The Meaning of Your Life Feat. Arthur Brooks

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1:01This is the Ed Mylon Show.

1:30and I'm excited that he's back. My guest today is Arthur Brooks, you guys. I don't know how to describe him. I think he's like the most interesting man in the world candidate. I guess he's a, I call him, I don't know, a happiness, meaning, human flourishing guru of sorts, but his work kind of crosses over with neuroscience. He's a very bright man, very spiritual man. He's a professor at Harvard, and I enjoy his work so much. I look forward to the conversations I've had with him, And he's got a book out now called The Meaning of Your Life, Finding Purpose in an Age of Emptiness. I cannot wait to jump into this for my own emotional well-being.

2:09So, Arthur, welcome back to the show. Thanks, Ed. It's great to see you again. Likewise. Likewise. This is so good. So I learned a new word in your book, and I'm not sure that I pronounce it right. But I want to start with kind of a concept at a time that you describe in the book. It's a German word. I'll butcher it, and then you clean it up, okay, because you're the Harvard professor. And I'm the guy with the microphone and a camera in his office. So, Unheimlich. Am I close? That's good. Yeah, that's good. Unheimlich. Unheimlich. And again, I'm no German expert. That's not my second language.

2:43But that's a word. It almost doesn't have a translation. And my daughter taught it to me, actually. It means to not feel, to feel eerily out of place. To not feel comfortable in your home. like something's not right and you can't quite put your finger on it. And we know that, you know, something's creepy. You go into a room and everybody's acting real weird or whatever it happens to be. And, you know, something's not right. And the reason I brought that word out in the beginning of this new book, The Meaning of Your Life, is because that's how I felt just a very few years ago. I'm an old college professor.

3:20I mean, that's I've been I got my PhD 30 years ago. And I taught for a long time. And then I left to run a company just to see if I could actually do it. And I ran the company for 11 years. And then I retired and came back to academia. And I kind of thought I was going to find universities the way that I'd left them. I left the university in 2008 and it was happy. I mean, it was a happier part of life. Everybody was ambitious and getting along and falling in love and making friends. And I I mean, like you remember college, right, Ed? Yep, yep. College was a blast. Yes, exactly. I came back in 2019 and, man, it was unheimlich.

3:56It was like something wasn't right. It was creepy. I mean, people were sad and angry. Depression had tripled. Anxiety had doubled. And a lot of universities, including my own, more than 50 % of students were getting counseling or actually seeing a mental health professional. There was loneliness. There was bitterness. all this really crazy, angry activism where everybody was a victim. It was like the victim Olympics on these campuses. Cancel culture, safe spaces, microaggressions. It was misery. It was like a plague had gone through my village while I was gone. And I thought to myself, well, I guess this is my research now.

4:39I guess figuring this one out is why I'm here when I came back to academia in 2019. The reason it stuck out for me, so I read the whole book because I just, you know, I got a digital copy. I read the whole thing. That description, though, I almost feel like that's how so many people feel about their entire life, meaning it's familiar, but it doesn't feel like home anymore. And it's really the nature of your work. And I'm not even so sure that I wouldn't describe myself this way more often than I'd like to admit it, that, I don't know, the meaning of life escapes me often. You know, I do work that matters, like what we're doing right now.

5:18I've got wonderful family. I've been blessed to build wealth far beyond my talents, that's for sure. But I think sometimes I'm searching for fulfillment, even though I've had a lot of achievement. Yeah. It's really what this book's about, you know. It really is. Yeah, it really is. It's the crisis of emptiness that people feel. It's the meaning crisis, which, by the way, is not just part of the human condition. People have always struggled with, you know, what is the meaning of my life? But it's become a phenomenon in our society, in our world, but particularly in the United States since about 2008.

5:55And it affects everybody, you and me and everybody else, but especially people under 30, and most especially educated people under 30, as a matter of fact. There's this weird psychogenic epidemic, which is just a fancy way of saying an epidemic of misery that doesn't have a biological origin. There's no virus that we can find, but it's really spreading around. And you see it explode after 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012. And so my research is all about why is it that suddenly all of us are struggling to find meaning and young people in particular can't find the meaning of their lives? What is meaning? where do they need to go to find it and how do they need to live differently?

6:35That's what this book answers. Let's talk about a couple of those answers. That's what's great about his work. He'll describe things in his book. You go, that's me. And then the next part of it is here's maybe a possible solution or a strategy. So the first chapter is the meaning of meaning. Yeah. And then you sort of break down, I think you call it the three components of meaning or happiness. Why don't you share those with us? Because I think that alone is illuminating for a lot of people. it was for me. When you don't know what you're looking for, you can't actually find it, generally speaking.

7:04So you have to be able to name it. And that's true in anything, by the way. You know, if you say you got to go to Tacoma, but you don't know what a Tacoma is, it's not going to be very helpful. So what I start off with is talking about how we as behavioral scientists understand what meaning really is in people's lives. And what it is, is a combination of three things. There are three things that if you don't have them, you won't have a sense of the meaning of your life. Number one is you have to have a sense of why things happen the way they do. That's called coherence. And that's the reason that people, they have a lot of their beliefs.

7:39Religion provides a sense of coherence, why things happen the way they do. Science provides a sense of coherence. Personally, I'm both religious and I'm a scientist. Some people, they really go after conspiracy theories. And when you see somebody who falls for every conspiracy theory, it's because they don't have a sense of meaning. And that's because they don't have a sense of coherence in their lives. When people are falling, are looking for, oh, there's powerful people that are pulling the strings behind everything. That's their search for coherence because they lack a sense of meaning. It's a dead giveaway.

8:10They got a meaning crisis is when you see people that are, that are falling to these things. The second is purpose. Purpose and meaning are not the same thing. Purpose is why you're doing what you're doing, what direction that you're going, what are your goals in life so that you know you can make progress. That's the answer to the, or that's the question, you know, where am I going? That's purpose. And you have to be going in a particular direction. If you're not, you're gonna be going in circles and your life is gonna feel meaningless, which is huge problem for a lot of young people today. And the last is what's called significance.

8:43And significance is the answer to why my life matters. Because if your life doesn't matter to anyone, including yourself, you don't have any sense of meaning at all. If nobody loves you, if you don't have a sense of somebody caring about you, you're insignificant, you won't have any meaning to your life. And so those are the three things to go in search of. Why do things happen the way they do? Why am I doing what I'm doing? And why does my life matter? Those are the three big searches to find the meaning of life. Yeah, you know, the latter. I remember when my first bout, I always share stuff with my audience that maybe is a little bit more personal than some hosts might be willing to share.

9:20but I remember my grandfather died when I was a little boy. I thought I was a relatively happy kid. My dad was an alcoholic and a drug addict, and I don't recall whether my dad had gotten sober yet or not. But I remember my grandfather died. I found myself a few weeks later stumbling into this loop. You kind of call it a doom loop. Right. It was more like, well, he's gone. Like, why does life matter? Right. And I think in my case, like, the most unhappy I've been is the third element. Like, does any of this matter? Right. Obviously, because of my faith, I've been reborn in that. And that does have a matter to me.

9:57But I got to share. You talk about this in the book, and I want you to maybe elaborate, even if it's something that's not in the book, because I'm curious this for me, for myself. I know a lot of people that live in the middle. They're not really happy. They're a little bit melancholy, but they have moments of happiness. The people that I actually know, the most unhappy, and by the way, this is not all of them. when I have to rank my unhappiest friends, they're actually externally more successful than the other group. Meaning success is almost external success, whether they got the money or the house or the car, maybe even the relationship in some cases.

10:36They are actually unhappier. It's almost like their success contributed to their doom, almost like is this all there is type thing. That's right. That's right. And there's a reason for that. There's an absolute reason for that. When you're going to find what you're looking for in life, what we call extrinsic motivation, that is to say, stuff happening to you, I'm only going to be happy when I have enough success. That's looking for extrinsic outside rewards as opposed to doing the work inside, intrinsically looking for the rewards. You're not going to find it, and you're not going to find meaning.

11:11You're going to be aimless. It's going to be a big problem. I tell my students on the first day of class, you think, because the world's told you, my My students are, by the way, 28 years old, MBA students at the Harvard Business School. These are the, they want to grow up and be Ed Milet. That's what they want to be when they grow up. They want to be successful like you. And they believe when they have the money, the power, the admiration, the prestige, the position, the relationships, then happiness will come for free. And I say, no, no, no, no. You got to do the work. You got to point to the happiness by asking the questions and doing the work in your relationships and all the stuff I talk about in this book.

11:45and then you'll be successful enough. And the problem is for all the strivers that haven't done the work, there's no enough. There isn't ever enough. And that's the reason that there's so much misery among some of the most accomplished people in the world. Gosh, it's so, by the way, everybody, I can just tell you as someone who's maybe had a little bit of that success thing, it's really true if you don't do this other work. The antithesis is written about in the book as well. This I've never, well, I've heard it of my spiritual life and my Christian walk, but nowhere else in a book like this. And you actually say that suffering, everyone lean in on this, okay?

12:25This might be cool for you to all take a different meaning when you're suffering. That suffering may actually contribute to your ability to find meaning, that there's a purpose to suffering. You ought to get something for your suffering. Yep. Yep. Yep. As a matter of fact, that's one of the great ways that people who are finding meaning to their life actually find it is they stop trying to avoid their suffering. It's an interesting thing. There's a formula that the Tibetan Buddhists have that suffering equals pain multiplied by resistance. Pain times resistance. And when you're trying to lower your pain to get rid of your suffering, it's pretty ineffective.

13:04Why? Because your pain is going to come back. It's interesting that people who baby their back because their back hurts wind up with a lot more back pain. They always do because they, you know, they get weaker and they become more sedentary. The way to actually, to make your suffering more productive is not by lowering the pain, but by lowering your resistance to the pain. To be saying, I'm not going to resist. I'm going to learn how to live, how to grow and learn. And by the way, you and I as Christians, I mean, what's the most amazing thing to me is that Christian people who are trying to avoid they're suffering.

13:36They worship a man who's suffering and we don't want to suffer. Are you kidding me? My savior is suffering. And I'm like, yeah, but me, I don't know, man. I, it's like, I don't want to go a couple extra days waiting for that money. You know, I don't want to have an argument with my wife. My savior is on the cross, but me, nah, I'm annoyed because, you know, I can't get, you know, because the cable's out. By the way, I was, as you were talking, I was thinking that very thing. I was thinking of Jesus when you were talking. I think sometimes we conflate that he died for our sins and that we're saved, that somehow that means we all escape suffering as well.

14:13Right. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. It's really interesting. And, you know, I'm Catholic. I know you're Protestant, but it's interesting because we're taping this the day after the reading in the Catholic Church was where John the Baptist's followers, John the Baptist is in prison. And his followers come and find Jesus and say, are you the one we've been waiting for? But what they're really saying is, aren't you the one we've been waiting for? Why aren't you doing something about John who's over there in prison? And Jesus actually says in no small and indirect way, this is the point.

14:47It's like you got to suffer. This is the will of God is to actually suffer sometimes. But the reward is so much greater. And the truth is, even for those who are listening to us who are not religious believers, you must lean into your suffering because growth and learning comes from suffering. Suffering is your teacher. You want to find the meaning of your life. this is one of the six ways you got to do it is learning how to understand and live with your suffering. Love you guys. So good. By the way, those of you that are not religious, we're about to shift the neuroscience in a minute. So hang in there.

15:18We're going to go to the brain. But before we do that, I want to ask you about one other element that I think can bring meaning to life, which is service. Yeah. Speaking of Jesus, what's what's he do before he dies? He gets his guys together and washes their feet. Right. So what about that element of finding something that you serve, that you care for, that you love. I know it's in the book, but they haven't read the book yet. So what about that element of finding meaning in one's life and service? This is one of the other six means of doing so is by transcending yourself. And one of the things that people don't often understand is that Mother Nature doesn't care if we're happy at all.

15:59Mother Nature just wants us to survive and pass on our genes. Happiness and meaning, that's our business. That's how we, that's our moral aspiration as opposed to our animal impulse, which is such a beautiful thing that we have this incredible brain that allows us to choose between animal impulse and moral aspiration. And we're doing it all day long. But Mother Nature says, focus on yourself all the time, because that's going to be good for you. It's good for getting another meal or getting another mate. It's horrible for your happiness. It's horrible for your sense of meaning in life. And so what you need to do is to stop focusing on yourself.

16:36And that's one of the reasons that we talk, I talk in this book about this method of finding meaning, which is transcendence. And that means transcending yourself by standing in awe of something greater than you, maybe through religion, maybe through nature, maybe through music, maybe through philosophy and focusing on others and not just yourself. Focusing on the needs of other people. It's so transcendent and it gives you so much meaning. The fast path to finding the meaning of your life is to stop focusing on yourself and go serve other people who need you, you will experience meaning. When you're starting off with something new, it seems like your to-do list keeps growing every day with new tasks.

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18:57Again, that's quickbooks.com slash bill pay. Terms and conditions apply. Money movement services are provided by Intuit Payments, Inc. License as a money transmitter by the New York State Department of Financial Services. That's a fact. By the way, you guys, I could tell you, even like a day like today, kind of an odd day for me. And I have now built these patterns. I can't wait to do the show because at least for that hour of my life, I feel as if I'm in service of other people. and all my issues that are going on in my life, good or bad, I almost escape a different state. I wanted to ask you about this.

19:33In the book, you talk about the left and the right brain. I just did this event. I only do it once a year. It's like an all-day thing in my house. I have 20 people come in, and I do a ton of RAS programming and cognitive rehearsal and visualization stuff that I teach these groups. and one of the throughout the training i play the movie the matrix i play clips yeah i book the power of one more i have uh it's called the one well that's neo right and and then the messiah jesus is the ultimate one so i love the matrix and i actually told this group to some extent you live in a simulation to some and you actually simulations in the book the matrix is in the book Right.

20:20I wonder, do we get the life we're also looking for? In other words, do we scan? Is there a part of our brain that is habituated itself into its condition to scan our environment, scan our life to deliver to us what we're most familiar with? Right. No, of course. Of course. And that's that's you know, there's people have always done that. I mean, the things that you're familiar with are the things that you actually see, the things you're actually aware of. But the point that you're making about the Matrix is really important. So for our listeners and viewers who are not super familiar with this, the Matrix was one of the most one of the most popular movies of the year in 1999 when it came out.

21:02And it had this crazy science fiction plot in which something I don't know, maybe you'd call it an artificial intelligence. intelligence, crazy computers were actually controlling humanity and they were taking their energy from humans. And the way that they did that was by anesthetizing humans, keeping them in pods, sucking off their energy and playing a simulation into the human mind. Well, guess what, friends? We're in the matrix. We're actually living a simulation. If your life is largely one that's simulated through a screen, it's mediated by, you know, you're going to work on Zoom and you're dating on apps and your friends are on social media and your sense of accomplishment is coming through gaming and on and on and on and on, then what's actually happening is it's not real life, it's a simulation of real life.

21:50And your brain isn't made to do that. Your brain simply can't do that. And here's what's going on. And here's the neuroscience, Ed, that we promised we'd talk about. What happens is when you're in the matrix, when you're in the simulation, you're being relegated to the left hemisphere of your brain. The left hemisphere of your brain is all the what and how to questions, including all the technology and hustle and grind. And the right side of your brain is all the mystery and the meaning, all of the things you really care about, all the love that you actually care about. That's the right side of your brain.

22:23When you're online all day, you're on the left side of your brain. But on the right side of your brain, that's where you answer and deal with meaning questions. So not only do you not know the meaning of your life when you're living in a simulation. You're not even asking the questions. And that's why life feels empty. The one thing you can't simulate is the meaning of life. Oh my gosh, you guys. By the way, that's the book title, The Meaning of Your Life. Go get it, you guys. There's not a lot of books that I'm really kind of firm on with you. Like, go get the book, okay? I'm telling you there, first off, it's also an easy read.

22:53But I gotta tell you, so many of you, these are the questions that I get asked the most. Have you had a moment in your own life, like a seminal moment on this topic? Is that why you wrote the book? Was there like a moment? I mean, I'm sure there's been a series, but is there one that stands out where you were suffering or struggling with this? Yeah, I mean, I did have a significant meaning crisis. Now, not to the extent that I see with my students who don't remember the before times, by the way, who don't remember before people were living in the matrix. But, you know, I was a CEO for a long time and it was a great run.

23:26I ran a company in Washington, D.C. for 11 years, and I retired at 55, which was six years ago for those who are keeping score. That's how old I am. And when I retired, I was just, man, I was spent. I was empty. The tank was empty. I'd been working 80 hours a week, and I made a bunch of mistakes during those years personally. I mean, I hadn't paid enough attention to my family. And furthermore, I've been super, I've got more and more addicted to my devices as kind of pacifying me and distracting me. And so the result of it was that I just wasn't all there. My life really didn't have a sense of meaning.