Hey everybody. I'm super proud to announce the publication of voicing change volume to the second. In our series of incredible coffee table, book, anthologies, featuring wisdom essays conversation, excerpts and beautiful photography inspired by 64. Of my favorite podcast. Guests. All books are hand-signed and we're shipping globally. So to learn more and pick up your copy. Visit Rich world.com, Supply is limited.
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today. Alright, let's do the show.
Love is a decision and not a feeling. It's a measure of who you are. As a person is your decision to love in a world full of hate. How do you re-establish a relationship with your spouse and Kids when that has become cordial at best? How do you kick a success addiction? That is deeply rooted in the neuromodulator. It's re-establishing love relationships. And replacing the substitutes for a love that will never truly satisfy you meaning and
Best for you or simply intertwined with the suffering that you've had with substance abuse, for example, with the relationships that suffered as a result of that. And that's the cosmic truth of meaning, when you avoid pain, you're avoiding. Meaning. What, you're avoiding learning, what your purpose is through, resiliency, what you're capable of, and the lessons, you're supposed to learn to avoid, your unhappiness, is to avoid your happiness, which is the we need pain. The secret to being more satisfied as not having more as wanting less.
The secret.
The Rich Roll podcast.
Hey, everybody. Welcome to the podcast. So last week, we delve deep on the value of wisdom accrued with age, what it means to be a modern Elder and how to adapt, as we grow older. And we did that with chip Conley. Well, today we extend that conversation how to make the second half.
If of life better than the first and we're going to do it with the esteemed Arthur Seabrooks on the occasion of his latest book is 12 and an instant. Number one, New York Times bestseller entitled from strength to strength, which is this really powerful roadmap for finding success, happiness and deep purpose. In our later years Arthur is a professional French horn player, turn social scientist. He was the president of the American Enterprise Institute.
Think tank in d.c. For a decade and he's currently the professor of public leadership at the Harvard. Kennedy School as well, as professor of management practice at the Harvard Business School. In addition. He writes the popular, how to build a life column at the Atlantic, which is also home to his podcast, the art of happiness. And if you Google him, you'll quickly realize that this guy and his work is prominently plastered on essentially every prominent media Outlet. There is
Is I enthusiastically dub this conversation overflowing with wonderful and it's coming right up. But first this episode is sponsored by better help online therapy. Look. It's been a rough couple years, right? I know I get it. So many people I know are lacking motivation right now, a bit confused about what's next with life. A sense of helplessness. How about fatigue? That's a big one. Like I didn't even do anything today. Why am I exhausted?
That and feeling so burned out. When Ashley everything in my life is not that bad. I am a huge proponent of therapy. I'm fortunate to have been in and out of so many therapists offices therapy. Modalities men's groups and tens of thousands of AA meetings over the last 25 years. And as somebody who has benefited tremendously from all of that. I'm here to tell you that, whatever it is. You got going on. You got to talk it out. Those feelings. Just don't get process.
Just in a healthy way when they're trapped inside the head. That is responsible for them. And you my friends, you're not alone in feeling this way. The thing about therapy. However, is that, it's expensive. It's inconvenient. It's not entirely accessible to many, which is why I'm so full of Sean and proud to support better help customized online therapy that offers video phone, and even live chat sessions with your therapist. So you don't even have to see anyone on camera. If you don't
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Preparing for many of my podcast. Guess I just looked at my blankest history. And there it is from strength to strength by Arthur, Brooks the practice of groundedness by Brad stolberg and transcend by Scott. Barry Kaufman mind you. I actually read all those books. But sometimes it's hard to hold onto, or synthesize. All the information, especially when you're reading lots of books every week and blankets, really just helped cement the ideas in my mind, and that allows me to then incorporate them better into
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Okay, Arthur Brooks. I'm sorry. Arthur. See Brooks.
Can't forget that c. So we cover a lot in this one, how to define, happiness and strategies to improve it. We talked about the role that negative emotions play in living a meaningful life. We discuss the crisis of meaning that visits people as they age also, the Strivers curse or what happens when we prioritize specialness over happiness. We talked about the difference between fluid and crystallized intelligence.
It's how to confront your inevitable decline. We talk about the increasingly important role that friendship Family, Faith and service play and finding happiness as we age and many other topics. As I mentioned. This episode is very much of a piece with my conversation with chip Conley. It's sort of an extension or bookend to that conversation, if you will, so, if you enjoy chip, you're going to love Arthur. He's very charismatic. We got on like a house on fire.
One is packed with Priceless, wisdom and actionable, takeaways for everyone. It's also just super fun. And I think you're gonna dig it. So, let's do the thing. This is me and Arthur Brooks. Are there Seabrooks? You still got it in yet, every
year. Well, I can't dribble coronavirus, epidemics has been closed, but I have, you know, I did until coronavirus once or twice a year. It's super important. To me. It's just, it's you've been there. Of course.
I haven't. Julie is actually only
We been once, I mean, she went to a Runa
Chola. Yeah, so I'd go to every year. I would do three things. I would do business stuff, and neither Mumbai or Delhi meeting with government officials and, you know, random capitalists, and because they're so interesting, the good that, you know, the, the billionaires and India are so interesting, right? And every year, go to dharamsala, see his Holiness, Dalai Lama, right? And then, and then in the South, I would actually study with somebody in palakkad or someplace like that. I would actually find a guru who is who is willing to spend a day with me.
It's so interesting that you square that with being, you know, this this I don't know if you would call it developed but it seems like you're pretty devout Catholic. Yes. Well, like how does God life. How does that line
up? I love all religions, but I'm in love with the Catholic church and I learn as much about who I am as a Catholic by talking to people who are not. Yeah, it's really really important to talk to people who are nice to you because you know, there's too much uniformity and and spiritual compatibility does
Expose you to enough complementarity complementarity in life is how actually how you learn things, you learn things from people who are different than you. And what you want to
stress, test your stress
test. And also, just they give you the better technique. I mean, those studying with a Tibetan Buddhist monks and our Masala is how I learned to pray, my rosary. Wow. Yeah. I learned how to pray the rosary with my breath and heart by studying with the Tibetan Buddhist monks. That's interesting. Yeah,
and you've how many times have you visited with the Dalai
Lama 1011 liked that? Didn't you?
Meantime, I'm there and he's there. The problem is that he's completely sequestered. So he's 86, right? Are 87. Now, in July, it would be 87 in July, but he's been in the state's many times with me, too. So when he would come here, you know, we would, we've been in different parts of the states. I would interview them and we've written together to, which is
what would you say is the primary thing that you've kind of extracted from being in his
presence. The understanding that the decision that that love is a decision and not a
Feeling.
Elaborate. It's that that
tell it well, st. Thomas Aquinas said that to love is to will the good of the other. It's nothing about feelings. And this is an ancient medieval teaching that actually comes from Aristotle. That love philia is a positive decision on the basis of who we are as people. And the Dali Lama lives that every single day. He says, You must decide to love you. Must decide to love might not like the like as Martin Luther King said to like someone has a Sentimental something but the love somebody is a
The decision is hard. It takes work. It's it's a measure of who you are. As a person is your decision to love in a world full of hate. And the Dalai Lama is a living embodiment of that. He's as wonderful as he seems.
I suspect that's true. And it's interesting to hear love contextualize as this action verb that you have control over. It gives you a sense of agency. Absolutely. And I think our Western notion of it is backwards in the sense that we're looking to receive love.
But we're not really adequately focused on how we're giving it or exuded
it. Absolutely. We're feeling based society. And this is actually one of our, great meet. You think. So one of your sort of preternatural gifts, is that how you've engineered your life on the basis of what you wanted it to be, you know, this is one of the reasons that I listen to your show and many people do is because they want agency. They want to be fully Alive in to be managed by themselves as opposed to be managed by their urges, their impulses, our appetites and their feelings. That's a
Now that we call metacognition and you're the walking example of metacognition you made decisions on how you're going to live and you live that way. And that is not a, just a western brainy idea on the contrary, you know, the Dalai Lama shows that in by understanding ourselves at a certain remove, we can make these decisions for ourselves, including how we're going to treat others. The love that we're going to show to the rest of the world.
I'm trying to take that and I'm trying to get better at like receiving, but when I hear you say that, all I'm thinking is you have no idea like what
I'm going to wait till I get to the part where I get to tell you about. You know, how much your latest book, like, spoke to me. And how many things? It's given me to think about how imperfectly, I've kind of made this transition and live it on a daily basis. And, you know, I look at it as a series of light posts or kind of, you know, aspirational Behavior patterns, but I suspect and I'm interested in your thoughts on this. Like this is not a linear thing. Like this is a this is a one step forward. Two steps back.
Tires kind of thing that, you know, requires a level of Mastery, that will all take to our Graves for
sure. And the reason I wrote it is because precisely on the same journey and I wrote it as my own exercise and metacognition, which says, you know, I can be managed by my feelings for a minute. I can manage them. And the only way to manage your feelings mean, the greatest way, Western way, at least, to manage your feelings to journal. Write this, my journal book? Is my journal. Yeah. Is the Journal of actually that what I would actually found in my research and how I wanted to apply it to?
My life. And the only way I can do that is to make it something I can share with you, the way that I can share it with other people. I know I'm sure that you at the, the road to being the man that you are includes helping people to be their best selves as well. The I'm sure that this is, this show is a form of therapy for
you, 100%. I mean, I invite people on who can help me figure out how to take that next step on. My growth are core. Who can talk me through whatever it is. I'm going through.
So it's it is very self-serving in that regard. But the greater mission of course or The Guiding Light, is this effort to be of service? And in that, of course, is the meaning and the purpose which is at the heart of this book that you've written and a side benefit is it's a vocation that can support my family. Yeah, but the past but there is a ego piece to it and there's a you know, a sense of like how special can I be that plays into all of that and I want to unpack all of that, but let's just we should probably kind of
Like set the stage and contextualize what it is that we're actually talking about. We just had chip Conley in here the other day. I love Chef. He was the best in very special and so we had a different version of what we're going to talk about today. But all of this kind of subject matter is swimming around in my mind, like a soup. So maybe the best place to start is with how you conceived of this book to begin with because it kind of starts with this incident that occurred on an airplane.
Yeah. Right now, I right speaking, teach about
Happiness, but ten years ago. I was the president of a think tank in Washington based research organization. He grew up in DC and you know what these things are all about. But a lot of our, you know, the people are watching and listening to us right. Now. This is like a university without students which many professors would say is the best kind of
a bunch of smart. People sitting around coming up with ideas and trying to impress each
other influence policy. It's a very DC thing, huh, and it was a great organization has been around since 1938 and I was feeling like a proper Big Shot, being the president of this organization and it was
it was great as far as it went, but I was having a little bit of a crisis trying to understand what the future was going to hold. I wasn't especially happy. I was working more than I wanted to I was I was away from my family more than I should have been and there was no end game. I mean, work, work, work, work, rokk. Yeah. We're it go to the wheels. Come off, is it wasn't exactly clear. And furthermore. The whole idea is be as successful as you possibly can. And finally, you'll find satisfaction. That doesn't seem right and I was I'm a social scientist. So this is more than idle curiosity to mean something.
A research question for me and I didn't know quite know how to get my mind around it. And as I was going through this period of reflection, I guess, I had this experience where I was on an airplane and I heard overheard a conversation. Now, my Laboratories and social scientist is overheard conversations on an airplane. So if I overhear, you, you know, talking to your life. It might become a book. Write as this did. Yeah, exactly. Right careful.
Aha, and check your seats before
you make sure you're not sitting behind Arthur Brooks. Fortunately. I'm getting, you know, my hearing is not as great as it used to be. So
But anyway, so the guy behind me, I could tell he was an elderly gentleman and he was talking to somebody as soon to be his wife, who sounded like an elderly lady and he was as near as I could tell explaining to her that he might as well be dead. And his wife was trying to console this obviously disconsolate man saying, it's not true, you'd be better off. If you were dead. He's kind of mumbling is going on for 20 minutes that nobody respects him. Nobody remembers him. Nobody thinks about him and I'm thinking this is guys, probably disappointed with his life. He didn't actually live up to his own expectations or get there.
Education, he wished he had and he's disappointed because it's over. It's probably 85. I don't know the end of the flight. It was from coming from here in l.a. Out to Washington, Dulles and is the nighttime flight. So I couldn't really see was dark and when we landed, you know, the lights go on, everybody stands up and I'm curious now not try, it's not pre interest, but you know, humans my gig. So I just flip around to see and is one of the most famous men in the world. This is somebody who's done 10 times as much of his life as I ever will or hope to. He's
Rich. He's famous. He's a hero. He's somebody who's not controversial. He's not Senator. He's not a Entertainer. He's somebody who has done amazing things with his life, a long time ago, and is still rich and famous as a result of it and still dining out on it. And I got this glimpse of this mistaken view of satisfaction and happiness. Like the world tells us do a lot with what you've been given succeed work hard, strive, achieve Bank. It.
Die. Happy. That's the world tells you to do. That's what the world says that. That's the secret to your happiness is money. Power, pleasure. Fame on the basis of your achievements. Do it as early as possible is even a name for it based on a, it's called the holder. Linden strategy is get rich, famous successful powerful early and then dine out on it for the rest of your life because you you can achieve that permanent satisfaction. You kind of know, that's not right, but I heard this guy. If anybody should be happy with,
Life and proud of what he had done. It should be this guy and I thought so it is it a scene outlier or is the whole model wrong and I started looking into that and furthermore. I thought to myself you're on the wrong track. To me, you know the way I'm going 30 years from now. I'm going to be explaining to my wife on a plane that I might as well be dead because I'm not very happy. And I'm like, gonna suddenly get happy. Let's be honest with ourselves. I'm on a
Honor, I'm on a treadmill here and I got to find some way to get off because that's where it ends and I'm not happy now. So come on and and furthermore, looking at the data as a social scientist. I know perfectly that the people who tend to be most unhappy at the end of their lives. Are the people who achieve the most earlier in
their lives, is exactly the
opposite of what the world tells us. Because if you achieve a lot early on, you can never ever live up to your impossibly high expectations. And furthermore, when the
Over, you know it, you know what goes up must come
down. Well, we see this played out in all kinds of ways. I mean, it's the it's the high school quarterback whose Glory Days Are, you know, behind him at 18 but never leaves the small town or, you know, the professional athlete who had a couple good years and has to retire at, you know, I don't know. 32 right then is faced with the prospect of trying to find something as exciting and as meaningful, which is a, you know, almost a Fool's errand. But at that point.
Point and it's a setup, right? Because you think, well, how could my life already be over? And this idea that, that sense of satisfaction that you get with a setting out. And then achieving these goals has any kind of lasting emotional impact that would give you some kind of sustainable sustenance later. In life, doesn't make any sense
at all. It doesn't make sense on reflection and yet you're the limbic system of your brain. Your primordial processing center for appetites.
Things that make you drink, too much, the things that make you reactive when you're angry, they tell you. It's going to work, man. It's going to work. Just just stay on that treadmill. Mother Nature wants you. To be have a lot of Fitness in Your Capacity, to pass on your genes. She does not care. If you're happy. She will trick you until the end of your life.
The neurochemistry is both interesting and Powerful here, like my lens for this type of thing is always through recovery and addiction. If somebody's been in recovery for a long time, so it's clear like when you lay it out,
Like, oh, well, this is an addictive relationship with something that is steering you astray, but the neurochemistry of the constant dopamine hit. And then the need for the bigger. Dopamine hit is a powerful means by which we can all delude ourselves into thinking. Well. Yeah, but this next thing or this next thing.
Yeah, absolutely satisfied. Yeah. No, no. If I you know, I'm finally going to drink so much. I don't need a drink anymore. Nobody has ever said those words. I know it's it's it's and but there's an actually
Layer of tyranny to this, which is that, you know, when you were in the worst parts of alcohol, abuse, nobody's
at a rich. Good job. That's a lot of alcohol.
I'm really impressed. But if your social
reward system is
inversed, but if you're a hopeless success at it. Yeah, you know and you and you were the 14th hours that are the first hour with your children. You get patted on the back. Are you kidding me? Because you're just you're a hard worker and you're successful in your do. They can gradually they admire you nobody admires somebody for doing?
Doing 5 grams of cocaine on a Saturday night, but being a few people might be active, but this is the key but it presses the same lovers, you know, hidden hit the lever, get the cookie, which is how dopamine works. I mean, we understand this better and better. The the anticipation of the reward is so powerful and creating the craving where there's a behavioral or chemical addiction. It all works the same way. And by the way, you notice that people who are really successful.
All horse success addict's, they tend to abuse alcohol. More than people who are not, you know, the people in the the so high socioeconomic status, people who work really, really long hours, according to the oecd data across virtually every country, especially for men. They tend to her alcoholism. They turned toward drug abuse. They
these maintaining that level of intensity. You need a, some kind of Escape
valve. Yeah. There's also cross addiction, you know, dopamine is dopamine and these are, there's comorbidities between do is one of the reasons. If you go to the doctor and if you have abused alcohol, the first
Thing that any say I can't sleep, the doctor should not prescribe you ambient, because you could get addicted to Ambien much more easily than somebody who's never engraved these dopaminergic Pathways into the brain, like, you know, you know, Rich loves Suzy on a tree that you're mortified to see for the rest of your life, even though the tree continue to grow.
So explain this existential crisis that so many people face, like you kind of set the stage but the experience of trying to reckon with this.
Reality is something. I think a lot of people can relate to, if they're not in it. They're inching towards
it. Yeah, and this is, especially true for Strivers, you know, the people who want to make a lot of their lives, the people who are trying to be their absolute best selves, that they measure it in worldly, terms, bunny, power honor, which is, you know, admiration, where even the Envy of other people, these are natural yardsticks that they use, but there's a couple of things that go wrong with that. Number one is this is the satisfaction.
Paradox. You actually can't find Satisfaction by getting enough of those things. You will reset. There's a process that the brain in any biological process, in the human body is called homeostasis that takes you back to equilibrium because if you stay out of equilibrium, you will die. You have to be ready for the next set of circumstances whether it's physical or emotional to be sure. But the bigger problem on this is that you will outrun your ability even to do the things that you did. Well, which is the thrust of what I'm was writing about what I've been writing about.
Research and the Strategic plan for the rest of my life. You find that what people who are really good early on what they have in common is their their face, the puzzle of the fact that things weirdly that they were really good at and getting better at start getting harder in their 40s, so and nobody else notices because if you're a real stryver whether you're in financial industry, or you're a doctor or a lawyer or an electrician or a bus driver and you're just good at what you do and you take pride in it. Nobody's going to notice when things that used to be easier a little bit harder that you're just and you're not
Making progress anymore. But you notice the thing is that what happens typically is in one's mid-40s after working really hard, and just seeing things get easier. And being congratulated, because you do a good job that you're, like, I don't kind of burning out. I'm kind of feeling bored by this. That's a signal that actually things have gotten harder. So your dentist at 45 starts taking Friday's off. Why do you taking from? I thought you loved being it? I used to love being a dentist. But, you know, everybody gets bored. They're not bored. They're actually in the wrong side of their
Intelligence curve fluid intelligence, is your ability to innovate, your ability to focus, your ability to get better and better. And you're a ninja at your job, and your 20s and 30s is, when it's like blue ocean, man. I mean, you're just like, you're getting your and then your late 30s, you Peak because because fluid intelligence peaks in your late 30s, early 40s and you start to decline and people who try to stay on that curve. We try to keep their groove who, who want to be special in that particular way. Woe, be unto them because they're going to ride that curve all the way.
Down to the basement. They're going to wind up like them out of the plane behind me.
Yeah, a couple observations. First of all baked into the DNA of this driver is going to be a denial of that declining fluid intelligence or they're just going, they're going to fight it all the way to the death, and just try to outrun it basically right
harder and harder and harder work because it always worked
in the past. Yeah, and what was, you know, somewhat dispiriting. There's a silver lining to it. But somewhat dispiriting is not only the inevitability of the decline of the
Fluid intelligence, but how early it comes a-calling? Yeah,
absolutely and you can keep doing the thing that you're doing. I mean I was perfectly fine. Doing what I was doing was running a company and and I was, you know, super energetic doing all the things that I was doing. But I was noticing it was getting less satisfying and I didn't have I didn't have the focus that I had before and I couldn't quite understand why. And I thought maybe it was because I was just less interested or I was at a steam or something and what it was was I was on the wrong, I was on the
Downward part of my fluid intelligence curve. And I did not know that that I was making a big mistake, which was the failure to recognize that, that was not my only success curve that there was another one behind
it. Well, before we get to that, though, so you're 58. Yes, right. I'm turning 58. And yeah. Okay, May 25th. Ya know what accuse you of having lost half a step, though. Right? Like, it's a self dot. It would have to be a self diagnose. They just can't we acquire like a level of
Like self-awareness and you know enough inside work to be able to call yourself out.
Truly. I mean, but this is the this is the Strivers standard is you versus you? What all Strivers know is they got better than they were before the Strivers Scenic One on of Excellence, as I was better than yesterday. I mean, you're like a super athlete. And, and if you're losing a step in what you're actually doing, athletically, that's bumming you out. Despite the fact that you're like, you're eating everybody's lunch for people who are your age, that means nothing to
you.
No, my visit to the pool today was, you know, it was a reckoning of you know with my own mortality. Yeah, but if you were, if you were you were
swimming compared to me, you know, it would be like if that doesn't count. Exactly right, you know, exactly right now. So when you're losing a step compared to you yesterday, that's what's really, really painful. And so, you know, you know, this, the solution, the Strivers solution is to work harder, work longer, and this gets into this deeply deeply dysfunctional, addictive behavior.
When you're when you're chasing the high, what do you get? How do you chase the height? And more of the drug more of the drug? And and when you're getting less of the high back because, you know, homeostasis and drug addiction and drug, abuse means that you take more and get less and you simply have to do more and more and more. You're chasing the elusive high that actually comes from that. And that's what it's like to be on the wrong side of the fluid intelligence curve, mostly in your 40s, but your 50s, but I know people in the 60s that are trying to keep up with the young guys, you know, they were the star, litigator your lawyer before and you know, they come in, they can crack any.
Case. They're, they're gifted and and the guys in their 60s and 70s or 50s. Even who are trying to keep up with the lawyers in their 20s and 30s. That's the yeah, the wrong path. You want
to be Cincinnatus. You do want to be the nattering old guy, you know, wandering down, you know, the hallway knocking on people's doors?
True, but it's crazy, you know, and I, when I first finished my doctor and I was writing these papers that were so mathematically, sophisticated that today, I can't understand them.
And I wrote them when I was in my mid-30s and I can't understand them. And at first I thought, you know, when I was, when I was starting to lose my Edge in this really pretty hardcore research that I thought that I needed to work harder. I needed to, you know, go back over my textbooks, to relearn, my math, to do that, until I realized that, this is the structure of the prefrontal, cortex of my brain and there was another path. There was a better path, weirdly. This is not what we talked about. This is not the common knowledge because the, the success trajectory that
Handed To Us by our culture is get better. Get better get better, get 10,000 hours. You'll never get worse. You can be a star for the rest of your life. Croak done. And that was the Perdition of the guy behind me on the plane. And by the way, when you look at the biographies of some of the greatest women and men through history, you find, they died bitterly unhappy because they were on the wrong side of their
fluent. So talked about there's a couple really interesting examples. Like you talked about Darwin and pastor and you know these guys that we you know, if you don't really know their story, you would never
Imagine that they you know, suffered this, you know kind of their version of
this. Yeah, the biographer isn't that biographers don't care about if you're unhappy, they care that you were great because that's what goes down in history. They do this a richer all, you know. Yeah. The still all these millions of listeners who is podcast. They don't talk about the fact that, you know, something might not have been going right in your emotional life. Yeah, that's because that's not interesting. As far as the the history. The Strivers is concerned. Charles. Darwin is a perfect example of this. Charles. Darwin was the
He was the king of the Mambo and when he was 27 years old. I mean he came back from his voyage around the world where he visited the Galapagos Islands. It was the five-year Voyage of the beagle that terminated from when he was 27 and it came back and drop this, this Atomic intellectual bomb, which later was known as his theory of natural selection. He was he was introducing the concept of evolution by his mid to late 20s, and he was almost overnight the most famous celebrated scientists and all of Europe. He was rich. He was famous. He was the guy in the plane or
Early in life, quite frankly or any stryver that we can imagine who's, you know, he's killing it and he earned it. I mean, he was he was no slouch and he developed that in the next couple of decades and then he hit a wall in his early 50s. He actually couldn't keep up mathematically with his own field because it was developing more and more. He needed the knowledge. That today is what we call genetics the field of genetics, which is just beyond his capacity. And so his forward progress stopped and he was not able to update, he couldn't back in the old days. He wouldn't have been able to, he would have been
To learn this new knowledge, but for some reason he couldn't do it and his creative work. Never made any more advances. He wrote like 11 more books after that, but it was all straw in his mouth. Right? And he was, he went to his death regretting bitterly, the disappointment that was the back half of his life,
and it was Gregor Mendel. Who picked up, picked up the football and took it across the goal line. Yeah, interesting Gregor Mendel. He I feel like he deserves more, you know, more recognition. Well Gregor
Mendel's nitrogen, case can for sure, I mean a check mark,
Monk, who wrote his papers in German and who invented the field of genetics, didn't actually get super famous for until after his own death, because after he invented the field of genetics, he was promoted by his local, Bishop to be the Abbot of his Monastery. And he spent the rest of his life in management, doing human resource issues, among the monks, and he died in, and he died in relative humility serving his religious community. So, it's a kind of a different model, but in a way it's a better model.
Do it better than Darwin felt for sure.
Yeah, but the other thing is that, he he moved on from his fluid intelligence curve and then went on to serving other people. Yeah, he went on to becoming a he went from being a player to becoming a coach in his own way, which is
interesting. Right? Which is similar to the trajectory of Bach that you talk about in the
book. Yeah. They mean these biographies are interesting as a social scientist. I have a tendency to be like studies show, but it turns out that somebody's life shows can be more evocative and and winds up, you know.
Helping me a lot more to Bach is my favorite composer. I was a musician for many years. And Bach is my favorite composer. He's unbelievably prolific. He lived. 65 years published more than 1,000 pieces of music for every instrumentation of his time and had 20 kids. This is his prolific, right? Can live to adulthood and most,
how many, how many wives
who to? I mean, his first beloved wife, Barbara died after seven seven kids and then his and his second wife, who is his copyist had 13.
In his last 13 kids. And and he was a, he was total Family, Man. Absolute Family, Man. And but what happened was the same thing had happened to Darwin, which is his forward progress. Stopped when he was about 50 years old. He was the most celebrated composer of the high Baroque, which is this, you know, the music that we think of his Bach today was, was the rage. I mean, princes were seeking them out for commissions and he was super famous and all over. Europe is famous as you could be before social media before that. He didn't have a pot.
Cast. But he was pretty good, you know, and the bach cast he was very famous and and about age 50. He was supplanted because his own son, Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach was developing a new musical style that took care of by storm and left, the high Baroque in the dust and Bach couldn't write in the new style. He just couldn't figure out how to write the new style. He was too far down in his fluid intelligence curve. So he retooled his whole life and he did it right by accident. He became the most celebrated beloved teacher.
Of his time. He said I'm going to teach all different kinds of music, especially the high Baroque. I'm going to teach chorus. I'm going to teach organ. I'm going to write textbooks. He was literally had his pain and his hand writing a textbook called the kunst Der fuga the art of Fugue. When he croaked is half a measure was written in his own son who had supplanted him wrote in the margins. At this point the composer put down his pen and died. It was like right, Strong finish and and he was surrounded and his ultimate is last days helping others.
Writing a textbook, the textbook, by the way, is played as music in concerts that I imagine writing a textbook. So incredible that is read as literature. That's what this is today. But at the time it was like, I don't know. He's like an expert in Disco beats me. That's what we would think of is anachronistic at the time and when he died, he died happy because he was known as the greatest teacher of his time and he felt like he was serving other people. He was on his second curve, which is what the man on the plane Mist, which is what Charles Darwin Mist, which is what - Pauling this.
Which is what so many Strivers what you and I are in danger of missing, right? Unless we can understand what that second curve is
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And liquid death.com /. Rich Roll. That's liquid death.com, Rich role or grab some at Whole Foods. 7-Eleven Target Albertsons and Safeway or Amazon. Okay? Back to the show. So the second curve involves this Reckoning with your declining fluid intelligence in 12-step. They would say, you know, it's a Moment of clarity that must have
It upon you, where you realize that you have a problem and then the first step towards, you know, embarking on this second curve is a recognition and a cultivation of crystallized intelligence. So let's explain that a little
bit. There's a social psychologist in the middle of the 20th century named, Raymond cattell, who noticed that there was kind of two kinds of geniuses and what he meant was, people who have exceptional ability and an accomplishment, one blooms super early and they
Have Innovative capacity. The ability to focus solve problems and they're kind of sole Proprietors, big early stars and you would see them in law in science in and, you know, almost every field. There's a second kind of Genius. That blooms really late like 50s and 60s. These are the ones who are more historians. They assemble other facts that actually exist. They use a vast intellectual Library. They're better at working with people and forming teams. They're much better teachers. So applied mathematicians.
This for example, they use the theories that have been developed by other people in New and creative ways. But assembling them, they bloom really late theoretical mathematicians Bloom, really, really early. And so we called the first fluid intelligence which is what Darwin had and which he declined. The second. He called crystallized intelligence, which is wisdom, the ability to recognize patterns, take information from other people, and put it into coherent stories and teach it. That's what it comes down to it. That's what Bach did. It turns out and there's these two
Two different intelligence curves. Now, later on Research showed very clearly that everybody gets both. We all get both, not everybody. Recognizes. Both Darwin didn't recognize both. And a lot of people, you know, they stumble a lot early in their lives, until they don't actually realize their own form of Genius. Until they are much later because they have a Miss spent youth. For example. Those are the people who only recognize the crystallized intelligence, but properly understood. We both get both in the mistake that we make is not walking from one to the other, but trying to stay on
the
Mmm are just holding onto the former until you know that ship is. So capsized that making the transition into the latter becomes much more
complicated for sure. A bitter and you through bitterness, you can you can live in the
past. Right? So crystallized intelligence is more about synthesizing information, pattern recognition. Also leveraging, a lifetime of experience to, you know, have some kind of wisdom to share and then really it's
About channeling it in service. I mean, we explore this with Chip. He calls it being a modern Elder, right? But whether you're a teacher or a mentor or advisor, what have you? It's really just a giving back of what you have, you know, accumulated your knowledge years, right? And every first driver also, it's sort of like, yeah, but it's about it's about me getting. All right, like, what do you mean? I'm giving this
away. Totally totally. It's the the hubris that comes from the first curve is so hard to kick.
It's so hard to kick in part of this, because the accolades that you get as the sole proprietor is the super
ninja. Well, you have to be the, you have to be a bit of the man in the shadows. You're the guy behind the guy a lot.
Yeah, and so this interesting thing so you find that you can find it in almost any profession. So you go from researcher to teaching Professor. You go from in your former line of work, the star litigator to the managing partner or in entrepreneurship. You go from the innovator, the the startup entrepreneur to the Venture capitalists because the Venture capitalists the
Successful ones are pure crystallized intelligence and you don't find venture capitalist or 25 or very successful because they don't actually have the perspective. And the pattern recognition built up through the School of Hard Knocks. You actually need to be a problem. Most need to be a really good entrepreneur. And with that, just incredible Focus, that comes from the crystallized intelligence curve and then walk onto the second curve where you can pick out the the ninjas. Right? Right. Pick the winners.
In your case, when you became a professor at Harvard, was that
A conscious decision of embracing crystallized, you know, this crystallized intelligence or was it a happenstance sort of thing where it just seemed interesting. It was on purpose
on purpose. I mean, I got to eat my own cooking. Yeah, and I had done this research to find out how I was in the middle of an executive career that I understood. It looked like it had a dead end for me and I did the research and find out that sure enough. I was probably five years late on my fluid intelligence curve and I said, okay, what is my crystallized intelligence from? I mean I could have that kind of money.
A
guy, I'm a social scientist right speaking to each write speak and
teach. So I'm going to stick it to you a little bit here because what I see is a guy who has a lot of self-awareness who understood that his life in the think tank world inside the Beltway and all of that had kind of run its course, and was sort of providing diminishing returns to their well-being, Etc. You make this pivot, you become a professor as a social scientist, you got interested in.
This particular subject matter, you write this book, but the book says instant number one New York Times bestseller, it seems like and I'm sure this wasn't your lived experience, but it seems like you went from public intellectual to happiness, Guru, almost overnight, and ever. Since have you not been on some version of the hedonic treadmill going from speaking engagement? To speaking engagement to podcast to, you were just in Half. Moon? Bay was the Atlantic happiness.
That you were hosting and your publishing all these articles on the Atlantic and you're on the news and, you know, you're on the all the shows and all that kind of stuff. Like, are you not rushing around chasing some kind of validation in this, like second or third Act of your life? And I know, judgment, you know, I'm, I'm like, you know, I mean, we'll get to that but like, you know, I, I'm just interested in how even if you were to disagree with me, how do you know the difference?
Yeah. I know. The obviously you've been talking to my wife.
Observation know. That's it's it's it's ironic, you know, it's ironic that I, you know, I talk about the the success addiction and had a break it. Such that you can get on your second curve, which requires Clarity and humility
and just by dint of talking about that a lot. It's like falling back into
it for sure, for sure. What I mean. It's like those experiments in the 1950s of primates where they could self-administer cocaine and within six hours, they were sitting in front of the lever hitting it until they died. I mean, I'm a cocaine monkey.
I'm hungry to talk about this to spread these ideas to be sure, but I got to be careful because I can actually turn this right back into something else. Now. It's a different kind of work. It's not a fluid intelligence work because writing speaking and teaching is synthesizing
ideas. And it is a you are mentoring the World by passing on this very valuable message to people, but it's about your egos relationship
for sure. Absolutely. I mean, it's absolutely astute, observation? A fair, one of that. I mean, it's when you have, when you
Strike while the iron is hot and I'm doing something that that is associated with the Excellence of the fluid intelligence curve in a younger man, for sure. And and so, I have to ask myself, where does this lead? Does this lead to ever bigger and greater this lead to something. And as soon as I start thinking that, at least have the presence of mind to say, no, this is a temporary phenomenon, you're spreading these particular ideas, but this is not forever
and keep telling yourself that.
Well. I'm not lashing myself, the master of this popular podcast, telling you
But I have to be careful because I am. I am. I'm a dopamine guy. I really am. Aren't we all? I mean, we were built for this. This is, I mean 100%. I am. Yeah. Yeah. And
it's like, we're two guys in our mid to late 50s who on some level, you know, one thing we share is that we're both hitting a certain kind of Stride Rite in our lives. And I came to this very late and I feel like, I finally found this thing that like, I'm good at that, people seem to enjoy, and I want to make hay while I
I can. And so I'm going to sit in that. You know that that denial mode of. I don't need to recognize my declining fluid intelligence. But part of what I get to do here is synthesize information and share, other peoples, right? Wisdom and pass that along. So there is a kind of teaching kind of advisory mentorship. Peace to all of it. But there's also a big ego people like how many people are watching and listening and like, how big can I make this? And
Will this lead to something else and, you know, all of that kind of stuff, but you're really, it's, it's dangerous and it's intoxicating. And when you told the story in the book about woman, the Wall Street executive who, you know, was very unhappy, the very successful and said, yeah, but maybe I just want to be, maybe I'd rather be special than happy. And I was like, that was like a gut punch because I I've entertained that like, I'm a pretty happy guy, but I go through periods of being exhausted and burned out and stressed and somewhat
Unhappy and thinking, yeah, but like, I get to do this thing and I feel really special doing
it. Totally, totally, and that hits the same circuits that you that let you have. Like, I haven't had a drink in 19 years. Hmm. This is like, having a drink. It hits the same circuit. Yes. It's the same. Sure, chemistry. This is, I mean across addictions are exist all over the place and and there's a reason that you have to be, especially if you have monkeyed up your dopamine with substances or behaviors in a previous Point your life. You have to be especially
Adroit, you have to be awake to these types of behaviors. And it led very least to be metacognitive about them to understand exactly what's going on for. At least, look rich. You just told me you're doing it. You didn't you're not accidentally doing it. And then somebody says, discovering this, your give the self-awareness to do this because you have recovered from from, you know, something is being in the grips of
that. You're not as they would say, in 12-step, self-awareness will Avail you? Nothing sofa. Well, it's call myself out, but if I don't alter my behavior, correct, correct.
And
My guess is that you do alter your behavior, but the question is whether or not you know, it's you're working in a liquor store. Yeah, and and so there is constant Temptation and there is a little bit of backsliding, but we have to take care of ourselves. We there's a balance. I'm I want to serve people. I want to lift people up my mission in with my crystallized intelligence is, I am going for the rest of my life to lift, people up and bring them together and bonds of happiness and love using my ideas. That's what I'm going to do. And when there's a
Attention on
that, it's risky. It really is risky, but I can be me and you
can't the valence of that message like the depth and the Resonance of that message is directly correlated to the extent to which you are walking that talk. So the minute that you're out of balance with it, that message is not going to
land. It's weakened. Absolutely. That's why I have to be very careful with that. I have to have an exit strategy from this particular point. This doesn't lead to lead.
Lead to something else to something else and then then suddenly, you know what, they'll be happy, and I'll be happy. I have to make sure I'm not just pulling
their the new thing. You know, that's always right around the corner. Exactly right side us.
That's exactly. Well,
you sat at the foot of a guru in India who declared that your wife was your Guru. So what you did, your wife keep you in check with this year for, she's got the Clary to say. Hey, man. Yeah. No. She under time for come
home. Absolutely. I mean, maybe she
sure Miami was great.
Yeah.
That is podcast but talk to her. But your first race is on Joy that, you know, enjoy that, but come home and, and that's really important because left unmediated, it can be a really dangerous thing. You can. And, you know, it's really mean somebody and you're not the first person to recognize the irony that I'm talking about, be careful with your ambition because it's as addictive as any drug. And then being very ambitious about the message of talking about tempering your Ambitions, right? This is the kind of the nested.
Picture of actually how, how these
things work? Yeah, the latticework of that is kind of so beautifully constructed, right? If you're out of synchronicity with it, it'll
just Frac Wheels inside Wheels, man. And so yeah, so my wife Esther is truly my Guru and has it's time for me to come home and we have a time limit by the middle of June. This era will have passed. This epic will have passed. Yeah.
All right. Well, maybe I'm going to put it in my calendar, call you, and I. All right. So one of the things that I appreciate about the work that you do,
Is that it's rooted in science, your social scientist, but as you have sort of written about repeatedly, social science is very good at kind of pointing out these problems but not always. So great at the Practical kind of offer a on ramp to you know, altering your behavior patterns so we can say look you got to get off the hedonic treadmill, you know, you've got to let go of your attachment to your fluid intelligence. All of these things, but there are very, you know, ephemeral.
Notion, so, let's root this in in practicalities, with maybe first some thoughts on like what would make somebody happy? What is happiness? How do we make this transition gracefully? So that we can actually follow that curve of be being, even happier like that Arc continues to go upward right through our 60s in our 70s. If we can, keep our health intact, right to continually get more happier as we age, right?
And the way to understand that is to begin with, what's the hole in our souls, that we're trying to fill with this is set the success that we're pursuing our fluid intelligence curve. It virtually always has to do with love. And why? Because, you know, we can get more validation. We can get more satisfaction early on by sacrificing the non-special love relationships and by being successful. I mean, that's how people behave. And so what do we need? If we're fearful of what it would mean to not be successful. We have to remedy that.
Sphere by surrounding and love fear and love, are opposites their cognitive and philosophical. Opposites, love, and hatred are not opposites. Hatred is Downstream from Fear when we are fearful of being unsuccessful. The remedy to that is more love and love only comes from human beings. So what you find is that the happiness 401k plan that, you know, what you need to invest in all along the way, which has that, you know, the great thing about it. Is he a 401 k plan and money means you have to sacrifice now, you don't have to sacrifice. Now, you actually enjoy now and in the future.
Is in the categories of Faith, Family, friendship and work that serves other people, the more that we invest in those particular things, the more that we can actually step away from these hyper validating But ultimately unsatisfactory accomplishments on the fluid intelligence curve. And so one of the things that I talk about is how do you start and your spiritual walk? When you're 45 years old and you're a declared agnostic and and and think it's all woo and nonsense. How do you re-establish a relationship with your spouse and Kids when?
So that has become cordial at best. How do you kick a success addiction? That is deeply rooted in the neuromodulator. That's just keeping you chained to that sense of success. How do you break those shackles? And so, these are the things that we actually talked about. That's that's what I talk about in the book. It's re-establishing love relationships, and replacing this the substitutes for a love that will never truly satisfy you.
Yeah, it's beautifully. Put the Dilemma of course being for this driver.
Who has, you know, not been there for their kids and really hasn't been super present for their partner has shunned. Any relationship with faith and has lost touch with most of his or her friends. Because of that allegiance to the career track becomes a Sticky Wicket to undo and you go through kind of a series of, you know, the common things that come up. Like, I don't even know how to do that. Or, you know, I would feel it would be embarrassing for me to call this friend that I haven't spoken to in 20 years, and I've been going.
Going through a version of this. Like, I noticed that I'm raising kids. I'm working really hard. It's like, I don't have time for much else. Yeah, and I miss my friends. Yeah, and I realized like that's work and that takes like an intentionality and carving time out and I'm trying, you know, I don't always do such a great job, but I really started to recognize in the last couple of years. Like I miss my friends and I not only do I want them in my life. Like I need them. And if I don't-- sort of water that Garden, it's going to be really difficult. It just
gets
Earnhardt,
yeah, there's a there's a movement. I mean given the fact that traditionally the loneliest people in America are 60 year old men at 60 year old men. And so the not six year old women. It turns out that six year old women tend to be pretty good because they are much better at than friendship. They're better friendship because they put the time in on friendship, you know, and they that's why women. For example, they recover six months after being widowed, typically to their own level of happiness for men. Never do. I told my wife that she's like, huh?
You know, it it don't do. No
the Widow Brooks, you know, like I guess it would be okay, but it's so and so what do they do this in a couple of countries? There's this thing called The Men's sheds movement. And what it is is that men who retire at 65 or seven years old they retire and their wives dropped them off to in these like sheds where they do woodworking in parallel with other guys. And I
talked about like it's the parallel play date that your lovely terrible play was so kids infantile. It's hilarious
because they don't look at each other. So the guys are not to talk to each other. They're making a birdhouse together. Some
It's sad. You don't want to be dropped off in a shed, you know, to make a, to make a birdhouse with a stranger because you don't know how to make friends. It's like you're
completely. Are you were too afraid to call your friend that you haven't seen in a
long day. Yeah, and so, the key is, is actually you. So, one of the things that I recommend, is that the, for our faith, family friends and work, but Strivers over index on work and under index on the other three, so the key is to right now, start making a proper investment in the first
Re so, everybody should be reading. I don't mean a traditional religious Faith necessarily. I mean, you need to read some wisdom literature and engage in something that is transcendent every single day, right? That she's at practice. Yeah, everything that means 15 to 30 minutes of reading something. The stoic philosophers or, literally studying the theory of the work of Johann, Sebastian, Bach or walking in meditation with a walking meditation in the forest. Whatever that is free or rediscovering the faith of your youth, whatever happened at least looking at that.
The second is family and friends. You should be sending a, we all should be sending a text or email in each one of those categories every single day. How are you? How did that thing turn out, you know, I was just thinking about you today, whatever. It happens to be, just to touch just touch, touch touch and then start you can grow it from there. But when these relationships are fallow, they they're very difficult to, especially when it's like, hey, I just retired, want to be friends again. It doesn't work that way,
right? We
Need to and family is insufficient on its own or just turning to your
spouse. Your immediate family. For sure. Yeah. I mean one of the things you find is that six year old men often. Will they'll Strivers in particular will retire and they, you know, they've got enough money for example, and they'll just want to hang out with their spouse all day long. This house is like I got a life, man. I got a wife and, and they don't want that. And that's, that's intensely lonely. Because they actually don't have that closer relationship with their spouse, but it's the friend at hand. And if you don't actually create these routes,
Interesting. Because the metaphor that I like to think of is the aspen tree which looks stately and solid in solitary, you know, it's the stryver. It's like, you know, sometimes I'm lonely, but you can count on me, you can take shade under me. And this, the aspen tree is actually a great metaphor for the way that we should be living because it's one single root system. All Aspen. Trees, in a particular Grove are one plant. The largest living organism in the world is called Pando. It's a, it's a 160-acre Aspen. Stand in, Utah.
Oh, that's a six million kilograms of wood. And that's really who we are. If you're thinking about, you know, the the height of your tree and the you know, the gloriousness of your leaves, you're getting a wrong, the health of your tree is actually the health of the next tree, you know, you need to be cultivating your root system because your life is that next tree, and you need to be to see yourself in your children to see yourself and your friends. The Buddhists say that individuality is an illusion. That is literally an illusion that rich.
Third different guys, that's of the Buddhist. See it as a very sophisticated philosophy, but it's easier to understand somewhat conceptually, and that's what we need to
attain. Yeah, and that, and that really underscores the difference between East and West. I mean the the idea that, you know, there is no such thing as separate nests versus the rugged, individualism of the West that breeds the stryver to build these pans to his ego and to you know, hearken to the world that he is the self-made man. Like
It's difficult for that, you know, identity construct, to then say, yes. I'm a root system, you know, tied to everything else. You have to, you have to deprogram all of that to get back to that essential Truth for sure.
And it's interesting. You know, I have since doing this work, I've cultivated friendships. Have a very close friend in Atlanta. So I would say that we talk about things about her. We text each other about doing the shed. What's that? You know, she has no birdhouses. I'm afraid here in San Francisco here in California that I talked to two times a week on the telephone. And I mean,
80. I'm 58. I learned a lot from him. I love him. I love him and he's just such an interesting person. But we have a real friendship. This is the key to key to remember is when you're thinking about the people around, you ask yourself, put them in a category. I make my students do this at Harvard because my students, our MBA students, their big Achievers, big streamers. I make them take all of its take your 20 closest friends and put them on a piece of paper and put the line on the piece of paper and put on one column real and the other column deal and put
Your friends in one of those two in one of those
two groups and it was your kid that came up with that. Yeah, right. It's my kid. Yeah, my kid. My real friends are deal from. Yeah. I was
talking to a guy, the phone and and it was he was Scott was actually delaying a fishing trip because I was talking to a guy on the phone and, you know, long time the little a long conversation about a deal, we're doing a deal and, and afterward, he said it was that Dad. He's 11 and he said, who's that? Dad? I said it was a friend. He said really, is that a real friend or a deal friend, right clever boy?
That's gold. That's a good one. It's a
good one. Now that boy now is a sniper in the US Marine Corps. Wow, six foot five. Four point three percent body
fat. Yeah. Fluid intelligence
intact. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it's fluid intelligence tattoos, large explosions and love for America. Wow. Okay,
obviously, the driving principle here is to extend your happiness later in life, but like, explain to me, how you
You think about happiness? Like what is that concept? What is, how do you define happiness? Yeah, so many different ideas around, how to think about. Yeah. So
say happiness gets people's attention because they know they want it but then when they think about it, they don't know what it is. And so I ask my students on the first day of class and it look, it's a hard class to get into, there's a lot of competition to get in the class. So I say, look, you're in this class, you bid your points because this was there, a point system for getting electives at Harvard Business school's to Market. And I say, so you must know what it is, right? What is it? And they'll go around. This is the feeling I get.
Want to remember that wrong. Happiness is not a feeling any more than the the smell of the turkey is your Thanksgiving dinner. That's evidence of your Thanksgiving dinner. You're feeling is evidence of it. If we look at the happiest people and then happiest people. The happiest people have in common three macronutrients like you. And I are interested in this stuff. If I say, what is the Thanksgiving dinner? You're going to say because you're a you know, a guy who does this stuff is protein carbohydrates and fat. That's what your
We didn't literally your Thanksgiving dinners, proteins, carbohydrates, and fats, you making your Macros or not. If you're going to be healthy, happiness has three macronutrients enjoyment satisfaction and purpose, which you need in balance and abundance. And if you don't have all those three, you're not going to be a happy person. So when I talk to somebody who says, I'm just and you know, in your happiness special as people talk to you, like your psychiatrist and so I'll talk to, you know, very powerful. People say frankly. I'm just not happy. I will I will look at their macro nutrient profile and the
Same way that if you said, my digestion is all goofed up. Well, probably you're not eating, you're not getting the right macros and ordinarily. What I'll find with Strivers is that they're very high in stoic work. Ethic to get a whole lot of long term meaning and they're very low and enjoyment. Very low enjoyment. What I find if I'm talking to undergraduate students, are very high in enjoyment on the basis of a high dose of pleasure. They're sort of Epicurean and their Outlook and they're very low in meaning. They're not getting a whole lot.
Lot of meaning, or they're what they're if they're real success. Junkies. They're trying to get as much satisfaction as they can, and it's elusive because our on the treadmill, you know, it's like work hard, get the hit, you know, okay. Well that was good for a week. The new car smell last for like a week, right? You know, the that people always say, you know, it's the the California phenomena. There's a lot of research on this about how long you'll be satisfied. If you move to California and the answer is the sunshine will give you satisfaction for six months, but the taxes are forever, you know careful with I mean, yeah, sorry.
Trying to hurt your Edge. I've made my peace with that but go ahead. It is nice place.
So so the point is that that the balance that you need in the macro nutrient profile of happiness is really the best way to diagnostically understand how happy you are. That's where I actually start. That's the definition satisfaction enjoyment plus, meaning and purpose, and they all have a big science behind them. Right?
So enjoyment is sort of pleasure with this elevated surface
elevation. Yeah, plus it's
Plus it's basically pleasure enjoyed in communion. So you get pleasure from eating the turkey at Thanksgiving dinner. You get enjoyment from eating it and making a memory of doing it with people that you actually love such that you can actually get happiness from it for a long time afterward.
Right, satisfaction. That's, you know, kind of a striver thing. Right? Like, we get that sense of satisfaction in the pursuit of something, but that's ignition.
That the joy of
Award but it, which is very elusive as Mick. Jagger reminds us that you can't get no rice action, but you can hack it. You can actually hack it. If you understand it, go against, you can get in during, or, at least lasting satisfaction. If you will go against your nature, which is a really interesting body of literature because it reminds us. Again, that mother nature doesn't care for Happy. Mother Nature wants to fool us again and again, and again and again to hit the lever because it makes us more genetically fit, it helps us to pass on our genes by having more money.
Money more power more honor than the troglodyte in the next cave was fewer animal skins, but we think that that car will bring us lasting satisfaction. You have to hack that Matrix and you can get lasting satisfaction,
right? The purpose piece is a little bit more complicated and
Elusive. Yeah, purpose pieces in a way the most beautiful and one that you're I know you're well aware of, you know, it listen to this podcast and you learn a lot very quickly. It takes about five episodes before.
Put together your biography which is one of struggle and pain and sacrifice because of a lot of things that happened to you in your life. But who you are as a man as everything to do, with what you suffered. It's part of who you are as a person, you know, not being a mental health professional, but being a listener to the show and a specialist in this area. I would say that, that meaning and purpose for you are simply intertwined with the suffering that you've had with substance abuse, for example, with the relationships that suffered as a result of that.
And that's the cosmic truth of meaning. And one that's really elusive for all young people today, who are psychological hedonists there were spending all their energy and time trying to avoid unhappiness. What that does is that, that when you avoid pain, you're avoiding meaning. What, you're avoiding learning, what your purpose is through, resiliency, what you're capable of, and the lessons you're supposed to learn. And you're avoiding your to avoid your unhappiness, is to avoid your happiness, which is that you we need pain. We need
sacrifice. Yeah, it's so
Through and so convoluted understand that but it's absolutely essential and I think that's a very accurate notion of how I think about this because my satisfaction and my purpose have been sort of gilded out of unhappiness and suffering and toil but a search for meaning within that. And then an act of service in trying to return what I've learned along the way. And so it's not an Epicurean happiness.
I mean, it's fun to talk to you and we'll have a couple laughs and all of that. But it's really more of a meaning driven thing. And so I think of happiness is being a byproduct of pursuing meaning of being of service of trying to align my actions with my values because happiness isn't something that you can grab. It's only the result of these other endeavors and it's fleeting at best. So it's best not to really even think about happiness or be in its Pursuit because I feel like it's
Crap. Well, the pursuit is of its macronutrients to make sure that you are doing. You have a proper, your proper hygiene that you have the right habits. Think about the habits as opposed that happiness itself. So, what the, the best way for people to get happier immediately is to think in sort of three steps. The first is, do the work and to do the work, you need to, you need to self knowledge, you need understanding and maybe that comes from your religious practice. Maybe that comes from, you know, reading a happiness book about the science of Happiness. Maybe that comes from sitting at your Grandmother's.
Others knee and writing out everything she says for a week, whatever it is, do the work, you know, if you said, hey, man, I wish I knew more calculus. That's a buy a book, right? I would say, do the work. Don't wish you knew more math. Do the work. The second is to practice it in your life. People. If you can't just read a book about Golf and become a better golfer, you actually have to golf, you have to learn and then you have to golf. And and happiness is a Hands-On business by practicing. The habits of Happiness faith, family, friends and work, loving other people, intensively, purposive lie. And in the last is really
Most important which is you got to share it, you have to teach others. You know, what I'm trying to do is I'm trying to create a happiness movement of a nation of Happiness. Professors. I want us to hold each other accountable for this. I mean, it's so valuable to me that you notice the irony of what I'm actually doing, which is not good for my happiness, hygiene and talking about happiness. That's, that's what brothers are supposed to do for each other. I mean, and when we hold each other accountable, we give each other suggestions. When we actually teach, this is the ultimate Act of metacognition where you're not being managed by anything, your man.
Judging it by making it fully Human, by observing it by putting it into the prefrontal cortex of your big wonderful. Human brain 123 understand practice, share. That's the secret. Yeah. Coming back for more. But
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The sharing
piece is so powerful. I mean, I just as you're explaining that, I'm just thinking of Chip, you know, down in Baja with his modern wisdom modern Elder cavity. A modern Elder Academy where he's teaching, you know, this elder wisdom and the experience that he had at Airbnb where he got to, you know, practice that crystallized intelligence to be of service.
These young Founders and it's confusing. I said to him, I said, why isn't that experience that you had at Airbnb a case study Harvard Business School case. Study. That should be taught. Like why doesn't every company have their version of that? But that business school students are studying and understanding the value of? Yeah. No
for sure. And one of the things that chip Conley is, I mean, I think very highly of Chip Conley. He is magnificently transformed his own career into one that actually is
Is it with crystallized intelligence passing on these ideas to other people and lifting them
up such a beautiful way. And I feel like he he isn't on the hedonic treadmill and his ego is is exactly where it's meant to be right now. He has such a healthy relationship with what he does. And he's so he's so generous of heart and spirit. Yeah, and you feel it in his presence. Yeah.
Absolutely. And one of the things that he's as a practical matter that he points out to all of us and some of the one of the things that I've at the
Business school that I'm promoting as much as I possibly can is trying to get one of the problems in in America in our business climate today is his to heavily loaded on fluid intelligence. How is it that social media and the tech industry have gone from the Pinnacle of respect for in capitalism to near the bottom in 15 years where people are worried that social media is creating a harmful product or or has a harmful culture or is anti-competitive or whatever. It happens to be. It has everything to do with the fact that there's unforced errors across these
Business models. And the way that these things are working. Like, I have tons of respect for these people. These are my friends. They're your friends too. But the truth is, there's not enough old people in this process. There's too much fluid intelligence. There's not enough crystallized intelligence. My view is that in and Chip gave me this idea quite frankly that every product marketing and team and see sweet of every company in America needs more people over 70, you know, I was saying that I'm going to tell a story when I was lecturing. I was giving a talk at a tech company in the
Ali and, and they were talking about, they asked somebody asked me about diversity, which is, you know, people of color, and women who are coding and doing engineering work and that's it's a, it's a diversity of problem, for sure. I talked about that. But then I said, speaking of diversity, how many old people work here like mean over 30, right? That's problem. Yeah.
I pointed this out to chip though, and I'm interested in your thoughts on this. This is certainly true in start-up culture. But if you're at, if you're at a Fortune, 500 company or some giant,
Jassi conglomerate, you know, Dupont or Coca-Cola or something like that. I would suspect that the c-suites are filled with you know, septuagenarians who are well past their fluid intelligence curve who are sticking around too long. And in that case, you need the younger person to hold those people accountable because that's that's equally
broken, we need diversity, and that's why diversity is really important, but the kind of diversity that we really lack in America today is age, diversity. We need and
Weird because we have a system for, you know, your kids are going through grades in school, where they stay with the same age over and over and over again, and that lack of diversity, that lack of inner generational diversity. But, but even among students were four five, and six years apart, who can teach each other, that's a real debility. That's a big weakness that we have in our society today. And so we have a tendency to hang out with people more or less our age, you know, hang out with a couple more or less your age and I made a conscious effort to not do that. I have friends who are younger than me, and I have friends who are a couple of decades.
AIDS or 30 years younger than me. I have friends who are 30 years older than me, because it's, it's way more interesting and fun among other things. But also I learned
more. Yeah, when you're teaching his class at Harvard Business School. Well, there's let me say this. So in in recovery, you know, there's this understanding like you can't will somebody else to get sober like they have to have their own, you know, intrinsic willingness or receptivity and everybody. It's a timing thing like you have to be ready to
The work to get sober, right? Not everybody is when your kind of espousing the virtues of this way of thinking and approaching your life to these young Strivers. What is the receptivity level? Like does it land for them? Or what is your sense of how it's being processed by people who are at the very beginning of venturing out into the world and, you know, in their attempt to conquer
it. Yeah. Well, one of the things that I tell them is it's useful to them to have a crystal ball. And, you know, if I can, if I can tell you,
ooh, what's going to happen to you right now? They're very interested in it. You know, I say you're here in 20 years. You're going to see this. I want you to remember this. That's interesting to people. This is a thing that's going to happen to you ready. Now, write down to committed to memory and you're going to see this thing. When it happens to you. You're not going to be surprised. And as a result of it, you're not going to make the following mistake. They're intensely interested in what that's all about. The second is they're extremely interested in their parents. So my students have parents that are my age. I mean,
Kids are in their 20s. And and, and when I, when I talk to, you know, people who are in their 20s, I'm the I'm the age of their parents, their, I'm talking to them about people like you and me, and a lot of their dads and moms are intensely unhappy and they understand For the First Time whiteness and they, they care about their parents. And so a lot of what they wind up doing, is that I've noticed that there will be a zoom link on my for my classes for people who have, you know, coronavirus or something that came to class and and they'll be parents on the zoom link.
Unofficially auditing. That kind of, is it out? I know. And then a bunch of times. I'll see, you know, that I'll be in this lit, right? Mean, my students are, I have sections of 90 and two sections of 90. And as the semester goes on. I noticed that there's like people my age in the back of the class. It's for the afterward. I say,
well, that's a good indicator, you know, you're onto something one of the techniques.
For this, you mentioned stoic, philosophy, etcetera, but you talk in the book about I can't remember what sort of Faith denomination it was. I think these ascetic monks, who would do this version of exposure therapy, where they would walk amongst, you know, rotting corpses like have this, you know, to inject yourself with a sense of impermanence and you know a connectivity to your own
mortality, exposure therapy to the source of your fear. Most people that I talk to only twenty percent of
Are morbidly afraid of death that's called thanatophobia and it's in the it's in the DSM-5 manual but only 20% we none of us is like owe her a death, but but we're not really afraid of you. And I are not afraid of death, but we almost all have our own death fear. So if you're afraid of failure, that's your death fear. Mmm, if you're afraid of irrelevance or being forgotten, that's your death fear. And and one of the things that I ask my students or anybody to do is to figure out what your death fear is. What is the key?
Is your concept of your life that you're afraid to lose? That's that's your death. Anybody who says, by the way, my work is my life. Professional failures death fear. Then the way to cope with that because you can't break through. You can't get to the second curve. You can't actually find your bliss until you conquer your fear because that stands in the way of your love. That stands in the way of the real life in your life. So I do the way that I do. This has been very helpful to me, and now I do it with my students, particularly, with fear of failure. Because my MBA students at Harvard,
Our Ultra Achievers with very little experience of failure and and their their, their self objective fires. A lot of them because they consider themselves to be success monsters, success machines homoeconomicus. Like of course, I was good days. Of course, I get into the best schools, of course, because I'm the special one, right? And some of that comes from their parents, but a lot of it is internally generated. So the way that the, in the meditation on death works, that can be, that can be adapted to our own particular death fear as cause called the Martinez.
Sati meditation of the theravada Buddhist monks. If you go to a monastery in Thailand, or Vietnam, you'll notice that in a lot of monasteries, I'll have photographs of corpses in various states of Decay and and the monks will stand in front of them and say that is me and they'll walk to the next one. Say that is me, and it's just like horrible Until you realize that's exposure therapy. You can't, you can't be fully alive when you're afraid of not being alive. It just doesn't make sense. And yet the the nature of our brain is to block out this
Of dissonance, you know, the the mortality Paradox is that we know we're going to die, but we can't conceive of non-existence and that intense discomfort makes us terrified. So this, it turns out that that meditation that nine-part meditation. If people Google it, the maryna Sati meditation will come up. And if you do that, you will be free. But if you do that, in the case of your fear, you will be free as well. So, I have a nine part fear of failure meditation that I ask my students to contemplate one of the exercises, every
Lecture ends with an exercise met much of it in based in theological or philosophical tradition. And it's like, I'm not doing well, in class starts easy, right? And then it gets a little bit harder. My friends from college seem to be doing better than me and getting better jobs than me. And then, and then a little bit later. It's like, I think my parents feel sorry for me, and sometimes the students will weep at this point because the concept, you know, confronting that
To Terror of what is effectively their own death, but they will be free when they do that because you can't, it can't hurt them anymore. When it becomes ordinary the Phantasm once exposed to light
evaporates. And then the ultimate being sort of yes, you're going to die and this attachment to relevance or being Remembered in a certain way has to go, right? So nobody's going to remember you. Nobody's going to Care, like the more that you can just kind of acclimate to that notion and
Be comfortable with it. There is a freedom like in the example of the gentleman sitting behind you on the plane. Like if he had just embrace the fact that his time was up. And that's this is the nature of the way life is. He could have found some peace and
comfort with? Yeah, Amy. Your great-grandchildren will not know your name. Hmm. Didn't know your name. I mean if he can say how many men you have a, that's nothing. Yeah. You have eight great-grandparents. How many can you
name? Oh my God. I don't know. It's a boo. Yeah, it's
crazy. It's crazy. So there's six that are gone poof.
And it's funny because you get evidence of this as you get older. It's one of the consolations of age is actually experiencing these actually having this exposure. You know, I ran this important think tank in d.c. For almost 11 years. I've been gone for three years. I go back people in the slightest idea who I
am poof.
That's great. DC
and are you able to gracefully kind of like laughs and, you know, smile to yourself?
Yeah. I mean, it helps that I've got a new thing. I got a new bag right? But but yeah.
I mean, this part of that is the exposure that comes from actually having done this. We have done this work. This was work. I did and then published. I mean, I actually did the work on this such that and I'm much more comfortable with my weaknesses. I'm much more comfortable with my professional and Prestige mortality than I was in the past. I can I can laugh at things that scared me before. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's not perfect. I mean, I have I wake up in the middle of the night sometimes, but it's better. I mean, I'm happier. Here's that mean into acid test is basically this when I, when I
Down from that job in the middle of 2019. My happiness on a 1 to 7 scale self evaluated, which is the best kind of way to do it. Where one is the unhappiest person you've ever met and 7 is the happiest person you ever met. That number was three. And now it's four point eight.
And that's very
specific. Yeah. Well, I'm a, I'm a contest, you know, I'm like, I'm a quantitative guy. But but for me, that's really meaningful. I keep very careful data on. Not just the macronutrients of my happiness, but the micro nutrients that feed into it, as well. All of the
The elements that I need to track. I'm tracking very carefully all the time, such that I can make a strategic plan for my life. And this Alban, it's all been going up. It's all
been going on. And do you do that specifically with respect to the numerator denominator math that you talked about where needs and wants have to be correlated and I healthy
ratio you have sir once. So this is this is how you hack the satisfaction rate Matrix. So the problem is not that you can't get no satisfaction as Mick Jagger sings. The problem is you can't keep
Satisfaction. The real problem is you get it and then it goes. So it's your you get, you get the, the high from cocaine or alcohol, for example, but it's gone immediately. You chase it. The, if you never got it in the first place, it wouldn't be a problem. If you don't literally got no satisfaction, there would be no problem, but you can't keep No Satisfaction. That's the real problem. The way to think about it, is, if you have a concept of your satisfaction in terms of which you have you're in trouble, but if you understand a more accurate model, where your satisfaction
Factions, which you have divided by what you want halves divided by wants. Then you need a halves management strategy, but more importantly, I wants management strategy. The secret to being more satisfied is not having more as wanting
less. That's the secret. Right? And I feel like culturally that's not unrelated to the rise of minimalism. And so many young people who are interested in living their lives differently than what the way that we were brought up. Like I think that there is an
I'm sure you see this in your stupid. Maybe not because it's Harvard Business School. But so many young people are approaching their career tracks. From a perspective of, you know, how is this going to be meaningful to me? Or what is the impact going to be of my involvement in this, rather than what's my starting salary? Was the Rays going to be etcetera?
Yeah. No, I do see that. Although I still see. We're all human. I mean, we all are chasing the, the the, the te Mystic, you know, st. Thomas Aquinas is for Idols to, for substitutes for God.
Our money power, pleasure, and fame and, and, and you don't have to be a theological. Even understand that. What he's basically saying is these are the things that distract you from your happiness because they're instrumental to good things is nothing wrong with money. It's when you make it intrinsic that, it'll be what you chase and you never find your satisfaction. You wind up on happy. So what you find is that there's a natural human tendency based on our evolutionary biology to chase these. It is extrinsic goals these instrumentalities as if they were the secret to our own happiness. And then we
Quite figured out so hacking, The Matrix means wanting less of that. It's okay. If we get it. I mean, I play a game with my students called. What's your idol? And the way that what's your idol, works, as I say, okay to get theirs. It's a very comprehensive taxonomy of, you know, your, your Idols, which is money, power, pleasure. And honour, which is usually admiration or Prestige. Sometimes the fame. Some people actually want to be famous, the, okay. Don't tell me what your idol is. Tell me. What's, what is not? So let's play want to
Play sure. Okay. Tell me of these for money, power, pleasure and fame. Which is the one that you care about the least and would kick away in 2 seconds,
power, pleasure Fame. Yeah, it is. Yeah.
Probably pleasure. You kick it away. Yeah, but you chased it for years.
Yeah, but I was that was more of a running
away. Yeah, you know who's actually escaped not pleasure. It was the wasn't you're looking. You're trying to pleasure. You were running away from Pain. Yeah, so pleasure. Okay good.
Good. And tell me what's
next money
power. You got money and power and fame.
Power can go power. You don't care how or people you probably in part of the reason is because you don't want to, but Power might even be the first thing. Yeah, because you don't want, anybody have power over. You know that drives. I don't see, I don't
see, I'm not like motivated by
power. Yeah. Okay, you got two left.
So it's money and fame and fame fame would go. I got your idle. So the money money is my idol.
Well, it again, you might be
pretty but it's weird because I don't like
His podcast makes money, but I didn't get into it for that. Like it's a byproduct of doing something meaningful to me. But I think maybe I'm thinking of it in that way because I've got four kids, and I'm worried about making sure that they're taken care of. And, and I've gone through financial hardship. And I know what that feels like, and I don't want to go back there. Totally. Yeah,
totally it again. There's nothing that's disreputable about that at all. This is absolutely human. The key thing is knowing yourself such that you're not making decisions that militate against your happiness on the basis of chasing.
I'm your idol. That that's how you can self manage, is understanding that, that will wind up being your weak point. Now. Ordinarily is because there's a little bit of fear having to do with your past and you can never be quite secure enough when the people that you love are involved. The second is that money is a trophy for entrepreneurs? Money is a trophy. In other words, money is good because it represents the value of the rest of the world places on you. So even if you don't care about boats and planes, you can still have that as an idol under these circumstances. And you got to watch that is what it comes down to for me.
I don't care about power. I mean running a think tank was hard because I don't want anybody no power over me and I hate having power over others. I actually dislike. Yeah, I'm pretty libertarian in this way. It's like don't tread on me kind of write s money money for me money, you know, it's didn't have that much growing up. But you know, it's just it's it doesn't have any Allure for me, particularly.
Now things get a little bit uncomfortable. I like pleasure. I like it. Right. But okay, I'll give it up. I just found my I don't want to be admired. I want admiration. Yeah, I want the admiration strangers. I mean, how stupid is that to want the admiration of strangers? What could be less, satisfying, and more idiotic than that and yet and yet
but that brain neurochemistry gets lit up when Anderson Cooper calls says, dr. Brooks on tonight.
Yes, sir. To I am available. Yeah, it
is. And it's funny because you know, we understand how the neurobiology of that would be wired. Right? And yet, you know, the whole idea that the reward would have been multiple mates and lots of Offspring. I want that. I don't want that. No, I don't want that. I don't want to secret second family. I want, you
know, what do you do with that self-understanding?
You make sure that you're not making decisions on that basis. So I will interrogate my decisions. So my decision to go on Anderson Show.
Show, I'll say why and I'll interrogate myself now. Fortunately, I have a partner, my beloved wife, who will interrogate me with, you know, great Acuity. So, why do you want to do that? Why do you actually want to do that? Why did I want to do your show? Because I love your show and I never been on it before. I was wanted to, that's actually a meritorious. It's interesting to me. It's not because it's going to bring me this, the cosmic admiration that I seek and actually gives me the intellectual enjoyment that is as part of how I'm trying to live a good and
Life, I would actually take the time even if we weren't airing this, but that's kind of how I interrogate. It expose it to empirical scrutiny and make a decision properly. I don't always make the proper decision. But at least I know my weakness. Yeah, that's
power. Yeah, that's cool. Let's talk about the faith. Peace that we kind of kicked this off. You were sharing about your, your trips to India and your, your Catholic faith, but this is a big piece here and it gets tricky.
People don't like to talk about this stuff. Makes them uncomfortable. Right? But, you know, if you look at the blue zones and where people live the longest and live the happiest, you know, faith is big, big piece here. Yeah, and a lot of people have very unhealthy relationships with how they were reared in a certain faith. And it's, you know, whether it was traumatic or just they're not interested anymore. And then they live this secular life where they're in pursuit of the very things that we were just talking about. And now are faced with the prospect of
Of being told like you got to figure this out. Yeah stuff, right? Yeah, but as the statistics, interestingly bear out and you talked about this in the book like there is this receptivity to a more Transcendent way of approaching your life that kind of begins to bloom and Blossom as we get
older. Yeah. It's a real mystery and it was for the longest time because the belief was with the enlightenment that faith and reason were naturally antagonistic and that science was going to crowd out Faith entirely because Faith was nothing more than a bunch of superstitious.
Theories that help us understand the world. Now, that's been overtaken. By the observation that you don't know that there's no antagonism between a Picasso painting, and Picasso. There's no antagonism between the two and it's worth understanding both the man and the painting and that is the, the painter in the painting, is the better metaphor as opposed to, you know, when the Soviets in the 1970s sent, a rocket of telescope into orbit and pointed out into space and announce to the world that there was no evidence of God.
You know, that's sort of sounds idiotic because it is, it's like, looking in a Picasso painting for evidence of Picasso. That's not actually where you find that, these are different lines of inquiry that are actually complementary. And people start figuring that ordinarily in the 40s, you know, you find that people tend to walk away from Faith or spirituality and their 20s. And the reason is because the world is messy, you know, and you say how can there be a benevolent creator with so much pain in the world Etc. And I understand that these that this is troubling to a lot of people. But when you're our age, you like,
Things messy. Nothing's consistent. I can accept a whole lot of cognitive dissonance now that I was unable to accept when I was 28 or 32 years old, just couldn't do it. And so the result of that is that, whereas superstitions tend to fall away. I don't believe in the Tooth. Fairy, the Easter Bunny. I'm more willing to be childlike and understandings of the supernatural. Now, for some people, it doesn't work that way. But here's the deal, when it comes to happiness. If you're left to your device's, your ordinary quotidian devices. You're going to your
If it's going to be like a contact up, continuous tape Loop of one episode of Better Call Saul like it was okay, the first time and then it's the same and the same and you'll go mad with Tedium with boredom. It's just really my job, my car, my money, my friends, my time, my show, my me, me me. Let's just give me a break. The Dali Lama always says, every time I see him. He says, remember, you are one in seven billion by which he does. Not mean that.
I'm an aunt that I'm insignificant by which he means don't forget the adventure of looking at things from a distance. Don't don't don't forget the inventor of seeing life in its Spectrum. Its Majesty, its scale at 40,000 feet looking at the whole world where you're part of it gives you perspective and it gives you peace. You need that. Everybody has a trans little walk. Now comes maybe it comes from the you know, the incredible. I mean, it's like I hang out with a guy named Ryan holiday.
Yeah. I just talked to him like two hours.
I talked to Ryan all the time that close he's fantastic and he's cut his
teeth by introducing Marcus, Aurelius to a generation of Jen's ears. Like wow. Alright holiday discovered. Seneca is awesome, but it's so smart and so good. He's such a Ryan's a Visionary guy and and you can study this the Philosopher's or as I mentioned before the The Works of Bach or understanding nature in a very metaphysical way or a traditional or non-traditional.
Traditional Faith through spiritual practice or a meditation practice. There's lots of ways to do this, but we must have a transcendental walk because life is simply too intense and exhausting and boring, if we don't do that.
So, how does one Embark upon that? If this is a new alien concept? Yeah. I've asked it all along with that
very thing, you know, it's like, asking for a friend, kind of, but in, and I have a, my trip more traditional religious life. Actually proceeds from this, because I realized, I mean, there are times when I was more religious, and times when I was less religious.
But in my 30s, I recognize that this was a big hole in my soul and I didn't need to go across state lines to go to a different Supermarket. What? Precipitated that I need. I recognized the need that I needed. I needed better more peace and better perspective. And I just have a sense that this is right. Now. What part is, right? I don't know. I don't actually know, but I need a physics of spirituality and just as I would not try to create my own mathematical structures and you know, to create my own.
Alternative system of mathematics. I don't feel like I have to do. So, in a religious way, other people feel differently about it. But it only llama talks about kind of a pyramid for the basis of the pyramid is moral living figure, and this is a jungian perspective to Carl. Jung said that, happiness comes from defining your values and living according to them. If you know what your values are and you don't live according to them, or you don't know what your values are. You won't be happy, defining your values, and your morals and living. According to them with impeccable Integrity, that means, you know, when they say make your bed,
That's just a, it's a boring example of living according to what you think is, right? And even when nobody's watching living according to it. I what I recommend is that, that people don't lie, ever, just don't lie. Now, when the murderer is at the door and says, you know, where's the victim fine, but that's not. We're
talking about, it's a different podcast. That's a different
one dream. I'm
casting or a Sam Harris podcast,
maybe. So so figure out write down what your moral values are and make a plan to live, according to the step 1.
Step two is build a meditative practice, build a practice of contemplation. Maybe that's formal meditation. Maybe that's walking in the woods, but you need a practice without devices where you can be a piece. And finally, you need to read wisdom. You need to expose yourself to people who have had deeper thoughts and more profound thoughts than you. So, number one, act, according to your value. Learn your values act. According to Ali's, practice your values, write it down Journal. At number two, is get your contemplative practice in order.
Make sure you start with at least 15 minutes a day. And number three is actually read the wisdom literature and whatever tradition you want and do that daily for at least 15 minutes starting their, your life will change. It won't your world war
Rock. Hmm. What is the science say about the service piece? The giving back piece? Because I just know for me like when I have those moments of bliss, you know, they come in the most unlikely packages. They generally come when I'm not.
If seeking, but I'm able to get outside of my own self and my own egocentric, you know, looping and Avail myself for the betterment of somebody else. Like it's just if you if you are going through something difficult, if you're having a hard time, if you're meeting a roadblock to just like, pick up the phone and like see how someone else is doing, and not in a complicated way necessarily, but to kind of reflexively develop that skill is such a relief in such an amplifier.
Of that thing that we're seeking which is a sense of connection and fulfillment and purpose, Etc. And I suspect the older we get and the more our crystallized intelligence becomes more important and Paramount as we're searching for Outlets or ways to kind of engender more meaning in our lives that this is such a beautiful and obvious thing for people to channel their energy
into. It will lie, know you're absolutely right crystallized intelligence in this expression requires serving others.
This requires serving others, you can't teach without students. There's no reason for you to have pattern recognition and and pass on the knowledge. There's nobody to pass it on to. It's not just a question of you creating value on the basis of your clever ideas. It's collecting clever ideas in service of other people who need to learn from you. The professor requires students, and that is an act of love and its best all of the evidence. All of the empirical evidence, all the social science shows that you will
Happier, healthier richer, and even better
looking, if you give more lucky. Yeah, I kinda think evaluate that
this is great. This is great study. As a British study, where there's the social psychologists. They bring couples in the lab married couples. And huh, and there's again a white lab coat. And he says, to the married couple, some have been married for a long time. So I'm just for, you know, a couple of years and he says to the couple. Okay, here's how the experiment works. I'm going to give you this pocket full of change this to the to the gentleman. He picks the coins and puts it in the Man's Pocket.
You two need to walk down a little path over to that building over there outside. He says and I have a colleague who's going to wait and is going to interview you for five minutes and you get to keep the money and go home. Simple experiment, cool. Okay. Now turns out when they're walking down a little path. There's another pathway that comes from between the buildings from which a hobo comes walking out, a homeless guy comes walking out and pan handles the husband, right? He's a Confederate to the experiment. He's a, he's got collaborator. You have some change, he does they put the change in his pocket.
Has to make a decision. My going to give to the homeless guy, run. Am I not? He makes a decision. They go on walking to the next building, where the other scientist is waiting to interview them. He says, first sir. Did you give to the homeless man and how much rice it down, says, to the wife. How attractive do you find him right now? It turns out the more
direct now. I mean, that's why I recommend the
whole point is that she likes him. If he was just more general, which is why if you're in the market, when you were in the market back,
In the old days when you were dating your wife, you are extra nice to puppies and babies around her because you wanted her to see that you were a giving person. You were loving person that it brings out the best in you because you actually became more attractive on the basis of your love for your fellow men and dogs.
Yeah. That's that's
you actually get better-looking. You of women, find men better-looking. If they are more loving and philanthropic and serving service, right?
So if you take away nut, no. Other idea from this podcast news, you can use man. That's right. We were talking.
In a few minutes ago about reducing your your wants, like if you can if you can really, you know, curtail that that's a good recipe for putting you on a like a happiness trajectory, right? But like, how do you do that? How do you
want? What you want right now? Except that. There's there's all kinds of interesting ways to do that. So what there's an image that I really like, it's really helpful that a guy of philosopher of Art in China taught me and I was actually touring the National Palace Museum in Taipei, and we were looking at this.
This sculpture of this chipped, you know, piece of Jade that would end. It was sculptured to a Chinese village and I said, look, even if you didn't tell me it was Chinese, I would knows Chinese. How do I know just by looking at it? This Chinese, you know, they didn't have a pagoda and it but it's just, you know, it's just it looks Chinese. He says why he says because it's a different concept of what art is. He said you think of art as starting with an empty canvas and being filled up with brushstrokes. We think of art is already existing inside the block of Jade, which you have to chip away until we find the work of art.
He said this is also how you see success in the west and starting from nothing and building up and then after a while it's so full that you actually can't get any more satisfaction because you're just more brushstrokes, you know, if you got a completely full canvas effectively metaphorically and you like, I don't know. I'm not satisfied. Maybe I'll get a boat. It's not going to work because the canvas is already full to find real satisfaction in the second half of life. This is a second curve phenomenon. This is one of the things that all happy older people have in common they have stopped adding and they start taking away.
They start chipping away and each year. I throw away more stuff until I can find me which is intensely. Satisfying. So the key thing is what do you throw away this year? Don't have a Bucket List, have a reverse bucket list. The reverse bucket list is a list of your attachments and your strategic plan for. Look, if I get it, get it. But I no longer am going to consider myself a loser. If I don't, you know, ride in a hot-air balloon or, you know, have lunch with the president. I am detaching myself, officially and that
Exercise really, really works. And I do that. You know, when you're at gave away
tooth, paste by making a like making a decision to do
it, making the decision to be detached and act accordingly. I gave away to others in my clothes last year, the year before on my birthday. I gave away half of my political opinions. I wrote down, on my political opinions. I detach myself from half of,
that's so interesting. It's just two things. It's hard core, right? Your your kind of a clotheshorse, right? Like your assets, sartorial Maven. So giving away your clothes was probably
Probably, there might have been a little pinch there. I might have not
given me the best one. Yeah, okay. All right, fair
enough and it is interesting because you were once known and have written many books about politics. But if you kind of go online and research everything you've been talking about, there's none of that like you've really kind of put that aside and said I'm focused on
this that is and it was pursuant to the decision in my reverse bucket list birthday exercise, to detach myself more.
Flee from something that had been quite important to me quite frankly, but was holding me back. It was holding me back from bonds of love with people who are different than me. Are you
happier? Yeah, you're not part of that conversation. Really?
Yeah. I really am. And again, I've got nothing against the conversation. I want a responsible country that has good public policy and better politics, but I actually don't think I have an oracle on truth. I know I'm wrong. I just don't know on what and actually getting away from intense opinions. And big arguments has been a kind of attachment. That is too.
Truly Set Me Free,
as you have to just, you have to just stay off Twitter. Well, I mean, I mean that's got to be provocative when you see a bunch of crazy. And yeah, but it's actually the urge to jump in, right? Well, since I,
since I made the Detachment decision about my about political opinions, I get a lot more. I get more laughs, I get more last from people, you know, who are saying, outlandish, things. I have to say, I mean, like I'm alarmed. What's happening in this country? And I believe we need to love our enemies politically a lot more than we do. That's super important for us.
To do and I'm just better able to do it. And to model that to build alliances with people who would ordinarily be very very different than me politically when I'm when I'm not attached. I mean, I think I got these opinions, but I can take them or leave. Them is the whole point. It's a, it's interesting and you know, it tick, not Hon, you're the great Vietnamese Buddhist Master. He said the greatest attachments that many have his to their opinions and big effect on because we never think of that, right? It's like yeah, it's my
material possessions and well, there's an identity
constructs. Yeah, for sure.
Absolutely, for sure. And by the way, give away parts of your identity. Give away your concept of who you are detach yourself from these things about who you actually are. And that's been really
helpful to me to. I have to say, that's very liberating.
Hugely. It's actually one of the greatest secrets that I've ever been able to come across is the reverse bucket list around ideology identity and
opinions. Yeah. It's a PhD in minimalism because it's really a mindful practice. It's not about me.
Cleaning out your closet is an activity, but it's not really about getting rid of your possessions. It's about Clarity of purpose and thought and removing the Clutter of your conscious experience and The Traps of your identity that are getting in the way of you being a more fulfilled. Human.
Yeah, and when you make a commitment to it and somebody says something you would have snapped at before you're more likely to go, huh?
Right? Huh? Tell me more come sit next to me. Yeah.
So so so when you go back to the think tank and walk the Halls, can you like it must be? You know, like did they like your old colleagues? Are they
confused? I don't know. You don't know. I don't really know you but transcended that. Well, I mean, I've gone back a couple of times and and like I love these people and I think they're doing absolutely outstanding work. I'll just love them when they do. I'm so proud to have been part of that. But I also recognize that I did go poof and, and, and it's okay.
It's absolutely. Okay. And they'll talk to people and they'll kind of be like, what happened to you, man. It's interesting because I used to be, I was a musician for so many
years. Yeah, we didn't even talk about.
Yeah, it was a classical musician, but I also toured for two years with a jazz guitar player Charlie bird. Oh you did. Yeah, and and I was on tour with Charlie bird all over the place and and years ago, probably six or seven years ago. I was doing this. I was hosting this big event in Washington d.c., you know, 2,000 people black tie, the National Building Museum.
Museum, you know, we had this big event and Benjamin Netanyahu is this guest speaker? And and it was a huge thing in the Press Corps was all there and we had protesters outside was a great night. It was a fantastic fun night and we hired a band and, you know, the band was playing and they were pretty good in the end. You know, we're kind of cleaning up. And, you know, I was the president of the organization. I did given the remarks and one of the keynote addresses and and afterward, you know, my tie, my bow ties untied and it's 11:00 at night and pretty satisfied. And I noticed the drummer is coming down from the Bandstand. He's walking over to me and this is the the place is
During that he says, are you Arthur Brooks the French horn player? Because that's what I did for a living and Rick recognize him. He was the drummer for Charlie bird and I'd made two records with him. 20 years earlier, 25 years earlier and, and, and he's looking at me. And he says, he says, are you the boss of all this? Now? I said, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. He says, what happened to you,
man. It's the same thing, right? It's a crazy story to be this French horn Prodigy, and I have this whole
Whole career throughout your 20s and be playing in these orchestras and really being, you know, in pursuit of this career of Mastery of music and then to discover in your 20s that you just couldn't play as well as you once could and the struggle to try to figure out how to solve it until ultimately, you just you have to give it up.
Yeah. Yeah. Give it up.
And then it bursts this whole other career reminds me of, you know - Shankar. Yeah. It's a similar. Very similar story. Yeah.
The
violinist.
Yeah, it's playing a classical instrument is hugely coordination and strength and ever strength oriented and ever, it's like, being an athlete. But with fine motor skills, as opposed to gross motor skills, and there's a lot of things that can go wrong. And there's a lot of things that we don't understand that can actually go wrong. There can be repetitive stress injuries or can be nerve damage. There can be actually muscle tears and the finest level you can be a French horn player. Like I am in Tara tiny muscle in your upper lip and your cooked. I mean you just you'll be go.
Oh, go into decline, you'll be able to play, but you'll be able to go into client and who knows why? But in my 20s, I was getting better, man. I was getting better. I was on this upward trajectory and I frankly wanted to be the greatest French horn player in the world. And I think like, what a great country you can have ambition like so crazy and, and, and things look good. But when I was 21 or 22 years old, I started to get worse and I couldn't quite figure it out. And, you know, then, I, I played for a bunch of seasons in the Barcelona Symphony and, and I was getting worse. I mean no matter what I do. It's
And worked. And and I went to the greatest teachers and and it was like this master class and understanding Klein, which is very helpful to me. I have to say because, you know, the clients that came later because the fluid intelligence, not because of a small muscle tear in my lip or whatever happened. I was actually able to experience what decline meant but I had to retool my career and leave and and, you know, I went into I just reluctantly and sorrowful e and ashamedly left music and when you know, got my PhD and went into the family business, which is Academia, because my dad
My father and my grandfather were both academics and and, you know, most people would be like, awesome. What's your problem? Man is because this was my dream. Yeah. This was my dream is like I was I wanted to be a major league pitcher and I just got kind of got to the, you know, three games and AAA or something like that and had to give it up and thought about it. And I thought it was going to be sad about it for the rest of my life. Quite frankly. I have to
say, do you play today just for Joy? Never becomes a joy,
right? There's actually no joy, there's there's just wow, I love
Music. Now, I actually love music for the first time. I didn't love music when I play and it's interesting, you know, there's all this literature about humor. I've done a lot of research on humor. There's two sense of humor means two things. It means enjoying jokes and making jokes. Happiness is only associated with enjoying jokes. It's not associated with making jokes. Hmm. It turns out that if you're a funny person, that does not improve your happiness, quite the contrary, but if you enjoy funny things, you have the humility to laugh at other. People were funny, you get the benefits.
The same thing is true with a lot of enjoying music and making music. Now, some people get a lot of Joy from it. But for me, it was like being a stand-up comic, it was just this Pathos and drive and ambition, and I wasn't happy and I'm
much happier than I. Yeah. I was that it's interesting because then that becomes almost a test case for, you know, what you focus on later in life. Like you had this experience where you had to weather a career transition at a very early age and you understood
Disappointment and loss and all of that and how to rebuild. But so you did it at a period of time where you had a lot of fluid intelligence and when you're younger, maybe the stakes are lower and you have all this upside because you have so many more years to do other things. But, but it's almost like that maybe that, like, you know, planted something.
Yeah, and I've taken my career down to the studs four times. Mmm. It mean, when it did 10, 12 years of professional French horn, player, 10 years in Academia, 10 years, running a think tank. And now this happens
Penis operation. Whatever happens is startup. This is like make America
happy. Well, there's a cabal of like happiness experts, you know out there like crack problem.
We're all trying to be happy. You don't study what? Yeah. Yeah, you study what you want. Yeah.
Well, let's let's like round this out with maybe a little bit more practical advice. Like as I think about this in relationship to myself and my own career path. I'm thinking okay. I'm 55 like
To keep doing this. How long can I keep doing this? I don't know. I'm trying to make it as sustainable as possible so I can continue to have a joyful relationship with it and maintain that level of enthusiasm and and and kind of like connection to it. So that it can maintain that level of quality. But how long am I going to be able to do it? I don't know. I do know that at some point. I'm going to be like I don't want to talk into a microphone anymore or I'm not able to do it at the Quality level that I want to. So what can I do now? Well,
Well, as I mentioned earlier, I want to develop my friendships a little bit better. My kids are getting older. I want to make sure that those relationships are intact. That there is a bond there that, you know, will transcend my career path without doing it in an unhealthy way where I'm creating expectations for what our relationship because they need to go and be in the world. Like I don't want to be you know, like I think some parents make the mistake of like putting all this pressure on their kids, to now be their friends because they're in that weird space.
Big mistake. But you know, what else should one be doing? Or should I be thinking about or even you be thinking about as we, you know, walk this
path. Do you need? We need to be purposive. We need to be thinking in a very specific way about the engineering of this and that requires discernment. See discernment is hard. We think that the world is going to tell us what we want through the experiences that doesn't work. It doesn't work that way, you know, my students will say, you know, I thought when I went to college, I would figure out what my passion is and I got out of college.
And I still don't have it. So so I went to business school. I thought that I would find it there. And then I went to McKinsey or, you know, I went to, you know, the Boston Consulting Group or Goldman Sachs. I thought I would find it there and and, you know, I'm 31 years old, still looking still waiting for my passionate but we're we do sort of the same thing, too. I like this thing. And and and and what the next thing that should be, will present itself to me, but that's actually not the way it works. We need to be highly proposal about our discernment and discernment hasn't is an ancient.
And tradition, you know, discernment soon. Esis in for the ancient Greeks upon for the for the for the Buddhists in poly or Sanskrit and there's this ignatian spiritual discernment for Catholics. And so, every spiritual tradition has discernment and it requires work when I was thinking about this, when I step down as the president of a think tank, I went for a walk. I walked the Camino de Santiago. I walked and walked and walked and ask for help.
Thought about this and what am I supposed to do next? And I've done it since then too. And I'm going to do it regularly because I need to display this constant process of discernment, which exposes me to the, the most boring thing ever, which is the exposure therapy to something. That's not exciting. That is actually excruciating. Lee boring and painful and during which time I can actually contemplate actually what the next next thing probably should be. But yeah, we need to get out of our routine and do the work.
That's what I recommend is that you're 55 years old, say what's 60 year old Rich? What's he doing? What does this actually mean? Now? What is your happy version of you? Look like, okay. So here's the exercise. Six to five years from now. You imagine yourself, you are happy. You know what that means because you know how that feels and you've got some of the data on this to, with your enjoyment, satisfaction and purposes, etc. Etc. Now, list the five things that are most responsible for you being happy in order.
Okay, the podcast is not number one. Mmm, your marriage and your relationship with your children and your friendships are probably number one, two, and three. And probably number four is your religious Enlightenment. And maybe number five is what you're doing professionally, all day long. Maybe I'm just guessing. Yeah, put them in order. And then ask yourself. What am I managing to? I bet you're managing right now to number five switch, the order, switch the management imperative, switch, the, how you need to in more intensively, managed. One, two, three and four. Then number.
My students do this all the time and part of the reason is because it's easier to manage the things that are are more professional. It's easier to manage your career than it is to manage your friendships. Yeah, but you can manage your friendships and that means starting to do that every single day. Maybe in five years, you'll be doing the podcast. Maybe you won't. But, in 5 years, you should have closer friendships, a better marriage, a better concept of your relationship with your children and a much deeper spiritual walk. And if, and if you do the work right now,
Then the job will take care of itself and your priorities will be in order.
Mmm. That's super Sound Advice. I feel like I am doing all of those things on some level, but just to kind of label it in that way. And then to inject it with like a higher degree of intentionality and structure. I think for
sure. And we can all do that. Mean. This is the wonderful blessing of having a big free, prefrontal cortex. Yeah, is that you don't have to take life as it is given. You can actually be the
Of you ink, right? Which is your ultimate Enterprise of importance.
And what, what you kind of didn't say explicitly, but is implicit is, when you're in this mode, in this practice, you are making space for the mystery, right? Like there is the like, if you walk this path and you're taking care of these things and you're aligning, your actions with your values you and your exercising that level of discernment. There is a faith and a trust that like the next step.
Will be revealed. And that's like, that's an Embrace of, you know, the mystical nature of what it means to be in the beautiful mystical nature of Being
Human, you're willing to walk off that edge, you know, is what I talked about this, you know, it's for my little girl. She returned 19 last week. Great year, youngest. Yeah, and she was 18 a year ago, obviously, and for her 18th birthday, she wanted one thing. One thing, one thing she want to jump out of an airplane with me. She wanted to go skydiving. Okay, so and my wife's like forget it.
It. And and I have a son and as I mentioned, the Marine Corps, he's done it a million times and my older son is like that's stupid. She said, no, no Daddy. I want to do with you.
So we but how sweet is that and, and the awareness like, those calls. Don't come around. No. No, I'm not. She's the best. She's the, what she's
truly understands me and she's Rock Solid and so we did that. And it's not scary. It's just the most unnatural thing ever. I mean, not my heart didn't even Elevate, but it was, I was intensely aware of how unnatural it was.
And this unnatural thing, and it could have been scary for some people find it very frightening. But for whatever reason, it didn't frighten me. Exactly. And, but the guys like jump,
And he was telling me to do something that was that seemed literally impossible and I did it. This is it. If you're actually doing the work, you're doing the work of having your spiritual and moral and values your life in order, then it will still feel unnatural to make these jumps, but you can do it. You can actually just because all you do is you fall out of the plane. You just literally fall out of the plane and and you can do that. And that's an Incredible Gift to be able to
But you can't do that. If you don't actually have somebody who's that you trust and you know, a parachute strap to you and a guy strapped to you and you can't do all that stuff. And that's what this work really is is actually making it so that with complete confidence. You can do the least natural thing
possible. Hmm. But there is a level of like self connection. Interconnect it like a self-awareness and a commitment to that inside work so that your intuition can be somewhat trustworthy, right? I think for a lot of strife.
Purrs, that's not really part of their mental, emotional, or spiritual equation. So there has to be some cultivation to that. So I guess that's, you know, when you talk about, you know, Faith or pursuing something Transcendent in your life. Like that's a big component of whatever that modality is going to look
like. Ya know. If you're only developed your exterior self. It's a problem. If you've developed yourself as a full person, a lot of Strivers. When you talk to him deep down. They think they don't really exist. They
Think of themselves as a hologram because they've been working on the they think of themselves as a 2d person on Zoom to themselves. It's the weirdest thing. And in my worst days, it's been like that to you know, I'm I'm a guy. I'm a guy that I've invented, I've invented this
guy. You're the Avatar. Yeah. I'm an
avatar of a real person and that's what a lot of Strivers do and you have to actually do the work so that you come to life in 3D to yourself. Cool.
Super inspiring to talk to you. So glad we were able to do this. Really nice to meet you. Nice to meet you in person to I love all the writing that you're doing. I love the book. It's fantastic. So everybody should pick it up, strength to strength, and come back and talk to me again,
sometime. Thank you. Thank you for what you're doing. You're lifting a lot of people up and you're bringing a lot of us together around these values. That matter. I
appreciate that. Cool piece you
too.
That's it for
A thank you for listening. I truly
hope you enjoyed the conversation.
To learn more about today's guests, including links and resources related to everything discussed today. Visit the episode page at Rich world.com where you can find the entire podcast archive, as well as podcast merch. My books Finding Ultra voicing change in the plant power way, as well as the plant power meal planner at meals Rich Roll.com.
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Other subjects, please subscribe to our newsletter, which you can find on the footer of any page at Rich world.com. Today's show was produced and engineered by Jason camiolo, with additional audio engineering by kill. Curtis. The video edition of the podcast was created by Blake Curtis with assistance by our creative director. Dan Drake, portraits by David Greenberg and Grayson Wilder, graphic and social media assets courtesy of Jessica Miranda. Daniel Solace dance.
Drake and AJ act party at a thank you, Georgia. Whaley for copywriting and website management. And of course our theme music was created by Tyler Pia. Trapper piatt and Harry. Mathis, appreciate the love. Love the support. See you back here soon. Peace plants.
