#110 How To Build Lasting Happiness | Dr. Arthur Brooks

22:26Dr. Rhonda Patrick:Okay. So when we get into the third macronutrient, we'll talk about that. We're definitely going to talk about that. Awesome. I want to hear about this. Okay. Let's talk about satisfaction too. But generally just on the side of how we use the devices wrong, how young people use the devices wrong, And we're using it because it gives us a little reward, a dopamine reward, wondering if there's mail or notifications or whatever it happens to be. And that's just, you know, the algorithms have been designed to actually stimulate the dopamine pathways in the human brain. So the locus coeruleus has a little spritz in there.

22:59And it's weird because, you know, you know there's nothing on text that you care about. You know there's nothing on social media that somebody's doing that is of even minor importance. But you think about that when you're waiting at a stoplight and you pull out your phone, right? That's the number one reason. The second reason is distraction from other things you don't want to think about as a distraction machine, which is related to the third reason, which is boredom avoidance. We hate boredom, but boredom is unbelievably important for the human brain. We're made to be bored. When we become bored, in other words, when we put people into the fMRI and you say, think about nothing, you can't do it.

23:34You immediately, your mind just starts wandering and the default mode network of the brain becomes active, which is important for you to understand. The third macronutrient we'll talk about in a minute, which is meaning. And so therefore, when you're distracting yourself to not be bored, because boredom is uncomfortable, but mother nature doesn't care if you don't like it. Mother nature does all kinds of things that we don't like. We were just never able to avoid it. Now we are. So the same way that, you know, we need pain for lots and lots of things. we created analgesics that got that escalated in power to the point we're able literally to get rid of all of the pain and a hundred thousand people died of drug overdoses last year's result were homo sapiens were incredibly ingenious at getting rid of little problems and creating massive problems and that's what smartphones do today is to get rid of boredom because we don't like it dan gilbert's experiments at harvard on boredom he shows that when people have to sit in a room and do nothing with nothing to do except the option of pushing a button on a key fob to self-administer a painful electric shock that 25 % of women choose to shock themselves rather than being bored and two-thirds of the dudes shock themselves painfully rather than being bored for just 15 minutes.

24:46Get an experiment. One guy shocked himself 190 times in 15 minutes. Wow. I mean, he was a sick and twisted freak and got thrown out of the experiment. But you get my point that that we hate boredom so this we want the little dopamine bump we want to distract ourselves from things we don't want to be thinking about right now because life is complicated and we don't want to be bored and those three things together mean that in you're missing your life because it's christmas morning and you're going

25:14Dr. Rhonda Patrick:so that's exactly exactly big problem and and and then you know thinking about like kids growing up with it. Like they're not even, at least I have like a baseline. Like I remember. Yeah. You know, we remember the before times. Yeah. Okay. So the satisfaction is the big one. That's a big one. And it's weird because it actually leads to a problem we haven't even discussed, which is you can't keep it. You want it. It's so sweet. And you know, this is a Stryver show. It's transient. This is a Stryver show. I mean, this is like, this is not a slacker show. This is a Stryver There's lots of slacker shows.

25:49Dr. Rhonda Patrick:Yeah. This isn't one of them. You know, Found My Fitness is not for, it's like, yeah, I don't know, I'm going to chill at the beach. No, this is for people watching this are hardcore. The problem that they have is called the striver's curse. And the striver's curse is when you work for that thing and you work for that thing and you work for that thing because mother nature is telling you, if you get it, Ron, if you get it, it's going to be so nice forever. You can enjoy it. And then you get it. You're like, huh. most olympic athletes who win a medal have a have a have a clinical depression in the wake of winning an olympic medal like so weird and there's a reason for it we're wired for progress progress brings tons and tons of of just absolute enjoyment and satisfaction it's wonderful to make progress we're designed for progress and so we incorrectly assert or or believe that when we get to the goal toward our progress of the, you know, we get to Hispaniola with the ship that, and then we'll, we'll have that emullience, that joy forever, but that's not how the limbic system is supposed to work.

26:54That's a lie. And then when it's kind of, huh, it's okay. It's okay. We're like, life is meaningless. Life has no satisfaction. Life isn't good. And, and, and, and so you say, I guess a billion dollars wasn't enough. I guess I needed another billion dollars. I guess I needed another Academy Award. I guess I needed another person praising me and admiring me. I guess I need another person who says she loves me. I need a new mate, whatever it happens to be. And that's the hedonic treadmill more, more, more, more, more, more.

27:27Dr. Rhonda Patrick:The goalpost keeps moving and you get this diminishing satisfaction. That's why you need some metaphysics to solve that, to sort that one out. How do you break out of that? How do you break out of that? Yeah. You break out of that by understanding that the brain, human brain, gives us options beyond our animal impulses. My dog, Choo Choo, he's a good boy. He can't break out of that. He can't break out of that cycle, right? He doesn't even know he's in the cycle, as a matter of fact, right? And so it's all animal impulses. His prefrontal cortex is wafer thin. It's like a tiny, tiny little thing.

27:59mine is 30 of my brain by weight and it gives me the option of animal impulses run run run run run another billion another metal another you know three pounds lost on the scale or my moral aspirations i can stand up to mother nature and say no no i'm out i'm out and the way to do that is to is to realize that satisfaction that lasts is not about having more it's about wanting less That's how it works. Your satisfaction is all the things that you have divided by what you want, haves divided by wants. Don't always work the numerator because you'll work yourself to death. You'll become a workaholic, success addicted, self-objectifying creature of the world.

28:44You'll ruin your relationships and be frustrated. You need just as much to manage your wants because when you manage the denominator, when your wants go down, your satisfaction rises and stays high.

28:57Dr. Rhonda Patrick:Yeah. That's what we need. Okay. So you've spoken about these four sort of false, I don't know, idols. Idols, yeah. That people kind of substitute and think will bring them. Maybe they are the wants. Yeah. They will bring them the happiness. Yeah. I absolutely have at least two of them for sure for me. Yeah. But can you talk a little bit about these? like, you know, four idols. Yeah. And why do people think they will bring them up? Yeah, I know. I mean, all of the really interesting ideas in behavioral science and neuroscience, they all kind of come from the old philosophers, it turns out, right?

29:34I mean, there's nothing new under the sun. And Aristotle was talking about, you know, what beguiles humankind. And the greatest Aristotelian thinker of the more modern times, which is still not that modern, was Thomas Aquinas. You know, Thomas Aquinas writes the Summa Theologiae in 12 1265, this magisterial text bringing Platonic and especially Aristotelian ideas to more modern audiences. And he was an unbelievably good behavioral scientist, also a great saint. You know, I'm a Catholic. And so I love Thomas Aquinas. He's the best. But what he talked about was the idols that distract us from what we truly want.

30:11And so, you know, as I'm a religious person, you know, and Aquinas said, but you want God. Even if you can't quite put your finger on it, You want God. You want the permanent truth, the real thing, the ultimate numinosity, the end of all things. That's what you want. You want it, but man, it's convenient. There's a lot of rules, man. There's a lot of one-sided conversations. You don't really know if it's out there. And so you look at things that seem to have kind of a divine nature. Those are the idols on earth that will attract you. And he said there's four, and this is unbelievably good science because it turns out that these are the buckets that people still fall into.

30:51He just knew, right? We have surveys and data and experiments to find what he was talking about in 1265. So there goes my whole PhD. Anyway, they are money, resources, power, which is influence, not evil. It's just influence of other people. People do what you want. Pleasure, which we already talked about. And pleasure, by the way, is not just feeling good. It's also comfort. like the comfy covers instead of going to the gym or security, which is checking your stock portfolio every day. Same thing. And a lot of people are like, ah, I don't care about pleasure. Let's see how rich I am today. That's the same thing.

31:28It's working the same circuits. And the last is honor. And that's an ancient way of saying fame, right? Fame, admiration, prestige, that it's like wanting to be liked and accepted by the right people. Yeah.

31:41Dr. Rhonda Patrick:Bring it on. I mean, you and I are academics fundamentally. And so, you know, it's not just like any idiot. It's people who know, right, is what it comes down to. But there's also the admiration of strangers, which has all sorts of neurochemical benefits that we get that go back to our Pleistocene brains, that we really want that. It makes you insane. So those are the big four, money, power, pleasure, and fame, fundamentally. Everybody is most beguiled by one. And when they know what their weakness is, they have pure strength. Because if you know your weakness, you can actually fight against it, avoid a bunch of errors, and understand what you most regret.

32:17That's why this is really important. So I have a game with my MBA students called What's My Idol? You want to play?

32:23Dr. Rhonda Patrick:Yeah. All right. Let's find out Ron does it all. And you probably know? I have two, I think. Yeah, but we'll find out which one is bigger. Okay. Right, okay. The way to do this, and as you know, in the way that we do our work is when you're trying to select something, it's better to eliminate. That gives you a truer understanding. Eliminating things that it's not always gives you more focus on what it is. So of the four, we're going to look at which one you'd get rid of first, which doesn't mean you don't have it. It just means you go to the population mean. So for example, if you say, I don't care about money, that doesn't mean you're poor.

32:55It just means you're the average American. which is pretty great by world standards, but it sucks to the striver. I was like, being the average is the worst, right? That's like torture if it's your idol, okay? So that's how it works. So you got money, power, pleasure, fame. Which one do you get rid of first?

33:13Dr. Rhonda Patrick:Pleasure. And why? I think because I'm a striver. You're an austere type? Yeah. You're up at dawn, before dawn. I mean, I like to work. I like to get that. I mean, I guess the satisfaction. Yeah. Now watch your distraction because your distraction can be a form of pleasure. Okay. If you're distracting yourself from things that are uncomfortable, that means you have a comfort idol. And so a lot of strivers actually do fall into it. I'm not saying that that's the case, but that's something that's actually kind of keep your eye on. And I believe it because you've been super successful doing all kinds of, I mean, your academic work is impeccable.

33:58Your show is successful. You're super fit. All that stuff. Your wife, your mom, you're doing it all. I believe it. What are you sacrificing? Feeling good. Okay. Because it's not important to you. Good. Got it. What's next?

34:12Dr. Rhonda Patrick:Probably. Ooh, it's hard. That's a hard one because. Yeah, because all of them are nice. Yeah. I mean. We all like all of them. There's a reason they're idols. Well, also, I think maybe the fame is the path to influence and money. Yeah, could be. Could be. But I'm talking intrinsic desire for each one of these things as opposed to an instrumental desire for it. Okay. So which of these things is your intrinsic thing that it feels like if you got there, you'd be really happy, even though you know it won't. You're smart. Yeah. But that thing that I like, no idea. Which is the next one that you don't care about, you'd get rid of, you think, if you had to?

34:55Because we have to. We're eliminating.

34:57Dr. Rhonda Patrick:Fame. Yeah. And fame means, you know, people admiring you and stopping you in the airport. Or, you know, the right academics going, I just, your work is so great. Because you're still publishing academic journal articles from time to time. I mean, you're doing that work. I mean, you're doing that serious stuff. And you're doing it for a reason. You want to end. It's so hard. Influence and fame are like, you know, because I also want to influence. people. I really do. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I believe it that you're actually not egotistically driven. I believe it that you're not egotistically driven.

35:27Dr. Rhonda Patrick:It's like you said, it's a pathway to get. Yeah. And I see that because I know your public profile and your public profile isn't like internet influencer par excellence where, you know, more clicks, more clicks, more clicks from strangers. And so I believe it. I actually believe it. And so that's good. But now it gets difficult because what we're now, what we're talking about is money and influence, money and influence other people. By the way, this is not bad. There's many beautiful, good things you can do with money. I'm a free enterprise guy. I mean, I believe in a free economy where people can, I just, I just love living in a free society where successful people can make a bunch of money and create jobs and opportunity and growth and philanthropy.

36:08I love it. I'm so happy to be in that kind of environment. I'm so grateful for it. But I also recognize that when it's an idle. It can control you like anything else. So which one, if you had to get rid of one of them and only one was left, which one would you get rid of? Influencing others?

36:28Dr. Rhonda Patrick:Money. Money. Did you grow up with money? No. Did you grow up with no money? Just middle class? Yeah. Did you grow up poor? Yeah. Yeah. I grew up poor, but I was in the best private schools because I - Because you're smart. I got in. I got in. And you had good parents. And I had good parents. Yeah. Intact family? I had financial, no. Parents broke up? Not the whole time. Yeah. Uh-huh. Yeah. But they stayed friends. We'd still had family vacations together. Yeah, really? To keep the unit together. Mom and dad went on vacation together when they were divorced? Yeah. At least for a few years until my dad married my stepmom.

37:07Yeah. And you have a good relationship with her, too? Yeah. So you had good parents who cared about you. Were they educated people?

37:14Dr. Rhonda Patrick:My mom got her education a little bit later in life, but not really, no. My dad's like a blue-collar worker. And a hard worker. Hard worker, for sure. Like, work, like, a lot. Good man. Good man. Yeah, good man. Imperfect, because we all are. Yeah. Right, you know, it's like, his marriage didn't work out, you know? But that's life, is kind of how that works. So, people have different backgrounds around that. And some people who have the money idol, they generally come from two different camps. real poverty or real wealth. And real poverty turns into a money idol because you're afraid of going back there.

37:48And real wealth becomes a money idol because that's how you understand yourself. And you don't want to become alienated from your sense of self. So the people who are least likely to have it are just kind of right in the middle, sort of indistinct. Got it sometimes. But everybody's different. But what this really defines, of course, is what will, which is not, there's nothing bad about influence. On contrary, you use your influence to great good. Even you've influenced me and it's made me better. But if it runs you, if that influence becomes an intrinsic motivation for you, that's the thing that will lead you when you're not guarding against it to change the way that you relate to the people you most care about in your life, your husband, your son.

38:30You'll cut corners, not ethically, it will cut corners in the things that actually mean more to you than that. And that's what absolutely always leads to regret. It always leads to regret. You know, those are resume virtues.

38:44Dr. Rhonda Patrick:You'll work. You'll work because you want to get that influence. That's right. And those are resume virtues, not eulogy virtues. My friend David Brooks writes about this, about resume versus eulogy virtues. You know, resume virtues are the things you would not want people to say at your funeral. He had 5 million miles on United. That's not what you wanted to say. And that's the danger is what it comes down to. That also tells me something probably about your childhood, which everybody's childhood is. I mean, I'm not of the trauma school like that, but we're path dependent for a lot of things. You probably were a super good student growing up, right?

39:27Great student. You were probably really good in sports. And you probably got a lot of attention from adults when you did things that were really amazing.

39:35Dr. Rhonda Patrick:I got a lot of attention. Yeah, I was like a superstar, running a jump rope teen, a gator, in commercial. Like, yeah. You were in commercials. I was in commercials. Yeah. I was like, you know, I was getting that fame. Yeah. When you were getting noticed for things that were, you know, for your ability, for your looks, whatever it happened to be, right? That wires a kid's brain to not to misunderstand love. Love is a grace. It's a free gift freely given. It's not something you can earn. You can't literally can't earn anybody's love. You can't even earn your own love. You can't earn God's love. You can't earn love.

40:14But when you're a little kid and you get attention and affection from grownups because of what you do, that will teach you. You will synaptically wire the idea that love can be earned. And then you grow up trying to earn people's love by doing amazing things. That usually manifests in either power or fame. That generally speaking, it manifests in either the fame idol or the power idol. And by the way, me too. Me too. I was the best classical musician among all the kids growing up. had really good grades and all that, but that's not, was my thing. I wanted to be the world's greatest French horn player from when I was eight years old.

40:50All I wanted to do was to play the French horn. I was better than everybody at it. And, and I had this like from grownups all the time. And the result of it was that it was the same thing. And I grew up as just super success addicted, meaning that when you win, you get that bump, you're going to get winning, winning, winning, winning, succeeding, getting noticed, whatever it happens to be. Um, that's when I got my parents' attention. That's when I got my teacher's attention. And the result of it is that now I'm 61 years old and I'm still chasing, chasing, chasing, chasing, chasing. And it has everything to do with the fact that deep down, my great fear is if I stop, no one will love me.

41:29Dr. Rhonda Patrick:We're just little kids. Right. We're just little kids. But that's power. That's power. I mean, That power has helped my marriage a lot. That's helped my relationship with my adult kids and now grandkids a lot, actually. That's why it really, really matters to know what our idols are. And let's say, you know, if you know what your idol is and then you can like think about that and actively try not to, I mean, like what sort of exercises like, you know, can you do to kind of like, is it the reverse bucket list? Right. I mean, are you going to put them, maybe you can talk about that. Yeah. Well, the reverse bucket list is just the obvious.

42:08The bucket list is an incredibly deleterious way to set up your life because it's basically to say, when I achieve these worldly things, then I will be happy. And this is what I'm going to do this year. And all it does is make you more attached. It's like anti-Buddhism is kind of how it winds up. And so I have a reverse bucket list, which is to name my attachments and my ambitions and cravings and desires, which I'm not ashamed of. They're all, none of them are like shameful or gross. but I don't want to be managed by my desires. I want to manage my desires. And so I write them down and cross them out and say, easy come, easy go.

42:39This year, I want to do this and this and this. Easy come, easy go. I am a human being. I am a child of God. I am a husband to my wife. I'm a grandfather. I'm all these things I really care about. And maybe those worldly things will happen and maybe they won't. And I'm going to be just fine. No, I'm going to be better than fine. That's how the reverse bucket list actually works. And it's, I'm free. I'm free for the first time. That's one of the exercises that helps you with your idols. The second is you got to have a buddy on this. You know, I recommend a spouse say, hold me to this. This is my weakness.

43:14You know, my weakness, right? And, and the problem is when your spouse actually is codependent in your, in your idolatry. I mean, if you have, if you're a, if you're a fame idol and your, and your spouse, gives you admiration only when you're getting the admiration of other people. That's a bad situation. But that's not the situation with my wife. On the contrary, my idol is honor. Absolutely. Absolutely. All day long. It's so dumb. It's so ridiculous and laughable. And my wife's like, you're doing that thing. You're doing that thing. It's like, you want somebody to think you're smart. You're just trying to do something for the approbation of strangers.

43:52Be here now, man. she understands me and that kind of accountability is really really important for being a full person

43:58Dr. Rhonda Patrick:what about you know and this is all coming back to being able to obviously manage your mood as well yeah you know and it's something that i've i've read you know from you is this gratitude list where and i and i haven't really done it like written i haven't but i'm thinking about it now where it's like you know what are you thankful for and how if you can think about what you're thankful for, maybe that helps temper that wanting of one of your idols or even the social comparison, you know, treadmill, which we can talk about. Yeah, the envy. The envy. And, you know, for me, it's like, you know, I know people that have just in youth, like young adults just got cancer and are dead.

44:45Yeah. You know, so health is a big one to be grateful for.

44:49Dr. Rhonda Patrick:And I have others, obviously my family, my son, my husband, the love we have, like, oh my gosh, I'm so, I'm just blessed in so many ways, you know, and I have so much to be grateful for. And I don't think about it enough. I'm constantly thinking about what I don't have and how I want to get it, you know, and it's toxic. Yeah, but that's why we're successful as a species, is because of ingratitude. It's because we don't have enough. That's why we strive. When you think about it, and again, we will talk about how to be more grateful, but let's recognize that this is a perfect example of how evolutionary biology has made us successful as a species and miserable, because Mother Nature doesn't care.

45:29So we are made to be resentful, ungrateful, suspicious, hostile creatures. There's literally more space in the brain, more tissue devoted in the limbic system to negative emotions than to positive emotions. Positive emotions are nice to have. Negative emotions keep you alive. That snap of the twig behind you while you're walking across the savanna, your brain does automatically say, I bet that's a good friend here to say hello. You take off running. And then it's like, oh, it was just my friend. Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha. We are made to be resentful to get more, more, more, more, because that actually allows us to advance as a species and pass on our genes.

46:09And the result of that is that left to our devices, we're unbelievably ungrateful all the time. Just the ingratitude, I mean, the grinding ingratitude. It's like, I literally said, I found myself saying the other day, you know, first class in United Airlines has really gone downhill.

46:28Dr. Rhonda Patrick:It's so absurd, right? And that's me. I mean, I'm just, and this is what I teach. This is my stuff. And I still do that. That's our tendency, which means you have to override it. And the way they override it is by being conscious of it. Once again, you can do animal impulses, you can do moral aspirations, you choose, but you got to do the work. I mean, you can sit on the couch and eat Haagen-Dazs and binge Netflix, or you can get up and do leg day. I mean, you choose. Moral aspiration is leg day. And so, everybody watching Found My Fitness, they understand that, right? But the same thing is true for every part of your life.

47:04There's a leg day analog to everything that goes on in our lives. And gratitude, the gratitude listing procedure, any of the exercises that I recommend about gratitude, that's what it is. It's getting up off the couch of resentment and going into the gym of blessings, which is hard to do and it's not natural. So, the way I ask my students to do it is to override their tendencies by writing a list of the five things you're most grateful for Sunday afternoon. And I don't care how stupid it is. I mean, right now, you know, I'm kind of grateful for Ronda. The Seahawks are doing really well. I grew up in Seattle.

47:39I love that. I just, I'm not a big, but you know, I can't change my heart. I want the Seahawks to win the Superbowl. And I was really grateful last weekend. And I saw that that's so awesome. That's great. So stupid. I got it, but I'm going to put it on my gratitude list and I'm grateful for, and big things too. I'm grateful for my faith. I'm grateful for my family. I'm great. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Five things. Now each day during the week, take just a couple of minutes and focus on each one of these things before you go to bed, before you go to bed. And I have a whole nighttime protocol of things that we can actually do for better happiness, hygiene, as well as better sleep and, you know, proper functioning of the pineal gland and all the stuff that we talk about in our business.

48:23And then every Sunday update it on average, the average person after 10 weeks will be 12 % happier. That's just overriding your tendencies is what it comes down to. It's so beautiful that we don't, we're not, we're not, you know, subjugated to our animal impulses. I just love that about life.

48:40Dr. Rhonda Patrick:This is, I mean, this is great for adults. How do you teach that to children? Well, the way to do that is to actually model it. is the model everything all that matters is what you do it really doesn't matter what you say so so people ask me all the time traditionally religious people say like you know in the world today everybody's wandering away from the faith what do i do to keep my kids in the faith and i say it doesn't matter what you say don't harangue your kids there's this old saying don't talk to your kids about god talk to god about your kids right but the way to keep and this is very well empirically verified truth about religious faith, but it makes the broader point.

49:22Have them see you practice the faith because that's what they will model. That's what they see. The wiring is established. If you don't want your kids to scream square words out of the window of the car in traffic in Southern California, don't do that. If you don't want your kids to be drunks, don't be a drunk for God's sake. And if you want to raise them in the faith, then practice the faith assiduously seriously with your heart with your whole heart and they the data say they absolutely will i mean not 100 but that's the only thing that really raises the odds materially so if you want your kids to be more grateful be more grateful if you want your kids to be less ungrateful about the beautiful life that they have be less ungrateful don't see them have you grousing and complaining and just being kind of grumpy all the time and and one of the ways that you do that is by talking to them at dinner about the things that you're grateful for don't bug them but what they're grateful for is you know what i'm grateful for today i'm so grateful that we have this time together you know i'm so great look at the sunset i mean in southern california like we live here in december and january and it's it's actually really easy to be grateful for the sunset out here when you're not here all the time because you don't habituate

50:33Dr. Rhonda Patrick:to it that's how you do it um i love this and then i think also maybe bringing them pulling them into the Sunday writing down and just like, maybe they don't have to do it. You don't have to force them to do it, but they can see you do it. Put it on the fridge, yours on the fridge. Yeah, we just, we're actually, my husband just ordered this really nice digital board for schedules and phrases and things you want to put on and so that's a great idea. Things to really remember for sure and they see mom is practicing. She does that thing. Mom does that thing. And mom is happier after she does that thing.

51:08Dr. Rhonda Patrick:You brought up something about how humans are wired to kind of be ungrateful, to be competitive, to we've got this, this is the survival, this is how we're surviving and getting better. How does that relate to people's emotional baselines? and like understanding, because obviously, you know, there are, there's more of the anxious phenotype. There's more of the positive, like my, my, my late mentor, Bruce Ames, I mean, he was rose colored glasses. Everything was positive. And he was like, oh, just like, unbelievably annoying. Just like, I, how are you like this, you know, but also very successful.

51:45Yeah.

51:45Dr. Rhonda Patrick:So how does like understanding your emotional baseline come into helping you manage your emotions? Yeah. That's such a smart question because we don't all have the same, obviously the same emotional baseline. And we beat ourselves up if we're naturally grumpy people. But it turns out that there's a lot of research on the natural functioning of the limbic system and how it affects our personalities. There's a great test called the positive affect, negative affect sequence, PANIS. And people can take it online or they can actually go to my website because I have a thing called the happiness scale and it will look at your natural affect profile.

52:17there's four affect profiles that will that will divide up positive and negative intensity of emotion that we naturally fall into and and all of us fall into one of these quadrants as it turns out and the reason is because it's the the functioning of the limbic system is different between different people it's not because you had a crummy childhood it it most of it is genetic most of the stuff is between 40 and 80 genetic on and we know this from identical twins separated birth. You know, those identical twin studies they did at University of Minnesota for all those years. And then, you know, we want to be in charge of everything.

52:51We're not, right? So much is genetic, but you got to know it so you can manage your genetics with good habits. So this research, it talks about positive emotionality and negative emotionality, positive and negative affect, which is just, you know, the fancy way of talking about this intensity of emotions that we have. you can be above average on both, below average on both, or above average on one and below average on the other. Those are the four quadrants. If you're above average on positive and negative, that's the mad scientist profile. That means you feel things super deeply. It's everything is great or terrible.

53:30And, and, you know, it's, you know, most CEOs and entrepreneurs are the mad scientist profile. You might be one you're either this or the next one.

53:38Dr. Rhonda Patrick:Yeah. And that's what I'm trying to figure out what I need to take the test. So you've got high positive emotionality, but I don't know about your high negative emotionality because I haven't seen you on your, you know, like when you first wake up in the morning or how you, you know, I can judge things. I can want it to be a certain way. You're obviously very meticulous about detail, but I don't know about the intensity of your negative emotions as you do so. So that's what I'd have to see. We could take the test and we could actually find this out. That's a great profile for leadership. That's a great profile for, you know, just being completely alive in the world, but it can be unbearable to your partner.

54:11You know, it's not that easy to be married to a mad scientist. I, you know, my wife reminded me of that this very morning. Matter of fact, it's like, you're just exhausting me. What people want is high positive and low negative, which doesn't mean you don't have any bad feelings. It just means the intensity of negative emotions is lower. That's the cheerleader profile. That might be you. I don't know. And then And so that's Bruce. Bruce Ames. Yeah. So the cheerleader profile is one who is quite a bullion, but takes in stride the negative with real philosophy takes the negative, right? Things are, they tend to be pretty optimistic and very hopeful, which are different.

54:53I mean, hope is a virtue. Optimism is a prediction. And they don't always make the best CEOs because they're not very good at receiving or giving negative feedback. And so your worst boss was probably a cheerleader and they come into your office and they say, Rhonda, you're the linchpin of this whole company. And you're like, it's great. And you're calling your husband. I realize you haven't had a job like that. Neither have I. And then you hear them saying the same thing to the lazy moron in the next office. It's like, wait a second. I thought I was special. And that's bad leadership. The other two are low, low.

55:33These are low affect people. which means that they, they're, they're, that's the judge profile. A lot of surgeons, you and I have known a lot of surgeons. Surgeons are like this, right? Uh, fighter pilots are like this. These are people who are low affects, like whatever, bring it on. You don't want somebody to

55:48Dr. Rhonda Patrick:cut you open and go, Oh my God, that's not what you want. You want somebody who's like, I can take that out. Can do it. Done it 50 times. I can do it at 51st. And the judge is somebody who's not emotionally super high affect when they actually see things, seeing strong things. And the worst one for people, but good for society is high negative, low positive. That's the poet. These are people who feel very strongly negative emotions, fear, anger, disgust, especially sadness. And they feel positive emotions at a very low simmer. These people tend to be very creative. And part of that is this interesting research on the ventral lateral prefrontal cortex, which is the part of the brain that's involved in rumination.

56:33So people who have clinical depression, high activity in the ventrolateral prefrontal cortex. And when there's more serotonin in the synapse, you find that what it does is it lowers the activity in the ventrolateral prefrontal cortex. A lot of the stuff is so black box that it's contested in neuroscience like everything else. But it's interesting because that's the same thing that you find with people who are creative. A lot of VLPFC activity with low serotonin in the synapse is the same thing when people are falling in love. When they fall in love, there's a big dip in serotonin. It looks like clinical depression, as a matter of fact.

57:05And the reason is you want lots of activity in the ventrolateral prefrontal cortex because they're bonding to each other. They're doing stupid things like sending 50 texts in an hour that are humiliating and ridiculous because their brain is working like a deeply clinically depressed person as they bond to the other person. That's why poets are depressive, creative, and romantic. It's all the same thing. And that's why we need them. But they suffer. They suffer more depression. They suffer more anxiety than the rest of us. But that means that we need to love them more because we need them in our society.

57:40Dr. Rhonda Patrick:Okay. So understanding your emotional baseline. Yeah. How does that help you manage your mood? Because when you know your emotional baseline, you know that this is your natural proclivity and you can actually take steps. So for me, as a mad scientist, my problem, generally speaking, is not insufficient happiness. It's excessive unhappiness. So all of my protocols, my science-based protocols for self-management are dedicated to managing my high negative affect levels. That's especially acute from when I wake up in the morning until noon. That's especially the case. This is me as well. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

58:16So you wake up. But I have to take the test. And then after that, when your day wears on, then you're like, okay, I can dig it. It's actually better. And that's actually neurochemically very common is what we actually find. And so the result of that is that when you know your affect profile, you know which levers to push. Managing happiness and managing unhappiness are not the same thing. So I'll give you an example. When I talk to somebody and I say, you go to the gym, you can't tell just by looking. and they're like, yeah, you know, yeah, but I'm inconsistent. Anybody who tells me that does not have high negative affect.

58:51The reason is because going to the gym is one of the best ways to manage negative affect. Right. And people who don't have high negative affect, they go to the gym and it's like, I don't feel better. I got slightly better biceps, but I don't feel better. You go to the gym because you feel better, but you don't know. So people will say, oh, it makes me so happy to work out. No, it doesn't. It makes you less unhappy to work out. That's what it is. and it's a healthy way to do it. The unhealthy ways to manage your negative affect are drugs and alcohol and workaholism or scrolling social media, distracting yourself.

59:22The healthy ways to do it are developing your spiritual life and or working out, picking up heavy things and running around. That's an important thing to understand. So almost everybody who's like a super gym rat, Like you and me? Yeah. High negative affect.

59:40Dr. Rhonda Patrick:So that's great. Exercise, and that's what I was going to get to. I mean, that's one of the best ways to manage the unhappiness you write. The reason I exercise is for my brain. I have to do it for my mood, too. Oh, yeah. Just making sure that I'm not seeing more negative. Do you work out first thing in the morning? Yes. Yeah. That's a classic thing for high negative affect people. Because is it the first thing you do? Yeah, it's the first thing I do. What time? Usually, like, it depends. 8, 8.30. Because you have a little kid. Because I have to do the school, like, all that. I wake up and have to get him ready and all that.

1:00:15Dr. Rhonda Patrick:Yeah. What about 10 years ago? Were you still working out when the sun was warm? I would work out before I went into the lab. Okay, yeah. And I started doing the sauna before I went into the lab because it's the only way I could deal with going into the lab. Yeah, I got it. I got it. No, I get it. So you were probably waking up at 4.30 in those days and working out from 5 to 6 or something? No, because I was going to the lab at 10. Oh, I get it. It depends on the lab. Your results may differ. Yeah, it really does. But you do, and I have very, very strong protocols that are science-based and dedicated to lowering negative affect and increasing productivity and creativity.

1:00:53Can you tell us about that? Yeah, for sure. Yeah, absolutely. And it's all designed to actually do so, what I ingest, when I ingest it, what I actually do. So I get up real early. And there's a lot of research on how the brain works. There's an ancient Vedic science literature on something called the Brahma Mahurta. I spend a lot of time in India. I go to India every year. And I study with a lot of both scientists and spiritual teachers. I'm a Catholic, but I do that anyway because it's really, really good stuff. And they've always talked about the Brahma Mahurta, which in Sanskrit means the creator's time.

1:01:27It's an hour and 36 minutes before dawn. A Mahurta is 48 minutes long in ancient Vedic physics. That's arbitrary from a scientific point of view. But there is a lot of research that shows that if you get up before dawn and you're conscious and awake while the sun is rising and has strong neurochemical. I mean, you know, I've seen the literature on this. You're more productive. You're more effective. You're more creative. You're more focused. And you're happier is the way that that works. And Huberman talks about this stuff a lot, too, about, you know, the sunrise, the sunrise. So that's what I practice.

1:02:01And 430 is my time. I usually work out from 4.45 to 5.45 every morning. And I'm a seven-day-a-week guy, which means that I have to be really careful to not screw up my joints. And I want to be working out when I'm in my 80s, which is a couple of decades from now. And that means I have to really structure this thing in a very, very good way to do that. And a lot of it is zone two cardio, sometimes zone three, HIIT training, et cetera. But it's also a lot of resistance training, too. And also, I'm able to stay healthy and not touch my hormones, which is really good. It's a nice side effect of that.

1:02:32But that manages my negative affect from the very first moment. The second thing that I do is, that's the physical fitness. The second is my metaphysical fitness, which is the second technique for managing negative affect. But it's also really personally important to me. I go to mass every day. I go to church every day because I'm a Catholic. It's the most important thing in my life. Now, I also work, I've studied Vipassana meditation and Stoic philosophy. Everybody's got to find their thing, something that they actually practice, which is a form of transcendence, to transcend yourself, to actually be focused on things greater than yourself every single day.

1:03:09So I go to mass from 6.30 to 7 every day. And when I'm at home, it's with my wife. And when I'm on the road, it's by myself. Because the great thing about the Catholic Church is like Starbucks. It's a very high quality uniform product. It's pretty easy to find, right? So for me, that's great. That really works. then and i haven't ingested anything except uh you know electrolytes and with some creatine monohydrate 10 grams because i don't i don't want the just you know you know that second five grams is really good for your brain yeah etc etc that research is unbelievably strong at this point i've heard you talk about it and it's just really great so i'm not ingesting anything until i get back and then i actually self-administer psychostimulant that's when i actually use my caffeine.

1:03:53And I like caffeine and I've been drinking it since I grew up in Seattle. And so I drink a lot of dark roast Starbucks. The more they burn it, the better I like it. And I'll drink 350 milligrams of caffeine and I'll get that in a bolus right after I get back and before I eat anything. But that's two and a half hours after I've gotten up at this point because of all that stuff about adenosine clearing and et cetera. That's contested, but works for me. I don't get the crash in the afternoon. And then only then I eat and I get about 60 grams of protein in my first meal of the day, which is really good.

1:04:27Greek yogurt has a lot of tryptophan in it. And that will actually hold you. And when I do that, when I get to work, I get three and a half hours of concentrated creative work, which you don't get otherwise. You're not going to get, I can't write for three and a half hours unless I set my day up in a particular way. And I'm not unbearable to live with because my negative affect has been managed. That's my five-part protocol.

1:04:51Dr. Rhonda Patrick:Oh, love it. And I want to get into some of like a lot of different aspects of that, like the transcendence as well. But I think we need to talk about the third macronutrient, which is meaning, purpose. The meaning of life. Yeah. That's the biggie, And that sounds like, what even is that? That's a New Yorker cartoon, a guy sitting at the mouth of a cave in the Himalayas, which I've done. And it is big until you actually realize that there's a big literature in the world of social psychology that breaks down how people experience meaning and thus what it is. meaning the meaning of life is the answer to three questions so if you want to look for the meaning of life look for the answer to three questions this is just a decomposition technique big problems are just a bunch of little problems here are the three questions why do things happen the way they do in life that's coherence you need an answer to that and your answer doesn't have to be my answer i mean my answer is profoundly religious and also super scientific because I'm a, I'm a, I was going to say I'm a Christian scientist.

1:05:58That's a thing. That's not what I mean. I'm a scientific Christian, you know, whatever. Some people answer that in different ways. You know, when people are going down the rabbit hole of conspiracy theories, that's a, that's a cry for coherence because they don't have a sense of meaning and they're not happy. That's what it says. So if you have a relative who's going berserk on conspiracies, don't yell at them and, you know, throw data at them, provide a better way to find coherence as an act of love because that's the need that they're trying to meet. The second question is why I'm doing what I'm doing.

1:06:31I mean, am I going in circles? A lot of people don't know. It's like, I get up and I go to work and I turn on the Zoom screen. And it's like a boat that's kind of just going around and around. You're not getting any place. Remember, we're made for progress. We're not made to arrive at a goal. We're made to make progress toward a goal. Arrival's tricky, you know like we talked about before the olympic athletes or 30 percent of people depending on the study you're looking at that go on a super strong diet they get to their goal and develop an eating disorder because they want more progress and the goal for hitting your goal weight or the reward for hitting your goal weight is never getting to eat what you like again for the rest of your life it's so depressing so it's like no i want the scale to keep going down and then they develop you know these eating disorders these bad things because we're made toward progress that's purpose why am i doing what i'm doing that's the sense of purpose that's goals that's direction and the last is significance which is why does my life matter and to whom and that's the love problem that you know the significance is the love problem and so what you need is an explanation for the universe.

1:07:41You need goals and direction and you need love. And those things together are the ingredients. Those are the macros of meaning is how it, and that's this new book about actually how do you find that? And I guess more importantly, why we're not, because that's the crisis of our time. The crisis of our time is not an enjoyment problem. Although the strivers watching us probably have an enjoyment crisis. That's the big problem for strivers. They don't enjoy their lives, right? They got tons of satisfaction, but meaning is the crisis for adults under 30 that we see today. The number one predictor of clinical depression and generalized anxiety today is saying my life feels meaningless.

1:08:21My life feels like a simulation. My life feels empty. That's why I wrote this new book is because I wanted to figure out what's going wrong. Where do you have to go to find meaning and how do you have to live differently? And that's what it comes down to.

1:08:36Dr. Rhonda Patrick:So people can ask themselves these questions and that's a start. It's a start. What else? Well, you got to get rid of the barrier to it. And the big barrier to it is, this is where the science really kicks in. So there's this whole body of neuroscience that's very hot right now on hemispheric lateralization. That's the work of Ian McGilchrist at Oxford, who's really, for my money, this is the most visionary guy working on both the psychiatry side and the neuroscience side. And hemispheric lateralization is an old idea that just says the two sides of the brain do different things. And when I was a kid in the seventies, we all was like, yeah, mom's an artsy right brain person.

1:09:14And dad is a, is an analytic left brain guy. Cause my dad was a PhD biostatistician and my mother was a painter. And so that's the two sides. My parents together made a whole brain is kind of how it worked. That's out of style because you don't just have an analysis side and art side. What you have, however, because it's come back with this guy's work is a why side and a how side, right? And the why side of your brain asks the big questions of life and the left side of your brain figures out actually what to do because of the why. You got to have coherence, purpose, and significance, and then you go out and do the things that actually matter.

1:09:53So, if you're saying, you know, if you're saying like, Like, why do things happen in the world? Because this is what God wants and God loves me. This is part of significance and I want to serve his creation. If that's, if you're a traditional religious person, then you're going to go live in a particular way. And how do you figure out how to live? Left hemisphere of the brain. All the technical problems and tasks, left hemisphere stuff. Here's a problem. Our culture today, especially for people under 30 who don't remember the before times like you and me, it's all left brain. It's a technologized, engineered world.

1:10:22The tip of the spear is life online, life in the matrix. That's all left hemisphere. That's the reason that life feels bereft of meaning. Because not only can you not find it, you're not even asking the questions. You're not using your brain the way it was supposed to. You're never bored. You're never having a bowl session late at night in the dorm, asking, you know, why things, you know, is there a God? Those are big meaning questions. there's no mystery you only ask questions that chat gpt can answer if if ai can answer your question it's not a meaning question it's not a right brain question it's a left brain question ask it a meaning question like and by the way here's the test if there's a meaning crisis two-question test why am i alive for what would i die right and chat gpt will give you nonsense it'll kiss up to you saying oh it's a such a smart question rhonda you know that's it you're asking the questions that Plato and Aristotle, it's like, oh, I'm like Plato and Aristotle.

1:11:21It gives you nothing. It gives you nothing. And the reason is because you can't answer it. You can only live with it. I'll ask you a meaning question right now. Why do you love your husband?

1:11:35He makes me feel loved and like always, no matter what, no matter what, no matter who I am, safe.

1:11:47Dr. Rhonda Patrick:Um, and he, I look up to him. He's the most honest person that I've ever met. And, and it's, it's nice to have that person that you admire and I want to be like that. It's. By the way, I can tell you right now, you have a successful marriage and you will. Yeah. The reason is because in the human species, females in a successful pair bond mate, mating relationship require adoration and males require admiration and that's biological he would fight a tiger for you you just told me that you feel safe you feel loved he would fight a tiger with his hands for you and only you and and and you admire him because in metaphorically or really he brings the biggest gazelles into the cave that anybody could ever bring in and he's so big and strong and he takes care of the family.

1:12:46And that's kind of what we want. These are the elements of, because we're just, we all need respect. You know, we all need to be loved, but these are differences in the pair bond mating between females and males. And you just told me right now, you just told me you're going to have, you're going to be married to him for the rest of your life. That's what you told me. No, no. I mean, it's like he'll be gazing into your eyes as he takes his dying breath. That's what it's going to be. Cause you got the formula, you crack the code is what it comes down, which is beautiful. I mean, it's going to change.

1:13:14There'll be challenges, but that's beautiful. But the whole point is when I asked you that, you didn't have a crisp answer. And the reason is because the language centers in your brain are in the left hemisphere. And I asked you a right hemisphere question. So any one of those particular things, I feel valued. Well, your third grade teacher made you feel valued. I felt safe. Well, your dad made you feel safe. Any one of those things could be applied to another person because language defies

1:13:46Dr. Rhonda Patrick:meaning. Meaning is felt, it's lived. I mean, I've been married 34 years and I can't solve my marriage like an analytical problem. I can only live my marriage, which is why I love it. I don't know if we're going to have a big argument tonight. My wife's from Spain, so probably, right? I mean, that's why it's beautiful. That's why it's good. And if you're spending all of your time online in the matrix, which by the way, that movie was about an artificial intelligence, which subjugated humanity and kept them pacified to use their human energy. That's the reality. Now, if you're in the matrix all day long, you're sitting on the left side of your brain and you're not even considering questions of meaning in your life is going to be bereft of the things that really matter.

1:14:30Dr. Rhonda Patrick:That's why you're depressed. If you were to give advice to different age groups on finding the meaning of life. So a young adult, younger than 30, middle age. I mean, that's where I am. And then older adults. Young middle age, you are. Where, like, would that advice change? Yeah. Yeah, it does. It does. It really does. Because the habits actually depend on where you are in your life, the relationships that you actually have. So I wrote The Meaning of Your Life fundamentally for my 28-year-old graduate students is because they're really struggling with it an awful lot. They don't remember the before times and they actually aren't living in an old fashioned way at all.

1:15:10So my kids grew up with the stuff as mother's milk and they're super old fashioned. I mean, my kids look at me and they think I'm some sort of like freaked out hippie or something. They're like, two of my kids are, my three kids are military. Two of my three kids got married in their early twenties and nine months after their wedding started having children. I mean, it's, you know, all three of my kids are traditionally religious. They like read newspapers. It's like living with a bunch of old people, which is they live in my house. I mean, one of the families, we have an intergenerational household at their request because they want to live like the old days.

1:15:42So they take this stuff really seriously when we talk about it. But that's very unusual. That's very transgressive. As a matter of fact, most young people today are not doing living according to the old ways that people naturally lived in when they had their brain working. hemispherically in a balanced way. If you're online all the time, there's a bunch of things that I can actually predict about life. Number one, you're not asking the big questions. You're asking the trivial questions, the technical questions. Number one, actually before that, you're spending too much time online. You're spending too much time looking at screens up to 12 hours a day.

1:16:16You're in the matrix. But then the things that you're missing are these big questions. The second thing is I almost always find real struggle with romantic love. The whole thing you talked about, the beautiful thing you talked about about your husband, they'll be like, what's she talking about? I want it, but I don't know what it is. And I've certainly never had it. Right? And the reason is because you can't get there until you are making an antenna to the divine between the right hemisphere of your brain and the right hemisphere of his brain. That's how it works. You communicate with him hemispherically on the right.

1:16:49You understand each other at a deep level of emotional, no, spiritual connection. You can't do it if it's just like swipe right, zip, zip, zip, knowing each other on social media, spending all day looking at screens because your brains won't fuse. That's what one flesh means is right brains.

1:17:08Dr. Rhonda Patrick:So get, well, getting rid of the screens or cutting down them. It helps a lot, a lot. And there's a lot of science behind this. So this is, there's a lot of science behind this. It doesn't mean throwing your phone in the ocean. What it means is you need proper protocols in your life. You need discipline in your life. The best way to do it is no phone in the first hour of the day, no phone in the last hour of the day, and no phone during meals. Just that. Then a bunch of phone-free zones, classroom, bedroom. You should never have your phone in the bedroom. I mean, everybody knows that, but people use it as the alarm clock, et cetera, et cetera.

1:17:40I can use my phone as an alarm clock now, but not look at it because I'm so trained in that particular way. And then tech fasts is really important. I recommend three to five days a year.

1:17:50Dr. Rhonda Patrick:Okay. We actually don't have it. And just that, and you'll change your relationship to the devices and your brain will be working differently. If you want to go super hardcore, change your screen to black and white, that'll change how you relate to it. You know, the neurochemistry actually will change in the way that you, the way that you use it. Start communicating on purpose differently with your friends. Start actually using the phone as opposed to as opposed to texting more etc there's a bunch of things like an old school yeah like an old school phone basically yeah exactly like crazy right it's like yeah you can actually have a real time conversation but within just 10 numbers like how new technology yeah i know all them now i know because culture's changed yeah culture has accommodated itself to the left brain world of the way that we use technology but this book has the whole set of protocols these are actually how to get clean for sure and then on top of that answer asking those questions right answer ask the questions and then falling in love.

1:18:42Then there's the whole thing about actually how do you find calling in life? How do you find holy vocation in life? And that's really about how you find service, what you're doing to actually serve other people as opposed to how I can serve myself. And that's an ancient idea that actually accentuates the activity in the right side of the brain as opposed to the left side of the brain. You're egotistical on the left more than you are on the right, actually, because you seek transcendence, which is another important thing, is looking for spiritual reality as people understand it, is looking for ways that they can serve and love, including people they don't even know, that's right brain all day long.

1:19:18That'll just like, that'll wire you. I prescribe volunteer work to people for that particular reason, to love and be loved in ways beyond just the technological world that we live in. I recommend beauty. There's three kinds of beauty that people need to self-administer. It's not like beauty of somebody that might become your mate. That's different. It exercises different parts of the brain. It's three kinds of beauty. Artistic beauty, natural beauty, moral beauty. Those are very right brain experiences. And it's so interesting in the literature today that shows that young people just have less beauty in their lives.

1:19:53All across the board. All across the board. I mean, there's a pretty interesting work that talks about how, for example, natural beauty, the average child under 12 spends four to seven minutes a day in nature. huge problem four to seven hours a day behind the screen four to seven minutes in nature that's upside down obviously and so natural beauty boy it has a big neurocognitive impact artistic beauty is just missing when you're looking at things on the screen all the day because you actually don't get any three dimensionality to things but you actually can't get any depth to anything in any other way as well you find that music today and this is pretty interesting i don't want to be just like an old fogey and say, in my day, music was more beautiful.

1:20:34But music is objectively less melodic than it's been in the past, which actually affects us neurophysiologically, is the tunefulness, the beauty that we actually see. And then moral beauty. There's just less moral beauty that we see. And when you witness an act of moral beauty on the part of somebody else, it's so interesting. So the British journalist, Malcolm Muggeridge, you've ever heard that name? He wrote a book called Something Beautiful for God, where he kind of discovered for the whole world Mother Teresa, Mother Teresa of Calcutta. And he heard about this Albanian nun who's like four foot ten, living on the streets of Calcutta and just serving the poorest of the poor, serving the poorest of the poor.

1:21:16So he goes to me, he's a complete hardened atheist and he meets her and he becomes Catholic. And he says this story, it wasn't because of the theology, it was because of the moral beauty that he saw in Mother Teresa and her sisters and what they were doing. I mean, it's scooping people up. It's like, and he made it into a book and as people would read it and they're just weeping as they read the book or they would see it and he made it into a documentary in the BBC and people would just buy the millions. And it's like, I don't know. I don't know. When you see somebody serving somebody else, when you see beauty, when you allow somebody to serve you in just pure love and pure charity, it gives you what the psychologist Rhett Diesner calls moral elevation.

1:22:01and it has, it's biology, man. I mean, we're wired for this. We're wired for the altruism that actually comes from doing beautiful things and experiencing that kind of moral beauty. And this is really important. And the last, the hardest one of all, you want to open up your right brain, you got to suffer and you have to understand suffering. And so I have a whole chapter in this book about how to suffer. It's called never waste your suffering. And that's really countercultural today. Okay.

1:22:29Dr. Rhonda Patrick:This is so much to unpack here. I mean, going, you know, going to the, into the service part too, like serving others. And I mean, it seems like that I've heard you talk about becoming a really important factor, particularly as you're in maybe later midlife, perhaps going to even, or just midlife. I mean, basically, you're not in your peak in terms of your productivity. You know, you're not able to, you're not the best French horn player, right? I mean, like, you peak and then, like, you can't be the best because, I mean, biology does happen and you do get older and, you know, you're different types of intelligence that are changing.

1:23:11Dr. Rhonda Patrick:But, like, if you are, you're serving others, you still have that purpose, too. Am I understanding that right? where, you know, and I'm thinking about this as I was, again, reading up on a lot of your stuff and you've written your books. I was trying to apply this to my life and thinking, you know, like what I do with this podcast, you know, you can look at it through a variety of lenses. You could say, well, this is your job. You make money doing this. This is like, or, you know, you realize that, I mean, I get so much feedback on helping people like change their lives. They've like whatever little change, it's made a big difference in their life and it's a service and you feel good.

1:23:52Dr. Rhonda Patrick:Like I'm actually improving people's lives. I'm improving my own life. I'm improving my family, my families that are listening, you know, family and friends that actually listen to the podcast. And so that in itself almost kind of fills that service bucket in a way for me. It's gray, right? Because it's also, it is like my job, but like, I mean, I get paid to do this, but I mean, I'm getting paid. And also from the people, right? Right. Of course. People are just like saying, hey, keep doing this. Right. So I'd love, you know, like for you to kind of elaborate more on like how can you don't have to go out and be Mother Teresa is what I'm saying.

1:24:29Dr. Rhonda Patrick:Right. Like you can you can you can find service through a variety of different mechanisms. For sure. Easier than you think. Yeah. That's the sense of calling. Sense of calling is is your work is a vocation. It's what you're meant to do. And a lot of young people ask me that. I don't know what I'm meant to do. And the reason is because you've been sitting on the left side of your brain on the smartest thing for you to do. You went to college and they said, well, you know, you should really study some STEM thing, you know, because that's a really smart thing to do. It's like, but I'm, I love art.

1:24:56Right. And I get it. I'm a practical person too. And I've got kids too. And if they're like, yeah, dad, I'm going to study postmodern puppetry at Princeton. I guess I'm trying to do all alliteration here, but it's a, I'd be like, ah, you thought about the implications of that? I mean, I'm a dad too. I get it. But the whole, but the truth of the matter is that we're meant to do different things. I believe that we have a vocation and their vocations have, it's so beautiful because we're different and the diversity of what we love and what we're able to do. And when we're able to do what we're really good at, this is kind of the concept of Ikigai, which you've heard about.

1:25:33It's like what I'm good at, what the world needs, what I'm paid to do and what I love to do. So what I love to do, what I'm good at, what the world pays me to do and what the world needs. And the concentricity, the Venn diagram of those things, that's your vocation. And finding that is this unbelievably fun adventure in life. I'm actually trying to find that, but you can't do that when you're just sitting on the left side of your brain, you know, Googling the jobs that are going to pay the most in 12 years. You're not going to actually get that. Now, there's one thing that's really important for people to keep in mind, and you just said it.

1:26:12You get a sense of calling and a sense of service, a sense of love toward the world through the way that you earn your daily bread. That's exactly how it's supposed to be done. You know, the idea that because you make money would somehow be at odds with serving? No, that's never been the case. You know, in the Bible, in the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve before all the bad business with the snake and the apple and all the unpleasantness. They're working the garden. They're working the garden and they're in bliss with God while they're working the garden because that's what they're supposed to do.

1:26:44That's their calling. You, with this podcast, are working the garden before the fall. And that's what we're looking for. That's what people actually need. And a lot of people, they struggle to actually find that, but a big part of that is because they're not living with this as, what can I do that I love, the world needs, they're willing to pay me for it, that serves, and I'm really good at it. They're not thinking about it in a holistic way. And when you can find it, it's an incredible blessing. But as they say, the kids, they say these days, you got to do the work.

1:27:18Dr. Rhonda Patrick:And you said that hardship, like suffering is also a really important ingredient in this. Not everyone has had, I mean, everyone suffers to some degree. we all have things in our life. But like the big events, you know, like a loss of a loved one, like a really close loved one, right, would be one that comes to mind. Can people create these types of suffering? Like is going out and lifting heavy a type of suffering? Like how can people who haven't really yet, maybe they're younger or they haven't really experienced that great, great type of suffering, experience it? So suffering, when you use it productively, creates a tremendous sense of meaning in life.

1:28:00And we see this from the whole literature on post-traumatic growth, where people who do have really hard experiences, they get cancer, they lose somebody, they, God forbid, they lose a child, which is the most traumatic thing that you can imagine. It's almost happened to us a couple of times. And it's just the brush with that. But people who experience that in more than 90 % of the cases, they experience post-traumatic growth. There's transitions that people have that are really, really painful in life. Bruce Feiler does this work called Life is in the Transitions. It's really nice. And he talks about the fact that every 18 months, you're going to have a pretty substantial transition.

1:28:37Most of them will not be of your own design, that they'll be induced. And so you don't like it because you didn't choose it. Every five years is what he calls a life quake, which is like, you really don't want that. But it's going to happen on average every five years. And it's always a big surprise. It's like, what? How is this happening? It's because that's life. right how you how you understand that is really really important for whether or not it's going to bring you meaning or not whether or not you're going to get post-traumatic growth if it's actually traumatic and here's the way to understand it and here's how to do it here's the formula because we like formulas all right you know we're you know they gave us phds for having formulas so suffering is not the same thing as pain pain is a neurophysiological reality and it happens to you Pain is both sensory and affective.

1:29:25Sensory means involving the nerve endings and inflammation, and affective means that it's affecting part of the limbic system that says, I don't like it. So you burn your hand on a stove, and the sensory pain where the nerve endings are indicating that there's a problem, ouch, immediately leads to the affective part where the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex of the limbic system says, I hated that, right? So ouch and I hate it are the two parts of pain. Now, when you have mental pain, it's only the second part. So if somebody rejects you, you know, somebody says, your work is stupid, you're a hack, your dorsal anterior cingulate cortex is going to go into overdrive because you don't like that.

1:30:04You don't want to be, you don't want to be rejected in this particular way because that, that's your ancient brain saying, I'm going to get thrown out of my tribe and I'm going to walk the savannah and get hunted down by a cheetah or something like that. And it's weird how it's developed, how it's adapted to modern life, misadapted, I should say. Okay, so that being the case, this pain is going to happen. You don't have to go looking for it. It'll find you. And every five years, it's going to be really bad, maybe catastrophic as far as it seems to you. Suffering is your struggle when that happens.

1:30:38Pain is the experience. Suffering is the struggle. that the ancient buddhist formula for understanding the relationship between suffering and pain which is very valid scientifically valid in the way that we think about it as westerners suffering equals pain multiplied by resistance pain times resistance to pain now everybody who watches us is going to the gym and they understand that you don't go to the gym because it feels good you go to the gym because it feels bad i mean i don't care who you are i mean i was in there this morning Today was a pull day. It was a pull day. And I was, man, it hurt.

1:31:13That's the point. And how am I actually not suffering even though I'm in pain? Because my resistance is low. I went in there on purpose and I subjected myself to it. You know you're doing well in life when your pain is high, but your suffering is low. Now, most people don't know how to do this when it's not the gym. Most people don't know how to do this when life is throwing something at you, when life is making you go to the gym. It's interesting because if it's not of our own volition, it's like, you know those old mouse studies where mice are subjected to exercise? And so they're made to run on a treadmill and their cortisol levels are unbelievably high and they die.

1:31:54And then they actually put the same wheels out in the field and field mice just find the wheels and run on them and they live longer. I've probably heard you talk about these studies, right?

1:32:04Dr. Rhonda Patrick:I don't think I've talked about them, The stress studies. Yeah, it's involuntary versus voluntary stress. Turn all stress into voluntary stress through non-resistance and it'll make you stronger and better. If something bad is happening in your life, bring it on, bring it on. Just like the gym. You know, somebody rejected you, your beloved. I thought I was going to marry her. And it turns out she loves somebody else. That's the gym. That's the emotional gym. Your dorsal and The anterior cingulate cortex is going crazy. You're like, I invited that. I invite this. And that's your resistance actually falling and your suffering will actually fall paradoxically, even while your pain is high.

1:32:45And that's where you will actually learn and grow and find your meaning.

1:32:48Dr. Rhonda Patrick:So you really just have to change that mindset. And it's hard to do. It's hard to do because once again, you're making a choice that's not a natural choice. You know, left to your devices, your brain will be like, dorsal anterior cingulate cortex. that means that you're going to walk the frozen tundra. So you better avoid this, but you know, it's not true. Right. So you have to make a decision. I think that, you know, people that do go to the gym and do intentionally, you know, engage in that type of pain and, you know, suffering, but then they feel better. They get stronger. I think that you are probably somehow working that part of your brain because for me, you know, I do really heavy lifting first thing in the morning.

1:33:31Dr. Rhonda Patrick:And guess what? The other stuff that's thrown at me isn't as hard. It's really not as hard, truly. It was probably one of the biggest shocks to me because I've always been more of an endurance sort of junkie. I like to run. You did long distance stuff, right? Long distance, I did marathons. Yeah. And then I started getting really serious about weight training a couple of years ago. And it's a different kind of ouch. It's a different kind of hard. Women don't often do that, actually. No. You don't. and it's there's definitely um there's a lot of fear it's like there's a psychological barrier i have to get over when i'm like cleaning heavy weight i mean it's scary to me um it's not like as natural as like running and like i said that hard that mental hardship that i have to get through now i do have a coach and that helps somewhat but only somewhat like i definitely like i'm like i don't want to do this you're making go heavier she'll like sneak the weight You can have an accident.

1:34:28Dr. Rhonda Patrick:Yeah. And it's like I said, I think that for people listening, it does help to voluntarily engage in that kind of struggle because it will help you deal with the stuff that does get thrown at you. For sure. I love that mindset change where you're like, bring it on. Like I can like this, this is, I'm going to do this. Don't kick out the pain, lower the resistance. Because remember, the formula is you want to be thinking about your suffering, not about your pain. and you have to work the right lever so your suffering goes down. And you can temporarily, I mean, you can take more and more analgesics or sit on the couch all day long.

1:35:04But let me tell you, if you're actually trying to avoid emotional suffering by never dating, that's a huge problem as opposed to, you want to be a real entrepreneur with your life? Give your heart away. See how that feels. Lower your resistance to risk. Lower your resistance to rejection. That's what a life entrepreneur actually does.

1:35:26Dr. Rhonda Patrick:Right. I mean, you're definitely, you're going to, you're going to fail. You're going to have pain. You're going to have pain. It's going to happen whether or not you take the risk or not. You're right. So you might as well get better at it too. That's right. That's right. And this is, once again, this is metaphysical fitness is what we're talking about. Is that what you would call like being an observer of like your emotions as well? When you're like, instead of you happening to you, imagine it's happening to someone else. And like how. Yeah. That's one technique for lowering resistance for sure.

1:35:55That's called metacognition. where you're observing, you're thinking about thinking, you're observing your emotions, you're getting space, you're saying to yourself, I'm not my emotions. My emotions are a physiological experience that I'm having. And that's because that's the way my brain is wired. This is really, really helpful when you're having extremely aversive emotions to say, that's not me. That's something that's actually happening neurochemically to me right now. That's space that you put in. There's a lot of techniques for doing that. And that's a resistance lowering set of experiences and techniques.

1:36:27So for example, journaling does that really, really well. You know, when people find that when they write about their feelings, that their feelings don't feel so intense. The reason is because you can't actually, you can't write with your limbic system. You have to write with your prefrontal cortex. You want to move the experience of your emotions to the executive centers of your brain. Prayer is great for this. Prayer is a petition. Vipassana meditation, you know, insight meditation. What am I feeling right now? Let's actually think about that a little bit. For some people, certain kinds of therapy actually really helpful for that.

1:37:00But all of us have these techniques at our disposal if we actually want to self-manage. And, you know, in this life, if you're not self-managing, what are you doing? I mean, it's like the most important management you'll ever do is of yourself is what it comes down to. And this is how we actually learn and grow.

1:37:19Dr. Rhonda Patrick:Right. Right. So the prayer, like for people that are religious, the prayer part, like having daily prayer, whether it's morning or evening. Yeah, it's called conversation with God for a lot of people. It's like, you know, it's funny because there's this three-part structure for very traditional Christians for prayer or four-part structure, depending on it. It's like the first part is part one, you're awesome. Part two, thanks. Part three, sorry. Part four, can I have some help here? It's kind of those four parts is glorification and worship. It is gratitude. It's a contrition. And it's asking is what it comes down to.

1:38:05But all of that is hugely metacognitive because what you've done is explored all of those things in the murky depths of your limbic system and made them conscious. And that's to be fully alive.

1:38:16Dr. Rhonda Patrick:I've found that praying alone in my head versus praying with a family member or someone else, praying together out loud, there's something about praying together that makes me feel really good versus praying by myself. It's a little different. Oh, yeah. That's called joint metacognition, actually. And that's super powerful because you're wiring together the right hemispheres of your brain. There's kind of there for the big threat to most family life, to most marriages, for example, is not, I mean, abuse or abandonment or disloyalty. Those things are real for sure. It's just cooling. It's just, you know, it's torpor.

1:39:01It's time. It's like drifting apart. Right. And so there's things that you can actually do to bring a marriage back together again. And there's sort of like four things that you see in the literature that really, really, really work. And what it does is it fuses your right hemispheres. Again, refuses them. Number one is eye contact. And when you're looking into your husband's eyes, that's actually more important to you than him. Because women get three times as much oxytocin as men, because you're taking care of a baby. And when your son was a little boy or a little tiny baby and he was nursing, you know, so he'd be staring up at your eyes and it'd be like the 4th of July inside your head.

1:39:35That's oxytocin, right? Oxytocin production is the, you know, the bonding and love connection that you have with a baby. And women have three times as much. Men, plenty. And it's really, really important. But eye contact is critical for that. And so one of the things I tell guys is if you want to reheat your marriage, you want the marriage microwave, is actually when you're talking to her, you're looking at her in the eyes. Because guys are always like this, and they're kind of talking, and it's fine and all that. And she's like, I don't feel connected. I don't know why. And then he starts like, okay, whenever we're talking, we're looking in the eyes.

1:40:11And she's like, I just feel better because it's more oxytocin. Two is always be touching. Touch, touch, touch, touch. That's actually more important for men. More touch, more touch, more touch. You're sitting next to him, watching on the couch, watching TV, touch, right? Hand. When you're walking, always holding hands, right? Always touching, always just ABT, always be touching. Number three is having more fun.

1:40:32Dr. Rhonda Patrick:Wait, explain why touching because it's so true. I've noticed that for my husband. Touching is way more. Oh yeah, for sure. If you're walking down the street with him and you hook your arm inside his, like, you know, that thing, he's like seven feet tall. And part of the, There's a lot of, you know, sort of contested theories about actually how this works. But for sure, there's more oxytocin, but there's more vasopressin, which is defense and strength is the whole thing. And so guys need that more than they understand. It's just casual. It's not sexual touch. It's just touch. It's just actual physical contact that they actually need.

1:41:04It will change your brains, especially his is what we actually see. It's super critical. And women kind of forget that. When they cool, when men are cooling, they're looking at you less. And when women are cooling, they're touching you less. That's sort of the typical finding that we say, right? So ABT, ABT, ABT. And so number one is dudes. Number two is ladies, right? Number three is fun. Now, a lot of couples, when they're cooling, they kind of just rehearse grievances again and again and again. And if they go to couples therapy, a lot of that is like, okay, well, he said this thing and she did this and et cetera, et cetera.

1:41:41You can cover a multitude of sins, actually make them go away by reducing the significance of the problems, by covering them in happiness, right? And so the negative emotionality can be really drowned in positive emotionality that you're having jointly. And part of that is that thing that's really fun that we really, really like doing. And it's like, you've noticed this, that when you're having a kind of a squabble, when you're irritated and then something happens, like somebody that you like, some third person knocks on the door and pretty soon you're all laughing and you're realizing you're not annoyed with each other anymore.

1:42:17That's a perfect case of this. You got to do that. Go ride your bikes, go walk on the beach, watch a movie that you both like, whatever it happens to be, but find something as fun. And number four is praying together. And this gets back to what you're talking about. Praying together for people who are really, really, really not religious, just meditating together or reading actually to each other actually does much the same thing. Reading to each other is just, it's almost narcotic for people who love each other. It's actually, you know, the sound of your voice, if you're actually reading something to them, the Psalms, poetry, whatever it happens to be, it's just so good.

1:42:53And part of the reason is because the way that it actually, the activity in the brain that it elicits when you're hearing the voice of somebody doing something like that, the person that you actually love. So joint prayer is really, really, really powerful. And I recommend that religious couples, I know, I know Catholic couples have been married for 50 years and they don't pray in front of each other because it's so intimate to pray in front of somebody. It's so intimate. It's like, it's really embarrassing at first because it's like looking into the sun. And it's like, I don't want you to see.

1:43:23I can't. It's bad for me. It's going to burn my retinas or something. Which also looking into each other's eyes after a long time can hurt like that too. It can be really heartbreaking in its way. But doing that, boy, oh boy. When I talk to couples that are engaged, I say, it's like, you know what the most intimate thing is? Not that. Prayer.

1:43:46Dr. Rhonda Patrick:Right. And I love how you, I mean, even for someone that's not religious, perhaps you're not, you know, atheist. Maybe you're just, you don't know. You're agnostic, right? Like, you can still pray together. Like, you can, sometimes you can pray together just to, like, and then, you know, talk about, like, what, you know, what you're wanting to be better or what you're looking forward to or, you know? So, it's like, it's, there are ways. It doesn't have to be sometimes when the people hear the word meditation, it's like, it's got to be alone. It's got to be centered in the whole thing. A single point meditation, getting kind of spaced out.

1:44:23I got nothing against meditation. I've been meditating for years and years and years. But that's, you know, when jointly meditating on something with different kinds of techniques, you're sharing something metaphysical, sharing metaphysics of it. This is why reading is a really good way to do it. But I like reading poetry, you know, reading psalms, reading poetry to each other because it's unusual. It's not what you ordinarily do. And so, therefore, it makes your brain and his brain work in a different way. Since we're on this social relationships, I mean, I think, you know, the romantic love.

1:44:59Dr. Rhonda Patrick:First of all, you're talking about younger people who have a hard time even finding a mate. I mean, that's a whole problem. And there's a lot of loneliness in these people. Huge problem. Yeah. Um, but then there's also like, you know, keeping that romantic relationship going. And I think that we've kind of talked a little bit about that date nights for one, like finding those fun things. I mean, I love that. That's part three. That's fine. It really is. It really is important. But, um, yeah, I mean, can you kind of just across the lifespan, maybe navigate like how, um, you know, the social challenges people are going to be challenged with and how they can kind of navigate that at different stages.

1:45:36Yeah. Yeah. I mean, people, obviously, you're a lot less likely to be dating at 60 than you are at 20. I mean, that's the case. Although that's not necessarily the case anymore. I mean, there are fewer and fewer 20-year-olds dating and more and more 60-year-olds who are dating. And part of the reason is because this phenomenon of gray divorce, which is divorce after 25 years, which is exploding, actually, is that that's what one of the things that we see in no small part because couples who are highly, highly, highly online, they cool to each other because their right hemispheres are not fusing in the ways that we're talking about.

1:46:09They don't know. And I talked to a lot of couples my age about one, two, three, four, what we just talked about here. A lot of young people, 20 year olds are not dating at all because they're actually they're in a technological milieu where it's hard. You know, dating apps are responsible for 62 % right now of long-term relationships that we find today. But it's actually really hard using these technologies to find people that you're deeply attracted to. The main reason for that, by the way, is because these technologies, which are getting better, and I'm not against them. I'm not against technology per se at all.

1:46:42And I think the dating apps are going to be really good. but they've tended to reward compatibility as because as opposed to complementarity we bond deeply to somebody who completes us not who copies us so you want somebody who's enough like you you know same religion maybe same basic values but not just like you because that's dating yourself and man that's not hot right it's it's narcissism but it's not hotness is what it comes You want somebody who really makes you bigger and better and somebody who makes you complete in its own way. And so that's one of the things that's actually setting people back.

1:47:20It's very hard to meet people outside of technology today is what we find.

1:47:24Dr. Rhonda Patrick:Right. Well, I mean, because that's how people are meeting each other. And so what do these young 20-somethings do? What do they need to do, actually, is that actually it's finding better ways to meet people IRL. all and and generally speaking that means around mutual interests finding people who are different than you around mutual interests and so i recommend young people all the time um you know they'll say well i'm not religious i don't care i don't just practice just do a thing right there's and for example they'll say that they're you know raised jewish or something but they don't feel they're not religious at all i say there's one temple in town where the young single people go i don't know where you live, but it's true.

1:48:04Figure out where it is and just go with an open mind because you're trying to fill your heart in all sorts of different ways, potentially. If that's not your thing, it's like join a running club. I don't run. I don't care. You're going to join a running club because you want to meet people around something that's actually good and healthy. I want to join a book club, whatever it happens to be, around something interesting because mutual interest is really, really, really critical. Aristotle talked about the perfect friendship, which is not transactional. The perfect friendship is usually based around a third thing that we both love.

1:48:38Now, that's why couples, their mutual third love is generally speaking kids, right? It's that thing, but that's not enough. That's why they need something else that they truly love, which is why the most successful couples also have a metaphysical love. They have a divine love together, that's long-term stability because you're going to walk into the future shoulder to shoulder for the rest of your lives is actually how that's developed. So I tell young people, there's something besides that. Second thing I tell young people, if they're actually trying to meet the person, is everybody who knows you really well and loves you is on notice that that's what you want.

1:49:17Because in the old days, the people who really love you, the people that they set you up with are enough like you, but not too much. That's what the matchmaker was really good at. Now, it doesn't mean that's going to be perfect. It's also the case that bad behavior is a lot less common when it's a mutual friend. You're not going to get ghosted by somebody who's going to be in the bad graces of the person who recommended you to them. And so having people on the lookout for the person, and that's not normal these days, But those are the techniques. Those are the old school techniques that people actually need that that are most likely to lead to permanent love relationships today.

1:49:55Yeah.

1:49:56Dr. Rhonda Patrick:I think even just relationships, the friendships are even, that's a struggle, you know, for actually, I would say each young people. I mean, young people, we have a lot of social media, like groups gathering together. They're going out and, you know, doing dinners or going to the, you know, clubs or whatever. And they're just, they go because they don't want to miss out. Right. Fear of missing out, fear of missing out. And then, you know, how deep are those relationships? So a common theme I'm hearing that people and experiences are very important for happiness. Extremely important for happiness.

1:50:30Dr. Rhonda Patrick:But the relationships aren't just these sort of shallow, you know, relationships that you have to put work into them. Yeah, they take work. They take work. Yeah. Real friendships, and by the way, people, all grown up people with successful careers, they can be super lonely too because they've atrophied all their real relationships. They might be in a cold marriage, but they have only deal friends and no real friends. Real and deal are different. We all actually know that. Real friends require work. Right. So how would, like, first of all, let's say someone did atrophy their friends. Maybe they haven't put in the work and they're feeling it, right?

1:51:09Dr. Rhonda Patrick:They're feeling lonely. They're not feeling connected. Maybe they don't have a spouse or maybe they lost their spouse. How do they rekindle that? What kind of work do you have to put in? Generally speaking, the best way to do that is to reconnect with people from the past and find people that you really connect to. So when I was starting to do this work, I realized I was, and I've been working my, you know, busting my pick forever. And in the middle of my academic career, I left to run a company. And I was the CEO of this big think tank in Washington, D.C. for 11 years. And that was 80 hours a week for 11 years.

1:51:43And my kids grew up during that period. I worked that 14th hour before the first hour with my kids. I missed a lot of the growing up. It was because, you know, because I'm a striver and I've chosen to be special rather than happy a whole lot in my life. I've made that mistake a whole lot of times. And I did a lot of soul searching on the basis of it. one of the reasons that I do dedicate my work exclusively to the science of happiness today is because I want it, Rhonda. I want it. I want it. And I know that it doesn't come easy to me. I'm not talented at this stuff. I got to do the work myself is what it comes down to.

1:52:17One of the areas of my life where I was weakest was friendship. I mean, I just, I didn't do the work. I was working all the time. It takes work to have real friends, by the way, that means useless. It doesn't mean useful, useful friends or deal friends, Real friends are, even if they weren't useful in any other way, if they're really, really useless, you just love them, right? You're not compensated in any worldly way from these people. You love them. And for strivers, it's like, I don't got time. I don't have time for that.

1:52:46Dr. Rhonda Patrick:I don't have time for that. And I realized that had been me. And so I rekindled relationships in the past and I started dedicating real time to it. And now I meet people. And when I make a connection with somebody my age, somebody younger, somebody older, I do more work on it. I set time aside. I cold call my friends. I text a lot. I have a friend I made two years ago when I was 59. I love the guy. I love the guy. We just actually hung out as couples up in Camarillo just last weekend. And for no reason, for no reason at all. I mean, I don't, he needs nothing from me. I need nothing from him, but he's great.

1:53:26And I just wouldn't have done that 10 years ago. I mean, this is great because, you know, also men struggle with keeping relationships, like friendships, right?

1:53:34Dr. Rhonda Patrick:I mean, they rely a lot on their own. Dudes aren't good at this. No. No. And how important is it for them to really try and, like you said, you know, find the real friends, maybe just maybe one or two, whatever, to like and try to connect with them. schedule things, whether it's coffee or a little getaway. Yeah. Women are better at this in no small part because women naturally have more developed right hemispheres of their brain. Women are more generally adroit at love. They're better at love. They're better at mystery and meaning than men are. Men have generally more developed left hemispheres of their brain, which is why little boys like trains.

1:54:12How does that work? And it's It's funny because, you know, I have only grandsons. I have four grandsons at this point. Man, you have construction equipment out there. That's going to be, that's what they look at is construction equipment. And that's very hemispherically lateralized. A lot of that is like the work of Simon Baron Cohen. Have you ever heard of Simon Baron Cohen? It sounds like Sasha Baron Cohen is his first cousin.

1:54:38Dr. Rhonda Patrick:Oh, oh. Yeah, actually. He's the most distinguished social psychologist in the world on autism. He teaches at Cambridge. He does really, really important work on this. And his work touches on hemispheric lateralization, the hyperdevelopment of the left hemisphere of the brain, which is associated with autism. It's just one of the reasons it's more prevalent in little boys than it is in little girls. Not exclusively so, but it sort of explains a lot of actually what we see. So the result is that as we grow up, women don't tend to get worse at friendship. On the contrary, they tend to get better at friendship as they get older.

1:55:13I mean, your results may vary because you work all the time, right? And men tend to get worse at it as they get older because they're not in the milieu, because they don't have their moms having play dates with other little boys. And they're not in college where they're, you know, in a dorm with other dudes and they're not on sports teams anymore. And pretty soon, you know, there's a statistic I see all the time. I can never source it. So who knows? But 60 % of 60 year old men, their best friend is their wife. whereas 30 % of their wives their best friend is their husband which is this heartbreaking statistic of unrequited friendship in its way and that's because well and that explains by the way why women do so well when they're widowed and men do so poorly because they're the men are when their wives die often are just profoundly alone they're just they're cordial with their adult kids at best they don't have any real friends they don't have any interests really that they developed and their work stops and then and then their wife dies their only friend dies it's like robinson caruso on a desert island but without without friday right i mean and also like if

1:56:20Dr. Rhonda Patrick:you're if you're relying on your wife on your spouse for everything because that's like your only real deep relationship i mean that's a lot it's a lot on her oh my gosh when you retire i mean yeah I mean when you retire I mean it just imagine like it's I married you for better for worse but not for lunch stop following me around the house yeah totally I hear that a lot I hear that a lot I mean I sort of specialize in helping guys retire at this stage in life you know because I've written a lot about how to be successful as you get older and by successful I mean happier better having a more full life and guys just don't know how to do that so I talk about what does leisure mean how do you do leisure how do you do friendship you know and how to develop relationships how to develop a spiritual relationship when you never had one when you're 65 years old for the first time and it's like it's like preschool for a lot of these guys and what do you do for like your friendship do you just like call up an old friend and that you did that you were close to at one point yeah it's like call him up and start talking is that like a kind of start kind of and it sort of works with dudes they're like man i've been thinking about you too.

1:57:28That's great. It's like, you know, what are you up to these days? And just basically rekindle the friendship, which is, it sounds like it's weird and awkward, but it kind of isn't as a matter of fact. And so I've, I've helped groups of guys in their sixties start hanging out again with their college buddies and it's such a relief for all of them, but somebody actually needs to take the initiative and inevitably they were all lonely. You know, this is funny. There's this, there's this movement. This is like the most European thing ever. Um, in great Britain, there's this thing called the men's sheds movement.

1:57:58Have you heard of this? Where they're, of course the government is building these like craft sheds in these neighborhoods for retired guys to go build birdhouses and stuff. And their wives will drop them off. And cause they're bored and they don't have any friends and they got nothing to do. And so these old men will be in there doing crafts and this is sponsored by the government to get rid of loneliness. Right.

1:58:22Dr. Rhonda Patrick:It is just, it's, But it's so dystopian that the government is building sheds because of loneliness. No, the government's doing it, but the fact that... I know, I know. I mean, but this is what people should be doing. Yeah, their wives are setting them up on play dates like they're four years old. I know. I know. I know. But the whole point is, if we don't manage ourselves, we're going to get in trouble. Yeah. Right. Okay, so we've covered a lot. Yeah. What are we missing? What indeed. We've covered transcendence. We've covered love. We covered friendship, the definition of happiness. We've talked about meaning.

1:58:57I don't know. What else do we need to talk about? We've talked about morning protocols. We've talked about actually how to use science on all this stuff.

1:59:05Dr. Rhonda Patrick:So if a person comes to you and says, I'm unhappy, I am not happy. Right. You would tell them that they could learn to be happy. Absolutely. And here's basically how it works. And to begin with, most people don't know if they have an unhappiness problem or a happiness problem. And so I have a battery of tests. I have this happiness scale that I take them through to see whether or not happiness or unhappiness is your bigger problem, right? Because it's a different treatment. You know, the diagnosis actually suggests that the treatment would be different. So people who are deeply, deeply unhappy have a different course of treatment than people who have low happiness.

1:59:41And people who have low happiness, I'm going to talk to them about their faith and family and friendships and finding meaning in their work. and people who are deeply, deeply unhappy, I'm going to try to figure out what actually the problem is with that instead of protocols that will naturally lower their unhappiness to a tolerable level with or without a medical professional is actually how this would all work. So that's an important thing to actually keep in mind. But the whole point, the reason that this is a science and it's really valuable and worthwhile very much relates to what you're doing in your work, which is that science empowers you.

2:00:14Knowledge is actual power if and only if you turn this into habits. If you turn this into the way that you're living your life and then the most important thing actually occurs, if you want to make it permanent, you got to share it. So this is an algorithm for improving anything about your knowledge. And I remember this because my dad, who is a statistician and a math professor lifelong, I watched him one time giving an advanced calculus lecture and I was in my 20s. So I I was old enough to admire my dad. And he was giving this hour and a half lecture, very sophisticated advanced calculus with no notes.

2:00:54And man, he was killing it. It was unbelievable. It was like watching a virtuoso violinist in his prime. And afterward, I'm like, how did you do that? That was amazing. How did you do that? And he said, well, I understand it. I practiced it. And now I'm sharing it. That's what I do. it's the full algorithm and he was happy while he was doing it you will learn language or golf if you understand golf you play a lot of golf and you explain golf right your secret to holding yourself accountable to all the stuff you're talking about in the show is understanding the science living it in your life and talking about it with others the secret to getting happier is understanding the science that psychology is biology living in a different way and actually sharing it with other people my class at harvard is called leadership and happiness because i'm trying to make happiness teachers which is the secret to making happy people a lot of people

2:01:54Dr. Rhonda Patrick:seek out pharmacological treatments um Maybe because their unhappiness? Almost always. I mean, there's sort of two things. People do try to get happier pharmacologically, but that's like smoking dope and hanging out at the beach mostly. And that's sort of the pleasure lever. And I don't recommend that. And part of the reason I don't recommend that is that all euphoric substances are neurotoxic. That's the rule. Which means, okay, you don't have a glass of wine. You got to decide. I don't drive the safest car either. I don't drive the unsafest car, but we all cut corners and we all have to make cost-benefit decisions in our lives.

2:02:31But I avoid euphoric substances because of the neurotoxicity that is inherent in these types of things. Plus, I know that pleasure isn't going to lead to happiness. It's enjoyment. So, which is why you wouldn't, you know, drink a whole bottle of wine by yourself. Anyway, okay. So substances on the happiness side are kind of less frequent and that's dubious. And I kind of, I question whether or not people are actually trying to do it to get happier. People use substances all the time, licit and illicit substances to try to lower their unhappiness. And in certain cases, it can be really, really effective.

2:03:06you know, selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, for example, are really, really good for keeping more serotonin in the synapse, which is associated with less activity in the ventrolateral prefrontal cortex, aka less rumination. If you can actually increase the dopamine in people's brains, you're going to get less anhedonia, which is the inability to feel pleasure. If you can actually keep more norepinephrine in the synapse, you're going to get less psychomotor retardation, which is a characteristic of clinical depression. I get it. I get the biology on how all this works and it can be really, really effective, but it's going to be way less effective than it should be if you're not self-managing, if you're not on top of all of these things.

2:03:48And for a huge part of the population, the self-management per se really is the secret. That's why one of the things that they find typically in the treatment of clinical depression is that chemistry plus cognitive behavioral therapy has like eight times the effect of chemistry by itself, of changing your neurochemistry by itself. And so a lot of what I'm talking about here, both the unhappiness and the happiness side is incredibly powerful. If you do one, two, three, this is not self-improvement, which just gives you an epiphany that burns off. It's learn the science. The science is not inaccessible.

2:04:26It's not. I mean, most of the people that watch your show are not scientists. They're not sending a big background like me. They're mostly people who just want to live better and they get to understand it. Second, change your habits. Change your habits. Live differently. Third, share it. Pass it on. You know, talk about it with your family. I promise everybody watching this right now.

2:04:47Dr. Rhonda Patrick:That gives that meaning purpose too. Oh yeah. And it's also awesome because if you start talking about the science of happiness, everybody wants to have dinner with you. Yeah. Everybody wants to have you at the dinner table because everybody's interested in it. Everybody wants to be happy. Everybody wants to be happier. You know, and this pharmacological treatment that people do seek out, and I just posted a study yesterday on this new study, a new meta-analysis of multiple studies came out, randomized trials, comparing exercise, running exercise, to standard of care treatments, whether that be cognitive behavioral therapy, traditional psychotherapy, including CBT, also SSRIs.

2:05:27Dr. Rhonda Patrick:and exercise was as good as either of those at improving depressive symptoms. This is multiple studies. It was obviously better than placebo or no treatment. Of course, exercise is something you have to want to do. You have to put in effort. And some people, they can't even get to that point because they are so paralyzed by their unhappiness or whatever it is. Especially if they have a real, real deficit in norepinephrine and they have this psychomotor retardation, it's keeping them effectively paralyzed. Right. Right. And so getting out of that first and then actually getting into a routine, super important.

2:06:07But you're right. I mean, that literature is dramatic.

2:06:10Dr. Rhonda Patrick:It's dramatic. But adding that in to like, I mean, the habits that you're talking about are so important. Like I mentioned, you know, just educating myself on these. And I love how you speak about it. And, you know, you've got two wonderful books, one on the way coming, The Meaning of Your Life. You've got a podcast that you do. I mean, you know, so just me learning from you, I was so excited because I could immediately see where I needed to apply these things. I love to learn the lie. I love it. It's very motivating for me when I understand something. It's like, it makes sense. I have to do this, right?

2:06:46Dr. Rhonda Patrick:Like that's, and there's a lot of people like that. I think people don't even realize that they're like that because they maybe just haven't learned the why. They haven't learned the science of it. They haven't had someone explain it to them in a way they could understand. Whatever, whatever. They haven't found where to consume it. You know, there's a lot of reasons why they may not have gotten it. Which is why the modern era with YouTube and Spotify and all of these platforms that we have is so wonderful. You can just learn and learn and learn and learn. You got to have some judgment about what you're learning.

2:07:15Dr. Rhonda Patrick:Right. I mean, that's a double-edged sword of, you know, having all this information on our fingertips. No gatekeepers. Right. That's actually one of the reasons that you got to be careful that you're watching and listening to people who have some credibility in what they're talking about, which is not necessarily people who have suffered through PhDs like you and me. But it does require that you have some, you know, basic judgment about who you're listening to, for sure. But it's wonderful. It's great. Did you enjoy your PhD? I did. Yeah. I mean, to some degree. I mean, there was, I enjoyed my postdoc more than my PhD only because I liked the topic.

2:07:50Dr. Rhonda Patrick:I was more passionate. My PhD, I was diving deep on, I mean, I like nutrition. I like, you know, micronutrients. And I was diving deep on this like protein that like helps cells not die. This is because you were doing experiments, biochemistry experiments. Yeah, biochemistry. I was going deep. And you kind of have to do some of that deep diving. You have to like understand mechanisms. Like that's part of what your PhD is about. like just going really deep. They got to haze you too. They do. Yeah. Make sure you're miserable enough. That's why exercise in sauna before going to the lab was very important to me because it was very challenging, especially if you're someone that already puts a lot of pressure on yourself and then you have this other whole, you know, committee and all the, you know.

2:08:33Dr. Rhonda Patrick:Yeah. But you're learning a lot. And actually one of the things that people, they ask about is, should I get a PhD? And the main, you know, you could get, you could have gotten a PhD in almost anything and you'd be the kind of thinker that you are today because the reps in pure thinking are something you never get. It's a super interesting literature that shows that when you do something, this is the 10 ,000 hours or something theory of just the reps on something makes you really, really good at it. And most people never spend very much time thinking, just knocking your head against problems. problems.

2:09:06And so you could have gotten a PhD in puppetry and you'd be a really good linear thinker because you would have spent four or five years just basically thinking all the time. That's the number one benefit of actually getting a doctorate. As far as I'm concerned, you've got the time and space to just organize thought inside your brain in a way that nobody ever taught you to do it because they don't teach you that in college. They don't teach you. God knows they don't teach you that in high school.

2:09:29Dr. Rhonda Patrick:That's super interesting. Never thought about it that way. How important is it, you know, as you're getting like midlife, you're in your midlife and then you're going to eventually transition into like, you know, older adult, how important is it to continue like thinking and learning new things, novel experiences? I mean, I know how important that is for, you know, novel experiences itself is like, you know, helps with BDNF, obviously exercise does too, but like neuroplasticity, how important is that, you know, for transitioning into the next stage. Well, I mean, that's a great question. And actually, the answer to that comes from studies on people who wind up happy and healthy.

2:10:11So you've heard of the Harvard Study of Adult Development, the grant study. That's following the same cohort 85 years now, starting in the late 30s, people who are in their sophomore year at Harvard, which is not a representative sample. It was all like white men above average income. But then it was matched up with a sample of men who were lower, you know, not, they were economically lower class. They were, they didn't actually have even high school degrees largely. And then it is expanded to their spouses and then it expanded to their kids. And so now it's representative of the population and it's been following them.

2:10:45And it says, what did they do if they were going to wind up in the quadrant that's both happy and healthy when they're old? So it's a crystal ball, right? And it turns out that they all, the almost all of the people in that quadrant, there's a lot of people were unhealthy. A lot of people were unhappy, but the ones who were happy and well did seven things. Okay. Seven things. Now, some of them are obvious diet, exercise, smoking, and drinking. And that would be substances today. They're very moderate on substances. None of them were addicts or, or if they, you know, they had trouble with it, they quit, right?

2:11:16Smoking. It's like, duh. I mean, duh. I mean, right. I mean, I used to smoke on it because I was a musician in my twenties and And I knew in my 20s, it was so stupid. It was so stupid. I quit when I was 26 years old. I still think about it every day. I do. I love nicotine. You know, I got addicted when I was 13. And I quit when I was 26. And it was a relationship for me, right? But the whole point is, no. Because lifelong smokers have a 7 in 10 chance of dying of a smoking-related illness. And that's an unhappy way to go. that is an you're not going to be healthy and you're not going to be happy dying of emphysema that's just the case and then it's uh and then exercise and diet and that means a really a basically a normal diet is what it comes down to a healthy diet and exercise actually interestingly there's that sort of curvilinear effect where you don't exercise at all you're not happy and well and if you're an exercise maniac you're you're actually will do some mechanical ill to your to your body, but actually you're probably not happy.

2:12:18And there's a lot of compensation that's going on because that's how a lot of former alcoholics, for example, they become exercise addicted and they're transferring. They're kind of dry drunk.

2:12:26Dr. Rhonda Patrick:It's a quitter bias. Yeah, it's a problem. It's a rexial problem. So it's just normal. And walking a lot, staying active, okay, that stuff is obvious. Then there's the three that are not the obvious ones. Number one is continuing to learn. and people who are lifelong learners, they're healthier and they are happier. That's usually a lot of reading, but it's just curiosity is how that comes about, which is really, really important. That's, I mean, just this lifelong learning is a critical part of it. The second is learning to - Wait, can I ask why you think that is? I mean, you know, obviously if you're naturally curious, you're going to want to learn.

2:13:01Dr. Rhonda Patrick:And so maybe there's a little bit of a reverse causation there, but like, do you think it has to do with neuroplasticity? Yes. Being able to adapt, okay. I think it is. I do think, because once again, I'm very strongly the view that psychology is biology. I mean, it's just, I mean, I believe that there are things that are, that are, that are super biological as well. I believe that there is a metaphysics. I don't believe that everything is a, you know, related to the brain. I think that the mind goes and the soul go beyond that to be sure. But most, almost everything that we talk about in psychology, you have to understand the biology to really get it.

2:13:32I think neuroplasticity is the key. People who have a lot of very, very active, have a life of the mind and are highly neuroplastic, they're just happier and healthier. And by the way, even if they have a whole lot of degradation, neurocognitive degradation, physically, they do better. You know, if you're learning a lot, you can, your brain can hollow out practically and you're still going to have enough of the connections synaptically in your brain that you're going to be able to function for a much, much, much longer time.

2:14:04Dr. Rhonda Patrick:Do you think there, um, that part of that has to do with like the fact that changes will continue to happen in your life. And because you have that neuroplasticity, it's not going to be so low, but you can adapt. You can adapt to it. And by the way, when you're doing that, when you have a lot of neuroplasticity, life is just more interesting. Because when you start learning, you start seeing that everything is an opportunity for you to learn and grow. Life is just not boring. And, you know, once again, a boring life is not that great. Boredom is important, but the right kind of boredom. And side note on this, it's really quite interesting to note that the misunderstanding of boredom today is leading to this meta-boredom.

2:14:47So, you're, you know, the great grandpa Patrick never came home and said, honey, I had a panic attack behind the mule today, right? No, because his brain was working the way it was supposed to work with both hemispheres. But he was pretty bored in his job. He wasn't listening to podcasts. He wasn't, you know, scrolling reels. He was like behind the mule. And in moment to moment, his life was boring. But at the end of the day, at the end of his life, he didn't say, I had a boring life because his life wasn't boring in the meta sense. Young people today are never bored moment to moment, but their life is grindingly boring.

2:15:25It's just so ironic that we don't understand boredom in this particular way, to be sure. somebody who's interested in things interested in real things interested in life itself is not going to be bored and they're going to be happier and for all sorts of biological reasons they're

2:15:40Dr. Rhonda Patrick:going to be they're going to be healthier i don't want to forget about the harvard study and the two other there's two more three but that's so fascinating because like the younger people that are constantly scrolling and you're you're not ever bored and so true you're never bored but your life's so boring is that because they're not seeking out these experiences with people these i mean the purpose they're not it's all everything that we've talked about is that is that essentially what it comes down to because your life's a simulation okay simulation a simulated life is a boring life a real life's an interesting life and you're living in a simulation if you're you're you're you're dating online you're dating you're swiping if your life is if your work is on the zoom screen if the first thing you look at is your phone to check your messages if your social life is largely on social media if you're gaming to get your sense of accomplishment that's not That is the plot of the matrix.

2:16:30It's so boring.

2:16:31Dr. Rhonda Patrick:But it's even more than that too, Arthur, right? Because then you've got this social comparison. Yeah. Constantly comparing yourself. And there's always going to be someone smarter than you, better looking than you, richer than you, more powerful than you. Right. Always. So you're belittled. And you are just constantly belittled. Like I personally, I use social media for my business. I don't actually consume it. Right. And it's probably to my, it's, I should be consuming more of it because it would help me get more perspective on like what's going on in some cases. But honestly, I don't like social media.

2:17:01Dr. Rhonda Patrick:I don't like how it makes me feel. Defensively, it's good for you not to do that. Right. There's all kinds of things that you could do to be good for your business. All kinds of things that you could do. You could be on the road three times as much as you actually are. That'd probably be good for your business, be bad for your life. What do you tell people, like, you know, young people or anyone? Like, I'm in midlife and I'm subject to this social comparison. You know, what do you tell people, like, to help them deal with that, not keep comparing yourself? Like, how do you break out of that vicious cycle?

2:17:33it depends the the way to do that is not necessarily to get off of all social media because that's an unreasonable thing to do is to curate the experience through in a way that's life-affirming as opposed to life diminishing and so the two things that people should actually be

2:17:48Dr. Rhonda Patrick:doing with social media are learning and laughing you know and and you know connecting with other people to be sure like you know my my kids are not interested in social media very well very much at all. But like my oldest son, he's on Facebook, like Facebook. What is he like, your, you know, 71-year-old Aunt Marge? And the reason is because all of his Catholic buddies are on Facebook and they know what they're going to do. It's like, oh, they're going down to the harbor and we're going to have a cookout. That's how he learns, actually using social media to connect. But when you're just entertaining yourself on social media, it should be learning and laughing.

2:18:20You should be following accounts that teach you something that's life-affirming about science, about books, about art, about whatever it happens to be that you're interested in, and the stuff that you actually find funny. And those two things, that's the two things to do. Don't follow some celebrity who has the life that you always wanted, because you just feel crummy about yourself is the way. And you gotta, I mean, don't do things that make you feel lousy, is what it comes down to, and take positive measures on purpose. And people can do that.

2:18:48Dr. Rhonda Patrick:I mean, even with young adults, you know, realizing that you're looking at like the highlights of everyone's life, like that's not real life, right? I mean, like everyone's looking their best. They got the filters there, you know. It's a lie. Yeah. And the funny thing about it is there's a couple of papers that shows that even if we know it's a lie, we still believe the lie. And even if we're participating in a lie by, you know, nobody puts on social media, it's like, my wife just yelled at me again, brutal. Nobody, nobody puts that on. So my kid just flunked math for the fourth time. Nobody puts that on there.

2:19:21And so you know you're curating a version of your life that's not an accurate version of your life. And you know that you're consuming a curated version of other people's lives as well, but you still believe it. You still believe it. And so don't subject yourself to it by actually setting up boundaries on it. Also, I recommend that people have certain limits, half an hour a day of social media across all platforms and do it on purpose in one or two boluses of consumption of social media.

2:19:51Dr. Rhonda Patrick:And do you think they should just go to the profiles that they're going to learn something from rather than letting the algorithm feed it to them? If you're going to do half an hour in the morning of social media and it's a certain half hour that you've set aside, you're not going to waste your time. You're not going to scroll away your hours. You're going to go here, I'm going to go here, I'm going to go here, I'm going to go see the Seahawks score, I'm going to go see the da-da-da-da-da-da-da, right? Because you want to learn something. It's actually enriching to you. Okay, let's go back to the Harvard study.

2:20:13Yeah, I got two more. Two more. is you need your technique for dealing with life's problems. You got to get good at it. You need skill at dealing with life's problems. And if you don't get good at it, you're going to be bad when things actually crop up. And so maybe you're good at therapy. Maybe you're good at prayer. Maybe you're good at meditation. Maybe you're really good at journaling. But all the happy and well people have their way to deal with it. And they're highly skilled in doing it.

2:20:39Dr. Rhonda Patrick:How do they measure that? Just they measure all the parameters that you're talking about? Yeah, exactly. It's like, what do you do when you're upset? And people have very strong answers on how they do it. How long have you been doing that? They dig into it. So Bob Waldinger, Robert Waldinger, has he been on your show? I'm in touch with him. He's great. He wrote the good life. And he actually gets lectures for me at Harvard sometimes. He's phenomenal. And he can tell you actually how they measure that one, which is really interesting. And the last but not least is the biggie, which is love. People who have the best lives, who are happy and well, and they're older, they have a strong marriage and or close friendships.

2:21:10Dr. Rhonda Patrick:That's it. There's no substitute for love. Happiness is love, full stop. What about love with like your children? Yeah, I mean, that's good, except that what they find is that the two kinds of relationships that are most correlated with happiness and wellness is marriage and or friends. You don't have to be married and not everybody's marriage works out, but isolation from other people that are not just your children. Is that because your children like eventually leave? They leave. And like life changes, yeah. They leave. And you know, they have a different kind of love for you. It's an asymmetric relationship.

2:21:39You know, you love your kids more than they love you. That's just the way it is. I mean, I believe that my kids love me and I live with my kids. And I tell people I live with my 27-year-old son. They're like, oh, I'm sorry. I say, with his wife and kids. And they're like, oh, that's great, you know? And we made an intentional decision to have all the family in one area, as a matter of fact. We all moved to Northern Virginia in a huge house where three generations now live and the others are right up the street. The only one that's left is my daughter who's active duty in the Marines. And she'll have a duty station in Hawaii for the next few years.

2:22:13But she'll be back at the end because we're doing that on purpose. It's really, really, really important. But it's also important that everybody realize that the love relationships most correlated with happiness and wellness later in life are close personal friendships and or a strong marriage.

2:22:30Dr. Rhonda Patrick:Yeah. Yeah. So that's also really important because, you know, I do know some families and mothers that really have put, it's easy to neglect your spouse when you're trying to put everything into raising the best child. And what happens is when you neglect, when you let that atrophy and the kids leave, it's like, what's my purpose? Well, you've gone from real friends to deal friends in your marriage when it's only about the kids and raising the kids and all that. that is a third love to be sure. But then you're just with each other. It's just, it's just, it's just transactional. Did you take the kids to school today?

2:23:04Did you make their lunches? Did you call the teacher and you got nothing in common? And then they move out. And that's weird when they move out. I mean, it's because my youngest is 22 now. And so it's been a long time that we've had an empty nest and, and our friends who have nothing in common except raising the kids, then they'll look at each other and blink, blink. It's like, who are you? They don't have anything in common and then the thing they had in common dissipates and that's that's really

2:23:30Dr. Rhonda Patrick:dangerous for sure my husband and i i mean we do date night we try to do it once a week um we love to work out together but we also i started i i instigated us uh playing learning to play tennis together and we've been learning to play tennis for a little over a year now but i feel like i'm like i wanted something like a leisure time for us to do together right when we're older you know lifting weights and stuff, we do like doing that as well. But I - A game is better. Yeah. There's something about games. Games, yeah. That actually do that. Being able to play each other, play doubles. Right. And so, and I think there's just another thing I wanted to jump into before we - Yeah, let's do it.

2:24:06Dr. Rhonda Patrick:Wrap this up, which is, you know, people that are, I think you wrote about it in your From Strength to Strength book, right? Where you're, there's like these four sort of, I don't know, outline like principles that people can follow to kind of make that last part of their life fulfilling and be happy, right? Was it the jump? There was jump. Was it service? You helped me out here. I can't remember which ones I actually listed at the end of that book. Jump, serve, worship, connect. Oh, yeah. And I know I still have a ways before this, before I'm really there, but not that long. It's going fast. It goes super fast.

2:24:50Dr. Rhonda Patrick:And, you know, things like realizing, and we touched on this, when you're not in your peak anymore, and like how you can still be happy because like trying to relive those glory days will make you unhappy. It'll make you nuts, actually. Yeah, trying to actually live in the past and extend what was good for you at one particular time forward is a real problem. them. And so the first one that I do talk about in From Strength to Strength, which is a book about how to design the second half of your life and being prepared for that in the first half of your life, is actually jumping, is recognizing that the past is in the past and you need to proactively build a different future for yourself.

2:25:31People who are trying to keep the party going, they're always, they always wind up being really frustrated. And the reason I say jump is, you this metaphor that, you know, the ground is changing under you. Jump to the next thing. Be proactive about it is really, really important. Even, by the way, when you feel like you're losing something, that's the most fertile period. And we know that from the whole literature on liminality. Liminal spaces in life are when there's unwelcome change. Unwelcome change is inevitably where you have your greatest creativity and where there's the most generativity in your life, but you bridle against it and you reject it and you don't want it to occur.

2:26:15Change is going to occur. The choice is whether or not you're going to learn and grow. That's your choice. You're going to learn and grow while change occurs so that you profit from it, or you're going to not profit from it, but it's going to happen anyway. It's similar to the whole concept of suffering. The second part is serving other people, and we've talked about that, and that's really important because you will grow as a person, but only when you dedicate yourself to others. And that's not what mother nature wants. Mother nature wants you to live in the psychodrama, me, me, me, my job, my car, my money, my fun, my job, my, me, me.

2:26:51It's so boring. And yet, I mean, last night I was the star in every one of my dreams. It's just so tedious. And when we go against that basic nature of being the star of the psychodrama, then we can actually transcend ourselves, see something from 30 ,000 feet, see what the possibilities of the future might be, and actually build a happier tomorrow than what we see today. The whole idea of worshiping, we've talked about before, but everybody worships something. Everybody does. And most people actually worship themselves because they're effectively the center of their own universe, whether they believe in God or not is what it comes down to.

2:27:30But transcending and standing in awe, whether it's a traditional kind of worship or not, is critically important for actually building a better future. And last but not least is love, is the connections that we actually make. And the connections are not going to make themselves. They just aren't. And if you're not in the business of connecting with other people, you're going to get lonelier and lonelier as you get older. And people actually move on with their own lives and you wind up isolated. Now, I'm not talking about not having aloneness, not having solitude, because solitude is a beautiful thing.

2:27:58Just read, you know, Henry David Thoreau's Walden. He talks about solitude and how lovely that is. But isolation is a different kettle of fish. And you have to take matters into your own hands of working on the relationships that you care about the most. You have to serve those relationships and take the time to build them to be as healthy as they possibly can. And those are the ingredients that actually are most correlated with people proactively building lives that they actually want going forward in the future. And I had to change my own life too, by the way. I had to make different decisions as well.

2:28:33I mean, at one point I quit my job as a CEO because I wasn't doing with my life what I needed to do. I mean, I started the whole project of looking at the second half of life because I realized I was on the wrong track. I had the experience of overhearing one of the most famous men in the world telling his wife he might as well be dead. It was extraordinary. I didn't even know it was a famous guy. I just heard this old man behind me on an airplane telling his wife, like, nobody remembers me and I might as well be dead. And I'm thinking, oh, it's just like some high school teacher who got, you know, retired involuntarily.

2:29:07And I turned around at the end of the flight and it was literally one of the most famous men in the world, rich and famous guy. And it's because he felt like he'd been forgotten and he was trying, He wanted the glory of the things that had actually happened in the past. I was like, man, I do not want to be telling my wife Esther this when I'm in my 80s. I got to make some changes. And so I did. And each one of the phases of change in my life has occurred because I got to crack the code. I'm responsible to do that. Part of the reason I teach happiness is because I want to live, I want to be held accountable to these particular ideas.

2:29:45But that's the idea of these four parts. of living better is all science-based and, and that, what I'm trying to do in my own life.

2:29:54Dr. Rhonda Patrick:Yeah. I'm so, it's so good, Arthur. I mean, thank you so much for everything you do. Thank you. I mean, I'm just. Likewise, you're, you're really helping me an awful lot. I'm always excited when on, on, on Apple podcasts, I see there's a new found my fitness. I just wish it were every week. I understand why you're not doing it every week. Yeah. Thank you. Because you go deep, you go deep and you're, it's about quality. yeah it's about quality and it's also about balance for my life yeah you know super important and i just it is super important i want to be happy too like everyone else you deserve to be happy and you need to be happy actually because the authenticity that comes into helping people build better lives requires that you actually be living what you're talking about yeah and there's and now i feel like i have so much more i have tools now that i didn't have just a few weeks ago before I started reading a lot of your work and stuff.

2:30:48Dr. Rhonda Patrick:And, you know, it's just like, it's helped me. It's helped me. I'm excited. I'm really excited about it. Already applying things, like I said, and, you know, telling people about dwelling on their mortality more. I mean, it actually is really important. It sounds morbid, but it really does help you put the things that are important into perspective. And it's, and that really is something that, you know, and it also helps, you know, with dealing with that, you know, anxiety that you, the fear of death, like realizing that, Like life is finite. Like you're not going to live forever. Yeah, for sure.

2:31:18There's a reason that it did memento mori. Yeah. The Stoics were actually contemplating a human skull or something. But the whole point is that you don't have to be morbid about it. But yeah, life is finite. And just be alive now.

2:31:30Dr. Rhonda Patrick:Every minute matters. I know. It makes you realize you're like every minute. I know. Like you don't want to waste your time. I know. You know? You just like, because it goes and every minute matters. So anyways, with that said, there are so many places people can read your books. You can tell them about all your books, the new one coming out, your podcast, you're on social media, YouTube channel. Let's hear it. So my website is arthurbrooks.com, which is, you know, everybody's got a website. That's their name, arthurbrooks.com, just like it sounds. And that's where you can find my columns and newsletters.

2:32:02And I have a weekly newsletter on the science of happiness. It's completely free. Oh, I'm signing up. Yeah. I'm signing up. Yeah, yeah. And it's super fun because I can actually goof around and show pictures of my grandkids or whatever, but also real advice on what the latest science is saying. I have a column every week in the free press called The Pursuit of Happiness, appropriately. I have a book that's coming out March 31st, which is The Meaning of Your Life, Finding Purpose in an Age of Emptiness. That's with Penguin Random House, and that will be every place on March 31st. I'm really excited about that.

2:32:34I've been working on that book for five years, as a matter of fact. because I've been trying to crack the code on the neurobiology of emptiness. Why do we feel this way that we do? My podcast is office hours. It's just kind of like it sounds because it's a lot of my work. It's talking about my work. Most of the time, I'm just talking about some area of the science of happiness. Occasionally, I have guests, but not always. It's not very long. It's only 45 minutes. It's not like the conversation we're having here. And then I'm on social media, which is where I'm cutting up and slicing and dicing little things.

2:33:05I've got a great team of people that are trying to live the mission. And my personal mission is to lift people up and bring them together in bonds of happiness and love using science and ideas and what I'm going to do for the rest of my life.

2:33:17Dr. Rhonda Patrick:Amazing. Well, thank you so much. I look forward to our next conversation because we're going to talk about some more interesting stuff. I can't wait either. Thank you, Rhonda, for what you're doing. You're making me happier and healthier and I get to do it in person with you. That's so great. Likewise, I feel the same, really, truly. I'm so excited. Thank you. A big thank you to Dr. Arthur Brooks for coming on the show and educating us on the science of happiness, but also helping us learn how to be happier. And thank you all for joining me today for this fascinating conversation with Dr. Brooks.

2:33:50Dr. Rhonda Patrick:This episode was a bit unique, and it goes far beyond the usual conversation about happiness as a fleeting emotion. Instead, it really offers practical advice and a framework for understanding how enjoyment, satisfaction, and meaning work together and how our habits, our relationships, technology use, our ambitions, and even our struggles can either support or even erode our well-being. For those of you who want to think more deeply about how to live with greater purpose, stronger relationships, and a healthier emotional life, this is truly a conversation worth returning to. And lastly, as a reminder, if you value my podcast, if you value these deep dives into science and appreciate the content that remains free of sponsorship bias, please, please consider are supporting this podcast by becoming a Found My Fitness Premium member.

2:34:37Dr. Rhonda Patrick:Your support makes conversations like these possible and allows me to continue delivering rigorous, unbiased, authoritative information directly to you. You also get some amazing membership perks. So you get the special members-only podcast called The Aliquot. We have over 140 episodes. They're awesome podcasts. I get great praise about them. You also get access to a monthly live and recorded Q &A with me. You can submit your questions. I answer them and they're recorded. They're live. You can attend them live. You can also just listen to the rerun of that. Whatever it is that, you know, that works for your schedule, they're great.

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2:35:58Dr. Rhonda Patrick:So please, please sign up for that email newsletter. It is really, really good. I run into people everywhere on the streets and they tell me they love the email newsletter. So if you're not signed up, you are certainly missing out. Please pause. Go do that right now. Foundmyfitness.com forward slash newsletter, N-E-W-S-L-E-T-T-E-R newsletter. Thank you so much again for listening and I will talk to you soon.