#931 - Arthur Brooks - Harvard Professor Reveals The Secret To Lasting Love & Happiness

23:38Right now, you can get a 20 % discount of everything from nomadic by going to the link in the description below, are heading to nomadic .com slash modern wisdom, and they ship internationally. That's nomadic .com slash modern wisdom. But the whole point is that you want to get to this bonding. You want to become kin together with this person in a particular relationship. And getting to that is really important and staying there is the ultimate goal of relationship. The early stages are passion. The bonding stage is what's often called companion at love, which sounds as my kids' Ryan Beatt sounds not hot, right?

24:14Correct. Companion at love. But companion at love has lots of passion in it. But you want to get, if you're going to fall in love and stay in love, your goal is best friendship. You want to spend every night with your best friend. That's the goal. And you can't get over the agony, you've got to go through the agony. That's the reason the friend zone almost never leads to these relationships because you've skipped the early stages. Oh, fascinating. Yeah, the friend zone is really... I mean, I've heard people, it's like, yeah, you know, we said to each other, look, if we're still not married in five years, and we really...

24:46I mean, we get along so great, then we'll just go get married. And I've heard of that actually kind of working, but I don't believe it. You've said you want to... Your partner should be your best friend, or you should be best friends with your partner, but marrying a best friend is not. That's not, no, it's bad. You gotta go through one, two, and three. You gotta have a ton of attraction. You have to have lots of anticipation euphoria. You have to go through the bonding stage of rumination on the other person. And then you have to arrive at best friendship through that particular process. That's just leapfrox at the end.

25:19Yeah, exactly right. So this is why a lot of the stuff that we see in modern life is screwing a relationship so much. So dating apps, for example, they short circuit this process. They don't let you get into later stages because you're rejecting people at the storefront, rejecting too many people at the storefront. That's why you can't solve for a lot of plus. People are putting together dating profiles, looking for themselves. You curate your choices on the basis of your tastes and you want somebody who matches your taste. Do we know mate is solitively low? We have a pretty minimal level of compatibility and then what dating apps don't actually give us complementarity.

25:58Because you're not like, how would somebody who completes me? How would a Democrat? I want somebody to Republican. You just say that. It's like I'm not gonna, maybe the big, 71 % of Democrats won't date a Republican. 41 % of Republicans won't date a Democrat. Why is the difference? Quiz me this, Chris. What's the, why the difference between Democrats and Republicans in a sort of political mating? Uh, I would guess, Well, Democrats, I would assume a more open to experience as a personality profile. But they're more likely to not date a revolt. That's my point. Yeah. But they're more open to experience as a personality profile.

26:35So that seems to be, so they're not only having to, whatever it is, whatever the effect is it's going on, it's having a compensate for their openness, their increase in openness. So this is even more strong. I could try and pull out as much bro social sciences I want about purity spiral, center of ideological rigidity. It's actually simpler than that. So that's good, that's that's good stuff. Okay. It's about gender. Okay. Who's choose here, men or women? Women. Uh -huh. Who's Democrats, men or women? Women. then they are more likely to Republicans than it like, yeah, it's like, Democrat. I don't know.

27:13Show me a picture. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. How Democrat? How Democrat are we talking? It's like, and more beautiful. It's okay. And so that's just choosing us as kind of kind of the way that works. But we set up date. We, I mean, I've never done it because, you know, I did my pair of bond mate. You re -excaised for the Yeah, exactly right. Nineteen, I think my last date was in 1989 or 1988 or something like that. The year I was born fantastic. Nice. I know. Thanks, thanks man. That's okay. That's okay. And, but the dating app, you set it up so that it's like, I like Sriracha and I want somebody like Sriracha.

27:50I want somebody who thinks Austin's cool. And pretty soon you're looking at a mirror. Also not hot. You're getting your sibling. That's not what we want. we want that because we're narcissistic, but we actually don't want that. The happiest couples have lots of difference. They have lots of interlocking personality parts. Do you think that that's a psychological representation of the way that we look for a immune profile difference? Yeah, that's the MHA. That's the, no, the immunomagre major histocompatibility complex, the MHC. That's from the, all that stuff comes from the mid -90s, T -shirt smelling tests, you know all that research, right?

28:31Yeah, yeah. Where you can, the olfactory bulb senses the major histocompatibility complex in others to get an immunological profile, a repertoire that's larger. So you want somebody different than you. And there is no doubt that that is displayed not just in how your T -shirt smells, but actually how you display your perception. Are you showing up in the world? Yeah. An adaptive explanation for why humans kiss. No doubt. You're sampling the saliva. You're sampling the saliva. that you actually want to exchange something that's, you know, I mean, it is, it has pathogens in it, but it's not like dangerously pathological in the broad scheme of things.

29:06Yeah, that's probably why. That's probably why it is the case. I'm fascinated with. And there's more saliva exchange, the more passionately you kiss somebody. Uh -huh. Can you just explain, so those five steps there, with a bit of an adaptive lens? Like what is, what are our genes ultimate but reasons for behavior trying to get us to do here. Presumably it's become attracted to something very quickly, to, to, to, to, to, to, all the way down. What's the reason for those five stages? You, you, okay, so the first stage is that, that's how you can actually link up with somebody potentially. The second stage is one in which you have a strong sense of wanting to be with that other person.

29:49So you will pursue getting to, getting to greater depth with that person. The third stage is when you're really bonding to each other and the four stages when you actually create kin and you will be with each other now and forever. That's the whole idea. It's the whole concept of your mind, we're together, this is it. As opposed to, if you just stayed at stage one, which path a lot people who have real pathologies and their relationships, it's just basically stage one, stage two, stage one, stage two, stage one, stage two. That's hookup culture. Is one or one and two over and over again, or the emophelic problem of of careening through and then the other person going, whoa, and then starting again and starting again and starting again.

30:29So you're looking for somebody, people who go through the stages together and wind up bonding together permanently, but they need to go deeper and deeper, and their brains need to imprint on each other in these particular ways. That's how the psychology of falling in love is really just a biology of falling in love. Okay, talk to me about the fellow dopamine nor epinephrine addicts out there about how they can... It sounds to me like a biology psychology, we're along for the ride here. We don't really get to choose much of the time who we fall in love with. You know, if you spend enough time around the person and you go, fuck, like all of the things I said I wasn't going to fall for and that I are.

31:08So this is true. And there's a really interesting research going back to the 90s on this. He know the work of Art Aaron, Art of Aaron, as SUNY Sony Brook. This actually got news because it was covered in the New York Times. It became sort of a pop social psychology research. This was love in the lab, where he was actually simulating the neurochemical cascade. And here's how he did it. Art officially? Yeah. So that's how he did it. He brought people into his lab and it was people who didn't know each other, but who based on surveys beforehand were theoretically capable of falling in love with each other.

31:39So it wasn't people who were 30 years of part an age. And it was people who were, you know, opposite sex attracted and who would rate pictures of attractiveness more or less the same. So as men and women, it was all heterosexual potential couples. And they came into the lab, they come in opposite doors and sit down at a table across from each other. And they don't know each other at all. They've never seen each other. Of course it's undergraduate students because they'll do anything for 20 bucks. And he starts asking him questions. He asked him 36 questions that escalate in terms of intimacy. So question one is, if you could have lunch with anybody or dinner with anybody in the world, who would it be and why?

32:17That's like at the icebreaker and a party, right? Steve Jobs, whoever it happens to be. Well why? Question 30 is, when's the last time you cried and why? Now your mom doesn't know that. Your actual partner probably doesn't know that, but you have to answer the question. and you're going super deep. So this is simulating, you're just screaming through the process of intimacy with this person. And then, now it's when it gets really good. To the end, they have to gaze into each other's eyes, blinking as little as possible for four minutes to release as much oxytocin as possible. And they would walk one after the other at a lab saying, I feel like I just fell enough.

32:58I feel like I just fell. It's arguably manipulative. Could you could you get it passed an ethics board now? Do you think an IRB? I don't know. One couple got married. Okay. Not that day. Yeah. But a bunch of the couples found updating a bunch of them, the couples went up dating and one actually after college got married. Wow. Yeah. Yeah. No, it's it's unreal because we think that there's some sort of, you know, Disney soulmates kind of metaphysical thing going on. But we're made for parabots. Humans are made for parabot mating. This is one of the most important imperatives of human life and our brains are built for it.

33:36But this is the important thing, and this is one of the things that I teach my business students and my clients is be careful with this. So I'm in my company and my unit. I need a team building exercise. You know what I'm going to do? I'm going to do an off site. No spouses so that we can really get to know each other better. I just put them in the lab, man. And so when you're all day long with somebody and you're working with somebody with whom you could conceivably have a relationship, even though you don't want to, you're paired up and you're looking into each other's eyes and you're talking about things that are important like your work.

34:12And then you go on a lazy river like canoe trip and you're telling each other stories around the campfire. That's the reason that 31 % of extra marital fairs start at work. Have you heard of Workplace Plus 2? Do you know what this is? Oh no, tell me. It's that she's a five on the street, but she's a seven in the workplace. And it refers to precisely this, that there's something about working with this person in the office who you might not really even think twice about looking at in a bar or a restaurant or something. They wouldn't get passed up one in the case. But workplace plus two, it turns them from a strong seven to a nine.

34:52Yeah, you gotta be careful. So if you're boss, every boss watching us here, be careful. Don't ruin people's lives. You know, it's like no outside work activities that don't include plus ones. If people, if people, or, you know, people have partners or spouses, they have to be invited to these things. And you shouldn't, you should be going with your partner or your spouse to the Christmas party. Isn't it interesting, you know, there is this sense of self and sense of attachment and something transcendent and greater than just the neurochemical cascade that's going on. It's not just neurobiology.

35:28It doesn't feel like it's just neurobiology that's going on. And yet, you can manipulate people into that situation largely through neurobiology. And you need to account for it. And you think, well, what? So you're saying that my partner doesn't actually love me that much. that you can just put them in this, you can ask these fucking 36 questions and put them on a lazy river, and there's 50 % chance, 30 % chance that you can cheat on me. You're telling me that that's the depth of our love. That's what this transcendent, what about the, you know, until sickness and health and... Right. Yeah, kind of...

36:03I respect the biology, man, because we have brains. That's a good way to put it after. You have to respect the biology. And this is important about everything having to do with psychology, about anything about behavioral science, is that there's such a strong biological component to it, which is why you go back just a few decades when they weren't talking about the biology very much. They weren't, they were missing a lot about this. You know, the way that I teach this is that all the interesting questions come from philosophy and ancient wisdom or even modern wisdom. Right. There it is. Show. There it is.

36:34There you go. Then you talk about the biology to understand mechanism of action and then you talk about behavioral science to get the data and then you talk about management science such that you can actually use it. So it goes one, two, three, four, all the way through. And this is an entirely multidisciplinary understanding of human life. But if you skip one of those stages, you're gonna miss the boat. If you don't know any neuroscience, you can't be a good behavioral scientist. If you don't know any behavioral science, then your neuroscience won't mean anything. It's not practical. Yeah, exactly right.

37:03And so this is, this is a lot of what I wind up teaching is for my students to respect their own biology and respect the biology of other people and manage their lives accordingly. Don't put yourself in just like you wouldn't walk in a bad neighborhood of $20 bills hanging out of your pockets. Don't do something that actually, it doesn't necessarily put you at risk. It just puts you at emotional peril. Why would you put yourself in a situation where you find yourself unduly attracted to somebody and you don't know why and mess up your relationship? Even if you don't do anything, it just, it doesn't make sense.

37:37Yeah, because you're gonna be in turmoil. Avoiding temptation is way easier than resisting it. It's the same reason that if you're on a diet, you don't have cookies. That's right. The near occasion of sin. Yeah. David Busce wrote fantastic. He's fucking phenomenal. I don't even know him, and I love his work. His work on jealousy. He's unbelievable. The evolutionary basis of the differences in jealousy between men and women. Do you know that well? Can you explain? Yeah. So the whole, David, I mean, he's everything he writes is visionary. He's a god. Yeah, he's fantastic. So the whole idea is that in surveys, you find that men are especially jealous of the concept of their mate having sex with another man.

38:16Women in heterosexual relationships are driven mad by the concept of their or the vision of their mate saying I love you to another woman. Emotional versus physical jealousy. And that has a biological basis to it because in the ancestral environment before DNA tests And before evidence is abundant, you got to know if you're a man that you're raising your own offspring. And if you're a woman, you have to know that your mate is not going to run off and raise somebody else's offspring. And so that's why the difference is, and this really explains a lot. So for example, one of the things that you find from this is that if a man wants to be forgiven for infidelity, be, he should say according to this theory, right?

39:00I'm not advocating this because don't be unfaithful. But to be forgiven for infidelity according to this theory, he should say, like, I mean, I didn't love her. I only love you. I don't love her at all. But you haven't slept with me in a long time and I have needs. And that was the whole thing.

39:25She'll take the sex. It was disgusting. But he told me he loved me and you haven't said that in a long time and I need that and he'll take you back. A quick note, I partnered with function because I wanted a smarter and more comprehensive way to understand what's happening inside of my body. Twice a year function run lab tests that monitor over a hundred biomarkers and then they've got a team of expert physicians that analyze the data and give you actionable advice to improve your health and lifespan. If you've been feeling a bit sluggish, then your testosterone levels might be the problem. They play a massive role in your energy and your performance and being able to see them charted over the course of a year with actionable insights to actually improve them gives you a clear path to making your life better.

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40:46He's gonna watch this and disown it completely. He loves everything that I do. He's my number one fan. But one of the cool things that he explains sort of talking about, you don't get to control the cascade quite, but you can, I suppose, reframe what you tell yourself it means if that starts. This guy reached out to him after we read the evolution of desire and in it, David talks about an area of the brain that specifically gets turned on in men, when men look at something that resembles anything sexual. pair of rocks that look like, remotely like boobs. It's like, you should be looking at that.

41:23That's why, after reading that, I had, I took such, I contested so heavily this idea of the toxic male gaze. I'm like, these are mostly accusations that are being made by so particular sex of people who do not have the same circuitry, that men do. Although that's to be said, men shouldn't make people feel weird by staring at the montraines and in the tube and all the rest of the stuff. But I did think some pretty deep rooted fucking brain circuitry going on here that's incentivizing men to look at you in those leggings that have the thing that goes up the middle of the ass crack. Like, come on, play the game.

42:00Anyway, this guy read the book and a message David and said, I just wanted to thank you for saving my marriage because I found myself looking at other women and I was attracted to them. I thought that they were hot. I didn't do anything about it. I love my wife and I love our kids. But I thought there's something wrong with our marriage because I was attracted to other women. And the story that I told myself about the fact that I was attracted to other women was something wrong with my partner. And I read your book and I realized that I'm just kind of designed to find attractive. Shock horror, man finds attractive women attractive.

42:31And respect the biology is what it comes down to. That means understand yourself, understand how you're wired, don't act on your impulses. That's respecting the biology and acting accordingly. That's managing your brain, managing your limbic system, so it doesn't manage you is what it comes down to. There's also a real understanding in that work about the basics of what people need in opposite sex relationships, for example. I mean, it's not just David Buses' work, there's a lot of the evolutionary biology of attraction, suggests that fundamentally, I mean, you're not going to be reductive about this, because there's a lot that goes into falling in love and staying in love and having relationships.

43:12But fundamentally, women require adoration. This is often called the adoration admiration dichotomy. Adoration means, baby, you're everything. I would literally take a bullet for you. You're so wonderful. You're so beautiful. Because from the evolutionary biology, it would suggest you need somebody who's going to take complete, I mean, who's going to take a, who's going to be protective, completely protective way beyond what reason would suggest. You're insane for that particular person, whereas men need admiration, which is basically, you know, that is the largest gazelle I've ever seen that you just dragged into the cave, man.

43:49I mean, that's that's going to feed our family for three. You're so big and strong, right? And so it's almost I'll suggest that that what guys need is like, just admiration. I need you to admire me, but anybody else admires me, right? And we're not egomaniacs, but these are differences that actually would get back to I'm I'm going to Just take care of you and the kids forever and I'm gonna protect you because I adore you so much And you're gonna admire me for this and again, we're I need to be admired I mean I do need need to be adored as a husband and as a person and the whole thing So it's not that simple, but there's a lot to that There's a lot to that and so one of the things that all you know guys will say What's the secret and it's number one adore her?

44:34and number two, be admirable. Be admirable, actually be admirable. She's not gonna admire you if you're not admirable for God's sake and adore her. What if I don't feel it? I don't care, I don't care, adore her. That's the secret, weirdly. I mean, yeah, there's more to it, but maybe not that much more to it. Did you look at the over perception and under -piss option bias of attraction? Have you seen this? Oh, men over perceived attraction from women and women under perceived attraction from men. Very reliably. Very reliably. It's like, ah, yeah, wait, there's a smile. She wants a tip. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

45:14The smoke detected principle working in both directions. Yeah. And this is why, you know, for all of the girls that like, my boss, no, he's just, what just, he's just friendly. He's nice with me. It's like, you don't see him. You're the one. The way that he sees you. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And you don't see him the way he thinks you see him. Correct. And that's sort of weird that perception gets into it. No, I, I've, that's a funny thing, you know, in my almost 34 years of marriage, nobody has ever, no woman has ever looked at me that way. Nobody, there's been the slightest hint of any attraction.

45:54Now I get it. I mean, it's not, I'm not like that much to look at, but you know, there's not, not not once. I don't get guys who over perceive. Never. What would be your advice to the insecure overachievers that get some of the dopamine or epinephrine under control? The insecure overachievers. So in relationships. Yeah. So give me a story. Well, for instance, if you are someone that finds yourself ruminating more aggressively, then you're really struggling to get that under control. The serotonin is dropped. The rationality is out of the window. You find yourself moving through this at a pace that maybe you're upon a conkey, but with...

46:36You're scaring people off. You're behaving in a weird way. Knowledge is power on this. Knowledge is always power on these things. One of the things that we find is that this is this whole literature on metacognition that suggests that when you move the experience of your emotions into your prefrontal cortex by journaling through, through some people use therapy, through prayer, prayers of petition, through meditation, for example, meditation techniques, mindfulness, meditation techniques, they move the experience of very strong aversive emotions into the prefrontal cortex where you can manage them more effectively.

47:11One of the best ways to do this, by the way, is simple journaling of strong emotions and hard experiences. So this gets back to something you asked about a little bit earlier, which is anxiety, right? Anxiety. So you're an anxious person and what that means is you have an overactive adrenal system. You have an HPA axis that is kind of, and that's part of your success by the way. I mean, it's like, would you trade it away if you could? No. I realize this a few years ago. No. Yeah. I mean, this is, and one of the reasons is your weaknesses are your strengths and your strengths are your weaknesses.

47:41And you can try to eliminate your weaknesses, but all you'll wind up doing is eliminating your own success and satisfaction in life. That's just the way it is. You better learn how to manage your weaknesses and embrace them and be thankful for them. That's the only... That's the way you got to live your life is the way that that works out. But it doesn't mean you don't go... They don't go unmanaged. So for something like anxiety, anxiety is unfocused fear. That's what... That's the best definition of anxiety. Fear in the ancestral environment was supposed to be episodic and intense and rare. You didn't feel fear that often.

48:14But when you did, man, it was all on. You heard a snap of a twig behind you. you take off running in climate tree, whatever it happened to be. In the modern environment, fear is chronic and mild. And the reason is because there's nothing trying to chase us down to kill us. That's very rare. On the other hand, there's Twitter, which feels like it's stalking us in some sort or what acts. It's social media. It's the modern environment. It's stressful. It's cars honking. It's whatever it is. And so just the limbic system is mildly, the amygdala is sort of on, sending a weak signal to the hypothalamus and stimulating the pituitary gland a little bit and then asking the adrenal glands to kind of drip out cortisol so you're on.

48:58And that you're getting this epinephrine so at two o 'clock in the afternoon that pit of the stomach feeling, and you know this feeling, because this is your life, right? So how do you deal with that? And the answer is not to avoid it. You go to a doctor, And a doctor might say, take a benzodiazepine drug. Take a little Xanx and you're going to feel a little bit better. And that's true because that will mute the activity and the HPA access. It'll be inhibitory. A much better way is to lean into what it was supposed to be, which is fear. And so a good exercise for somebody who's anxious like you or me, I'm a super anxious person, is to, at the end of the day, say, okay, five things are freaking me out.

49:39But they're kind of like ghosts. I'm not focusing on them. I'm actually blocking out the real source of anxiety. I'm just anxious. Number one, what actually is the source of anxiety? What is the fear that that's based on? Make it real, write it down. What's the fear? Step two, what's the worst thing that can actually happen? Literally the worst thing is actually gonna happen. Sometimes I'm gonna die, but sometimes it's like, the stock market goes to zero. Then what's the probability that's going to happen? Where's smart people? What's the probability that worst case scenario is going to happen?

50:16And then step four, what would I do if that happened? Write it down, because you would do something, right? Okay, what am I really worried about? That thing, that thing, you know, it's like a, it's cancer, right? What's the likelihood? Pretty low. If it happened, what would I do? I'd get treatment. I'd actually get treatment, right? And when you do that, you've turned your anxiety into fear and you'll shut it off. Why? Because you put it in this proper place. You've given it direction. You've managed it. You've actually managed your limbic system so your limbic system is not managing you. Then go through the other four things and you'll sleep better.

50:52And part of the reason is because you've actually calm your HPA axis. Your adrenal system will actually... And again, there's all kinds of other things to do like box breathing and all sorts of physiological things. but this is a good, good way to actually cope with this. So that you can continue to use that gift that you have, but that gift isn't manipulating you in all sorts of ways that hurt your quality of life. That's really cool. You mentioned about some of the challenges of digital dating enabling on the front end. You also said that getting to stage five, getting to kin. That's actually four.

51:25So we're going through four, but there's not a stage five that counted wrong. Oh, okay. Right. What I've seen. Oxytocin is the connection phase stage four, yeah. I was thinking about relationships that have started to mature but are enabled by being long distance, which I imagine pen -paling back and forth is less common than somebody who lives in LA and someone else who lives in Wisconsin and they're dating and takes a lot and all the rest of it. But the eye to eye and skin to skin is precisely what you said. You're crave the oxytocin. Yes. Does that suggest that long distance relationships need a different type of work?

52:03they need to compensate in different sorts of ways. Yeah, it's very problematic. And a lot of my students are going to be in long distance relationships because they'll form some of them will pair up in business school and then one of them will work in San Francisco and one of them will land in. And it's eight hour time difference and they're not going to see each other that often. But it's okay because we'll see each other a couple of times a year. And I'm sorry because you're going to be in close proximity to other people and the neurochemical cascade is going to happen and oxytocin can occur.

52:31So, you know, respect the biology. And, you know, I'm explaining this, they're like, mmm. Yeah.

52:44And so that's one of the reasons that those long distance relationships usually don't work, is because we're not built in our ancestral state to be living in a continent apart from each other. We're supposed to do eye contact and touch. I mean, it's so important that I can practically save a marriage just by having people understand that they need to get back on the oxytocin express and the way to do this, two simple rules in every marriage. And this is how marriages fall apart. Is they stop touching and they stop looking at each other in the eyes. And so the two rules for everybody's married watching us and they want their marriage to be like it was, not like in the very beginning because that's insane.

53:23but they want like what it was in your four, like your three or something. Every time you're together, you're touching and every time you're talking, you're making direct eye contact. Those are the two rules. Now there's going to be more to it. Also don't be a jerk and you know and take out the trash and don't and unload the dishwasher and and don't sleep with a coworker and and yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But if you follow those two rules, the biology will be on your side instead of being on somebody else's side in this. And that's critically important. But that's what you don't get in long distance relationships.

53:58And so when they're doing that, I'll say, okay, your number one expense is that you're going to be together two times a month. I don't care where you're in the world. You're going to be together two times a month and setting up your work schedule so that you've got all of your vacation time as in long weekends and all of your discretionary income is is plain fare. And if you're not into it, then you're not enough into your relationship. That's the price that you need to pay in order to make this work. Absolutely. Absolutely. And still it's dangerous. Still tough. I mean, you should be... I mean, it's like, you need protocols around this.

54:32I practice these protocols as well. I don't travel on weekends. Because I'm going to be home with my wife on weekends. I'm gone all the time during the week. And 48 weeks a year on the road. Because I went to her. I'm speaking to her and... You know, it's phenomenal. It's great. But I'm home on weekends. Because I want to sleep with my best friend. Yeah. In other news, you've probably heard me talk about element before and that's because, frankly, I'm dependent on it for the last three years. I've started my morning every single day with element. It's a tasty electrolyte drink mix with everything that you need, nothing that you don't.

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55:42That's how confident they are that you'll love it. Right now, you can get a free sample pack of all eight flavors with your first box by going to the link in the description below or heading to drinklmnt .com slash modern wisdom. That's drinklmnt .com slash modern wisdom. You mentioned two parts, finding the right person, falling in love, et cetera, et cetera, staying in love. Yeah, right by that. So that's really what we're talking about now I was staying in love part is actually remembering that you have a pair bond and the pair bond requires that you don't make mistakes and you continue to cultivate.

56:16You continue to cultivate the oxytocin -related relationship. And so it's not making mistakes and doing things that will, I mean, stupid mistakes like getting into a different pair bond, obviously, but also not doing things that will pull you apart from that person, not making decisions that get into the way of the relationship. And so that is your prominent relationship is the most important thing. It's the person on whom you will be gazing as you take your dying breath. And that's actually what you want. And that's really, really important. Now, religious couples have a real advantage on this.

56:47And that's because almost every major religion has a concept of marriage, which is that marriage is your antenna to the divine. And so most married couples were religious. One of the things that they believe is that when I love her, it's God's love for her coming through me. And vice versa. And her love for me is God's love for me coming through her. And that's when, and so, you know, when I'm counseling couples that are getting ready to get married in the church, for example, I'll say the most intimate thing that you're gonna do, and they think I'm gonna talk about sex, praying together. That's literally the most intimate thing that a couple will ever do.

57:24And I know couples who are church goers, they'll go 50 years and ever pray in front of each other because it's too embarrassing. They'll have like six kids, But they won't pray in front of each other because that feels more intimate. So that's one of the basic maintenance things for, or if you're not really just then meditating together, using some sort of antenna to the metaphysical forces that you are feeling. And some people would say, who are atheistic, they'll say it's a simulacrum, something is actually happening in the brain because of the neurochemistry. I happen to believe that there is a metaphysics to it, that there is a divine element to these types of things, but using those things because it's that important.

58:05Best friend, best friending, turning a partner into your best friend. Right. Not your only friend. Very important. How can you tell if you're a compatible romantic partner but not a compatible best friend? Because you don't get to the best friend stage. It's a test, you test by finding out that it fails. And that's the reason that people will fall in love into years later, hate each other. They'll fall in love, but they won't get to the best friend stage. They'll never get to companion at love. And that's because all they had was attraction. Passionate. They had the passion that came from the obsession and that came from the bonding, but they actually never got a friendship.

58:44And the reason was because they're not cut out to be friends. They don't have enough compatibility or complementarity to actually be good friends to each other. Or they're not cut out. They're probably not good friends to anybody. Is there any way than given that we're in this psychedelic hormonal fugue state for between six and twenty -four months? Good way of putting it, that's really nice. It's true. You're kind of insane for half a year to break. It's like cutting to your soul. Correct. Yeah. Yeah, you can't be trusted. Do not run with sharp objects. Do not drive heavy machinery. That's why I house.

59:18Yeah. Don't go to Vegas. But what you're basically doing, and I've been thinking, I had tied to Shiroun recently, he was fucking fantastic. And we were talking about this passionate companion at ARC. We go through and how clever human biology is instead of tricking us into doing this thing. You're getting attached to this person. We've got nothing in common with. Right, yeah, they've got a nicely shaped nose and they smell kind of cute or whatever. I'm not fell over the girl, didn't speak a word of English. Okay. Not a word of English. I think didn't you, didn't you say, did you drop something and go to Spain?

59:53Do you have a scholarship? Yeah, I moved to scholarship. No, I didn't. No, no, I just quit my job. I quit your job. And I went to Spain and I found a job in the Barcelona city or Kistra. I was a French horn player in those days. And so because I was in, I was, because I wanted to be able to communicate with her. Psychedelic, a little fugue state. I was in sync. It was, she didn't speak in English. I didn't speak any Spanish or Catalan. It was in Barcelona. Yeah. And we learned each other's languages a little bit, a little bit, a little. and two years later I closed the deal, we've been married almost 34 years.

1:00:23And she's the mother of my children and grand mother of my grandchildren. Wow. So there is this unique period of insanity that everybody goes through. Yeah. Some people more quickly than others, some people out of sync with the partner. But what you're really trying to do is not, you cannot use the front of the funnel, the shop window, even experientially, even if that shop window lasts for six, 24 months. as something that is necessarily predictive of what you're actually trying to get to, which is month 25 through month 500. You don't know. So what are the ways, you know, if the goal is best friendship through romance, but all you get to experience is romance, but what you're supposed to be assessing based on is best friendship.

1:01:13What can be done? Try, learn, fail, try. The average person goes through it five times. The average person goes through this thing five times. That means if they end up in a permanent relationship, either that or they end up in a convent or a monastery, if the fifth one is the one, that means the first four are failure. You failed, but you learned. This is the same thing, by the way, I mean, you're an entrepreneur. This is startup. This is how it works. The average entrepreneur, according to stuff coming at the Kellogg School of Northwestern University, the average successful entrepreneur successful in terms of a going concern, a business that actually makes money, has three point a failures.

1:01:57And that's pretty close to the number of failures that you're going to have in relationships if you're an average person. That's because it's the most entrepreneurial thing you're going to do. It's a startup. This is the startup of your life. And if you're not willing to take risk because you're actually trying to use an app to solve the problem, or you're trying to wire around to have a similar crum of the experience through God for bid pornography, which is horrible for you, because all that does is that simulates the whole experience. You know, step one, one, one, one, one over and over again.

1:02:27And then you're actually never going to have this unbelievably fulfilling experience of the most entrepreneurial endeavor of your life, which is your marriage. That's the startup. And that's actually one of the reasons, by the way, that the most successful marriages typically start start as startups where as opposed to mergers for the magic zone is 28 29 30. That's when you're both getting into a startup together, your co -founders of a startup. By the time you're weigh -in to your 30s, sorry, that it's more of a merger. Louise Perry talks about this. She uses this example of a lamp and she says, if you haven't yet moved into a house buying a lamp that you like is pretty easy.

1:03:04But if you've built the perfect that you want and you've got the color schemes and the decoration, trying to find the perfect lamp for this very well -established house becomes more difficult. It is more difficult and that's one of the problems with actually waiting, waiting, waiting, waiting, waiting, waiting. But startups that work are mature startups. So getting very 16, the first time through, or you meet somebody for the first time and say, I've never felt this way before, let's go to the Little Marriage Chapel in Vegas. That usually doesn't work. high -res, dice roll. Yeah, yeah. You need and you need more experience on that and that means you need more failure and you need more learning typically.

1:03:40James, my business partner in eutonic, he used to work for N Power, a gas company and he'd go door to door trying to convert people from British gas or whatever, Northern grid and put them onto his. And his boss one day said, how many more sales do you need this month? He's like two. He's like, how many sales do you 100 doors one sale is okay 200 doors and That reframing is exactly the same which is okay. You have a failure rate This is the failure rate, but what you're looking to get toward is to beat the failure rate get to the success the big one that man And the more experience that you have the lower your failure rate is in this particular case So people do learn there is a learning process for entrepreneurs and for couples And so your first relationship you like I mean what I learned from that.

1:04:29Oh, yeah Yeah, here's the classic one. The big thing that people learn often is that they'll get into a relationship with a so -called dark triad and they'll know what to avoid. What personality characteristics to avoid. And so, men who are most compelling to young women, for example, they tend to be narcissistic, Machiavellian, and somewhat psychopathic. That's the dark triad constellation. I know you've talked about this before, and I've done a lot of work on the dark triad. If you had Scott Berry -Coffman. Of course. Yeah. He's got his new book out, so I'm going to talk about that. Yeah, and he's the master that, you know, that he's that he knows more about the dark triad than anybody else.

1:05:02And so the big mistake that women will make is they'll get into relationship with the dark triad, especially if they're emo feel like. And so they fall in love quickly. Dark triads feed on that because they will simulate the neurochemical cascade that they're actually not experiencing. And then women when they go through the first time and have their hearts broken and their bank accounts drained, they will and all their friends have been slept with. They'll not make that mistake. They'll look for that. Lessons. Lesson that hopefully you want me to once. And so heartbreak too, heartbreak three, they're usually learning different lessons unless there's a particular pathology and the pathologies are number one, mate choice copying.

1:05:38This is a very standard thing where people who are already partnered are more attractive than people who are not partnered. And the reason is because in nature, you want to look for somebody who somebody else has done the work of finding them a good enough partner. reselection. Yeah, that's one of the reasons that men in the eyes of women go up three fold in attractiveness when they're partnered already. Well, women find men who are a partner, more attractive than people who are not partnered. Question, why is it that guys find pregnant women so attractive? Same reason? It's a good question. Probably not make choice copying.

1:06:12It's probably has, these are probably fertility cues. Is, you know, the kind of thing that you talk about. Carrier. Now, typically in the male brain dopamine is stimulated because of a hips to waste ratio. which talks as and length and shininess of hair, symmetry, of facial features, the whiteness of the irises, no, of the whites of the eyes, not the irises, the whites of the eyes, because that shows liver function and good health, and those are cues for fertility as well. And men, women look at men and it's the neurochemistry is affected by the shoulders to waist ratio, because this has to do with virility and fertility of men and ability to drag in the gazelle.

1:06:56That's all the things. Have you looked at the environmental security hypothesis? Do you know this one? No, tell me. This is fucking awesome. So, women's, males preferred body size for women has fluctuated across time. The waist to hip ratio, I think, remains at about 0 .68. Yes. Typically, it's It's quite constant. Got follow, got follow figures, small figures, but the waist to hip has always remained the same. And the human behavioral ecology stuff that's going on at the moment, which is really fascinating how humans interact with their local environment. This study looked at when particular body sizes, not shapes, because the shape remains the same, when particular body sizes are preferred.

1:07:45And it seemed like, it seemed like during periods of an economic recession bigger women were preferred and during periods of economic prosperity, smaller women were preferred. So there was a study done on students because that's what the only people you've got to do to. They did it in their canteen and they would show images of bigger and thinner women to guys before they ate and after they ate and before they ate when they were hungrier they preferred the bigger women and after they ate when they were followed they preferred the thinner women. And the argument being, if you were in time of results in certainty, and you see a bigger woman, you think, ah, she's a vibrato for winter.

1:08:24And this seems to be born out economically across time. If you go back and you look at the trend, you can track it. Economy is good. Tendon women. Economy is bad. Take it women. Yeah, that's, that's the same phenomenon, by the way. And you want to, you're attracted by people who have resource abundance that have more than they need. That they can actually afford something that's scarce and a lot of something that's scarce. So that's the reason that guys will go to Miami Beach on spring break and rent a Ferrari. And just like, let's treat them for it. Because you want women to think that that's your Ferrari because you're rich enough to have a car you don't actually need showing that you have abundant reach.

1:09:04My conspicuous consumption. Yeah, that's the reason, you know, the fifth watch. You know, that's kind of what it comes down to. I got, baby, I need more, I have more than I need. It's a bottle of vodka so big that you couldn't drink it in two lifetimes in the nightclub that you have to leave in three hours. Yeah, exactly right. That's, and so that's, and again, I mean, that's like, college is biology, it's so true. And we have these weird tendencies to do these things and we don't know why. It's like, why are you peacocking? Why are you trying to actually peacock? Why do men put on way, way, way more muscle than they need?

1:09:35I mean, we can tell ourselves all day long that it's like, oh man, it's like really good for the muscle protein synthesis. It has the same on the one Jodi. It helps to manage my insulin and all the rest of it. It's like, kind of just attracts chicks. What it is that suggests that you have more muscle than you actually need because you have resource abundance. Long nails on women. Long hair on women. It's like, if the collagen, what it suggests is a really very, very healthy metabolism.

1:10:08and good nutrition, and so therefore high fertility. You said this sort of a startup or founder mindset when it comes to building relationships. How should people think about project managing the task of finding their future husband or wife, especially given that we are living in a world where people are more risk of us than ever before, slow life, strategy, less risk -taking behavior, give you a less risky behavior, endemic everywhere among young people. Yeah, so number one is finding people in real life. Number one is finding people in real life, because what one, there's really interesting new data out there that show that the instigation of the relationship if it's mediated through technology is makes it less stable to begin with.

1:10:48So there's a new paper out that we can put in the show notes when I find it. I just wrote about it as a new book that I'm writing on meaning. Oh, and it shows that marriages that actually start online. And by the way, 62 % of relationships are starting online right now because it's crowded out. I mean, it's the VHS tapes of relationships that's crowding at Betamax. It's an inferior technology for actually finding people. That's what's available. So, you approach somebody in a bar and they think you're a creep at this point. Anyway, the problem with that is that it leads to when relationships, even marriages, are less stable and there's less attraction when it's actually mediated by that.

1:11:25The better relationships actually come when somebody sets you up. When you meet somebody through a mutual interest or through mutual people that you know and love, that's really what it comes down to. So people will ask me, it's like, so where do I meet somebody? And you go someplace where you might meet the kind of person that you might conceivably find attractive. So for example, were you raised in a religion? Yeah, but I don't practice it. I don't care. Go to church, right? Go to the church for all the young people go to, but I don't believe it, I don't care. That's not the point. The point is you could, you could believe it.

1:11:58The point is you don't hate it. The point is you want somebody that has those values, for example, and somebody who has that in common with you potentially, that you actually might find attractive and somebody who might talk to you, despite the fact that you're bald or, you know, whatever thing that might not get you past the swipe left, right on the dating site. So number one is human mediated meeting. That's number one. Number two, no more simulating. No more simulated. No more porn. No more pornography. Pornography is just absolute cancer for attraction and for expectation and relationship, especially for men because men get deeply deeply addicted to it.

1:12:43It just it grabs you and there's a lot of research on this. So I mean, there's some research that suggests that's not addictive, that's not. I don't know. Do you know who Dr. David Lay is? University of New Mexico? Yeah, I've heard of him. And the fact I've seen some of his stuff on psychology, psychology today. Yeah, he's in the circuit. He's a Diana Fleischman -esque Jeffrey Mellerie type person. And I had him on the show. And I've really been kind of conflicted. So I'm super interested to hear what your sort of position is and what the data suggests. So I don't do this work. I don't do this work, but I find the preponderance of data compelling that it is highly addictive.

1:13:16And it does actually torque the expectations that men have about the relationships with women. And it tends to objectify women in ways that will harm your ability to go through the neurochemical cascade and get dosing. Well, that's interesting. Yeah. In other words, it tends to interrupt the cycle. You gotta go through the stages. And if you're interrupting the stages because of something you're doing to your brain to get the satisfaction that comes from just stage one, it's a problem. That's not what we're actually made for. And again, I know there are some scholars that disagree with this, but I just don't find it compelling.

1:13:53So the suggestion is that if you're training yourself or if you're practicing stage one over and over, and then the time comes in the real world for you to go from stage one to stage two, that's... It's going to be harder. and it's maybe not even possible. We may have a generation of young men in particular that can't get past age one. Can I give you, so this is just the Chris Williamson bro science hour here. You're pretty good. You're pretty serious consumer of this stuff. I mean, I - Yeah, I - So this is, don't sell yourself short. This is not bro science. Bro science in many ways is actually superior to real science.

1:14:28That's the - Well, part of it is just because it's broader. Correct. Temperature plays a huge role in how well you sleep, but traditional bedding often falls short. Just add the brand new pod for ultra to your mattress like a fitted sheet and it will automatically cool down or warm up each side of your bed up to 20 degrees plus it's got integrated sensors that track your sleep time in your sleep phases and your HIV and your snoring and your heart rate with 99 % accuracy. 8 sleep has been clinically proven to increase total sleep by up to one hour every night, increase deep sleep, by up to 2 .5 hours a month and reduce wake time, buy up to three hours per month.

1:15:04Best of all, they ship to the US, Canada, United Kingdom, Europe, and Australia, plus they offer a 30 -day sleep trial. So you can buy it and sleep on it for 29 days. And if you do not like it, they will give you your money back. Right now, you can get $350 off the brand new Pod4 Ultra by going to the link in the description below, or heading to 8sleep .com slash modern wisdom using the code modern wisdom. A checkout. That's e -i -g -t sleep .com slash modern wisdom and modern wisdom. a checkout. This actually came up in a paper. So David and William, number one researcher of InSelf and Dr. Boss himself, they wrote a paper based on something, a conversation that we'd had which is where is all of the InSelf violence.

1:15:46So you'll be familiar with young male syndrome in societies where there is a high number of young and married and unpartnered men. They tend to become disgruntled. They push over cars and they set things on fire and they abuse granny and it's not good and in Certain societies in our past. I think Portugal had the first male was allowed to marry and the rest of them were put on ships to go discover the new world Which is not fuck up the homeland was really what they were talking about But in an era where we have you know this sort of silent epidemic of needs not in education employment or training men who are largely living lives, many of them living lives mediated through virtual worlds.

1:16:30There is a question of if young male syndrome has been this very present dynamic throughout all of human history and we're in an unprecedented time of sexlessness, specifically among young men, especially if women are attending to date ups, sociodynamically they're outperforming men, especially up to the age of sort of 30 or so. So one of the ways that they can compensate from that is just sort of skew that dating age up a little bit, broader a bit higher, and they can actually bring a man in line socioeconomically. One of the biggest predictors of wealth is age, so that's pretty easy to do. You think, well, where is the violence in kind, where is the subsequent concern?

1:17:08And it was mine and the guys, I think, belief that men are largely being sedated out of state of seeking and reproduction through porn, video games, screens, social media. And yeah, this mail sedation hypothesis, I think is something that the I think is very compelling. I think of very compelling hypothesis. Now, there are places in the world where you are seeing these effects. So interior cities in China, where the ratio of men to women who were born over the past 30 years is 1 ,24 to 100. And had to do a sex elective abortion. And all of the abandoned men, one of my kids was one of my kids is a Chinese girl who was abandoned at 12 hours old in the park in China.

1:17:51I mean, it was, and there was just millions and millions and millions and in the early 2000s, a lot of them came to the United States because there was a big adoption movement that we were part of as a matter of fact. But the upshot of that is in that period, those people grew up and there aren't as many women as there are men and there's a lot of trouble with sex ratio hypothesis. It's a mother fuck problem and this is one of the reasons for the social instability in Chinese any cities as a matter of fact. And that's where they're importing girls from Vietnam and you'll say, it's like, guys, you're...

1:18:23Especially inflating the sex ratio. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. So this is no joke. And if there's some way to to sedate guys that are... Right, so here's the really ruthless implication of it, which is, you know, a group of men who are useless and sedated, maybe, maybe, unbalanced, is better than a group of men that are dangerous and anarchistic. but not by much, and those two choices on particularly good. That's not what, that's not the kind of choice you want to be making in a society. And that's really not a choice you want to be making personally. What a young man should not be having to choose between, you know, violent anti -social behavior and seven hours a day of pornography.

1:19:04That's a bad choice. And the whole point is you get your life together, turn off the porn, start paying attention to becoming more successful, get serious about your education in your business and get into the gym. And all of that stuff that these guys like Goggins and Jocco and Jordan Peterson are talking about, that's why they're talking about these things. And so men don't have to make these, this, this, this, this, this wolf, weird bargains. Yeah. It's like, okay, to stay out of prison, I'm gonna look at porn. It's like dystopian. It's science fiction. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I sort of start last week, you know, talking about, I guess, some of the challenges of remaining best friends.

1:19:43If a male grows up in a non -intact household of any kind at all, there is a high likelihood of them going to prison than completing college. Yeah. The number one predictor -romanding successful is seeing his father, loving his mother. How is that defined? That's defined as dad stays home and is faithful to mom. That's what you want. It's like, as a dad, you got one job. Love her. If you want to raise successful kids, especially boys, you have one job. Love his mom. That's so sick. It's crazy, but it's great. And it's beautiful. And it's like, here's the funny thing. People often ask, what do I do?

1:20:26What should I teach my kids? It doesn't matter what you tell them. You could talk to them in a foreign language. All that matters what you do. So the number one predictor, for example, of kids growing up and practicing religion is whether their father practices the religion. There's like a 40 percentage point difference in the father and the mother practicing on the predictive ability, on the predictive capacity on how, on how the kids are going to grow up and behave. And there's almost certainly the case. It's because, I mean, when I was a little kid, I thought my dad was, you know, I thought he could lift the corner of the house.

1:20:56My dad was a math professor. He could not. Now I realize he was a nerd. That's how he thought he was cool. Nerd. Yeah. I think that I'm a nerd. I recognize that. But, and my dad was very proud. Guy, I mean, he never would have bent the knee to any other man, but he was on his knees on Sunday. And that had a big impact on a little dude. There's something bigger than my dad. And I saw it and it's like, it's in there. Right? That's really important in every part of life. If you want to teach virtue, practice, virtue, be the person you want your kids to actually turn into. And they will become that, generally speaking, they'll become that person.

1:21:32Yeah, I was thinking about, you know, this generation, both millennials and Gen Z, the progeny of parents who didn't have the tools to sort of relate or navigate in the same way as an infinite number of evidence -based relationship coaches in the podcast world and itself helping all the rest of it. I think I wonder how they should go about thinking, well, I didn't necessarily have the best example in front of me because there was challenges here and we did have changing dynamics and motivations around the acceptance of divorce and maybe I did grow up in a non -intact home and such. But that sets expectations for a good relationship as it was to be now and there's this interesting, not a burden I suppose, but a responsibility opportunity to be a circuit breaker.

1:22:29And to think, you know, Goggins talks about this. So, you know, he explains about how his dad hit him a lot as a kid. And he had a brother and sometimes Goggins sort of took the beatings in place of his brother. But he also found out that his granddad would make his father stand in front of an open stove. And if he moved, he would hit him with a belt as a kid. So you have this lineage, this like ancestral, literal ancestral trauma, but physically being passed down, plus also probably epigenetically being fucking passed down as well. And I asked David, I didn't even know that this was the case, it was really kind of beautiful of him to say on the podcast, I said, if you had a child, how would you hope to raise them?

1:23:17So I do have a child, I've got a 22 year old daughter. And he'd never mentioned it previously. He brought it up on the episode. And he said he basically sees himself as kind of like a dam, sort of a breakwater, the circuit break of thing. In between the series of mistreatments of people, like, no more. And I kind of think, I often think about that example when it comes to stuff like, your parents didn't necessarily have the tools, you do. You didn't have an example, but you have the opportunity. And you have the metacognitive ability to manage your emotion so they don't manage you. This is the most important thing to keep in mind.

1:23:52We're talking about the psychology being biology, but we also have will. We also have a prefrontal cortex for a reason. That's the most important part of the neurobiology of all, is the C suite of your brain, where you're actually making decisions notwithstanding your proclivities. I mean, you've got these urges. We all have these urges. You look at a woman who's not your wife and you go, oh, man, she's really, really attractive and all that, and then your prefrontal cortex, which is the behavioral activation system, the behavioral inhibition system. That's in the prefrontal cortex, bison bass, behavioral inhibition and behavioral activation, right?

1:24:25And behavioral inhibition is more important, because, you know, I want to hit my son and my prefrontal cortex says, uh -uh, no, because my father hit me and I'm not my trauma. That's a perfect example of metacognition. That's a perfect an electric example of being the master of yourself. And we actually can do that, but you gotta have knowledge. You have to be strong, but you also actually have to have knowledge. And that's why all this stuff matters. That's how I teach happiness. Is happiness is really a process of understanding the science, practicing habits that go along with the science, and then teaching it to other people so you ingrain it in yourself.

1:25:02And that's anything that you wanna do. Anything you wanna get better at. If you wanna become a better golfer, learn about golf and golf and teach golf. You know, doctors, when they're becoming surgeons, they always say, watch one, do one, teach one. That's how you become a surgeon. Anything in life actually follows that basic pattern, but you must have the knowledge such that the habits that you practice are not the habits that are just kind of lurking your limbic system and being epigenetically expressed from the misbehavior of people six generations ago, or some crazy thing like that. We should not be prisoners of that.

1:25:33Yeah, this is gorgeous idea from Robert Wright's Why Buddhism is true. That's a nice book. Fuck. Dude, blending evolutionary psychology with Buddhism. The book that got me into EP was at the moral animal, from 1991 or 1992 or something. And it's still... It's some of the stuff, a little replication crisis, but most of it's shit art. I love it. The replication crisis is a big problem, I feel. Yeah, a lot of people make that career. It would be true. And grandma would have said, I mean, I can find you a study that shows that that conjugal infidelity will bring happiness. I mean, I'm sure I could.

1:26:15Right. The motivated reason by a research of that first. Darling, darling, honestly, I only did it. Not only did I not love her, but I did this for us. I know exactly. And besides studies show. I'll die it. So. So. But and and but the whole problem if it if a set in this is like you're talking about evolutionary psychology all the time and biology all the time. And this is my stock and trade as behavioral scientists. For everybody watching, if your grandma would hear this result and say, that's wrong, she's probably right. Okay. Okay. Why do Buddhism is true by Robert Wright? Then there's this quote from some Buddhist teacher that says, ultimately in life, happiness comes down to choosing between the discomfort of becoming aware of our mental afflictions or the discomfort of becoming ruled by them.

1:27:00Nice. And I just love that idea of the because it's the first step, the knowledge is power, right? Right. And I think in many ways, that is why this burgeoning industry, whatever we want to call it, wisdom porn of... wisdom porn. wisdom porn. Yeah. There's some Reddit threads. I think that that is the gateway drug at the top. I think that that's what people are looking for. Yeah. The question that I have, the potential problem I can see, is for the ruminative cerebral insecure overachiever type people who enjoy content like yours and mine, to get stuck in just the first step, knowledge and all the content.

1:27:45Just sucking it in. How do you advise? And I imagine that many of your students are like this too. you know, the academic key intellectually people, have praying at the cognitive horsepower alter. How do you move them beyond that? Yeah, so that's actually what academics are really bad at. That's why I have this column in the Atlantic every Thursday, and I'm the retailer of academic stuff in this. And so I'm not actually running your regressions or doing experiments myself. I mean, the point in my career, what I'm looking, I usually I will serve a particular topic every week. It's a different topic, a different scientific topic in the happiness literature, the broader living, better literature, and the neuroscience and behavioral science.

1:28:27And then the first part is, here's what the science says, the second part is, here's how you can use it. Here's it, but you've got to practice it. And I'm usually 10 weeks ahead of my column and I'm practicing those things to see if it works. So I'm a lab. And this is the important thing. This is the important ethos. You're not going to design experiments perfectly like a drug test in your own life because because N equals one and you know, statistically it's, and there's no control group, but you are a lab. Start living like you're a lab. So learn something about this and set up an experiment in your life.

1:29:01And so you keep your eye red and article on this, that you know, that the part of the limbic system dedicated to resentment is much, much larger than the part of the limbic system dedicated to gratitude. And that's why we have a negativity bias. And that's how we revolve because resentment and suspicion and anger keeps us alive and and your gratitude is nice to have. And I get it, oh, that's very, very interesting. Okay, what that means is you need to practice gratitude consciously to override your negativity bias. And how do you do that? Well, I'm gonna set up an experiment where I'm actually gonna practice gratitude in a very particular way every day for a week.

1:29:33And I'm gonna keep the data. I'm actually gonna keep my own data. Is it publishable in psychological sciences or the journal of personality research? No, that's not the point. the point is you living better, but you're not going to do it unless you actually change your habits and experiment on yourself and treat your life like a lab. Should you limit the bits of input, the sort of a FOMO, next thing type idea, the intellectual porn, I must try this new, because this is a different type of grad, maybe it's breathing, maybe it's breath work that I need to be doing, maybe it's some other, maybe it's prayer, What about the prior thing?

1:30:13So is it commit and advise? Do you have any rubrics that you get people to follow when it comes to this? Yeah. Well, people are substituting stage one for stage two. In other words, get some information, set up an experiment, and commit yourself to it. That's the most important thing is the doing as opposed to learning. Learn, do, learn, do, learn, do, and then by the way teach. Because then what will happen is by the time you've done five or six of these experiments, there's one that's actually working for you and then you're teaching. thing. Then you get the historical podcast, you know, well, I love the thing that I really love about the teaching element is it wraps more of your identity up in this thing because you become an advocate for it.

1:30:51That's you, which deepens your practice. This is a teaching podcast. Modern wisdom is a teaching podcast. It's not an entertainment podcast. It's an actual teaching podcast. You're talking, Professor Williamson. Yeah, thank you. Thank you. But but you're, you're retailing series ideas all the time, again and again and again and again. And people who stop with consuming the retailed ideas are missing, are missing out because what they, we've talked about a whole bunch of really practical things that people can do, actually write these things down, you know, look at the show notes, put together a couple of experiments in your own life, and if you like them, share them.

1:31:26Like find some way to actually share them with other people. That's what social media is for. That's what, that's what God created YouTube. And media is for sharing ideas. You mentioned resentment there. We've talked about all of the ways that dating and then making a long -term relationship can go right. Resentment contempt. Some of these sort of real trap doors in relationships. How can people better overcome contempt, resentment? You've had John Gottman on your podcast, right? Not yet. I'm going to get in into it. I've got it. Julie and John Gottman, I've talked to them before, the phenomenal.

1:32:00They're visionary. They're actually heroes because anybody at any good societies, any strong societies based on strong families obviously and strong families require This one element which is mom and dad loving each other. You know, that's what families have in common is that two parents who Who love each other and they've they've saved thousands of marriages Thousands of it's unbelievable and the number one thing that really jumps out of their research is that they find the marriage killers So in other words Not what to do right what to stop doing wrong That's how you start anything. If you go to the doctor and say, oh man, I don't get drink too much.

1:32:35He's not going to put you on something to treat the trouble with your drinking. He's going to tell you to stop drinking very beginning. So that's what they talked about, things to stop doing. And the number one thing gets to the cruxier question, which is to stop treating each other with contempt. Now there's a whole concept in the, it's actually in the political science literature, but it's a psychological concept called motive attribution asymmetry. You know about this? is this why Nazis called Jews vermin? Yes. So the good, nice boy, you're good, you really know a lot about this stuff. So in Motivation asymmetry says, I love what they hate, right?

1:33:11And so therefore it's related to the idea that you will with contempt, you'll call, you know, the Hutus called the Tutsi's cock roaches and the, you know, the the German Nazis called the Jews rats, for example. That's because you can other than that particular way. But it's based on this idea that I love Germany and they hate Germany. They're the other and they don't love us. They hate and I love. In an implacable conflict, not just the genocidal situation, but an implacable conflict like a civil war, both sides believe that they love the other side hates. That's the least. No, no, I love, you know, it's like I love my people and I love this place and they just hate us.

1:33:49And both sides think that and that's based on an error because both sides can't simultaneously love and hate. And so the central idea behind that is if you have an implacable conflict that's leading to schism, that you're going to find that error behind it, Motivatribution asymmetry. And I'm not trying to sort out world conflict, but I can sort out a lot of... Comple is going to... Yeah. And almost all marital dissolution comes from Motivatribution asymmetry. So you take a couple that's on their way to the horse court and he'll be like, no, I still love her, but she hates me. And she'll be like, no, I'm the one who loves.

1:34:27He's the one who acts like he hates. And the reason is because they're behaving in a contemptuous way that says, you're worthless. And I do think I do hate you, even though you don't feel that way. It's a it's a John John Julie gotman. There's one of their central insights is that we we we communicate so poorly because we're transmitting hatred when we don't feel it. Why? Why would that be adaptive? That it's it's it's not clear why it's adaptive, but it's certainly is a habit and so what in the habit is basically So he'll look at a couple that he's met Just now talk to them for an hour and watch them in the laboratory discussing something of great contention And he'll want to see if they're rolling their eyes because I rolling is a is a real physical Manifestation of contempt now contempt is two negative emotions blended together anger and disgust anger is a hot emotion that's not correlated with divorce.

1:35:23Thank God, with my marriage to a spandard. Disgust is a response to a pathogen in the insular cortex of the brain, the insula of the brain retreat. And what it says is that's a pathogen of my poison you. That's what all we had before antibiotics and vaccines was the insular cortex that gave us a sense of disgust. So that piece of chicken back in the fridge that you forgot about, you're like, never, Never, never, never treat another person like a pathogen, it gets us back to the Nazi thing that you talked about before. When you treat somebody like a pathogen, the way that you stimulate the insular cortex and an entire population is by talking about them in terms of disgust to stimulate that part of the brain as such, making them utterly anathema and worthy of the greatest barbarity.

1:36:08Justifies mistreatment. That's exactly right, because it's the same way that you throw away, you'd hose off your shoes after stepping in something awful or you throw away something that's rotted in your fridge, or you'd kill somebody who's an actual pathogen in your society by talking about them in this pathogen. Wait, stimulating this very, very volatile part of the brain. Okay, take those two things and put them together. That's contempt. When you express contempt for somebody, that's interpreted as hatred. And that's what people do when they get into these suboptimal routines in their marriage.

1:36:36And they'll be like, you always say that. Really? Really? Again? Sweetie, really? And she interprets that is he thinks, what I said is worthless, he thinks I'm worthless. And that's what leads to this communication breakdown of, I love as she hates, no, I love it, he hates. And then you get divorced. People can literally get divorced because they don't know that their eye rolling is expressing hatred for their partner, which is almost in a way that when you get hatred from another a person that you're supposed to love, that is as painful in the limbic system of the brain as physical abuse. It's the same part of the brain.

1:37:18It's the dorsal interior singular cortex in the limbic system that's affected when you're being rejected. That's what motivates social rejection and sadness. That's the affective part of all pain, as a matter of fact, that comes from that and is super acute when you're getting, and you don't say, oh, I did throw my eyes. No, no, no, no, you spoke volumes that you didn't think that you were, you didn't even mean it. And so what he does is what they do in the Goblin Mirage Lab is they treat, they teach people, here's the beautiful thing about it. Most couples just need to say what they really think, which is actually I love you.

1:37:54I really, really love you. Really? Well, I really, really love you too. So let's not accidentally be telling each other we hate each other. That's where how the The content comes in and that's one of the examples of suboptimal habits that can ruin a relationship and if you can turn that around and how you do that, knowledge and practice. The knowledge is don't do it. The practice is touch and eye contact and then life gets better. What else is some of the suboptimal habits of couples? Number one is, well, I mean, anything that actually pulls people apart so they have insufficient contact, neurophysiologically insufficient contact with each other is going to create a real problem.

1:38:41And so, for example, what you'll find is the habit of doing what you're really, really good at as opposed to what you're getting worse at. People will be getting, they'll be losing their relationship chops while they're getting better in their careers. And so they're spending a lot more time, the one of the reasons they spend a lot more time at work is because that's what they're better at and that's really getting their satisfaction. I, and they, I, I, I had this, I got to I had this insight a couple of weeks ago about why people commit themselves to their careers more than they commit themselves to their partnerships.

1:39:10The reason being the only you can leave your career, but not only you can leave your partnership. And there is this sense of safety. It's like, if I just keep grinding away on this, I'll probably get better. I'll probably grow. But the same isn't true because my career isn't going to leave me, but my partner might. And that's one of The other things that you find is that your career will never keep you warm, but your spouse will. You're saying that people who make a trade where they get a job that is an additional hour commute there and back five days a week because it's a better job title or they think that it's going to give them fulfillment of validation or whatever.

1:39:49It'll make them special. That's the special versus happy. A lot of people will choose specialness over happiness. Yes. Why? The world wants you to be special, wants you to stand out. The world, Mother Nature wants you to be special. Mother Nature does not care if you're happy, Chris. She does not care. She wants you to survive and pass on your genes. And when you're really excellent in outstanding and getting more resources and getting better at your job, you're going to be more special, but you will be less happy. And that's why people will become, will walk into mediocrity and their marriage while they're walking toward excellence and their work.

1:40:22And the result is they're going to be less happy. They're just gonna be less happy. Yeah, and by the way guilty man guilty guilty. I'm a I'm a completely Success addict 16 books deep 15 anyway, I never it's it's I'm addicted to success and and there's all this interesting neuroscience on success addiction You know when people are told you know, usually good good students who are also good athletes as kids And they get all their validation from parents and that gives them this neurochemical reward from from You're such a hard worker. And that's another good report card. And they're looking for the next gold star for their whole lives.

1:40:59These are the people when they get past the flush of a relationship and it starts to become a little bit boring, then they'll just like lean into the, to the specialness. They'll lean into the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the adulation that actually comes from excellence in their work and let their, and let their marriage become utterly mediocre. Right. They've kind of become, um, adrenaline junkies or whatever the particular hormone of a and the U .S. chemical of choices, junkies, and the relationship is no longer able to compete and that you're out of passion and into companion it.

1:41:30It's not giving you quite the same rush. The progress isn't there. You've retired from the Russian growth but the Korea can continue to give you that. And you might be very admirable. You might be really, really admirable. The problem is that you're not adoring, that you've stopped adoring. Because all you've, Again, there's two things you need to do, guys. You need to be adoring and admirable. And if you do 100 % admirable and 0 % adoring, you're gonna lose your relationship. Talk to me about this balance. It's a tension that has come up and awful lot. I did these live shows last year. I'm about to...

1:42:12You went on tour. You like it? It's fucking awesome. It's sick. Did you sell tickets? I sold out the event in Mapolo and London, and three and a half thousand people, which was pretty cool. Anomenal, how long was your tour? So I did four dates around Australia. No, sorry. Three dates around Australia, Brisbane, Melbourne, Sydney. We did one big show in London, and we were about to announce Canada and the US. This is Boston, New York, LA with a plus one, so we could double up on that, like Matt and I across the weekend. and Nashville, Utah, Toronto, Vancouver, Austin, Chicago. So we've got a good run and we're gonna try and do a World Tour next year.

1:42:56So that would be like Jakarta, Delhi. Yeah. It's sick. I really, I love it. That's the best. It's the best. Touring is the best. It's so fun. It's so fun. I mean, some people hate it, right? I love it. I've been on tour since I was 19. You know, it was a French horn player. I had the French horning all the time. Yeah, yeah. Oh, it's the best. It's the best talking in front of real people and getting up, but you're also very, are you an extrovert? I would say introvert over you, but I've got, I can swing both ways. The real question about that is not whether you can perform the question is whether or not you've got more or less energy after a performance in front of people.

1:43:29After a performance in front of people more, what I do find a little trying, this is an interesting question. I'm aware of the sort of where do you get your energy from? Like do you get it from being a neuronebi around people? Well, Anna, I've been thinking about this a lot, maybe you'll be able to tell the person to speak to about this. Only child, spend a lot of time in solitude as a kid, spend a lot of time in solitude working throughout all of this one. Parents together? Yeah. Good parent, parents together? Yes. Okay. And I really enjoyed my time alone, really, really enjoyed it. Put me in a room with a laptop and some slow moving deep house, and I'll just grind until, Until the caffeine wears off and just keep going.

1:44:11I said before, one of my skill sets is maybe dealing with discomfort and I think you're able to sort of keep going to lane gratification, very, very good at that. But recently, especially the last, I'd say five years in training, lifting things, and probably three years or so, psychologically, with the way that I work, I found myself wanting to spend less time alone. And I got a trainer about two years ago here in Austin because one I used to be able to just happily air pods in listening to a podcast prepping for a guest listening to an audio book listening to some music go in just crack out a session at you know a nine out of ten effort and then go home and not think about it I just found that I really I just didn't want to do that but if you put me in front of a trainer or you get me training with a friend and flying.

1:45:01And kind of the same things happened a little bit with work where I just take less pleasure from working on my own. Now, when it comes to doing the live tour, I could happily go on without an opener. I don't need an opener. But I'm gonna take an opener. So I wanna have one of my boys with that with me. I don't wanna be experiencing this on my own, despite the fact that I kind of get the sense that Crescent 10 years ago would have been like, no, the lone ranger this, like this is cool, like it's a solo adventure. And I don't want that. And that's been a transition that I've noticed in myself. That's a normal transition.

1:45:31That's a normal transition. That's a, believe it or not, that's a neurological transition. That gets back to the work of Raymond Catell, the British social psychologist in the 60s and 70s. He was really 50s and 60s and 70s. Actually, he was the world's greatest researcher in his time on intelligence. So I wrote a book on this called From Strength to Strength, about how people, they go through the course of their careers and they find that their interests change and what they used to be good at, they're not as good at, and they're good at something different, and it's very disconcerting. So, super high performers in their 20s, and particularly the early part of their 30s, they find that they're less, they burn out.

1:46:08They're less interested in doing something, especially with individual, indefaticable focus. That's because that's called fluid intelligence, according to Ketel. That's working memory, individual work, incredible focus on something. while innovation, individual innovation, right? And that's highest as you're going through your 30s, right? It has to peak in your late 30s and then start to fall. Your results may vary, but they probably won't very much. The second curve of intelligence called crystallized intelligence and comes in behind it, you've heard about this, this is wisdom, right? This is what all the things that you know, that's pattern recognition, teaching ability, mentoring, and coaching, sharing ideas.

1:46:52That's what you get better and better and better. So what you're 38, I mean, you're at the top of your fluid intelligence. 30 years from now, you're gonna be in the zone, man. You're gonna be much better even than you are now, which is gonna make you super potent, but you're gonna get way, way more interested in and get much more satisfaction from sharing ideas. I mean, the fact that you become a teacher now, that's gonna go to the max as you get older because you're gonna be on this crystallized intelligence curve. But you're a little head of schedule, but not that much. How would you manage that transition?

1:47:23That is making sure that you're walking from one curve to another. So it's hard for some people. If you're a star litigator in your early 30s, you're the star lawyer. You can crack any case. You can solve problems by yourself. You should work toward going into management as you get older. Is it supposed to holding on to past glory? If you're a startup entrepreneur, you come up with your brilliant whizbang idea as a coder when you're 30, you should be actually a VC when you're 60, because you become a talent scout is what it comes down to. I was writing academic journal articles, you know, using early AI algorithms in my early 30s, using something called genetic algorithms that were learning algorithms, and I was imposing them across economic processes to see how they predicted.

1:48:07It was very mathematical. I was writing papers I can't understand today. No way. Yeah, and that was almost 30 years ago. And now, but I had like four different person. Yeah, and I had like 14 readers because it was so esoteric. Now, I have 500 ,000 readers a week for my column because I'm retailing ideas because I've become a teacher. Now you know, I'll meet brand new professors coming right out of their PhDs and I'll look at their papers and they do realize what you're saying here. They're like, oh no, they don't know. They just do in the math. And I'm like, do you realize the implications of this thing?

1:48:46You know, people will come and say, what's the secret to getting great teaching evaluations? I'm like, get old.

1:48:54Yeah, and that's because the crystallized intelligence increases and that's the future But you gotta make sure that you're you're walking onto that curve and everybody in their profession Some people have to change careers. Yeah, and I'm all about that I'm gonna write a book at some point called how to reboot your life because I've done it I've had four completely different careers. They usually go about a decade each and then I take the whole thing down to the studs and start again. And it's super fun, super exciting. And I've done it a bunch of times, a random company for a big think tank for a long time in the French horn player for a whole decade.

1:49:26And that is great. But to do that, you actually have to know which curve you're on. So you don't actually try to create a career in the, and a lot of guys who are very successful as entrepreneurs and fluid intelligence, they want that feeling. They want to get that feeling back. They want to let go of this sense that I'm the rock star. And they can't get it back. They can't get it back because their brain has changed and they'll get way more satisfaction from doing something on the correct curve. And so I spend a lot of time coaching successful people to say, no, no, no, no. There's nothing wrong with you.

1:49:59You're just trying to get out, you're trying to stay on the old curve. Walk out of the new curve. So let go of this previous ocean of view. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Become the go from the innovator to the instructor. or go from the talent to the talent scout. Well, I mean, given how long people would have lived ancestrally, it makes sense. Yeah. You know, if you're 40, you're probably a grandfather. Right. By that point. So you need to be bestowing some wisdom. It's not really about you wanting to take down that gazelle on your own. Granddad, get back here. Teach us about how you make that hot thing that has flames.

1:50:29That's a great spear. I don't know. I don't know how to sharpen that flint. But it's also one of the reasons in the ancestral environment where people didn't live very long. That until relatively recently, we didn't have enough, we didn't have a stock of wisdom that would allow us to do these amazing things. Yeah, there was no copus. Yeah. So for example, it's like, of course, there was no electricity and biblical times. There weren't enough old smart people to say, we already tried that thing and it didn't work. Let's try this new thing so that you could make substantial advances that go through history.

1:50:57That's why you need old people. That's why you need lots and lots of old people and you need to exploit what they've got. This is actually what it's like. That's the thumbnail for the Well, episode, so old people. But there is not a C suite of any substantial company in America that should have, not have at least one person over 70 in it. You need more old people who have vigor and health and ideas, but crystallized intelligence. This is one of the reasons that you look at Silicon Valley that are, there's just too many young people. I mean, it's like, I say this is an old guy, but you know, I was given a talk at one of these tech firms because they have a lecture series always.

1:51:36and somebody asked me about a diversity thing about women in minorities in coding and engineering, and that's a perfectly legitimate topic. But I said, on the topic of diversity, how many people, how many old people work here? And the guys like, you mean over 30? Okay. So, and that's why there's so many mistakes that you see in these youth -dominated cultures. Because there's no wisdom being applied. There's not enough. There's not enough. There's not enough. of energy. So have you looked at any mapping of introversion, extraversion over time? Is that dynamic? Does shift or is this just other stuff showing out as introversion or extraversion?

1:52:15Yeah, so extraversion has a couple of different dimensions to it. One is gregariousness and the other is assertiveness. Those are the two dimensions of of intro of extraversion. Extraversion is one of the big five, of course, as you know. And the big five almost all change. As you get older, your personality changes. You're going to be a different person I am and we all are. And your neuroticism is gonna fall, your agreeableness is gonna rise, your conscientiousness is gonna rise, your openness to change is gonna rise and then fall, and your extroversion is gonna change where your gregariousness is gonna fall, but your assertiveness is gonna rise.

1:52:49That's what you find. That's what typically, canonically, is what we find in the literature. And generally speaking, your personality is gonna get better. Generally speaking. Better. Better. More optimal. You're gonna be happier and you're gonna be more fun to be around and you're gonna be easier to be married to It's a good thing I mean, it's like one of the things that you find especially neuroticism People tend to be less depressed and less anxious when they get older you're gonna be a less anxious guy when you're my age I mean, I was a basket case when I was your age and and especially when I was in my 20s And I was a chain smoker and I mean, I was just like I was self -medicating to the hill Well, I did build an unpronounceable Neutropics company.

1:53:30So maybe we're on track there. I'm just avoiding, it's the 2025 equivalent of chain smoking. Maybe, although, yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean, self -administering nicotine, I don't know, but a lot of literature on that. It's, I wonder how many people struggle to let go of that previous version of them. A lot of people do. And the more special versus happy you are, the harder it is. the more that you are a success, addicted, workaholic, the harder it is, because that's your death threat. Is the threat to actually see how you see your own success as a human being. The thing you're most afraid of that attacks your identity, that's your death threat.

1:54:09That's, and everybody has a death threat, has a death fear. You know, only 20 % of people have found it in phobia, which is the pronounced and pathological fear of actual death. 80 % of us don't. I mean, do I want to die today? they know, but you know, it's okay. It might do. It's okay. But do I have a death fear? Oh yeah. I'm afraid of failure because I want to be special because that's who I am as a person. I'm a successful person. Isn't it fascinating? I'm using the wrong terminology here. But I would use this sort of EP, which would be proximate reasons for behavior and ultimate reasons for behavior.

1:54:47But there's a behavioral science equivalent conditional, conditioned stimuli and what's the other one. I don't know. Anyway, the point being that when you spoke about it earlier on with regards to turn the anxiety into fear, I can make it more concrete, see it for what it is, get to the end and what will happen and what will happen if that happens and how likely is it that it's going to happen as opposed to the sort of what the proximate which is I feel this thing, right? I am worried. I'm scared. I am whatever. It's kind of the same with the specialness, which is if I don't continue to release three podcasts a week, then the world's going to forget about me and people are not going to think I'm interesting.

1:55:26I'm going to be homeless under a bridge and you have a gluten intolerance. I'm going to lose my foot. You go, right, okay. Well, let's just dig a little bit deeper. So why do you think the world needs to see? What is it that you want from the world? To be liked by people. It's like, okay, do the people that like you? Did that contingent on the amount of work that you put out each other contingent on the amount of shows that you do or the amount of Like is it does your wife? Car about whether it's book 16 or book 17 or whatever. It's like that or is it something else and you're Yeah, actually now you're right and it's just so when you bring it into delight when the prefrontal cortex is managing the problem The problem becomes manageable Which is really critical, you know, and we all actually need to do that but but But you're touching on one of the greatest fears of people who are in your space, which is the fear of your relevance.

1:56:17And the fear of your relevance, part of the reason is because you're in an industry that has to feed a beast. And that meant the monstrous hungry. Ah, feed me. More podcasts. You know, more. And most sub -stachocauticals. More content, but also more demand and more supply. That's how the beast gets fed. I mean, it's when you got your millionth subscriber hit that subscribe and like button, folks. I mean, it's like feed the beast, feed the beast. And so that leads to this pathological fear of irrelevance and irrelevance is a death fear for a lot of people. Now, the old version of the irrelevance was the CEO who was in who's who in 1928 or something like that and then was kind of forgotten.

1:56:59And the old joke is from who's who to who's he in six months. You know, that famous Jack Nicholson film about Schmidt where he's like Mr. Big and an insurance company. He's an actuary and insurance company and he has his, you know, his going away party and he retires and he goes back to help out the young guys just to give my hand and he sees some guy throwing oil as files and the dumpster out back like a week after he retires is incredibly disheartening and he's trying to find himself as the whole thing because his death fear really is his only relevance and that's what a lot of people have to.

1:57:30But the whole point is we need to actually figure out what our death fear is and then the way that you confront that, I have a whole meditation, I take my students through. My students are mostly afraid of failure because they've never failed. They're superstrivers. They're Harvard Business School MBA students. They're like kings and queens of the Mamba, right? And they've never gotten a B. And so their death fear is somehow failing. So I take them through, there's a Theravada Buddhist meditation that I take them through called the Maranasati. Are you aware of this? No. No, this works. The Maranasati is an actual def meditation that Theravada Buddhist monks in the southern into your Buddhism, that's what Robert Wright practices is that their about Buddhism.

1:58:08And if you go into a Buddhist temple in Thailand or Vietnam or Sri Lanka, that you'll, there are often see pictures of bodies in states of decay, dead bodies, pedavers. I have seen that. And imagine what he's going to stand on. The Maranissahti meditation is for a couple of minutes in front of each one of you saying that is me. And that is me. Why? Because you are going to die. It is completely inevitable. and only when you make it the most familiar thing your death will you actually be alive. So the Maranosati meditation requires that you look straight into your death fear to make it completely ordinary.

1:58:46See, the truth of the matter is I'm gonna fail. I'm gonna be forgotten. You're gonna become irrelevant. You're not gonna have content. And so only staring into the beast by looking at the pictures of the cadavers of your own content creation And so I actually ask my students to write a Maranissa tea meditation where each part is the nine part meditation canonically intervalled Buddhism where each part is. So for example, it will be I'm going to think for two minutes. So I don't imagine I'm not getting the grades at the Harvard Business School that I thought I was going to get. I'm getting lower grades than my companions and friends.

1:59:25Next is I'm starting to get alerts from the administration that I'm not measuring up. The next is I think I'm gonna have to take a leave of absence. The next is I'm not getting job offers. You know, step six is usually, I think my parents feel sorry for me. That's when people start to cry. Right? Because that's what the death fear around the fear of failure feels like to people. And so everybody watching us, what is your death fear? That is the threat to the intrinsic you. And if you don't get your mind around it, you're going to spend your time and your effort and your energy trying to earn other people's love.

2:00:07So if you're, for example, if you're a success addict, when you get married, you're going to try to earn your wife's love. And you're going to ruin your marriage, earning your wife's love. Why? Because you'll never be enough. And then you'll go to work and try to earn her love. And you'll try to earn more money to earn her love. And that's what you'll do to try to feel alive and to actually not die. And you won't understand that you're starving her of what she really needs, which is you. This is how death fears can torque our entire lives. And so the practice of that is, go die. How do people, if they're not at Harvard Business School with a particularly one track mind of where most of the fear probably comes from?

2:00:48How do people more easily investigate what that is? think about what actually keeps you up at night. Think about what it is that actually bothers you the most. Think about what is your paranoid fantasy. What is the thing that feels to you most catastrophic? What is the thing that actually feels most catastrophic? Is it losing a particular person that you love? Is it being ridiculed and humiliated? Is it not ever being able to make a living? What is the concept that would destroy that would utterly eviscerate your own self -concept of who you are as a person? That's where you need to write your Maranissaughty and need to stare straight out at every day.

2:01:25And you'll be free. You will be free. It's hard, but it's beautiful. And this is just another example that your bliss lies through misery. Lies through the tunnel of misery. Bring it on. Let's finish it there. Arthur Brooks, you are so great, dude. I already come. I've got so much shit I want to speak to you about. I can't wait to see you again. We'll be back soon. And you're in Austin, Texas. Austin, Texas, baby. I don't know the podcast. That's where all the cool kids live. That's a cool way. It is as long as you're here. Why should people go? They want to check out all the stuff you've got going on.

2:01:55On authorbricks .com. I have my Atlantic column every Thursday morning called How to Build a Life. Putting out a lot of videos and ideas on socials like everybody does these days because you've got to feed the beast. I have a book every two or three years that comes out. A new one that's coming out in a year called The Meaning of Your Life. how to find deep purpose in an age of emptiness. That's coming out. But everything is at orthoworks .com. Time right, Austin, I appreciate you. Thank you, I appreciate you too.