Arthur Brooks On The Crisis Of Meaning & How To Actually Find It

22:58Arthur Brooks:Completely. And, you know, people ask me a lot because I'm, you know, I'm a religious person. And people ask, well, how do you get into it? How do you get into it? And, you know, I live in this intellectual world. And you say, well, let's, you know, get a bunch of books on apologetics. Apologetics are intellectual arguments for the existence of God, for example. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. Because that's a left brain way to understand a right brain problem. The way to do it is to go away and pray. to go walk a pilgrimage, to pray your rosary, to go sit in meditation, you're not going to solve the problem.

23:31Or to sit with a Zen koan or the yin and yang, these dualities that are opposing forces that are both true and false at the same time.

23:43Arthur Brooks:That's exactly right. And the koan is a perfect example of that. Every religious and philosophical tradition is based on questions. and here's the weird thing about questions that don't have answers you remember when we were kids you remember coco the gorilla yeah you remember the coco the coco the gorilla was up there in northern california who who learned uh a thousand words so penny patterson her primatologist of trainer trained coco to sign a thousand words and she answered all these questions people said ah, it's blurring the line between primates and human beings and homo sapiens. No, it wasn't.

24:21Arthur Brooks:Because that's the same mistake as saying that AI is blurring the boundaries between machines and humans. It's not. Because all AI can do is answer questions. Coco the gorilla never asked a single question, ever, in her entire life. No non-human animal has ever asked a question. And the only thing that you can say to chat GPT, ask me five questions. but it's just generating things on the basis of knowledge that's extent. The essence of being alive is asking questions. Why questions with no answers. And that's what Zen Coens are really supposed to do. They're supposed to get you to exercise the right hemisphere of your brain to find meaning.

24:59Arthur Brooks:You know, it's the, all of the religious traditions actually do this. And, you know, I'll challenge my students to ask two questions to find meaning, just to go away and think about why am I alive and for what would I give my life? I challenge anybody to put those questions in a chat GPT. You'll get nonsense back. You'll get hilarious garbage back if you ask, hey, hey, Google, what would I give my life for? Well, that's a very smart question that you ask. It's nothing. And when you were at Stanford in, what was it, the late 80s, early 90s, right? Late 80s. Late 80s. And when you came back from a party on Saturday night at midnight or one or something like that, and you'd hang out with your friends and you'd have those really pretentious conversations in the dorm, that was one of the most important things you did in college, actually.

25:53Arthur Brooks:And now, of course, people aren't doing that. They're watching funny reels and videos and they're looking at their phones. And the result of it is that they're not exercising the right side of their brains because the why questions are just going unasked. it keeps them stuck in that doom loop that you talk about without an escape hatch. Yeah. The doom loop is a really common thing for all of us who've been interested in and involved in addiction and the pathologies of addiction. They all involve a doom loop where they're all based on something that's iatrogenic, which is to say that something that is supposed to help you and it winds up making your life worse.

26:31Arthur Brooks:So for example, alcohol abuse is funny because alcohol abuse is most dangerous in the lives of people who are either bored or anxious or both. Because booze is great for treating boredom and anxiety. The problem is that boredom and anxiety come back with a vengeance. And so what solves your problem makes it worse. That's a famous Homer Simpson line, to alcohol, the cause of and solution to all of life's problems. And that gets you into the Zoom loop. I drink because I'm anxious and tomorrow I'm more anxious, So I drink more and you escalate, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. All addictive behavior works in that way.

27:05Arthur Brooks:And the same thing is true with the way that we use technology, the way that we get into these complicated solutions to life's complex problems where I want distraction. I'm feeling lonely and depressed and anxious. I'm bored. And so I look at my phone or I self-administer, I self-soothe with technology, which makes it worse. And so I have to solve the problem more. Ultimately, the way that you get out of a doom loop of any sort of addiction is you got to clip it. You got to recognize it. And you have to say, something's got to give. How do you do that in your own life, given the fact that your career is so intertwined with social media and technology and all these platforms?

27:51Yeah.

27:52Arthur Brooks:And technology is funny because, you know, there's really two kinds of addictions. There's the kinds of addictions that you treat with complete abstinence. Those are easier than the addictions that you treat with moderation. You know, so if highly glycemic carbohydrates are a big problem in your life, the wrong advice is don't eat any more food. I mean, say, like, I don't drink alcohol. You don't drink alcohol. Life is better when we don't drink alcohol. But we're not going to die if we don't. The truth is that technology today is much more like carbohydrates than it is like alcohol. You actually are going to use it because the world has changed.

28:25Arthur Brooks:and the world, look, you could throw it into the ocean and go join a Carthusian monastery, but I'm not gonna. I mean, you'll have to pry my iPhone out of my cold dead hands to paraphrase Charlton Heston. That's not gonna happen. So the result is I need to learn how to use it as a tool as opposed to administering it as a medicine. Yeah, for the average person, I know. I mean, Tyler like did an experiment of getting rid of the smartphone and he lasted for a while and was happier. But ultimately, like it's at cross purposes with some of the things that drive happiness. Because if you aren't available when your friends are trying to find you, you're not able to go meet up with them.

29:10You know, it just makes life too difficult in 2020, in the 2020s, right? So you do have to develop a moderation diet, which is difficult because it's sort of like, well, I'm using it, So I might as well look at this now and look at this and then you're off to the races. Yeah.

29:27Arthur Brooks:So there's actually pretty good science that talks about how we can moderate it in very structured ways that work pretty well. So for people who have, who are kind of left brain types and who want to live by protocols, you know, people who watch a lot of podcasts, there's three things to do. And that will really, really change. So there's tech free times, there's tech free zones, and there's tech fasts. These are the three ways to think about it. The tech-free times, the tech-free times that really matter a lot are first hour of the morning, last hour at night, and mealtimes. And there's a lot of neuroscience behind why that happens.

30:00Arthur Brooks:I mean, the neural programming that goes on in the first hour of the day is set in the first hour. And you're either going to be thinking with your, you know, looking at your screen all day, or you can actually get a start on it. I recommend actually running around and picking up heavy things first thing in the morning and actually not using your phone while you do that. which sounds insane to a lot of people, except that you notice that you have your best ideas in the shower. That's because your phone's not in there. And so in workout time, I'm sure that you felt that because you've done these, I mean, all night kind of deals.

30:32Arthur Brooks:And you're not looking at your phone, on the contrary. And this is almost a transcendent experience in no small part because you're exercising, you're opening up right hemispheric activity. Mealtimes are really important because homo sapiens are evolved to get a lot of oxytocin, you know, the neuropeptide that functions as a hormone for human bonding. When you eat together with eye contact, sitting around a campfire, this is 250 ,000 years old. This is how it's weird because the idea of talking and eating and communing while putting stuff in our mouth, it doesn't sort of make sense. But in point of fact, eating together without devices, even having an iPhone on the table, it's important that we not have devices on the table right now, because I'd look at it and think notifications, messages, and that would disrupt the oxytocin that I'm actually getting from looking at you in the eyes right now.

31:23Arthur Brooks:That's why it's important that we do this show, not on Zoom, that we do it with each other. Plus we're friends. I love how you couch it in terms of oxytocin. It's like a deliberate choice to message this idea, like sort of package it in a masculine way, like the oxytocin protocol. You know what I mean? I know it's funny. Which is just like, it's so, it's obvious, right? Like we know this, you know, deep down, we know that if we want to feel connected to other people, we have to remove distractions and we need to look them in the eye and we need to listen and be present with them and engage. Right, I know, I know, I know, I know.

31:59Arthur Brooks:But we have to have these reminders, scientific reminders. And you know, one of the things I talk about when I'm working with couples, for example, is I have to remind men that their wives, their girlfriends, their partners, when they're with women, Women have three times as much oxytocin as men because of the bond with infants. So they've evolved three times as much oxytocin, which means that oxytocin is more important for women than it is for men to feel alive. And how do you get it? With eye contact, which is why guys need to learn when they're having a conversation with their partner to look at them in the eyes the whole time.

32:32Arthur Brooks:And just that protocol, they're like, I don't know why she's happier. That's why. Yeah. This is called the oxytocin marriage protocol. and there are four prongs to this. Yes. Exactly. There is ABT, always be touching, eye contact, as you mentioned. What are the other ones? Julie's gonna kill me. Yeah, having fun. Having fun as opposed to rehearsing grievance because that's reinforcing actual positive patterns as opposed to negative patterns. So it's not, you know, it's like you said, let's work at our problems all the time. Pour water into the glass that has a little bit of dirt in it and watch all the water just dissipate.

33:11Arthur Brooks:I mean, all the dirt dissipate. That's fun. Have more fun together. Associate the relationship more with fun. And last but not least is pray together, meditate together, have a transcendent activity that goes beyond the here and now together because then you're wiring your right hemispheres together. One flesh, what that really means is two right hemispheres bonded together in an antenna to the divine. That's what that actually means. But again - And this is why Julie said to me the other day that you are our newest relationship guru. She sent me the video that you did on that. Yeah, yeah. And we've been practicing it because I'm on this journey towards more intimacy.

33:51We can talk a little bit more about that later. Because you love her. Because she's your soulmate and she needs that

34:00Arthur Brooks:and you wanna give her what she needs. Mm-hmm. Yeah. And this is the medicine to treat my Stryver's dilemma, my terminal case of Stryver's dilemma. Well, we also need to talk about enjoyment, which is another macronutrient, but we'll get back to that. We'll get back to that. We're kind of jumping around and jumping ahead. And there's a couple other things about tech before we move on. So the third tech-free time is the last hour before bed. And a lot of that is the disruption of the activity of the pineal gland and melatonin, et cetera, et cetera. But basically you should be paying more attention to your loved ones and less attention to your devices such that you'll rest better.

34:39Arthur Brooks:One of the things that we know is that you will really disrupt your rest if you're looking at the screen. So it's first hour of the morning, last hour at night and mealtime. Second is tech-free zones in your life. And the biggie is your bedroom. You shouldn't have a device in your bedroom. And the phone should be plugged in downstairs in a locked closet or something. in the foyer of your house. And so it's just, you get out of the pattern and it's very, it's actually pretty successful. People say, and this has happened to me too, even if I do have the phone next to my bed, because I don't have an alarm clock and I'm on the road, I never look at it because I'm not in the habit of ever looking at my phone at night.

35:19Arthur Brooks:And another tech-free zone is a classroom, by the way, and I have to, this is a public policy discussion, but you know, There shouldn't be a telephone, a smartphone in any classroom at any level from kindergarten through PhD. That is insanity. 100%. The whole school day, as a matter of fact, and the most important hour is lunch hour because of socialization. And last but not least is tech fasts. And I recommend a four day silent retreat for everybody for lots and lots of reasons. But a tech free, at least four day retreat, spiritual retreat, meditation retreat, prayer retreat, religious retreat, whatever it is.

35:56Arthur Brooks:And I know you do these things and I do, too. I mean, I go on retreats every single year, but four days completely away from your devices. These three things are a game changer. Hey, guess what, everybody? Today's episode is brought to you by AG1. I love springtime. I know you do too. It's so verdant and alive here in Southern California right now, more light, more life, more movement, more change. And every year at this time, I feel like I'm being reborn, but not at the cost of the routines that keep me anchored. One of those non-negotiables for me is always AG1. I just take one scoop in cold water first thing in the morning.

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38:54We've talked about the what, like there is this crisis of meaning. We've talked about about how we arrived in this place, but we have yet to actually define what meaning is. I think when you say like, oh, like I, my life lacks meaning or I don't have purpose, or I feel like, what exactly are we talking about? Yeah. It gets confusing for people. And I think when you say, well, well you need more meaning in your life, that can be paralyzing for somebody because - It's too big. What are you supposed to do with that?

39:20Arthur Brooks:It's too big, it's too big for sure. And like anything else, when you have a big problem, the way to solve it is to break it down into smaller problems, like anything else in your life. You know, if you say, if somebody comes to me and say, I'm really, really struggling in my marriage, that's too big. You know, you break it down into five or six areas of your marriage and figure out how to solve those problems. And what you find is when you're working on little problems that they scale up into big solutions. And so the same thing is true with meaning. Meaning really is a series of three little problems.

39:50Arthur Brooks:The meaning problem is three smaller problems. One is the problem of why things happen the way they do in your life. and you need to have an understanding, a belief about why things happen the way that they do. It doesn't have to be my belief. A lot of people are religious and that's how they have, that's called coherence. Why do things happen the way they do? Big why question. Some people are very scientific about that. Some people go down the rabbit hole of conspiracy theories. That's a cry for meaning. You know, when you have a relative who's really, really into conspiracy theories on the internet, that's because they're looking for a sense of coherence because they're searching for meaning and they want meaning because they want to be happier.

40:25Arthur Brooks:And so saying, you moron, look at the science. It's completely unhelpful. The way that you deal with this is offering them a better sense of coherence. How does that relate to a discomfort with uncertainty though? Because sometimes whether it's conspiracy theories or religion or just looking for reasons why and how I ended up in this place, like, oh, you get out the red string and you can find the data points and connect everything. And it makes you feel like, okay, I feel some sense of control, or at least I understand the landscape because I'm just uncomfortable with the fact that, you know, I can't make sense of it.

41:04Arthur Brooks:Right. And absolute certainty, it turns out is not necessary for a sense of coherence. So as a religious person, I believe that God has a hand in what's happening here on earth. I don't understand it. You know, the book of Job and the Old Testament of the Bible is all about not understanding pain and suffering, suffering but that but there there is a logic behind pain and suffering there is meaning that the book of job is about suffering brings meaning and you don't understand why that's the punch line of the book of job but that's a sense of coherence without perfect understanding because remember perfect understanding is the left brain thing the idea that there is coherence and there's a source of coherence that's a right brain thing and it's okay you know it's like as i mean i'm a behavioral scientist.

41:52Arthur Brooks:I mean, that's, that's where I live. And I believe that science, that there's a coherence behind science, right? But I don't understand it all. There's a, there's so much about neuroscience. I'm just a hack. I don't understand anything, but I know that there is truth that lies behind it. I've studied mathematics extensively for my, especially when I was in graduate school, there was so much math I didn't understand. And I know that there was math explaining a lot of things that I couldn't get, but I knew it existed. I knew it actually existed. and that gave me a sense of coherence. So that's number one, is a belief that there is a structure and you have a family of what it might be.

42:27So the question is, why do things happen in my life? Like that's a pretty, that's a heady question. I mean, that's a profound question and it's demanding rigorous honesty, I think, to really get to the bottom of it. So for somebody who maybe is unfamiliar with that kind of self-inquiry or probing, Like what would be an example of that question?

42:51Arthur Brooks:A lot of bad things are happening to me. Now, anybody who's been in recovery has dealt with this. A lot of bad things are happening to me. A lot of bad things are happening to me. I don't wanna deal with why bad things are happening to me. I'm gonna stay anesthetized. So I don't have to deal with why bad things are happening to me. Breakthroughs happen when you confront the real reason that things are happening in your life. And say, I want the truth. truth i want the truth i'm gonna get the truth and it's gonna hurt and that's okay it's an amazing thing it's a it's a it's an epiphany is kind of how that works and so that's what it comes down to there's lots and lots of things happening what do i believe and i haven't i have an exercise in the book that gives you five different possible explanations why to get you started on it and put them in order because they're not mutually exclusive and i'll give you example of this.

43:41Arthur Brooks:My dad had a PhD in biostatistics. He was a statistician par excellence and he was super religious. My dad was a super strong practicing Christian. And he believed that God controlled the universe. And one of the ways that he set up the universe was by creating random series of events that he built randomness into the universe. and and and he's and i said okay i you know i'm being a i'm you know i'm being a wise ass dad oh yeah oh yeah you know adolescent yeah well what's a miracle then and he said a long tail event duh in other words something is two or three standard deviations out on the in the in the distribution with the random variables he said it's so amazing it's so sublime that god created the universe in this particular way, which says that there's not a discrepancy behind the idea of a grand intelligence and at the same time stochastic variation and what would happen in your life.

44:41Arthur Brooks:But understanding kind of how you see things is really important. Do you believe in willpower? Do you believe in will, free will? Do you believe in the essence of consciousness? These are all the kinds of questions that you actually get into. And guess what? ChatGPT can't tell you because all that will do is just exercise a couple of patterns in the left-hand side of your brain. This is something to live with. Does it confuse people that you're a deeply religious person as well as a scientist? Sometimes, although there's traditionally, I mean, if you go back and look at Sir Isaac Newton, I'm no Isaac Newton, but Isaac Newton was super religious.

45:21Arthur Brooks:If you look at Arthur Haley, I mean, these old school scientists from times back at the early stages of the Enlightenment, they tended to be very, very religious people. Charles Darwin was extremely religious. He was very orthodox in his Christian beliefs. And here's basically how they saw it. we see a tension between the creation and the creator but there isn't any tension if i were an art historian specializing in picasso you'd say i was a pretty crummy historian of picasso if i only understood picasso's paintings but knew literally nothing about picasso and had no interest in picasso whatsoever furthermore if i said picasso doesn't exist and you say what are you talking about because i can't find evidence of him in these paintings i mean i keep looking at the paintings, there's no Picasso in here.

46:11Arthur Brooks:I keep reading Harry Potter and JK Rowling is not showing up in Harry Potter. That's the Pete Holmes joke. That's the Pete Holmes joke. Have you heard that? Yeah. The Picasso joke, actually, that was the example that my dad used to give. I grew up in Seattle and the unique feature of Seattle is the space needle. You've seen it before, right? I was just there a week ago. Oh, really? Yeah. My hometown. And that was built for the 1962 World's Fair, you know, before we were born. And the reason is because the theme of the 1962 World's Fair was man in space. Did you know that? And I didn't. Yeah. And so the space needle was supposed to be sort of evoke images of space travel.

46:49Arthur Brooks:And the big celebrity event at the opening of the space needle was German Titov, the cosmonaut, the Russian cosmonaut, the first one to actually be in outer space. And he gave this speech, spoke English more or less. And he gave the speech saying it was a total Soviet atheist, you know, line. I spent the whole afternoon with my telescope looking out into space and I saw neither angels nor God. And my dad said, that is the stupidest thing I've ever heard because that's not where you're going to find God is by looking into the creation that God created. And that's the point. There's the physics and there's the metaphysics.

47:27Arthur Brooks:And you're just not a very good intellectual if you're interested only in the physical side, but not the metaphysical side. The metaphysical side is the why of it all. And that's really, really where it gets interesting. To me, there isn't an inconsistency because I think the more steeped you are in science, the more wild and magical and unbelievable everything gets, right? Like, which would lend itself to a deeper appreciation for just how insane, you know, it all is. Like, once you get to, yeah, okay, the Big Bang, but like, why the Big Bang? Like, what was before the, you know, all of that, right?

48:08Like, these unanswerable questions.

48:10Arthur Brooks:My dad used to say, the miracle isn't walking on water. The miracle's water. Right. But then you have to reconcile that with the scientific method, which is premised on the idea that everything is understandable through rigorous investigation. Right. Right. And all that is, is a left hemisphere curve fit for the mysteries of the right hemisphere of the brain. That's what it comes down to. It's like, I'm doing the best I can to apprehend in a complicated way the complexities of the universe. And that's a good thing to do. But if you get stuck in that, you can make the mistake of thinking everything actually is complicated.

48:48Arthur Brooks:You know, but by the way, that has led to misery and the death of millions of people. You know, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels talked about scientific socialism. Their whole concept of society is that it's ultimately a scientific system and that we can solve it in the same way that physicists are trying to understand the natural laws of the universe, the natural laws of nature. and people will follow absolute patterns because it's all just atoms. It's all just molecules, not appreciating the fact that people are complex. People aren't complicated in this way. And when you treat people like they're a machine, you will take away their humanity.

49:27Arthur Brooks:They will become ultimately alienated. And when they don't behave the way that you want them to, you got to force them to do that. That's all of the mistakes and all the demagoguery and nuttiness of tyranny of humanity has been based on that error. So we've made it through one of the three big questions. Meaning. In man's search for meaning, we talked about coherence, the question you have to ask yourself to get to the bottom of that. That brings us to purpose and a next question. So purpose is often used interchangeably with meaning, but it's not the same thing. It's a component of meaning. Purpose is goals and direction in life.

50:07Arthur Brooks:It's the why question of why am I doing what I'm doing? Not, not why do things happen the way that they do, but it's why am I doing what I'm doing? Why is Rich Roll doing what Rich Roll is doing? It's the, why am I continuing to do this podcast? Why am I doing that? Why am I going and getting, why, why do I continue to live the life that I live? And if the answer is for no reason, for no reason, then all you're doing is actually going in circles. People, humans are made not for achieving goals, but making progress toward them. And this is a, there's a lot of research that shows that if you actually think that your happiness is going to come from getting to the finish line, you're, you're, you're, you're going to be in a world of hurt.

50:48Arthur Brooks:This is one of the reasons that Olympic athletes, they typically suffer a clinical depression after they win the Olympic gold. It's because it's like, it's going to be so good, but that misapprehends how the limbic system actually manages emotional systems. We have emotions for no other reason than they're an alarm system that we've ascertained a threat or an opportunity. Negative emotions say, look out, you've just perceived a threat. I'm going to give you negative emotionality so that you'll be averse to that threat. Fear, anger, disgust, sadness, positive emotions, joy, interest, surprise say, I've just alerted you to a possibility of getting a mate, having, you know, getting calories, survival, et cetera.

51:28Arthur Brooks:And so I'm going to give you the incentive to approach is what it comes down to. If you think that your emotions exist to give you a permanently good day when you win the Olympic gold, when you win that race, when you get that billion dollars, when you finish what you're trying to start as a human being, you're going to be in a lot of trouble. What you need to do is to make progress in your life toward goals, but you got to have the goals and that's purpose. It is an intractable problem because I'm sure every athlete who's striving for an Olympic gold medal will say, sure, I know that. Deep down though, do they?

52:10It's sort of like self-aware. It's again, a self-awareness thing. It's like, yeah, I'm aware that life will continue after this, but still I'm gonna go for this. And maybe, you know, on some level, like I do believe that like my life will be permanently better.

52:26Arthur Brooks:That's because Mother Nature is lying. Mother Nature lies to us all the time. Mother Nature wants us to make the mistake of believing that when we hit the goal, all will be well. Because that's how we stay in the hunt. I mean, if you actually figured it out, if you actually figured it out that you can't, it's not that you can't get no satisfaction. You can't keep no satisfaction for more than like a minute. You'd stop trying and you'd starve to death. You know, you'd get hunted down summarily by some wild animal, at least in the Pleistocene. And so the result is that mother nature, your ancestors passed on their genes because they were strivers.

53:01Arthur Brooks:And they were strivers because they thought that they would keep satisfaction from hitting that goal. And then when they didn't, they got back in the hunt again. But that's, and that's not the secret of survival, but it is the secret of happiness is understanding that. One of the great secrets. But this is a Cohen-esque sort of thing because we need goals, we need things that we're working towards, that we're engaged with, but we can't be caught up in the externalities of those and what those will do for us when we achieve them or fall short of them. Yeah, the Buddhist solution to this is called intention without attachment.

53:40Arthur Brooks:So the whole idea is in sailing, there's a concept. It's a really common word in Spanish, el rumbo. Rumbo means, in English, it's called the rum line. R-H-U-M, the rum line, which is the Euclidean distance between where you are and where you want to go. You have to establish that such that you can make progress toward your goal. You can't start sailing. Maybe it's America. I don't know. Maybe it's India. So you need the rum line. But that's a very important idea in life. The problem is that if you're only attached to the end point, to the last, the pin at the end of the piece of yarn, then life will become an exercise in futility for you.

54:24Arthur Brooks:You need to have intention or you're not going to be able to make progress, but you have to have detachment from actually getting there. It might be India. It might be Hispaniola, but I'm going in this particular direction so that I can actually make progress in my life. And that's the trick. That's the trick is actually figuring out how to have the detachment to the goal while having intention toward it at the same time. So coherence. Purpose. Purpose and now significance. significance is why does my life matter? Why does my life matter and to whom? That's love is what it comes in. And people who are lonely, they have a lack of significance.

55:02Arthur Brooks:People who are bereft of a belief that there is cosmic love, they really lack significance. And so this is one of the reasons that people who don't have love relationships in their lives, who are too detached in no small part because of the misuse of technology, which is incredibly detaching for people. It's incredibly isolating for people. That's how, it's one of the ways that, that the misuse and overuse of technology, when it isolates people, it erodes their sense of meaning because of this last question, because of significance. If you, if I ask you, Rich, who loves you? What would you say?

55:40My wife and my kids, my parents, Anybody else? Some friends, close knit group of friends. Do people feel love of the divine? That's a trickier one. I know. I'm working on it.

55:57Arthur Brooks:It's a hard one. I know it's a hard one. But the reason that that's an important question, not that you have to have an answer, is that living in the idea that you're a beloved child of the divine is a search for significance. And therefore it's a search for meaning. And you're not gonna answer it because I defy anybody, me included. Look, I'm a lifelong religious believer, but it's like, show me proof that God exists and loves you. Sorry, that's not the way it works. That isn't the way that it works. But that's what we need to be thinking about. You need to have people and entities and a world around you where there's significance, where your life actually matters.

56:39Arthur Brooks:And that's the third part of meaning. I mean, this is the easiest on-ramp, it seems to me, for somebody who's struggling with this question of finding meaning in their life. Begin with who are the people that are important to you and the people for whom you are important. Right. And making a deeper investment in that is kind of an immediate catalyst towards meaning. Sure. That's the number one way that people start to find the meaning of their life. and when they're most lost is actually, it's one of the reasons that one of the great solutions to finding meaning of life is giving your heart away.

57:13Arthur Brooks:That's one of the, which is the most complex thing. It's like, again. So now we're getting into the escape hatch to the matrix. And you've got like these very practical series of strategies to find meaning in your life. And the first of which, the very first one that you offer is this idea of giving your heart away. Yeah, well, before that, of course, is clipping the doom loop. You know, one of the things - We talked about the tech and all that. So when people are in recovery for substance abuse, they say, don't fall in love with the person sitting next to you in a 12-step program. It's like, first, let's get clean.

57:47Arthur Brooks:Yeah. First, let's - The hilarious thing in recovery, though, is that people come in and, you know, when there's a bit of a pink cloud and they have a taste of sobriety, they wanna solve all of their problems at the same time. And it's like, let's just deal with this, you know? Or like, or there's the case of the person who is still in some degree of denial and says, well, I don't, you know, like, yeah, it's not that big of a deal. I need to solve these other problems. Not understanding that you can't get off. You can't even begin this journey until you resolve that issue. You got to get off the junk first.

58:19Arthur Brooks:You have to do that because that's what's actually hijacking. Remember, when you're in the doom loop, the solution to your problem is actually the cause of the greater problems. And you have to get out of the doom loop before you can actually live in a different way. That's what it comes down to. So once that's done, and then you're actually asking these questions, then the first very practical thing to do is to take the most complex risk of your life, which is to give your heart away. And we have every incentive in modern life and the complexified technologized modern life pursuant, especially to 2008, to not give your heart away, to not take risk.

58:55Arthur Brooks:Risk is the funniest thing because risk is not about being fearless. Risk is about being incredibly fearful, but being courageous. that's what it really comes down to. And that's a very right brain thing is to be, I'm afraid, I'm afraid, this is scary, this is dangerous and I'm gonna do it anyway. That kind of cognitive dissonance, that tension is, it leads to a whole lot of a sense of meaning. And the most important one of those things is to do that thing that nobody really understands, which is falling in love. Yeah. I heard you say to Tim Ferriss, like if you find somebody and you fall in love with them, you should marry them.

59:27He was like, whoa. I know. Not so fast.

59:32Arthur Brooks:That's a little reductionist, and I will admit that. Right, but I think what you're getting at is an important point, which is the way that dating culture is now with scrolling and apps. It's just, it's infinite choice. Yeah. And if you're, you know, if you're somebody who's in demand, there's absolutely no incentive to commit to anybody. Right. And so you can just do this forever, but that is its own doom loop because it is a dopamine inducing thing. Like there's always somebody better on the next, if I just keep moving my thumb up and down. Yeah, the paradox of choice is an absolute left brain complicated phenomenon where it's more, more, more, more, more.

1:00:10Arthur Brooks:And you're trying to basically solve a problem in a complicated way. If I actually look at enough people, then I'm gonna be able to optimize this. And that's actually not how it works at all. That is not how it works. That's not how love works. You're not gonna suddenly say, in the 343rd person you find is you're swiping left or right, that that person is your soulmate. That's not what works. I mean, it's like you and Julie wouldn't have been together under the current technological circumstances, probably. I never would have. I mean, I married a girl who didn't even speak English. I didn't speak Spanish.

1:00:41Arthur Brooks:There was something complex. I mean, if I'd set up a dating profile, I'd be like, yeah, I got to make sure this person, you know, like really likes my kind of music and votes the way that I do and, you know, likes to eat sriracha. I don't know, you know, whatever, you know, I'd be trying to date myself and man, that's not hot. there's nothing soulful in that at all. And I just ran into a music festival in the Burgundy region of France, a girl who'd smiled at me and I said, I don't, God's talking to me. I don't understand, man. And we can't, we couldn't even talk to each other. And I, this is the before times.

1:01:17Arthur Brooks:And I quit my job and moved to Spain to see if I could learn the language and close the deal with this girl that I just had the premonition, right? That's pure right brain. At what point did she fly to New York, like not knowing if you were going to even show up at the airport? Like there's no cell phones or anything like that. Like this is, you know, you guys were way out on a limb. Well, yeah, she's a pretty entrepreneurial person. Life is a startup, I guess, but putting capital at risk. But she had the sense too, and we look at it now and, and, uh, it's interesting because we've grown up together.

1:01:54Arthur Brooks:I mean, I was 24 and she was 25 and, um, yeah, we met in, in, in Bichon at a wine tasting and we had an interpreter and we went out on a couple of dates and I went home and told my dad, I think I met the girl I'm going to marry. And he's like, yeah, you're a hopeless romantic. And she came to visit me. I was living in New York city and she came to visit me that, that Christmas. And she, She had been taking English lessons for six weeks since then or something. I don't know. We still couldn't talk to each other, but we were just in love and we didn't know why. And we didn't know why. And the answer is because we were one pulsating meta right hemisphere is what it came down to.

1:02:32Arthur Brooks:Even if there were dating profiles, hers would have been in Spanish or Catalan and mine would have been in English. And we wouldn't have been able to even read them is the whole point. And so when solving for love, you've already lost. If you're trying to solve for love, you've already lost understanding and living in love and taking risks and having your heart broken and trying again and learning. That's the way it's actually supposed to work. That's the way that we're, that's the way we're evolved. It's a surrender. It's a form of surrender. You can couch it as risk, but you are wagering yourself for another person and there's just no way to know if it's gonna work out.

1:03:14And trying to create a blueprint or a listicle of pros and cons isn't really the way that it works. On some level, you take this incredible leap.

1:03:25Arthur Brooks:Yeah, totally. And dating apps are a brand new thing. 62 % of long-term relationships now start on dating apps, which is a lot. They're getting better because now the really good ones are not trying to maximize time in app. They're trying to maximize time in person. Basically, it's actually how we meet each other. but it's important to understand that that that that human connection doesn't actually work that way it's nothing more it should be nothing more than a tool of facilitation as opposed to a way to solve the problem much much worse of course is is algorithmic ways to strip love to its component parts and i'm talking about pornography of course that's really dangerous that's a really really dangerous thing and and people get super addicted to it and it changes of the brains and the whole thing.

1:04:12Arthur Brooks:But most importantly, it renders them incapable of the right brain metaphysical experience of romantic love. Because it's reducing it to an algorithm, a digital algorithm, and stripping it down to one of its component physical parts. That's not how we're supposed to, that's not to be alive, actually. If there's a silver lining in all of these technology advances that have us so hopelessly hooked, it's that the everyday average person has a better understanding of the nature of addiction than 20 years ago. Like it used to, oh, you're an alcoholic or you're a drug addict. And you know, like, I don't, you know, you have this disease, you're not like me.

1:04:56But I think, you know, addiction is a, is a spectrum condition and we're all on the spectrum and technology has really connected us with the idea of how easily our brains can get hijacked and we can, you know, start to cultivate these obsessive compulsive behavior patterns that we lack agency over controlling.

1:05:16Arthur Brooks:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No, I mean, human ingenuity is an extraordinary thing, how many problems we've solved, but also almost all of the problems that were little that we've turned into major crises, it has to do with wanting, learning, and liking, which is to say the neurobiology of addiction. You know, think about it. You know, it's like, I have a little bit of pain. Well, I've figured out that I can create an analgesic by eating some bark off a tree. And then I made it better chemically by turning it into something, a non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug. And hey, guess what? I got a narcotic drug, an opioid drug.

1:05:48Arthur Brooks:This is unbelievable. And now a hundred thousand people are dying a year of opioid overdoses, you know, solving little problems and creating huge problems. And a classic case of this is - This is the human condition though. I mean, we just stumble into these things, you know, even with the best of intentions and create larger problems every single time. And, you know, the classic case of this in technology is boredom. We need to be bored. Our brains need to be bored. The default mode network of structures in our brain actually is completely necessary for finding and understanding who we are and the meaning of our lives.

1:06:24Arthur Brooks:But it's uncomfortable. And Mother Nature doesn't care if it's uncomfortable because nobody could ever do anything about it. Again, you know, the great granddad was bored a lot. and he didn't say, boy, I sure love being bored behind the mule, you know, because my boring job is so meaningful. No, but his brain was working in the way it was supposed to. And, you know, my colleague, Dan Gilbert at Harvard, have you had him on the podcast? I'm familiar with him though. Visionary social psychologist. He's the world's leading expert in boredom. He did these boredom experiments. You know, the boredom experiment.

1:06:53Arthur Brooks:No. They're awesome. You bring a bunch of undergraduates into the lab because they'll do anything for 20 bucks, right? And you and you put them in a room where there's nothing to do. Just a chair, 15 minutes. You have to sit there, silence in a chair. There's one possibility. It gives you a key fob and it has a little button. And if you press the button, you self-administer a painful electric shock, right? And he wants to know pain or boredom. And a quarter of the women shocked themselves. Two thirds of the dudes shocked themselves. Yeah. Because men are way worse than boredom. Yeah. And so they prefer, One guy shocked himself 190 times in 15 minutes.

1:07:30Arthur Brooks:He got thrown out of the experiment because he's a sick and twisted freak. So anyway, you get the point that we solved the boredom problem. The screen, the small screen in your pocket is the solution to the boredom problem. But you need to be bored just like you need that headache, just like you need the discomfort. And our relentless, ingenious search to wipe out the little discomforts from life lead to these problems. and what we're seeing today. The meaning crisis is just another example of the same thing we've always done. Have you seen this trend called raw dogging flights? It's interesting that this is now like an act of courage and valor, you know, to like sit on an airplane and do nothing.

1:08:14Yeah. Terrifying, you know, like, oh my, you don't have, you didn't stack up your iPad with all kinds of movies or bring a bunch of books. but it is cool that like, yeah, I'm gonna do this. I'm voting for my boredom because it's important. There's a performative aspect to it, I suppose. And at the same time, the bar's never been lower to kind of outpace your peers because everyone's so distracted. So if you can just purchase a modicum of, you know, kind of silence and serenity for deep work and focus, you're at such an extraordinary advantage in comparison to everybody else. That's right.

1:08:57Arthur Brooks:Now, when you gamify it, it may actually be a left brain solution to a right brain problem. Right, right, right. You know, one of my students, I mean, I teach at HBS, so they're really, really competitive. They're awesome. They're super smart. And I'm talking about boredom and how the default mode networks works and we're, you know, working at brain scans and the whole thing is like - I'm gonna use my left brain to activate my right brain. I'm gonna become great at boredom. You know, it's like, I'm gonna become the best at boredom. you know for example and the whole point is that that life is supposed to just naturally have boredom in it and there should be these moments where of stillness and and to the extent that we've gotten out of the practice of that we can't we can't cope with it we can't we can't tolerate it our tolerance for that has actually gone down and as it has done so of course that collateral damage has been has been extensive this podcast is brought to you by squarespace Squarespace is the all-in-one website platform designed to help you stand out and succeed online.

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1:12:20The other aspect of this giving your heart away idea isn't just expressing your love, wagering your love, taking a risk on love. It's also taking the risk of accepting love, receiving it. And that can be for a lot of people and I would include myself in this, like more difficult than the giving piece.

1:12:45Arthur Brooks:Yeah, it really is. And the greatest act of love that you can give somebody else is giving them an opportunity to be their best selves. And that means you have to take their love. You have to give them an opportunity to love you. The greatest act of selfishness is never allowing somebody to serve you, never allowing somebody to love you. And people do this all the time, you know, for all sorts of reasons. What is the source code behind the resistance to that? Part of it is, I mean, the source code behind the resistance to that is that, that the love that we're expressing to other people is, I wouldn't say that it's performative, but I think it's pro forma.

1:13:29Arthur Brooks:I think it becomes a common pro forma. It's the person that I, this is the person that I should be. It's love is duty as opposed to love as the, the, as the, the code of metaphysics. Love is circulatory like blood. And if you stop it because you give it, but you don't take it, it coagulates and it becomes, um, unhelpful. It becomes, it becomes dangerous as a matter of fact. And the most selfish people that I've ever met are the ones who don't allow themselves to be loved. They're the ones who will act in a very kind way toward other people, but ultimately they they close themselves off, they're isolated from that.

1:14:04Arthur Brooks:And that's a misunderstanding of what love actually is. Beneath the surface, I would imagine it's often driven by a sense of undeservedness or a fear, a fear of vulnerability. Like if I actually let this person know who I am, they would see how terrible I am, or I can't possibly be honest with this person. So I can love them in my own way. and I suppose allow them to love me to some extent, but there's always like a veneer of separation. Yeah, I mean, let's get back to the striver's dilemma because nobody listens to the Rich Roll podcast who's actually not a striver. Let's just say that you're heavily over-indexed on striving individuals who are watching us, and I admire that.

1:14:52Arthur Brooks:But there's a particular pathology that actually comes into this about love. I see a lot of people who are heavily workaholic Workaholism is a downstream pathology. Behind it is success addiction. On your show, we've talked about it in the past. And that really comes from you. You get dopamine from winning. Behind that is a pathology that largely has to do with the way that you're raised. so almost every striver really hard charging successful individual they have certain things in common in their childhood and they look something like this you get attention and affection from adults when you do something well a's in school made the baseball team first chair in the orchestra and so you learn something from that that love is something that's earned it's not a grace it's not a free gift freely given no no it's an earned commodity and how do You earn it by achieving.

1:15:45Arthur Brooks:So therefore you're not a human being, you're a human doing. And that's how you go through life. A lot of people are like this. A lot of men are like this. A lot of men ruin their marriages by trying to earn their wife's love. You can't earn your wife's love. It can't be done. You can only accept the grace of love freely given. And when you don't accept the grace freely given and you keep trying to earn it with your achievements and your hard work and your personal merit and your responsibility, you drive her away. I'm a textbook case, Arthur. You know that. I know, but me too. I mean, when you say that, it's just like, it's like literally you're writing the biography of my life.

1:16:21I know, I know.

1:16:22Arthur Brooks:Me too, me too. And it's just, it's funny because, you know, and it's like, I have all these conversations with very, very rich men, for example. And they'll say, they're their wives. It's like, you don't want me to work. You want me to be around all the time, but I notice you like what we can do with all this money. and the wife doesn't have quite the words to say what's on her heart which is i'd take you over the money but if i can't have you i will take the money you see this is a this is a paradox that's its own kind of doom loop it's a catch-22 that we're actually and i was talking to a friend very very wealthy really really really super successful in this industry billionaire and um and and i said because he was he grew up without nice things as they say and he knew when he was in his early 30s that things were going well for him and he was going to get rich he wasn't rich yet but he knew he was going to get rich and it's a really interesting thing we're close and i said what did you think was going to happen and how your life was going to be better when you got rich and he thought about anything he said he said i thought my wife would love me and and i said what happened and he said she didn't yeah because that's not how love works.

1:17:35Arthur Brooks:Can't be earned. It can't be earned. And again, you can know that, but you have to take the leap. You must take the leap. And when you don't, it just means you're in another addictive cycle. When I think about my own relationship to this and kind of where I'm at now, I mean, going all the way back to the macro nutrients of happiness, like I've got them covered except for the enjoyment part. You know what I mean? Like I've got tons of meaning, you know, and I'm so grateful and feel so privileged to have this vocation that is personally meaningful to me and is meaningful to other people. And it's deeply satisfying.

1:18:17And, you know, I get to wake up in the morning and sit down with someone like you and learn. Like it's just, you know, I can't imagine anything better, but I'm definitely a workaholic. And even though I know after climbing many mountains and looking, you know, across the, you know, from the summit and seeing another mountain that I have to climb, I know that climbing another mountain is not gonna do anything for me. It might have some kind of short-term benefit, but ultimately and increasingly it's at cross purposes with solving my fundamental problem or my bigger problem, which is finding a way to enjoy this life that I've worked so hard.

1:18:59so hard to create. And I refuse to be a casualty of this dilemma. Like I am so resolved to solving it. And yet I continuously get in my own way, because I wake up in the morning and there's my wife or there's an opportunity to do something that I know will bring greater enjoyment into my life and will serve this goal that I have. But like, man, Arthur's gonna be here at 11 and like I got, you know, I have so much prep I gotta do, you know, like I can't let him down and off I go. And I'm, you know, here in the studio before the sun has come up.

1:19:40Arthur Brooks:And strivers, one of the things that they have in common, and this is one of the characteristics, one of the diagnostic characteristics of the strivers dilemma is if it doesn't put points on the board, it doesn't count. So for example, a lot of strivers, they wear, they keep very close track of their biometrics. You know, and one of the things they're looking at, for example, is something stupid like steps. The steps don't actually occur if they didn't count on your device. That's how a lot of people think because it's the scoreboard mentality. It has to go toward a particular thing because - We're just collecting medallions all the time because that's the only means by which we feel worthy in the world because we're not deserving of love until we earn it.

1:20:23And even if it's just steps, anything that will work us towards that earning mentality is going to be like an attractive lure that's hard to resist. Precisely.

1:20:33Arthur Brooks:That's the human doing as opposed to the human being. That's what it comes down to. So let's take the three macronutrients and let's kind of see it. Let's take stock here where one is the person with the most meaningful, meaningless life you've ever met, Friedrich Nietzsche, right? 10 is the person, is Julie, really, you know, the deepest meaning of somebody you've ever met that you know personally really well. What's your meaning number? I would say that I'm, so Julie's the 10 and Nietzsche's the one. Well, I don't know about Nietzsche, but Nietzsche's life actually was pretty meaningless, but the person who's really, really at, at, completely struggling.

1:21:10Yeah, I mean, I would put myself maybe a six and a half. Like I'm more than halfway there. You have a meaningful life. Yeah, like in terms of happiness, like I think I'm at like maybe a seven and a half. I think when it comes to the enjoyment piece, like I'm at a six and a half. Yeah, yeah.

1:21:30Arthur Brooks:So. With meaning you're at a six and a half. I'm like dancing around it. You know what I mean? I'm like right there and there's something that's preventing me from taking that risk, I think. Yeah, yeah, okay, what about satisfaction? Satisfaction is high. I think you're probably at nine and a half. I mean, man, you're killing it. What's your enjoyment number? I mean, it ebbs and flows. Like when the kids are home over the holidays, like it was high, I had like some peak experiences, but I would say on a daily basis, it's probably around four. Yeah, it's classic, it's classic, me too. Me too. I mean, it's the same thing.

1:22:09Arthur Brooks:And one of the things that people who really struggle with enjoyment have in common is that early in life, they typically mistook enjoyment for pleasure. Pleasure is a limbic phenomenon where you're hitting the ventral tegmental and ventral striatum areas of the limbic system of the brain, right? And the secret to happiness is not the pursuit of pleasure. That's the secret to rehab, is the pursuit of pleasure. Pleasure is social and memorable, meaning you move the experience of pleasure into the prefrontal cortex where you can share it and remember it and manage it. You have to manage your own pleasure so they don't manage you.

1:22:44Arthur Brooks:That's how enjoyment actually works. You can't get enjoyment if you have the achievement mentality, if you have the earning mentality, because you'll always default to satisfaction. The striver will forego enjoyment eight days a week to get more satisfaction. The load on satisfaction. Yeah, it feels like an indulgence. I don't need that because I get so much satisfaction from this other thing that I do that, you know, oh, it's, I wanna make sure that people I care about are happy, but it feels optional to me. Like I can go without it. Yeah, so let me tell you a story about this woman I interviewed for, the first conversation that you and I had when we met was From Strength to Strength, a book that I wrote in 2022, and it's the first time we met.

1:23:29Arthur Brooks:When I was interviewing people for that book, which is about how to be happier later in life. This woman who's an icon in finance, my age. And at the time, when I interviewed her, she was in her 50s. And she said, like, when you study happiness, people treat you like a psychiatrist, right? And it was like, and she said, I've got everything I wanted in life, everything I thought I wanted in life. I'm so unhappy. I'm like, talk to me. She said, I mean, I'm roommates with my husband. I have a cordial relationship with my adult children. And, um, I, I, I used to go to church as a girl and I haven't, I don't know why she said, you know, I think my employees are afraid of me.

1:24:06Arthur Brooks:You know, um, I don't have any hobbies. My doctor says I got to get to the gym and stop drinking so much. What do I do? What do I do? And I said, I mean, sister, you don't need a Harvard professor to tell you what to do. You just wrote your own prescription. I mean, go away with your husband, get to know your kids, take a souvenir in your company and step back, go to the, go to AA. hey, you know, get into the gym, get your life together. Right. And she said, I know, I know. I said, so why not? Cause that's the real question. Why not? If you know what to do, cause Rich, you know what to do. Why not?

1:24:38Arthur Brooks:And she said, I've always chosen to be special rather than happy. That's the curse of specialness. That's the striver's curse. Any loser can have a happy family. Any loser can have a good relationship with his kids. But not everybody can have a blockbuster podcast. Not everybody can be an ultra endurance athlete. Not everybody can do that. And we humans, we want to be special and we will sacrifice our happiness on the altar of specialness all day long. Now, most people, they don't have the option. They don't have the option because the specialness doesn't come along. So like, okay, I can't get rich.

1:25:14Arthur Brooks:I might as well just like go play ball in the park with my son. That's the code. That's the code because that's, that's the happiness that comes and and and so for the blessed few you for the blessed few who are watching us who were anointed with specialness the happiness actually has to come on purpose and that's the hard part that's the hard part has to be an intentional exactly decision made consistently so the question is how right inconvenient circumstances yeah but there and And it turns out that there, believe it or not, there's a philosopher that has written about this. Have you read Joseph Pieper?

1:25:54No.

1:25:55Arthur Brooks:He wrote The Four Cardinal Virtues. He's a great 20th century German philosopher who did tectonically important work. I think probably his best book is called Leisure, the Basis of Culture, where he talked about the fact that your understanding of yourself and our society's understanding of itself actually doesn't come from work. it comes from leisure, which is really, really weird and not an American way of thinking. We understand ourselves as Americans based on what we do. That's when you're at a party, you'll say, you'll say, my name is Rich Roll. What do you do, Rich? And they don't mean like, what do you do with your kids?

1:26:30Arthur Brooks:They don't mean, what do you do with your heart? They mean, what do you do? It's like, well, I have a podcast. Oh, podcasting. How interesting. And then you go talk about your work. He says that who you really are is based in what you consider to be leisure and leisure is not chilling on a beach. It's not killing time. That's the paranoid fantasy of every striver is going to the beach and having nothing to do. Shoot me. And the reason that you do that is because you're trying to not make your wife mad or whatever, something like this. Leisure is learning, loving, and worshiping. That's what it comes and becoming completely excellent at that.

1:27:07Arthur Brooks:Learning something that, I mean, you prepped like crazy for this conversation, but this is your job. I know you, I know you enjoyed it. I know you enjoyed it in its way, but ultimately it was an, it was an achievement motivation toward the learning. It's learning for the sake of learning. Then there's loving, which is working on a relationship, like a real thing. You know, I want to be better. I want to be a more elite husband. I want to be better at that. And last but not least is digging into the metaphysics of your life is finding the transcendence, is finding, is getting in touch with your soul by actually doing the work that actually comes into that.

1:27:42Arthur Brooks:And when you take time to do that, and it doesn't compensate you in terms of money or power or honor of the world, then your life starts to become enjoyable for the first time. I mean, it's pretty clear cut and you made a pretty compelling case. I'm trying to take my advice. Look, brother. I mean, how does it work in your life, Arthur? You have all the self-awareness, you're steeped in the science. This is something you're able to speak about, you know, just basically so spontaneously and eloquently. But we're all humans and we struggle in our own ways. Like what comes up for you? so last year when we were in india together um that wasn't your job but it was a deeply deeply meaningful experience to you in no small part because you were doing peepers understanding of leisure which was incredibly productive without having it compensating you in a professional way in other words you sheared the enjoyment away from the satisfaction right in professional satisfaction, which is how you're really good at getting satisfaction.

1:28:50And it was also something that I could share with my wife that we could do together.

1:28:55Arthur Brooks:Which meant that you were working on the worship side and the love side and the learning side, all at the same time, I was working. So I was working. Here's the problem. I instrumentalize all of these truths in a way that gets me to greater satisfaction. It's the problem.

1:29:16Arthur Brooks:It's It drives everybody crazy. Me and my wife and my kids, it drives them crazy because I can turn anything into a job. Yeah. Well, it's - The happiness protocols. The whole idea of getting into happiness to begin with was an antidote to what you were doing before that made you unhappy. And then you manifested it, turned it into this incredible career where you're in high demand. And you're traveling constantly and speaking, et cetera. And you're in your bliss. Like it's clear that you love it and it's so meaningful for other people, but it means that you're not home, you know, that much. And, you know, there's challenges with that, I would imagine.

1:29:58Arthur Brooks:And I have to crack the code of the, you know, the peeper's dilemma, the striver's curse. I have to crack this code. And that's my, by the way, this is my goal for the next five years. That's what it's going to happen. That's how I'm going to fix it over the next five years. Are you with me? Yeah. How are you at saying no? I'm pretty bad. I'm pretty bad because, you know, if you give me enough time in advance and it's an opportunity to do something and I haven't done it before, if you say, you know, next February, right? No, no, because that's too close. Next September, will you make balloon animals at my nephew's bar mitzvah in Fairbanks?

1:30:37Arthur Brooks:I'm like, Fairbanks in the fall sounds good to me. I know. When it's far away on the calendar, it's pretty easy to say yes and difficult to say no to. It is, and especially if you're an experience freak. New, new, new, new, new stuff, new stuff, new stuff, new stuff, new stuff. And part of that is interesting because that's chronic seeking behavior. It's another issue when it actually comes to meaning, but all the macronutrients of happiness. Seekers really pride themselves in looking for truth, but there's chronic seeking behavior. and what's really happening. I mean, you've been outdoors a lot in your life and you know perfectly that if you're lost in the woods, what you're supposed to do, stay still.

1:31:22Arthur Brooks:Don't start looking because they're more likely to find you than you are to find them. And yet what we do in our lives when we're lost is that we start wandering around. We start looking, looking, looking, looking, looking. And what you need to do is to stay still so you can be found. That's a metaphysical truth is what it comes down to. And that's a really, really hard thing to do is to be sought as opposed to seeking. You talk about meaning as this thing that we think we're searching for. We're trying to get it. We're trying to find it. But it's much more a situation of it finding you. Like I've heard you talk about like, did Steve Jobs invent the Apple computer or did he discover it?

1:32:04It's like that Elizabeth Gilbert idea, the big magic where the ideas are all out there. And when one descends upon you, it's your obligation to express it. And if you don't, it goes back and somebody else expresses it. Like we're receptors, we're receivers. And I think about like, my life doesn't lack meaning, but when I had this experience with back surgery, like it was very clear to see a path to meaning with it. Like God, the ineffable, the universe, you know, choose however you like to, you know, couch your relationship with the mystical and spiritual was giving me a time out for a reason.

1:32:46It's like, I resist sitting still. Like I wanna be on the go. I wanna strive. And God's saying enough of that. We already know what that got you. The real learning is what happens when you're forced to sit still with yourself. So I'm gonna take that away from you. Right. And I had the choice of being resentful or just trying to figure out with my left brain how quickly I could get back to being that person I was before. Or I could take advantage of this once in a lifetime opportunity to figure out how to become someone and something better and different in the future rather than returning to some version of a person I was before.

1:33:30And I've really done my best to try to lean into that and acknowledge that. And as a result, it's been a profound experience instead of an annoying setback in my life.

1:33:43Arthur Brooks:right surrender is unbelievably powerful this is an example surrender is an example and you and i've talked about this before of never not wasting suffering surrender is the way that you don't waste your suffering so the the the math of suffering suffering and pain are not the same thing pain is a is a physiological phenomenon so it's a neurophysiological phenomenon it has a sensory and an affective component the sensory component is ow you know it's inflammation oriented ordinarily. And the sense and the affective component is I don't like it, but that's an actual part of the limbic system called the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex that processes this affective pain.

1:34:22Arthur Brooks:It's all, you know, psychology is biology fundamentally. That's pain. Pain is involuntary. It happens to you. Suffering is your struggle that ensues, the struggle that ensues against pain. Struggle, suffering equals pain multiplied by resistance to pain. Pain times resistance. If you go through your life trying to lower the pain, you're going to have tons of pain because pain is going to come your way and you're not going to learn anything. If you lower your resistance to pain, you will suffer less. Don't try to suffer less by having less pain. Try to suffer less by having less resistance to the pain and then you will learn.

1:35:01Arthur Brooks:And the way to do this is through metaphysical acceptance of these things. It's interesting because you know you're in the zone of finding greater meaning in your life, this is how suffering relates to meaning. When your pain is high, but your suffering is low. High pain, low suffering. And you see this with people who are deeply enlightened. You see this with people who have tremendous physical setbacks and problems in their lives. And they have a deep kind of peace about them because their suffering is low, even though their pain is enormous. I mean, my mother-in-law in the last three years of her life i loved my mother-in-law um and and i was very close to my mother-in-law and she was bedridden the last three years of her life she lived in 93 and and she was in a lot of physical pain and a lot of torment about that because she was a very active person and yet her suffering was lower than i'd seen it before and the reason is because she lowered her resistance to it she lowered it through acceptance and and that's what you were i mean i talked to you when you were in this process of recovery and you use the language of non-resistance.

1:36:04Arthur Brooks:Non-resistance is stop resisting. When you're in pain, you have a bad breakup. Let's say people watching us, they're a quarter have had a bad breakup in a recent memory. Stop resisting the pain. Stop distracting yourself from the pain. Lean into the acceptance of the pain. The pain's still gonna be high, but the resistance is low. And you will acknowledge that tremendous pain, but you'll have less suffering. And that's the source of meaning. The interim step, is it not, for somebody who finds themselves suffering is to understand that suffering is a teacher. Like if you are suffering, there is a message that is trying to be imparted to you.

1:36:50Your resistance to the pain is like this crucible of learning, if you're willing to deconstruct that and look at that. I mean, all of my bouts with suffering in the past have been incredible catalysts for transformation. And so I have a relationship. Sometimes I get confused between pain and suffering, but I've gone through periods of pain. I've volunteered for suffering. I've suffered unnecessarily. but every one of those experiences in my life has been a catapult for growth and transformation. So for the person who is in the midst of that, it's very Pollyanna to say, well, this is your greatest opportunity for growth.

1:37:33It's like, no one wants to hear that, but ultimately it's true. And people who have endured these types of experiences, often in retrospect, later will reflect back on that and realize that experience is what set them up for the better life that they're enjoying now.

1:37:50Arthur Brooks:Yeah, no, the truth is that there's nobody watching us right now who, if I asked, when did you find, what was the greatest teacher of meaning, of the meaning of your life, would say that week at the beach in Ibiza? Not one. No, they would talk about a hard thing. You know, when I was afraid, when somebody died, when somebody left me and I found my sense of resiliency, I found out what I was made of. I was actually, I found that I had more courage than I thought I had. You know, that's what it comes down to. And it's, you know, people in recovery are really good at this too, because they stopped trying to lower the pain of life and they started lowering their resistance to the pain in life.

1:38:27Arthur Brooks:And they've understood that the essence of suffering actually comes from the benefit from suffering actually comes from working the right-hand side, not the left-hand side of that equation. Hence why you say never waste your suffering. Never waste your suffering. If you waste your suffering, you're gonna suffer, but you're just not gonna get anything from it. There will be no growth from it. So you get two choices, suffering with growth and suffering without growth you know that's like the old joke death or chi chi right where you know it turns out that chi chi is just horrible torture before you're put to death and so you obviously want death not chi chi people who are actually trying to lower their pain they're they're they're working on it the wrong way because they're gonna they're gonna have the same amount of suffering ultimately i see this i've been seeing this a lot you know i have aging parents and the amount of suffering that is caused by the resistance to reality is really painful to bear witness to.

1:39:24Arthur Brooks:It really is. And that starts much earlier even than old age. When people, I mean, you're an athlete and you're not gonna be as good an athlete at 70 as you were at 50. And when you resist that, when you cognitively resist that, when you don't like it, when you spend a lot of time thinking about it. Women really suffer a lot with age. And part of the reason is because the way evolution works, there's, you know, the perceived mate value plummets beyond, you know, years of obvious years of reproduction. Not inherent dignity, obviously. And in happy marriages, the value doesn't decline at all. But the whole point is that women perceive this a lot.

1:40:00Arthur Brooks:And so the result is that they suffer like crazy. They suffer a lot. And they try to lower the pain of that by trying to continue to be young and continue to be young and continue to be young, as opposed to stop resisting the fact that aging occurs. But it's extrinsically impulsed. I mean, the entire culture, you know, is informing that response. Absolutely, you know, absolutely. This is, we hate to lose things. And so we militate against something that we lose, which is nothing more than trying to lower pain. And one of the things that you talk about is this idea of, you know, love is not an emotion, it's a decision.

1:40:40And I can't help but wonder if you think of meaning as the same way. Like, is meaning a decision? Like, for example, with my back surgery, like I assigned meaning to it. I don't know that it inherently had meaning. I inferred meaning from it and I invested in that meaning. And that was very much on some level a conscious decision. I suppose. So if somebody is struggling with this idea of finding meaning and they're like, yeah, I can invest in my relationships or I can, you know, I can do these things. And, you know, Arthur's got all these different, you know, threads I can pull and avenues I can pursue.

1:41:17But fundamentally is there is a degree of choice involved. Is there not?

1:41:23Arthur Brooks:There is choice to invite meaning. Meaning can't be pushed. It's to, to, to, to get meaning directly is like pushing on a string, which doesn't work. What you need to do is to create the conditions such that meaning can find you. And that's really what we're talking about. Giving your heart away allows meaning to find you. Asking the deep questions, pursuing beauty in your life, not resisting your suffering. What these things do is they make it possible. And it's one of the things I talk about a lot. And I talk about this book is the idea of the pilgrimage. The pilgrimage is one where you think you're looking for meaning.

1:41:56Arthur Brooks:And it turns out that what you're doing is you're putting yourself in the position where meaning can find you because you're tired and you've got blisters and you're broken down and your defenses are low. And that's when meaning actually finds you, which is one of the reasons that every religious tradition has always had pilgrimages involved in it, where you walk and walk and walk and walk. I'm going to go find this thing. And then it turns out it finds you and it's different than what you thought it was. Are you still doing the Camino annually? No, I've done it. I did it in 2019. I did it in 2021.

1:42:27Arthur Brooks:And I think I'm going to have to have my back fixed before I do it again. I know. Just walking along. I'm going to call you first. We're going to have to talk. I know. But, you know, there's a lot of things that I do. And, you know, one of the reasons that I wrote this book about meaning is because I really wanted to help my students. I wanted to help people who are struggling with this. But I want this for me, too. I want this for me, too. I wanna make sure that my meaning hygiene is appropriate, that the ways that I'm living my life make it continuously possible that the meaning of my life will be present to me and will actually find me.

1:43:00I'm imagining the parent who's watching this or listening to this, who has a young adult who's struggling right now, perhaps they're languishing or there's some indicia of, you know, some mental health stuff going on. They're noticing their child is disconnected or, you know, in their bedroom, playing video, whatever it is, right? Like this is the epidemic. I mean, every parent I talk to talks about this. What is the message, A, to the parent, and then B, if you were talking directly to the young person?

1:43:33Arthur Brooks:Yeah, so to the parent is, this is why it's happening, right? It's not because the world is worse. It's not because the economy is more oppressive. Those things might or might not be true, but all of the explanations that the world is giving you of these exogenous circumstances that life is actually harder. That's not why. Here's the reason why it's because that the circumstances under which your child is neuro neurologically getting through the world have changed. And that's a problem. Then the second point is how do you, how do you help the child? And the way to help the child is not walk in and say, I just read this book by Arthur Brooks, and there's going to be some changes in tech policy around this house.

1:44:15Arthur Brooks:And by the way, when your kids are little, you should have some changes in tech policy. You know, your eight-year-old shouldn't have an iPad. They just shouldn't have an iPad. And should not have, you know, an iPhone alone in the room, which is predators climbing out, you know, out of the screen. I mean, there's all kinds of common sense that goes into this. And parents don't want to fight those battles, but they need to. But here's how I recommend this. And people ask me this all the time. It's like, this is good information. How do I get my young adult child, my teenage kid to actually pay attention to this?

1:44:46Arthur Brooks:And the way to do that is to say, I'm learning about this thing and it's having a big effect on me. And I would really like to know your opinion about this as well. Would you watch this and tell me what you think? Would you read this? Can we read this together? Because I think I would understand this better with your perspective as well and learning together. In the event that the kid is not receptive to that, which I imagine is probably more often than not the case. From an emotional point of view, like how do you support the child? Like how do you show up for that kid just on the daily so that you're kind of in the solution?

1:45:25And at a minimum, not making things worse, but actually kind of promoting a new trajectory without being the overbearing parent

1:45:34Arthur Brooks:who's telling the kid what to do. Yeah, for sure. The answer is modeling. the best predictor of your kid looking at her, his phone during dinner is you looking at your phone during dinner. It's actually doing the things that we talk about. Um, it's funny because people often ask me, what's, how do I get my kid to grow up and go to church? How do I get my kid to grow up and, you know, go to the synagogue or, or, or, you know, be observant in the faith. And the answer is have them see you impeccable in your, in your metaphysics. The number one predictor of a kid growing up and being religious is seeing their father being religious.

1:46:11Arthur Brooks:It's a funny thing, but, but, and there's a reason for that. That's, that's generally in, in, in a traditional nuclear family, this is not everybody's family, but in traditional nuclear family, the dad is the physically most powerful person that they've ever met. I thought my dad was like nine feet tall. And, and I, I, I remember, I remember asking my brother, do you think he lift the corner of the house, you know, and my dad would never have been on his knees before anybody. But my dad was on his knees next to my bed saying his prayers every night. And for me, that's what it meant to be a man.

1:46:47Arthur Brooks:That's what it meant. And so for me to grow up and be a man is to be on my knees before the divine, because that's what I saw. The best way that you can actually bring more meaning to the life of your child is to invite more meaning into your life to practice the hygiene that will actually lead to it that's the way put on your own oxygen mask first nobody wants to have a dad whose life lacks meaning nobody wants that that that that's that's how we bring this to the people that we love the most is by bringing these things into our own lives And along the way, reserve judgment of the child. Of course, because it's a struggle.

1:47:28They're playing out their life in the context of circumstances they didn't choose. Of course. And I think that the solution is always more love. You know, it's more love. It's like what the Dalai Lama said, like I'm wearing, see this red, this is from that experience. It's just, you know, the answer is always more unconditional love.

1:47:47Arthur Brooks:Yeah, of course. Of course, you know, it's funny because my brother gave me great advice. He had his kids before I had mine. I said, so what do you do? He says, don't freak out. Don't freak out. Keep them close. Don't freak out. And thank God, because there were freak out moments in my kids' lives. And there's no reason to withhold love. There's never a reason to withhold love. One of the things that I realized in reading your book and going through all of these pathways towards meaning is that they also are pathways towards enjoyment. Like the things that I am avoiding or resisting doing that could bring my life greater enjoyment are also the same things that contribute to meaning.

1:48:34Like it's in the Venn diagram, there's a significant overlap there. There is indeed. you know, like surrounding yourself with beauty, like awe and wonder. Right, not suffering. Yeah, not suffering. Giving your heart away, of course. And there's obviously -

1:48:50Arthur Brooks:Sort of giving your heart away is not actually that enjoyable a lot of the time. There are certain parts of it that are enjoyable, but it requires an investment of time and attention. Yes, yes, indeed. Yes, indeed. You can't be working while you're doing that. No, no, that's right. And ultimately in the long run, it is a pathway to enjoyment. Yeah. Is it not? Ideally, there's a lot of enjoyable things I have about my marriage for sure. For sure. The one I want to drill down on before we conclude today's conversation is this idea of transcending yourself and going from the me, me, me of it all to making your life about something bigger than yourself.

1:49:35Yeah.

1:49:35Arthur Brooks:Yeah. This is the ultimate kind of catapult to meaning. Yeah, yeah. Transcendence is funny because, you know, there's a lot of literature, a lot of behavioral science out there that shows that people who have a strong religious tendency, they tend to be happier. They tend to be happier. And the reason is because religion and spirituality are a real source of meaning, but it turns out it's not religion per se. It's transcendence, which allows you to stand in awe of something greater than yourself. So Ryan Holiday, who's phenomenal on Stoicism, of course, he gets tremendous transcendence. He transcends himself, self-transcendence from studying the Stoic philosophers.

1:50:17Arthur Brooks:I know people who do that, who in participating in extreme athletic activity get this. I know people who study the works of Johann Sebastian Bach, people who do Vipassana meditation, but the whole point is you need to get out of the psychodrama of your life. Otherwise, I mean, it's me, me, me, as you say, it's my job, my car, my lunch, my money, my, it's just rich. It's just so boring and it's so terrifying and terrible and tedious all the time. And yet mother nature wants you. I mean, look, think of all the dreams you had last night. You were the star in all of them. You know, Mother Nature wants you at the center of the psychodrama because that gives you a better likelihood of surviving and passing on your genes, but it doesn't do anything for your happiness.

1:51:04Arthur Brooks:You need to be in what William James calls the I self instead of the me self. Looking outward, looking upward, as opposed to looking inward. And you need ways to do that every single day. The distinction between looking outward and looking upward, looking outward, an example of that would be investing yourself in the betterment of other people, right? or committing yourself to a cause or just, you know, carrying yourself with a spirit of contribution, going into every room, looking to contribute rather than to extract. Whereas the looking upward, that's the cultivation of a relationship with the divine and an investment in the mystical and ineffable.

1:51:52Arthur Brooks:They go together in a lot of ways. You know, what you find is that when people really believe that they're living up to their spiritual potentialities that they tend to serve others more too. And what you find is that these two things are multiplicative. Serving others and developing your spiritual self, these things go together really well. They're beautiful things that actually go together and they enhance each other in their ability to get you out of the me self, get you out of the mirror and thus help you find meaning, help you find through transcendence. These are all vehicles for surrender, acceptance, and humility.

1:52:33Like it's a surrender of the ego. It's a humbling of your high sense of self. It's a disabusing of your self-obsession. And it's an acceptance that you're not the center of the universe. Right.

1:52:48Arthur Brooks:You remember when we were with the Dalai Lama and I don't know if this registered, but he talked about a photograph that he saw from 1969. Photograph. It was called, what was it called? Earthrise. It was that photograph that an astronaut took from the surface of the moon of the earth. Now for us, like, huh, interesting. That was mind blowing in 1969 because nobody had ever taken a picture of the earth, not on earth ever. First time ever. and it made people like whoa that is like crazy stuff that ali lama said that he found that a very reassuring photo like what because he said it reminds me that i'm so small and that gave gave me perspective and peace it's funny at my university most universities the most popular class or one of the most popular classes for freshmen is is astronomy one and they're not astronomers like english majors and communications majors but they love the astronomy class so i asked the student, why do you all love the astronomy class so much?

1:53:47Arthur Brooks:She's like, I don't know. But you know, I go in on Thursday morning and, um, you know, I just had a big argument with my mom and I think my boyfriend's breaking up with me. And I think I got a B in a class, which at Harvard is like a big deal. And, and, uh, and I go into astronomy and I come out an hour later and I realized I'm a speck on a speck on a speck. Mother nature wants you to be huge, but you need to be small. You need to get smaller is what it comes down to. And then you'll have perspective. As an intellectual exercise, like we've all seen the videos and we're telescoping out and further, and you get, you know, like we're getting smaller and so you're like, wow, that's like, we are just nothing, you know?

1:54:25And then we just immediately snap back to self-obsession and being the, you know, main character in the universe. That's right.

1:54:31Arthur Brooks:Then you look at your text messages and you're like, can you believe she said that? Or whatever. Why is it, like, is there a neurological explanation for why we default to this? Yeah, for sure. Because virtually all of our attention has to be focused on what we individually are doing. So our self-awareness is at the cognitive center of all the things that we do. Because if we had a natural tendency to not be at the cognitive center of what we do, we'd get in a car crash within the first 30 seconds of getting behind the wheel. You know, this is absolute self-defense. But once again, Mother Nature could not care less whether it makes us happy or not, because happiness isn't actually a measure of or a means of evolutionary fitness.

1:55:16You consider the Dalai Lama to be a mentor. Yes. If not the mentor of you. How many times have you visited him or spent time with him?

1:55:27Arthur Brooks:Over the last 12 years, many times, several times in the States and many times at his home in Dharamsala. Yeah. And what would you say is, if you had to synopsize or drill down on the most impactful wisdom that he has shared with you that has had the most meaningful impact on your life, what would that be? He's taught me so many things, so many things that I carry with me and so many things that I love. He's helped me to be a better person. He's helped me to be a better Catholic. He told me, I want you to be a better Catholic man. He didn't try to bring me into his own religion, into his own philosophy even.

1:56:06Arthur Brooks:He wants me to be the best person that I can possibly be. and when he sees me every time he reminds me of a lot of different moral lessons that he's emphasized over the years and and the one that always reminds me in the vein of what we're talking about right now he tells me again and again he told us when we were there to remember that you're one of eight billion remember the eight billion and you're one because in doing that then your uniqueness is not diminished in any way but your sense of actually the part that that you play in the world can be emphasized. And that's the sort of emphasis that we actually need to be the happiest person, people that we can be and to serve the world in the way that we possibly, the best way that we possibly can.

1:56:46The cynical part of me thinks, this is obvious to all of us. Where's the profundity in making that statement?

1:56:53Arthur Brooks:Yeah, most profound things, the most profound things in life are the things that you knew to be true, but that you forgot. That's where real profundity really comes in. There's nothing very profound about something that is completely new to you. It might be insightful, it might be important, it might be profitable, but there's something that you know to be a deep truth, but you're off track because you forgot it. The reminder of that is the most profound thing that you'll ever hear. What is your daily practice look like in terms of nourishing your spirituality and making sure that all of these areas of life that are contributing to the macronutrients of happiness are being served?

1:57:37Arthur Brooks:I have to be really disciplined and rigorous about it because I know myself. You know, my wife doesn't have to. My wife is a, she's spiritually deeply adept and she can have what looks to me like a complete mess of a schedule and still have it really all together and the important, I can't do it. I can't, I can't be done. I can't do it. I'm relating to that. Yeah, I can't do it. And so, because my wife will just naturally do the important things. She does the important things. But for me, I practice the Brahma Muhurta, which in Sanskrit means the creator's time. That means I get up before dawn.

1:58:11Arthur Brooks:And there's a lot of neuroscience behind why that's good for your performance and creativity and your focus, etc. But also for your happiness. I exercise every day because that's really an important way for me to manage my high level of negative affect. I have very high negative affect. Negative affect means negative natural mood that I experience, which is nothing dangerous. But I'm highly hypomanic. meaning I have high positive and high negative affect. And so my bigger challenge is not getting happier. It's getting less unhappy. And the first thing that you can do to manage high negative affect is to pick up heavy things and run around first thing in the morning.

1:58:44Arthur Brooks:That's the best possible way to do it. And then I follow that on every single day with spiritual practice. I go to mass every morning. And so, you know, Catholics are - That's wild. I mean, you've told me that before, so I've heard it. But, you know, that's quite a commitment. Yeah. That's a rare thing. There are probably 4 % of Catholics do that. 4 % of practicing Catholics do that. But again, in a way, it's not that hard because Catholicism is like Starbucks. It's a highly uniform product that's easy to find in its way. But also this is deeply, deeply, deeply spiritual experience that's remarkably the same from day to day that reminds me for half an hour a day, at 6.30 in the morning who I am.

1:59:32Arthur Brooks:That's who I am. That grounds me to my relationship to the divine every day, every day, every day. It's a little window onto, onto the metaphysical every day. And then, you know, that I, I, I tightly control my diet and exercise. I tightly control it because I understand biologically actually how it's going to affect my mood, how it's going to affect my productivity, how it's going to affect my focus, et cetera. And my, my career, my work, my vocation, my calling is all about ideas. It's all about bringing ideas that matter to as many people as I possibly can. And I can't, I can't afford to, and again, this is a strivers thing to say, but I don't feel like I can afford to lose a day that I actually have when there's ideas to be.

2:00:14Arthur Brooks:Yeah. That's, I know, I know. That's, I know. That's dangers out. I know. Danger, blink, blink, I got it. Yeah, I know. And, and so I, I designed my, my consumption around that about what I eat, what I drink, when I consume caffeine, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. But I finish up the day looking at the divine as well. I pray the rosary with my wife. That's a thousand year old ancient Catholic meditation, very, very much like the Eastern meditative practices. And it's repetitive prayer, repetitive prayer, contemplating certain scenes from the life of Christ, which we do together because we're wiring our right hemispheres together as an intent of the divine.

2:00:52Arthur Brooks:We believe that our marriage isn't intended to God. I believe that if I deny my wife, my love, I'm denying my wife, God's love and vice versa. And so that's the stakes, man. That's the stakes. Wow. That's intense. Well, we're all a manifestation of God, right? To love your beloved is to love God. And to be loved by God. Yeah. That's what it means to love and be, see God is made manifest in the loving relationships that we have on earth. It's one of the reasons that people are so funny that, you know, they'll say, you know, why do people get so religious when they have kids? And it's not because it's a good way to set down a set of rules.

2:01:35Arthur Brooks:That's not it. It's that when you first, you remember this when you first have children and they're so rotten they're so difficult and they go to sleep and you're sitting in their room while they're asleep and they got those little red cheeks from having been rotten all day long and you're like i just i love him so much i love him so much same with my little son carlos who met carlos was i was a troublemaker i love him so much and then i would say and that's how god feels about me because i'm lying in my bed and and and And God is saying, Arthur was so rotten today, but I love him so much. The whole point is that the love that we have on earth is a taste.

2:02:10Arthur Brooks:It's a foretaste of the divine love that we can all experience. That's my belief. And so to not practice that, to not practice divine love and the model of divine love on earth, it's malfeasance on my part. And the last thing that I do as I go to sleep, there's an Eastern Orthodox practice, the Eastern Orthodox monks. monks, they have a prayer that the further east you go in Christianity, the closer you get to Eastern religious practices, the more you get toward karmic religious practices. Not to say the karmic religious doctrine, but the practices are very similar. The Eastern Orthodox monks have what's called the Jesus prayer that they'll pray again and again and again.

2:02:49Arthur Brooks:And there's a very famous book called the way of a pilgrim about just a mendicant beggar walking around praying this Jesus prayer because a monk told him that he should pray the Jesus prayer 10 ,000 times a day. That's all he had to do with his life. Here's the Jesus prayer. Lord Jesus Christ, son of the living God, have mercy on me, a sinner. And you pray the first half as you breathe in and the second half as you breathe out, and then you link it up with your heart. And then it becomes your life. That prayer becomes your life. The last 15 years, I've gone to sleep praying that prayer every night.

2:03:26That's the last thing on my lips. Do you know this therapist called Phil Stutz?

2:03:32Arthur Brooks:Yeah, yeah, famous. Cause he had the documentary made about him. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He's been on the show a couple of times. He's become a friend. And Julie and I have gone to see him. And this is a guy who specializes in treating strivers. Like his whole career has been, and he has this operating philosophy that one of the primary reasons why, you know, these super successful people are so unhappy is because they deny three unassailable truths. That life is, I have it on my wrist. Pain, the need for constant work, and what does it say here? They deny pain. Well, basically, the reason for the unhappiness is that there is a belief that if they reach a certain level, they won't have to suffer pain.

2:04:31They won't have to deal with uncertainty and they can retire from having to do any work and work defined broadly. And so disabusing people of this, there's always gonna be pain. There's always gonna be a need for more work and life is uncertain. And so once you accept that, surrender to that, there's a liberation and a freedom. But he's also, I mean, he's kind of an iconoclast, but he's a profoundly spiritual person. And he essentially, like he understands my wife and me, and he basically, he's almost like a mind reader. Like he can read energy and he just knows people, you know, incredibly well.

2:05:10He's got huge crystallized intelligence. Unbelievable. Unbelievable pattern recognition. And he just said to me, the solution that you're looking for, he goes, it's all about your wife. It's all about you getting more connected with your wife and then the two of you together connecting with the divine, like in his own words. But he's essentially saying a version of what you're telling me. I believe that. And he's like, this is the path that you have to walk. Right. If you wanna liberate yourself from -

2:05:41Arthur Brooks:She's been put in your life for a reason. Look, Rich, she's your guru. Julie's your guru. You have to be close to your guru. There is no other way. She's been put on earth as your channel to the divine. I know it's true. I know it's true. And I have some work to do, I suppose. Yeah, for sure. We do. Look, this is why we get 90 years. This is why we get all this time. You know, if you were 10 years old and enlightened, it would be a different matter. But we don't get that. Look, there's a reason in the karmic religions that they talk about that we get all these years because we're trying to make progress.

2:06:22Arthur Brooks:And if you were at 59 years old, you were there already. It means it's time to die. And it's not time to die yet. It's time to live right now and to learn more. Look, I write books about this stuff and I struggle with it. I struggle with it. And that's actually the reason I write the books about it is because it's part of my pilgrimage. This show is your pilgrimage. That's what it's really all about. And you're making progress. Like I've known you for a bunch of years and I've seen progress. And that's a beautiful thing. I appreciate that, man. Let's close it down with just a few thoughts for the viewer or the listener to synopsize this whole idea of meaning, how to capture more of it and engender your life with the beauty that it makes available.

2:07:09Arthur Brooks:Your life has meaning. It does. Can you articulate it? Probably not. That's fine. But you get the opportunity to go in search of it to in so doing for it to find you. And when it does, the richness that your life will have will be beyond what you could have possibly imagined. do the work to find the meaning of your life and the payoff will be something that will be made manifest in a life that will lift other people up and bring them together in bonds of happiness and love which is ultimately why i believe we're put on earth i love you arthur i love you rich roll fantastic thank you so much uh for for sharing today i appreciate you yeah likewise all right will you be my accountability partner yeah if you'll be mine okay all right until next time Thank you.

2:07:58Bye, guys. Peace.