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Living tissue over metal endoskeleton.
Hello boys and girls, ladies and germs. This is Tim Ferriss. Welcome to another episode of the Tim Ferriss show where it is, my job to deconstruct, world-class performers, or those performers, who study, world-class performers, who pick out the meta patterns, the things that you can apply to your own lives whether they be tools favorite books Frameworks, rituals annual reviews, perhaps, reverse bucket lists in the case of my guest today and that guest is Arthur Seabrooks, Arthur Seabrook.
Is the Parker Gilbert Montgomery, professor of the practice of public and nonprofit leadership. At the Harvard, Kennedy School and professor of management practice at the Harvard Business School where he teaches courses on leadership and happiness. He is also a columnist at the Atlantic where he writes the popular how to build a life column Mega popular and Brooks is the author of 13 books including the 2022. Number one, New York, Times bestseller from strength, to strength, finding success, happiness and deep purpose. In the second half of life, which is a book. I've actually recommended
Amended in my newsletter, five, bullet Friday. His newest book is built the life you want. Subtitle the Art and Science of getting happier with co-author Oprah Winfrey, he speaks to audiences all around the world about human happiness and works to raise well-being within private companies, universities public agencies, and Community organizations. We cover a lot of ground. He is a fascinating character with a lot of fascinating Frameworks and practices that he implements in his own life and certainly those that he's studied for his class and for
Other projects. You can find him on Instagram at Arthur Seabrooks on Twitter at Arthur Brooks with a further Ado, please enjoy. My very thought-provoking and actionable. Highly tactical conversation with Arthur see Brooks.
Arthur. So, nice to have you here. Thanks for
joining. Thank you. Sam this great with you. I've been looking forward to this me, too. I feel like we've been looking forward to meeting and is we've been warming up for
this for a long time. We're sewing friends in common. We have a lot of friends in common. I have read your prior work from strength to strength. Excellent book, recommended to me by Peter Atia. People may know him as dr. Peter Atia? Good friend. Proud Texan, also. Now, we're all the cool kids left for Austin. Texas are all the cool kids are
And I have more questions than we will have time, but I'm hoping to really explore broadly. And I wanted to start with something that I thought would pique, the interest of many people listening. And that is the reverse bucket list.
Is this something you still do? And what does it entail?
The reverse bucket list is something I do. Oh, boy. Do I ever do it? And it took me too long to figure this one out. When I was 50, I'm 59 years old. When I was 50, I found my bucket list from when I was 40 and I was a classic thing and on my birthday I would make a list of my desires, my ambitions and I would, you know, imagine
myself visualize myself
consuming or experiencing these things and it would fire me up and make me well kind of
Like a loser quite frankly because it was, it was, it was lowering my sense of satisfaction as subsequently found out. And I looked at that list, when I was 40 and I checked everything off that list and I was less happy, oh no, at 50 that I wasn't 40 and so I thought I'm a social scientist, so I thought to myself, obviously I'm doing something wrong. What am I doing wrong? And basically, this is the problem. This is a neuro physiological problem and a psychological problem. All rolled into one handy package. I was making a mistake.
Of thinking that my satisfaction would come by having more and the truth of the matter is that lasting and stable satisfaction, which doesn't wear off. And like a minute comes, when you understand that your satisfaction, is your halves, divided, by your wants halves, divided by W. That's the model. So, you know, it's like, I'll slow down because I know people watching you like a me, write that down. Halves divided by W, you can increase your satisfaction temporarily and in efficiently, by having more or permanently and securely by wanting
Us, I thought to myself. Hmm. So what does that mean? And the answer to that? What does that mean? Is I need a reverse bucket list, not that. I'm looking to get nice things in my life, but I'm going to be consciously detached from them by going through the exercise of writing them down and Crossing about. So on my birthday now might 59th birthday a couple of months ago. I wrote down all my ridiculous Ambitions and desires of money or whatever power ambition.
Admiration, all these things that I want from other people that we all want, because we're human and mother nature wires us to to accumulate the rewards that will help us survive and pass on our genes. I got it. I know how evolutionary psychology works and I know that these things are going to occur to me as natural goals but I do not want to be owned by them, I want to manage them, I don't want them to be like phantasms in my limbic system managing me. I want to move the experience of these Ambitions to my prefrontal cortex, which is my executive manager.
Bumper of tissue right behind my forehead. And the way that you do that is by looking at each one of these Ambitions and saying maybe I get it and maybe I don't, but I'm going to cross it out as an attachment and I'm telling it to him I'm free. And so you find that to work the extra works. It does not because you don't care about it but because you're not attached to it in the same way you've made the decision to have it. Not be a rootless, desire, a ghost in your head. You've made it into something that you will consciously managed by literally
experiencing that ambition in a different part of your brain.
So you go through this exercise so you write down whatever it is receive such and such an honor, right? Sell so many copies of book X, right? Whatever. These are, all the stuff that guys like you and me, do right? You have 37 inch arms, and in your case, possibly, your incredibly fit. I'm not hitting on you. I'm just saying, I aspire to your beautiful man to come. Well, we go to the same stylist for our haircuts, but I would say,
We will maybe get to like self care and physical practice later, you go through this exercise, you write those things down, you cross them out. Yeah, in a sort of idol worship sleight-of-hand, move right then following that, I'm curious, when there is, if there is the spark of this desire, whatever it might be. Do you have self talk or something? That acts as an interrupt? I keep the list, you keep
the lights, keep the list and I go back and I look at the list.
Just like I would look at my bucket list later, every six months or every year, every 10 years, whatever happened to be. I go back and look at my reverse bucket list and say, I am, I living up to this am I truly
conscious. Am I living up to not being
attached? Am I practicing the Detachment that I committed myself to? And the truth is usually. Yeah. Kinda I mean the Phantasm will be back, it will be flying around in your head again, but you brought it to your prefrontal cortex for a reason and your prefrontal cortex is an adult and will govern the children, but sometimes you have to
Mind yourself. Remember. Look I mean you're an adult here and you look back on is a and it's funny actually it's pretty amusing when you look at it and say oh I
can't believe that thing is bugging me again, but you're not governed
by it in the same way. You don't actually put on my list. I was reading just for clarity so it's okay
to have the goal and to have it as a Target and plan for it. Let's say selling X number of copies but not to have that Hungry Ghost attachment
to, it's nothing more than an intention, intention is fine. But attachment is
bad and this is what the Dalai Lama talks about to. We talked about intention without attachment. There's a word in sailing the rhumb line in Spanish, will Rumbo, which is a lot more common and normal everyday speech. And what it means is it's the intention of your Voyage. You have to have that even though, you know, it's not you're not going to be true to it because if you don't know, you're just gonna be going in circles, you'll, you know, you're just be like, I don't know. I've been out to sea for a long time. Who knows? Where I am, you know, it'll be like, one of your vacations.
It's like, I don't know where I am. I'm just like doing nothing man and
It can be therapeutically important but it's actually not the way that you get from Europe to the Americas. Yeah, you need a, you need a wrong in either
location and your any 910 GPS. But if you're
super attached to it, then you're going to freak out when something throws you off. And furthermore, you're not going to recognize the fact that it is the voyage itself. That is the adventure of life, not actually reaching the particular destination. Whether it's the original one or one that turns out to be better or worse or wherever you wind up and that's the way you got to live your life. So its intention without attachment.
Now, there's another thing that I was thinking about this year because tick not Han died, you know, the great idea, Timmy's Buddhist monk and I wrote his obituary in the Washington Post. Actually, it was a really interesting experience because I talked about all what he's taught. All of us tick, not Han said and I was that an impact on me, but I reflected on an upon his death, that one of the greatest attachments that people have in modern life is to their views and opinions. That's a real attachment. It can be as dangerous as your attachment a money or power.
Why? Because people treat their opinions as if they were gold at their Jewels. You know, get between me and my political opinions, man. I'll cancel you, I'll get you fired. I'll denounce you on social media, who knows? Maybe I'll be violent. I mean, life is crazy these days. And so I looked at it, I thought am I weighed down by attachment to My Views, to my political views? So I wrote down five of my strongest political
views,
And I crossed him out this was after writing the
obituary. Yeah, it was on my reverse bucket list, my turn, 59. And I said, look, it's not that I don't have these views, I just don't have the attachment to these views. Look, man, I need more friends, and strong. Political opinions is not going to get me there. It's not going to get me. Their love is going to get me. Their tolerance is going to get me there. A sense of curiosity about other people is going to get me there and strong, political opinions is going to put me in the wrong direction. So man,
Dead. The attachment
dead. Mmm. So maybe this is a little too granular, but I'm curious tick not hon. This is a legendary figure, I would be very intimidated by the task of writing an obituary for such a person. I've read numbers of his books been very influenced by is thinking, how do you go about deciding what goes into an obituary for someone like that or for anyone for that matter but in this particular case,
the Germans talk about doing a something called a Fest shrift.
It's a word that means kind of this in encomium. It's a celebration of the work of somebody and which I will start. When you do one of these things, it's a typical sort of European intellectual deal. Is you look at the things that they said? And did that had the most impact? And it was most meaningful to them in the same way? Now, I didn't know tick, not hon. I've worked very closely with it all day long. I and, and the Tibetan Buddhist tradition, but the theravada Buddhist tradition. I've never penetrated personally. And so, I didn't know, Tech not Han, but I do know the things that he said and taught.
That really changed the way that westerners think. And so, that's what I wanted to talk about. Now, what did he do? That changed theravada Buddhism, I'm not a theravada Buddhist. I'm not equipped to write that but I can talk about the way he changed me as a Catholic. I can talk about how he changed me as a public policy person because I was reading Tech. Not Han when I was running a think tank in Washington, d.c. how he influenced me as a happiness? Professor at Harvard. That's the stuff that I really wanted to
focus on. That
was the idea of
Mint and Detachment. That was the idea of the illusion of individuality. I mean, these are Concepts that people didn't think about. He also was really behind the whole mindfulness revolution in the west, he starts off the miracle of mindfulness that famous book, big bestseller with his simple description of washing the dishes. And he says, when you're washing the dishes, you should be thinking about washing the dishes. Because if you don't think about washing the dishes, you're not really there a while.
The dishes are you and he persuades you with this kind of hypnotic Pros. To remember that if you don't think about washing the dishes. But you're thinking about doing something at work tomorrow or you think about something that happened yesterday that you're living in the future of the past and you've missed your life?
Yeah. Or if you're thinking about eating the juicy Peach which is a story may not have been in that book that I remember him telling but it was paired with the washing of the dynasty. Said if you're thinking about the peach while you're washing the dishes, when you're eating the peach, you'll probably thinking of something
else. Exactly? Right. I'll and then what you're doing is you're why?
You're doing this, you're planning for a future existence, that's better than now. And when you reach it, it will be a Phantasm as well. It will be nothing more than a mythical past while you're thinking about a new future. That doesn't quite exist in. You've missed
your whole life. How did he change your influence? You as a Catholic
and the Dalai Lama to, by the way? I mean a lot of Buddhist thinking has been incredibly helpful to me, to understand exactly what I'm trying to do as a person when I'm centering myself in
prayer.
For example, Catholics traditional Catholics they generally pray was called the rosary and the rosary is a set of beads that you pray repetitive prayers. It's about 1,000 year old Catholic meditation, I do it every day and I noticed that I was having a hard time focusing. I was having a hard time understanding. What I was trying to do for myself for this offering. I didn't know how to make it fruitful in its way. I didn't know exactly what the point was.
And studying the work of tick not Han. And also studying at the Dali, Lama's Monastery in dharamsala, India, sitting in meditation and studying meditation. Techniques with the Tibetan Buddhist monks. I actually learned what I was supposed to be doing. As a Catholic praying, my rosary, how I actually could center my prayer and make it deeply worshipful in a meaningful way and perhaps God wanted me to learn that from my Buddhist sisters and
brothers. This is going to be
Adjacent to this conversation. Yes topic. But I'm curious. Do you believe that we can always cut this? But I'm very curious and you believe that direct transmission and some of these lines, which is very important in certain schools of we could call mindfulness, but that is
A real phenomenon or at least I suppose it's undeniably important in the tradition of the idea that's sitting with someone and meditation with them. That there are teachings that are sort of directly transmitted, what is your thought on that? If you have any thought,
I don't know the answer to that. I do know that you can deeply be in communion with somebody and really intimately. And my wife has turned, I we actually, we teach young couples that are engaged about, you know, she teaches the theological part, I teach the social science.
Because I'm just, you know, I'm a total walk. And what we do tell them is that according to the best science and our experience and common sense, that one of the most intimate things that you can do with your partner or spouse pray together. It's super intimate. I know couples that have been married for 25 years, that will have sex together, but won't pray together because it's too embarrassing to pray together because praying together is just too intimate. They don't know how to do it. It's embarrassing to them.
I mentioned you'll get naked in front of somebody else but she won't pray in front of them and that's because it's such a deeply intimate thing. Okay, so when you cross the boundary of the greatest intimacy with another person, there's going to be some transmission. The idea of direct transmission Rings true to me because of the nature and intensity of the intimacy that comes from that
experience. We're going to take a hard left for a second. Okay we're going to come back to through line which I am tracking.
Because it's just what is top of mind for me and then we're going to come back to possible mystical / semi mystical experiences in Mexico's. I'm gonna give you an idea. All right, I can't wait. Where am I? Had a
typical New Mexico is might have mystical
experience. The invitation is now formal, but first for those who are not watching this video, I'm you are an incredibly physically fit and I know that you have some very deliberate, consistent practices, including we training and so on blood occlusion training, are you still using
cuffs?
I do yeah, and I recommend it for anybody over
40. Could you explain what this is and why you recommend it? So
exclusion training what it effectively does, is it it's not a tourniquet but what it is it's a band around your arms and or legs. So that when you're lifting you actually will get a much greater as you know, in the vernacular, the burn from resistance training with lower way. Now the reason I recommend this very strongly as because the research suggests that is very good for both strength and hypertrophy at lower weight levels. So it's
Dave's your joints but gives you results and that's what you need to do when you're over 40. Save the joints.
Yep. And I really strongly encourage people to check this out. I've done some of it. Yeah and to say that it increases the burn or the pump is certainly true. You got a lot of pain. Yeah, I would say exactly though, it's a fan who it's a stark conservative because you might feel weak dialing back the way it's but just wait,
just just give it a bit, it really does in you then, but then you learn to
love the pain and you can travel
Well, with there are cups, you can travel
with, I have them. I like Aaron with me. All these are the road 48 weeks, a year. Their
particular type that you use. I don't
actually remember the brand, but they're actually the use velcro and they're about two inches thick. So of too thick and actually can't get the kind of occlusion that I really want. So experiment with, you know, what works with, you know, the size and shape of your biceps and triceps and then and then learn how to use them and then make them Tighter and then and then get in touch with the
pain and they're easy to travel with. Yeah, do your homework Dart, conservative Kelly Starrett. A very famous.
Performance, coach, and PT. Use a friend has been on the show many times introduced me to that. Yeah, it's amazing. And he had a very similar argument, which is effectively, he doesn't say this, but I would say, like, you were kind of as old as your joints and connective tissue feel. There's certainly a cognitive component. And this is a really elegant way, right through to preserve or build muscle mass.
Without I learned this from real life, friends, all the stuff. You know who started mine pump with his partners and mind pump. Well, your mind pump inside, Fitness and culture.
Cast and striving listening to it for years and years. And he taught me how to do it. Actually is gives me training tips and good ideas and now it's great. It's been very helpful and by the way, when I was a younger man, you know what I was in my 30s? I figured you know like what's my goal with Fitness and the answer is to still be lifting when I'm 80, why? Because we know of all the health benefits from it, but the truth is that physical fitness for me is a way to manage my negative effect. It's actually a happiness technique for me. It doesn't make me happier. It makes me less unhappy. That's what physical
This will do, it will buy you, less unhappiness and so I manage my negative effect that way and I know when I'm 80 I'm going to need to manage my - fxy don't want to hurt myself. So I would go to the gym when I was 35 or 40 years old and I would go to these iron Jim's wherever I was traveling and I would find the oldest dude. Yeah. The old guy who still lifting heavy things and I would go up to him I say can I ask your advice and they always want to give you advice you know the 76 year old guy who's is like don't bench press it restricts your range of movement and that's going to hurt your
To get impingement injuries along the way. So that's why, as you get older, you should actually press with dumbbells. And, and then do higher rep to give volume to higher reps with lower weight Etc, and just the sensible stuff, but it's actually been incredibly helpful for me to not get hurt and stay in the Jess. Yeah,
100%. All right, so naturally from the next wise is ridiculous. Well, maybe ridiculous, maybe not. So not for me, it's not that sweet. I could you please describe your experience. I think it was as a teenager. It was a teenager in
Mexico.
Yeah, them the Mexican say it was not out in the woods with a shame in an
Ayahuasca. When
I was 15, I was on a band trip. I used to be a musician and I started as a kid. I was a real serious musician and I wound up being a professional musician from when I was 19 till I was 31 French horn. Yeah. As a French horn, player classical, French horn, player all the way through my 20s. I didn't go to college, till I was 30, but my Gap decade.
And, and when I was, I need one of those. Yeah, too late.
And when I was 15 years old, I was on this trip.
With a group with a not a professional. Is that like an amateur concert band but you know, doing a tour through Mexico and we're doing a lot of Tourism and one of the tourist activities was to go to the shrine of Guadalupe in Mexico City. Now this is a famous place for Catholics because it's one of the great pilgrimage sites to the world in Catholic teaching. This is where when the Spanish explorers came to Mexico and having a horrible time because their marketing was all goofed up for the Catholic church. I mean converter dies, not a very compelling pitch. It turns
You know and racist and you know everything that you possibly could want what happens, then is this, weirdly miraculous thing for Catholics and fellow Travelers, I mean just as a mystical experience. So there was a peasant Man, by the name of Juan Diego, who's outside on a hill outside of Mexico City and sees an apparition of the Blessed Virgin Mary. So he on his Poncho is imprinted the Blessed Virgin Mary's image on his tilma. He takes it back to you as well as a textile. It's sort of a pain.
So it's the tilma is what they would wear and it was based on a fabric made out of cactus. It's beautiful. Imprint in color we've all seen the picture of the of almost everybody has seen the Blessed Virgin Mary of Guadalupe on this and if you Google it the Virgin of Guadalupe. And you say, oh I've seen that a million times because it's in every Latino church for the Catholic Church. She's the patroness of all the Americas, including the United States. I mean, this is a big deal for the church. So the bishop sees it, they take the tilma, they display the telephone.
Line public. And for the first time they start getting converts in the next nine years. Seven million people convert the Catholic church. Now why there's worldly explanation. There's Divine explanations for it. Here's a worldly explanation. That's pretty compelling. Our Lady of Guadalupe is not white. She's not Spanish. She's a misty Theta. She's a woman of mixed race. Now, we don't realize that a how incredibly subversive that is how unbelievably culturally transgressive that would have been the
Acid Virgin Mary is not not white. What are you talking about? No,
no, she's us, she's us. She's
every person in the world, she loves you, she loves me and she's one of us because she's in all of us. And that was this weird message that nobody really would have thought of it the time or so, Laura goes. And that's why people started saying, oh, ah, oh, this actually is for me because she actually looks like me crazy. So I'm in this church in Mexico City, the shrine of Guadalupe and, you know, I'm looking
That the tilma is just sitting up there and I'm thinking, this is boring, but then I noticed she was looking at me now to be sure. I didn't realize that you can look at Elvis on velvet and the eyes will follow you, right? Okay, fair's fair, but I couldn't get it out of my head. I couldn't get it out of my head. So worldly or Divine or mystical or not reasonable people can disagree but I couldn't get the image out of my head. I couldn't and I realized I needed more in my life.
I needed a deeper sense of the metaphysical in my life. I needed the Transcendent in my life, and every time I thought of that, I thought of that image. And so, I became Catholic at 16 years old and I've been a Catholic man ever
since. And did you have a family history of Catholicism, 000.
I know, I grew up in a Christian family, so it's, I had a little bit of wiring, but I
literally knew no Catholics.
There's just this thing. Okay. And, you know, my parents are like,
Adolescent Rebellion a guess, it's better than drugs.
It is better than heroin, but and the point
is a lot of people watching a summer, traditionally, religious and some are spiritual and some are not. But the whole point is, we have a sense that there's something else. We have a sense that there's something deeper, let something in your life, take you to the deeper Place, something needs to take you by the hand, to the deeper place, that is a lot of research that suggests
This is the case. Don't try to go to the deeper place to find it randomly on your own. Let someone take you now that Insight is ambiguous. But once people start to say, I'm ready to be taken to a deeper place. A more Transcendent state that person, that entity will
appear. We may come back to that. Thank you. Mmm. And I do think that many different paths touch corners of the. Same thing is my impression, which we may not.
Of time for this conversation but to be continued. And the reason I'm asking about this experience, for those people who are wondering how this ties into, maybe the headline of the podcast is because I want to better understand the influences and experience that has that have shaped you, right? And you're like, perceptual apparatus and you're thinking. So another would be you've had multiple wake up calls in your life and as you described, you didn't exactly have the linear path to Harvard proof that people might have envisioned right now. I got one went to Harvard.
Exeter,
Harvard, the Kinsey, I actually applied to Harvard for graduate school and they're like, no, it took two weeks for them to reject. My part of it is at the time I was 31, I was a College Dropout, I had a degree from a correspondence school. I was a French horn player. These are not the cord demographics of your typical Harvard graduate student and so yeah, I got rejected which suggests by the way Tim that are standards for faculty today are lower than our
Mentor, our students but be that as it may they be
I'm skeptical in your case. I'd like to talk about your dad. Yeah. So who's your father? What was he like? And how did his life? And
my dad was a mathematician. He had a PhD in biostatistics. He was a lifelong college professor. Most of it, at a small Christian College in Seattle, called Seattle Pacific University. He was born to missionary parents Evangelical missionary parents. He was born in the Navajo Nation. In New Mexico,
Where my grandfather ran a Mission School actually. And then my grandfather went on to become the dean of a very famous college outside. Chicago called Wheaton College, where all of our family members had gone. My aunt, went there in the 40s and dated Billy Graham
and college has a turn set. Yeah,
so and then my dad, you know, went on to another Christian College to the college where he ultimately taught and he was just absolutely in love with the beauty of mathematics as kids. You know, my mother was an artist, my mother was a painter, my dad was a mathematician and you
And around the dinner table. We would talk about art, we would talk about math. Those are the things my father would pose math problems to us. He was okay. Okay, boys. Me and my brother, imagine all of the integers between 1 and 100 1, 2 3 4, OK, Adam all together. What's the result? And we like I don't know. I need a piece of paper saying oh you know thinking another way think of another way, the solution by the way is one plus 100 equals 100 and 1 + 2 + 99 equals 100 and 1 + 3 + 98 equals 101.
There are fifty one of those which makes 51 combinations of 101. 5050. That's what we would do.
That's what my father would do here. Liked Adam just trying to eat my macaroni. I know he's my macaroni cheese and they would say something like, see isn't it beautiful? Isn't it beautiful? Isn't that evidence or God? That's what he or your mom would say - he was. My dad
was a the Elegance. The my dad believed. Not that what we know is what we should pay attention to, but them to Marvel at what we can do and still not know anything.
So my father would you explain just had a big impact on me. That there's two kinds of problems in life. There's complicated problems and there's complex problems. It's a mathematical difference but the technique doesn't matter. Complicated problems are all the things you can solve with computational horsepower and and Tech complex problems are super easy to understand but you can never solve them. Like who's going to win between the Patriots and the Dolphins. I know what winning looks like. It's more points on the scoreboard but I have
No idea. And that's why it's beautiful to watch the game and you don't want to simulate it on the computer because it'll be inaccurate. Love is complex. A jet engine is complicated. A cat is complex at Osteria is complicated and he said, two kinds of problems and this, he said as a basic math problem. The reason that we're always unsatisfied in life is because we have complex problems we want love and all we have is complicated solutions that the world is offering us like, you know, computers and the internet. And
Social media and blah, blah blah blah, and you'll never be satisfied because it's the wrong kind of solution for the wrong kind of
problem. So that seems like a tremendously valuable Insight. You describe your father as a happy man. No,
my father was a gloomy man and no doubt that had a lot to do with genetics because 50% of our emotional Baseline is genetic. We know this from identical twin studies, we're twins are born and separated at Birth in two separate. Families is not an
I meant that social scientists have done because that would be horribly and I think all but three identical strangers
shows how that turns out. Yeah. Well, yeah, no brutal doc.
Oh yeah that's a great document. It is great. But 50% of your Baseline mood, your tendency toward you know, a Boolean sore gloominess is sitting in your DNA. And this is the reason to him that I came to the happiness field because I saw my grandfather who is
A
wonderful man and gloomy and my father who is brilliant and a lovely person. And excellent. Ethical kind man, who is gloomy and I said no more man, no more. I'm going to live on the other 50%. I am not going to be governed by the 50% that made my father, an unhappy man. And so he died young 66, you know, he had cancer and they gave him 10 or 15 years or more.
And he died in two, and as a statistician, he explained it. He was a biostatistician by his graduate degree and I said, dad is terrible luck. He said, look, there's got to be people on that side of the curve too,
but he had a good sense of humor, but the whole point
was he wasn't prepared to fight for life because he didn't have the hygiene for his own happiness. And that example, set me on the path to learn
Out this and to share these ideas and it has transformed my life. I'm grateful to my father and I will be for the rest of my life for the example that he gave me in the lesson. He taught me even through his unhappiness.
Hi everyone. Tim here, pardon the interruption just a quick announcement. The recording studio had a small glitch so the audio for the next 20 or so. Minutes is not perfect but we correct it quickly. Please bear with us. Thank you for understanding and now back to the conversation.
What were some decisions you made or things you began doing or stop doing after your father's
death? I started exercising there is a little vanity to it but not that much. The whole point of the matter is this is one of the single best ways to manage your negative effect is to be in the gym for an hour a day.
Yeah. And there's a it's a bit dated probably but there's be called spark which also goes into sort of a lot of like, bdnf and a lot of the circuitry and biochemical reasons for exercise for this
A
purpose when I'm working with students, I put them through a battery of tests to look at whether the bigger challenge in their life is happiness or unhappiness. The world is really scarce in the definitions that it gives us and there's a big mistake than almost everybody makes about happiness, which is that a lot of mistakes. Number one, that is the absence of unhappiness, number two, that it's a feeling, both of those are wrong. Number three is that we can get it so we can approach happiness, but we can't get there because we actually need unhappiness and unhappiness in.
Happiness are not opposites and can coexist, so there's a lot to lot to unpack. So, to begin with happiness and unhappiness. In terms of moods are largely processed in different hemispheres of the brain. A lot of neuroscientists believe that unhappy cognitions and emotions are largely dominated by activity in the right side of the brain. And the way that we know this, there's a terrific neuroscientist at University of Wisconsin, Richard Davidson, and he's done work. That shows that that the left side of the musculature, on your face is more active when you're unhappy when you're experiencing.
Negative emotions, anger, fear, disgust sadness, and it's actually funny when you have one of my kids were little, I would notice that, you know, when they fall down, you get a moment where you don't know what's going to happen next? Are they going to laugh and keep playing or they going to get the Waterworks right? And the way the tell on that because it's usually five or six seconds because the wiring in the brain is actually not complete to work in progress. So one of the tests that I've administered my students and I put in my new book. As a matter of fact, it's so important for me and for understanding ourselves as called the positive effect negative
that series panas PA n a.s. this on my website and so it's easy to find and I didn't create it. It's been psychometrically validated a bunch of dots, a great test. And what it does is it helps you figure out if your hypothesis - hi - or low positive low-, and there's four combinations. It's a two by two Matrix. You can be a high positive affect person and a high negative affect person. That's a high, a fake person. Who's got a lot of strong. Moods about everything. That's the mad scientist, that's the mad scientist profile.
That's me. I'm at the 85th percentile and happy effect. And I'm at the 85th percentile and -
fxl, the highs are high on the right
side, over happiness problem, I haven't unhappiness. Problem is when it comes to add another, it's not a problem because unhappiness is really important. You won't be happy if you get rid of your unhappiness because you got to be fully Alive to get happier. But you do need to manage yourself. Some people are really high positive and really low - those are the cheerleaders. Those people can't stay in the gym. Why?
Because they don't feel better when they go to the gym because they're negative effect is already in the cellar. The third is high- and more positive. That's the poet in the top. Nobody wants to be a poet but the truth is that the part of the brain called the ventral lateral. Prefrontal cortex is highly active for people who are sad and people who are creative. That's the reason when I say poet, you don't think about somebody, skipping down the
street, right? You think I'm afraid of person to be
exact there ever. A exactly, right? Your no French cafe. You know, thinking about thinking nihilistic thought.
And writing
poetry. So that's the poetic disposition and the last is low low, so you could be perfectly happy or unhappy, but you have low effect levels, that's called the judge, the sober judge. I wish
it were otherwise, but I would put high confidence that I am right down the beret-wearing way. How would you advise someone? And I know this won't apply to everyone listening but just by way of working example, what does someone do with? What are their options for how to act upon them?
Okay. So the if
You know that your poet this is an effect level. It doesn't mean that you're cosmically happy or unhappy it just means that this is your natural disposition. So this is important, right? So it also means that you need to manage two levers, you need to manage your happiness levels up and you need to manage your unhappiness levels, not 20, there's nothing wrong with unhappiness, you need to mute them, you don't need to numb them, you need to manage them
and could you, and I may have already missed the plot but just Define those two because I think,
Two people myself may be included with think if you remove unhappiness by default, since unhappiness, they seem to be antonym. So you remove one, you have more together. So, how should we think about these?
Yeah, that's a very good question. And, by the way, the answer is not obvious. As a matter of fact, psychologist, until at 50 years ago, really believe that unhappiness was the absence of happiness, but it's not true because we actually find that the basic negative and positive emotions are coming from different parts of the limbic system and can
coexist I see. So if you're thinking about it, you
Think about it, then neuroanatomic Lee as opposed to semantically
with the word. Yeah. Yeah. Not to
dumb it down too hard but it's back, if your left hand performed X types, of tasks, and your right hand performed, why type of tasks like, okay, you can sort of
decide what ratio, right? And your negative emotions are much more intense than your positive emotions. This is evolved to keep you alive. Positive emotions are kind of nice to have negative emotions are signals or alarms that something might kill you. A sweet smile from somebody across. The room is very pleasant.
And but a frowning face might be somebody who wants to murder you and so therefore, we've evolved to pay attention. This is called the negativity bias that we have. We also have mixed states that we go through all day long. So if you look you ask people in surveys what they're feeling at any given moment. So you'll say, you know, 15 minute increments, what are you feeling positive or negative? You'll find that about 90% of the time. People can tell you how they're feeling in 40% of the time for the average person. It's really pure positive emotions at a low level at your idol as most of the time. It looked good last. Okay. That's kind of funny today, whatever.
Whatever all good about 16 percent of the time is pure negative emotion and that usually means something's happening that you don't like now 33 percent of the time, you've got both and usually the way that this looks in people's lives is that you're in your positive Idol, but something's intruding. So there's something bugging you that you don't always remember and you know, we go through life and you know, on a certain day. It's like yeah, it's all good. Oh yeah, that thing. And then you go back to kind of going back to your positive violent. Oh, yeah. The thing, you know, that thing and so that's the mix.
State like Twitter. Yeah,
totally. And by the way, I mean, it's an
unhappiness machine. You mean X?
Yes. Sorry. Exactly. That's right. A big black
axe. You mean it's like X. It's so appropriate. You know. So this is important because we understand that these are separable phenomena. We need both these emotions, but we need to be able to manage our emotions like pros. And that's a lot of what I do.
Yeah. So what are some options? So I go through the panas end up poet their these tools.
A hmm, what might be the process of thinking through how to pull these levers and different ways? So, happiness side is
what I spent a lot more time on because
It's just so interesting on how we can pull the happiness lover. They starts by actually a good definition, which is not feelings. Feelings are evidence of happiness and thank God. Happiness isn't a feeling, can you imagine going through life chasing a feeling, that's awful. It's like,
he feels good. Do it, or
if it feels bad, make it stop. It's a terrible life strategy. Happiness. And it's feelings, are associated with three tangible phenomena in our lives that we can actually understand manage enjoyment satisfaction.
And meaning those are the three things that we need in balance, in abundance, think of these as the macronutrients of Happiness. The protein carbohydrates and fat of Happiness, they don't have protein and carbohydrates and fat and balance. In abundance, all kinds of weird things are going to happen to you. You're not going to be as healthy as you should be and you won't feel good. Same thing is true. You need to enjoy your life. You need to get satisfaction from your accomplishments and you need to have a deep sense of meaning. And each one of these is a big challenge when I meet somebody through a series
of structured questions.
I
In figure out. If there's a problem along one of these macronutrient dimensions, and it turns out that it's, there's some very easy interventions that we can make across all three. I'll give you an example. The first one is enjoyment. I say you enjoy your life, you'll think about their little pleasures. That's, that's not it. Pleasure is not a secret to happiness. Pleasure is the fast road to obsessive-compulsive activity and addiction. Why? Because all pleasure is is a phenomenon from the limbic system of your brain saying,
More of that thing because you're more likely to survive and pass on your genes. If you get those calories, if you have that sex, whatever it happens to be the way that you can actually turn that into a source of happiness, is by mixing into ingredients with your pleasure people and memory, never do something that gives you pleasure alone. That's the rule of thumb if you're doing it, alone is a problem. So Anheuser-Busch doesn't beer at they never have in the beer ad Guy drinking in his
closet. Yeah, guy building a 12-pack and sometimes you know why?
Because
That's pleasure. And that actually leads to addiction as problematic. They always have an ad of a guy cracking a beer with his buddies, people and doing something he's going to remember memory. That's the secret to it. So, I'll take a survey of people's habits. Now, this is the reason that pornography is a big problem, you're not consuming it in public with friends to make a memory for God's
really, just sort of weird. Rarely, that's a pretty weird thing to do, right?
I mean, it hits the dopamine lever. I mean that they all are newer physiologically, similar phenomenon,
Dopamine, dopamine, dopamine, dopamine over and over and over again, and they ruin your life because they become addictive, they become monomaniacal and they're not the secret to happiness. If your 3:00 in the morning and Vegas, pulling the lever on the slot machine by yourself, that's not the secret of Happiness to anybody. I know and I've never heard somebody say, you know, you know it gives my life happiness. Methamphetamine never been said right. And the reason for that is because these are drugs. People say drugs of abuse. Not a drunken pleasure. Let's not lie about it.
It, they give you pleasure and pleasure alone without memory is a problem. This is a very practical example of how we can use the science and turn it into a set of guideposts for our life.
Just a quick thanks to one of our sponsors and we'll be right back to the show. This episode is brought to you by wealthfront. There is a lot happening in the US and Global economies right now. A lot that's an understatement. Are we in a recession? Is it a bear Market? What's going to happen with inflation? So many questions. So, few answers, I can't tell the future, nobody can, but I can tell you about a great place to earn more on your savings and that's wealthfront. Wealthfront is an app that helps you save and invest your money right now. You can earn four point eight.
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And so you have enjoyment, which you clarify satisfaction satisfaction meaning or next. And how would you make satisfaction granular? Because I think about satisfaction like I might conflate being satisfied with doing. Say a large project with some form of meaning. I can see how I might get my wires crossed. So I have how should we think about these two? And
satisfaction is achieving something with struggle, it really, is that project that you're talking about which it will give you meaning as well. The project
They can actually cross the boundaries across the macronutrients. Just like
something that you eat
has won more than one macronutrient. But satisfaction per se is doing something that takes effort and expending the effort. So if my graduate students they they cheat to get an A and an exam in my class they'll get the grade but they won't get the satisfaction. The satisfaction Lee comes from the pain. This is one of the paradoxes of life. You gotta suffer to get the satisfaction. You got to defer the gratification when
Buddies on the pleasure mail, by the way, they also don't get satisfaction from anything because they can't defer gratification anymore. These problems, bleed into each other. So, one of the things that you find is that people who are very accomplished. You know the people you are good at satisfaction because you can defer your gratification and do long-term projects your satisfaction guy. The problem for you and me and a lot of people are going to watch your show because they want to be better. I mean, nobody's watching the show just for Giggles
no one.
Shoulders funny enough,
they're watching your show because they want to be better in their lives. And so they're going to be good at differing, their gratification and doing hard things, at least a Spire. Totally. I mean, it's like, I've read your books. It's interesting Lee deceptive the for our fill-in-the-blank, the early books. It makes it sound like it's a hack and it's
easy. No, no, it's not
the four hours is hard. Is the point those four hours of going to
hurt? Yeah, there's a lot of front-loading. There's also hard work without forethought and planning.
Yawning. So there is built into any of those books. A strategic deferral. Yeah for sure.
So that's what brings satisfaction. Here's the problem with satisfaction. And this goes back to where we started the conversation. Mick Jagger saying I Can't Get No Satisfaction that's wrong. You can't keep No Satisfaction. That's why you try and you try and you try and there's a reason for that, you know, neuroscientist talk about homeostasis, which is a phenomenon of always going back.
Physically and emotionally to your Baseline. And there's a reason for that because you need to go back to the Baseline in your life so you can be ready to react to the next set of circumstances. If emotionally you're going to be bummed out for the rest of your life, you become immobilized. And if you felt super happy, when something good happened, you wouldn't be in the hunt anymore. Mother Nature wants you to think that you're going to feel this emotion for the rest of your life. So that you will either avoid one thing or pursue something. But she wants to fool you and send you back again. And again,
It again have you never figured out man. If I get that car I'm going to love it. If I moved to California I'm going to enjoy the sunshine for the rest of my life. Turns out you get six months by the way of enjoying weather but the taxes are forever and that experience of never learning is called the hedonic treadmill and is unbelievably painful. The way to solve that problem is halves divided by wants the way to get real satisfaction is not having more about wanting less and that's the reverse bucket list. Etc! That's the set of habits.
That helps you dominate that particular science and short-circuit the loop that you're on because of Mother Nature's plans for you, which you're not really in your happiness interest. He doesn't care if you're happy by the
way, no passing on producing progeny is not
dependent. Yes, I think it's Mi DNA, man. It's aldia survival to pass on your genes. And, you know, it's that's great for the propagation of the species. It's not good for having them for. I don't know. For pursuing the Divine path. We are going to come back to
meeting. I want to just take a sidebar on reducing wants.
Right for a second. Sure. And talk about exercises that you've had your students, do in your classes. And I'm pulling this from memory. So I may not get the wording spot-on but identifying their idols and my yeah, getting this, right? So, if, if you could expand on what that looks like, we have a game of a game show in my class at Harvard
called, what's my idol. Now, I can tell old, I am when I was a really little kid. There's a game.
On TV called What's My Line? Like, sure, your viewers can Google it. I'm sure there's some black-and-white grainy footage of it or something from, you know, when I was in the 70s or Beck what's, my idol is actually based on the Insight of a medieval philosopher. St. Thomas Aquinas. Theologian to really a philosopher in the neoplatonic tradition. Aquinas is responsible for introducing Aristotle to the modern world up into that point. Nobody read Aristotle. It was all Play-Doh, Aristotle's teacher.
Saint Thomas Aquinas. He said, no. No
guys read this one, this is the one
and he interpreted Aristotle for the modern world. It was the same thing more or less that averroes was doing for the Muslim world and that maimonides was doing for the Jewish world because they were coexisting in southern Spain. And this intellectual soup that's hard for us to understand. Today was so deep. What was going on. So to st. Thomas Aquinas was an unbelievably adroit social
scientist.
He was also, by the way,
phenomenally impressive figure. I mean, for people who aren't familiar, just go read the Wikipedia entry and a few other things. Yeah. Yeah. Right in mind and his
magisterial work was a summa theologiae and the way that he does it, by the way is just it's a master class in the way that we should be thinking about big topics today. Which is by saying, by starting the topic with the best objection. Here's the question, here's the supposition, what's the best objection? Here's how I meet that objection. What's the second best?
Objection. Here's why me the object. The whole book is written this way. It's unbelievable. And in the section on human happiness, which he pulls from Aristotle, who claims, without any need for proof, this is what we all want. Whether we act that we're not that there's four things that we do that distract us from happiness. Now his definition of happiness is seeking the Divine, you know, this is what we all want. What do you want? But a mine. Do you know that not necessarily? Is it hard? Yeah and that's the reason we don't actually act like we're pursuing the Divine because you know
Doing God, or the Divine were the metaphysical, Singularity, or exterior, Consciousness, or what your thing is, has a lot of one-sided conversations and a lot of inconvenient morality attached to it. So we take these Divinity substitutes. These are the idols Idols are biblically and in mythology, what Idols all have in common is that they're Godlike. But they're not God. There are convenient substitutes for God. That's all in Idol. Is and st. Thomas Aquinas says there's for substitutes for God.
Which we can think of is the forest substitutes for the real secret to happiness. They are money, power, pleasure, and
fame, a little things change.
And what when he said faintly action is safe and he said honor, but that has a different connotation in English, you know, I have a son who's a special forces in Military and he served with honor, that's not what they make. Honor means to be honored its Fame. Its reputation is the admiration of other people, maybe it's Instagram followers or something ridiculous, but it is
Thing that we want in the opinion of other people. And we see the thirst after it and he says, everybody is motivated by one thing and even throw away comments like communities, they coalesce around an idol. Is so true. You know, we're recording this podcast in New York money baby. You go to a party in New York and it was like, how's your fund this year? How you doing this year? And like how much this apartment costs? It's all about money. You go to
La was the idol. I'm not going to even call it on her fame. Fame fame. Okay.
Okay, let's get keep with the quiz, DC. What's the idle power power man is how close are you to the president? What Senator do, you know, right. Vegas.
Yeah. Right? I mean
communities will coalesce around this but each one of us has our Idol to. So here's the game. You want to play sure. Let's play the game. Okay? So the truth is, none of us has all for. None of us is so Vice written. We don't have the energy or time to be serving all four of these Idols. I mean, come on life as you underestimate me,
sir. But we all
have one or two that really animate us and we don't always know it because we're not paying attention to it. Now a client is his point and modern
Yogi Bear's all this out that as a normal adult with a complicated life, if you know your idol, you'll recognize the thing that always leads you, astray and leads you to do the things that you later regret because you were following that Idol. So it's very important to figure out which Idol that is so that you can manage it. Not the only kid go away because you're human, but you can manage your idol, okay? So I start by saying, what's not your Idol because of the for there's something that you could ditch.
Yeah, Power is not a, yep, power.
Immediately I was on them one to start with.
So that's why you're not a CEO. I mean, you've got a company and, you know, you but you're not like trying to run a
corporation. Yeah, there's a lot of things that are and I know a lot of people who are power focused, yes sense and one form or another. It just doesn't, he
doesn't like it. You actively dislike power like people having power over you and you having power over others. I don't dislike it
necessarily. I mean, I think that it's an inherent dynamic.
In particularly chimpanzee politics. But just in out, nature in general, I
was thinking of which, let me they react to this phrase, Tim Ferriss for
congress. No haga. Absolutely not.
Your answer is correct. You are not motivated by power is the first one to get rid of. Okay. You got three left money. Pleasure Fame. You got to kick one out. You got to get rid of one. What's the next one to go? I can get rid of Fame easily. I think that there was a point in my
life, where I sought a lot of social validation, but
I think seen the flip side and the shadow elements of that, it has it
holds. We got pretty famous young and so you saw the dark side of that which is what social scientists. And even neuro scientists will tell you what their research is that Fame is really the only of the idols that you can never be happy in spite of, you know, when Lady Gaga tweeted Fame is prison hmm and everybody derided that I'm thinking that's deeply a depth that is a deeply clarifying common and by the way, I mean, you know, John
Milton wrote that. And you know the 17th century that it is the the idol that we thirst after and sacrifice the happiness of our days for that. And you learn that by experience, not because of disposition because you did hunger after it and then experienced it, and you realize that it's a very, very, very bitter
fruit. Yeah, there are a lot of footnotes and a lot of fine print in that Faustian bargain. Okay. So I 46
year-old Tim Ferriss, that's number two. That you that goes out the door.
Don't care. In fact if I
Could put the toothpaste back in the toothpaste tube in numerous ways. I would do
that, right? Okay, you got two left in. It's getting hot in here, right?
Money and pleasure Yeltsin pleasure which one you can read say money I can in the hierarchy I can get rid of the marginal utility of each additional dollars is just makes no difference in the things that I care
about. So in a middle-class life wouldn't freak you out.
No and I'll point I mean, I'm not
talking about poverty. I'm not like
He about getting not getting three squares. I'm talking about not having the money for the nice stuff that people think is really wonderful to have the houses,
the boats the cars. Yeah, I don't really buy, I don't care of. Yeah, I don't I don't really care and I care less and less. Because also, the more financial success you have, the more time you spend with people who have even greater financial success. And I've seen no indication. In fact, might even be a contraindication that wealth produces the things I'm after.
I think there are significant adverse side effects.
Well, I'll there's a lot of research that shows that there is a way to buy happiness, but it's not by buying stuff, is by buying experiences, it's by buying time and by giving it away
and you already figured that one out. Yeah, so yeah. I mean, quick example of that for me in the last handful of years, I oh, Tim Urban a huge thank-you for his article, the tail end. I ended up booking most years depending on my family's health and so on, right? A family trip once a year that we can
look forward to for like six months and have group chats about and so on. And then, even today was was discussing a boy's trip with. Some of my closest friends are probably like, six months from now and the ROI on those is huge. But I would say money, I can get rid of money. So
we found your idol. Yeah, playing Ferris likes to feel good, I do. Yeah. And again, there's nothing wrong with feeling good, but for you we need to watch to make sure that you're getting enjoyment and pleasure. Yeah. And we need to be very disciplined about enjoyment. Not
pleasure. And
Also add to this that I do think I'm pleasure junkie for certain things. Sure. The central the sexual being very high on the list. There's also I think a wrinkle to this like the, the sort of Mara sitting on my shoulder if anybody has the reference would be given a history of depression, right? I fear its opposite right so I chase pleasure as hopefully some inoculation against I Darkness. So there are many things contributing
That will pleasure
tends to be numbing. It does tend to be numbing of negative emotion. So people will pursue pleasure because they're actually trying to it's
it's fentanyl.
There's a reason that felt there's nobody who enjoys fentanyl because it's not something you like I want to go hang out with my buddies and take Fentanyl and make a memory on the country. You're trying to eviscerate memory in, trying to get rid of memory with these types of things. And so numbing things, tend to work that way. And I understand, I mean, you've actually had you have a history of mood disorders in your life and you don't want them.
I want them back. You don't want to invite them back and so you do something that feels like an inoculation from those depths. The key thing, is that the real insurance policy is enjoyment. Satisfaction and purpose, that's the real insurance policy, okay? And again, because because it doesn't eradicate the unhappiness, the darkness, but it puts it into context such that as part of the quilt of your life. And so it's just one square in the quilt of your life and not the whole blanket. Yeah.
I so I want to, I want to expand
Don this, this is thread selfishly that I'd like to pull know you
and God I will add
maybe just one thought which is much of the pleasure that I pursue is not numbing. It's actually a volume competition in the sense that if I start to feel like there are Whispers of the potential of an onset of a depressive episode or maybe it's the ruminative thoughts and anxiety that comes with that. But let's just say those
At a 2 out of 10 volume. Mmm,
there's fear, because I'm worried that that is going to spiral, right? And so, I seek out something on the positive side of The Ledger, or let me just say the pleasure Side Of The Ledger, right? That is higher volume.
Yeah, you're trying to knock yourself out of a Groove,
is welcome. So it's like overcoming a dread of deadness with greater aliveness right? What's
one? Possible strategy. That could be a substitute strategy for that. That's why I'm here
doctor. Yeah.
So so and there are so that's
right. There are meditation and prayer. Seeking for the Divine, a serious spiritual practice. These are the things that will actually do much the same things, but without the numbing, and without the danger, because it's tricky, right? I mean, hitting the dopamine lover, has
consequences,
cherating, we hitting it hard and often as you know, desperate consequences for it. And we know none of us needs problems in our lives. We have plenty of those already.
Yeah. Totally. So yes, end. Let's just say, spare meditation prayer.
Spare spare prayer name of my forthcoming book. I like your prayer and meditation. I can see the difference. It's easy for say a secular listener right to consider, right? What would you say to people who are perhaps secular not necessarily militant atheists, right? Who I think recognizes I do in some ways. I am deeply just to layer on my sins here envious, right?
Of people who have strong religious compression, I recognize the value. And from a, at least, in the sort of monotheistic judeo Christian Traditions, I don't think I'm likely to join right. One of the Bands, I'll work on you. So I recognize, we can go do some, some blood occlusion training and you can just spend it will save Rose together between in between sitting, right in between reps. Lay the prayer on thick.
So, what would you suggest
to me or someone who recognizes the value? I don't, I do not have a
counter-argument. Yeah, but I'm not sure how to embrace that, so there are alternatives. So I can tell he's a Catholic, that's my thing. But I can tell he's a social scientist that it's not. The only thing that will actually bring the same neuro physiological and psychological benefits. What we need is a sense of the Transcendent that makes
us small.
That's what we need, why? Because we need perspective and peace. I mean 10, you're going to go through all day is like, my podcast.
Stand, you know, it's my commute, Andy me, my money and my friends and my mom and my mimi is so man, it's just so it's like watching the same episode every single night of Better Call Saul when the rest of your
life. It's like having the seagulls from Finding Nemo in your head. Yeah, my mind might. I mean, it's just, it's the
worst. And so you have to find a way to get peace. But what we really need is to put ourselves in perspective. Now, most people are afraid to be little are really afraid to be insignificant purse.
Active requires that we see reality and we get smaller and we stand in awe of the universe and what it can bring, there's lots of ways to do
that.
Meditation practices are very good for. That prayer is very good for that religion and most traditional circumstances, very good for that, but walking in nature without devices Before Dawn for an hour is incredibly good for that, for all sorts of reasons and this is extremely well validated in the social science literature.
How important is the timing on that?
Well,
it's good because you start the day that way and there's the programming of it. And by the way the experience of seeing the sunrise is incredibly awe-inspiring plus it's quiet and cool,
deaf, all plus quiet and cool for sure.
And therefore you get a, just a bigger bolus of, you know, the benefits that you actually get from the in contact with the Earth and be in contact with nature Etc. Another way to do this is to stand in awe of human genius. That's way, outside the realm of your experience. So learn about the fugues of Johann. Sebastian Bach read about his life. Your
And listen to a hundred of
his cantatas and learn how to analyze them in your life, will never be the same or your neighbor and our mutual friend. Ryan holiday read the stoics, read the stoics. I mean, it's a quasi-religious experience, you will feel a deep satisfaction at your littleness. Probably for the first time in years. As a matter of fact, there are many ways to get this, but you need to get small in front of Bach and in front of Epictetus in front of God,
God, you need to get
small. Is the whole point. I love that it's easy to remember, right? Get small and there just to underscore that for myself. Made a few things that have been helpful, right nature. Yes for sure. Studying or could take the farm listening to say hardcore history and listening to Kings of Kings the Assyrians and really widening, the aperture of your historic lens, just to put the problems of this week perspective.
And also the impermanence of Empires like yeah maybe relevant these days a
moment in time and yeah yeah. So going back and
realizing the most, some of the most powerful figures in the history of humankind, you will not recognize. We also, I think, for me has been very relieving and also has taken a lot of the earlier fixation on money away because I realized, it's just ashes to ashes dust to
dust typically the ecclesiastic.
That's right. Give me the full name of Alexander, the Great most
Well, can't so rather than get fixed on some vague notion of Legacy. Like, let's actually focus on other things. The getting small looking at the stars. Honestly, I did so much as a kid and I lost it and have sort of reclaimed as this thing that can be used as such a tool for zooming out. And I've two friends, Ed cook is one notable example who, when he thinks of his problems, and I'm going to paraphrase this, but he will look at the stars and
Zoom out from his neighborhood himself to the planet to the solar system and when he then returns back to laying on the ground, looking at the stars, like the problems that were plaguing, you just do not seem, that's the point. So significant,
that's really the point. It's not just a question of minimizing your problems. It's also minimizing the scale of your hopes and dreams and opportunities and recognizing that.
What really matters. You're in that to be sure but you're one part of that. It's okay, it's all okay. The greatest just okay in the bad is okay to. And, you know, that's so deeply comforting and it leads to so many improvements in mental health.
I just don't know how you can put one foot in front of the other, without doing something like this every day. Now people often ask okay, how do we get started? How do I get started? Read 15 minutes a day? Pick up the brothers. K.
Brothers karamazov. Yeah, my saying like probably not.
Yeah, you are yeah, Brothers karamazov by fyodor Dostoevsky, if you like fiction, stop wasting your time on. Triviality is go get the brothers k y because it's a deeply inspiring experience, about the human condition and the absurdity of
Of it's beautiful. Get the meditations of Marcus Aurelius who, by the way, a world historical figure because he was a Roman Emperor. Nobody remembers a practically, a single thing that happened as Roman Emperor. We remember what was written in his private diary, it's
wild, it's crazy. Last of the great Emperor's
mostly because he was dumb enough to leave his son in charge. Oops, his waist roll
that's like the story of humankind all thing with. I think I
want to leave my business to my kids. What do you think Tim? You
know, there's a there's a
A conversation with my kids are awesome. I wonder if I wonder if I can get him into the happiness.
But Dad. I know you're always being us over the head on this hat. It's not my path. I roll. So I'm curious for you personally having thought about this deeply having tracked a lot of things. Also, what are some of the best uses of money that you have found personally? What types of things? So,
Any concrete examples that you can give we
roll through that fast just a second ago, but it turns out there's a ton of research on this, my colleague Mike Norton and my colleagues might turn and Ashley will into the Harvard Business School. They've done this, exhaustive research on how to buy happiness
out of my happiness, right? Okay.
Mother nature says get more stuff. Why? Because satisfaction comes from having more, what's the strategy for life more Mother Nature tells you that she lies lies and lies and laughs at you? That's not the strategy you need to buy enough but no possession will do anything beyond bring.
Out of misery. That's the reason that the studies, you know, the famous condom and indeed in study from Princeton shows that happiness flattens out after 75 thousand dollars a year and you know Matt Killingsworth that pain actually reran the data and finds that is higher but it's still flattens
out inflation-adjusted but it's faithful
inflation adjusted or you know, your results May Vary or whatever it is. But the whole point is you don't get happier and happier and happier as Millions. The Reason by the way that we think that is an illusion that comes from our experience. Most people have less than they perceive that they need when they're young and the
Result of it is that they a lot of people, and a lot of people listening to us, they suffer a lack of meeting some basic needs. You know, when I was 19 to 25, I was too poor for six years, to go to the dentist for six years. No, of course, I don't think everyone to do with us cigarettes, so I guess it was priorities,
but the, but the point is that what I was referenced a champion? Yeah,
yeah. Beard cigarettes, pizza. And I was living on those living in Washington Heights, and those days. And when I was 25, I took a job in the Barcelona Orchestra and
To Barcelona. Had benefits had been he's man and I went to the dentist and he filled 10 cavities and I felt a lot better and I thought
Money doesn't buy happiness. No, not money. Lowers unhappiness when you move out of deprivation, that's it. And so what happens is I made the mental link between feeling getting money and feeling better and people do that and they chase that feeling for the rest of their life
because you're doing sums in your
head well-being, as happiness and unhappiness and all that. You can't tell the difference when you're just, you're rolling through your life and early on, you felt a lot better. That's all, you know, and you had more money and so you want that feeling.
Chase the feeling you chase the high, you chase the early hits, like drugs, like any other drugs in this way. So that doesn't work. Yeah. There are three ways you can buy happiness, according to willens and Norton, my colleagues at
HBS, you
can buy experiences. This is critically important because what do experiences that were you buy happiness? Really have in common, you add money, which is sort of like pleasure. But the really important parts are the people in the memory. People in memory are always part of experiences, okay? Now sometimes you want to
to do things alone. But generally speaking, the greatest happiness comes because it enhances love and your life. The best way to improve love in your life. If you want your love life with your partner, to get better go away together, go away together, that's always the West best way to do or stay home together. But turn off the phone. In other words, get an experience for the person that you love. That's a great way to spend money because it will reliably unless you wasted do something stupid. Like I'm going to have a bender in Vegas and then you know, get
I got drunk and sit in front of the slot machine. That's not the secret but you know, being prudent you can actually buy happiness through experiences. That's number one.
Number two, I'm going to ask you for personal examples but yes, yeah, I'm serious. Yeah for
sure by time by time but use the time correctly if you have the money and you're cutting your lawn you don't like cutting your lawn improve GDP. Hire a guy. Now a lot of Americans don't like to do that because I have this kind of this weird reversed.
Class cyst sense. Well let me tell you. There's a lot of people are making more money than you cutting Lawns and running a gardening service, spread the love, give somebody a job and then use the time correctly, don't Fritter away your time, scrolling social media in the house and the air conditioning. No, no. Use the time, specifically for something. Ideally, with somebody, doing something that you enjoy, and that will truly buy happiness. And last but not least, give your money away to somebody who needs it, who deserves it and a cause that truly inspires,
Is you something you really, really believe it. I've studied philanthropy long before I studied happiness. I was, you know, an academic, beavering away in obscurity writing books on charity and philanthropy and nonprofit organizations. And the reason I initially got into happiness in the first place, besides, you know, wanting to be happy, was that? I found that the more people gave the happier. They
got. So we don't have to tread into these Waters. But I think it would be very helpful for people and I'm very curious. I'm happy to receive Medicaid. Also. Yeah, where have you landed for where to give your own money?
If I
give money to things that are really care about that, I think have an impact on people's lives in a big way. And a lot of what I do is I give to education to people who are at the margins of society. So I give a lot to primary and secondary education specifically to Catholic primary and secondary education because I think it just really, really well done. And it's an option that a lot of people don't have access to because it costs money. So a lot of what I do probably 75% of what to give away and I give away 10% of my income. So I feel ya it because, you know, it's not
That hard to do is have to pay attention to it and then the structures, you know, so you get a charitable giving a coladas and tithe or yeah. I do think it was a tide that I really think of it as a privilege. Mmm, I think of it, a lot less is a duty and a lot more is a privilege. My wife. And I we just look forward to it. And then, you know, we have a process in her family of, you know, should we give money to this? We give money. That usually we give something kind of a big bolus, one year. And then in the smaller guess, two things that are ongoing sources of support that we really believe
in. How do you decide what to give to?
Well, we know the
people we do the work so it's not just anybody. We get a letter in the mail and we respond with a big check, like huh? Seems worthy. No, we actually do the work and part of it is because I teach one of the classes, I teach at Harvard is on nonprofit management. And so, I have a kind of a strong background and, you know, whether it's a reputable cause and what to look for and to measuring the effectiveness of an organization. So I do the work, I do the background work. I, you know, I see what kind of overhead rates that they're using, how they're using their money, A lot has to do with if I like the mission, sometimes if it's going to be a substantial.
The money I get to know the people and the organization and it has to be something that I think is going to change people's lives for the better. Now, I've actually changed my view on this a little bit because early on would write a lot of little checks. Lots and lots and lots of little checks, two, great organizations. And then I found that you can have a lot more effect on your own well-being. And again, this is kind of selfish but in your own well-being, by concentrating on turning the whole dial in one person's
life and there's an old towel.
The
modak phrase from the book of Sanhedrin that says, in every man is the whole world. In other words turned the dial for one person who turned the dial for all of humanity because it's really had an impact. And I remember telling my wife about that so I can I can think of these data that when you're really helped one person. Instead of a little bit for a lot. Really anonymously. You can you can get all these benefits. She's like this is years ago. This is maybe 20 years ago now and she's like why don't we adopt a baby?
And I'm like
it's only a buck man,
but we did.
We actually did. It was
totally life-changing.
So that's how you give you got to do the work and think about it and put your heart into it. Did you say Martha? How
did she come to the adoption? My wife? Yeah. How does
she came to it? Because I was saying, you know, you get a lot more benefits When you turn the whole dial on one person's life as opposed to just you know Slinky going dollar bills at
this to 11. Yeah she's like that we should
basically
Ali. Like, okay,
buddy.
You really,
really mean it was like, I know you got this interesting research, you know, fancy social scientist guy and let's
see.
Should we put our money where our mouth is? By the way, she had also been having dreams about a little
girl who was abandoned
your dreams and dreams and dreams at night. If you're open to it, you tell me more
about your wife and how you guys met, because I know a little bit of the back ground. But how did that happen? Since I'm back on the playing field back in this wire field show. Mmm. One of the things that I teach
my students at HBS,
Is that I would never invest in The Firm of an entrepreneur who is unwilling to give her or his heart away because as the single most risky entrepreneurial thing that you can do putting every bit of Capital At Risk, if you're not willing to give your heart away, I'm locking it, put my money in your fund.
Now, and that takes the
form of risk, man. Loving someone wholeheartedly
giving her heart away. Okay, here in your heart away. So, and the reason I believe this is because, you know, I've always had this sense that part of the Journey of life is just like getting in it getting in it. And you know entrepreneurs talk a lot about putting Capital risk environment money, how boring the real capital of the Enterprise. The startup of Tim Ferriss is life because this is the ultimate Enterprise. I mean the Enterprise is not the podcast and the books and the company and the that's
It those are manifestations of Tim Ferriss, think of you. The Enterprise is you and the currency of you is not money, it's love and happiness. That's your currency. So how are you going to put that at risk for explosive tectonic? Inflicting Returns? What do you do to put it at risk? That's the question, right? Yeah, the answers are really tricky but the one answer that's not right is, don't put it at risk,
don't put it at risk, right? So I am with you now. There are
Myriad ways that if you were to sort of take off your flak jacket and just walk into. Yeah, oncoming traffic with like emotional oncoming traffic with someone who you've been on a dating app. Who you meet? Within five minutes in there cuckoo, bananas that could turn out poorly. Of course, that's just
Vegas. That's not entrepreneurship, that's just gambling.
Right? So how? Well,
first, I want to hear you after our. Yeah. So this gets back to the issue at hand and the reason I did that little Prelude is because I don't want anybody.
I think that my screws are too
loose, right? That's not my goal. Yeah, that's, and if I don't, I'm not Insanity. So, okay, first my case, insane. Insane man on the podcast, deeply unbalanced, guest joins, Tim Ferriss. So when I
was 24 years old, I was on a concert tour and I was making my living as a classical French horn players on a concert tour in the burgundy region of France. Now, we're going from town to town playing concerts and I was staying at this school
I don't know. He's just where we were housed during this, you know, we were going out from there and at the same time, there's a music festival going on. And there were musicians from all over Europe, there were studying at this music festival and I was at this concert playing at this very school and playing you know playing my horn looking out in the audience and there
was this girl smiling at
me in the front row. Beautiful
girls smiling at me, just gorgeous
and I'm, you know, I'm a red-blooded 24-year old dude and I'm like, obviously, I'm going to make a mental note to go.
Talk to her. No,
so I go talk to her later. I find out two things. Number one. She's not French.
You're not in France and number two that she doesn't speak a single word of English and it was hard because you know, where I was trying to talk to her and, you know, monosyllabic grunts in the fruitless search for cognates and I said, are you single? I mean, this is like, this basic. Are you single? And she says, yes, I'm divorced. I'm like, I'm not down with that but what she meant was, I just broke up with my boyfriend but she couldn't come up with any latin-based words besides divorce, which actually comes from lat. It's a try to get me to understand this point anyway, so it was a
A comedy of errors. And we went out to dinner. And we went on
some dates
and I left after a week, and I went home, and I call my dad in Seattle. I grew up in Seattle. I was living in New York at the time. I said, Dad, I think I met the girl I'm going to
marry and where was she from Barcelona
Barcelona and he said great, let's meet her and I said, I got problems problem. Number one is that she doesn't live in the United States. Problem number two, she doesn't speak a word of English problem. Number three is that
she made
me aware that she doesn't believe in marriage because she thinks it's an anachronistic.
Institution and she's never going to get married.
He's a hell of a. Yeah, it's a concept to communicate and yeah, Tarzan. He is. Yeah, yeah. No, for sure. I mean, we're together for a week and we, you know, you got there.
We got there and I couldn't get out of my head. It was like Our Lady of Guadalupe kind of, and I thought about it, I thought about it and we exchanged letters and weirdly somehow talked on the phone. She started. Taking English classes, I started studying Spanish. Who knows what? I'll see your, I travel to Barcelona saw her she came to New York and visited me just a little bit here and there. And what I didn't tell her,
Her is that I had quit my job in New York and I'd won an audition to be a member of the symphony in
Barcelona
because I wanted to go see if I could close that deal. If I could change her philosophy of marriage, it took me two years. But I closed the deal and 32 years later, we have three adult kids and one grandson and I'm still in love. So how did
you how did you end up debate doing that? I'm just curious, like, how did I had
were down to just one down were down. So you know,
we were, you know, as 11 of our salon and she was in love with me and so
Is not
like, get out. It's not like I was some weird stalker. She really wasn't love with me and she wanted to be with me. But, you know, she nobody in her family was married. I mean, this is not what you do in Barcelona. I didn't realize that because I mean, it sounds like a big Catholic country, it's a post-christian country. 3% of the population of Barcelona ever goes to
mass. 3%. I never would have guessed that denim Alia
Mediterranean. That's incredible. You know idea? Yeah, nobody does for sure. I mean it but you know, it has a long tradition and she comes from a hard read.
Communist atheist family. Mmm, so suffice it to say that our background is a little bit different. I mean, again, she was beautiful and smart and funny and and I was in love. Yeah, I just
love will allow
love will out and it finally, the end of two years. I just finally, I said I got down on one knee and I said, you ready to change your mind. She said, yes.
All right. So once again Envy is showed its ugly head and I have to admit my French horn game.
Very weak very well turns out. The front row is the least about my pants, they've guns in those days. The sun's out, guns
out to in 142 pounds. My wife said that it was like hugging a tight sack of
rocks.
Now she says, it's like a loose leather bag of ropes. So you know, I've made
some pride. Yeah. Is that progress? It sounds like progress, their hopes. Maybe that should be in my dating profile. There's
If you hug me I feel like maybe not. Maybe that's a little too shy little lamb. Hiding under a blanket. I don't know if and maybe you're so far removed that this doesn't make sense to ask, but what advice? Also you're coming from a different orientation with the Catholicism and I assumed maybe wrongly but I imagine is my life not hers right now. She fully aboard the Catholic a fully bar. But that
took such a long time were down rents around to a lot of prefer.
They say this is one of those problems that requires prayer and
fasting. So you pray and chief asked it? And you're like no food, it will put the restaurant is on its
Wrist.
All right. Thoughts on how to get find a partner.
Yeah, no, I think about this an awful lot because this is the number one Topic in my science of Happiness class that HBS, that they want to know about Wednesday. It's got to be, oh, for sure, for sure. Absolutely. Because, you know, not only is it something that we always,
I want that everybody wants. It's something that's getting
harder. Yeah, all the traditional scaffolding is gone. Unless you perhaps your part of say, Jewish Community were. Yeah, that type of yen to like matchmaking is a very esteemed
but equal then the modern world is encroaching on that. And, you know, if you look at the comparison between in the
80s, when I was in my twenties or the 90s when you were in your 20s, sorry I didn't mean
to shock you with that. You know. That's okay. Yeah. I
know it's much. Much, much harder. I have the ring of Frodo's. I'm not planning on Aging.
More from this point forward side note, you should look at photos of him now and 20 years ago, the same the actor anyway. Yeah, not me though, those. I mean, back when I was in the Barcelona
Symphony, I had this hair. It was like a great civilizations, like, the locks of Samson, I was unbelievable. And, and so, you know, then I start going bald and getting more and more bald. My brother, my older brother is very judgmental about these. Funny loves me, but he
says, you deserve it because of the life, you've LED
So what are the guardrails? What are the mistakes that we make, you know, what's actually making it harder? And there's a lot of things that go into it. You know, there's the fact that we're using Tech where we would have used, humans is deeply problematic. I mean, the fact that we have so much deal flow is making it harder. The Paradox of choice is a real thing. Better better better better better. I mean it's a ton of research on this. By the way, to me I'm you've seen some of this research for example on car purchases, where, you know, you give two groups you know, this in the treatment and control, social science experiments, two groups.
Different car buying experiences for the first buys their car and there's no refund and there's no returns and the other side can return it for any reason in the next 6 months. And the first group is much happier with their car because they're not thinking about it again and again and again there's no more swiping on the car purchase. And so the same thing is when it's very easy to have a lot of selection, it gets much much harder to attain satisfaction
also exhausted more easily because of the decision fatigue.
Yeah, I mean I can often take your word for it but I mean
that that's certainly true. That's in the data while the day not
outside of
Dang. Yeah, just in general. Yeah. Right. But the bigger problem actually comes because we're looking for the wrong thing in a partner. The data suggests that what everybody wants in a partner that they can curate carefully because of the online presence, because of the platforms is they want compatibility. And they look for compatibility with sameness to them. I like this kind of food, you do great, I vote like this. You do too great on this religion, or on the on no religion. I grew up here, I went to college out. Where did you go? To college,
Etc. They're not looking for someone who doesn't speak their language.
Who
they're looking for a sibling and you know, and as my adult kids would say that's not hot. Yeah, the truth is, were way too compatible and we're sorting on compatibility with these technological means. And the biggest problem with dating today is, we're less and less
attracted to people.
We're less and less attracted because they're too much like us. We need more complementarity and less compatibility back in the old days, you say, opposites attract, not true, but you need a baseline of compatibility, but on
Of that you need difference. Difference is hot differences, fun, differences in adventure and you're just not going to find it because nobody's going to swipe on you quite frankly, if you're the other party, you know, a lot of people curate on language and culture and race. It's Insanity. You know, that's the reason that good ol fashioned human people who say they could fall in love. When you talk about people who fix you up on a blind date or the old-fashioned matchmakers, they're always looking about complementarity this introvert.
And this extrovert can fill in the gaps in each other. In a kind of a Divine in Cosmic way. That's how I always kind of felt. I felt like my wife was, you know, I don't believe in magical thinking on this magical thinking is a big problem because soulmates don't exist. And there's no such thing as love at first sight. But I always do feel like my wife. Esther was, she was picked for me. She was really picked for me and because of the difference, as much as anything else, I mean, she completes me, she makes me a better, man. She knows when I'm
After
the idol. See knows he can see it going after the law. As you can see, it's right? And that's 32 years of experience together, but it's also the Deep complementary that cans because I was born at a particular time and I accidentally have this kind of experience and that's what we need. That's number one, this is clear. The second thing is goals, you know, when I ask people, you know,
You're going to meet the person of your dreams or the good enough person or whatever. What do you want to have after five
years? The good enough person? That's to Paris is guide. The good enough wife to passable relationships,
wife me up with someone good enough man. Anyway
so yeah I know because by the way
up one their car no record. There aren't
just kind of I don't know man. Volunteer yeah maybe it's like you've been in prison.
I haven't really neat, really, whatever I've been tried. Isn't working. Maybe I'll skip Barcelona into the prison circuit, all right? Yeah.
But when you ask people what do you want your relationship to look like in five years, they have kind of this magical notion of an ongoing passion and that's the wrong goal. The right goal is what is called companionate. Love, you want to be best friends in five years, five years two, best friends, that's the goal. And if you're right it out, and if you actually make it the goal and then you have interim.
Steps and a strategic plan. You might just get there, but if you're like an adult's, like if the ban should feels like the magic's gone, obviously there's something wrong with our love. No, best friends. Who were married. They can have plenty of passion but you can't live like that. Look the neurophysiological Cascade of the experience of falling in love is unbelievably intense, its Fourth of July, in your head,
the bolus of
testosterone and estrogen at the very beginning of the relationship. Massive increases in norepinephrine and dopamine that give you you
Phoria and concentration and focus on the other person, the Deep dip, and serotonin, your serotonin dips. Why? Because you want to ruminate on that person using the Good Ol, ventral lateral. Prefrontal cortex? That's the reason that falling in love is an awful lot like being clinically depressed, so you're both addicted to meth and depressed at the same time, that's what falling in love is like and then you're going to get that big dose of oxytocin which is the neuropeptide that links you to the other person. In this almost magical confusing way, man. That's just
Too
much. You don't
have that for the rest of your life. Sounds like a
lot. Well, you'll be institutionalized.
Let's let's pause there for a second. There's a lot of it was a lot. I was I want to go, you are simulating, want to go. I want to go from falling in love as math and depression to the lightness of death
and we haven't even talked about meaning yet math. Oh we're going to get there and get there by the
90,000. Yeah I'm keeping track our nine I haven't bookmarked also I have a promise I made to listeners that I have not fulfilled which is your personal examples for
Or using money for experiences time, whatever comes to mind, so we'll get to that. But before that death meditation, yeah, could could you please describe your death meditation and why you have a death
notification? Most people watching us are not afraid of death, not pathologically, afraid of death, but only about 20% of the population is pathologically afraid of death. And I bet you that it's less than 1% of Tim Ferriss followers
because people watching this are in control of their lives and they understand the
Contours of their lives and they're looking at the truth of their lives, but they have of death fear, the death, fear isn't physical death and this is a problem. For some people, it's irrelevance for some people is being forgotten for a lot of your listeners. Its failure. Just straight on failure because they're Strivers their Achievers. Everybody has a deaf ear and what is it? It's an ego thread. So threat to who you see as yourself if Tim Ferriss is Tim Ferriss - is
Threatened that will provoke a panic in you because that's the ultimate death of who you see yourself the way to get over that. And by the way, you have to get over that we all have to get over that or we won't be fully Alive until we actually face the death that really matters to us. This is an Insight that actually comes from the theravada Buddhists across the Southern Tier of Asia from Thailand and Myanmar to Vietnam and parsa Malaysia and the theravada in Sri Lanka and particular. So the theravada Buddhist monasteries often, you'll go in and you'll see
Photos of cadavers in different states of decomposition. Super super Macabre. I mean, you're like what are these dudes all about here? And what they do is that usually there will be nine, nine states of decomposition, photos bodies decomposing falling, apart,
bones bloated corpses,
and they stand in front of each one. And they say that is me.
And then they move to the next one after contemplating and saying and that is me and what are they doing? They're familiarizing themselves with the truth of their future such that they can be liberated from any fear of physical death, only then can they be fully alive? That's an important Insight from theravada Buddhism. That's a meditation called maryna Sati. The mara necessity, deathbed, a tation.
Now, when I read that I thought was interesting but I thought it's a good thing to do because you know, I shouldn't be making all of these decisions about when I'm old and when I retired and when I die and what's going to happen and call the lawyer and all that, I want to be free from all that stuff by understanding, that life and death, or in a very real
way in an illusion,
but a lie because I believe in eternal life, but I haven't death
here. Oh yeah, you know what?
I'm afraid of. You know, my death fear is going to take care of cats.
No, I don't know.
No, that's good. Who's gonna take care of my dog Chucho losing my mind. Hmm, on the way there.
Yeah. Cuz, you know, you know what Arthur Brooks is gray. Matter. Look, I'm not the smartest guy in the world. I'm of the cleverest guy in the world, but I make my living and I support my family. And I understand me, in terms of my ideas, literally, my company is called a CB ideas. He was very revealing to me when I contemplated the fact that I did, you say ACB as
I also Charles Pro chicken took me
seconds. I just can't remember the alphabet little. It's like sick. It's like xzy. So I'm Long Island. Sorry guys. Yes. So
in my mother was showing signs of dementia in her early 50s and she was quite demented by the time. She was my age and it runs in families. Its genetic. I know, it doesn't mean I'm going to get the bullet. It doesn't mean I'm not being
About it. I'm not being fatalistic about it. Probably the odds were in my favor, but I'm just, I'm just terrified of that and when I recognized that, I realized I need a marine, Asante meditation on that. And that's what I contemplate. I'll take two minutes and I'll thank my memory is failing and I don't know why.
And then I imagine going to the neurologist. A neurologist saying, well, I think you need to come into my office and then I imagine myself telling my kids, the future is going to be rough. And then I imagine my work slipping away, my inability to have this kind of conversation to write a book to share an idea to help somebody with these ideas.
And then I imagine myself not remembering what, I don't remember.
Then I imagine being a beloved Son of God with no memory at all.
Now, it's heavy, right? Seems like that ending
point is important.
It's the most important because you end on the
truth. So, if you're not religious, do you just end up to use the parlance of the kids. These days, just depressed AF. I mean, are you just now shit out of luck now?
Okay. Because in the end of the day, in the marina, softy meditation, you recognize the illusion of the tragedy. That was your death in the first place.
Ashes to ashes dust, to dust new life will emerge. Will it be? You, will it be somebody else? Do you care? See,
when you look into the abyss, you
can cope with it, you're stronger than that, my students, by the way, at Harvard graduate students, Harvard Business School best in the world. So, we like to think they're afraid of failure because they've never failed. They've never failed. I mean, you and I have struggled and you know, were older and, you know, I failed a lot.
But my students are deeply afraid of failure. I mean, I've basically got kicked out of college and I was 19 and turns that you're not supposed to drop all your required classes and take nothing but Indonesian dance in North Indian. Classical drumming turns out. That's not the secret to academic
success kids, you know, make a note of it.
So I failed, right? But a lot of my students haven't and so I asked them to do the marinus, Auntie meditation on their own academic and professional
failure.
Or 12 minutes. I think I'm
falling behind academically and the people around me are getting better grades to I just got put on academic probation. This was my dream to come to this school and I'm not succeeding three. The job market is looking bad compared to other people. I can't believe
it for.
I think I need to move home for a while.
Five, my parents feel sorry for me that's when they cry, right? Because all you want is for Mom to be proud of you. That's all you want. When you're a success addict,
that's all you want.
And imagine that look into that stare into it, stare into it and they do and they get over it and they can Master it. That's them, are in a sautee, death meditation on the self, objectification of the
The success
addict. See, what do you see in those students? Because they come from all different backgrounds and different orientations religious or not, or somewhere in between some are some aren't. Yeah. What types of effects and how frequently do you personally do this type of death
meditation? A lot because I have my own death meditation. I'm not, I mean, I contemplate failure sometimes because I'm afraid of it, but I'm not deathly afraid of it. The truth of the matter is, the great thing about being 46 as opposed to 26 for you. The great thing about being 59s that at 29 for me,
Is that bad stuff is going to happen and it's going to be okay. Bad stuff is going to happen, right? I mean, the truth is that we realize you and I both realize that the worst thing that's ever happened in life, probably hasn't happened yet.
And okay, that's heavy. But it's not that
heavy, you know, we're going to survive. You've survived a lot and it's actually going to be okay, I don't want to fail, you know, I've always got, you know, we have a book coming out. I have a big book coming out a few weeks from when we're taping this episode and I deeply wanted to be successful.
But I can't control that and so I don't have to do much more than a couple of modern society, meditations of them, you know, the market failure of a book, but I have to do it about losing my mind because that feels deeply existential to me. I have to do it a lot. I do it at least once
a week actually,
because I want to remember, I need to remember and if I don't I'm going to be walking kind of on eggshells and just sort of wandering and having that kind of minor sense of dread. I don't want to live that way. I don't need to live that way. It's not important for me to live that way. On the contrary, it's
For me, not to live that way because I won't be fully Alive. Now, I'll be living prospectively in the future, and that future is dominated by fear and then I'm really not washing the dishes. I'm really not enjoying that juicy Peach on the contrary. I'm breaking my teeth on the pit and it's not even a real
Pit. That's crazy. So,
not yet really yet. Yeah,
this is, I think, is a good tie in to meaning, and I'm going to get there with self-indulgent, reference back to Marcus, Aurelius
People have not read meditations. Read meditations. It was never intended for Publications really. These are effectively the pocket musings of someone deeply conflicted but also incredibly impressive during war campaigns and otherwise but lots of thoughts on death. And also for those interested there's a considered a stoic practice that exists in a lot of different varieties. But Memento Mori, there are these meditations premeditated malorum, right?
Which is the
Greek - aw T, exact has a bag right or Roma's,
right. Exactly. And while he also thought very deeply on meaning, let's come to meaning. So we identified two, I guess of the legs on the stool on the stool, right? Meaning how should we think about minis? A hard one
meaning is the hard one. I mean look, I mean enjoying this no joke and and satisfaction takes work. But meaning eludes some people their entire lives because they don't know what they're looking for. They're fumbling around for something.
Don't know exactly what it is. And a lot of people, they deeply suspect that it doesn't exist that it doesn't actually exist. You look at a lot of 20th century 19th century philosophers and they say it doesn't exist. I mean, there's sort of three schools of thought about meaning, there's the ancient Greeks and Romans, and the Christians, and the Jews, and the Muslims, it's all kind of based on meaning in the following way. Essence proceeds, existence, meaning you have meaning in life, that precedes, your actual
life and your job is to find it and live up to it, but it's already out there. You just need to go looking for it, right in the 19th and 20th. Centuries, that was relaxed with two major schools of philosophical thought, nihilism and existentialism existentialism, you know, Sartre and even to a certain extent Kierkegaard would say that existence precedes essence. In other words, you're born and there is no meaning until you create it. Tabula rasa, good luck. Yeah, good luck. Go go, make it and if it's no good,
On you, man. And by the way, Sartre, he has a very empowering a very muscular philosophy because he says you have to live up to the responsibility of creating your essence and living according to it, it's sort of Freudian this way and then, of course, there's Nietzsche our old pal Friedrich, you know, a lot of young men, love nice' because by the way, it's unbelievably beautiful prose, gorgeous writer, including an English. You know, I have to go, like, learn German to read it but, you know, the gay science which is one of his most famous
Text where he said God is dead and he killed them it lands right but his whole point is existence is real but Essence is a figment of your imagination so don't even try to find it. That's nihilism. We're struggling with these schools of thought and we all suspect it doesn't matter how religious you are. You know, it doesn't matter what your wiring actually happens to be you kind of wonder if maybe May chance Archer were right. So you go in search of it and it turns out I want to go find the meaning of life is too big a
And you'll never find it by sitting at the mouth of the guru's cave or with the Ayahuasca shame and saying, it's just want to find meaning in life. You need to boil it down to really sub questions which are all about coherence. Why do things happen? The way they do? I need to believe something about why things happen. The way they do, it is not to be religious. It can be completely secular. They might even be nihilistic. You need a purpose. You need to answer a purpose question, which is what's the purpose of my life? And what direction am I going? What's the goal of my life was the endpoint of my life?
And the last is significance, which is. Why does it matter that I'm alive? Now I have a test to see if somebody has a meaning crisis in their life. That's really just two questions. And to pass the test, you need incredibly true honest and compelling answers. There's no right answers. There's only wrong answers. Or no answers. So you want to take the test? Sure why not? Let's go time question number one.
This is honey. Get me for all that Ayahuasca have done. Go for it. I just say this is something wrong with. I just said, it's a
it's what do we say? It's necessary. But not so much like a benign. The Opus Dei
myself. Load it back at the hotel. Yeah. Damn.
Why are you alive? Do you have an answer to the question of why you're
alive? I mean I have a very clinical answer
for me. Well, I mean there's the physical answer but but metaphysically why are you alive? Which can be to one of two things either who created you or what you're put on Earth to do, you can answer that in one of two ways. Do you have a
strong belief? Mmm. And while you're alive, I've strong driver for taking advantage of the fact that I am alive. But I don't have a
Story of a Creator or something along those lines
or a strong purpose, you know. It can be a Creator or a
purpose. I do feel like I have a strong purpose, but it doesn't relate to my birth.
That's okay. It's going to Y of your life. You know, our mutual friend, Simon sinek talks about this start with Y and the Y of your life can be because of creation, or it can because I exist to, you know, lift other people up and bring them together and bonds of happiness and love. Which by the way, is the why? My life, hmm. So that's number one.
If it's there but a sinkhole. Wait, it's not quite clear enough.
Find out the answer to that and write it down and then he perfected over a
six-month period. Yeah, I would say that for me. I mean it's looking at and experiencing things and unorthodox ways so that I can teach. And why do you want to teach mostly to alleviate
suffering? Yes. In other words, you want to lighten the load for other people. Yeah. And so, in other words, you want to serve your sisters and brothers. It's after sure? Okay, that's a great why. That's a great. Well, that's a great answer to the first question. Why are you alive? Yeah, I don't feel conflicted about that. Okay, so the second one's harder for, what would you be willing to die
today?
A.
Don't have a ready.
Answer, it's hard one. It's a hard one. What's your lot of people down for my faith, for my family, for my country and for you, I am willing to die for others. That's the answer. I mean, I probably won't be called to it, but I'm willing to do it. I'm willing to do it. I've come to the conclusion that I'm actually willing to do it. Here's how I learned this from
my son. I learned is actually from my
son. I mean, I have theoretical answers that are politically correct in the Catholic sphere, I would die for the Catholic church. I would die for my faith. These
These are
true by the way, I really would. But as to Pat, here's how I learn this for my son. I have three kids, 25:23 and twenty, and my middle son is named Carlos and Carlos is, he's a kinetic boy, he's a fan of yours. You know, he's probably watching us right now. I do know Dad's going to talk about me right now. So Carlos sorry
Carlos and you know
Carlos was having a good old time in high school, you know, like we had substantial grade problems and academic issues.
And you know, my wife's like at least we know he's not
cheating. Yeah, but the
problem was he wasn't really having fun. I think it was a meaning problem and
In search of the answers to the questions after high school, he really became an entrepreneur with his life. And, you know, we asked my kids to do a business plan on their high school because they're entrepreneurs and I'm VC. I'm an investor, I deserve a business plan. And when they're not, when they weren't original, I'd send it back for Rankin to thank of dad
and
I just really fun to be my son. You can imagine. So Carlos is business plan for his life was by the time.
It went through several rounds of revisions was appropriately in Orthodox. He was going to go work on a Farm by himself and find the answers to the questions, work hard. And so, he actually got a job on a wheat farm in Idaho. A real job not some sort of, you know, hobby Farm. No, no, it was a 8,000-acre working wheat farm. He lives in the farmers basement for the first year, he picked rocks out of the soil. He started in the bottom made minimum wage fixed fences, cut down dead trees.
Combine by himself 16 hours a day. Why
did he choose this? How would he explain it?
Because he needed to see what he could do. He needed to find out what it meant to be. Carlos, Brooks away from his family away from everybody, why? Because he was looking for the answers to the questions. They were inchoate. They were like, why am I live? I don't know. Maybe I'll find it. The cab of a combine. Maybe I'll find it when I dig rocks out of the soil, May little find it by doing something hard in my hands. Then I joined the military, there's 19 years old. I joined the Marine Corps.
And boot camp is no walk in the park for the US Marine Corps as we've all heard but then it got harder from there. I did infantry training Battalion and the, the in dock, for the scout sniper platoon, which is a branch of the special forces and the, and the Marines today is corporal, Carlos Brooks Marines, 35 scout sniper
platoon. He's got answers
now that's a scary job from his mom. He goes on field trips right field trips and thank God. Nothing's happened to him. He's getting out of the military in December of this year.
He's got answers what types of answers? I mean not only is yours is answers. Yeah, Sally's answers! Carlos! Why are you alive? Because God Made Me.
For, what are you willing to die for my faith and for my family and for my friends and for the United States of America?
Boom. These are not the answers that a lot of people watching us would give but these are super solid answers. I'm super proud of my son because he earned the answers to his
meaning questions,
but everybody watching us has got to earn it. Everybody was watching. Us has got to go on a quest. A Vision Quest for the answers to the meeting questions. There's no other way to do it. Your dad. Can't tell you, your priest can't tell you the holy books. Can give you inklings. They can give you
Shadows on the cave wall to get back to the old playtonic metaphor. You need to live and to try things and to go through a process of discernment. And the way to do that is to do hard, things is to challenge yourself and to say, to yourself, I will not stop until I have answers to these questions to my own
satisfaction. So hearing you describe Carlos's experience
Hi, Carlos and congratulations on the trajectory
if I was like, yeah, my dad embarrassed me. What Jennifer said hi to me on his podcast. So it's all good
was not easy. I have some friends who were formerly Marine, Force Recon. That is not a Recon, guys. Are not an easy path. No, it is not a none of that is easy. Yeah, I think I was over processing the for what would you be willing to die tomorrow? I think it was the tomorrow piece that I fixated on so family. Right?
Plus we got here?
You would
yeah. Family and close friends. I can give that answer, right, right. I was thinking of it more. Hypothetically, as a for what happening in the world would you be willing to basically
off yourself tomorrow here? For what would you be willing to die? Is there a truth? Because this is really where it gets super intense. Yeah. That's where it gets. Yeah. When Carlos says, I am willing to die for my faith. I am willing to die for the United States of America, which for him, is an ideal of Liberty. He's by the way, for those of you outside United States is willing to die for our allies to
You know dying for an idea that's super heavy. I mean that's like pure grade meaning because people are going to say, are you kidding me? Are you
nuts? This is not.
I'm willing to kill for an idea that's that's that's like you know that's kindergarten stuff. That's kindergarten stuff now, I'm willing to die for something. I'm willing to give my own life. I'm I'm willing to take yours. Yeah. You and every other half baked dark Triad malignant narcissist.
Hansel culture, trait psychopath. You're talking to me for a second
that was like - moments that you're a beautiful man but but I
mean I mean, come on, I mean, it's everybody around the world is willing to, you know, kill for you know what they think or cancel or hurt people, what they think. But the real question is, are you willing to sacrifice? But you have for an idea? And that's that's really hard.
Yeah, I'm not sure that's a tough one for me to answer.
Sir. I think also thinking about what you're willing to die for it, let me personalize it thinking about what I'm willing to die for. I also want to be very aware if there are things, I would be willing to die for that. Could be manipulated to make me do things that I might not currently be morally
aligned only donate. So for sure, I think the
allegiance I get it. It needs to be a very weird for me. I want to be aware of their things. Like, for instance, faith has been manipulated pressure.
To show his patriotism. Of course, my goodness, right made a lot of people listening to say, you died for the United States of America. Are you
crazy? Which is not to say that it's wrong. It's just very context, dependent, very
context dependent and it requires a lot of updating and serious thought. And it's not good enough to just be sort of raw and taking it at face value. It takes serious discernment. So, we
have the
Why were you born or four? What why are you alive are you alive? What would you be willing to die for? Ya. Got any more? Those are the ones.
I mean, what those do is that they really kind of wrap up coherence purpose and significance into to kind of Handy Dandy questions. And and the point is really this, I mean it's easy for me to frame that up is you know once you find those you're all good to go. All right but the truth is you're going to go through the rest of your life, contemplating these things and these are the questions to ask on your birthday. Are these still the things that I believe?
Have I updated my knowledge? Do I have a better sense of who I am have I gone backwards a little bit if I lost the sense of what I'm willing to die for. Do I need to go a little deeper at this point and and touching up on those questions. Turns out to be a really good. Is this sort of the same thing? When you go to the doctor and they do the same test again and again and again. And again I have a series of tests that I do these questions that I ask myself like that, you know, about the reverse bucket list and the meaning questions and a, my pursuing, my Pleasures, socially, and making memory with my prefrontal cortex. I also
By the way out, a spreadsheet of 19 micro nutrients that feed into my macro nutrients. And I grade myself on tenths of one percent on a 1 to 10, scale, waited with respect to what? I've what my best estimate of my well-being. And when I'm going backwards on those things, I said a strategic plan for my year. So I'm, you know, I know I'm getting Crazier by the minute. Right.
I you, I'm into it. I encourage, I want to pour gasoline on the fire. Let's do it, man. So I we already talked about death meditation. We talked about your
As in Mexico and in build the life you want, obviously we're not going to go into all the micronutrients of each of the legs on the stool per se. But I'm curious whether its meaning or one of the others may be meaning, but doesn't have to be, could you give some examples of some of those? I don't say antecedents but micronutrients, the cast of characters and ingredients that are important for sort of healthy functioning for sure, for sure. And you know,
you can break
I'm up in as variegated ways you want, you can make 20,000 of them, but really, there's for that we should be thinking about. So there's four fundamental micronutrients and I make it more very than that. I've got 19 because because they're really about love and relationships. That's really what it's all about. And the big four are your search for the Divine or your spiritual journey or your philosophical your faith. Whatever that happens to be religious or not your love for something bigger than you so you can stand in. Awe, it's your family relationships. This is the most mystical kinds of love that we get.
Because we didn't choose the loves they were chosen for us and sometimes were like, yeah, I wouldn't it. Junkman
friendship, you know, and
friendship when I'm talking about that, I talk a lot about moaning us because especially Strivers hard-working people. A lot of people watching us there they have a lot of people around them, but what they have is deal friends. But not real
friends,
your deal friends are super useful to you. Your real friends are useless, cosmically, beautifully useless. And so I go into a lot of detail with my students about how to build useless friendships. Not worthless. That's different. I've got those too.
And last but not least, it's loving. Everybody is expressed through your work and that means serving others with your work, your work should be a service profession, no matter what you're doing and so faith, family, friends and work. And then there's, you know, we Branch out from there. You know what I'm talking about family. I'm talking about different branches of family that I'm trying to make sure I'm working on what I'm talking about. You know, my marriage is critically important as gets one of the absolute highest scores in importance, not always in terms of quality because I'm not the best husband, but in terms of importance for sure. And that's
That's the Apex of two of those columns, both family and friendship, my best friend, and also the adopted member of my family, my wife. And so, therefore my marriage is really at the top of those two pillars. And so I'm thinking about that a lot. So, I break it up into sub categories, but they all go into those silos of faith, family, friends and work. Work serves work this meaningful, right? Earned my success and then I say, okay, well, you know, what does it mean to earn my success? What does it mean to serve others? How do I know? Etcetera? Etc. Etc. I start getting down to brass tacks. I start putting numbers on it and if the numbers aren't
I'm going backwards in a particular year. I do it. Not my birthday and my off birthday. By the way you're off birthday. Yeah, my 6-month birthday. November
21st got it.
My birthday is May 21st and
whatever 21st you got the Thanksgiving
week. Yeah, I've got Thanksgiving weekend. So it gives me a chance to actually think about these things and in some detail to be sure. And then I've got it, you know, I've got the data going back to about the year 1999.
I've got it going forward and this system has gotten better along the way and change. What
is the most important changes you've made to the system? Would you say?
Yeah, the most important change, the single most important change I made of the system was the recognition that I knew a lot about happiness but wasn't
happy
because I was studying it but I wasn't doing it. The biggest change to the system was using my knowledge to change my habits. That was number one Far and Away, right? It's one thing I was giving people all those, all this advice about friendships and about any good marriage.
and like,
I was looking at my life and I wasn't living these things. I was just like everybody else, you know, waking up going sure. Hope I feel happy today, it was pathetic, it was pathetic. It was like, it was like a drug and alcohol counselor getting up and, you know, taking a bunch of bong hits and having a six-pack, it was craziness. And by the way, it was my wife, who finally clued me. She said you have a PhD, right? What are you using it for? Exactly.
I mean, you're like your English has come along the way. Killing me. Sweetheart. You
kill me, but you know, I'm writing academic Journal.
That 14 people read, so I can get promotion and tenure it was ridiculous.
So how did you imagine? Even if you're not necessarily walking the walk, as much as you would like you believe in what you are sharing, so it wasn't necessarily conviction issue, right? So how do you then translate it to action? Are you just like, you know what? If it's not in the calendar, it's not real. Let me commit to things that I block out, so that they are unavoidable in a sense. Yeah. How did you convert it?
Well, I started by doing habits and practices that were very, very
Very specific. I mean extremely specific as specific as the stuff in the, you know, the 4-Hour Body specific and I was writing stuff down. A hellhole notebooks of protocols and things that I was trying. I was trying things on myself based on science and when it worked out keep it and I would write it down or practice. It turns out that wasn't good enough, you know, because that was to hacky, you know, that wasn't really habits to ingrain a habit. You got to do one more step, which is it? You got to teach it. Mmm, the reason I'm happiest Professor is because I want to lash myself to the
I asked and I want to be completely committed. Because look, I mean, if I'm doing something that's clearly at odds, with what I'm teaching, I'm going to hear about it. I'm gonna hear about it for my students. I'm going to hear about it from my family. I'm going to hear about it. Good Lord, I'm going to hear about it on social media, nothing, I'm paying that much attention to that, because I want to be happy and it's really really important. So basically there's a protocol in my life, which is number one. Understand number two, practice, number three, share. And that's the protocol that works for everybody. When it comes to happiness, you got to take those three steps.
And you got to do the work and understand. Its think that's funny because I've done all this work over the years of the Dalai Lama and he always says the same thing. If you want to be a spiritual adapt, think more feel less think more feel less.
I would not expect no, thank you the framing, okay, what is that? What you mean by?
What he first wakes up in the morning, in the first two hours of his meditation gets up at 3:00 or 3:30 in the morning. The first thing that he does after a little bit on his exercise bike and hanging out with his cat. The first thing that he does is two hours of analytical meditation.
Catholics called mental prayer. That means you take a couple of lines of sacred scripture and you analyze it and you think about it. Most learning doesn't happen when the professor talks about something. If you understand everything, the professor says, it's not a hard enough class and you don't have a very good professor. He has to blow your mind with something. You got to go away and think about it and then you learn it through your own thinking. That's analytical meditation or mental prayer
and is the Dali Lama using scripture in the sensor,
what? That Tibetan Buddhist scripture. So he's contemplating something.
Thing for, you know, words of the Buddha or Shanti Deva or any of the
ancient tactical questions. Is he choosing it? Or is it flip open the book? And which would not denigrate it. I'm just one, drop the needle. Yeah. I mean,
I know he's, I mean, he's extraordinary. I mean the holy scriptures for Tibetan Buddhist or vast. There's a library in dharamsala that's just stack after stack. After stack after stack is not a Bible, it's not like a collection of books in a little Library called The Bible and its just its enormous and and the monks are going through the scriptures again and again and again, so
Has. I'm sure he hasn't explained it to me but I'm sure that he has actually a regular rotation that he's going through to do his. And that's what we need to do is got the
equivalent of these 10 exercises. When you go to the gym, skip the bench, press like he's got a yacht
Kleine. His greatest to No Doubt. Yeah, no doubt. And so that's really important to do in the science of happiness is to look at what you know, the best protocols. You know, what does it mean to stand up to your negativity bias by actually practicing gratitude? When what you're feeling is resentment? How do you do that? How do you actually
Achieve a state of metacognition, awareness of your own feelings such that you can choose reactions in the face of emotions. How can you get into the state of the I self, which is the state in which you're observing the world as opposed to observing yourself. Well, it starts with knowledge of what these concepts are and then you put it into practice as real exercises. I have a column in the Atlantic, that comes out every Thursday
morning, that's next on my list of
questions. The third part of every column is, do these three things is taking the science, and then applying to your life in these three.
Eyes. And so it's application and change of habits and a commitment to that. And the best way to cement in those ideas by lashing yourself to the Mast and that's by teaching these things to everybody else. And everybody, look, I have a lab at, Harvard called the leadership and happiness lab. The whole point of the lab is not bench science and pouring stuff into test tubes are doing new experiments. It's learning how we can all be happiness, teachers, how can Tim Ferriss be a happiness teacher? We are already are by working on and what you're working on it and there's no reason that you have to be happy to be a happiness. Teacher does not like playing basketball.
Thank God. Yeah, totally. I mean on the contrary, the people are struggling in the
best down thought is miserable awesome. You're pretending to be. I mean, the point is that your buddy just struggles? I mean I do have shadows other. She is sort of why you're
self-aware yourself or a part of your commitments. I know your work part of your commitment to lifting other people up is sharing your journey. This is what it comes down to. So you joke about you but the truth of the matter is we're all we all are and sharing that is actually part of the way that you're practicing. These
Calls you're not hacking anything. You're actually trying to build these habits and then the teaching role, your teacher right away because this is a teaching podcast, we're not shooting the breeze and saying what you see on TV and went to a new restaurant, know we're talking about heavy stuff because we actually want to teach these ideas and lift other people up. So that's the secret man. Learn more think,
more feel learn thing, second
turn, this into habits and practices habits. Third share with others and commit to other people through your teaching.
That's the secret to
happiness. Commit, commit in what sense just of energetically taking the magnifying glass off of
yourself and committing to actually these practices in your own life right now. And this can often be. I've been doing this thing wrong, and I don't want to keep doing this thing wrong. And me telling you is making yourself accountable to another person. Like all 12 step programs work this way,
right? Honestly, 12-step programs a a, some of the most important and impressive, decentralized organizations. I
Ever seen. Yeah and I've never participated but I'm so
impressed. They require accountability. Yeah, because basically, what 12-step programs do is knowledge of what's wrong with me committing to new habits and sharing it with others. That's why a a works is because
of those three steps as well. Do sneak some got in there?
Well, yeah, the higher power for sure that the higher
power, which is helpful. Yeah, I'm not going to deny it. One facet that I really appreciate all of your work. In your writing is that you straddle the very old and the very new. Yeah.
And you mentioned Aquinas earlier. Again everybody read a few pages at least on Wikipedia about Aquinas and then Aristotle and one of you were popular columns is about Aristotle's. 10 secrets to happiness. I wonder if any I do have them in front of me - I can't remember
them. Yeah, I was just going to say it's a lot. Making weekly copy. You know
how about this? How about I read through? Yeah and then I would love for you to pick out
One or two perhaps that have been particularly impacted out for you, or for your readers right? Here we go, name your fears and face them to know your appetites and control them. Three, be neither a cheapskate and Nora spendthrift for give as generously as you can. Five. Focus more on the Transcendent disregard the trivial 6. True strength is a controlled temper. 7 Never Lie, especially to yourself eight. Stop struggling for your fair share 9.
I forgive others and forbear, their weaknesses, 10 Define, your morality live up to it, even in private and I want to take one off the table, sure, which is the last one because there's a there's a recency bias here with it since we've been talking, I think fairly extensively about that but yeah, those are, there we go. So start with number 7. All right, never lie, be impeccable with your word, especially with you.
Hmm, now I know a lot of people who are
Be honest. Frankly the reason my wife fell in love with me is not my, you know, my stunning good looks and you know my lousy
accent and the gray hair at the time. Trade here. No, great hair, a
great hair. I know. I mean, that was a spectacular if I do say so myself. But the, the reason she told me later is because I was the first man that never lied to her. Hmm. I never lied. Now, that's part of my upbringing and, you know, that's has to do with your family at cetera, that was a really super important value in.
I home you had to be honest, the only really dramatic and scary consequences when my parents are from lying.
Don't lie, don't lie, don't lie. And so the result is it was kind of in a way easier for me because the way that I was raised, but I was the first guy she'd ever met that didn't
lie? She's like, what's up with this dude? He
doesn't lie and and I've procured and, you know, when my, when my oldest son, both of my son's 25:23, they're both married. And when my 25 year old, when he fathered
23 bed with married, they're both married. Yeah. How I need to get relationship from advice from your son?
Well, my older son, he's a piece of work. I mean, he's I
A lot from him. He's literally one of the brightest native intelligence people that I've ever met but he's also has this this super adroit moral instinct to him and he asked me. He said, tell me one thing that I should never do because I'm in love with this girl that I should never do. He asks, you know, good questions like that. I thought about it. I said, it's actually pretty easy. Never lied. Her ever, ever, ever, ever ever until you go to the Grave, never lied to her and ask her never to lie to you.
No matter what the consequences, that's the secret to the pure oxygen of a true companionate. Love the mystical love.
The romance where you feel truly chosen for each. Other, has to be based on honesty, it has to be and a lot of people are like, yeah, yeah, good luck with that, right? But, and there are lots of things that doesn't mean you have to say, by the way, sweetheart, your butt
looks fat in that just gonna ask ya. No, no, it doesn't mean you have to pick a
volunteer every single thing that you're thinking because you're not insane. But when there's a direct question,
There's a direct answer. So when it comes down to, okay, that's fine, but that's the same Spanish that's pre-medical. So that's that. That's, you know, that's a little sticks table Stakes, man, you run and really be in the game. Hmm. Never lie, to yourself, and we're doing it all the time. We're doing all the time. We don't want to face up to the truth. We don't want to look really in the mirror and not so that we can you know, think a greater hair looks or whatever. But so we can actually see the good and the bad.
And to say I'm a true human being, that's a hard thing to do when people lie to themselves constantly and Aristotle, talked about that and Aquinas and the Buddha. And, you know, one of the things that they all have in common is that they have this impeccable idea of self-honesty, which is that's taking a draft of the purest liquor of life. It's like, yeah, I can drink that. I'm gonna drink that really you tough enough to drink that and once you start doing that, I mean, it's just it's hard, it's really hard but it's
life-changing. Yes, I have a question about that.
And also makes me think about some of the scientists. I respect most like Richard Fineman. Yeah, who says, You must not fool yourself in your of the easiest person to
fool raw for sure. And a lot of people say because I'm religious that I'm fooling myself,
right? Well this leads not to a religion specific question but rather just to a fine slicing which is sometimes and I'm going off the cuff. So this isn't going to be polished. But we lie to ourselves in the sense that we have a story about ourselves or the world right. That we know isn't quite true but we repeated
Enough because we want it to be true. Then there are times when we lie to ourselves, but we are in the delusion, it is because we have a lack of awareness or who knows, there are any number of factors that have fed into this belief, which is simply not accurate for whatever reason. So, how do you catch? How do you catch yourself? Could you give examples hypothetical or otherwise of? So, I think, most people would say, I don't want to lie to myself, right? But
When it comes down to actually catching those self lies that self-deception in the butterfly. Net. So you can do something with right. How do you do
that? Well, you commit yourself to being uncomfortable for one thing. There's a couple of different ways to do that. Number one, is you seek outside counsel you, ask people who really know you. Well, you ask them to be committed to telling you the absolute truth, and then you ask them incredibly hard questions about yourself, right? And you should have friends that can do that for you. This is one of the ways that you can do it your
Has really have to be able to tell you being a good friend usually means telling you a convenient lies. That's not the right Criterion for your closest friends, your real friends, your real friends, who should be like
buddy.
I don't think you're being straight forward with that right now. So this is I'm thinking, I'm doing a fake Atlanta accent because my best friend's a guy named Frank, and he lives in Atlanta and he and we are committed to telling each other the truth and boy, does he ever give it to me both barrels? Hmm. When he thinks I'm being full of it buddy? I don't know. I know you're saying that thing but let's drill.
Down on that a little bit, shall we?
Yeah, I talk to her every week
and that's super important. Very weak. Sure. I'll talk to you, cause he's a real friend and that takes work right now. I understand it is that like you have a lot of sanding? No, but he's somebody where we're committed to when the call comes in and says Frank. I take the call even if it's during work time. I take the call. Otherwise, you know, you can't take every single call it comes in there. Certain colleagues certain family members and Frank
and have you guys explicitly.
Lee made some type of mutual commitment. And the reason I ask is there are environments also that I suppose I could try it, but I haven't up to this point. For instance, YPO forums these small groups.
Those are quite good. They are very six, seven, eight, guys, and I
know people who people benefited from a tremendously and there, as I understand it based on my friends stories that there are many hot seat moments where you get your beliefs and stories and approaches and strategies
interrogated. What? And you are committed in a wife.
Forum to have your BS called out. Yeah. So if you're saying something, they know is not true about
you, there's some great rules. People can study it also, if you wanted to try to mimic or replicate it, I guess for a lot of folks, I hate to say it, but I think especially men, they may not have sort of a codified setting like
that men, especially successful men tend to get lonelier and lonelier as they get
older. Yeah,
women tend to get less and less lonely, but men tend to get lonelier and lonelier. So about 60% of six year old men.
A, the best friend's wife about 30% of their wives, say, their best friend. Is her
husband. This is the story of a sad story of unrequited freccia unrequited companionate, love at home for sure.
But, you know what that means is that a lot of women have very, very close friends that they've cultivated usually through family, life and community life, and guys, you know, it's like, hey man, I work so hard over the years and, you know, hanging out with my friends is stealing from my family. I'm not going to go golfing for five hours on Saturday, you know, when the kids are little, it'll be terrible at home. I'll get yelled at and yada yada yada yada.
Excuses and pretty soon. They're lonely. So we can and we might come back to this. Put the lime in the loneliness is a big, big topic. Sure. And the bonding and and this these types of communal relationships, but it's far as cultivating a relationship with the friends that you have that unvarnished feedback and interrogation. My you have any suggestion for how to approach that? Well,
there's two ways to do it. There's the organic way and there's the manual way.
The organic way is that you don't lose those true friends, that you've had usually, since you were a young adult and a lot of people do. I mean, we move around a lot. We're really ambitious and our friends wind up being our deal friends and our real friends, you know, people will say I mean I'll do an exercise for I'll say, tell me the 10 people that are closest to you. Write them down real quick. I can do it easily. Yeah. And Italy
have in a spreadsheet that's
great. And then put real ordeal after each one of those names based on the fact that and for you is all real, right? Because you have close friends,
right? Yeah I do a lot of
High percentage from long time
ago and you travel with them and you do stuff with. I'm right, I put a lot of energy time into ensuring that we spend time together
which gets harder as people have wives and kids and their children and, you
know, for sure, Family Life tends to get in the way of that, but you have to do, it's like anything
else. You got to do the work. I'm unfettered by the direct family life since then. But you know, as a Dana say
that in 10 years, you'll most likely be married and have kids and it's going to be harder, but you'll have
to put in so long and I come in
Folks, let's
work on this, shall we?
Write in the comments, your best yet. So there's
the organic way. Yeah, that's again equate, which is, you know, is make sure that you don't lose track of your real friends and you have a commitment with your real friends, to hold you to a standard of honesty in the friendship, and with yourself because that's what true friendship really entails. The manual way is the YPO Forum way where there's a bunch of guys that, you know, that are usually deal friends and you make a deal to make them in a real friends.
Mmm, you make a deal. You know it's an arrangement for part of the Friendship is actually going to be to go deeper to hold each other's secrets to be honest with each other and that can actually be incredibly effective because you've actually decided to do that and people will live up to those particular promises psychological. Safety is really important in that to write because it's one thing to say I want you to be completely honest with me and say, yeah, you're Jerk. It's like not that honest or, you know, don't express it and that particular way you have to have enough psychological safety where the rules of the
Schroeder clear? That honesty is always wielders as a gift and never as a
weapon mmm-hmm
that's also true in marriages. By the way Tim the best marriages are completely honest but the honesty is a gift to never a
weapon. Yep, you know, one of the mantras at Facebook for it was meta was face. Facebook is a gift. Maybe feedback is get feedback that. Get feedback is a gift. It was repeated over and over going to put all over the place. Yeah. To cultivate a culture of feedback. Yeah. And
I
thought about that just grabbing these little Snippets, make yourself small. I mean, these very pithy reminders that will have some stickiness in the mind and also doubling down on having your friends act as the best mirrors available, very brief side note, just to give people a Scooby Snack, mirrors Reflections. What are your thoughts? Get rid of them, get all of them done, tell me more so I work with a
guy he's fantastic. You actually is a he's really, really helpful for
Or me, I've recommended him to you because he does incredible body work. Physical therapy is fantastic. And you know, he was a fitness model, there's almost nothing you can do this on healthier worse for your mental health. Having a fitness model or Fitness influencer, why? Because you're just looking in the mirror all day long, and your physical appearance is that on which you will be judged, is very emotionally warping and he hated it, he hated it. He hated he was unhappy, never ate what he wanted for 10 years. And the truth of the matter is we all know, you'll look great. If your body fat is under 10,
Set what you feel crummy and you want everybody in the world to die. It can be really, really hard on you. And he said after a while you know, there's a reason that 35% of people who lose a lot of weight, when they get to their goal, they keep going and a quarter of them, develop an eating disorder. The reason is because you can't stop when you're looking in the mirror all the time you can't stop. You can't stop. You don't know how to stop. So he had the presence of mind, he's an Adept, he's a spiritual
Adept. He
got rid of all of
Has Mirrors and showered in the dark for a year, he got rid of all of the mirrors and his house, the
showering in the dark. I need won't be coming back straps. I don't have that problem. Let me but yeah I guess
he got washboard abs. You're looking at you going. Yeah man. Yeah, but and and buh-bye
watching because he's watching the water Cascade off your 12-pack like rocks in a waterfall. I
know. And and the truth of the matter is that it's hate when that happens
extreme. But, yes, I got physical.
Attractiveness ordinarily is something that you do because you want to become more lovable and you make that judgment on the basis of what you're seeing in the mirror and not the relationship that you're projecting to others in real life. It's really weird. You know, you can talk to dudes are trying to get to, you know, 6% body fat and get super jacked in the whole thing. And they have this, imagine that women are going to be just super attracted to them. And the only people we can say anything or dudes. Oh, it's always do. It's
like it's guy friends who've
Single guys, and they've been credible, beard game. Yeah. For like, mustache game and non-stop. It's just dudes. Coming up and complimenting them. Really you mean? I'm sure they're when they're like it too, but it's mostly good. That's for sure. You know and you know, no one was ever
said, nice car. I mean it's just no. It's other guys, is the whole thing. And what that is, is the other guys are just a mirror, there's just a mirror. The other guys are saying the thing that you think, but it's a profoundly unsatisfying, right? If you're actually in the heterosexual dating Market to other guys saying,
NG did you get those abs hell
cares now to provide a counter example, also. And this is just something I've seen on dating apps if she could talk about. But I have yet to meet a single guy I like and respect. Who's like I love super intense lip fillers and all of this, you know, Franken Botox situation, I've not met a single one. I know. And have
you ever said I've never said to my wife. One time, that's such a cute little dress did, is
it new?
I've never said that all her friends say that and she's always like have a cute little dress and everybody noticed it but you didn't
for the record, I'm into cute little dresses. Just I don't give a mix-up voices here, the show notes. So why did you write this book? And how did it come to be? I know you have this long history with thinking about and these catalyzing events and tracking
And I don't say pursuing, but analyzing thinking deeply about happiness. So why why now and what do you hope that it will accomplish?
So this new book is the most bread-and-butter book I've ever written about the size of Happiness. It's two parts. Part one is how to manage your emotions, so they don't manage you. Part two is once you've got that down, now, you can actually build your life and not be distracted and frittering away your time with stupid things. Those are the two parts of the book and it says, Deep dive is. I've
Actually written publicly about Neuroscience, it was actually vetted by my colleague at Harvard. Josh Green is one of the most distinguished neuroscientist in the world just to make sure because I'm a social scientist. I got to be careful, you know, getting into the biology side of this thing, you know. I know enough to be dangerous to be sure, but I have to be very careful about that. So I realized and and by the way, this was instead this project was instigated to do a bread and butter owners manual on you and your happiness, that's what it is. It's an owner's manual on your happiness.
It wasn't my idea. It was Oprah Winfrey's idea.
So, you occupy some rarefied air. So from the Dalai Lama, how does it does? And you just bumping around the subway?
Yeah. His Holiness Dalai Lama and her Holiness Oprah Winfrey. Yes, exactly. Yeah, I mean, it's, you know, when Oprah Winfrey calls? It's
like right? But, yeah, and I'm guessing she didn't get your phone number on Zoom info. Like, how did this happen
also? I'm like, yeah. And I'm Batman. No. Really? Who is this? Nope.
Hi, it's Oprah calling again. Your company has been verified by Dun & Bradstreet.
Wait a minute. Anyway,
so we got connected because she is a regular reader of my column in the Atlantic and she was during the Corona virus epidemic, when, you know, people were trying to use the time to learn new things cetera. She was actually a serious reader of the column and she's a serious. Reader is a serious when she has a book on her podcast. She reads the book. It's just amazing how exhaustive her knowledge is. And then, when my book came out from strength, to strength and February, 20, 22, she got it literally in the first week, she
Read it that's when she called and she said would you come on my podcast her super-soul? Which is this book? Podcast phenomenal. And we were like a house on fire from the very beginning because it's funny because you know you've met a lot of famous people and you know I've met some famous people and they're usually not exactly like the public, right? She's like, she appears in public. I mean,
she's calm, she's smart, she's nice. She's funny.
She's awesome. She's actually what people think she is, she's truly an authentic person and so we really got along and we have the synchronicity of mission, which is to lift people up and bring them together in bonds of happiness and love. But we have different platforms for doing it. I'm teaching this class on the science of happiness at Harvard University and writing in the Atlantic. She has been in mass media forever and whenever she weighs in, she has millions and millions and millions of people around the world that trust her and want to hear what she has to say. And so, her suggestion was, let's take that
Class that you teach at Harvard and that you're writing about in the Atlantic. Let's present that to a big audience. Want a big audience. I said, yeah, yes, yes, I yes, Oprah can. I have a big audience
please?
And she says, let's write a book together. Will present this book together. And so we did and, you know, we got together at her home and we framed it up. We framed up the book, over three or four day period last year and her tea house in Montecito, California. It's like you know I was looking around going, you know, I'm just like the small town.
College professor fell off the turnip truck in front of Oprah's Tea House. You never know. He's like God Bless America. You never know what's going to happen and it was super fun. It was super
exciting for people who want to work
on. Oh my goodness! Oh my goodness! Oh, and she's a, the best case study in American success and working hard and believing in others and paying it forward possible. And then we went, and we started working on our respective parts of the book, and passing it, back and forth. And I took a house in San Clemente in California for six weeks in the winter largely to look at the Pacific Ocean to write the book and she was right.
Our parts and and then we got to this impasse at one point now between us but because the title didn't fit the title. Now is how to build the life you want. The Art and Science of getting happier and it was called Fully Alive, and it wasn't fitting and I didn't know. And finally, Oprah calls me. And she says got the wrong
title. She's a genius,
we got the wrong title. This is a how-to book, this is an owner's manual book. This is really a, how to book on your own happiness. This should be called how to build the life you want.
And catching the whole thing fell into place because that's what happens is, you know, and the course of writing a book, you think you have it, but you don't. And then when the title actually completes the book and allows you to finish the book and make it all Co here and we finished it up and it was this amazing collaborative experience, a joy actually is the most fun. It was the most positive experience I've ever had writing a book because I got to write it with her and she's enriched my
life. What a wild incredible experience. It's not
It's man, you know that I told you my death
fear is losing my mind. It's actually possible that I am and that's just a
hallucination. Then we had tea and crumpets I know it's a bridge Party House. Know what? It's like, but Tim I know I want the pure truth, but if that's
not true, don't tell me.
Let me keep that one. Let me keep that one lie to me, baby. So in this book are there areas? Because I know in my book, I can point to specific chapters from like man.
I really wish people had paid more attention to X. Yeah like maybe it didn't quite get the emphasis so I can own that responsibility but maybe they
For whatever reason, didn't pay enough attention to this one component. Yeah. Is there something that comes to mind? I don't know yet because it hasn't come out. Oh, I know, so this is that I can. What do I hurt you? The most if people
missed. So I think what would bother me the most
is the amount that Oprah and I emphasize the role of unhappiness and living a full life. See that one of the biggest mistakes that people make is we talked about before? Is that people say I want to be happy but and then they talk about some source of unhappiness in their life, that they think, blocks their unhappiness. And that's the wrong way of thinking, because you can get happier, even if you're unhappy, absolutely 100% all day long because these are existing in different parts of your brain. Number one, but number two, happiness is not the goal and unhappiness is not the enemy getting
Here is the goal, you know Oprah coined this term in the book. She said we gotta stop talking about happiness because that's actually not the goal. The goal is Happy Earnest, that's really what we're going for is Happy Earnest and to get happy Earnest. You need unhappiness in your life. Look, you need negative emotions to keep you alive, but you also need the deferral of gratification to get your satisfaction and you need to understand the nature of the frustration that comes such that you can start to manage your wants. You need like serious full-on suffering, to find the answers, to the questions of meaning that we talked about. You do my son needs,
To boot camp you. And I need substantial
problems with mood to put it euphemistically. We need no, look, we need sadness. A young
phrase, greatest student Carl Jung. So much greater in so many ways. So the you don't really understand happiness until you've experienced unhappiness because of the contrast. But more to the point, you've not been fully Alive. Because unhappiness is what actually the suffering is, what helps you understand, what you're made of, and what you could bear and only then.
You find the answers to the why am I alive or what? I'd be willing to die questions. You don't find the meaning questions, the answers at that we at the beach in Ibiza you find it in the depths when somebody you love dies when you're afraid of what your future
holds when you feel
hopeless, that's when those moments become real and that suffering turns out to be an integral part in your journey to happiness. So the number one thing that Oprah and I will be very disappointed about is if people don't
It actually become more Fully Alive through the Transcendent passage of both happy Earnest. And and the unhappiness, that is a part of what it means to be a real
person. It is a diverse and ever-changing tapestry. That is for
sure it is. And you know, I, you know, I think about it. One of the biggest mistakes that I think that my students make by the way, right now if I were to go back to 1968 or 1969 Woodstock you know in the hippies and if it feels good, do it. I remember my dad heard that for the first time he's like that's the end of
God is kind of, right? Anyway, if we had a Woodstock today, it might be if it feels bad, make it stop. If I'm suffering treat it. If there is pain, it's evidence that I'm defective that I'm broken. Something's got to change. That's wrong, that's wrong thinking. Look, the Tim Ferriss I'm talking to you right now had to suffer. I mean, these messages that you're giving her dramatically different than what you were writing 15 and 20 years ago, their dramatic.
Lee different doesn't mean I was wrong 15 or 20 years ago but it was incomplete. It wasn't deep in the same way and the depth actually comes from the not just from the good. It also comes from the bad. This is, you know, Andrew Solomon. Who wrote the Noonday demon, if you read that book? No, it's the best book I've ever read about anxiety and depression. You know, Andrew Solomon is a phenomenal writer, all right, so what is the title again, the Noonday demon which was an ancient way of talking about depression which comes over you like a named a demon like the black dog.
It's like that. It's like we're instant Churchill's black dog, for sure. The Noonday demon in the end, it's an Incredible Book. It's a total page Turner for anybody who's actually had anything close to face.
Special does not sound like a Phi. No phenomenal. It's so
interesting. It's a but it's just beautiful writing but in the end he said,
In the some and final balance, I have to conclude that I love my depression because it's part of who I am as a person and it's allowed me to learn what my life is all about. I don't wish it on
anybody, I don't want it to come back
but it is who I am and so therefore I have no choice but to love it. I'm paraphrasing but it's you know, his words are more beautiful than anything I could remember but it's really an important thing for us to remember and anybody who's watching you and who follows you and who admires you and gets a lot of sustenance.
From the knowledge that you bring to this podcast, what they have to realize is that they are beneficiaries of Tim Ferriss is suffering.
And if they want to lift up the world, they have to suffer
too Food For Thought. Yep. Food For Thought may not be candy bars. Might be high fiber but it is important Food For Thoughts, a philosophical Clif Bar
and right people love those. I don't need not to cast
dispersions my friends that cliff and
you know, but I have thought about
this very deliberately and you know, I don't wish suffering upon anyone but
I had someone give me very good advice at one point and the words can be substituted, of course. But she said to maybe after I had gone through very gifted therapist with a lot of experience, a lot of
Mileage with different types of patients, including some, very tragic, and difficult cases. And she said, take your pain, make it part of your medicine, huh? And I was like, okay, meaning the medicine in my case, the way I think of that is what I can teach or provide or just the perspective through which I can speak and explore given that I have the history that I
have, right? Understand. This is what the best therapists do? They teach you about yourself?
They help you to learn and grow from your pain and they help you to treat yourself and serve others. That's what the great therapist do. The worst therapist is like yeah, I'll help you take care of that. Will make that problem go away. No, no, no, no. I want to learn. I want to grow and I want to surf.
Surf. Part has been a very critical to the tether of meaning that has given the suffering.
Meaning exactly. Meaning made it. Don't say irrelevant like the greater the potency of the meaning, the less the suffering. Incapacitates you, this is why I ask you,
is it possible? You're not afraid to suffer more
Now, because you said, you
know, pleasure and you know, as a defense etcetera etcetera, but I don't feel like I'm sitting with somebody who's afraid of suffering. It's certainly less
than it was. I also think that they're just pleasurable things that I really like. Yeah. Well, there's there's that. There's that weird. Yeah,
yeah. There is that. I remember reading about one of your, you know, a sexual experience in the, you know, in the 4-Hour Body raised like to get more testosterone and then I ate a single Brazil nut and
In time. Yeah, I was lots of Brazil, nuts, cholesterol, loading. I did lots of crazy stuff in the 4-Hour Body, but it was, it was somebody who knew, how to have fun. Oh, yuck. Yeah, that chapter
for you. What? 34, something on
your own 30 years. Early 30s.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So anyway know, I respect the fact that you like to have fun and you like to feel good, I get
that. But I don't sense fear from you. Yeah, I would also say what I have done is I've built in to my life, a lot of
Premeditated deliberate discomfort to inoculate myself against the fear of unpredictable discomfort. And it's not a cure-all but I have found that as your
that's exposure therapy, its exposure therapy also just like waiting into some of
the deep Waters psychologically and psycho emotionally, that I would be prone to fearing learning how to take swimming lessons. In some of those deep Waters. I would say is also an approach. So it resembles,
Was
your therapy. But there's also a skill development piece on top of that, which is combined, with the exposure, is a, which I know is a bit nebulous my
God, but it makes perfect sense. And there's actually a way that we can all get better at that because I know a lot of people are watching this. Like yeah, I don't get better at that. Here's one way to do that. That actually is very practical way to do it. Start each day with a statement of fact, and then an aspiration, the statement of fact is I don't know what's going to happen this day. I don't know. I learned this from a pediatric oncologist.
Ologist by the way, somebody who has you know, bad cancer diagnosis to kids he says he tells the parents to every day. Start the day saying I don't know what's going to happen in my future but I do know I am alive this day and I'm deeply grateful for everything that happens for good. And for bad, it takes cojones, man. It's hard because you're like,
you catch your breath a little bit, right?
Because what, you, when mother nature wants you to do is to look for
Good feelings in to avoid the bad feelings because that's the evolutionary imperative to avoid the discussed in the anger, and the sadness, and the grief, and the loneliness, and to avoid those things, not to embrace those things till, you know, the say it's inevitable, bring it on, but if you can actually do that to Steel yourself to steal. As they say, in Isaiah, I steal my face like Flint, right? And that's how to do it. Look, I don't know what's, I don't know what's going to happen today, but I do want all I'm alive right now. I'm not going to waste this day in the
A I don't waste this day is by being grateful for every single thing that happens. Good and bad. Bring it on. Here we go.
I have a gift. I received quite a while ago but a actually steal my face. Like, Flint, it isn't. It is a piece of I think it is steel and it's engraved with a quote from, I think it is Neale Donald walsch. I may be getting that off, someone can fact check, but the quote is the struggle ends when the Gratitude begins. Yeah,
And it's such good advice. Yeah, yeah. And you don't have to be grateful only for the Obviously, good things.
No, no on the contrary. And that's really. That's what separates, you know. First course, gratitude from PhD level stuff. And by the way, here's the practical way to do that, to be grateful for bad, things are very practical way to do it. I asked my students to make a failure journal. And so what that is is that every time Bad Thing Happened, something bad happens frequently. And you're 28 years old, you know,
Nobody breaks your heart today and tomorrow you get to be on a test and and the next day after that, you know, you don't get the interview for that job. You hoped for and it's just a constant string of disappointments and thrills. So every time something happens that really frustrates and disappoints you or you screw up or whatever, you take out your failure journal and your right and your failure journal, what happened? And then you leave two lines open behind it and you put reminders on your phone. Ding, one month for me, you got to go back and six months from now. One runt from now you got to go back and say what you learned from that.
Thing that you would forget. Otherwise, and six months from now, you got to go back and say a good thing that happened because of that thing and there's always entries. Always, always always. And so it's like I went into my performance review and my I thought I was doing a really good job of my boss, basically told me that I'm a be player at best. This happens constantly that bums me out. I just want to put it behind me and I want to go hang out with my friends and have a couple of beers and complain about my boss and move on right now. No, no, write it on your failure. Journal one month from now.
Her and go back. Huh? You know what I learned from that is I thought I was going to be super bummed about that for a long time and it bothered me for like a week. That's interesting. Now that's homeostasis. There's a lot of brain science in that. Six months later you come back. And you say when I thought about that, I realized that that probably wasn't the perfect fit for my career and I went on the market.
And I have a better job now. I think the job I have now is a better fit and every single thing that happens that you put into your failure, General, you will realize that there's something generative that happens from this in terms of learning and in terms of gratitude and you will turn that thing into something. It sooner or later when something really bad happens to you, you be like a good. I get to put in the failure Journal, it'll really change your perspective on it because it failure and disappointment and frustration and sacrifice and pain will take on their proper perspective.
Which is part of your full
life. Hmm, we shall see. That's great. We shall see. That's, that's another famous we shall see. We shall see that frame so true. Yeah, well, this has been so much fun. Now, the title of the book
is build the life. You want the Art and Science of getting
happier and by the time this comes up, you will be able to certainly find it. Yeah, and purchase it.
Yeah. And we're all fine books are sold. We're all it. Also, if people like Oprah and I will read it to you,
You mean I'm guessing in audiobook form, another scenario for Outlook. No will come to your house
and with a dulcet tones of Oprah's voice, will you lull you to sleep now? I mean we rent it could raise a lot of money.
Yeah, that's right.
Sorry over. I kind of committed us to his thing. You know, what's this in his book tour is taking on New Dimensions. Now, the but we know we read the book for penguin random house and I'm really super happy with the way that it turned out.
Mostly because my voice is interspersed with her beautiful voice. One of the most famous voices in
America. What an incredible experience. Congratulations. Thank you. So people can find the book. We're all fine books are sold. I just love saying that. Yeah. And is there anything else? You'd like to point people to whether it's a social profile, or a request of the audience and ask of the audience? Something, you'd like to close with anything at all that you like to add before we?
Yeah, I'm doing. This is really a teaching experience both for me and Oprah.
Just part of my life, which is dedicated to writing speaking and teaching about love and happiness to bring people together in bonds of love, using the science and ideas. That's really my mission statement for the rest of my life and that really is a teaching Mission. Just like yours isn't teaching Mission. So, there's a lot of stuff that I'm doing ancillary to books and columns Etc. I have classes like video classes and things that people can watch and my goal in doing those things. The some all on my website or through works.com, but when people do those things my goal is training them to be happiness.
Teachers
this is really what
It's all about because remember it's understand change, your habits, share with others. And so to learn more about exactly how to do that. We're developing a lot of resources that make that possible and I think a pretty effective way and I would love people to do that for the single reason that I want a movement. I want to be part of a movement of people whose hobby is the science of happiness, and bringing it to others. You know, there's a lot of people who are broken in this world and we're sad, and, or suffering. And if we had
People who were warriors for greater happiness for themselves through others, through real knowledge and a commitment to change. I'm truly convinced that this is the one thing that I can do that could have an impact on the world that needs to be a lot
happier Arthur. So glad that we were able to find the time, have this conversation and I admire the work you do. I respect the work you do? I value the work that you put out the world, it does help people. So I wanted to
Also, just simply thank you for putting out what you put out. And spending time on the things you spend time
on likewise, Tim, I've only met you today in person, but I feel like I've known you for a long time because I've been consuming your work like so many millions of other people and you enrich my life, a lot. Thank you for
that. Thanks man, I really appreciate it. This is really sparked a lot and may have taken copious notes. So I have a number of things that I'll be focusing on getting small Brothers, K muscular philosophies. I just love the phrasing. So I wrote it down.
Aristotle Aquinas all things that can lead you to build the life that you want. And for everybody listening, we will have extensive show notes, links to everything as usual item, dot block / podcast. And until next time we just a bit Kinder than is necessary to others and to yourself, thanks for tuning in.
Hey guys, this is Tim again, just one more thing before you take off and that is five bullet Friday. Would you enjoy getting a short email from me every Friday? That provides a little fun before the weekend, between one and a half and two million people. Subscribe to my free newsletter, my super short newsletter called five bullet Friday, easy to sign up, easy to cancel. It is basically a half page that I send out every Friday to share the coolest things. I've found or discovered or have started exploring over that week, kind of like my diary
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