600 You're just going to be like a mean guy.

01:27:30.280 That's called the dry drunk syndrome.

01:27:32.280 And we could be dry social media users or something,

01:27:35.440 dry screen addicts or something.

01:27:37.120 Right, you're just standing around

01:27:37.960 looking for something. Yeah. To be like, he's on your back. You know, you're super nervous all the

01:27:42.220 time. You're uncomfortable with yourself. You're bored. Yeah. You don't even, you just feel less

01:27:46.680 human. And I, and I'm, I'm amazed that you think that it's repairable that you believe that there's

01:27:52.320 another, that there's a way out of this. Cause sometimes it feels like there's not. Yeah, but

01:27:56.180 there is. And I've actually seen it with a lot of young people who are actually developing and using

01:28:00.100 these protocols. Once again, it comes back to structuring the architecture of your own life,

01:28:04.540 the way that you want to live, taking back your own brain. I mean, again, it's not easy. If it

01:28:08.640 were easy, everybody would do it. You know, there are actually studies now that show that teenagers

01:28:12.820 would literally pay for there to be no social media as long as nobody had it. They don't want

01:28:18.520 to be the only ones without it because they don't want to be alone on Gilligan's Island.

01:28:21.960 They want nobody to have it. They would literally pay, I think it's like 35 bucks or something that

01:28:26.780 they say they would pay on average to obliterate it, right? There's a good study here, right?

01:28:30.980 A study led about researchers examined how much people value social media versus a world without it.

01:28:36.400 When asked about individual use, participants typically said they would need to be paid around $59 to deactivate their accounts.

01:28:45.960 However, when asked about a collective deactivating scenario, many users would actually pay to get rid of the platforms.

01:28:51.440 Yeah, they would pay an average of $28 to deactivate a social media platform and $10 to globally deactivate Instagram.

01:29:00.980 you want to get rid of both 38 bucks deal how nice would it be imagine what it would be like

01:29:06.680 yeah and and you know that's what a lot and these are teenagers are saying this is not like

01:29:10.460 you and me you know grown-up guys because then you got to be like around some like if you want

01:29:16.340 to see people uh if you want to see you had to go see them dude you had to hope they were somewhere

01:29:22.920 i know i know i know and so what happens is when young people do that they'll have a they'll

01:29:28.120 collectively do that groups of friends will do this you see this on campuses and they get so

01:29:32.380 much happier and what are they doing at night after they after saturday night when they come

01:29:36.320 back from a party they're just like bsing they're having those conversations those late night dorm

01:29:41.480 conversations yeah they're not waiting for the youtube algorithm to deliver them some anesthetizing

01:29:46.880 algorithmically derived information they didn't seek it's so depressing and you reminisce bro

01:29:54.640 yeah dude laying like if my friends would sleep over we'd do a sleepover something bro i know and

01:30:00.840 we was reminiscing but you know the kid what and we could lie to each other i know and you'll think

01:30:05.580 about that right now we're having a conversation right now and it's so awesome i'm just enjoying

01:30:10.460 it so much want to know why why because we're talking about real things in real time and that's

01:30:16.640 life in life well dude remember when you could lie to your friends bro remember that tell me a lie

01:30:24.300 you told your friends oh dude i remember bro so we had to go like we was doing uh i don't know if

01:30:29.200 it was boy scouts or if there was just like you were a boy scout uh it might have just been some

01:30:33.480 pedophiles in the area nonetheless we were going camping and right when we got there i remember

01:30:39.480 telling everybody like man i just can't even believe that and like what happened i was like

01:30:42.700 did y'all see that jay leno had died and they're like what even the dads and kids and everybody

01:30:48.120 was like what and i was like yeah jay leno died and they're like oh man you spread a rumor a local

01:30:54.060 rumor so for so for the next two nights we're out in the woods and stuff and everybody thought

01:30:58.220 jay lennon would die so i'd hear them sit up and talk about it at night and i would be in my tent

01:31:02.660 bro like laughing at a level that came from like i can't even because there was no internet access

01:31:09.620 yeah there was no way to fact check that like we're like fact checking me in real time right

01:31:13.200 now right like no no and i and i knew that when they got home he was going to be alive for them

01:31:18.160 and that was awesome too that's pretty funny i was like damn that was like real life not only

01:31:23.140 I'm having so much fun right now,

01:31:24.420 but you guys are going to get Jay Leno back.

01:31:26.820 Oh, it's so great.

01:31:27.920 It's like resurrected.

01:31:31.320 The reincarnation of Jay Leno.

01:31:34.160 Oh, dude.

01:31:35.600 Oh, God, bro.

01:31:36.880 Yeah, that's great.

01:31:38.040 So that's the protocol.

01:31:40.400 That's the protocols.

01:31:41.340 One, two, three, right?

01:31:42.920 And no phone in the,

01:31:43.920 there shouldn't be, by the way,

01:31:44.920 any phones in classrooms any place in America.

01:31:46.760 That's completely insane.

01:31:47.900 That's total, that's nuts.

01:31:49.000 At a certain point, though,

01:31:51.160 it's obvious that there are bigger entities

01:31:52.960 out there who want us to, they want this. You know, sort of, I think that what's happening

01:31:57.480 is that we're finding our way. I know a lot of these guys in you do too. They want the best for

01:32:01.740 their kids and they don't want to get sued to kingdom come. And they don't want the worst for

01:32:06.140 our kids either, but we kind of, people develop stuff and, you know, we've got this dynamic

01:32:11.160 economy where people invent things they think are cool. And it turns out that, well, they're

01:32:15.740 dangerous too. And we're going to figure it out. And you know, when you meet these guys, they're,

01:32:20.300 they're they're good dudes they're good people and and they want the best and it's not just like

01:32:25.280 profit at any cost you have to not know them to think that it's profit at any cost i don't know

01:32:29.980 some of them you start to wonder if they're even people sometimes i start to wonder and you start

01:32:35.120 i start to wonder like do they care about anything other than profit at any cost sometimes what i

01:32:41.700 think that they've created is something that they can't control anymore yeah and that's a common

01:32:45.780 thing. And they don't want to admit that. That's right. No. And look, I mean, there were people

01:32:50.080 who, who, you know, develop tobacco products or people who developed the automobile and there

01:32:55.320 were unintended consequences of those things. And, and we figured it out. Yeah. We figured it out.

01:32:59.860 And we're going to figure this one out too. I'm, I'm super optimistic about that. I just don't want

01:33:03.360 to lose a generation in the meantime. I love that. No, I love hearing that because it's like,

01:33:06.960 that's the thing that we do need to hear is that there's optimism. Yeah. Yeah. No, no. I'm very

01:33:10.440 optimistic about it because humans are great at figuring stuff out. You know, it's not like the

01:33:15.260 end of civilization. We're going to be all right. We're going to be all right. And the best thing

01:33:19.740 used to be though, dude, when it was like you, but you, if you wanted a story, you had to go

01:33:23.820 to your buddy to get it, dude. And that was the guy who told the story. And that's what added so

01:33:28.620 much, like it added of so much value to me. It was, it was this and it was oxytocin and it was

01:33:34.540 friendship and it was love and it was good. Yeah. And now what is it? We're actually just getting it

01:33:39.780 virtually electronically, just the facts, just the facts, just the facts, left brain, left brain,

01:33:44.560 left brain. Which is, of course, a simulation of fellowship and goodness and love. That's what it

01:33:50.080 comes down to. So that's the way that we get in. That's the cessation method is actually getting

01:34:00.300 into that. That's the way that we can actually solve the problem. But then we have to live in

01:34:04.920 a different way because we've got to live the rest of our lives. And that comes back to living

01:34:08.120 like your great-grandfather. My great-grandfather was Leroy Brooks. He plowed the fields in Olathe,

01:34:14.120 kansas oh yeah yeah beautiful out there he he married mary ellen james the the sheriff's daughter

01:34:22.040 her father had been strung up by quantrail's raiders you know like frank james and those guys

01:34:28.040 yeah strung him up he was even that didn't kill him because they were too drunk to tie his hands

01:34:32.200 dang he let himself down got married had kid i'm alive today because of liquor yeah

01:34:38.520 also not unfortunately not dead because of liquor that's true well it has a complicated

01:34:42.600 relationship in our lives, doesn't it? But, but he was, you know, he was fully alive,

01:34:47.080 bored moment to moment and completely engaged in his life. Yeah. Kids, grandkids, strong Christian

01:34:53.380 guy, married 60 years. I guarantee you his life was not boring. He did not say on his deathbed,

01:34:58.200 honey, that was boring. Yeah. Cause it wasn't. And so that's, and how did he live? He lived

01:35:04.500 with nature. He lived with beauty. He lived with his faith in God. He lived in love with his wife.

01:35:10.640 he was fully alive and completely engaged in his life we lived with all the real things that it's

01:35:15.860 like we see clips of yeah and we share them and we say well this is real yeah yeah but we're not

01:35:21.140 like um we don't have a tan like a uh we don't have a true relationship with it sometimes yeah

01:35:27.300 and so we need to we need to go back and do those things on purpose whereas there was no other

01:35:32.240 choice you know people send out those internet clips now of how people lived in like the late

01:35:38.540 70s or 80s or something like that that was my childhood yeah and it was like ride our bikes

01:35:43.240 and and and if you got to call home you got to find a pay phone but you probably don't your mom

01:35:46.840 was like make sure you're home before nightfall and she didn't know any idea where you were what

01:35:50.740 you were doing yeah and you're at the arcade ding ding ding playing ping ball and and these kids

01:35:55.020 were like 17 years old are feeling sentimental about my childhood because they know it was real

01:36:02.200 there was something real in it something real in it right yeah and that's key is to actually live

01:36:06.980 in this old-fashioned way, falling in love, right?

01:36:10.900 Seeking the beauty in life.

01:36:12.560 That's a big one right there.

01:36:13.840 Huge.

01:36:14.280 Finding some love out there.

01:36:15.700 Huge.

01:36:16.400 And that means in real life,

01:36:18.680 you know, for the guys who are watching this right now

01:36:20.220 with a real woman.

01:36:20.780 Love is real.

01:36:21.600 Love is a real thing.

01:36:23.480 Oh, man.

01:36:24.220 My next book is called Falling in Love and Staying in Love.

01:36:26.820 The science of falling in love is so heavy.

01:36:29.320 Is it?

01:36:29.840 It's amazing what happens to your brain.

01:36:32.240 It's completely indescribable.

01:36:33.960 It's like a total miracle.

01:36:35.780 Have you ever been in love? 1.00

01:36:36.300 yeah how many times probably three times your heart broken any of those times yeah my shit 0.95

01:36:43.200 was pretty banged up but some of it was my own fault but yeah dude when it was good it was good 0.85

01:36:47.920 i think i was always part of me was afraid to be all the way there did you were you always the

01:36:52.800 reason that broke up that it broke up probably in some ways or something like i just i don't know

01:36:58.740 i never had a good um the foundation for of it for me wasn't great but i think it's i do like

01:37:05.180 Like, yeah, the moments where you felt like connected, man, it's really nice.

01:37:09.200 It's like 4th of July inside your head.

01:37:11.340 And we actually know, I mean, the chemistry is actually there.

01:37:14.100 We've evolved the chemistry to bond to each other and find your person, to find your soulmate.

01:37:18.860 Human beings are made, we call it pair bond mating.

01:37:22.080 It's just a kind of a clinical way to say falling in love with your person for the rest of your life.

01:37:27.760 And the goal is the deepest possible friendship, deepest possible friendship.

01:37:31.920 That's the union of your right hemispheres.

01:37:34.560 It is.

01:37:34.840 oh totally so that's right hemisphere stuff that's meaning stuff totally my wife and i is like

01:37:39.020 when we're in the zone when we're really clicking it's because i mean she's finishing my sentences

01:37:43.800 and uh and when we're understanding each other at a deep intuitive level it's not like yeah i can i

01:37:49.460 you know i understand the meaning of those particular words no it's just it's this deep

01:37:53.740 intuitive understanding we're right there yeah yeah yeah that's two right hemispheres beating

01:37:58.600 is one. Dang, bro. It sounds, yeah, something you're going to get arrested for. It doesn't

01:38:02.880 sound like romantic, I know, but, you know, but that's really, really, I mean, it's, that will

01:38:07.560 lead you to meaning. Falling in love and letting yourself fall in love. And that's, you know,

01:38:11.060 it's very hard on apps to do that. Oh, yeah. 62% of couples today meet on the apps. Some are better

01:38:19.040 than others. I've actually done a bunch of work with Bumble. I like those guys because they're

01:38:22.000 trying to add more human friction into the algorithm. So it's not just the, you know,

01:38:27.560 they're trying to find ways to get people out on real human dates faster. And that's the way it's

01:38:32.240 going to have to be. And once again, we'll solve these problems like that. So you think a lot of

01:38:36.120 it is just kind of a fine tuning of this errant ways that we've gone. Yeah. Well, I mean, we're

01:38:41.380 not going to throw our phones in the ocean. It's just not going to happen. Right. I mean, we're not

01:38:45.220 where that ship has sailed. And so we're going to have to figure it out. It's like people said,

01:38:48.780 we'll never be happy again because of the telephone. I mean, there was an article early

01:38:53.720 out of the telephone where people like people are going to stay in their houses. Somebody's just

01:38:57.180 going to hold a phone up at the church and people are going to listen in their houses, not going to

01:39:00.300 see each other anymore is the death of civilization. No, no, it's just a tool. What's going to have to

01:39:05.380 happen is we figure out that the internet and especially social media and small screens are

01:39:10.500 nothing more than a tool. They got to go from entertainment to tool. Here's the, here's the

01:39:15.120 way to think about it, Theo. If any device or technology is substituting for your in-person

01:39:21.440 relationships, it's going to make you miserable and ruin your life. If it's a compliment, if it

01:39:26.420 actually connects you to other people it's good it's a tool okay use it and go forth and you know

01:39:31.900 be be at peace yeah so you know i mean i just say yeah i mean yeah i mean there's so many good like

01:39:38.180 like nuggets in this conversation of just ways to evaluate where you're at

01:39:42.480 to begin to have a little bit more of a relationship with yourself yeah right which is so key yeah um

01:39:48.360 love yourself and others yeah don't distract yourself from yourself don't lose yourself

01:39:54.300 don't simulate yourself real life and and that's by the way when you're not feeling good that's

01:40:01.720 hard yeah when you wake up and you're like no no i don't want me i don't want to be with me

01:40:06.720 but sometimes those are the days you got to work through it's like i know that if i put in the

01:40:10.780 effort right now then hopefully it'll pay off you know that tomorrow will be easier it's like

01:40:15.040 you know i'm saying some of those things you start to know and it's just the next foot in

01:40:18.120 front of the other it's like my buddy mark dowdle says it's just like can i take this next step for

01:40:22.820 myself right now and that is a truth right whatever's going on in here if it's not thought

01:40:28.840 then it's like um it's like because you ever do you ever notice sometimes in your brain like

01:40:33.620 i've really started to notice sometimes my brain is just rattling and i'm really thinking i feel

01:40:38.360 like i feel like i'm thinking but it's not thinking it's something else like yeah it's

01:40:42.720 sort of chatter it's not deep in its own way and what's actually this is the hemispheric

01:40:47.880 lateralization problem your right brain is not engaged at all okay all you're doing is just like

01:40:52.000 kind of information. It's like a ticker tape. It's like the, it's like the crawl on CNN headline

01:40:57.360 news. And it doesn't have any content. That's how we feel. Yeah, sure. Absolutely. That's where we

01:41:04.700 are. We got to get back into the big picture. Oh yeah. You got to be alive, fully alive. There's

01:41:08.680 this guy in the, in the early church, there was a saint in the fourth century named St. Irenaeus.

01:41:12.880 Great name, right? We got to name boys Irenaeus again. And he said, the glory of God is a man

01:41:17.640 fully alive. Wow. That's what he wanted. The glory of God. What does God want? He wants you

01:41:22.860 miserable. He wants you happy. He wants all of you. What he doesn't want is this degraded 0.99

01:41:28.600 version of you that's like getting filtered through a screen. Yeah. Like bring it on and

01:41:34.660 bring it on. And so this is, you know, like this thing early in the morning, I'll do this, like

01:41:37.920 there was this old preacher named Norman Vincent Peale back in the day. Norman? Norman Vincent

01:41:44.900 Peel. And he used to have this thing called the power of positive thinking. It was like one of

01:41:48.560 those little Protestant guys, right? And he used to say, every day when you wake up, you can actually

01:41:53.040 get these recordings. They all sounded like that back in the day. Every day when you wake up,

01:41:57.780 he says, say the Psalm, this is the day that the Lord has made. I will rejoice and be glad in it.

01:42:02.900 Yeah, but there's more to it than that, I say. Wake up and say, I'm also so grateful for all

01:42:07.560 the trouble I'm going to face this day because I'm going to learn and I'm going to grow and I'm

01:42:12.300 to feel somebody else's pain and i'm going to get the meaning of my life bring it on amen bring it

01:42:17.200 on man how do i be a warrior how do i start to just how do i have that relationship with myself

01:42:21.520 yeah yeah yeah all of it all of it all of it i want it all i want it all at the end of the day

01:42:26.980 you want some of it you want all of it this is yeah you're here for the yeah i want the i don't

01:42:32.020 want to scoop i want the sundae dr brooks you have your uh new book the meaning of your life

01:42:37.740 finding purpose in an age of emptiness.

01:42:42.180 And thank you, man.

01:42:43.560 Thank you so much for coming and talking about it.

01:42:45.040 I love being with you.

01:42:45.940 Yeah, I've enjoyed it, too.

01:42:46.840 We'll have to do it again sometime.

01:42:47.700 You have a very, very, very, very special soul.

01:42:51.200 Oh, thanks, dude.

01:42:52.540 Yeah, I feel lucky to be alive most of the time.

01:42:55.680 And when I don't feel that way,

01:42:57.100 I got to find a way to get back to that way.

01:42:59.120 Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

01:43:00.080 I mean, you run super deep.

01:43:01.780 You run super deep.

01:43:02.640 And that's got cost.

01:43:04.880 That's got a cost to it.

01:43:06.100 Yeah.

01:43:06.280 Yeah, well, I'm grateful to have days like this

01:43:09.120 Where I can talk with somebody

01:43:10.000 And like, you know

01:43:10.680 I mean, if anything

01:43:11.680 I feel way better now

01:43:13.240 Than I did when I started

01:43:14.100 Yeah, man

01:43:14.680 Let's do it again

01:43:15.520 What a blessing

01:43:16.180 Yeah, thank you

01:43:16.940 We'll do it again

01:43:17.520 Thank you, Dr. Brooks

01:43:18.360 Thank you

01:43:18.920 Go Doors

01:43:19.620 Now I'm just floating on the breeze

01:43:22.760 And I feel I'm falling like these leaves

01:43:25.720 I must be cornerstone

01:43:29.040 Oh, but when I reach that ground

01:43:33.580 I'll share this peace of mind

01:43:35.740 I found I can feel it in my bones

01:43:39.920 But it's gonna take a long time

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This Past Weekend with Theo Von - November 11, 2026

#695 - Happiness Expert Dr. Arthur Brooks

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