Arthur C. Brooks: Are We Happy Yet?

I often thought one of the worst things that happened to society was a series of movies, whether it was kids' movies or adult movies, rom coms. but that were happily ever after. Like they they ended at the moment where the people met. And I I always wondered what that did to people's brains growing up in a world where they went like, Oh, if you meet the person you love, that's the end.

And then it's like this is it. Like w what is that? Pac Man did that to us as well. I never finished Pac Man. Yeah, but I never I've never seen the end of Pac-Man. I saw junior Pac-Man, so I know what they did, but I don't know But there's Junior Pacman? Yeah, Junior Pac Man Paco. There was Junior Pac Man. Junior Pacman. Yeah, junior Pac Man. So I think baby Pacman. Yeah, like a tiny little Pac Man had a little bow and then the pickety butty but like a tiny little Pac Man. So as a girl Pac Man.

Yeah but there was a boy and a girl. There was a girl and a boy. Junior Pac Man. Yeah, no, no, they M the whole family. Yeah, Pac Man had I like these family values in video games like this. Yeah, no, Pac Man did it, bro. I was like, okay. Yeah, Mario and Luigi did it well. They were brothers, bro. I think you're mix mixing up the story. Yeah, they were family members. Oh yeah, they were. They were you know, they'd be they'd be like, What are these guys like Pac-Man?

Okay, Elden Ring, fine, we'll bring in Elden Ring. Call Call of Duty, we'll go with We got every game covered here. You you tell us the generation. And we've got you. We've got you. We got you. It doesn't matter what it is. This is what we're going to do. This message is a paper. With Apple Card. Imagine this: you're at a checkout counter. You're ready to pay when you realize you don't have your wallet. Dun dun dun.

You could drive all the way back home and you could get it, but you remember that you have your Apple card on your iPhone. So you can tap to pay with Apple Pay. Imagine that. No need to carry a wallet. But you know, one of the things I do like about having my card on my phone is we live in a world where you lose your card and then you don't know where it is. And then you're like, what do I do?

Well, if your phone is connected to your card and your card is connected to your phone, you know what's going on. The best thing about having the Apple card connected to your phone is you know what every transaction is. You know like sometimes you're like, what did I spend this month? The Apple card will show you. One month I had spent an obscene amount of money ordering videos online. Just videos.

They were just videos. What kind of videos? That's not the point. The point is, I knew that I didn't want to order those videos anymore because I'd spent too much money on it. it was videos on how to not spend money online. I felt like I'd been duped.

Point is Apple showed me what I was spending my money on and I was able to change my spending habits and you can do it too. I earn up to three percent daily cash back on every purchase with my Apple card. That's unlimited daily cash back no matter what. Subject to credit approval, AppleCart issued by Goldman Sachs Bank USA, Salt Lake City Branch terms, and more at AppleCard.com. Bowser is back. Everyone calm down. The Super Mario Brothers can take care of the kingdom.

Let's go on April 1st. Code pack our things. Woohoo! The galaxy. Whoa. Who is this? So some cool dinosaur just shows up and he's now part of the group. Cool. The Super Mario Galaxy movie. Pretty PG. Only beat us here for first. Get to get now. This episode is brought to you by Verizon. All right, Eugene, let's play a little game. You know, make something fun. Two truths and a lie. Mm-hmm. Here we go. One, I've had to tell a world leader that their fly was undone.

Two, when getting dressed, I don't do sock sock shoe shoe. I do sock shoe sock shoe. Three, I've been a Verizon customer for eleven years. What do you think? Very confused. First of all, why would a world leader owner fly? 'Cause those things just come uninvited. Secondly, lying to your friends is not cool. There's never been a game. No, Eugene, the f a fly is for like the zip is what and then it's it's it's not a lie, it's a game where I'm try it's like I give you inform.

Okay, I lied. All three are true, Eugene. And in case you were thinking, you know, Verizon isn't as expensive as you think. In fact, if you bring in your ATT or T mobile bill, they'll give you a better deal. And the reason I've been with them for this long is just because I travel so much. I need a network that's reliable. That's right. A better deal on the best network, with the most ways to save on planned streaming and phone deals.

Take your AT&T or T-Mobile bill to your local Verizon store today. Get your better deal. And start saving for real. Based on root metrics, best overall mobile network performance, US second half twenty twenty five, all rights reserved, you must provide recent consumer mobile bill in the name of the person redeeming the deal. Additional terms, conditions, and restrictions apply.

So do you understand how two truths and d do you understand it now? I understand that you didn't have to lie first before telling me that Verizon is the best. No, I wasn't lying f Eugene, it's not a lie. I wouldn't lie to you. It's it's a game. Okay, I'm sorry. I lied. Ah

I mean that's so you're on you're on tour all the time. Not on tour, but just like life takes me, you know. I've had the gift and the curse of planting you know, many trees uh in many different places. So oftentimes they call me to go and tend to them. Right. This is not a euphemism for families, Eugene. Please. Yeah. Please. How many children do you have? No, y uh Eugene was about two. I was please, Eugene, I have zero. None of these things.

My gr my grandparents. Yeah. My gr uh my great grandparents actually they they they were Danish and they had this they believed that the Holy Spirit spoke to them. that they should go become missionaries, Lutheran missionaries to the Zulus. No, no ways. Yeah. And they didn't speak a word of the Zulu language, which is problematic. Big problem. But they knew that the Holy Spirit would teach them the Zulu language. And he didn't.

And he didn't. And so they just was like, so I didn't go for woo So they left after ten months and they came they didn't go back to Denmark, they came to the United States and started a farm in T in South Dakota. Do you understand how this one moment in time if your grandparents just learned Zulu, you could have been South African. This would have been a totally different conversation. Completely different conversation. And you and I would have had, you know, these sort of parallel

This is why I mean look at this connection. The other day I was at Carnegie Hall and I was thinking you fell off the stage at Carnegie Hall. You heard about that? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. I did. What happened? That was my Carnegie Hall debut. It was beautiful. I was twenty two. What happened? I was um doing my Carnegie Hall debut in chamber music. I was a professional French horn player. You all through through my twenties. I left I left college at nineteen.

I dropped out. Just to confirm which one is the French horn? The round one. Yeah. W the one you put under your then you It's a the round one and then it has the bell in the back that you put your hand in. Yeah. Huh. And so the bell is going backwards. Okay, okay, okay. Got it, got it, got it.

And um I wanted to be the world's greatest French horn player since the time I since I was eight years old. You knew this is what you wanted to do. Yeah, I knew. What did you see that made you think French horn player me? Well, I I was a good musician. I started violin at four and piano at five. And then the French horn at eight. And that's what I was really good at.

And when you were a little kid, I mean it's not like I loved music. I loved having people tell me that I was doing well. Worthwhile. And I got a lot of attention and affection, which is what all people who are addicted to success later in life have. And all a anybody who's a workaholic later in life, ordinarily their their their childhood is is characterized by getting attention from adults because of what they do.

Oh, and feeling like love is earned, which characteristic'cause people I work with all the time. I say, I let me tell you something about your childhood and they say, How did you know?'Cause every striver has a s different version of that same story. And uh and so that's what I loved. I loved the attention that I actually got for being better than everybody else at one particular weird thing. And so I went pro at nineteen, playing chamber music and and and trying to become a soloist.

And at twenty-two I got my big break, which was my Carnegie Hall debut. No way. Yeah. Yeah. And uh at one point in the concert, the str most stressful point of the concert, I had to walk to the front of the stage and talk to the audience.

To tell them about the next piece. And that's what stressed me out the most. Were you holding the French horn at this time? Of course. But you know, playing the French horn didn't stress me out. Talking to people in public stressed me out. Because I'd never done it. So and I was I was rehearsing it in my mind and rehearsing going through it and going through and it came time and I was really nervous and I walked to the front of the stage and I wasn't looking at my feet.

And I fell off this front of the stairs. How f I've always wondered about feeling. Yeah, and that's what I've always wanted to ask somebody about falling off of a stage. Yeah, because it it you watch videos of people who do it all the time, whether it's a catwalk, whether it's a performance or they just disappear. You know, they do their thing, it's like one minute they're there, one minute then it's like gone. Right. How how painful is it? It's ver well, it's about six feet and on my elbow.

So so it was very painful. And I I did a lot of damage to my instrument as well. And and of course I did what anybody would do, any w any 22-year-old man would do. I jumped up and said, I'm okay, folks. Yeah. I'm clearly in pain. And there's a gasp from the audience. Oh man. Yeah, yeah. It's so funny that humans do that. Why are we more concerned with Like

Assuaging the the like like everyone out there is having their own like fear. Everyone out there's going, Are you okay? And we're like, No, no, no, I am okay. Do not worry about the arm that's dangling in the wrong direction. You do not worry. Yeah. I also think it's a group Are you okay is not about you, it's about them. But that's what I'm saying. Why do we care about the you've just fallen off a stage? No, it's just about them. How m is this concert gonna continue?

Is it still gonna be able to do this thing for us that's a little bit more than where does that come from? So that's a natural human tendency to show strength. That's a natural human tendency to show resiliency. And it's especially true for men. They don't wanna look as if they're vulnerable in any way. They don't wanna look like they're weak in any way.

It's very, very embarrassing to to to show that something has hurt you. Yeah. Okay. For a young man, especially in front of a whole bunch of people that I'm trying to impress. I'd been spending the last hour and a half trying to impress them as deeply as I possibly could. This is my New York debut.

Carnegie Hall. Carnegie Hall, baby. I mean, how do you get to Carnegie Hall? Well, try not to fall off the stage, among other things. And and and so during that, what you don't want is that to car your weakness to characterize your New York debut. That's not And so the result is that you're trying to wind back time. You know, trying to wind back the time. I say, I'm okay, folks, let's just go back to the concert. And it's like, we're never going back. We've just lost the colour. A French horn.

W that has happened to you. Some version of that, right? Never. There's never been anything in your life that has been a little bit more than that. Oh, you mean like on a stage no stage? I mean, we've all had that somewhere. But tell me. No, you're telling the story. We we want to know Particularly yours. Eugene. I thought you were Zulu brothers. What's going on here? Oh wow.

Let me think where was one okay I'll tell you where was wh where where one was. Um the earliest I can sort of remember in my life was I was in a school play and Your school had plays? Yeah. Y your school didn't have plays? Yeah. No So I was in a school play and I was six or seven years old and in the play I was I was uh portraying a tortoise, right?

And so I had a big shell on my back and a whole thing. And there was one part of the play where we all had this like March dance thing where it's like da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da. And we walk off the stage, and then we walk back onto the stage and we walk off the stage or on the stage. And then I was walking back onto the stage. And as I got up onto one of the steps, one of my tortoise feet

caught the step'cause I hadn't walked much on stairs with tortoise feet. Human feet are pretty much you're not going to be able to do it. You didn't attend much rehearsals. I I mean even then I just rehearsals don't happen with costumes on. Yeah they don't But it was one of those like, you know where you save yourself from tripping and so it makes the trip worse.

So you just flying off. If you just trip and fall down and get up, it's it's not bad. But sometimes you go, I'm not tripping, I'm not tripping and then it draws attention to the trip. So it was like and then while this was happening, everyone's turning. And the whole school. When I tell you the whole school, because it was in the hall, laughed at the same. Time and you know the laugh that kids have, young kids. It's not just like a ha ha ha like horrible hunting. It's that one of like

They love that laugh. What the hell? Whole school up to maybe it was like teachers three hundred kids you man And that happened. And I remember the blood left my head and left my i I just I just wanted to disappear. Yeah. Right. And then As I'm walking on the stage,'cause we have to do the parade multiple times, as we're walking down the other side, we come back up, and then I did it again, but this time I did it on purpose.

And then they laughed. Well played. Well played. I did it as a bid, Charlie Chaplin. Then they laughed again. Uh-huh. And then after the show the one of the teachers came and was like, That was comedic genius. Oh. Well done. That was brilliant and whatnot. It was literally and and that but I remember the the shift in that moment from that that

There's few moments in my life that I think have had more of an impact on me than that specific moment. But the presence of mind that that takes at six years old to figure out that this is a comedic bit. I don't think I thought it was a comedic I don't think I thought it was a comedic bit. I think I thought to myself If I can be the person who is creating this then you can't hold it against me. Does that make sense? It makes sense. It actually explains a lot.

Yeah. I was going like oh okay, no, no, I'm I'm the one who did it. I'm the one Oh yeah. I I did it. I did it. I did it. So the second time it's interesting. So you it was surprising to them but funny at the same time. The second time actually, so there's this really interesting thing about comedy. There's a little part of the limbic system of your brain. It's called the parahippocampal gyrus.

And what it does is that that's what mediates surprise. That's the reason that all humor is based on surprise. It's all based on surprise. And and so what what'll happen I mean, any stup I could tell you a stupid dad joke. Yeah. And it's all based on it. I want to die peacefully in my sleep, like my grandfather, not screaming in terror like his passenger.

Yes. Right. Right. So that's why it's like that's great. You'll have all my kids. So so what that does is that flicks the parahippocampal gyrus. Uh-huh. And and if it's too much, you're gonna like Why are you making m making fun of hurricane victims? Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. And if it's too little, it's a pun and you're like uh

You see? But it but it's because it's it's basically what is that part of the brain responsible for predicting something though? Yes. It sorts out cognitive dissonance. Got it. It sorts it out. That you know the parahippocampal gyrus is like you're going in one direction and then you say, What happened? Oh. and that makes you laugh

That's what makes you laugh. That's why surprise is funny. It's inherently sub f and then not the kind of surprise like the lawyers on the phone. Not that kind of surprise. Yeah. It's like it's and so that's how all humor works, right? And so that's what you did at six. You have a nose for it. You basically said, I'm gonna come around the other time and I'm gonna surprise them because the last thing that they're expecting is that Trevor Trips a second time.

And that's why they cracked up. But honestly, the first time they mocked you, the second time they actually laughed. Yeah, no no. The second time they were I had taken control of the thing. Yeah. When you control the parahippocampal gyrus, you control the world. Huh. Actually maybe that's a little bit too much. Nothing. Okay.

So what's yours, Eugenia? Yeah, I know. We're we're getting to that the good stuff here. We'll get what's your what's your moment? Why are you looking at me like you expect me to tell me to tell you guys something embarrassing about my No, it's not Okay, here we go. So this was my first year of school. Uh huh. So my parents had bought me a school uniform, right? So everyone is excited about me going to school for uh personally I've been looking at these grey flannel plants.

For the longest time. I'm gonna wear these pants, my uniform, my white shirt, I'm gonna do this thing. So it came with a belt. Ironically, that's what I forgot this time on my trip. And I've gone to shop so many times, almost bought the shice tea, but not a belt. In any case, so I go to school for the first week. On Friday, and remember it's orientation for us.

So they're teaching us the songs that we must sing at assembly. We had assembly but it was outside no hall. You what like six years old? Six years, yeah. First year of school. So all of this is happening. I lose my belt playing football after school. So on Friday I have to go to school. Without a belt. My mom notices I don't have a belt on. What does she do? She had bought a pair of suspenders for Christmas clothes. This is not the fashion statement you're trying to make, is this what I gather?

Maybe maybe He's reliving this horrible moment of trauma because What he what happened there. That one. Hippocampal Hippocimple gyro. You see the hippocampal gyro? It got flicked in my brain. Uh-huh. Because Of all the things I thought you would say. I did not think the word suspenders was gonna come into this story at all.

You said then my mom found out and then I thought you my mom was gonna get angry, my mom was gonna shout at my mom was the many things. Well she did she was No no no. But then you said my mom had bought a pair of suspenders. Yes, for my Christmas clothes that I avoided. Sorry. Now carry on. I wasn't laughing at you. I was laughing at the suspenders that were just in the mix. He was laughing with you. or about you

But not at you. Sorry, I apologize. Carry on. So your mom had bought susp Christmas suspenders. That I avoided. Yeah. Throughout the whole entire December. Yeah. And I managed to go through Christmas without wearing them. And then she said, You're gonna put on these suspenders? 'Cause this those pants are gonna fall because they're not the exact size. You have to wear them you have to grow into them a little bit. This is two years worth of pants, yeah. They've hemmed them up at the bottom.

They're loose fitting. So I wear the suspenders and mind you I have to walk to school. There's no drop offs here. So all the way I'm wearing a jersey in the heat, going to school. Hiding the suspenders. Hiding the suspenders. I get to school We're in assembly. I'm the shortest kid, so they put me right at the front. So we're singing this song, right? Uhhuh. Our Father Who Art in Heaven. Uhhuh. But we had a version an English version.

And the Isi Zulu version. So I went to a Catholic crutch. So I knew the song very well. So the teacher that's been teaching us at assembly to sing this song for the longest time noticed that I was actually hitting all the notes. And then he said to me You guys are idiots. There's this kid here. He four days in this school, fifth day today.

And he's hitting all the right notes. This is our school song, Our Father Oatin Heaven, hallowed be thy name, thy king Baba Weto Sama Zulu. Yes, and this kid's nailing it. This kid is nailing it. Which means he's the shortest here, he's the youngest here, he's the newest here. There's people who've been here for four years. This song is not working for you, but this kid is nailing it. So what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna ask this kid. I knew it.

And you went up in front of the school. I'm gonna ask this kid to come in front, start the hymn from the beginning and sing this thing. Then I'm like, eh? So this traumatic look that I have whenever something when you spring something on me and my hippogyra's campus. Is affected. There's the same this look I've been having since I was sick. So he takes his time instructing the biggest kid in the school to go fetch a desk in one of the classes to put as a stage for me. Oh. Then as this stage

My Carnegie Hall is being erected in front of me or behind me. He says to me, this jersey in this heat, this is South Africa in January. It's hot. So he says you can't be wearing a chair. Take off. I'm like, no, trust me. I'm fine. He goes, you are not going to do that. And mind you, this is with a belt.

The Taylor made sure, Taylor being my mom, uh huh, that the hemming up of these pants fitted perfectly to my ankles. Now suspenders on the other hand, they pulled white they were suspending my ankles. That's what they were doing. And then he says to me the jersey's coming off. So now I'm six years old, small kid. I'm trying to argue with this teacher as he grabs the shoulders and pulls off this jersey while he's plucking me up and putting me on stage. Oh man.

See that laugh? Yeah. Oh man. All of that the happened. And I knew I had one option here.'Cause the other option was if I jump off stage, I'll make a bigger idiot of myself'cause this rickety desk might actually be the end of me. Yeah. Then I stood there and I continued singing the song. Our father who had went on and on and until they all kept quiet and I switched between the two songs, Zulu version, the English version, and it ended.

Then from then onwards everyone called me our father for that year. Then I was like it's ironic because they didn't call you suspenders. So that was that was th that was my story. And then I went home and I told my mom That story and you know, I was so embarrassed because it felt like a long day obviously of what happened, the nicknames that happened afterwards on my way home, playing soccer afterwards there. And my mom said, You know, you

Then I said, no, they hurt my feelings. She says, Yeah, yeah, yeah, I hear that. But is there any part of you that they took away from you physically? Then I said, Nothing. She says, Life is gonna be like that. People are gonna try, you mustn't let them. Someone can surprise you about something that you are. They will say many things about you. But don't believe them because it won't break any bit of you.

And the other thing was my name. People didn't know how to pronounce my name or write my name. And she taught me how to teach people how to pronounce my name. Said you must say e uken. Because if they want you to pronounce it like that, it means they're slow and you're not. So I learned all of those little things and when it came to stage and performing After a bad show you're like this is nothing compared to standing in a

On top of a desk and an assembly with suspenders on it. Beautiful. I'm basically picturing like like a African forest gump now. Yep. A hundred percent. Literally like the suspenders and your mom being like slow as a stupid does ga and You can't sit here, our father. You can't sit here.

I haven't accessed that memory for the longest time. There you go. In fact, never. That is so powerful. And most powerful for me. Thank you. Absolutely. You know you've you know what the the happiness you've brought to me, one, you've brought me closer to my friend. But two, and more importantly In your story I noticed you were playing football. I was good at football. But now I see like you you're playing football, the football.

And this is another reason that you now hate football. I'm slowly piecing this together, my friend. But for both of you guys, if you think about this, these are the formative experiences that make us who we are. So here's the deal. And this is a real problem, especially today. A lot of young people watch you be big fans. Yeah. The biggest mistake that a lot of young people make today is they think that the pain that they have must be eliminated.

And the truth is that these experiences and the on the day to day suffering that they're going to inevitably face, that's their teacher and makes them who they actually are. So to the extent that we that we resist the pain in our lives to try to lower the suffering that we face, the worse off we are.

the worse off that we are. The fact is, I asked you about something that was a really bad day for you. Yeah. You turned it into a good day. This was a unambiguously bad day for you. And for me, it was the worst day of my young adult life. Right. And in point of fact, these things made us who we are.

In a very in a fundamental way. This was these were turning points, these were inflections. I realized that day that I didn't actually have to be this person, that it didn't matter. It didn't matter. That that wasn't who I was, was the guy falling off the stage. That wasn't who I was. I I sir here's the deal. It's funny. I was talking to this young guy. I was talking to a I do a lot of talks for young adults. And I was talking to a group of young adults in Washington DC.

Uh they were all working on the on Capitol Hill. And Washington DC is the world's most dysfunctional dating. It's comp it's it's it's a nightmare. In what way? That you know everybody's kind of climbing and they want power and that everybody's jockeying for position is socially dys. And and I'm talking to this group, they're all in their twenties somethings, uh, on on the Senate side. And and I was talking about, you know, you gotta treat your life like a start.

You gotta be an entrepreneur in the business of your own life. Your life is an enterprise. You're the founder. And the number one most entrepreneurial thing that you can do, you know what it is? Fall in love. And and put your heart at risk. Give your heart away.

Right. And I thought it was pretty clever. Anyway, a couple of weeks later I'm on a plane and a kid comes up, a kid, twenty-six, kid compared to me, comes up and he says, Professor Brooks. I said, Yeah. He said, I saw you give that talk on Capitol Hill. I can't get it out of my head. I'm on my way right now to tell a woman that I've been l in love with secretly for two years that I love her because of your speech. And I'm like, it's only a speech.

Oh wow. I don't want to ruin your life. I don't want to ruin your life. Her para hippocampal gyrus about to get flicked pretty hard. So and so I said, Well, you know, let me know how it goes. And I give him my email. You don't hear from him, which is a bad sign. I see him several months later.

a a at a party in DC. I was running a company in those days. He comes up to me and he says, Remember me? And I'm like, Yeah, and I said, Yeah, uh on the plane, right? He said, Yeah. I said, So what happened with that girl? And he said, She shot me down. She didn't just not love me, she introduced me to the guy that she was in love with.

day of my life. And I was very contrite. I said, I'm sorry, I'm not trying to ruin your life and I said, No, no, no, no. I'm here because I wanted to tell you that I w I meant to get in touch and thank you. Hm. And I said, What are you, masochist? Why why do you want to thank me? And he said, because that was the thing I was literally most afraid of in my life. And it happened, and I didn't die.

I didn't die. Did you break no way? Like my mom said. Exactly right. Exactly right. I didn't look I broke my horn, but I didn't break my life. This is the thing. It's so funny because all these things that you break through, you had to you had to stand up to your embarrassment, stand up to your shame. My my first day lecturing when I was a brand new professor, I was nervous. And and I had to give a three hour.

In in front of graduate students. These are this is hardcore. I was at Syracuse and those I had just come to Syracuse, early on very early on in my career actually. And so and I'm giving this three hour lecture and I'm noticing they're very they're kind of laughing at my jokes and they're really all smiley and they were very, very, very pleasant and I thought Why is it that they're so amused by it?

But it went really well. Kind of patted myself on the back. I I had been very nervous. And I walk out of the lecture hall and I'm walking down the hall and I see one of my colleagues coming toward me and he starts laughing. I said, What are you laughing at? And he said, Your fly's down. Oh I had just given a three hour first lecture. And I was trying to impress them.

With my fly down. And a little piece of my like shirt coming out of the fly. Oh, that's perfect comedy. Yeah. Yeah. That's flawless comedy. When it does that little peak thing. Yeah. Yeah. That's Yeah, it's beautiful. So okay. But that's the point. And the whole point was I wasn't nervous anymore for any lecture after that ever.

Yes. Got many HR complaints though. They were like I mean we would like you to zip the fly up and he's like, This is the new me This is the new me. This is Professor Fly. I gotta be me. I found myself, baby. That's my suspenders. But

But this is the thing, but this is what this is what I mean. Because I'cause I uh you know, the thing I I want to be careful of is Um, you you actually taught me this in many ways, but it's like sometimes when you speak to somebody who has mastered something or has a certain mastery of something. they can gloss through it and move through it in a way that sounds correct but then uh sometimes doesn't connect with how people are hearing it. So let's let's take these things step by step because

Um you study happiness. Right. You know what I mean? And you studied it for how long now? Uh I wrote my first book on happiness about twenty five years ago. Right. So you you've really been in the game. But I've been the seven last seven years writing, speaking and teaching full time, nothing else. So So let's let's start with the the the core idea because I I think it's important for us to build from the ground up, understanding you and understanding your work.

The first thing I I realize we need to think about is what is happiness? 'Cause every everyone says. They want to be happy. Everyone America, the pursuit of happiness. Which is not the promise of happiness. No, but the pursuits. Yeah. You know what I mean? The pursuit. So I I I I want to know from you, as somebody who's studied it, how do you define happiness? So first, what is it not? It's not a feeling.

The biggest mistake that we make is misunderstanding emotions. Most people think that happiness is a feeling. But happiness is a feeling kind of like the your Thanksgiving dinner is the smell of your turkey. It's not. The smell of the turkey is evidence of Thanksgiving dinner. And your the feeling of happiness is evidence of actual happiness. Happiness has like your Thanksgiving dinner has three macronutrients.

Three constituent parts that you need to get really good at understanding and changing your habits around. Number one is enjoyment, which is not the same thing as pleasure. If you're pursuing pleasure, you're not going to find happiness, you're going to find rehab. And it's very different understanding the difference between pleasure and enjoyment. Second is satisfaction, which is the joy that you get from an accomplishment after struggle.

And the the accomplishment is not more important than the struggle for satisfaction. And the third is meaning. That's what I'm doing most of my work on for now years. Meaning, the meaning of life. You know, what is the why of your existence? You need to become an elite athlete in enjoying your life, taking satisfaction in your accomplishments and your achievements.

And understanding the why of your existence. Those are your three big jobs. And enjoy it. That's what it comes to. And then a lot of the time you'll get the feeling of happiness. Not all the time. But that's not what you can rely on. So happiness is the byproduct of the actions that you are taking. Yeah. So the feeling of happiness is a byproduct. The happiness itself is the amount of enjoyment, satisfaction, and meaning that you're experiencing in your life. Yeah.

That's kind of like the the the the amount of protein, carbohydrates, and fat that you eat is the amount of food and calories that you're getting. That's what it comes down to. That's how to think about it. And each one of those things is really important. Some people the good news is nobody's great across all these things. I have tests that I give my students to find out where that what in which macronutrient they need work.

I know a lot of people who take tons of satisfaction in what they do because they have a lot of achievements and they've worked hard and they've struggled. Yeah. But they don't know why they're doing it. They have a low sense of meaning. And I know a lot of really big executives, you know, hedge fund managers and private equity people and me people make a ton of dough. People that everyone uh like sort of aspiring to. And they don't enjoy their lives at all.

Because they don't know how to enjoy. And what are they what are they lacking in those instances? So somebody step somebody comes into your world who says, Professor Brooks, I man, I am I'm nailing it. I'm satisfied in in in this realm. You know, I'm I'm I'm doing it. But man, I just uh I just don't feel good. What do what do you find they're missing or why is why is it so difficult?

to experience that happiness if they're missing meaning. So if they're missing meaning, then there will be no reason for what they're doing. So meaning really has three meaning is the most is the heaviest, most philosophical part of it all, but it's the most important of these macronutrients. It's the protein.

It's basically the protein of your happiness as your drive. Yeah. So meaning is is really a combination of being able to answer three questions. Why do things happen the way they do in life? That's coherent.

And some people answer that with religion. And some people answer that with science. I'm both religious and a scientist for both. Some people here's a funny thing. You know people who follow a lot of conspiracy theories. That's very common today. They're going down the rabbit hole, oh you a conspiracy theorist. Generally speaking, the best one I've heard yet. The what? We had Mam Dani trying, uh it was okay. No Mam Dani trying to do it. The Batman voice is a conspiracy theory.

You're a conspiracy theorist. Yeah, that's right. That's like I I'm I'm actually I did I'm I'm I'm auditioning to be the next Batman. I realize it's like it's called Bald Batman. You wear no, you wear the the the that's why I know but the but Bruce Wayne, he has a beautiful hair head of hair. This is true. I know, but not now. It's a new thing. Could change. Yeah. Could change. But okay, so yeah, so you're saying conspiracy theorists conspiracy theorists are looking for coherence.

They're looking for an answer to the question: why do things happen the way that they do? So when I meet somebody who's really down the rabbit hole of weird conspiracy theories, that is a dead giveaway that what they're looking for is coherence because they want meaning, because they want to get happy. That's where I'm gonna actually work with that person.

I'm gonna work for that person in alternative ways. And I'm not gonna say you're an idiot. I'm not gonna say that's not true. I'm not gonna say, you know, go read the paper for God's sake. I'm gonna say Let's work on different ways to understand why things happen the way that they do. I'm gonna rec try to reconnect them with the faith of their youth. I'm gonna try to get them really interested in science.

You know, different nutritious ways to actually understand why things happen the way they do. So it's not erasing their curiosity nor their need to find coherence, but it's finding a healthier balance of those ingredients. It's a redirection. Okay. It's a redirection towards something that will truly bring you a sense of coherence.

While not alienating you from, you know, the people that you're thinking about. So that's number one. It's just the one element. But while you're still on that though, let's talk on on that one element. Does that apply to everything? So can you meet somebody who, for instance, is so religious that they're not having a good time in life? Or can you meet somebody who is

So science based that they're not having a good time in life, or does it only apply to like conspiracy? Well conspiracy theories i tend to be kind of anti social. And so if something that your your sense of coherence is pulling you away from your love relationships, then that's gonna be militating against another one of the elements of meaning, which is significance. Significance is that your life matters to someone.

Your life has to matter to someone. No maybe significant other part. It has to be your spouse, your kids, your parents, your friends, God. Wow. You need to be significant. And when you're doing something with your sense of coherence, like conspiracy theories, that's ruining your relationship. then coherence goes up, but significance goes down and you're defeating the purpose. Mm-hmm.

Those are different elements that have to be in balance. You become an expert in that subject, but alone in it. And if you My mom said this a lot. Nice. Right. Yes. My mom used to say If you love being right, you'll be right alone. It makes so much sense. Certainly unmarried. I've been married thirty-four years. I'm wrong a lot. But I but I guess that's the foundation of all relationship, right? Is is

In fact, all society, funny enough, even if you just keep expanding on it, it becomes the like how much do you care about being right? I mean that's the whole basis of our you know culture of contempt. That's a whole basis of the fact that we can't get along politically, that we have ideological wars, cancel culture, all of it. Is this grievance about having to be right all the time, as opposed to, huh?

I wonder I wonder if somebody actually is saying something interesting to me. Inquiry is not about being right. Inquiry is about learning. But the system isn't designed to reward. Yes. And so when you get the wrong balance of inquiry and activism, it turns the ship over. Yeah, and and that's why I'm saying the system is important though. Because what you just said about like our childhoods. Right.

Something forms you. Right. Something shapes you. Right. And oftentimes it's how the people around you responded to an action that you took. Right. Right. So now because of your suspenders, they respond to you a certain way. Because of the way you sing. You responded to yours because of the way I tripped, they responded to me a certain way. Because of the way you fell, people respond to you a certain way. You respond

When we're living in a world where the systems themselves are rewarding people for one versus the other, you don't get rewarded for compassion online. Let's be honest. No You don't. There's a it's an entirely different scale of reward that you get.

You get rewarded, but you don't get the same scale of reward, the same intensity of reward. Yes. Which is really, really important. You get a slow burn of what you're actually able to have that you have a different kind of impact. You have to You have to to to um become

I guess comfortable with the idea that you're not gonna get the same intensity of reaction. And part of the reason for that, by the way, is the limbic system of the brain has more tissue dedicated to negative emotion than to positive emotion.

And so why is that? Because in the evolutionary environment, in the place to scene, you needed negative emotions more than you needed positive emotions. Negative emotions are an alarm. Yeah, to avoid danger. So fear, anger, disgust, and sadness, those are the four negative emotions. And all good man. He's a professor. He's a professor. I love the idea that Eugene would be in your class like yo this guy. Yo Hey my man, I think you're gonna ace this class.

This guy in the front. By the way, I love your fly. Keep it down. Keep it down. You're a horrible friend. Now he's yours, Arthur. Perfect. Students who are big fans of yours is like I was there that day. I felt threatened. I felt unsafe.

Actually let's w by the way, let's I'm gonna hold that as let's keep going. We're going down to the No no no this is good because it's like a nesting doll of this is like a Metrushka Russian. You figure that this is exactly what it is. Yes, but no no we'll hold that and we'll let's so keep let's move So the negative emotions exist because those are alarm systems for the things that can kill you.

You know, you have sadness so that you will not be rejected by your kin. We're we're in the in the Pleistocene, human Homo sapiens lived in bands of thirty to fifty individuals. Okay. Kin based hierarchical bands of individuals. And and and the Pleistocene starting two hundred and fifty thousand years ago was when we got the modern brain. Our brains are the same.

And so all the weird stuff that we do today is because it's it was suitable to being in b hierarchical kin-based bands of thirty to fifty individuals. It explains almost everything. It explains how genders work together. It explains why we have envy, why we try to climb in hierarchies, why we want to be famous.

All that stuff is is actually explained by this the place to scene brain is what it comes down to. But also that place to scene brain had a lot more space for the negative emotions. Positive emotions are nice to have. Negative emotions keep you alive. And so if you hear a little snap of a twig behind you, your first reaction is not, I bet that's my friend Trevor who's come to say hi. You know, like you j run and ask questions later.

And and you know, you you wanna make sure that you're not gonna be abandoned, you wanna make sure you're not gonna get killed, you wanna make sure you don't ingest poison. That's what disgust is. There's this beautiful little place in the limbic system called the and the insular cortex.

And that little thing is your is your disgust mechanism. And that's all that kept you from ingesting poison before there was like vaccines and antibiotics. It was just a signifier that this thing could kill you. Yeah, yeah. That's why something that smells dead, something that smells rotten, that's why it disgusts you.

And that's why your dog, who's very disgusting, by the way, that's why he licks the floor, because he is actually not gonna be exposed to the same kind of pathogens because of, you know, the the the the constituent parts of his saliva.

That can neutralize some of the germs that you can't. That's why he's like, that's not disgusting. And yet you think that's disgusting and you tell your kids not to lick the floor. Anyway, I digress. The whole point is thank God for negative emotions. They've kept you alive again and again and again and again. But now you want to be in a place where your negative emotions

Are in control? Well you want to manage them so they don't manage you because we're not in the Pleistocene. And that's why we have this great big prefrontal cortex, all this tissue behind the forehead, thirty percent of your brain by weight. That gives you consciousness. Right, your dog doesn't have consciousness. Your dog doesn't know it's alive, your dog doesn't know it's gonna die, your dog doesn't have

future ideas or past ideas. Your dog's just here now. That's why your dog's happier than you are. Oh woah. Because your dog It's why your dog is happier than Your dog is like you're thinking about, well, I gotta do this thing. I gotta I hope I get a I hope my flight's on time tomorrow. And you know, it's like I got this thing. It's oh man, I haven't haven't falling out with somebody I really care about. And what's gonna happen next year, and what if the economy tanks?

And your golden retriever's like, I'm sitting here with Trevor. You're remembering your dog is enjoying. Your dog is here now. Here now. You're not, you're in the future. So does that also mean that your dog can experience a lot more stress and pain because the now can last forever for it?

Well like let's say your your dog's experiencing an adverse experience. Right. Is that thing lasting forever in its mind? Well the limbic system for the dog is pretty the the Homo sapiens and canines have they they they They actually evolved in parallel. Okay. So they have very very similar emotions. So when you think when your dog looks at you with love, do you have a dog? No. I had one. Yeah. And and your dog looked at you with love, right? Yeah. Absolutely. Your dog was feeling love.

Your dog actually gets oxytocin, which is a neuropeptide in the brain, the bonding hormone, the sense of love that you get when you look at your kids and your friends and your your your beloved. Your dog looks at you and you stroke the dog and give your dog eye contact, it gets a 56% bump in oxytocin, just like you. Your cat. Twelve percent more. I knew it. Assholes. I always say this.

Your your dog loves you. Your cat. We shouldn't even say your cat. You should say that can do without you. Hey, let's say the cat you live with. Please, let's stop perpetuating this myth. It is not your cat. It is a cat that lives at your house. Those things do not that is not your cat. There are a few cats that are exceptions. I know some cat owners will be like my cat's nice, that's your cat. It's an outlier. Most cats they're not your cat. Cats are takers.

My man. Yeah, yeah. Anyway, we digress again. So that's so bad, you know, negative emotion is really, really interesting and useful is the whole point. About that. Where were we at? We're talking about it. Meaning was the thing we're talking about. Coherence and significance. Yes. But there's one more. Yeah, what? The most important one. So everybody thinks meaning and purpose are the same, they're not.

They're not the same. Purpose is a subcomponent of meaning. That's your goals and direction and sense of what you're doing with your life. It's the answer to the question, why am I doing what I'm doing? Okay. And if you don't know the answer to the question, why am I doing what I'm doing? You're not gonna have meaning and you're That's why, if you have kids, the one of the most important ways to actually motivate them to do things with more joy is to give them a sense of.

purpose which is goals and direction for a better future. Give me an example of that at like different age levels for a parent, for instance. So let's say let's say it's a five year old, a fifteen year old and a twenty five year old. So a five year old is The way that you motivate a five year old is that you say, If you're a good little boy, Santa Claus is gonna bring you some nice presents.

Okay. You're motivating them to behave in a particular way happily because that's their kind of little kid purpose. Is getting the getting the Christmas morning and getting a bunch of stuff under the tree. You get a little bit older, it's like get good grades in school, you're gonna get get to go to a good university and you're gonna have a better life. When you get a little bit older in life, it's going to be if you actually behave in a particular way, you're gonna meet the love of your life.

And that's really going to complete you. So it's always reward based. It's always are we just like reward? It's kind of goal based. It's kind of getting to a particular goal and making progress toward the goal. So what how we're really wired, which is really interesting, yeah. We think that what we really want is the reward. What we really want is progress toward the reward.

And if we think that we're gonna be in bliss when we get to the reward, we're gonna we suffer from a syndrome called arrival fallacy. It's a funny thing. It's very common that Olympic athletes who win the gold suffer a clinical depression in the two, two months after they win the gold.

Because they've been suffering, suffering and suffering. And they think that all this progress, which was awesome, is actually gonna lead to permanent bliss when they win the gold. And it's just another day. They go back to their hotel, they're like,

You know? Looking at the case. Yeah. With the thing around their neck and it's just another day and they're looking at the rest of their lives when they're no longer winning Olympic gold medals. And it's very, very depressing. So this is a funny thing about dieting is another example.

All diets will make you lose weight. I mean, uh un except for the all candy corn diet or something, right? I mean it's like any sensible diet. You can cut fat, you can cut carbs, you can cut, right? You'll lose weight. And and it's awesome, right, if you're trying to lose weight, because the scale goes down. It's a reward every single day in progress toward the goal. But what what's the reward when you actually hit your target weight? And that's

Never getting to eat what you like ever again for the rest of your life. Congratulations. Damn, that's why diets don't work. They got about an 80% failure rate. And 30% of people who go on strong diets and hit their goal developing an eating disorder because they want to keep making progress. Because progress is everything in life. We're gonna continue this conversation right after this short break.

You know, Eugene, one of the things I've always loved about food is you can travel without going anywhere. Some people book flights, I just walk into Whole Foods Markets. Whole Foods Market is your go-to destination for a flavor tour inspired by regions across the world. One minute I'm thinking about making dinner. The next thing I know, I'm in Italy because I picked up the Cecco Pasta and Real's sauce. The Cecco Pasta.

Then I see Siete Tortillas, San Pellegrino. Now we're in Mexico with sparkling water confidence. Siete Tortillas? And if you don't feel like cooking, well the prepared foods department and whole foods market makes dinner time so easy and banadas. Burritos, soups, lunch or dinner solved. You just follow the yellow signs and suddenly you're on a flavor tour without leaving your postcode. Borritos?

Exactly. Uh if you want snacks, plantain tostones, uh Peruvian potato chips, Philos walking tamales, you're basically touring Latin America through crunch alone. Tamales. And don't forget desserts. Because every good trip ends with something sweet, like tress, leches, cake.

Expand your horizons without expanding your luggage. Tres leches. If you need a weeknight shortcut, you could also head into aisles for three sixty five by Whole Foods Market. Rice, beans, chunky salsas, instant taco nights. Taco. Or check the Frozen Isle for$365 Brand Taquitos at low prices.

Dinner handled. Taquito. What are you doing? Dude, I'm trying to do an ad. I think I can speak Spanish now. What do you mean you think you can speak? You just say the words that I said. I said everything in Spanish. I mean the words are already in Spanish. I commit- Save on regional flavours. This message is a painful With Apple Card. Imagine this, you're at a checkout counter. You're ready to pay when you realize you don't have your wallet. Dun dun.

You could drive all the way back home and you could get it, but you remember that you have your Apple card on your iPhone. So you can tap to pay with Apple Pay. Imagine that. No need to carry a wallet. But you know, one of the things I do like about having my card on my phone is we live in a world where you lose your card and then you don't know where it is. And then you're like, what do I do?

Well, if your phone is connected to your card and your card is connected to your phone, you know what's going on. The best thing about having the Apple card connected to your phone is you know what every transaction is. You know like sometimes you're like, what did I spend this month? The Apple card will show you. One month I had spent an obscene amount of money ordering videos online. Just videos.

They were just videos. What kind of videos? That's not the point. The point is, I knew that I didn't want to order those videos anymore because I'd spent too much money on it. It was videos on the how to not spend money online. I felt like I'd been duped.

Point is Apple showed me what I was spending my money on and I was able to change my spending habits and you can do it too. I earn up to three percent daily cash back on every purchase with my Apple card. That's unlimited daily cash back no matter where I show. Wallet app on your iPhone. Subject to credit approval, AppleCart issued by Goldman Sachs Bank USA, Salt Lake City Branch terms, and more at Applecart.com. Bowser is back.

Everyone calm down the Super Mario Brothers can take care of the King Let's go! On April 1st. Code, pack our. Woo! The gallery. Whoa. He's waiting. Who is this? So some cool dinosaur just shows up and he's now part of the group. Cool. The Super Mario Galaxy movie. Pretty PG. Only beat us here for first. Get tickets now. I think about like um

The conversations I have with my younger brother are always fascinating to me because of how he sees the world. I think he's one of the smartest people I know. And I always tell him at his age, he's way smarter than I ever was, maybe even now, you know? But we we have this conversation about video games. And I said to him,

There's a there's a video online that that I really loved and it was some kid who made this video said, um how you play video games is how you live your life. Right. And I was so intrigued by this because he he did this whole breakdown. He said, Some people play video games to finish the video game. Right. They get in, they try and finish the story as quickly as possible, get to the end, save the princess, you know, w end the story. Thank you very much.

He said some people play video games and then get bored and quit. Some people all everyone has different methods. But he said, But you can learn a lot about yourself because playing a video game, especially in today's game, is like a simulation of how you are. And I realized for myself and I realized for what a good game is. Great games are the ones that Make you feel like you're trying to finish the game, but constantly trick you into doing things along the way, the side quest.

that make you feel like you're actually trying to get to the end. But you get so swept up in these mini moments along the way that you enjoy the game itself. But those are the great games. Yeah, they do it for you. But I've realized they do say it like that, it's progress. They literally write progress. But I've noticed in the games where they don't do that for you If you're not careful, you can and I'd love you to speak to this uh like beyond gaming, but it's like if they don't do it for you.

There's some games where you can literally just go straight to the end as quickly as possible and be done. And I find you can be very depressed as you say, you get then you're like, ah, I don't know about this. I don't like this guy. This this was it. You know? And it was and it was too hard by the way, because you didn't like level up the way you should have. Or there's the the the inverse where's

You spend so much time in the side quests that you don't move towards progress because nothing's pushing you, nothing's propelling you, not you know what I mean? Right. And then what happens is you quit the game. Right. So you play like forty percent of the game. You do everything around getting to the end, but then you don't get to the end'cause the game didn't it's I I forget what they call it, but essentially some games will dole it out in the right amount.

You're moving forward now, you're moving sideways, sideways, side, moving forward, sideways, side. Some go do whatever you want. And it's interesting how that flips. And I wondered how how that applies to life in what you're saying. Because they understand that life is all about making progress toward particular moral goals. People who are all about actually getting to the end. So wh what what's the the best predictor of having a crummy marriage?

Is having a destination wedding. Why? Because your wedding isn't a destination. Your wedding is just like the beginning of a journey. Destination wedding. Destination. My destination is actually You're beginning something with the end. Locking that person down forever. No, there's no there's no destination in your wedding. Elope. Justice of the peace.

I'm Catholic. Don't do that. We're Catholics. We don't do that. Remember that? Priest, go to a priest, go to a priest, go to a priest, go to priest. But there you go. I wanted it in Zulu. Oh yeah, no. This man is ten months Zulu. You don't forget that. Expression that they know it's gonna come out. So so so this is really important, right? You gotta see your wedding day as

a step in progress toward the eternal bliss that actually comes from a a relationship, your soulmate with whom you can actually experience the divine and on whose face you'll be gazing as you take your dying breath. That's marriage. That's poetry. Marriage isn't wedding day. So then do you do you think the worst thing we've done and and I'm not trying to incept you'cause this is what I think, but

I'll tell you what I think and you tell me if you agree. I've often thought one of the worst things that happened to society was a series of movies whether it was kids movies or adult movies, rom coms but that were happily ever after. Like they they ended at the moment where the people met. And I I always wondered what that did to people's brains growing up in a world where they went like, Oh, if you meet the person you love, that's the end.

And then it's like this is it. Like that's right. What what is that Pac Man? I never finished Pac Man. Yeah, but I never I've never seen the end of Pac-Man. I saw junior Pac Man, so I know what they did, but I don't know But there's Junior Pacman? Yeah, junior Pac Man had there was junior Pac Man. Junior Pacman. Yeah, junior Pacman. So I mean baby Pacman. Yeah, like a tiny little Pac Man had a little bow and then the pickety body, but like a tiny little Pacman. So it was a girl Pacman.

Yeah, but there was a boy and a girl. There was a girl and a boy. No, there was Ms. Pacman, but then there was also Junior Pac Man. Junior Pac Man. The whole family. Yeah, Pac Man had I like these family values in video games like this. Yeah, yeah, no, Pac Man did it, bruh. I was like, okay. Yeah, Mario and Luigi did it well.

No, they were brothers, bro. Yeah, they were family members. Oh yeah, they were. They were but my kids my kids are you know, they'd be they'd be like, What are these guys Pac Man? Okay, Elden Ring, fine, we'll bring in Elden Ring. Super Mario Call Call of Duty. We'll go with we got every game covered here. You you tell us the generation. And we've got you. We've got you. We got you. It doesn't matter what it is. But but help help us on like

Yeah, this is a problem. Uh happily ever after actually gives you a distorted understanding of what brings happiness and light. It's the journey. It's the journey. It's the it's w it's walking into the future together with your beloved. It's actually the the the the the process of actually Lewis and Clark looking for and going down the Missouri River as they're going toward the Pacific Ocean. It's not the Pacific Ocean. You just have to have there's a there's a really great word in Spanish.

That's a metaphoric word. It's a sailing word. It's called rumbo. Rumbo. Rumbo. El rumbo. El rumbo. El rumbo. El rumbo is the the word in English is rum line, R-H-U-M-line. But it's not a metaphor that we use typically. That is the the the the destination that's a Euclidean straight line from here to there. That's like the the piece of yarn at the with a pin at the end.

Flying like the what do they call it? Straight as the crow fly? As the crow as the crow flies, exactly right. So and and and that's that's an important concept because you say I want my life to have El rumbo. I want yo quiero que mi vida tenga un rumbo. Okay. And what that means basically is I want to have a destination. I want to have a I want to have a uh something that is the arrival so that I can make progress. The point is not that you're gonna be on this line the whole time.

The point is that you gotta you have to have it, but because you can make you can't make the journey without it. Otherwise you're gonna be like a you know what's so depressing about cruising? Uh there's a cruise ship near I don't want that.

I don't want to get in a boat and just go in circles. Okay. Because that doesn't feel like you're making progress. No, now you're a roomba. Very different. Nice. Not going in one straight line. Yes. That little that little have you seen how that thing moves? You don't want your life like that. Didn't they just go bankrupt?

Didn't the company go back? I wouldn't be shocked because I mean have you seen that these kind of reviews. It's a it's a metaphor of unhappiness. So what do you want? So that's so that's interesting. You you you want to be in a place where I mean this is this requires a total rewiring of the brain though. Like how I I I even think about myself. I I don't know how you'd think about it for yourself. But I I think a lot of people would relate to this idea of going, wait, wait, wait, wait.

But Professor Brooks, I've been told. Get the job and then life right. Look, get the grades. Get the grades and then I'm gonna get the job. Like the grades is the job. And then get the house? Get the job. Right. You're gonna be then you get the house, you're gonna be happy. Get the person you live in the house with, you're good. You get the marriage. You get the marriage. It's like peop guys even say, like if you marry me, you'll make me happy for the rest of my life.

That's what they say, and I got data on that. It doesn't matter what you say on your wedding day, it matters what you say every day after that. So what should you say to somebody not If you marry me then Let's go on a journey together. Help complete me. Because together we'll wire our batteries together. We'll create an antenna to God. Yeah. Teach me something. That's let's work beautifully. Let's uh let's walk through life together. Yeah. Let's walk I want to walk through life together.

Damn, that's different. Yeah, it's a completely different perspective, but it actually makes perfect sense and people kind of know that that's the case. And and if you don't do that, by the way, there's a easy neurobiology on why this happens. We think that if we get that thing, that burst of of positive emotion, and there's this funny little part of the brain called the ventral tegmental area. When you tap it, it gives you this.

The sense of euphoria. And so you can get it from, you know, your girlfriend says, I love you or you can get it from a huge bump of cocaine. We have very thrifty brains. It's the same thing. What a broad spectrum. Yeah, totally. And and it gives you the sense of immediate abulliance, joy, right? And we think that we get that thing that we really, really want, that the ventral tegmental area is gonna get tapped over and over and over again. But let me tell ya.

If you do something that taps your ventral tegmental area continuously, you're gonna wind up in a rehab. You're in drugs. Yep. You're gonna, you're gonna, you're an addict. I mean that's exactly tapped that many times? We're not designed to feel emotion continuously. Yeah. Remember, emotions are an alarm. That there's something good for you or something bad for you that you should uh you should approach or avoid.

The the reptilian part of your brain, the back of your head, is sensing stuff, sensing stuff, sensing stuff. That sends data to the limbic system, which is between two and forty billion years old, old. It it predates Homo sapiens. And that's what creates emotions. Emotions are reactions, a universal language to you, that there's something out there that there's a threat or an opportunity.

And the opportunities give you positive emotion and then and the threats out there give you negative emotion. And they clear really quickly so you're ready for the next thing. So should we be in nothing states? No, no, no, no. We should actually say understand our emotions. Chase them as if we're gonna keep them forever. For example, if you're looking for continuous positive emotion on the basic basis of what you have or experience.

You get on what we call the hedonic treadmill. Ah yes. You've heard about it. Hedonic adaptation. Yeah, hedonic adaptation, which is basically I get the I get the you know, the person that I love, I get the money, I get the uh the millionth Instagram follower, whatever my thing is. And you're just running, running, running, running, running, and that treadmill starts speeding up until it's it's going with terrifying speed. And then you're afraid to step off it because you're gonna face plant.

If you try to step off a speeding treadmill. Yeah. And that's no way to live. And you're hedonically adapting, which is called homeostasis. Where the brain is adapting emotionally back to the baseline state. So you're ready for the next set of circumstances. One of the best pieces of advice I ever received in my life came from uh my best friend's dad when we were still in school and they had grown to do well for themselves. They didn't gr you know, he didn't grow up doing well and so

He had a a nice car, they had a very decent house, but it wasn't like super wealthy, wasn't a mansion or anything. But I remember speaking to him once and I said, um I asked him, I was like, Yo, Bob Nzele, can I ask you a question?

How much money do I need to earn to be like happy and and to be set and to be good? What did he tell you? And he said to me, he said, Yes, Trevor. He said, Can I tell you something? He said, I know some people and this was I mean now twenty years ago, he said, I know some people who earn

And he said, like said, I know some people who earn five thousand rand a month, five hundred dollars, let's say, or two fifty, whatever. And he's like, And I know some people who earn fifty thousand rand a month. I was like fifty thousand rand a month, that's impossible. Субтитры сделал DimaTorzok No one can run that karma. And he's like, no. Said, let me tell you now. Said, I know more of my friends who earn the five, ten thousand rand a month who are happy.

than I do the ones who earn the fifty thousand. He said, because with them They spend that money and more every month, then get depressed that they only have it and then they try and move it to sixty. Then they spend sixty, then they move it to seventy, then they spend seventy. Then he said, I've watched them move up that ladder. And and he said he genuinely and I'm I'm like sixteen years old and he said to me, I know it seems like a myth, but there is no number.

He said, I've seen everyone in my life. He said there just there is no number. And I was like, I I just I can't believe anyone wouldn't be happy with fifty thousand rand a month. My brain is like that's not possible. And the same thing is true with power, and the same thing is true with pleasure, and the same thing is true with fame. Fame is the worst, by the way. Fame is the only one of life's rewards that you can only ever be happy in spite of never because of.

But you wanna be famous. Everybody wants to be famous because fame is rising in the hierarchy of your band of thirty to fifty individuals where more people are thinking about you than you're thinking about because you'll get more you're more likely to survive, get your caloric needs met, and get lots of mate. The trouble is that we can't accommodate that tendency to a world in which we can actually be famous in front of millions of people.

That will make you literally insane. Okay. It will make you literally insane unless you're very self-governing, unless you're really self-managing. And you know tons of people in show business that are pretty nuts.

They're pretty nuts'cause they're on this treadmill of more and more and more and I can't have enough. And it's like drinking seawater. The more that I drink, the the thirtier I'm gonna get. The more dehydrated they get. Exactly right. It's it's it's also it also does this thing to you where

You know, when you think about like the fame of it all and how powerful it is, I've often thought one of the most genius things that TikTok did that I don't think any other social media platform ever did, but I I I I I watched it on TikTok. TikTok allows everyone to go viral. Mm-hmm.

If you look at old social media, there was there was sort of like the hierarchy that existed in old media moved into it. So on Instagram it was still like, oh, the most video, the most watch is the Kardashian, then there's this actor and this is the you know what I mean? It was very difficult to just be Random. Random. Right. And have no no no. TikTok. Go to people's accounts.

Watch how there's one video almost everyone has that is an outlier that's a blip in their world. And then watch how their usage and posting exponentially jumps off the left. This is Vegas. It works it works the brain in the same way. So Las Vegas? Yeah. So

The the the way to get rich is to work really hard and get a good education and and and be responsible and show up and and create value and create some more value and and then and then dot dot dot thirty or forty years later you got a bunch of money. Or go to a casino and get and get a hit. And so the result is I want the easy way. Play the line chunk. Yeah. Right. Roulette, that's TikTok. That's how the algorithm works. I'm gonna get a hit. I'm gonna hit fast.

They give you one and then. Your mom and they give you one and I've watched people never been on TikTok. I've watched people like so y crazy stor th th this is the random thing, thank God for me. My friend signed up to TikTok for me when it first came out. I I was like, I can't keep up anymore. And he was like, No, no, no, I'll just do it for you because you don't want to lose your account. It's gonna be the biggest thing. He was right. And um

Because of because he was on it for me. He was just using it and he lived in like West Virginia and all the content was to him. And so till this day our algorithm the algorithm is not like completely correct. And it didn't hook me. Right. So I I get to enjoy TikTok as a pop but I've a bystander. I've literally never been on TikTok. For more than more than six minutes, seven minutes? I deleted them because of that. So I had to put as many inconveniences any of them could be.

Twitter? Twitter could get me like all day every day. Really? Twitter? Woo. No, no, no, no. News news from here, information, information. Did you know this about that? Did you know the yet political? Any information. It's it's got you.

And then Instagram. Ah, got you, got you, got you. It doesn't matter what got got you, got you, got you, got you. I took the apps off your phone. Yeah, I I deleted them. And then now what I do is I log in on a browser which is painful. Right. It doesn't render correctly. Yeah, yeah. The images are off. Sometimes it doesn't load.

Just that that block You're trying to actually increase the transaction cost. Yeah, that's that's all I do, genuinely. Because I I don't I don't believe I've tried many times to go like, I can handle this. I even put a block on my phone five like ten minutes, twenty minutes. I was like, I got this. And then my phone would be like, you've reached your limit. And then I'll be shut up phone. Right. And I'll just go back in. One good way to do this, by the way, is put your phone on black and white.

Because it'll actually make your brain work differently as you interact with social media. Like you when you change the color scale, grayscale on the phone. Actually that actually works. That actually wait, how do how does that work? So it's basically like drinking three, two beers.

I don't know what that means. That means three point two percent alcohol. Oh, okay, got it. Right. And you'll be like bloated and peeing and and and you'll be like, I'm gonna stop drinking beer. It just doesn't have enough alcohol in it to And to keep you buzzing. Yeah, yeah. To keep you buzzing, you have to do something that's way beyond your level of boredom.

And so my oldest son, for example, has I mean, m my two I have three kids, twenty seven, twenty-five and twenty two. My twenty five and twenty two year old they're in they're in in the military. Yeah. So no I mean they're not they're not active on social media. They can't be. My oldest son, he figured out that it wasn't gonna be good for his life. So he put it

No Marines. That was not gonna be good for his life. Social media or the military. No, no, no, no. My oldest son, who isn't in the military, he put grayscale on his phone for social media a long time ago, and he's never been addicted. He's never been addicted. So there's a your brain interacts with visually with social media and the stimuli with social media in a lot of ways. So um anything that you get addicted to is is involving dope.

You know, dopamine is the is the neuromodulator of liking, learning, wanting, craving. And we have it because we need to learn. We need to be more effective as a species. So when something comes along, you get a real reward from it, it's like and the next time you think about it, you get a minor reward, which will send you in search of doing that thing again.

But if it's just like it was the day before, it's not gonna be as much and you wanna get a little bit more spritz of dopamine from the locus ceruleus to go in your brain, so you gotta get more of. Fuel injected to the engine. Is how this works, right? Yeah. And the stimulus, the more in visually stimulating something actually is, the more beautiful, the more animated it is, the more that it looks kind of like real life, the more dopamine you get.

Is what it comes down to. So my son, my oldest son, very wise, he just gets less dopamine from this thing. And since he's getting less dopamine from it, it's less rewarding. And so he does it less. You drinking things. Were you always happy? I'm not happy at all. Oh. That's why I study happiness. Oh, well, there we go, folks. Now we get into the crux of it. Tell us more. I'm much happier than I used to be because I study it.

Because knowledge is power. Were you like before? Well, I mean like w where do we meet you now in life and where were you before? So I I left a c I did a lot of different things in my career. I was a professional classical musician. I was a academic. I I ran a company for a long time. I was a CEO for a long time. And I left and came back to academia because I wasn't happy and I realized I needed to go back to my roots as a behavioral scientist.

Because I needed to sort some stuff out. What were you what were you when help me understand what made you realize you weren't happy? What were you not happy about? Um so how did you know you were unhappy? What were you experiencing? Um from day to day my life felt gray and I didn't feel like I was making progress toward any metaphysical goals. I felt like my relationships were suffering.

I had a lot of sort of anhedonia, which is another way of saying that I didn't really feel very much pleasure. And that nothing nothing delighted. You know, nothing delighted me. And my wife, who's been with me for decades. Yeah, thirty four years, you said. Yeah. And she said, uh, you why don't you use your PhD for something useful? Hilarious. That's a good part of it. And I said, Like what? And she said, Study yourself.

You know, heal thyself. And and so and so I actually I went on a I'm on a pilgrimage. I I retired. I mean I stepped away, quit my job. How old were you at the time? Fifty five. Okay. And I'd been running this think tank, the big nonprofit think tank in Washington, DC for almost eleven years. Great job. Great job. But I was v and it had nothing to do with the job, but I was just empty, man. I was spent. Part of it was that I was

You know, I didn't sleep very well, and I was I was working all the time, and I worked 80 hours a week. I missed a lot of my childhood, and I was unhappy, and so I did a pilgrim. Which I recommend to everybody, by the way. When you don't know what to do, go for a really long walk. I did that. Did you? Which you do. Which one? You walked for a year. No no no he just went away. He just disappeared from where we all knew him. Went and lived by the beach. It was just gone from everyone's lives.

Yeah, yeah. So I I walked the community of Santiago, which is across northern Spain. Oh, you did like the actual pilgrimage, like walk walk pilgrimage. Yeah, that's what Catholics have been doing for one thousand one hundred years. How long is this walk?

It depends on how long you do. I wanted to do the whole thirty three days, which is eight hundred K. Yeah. And my wife's like, No. So we did what she was able to what was willing to put up with, which was the last hundred and sixty kilometers. Oh, that's a lot to put up with. A lot of blisters. You know, and you walk yourself into a vulnerable state, you walk yourself into weaknesses. You gotta be weak if you're gonna find the truth.

I mean that's why St. Paul said when I'm weak, then I'm strong. You can't connect with anybody. We talked, we started this whole conversation talking about embarrassment, shame, suffering. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Only then, I mean, it's like here here's the thing. You guys told these stories, and this is when the audience is like, I'm like Eugene and Trevor because that's how people actually connect with you. And that's how you connect with yourself.

is by beating yourself down. Then when the aperture is open to actually find the truth. And uh and so I had a complete by the end of the by the end of the walk, I had a completely new life mission, which was I was gonna spend the rest of my life

lifting people up and bringing them together and bonds of happiness and love using science and ideas. Do you have a memory of what your thoughts were in the first few miles versus the last few miles? The first few miles were uh you know, uh uh my feet hurt, um This is boring. It's too hot. What am I doing? Maybe this was a mistake.

And only when I walked myself into a kind of a submission to it, when I beat myself into a kind of a submission, which is what a pilgrimage is all about. And life is a pilgrimage. It's also a metaphor. You know, you enter into Santiago de Compostelo, which is this city in northern Spain, where you end up with a cathedral, which is this medieval cathedral where where Saint James, the brother of St. John, is

Where his remains are. And uh, and and that's where you're supposed to get this sort of sacred knowledge. But that's a metaphor for heaven. Ca'cause that's what life is supposed to be for many for anybody in in Abrahamic religions for sure and and many of the karmic religions as well is the whole idea of being reunited with the Godhead. Yeah. Being reunited with the divine. That's the only see, here's the thing.

For a lot of religious people, evidence of the divine is that you crave the divine and can't get it off. Yeah. is that you really believe that there's heaven, but you can't get it on earth and the harder you try, the further away you get from it. And the day you see it you won't be able to tell anyone about it. And then it'll be just for you.'Cause you can't die and go to heaven and come back again and say it was nice. And that's the metaphor of this m of this

of this yeah, I'm I'm walking to the cathedral, I'm walking to the cathedral, I'm walking to the cathedral. And I'm when you actually put people have been saying for a thousand years that they're they're blessed with sacred knowledge. And so what what what were some of your thoughts towards the end of it now as you It was becoming clearer. It was becoming clearer. It's like the clouds were

Lifting a little bit. And and and was your wife on the walk with you? Yeah. Did her life change? Because uh it doesn't sound like she was on the same quote unquote journey that you were. She seems like she was a little bit more clear. She's an adroit. She's an adept. She's a spiritual adept. Okay. So yeah, yeah, for sure. For sure. And and she didn't have the same issues. I mean, my wife like so so the way that you measure happiness with self-evaluated happiness is called cantral ladder.

One to ten or zero to ten, where zero is the unhappiest person you've ever met, the worst SOB, the person who's just miserable. Yeah. And ten is this. annoyingly happy person that you know, right? Joseph OPO. And and and and your number is all things considered at this point in your life m where you've more like not right now because you slept poorly last night or you got a fight with your girlfriend or whatever.

It's more or less in your life what your number is. That's incredibly stable and accurate, it turns. And my wife's a nine and I was always like a three and a half. Wow. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, that's right. And I and I was doing, you know, on my work, I was doing all kinds of cool, kind of interesting things and trying to create value and succeeding in my career and the whole thing. And my wife said

Why did you become a behavioral scientist? Why? And I said, well, I want to, I guess, make life better for other people. Start with you. Start with yourself. Because you're not gonna lift other people up unless you actually start to get your mind around this. And so that was the that was it. I did a pilgrimage and

And then I le I I I left my old work and I I I d this is what I do now. I get look I we we get to talk about this in front of millions of people. Yeah, but why I'm I'm fascinated by how you came to that conclusion. I'll and I'll tell you why. I've met many men who have been CEOs and have run companies and have been in powerful positions and oftentimes when they hit that brick wall, oftentimes when their world turns gray.

They don't have turn to something that's more spiritually spiritually fulfilling. They just search to more. Right. Yeah. You know, they just look they turn to more. They go, Maybe I should merge my company. Maybe I need to buy a bigger company. Maybe I need to

Find s so I I wanna know what it was that you bumped into and maybe it was just your wife telling you, but like what was it that made you go, Oh no, this hedonic treadmill is not taking me anywhere. So It it was a realization that I guess I can explain best with a metaphor, which is that um I used to go to Taiwan a lot for work.

for when I was running this think tank. Is the food as good as they say? The food's great. Okay. Yeah. Food's great. I mean, uh the people are awesome. Every single person you get a like a taxi driver gives you the business card and it says CEO. Because everyone is a CEO. I love it. Oh, it's really entrepreneurial. It's phenomenal.

But the every time I would go, politicians and leaders and CEOs would tell me every time I was in Taiwan, before you leave, you gotta go see the National Palace meeting. Which is the world's greatest collection of Chinese art and artifacts in the world. It was spirited across the Taiwan Straits during the revolution. And it it would take you.

Weeks to see the entire collection. You can't see the whole thing. And I never had time. And I know perfectly, I've been in a lot of museums in my life, that if you've only got an hour, then you're gonna the only thing you're gonna remember is the snack bar. Yeah. Just breeze through it. Like the Velcro. Right. So finally, um, I I knew I this was never gonna happen unless I took matters into my own And I hired a guy.

I had two hours and I hired a guide and said, here's what I want you to do. I want you to teach me in depth about ten things in this museum. Ten things. I prom I promise I'm going someplace with this. No, no, I what do you mean? I'm with you. Ten things. And I want to know the history and the providence and the philosophy, and I want to know about the artist. And this is stuff from 8,000 years ago until the present. And it was phenomenal.

So I'm standing in front of this two ton block of jade that had been carved into a Chinese village. And I said Even if I had never left the United States, just looking at this, I would say, this looks Chinese. Right? Why does this look Chinese? And he said, that's because of the philosophy of art in China. I said, oh, tell me more. And he said,

He said, L he answered my question with a question. It was very Eastern. He said, When you as a westerner think of a work of art yet to be started, what image pops into your head? And I said An empty canvas. Yeah. Yeah, painting. He said that's because you think of things as starting from nothing and through your own initiative coming into existence.

He said, Okay. He said, I think about a work of art not being started as an uncut boulder of jade where the the the sculpture is inside it and I have to take everything away until I find it. And he said, and now here's the important part. He said that's also the difference in philosophy between East and West. You think that if you're gonna have enough, add more, add more, add more, add more, add more, then it's gonna be perfect. But by the time you're 45 years old, if you're remotely successful,

More brush strokes means a denser, darker canvas and you're not it's not getting better. It's getting uglier. But you think more more paint, more paint. You're sloshing paint on, you're getting a boat at seventy five or whatever. And you're not getting happier. He said, We understand that the job on your last day is to chip away the last piece of jade when it's And that means That we chip away, we take away, we're subtracting. He said, that's the difference. And I thought, oh.

That's what I was thinking about on that Camino. That's what I was thinking about that Camino. What do I need to chip away? I've been adding brushstrokes and adding brushstrokes and my canvas is not getting more beautiful. I need a different metaphor. It's about sharing and giving in the city. So what do I need to do? I need Chimp away. So I start chimpin away. Start chimpin away.

It's about giving and not taking. Yeah. It is you know, thinking and and now I don't have a a bucket list on my birthday. I have a reverse bucket list on my birthday. Like what am I gonna stop doing this year? What are the relationships that don't serve me? What are the possessions that are talking about? You're getting you taking things out of the bucket totally. Throwing things reverse bucket list. Like, you know, my last birthday, you know.

actually my my on my sixtieth birthday, which was in twenty twenty four, right? It was in the middle of an election year. And I'm like, okay, what do I need to chip away? And you know what it was? It's my political opinion. I needed more political opinions because I needed fewer political opinions because I need more friends. Right. And I was adjudicating friendships on the basis of my political opinions.

A lot of people are. Like, no, no. And so I wrote down my strongest eight political opinions and I crossed them out. Not because I think they're wrong. They might be wrong. I I for sure I believe things that are wrong. But I'm not gonna know which until I'm hanging out with people who disagree with me, as friends. Mm. It changed my life.

Yeah, that's that's something we spoke to uh Robert Putnam about on the show. Still one of my favorite human beings. No, really? Yeah, I feel like he's wonderful. He's one of my favorite human beings because of how he synthesized what's lacking in humanity today. And it's that we think that good politics creates good relationships in society. And he was like, no, the good relationships in society is what creates good politics.

And so we live in a world now where we go we don't agree, so we don't spend time and if we get if I get my politics good enough and I get my worldview good enough, we will all come together and it's like, No, no, no. If we all find ways to come together, not around the politics

The politics starts to build itself in the most meaningful, beautiful ways, which is which is counter to how people think. And it's it's beautiful that you said it that way. If relationships are downstream from politics, you're gonna be Yeah. If uh if politics is downstream from relationships. And it's funny because I've actually seen and participated in these studies where when you when you bring people who are really diametrically opposed politically together, like

Bernie Sanders voters and Donald Trump voters. Which actually they have kind of a lot in common. But anyway, they're you and you and you say, Okay, you're gonna talk about politics, there's like daggers drawn, right? Yelling. But if you tell'em, you're gonna talk about politics, but first you gotta talk to each other about your kids. You gotta tell each other about your kids.

And they're laughing and they're sharing c stories about the people that they love the most. And if they have both have teenagers, it's like you have a common enemy. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it's just um and they and then they talk about politics and this like they they don't Why? Because there's no way to get to hate if you start with love. And that's the point. That's Bob Putnam's point. I think we've placed such a

I think from the conversation that we're having now and realizing what you're saying, we've placed such little value on community and the people that we have around us, right? And we we don't have a giving spirit when it comes to opinions and what the likes of other people are. For example, I hate pickleball. But there's these two friends of mine that I can't shake off. I love pickleball.

But I've realized relationship ender. Yes, but uh Is that you? Are you the pickleball guy? I wasn't gonna name names and out people. One of them is at this table and it's not and it's not me. But I realized that the first time I watched them playing pickleball I was like oh this is boring this sucks The second time I went, I was like, they look so happy doing this.

And the third time I saw them growing within the game that they were playing. From the first time that I'd seen them, which is three games ago, you know? And I thought to myself, if I'm able to take myself away from what I think is entertaining and watch others who I care about being entertained,

That makes me happy. Yeah. It was almost like being there and I started enjoying the snacks there. I enjoyed the little walkabouts there. I enjoyed the people that worked there and overhearing conversations. Then I realized it wasn't just about seeing them happy. It was Once I realized that they were happy, I could go out and find my own happiness. That's crazy. And I end up with happy friends in the car. What you did was you stopped doing this and you started doing this. So, so...

There's the the you you're two people. Eugene is two people. There's Myself, Eugene. Mm-hmm. Looking at yourself. And there's our father. There's there's suspenders. So there's I don't expect that from you. Sorry. Turtle feet yeah. And there's eye self, Eugene, which is looking out, looking outward. And and it is funny because you know the the most

popular class on most college campuses. You know what it is? Astronomy 101. Why? Exactly. Why? Finally I ask a student, why do you are your cause they're like English majors, communications majors, they're not astronomers. They're not physicists. And you say, Why do you love this so much? And this girl says, Well, you know, I don't know. But on Thursday morning, I got my astronomy class at nine o'clock, and I go in, I'm super stressed out because.

'Cause I had a big argument with my mom and I think I'm gonna break up with my boyfriend because I got a B, which at Harvard is like the end of the world. And and and she says, and I sit in that class for an hour and a half and I come out and I'm a speck on a speck on a speck. That's the eye self. It's looking outward, looking outward, looking outward. That's the reason that's meing out and out and out. Standing in awe, watching people who are enjoying themselves, serving other people.

worshipping God, being in nature. Listening to the works of Johann Sebastian Bach, whatever your thing is, that's the eye self. Looking in the mirror, notifications on social media, pure torture. I had been there three times to tell you the truth, Arthur. Three times. And I didn't realize that they had ginger ale. While I when I was the happiest yesterday about what they were doing and what we were gonna do afterwards, which was in my bucket list forever, I discovered in that fridge

That they had ginger ale. Do you love ginger ale? Love ginger ale. But you really but you couldn't have seen it before because you were focused on how much you didn't like pickleball. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And yesterday I saw it. Yeah, yeah. And you looked out and saw something beautiful, which is people that you love. doing something that they truly enjoyed.

And love is the basis of happiness and enjoyment is a macronutrient of happiness. And when you witness that, it changed your life, it changed your perspective. It wasn't a pickleball. So how do we find this balance because uh pickleball by the way was invented in my city where I grew up.

You grew up in Washington? I grew up in Seattle, Washington. Yeah. Wow, look at that. Yeah, yeah. I grew up Seattle, Washington. And when I wasn't then about like seventies and eighties, people were playing pickleball. It was like a local thing. Yeah. Now everybody's playing pickleball. Yeah, no as fast as well. I don't know. What I know is old age homes. Old age homes invented it as a as a low risk sport. Yeah, exactly right. Actually we wouldn't wipe out your knees.

or something. Yep. No one said anything about your wrists. I used to go to the only Starbucks in those days. I used to walk to the only state. Oh, because that's the capital of it, right? That was the place I can't do. I lived I w I I grew up on Queen Anne Hill and I would go over to the top of Queen Anne Hill and down to the the Pipe Place Market.

This is back when it w so this is when it was like Boeing town, basically is when you were when you were growing up there. This is when Boeing ran the town. Warehouser and Boeing. I don't know what Warehouser is. Warehouser is uh is uh logging. I did not know that. It's an extractive industry. And so low sort of low low education high skill was Warehouser, high education high skill was bowling when I grew up. My dad taught it at local college.

So the technology up there in Lumberjacks are down there. My dad had a PhD in biostat. Yeah. And your mom taught? My my mother uh was an artist. Was a artist of like s like A c minor acclaim in the Pacific Northwest. What a beautiful combination. Yeah. Right? The arts and the sciences. Yeah, no, it really is. They were wonderful people. And you know it's wonderful people. You you're just saying that I this is just my

Anecdotal, amateur, no no science based research, nothing brain. I feel like I have noticed a decrease over the years in people And maybe this is socioeconomic, maybe whatever it is, but I've noticed a decrease just from my perspective. A disclaimer, disclaimer. In the amount of people who are with somebody who's like from a completely different discipline to them. Do you know what I mean? I feel like a a previous generation was like, my dad was a scientist, my mum was an artist.

Uh my dad was a this, my mum was a that, my dad was a and then like these days, people like we're accountants, we're lawyers. I know that's called homogamy. Homogamy is a really is a very is a it's a a phenomenon that's growing in prevalence where people are. Oh totally. Totally, completely. And and by the way, it's socioeconomic too.

Which is a real problem. Yeah, that's what I that's what I like. It's like th they go to college and th they meet they marry people from other fancy colleges that do the same thing that they do. Right. And the and you know that's just

Wow. I mean uh great, fall in love with whoever you want, right? But it's Yeah, but meet more people that you can't fall in love with. But there's another problem in here. There's another isn't a like a neurochemical problem. Okay. Here's the here's the the wrinkle in this. And this this is exacerbated by the way by dating it. Dating apps allow you to curate the relationships, curate the people that you meet on the basis of your comp uh uh your compatibility.

So you say, I want somebody who, you know, is votes like I do, and somebody who likes the same kind of music that I do, and somebody who thinks that, you know, Austin, Texas is really awesome, and somebody who likes to eat sriracha. I don't know, whatever. You want to date yourself. And and that's not hot. It turns out that what's most hot is a baseline of compatibility and tons of complementary.

And you don't find Terry. You don't find it on on on most apps. Some apps are getting much better about this because they're trying to not maximize time in app. They're trying to maximize time in person, which is really important. But there's this whole literature on this. There's these This uh physiology experiments where do you have you ever heard about the t-shirt sniffing c uh Oh yeah. That's one of my favorite experiments of all time. Yeah, yeah. So these are

Did you it is one of my favorite experiments of all time. Eugene, so what so Trevor and I'll tell you about the t shirts. Yes, yes, please. No, you you go, you go. Because you know the I'm sure you you won't mess up the details. I I think I know all of them, but I you can go either. It's a mid nineties thing. So and what the the the the researchers did was they they they used they have an experiment with undergraduates because that they'll do anything twenty bucks.

And uh and they had guys who would wear these t shirts around for forty eight hours. But no deodorant and no conorant. Nothing. They would do the thing. They place sports or walk around and just go to class, whatever. Then they took their t shirts off and they put'em in shoe boxes and drilled holes in the shoe boxes.

And they gave them to random women who didn't know the guys necessarily, who then there was no identifying marks on the boxes, and they would sniff the t-shirts through the holes. And then they had to rate them on the hotness of the guy. And it turns out that the hotness was inversely correlated to the similarity genetically of the men and the women. No. And the reason.

So the more different somebody is from you genetically, the hotter you find their smell. Because the olfactory bulb in the brain picks up what's called the major histocompatibility complex, which is a measurement of how much genetic uh or or how much um um how how resistant you're gonna be to diseases. You want people somebody really different than you that you have kids with. You're getting the best kids get a better repertoire of defenses. Right.

And that's how you sense it. One of the ways that you sense it. That's why you should never pick your your that that you should you should never pick your own perfume. Women should never pick their own perfume. Because if women pick their own perfume, they like something, right, that smells like that smells attractive to them, which is like their boyfriend. And their boyfriend smells it and says, that smells like my sister.

Always let your beloved sh pick your boy pick your perfume. Because you you're trying to smell good for them, not for yourself. But what you're doing is you're trying to smell good for them. So you pick something that smells delicious to you, and something that smells delicious to you, you've already

You've already picked that person on the basis of your olfactory bulb because that person is right for you. That a b a huge amount of attraction comes from smell. Like I met my wife and I'm like, I don't know, it's like It's like cantaloupe on an August afternoon. Hey. It's just like I can't get enough of it. I'm in thirty-four years in, I can't get enough of my wife's smell. Can't get enough of it.

Because it doesn't smell like me. Yeah. It's it it is the right cut Is it is it true and I uh uh correct me if I'm misremembering this in the study. I also remembered that they um showed the people pictures of the guys. Yeah. So they give you the box. Or you sniff. And then you go rate from one to ten. But then they would also give them a picture of guys and go rate them from one to ten. And the numbers that they chose were almost exactly like so the guys they gave a seven

was the picture they gave a seven, the guys that gave a three was the picture they gave a three. And people were like, how is this So Love is Blind is great as long as there's like holes in the wall that you can sniff through. Because you're it's basically you're gonna you're gonna get a lot of the same information.

So now let going back to sort of what you were saying earlier about us finding this balance. You know, you talk about your wife, you talk about your relationship, but you know, it applies to kids, families, societies, etcetera. in danger of living, you know, when you talk about East versus West, are we in danger of living in a world where we are So encouraged to pursue individualism.

that we then end up losing happiness. Like is there an extreme that you can go to where it's like your rights, your freedom of everything, your house, your car, your swimming pool, your you know what I mean? Like For sure. Absolutely for sure. And this is the balance that we're trying to get. This is like the

dark side of the Enlightenment in its way. I mean the Enlightenment's phenomenal. It's great. You know, we we've gone from might makes right to trying to persuade each other, rule of law, markets, individuality. democracy, all this good stuff that we count on. But the other truth about this is this individuality, it it makes us into islands. And that's something that we have to it's it's it's something that we have to be aware of and be taking care of in our own lives.

Super ultra my my my favorite my favorite philosopher is Ralph Waldo Emerson. Okay. Have you ever read Self Reliance? By Ralph Waldo Emerson. I don't know that I have it's just like the sturdy lad who always does it on his own, who farms it, who mines it, and who always lands on his feet like a cat. That's the stuff that I want. I mean, I bailed out of my hometown when I was a kid, never came back.

It's me, man. It's me against the world. That's not the secret to happiness. It just isn't. And I have to be really, really aware of that all the time. I have to be clear on the fact that my impulse is toward individuation, toward radical individualism. I I get it. I'm I'm I'm an American by birth. You guys are Americans by choice. No, we're not. We're South Africans. All the way, baby. Yeah. I will notice that we're in New York. New York doesn't count.

Trevor Nelly just said that New York's not part of America. Anyway the New York said New York's not part of America. You can't that one you can't get me on. New New York will protect me. They'll be like, Yeah, what you gonna do about it, Brooks? No, no, no, no. So so but this is important because like like a lot of people watching us are are really, really individualistic. But the point is that you can't you can't actually find love by becoming more and more isolated. Yeah.

And that means that there's so many things that we have a tendency to do that we actually have to self govern, that we actually have to manage. You have to walk back from I mean, look, there's many tendencies that everybody knows about. I wanna, you know, go get drunk because it's awesome. Yeah. But I'm like

Because it's not the right thing to do. But that's like an obvious one. But it's sort of obvious, not obvious to everybody. I mean that's the pursuit of pleasure is really deleterious, as it turns out. People do all kinds of things and they think if I get it goes back to what we were talking about, if I get enough money, there's gonna be a number.

I'm gonna meet my number. I'm gonna scratch the itch so hard that finally I'm not gonna itch anymore. That's true for money. It's also true for individuality. We need people. We're social animals. Right.

I I'm I'm I'm intrigued by what it does to our actual brains when we need people and we actually express that need. Why does that make us happier? I don't understand that. So we're effectively we're emotionally completed. And there's a lot of you know we could we could talk about this neurobiologically. But it makes it a little bit.

sense yeah that we actually don't feel ourselves when we're all by ourselves. Yeah. That we really are and you know, we're we're we're we're made to live in kinship. We're made to live in kin groups. And that makes perfect sense because if you you truly were an individual You'd be walking the a savanna and getting hunted down in minutes. So you need to actually feel complete when you're around.

That that's and that that's a an evolutionary imperative is to be around your people. Because, you know, the the members of the species that didn't have that, they're gonna die off. They're gonna die up. You know, that's just the way it is. And that's one of the reasons is there's very, very, very few people. I've met a hermit, I met a hermit in Himalayas.

And he hadn't lived with anybody for twenty seven years. He saw people very infrequently. He he granted me uh and what he does every day he wakes up six o'clock in the morning and He uh you know, makes himself a little breakfast by himself and then he reads a bunch of, you know, texts in Tibetan and and you know, and then and he sees nobody. And he d he you know, he'll say he'll talk to the monkeys, a lot of monkeys.

And and he says he's blissfully happy, blissfully happy. That's very unusual. That's an aberration. That's not that's not the norm, as it turns out. Now some people are more introverted and some people are more extroverted, but introverts need people. We need people. We don't feel like ourselves. You don't know who you are unless you actually have somebody who mirrors your back to yourself. Yeah. Oh, that's deep. Mm-hmm. Press anything.

We've got more. What now? After this? Eczema is unpredictable. But you can flare less when A once monthly treatment for moderate susceptibility. About NPC. Clear at one year with monthly dosing. Prescription therapies. Topics or who cannot use topical therapies.

Can be used with or without topical corticosteroids. Don't use if you're allergic to Epglis. Allergic reactions can occur that can be severe. Eye problems can occur. Tell your doctor if you have new or worsening eye problems. You should not receive a live vaccine when treated with Epglis. Before starting Epglis, tell your doctor if you have a parasitic infection. about EPCLESS and visit EPCLESS Lily.com or call 1-800-LillyRX or 1-800-545-5979.

Security usually means extra steps and complications. But with Apple Pay, secure payments are simple. Your transactions are authenticated with face ID, touch ID, or passcode, so security Is built in when you check out. Plus, your name isn't shared with merchants and they don't see your actual card number. Whether you're shopping in-store, online, or in app, protecting your money should be simple. Pay Terms apply. Bowser is back! Ha ha!

Everyone calm down. The Super Mario Brothers can take care of the Let's go on April 1st. Code pack our things. Woohoo! The galaxy. Who is this? So some cool dinosaur just shows up and he's now part of the group. Cool. The Super Mario Galaxy movie. Witty PG. Only beat us here for first. Get tickets now. There's something Eugene uh will often bring up that I think is important to get into and it's how we talk about

This how we talk about these ideas whilst also acknowledging the positions that people are in their lives. You know, so I I'd love to know when you when you're teaching people about happiness, is there a way to break it down according to how people are living their lives. And this is what I mean. You know, sometimes people go, Hey, money's not everything, but it's often the people who have money who are saying it. And I'm literally borrowing this from you. You know, it's like

Oh but you have the money. It's it's a lot easier for someone to say it when they have the money. Right. And it's a lot easier to try. It's a lot easier for somebody to say Hey man, don't let work be your life and it's like Yeah, but I have to work for my life and this this has to be my life So how do how do you think of happiness in in those ways is they is there a

You know, is there like a shifting wheel that clicks? Is it you know, is there a way to think of it differently or does it just apply to everyone the same regardless of what's happening to them? So everybody needs enjoyment satisfaction in me. But there are habits that everybody actually that the happiest people are are dedicated to. And and those basic habits fall in the categories of faith or life philosophy, friendship. of family and meaningful work. Those are the four big bucks.

The happiest people are what our grandmothers did, funny enough. No, they really nailed that. And what's actually pushing us away from this, by the way, is the the misuse and overuse of technology. That's one of the reasons that the the big the the big problem, the crisis that we're having in happiness today, for particularly for people under 35, is that they don't know meaning. The number one predictor of depression and anxiety is saying my life feels meaningless.

And the reason for this is because the misuse and overuse of technology have changed the way that people use their brains and pushed them away from the old way. So the old ways, you know, it's like I I I I guarantee you that, you know, grandpa Noah never came home to grandma and said, Honey, I had a panic attack behind the mule today. And then grandmaster you have a mule? I was picturing uh you know I was picturing the same thing. I was like Mule? No, but I was like

You're not wrong though. But the reason is because you know, li I I don't wanna go l live like Grandpa Noah, and neither do you. Yeah. I don't wanna live like my grandfather and smoke a pack of Winstons a day. I don't wanna do that.

But I do want my brain to work the way it's supposed to work. Oh and the truth of the matter is that we've hemispherically lateralized our brain. We've moved activity to the left hemisphere of the brain, which is all about what and how and efficiency and grinding and achievement and and and reels and apps and tech

in the right side of the brain, when you're bored and when you're in love and when you're suffering and when you see beauty, that that right side of the brain gives you mystery and meaning. And all the stuff that you actually can't quite articulate. So that's the this is the big difference that I actually see. The unhappiest people that I meet today are all living on the left, and the people who are happiest are doing a bunch of old weird things.

that are weird now, that would have been ordinary life before, that are helping them to be on the right side of their brains. You know, also what you're explaining helps me rationalize my Hate for conversations about AI. Yeah. Because when when I hear people who despise the thought of AI coming more and more into our lives. It makes me understand that they are more and more addicted to this technology that they feel like AI is gonna take.

AI won't replace you making breakfast or taking a walk with your loved one or with your child or writing a book. It has no interest in that. But if you have made technology your con the cornerstone of your happiness and of your purpose.

And what keeps you busy and what keeps you entertained. Of course you're gonna worry when someone or something comes and threatens that, right? Of course. No, no, for sure. And you know, the way for people to understand this for AI, can AI make me happy? What will you love? Your cat? I know you won't. Or a mechanical cat. Uh uh and and and it's an it's a question that answers itself.

A mechanical cat can be really, really, really amazing, but you're always gonna know it's actually not alive. Yeah. So what does a live mean? I don't know. It's uh I can simulate it, I guess. No, no, no. You know what a live mean. You know it. So that's why AI, by the way, can bring you greater happiness if you're solving how to and what technical problems, freeing up your time and going big with the people you love.

But it will lower your happiness if you're using it for right brain functions by making it your therapist and your lover and your friend. I mean it might fool you for a minute, but it won't fool your brain. You can't simulate meaning. It can give you high resolution of what Central Park looks like or you can be in Central Park. Yeah. And that's a point. That's an important point.

You can't so w when I was a relative much younger man, 25 years ago now, was the most popular movie of the year was The Matrix. Oh that's a great movie. Still my most popular movie. Still my most popular movie. It's twenty six years ago now. Depending on when we air this, it's gonna be twenty seven years ago. Twenty six years ago. It was nineteen ninety nine.

Oh wow. I don't feel like the Matrix is that wow. Sorry dude. Yeah. Damn. I know. No, I'm not in a bad way. I'm just like imagine how I feel. Anyway, so So and and in the Matrix, the the plot of the movie. obviously, is that there's this super intelligent machine life fake life in a machine that has to it's it's an a super intelligence and it has to power itself on human endeavor and it does so by putting people in pods and simulating

a real life that's really, really pleasant and distracting and and kind of n narcotic. And and that's sort of like crazy science fiction. We're in the matrix. We're in the matrix. I mean it's like I'll get up, you know, then I check my phone and then I go to work, which is on a zoom screen, and and all my friends are kind of on social media and then I'm gonna date z and and a lot of my accomplishment is gonna come from gaming. It's the matrix.

Which is getting you stuck in the left side of your brain and the one thing you'll never get from that is meaning. Isn't it weird that we go, I'm bored, swipe, I am hungry, I wanna get from A to B. And I want some company. Yeah. But we're doing all of it is here. And the great irony of this is that your grandfather, he his day-to-day existence was pretty damn boring.

It was he did a lot of a lot of stuff was his job was pretty boring. He worked in the railway, so he was pretty bored, yeah. But he never at the end of his life, he wouldn't have said, My life has been very boring because his life wasn't boring. But here's the thing. If you live like modern people do today, not using your brain the way it's supposed to, you're never actually bored moment to moment, but your life is unbelievably boring.

I always say it's the um elimination of friction that w that we take for granted. Like as as you increase convenience implemented that so many times cost of hurts. Remember when we spoke up like the cost of convenience is one that we haven't fully understood yet in life? And it's it's actually interesting to see. I I know I've spoken about this before, but

Go and look at the tech entrepreneurs who make technology in India, all over Africa, Nigeria, Kenya, South Africa, you name it. Look at the tech that they make. They're not going to be able to do that. that solves a problem that was otherwise unsolvable. You know what I mean? So they'll make an app that enables farmers to know when to plant their crops so that they have the highest yield and they don't lose, you know, forty percent of their crops or whatever.

solve a problem. You can find a closest pizza at ten p.m. Do you know what I mean? And and I think of meaningful. No, and I think of I think of what you're talking about now, what it's robbed us of is the walk To go find the pizza place.

the conversation. Remember asking somebody for directions? Yeah. You know how crazy those moments were? Or asking someone where you you're trying to get somewhere and that might spark something. And then because you're in a place, then someone else talks to you and then a thing happens and where did you bump into each other? All of the most wonderful things or many of the most wonderful things that'll happen to you in your life are inconvenience. Yeah. Yeah.

That's why they happen to be able to do that. Oh, I love that. Induced inconvenience. Totally. I mean you're putting a bunch of friction in your life. Like I'm gonna walk Even though I could fly, I could drive, I could take a train, I'm gonna walk hundreds of miles. I'm gonna walk and it's gonna hurt. I'm gonna do that. So I take time. Why? Because I want to I wanna get access to the special information that comes to me when I'm not actually arriving.

So let me ask you this as somebody who who's written multiple books about this. I'm always intrigued by the things that Scholars keep learning about a subject that you would think they would have otherwise conquered. Right. You know what I mean? Now I wanna know what what you are newly discovering or or what's newly exciting you in the field of happiness that you haven't previously delved into. Yeah. So

My background is behavioral science. Okay. And behavioral economics, psychology, et cetera. I had to retrain learning a lot of neuroscience. Because the vanguard is this realization that psychology is biology. That if you don't understand the brain, you don't understand the mind. And I'm not a radical physicalist, I'm a religious person.

Yeah. I'm like I I'm a traditionally religious person, so I'm not a radical physicalist where it's it's it's all it's all here and nowhere else. No I don't I don't actually believe that. But the truth is I'm not gonna understand what's going on with my emotions. Unless I understand what's going on with my limbic system. And that's the Vanguard. That's super fun and exciting. It's unbelievable. For my writing, I'm reading.

10 to 20 neuroscience articles a week. So I've had to really retrain it. And I'm not I'm not an expert. I don't have a PhD in neuroscience. I mean I I talk to neuroscientists and it's like, oh man, this is so far above me. I you know I listen to like Huberman.

He's truly is a great neuroscientist. And and I don't hold a candle to that, but the more that I'm learning, the more excited that I actually get. And that's the that's a that's a learning pilgrimage that I get to be on for the rest of my life. It's just so discovering new parts of You're pumping that limb, man. How the how the thing one thing connects to the other thing connects to the other thing.

You've been at the top of your profession. What are you doing to stay fresh and to learn? What is thrilling your heart these days that you're learning? So now I'm trying to be a professional at living. Tell me more. Sort of going back to what we spoke about earlier. Um, I realized I'm very good at working. Yeah. I've worked my entire life that I've been that I've been allowed to work, you know?

So I've I've worked my entire life. I'm very good at working, I'm very good at adapting to that work, understanding it and getting to a level of proficiency that allows me to earn a living in that work. What I've never been particularly good at is living. Ah. You know, so recently I went to my first wedding ever. That at the age of forty one years old, I went to a wedding. I accepted This wasn't yours, right? No, it wasn't. I accepted an invitation

I attended and for the first time I was like, Oh, this is what a wedding is. I see. And we sit like this and then those people oh wow, this is a you get what I'm saying? Yes. I've never done that. And I've never done it because I think for the most part it's been w work. Work comes m most people don't know when their weddings are before I know my schedule. Right. So by the time you know your wedding, I'm like, I'm already working that day.

You know? And now this one was a combination of me saying, I will make the space, but I luckily the person told me. So why the preoccupation would work? No, it was Because you love your work. I think it was a combination of two things. One Um survivability. So the first one was just like earn a living.

Right. Yeah. There was no like choice. And I always tell people people like, Why did you become a comedian? I'm like, Because it's the only job they weren't interviewing for. You know what I mean? I didn't need to come with qualifications. Otherwise I would have done other things. No dates. Yeah, really. that I enjoyed it and I started developing and I still work on a massive. Yeah. Yeah. So I go like this is great because it's a good thing. Your number one macronutrient is satisfaction.

Mm-hmm is achievement that you get after struggle. Achievement. Achievement. Satisfaction from a shit. So so and you're like a virtuoso at satisfaction. So what I love is I'm I'm a big fan of luck theory. Yeah. Right. And when I discovered this, it changed my whole life. So there was a a French philosopher who wrote a whole book about luck and the principles of luck. And he said

We always just talk about luck as if it's this one flat idea. So lucky, unlucky, terrible, good things, not bad for you, uh huh lucky. And he wrote this whole book and he broke luck down into these four card quadrants. And he said we need to understand what luck is, to understand how we welcome or dissuade luck from coming into our lives. So he said It's not luck. Yeah. So he said the first thing is Dumb luck, right? Mr. Luck, where something just...

Is it is because it is. Where you were born, your grandparents dumb luck. If they learned Zulu, now you're a South African. There you go. What do you even say? How do you flick? I don't know what flick is I don't think there's a word for it yet. Yeah, we gotta come with a flick. You gotta flick your Yeah, but anyway, um

No, so so so there's your your dumb luck. We almost lost the whole show there. You cannot control it. Oh Lou Natal! You're number one. There's a spike. There's a spike in the brain. What's happening? Um so dumb luck. Things that you cannot control. You cannot blame anyone, you cannot thank it's just happening. Yes. That's you.

country you're born in, people you're born to, langu etc. Family, yeah. Then the next one is luck of motion. Right. Luck of motion is literally what it sounds like. You once you start moving, luck can happen to you. You can't stub your toe without getting out of bed.

But you also can't bump into somebody in the street without walking into the street. Yeah. Do you get what I'm saying? And that's luck. Oh, so look, you know who I bumped into? Oh my god, luck of that's luck of motion, right? And then the third one is luck of awareness.

This one is an interesting one to me because it's the ability to see and notice the ginger ale at the pickleball place. I'm so lucky there's ginger ale here. No. You were aware that there was ginger ale and so you became lucky. So there are two people walking down a street. There's a hundred dollars on the ground. The one person is aware that there's a hundred dollars, the other one isn't. One person says, I'm so lucky I found a hundred dollars. The other person says,

Oh, I'm unlucky. I've never picked up I've never found money. You weren't aware that there was money. Exactly. And that applies to everything. It applies to love. Right. It applies to opportunities and work. It's someone who sees a sign that says help wanted. Right.

They're just aware. They see a place opening and they go, hey, are you guys gonna look for work? Do you need people here? Because you haven't even advertised, but I've noticed that you're starting a new store, you know? That's awareness. And then the last one, which I find most interesting, is the luck of uniqueness. Specialization. When you choose to delve into something

And really, really, really get into it. It doesn't matter what it is. A sport, a hobby, a profession, uh, it doesn't matter what it is. It presents unique opportunities to you that'll make you feel lucky, but they aren't necessarily just lucky. So by you being a professor who specializes in happiness. You are more likely to be lucky to bump into Oprah Winfrey. I'm so lucky, Oprah like me. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, but it's a lot harder to meet Oprah.

When you're not going to be able to do that, you can't do that. in this world. Do you get what I'm saying? No, for sure. It's a lot easier to meet LeBron James if you specialize in basketball. It's just a lot easier. I'm not saying it'll happen, but it's easier. So this is so this stuff is great. And there's the the the best psychologist on this, a British guy named Richard Weiser.

Oh I mean if your name's Wiseman, I mean you've got to now you you can't what are you gonna do? Yeah, that's like old Wisey over here. Didn't do as well. That's a good one. So so and and the fact that you think about this an awful lot is because you've got this heavy achievement oriented. Yes, but what to to to f to wrap it up in terms of the life thing, what I realized was I was like, Oh, Trevor

You think to yourself, you're like, Oh man, I I I I wish, you know, I had more wedding stories. I wish I and it's like, oh, instead of wishing for them, why not try and work on the luck that makes these things happen? Right. So create more space in your diary. Mm-hmm. And this is this is your project now. Yeah, this is my this is your project he knows. This is my actual project. We and he's been a great friend in this. I'll go, Eugene, what are you doing? Nothing. Great.

Pick something for us to do and then we just drive. And we go have lunch or we don't or we walk or we don't or we but we but I I I now create the space that I didn't. Mm-hmm. Hoping that maybe something can come into that space that couldn't otherwise if I hadn't filled it with work. Does that make sense? Yeah, it does. So yeah. So this is really important. So um remember, there's three parts of happiness. Yeah. And so based on this.

And, you know, we've met before. Yeah. But we didn't like grow up together. No. And we haven't played pickleball together. No, we have not. But um I would say of the three of the three macronutrients of happiness, you're a ten on satisfaction. Probably yes. You're probably a six on meaning. Oh, you think it's that low? No, it's not low. You think six is high? I think so. Six is pretty moderate. It's pretty pretty normal. All right. And I think you're a three on enjoyment.

I think that you never learn how to enjoy your life. And so if I were working with you on this, that see that you say, I want to be better at living. I want to be better at living. The problem is that when I'm doing these things to be better at living, I'm not putting points on the board. I'm not making progress in my life.

That's what all strivers think. Yeah. Right. And so the way to deal with this is to understand how enjoyment works. So I've you and I were working together. We were talking about this every week, right? That's okay. We got to have a pl an enjoyment. We're gonna have a strategic plan for it.

Because we need to reframe it kinda like you do with getting good at this. It's so funny you say this'cause I never remember I never learned it. I was talking to my mom about this the other day and I I said to her,'cause my mom is like the ultimate worker. Yeah. And I said, Mom, have you noticed that you work yourself to death?

Then you rest. But you don't rest. Right. You're just exhausted. Right. And she was like, Yeah, how else could I be? And I was like, Well, I think you and I both could practice enjoying before we're exhausted. And she was like, You do it and let me know how it goes. And if it's good, I'll join you. And so I'm on that journey. And she's not against it. She's just like, hey kid. She's like, look, man, the life I lived.

I didn't have sort of the luxuries you had. So work hard and I'll I'm I'm open to it. But but so carry on. So you so work on and learning to enjoy. So let me make a suggestion. Yeah. All right. There's a great book.

um that was written by a German philosopher in the middle of the twentieth century named Joseph Pieper. Uhhuh. And Pieper, he wrote this book called Leisure the Basis of Culture. And you're like, okay, so he's gonna write a whole book about chilling on the beach. No, no, no. Chilling on the beach isn't leisure. That's that's that's a sadia, which means kind of a laziness.

And and there's nothing wrong with chilling on the beach from time to time, but that's not actual leisure. Leisure you have to be excellent at. I'm already in. Leisure is something you're truly good at. This guy here? Might be an expert but carry on. That that that they don't pay you for.

But you're just really, really good at. And so he talks about it in categories of spiritual depth, going deeper and deeper and deeper in your spiritual life. It's developing your relationships with your closest friends. It's developing relationships at a real level where you go out to dinner, it's like go deeper, go home. Go deep or go home. And it's like, here's the first question. Trevor, what are you most afraid of?

That's the first question. Because we're gonna we're gonna learn about each other here. That's leisure. That's actual leisure. It's about getting an aesthetic sense. It's about going deep into the works of the So it's not how's things been? No, no, that's nonsense. Who cares? It's like I don't care about the weather. I don't care what the jets did on Sunday. No, no, no.

I want to know what you're afraid of. I want to know you. That's leisure. And that's what you that that will create enormous strivers can enjoy their lives only when they understand the truth about leisure. And when they're like, if you don't, you're gonna be like, Yeah, so so I I guess I'm a vacation. I gotta go someplace and sit on a beach bored.

No. You don't want to do that. I know you don't want to do that. That sounds horrible to you, right? Yeah, and it's it's always been horrible. It's like the sound of that has always been like all and it's like and and the problem is that a lot of strivers who have family

They're like total killjoys because their kid you know their their you know, their spouse is like, let's go to the beach, let's take the kids to the beach. And you're like, I don't sweetheart, I can't tell you why, but I hate it. I can't tell you why, but I hate it. And that's because you in your heart know that real leisure is something that that has incredible value. That creates value for you and value for the universe.

But it doesn't pay you. So what? Yeah, that's not the point. Yeah. But the the enjoyment. Now do Eugene, do Eugene. What's what would you say Eugene's numbers are? So higher on enjoyment. Higher on enjoyment. Um, I don't know about the satisfaction numbers'cause we actually haven't you're you're I don't know as much about your career. I don't know about Yeah. So tell me.

So I started off doing comedy, but comedy introduced me to television, to doing a bit of radio and now it's led me to this path. And we've had guests here that asked me, So do you miss comedy? I'm like, I can't miss comedy. 'Cause I'm happy here. Uh like I'm enjoying this. This this was part of my visualization.

six, seven years ago, I wrote this all down in a book. I said, I wanna do something and I wanna do it here and I wanna earn in this currency. Wrote it all down. So when I'm here now, when someone asks me, Don't you miss the other thing, I'm like, it doesn't It doesn't come into my world. You know, when other comics ask me, now that you're in New York, are you gonna go do a club? I'm like, I know I'm not even thinking about it. I'm thinking about eating pigs' feet.

And hang out with my friends. It's high enjoyment. So I'm like, no, no, no. I don't think that far. And we've we've also had this conversation. I'm like, no, no. This for me is the world cup of it all for now. This is what's happening and I'm enjoying this. So tell me. Um what's the mission statement of your life? I do not want to regret not doing things. I for a while I forgot the philosophy that my mom taught me that no matter who says what and how uncomfortable it is.

You didn't break anywhere, you must just keep going. Her other philosophy was you can always start over, you know? Try again and try again and try again. And there was a time where besides the sabbatical that I took, I just paused. I stopped doing things that made me happy. And I started doing things that made other people happy. And when I when I was in really, really a bad place, I had lost my son.

Things were just horrible emotionally. Those people that I try to satisfy were nowhere to be found. In fact, I would find out when I came out of it that they were the first people that will call me unreliable, that will call me I don't show up for places, I don't show up for work. And didn't even bother knowing what was wrong in the first place. So that alone freed me and gave me the independence to just ride bikes by myself.

uh go to shooting by myself. So I learned to do these hobbies and those side quests as my daughter calls them, you know, by myself. So you have low what we call pa negative affect. Negative affect is intensity of negative emotion.

And half the population is above average and half the population is below average, right? So you're you're low in negative effect. And which is one of the reasons that you can terrible things can happen to you and you feel crummy about it, but it doesn't ruin your life.

It doesn't ruin any. Suspenders and a disc against a huge amount of resilience because of this, which is really great. I would say that you've got what we call the temperament of the cheerleader, high positive neg h high intensity positive emotions, and low intensity negative emotions. It doesn't mean you don't feel these particular things, but that's just the functioning of the limbic system. I know it's gonna work out. Yeah. You on the other hand are high, high.

High positive emotion, high negative emotion. You feel things really strongly. Oh yeah. You feel things strongly. That's the mad scientist profile. Hmm. Mad scientist. The mad scientist profile is like everything is like I love this. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So you're the chair of the thing. That's what I love. And you're the mad science.

Right. Okay. So there's two other profiles, which is low intensity positive and high intensity negative. That's the poet. That seems rough. That's rough. That's rough. That's the poet. But those people yeah, those are the poets. And then there's low, low, low amplitude emotionality. Those are the judges.

Those are the judges. They're not freaking out. They they don't they don't they're not freaking out. And this it's quarters of the population, but you find people in different in different lines of work that tend to crowd into one of these. into these into these quadrants. So you find that CEOs and entrepreneurs they tend to be met Hm. Right?

You just told me you're taking a huge bite out of life all the time. Yeah. That's like time's ticking, dude. Let's do this. Right. And sometimes it sucks and you understand that and you feel that deeply and and and you got bad days, but you're gonna keep going, going, going, going, going. And you on the other hand, you're actually able to stop

You're actually able to stop doing things. Why? Because you're a cheerleader and the the amplitude of your negative emotionality is not going to impel you to be constantly in motion doing something. You're actually, and and that's that is the happiest, that is the happiest profile. It doesn't mean crummy things aren't going to happen to you like or they do and you don't care. That's not it at all. What it means is that you're highly, highly, highly resilient. You're a highly resilient.

And that what does this mean? This means that you can bring I mean this is this is you're perfect. I mean you're perfect here. You're you're it's interesting comics who are who are cheerleaders. There's kind of two kinds of comedians. They're comedians who have really high intensity negative emotion.

And what they get is they do a lot of emotional substitution where they figured out when they were little kids. I'm I pal around with Rain Wilson a lot. Yeah. And he had a really, really rough childhood. He grew up five miles away from me in Seattle and we're about the same. We didn't know each other as kids, but we bonded over this, right? Watching the same shows on TV and, you know, fifth grade.

And and and what they do when they have a rough childhood, he really struggled is that they figure out that they're smart and funny. And when they make a joke. Everybody else laughs and then life feels better. That's the first kind of comic. They're really good at with a straight face making everybody else laugh. Then the other kind make everybody laugh because they they use emotional contagion. That's you. So you you do this. You use emotional contagion. You laugh all the time.

Mm-hmm. Which makes me laugh and makes me happy. Mm-hmm. And there's a kind of comic like this. And there's two kinds of comics like this, but you have figured out you've you've you've you've you've unlocked This success as somebody who's gonna bring happiness to everybody else around you by sharing your happiness. And you've even done it by laughing and being a comic who laughs a lot.

It's an amazing thing. This is crazy. This is a crazy thing. It's an amazing thing. Before before you go, what's your quadrant? What's your I'm a math scientist. Oh math scientists. And what this means by the way, that for you, you don't need to worry so much about raising your happiness. You need to manage your unhappiness. You need to manage your unhappiness more than raise money. Maybe it's be maybe I'm I'm

I wrote down I remember in one of my journals I said f especially for me, I said, I just need to worry about what I do not like. Mm-hmm. I I I believe this for most people'cause I go we do not know what we want. We only remember what we enjoyed and then we want to replicate it. But I was like for myself, for me, me me. I went just find the knots and just minus them minus them minus because those things Because I...

I did not know how much fun I would get have getting to know you. Right. I did not know how much you would influence me when I first met you. So I'm always open to those things where I'm like, Well, you never know what'll happen, it'll happen, happen. But the knots, hey, hey, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, totally. Can you try it? Ah, there you are. See, you're in now. I got it. You're in.

You are much closer than your grandparents were instantly. You were flawless there. The Holy Spirit just worked through me. It worked straight through you, my friend. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So but this is important because you know what

There's all kinds of people who have really high negative affect. There's all kinds of destructive ways to manage your negative affects. Oh, okay. Drugs and alcohol, classic way to manage your limbic system, which is overactive on the negative side. Okay. That's why people do that.

You know, there's sort of two reasons that people become, you know, addicted to alcohol, for example. It's boredom and anxiety. Oh man. But for high achievers, it's always anxiety because they're highly anxious people, which means they have a really active amygdala. And that's the only way they can f like instantly comment. Who Which is why two drinks you're like, Oh, okay, I'm all right. And and so there's self treating for that. Another is workaholism, just just just like

This I know how to do this. This I know how to do. And they ruin their marriage because they're trying to get away from their negative affect by staying at the office for the fourteenth hour before the first hour with their kids. I'm guilty. I'm guilty. That's the problem when I was running the company. How do how do we work on these things as people? Like how do you

You find better ways to manage your negative affect. Yeah, so how do but how do people even begin how do you even know that you are doing it and then how do you begin to work on it? You gotta know yourself. You actually have to do the work.

as they say, which doesn't necessarily mean going, you know, getting tangled up in the therapy industrial complex. That's good for some people, but it's not it's not necessary for everybody. The reason I teach this stuff is because I want people to think about their lives.

I want them to understand because your laboratory, it's time to go experiment in all these different ways. And you've been telling me about experiments that you're doing already. Like I'm gonna get better at living. What you're telling me is that you're a living lab. And why? Because you're treating these different things to be a more effective, happier person that can lift other people up more effectively, which is a beautiful thing. And so what are two great ways to treat negative effects?

Get deep more deeply into your spiritual life. More deeply into your spiritual life. Hugely effective. And we recommend Catholicism, by the way. I'm gonna learn it in Zuru. And the second is is really is is really simple. Run around to pick up everything.

Huh. That's simple. It's that simple. Run around and pick up everything. It's like exercise. Exercise. And so I you know, I'm a mad scientist and I have to treat my negative effect. I start every day, I get up, I do an hour in the gym, and I go to math. That's every day. Take care of the physical, take care of the spiritual because and and it's just self defense. You know, it's not like I'm some great guru sitting in a cave in the Himalayas. It's just I have super

astronomically high negative affect. I'm at the ninetietth percentile in negative affect. And I don't want it to interfere with my life. And that's what I figured out by studying this stuff when I left that job. And that's what I've been doing for the past seven years. And that's what I want to bring to everybody. And use this information. You are and you have and you continue to We we gotta do this again. Thank you.

This is so much fun. Thank you. I loved it. Did I pro did I not promise you this as well? I was not gonna say this, but on our way here, he was like, You're gonna absolutely Do you? Man, you're a wizard. I love you too, Eugene. No man, Professor Brooks, thank you so much. This has really been great. Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. Fire guys. Man, you were the conversation we needed.

In partnership with Sirius XM. The show is executive-produced by Trevor Noah, Sanaz Yamin, and Jess. Rebecca Chain is our producer, our doctor. Researcher is Marcia. Brown. By Ryan Harduth. Thank you so much for listening. Join me next week for another episode of what. Once monthly treatment for moderate susceptibility. After an initial four month or longer About four NP. And glare are almost like a little bit. at one year with monthly donations.

MGLIS Library Kissumap With moderate to severe eczema, also called atopic dermatics. Controlled with prescription therapies used on the same. or topicals or who cannot use topical therapies. Epglyst can be used with or without topical corticosteroids. Don't use if you're allergic to Epglis. Allergic reactions can occur that can be severe. Eye problems can occur. Tell your doctor if you have new or worsening eye problems. You should not receive a live vaccine when treated with EBGLIS.

Before starting Epglis, tell your doctor if you have a parasitic infection. Ask your doctor about everything. Lily.com or call 1-800-LillyRX or 1-800-545-5979. Ever walk past a place for rent and wish you could just take a peek inside? Maybe even explore the layout. Envision the natural light streaming through the windows. Or plan where your vinyl record collection would go.

At apartments.com, you can. With tools like their 3D virtual tours, you can see the exact unit you could be living in. Really envision yourself in your new home with apartments.com, the place to find