In short
The Ed Mylett Show: Episode Summary
Episode Title
Harvard Professor EXPOSES Why You Feel Unsatisfied & Unhappy In Life | Arthur Brooks
Episode Description
In this episode, Ed Mylett interviews Arthur Brooks, a Harvard professor and expert on happiness, who explores how life's challenges may hold the secret to personal greatness. The discussion challenges the conventional understanding of happiness, suggesting that discomfort and negative emotions can lead to deeper contentment.
Key Concepts Discussed
The Happiness Paradox
- Unhappiness as a Catalyst: Arthur Brooks posits that unhappiest days may be crucial for significant personal growth. Unhappiness is not the enemy but rather a necessary emotion that helps with survival and learning.
- Emotional Spectrum: Happiness should not be treated as a destination but a direction; it's a skill that can be cultivated through emotional management.
Misconceptions of Happiness
- Negative vs. Positive Emotions: Brooks emphasizes that there are no inherently bad emotions; instead, all emotions serve as signals that can guide us. Understanding and managing these emotions leads to greater happiness.
- Material Wealth and Happiness: The episode discusses the idea that accumulating more wealth and possessions often leads to greater dissatisfaction, known as the hedonic treadmill.
Emotional Management
- Practical Strategies: Brooks suggests that one can get better at managing emotions akin to physical training. Emotional self-management enables one to respond rather than react to feelings, which promotes happiness.
The Importance of Purpose and Service
- Four Practices of Happiest People: The key to happiness lies in faith, family, friendship, and engaging in work that serves others.
- Finding Purpose: Arthur Brooks provides strategies for young people to discover their purpose, including morning routines that foster clarity and introspection.
Key Takeaways
- Rethinking Happiness: Happiness should be viewed as a skill set rather than a constant state. Emotions, both positive and negative, are integral to the human experience.
- Manage Your Wants: Real satisfaction comes from managing what you desire rather than continuously seeking more.
- Focus on Relationships and Service: Building happiness requires focusing on relationships, serving others, and engaging in meaningful work.
- The Impact of Distractions: Social media and distractions can hinder the pursuit of meaningful questions about life and purpose.
Actionable Insights
- Reverse Bucket List: Create a list of things you desire less of to manage your wants effectively.
- Morning Clarity: Establish a morning routine that prioritizes solitude and reflection to discover your purpose.
- Serve Others: Engage in acts of service to shift focus from self-centeredness to a broader perspective on life.
Closing Thoughts
Arthur Brooks emphasizes the importance of living a meaningful life by asking reflective questions about love, relationships, and service. He argues that happiness is ultimately about cultivating connections and managing one's emotional responses to life's inevitable fluctuations.
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This episode offers profound insights into understanding happiness and provides practical steps that anyone can take to enhance their emotional well-being and satisfaction with life.
Written by AI. May contain mistakes. Listen to the episode to check what was said.
Transcript
Automatic transcript. May contain errors.0:28So, Hey guys, listen, we're all trying to get more productive. $10 ,000 worth of courses that are in there that come with the app. Also, some of the top influencers in the world are all posting content in there on a regular basis, like having the Avengers of personal development and business in one app. And I'm honored that he asked me to be a part of it as well and contribute on a weekly basis, and I do. So go over there and get signed up. You're going to get a free tuition-free voucher to go to an event with Brendan and myself and a bunch of other influencers as well. So you get a free event out of it also.
0:53So go to growthday.com forward slash ed. That's growthday.com forward slash Ed.
1:06This is the Ed Myerling Show. Welcome back to the show, everybody. So today's interesting. I'm recording from my gym thanks to some travel issues. And I did not want to cancel this podcast today just to do it in a fluffy studio because I've wanted to talk to this man for so long. So many of my other guests on the show, I was just telling him, have referred him to me saying, if you want to have an incredible guest, particularly on the topic of happiness, which we talk a lot about here, this is the worldwide expert. So my guest today is a professor at both Harvard Kennedy School and its business school, written several books.
1:39His recent book is Build the Life You Want. He wrote that with this lady you've never heard of before called Oprah Winfrey. And I read the book cover to cover about three nights ago after reading all the notes of it for a very long time. I cannot wait to jump into this topic. Today's all about happiness. From the guru of happiness, Arthur Brooks, welcome to the show. Thank you, Ed. It's so great to be with you. It is awesome to be with you. I told you I've just kind of fallen into your work and I'm in love with it. And so I have so many questions for you personally that I'm excited the audience gets to listen into.
2:14So I got a million things. I got way more than an hour of stuff I wanted to ask you. So the first thing is I open up the book and I'm like, okay, this is obviously going to have a lot to do with happiness. This is the guy who talks about this all the time, 25 years of it. First thing I read, happiness is not the goal. Yeah. Unhappiness is not your enemy. I'm like, wait a minute. That's like a plot twist on the first page. So what do you mean? Yeah. Yeah. So that's very important for people to figure out. I mean, a lot of people say, I want to be happy, but you know, guess what? You're not built to be happy.
2:43You're supposed to have negative emotions. They keep you alive. Sadness and anger and disgust and fear. Those are things that in your caveman times would keep you out of the jaws of a tiger and today from getting run over by a car or doing the kinds of things that might leave you divorced and fired and friendless. You need to have negative experiences and emotions such that you can learn and grow and survive. And that means perfect happiness is not in your future. Happiness is not a destination. Happiness is a direction. You can get much better at managing your negative emotions and learning from your negative experiences and accepting all these parts of life.
3:21And if you do that, then you'll realize that you can get happier and happier over the course of your life, and you won't be afraid of unhappiness anymore. You mean so you trend in a direction towards happiness more often than you did prior? Is that what you mean? Yeah, yeah. And you get just better at happiness is what happens. It's just, it's a skill. People think about it as a feeling, which it isn't. Feelings are evidence of happiness. Like the smell of your dinner is evidence of your dinner. But happiness itself is something we can study and get much, much better at. And a lot of it has to do with emotional self-management.
3:52It's basically the gym for your emotions. You know, you actually build your muscles and get better at it and get more coordinated and have more strength, et cetera, when you're serious about your training and more emotional training can make you much stronger at it. Not that you're not going to feel bad because you need to feel bad from time to time, but you'll understand what it means and it won't feel like you're out of control. And that's how you actually get happier. Have you thought about that term? Because I have, I had a lady on, I think it was Dr. Caroline Leaf. I think I'll give you credit for saying this.
4:22I think it was Caroline, where I used the term repeatedly in our conversation, negative emotions, which you just used. I think it was her. And she said, I actually don't believe there are positive and negative emotions. I just believe there are emotions. Meaning, I think she's making the same point is you that they can serve you one way or the other. But what are your feelings about that? Like, is fear necessarily a negative emotion? Yeah, it's called a negative emotion. Well, she's right. There's no such thing as good and bad feelings. Maybe that's how she said it. Good feelings and bad feelings.
4:54I think that's how she said it, Frank. Yeah, negative emotions are simply signals that something's a threat. That's really what they are. Emotions are nothing more than data. They're nothing more than information. They're produced in a part of your brain called the limbic system that was evolved between two and 40 million years ago. All mammals have limbic systems, meaning they all have emotions. And most of their emotions are pretty similar to ours because they have to process stimuli from the outside and turn it into a language that says that's a threat and that's an opportunity. So positive emotions of joy and interest and surprise, those are things saying that's something that's going to give you calories or mates.
5:32Negative emotions, which are not bad feelings because they're good for you, negative emotions are things that say that's a threat. So they make you feel disgust. You don't get killed by a pathogen. You can get poisoned. They make you feel fear or anger such that a threat, an animal that wants to eat you can be dealt with appropriately. Sadness is a classic one. You need sadness because what sadness is all about is it's an aversion to losing something or losing some body from your life. We're a kin-based species. If we don't have our people, we're going to walk the frozen tundra and die alone. That was what was going on 250 ,000 years ago.
6:06And that's why there's a part of your brain dedicated to mental pain and sadness called the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex. Its whole job is making you not want to be sad. It's to make it painful when you've lost something that you really love. Once you understand that, you realize there's no bad feelings. No such thing as bad feelings. What there are are negative emotions. And when you learn what they mean, how you can profit from them and how you can manage them, then your life really starts to get better. Okay, let's talk about that. By the way, I want to make sure that I give Caroline credit.
6:37I actually think she said good and bad the way you did. Yeah, probably for sure. Yeah. Now, we all want more happiness. And I just had a call with my CPA before you and I got on here. And we were talking about some of the blessings of abundance that have happened in my life. And as I told you, I'm actually talking to you from this island that I own here. Hang on, everybody. This is not a humble brag. It's going to go somewhere. And I was telling him, it's taken me 53 years to figure it out, but more is not making me happier. And I literally just had this conversation with him before we went on.
7:15And he goes, what do you mean? And I said, you know, So acquiring more stuff and more things has actually trended in a direction the other way for me now, where it's giving me more angst, more worry, more fear, less joy, more burden, more stress. And it's taken me this long. Then I went to review my notes for our interview, and there's literally a question I had in here with you on more. right I want to ask you about this because I think most people think if I can get more of something I did more stuff more wealth more possessions more awards more recognition more likes on my social media more downloads to this show that's going to equate to happiness and in my own case I can't say that it didn't initially I think it might have brought me some temporary joy but man it was pretty fleeting so would you just discuss this concept of more because I literally just went through this with my dear friend of 30 years on my CPA.
8:14Yeah, no, and this is very common among people who let's say were not raised with nice things, but then do really well in life. See, this is a problem with mother nature and it's a satisfaction problem. Mick Jagger saying, I can't, still sings, he's like a hundred, he's still singing, I can't get no satisfaction. That's not right. The problem is that you can't keep no satisfaction and that's why you're always trying to get more and more and more. And that's an evolved trait. Mother Nature is lying to you. She says that if you get more money, you get more power, you get more pleasure, you get more admiration and fame, that you're going to be happier.
8:50Now, what's really going on is that that's an ancient idea. That if you get more of those things, you're going to get more mates and you're going to get more food. cave men wanted to be better known they wanted to have more power they wanted to actually have more resources and so we are evolved to want more of that worldly stuff that's sort of makes sense when you're poor living in a cave the problem is when you live in an abundant society like we have in the united states in both places around the world you quietly max that thing out and then you say to yourself huh i'm still not satisfied i guess i needed more and more and that's called the hedonic treadmill.
9:28That's a metaphor. Hedonic means feelings. You're looking for the feeling of joy for more. You're always resetting and resetting. And pretty soon the treadmill starts to speed up. And so the first thing that a billionaire says is, I guess I needed another billion because I'm not feeling it. And you can just do that for the rest of your life and be really unsatisfied. And at the same time, Ed, you're exactly right. There's a huge cost. I talked to a friend who got very, very rich. And he said, I always wanted a yacht, a big yacht, 150 foot yacht. So he got one, you know, 50 million bucks. He bought it.
10:02And he said, the first thing that happened to me is that I realized that I now had another 25 full-time employees. And I had to think about my employees and then one didn't show up. And how much am I going to pay them? And are they happy? And it was just a human resource stress problem. That's the thing. That's what we need to think about. so the way to solve this problem there's a solution to this problem by the way and here's what it is mother nature says satisfaction will come when you have more but the real formula and i'm going to slow down so the people watching and listening to us right now can get out the pencil the real formula for lasting satisfaction is all the things you have divided by the things that you want house divided by wants now the inefficient way to get greater satisfaction is to increase the numerator, have more.
10:50The efficient way is to decrease the denominator by wanting less. What everybody listening to us needs to do is to manage their wants. And how do you do that? Lots of ways. I have a reverse bucket list. For my birthday, I think about all my cravings and desires and I cross them out one by one by one. Another way to do that is to think before you, when you're talking about some physical thing, how am I going to feel about it in a year? I guarantee you, there's literally nothing in the shopping mall that you're going to care about at all in five years. You couldn't buy anything in the mall that you would care about in five years.
11:25That sweater that's going to look so nice, you won't care about it. That watch, I guarantee you, you won't. And if you think ahead a little bit, you can get ahead of this thing and start managing the denominator, start to lower your wants. And that's where real satisfaction lies. Interesting. I did a podcast last week where I said, you get the life you focus on. So if you've got this sort of pattern in your life, you're focusing on the things you don't have. That pile is always going to be a whole lot bigger than the things you do have. Yeah, totally. You can train yourself to be focused on the things you do have and less desirous of the things you don't.
11:57Having said all that, I'm going to push you on this a little bit. When I wasn't wealthy or no one knew me, I would watch wealthy people say what we're saying or successful people. And I'd go, that's really easy to say once you've got all this stuff. Yeah, right. And by the way, you're even taking away a little bit of my mojo because I've been programmed to want these things. And so I used to almost resent people who were successful. They go, oh, it's not all that cracked up to me. I'm like, yeah, and you had a great bottle of wine and a steak last night. And I'm on my third burrito at Taco Bell for three days in a row over here, right?
12:33And so is there a line, though, where it kind of meets and flips the other way? Right. In other words, is there any core of effect to lack of abundance or lack of success that delivers unhappiness to people? In other words, is there a light or is it all about the expansion of you? And when you're growing as a person, regardless of the acquisitions, you feel better about yourself. I'm just curious about that. It's a very smart question, Ed, because you've actually touched on something that social scientists and neuroscientists have been looking at for a long time. Does money ever buy happiness?
13:08And the answer is no. but at low levels, it eliminates the sources of unhappiness. And I'm not splitting hairs here. Unhappiness and happiness are largely processed in different hemispheres of the brain. Unhappy, negative emotions are largely processed in the right hemisphere of the brain. Happy emotions, positive emotions are largely processed in the left hemisphere of the brain. These are separable phenomenon. Happiness and unhappiness are not opposites. You can be an unusually happy person and an unusually happy person. That's called being a high affect person. Those are the mad scientists.
13:42High highs, high lows. And about a quarter of the population has that. Almost guaranteed, Ed, that you have that because most successful entrepreneurs are these mad scientists. They're in it for everything. They're taking a bite out of life. It's not the only portrait. You can be high, low, low, high, and low, low. And I talk about all that stuff in my work. And you read about that in Build a Life. You want what you talk about if you want. But the bottom line is that their resources and money, they work on the unhappiness side at low levels. When I was a young guy, when I first got kicked out of college and went out on my own to work at 19, I was a musician.
14:18I had nothing. And I didn't go to the dentist for six years because I didn't have money. When I was 25 years old, I finally joined a symphony orchestra in Barcelona, which is where I was working. And I finally had enough money to go to the dentist. and I felt a lot better because I had 12 cavities and he filled these cavities and I felt so much better. And I thought to myself, money buys happiness. No, money was eliminating a source of unhappiness. And it does that up to about$100 ,000 a year in annual income in the average community. Obviously your results may vary if you live in New York or San Francisco, et cetera.
14:52But then what happens is that we get fooled by that. We remember early in our lives when we felt better, when we had more money And we go for that feeling of feeling better for the rest of our life from six to seven hundred thousand dollars from one million to two million dollars. I'm like, it was nice, but I didn't get that great feeling. And the reason is because it only works at low levels and it only works to alleviate unhappiness. Wow. I just have to tell you all, I've sort of lived this exactly what Arthur just described. I've kind of lived it. And I do agree, though, that some success and abundance, probably up to that six figure number, does buy your way out of some level of stress or unhappiness.
15:34I was impressed with you. I started to really dive into your stuff. So I read the book, by the way, it's called Build the Life You Want. It's got other stuff too that's awesome, which we'll talk about in a minute. So hey guys, I want to jump in here for a second and talk about change and growth. And you know, by the way, it's no secret how people get ahead in life or how they grow. And also taking a look at the future. If you want to change your future, you got to change the things you're doing. If you continue to do the same things, you're probably going to produce the same results. But if you get into a new environment where you're learning new things and you're around other people that are growth oriented, you're much more likely to do that yourself.
16:05And that's why I love Growth Day. Write this down for a second, growthday.com forward slash ed. My friend Brendon Brouchard has created the most incredible personal development and business app that I've ever seen in my life. Everything from goal setting software to personal accountability, journaling, courses, thousands of dollars worth of courses in there as well. I create content in there on Mondays where I contribute as do a whole bunch of other influencers, like the Avengers of influencers and business minds in there. It's the Netflix for high achievers or people that want to be high achievers.
16:34So go check it out. My friend Brennan's made it very affordable, very easy to get involved. Go to growthday.com forward slash ed. That's growthday.com forward slash ed. I was surprised because I'm reading, okay, Harvard professor, this guy would never talk about God. And I was surprised to hear you speak so boldly and eloquently about the source of happiness that you feel comes from not the direction of your own life, but finding what God's direction is for your life. And I went, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, because that's sort of my jam. So I just want to kind of turn that topic over to you for a second, because what is it that delivers happiness in everybody?
17:13Yeah, for sure. There are really four practices that the happiest people have. And those four practices are faith, family, friendship, and work that serves other people. Those are the four things to be paying attention to. There's other stuff to do to lower your unhappiness. One of the best ways to lower unhappiness is to get into the gym, for example, to give up alcohol. There's lots and lots of good stuff to do. But on that happiness side, it's faith, family, friends, and work that serves. Now, when people hear faith, they're like, ah, which one? Now, I'm a Christian too. It's literally the most important thing in my life.
17:46But as a scientist, I can also look at the data and see that there are many paths that bring the happiness that we're talking about. What they all have in common is transcendence of oneself. Mother Nature, I mean, we talked about the lie she tells you that if you have more, you'll be happier. Another lie that she tells you is that you're the center of the universe, that you're the center of the psychodrama. And the psychodrama is like, it's all about Arthur. It's Arthur's commute and Arthur's lunch and Arthur's friends and Arthur's shows and Arthur's money. And it's so terrifying and boring at the same time.
18:21It's so tedious. You need relief. Each one of us needs relief. And the only way to get relief is to get small and make the universe large. But that's very unnatural because Mother Nature doesn't want you to do that. And so you need something that will pull you out of the psychodrama. Maybe that's studying the Stoic philosophers. Maybe that's walking in nature before dawn. Maybe that's studying the fugues of Johann Sebastian Bach or adopting a meditation practice. Or maybe, like for me, I go to mass every morning and I pray my rosary every night with my wife and my Catholic faith is at the center of my life.
18:56But you need something. Now, I didn't say which one is most metaphysically right. Ed, you and I have a strong opinion about that. I'm just talking about the happiness. And if somebody doesn't have something that is a faith or philosophy that will make the universe large and make you small, you're going to be leaving a lot of happiness on the table. Let's talk about that small thing for a second. I love that. I pray on my knees. And one of the reasons that I pray on my knees is it reminds me of how small I am. And I've said to this, this is one of the things I've noticed. By the way, I have a lot of experience with this.
19:31my most unhappy people that I know in my life and I will put me in that category for most of my life are egomaniacs yeah let me they don't all look the same though everyone I want you to stay with me some of them are that obvious egomaniac that when you meet them they brag about their jet or their car or their degree or their whatever that's an obvious egomaniac the other one is actually somebody who may suffer from very low self-confidence and you never think of that person that way but it is true because all of their world surrounds them. Why am I so invisible? Why don't people see me? Why don't I get the reactions I want?
20:09Why am I a victim all the time? Why am I being treated? I actually believe they're the same person with two sides of the coin. And so is that what you mean when you talk about me centered versus God centered? And that's something I want everyone to evaluate. You always picture ego driven people as like, they're already pretty successful and they think they're amazing. I actually had that, but I also had a huge ego when I was broke. And that huge ego was everything was focused on me and how I was being treated or how people didn't respond to me. Even my own lack of confidence when I'd walk in a room was because I was so focused on what everyone was thinking about as opposed to what I was thinking about them.
20:44And pathway out was to stop thinking about me. I finally, a friend of mine said to me, Arthur, he said, when you're feeling the most helpless, get the most helpful. And it got out of me into service. And I have to tell you, I got a job at an orphanage when I was young. We won't get into that now. But it changed my life because all of a sudden I was forced not to think about me. I had to think about these little boys that I was with. Is that part and parcel of what we're talking about here? That's it, man. That's it. That's it. Now, you talked about two kinds of narcissists, by the way, already, about two kinds of egomaniacs.
21:16And clinically, there is a designation that we're talking about is grandiose and covert narcissism. Grandiose narcissists are the ones that's like, it's all me. They're usually very extroverted. They're very self-confident. The covert narcissists, they tend to be incredibly insecure and they're getting hurt all the time because they think that people are not giving them that to which they're entitled. They're the victims. They're the ones who are living in a constant state of grievance that we see in our activist culture today. That's a kind of covert, insecure narcissism that we see. What it all has in common is me, me, me, me.
21:49It's so boring. and the answer to it really is. It's not just war therapy. It's not some sort of psychiatric drug. It's go out and serve others. Go out and serve other people. Here's the way to think about it. Here's the formula to think about it. Mother Nature and our culture tell us that the formula for a happy life is as follows, okay? Six words, six word formula. Love things, use people and worship yourself. that's what the culture tells us and and again you're not going to literally put a you know picture of yourself and pray to it but you act like you're the center of the universe and that's that's worshiping yourself because then you're god that's what it comes down to the right formula according to all of the best clinical and social psychological work all the best neuroscience all the research says that really what it comes down to is to just change the verbs and the nouns use things with abundance and joy man because things are made to be used i mean use that gym behind you enjoy that island absolutely use things don't love them love people because only people are made to love and worship god that's it worship the divine and if you follow that formula man you're gonna be happier you're gonna be better adjusted you're gonna be better to other people now one of the things that you said was really important you get small by physically getting on your knees how many kids do you have i can't remember two yeah how old are they 22 and be 21 in two weeks and they're are they believers yes so this is the thing people ask me all the time because you know as a scientist not as just a christian guy what can i do so the people my kids will grow up and follow my faith because everybody's worried about that people were religious i mean muslims ask me this jews ask me this tons of christians ask me this hindu has asked me this my travel what should I do so that my kids grow up and follow the faith?
23:46Because so many people are falling away. And I say, I got the data. I got the data. Be like Ed is the answer. Let me tell you how. It does not matter what you say. It does not. All it matters is what they see. When I was a little boy, my dad, he was, you know, I thought he was so strong that he could lift the corner of the house. Right. He couldn't. He was a math professor. So no way, man. And my dad was a proud man. and he would never bow the knee to any other man. But on Sundays, he was on his knees. And this was huge for a little dude, right? Because this had a huge cognitive impact on me because my dad was bowing before the Lord.
24:29There was something more powerful than the most powerful person I had ever seen. And so what did that mean? That meant to be a man, to be manly, is to be strong and to be serious and to be hardworking and to be on my knees before the ultimate source of goodness and power. That's what I meant to be a man. So this is the secret, man. I mean, this is actually to get small and let people see your smallness. That's how you're going to raise your kids too. Brother, that's incredible. It's amazing you say that because my dad was an alcoholic when I was growing up. He got sober when I was 15. But one thing my dad did when he was home, he would come into my room individually, kneel down at my bed and say a prayer with me.
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25:12And then he would leave the room and go into my sister's room and do the same thing. And I saw my dad pray. And when I think of my dad, he's passed away. I think of a few visuals, but one of them is me being next to him at church on a Sunday and watching my dad really pray and really get emotional when he would pray. And my dad was a dude's dude. Like I've seen him in fights. So it's just amazing that you say that. It's literally the pictures just flashed in my head and i found by the way everyone whatever your faith is today's not a faith like just your practice with them whatever that is meditation prayer if you're you know and it's not just dad it's mom too it's it's if you're in a position of authority of your kids it doesn't matter what you tell them all that matters is what they see if you don't want your kids to grow up and and drink too much get on the wagon and don't drink if you don't want your kids to yell obscenities out the window of the car never let them see you do it and if you want them to be on their knees, let them see you on your knees.
26:06Golly. Yeah. I've turned into my dad in a lot of different ways. It's funny. Me too. Me too. Metacognition. Let's talk about that. It's in the book. Fancy term. It's the first chapter I turned to because it was the fanciest term in all the chapters. So I turned to metacognition. I know what that means, but I'm like, I'm going to read this chapter first. So I did. And it's actually a very simple concept in general, but I want people to understand why this can lead to the life you want. Yeah. So metacognition is thinking about thinking. It's emotional self-management. And here's the basic idea. We talked a minute ago about how emotions are produced.
26:41They're nothing more than data. They're nothing more than information being produced in a part of your brain below your level of consciousness called your limbic system. That's the console of tissue dedicated to creating emotions so that you have appropriate information about what's going on and you can react in an appropriate way. But that information is then relayed to the conscious part of your brain, which is called the prefrontal cortex. That's 30 % of your brain by weight is the bumper of tissue right behind your forehead. It's the C-suite of your brain. That's the boss. That's your, you're making your decisions.
27:14You're saying this, yes, this, no. You inhibit behaviors that are not good. You accept behaviors that are. You judge what you're hearing as being true or untrue. It gives you a sense of interest in what you want to do. You go right or left to the stoplight. All that's your prefrontal cortex. Emotional information is being delivered to it all day long. The more that you can actually experience your emotions in the prefrontal cortex, as opposed to just in the limbic system, the happier you're going to be because you will be managed by your emotions. And that means putting lots of time in between when you feel something and when you react.
27:50You feel something in the limbic system. You react with the prepronchal cortex, and that requires a bunch of time. Here's an example of this, by the way. Here's how amazing the limbic system is. When you're crossing the street, the city, and you're at a crosswalk, and a car runs the light, and it's coming toward you, it might hit you. It's happened to all of us. What happens in rapid succession is that the image goes actually down the optic nerve into the occipital lobe of your brain. That sends a signal of an oncoming predator. Your brain doesn't say, can't say Mercedes. Your brain sees that as a predator that wants to harm you.
28:28That sends a signal to your amygdala, these little almond-shaped things in your limbic system that light up as your fight or flight module. That sends now a signal to the hypothalamus of your brain, your pituitary glands, which then signals to your adrenal glands above your kidneys to spit out epinephrine, adrenaline in your system. That happens in 74 milliseconds. That gives you enough time to jump out of the way of the car and your heart is pounding and you're sweating and you're shaking and you flip off the driver before you're conscious of what's happened. And three seconds later, your prefrontal cortex catches up and you say, I shouldn't have flipped him off.
29:05I'm a Christian. That's not the right thing to do. Right. OK, now that's important because you need your limbic system to react. But you want to make a decision about what that means and how you're going to react socially. and that means you need your prefrontal cortex to be involved. You can get much better at the relay all day long. We're getting irritated all day long. I mean, there's a whole news complex dedicated to making Ed and Arthur, you know, bummed out and angry. They want that. They want your limbic system to be clicking on things and getting engaged and getting mad. No, no, no, no, no, no.
29:40You need your prefrontal cortex to say that's stupid. That's probably false. You know, well, that bugs me, but I've decided not to care. And the more you do that, and the better you get at that, and that's what this book is really about, is how to get better at that. Then you're managing your emotions so they don't manage you and your life starts to get a lot better and you become more successful. You say in the book, choose your emotions. Right. You have to use that term. And I actually wrote a question mark down. Like, can you actually consciously choose an emotion? And let me give you the hardest possible litmus test, okay?
30:15And then I'll get you to just run with this. A lot of people listening to this are like, this sounds good. And okay, I'm going to start praying. I'm going to focus on God. I'm going to get my ego out of the way. I'm going to kind of get focused on lessen my life because the more and more and more thing clearly doesn't work. But I just had a loss. I just lost a relationship and someone I really love or somebody I know has passed away or man, I just lost my job and I am now really under financial pressure. Whatever that loss is, are you suggesting that even during those times, I can choose an emotion that serves me better?
30:53Or are you also saying what you said earlier? I know this is complicated, but I want to ask you the hard things. That it's okay to feel sadness and down, but only for a period of time. It's a great question. It's a complicated question. I talk an awful lot about emotional substitution in the following way.
31:12we have a range of emotions that are appropriate in any given situation often our limbic system gives us an emotion that's not the best one for us now when something really bad happens to you you can't choose to think it's good because it's not good but you can choose an emotion that's also appropriate and is actually productive i have a guy i pal around with i don't know, do you know who Rainn Wilson is? Yes, I do know Rainn Wilson. But on the show, I love him. He's a famous comedic actor. And he and I, we both grew up in Seattle and we're very good friends. And I asked him one time, why is it that so many comedians are depressed?
31:53What is it about comedy that makes them depressed? Those seem like opposites, right? And he's like, no, no, no, no, that's not it. It's that a lot of depressed people who are funny, they turn to comedy to relieve their pain. And the reason is because they have found that when they're feeling a whole lot of pain, they can make a joke. And it's totally appropriate to make a joke. Sometimes they'll make a hardcore joke about something that's really, really terrible and people laugh and they laugh and they feel better. That's the reason that so many comedians are actually depressed because they're choosing an emotion.
32:23That's not an inappropriate emotion. It's an also appropriate emotion. So I talk to people all the time about emotional substitution, about, you know, angry, then you don't yell. You're not going to go and then learn not to go yell at your wife when you're feeling annoyed. Do something that's actually more appropriate to the situation, which is to express concern, to be honest about what your anxiety is about the situation, which is a parallel expression that makes perfect sense, but it's one that you chose. That's a great answer. By the way, I could have used that like 32 years ago, that answer.
33:00So there's this story you tell that I just heard. I want you to share with the audience a little bit. When I first started to kind of climb up in my life, I had this mentor, wonderful man, Christian man too, by the way. And we would meet once a month and he would actually write me these letters of advice. His name was Bill, cared about me very much. I love him. And as I started to climb, he had climbed also in his life, but probably not as high as I was more than likely to climb because I was so much younger. Right. And I remember him leaning in. We were having coffee one day. And I violated this advice to such a large extent.
33:35And I regret it. But he said to me, he said, Ed, you're going to make a lot more money. You're going to have a lot more opportunities in your life. Resist the temptation to complicate your life. You're going to want free houses. You're going to want this. You're going to want that. I promise you, you will be happier if things are more simple in your life. and the temptation as you grow and climb is to just more podcasts, more appearances, more speeches, more of this, more of that. And he was right. And you tell this idea about sort of Western versus Eastern happiness philosophies in this museum analogy.
34:12And it's, this is just something no one will forget. Facts tell, stories sell, right? So just please share this. Everyone lean in on this one. Yeah. So I tell the story in, in, in one of my books about a trip that I took to a very famous museum in Taiwan called the National Palace Museum. It's the, it's the, it's the greatest museum of Chinese art artifacts in the world. It's, it's in Taipei and it's so vast. You can't, you can't go through it yourself and absorb anything. All you'll remember is the snack bar because he'll just be walking past stuff for, you know, hours after a while. So I hired a guy and And he was a really kind of a philosophical guy.
34:48He knew a lot about both Eastern and Western art. And I asked him at one point, what is the big philosophical difference between art here in China and art that we see in the West? And he said, actually, it's a very interesting question. He said, because you think of art before it started as an empty canvas to fill up. We think of art yet to be started as a block of stone or jade to be chipped away until we find the work of art that's within. Now, Michelangelo said that at one point, But that's literally how they see art, including music and painting, that it's already there. You have to take away the things that are not there.
35:22And that's the reason that Eastern art always looks so simple compared to Western art, that Eastern music is so simple compared to Western music. It's not less intellectual. It's a different approach, different philosophical approach. And then he said something that really blew my mind. He was very hopeful today because that's also the difference in the idea of success between the West and East. He says, you think of success as adding more, more brushstrokes, more money, more power, more pleasure, more fame, more followers, right? We think of success as chipping away all the stuff that's getting in the way of the true sense of self.
36:00And he said, and if you're a successful person, which a lot of people listening to your podcast are real strivers, that's why they follow you because they want to, because they're strivers. And I love that. I admire that. But if that's the case, by the time you're about 45 years old, man, your canvas is full. You add more brushstrokes, it doesn't get better. You need a better metaphor. The metaphor is the block of jade that you need to start tipping away so you can find a beautiful work of art that's within it. And so the goal is for everybody who's already successful in worldly charms each year is what am I going to get rid of?
36:34What's not serving me? What's not serving not my personal interests? What's not serving my mission? you know and and by the way everybody should know what that mission is you know i have a four-part mission for my life and for my business and it has to go these four things in this order glorify god serve others have an adventure and make a living last now i'm very privileged that i can put make a living last because i get to pay all the bills and there were times in my life where i had to go higher because i had to like you know pay my mortgage and feed my kids but but if you if you know what your priorities are, then you start chipping away, chipping away, chipping away the things that are making it harder for you to meet your own mission.
37:16It's so true. When we were moving here, we just moved here. And I said, I'm going to hit, I'm only going to take to this new place what I actually need. And so I actually went through my closet and gave away 80 % of the stuff in my closet. I did metaphorically what you're saying. I chipped away. I was so much happier with this clutter and burden of things that no longer serve me. I had shirts in there I haven't worn in eight years, 10 years. And many of you are chasing a dream sort of still that hasn't even been your dream for eight or 10 years. And you're still chasing it, wondering why it doesn't fulfill you.
37:54And you've cluttered your life with people and things and stuff and thoughts. You need to clean out the closet. Yeah. You know, the big one, the big one these days is opinions. People have too many opinions and, and, you know, it's like, and it's holding us down. It's weighing us down. You know, I make a reverse bucket list on my birthday. Now I used to have a bucket list when I was, and it's like, I'm going to do this. I'm going to do this. I'm going to do this. Now I have a reverse bucket list. Not that I'm not going to get and do the things, but that I'm not going to be managed by these attachments anymore.
38:26That's why I cross these things out. It's okay if I don't do It's OK, but this year, I mean, I had a big birthday. I'm older than you are. And I had a birthday with a zero on it in May. Obviously not 50. And equally, obviously, I hope not 70. So now everybody knows all that. And, you know, I realize that what's really been holding me back is that I've got too many political opinions and they're too strong. So I put a bunch of my political opinions on my reverse bucket list and I crossed them out. Not that I don't believe these things. I have very strong beliefs. You know, I have very strong beliefs in the primacy of the American free enterprise system.
38:59And I believe in a strong American military. And I think America is the greatest country in the world. I mean, I'm not going to suddenly not believe these things. But the point is, it's OK if people don't agree with me. It's not OK. That's OK. It's great if people don't agree with me. If you don't agree with me, I love you. Come sit down next to me and tell me what you think. Because it's been on my reverse bucket list. By the way, that happened to me at a zero birthday a decade earlier than you. And I have to say this, that particular topic in general, I've learned to stay informed, but not obsessed.
39:35Yeah. I think social media and that topic, politics in general, everyone should just evaluate whether or not your participation at whatever level you're doing it on is bringing you the joy and bliss you want. Now, having said that, there are really dangerous, important things happening in the world. Taking stands where appropriate on those things is part of being human, part of your contribution to the world. I get all that. But you also should evaluate what is it doing to your relationships? your body, your mind, your spirit. Completely. Completely. You got to keep things in perspective. Remember, love matters most.
40:13People matters most. Matter most. Your relationship with God matters most. Politics comes and goes, man. I mean, it's like the weather. You can shake your fist at the clouds that are passing by, but what a way to waste your life. Have opinions. Work for the good. And by the way, everyone, I want to be clear, and I know Arthur feels this way too. When you're strong and passionate about something going on in the world where there's a genocide or something. My gosh, of course. I'm not talking about that. What I'm talking about is the day-to-day obsession with things outside your life and your control.
40:46And you have to ask yourself to some extent, are you doing that to divert attention from yourself and do the real work on you that could bring you happiness? That's the question I had to ask myself. Am I so obsessed with all these? Because there are three or four of them I should have been obsessed with. I should take, but there weren't 300. There were 365 days a year. I found myself in this level of stress and toxicity and it just started to become all consuming. Yeah. Well, that's really important. And you know, the key thing is that a lot of people, they don't know how to do the interior work.
41:18They don't want to make the effort to do the interior work. And so they'll take a, an extraordinary leap to say that I'll actually be happy if the outside world changes. Now, the news networks want you to think this. The politicians want you to think this. Social media wants it. Every activist in the world wants you to think that if the injustices in the world were finally rectified, then you'll finally be happy. It's not true. It's a lie. There's only one way for you to get happier, which is to do the work. And doing the work is not changing the whole outside world because newsflash, you're not going to get it done.
41:54It's working inside. And when you do work inside, then you'll be effective at making things go better outside, but you're not going to lose your mind when things don't go your way. That's a good point. You know, for me, I think one of the reasons I was struggling with it, I want to ask you another hard question. We only have a few more and thank you for today. It's been just exactly what I was hoping it would be. I love it.
42:15I was sort of lacking. So when I was younger, I didn't have those tendencies. I had passion and beliefs and I'd make an effort and have an opinion where it stood because I also had a strong purpose when I was younger. Yeah. This purpose dominated my life and my frustration was going on geopolitically. I'd speak up where appropriate. Then when my purpose sort of became fulfilled, that first one, that first big goal, when I lost my purpose, I just dove deep into this stuff where that kind of became my religion almost. And, but then I rediscovered a purpose in my life. So I think a lot of people listening to this feel like if they had a real purpose in their life, they'd probably be happier.
42:58I think your work states that that's true when you're making a contribution, feel good about your work, you're happier. The hard question is how does someone uncover, discover their purpose or their new purpose? Yeah. So finding meaning and purpose in your life is the biggest challenge that most young people have today. I mean, I can go a long time not getting the stuff that I want, but I can't go 10 minutes not knowing the why in my life and be a happy person. And what we find is that fewer and fewer and fewer young people are looking for their life's purpose, let alone finding it. And there's a reason for that.
43:29There's a neurophysiological reason for that. Questions of meaning are in the right hemisphere of the brain. Questions of distraction and things, those are largely occupying the left hemisphere of the brain. The more time you spend on the screen, the more time you spend on social media, the more time you spend gaming, the less able you are to examine the meaning questions in your life. Physiologically, you can't get from one side to the other quickly enough. And so the result of it is that you're going to have less of a sense of meaning and a greater sense of emptiness. Here's what I recommend to all the young people that want to grow up and be it.
44:03And by the way, that's a good goal to want to grow up and be you. So how are you going to do it? And the answer is you need regularly to cleanse from all of the distractions that are marooning you on the left side of your brain and start doing something systematically that will get you on the right side of your brain. I recommend getting up an hour and a half before dawn. It's an advice that I get to a lot of young men and young women, if they ask. Get up an hour and a half before dawn. with the Hindus called the Brahma Mahurta. In Sanskrit, that means the creator's time. There's a lot of research that shows that this is when you have unusual clarity.
44:40Don't tell me you're a night person. No, no, hour and a half before dawn and go for a walk with no devices for an hour and do it every day for a month. And I promise you, you're gonna start seeing things differently than you currently do. This is the glitch in the matrix, man. This is the way that you strike back against the empire that wants to keep you distracted and they don't care how unhappy that you are. This is the way to get. So start back on a path forward meeting. I love, do you know who Wayne Dyer is? Do you remember Wayne Dyer? Of course, of course, he's the hero. Okay, he became a mentor to me and a friend.
45:14And when I started to get to know him young, he said, Ed, you ever wake up like around three or four, 4.30 in the morning with like these unbelievable ideas? And I said, yeah, he goes, that's the divine awakening you up and right. And I said, I go back to bed. And he goes, well, how often do you even remember what you were thinking about? I said, like 5 % of the time. Right. That if you really want to nail it, get up before dawn and walk with these ideas and create them. That's exactly right. And there's a lot of ancient philosophy and thinking and theology, but there's also a lot of research that shows why exactly that works.
45:48I've done a lot of that research myself, and I strongly recommend it as the way to start finding why am I alive for what would I give my life? these many of these fundamental questions. And you, by the way, you don't even have to like go to the mouth of a cave and ask a guru. You need to actually offer up these questions in a spirit of non-distraction and the cool before dawn. This is the magic time. Brother, I love you. I've got one more question for you. What he just said, by the way, there's this podcast out where someone edited me where I say walking is an exercise. Walking's amazing exercise.
46:22I've talked about it on 50 different shows. It's the most. So my dad did all through chemo. But it's also an unbelievable way to be creative when you do it before dawn. And I got to tell you, not only will you be connected to the divine, but the divine, people ask me, where do you get all your content from? How do you keep creating new content and writing? It's those hours when I'm actually in that state of mind. I cannot stamp of approval that more of what he just said. Yeah. And there's so much that goes into it because when you do that, you have to start the time before dawn the night before.
46:53And so how do you start that the night before by going to bed, sober, very important. And just doing that one thing, it starts to make things work in your life. All the puzzle pieces start to come together. And that's how you start to build a life that's highly functional. It's highly responsible. That's how you start to become. It's the first thing to do to become the man that you want to be or the woman that you want to be. So good. And here's the reason why that matters. This isn't from this book. It's from a previous book and I had written it down. It's my quote. I don't know if I'm quoting you directly because you said in the book, because your decline is coming much sooner than you think.
47:29And it's true. We're here for a flicker, everybody. This thing is quick. So the last question I just want to ask you about is that, like, give us context to why all of this matters, right? Like, like you and I, you've had a zero. I'm catching you. I'm about seven years behind you. Hey guys, I'm telling you yesterday, my kids were being born. I mean, yesterday they were born Yesterday, I was still playing college baseball. Here's how crazy time is, everyone. When I watch college sports on TV, this is no joke, everyone. I watch college sports on TV. When I watch these kids, in my mind, I'm only like five, six years older than these guys when I watch them.
48:08Is that nuts? I could be their father or grandfather because it was just yesterday for me. So just speak to that last, Arthur. This life is so precious. and the end in our decline, even our capacity. You only have so many years where you've got a high capacity to think and function and perform. And I just want everyone to sort of have some sense of peaceful urgency about making these shifts and these adjustments. And then speak to the decline thing too. It's not the most fired up way to end the show, but it's just real. Yeah. And when I talk about your decline, the truth is that there's lots of changes throughout life.
48:42And so certain skills decline and certain strengths decline and other skills increase and other strengths increase. And you get that. At the end of the day, of course, there's the ultimate decline because everybody dies. Here's the way to think about it, however, because I agree with you. It's extraordinary how fast these things go. My kids were just born and now I'm a grandfather. What the heck is that all about? And the answer is that love keeps going. Life keeps going. Time keeps going. And so here's the way to think about it. You know, for most of us, we're not in the last year of life. We are.
49:16But you know what? We might as well be. So ask yourself this. Am I doing what I would be doing if this were my last year of life? Mostly. Am I worrying about something that I wouldn't really care about that much if this were my last year of life? Am I concerned about a stupid thing like the election in my last year of life? I mean, good. Vote the way you want to vote. but why are we freaking out about politics if this were my last year of life? Would I be offended because that person said that mean thing about me if this were my last year? Like, no, no, no. I'd be focused on my kids. I'd be focused on my wife.
49:55I'd be focused on my grandchildren. I'd be focused on my friends. I would be on my knees in prayer and I would be happier as a result because happiness is love. That's what it comes down to. So just ask yourself, this might not be the last year, but it might be, am I using it well? And by using it well, it's not like, you know, am I buying the right things? Am I experiencing the right things? Am I backpacking across Europe? No. Am I loving enough or am I wasting the opportunity to love more? Oh my gosh. Now I'm really glad I asked that to finish things. Yeah. It's a great question. And again, that's a harder question to answer when you're 26 than when you're 61.
50:36It's a harder question to answer. And that's what's great about these times, Arthur, because a 26-year-old can benefit from a 61-year-old's wisdom up close like this. Whereas 25 years ago, I'd had to find somebody and ask them. Now, you have access like this. It's one of the great blessings of being alive right now. I know. I know. It really is. It really is a lovely thing, I have to say. And I'm hoping that I'll actually be able to benefit from and share wisdom for the rest of my life. That's how we should actually be using the technology. That's why I'm so grateful that the technology that made it possible for me in Northern Virginia can have this wonderful brotherly conversation with you on a little island in Maine.
51:12I loved this today. You guys, that's why the decline that's coming, you know, that's why you want to build a life you want. By the way, he wrote the book with Oprah Winfrey. We didn't even get into any of that. And there's little things, everyone, a word from Oprah that comes throughout the book. And so you'll get both of their wisdom throughout it. I like loved today's conversation, brother. Me too. This is how you should be spending your life is conversations like this with wonderful people. So thank you, Arthur, for being here today. It was everything I hoped for and more. So thank you so much.
51:39Thank you for the wonderful work that you're doing. Thank you for your show. Thank you for your witness. Thank you for your life that you're sharing with other people. And let's just keep at it, my brother. Love you, brother. We're going to be doing something together. And you're coming up here. I'm coming down there and taking you to dinner, lunch soon. Perfect. God bless you, everybody. Max out your life. This is the Ed Myron Show.
52:03We'll see you next time.
From the publisher
Could your toughest days hold the secret to personal greatness? It's time to rethink everything you thought you knew about being happy...
Arthur Brooks, a renowned happiness expert and professor at Harvard, joins me today to unravel how embracing life's challenges can transform your path to happiness. In this deeply insightful episode, we challenge conventional wisdom about happiness, revealing the unexpected ways that embracing discomfort and negative emotions can enrich your life.
Arthur and I take you on a journey through the complexities of human emotions and the pursuit of happiness. You'll discover why the quest for constant positivity might actually be hindering your personal growth and how the key to true contentment lies in a balanced emotional spectrum.
In this episode, we explore:
The Happiness Paradox: why your unhappiest days might hold the key to your most significant growth
Satisfaction and Desire: Dive into the psychology of desire and learn how recalibrating your aspirations can lead to deeper satisfaction
Misconceptions of Happiness: We debunk the myths that cloud our understanding of what happiness really is
Emotional Management: Learn practical tips for reshaping your emotional responses to life’s fluctuations and how to use both positive and negative emotions to your benefit
Building Resilience: Find out how true resilience is developed not by avoiding difficulties, but by confronting them boldly and with preparation
The Science of Happiness: Arthur breaks down the scientific foundations of happiness, offering a solid framework for understanding your emotional world
Arthur’s insights are backed by years of research and his teachings at Harvard, making this discussion not just theoretical but grounded in evidence-based practices that can be applied immediately to your daily life.
Join us as we redefine the pursuit of happiness, proving that understanding and managing the spectrum of our emotions can lead to a richer and more content life. Get ready to shift your perspective, embrace a new paradigm of happiness, and unlock a deeper understanding of yourself.
