Arthur Brooks — The Pillars of Happiness | Prof G Conversations

money can buy you happiness and now it tops out but money is a very strong forward-looking indicator of your happiness it's true so it's a complicated relationship now at low levels money absolutely lowers the sources of unhappiness above those low levels here's the point if you just buy crap you're not going to get happier it really depends what you do with your money if you want to keep buying [Music] happiness Arthur where does this podcast find you I am in my office at the Harvard Business School I'm about to go and give a lecture on happiness which is the class I teach at HPS nice so let's start there you're known as an expert on happiness and strategies for building a better life how would you describe the overall state of happiness in the US of happiness for a stock where do you think it's trading right now it's trading way way below where it was in 1990 and it would have fallen off the the out of the out of the Industrial Average it um it's in crisis is is the bottom line we've actually seen kind of two things happen to happiness as we measure it in the United States over the past 30 years it's been in kind of a a secular Decline and then there have been three crises that have pushed it down as well the secular decline has to do with the fact that that happiness rises in a population or for individuals when people have more of a sense of their faith or philosophy of life whether it's secular or religious when people have a better relationship with their families when they have close friendships real friends not deal friends and and last but not least when they have a good relationship with their work which means earning their success and serving other people and all those four things have been in Decline since about 1990 and that's been a secular decline of Happiness then then there's these three incredible storms that have pushed happiness down in 2008 2009 a major decrease in happiness started uh particularly among young adults and I thought at the time probably you and I would have seen it the same way as as B School guys that that it was the financial crisis and people not being able to find jobs you know com young people coming out of school it wasn't that was when everybody got social media on their devices that turns out to have been the catalytic event especially with young adults and especially young women to inflect happiness down the second was political polarization 2014 2015 2016 where we were being encouraged by my malignant narcissistic politicians that we should hate people who disagree with us which is the worst for the people who are the haters even worse than the Hades and then last but not least was Corona which was you know hey everybody go home and and you know work from by zoom and and don't talk to your friends and good luck to you have a nice day which quadrupled the rates of of of depressive symptoms which have not declined ever since I mean isn't it if you try to distill it down to one thing isn't it a lack of contact the fact that we're mammals and we're supposed to be bumping off one another and whether it's facing our screen or just not going into work we just don't have as much contact with one another yeah yeah yeah for sure it's eye contact and touch so there's a neuropeptide in the brain called oxytocin most people know what it is it's a it functions as a hormone and it's it was evolved so that we would bond to each other so that we would have kin group so we wouldn't you know walk the frozen tundra and die alone and so it's intensely pleasurable and you only get it from eye contact and touch and so anything that actually pulls us apart so we're not having in-person eye contact and and and even worse that we're not having physical touch is going to give us a deficit of that and that's going to lead to all the problems we see today and if we start to begin to think about Solutions well let's let's back up is it especially Stark if you start to to segment it by gender religious income levels age where is it the problem worst and least least bad so it's worst among young adults is what we find so that the two groups that actually have we've seen the greatest increases in self harm you know suicidality are are women between the ages of 15 and 25 and Men our age which is pretty interesting isn't it it's so it's guys who are between about the ages of 50 and 65 and women between the ages of 15 and mid 20s are where you actually see the highest rates of suicidality the highest increases in suicidality and and there are different reasons for that number one is you find that young women are they tend to actually suffer the most from the ravages of how social media has driven them apart and become a substitute for their inperson relationships when you talk about men it has a lot more to do with the fact that you know these are deaths of Despair that we see so you see more sosis of the liver more men outrage getting addicted to opiates uh more men outage actually killing themselves and the rates of growth are double digit in suicidality in that group so I'll put forward a thesis and I I know you agree with the first but I'm curious to explore the latter and that is when we look at when we look at girls um they have uh in you know boys bully physically and verbally girls bully relationally we've put these nuclear weapons in their hands they're sexualized at a young age they are given unreasonable expectations that they place on themselves in terms of their appearance and their success and and then they have social media picking up on algorithms that they're interested in self harm and sending them pictures of Nu's bills and razors I I see a Blu line path or it's fairly clear to me what's going on there the people our age I'll put forward a thesis I'm not as clear but I read this article about the path to Suicide for men our age and it goes something like this or one of the broadest paths a man loses his job or has some sort of Mental Health crisis is no longer viewed as a provider by a spouse spouse divorces and 70% of divorces people our age are initiated by the woman loses his income his primary relationship and access to his kids all at the same time and also the Mental Health Community is I think it's like 90% now of of the therapists or women don't have a strong friend Network don't have therapists who can relate to the unique problems that a man faces and makes not a mental health or it doesn't have a mental health breakdown but makes a rational decision to kill himself your thoughts yeah that's a that's that's very adroit Scott I mean the most self harm follows or most suicides uh follow more or less the same structure which is they start with a mood disorder so a clinical mood disorder which is to say you're above the bar on clinical depression or general and or generalized anxiety which are cousins mental in in terms of mental health now to be sure those are dials not switches part of the problem with the mental health profession is you go to a a therapist and they say you have depression well guess what Scott we all have depression the question is how high is the dial turned and if it goes above a particular threshold such that is clinically designated then you actually need treatment anyway so people who are above that clinical designation then like most there's about a 95% undertreatment rate for these mood disorders and most guys our AG self treat and how do they self treat with drugs and alcohol they self treat with drugs and alcohol plus other really delerious things for your brain like pornography which is horrible for the brain all these things that will actually in increase the the the neurotransmitter activity that's involved with addiction Etc it basically is brain capture gambling whatever it happens to be and then on top of that so you've got a mental illness problem you have self a very messy and and bad self- treatment issue and then you have a setback and the setback is what you know something happens you lose your job your wife leaves you uh you you know something happens to one of your kids and and you just you can't handle the setback because life is full of setbacks man I mean life is full of crises life is full of problems and what do you need to deal with your problems you need people around you who love you you need a support structure you need a religion you need a a spouse you need kids you need a family when all that stuff is gone and by the way the only coping me mechanism that you have is you know internet porn and a 12pack of beer that's not going to solve the problem on the contrary it's going to make it worse so it's that's I just basically summarized what you said in slightly different terms one of the reasons I wanted to speak to you is that religion plays a big role in your life yeah and it plays it plays none in mine and I was just curious and it makes a lot of sense to me that you need those shock absorbers friendships or a belief that you're playing a part in something bigger than yourself which I think religion a sense of community provides all of those things can you walk us through the benefits of Faith specifically if you're explaining those benefits to those of us who are atheists yeah for sure so um I'm a Catholic most important thing in my life and that the metaphysics of the rightness of Catholicism or I don't know man I don't know it's above my I'm not a priest it's above my I'm not a theologian but as a social scientist the important thing about about um faith is actually the Transcendence that it brings which you can also get many other ways here's the point nature mother nature who does not care if we're happy Mother Nature really only cares about two things which is procreation and survival that's really Mother Nature's imperatives for you happy that's your business and the mother nature gives you uh a real imperative to focus on yourself all the time that's called the Psycho Drama that's what most you know in in the in the social science literature that I i' swim around in the Psycho Drama is my job and my lunch and my commute and my students and my money and my sandwich and and it's just it's like watching the same episode of Better Call Saul every single day by force and it's incredibly tedious and terrible that Psycho Drama will drive you almost literally mad and the only way to get beyond the Psycho Drama is to transcend it you need to look at something bigger than yourself there's a lot of ways to do it you know you and I both know Ryan holiday who's a good dude and what he's done is he's actually introduced millions of people to stoicism which what it does is it gives you a sense of transcendence you you play a smaller piece it becomes instead of the M self looking in the mirror is the I self where I can actually observe the world and take some sense of awe in it some people like to walk in nature without devices I love to analyze the fugues of Johan Sebastian Bach some people engage in a Vasa a meditation practice some people like me go to mass the point is man you got to zoom out because if you don't zoom out you will be zoomed in and you'll be miserable all the time that's why you need a sense of life's philosophy and something that will put you in proper perspective which is little you need to as they used to say as Steve Martin used to say you got to get small man you got to get small do you think I'm trying to move to Solutions here and I I I like the way you framed it I think of the more time I spend just focusing on my own and looking at myself constantly the more susceptible I become to a shock and for me having kids was really became a bit of a shock absorber CU for the first time I was thinking about other things more than myself and so quite frankly I just had less time to be hard on myself or think about my shortcomings because I was focused on something other than me do you think that for example what outside of religion like national service nonprofit volunteer work what else can serve that role or fill that hole like religion does yeah relationships are key so you find that the happiest people they engage in faith or philosophy family life real friendship and work that serves other people those are the big four faith family friends and work are the big four what do they all have in common they're about other people they're about love of the Divine or love of your family or love of your friends or love for everybody is expressed through your work and and you know that's probably I mean you and I have we were engaged in public education that's what we do you know we have our our our University students but then we have the general public that we're dedicated to educating and and your work makes you miserable when you're thinking about your own career and it makes you intensely happy when you realize you're doing something something good for a lot of other people when people say you know what's the best way to get rid of loneliness the answer is go find a lonely person and give them relief that's the single best way for you to be less lonely if you want to be less depressed and you feel isolated go do something for somebody because you actually will go from me to i s it's all about other people talk about the role that Fitness plays in happiness or exercise yeah so that's an interesting one because that's really important I know to you and really really important to me as well I'm a I'm a I've been a gym at for 30 years um and and for the longest time I noticed that it was is tremendously important for my well-being my well-being in general but well-being is you know subjective well-being Which social scientists have been talking about for a long time is is too blunt a concept because it mixes two things that are actually occurring largely in different hemispheres of the brain positive and negative affect positive and negative mood which are separable because they're actually induced by activity in different parts of the lyic system of the brain you need need negative emotions fear anger sadness and disgust to protect you from threats and give you aversive Sensations all emotions are are data all they are are information so you know what's going on and you know how to react to it your positive emotions they give you approach motives it's like I Joy interest these are the things that make me want to go do something now people talk about good and bad feelings they're completely wrong there's no such thing as good and bad feelings there's positive and negative emotions largely emanating from different hemispheres of the brain now the reason that that's really important is because when we mix them together and call it subjective well-being you're kind of mixing things that don't mix very well what we find is once we separate those things that we have different stimuli that will either raise your levels of happiness Visa your positive effect or manage your levels of negative effect your unhappiness fitness and health are very good techniques for managing your unhappiness they're not very good for raising your happiness and that's a super important thing I mean I have these tests that I give people about whether they have really high or low levels of positive and negative AFF you know I've been you know it's like you and I are just meeting but I've been I know who you are I've been seeing you for years and years and years and you have a classic mad scientist profile of an entrepreneur very high positive effect and very high negative effect you're a high affect guy super engaged super high energy but that means that you got to do two things you got to make sure that you keep that high positive affect but you got to make manage that high negative effect or you'll go you you'll make everybody around you nuts I mean you you'll drive your spouse off you'll make your employees insane if you don't do that and the single best way to manage negative affect not to get rid of it because you'll die you'll get chased down by a tiger and get killed you want to manage it to manageable levels is physical exercise now another way to do it of course is meditation and so I recommend to all of my students who are mad scientists like Scott Galloway and and Arthur Brooks by the way is to get up before Dawn no coffee no stimulants because you'll all you be doing is pouring stimulants on top of unusually high cortisol levels that are spiking at that point go beat yourself up I mean beat yourself up for 60 minutes in the gym man I'm talking lifting because there's no substitute for Lifting for the for the hormonal impacts that it have and then work on your spirit whether that's your meditation or your analyzing Bach or doing your wisdom reading or going to church and then 2 hours after you get up have your coffee and then you'll have a maximum period of dopamine you'll be managing your negative effect and you'll have a much better day we'll be right back so you talked about caffeine and I'll use this as a segue into I try to be as I try to be as transparent as possible with with my listeners and I'm finally in a position of Economic Security where I'm not too worried about being canceled at least economically I love alcohol um and I love substances I drink I used to drink four or five times a week now recognizing my liver just can't handle that I drink two to three times a week and I think it's been a net positive in my life and I also uh take Edibles probably two or three times a week I love THC and I I used a lot of it when I was young I gave it up when I was working all the time but I I it maybe this is the symptom of of of an abuser but I've talked myself into believing it it's actually enhanced my happiness has have you thought about a construct through which to look at substances in terms of because I don't just buy I find it's very reductive to go Nancy Reagan and say just say no and they're all bad all the time I just don't buy that have you thought about a lens through which to look at substances in terms of managing your own happiness it's a cost benefit question is what it comes down to and so the whole idea of being very Arch on this is not appropriate and and the cost benefit differs for different people I don't use any substances because I have a lot of addiction in my family and you know recogniz nothing no alcohol not a glass of wine no nothing nothing I have I I drank very heavily through my 20s and 30s I was a musician all the way through my 20s I was a professional classical musician until I was in my early 30s and then all the way through graduate school getting my PhD and becoming a social scientist I kind of kept being a musician with respect to my habits and by the time I was 38 years old I saw the writing on the wall I was going to go the direction of the rest of my family and so I needed to stop that doesn't mean Scott Galloway needs to stop you need to know yourself remember the Oracle at Deli know thyself it's very important and and if you don't then you'll be following somebody else's pattern and somebody who has ATT tendency toward alcohol abuse can ruin their life or somebody who actually could get some positive benefit for their relationships and just just entertainment will be missing that so one of the things that I talk about is family tendency is that is the you know there's a whole series of very interesting behavioral experiments so you can find for example that if it's easy for you to stop with two drinks you probably don't need to if it's hard for you to stop at two drinks you should probably not be drinking and that has everything to do with just your general proclivities toward um toward the the addiction that comes s the dopamine Pathways the other thing it's really worth pointing out Scott is that people can enjoy substances a lot more the longer that they wait to use them and the reason is because of the pathways that we lay down in the brain when your brain is highly plastic and you're drinking at 14 you're much likely to be an alcohol abuser when you're 28 and 38 then if you actually don't start until your brain is less plastic and so the key thing for parents listening to us don't waste your time trying to tell your kids never never never don't don't ever try pot don't ever try alcohol you'll die if you do just delay as long as you possibly can and they're far more likely the longer you delay to develop healthy patterns and you know life affirming patterns as opposed to having to you know quit and go through a whole lot of crises later on in life we both teach it a business school and I I've you know the notion that money can't buy you happiness I found that that's something we tell ourselves to feel more comfortable with a society where in fact and again this is a thesis that money can buy you happiness and now it tops out but my understanding is it tops out at a pretty high level and billionaires are no happier than millionaires but they're no less happy either at least the research I've seen and that Economic Security is just and again it's it it's not a good thing I'm not saying it's the way it should be but it is but money is a very strong forward-looking indicator of your happiness what are your thoughts yeah it's true so it's a complicated relationship now at low levels money absolutely lowers the sources of unhappiness unambiguously that you can eliminate the sources of everywhere absolutely I mean if you if you're not meeting your caloric needs if you're not getting adequate health care if you don't know if you're going to be able to pay your rent it's horrible for your un not your happiness your unhappiness that will raise your stress levels you'll have chronic you know a cortisol drip right into your brain you won't be able to function properly or even or even focus so that's at low levels but that's really low levels on top of that the biggest problem that people make I mean I remember when I was poor I mean I was living in New York City uh I was a French horn player I didn't go to the dentist for six years from when I was 19 until I was 25 years old because I didn't have the money and then when I was 25 I went to the dentist cuz I finally had the money I joined an orchestra in Barcelona and I was making a living and I went to the and I felt a lot better cuz I had like 12 cavities I needed to get filled and I mistake of course I I will I will admit that during that time I never went a day without cigarettes so I guess probably it was you know priorities at that point but you know at 25 when I got I went to the dentist I figured out that I felt a lot better and I concluded money really does BU happiness no it was eliminating my my avoidable sources of unhappiness above those low levels here's the point if you just buy crap you're not going to get happier it really depends what you do with your money if you want to keep buying happiness so there's five things you can do with your money and anybody can do with their money no matter how much money that they have they can buy stuff they can buy time they can buy experiences they can give it away and they can save it those are the five things that people can do the one thing at relatively high levels that money doesn't give you very much happiness at all much more than kind of a fleeting Thrill Is buying stuff what will bring you authentic happiness is experiences with people that you love time not to Fritter away on social media but to spend with people that you love giving it away to causes that you think are highly meritorious and saving your money it turns out that saving your money has a lot of huge benefits for people it makes them feel secure about their future it makes them feel good about you know what they're going to leave to their kids or causes and all kinds of stuff so I mean there's a limit on that too obviously but those it depends on how you spend it you can buy happiness for sure so you're coaching two people about to get married and they come to you and they say Professor you understand happiness talk about happiness through the frame of a relationship what are the best practices when you approach a relationship that not only increase the likelihood of your own happiness but of your partners the the key thing is number one what what is the goal of the marriage and the goal is not permanent passion it's what we call in my business companion at love which as my kids remind me does not sound hot but it's the best thing ever it's best friendship that's the goal the reason that people will date and be just madly in love and then find after two years that they hate each other is because they actually never got to Friendship when the the neurochemical tide receded there was nothing left on the beach and and that meant there was no friendship left here's the point so when you when you the the falling in love has a has a the process of falling in love with somebody has a very uh important chemical footprint neurochemical footprint it starts off with the sex hormones of estrogen and testosterone where where that's where attraction starts that's that's ignition the second part is where we have that the sense of euphoria and anticipation in falling in love and those are two neurochemicals that you know dopamine which gives you anticipation of a reward which is why the the signature of falling in love looks an awful lot like the early stages of of a methamphetamine addiction because of the because of the dopamine the noradrenaline or norepinephrine in your system gives you the sense of euphoria when you're talking to that particular person the third step is infatuation and infatuation is where you're really neurally imprinting on another person because you can't stop ruminating on the person so rumination involves a drop in serotonin levels that's the reason that people who are clinically depressed they will have they'll they'll take drugs to enhance their serotonin levels or the re-uptake of the serotonin in their brain is because they want to ruminate less the problem is that when you're falling in love with somebody you need to ruminate on the person that's the same thing that creative people do when they're doing a business plan is they can't stop thinking about it you know when you and I are doing a thing for work like I'm writing a book or we're putting together a company all the stuff that we do and you can't sleep and the reason is because you're ruminating in the same way that you would be depressively ruminating or when you're in love infat infatuated with the other person then last but not least is when the oxytocin really bonds you to the other person permanently that's where you want to wind up in your relationship and so you need to cultivate true deep friendship with the other person by about 5 years in if you have that best friendship that actually comes from the high oxytocin levels it does it's I mean you you got all the other stuff has to go away or you'll lose your mind and hate your life I mean if you're basically completely infatuated with the other person you'll be so stressed out you won't even be able to work you need that to stop you need your serotonin levels to come back but you need your oxytocin levels to stay high the goal of that is you don't need to go get you know like a PhD in Neuroscience what you need to work on is making sure that that you are cultivating a deep a real authentic profound even metaphysical friendship with the other person and as a parent if you want to raise kids that are just generally more likely to be happy are there practices or behaviors or values you can instill or try to instill as a parent that increase the likelihood they will be I don't want to say likelihood that they will be happy because there's so many things that go into that but give them a better maybe a better toolkit yeah it's all about modeling is it doesn't matter what you say there's nothing in parenting that matters what you say you know I've done this work on what what what's what's the biggest likelihood that your kids will grow up and practice your religion you know if you're Jewish and it's important to you and you want your kids to grow up and be Jewish Christian Muslim whatever it happens to be and it turns out that the number one predictor of your kids growing up and practicing your religion is seeing their father practice the religion it does not matter it's a lot less the mother weirdly and the reason for this is that the physically most impos closing human being um in a child's life is us is often in conventional families at least the father and when I was a kid I wondered if my dad could lift the house I mean because he was huge I mean he seemed huge to me and and my dad I mean he bent the knee to no man but he was on his knees on Sunday and as a little dude that had a huge impact on me it's like something's bigger than Dad so so my point is not the religious point my point is the modeling Point put your own oxygen mask first you have to have good happiness hygiene in your life so your kids can witness it that's the most important thing and that means that you're serious about your your sense of Life philosophy that you're serious about your family relationships that their your kids see you with a relationship with your own parents for example that you have real friendships really deep friendships that you're engaged in with your work that you're passionate about it because you're serving other people and creating authentic value with your life and value in the lives of other people and that's the best thing you can possibly do for raising Happy Kids frankly I mean I can talk all day long about you know conflict in families you know 11% of people our age are not speaking to at least one of their adult kids which is insanity and I know the reason why that happens we can we can talk about how to make sure that doesn't happen but if you want him to actually be happier you got to model happiness and so it sounds like I mean you started off as a musician you ended up at HPS it's a pretty unusual path what advice would you give to your younger self around trying to get to a position of Happiness um more quickly um I would have I would have cultivated my my my family relationships and friendships more um I mean Scott I was a CEO for a long time too so there's a lot between the French horn and HBS I was actually a professor for a while doing really conventional I was doing genetic algorithm stuff early AI stuff and applying it to public policy then I was a CEO of a big think tank in Washington DC for 11 years of a place called The American Enterprise Institute and and I was doing that job and it was a big job man I had to raise $50 million a year I was on the road all the time giving 175 speeches a year and I was all about work I was working 80 hours a week for a long time I I spent the 14th hour at the office instead of the first hour with my kids many times and those little ingrates they got their revenge on me man they grew up you know and and now I look back and I'm a grandfather now so you know um and I'm not screwing it up anymore I talk to all my adult kids and uh every day now on FaceTime whether they want it or not they're going to be hearing from dad because and I'm not going to screw it up with my grandkids but that's the greatest thing I mean there were days when um I neglected my marriage I my parents died and I didn't know them very well um they died young I mean they died young there's you know there's you know issues with their health but I they were interesting people my mother was an artist my father was a brilliant mathematician I was thought God gosh what interesting people but I was doing my thing and I was running around and so the ambition got in the way of my life in a way and I I like the results but I it was a it was a a sacrifice that was too great actually for my own happiness so if I'm giving myself success advice in World Libra Awards is different than giving myself happiness advice and and at this point I took the choice to be special too many times over being happy and I regret some of that I think um I feel the same way but I wonder if you're being a little bit hard on yourself cuz every piece of stimulus and incentive out there as a man is to be a baller professionally and everything else will fall into place and so I think the incentives are you know every every piece of external stimuli is telling you that you have to be successful and if you aren't you're going to regret that more than anything but I never forgave my father for not being around I still have struggles with it I mean it sounds like you've you have a good relationship with your adult children now what about I like this idea of repair what about the dad who understandably in his 20s and 30s wasn't there as much for his spouse and his kids because he was just really focused on economic security I I I'm grateful I didn't have kids when I was young because I did nothing but work that was my identity I was worried I was always worried about being broke yeah and and kids wouldn't have changed that I just wouldn't have been around yeah but any thoughts on SC because you know I had my kids and in my in my 30s and and uh and and I was working all the time because I was just look here's the thing with my students which is to say me and you too we're intensely afraid of failure that's our death fear so everybody has a death fear only 20% of humans are actually morbidly afraid of physically dying but we all have a death fear which is the end of our sense of self if you define yourself in terms of your work you're going to be intensely afraid of failing Prof professionally and that's what I am and that's what you are and that's what we're going to take to the Grave unless we manage it unless we're we're open and we're we we articulate that particular fear to ourselves and the people who love us the most to say look I I know I'm strong I know I'm successful I've been very fortunate that things have really gone my way professionally in four different careers fantastic and so people say like you must be the happiest guy in the planet it's like no I'm I got I got something chasing me you don't understand you know when you're Chas something chasing you you can run really fast and and and it can look like you're running a race but you're basically kind of you have this this ghost actually and and so the point is that when I've talked to you know my my own family and my adult kids about this you know I have a Frank conversation about it I say look that was not a good impetus and so the result is that that's been my own process of knowing myself and the reason that I teach happiness right now is because Scott I want it you know it's not because I'm you know I don't have natural athletic abilities in in in you know the sport of Happiness it's because I don't quite frankly and so studying it as a scholar has been really the secret to giving my own self a better life and you know the truth is I measure it carefully with my students and my own happiness is up 60% in the past 5 years since I've dedicated myself to it and that's what I'm going to do for the rest of my life so last question I appreciate you've been very generous with your time what have you given any thought to the Notions of masculinity and femininity and gender roles embracing them modulating them redefining them the role that plays in happiness yeah I I I have to a certain extent because you find that there are are are pretty pretty substantial gender differences that you see in the literature um and I'll give you an example of that I've looked for the longest time asking who's happier men or women and forever the answer was women you know you find that married women are happier than married men that single women are happier than single men that widowed women are way happier than widowed men right I told that one to my wife and she's like huh you know but this weird thing happen Scott over the past 15 years which is that the the Gap has closed and the Gap has not closed because men have gotten happier it's because women have gone down to the unhappiness level of men and the reason for that is because probably I mean we can speculate on this but this is not something that Scholars are likely to touch for the obvious reasons of self-preservation that that gender roles have been blurred to the point that women are working and in the in the same much the same way with many of the same unhealthy work patterns that men are and it's not good for happiness under the circumstances so one of the things that I recommend is that you know men understand what their proclivities are and embrace them when appropriate and fight against them as is appropriate as well you know the truth is that you will just I mean you left your devices as a man you will think because Mother Nature is telling you that nobody's going to love you unless you bring in a freaking gazelle every day bring in the gazelle and if you drag in the gazelle then your spouse will continue to love you and your kids will continue to respect you yet for another day and then you go get another gazelle but that's not right that's a that's an evolutionary anachronism that is not correct they love you and they want more of you how many times do I talk to men our age and they have the same argument with their wife over and over and over again where their wife is like are you on the road again and it's like yeah you complain about me not being here but you sure love what all of this work brings you and I noticed that you use this money and the wife is like I'm spending the money because I got nothing else to do I would take less money if I had more of you and that argument goes on and on and on and on and it's what I recommend of men in particular who are stuck in this Vortex of incentives from Mother Nature is to remember that you can take that animal path or you can you can choose a Divine path and if you're an atheist that's the truly human prefrontal cortex path where you're not a prisoner of your lyic system your prefrontal cortex the sea Suite of your brain can make the decision to go against those proclivities and you can be happier one quick last question uh we both are around a large cohort of what I'll call highly productive overachieving young men and women if you could tell them this is the behavior I need you to do less of or more of what would those one or two things be there's really one big one which actually comes from the Harvard study of adult development and that's the longest running longitudinal study on happiness and health in the United States that started with guys at Harvard in the late 1930s and then it matched it up with a cohort of guys who didn't go to college and then it wrapped in their spouses and then it wrapped in their kids so it's very demographically representative at this point and it's 85 years in it looks at as people who are happy and healthy when they're older what did they do differently than the ones who are not happy and healthy when they got older and it comes down to one thing Scott happiness is love that's the one thing big thing greatest opening line of any academic study it's Happiness Is Love full stop full stop that's from George Valiant who ran it for for 30 years that the guy who took it over is Bob waldinger at the Harvard Medical School wonderful guy really worth having on the show as a matter of fact he wrote The Good Life which was a big bestseller they keep getting best sellers out of these data but it comes down to this unipolar idea which is that when you're doing something instead of love you're doing it wrong I mean when you're basically when you're systematically substituting for love in your life it's a problem when you're complimenting the love in your life when you're doing something that's a compliment to your love relationships you're doing it right but if when I what I tell my students is that if you're lonely you're doing it wrong that if you're making sacrifices with respect to your marriage and and and having children informing your family you're doing it wrong and you don't have to do it that way and you're going to regret it because you're not going to have as happy have as much love in your life as you want and need and deserve Arthur 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 happiness and social entrepreneurship he's also a columnist at the Atlantic where he writes a popular weekly how to build a life column and is the author of 13 books including the 2023 number one New York Times bestseller build the life you want the Art and Science of getting happier with co-author Oprah Winfrey he joins us from his office at Harvard uh Professor Brooks love this stuff and I you just have such a facility you just break it down so well such that it resonates with people and I think you're in the seat you should be in I think it's good for good for you good for your students good for the planet we really appreciate your time thank you Scott and thank you for what you're doing you've enriched my life a lot um not only given me a lot of great entertainment but a lot of incredible ideas you've used your platform as a public intellectual for public good and um I've been the beneficiary of that so thank you [Music]

Channel: The Prof G Show – Scott Galloway

Views: 25,250

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Id: Hf5DOpNjW44

Length: 38min 11sec (2291 seconds)

Published: Sat Mar 09 2024