Conversation with Arthur Brooks — The Pillars of Happiness

24:37And if it goes above a particular threshold such that it's clinically designated, then you actually need treatment. Anyway, so people who are above that clinical designation, then like most, there's about a 95 % undertreatment rate for these mood disorders. And most guys our age self-treat. And how do they self-treat? With drugs and alcohol. They self-treat with drugs and alcohol. Plus other really deleterious things for your brain like pornography, which is horrible for the brain. all these things that will actually increase the neurotransmitter activity that's involved with addiction, etc. It basically is brain capture, gambling, whatever it happens to be.

25:12And then on top of that, so you've got a mental illness problem. You have a very messy and bad self-treatment issue. And then you have a setback. And the setback is what, you know, something happens. You lose your job. Your wife leaves you. You know, something happens to one of your kids. and you can't handle the setback because life is full of setbacks, man. I mean, life is full of crises. Life is full of problems. And what do you need to deal with your problems? You need people around you who love you. You need a support structure. You need a religion. You need a spouse. You need kids. You need a family.

25:44When all that stuff is gone, and by the way, the only coping mechanism that you have is internet porn and a 12-pack of beer, that's not going to solve the problem. On the contrary, it's going to make it worse. So I just basically summarized what you said in slightly different terms. One of the reasons I wanted to speak to you is that religion plays a big role in your life. Yeah. And it plays none in mine. And I was just curious, and it makes a lot of sense to me, that you need those shock absorbers, friendships, or a belief that you're playing a part in something bigger than yourself, which I think religion, a sense of community provides all of those things.

26:22Can you walk us through the benefits of faith, specifically if you're explaining those benefits to those of us who are atheists? Yeah, for sure. So I'm a Catholic, most important thing in my life. And the metaphysics of the rightness of Catholicism are, I don't know, man. I don't know. It's above my, I'm not a priest. It's above my, I'm not a theologian. But as a social scientist, the important thing about, about faith is actually the transcendence that it brings, which you can also get many other ways. Here's the point. Nature, Mother Nature, who does not care if we're happy, Mother Nature really only cares about two things, which is procreation and survival.

27:01That's really Mother Nature's imperatives for you. Happy, that's your business. And Mother Nature gives you a real imperative to focus on yourself all the time. That's called the psychodrama. That's what most, you know, in the social science literature that I swim around in. The psychodrama is my job and my lunch and my commute and my students and my money and my sandwich. And it's just, It's like watching the same episode of Better Call Saul every single day by force. And it's incredibly tedious and terrible. That psychodrama will drive you almost literally mad. And the only way to get beyond the psychodrama is to transcend it.

27:41You need to look at something bigger than yourself. And there's a lot of ways to do it. You and I both know Ryan Holiday, who's a good dude. And what he's done is he's actually introduced millions of people to stoicism, which what it does is it gives you a sense of transcendence. You play a smaller piece. It becomes, instead of the me self looking in the mirror, it's the I self where I can actually observe the world and take some sense of awe in it. Some people like to walk in nature without devices. I love to analyze the fugues of Johann Sebastian Bach. Some people engage in a Vipassana meditation practice.

28:13Some people like me go to mass. The point is, man, you gotta zoom out because if you don't zoom out, you will be zoomed in and you'll be miserable all the time. That's why you need a sense of life's philosophy and something that will put you in proper perspective, which is little. You need to, as they used to say, as Steve Martin used to say, you've got to get small, man. You've got to get small. Do you think I'm trying to move to solutions here? And I like the way you framed it. I think the more time I spend just focusing on my own shit and looking at myself constantly, the more susceptible I become to a shock.

28:47And for me, having kids was really became a bit of a shock absorber because for the first time I was thinking about other things more than myself. And so quite frankly, I just had less time to be hard on myself or think about my shortcomings because I was focused on something other than me. Do you think that, for example, outside of religion, like national service, nonprofit, volunteer work, what else can serve that role or fill that hole like religion does? Yeah, relationships are key. So you find that the happiest people, they engage in faith or philosophy, family life, real friendship, and work that serves other people.

29:24Those are the big four. Faith, family, friends, and work are the big four. What do they all have in common? They're about other people. They're about love of the divine or love of your family or love of your friends or love for everybody is expressed through your work. And, you know, that's probably, I mean, you and I have, we're engaged in public education. That's what we do. You know, we have our university students, but then we have the general public that we're dedicated to educating. And your work makes you miserable when you're thinking about your own career. And it makes you intensely happy when you realize you're doing something good for a lot of other people.

29:55When people say, you know, what's the best way to get rid of loneliness? The answer is go find a lonely person and give them relief. That's the single best way for you to be less lonely. If you want to be less depressed and you feel isolated, go do something for somebody because you actually will go from me self to I self. It's all about other people. Talk about the role that fitness plays in happiness or exercise. Yeah. So that's an interesting one because that's really important, I know, to you and really, really important to me as well. I've been a gym rat for 30 years. And for the longest time, I noticed that it is tremendously important for my well-being, my well-being in general.

30:31But well-being is, you know, subjective well-being, which social scientists have been talking about for a long time, is too blunt a concept because it mixes two things that are actually occurring largely in different hemispheres of the brain, positive and negative affect, positive and negative mood, which are separable because they're actually induced by activity in different parts of the limbic system of the brain. You need negative emotions, fear, anger, sadness, and disgust to protect you from threats and give you aversive sensations. All emotions are, are data. All they are, are information.

31:04So you know what's going on and you know how to react to it. Your positive emotions, they give you approach motives. It's like, joy, interest. These are the things that make me want to go do something. Now people talk about good and bad feelings. They're completely wrong. There's no such thing as good and bad feelings. There's positive and negative emotions largely emanating from different hemispheres of the brain. Now, the reason that that's really important is because when we mix them together and call it subjective well-being, you're kind of mixing things that don't mix very well. What we find is once we separate those things that we have different stimuli that will either raise your levels of happiness vis-a-vis your positive affect or manage your levels of negative affect, your unhappiness.

31:46Fitness and health are very good techniques for managing your unhappiness. They're not very good for raising your happiness. And that's a super important thing. I mean, I have these tests that I give people about whether they have really high or low levels of positive and negative affect. You know, it's like you and I are just meeting, but I know who you are. I've been seeing you for years and years and years. And you have a classic mad scientist profile of an entrepreneur. Very high positive affect and very high negative affect. You're a high affect guy, super engaged, super high energy. But that means that you've got to do two things.

32:19You've got to make sure that you keep that high positive affect, but you've got to manage that high negative affect, or you'll make everybody around you nuts. I mean, you'll drive your spouse off. You'll make your employees insane if you don't do that. And the single best way to manage negative affect, not to get rid of it because you'll die. You'll get chased down by a tiger and get killed. You want to manage it to manageable levels is physical exercise. Now, another way to do it, of course, is meditation. And so I recommend to all of my students who are mad scientists like Scott Galloway and Arthur Brooks, by the way, is to get up before dawn.

32:56No coffee, no stimulants, because all you'll be doing is pouring stimulants on top of unusually high cortisol levels that are spiking at that point. Go beat yourself up. I mean beat yourself up for 60 minutes in the gym man and I'm talking lifting because there's no substitute for lifting for the for the hormonal impacts that it have and then work on your spirit whether that's your meditation or you're analyzing Bach or doing your wisdom reading or going to church and then two hours after you get up have your coffee and then you'll have a maximum period of dopamine you'll be managing your negative affect you'll have a much better day we'll be right back Running a business comes with a lot of what-ifs, but luckily there's a simple answer to them.

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35:04So you talked about caffeine, and I'll use this as a segue into, I try to be as transparent as possible with my listeners, and I'm finally in a position of economic security where I'm not too worried about being canceled, at least economically. I love alcohol, and I love substances. I drink, I used to drink four or five times a week, now recognizing my liver just can't handle that. I drink two to three times a week, and I think it's been a net positive in my life. And I also take edibles probably two or three times a week. I love THC. And I used a lot of it when I was young. I gave it up when I was working all the time.

35:42But maybe this is the symptom of an abuser, but I've talked myself into believing it's actually enhanced my happiness. Have you thought about a construct through which to look at substances in terms of—because I don't just buy—I find it's very reductive to go Nancy Reagan and say, just say no, and they're all bad all the time. I just don't buy that. Have you thought about a lens through which to look at substances in terms of managing your own happiness? It's a cost-benefit question is what it comes down to. And so the whole idea of being very arch on this is not appropriate. And the cost-benefit differs for different people.

36:18I don't use any substances because I have a lot of addiction in my family. And, you know, recognizing So nothing, no alcohol, not a glass of wine? No, nothing, nothing. I drank very heavily through my 20s and 30s. I was a musician all the way through my 20s. I was a professional classical musician until I was in my early 30s. And then all the way through graduate school, getting my PhD and becoming a social scientist, I kind of kept being a musician with respect to my habits. And by the time I was 38 years old, I saw the writing on the wall, I was going to go the direction of the rest of my family.

36:46And so I needed to stop. That doesn't mean Scott Galloway needs to stop. You need to know yourself. Remember the Oracle at Delphi, know thyself. It's very important. And if you don't, then you'll be following somebody else's pattern. and somebody who has a tendency toward alcohol abuse can ruin their life, or somebody who actually could get some positive benefit for their relationships and just entertainment will be missing that. So one of the things that I talk about is family tendency. There's a whole series of very interesting behavioral experiments. So you can find, for example, that if it's easy for you to stop with two drinks, you probably don't need to.

37:22If it's hard for you to stop at two drinks, you should probably not be drinking. and that has everything to do with just your general proclivities toward the addiction that comes through the dopamine pathways. The other thing that's really worth pointing out, Scott, is that people can enjoy substances a lot more the longer that they wait to use them. And the reason is because of the pathways that we lay down in the brain. When your brain is highly plastic and you're drinking at 14, you're much likely to be an alcohol abuser when you're 28 and 38 than if you actually don't start until your brain is less plastic.

37:53And so the key thing for parents listening to us. Don't waste your time trying to tell your kids, never, never, never. Don't ever try pot. Don't ever try alcohol. You'll die if you do. Just delay as long as you possibly can. And they're far more likely the longer you delay to develop healthy patterns and life-affirming patterns as opposed to having to quit and go through a whole lot of crises later on in life. We both teach at a business school. And the notion that money can't buy you happiness I've found that that's something we tell ourselves to feel more comfortable with a society where, in fact, and again, this is a thesis, that money can buy you happiness.

38:35And now it tops out. But my understanding is it tops out at a pretty high level. And billionaires are no happier than millionaires, but they're no less happy either, at least the research I've seen. And that economic security is just, and again, it's not a good thing. I'm not saying it's the way it should be, but it is. But money is a very strong forward-looking indicator of your happiness. What are your thoughts? It's true. So it's a complicated relationship. Now, at low levels, money absolutely lowers the sources of unhappiness. Unambiguously, that you can eliminate the sources of unhappiness.

39:09Stressors everywhere. Absolutely. I mean, if you're not meeting your caloric needs, if you're not getting adequate health care, if you don't know if you're going to be able to pay your rent, it's horrible for your unhappiness. Not your happiness, your unhappiness. That will raise your stress levels. you'll have chronic cortisol drip right into your brain. You won't be able to function properly or even focus. So that's at low levels, but that's really low levels. On top of that, the biggest problem that people make, I mean, I remember when I was poor, I mean, I was living in New York City. I was a French horn player.

39:39I didn't go to the dentist for six years from when I was 19 until I was 25 years old because I didn't have the money. And then when I was 25, I went to the dentist because I finally had the money. I joined an orchestra in Barcelona and I was making a living and I went to the dentist and I felt a lot better because I had like 12 cavities I needed to get filled. And I mistake, of course, I will admit that during that time I never went a day without cigarettes. So I guess probably it was, you know, priorities at that point. But, you know, at 25, when I went to the dentist, I figured out that I felt a lot better and I concluded money really does my happiness.

40:10No, it was eliminating my avoidable sources of unhappiness. Above those low levels, here's the point. If you just buy crap, you're not going to get happier. It really depends what you do with your money if you want to keep buying happiness. So there's five things you can do with your money and anybody can do with their money no matter how much money that they have. They can buy stuff. They can buy time. They can buy experiences. They can give it away and they can save it. Those are the five things that people can do. The one thing at relatively high levels that money doesn't give you very much happiness at all, much more than kind of a fleeting thrill is buying stuff.

40:48What will bring you authentic happiness is experiences with people that you love, time not to fritter away on social media, but to spend with people that you love, giving it away to causes that you think are highly meritorious and saving your money. It turns out that saving your money has a lot of huge benefits for people. It makes them feel secure about their future. It makes them feel good about what they're going to leave to their kids or causes and all kinds of stuff. So, I mean, there's a limit on that too, obviously, but those, it depends on how you spend it. You can buy happiness for sure.

41:21So you're coaching two people about to get married and they come to you and they say, professor, you understand happiness. Talk about happiness through the frame of a relationship. What are the best practices when you approach a relationship that not only increase the likelihood of your own happiness, but of your partners? The key thing is, number one, what is the goal of the marriage? And the goal is not permanent passion. It's what we call in my business companionate love, which as my kids remind me does not sound hot, but it's the best thing ever. It's best friendship. That's the goal. The reason that people will date and be just madly in love and then find after two years that they hate each other is because they actually never got to friendship.

42:01When the neurochemical tide receded, there was nothing left on the beach. And that meant there was no friendship left. Here's the point. So the process of falling in love with somebody has a very important chemical footprint, neurochemical footprint. It starts off with the sex hormones of estrogen and testosterone. That's where attraction starts. That's ignition. The second part is where we have the sense of euphoria and anticipation in falling in love. And those are two neurochemicals, dopamine, which gives you anticipation of a reward, which is why the signature of falling in love looks an awful lot like the early stages of a methamphetamine addiction because of the dopamine.

42:45The noradrenaline or norepinephrine in your system gives you the sense of euphoria when you're talking to that particular person. The third step is infatuation. An infatuation is where you're really neurally imprinting on another person because you can't stop ruminating on the person. So rumination involves a drop in serotonin levels. That's the reason that people who are clinically depressed, they'll take drugs to enhance their serotonin levels or the reuptake of the serotonin in their brain is because they want to ruminate less. The problem is that when you're falling in love with somebody, you need to ruminate on the person.

43:17That's the same thing that creative people do when they're doing a business plan is they can't stop thinking about it. When you and I are doing a thing for work, like I'm writing a book or putting together a company, all the stuff that we do, and you can't sleep. And the reason is because you're ruminating in the same way that you would be depressively ruminating or when you're in love, infatuated with the other person. Then, last but not least, is when the oxytocin really bonds you to the other person permanently. That's where you want to wind up in your relationship. And so you need to cultivate true, deep friendship with the other person.

43:49by about five years in, if you have that best friendship that actually comes from the high oxytocin levels, it does, it's, I mean, you, you got all the other stuff has to go away or you'll lose your mind and hate your life. I mean, if you're basically completely infatuated with the other person, you'll be so stressed out. You won't even be able to work. You need that to stop. You need your serotonin levels to come back, but you need your oxytocin levels to stay high. The goal of that is you don't need to go get, you know, like a PhD in neuroscience. What you need to work on is making sure that you are cultivating a deep, real, authentic, profound, even metaphysical friendship with the other person.

44:30And as a parent, if you want to raise kids that are just generally more likely to be happy, are there practices or behaviors or values you can instill or try to instill as a parent to increase the likelihood they will be, I don't want to say likelihood that they will be happy because there's so many things that go into that, but give them a better, maybe be a better toolkit? Yeah. It's all about modeling. It doesn't matter what you say. There's nothing in parenting that matters what you say. I've done this work on what's the biggest likelihood that your kids will grow up and practice your religion.

45:02If you're Jewish and it's important to you and you want your kids to grow up and be Jewish, Christian, Muslim, whatever it happens to be. It turns out that the number one predictor of your kids growing up and practicing your religion is seeing their father practice the religion. It does not matter. it's a lot less the mother weirdly and the reason for this is that the physically most imposing human being um in a child's life is usually is often in conventional families at least the father and when i was a kid i wondered if my dad could lift the house i mean because he was huge i mean he seemed huge to me and and my dad i mean he bent the knee to no man but he was on his knees on sunday and as a little dude that had a huge impact on me it's like something's bigger than dad So my point is not the religious point.

45:47My point is the modeling point. Put your own oxygen mask first. You have to have good happiness hygiene in your life so your kids can witness it. That's the most important thing. And that means that you're serious about your sense of life philosophy, that you're serious about your family relationships, that your kids see you with a relationship with your own parents, for example, that you have real friendships, really deep friendships, that you're engaged in with your work, that you're passionate about it because you're serving other people and creating authentic value with your life and value in the lives of other people.

46:18And that's the best thing you can possibly do for raising happy kids, frankly. I mean, I can talk all day long about, you know, conflict and families, you know, 11 % of people our age are not speaking to at least one of their adult kids, which is insanity. And I know the reason why that happens. We can, we can talk about how to make sure that doesn't happen, but if you want him to actually be happier, you got to model happiness. And so it sounds like, I mean, you started off as a musician, you ended up at HBS. It's a pretty unusual path. What advice would you give to your younger self around trying to get to a position of happiness more quickly?

46:57I would have cultivated my family relationships and friendships more. I mean, Scott, I was a CEO for a long time too. So there's a lot between the French horn and HBS. I was actually a professor for a while doing really conventional. I was doing genetic algorithm stuff, early AI stuff and applying it to public policy. Then I was the CEO of a big think tank in Washington, D.C. for 11 years, a place called the American Enterprise Institute. And I was doing that job. And it was a big job, man. I had to raise$50 million a year. I was on the road all the time, giving 175 speeches a year. And I was all about work.

47:32I was working 80 hours a week for a long time. I spent the 14th hour at the office instead of the first hour with my kids many times. And those little ingrates, they got their revenge on me, man. They grew up, you know. And now I look back and I'm a grandfather now. So, you know, and I'm not screwing it up anymore. I talk to all my adult kids every day now on FaceTime, whether they want it or not. they're going to be hearing from dad because, and I'm not going to screw it up with my grandkids, but that's the greatest thing. I mean, there were days when I neglected my marriage. My parents died and I didn't know them very well.

48:12They died young. I mean, they died young. There's, you know, there's, you know, issues with their health, but they were interesting people. My mother was an artist. My father was a brilliant mathematician. I always thought, gosh, what interesting people, but I was doing my thing and I was running around. And so the ambition got in the way of my life in a way. And I like the results, but it was a sacrifice that was too great actually for my own happiness. So if I'm giving myself success advice in worldly rewards is different than giving myself happiness advice. And at this point, I took the choice to be special too many times over being happy.

48:50And I regret some of that. I feel the same way, but I wonder if you're being a little bit hard on yourself, because every piece of stimulus and incentive out there as a man is to be a baller professionally, and everything else will fall into place. And so I think the incentives are, you know, every piece of external stimuli is telling you that you have to be successful. And if you aren't, you're going to regret that more than anything. But I never forgave my father for not being around. I still have struggles with it. I mean, It sounds like you have a good relationship with your adult children now.

49:26What about, I like this idea of repair. What about the dad who, understandably, in his 20s and 30s, wasn't there as much for his spouse and his kids because he was just really focused on economic security? I'm grateful I didn't have kids when I was young because I did nothing but work. That was my identity. I was always worried about being broke. And kids wouldn't have changed that. I just wouldn't have been around. Yeah. That was me, Scott, because I had my kids in my 30s, and I was working all the time because I was just... Look, here's the thing with my students, which is to say me and you, too.

50:03We're intensely afraid of failure. That's our death fear. So everybody has a death fear. Only 20 % of humans are actually morbidly afraid of physically dying, but we all have a death fear, which is the end of our sense of self. if you define yourself in terms of your work, you're going to be intensely afraid of failing professionally. And that's what I am. And that's what you are. And that's what we're going to take to the grave unless we manage it, unless we're, we're open and we're, we articulate that particular fear to ourselves and the people who love us the most to say, look, I know I'm strong and I'm successful.

50:36I've been very fortunate that things have really gone my way professionally in four different careers. Fantastic. And so people say like, you must be the happiest guy on the planet. It's like, no, I got something chasing me. You don't understand. You know, when something's chasing you, you can run really fast. And it can look like you're running a race, but you're basically kind of, you have this ghost, actually. And so the point is that when I've talked to my own family and my adult kids about this, you know, I have a frank conversation about it. I say, look, that was not a good impetus. And so the result is that that's been my own process of knowing myself.

51:13And the reason that I teach happiness right now is because, Scott, I want it. You know, it's not because I don't have natural athletic abilities in the sport of happiness. It's because I don't, quite frankly. And so studying it as a scholar has been really the secret to giving my own self a better life. And, you know, the truth is I measure it carefully with my students. And my own happiness is up 60 % in the past five years since I've dedicated myself to it. And that's what I'm going to do for the rest of my life. So last question. I appreciate you've been very generous with your time. Have you given any thought to the notions of masculinity and femininity and gender roles, embracing them, modulating them, redefining them, the role that plays in happiness?

51:56Yeah, I have to a certain extent because you find that there are pretty substantial gender differences that you see in the literature. And I'll give you an example of that. I've looked the longest time asking who's happier, men or women? And forever, the answer was women. You find that married women are happier than married men, that single women are happier than single men, that widowed women are way happier than widowed men, right? I told that one to my wife, and she's like, huh. But this weird thing happened, Scott, over the past 15 years, which is that the gap has closed. And the gap has not closed because men have gotten happier.

52:34It's because women have gone down to the unhappiness level of men. And the reason for that is because probably, I mean, we can speculate on this, but this is not something that scholars are likely to touch for the obvious reasons of self-preservation, that gender roles have been blurred to the point that women are working in much the same way with many of the same unhealthy work patterns that men are. And it's not good for happiness under the circumstances. So one of the things that I recommend is that men understand what their proclivities are and embrace them when appropriate and fight against them as is appropriate as well.

53:08You know, the truth is that you will just, I mean, you left your devices as a man. You will think that because mother nature is telling you that nobody's going to love you unless you bring in a fricking gazelle every day, bring in the gazelle. And if you drag in the gazelle, then your spouse will continue to love you and your kids will continue to respect you yet for another day. And then you go get another gazelle, but that's not right. That's a, that's an evolutionary anachronism that is not correct. They love you and they want more of you. How many times do I talk to men our age and they have the same argument with their wife over and over and over again where the wife is like, are you on the road again?

53:43And it's like, yeah, you complained about me not being here, but you sure love what all of this work brings you. And I noticed that you use this money and the wife is like, I'm spending the money because I got nothing else to do. I would take less money if I had more of you. And that argument goes on and on and on and on and it's what I recommend to men in particular who are stuck in this vortex of Incentives from mother nature is to remember that you can take that animal path Or you can you can choose a divine path and if you're an atheist That's the truly human prefrontal cortex path where you're not a prisoner of your limbic system Your prefrontal cortex the c-suite of your brain can make the decision to go against those proclivities and you can be happier One quick last question.

54:29We both are around a large cohort of what I'll call highly productive, overachieving young men and women. If you could tell them, this is the behavior I need you to do less of or more of, what would those one or two things be? There's really one big one, which actually comes from the Harvard Study of Adult Development. Now, that's the longest-running longitudinal study on happiness and health in the United States. It started with guys at Harvard in the late 1930s, and then it matched it up with a cohort of guys who didn't go to college. And then it wrapped in their spouses, and then it wrapped in their kids.

55:03So it's very demographically representative at this point. And it's 85 years in. It looks at as people who are happy and healthy when they're older, what do they do differently than the ones who are not happy and healthy when they got older? And it comes down to one thing, Scott. Happiness is love. That's the one thing. The grant study. Greatest opening line of any academic study. Happiness is love. Full stop. Full stop. That's from George Valiant who ran it for 30 years. The guy who took it over is Bob Waldinger at the Harvard Medical School. Wonderful guy. Really worth having on the show, as a matter of fact.

55:34He wrote The Good Life, which was a big bestseller. They keep getting bestsellers out of these data, but it comes down to this unipolar idea, which is that when you're doing something instead of love, you're doing it wrong. I mean, when you're basically, when you're systematically substituting for love in your life, it's a problem. When you're complimenting the love in your life, when you're doing something that's a compliment to your love relationships, you're doing it right. But if, what I tell my students is that if you're lonely, you're doing it wrong. That if you're making sacrifices with respect to your marriage and having children and forming and your family.

56:06You're doing it wrong, and you don't have to do it that way. And you're going to regret it because you're not going to have as much love in your life as you want and need and deserve. Arthur Brooks is the Parker Gilbert Montgomery Professor of the Practice of Public and Nonprofit Leadership at the Harvard Kennedy School and Professor of Management Practice at the Harvard Business School, where he teaches courses on leadership, happiness, and social entrepreneurship. He's also a columnist at The Atlantic, where he writes the popular weekly How to Build a Life column, and is the author of 13 books, including the 2023 number one New York Times bestseller, Build the Life You Want, The Art and Science of Getting Happier, with co-author Oprah Winfrey.

56:47He joins us from his office at Harvard. Professor Brooks, I love this stuff, and you just have such a facility. You just break it down so well such that it resonates with people, and I think you're in the seat you should be in. I think it's good for you, good for your students good for the planet. We really appreciate your time. Thank you, Scott. And thank you for what you're doing. You've enriched my life a lot. Not only given me a lot of great entertainment, but a lot of incredible ideas. You've used your platform as a public intellectual for public good. And I've been the beneficiary of that.

57:19So thank you. I'll talk to you soon.

57:49some kids that are nice to be around and just pretty easygoing and do what you tell them and, you know, just not a lot of drama or brain damage. My youngest is not that stock. He has a volatile stock and he's difficult and he can be really disrespectful, even mean sometimes. And I think it's important for the dads out there to remember a couple of things. Parenting experts will tell you the reason they're acting that way is because they feel safe around you, that they know that they can behave this way or that way and not around other people because you love them and they feel secure, kind of having that emotional release around you.

58:26The second thing is you're not their friend, you're their parent. And don't be disappointed that they're not treating you like a buddy or a friend. And I have fallen into that. I was really, I think I envisioned at this age or at this point in their life that we'd be buddies. And it's a little bit with my older one, but my younger one, and I need to remember this, you know, I'm not his friend, I'm his dad, and that's fine. The other thing is, it's not an equivalent relationship. I unfortunately approach it with a bit of a scorecard, and it's like, I'm so nice to you. I do so much for you. I'm constantly thinking about your happiness, and you're just impossible to get out of the house in the morning and rude and mean and bring the whole household down with your dramatics, and it's just not very nice, and I don't like the way you're treating me.

59:11And here's the

59:16parenting. And I do believe you get it back. Actually, I know you get it back. There's moments when I'm down, I like to fall asleep with my youngest. I just like being next to them. I find it very restorative, oxytocin, mammalia, whatever it is. But I think it's important as dads that we remember we're not their friend, we're their parent. And what does parent mean? Parent means it's not going to be an equivalent relationship. Parent means you're going to invest a great deal more than you're going to get back, at least in the short run. That's what it means to be a dad. That's what it means to be a parent.

59:53It's not their job to be nice to you. It's not their job to calculate what they're getting from you and give it back. It's not a business relationship. It's not even a friend. It's your son. It's your kid. You're the dad. This episode was produced by Caroline Shagrin. Jennifer Sanchez is our associate producer, and Drew Burrows is our technical director. Thank you for listening to the Prop G Pod from the Vox Media Podcast Network. We will catch you on Saturday for No Mercy, No Malice, as read by George Hahn, and on Monday with our weekly markets show.

1:00:30Little porn accounting humor here. It's not easy to take porn and accounting and make it work. Make a salad of delight, a salad of humor.