The Art & Science Of Getting Happier | Arthur C Brooks

25:34because I know if they can teach it, that they know it and that they're going to remember it. This is the way that that works out. And so I have a lab at Harvard called the Leadership and Happiness Lab that's dedicated to teaching people how to be happiness teachers, whether it's formally in school or as a CEO or as a podcast host or a politician or whatever they happen to do, so they can embed the happiness technology in any other job that they have and become happiness teachers. I just want to say to our X Factor members who are listening to this right now, you're on deck. You're going to be teaching one of the next sessions, guys.

26:09So how can we, is there a test that you recommend our listeners take to raise their own happiness self-awareness? Yeah, for sure. So there's a bunch of them. There's a couple of them in the book. There's a lot of general happiness inventories that you can take on the web. There's one that was developed by a researcher at the University of California at Riverside. Her Her name is Sonia Lyubomirsky. Google anything that sounds like that and you'll find her because she's one of the most distinguished researchers. She's Russian. She's one of the most distinguished researchers in happiness. And she has excellent self-tests on it.

26:40Now, if we want to find out about our basic mood structure, this is where it really gets interesting. Because it turns out that happiness and unhappiness are not opposites. You know, happiness is not the absence of unhappiness nor vice versa. They exist and they're largely emotions that are produced in different parts of the brain. So you can be an unusually happy and an unusually unhappy person or happy and low unhappiness, high unhappiness and low happiness or low in both. You got to know that to be able to manage yourself and surround yourself with people who compliment you. I strongly recommend understanding this and marrying somebody who's your compliment and not somebody who's just like you because it'll be like daggers drawn forever.

27:22or worse. So here's how it works. This is a test called the PANAS test, the positive affect, negative affect series, P-A-N-A-S. After September 12th, you can go to my website, arthurbrooks.com and take a version of that test. And it's a super scientifically evaluated test. And that'll show you if you're a high, high, a high affect person, you have more than average intense positive and more than average intense negative emotions. You're unusually positive, but unusually not negative. In other words, that's high, low, or vice versa. So high, high is called a mad scientist. Mad scientists have extremely strong affect, both positive and negative.

28:04They're like, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. I'm a mad scientist, like to the max, man. And so I didn't know this until I started doing this research, this neuroscience research, because I thought I was just kind of melancholy and didn't feel good along. No, no, no. I'm super happy. I'm just also super unhappy. And so what I need to do is I need to manage my negative affect, not my positive affect, my negative affect. My wife is a cheerleader. Cheerleader is high positive, low negative. Good for her. Lucky for her. That's all I can say. Makes me sick. Anyway, so there's high negative and low positive.

28:38Those are the poets. They tend to be extremely creative. They're really clear on what the threats to the environment are, right? They're not always fun to be around. And then there's low, low, people who are low affect. They're not less happy or less unhappy than others. They're just lower intensity of their emotions. These are called the judges. These are slow. They're steady. They're the people you want around in high stress professions, like being a surgeon or a judge, for example. Oprah Winfrey's a judge, by the way. She's very steady emotionally. So we're good compliments as writing partners, because I'm a mad scientist.

29:10She's a judge. I find her incredibly reassuring. She finds me entertaining. And the result is that we work together really well. But when you have two people of the same kind, it can be a problem. You've got to understand yourself because you have unique gifts. It's a quarter in each basket. We need all four in our society. But you also need to know how to manage it with the people around you. If you're a cheerleader, don't marry a cheerleader. You know what they do? They spend all the money. They always spend all the money because it's like, there's going to be no problems, no problems. The money will come from someplace.

29:45It's like spend, spend, spend. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Spend, spend, spend. So you get the idea on how you need to. And so that's all in this book. And it's super interesting. And that's something I recommend everybody learn about themselves. So we touched on two of the four pillars, friends and family. What are the other four pillars? Well, the other two of the four pillars are faith and work. So it's basically, think about it this way. If you want a better life on purpose, take it as a multi-year project, learn the science and build, starting with emotional self-management. When you've mastered that, that's the first half of this book, by the way.

30:18Then when you've got that, you won't be distracted with the stupid stuff in life like social media and shopping therapy and streaming Netflix in the middle of the day because you're feeling bored or whatever. You'll be able to pay attention to the stuff that you really want to pay attention to. And the four things, the four pillars on which to build your life, this is your happiness 401k plan, basically, is faith, family, friends, and work. Those are the big four. Now, faith, I don't mean my faith. I'm a Catholic. I told you before that my kids get married at nine years old or something like that and then have 40 kids each.

30:53You raise them Catholic, they do Catholic stuff. And I'm not saying that my way is the only way. But you need something transcendental to your day-to-day routine life. You need to get small is what you need to get, right? Back in the 60s, I can't remember what rock and roller said that getting small was a euphemism for getting high. That's not what I mean. Well, right now, yeah. People are a burning man doing just that. Getting small, man. No, but anyway, so getting small, which means that you have to get yourself in perspective so you can have peace, so you're not focused on your own little thing again and again and again and again.

31:27And so that might mean reading the Stoic philosophers like my buddy Ryan Holiday. that might mean practicing the faith of your youth or developing a meditation practice or walking in nature or studying the works of Johann Sebastian Bach with great seriousness or whatever it happens to be. But you need something that zooms you out. That's the faith one. And then there's the work one. And the work one is really simple. It's not 100 hours being a lawyer. It's not even earning a lot of money or having power or prestige. It's two things. Earning your success by creating value with your life and feeling like you're serving other people.

31:59Those are the characteristics. I don't care if you're an electrician or you're a general contractor or a lawyer or the president of the United States or a podcast host or a professor at Harvard. It's those two things all day long that'll bring you the joy that you need. So those are the four, faith, family, friends, and work. So we have a lot of lone wolves listening to the show and that serving others piece. Why is that so important? Because dignity comes from being needed. Despair comes from being managed and not needed. That's the truth. I mean, everybody sort of asks, why is American poverty policy such a catastrophe?

32:36And the answer is because we treat poor people like liabilities to manage. That's what we do. It doesn't matter how much money you throw at the problem. If people are liabilities to manage, you have stripped their dignity away. People need to be needed. That's the bottom line. If you want people to have a good life, they have to feel like they're needed people. And that's the reason that serving others is what brings you that sense of dignity that comes from your work. We're pack animals, man. We're social and we're made to serve each other. And this is sort of the divine path of human life is the love that we can express.

33:11And again, remember the four pillars, faith, family, friends, and work. You can boil this down. Love of the divine, love of your family, love of your friends, and an expression of your love through everybody and the way you earn your daily bread. Love, love, love, and more love is what it comes down to. That idea of serving your fellow man, which is going to put us in touch with each other in a positive manner of serving others, you can make an argument. That was at least the beginning dismantling of that was an industrial revolution, because now we have all these people working for a paycheck, but not directly seeing how their work enhances and improves the lives of others.

33:55And once that was that result, that being able to see that was taken away, then anything could be put in its place. You know what drains your energy faster than a bad networking event? An overpriced phone bill. The big wireless companies love taking your money. They count on you not switching. Right now, Mint Mobile is running their best deal of the year. 50 % off all unlimited plans. That's$15 a month for unlimited. $15. That's less than most people spend on coffee in a week. You get high-speed data, unlimited talk and text on the nation's largest 5G network. Bring your current phone. Keep your number.

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36:50dehumanizes us, not because of what we're actually doing, stamping out widgets, sitting next to a machine. That's not the problem. The problem is that we can't actually see the impact that we're having on other people. We're too far away. We're contributing a concept called subsidiarity, which is pushing things down to the lowest possible level. Now, it doesn't mean that we all have to be back out in the fields and some primitive society that Europe had in the 14th century. I'm not talking to, I know people who want that. I don't want that as the bottom line, but we don't have to choose. You know, we can actually have a wealthy society that's advanced and does all kinds of good things, but it's not highly, this is what Karl Marx talked about, alienation.

37:32He got so much wrong, you know, by saying that, you know, all that mattered was just units of labor and that capital didn't matter. And, and, you know, the way that he got so much wrong about how humans are wired, that you could change human society. And so we wouldn't compete against each other and from each one according to his abilities and to each one according to his needs. I mean, it gets so much wrong about human behavior. But one thing he got right was this concept that we are alienated from the means of production because to be a true human means to sanctify your work and understand the benefit that it actually creates.

38:05And what I think has happened, we've talked a little bit about this trend on the show, is with what happened through the pandemic and coming out of it is our survival instinct was so strong that our focus narrowed to the here and now, like the creature comforts in the moment. And a lot of what we're talking about here on happiness is long tail stuff. This is like your entire life. And we've gone into a remote work environment. We've seen some studies recently that socialization in the workplace was actually really important to our health and happiness. And that's been severed with more time spent in a hybrid model or completely remote.

38:37And our focus was on, well, the here and now is I'm getting DoorDash. I have streaming. I'm safe and comfortable. my house. Who cares about friends? Like, why do I need to worry about this stuff? Why do you need to worry about family? I can just have a FaceTime with them. When in actuality, it's these moments together of helping one another, being in love with their family, being in love with our social group that actually creates the meaning in life that we're talking about. Long tail stuff, not short tail wins. Yeah, for sure. I mean, COVID-19 was absolutely catastrophic for human happiness.

39:08And if you look at the data, it couldn't be clearer. So you find that happiness on average in the United States has been slightly declining since the late 90s. And there's lots of reasons why. And then it would kind of punctuate the equilibrium a little bit. It's just sort of staying constant, slightly declining. Social media is introduced. It goes down, like a big dog leg down. Because people start to get lonelier when they get on the burger and fry social diet we talked about before. And then COVID comes and it's in the tank. I mean, ordinarily, about 30 % of the population is very happy about their lives, 15 % very unhappy about their lives.

39:41It's reversed. Those two things have been reversed since COVID-19. You're about twice as likely to say that you're unhappy as that you are very happy about your life in general. And the reason has everything to do with the way that we've severed these social bonds, for sure. And, you know, what happens, like anything else, you know, when you provoke the symptoms of clinical depression, which you will if you take away all your social bonds. I mean, you just will. What happens then is that tends to impair the executive functions of our brain. So we actually can't see the origin of the problem and we resist the way to fix the problem.

40:19So for example, you're really lonely and you're really sad. And so you cocoon in a warm, comfy blanket, eating Haagen-Dazs, watching Netflix at like two in the afternoon. That's a big problem. That's exactly the wrong thing to do. You should call a friend, you should ride your bike, you should get outside, you should see people. And those are all the things that are like, I don't want to do that. I don't want to go to that party, go to the party. And so that's the problem. And the whole nation had its executive centers impaired by the involuntary lockdowns. And you see people who still aren't going out.

40:51It's just the craziest thing. And people who have made life decisions that cut themselves off from other people. It's like, yeah, I decided to move into a cabin in the woods. It's like, I'm sure it's peaceful and beautiful, but you know, bears are not your, you're not going to keep you warm at night, man. This comes back to something we were saying earlier about hating the things that attack the things that are dear to us, especially our core values and the importance of relationships. And in the book, you discuss some different levels of relationships and how they make us feel. So I would love to discuss that for our audience.

41:34There's a lot that definitely realize that since COVID, something has happened. And they also see that their peer group is dwindling without replacement friends, an idea we talked about with Stephen Kotler. But the other part is, I think a lot of people would recognize that they have acquaintances that are deal friends, but they don't have anyone who, in the terms of the book, useless friends, and what that meant and how important that actually is. Because I think we've now gotten to a point since COVID where we're now viewing everything as very transactional. Yeah. No, there's a lot to that. I mean, you find that people, when they're dealing with each other, there's a particular reason for doing so.

42:16It's like, why am I going to come into the office? Well, because I have to do X, Y, and Z, as opposed to the ordinary routine where you'd have some spontaneity in how you see particular people on your way to the office and around the water cooler. There's nothing spontaneous anymore. We have to plan everything out because of the logistics or such that people are working off-site unless they don't have to. So that basically gets to the big point that you're making right here, which is that when I ask people if they're lonely, and a lot of people are but don't know it. This is a really interesting thing.

42:47The reason is they don't know it is they're not isolated. I mean, they're around tons of people. And so I say, okay, okay. So let's do a little test for the audience here. We can go into the testing portion of the podcast here. It's like, make a list of the people that are closest to you, by which I mean you have the most frequent interaction. Now, after each one, write an R or a D, real or deal. You know the difference. Everybody knows the difference between deal friends and real friends. And if you need a little primer on it, then John just gave that to us, which is real friends are, our deal friends are useful.

43:24They're very useful to you. Real friends are cosmically useless to you, not worthless. I have worthless friends too, but that's a different problem. So useless friends, you just love them. You just love them. And that's, by the way, there's a word in Greek that Aristotle used for useless friends. He called them atelic. They're a telic relationship. Or telos means the reason for something. So they're just like reasonless friends. These are the people we lose contact with during COVID. These are the people we lose contact with when we become lawyers and join law firms and work 100 hours a week. Why?

44:00Because it's costly to keep up with your useless friends. I mean, it requires that you go out of the way. Now, since I've done this research, by the way, I've changed my life. I never do research that is not going to work for my life. And my column every Thursday in the Atlantic, I always suggest three practices. And I've written my column eight weeks in advance, and I've tried them out. So I'm the guinea pig on everything. So it's like I'm always cycling through these different practices. And when it came to real and deal, man, this was a game changer for me. I realized that I had a bazillion deal friends because I'm on the road 48 weeks a year.

44:33I have a company. I do all this stuff, right? And I teach at university, et cetera. the problem was that I was actually crowding out the real friendships and so I said no no no no I looked at you know the people that I I have been closest with I really love the most that are not my immediate family and I made a point of an hour a week on the phone with a couple of guys an hour a week on the phone with a couple of guys and it's expensive you know my hourly rate is not is like is four dollars an hour so that's not nothing right and uh and so yeah and um and it's been great because, you know, I'm eating my own cooking here and I can tell you it really works.

45:09Yeah. For our X-Factor members, I encourage them all to have a Wednesday reconnection practice. Hump day. Everyone's kind of doesn't have plans. They're tired of work and to reconnect and rekindle some of these connections that you've frayed or lost due to the pandemic or moving or career. As you said, it's so much easier to keep the deal friends because you think there's some payoff at the end. Oh, they're going to help you move your career forward or they're going to be there to do something that's going to allow you to get to that next level for yourself. But in actuality, that's not really what we need only in our friend group.

45:42And another point that the book makes is that we've also started to homogenize our friends. So we talked a little bit about this in the beginning about, okay, writing off political disagreements and family members. We're doing this in droves with our friends. We hear an opinion we don't like, we hear a view we don't like, and we're like, all right, you're out. and we see this rise online. And we've talked a little bit about the show, Toxic Friends, but now everyone's being painted as toxic. Oh, you're toxic, get away from me. I don't wanna be involved with you, friend breakups. And in actuality, we need these social connections in our life to be happy, to sustain us.

46:15Yeah, and we need people who are really different than us is actually the point I think that you're making as well, which is, by the way, you wanna know the number one reason why internet dating is a disaster? Well, there's many, but I don't know which one. The number one reason. The number one reason. I mean, there's a bunch of reasons like the paradox of choice, like swipe, swipe, swipe, better, better, better, better, better. That's horrible, right? But that's not it. The number one reason is because in dating apps, people curate for people who are just like themselves. They curate for compatibility, which is similarity, which as my adult kids would say, that's not hot to look like a sibling, to look in the mirror and say, oh, that's what I want.

46:54No. No, but 71%, for example, of people who describe themselves as politically progressive, 71 % say they will not date somebody who's not politically progressive. Now, interestingly, 41 % of conservatives say they won't date somebody who's not a conservative, which just shows that conservatives have lower standards. Conservatives are like, yeah, whatever. What do they look like? But it's impossible. If you're basically putting in your dating profile, I want somebody who likes tacos al asado. I want somebody who likes classic Led Zeppelin. I want somebody who grew up in the outskirts of San Jose, who votes the Democratic Party, who went to USC.

47:38I don't know what – fill in the blanks and suddenly you have a null set of everybody except you. It's just so – look, there's a lot of biology that shows, by the way, that we're not attracted to people who are too much like us. There's a lot of, there's a wonderful study from the 90s that's since been replicated around the world in which these scientists, they go onto a college campus and they ask dudes to wear a t-shirt in for 48 hours and go like sweat it up. And then they take it out, dry it off, put it in a shoebox and they poke holes in the shoebox and they give the shoeboxes to women who don't know the guys and ask them to sniff the shoeboxes and rank the most attractive smelling guys just by the smell of their sweaty t-shirts.

48:18Okay, now it turns out that by far, women rank as most attractive, the guys who are most immunologically different than they are. Different race, different part of the, if the same country, different part of the country, really different upbringings. And part of the reason is because they're so far apart in the gene pool that they have different immunological profiles and they're sensing through the olfactory bulb in their brain that this is somebody, I better find them as hot because if I have kids with that person, our kids are going to have a better immunological repertoire. And so this is another example of even biologically, we need more complementarity and less compatibility, and we're going to like each other a lot more.

48:58So the book goes through five challenges that we face socially right now with our relationships. We've started to unpack a few of them, but I'd love to dig into them because it really is a core tenet of the show. And many of our listeners are feeling these things, but they're not necessarily understanding how they can start to change and shift and build better relationships in their life. Right. So what's the first one? As you look at it, what are you thinking? What's the first one that's on your mind? Well, the first one for me was the homogeny because I find this over and over again. And even with our X Factor members, I challenge them to look outside of the box with who they're meeting and try to find activities that maybe on first glance wouldn't sound necessarily fun to them to meet people completely different than them, to bring in different perspectives that allow you to have different experiences.

49:44Yeah. And if it's a potential romantic partner, it'll be much hotter, is the point that, and look, this is just a science talking. So I say this from a scientific point of view, you're going to enjoy your life a lot more, for sure. The second is basically understanding how to deal with conflict. One of the biggest problems that we find is that there's tons and tons and tons of conflict, but everybody's afraid of conflict. That's craziness, is the way that that turns out. The best way to have a lonely life is to be resistant to actually having disagreements with other people. We don't need to disagree less.

50:18We need to disagree better and actually, in a lot of cases, to disagree more. That's actually what brings people together. When I talk to married couples, for example, you find that the coldest marriages never fight. Now, the marriages that fall apart, they fight like crazy, but they don't know how to fight is the way that that works. I work with couples all the time on how to fight and actually how to do that. And a lot of people will say, it's kind of interesting. Married couples will say, you know what, after we have, we haven't fought for a long time. You know, it's been weeks and weeks. We haven't seen each other.

50:46We have a big argument. And then for some reason, we always have sex afterward. It's like, it's not, it's not makeup sex. That's actually not right. A fight is the most intimate thing that you, that you have because you actually said something that you believe that you've been not saying. And when somebody is super honest with you and you're being super honest, you're just completely in love, even if you're angry. That's the way that that works. And that's what we have to keep in mind, that conflict can be incredibly healthy if we know the rules. I also want to add to that, and that's an incredible point.

51:16And to go back to a point that I was discussing about my dad's family and my mom's family, both of the grandparents stayed married until there was a death. And you could look at that and think they hated each other. They should have been divorced a long time ago. or you can look at that saying they did what it took to stay married for that family for all those years so you could say and it depends on observation and a worldview but learning to fight learning to stay together right and and that that fighting plays an intimate role in that relationship and keeping those things together. Yeah, right.

52:02I mean, nobody knows what's going on inside an individual couple, to be sure. Only the couple knows that. And you find out things about people after the fact, et cetera, you're always kind of surprised about that. But when we say that these older couples, the reason that they stayed together is because of the social strictures against divorce. That's not usually true. The number one reason is that they were highly complimentary to each other because they were probably set up by a loved one who thought they might make a kind of a good match based on their complementarity and their difference. And the second is because it was really, really inconvenient to split up, they learned how to have conflict.

52:37They just actually learned the rules of the road is what came down to. Now, when I'm working with couples, the number one thing that I work on is I listen to them having an argument. And all the couples that are really, really struggling, it's always me and you and I and you. And they're always talking about these personal pronouns, either in the first and second person, always move to the we and us pronouns. And it's going to change the way you think and change the way you fight, it turns out. Because you don't say, you hurt my feelings. You say, we had an argument that really hurt me. We had an argument that really hurt me.

53:11You're taking responsibility and you're defining the problem as a project for the two of you to solve. And so when you actually solve it, you've made progress together. It's like your fights become projects just because of the pronouns that you use. It's so critically important. And couples that always use we and us, always use we and us, they're a team and they don't split up is basically what you find. So that's, you know, idea number one. Well, not only are you staying married together, you're growing together because if you had gotten married kind of early in life in your 20s, you haven't really even discovered who you are, let alone your significant other.

53:47And that process, if you're able to be able to do that together only lends itself to building, constructing a North star between you and your partner and working towards that together. This is actually one of the reasons that, that the, the marriages, they tend to do better when they're startups than when they're mergers, you know, to use the industrial language. And so that's a good one. So people are like, you know, I got to get through law school and I need to get my career down. And then I'll think about marriage. That's the wrong order. Startups where people are like, we got nothing, we got nothing together.

54:24I fell in love with my wife when I was 24 years old. Man, I was like a starving musician in those days all the way through my 20s. I had hair like you. That's why she fell in love with me, by the way. We got married. We were poor. We had big ideas. We had dreams. We learned how to live together so that people change over the course of their life. Couples that are startups, they tend to change together. Mergers, it's harder. And don't get me started on hostile takeovers and acquisitions. Those are really the most. You can tell I teach in a business school. Well, I mean, listen, a marriage basically is a business arrangement the way it is presented on paper.

55:05So let's be honest here. Yeah. And the mergers are the ones with the prenups, by the way. No startups have prenups. I mean, it just, you don't think about your marriages. Oh yeah, that's right. And acquisitions, exactly right. Well, we've heard a lot of studies, you've mentioned it, just that loneliness is rising. And yet, at the same time, we're making choices that don't move us away from loneliness, but entrench loneliness. The streaming platforms and the empty calories. What are the choices we should be making around building relationships that can start to foster and form these real relationships that we need?

55:46So the key thing to keep in mind is eye contact and touch, eye contact and touch. That's what we need to actually get the oxytocin. But those are also really good rules of the road for any sort of a relationship. Never substitute electronic media for eye contact and touch unless you absolutely have to. So have an order of operations. See somebody in person if you can. If you can't, talk on the phone. If you can't talk on the phone, text. And only then, if you can't, then actually use lesser order, less contact means of communication with other people. And never, never, never, never binge the bad substitutes.

56:20You know, when you're really lonely, don't binge social media. It's a complete mistake to do that. It's one of the things that we should always be thinking about that order of operations. The other thing is to just think about just in general, in this and every other subject, what it is that we want. And, you know, people, when the kids come into my class, I say kids, they're 28. You can tell I'm an old dude at this point. But, you know, they say, you know, I say, what do you want? They say, we're in this class, professor. We're here because we want happiness. I said, okay, I got it. What is it?

56:47And they can't define it. Stop thinking of your happiness as a feeling that you're chasing. Feelings are evidence of happiness, like the smell of the turkey is evidence of your Thanksgiving dinner. Feelings are like smell, just evidence of the food. The real food is the enjoyment that you get in life, the satisfaction you get in life, and the meaning you get in life. Now, I can go through that, and I can actually diagnostically figure out where somebody's problem is. In the same way that I can go through, because I'm kind of a nutrition and fitness nerd, I can actually look at your diet and say that you've got a macros problem because you're getting too much carbohydrate and not enough protein or whatever it happens to be.

57:25It's the same sort of thing. So that's where I really start with people, with their relationships or any other parts that I talk about a lot in this book and every other place that I write. So I find, for example, a lot of lone wolves. The big mistake that they're making is they're trying to get enjoyment in their life, but all they're getting is pleasure. Why? Because pleasure is a limbic phenomenon that sets a neurochemical cascade in your brain going that you hit the lever and get the pleasure and it becomes a very short-term thing that wears off. And then you get addiction, never happiness.

57:58What you need is the source of the pleasure plus people plus memory. That's what creates enjoyment. And so the rule of thumb for all the lone wolves, and we've all been lone wolves in our lives, dudes, we know what's going on here. How do you actually get happier? And the answer is you don't have to stop doing anything. You just have to stop doing it alone. That's the key. Don't drink alone. Don't have sex alone. That's the key thing because what that does is it severs the pleasure from the enjoyment by taking away the people and the memory, and then you're not going to get the happiness that you seek.

58:31So you can see that this happiness science, this neurochemical happiness science, is really important and very, very practical for our day-to-day living. So this goes to the levels of friendship that were discussed in the book. And we were, as you were mentioning with introversion, they tend to not have a lot of acquaintances, but they'll have maybe it's easier to have deeper relationships because there's less people in their lives and those relationships are more important. And then the opposite with extroverted people, they're going to tend to have more acquaintances, but less deeper friends.

59:03Now, herein lies an issue that I've witnessed because AJ would consider me the extrovert, and I would have to say to both of us, yes, I'm the extrovert. As I've gotten older, probably a little bit more of an amivert. But however, in my extroverted days, I had tons of acquaintances. I could go anywhere. If I went to a bar, if I'm sitting next to you, guess what? You're my new best friend for evening, and we're going to have a blast, and I'll see you again next week. However, outside of that, this is where I've recognized that I had become a lone wolf because though I had all these acquaintances, there wasn't anyone close to me.

59:38So if I was going to make plans, I wouldn't call anybody because I'm like, I'm just going to hang out with whoever's there. Well, I'm going to do this. Well, aren't you going to call somebody to see who's going? No, because whoever's there is going to be my new best friend for the evening. It almost goes to that idea. what's the movie AJ with single serving friends on the, on the, Fight Club, right. And being able to easily identify it. The first rule of Fight Club is not remembering the name of the movie, man. Yeah. Johnny nailed it. And exposed aging. Well, it's funny because I, I say the intro to the show that I'm a recovering introvert and some listeners are like, what's wrong with being an introvert?

1:00:24And it's like, I've recognized that it has some weaknesses to it. It has some strengths, but it also has some weaknesses. I tend not to share my hopes and dreams with people. And because of that, I only have a few like really close, deep friends, but I can't go like Johnny, no plans, just go out socially and have as great of a time. Yeah, for sure. No, the truth is you're both bringing up a very important point, which is you know yourselves. And when you have the knowledge, you can consciously change your habits and design your life the way you want it to be. Look, John, you're going to be an extrovert, but you can act in a way that introverts actually do and get happier as a result because now you know and you're doing it on purpose.

1:01:03And I had to learn to build deep relationships. I had to learn how to use vulnerability to my advantage in order to build relationships and then also become choosy about who was going to be coming into my life that I didn't bring in folks who would destroy my core values or take me off of my game. And so, and in learning this, I was, I was older and more aware of these behaviors in me that I wanted to fix. So it was a bit easier for me. However, for somebody who's younger, who may not be so aware of this, is that each person that comes in is going to have a certain influence on your life to some degree.

1:01:44And you have to be able to manage that, whether it's going to be a large influence, a small influence, or no influence at all. Exactly right. Exactly right. But to understand that, yes, I have a lot of acquaintances. Maybe I am extroverted, but I am a lone wolf due to not having many people that I can discuss what's important to me, my values, my dreams. Because it is those relationships that are going to add the social pressures that produce you to being your best. Yeah, totally. Yeah. So you're basically trying to find this balance, understanding it left to your own devices and going through life, not thinking about it.

1:02:25You will be missing something big and you have to add it in on purpose. Now, remember, you know, we're all created in a particular way. We all have our differences. We all have our tendencies and our urges. And Mother Nature pushes along this path. But Mother Nature doesn't care, Johnny, if you're happy. She doesn't care. She wants you to be at the bar and meet more people and pass on your genes and survive for another day. She does not care if you're happy. And that's true for all of us. And that's the reason that know yourself, know the science, adjust your habits, teach the ideas. And what you'll get on is off the animal path and right onto the divine path.

1:03:00As sure as we're talking right now, I guarantee it's true. Beautiful way to end it. Our last question, we asked you before, but I wonder if it shifted at all. What is your X factor? What do you think makes you unique and extraordinary, Arthur? Yeah, you know, my X factor is the fact that I have learned that everything comes down to love. It all comes down to love. And when things are off, I've learned to ask myself, where's the love missing? Where am I denying the love that I need? Where am I pushing away the love that I need? Sometimes it's my love for the divine. My prayer life has become desiccated over a week period, for example.

1:03:35Sometimes it's because I've denied my love for my lifelong companion on whom I will give my dying glance, which is my wife Esther. and I've just been cold to her. Sometimes it's because my real friends have drifted a little bit, but that's my X factor is my knowledge of the fact that I need more love to be happy. So the book comes out tomorrow. Where can our audience find out all the great resources from the book? So it's arthurbrooks.com. It's got all the details. You can, you know, there's classes you can take. There's surveys that you can take. And so if you read the book, which I hope people do and get a lot out of it, it's fast read.

1:04:10It's not a very long book. It's only a couple of hundred pages. And then they want more. they can go to arthurbrooks.com and take all the surveys and, you know, take different classes and have downloaded exercises that they can do. And, and, uh, and just remember Oprah and I wrote the book for, for you. Thank you, Arthur. It's great having you back. Thanks. It's great to see you guys. Thanks for what you're doing. You're making the world better. Thank you, Arthur. You too. Thanks.

1:04:43Johnny we could talk to Arthur for hours well I hope everyone had as much fun listening to that as we did putting it together because as as you heard at the beginning we just started talking you hit record and it was on from there and the laughs and the great points and takes I could talk to Arthur all day. And what I love about it is he actually applies the science in his own life. We've had a few guests on here who are very academic who might not have applied the science, but everything that Arthur shares, he's actually applying in his own life with great results. And I've really enjoyed his Atlantic pieces on a weekly basis.

1:05:16This week's shout out goes to Luke. Now Luke is an X-Factor Accelerator member, and he wrote us to say, hey there, my name is Luke. And I just had to share an incredible experience with the Art of Charm X-Factor Accelerator program. Let me tell you, this program is a game changer when it comes to achieving true happiness and breaking free from my negative behavioral patterns. Before I found this program, I was stuck in a cycle of apathy and disappointment. I couldn't understand why I was constantly repeating the same mistakes, falling into the same patterns, and ultimately feeling frustrated. The program helped me identify my patterns that were not serving me.

1:05:48It was eye-opening to realize how many of them I was blind to and stood in the way of reaching my full potential. The program guided me in understanding the root causes of these patterns and actually provided me with tools and techniques to break free from them. As I started recognizing these harmful patterns, I was able to actively replace them with positive and empowering behaviors, growing my social circle, and improving my life. I learned how to communicate effectively, build strong connections, and create a life that genuinely brings me happiness. It's like escaping from my own prison. I was also able to recognize these behavioral patterns in my career as well.

1:06:21I became more confident and assertive, and my coworkers noticed a change. The impact it had on my overall being cannot be overstated. Now, if you're someone who feels stuck on a repetitive cycle, longing for genuine happiness and fulfillment, I wholeheartedly recommend the Art of Charm X Factor Accelerator. It's a life-changing program that empowers you to break free from those negative patterns and ultimately discover the happiness that you truly deserve. Wow, Johnny, what a glowing recommendation from Luke, and it was a pleasure having him inside the program. Yes. Yes. Well, that's my favorite thing is when we're able to lay out these processes and how you're able to identify these patterns, and then all of a sudden you begin to do that on your own.

1:07:01These are skills that you will have for the rest of your life. And the bigger takeaway is that for all of these folks who've been through this program, they always say the same thing. Why didn't I take it sooner? I've been spinning my wheels for years. And now I have the ability to not have to worry about it ever again. Well, Luke admitted he was a bit of a lone wolf before joining the program. And he actually found the community to be super supportive. So not only to see the patterns in himself, but to help others break free from the patterns is a rewarding part of the X Factor Accelerator experience.

1:07:37If you listen this far, my guess it's because you want more out of life. And you learned that it all starts with relationships. Whether you're an introvert or an extrovert looking to level up your social life or a lone wolf looking to build a wolf pack, our X Factor Accelerator Mentorship Program is designed to build elite social skills and shift your mindset to become a master relationship builder. Join us, the Art of Charm team, and hundreds just like you are experiencing breakthrough conversations, supercharging their confidence, and growing an incredible network inside our world-famous X Factor Accelerator Program.

1:08:10Weekly implementation sessions are your skills dojo to level up and master the scientifically proven strategies you have learned from this show. Our high value community of top performers is built to support your journey and create an environment that ensures your success. Grow your charisma, build your influence, and leverage your social capital to excel in work, love, and life. Imagine what you can accomplish with coaching and mentorship with the art of charm. What are you waiting for? apply today at unlockyourxfactor.com. All right, before we head out, a huge thank you to our producers, Michael Harold and Eric Montgomery.

1:08:45Can you do us a huge favor and review this show on Apple Podcasts? If you found this episode interesting or gained insights from what we've shared, take a moment and let us know in Apple Podcasts reviews. We deeply appreciate your support and we hope you have an epic week.

1:09:07You threw your love away Like you were just a toy And you sold the world You're a song of a tragedy Cause you had your taste All black on the yesterday Yeah, but I remember you Oh yeah, I remember you It was a bad day But I found it all the way