#1043 - Arthur Brooks - 14 Habits for an Optimised Morning & Evening Routine

26:08I mean, there's two paths, I think, that people who don't come from money. I did not come from any money. I grew up in the most working class town in the UK. That was, the only title it had was the widest high street in the UK and the highest teen pregnancy rating. And then it lost that. What town? Stockton. Stockton. Yeah, it's northeast. It's just below Newcastle. And you're the same town as, oh, you went to university with Mike Thurston, right? I did, yeah. Newcastle. So he's from Leeds. He's from a little bit lower down than me. But yeah, two directions. One is I never had money. Wow, like look at all of this like spare money that I've got.

26:49I really don't know kind of how to use it. Maybe someone will coach me like how to make more of it or whatever. But I still have a bit of a puritanical work kind of ethic thing. And like the Bill Perkins archetype, right? You need to read Die with Zero like fucking 20 times and learn how to spend some money. And then the other side, which is I never had money. And it's just like a roller coaster all the way down. That gets old. Yeah. That's the NBA player. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's right. And when you get married and have children, then that's, you know, then it's a different kettle of fish because then you start thinking about intergenerational wealth and how you're building your family and your philanthropy and all that kind of stuff.

27:27But I completely believe you that the next thing to go is money. Now it's, of course, more difficult because the two that are left are left for a reason. And that's pleasure and fame. and and fame can mean different things you can mean fame in the eyes of the right people so academics is like i don't care about that yes you do you want to walk into the room your age index you're a professor williamson he wrote the paper on you know the new string theory paper or something like that like on what who cares the point is that prestige is prestige or the really kind of dysregulated one is is adoration in the in the eyes of millions and millions of people on social media, which is a really dysregulated.

28:07A deranged version of it. Well, there's a real problem with it because fame is the only one of those that you can ever only be happy in spite of. You can be happy very easily with money. I can teach you how to be happy with a lot of money, but I can't teach you how to be happy with a lot of fame unless you do a lot of work. I mean, I know my co-author is Oprah Winfrey and she's very, very, very famous and she's an extremely happy person. but the only reason is because she realizes soulfully that her acclaim is a gift such that she can help other people that's the only reason and it will be withdrawn immediately if she were to stop doing that in her view which is an incredibly healthy way to see it which is why she's actually done well okay comfort or i should say pleasure your version of pleasure or fame which one do you get rid of so we've done this before but the last time i didn't hear you talk about security or comfort uh-huh that's a big deal to me uh-huh that's a huge deal partly because you grew up without money uh the money thing was that it wasn't like we had um uh like poverty anxiety uh it was more so i'm a pretty big feeler and chaos doesn't agree with me like intensity agrees with me but complexity doesn't agree with me ambiguity and uncertainty really do not agree with me at all oh yeah um so that's a good thing for us to work on actually let's put a pin in that because we need to come back because that means you're an anxious person anxiety is unfocused fear and there's a way to fix that okay there's a way to fix that without benzodiazepine drugs okay well i imagine that lots of other people are feeling the same here what would i say

29:46given where i'm at right now i would actually say that the next one that could go would be fame and that I would keep myself with safety, comfort, security. I think that that would be top of the tree for me right now. Yeah. So that would mean that the acclaim that you actually get from what you do for a living right now would go to the population, which would mean that you'd have to do something else for a living. That would suck a lot. That would kind of suck, right? Yeah. But I would have 100 out of 100 security, comfort. I don't know. I mean, maybe this is me speaking from my ivory tower. maybe what's changed the guy with the top you know three podcasts or something in the world yeah yeah yeah by the time that by the time that this comes out Spotify will have released 2025 Wrapped which is Modern Wisdom's eighth on the planet dude that's unbelievable I got the I got the press release that's sweet today yeah it's fucking crazy I'm on top of Jay Shetty a position I've always wanted to be in and actually I'm the power bottom just below Andrew Huberman so I'm in a Jay Shetty Andrew Huberman three way which I imagine the internet has just been waiting for this is what the world's been hoping for that's great congratulations thank you that's a really wonderful thing and the problem is that you're in a business that requires a claim that requires fans that requires followers it requires people who recognize you and trust you and so that kind of in in a way to say i don't really care about it is not meaningful because you you actually to do what you're able to do it has to be something that's important i think do you know what i think it is if i was being completely honest and i think maybe other people as they've played along at home may have felt the same thing.

31:20There's two worlds. There is, what is it that I, functionally, what am I driven by right now? Right. And what do I want to be driven by? Right. Like, what do I feel like my higher self? Like, if I was being incongruent, if I was coherent. Yeah. It's what do you want and what do you want to want? And so, what do you want to want is a really important exercise. I adore that. You know, the first ever essay that completely broke my brain is a guy called kyle eschenroeder it's no longer available his website got hacked and taken over by some like one of those fishing porn websites so you can't even see but i've got the pdf saved and it's what do you want to want and it was a 20 000 word essay and it it snapped me in half in like 2018 yeah it was so phenomenal it's really you know i'll i'll ask people to answer a bunch of questions for their effective mission statement for life and then i'll have them write their ideal mission statement and the difference between the two is what you want what you want to want and that's the essence, the Buddhist essence of right desire.

32:19Because what we want is right desire. The problem is not what you want. The problem is that your desires aren't right. You don't want the right things. For all of misery, pretty much, can be summed up in not wanting the right things. You don't need to do something differently. You need to want something differently. Correct. Well, your wants, Kyle's argument was that your wants define your path of least resistance. And if you can choose, if you can get yourself to want what you want to want, then you get to row with the tide as opposed to rowing against it. Yeah, that's right. And when you work with couples that are having trouble with infidelity, for example, the problem isn't the infidelity, it's the desire for infidelity.

33:00That's really what it comes down to. And what you need to do is to actually engineer a different kind of desire. that's how you fix problems that's how you fix problems in yourself and in your and in your relationship that's how you is is really getting into the whole concept of what you want is making sure that what you want and what you want to want are congruent that's a lifetime goal so so what we've established is that comfort is important to you or security is important to you and that you've built a life you've built a career that requires a lot of acclaim and so these are the things to keep an eye on these are always the things to keep an eye on that you'll make decisions and cut corners because you're trying to feel more secure and that you'll hang on doggedly to a claim and and and never hold it lightly you won't ever hold it lightly because this is an asset the claim that you have is a really really important asset professionally for you but it's also kind of who you understand who you are i mean i know the story of this podcast i mean you didn't start with millions of listeners no it took 450 episodes to hit 250 000 subscribers yeah and i moved to america with like 250 and yeah so the first half half of the show was like five percent of the subscribers yeah first half of the show to the fledgling podcasters out there if you're expecting quick success it is not it's a really important lesson.

34:26It took four years. It took four years and four years. I remember hearing you early on, as a matter of fact, this is really good. This is going to be really good. And it turns out it was true. Yeah. Well, game recognizes game, as they say. So anyway, all this is really super important self-knowledge because once you understand what beguiles you, you can manage yourself in a more effective way. Always a more effective way. We'll get back to talking in just one second. But first, if you have been feeling a bit sluggish, your testosterone levels might be the problem. They play a huge role in your energy, your focus, and your performance.

34:59But most people have no idea where those are or what to do if something's off, which is why I partnered with Function, because I wanted a smarter and more comprehensive way to actually understand what's happening inside of my body. Twice a year, they run lab tests that monitor over 100 biomarkers. They've got a team of expert physicians that analyze the data and give you actionable advice to improve your health and lifespan. And seeing your testosterone levels and tons of other biomarkers charted over the course of a year with actionable insights to actually improve them gives you a clear path to making your life better.

35:29Getting your blood work drawn and analyzed like this would usually cost thousands, but with Function, it's just$499. And right now you can get$100 off, bringing it down to 399 bucks. Get the exact same blood panels that I get and save that$100 by going to the link in the description below or heading to functionhealth.com slash modern wisdom. That's functionhealth.com slash modern wisdom. talk to me about the anxiety and uncertainty thing because it feels like that based on a lot of the people that i speak to the the hyper vigilance that people have from maybe an uncertain atmosphere growing up maybe communication wasn't super transparent and they needed to be able to detect the micro movements of exactly what was going on and read into sentences maybe love was contingent on performance maybe their nervous system just didn't feel soothed maybe maybe maybe maybe i think that that based on the conversations i have at the live shows as well the people that come up and do the meet and greet or the questions that i get that done at the q and a's afterward so many of them are basically around i i really fucking struggle with the uncertainty of the future yeah like tolerating ambiguity uncertainty unpredictability feels like some weird personal cuss yeah so uncertainty is a problem risk isn't by the way risk and uncertainty are different and people use them interchangeably uncertainty means you don't know what might happen so you can't assign probabilities so you can't manage contingencies risk is that you know what might happen so you can assign probabilities so you can manage contingencies that's the reason that people feel better when they buy insurance insurance is a happiness business what it does is it converts uncertainty into risk and it no longer becomes a source of misery.

37:12That's why anybody who buys a life insurance policy feels better after they do it because they've just turned their uncertainty into risk. Uncertainty is a source of fear and that stimulates the amygdala because the amygdala says it makes you hypervigilant. And when there's a lot of uncertainty, you're more vigilant than you would have been otherwise. And that's a source of negative emotion. So you're feeling this constant sort of negative emotion. Why is vigilance a source of negative emotion? because you're vigilant against threat. And it's the possibility of threat. When you're uncertain, it's funny, because, you know, there's all kinds of uncertainty that we don't worry about at all, right?

37:46Uncertainty, like, things might be great. You're not worried about that, right? It's funny because, you know, I do a lot of stuff on waiting. Waiting's a funny thing. There's waiting that's wonderful. It's like I'm waiting for Christmas. And the reason that the Christmas lights go up in America after Halloween is because we want to savor the season longer, because we want to wait longer. and that's positive. There are certain things that might happen and might not. And so we're anxious about it, but anxious in kind of a happy way, in an optimistic way. There are certain things that might go wrong and might be okay, but might be terrible.

38:20That's like tests from the doctor. And that's real anxiety. And then there's the one that you know it's going to be bad, that's dread. And so there's a whole range of motions of that. Sweets of different uncertainties. When it comes to waiting and uncertainty, for sure. So when people say, you know, I'm really worried about uncertainty, they're worried about threat. and threat vigilance is really part of human evolution. We've, you know, the species has survived because of threat vigilance in the way that we're vigilant in the face of uncertainty. The problem is it's really dysregulated. It doesn't work the way it's supposed to.

38:51We're supposed to be occasionally really fearful and then have a sudden burst. The HPA axis goes bonkers and we're going to start running and climb a tree. But that's supposed to be occasional and intense and not very frequent. How, just on that, how likely do you think it is that the ancestral evolutionary zebras don't get ulcers explanation for it comes and it goes and you shake it off? Do you think that that was ancestrally accurate? You think that that was like the... Yeah, I think it was. I don't think, they didn't have Twitter. And so they weren't sitting around going, I wonder how that tweet did.

39:32I understand on that, but what about the chronic, that guy in the next cave keeps eyeing up my missus and this has been going on for a long time, male parental uncertainty, the fear of abandonment of a male partner from a new mother. Those things have always existed for sure. And would that not cause this sort of chronic stress? Not chronic stress in the same way. It was a much sort of simpler, under-stimulated kind of environment where you could, I mean, when you live in bands of 30 to 50 individuals, it's a lot easier for you to have situational awareness. Now we live in an environment where you have no situational awareness because it's just too multidimensional.

40:13What's going on all the time. Something can be happening and you won't know about it all the time is really what it comes down to. So there's the big threats in, you know, 250 ,000 years ago, a neighboring band of Homo sapiens comes in and takes all your animal skins and flints and kills you. That's really, really scary. And then there's the smaller threats that you'd find where you're falling in the, and you're falling in the hierarchy in your band for some particular reason. Now it's everything all the time. Everything all the time is stimulating the amygdala. And we're getting this little drip of cortisol and, and, you know, people get these panic attacks.

40:46You know, it's like, it's not that long ago, by the way. I mean, I'll tell you what the, you know, Grandpa Williamson never said to Grandma Williamson, I had a panic attack behind the mule today.

41:00No, it wasn't a thing. What drives panic attack? It's a flooding of the HPA axis. The adrenal system goes berserk. It becomes incredibly dysregulated. And when you have a lot of time without devices and you're doing a job that's relatively repetitive and your brain is working the way it's supposed to, so the default mode network is on, when the right hemisphere of your brain is properly activated, which is the part that questions mystery and meaning, the why questions in your life, you're not going to be freaking out all the time. And that's what people are doing, is they're freaking out all the time because they're constantly distracted and they're overstimulated.

41:40That's what it comes down to. Is this an argument to chop wood and carry water more? Yeah. Yeah, well, it's an argument to live more like Grandpa Williamson, actually. But which is not ordinary anymore. That's the problem. He didn't have to think about it, but we do. Grandpa Williamson did also, I think he went to the Falklands War. He went to cause some tropical disease in the Falklands War. He fought in the Falklands War? I think it was the Falklands, yeah. That's really. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, that's a real source of meaning for these guys, is that they did these things. They did these hard things, and he wasn't looking at his phone the whole time.

42:15No, that's true. And he wasn't posting, you know, his Falklands War pictures to Instagram. I mean, his life was, in a way, more simpler. I mean, the pulsatile nature of life is, like, real interesting to me. Yeah. And the sort of flattening and the spreading of the curve. We've seen this really great demographer dude, Stephen J. Shaw. He's the best on the, as far as I can see, he's the best on the planet for birth rate decline. The best on the planet. He's a demographer. Yeah, yeah. I mean, he's self-trained, but he's done it. He's been obsessed. he created the birth gap documentary um brad wilcox is also fantastic on this one lyman stone also fantastic nick everstadt yeah yeah nicholas everstadt and and uh his wife as well although she's a different beast mary yeah fucking animal um isn't it so fortunate we get to live in this time with all of these cool people it's great it's unbelievable because you know you live in the ideal world and the ideal world is like an unbelievable sporgasport infinite anyway he's got this idea about the flattening of the vitality curve.

43:15So in the past, if you were 21 and you met a 21 year old, the likelihood that they're ready to have kids right now is pretty high. As you flatten this curve, you can imagine that there is a left to right, there is a time, and then height is what proportion of the entire population is ready to go at that time. You have both moved it rightward and you have flattened it down. And when you flatten it down, it means that the likelihood of you finding someone that is ready at the same time that you are ready is actually low. And as you know, in some of the research, if you stick about in a relationship with somebody for more than five, more than seven years, and no kids have come along, it is really, really tough to hold that together because your ancestral programming, your brain says to you, there is no world in which reliable contraception existed in paleo times.

44:03No kids have arrived. Maybe it's her, maybe it's me, but it's definitely one of us. and if we break up if i just find the way that she used to sip her tea and i thought was cute now fucking horrendous and driving me up the wall i i just feel like we just fell out of love we're not really too sure right and the people hate to hear this because the we're enjoying ourselves we're by we're bonding we're doing all the rest of it like i get it i get it but like there are was a psychology of biology there are some physics of the system that are risky to roll the dice against. I'm not saying it can't be done.

44:35Many of my friends have, but more of my friends haven't. I mean, you and I have talked about this a lot, about the evolution of desire and about David Buss's stuff and about the fact - The king. He's the king of this. He's really great. You know, I don't even know him personally and I cite him constantly. I got to meet him. We're in his city. We should have gone out. I know. We should, we should, we should, anyway, but, but the whole point is that there's this, it's a funny thing in relationships. There's this, they talk about the seven-year itch. It's actually a five-year itch in relationships where you're most likely to break up after five years.

45:03And actually, that's a divorce rate. So that's after you get married. And part of the reason for that is that the tension, the honeymoon is over, and people get angry with each other, and people start to have higher negative affect in the relationship. But that's when you start to, for example, fertility cues and resource cues go from positive to negative. And so, for example, women, they tend to admire their husbands less if their husbands are not doing well and it's at the five-year mark, they're starting to think, cut my losses? Even if they don't know they're thinking that. And men, if there's fertility issues, as you suggest, around five years, they start thinking, try someone else?

45:45That's the big problem. Isn't it horrible when our ultimate motives clash up against the much more publicly acceptable sort of proximate motives of things? Like, oh, well, you know, like we just didn't really feel the same way about each other. We didn't really, It's like, I wasn't sure that he could provide for me and my family, or I wasn't sure that her AMH level was actually where it needed to be in order to be able to keep this thing going. Yeah, and part of that is just because propaganda tells us that we're not biological creatures, that we don't have an evolutionary impulse behind us. And that's nonsense.

46:18The more that we actually understand how we're biologically wired, the more that we're actually able to stand up to our biology and live in our space of moral aspiration. The prefrontal cortex of the human brain is an incredible marvel. And it actually allows us, the fact that it's 30 % of our brain by weight allows us to make decisions consciously that the dog can't. Your dog's prefrontal cortex is wafer thin. That's why all it has is animal impulses. We, on the other hand, have moral aspirations. But you're not going to get beyond your animal impulses into the space of your moral aspirations unless you understand those animal impulses.

46:55That's why I teach about the animal impulses so that you know enough that you can reject them. You start from the bottom of the brain stem up. Absolutely. I mean, the whole, you know, the fact that if you don't actually understand how you're wired and what your impulses make you want to do, you're unable to stand up to it and say, I choose to behave differently. Yeah, it's a weird blessing, but also a burden or an obligation, perhaps. Like you're obliged if you want to capture all that is available up here. there's an entry price that you have to pay for this weird inheritance that you've got this like cosmic cognitive inheritance that you've been given if you want to if you want to make it work you're going to have to you can just live like your dog you can have the same moral goals as a squirrel and a lot of people do that you know Peterson had a great line about this it was a live event of his in like 2018 a show had been going for six years someone stands up at the end like they do in my Q &As.

47:56And he says, the depth of my consciousness causes me to suffer. Is it a blessing or a curse to feel everything so deeply? I was like, what a wonderful question. Give that guy a podcast. What did Jordan say? Thought for a moment. Said the only way out is through. You take more of the thing that poisons you until you turn it into a tonic that girdles the world around you. You can try and regress back into a more animalistic state. said it's too bloody late for that it's too bloody late for that and i thought it was such a very apocalyptic on brand but i thought it's such a wonderful answer yeah that's an ancient answer actually that's an ancient answer saint iranus in the fourth century said the glory of god is a man fully alive that means a man who's suffering you need to be fully alive because that is your teacher it's interesting because you know the buddhists have this math with his suffering is pain multiplied by resistance.

48:56And you can go to the therapy industrial complex in the Western world today to try to lower your pain, or you can try to be fully alive and lower your resistance. In so doing, what happens is that the suffering ultimately declines because you've turned it into learning. You've turned it into generativity. You've turned it into growth. And that's what Jordan means by you've got to go through. In other news, you've probably heard me talk about element before, and that's because I am frankly dependent on it and it's how I've started my day every single morning. This is the best tasting hydration drink on the market.

49:31You might think why do I need to be more hydrated because proper hydration is not just about drinking enough water it's having sufficient electrolytes to allow your body to use those fluids. Each grab and go stick pack is a science-backed electrolyte ratio of sodium potassium and magnesium. It's got no sugar, coloring, artificial ingredients or any other junk. This plays a critical role in reducing muscle cramps and fatigue while optimizing brain health, regulating your appetite, and curbing cravings. This orange flavor in a cold glass of water is a sweet, salty, orangey nectar, and you will genuinely feel a difference when you take it versus when you don't, which is why I keep going on about it.

50:05Best of all, there's a no questions asked refund policy with an unlimited duration. Buy it, use it all, and if you don't like it for any reason, they give you your money back and you don't even have to return the box. That's how confident they are that you'll love it. Plus, they offer free shipping in the US. Right now, you can get a free sample pack of Element's most popular flavors with your first purchase by going to the link in the description below, heading to drinklmnt.com slash modern wisdom. That's drinklmnt.com slash modern wisdom. The only way out is through. I remember this Daniel Kahneman idea.

50:35I think it's so great. I wonder if you've ever used this analogy in your work. imagine that you have a spring and on both ends you're pulling this spring your goal is to get the midpoint of the spring to go in one direction now you can either apply more pull to one end or you can reduce more pull from the other and the difference the thing that i thought was so clever about it was that if your solution is to hit the gas rather than to take your foot off the break yes you move the center of the spring but you have way more tension in the system i thought that it stuck with me i think that's such a it's a nice analogy great analogy because you pull more yes you're overriding it and you are pulling it through right but there's so much more tension in the system that's right and you're having to work harder yeah yeah yeah that's why you know the the zen buddhists it's an attitude of non-resistance an attitude of non-resistance Look, when it comes to suffering in general, and this is a lot of what I write about now, and part of the reason is because the most important teacher of the meaning of your life is your suffering.

51:42The most important. And one of the greatest ways for you to miss the meaning of your life is for you to try to avoid your suffering. Give me an example. So nobody ever said, I really figured out what I was made of that week at the beach in Ibiza. Now, they talked about when my mom died. when I almost lost my business, when I flunked out of college, when I got really sick, when I was truly scared and I made my way through it, when I understood, when I went through that suffering was my teacher about who I am as a person and the meaning of my life. What you find is that in large groups of people, you find that when you ask them to talk about the meaning of their life, they always talk about their terrible times.

52:26They always talk about their suffering. Always. That's the way it is. And if we have a culture that tries to get rid of pain, you have a culture that gets rid of meaning. It's not only get rid of pain, it's resist it, right? Yeah, well, more resistance is bad, just as trying to lower pain is bad. So you have a culture of that. That's what the therapy culture really is. The therapeutic culture is about getting rid of pain and not resisting anything, etc., etc. That's a really big problem because ultimately, at the end of the day, what that is is that's antithetical to finding the meaning of your life, to finding the significance, the purpose and coherence of your life.

53:00So what we need is we need a culture of the Spartan Fife, as Ralph Waldo Emerson put it. There's the best essay on this, by the way. You've read it. But everybody who watches Modern Wisdom needs to read Self-Reliance by Ralph Waldo Emerson. 1841. It's like, read it tonight. It's an essay. It's like Ayn Rand, but not creepy.

53:28I liked what else I read recently. Is there a Rilke poem on the shortness of life? Yeah. Oh, fucking fuck. Yeah, yeah. Talking about walking through some madmen. But the whole point is we need a culture that embraces the inevitable suffering that is part of the human existence. That says, you know, so I ask my students to repeat after me, my suffering is sacred. And it's like a really fun teacher, right? and just have a little mantra at the beginning of the day. Say, I'm truly grateful for the happy things and the fun things that are going to happen this day. But I'm also grateful for the trouble I'm going to have because therein lies my growth.

54:10Bring it on. And have that, to face it, to face up to it. It's a really wonderful thing. It's actually one of the reasons that people get happier when they're older. People start to get happier in their 50s and 60s. And almost every, it's like I tell my students because almost everybody's happy declines in their 20s and 30s and 40s. But almost everybody from early 20s until about 50, their happiness declines. And they think it's going to go up because their success and money, etc. Their dreams are going to come true. They are. The problem is that you're going to get less enjoyment and it's going to be trouble.

54:47Almost everybody gets happy. So I tell my students, it's a good news, bad news story. So the bad news is that your happiness is declining. The good news is that I'm getting happier. oh see ya your 50s and 60s almost everybody's happier and part of that is because you start to understand suffering for the first time you're like oh oh i'm not going to be suffering about this tomorrow so i'm going to get a head start feeling better today you you you understand yourself you understand the nature of the experience it's the sort of transient yeah nature of these things i read this is a big sort of lesson for me that i really struggled earlier and I still struggle with now, which was, this is going to be the way it is forever.

55:30And it causes you to not savor things that are good, that are happening, and overly fear things that are bad, that are happening. When the world's on top of you, it doesn't last for as long as you're worried about. And when you're on top of the world, it doesn't last for as long as you hope. Right. That's the hedonic treadmill. I mean, the fact that emotions are transient, because emotions are not there to give you a good day. Emotions are there as a signal that there are threats and opportunities in the environment and that you need to avoid them or approach them. That's all your emotions are.

56:01They're just neurobiological signals to you. Negative emotions, fear, anger, disgust, and sadness, there's only four, and they're in response to four different threats. Thank God for those threats. They keep you alive. But when you understand them as particular signals, then you can metacognitively manage them by understanding them better. And that's one of the great, that's one of the reasons that people get remarkably less neurotic. It's one of the ways that personality reliably changes as people get older. They become more agreeable. They become more conscientious. They don't become more open to experience, but they almost always get less neurotic because they have a better understanding of the fact that life is suffering.

56:40When it comes to... negative experiences, what are the most reliable levers to lower negative feelings? So the most reliable is anything that's metacognitive. It's understanding of negative emotion. That's really what it comes down to. So, okay, so there's two different questions here. Number one is what will actually help you with negative emotions? Number two is what is the technique in your life? And so the least productive ways are drugs and alcohol and workaholism, like we talked about. And now it'll be mindless internet use or something like that. Sedation through distraction. Yeah, sedation through distraction, et cetera.

57:27So it just kind of goes into those categories. The techniques that work really well and are extremely productive because they make you better through your suffering and they actually alleviate a lot and they're non-resistant in their way. Number one is religious activity. And number two is picking up heavy things and running around. So people ask me, do I get happier when I go to the gym? No, you get less unhappy. if you have naturally low negative affect if you're naturally a very low intensity unhappiness person which is to say that you're a cheerleader or you're a judge you're not going to be able to stay in the gym because you're not going to feel better you're going to be like it just hurts so you're saying that as we look around the gym the more jacked people are the harder they find life generally yeah that means they have high intensity negative affect that's the reason you love the gym.

58:16They're being alleviated. Yeah. And you get lots and lots of, you get a lot of relief when you go to the gym of your, from your intense negative affect. So jacked guys are sad guys. Jacked guys are guys with issues. Jacked guys are guys with issues. If you're a 61 year old and you look like you go to the gym a lot, it means that you're, you just, but the other thing is religious activity and religious activity is really, really important. And that's part of, by the way, that's own morning protocol starts with number one i get up at 4 30 4 45 to 5 45 in the gym every day i have a gym in my house then i go to mass every day i'm a catholic you go to mass every day because it goes body and soul because i have a negative effect problem you're saying that you're using church and religion as a performance enhancer for your happiness that's right and it's completely legal yeah wow okay so take me through your if you were to create an evidence-based morning routine yeah But maximizing well-being, what would it look like?

59:16So I maximize both well-being and productivity. So this is really, really important because I'm in a creative profession. I've got to write, think, speak, teach. I've got to work every day on having creative output because I have a weekly column and I write books and I have to give talks, et cetera, et cetera. Your output's terrifying. And I have a podcast. I mean, it takes a lot of work, this whole thing. So I need to be super productive, And that means my brain has to be optimized for that. And I want to alleviate high levels of negative affect. So number one is the Brahma Mahurta, which is in Sanskrit means the creator's time.

59:54That has been around for 6 ,000 years. And the whole idea is if you get up before dawn, you've already won the day because that actually gives you better concentration, better focus, and better creativity. If you get up when the sun is warm, you've already lost the first battle. And now a lot of people are like, yeah, my chronotype, I'm a night owl. No, I used to think I was a night owl tool too. I was actually just a musician who drank too much. Morning larks, the chronotype is probably 60 % environmental and only about 40 % genetic. So everybody can be a morning lark. It's harder for some. I never get up with an alarm clock ever, ever, ever, ever.

1:00:32And year after year after year, I still have to. I would sleep in if I could, but that's the first battle. And that's really a big swinger in improving your negative. Yeah, you've really started off with a difficult one that, especially if you're in summer somewhere and you think, oh, that's 4.30. No, no, of course. If you're in Helsinki in July, you're not going to be able to do it. No sleep. No sleep. That's right. You got to get up. You got to get up before you went to bed. So, I mean, your results may vary. You got to figure out how to, I mean, you never make the perfect enemy of the good on this.

1:01:03The second part of that is what you do first thing, and that's substantial physical activity. Exercise is really important. So a lot of guys will write to me, 22-year-old guys, graduated from college, feel aimless, don't know what to do, feel really depressed, living with mom, whatever. I say, okay, you don't have to go to the gym and pick up heavy things and do something insane, like your routine. I recommend getting up a half hour before dawn and walking for an hour without devices outside. Walk, not under treadmill, outside, hear the crunch of the gravel under your feet. No devices. is this will give you a sense of transcendence.

1:01:35It will wake up the right hemisphere of your brain, which is what you need for a sense of meaning and mysticism. It's important. I mean, it's great to listen to modern wisdom, but not during the walk, right? And doing that while the sun comes up has special benefits. Huberman talks about that an awful lot, but it's very well studied that this is really important. Okay, so combine these two for me. If you're saying that it's great to pick up heavy things, and some people like to pick up heavy things, but you're also saying it's great to be out on a walk outside. like those are incompatible unless you're working out outside i know right and and that's great if you can actually do that if you've got an outdoor gym because you know you're lift atx shout out lift atx in austin texas venice beach whatever yeah that's so but and so you got to make choices along those lines i have a gym in my house so i go downstairs to the basement from 4 45 to 5 45 every day um i get about i take about one one day off per month because of travel i'm on the road want.

1:02:29Then I clean up and I go to mass every day. And that's important to me. I mean, these are my religious beliefs. And by the way, I go with my wife. We go to 6.30 mass every day when I'm home. And I'm home about half the time. And here I'm in Austin, Texas. I'll go to mass tomorrow morning at 6.30. There's a church near my, my, there's, it's like being Catholic is great. It's like Starbucks. It's a complete franchise system. It's the same every place. There's one in every corner. It's unbelievable. Exactly what you're going to get. Yeah, exactly right. Um, so but that's important to me. But that the whole point is not Catholicism.

1:03:02The whole, my path is not the only path. The point is transcendence and transcendence by getting smaller and making the universe larger. For some people, Vipassana meditation works really, really well, but that's, that's getting soul in line with body first thing in the morning. And there's a lot of neuroscience research that talks about why that's so important because I'm driving toward high F high wellbeing and high productivity. Those are the twin goals and doing this alignment really works, really helps a lot. Because by seven, then you're ready to, and I haven't taken any nutrition yet, except for, you know, 15 grams of creatine monohydrate and, you know, electrolyte, something salty.

1:03:44And yeah. So I'm not getting any calories. That's when I apply the psychostimulant. That's when I apply the caffeine. Because you don't want to use caffeine to wake up. You want to use caffeine to focus. Yes. We all know about how the A2A adenosine cycle works in the brain. No doubt everybody in your show knows about this. I piped on about it. Look, I got a ton of shit because for a long time, Element, that's been a great partner on the show and I fucking love them. They're terrific. My big pitch was for the first 90 minutes of the day, your adenosine system isn't what's in charge your adrenal system is.

1:04:16And salt acts on your adrenals more than it does. If you want to fuck about with cortisol and you want to like increase that using caffeine. But so many people have a mid-afternoon, early afternoon slump, and then need to crank the caffeine lever again. But this is - They drank their caffeine too early. Correct. Yeah, just push it. I'm telling you, New Year's resolution, push it back by two hours, by three hours, and just see what happens. Especially if you're using something like Nutonic as well, because the L-theanine is going to smooth out. Or just take L-theanine, you don't need to use Nutonic.

1:04:46Take L-theanine capsules with your morning coffee. And if you are really, really tired, you can go harder on the coffee, but the L-thenean will smooth out the letters. And then if you add 10 plus grams of creatine in, I've... You're in good shape. Because it's the creatine monohydrate, the newest research says it's neuroprotective. It's not just good for, you know, muscle protein synthesis. So it's a really, I mean, creatine is one of the most studied supplements. Super product. Super product. And I take a multivitamin and I do all the stuff that sensible people do. Okay, so you're up before the sun?

1:05:20Yeah, up before the sun, hard workout. out which is 75 resistance 25 zone 2 and then I'm going to be active for the rest of the day so I get another five miles of walking over the course of the day the rest of the day which is important go to Mass go to church which is or my meditation five miles like 10 000 that's 10 000 steps I just don't like saying 10 000 steps because it's so hackneyed you know uh okay you just got to do it differently I gotta be different I gotta be me anyway so I come back from once we come back from church that's when caffeine that's when caffeine is entered as a picture and i use about 350 milligrams of caffeine a day it's usually it's not a small amount it's not a small amount it's a one bolus i grew up i grew up in seattle dude i grew up when near the only starbucks in the world okay yeah so i'm used to burnt coffee for me the best coffee is like hot water through charcoal briquettes you know it's like if you if you made something called indonesian ashes i would buy it.

1:06:16Anyway, so then, um, and then I take first pro take first protein. I try to get between 60 and 70 grams of protein first thing in the morning. And that means whey protein with, with Greek yogurt and berries and to get the micronutrients with the berries and the nuts and there, and that's all I've, that's the only nutrition I take until the middle of the day when I get another bowl of protein, but that Greek yogurt has a ton of tryptophan in it. And tryptophan is real good for mood management. What's your favorite brand of Greek yogurt for this? I like, well, fadier's great, Chobani's good. Chobani's lovely.

1:06:48Oikos is nice. Okay, so it's not like there's something that you found that doesn't have the… Unflavored, fat-free Greek yogurt. It sounds joyless, but when you put some delicious berries and nuts in it, it's the best thing ever. I should be able to make some good protein powder in it too. Yeah, for sure. And you spike it with protein powder. You get up to 70 grams of protein, and that's a big bolus of protein. So you're getting the right amino acid that you need. And all of that is really good for focus. And so I get four hours of an appropriate amount of dopamine in my prefrontal cortex, equivalent to what I would, if I were taking modafinil.

1:07:22I mean, if I equivalent to taking an ADHD medication and you can't get four hours of, I mean, if you're doing creative work, generally speaking, you can, you can expect two hours a day. You can extend that by about a hundred percent. If you design your, your protocol to, to make your brain chemistry work the right way. I'm happier and productive. A quick aside, you've probably heard experts like Dr. Rhonda Patrick talk about the benefits of omega-3s. They reduce, hello, omega-3s. There they are. They reduce brain function. No, they don't. They support brain function. Maybe I should take more. They support brain function, reduce inflammation, improve heart health, and are backed by hundreds of studies.

1:08:01But here's the thing, all omega-3s are not made the same. Most brands cut corners. They use cheap fish oil, skip purity testing, throw in fillers, and call it a day. But with Momentus, you know you're getting the highest quality Omega-3s on the market. They're NSF certified for sport and they're tested for heavy metals and purity. So you can rest easy knowing anything that you take from Momentus is unparalleled when it comes to rigorous third-party testing. What you read on the label is what's in the product and absolutely nothing else. Best of all, Momentus offers a 30-day money-back guarantee.

1:08:30So you can buy it and try it for 29 days. And if you don't love it, they'll just give you your money back. Plus, they ship internationally. Right now, you can get 35 % off your first subscription and that 30-day money-back guarantee by going to the link in the description below or heading to livemomentous.com slash modernwisdom and using the code modernwisdom at checkout. That's L-I-V-E-M-O-M-E-N-T-O-U-S dot com slash modernwisdom and modernwisdom at checkout. This is the happier and productive thing is an interesting non-trade-off that you're making work. So it makes me think about varicoseal surgery.

1:09:07So I'm going to bring this back. Wait. So most interventions that increase testosterone decrease fertility. If you go on TRT, if you start taking PEDs, your fertility reliably drops. Sperm count goes down, motility, morphology also usually not too great. LH and FSH, like just super suppressed. But one of the few interventions that I know, which is varicocele surgery, which is to improve the blood flow to testicles, makes both go up. They see a mean change, I think 120 points on tests, which is, you know, for a lot of guys now going to be between like 25 and maybe even like 50 % or 40%, something like that.

1:09:54And you also see improvements in sperm count and motility. Basically makes your boys younger. Correct. It makes everything work a little bit better if you've got varicocele, obviously. And this is one of those few interventions where having a bit more of a global perspective. So for instance, it's one of the reasons that we designed the Newtonic drink. It felt like when I was drinking energy drinks, usually like I was borrowing health from tomorrow for today. And I didn't want that. I wanted something that felt like, oh, this is good. This is like compounding over time, and this is contributing to better performance.

1:10:29And that's what you're talking about here too. Yes, that's exactly right. That's exactly right. You can turn back the clock in a lot of ways, because you're doing exercise i mean peter atia talks about this a lot exercise is the single best medicine the single best longevity drug you can get what are you piecing your uh energy your uh exercise routine around what's that look like to you so i've been when i was in my late 30s when uh you look fantastic it's great well thank you chris i appreciate that a lot it's gonna it's gonna come in here, it's like with a tank top or something, but nobody needs to see that.

1:11:02Um, so when I was in my late thirties, I changed my life up a lot. I quit drinking alcohol cause I had to, it wasn't, it wasn't going no place good. And I recognized that if I didn't exercise that the future, I was going to be, I was going to be broken down. I just looked at a lot of people that were in my profession. I was an academic professor in those days, looking at a lot of people who were in their 60s. And it was grim. So I started doing what I do with everything else. I started studying it, studying the science of, you know, the exercise science, which when I'm in my 30s was way less advanced than what it is now.

1:11:37But we still knew a lot. You didn't have to get your science through muscle and fitness. There were papers on PubMed that you could actually understand what the proper exercise protocols looked like. But I did actually something that was more important than that. I started every place I was going. I'm starting to tour a lot as a, as a lecturer. And every time I was in a city, I would find the oldest iron gym I could find. Cause that's where the old guys hang out. That's where the guys in the seventies hang out that are still kind of, they're still pretty shredded. And they're like, you know, and, and now, now I'm one of those old guys, right?

1:12:11My wife says sleeping with me is like holding in a leather bag of ropes.

1:12:20like yeah thanks that's that's nice anyways a sack of ropes that's exactly what my ambition was but anyway i'd go to these old guys i would say give me advice how do you not get hurt how do you stay shredded what do you eat and i started just copying these old guys i was just collecting data but they're not necessarily the healthiest they're not necessarily the healthiest but that's why i wanted the oldest guys that's why i didn't go for the youngest shredded guys because you know when you're 29 years old, you can look at a portrait of health and have, you know, you can have a right ventricular hyperplasia or something.

1:12:54Who knows? You can get something like hypertrophy of your ventricles because you're taking performance enhancing drugs. You can be on death's door when you're - Fuck, right. When you look like, and you're unable to have children. But if you're 75 years old and you're still picking up heavy things in the gym, a lot of things are going right. that means your back doesn't hurt too much and your joints are pretty healthy and you're keeping proper muscle mass and you're keeping proper body fat and what it did was it started me on a set of protocols that i've been adjusting and adjusting and adjusting i'm still adjusting it by the way i mean i'm down i'm 15 pounds lighter than i was five years ago because i adjusted way up my protein content in my in my exercise protocols and what it comes down to is basically this you need a proper balance of zone two cardio and resistance training and the older you get the less heroic IQ need to be under the, under the weights.

1:13:46And so I hate it. I don't want that. Right. I still want to do heavy squats and I can't do that anymore because I'm going to hurt myself is what it comes down to. But you can maintain a lot of muscle mass. And so you can actually get rid of it. Yeah. I can maintain sub 10 body fat and, and keep, and keep muscle mass. That's absolutely wild. And part of it is because genetics and I'm thin, right? But part of it is, I mean, you can, you can do a lot just by having good protocols, by being a really, really disciplined person. It also helps I don't drink alcohol. Well, it's not. Okay, so the alcohol thing is a big part.

1:14:16And what you're doing with a structure and a framework is you're trying to not rely on discipline. You're trying to just follow the program. I mean, if I could give, one of the things that I did that was great, I did lots of things in my 20s that were fucking ridiculous, especially. You were a club promoter in your 20s. I was. I spent a decade and a half sniffing random bags of unpronounceable white powder from dudes called Greg that were in the bathroom of some fucking, like unpronounceable nightclub in the northeast of the uk if this should be fine well i mean i'm made of rubber and magic what's it gonna do that was my point with covid when covid came along my main takeaway was that covid should be scared of me not be me scared of covid like if you get into his blood he's like what the fuck is inside of this like get us i'm no way no thank you i'm leaving um but the thing that i'm super happy with is that i started training in the gym me Mike Thurston, he was one year younger than me.

1:15:10We trained at the Center for Sporting Excellence in Newcastle University. And I have been four days a week, three days a week on average compliance since I was 18 years old. It's so good. And the point is, if you are in your 20s, even if you're in your 30s, what you're doing is it's kind of like an investment into a future bank account. It's about health. Forget that bit. Forget the ATIA, you're not going to fall over, you can pick your kids up when you're 70. That doesn't matter. What it means is that when you get to 37 or probably even 47, you can maintain a beach ready physique on two training sessions a week.

1:15:48You can do less than everybody else and look better than everybody else and not have to work as hard. So it's all, and you look great now, right? And it's good for your health and it's good for your mental health and like all of those things. But the main one that I can see is I am like an inheritor of shit that I did. Yeah. And it means that now I just, I don't have to work as hard. And it's like what every, it's this weird side effect that every gym bro didn't ever intend to be doing. Right. But realizes as they get a bit older, ah, I just, I don't really need to train all that much. And look, I'm never going to be shredded as I was when I was 25, but I hold on pretty fucking.

1:16:27Yeah, yeah. And your wife doesn't go, eww, we take her shirt. But it's also, as you get older, you find that you want to do more days in the gym. And part of the reason for that is because of mood management. It's so incredibly effective as a means of mood management to pick up heavy things and run around. I do seven days a week. How are you splitting the resistance training into cardio? Yeah, so it depends on the day and actually where I am or what I'm doing. So if I'm someplace where I'm going to be relatively sedentary, then I'll do a lot more zone two first thing in the morning. So I just plan it out according to that.

1:17:01If I'm in more pain for whatever reason, because I'm stiff, I'll actually do more stretching, more yoga is what I'll do. So I apply it in particular ways. If I'm under an ordinary routine, then on the weekends when I'm actually walking a lot with my family, with my wife, then I'll actually do 100 % will be resistance. I'll have a big pull day and a big push day, for example, for an hour of push and an hour of pull. And it's a lot. I mean, it's a, but I'm not using the kind of weights and i'm not putting the i'm not having the impact on my joints and i'm spreading things out enough that i'm actually not getting hurt covering which is the great thing about being older what's your favorite zone too my favorite zone i have an elliptical i'm i'm a weak man it's just you know yeah dude honestly i i did this at the start of the year in mexico as we're on a trip in mexico and uh just put the treadmill at 15 degrees yeah three miles an hour and you will just hold, I mean, people that are way better than me probably would need to push it, between 3 and 3.4, something like that, and you will just hold like 140, 150 BPM.

1:18:04Yeah. And you can text, you can think, you can... Yeah, no, it's good. And I'm like, oh my God, 45 minutes of that a couple of times a week. No, it's great. And my daughter, who, we have a treadmill too, because my kids are, two of my three kids are complete gym rats. I mean, absolute gym rats. They're military. Good. And my daughter's a second lieutenant of the Marine Corps right now. She's 4 '11", she's 100 pounds. She does show that the treadmill's not going to make it. Well, she'll put it up at 30 degrees or some crazy thing like this, like practically, it looks like it's straight up. And then she'll put on a pack that's 70 pounds on her 100-pound frame and go for an hour.

1:18:44She's the animal. So that's, I mean, that's hardcore. But then again, you know, she's 22 years old. Wow. Okay, evening routine. So the evening routine is a little bit different, because what you want is mood management and sleep. It's not mood management or productivity. You want mood management and sleep. And so that's a slightly different routine. And that routine starts at dinner. And one of the mistakes that a lot of people make is that they eat dinner too late. And, you know, I lived in Spain for a long time. I've lived off and on in Spain for 35 years. And dude, no. 10 p.m., I'm sorry. I mean, it's like, oh, it's so great.

1:19:16The lifestyle, that's unhealthy. I'm sorry. You know, it's like, lo siento mucho, pero no se puede hacer eso. It's like in Spain, it's not good to do that. And so when we moved to the United States, that was a hard transition for my wife, who is from Barcelona. Oh, that's interesting. I've always thought that one of the worst incompatibilities that you could have with somebody that you loved was bedtimes. You want to go to bed at nine and they want to go to bed at two. Yeah. That would be difficult to navigate. I hadn't accounted for the fact that somebody could want to eat dinner at six and somebody else could want to eat dinner at 10.

1:19:49Exactly right. And that was, you know, we got through it, man. We've been married 34 years, but now we both eat at 6. And part of the reason is because, you know, we're in our 60s, and so we actually need an evening protocol that actually works. And we have to get up early in the morning. She doesn't get up at 4.45, but she gets up at 6 o 'clock. She sleeps more than I do. I need about six and a half hours of sleep. She needs closer to 8. So to actually be, have her, you know, biology working the way it's supposed to be working. So it starts at 6 o 'clock. And what that means is, you know, your last protein-rich meal, really your last meal should be a couple, three hours before you go to sleep.

1:20:26For all sorts of reasons that Rhonda Patrick talks about a lot. 3-2-1. Yeah, exactly right. Exactly right. So, and it shouldn't be your heaviest meal. And there's a lot of things that go into that. Now, having never any caffeine with dinner. Never drink any caffeine with dinner. I mean, you can actually get away with it better when you're younger. but let me tell you, Chris, when you're 61 like me, it's like I just looked at this. This is so delicious, what you gave me. It has 120 milligrams of caffeine in it. I'll be up cleaning the garage tonight or something. The fact that you opened it in the same room as yourself is...

1:20:57I know. It's like I smelled that thing and I'm not sleeping tonight, but you become way more. The metabolism of caffeine changes a lot with age and almost everybody. So that's why benzodiazepine drugs is the same kind of thing, that you have to titrate what you use for going to sleep or waking up very differently as you get older. And a lot of people will have insomnia when they're older because they're drinking an afternoon coffee and they don't realize that that's what's happening. That's a really common thing. So no caffeine. I recommend no alcohol in the evenings for anybody, even for people who can drink appropriately, not doing that because that just messes up your sleep architecture.

1:21:35And the hardest one for me is sweets. I have a huge sweet tooth. All former drinkers all love sweets. because you metabolize in the same way. And the result of it is that I want... It's sedative. The big chunk of sugar is the same, like, oh, so good. It's so good. But it's just not good for your sleep architecture is the way that that works. Of the three, sweets are a little less bad than the other two is what it comes down to. Then actually, walking right after you eat is really important. And so we walk 30 to 40 minutes after dinner every night when I'm home. And I'm home about half the time, so I get to do that.

1:22:09And that's really good for you because it actually, the way that your insulin response, your glucose, et cetera, et cetera. So just much better for your sleep and mood management later on. And then getting to sleep, actually going to bed. Going to bed is really important. And if you're sleeping with your partner, this is the best thing ever because you could actually work on both your mood management and your relationship by going to bed early, but don't go to sleep early. The thing to do is to actually have about five minutes of hardcore oxytocin release by staring into each other's eyes in bed.

1:22:44This really, really, really works. Now, this is more important for women. Women have about three times as much oxytocin as men. That's why women need more eye contact than men. Men need more touch than women. Women need more eye contact than men. Hold hands while you stare into each other's eyes deeply for five, ten minutes and you're having a real conversation. You can save most marriages, by the way, by holding hands more and always looking at each other in the eyes when you talk. This will save most marriages. And I can add a couple more things and like having more fun and praying together or something, but eye contact and touch is super important.

1:23:18ABT, always be touching, always be touching. It's what it comes down to. And never be not looking at each other in the eyes when you're talking. That's in bed or out of bed. But in bed, that's a really good way to do it. Reading to your partner is an incredibly good way to work. Reading to your partner. Reading to your partner. or being, yeah, or being read to. And there's a whole bunch of really interesting studies on this, but it's like, for me, it's like narcotics. If you read to me in a feminine Spanish accent in bed.

1:23:50Unbelievable. And so, you know, we've been reading Psalms and love poetry and things we read to each other a lot at night is really what it comes down to. It's a really, really, really good thing. A nice bonding experience. Yeah. And then actually getting to bed on time, getting to bed at a reasonable time. And so you're managing your blood sugars and your blood chemistry, your blood glucose, et cetera, through your activities, et cetera. And then you're doing what actually your brain needs, which is connection and relaxation in a really, really healthy way. And these are the protocols that when I'm home, at least we use pretty regularly.

1:24:25It's helped a lot because I'm an insomniac. And so I need to be really rigorous about my sleep hygiene. Is there a risk of people over-optimizing well-being to the point of neurosis? Oh, for sure. And that's the reason that wearables can be a real curse for a lot of people. What do you use for wearables? Whoop. You use Whoop. That's great. Those guys, Will Ahmed, it's a great company. Sat in that seat. He's a terrific entrepreneur. It's fantastic at what they do, but I understand the health anxiety thing. And Aura, same thing. Yeah. And so you have to be real cognizant of that. And some people like my, my wife doesn't use her wearable when she's in bed because she doesn't want to know how many minutes she slept and how many minutes she was awake and what her sleep score is.

1:25:06She doesn't want those data. Her life is better when she doesn't have those data. So you got to figure out how much data you need and not to gorge on it in such a way that you become really, really neurotic. Some people are. And so I have to be pretty careful about that. But what I find is that when I take the cognition, the consciousness out of everything, and I just turn it into what I do when I wake up in the morning, what I do before I go to bed at night, that my life is better. Because I'm able to use the cycles. Well, you've got a system two, system one-ness, right? Yeah. You've got to go, okay.

1:25:40And this is why, you know, when I first started the show, and it's one of the great things about having a ledger of proof of work of where you were at at what time the first two or three years of the show was me being a productivity bro it was me talking about morning routines and peter c brown make it stick learning how to learn and ebbing house forgetting curves and spaced repetition and anki note cards and like fucking evernote external brains it was all that because you have to go through this sort of big over complicated is the solution over here or over there or is it this thing and you go really hard and deep on this and then you move on to the health and fitness thing and then you move on to the for me the sort of relational thing and then you move into the culture thing and then my current era is like the emotions thing right it's like the emotional right i'm like i'm gonna get below the neck that's right and the but below the neck is still above the neck because psychology is biology all right fucking all right professor um

1:26:42the realization is you're going to have to do a much more obsessive version of this first you're going to have to do a very deliberate it's going to look super nerdy it's going to be really clunky you're probably going to hate it half the shit that you do is going to fall away right because for you the past not just doesn't work but mass may or mass just doesn't work but breath work does yeah whatever like you're going to find your particular flavor of what it is and that's going to take time yeah so I think that everybody needs to go through a productivity bro phase and I was fortunate that I did basically five years of like this obscene morning routine maybe compared with yours it's comparable but like this big you know opulent two and a half hour monstrosity this cathedral of stuff that I would do I get up and I'd walk I'd come back and I'd sit down journal journal and then I would do breath work and then I would meditate and then I would read and then I would do yin yoga and then I would prep my food and then I would go to the gym and then I would come back and it'd be midday.

1:27:42And I'd have got up at 7am and I'm like, well, I've done so like all of the things I wanted to do, I've done. And that was me trying to reach escape velocity from the adult infant that sniffed random bags of drugs for 15 years. Yeah, I got it. I got it completely. And, and you know, that, that ultimately is not the solution. What that is, is gaining information. That's not the solution. So as a matter of fact, when it comes to the person that you want to be, that's not a problem you can solve. That's a problem you can understand. There's two kinds of problems. There's the solvable problems and the understandable problems.

1:28:14There's the complicated problems of life and the complex problems of life. Complicated problems you can solve with enough brain power and enough discipline and enough computational horsepower and enough information. That's like a jet engine or making a toaster or, you know, that's actually figuring out how to put together a podcast. That's a complicated problem. Complex problems are super easy to understand, but they're impossible to solve. You can only live them. That's like a football game. It's very simple. One team has more goals than the other. But the reason that you care about it is because you can't solve it in advance.

1:28:50You can only live it in real time. My marriage is the ultimate complex problem. I can't solve it. I'll never, Chris, I'll never solve it. My wife, before I came over, she said, I love you. She texted me. We text all the time. And when I finish this, she might be super pissed off at me. I don't know. Let's hope not. Well, I don't know. She's Spanish, and that's part of the complexity. But, I mean, that's why I love my marriage. That's why I love my cat and not my toaster. Because my toaster is complicated and my cat is complex. That's why. All the things you really care about are complex. Your life, you, the Christmas is a complex problem.

1:29:31You start off as a bro trying to treat Christmas as a complicated problem. And what you do find at the end of the day is the complexity therein to understand it and actually live your life. talking earlier on about the do people need more happiness less unhappiness what are the experiences in life that give people the most pain what makes us miserable the fastest reliably uh is uh sadness is what is the the hardest thing that people can actually bear and what's sadness sadness is uh losing something or someone that you love that's what that's what reliably brings you the most pain is loss. Is that grief?

1:30:14Yeah. Well, grief is an extreme form of sadness. Right. And you know, that's the, when, when somebody is removed from your life, that's the most pain that people actually go through. That's the negative emotion that's most intense. And part of the reason is because that is on its face, the most catastrophic of the occurrences. That's why you're the most averse to it. That's why you have the most pain from it. You know, there's a, this, this little place in your brain, this dorsal anterior cingulate cortex in your brain, that little thing in your limbic system, that gives you what's called affective pain.

1:30:43Pain has two parts, sensory and affective. Sensory pain is really the stimulus from the nerve endings when you burn yourself on the stove or something. That has to do with inflammation. Affective pain is where it hits your brain and you say, I hate this, right? So there's ouch and I hate it. So when you physically hurt yourself, that's what happens. That's a good distinction. Yeah. And there's two parts. And it's, you know, it's working in different parts of your brain. So the pain has two parts. When you have mental pain, like rejection or loss, that's only the affective component. And that's worse.

1:31:16That's worse. Now, interestingly, acetaminophen, which you, Brit's called paracetamol, I think, that's Tylenol. That works on the affective component of pain. Whereas as Advil, you know, ibuprofen, that works on the sensory component of pain. So that lowers inflammation. Non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, they work on inflammation. whereas Tylenol works on the affective component. Tylenol actually doesn't make you feel less pain. It just makes you care less. Is that right? Yeah. That's why when you take Tylenol and ibuprofen, when you take acetaminophen and ibuprofen together, it's a potent thing.

1:31:49It works on the two parts of pain really effectively. Oh, how interesting. And it's actually, that mix is better than opiates. That actually is more effective than opiate drugs in managing pain. But here's the point. When you're really, really, really sad and there's a study of college students who are in bad breakups. And some of them get Tylenol and some of them don't. Those who take Tylenol, a course of Tylenol, are about a third less heartbroken. No way. Yeah. Wow. But did you not say earlier on that we want to embrace our suffering? Yeah. We want to feel our suffering. Of course. What you want to do is manage it.

1:32:24And so what you don't want to do is eradicate it, but there are times when it's good to manage it. How do you know when it's time to manage it and when it's time to feel it? When you want to know when it's there, but you don't want it to actually interfere with your ability to live your life. That's usually at the therapeutic line when they talk. And that's one of the reasons that over-the-counter analgesics are fine, but opiates are bad for most people. And one of the reasons that people will take opiates is because they're trying to use them as an analgesic against the pain of life, just the pain of life, the pain of life.

1:32:59And that's a really dangerous business. Why do breakups hurt so much? because they're a signal to you that you're going to be cast out of your tribe and walk the savannah and die alone. It's that you're going to die alone. That's why breakups hurt so much because they say, there'll never be anybody for me. I'm incapable of falling in love. You catastrophize because your brain wants you to avoid that. Your brain wants you to not break up and so it's going to make you feel like this is the end of the world so that you won't break up. It's not the end of the world. But if you knew it wasn't the end of the world, you'd be like, whatever, whatevs.

1:33:36That's why you won't leave a crummy relationship because you're afraid. You're not afraid of the breakup. You're afraid of the pain for the breakup. You're not afraid of failing. You're afraid of how you'll feel about yourself if you fail. People are afraid of their emotions. They're not afraid of the catastrophes. It's what it comes down to because the emotions are so aversive and that's what they're evolved to do. So once you understand that and you're saying, look, this is a crummy relationship. This is an unhealthy relationship. This is not going anywhere. Ten years from now, this is not going to be better than it is today.

1:34:05I've got to do that. And then with the knowledge, this is going to hurt, but it's going to be temporary pain. And that's a normal biological process. You can handle it. That's how knowledge is power. what what happens in the brain when you put off the breakup when you end up in a relationship with the relationship with the breakup yeah and you're constantly ruminating and thinking and pushing off that you're not getting you're actually the inevitable is still inevitable but you're just elongating the suffering that leads up to the inevitable that's a problem now if you don't know you don't know is what it comes down to but if you're trying to just avoid doing something that's difficult, firing that employee, saying that difficult thing, facing up to the fact that the business is not going well, then you're just going to suffer and suffer and suffer and suffer and suffer about it, and then the inevitable is going to happen.

1:34:56That's why the Band-Aid write-off is usually the right approach. You know. What's the gold standard for how people should deal with a breakup? So the gold standard, and there's a bunch of interesting protocols that actually show up in the literature, the breakup protocol. there's a bunch of stuff to not do too. There's two do's and there's two don'ts. Number one is take some Tylenol perhaps. Why not? I mean, it's a don't, obviously, check with your physician. This is not medical advice on modern wisdom, but there are a lot of other things to do. One of the things that you find is that when people actually, they want to curl up and cocoon when they're in the midst of a breakup, actually having more fun is really important.

1:35:38Distraction is extremely important. Distraction is something that you enjoy with people that you love is a critically important thing. Go ride your bike with your friends, even though you don't want to. Doing that is a very effective way for you to actually start to heal. The second is to consider not the things that you're missing, but the things that you're not missing. It's actually focus in a relationship. In every relationship, you broke up for a reason, right? If you have a breakup, you broke up for a reason. Focusing on what was good about it is actually going to prolong the grief. Focusing on the reason that you broke up is really, really important.

1:36:12Because that actually aligns, that's metacognitive. It aligns your prefrontal cortex with your limbic system. Like, I broke up for a reason. Why did I break up? I broke up because this wasn't going to go anyplace. And here's the reason it wasn't going to go anyplace. And focus on that. You know, so if you're, you know, for women, for example, they get into these relationships with these terrible dark triad guys, narcissistic Machiavellian psychopaths, which is, you know, by the way, 7 % of the population. And, you know, it's your first husband, right? And focus on the reasons that you had to get away from that guy, not the reasons that you missed that guy.

1:36:47And last but not least, there's a really interesting study that actually talks about the effects of sad music. It's like you wouldn't put on a marching band after you break up. Even if you think, I should improve my mood. The reason is that you don't, you're trying to, when you're sad, you're trying to understand your feelings. You're making a real effort to understand your emotions. And your emotions are very confusing to you in a period of high negative affect. And when you listen to sad music, sad music literally, because it expands, it stimulates the right hemisphere of the brain, where you process aesthetics, where you process beauty, it helps you to understand your emotions better than you did before.

1:37:29And understanding your emotions is part of the healing process. So some Lewis Capaldi would be... Whatever your favorite sad song is, right? Okay, so one thing that you said that was really interesting, this sort of odd duality that people are in when they go through a breakup of prior to the breakup, thinking about all of the reasons that they should break up, and then as soon as the breakup is done, thinking about all of the reasons about why they shouldn't have broken up. What's the switch that seems to be happening in lots of people's brains there? When, you know, when switch such that they actually pull the trigger?

1:38:00No, the switch that prior to the thing, prior to the breakup, here are all of the things that are bad. Because we focus on losses. Because we're always focusing on losses. You focus on losses when you're in it and focusing on losses when you're out. That's the negativity bias inherent in Homo sapiens. So we're always focusing on the negative because the negative emotions and attention to threat is what keeps us alive. Thinking about what's good doesn't keep us alive. That's nice to have. That's why you have literally more brain space dedicated to negative emotions than to positive emotions. So you're always looking for the bad side of whatever's going on.

1:38:30I mean, I found myself saying the other day, you know, first class in United Airlines has really gone downhill.

1:38:40It has. Was it transatlantic or domestic? It's all of it. But yeah, it was some domestic. It was like East Coast to West Coast. Yeah, that sucks. It sucks. Yeah. But I mean, I mean, I'm getting there in five and a half hours for Pete's sake. Yeah. It's so, but that's how we're wired. And so when you're in the relationship, you're focusing on the negative part of the relationship. And when you're out of the relationship, you're focusing on the negative part of not being in the relationship because we have a negativity bias, which can be overridden metacognitively. And so if you're in a relationship and it's till death do your part, you're going to have a lot of negativity.

1:39:14You're really going to have a lot of negativity. And the thing to do is to focus consciously and systematically and therapeutically on what's right about your marriage every single day. and giving thanks for what's actually in your marriage. If you have to break up with your partner and you do, then the thing to focus on is not what you're missing, because that's the negative stimulus, but to be focusing on the reason that you did it and the fact that it was the right thing to do and the things that are actually giving you relief. Like, I'm not screaming at somebody today. I'm not jealous about something today.

1:39:45I'm not wasting another year of my life in a relationship that's unproductive today. And so focusing consciously as opposed to focusing unconsciously on the negative. That's the reason we do that. Do you think the modern freedom has made happiness harder, not easier? Yeah, I do. I actually do. And I think that that's actually escalated a lot in the last 30 or 40 years, as a matter of fact. And the evidence of that is that in the UK and the United States that happiness has declined since about 1990. It's been consistently declining. And part of the reason is we make just tons of errors. I don't think, you know, I'm not of the view that we have too much freedom or we have too much abundance or we have too much affluence.

1:40:30I think that what we have is a tendency, well, we have kind of a climate and a weather problem with happiness. The climate is that in modern society, we've gotten away from things that we took for granted, which are faith, family, friends, and work. Those are the four habits of the happiest people. they're serious about their faith or life philosophy if they're not religious they have serious family life they have close friends and they pay attention to the meaning of their work and all those things have been in decline for the past three years the weather problems are screens hatred political polarization and covet those are the three big storms of unhappiness that have come our way surprising that anybody's managed to make it through the last half decade.

1:41:17But, you know, we do. I mean, we're tough, man. People are really, really tough. And the way that we do it, by the way, is by having personal protocols that fight against those tendencies. It's to say, okay, yeah, I mean, that life is making it less likely for me to worship or practice the philosophy of life. I'm being distracted constantly by these doodads and googahs and stupid nonsense on the internet. No, I'm putting that down. I'm going to study the holy book or whatever it happens to be. Yeah. I mean, that life says that you're tied down, that you're losing your freedom. If you get married and have kids wrong, get married and have kids.

1:41:54It's one of the secret of happiness for most people. Most of the married to the right person. Yeah. Kids with the right person. For sure. For sure. But it's interesting to do it wrong. Your show is, you know, the reason I always, I always like your show because modern wisdom actually is ancient wisdom. That's the, that's the twist. Well, the thing that's been fascinating about it is the mismatch yeah as you would say in evolutionary psychology the mismatch principle that a lot of the systems that were built to protect us or keep us effective ancestrally are maladaptive yeah in the modern environment or they're maladapted yes a lot of the time yeah so it's you know there's there's nothing wrong with resource cues and fertility cues the problem is the way that we mount they're maladapted in modern culture and the extent to which we believe the propaganda that they don't exist.

1:42:42Do you ever look at Seth Stevens Davidowitz's work? Oh, no. So he used to be a data scientist at Google. He wrote, first book was Everybody Lies. And then his next one was Don't Trust Your Gut. Oh, yeah. I've seen that. Don't Trust Your Gut is fucking money. It is so, I can't believe that he managed to like, he danced through a minefield of political incorrectness and just got away with it somehow. I don't know why. Maybe it's because of the way he presents. he presents this sort of slightly nerdy slightly jewish guy uh but he he fucking crushed it with that book and he highlighted what are the traits that people optimize for to click on and what are the traits that are actually reliable for who you'll click with right what predicts long-term relationship satisfaction and happiness versus what are the things that people tend to optimize right front end and the two are totally different i mean he did some in that book did he did some really spicy shit he did some stuff around uh sex and race and which ones are most preferred by each sex and race one of those crossover charts and he's taught he was like hey asian guys and black women like you guys have got a tough end of the deal at the moment because it seems like certain groups from that and he's i'm like how did you get away with that fuck did you write this book and put this out there and it just people just say it's very interesting isn't it like have i because it was in the middle i think this came out in 2020 2020 2021 like this could not have been more in the bullseye of like exactly how the walkpocalypse is upon us oh my gosh yeah and you know like real real yeah harsh brusque yeah insights here's how you do it so here's how you do it so i've been you know i've been in the business of saying you know unspeakable thing yeah um you can if you use the truth as a weapon versus if you use the truth as a gift do you bring the truth in love or do you bring the truth in hostility do you say these things about race and sex because you're trying to score a point you're trying to make someone look silly or you're trying to do it because you love people and you want people to live better happier lives it's the motive i mean you can still get cancelled with a pure motive but the truth of the matter is that motive matters a lot and people know your motive someone i watched this video online about comedians and they were talking about how i can't remember the comparison was between a couple of comedians and they said about how one of them you just didn't believe that he was doing it to be nice yeah he was saying that thing because he kind of maybe had people know secret acts to grind and this other one you go yeah i mean it's kind of the same group that you're punching at or whatever but it doesn't feel as this doesn't feel the same yeah it doesn't feel we have a A hundred ways to discern that.

1:45:23A hundred ways to discern that. We have so many ways below our level of consciousness to know whether somebody's friend or foe. And somebody can say the same thing. You can criticize somebody. I mean, if you criticize me right now, I'm going to take it as an expression of love. I'm going to take it as a way that you want me to be better. Because I know you will my good. To love, according to Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas, is to will the good of the other as other. To will the good of the other as other. Nothing about your feelings. nonsense to if I will Chris as good as Chris and when you believe that I have love in my heart for you like that I can say hard things you're gonna be like thanks man it's amazing actually and so that's what we need to work this is the wanna want this is the right desire if you have to if we want to be interesting people in the world we have to have right desire which is love for everybody else just be full of love.

1:46:17And then it's like, it's funny because St. Augustine, it's like, it's very biblical in its way. It's very Buddhist in its way, but it's very biblical in its way. So, you know, you got the 10 commandments and the young guy comes up to Jesus and he says, I got a lot to remember, Lord. Can you boil it down? Something I can remember. He says, yeah, I mean, there's really just, you know, love the Lord your God and love your neighbor as yourself. You know, And he said, okay, that's great. So St. Augustine was asked, can you boil it down? St. Augustine said, love and do what you will. So we're really good at the do what you will part, but we're really not good at the love part.

1:47:00So this is the important thing for everybody watching us and for us to live. We're going to do what we will. And that's great. I love living in a society in which we have all these opportunities to have conversations like this and get paid. It's insane. But if it's not based in love, it's bad. If it's not based in love, it's a problem. It's making life worse, and you're going to get in trouble, is what it comes down to. But if it's based in love, you can be pretty confident, because people are going to know that. Heck yeah. Arthur Brooks, ladies and gentlemen. Dude, you're great. I love you to bits.

1:47:31What have you got going on at the moment? I've got a big book coming out in March called The Meaning of Your Life, Finding Purpose in an Age of Emptiness. we got to talk about that again can't wait me too thank you podcast you've got a podcast I got a podcast yeah sorry Office Hours with Arthur Brooks it's brand new it's doing really well it's crushing it's super fun I mean it's like it's a lecture it's not it's I'm talking about behavioral science and in front of a camera it's cool unreal appreciate you man until next time thank you