Transcript of #695 - Happiness Expert Dr. Arthur Brooks

Today's guest is an author and a social scientist; he's a professor at Vanderbilt and a senior fellow at the Harvard Business School, known for his popular class "Leadership and Happiness." He's here discussing his new book, "The Meaning of Your Life," which is available now. I had a great time with today's guest, Dr. Arthur Brooks.

Shine on me, and I will find a song I will sing about you.

Well, the whole idea of, you know, Jesus carrying the cross—that has this incredible imagery, that idea that each one of us has to take up our cross and carry it. I mean, you woke up heavy today.

Yeah.

You were carrying your cross.

Yes, yes.

And that has meaning, but you—and the whole modern therapeutic culture says, "Theo, you've got to get rid of that feeling. That's a pathology." No, it's not. It's an opportunity. That's what that is. That means something. And then we can actually kind of get to the deep meaning of what that is, that can actually help you learn and grow.

Amen.

And to say, "Man, there's suffering today," okay, bring it on. Put me in, coach.

Right.

Right?

Um, Arthur C. Brooks, thank you so much for joining us. I know that you are an author, a social scientist, and a professor, is that fair to say?

That's right. And I've been teaching the last 7 years full-time at Harvard, and I just—I just switched out to Vanderbilt here in Nashville, Tennessee, where we're taping this today.

Thanks. Welcome.

Yeah, thank you.

You have a new book, "The Meaning of Your Life: Finding Purpose in an Age of Emptiness." And one thing that I even just loved about the title is it's the meaning of your life, right? It's not like this—this huge thing of like, "Oh, the meaning of life."

Yeah, everybody has the same meaning to life, and I'm going to lay it on you. No.

Right. It's the meaning of—

I want to lead you to find the meaning of your life.

Right.

Yeah. I'm a trail boss. I'm a sherpa in this book. And it's basically the brain science and behavioral science that shows that all of us, when we use our brains right, and we stop doing a bunch of dumb things, and we start doing a bunch of old things, old-fashioned things, that we can find the meaning of our lives. And I'm not going to tell you what it is because I don't know. I mean, some days I don't know what the meaning of my life is.

Yeah.

I mean, I'm on this journey myself because I'm, like, beaten up and suffering too.

Yeah.

Right?

Amen, bro. Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, even today, it was just like, man. I was, like, praying right before I—like, probably 11 minutes ago I was praying. I was just like.

What were you praying?

I was just like, "God, just let me have some confidence in myself."

Yeah.

You know, "Let me have some peace today."

Yeah.

Um, "Let me not feel this pressure that everything has to be perfect."

Yeah.

And that this pressure that I don't know what I'm doing.

Mm-hmm.

You know?

You know, it's funny because.

So a little more agency.

Yeah.

I think I was just looking for a little bit more real agency and not just, like, frenetic energy like, "I'm, you know, I'm going to have another coffee and I'll be ready."

Yeah, and I'll be all set.

Yeah.

But there's, you know, whatever, 2, 3 million people, whoever will watch this episode of the show, the assumption is—and this is a huge thing for them to understand—they think, "If I had Theo Von's life, it would be so awesome and everything would be good."

Yeah.

That's a lie. That isn't true. That's not how life works at all. You know, it's like we say in my business, "Woe be to the man whose dreams come true and he finds he had—he finds he had the wrong dreams." Because you always have the wrong dreams.

Mm-hmm.

You know, you always think, "If I hit the lottery." But we know people who hit the lottery, they wind up miserable. It's a huge problem. I mean, and people who—where their worldly dreams come true, it's a big burden. It's a big problem. The stakes get higher. And then the guy was like, "I'm not going to hit the lottery. I'm not going to be CEO. I'm not going to be a billionaire." Okay, whatever. I guess I'll just go to the park and play with my kid.

Right.

He hit the lottery. He won!

He won.

He won. And then you got to figure, "Okay, all right, well, the die is cast. Theo Von is Theo Von. Arthur Brooks is Arthur Brooks. Good. So what are we going to do with it?"

What are we going to do with it?

And the only thing that we can do on the day that's heavy is go love somebody else.

Mm-hmm.

Is to go serve somebody else. That's all there is.

Amen, man. Yeah, even when you came in, you just asked me what was going on, like, genuinely, man, I just appreciated that. You know? Sometimes it's what I need. Like, last time I was even calling my brother, like, and he was busy with his kids, but I just wanted to have a moment where he, like.

Yeah.

You know, just, like, told me everything was going to be okay.

You know, there's a funny thing. There's this Catholic saint from the year 13 something. She's the first woman ever published in English. Her name is Saint Juliana of Norwich. And that, like, there's a.

Saint Juliana of Norwich?

Of Norwich.

Okay.

In Great Britain. And these troops, these enemies were closing in, and it was a huge thing. And she wrote in her journal, "All will be well, and all will be well, and all manner of things shall be well." You got to have faith, right? And you got to offer up the suffering. You have to, you know, say, "I'm going to love somebody right now, and then all will be well." What does it mean for it to be well? That I won't actually have any discomfort or suffering or heaviness anymore? No, because that's your lot, man. I mean, there's suffering in your life.

Yeah, and there's suffering everywhere.

Yeah.

There's—and there's so much. There's a ton of suffering, and a lot of that is, is, is part of life.

It is. And it's actually weird because that's one of the things I study, is that people who have a lot of suffering, they have a lot of meaning too. They have a deep sense of life's meaning. You get, like, 90 years to figure out how to live with your suffering. If you're lucky.

Oh, that's so interesting, man. Yeah, it's, it's, it's, it's interesting that, that your book came into my life at this moment. You know, a lot of times I've had a fear of missing out recently. Like, I have a lot of FOMO, but even more so it's become a fear of missing out on myself.

Mm-hmm.

You know, it's not like.

Mm-hmm.

I keep thinking it's like, "Oh, I'm missing this game that I'm seeing," or, "I'm missing these people doing this." And there's some of that.

Mm-hmm.

But it's—there's this deeper thing that feels to me sometimes, like, "Man, I'm missing out on some opportunity of me or some."

There's something deeper. There's something deeper, and you can't get it.

Yeah.

You can't quite get it, right?

Yes. And I can't quite.

You can't focus in on it. You don't—it's like, "What is it?" And then you're distracted, and then it goes away, and it's like, "Oh, I missed it again."

Yeah.

Another day won't bye.

Yeah.

That feeling?

Yes. And so what made you write this book.

Yeah.

Now?

So I teach classes in the science of happiness. So the past 7 years, I've been full-time teaching a class in the science of happiness at Harvard, and it's super popular. It's, like, the most popular elective at the Harvard Business School. So, like, I have hundreds of people on the waiting list for this thing because they want to be happier. They know how to make money.

Yeah.

But—but they know how to be successful, but they don't know that the ultimate startup is your life, that you're the CEO of the enterprise of you incorporated, and you're responsible for it. And that means taking risks where you should in, in, in, in return for explosive rewards. But how are they denominated? Not money or power or pleasure or fame or Instagram followers or anything stupid. No. It's love and happiness. And—and people don't know how to get that. So I've been talking about that. So, so scientifically, happiness isn't a feeling at all. Feelings are evidence of happiness.

Okay, so the smell.

That's feelings.

So the smell of the turkey is evidence of the Thanksgiving dinner.

That's right. And your feelings of happiness are evidence of happiness.

Okay.

So don't ever go for feelings. Big mistake that everybody makes in trying to find something big in their lives is, like, "I want that feeling. I hope I feel happier tomorrow." Big mistake. Your—your feelings lie all—when you woke up this morning and you—and you didn't—I woke up this morning, I felt bad too.

Mm-hmm.

And, and you're like, "Is God here?" And, and, you know, "Okay, get it back." If I actually said, "Okay, my feelings are authentic," I would have really questioned a lot of things in my life. But my feelings are—are the activity, are biochemical activity in my brain, in the limbic system of my brain. It's a bunch of signals saying that there's threats and opportunities. That's all emotions are. And they lie constantly. They lie to.

They lie constantly?

Constantly. Your—your feelings are not to be trusted. Now, they're worth listening to, but don't trust them as the authentic truth. The problem with a lot of young people today is a lot of young adults today are told that the only thing authentic about them are their feelings, which is why all that safe spaces and, and "I'm offended" and, and, you know, all that nonsense that's based on the feelings-based culture, which is a culture of lies.

Mm-hmm.

That's what it comes down to.

Amen.

And so what do we want to look for if it's not feelings? We want to look for something that's really tangible. Sort of the—you know, the macros when you're trying to eat, right? Protein, carbohydrates, and fat.

Mm-hmm.

That's food. Happiness has three macronutrients. The things that we really got to go for are enjoyment, to enjoy our lives. Not the same thing as pleasure. I've made that mistake. You know, there's a reason I drink zero alcohol today. It's because I made the mistake of confusing pleasure and enjoyment.

Yeah, I've done that a lot.

Yeah, for sure. I mean, it's anybody who's been addicted, they know exactly what that's all about.

Okay.

You know, the—the pleasure is not the road to happiness. Pleasure is the road to rehab.

Okay.

Now, there's nothing—there's nothing wrong with pleasure, but it's incomplete. You got to add people and memory to it so you can manage your pleasures and they don't manage you. That's enjoyment.

Okay.

The second macronutrient is satisfaction, and that's the joy of an accomplishment with struggle.

Okay, so the first one is.

Enjoyment.

Enjoyment?

Not pleasure. Enjoyment, right?

Not pleasure. Enjoyment. And the difference between those two, one more time?

Is pleasure plus people plus memory equals enjoyment.

Okay.

So it's got to be conscious and memorable. So that's why when you're doing something really pleasurable and you're doing it alone, you're probably doing it wrong.

Got it.

That's why people are so critically important. You almost never really enjoy if it's not addictive, like walking in the woods or saying your prayers, good.

Mm-hmm.

But anything that actually is pleasurable, like what you eat, what you look at, what you use, if you're—that's the reason that, you know, that a beer company doesn't do an ad, you know, a beer ad for a dude alone in his apartment pounding a 12-pack.

Yeah, yeah.

It's like, "That doesn't look good in the ad."

Yeah.

And the reason is because it's pleasure, not enjoyment. They show the guy with his buddies, right? Because it's pleasure, it's beer plus people he loves plus memories that they're making together. That's enjoyment.

Got it.

That's the recipe.

So the first one is enjoyment.

Right.

And you'll get enjoyment if you include other people.

Yeah. And making a memory. So it's really conscious.

Got it.

So that you can—you can—enjoyment is permanent. And when you remember it, it's permanent. You know, it's like when I—when I was a kid, you know, my mom was a good cook, and, and we had Thanksgiving at our house every year, just like all of us did, right? You probably did too.

Mm-hmm.

And every year we'd open up the oven, and it'd be a beautiful turkey. My dad would be like, "Get the camera."

Mm-hmm.

And we would take a—it's like we have 30 turkeys in the same oven, and we don't even—but the whole point was he was trying to make it memorable.

Mm-hmm.

And that's what Thanksgiving dinner was all about. That's your life. So it's like, yeah, yeah, there's going to be pleasure. But if you start doing something for pleasure and you take it away from people and memories, you're going to be an addict.

Right. So if you're just sitting in your apartment just playing with your turkey or whatever.

Yeah, exactly right. Or if you're sitting in your apartment all alone and you're isolated and you're gaming.

Right.

Or—or you're looking at pornography because nobody looks at pornography with a bunch of friends.

Yeah.

You know, all these things are so bad.

Right.

You know, that's the reason they're so bad, because they take pleasure away from it and they make them not part of enjoyment, which means they lead to addiction, not to happiness.

But we feel like that's not the truth, right?

Yeah, because your brain, your ancient brain, which is the same as it was 250,000 years ago, lies to you. And all your brain cares about is you actually getting these rewards that will make you more likely to get mates, more likely to get calories, more likely to survive. Mother Nature, she doesn't care if you're happy. She doesn't care at all. And so she'll lie to you and make you follow your animal impulses.

Got it.

And that—and so all the stuff that we're really good at today, you know, opiates, alcohol, or pornography, all it is is a way to supercharge the impulses, the animal impulses that we naturally have.

So it's kind of a hijacking of those.

Completely.

Right. And there's a much more dense and meaningful way to get those.

Yes, for sure. And the way to get that such that it's—it's deeply fulfilling but not addictive is to make sure that you're getting, you know, the experience the way that it was intended. So don't, like, refine it. I mean, we have natural endorphins in our brain so that when we get injured, we're actually able to function and run away from the predator and not be completely debilitated by the pain. That's what endorphins are for. Well, when we figure out chemically what they're all about in the brain, and then we refine them and produce them, they turn into fentanyl. I mean, that's what—that's what heroin is.

I see.

That's what—that's what opiates are. Pornography, it—it shears off the—the, you know, the physical aspect of a sexual relationship between people who are in love. And it—all it does is it just preserves that particular part. It's the fentanyl. It's fentanyl for sex.

Right.

And that's the reason it's.

It's like weaner fentanyl or whatever.

It's just super addictive.

Yeah.

It's a—it's supposed to be addictive.

Right. So they're just high—so a lot of that is the hijacking of just a simple moment.

Yeah.

To kind of trick your system, really.

That's right. And so if you make it social and memorable, you'll go to the real thing.

Got it.

Right? That's what it comes down to. Then it's enjoyment, and that enjoyment is a beautiful part of life.

Mm-hmm.

That's a beautiful part of life. But any of us who've actually really, really struggled with addictive behavior.

Mm-hmm.

It's because we got that wrong.

Got it.

Right? And some people are genetically more—more prone to that than other people. Did you have alcoholism in your family?

Yeah, we got it.

Yeah, so do we.

Yeah.

It's a Brooks disease.

Is it?

Yeah, for sure.

Satisfaction. Now, satisfaction is the joy you get from an accomplishment with struggle. And this is super weird because only Homo sapiens want to suffer. We want to suffer for our accomplishments because that's how we know what they're worth.

Okay, so only Homo sapiens want to suffer.

Yeah. My dog doesn't want to, like, struggle for his rewards. He'd eat lying down, right?

Right.

They want the easiest path to absolutely everything because they don't have moral aspirations. But you and I, we—we actually, we don't know if something is actually worthwhile unless we gave something up for it. And that's why struggle is so critically important. And that's why we teach our kids, you know, good things come to those who wait. Defer your gratifications. Don't eat before dinner. Study really, really hard, even though you're not going to like it, so you can get good grades. Because then you learn this lesson that things are—that the reward is way sweeter, the accomplishment is meaningful to you when you've actually struggled for it.

And where are we teaching that at, or where are you seeing a lot of this being taught?

I see this taught with sort of the immediate gratification that comes around from tech and social media, for sure, but also in the therapeutic—the therapeutic industrial culture that we've got that says that if you're suffering from something, it's evidence that there's a pathology.

Right.

That's wrong. I mean, I teach my students, it's like, you're studying at Harvard. If you're not depressed and anxious, you need therapy.

Yeah.

You know, it's hard. And you're doing a hard thing on purpose. Of course you're suffering. Good.

Right.

I mean, I don't go to the gym, and you don't go to the gym going, "This is going to feel so good." No, it's going to hurt. That's kind of the point. But the whole—but life is a gym.

Right.

You know, you put yourself in front of hard things, and you're going to suffer for those hard things because you want the sweetness that comes as a reward for what you get in—in—in return for the struggle is what it comes down to.

Yeah, yeah. It feels like some time—some point along the way, we forgot the value of the squeeze.

Yeah.

Is what makes us love the juice.

Totally. And that's absolutely the case. It's so funny that we actually—we—we fail to realize this kind of thing. But in—in a culture of immediate gratification.

Yeah.

We're not going to have any struggling. And so we start to lose the reps. We start to lose the ability. We get in kind of a doom loop where I don't suffer, and so I'm no longer able to suffer, and so I try less to suffer. And what happens? I get less and less and less and less satisfaction from life. Life is just like, "Eh, whatever. Why should I even try?" And you find that people are just, like, not striving in the same way that they would have before because they can actually get a payoff without any struggle, and they don't want the struggle naturally. But that's the wrong approach. Like, it's funny because, again, the animal impulses lie.

The animal impulses lie.

Mother Nature lies all the time. And she says the easy path is the best path because in, you know, 250,000 years ago, all of humanity lived in bands of hunter-gatherers of 30 to 50 individuals. And if you could actually sit down and not work better because you're saving your energy, if you could get more calories, get them, right, under all circumstances. But that's not the case today.

Right.

And so the result is we actually have to put friction back into our lives and not listen to Mother Nature who says, "Take the easy path." Don't take the easy path. Take the hard path.

Yeah.

And this is one of the things that we find. I talk to a lot of young men.

Mm-hmm.

I mean, I get tons of unsolicited email from young guys. "I just graduated from college. I got nothing to do. I'm living with my mom. I'm having a hard time finding a job or even looking for a job.

Yeah.

I'm smoking a lot of weed. I'm gaming all the time. You know, what do I do?" And my answer is always, "Go do a hard thing." You know, even if it's a hard thing, it's like, "Get up before dawn every day for the next month."

Your life will change.

I mean, if—if the sun is up every day when you get up, you've lost the first battle.

Yeah.

Right? And—and there's a whole bunch of neuroscience on this too. It talks about productivity and focus and happiness. The Indians call that the Brahma Muhurta, which in Sanskrit means the creator's time.

Brahma Muhurta?

B-R-A-H-M-A M-U-H-U-R-T-A. Brahma Muhurta.

Bring that up and keep that other page open for me. I do want to read that really fast.

There you go. The time of Brahma or the creator's time. It's the sacred pre-dawn window in Vedic tradition in Ayurveda.

Yeah.

And I—I learned this. I go to India a lot. But when I go to India, I have Hindu teachers in—in the south of India. I've also worked for the last 13 years with a Dalai Lama, which has been really, really helpful for me. But the result of it is I've been able to incorporate a lot of that Vedic physics, all that, you know, ancient Indian wisdom into my own work as a scientist in the West and as a Catholic. It's made me a better Catholic.

That's fascinating. And I find that so many of the faiths overlap in—in a lot of ways.

Yeah.

With some of the core principles.

Many of the same core principles. Many differences, of course.

And not so much in some of their lore and truths.

Right.

To the—to the faiths themselves.

Right.

But in—in the principles.

For sure.

Oh.

And—and a lot of the things, you know, the intense love for the divine, the search for life's deepest meaning, and different ways to actually do that. And I've learned a tremendous amount about my own prayer life by actually sitting in—in meditation with the Tibetan Buddhist monks.

Mm-hmm.

Even though I'm not a Buddhist. I'm not a—no, I'm not a—and the Dalai Lama's not a Catholic. But we've shared these ideas with each other an awful lot. And he's a man of great wisdom and love and compassion.

Mm-hmm.

And it's made me—I think it's made me a better Christian man.

Amen.

Yeah.

Well, even when Bishop Barron was on, you know, he was talking about how he would sit in front of this statue in the morning and just repeat a mantra for a long time.

Right.

I remember how long.

That's his holy hour.

Right.

Which is what the Indians call the Brahma Muhurta.

Oh, I didn't even know exactly that.

Yeah.

That it brings us back to that.

Yeah.

But when—when he was saying that, I was like, "Oh, well, that's just a medit—that's meditation," right?

Yeah.

It's like creating a pattern within yourself. It's a lot of—so much is action, right? It's like.

Yeah.

When I'm sitting sedentary and when I'm just scrolling on my phone, when I'm just doing things that are sedentary, I'm just stuck in my thoughts.

Right.

It's not action. And action, when I can put action with something.

Mm-hmm.

I don't know, it creates a lot more meaning. I'm noticing for me in my own life, even that's why I notice in my gratitude list, it's like, "Well, let me create even a visual action with it if I am sitting here."

Right.

Kind of in a meditative state and walk and writing out things I'm grateful for. Like, if I'm—I'm thinking, "Oh, I'm so grateful for my sister," then I will think of things, of active moments.

Mm-hmm.

Where I've seen her smile or.

Right.

Seen her, like, laugh or jokes she tells. So it's just like, even if I'm just remembering actions.

Right.

Or attaching actions to thoughts.

Yeah, for sure.

Right? It—it just helps make things more real.

For sure. Look, I mean, it's like an unsupervised mind is a dangerous business, right? And—and one of the—the whole thing about actually disciplining the mind first thing in the morning comes a lot along with disciplining the body. That's why I recommend to all of my students that they have morning protocols. And doing something that you know is going to set yourself up for success. Because I wake up and unsupervised, I'm like, "I'm all alone."

Yeah.

I'm all—you know that feeling where you wake up and you're like, "It's real dark. It's real in here."

Oh, yeah. I feel like a missing person.

But I have.

But you feel like—you feel like you've been in deep space all night long. And that there's a profound aloneness to it, right?

Well, if I don't create a little bit of structure and create some points of structure, then it's just one big whatever.

It's.

It's just—it's a—it's a—it's a—it's a sunrise and sunset of whatever.

That's exactly right. That's exactly right. You have to put together the architecture to be—to be the person that you want to be.

Right. A lot of my life is filled with a lot of stimulation, though, where it's like.

Right.

Things look fun. You get to go do all these fun things, and it is fun. But it's like.

It's distraction.

It's—a lot of it is distraction, even though it's great.

Yeah.

It is distraction in the end from just my relationship with me.

Yeah.

And—and—and maybe what more do I want for myself, like in a human sense or I don't know. It's just, yeah, it's a distraction from my relationship with myself and—and what things might be very important to me that I'm putting on the side just because I'm—because it's—some things are fun. I want to read what the—can you bring that up with the—the Vedic—the Bar—how do you say it?

About the Brahma?

The Brahma Muhurta?

Yeah.

Yeah. Brahma Muhurta is a sacred pre-dawn period in Vedic tradition and Ayurvedic practice. Let me see. In traditions highlighted by teachers like Sadhguru, it is considered a time when an individual can act as a creator of their own state of mind and energy. So yeah, it's like—it's like swabbing your decks, washing your decks.

Yeah.

Seeing what's going on.

Yeah.

And preparing yourself.

Yeah.

Oh, when I have those days where I get up and I'm popping and I get to my meeting and I get my workout done, dude, by 9:30, I am the king.

Yeah.

Anything's possible.

Mm-hmm.

But your brain chemistry is not the same every day when you wake up. I mean.

Right. So I have to take control of it.

Yeah, yeah. So that's right. That's why you got to have protocols that actually will get you back to a baseline, reliably get you back to a baseline. You're not going to be perfect. I mean, I slept like garbage last night.

Yeah, see.

I mean, I was sleeping it up. Yeah. I mean, I'm on tour.

I must have slept like a damn farm animal or whatever.

Oh, man. It's like I.

I slept like a farm animal in the city.

You know, it's like that old joke. I slept—I slept like a baby. Every two hours, I woke up crying.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And reaching out for—for breasts or whatever.

It's bad. You know, I'm on tour every—almost every week, 48 weeks a year.

Are you?

Yeah. I mean.

And you're like traveling and speaking?

Yeah. Speaking—speaking—speaking to media. So I'm doing speaking to media because there's, you know, a lot of people want to hear about happiness.

Mm-hmm.

But the result of it is, you know, I'm not with my wife. I'm—I'm—I'm in hotels. And, you know, it's okay, but it's kind of lonely.

Oh, yeah.

But you got to have a protocol so you can become human again. I—I wanted to come see you today. I'm super pumped to come see you today.

Thanks.

I got to be my best self, right?

Right.

And you were thinking about that even before we hadn't met before. And you're like—and—and so the protocols, actually, that we can actually have the discipline. It's funny because, you know, there's this guy, Admiral McRaven. Remember he gave that famous speech called "Make Your Bed"? Remember this a few years ago, like 2005?

Bring him up because I feel like.

William McRaven.

He was the.

Jordan—Jordan Peterson kind of became the guy that did that.

Yeah, yeah.

For—for sure. He gave a speech. This guy gave a speech at the University of Texas at Austin called "Make Your Bed." And the whole point was you want to get started on something good that was have a protocol that's practical and specific that will set you on the right path. Now, making your bed is great, but the whole point that we're talking about here is, like, make your bed in a metaphysical sense.

Right.

Like really good things. Get up, pump the iron, go to mass, say your prayers, do your gratitude list. You know, do—do the things that you actually need to do to get your brain and this neurophysiologically into the right possible space, notwithstanding the fact that you slept like garbage, you went to sleep feeling sad, you woke up feeling a lack of the presence of God, and, you know, the biology isn't there for you. So you got to have a way to get it back.

Yeah. Yeah. It says right here, "If you want to change the world, start off by making your bed. If you have a miserable day, you will come home to a bed that is made, that you made, and a made bed gives you encouragement that tomorrow will be better."

It's a metaphor.

I agree.

It's a metaphor.

Well, let's just getting up.

Yeah.

It's like getting up. I go in the kitchen. A lot of times, I'll leave my dishes out from dinner. And so then in the morning, the first thing I'll go do is go and put them up, start the dishwasher. It's like.

Yeah.

That's the first thing. Then I'll—and I keep earplugs in too for the first, like, probably 90 minutes of the day.

Do you look at your phone in the first hour?

Dude, if I do, I wait until I'm rolling my legs out. That's usually, like, probably about 50 minutes that I've been awake, and then I'll respond to texts.

Yeah.

But it's just for communication.

Yeah.

Because.

I recommend actually the whole first 60 minutes without the device.

Yeah.

For neurocognitive programming. And if you don't do that, if you actually don't, you'll—you'll be better focused and you'll have better mood and productivity for the whole day.

Mm-hmm.

Because you won't get the hijack. You know, this—it's the kind of thing where it's like, okay, if you can go the whole when you're—when things are really, really rough, if you do a bad habit in the first hour, you're going to do it for the rest of the day.

Yeah.

And the whole day is written off, right? But if you don't do it for the first hour of the day, you're programmed, you're path-dependent toward the better self. And so one of the things that—that we all should actually do is don't look at it in the first hour. I mean, look at it. Nothing's on fire in the business, okay? Then not for the first hour. While you eat, because your brain actually wants you to eat with other people. And if you have your phone on the table, it interrupts the neurochemicals that you need to connect to the other person.

Mm-hmm.

And then last hour of the day. So you're looking at a real physical book. You're not getting blue light. If you're—you know, people who are watching us who live with somebody else, like a spouse or, you know, somebody they love, they can connect with them better. That's really just those three things. It'll change your life.

Yeah. Oh, well, I mean, I—I was even thinking last night I was reading your book before I was going to sleep, and I was looking and I was thinking, like, there—there's certainly been times where I will replace my sense of self, like, with a sense of screen, right?

Yeah, yeah.

It's like how I feel.

That's the simulation. That's the matrix.

Right.

That's what—and—and there's actually we know how that affects the brain. So your brain has two hemispheres, the left and the right. The left hemisphere is what you're using when you're looking at tech. That's a simulation of the experiences in the right hemisphere, which is all, like, love and mystery and meaning. And so dating on the apps is a—is a—is a simulation of actual courting. Your social media is an actual simulation of friendship. Gaming is a simulation of actual real-life accomplishment. And we're living in a simulation.

So that's why it feels more like a simulation, because everything that is—that was once more tangible.

Yeah.

And interactive and actually human, we are simulating it now.

Exactly right.

So—so when people say we're living in a simulation, some people think it's like, oh, this everything is a computer and it's gigabytes and everything.

No, that's not what I mean.

That's not what you mean.

We're simulating in real-life love.

Right. So that's.

That's what we're simulating.

And that's why we feel like we're living in a simulation.

Yeah.

Because in that way, it's truly a—like a literal simulation. Not like Elon Musk says there's a 90% chance that this is a simulation run by aliens. I don't know.

Right.

I don't know. But this is simulating what our brains really want, which is we're made for you. There's a reason we're not doing this on Riverside.

Yeah.

There's a reason we're not doing this online, like a Zoom right now, because we're having a human connection right now that we can't get otherwise.

Mm-hmm.

It would be a simulated conversation between Theo and Arthur if we actually did it online.

Right.

And it wouldn't be as good.

Right.

Because it would be a left brain simulation for the right brain connection between friends.

Got it. And this is super important for me to even just—just make sure I'm clear on. So because a lot of people here, you hear stuff like that Elon says, and you see all these things like, "We're living in a simulation." And like, you know, I was on, you know, I was on 70 grams of mushrooms.

That's a trippy, man.

And I could see the numbers at the on the, you know, in the light on the wall. Like, you hear a lot of that, right?

Yeah.

Like, you hear a lot that. And but as we're seeing—hearing, seeing, like, clips saying this and hearing this in our world, if at the same time we are simulating things that are very real, like instead of meeting somebody and having to ask them out and having a real moment with them, you are just swiping left to right.

That's right.

That's why it feels that way when we.

Right.

Hear those—when we hear those things saying we're living in this, like, in the matrix, that's why it feels that way, right?

It's a digital curve fit for the thing you actually want to see, want to experience.

Got it.

You're getting a virtual experience instead of a real experience.

Got it. And one thing that I—that I really loved about your book is when you say that one thing that cannot be simulated is meaning.

And that's the third macronutrient of happiness. And that's the hard one.

Oh, right there, bro.

Man.

Is that how we pulled up at that?

Nice. Nice. See that corroboration?

Let's go.

So the—so meaning is the third macronutrient, and that's the hardest. That's what's missing today. So before we go down, so just tell me the first two again.

Enjoyment, satisfaction.

And those are the macronutrients of happiness.

The first two macronutrients. There's three.

Got it.

Because remember, food is protein, carbohydrates, and fat.

Mm-hmm.

Happiness has three also.

Got it.

It's not—it's—it's a coincidence, right?

Mm-hmm.

So—so enjoyment, super important. You got to enjoy your life. Satisfaction, that's like you got to take a deep sense of satisfaction in your accomplishments for sure, which means you got to have stuff to do: goals, direction, progress. And the third, the hard one, is the meaning of life, because that's the why of your existence.

Man, you hit—you hit that third one as a meaning.

Yeah. That's the why of ex—and that's the one I didn't—that's so hard to write about because it's so philosophical. So it turns out that the meaning of life, the fact that we have walked into since 2008, I've been—I've been keeping data on this forever.

Okay.

That since 2008, people have been progressively more and more likely to say, "My life feels meaningless." That's not coincidentally when we started to actually have screens take over our individual lives.

Yeah.

Why? Because that's when we started to walk into the matrix. That's when our brains started to work differently.

Right.

And that's where.

A sense of screen and not a sense of self.

Yeah. And so that meaning of life, that lies behind the explosions in depression and anxiety and loneliness that—that we actually see. I mean, you—when you read the news, it's like, okay, why are so many young people depressed and anxious? And depression is up by 3X since 2008 for people under 30.

Oh, one out of six people are on antidepressants.

It's—it's insane.

And a higher percentage of that in college.

For sure. And the—actually, here's the weird part, Theo, is that ordinarily you see mental suffering for people who have less privilege and less education. It's more likely if you have education, have high levels of education, gone to college.

Wait, so say that again. So people that have more education.

People who have more—that have—have more years of education are more likely to be depressed.

Mm-hmm.

And they're more likely to be anxious. So depression, 3X.

That makes me feel pretty good, honestly.

I know, man.

Well, that's.

But so that's.

You went to college, but still. I mean, it's like.

So it's like, yeah.

So look, there's still a way out of all this.

Yeah, yeah. So and.

It's a blippy.

Anxiety is up by 2X. So everybody's like, okay, it's because the boomers made all the houses really super expensive and we're wrecking the environment. There's too much income inequality. That's all nonsense. Those might be problems. Everybody's got to decide for themselves whether those are problems, but they're not new problems. There's nothing new about the fact that, you know, something's wrong with the environment or—or stuff is getting expensive. There's—I mean, I kind of remember—I remember the '70s. It was way worse. Everything was way worse. You—you had to roll up your windows when you drove through LA because it was too smoggy.

Mm-hmm.

And, you know.

That's a good point.

18% inflation.

Well, even if you go back to feudal times, it's like.

Yeah, way worse.

You could be walking down the street and somebody would shit out their window and it would hit you.

I know. I know. It's like, yeah, a third of the population died of the Bubonic Plague. Bummer.

Yeah.

Right? No, good old days. What are you talking about?

Because I will romanticize stuff like, oh, it was so, you know.

Oh, so good. I got a—my son got a blister and he died of sepsis.

Oh, my gosh.

Like, what? Like, uh-oh, toothache. You're going to die.

Yeah, dude.

Oh.

You'd have three or four funerals a week to go to.

Oh, yeah, completely. And, you know, half your kids would die.

Yeah.

I mean, it's like.

Abraham Lincoln, the president, Abraham Lincoln, all three of his kids died by the age of, like, 22.

Oh, yeah. Well, one of them was playing—no, that was Calvin Coolidge. His son was playing tennis at the White House, forgot his socks.

Mm-hmm.

I kid you not. Got a blister on the back of his heel and died of an infection.

Ugh.

The president's son. So I'm like, romanticizing the old days is completely absurd. Oh, we're bringing it up. Cal—Calvin Coolidge, Silent Cal.

Calvin Coolidge's younger son, Calvin Coolidge Jr., on June 30th, 1924, Calvin Jr. played lawn tennis on the White House South grounds with his brother John without wearing socks. A blister formed on his toe. He was moved to Walter Reed Army Hospital, where doctors could not stop the infection because antibiotics like penicillin had not yet been discovered and made available. He passed away. Wow.

And people are like, oh, man, old days were so much. No, that's actually wrong. The reason that we have this explosion of depression and anxiety is because people don't know the meaning of their life, and they're not even looking. And they're paralyzed from looking because they're using their brains wrong because they're staring at the screen all day long.

And—and before we go too much deeper, can you define meaning for people?

Yeah, for sure, because it sounds so philosophical. It's like a New Yorker cartoon. What's the meaning of life, right?

Right.

So.

And this is also about what's—yeah. And—and you—but the book—but I did love it, and I'll reiterate is that it's your meaning, right?

Right. You're right. Exactly right. And it's the answer to three big why questions in your life. So—so we'll go through the big three why questions.

So meaning answers three big why questions.

Yeah.

Oh, wow.

Yeah, because meaning is always about the why of life. You—have you had Simon Sinek on your show before? Do you know who he is? Simon Sinek, he wrote a book called Start with Why.

We've not had him.

He's fantastic. And—and why is fundamentally about meaning. It's like, why? You know, those days when you wake up, it's dark. Simon Sinek, he's great. I've been working with him for years. And—and you're like, why? Lord, why? Right? That's a meaning—that's a cry for meaning, right? The first big why question is why—why does all this stuff happen? That's—you know, that's called coherence. You got to have some sort of a theory about why things happen the way that they do. I believe that things happen the way they do because of the mind of God and because of the laws of science. And those things work together. That's my coherence theory.

Right.

But that's a why. That's a—that's—that's number one.

So—but—but—but any of those are okay. You just have to have a why?

You got to have a why that actually makes sense to you, that you actually believe.

Got it.

That you think actually kind of holds water is the way this works.

But we used to have a—a—we used to have a news—kind of a news system, I feel like.

Yeah.

In America.

Yeah.

Or it used to feel like we had a news system in America that we believed and trusted.

Yeah.

So I feel like when that sort of dissolved, then it made probably the why a lot.

It made coherence worse.

It made coherence.

It made coherence a big problem for people.

It made coherence a big problem because you—that's a huge thing. You don't know what is real anymore.

Why things are happening.

Yeah.

Why are these things happening? It's like, well, well, the—the—the mainstream media said, and you're like, yeah, right. Yeah, right.

Yeah, the last thing I'm going to trust is them. They're like the, you know, they're the.

Yeah, it's obfuscation and, you know, it's like biased whatever. For sure, it's a big problem.

Right.

Right? I mean, I think we all understand that at this point. And—and by the way, that's going to lead to good things. You know, it's like I—I do a lot of mainstream media, and we all do a lot of mainstream media. I think it's actually getting better as a result of the fact that people are more skeptical.

Mm-hmm.

At this point. But it hurts in the meantime because it—it ruins the sense of coherence, the—the through line about why things are happening the way that they are. That's number one.

Right. So that's one of the issues that why we're having trouble with meaning right now is because things feel incoherent.

You don't know who you can trust.

Yeah.

You just don't know who you can trust. The second is purpose, which is why am I doing what I'm doing? And that's the question you started with today. It's like, why am I doing this? I mean, it's got to be perfect, but why? You know, that's this—the—that means goals, direction, and—and the ability to make progress. And when life feels feudal, like this is dumb, that—that means that you're—you're lacking a sense of purpose. You're lacking a sense of direction in your life.

Mm-hmm.

And, you know, it's funny because experiments on, like, undergraduate students in college show that you can dramatically raise their sense of meaning and happiness by giving them an arbitrary goal, which gives them more purpose. Like, you're getting a B minus in calculus. We're going to get a B plus for you in calculus. And you set them up on a protocol, which is why the morning protocols.

Yeah.

We talked about.

As a—as a professor, you mean?

Yeah, as a professor. Like, campus counseling will do this an awful lot. Like, we're going to raise your grade by one full letter grade. And just that gives them a sense of purpose, and they start getting more disciplined. They start getting happier.

You mean you're going to raise the goal of their grade?

Yeah. The—you got—they need a goal, and that gives them a sense of purpose. Even a—like an arbitrary, dumb little purpose like that really helps people an awful lot.

Are there easy ways for us to do that for ourselves?

Yeah. To set, you know, basic goals about ways in—in small ways you want to get better.

Okay.

I want to get—so, you know, for example, purpose in recovery is one day at a time.

Mm-hmm.

It's like, today I'm not going to drink.

Yeah.

And that's a doable goal, and that gives you a—a sense of purpose. Now, that's—you need more than that, but that's really super helpful.

Right. That's a huge thing.

It's like people.

It's a huge thing.

People say, "I can't—oh, I don't get to drink for the rest of my life." I don't know if you get to drink for the rest of your life. I'm just saying you can't—like, can you not drink for today? Yeah, exactly. And, you know, there's a funny thing in my—in my world. You know, we ask a lot, for example, what is the psychology behind the fact that diets always fail? So almost any diet works: low fat, low carb, low whatever, man. I mean, it's like fasting, keto, caveman, whatever.

Yeah. Sleep and beauty diet, having a tapeworm.

They all work, but they don't work in the long run. Now, the reason they all work in the short run is you can make it today not eating what you want because the scale is going to go down. But when you hit your goal, the reward is never getting to eat what you like ever again for the rest of your life. Congratulations.

Mm-hmm.

That's a big problem. That just destroys purpose.

Oh, yeah.

Purpose is everything. You just don't have any more goals. You don't have any more direction. You can't make any more progress. And so it's obliterated. It's depressing, as a matter of fact. People hit their goals and get really, really depressed and, like, eat a whole cake.

Yeah.

Right?

Oh, yeah, dude. Somebody sent me a cake, dude. And, bro, if.

Did you eat the whole cake?

I didn't plan on it, dude, but I woke up in the middle of the night. I wasn't doing well and I ate half that.

You ate the half.

Bro, I ate it standing up.

What kind of cake was it?

I don't even know. Dude, it was dark.

And it was.

I ate it standing up, Arthur.

Oh, yeah, yeah. No, I'm not.

I mean, who is that?

It's me too.

But then I was so jacked up on sugar, I couldn't sleep.

I know.

Now I'm furious with myself. Now I go buy a vape, dude.

Now you're full of self-loathing.

Oh, now it's 4:00 a.m., dude. And I'm like, I can't live like this anymore.

And, you know, here's the irony. It's like there's like 200 people that are listening to this conversation right now at 3:00 in the morning standing up eating a cake.

It is true, bro. Yeah. And honestly, and somehow I'm envious of them.

Oh.

Oh.

No, I get it. You know, so this is a.

But so where.

Now, that's the problem with progress.

Where are we?

That's progress. You know, progress means that you actually make goals, and they're achievable goals, and you know what they are. And that's one of the big parts of meaning in life. Purpose is part of meaning in life.

Okay. And—and—but so that's.

That's why you're doing what you're doing.

Got it.

Because that's my purpose. For today, at least.

Yeah.

For today, at least. Now, it doesn't have to be like, I want to be president of the United States. I want to save 7 million children. No. It might be as simple as I'm going to be kind to my wife today. I am going to do one good act for somebody today. I'm going to love somebody who needs my love today.

Yeah, including myself.

Yep.

Sometimes.

Yep.

That's a big one, dude.

Exactly right. I'm not going to eat that cake tonight.

Yeah. I'm going to.

We'll see.

Yeah, we'll see.

It's like, don't send Theo a cake, folks.

Well, dude, yeah. And when people send a cake, I can't even—and sometimes I'll even curse them or whatever.

I know, I know.

I'll curse them.

I know because they think they're doing something so good for you, but you have no impulse control in the middle of the night.

That's true.

That's when your willpower is gone.

Dude, I ate fricking 17 peanut butter cups one night.

That sounds so good.

I ate 17 peanut butter cups one night in my 40s.

Oh, yeah. Don't—look, I'm in my 60s.

Oh, yeah, wolf.

There's.

So it doesn't get better?

Well.

And so that is the second, um, question.

Yes.

The second why question is, uh, why am I doing the things that I'm doing?

Right. Exactly.

And if you ask yourself that question, you'll be able to establish some sense of purpose with yourself.

That's right. That's right.

Okay.

If you basically say, "I am doing what I'm doing because—because XYZ, because I want to lose some weight, because I want to get better grades, because I want to be a more loving person, because I want to get to the end of the day not having used alcohol."

Right.

Right? That's the person that I want to be. And you got to see that better person, that better version of yourself. Say, "That's—that's me at the end of the day going, yep, still not drinking. That's good."

So to visualize it too will help you.

Super important. Super important. That visualization is—I mean, that's how—that's how this idea of manifestation actually works. There's nothing—no gears in the universe that are turning. Although I do believe in the power of prayer.

Mm-hmm.

I do honestly believe to—I believe that it's a good thing to say, "What is—I'm going to visualize 11:00 p.m. Theo going to sleep, not having done the things he didn't want to do, and now I'm going to pray that God will give me the strength and grace to become that person."

Mm-hmm.

That's how purpose—that's how you can—you can bring purpose, you know, to your real life.

That even feels cool when you say it. I mean, I—I feel like there's a sense of, um, say that one more time. Say that part one more time.

So, okay, so you got—purpose means you got goals and direction. And your goal—your direction is toward a goal that is something good, right? It's got to be something tangible, something that you can actually put a pin in, not something like, "The universe is perfect."

Right. Or, "I want to be a millionaire."

Yeah.

Or a jillionaire.

Yeah. It's just—it—no, no. It's, um, it's—it's something really tangible, something really meaningful to you. And it might be as something as simple as, "At the end of this day, I will not have done this, and I will have done that. And I'm going to imagine myself at the end of the day and how I'm going to feel when that has actually come true."

Mm-hmm.

And visualize that actually you understanding yourself as having achieved that goal. Nothing audacious. Nothing—somebody else would be like, "Holy mackerel, you did that in one day?"

Right.

No. It's something realistic that you can achieve.

So I would just think like, "Okay, so today if I make it to bed like, like, um, tonight I would like to make it to bed by 10:00 p.m., right?"

Yeah.

So that could be my thing. And it's.

Sober.

Right.

Stone cold sober.

Stone cold sober.

Having worked out, having done my job, having done a good podcast, having, you know, fed my body in the right way, having had a couple of conversations and told a couple of people I love them.

But now we're—is that stacking too much on, or do you think that's an okay basic day?

That's a good basic day.

Okay, good.

Yeah, because you've actually fed your needs.

Got it.

Body, soul, work, relationships, in a very—in a very, you know, very modest way.

Got it.

You know, you didn't call 63 people and say, "I love you."

Right. Called a couple of buddies, checked in.

Yeah.

Listened to them.

Exactly right.

Um.

And then you figure it out, and then—and then you say, "Okay, but—" and I really want that. I see myself doing that. And then you—then you get help. And the way that you—a good way to get help is to say, "Lord, help me make it to that point."

Help me make it to that point.

Yeah. Help me—it's like, "Be with me until 10:00 p.m. tonight when I'm looking back on that in this way."

Mm-hmm. I like that. So, God, help me be—get to 10:00 p.m. tonight. I would like to be able to make it through my day healthily. I would like to be able to take care of my body, my mind, and my soul. Um, I would like to be able to be of service to others. Um, show me examples of ways I can do that. Um, and I would like to get to bed sober, and I would like to get to bed at a decent time tonight.

Right.

Please be with me until I can get there.

Yeah. There's an—there's an ancient, ancient, ancient Catholic prayer that—that—that a lot of priests will pray. And they'll say, "Night has no terror for me sleeping under God's wings."

Mm-hmm.

Right?

Dang.

Yeah.

Well, that's a fricking holiday in of the Lord, brother.

Yeah. It's too good. It's so good. It's so good.

It's nice.

So—and then—and then the last of the why questions is, "Why does my life matter? Why does my life matter? And to whom?"

And to whom?

Yeah. And to whom? Because it has to matter to someone. It's like, "Why does my life matter?" It's going to be like, "Because," you know, something cosmic. No, it's because my mom loves me, because my friends care about me, because God is somebody who's taking care of me. That's the significance question. And you got to have an answer to that. And a lot of people today, they're like, "I don't know why my life matters, and I don't know to whom my life matters."

Mm-hmm.

Establishing that is critically important. If you don't know, that's going to be a problem.

So significance is the—is the answer to the question, "Why does my life matter and to whom?"

That's right.

Okay.

That's right. And that's getting harder and harder to answer, especially when we're mediating our relationships through screens. It's like, "Why does my—why does my life matter and to whom?" And if it's like all the people I'm dealing with over the entire course of the day are 12 hours through social media, I'm not quite sure that my life does matter.

Why does that—why does this so much create this? Oh, because this is a simulation.

Yeah.

And it's not real.

Exactly right. It's very hard for me to deny—for us to deny each other that we matter to each other right now because we're looking into each other's eyes.

Right.

And we're brothers right now.

Right.

That's the way life's supposed to work.

Got it.

But if I'm looking at, you know, it's like, "Hey, Theo," and like, "Text, text, text, text, text, text." I don't know. I don't know what else you're doing. I don't even know if it's you.

Oh, that's the craziest.

Uh-huh. And that's how the simulation works. Is it real? Is it not real? That matrix effect actually destroys significance. Our brain is not made to—to—and there's a lot of neurochemistry in this. There's a—a neuropeptide in the brain called oxytocin. You ever heard of oxytocin?

Oh, yeah.

Yeah, yeah. It's the love molecule. And it's how we connect with each other, how you connect with your baby, how you connect with your friends, how—how people who are in love connect with each other very, very deeply for deep friendship.

Okay.

You don't get it through a screen. Almost nothing. Almost nothing. And so neurochemically, we're not getting the link that we're evolved to actually get to connect with each other as human beings, and that destroys the sense of significance.

And is that true? Bring that up.

Oxytocin? Yeah. Oxytocin, a natural peptide hormone and neuropeptide.

Um, it's often nicknamed the love hormone or cuddle hormone. It influences social recognition, trust, romantic attachment, and mother-infant bonding. Wow.

And the new research on Zoom screen, for example, we wanted to know during COVID.

Mm-hmm.

How much do we actually get when we're disconnected and we're talking on FaceTime and Skype and—and over the Zoom screen? And the answer is not very much.

Um, when prolonged social isolation settles in, the body's hormonal systems undergo a profound shift. Social—social isolation essentially hijacks the oxytocin system by driving down its baseline production and allowing stress hormones to dominate the brain. So that comes from social isolation. So it, uh, it hijacks the oxytocin system by driving down its baseline production and allowing stress hormones to dominate the brain. So not only do you have lower oxytocin, but it.

When you're only on screens and not in person.

When you're only on screens and not in person. But scientifically, it allows more stress in.

For sure. I mean, basically you said that—that—that space man's going to get filled by something.

But so the enemies are at the gates, and we're—we—we—we're—we're—we're the gate—we're the enemies and the gates.

Yeah. Did—did Bishop Baron—Bishop Bee, when he's on the show, did he teach you the—the—did he teach you the St. Michael prayer?

Um.

This is a great prayer. So St. Michael the Archangel is one of the three archangels in the Old Testament.

Mm-hmm.

And he's believed by Catholics to actually fight the devil. But that's how he talks about it. St. Michael the Archangel, defend us in battle. Be our protection against the wickedness and snares of the devil. May God rebuke him. We humbly pray and do not do thou. O prince of the heavenly host, you know, and—and it talks about, you know, cast into hell Satan who prowls about the world seeking the ruin of soul.

Wow.

Okay. Good manly stuff, right?

We need that right now.

We need that right now. But—but look, okay, even if people are watching us, they don't believe literally in Satan. They don't believe in the hijacking of souls. They don't believe in all this stuff. There are problems out there. And you need the sword and shield.

Yeah.

You need the defense.

Oh, Satan is lurking, bro. Satan these days has cleats on, dude.

Yeah.

He is active, bro.

Yes.

That is the realest thing that—that's become more real than ever.

And you're just like—if you're looking at your phone all day long, you're wandering into battle unarmed and naked.

Yeah.

That's what you're doing. It's like, good luck to you.

And most who—like, a lot of, like, the—it's just—it's—it's—there's a lot of ill out there that's coming through the phone, and it's designed, um, it's designed to ruin you.

Yeah.

I think a lot of it is—it's designed to ruin you.

I think that more than anything else, it's designed to leave you vulnerable. It's designed to disarm you.

Mm-hmm.

It's designed to leave you completely defenseless.

The devil is here. And it's like, uh.

And that ruins the sense of significance. The whole—this gets back to who loves me, why does my life matter, and to whom? And it's like, I don't know. No. So people who are isolated, get this. So we talked about this a little bit before. Isolation.

Mm-hmm.

Right? Why isolation is so critically important. This is why all of this leads to loneliness is because of isolation. Not because of solitude.

And so just so we're—just so we're—just so I'm making sure that we're locked in here. How—and how this is—let's—how does—how is this affecting significance?

So significance is why your life matters and to whom.

Okay.

It's all about love. It's all about the people who value you, people who love you, people who care about you.

And one of the main people needs to be you.

Got to be you. And—

And—and a lot of you gets, um, a—a lot of you gets hijacked when, um, when we're on our screens and we're not actually on ourself.

Yeah. It's almost as if you lost yourself, that you don't know yourself. You're not—so it's a funny thing. So I'll—I'll say to people, "Okay, put down your phone for the first hour of the day. Do the Brahma Muhurta, that first hour, starting, you know, 48 minutes before dawn, and—and go for that walk without your device, without—without headphones, just hearing the crunch of gravel beneath your feet and watching the sun come up. You will know you because you're going to be with you."

Right.

Right? And—and but if you're not, you're—I mean, it's like—so there's a—a—a Vietnamese Buddhist monk who died two years ago named Thich Nhat Hanh. Very—has a.

Thich Nhat Hanh?

Thich Nhat Hanh. Have you heard of him?

Uh-uh.

Oh, yeah. He's—he had the, you know, the Plum Village movement, which was a lot of Westerners actually got into it.

Oh, really?

Thich Nhat Hanh.

Rip Thich Nhat.

Yeah, yeah. He's—he was—and he's—he wrote—his most famous book was called The Miracle of Mindfulness. That starts off with his description of washing the dishes. And when you're washing the dishes, you should be washing the dishes and thinking about washing the dishes and fully present while you're washing the dishes. Because if you don't, you're not there.

Right.

You're missing your life. And we're missing our lives. And you're missing your life. So if you're really not missing your life in that first hour of the day, you're there for you. You care about you. You're fully showing up is what it comes down to.

If while washing dishes, we think only of the cup of tea that awaits us, thus hurrying to get the dishes out of the way as if they were a nuisance, then we are not washing the dishes to wash the dishes.

What's more, we're not alive during the time we're washing the dishes.

Mm-hmm.

That's the thing, isn't it?

Yeah. It's just about being—like, having a sense of presence. Um, before we move forward, uh, how—let's—uh, can—how can we tie a bow on, uh, significance?

So signi—to lock it down and say, "Okay, I—if I'm with—if I'm with somebody who—if I'm with my wife and—and every time I'm with her, she's scrolling her phone. She's not actually with me, and I don't know if she loves me."

Right.

And that's—that destroys my sense of significance. If every time I'm by myself, I'm scrolling my phone, I'm not with me.

Right.

And I'm not even significant to me.

That's—and that's what it feels like right now.

Sure does.

You just start to feel like this.

Who am I? I'm—I'm nothing. I'm a simulation of me.

Right.

That's super heavy when you think about it. I don't want to be a simulation of me. I want to be me.

Right.

Right? I mean, for all the problems that I've actually got and all the dumb stuff that I've actually—I—I want to at least I get one life. Why am I missing it? You know, why am I simulating it? Why am I running it like some sort of weird blooper reel? What—what's the deal? How stupid is that? What am I trying to distract myself from?

Mm-hmm.

And the answer is I don't—I don't know. I don't know. I'm just doing it. And that's no way to live.

No, it's no way to live. And it's—I mean, I—it's certainly—it's where I find myself a lot of times. It's like, um.

Yeah.

And also, I don't even notice how it just happens over and over again.

Yeah, I know.

And the main—it's just like, oh, it's just another rerun of the same.

Yeah.

Like me finding these little things that I feel like meant something and they don't, and then I just keep going.

Yeah. It's a doom loop, actually. It's—and what the problem is that we're very bad at boredom.

Mm-hmm.

And, you know, life until relatively recently was pretty boring. Your great-grandfather, they were plowing fields three generations ago, right?

Oh, I'm sure, dude. They used to smoke, I know.

Yeah, yeah. And they were.

You got to grow it.

And—and they were—and—and, you know, moment to moment, your great-great-grandfather was basically looking at a mule's butt.

Yeah.

Right? No headphones, no podcast, not even yours or mine, right?

Yeah.

But his life wasn't boring. Now you can wipe out every moment of boredom, moment to moment over the course of your life, but life is profoundly boring. See, this is the thing, man. This is the irony. If you try to wipe out your boredom moment to moment, your life is going to be grindingly boring.

Mm-hmm.

That's the irony of life. If you're not going to be alive, you're going to be dead.

Wow.

That's what happens.

And we're missing out on being alive.

We're zombies. We're walking dead.

And so the things that we can do are we can find some coherence, right? Find things that make sense to us, that we believe in, that are sure to us.

Mm-hmm.

And sometimes if you can't find those in the media, you have to find those in, um, personal relationships.

Right.

And like, um, just things that are very sure to you.

Right.

Right?

Your spiritual life.

Your spiritual life.

Super important because that's—man, that gets real real fast.

Yeah.

If you're basically like—if you're going to like before at that 10:00 p.m. hour, you're down on your knees, life gets real very fast.

Yeah.

Yeah. And a lot of people, it's like, uh, what? Like my grandfather? Yep. Like your grandfather.

And sometimes it's like people will say like, um, or I'll—people will say to me like, "Man, I just want to help other people."

Yeah.

People say that a lot of times. And—and I think about that a lot too. And it's like, but one—one way I think that we can do that is by praying for others. It's like the giving of myself and my energy and my time with God.

Yeah.

It's like me wanting to focus that onto someone else.

For sure. That's a—that's an ancient truth. What you just articulated.

Is it?

Yeah, for sure. I mean, the monastic tradition is that the—the monks and the nuns that would be cloistered, meaning that they never go out, their whole job was praying for others.

Wow.

Full-time, man. Full-time praying for other people because we believe, you know, Christians believe that intercessory prayer is a real thing.

Oh.

That intercessory prayer actually works.

Intercessory?

Intercessory prayer. You're interceding for somebody else. You're asking God for something for them is what it comes down to.

Yeah.

That's super powerful. Now, I don't know.

And how long do they pray for it? Is it for all the time?

Yeah, yeah. Like—like a lot of the day.

Oh my God.

A lot of the day.

We don't even have for lunch during that or whatever.

I know. It's like eating a corn dog and praying for Theo Von. So.

Yeah, dude. Here it is over there praying for, uh, Kyle Larson or something.

Right.

Dude, there's having chips on your lip.

No, but it's like—and it's funny because, you know, I know a lot of laypeople, you know, who are—who are not living in religious communities who will have a list of people they pray for every single morning.

Mm-hmm.

And actually start their day praying for a list of other people. And I try to do that too. I try to pray for other people every single day and people who—and then the last one is always like, "And Lord, I'm praying for all the people who asked me to pray for them, but I forgot."

Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You got to bundle it.

You got to bundle it.

Sometimes you have to bundle it, man.

I know. But that's really powerful.

And God gets that prayer and He's like, "Oh God, I got to."

That one again.

This one bundled.

I know. It's like lame.

It's lame.

But that's a big deal what you just said. That's a real—that's a real thing.

So that's the first one is having co—things that are creating coherence for yourself, right? Things that have meaning.

Right. And things that really help you understand why things happen in the world.

Got it.

Right? The second is making sure that you've got direction in your life.

Mm-hmm.

And the third thing is knowing who loves you and why.

Got it.

That's—and if you do that, you've got meaning. Now, here's a test.

Mm-hmm.

To see that kind of bundles all that stuff together. And so it really scientifically validated. I've been giving this test for 30 years.

It is—it's very scientifically validated?

Yeah. So in other words, we've tested all this stuff. It's in a lot of research, et cetera. Those three—the why questions are super scientifically validated.

Got it.

There's a guy named Mike Steger who's a—who's a, uh, psychologist and in Colorado. And he's done—he's published, you know, books and academic journal articles on why this works, et cetera.

Okay.

But I have a two-question exam that I give my students to see where they are on that that makes it easier. And if they're struggling, then they—they don't need to look for the meaning of life. They need to look for the answers to these two questions.

Okay.

Right? Question number one is, why are you alive? And—and the way to answer that is like, who made me or for what reason? Maker and mission.

Okay.

So—and—and—and by the way, you can't Google that.

So wait, why are you alive?

Why are you alive? I mean, why are you walking the earth?

And that's a question I need to ask myself when.

Yeah. And you—you need to start contemplating that question and maybe thinking about it during your holy hour, first thing in the morning when you're out for that walk.

Mm-hmm.

Is thinking, why am I alive? Who did create me and for what purpose am I alive? Because here's the thing, you have been created for a purpose.

Amen.

Absolutely. But it's obscured, especially on the hard mornings. Like that's when it's hard because that's when old scratch is bothering you, right?

When the devil starts weighing in too.

That's old scratch.

Is that the devil?

Yeah.

Dang. What the heck? That's his nickname.

You're Southerner. You're from Louisiana, aren't you?

Yeah, dude.

That's an old Catholic Louisiana deal.

Old scratch.

Old scratch. Not bad, right?

God, yeah.

Yeah. When he's got his old pitchfork out and he's, you know, distracting you from the things that matter.

Poof.

So, okay, who created me and for what purpose? And let's give that some thought. Second question is, what would I die for right now happily?

Mm-hmm.

It's a funny thing because two of my kids are US Marines. Two of my three kids are Marines.

Mm-hmm.

And one of the things that you find is when people come out of combat roles in the military that are—that they're—and they—they can have problems, right? I mean, there's PS—PTSD and, you know, all this stuff. But they're happier because they have answers, especially to that second question. You know, my son was a scout sniper in the Marine Corps. That's a hard job. That's a—that's a—an elite job. And—and I said, "So what would you die for after he came out of the Marines?" 23, married with a kid, right? He said, "Easy. I signed a contract with the government for that question, you know?

So he had his answer.

Mike dropped. He had an answer. And he was fundamentally happier because that was defining of his sense of meaning in life, whether he was thinking about meaning and all this esoteric, psychological.

Or whatever he had.

Neuroscience nonsense.

He had something foundational.

Foundational. It's like, "Why—why are you alive?" Carlos says, "Because God made me to serve others."

Carlos who?

Carlos Brooks, my son.

Oh, that's his name?

Yeah. Yeah.

Oh, shout out Carlos Brooks. Bring up a picture of him.

Good old Carlos Brooks. Is he on—is he on the internet? There he is.

That's him?

That's him.

Jeepers, dude.

That's my son.

And he's like, bro, if he's fricking—bro, if he's mowing the lawn with that.

I know.

Yeah. Tell him, uh, that's awesome. Oh, that's awesome.

Yeah, that's great.

Thank you for your service, sir.

Absolutely. And his little sister now is an officer in the Marine Corps. She's a—she's a second lieutenant out at KVA, Hawaii right now.

Ooh, that's a beautiful place to be for her, huh?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. She's 4'11". He's 6'5".

So he, uh.

And he has to salute her because she's an officer.

Really?

Well, he's not active duty, but he gave her her first salute.

Perfect.

That was a very beautiful moment.

He gave her her first salute?

Yep. As an officer. She was commissioned, um, uh, a year ago in Providence, Rhode Island, after she graduated from college. And she took her first salute from her older brother.

Oh, that's awesome, man.

It was really great. But, you know, his—he's got answers to his questions. Why did—why are you alive? Because God made me to serve others.

Right.

For what would you give your life? For my faith, family, for fellow Marines in the United States of America? There—there it is. There it is. First salute.

Oh, that's cool, dude. That's beautiful, dude.

Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

And what is her name?

She's a tall Marina.

Marina.

Marina. She's—she's, uh, she was born in—in, um, in Fuzhou, China.

Ooh.

We—we adopted her in 2004 at the age of 16 months. She had been abandoned at 12 hours old.

No.

In a—on a park bench in China.

Aw.

Parking. No, it was good, man. She's—she's tough. She's tough one.

Yeah, it's a good—yeah. Look, I mean, look, if you spend a night out in a park, I'm slipping some parks, dude. You know what I'm saying?

At 12 hours old?

Hey, not at 12 hours, bro, but maybe, you know what I mean.

No, she's—she's tough as nails, man.

A couple thousand hours.

She's tough as nails. She's so strong and so good, and she loves me, and I love her.

Aw.

Yeah.

Blessings. Thank you for your service.

My Lord. Yeah.

Marina, um.

My baby.

Thank you.

My baby forever.

Yeah, huh?

And lethal.

Lethal babies, dude.

Yeah.

That's what—that's what we need more of.

I know.

We need more lethal babies for us.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. But that's why people in the military, by the way, and that's one of the things that I recommend to a lot of young men who have no answers to these questions, I recommend the military.

Yeah.

Because the military helps you find answers to these questions.

Just adding structure to yourself because things can get really unstructured.

Yeah.

You know, things can get extremely unstructured.

Yes. Yeah. And for you and me too. I mean, who knows if we would have been better off?

Dude, when I leave out of here, I could go la—you know, I'm saying there's nothing—it's just me that's going to keep me going for the rest of the day.

Right.

Like there's things, you know, I have responsibilities to my coworkers and—and we'll do some stuff together, but it's like, yeah, it's—and I'm sure it's the same for a lot of people. It's like, um, yeah, they have to be the ones to keep themselves going. Um, and I think if I can create more of a relationship with myself, then it's more of there's something to keep going.

Right.

Because otherwise you can fall in, I'm just this sort of like thing.

That's right.

I'm this re—I'm this repeating thing.

Yeah. So thinking about those questions is critical because what that does is it opens up your brain.

Mm-hmm.

So the meaning of your life will find you. It's the cheat code.

Okay. So I want to say those again. And those questions are.

The questions are, number one, why are you alive? Like who made you for what purpose? Like why are you alive? Like why are you walking the earth? I don't know. Random. Right? No, it's more than that. But if you don't think about it, and—and again, it might take years.

Right. But you have to plant seeds. That's the other thing about talking with yourself and have a relationship with yourself.

Mm-hmm.

I noticed for me, it's like it's—it'll plant a little seed. I'll start something and it might not be anything for a little bit.

That's right.

And then it'll come back around when I have some space or when I have some peace or when I'm.

That's right.

Rested. It's like, oh, okay.

That's right. That's right. That's right. And then.

Because your brain will do a lot of the work for you.

That's right. And you know, that has been fundamental to my life. I mean, it—there are different points in my life when I felt very desperate.

Mm-hmm.

Really lost, as a matter of fact. And—and by the way, that doesn't stop. I mean, the last time I was very desperate was 55. I was retiring from this big job. I was super burnt out. I didn't know what I was doing. And so I went on a—a pilgrimage. I walked hundreds of miles across northern Spain.

I was going to say a pill.

Nah, pilgrimage.

Oh, yeah.

Pilgrimage.

But that's how things have changed right there.

Yeah.

It used to be people would go on a pilgrimage.

I know.

Now they go on a pill.

I recommend the pilgrimage.

Yeah.

And—and I just thought, you know, why am I alive and for what would I give my life?

Yeah.

Why am I alive and for what would I give my life?

Why am I alive and for what will I give my life? It's a tough thing to answer, kind of.

It is. It is. And sometimes you just have an understanding, a deep understanding of it. And you ask for the grace, if you're religious, to—to—to put this—put the understanding of these questions on my heart. Put these like grant me this wisdom.

And so—so that's something I could ask God to do because it's like.

Yeah.

I don't even know if I know those answers.

Yeah. I know. And you—and—and for sure, of course. I mean, it's hard. I mean, and those answers change over the course of your life, for sure. But that led me to, I mean, now, I mean, my purpose, my mission is to lift people up and bring them together in bonds of happiness and love using science and ideas.

Okay.

That's my mission in life. I came up with that on the pilgrimage.

Wow.

Asking those questions. You know, and—and—and I feel like that—that information was granted to me because I was in the space to actually get that. But if you don't—if it's like, you know, the way to not be in the space.

Yeah.

I mean, it should—and hours pass and days pass and—and—and your life passes.

Okay. So I want to say those again. Uh, and those questions are.

Number one, ask yourself, why am I alive?

So why am I alive? And how do we ask ourselves it? Because you don't want to ask yourself in a way that's negative that puts you in a negative space.

Not—not as if, you know, I might as well be dead.

Right.

But I'm alive. There's a reason.

Right.

And I want to know what it is. And the two parts are who created me and number two is for what purpose.

Mm-hmm.

Now, that doesn't have to be religious like me or you. We—we do our own thing, right? I like my way.

Yeah.

But there's got to—there's got to be an answer to that. There's got to be an answer to that. But the second one is, you know, like this, it gets real fast when you say, for what would I die? Like what? Because a lot of people are like, I don't know why I'm alive and I don't have any idea what I'd die for. What a way to—how the hell would I live?

Right. Right. Because if you don't have something you would die for, then, uh, then what are you living for, right?

Correct. Correct.

Right. There's not a real purpose. So—and I think some of us have some basic things, right? Like you, if you have a family or if you have children, those will give you some—some severe purpose. Sometimes it could be work. If you have a work that you're passionate about and you feel like it's helping the world.

Right. If you have kids, most people would die for their kids.

Yeah.

Most people really would die for their kids. Um, would you die for your friends? Would you die for your country? Would you die for your faith? Would you die for your ideas? Would you die for a stranger? I mean, it's really worth thinking about that, right?

Right.

Because, you know, I—I don't know. I don't know. But there's sometimes when I feel more like I would and—and—but—but the act of doing that, what that does is, as a scientific matter, is it—it opens up the aperture to meaning by actually activating the right hemisphere of your brain.

So it opens up the aperture to meaning by opening up the right side of your right hemisphere.

Yeah. The right hemisphere of your brain.

Which is where meaning is calculated.

This is—this is where we—this is where we process issues of meaning.

Okay.

Is in the right side of our brain. That's where intuition happens, mystery, love, happiness, all the stuff that—the quiet questions of life.

Wow.

Like, you know, the how to and what is what you're doing all day long. You know, you're doing your podcast and it's a really technical thing and you got all these stuff, all these, you know, how to and what questions to answer.

That's your left brain.

But it's going to be really depressing if you don't ask the why question first. Why am I doing the podcast?

Mm-hmm.

Why am I doing that podcast? And the answer is to help a whole bunch of people, to entertain and help people, right? Because I want to make my living.

Yeah.

And those are—that's really important. Why is way more important. All the important stuff is on the right. All the technical stuff is on the left.

Mm-hmm.

And people are on the left side. Anytime you're looking at your phone, you're on the left side.

Got it. Well, we've also—the—all of our—the owners of so many of these, uh, tech companies and a lot of these sort of tech oligarchs, and I'm not blaming them, but it's like they are all left—they seem very left brainish.

Yeah. They're—yeah, they are.

There's—there's just all these tech lords and a lot of—there's a lot of like, you know, these tech lords nowadays, people say that term, but, uh, they all have sort of this, you know, it feels a lot of times like an autism, like where they don't know how to create, like they're trying to connect us more than ever, right?

Mm-hmm.

But it's not working.

Right.

And I don't even know if some of them possess, you know, I believe a lot of them have like an autism, like a techism or whatever.

Mm-hmm.

And that they don't even know how to process. They're just going to keep trying.

Yeah.

It's like they're just trying to like find the exact formula. It's like, motherfucker, it's a hug.

Yeah.

You know what I'm saying?

Yeah.

It's—there's—there's two equa—it's like four equations.

I know.

You're two arms and my two arms. It's like there's nothing. You know what I'm saying? Like.

I do. I do. I know exactly what you're saying. And—and—and one of the biggest problems that we have, and if you back up a couple hundred years to they talk about the enlightenment. The enlightenment was this idea that there's a solution to every human problem, that science is going to come up with a solution to every problem. That was a belief in the enlightenment, that a kind of a religion of scientism. It's completely wrong.

Okay.

It's completely wrong. And it has everything to do with the fact that scientism and science and technological solutions are the solutions to complicated problems, not the complexities of the right hemisphere, which is all the why stuff, the things you can understand, but you can't solve. I'll give you an example. All of your human relationships, they're not complicated problems like writing software or putting together a jet engine or even building a toaster. Your relationships are complex problems that you'll never solve, but they're easy to understand.

Okay. Wait. Say that stuff again.

So complicated problems that tech is really good at solving are problems that are hard to figure out, but once you do, they're solved. That's not the same as complex problems, which are really easy to understand and impossible to solve. My marriage is incredibly complex. It's my most complex problem.

Right. Love is a complex problem.

Because it's completely—it's like, you know, your cat is a complex problem.

Right.

That's why you love your hood.

Being a ch—oh, all these—

Yeah. A mechanical cat is a complicated problem, which is why you don't love your—your mechanical cat.

Right.

Right? And so if the tech guys and the whole culture are saying there's a complicated technological solution to all of our deep human needs, they're going to keep giving us mechanical cats.

Right.

And that's why we feel so empty when we spend all day scrolling is because there's one mechanical cat after the other and we want a real cat.

Mm-hmm.

That's what it comes down to.

Who don't want a little cat?

Cat's warm.

Yeah.

You don't know what it's going to do.

Yeah.

It's alive. It's a—it's a creature.

Oh, yeah.

And the—and the machine, it's like, it's—it approximates a cat. It doesn't poop.

Yeah.

No litter box.

Right.

Don't have to feed it. Just kind of plug it in. It's better than a cat. No. It's completely inadequate.

Right.

It's totally inadequate. And so all of these tech solutions. So yeah, social media is going to wipe out loneliness. Every hour you spend on social media, you will get lonelier because your brain knows the difference.

Mm-hmm.

That's the—it's like social media, which has its place and is not going away, and it can do a lot of good, but it's basically the junk food of our social lives.

Yeah.

You know, if you're really hungry and you're coming home from a gig and—and you pass like a fast food place and you're like, "Yeah, it's going to be good." And you stop in and—and it is good, right? You get all your calories, but you get hungry really fast later because it doesn't meet your nutrient needs. And so you can binge and get both malnourished and obese at the same time.

Mm-hmm.

If you eat stuff that's high in calories and low in nutrients, social media is high in calories and low in nutrients.

Yeah.

Which means that we'll binge it and get lonelier and lonelier and lonelier.

Our soul just has a lot of fat on it.

And the reason is because it's a simulation of what we actually want.

Wow.

Fast food is a simulation for the nutrient-dense foods that our bodies need.

So why can't we quit it right now? What's going on?

Because we're super addicted.

Okay. Got it. So we are addicted, but also there's this element of the devil is creating it.

Yeah.

It feels like—like they are sharpening the spear every single day.

Yeah. Well, it's all—it's also—here's an interesting thing. So you've dealt with, you know, we—we understand how addiction to substances work.

Oh, yeah.

Substance addiction is always the solution to a problem that winds up creating a catastrophe.

Okay. Wait. So substance abuse—substance addiction.

Yeah. Is always a solution to a problem.

Is always a solution to a problem.

But it always creates a bigger problem.

But it always creates a bigger problem.

Right. So for example, people who are anxious are in danger. Everybody watching us who has not—not clinical, you know, generalized anxiety, no, no, no, who has an anxious job, who's an anxious person.

Yeah. Like real anxiety, like something, you know, like.

Which is unfocused fear.

Right.

Right? That's anxiety. You're in danger for alcohol abuse. And there's a reason for that. We actually understand that—that you're the alcohol—I mean, anxiety, it stimulates the amygdala, which is the part of your brain for fight or flight.

Mm-hmm.

And—and you don't like it, right? And it's chronic and it's uncomfortable. You'll cut the connection with your conscious brain, with your prefrontal cortex, with alcohol. Alcohol snips that connection. So you're stressed up, but you don't know it. And that's the reason that when you're really stressed out, like really stressed out, two drinks and you're a new man.

Yeah.

And then another six drinks and you're the best version of yourself. And then—and then after that, you don't remember anything. So the problem with that is that then it will rebound. It will create a much bigger problem with escalation and—and—and all the things that we understand that are attendant on that. If you're lonely, opiates solve that problem because they feel like love.

Mm-hmm.

Opiates feel like love and they hit some of the same receptors as oxytocin, as a matter of fact. The problem is that they create addiction and destroy your relationships in the end. The reason that we're using social media addictively is because we hate boredom. It's boring and it—and it wipes out boredom. But what it does is it creates the most boring possible life. That's the irony. It's just like—it's just like alcohol.

Right.

It's like I'm feeling stressed out and so I wipe out momentary stress and all I get is like the most stressed out, horrible life ever.

Yeah.

That's—it's the same thing. We're wiping out a little problem. We're creating a catastrophe. That's how old scratch works, by the way.

Mm-hmm.

Right?

That's the devil.

Uh.

The devil's active.

Here's the thing about it too. It's so funny. Nobody says the secret to my happiness is social media.

Mm-hmm.

Just like nobody says, you know, the secret to my happiness, meth.

Right.

Like words never uttered.

Yeah.

And a lot of people use meth.

Yeah, dude.

Yeah.

I never got to use it. I never—I don't think I would have liked it. I don't like doing a lot of, uh, auto body type of shit.

Yeah. It's actually more addictive than cocaine because it actually boosts—it's the substance that we know of that boosts dopamine the most.

Mm-hmm.

Crystal meth is a 10X of your dopamine.

Dang.

It's like supercharge.

Dude, it's crazy. They gave it like crystal meth. They gave it as like a kind of a cool name to have overall.

I know.

You know? Um.

So that's the problem with tech.

Yeah. I don't know if I feel like there's a solution.

There is. There is. There absolutely is. But it requires commitment. We don't need, you know, a massive 12-step program.

Okay.

I don't think for social media. What we need is—is people to—it's funny because when people stop using, they—there's three things that they always do, right? And they stop using. Number one is that they get pissed. That's the first thing that happens. Get pissed off. This thing is—is—is ruining my life. This thing is sucking out my soul and I don't want to live this way and it's not right. They get angry. You got to get mad enough. You know that feeling?

Right. So you have to get upset that you're using this.

You got to get furious. You need to be in a rage about that.

Like when—yeah. Like what kind of bottom do people have to hit? Like you know what I'm saying? Do you need to sit, you know, like.

People's bottoms are different. So set with alcohol abuse, 70% of people who stop using, stop using before they hit rock bottom and have to go to rehab.

Amen.

So 70%, this is really, really good news. I never went to rehab.

Yeah.

I never went—never had to go to rehab. But boy, was my life a mess. And so I—but I was in—I was in the 70%. I could have—I could have taken that elevator down many more floors.

Yeah.

Right? So most people, but I—I was so mad. I was so mad at what it was doing to my life, what it was doing to my marriage, what it was doing to my relationship with God. It was tearing me—it was tearing apart my relationships. And I wasn't going to put up with this. Step one. Step two is actually understanding the science of what's actually going on sufficiently that you can actually engage in what the—the medical intervention that's appropriate, right? I mean, you actually have to do something about it, do something tangible about it, which might involve a 12-step program, but usually it has to do with like going to the doctor and saying, "I got a problem here."

For alcoholism, you mean?

Yeah. Or alcoholism or any drug abuse or any addiction, by the way.

But are you talking about a screen addiction to screen too?

That is—it's really important that we actually have an intervention. You know, the second step is actually intervening and changing our behavior.

Okay. So the first step is hitting a bottom, recognizing getting angry.

Getting angry. The second is intervening in the process of using.

So you have to intervene for yourself.

Yep. And the third is you got to live in a new way. You got to live in a new way. I mean, it's like you got to get new friends. And—and you know, it's funny because one thing that alcoholics always do that's really interesting.

Mm-hmm.

Is they try to go to step three first and they'll like move. Hey, man, if I move, then all these stimuli and all these kind of loser friends that I've got and all that, it never works.

Yeah. It never works.

Because you didn't do one and two.

Right.

You didn't do actually the—the you didn't get mad enough and you didn't actually intervene. But then you do have to live in a new way. And—and so that's what we need to do with these screen addictions. People need to say, "I'm tired of this sucking out my soul. I'm tired of this actually taking over my life. I'm tired of missing my life."

And I—I feel like you almost hope you hit a rock bottom with it. You know, um, I heard my friend, uh, Jay the other day shared at a meeting. He's like, um, and this was about addiction like in, uh, drug and alcohol, but not, uh, screen addiction, but he just said rock bottom is when you break your own heart.

Yeah. I know.

And I thought that that was pretty profound. It was like.

Just this deep disappointment in you.

Yes. And how like and like will we get there where we are like we're just fed up. We're like this isn't feeding anything anymore. These are just empty calories.

Yes.

Um, for a desperate soul.

We will because people do. And then we will and we do. And it turns out that the second part of the intervention is easier, much easier.

So the first one is over is, uh, getting up.

It's like acknowledging I got a big problem.

The second one is an intervention.

And the intervention, it turns out there's just those three steps, that science-based things that we talked about before. First hour, meals, last hour. That in 42 days, your life is different.

So what are you saying you're going to that will help you stay off your screen?

Yeah. It'll make it so that when you use your screen, you're using it as a tool and you're not using it as a way to actually pacify yourself. You're not using it to hypnotize yourself. You're not using it to miss your life.

Got it.

So it's not the kind of thing where you won't think of it in every single moment. So if you don't use it the first hour of the day, after about it takes about six weeks. Most and that's a rule of thumb. Your results may vary, right? It might be less, it might be more. But the whole point is a few weeks and what you'll find is that you won't think of it all the time when you're not doing something else.

Mm-hmm.

Like when you're waiting at the light, light's kind of taking a long time. It's like, "Eh, nothing." Right? That's because you don't want your mind to wander. You want to keep the mind wandering. It's called the default mode network in your brain.

Okay.

You want to keep it off. That mind wandering is really uncomfortable and that's why we do it, right? Okay. You won't you'll you'll get out of the habit of distracting yourself all the time.

Got it.

Which is important. You'll also get more oxytocin because you're eating with other people and you're not having your phone on the table. We're evolved to eat with other people.

So you're saying that the actual intervention for self is spending time with yourself in the morning.

Right.

Have an experience for an hour. Uh, eat.

Together with others.

Eat together with others.

With no phone even on the table.

With no phone on the table. So you're engaging in humanity.

Mm-hmm.

Um, and you have a connection.

Right.

And then the last hour.

Third is last hour of the day. And the phone should never be in the bedroom.

Got it.

Never. If it's the last hour or the first hour, you don't have it, you don't need it in the bedroom. It's plugged in downstairs.

Yeah. It's a phone in your bed. You're you're supposed to have your spouse in there.

I know.

I know people that'll sleep with their phone and won't even sleep with their own spouse.

I know. Well, I know people who are, you know, it's like the saddest thing is a spouse, you know, two spouses lying in their beds, you know, scrolling their individual Instagram until they fall unconscious.

And they don't even like each other's shit.

It's they're not even laughing at each other's funny memes.

Dude, that's the worst, bro. You're you're laying there and your wife posts something you're like.

It's not funny. Yeah. So it's it's yeah. No, it's sad actually. And so.

Yeah.

I mean, you can save a ton of marriages if you just have like read to each other from a real book and then stare into each other's eyes for oxytocin. Nighty night, man. You'll wake up more in love than you went to sleep. But you won't you're missing your marriage. It's it's just those three things. That's the intervention. And then you got to live in a new way where you're actually engaging in life and love and beauty and pain and life.

Right. If there's something on the side it's like say you have something on the scale that's heavy, right? Like it's like, "Oh, this thing's too heavy for me. I'm tired of this like feeling checked out. I'm tired of this phone addiction. I'm tired of this." Like it could be alcohol, whatever it is, whatever this thing is. Yeah. You have to put something on the other side of the scale. So you can't you have to replace it kind of with something.

You got to do it. Otherwise, you know what? I mean, I'm sure you know what a dry drunk is, right?

Yeah.

A dry I mean, for everybody who doesn't know, a dry drunk is somebody who doesn't replace the alcohol with something that's positive. They don't get to the bottom of what you're actually trying to the need that you're trying to meet.

Right.

I mean, you're remember you you you you use alcohol abusively because you're trying to solve a problem. So you get rid of the alcohol without solving the problem, you're just going to be like a mean guy. Just that's called the dry drunk syndrome.

Yeah.

And we could be dry social media users or something, you know, dry screen addicts or something.

Right. You're just standing around looking for something. Yeah. To be like.

Monkeys on your back, you know, you're super nervous all the time. You're uncomfortable with yourself. You're bored.

Yeah. You don't even you just feel less human. And I and I'm I'm amazed that you think that it's repairable, that you believe that there's another that there's a way out of this.

Yeah.

Sometimes it feels like there's not.

Yeah. But there is. And I've actually seen it with a lot of young people who are actually developing and using these protocols. Once again, it comes back to structuring the architecture of your own life the way that you want to live.

Yeah.

Taking back your own brain. I mean, again, it's not easy. If it were easy, everybody would do it. You know, there are actually studies now that show that teenagers would literally pay for there to be no social media.

Yeah.

As long as nobody had it. They don't want to be the only ones who had it because they don't want to be alone on Gilligan's Island. They they they want nobody to have it. They would literally pay. I think it's like 35 bucks or something that they say they would pay on average to get obliterate it, right? There's a there's a good study here, right?

A study led by researchers examining how much people value social media versus a world without it. When asked about individual use, participants typically said they would need to be paid, uh, 59 around $59 to go without it to deactivate their accounts. And however, when asked about a collective deactivating scenario, many users would actually pay to get rid of the platforms.

Yeah. They would pay an average of $28 to deactivate a social media platform and 10 bucks to globally deactivate Instagram.

God.

You want to get rid of both? 38 bucks. Deal.

Dude, how nice would it be? Imagine what it would be like.

Yeah. And and you know, that's what a lot and these are teenagers who are saying this. It's not like you and me, you know, grown-up guys.

Because then you got to be like around somebody. Like if you want to see people, uh, if you want to see you had to go see them, dude. You had to hope they were somewhere.

I know.

Remember that?

I know. I know. And so what happens is when young people do that, they'll have a they'll collectively do that. Groups of friends will do this. You see this on campuses and they get so much happier. And what are they doing at night after they after Saturday night when they come back from a party? They're just like BSing. They're having those conversations, those late-night dorm conversations.

Yeah.

They're not waiting for the YouTube algorithm to deliver them some anesthetizing algorithmically derived information they didn't seek. It's so depressing.

And you reminisce, bro.

Yeah.

Dude, laying like if my friends would sleep over, we'd do a sleepover or something, bro.

I know. And you know.

And we was reminiscing.

But you know the.

And we could lie to each other.

I know. And you know, think about right now.

Remember I'm not hold on.

We're having a conversation right now and it's so awesome. I'm just enjoying it so much. Want to know why?

Why?

Because we're talking about real things in real time and that's life and life.

Well, dude, remember when you could lie to your friends, bro? Remember that?

Tell me a lie you told your friends.

Oh, dude, I remember, bro. So, we had to go like we was doing, uh, I don't know if it was Boy Scouts or if it was just like.

You were a Boy Scout?

Uh, it might have just been some pedophiles in the area. Nonetheless, we were going camping. And right when we got there, I remember telling everybody like, "Man, I just can't even believe that." And like, what happened? I was like, "Did y'all see that Jay Leno had died?" And they're like, "What?" Even the dads and kids and everybody was like, "What?" And I was like, "Yeah, Jay Leno died." And they're like, "Oh, man."

You spread a rumor, a local rumor.

So for so for the next two nights, we're out in the woods and stuff and everybody thought Jay Leno had died. So, I'd hear them sit up and talk about it at night and I would be in my tent, bro, like laughing at a level that came from like I can't even tell you.

Because there was no internet access.

Yeah.

There was no way to fact-check that. Like we're like fact-checking me in real time right now, right? Like nuh-uh.

No. And I and I knew that when they got home, he was going to be alive for them. And that was awesome, too.

That's pretty funny.

I was like, "Damn, bro."

That was like real life.

Not only am I having so much fun right now, but you guys are going to get Jay Leno back.