Modern Life Is Designed to Leave You Empty. Here's the Antidote | Arthur Brooks

Key Takeaway

Arthur Brooks reveals that our meaning crisis stems from over-reliance on the left hemisphere of our brain—the 'how and what' side focused on efficiency and answers—while neglecting the right hemisphere that processes meaning, mystery, and love. The most actionable insight: reclaim your right brain by implementing three tech boundaries: no devices during the first and last hour of each day or during meals. This simple practice begins rewiring your brain toward meaning.

Episode Overview

Arthur Brooks discusses his new book presenting a six-part plan to address the modern meaning crisis. He explains how since 2008, young people have become significantly more depressed, anxious, and lonely—driven by a culture of distraction, technology, and left-brain dominance that strips life of meaning. The episode covers the neurobiological roots of meaninglessness, practical steps to interrupt the 'doom loop' of tech addiction, and the three components of meaning: coherence (why things happen), purpose (life direction), and significance (mattering to others).

Full Transcript

Transcript of Modern Life Is Designed to Leave You Empty. Here's the Antidote | Arthur Brooks from 10% Happier. Auto-generated from episode audio; may contain minor errors.

Arthur Brooks, welcome back to the show. Thanks, Dan. How wonderful to be with you. Great to see you. You You look the same. same. same. I look older every time. And you look the same. So, I have a portrait in your house someplace that's aging. No, I don't have that. I There's no Dorian Gray, but I do have extremely generous lighting in my home studio. So, that is really what's happening here. outstanding jeans, a relaxing lifestyle. There's a lot that goes into it. Uh well, you look great.

And and right before we started rolling, you said something to me that I just maybe I thought would be a great place to start. This is uh you said that your new book is is the biggest one you've written in a long time. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. What makes it so? This is a book that I started thinking about in 2019, as a matter of fact, because that's when I came back to academia for a after a long hiatus. I I'm a you know old school college professor and I you know I got my PhD in the 90s and and and went into academia but I left for 10 years to run a organization in Washington DC a big nonprofit in 2008 and when I came back 11 years later it was a completely different place.

Academia as a matter of fact youth young adult culture had changed over that period quite dramatically. We found in in around 2008, young people were happier than older people. And by the time I came back in 2019, people under 30 were more likely to be depressed, more likely to be anxious, more likely to be lonely. And it was especially acute on college campuses. And as a behavioral scientist, I thought, man, this is like my Sherlock Holmes moment. I got to sort this out. This is why I'm back.

This is really why I'm supposed to be here. Was to figure out neurobiologically and behaviorally what went wrong in that 11-year period. It was a meaning crisis. It was a crisis in the meaning of life, quite frankly, is which I quickly figured out by looking at the data and interviewing hundreds of people. And I've been working since 2019 on the solution to that problem. And this book is my six-part plan on how to find meaning in a culture of basic emptiness. And and I just to state the obvious, this is not just for college students.

It isn't because what I found on campuses actually is is every place. It was just most acute there where I saw it and that was my, you know, that was my my testing ground. That was my laboratory is where I was doing this. And so I find that the problems of of ascertaining meaning in life, these are among people of all different ages, but they're especially acute for people under 35 years old is what I find. the uh when you talked about the data the shift between 2008 and 2019 the first thing that came into my head was well what happened in that period of time was the introduction of social media media media yeah and and that was the first catalytic event as a matter of fact you find that before 2008 the the question which a group a survey group called monitoring the future has been asking for a long time uh does your life feel meaningless it was always about 15% of adults under 30 would say yes but it bumped along at that level and then after 2008 it absolutely exploded and that was the best predictor of saying I feel anxious and depressed.

That's what's driving it. I mean people have all of these um explanations. You know boomers wrecked America, they drove up housing prices or or that young people are just really entitled flowers. All that stuff's nonsense. There was an actual explanation for this and it really started with the introduction of small screens in people's pockets. That wasn't the only thing. What that was was the tip of the spear of a culture that had changed away from finding meaning, away from ascertaining mystery and the the deeper things in life and much much more to to the the virtual world toward the technological world toward the one that's all about efficiency and and answers and analytics and also just distraction and an aversion to boredom.

That's where that started around 2008 and it's really ruined the quality of life for people since then. So it's it's not just social media. It it's a bigger picture that includes uh distraction, uh intolerance for discomfort, uh isolation, perfectionism, hyperindividualism, hyperindividualism, hyperindividualism, that sort of basket of of deplorables to quote uh Hillary Clinton. Yeah. And and really what it has in common and this is what the you know the probably the most important part of this book is an explanation of why those things are related to each other.

And it really has to do with the functioning of the brain. I mean, I know you're really interested in neuroscience because the work that you've done on meditation, for example, is a highly neuroscientific thing. This is not just this is not just some, you know, uh something that is inexplicable. On the contrary, we've been doing research on this for generations. And sure enough, the meaning crisis is a neurobiological phenomenon. The brain, the human brain is hemispherically lateralized, which is just a fancy way of saying that the two sides of the brain do different things.

The right side of the brain is all about mystery, meaning, love, and happiness. All of the complex things that you can never quite apprehend, but give life its meaning and give life its depth. The left side of the brain is the how and what questions of life, not the why questions. It's how you do stuff. It's how you solve problems. It's the questions that you actually answer in ordinary life. And that's how you get stuff done so you can feed yourself and get to work and and you know, ask Google questions and all that sort of stuff.

The problem is that if we don't have the right side of our brain working properly, we won't find meaning and we won't be happy. That's what it comes down to. And what we find is that the the culture, the hustle culture, the achievement culture, the technological culture, but most importantly, that in which we're constantly distracted and constantly online is pushing us only into the what and how-to side of our brain and is locking down the right side, the why part of our brain. Now this book is shows that's what's happening to our brains.

But more importantly, it's the six things that we need to do to live differently to get back on the right side of our brain. People say, "Where do I go to find the meaning of life? The beach, Italy, church." No, the right side of your brain. That's where you go. So, how do you get there? That's this is a a handbook on how to get there. I want to dive uh quite deeply into the six parts of your plan, but let me just step back for a second and talk about the word meaning and its opposite meaninglessness.

How are we defining meaning and meaninglessness? So, that was the first big challenge. Of course, you know, people say, "My life doesn't have meaning. I don't know what I meant to do. Everything feels meaningless." You don't just gloss over that. You got to figure out what they're talking about. And and it turns out there's a pretty big literature from psychologists about I guess the meaning of meaning. As a matter of fact, meaning has three parts to it. It's kind of the answer to three questions. If you have a deep sense of meaning in your life, and again, this doesn't have to be explicit.

Your, you know, the, you know, great granddad Harris was, you know, he he didn't he he wasn't asking these questions because my guess is he was plowing a field or working in a factory or, you know, just getting through. But the truth is that you have a sense of the answer to three questions. Number one is the coherence question. Why do things happen the way they do? You have to have a sense of that. Some people answer that through religion, some people through science. Some people, by the way, through conspiracy theories.

When somebody's going down the rabbit hole in conspiracy theories, that's a cry for help without meaning because that's saying, "I need coherence and the reason I need it because I don't feel like my life has meaning." So, you know, don't argue with somebody and say they're stupid because they're looking for the answers and conspiracy theories. Treat them with compassion because they have a deep need. That's number one. Number two is purpose. Why am I doing what I'm doing? Where is my life going? You know, purpose and meaning are not the same thing.

Purpose is a component of meaning. Purpose is I got to have direction. I got to have goals so I know why I'm doing what I'm doing. Otherwise, I'm going in circles and that's meaningless. And the third is is significance. Why does my life matter? These are these big why questions. To whom does why my life matter? Who loves me? Why does it matter that I'm actually alive? Who would care if I weren't alive? And you have to have these answers to these three questions. Now, these are not the kind of thing where you're walking around with the data right on the tip of your fingers all the time.

But you have a sense of these things. And this kind of shows you how the right side of the brain works. The right side of the brain is not I mean, I defy anybody to put those questions into AI. you'll get you'll get hilarious nonsense. nonsense. nonsense. These are the kinds of things that you live with. So, you're a longtime meditator and when you're meditating, the the the information is apprehended by you in ways that that defy your ability to explain them. The life of prayer and meditation actually does that.

And the reason for that, Dan, is that your language centers are on the left side of your brain. And so if you can explain it really really really clearly, it's not as deep as the true answers which are in the right side of your brain. That's why meditation doesn't make you articulate. It makes you deeper in your understanding because it's working the correct side of your brain. As a matter of fact, meditation is one of the ways to get there. Let me just go back to these three parts and these three questions because actually asking these three questions that is um that is part of the six-part clan.

So let's just stay there. Let's just yeah asking let's just stay there for a second. So it's coherence purpose and significance. I guess part one for me is can you just help me disambiguate between purpose and significance? significance? significance? Yeah. So purpose is the direction that I'm going with my life. Significance is who cares? Who in your life cares about what you're doing and who you are? So for example, I mean my work is very very big part of my purpose but my marriage is a bigger part of my significance.

that your relationships in your life, you know, my children, my grandchildren, that's a lot about my sense of significance. It's, you know, why why am I alive and who would care if I weren't is what it comes down to. And, you know, this is why, you know, for example, you know, I have a lot of purpose and what I'm trying to do with my life, but my relationship with God is really about my sense of significance. So, religion has a big big big role in the significance part.

part. part. Got it. Okay. So do you do you feel like it's appropriate to go through these questions now because um it's a huge it is a huge emphasis in the book. Yeah, it's a huge emphasis in the book and part of this point that I want to make is that we have a tendency in this left hemisphere culture, you know, this like leftbrain culture to think that the essence of being a really successful person is answering questions. And part of the reason for that is because the engineering emphasis that we've had and and the technological emphasis that we've had in our culture is that if you can answer a lot of questions, you win, you know, and that and that the result of that is that we think that being truly alive that you can make an AI that's actually human is because it can answer any question better than any human actually could.

But answering questions is not a uniquely human thing at all. On the contrary, that's actually not it. And and one of the things I talk about in the book to illustrate this is that famous famous case of the gorilla that learned a thousand words that you know when when I was a kid and you're 10 years younger than me so maybe you'll remember this was Koko the gorilla who is taught by Penny Patterson a primatologist to do a thousand words in sign language and and you know Koko the gorilla was so famous that that you know when she died at age 46 which is real old for a Ugandan lowland gorilla in captivity that she got an obituary in in the New York Times.

I mean, we're not going to get obituaries in the New York Times, man. But Koko the gorilla got a obituary in the New York Times. And the reason was because a lot of people said that she was almost human because she could answer so many questions with sign language. You could ask her a question, "What do you want for lunch?" She answers a question. But the one thing that she never did ever in her life that no non-human animal has ever done and that convincingly neither has a machine is ask a real question.

Koko couldn't ask questions cuz human life is about asking, not about answering. And that's what we forget. You want to be a real human, fully alive, ask more questions. You know, it's funny because I talk to people my age. I'm I'm 61 years old and and I ask people, you know, what were what are your your most profound memories from college? and and they'll they'll always say, you know, like 11:00 p.m. bowl sessions in the dorm with my friends who we'd have these really really pretentious conversations.

That's not happening with young people today. And the reason is because it's all this stuff. Zoom, Zoom, Zoom, Zoom. It's YouTube shorts at 11 p.m. It's social media at 11 p.m. It's distraction. It's all answers, not questions, which is taking the life out of life. And you know, I I want to say something that I think you'll agree with. There's a way in which sometimes, and I don't think you're doing this, sometimes these discussions lapse into a kind of criticism of the young, but we created this world for young people.

Oh, yeah. Oh, totally. No, absolutely. This is a long time in the making, by the way. You know, this is uh this crisis that we have. Um, you know, you you look back at um, you know, Leo Toltoy in the 1890s, you know, in writing his autobiography, he talked about wanting to kill himself and and and he had everything. He had 13 kids. He had been no nominated for the Nobel Prize in literature four times. He had a a contentious but very successful marriage. He was rich.

He was world famous. He had all the stuff that people think that they want, but his life didn't have any meaning. And he couldn't figure it out. And he couldn't find it through fame. He couldn't find it through money. He couldn't find it through science. He studied biology and mathematics and actually couldn't figure it out. And finally, he went to a little town of peasants hours away from Moscow. Everybody's illiterate. And what they were doing all day long is that they were they they would go they would pray, they would practice their religion, they would go to dances at night, they would have dinner with each other, they had ordinary relationships.

And their life had a ton of meaning. And he figured it out. We've all become Toltoys. And the reason for that is because little by little by little, we've stripped out that that those fundamental skills that used to be normal out of life and we've turned it into something that's more technologically advanced and yet bereft of the things that we actually want. Absolutely. It is the fault of people my age because what we find in today is that if you can technologize life, you get rich, right?

And and so and then who's your consumer? people who don't remember the before times is what it comes down to. This is not a criticism of the young. This is a call to to actually serve them the way that we're supposed to. supposed to. supposed to. Yes. Amen. Um let me call an audible here. I was driving you toward these three big questions each linked to the three dimensions of meaning which are again coherence, purpose and sign significance. Um, but we've now started talking about um something that actually precedes the three questions in the book.

So, I I want to go there and then we'll get to the three questions. You have a chapter called interrupting the doom loop. doom loop. doom loop. What we've been talking about for the last couple of minutes without naming it really is the doom loop. So, what do we do? If modern life is driving us to the wrong side of our brain, if in other words, modern life is stripping us of meaning and making us sick uh spiritually um and psychologically, how do we counterprogram how do we counterprogram against that?

against that? against that? So, the doom loop that you talk about is is sort of the same doom loop as anything else. Um, you know, I've I've I've worked for many many years um in the behavioral science of addiction and all addiction has in common a doom loop where you're trying to avoid something you don't like and you make it worse. You know, so what you find is, for example, alcoholism is best predicted by two things, anxiety and boredom. You're an anxious person, you're in danger for alcoholism.

You're you're chronically bored, you're in danger for alcoholism because it it relieves temporarily those two things. But the problem is that the more you drink, the more boring your life gets. The more you drink, the more anxious you get. You get more bored and more anxious and more bored and more anxious. And that's a doom loop all the way down until you cut the doom loop somehow. The same thing is true with the way that we use technology and the way that we live our lives today.

You know, I don't want to be, you know, bored sitting at a traffic light. So, I pull out my phone and I scroll social media, look at my notifications, for example. I want to be distracted from a life that is bereft of real relationships because, you know, I get up and look at my phone and go to work on Zoom and then after I'm done with my work on Zoom, I talk to my social media friends and I date people on the apps and then I get a sense of accomplishment by video gaming and and and and I'm really really really lonely and so I do more of that and I binge that.

It's like binging fast food when you're hungry and you actually get hungry faster while actually becoming unhealthy and obese. It's the same basic idea. It gets worse and worse and worse. And that doom loop is what we have to counteract. So the first thing I talk about in this book is how do you eclipse the doom loop in any sort of addictive behavior such that you can actually start working on your life and getting better. Just to reset for the listener, we're talking to the great Arthur Brooks about his six-part plan for restoring a sense of meaning in a world that militates against it.

And uh uh the first step is interrupting the doom loop as you just described it. Arthur, what what are the steps that you would recommend for this interruption? So, I relied a lot in this and looking at my my background and and and research on alcoholism and drug abuse actually because the way that we use technology looks an awful lot like that. It it and it uses the dopamine the dopamineergic pathways in the brain. It captures the brain in much the same way, etc., etc. And there's three parts for breaking out of it, you know.

Now, to begin with, there's two kinds of addictions out there. There's the addictions that you need abstinence, like alcohol. If you're an alcoholic, and you come to me and people, many people have. And I say you number one, you got to stop drinking. Duh. But if you come to me and you say, "I'm really, really, really hooked on junk food, highly glycemic carbohydrates. They float my boat, man. I'm not going to say stop eating. I need to." And and so that's the reason that that the second kind of addiction where you have to manage it is harder than abstinence.

Management is harder than abstinence actually. And and social media and the use of devices is in the second category. Absolutely. So number one is is basically in these kinds of addictions is rebellion. You need the spirit of a a rebel where you recognize that you've been that that this thing is a pirate ship that just you know it man it has sailed up alongside and there's guys swinging across on ropes and it's not going to be good for you with like knives in their teeth and and there's a reason for this.

Look, I'm not against social media. I know you aren't either. I'm certainly not against technology. You know the you know this the platform that we're recording on right now is making it possible for Arthur Brooks and Dan Harris to have a conversation that's going to help people. I love that. But when it takes over my life, it has become a barrier to everything and I need the spirit of rebellion. So that's number one. Number two is actual detox. And I've got basically a three-part plan in this book about how to detox from devices in a way where you can continue to use your devices.

And it's very well scientifically validated on how to do that. About the times of the day where you shouldn't use your devices. There's only three. First hour of the morning, last hour at night, and during meals. Those are the three times. And if you start doing that, people are like, "Ah, it's easy. It's super hard." But when you do that, your life really changes. Also, tech-free zones, classrooms, bedrooms, and last but not least is is is tech fasts. And I recommend a 4day silent retreat or 4-day spiritual retreat or 4-day hike or 4-day walk where you don't have devices every year.

And if you do these three things, tech free times, tech free zones, and tech fasts, you're going to you'll have this problem cooked. you're going to actually solve this problem. It's just really hard to do. And last but not least, you have to learn how to be alone in your mind. You have to learn how to be bored again, which most people have forgotten or or or or never learned. And and so I have a whole bunch of techniques. A lot of it actually comes from Zen and different Buddhist traditions on how to become bored in a very productive way from a lot of my study with the Tibetans, but also the study of of many of the Zen traditions on how to become bored in a productive way.

And so the these are the three parts. Rebel, detox, and learn how to be bored. And and now you're ready because you will have broken the cycle. You've been broken out of the doom loop, and you're ready to actually do the that the the you know, the six things that we talk about in this book to rebuild your life. And and what I found with my students over the past seven years is that within six months, if you put these things into practice, you will no longer be in a meaning crisis.

meaning crisis. meaning crisis. H okay. Well, let's go into the list within a list here. The the three things you're recommending for interrupting the dream loop. First just to say on rebellion, rebellion, rebellion, I I co-sign on that heartily and I it puts me in mind of something that happened in the '9s and as uh which was there there was a a very successful advertising campaign on MTV to try to get young kids not to smoke. And instead of lecturing them, it engendered the spirit of rebellion.

These guys are lying to you. They're trying to get you sick. these tobacco companies. That was the body bag uh thing. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And and it was it if memory serves, it was quite successful. And I think what you're calling for is a similar attitude visav tech. visav tech. visav tech. That's right. And again, I'm not against tech. I have many many close friends who are I mean I I I have many friends who are working on dating apps that are not trying to maximize time in app.

They're trying to maximize time in person. And that's a really really good thing. And we're going to get there. We're going to solve this problem. The the the trouble is between now and then we need people to be a lot more disciplined and that requires not a rebellion and you know hating everybody who's intact and all that. No, no. It rem it means a rebellion against your own tendencies. A rebellion against yourself which is the most amazing thing. You know it's just so funny because this whole idea if it feels good do it and you should be really authentic.

No you shouldn't. You shouldn't be authentic a lot of the time cuz mother nature doesn't care if you're happy. You want to live not in the space of your of your animal impulses. You want to live in the space of your moral aspirations. I you as a meditator, I mean, you've talked about this a lot of being the person that you want to be, not the person who wants to skip meditating, yell at your wife, and eat a Twinkie for God's sake, because that's not the person that you actually want to be.

And and so the first thing is rebelling against your own tendencies and saying enough. Enough. I'm going to be the person that I want to be, not the person I've been in the past. And that's bracing. That's just like that's that's the essence of rugged individualism. Not just like not caring about anybody else. It's being the person that you want to be and taking responsibility for your life. life. life. Yes. Joseph Goldstein, my meditation teacher, often talks about switching from follow your heart to train your heart.

So, I agree with what you're saying and and I do want to slightly push back. I I agree with what you're talking about the spirit of rebellion visav your own impulses. But uh don't you think we should have some sense of rebellion against the algorithms which run on anger and anxiety and to understand that the world is not what our news feed is trying to convince us it is. it is. it is. Oh good lord. Yes. I couldn't agree more. I wrote a whole book in 2019 called Love Your Enemies.

That was all about that. And suffice it to say, Dan, I failed in my effort to to, you know, to break the spine of the of the culture of contempt. But the culture of contempt is largely fueled by the fact that that contempt in our modern life uh is is is fueled by addiction to the news cycle, addiction to outrage, addiction to my side bias, and is much much worse than the technological age. So I I couldn't agree more that that stuff is really really dilerious.

How do you break that? It would be great if there were some public policy way to say sorry don't we it's it's no longer possible for you to put out inflammatory horrible evil stuff on the internet but really it's going to be a lot more if we can actually have a culture of people who say enough because you know on the demand side that's how you break supply is actually is demand. So speaking of that, you you talked about uh these three techniques for um uh creating uh some tech-free zones in your life.

So tech-free times, first hour of the day, uh last hour before you go to bed and and um meals um and also uh taking uh a a silent retreat of some sort for for 4 days. And uh I can't remember what else you recommended, but I was thinking as I was listening to you talk that I have done the vast majority of those things. And yet I still am the at times who's checking his phone at a red light because he can't bear to be bored.

Now hearing you say all of this again is a great reminder for me to sort of reset. But I say all of this not to cast out on your suggestions, but just to emphasize that this is hard. Oh, totally. Totally. And and look, you know, we you know, you and I have have, you know, had all kinds of fun adventures with substances in our lives and and and a lot of people watching us have struggled with addiction and like, oh yeah, do these three things and you'll never want another never want a little drinkie again for the rest of your life.

No, that's not how it works. It's all it's always a wolf at the door, which means you got to keep doing it and keep doing it. And by the way, that's a beautiful thing that you're doing the work to keep the wolf away from the door because you're responsible for your own life. That's what empowerment is all about. It's not one and done. It's not take a pill and everything is going to be okay. It's that you be in charge of your life in this particular way.

This is one of the reasons that people who have struggled with addiction and who have learned how to manage their lives substancefree are happier than people who don't actually because they learned something about themselves. they won this huge battle, an ongoing battle. Okay. So, then you also referenced uh some zen derived techniques for um getting more comfortable with boredom. Can you say a little bit about that? Yeah, boredom is a funny thing because here's a you know, it's weird because if I went back to, you know, great grandpa Harris, where where was great grandpa Harris?

Was he like running from some god-forsaken or something? Uh, exactly. Arthur Labau changed his name from Liowitz to Labau. I think about this guy all the time. Uh he escaped the uh preWorld War II in the early 1900s and then came here and became a crook and um ultimately got busted. Uh I've seen the the articles about him in the 30s. He got busted. He was a crooked bail bondsman. Uh then took his own life in the family kitchen. Um Um Um wow. wow. wow. So I think about this guy a lot.

That's that's uh that's bookw worthy, Dan. Dan. Dan. He is a major character in my in my next book. Uh book. Uh book. Uh I love it. I can't wait to read the next book. You know, it's funny. Um most great granddads today didn't have that exciting a life as greatgrandfather Labau. Labau. Labau. I mean, great granddad Brooks, um he pushed a plow, right? But I guarantee you he never came home and said to his wife, "Honey, I had a panic attack behind the mule today." And the reason is because his brain was working the way it was supposed to work, you know, cuz that's the way he was just living his ordinary life.

And here's the irony when it comes to boredom. His life moment to moment was pretty darn boring. I guarantee you he never got to the end of his life and said, "My life was completely boring." But today, people's lives from moment to moment are eradicating boredom and yet their life overall is unbelievably grindingly boring. That is an incredible irony that we see today. And the only way to fix that problem is to get comfortable with momentto- moment boredom so that your yearto-year boredom goes away. So that you're really digging in and living a life fully alive.

And the way to do that, well, I mean, you can go live in an ashram. You can go, you know, meditate in the Himalayas. I've done it. You've done it. But we're privileged guys. Not everybody's got the time or means to actually go do that. But there are other ways to do that. And I recommend a bunch in in in this book. For example, work out without headphones. headphones. headphones. This is a funny thing because it makes your brain work in a different way. If you're working out without headphones, you're going to be opening up the right side of your brain.

And at first it feels grindingly boring, but then it becomes the equivalent of an hourong shower where you have your best ideas. People always like I come up with my best ideas in the shower. It's cuz your phone isn't in there, man. I hope. And so that's and doing that is a important way to do that. Commuting without headphones like on the train, in the car, making it your decompression zone. Turn off the radio and don't listen to anything and just like get lost in your thoughts.

That's called using the default mode network. That's a center a set of structures in your brain that turns on when you're literally thinking about nothing. super uncomfortable at first, you know. Yeah. Have you met Dan Gilbert, my my colleague at Harvard? Have you had him on the show? The psychologist. I If you see him in the hallways, tell him I'd love to have him on, but I have never had him on. He's fantastic. He's the world's leading expert on boredom. And he has these experiments where he puts undergraduates in the lab because they'll do anything for 20 bucks.

And and they have they have to sit in a empty room for 15 minutes with nothing to do except they have a little key fob. and if they touch the button on the key fob, it'll self-administer a painful electric shock. And he's looking for whether or not people choose boredom or pain. I don't know how he got through this through the internal review board for for you know, maybe it was just because it was long enough ago. What he finds is that 25% of the women shock themselves and twothirds of the guys shock themselves cuz you know, dudes, dudes, dudes, right?

One guy shocked himself 190 times in 15 minutes. Like painful electric shocks. He got thrown out of the experiment for being a sick and twisted freak, right? But the truth is, if you're not used to boredom, you're going to hate it cuz the default mode network is going to make you go to all sorts of really, really uncomfortable right hemisphere places. But once you start getting used to it, your life is going to start changing and you have to administer that on purpose because we solved the boredom problem.

This solved the boredom problem. And once you solve the boredom problem, you don't want to go back. But then you're hooked. You're in the cycle. You're on the wheel. And that's what you got to break. Have you ever invested in something uh that seemed incredible at first, but did not live up to the hype? That happened to me back in the '90s when I invested in the company that made the Palm Pilot. People of a certain age will remember those. They were like kind of the precursor to the smartphone, but they were not that smart and not connected to the internet.

Anyway, lost a little money on that. If you're a marketer, you definitely know this feeling. Marketers optimize for the numbers that look great. Impressions, reach, and reacts, but when they don't show revenue, uh, well, that's a conversation with your chief financial officer. LinkedIn has a word for this, bull spend. LinkedIn ads generate the highest rorowaz, 121% of all major ad networks. Reach the right buyers with LinkedIn ads. You can target by company, industry, job title, and more. Cut the bull spend. Advertise on LinkedIn, the network that works for you.

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Your emotional well-being matters. Find support and feel lighter in therapy. Sign up and get 10% off at betterhelp.com/happier. betterhelp.com/happier. betterhelp.com/happier. That's betterhp.com/happier. Have you seen these social media videos of usually it's young men uh and the term they use is raw dogging reality where they'll sit on a plane for 18 hours and and and and do nothing. Yeah. Yeah. Raw dogging flights. It's a classic thing and I don't actually use that example in my in my book because I didn't want to say raw dogging in my book because you know this is this is this is family research Dan you know but but man it's true and and it's so funny because you know I teach for our listeners who don't know I teach at the Harvard Business School MBAs these are the most striving hard charging people I've ever met and they are excellent man they're super good at what they do so I'm talking about board you got to get bored got to One guy's like, I want to become truly excellence excellent in boredom.

He wants to be better in boredom at anybody else. So the the the thing I think about when I hear you talk about working out without headphones or commuting without headphones or when I see these young men uh and I it is usually most mostly uh it is usually young men uh raw dogging uh their flights or or any aspect of reality. The thing I think about is, well, why don't you use that time to meditate to be mindful? Um, you can be mindful while you're lifting weights or you're commuting or anything.

That's right. To be mindful. Now, it's a it's actually a little harder when you're doing something really strenuous and and part of the reason is because your blood pressure is going up and down so precipitously. so precipitously. so precipitously. um you're also bringing so much blood in and out of your brain that it kind of that's one of the reasons that when you're meditating for example or when you're sitting in prayer that you want to be in a place where you can get more uh uh cognitive and physical equilibrium.

So it's a little harder to do that under the circumstances but dedicating yourself to being undistracted to being fully present. So it's like now I'm picking up a 60 lb dumbbell. now I'm dropping it on my foot or whatever you happen to be doing that you know you're fully present for the experience of what you're doing and and you remember it and you're part of what's actually happening and at first you're like god this is so boring but then pretty soon you're going to be like I feel like I'm involved with my life cuz you're not missing your life anymore.

anymore. anymore. Yeah. Okay. So we've talked about interrupting the doom loop. Now let's get to uh the three big questions. Uh can you run run through them? So, the questions that we talked about before, this really is any sort of questioning about your life. And one of the things in modern life that we've gotten really, really bad at is asking questions. And the reason is because we reward answers, not questions, as we talked about before. You want to make a billion dollars, create a search engine that answers questions better than than than any other, you know, but the truth of the matter is that you're not going to illuminate the right side of your brain or find the meaning of your life with any question that you can put in a Google search bar where the answer is anything less than completely meaningless.

If you put into Google or chat GPT, chat GPT, chat GPT, hey, um, what would I die for? It'll give you a bunch of stupid nonsense. It'll give you this pabum, you know, this pat answers that mean nothing to you. And the reason is because those kinds of questions, those why questions of life can't be answered. So the whole point is I give these three meaning questions to ask. But that's just a that's a that's that's a place to start. What I recommend to my my students is literally the two questions.

I have a two question exam to see if there's a meaning crisis, but also the two questions to be contemplating as you try to solve the crisis in your life. Why am I alive? And for what would I die? Why am I alive and for what would I die? And I find that young people really, really struggle with these questions. I mean, you and I in the second question, for what would I die, we go like, "Oh, I know that one. My kids and now I'm a grandfather, my grandkids." But you know what else really?

Is that it? Is that literally it? What about your country? What about your ideals? What about people who are innocent that you don't know? Right? It's so interesting, you know, that I'd always read that people have a big sense of meaning who are veterans and and and it's interesting because two of my kids are Marines now and and when I saw that it was a case study in why that is the case. So I have a my middle son Carlos um really really struggled with a lot of the meaning and you know life what a drag and then he joined the Marine Corps and became a scout sniper which is this really dangerous sort of elite job in the Marine Corps and he had to not only contemplate why am I alive he had to sign a contract for what he was willing to give his life for.

He was willing to give his life for his fellow Marines the United States of America and our allies. He was literally willing to do that. And he's been a completely different person since he got out of the Marines because he confronted those two questions in a way that, way that, way that, you know, life on the internet would have made it impossible for him to even have time or a lack of distraction to deal with. Just to make sure I I fully grasp this, we should take these questions, whether three questions or two, and just make a mental habit of chewing on them, mulling them over as a practice.

That that's exactly right. And and people can write their own questions, too. But remember, if Google can answer it, it's the wrong question. If Google can answer it, it's a left-hand side question. If Google can't answer it, it's a right-hand side question. That's kind of the acid test on any of these why questions for life. Find the questions that you most want. What is that's like why am I spending my time in this job? Why am I spending my time in this relationship? You know, these kinds of things that nobody can answer except you.

and and you can only come to an understanding of when you deeply examine the meaning of your life. That's what will open up the part of your brain that you actually need. And even if you can't come to exact answers, you will come to a deeper understanding and a sense of calm that you've never had before just by asking the questions. So, we're working our way through your six-part plan here. The next part is to, and these are your words, give your heart away. What do you mean by that?

Yeah. One of the most mysterious meaningful things in people's lives that the kind of complex problem that you'll never solve is your marriage. You know, you and I have talked about this before. You've been married for a long time, just like me. We were both we're both married dudes for a long time. I've been married for 34 years. And uh I'm I'm completely in love with my wife. Um before I started this podcast, she's upstairs. She said she told me she loved me. And she does.

I believe it. But when I'm done, something might have happened and she might be just pissed off at me. I Dan, I don't know. I can't solve my marriage. I can only live my marriage. Now, to begin with, it's partly complex cuz my wife is Spanish, but you know, that adds a layer of complexity to any marriage, I will tell you. But but you know, it's the truth is that love, especially romantic love, is is a a right side complex phenomenon. You'll never solve the problems.

All you'll ever do is learn to live with them. And what do we find? Not coincidentally, as we've been pushed to the left side of our brain, people are less likely to fall in love than they ever have before. For people under 30, the likelihood of getting married, falling in love, living together, even having sex has gone down dramatically dramatically dramatically since every decade since the 1980s. And so we find for the very first time more people in their 30s are like are living alone than people who are in permanent partnerships.

The reason is because we're not good at the complex phenomenon of falling in love. And so, one of the things I prescribe to my students, I have a whole unit of my class called falling in love and staying in love. And I walk through what's happening in the brain and and how the brain reacts in this crazy right hemisphere way when you're falling in love. But that's one thing that you got to do. And it's super scary. Why? Because we're used to solving complicated problems and not living with complex problems.

We're not used to getting on the right hand side. But the minute that you say, "Okay, I I no moss. I'm I'm I gotta I I'm in love. I'm in love." You've opened up the right side of your brain. Falling in love is the ultimate right hemisphere meaningfilled experience. And by the way, you're going to get way, you're going to get hurt. You're going to get hurt. It's super dangerous. There be dragons. But that's kind of how it works. That's how anything full of mystery and meaning works.

It's always scary because you don't know what's over there. You don't know what's in there. You can't even articulate these exper these things that are actually happening to you. That's the point. That's actually the point. When you assign falling in love to your students, how do they then go about it? So, here's how I assign it. And and I've had a lot of experiences of this over the past 5 years. Um I was giving a talk to this big group of 20somes um in Washington DC actually not as part of my class.

And I said, "You want to be an entrepreneur in your life? Give your heart away." because that's the ultimate, you know, expression of risk in in in search of explosive returns. And if you're not doing that, you're not an entrepreneur. And and afterward, a kid comes up. Actually, it wasn't right afterward. It was two weeks later, and he found me on an airplane. It just happened to be with me. And he said, "I can't get that out of my head." And so, I'm on my way right now to confess that I've secretly been in love with a woman for two years, and I haven't told her because of your speech.

And I'm like, wow, wow, wow, dude. It was only a speech. I don't want you to ruin your life. And and and I thought about it. I said a prayer for him, you know, and and I didn't see him. I actually gave him my email address and he didn't respond, which seemed like a bad sign. And I ran into him a few months later in Washington DC. And I said, "You remember me?" He says, "Yep." I said, "What happened with that woman?" And he said, "She wasn't in love with me.

She shot me down and she introduced me to the guy that she's in love with." And I said, "I'm really sorry. I was very contrite. I didn't mean to ruin your life." says, "No, no, no, no." See, the thing is, that's what I was most afraid of and it happened and I didn't die and I'm not afraid anymore. I'm free. See, that's the thing about it, right? So, what I recommend is that that people actually go for it. They just go for it and and get rejected.

That's how you do anything, anything, anything, right? Is like you take risks in these murky waters. I'm not asking you to go, you know, swim in a sharkinfested part of the ocean. I'm talking about doing something that's really scary that people don't have very much experience in right now, which is is falling in love with somebody and taking the risk of them saying, "I don't love you." or having a bad breakup and then learning from it and growing from it and coming back and and actually having these experiences more because that's the richness in life.

You know, everybody watching us saying, "Oh, these two old guys." Yeah. Well, guess what? We were rejected a lot before we found our soulmates. soulmates. soulmates. Speak for yourself. Yeah. It's just like you were in third grade with your wife, right? So, um, So, um, So, um, you know, what you that story you just told which I love. Uh it it reminds me of something that we kind of um mentioned earlier, one of us or both of us mentioned earlier, which is that in this um uh chronically online hyperproductive, hyperindividualistic hyperproductive, hyperindividualistic hyperproductive, hyperindividualistic era, we have developed, and this is not a new observation on my part, but we have developed an allergy to discomfort, all sorts of discomfort, because the the the phone makes it so that we can get dates and uh food and anything from Amazon and any uh piece of information we want very very seamlessly.

So life really doesn't have the kind of friction it used to have and as a result people are really really uncomfortable with what you're describing when it comes to giving your your heart away. Yeah. It's and it's not just ease. It's also the lack of risk when it comes to romance. So what apps are supposed to do and some apps are much better than others because some apps are now you know as I mentioned before they're they're looking for not time in app but time in person and they're going to get better and I'm actually not down on this.

62% of of permanent relationships start on apps today. The trouble is when people are trying to mitigate all of the risk of rejection by curating their dating profile in such a way they're going to find somebody who's exactly like themselves. And this has actually led to a a much bigger increase in a lack of complimentarity. That that the secret to to happiness and romance is not compatibility. You need a very very I mean a a tangible but low level of compatibility with somebody you can fall in love with permanently.

What you need is complimentarity. You need to complete each other. You know, that's the secret to to su successful romance. And that's less and less and less likely to people who are worried about risk when they're curating their dating profiles. The second part which is even more dangerous than this because again I think that the dating apps are going to figure this out and I'm working with some of the app developing companies and they're getting better and better at this. The problem that we can't get beyond is something that people do when they when they want love and they strip it down of its components technologically and they get involved with pornography.

Pornography is super dangerous and bad for you. Pornography works your brain in a very bad, very addictive way that rules out this this this search for meaning. It's like the most meaningless thing ever. And what it does is it takes this meaningfilled experience, you know, sexual intimacy in a in a in a monogous partnership. That's a really really meaningful thing. And stripping that part out is such a dangerous thing to do for your brain and such a bad thing to do for your happiness. H how does it go down with young people when you tell them quit the porn?

They know it's true. They know it's true. But 80% of men under 30 are using porn regularly. 80%. You know, and so at 30% of women and 80% of men. And so the result of it is that, you know, they're all like, I know, I know, I know. But I mean, it's just it's it's hard because the ubiquitousness of the product, you know, and how how alluring it actually is. It's made to draw you in and capture your brain. It's made to make you addicted. But what it does in your addiction, just like any sort of the technology, is it supercharges the dopamine in your brain to give you this sense of satis temporary satisfaction, but it leaves you completely bereft of what the sexual experience and an intimate partnership is supposed to do, which is to which is supposed to a mind meld between the right hemispheres of the partner's brains.

You know, in the biblical language of one flesh, that's not sex. That's that's the right hemispheres. One flesh is two right hemispheres hemispheres hemispheres which gives you a sense of of of the divine you know where happily married couples you know they they don't they they have a sense of the existence and love of God and when they have the love of each other that that's it doesn't happen all the time and it doesn't happen for everybody and it's hard but that's what we're really going for and when when you strip that away boy it's a big problem so I've almost never met anybody's like no are you kidding me porn is awesome no they know that they're actually being managed by pornography as opposed to managing their own use of pornography.

The next suggestion is to transcend yourself. Say more. Transcendence is something that you've done I think a better job than almost anybody over the past 10 years in your work or self-trcendence is uh is a meaningfilled experience where you you can break out of the psycho drama and you can stand in awe of or stand in the presence of something that's bigger than yourself. Um, the psycho drama psychologically is the story inside your head that where you're the star all the time and it's like the most boring story ever.

It's like my waking time, my breakfast, you know, my back hurts, my irritations with my spouse, my commute to work, me. It's so boring. It's like the most boring television show that you're forcing yourself to watch all the time. And to transcend yourself is to stop looking inward and to start looking outward. This is what meditation at its best actually does. It puts us in what William James, the great psychologist from the 19th century, called the eye self. The me self is the mirror. Me, me, me, me, me.

And you got to know where you are and what you're doing or you know, you won't survive. You won't be able to actually drive in traffic if you don't know what you're doing with your car. But the eye self is looking out to the world. A and looking out to the world is gives you a sense of what the meaning of your life actually is. And meditation is incredibly good for that. It's an incredibly good source of transcendence. Religion super good. I mean, I'm a more traditionally religious person.

And I practice my religion every day. It's so I practice every morning. Every morning, every morning because of transcendence, you know, is what it comes down to. My friend Ryan Holidayiday, who is this world's leading expert in stoicism, you know, he practices stoic philosophy. Same thing. People who practice the Brahma Mahort of walking before dawn, same thing. People who listen to the works of Johan Sebastian Bach and analyze the greatest music that has ever been written. Same thing. That's that sense of transcendence that we actually need.

And what it does is it delivers to you the way your brain is supposed to work. And you will find the sense of meaning. Even if you're not looking for it, you'll find it. That's that's that's transcendence. Another way to do this, by the way, is serving others as opposed to yourself. service to others, which is this, you know, this moral beauty that you actually get from serving other people as opposed to, you know, me me my stuff, my stuff. So, look upward or look outward and you'll find what you're looking for on the inside.

Yeah. I think service is um I was thinking about it before you said it. If you don't want to meditate and you're not into religion, service is uh a really great way to get out of your head. Totally. I've done work on that for years. I would I wrote my doctoral dissertation years and years and years ago on why is it that people get healthier, happier, richer, and better looking when they when they give time and money to charity. Literally, you people will think that you're better looking than you are if they witness you in an act of charity.

It's like wives think their husbands are hotter when their husbands are actually giving money to a beggar. I've got a an experiment that shows that. It's it's amazing. Almost every area of your life becomes deeper, more meaningful, richer, happier when you're serving other people, especially people who really need you. And by the way, one of the ways to serve other people is to allow yourself to be served. And I had this really interesting experience of this where I was giving a talk um up in you know near I think pretty near where you live as a matter of fact and um the um one of the students at his college asked me you know how do I you know I said you need to be able you need to be open to other people serving you because that's the ultimate that's one of the ultimate forms of service is allowing people to transcend themselves by helping you and a lot of people are like no I don't take anything from anybody I don't That's the rugged individualism that will ruin things.

And and so a guy puts up his hand in this talk and he says, "What about somebody who truly doesn't need anything from me?" And I said, "Well, name somebody." He says, "A homeless guy on the street." Homeless guy on the street. And I was kind of I was sort of uh speechless for a minute and I went home and I thought about it. I meditated on it as a matter of fact. And the next day I did an experiment because I was in New York City and I said I I ran across a homeless guy and he asked me for something and I I you know I was near CVS and I went in and got him something to eat and I came out and this is where the experiment came in.

I said but you know before I leave will you do something for me and he said what I said would you please pray for me and my family family family and it's like this look on his face he's like what? But but you know the truth is in my religion God hears the cries of the poor. You know, he has special access, man. I And I truly I believe I need his prayers. My family and I need his prayers. I I I wasn't making it up.

I wasn't being like some kind of saint. I realized that's the thing I need from this guy. He needed food. I needed prayers. And he did. He prayed for me. And it was this like transformative experience where we were we had a a deep link to each other as two men. You know, it wasn't a, you know, a rich guy and a poor guy. It wasn't any of these all of these distinctions just temporarily for a few seconds went away. Why? Because we had a link in the right hemisphere of our brains if you want to look at it physiologically but more importantly spiritually we were both able to transcend in that moment.

And that's more of what we need to do is establish more interconnected need because we're all truly brothers and sisters. Not when we're just when we're doing things from each other with for each other but when we need things from each other. each other. each other. If you're a regular listener to this show, there's a good chance you are well acquainted with the voice in your head. That's what I call the voice who's constantly narrating, judging, wanting, planning, etc. For some of us, that distraction is an aspect of ADHD.

And if that is the case for you, I want to tell you about a show that you may well enjoy. It's called Hyperfocus with Ray Jacobson. Each episode, Ray tackles the big existential questions that we talk about here, but through a specific lens of neurode divergence. She talks to scientists, doctors, and researchers to dive into studies and headlines around ADHD, neurode divergence, and mental health. This is a huge issue that many of you care deeply about, and Rey is all over it. So, go check it out.

To listen to Hyperfocus with Ray Jacobson, search for Hyperfocus with Ray Jacobson in your podcast app. That's hyperfocus with Ray Jacobson. Spring, as we all know, is a natural reset point. And if you've been putting off cleaning up the messier parts of your business, now is the time. Streamlining your communications is one of the quickest and easiest upgrades you can make. That's why today's episode is brought to you by Quo. That's spelled Quo. It's the smarter way to run your business communications. As a business owner myself, I'm always looking for ways to stop leaving money on the table.

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and we lived for the last 5 years uh of our uh time in the city right next to a soup kitchen um on on the upper west side and um so there were a lot of homeless folks around. There was a particularly uh intimidating gentleman who was very large and was often often wearing a hospital gown like he had just run out of the hospital um who was in my neighborhood a lot. Um, and he never made eye contact or anything like that. But I was consistently giving him money because that that was just my practice.

And um, I was not thinking about what I would get in return. It was just uh, in some ways selfishly oriented because it was so painful to try to look away all the time. Um, and if it just felt better moving through the world by giving away the money. And um over time I started to notice that um he was actually subtly running interference for me and my family as we walk through the neighborhood like um if anybody bothered us or anything like that. He would start to loom into uh into view.

Um it was very moving actually. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No, it was uh you know we we do all have this interdependent need. Um, it's an artificial, it's an artifact of our highly technologized and hierarchical society that we think that we don't actually and we only become truly human when we obliterate that that misunderstanding of what it means to be human together. And again, you know, I know that it's not like I'm going to fix poverty by doing this, but at least I can be a fully alive in those moments and help somebody else be fully alive in those moments as well.

Yes. Yes. Yes. Next item. And this really gets into what a lot of people wonder about when they they they when or if they ever contemplate meaning. So the next item here is look for your calling. What do you what do you mean by that? My students are intensely interested in their careers and young people are as well. This is sort of the the MMO of the strive and you know the meaning crisis is the stver's curse. And again, I'm not saying that if you're not a strior, you don't have this problem.

But, you know, I sort of spe I'm the styver whisperer. I specialize in people who are they want to grow up and be Dan Harris. But they they they don't understand that that having the if they had your level of professional success. That's not the ticket to happiness. It actually isn't. And so, I have to talk to them about not what it means to be have more money or power or fame, what it means to actually find what you're supposed to do. That's a meaning question.

What am I supposed to do? That's the same thing as what am I meant to do? That's a literally a meaning question. So I talk an awful lot about seeing seeing work as a vocation as opposed to seeing work as a job. And again, there are lots and lots of days where my job feels like a job. But more than anything else, I try to inject a couple of things and I I identify in this book the two things to inject into almost any job that can turn it into much more of a calling.

Those two things are and they don't consist of money or power or prestige or position. The two things are the sense that you're creating value which is called earned success and the sense that you're serving other people which is to say that people need you. Those are the two things to look for. Am I creating value for other people and actually do people need me? Does somebody need me? And and it's funny because you know I've advised a lot of people. I was doing a I was doing uh you know Drew Barrymore's show last year and I was talking to the audience because that's a big part of her show is interacting with the audience and the guy's like you know how do I find meaning in my job?

You know I'm in a cubicle farm and it's not that great and I don't feel like anybody needs me and it's just so boring. And I said okay I got it. You need said okay I got it. You need to look for a new job when you can. It might not be possible right now etc. But in the meantime, tomorrow at 2, go to the break room, make a fresh pot of coffee, and bring it out to the guy in the next cube and say, "You know what?

You look like you could use a fresh cup of coffee." And look at the look on his face. And you'll become that guy in the office. You'll want to be that person. Why? Because you're a a big part of your calling is is is serving other people and doing something that people actually need. Whether it's the job per se or it's whether it's what you're doing while you're doing the job. This can give you a much much stronger sense of calling. That's a lot like transcendence, but building your professional life around the principles of earned success and service will give you the vocational craving.

Will meet the vocational craving that almost everybody has. everybody has. everybody has. I think about this a lot. The world is filled with problems, but as a result, it is a target-rich environment for being useful, for being helpful, for being compassionate. And that, by the way, is a great way to make yourself happier. happier. happier. Oh. Oh, yeah. I mean, and the point that you're making is that every entrepreneur sees opportunities where everybody else sees problems. We should be entrepreneurs in the business of our lives, in the business of our careers, in the business of our love lives.

There's a problem. Ah, that's an opportunity. That's an opportunity to help somebody. That's so beautiful. And to say, you know, there's a homeless guy in the street. Oh, thank you. Thank you, God. you gave me an opportunity to help somebody, to transcend, to do something beautiful. That's an entrepreneurial approach to life. And and the reason that it's so satisfying is because not coincidentally, it's what leads to a much much stronger sense of meaning and what we actually have. Okay. So, but very specifically when people are trying to figure out what they should do with their lives, um, and once you've convinced them that they may be aiming for the wrong stuff in terms of just trying to make a lot of money, etc., etc., or be famous.

Uh how then to think about what what their calling might be. Yeah. So I I do I go into great specifics about that in my class and and to some extent in this book as well. And and one of the things that I talk about is finding calling first. There's this one really interesting question to ask that's based on the work of psychologists who have worked at the worked on the patterns of different kinds of careers. It turns out that there are four kinds of careers when it comes to finding meaning.

Number one is what everybody thinks they are when they're at a fancy university or they're really ambitious drivers. That's the linear career path. That's where you do something that you know pays you the has the best benefits and the best money and the best prospect for success and you only change when you get something better in in line with that. And so usually that's every 3 to 5 years you change jobs and you climb this ladder. But that's only one career path. It turns out there's three others depending on the psychology of the person.

And that's not even the majority. Two others are the expert career path where people actually take jobs that don't have huge upsides in terms of money or fame. But what they do is they provide the ability for people to live the life that they actually want to live. That was my dad. You know, my dad was a college professor just like me, but you know, he never changed from the same institution and he got a 2% raise every year and he got his tenure in the mail without applying for it.

And he had a nice life. He didn't work that many hours and he did all the kinds of things that he wanted to do. And you need to know that about yourself. If if you're not living to work, you're working to live. The third pattern is called the transitory pattern. And this is more common with young people today. Everybody's kind of freaked out about this with their teenage kids. That's people who are like, "No, man. I mean, I I I am going to work in all sorts of different things because it actually makes it possible for me to live my life like an adventure.

So, I'm going to drive a moving van out of Tucson for a while. Then I'm going to go be a barista in Portland, Maine, because I fell in love with a girl there. And then I'm going to go learn how to surf, so I better go to San Diego." And and they're living like that at least for a period of their life. But for strivvers, the number four pattern is the predominant pattern for finding meaning. And that's called the spiral career. I wind up showing a lot of my students for the first time who they really are to find meaning.

And it starts with this idea that every 5 to 12 years, you change something. You change a big thing about your career. Maybe you come out of business school and you go work for a company and and then you step back and raise kids for the next five or 10 years. Then after that you go and work for a nonprofit and later in your life you become a teacher or let's just say hypothetically that you're a a great big famous guy on TV and then you step back and develop a a meditation practice and app and podcast and let's just hypothetically and and somebody says what do those things have in common?

You're like it it it's it's the thing I'm building. I'm building my life. And that's because you're actually willing to sponge to to to port over the things that you've learned in one part of your life into a big beautiful new thing that you're going to do. And those people, they tend to have four very distinctly phases in their lives. And they're not afraid to stop doing the old thing and start doing the new thing. That's the thing to keep in mind. Sure, do what you're studying because you think it's really interesting and do that, but don't be afraid to quit.

Quit your job. walk away. I love it. You used the word beautiful there leads me uh I've only I only have a couple questions left so it le but that word leads me to my next question which is you have a whole chapter called surround yourself with beauty which I'm interested to hear ho how exactly that leads to a a refreshing of meaning. Yeah. So beauty, the experience of beauty, um that is a directly illuminating phenomenon in the right hemisphere of the brain. This is just there's tons of research that shows that when you encounter beauty, your right hemisphere is the thing that actually makes you cry and you don't know why.

It's like wait a second. And there's certain things, by the way, almost everybody will get like and men in particular will get choked up over like two things about life and they can't quite explain, right? Um it'll be like something about music will make men go right or something about their religion and they can't quite explain you know why. It's something about their childhood that I want I want it. I want it. It's like an echo from the past. These are all right brain experiences. When you feel emotional and you don't actually know why about something, it means that the right hemisphere is being illuminated and you're having a meaning experience, a powerful meaning experience.

And beauty is a really good way to invoke that. There's three kinds of beauty that do that. Now, here's the kind of beauty that doesn't do that. Physical beauty from the gender you're attracted to. That doesn't do it. You know, if I It's like going to the beach and and looking at that person on the beach going, "Ah, yeah, wow." No, sorry. That's not doing it. That's a different part of the brain. That's or different part of the body. That's a different thing. That's stimulating sex hormones and etc.

There's three kinds of beauty I'm talking about. There's artistic beauty, there's natural beauty, and there's moral beauty. Those are the three kinds of beauty that will really illuminate the part of your brain that you need that will give you these deep, ineffable, meaning based experiences. Ineffable means it's real, but you can't explain it. You can't put words to it. And if it's real, but you can't put words to it, it's because the language centers of your brain are on the left hemisphere, but the meaning parts are in the right hemisphere.

It's like, this is huge. I can't tell you why that you just know you're in the right place when that kind of thing is happening. And so look for the beauty, the for the look for the beauty, the artistic beauty that really floats your boat. And there's a really interesting body of literature that suggests, not coincidentally, that popular music since about 2008 is objectively melodically less beautiful than time before that. Why? Because we're a left hemisphere culture. That we're a technological culture. And again, I don't want to be an old fogy who's like criticizing young people's music.

I'm just looking at the research on that. But you got to find the music that most moves you. For me, that's the work of Bach. I'm a Boach fanatic. And I was a classical musician all the way. I was a trained classical musician all the way through my 20s and did it for a living until I was 31. So, that's my background. But, everybody's got to find their thing. The second is natural beauty. The average uh child under 12 spends between four and seven minutes a day in nature and between four and seven hours a day behind the screen.

That's a big problem because nature is a great way to do this is you know how the kids these days like my 20some kids they talk about touching grass. Do your kids talk about touching grass? You ever heard that expression? What that means is I feel like I'm getting out of touch with reality here and so I need to go outside. That's literally what's happening. I'm out of touch with reality, meaning I'm living in a simulation. The simulation is in the left hemisphere of my brain.

I need to get back to reality, which is the right hemisphere of my brain. So, I'm going to go outside and be in nature. That's what they're saying in not so many words. And that's what we all need to do. We need to touch grass. Last but not least is to witness beautiful acts of kindness and goodness and generosity and moral beauty from others. And when you do that, this is one of the reasons that that everybody was so taken worldwide with Mother Teresa of Kolkata, St.

Teresa of Kolkata. She's already been canonized by the Catholic Church. She she lived this life among the most the world's most abject poor. And people were just I mean she's a an old Albanian nun serving the poorest of the poor in Kolkata. And she's like this worldwide celebrity. Why? celebrity. Why? celebrity. Why? She she died the same day, by the way, as Princess Diana. and and and there were like these two big deaths. Princess Diana who was a a cultural figure for her glamour and Mother Teresa who was a cultural figure for her moral beauty.

And people were they they didn't know why it was but when they looked at her life they were deeply deeply deeply moved. And the reason is because just looking at her moral beauty showed them the meaning of their own lives. Just a quick note on music. I listen to a lot of young people's music. Um because my my I'm less a Bach guy and more a punk guy. So most of the best punk music is is made by young people. Um Um Um but I was watching recently I was unable to sleep.

I uh was physically restless feeling like and I for one reason or another I put on the Last Waltz Martin Scorsese documentary about the band, one of the best bands of all time, the band. And and that in the first five minutes they play don't do it. uh which is just a in my opinion a song of transcendent beauty and watching them play and the magic of their interactions and the beauty of the sound I got full body chills. body chills. body chills. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

And was able to go to sleep. It's beautiful. It's beautiful. I mean what you did is you know when you were fully experiencing the meaning of your life because your brain was working the way it was supposed to. It wasn't, you know, cranking through analytic problems on the left. It was actually living on the complex right. You could drift off to sleep. to sleep. to sleep. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. And it's one of the reasons that some people will put put on their favorite music to go to sleep every night.

That's what they're doing is they're, you know, their brain is working the way it's supposed to. And when your brain works the way it's supposed to, you'll be able to rest. Last thing to ask you about. Uh you have a chapter that coincidence or not, this is also an expression that the aforementioned Joseph Goldstein uses a lot. Uh don't waste your suffering. What do you mean by that? Suffering is a sacred sacred phenomenon. And one of the biggest mistakes that young people make today, they're kind of like the hippies um who said, "If it feels good, do it." But they do the opposite, which is if it feels bad, make it stop.

We pathized suffering. Um, and and this is a this is an important lesson. I've been working, as you know, for the past 12 years with his holiness the Daly Lama very closely. And I've learned a lot from him. He's made me a better person in every way. And one of the things that he's taught me that the Tibetan Buddhists teach is that suffering is pain multiplied by resistance. resistance. resistance. And and that's important because a lot of what we're doing today with young people, we say if you're feeling sad and anxious, you need to go to campus counseling and you need to get that treated.

All that what that's trying to do is to lower mental pain. And the truth is, I get it. I mean, I'm all about mental health treatment and you know, psychiatric care has saved the lives of people in my family to be sure. But the truth is that suffering isn't necessarily terrible, nor should it be treated by lowering pain, but rather by lowering resistance to pain. Why is it that people who are in great pain can have relatively little suffering? It's because they've lowered their resistance to it, and in so doing, they've understood the meaning of it.

If you eradicate your suffering, you've eradicated your ability to ascertain meaning in your life. And that's a longstanding finding from psychologists for the the longest time. If you try to avoid unhappiness by avoiding your pain, you will avoid the meaning of your life and that means your happiness is going to go down. I tell my students, look, you're studying at Harvard. If you're not sad and anxious, you need therapy. The truth is, you're doing a hard thing and you're doing it on purpose. My kids who were Marines, they did it cuz it was going to hurt.

That's why they did it. And the reason that they did it is because they wanted to understand how you could have high pain and low suffering. And when you actually lower your resistance and use the formula in the right way, you find meaning. That's what it comes down to. That's uh and again, I could talk about the neurohysiology of it, but we don't need to. The whole point is for us to become a lot more comfortable with the fact that life has a ton of suffering in it.

You're learning and growth. your learning and growth about the meaning of your life is going to come from your understanding of and your non-resistance to that suffering. In this regard, do you agree with the arguments made by Victor Frankle uh you know, man's search for meaning uh going through the Holocaust and being able to find meaning in those horrific circumstances. circumstances. circumstances. Yeah. And it's it's really what he said. He you know it's it's funny. He talked about meaning and suffering all the time because he was in Awitz.

It was a, you know, the fir man's search for meaning, which everybody should read. It's a classic. The first half of is his chronicle um of his experience in the concentration camps for his wife was euthanized within the first hour, but he spent he didn't know that until after he was liberated. Um, and he spent his time thinking about living on purpose because of his wife, which gave him a sense of meaning. But it also put into context, it put into perspective the suffering that the pain that he was undergoing.

And that gave him the the will to live is how that came about. like you know it's a his his book man's search for meaning is a case study and you know my the la the second to last chapter of my book never waste your suffering is really what that's all about and how people can do it in modern life you know the suffering that people actually go through how to think about it how to be more non-resistant when it comes to the pain such that the suffering means something I have even tangible exercises I keep my I have my students keep a failure journal not where they're trying to get rid of their failure forget it or their disappointments or they write it down, you know, and they keep a pen and pencil journal where something happens they don't like that makes them feel crummy about themselves.

3 weeks later they come back and say, "What did I learn from that?" And then two months later, they come back and say, "What was something beneficial that came to me from that?" And and in so doing, then they become way way way less resistant to these things that are aversive in their life. They become more comfortable with the fact that this is how life actually works. I'm not telling people to get off their meds at all because that's management, but it's not you. You need management is fine.

Elimination is a real problem because then you'll be unsuccessful, but you'll never get any learning or growth from it. And this is how most people actually figure it out. You know, it's funny. I talked about how veterans, they have a great sense of meaning in their lives. So do cancer survivors. So do former addicts. They have so much strong sense of meaning in their lives, right? and you go back and and you say, "What taught you the meaning of their life?" And they tell you terrible stories.

They tell you terrible things that happened. You know, it's like nobody ever said, "You know why I'm so happy? Cuz I never got cancer." Nobody says that, right? But a lot of people say, "I'm a cancer survivor." And man, my life is rich. And there's a reason for that. There's a connection between those two things. I always ask two final questions. The first is was there something you were hoping we would get to that we failed to get to? get to? get to? No, I mean because this is this is thorough cuz you're thorough.

I mean we went we literally marched through this book chapter by chapter and so I'm really deeply grateful for that. Um and uh and the the key thing for a lot of people to keep in mind is with any problem like the meaning problem the first thing to tackle is the barrier right is the barrier to it. And so I would like everybody to all of us to examine our tech use because this is the first thing for us. So first this is the first thing for us.

So going back to the beginning of the conversation once we can actually examine that critically um then we'll be open to doing all these more important things down the line that will rebuild our lives. our lives. our lives. I'm just such a huge fan Arthur. I mean you've just written you very few people um have written such a successful series of really smart helpful books. Um so congratulations. Can you just remind everybody of the name of your your new book and maybe uh throw in a few of of the others while we're at it and also mention your podcast.

Yeah, sure. I appreciate that, Dan. It's the meaning of your life, finding purpose in an age of emptiness. available everywhere at the end of March, March 31st as a matter of fact. And this follows on the last two books that I wrote uh build a life you want with Oprah Winfrey and then right before that from strength to strength and you and I met because you read from strength to strength which is a book about designing the second half of your life. This is more a first half of life or all of us book is is the meaning of your life and you know the success of from strength to strength where a lot of people said yeah this is this was really helpful to me what can I give to my 28-year-old kid 28-year-old kid 28-year-old kid and you know that was one of the reasons that I you know I finally took the plunge of you know writing up these things that I had found about the meaning crisis along the way I'm talking about a lot of these things and what I talk about in my classes I have a really oversubscribed class at the Harvard Business School and I try to bring that information to people with my podcast which is called office hours and it's mostly me talking about the science of happiness.

Most importantly, how people can use it and and in my column. I have a column at the Free Press. I'm a I'm a I'm the happiness I'm a happiness uh contributor at CBS News. And so there's a lot of places I'm doing that people can find out, you know, all the things I'm writing and doing by just going to my website, arthurbrooks.com. Arthur, such a pleasure to talk to you every time. Thank you for making to come back on. back on. back on. Absolutely. Yeah, it's great.

It's great to see you and great to continue to watch as you go from strength to strength in your own career and um the strengths that you bring are those that you're actually bringing to other people. You've dedicated yourself to lifting other people up and bringing them together in bonds of happiness and love and I'm really really really appreciative and admiring of you for that. It's very kind. Thank you.