Transcript of 652: Arthur Brooks - The Power of Teaching, The Arrival Fallacy, The Mad Scientist Profile, Lifting Heavy Weights, & The Two Best Practices To Be Happy

Jim Collins told me on episode number 216 that the single greatest determining factor in my long-term success or failure would be my who, who I chose to surround myself with. That conversation has had a huge impact on how I've designed my business. One of the most important elements or services that I provide is my learning leader circle. I open up applications one time per year, and that time is now at learningleadersircle. Com is where you can apply. Now, this is the most inefficient element of my business because I personally read every application, and I personally choose who will go on to the next round and then who will ultimately be one of the 12 people to be in my next Learning Leaders circle. I only do it one time per year, and that time is now. If you are intentional about surrounding yourself with others who will push you, challenge you, make you think differently, if you're willing to self-reflect and do some work, this could be for you. You can apply at learningleadersircle. Com. We meet once per month on Zoom, and then we meet one time per year in person for our leadership retreat for members of my Learning Leaders Circle.

If you'd like to apply, go to learningleadersircle. Com. Welcome to The Learning Leaders Show, presented by Insight Global. I am your host, Ryan Hawk. Thank you so much for being here. Go to learningleader. Com for show notes of this and all podcast episodes. Go to learningleader. Com. Now on to the night's featured leader, the great Arthur Brooks is back. He teaches courses on leadership and happiness at Harvard Business School. He's a columnist at The Atlantic, where he writes the popular How to Build a Life column. He's also the author of 13 books, including the number one New York Times bestseller, Build the Life You Want. His co-author on that book, Oprah Winfrey. He's also written From strength to strength, Finding success, happy and deep purpose in the second half of your life. During this conversation, we discuss failure, specifically why it benefits you to experience it regularly and how we can grow through it. Then discuss the progress principle, how to create positive momentum in both your personal and professional life. Then Arthur shares the best way to learn a challenging concept. It is a three-step process that ensures you'll be able to learn it and then execute.

Ladies and gentlemen, please enjoy my conversation with Arthur Brooks. All right, Arthur, Thank you so much, man, for coming back on The Learning Leader Show. Welcome.

Delighted to be with you. Anytime you call, I'm coming on. I love your show. Let's go.

Okay, I couldn't help, but this is not where I planned to start. But you pop up on the Zoom, you got this beautiful lighting, and you are jacked out of your mind.

I don't know. Is this jacked out of my mind?

Yes. Look at you, dude. You're 61. You look like you're 40. I got to know. I'm serious here, and you can maybe talk about how this deals with happiness, too. What are you doing? What are you doing every day to be in such good shape?

Thank you. Thank you, Ryan. I appreciate that an awful lot. I'll send you flowers for that. To begin with, I don't touch my hormones. I don't do anything with my hormones. A lot of guys-No TRT, none of that stuff. Nothing, nothing, nothing. My natural standing, total testosterone level, I just I've done 14 days ago for my semi-annual blood work was 812. Look, there's some guys who are 1,200. That's terrific and the whole thing. But 812 for me is a good place to stand, and I don't want to see it go down very much. And the way that I deal with is the way that I eat, the way that I try to sleep, which is actually tricky, and the way that I lift is how it comes out. Hormonally, a lot of people can stop the clock, but you have to do the work is what it comes down to. So I've been doing zone 2 cardio, but mostly resistance training for the past 30 years and just being really, really serious and consistent about it and watching my diet, making sure that I'm eating right, making sure that I'm actually getting into the gym for 60 minutes a day, seven days a week, keeping the body in shape.

That's actually how I do my work. And I have a very a very disciplined protocol starting at first thing in the morning that takes me from the moment my alarm clock goes off with great regret on my part to when I actually get to lunchtime where I've done four hours of creative work. And so the brain chemistry is all calibrated to do exactly that, making sure my body is up to it.

So you're the happiness guy, right? You're maybe the number one person in the world to talk about happiness based on all of your hard work, your research, your teaching, where you do. What is your morning routine, your fitness routine, your diet? What does that have to do with your happiness?

So it's a great question. And people often say, I work out every day because it makes me happy. It doesn't. It makes you less unhappy. The research is very clear that working out hard, picking up heavy things, and there's a lot of different kinds of exercise, of course, and I've done the research on the different mood advantages from different modalities. But what it does is it moderates negative effect. Our well-being is experienced. Happiness is not a feeling, but happiness has feelings associated with it. That's called affect. And affect, positive or negative, is produced by the limbic system of the brain, which is a console of tissue that's between 2 and 40 million years ago that translates the stimuli that we're perceiving outside of us into the universal language of emotions so that we know if something is perceived as a threat or opportunity, and that's whether something is negative or positive. Now, half of the population is above on positive affect in intensity, and half of the population is above average on negative affect. A quarter of the population is above the median on both, meaning they're incredibly high affect people, and that's most of the people watching your show.

I know this because hustlers, hard workers, strivers, entrepreneurs, ambitious people, they're in that quadrant of high positive, high negative affect. That's called the mad scientist emotional profile. For your listeners who want to find out where they are, if you go to my website, arthropbrooks. Com, at the very top of the website, there's a test that you can take that we've administered to hundreds of thousands of people. And you can find out. It takes about two minutes, and you can find out if, sure enough, you're a mad scientist like me. Okay, So back to your question. That's great to be a med scientist. The problem is that you have unusually high negative affect, a lot of intensity of negative emotion, which can actually hurt your well-being, and you need to manage it. Now, high negative affect people, they always try to manage their negative affect, and a lot of them do it in very dangerous ways. Number one, drinking alcohol is a dangerous way to moderate your negative effect. Number two, out-of-control internet use, especially pornography. Pornography is a horrible way to manage your negative affect. It's just terrible for you in all sorts of ways.

Number three, workaholism. Just distract yourself. Just another 16 hours with your nose to the grindstone.

Is that one you struggle with, though? Oh, yeah.

Oh, yeah, for sure.

The first one's drinking not much, no porn, too much online, maybe, maybe sometimes. Workaholism.

Workaholism, for sure. The isms, the work, the isms, the addictions, they're almost all negative affect management techniques. So anybody watching us today who has a tendency to get addicted to stuff, Everything from highly glycemic carbohydrates to gambling, those are all attempts to manage your negative affect. And you don't even know it. You're just doing that. It's like, I don't know why, but I feel some relief. Of course, you feel some relief. What these things are doing is they're severing the connection between between your limbic system and your prefrontal cortex so that you're actually having the negative emotion. You're just not aware of it in the same way because of what you're doing. But those things, they'll ruin your life. Those things, subjugation and addiction are no joke. The two best ways to deal with negative affect, and again, don't be mad about it, about negative affect. On the contrary, be thankful for it. It's one of the reasons everybody watching us, that you're strivers and on your way to big success. But you got to manage it. And the two best ways to do that are Number one, faith, spirituality, and philosophy. Number one, it's like every day, every day, go deep, go deep.

And that means if you're raised in a religion, think about it again. If you want, and if you weren't, this is what Ryan holiday is talking about. Are mutual friend Ryan holiday. He's the leading proponent of stoic philosophy. That stuff makes you transcendent to your ordinary life and will moderate your negative effect really effectively as well. But you need something like that, or go pick up heavy things. Go pick up heavy things. And The truth is I do both every day. So this gets back to your question. I start my day every day at 4: 30. 4: 30 is when my clock goes off. I'm not a natural morning lark chronotype. On the contrary, I mean, left to my devices, I would stay up late and get up when the sun is warm. But that's a big mistake to begin with. I've tried to change my chronotype. It's harder for me than for other people, but it can be done. I mean, I used to think I was just naturally just stay up super late. Actually, I was mostly... I was just a professional musician who drank too much. But I've shifted it with some effort over the years.

I work out from 4: 45 to 5: 45. I have a gym in my house. This is the number one thing. I'm getting the equipment and all the stuff that you need, which is a really, really important investment. After that, I get cleaned up. Then I go to Mass. I'm a Catholic. I go to church every morning. So I go to Mass from 6: 30 to 7: 00 every morning. When I'm in town, I'm on the road 48 weeks a year. And so when I'm on the road, I have to adjust to whatever is around me. But I only stay in hotels with Good Gems, and my staff makes sure that I'm near someplace where I can go to Mass in the morning, too. So this has almost never interrupted when I'm on tour. And then I come back and my brain is wired with lower negative affect and it's perfectly suited because the adenosine, the inhibitory neurochemical that makes you feel groggy and sleepy, it is naturally cleared. Now I'm ready to apply psychostimulant to my brain, aka caffeine. So I'm not doing that thing where you use caffeine to wake up. Don't do it.

Use caffeine to focus you. After. Wait until you're no longer sleepy. And so I do that, usually about two and a half to three hours after I've got up, I have my first cup of coffee, and I eat a very high protein meal That's also high in tryptophan. Greek yogurt is the best. I mean, don't eat a turkey. That's gross. But with Greek yogurt, I'll get 60 grams of protein in one bolus with very, very, very dark roast coffee because I grew up in Seattle, and that's what we do. And then, dude, I'm ready to go. At 7: 45 in the morning, I am loaded for bear. I get four hours of creative concentration with maximum dopamine in my prefrontal cortex, which is the neuromodulator of creativity and focus, where ordinarily I would get an hour and a half, two hours of real clarity and real focus. I get four hours.

You know what it says, Arthur? This is not an accident. All the stuff that you've done, the impact you've made, made, the impact you're currently making, the lives you're changing, it's just not an accident. It can be done. It's hard. It takes discipline. But it's possible for literally every single person can make the decision to do that. It's probably easier not to, but I think we're all much better off if we say, Hey, what is that version for me? It doesn't have to be exactly yours or exactly mine. It's funny that ours are very similar, though, almost the exact same So I wake up at 4: 45. I like to stretch and drink a lot of water, and I like to read for literally 10 minutes and then write. Get the thoughts out of my head onto the page, and then it's gym time. Punish the body, lift heavy weights, run. And then I like to do elliptical or walking for 20 to 30 minutes when I read. And I love reading while doing... I don't even know if it's called cardio. Some might call it. I think it's basically cooling down. And then I like to go on a walk with my wife.

And that's usually how the day starts, most days, and it's the best. And then after that, little family time before kids on the bus, and then let's go. Let's get to the day. And I think that's a great, great morning. It's a great way to get started when we can do it. Certainly, that takes me being home, but I don't travel a ton.

That's a very good protocol, Ryan. I like it a lot. And this is a tried and true thing. This is not some newfangled thing that Ryan and Arthur are proposing to the world. I've been working for the last 13 years very closely with the Dalai Lama. No big deal, really? Yeah. So we've written a bunch together, and we've done a lot of documentary footage that's going to be coming out in this year. But I go to his ashram, his monastery, once or twice a year in Darmsala in the Himalayan foothills. And he's come to the United States, and we've done stuff together here a bunch of times, too. I'm going next March, for example. I've known him for years, and he just turned 90, as a matter of fact. His day starts like yours. He gets up at 3: 30 every day. Now, he goes to bed at your dinner time because he can. And also this is a very, very common thing for tabedian Buddhist monks is, man, it's like Benjamin Franklin on steroids. And so he goes to bed very early. He gets up at 3: 30 in the morning. The first thing he does is he gets on his little exercise cycle.

He's got a little exercise bike. He does half an hour cardio. This is before he has any hit water, right? I mean, me too, when I'm working out, when I first wake up, I have a lot of water. It's actually really important because you're where you'd hydrate it. So he works out, and then he meditates for two hours. And this is not the single point meditation, the spaced out meditation that Americans are always trying to do. It's called analytical meditation, which is a different technique. This is one in which he will contemplate scriptures in Tibhitan, so a Tibhitan Buddhist scripture, of which there's an enormous amount. I've learned in sat in meditation with the Tibhitan Buddhist monks while they do this. And he'll think, who am I in this passage in scripture? What the world. And so he's thinking analytically. He's thinking, thinking, thinking about two sentences for two hours, which is incredibly helpful thing to do. It's like, as much as possible, listen to as much as possible. No, no, no, no, no, so that you'll really learn it and remember it deeply, and it really speaks to you. That's two hours, man. And then he eats a little bit, and that's when he's starting his day.

So it's very similar to yours. That's his Holiness, the Dalai Lama. Wow.

I am fascinated by the routines of people, and it's usually... Like I said, there's usually some discipline involved. There's some routine. Some might call us regimened. My wife calls me that pretty regimened person, which is fine. I'm okay with that. I call it maybe being consistent. But anyway, it's funny, Arthur. That's why I love talking to you so much. I had no idea that it was going to start like this for the first almost 15 minutes. I wanted to get into some of your book, which, by the way, congratulations. Normally, you come on ahead of to promote the work. You're not doing that. We're here just to talk. You already hit the New York Times best seller list. You've done all the stuff with this book, but I still loved it, and I still want to dig into it a few more. Can I rip on a few things? You bet, man.

Let's do it.

Okay, so let's go to failure actually. Okay, so you have a chapter called How to Succeed at Failure, and you share a bunch of research. Scholars who were narrowly rejected for research grants early in their careers, they went on to outperform others who enjoyed early success. What do you think that teaches us, teaches leaders about early wins versus early setbacks?

So to begin with, there's something in my business because I've been in the bookwriting business for... I mean, this book, I just published in my 15th book, and It's never easy. It's still brutal. It's like the stages of death and dying as you're getting ready for it. And it's really, really hard. There's a lot that you don't know. And so sometimes what happens with especially young authors who who are highly intelligent and they've been working on something for a long time, they get six years of clever work into their first book, and then it just hits the news cycle in exactly the right way, and they get a big best seller on their first book. That's terrible luck. And it's like, Why? Why? Because everybody thinks that they're going to be Stephen King or something. Everybody thinks that they're going to be the Rolling Stones, Hitmakers, or everything they touch, Picasso, a little scribble, and it's $150 million or something. But that's not the way it is because And you almost always get a second book curse. The second book curse is that your publisher comes to you and says, Let's write a contract for book two, and they get a really nice advance, which feels awesome.

But what an advance on a book is, is basically handcuffing yourself to a pipe in your editor's basement, and then they'll throw food down the stairs and flip the light back off and say, Right. I mean, it's tyranny is the way that this is. And so the result of it is they get one year to do something that's as popular as the last book, which is based on seven years and their main set of ideas. And so the second book doesn't do anything. And that's horrible because it throws a complete monkey wrench into the trajectory of their careers. Much better is when you do the work and you build yourself up. So If you want to be a public intellectual, for example, I mean, do the work, go to graduate school, do the research, publish an academic journal, do research. Don't be an autodidact and just try to be a grazing on the research that happens to come across you on a Google search, that's not the right way to do it. I mean, be a wholesaler before you become a retailer is how that works. And then little by little by little, it builds and it builds and it builds.

And that is a super, super solid foundation. A lot of it feels like failure early on. It's not. It's building. It's building a strong foundation is how that works.

I feel like part of the takeaway from that chapter and from what you just said is, let's say you are the one who's experiencing big challenges, failures, and you're getting started in your career, or maybe you're already in your career quite a bit, that's actually the natural way that you want it to work. That could better set you up than if maybe you got lucky or something hit right away. The natural progression of things is, let's keep working, let's keep at it. Don't get discouraged when the initial thing or the initial few things or the initial few jobs aren't dream jobs or they're not great, or you get passed over for a promotion maybe, which happens to people. Those are actually good things for you. It's like, stay in the work, stay after it.

Totally. What happens if you have super early success and you expect that is that you start becoming more dependent on the rewards as opposed to enjoyment of the work itself. And that's as old as the hills. I'm saying Plato talked about the key to the treasure is the treasure. There's nothing new about that basic observation, but all that rewards orientation, that arrival motivation for something, it sucks the life out of life, and it makes you mediocre. It makes you rigid. It makes you weak. So one of the things that I do with my students, my students are MBA students at the Harvard Business School. I mean, these are the Titans of the universe, right? And the average starting salary coming out of our MBA program, I think, is $210,000 a year. It's a lot of money. And they're not used to failing at all. I mean, they never got enough B. That's how they got to the Harvard Business School, right? They went to Duke or some fancy undergraduate, and then they worked at Goldman Sachs or McKinsey something for three or four years, and then they came to the Harvard Business School. And I talked to them about the fact that you need a bunch of failure.

You need to fail, so you're not afraid of failure. You know how it feels, and you have the learning and growth that uniquely comes from failure. Just what you just said, Ryan. So I make them keep a failure journal Journal.

Oh, really?

Yeah. And this is...

A lot of people have-Do they have much in it?

They do when they start paying attention to it. So a lot of people have a gratitude journal, but that's just so boring. What's really good is a disappointment and failure journal, and that's because that's how you grow. So the way it works is this, and this is what everybody can do who's watching us here. You have failures and disappointments a lot. I'm talking about the ones that happen once a month, and I still get them, by the way. The great thing about being 61 as opposed to being 31 is that when you have something that really disappoints you, you're like, Yeah, that emotion that I feel is intensely negative, but it's not going to last. I know that because I'm old, so I'm going to get a head start on not caring. And so that's why the 61-year-olds are generally happier than 31-year-olds. But So what I tell them to do is it's going to be a disappointment like, That girl doesn't like you, that thing. Or, You applied for that job and you didn't hear back, that thing. Put it in there and then leave two spaces blank under each disappointment or failure. Come back after three weeks and on the first blank line, write, What did I learn about this in the last three weeks?

What was my learning in this? And then come back two months after that, put alarms on your phone for this, two months after that, and write down what good thing happened because of that. So you won't get the learning if you don't actually install it in your prefrontal cortex by writing it down. It'll just float around limbically. And that's not the source of learning. You got to make it explicit. So you get a bad performance review at work, and you're not expecting this. It's like your first job at a college. You're like, I thought I was killing it. And your boss is like, You're not killing it. This is B minus work. And you're super bummed. And you're like, I got to go home for the day, the whole thing. And then your friends are like, Your My boss is a jerk. And you're like, I just got to forget this thing. No. Put it in the journal. Write it down. I thought I was doing A plus work. He said, I'm doing B minus work. I'm very, very disappointed. I am disappointed. Come back in three weeks and you're going to be like, You know what I learned?

I learned that I thought I was a good match for that job, and I'm less a good match for that job than I thought. Two minutes later, you come back and you say, I started to pay attention to other jobs on the market, and now I'm talking to employers that I think might have a job that will be a better match for me. And you don't like having gotten nailed on your first performance review, but now you learned and grew from it. But you can't do it if you don't take the job seriously and do the work.

I love the idea of a failure journal as well as taking ownership of it. You're not being a victim or just blaming others. Because the problem is you blame others and be like, Well, it's not my fault or I didn't do anything wrong. You play the victim card. Then you don't learn from the failures. I think failures become really bad failures if you don't learn anything from, you're probably going to repeat them. That's the big part. I feel like a failure journal will help you learn from those times and then be better in the future as opposed to continuing to make the same mistakes.

Yeah. No, by the way, even if you are a victim, it still helps. Let's say that you're dating somebody who's sociopathic, which has happened. I mean, especially for all the women who are watching us right now, that's like your last boyfriend, who's what we call a dark triad, which is narcissistic Machiavillian and having traits of psychopathy. Jeez. No joke. I have this new podcast called Office Hours, and I've got an episode coming up on how to identify a dark triad and avoid them. But if you have one and it was a terrible breakup, for example, then you've been victimized for sure. Put it in your failure journal. This wasn't a personal failing on your part, but it was a failed relationship. Underneath, you're going to come back and say, I learned that that person was a dark triad. And then underneath that, you said, The good that came from it is that the breakup actually made it possible for me to move on to a relationship in the future. And then by about the fourth entry, fifth entry, you're going back and you're going, I'm looking forward to writing that down because I get to look at the other good things that actually came to me, only via nasty gifts.

So good. Okay, you have a part about big promotions, a chapter called Think Twice Before Taking the Top Job. You cite research, again, showing people satisfaction. It doesn't necessarily recover to pre-promotion levels until two years into a new role, leadership role. And so So sometimes their anger actually can increase and doesn't go away for five years. So how should, as you already mentioned, the type of people that listen to this show are ambitious, growth-focused, I'm the same way, but think twice, right? Can you go into this research?

So really highly motivated people who are extremely competent. There's no Peter principle. Peter principle is you tend to be promoted to your level of incompetence. That's not true for the people who are watching us. There is a version of that, though, where you're promoted to your level of unhappiness. And this happens when you're put into more and more management roles. There aren't that many people that get a lot of intense positive emotion from management very often. And there's a neurocognitive reason for this. We've all heard of the phenomenon called flow that was invented by the great social psychologist Michal My Cheek, Sent me high, who wrote about this intensely pleasurable state when you're in the zone, like what you're really good at. For me, it's in writing. I used to be a classical musician for a long time. So when I was up on stage, when I was playing my instrument, I'd be totally in a flow state where an hour would feel like five minutes where you lose track of time. Well, there's one job where you don't get flow, and that's management. The reason for that is you're getting jerked from thing to thing to thing to thing.

And it's not the thing where you can show mastery in a particular skill. I mean, you're doing everybody. This job when you're the manager in some way, shape, or form. And the result of that is people go from jobs that they truly enjoy to ones that are important and maybe lucrative and on the stair, step up to great success, but they don't They don't enjoy them as much, and they think it's because of them. No, no, no. Being the boss isn't that fun. It isn't that fun. It just isn't. I've been a CEO. I was a CEO for 11 years, and it was really, really hard. I didn't enjoy it that much. It was satisfying, but not enjoyable. Those are two different things. I'm really glad I did it. We did a lot of good. I think we helped America. But there were a lot of days when I just wasn't getting enjoyment from it. And that's the thing to keep in mind. Manage your expectations. If you're going to try to conquer the world, you're going to learn that being the conqueror of the world, isn't that fun? Amir of Córdoba in the 14th century, Abdel Rahman, in Southern Spain, and during the Moorish rule of Spain, he was this absolute, absolute ruler.

I mean, he had hundreds of concubines. His enemies fell at his feet. He never lost a battle. He was the great warrior. He was just worshiped almost as a God. And he wrote at the end of his life, he said, I have had everything a man could want in life. I have lacked for nothing. And he goes through all these lavish gifts that he's had. And he said, I have carefully accounted for all of my days of happiness. They add up to 14. Beware the corner office, boys. They are the corner office.

We got a lot of those, though, here, Arthur. So how do you make... I know they're meaningful, and it's probably part of people's purpose to lead and inspire others. And I could see... I mean, I've been in those roles. What advice What would you give to the SVP of sales at a Fortune 500 company who is stressed but also likes the juice? They like the competition. They like hiring people and promoting them and helping them get better. Yes, it's hard, but how do you make those jobs better, more, I don't know if I should say more enjoyable, but maybe. I do hope there's something there.

Yeah, for sure. The answer to that is that when you do anything that's truly hard and competitive and stressful, and you're doing it on purpose, you have to be mindful about the that this is your choice and the impact that you're having outweighs the discomfort that you're experiencing. That's what it comes down to. In other words, mindfulness of what's actually going on is the key. There's lots of things that we do. I tell young parents constantly, I can't remember how old your kids are. They're not little, little.

No, we have seniors in high school down to 10.

But you remember when you were getting up at 2: 00 in the morning, it's like the baby barfed again. It's 2: 00 in the morning and you got to get up at 4: 30. But you remind yourself, this is I love my baby. What you're doing when you say that is that you're reminding yourself that this is passing the cost-benefit test, but that the cost isn't zero. So this is one of the things that I recommend, that you're not being managed so highly by your negative affect when you're on the ladder, that you can continue to remember why you're doing this thing. Why am I doing this thing? And cut to the chase. If you're only doing it for your own ambition, it doesn't pass the cost-benefit test. Nobody has the baby for their own ambition. They have the baby because because babies are pure love. Babies are the essence of what it means to be fully alive. And that passes the cost-benefit test because it's about the baby, not because of you. And your job has got to work that way, too. I know you want a successful career. I know we're all ambitious.

We all want a better future. But it has to be fundamentally because what you're doing is important. What you're doing is impactful. And many days, what you're doing is just awesome. Right now, it sucks.

That's okay. Got you. Okay. Actually, along those same lines, you quote Hemingway, Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know. You write about how intelligence can lift you up or pull you down, depending how you use it. So what's your advice for growth-focused, ambitious, intelligent leaders?

To begin with, a lot of people watching us are blessed with high intelligence. That's why they're watching this content as opposed to, I don't know, Love Island or something. And that's great. You're not wasting your time watching stupid shorts right now. But the point is not that you're better because you're intelligent. On the contrary, it's good that you cultivate your intelligence, but intelligence is just another gift. It's like being born over an oil well with a bunch of money is what we find. A lot of it actually is, thanks, Mom and Dad, is what it comes down to. So the result of it is that like any other gift that you have, whether or not it makes you happier, it depends on whether or not you're using it to make other people happier. That's what it comes down to. Money will make you happier if you use it to make other people happier. Anything. Your power will make you happier if you use it to make other people happier. That's just the truth. It's a truism in life. It's a cosmic divine truth. Your Fame will make you happier if the admiration you have from other people is reflected in the virtue that they bring to their own lives.

That's the reason that the admiration that other people have for you can make your life better, but not if you're like, Yeah, I just want to be famous. I just want to be famous. You'll be miserable if you do that. And the same thing is true with your intelligence. Now, here's a key thing to know whether or not you're using your intelligence in the right way. Do you denigrate other people because they're not as intelligent as you? If you're like, That waiter is so stupid. Can you believe it how stupid that bus driver was? Can you believe it? If you denigrate people on the basis of their exhibited intelligence because it's lower than you and you put yourself above another person because you believe, you might be wrong, but you're probably right that your intelligence is higher. You're using your intelligence in the wrong way. I can guarantee you you are. On the other hand, if you look at other people as people not assessing their intelligence, but thinking about this gift that I have of thinking clearly and working hard, what can I do to lift up the world? What can I do to unite people?

What can I do to bring people to more happiness and love?

We talked about this last time, but it's less focus on you, more focus on the impact you can have on other people to help them. That literally, scientifically makes you happier.

Totally. I mean, there's so much research on this. By the way, we don't even need research because every religion philosophy and your grandma agree that this is the right way to live and that you'll have a happier life if you do that. But people who need it, there's all kinds of randomized treatment controls and experiments, et cetera, that show that One of the fastest ways that you can get happier is by lifting somebody else up.

Yeah. It's funny. You know, sometimes I'm sure you do this all the time. People may ask you, How can I write a book? How can I start a podcast? How can I get into Harvard Business School? Whatever it may be. And you help them because you're a good guy. And I like to do the same thing, help them do whatever I can do. And they'll say, Oh, my God, I got to repay you. Let me take you out to dinner. I'm like, Look, I'm cool to go out to dinner, maybe. But you don't need to repay me. You don't understand how good it makes me feel. I can't do it nonstop, 24/7 because I have to get work done. But it genuinely makes me feel really good if I felt like I helped you, if I felt like I benefited your life, I felt like you're better off because of something that I happen to do. That's the biggest gift I can get, man. It's the coolest feeling in the world.

I know. It's interesting. I'm sure you're finding this because you're more and more prominent. Are you getting to the point where your show, where you go to the airport and people recognize you? Is that happening to you?

It's happened. I mean, not a lot, but sometimes, yeah, it's cool.

This is the way the world right now where people recognize podcasters in the air. Oh, yeah. I mean, it's crazy, right? I mean, that's how... Behold the power of YouTube, the way that this works. What's more and more satisfying is the extent to which you help other people and you don't need them at all. And you do just because you love them. And they accept the help that you give them, even though they don't need you. They don't really need it. This is how a peer relationship is really supposed to work. This is what Aristotle talks about as the virtuous friendship, one in which you just love each other and lift each other up, and neither one of you needs the other to have a better career. And you walk together shoulder to shoulder, toward these values that you both really... I mean, it's like I have this really close friend in Atlanta, his name is Frank. Frank and I are the same age, in the '60s, and I've known him for many years. And I don't need, technically, anything from Frank. He doesn't need anything from me. But we're just looking for ways to build each other up.

And it's just great. It's just a beautiful thing. And so that's one of the things to look for as well.

I love it. Okay, I probably personally need to help with some of this stuff, but I'm a big momentum/progress/I need to look back and feel like I'm growing, I'm improving, I'm getting better. And you cite research from the progress principles showing that satisfaction comes from forward momentum and meaningful work, not these giant... You hitting Newark Times is cool. I'm sure you're like, great, nice. We didn't even really have a big marketing campaign, and we hit it anyway. But I would consider that it's still a pretty big audacious win. But really, what satisfaction comes from is this forward momentum and meaningful work. Those people who, again, who are ambitious, they're goal-setters, they want to climb the mountain, what advice do you have from them that you learn from the progress principle?

So don't fall prey to the arrival fallacy. For the longest time, people thought it was so weird that Olympic gold medalists tend to fall into a clinical depression in the month after they win their gold medal. And why is it? Is there something about them that's naturally mentally ill? Is there something about the training? Is there something? No, no, no, no. What it is, is that They had so much positive emotion that came from making progress toward the Olympics in their mind because they're such goal-oriented people. This is called the teleological tendency in Greek. They're so goal-oriented that they assume that when they hit their goal, that's when the maximum bliss point will occur. And it doesn't because biologically can't. Your positive emotion doesn't exist to give you a permanent good day. If it did, you'd be distracted from your life and get eaten by a tiger on day two. You need to be all about what's going on around you, meaning that you can't maintain positive emotion just like you can't maintain negative emotion. Maintaining high levels of negative emotion, that's a dysregulation. We call it generalized anxiety or clinical depression, as a matter of fact.

And it's also dysregulated to be so blissful all the time that you're not paying attention to what's going on around you. And so you don't. And so you don't. You homeostatically move back to your baseline and you're like, Well, that's disappointing. And so the first thing that a guy who hits a billion dollars in his bank account says, I've known plenty of them, I guess I needed another billion to get the feeling that I was trying to find that I thought I was going to have. That's the arrival fallacy. That's why, by the way, that people who go on very, very serious diets, it's very easy to lose weight. Again, people are like, Oh, it's so hard to lose weight. It isn't hard to lose weight. It's hard to keep weight off. The reason is because when you hit your goal, your reward for hitting your goal is never getting to eat what you like ever again for the rest of your life. Congratulations. I was like, That's first prize? It is. That's first prize, and it's the only prize. That's the reason that people who go on very strong diets have about a 30% chance of developing an eating disorder because they want to keep getting the reward of the scale going down.

And so the scale keeps going down even when the scale going down is dangerous.

You've never arrived. You're always becoming. Jj Reddick said that on this podcast seven years ago. I think about it all the time, no matter what. What is the reward for this, Arthur, for me? That I get to keep doing it. That's the reward, right? I like that this podcast does so well because I want to be able to talk to Arthur Brooks every six months or so. You know what I'm saying? Yeah, totally. That's the reward.

That's a big point, Ryan. And you just made a very profound point because there's an old saying What's first prize in a pie eating contest? The answer is pie. So I hope you like pie. More pie. And so look, and so if you hated podcasting, but we're looking for some reward, the ultimate sponsor, a million downloads per episode, you're going to hit it. But if you don't like podcasting, you wasted your life.

Right. The reward is the work. I love that. Okay. The two choices that keep a midlife crisis at bay. So choosing to focus on what age gives you rather than what age takes away. And choosing subtraction over addition. You reference Eric Erichson's concept on this. Generativity versus stagnation.

Right. So that's right. So number one is when people are feeling, when they're in a period of liminality. Liminality means you're between phases in life. And that's not necessarily a midlife crisis. I mean, I had my first big liminality in my late 20s when it was clear my classical music career My career was not going to last me for the rest of my life. And I started to have to make a difference. So I quit when I was 31, and I went to get my PhD. And during the time I was in my PhD, it was a great liminal thing. And I would pay a lot more attention than I should have to the fact that people weren't clapping for me for being a really good French Horn player. Now, again, everybody's watching is like, who cares if you're good French Horn player? That was my thing, man. I mean, that was my weird thing. That was my bench press. And I was super good at it. And I've been good at it since I was nine years old, and it was my entire identity, et cetera. What I should have been doing that time is paying attention to the things that I was accumulating, the new skills that I was getting, that what lay ahead as opposed to what was behind, that which I was shedding.

And that's true at any age. A lot of retirees, they're like, I went from who's who to who's he, like six months. Yeah, but your grandkids are seeing you for the first time. Yeah, because you and your wife, you actually get to do some pretty interesting things. Yeah, but you're sitting on the board of your community foundation. I mean, you should be structuring your retirement so that it's so exciting that you can't even afford to keep working is the way that that works. That's the whole important thing. And that leads to the second trick that all successful people have in midlife or retirement or forced unemployment or whatever liminal state that they're in is that they start paying attention to how much satisfaction comes from not doing things as opposed to doing things. So when I'm helping people to retire, and I coach people on retirement all the time, I say, Okay, let's not start by the thing that you're not going to get to do anymore. Let's start talking about the things that you don't have to do anymore. And I know, by the way, for every single busy person watching us, the thing they hate the most, which is that they feel completely harried all the time.

Zoom meetings all day, and you have to pee so bad because you don't have time. Five minutes between Zoom meetings, you're like, I don't know, can I go in this bottle? And will they see? And it's awful. And the higher up you are in an organization, the less free time that you have, and then you're stuck in traffic, and then your spouse is mad you because you left work late again. And you hate that. You hate it, you hate it. I got it. Okay, good news. That's going to stop. So what does that mean? That means you get to redesign your whole schedule and put in things that are valuable to you in such a way that you go from an 80-hour schedule to what on paper looks like a 15-hour schedule, but which will, because fellow striver, will be a 40-hour schedule. But if you're having lunch with somebody who's really fun, you're going to go an extra half hour because you don't care. If you're having a It's an awesome workout. It's like leg day, and for the first time in six months, leg day feels good, you're going to go an hour and 45 minutes instead of an hour because you can't.

That is so unbelievably empowering, and that's the power of withdrawal, of subtract. That's chipping away your schedule as opposed to larding it up.

What will retirement look like for you?

It's a good question, but it's not going to be golfing in Florida. I can guarantee you that. Part of it is because I don't know how to golf, and part of it is because Florida is too hot. But the truth of the matter is, what I'm going to do is progressively make sure that I have more and more time so that the parts of what I do right now that I love the most, I'm doing more of. What's that? I'm not actually criding them out. And for me, that's writing and speaking. Writing and speaking. I love writing and speaking.

What about the travel that comes with all of the speaking stuff?

I love it. Do you really? I'm crazy about it. Does your wife go with you?

Or what do you- Sometimes.

But I I started touring seven months a year when I was 19. That's when I went pro as a musician. The open road for me, Ryan, I mean, it's just I love it.

You like airplanes, you like hotels. By the way, complete separate question. What do you do on airplanes?

I only work.

You're writing, thinking, reading?

I'm not looking at the television. I'm not having conversations. And so if I'm not sleeping, I'm working. I'm sitting in an expensive seat, and so I'm going to use it like an office where the phone next to me.

Which do You're not in private?

I do private some, but I'm flying first class when I'm not in private because it's a good investment for me.

100% agree. It actually makes me look forward to them in the quiet time, the non-Wi-Fi time, the thinking time, the writing time. Sometimes sleeping, I guess, we're really tired. Some people think that's a crazy investment. I think it's the most no-brainer about the time.

I take a lot of red eyes, too. So when I'm coming back from the West Coast, I almost always take a red eye. I mean, it's not like I sleep that well anyway. And so sleeping four hours instead of 6 hours. If I were an eight-hour-a-night guy with my fluffy pillow and I went, as soon as my head hits the pillow, one of those annoying people, then it would probably be a different kettle of fish. But no, I take a lot of red eyes, and I'm going back and forth to Europe a lot. Those are the times when I'm actually going to sleep, and the rest of the time It's my office and I'm working. And I've been on the road so long that I'm able to actually get in the zone pretty quickly.

Yeah, you're used to it. You got so many reps. I like that idea of your retirement style. I just had a meeting, in fact, this morning with my financial adviser. And every time we talk about retirement, I'm like, Dude, I'm not going to retire. Why would I retire? I have the greatest job in the world. I just want to keep doing this. Maybe I'll cut out a few of the parts of it that I don't like. But for the most part, you're telling me I get to talk with these brilliant people and then share what I'm learning from them with other people who become clients of mine or speak on stages? Why would you ever want to stop doing that? That's the coolest thing ever.

Your preferences will change. You'll like other things at different points in your life. But the point is, chip away the stuff stuff that's actually distracting you from the real person that you are. Things also change when your kids grow up. So you have one or two going to college next year, right? I mean, I'm a grandfather. By Thanksgiving, I'll have four grandsons, and they're coming thick and fast. And then you want time for that. It's the best thing ever. It's awesome. It's so great. I have them living in my house, as a matter of fact. We have a multi-generational household. Really? Yeah, totally. They live with you? Yeah, we made a decision as a family. The research was clear. I try to eat my own cooking intellectually. And the research is clear that the closer that you are to your grandchildren, the closer your grandchildren are to their grandparents, the better it is for everybody. So neurocognitively for the grandchildren is really good to live with grandparents if possible. And grandparents are just much happier. We had a big family decision. We have three adult kids. Two of them are married and have kids. They got married at 22 and 23.

Our sons did and had their first kids at 23 and 24, old school.

Love it.

Yeah, I know. Love it.

That's not happening anymore.

I know. We all moved to the same place. We made a joint decision to all move to the same place, and they're going to raise their kids in this place because the schools are really good, the Catholic schools where they want to go. One of the families moved in with us and the other one up the street. My youngest, my baby, is 22. She's still in the Marine Corps. When she gets out...

I was going to say that takes a lot of agreement with spouses and all that. That can get messy. You guys figure that out, though, huh?

Yeah, we figured it out. Part of it is that we made the commitment. We have a deal that my wife and I are going to pay for everybody's college, and that's easy. You just actually set up a fund when they get their social security number six weeks after they're born and then rely on the power of compound interest and then hope the markets don't tank or that universities don't continue to abusively increase their tuition for stupid nonsense, like lazy rivers and climbing walls, et cetera, all the dumb stuff and the administrators of useless nonsense. And if all goes well, that's going to be taken care of. Then be easy to live with. Treat your adult kids like adults is the way that that works. Let them raise their children the way that they're going to raise their children. What I'm finding in my sons are better dads than I was.

That's really cool. I love that idea. I think that's super old school, but I hope that comes back.

It's so good. I strongly recommend it. I really do.

Well, you write, To start your book to my grandsons, Joseph and Charles, who are the secret to my happiness. You could tell it seems like they genuinely bring you so much happiness.

Yeah, Joseph and Charles. And they're both getting little brothers in the next two months.

That's really cool.

Yeah.

What's it like at Harvard? You see a lot in the news, but I'd rather hear from somebody who's actually there. What's it been like there? Has it changed over the years? What's your experience teaching there?

It's been very positive. I mean, everybody's super nice to me. I teach the happiness class, what's not the like? Pretty nice. I teach the science of happiness at the Harvard Business School. I teach nonprofit management at the Harvard Kennedy School. I have some of the greatest students in the world. My colleagues are super nice. It's been hard academia has been really tricky because academia has made a lot of bad moves. Harvard is no exception. I mean, the truth is that there was a period in which activism was way, way, way too prominent. There's always been activism at universities, but fundamentally, they're about inquiry. They're about learning. They're about open debate. They're about scary, strange ideas. When activism takes over, then you get a party line and you hire faculty and recruit graduate students who say there's one way to think, and that's just antithetical to the intellectual experiment. And that's what made the universities turn upside down and get to where we are today and get to the point where there has been at many universities open discrimination against certain points of view, which is a very, very bad and dangerous thing. That said, I'm a super proponent of capitalism in the free enterprise system.

I'm a traditional Catholic in the way I live my life, and nobody's bothered me. Nobody's bothered me. But it's been hard on other people. And now I think that reforms are taking place that are painful for some schools, including ours. And I think they're going to make us a lot better. I know the end of the story, Harvard is going to be fine.

Yeah, I would think so. You also write in your book about getting practical. So you reference this 2020 study or 18 Distinguished Happiness Experts rated all these ways to improve happiness. And some of them are obvious ones, invest in family and friends, join a club. But Gretchen Rubin and you were talking about this, and it's one thing to know what those ways are of the 68 ways. It's another thing to actually implement and take action. What are some ways that people can take all the things they've learned from you, they learned from Gretchen Rubin, who also been on this show a few times, and execute on that so that it actually works?

Yeah, I know. It's a big difference between getting ideas and making them sticky in your life. There's one of the reasons that self-improvement is so unsuccessful. Self Your improvement gives you a flush of epiphany. Like, oh, wow, you read something, you read the meditations of Marcus Aurelius, and you're like, oh, it's so true, so true. And what that does is gives you a recognition of a truth. That's not sticky. That's going to burn off really quickly. To make something sticky, you got to do three things, and this is really well-documented in the behavioral science research. Number one, you need to understand why it's true. And that's why I'm a scientist. That's why I do behavioral science. And that's why about 30% of what I teach is neuroscience because I want to know what the experiments say, what the mechanism of action inside your head is, how the biology works. I want to know and I want to teach it. You need to understand, not just, That feels right. Sorry, not good enough. That's like, I believe that's right for the following reasons. Okay, that's one. That's a lot. So reading my books is not enough.

Number two is actually committing to habits, committing to changes, doing something different in your life. That's why everything that I write, you notice the chapters in the book, the Happiness Files, the third section of every essay of every chapter in that book is do these three things. Here are the habit changes. I have this column in the Atlantic. It comes out every Thursday morning. It's called How to Build a Life. Every edition of that has how to put these ideas into action, how to make the changes. Now, how do I know it works? Because I'm 10 weeks ahead of my column, and I'm doing those things 10 weeks before it shows up in the magazine. So that's how I know. And so I'm a living guinea pig on these things. That's two. Then number three, now the thing to really make it sticky, where you really move the experience into your prefrontal cortex, will you remember it, be accountable to it, teach it? So what everybody needs to do who wants to become happier, or By the way, who wants to stay in the gym or have a better relationship or be more successful at work is understand the science, number one, change your habits, number two, and go explain it to somebody else, number three.

Teaching is the greatest tool in the world for learning. Oh, yeah. Every leader I work with, I'm like, When is the next training you are leading? When is the next meeting where you're going to teach somebody something? I don't care what it is. Oh, yeah, totally. Put yourself in the position. You're a teacher, This is what you do for a living. You also teach through your books. But I feel like if you really want to learn about something, you really want to know yourself, and you care, you actually care to be good at your craft, teach it. Because then you're going to for sure gain an understanding, both in the prep process to get ready to make sure that you do a good job, then you actually do it, and then you usually get feedback afterwards. That loop is where a lot of learning happens.

Yeah, no. At the medical school at Harvard, they have a saying, When you're in a surgical residency, to become a surgeon, watch one, do one, teach one. Watch a surgery, do a surgery, explain a surgery. That's how you become a... My father was a math professor, most brilliant man I ever knew. And he said that that's really how it worked. When there was some new thing he needed to understand, he would learn the science, he would learn the theory, he would do a whole bunch of problems, and then he would teach a class in it, and then it would be his.

Watch one, do one, teach one. This hour is flown by, Arthur. I asked you this last time, but I'm asking you again, because you grow and learn and improve. You're meeting with one of your Harvard grad students, okay? So they're smart people. They want to leave a positive dent in the world, but they're not exactly sure how they're going to do it yet. What are some general pieces of life/ career advice you give to that person once they're leaving Harvard?

There are some basic principles, and there's a lot that you can do. Some of it is specific to the person, but there's the rule of thumb is to not trust your impulses. You've got three basic impulses that are almost right, but they're actually a little bit wrong to become a happier person. Your impulses are to love things, use people, and worship yourself. Those are your impulses. Really? Yeah. It's like love things. It's like more stuff, more stuff, more stuff. Because Mother Nature says more resources means you're going to be more successful through the winter and get more mates. Use people because you want to climb on top of people and use them for your gratifications, what people do because we're egomaniacs and narcissists. Number three, worship yourself because you're the center of the world. You're the center of the universe. That's what Mother Nature tells you. But those are lies that are just close enough to the truth that we believe them. Here's the truth. Just move the nouns and verbs around, and here's the formula. Use things with pleasure and abundance, man. I'm a capitalist. It's great. I want an abundance world. That's what I want.

Use things, but don't love them. Because love is only for people. Love people. And last but not least, worship the divine. And that's a different thing for different people. I get it. I got my version, but people have their version, something bigger than you, something transcendent to you. And if you can remember that, use things, love people, worship the divine, everything will go well for you in life.

God, this was a tightest hour ever, man. You killed it. The book is called The Happiest Files: Insights on Work and Life. As we already said, book's already out. The milk has already hit the list. It's crushing it. I cited 2% of it. It is really, really good. I highly, highly recommend people read it, and then, most importantly, take action on it, and you'll be better for it. Arthur, I love this man, and I'm excited for us to continue our dialog as we both progress, man.

Yeah, baby. Thank you so much. Thank you for the... And congratulations on the success of the show. Part of it is because you deserve it, but I'm mostly congratulating you because I'm glad for the impact that you're having on the world. You're making the a better place, and I appreciate that a lot.

That's really cool, especially coming from you, man. I really appreciate that. Thanks so much, man.

Thanks. See you soon.

It is the end of the podcast club. Thank you for being a member of the end of the podcast club. If you are, send me a note, rian@learningleader. Com. Let me know what you learn from this great conversation with Arthur Brooks. A few takeaways from my notes. Watch one, do one, teach one. The best way to learn something is to watch it. Then do it and then teach it. That is a great flywheel to become a learning machine. Then the progress principle. Do not fall prey to the arrival fallacy. You never arrive. You're always becoming. The reward for the work is that you get to keep doing it. Then I love this life/ career advice. Our initial impulse is to love things you Use people and worship yourself. That's wrong. Instead, we should use things for pleasure. Love people and worship the divine. That is not our initial impulse. We need to understand that so we can so we can flip it and do it right. Once again, I want to say thank you so much for continuing to spread the message and telling a friend or two, Hey, you should listen to this episode of The Learning Leader Show with Arthur Brooks.

I think he'll help you become a more effective leader because you continue to do that and You can also go to Spotify and Apple Podcasts, and you subscribe to the show, and you rate it, hopefully five stars, and you write a thoughtful review by doing all that. You are giving me the opportunity to do what I love on a daily basis, which makes me very happy. For that, I will forever be grateful. Thank you so much. Talk to you soon. Can't wait.