Build the Life You Want | Harvard Professor Arthur C. Brooks

[Music] uh good evening it's great to see you joining us you've come to the right place especially if you're in the UK being battered by rain and wind I can't think of a better way to uh spend the next hour than learning about happiness or as the book that has inspired uh this event is called build the life you want the Art and Science of getting happy er uh it's the most accessible book of its kind that I've had the privilege to read I've learned so much uh and I'm really quite looking forward to putting all the advice into action I know that you will be too having uh listened to this and read it reading it hopefully yourself so I am delighted to welcome one of its two authors Arthur Brooks is a professor of the practice of public and nonprofit leadership at the har Harvard Kennedy School also professor of management practice at Harvard Business School where he teaches courses on leadership and happiness he's a columnist as I'm sure many of you will know at the Atlantic uh he writes the popular how to build a life column and he's the author of a mere 13 books including the number one uh New York Times bestseller from strength to strength finding success happiness and deep purpose in the second half of life this book is written uh with none other than Oprah Winfrey who you may have heard of um sadly she's not with us but we have Arthur I'm delighted to say so Arthur thank you so much um for joining thank you Hannah great to be with you and great to be with all of our viewers and listeners so you begin in the book saying a lot of people ask you uh given what you do you must be Mr Happy you must be happy all the time you must have always you know be this happy personification of happiness and that's not right is it well happy people don't study happiness we we we study the things that we want generally speaking and and the truth is it was always kind of a mystery to me I mean I come from gloomy stock I'm of British extraction so what can I tell you of course our family snuck at of laner in 1630 but that notwithstanding it's still I mean it is stiff upper lip territory in my family and so the result is that we you know it's it comes hard for some people now I've come to understand as a scientist that about 50% of your mood balance is genetic and so there's no joke about that but one way or the other it didn't come naturally and I wanted to study it so I could see whether or not I could get better at it and it took quite a long time for me to convince myself that these were actionable ideas but but boy oh boy what I actually was finally on the scent the happiness research the Neuroscience the social psychology to change my habits and change my life I really did and my life has never been the same what is it exactly that you're studying I suppose as happiness is a very difficult term to Define yeah know the tendency that people have to define happiness as a feeling is one of the big problems in happiness you know one of the it's funny we all want to be happier but it's elusive to so many people everybody would like to be happy happier than they are and if it were something that was quite easy to do we'd be selling it we'd be there would be internet sites dedicated to it or you could download it or the government would be giving it to us in public programs but the truth is it's quite mysterious and part of that has to do with the fact that we don't even know what it is and if you define something incorrectly you're unlikely to be able to pursue it appropriately and that's exactly the case most people think that happiness is a feeling and it isn't feelings are evidence of Happiness kind of like the smell of your dinner is evidence of dinner so if you get the two things mixed up you're going to be pretty disappointed you're going to be waiting for your feelings to change you're going to be hoping that you feel differently tomorrow if your spouse yells at you or you don't sleep well you're not going to be happy and that's no way to live well you know good news that's simply evidence of your happiness happiness is a lot more specific more relevant more scientific and more and and and something with which we can actually understand and change our habits specifically happiness is a combination of enjoyment satis isfaction and meaning and one of the things that Oprah and I write about in the book is what each one of those things mean and how we can pursue those things more appropriately while managing our emotional balance before we come to then tell us uh why then Oprah like how you came together why you're collaborating together on this project well Oprah actually um approached me so my I had a book that came out in 2022 called uh you know called from strength to strength about how people can get happier over the course of their lives even as they're aging and and and she is a regular reader of my column and and read that book and then called me up and I I didn't know her before um you know she called up and said hello this is opra Winfrey and I said well really well this is Batman I didn't believe it you know quite frankly but but it really was Oprah Winfrey and she suggested that we do a little bit of we did her podcast together and you know did a couple of videos and I thought well she thought wouldn't it be fun if we actually collaborated to get the science of happiness in front of millions of people by writing a book together and and a really fun fun fruitful friendship and partnership was born that was more than a year ago and the book just came out in September in London and New York and I love she says at the very end that that's born out of her desire to share this with everybody that the most important thing that you can do is to go out and share this knowledge right that's exactly right and one of the things that I teach my students you know given the fact I teach the science of happiness at the Harvard Business School as I say if you want to be happier you need to do three things you need to understand what happiness really is in other words do the work to understand the science use the science to change your habits make a commitment with discipline to changing the way that you live you know going on and doing all the things that you used to do is not going to get it done and last but not least you need to teach these ideas to other people you need to become a happiness teacher here's the thing you asked me at the very beginning you know am I happy is that why I study happiness no I want to be happier which is why I study and teach happiness that's the ultimate trick to learning something better better you want to understand math better well learn it and then teach it and then you'll never forget it and that's one of the things that Oprah and I are trying to do in this work is to create a whole generation of Happiness efficient AOS and happiness teachers and why does she call it happier one of the the big misconceptions I talked about a minute ago is that happiness is a feeling another big misconception is that happiness is a destination that we can actually become cosmically happy in some way I'm no theological expert but I I do know that on this side of Heaven that's not possible and there are good reasons why that's not possible we have emotions that are positive and negative for good evolutionary reasons we have many negative emotions like sad and disgust and anger and fear and we need those things to stay alive as a matter of fact and they're very important we have more brain tissue dedicated to negative emotions than we have to positive emotions they're so important for our survival and yet they don't make us feel good they're supposed to make us feel bad and so to survive put one foot front of the other to be a successful human being Fully Alive you need lots and lots of aversive experiences and emotions furthermore if you're going to get happier you need to learn you need to learn about life you need to make mistakes you need sacrifice and suffering in your life and that doesn't make you happy in the moment either notwithstanding the fact that it leads to potentially greater happiness down the road so the goal is not happiness the goal is to get happier or as Oprah Winfrey puts it the goal is happier the goal is to get happier I mean one of the things that you you go through many ways in which to do that and one of the most powerful tools you teach is metacognition right so I wonder if you could explain that to people and so sure um the the the brain produces emotions which are just information about the outside world you know one of the one of the things that my students often do is they say I want I want to feel good and I want to stop feeling bad that's the wrong way of understanding emotions the wrong way of understanding feelings the lyic system of your brain is brain tissue dedicated to producing emotions so that you can understand the outside environment and react appropriately to it there's no such thing as a good or bad emotion there's only a positive or negative emotion and you need all of them this is a very important way to re-understand emotions for the first time then if you actually want to have a prayer of managing those emotions and learning from them you need to employ a part of your brain the most evolved part of your brain called the prefrontal cortex this is a a big bumper of brain tissue right behind your forehead it's your executive brain it's how your Consciousness your conscious brain and and the way for you to experience positive and negative emotions in your Executive Center is by this technique called metacognition which is thinking about thinking you need to be a student of yourself you need to be aware of the emotions that you're having and analyze those emotions and one of the things that we do in the book is to go through a suite of ways to do that different ways that you can become an expert in your own emotions if you don't do that you just exist if you're if you're being managed by the lyic system of your brain then you'll be a reactive person you'll be reacting to your emotions all the time and that's just no way to live you'll be quite unhappy you'll also be pretty unsuccessful emotionally in your relationships with other people we need to use our executive centers to experience our emotions more consciously and so doing then we're really in charge of our emotions they're not in charge of us but that sounds much um easier said than done I mean reacting to things instantly is something that is very human it is human but it's all sort of childish in its way you know um just before I came and and saw you for our how-to session today I was upstairs and my my little grandson is there and and he's he's a little kid he's a little boy and my little grandson is completely lyic he's a completely emotional creature where is he feels angry and he yells he feels sad he cries suddenly part of the reason for that is the wiring in his brain is incomplete he's a baby the wiring of the brain has not yet connected the lyic system with the prefrontal cortex of his brain it will and one of the ways that it will is that we will encourage him as he gets older to use his words when he feels something crummy we'll say use your words and and talk about what is actually happening as he gets older will it will it will encourage him to write down his feelings thus really employing your prefrontal cortex and managing your feelings to to list the things that are bothering you so that they're not unfocused and floating around like like like ghosts in your lyic system and in so doing there all kinds of very very manageable ways to do this it sounds hard but it really isn't and and quite frankly it's an adventure to be able to do this and we talk about the specifics on how in the book perhaps you could explain though how it makes one happy here yeah for sure I'll give you a specific example so a lot of young people today a lot of people in general but especially a lot of people in the 20s all over the UK and the United States and many other countries around the world are are experiencing a lot of anxiety anxiety and and they'll go to the doctor and the doctor will say you have some an generalized anxiety disorder for example now that's a problem in and of itself because we over diagnose everything we turn everything into you have it or you don't have it and the truth of the matter is that everybody has some anxiety we need to understand what anxiety is it's unfocused fear fear is evolved in us as a primary negative emotion so that we will be averse to things that are dangerous you hear a stick snap behind you out in the forest and your first instinct is to run because that's how your brain was wired that's a a much better Instinct than saying oh a twig snap behind me I bet that's my close friend everything is a threat until you actually know what it is and that's what's kept you alive for you know the last 500,000 years or so so fear is something that's episodic with respect to the natural environment um anxiety is an unfocused fear because we have so many sources of threats that we can't put our finger on if you want to fix a problem with anxiety one of the best ways to do it is to make it focused is to focus your fear so here's what I recommend everybody when you're feeling a lot of anxiety and you get that you know that that that kind of that flightiness and the pit of your stomach and you you're feeling like ah I I I'm not going to be able to go to sleep tonight all the things that anxiety does to you get out a piece of paper and take out your favorite pencil and say I'm going to write down the 10 things that are freaking me out right now and what I think the reason they're freaking me out and the worst thing that can happen and something I can do about it for each one of those things and by the end of those 10 there's still some things that going to be freaking you out a little bit but you will have focused the fear in your prefrontal cortex as opposed to having the unfocused anxiety that's bombarding you from the lyic system and it's actually pretty interesting and sometimes even kind of fun I do it myself all the time when I'm feeling anxious I make a list and that's my prefrontal cortex at work and just going back to what you were saying about taking time it's it's with everything when you're reacting to anything negative comments said about you or something online or an email that's made you angry or someone says something to your face that makes you angry is it just about taking the time essentially to assess the situation and not going with your gut reaction and and just learning to be slower and to process there's a lot of that the beginning of all metacognition is putting space between what you feel and how you react because your prefontal cortex is slower than your limic system if a car is about to run over you in a crosswalk and you're walking through London if you're An American in London you're looking the wrong direction for oncoming cars all the time sooner or later a a a London taxi cab is going to almost kill you and when it crosses your visual cortex it's processed by your brain as a large uh as a large Predator that's how your brain sees it that sends a signal to the amydala of your lyic system that lights up and puts you on full alert that sends a signal through to your pituitary gland down to your adrenal glands above your kidneys and that starts spitting out stress hormones this happens in 74 milliseconds it's extraordinary how fast this is you'll jump out of the way you'll be sweating your heart will be pounding you'll make an obscene gesture to the cabie three seconds later your Lim your your prefrontal cortex catches up with you to understand what's happening Meanwhile your lyic system has saved your life your prefrontal cortex three seconds later will say I shouldn't have made that obscene gesture to the cabie because those aren't my values so the whole point is if you want your prefrontal cortex involved you need to give it time here's a way that we can all do that we feel angry a lot you feel angry your grandmother probably told you hey Hannah when you feel angry count to 10 before you say anything there's a lot of research on this the truth is you should count to 30 and while you're doing that Envision yourself saying the thing that you want to say to the other person and and and bearing the responsibility for that that's working everything into your prefrontal cortex takes about 30 seconds you know to really process it and then you will make a better decision and what you're doing is you didn't choose the emotion you chose the reaction and choosing the reaction is something you really can't have control over well one of the other things you were mentioning writing down uh you know your reactions and your thoughts and what's making you feel stressed and dealing with that dealing with it that way and one of the other things that you talk about the power of a journal to help with is gratitude and mean we hear a lot about gratitude these days and sometimes I think it's lost its real meaning in the sense that you know we we hear it a lot it's become almost cliched but you talk about in the book as something incredibly important this really significant part of making our lives better and becoming happier absolutely gratitude is a funny thing because it doesn't always come naturally and and part of the reason for that is that we have what evolutionary psychologist call the negativity bias the negativity bias which is always beyond the lookout for the bad thing good things are nice to have bad things can do you in so if you're at a party and somebody's smiling sweetly at you from across the room it's nice but if somebody's frowning angrily at you from across the room pay attention because that actually might do you in once you go out on the street that's how our bodies are our brains are wired to help us survive but the result of that is that it's maladapted to the current environment by giving us a bias toward the the neg the negative around us and that's why you can be I don't know you you you you're sitting in first class on an airplane complaining about the food that's how that works that we tend to be resentful we tend to forget the nice things that we have you can be in a safe country like the UK in a warm home in a soft bed and be really mad about the pillow because we tend to focus on the negative part that's how we're wired as people the way to counteract that and to actually be more in touch with reality of our modern lives is to make a list of the things that you're really grateful for and pay attention to those things that way you're manually using your prefrontal cortex to focus on what you should be focused on will give you much more happiness and you have a better life as a result of that my students they write down the things they're most grateful for on Sundays every day during the week they look at their lists on Sundays they update their lists and by the end of 10 weeks they're 12% happier this is free and everybody should be doing it and then you also I mean we'll go through and and you know that there's something for everyone in this book and then all of it for everyone as well and I think some people will focus on certain elements and know they need that a lot more in their life but I think it's fascinating ating the way in which you sort of question empathy and I I mean I I did not think this I thought that having empathy and having a lot of empathy is something that we should all aspire to have but you question actually how happy that makes you and I wonder if you can explain why yeah I mean empathy tends to be kind of an overrated virtue in our modern society it's uh it's feeling somebody else's pain and there's a lot of good that can be that can come from that it's not the same thing as sympathy empathy is really relating to the pain that somebody else is going through physically or even more important emotionally they're going through it's overrated because we're we have a tendency to substitute it for action and compassion compassion starts by feeling somebody else's pain then it proceeds to not being uh Paralyzed by somebody else's pain and then finishes by not being afraid to do what actually needs to be done to help somebody now that's really important the worst parents of teenagers I've ever met are unbelievably empathetic ah you're feeling so much pain I'll call your teacher um I I'll try to relieve your pain that's that's terribly uncompassionate ordinarily because people need to actually grow up and and people need to feel feel the pinch of what life is really all about the most compassionate parents they suffer with their children but they're not paralyzed by their suffering and they do things that are really really hard even when their kids don't like it bosses need to be compassionate as opposed to just a athetic and and in general you make life a lot better for yourself and a lot better for others if you have the courage and understanding of compassion which is which is not limic it really comes from making decisions and being reasoned about what you do as opposed to Simply being you know the feeling of other people's pain which is a highly limbic phenomenon let's just um get some more explanations or examples from you so people can take it into their own lives so you've given the example of a parent but if you feel like you're someone who's prone to over empathy or even if you're just looking at situations a new with this in mind how do you say go out into your life and and be more compassionate in a way that makes you a happier person for sure and you know there's lots of examples by the way of how empathy makes less happiness around us you know what you find is if you're an overly empathetic person the person who's in front of you right now who's suffering will actually get what they need they'll get the favors and you'll be paralyzed from doing what most people need we see this a lot from politicians where politicians were swayed by the the plight of somebody who's right in front of them actually leads them to make a decision that's not the the greatest good for the most people for the the greatest number of constituents or even for their country and we find that this over empathy that we find in our modern political system can can become a real problem you can be clouded in your decision making and that can result in in in the welfare of people falling and your own welfare fall falling as well so that's one of the reasons that we need to kind of question the Baseline emotions that we feel to to to always interrogate the feelings that we have to to you know this is one of the things and by the way this is not just some super analytical scientific Western approach this is the basis of self-analysis in Buddhism Buddhists will meditate and they will they will analyze their own emotions they'll say while they're meditating what is the nature of my sadness and and in so doing they're making it highly metacognitive such that they can actually use their emotion in the most productive way while while they're not being paralyzed by that emotion or induced to do something that's against their interest and hurts other people as well I mean it's it's really interesting we'll come back um at the end to an example I think a very sort of current example where I'd be really interested to hear your thoughts on but you're talking empathy talking about compassion they these all involve behaviors towards other people and a lot of the time happiness or the path to a good life is portrayed as something that you do for yourself your own self you sit and you practice self-care and self-love and that is how to have a better life but your book is very much emphasizing that it is much more about the way you behave towards others or bring others into your life that's what you would say is putting people more on a path to happiness absolutely I mean what we have a tendency an evolved tendency to do all kinds of things that don't make us happy Mother Nature really doesn't care if we're happy at all Mother Nature really wants us to survive and pass on our genes I mean the higher path the Divine path is one in which we can love and be loved which is really not a prerogative of of our Natural Instincts and so we need to do things that don't necessarily feel as natural as they otherwise would and that's a perfect example when I don't feel good I I want other people to help me and and and I want to help myself and I'm not really very focused on the needs of other people but the research is very clear when you want more love the way to get it is to go love another person when you you want to actually feel more belonging the way is to go and give somebody a better sense of belonging if you really want to lift yourself up lift other people up is really the way that it works and it's not a natural phenomenon necessarily some people are naturally better at it than other people you know I'm kind of a selfish person naturally I have to work at this all the time I have to write notes to myself to make sure that I'm not doing that we give a lot of hints on how to do that by the way and one of them which is a great happiness enhancer is to try to make time in your day every day to just observe the world and what you can do to make it better as opposed to looking in the mirror looking in the mirror the zoom screen or the social media mentions or or even the physical mirror all that is doing is focusing on me me me me that's called the Mis self rather spend more time in the I myself observing the world the the Japanese Zen Buddhists they talk about this an awful lot it's a very beautiful thing that they talk about where they they just observe it's an attitude of outward observation and in so doing they they finally find peace quite frankly there's there's no more turmoil than focusing on yourself all the time being the big star of your own Psycho Drama which is one of the reasons that zooming out on life the majesty and the awe and and and quite frankly the enlightenment that comes from practicing your religion which I do I have a traditional religious practice it it gets me out of me which is just so boring I mean you do say well let's talk about faith definitely but you do say just to stick on the mirrors and the and the me sself you you say I mean perhaps try not to have mirrors around try very hard not to take selfies try not to go online and put photos of yourself or try to look to Facebook or social media for satisfaction or for completion but then some people would say that to them they feel insecure or they don't feel a sense of a full sense of self without checking those things that that that brings some sort of fulfillment to their lives yeah that's an addiction um and so mirrors both virtual and real that what that does is that a little bit of uh affirmation that comes from seeing somebody like your Instagram post or you know checking your your looks in the mirror as often as you possibly can that gives you a little hit of a neuromodulator in the brain called dopamine which is anticipation of reward and we get very hooked on the on the stimulus and response we get very hooked on on on a particular action that gives us a little tiny bit of the Spritz of of chemical that that that has a kind of a relief factor that it gives us in our lives and and the more we do it the more addicted we are and the more addicted we are the more that we do it and the result of that is that people check their phones 600 times a day what are they checking their phones is somebody writing to me is somebody talking about me is somebody thinking about me is somebody posting about me and that's just no way to live I I talk in the book op and I talk in the book about somebody I've work I've worked with very closely who was an an Instagram influencer on Fitness so this is this is a guy who you know he's showing his abs on the internet for you know Fun and Profit and what a way to make a living I mean he he said that in in order to look the way that he does one of the great um ironies of the fitness industry is that to look as healthy as possible you have to do things that are not healthy and so there's a lot of Illusion there's a lot of smoking mirrors and a lot of unhealthy behavior and he said he didn't eat what he liked for 10 years he didn't have proper relationships all kind of weird physical problems and so he finally said I'm stuck I'm addicted to how I look I need to get away from that so he literally took all the all of the mirrors out of his house and then he didn't and he showered in the dark for a year so he couldn't see his own abdominal muscles to get away from this constant constant constant melf of the of the objectification of who he was as a person and it really changed his life now he's you know dedicated to helping people in all sorts of different ways and and he's a good good friend and a a really good family member and he saved his life quite frankly by doing this but we do live in a very different world don't we we live in a world where it's very hard for a lot of people to avoid I mean mirrors is one thing but the online presence or you know just a very a digitization of society and perhaps more stressful for people to try to entirely you know disappear from that to switch that all off because that is the world we live in so it's a balance isn't it it it is is a balance and you have to live in the world but we need a lot less of it than we think what I would recommend is that everybody is watching us that they do just a little experiment which is to take the social media apps off your phone just get rid of the apps um and and then and and then to only look at your social media on your computer and only do it for a total of 30 minutes a day in the morning across all of the apps across all the applications across all the platforms why because you'll look at it all at once you'll scroll a little bit but you're going to be rationing your time and you'll mostly be using it to kind of keep up to date with people that you like and know as opposed to you know wasting your time understanding what Kim Kardashian is up to for example or you know watching ridiculous videos or scandalous stuff or feeling lonely because you're not being invol or social comparison or all this kind of stuff to just a little experiment the first couple of days are hard and the reason is because the dopamine in your brain is screaming out to get some satisfaction your brain is saying feed me feed me more dopamine don't do it it'll be okay you'll survive and then after a few days it'll start to get better and by the end of the week you're going to notice you have a lot more time on your hands and you feel a lot better about yourself you might just like I did leave those applications behind for good and what about the soci socialization aspect of people who are otherwise on their own I mean we obviously saw a huge peak in this during the pandemic but still after that time there are people who live on their own or who don't live in big communities and uh you know the digital world can help them but of course I mean there's two questions in one really but it's what about them and also I suppose how did the pandemic change that sort of socialization and how important is it for happiness well you know that what we get um what our brains want with respect to relationships is a is a hormone it's a neuropeptide that functions as a hormone the brain called oxytocin we're evolved to produce this molecule called oxytocin which is referred to by scientists as the love molecule it's the in in your brain what links you to other people and it's intensely pleasurable when you first lay eyes on your newborn baby or you see your parents for the first time in a long time if you have a good relationship with them or or your closest friends but you only really get oxytocin with eye contact real eye contact and touch you don't get it very much just a little tiny trickle of it from social media and when people are not when people are virtual and they're they're not live you need a little bit of it from Zoom from these platforms but not very much and and and touch is the real deal so if you're substituting Human Relationships for virtual versions because of convenience and distance you're going to be starving and what's going to happen almost inevitably it's like getting all of your all of your meals at McDonald's there's nothing wrong with going to McDonald's from time to time I say this as a as a as an American you know this is a lot of what we eat over here but every meal what's going to happen is you're going to get not enough nutrients and too many calories you can literally become obese and malnourished at the same time if you're getting all of your food at fast food outfits that's the same thing as social media you want the oxytocin and so you binge the social media and you only get a little Trickle and so you're you're you're binging doing something bad for your brain at the same time you're actually getting lonier and wasting your time you need real humans to the extent that you possibly can and we need a society where it makes it easier for us to get that yeah and you say if I'm right that the four pillars of Happiness are friendship Family Faith and work right right that's correct yeah those are the pillars on which we the happiest people build their lives it's kind of an Investment Portfolio because these things take time and then of course Oprah and I we go into describing what each each one of these things mean because they're not self-evident what they mean in different people's lives no and I think the work one is really interesting because I think sometimes you know it's it's a mixed message as to whether work should be something on which you base happiness and whether if you give your life to your work and that makes you happy that is in necessarily a good thing yeah no for sure and there are a lot of people who over index on work you know here in the states there are people who work routinely 80 90 hours awake and and London God knows is a is a you know it's a factory um of people's lives relatively speaking and the biggest problem that we have is workaholism for people who don't do the other three so faith family friends and work remember the faith family friends part you need a diversified portfolio only paying attention to your work is like putting all of your pension portfolio into Greek bonds I mean I don't recommend I'm an economist trust me I don't I don't recommend that's not a good I mean you might it might work out but it probably won't it's not a good strategy and you might be very disappointed come retirement time about how much you have to live on so the and so work is really important and and work doesn't mean working for pay by the way working might mean raising your children it might mean it it might mean taking care of family members it might mean volunteering there's lots and lots of ways to work but that's the productive use of your labor and it has to be one part of the four dedicated really only to two things you're creating value and you see the value you're creating and you're serving other people that's really what it is it's not how much money you make and the power and the admiration of other people it's using your the way you make your daily bread the way that you create value to be a valuable person and be recognized for that and to serve other people who need you it's interesting of course uh begs the question you're an economist and you're talking about it's not making money that's important and I'm sure many people wonder you know it's easy to say that you don't need money and money doesn't make make one happy but what are your thoughts on that well of course people need enough to feed themselves and take care of their families we we know that we we we want to have a society in where that's possible we even set up government programs to make it such that people don't fall too much through through a social safety net we have that in all the oecd countries some countries are doing it differently than other countries but we all want that kind of thing so money is no joke you have to have it to exist in a in a market-based society or really any society that we see on the on the Earth today but here's the thing all of our grandmothers taught us that money doesn't buy happiness and it's true what money does is it is it eliminates the common sources of unhappiness up to a particular point so we find in the United States that some somewhere up to like $100,000 a year that really will defay unhappiness in all sorts of meaningful ways depending on where you live some places are more expensive than others probably more than that in London New York quite frankly but above that that it doesn't eliminate more sources of unhappiness and people will well will think they're going to feel better from having more money and Chase it and Chase it and Chase it for the rest of their lives and what are they eliminating is the time that they need for the things that really will bring happiness which are based on on Faith and family and friendship and serving other people and actually talking about chasing that's this element slightly different of looking to the Future that humans do looking to the Future assessing the future making plans and you talk about the importance of just being in the moment to happiness yeah that that's true you have to enjoy your life and one of the problems probably a lot of people who want to watch howto frankly you're look we're Strivers you know we want to get better we want to make progress that's why we do something called howto so we can learn more and we can use that information let's not kid ourselves this is not the average person on the street watching this show why because we tend to live in the future you find that Strivers and entrepreneurs and hard workers and and one of the great things about them is that they always see the possibility for a better future and our society is based on the the labor and optimism of people who see a better future or at least the hope of people who see a better future that's really important but here's the thing it can go too far the average human spends 30 to 50% of their time thinking about imagining themselves and planning the future they're living in the future if you're spending all your time in the future you're not alive right now you're not you're you you're not experiencing the present and what what you're doing now is thinking about a future uh you're thinking about a future now and when you get to that future now you'll have missed it because now is in the past and that future is now the present you're not paying attention to your whole life passes before your eyes and so one of the things that I recommend and and the striver the entrepreneurs more than 30 to 50% up to 80% of their time is in the future is taking real measures to say I'm alive now I am experiencing this now walk for an hour before Dawn in nature without your phone thinking about the things that you're seeing listening to the sound smelling the morning air oh it's it's it's crazy actually it feels like a brand new life to a certain extent it's also hard to do but the better at it you get the happier you'll be you talk about that in the chapter about faith do you think that faith is necessary for happiness can you can you be happy if you are not with the faith absolutely you can be when we talk about faith however that's a big umbrella term faith in this sense mean it encompasses philosophy spirituality a sense of the Transcendent what you really have a hard time being happy with is you have no sense of bigger things than you is what it comes down to bigger ideas is the Majesty of the universe there are a lot of ways to get that and so I mean I say I'm I'm a Catholic it's a really important part of my life for sure but as a social scientist you don't have to be a Catholic to get this I mean it's like uh I hope the Pope's not listening does he listen to howto I'm not sure but anyway all the time one of our regular I know he's actually calling in right now so um one of the things that's important to understand is that we need to zoom out from our Psycho Drama to be happy get small it's very important why because otherwise you know the the the the narrative in your head all day long is my job and my house and my car and my success and my money and my lunch and me me me it's so the Psycho Drama is so boring and when you zoom out and get small you have peace and you have perspective and so what I recommend is that everybody spend at least 15 minutes a day to start more later reading the wisdom of the ages maybe that's the stoic philosophers Maybe that's um maybe that's a traditional religion maybe it's starting a meditation practice maybe that's analyzing the fugues of yan Sebastian Bach or maybe it is that walk in nature where you actually have a an experience of the majesty and wisdom of the ages one way or the other you got to get small and that's what Oprah and I mean by faith and what's the balance then between getting small because when you get small you may feel that none of it matters yeah actually feeling that none of it matters temporarily is Central of happiness because when everything is heavy and everything is serious and everything matters so very much it's just terrible life is tyranny under those circumstances and when you can zoom out on your own life a little bit you you find you're just laughing at what you thought was so important you know it's oh man yeah I can't believe it I can't this this you know I I I paid that bill late and somebody called me on the phone and I felt really embarrassed about that and whatever I got to be in a class or whatever the problem happens to be get some space man it's so important that we zoom out on it that we make the problems small in our our our own issues small it's not going to stay that way it's not like you're going to become the Dal Lama and have this you know Grand Enlightenment where you're where you feel like you're small forever no you're a human being you're going to come right back to it but you need peace you need space you need a a safe space in your life where you're not there bothering you and you talked then about laughter which it's it's very easy as a question for me to ask and it's very easy but it's it's and it's obvious I suppose is what I mean but it's so important you talk about that in the book The Importance of humor and not being the person making the joke but just finding things to laugh at and people to laugh with yeah no for sure it's um you know there's a this is one of the things that we call emotional substitution in the book where if you're properly metacognitive you can get some space between the the emotion that you're feeling and the reaction that you want one of the things that you can do is you can literally substitute one emotion for another where both are appropriate but one's better and and this is a classic case of this you know I have a I have a friend who's a a pretty famous actor in the United States he he was actually one of the stars of the American version of the office you know of course it's a British show a Ricky JY show but when it came to the United States it was hysterically funny because it was you know the American style of it which meant it was a different show but very funny and this is a guy named Rain Wilson who was in the office and he's incredibly talented comedian he's wonderful I talk to him almost every day we grew up about five miles away from each other in a city called Seattle on the west coast and and um I asked him one time why is it that so many comedians are depressed and what is it about comedy that makes you depressed and he said no no no no you got it backwards he said the depressed people turn to Comedy if they tend to be funny they notice that when they feel rotten which is a lot they make a joke and people laugh and and they feel better this is really important to keep in mind that's a substitute emotion that the that humor is a substitute emotion for sadness for a lot of people now not everybody's funny but here's how the hack for the people who aren't you know great joke tellers like my friend R Wilson or Ricky jves or anybody like that look for funny things and surround yourself with funny things and learn how to laugh more and when you're feeling sad expose yourself to humor it's just incredible analgesic it's it's better than any pill you can take at least in the moment I could explain the Neuroscience but nobody needs it you know it's true um there's some audience questions it's definitely time for audience questions because it's very selfish for me to ask them all myself but I just wanted to ask I I said at the beginning um that I feel like one of the things people might be thinking at the moment is that the world feels like a very unhappy and frightening Place particularly in the last few weeks really just almost unfathomable for many people and I think it really does take happiness away from so many people's lives not least the people who are involved and I'm just wondering I'd love to know your advice on how to remain uh you know happy if that's possible when the world feels such so Bleak yeah so it is absolutely possible to be happier than we were before you know when the book came out in London and New York on September 12th um there were these terrible wildfires that had just happened in Mai my co-author Oprah Winfrey lives in Maui she was there for those particular fires and you know her heart was in for those people and so what so it was for people all over the United States that saw this incredible hundreds and hundreds of people lost their lives and and and thousands and thousands lost their homes and now we see you know the war and violence and suffering that's coming from the Middle East right now and most people can't do anything directly about that but but they want to do something they feel hopeless and helpless and this and and the the origin of the unhappiness they feel is the helplessness that they feel when they see so much human suffering around them a couple of things to keep in mind the first is that that the idea that if you're happy something's wrong with you morally is not right that is simply not correct and there are a lot of people no matter what it is that say if you're not outraged you're not paying attention this is the standard you know tool in the toolbox of politicians today that are trying to get everybody to be extremely unhappy because unhappy people are good consumers and good voters quite frankly but even when people see a legitimate crisis like what we're seeing in the Middle East today say if you're happy something's morally defective about you that's that's just simply not right and we should reject that but the bigger question is how can you be happier when there is so much suffering and here's the answer to that you can't probably do something that's remarkably going to change the suffering in the Middle East but you know what there's somebody within a few blocks of you that is suffering right now and it's easy for us to block them out it's easy for us to forget about the suffering that's proximate to the lives that we're leading there are people in in your country there are people people in your community that actually need you the way for you to feel less helpless is to relieve somebody's pain near you use the opportunity of the helplessness that you feel because of the war in the Middle East use that hopelessness and helplessness and turn it into hopefulness turn it into you know your opportunity your stimulus to do something for people around you to do and here's my promise if you relieve the suffering if you lighten the load from somebody who needs it right now you'll feel less helpless and you'll feel less hopeless and your life is going to get better because the world is getting better because of you really um interesting answer and yeah very very helpful I think um Anna's question I think your answer will be compassion is is what she's searching for as a word but Anna says your you say empathy is an overrated virtue but without empathy surely we wouldn't strive to improve life for others doesn't having empathy mean we want to volunteer and serve other people and as you say volunteering and serving serving others are part of those ingredients of Happiness yeah for sure and and and Hannah you got it right on the money we need to move so that's Anna I'm not taking credit yeah okay that's an audience member Anna no but Hannah your your your answer about compassion was exactly where this where the answer goes which is that empathy is fine it's just not enough there's nothing wrong with empathy empathy is not bad it's just incomplete you need to complete it with action and action requires courage so just feeling somebody's pain isn't enough and sometimes you need to not be paralyzed by somebody else's pain when you're feeling empathy for sure you need empathy so that you will be spurred to action but the action part itself frequently is really hard I've had my kids really really mad at me when they're suffering and I tell them they have to do something hard and they want me to just relieve their suffering that's because I was able to move from empathy to compassion and all of us can do that and that's what makes the world better that's what winds up making us happier at the end of the day that's really interesting and the other thing that people you know uh debate what's makes you happier and what makes a better life is sort of routine versus spontaneity H what are your thoughts on that do you think it's better to have a routine to stick to and to know and have the familiarity or better to let things come at you and not worry too much about that it's a good question and people vary with respect to this there's some people who are much happier when they have an utterly routinized structure of their day there's a lot of Neuroscience about the differences between people who love routine and people who love spontaneity now that said there's a certain number of disciplines that can really help I recommend that if people want to get happier and they want to build their day around the the highest likelihood of getting happier that's most productive that they have certain routines that they have in the day for body and soul I mean for me personally I get up every morning and I go to the gym and then I I practice My Religion before I have my coffee and before I do my work why because I want my body and soul on point and I have certain very specific disciplines that I undertake in my life to do that that's a routine now that's hard for me because I'm a spot spontaneous person I would love to have every day be completely different but if every day is different and doesn't actually involve me taking care of my body and soul that spontaneity is going to work against me so find the kind of job and find the kind of life if you can that has the right level of structure and spontaneity for your happiness but make sure that you have the personal disciplines in place so that your happiness hygiene is also on point okay I really like this next question from an anonymous attendee who says how happiness is overrated what's wrong with being sad then count your blessings yeah indeed and and the idea of perfect happiness as we mentioned before is absolutely the wrong goal you're not going to be in some Cosmic sense absolutely happy you need suffering in your life suffering is sacred young people today they talk about getting rid of their their their unhappy feelings you know at my University people go to the campus Counseling Center and say I'm anxious and depressed and and and they as if it as if if it's some sort of defect it's not a defect look I realize it can that it can interfere with your life and it can actually be a medical problem I understand that perfectly well as a social scientist but I also know that life is hard and life requires sacrifice and there's no way you're going to avoid negative feelings and you learn a lot from your sadness one of the things that I I encourage my students to say with me is that that suffering is sacred you just have to understand it learn from it and grow from it and that's what really requires the skills that we're talking about here don't be afraid of unhappiness don't be afraid of your sadness don't avoid those things learn from them understand them and grow from them and what about we haven't talked about family I mean we haven't talked about lots of things but of course we can't go through the entire book in an hour but we're doing a good job but what about family why do you say and why do you devote a chapter to building your imperfect family well all families are imperfect and everybody cares about their families I mean any anybody who says I don't care about my family they're just lying we actually it's very very important that we understand that the the strange and magical nature of family relationships we have they're some of the most intense love relationships that we have and we didn't choose them it doesn't even make sense it's almost like a it's almost a mystical thing that people have those people who can drive you absolutely around the band make you completely crazy and you didn't even choose a relationship and you feel great sorrow where there's schism this is something that we need to understand now again the oxytocin neuropeptide that we talked about earlier is in greatest abundance with your kin and that's an evolutionary phenomenon your kin are very important to you on the PTO scene 500,000 years ago if you break with your kin you might walk the frozen tundra and die alone or in I guess 1630 when my family bailed out of Lancashire they're um you know they probably were getting thrown out of their kin not enough oxytocin all I can say is they did a little bit better in Mass Massachusetts I hope you know the truth is you need that that's really important so understanding the imperfect nature of the family and and making the relationship a little bit better is a lot of what we talk about because that requires knowledge and and that has a certain set of skills attached to it that we can all we can all get better at yeah and you talk about one of the things that really breaks a lot of uh families or distresses a lot of families is difference of values and difference of views and the importance of putting that to one side right yeah that's absolutely right you know there's a a big um a there's always an intergenerational problem in families where young people have different ideas than their parents and their parents have not quite let them go as adults and so the result is how can you think those things those are contrary to our religious values or our political values or our social values and we see this all the time in the states where you know kids will come back from college and they'll tell their parents that they're fascists or you know or even more frequently what will happen is that you know kids come home and and their parents are still kind of hippies and their their kids are you know working for an Investment Bank or something and one way or the other everybody's everybody's sort of disappointed by the fact that there's some sort of values difference okay now here's a way to deal with that because these kinds of things are actually inevitable live the life you want but don't tell people that disagree with you that their values are stupid almost all of the family schisms come from values schisms not from behavioral schisms you know live the life that you want if you're doing something your parents disagree with they're going to forgive you I mean I've got the data on this I'm not making this up in virtually all the cases is very rare because of the way you're living your parents disown you what really happens is that that the Schism with your parents comes is that you tell your parents that they're evil racist fascists or whatever it is because you're telling that their religion is stupid let them live their lives too this is really important I mean my kids don't vote the way that I do but they don't think I'm an idiot at least they don't say that I'm an idiot and that's really important so pay attention to respect other people's values while living the life life that you want to live and letting other people live their life too I mean the same goes I suppose with friendships you do choose your friendships and you can let go of your friendships and you have some data about the amount of people that are saying these days they wouldn't be friends with someone who voted differently I mean you the results are from um the states but we've had our own great divisions here which have split families and friends and what the advice is the same there oh yeah for sure I mean brexit was really fun for a lot of families you know I I spent half my life in the states and the other half in Barcelona and you know in Barcelona families are being split apart by the independence of Catalonia and the referendum and you know it's the same thing in every country every country's got their thing and Americans will look at Great Britain and go like you'd stop talking to your mom because of brexit what's wrong with you it's not that important it's like yeah well come here and tell us that I mean it's really important to people here why because there's so many values that are loaded on these political issues it's not the politics per se it's all that it represents and it's you rejecting me Etc Etc but by the way this is an important point to to make is that if somebody's profiting when you hate somebody for political reasons or you walk away from a friend it's a cable network it's a social media platform it's a politician when you hate somebody's profiting but it's not you and that's an important thing to keep in mind you're being conscripted into somebody else's culture War it's time to be a conscientious objector and love other people more so and one of somebody says to to the point about family some people break with families because they choose to do so others lose family through illness and accident and they have no choice but they need to manage their circumstances so I said of course you can't choose the situation that you are always in you know there are a lot of things that life throws at people uh that that they would not wish for absolutely and learning and growth is incredibly important for us to understand ourselves and ultimately to get happier part of that is the losses that we feel you know I've I've written a lot of about sadness and and grief sadness is a basic negative emotion it involves literally a specific part of the brain that sadness is processed in it's called the dorsal anterior singulate cortex nobody needs to write that down it's just a part of the brain that's dedicated to affective pain mental pain when we're either rejected or lose somebody or we're we're we're separated from somebody that we love and the reason for that is that Evolution wants us to not be separated from people because people when they stick together in packs they're more likely to Sur survive you don't want to be separated from your tribe or your kin or your family is what the way that it works out well sometimes it happens and when that happens the the dorsal interior singulate cortex it's highly active and it's incredibly painful mentally painful for you here's an interesting little trick by the way if you have a bad breakup you know this is one of the ways that people in their 20s and 30s especially their 20s this is where they have a whole lot of grief and sadness that they they can't control and there's not much they can do about it it's when your beloved leaves you you that part of the brain the dorsal interior singular cortex is most is best treated by an anlg called acetaminophen or paracetamol in the United States that's called Tylenol that's a very funny drug you should never take too much of it it's hard on your liver but what you find is that it makes your dorsal anterior singulate cortex a little bit less active and new research shows that when you're very sad about losing a loved one or or or having a bad breakup that just taking ordinary Tylenol for a couple of weeks can can relieve some of that pain because it's a brain phenomenon and when you talk about chemicals there are of course I'm sure people who would listen and people would say that there are certain very many sadly issues you talked about anxiety at the beginning that people would feel they have absolutely no control over yeah you know that that's but it's not entirely true they have no control over it but anxiety is a perfect example of as we mentioned before of unfocused pain and or unfocused fear and they can focus the fear but they have to know how to do it a lot of the things that emotionally we feel like we have no control over what it really is is that we have no knowledge of and so we're taking these things as given because feelings are feelings are feelings and there's no science of this and it's just what we are as human beings and the point that we're making in this book and and indeed my my life as as a scientist is dedicating to helping people understand that the project of you has all there's a lot that you can do there's a lot more that with knowledge and that you can with simple things like making a list to focus your fears can greatly relieve your anxiety can take it down by by tens of percentage points almost immediately as a matter of fact and you know getting these skills is these are the life skills that can that can be the difference between a life that's mostly unhappy and one that's mostly happy so we've come to the end really but I just wonder if your parting words would be just the simple things that people could take away if they were going to take away five things from this hour or from you we have your expertise for this hour just to take into tomorrow yeah for sure absolutely I I'll make it even simpler than that um you know one of the things that we find is that there's a we have data at Harvard called the Harvard study of adult development that follows people over or 85 year period from when they're very young until they're they're old and and even dying and and and one of the things the questions that this study asks is what do older people who are happy what did they do when they were younger what are the patterns of Behavior when they were younger so this is like a crystal ball into your own happiness and it turns out that it you know some of it's pretty obvious and drinking and smoking and diet and exercise and learning and dealing with your anxiety and worries Etc some of the things we already talked about but by and large the biggest thing in everybody's life that blows everything out of the water if you want to know the one thing that really matters is that you love people more that you have relationships real close friendships that you work to have a a romantic partnership that can endure that you stay close to your family not everybody has to have all of these things but everybody has to have some of these things is the way that this works now remember the four pillars of a happy life for faith family friends and work what is that that's love for the Divine or something like that love for your family love for your real friends not your deal friends London Strivers and and and love for everybody's expressed through the way that you earn your daily bread so I guess if there's four secrets to a happy life they're love love love and more love thank you very very much indeed was a good good place to end I'm delighted to have you with us and thanks everyone for signing in and thank you for your questions um brilliant thank you I was just saying there was no no more questions just uh someone saying great really enjoyed it brilliant as always thank you so much Arthur thank you thank you Hannah and thanks for everybody watching how too

Channel: How To Academy Mindset

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Length: 58min 47sec (3527 seconds)

Published: Sun Nov 12 2023