#692: Arthur C. Brooks — How to Be Happy, Reverse Bucket Lists, The Four False Idols, Muscular Philosophies, Practical Inoculation Against the Darkness, and More

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4:30 A cybernetic organism, living tissue over metal mental skeleton. Hello, boys and girls, ladies and germs, this is Tim Ferris. Welcome to another episode of the Tim Ferris 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

5:04 Reviews, perhaps. Reverse bucket lists in the case of my guest today, and that guest is Arthur C. Brooks. Arthur C. Brooks 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 in my newsletter, Five Blood Friday. His newest book is Build the Life You Want, subtitled 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

6:09 studied for his class and for many other projects. You can find him on Instagram at Arthur C Brooks, On Twitter at Arthur Brooks. Without further ado, please enjoy my very thought provoking and actionable, highly tactical conversation with Arthur C. Brooks.

6:30 Arthur, so nice to have you here. Thanks for joining. Thank you, Tim. It's great to be with you. I've been looking forward to this. Me too. I feel like we've been looking forward to meeting and and it's we've been warming up for this for a long time. We have so many 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. Where all the cool kids live. Where all the cool kids are. And I have

7:02 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. Peak.

7:15 The interest of many people listening, and that is the reverse bucket list. Is this something you still do? And what does it entail? Reverse bucket list is something I do, oh boy to ever do it. And it took me too long to figure this one out. When I was

7:31 Fifty. I'm fifty nine years old. When I was fifty I found my bucket list from when I was forty. You know, I was a classic thing. And on my my birthday, I would make a list of my desires and my ambitions. And I would kinda imagine myself, visualize myself consuming or experiencing these things, and it would fire me up and make me Well, kinda feel like a loser, quite frankly, because it was it was m it was lowering my sense of satisfaction, I subsequently found out. And I looked at that list from when I was forty and

8:00 I checked everything off that list and I was less happy. Oh no at fifty than I was at forty. 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 neurophysiological problem and a psychological problem all rolled into one handy package. I was making a mistake.

8:20 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 in Like a minute. Comes when you understand that your satisfaction Is your haves divided by your wants?

8:36 Halves divided by once. That's the model. So you know it's like I'll slow down because I know people watching are like, I'm gonna write that down. Halves divided by ones. You can increase your satisfaction temporarily and inefficiently by having more. Or permanently and securely by wanting less. I thought to myself, Hm. So what does that mean? And the answer to that, what does that mean, is I need a reverse bucket list.

8:58 Not that I'm not gonna get nice things in my life, but but I'm gonna be consciously detached from them. by going through the exercise of writing them down and crossing them up. So on my birthday now. My t fifty ninth birthday a couple of months ago. I wrote down all my ridiculous ambitions and desires of money or whatever power.

9:18 Ambition. Yeah, 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'll 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.

9:44 А вона мусперинсов з амбіційстомай префронта корти. Which is my executive manager, the 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

10:01 But I'm gonna cross it out as an attachment. And I'm telling you, Tim, I'm free. And so you find that to work. It 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.

10:13 To have it not be a rootless desire, a ghost in your head. You've made it into something that you will consciously manage 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, wh whatever these are. All the stuff that guys like you and me do. Right. And then you have thirty seven inch arms and in your case, possibly. You're incredibly fit. I'm not hitting on you, I'm just saying I aspire to You're a beautiful man to be too. Well, we go to the same stylist for our haircuts, but I would say uh we will maybe get to the like self care and and physical practice later. You go through this exercise, you write those things down, you cross them out. Yeah.

10:58 in a sort of idol worship sleight of hand move. Then following that, I'm curious. When there is, if there is, the spark of this. Desire. Whatever it might be. Mm-hmm.

11:12 Do you have self talk or something that acts as an interrupt? I keep the list. You keep the list. I 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, every year, or every ten years, whatever it happened to be, I go back and look at my reverse bucket list and say, 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.

11:40 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 we'll govern the children. But sometimes you have to remind yourself, remember, look, I mean you're you're an adult here. And you look back on it and say, And it's funny. Actually, it's pretty amusing.

11:58 When you look at it and you say, Oh, I can't believe that thing is bugging me again. But you're not governed by it in the same way. You know what I 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 let's say s selling X number of copies, but not to have that hungry ghost. Attachment to it. It's it's nothing more than an intention. Intention is fine.

12:19 But attachment is bad. And this is what the Dalai Lama talks about too. He talks about intention without attachment. There's a word in sailing, the rum line. In Spanish rumbo, which is a lot more common in in 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'll 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

12:52 Important, but it's actually not the way that you get from Europe to the American. Yeah, you need a wrong you need a location and you're you're GPS. But if you're super attached to it, then you're gonna freak out when something throws you off. And furthermore, you're not gonna 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 it's intention without attachment. Now there's another thing that I was thinking about this year because Tick Not Han died. You know, the great Vietnamese Buddhist monk. And I wrote his obituary in the Washington Post, actually.

13:31 It was a really interesting experience'cause I talked about all what he's taught all of us. Tick not Han said and I was had an impact on me, but I I reflected on it 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 to money or power.

13:50 Why? Because People treat their opinions as if they were gold. They're 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 and I thought Am I weighed down by attachment to my views?

14:10 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 when I turned fifty nine.

14:23 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 gonna get me there. Love is gonna get me there. Tolerance is gonna get me there. A sense of Curiosity about other people is gonna get me there.

14:42 And strong political opinions is gonna put me in the wrong direction. So man Dead. The attachment dead. Mm-hmm. So

14:50 Maybe this is a little too granular, but I'm curious. Tick not haunts. 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

15:04 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 f something called a festschrift. It's a word that means kind of this an encomium. It's a a celebration of the work of somebody. And what you always start when you do one of these things. It's a you know typical sort of European intellectual deal. As you look at the things

15:27 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 Ticknaut Haw. I've worked very closely with the Dalai Lama and the in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition, but the Theravada Buddhist tradition I've never penetrated personally and so I didn't know Technod 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.

15:55 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 Technod Han when I was running a think tank in Washington, DC, how he influenced me as a happiness professor at Harvard. That's the stuff that I really

16:12 Wanted to focus on. That was the idea of attachment and detachment. That was the idea of the illusion of Individuality. I mean these are concepts that

16:24 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.

16:34 Big bestseller. With this 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 washing the dishes, are you?

16:47 And he persuades you with this kind of hypnotic Froze. To remember that if you don't think about washing the dishes, but you're thinking about doing something at work tomorrow or you're thinking 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 dishes. He said If you're thinking about the peach while you're washing the dishes when you're eating the peach, you'll probably be thinking of something else. Exactly. And then what you're doing is you're while you're doing this, you're planning for a future existence.

17:19 That's better than now and when you reach it. It will be a phasm as well. It will be nothing more than a mythical past while you're thinking about a a new future that doesn't quite exist and you've missed your whole life. How did he Change you or influence you as a Catholic. And the Dalai Lama too, 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.

17:45 So for example. Catholics. Traditional Catholics. They generally pray what's called the rosary. And the rosary is a set of beads that you pray repetitive prayers.

17:56 It's about a thousand 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.

18:07 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 Tiknath Han and also studying at the Dalai Lama's monastery in Dharamsala, India, sitting in meditation and studying Meditation techniques with the Tibetan Buddhist monks.

18:26 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 gonna be

18:43 adjacent. to this conversation, this topic, but I'm curious, do you believe that we can always cut this, but I'm very curious. Do you believe that direct transmission in some of these lines, which is very important in certain schools of We could call it mindfulness, but Th that is

19:01 a real phenomenon or at least I suppose it's undeniably important in the tradition, but the idea that sitting with someone in meditation With them. that there are teachings that are sort of directly transmitted. What is your thoughts on that if you have Any thoughts?

19:17 I don't know the answer to that. I do know that you can deeply be in communion with somebody in really intimately. And and my wife, Hester and I, we actually we teach young couples that are engaged. About You know, she teaches the theological part. I I teach the social science. Because I'm just a you know, I'm a total wonk.

19:33 And what we do tell them is that according to the best science and 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 twenty five years.

19:50 That we'll 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. You'll get naked in front of Somebody else, but you 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

20:13 There's gonna 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 gonna take a hard left for a second. And then we're gonna come back to a through line, which I am tracking. Because it's just what is top of mind for me. And then we're gonna come back to possible mystical slash semi-mystical experiences in Mexico. So I'm giving an idea. I get to go to Mexico to and have mystical experience. The invitation is now formal. But first

20:45 For those who are not watching this video, I mean you are incredibly physically fit and I know that you have Some very deliberate, consistent practices, including weight training and so on. Blood occlusion. Training? Are you still using cuffs? I do, yeah, and I recommend it for anybody over forty. Could you explain what this is and why you recommend it? So occlusion training, what it effectively does is it

21:06 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 weight. Now, the reason I recommend this very strongly is because the research suggests that it's very good for both strength and hypertrophy at lower weight levels. So it saves 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 I really strongly encourage people to check this out. I've done some of it. Yeah.

21:37 And to say that it increases the burn or the pump is certainly true. You got a little pain. Yeah, I would s exactly. I would say I would say start conservative because you might feel weak dialing back the weights, but just wait. Just get rid of it. It really does. And you then Then you learn to love the pain. And you can travel with there are cuffs you can travel with. I have'em. I I carry them with me all the time. Is there a particular type that you use? I I don't actually remember the brand, but they're actually they use Velcro and they're about two inches thick. So it's too thick and I 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 uh and then get in touch with the pain. And uh they're easy to travel with. Do your homework and start conservative. Kelly Starrett, a very famous performance coach and PT who's

22:30 A friend who's been on the show many times introduced me to that. Yeah, it's it's amazing. And uh he had a very similar argument, which is effectively He doesn't say this, but I would say like you are kind of as old as your joints and connective tissue feel. I mean, there's certainly a cognitive component. And this is a really elegant way. Two

22:47 to preserve or build muscle mass without Yeah, I learned this from my friend Saldus Stefano, who started Mind Pump with his partners and um Mind Pump, what's it? Yeah, Mind Pump, it's a uh you know fitness and culture podcast. And I've been listening to it for years and years. And he taught me how to do it. He actually is gives me training tips and good ideas and yeah, it's great. It's been very helpful. And by the way, you know, when I was a younger man, you know, when I was in my thirties, I figured, you know, like what's my goal with fitness? And the answer is to still be lifting when I'm eighty. 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 affect. It's actually a happiness technique for me. It doesn't make me happier. It makes me less unhappy.

23:27 That's what physical fitness will do. It will buy you less unhappiness. And so I manage my negative affect that way. And I know when I'm eighty I'm gonna need to manage my negative affect. So I don't wanna hurt myself. So I would go to the gym when I was thirty five or forty years old and I would I would go to these iron gyms wherever I was traveling and I would find the oldest dude. Yeah, the old guy who's still lifting heavy things. And I would go up to him and say, Can I ask your advice? And they always want to give you advice. You know, the seventy six year old guy who's He's like don't bench press. It restricts your range of movement. And that's gonna hurt your you're gonna get impingement injuries along the way. So that's why as you get older, you should actually press with dumbbell and and then do higher rep to get volume, do higher reps with lower weight, et cetera. And just that sensible stuff, but it's actually

24:10 been incredibly helpful for me to not get hurt. And stay in the jets. Yeah, a hundred percent. Alright. So naturally. From the supply to the ridiculous. Well, may maybe ridiculous, maybe not. So not for me, it's not. That's for could you please describe your experience. I think it was as a teenager. Was it as a teenager? In Mexico. Well yeah, the the Mexican ex it was not out in the woods with uh shaman in ayahuasca.

24:32 When I was fifteen, I was on a band trip. I used to be a 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 nineteen until I was thirty one. French horn. Yeah, I was a French horn player, a classical French horn player all the way through my twenties. I didn't go to college till I was thirty, but it's my gap decade. Mm and uh and when I was I need one of those and when I was fifteen years old, I was on this trip with a group with a Not a professional. It was a like an amateur concert band, but you know, doing a

25:03 tour through Mexico and and we're doing a lot of tourism. And one of the truest activities was to go to the shrine of Guadalupe in Mexico City. This is a famous place for Catholics because it's one of the great pilgrimage sites of the world in Catholic Teaching. This is where

25:18 When the the Spanish explorers came to Mexico and having a horrible time because their marketing was all goofed up for the Catholic Church. I mean Convert or die is not a very compelling pitch, it turns out, you know. And racist and, you know, everything that you possibly could want. What happens then is this weirdly miraculous thing for Catholic and fellow travelers. I mean just it was a mystical experience. So there was a a peasant Man by the name of Juan Diego.

25:42 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 is Image. On his Tilma.

25:55 He takes it back to Tilma is a is a textile. It's sort of a poncho. 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's seen the Blessed Virgin Mary of Guadalupe on this. And if you Google it, the Virgin of Guadalupe and you see 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 they display the Tilma in public, and for the first time they start getting converts. In the next nine years, seven million people convert to the Catholic Church. Now why? There's worldly explanation and there's divine explanations for it.

26:39 Here's a worldly explanation that's pretty compelling. Or lady in Guadalupe. Is not white. She's not Spanish.

26:47 She's a Mestieta. She's A woman of mixed race. Now we don't realize today how incredibly subversive that is, how unbelievably culturally transgressive that would have been. The blessed Virgin Mary is not Not white? What are you talking about?

27:01 No 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 at the time, or so lore goes.

27:15 And that's why people started saying, 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 um you know, I'm looking at the Tilmas just sitting up there and I'm thinking.

27:30 This is boring. But then I noticed. She was looking at me. Yeah. To be sure.

27:37 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. Then I realized I needed more.

27:56 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

28:08 I became a Catholic. At sixteen years old. And I've been a Catholic. And did you have a family History. Of Catholicism. Zero. Zero. Zero. No, I grew up in a Christian family. So it's I had a little bit of wiring, but I literally knew no Catholics.

28:24 It's just this thing. Okay. And you know, my parents are like Adolescent Rebellion. I guess it's better than drugs. It is better than heroin. But And the point is a lot of people watching us, some are traditionally religious and some are spiritual and some are not, but the whole point is We have a sens.

28:44 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. There's 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.

29:03 Лет само такі на. Ambiguous. But once people start to say, I'm ready to be taken. to a deeper place a more transcendent state

29:15 That person, that entity will appear. We may come back to that. Thank you. Mm-hmm. And I do think that Many different paths. Touch corners of the same.

29:25 thing is my impression, which we may not have time for in 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 experiences that have shaped you and your like perceptual apparatus and your 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 prof that people might have envisioned, right? Oh, Exeter, Harvard, McKinsey. No, no, no, no. I actually applied to Harvard for graduate school and they're like no. It took two weeks for them to reject my

30:06 Part of it is at the time I was thirty one, I was a college dropout. I had a degree from a correspondent school. I was a French horn player. These are not the core demographics of your typical Harvard Graduate student and so Yeah, I got it. Rejected, which suggests, by the way, Tim, that our standards for faculty today are lower than our than for our students. But be that as it may. Maybe, maybe. I'm skeptical in your case. I'd like to talk about your dad. Yeah. So

30:32 Who was your father? What was he like? And how did his life And My dad was A mathematician. He had a PhD in biostatistics.

30:44 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 uh Chicago called Wheaton College. where all of our family members had gone. My aunt went there in the forties and dated Billy Graham in college, as it as it turns out. Yeah, 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.

31:21 With the beauty of mathematics. As kids, you know, my mother is an artist. My mother was a painter and my dad was a mathematician and you know and around the dinner table we would talk about art and we would talk about math. Those are the things my father would pose math problems to us. He would say, Okay, okay, boys

31:35 Me and my brother. Imagine All of the integers between one and one hundred. One, two, three, four. Okay. Add them all together. What's the result? And we'd be like, I don't know, I need a piece of paper. He said, No, you don't Think in another way.

31:48 Think of another way. The solution, by the way, is one plus a hundred equals one hundred and one, and two plus ninety nine equals one hundred and one, and three plus ninety eight equals one hundred and one, and there are fifty one of those which makes Fifty one combinations of one hundred and one. Five thousand and fifty. That's what we would do.

32:05 That's what my father would do. You're like Dad, I'm just trying to eat my macaroni cheese. I know eat my macaroni and cheese. And they would say something like See, isn't that beautiful? Isn't that beautiful? Isn't that evidence of God? That's what he or your mom would say. That's what he would say. My dad would say. The elegance of that. 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.

32:29 So My father would explain this has 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 that you can solve with computational horsepower and and tech.

32:46 Complex problems. are super easy to understand, but you can never solve them. Like who's gonna 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 a computer because it'll be inaccurate. Love is complex, a jet engine is complicated, a cat is complex, a toaster is complicated.

33:10 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.

33:22 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. Would you describe your father As a happy man. No.

33:44 My father was a gloomy man. And no doubt that had a lot to do with Genetics because fifty percent of our emotional baseline is genetic. We know this from identical twin studies where twins are born and separated at birth into separate families. This is not an experiment that social scientists have done because that would be horribly unethical. But three identical strangers shows how that turns out. Yeah. Which are brutal brutal doc. Uhhuh. Oh yeah. That's a great documentary. It is great. But fifty percent of your baseline mood, your tendency toward, you know, abulliance or gloominess is Sitting in your

34:15 DNA. And this is the reason, Tim. Yeah. I came to the happiness field because I saw my grandfather who was A wonderful man and gloom, and my father who was brilliant and a lovely person and an excellent ethical kind man who was gloomy, and I said, No more, man. No more. I'm gonna live on the other fifty percent.

34:36 I am not going to be governed by that fifty percent that made my father an unhappy man. And so he died young, sixty six. You know? I mean he had cancer and they gave him Ten or fifteen years or more. And he died in two.

34:50 And as a statistician, he explained it. He was a biostatistician by his graduate degree. And I said, Dad His terrible luck, and he said, Look. There's gotta 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.

35:06 To fight for life. Because he didn't have the hygiene for his own happiness. And that Example.

35:16 Set me on the path. To learn about 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 and the lesson he taught me. Even through his own happiness.

35:33 Hi everyone, Tim here, pardon the interruption. Just a quick announcement. The recording studio had a small glitch, so the audio for the next two 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 stopped doing.

35:55 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 affect 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 a book called Spark, which also goes into sort of a lot of the like BDNF and a lot of the circuitry and biochemical reasons. for exercise for this explicit purpose. When I'm working with students, I put them through a

36:21 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 and there's a big mistake that almost everybody makes about happiness, which is That a lot of mistakes. Number one, that it's 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.

36:44 But we can't get there because we actually need unhappiness, and unhappiness and happiness are not opposites and can coexist. So there's a lot to do. Yeah, there's a 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.

37:12 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 emotions, anger, fear, disgust, sadness. And it's actually funny, when you have when 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 gonna happen next. Are they gonna laugh and keep playing or are they gonna you're gonna get the water works, right? And the way the tell on that, because it's usually five or six seconds because the the wiring in the brain is actually not Complete a work in progress. So one of the tests that I administer to my students and I put it in my new book, as a matter of fact, because it's so important for me and for understanding ourselves. It's called the Positive Affect Negative Affect Series Pan S P A N A S. It's on my website and so it's easy to find. And I didn't create it. It's been psychometrically validated a bunch of times. It's a great test. And what it does is it helps you figure out if you're high positive. High negative or low positive, low negative, and there's four combinations. It's a two by two matrix. You can be a high positive affect person.

38:10 And a high negative affect person. That's a high affect 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 eighty fifth percentile and happy affect and I'm at the eighty fifth percentile and negative affect. So the high's are high and the low I don't have a happiness problem. I have an unhappiness problem is what it comes down to. In other words, it's not a problem because unhappiness is really important. You won't be happy if you get rid of your unhappiness because you gotta be fully alive.

38:36 to get happier. But You do need to manage yourself. Some people are really high positive and really low negative. Those are the cheerleaders.

38:45 Those people can't stay in the gym. Why? Because they don't feel better when they go to the gym because their negative affect is already in the cellar. The third is high negative and well positive. That's the poet. And the po nobody wants to be a poet, but the truth is that the 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 who's skipping down the street. Right. You can think of a creative person with exactly right. You're in a French cafe, you know, thinking about you know thinking nihilistic thoughts and and writing poetry. So that's the poetic disposition. And the last is low, low.

39:23 So y you could be perfectly happy or unhappy, but you have low affect 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 everybody listening, but just

39:40 By way of a working example. What does someone do with What are their options for how to act upon that? Okay, so the if you know that you're a poet

39:49 This is an affect 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 to zero. There's nothing wrong with unhappiness. You need to mute them. You don't need to numb them. You need to manage them.

40:13 And could you and I may have already missed the plot, but just define those two because I think a lot of people, myself, maybe included, would think if you remove unhappiness by default, since it's unhappiness, they seem to be antonyms. So you remove one, you have more of the other. So how should we think about these things? Yeah, that's a very good question. And by the way. The answer is not obvious. As a matter of fact, psychologists until about fifty years ago really believed 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,

40:48 You can think about it then neuroanatomically as opposed to semantically with the words. Yeah, yeah. Not the dumb it down too hard, but it's like if your left hand Performed. X types of tasks and your right hand performed Y type of tasks. It's 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.

41:10 Positive emotions are kinda 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, 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 you'll say, you know, in five minute increments, what are you feeling, positive or negative, you'll find that about ninety percent of the time people can tell you how they're feeling. And forty percent of the time for the average person, it's really pure positive emotions at a low level. It's your idol is most of the time. It's okay. It's kinda sunny today, whatever, whatever. All good. About sixteen percent of the time is pure negative emotion. And that usually means something's happening that you don't like. Now thirty-three percent of the time

41:58 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 kinda going back to your positive violence. Oh yeah, the thing.

42:16 You know, that thing. And so that's the mixed state. Like Twitter. Yeah. Totally and by the way, I mean, it's an unhappiness machine. You mean X? Sorry. Exactly. A big black X. You mean it's like X. It's uh 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 I go through the panace.

42:46 And uh Poet. There are these two levers. What might be the process of thinking through how to pull these levers in different ways. So happiness side is what I spend a lot more time on because It's just so interesting on how we can

43:00 Paul the happiness lover. This 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 If it feels good, do it.

43:14 Or if it feels bad, make it stop. It's a terrible life strategy. Happiness And its feelings are associated with three Tangible phenomena in our lives that we can actually understand and manage. Enjoyment.

43:26 Satisfaction. And meaning. Those are the three things that we need in balance and abundance. Think of these as the macronutrients of happiness, the protein, carbohydrates, and fat. Of Happiness.

43:38 You don't have protein and carbohydrates and fat and balance and abundance, all kinds of weird things are gonna happen to you, and you're not gonna 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 can 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.

44:08 The first one is enjoyment. I say you enjoy your life. They'll think about their little pleasures. I see that's not it. Pleasure is not a secret to happiness. Pleasure is the fast road to

44:19 Obsessive compulsive activity and addiction. Why? Because all pleasure is is a phenomenon from the limbic system of your brain saying do more of that thing'cause 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 in two ingredients with your pleasure. People and memory. Never do something that gives you pleasure alone.

44:45 That's the rule of thumb. If you're doing it alone is a problem. So Anheuser Busch does a beer ad. They never have in the beer ad. A guy drinking in his closet. Yeah, a guy pounding a twelve pack in a cell bargain alone. Why? Because that's pleasure and that actually leads to addiction. It's problematic. They always have an ad of a guy. Cracking a beer with his Buddies.

45:05 People. And doing something he's gonna 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 sake. That's a pretty weird thing to do, right? I mean, it hits the dopamine lever. I mean th they all are neurophysiologically similar phenomena. They hit dopamine, dopamine, dopamine, dopamine over and over and over again, and they ruin your life.

45:32 Because they become addictive, they become monomaniacal, and they're not the secret to happiness. If you're at three o'clock in the morning in 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 what gives my life happiness. Methamphetamine. Never been said. Right, and the reason for that is because these are drugs

45:54 People say drugs of abuse. No no, it's drugs of pleasure. Let's not lie about 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 a set of guideposts for our life.

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47:28 And so you have Enjoyment. Which you clarify. Satisfaction and meaning next. Yeah, how would you

47:35 make satisfaction granular because I think about satisfaction I'm like, hmm, 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 But how should we think about these two in your frame? 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 per se can actually cross the boundaries across the macronutrients just like a Something that you eat.

48:02 has one more than one macronutrient. But satisfaction per se is doing something that takes Effort. and expending the effort. So if my graduate students say The she

48:14 to get an A in an exam in my class. They'll get the grade, but they won't get the satisfaction. The satisfaction comes from the pain. This is one of the paradoxes of life. You gotta suffer to get the satisfaction. You gotta defer the gratification. When somebody's on the pleasure mill, by the way, they also don't get satisfaction from anything because they can't defer the gratification anymore. These problems bleed into each other. So

48:36 One of the things that you find is that people are Here. very accomplished. You know, the people you are good at satisfaction because you can defer your gratification and do long term projects. You're

48:47 Uh satisfaction guy. The problem for you and me and a lot of people are gonna watch Your show. Because they want to be better. I mean, nobody's watching this show just for giggles. They're watching the show because 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 deferring their gratification and doing hard things. Or at least aspire.

49:07 Totally. I mean it's like I've read your books. It's interestingly deceptive. The four hour fill in the blank, the early books.

49:14 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 are gonna hurt. Yeah, there's a lot of front loading.

49:24 There's also hard work without forethought and planning. So there 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

49:40 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, neuroscientists talk about homeostasis, which is a phenomenon of always going back

49:58 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 were gonna be bummed out for the rest of your life, you'd become immobilized. And if you felt super happy when something good happened, you wouldn't be in the hunt anymore. Mother Nature.

50:17 Wants you to think. that you're gonna 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 and again and have you never figured out, man, if I get that car, I'm gonna love it. If I move to California, I'm gonna 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 hidonic treadmill, and it's unbelievably painful. The way to solve that problem is Is halves divided by onts.

50:48 The way to get real satisfaction is is not having more, but wanting less. And that's the reverse bucket list, et cetera. That's the 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 are not really in your happiness interest. She doesn't care if you're happy, by the way. No.

51:08 Passing on producing progeny is not dependent on the big smiles. DNA, man. It's all d 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 the For I don't know, for pursuing the divine path? We are gonna come back to meeting. I wanna Just take sidebar on reducing wants for a second. Sure.

51:29 And talk about Exercises that you've had your students do In your classes. Mm-hmm. And

51:39 I'm pulling this from memory so I I may not get the wording. Spot on, but identifying their idols, am I Yeah. Getting this right. So if if you could expand on what that looks like. Yeah. We have a game. I have a game show in my class at Harvard. Called What's My Idol. Yeah. You can tell how old I am. When I was a really little kid, there was a game show on TV called What's My Line. 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 the seventies or back.

52:08 What's my idol is actually based on the insight of a you know a medieval philosopher, Saint Thomas Aquinas. theologian, but really a philosopher in the Neoplatonic tradition. Aquinas is responsible for introducing Aristotle to the modern world. Up until that point, nobody read Aristotle, it was all Plato. Aristotle's teacher.

52:28 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 the Memonides was doing for the Jewish world, because they were coexisting in southern Spain in this intellectual soup. That's hard for us to understand today. It was so deep what was going on. So to Saint 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. And his magisterial work was the Suma Theologiae.

53:07 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 how I meet the objection. The whole book is written this way. It's unbelievable. And in the section on human happiness. Which he pulls from Aristotle.

53:30 Who claims without Any need for proof? This is what we all want. Whether we act that way or not. That there's four things that we do that distract us from happiness. Now his definition of happiness is seeking the divine.

53:43 You know, this is what we all want. What do you want? But of 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, pursuing God or the divine or the metaphysical singularity or exterior consciousness or what your thing is. Has a lot of one sided conversations.

54:02 And a lot of inconvenient morality attached to it. So We take these divinity substitutes. These are the idols. Idols are biblically and in and in mythology. What idols all have in common is that they're godlike, but they're not God.

54:16 They're convenient substitutes for God. That's all an idol is. And Saint Thomas Aquinas says there's four substitutes for God. Which we can think of as the four substitutes for the real secrets of happiness. They are money.

54:27 Power. Pleasure. And fame. How little things change. And when when he said fame he actually say fame, he said honor.

54:35 But that has a different connotation in English. You know, I have a son who's a Special forces in the military and and uh he serves with honor. That's not what they mean. Honor means to be honored. It's fame, it's uh reputation, it's the admiration of other people.

54:49 Maybe it's Instagram followers or something ridiculous, but it is something that we want in the opinion of other people. And we've s the thirst after it. And he says everybody is motivated by one thing and he'll 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 everybody's like, How's your fund this year? How are you doing this year? And like, how much does this apartment cost? It's all about money. You go to LA?

55:16 What's the idol? No. Yeah. Well I'm not gonna even call it honor. Fame. Fame. Same. Okay. Okay, let's let's g keep with the quiz. D C

55:25 What's the idol? Power. Power, man, is how close are you to the president. What senator do you know? Right, Vegas? Yeah. Right. I mean

55:35 Communities will coal us around this, but each one of us has our idle too. So here's the game, you wanna play? Sure. Let's play the game. Okay. So The truth is none of us has all four.

55:45 None of us is so vice ridden. We don't have the energy or time. To be serving all four of these idols. I mean come on, life is sure. You underestimate me, sir. But we all have one or two that really animate us, and we don't always know it'cause we're not paying attention to it. Now Aquinas' point and modern psychology bears all this out, that As a a normal adult with a complicated life. If you know your idol, you will recognize the thing that always leads you astray and leads you to do the things that you later regret.

56:15 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 that you'll make it go away because you're human, but you can manage your idol. Okay, so I start by saying What's not your idol? 'Cause of the four, there's something that you could ditch. Yeah, power is not uh yeah. Power

56:34 immediately I'll just I'll I'll name one to start with. So that's why you're not a CEO. I mean you've got a company and you you know you're 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

56:48 power focused in a sense in one form or another. It just doesn't it does you dislike 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 I think that It's an inherent dynamic. In

57:03 Particularly chimpanzee politics, but just in nature in general. Speaking of which, let me react to this phrase. Tim Ferris for Congress. No. Again, absolutely not. Your answer is correct. You are not motivated by power is the first one you get rid of. Okay, you got three left. Money.

57:21 Pleasure. Same. You gotta kick one out. You gotta 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 having seen the flip side and the shadow elements of that, it has it holds But you got pretty famous young. And so you saw the dark side of that, which is what social scientists and and even neuroscientists will tell you with their research is that fame is really the only of the idols that you can ever be happy in spite of.

57:51 Mm-hmm. You know, when Lady Gaga tweeted fame is prison and everybody derided that. I'm thinking that's Deeply adept. That is a deeply clarify comment. And by the way, I mean, you know, John Milton. wrote that in, you know, the seventeenth 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 some very, very, very bitter fruit. Yeah, there are a lot of footnotes and uh a lot of fine print.

58:24 In that Faustian bargain. Okay. Uh so I forty six year old Tim Ferris, that's number two that yeah that goes out the door. Don't care. In fact, if I could put the toothpaste back in the toothpaste tube. Mm-hmm. In numerous ways I would do that. Right. Okay, you got two left and it's getting hot in here, right? Money and pleasure. Yeah. Wealth and pleasure. Which one do you get? I would say money I can in the hierarchy I can get rid of the marginal utility of each additional dollars is

58:53 Just mixed note. Difference in the things that I care about. So in a a middle class life wouldn't freak you out. No, at this point I mean I'm not talking about poverty. I'm not talking about getting not getting three squares. I'm talking about not having the the money for the nice stuff that people think is really wonderful to have the houses, the boats, the cars. Yeah, I don't I don't really buy That's tough. Yeah, I don't I don't really care. And I care less and less because also

59:18 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. And I think there are

59:34 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. It's by buying experiences. It's by buying time. And by giving it away.

59:47 And you already figured that one out. Yeah. So yeah, I mean quick example of that for me in the last a handful of years. I owe Tim Urban a huge thank you for his Article end I ended up Looking Most years depending on my family's health and so on. Right.

1:00:01 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 a boys trip with some of my closest friends. 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, plus Jim Ferris likes to feel good. I do, yeah. Yeah. And again, there's nothing wrong with feeling good.

1:00:24 But for you, we need to watch to make sure that you're getting enjoyment, not pleasure. Yeah. And we need to be very disciplined about enjoyment, not pleasure. And I would also Add to this that I do think I'm pleasure junkie for certain things. Sure. The sensual, 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 gets the reference, would be given a history of depression. Right. I fear its opposite. Right.

1:00:55 So I Chase pleasure as hopefully some inoculation against darkness. So there are many things contributing to that. Yeah. Well 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.

1:01:12 There's a reason that fentan there's nobody who enjoys fentanyl. Because it's not something you like I'm gonna go hang out with my buddies And take fentanyl. And make a memory. On the contrary, you're trying to

1:01:22 Eviscerate memory. And 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'em. You don't want'em back. You don't want to invite him 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.

1:01:45 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 it's part of the quilt of your life.

1:01:57 And so it's just one square in the quilt of your life and not the whole blanket. Yeah, I so I wanna I wanna expand on this'cause this is thread selfishly that I'd like to pull on. No, you're and 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

1:02:19 I start to feel like there are whispers. Of the potential of an onset. Uh A depressive episode. Mm-hmm. Or maybe it's

1:02:29 The ruminative thoughts and anxiety that comes with that. But let's just say those are at a Two out of ten volume. Mm-hmm. There's fear. Because I worry that that is going to spiral. Right.

1:02:40 And so I seek out something on the positive side of the ledger, or let me just say the pleasure side of the ledger that is higher volume. Yeah. You're trying to knock yourself out of a groove. So it's a it's like overcoming a dread of deadness with greater aliveness. Right. What's one possible Strategy.

1:02:58 It could be a substitute strategy for that. That's why I'm here, Doctor. So so and there are. There are. Meditation and prayer. A seeking for the divine. A serious spiritual practice.

1:03:12 These are the things that will actually do much the same things but without the numbing and without the danger. 'Cause it's tricky, right? I mean hitting the dopamine lever has consequences. Hitting it hard and often has, 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, and

1:03:30 Let's just say Spare meditation uh prayer. Spare spare prayer. Name of my forthcoming book. Uh a life of prayer sound of it. Meditation. 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.

1:03:55 Who I think recognizes I do in some ways I am deeply Just to layer on my sins here. Envy of People who have strong religious conviction. I recognize the value.

1:04:07 Mm-hmm. And from a at least in the sort of monotheistic Judeo Christian. traditions I don't think I'm likely To join.

1:04:17 Right. One of the bands. Oh, we'll kinda. What? So I recognize we can go do some some blood occlusion training and you can just have rosary together. Lay the prayer on thick. So what would you suggest to me or someone who recognizes the value? I don't I

1:04:38 Do not have a counterargument. Yeah. But I'm not sure how to embrace that. So there are alternatives. So I I mean I can tell you as a Catholic that that's my thing, but I can tell you as a social scientist that it's not the only thing that will actually bring the same neurophysiological 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, Tim. You're gonna go through all day. It's like my podcast and you know, it's my commute and my lunch and my money and my friends and my mom and my me. It's so

1:05:09 Man, it's just so it's like watching the same episode every single night of Better Call Saul. For the rest of your life. That's like having the seagulls from finding Nemo in your head. Yeah. Mine, mine, mine, mine, mine, mine, mine. 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. Perspective requires that we see reality.

1:05:36 And we get smaller, and we stand in a. Of the universe and what it can bring. There's lots of ways to do that. Meditation practices are very good for that.

1:05:47 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 it'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. Yeah, all plus quiet and cool, for sure.

1:06:15 And therefore you get a just a bigger bolus of, you know, the benefits that you actually get from being in contact with the earth and being in contact with nature, et cetera. 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 favorite. Oh yeah. And listen to a hundred of his cantatas.

1:06:37 And learn how to analyze them. I mean. Your life will never be the same. Or Your neighbor and our mutual friend Ryan Holliday. Read the stoics. Read the stoics. I mean, it's a quasi religious experience. You will feel

1:06:49 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, in front of Epictetus. In front of God.

1:07:03 You need to get small. That's the whole point. I love that. It's easy to remember, right? Get small. Just you underscore that for myself. I mean a few things that have been helpful.

1:07:14 Right. Nature, yes. Yes. For sure. Studying What? could take the form of 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

1:07:30 The problems of this week in perspective. And also the impermanence of empires like Yeah. Uh may be relevant these days. So going back and realizing uh like the the most some of the most powerful figures in the history of humankind you will not recognize. Which also, uh I think for me has been very relieving and also has taken a lot of the earlier fixation on money away because I realize it's just

1:07:57 Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. That's right. Give me the full name of Alexander the Great. So Rather than get fixed on some vague notion of legacy, like Let's actually focus on other things. The getting small

1:08:12 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 is one notable example who when he thinks of his problems, and I'm gonna paraphrase this, but he will look at stars and sort of zoom out from His neighborhood.

1:08:36 Himself. to th the planet, to the solar system. And when he then returns back to lay 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

1:09:01 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 great is just okay, and the bad is okay, too. And you know, that's so deeply comforting, and it leads to so many improvements in mental health.

1:09:18 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 fifteen minutes a day. Pick up the brothers K. Brothers Karamasov. Yeah. Am I saying that probably not. Yeah, you are. Yeah. Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky. If you like fiction

1:09:37 Stop wasting your time on trivialities. Go get the brothers K. Why? Because it's a deeply Awe inspiring experience about the human condition and the absurdity of it. 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. Last of the great emperors. Mostly because he was dumb enough to leave his son in charge. Oops. His waistroll of of humankind also. Sticking with I think I want to leave my business to my kids. What do you think, Tim? You know.

1:10:16 There's a there's a long conversation. My kids are awesome. I wonder if I wonder if I can get'em into the happiness but Dad, I know you're always beating us over the head on this happiness business. It's not my path, it's your path. I roll. So

1:10:33 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? Are there any concrete examples that you can give? We rolled 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 Mike Norton and Ashley Willins at the Harvard Business School. They've done this exhaustive research on how to buy happiness.

1:11:01 How about 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.

1:11:12 That's not the strategy. You need to buy enough, but no possession will do anything beyond bring you out of misery. That's the reason that the studies, you know, the famous Conneman and Deaton study from Princeton shows that happiness flattens out after seventy five thousand dollars a year. And you know, Matt Killingsworth at Penn actually re ran the data and finds that it's higher, but it still flattens out. Inflation adjusted, but still inflation adjusted, or you know, your results may vary or whatever it is, but the whole point is you just 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

1:11:52 А лак, іно, мітин сам базик ніц. Найтін та твіті фа. I was too poor for six years to go to the dentist. For six years. No, of course I don't think I ever went a day without cigarettes, so I guess it was priorities. But the But the point is that when I was Breakfast of Champions Beard, cigarettes, pizza, you know, I was living on the I was living in Washington Heights in those days. And when I was twenty five

1:12:15 I took a job in the Barcelona Orchestra and I moved to Barcelona had benefits. Had Benny's man. I went to the dentist and he filled ten cavities. And I felt a lot better than I thought.

1:12:27 Money does buy happiness. No no no no no. 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.

1:12:39 And people do that and they chase that feeling for the rest of their life. 'Cause you're you're doing sums in your head of well being is happiness and unhappiness and all that. You can't tell the difference when you're just you know rolling through your life. And early on you felt a lot better. That's all you know when you had more money. And so You want that feeling, and you chase the feeling, you chase the high, you chase the early hits.

1:13:00 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 Willins and Norton, my colleagues at HBS. You can. By experiences.

1:13:11 This is critically important because what do experiences that where you by 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

1:13:25 Sometimes you want to do things alone, but generally speaking the greatest happiness comes because it enhances love in 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.

1:13:41 Go away together. That's always the West best way to do it. Or stay home together, but turn off the phone. In other words, get an experience for the person that you like. That's a great way to spend money because it will reliably unless you waste it, do something stupid. Like I'm gonna have a bender in Vegas and then, you know, get blackout 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 gonna ask you for personal examples, but yes. Yeah I'm serious. Yeah, for sure.

1:14:11 Buy time. Buy time, but use the time correctly. If you have the money And You're cutting your lawn and you don't like cutting your lawn.

1:14:20 Improved GDP. Hire a guy. Now, a lot of Americans don't like to do that because they have this kind of this weird reverse classist sense. Well, let me tell you, there's a lot of people who are making more money than you cutting lawns and running a Birding 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 in the air conditioning. No, no, no, no. Use the time specifically for something, ideally with somebody doing something that you enjoy, and that will truly buy happiness.

1:14:50 And last but not least. Give your money away. To somebody who needs it, who deserves it, and a cause that truly inspires you. Something you really, really believe in. 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 and the reason I initially got into happiness in the first place, besides You know, want to be happy.

1:15:14 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 reciprocate also. Yeah. Where have you landed for where to give Your own money.

1:15:27 I give money to things that I 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 that it's 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 seventy five percent of what I give away, and I give away ten percent of my income. Yeah. It's not that hard to do, you just have to pay attention to it.

1:15:58 And then the structures, you know, so you get a charity giving. Yeah, I do think of it as a tithe, but I really think of it as a privilege. I think of it a lot less as a duty and a lot more as a privilege. My wife and I, we just look forward to it. And then you know, we have a process in our family of, you know, should we give money to this, should we give money to that? Usually we give something kind of a big bolus one year and then and then smaller gifts to 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 and we do the work. So it's not just anybody, we get a letter in the mail and we respond with a big check. It's like huh. Seems worthy. No, we actually do the work. And part of it is'cause I teach

1:16:36 One of the classes I teach at Harvard is on nonprofit management. And so I have a kind of a strong background in, you know, whether it's a reputable cause and what to look for into 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 gonna be a substantial amount of money, I get to know the people. And the organization and it has to be something that I think is gonna change people's lives for the better. Now I've actually changed my view on this a little bit because early on.

1:17:08 And we'd write a lot of little checks. Lots and lots and lots of little checks to 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.

1:17:25 And there's an old Talmudic phrase from the book of Sanhedrin. That says In every man is the whole world. In other words, turn the dial for one person, you've turned the dial for all of humanity because it's really had an impact. And I remember telling my wife about that. It's like yeah, I've got these data. And when you really help one person instead of a little bit for a lot.

1:17:45 really anonymously. You can you can get all these benefits. She's like, This is years ago. This is maybe Twenty years ago now. And she's like Why don't we adopt a baby? And I'm like

1:17:56 It's only a book, man. Ha ha. Oh we did. We actually did. It was

1:18:03 Totally life changing. So that's how you give. You gotta do the work and think about it and put your heart into it. 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, spring food throwing dollar bills at a helicopter this to eleven. Yeah. She's like she'd basically like, Okay, buddy. You really?

1:18:28 Really? I mean it's like I know you got this interesting research, you know, fancy social scientist guy. 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.

1:18:42 Dreams and dreams and dreams at night. If you're able to can you tell me more about your wife and how you guys met? Because I know the little bit of the background, but how did that happen since I'm Back on the playing field. Back on the playing field, too. Mm-hmm. One of the things that I teach my Students at HBS. Is that I would never

1:19:00 invest in the firm of an entrepreneur who is unwilling to give her or his heart away. Because it's 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 not gonna put my money in your fund. Now.

1:19:18 And that takes the form of risk, man. Loving someone wholeheartedly. Giving your heart away. Okay. Yeah, in your hard 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.

1:19:32 getting in it. And you know, entrepreneurs talk a lot about putting capital at risk and talking about money, how boring. The real capital of the enterprise, the startup of Tim Ferris' life,'cause this is the ultimate enterprise. I mean, the enterprise is not the podcast and the books and the company and the that that's not it. Those are manifestations of Tim Ferris Inc. Of you. The enterprise is you and the currency of you is not money, it's love and happiness. That's your currency.

1:19:56 So how are you gonna put that at risk for explosive tectonic inflecting returns? What are you gonna 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 I'm with you. Now there are

1:20:13 myriad ways that if you were to Sort of take off your flak jacket and just Walk into the Yeah. Oncoming traffic with like emotional oncoming traffic with someone who you've been on a dating app who you meet within five minutes and they're Cook bananas.

1:20:29 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 wanna hear your story. Yeah. So this gets back to the issue at hand. And the reason I I did that little Prelude is because I don't want anybody to think that my screws are too loose. Right. Yeah, that's not the same. So okay. Insane man on the podcast. Deeply unbalanced guest joins Tim Ferris. When I was twenty four years old, I was on a concert tour, and I was making my living as a classical French horn player. I was on a concert tour in the Burgundy region of France. Going from town to town, playing concerts.

1:21:10 And I was staying at this school. I don't know, it'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 that 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 at the audience and there was this

1:21:29 Girl smiling at me. In the front row. Beautiful girl smiling at me, just gorgeous. And I'm you know, and I'm a red blooded twenty four year old Dude, and I'm like, obviously I'm gonna make a mental note to go talk to her. Well. So I go to talk to her later and I find out two things. Number one, she's not French, even though I was in France. And number two, that she doesn't speak a single word of English. And it it it was hard because you know, where I was trying to talk to her in you know monosyllabic grunts and fruitless search for cognizant. And I said Are you single? I mean, this is like this basic. Are you single?

1:21:59 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 Latin to try to get me to understand this point. Anyway, so it was a it was 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 called 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 gonna marry. And where was she?

1:22:26 Barcelona. Mm-hmm. 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 is 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 gonna get married. It's a hell of a concept to communicate in Tarzanese. Yeah. Yeah, no no for sure. I mean we're together for a week and we you know You got there. We got there. And uh

1:22:56 And I couldn't get out of my head. It was like Our Lady of Guadalupe kinda. 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 her. I I traveled 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 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.

1:23:25 It took me two years, but I closed the deal. And thirty two years later we have three adult kids and one grandson, and and I'm still in love. So how did you How did you end up Mm-hmm. debate teaming that. I'm just curious, like how did I just wore it out. Just wore it out. So you know we were, you know, I was living in Barcelona, she was in love with me. And so she's not like

1:23:45 get out it's not like I was some weird stalker. She really was in love with me. And 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. Three percent of the population of Barcelona ever goes to Mass. Three percent. I never would have guessed that. Denmark in the Mediterranean. That's incredible. I have no idea. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Nobody does, for sure. I mean it but but you know, it has a long tradition. And she comes from a a hard red communist atheist family. Mm-hmm. So suffice it to say that our background's a little bit different. I mean I again she was

1:24:19 beautiful and smart and funny and and I was in love. Yeah. I just Love will allow. Love will out and it

1:24:27 Finally at the end of two years. I just finally I said I got down on one knee and I said, Are you ready to change your mind? She said yes. Alright. So once again.

1:24:37 Envious showed its ugly head. And uh I have to admit my French horn game Very weak. Very weird. Turns out the French road was the least of it. Tight pants. Tight pants. Big guns. In those days, six foot two and a hundred forty two pounds.

1:24:54 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 progress. Is that progress? Sounds like progress. Maybe that should be on my dating profile. If you hug me, I feel like maybe not. And maybe you're so far removed that

1:25:24 This doesn't Makes sense to ask, but What advice Also you're coming from a different orientation with the Catholicism, and I assume maybe wrong, but I imagine but not hers.

1:25:35 Right, now is she fully aboard the Catholic train? Fully aboard, but that took That took a long time. War down. Right to a lot of prayer. As they say, this is one of those problems that requires prayer and fasting. So you pray and she fasted. You're like, no food. It will put the rosary on its wrist. Thoughts on how to Find

1:26:02 A partner. Yeah. No, I think about this an awful lot because this is the number one topic in my science of happiness class at HBS that they want to know about. It's gotta be. It's gotta be. Oh, for sure. For sure, absolutely. Because you know, not only is it something that we all want, that everybody wants, it's something that's getting harder. Yeah, all the traditional scaffolding is gone. Unless you m perhaps you're part of, say, a Jewish community where Yeah. that type of Yenta like matchmaking is a very esteemed But even then the modern world is encroaching on that. And you know, if you look at the comparison between in the eighties when I was in my twenties or the nineties when you were in your twenties.

1:26:36 Sorry, I didn't mean to shock you with that, you know. Okay. Yeah, I know. It's much, much, much harder. I have the ring of Frodo, so I'm not planning on aging anymore from this point forward. Side note, you should look at photos of him now and twenty years ago. They're the same. The actor. Anyway. Yeah. Not me though. For those of you back to when I was in a Barcelona symphony, I had this hair It was like a great civilization. It's like the locks of Samson. That was unbelievable. And and so I you know then I start going bald, I'm getting more and more bald. My brother, my older brother, he's very judgmental about me. He's funny, he loves me, but he says You deserve it because of the life you've led.

1:27:07 It's just a lot of DHT, man. Anyway. 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, there's a ton of research on this, by the way, Timmy I mean, you've seen some of this research, for example, on car purchases where you know you give two groups, you know, there's in the treatment and control social science experiments, two groups. different car buying experiences where 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 six 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

1:27:58 on their 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. You're also exhausted more easily because of the decision fatigue. Uh yeah, I mean I can I'll have to take your word for it, but I mean that's that's certainly true. That's in the data in the day. Not outside of dating. 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 too. Great. I vote like this. You do too. Great. I'm this religion or I'm the I'm no religion. I grew up here. I went to college. I where did you go to college, et cetera. They're not looking for someone who doesn't speak their language who

1:28:44 They're looking for a sibling. And you know, and as my adult kids would say, that's not hot. Yeah. The truth is we're 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.

1:29:04 We need more complementarity and less compatibility. Back in the old days used to say opposites attract. Not true. But You need a baseline of compatibility, but on top of that, you need difference. Difference is hot. Difference is fun. Difference is an adventure. And you're just not gonna find it because nobody's gonna swipe on you.

1:29:22 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 old 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

1:29:41 Complimentarity. This introvert and this extrovert can fill in the gaps in each other in a in a kind of a divine and cosmic way. That's how I always kinda felt I felt like my wife was You know I don't believe In magical thinking on this. Magical thinking is a big problem.

1:29:56 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.

1:30:10 She makes me a better man. She knows when I'm going after the idol. She knows she can see it. Going after the Lore, she can see it. She's like mm. Right.

1:30:19 And that's thirty-two years of experience together, but it's also the deep complimentarity that came to because I I was born at a particular time and I accidentally Had this kind of experience. And that's what we need. That's number one. This is clear. The second thing is goals.

1:30:34 You know when I ask people, you know. You're gonna meet The person of your dreams or the good enough person or whatever. What do you want to have after five years? A good enough person. De Paris's God. The good enough wife.

1:30:51 Two passable relationships. Wife me up with someone good enough, man. Anyway, so Yeah. Because by the way, Step one records there aren't just kidding. I don't know, man. Complimentary. Yeah, maybe. It's like you've been in prison or I haven't. We complete each other. Maybe I'll skip Barcelona and do the prison circuit. All right. 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.

1:31:24 The right goal is what is called companionate love. You want to be best friends in five years. Five years to best friends. That's the goal. And if you write 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, Yeah, no, it's like if the magic feels like the magic's gone, obviously there's something wrong with our love. No

1:31:46 Best friends who were married, they're gonna have plenty of passion, but you can't live like that. Look, the the neurophysiological cascade of the experience of falling in love is unbelievably intense. It's fourth of July in your head. the bolus of testosterone and estrogen at the very beginning of the relationship, massive increases in neuropinephrine and dopamine that give you euphoria and concentration and focus on the other person. The deep dip in serotonin, your serotonin dips. Why? Because you want to ruminate on that person using the good old ventral lateral prefrontal cortex. That's the reason that falling in love is an awful lot like being clinically depressed. So you're both.

1:32:23 addicted to meth and depressed at the same time. That's what falling in love is like. And then you're gonna 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 want that for the rest of your life. Sounds like a lot. Well, you'll be institutionalized. Ha ha ha.

1:32:43 So let's let's pause there for a second. That was a lot. I wanna go I wanna go from falling in love as meth and depression. To Okay. The lightness of death. And we haven't even talked about meaning yet, man. Oh, we're gonna get there. We'll get there by the night. I'm keeping track. Yeah, I'm keeping track. Hour nine, I have it bookmarked.

1:33:06 Also I have Promise I made to listeners that I have not fulfilled, which is your personal examples for using money for experiences, time, whatever comes to mind. So we'll get to that, but before that Death meditation. Yeah. Could could you

1:33:21 Please. describe your death meditation and why you have a death meditation. Most people watching us are not afraid of death. Not pathologically afraid of death. Only about twenty percent of the population is pathologically afraid of death. And I bet you that it's Less than one percent of Tim Ferriss followers.

1:33:38 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 a f deaf fear. The deaf fear isn't Physical death. And this is a problem.

1:33:51 For some people it's irrelevance, for some people it's being forgotten. For a lot of your listeners, it's failure. Just straight on failure because they're strivers. They're achievers. Everybody has a deaf fear, and what is it? It's an ego threat's a threat to who you see as yourself.

1:34:08 If Tim Ferris's Tim Ferrisness. Is threatened. That will provoke a panic in you. Because that's the ultimate death of who you see yourself.

1:34:17 Yeah. 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 parts of Malaysia and the Theravada and Sri Lanka in particular. So the Theravada Buddhist monasteries, often you'll go in and you'll see. Photos of cadavers in different states of decomposition.

1:34:46 Super, super macabra. 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.

1:35:02 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.

1:35:12 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.

1:35:24 That's an important insight from Theravada Buddhism. That's a meditation called Maranasati. The Maranasati death meditation. Now when I read that I thought it 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'm retired and when I die and what's gonna happen and call the lawyer and all that. I I wanna be free from all of that stuff by understanding that

1:35:47 life and death or in a very real way. An illusion. Particularly because I believe in eternal life. But I have a deaf fear. Oh yeah.

1:35:56 You know what I'm afraid of? You know my death fear? Who's gonna take care of your cats? No, I don't know. Ha ha ha.

1:36:04 That's good, man. Who's gonna take care of my dog Choo Cho. It's losing my mind. Mm. On the way there. Yeah,'cause you know you know what Arthur Brooks says? Gray Matter.

1:36:16 Look, I'm not the smartest guy in the world. I'm not 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 C B ideas. It was very revealing to me when I contemplated the fact that I Did you say A C B? Yeah, it's my Arthur Charles Press. Okay, it took me a second. I just can't remember the alphabet. Little dyslexic.

1:36:48 And my mother was showing signs of of Dementia in her early fifties. And she was Quite demented by the time she was my age. And it runs in families.

1:36:58 It's genetic. I know it doesn't mean I'm gonna get the bullet. It doesn't mean I'm not being morbid about it. I'm not being fatalistic about it. Probably the odds are in my favor, but I'm just I'm just terrified of that. And when I recognized that I I realized I need a maranasati meditation on that. And that's what I contemplate.

1:37:15 I'll take two minutes and I'll think. My memory's failing and I don't know why. And then I imagine going to the neurologist, the neurologist saying, Well I think you need to come into my office. And then I imagine myself telling my kids

1:37:29 The future's gonna 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.

1:37:41 Yeah. And then I imagine myself not remembering what I don't remember. Then I imagine Being a beloved. Son of God.

1:37:51 No memory at all. Yeah. It's heavy, right? Seems like that ending point is important. It's the most important.

1:37:59 Because you end on the truth. So if you're not religious, you just end up Depressed AF? I mean are you just No Shit out of luck? No. Okay. Because at the end of the day in the Maranasati meditation, you recognize the illusion of the

1:38:18 tragedy that was your death in the first place. Mm-hmm. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. New life will emerge. Will it be you? Will it be somebody else? Do you care?

1:38:30 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.

1:38:40 So we like to think. Ha. They're afraid of failure because they've never failed. They've never failed. I mean, you and I have struggled and you know, we're Older and you know

1:38:50 I failed a lot. But my students are deeply afraid of failure. I mean I basically got kicked out of college when I was nineteen. It turns out you're not supposed to drop all your required classes and take nothing but Indonesian dance and North Indian classical drumming. Turns out that's not the secret to academic success. Kids, you know, make a note of it. Um So I failed, right? But a lot of my students haven't. And so I asked them to do the Maranasati meditation on their own academic and professional failure. Or one.

1:39:18 Two minutes. I think I'm falling behind academically and the people around me are getting better grades. Two. I just got put on academic probation. This was my dream to come to this school and I'm not succeeding. Three.

1:39:32 The job market's looking bad. Compared to other people. I can't believe it. Four. I think I need to move home for a while. Five.

1:39:41 My parents feel sorry for me. That's when they cry. Yeah. Right. Because all you want is for mom to be proud of you.

1:39:51 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.

1:40:02 And they do and they get over it. And they can master it. That's the Maranasati death meditation on the self objectification of the success addict. So what 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. 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'cause I'm afraid of it, but I'm not deathly afraid of it.

1:40:32 The truth of the matter is The great thing about being forty six as opposed to twenty six for you, the great thing about being fifty nine instead of twenty nine for me. Is that Bad stuff is gonna happen and it's gonna be okay. Bad stuff's just gonna happen, right? I mean the truth is that we realise you and I both realize.

1:40:48 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 we're gonna survive. You've survived a lot, and it's actually gonna be okay. I don't wanna fail, you know, I've always got You know, we have that book coming out. I have a big book coming out. a few weeks from when we're taping this episode.

1:41:07 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 marnasati meditations on the 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.

1:41:26 Because I wanna remember. I need to remember. And if I don't, I'm gonna be walking kind of on eggshells. And just sort of wondering. And having that kind of minor sense of dread. I don't wanna 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 important for me not to live that way because I won't be fully alive now. I'll be living prospectively in a future, and that future is dominated by fear. And then I'm really not washing the dishes.

1:41:49 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

1:41:58 Not yet, really yet. Yeah. This is I think is a good tie in. to meaning and I'm gonna get there with a self indulgent reference back to Marcus Aurelius. For people who've not read Meditations, read meditations, it was never intended for publication. True. These are effectively the pocket musings of someone deeply conflicted, but also

1:42:21 Incredibly impressive during war campaigns and otherwise, but lots of thoughts on death. And also for those interested, there's a It's considered a stoic practice. It exists in a lot of different varieties, but memento mori, there are these meditations, premeditatio malorum. Right. Uh which is the Greek Murna Sati, for all intents and purposes, right? Or Roman. Right. Exactly. And uh

1:42:45 Well he also thought very deeply on on meaning. Let's come to meaning. So we identified Two I guess of the legs on the Stool. On the stool. Right. Meaning.

1:42:55 How should we think about me? Mm-hmm. Meaning's the hard one. I mean, look, I mean enjoyment's 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. They don't know exactly what it is. And a lot of people s They deeply s suspect. That it doesn't exist.

1:43:16 That it doesn't actually exist. You look at a lot of twentieth century and nineteenth 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 precedes 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.

1:43:45 Right. And then nineteenth and twentieth 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. Toby La Rossa. Good luck, kid. Yeah, good luck. Go go make it. And if it's no good, it's on you, man.

1:44:10 And by the way. Search for it. 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 in this way. And then of course there's Nietzsche, old Pal Friedrich.

1:44:27 You know, a lot of young men love Nietzsche because, by the way, it's unbelievably beautiful prose. Gorgeous writer, including in English. You don't have to go like learn German to read it, but you know The Gay Science, which is his one of his most famous texts where he said God is dead. And we 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.

1:44:52 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 kinda wonder if maybe Nate and Sarcher were right. So you go in search of it.

1:45:05 And it turns out I want to go find the meaning of life is too big a question. You'll never find it by you know sitting at the Mouth of a Guru's Cave. Or with the ayahuasca shaman saying, I just want to find meaning in life. You need to boil it down to really sub questions, which are all about coherence.

1:45:23 Why do things happen the way they do? I need to believe Something about why things happen the way they do. It doesn't have to be religious. It can be completely secular. It might even be nihilistic.

1:45:32 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? What's the end point of my life? And it last is significance. Which is Why does it matter that I'm alive? No, I have a test. to see if somebody has a a meaning crisis in their life. It's really just two questions.

1:45:50 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 wanna take the test?

1:46:02 Sure, why not? It's go time. Question number one. This is punish me for all the ayahuasca I've done. Go for it. I didn't say this for something wrong with it. I just said this. It's necessary but not sufficient. Damn. Why are you alive? Do you have an answer to the question of why you're alive?

1:46:36 I mean I have a very clinical answer for it. Tell me. Well, I mean there's the physical answer, but but metaphysically, why are you alive? Which can be two 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

1:46:51 belief. Mm-hmm. And while you're alive. I've a strong driver for taking advantage of the fact that I am alive, but I don't have A

1:47:01 story of a creator or something along those lines. I think or or a pr a strong purpose. You know, ca 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. So the why of your life. Our our mutual friend Simon Sinek talks about this. You know, start with why and the why of your life can be because of a creation. Or it can be because I exist to, you know, lift other people up and bring them together in bonds of happiness and love, which by the way is the way of my life. Mm-hmm.

1:47:29 So that's number one. Mm-hmm. If it's there, but it's in Kuwait. It's not quite clear enough. Find out the answer to that and write it down.

1:47:39 And then perfect it over a six month period. Yeah, I would say that for me, I mean, it's looking at and experiencing things in unorthodox ways so that I can teach. And why do you want to teach? Mostly to alleviate suffering. In other words, you wanna lighten the load for other people. Yeah. And so in other words, you want to serve your sisters and brothers.

1:47:56 Is that fair? Sure. Okay. That's a great why. That's a great one. 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? I don't have a ready answer. It's a hard one.

1:48:10 It's a hard one, which a lot of people don't. 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.

1:48:24 I'm willing to do it. I've come to the conclusion that I'm actually willing to do it. And here's how I I learned this from my son. I learned this 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 things are true, by the way. I really would.

1:48:41 But it's too pat here's how I learned this from my son. I have three kids. twenty five, twenty three, and twenty. And my middle son is named Carlos. Carlos is He's a kinetic boy. He's a fan of yours.

1:48:54 You know, he's probably watching us right now, going, Oh, dad's gonna talk about me right now. 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.

1:49:15 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 have I asked my kids to do a business plan when they're in high school. Because they're entrepreneurs and I'm V C. I'm an investor. I deserve a business plan. And when they're not when they weren't original, I'd send them back for range. Thank you, Dad.

1:49:36 Yeah. It's really fun to be my son, you can imagine. So um Carlos is business plan for his life. What

1:49:47 By the time it went through several rounds of revisions was appropriately unorthodox. He was gonna 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. It was a eight thousand acre working wheat farm. He lived in the farmer's basement for the first year.

1:50:10 He picked rocks out of the soil, he started at the bottom, made minimum wage. Fixed fences. Cut down dead trees, ran a combine by himself sixteen 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.

1:50:28 Away from his family, away from everybody. Why? Because he was looking for the answers to the questions. They were in coate. They were like, why am I live? I don't know. Maybe I'll find it in the cab of a combine. Maybe I'll find it when I dig rocks out of the soil. Maybe I'll find it by doing something hard with my hands. Then he joined the military. He was nineteen years old, he joined the Marine Corps.

1:50:46 And Ha. 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 battalions and then the in dock for the scout sniper platoon. Which is a branch of the special forces and the

1:50:59 And the Marines. Today is Corporal Carlos Brooks. Marines three five scout sniper platan. He's got answers. Now, that's a scary job for me and his mom. He goes on field trips, right?

1:51:10 Field trips. And Thank God nothing's happened to him. He's getting out of the military in in December of this year. But he's got answers. What types of answers? I mean, I don't want you to answer. Yeah. Tell you his answers.

1:51:21 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.

1:51:34 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.

1:51:46 But everybody watching us has gotta earn it. Everybody who's watching this 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.

1:52:02 They can give you a Shadows on the cave wall to get back to the old platonic metaphor. You need to live. And to try things. And to go through a process of discernment.

1:52:13 And the way to do that is to do hard things. І с то чанж є все. And to say to yourself I will not stop until I have answers to these questions to my own satisfaction. So hearing you describe

1:52:26 Carlos's experience. Hi, Carlos. And uh congratulations on the trajectory. It's like yeah, my dad embarrassed me but it was not easy. I have some friends who are formerly Marine Force Recon. That is not a recon guys. That is not an easy path. No, it isn't. None of that is easy. I think I was over

1:52:49 processing the for what would you be willing to die tomorrow. I I think it was the tomorrow piece that I fixated on. So family. Right. You wouldn't ask your family. You just 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 you would you be willing to basically off yourself tomorrow. Is there a truth?

1:53:12 Because this is really where it gets Super intense. Yeah, that's where it gets into. 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. Mm. By the way, for those of you outside the United States is willing to die for our allies too. You know? Yeah.

1:53:30 Dying for an idea, that's super heavy. I mean that's like Pure grade meaning. Because people are gonna say, Are you kidding me? Are you nuts?

1:53:40 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. Cancel culture, trait. psychopath. I thought you were talking to me for a second. No, no, I was like, how do we get there? Arthur Brooks got really abusive on my pocket. No, no, no, Tim, I love you. I was high negative moments. 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

1:54:20 question is or are you willing to sacrifice Well 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. I think also thinking about what you're willing to die for, or 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

1:54:40 could be manipulated to make me do things. That I might not. currently be morally aligned. Totally totally so I think the allegiance I get it. It needs to be a very or

1:54:53 For me. I wanna be aware of their things. Like for instance, faith has been manipulated by politicians. So has patriotism. Of course. My goodness. Right. I mean a lot of people listening say you die for the United States of America, you're 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.

1:55:14 And it's not good enough to just be sort of Raw, rah, raw, and taking it at face value. It takes serious discernment. So we have The Why were you born? Or for what

1:55:27 Are you alive? What would you be willing to die for? Yeah. Got any more? Those are the ones. I mean what those do is that they really kind of wrap up coherence

1:55:37 purpose and significance into two kind of handy dandy questions. And and the point is really this. I mean it's 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 gonna 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 a better sense of who I am? Have I gone backwards a little bit? Have 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 it's it's 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. Well, these questions that I ask myself like that. you know, about the reverse bucket list and the meaning questions and am I pursuing my pleasures

1:56:21 socially and and making memory with my prefrontal cortex. I also have, by the way, a a spreadsheet of Nineteen micronutrients that feed into my macronutrients and I grade myself on tenths of one percent on a one to ten scale weighted with respect to what I m my best estimate of my well being And when I'm going backwards on those things, I set a strategic plan for my year. So I'm, you know

1:56:43 I know. I'm getting crazier by the minute, right? I'm into it. I encourage it. I wanna pour gasoline on the fire. Let's do it, man. So I I So we already talked about death meditation. We talked about Your experience in Mexico. And In Build a Life You Want, obviously we're not gonna go into all the

1:57:00 micronutrients of each of the legs on the stool per se, but I'm curious Whether it's meaningful. Or one of the others. Maybe meaning.

1:57:10 But doesn't have to be. Could you give some examples of some of those I don't want to 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'em up in as variegated way as you want. You can make twenty thousand of them.

1:57:28 But really there's four that we should be thinking about. So there's four fundamental micronutrients and I make it more varied than that. I've got nineteen because Because they're really about love and relationships. That's really what it's all about. And the big four are

1:57:41 Your search for the divine, or your spiritual journey, or your philosophical, you know, 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 we're like, Yeah, I wouldn't have chosen that. Friendship.

1:58:01 You know, and friendship, when I'm talking about that, I talk a lot about loneliness because especially strivers, hardworking 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. Mm-hmm. 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 two.

1:58:25 And last but not least, it's loving everybody as 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, when I'm talking about family, I'm talking about different branches of family that I'm trying to make sure I'm working on. When I'm talking about, you know, my marriage is critically important. It 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 because that's the apex of two of those columns, both family and friendship.

1:58:58 My best friend and also the the adopted member of my family is 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 subcategories, but they all go into those silos of faith, family, friends, and work. Work that serves, work that's meaningful, right, earn 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, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And I start, you know, 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 n my birthday and my off birthday, by the way. Your off birthday. Yeah, yeah, my six month birthday. November twenty first.

1:59:33 Got it. My birthday's May twenty first, so November twenty first, I think. Yeah, I've got Thanksgiving week. And so it gives me a you know a chance to actually think about these things in 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 nineteen ninety nine. I've got it going forward. And the system has gotten better along the way and changed. What are 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 to the system. Was the recognition that I knew a lot about happiness but wasn't happy. Because

2:00:04 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 this all this advice about friendships and about having a good marriage and all that like

2:00:21 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 f hope I feel happy today. It was pathetic. It was pathetic. It was like it was like a a 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's like, You have a PhD, right?

2:00:43 What are you using it for? Exactly. I mean you're like your English has come a long way. Killing me, sweetheart, you kill me. But you know, I'm I'm writing academic journal articles that fourteen people read so I can get promotion and tenure. It was ridiculous. So how did you I 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.

2:01:06 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 specific. I mean extremely specific. As specific as the stuff in the, you know The four hour body specifically.

2:01:28 And I was writing stuff down. I held whole notebooks of protocols and things that I was trying. I was trying things on myself based on science and when it worked, I would keep it and I would write it down. I would practice it. Turns out that wasn't good enough. You know,'cause that was too hacky. You know, that wasn't really habits. To ingrain a habit, you gotta do one more step. Which is that you gotta teach it.

2:01:47 Mm-hmm. The reason I'm a happiness professor is because I wanna lash myself to the mast and I wanna be completely committed. Because look, I mean, if I'm doing something that's clearly at odds with what I'm teaching. I'm gonna hear about it. I'm gonna hear about it from my students, I'm gonna hear about it from my family, I'm gonna hear about it good lord, I'm gonna hear about it on on social media.

2:02:05 Not that I'm paying that much attention to that because I I wanna 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 gotta take those three steps.

2:02:21 You gotta do the work and understand it's it's thinking 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 adept. Think more, feel less. Think more, feel less. I would not Expect that to be the framing. Okay, what does that mean by that? Well he first wakes up in the morning and the first two hours of his meditation he gets up at three or three thirty in the morning. The first thing that he does after a little bit on his exercise bike and hanging out with his cat

2:02:47 First thing that he does is two hours of analytical meditation, which Catholics call 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 and 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 Dalai Lama using scripture in this sense or what Tibetan Buddha scripture so he's contemplating something for you know, words of the Buddha or or Shanti Deva or any of the the ancient

2:03:25 Tactical questions. Is he choosing it or is it Flip open the book and Which would not denigrate it. I'm just wondering. Yeah. I mean I know he's I mean he's is extraordinary. I mean the the holy scriptures for Tibetan Buddhists are vast. There's a library in Dharamsala that's just stack after stack after stack after stack. It's not a Bible. It's not like a collection of books in a little library called the Bible. It's just it's enormous. And and the the monks are going through the scriptures again and again and again. So he has a 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. He's got the equivalent of

2:04:00 These ten exercises when you go to the gym, skip the bench press. Like he's got his kinda. His greatest test. 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.

2:04:34 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 ways. And so it's application.

2:04:53 And change of habits and a commitment to that. And the best way to cement in those ideas is 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 or doing new experiments. It's learning how we can all be happiness teachers. How can Tim Ferris be a happiness teacher? Well, you already are by working on it. Well, you're working on it and there's no reason that you have to be happy to be a happiness teacher.

2:05:19 It's not like playing basketball. Thank God. Yeah, totally. I mean, on the contrary, the people who have struggles are the best now. I'm not as miserable as some pretending to be. I mean the point is that you're but I do have struggles. I mean I do have challenges. So do I. You're self aware. You're self aware and part of your commitment'cause 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 know

2:05:44 But the truth of the matter is we're all uh We all are. And sharing that is actually part of the way that you're practicing these protocols. You're not hacking anything. You're actually trying to build these habits. And then the teaching role, you're a teacher, by the way, because this is a teaching podcast. We're not shooting the breeze and saying what you see on TV and uh I went to a new restaurant. No. 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.

2:06:08 Lear more. Think more. Don't feel? Learn. Second. Turn this into habits and practice this as habits. Third

2:06:16 share with others and commit. to other people through your teaching. That's the secret to happiness. Commit. Commit in what sense? Just sort of energetically Taking the magnifys off of yourself.

2:06:30 No, and committing to actually these practices in your own life. Right. You know, and this can often be I've been doing this thing wrong. And I don't wanna keep doing this thing wrong. And me telling you is making yourself accountable to another person. Like all twelve step programs work this way, right? Honestly, twelve step programs AA some of the most important and impressive decentralized organizations I've ever seen. Yeah. And I've never participated, but I'm so impressed. But they require accountability. Yeah. Because basically what twelve step programs do is knowledge of what's wrong with me, committing to new habits, and sharing it with others. That's why AA works is because of those three steps as well. They do sneak some God in there.

2:07:07 Well, yeah, the higher power for sure. The higher power. Which is helpful. Yeah. Yeah. I'm not gonna deny it. One facet. that I really appreciate of your work and your writing is that you s you straddle the very old and the very new. And uh you mentioned Aquinas earlier. Again, everybody. Read a few pages at least on Wikipedia about Aquinas.

2:07:28 And then Aristotle. Yeah. And one of you were Popular columns. is about Aristotle's Ten Secrets to Happiness. I wonder if any

2:07:38 I do have them in front of me. Yeah, I was just gonna say making weekly copy, you know. Well let me I how about this? How about I read through And then I would love for you to pick out one or two perhaps that have been particularly impactful for you or for your readers. Right. Here we go. Name your fears and face them.

2:07:58 Two, know your appetites and control them. Three. Be neither a cheapskate nor a spendthrift. Four. Give as generously as you can. Five, focus more on the transcendent, disregard the trivial. Six, true strength is a controlled temper. Seven, never lie, especially to yourself.

2:08:17 Eight, stop struggling for your fair share. Nine, 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,'cause there's a there's a recency bias here with since we've been talking, I think Barely

2:08:35 Extensively about that. But Yeah. Those are here we go. So Start with number seven.

2:08:42 All right. Never lie. Mm-hmm. Be impeccable with your word. Especially with you.

2:08:47 Mm-hmm. Now I know a lot of people. Who are pretty honest. Oh. Frankly, the reason my wife fell in love with me Isn't not my you know, my

2:08:56 Stunning good luck and you know my my lousy accent. And the gray hair at the time. Great hair. No, great hair. Great hair, I know. I mean that there was spectacular if I do say so myself. But the um The reason she told me later is because I was the first man that never lied to her. Mm.

2:09:13 I never lied. Now that's part of my upbringing and you know that's has to do with your family, et cetera. That was a really super important value in my home. You had to be honest, the only really you know, dramatic and scary consequences with my parents or from lying.

2:09:28 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 of the way that I was raised, but I was the first guy she'd ever met that didn't lie. She's like

2:09:39 What's up with this dude? He doesn't lie. And and I've procured you know when my one my oldest son Both of my sons, twenty five and twenty three, they're both married. And when my twenty five year old twenty five and twenty three, both married. They're both married. Yeah. Wow, 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 learn a lot from him. He's literally one of the

2:10:00 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.

2:10:13 That I should never do because I'm in love with this girl. That I should never do. He asked, you know, good questions like that. I thought about it. I said it's actually pretty easy. Never lie to her ever, ever, ever, ever, ever until you go to the grave. Never lie to her. And ask her never to lie to you, no matter what the consequences.

2:10:30 That's the secret. to the pure oxygen of a true companionate love. The mystical love of 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 they're like, Yeah, yeah, good luck with that. I mean 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. Yeah. No. That doesn't mean you have to volunteer every single thing that you're thinking because you're not insane.

2:10:58 But when when there's a direct question There's a direct answer. Okay, that's fine. But that's You say in Spanish, that's primer curso.

2:11:07 That's that that's you know, that's table stakes. Table stakes, man. You wanna really be in the game? Mm-hmm. Never lie to yourself. And we're doing it all the time.

2:11:16 We're doing it 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, s think how great our hair looks or Whatever. But so that we can actually see The good and the bad.

2:11:29 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 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.

2:11:48 It's like yeah, I'm 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. Yeah. So I have a a question about that. And also makes me think about some of the scientists I respect most, like Richard Feynman. Yeah.

2:12:03 Who uh says you must not fool yourself and you're the the easiest person to fool. Well, for sure. And a lot of people say'cause 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 gonna be polished, but we lie to ourselves in the sense that we have a story

2:12:24 about ourselves or the world that we know isn't quite true. But we repeat it 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

2:12:45 not accurate for whatever reason. So how do you catch How do you catch yourself? Could you give examples hypothetical or otherwise? Of 'Cause I think most people would say I don't want to lie to myself. Right. But

2:12:58 When it comes down to actually catching those self lies, that self deception in the butterfly net. So you can do something with them. How do you do that? Well You commit yourself to being uncomfortable to be to for one thing. Mm-hmm. So 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.

2:13:22 Mm-hmm. You should have friends that can do that for you. This is one of the ways that you can do it. Your friends really have to be able to tell you the tr being a good friend usually means telling you 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 straightforward with that right now. See, this is I'm making I'm doing a fake Atlanta accent'cause my my best friend is a guy named Frank and he lives in Atlanta and he and we're committed to telling each other the truth. And boy does he ever give it to me both barrels. Mm-hmm. When he thinks I'm being full of it, buddy.

2:13:54 I don't know. I know you're saying that thing, but let's drill down on that a little bit, shall we? Talk to him every week. And that's super important. Every week. Sure. And I talk to you'cause he's a real friend and that takes work. Right. No, I understand. But is that like you have a a standing? 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.

2:14:17 I take the call. Otherwise you you know, you can't take every single call that comes in. There are certain colleagues. Certain family members. And right.

2:14:26 And have you guys explicitly made some type of mutual commitment. And the reason I ask is there are environments also that I suppose I could join, but I haven't up to this point. For instance, YPO forums, these small groups Those are quite good. Well they are very good. And I know people who have benefited from it tremendously. And They're as I understand it, based on my friend's story, is that there are many hot seat moments where you get your beliefs

2:14:52 And stories and approaches and strategies interrogated. Well and you are committed in a YPO forum to have your BS called out. Yeah. So if you're saying something they know is not true about you, there are 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.

2:15:10 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 Lonier and lonelier as they get older.

2:15:21 Yeah. Women tend to get less and less lonely. But men tend to get lonelier and lonelier. So about sixty percent of six year old men say their best friend is their wife. About thirty percent of their wives say their best friend is their husband. Oh, this is sad story of unrequited friendship. 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 gonna 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 and all kinds of excuses and pretty soon they're lonely.

2:16:00 So we can And we might come back to this. Put the l I mean the loneliness is a big Big topic. Sure. And the bonding and and this these types of communal relationships. But as far as cultivating a relationship with a friend so you have that unvarnished Feedback.

2:16:18 And interrogation. Mm-hmm. Might you have any suggestion for 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.

2:16:32 And a lot of people do. I mean they we move around a lot, we're really ambitious and our friends wind up being our deal friends. And are real friends, you know, and people will say, I mean, I'll I'll do an exercise where I'll say, Tell me the ten people that are closest to you. Write them down real quick. I can do it easily. Yeah, yeah. I literally have it in a spreadsheet. That's great. And then put real or deal after each one of those names based on the fact that and for you it's all real, right? Because you have close friends, right? Yeah, I do. A lot of them high percentage from a long time ago. And you travel with them and you do stuff with them, right? I put a lot of energy and time into ensuring that we spend time together, which gets harder as people have wives and kids and everything. Children and yeah, 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 For direct family life. But you know, and the data say that in ten years you'll most likely be married. Yeah and have kids. And it's gonna be harder, but you you'll have to put in a commitment.

2:17:27 Uh uh. Yeah. Folks, let's work on this, shall we? Write in the comments your best. Yeah, you know, there's the organic way. Yeah, organic way, 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. Yeah.

2:17:49 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 into real friends. You make a deal. You know, it's an arrangement. Where part of the friendship is actually gonna be to go deeper. To hold each other's secrets.

2:18:06 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, too, right? Because it's one thing to say, I want you to be completely honest with me and say, Yeah, you're a jerk. It's like not that honest. Or, you know, don't express it in that particular way. You have to have enough psychological safety where the rules of the road are clear that honesty is Always wield this as a gift and never as a weapon.

2:18:33 Mm-hmm. That's also true in marriages, by the way, Tim. The best marriages are completely honest, but the honesty is a gift and never a weapon. Yeah. You know, one of the uh mantras at Facebook before it was meta was face uh Facebook is a gift. Maybe feedback is a gift, feedback is a gift, feedback is a gift. It was repeated over and over again, it's put all over the place to cultivate a culture of feedback. Yeah.

2:18:57 And I've 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

2:19:11 Best. mirrors available. Very brief side note just to give people a Scooby snack. Mirrors. Reflections.

2:19:20 What are your thoughts? Get rid of them. All of them to tell me more. So I work with a guy. He's fantastic. He actually is a he's really, really helpful for me. I've recommended him to you because he does incredible body work. Physical therapy is fantastic. And uh you know, he was a Fitness model.

2:19:35 There's Almost nothing you can do that's unhealthier, worse for your mental health than being 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 it. He was unhappy. He never ate what he wanted for ten years.

2:19:54 And the truth of the matter is, as we all know, you look great if your body fat is under ten percent. But 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 thirty five percent of people who lose a lot of weight.

2:20:11 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.

2:20:21 You don't know how to stop? So he had the presence of mind. He's an adept. He's a spiritual adept. Hm. Got rid of all of his mirrors and showered in the dark for a year. He got rid of all of the mirrors in his house. The showering in the dark, I need to get scraps.

2:20:38 I don't have that problem. But yeah, I get it. You got washboard abs and you're looking at it and you're going Yeah, man. Yeah, yeah. But and and Bye bye. Because it became the water cascade up your twelfth back like rocks in a waterfall. I know. And and the truth of the matter is that that extra I hate when that happens. Extreme But yes, I get it. 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.

2:21:08 And not the relationship that you're projecting to others in real life. It's really weird, you know, you talk to Dudes are trying to get to, you know, six percent body fat and get super jacked in the whole thing. And they have this they imagine that women are gonna be just super attracted to them and the only people who even say anything are dudes. Oh, it's always dudes. It's like it's like I have friends with single guys and they've incredible beard game. Yeah. Or like mustache game. Yeah. nonstop. It's just dudes coming up and and complimenting them. I mean I'm sure there are women who like it too, but it's mostly guys. Yeah for sure. And you know, no woman has ever said Nice car.

2:21:43 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. They're just a mirror. The other guys are saying the thing that you think, but it's profoundly unsatisfying, right? If you're actually in the heterosexual dating market to have other guys saying How'd you get those apps? Who cares? Now to provide a counterexample also, and this is just something I've seen on dating apps that she could talk about. But I have yet to meet a single guy I like and respect. Who's like

2:22:10 I love super intense lip fillers and All of this, you know, fr Frank and Botox situation. I've not met a single one. I know have you ever Say

2:22:22 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 I was like I have a cute little dress and everybody noticed it, but you didn't.

2:22:35 For the record, I'm into cute little dresses. I don't want people to mix up voices here. The show notes just went 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 want to say pursuing, but analyzing, thinking deeply about happiness.

2:23:00 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 signs of happiness. It's Two parts. Part one

2:23:13 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's as deep a dive as I've ever actually written publicly about neuroscience. It was actually vetted by my colleague at Harvard, Josh Green, who's one of the most distinguished neuroscientists in the world, just to make sure, because I'm a social scientist, so I gotta 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 th realized and and by the way, this was inst this project was instigated to do a bread and butter

2:23:47 Owner's 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 for the Dalai Lama, how does does uh you just bump into around the subway? Yeah, his holiness Dalai Lama and her holiness Oprah Winfrey, right? Yes, exactly. Um Yeah, I mean it's you know when Oprah Winfrey calls, it's like right, but um Yeah, I'm guessing she didn't get your phone number on Zoom info. Like how how did this happen? Yeah, uh like, yeah, and I'm Batman. No, really. Who is this? No. Um Hi, it's Oprah calling again. Your company has been verified by Dun and Bradstreet. Oh, wait a minute.

2:24:25 Anyway. We got connected because she is a regular reader of My Column in the Atlantic. And she was during the coronavirus epidemic when, you know, people were trying to use the time to learn new things, et cetera. And she was actually A serio of the column. And she's a serious reader. I mean 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 in February twenty twenty two, she got it literally in the first week. She read it and that's when she called and she said, Would you come on my podcast, her Super Soul, which is this book podcast, phenomenal.

2:24:59 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 in the They're usually not exactly like they appear in public, right?

2:25:13 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

2:25:22 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.

2:25:47 And so her suggestion was Let's take that class that you teach at Harvard. And that you're writing about it in the Atlantic. Let's present that to a big audience. You want a big audience? Yeah. Yes. Yes, I yes, Oprah. Can I have a big audience, please?

2:26:02 And she says, Let's write a book together and we'll present this book together. And so we did and 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. In 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 who fell off the turnip truck in front of Oprah's tea house. You never know. And it was super fun. It was super interesting. Oh my goodness. Oh my goodness. So and she's a the best case study in American success and working hard and believing in others and

2:26:37 Paying it forward. possible. And then we we went and we started working on our respective parts of the book and passing them 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 and write the book. And she was writing her parts and and then we we got to this impasse at one point, not 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.

2:27:08 She's 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.

2:27:19 And ca ching the whole thing fell into place.'Cause that's what happens as you know. In 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 and and make it all coherent. Then we finished it up and it was this amazing collaborative experience, a joy. Actually it was the most fun. It was the most positive experience I've ever had writing a book because

2:27:41 I got to write it with her and she's enriched my life. What a wild, incredible experience. It's nuts. You know that I told you my death Fear is is losing my mind. It's actually possible that I am and that's just a hallucination. Ha ha ha.

2:27:59 Yeah. So then we had tea, and then we had crumpets, and we had bridge in her tea house and all that. I know I want this 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. In this book, are there areas because I know in my book I can point to specific chapters where I'm 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.

2:28:33 Is there something that comes to mind? I don't know yet because it hasn't come out. Oh I know, but I'm just saying. What would 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 in living a full life. See th one of the biggest mistakes that people make, as we talked about before, is that people say I wanna 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,

2:29:09 Happiness is not the goal and unhappiness is not the enemy. Getting happier is the goal. You know, Oprah coined this term in the book. She said, We got to stop talking about happiness because that's actually not the goal. The goal is happierness. That's really what we're going for is happierness. And to get happierness, 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.

2:29:43 My son need a boot camp. You and I need substantial problems with mood, to put it. Euphemistically. We need No look. We need sadness. A young.

2:29:55 Freud's greatest student, Carl Jung. So much greater in so many ways. So 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.

2:30:12 And what you can bear. And only then will you find the answers to the why am I alive and for what would I be willing to die questions. You don't find the meaning questions The answers that we At the beach in Ibetha. Uh uh uh

2:30:24 You find it. In the depths. When somebody you love dies. When you're afraid of what your future holds. Вені філхос.

2:30:34 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 actually become more fully alive through the transcendent passage of both happierness and And the unhappiness that is a A part of what it means to be a a real person. It is a

2:30:55 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 nineteen sixty eight Nineteen sixty nine, Woodstock. You know, when the hippies said, If it feels good, do it I remember my dad heard that for the first time and he's like, That's the end of America. He was kinda right. Anyway, if we Had a woodstock today, it might be

2:31:19 If it feels bad, make it stop. If I'm suffering, treat it. If there's pain, it's evidence that I'm defective, that I'm broken. Something's gotta change. That's wrong. That's wrong thinking. Look. The Tim Ferris I'm talking to right now had to suffer.

2:31:38 I mean these messages that you're giving are dramatically different than what you were writing fifteen and twenty years ago. They're dramatically different doesn't mean it was wrong fifteen and twenty 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, um Andrew Solomon who wrote The Noonday Demon. Have you read that book? No. It's the best book I've ever read. about anxiety and depression. You know, Andrew Sullivan's 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 noonday demon. It's like the black dog. Yeah. It's like the Winston Churchill's Black Dog for sure. The noonday demon in in the end.

2:32:18 It's it's an incredible book. It's a total page turner for anybody who's actually had anything close to his own. I know. It's phenomenal though. It's so interesting. It's it's but it's just beautiful writing. But in the end he said In the sum 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.

2:32:42 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.

2:32:52 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 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 Ferris's suffering. And if they want to lift up the world.

2:33:12 They have to suffer too. Food for thought. Yeah. Food for thought may not be candy bars. Might be high fiber.

2:33:19 But it is important food for thought. It's a philosophical cliff bar. And uh sorry, people love those. I don't mean to not to cast dispersions. My friend's a cliff You know, I but I've 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 me be after I'd gone through very gifted therapist.

2:33:50 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. And I was like

2:34:05 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.

2:34:19 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 therapists do.

2:34:31 The worst therapist is like, Yeah, I'll I'll help you take care of that. We'll make that problem go away. No no no no. No no no. I wanna learn. I wanna grow.

2:34:41 And I wanna surf. Surf part has been a very critical to the tether of meaning. That has given the suffering Meaning.

2:34:53 Exactly. Meaning Made it. I don't want to say irrelevant. Like The greater the potency of the meaning, the less the suffering.

2:35:03 Incapacitates you. Is it possible you're not afraid to suffer more? Yeah. Because you said, you know, pleasure and and you know, as a defence, et cetera, et cetera, but I don't

2:35:15 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 weird. Yeah, yeah. There is that. I remember reading about one of your you know, a sexual experience in the you know, in the four hour body where he's like To get more testosterone and then I ate a single Brazil nut. And you're you know, Yeah, it was lots of Brazil nuts, cholesterol loading. I did lots of crazy stuff in the Fryer Body. But it was it was somebody who knew how to have fun. Oh yeah. Yeah, that chapter. How old were you? What, thirty-four or something? Yeah, early thirties. Yeah. Uh yeah. So anyway, no, I respect the fact that you like to have fun and you like to feel good. I get that. But I don't sense

2:35:58 Fear from you. Yeah, I I would also say what I have done is I've built in To my life. A lot of premeditated deliberate discomfort.

2:36:11 To inoculate. myself against the fear of unpredictable discomfort. And it's not a cure all, but I have found that It's exposure therapy. It's exposure therapy also just like wading into some of the deep waters psychologically. and psychoemotionally that I would be prone to fearing

2:36:30 Learning how to take swimming lessons. In some of those deep waters, I would say is also an approach. So It resembles exposure therapy, but There's also a skill development piece on top of that.

2:36:44 Which is combined with the exposure, I would say. Which I know is a bit nebulous at my own. No, no, 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, yeah, how do I 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 gonna happen this day. I don't know.

2:37:06 I learned this from a a pediatric oncologist, by the way. Somebody who has, you know, bad cancer diagnoses to kids. He says he tells the parents. To every day start the day saying I don't know. What's gonna happen in my future.

2:37:20 But I do know I am alive this day, and I am deeply grateful for everything that happens. For good and for bad. It takes cojones, man. It's it's hard. Because you're like

2:37:34 You catch your breath a little bit, right? Because what you're what Mother Nature wants you to do is to look for the good feelings and to avoid the bad feelings, because that's the evolutionary imperative. To avoid the disgust and the anger and the sadness and the grief and the loneliness and to avoid those things. Not to embrace those things till you know, just say It's inevitable. Bring it on.

2:37:51 But if you can actually do that to steal 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 I don't know what's gonna happen today.

2:38:05 But I do wanna know I'm alive right now, I'm not gonna waste this day. In the way 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 uh gift I received quite a while ago, but a actually Steel my face like Flint.

2:38:28 Neil Donald. Walsh. I may be getting that off. Someone can fact check, but The quote is the struggle ends. When the gratitude begins. Yeah. And

2:38:39 It's such good advice. Yeah. Yeah. And you don't have to be grateful only for The obviously good things. No, no, no, no. On the contrary, and that's really That's what separates you know, first course gratitude from PhD level stuff.

2:38:54 And by the way, here's a practical way to do that. To be grateful for bad things. A very practical way to do it. I asked my students to make a A failure journal. And so what that is is every time bad thing happens, something bad happens frequently. And you're twenty eight years old, you know, somebody 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.

2:39:23 You take out your failure journal and you write in your failure journal what happened. And then you leave two lines open behind it and you put reminders on your phone. Ding, one month from now you gotta go back and six months from now. One month from now, you gotta go back and say what you learned from that thing that you would forget otherwise. And six months from now, you gotta 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 and my boss basically told me that I'm a B player at best. This happens constantly.

2:39:57 That bums me out. And I just want to put it behind me. I want to go hang out with my friends and have a couple of beers and complain about my boss and move on. Right. No, no, no, no, no. Write it on your failure journal. One month from now, remember it and go back. Huh. You know what I learned from that? Is I thought I was gonna be super bummed about that for a long time and it bothered me for like a week.

2:40:18 That's interesting. Now that's homeostasis. There's a lot of brain science 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

2:40:32 I have a better job now. I think that the job I have now is a better fit. And every single thing that happens that you put into your failure journal, 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 in it sooner or later when something really bad happens to you, you'll be like, Oh good, I get to put it 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.

2:41:02 Mm-hmm. We shall see. That's great. We shall see. That's that's terrible. We shall see. We shall see that famous caramel. So true. Yeah. Well, Arthur, this has been so much fun. Now the Title of the book is

2:41:17 Build the life you want. The art and science of getting happier. And by the time this comes out people will be able to certainly find it. Yeah. And purchase it. Yeah. Where all fine books are sold is. And also if people like Oprah and I will read it to you. You mean I'm guessing in audiobook form, nothing. Look. No, we'll come to your house.

2:41:39 And with the dulcet tones of Oprah's voice will y lull you to sleep. No. I mean we read it raised a lot of money. Yeah, I know. Sorry, Oprah, I kinda committed us to his thing. No, they um but we know we read the book for Penguin Random House and I'm really super happy with the way it's a 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 where all fine books are sold. I just love saying that. Yeah.

2:42:14 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'd like to add before we Yeah, I mean, this is really a teaching experience, both for me and Oprah and 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.

2:42:37 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 is a teaching mission. So there's a lot of stuff that I'm doing, ancillary to books and columns, et cetera. have classes like video classes and things that people can watch. And my goal in doing those things, this on all on my website, ArthurBorks dot 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 uh

2:43:11 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.

2:43:25 Yeah. There's a lot of people who are broken in this world and who are sad and who are suffering. And if we had people who were warriors for greater happiness for themselves through others through real knowledge. А на комитмент то чан, а тлі конвіст. But this is

2:43:40 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 in the world. It does help people. So I wanted to

2:43:58 Also just simply thank you. Or Putting out what you put out and spending time on the things you spend time on. Likewise, Tim. I've Only met you today.

2:44:06 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 enriched my life a lot. Thank you for that. Thanks, man. I really appreciate it. This has really sparked a lot in me. I've taken copious notes, so I have a number of things that I'll be focusing on. Getting small, brothers K, muscular philosophy. 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 at Tim.blog slash podcast.

2:44:40 And until next time, be just a bit kinder than is necessary. to others and to yourself. And 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?

2:45:00 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. It's kinda like my diary of cool things. It often includes articles I'm reading, books I'm reading. albums perhaps, gadgets, gizmos, all sorts of tech tricks and so on that get sent to me by my friends, including a lot of podcasts. guests and these strange esoteric things end up in my field and then I test them and then I share them with you. So if that sounds fun again it's very short, a little tiny bite of goodness before you head off for the weekend, something to think about. If you'd like to try it out Just go to Tim.blog slash Friday. Type that into your browser. Tim.blog slash.

2:45:53 Friday, drop in your email and you'll get the very next one. Thanks for listening. This episode is brought to you by AG1, the daily foundational nutritional supplement that supports whole body health. I view AG1 as comprehensive nutritional insurance and that is nothing new. I actually recommended AG1 in my 2010 bestseller more than a decade ago, the four hour body, and I did not get paid to do so.

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