Why Finding Yourself Is Overrated: Arthur C. Brooks' Guide To Real Happiness

26:01It helps people that have never listened to the show before come across it and see all the incredible episodes that we have with the amazing guests. So if it is one small favor today, if you're not already a subscriber, please do subscribe. What's my idol? So there's four possibilities. And this is a pretty exhaustive list. Money, wealth, resources. you know, however you denominate those resources. Two, pleasure. Pleasure has three kind of variants. One is feeling good, right, like the hippies, right? But it can also be comfort or security. Those are also in the pleasure idol. So a lot of people my age, so I'm as old as your parents, and a lot of people my age will say, well, you know, I'm feeling good all the time.

26:43Oh, yeah, how often do you check your stock portfolio? If it's every day, that's a security idol, and that's pleasure, okay? Okay? Comfort is, yeah, yeah, I know you're not like, you know, smoking weed and, you know, and being irresponsible. Is it hard for you to get out of bed in the morning? That's a comfort idol. Okay? So, and again, I'm not judging. I'm just, we have to recognize this in ourselves. Third is power. Power isn't a bad thing, like, you know, a dictator. It means persuasive capacity over other people. You get to call the shots. Now, power can be incredibly virtuous. It can also be terrible.

27:20But the point is if you want to be in charge, if you really, really want to be in charge, and you want other people to know that you're in charge, that's a power vital. And last is fame. Fame is funny because there's all this internet fame, but that's actually not how most people find it. I mean, there's a think tank in the States called Consensus, and they ask people about what they want and what they think that other people want. Most people think that everybody wants to be famous. Most people don't want to be famous, as traditionally understood, like recognized on the street. But fame takes other forms, like prestige, being praised for what you do.

28:00Social status, for sure. Prestige, adoration of other people. In the worst case, the adoration of strangers becomes almost a religion. And your brain will do that, where you actually don't feel alive unless people that you don't even know are clapping. Wow. Yeah, that happens all the time to performers. That's a really dangerous situation. Okay, so those are the four idols. And here's how we find out what's there. I'm not going to ask you what it is because who knows. I'm going to ask you what it's not. We'll start taking the ones away that you don't care about. Now, if you take one away, it doesn't mean you don't have it at all.

28:32It just means you have the population average. So, for example, if you say money, that doesn't mean you're poor. It just means you're the average citizen in the United Kingdom. Which for an idol is torture. Being average is the worst if it's your idol. Okay? So that's how we know. And for sure, there's one that you care about least. And then we're going to start eliminating until we find the one that you just can't eliminate. Wow. And that's your idol. So, okay, you got the four, right, in your head? Mm-hmm. Which one do you get rid of? You got to get rid of what? Fame. Fame. Really. So what that means is you have the exact amount of fame, notoriety, prestige as the average citizen in this country.

29:11Okay, that's fine for you. That's fine for me. That means you walk down the street and nobody recognizes you. That's fine for me. Right, that's great. It sounds to me that you actually like that. Yeah, because I had to get out of that from when I was younger. So there's no merit, actually, because you're actually like, ugh. And what we do is we're so prideful about the idols we don't have. Oh, I don't care about money. Well, then I'm sorry, there's no virtue in that. But anyway, I get it. And so you experienced it, and it was obnoxious to you, right? sorry, you're doing it again.

29:46Oh, that's right. No, I don't care at all. I think I'm going to put up my best-selling book. So we can have a discussion about this. We know how hard it is to sell a book. No, I know, I know. But the whole point is if you really, really, really didn't care about it at all, you wouldn't be actually doing something for mass market and having a podcast. So we'd want to dig a little bit deeper. And again, there's nothing bad about this. This is just how we're wired. Right? Okay. Okay, so let's take it on his face. But I would want, if we had, you know. I love how this essential psychoanalyst session will be.

30:22Is there a couch? Oh, my God. I'm sorry. Our time is up. But next week, you know. Thanks, Arthur. You've been great. So you've got to get rid of the next one now. I'm not completely sure about the fame part, but I'll take it at face value for the moment. What's the second one you get rid of? What you have left is money, power, and pleasure. I think I connect to the pleasure one quite a lot. So I wouldn't take that away. But don't think about what it is. Think about what it isn't. Because we're eliminating. What it isn't. Yeah. You have to get rid of one of these things to go to the population average.

31:01Wealth. Yeah, okay. So you have the average UK citizen, which apparently is getting worse as the years go by. Prices are going up much faster than wages and have been for a long time, sorry. You know, you can move to the States. Are you guys much better over there? Where are we? It's pretty good. Our mutual friend, Chris Williamson, will tell you that it's much better. My former Brit. Yeah, I think he's still a Brit for sure, but you can get an entrepreneur visa. Okay. Anyway, well, that's a different issue. That's our next. So you're already going to marry me off and get me into the States, so we're fine.

31:39That's right. Okay, guys, right into the show. It's not a raffle. It really is going to be based on merit. Okay, so money, right? And did you grow up with means? Average. Average. Middle class. Upper middle class? I would say probably. I would say we're middle class now, but as I was growing up, probably low to middle class. Okay. So that actually makes sense. And part of the reason is the people who have the money idle, they generally speaking grew up either poor or rich. And one of the reasons is if you grew up poor, that deprivation mentality creates a lot of fear because you know what it was actually like.

32:21And if you grew up rich, then it's like, I don't know who I am. And I want to feel like a loser compared to my dad or my mom. I mean, that sort of thing. So it actually sort of makes sense that you grew up in a prosperous, developed country, not wanting for anything. You went to school and had your caloric needs met, went to the dentist when you needed to, et cetera, et cetera. Very normal. So now we've got power and pleasure left. Okay. Which one do you get rid of? You like being in charge, don't you? Yeah. Yeah. And you like feeling good. You can tell. But you've got to get rid of one of them, right?

32:57I'm talking about the thing that's most likely to change your actions and lead you to make decisions that you later regret. So that's why we're looking for the one. Not to say that you don't care about one more than one. So which one do I connect to the least? Of those two. If you had to get rid of one because you're hanging on to one. Yeah, okay. And look, I can tell. You eat healthy. You stay in shape. Those are ascetic things. Those are hard. especially in a world of abundance. Those things are actually hard to do. So you're in the gym an hour a day and you probably get a gram of protein per pound of body weight and you're doing all that stuff, right?

33:36I mean, that's like not easy. And like I'd like enough cake, said Sarah. No. Right? And of course, we'd want to dig in on the comfort. I hid your drink when we came in. Uh-huh, I know. But comfort and security we'd want to dig into to make sure. We'd want to make sure that that's the case, right? But I believe you. And what that means is you really need to be in charge. And so we'd want to dig in on the extent to which you felt out of control in your life at different times. Now, you were a model, so talk about out of control. I mean, that was, yeah, completely taken out of control. And how horrible it was to feel out of control a lot of times in your life.

34:12A lot of people who are addicted to drugs and alcohol, they'll have a power idol later because of the personal control they want to exert. but any kind of a thing where you felt like your fate was in other people's hands that's going to leave a mark a little bit of scarring but also you know there's a lot of good that you can do with that there's nothing wrong with having influence the problem is when it becomes the goal the influence per se then you'll cut corners in your own life you'll cut corners in your relationships not that you'd cut corners ethically but you'll do things that you know you'll sacrifice love sometimes for it.

34:46And that's super important to understand. And now we know. Now you'll see it when you're saying, yeah, I'm being kind of controlling here. You just driven away any mountain that will ever take me on the hill. No, because you're self-aware, right? No, no. The guy who comes in through this podcast is going to be like, Sarah, remember that, you know? So this is important. And all of us, by the way, all of us, by the way, mine for sure. I mean, Number one, I would get rid of power. I used to be a CEO. I hated it. I hated it. People called me boss, and it felt boss. It felt passive aggressive. It wasn't, but it bugged me.

35:23I'm very non-hierarchical. I'm very flat in my understanding. I want everybody the same, everybody the same. I'm sort of naturally communist, despite the fact that I'm an unbridled, rock-ribbed capitalist. I want capitalism for everybody except me. So in the second I would get money, it's not that interesting. right it's just it's not that interesting as long as your material needs are met which means the meat the mean is fine i'm very acetic i mean i go to the been going to the gym every day for decades i mean i'm really serious about actually these types of things that that you write about and that i write about but that leaves something and that kind of gets back to my weakness which is i want people to love me i want people to love me i want it's so dumb sarah i'm 62 years old and I still want strangers to clap for me.

36:13It's pathetic, actually. Where does that come from? So where it comes from, basically, people who have the fame idol or who have the adoration idol, typically they're strivers and they do something super well. Right. And that pathology of looking for that, where you want to be rewarded for what you do well by the adoration of people who actually don't care about you, that's real pathology, of course, that generally comes from the childhood. So real strivers are super good at something, and they figure out that adults only give them love and attention when they do a thing. And they conclude that love is earned.

36:48Love isn't earned. Love can't be earned. If you're with a boyfriend and he makes you earn his love, he actually literally doesn't love you. Because true love is a free gift freely given, especially on your worst day. That's how you know. On your worst day. On your worst day. Now, one of the ways that boyfriends and girlfriends will test each other is by being difficult so they can see whether or not they're actually loved or whether or not the other person is trying to earn their love. So people will be like really moody with their partner. That's just a test. That's generally speaking a test.

37:20See if you love me. On my worst day. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And my worst day is today. So the problem with that is when your brain is synaptically really plastic, like your kid, pre-adolescence, you'll wire that idea in, and you only get neurochemical rewards when you're doing something kind of extraordinary, and you're getting applause for it. You're getting approbation and praise for it. And that was me. I was a little kid. I was the best musician you ever heard. Wow. I started violin at four. I started piano at five. I started the French horn at eight. So niche. Yeah. French horn. Welcome to America.

38:05I know. And I was just like a really, really, really good French horn player. I went pro at 19. I spent my 20s playing a lot of it playing in the Barcelona City Orchestra. And I wanted to be the world's greatest French horn player. Isn't that the most American thing you've ever heard? It's such an American thing. It's such living the American dream right now. I know. It's like, you define it, you do it. So but the but the result of it was when I was a kid, I got all this attention for it. And I've been I've been striving and searching for that the rest of my life. Now, the point is, it's fine.

38:35I'm okay. I've got a great life because I know it. Because I know it. And my wife was responsible to, you know, keeping me in line. It's like, you're doing that dumb thing again. You know, it's like, wait a second. You're going to literally leave town on the kids' birthdays to go give a speech someplace for a few thousand people who don't know you. I'm like, yeah. Of course. I need to hear it. I need to hear it. See, I flip mine from what you've said to my one being, I mean, it's interesting because Nir, Earl said like perfectionism, he doesn't believe him, but as in that I have that kind of everything needs to be perfect.

39:17You know, the striving. I think that's where mine comes from. It manifests in all sorts of different ways. But if you know the pathology, you're fine. Yeah, that's why I wrote a book about self-compassion. But you don't need 13 years of therapy. I mean, this is the most amazing thing. All that trauma stuff is very overblown. We all have issues. We got like my kids say. We all have issues. Of course we do. That's why we're human. And manage yourself. Know yourself and manage yourself. It's so beautiful that we can actually do this. It's so awesome that we can fix ourselves in this way. But you got to know.

39:48You got to pay attention to it. You also got to be vulnerable. Right? You have to be honest actually. And honesty starts at home. Most people are going through life lying to themselves. You got to be honest with yourself. And honesty about yourself is not, I'm honestly looking at all of my virtues now. You honestly look at your weaknesses. And that's bracing, and it's powerful, and it's great. It's actually a pleasure. Yeah. Can we trick ourselves into think we're being honest about these things and actually not being? Yeah. Because that's the thing I find quite interesting. Oh, yeah. We're great liars.

40:19Fantastic liars. We lie to other people, and we lie to ourselves constantly. This is the thing that I think. We lie to ourselves into things. And it's funny because the permutations of this are vast. People will often lie to themselves to think that they're victims of something that they're actually not or be aggrieved about something that they're actually not because they've been convinced by somebody else and there's some sort of status that comes from victimhood. I mean, we'll even lie about lying about lying. You get lost in where you are. That's exhausting. Completely. You're lost in the woods.

40:51Yeah, exactly right. This is one of the reasons, once again, that transcendence, standing in awe of something greater than yourself, is clarifying and that we need it. I mean, it's one whole chapter in your book. Yeah. It's called transcendence. To transcend you. You know I've read. You know I've read the book. Yeah, I know. I'm pretty. What chapter is it, Sarah? It's near the end. Oops. It's after the loved one. It's after the loved one. Well done. Yeah. See? I know. I know where I am. Yeah. So, help me with something. Okay. The arrival fallacy. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So remember we talked about progress and we talked about purpose.

41:27Purpose is the why question. Why am I doing what I'm doing? That actually serves this visceral human need to make progress. We're not made to arrive. We're made to make progress. Now there's big theological implications to this, by the way, in every religion. I'll give you an example. You want to be happy. I want to be happy too. You can't be. Sorry. Right? Happiness is fleeting. Well, I'm a happiness scientist, and I know that happiness, you couldn't be happy if you were happy all the time. It would mean you'd be bereft of negative emotionality, which would leave you vulnerable to outside all sorts of problems.

42:04I mean, you'd get wiped out. You'd get eaten by a saber-toothed tiger because you wouldn't feel fear. You'd eat something poisonous because you wouldn't feel disgust. I mean, you'd be void of negative emotions, which make you unhappy because they're supposed to. You wouldn't have negative experiences, meaning you're actually not walking around in the world. That's just life, humans, et cetera, et cetera. But we want to be happy. We want to be happy, and we deep down think that we can actually be happy. So think about what that actually is saying. We have this vision of actual unremitting happiness, and we want it, even though intellectually we know we can't get it.

42:38Now, philosophers say, and it's a good definition of evidence that something exists is hunger for it. So evidence that water exists is thirst. Evidence that food exists is hunger. Evidence that pure happiness does exist is our desire for pure happiness. It's just not on this earth and in this life. That's evidence of heaven for some people. Some people, some theologians will say evidence that does exist, just not in this life. That's why you strive for it and that you want it and you work for greater virtue and you work for greater love because you get a little taste of it. You make a little bit of progress toward it.

43:21And then one day, one day, when this earthly coil is finished, that you will experience it on remitting joy and the beatific vision of the Godhead, or depending on what religion you're talking about. You suck back into the cosmic consciousness, whatever your thing is. But that's interesting because what that suggests is that there is this thing. There is this thing. The problem is when we actually think that we will get unremitting joy, this gets back to your question, here and now by doing something, by satisfying a need, by winning the race, that's a mistake. That's called the arrival fallacy.

44:00You're making progress and it's awesome. but and so therefore you the joy that you get from making progress every day suggests to your brain that when you actually get to the finish line then it'll be perfect forever you'll get that happiness that you seek but it's it's not true i mean good old mick jagger saying i can't get no satisfaction he should have saying i don't i can't keep no satisfaction that's why i keep trying if he were if he had taken my class he would have had different lyrics to that song how do we think about a goal then? Because I'll talk you through this with me. Write this book.

44:35That's a big goal. Very many years. Kind of eight years in total. Eight years into it. This is your thinking of the past decade. And the pressure to make it a success. I put a lot of pressure on myself. There's my goal. And it's from the moment that I started thinking about it to the very end. Now it's out in the world and I'm proud of it. but I felt weird after. Yes, what did you feel after? Hello. So we could just explain this neurochemically, of course. There's a chemical in our brain that we all know about called dopamine, and we think of it as a pleasure molecule. It's not. What it is, it gives you wanting and learning and liking.

45:20It gives you anticipation of reward. Something that you like happens that you didn't anticipate, and it gives you this little burst of euphoria, that's dopamine making you learn about that thing so you'll do it again. Now, next time when you go do it again, if it's not as good as you thought, you'll get less dopamine. You won't like how that feels, and so you'll learn not to do it. If you get even more than the first time, you'll get even more dopamine. You'll keep doing it. That's how people get addicted to drugs and alcohol, and that's why they have to escalate so they get more and more of the chemical is the way that this works.

45:52Okay, so the way for us to think about arriving is that we want to get as much of this as we possibly can. But when we do get it because we like what happened, like my book got published and it made the Sunday Times bestseller list. Congratulations. That chemical can't hang around forever. It can't. If it did, you'd literally be driven insane. You would be in an institution in one week if that dopamine... As a matter of fact, That's one of the neurochemical definitions of psychosis. People are experiencing psychosis. Is that why our phones are driving us insane? Because it's the constant dopamine.

46:36Right. So if the dopamine is sort of in the substantia nigra of your brain, there's too much dopamine. Dopamine land. Yeah. And that would be a pathology. So you have a neurochemical pathology. You'll have to take a dopamine suppressant so that you don't hallucinate and behave psychotically. Okay, so you don't want that reward, trust me. So actually, it's quite healthy. It's totally healthy. But what that means is once you get to that thing, then you're going to come back off that particular high, and you're not going to like how that feels because you believed that when you actually got that reward, it was going to be the culmination of all of these little tiny dopamine hits as you made progress toward the goal.

47:16You hit the goal, and you're like, now it's going to be great forever. Why do I feel empty? Why am I crying in my room? I know. You know this feeling? Yeah, I've written 16 books, Sarah. And here's the worst part. Here's the worst part. This is not your last book. Let me tell you what's coming. This isn't your next book. You're going to be like, if I make the Sunday Times bestseller list, I'm just going to feel okay. Next time, I've got to be number one on the Sunday Times bestseller list. And if it's like, what's the highest one? What's it right now? And if it's not, then you can laugh. You know the number right now.

47:56Don't lie to me. You know the number. Seven. Seven. So next time he comes in at eight, you're like, loser. You suck. You're going to say in the mirror. I know. I know. Trust me, I know. Right? It's even worse. So a friend of mine, he said that he always dreamed about being number one on the New York Times bestseller list. And he got it. He's like, this is so awesome. And the next week, Trump's kid was number one. And he simultaneously was disappointed and realized the absurdity of his life's goal. It was like it's the myth of Sisyphus or something. It's a Greek tragedy in a nutshell. But it all has this neurochemical basis, and that's how the rival fallacy works.

48:47And so you have to understand, I'm made for progress. I'm made for progress. So it's about progress of goals, not the end goal. Yeah, and here's how the Buddhists talk about it. They've got it best. Intention without attachment. This is what you want. Intention without attachment to the goal. So you say, good. But does that then make us less driven? It won't make you any less driven, trust me. I got data on you. Can you see me trying to negotiate with you? But it won't make you less driven. It won't? As Taylor Swift could have sung, strivers are going to strive. They are. I mean, strivers are just going to strive.

49:25I'm not going to turn you into a slacker. I could say, go slack, and you'd be like, can't do it. Can't be done. You're a driven person. That's in your genome. That's how your brain is wired. I'm not worried about that. But you do need a little bit more Buddhism. You do need a little bit less attachment. Plenty of intention, less attachment. The problem in a lot of our lives is that we're all attachment and we're weak in intention. And that's a life of kind of disappointment. But you can be really, really fulfilled if you say, I intend to do this big thing. And I have decided, I have made a pact with myself and the heavens that no matter how it turns out, it's going to be okay.

50:09No matter how this turns out, it's going to be okay. It's the divine will how this thing turns out. But I've run the race. I've absolutely done my best. And what's really, really useful for young people like you in particular is to say, is to ask yourself, to interrogate yourself, am I doing my best or not? Am I doing my best or not? And am I doing my best for my publisher? Am I doing my best for myself? Am I doing everything that I possibly can that makes sense, that's ethical and sane? And if the answer is yes, you'll be at peace. Do you know what I loved about your book? You keep a journal of your failures and disappointments, but not the things that go You're right.

50:43Yeah. Why? Well, the failure journal is actually a lot more effective exercise for your own happiness and progress in life. And it winds up actually raising your well-being more. So good, count your blessings. I mean, and I do. I mean, I pay attention to the things. I have gratitude lists that I keep. And I assign gratitude lists to my students. The five things that you write down on Sunday that you're most grateful for. Or my mom is healthy. You know, the national team won in the World Cup. You know, whatever. Whatever your thing is, no matter how dumb it is, it doesn't really matter. And then I look at it each day over the course of the week for a couple of minutes before I go to sleep.

51:19And I update it on Sundays. And by the way, if you do that, on average, you'll be 12 % happier after 10 weeks. Gratitude's great. Gratitude's awesome. It fights against the negativity bias of the human brain. Yeah. The negativity bias exists because negativity keeps you alive by keeps your head on a swivel, right? But it's maladapted because we're not in that much danger anymore. There's not something sneaking around. Is there a snake in a cave? I mean, we're pretty good about that now. But what really will help you out that's even less natural is actually focusing on your failures and disappointments.

51:56So I keep a journal, and I recommend my students do as well. The failure and disappointment journal is every time something kind of significant comes down the pike that bugs you. And no matter how wonderful and magical your life looks like. So a lot of people watching were big fans of yours. They're like, if I could have Sarah's life, I would be completely happy. And you're like, no, no, no, no, no. Spend a day in here and you'll see. Because everybody's the same. Everyone's the same. Everybody's the same, right? And you're grateful, I know, for all the good things. But you're not happier, per se.

52:30So when something bad happens in Sarah's life, you write it down. Now in your journal, I recommend actually pencil and paper because it has cognitive impacts that are more profound and enduring than typing it into your phone. But whatever works. Leave two lines under it and then set an alarm to come back to it. Come back to it after two or three weeks to the first line that you left blank under it and write down something you learned over that period because of the disappointment. And then come back after about two more months and write down something good that happened because of that disappointment.

53:07Okay, now you're always writing things down. And sometimes you'll have like three or four of these things with the blanks under them because you're going through kind of a tough time. But once you've got a lot of things in this journal, you're going to start looking at the things above. And you're going to say, yeah, every time something bad happens, I learn something and something good happens as a result. Not better than the bad thing necessarily. It doesn't mean you'll say, sure, I'm glad mom died. No. But you will learn something. You will learn, for example, about the decisions that mom, let's say mom does die.

53:35Because mom's going to die. And when it happens, when my parents died, I remember thinking, what did I write down? in the first line I wrote down, this is making me think about my own life and how many Thanksgivings I have left with the people that I love. And it's making me think about the passage of time, and I'm learning a lot. Then I came back to it later, and I said, what good came from that? I'm closer to my brother. I love my brother. And I'm closer to my brother as a result of that. And then as that starts to fill out, you start to look at the failures and disappointments from before and you start looking forward to writing them down Because these have become generative and they become generative because they were explicit This is self-management.

54:20This is management over your life instead of just like that sucked Let me try to forget that By you know having a couple of drinks or hanging out with my friends And my friend your friends are gonna be like it's okay, sir. He was a jerk You know, he was no good for you anyway, so just move on No. No, I mean, you're going to move on, but move on with power. Because they say, what I learned, he did this and this and this. That wasn't a good thing. It wasn't a good thing that came from it. Now I'm free and I'm meeting new people. That's a classic case of what happens after a breakup. Never waste your suffering from a breakup.

54:57Yeah, how important is that to learn? Let's get to love. Uh-huh. My favorite topic. My next book is called Falling in Love and Staying in Love. It's coming out in two years. Wow. This is what people, my students would have me on this topic the whole semester. Really? Yeah, my average age student is 28. And they're really good at business. And they're baffled by love. I think everyone's baffled by love. Yeah, I mean, and part of the reason is because business is a left hemispheric phenomenon. It's analytical. And love is a problem you can't solve. It's not logical. It's not a solvable problem. It's only something you can live and understand deeply through experience.

55:39And people who are highly analytical, they struggle with the problems you can't solve. My car is a... This is hemispheric lateralization, meaning the two sides of the brain do different things. The great neuroscientist Ian McGochrist, who would be a good person for the show, actually, from Oxford. He's a meritist professor at Oxford. He lives someplace way up on an island, so he might be hard to get. We need to get him in. I think it's like 13 hours to London for him. But that left hemisphere deals with these complicated analytical problems, like my car. But the right hemisphere of the brain deals with these creative and these mystical problems that don't have solutions, like my marriage.

56:18I've been married 35 years. Congratulations. Thank you. I have not solved my marriage. I will never solve my marriage because it's not a solvable problem. That's why I love my marriage, because it's dynamic and it's human and it's changing and I'll call her when we're done and she might be super happy and she might be really mad at me. I don't know. I don't know, Sarah. I mean, I know if my car is going to work, but I don't know if my marriage is going to work this afternoon because it's a living thing. But you've stayed married for 35 years. So what's the secret to that? Yeah, what's the secret to that?

56:53Oh, that's an easy one. That's like two sentences. But part of it is actually treating it like a complex problem. not like a complicated problem. It's like fostering it as something that you actually live with, as something that's truly beautiful and dynamic itself. That's what it really comes down to. And one of the problems that we have today and one of the reasons that dating and love are getting more and more difficult for young people is they're trying to treat it like an analytical problem, largely through algorithms, through the way that they use apps, for example, which is the different kind of problem.

57:27It's like basically, I want a cat. Because I want companionship and it's alive. Here's a mechanical cat. I don't want that. Why not? It's better. It doesn't go to the bathroom. It doesn't tear up your couch. It's a mechanical cat. It looks just like a cat. It's not alive. It's not real. Yeah, exactly right. And so how do we maintain that? We're conscious of it. Now, we do have actual love protocols that are based on science. You want the love protocols? so this is a science-based approach to maintaining love in a relationship that's long-term okay okay this isn't the absence of abuse or abandonment or big big structural issues these are people who want to stay in love so my wife and i we we work with couples who are about to get married we work with couples who have long been married we do retreats for people who are want to stay in love And there's a lot of things that you can actually do to fall back in love and stay in love.

58:28Let's start with the neurochemistry. When couples are in love, they have a huge exchange of a neuropeptide called oxytocin. You've probably heard of this. It's a neuropeptide, functions as a hormone in the brain. Now, human beings have a lot of this to bond to each other. So when you have a baby and the baby, when the baby is nursing, the baby will, when you have a baby, you'll see the baby will stare into your eyes while it's nursing. It's a little tiny baby. And when you do that, there's a huge amount of bonding, oxytocin exchange, like the 4th of July. It's intensely pleasurable. Yeah. You really, really need it.

59:03Now, this is how you know that somebody's your kin. And so lovers will do this because you're supposed to be attracted to somebody who's not physiologically related to you, who's not genetically related to you for the health of your offspring. but we're not in in the ancestral environment we're suspicious of people who are not genetically related to us and so we adopt them and the way that we adopt them is with oxytocin exchange now how do so so when you get married how do you get that well the lots of ways touch for example but another way you get that is with eye contact is by looking at each other deeply in the eyes and when you're falling in love and you're sitting across from each other on the first date at a at in the restaurant you're like i feel like this conversation is really interesting we really have this deep connection and it's just because you want oxytocin and like this actually might be my family member aka my husband quick first date yeah first date let's go first date first date boom you get a lot of oxytocin exchange on this okay couples fall out of that so it'll be married honeymoon period yeah but it's so but it's even longer you know but 5 10 15 20 years they might not have looked deeply into each other's eyes for a long time.

1:00:12Why? Well, because life passes. And so now women have three times as much oxytocin as men, which means that women need this more than men do to fill their proper oxytocin levels. To drug them up. Yeah. So one of the things that I recommend, especially to husbands, boyfriends, is every time she's talking to you stare at her in the eyes. And she'll be after two weeks like, I don't know why, but I feel a lot closer to you. And she'll never figure it out. Unless she listens to this podcast. Unless she listens. This is a really popular podcast. So the cat's out of the bag. So number one is eye contact.

1:00:51Number two is touch. Men need more touch than women do, especially non-sexual touch. Really? Yeah. So there's a vasopressin, which is a cousin neuropeptide. Men have more than women. And you get it from touch. Now, when you're with your beloved and you hook your arm into his as you're walking down the street, he gets like seven feet tall. Vasopressin makes you want to defend your tribe. It makes you want to protect your beloved. It makes you feel strong and capable. And the way that you get that is when she holds your hand, that's how you get it. And so every time you're sitting together, ladies, touch his hand, hold his hand.

1:01:31When you're in the movie theater, hold his hand, touch, touch, touch, touch. Now, some guys like it less and some guys like it more, but they all need it more than they think. Non-sexual touch, right? Number three, have more fun together. One of the problems that couples who are in trouble that they do, one of the problems is that they're trying to solve their problems and all they talk about is their problems, right? You don't go to a marriage counselor and say, we're here just to let you know that it's just going great. You don't go to the cardiologist and say, you old ticker, you're so good.

1:02:04I'm just here to tell you, doc. That's not what you do. You go there because you've got a problem, so you talk about your problems. Pretty soon, a lot of couples will get in this, let's talk about our problems again. They forget to have fun. Fun is the basis of the relationship per se. I think we forget about that in all elements of our life. Oh, yeah. Work, friendships, romantic love, parents. But you really want to bond around fun. Because if your relationship isn't fun, by the way, if your romance isn't fun, you're going to find fun someplace else. And that's a bad thing. This is one of the reasons that 30 to 80 % of extramarital affairs start at work.

1:02:47And we don't know if it's 30 or 80, which we might as well say between a 0 and 100 % of affairs start at work. Whatever. Lots. I believe the 30 % number, but that's a lot. And one of the reasons is that they go to work and they have fun with somebody to whom they might theoretically be attracted. And you also spend way more time at work than your home life. Looking into each other's eyes. Exactly. Talking about deep things. Oxytocin. Solving problems. So have more fun. I mean, it's like stop talking about your problems and go ride your bikes. Right? Go have fun for Pete's sake. That's why, you know, it's like maybe once a week you have two or three hours where it's like it's a fighting and problem-free zone where you do something that you both really, really like.

1:03:29And it's like detente. Okay, we can have war in three hours. But right now, no war. It's hugely, hugely repairing for relationships. And last but not least is, believe it or not, it's reading to each other or praying or meditating together. But the same thing works with reading to each other. Yeah, yeah. I recommend that couples before they go to sleep in bed no phones your phone will ruin your relationship like couples that are in bed scrolling idiotic reels to begin with it will wreck your sleep architecture because of blue light, the functioning, the pineal gland all the stuff that you know really well and it's not good enough to have blue blocker glasses, just no phone for an hour before you go to sleep but when you're in bed read her love poetry I mean, right?

1:04:18I mean, read her the Psalms. You know, read her something beautiful, lovely. And, you know, for me, I mean, I'm married to a Spaniard, and so, you know, that accent is like...

1:04:33It's just... It's fiery. I just can't get enough of it. She reads to me at night. It's just like, I don't care how stressed out I am. I put Matthew McConaughey on when I go to bed. This is your boyfriend, Matthew. I wonder if he watches. Hey. Hey, Matthew. He's married. He is married. It's true. He's off limits. As we say in social science, he's restricted. He's restricted. So that's like we have to desiccate the joy of everything. But that's really important. Or meditating together or praying together. Praying together is like the most intimate thing. It's funny. I know religious couples who have nine kids, which means they've been pretty intimate over the years, but they've never prayed in front of each other because it's too scary.

1:05:14No. It's too embarrassing. Really? It's too embarrassing. It's super embarrassing to pray in front of them. Why? Talking to God in front of your beloved. Have you ever done it? No, but then I guess I don't pray. Ah. So that's maybe why. Yeah, yeah, yeah. As in, I would read a meditation. I would read the kind of something that I believe in or something that I'm like honoring. Yeah, but prayer is so intimate. Prayer is like you and God, doing it out loud in front of somebody that you love. And one of the reasons that most religions consider marriage to be an antenna to God, they believe that they call it a holy vocation to marriage.

1:05:49Hindus believe this. Jews believe this. Muslims believe this. Christians believe this. People all over the world believe this because they think that you actually can't fully experience God's love except through the conduit of your partner. They believe, most religions believe, that it is a holy antenna to the divine. And you can make it feel like that. Maybe you can make it that, but you can certainly make it feel that way. And there's a lot of, forget the research, it's sort of common sense. And so praying with each other, it feels like it's like on those old nuclear submarines where it took two people turning their keys at the same time.

1:06:24it's very magical actually but in people who don't pray reading is great reading really really works well what about breakups yeah so this is about sustaining a relationship which takes work like parents just celebrated 50 years of marriage congratulations that's beautiful and they've definitely told me it's a lot of work they had they were married a long time before they had you I've got a brother 10 years older. Okay. They got married at 19. They got married at 19. That's old school. They met at 15. They're school sweethearts. And they love each other? Yeah. They're in love? They're in love.

1:07:00Does your dad look at her and go, Yeah, he says he still fancies her. Which is very sweet. No, it's not just sweet. It's actually very powerful. Which is really powerful. And that's the way it should be. But I guess that doesn't mean that they have not had problems. Of course. Obviously, right? Yeah, because they're human beings. And I said, what's your secret? and they said people give up too easily. Yeah. So they do fight. They do argue. Yeah. Okay. So is it a high conflict? Not anymore. Yeah. I've never had moments. I think in 50 years you go through different spells. For sure. Right? I think it would be like unrelatable to say anyone who's been married 50 years has never had like moments of big conflicts.

1:07:35Yeah, I know. And the worst part for people your age to contemplate is in a 50-year marriage, they'll say, yeah, that was a bad five years. And you're like, bad five years? It's one tent. But do you think that's true? Do you think, because I sit with that, right? People give up too easily or have people just stayed in it too long? Well, it depends because if it's something like abandonment or abuse, and you're staying with it, it can be staying with it too long, right? But if it's ordinary conflict, then I think most people do give up too easily because that's a beautiful, beautiful reward for a good life well-lived is a relationship that really lasts.

1:08:10And so this is prudential judgment. I don't know how this works. I would never recommend to somebody that they stay in an abusive relationship. The question is, what's abuse? I mean, obviously, physical abuse, physical abuse. But arguing, I don't know. I mean, people have to actually figure out what that is. But the idea of having conflict, per se. Now, it's interesting, because I just fielded this new data, this new survey with my research team. OK. And it's about the happiness of relationships with respect to conflict and honesty. So what you find is that some relationships are really, really happy even though they're high conflict, high conflict.

1:08:47I'm married to a Spaniard. This is high conflict. I mean, there's just no other way. They let you know.

1:08:56But what they have in common, if they're happy relationships with high conflict, is they're also super high honesty. So it's like, I mean, the worst relationships are high conflict and low honesty. That's hell. Yeah, that's awful. And those are the ones that break up. Yeah. Right? Those are the ones that are just incompatible. But almost as bad are those that are low conflict and low honesty. Right? These are, it's like, yeah, we got problems. We're not going to talk about it. We're not going to, it's like, let's not even deal with this. And so, I mean, the best, obviously, low conflict and high honesty.

1:09:27But that's Shangri-La. That city doesn't exist for most people. So for most people, I say, don't worry about it. If you're really, really, if you truly love each other and you're committed to this, even though you've got relatively high conflict. You have to know how to fight, by the way. There are rules of fighting, for sure. Rules of fighting. This is the stuff that comes from John and Julie Gottman, the Gottman Marriage Laboratory from my hometown in Seattle. I mean, they teach at the University of Washington. And they talk about no contempt, right? Then contempt is eye-rolling and sarcasm and derision.

1:09:56And that feels like physical abuse. That's absorbed like physical abuse. A lot of men do that to women. And it's like, oh, there she goes again. All right. All right. That's highly contemptuous, and that's extremely bad for a relationship. That's off limits for fighting. Second is stonewalling, right? Third, and probably the most deleterious thing that people do to each other, is a silent treatment. A lot of women do that to men, is a silent treatment. Silent treatment is very, very abusive. Yeah. And it's like, I know it's going to be 48 hours. It's going to be 48 hours. And what will happen is that the victim of the silent treatment will be very pliant, and we'll do what the person wants for a while and just get so tired that they can't handle it anymore.

1:10:40It's like, we never did anything. I didn't do anything to you. Why are you leaving me? It's like, I can't handle it. I can't handle the silence. I can't handle the silence. So these are the kind of, and most of these things are common sense in the way that we, that the way that you're showing conflict. Well, that just feels like maturity. Well, yeah, except that a lot of, a lot of it actually comes, the way that we treat each other in romantic relationships has to do with what we've seen. Right, okay. and you know so men I think I was talking about this with Chris Williamson at one point I do his podcast pretty often and and I love his show because this is the stuff that we talked about sort of the gentle manosphere right and uh and and when when guys um ask me what's the best way for me to with like young men will have a son and I want to have a good son what's the best thing I can do.

1:11:32It's like really one thing to do. Love his mom. You got one job. Love his mom. I mean, it's like, okay, earn a living, of course. You know, you know, don't go to jail. You know, don't be a drunk. I got it. Right. But the biggest job that you've got, if you want to have a good man is your son. You want your son to grow up and be a good man is to love his mom. Because what he sees is so critically important. That's why when men have an affair and run off, when their kids are little that it has a huge lifelong impact especially on boys so so that's an example of how it's not just maturity it's formation it's what you've actually seen your parents influence so much yeah for sure and that's super good for you because that's what you saw it's better for your brother so my my my wife came from a broken home her dad bailed when she was six with another woman Right.

1:12:25And, you know, we got together. We were in our early 20s, and she didn't trust men because they're all bad. Can't trust them. They lie. They take off. You know, that's like they love you for now, but then they're staring at somebody else, and then you never know what's going to happen, right? Men, you know how they are. They got those brains, you know. And it took a while. I mean, some of them. Of course. Of course. I mean, sure. All the men she'd ever known. Yeah. All the guys she'd ever dated, right? And it took me two years to close the deal. Two years of establishing the fact that I'm not leaving.

1:12:55I don't have the roving eye. You can trust me. I'm not going to be messing around. I'm not going to be catting about. It took a couple of years, but then she's fine. And decades and decades have passed ever since. Men have a harder time with that. And part of the reason is they don't know why they're struggling. They don't know why they're struggling in their relationships. And a lot of it has to do with what they saw with that. Interesting. Yeah. So what advice would you give them? is actually knowledge is power. So once you actually recognize this, you can break out of really unhealthy patterns.

1:13:27But you have to know, which is why the intellectual part of this is so interesting and so important, right? Learn, learn, learn, and manage your life. You'll be fine if you manage your life. So how important is it to look at your breakups and learn from them then? It's very important. In the same way that if you see a romantic relationship is a startup. It's better if it's a startup than if it's a merger, which is the reason that people when they you know when they get to 40 before their first serious relationship it's more like a merger because they have their whole life and mergers tend to be less successful than startups you can tell them a business school professor that's people post 40 yeah yeah yeah now it could be worse i mean hostile takeovers and acquisitions are worse when it comes to relationships right but so how do startups work you know the average startup entrepreneur in America, probably more or less the same here, has 3.8 failures on average.

1:14:21You can't have 0.8 failures, but let's say four failures before their first success. Right now, interestingly, the average person, when they get into their lifelong pair bond, you know, pair bond mating, again, another way of saying a beautiful thing and not very beautiful language, they have five heartbreaks, five heartbreaks. I mean, that's a lot. having your i know and and what is it it's the same thing because you learn and grow yeah you reflect on it you learn you grow you made mistakes you get reps because you don't walk into it the first now one of my one of my kids uh first woman he ever dated first woman he fell in love with um proposed to her after six months they got married after six months they had their first son after nine months you know it's like six six nine but that doesn't happen very often that's very unusual it's like somebody who has a startup with a great idea and it goes ba-boom and they become a billionaire.

1:15:09Yeah. Happens. Does happen. But that's what they write about. And that's why every young, you know, business school student thinks that's what's going to happen to them. Just like every person who wants to fall in love just can't believe it when the first one doesn't work out. Of course it doesn't work out. It's very rare that it works out. But you're there to learn. Don't waste it. How do we learn from a relationship? Well, to begin with, you think about it. Use your failure journal. What did I learn? And what did I get? as a result of it. Now, you don't want to... Interestingly, there's one researcher asked, why do people listen to sad songs after they break up?

1:15:46You don't want to listen to a Sousa March after you break up. That's discordant, right? But why would you listen to a sad song that makes you sadder? The answer is because it makes you understand your feelings. But that's why Taylor Swift is fantastic. Yeah, I know. And that's why her whole genre has got to be about... That's a heck of a life. but she speaks to so many yeah and the reason she speaks to so many is because it's ubiquitous experience a failure in the thing that you want the most and the way that you put your feelings, the way that you understand this weird activity in the limbic system, there's a place in your limbic system which is the console of tissue that's between 2 and 40 million years old that's basically the production facility of emotions your emotions are made in there and there's one part of your limbic system It's super old.

1:16:33It's called the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex. It makes you feel psychological pain. It makes you feel grief. That's that thing. And it exists because if it didn't exist, you wouldn't be afraid of... It's supposed to be super uncomfortable when you lose somebody or somebody that you love. Otherwise, you'd just be walking around losing things all the time and your life would be over. If you weren't afraid of sadness, you'd say whatever's inside your head and you'd be fired and friendless and divorced in a week. And so that's why, because you're afraid of your feelings because they're uncomfortable, which is why you moderate your expression and do things the way that you do.

1:17:10But sometimes you can't avoid it and you have a breakup or you have a death or you get fired or your business goes bankrupt and you're in grief and you're in sadness. That's a huge learning experience. One of the ways that you get in touch with that, the sort of the analgesic is Taylor Swift. The queen. Yeah, I prescribe three Taylor Swifts and call me in the morning. Yeah. This is me and my friends. Yeah, but the whole point is think about it. Actually, don't ruminate on it for two years or something like that. The data is really clear your sadness will abate. The problem is while it's abating, you're not learning.

1:17:51And the way that you don't learn is that you go out and either you get drunk or high or you have a rebound relationship. And all those things are a way to distract you from the learning that's supposed to take place so that you can be better next time. So the song is one, but you have two others. What are the two other things people should do after a breakup? Ah, yeah. So actually, there's a long list of things that people should actually do after a breakup. Number one is that you should go have fun, right? Which is not to distract yourself. And going and having fun is not like going into a super serious relationship, which will be unsuccessful, generally speaking, if you're in a bad way because of trauma, if you go into another relationship.

1:18:28And that's pure distraction. But having fun with your friends is a really, really good thing to do. But here's the weird one. It turns out there's a paper that shows that the more that you think about the defects of your ex, the better off you're going to be. Like what a jerk he was. And by the way, he kind of smelled bad. He was kind of gross. you know it's like I always overlooked it but now that you mention it like come on I want a boyfriend who showers regularly for Pete's sake or whatever it happens to be or he had bad taste in music or his mom was horrible or you know I didn't like his dog or you know whatever it happened to be focus on that a little bit it really evaded now the one thing to not do is to surveil your ex don't surveil your ex and it's very easy to surveil people today so basically social media it's almost all the social media but if you know the tools of the dark web you can find out everything about everybody and it's amazing to me how my 28 year old female MBA students how good they are at like it's like they work for the CIA or something like wow it's like an intelligence agent so yeah because then it just gets locked in your brain and then you actually do never move on and that's why it's not helpful but it's really hard when things are at the tip of your fingertips like I think about distraction today even if it's not breakups right i mean how good is it to be able to be accessible to anything we need and want at our fingertips like it's not good it's it's that's what i mean it's bad but we think it's good well what it is is scratching an itch it's like scratching poison ivy it itches it's getting worse you know there's so many things that we're not supposed to have we're not supposed to have this information this information is completely unhelpful to us, but it's this, there's a word that Catholic philosophers use, it's called concupiscence.

1:20:15Have you ever heard that word? No, I love it. Concupiscence. Isn't it wonderful? Concupiscence. It means that idle curiosity for unsavory ends. That's amazing. It's like lingering on a photograph on Instagram that you really shouldn't because you're restricted in your relationship. That's concupiscence, right? Surveilling your ex is pure concupiscence. It's bad for you. Bad for you, but you want to do it, right? You want to know. But it's a drug. Yeah, yeah. It's satisfying like this little craving, but it doesn't satisfy any meaningful need. But I guess that can be the same with anything. Oh, yeah.

1:20:48Even if it's not a breakup. Oh, yeah. For sure. You know what's bad for you, but you want to do it. Yeah, and here's the beauty of this. Here's the most beautiful thing of all, and this is a big point in your work. You have choices. You got choices, right? I mean, you've got the human prefrontal cortex is the modern human brain, 250 ,000 years old, which is relatively modern, from the middle place to scene period. This is when modern humans became modern humans. All the rest of the brain is more ancient than that. But what this gives you is executive judgment and decision-making capacity, notwithstanding your feelings.

1:21:24The biggest mistake that young people make today is they think that the most authentic thing about them is their feelings. That's actually the most inauthentic thing about you. Your feelings are liars. They lie and lie and lie because they want you to be on alert, etc. They want you to think you're going to be sad forever. So you should get back together with that jerk so that you don't feel sadness until you're 80. You don't feel sadness until you're 80. That's a lie. Your limbic system is lying to you, right? Big liar. Or if my book makes the times list, I'm going to be happy forever. Another lie.

1:21:56That's another lie. So here's the most beautiful part about the prefrontal cortex. You can make the executive judgment not to follow your animal impulses, you can decide to follow your moral aspirations. You know, this is what you do a lot. You want people to be healthy, but there's all kinds of incentives to not be healthy. You know what the incentive is? That thing, that package of chips hanging up in the convenience store. You call them crisps. We call them crisps and you call them chips. Yeah, exactly. But you know what we're talking about. Chips are French fries for you, right? They are, yeah.

1:22:25It's a whole different language. It's a whole different world. Tomato, tomato. Yeah, and so, you know, the truth is that your animal impulses want you to do things that you don't want to do. And so you can have the moral aspiration to make a choice that's better. And the same thing is true with what you look at on the internet and the people that you date and who you go back to or don't go back to because they're good for you or not. And that's a beautiful range of action. My dog can't do that. My dog is a good boy. But he doesn't have the capacity to follow his moral aspirations because his prefrontal cortex is wafer thin.

1:22:56He doesn't have moral aspirations. He only has animal impulses. How do we train those? We train those through practice. We train those through like anything else that we do. So if I say, okay, you're super good at interviewing people in your podcast. How did you, like, did you just wake up one day and say, no, right? I bet if you went back to the early episodes, you'd be like, ugh, right? Yeah. Of course. Of course. You learn through reps. Yeah. You learn through practice. The same thing is true. If you want to become metacognitive, it's another way of saying that you are managing your emotions and they're not managing you.

1:23:30you do that by practicing putting space between what you feel and the decisions that you take that's how you do it so if you're in a relationship for example and and you're you're having trouble you're not getting along and you're both volatile you're both emotionally volatile we call that the mad scientist emotional affect profile high highs low lows right then you're going to fight a lot but you don't want to fight a lot because you love each other and you don't want to yell at each other you don't want to say things you don't mean because you always end up apologizing We don't want to do that.

1:24:01You decide you don't want to do that. How do you do that? Here's how you do it. Every time you feel those things, you say, we're going to take two minutes. We're going to take two minutes. We're going to do it. And then you come back after two minutes, and you're kind of laughing. Why? That's a metacognitive decision. Let's put space. That's like, as you say here in the tube, mind the gap. Right? It's the gap between the car and the platform. Right? Make sure you're paying attention to that gap. But in this case, unlike the tube, make it big. Make a big old gap. And then practice, and then practice, and then practice, and you can get super good at it.

1:24:35That's what the Dalai Lama is really, really good at. He has emotions just like the rest of us. He just has complete control over the decisions he makes about how he's going to act. He's not a victim of his emotions. He's not subject to his emotions. He's the master of his emotions. He's the master, right? And I guess that's the most important thing. It's like building up, but it's also taking the observational approach in, which is so bloody hard when you're in an argument. It is, it is. But you're not your emotions. Because you're not in your rational brain. Well, what will happen is, especially when you're having a fight, is that you'll have a phenomenon called amygdala hijack.

1:25:10I love that one. I know, I know. Because basically it's like a hijacker gets into the cockpit in your brain. And it's your amygdala, which is your fight or flight. It's a bilateral little organ in your limbic system. And when it's activated, look out, right? Because it's supposed to activate so that you hear a twig snap behind you and you run and climb a tree before you ask questions. It's very adaptive for survival. Yeah. But it's not so great. It's maladapted in the way that we deal with other people. And so one of the things we have to do is to recognize when we have this stimuli, when we have these signals.

1:25:45I bet your parents have figured out how to do that together. They've learned together that that thing is happening. So let's go do something else for a little while. and that's one of the reasons that they fight better. The repair. Yeah, yeah, yeah, and to avoid, quite frankly. It's not being avoidant of your emotions, it's just being avoidant of what the bad things your emotions will do to you if you let them. Yeah, and it's also allowing you to connect to your mindful brain. Right. Right, that's like such an important part. And your mindful brain really is in your prefrontal cortex where you're going to be here now.

1:26:17Going to be here now. What was your favorite chapter in this? I suspect that my favorite chapter in this book is the least pleasant chapter to read. Which is? Never, never waste your suffering. Never waste your suffering. The last chapter of the book, before the conclusion of the book, is about suffering. Because suffering is one of the most important ways that we find the meaning of our life. And yet it's the hardest and worst. Because nobody wants to suffer. and so I wrote that chapter because I really needed to understand I mean a lot of what my students I have 180 students in my class I have 400 on the waiting list why do they want to take this class so much not because they're happy and want to get happier it's because they want to be less unhappy that's why they're all going to get psychoanalyzed I can tell you that I've been psychoanalyzed no I know you're exhausted you have to go lay down after this so I mean they they they they want to be less unhappy.

1:27:12And the problem is that we're lying to them. We're telling them that if they're suffering, there's something wrong with them. So they come into my class, a lot of them, thinking something's wrong with them because they're suffering. And that's a complete lie. On the first day of class, I tell my students, you're graduate students at Harvard University. If you're not sad and anxious, you need therapy. Something's wrong with you if you're not suffering, because you're doing a hard thing on purpose, right? If you have a breakup with somebody that you love and you're not suffering, something's wrong with you.

1:27:43Your brain isn't working right. When you're suffering, it means your brain is working. Now, it can be maladapted. I mean, clinical depression and generalized anxiety are no joke. These are real mood disorders. They may or may not be correlated with brain chemistry that we can actually alter with psychiatric drugs, selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, et cetera, depending on different circumstances. But for the vast majority of us, in the vast majority of the time, our suffering is a normal part of life, and it means our brains are working the way that they're supposed to. And when we work with nature, we can actually get a much, much deeper and better experience of life itself.

1:28:23That's what that chapter is all about, is the how-to manual and how to suffer right. I think it's one of the most understated areas of life. Yeah. Like, I really do. And I say it because although this book became a success, Yes, this book became a completely different book because I went through the hardest period of my life when I got my book till. Everything changed in my life. Tell me what happened. And I went into the hardest. Tell me the story. The hardest moment of my life. I mean, do I want to ruin it or do I want to go and buy the book? Buy the book, folks. Buy the book. What I will say is that I thought I was very, I mean, the book's based on self-compassion.

1:28:58That's kind of what I believe is the antidote to the foundation that we've missed out in health, right? We've missed ourselves out. We've missed on treating ourselves at the center stage of just being a bit kinder. And a massive relationship ended very dramatically. And you thought it was going to be your last relationship. Yeah. You thought you were going to get married. I was on a plane to get proposed to him. What? Now, the important thing for people who are watching to keep in mind is not, it is that it was generative. It was a generative experience because you actually lived through it. But the important thing for people to keep in mind is that you lived through it.

1:29:31You're two years past that. And you're actually, I can tell you right now, you're fine. So everybody watching, folks, you're going to be okay. Your limbic system is lying to you. Your dorsal anterior cingulate cortex is telling you lies. But you have to do the work. Yeah. You have to do the work. And here's the funny thing. Let me make a prediction you tell me if this is right. So you had a ton of pain. Yeah. And the pain was inevitable because that's your brain working right. Painful, painful, painful, painful. If it wasn't painful, that meant that you were not attached to him and that you were not in love with him.

1:30:06Exactly. And you were attached to him and you were in love with him and you were getting on that plane so that he could propose to you and you could live happily ever after. Or at least live after. Ever. So, right? Because it's, you know, happily sometimes, right? Okay. Yeah, we're not on a freight train, but you know. So there's tons and tons and tons and tons of pain. Yeah. So you got a couple of different ways that you can deal with it. You can deal with it by, you know, pharmaceutical grade analgesics, right? You can medicate yourself, you can distract yourself, or you can stop resisting it.

1:30:39Now, here's the reason that's important. And this is a formula that I actually got from the Dalai Lama. Suffering equals pain times resistance to pain. Pain multiplied by resistance is suffering. Suffering and pain are not the same thing. I was talking about pain and suffering. Suffering is chosen on the basis of your... But part of it is that it's out of your control because the pain, pain goes up, suffering goes up. But if your resistance to pain goes down, your pain can be high and your suffering can go down. And that's how people get over these things. That's what people get over these things.

1:31:11Stop trying to get rid of your pain. Start understanding that this is how life works and stop resisting it. Every major religion and philosophical tradition talks about non-resistance. Now, there are times when you should resist it. You got a bad headache, you should take a paracetamol, right? Take a little Tylenol. I mean, for Pete's sake, you don't have to be stoic about it, right? Yeah. And I'm A tomorrow, right? My back kind of hurts. You know, I've been on a plane. Yeah. But fundamentally, if my back, I mean, I have like a chronic back thing, actually. And I know perfectly well, because I read the literature and I have a science background, that I shouldn't try to lower my pain too much.

1:31:50On the contrary, I need to lower my resistance to back pain, which will actually keep me in the gym. and it will actually keep me with a proper attitude toward life so it doesn't embitter me. And that's part of life itself. And that's what you learn after a really, really bad breakup. You're like, I want it to go away. I want it to go away. I want it to go away. I can't make it go away. I can't make this thing go away. And a year goes by, actually six months goes by, and then a year, and then a couple of years. And you realize by not resisting it, by trying to understand it, by treating other people with compassion who are going through it, by dedicating your work on this podcast and in this book to people who are in that process of suffering, that that non-resistance per se didn't lower the pain, but it lowered the suffering to the point that it has meaning for your life and it's bearable.

1:32:38And it did create meaning. For sure. For sure. And I think that's the thing about what so many people don't speak about is the suffering that maybe they've gone through. I think the most important thing for this podcast is when people come on here and just speak the truth. Because fuck me, it relates to people. It's so easy to come in here and be an expert and be like, you should do all of these things. And someone listening to this is just like, you have no fucking idea how I feel. This is really tough. And actually, when you can be like, no, I've been in there. I've been down there with you.

1:33:08Like, I get it. Which we all have, by the way. Which we all have. You can pretend you haven't. But a lot of times, you don't come across that on socials. You don't come across that to someone's conversations. No, the curated version of people's lives. It's like, who puts on Instagram, Junior failed math again. Brutal. It's like, just had a screaming argument with the missus. No. I expect that on your social media post tomorrow. I know, I know, I know. I expect that on your social media. I know. But it's true. Honestly, and I agree with you so much. And I think that was my favorite chapter. Yeah.

1:33:42I'm glad. I didn't say that when you sat down. And I know, I can't remember who you said, read that, that only chapter. You said somebody interviewed you and you said. Oh, yeah, no, who it was, it was actually that chapter, every chapter starts with a story. Right, yeah. Because that's how you engage people. Because it ended with the same story you opened with. Yeah, exactly. But the suffering chapter starts with the experience of a very close friend of mine named Rainn Wilson, who is a star in the American version of The Office, which is much funnier than the British version. I think I have to disagree with that.

1:34:08It turns out Ricky Gervais is a big fan of the show. Who knew? Sorry. Anyway, so, and Rainn Wilson, I love him. I mean, I just really love him. We text back and forth about deep spiritual. He's very religious, a different religion than mine. And when he talked to me about what it was like to be in that show, which is this big deal. It was a big deal. His dreams came true and it wrecked his life. Sound familiar? Remember? I was like, no. But people were screaming, I love you, from passing cars. But you would have loved that. So I think. But the point is that no, I wouldn't. I mean, I got the data saying I wouldn't, but my limbic system was like, you want it, you want it, you want it.

1:34:52Right? And so he talks about how much he suffered, you know, and I had the most popular television show. And he's like, he's not getting the movie deals that he thinks he should be getting. And he didn't win an Emmy. Can you believe it? Can you believe the tyranny of the universe? And everybody's like, what do you want? And he's like, more. More. And how he was saved, how he was brought back from the precipice of his own insanity, of the insatiability of the idols and of more. And what saved him was the love of his wife and his love for God. And that's made him the man who he is today, which is a beautiful, equilibrated, interesting person and a great friend.

1:35:35And a great friend, a great part of the book. Thank you. Sorry to interrupt, guys. We just hit quarter to five. Great. I've got one more question. Perfect. Thank you. So when people feel lost, confused in that state of suffering, what advice do you give? Yeah. To begin with, recognizing that the fact that you're suffering is not evidence of your brokenness. That's important, to recognize that my suffering means I'm actually alive. My suffering is evidence that I'm making my way through the world. It means I'm a human being and not a robot. I'm not an AI. That suffering is the way that my brain is actually supposed to work.

1:36:13It's scant comfort, but it's comfort nonetheless when people actually do this. The second thing is to recognize that the feeling that I have, the belief that I have right now, the overwhelming propaganda inside my head that's going to last forever is a lie. It's temporary. It's a lie. It's not true. It is temporary. It might be long-lasting. And then the last thing to tell yourself is that I am supposed to learn something here. there is something that I'm supposed to learn here. I have to, and my job right now is to actually figure out what that is. And that, it doesn't mean you're not going to have this pain because you're going to have this pain.

1:36:53It doesn't mean there's going to be no suffering. On the contrary, what it means is you're going to turn that suffering from something that's an unmitigated loss into a key part of who you are because what I found in my work is when I ask people what gave them the most meaning in their life, tell me about an episode in your life that gave you the most meaning that always tell me about something that was suffering. Always. They're never like, that week at the beach in Ibiza. Said no one ever. Right? I mean, it's your breakup. That made this book. It did. It made the whole book. Yeah. And it made you the equilibrated person that you are.

1:37:26And it made you ready for, I mean, your husband's coming. Thank God that old guy's gone. Because you wouldn't have met your husband. I know you're setting me up. I know you're ready. But your suffering made you ready. Your suffering was necessary to train you, to prepare you, to equilibrate you, to make you fully alive. Right? Now, okay, people say, but trauma, but trauma, but trauma. That's up to you. That's up to you. I mean, is the whole idea that the bad things that happen to me become my identity? No, they don't. And they should never become your trauma. They don't. They shouldn't define you.

1:38:04No. It actually just makes you grow. Totally. If you let it. It gets you out of your comfort zone and goes, okay, what's next? Yes. And what am I going to learn? That's right. That's the most important thing. And you're going to suffer for the rest of your life. Not that. I mean, you'll crack that nut, but there's going to be other nuts. I mean, look, I'm way older than you and I'm still suffering.

1:38:25But with meaning, so it's fine. That's right. And we get to laugh about it, so it's okay. So this is the question that I ask everyone, which ends the show. And I feel like it's actually really important for me to ask you this question because I do feel like it kind of, in a weird way, connects to the meaning of life. I connect it to success, the meaning of success, for everyone, it's individual. But I do feel like this really actually brings together everything we spoke about today, which is, Arthur, what does live well, be well mean to you? Live well, be well. Somebody asked me a similar question recently.

1:38:59Goddammit, who was that? But no, no, it wasn't as good as this. What does it mean to live well and be well? The question that somebody asked me was more sort of philosophically diffused. was what is life? What is life, right? And the same words in there, right? Live well, be well, yeah. Human beings, the essence of what it means to be a human being fully alive, which is, you know, St. Irenaeus in the year 200 said the glory of God is a person fully alive. To be fully alive is to love and be loved. That's why we're here. That's the point. That's the goal. That's the objective. that's both a supernatural and an earthly objective so what does it mean to live well and be well is to love and be loved to allow yourself to be loved and to love other people abundantly that's what it means I love that I mean I've got nothing else to say I think that's completely true I think we need more of it I mean I can't wait for your next book I think my book might also be more connected to is it already under contract?

1:40:04did you do that yet? You did that. Did you write a contract on your next book? We have to end her now. You did that. Oh, come on, man. It's brutal. Arthur. I know. You've been amazing. But you got a huge advance, didn't you?

1:40:25I couldn't resist. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I mean, I'm not 16 down, so, you know, I've got a long way to go. Yeah. But thank you. Thank you for the wisdom. It's a joy to be with you. And welcome to London. Yeah, thanks.