NEUROSCIENTIST EXPLAINS The #1 Reason Why People Suffer IN LIFE | Sam Harris & Lewis Howes

when you become aware of what it's like to be you a moment a moment you see that everything is just happening right including your ear capacity for effort all of that is part of the what's just happening in the universe it's not you can't make choices but again the choices themselves are also just happening how do we move on from the story or how do you do it do you live with a lot of worry each day or are you so good now I'm just saying this doesn't matter you know this is in the past or I'm concerned about something that's not gonna happen potentially in the future so let me get back to present how do you get well so I mean everything for me sort of at my level of practice and I've done a lot of meditation practice but you know there's there's apparently much more to do in my case because you still worry yeah well so I I can there's there's no emotion that I don't experience right so I can I can experience you know intense anger and ten sadness do depression you worry all of it and the difference for me and there's something that that you know I wouldn't have but for the fact that I've really learned to practice mindfulness the difference is when my suffering becomes at all intense it functions as a kind of mindfulness alarm right and so like the truly kind of mediocre path for me is to be within the range of sort of normal annoyance and normal desire and mental suffering yeah and where the alarms not going off and I'm just you know kind of a normal jerk you know within that the within those bounds yeah right like you know a little anxious here and there yes I go to the dry cleaner and and discover that they you know destroyed my suit right it's like this was like this this in the scheme of things this does not matter at all right but but your work traded your yes like what what do you do you know so it's like attention is captured and one attention is captured by that you know I'm the same guy always was right you're always a jerk yeah well just like whatever it's like I or attention can be captured pleasantly by something that you know like oh god I mean this is the best bagel I've ever had right something like I'm just going for the food and there's no perspective you know like I'm not I'm not you know the consciousness is trimmed down to just the the pleasure or pain of that experience for that moment right and that all of those moments for me have the character of being that they really are deeply analogous to being asleep and dreaming and not knowing that you're dreaming all right so the reality is you're in your bed you know prone or supine or you know you're just you're you're in a situation that's completely unlike the situation you think you're in and you think you're on a beach you know talking to somebody or you know arguing with somebody we showed up a conference and you know you didn't have your pants you know whatever whatever it is and you know you're relating to people who don't exist right and I mean just let me do it we're psychotic when we're dreaming I'm completely confused right unless it's a lucid dream right which is its own interesting experience but assuming your dreams are not lucid you are you are completely unaware of a larger contra la R jerk on text your experience and and you're merely hostage to whatever is playing out in that dream right you know so and that and that most of experience that is mediated by thought and the apart from mindfulness most experience has that character so for me once you turn up the dial on intense the intensity of the experience that's really yeah then I begin then then something else comes online for me more reliably and then you can you know if you really know how to meditate you can break the spell decisively in an instant you know and and in that instant you are you you have woken up I mean you're no longer in bed asleep right and so I can do that I mean there's sort of two less there two landmarks I would suggest to notice I mean if somebody's practicing meditation and they're and they're really getting into it I would say that they're kind of two points that I would would flag as points of real durable progress the first is just to know just to notice the difference between being lost and thought and clearly paying attention to experience you know prior to thought and riordan concepts and so that's that's mine that's sort of small and mindfulness that that people learn you know once that they start a practice and that has the consequences of if you do that enough if you keep if you keep punctuated in your ordinary experience with that just non-judgmental nonreactive acceptance of what the present moment is right so you feel anxiety you feel irritation you become mindful you just become interested in that feeling in the in just the neurophysiology of it the the sensation of it you get out if you're thinking about all the reasons why you should feel anxious or you should should feel irritated you just become merely present with the experience and then you notice this kind of half life it just dissipates right and that's um there's a certain kind of freedom in that there's another point which I you know in my in my meditation app I spent a lot of time trying to push people toward you know earlier than is conventional there's another point where you can you realize that the feeling of self the feeling that there's a subject in the center of experience is an illusion right that it's actually not there if you can look for it deliberately enough that we are an illusion yeah it's not that your body is an illusion it's not that people are illusions but the sense that you have that you are a subject in your head rock and riding around in the body like that you're that they're you're behind your face in this moment like like the UN are talking I'm looking at you in the normal that the default situation is for you to feel implicated by my gaze like I'm look I'm looking at something you're on the other side of my gaze right I mean my mind is or my mic on whatever yeah is this you it's like like I like your you there's something you know if you say something and I'm and I you know get a weird expression on my face like I don't believe you or whatever you you can can read that back into it sort of it it falls back to you it's like it points back to you like if I if I point at you it feels like I'm pointing at something I mean this feels Rewa though this feels normally a rude gesture right so it's like you feel like like like you're over there you're behind your face right you know and that's that's what we call I I mean that's that the personal pronoun pronoun for most people refers to the Fiat that feeling of being in the head it doesn't refer to the whole body you know it doesn't refer to because people don't feel identical to their whole bodies they feel like passengers in their bodies I feel like subjects they feel like the center of experience and I mean the real goal of meditation is to recognize that that is an illusory position that that's naturally not your position there really is just experience there's there's just consciousness and its contents and there's no center to it and so at a certain point mindfulness can become the experience of just cutting through that illusion right so you're not it's not that you're having to be strategically mindful of anxiety or anything else that you may notice that you you want to have dissipate you suddenly recognize that there's just no center to experience and then then your meditation practice becomes recognizing that in each moment and that has the that has the the consequence of just me that synonymous with not being lost in thought in that moment it synonymous with not giving any more energy therefore to this reaction you're having it synonymous with no resistance to whatever is appearing right so you so you're actually free even before the physiology of the negative state dissipates so let's say you're angry you're feeling road rage you recognize there's no Center your your freedom in that moment isn't even contingent upon the anger going away it's like yeah because anger at that moment's no longer anger anger is just it's just tension you know it's just tension in your face you know like you could have tension in your face because of you had some dental procedure right but like it like it literally it just completely disconnects the this this the free that the sense of your own well-being and and expansiveness because again the center has dropped out there's just consciousness and its contents right and it doesn't actually and then so that this is again this can sound paradoxical but then from that point of view you know the kind of experience I had on MDMA doesn't even improve the one situation maybe then it cuz when there's just consciousness without a center on some level there's no and this is the the truth here that I'm alluding to them and that the the jargon and Buddhism is is this the truth of emptiness right there's just there isn't it there's nothing there is no thing right everything everything is to take to take an analogy that works for me have you ever gone to a restaurant where you have this there's one wall that is a like I got a perfect and perfectly clean floor-to-ceiling mirror and for most of the meal you're you've been assuming that the restaurant is twice the size that it actually is right so you like there's a bunch of people over there that you just thought were people but you know at some point in the meal you recognize it's just half the size yeah and that's just glass and it's a wall of light right yeah yeah and so that transition where you like like if someone just walks up and puts their hand on the glass and and in that moment all the stuff you thought was happening there you know someone could have been having an argument right or like someone could someone could you know physically assault someone there now forget it this is where the analogy breaks down because you know there's something happening in the real world but but the what happens when you touch the mirror and equalize all of that is just a display of light you on some level everything has become equalized you know the ugly things are the same as the beautiful things right there's just no it's just like you know and there that that's a good analogy for the freedom you can experience when there's when the elusiveness of the self drops out of consciousness it's like it for that moment and it might only be a moment I mean the course of practice once you're able to practice in that way it's really just about punctuated in your life with with brief moments of that you know you know a hundred moments like that over the course of a day or an hour right it's not about at least not you know anytime soon for most of us it's not about spending an hour in that state right but being able to punctuate life with with that insight it really does change the game because then in each one of those moments you realize that you're you're not life isn't about seeking to become happy right it's not like you mom you can only be happy you can only you can only be free in this moment this is only it's only ever this moment now now I was thinking for the future you know what you have is this moment and then your thoughts about the past in the future that's that's always been true and that will always be true for as long as you have any experience at all and so it's you're either looking over the shoulder of this moment for what's coming you know worrying about it or or greedily you know kind of reaching out to the thing you want and I mean so so much of life you know 99.9% of life or for most of us is seeking certain experiences and getting them and feeling - the briefest moment of gratification that like we unite with the object of desire for the barely barely a second you know and then then we're on to the next thing or then we're even I mean even the thing we desired if it persisted longer would become undesirable I mean there's imagine like like you know you're going for the bowl of ice cream you're you're getting into the peak taste of it imagine if that taste never went away right like that wouldn't that's the pleasure you know that's not the pleasure you want and that would be intolerable I mean you you go to a doctor it's like I had a bowl of chocolate ice cream last week and I can't get in this case of chocolate a minute okay I mean so what happens is that you you take a bite of ice cream that you thought you wanted more than anything in that moment but actually it's a little too much and yeah you mean you reach for a glass of water and you wash it out at a certain point right like it's like it's not you know some of all of these these things we want are a mirage right you know you get you know what it's like it like you wanted a new watch and you were like you want you want to be associated with this object and you went shopping for it and you finally got it's like this is exactly how I wanted it to look on my wrist and boy am I happy with this and then like you know you have these brief moments of interaction with it and but when you actually drill down on what the experience is like and the experience of being satisfied with with some something in sensory space it is kind of paradoxical and and insubstantial and the thing we actually want is a good enough excuse to totally relax into the present like - and to get rid - to fulfill the desire so that we're not--we're no longer annual desire I'm interested you want to be free of desire right you want to be free of all of your problems you know you want your to-do list to be all checked off and then empty and and then and those become peak moments right so like it but the problem is we associate the experience of completely dry giving up the war and and being completely satisfied in the present we the brief moments we touch that you know and and you know in positive psychology many of these you know states are called flow states those brief moments where we're just we're not worried about anything right we associate that with some you know enormous effort we made to get here right and yet that is in fact the way consciousness already is if we can just pay attention to it and that's why meditation becomes a kind of the ultimate hack of in in how one can pursue one's well-being because it's just it's just it's just true that cut that consciousness is that way and yet we're spending all of our time seeking to have a good enough reason to realize that and it's like if I if I could just win the Nobel Prize I'd feel good enough about myself that I wouldn't feel like I would have to you know do anything just you know I would there would be no but then you know centric you know grandiosity program that I would need to run because I'd have a Nobel Prize but they need to be like well what's next how I stay relevant that's exactly what happens to everyone who wins the Nobel Prize what what happens is it suppressed someone says what are you gonna do next right and like I just won the Nobel Prize and it's so and the half-life of those those peak experiences is incredibly incredibly short you know it's it's it's in the best case it's it's days right but in reality it's you know it's it's unwinding over the course of minutes I remember my whole childhood I wanted to be at all American athlete it was like all I obsessed about I cared about it deeply I would sacrifice my life I never had a sip of alcohol high school or college because I was like I'm gonna do whatever it takes to be an all-american athlete right that was baller football yeah I didn't go partying I didn't go do anything I was like I'm not gonna date girls whatever it takes I will train in the morning the afternoon no sugar anything yeah and I remember I did it in football and a castle on but the first time it happened wasn't at a castle on and I remember it was down to the last event in the decathlon its two-day event ten events and I had to beat I knew exactly who I needed to beat in this 1,500 mile 1,500 race to get the eighth place in eighth place was the cutoff the autumn air so I was like okay comes down to this event and I just got to do something I've never done before to make it happen all my life comes down to this moment right 22 years of existence rheems dedication commitment everything and I go out and I run the race of my life I beat this guy by like a couple of seconds and it was so close to see how many seconds I needed to beat him and they call my name as the eighth place so I get the all-american I get the trophy I stand up on the thing in front of the whole stadium and I'm excited for literally maybe seven minutes maybe ten minutes and then I was mad the whole dinner and I'm sitting there with my family my parents are there my teammates everyone's celebrating me and I'm not angry I don't wanna talk to anyone and I didn't understand why and I think it was because because I was so obsessed of reaching this moment that I was like I don't think it's good enough for me I only got eighth place Oliveira kinda number one you know yeah what I'm gonna do now you move the goalposts yeah yeah and I was just like what now like I'm done with school now what do I do right I've been chasing this thing for so long what do I do now yeah so how old all the drugs and alcohol everything I gave up for this and I was like so how do we stay satisfied in an unsatisfied world well that I mean that's the the false premise I mean this is why this is again you know I don't consider myself a Buddhist and you know in my meditation app I'm not teaching Buddhism but you know it's it's true that Buddhism has such a good handle on this that it's easy to default the Buddhist language so it's often said that you know the Buddha talked about life being suffering and that's actually a mistranslation of what of the original pali that the term is dukkha and the better translation is unsatisfying or unsatisfactory and so now life is suffering life is unsatisfied yeah yeah so and it's unsatisfactory because we're the core reason is that whatever arises having arisen will of necessity pass away everything that is conditioned that everything that we bring conditions together mental and physical conditions and whatever has been has been born of that assembly is impermanent right so you yeah so so the I mean to take your experience you can only stand on that podium for so long right you know a certain point everyone who's been clapping will stop clapping and leave the room right and the neurophysiology of elation like oh finally I did it I did it I'd like it's just to say I did it I like you you only say that to yourself with the voice of your mind so many times right before you sound psychotic right and so everything has a everything just dissipates so you can't emit slily experiences like that and every other is literally like trying to scoop up water in your hands right you can't hold on today and so so that the Buddha was not denying that there are extraordinarily pleasant experiences in life I mean that's that's undeniable but however pleasant they are they pass away and then there are unpleasant experiences that are that are bound to come right it's just like if you sit no matter how comfortable you make your body you know this is a very comfortable chair I can get I could you know given 10 minutes I can get myself in precisely the right position here to be able to sit for as long as possible but at a certain point if I just don't move I will begin to felix crew in pain you know and you can try this I mean just just try to sit in the most comfortable position you can possibly find for four hours right at a certain point you know for most of us well short of four hours you will feel pains in your body that are amazing in the most comfortable bed yeah yeah two days like if you just if you just don't look if you just decide I mean the meditators do this where they vow not to move for some period of time because it's incredibly instructive I mean what happens is you you you know sit as comfortably as you want if you just don't move the pain comes or the itch you know the itching comes and if you're not going to move and scratch or you're not gonna move and relieve that the pain that has just you know been born like a you know a supernova in your knee you what you'll then experience is and this is why it's instructive because you can experience incredibly intense pain that you know conceptually can't be really problematic you're not getting injured you're just sitting in a chair right so whatever you can experience there even if it it is you know the worst pain you've ever felt you know if you just move you're gonna be fine right so so what happens is I mean they're people who sit for 12 hours right and and you expand experience I make it can feel like someone who's just driven a nail into your knee or that he was like just you just broke a vertebrae right like I'm just like awful pain right but it becomes an amazing tool of concentration and because it's impossible to ignore right so the problem with with meditation for most people is that for everyone in the beginning is that you're you have so little concentration that you're just you're lost in thought can perpetually you're trying to follow the breath or you're trying to pay attention to sounds and you do that for a second or two and then you started thinking about you know wonder you know how that interview wind turbine and then then you notice you're thinking and you come back to the object of meditation when you're feeling excruciating pain it's very easy for attention to just dive into it and you can become fantastically concentrated and and concentration it just so happens is intrinsically pleasurable and so much of what we like about you know flow States and and or even just being lost in our work I mean these these these satisfying moments of just be of having of not being scattered at all and being totally focused on something that the plett the pleasure component of that is really just the concentration it doesn't matter what you're focused on I mean literally if you can focus on the breath to the exclusion of everything else for five minutes that becomes like a like a drug experience I mean and that's you know again that's also a temporary experience and the concentration is one another one of these things where you know you create the conditions for it and those conditions are impermanent and then you're you're so the fundamental insight to have is that it's possible to recognize that consciousness itself is free of its contents you know and and that's that's really the purpose of meditation and that's why it's an antidote to the normal ordeal we experience of seeking satisfaction you're talking about you're talking about us at a an experience that lasted minutes that you spent years even even more than even decades right seeking you know and so many of them in so so many people are living their lives with that framework you know unacknowledged or not we're living with this sense of implicit in all of our efforts to become happy is this part this prospect of finally arriving at something and you never arrive right you can't you can't arrive until you can just drop your search right so it's the certain it's the search for happiness that is making us uncomfortable it is is the practice of being uncomfortable in each moment right and and that and and we have to meditation is just the a technique and again there many technique techniques but at bottom it's just relinquishing that that act of indulging the illusion that you could you would be happy if only so if only if only this cup were full of hot coffee right then I would you know yeah but yeah then I could relax I've got a few more questions on assert you are we silly okay on time we should make sure respect your time this is fascinating and I'm curious when do you feel the most loved the most loved well it's interesting because that you know there is a kind of transactional notion of love that most of us grow up with which again I've sort of lost it really since that time that first MDMA trip me that good because because on some level it's not about being loved right like I mean I have you know I have I'm very lucky I'm surrounded by people who love who in fact love me and they can they they successfully communicate that and that's nice right but but the real satisfaction is feeling love well I could again that's a state via this not predicated on what the other person is doing you know so like the parents do you do have kids okay okay so this experience you know okay this is what this will this awaits you you know so much of parenting is not about getting the clear signal of love back shining back at you from your kids right you can't wait for that to feel love for them right so and so much of so much of the experience of my feeling love for my kids happens when they're not especially happy right under there or if they're happy they're certainly not shining it back on me I mean they might be annoyed at me and that annoyance is just the most adorable thing in the world it's like like like that you know I've got a five-year-old who's like she can just whatever is going on with her I mean she can be she's a little tyrant I mean sometimes it's like I'm I'm living in North Korea with him drawing on all right like so like you know if she could have her way you know the whole cities would would burn but she's so adorable right and so it's like it's like and that state of being of just taking delight in the her full range of experience right that is on some level that's possible even with grownups who are unpleasant right like you can just see like some of you you look at the world you can see that you are surrounded by people who are suffering you know like so likely I mean this is sort of the compassion side of the coin rather than a lot like so you know love is I view love as having a few different modes I mean one is what it's like just just to have a fundamental good intention for for other people and other sentient beings and that that's the state of love well so what does that feel like in the state of other people's suffering well that it feels like compassion and you just want you just wish that they were no longer suffering anyway wish you throw something you could do to help and it was it feel like in the state of other people's happiness right and that's the the Buddhist term for that is sympathetic joy it's like you you actually you you take joy in their joy it's like like the feeling you feel like a you know if you see someone win you know on American Idol or whatever you see yeah it's like like that feeling like you know you you can burst into tears of joy for that other person's joy right now it's it's it's used I mean this is a good corrective for where many people are at I mean just notice what it's like when someone close someone in your life experiences some great success right and you know it becomes a potentially more uncomfortable if they if they do it in a zone where you are like well imagine you're trying to become the decathlete right and your best friend is also trying to become it like he comes in first in that race right you know like just how good do you feel for him right now that really is the limit of friendship if what you feel is envy rather than joy in his joy right you're not a good friend right like that like so like that's a boundary that you want to be able to blow past in yourself right so and love is pret real love is the ability to do that I mean real real love is antithesis of envy in that moment and you like it like you you actually do want your friend to totally succeed you get what he waiting you yeah I'm it's like it like it like that like that's the person you want to be like you want to be so stoked that your friend got what he wanted and was dreaming for that you are undiminished by it even when it's even when you guys are in the same Lane right that's what it would I mean and again that's that you know given the right or the wrong arrangement there that could be harder or easier to do but that's a made good ethical and emotionally I think that's the goal to be that kind of person where it's like you know you want people's dreams to be realized and when they're realized that becomes yet more reason for you to be happy true so but when do you feel the most loved personally well so I mean yeah I mean you know hey you know wrestling with my five year old or 10 year old daughter I mean that's just awesome yeah I mean that's just that's the greatest fun you know I ever have in any given day I do Brazilian jiu-jitsu and and so like I'm trying to teach them their the rudiments of jiu-jitsu you know which has the at this point the the routine is kind of like the Peter Sellers movies we're like you know Peter Sellers and Kato or constantly attacking each other you know surprise attacks so that that goes down a lot there's a very girly girls but you know they they can unleash impressive violence it's a great counterpoint to all the princess stuff and yeah it's just it's just pink and then and then it's just like you know like a Quentin Tarantino it's like Kill Bill you know what's the lesson you want to teach your kids the most if you can teach them one lesson what would it be well a lot of what we've been talking about is relevant there I mean just what are them at the real mechanics of suffering and happiness so the power of mindfulness is one but I mean what what gets emphasized even more at this stage and I think is even kind of the coarser grained corrective that that improves people's lives the most is just value honesty as the the most important foundation for ethics and and relationships and so I got when I when I was 18 I decided it was this was the most consequential course I took in college was was a course on just really it was a graduate seminar on whether it was ever ethical to lie right and everyone came into this course you know assuming that you know lion was sometimes a problem and obviously you know if you're lying all the time you're you're a sociopath but but it I would say everyone comes into that course thinking well there's certain situations where you have to Lyme and we all know there are white lies and you know you want to spare people's feelings and you like it so you got some amount of wine it's just essential for doing business right and so the course became just a crucible for kind of pressure testing that assumption and it was taught by this he still teaches it but this wonderful professor at Stanford Ron Howard and I wrote a book lying you know a few years ago based on on this course but this course since the days since some day when I did when I was 18 I recognized that basically I never wanted to lie again well under any circumstances a lot the lion was that occupied some point on the continuum of violence where like if I'm done I'm gonna I'm in a situation where I have to decide whether to punch someone in the face well then okay then lying is part of that right a toolkit but you know it's really only in emergencies where you would even consider it because it it is synonymous with a total breakdown of rational cooperation and collaboration with another person you're not you're no longer treating somebody like a a person who can be reasoned with or related to you're treating them like some emergency that you need to navigate around right and and that's true even for white lies so it's my book line gets into that and gets into white lines especially so since you're 18 do you feel like you've lied along I have you know in a few cases kind of by accident like like like like intentionally trying to yeah like I think you say something then you realize okay that wasn't quite true like it like I that you know I sort of got my there was some embellishment that they came online or something just came out and then it just becomes too awkward to actually get to massage the truth you know it's like or it's it's just it's just too pedantic or too so something like I'm only aware of having told my ten-year-old daughter one lie in her life right I feel like so like what was that are you got to share yeah yeah I know it's completely ridiculous live but Santa Claus is real yeah yeah so like so that that's actually the most common question I get in response to this this paradigm that like what about Santa Claus it's no fairy or whatever you have yeah and the answer there is that you know Christmas can be you don't have to lie to your kids to make Christmas fun right like like you notice you don't even notice no one feels like you have to lie about Halloween to make it fun right no one says no these witches are real ghosts you don't have to do that good fiction is fun enough for kids that you can make Santa Claus fun but it's what did you Leiter about we were looking at a well he'd done like some kind of Google search I mean she was she was maybe six right so she had no understand even understand the lie that I told but we've done a Google search on something that was producing like medieval wood cuts of like you know like something about the Middle Ages or Knights or work you know something and a woodcut came up that was just one of these you know happily was it was a woodcut not a real image but it was it was it was like one of these 50 century woodcuts of you know someone being decapitated right in during the Inquisition right yeah someone's head is getting sawed off and you know so I swiped by that and and she says daddy what was that and so I pull it back and I said well that that was a very ancient and impractical form of surgery and like I'm not even sure so something like sorry I just she was not prepared for me to say I got killed yeah there's circumstances where other people cut other people's heads off you know for bad reasons you feel bad that you told the lie or do you feel like that's a split was well I just didn't I wasn't I didn't think on my feet quickly enough but I mean there you know there's a role for so kind of radical honesty doesn't entail isn't incompatible with withholding certain information I mean like you don't have to tell kids everything about what's going on like my you know my daughter's don't need to know exactly what Isis was up to and you know it just how horrible all that was it's like there's a time to tell them what you know what was going on in the world so but the honest truth for my kids in those situations is Alyssa there's stuff you don't need to know yeah right like like yeah yeah you'll learn that later you know I you know it's interesting about this you know for the last six months I've been thinking about honesty more than ever in my life I feel like you know I've cheated I cheated almost all my way through school you know on quizzes and tests and homework right out of necessity because I couldn't comprehend the information and no matter how many tutors I had all through school it's like it was survival for me now I'm not saying I'm proud of this yeah I told things that I lied about from stores right I was a kid you know for two years I had to steal every time I went to a store mostly candy bars or whatever would be smaller things but still I stole things for a couple years right not proud of that and would lie about it and in relationships intimate relationships I remember wanting to tell the truth but having these negative consequences when I would and so I would start to have more white lies yeah and I would never feel good about it your ever yeah but I felt like it was more of a defense and is immoral way to survive or whatever it may be and I just started dating someone at the beginning this year and within the first few weeks of us dating she said I want you to promise me you'll always tell me the truth and it was like I had a moment where I said okay my conditions in the past is most of my experiences people can't handle the truth in intimate relationships and there's consequences when you tell the truth there's reactions there's you know all this energy that's I don't want to feel but I just said okay I'm gonna say everything a hundred percent true that happens from this moment out hmm and it's the most liberating thing yeah to be able to say okay I'm telling you the truth about everything no matter what yeah and if it doesn't work out it doesn't work out between us or whatever or for you to react but I'm gonna be honest and it just feels more peace yeah yeah and then the the growth is in that it forces growth on you and other people in surprising ways I mean so for instance once you decide that you can't lie then you fight then then that suddenly becomes a mirror held up to yourself then you find out what kind of person you are right here I'm not gay if I'm not going to how integrity yes like so why don't you want to go out with me right like if I if I if I don't have recourse to a lie right well then I then I'm forced to both and some on some of them articulate who I am to the other person yeah like you know you're too fat right am i that kind of person right so I like that you're forced to recognize just how deep that runs in yourself if if you're not gonna lie right and then then you can you know then there's growth that happens in all of those areas the I mean so much of the notion of white lies is as a matter of avoiding awkwardness and that's it's just not aborting pain right yeah yeah but the the thing that happens in relationship when you resolve not to lie is that and then people know this about you or discover this about you is that then you become a refuge for people actually want honest feedback and they would they want to know like then they know you're not gonna lie to them right so like what so and then when you tell them that you love something they did like if someone hands you their novel and you say you love it they know you're not bullshitting right right they really matter and and I've had this I've gone through this with so many people where it's like they've shown me one thing and I said okay well you want to know what I think about this and I tell them something they really felt like they didn't want to hear but they you know they recognized on some level I mean on some of it you can always frame it as listen I mean this is just my opinion I'm not you know I'm mission day like I said yeah it's like so this is my this is how your novel strikes me like the it may have a different effect on the people but you know here's what I feel very strongly about and then you you give them the download and you know certain people you'll discover actually didn't want beep honest feedback and they'll never don't never give you that again right which is fantastic right you don't want you don't want to hear from them on that point but the people who do want honest feedback really appreciate it and then when they give you the other novel they wrote and you love it mmm they know it's not [ __ ] and that's you know you become incredibly valuable creatively that's good what is the question that you wish you had the answer to that you like this is a certain fact about this answer well the deepest one is it's related to what we were talking about earlier just exactly how is consciousness integrated with the physics of things and how does consciousness arise you know what what's the answer to the you know what's called in philosophy the mind-body problem that would be you know if there were if there are one scientific mystery I would want to solve that would be it mm-hmm and we talked about your parents briefly before we started on camera I'm curious who was more influential in your life and what was the biggest lesson they taught you well it's definitely my mom my mom raised me essentially a single mom my dad left when I was two and a half and I had a relationship with him until he died when I was 17 but it was a long-distance one he he moved to New York and so it was you know that was interesting like I didn't really see the implications of all of that until I became a dad and like I mean just how you know aberrant that was to just leave it to it like a certain point I had a two and a half year old daughter and I thought what kind of guy would I need to be to leave now and move 3,000 miles away and you know have the level of involvement my dad had with me so you know through my my child's eye view of him I didn't really see the problem I kinda just complete level I probably thought I was the problem right but like it was just it was not you know yeah once I had a kid I realized not only was that unthinkable for me like I don't think I mean I know I know people of you know varying quality in my life I don't I don't think I know a dad who would do that right like I like I mean it was it was just very very strange epiphany to be able to triangulate on on him in that way so it's definitely my mom and what was the lesson the greatest lesson she's taught you that's it's hard to say I mean she's you know we we've been best friends for for so much of my life you know I think my love of books and my love of writing and like that all of that got set by her I mean she was somebody who was a big reader and just loved you know I grew up with you know like the television in the living room just had books it was like a wall of books all around it was like oh television just said in books and I remember you know from a very early age you know from you know age five I remember just like their books everywhere and and she's a great sense of humor so it's like in so far as finding finding the funny and things you know that you know that's a corrective for almost everything and that that's where she lives what's the greatest lesson your dad taught you in his absence or maybe I remember he explicitly taught me a lesson it's funny this is this is how old I was but I remember he explained I think I you know I was always somewhat shy I think I mean I definitely default to shyness and the more of an introvert and extrovert at one point I think he must have noticed this about me and he he said when you meet somebody I want you to notice whether they go to shake your hand first or you go to shake their hand first and I realized like that was it wasn't just about that he was like I like that like that way of thinking about just just being conscious of how I was relating to people was something that had never occurred to me at that point in my life like I just again I might have been you know ten years old or something but like it like it realized like that was like a a new piece of software that I you know I could have that you know I didn't even know was possible like oh like oh you can actually change the sort of thing about yourself like you can this this might matter so um so yeah I remember him you know consciously trying to impart that lesson what's the lesson you wish you were taught you well I mean it's really just obey the truth is I'm not even sure so he died when I was 17 so I didn't really have a fully adult relationship with him I got a and and and this was strangely there's this so everything we've been talking about in terms of like what I've realized in my life that's a value he liked it and the wisdom component of life and really most of my intellectual interests all of that came online when I was 18 you know he died when I was 17 so like there's a an amazing bifurcation in my life between you know who I am and have become and who I was doing it when you know when I had a father so I and I have no idea how what he would have thought about any of this or what he would have been like to interact with they so like I don't know how wise he was or wasn't you know there's very um it's interesting it's just like yeah I mean they let the lesson there you know that he teaches me and my absent and in his absence is that you know there's everything's in part you don't know how long anything's going to last right you don't know when the last when it will be the last time you were seeing a person right what's the quality of that interaction what haven't you said to the people you care about you know so um I mean he was a very loving guy and it was not there was a certain scent of zero conflict but it was just yeah it's just it's it's odd to consider the life choices he made you know as a father listen do you think you'd be where you are today without his death as you know successful and pursuing the questions and the work and the mission that you have if he was at home with you when you're a child yes or you know I don't know yeah I don't know I mean death has been a very important part of my life and it's not like it was what my best friend died when I was when we were both 13 well so and that was a like as far as an experience of death I kind of the the rude you know interruption in one's otherwise carefree life wasn't kind yeah like that was like the fact that that was on the menu you know that your 13 year old friend can just die and disappear that was that that was the biggest shock with respect to people close to me who died you know other people have died since but and that you know so from when I was 13 on I was somebody whose thing had kind of big picture philosophical concerns about you know what does it all mean and you know what's you know what is what does it mean to die and what happens after death and so I was I mean when I was 18 I had you know certain experiences that really answered some of those concerns but the you know I was thinking about issues of life and death from kind of 13 on and that that's been super and then so when my dad died when when I was 17 and he you know he had cancer for you know the better part of two years before that so I kind of saw that whole process and so that was yeah I mean it was it's sobering you know it's like it you realized that they it's it's good to get your head straight about things sooner rather than later and so I've always you know it has a I'm always amazed to meet people who don't think about death at all like and do their best not to think about death and succeed right so with it's just it's like they're just living their lives it's just the goal is to have as much fun and have as much success and just gonna keep it all positive and because they they seem to think that the end the alternative is to be made morbid by death right or to become a kind of you know Woody Allen character who's just torn neurotic and tortured by one's concern about death right whereas there's there's a kind of a third channel to be on which is you can actually be at the primary source of wisdom like it like it's massively clarifying to realize that you know you've only got a certain number of days right and then the end so like how I had just how do you want to live in each moment and you know just how trivial do you want to be you know how long do you how long do you want to suffer over this thing that you know is not going to matter not only but certainly not gonna matter on your deathbed it's not even gonna matter two days right all right like like it's like and yet now it's it's the thing that you're completely buried in yeah what's the thing you're most proud of that you've done in your life that you wish your dad would have seen or know about it's funny some of these words don't land on the right shelf like like like like proud dad doesn't so say I'm very in touch with the fact that I'm I don't know if you've heard my argument against free will but like I don't actually feel personally responsible for the good things that that happen in my life that I've done like sigh but I just I'm very it's very salient to me that I didn't make myself right I can't take any deep responsibility for for the tools I have or don't have that the level of effort I can exert or not the priorities I have or you know lose sight of and then find again I mean like all of this when you become aware of what it's like to be you a moment a moment you see that everything is just happening right including your your capacity for effort including the the the the the day is you set an alarm and wake up early the days you hit the snooze button once and the days you hit the snooze button five times like like all all of that is part of the what's just happening in the universe right and and it's not you can't make choices but again the choices themselves are also just happening and so when I look at what I've done that strikes me as good you know if given a chance I would have done that again right what I see is a lot of good luck right like I'm lucky to have had the the the capacity to do those things you know to end it or to have developed it and I'm lucky to be born into a society where I don't have to worry about all the things that you know someone in Syria has to worry about right now you know I can't take any responsibility for the fact that I wasn't born in Syria you know in a civil war and so I just see like I just see that I have all of these opportunities that have been able to make much of but you know not every day and I can't I can't account for why I haven't been able to make more of them right so like so I don't feel like I mean that the the flipside of pride is you no shame or self-reproach or some you know that some a corollary negative state I don't spend a lot of time on that either you know so so yeah I'm very you know things are more miserable yeah things are going well and I'm very grateful for the the opportunities I have to to deal with interesting ideas and meet interesting people and and you know add value to people's lives and and be surrounded by people who are adding value to most graça this is a question I asked a one at the end it's called the three truths mhm so imagine it is your last day as many years of ways you want it to be it can be 500 years old 100 years old whatever it is it's your last day you gotta go it's time to die do you get to have the situation you want it to be you've got your family surrounding you it's the good way of dying I guess if we're gonna call it that and you've accomplished the things you want to accomplish you've said the things you needed to say written the books you know people admire you whatever you want it happened a for whatever reason you can only share three final things you know to be true about all of your existence your life and everything that you've created has to go with you hypothetically so no one has access to your podcast or your app or your bloggers or anything like that but you get to write down the piece of paper and share your three final truths mmm the lessons you would leave behind to humanity what would you say are your three truths well we've covered that we've actually been talking about them more or less this whole time the core is the first one is that there is just consciousness and its contents you know that it's and you know the implication the implication that all of that has for well-being right like this is just you know it was a kind of admonition to look more deeply into that fact right because of all the good things that come and all the bad things that stopped happening once I do that that's one that's one so that's the that's the kind of the contemplatively inside of it then there's the you know I guess I could put it in the form of a question you know why would you ever lie and that's the ethical side of it you know that sorts out one's relationships you know once you seize the whole seize hold of that all the people you shouldn't be spending time with kind of magically disappear and all the people who want to have an honest relationship with you are there and when appreciate your honesty that's great [Music] the third one I guess I won we would should address in a more you know society like how do we how do we work in our society in a way that makes sense yeah this isn't poetry but the the your last yeah yeah yeah this is this is all the world knows you by this is this is an ugly last truth but it but it's nonetheless consequential I think incentives are everything at the level of society it's like what we want is to organize society in such a way where ordinary neurotic selfish people are incentivized to behave better and better toward one another I mean that that's how we built this thing to really be a kind of utopia where like it can't be it can't be dependent on everyone becoming a saint or or even especially wise it had we need to incentivize the things we want to see happen that in a way that takes out the friction and so much of what we see in the world that is creating needless human misery is a matter of incentives being badly aligned so you have good people doing horrific things just because they're incentivized to live that way you know and they're not incentivized to do the alternative yeah yeah I love it you've got the making sense podcast you've got the waking up app which everyone should get on on their their phone App Store where else can we connect with you what else can we do to support you in your mission well those are the two main places I miss all as Sam Harris that org is my website so you want to know more about what I'm doing or like a calendar of live events or anything like that that's that's always there a touring your speaking occasionally Amazon not much on the calendar at the moment but I've got an event in LA at The Wiltern on July 11th I don't know when this is going to come out but that's that's happening then but yeah I'm trying to keep the calendar a little clearer at the moment but yeah everything everything gets eventually announced on my website or on my podcast in the app so you're on Instagram Twitter everywhere I'm for better and worse I'm on Twitter I see a lot of your tweets ah yeah yeah the tweets can be brutal you got great opinions yeah yeah yeah yeah so I'm less on Twitter but Twitter's the only one I really engage with personally I mean we put stuff out in a perfunctory way everywhere there is where you go that's me on Twitter yes you're a veteran I like it so make sure you guys check out the making sense podcast that's about once a week on average yeah times waking up app I highly recommend it's really powerful what you've done there so congrats on that no it's been helping tens of thousands of people who have been using it already if not more maybe right now but grats on that I want to acknowledge you for a moment Sam for your wisdom and your intellect and your ability to dive into topics that are very controversial for people who have set beliefs that I don't want to look deeper into another option or another way and you continue to research dive in tests analyze ideas thoughts and beliefs that can hopefully and more end suffering for a lot of people or support people and less suffering to live a happier life and bring more peace to their hearts so I acknowledge you for yeah your gift even though you say that everything is you know you're lucky and situations but you've decided to continue to make the choices to serve people in this way and I acknowledge that cool well thank you thank you for us and of course the final question is what's your definition of greatness definition of greatness well I mean this really is really - it's I mean that you know the conventional one of you know whatever your whatever your goal is to be able to meet that most efficiently all right and I said this this greatness in so many areas of our lives so the but Beauty is an elegance as variables are we recognize greatness when when those are also maximized right so it's like it's a sort of thing so how you arrive at something matters as well as I'm not in since just not that you arrived so yeah I think you know I mean real greatness is a matter of meeting worthy goals and that you know that has the well-being well being an ethical component to it as elegantly as possible hmm big Sam Harris thanks man appreciate the pleasure - Shannon you

Channel: Lewis Howes

Views: 280,896

Rating: 4.8452597 out of 5

Keywords: lewishowes, the school of greatness, interview, business, self help, motivation, sam harris, suffering, satisfaction, emotions, mindfulness, attention, reality, experiences, motivational speech, inspirational video, lewis howes, jordan peterson, motivational video, self improvement, lewis howes interview, self development, sam harris debate, Ben Affleck & Sam Harris, inspiration, motivational videos, personal development, life is suffering, overcome anxiety, suffering jordan peterson

Id: iOYtxr7twB0

Length: 63min 27sec (3807 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 19 2019