Transcript of The Meaning of Your Life with Arthur Brooks: Finding Purpose in an Age of Emptiness

The number one predictor of depression and anxiety is the answer to the question, does your life feel meaningless? The answer, yes. That's a meaning crisis. What's meaning? Where do you find it? How do you live differently? What's going wrong? The happiest people are practicing 4 things every day. They are.

Do you know the meaning of your life? Do you feel a true sense of purpose? Is this something you've been searching for but perhaps are struggling struggling with? If so, you're not alone. Millions of people, in fact, describe this feeling of a growing sense of emptiness or lack of significance. And if you can relate and if you want more meaning and fulfillment in your life, then today's episode is for you. Arthur C. Brooks is a Harvard professor, PhD social scientist, and number one bestselling author of multiple books who specializes in using the highest levels of science and philosophy to provide people with actionable strategies to live live their best lives right now. And in his brand new book, it's called "The Meaning of Your Life," he leans on cutting-edge science and great philosophers to give us a blueprint that he says will help even the most skeptical person find a life of spiritual transcendence, passionate love, and true calling. Yes, please. Arthur speaks to audiences around the world about human happiness and he's flown across country to be here in person with you and me today. I am so excited for this conversation. And whether today you're listening for yourself or because someone you love shared this episode with you, I wanna welcome you to the Jamie Kern Lima Show podcast family.

Thank you so much for being here. If you haven't done this already, can you take a second and click the follow or subscribe button on the app you're listening to or watching on right now? It really truly means the world to me. And also you can get more inspiration for free right now from me to you. Just join my newsletter community at jamiekernlima.com. And this incredible episode today, it's not just for you and me. Please share this with every single person that you know who may need some inspiration or to find meaning in their life today, because what you're about to hear can truly impact mine, yours, and their lives too.

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Arthur Brooks, welcome to the Jamie Kern Lima Show.

Thank you, Jamie. It's so great to be with you. Two Seattle kids together, huh?

Yes, yes. And we both have roots Lived in Montecito, I learned.

Uh-huh, yeah, my dad went to high school at Santa Barbara High School and they lived in Montecito, but that was way before my time.

Before your time, yeah. It's wild, you know, I live in Santa Barbara and Montecito area now, and I was adopted. I didn't know this my whole life. I learned it at age 27, but long story short, my birth mom was actually a student at UCSB.

Really?

And she had me, in secret, gave, you know, and then placed me in adoption. And she worked down the street, actually, from where I live as a lifeguard. And it's kind of wild that my whole life went in a whole different area, then I end up back here.

You end up back here.

Living here.

All roads lead to Montecito, kind of. I think so.

I think so.

I used to spend summers a lot here, actually. When I was a kid, we would come down here. My dad would take doctoral classes when he was working on his PhD at UCSB, as a matter of fact. So a lot of my summer memories are from here too.

And you're, is it, are you third generation academic? I know you're a musician and a whole bunch of other things.

My dad, my, that's the family business. You know, the Gambinos do mob stuff. You know, the Rothschilds do banking stuff. Well, the Brookses do academic stuff.

You do academics. Well, we are all benefiting from that and blessed from that. And you've had so many bestselling books. You've co-written a book with Oprah. You are, you know, you teach the top class at Harvard on happiness. And so, So many people, I feel grateful to get so many messages and emails and DMs from people every day. And one of the biggest questions is like, how do I find my purpose? But also, how do I find happiness? And why right now? Why are so many people unhappy?

Right. That's a big problem that we actually see. And it's been growing, you know, it's almost, you'd say there's sort of a climate and a weather problem for unhappiness, where the climate is sort of the general conditions of happiness have been in decline. And then there've been some big storms along the way. Since about 1990, general happiness has been ticking down in the United States and many other countries around the world. And the general reason for that is that the happiest people are practicing 4 things every day. They're paying attention to their faith or life philosophy or spirituality. They're paying attention to their family life. They're paying attention to their friendships. And they're looking for work that's meaningful and serves other people. And all 4 of those things have been gradually in decline. And so that's kind of a sickness, a climatic problem for happiness. And then there's been 3 big storms that have had sort of a downdraft on happiness. Number 1 was when everybody got on small screens, you know, and that was 2008, 2009, when screen-based life and apps became ubiquitous, and that pulled us apart from each other. There was COVID, of course, you know, everybody went home and skyrocketing rates of depression, anxiety.

And then of course there's the whole climate of politics in this country, which has been extremely polarizing. And we're being told by activists and politicians that if your, your brother-in-law or your aunt doesn't vote like you, you got to stop talking to them. And that's just terrible advice that's leading to tremendous amounts of unhappiness as well. And so these are the things that I'm trying to combat in my work and bring people back to bonds and happiness and love using science and ideas. That's, that's my life's mission. For me, that's a huge opportunity because I get to live what God put me on earth to do, I think.

And would you say that we have a growing crisis of meaning?

Yeah, for sure. And this is what I saw when I came back to teaching. I left teaching for 11 years in the middle of my career, and I went to run a big think tank nonprofit organization in Washington, D.C., and I came back in 2019. So I was gone from 2008 to 2019, and it was not the same place that I left that I came back to. When I left in 2008, universities were happier than the rest of the world. You're falling in love, you're making your friends, you're learning interesting things. And I came back in 2019 and there were very high rates of depression, loneliness, anxiety, and people studying at universities were unhappier than the rest of the population. And I'm like, now I'm trained as a behavioral scientist, so this is my Sherlock Holmes moment. Like, what's going on? And I started working on that. And this book, this new book, "The Meaning of Your Life," is the culmination of that because the number one predictor of depression and anxiety for adults under 30 is the answer to the question, does your life feel meaningless? The answer, yes. That went up at exactly the same rates as people feeling depressed, anxious, and lonely.

And that's what predicts it the best. So that's a meaning crisis. And that's a whole, boy, what a kettle of fish. What's meaning? Where do you find it? How do you live differently? What's going wrong? And the answer, well, that's the book. I mean, the 6 ways that you do find it and to establish, the sense of meaning in your life in 6 months. At least that's the proposition.

Yeah, well, I've read the book cover to cover, "The Meaning of Your Life." And if you're just tuning in right now and you're like so many of us, or maybe you have like a sense of emptiness, or you're a seeker of meaning all the time, or you're like, you know, I really don't know the meaning of my life. Is meaning the same thing as purpose? And how do I feel more fulfilled and happy? There's so many questions that so many of us have, and I'm so excited for your book. And by the way, if you're just tuning in right now, you're listening or watching me me and Arthur, grab your copy right now, "The Meaning of Life." You can get it anywhere books are sold. And also the audio version, Audible. Sometimes I love to listen when I'm just like, do my morning walk and I'll read it.

I'll read it to anybody who—

Yes, well, it's so good and it's so important. Off the top, the question, so many people wanna know, Arthur Brooks, what is the meaning of life? Where do you find it? How do you have to live differently so you can find it in modern life?

Yeah, exactly right. And it really starts with an even more fundamental question, which people sort of assume they know, but they don't, which is what's happiness? You know, when my last book that I wrote with Oprah Winfrey, our mutual beautiful friend, that defines happiness in a way that people find very counterintuitive. A lot of people think that happiness is a feeling and they're looking for a feeling. We're a very feelings-based culture. And to look for happiness as a feeling is to really go after a vapor. Happiness and feelings are related, but the feelings of happiness are related to happiness like the smell of your turkey is related to your dinner. It's not the same thing. It's evidence of the dinner. So don't go looking for feelings. You need something more tangible. Happiness has macronutrients, sort of the protein, carbohydrates, and fat of happiness are enjoyment, satisfaction, and meaning. Those are the 3 things that people need to look at. And when I talk to somebody for the first time, or I'm coaching somebody, I'm working with an executive or whatever, I'll look into their lives to see where they're weak. It's kind of like looking at their nutrition and say, "Yeah, you're eating too many carbohydrates.

You need more protein." And I can find that out pretty quickly. I have diagnostic tests for that. Many people don't have enough enjoyment. They don't enjoy their lives enough. They're super hard workers, or they're not taking satisfaction in their accomplishments 'cause they don't know what they're doing with their life. But most frequently with young adults in particular, they don't know the why of their lives. They don't know why they're on earth. They have no sense of that. And that's the big crisis that I find here. The big blockage for people today, and not just young adults, a lot of people my age too, are struggling with The why questions. Why am I doing what I'm doing? Why does my life matter? Why are things happening all around me? Those are the why questions of meaning. And when I start seeing those things, wow, boy, do I know that I'm gonna have a problem on my hands, which is an opportunity to get better if we know what we're doing.

And so can you talk about meaning, purpose, and significance?

Yeah, so meaning, It's, you know, to say, "What's the meaning of life?" is too big. You know, you gotta go sit in the mouth of a cave and ask a guru in the Himalayas or something. "What's the meaning of life?" It's like a New Yorker cartoon, practically. You need to break it down. All big problems can be broken down into smaller problems. You know, it's one of the things when I talk to people about how to fix their marriages, that you break it into smaller problems and have smaller tasks. And when you do that, you can repair almost any marriage, but not when you say, I'm unhappy in my marriage. That's too big. That's too big. The same thing is true with meaning. The meaning of life is too big a question. It's really 3 smaller questions. The first is, why are things happening the way they're happening? That's coherence. That's the sense of coherence. And maybe your answer to that is because that's what God wants, or maybe it's because that's what science dictates. Some people really go down the rabbit hole of conspiracy theories. A lot of people do that today. That's a hunger for meaning is what that is, because they're trying to look for an answer to the question, why are things happening the way that they are.

So when you have somebody in your family who's just really nutty on conspiracy theories, don't yell at 'em or send 'em articles and say, "Do your homework, idiot." That's really counterproductive. They're looking for a sense of coherence. Give them a better way to find coherence. Talk to them about science. Talk to them about your faith. Talk to them about spirituality, different ways to find coherence. That's number 1. Number 2 is purpose. And purpose is not the same thing as meaning. It's part of meaning. Purpose is the why am I doing what I'm doing? Where am I going with my life? What are my goals? What's my direction? If you don't have that, you're going to be going in circles. You're really going to be going in circles. This is one of the reasons that people who have purpose, when they know that they've got this big goal— when you think back on your own life, I mean, you've had this legendary life of an entrepreneur, but there was purpose. You were going in a particular direction and you were driven, driven, and that was really helpful for you to find meaning. It wasn't the meaning of my life is having a successful cosmetics company.

No, the meaning of your life has purpose where you're going in a particular direction and you know you're creating value. The third is, the third is significance. Why does my life matter and to whom? And if it's like, I don't know why, and it's not meaningful to anybody, it's not, it's not significant to anybody, you're going to be in trouble. So that's why when people get deeply involved in their faith, they have a much better sense of meaning because you're significant to God. That's when they have a good relationship with their family and friends. Meaning becomes clearer because love is part of significance. And those are the 3 things we need to look at. The problem is those are hard to find for a lot of people in modern life today, and they're going about trying to find these in the wrong way.

Can you say more about that?

Yeah. So life changed quite significantly over the past 20 years, especially for young adults. Insofar as life is very technology-based. One of the things that's different from when I was a kid, a young adult, and the young adult lives of my adult children, yes, is that they suppose that there's an answer to every question that they can find by using technology. As a matter of fact, if you can't Google it, it's not a real question. But the big questions in life you can't Google. Like, why am I alive? For what would I give my life? I defy anybody to put that into a Google search bar or into ChatGPT and get an answer that means anything. ChatGPT can't tell you what you'd give your life for. That's something you have to live with. That's a meaning question. The result of it is that a lot of young people today, they live only in the space of questions that they can answer online. And that is literally using their brain in the wrong way. Our brain has two sides to it, the right side and the left side. That's a big fancy neuroscience theory called hemispheric lateralization.

You gotta have a fancy word for it. That's how we get tenure in my business. That's in academia. The right side of your brain answers these, deals with the complex questions of mystery and meaning and love and happiness, the life in life. The left side figures out complicated stuff like how do I create an app that will find a pizza place that's open at 10:00 PM? Or how do I design a jet engine? Or for that matter, where do I go to find a better toaster? Those are all left-brain questions. But modern life is trying to make everything into the left brain. It's trying to make us technologically savvy enough to answer any question. And that's locking down the right side, the mystery and the meaning side of life, the love side of life, where you're looking for the cosmic understanding of why life matters. You're not going to solve that problem. All the problems you really care about in life, you can't solve. You can only live with. You know, it's like, I've been married 34 years. I've never solved my marriage. I just live with my marriage. And that's why I love my marriage.

But if I were trying to solve it with this app or that technology or, you know, this algorithm, it would be a complete failure because it would never fit. I would never be living right now in love, which is what my right brain allows me to do, unless I lock it down and neglect it. And that's what's happening.

I have friends that literally do not see their therapist anymore, and they use AI or ChatGPT for their marriage therapy.

It's a big mistake.

Can you talk about this? This is so good. Um, you and I were talking before we even started this conversation, and I was like, oh, I've gotta get this on camera. This is so good because can you talk about how if we start only living in our left brain and technology and just the way we live our lives is there, and then we stop accessing our right brain, the right side of our brain, what happens? And does that prevent us from finding meaning, but also does that prevent us from being in love and feeling a sense of connection with the divine and feeling like that, the fulfillment and feeling, period.

Right, no, you got it. You got it is the answer to that. People ask me all the time, how will AI affect my happiness? Because I'm a happiness specialist, and I say, well, it depends.

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And now more of this incredible conversation together.

People ask me all the time, how will AI affect my happiness? Because I'm a happiness specialist, and I say, well, It depends. If you're using AI to solve complicated tasks and it's freeing up a bunch of time in your life and you're using that time to go spend time with people you love, two thumbs up. But if you're using it as a substitute for the people that you love and who understand you and who are making a real human connection with you, you're gonna be in trouble. If you're trying to use AI as your best friend or as your lover or as your therapist, that's not gonna get the job done. Fool you, but your brain knows. What that's doing is it's simulating real life. You know, in the most popular movie of 1999 was "The Matrix." And that was all about this crazy science fiction story of an artificial intelligence that's taking the energy away from human beings and putting them in a simulation so they won't complain. It's basically the plot of "The Matrix." Jamie, we're in the matrix. It's happening to us right now. People are spending all day long simulating a real life.

They get up and check their messages. Messages and they go to work on Zoom and they're dating on an app and their friends are online and they're gaming to get a sense of accomplishment. And it's a simulation. That's all left brain. And there's one thing that you can't simulate, and that's the meaning of your life. The things that mean something to you, your love relationships and the sense of the divine, you can't simulate that. And so what'll happen is you get more and more depressed, more and more lonely, more and more anxious, and you don't know why. The reason is because you're literally using your brain wrong. And everybody watching And they're like, "Yes, yes." It feels like a simulation. It's not your fault. You're in, the matrix is all around us. What we have to do is to break out. And this book is the manual, is the handbook, is how to break out of the matrix and get to the right side of your brain.

It's so good. It's so good. It's so true. And it's so easy. It's so addicting to just be on your phone, to look at it first thing in the morning, to, you know, look at the latest funny thing your friend just sent you to, I mean, just like on and on and on and on and on, right? And one of the things I love that I find really, really fascinating that you talk about too, is that people are trying to search for meaning in macro things, fame or likes and followers or activism even, you say, not realizing that meaning can come from the micro things.

Yeah, and meaning largely does come from these micro things. And so when it's missing, you look for something, somebody's offering you this and you take it and offering you that. Somebody says, if you vote this way, you'll feel better. If you get angry and march in a demonstration against something else, that everything will be okay. No, no, no, no, no. The problem is you're not in your native habitat. You're stuck outside the place where you need to be. You're not home. You're only home on the right side. And so you need to live differently. You need to live in an old-fashioned way. Yeah, on the right side. I'm not talking about politically.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, you say more about this because because when you talk about the micro, right? To find meaning and how most meaning is found in the micro. Explain what the micro is, 'cause this is something everyone can do right now, right, in your life.

And it's thinking about the little things in your life that really are the life in your life. That's really what it comes down to. And it's funny because that was all of life not that long ago. My great-granddad Brooks was not, didn't ever come home to my great-grandmother and say, "You know, honey, I had a panic attack behind the mule today." It wasn't a thing. It wasn't a thing at all. His brain was working the way it was supposed to. And by the way, his day-to-day life was probably pretty boring, but at the end of his life, he didn't say, "My life was boring." In contrast with today, with a lot of young people who are never bored, moment to moment, they're never bored. But their life is boring. Why is that, that you're never bored in the micro moments, but you're completely bored when you look at the totality of your life, which is exactly the opposite of the way that's supposed to work? And if you're not alive, like right here, right now, I mean, it's one of the reasons that this conversation doesn't work the same way if it's virtual. I mean, it's okay, but this is better 'cause I'm looking in your eyes, I can see you as a real person across from me.

And that's a very important thing for us to understand that we're, We're having an experience that's where we're communicating with the right hemispheres of our brain right now, which is why we're able to talk about meaning and understand each other is what it comes down to. And that's what we need more of in life. There are big, sort of 6 big ways to set up the micro-moments in your life to fight back, to break out of the matrix, actually. Before you do that, however, you gotta get clean because you're probably addicted. Now, I'm not a militant about I'm not some sort of a Luddite, or I have a phone like you. I'm on social media because I'm trying to bring beautiful messages of love and happiness and hope to people on social media. But we have to be able to use it in the right way so that we manage it and it doesn't manage us.

And it's just so addicting. I was sharing with you right before we started that this morning, I was thinking about your work a lot, of course. And this morning, my husband and I are having this conversation And I realized most of our conversations, he's looking at his phone. Sometimes I'm looking at my phone, trying to, and that's our connection. And it's like, oh, okay. We're sort of like in the left brain and we're, you know, but we're not in that.

You're not making a right-brain connection with the person with whom you should have, you know, it's like many religious traditions talk about a married couple being one flesh. And that's easy to sort of understand viscerally, but what that's really talking about, the one flesh is the two right brains working together. That's the— it's the uplink between the two brains. That's an antenna to the divine. That's why the most profound connection somebody has in a spiritual sense is when they're with their soulmate. But it won't happen if you're actually cutting those neurophysiological connections by using the devices. Because when you're both on the left side of your brains, it's just technology. You know, you're missing these opportunities. And so I talk an awful lot with my classes about about how these connections actually get made between people. Very specifically, it's super important. And we were talking offline before about these ideas that I had about what the science says about how to repair any marriage. And it starts by looking at each other in the eyes when you talk every time. That's more important for women than for men. And guys don't know this, but like, why is she so mad at me?

Because you're not looking at her in the eyes and she gets 3 times as much oxytocin as you with eye contact. Women produce more oxytocin than men, and the reason is because women are evolved to make an immediate connection with a newborn infant. And you look, and when you're nursing a baby, the baby looks at you in the eyes, and this is like oxytocin. It's a neuropeptide, and it's a bonding hormone. That's my baby, that's my baby. And the baby's going, that's my mama, that's my mom. Men get a third as much, which is still significant, right? And the number one way that you get it as a married couple is by staring at each other in the eyes when you're talking. And so I'll say to guys who say that, "My wife's really unhappy with me. I feel like we're getting, we're separating from each other. We're not close." I say, "Okay, number one thing, never have a conversation with her in the kitchen or wherever you are, especially when you lie down at night, is stare at each other when you're talking. Just look at her in the eyes every single time you're talking and she'll just be weirdly happier." and she won't know why.

It's what it comes down to. Now, on the other side, for him, what he needs is to be touched more. When you're next to him, always be touching. ABT— always be touching. This is when he's producing more vasopressin, which is another hormone, but that's his, like, I'm big and strong. And so if you're walking together and you link your arm in his, he feels like he's a giant. And that's more important to men. As it turns out. So it's number one, eye contact in every conversation, and ABT, always be touching. This solves so many problems in marriages. And this is something that we can actually get, that where you use the science, what we're talking about here, you'll weirdly have a sense of meaning in your marriage and you won't know why, because the mysterious side of your brain is working.

Does it matter where you're touching?

Yeah, I mean, it's like there's, you know, appropriate touch depending on where you are. Yeah. Yeah, but it's just touching. Just touching. It's just like holding hands and touching. And always, men often don't know they need that, but they really, really need that from their wives. It's super important, actually. And that will make him way, way, way more connected. But he has to do his part too, which is the eye contact.

The eye contact. The eye contact. So good. I think so many people are having, as Oprah would say, big aha moments right now, because it's so easy for neither of those those things to be happening.

Totally, totally. And then what happens is you kind of fall out of the rhythm of what a— that's very— those things are super easy to do when you're first in love because you'd want to stare into each other's eyes all the time and you're touching all the time. But you don't realize that what that's doing is bonding you to each other with oxytocin and vasopressin and various other neurochemistry that's going on. But you have to do it manually because life gets busy. You got a bunch of kids and you're running a business and everybody's traveling and everybody's nutty. And did you pick up the kids? And da, da, da, da. Did you go grocery shopping? Ah, the dishwasher didn't get emptied. That means you have to have these interventions that are on purpose, living on purpose to illuminate the parts of your brain that are necessary for the constant connection.

And also you're just addicted to technology. Even if you have time, it's wild how that works.

That'll shut down the oxytocin pump just like that. As a matter of fact, when you're eating, which is one of the phone-free zones, is meals should be, if your phone is on the table, and you're not even looking at it and it's face down, when you look at it, it'll cut off your oxytocin flow.

Really?

Yeah, because you're thinking, your brain just went to your notifications or your text messages or whatever it happened to be, and you're no longer mentally, and you're no longer neurologically linked to your partner. You're no longer getting the divine antenna.

So if you're in this conversation at dinner with your partner or even a great friend about something, and maybe you're, you're feeling like some type of divine inspiration and you're maybe in your right side of your brain, but then you go down, you look at your phone.

Done.

Done.

You're done, you turn it off, you go to the left.

You go to the left side.

So the first thing that people need to do, understanding, and again, this is not all about technology, it's also just the philosophy of how we live, which is I gotta solve every complicated problem. Everything is a complicated problem to solve. It's the technologized culture The hustle culture just lends itself to this. It's just that technology is the tip of the spear. But the first thing we need to do is to get clean from that. And that starts with tech-free times, one of which is meals. Always meals. Never eat with a phone on the table. The two other tech-free times, by the way, to solve this problem, because, you know, we're not gonna be free of technology. I mean, it's just, that's, I mean, that's like saying, you know, if you have trouble with junk food, stop eating it. That's bad advice. It's impossible advice. The two other times are over the first hour when you wake up and the last hour before you go to sleep. And that means don't look at the phone for the first hour, which is super hard. My students are like, "I use it as an alarm clock." And I say, "Well, there's also a thing you could buy for $5 on Amazon that'll wake you up." Like the old days.

But what'll happen is you can program your brain in the first hour not to be super, I mean, reliant on the dopamine and, you know, the neurochemistry that's being stimulated by looking at the phone. Just that first hour, really important, especially if you walk in the morning without your phone, it's great. And the last hour of the day, it gets you actually ready to sleep without the phone. And so lock it in the closet, you know, a time lock if you have to. But I have a closet in my house that I put it in. It's not the same floor as I sleep on. And I've gotten so out of the habit of looking at it at night that even if it is next to my bed, because I'm on the road, I am using it as an alarm clock. In a pinch, I never look at it because I don't think of it anymore. It's really changed my habits and improved my life a lot.

So I wanna dive into, you know, the meaning of your life with your book. I'm so excited for everyone to get this in their hands, 'cause I can't even tell you, and I would put myself in this boat, that there's times where I'm like, I think I'm supposed to be more fulfilled than this. And I've grown to understand a lot of things with some of the concepts you share that I'm excited to dive into for everyone listening. For myself. You know, a lot of us are like, oh, I feel like there's more and I don't know what that more is and something's missing. And we're constantly seeking. And I love how you break this down. So I'm excited to dive into this. For anyone listening that's like, I accomplished the thing, but then I still feel not fulfilled. And then, is it ever enough? Am I ever enough? Just all these questions. First, just a couple real foundational things, which is, do we all, and I know meaning and purpose are different, do we all have, do you believe we all have a purpose or multiple purposes? Purposes in our lives?

I think we all have a lot of purposes. We all have a lot of goals and direction in our life, for sure. And there can be one that's really overarching. You know, if you're a very, very religious person, you might say, my goal is to get to heaven. And that's a good one. And that'll be your whole life. And that's phenomenal. But there are lots of little goals too. And that's a beautiful thing as well. It keeps you going in a particular direction. It allows you to see whether or not you're making progress. And we're progress-oriented creatures. You know, that's how human beings are designed. The problem is when you have a big, big, big goal and you think that your happiness is gonna come from an earthly goal, that, you know, it's, if it, when my book is published, then I'm gonna be really, really happy. You're gonna be disappointed. I've actually done a lot of work with athletes and, you know, Olympic athletes, they typically suffer from a clinical depression in the months after they win a gold medal. And the reason for that is because all the progress in going to the Olympics is really satisfying because you're making progress toward a particular goal.

And you imagine in your head that if you get there and you win, then it'll be bliss that hangs around forever. But that's not how the brain works. The brain produces emotions as information about what's going on outside, you know, things that— rewards and punishments and things that you should approach or avoid. It's not there to give you a permanently happy day. That's not what emotions are for. And when you don't, it's It's very disappointing, which is why they go into a funk. And that's why they get depressed. As a matter of fact, that's called the arrival fallacy. And so one of the things I work with people on is how to have good goals that change and they're healthy and you're making progress and they're helping other people. But being kind of, you know, Deepak Chopra talks about this, is intention without attachment. And that's a hard thing to achieve. But if you have a good sort of supernatural understanding of your life and you're looking for deep meaning, You can do it.

Intention without attachment. So for someone that says, you know, "Oh, my dream was like I would feel better once I hit my goal weight," or, "Once I got the 2.5 kids," or the white picket fence, or I remember after my first book, "Believe It," came out, and I got, it was like 3 or 4 months after the launch, and I got a call from the publisher. And they're like, "We're just checking in to see how are you?" Like, "How are you?" And I was like, "What do you mean?" I'm great. I'm like, are you happy? All the things, of course, that they're like, no, no, no, the book's great. 'Cause everyone's like, they're happy it's on New York Times. They're happy it's selling, blah, blah, blah. But they're like, how are you?

Yeah, 'cause they know they're authors.

Yeah, and I'm like, what do you mean? And they said, well, a lot of times authors work so hard for so long. You put 5 years into "The Meaning of Your Life," or years into this work, and then it comes out. And they said, sometimes the book launch is like you're shot out of a cannon. And their authors go into big depression. And I was like, oh, like astronauts, like Olympic athletes, but also, you know, so many people I know have had these experiences where they think, well, once I get married, then everything's gonna be, or once I get that promotion at work, or once I have this number in my bank account, then you arrive at it and you still feel like, oh, that didn't solve all my problems. I don't still feel fulfilled. And a lot of people then go, oh, well, I just need to raise the bar. I need a bigger number in my bank account, or I need to have six-pack abs, not four-pack, or whatever it might be. And so, can you talk about that? Because I'm actually fascinated by this idea of, is it good to feel like, okay, I've arrived, I'm content, or is it good to constantly be in pursuit?

In pursuit is actually how you find meaning. Arriving is not the secret to meaning, is absolutely not the secret to meaning. And people think it is. People, they imagine that all will become clear. I had a close friend, very, very wealthy guy, significantly older than me. And when he was younger, he struggled a lot with his business. Big entrepreneur. I asked him, when you thought about being rich, how did you think your life was going to change? And he thought about it and he said—

We need to pause for a super brief break. And while we do, take a moment to share this episode with every single person that you know who this could inspire because this conversation can truly be the words and inspiration they need to hear today to keep going, to remember that they matter and to feel less alone and more enough, more connected, more inspired, and more worthy. Who you spend time around is so important as energy is contagious and so is self-belief. And I'd love to hang out with you even more especially if you could use an extra dose of inspiration, which is exactly why I've created my free weekly newsletter that's also a love letter to you delivered straight to your inbox each and every Tuesday morning from me. If you haven't signed up to make sure that you get it each week, just go to jamiekernlima.com to make sure you're on the list and you'll get your One-on-One with Jamie weekly newsletter and get ready to believe in you. If you're tired of hearing the bad news every single day and need some inspiration, some tips, tools, joy, and love hitting your inbox, I'm your girl.

Subscribe at jamiekernlima.com or in the link in the show notes. I am so excited for this book.

You know why? Because it's going to to save so many people.

It's gonna save people.

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I had a close friend, very, very wealthy guy, significantly older than me. And when he was younger, he struggled a lot with his business. Big entrepreneur. I asked him, when you thought about being rich, how did you think your life was going to change? And he thought about it and he said, I guess I thought that if I got rich, my wife would love me. And I said, "So what happened?" And he said, "She didn't." He's divorced, right? And I said, "So what would've made your wife love you?" And he said, "Paying attention to her when I was building my business." See, this is the thing. The goals are small goals around real things with real people in love. You know, you find, for example, that a lot of people think that if I, they wanna lose a lot of weight, weight because it's so common in the United States. And if they hit their goal weight, then something really amazing is either going to feel good about themselves, people are going to notice them more, people are going to treat them better, and it's going to be this beautiful ongoing thing. And what you find is they hit their goal weight and their, their reward is never getting to eat what you like ever again for the rest of your life, which is not that great.

And so about 30% of people on very stringent diets wind up with an eating disorder because they want to keep going. Because they wanna keep this feeling of progress going. You need micro goals that are actually progress in a particular direction, but fundamentally, the goals that we need to have are not about these things. They're about faith and family and friendship and working in ways that actually creates value in the lives of other people. Those goals that we talked about a little bit earlier, those are the goals that really matter. Those are the things that bring meaning.

And I just wanna recap. So macro goals, oh, I wanna have this huge career, this big number in the bank account, this many followers on social media, or, you know, be a well-known activist, or do all these things. Macro goals, you know, you're saying typically, don't bring you fulfillment.

Those are idols.

Once you achieve them.

They're just idols.

Micro goals, which is, how do I strengthen love with my friend or partner? How do I deepen my faith? How, you know, do I, feel of service, like things like that, right? Micro goals are where we find meaning. And I think that when you're saying to the arrival, the arrival thing, and so, you know, I had someone who I think is a genius and really, really smart, someone I respect very, very much. She told me that one of the things I'm getting very wrong in life is that I never, I'm constantly, she said, you think you're a climber, you think you're a hiker on the mountain constantly trying to— and but you, you're at the top, you're at the top. You've gotta just enjoy it. You're at the top. And you know, 'cause I have questions all the time, like, do I work harder to make this show twice a week instead of once a week? Do I do live events instead of speaking on everyone else's stages? Do I— all these things. And, and, and in the past, I would trade all my time for building the biggest company I could possibly build.

Right.

And I struggle with that idea. Okay, should I be like, okay, I've arrived, let me just be and enjoy it all.

That's hard to do for the striver, Jamie. Yeah, see, well, you told me more. That's the striver's curse. Right, right. And not everybody struggles with this. And it's a funny thing. It's like, it's strivers like you, like us, like a lot of people watching us struggle with things that are hard to understand for people who don't, who haven't had the same kind of childhood. Typically, a striver has a childhood that looks like the following. You're really good at stuff. You're a good student. You're maybe a good athlete. Maybe you're a good musician. And you notice that you get attention, you get affection from, you get affirmation from adults when you do things. You bring home straight A's on the report card. You get first chair in the orchestra. You make pitcher on the baseball team, whatever it happens to be. And your little brain wires, it's in a highly plastic state, and it wires in this conclusion. I am lovable when I earn things. That's— and you become a human doing, not a human being. That is almost like getting famous when you're 15 years old, which is super dangerous. It's super dangerous because you're gonna get your sense of reward from doing things that are excellent, and you'll chase and chase and chase that behavior.

That leads to self-objectification, that leads to success addiction, that leads to workaholism, that leads to never enough. And I wind up with, super successful executives and famous actors and athletes that I work with all the time, and I have to teach them how to be alive, teach them how that, you know, it's not next year, man. It's not next year. You don't have to look for the next audacious goal so that you can actually feel alive. You're lovable. Love is a free gift, freely given. It's a grace. Love isn't something you earn. You literally can't earn love. And one of the reasons that a lot of marriages fail with super strivers is because they're trying to earn each other's love. You know, it's like, I mean, men often will work themselves to death and wonder why they're driving their wife away because they're actually trying to earn their love. And what they're doing is alienating them. Women will do the same thing who are very entrepreneurial, or they'll be looking for the kind of beauty that would be characteristic of a 21-year-old when they're 51 years old and working for that and working and trying so very hard to do that.

And they don't understand that they're, they're, they're losing the sense of meaning that they should be enjoying. But that's because that's how they were raised. And that's one of the— that's why I call it the striver's curse. And that's what everybody watching us— like, if you're falling prey to the striver's curse, well, that's why I write my book.

Yeah. So if you're an achiever, a striver, and you have that, like, it's never enough, it's never enough, what do you do?

Yeah, well, and it's easy to say just go become a slacker, but that's not going to work because I know strivers. Strivers are going to Drive. Yeah, I could tell strivers to become slackers. They never would. I remember a guy, he came to me. I was a classical musician all the way through my 20s, and I was super ambitious classical musician. I wanted to be the best French horn player in the world, and I was on my way, I thought. It turns out I wasn't, and I had to change course and get into a new line of work when I was 31 years old. It was very disappointing, very hard. But in my mid-20s, I was so— I was on the wheel, man. I was working. I was gonna— and I met this guy, and he says, dude, Dude, you really got to relax. He's from California, of course. Dude, you really got to relax. You know what you should do? You should take a year off. Come with me. I have a surf shop on the beach in San Diego. And you really learn how to live. And I thought, that's a nightmare. That's a complete nightmare to me.

Why? Because my life wouldn't have any sense of direction to it. But it was misattributed. And so what I needed to do, I learned, and I've only learned as an adult. And one of the things I talk about in this book, I need to live more like my great-grandfather. I need to live in bonds of love. I need to ask big questions that are not tied to technology. I need to find a sense of service in what I'm doing for other people, as opposed to the glory that can actually might bring to me. I need to understand the nature of what it means to suffer. I need to enjoy a little bit more beauty in my life, and I need to do those things on purpose. So strivers need to do on purpose what everybody else does naturally and turn that into a project.

And is it dangerous in any way to get to I arrived? Like, I've arrived.

Yeah, 'cause you're not gonna arrive. There's no arrival. There's no arrival from that, right? There are certain things that we can actually do in bonds of love in which there are moments in our lives that are especially meaningful, but you don't say when your baby is born, that's it. No, that's the beginning. Yeah, that's the beginning. That's the commencement error. So when you graduate from college, it's called commencement. And that seems like the end. That's the beginning. Because commencement means literally the word means beginning. Your wedding day is the beginning. That's the problem with destination weddings. Destination weddings are statistically less likely to succeed. The marriage is less likely to succeed. And the reason for that, in no small part, is that your wedding's not a destination. That's the launch pad. You know, it doesn't matter, you know, what you say to each other on your wedding day. What matters is what you say to each other every day for the rest of, for the next 65 years if God gives you this really long and happy marriage, is what it comes down to. And so that's the way to think about it, is all of these points.

You know, the book came out. Well, that's the beginning of being able to go talk about the wonderful things in this book. My baby is born. That's the beginning of a beautiful life together as a family. I just got married. I got the raise or promotion. My company went to IPO. Great. It's a big opportunity to do something new. That's the starting point, not the ending point.

So good. Okay, can you talk about, you know, with your new book, "The Meaning of Your Life," which if you are just tuning into us and listening to this right now, I want you to go pick up your copy because it's so good. You can get it anywhere books are sold. You can listen to it on Audible. And it's just, I feel like it speaks so well to every person no matter where they're at in their life. But also there's a whole lot of people that are like, oh my gosh, the world is changing so rapidly. The geopolitical climate, AI, technology, like stuff's just, I have so many friends that don't know how the heck are they supposed to parent right now? What do they do? They don't wanna hold their kids back. They don't wanna not, they're feeling more empty than ever. They're a lot of college-aged kids, as you know better than anyone on the planet, are just feeling depressed, feeling like not hopeful, not excited. There's just so much going on. And I feel like this book, "The Meaning of Your Life" by Arthur Brooks, is gonna speak to every one of you listening right now, no matter what's going on in your life, because all of us are like, "Oh, wow, well, this hasn't happened before," in so many ways, right?

These are new dynamics in life. And, you know, And so many people are asking those big questions, and we're just at the start of the impact of what AI is gonna do in terms of impact on jobs, impact on the economy, impact on entire industries, right? There's a lot of people that maybe haven't even embarked fully on their journey of what's the meaning of my life, and they're sort of maybe misguided in thinking their purpose is as long as they have a job, then they have a purpose. That's all gonna shift for so many people. And so, I think this book is just the timing of it, the relevancy of it, and the billions of reps you put in, in your entire career, helping so many people find happiness and discover that. Now, to talk about the meaning of your life in a moment, in a day and age, in 2026, right now.

How to live differently. The whole point is how to live differently, because, you know, if we just go with the flow, You know, then we will spend all day online. Then we will be living in the simulation. Then we will be thinking that we can ask any question to AI and it will give us the information that we seek. And so we need to go back and live in a kind of a new old-fashioned way. Then there's this book, there's 6 things to do. I mean, people need instructions. I do, I need instructions. So I went and I looked at, you know, what will make your brain work the way it's supposed to work? What are the tangible things you need to do and pay attention to? And so I really, 6 things. 6 things. And, and, and when you do these 6 things, in 6 months you'll be in your life.

6 things in 6 months and you'll be living a different life. This conversation with Arthur Brooks, it's so incredible we made it into more than one part. And if you want to dive deeper into how to truly discover your purpose and feel a sense of fulfillment and greater meaning in your life, you are not going to want to miss this incredible part 2 of our conversation with Arthur Brooks. That's coming up in the next episode of The Jamie Kern Lima Show. Remember, this episode's not just for you and me. Please share this with every single person you know because it can impact and change their life too. And if you love today's conversation, please click the follow or subscribe button on the app that you're listening to it on or watching it on. And if it added value to your life, if you could please give it a review, I would be so grateful. 5 stars, Ours is perfect. And again, just share it with everyone you believe in. Maybe it's another person in your life who could benefit from it, someone who's been searching for meaning or maybe just kind of feeling a little bit empty and needs that boost of purpose.

You can also post the episode and share it with others online in your community who just might need the words and tools and lessons in this conversation today. You never know whose life you're meant to change by sharing this episode. And thank you so much for joining me today. Before you go, I wanna share some words with you that couldn't be more true. You, right now, exactly as you are, are enough and fully worthy. You're worthy of your greatest hopes, your wildest dreams, and all the unconditional love in the world. And it's an honor to welcome you to each and every episode of the Jamie Kern Lima Show. Here, I hope you'll come as you are, Heal where you need, blossom what you choose, journey toward your calling, and stay as long as you'd like because you belong here. You are worthy, you are loved, you are love, and I love you. And I cannot wait to join you on the next episode of The Jamie Kern Lima Show. In life, you don't soar to the level of your hopes and dreams. You stuck at the level of your self-worth. When you build your self-worth, you change your entire life.

And that's exactly why I wrote my new book, Worthy: How to Believe You Are Enough and Transform Your Life for You. If you have some self-doubt to destroy and a destiny to fulfill, Worthy is for you. In Worthy, you'll learn proven tools and and simple steps that bring life-changing results, like how to get unstuck from the things holding you back, build unshakable self-love, unlearn the lies that lead to self-doubt and embrace the truths that wake up worthiness, overcome limiting beliefs and imposter syndrome, achieve your hopes and dreams by believing you are worthy of them, and so much more. Are you ready to unleash your greatness and step into the person you were born to be? Imagine a life with zero self-doubt and unshakable self-worth. Get your copy of Worthy, plus some amazing thank you bonus gifts for you at worthybook.com or the link in the show notes below. Imagine what you'd do if you fully believed in you? It's time to find out with Worthy. Who you spend time around is so important as energy is contagious and so is self-belief. And I'd love to hang out with you even more, especially if you could use an extra dose of inspiration, which is exactly why I've created my free weekly newsletter that's also a love letter to you delivered straight to your inbox from me.

If you haven't signed up to make sure that you get it each week, just go to jamiekernlima.com to make sure you're on the list and you'll get your One-on-One with Jamie weekly newsletter and get ready to believe in you. If you're tired of hearing the bad news every single day and need some inspiration, some tips, tools, joy, and love hitting your inbox, I'm your girl. Subscribe at jamiekernlima.com or in the link in the show notes. And please note, I'm not a licensed therapist and this podcast is not intended as a substitute for the advice of a physician, professional coach, psychotherapist, or other qualified professional.