The 3 Things You Need To Be Truly Happy | Arthur Brooks

Key Takeaway

Today, create one non-negotiable ritual that makes you fully present with someone you love: take a phone-free walk, share a coffee without multitasking, or eat dinner together. Happiness is not a feeling you can chase directly; it emerges when you repeatedly build enjoyment, earn satisfaction through worthwhile effort, and invest in meaningful relationships. Put the ritual on your calendar before work expands to fill the space, and treat it as seriously as any professional commitment.

Episode Overview

Arthur Brooks explains happiness as a balanced diet of enjoyment, satisfaction, and meaning—not constant positive emotion or external success. He and Rangan Chatterjee explore why struggle builds self-belief, why goals need “intention without attachment,” and how love, friendship, spirituality, and present-moment rituals protect against isolation and workaholism.

Full Transcript

Transcript of The 3 Things You Need To Be Truly Happy | Arthur Brooks from Feel Better, Live More. Auto-generated from episode audio; may contain minor errors.

Arthur, you're probably one of the most prominent voices globally talking about happiness. Where have you learned the most about happiness from? Is it the scientific research, your religion, or your wife? So, I've learned different things from those three sources. I've been married a long time. Been married 35 years. I have a very happy marriage, a very high conflict, high honesty, happy marriage to a Spaniard, right? And and the truth is that I needed more happiness information in spite of the fact that I have a happy marriage.

And I realized this not that long ago. About 7 years ago, now I'm trained as a behavioral scientist. I got my PhD almost 30 years ago, as a matter of fact. But in the middle of my academic career, I left to run a company and and for 11 years, I was a CEO of a big nonprofit in Washington DC. And I was very unhappy by the end of it. I I couldn't I couldn't find the sense of meaning in my life. and I was very very stressed out etc.

And I realized that despite the fact that all of the things in my life were technically on point. I have a happy marriage. I'm serious about my faith etc. I have you know great kids. I make a good living that I was doing a lot of things wrong and I needed to get on point. I needed to get my happiness protocols on point. So I quit. I walked away and I dedicated myself to actually being more serious about the science of happiness that I could bring to other people starting well really with myself and I began teaching that and what I have found is this combination of the right conditions in your life but also doing things on purpose quite correctly that actually will will come together to make the happiest possible person.

You can have a super happy marriage and be an unhappy person is the bottom line if you're doing a lot of other things wrong. Yeah. One of the things that I've been thinking a lot about recently is that there are happy people out there who don't need a framework for happiness. Right. Right. So in in your book on happiness you have this beautiful framework these three macronutrients that required right enjoyment satisfaction and meaning in my book on happiness I created this framework which is alignment contentment and control that we can talk about that and compare and contrast shortly.

But I also have to acknowledge that there are so many people out there living in many countries around the world who are probably naturally happy and their culture and maybe even their religion leads to them doing the practices that we talk about without them needing an expert telling them how to do this. Yeah, they have good hygiene because of some of these things. and and and so did I because you know I'm serious about my faith and the data are very clear that people who are serious about religious faith are happier than those who aren't that people who have happy marriages are happier than those who aren't but I had a problem my big problem actually comes back to the the the genetics of happiness there's a really interesting identical twin studies you know from the from the psychologists at the University of Minnesota like and Teligan who actually did these they looked at this database on identical twins born between the mid-30s and the mid60s that were separated ated at birth and adopted into separate families, which is quasa experimental conditions, right?

Because they were reunited at about the age of 40 and given personality tests. And of course, there was a bunch of nerds like us with white lab coats following them around with clipboards collecting data. And it turns out that about half of your happiness is genetic. Now, what does this mean? This means that if everything is on point, religion, family, etc., etc., and you've got good genetics, you don't have to worry at all about the science of happiness. That's absolutely the case. It's like these guys who have unbelievable muscle protein synthesis because of their superior genetics and they can they can eat like an 11-year-old and they still look like a Greek god.

Well, that doesn't work for the rest of us. And so, I come from gloomy stock. You know, I come from parents who suffered a lot in Seattle, Washington, which has maybe even worse weather than Wilms, Northern England. And and and so the result of it is I had to do the work. It wasn't enough just to have some of these institutional things on point. and I needed to learn more is how that worked out. I'm a naturally unhappy person which is why I study happiness. Are you a naturally happy person?

It's tricky. Am I naturally happy? I think so. And at the same time, I resonate with so much of your work because I have fallen into certain modern traps over the course of my life. Okay. And I've those traps essentially thinking that external validation would make me happy. I learned when I got more external validation than I could have possibly dreamt of as a young boy, I realized, oh yeah, this is a trap. You can read about it, but now you're in the trap. Okay. So, I feel now at 48, genuinely, I couldn't be happier.

Like I I and I feel there's multiple components of that. But going back to your point about genetics, I don't know what my genetics are, but I would imagine that I won the genetic lottery when it comes to happiness. I mean, you knew your parents well. You said your father died about 10 years ago and your mother's still alive. Were they generally happy people? I think my dad, even when he was knackered and tired, he'd always have a smile. He'd always tell jokes. He he I think he was naturally happy.

And if I think about mom, yeah, I would say my parents aren't actually happy. So they're sunny people. And now they're immigrants. Immigrants have a partic There's a particular kind of hypomomanic edge. And that's very characteristic of immigrants, of hardworking immigrants. It's that, you know, they want more, more, more, more, right? They tend to present kind of workaholically, but what they really want is these deep experiences of the life that they can actually lead. Right. Yeah. It's so interesting. Perhaps you could go through your happiness model.

Okay. You can just outline it for the audience who may not be familiar with it. Okay. So, explain those three macronutrients of happiness. Right. Right. Yeah. That's great. And and by the way, your model too, which I think actually maps pretty nicely onto the one that I talk about. Yeah. Yeah. So, when I first came into the happiness business, I mean, I wrote a book 25 years ago about happiness and and and I got a got the flavor for it. When I came back to academia and I took a professorship at Harvard, I decided I was going to do that.

But I had to look at the whole field and say, "What's wrong with the field?" You know, why is it that happiness experts are not having more impact on how people live their lives? Everybody wants to be happy and and and we don't know how to do it. Now, now part of the reason is because it's a misbegotten idea that you can be actually cosmically happy. I mean, we're going to have negative emotions, which is protect which is a protective phenomenon. If you didn't have fear, anger, disgust, and sadness, you'd be a tiger's lunch in, you know, [snorts] 15 minutes.

So you need these things and you're going to have negative experiences because you're walking through the world. But but we want to be happier than we currently are and we don't know how. Now most of the the research when I came back to the field in 2019 talked about happiness as as you feel happy and you have objective proof that you're happy. That's happiness. Well, it's completely circular and unhelpful. So I went back to the way that you would define it by looking at the the nutrition literature.

Who has the best health and what are they eating? And what they find is that you know you'll break up into macronutrients how you know how people are eating and this gets to this whole concept of of protein, carbohydrates and fat in proper balance and abundance so that you'll have a healthy body and you'll eat in a healthy way. You know you as a physician you had to give all kinds of people advice over the years that you're getting too much carbohydrate and not enough protein for example.

So I knew that there was a model underneath that and I went to the literature to find out okay what are the phenomena that you find that are most correlated with people who have the most happiness. Number one they enjoy their lives and enjoyment is not the same thing as pleasure. Pleasure is a largely limbic phenomenon you know activating the vententral tegmental area in the vententral stratum of the brain where you say and it's a very blunt thing. I mean, you can get the same sort of pleasure, the same sense of a bulliance if you if your girlfriend says I love you or if you have a big bump of cocaine.

I mean, that's we have thrifty brains, right? And so pleasure is not the the the secret to happiness is not pleasure. Pleasure doesn't lead you to happiness. Pleasure and abundance leads you to rehab. Enjoyment is pleasure plus people plus memory. It's a largely executive experience of pleasure, which means that if you're if you're if you love something, it really feels good and it could be addictive. If you're doing it alone, you're probably doing it wrong. Yeah. That's how it's sort of dangerous. That's how I've talked about it with my kids and my students over the years.

So enjoyment is number one. You got to enjoy your life. And a lot of what I talk about is enjoyment. I work a lot with super strivvers and hardworking people, and that's where they're weak. A lot of CEOs and entrepreneurs, they don't enjoy their lives very much. They just don't, you know, because they they don't do, for example, I mean, they I I I look at at your show, which is super popular, really, really, really successful. They would not be able to stop the show for a couple of months every year.

They wouldn't be able to do it. The reason that you can is because you're assiduous about that macronutrient of your happiness, which is to enjoy your life. Yeah, you want to do that. So, that's part one. And I have to give people lessons on how to enjoy their lives. Number scientifically. Number two is satisfaction. satisfaction. The second macronutrient is the joy of an accomplishment with struggle. It's a funny thing about homo sapiens that we want to accomplish things but we must suffer or we don't find sweetness in them.

Suffering and accomplishment are both really important for us to get satisfaction in life. And this is a big mistake that a lot of people make. They want accomplishment without without suffering and then they don't get satisfaction and they don't know why. They're not getting full flavor from their lives. And so you need to inject more suffering into people's lives. It's like eating a cake with no salt in it. It's like something's wrong here. This doesn't have a complex flavor. This doesn't even taste good, right? Which is like American snacks, right?

You probably when you So So and and and it's funny because you know that's why you taught your kids good things come to people who wait. Good things come to those who wait because what you're saying is that you're going to enjoy your dinner if you're hungry. Yeah. At dinner time. that you're going to get a sweeter reward if you work hard for something. And it's not just because the work working hard will give you a better accomplishment. It's because you'll actually deprive yourself and that in and of itself will lead to higher satisfaction which is a funny thing.

And then of course all of it downstream leads to the mystery of why you can't keep any satisfaction and the the hydonic treadmill where you try and try and try as MC Jagger saying but you can't get no actually you can't keep no satisfaction. That's what he should have saying. I can't keep no satisfaction. And the reason for that is you can't keep positive emotions around. That's not what positive emotions are for, is to give you a permanently nice life. They're signals from the lyic system to you about what's going on in your environment as to whether you should approach or avoid things.

I I love the the nutrition analogy with micronut macronutrients because as you were just describing satisfaction and for some reason protein popped into my head and I thought you can't you can't keep protein, right? [snorts] You can take it in and and utilize it and turn it into muscle, but you can't really, you know, you have to keep eating it because you can't you can't you can't actually produce it indogenously. Yeah. Like satisfaction, right? You can't keep it. That's right. You can't keep no satisfaction, but you try and you try.

And then the weird part is the reason we're so successful as a species is because we don't understand this. Mother nature wants us in the hunt. And so she says, "Oh, you know, when you get that thing, then you get the Ferrari." When you get the Ferrari, then you're going to be happy forever. And you get the Ferrari and you know, 2 months later, you're like, "Yeah, I should have gotten the yellow one." And it's because you can't keep no satisfaction. And and if you could, you'd stop hunting and and you'd fail.

So it's the mistake per se that that homo sapiens make that actually keeps us in a successful frame of mind, which is interesting. And and this actually leads to a whole area of work that I've done on the the choices that we have between animal impulse and moral aspiration. And so one of the things that that you and I as people from relatively traditional religious backgrounds, we believe is that if you're not at war with your animal impulses, you'll never achieve your moral aspirations. And that's not to be fully alive.

You know, the whole idea that you should No, no. If it feels good, do it, said every hippie ever. And that's exactly how you would wind up divorced and friendless and fired. Yeah. And you need to be at war with basic moral uh uh uh animal impulses and live in the space of your moral aspirations, which your prefrontal cortex will allow you to do. That great big meaty executive center of your brain is to make choices that don't feel good necessarily, but give you the most satisfying possible life.

That's a beautiful idea to think about this sort of clash between animal instincts and moral aspirations, right? You get two spaces. Yeah. It's a beautiful thing for us to think about because yeah, if you just follow your animal instincts, you might get uh pleasure, not enjoyment. You might get short hits of pleasure, but at what cost? And and a a vast cost, which is another lesson that we're trying to teach our kids all the time. is live up don't don't live up to my my moral aspirations live up to your moral aspirations and what you find is your kid so your oldest is 16 and he's coming into his own I mean the first time I I I just met him a few minutes ago and he starts talking about doing well in school that's moral aspiration right that's what you want from your kid and that's it's unbelievably satisfying why because you see him doing something hard because it's hard and that's one of the great secrets to the satisfaction that he's going to get and that's actually it's a huge um signal that he's going to be successful and happier in life as a result of it.

Does it have to be hard? So this idea that satisfaction has to have struggle. Yeah. When I hear the word struggle well I think it can be interpreted in many ways, right? So it could be interpreted as this is not something I I necessarily want to do. This something I'm having to force myself to do against my interests. Like for example, let's say you want to be a really good tennis player. And in order to do that, you're going to have to train your fitness. You're going to have to go to coaching.

You're going to have to work on your weak stroke, right? But you could enjoy that. You may not perceive it as struggle, but when you actually reach the goal or as you get better at being a tennis player, you're going to have this kind of deep satisfaction, aren't you? So, you know, help me understand exactly what we mean by that. So we naturally don't want to sacrifice and struggle. We don't want to pass up on the cookie. We don't want that necessarily. But we learn that something good comes to us when we don't have that.

And that gives us satisfaction inherently. What you do find is that those who are are willing to stand up to their own animal desires and willing to actually put to to to to postpone their gratifications that they actually do better in life. And and one of the reasons that they do that, you find as you go as you as you look at people who are good at deferring their gratifications, they like deferring their gratifications. They enjoy that. There is a there's a a there is a a sense of satisfaction that comes inherently from dominating yourself.

And you know, think about it. I mean, you go to the gym every day like me. I mean, we're we try to be fit and have healthy bodies and the whole thing. And you don't go to the gym and say, you know, this is going to feel so good. It's leg day. No, it's going to feel bad. it's going to feel that's the point and then when you come out of the gym you're like yeah I mean that's a really really good thing is what I g when you were going through medical school and you were having you know sleeping 3 hours a night getting ready for exams the whole point was that that per se showed you something about who you are as a person well well that's what it does it that's the key thing it gives you self-belief right yeah you know as you you just met my son he's just finished his GCSE examinations which are the exams you do in the UK paid around the age of 15 16 right in August when the results come out time will tell how we actually did in but but I think even more importantly than that it's about hey I had to you know had to not do some of the other things I wanted to do whilst I revise for these exams and you can't really give that to someone else can you that is something that you can only get for yourself that self-belief yeah you're witness to your own sense of who you are as a person not by doing easy things but by doing hard things.

Yeah. You can't give let's say he has an idea of what grades he wanted and let's say in a you know an imaginary world you could get those grades. Someone could just go yeah you know what I'm going to give you those grades. Actually you could still get the same grades but if you haven't put in the work yourself it's going to have a completely different impact on on you and and how you think about yourself. Yeah. So there's a you know do you know have you ever had Marty Sullivan on the show?

No. But I'd love to. I love his research. It's fantastic. my men, one of my great mentors. Oh wow. Marty Seligman, he c in the 60s he started to do work on learned helplessness and learned helplessness is this idea that when you can't control the outcome of your actions, then you just kind of give up. You get sort of depressed. The opposite is earned success. Earned success is the belief that I did that because I did something hard. I earned my success. And that is the essence of dignity.

That is the essence of understanding who you are as a person. That's one of the reasons that, you know, my students, they could very easily cheat on my exams and get an A in the class, they get a really good mark in the class, but that would give them no satisfaction. On the contrary, if they stay up all night studying for one of my exams and get a the highest mark in the class, they're they're they're they're overjoyed because they got that deep satisfaction. And it wasn't just because of the accomplishment.

It was also what they had to give up for the accomplishment. Humans are funny in this way. My dog doesn't want to struggle for his rewards. I mean, he would eat lying down if he could. He's a lazy lazy boy, right? But the truth is and and part of the reason for that is that he doesn't have a complex prefrontal cortex in this way that says moral aspiration, not just moral aspiration. That's what's going to going to give you this sense of the divine. And so this gets into the metaphysics more than just the physical aspect of this, doesn't it?

Yeah. Big style. I mean when I when I hear the argument that you know you could cheat and get the grades but you wouldn't build up the macronutrient of satisfaction right you wouldn't [snorts] build up the self-belief I also think about in in my happiness model alignment right which is essentially you know when your external actions match up with your inner values and I think even if you cheat to get those grades or you lie at work to get a promotion, right? Yeah, you got the promotion, but you sort of overplayed what you did and underplayed what your colleague did to get that promotion.

You're not acting in alignment with who you are. So, in those quiet moments, you can't hide from yourself. Like, when you've not behaved in accordance with you are, I think that erodess away at you internally. So, I think it's satisfaction and I think there's also an alignment issue there for people for sure. I mean I say it largely is saying the same thing. I think it winds up asmmptoically becoming the same basic concept and and [clears throat] the metaphysics of it are really really important because who cares about alignment?

Well, you do because you want that sense of rightness. You want that sense of goodness. Why would you be imbued with a sense of goodness? Now there are people out there these so-called dark triad personalities very high narcissism, mchavelianism, psychopathic traits of low empathy, low remorse. That's according to Scott Barry Kaufman like 7% of the population but not the rest of us. We don't want that. And and and and you would say that's alignment perhaps with the godhead, you know, perhaps or or or or maybe that's alignment with some sort of cosmic consciousness which is exists outside of us.

But there's this idea that there's an there's an ideal me and I want to be that alignment with the ideal me is the only thing that's going to give me the satisfaction that I that I deeply deeply desire. And when I find people who are low in satisfaction, I have to actually work with them on doing just that. And a lot of young people today, you know, I mean, people, my my friends will people my age, I'm in my early 60s now, and people say, "Yeah, my son, he's 28.

You know, he lives in my basement. He's smoking weed, you know, he doesn't have any ambition." And and I he's what does he need? And what he needs is something hard. That's what he needs. He needs something hard to do where he can actually start to understand. Well, he is he's witnessed to the fact that he's not a loser. He's witnessed to the fact that he's actually somebody who can accomplish something that's worthwhile. It's so interesting that all these kind of different lenses through which we can look at happiness because of course I think happiness is something that we all want.

Yeah. Right. I know it's maybe a bit more fashionable these days to say it's not about happiness, it's about meaning. When it's interesting because your last two books, one was on happiness, one is on meaning. I actually very much like your model which is meaning is one of the macronutrients of happiness. Right. Right. But it's not happiness in and of itself. No, no, no, no. Any more than protein is food. Yeah. You know that carbohydrates are food. You need a balanced diet that has the macronutrients in it.

Yeah. You need all three. How would you sort of give us the top level snapshot of what you mean when you say meaning? Meaning is a combination of coherence, why things happen the way they do, purpose, why I'm doing what I'm doing, and significance, why my life matters. It's the answer to the three big why questions of life. Now, meaning is all about why. You know, we spend all day long on what and how to. I mean, that's that's, you know, the age of technology is being bombarded with how to and what information we didn't even ask for, which has all kinds of it's breaking our brains, quite frankly.

It's it's hugely dilitterious and the neuroscience on this is just completely adding up to the fact that we're doing a lot of things wrong. This we know for sure. But the but the the the the meaning per se is these why questions that we've largely neglected more and more and more that we've neglected and and we we crave a sense of coherence. Why are things happening the way that they are in our lives? Now maybe you answer that with in a religious context because of the mind of God.

Maybe as you and I are have a science background. It's because it's the laws of nature or the laws of physics. Maybe if you don't believe in science or religion that you rely on conspiracy theories. You do your own research on the internet. That's a cry for coherence when people are doing that. Which means that my life doesn't feel like it has meaning and I'm unhappy as a result of that. But but it's important that we actually have some organizing theory of why things happen the way that they do.

After that, we have to figure out why we're doing what we're doing. I mean, like you and I are having a conversation right now. Why? Why? Why? I mean, it's like, and people come to really interesting hinge points in their lives where they're like, I couldn't answer that question anymore. I was like, I was doing my job, you know, I was a lawyer, went through law school, working really hard, and I got to the point where I was 40 years old, and I was like, I don't know why I'm doing this anymore.

They'll say, I don't know why I'm married to this woman anymore. These are purpose problems. And so when you see somebody who's like they can't answer that why question that that that lack of purpose is a lack of meaning which leads to a lack of happiness and that's a big crisis. We are made for directionality and goals and progress. We're not made to arrive but we're made to make progress toward goals. It's a really interesting thing on this on this that that you've seen all those I mean you've probably recommended to 10,000 people that they lose weight, right?

I mean, you and I live in the two fattest countries in the world. Yeah. Right. And and so one of the interesting things is it's actually really really easy to lose weight, but almost impossible to keep it off. And this is a happiness principle that's actually behind this. So it's you're willing to forego eating the things that you like because you get the reward every day at the scale, but when you hit your goal weight, your reward is never getting to eat what you like ever again for the rest of your life.

So congratulations. And that's why 80 to 95% of diets fail, which is to say you've gained back all the weight within one year because we're not we're not made to arrive. We're made to make progress. Yeah. And that's this whole idea of the progress principle of of of of purpose in the meaning of life. Yeah. I think about this a lot like you, Arthur. And in my own life, I've really been questioning the merit of goals over the last few months. I think different strategies are useful at different times in your life.

Right? So there was a time in my life where goals I think were very helpful for me. I'm not convinced they are anymore unless I use goals simply as a direction, right? Because let's say for example your goal is in fact this is a great example because it actually was an example I witnessed at um there's something in the UK well around the world called park run. I'm not sure if you've familiar park run. Oh, it's it's a huge global movement and it's massive in the UK, but in in various towns and villages every Saturday morning, hundreds of people congregate together and they do a 5K.

It doesn't have to be a run. It could be a walk. But when I had the CEO of Partrun on many, many years ago, he said, "This is basically all about community. It's community disguised as a running event essentially, right? It's not actually about the running. It's about being there with other people, doing something together. And you see this a lot with athletes and and someone I know at Park Run literally had a goal to run a 23 minute 5k. Nothing wrong with that, right? But a year before that, they weren't even running 30 minutes, okay?

They weren't particularly fit or well, and then they trained really hard and they were getting faster and they were getting leaner and they were feeling good in their life. You know, it was he was getting satisfaction cuz he was training. He was doing something hard. He was getting faster and stronger. And then he couldn't break 23 minutes. And he was so pissed off. Yeah. He was so unhappy. It's like, Jesus, I just can't do it. I'm like, hey mate, listen. Right. If you compare it to where you were, yeah, you are flying, right?

You are one of the fastest runners here. You are faster than you were. You've got fitter. You're happier. You're more content. And so I think that sometimes is is a way I think about goals. I think the problem with a goal is or the way I see it is the problem if I have a goal is what happens when I reach the goal. Right? Because then the day after suddenly that goal is redundant. Hence the Olympic athletes who struggle to get out of bed the following morning.

It's very common to have So what is your take on goals? I'm not saying they're not useful. For me, I think at this point in my life, goals are simply a direction. Well, you you just described the arrival fallacy, which is a classic thing in behavioral science. The arrival fallacy is when since I get so much satisfaction from from from from progress, therefore, when I actually get to the fruit of my progress, when I get to the goal, then it's going to be unbelievable forever. And that's not the way that your lyic system works.

The lyic system of your brain produces emotions which are reactions to current circumstances. All the the the the joy that you actually get from from finishing that race, it's going to wear off really quickly because you got to be ready for the next set of circumstances. Your your lyic system keeps you alert and and gives you appropriate emotions so that you can react correctly. It's not there to give you a nice day forever. And and that's really disappointing to a lot of people. So the solution to that is to understand what the Buddhists have always called intention without attachment.

That's the that's the balance. Intentionality is going in a particular direction with goals but without a strangle hold on actually where you're going to arrive so you don't suffer from the arrival fallacy. Now for a lot of people, a lot of young people that's really hard. But now you are at the point in your life where you actually just say, "Oh, that sounds right." Right? Because by the time you get to about 40, 45, 50, then you realize that your greatest disappointments in life didn't come because you didn't meet your goals, but because you did.

Because you met your goals and you're like, that's so disappointing, right? And so therefore, you have to stop strangling the goal, per se. And so I'm going in this particular direction cuz it's a good thing to do and it's something is going to happen. But that's not the be all and end all of my life. A million dollars is not the be all and end all. The the yellow Ferrari. No. So therefore, Arthur, you are a professor at Harvard. You teach happiness to I'm moving to Vanderbilt, by the way.

Okay, so you're moving, but you're teaching probably 18, 19, 20, 21 year olds about happiness and and meaning and why these things are so important. Is it possible to really get these lessons at that age or do you almost have to pursue your animal instincts? Do you have to pursue what society has told you is going to make you happy to realize it's a fallacy or can you learn it before that? That's a good question. And and actually my students at Harvard are 28 on average.

They're graduate students. They're MBA students. So they've gone through a little they've gone through the wars a little bit, but they've got a lot coming and so they're they're quite baffled about things that 20-year-olds aren't yet. I'll be teaching at Vanderbilt younger people. I'll be teaching undergraduates of a class of about a thousand undergraduates that I'll be teaching in in this and I'm interested to see exactly what the experience level is in life. The truth is I wind up telling them a lot about their futures.

It's a little bit of the crystal ball. These are things that you actually can't avoid. And a lot of it's a really happy story. So for example, one of the things I like to talk an awful lot about are that you know the big five personality model. You're familiar with that, right? Openness to experience, conscientiousness, extroversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism are the three of the five aspects of personality. In almost all cases, people's personalities get better and they get happier, especially after about the age of 50.

It's a really interesting phenomenon. And so, I talk to my students about the fact that you're going to learn the hard way. There's going to be a lot of problems. You know, you're going to get have your heart broken again and again and again and again, but by the time you're my age, you're going to be happier and your personality is going to be better. Yeah. And so I'm telling them about things that they're going to experience. And then I talk to them a lot about avoidable errors that they could actually make because it's true if you have more information about anything.

For example, you could be a better golfer by learning about golf and then practicing and changing your habits in golf. And most importantly, the last phase which is most important about learning any skill whether it's golf or happiness is you got to you have to share it with other people. Yeah. You got to teach it. I have been using Boncharge wellness products for over 5 years. From blue light glasses to red light therapy, Boncharge make it really easy to get healthy while staying at home. Now, one of my current favorites is their demi red light therapy device.

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They are giving my audience 20% off all of their products. Just go to bondcharge.com/livemore and use the coupon code live to save 20%. Or click on the link in the description box below or scan the QR code on screen. One of the things we were discussing when you came to the house this morning is something I learned about you yesterday, which is that you I think have moved 20 times, right, with your wife. Yeah, you've moved a lot. I'm not in the witness protection program, but okay, safe house.

I'm glad we clarified that aliases. But what's fascinating to me is that that's a complete contrast to to me, right? And so apart from when I was at university at Edinburgh, I have lived in the northwest of England. You know, I live in the town where I grew up. I currently live 5 minutes away from the house in which I was brought up and where my mom still lives. But I actually think more and more that me having this almost container of living in this town I actually think has been really really good for me because in a world now of infinite choice where you can always say well would it be better to live there you know what if I moved oh wouldn't it be nice to live somewhere sunny all legitimate questions and legitimate things I've asked myself in the past now I'm thinking more and more hm if I think about your happiness model and I think about meaning for me and maybe this was because my dad was sick maybe it's partially to do with my Indian culture and my upbringing I have always felt that looking after dad and now mom is really really important to me and so if I personally if I wasn't able to do this I don't think I'd be living in alignment with who I am um I think I could have more work opportunities and and and do all kinds of amazing things but I think that would come at a massive internal cost.

So, so I guess the point I'm trying to make Arthur is I feel for me at least you could call that a limitation. Oh, elderly parents sick. Yeah, you could frame it that way. I can also frame it a different way and go that has really helped ground me in terms of what's important for me and I've had to make my work life work around that in inverted commas limitation. Does that make sense? No, absolutely. And you know the truth is that people actually find who they are as people on the basis of of things that are difficult and the things that look like setbacks and and and and that's exactly what we were talking about with respect to satisfaction.

Satisfaction is accomplishment with struggle. Yeah. Yeah. You know, and this these are the kinds of struggles that ordinary lives have. And if you try to avoid those struggles, well, you're not going to get much satisfaction. Yeah. But the funny thing is in my 20ies, I think although I probably would never have admitted it to myself, but I probably at times did get frustrated. Not that I had to look after dad cuz I chose to do that. But I would probably see my friends go off and, you know, go to Bali for six weeks and go and do this and go and do that.

And again, you know, we all have got a different life journey, right? And that's where I think faith and spirituality comes in, right? It's like I think this is my path. Yeah. Someone might hear that and go, where's the proof? I'm like, I don't need proof because this is a belief system that I've chosen to adopt. I mean, hypothesis, you know, you can't get any data on that. You know, that's that's actually what faith is all about is the idea of living in alignment with an idea that you have with the complete absence of outside data.

That's that's how physical culture and metaphysical culture actually can combine in a life, right? I mean, you're look, you're a scientist, you have a biological background, you're looking at data, data, data, data all day long, but you actually have to be transcendent to that to have a complete life as well to live up to values that you don't have data. I mean, look, I could give you some data that say that people who take better care of their parents are happier than people who don't. But that's not the point.

That's not what we're talking about at all, really is what it comes down to. And was it hard? Yes. And that was kind of the point. You showed you you have evidence. You actually created proof to yourself that you're the kind of person who does that and you'll carry that with you for the rest of your life. And by the way, you also showed that to your kids. That's really important because, you know, you think about it, 10 years from now, you and your wife are going to have your kids going to probably be off the payroll.

Yeah. 10 years from now, they're going to be in their 20s. And you know, I I never thought about that at all. But, you know, now my kids are 28, 26, and 23, and they're all working. They're all doing their whole thing. I have four grandsons. I mean, they're all they have they have, you know, their whole their lives, but they want to be around us. And the reason that they want to be around us and live near us is so that we can help. And and one of my kids said this, and this will probably resonate with you.

He said, "You know, you're kind of my safety net, but I'm sort of yours, too. I love that. That's beautiful. Uh-huh. And that was certainly true with you and your dad. Yeah. You were each other's safety net. And it's like we're we're we're it's divine. We're cosmically bound up in these in these relationships. And you know, perhaps God actually put us on the planet to take care of each other in this particular way. Well, let's go back to my very opening question to you, Arthur, which is about what taught you the most about happiness, science, religion, or your wife.

Perhaps you could give us one thing each of those things taught you about happiness. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, the the the the relationship between religion and my marriage, for example, that I I didn't understand that until relatively recently. Most religions, Hindus believe this very very strongly, but also Christians and Jews and Muslims that uh a marriage, a good marriage, a serious marriage is an antenna to God. And one of the reasons that most people have a vocation to marriage is because you can't understand God's love for you but for the earthly model of divine love that you actually have in your marriage.

And so it's kind of like the nuclear submarine that has two keys to to launch a missile that that you you can't really reach God but with your spouse because that's and that's a very and most people get married for for a particular reason but and and it's very easy to to to to reduce that to the you know well because you need a sperm and an egg and and you can and the biological model of it but there is something more there's something more transcendent there is something more metaphysical about that particular model.

And so the result of it is that love, divine love and and and earthly love, these are the the vernacular of actual happiness. They are it's really really important that those are the fundamentals. If I could only have if I could get had to get rid of all the science, I would if I had to choose two of the three, marriage, God, science, I would get rid of science. I absolutely would. What that taught me, what the science actually taught me was why those things are so critically important and how to avoid the mistakes that people typically make and how to actually get better habits.

So, it's the kind of thing where you you wouldn't want to get rid of a healthy diet. You wouldn't want to get rid of fitness, but you'd also want to have some information about how these things actually work together. And that's the sort of the three legs of the stool. It's this it's the spiritual it's the it's the emotional and it's the intellectual parts of you know what we're trying to do and and in in our lives and that it's their their reinforcing mechanisms to be sure.

What gave me the most information? Well, I have to say that my my the love in my life was not on point which is why I actually needed a better intellectual framework. And it's been enormously helpful to me and and productive for me to make sure that it was clear that I was doing things right in my life. What's really interesting is right at the start of this conversation when you first brought up your marriage, you said I have a high conflict marriage for sure. And I mean it's not like we're throwing dishes.

No, but it's an interesting thing because there is again in terms of these societal belief systems. I think some people are of the belief that if I have a good relationship that there won't be much conflict. Right. Right. And that's incorrect. It is incorrect. That's absolutely incorrect. And that's it's that's empirically incorrect. And and so I I actually just my lab just fielded a survey to to look at the the the quality of relationships on two dimensions, conflict and honesty. Why? Because what you find is that most people they put more emphasis on conflict than they do on honesty for the quality of the relationship.

But high conflict is actually not a problem if it's accompanied by high honesty is what you find. And so so what you really want is low conflict and high honesty. But that's like shanger law. There's you don't find it that often, right? The the what some people will do to avoid high conflict is that they'll have low conflict and low honesty. And that's just cancer for a relationship. Now the worst possible marriage is one that's high conflict and low honesty. And that's just, you know, that's just hell.

That's Washington DC. That's uh that's that's [snorts] not where you want to be. But it's very interesting because I looked at that and what you find is that the most normal marriages that function and last are the ones that have I mean depending on the personalities pretty high conflict but really really high honesty. Yeah. It's kind of interesting as you say that I reflect naturally on my own marriage and the two things that came up for me as you were talking there is I mean my wife did absolutely incredible.

Okay. And one of the things which I think I found hard initially was how honest she was. Right. She found it really easy and still does to be completely honest and direct. And was that a source of conflict at the beginning of your marriage? She was like drawn. Well, I heard you say on another podcast this morning that one of the best ways to meet your life partner is on a blind date set up by one of your friends. Yeah. Well, that's how I met Vid.

Okay. Beautiful. [snorts] And it was in 2007. I used to be a massive football fan or what you would call soccer. Mhm. Um and I would follow Liverpool Football Club around Europe. So, there was a huge Champions League final in 2005, like an iconic one. I I flew to Istanbul with my buddy to watch it [gasps] and then in 2007 we were in the final again and I was about to fly to Athens for the final with my buddy and I got a call from an old friend.

I won't get into every detail of the call but in essence it was like wrong are you still single? I said well you know kind of uh why and she goes well there's someone coming up to Manchester this weekend who is single. She's a gorgeous barrista and I think you guys will get on. do you fancy meeting her? I was like, listen, I'm literally about to fly to Athens for this football game. In principle, yes, kind of cool. You want to get back? In essence, we met that weekend.

3 months later, I proposed. This was nice. Pure whirlwinds. How old were you? I was probably 29. She was 27. Mhm. And uh, you know, you were ready. I was ready at the time. She lived in London. She was working as a criminal barristister. I lived in the Northwest where I still live of England and literally from blind date number one, it was both of ours first blind date. And literally from that moment, we didn't know how it would work. You live there, I live here.

A few days later, I I was like, "Hey, I'm actually going to be in London. I've got Dave Matthews tickets with my mates, but someone's pulled out. We got a spare ticket. Do you want to join us?" She came. Before you know it, 3 months later, whirlwind in love, married after 8 months. Okay. So, mates of mine who were already engaged. Well, you you not even met her. You got engaged. You're married before we've even got a marriage. So, less than a year from meeting her to marriage.

Less than a year. Was it 8 months? And so, when you asked me, were these qualities causing conflicts at the start? Yeah. Absolutely. I would say the first year of our marriage was actually quite hard. Yeah. Because once the kind of whirlwinders of the first eight months had kind of worn off and reality kicked in, I I certainly found that kind of direct honesty difficult cuz I was a real people pleaser at that time. I would say the right things, right? But actually I realized that's one of the best things in our marriage is and I've learned through her that actually it's really important to say how you feel.

Don't just keep the peace if you're not happy with it. You can say it nicely, but you got to say it. It's very important. Now, for for a lot of people, they grow up in an environment where honesty is is not common. You know, there's this I mean, there's there's certain cultures in the United States, for example, regionally, where people just don't say what's on their mind. So, there's a Have you ever been in Minnesota? Have you ever been to Minnesota? Once a long long time ago, there's a there's an old joke that there was a man in Minnesota who loved his wife so much that he almost told her So you get the idea that for some people that's actually really really hard and there other culture is not and I married a girl from Barcelona so they say what they think and I come from Seattle Washington which is kind of a Minnesotaike culture which you know I didn't hear my parents you know talking to each I never heard my parents have an argument not once I never heard it I mean I had a good marriage and I'm sure that they had arguments but the whole point was that that was quite foreign to me but in my marriage I actually had I married a Spaniard.

she's going to express herself. There was no way around that. And so it was really tricky from the very beginning. How do we I mean it's funny because you know this is the topic that's actually most important to my students at 28 because they find it most baffling is the startup that is your pair bond. That's the ultimate startup of life is falling in love. That's the ultimate it's it's the most entrepreneurial thing that you're going to do because what you're doing is you're co-creating a startup enterprise.

I mean, you can wait until you're in your 30s and it's more like a merger or there are lots of cases where it's more like a hostile takeover and acquisition, but that's not that's not the best model for marriage. You can tell I teach at a business school and and and what you find is that that that startup per se, when you think about it, it has all the rocky parts of it where you have different styles of work and different styles of communication, etc., etc., but at the end of the day, what really really holds it together, what I'm talking to my students about is not the passion.

It's the companionate love of living with your best friend for the rest of your life. It's satisfaction if you put it into your happiness model, right? This Well, it's actually all of it. It is all of it. It's really enjoyable. It's unbelievably satisfying, which is hard. Like, but but that's the the point I'm getting at with satisfaction is that you know, you have to compromise. Like, you're two individuals. You're not going to see everything eye to eye, but can you still navigate that and figure out a way to walk side by side throughout your life?

And by the way, one of the things that brings the most satisfaction is that you're jointly undertaking a hard project together. So it's remember accomplishment with struggle in a marriage. That's kids. I mean, that's a that's a joint project and it's a bunch of work and it's unbelievably satisfying as a result. But here's the problem. One of the reasons that that couples don't stay together when the kids move out is because they've lost their source of satisfaction. They've lost the joint accomplishment with struggle. So, one of the things I work with, my wife and I, we do we do retreats for married couples on how to stay in love.

People in their 50s and 60s, how to stay in love. And one of the big things we talk to them about is you need a new project. You need a new hard project together. Our project is teaching people about love and happiness together. We're going on the road. We just got back from New Mexico on Sunday actually where we we let a coup's retreat but that's the thing that you'll find in in 10 years when the kids are out of the house that you need a new thing to of course you do have I mean you this podcast is a joint it is but we've been doing it for a while right and and in terms of you know I have taken up paddle over the last uh 12 months or so it's a bit like pickle ball right uh but it's I guess it's doing a similar thing here that pickle ball is doing in America it's a mixture between tennis and squash.

You can think of it like that. It's the fastest growing sport in the world. It's literally blowing up. And I think there's a multiple reasons for that. One of the reasons I think for that, and I think this relates to meaning, and a lot of the stuff you write about in in the new book, is because it's played in community. You don't play singles paddle. You play doubles. And often you don't know who you're playing with or against. So, you're meeting new people. You're not on your phone.

You're present for 60 90 minutes. And I think in this world where people are glued to their devices and they're feeling more lonely and isolated, I believe that one of the reasons that a sport like paddle is blowing up is because community sits at the heart of it. Right now, you know, I am quite an experienced racket player from tennis and squash. So, I play to a reasonably high level. And then I was looking for a game last weekend and it was some mixed game. So I text Vid I said hey Paige would you fancy playing paddle with me like and she goes what?

Me and you against someone else. I said yeah yeah let's do it. And she hesitated. She goes are you okay? I'm like yeah I'm fine but do you want to play and it'll be a laugh. Anyway we went and played and it was a laugh because we haven't done stuff like that. Was that fun? Oh my god it was brilliant. And you want to do it again now? Yeah I think that you know we're still married. I think it worked pretty well. Some couples can't do that.

Yeah. I mean, look, maybe if you were chance of it, you might have a different perspective, but I was I think I was pretty disciplined with my my goals. It was I think it was really good fun. We left the kids at home. We rarely do stuff like that, right? We went off and played. It was great. And I thought, yeah, maybe this is something we'll do more and more. Now, it might be that we're better off choosing something that none of us have ever done before to learn together.

I think that might be better. So that's interesting because there's there there there is some literature on this, but it sort of follows common sense. One of the things that couples who fall deeper and deeper and deeper in love after the kids move out have in common is they go deep into spirituality together. They explore religion. So a lot of couples they're they're kind of religious, you know, culturally religious and they raise their kids and they're really distracted. The kids move out and they get super religious.

That's this whole concept this of the ashramas which is an Indian notion of the four quarters of an ideal life. Yeah. The first quarter is brahmacharia which is the student phase. The second is grihasta the householder phase. That's you and your wife raising your kids right now. You go into vonrasta at around age 50. That's the idea retiring into the forest typically with your spouse. And what are you going to do there? You're going to learn and learn and learn and learn such that syasa when you're old together you can sit in the luminescent light of the true god.

That's the whole idea from the ancient you know vdic scriptures as a matter of fact. And and so what you're finding now is that if you want to do that, if you have this call to actually go deeper, but to go deeper together with the person, you know, that has that vocationally with whom you have that reflection of the divine love, you're right on schedule specifically to what me and Vid could do. Mhm. As we move into this, from your experience as someone who's been married for longer than me, but also your expertise and wisdom, is there a difference between me and her doing something fresh together as opposed to something like paddle where ultimately I would probably be invers.

One thing I had to try and do on Saturday, I think I did it pretty well, was try not to coach her during the game. Yeah, I did a couple of times, but try not to. Right. Your intuition is right on that. Yeah. So my my point is do you what how would you think about this in terms of So it sort of depends on how much enjoyment and satisfaction you actually get from a particular thing. So you ever read a book by Yseph Peeper, the German philosopher called leisure, the basis of culture?

No, but I ordered it yesterday because I've heard you talk about it and it's going to be one of my summer reads. Oh, it's great. And this really and this is his most his magnum opus really. I mean, he also wrote the the four cardinal virtues which is a really really good book about you know fortitude and prudence etc. But but this whole idea of leisure is the basis of culture is the concept that there's something that you you need to do outside of your work but that is hugely generative.

It's not just chilling on a beach. It's what you do that creates tons of value that they don't pay you for. And it comes in three categories. There's deepening relationships, there's deepening spirituality or religion, and there's learning something new. Now, the best possible thing is leisure together, generative leisure together, which is will cement your marriage in those three areas. Deepening your marriage, getting closer to God, and learning something new together. So, that's the thing. And so, so what are you studying together? What skill are you actually trying to get?

What are you trying to do to grow your business, for example? Those are possibilities. Are you trying to learn how to do triathlon? We know I know a couple that they, you know, after their kid moved out, they started training for a triathlon together. It might sound trivial to somebody else, but the whole point is that it has to be something really generative where you see yourselves getting better together as a unit and that will that will bond you in these. Interestingly, it it probably shouldn't be about work.

Yeah. I I sort of reread your leisure section um in in your latest book, The Meaning of Your Life. And the the bit I I underlined which I which I just absolutely love was this bit here, which is leisure is a serious business in life that if done right can save you from workaholism and serve as a calling itself. I thought it was absolutely beautiful and I you know if you really reflect on society we have become a leisure deficient society. Totally. Totally. Absolutely. And you know the people who are most rewarded, the people that we admire the most are hopelessly success addicted and workaholic.

But that is the irony that that the a lot of the people we look up to or we we see prominently online are leisure deficient because they're workaholically unhappy. They're horribly horribly and this goes back to what we said before. I mean this is my last podcast recording before my summer break. Like the point is is it's gonna be leisure, right? It's going to be like I intentionally shut the show down for sit sweets, right? Even though all the advice would be you can't do that, right?

I'm like I am not playing that game cuz that game there's only one end result of that game. It's burnout. It's overwork. It's the decimation of relationships. My dad never did this. He couldn't do [clears throat] this. Right? So in some way I feel it's honoring my father and honoring the sacrifice that he made for me and my brother. And by the way he could have taken more leisure. No doubt he probably was driven. I mean look he's he's an immigrant. I mean he was probably coming from Kolkata.

Right. Yeah. And and probably it was about poverty back there and and and to be the person who alleviated some of that. Right. Yeah. [clears throat] Exactly. And if we could just briefly just look at dad's life through your model, I think it would be quite interesting. So I would say I used to say that my dad got success and happiness mixed up. Mhm. This is classic by the way. Aquinus talks about this. Aristotle talks about this that we have idols that we chase and we believe.

So I tell my students on the first day you think that money, power, fame that those will give you happiness automatically. No, no, no. You need to go directly for happiness and then you will be successful enough. And that makes them panic because of the word enough, which is ironic. And that gives me the rest of the semester to try to get drill into their brains this whole point. And a lot of people don't get that because they've been trained this idea. If I'm successful enough, then everything will fall into place.

And then they chase, chase, chase, chase for the rest of your life. And maybe I mean there a lot of things that you honor your father for. But one of the things that we can actually honor our parents most with is by reacting to the mistakes that they made. Yeah. So, a lot of people listening to us, their dads were maybe good men but drank too much. Honor your father by not drinking too much. Right? If your if your parents didn't have a good marriage and and and they were good people but they didn't have a good marriage, honor your parents by learning what went wrong and have a good marriage.

That's beautiful, Arthur. It's such a beautiful way to look at things, to reframe things, to move on and make your life better, which is fundamentally what I think all parents want is they want their children's lives to be better than theirs. I've I've reframed how I view my dad's life. He worked ridiculously hard. And and when I say ridiculously hard, for 30 years, he only slept three nights a week. I know that is the main reason why my dad's not alive today. Yeah, I know that.

Okay. If I could ask my dad one more question, I would ask him, "Hey, Dad, was it worth it?" And and the reason I'd ask him that is because it's very easy for me to say or think that he made a mistake. But if my dad's sole goal in life, his you know what gave him meaning right was to look after his family. Mhm. Was to earn enough to look after his mom in India, his brothers, his sisters and to give me and my brother a fantastic education to start life and his patience.

No doubt. And his patience. He did that right now. How much did he how much did he enjoy life? I don't know. I've got memories of dad, you know, even when he was knackered, he would still teach me how to play snooker in a garage. We'd still play snooker. He'd still play table tennis with me and teach me how to do a forehand smash, right? So, I think there were elements of his life. And I also think to the fact that damn, my dad was on diialysis for 15 years.

He lost a son in one of his eyes and he never complained once. I bet you my dad just reflected on his life and what got him to that point. So if I put him through your model, Arthur, I think he had bits of enjoyment, but I think a lot of his day-to-day life was a struggle, right? I think there was satisfaction there. I think there was serious accomplishment. Yeah. And it was hard. Yeah. So I just more as I get older, I you know, and meaning and meaning.

So I think he had these things. So, I'm reading The Meaning of Your Life, your latest book, and I'm like, I think dad had meaning. Well done, Dad. Well done. Now, I don't know if he had happiness, but he had meaning. But I don't know. Well, see, this is the thing. You don't try to get happiness. Exactly. You know, if you try to get happiness, you're going to be in trouble. You do the things that you need such that happiness happens to you. And the things that you need to do are work to enjoy your life, try to get more satisfaction and and and search for the why of your existence.

That's actually that the same thing that you do. You don't say, "I just want to be healthier." No, no, no. Tell me what to do to get healthier such that health will find me. Yeah. It's the same thing with anything in life. I mean, in these big diffuse concepts of the things that we want in life. So your dad looking at it from the outside, he probably could have had more enjoyment, but and it's the same for a lot of men of that generation, by the way.

I mean, my dad, too. I mean, my dad, I mean, he could have enjoyed his life a lot more, but but that was not thought of in those days in the same way that it is. I don't think they thought about is this going to make me happy. Yeah. I think it was more I've just got to do what I've got to do. There was this that the strong sense of duty would sometimes be sort of militate against huh enjoyment and for a lot of guys of that generation they'd feel sort of guilty if they were doing something really really enjoyable when they could be working right now is that the right approach you have to decide but probably you and I I mean I'm a little older than you but I think you know I think I have a more balanced perspective on that and I know that my kids have a more balanced perspective on that than I do but that's perhaps It's a luxury that we have because of the generation that came before us.

Here's the interesting thing about that though, which is really funny because you find that people of very moderate means have higher levels of enjoyment than people who are rich. I'm delighted to announce that AG1, the daily health drink that has been in my own life for over 6 years now, have updated and improved their formulation based upon the latest science and to celebrate by giving my audience a very special offer. Some of the upgrades include more magnesium which supports muscle function and improves the ability of your nervous system to relax and also five strains of bacteria instead of just two to reflect the latest advances in microbiome science.

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So that's that's one of the things and and again this is probably uh one of the great things about living in an advanced capitalist economy is that we can we can make those decisions. I mean if you were living back in in you know 1959 in Kolkata there weren't that many degrees of freedom. But if we live in the UK or the United States, then then we can actually decide whether or not we're going to work really, really hard. And middle class people, people of moderate means, they can afford to go to the park with their kids.

They can afford to be, you know, hanging out with their spouse. They can do these really enjoyable things that that a lot of workaholics and a lot of success addicted people just don't do. I wind up with some of the most successful people in the world that I'm talking to, that I'm working with day in and day out, giving them enjoyment lessons. this is where they're weak. Well, that's the irony, isn't it? That is the irony that in order for many people to be as successful as they think they need to be, they give up.

They sacrifice one of the great insurance. Yeah. And actually, I had a um a friend who used to live in Denmark and of course what our culture values massively also influences our happiness because it influences what we do. He said, "In Denmark, in many offices, the norm is to stop at 4 p.m. If you're still there working at 4:15, your manager is like, "Hey, is everything okay? What's what's wrong?" Because I believe, and again, I'm not Danish, but from what I've heard, they value leisure. It's like, "No, no, 4 p.m.

you're done cuz now it's time to maybe go and hang out with your kids. You know, enjoy leisure. You shouldn't be here at the office." Whereas I contrast that to the country you're born in. It's like what? You're leaving at 4 p.m. Get back in. What's wrong with you? Exactly. Interesting that my grandfather was Danish. Right. And and and what you find is that this is pro this is probably how we sort. So there's a reason that my grandparents, my great-grandparents immigrated from Denmark. The reason was because they were ambitious.

And so what they wanted in their lives was excitement. And this is a really interesting thing in the in the in the research on immigrants. Immigrants don't want contentment. [snorts] Immigrants want excitement. They want an adventure. And and if you're living in a country like Denmark, which has got, you know, the whole yantala and and the whole concept of huga, do you ever heard that word? H y g. It's the it can't even in English. It doesn't really have a translation. It's the the the comfortable conviviiality of friends on a cozy couch or something like that just chilling together, you know?

It's like I don't really want that. I want an exciting life. I want to be up in here with you doing this. This is what I want, man. Because I'm my grandf I'm named after him, Arthur, actually. It's like and and he wanted an exciting life. And so he, you know, he had his own business and and they started a farm and their kids went to college and, you know, it was just this different strokes is what it comes down to. And no doubt that was your dad.

Your dad is like, I want to bite out of life. I'm going to go do this thing. Yeah. The more I think about these things, the more I think about that we can have models, right? different models to help us realize what are the key ingredients of something like happiness. But actually how we apply that model is going to be individual. It's going to depend on who you are, how you were brought up, what is important to you. So, you know, it's now what 12, 13 years since dad died.

And I reflect now and I go, actually, you know what? I actually don't know. You know, maybe my dad made the right choices for him. Did he did your parents have a good marriage? It depends what your definition of good is. I know. In that generation, yeah, my parents had an arranged marriage. Yeah. Right. It and that was totally fine with them. Yeah. No, and by the way, arranged marriages tend to be pretty successful. I think it was successful. They We had a good stable atmosphere at home.

We did fun stuff together. I always knew that they were there for me. They sort of I don't know. Did they like each other? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Actually, they like each other because somebody who was really smart and who loved both of them put them together as probably a good match. And they were pro. It's interestingly arranged marriages tend to be successful because we're better at at at people who know us and love us are better at knowing us and figuring out who's right for us.

They're better at that than we are. Which is why you believe or you have data to support your friends. Putting you on a blind date is a good way to meet your life. And one of the best ways that you can use an app, a dating app by the way, is by introducing human friction into the algorithm. We all we think that we're going to take the algorithms and take human friction out of life. No, the way that the the technology is going to work so it makes our life better and not worse is we're going to be adding more and more and more right hemispheric friction into the left hemispheric algorithms that are our lives.

So, for example, let your friends see the matches that you're getting on the dating app and decide which one you're going to go out with. That's one of the ways that you can actually use it. for example. So the reason I asked about your about your parents about whether or not they had a good marriage is that that this is one of the great gifts that they give us. You know people often ask um what what's is what's the one thing I can do to make sure I have a good son.

So your father been super proud of you. I mean you have a not just a great career but you have an aspiration to be a good man. And that's all that's all a dad wants. Yeah. Is is his son to be a good man. You know the number one predictor of your son being a good man? What do your dad was? Loving his mom. [snorts] You got basically Ryan, you have one job. Love your kid's mom. If you can only do one thing, and this is getting us back to the original question.

What really really is most important for what we're doing? Is this the knowledge, the intellectual part of what we're doing? Is it the spiritual part? Or is it is it the love that people actually see? your your son your son will be a good man if you love his mom. I love that. It's it's weirdly simple because he will see that in terms of modeling. He'll go, "Okay, this is, you know, my father respects this lady. He's treating her with love, with kindness, with respect. He taughts her with affection." Is that purely it?

It's just the modeling that he then sees and then he takes out with him into the world. It's certainly those things are true. But beyond [clears throat] that, that's how you will be happy. That's how you will be a happy man by loving the woman who's on earth to make you complete. And and and to love is the will of the good of the other. To to love is not a feeling at all. I mean to love is a commitment. It's actual decision notwithstanding your feelings.

And when he sees you doing the one thing that will actually make you the man that you want to be, then he will see that modeled. And when he does that, he will be the man that you want him to be as well. That's the best gift you can give your son is loving his mom. Yeah. Well, I hope I do that, but but this is a nice reminder to to really go deeper and really show that more and more. Right. That's right. We we talking a lot about relationships and you spoke beautifully before about how your marriage plays into your religion.

Yeah. Right. There will be people listening, of course, Arthur, who are either no longer in a marriage or long-term partnership or have no desire to. Right. For a person who's listening who is single, can they still be happy? Yeah, for sure. And and you know that's a there's a couple of different ways to cut that. But you know you've heard about the Harvard study of adult development. Yeah. Famous study that Bob Waldinger has he been on your show? He's been here in this in this room.

Yeah. Love him. I mean he's actually guest lectured for me at at my colleague at Harvard. And and that study which is a crystal ball on being happy when you're old. What do you do when you're young so you'll be happy when you're old? And it comes down to like seven things that people who are healthy and happy when they're old they have in common when they're young which is really really helpful. Number the the first four are pretty obvious. Smoking, drinking, u diet and exercise.

You know, don't don't misuse substances. Um you know, don't eat like a 9-year-old. Um you know, exercise like walking around. I mean, it's just it's pretty it's pretty obvious stuff. And you know, don't smoke cigarettes, you I mean, it's like, you know, obvious things that that you because and part of the reason is because for happiness is if you have tuberculosis, you're not going to be happy. That's a really really unhappy life. And so having some of these avoidable things that actually come from addictive behaviors is really important to keep in mind.

But the last three of the seven are number one is that have a be really good at dealing with your problems. You need skills at dealing with your own problems and that requires reps and information. Some people are good at using therapy. Some people are good at vaposa meditation. Some people are really good at prayer. Some people are outstanding in journaling. You need a way. The next thing is learning, learning, learning, learning, learning. being a learning machine so that you can continue to have an interesting life.

But last and but which washes everything else out is either a happy marriage or close friendships or both. That's it. So the answer to the question is do you need a happy marriage? No. But you can't be alone. You can't make it through. I mean life is not meant to be lived alone. We're profoundly social animals. And that doesn't mean you need 50 friends. I'm like you and I are like these big extroverts. Yeah. But but some people aren't. You know, one of my kids is a my daughter is a is an introvert.

She needs two close friends. There will there will absolutely be cuz you will have seen this before, but when this episode airs in the YouTube comments, somebody will at this moment be saying, "I prefer to be by myself. I'm not that person." Arthur, what do you think? Solitude and isolation are different things. Yeah, we do. We I mean I need to be by myself sometimes, too. But I need people in my life. Now, the the very very happiest people, they tend to have a best friend who they're also married to.

I mean, and and that's and that's the key. That's the ideal of companion love. But it's not it's it's being married is neither necessary nor sufficient. Actually, what you find is the happiest people that have more than one friend who's who's their spouse is what you find. And the people who like a lot of solitude, that's great, but they need somebody who loves them and that they can love. And I, by the way, I've met a hermit before. I when I was in Darham Solo last time, I, you know, went up the mountain and found a hermit who'd lived alone for 27 years and I interviewed him.

He's not like us. He's not like most people. This is not typically the case. So, I guess what we're saying is that generally speaking, for most people, these relationships are really, really important. Super important. Of course, like anything, there are exceptions. Maybe that person leaving the comment is that exception. Maybe they're not. Our friend the hermit has just written in in the YouTube comments. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. He's like, "You're wrong. You're wrong. You can't be by yourself." But this is these are the exceptions that actually prove the rule.

Yeah. We really We need love. And you know, it's interesting is somebody asked me at a um at a a media thing the other day. Um they said, "We ask every you know, at the end of a lot of shows, they say, "Here's the question we ask everybody." Right? I said, "Okay, what is it?" He said, "What is life?" It's like, "Holy cow, what is life?" And I said, "Well, life, [snorts] you know, why why are we alive?" You know, the why of being alive is to love and be loved.

That's what human beings are made for is to love and be loved. Therefore, life is love. Now, we need other people. There's all kinds of love. There's divine love. There's friendship. There's marriage. There's love for your children. But the whole point is this is how we're created. Human beings are created to love and be loved. That's the beautiful thing. And what that and so so yeah, some people it doesn't work out. Theirs doesn't work out. Yeah. Your friend Sonia was here last week and you know the the thesis of her latest book is about you know how to be loved.

Yeah. It's how to feel loved. How to feel loved. It's not only to to to be loved, you have to feel loved as well, which I thought was a really interesting. You said something before I think it was really interesting because this actually came up at a conference I was speaking at a few days ago. [gasps] What was the difference between solitude and loneliness? Yeah, Robert Lustig who who posed that question. I was on a panel and Robert Lustig who a lot of people know he talks about sugar and and all that kind of stuff and he answered that question through the lens of uh chemicals.

He said the difference is serotonin, right? And he gave his rationale behind that. But as he posed that question to the audience, I was thinking, well, how do I think of it? Difference between solitude and aloneeness. And the word that came up for me was belonging. So if you're in a crowded room, you can still feel lonely if you don't feel that you belong. But I I I passionately believe that solitude is the most important thing that we all need in the modern world. And I think that's something you make abundantly clear also in your book.

And I feel that if you can be in solitude and be content with that, that is also belonging. You feel that you know I belong in this body. I don't need to distract myself from my present moment experience. I I for me it just came up in the moment. I thought you know. So how do you think about the difference between solitude and loneliness? Loneliness comes from isolation. Loneliness does not come from solitude. Solitude is to be alone and well. Yeah. Isolation is to be involuntarily alone.

That's what it comes down to, which is another way of talking about belonging. You know, you don't belong. You're involuntarily alone. And that's what leads to this sense of isolation. And that's what leads to loneliness, which is endemic. It's unbelievably pervasive in our society today. That's not because people are alone too much. It's because they are isolated. They're isolated from other people. And that has a lot to do with the way that we use technology. has a lot to do with the the the nature of our culture has a lot to do with the legacy of co I mean there's a lot of things that actually have gone into it right so I love being alone but fundamentally I do not want to be isolated I do not want isolation I simply want solitude in concert with the relationships that I actually have and I spend time alone in in my thoughts every single day and when I wake up in the morning I spend time alone every single day seven days a week and it's a very very important part of in my life.

One thing I do when I'm at home is I have one less coffee at home because I've realized that if I go to the local coffee shop and have one there and sort of have a chitchat with the baristas, it just enhances my life. Yeah. Yeah. Yesterday morning I was there going through your book and I think right at the start you there's a chance called you know there's the meaning of meaning and there is a questionnaire, right? the meaning in life questionnaire which tells you where you stand at the present and what you need to be thinking about and working on as you continue reading this book right now you've also got the questionnaire for people it says in the book at the meaning of your life.com right is that there want to take it right but I would just say get the book and you can actually do it I went through the questions right how did you score well so I did them without seeing what the questionnaire meant and then on presents I scored 34.

Good. Nice and high. And on search, I scored 17. Moderate. Yeah. You are a happy You're happy at home. I am. You're happy at home. And by the way, that's classic for somebody who doesn't move 20 times. Yeah. Right. That's interesting. You You're happy at home. You're fundamentally a guy. Now, you're going to travel. You travel the world because you give all these lectures and you do all this media, etc., etc., but you want to come back here. You want to come back home. Yeah. And the thing that I I do, I've realized more than anything is I orientate my life around my relationships.

Mhm. So whenever I get asked to do something, I'm my first thought is how does this impact vid the kids, you know, my ability to look after mom? That's my first thought, right? And I've just learned over the years that actually your to-do list is never done. There's always something else you could be doing. If you wait until your to-do list is done in order to do the important things in life, you're going to find very quickly that the important things in life never happen. So, I've flipped it intentionally over the last few years where everything is about the relationship first and I fit my work life around that.

Now, some people are going to say, "Rogan, I don't have the autonomy you do. I don't I don't have that possibility. I have to do like my dad perhaps. I get it. Yeah. But I can only live life honestly as I find myself in it. Right. Do you know what I mean? I do. And and what I would if I'm make a prediction please, right, because I'm 14 years older than you, but also because you're going through the ashramas just like me. My prediction is you're going to start to revolve more around spiritual depth.

My my guess is that you and Vid are going to start looking looking. You're going to I think you're going to retire into the forest a little bit. Well, literally this past weekend, we had been talking about Well, we're both very spiritual anyway. Okay. I think that's clear of people podcast. Yeah. We both meditate every day and I I fell out of the habit sort of last month, but I'm back on the horse at the moment. But I I I really enjoy meditation, right? And again, what has changed for me is that I no longer meditate for an outcome.

I don't meditate to, you know, improve my mood, to be happier, to be more present, whatever it might be, like I used to. That's when he used to struggle with the practice. Well, by the way, that's when the Daly Lama said to me one time. He said, "The problem with Westerners and and meditation, number one, is they want to be spaced out, which is a problem in and of itself." He said, "But the other reason is that they meditate so they feel better." And I said, "What are you supposed to do?" He said you should meditate so the whole world feels better.

That's the that's the point. I mean you should meditate so that the world is lifted up. And I realize that that's a very abstract concept for a lot of people but as we get older we start to understand it. Right. Totally. And and I I would say we are becoming more and more spiritual. And the thing we've been talking about is shall we set up a foundation and donate money into the foundation and have it do good? And then I think where I get to Arthur and you know one of the things I love most about the your latest book is this idea about why questions.

And actually it very much resonates with how I think which is I've always felt this as a doctor is that it's not about me telling you what to do. I can guide you but at some point you have to ask yourself is this the right approach for me and only you can do that I can't do that for you like I really feel the job of a good doctor or a good healer is to help that person find what is right for them that's certainly how I've gone about my career and then the clash I have in my head is it's easy to think that a foundation will do more good for the world and I think it could do and at the same time I think the way you change the world is to change yourself.

So the best way to actually I believe change the world is to show up and be that present kind compassionate human. If I can do that then in my circle and we've all got our circle of influence. If you are compassionate there that's the way you make change. So then I have this clash in my head thinking what if the foundation makes me more and more busy so I'm less able to be the change. Do you know what I mean? I'm just absolutely I'm not asking expecting an answer necessarily but these are the thoughts I'm currently Yeah.

Now the foundation like that is a great project for the two of you. A great project. It's a it's a it's an accomplishment with struggle. It's something that's really worth collaborating on for sure. That's a really good idea. I really like that idea. But the truth of the matter is that the internal revolution that you're talking about, the continuous struggle that you have as a person, that's going to always have a lot more influence on the world. So, for example, one of the things I talk about with married couples is if you don't you read the newspaper and the world's on fire, you don't know what to do.

Go home and love your wife. That's really I mean, you you want to change the world, let's have more couples who love each other. That will change the world. You want to have you want to lift people up, have more families, people having babies and and and and joyfully creating families. I mean, how many people because the world seems so crummy and no good. I I'm not I'm not going to get married and have kids. Are you kidding me? You have just basically you're bashing your own head into a brick wall.

You want to make the h the world happier, fall in love, stay in love, have children. And so you cuz you have a big profile, you're in the public eye. So am I. The best thing that we can possibly do is love our wives and love our kids. Love your wife, right? Do that. So it's kind of interesting you were saying that. I again a football analogy. I I thought back to when I was a, you know, a teenager growing up in the northwest of England.

Now my older brother was a big Manchester United fan. He still got a scenes ticket at Old Traffords. and I was a big Liverpool fan and I went to school in Manchester and so you know it was always about what football team did you support that was kind of your identity at at my school basically and at that time there was a you know someone who's regarded as one of the most successful football managers of all time Sir Alex Ferguson famous guy famous guy but what it's interesting now as I get older I reflect on some of the things I used to hear as a teenager so you know footballers back Then as they on out were paid a lot of money.

So you were literally getting kids at 189 19 back then were getting 40 £50,000 a week. But one thing he always would try and do is get his young footballers to find someone to settle down with. He he actively encouraged it. And a lot of those footballers at 21 22 would suddenly find themselves married uh with a child. Right. No, I I can't remember how we did that or what it but I actually think what he was trying to do was almost ground them and go, listen, all that money, right?

Cuz these guys are in hotels every weekend. They're going to have, you know, all kinds of opportunity to follow their animalistic instincts. Right. Right. Here's this older manager I think was trying to insulate against that, hey, listen, if I can get you married, it doesn't mean they're all in the right marriages. But it's kind of interesting. They'll be way happier. And this is it's a really interesting thing. We know we we our animal impulses will push us. Will push us. But here's here's the mistake that we make.

We think that mother nature cares if we're happy. Mother nature doesn't care if we're happy. Mother nature wants us to pass on our genes and survive the winter. That's what mother nature wants for us. And that's the reason that we have these animal impulses. But we have this repertoire, this possibility of doing something so much better. We can choose our own happiness. But it means we must be at war with ourselves. We must understand that these animal impulses are going to lead us to do things that we don't want to do ultimately and and the long-term goal, the life that we actually want.

Now, we know that less when we're 18 and 19. That's why we need older people. That's why you needed your dad who actually could say, "Don't do that. Do this." Say, "Well, I want to do this." Sorry, you're going to do this, not that. And what he was trying to do was to help you understand that this particular decision which feels good is actually not the right decision for your life. And that's exactly why we have parents. It's exactly why we have mentors. It's exactly why we have teachers to actually push us into the right space of moral aspiration.

Would you say from your research that there's a unique role for fathers when it comes to bringing up young men? Yeah, for sure. And that's one of the reasons that that fatherless families are so hard on kids. It's so hard on different impacts on boys to girls. Yeah, for sure. And that's an interesting thing. You know, there's a research that shows that one of the worst things that can happen to a boy who's adolescent or just pre-adolescent is his dad takes off with another woman. It's one of the worst things that can happen to a boy because that actually torqus his understanding of what it means to be a man.

That's a really, really big problem. It's literally better for your son that you die than that you leave your mother to leave his mother. Because if you die, your son will be like, "Yeah, my dad worked hard. My dad was a good man. My dad had bad health." But if he takes off with another woman, he doesn't understand who he's supposed to be. He doesn't understand the space of moral aspiration. Now, that doesn't mean that if your dad bailed that you're going to be all screwed up.

That's not what that means. I mean, but it means there's work to do under the circumstances. That affects women less. Mhm. And it's interesting cuz my my father-in-law bailed when my wife was six with another woman. Took off. Didn't pay child support, right? And and when I met her, she was in her early we were in our early 20s. She didn't trust men. Men are no good. Men are weasels. Understandably. Yeah. I mean, men are just they lie. They men want one thing and the whole thing took two years for me to close a deal.

Two years. Why? I grew up in a home where my dad loved my mom. He died young. died at 66, you know, and didn't have good health and it was a huge problem. Say that. Yeah. And and my mother was ailing. She was profoundly demented by the time she was my age. But my dad loved her. My dad took care of her. And that's the model that I saw. And so the result was that I had to make my marriage into something more like my family.

But the fact is it's if we had to choose one dad that was going to take off, it's better that was hers because I needed that bottle. If there's a guy who just heard what you what you said there, Arthur, and um perhaps they left their partner, their female partner a year ago because they felt actually, you know what, we should never have got married. It was the wrong relationship. We were constantly fighting in front of the kids. How can they make sense of what you just said and not feel guilty?

Yeah. No, I mean and and they do feel guilty. That's for sure. The question is how do you make it as good as it can be? I [clears throat] mean, nobody doesn't feel guilty when when things don't work out. That's the normal. If you're if you never feel guilty about anything, something's wrong. I feel guilty about things. I mean, we all feel guilty about mistakes that we've made along the way. But the whole point is to to continue to love your children and to help them understand exactly what happened such that it doesn't look like this is a natural form of behavior.

That is better to say, "My marriage didn't work out, but I want your marriage to work out." You know, it the the right way to go through life is not to run off with your secretary. The right way to go through life is to is to love the mother of your kids. And just because my marriage didn't work out that way doesn't it mean doesn't mean that yours can't. Is to own it is what it comes down to. Because that's what we said before when I was talking about vid and honesty, right?

It's about being honest and maybe depending on the age of your son saying that just saying hey I really wanted to work out the there's a couple of reasons why it didn't but or or if you made mistakes you can say hey listen I I really screwed up I'll give you an example of this so I was right I wrote a book called from strength to strength in 2022 it was it was a I learned a lot and it was based it was a very personal book because you know I was my life was changing a lot and I wanted to understand how the back half of my life, the second half of my life was going to be really meaningful and successful in its own way.

And I was interviewing a lot of people and I was interviewing this woman, this icon of Wall Street, who's incredibly rich, incredibly successful, um, one of the most famous women in the world in finance. And she's my she was my age at the time. I was in my late 50s at the time. And and and she tal she was going through her achievements, which I asked her about. And then she said, "And I'm so unhappy." And I said, "Well, talk to me, sister. What's a problem?" And she said, "My husband and I are just roommates." Um, I have, I guess, a cordial relationship with my adult kids.

Um, I think my my employees are are are afraid of me. All I know how to do is work. I don't really have any friends. I I was religious when I was a kid and I always loved it, but I I haven't got to church in decades and I don't know why. Um, I'm I'm drinking too much. I need to go to the gym. I'm getting bad. I'm get I have a bad lipid panel. I mean, what do I do? And I said, you don't need a professor to tell you what to do.

I mean, you just wrote your own prescription. I mean, go away with your husband. Take a souvenir in your firm. Get to know your kids. Get into AA. Go back to church. I mean, obviously. She says, "I know. I know. I know." I said, "So, why didn't you do it?" And she thought about it. She was quiet. And she said, "Because I've always chosen to be special rather than happy." And it was like a knife to my heart because me too. Me too. I mean, when I was a CEO, I worked 80 hours a week.

I was on the road all the time. I missed a lot of my kids growing up. I made mistakes and I felt bad about it. And so, I thought to myself, okay, so what am I going to do with that? I can pretend that it wasn't a mistake, but I've talked to my kids in a different way. And I said, I did that and that wasn't the right thing. Furthermore, I get a doover. I you know I I we we set it up with our family so that we all live in the same place.

We're we're we're we're making your life now. We live in a place and we have one down the street and the other the other down the street. My have one child still in the military. When she comes back, she'll be around us as well. I take I hope I hope that happens to my kids. I see my grandchildren. I have four grandsons. I see them and they're proliferating. I mean, it's like the the Brooks girls. They know how to have babies and and and and we're all in the same place because I get a doover.

But but when I'm conscious of it. Yeah. And that's it, isn't it? It's it's it you've made that unconscious conscious. You've owned what happened, right? The honesty is that Yeah. You know what? I probably overworked and I didn't see you guys as much as I could have done. I can't change that. But what I can change is how I go forward. Exactly. Right. And I can I can admit that that was suboptimal, that I'm not perfect, which is also a powerful thing for our kids to realize that we're not perfect, that we do make mistakes.

Of course. Of course. That's honesty. Again, that's something I would say I've learned from my wife is that you don't have to put on this illusion of perfection in front of your kids. No. Right. It won't work anyway. Yeah. It won't work. I mean, they until after about 9 years old, they know you're hopelessly imperfect. M and and if you basically say, "Yeah, you know, I snapped at you. I'm sorry." Like, you know, I mean, if you're apologizing every single second, that's problematic. That just means that you're not learning and you're not getting better.

But the truth is, you're going to make mistakes. And I said to my kids, "Look, you know, I want you guys to have families that are stable and good, and I want to help. I want to be helpful, and I want I want to babysit your children and and make your life better." And and it's important that you be present in your own families and it's important that I be present in your own families and I get a doover. It's the best thing ever. And and that's how you do it.

Look, if if if something has happened in your marriage and it failed, for example, you have to talk openly with your kids, especially as they're coming of age, about exactly what happened and how it could have been better and how they don't have to fall prey to the same fate. Yeah. Because it helps them as well. Totally. Helps them realize. Yeah. Author, I I followed your work for years. I think you're a brilliant communicator. I think your books are so wonderfully written and you have such a a wonderful grasp of all these different fields, right?

Science, faith, relationships. It's it's it's Thank you. You know, it's it's it's wonderful talking to you and listening to you speak. There's so many other areas we could have gone into today about the meaning of your life, but the the one area I wanted to touch on at the end of this conversation is about self-trcendence. Towards the end of this book, you write about Maslo's hierarchy [snorts] and this idea that once your basic needs are met, you know, food and shelter, you can then move on to self-trcendence.

But you challenge that and you kind of disagree I think with the order. This is uh I think very provocative um but very very interesting. Help us all understand where you view self-trcendence, what it is and why it shouldn't be left until the very end. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So you refer to Masle's hierarchy. Everybody watching your show is going to know Masle's hierarchy. Abraham Maslo in the 40s he writes this thing where he said first you have food and shelter and then you have security and after that you have to have a self-esteem and community and and then at the very top of his hierarchy is self-actualization later in life he said that's actually not the highest one is transcendence the highest thing is that we can actually understand who we are deeply with respect to perhaps even our creator so you know people get old they start to get you know sort of yeah they they get kind kind of mystical.

And and the problem with that is this. As I've gone through my work and I've gone through my life, I found that some of the most profoundly spiritual and enlightened people I've ever met are poor. It's funny, isn't it? It's like they're they they they still have more to have adequate housing and meeting their caloric needs, but they love God a lot. They have an intense love for God. You're Indian. I go to India a lot. I go to India every year. And you know, at one point I was making a documentary in Daravi.

Have you ever been to Daravi? Right. That's that was the world's largest slum. It's in it's in in Mumbai. It's uh it's like 750,000 people living on an amount of land that's smaller than Central Park. It would be like 40 people living in your house. That's this population density of I mean I've been to some of the Kolkata slums and it is humbling. It's unbelievable. And but what you find is all kinds of different sorts of people very very entrepreneurial people. You hear a lot of laughter and you see a lot of families and you see an intense love for God.

An intense love for God. The idea that I'm going to wait, why would I wait until I have everything else in order to do the most important thing? And you know, Mother Teresa in Kolkata herself, she talked about the intense love of God that she and her sisters and the people that she served should have because that's the most important thing. That's not the last thing. That's the first thing actually and that's open to absolutely every single one of us. Yes, we should wipe out poverty.

Absolutely. We need more security. We all know these things. But the one thing that is truly democratic is our spiritual heritage that we could actually have for ourselves. Just just so beautiful. And and I I know that one of the reasons I hold the views I hold about even the relationship between money and happiness is because every other summer growing up in our six week summer holidays we would go to India for the for the entire six weeks. My mom, me and my brother, my dad would come for like 3 weeks and he'd have to fly back home and work.

And what time of year? June, July. July, August. July. Yeah. monsoon season raining like crazy and they were some of the funnest times of my life and you you you live inside a different culture and you will see people with not very much with the biggest smiles on their face and one story I haven't I told once on the podcast a few years ago is when I went to see my auntie about 3 years ago in Kolkata and the block of flats where she lives the the gateman the porter who lets the cars in and out I I would chat with him every day I'd sit and chat And you know that guy was happy, right?

He he did his job. Like it it provided enough, right? He wasn't wealthy. And I always remember about 3:00 p.m. every day. He would just walk off and he'd sit with two or three others. They just squat around with his little clay pots of tea and they'd be in in Bangla, we would say, right? He would just um just in in English we say chewing the fats, right? just sit sipping tea with his buddies in the in the you know under a bit of shade like laughing the good life and I tell you there's so many successful achievers in the west who don't even have time to do that right something I thought about a few years ago is this idea that takeaway coffee wouldn't it be beautiful if we could live where you never needed to have a takeaway you had 5 minutes to sit and enjoy your coffee with body.

Yeah, we're the fact that we even need a takeaway. It's like, yeah, cuz we're so busy rushing around that, yeah, I need my caffeine here, but I can't even enjoy it, so I need to, you know, I think that tells us something about culture. Yeah. Yeah. There's no enjoyment actually is coming from the consumption of the caffeine. We're using it instrumentally. Yeah. That guy didn't ever take a takeaway tea. He wouldn't drink tea by himself. He drinks it with his buddies at 3 p.m. Yeah. You know, so the the big the big point that you're making is about coffee specifically.

Coffee should be the objective. It shouldn't be instrumental. The reason you're drinking coffee is not so you can do something else. The point should be the coffee. That's it. I mean, if it if you're drinking coffee to drink the coffee. Now, that's a that's a the whole the whole concept. I mean, Tick, not Han, right? He came to mind straight away. Yeah. Right. I mean, it's like when you're washing the dishes, you should be fully present while you're washing the dishes because if you're not fully present, then you're actually not washing the dishes in that moment, which means you're missing your life.

Yeah. And he would he would probably argue if you're not present for washing your dishes, you ain't going to be present for anything else. No, no, no, no. Look, you're you're you're you're here's I think the broader point because it gets back to the whole point of why we're alive, which is the love and be loved. The the amazing human brain, the most amazing thing that it does arguably is it gives us the ability to time travel. I can be prospective. I can be in the future.

I can be retrospective. I can think of the past and that's what makes us so competitive because I can learn from the past. I can practice the future. I don't make mistakes. It's unbelievable. Where we're not ever is now. It's actually hard to be mindful. It's why you have all these sort of spaced out western practices of mindfulness meditation because they know that that if you're 80% of your time in the future, average person is 30 to 50% of their time thinking about the future. Entrepreneurs, people watching this show are 80% of the time in the future.

They're in the future all the time. But here's the problem. You can't love in the future. You can only love now. If you're in the future all the time, you're missing love, which is to say that you're missing life. When you're having that coffee with your friend, you can love in that moment. That's the reason that the coffee anchors you in these five minutes that we're taking it and laughing with our friends in those moments. That's the reason that it brings you such great joy is because you're made to love and you're being anchored in the now.

Timeless wisdom. Timeless wisdom. Arthur. Arthur, you have such a wonderful way with words. My final question for you is to do with what you just spoke about when it comes to transcendence. You were talking about India. you talking about how we all have access to that right now. I want us to think about that person who's been listening to this conversation who is not present, is always rushing around, who feels that they overwork and that they can't see a way out. They certainly don't have time for spirituality or faith because they're they've got things to do.

Mhm. If they were to say to you, Arthur, I want to be happier, right? I want more meaning in my life. What can I do? What would you say to them? So, I would actually take a a pretty technical approach to doing something that you can only do now in your life. And this is how I've tried to change my life in the years that I was missing my life. I'm running a company, big important guy, right? What I did was when I realized that this was a mistake, I did this profoundly present thing.

I quit my job and I went and I I went for a long walk. I went on a pilgrimage. You know, it just as when you're in India and you see people walking to Matura and Utar Pradesh, you know, they're walking to the city of holy temples. I mean, it's just mendicants and people and normal people walking walking. I walk the community of Santiago across northern Spain with my wife. You just walk and walk and walk around. You're fully present because I was you have one job which is walking and you're praying and you're and I was holding my wife's hand and and and etc.

And and I realized that what I needed to do was that protocol. I needed a pilgrimage in my life every single day. And this is what I recommend to people whether it's religious or not. Now what I do is I wake up every morning. I I I practice the Brahma Maherta which in Sanskrit is the creator's time. It's an ancient idea of an hour and 36 minutes before dawn. A mahorta is 48 minutes. The Rama Mahorta is two of them. The science, the neuroscience behind that says that getting up before dawn is really good for you, especially if you witness the sunrise.

And you know, our friend Andrew Huberman talks about that etc. So there solid all that vadic wisdom always has tons of western science that that came much later that actually show that it was good. I get up before dawn. I exercise every day. But my exercise is is almost sacramental. You know, I I I generally speaking don't don't listen to things because I want to experience that. And then I get cleaned up and I go to Catholic mass every day. Esther and I go to mass together every day.

When I'm home, when I'm on the road, I do it by myself, either in solitude or in partnership. And you're fully present. You're not looking at your phone. It's not long. It's 25 minutes. It's half an hour. But you're there. You're fully present. You're experiencing that. And then at the end of the day, we pray our rosary together, which is a form of ancient Catholic meditation. And we do it together. And you can't check your phone. You have to be here. Now, here's the point. If we have a habit of being not present, we need a habit of being present.

You need a countervailing habit. What are people actually doing that they have to be present for? And wire that into their day. Wire that into their lives. That's what I recommend. I love it. ancient wisdom for modern times. But we've come full circle, haven't we? Because in that answer, right at the end there, my opening question fed right back in. There was the science, there was the faith, and there was the relationships, all three in one. Arthur, some people will have come to you for the first time through this show because you've surprisingly not been on over the last years.

Um, and this show, by the way, is touching so many people, including me, all these years. Yeah. Well, I'm I'm very lucky I get to do something for my garden that goes to so many people. Um, the latest book, of course, is the meaning of your life, finding purpose in an age of emptiness. I know you've written many books, but you know, the one just before this was on happiness, and then of course you mentioned the one before that, I think, was strength to strength. Right.

If someone says, "Arthur, listen, I don't know which of those three to choose for my first Arthur Brooks book." How would you articulate the differences between them and where would you point them? Yeah, this new book, well, the book that I wrote before I co-authored it with Oprah Winfrey, and it was about is a primer on the science of happiness, about enjoyment, satisfaction, and meaning. It's kind of a it's it's like a a small version of my college course on happiness. And so it's the basics on the science of happiness.

It's based on a lot of science etc. But but it it gives people practices that they can actually use in their life. A deeper dive on meaning. This new book it's really behind the biggest crisis that we face. The problem with the depression and anxiety from people under 30 is is really a meaning crisis. And this is a book about how modern life has broken our brains. So this is a book about the biggest problem in our life. If you want to learn more about the science of happiness, that's the last one.

If you want to learn about the biggest problem that we're facing today and how people can actually not fall prey to that, actually can repair themselves, how can fix their brains and and and and their hearts along the way, then that's actually what this is for. They're they accompany each other in a way. Yeah. As it happens. And so, you know, for me right now, this is the book that's really on my mind. I have to say this is the one that's actually making me remember the reason I do the work that I do for sure.

Yeah. Well, it's a wonderful book, The Meaning for Your Life: Finding Purpose in an Age of Emptiness. Author, thank you for everything you do. Thank you for all the wisdom you share and thank you so much for coming onto the show. I'm delighted to be with you. It's such an important thing that you're doing and it's uh as they say in the the world of talk radio in America, longtime listener, first time guest and I really really appreciate what you do and you having me here today.

If you enjoyed that conversation, then I think you are really going to enjoy this one that I've picked out. Especially if you actually went to the happiness gym several times a week, you will actually have a happier life, right? And the happiness gym is very straightforward. It's a set of skills that you need to practice.

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