Digital Social Hour - Why Work-Life Balance Is a Lie (Do THIS Instead) | Arthur Brooks DSH #1159

Episode Date: February 3, 2025

Is work-life balance holding you back? In this episode of the Digital Social Hour, Sean Kelly sits down with Arthur Brooks—a Harvard professor, happiness expert, and bestselling author—to uncover why work-life balance might be a myth and what you should do instead! If you’ve ever felt burnt out, stuck in a cycle of overworking, or unsure how to find true happiness, this conversation is packed with valuable insights just for YOU.    Arthur shares his game-changing approach to work-life *integration*, offering actionable tips on how to make progress across all areas of your life—work, relationships, fitness, and even spirituality. Discover how to fight burnout, manage your happiness like a pro, and transform your mindset with practical advice backed by neuroscience and years of expertise. You’ll also learn why chasing more "stuff" might not bring you joy and how managing your wants can unlock lasting satisfaction.    Don’t miss out on this eye-opening discussion! Watch now and subscribe for more insider secrets. Hit that subscribe button and stay tuned for more powerful conversations on the Digital Social Hour with Sean Kelly! Join the conversation and take the first step toward creating a life of meaning, happiness, and true fulfillment.   #DigitalSocialHour #SeanKelly #Podcast #ArthurBrooks #WorkLifeBalance #Happiness #Burnout #Neuroscience #ApplePodcasts #Spotify #SelfImprovement #Entrepreneurship   #happinessinadversity #thesecrettolivingahappylife #selfimprovement #positivepsychology #joyinadversity   #proactivementalhealth #happinessinadversity #selfimprovement #joyinadversity #howtoavoidburnout   CHAPTERS: 00:00 - Intro 01:11 - Avoiding Burnout Strategies 04:58 - Work-Life Balance Myths 07:19 - Dangers of Addiction 08:49 - Reclaiming Mental Clarity 12:24 - Cultivating Happiness Skills 16:51 - Money and Happiness Connection 18:00 - Smart Money Management Tips 22:00 - Savings Impact on Happiness 22:58 - College Debt and Education 27:37 - Immigrants in Entrepreneurship 31:18 - Role of Department of Education 32:50 - Teaching Emotional Well-being 34:15 - Understanding Anxiety and Depression 36:25 - Overcoming Shame 38:48 - Managing Fear and Anger 44:45 - Dark Triad Personality Traits 46:18 - Impact of Cheap Entertainment 48:17 - Exploring Cancel Culture 49:34 - Arthur’s Final Thoughts   APPLY TO BE ON THE PODCAST: https://www.digitalsocialhour.com/application BUSINESS INQUIRIES/SPONSORS: [e-mail]   GUEST: Arthur Brooks https://www.instagram.com/arthurcbrooks/   SPONSORS: Specialized Recruiting Group: https://www.srgpros.com/   LISTEN ON: Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/digital-social-hour/id1676846015 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5Jn7LXarRlI8Hc0GtTn759 Sean Kelly Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/seanmikekelly/

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BED-MGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. You know, it's like, I like that thing. I'm going to buy something that I want that's discretionary and I can't quite afford it yet so I'm just going to run the credit card balance. All that's doing is sitting behind the line of scrimmage, and you're gonna be paying it back to get to zero. That's gonna lower your happiness. I've got the data that show that you will become less happy if you owe money.

Really? That's the bottom line. All right, guys. Arthur Brooks here today. Got him in Vegas. Welcome to Vegas, man. Thank you. Vegas is great. Yeah. Beautiful. You got some fun stuff planned this trip?

A little bit. I'm giving a bunch of talks, a bunch of lectures at the Venetian. Oh, nice. Yeah. The Venetian is not featuring happiness content, but a group is actually there and they're having me talk to 5,000 or so of their employees. Nice. Venetian is one of my favorite hotels.

It's a nice place. They got the best rooms, in my opinion. Yeah. I knewian's one of my favorite hotels. It's a nice place. They got the best rooms, in my opinion. Yeah. I knew Sheldon Adelson back when he was still alive. Yeah. I was running a big think tank in Washington, DC called the American Enterprise Institute,

and he supported us a little bit. Nice. When was that? I ran that from 2009 through 2019. I just saw Miriam Adelson, as a matter of fact, in Abu Dhabi last week. Nice. Small world.

Yeah. It's a small world. We were just talking about working in our 20s. I want to dive into that, because I'm 27 now. I feel like I've been grinding really hard. But I have felt like I lost a step recently. Really? Yeah. How come?

Burnout. Yeah, burnout. It's classic. Well, I didn't take a day off for five years. I worked five years straight, 15 hours a day. Well, nobody teaches you how to take a day off. If you're a natural grinder, if you're a striver, nobody teaches you how to take a day off.

And so taking a day off feels like a waste and it feels like you're going backwards. You're the kind of guy probably, like most strivers, who feel like life is good when you're putting points on the board. Progress is everything. And if progress is everything, when you're not moving forward,

you actually start to drift backward and that feels really, really terrible. The point is you've got to get a different kind of balance in your life and see progress across multiple domains, not just work. Yeah, that's been a big thing for me this year. My fiance begs me to take weekends off, but then something always comes up,

and I start working again. Well, weekends off means drifting backwards is the whole problem. And so setting up your weekends with your fiance so that you're making progress in a different kind of a domain, mutually with her is the way to do that. And there are ways to do it. So for example, in your physical health,

in learning new skills, in building your spiritual life, those are the things you dedicate yourself to when you're actually not working. So no matter what, you're going to continue to make progress. You're a progress machine. You're not going to be able to change that your whole life. Trust me. I'm 60.

And I still can't stop doing that. But I've had to actually understand how to open up multiple domains as leads me to quality of life. So you don't have to stop. So your fiance says, you've got to stop and relax. And you feel like you're going to die? That's why. But you can set up things that aren't just

grinding away on work. And so you won't be burning out. There will be something that's sharpening the saw, making progress in a different area. I love that. That's how to think about it. That's huge. When did you figure that out?

It took a long time, actually, because I was a very ambitious guy in my 20s. I was working as hard as I could. I was a French horn player. I was a classical musician. French horn. Yeah, I was touring all the time. I spent a lot of it in Barcelona,

in the symphony in Barcelona. And I wanted to be the greatest French horn player in the world. And when I wasn't practicing, I was dying a little bit. And it actually took my wife. I mean, I met my wife, I moved to Barcelona to try to get her to marry me, as a matter of fact. We got married, and she has a much more balanced

understanding of life, and so she helped me set up multiple goals, and it took through my 30s and 40s and having her kids, it took a while for me to get this. I wish I'd gotten this a little bit earlier, but having physical goals for good fitness and proper health, these are a set of serious goals. I mean, that's as serious as your job. Spiritual life was really important to actually get serious about who I was as a religious person. And that's, you know, there's no end to the progress you can make in studying that kind of stuff. And setting

up those silos in my life, that that's what takes up all my non-work time, as a matter of fact, plus actually having relationships that are really healthy. I take my relationships as seriously as I take my career. Wow. Yeah, absolutely. And I think about it in the same way, and I set up goals in the same way. I've got metrics that I'm tracking across all these different domains of my life. How's my spiritual life?

Have I made progress in the past six months? What's evidence of the progress that I've made? How's my fitness? What are my lifts? Now sooner or later, I'm going to start... You can't have higher and higher lifts as you get through your 60s, of course. But your fitness can be really good. I mean, you can kind of stop time if you're serious about this. And then I think about my relationships with my children, with my friends, with my wife, with God. I'm thinking about this all the time. And am I making progress or am I not making progress? And I chart it the same way. And I have an entrepreneurial mindset about every area of my life. And now I've got balance, a lot more balance. I don't have balance. I still work 68 hours a week,

but I'm not working 100 because 100 is death. Right. That's what I was doing. You're doomed to do that. You can't keep that up. You're 27 years old, and you feel like you're 50. That's a problem. Yeah, so you do believe in work-life balance, though, because that's a controversial. Looking for the ultimate online casino experience?

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the love in my life, my physical life, and of course my productive life through my work. And I'm thinking about all of those things with the same entrepreneurial seriousness. I love that. Yeah, when I was working 15 hours a day for five years, I totally neglected spiritual and physical health. And it was probably the most unhappiest I've ever been.

You'll become unhappy. Even though I had a million in the bank, whatever, financial amount, I just felt unhappy. So what will happen is when you neglect your spiritual life, that your happiness will fall. And when you neglect your physical life, your unhappiness will rise. Those are two different things processed

in different parts of the limbic system of your brain. And you need to manage both the unhappiness and happiness in your life through the way that you gear your habits. And so the areas of faith, family life, friendship, and work, work that serves other people and is really productive, those are the happiness side. On the unhappiness side, you need to manage that largely through taking care of your health.

So better health through health and fitness and what you're eating and how much you're moving, et cetera. That's the best way to manage your unhappiness, your negative affect. The worst way to do it is workaholism and alcoholism and drug addiction and all the other things that people do to try to feel a little less unhappy. So the classic thing for a striver, a real entrepreneur, a guy like you, you start to see success in your early 20s,

unbelievable, it's great. And success gives you a whole lot of passion and it gives you a whole lot of enthusiasm. So you do more and more and more and more and more. But running faster and faster and faster is not gonna get you where you want to go. And so the result is that your unhappiness starts to rise dramatically.

And you try to manage that unhappiness by to rise dramatically and you try to manage that unhappiness by drugs and alcohol and substances. For example, and a lot of people really get into that, they get some extremely dangerous and bad habits. As well. As well as porn too. Porn is a big thing, especially for guys in their 20s, for sure.

I mean, that's one of the most common addictions and it works on the same brain circuitry as drugs and alcohol. It's working on the dopamine circuits where there's an anticipation of reward. It's all the learning. Addiction is all about how your brain learns, and it torques the learning mechanism in an unnatural and a dangerous way.

So it's all about wanting and liking. So if something says, I want that thing, and it gives you this little impulse to go seek out that thing. And then if you get it, and it's better than you thought it was gonna be, then you like it. This is all based on dopamine, a neuromodulator dopamine. it and it's better than you thought it was going to be, then you like it. This is all based on dopamine, a neuromodulator dopamine. And if it's just what you thought it was going to be,

you don't get any more reward. And if it's worse than you thought it was going to be, you'll feel a little bit depressed. That's because your dopamine actually dips. And this sets you up in a cycle to do more and more and more and more of that thing. And your brain gets good. It learns how to get those rewards.

And that's how people get addicted to drugs and alcohol and pornography and gambling. Right. And another big one's doom scrolling, they call it on TikTok or Instagram. For sure. And you're a college professor. Do you see kids on their phone all the time? Yeah, not in my classes.

No devices in my classes. And one of the most important things we can all do is to have device-free zones in our lives. So you should never have your devices in the bedroom. You should never have your devices at the table. You should never have your devices at the table. You should never have your devices for the first hour after you get up or the last hour after you go to bed. You should never have devices in any school in America.

All personal devices should be banned from all schools. It's the easiest, most obvious policy. I mean, I'm not talking about laptops. I'm talking about phones, effectively. And they should be checked in in the morning and checked them out later. This will dramatically increase the quality of life for young people today.

Yeah, because attention spans are so short these days. Yeah. And people are super lonely. I mean, they're surrounded by young people all day long, and they're getting lonelier and lonelier. It's insane. Right. Are you seeing that with the younger generation?

Yeah. And the biggest problem is that we're actually using our brains wrong. So what happens effectively is that when you don't have something to do and your mind wanders, it turns on a set of structures in your brain called the default mode network. That's when you think about nothing. If I put you into an fMRI machine, I say, hey, man, think about nothing. These are the parts of your brain that are going to illuminate.

And when you're feeling bored and your mind is wandering, it turns out those are the parts of your brain that you need to access questions of life's meaning. Now, you see where I'm going with this, right? If you create an anti-boredom machine where you never access the default mode network, you're never going to be exploring questions of life's meaning. And that's what actually lies behind

the mental health crisis for young people today, is that they don't, not only can they not articulate the meaning of their lives, they're not even looking, and the reason they're not even looking is they're not in the parts of the brain where they need to be to look. Wow. Yeah. It's a huge neuroscientific crisis that we've got.

That's such a good point though, because I always wonder why people don't look for it. Yeah, that's why. Because they can't, they don't know how. So your grandfather, what did he do for a living? My grandfather was a farmer. Yeah, there you go, where? In Pennsylvania.

In Pennsylvania. So your grandfather was bored a lot. Because he was pushing a plow, and he was doing all this farm work, and he probably liked being a farmer, but he was alone with his thoughts all day long. There was no earbuds. There was no, your podcast didn't exist.

No podcasting. There was nothing to occupy him for the 10 hours a day that he was working. And that means he was in his default mode network all day long. So he never came home and said to his said to your grandma, I don't know the meaning of my life. It would have been an absurd thing to say. What is the meaning of my life would have been an absurd question. And so the result is that he had a good sense of his life's meaning.

He was probably religious. He probably had a real sense of life's philosophy because he was exploring those things inadvertently and involuntarily all day long. That's what we've kicked out of our lives. That's what technology has gotten us. Wow. So how can people reclaim that? Just get rid of phones? Well, you don't need to get rid of phones because you can't, unless you want to move to the Himalayas, go to a cave, and become a hermit.

You're just not going to be able to do that. That's not a realistic goal. But you do need to set things up such that you can get into these spaces in your brain. And the way to do that is to actually create technology-free zones, among other things. There's a whole bunch of other things that you need to do. I mean, where do you find, you need to actually explore questions thatfree zones, among other things. There's a whole bunch of other things that you need to do. I mean, where do you find,

you need to actually explore questions that don't have answers. You need to give your heart away in romantic love. You need to look for the transcendent to yourself. But the first thing to do is to actually get bored more. And the way that you do that is by banishing the anti-boredom devices in your life. Interesting.

Yeah. I've seen you say on other shows, you describe happiness as a skill that could be cultivated. Yeah, for sure. It Interesting. I've seen you say on other shows, you describe happiness as a skill that could be cultivated. Yeah, for sure. It is. Most people think that it's a feeling that happens to you. So isn't that great?

Like a butterfly coming and sitting on your shoulder if you're still enough? That's not true. Happiness is a combination of enjoyment, satisfaction, and meaning. Those are the three macronutrients of happiness. And all of those things we can get better at, we can cultivate.

Now, feelings are evidence of happiness. They're not happiness itself. Happiness is not a feeling. The feeling is the smell of your Thanksgiving dinner, not your Thanksgiving dinner. The Thanksgiving dinner is enjoyment, satisfaction and meaning. And these are the things to cultivate,

but you have to understand what they are. You know, enjoyment is not pleasure. And if you just seek pleasure, you'll wind up stuck in the way that we talked about before, where you're getting addicted and you're in the wanting, liking cycle of dopamine. That's a big problem. Enjoyment adds people and memory to your pleasures,

such that you can manage your pleasures and you can remember. And those are experiences that we actually have. They're largely social experiences that we have are sources of our enjoyment. Satisfaction is the joy that you get from accomplishment after struggle. And that's a really important thing. And this for you, satisfaction is the big driver of your happiness for sure as an entrepreneur, because it's like, I work and work and I get this stuff and I make this progress. It's so wonderful. The problem for you and for anybody listening to us

who's into it in the same way that you are, they admire your success and they want to be a striver in the same way, is that we have a tendency to think that satisfaction is gonna hang around forever when we get it, and it doesn't. It doesn't. Yeah, it doesn't. I mean, it wears off because emotions

are supposed to be transient. Emotions only exist to give you information about what's going on around you. You can't get stuck in a positive emotion, or a negative emotion for that matter, but you think you will. The biggest mistake, mental mistake, that people make is thinking, if I get that car, or that relationship, or that I get to IPO, or I make that million dollars,

I'm going to be so happy forever. It's completely evanescent. It burns off in, if not minutes, then weeks. And then you're on running, running, running the next thing. And so understanding that is critically important for all the strivers who are watching us right now. There's a way around that, by the way. Yeah, is to remember that the satisfaction that lasts

is not a question of having all the things that you want. It's wanting all the things that you have. Whoa. So think about it this way. Satisfaction is all the things you have, including all your money and relationships and accomplishments, divided by all the things that you want. Have's divided by wants.

Now, the inefficient way to get more satisfied is to work the numerator, right? The efficient way is to work the denominator, to want less. That's how you get greater satisfaction that hangs around. And see, everybody watching us right now doesn't just need to have more strategy, they also need to want less strategy. That's crazy, because a lot of people want big things. Yeah, all they want is one.

They want that mansion. And their wants, because a lot of people want big things. They want down a mansion. And their wants will sprawl like the suburbs of Atlanta. I mean, it's like, never stop, never stop, never stop. And then what will happen is the more they have, their wants outstrip those haves. And they find that as they're becoming more successful, their satisfaction is falling, not rising. And then they become depressed.

That's why. It's like, you have everything. Why are you so bummed out all the time? I don't know. I know. The reason is because you don't have a wants management strategy. That's why. And that's the way that you deal with that is by thinking about that very specifically.

What am I going to, what are my desires, my attachments, am I going to get rid of this year? What am I going to, what are my desires, my attachments, am I going to get rid of this year? What am I going to physically get rid of? What are the conceits that I have right now that I'm going to say, I don't care, I don't care, I've decided not to care? And what you're doing is you're moving these cravings and desires from the animal part of your brain, the limbic system, into the prefrontal cortex right behind your forehead. That's the conscious, that's the C-suite of your brain. And in the executive centers of your brain, your prefrontal cortex right behind your forehead. That's the conscious. That's the C-suite of your brain.

And in the executive centers of your brain, your prefrontal cortex, you can manage your attachments so they don't manage you. You're still going to have desires. That's OK. But you're going to be able to say, oh, yeah, my old friend. My old friend, that ambition. Maybe I get it.

Maybe I don't. I'm in charge. I love that. You become the master at that point. You master your thoughts almost. For sure. That's a good place to be. I love that. You become the master at that point. You master your thoughts almost. For sure. That's a good place to be. It's unbelievable.

It's game changing. Yeah, absolutely. Now you deal with all sorts of people. Have you seen happiness levels change depending on wealth? Like if someone's super rich. Yeah, so one of the big questions people often ask me, especially strivers, especially young entrepreneurs, what's the truth about the relationship between, especially young entrepreneurs, what's the truth

about the relationship between happiness and money? And what's the God's honest truth? And we actually know how this works. Happiness, sorry, well-being rises from low levels of money up to relatively modest income levels. Back in the early 2000s, Daniel Kahneman, who's a Nobel Prize winner in economics at Princeton, he writes a famous paper that says that

$75,000 were it tops out, right? That was back then and I don't know, nationwide, doesn't matter what the actual number is, it's lower than we think. It's not a billion dollars, right? And so what is that saying? That's saying that at some point it flattens out,, it flattens out, the happiness flattens out, and then the stresses of actually having more come into play. What's going on with that is that well-being in our brains is a combination of happiness and unhappiness.

It's sums that we're doing. Now, here's the thing. At very, very low levels of income, rising income a little bit, it doesn't make you happier. It makes you less unhappy, because it eliminates sources of stress and anxiety in your life, like healthcare. From the ages of 19 to 26, I didn't go to the dentist once,

because I didn't have the money. I didn't have money. I was a musician, didn't have any money to do it. I couldn't afford it. And when I finally went to the dentist and they filled 12 cavities, and I felt a lot better, I'm like, hey, money buys happiness. No, no, no, money lowers unhappiness

at relatively low levels. Okay, then what happens is mentally what we say is, and maybe it's $75,000, maybe it's $250,000, I don't know, it's not billions, it's not rich, okay? So what happens in our minds is we can't actually distinguish between rising happiness and lowering unhappiness And so we say I felt so much better when I was younger and I got more money So now that I'm not young if I get more money

I'm gonna feel happy again and you chase that feeling right you chase the increment in your well-being for the rest of your life And that's what people do and they're frustrated because it doesn't work Now that said there are four things that you can do with money that will honestly raise your well-being at any age in life. There's really only five things you can do with money, by the way. You can spend it on stuff. You can get a car. You can get a house.

You can get a watch. You can get a plane, whatever, depending on what your level of income is. Second, you can buy experiences. Second, you can buy experiences. Third, you can buy time. Fourth, you can give your money away, philanthropically, charitably. And fifth, you can save it. It turns out four of those things bring happiness

and one doesn't. And what nature wants us to do is the one thing that doesn't bring happiness. Buy stuff. Buy stuff. Why? Because we're evolved from the place to scene. We're all just cavemen.

And what cave people do is they want to exhibit excess resources for survival and gene propagation. Frankly, what a lot of males want to do is they want to peacock with excess possessions and to show more resources than are needed because that's what they think, well, that's what they genetically think is going to attract more mates. That's why because that's what they think, well, that's what they genetically think is gonna attract more mates.

That's why you want five watches and not just one, and you're really sad when you lose your fifth watch. Why would you be sad? It doesn't matter, it means nothing to you. The reason is because it's some sort of a threat to your resource acquisition strategy as a primordial human being. You're not thinking about it that way,

but these are your instincts. I want more stuff, want more stuff, want more stuff. So therefore, I'm gonna get more mates when the female of the species says, that caveman over there has a lot of flints and animal skins and buffalo jerky in the cave. That's gonna get a family through the winter. It's weird, we still have these primitive brains. Wow.

That's why we want more stuff. It turns out the other four bring happiness. Experiences. Invest in experiences. Spend the experiences with people that you love. Second, buy time, but don't waste the time. You either use the time for your own depth, spend it in meditation or spiritual life or going on a pilgrimage or spend it with people that you love. So if you're paying somebody to cut your yard, don't waste it scrolling Instagram, right? Use the time wisely or writing a business plan, whatever is really meaningful to you. Third, give it away to something you're passionate about.

And everybody's passionate about something. Give serious thought to what you're really, really good at. So you, for example, you've done really well. You're always going to do really well economically. Start when you're in your 20s, in your mid to late 20s, thinking about what am I really passionate about and get really good at philanthropy. Because by the time you're 50 and 60,

if you're great at philanthropy, it'll be more important to you than being great at business. Really? But you've got to spend the time, because it doesn't come naturally. You have to learn when people are going to waste your money and causes that are worthwhile and how to do research on the things you care about, et cetera.

And last but not least, save your money. This is really important. So we're made for progress, like we talked about. Humans are made for progress. Happiness comes from progress. Savings is progress. Humans are made for progress. Happiness comes from progress. Savings is progress. Savings is basically saying there's a better future. I believe in there's a better future.

I have hope. I have optimism. How do I know that? Because I've invested in myself by putting money away. The dumbest thing you can do for happiness is buying consumer stuff on credit, is running a credit card balance. It's so dumb. Now, some people have to run a credit card

balance in a bad month for gas and groceries. That's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about putting your vacation on credit, putting your Christmas gifts on credit. It's like, I like that thing. I'm going to buy something that I want that's discretionary, and I can't quite afford it yet. So I'm just going to run the credit card balance.

All that's doing is setting you behind the line of scrimmage and you're gonna be paying it back to get to zero. That's gonna lower your happiness. I've got the data that show that you will become less happy if you owe money. Really? That's the bottom line. Don't owe money. What about college students?

College students, there's sort of two exceptions. A mortgage lending doesn't lower happiness because when you buy a house on credit, every mortgage payment actually is putting something in the bank where you're getting equity in the house, whereas your rent doesn't. So that's a different category. And college can be thought of as a real investment,

although for too many people today it isn't. Don't go in the hole when you don't have to for college. If you can go to the state university instead of the fancy private college, go to the state university. Don't go into debt. Don't be stupid. And this is coming from a professor. Totally. If you've got the money or your family's got the money, you're going to go to a private college, more power to you. But taking big loans to get an education that's pretty much equivalent to what you would be getting at the University of Maryland or whatever, that's the right choice. Because you're gonna come out, you're gonna be free,

you're not gonna be shackled, you're gonna make the investment without actually having to pay the piper for that investment, and that's the smart thing to do. And you know, this is, take it from a professor, it's great, go to Harvard, that's great, if you can afford it, wonderful, congratulations for getting in. But it's great. Go to Harvard, that's great. If you can afford it, wonderful. Congratulations for getting in. But it's okay if you don't.

It's absolutely okay if you don't. And by the way, it's also okay to not go to college if you've got something else to do. Not all my kids went to college. I didn't go to college until I was 30. You and I are products of the New Jersey State higher education system. Yeah, couldn't pass pre-calc, man.

You could, I mean, it's just you weren't pass pre-calc, man. Yeah. You could. I mean, it's just you weren't ready to pass it. You weren't ready to pass it because you had something else to do. Way too many people go to college when they're 18 and should wait. So one of my kids went to Princeton, did great. One of my daughter went to school in Spain

and now is actually finishing up in Rhode Island and she's doing great. But my middle son, he wasn't ready to go to college, so he worked on a farm and then he joined the Marines. Oh, wow. And he was a scout sniper in the Marine Corps. When he got out, he had a stack of job offers. Really?

Yeah, yeah. He's a manager at a construction company in Northern Virginia. He's making bank. Oh, nice. He's loving life. He's married. He's 24. He's married to a baby.

And life has just lined up for him. So lots and lots of ways to succeed. Yeah, that's a great way to do it, because a lot of parents want their kids to go the academic route. But there's other options these days. Mm, if you're serious and hardworking, you're going to be fine.

Yeah. It's the bottom line. I think sometimes there's a lot of pressure from the parents and the kids. Totally, because the kids, the parents, they're projecting their own autobiography on the screen of the kid. Right. And that's a problem. I'm sure you see that at Harvard, especially. Totally. Totally, absolutely. parents are projecting their own autobiography on the screen of the kid.

And that's a problem. I'm sure you see that at Harvard, especially. Totally, absolutely. And I tried hard not to do that. So for me, actually, I could relate most to my son, who didn't go to college, because I made it through a semester of college and then had a gap decade. Gap decade.

And then studied by correspondence, actually, graduating when I was about 30. That's cool. Yeah, yeah, no, it's great. Because the bottom line is, be an entrepreneur in the business of your life. And that includes the way that you make your investments, which starts with college.

You still play the French horn? I don't. You gave up? Well, yeah, I stopped when I was 31. So I made my living full time doing that from 19 until I was 31 years old. Wow. And then I stopped because I couldn't keep doing it

when I started my PhD. And because my PhD was just too taxing to continue to try to be a professional French horn player. And I'm much happier now. Nice. What was your PhD in? In public policy analysis. So I'm a behavioral social scientist by background.

That's cool. That's a very social scientist by background. That's cool. That's a very useful skill to have. Oh my gosh. It's so fun, too. Being able to read people, right? Sort of, although it's mostly being able to look at data and find patterns in behavior to see why people do the things that they do.

And then over the past 30 years, since I've gotten my education, I've found that I've had to augment it with the way that the field was changing. So behavioral science was all about with sort of psychology and behavioral economics, et cetera. And now there's a huge neuroscience component that's come into it to understand the brain. So these days, I've had to retrain such that 30% of what

I teach is neuroscience. Whoa. Yeah. You've got to adapt. Totally. Because you always have to. Otherwise, you know, you're high tops. And I like that.

Because when I was in business class at Rutgers, they were teaching out of textbooks, teaching newspaper ads and radio ads. I'm like, dude, we got to teach some social media marketing or something. Totally. I mean, that's just the way it has to be. I teach in a business school. And in my business, I teach a class at Harvard

called Leadership and Happiness. That's 20% philosophy and spirituality, 30% neuroscience, and the rest is behavioral science. And so it's a really interdisciplinary class because it has to be to actually get this across, but it's a real science happiness class based on the most cutting edge research. That's awesome.

I will say ever since I incorporated spirituality into my life, I've been way more fulfilled. What's your practice? Meditation. I wouldn't say I'm tied to a specific religion, but just like grounding, earthing, just connecting with nature. Were you raised in a religious tradition?

Raised in Christian, yeah. Which variety? I couldn't tell you. I was so young. A lot of Asian people were there. It was all Chinese people. Yeah, OK. So are your parents immigrants?

Your grandparents? Yeah, my mom's from China. Came here with 20 bucks. From where? Scrubbing floors from Beijing. From Beijing. Yeah, learned English on the fly. She here with 20 bucks. From where? Scrubbing floors from Beijing. From Beijing. Yeah, learned English on the fly. She married an American or she married a Chinese?

She married my dad who was from the UK. He's Irish. Yeah, no kidding, you're American. You're American through and through. Yes, sir. My daughter's Chinese. Oh yeah? Yeah.

Let's go. And my daughter-in-law is half Chinese from a Chinese mother and American father. Yeah, they work hard, man. Yeah, yeah. No, it's a, this is a, I mean, look, this is such a great country. I mean, we're all everything. Yeah.

That it comes down to. I'll say this about the Chinese. They work hard. I wish they could have a little more fun, you know? Very strict. But each culture has their benefits. Well, part of it is not Chinese immigrant culture. And so when people like your mom, I mean, $20, she's,

I mean, she understands the value of hard work because she had to make it on her own. She had to earn her success, and she was gonna make sure her son earned his success, and that's what it comes down to. So immigrant families, whether you're from Moldova or from Macedonia or Beijing, you're going to be very exigent about these things

because the immigrant experience is the single most entrepreneurial thing. So if you wonder, it's like, why am I such a natural immigrant? Because your mom or a natural entrepreneur. Immigration puts all the capital at risk. And that's what entrepreneurs do, is they put capital at risk. They're willing and able to take tremendous risk in return

for explosive rewards. And that's what an immigrant, that's what your mom did. It's like all my social capital, linguistic capital, cultural capital, spiritual capital, money. And I'm going to come to this new place and hope for the best and try to just like see to the pants. And that's why, by the way, we need tons of entrepreneurs, I should say immigrants forever in this country,

or we're going to stagnate and die. This is an entrepreneurial culture, which means we have to be an immigration culture. Yeah, because I get asked a lot, like where I get my workout, but it's definitely from parents, right? And it's interesting because there's a guy at Johns Hopkins, a psychiatry professor who does work

on the entrepreneurial mindset, and I've done work myself on entrepreneurial orientation. And he believes it has to do with this hypomania, which is a subclinical designation of, so you think of bipolar disorder, which has mania, which is super high highs, and it's clinical, and it's dangerous, and you have to have it treated. Subclinically, it's a thing called hypomania.

You can't stop, can't stop. And that's for sure you have hypomania, because almost all successful entrepreneurs do, but so do immigrants. Interesting. Yeah, and that's almost certainly genetic. There's almost certainly a genetic mutation that will make people be like, there's nothing going on here,

man. I'm getting on that boat going to some weird place where I might have more opportunity. That's weird. That's a mutation, right? But then if you have a country based on that, it's no longer a mutation. It's the norm. That's why when you look at the data, look, America's got all these problems.

We have a substandard education system that's really a big problem, way worse education system than many other developed countries, most other developed countries around the world, depending on how you want to measure it. And still, this is the place to be for entrepreneurs. That almost certainly has to do with your mom. Immigrants. Thanks, mom.

Thank you, mom. Department of Education, what's your take on, they want to remove it right now, right? Yeah, I mean, I'd have to know exactly what they mean by getting rid of it. Nobody's been successful doing that so far. I'm a lot more interested in what local communities are trying to do

entrepreneurially with the education system. So I'm a lot less interested in what the federal government is trying to do from the top down. Top down policies don't work that well. Bottom up entrepreneurial policies work way better. Yeah, there's power in communities. Totally, totally. And it's based on good ideas and smaller groups of people

that can try to do new things. And I think more education choice is a good thing. And why? Because I like entrepreneurs. Yeah, I just feel like in public school, where I grew up, at least, they punished you for critical thinking. They can outside the box.

So it's kind of like I was ashamed to be an entrepreneur. People ask it a lot, do I think that the public schools should be teaching happiness? And I'm like, not really, because they're not even very good at teaching math and English. And so how would they teach happiness? Probably like social activism or something that would make people more mentally ill or something.

I don't know. I don't trust the public schools to teach something as important as happiness. Yeah, I wouldn't trust it either. Yeah. I mean, it wouldn't be good, probably. I mean, some places it would be. If I could design a curriculum and people would actually

follow it, that'd be great. But then again, nobody's going to do my top-down thinking. Nobody's saying, we need a Harvard professor to tell us all what to do. Words nobody's ever said. Yeah. I mean, it's working with your students. They're great.

My students are great. I've got 180 starting every spring, and about 400 on the waiting list. Wow. Yeah, it's great. Well done, man. It's not the milk man. It's the milk.

People want to be happier, and they don't want just woo woo. They want science. And the whole discipline is based on the idea that if you understand the science, change your habits and teach others, you're going to get happier. Yeah. It's true. By the way, it's true for anything. You want to learn golf, learn about golf, go golf a lot, explain it to somebody, you'll become a better golfer. That's so true. When you see someone teaching they're smiling. Yeah, and they're also Learning that thing. Mm-hmm. And so you want to understand calculus if you went back and took calculus again if you decide

Ah, I'm gonna get my bachelor's degree You'd have to do Calc one again to be like this is easy Yeah, and what you'd be doing because I know because I did it I took calculus I took Calc one was 28 on my way to getting my bachelor's degree. And I learned it in the book. And then I did the exercises. And at dinner, I told my wife about it. And this is like doing crossword puzzles.

And that's how I learned it. And when you're becoming a surgeon in medical school, they say, watch one, do one, teach one. That's how you become a surgeon. That's how you become happy. That's how you become a golfer. That's how you study math. Anything in life. Yeah.

Yeah, surgeons go through a lot of schooling, man. Yeah. But the whole point is you got to do all three. And that's what you need to do with anything you're trying to learn. Yeah. Did you have any battles with anxiety? Everybody.

I mean, everybody who's trying to do big things. Anxiety and depression are what everybody's talking about now. Generalized anxiety, which is the clinical designation of anxiety, and clinical depression. We all have it. 100% of the people have it because it's not a switch. It's a dial. Well, people out here are saying they don't have it.

So I'm intrigued by this conversation. Everybody's got it. Everybody's got OCD. Everybody's got PTSD. Everybody's got ADHD. Any letters's got PTSD. Everybody's got ADHD. Any letters you want, we all have these things, because they're all dials. They're not switches.

And the whole point is you need to actually figure out ways in your life to turn the dials so that these issues are not an impediment in your life, and they actually are an enhancement to your life. If you had no anxiety, you wouldn't be you. You'd be boring. You wouldn't be you. You'd be boring. You wouldn't be achieving the things that you are. Being an anxious guy is to your advantage,

but you don't want the dial turned up so high that it's getting in the way. You wanna be able to adjust the dial, and that's what I'm talking about, adjust the dial. You don't wanna have no sadness. No sadness is terrible. Sadness exists for a reason. Sadness makes you averse to losing your love relationships, for example.

That's why sadness exists. There's literally a part of your brain called the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex that governs mental pain, aka sadness, and we've developed it so that we're averse to losing our relationships so we'll stay alive. Wow. So we don't walk the frozen tundra and die alone after being thrown out of our tribe. You need your relationships. You need to be averse to saying and doing the things that would drive away your fiance.

And what's making you averse to that is the fact that sadness is extremely uncomfortable. And at some point, I mean, you're going to get married, you're engaged, and one of you is going to die first. And then there's going to be grief in your life, and that's normal too. And so the whole point is not to look at particular emotions as pathologies, they're not. If you don't feel sadness and anxiety, something's wrong with you. Then you need therapy, right? The question is, is it turned up too high and how do you turn the dial down a little bit?

Don't try to eliminate any emotions. I love that. I used to feel a lot of shame with certain emotions. Sadness is one of them. I would avoid crying in front of people, in front of my girl, or whatever. Yeah, for sure. And I get that.

I mean, there are times when people who can't control their emotions adequately, and they'll burst into tears an awful lot. That's because they're quite limbic about particular emotions. And what they need to do is to become what we call metacognitive, to understand their emotions a little bit better, not to eliminate them,

but to manage them. And you can say, like, I cry a lot. I cry a lot. I want to cry a little bit less because it embarrasses me. Why does it embarrass me? Well, because it gets in the way of my ability to do what I'm trying to do, because it affects other people in a diverse way.

OK, let's understand this, not to feel less sadness, but to express it in a way that's more appropriate to my needs. That's all metacognition. That's all self-management. And that's the essence of being a self-entrepreneur. Yeah. Well, I think as a man, too, just trying to appear strong,

right? Not weak. Yeah. And also, there's all kinds of times when you don't want to cry, like in public. Yeah. Because it's like, why is he crying? Anger is another one too.

My dad had bipolar. So I shut down when I see anger. You know what I mean? I avoid it completely. When people are in periods of mania in bipolar disorder, then they can be weirdly too happy and weirdly too angry. Because their level of affect is extremely high. Both positive and negative affect is extremely high, both positive and negative

affect is just supercharged at that level. What it appears to, especially family members, is that the person is out of control. And that's really alarming for a kid to see a parent who's out of control. What you want is your parents to be in control because their parents is the way that that works. And so that'll scar you a little bit. But again, you learn from it. It's not there's no trauma.

You just learn from it. No trauma? Yeah, I mean, who knows? I mean, we can sort of talk about all that. But the whole point about trauma is not to have a stress disorder, but to have growth. Yeah, I mean, anything. It's like when you have these experiences, you say, OK,

what did I learn from my dad's difficulties? Number one, I want to have a lot of empathy and compassion for my dad because he was suffering a lot. Number two is that that was hard for me as a kid. What did I learn from it in the way that I'm going to design my own adult life? See, I love that mindset because a lot of people go the victim route.

So they'll say, oh, I was treated this way. Yeah, it's unproductive. It's unproductive. And part of the problem is that there because a lot of people go the victim route. Yeah. Yeah, so they'll say I was treated this way Yeah, it's unproductive. It's unproductive. And part of the problem is that there are a lot of people my age They're trying to tell your people your age that you should be aggrieved and the reason is because we're productizing you We baby boomers productize Gen Z and Millennials by telling them they're victims and should be aggrieved because then you become When I do that, I'm turning on parts of your brain that sort of debilitate your capacity for critical reasoning. Because if I make you afraid and angry, I'm illuminating the amygdala in your brain.

And if I can get amygdala hijacked, there's all kinds of stuff I can get you to do for me. I can get you to buy my product. I can get you to watch my network. I can get you to vote for my politician. I can get you to buy my product. I can get you to watch my network. I can get you to vote for my politician. I can get you to march on your campus. I can get you to cancel people on the internet. I can just pull the strings, man.

So that's what's going on. There's a lot of that on the news, everywhere, social media. And who's behind it? People my age. I love that you admit it. Totally. Totally. I mean, I'm not doing that, but I see it all day long.

As a behavioral scientist, I see right through it. They can't do it to me, because I'm a behavioral scientist. For example, I'll give you a classic example of this. Part of the limbic system is called the insular cortex, or the insula. That governs disgust. In other words, when you pull something out of the fridge that you forgot was back there and it smells terrible,

and you're like, oh my god You take it to the garbage like that. That's stimulating the insular cortex for your brain to say, don't eat that. A month ago that was food, now it's garbage. And the reason is because the brain developed that so you'll avoid pathogens. And it's stimulated by things that smell dead, that things that are rotten,

things that are a breeding ground for bacteria, basically, because those are the pathogens that could actually kill you. That's why dead bodies and blood and roadkill and all that kind of stuff makes you feel disgusted. And that was the only defense that you had before vaccines and antibiotics. It's an amazing feat of evolution that we have this insular cortex

that kept us alive for millions of years. Okay, but another way that you can stimulate that is by making people feel disgust for others because of what they think. And the way that you do that is by comparing people to other life forms. So the Nazis talked about Jews and called them rats. The Hutus talked about the Tutsis and called them cockroaches. Or to even say, the way, what that person thinks and says is disgusting. When people use the words of disgust about another person, they're manipulating you,

they're manipulating your insular cortex. That's what activists on campuses, for example, are doing. That's disgusting. And they want to young brains, 18, 19, 20-year-olds, nice, fresh insular cortices, they want them to switch those things on. Because when disgust is on, man, you are in a panic. You'll feel rage and panic, and you'll be overwhelmed.

Your critical capacities will be suspended while you're saying, get away from this, banish this, cancel this, even hurt this, and that's what they're doing. So listen to this, listen to your favorite politician or whoever you agree with telling you you should feel disgust for somebody else. They're trying to hijack your insular cortex.

So what's the way to defend against that? Know it, knowledge is power. Knowledge is power and say, hands off my insular cortex. The D word, I'm adding that to my ropes for disgust. Yep. Wow, I had no idea the word was that. That's an example. And they'll hijack your anger.

See, the four negative emotions are disgust, fear, anger, and sadness. And that's what people who want to manipulate you, they will be manipulating, is the parts of your brain that govern those four negative emotions, knowing that it will hijack your critical capacity, your capacity for critical reasoning. And that's how activism actually tries to get soldiers.

These are conscripting child soldiers into a baby boomer activism culture war. And that's what's going on in America. Yeah, that's scary. Yeah. No, it's, you know, but the whole point is, it's time for rebellion. It's time to stand up to the man, like they used to say in the 60s. But in this case, as people are trying to,

and there's nothing new under the sun. Demagogic leaders have always done this. They're always trying to hijack young people's brains. I can see it. I used to watch the news in high school. I would just feel that a low vibration. It was never positive things they reported on. No, no, no.

That's what you want. Just put you in a bad state of mind Yeah, and and you can you can hijack anybody's brain at any age. It's not as if that you're because you're 20 you're uniquely Vulnerable to these tactics Perhaps more so but that's really what's going on in politics in America today where you have kind of the five percent Extrinsic bullying factions that are fighting with each other, and they're trying to get the 90% who actually don't hate their relatives and neighbors.

It's like, yeah, that person, I mean, I disagree politically with the family I grew up with. They're awesome people, they're awesome. I had great parents. I mean, they taught me love and respect, and they gave me my religious values, and they told me that everybody has equal dignity and like totally I agree with everything that matters.

Voted for different candidates. Who cares is what it comes down to. That's really, really important. My kids voted differently than I do. All three of my kids voted differently than I did in this election. For sure. They're awesome, they're smart.

They might be right. I might be wrong. It's okay. It's okay. Yeah, it's one of the biggest divide politics. Yeah, totally. Like it's massive. Yeah, I's one of the biggest dividers, right? Politics. Yeah, totally. Like, it's massive. Yeah.

I don't even vote the same way as my wife sometimes. Wow. Yeah, it's all good. And you don't care? No. Interesting. All I care about is love. OK.

Yeah. So you don't let it divide the family. Yeah, because it's not important enough to divide the family. And I get it. I mean, we can argue at Thanksgiving dinner about taxes and trade and national security and all that stuff.

Sure, we can argue about those things. And we do, but it doesn't rise to the level of emotional schism. For you, it doesn't. It doesn't. For people on social media, you should see the comments. For people who are very online, oh, for sure. But also, you have to understand that the people who

are very, very online, these are not normal people. These are what we call dark triad personalities. I've taken that test. You have, you've taken my test on dark triad? Oh, that's your test? Yeah, well, I didn't invent the test. So it's actually a combination of three tests of narcissism, Machiavellianism, and psychopathy,

traits of psychopathy. And then you put them all together, those three different tests together, and they're in different places on the internet including at my website Oh got it the people can go to my website Yeah, and you probably scored really low low in psychopath and low in narcissism and middle in Machiavellianism You're willing to do hard things. Yeah, right. It's kind of hard things Even when people don't like them is kind of what it comes down to yeah, so you're in the middle of the pack

So that's great. That means you're certainly not a dark triad. A dark triad is above average narcissism. It's all about me. Above average Machiavellianism, which is I'm willing to do unethical and things that hurt you to get things that help me. Above average, not extraordinary, not like an ax murderer.

And traits of psychopathy, traits of being a psychopath, which once again doesn't mean you're Ted Bundy, it just means that you're low in remorse. Meaning if I hurt you, it doesn't make me feel bad at all. It's okay for me. And if you're above average across all three, you're in 7% of the population, one in 14 people. Everybody has met a dark triad.

The problem is that, ordinarily they're unsuccessful because we don't want to be around them. But in certain times, like when we don't know how to use social media appropriately, or when we're in a time of political polarization, or right now, both, we're going to reward a lot of dark triads. Almost all social activism today and internet activism is being fomented and practiced by dark triads.

These are not people you wanna hang out with or the people who are telling you you need to cancel your friends and family. Yeah, well the drama gets the views, so it attracts them, right? Yeah, totally. And it's a sort of a form of cheap entertainment. Conflict is highly entertaining.

Oh, you should see what Piers Morgan is doing these days. He'll have on two people from the opposite sides and they'll just- A screaming match. Screamingict is highly entertaining. Oh, you should see what Piers Morgan is doing these days. He'll have on two people from the opposite sides, and they'll just. A screaming match. Screaming match for an hour. People watching that. It gets millions of views. Yeah, it's kind of rhetorical MMA.

Pretty much. Yeah. Yeah, I hope to evolve from that. Yeah, totally. I mean, it's like, I'm going to get it, because if you've got a couple of minutes, and you're going to look at something, and it's mildly entertaining, but it's just not informative

because you're gonna get to people who are willing to go on TV and scream at each other. People contact me, I do a lot of media, people contact me all the time and want me to debate people. I'm like, no, you think I'm gonna go to robo debate atronic 8,000, a machine that goes on all the cable shows and just tries to score points?

That's just stupid. What I wanna do is I wanna find common ground with human stories with people, because that's the basis of how we get more happiness and love in our lives. Absolutely. With your family and with your friends and with your classmates,

and that means being really courageous. I heard a thing I disagree with, that's super interesting. That is crazy what that person just said. Come sit next to me and tell me again, because I want to understand it. That's what college should be. That's what America should be, quite frankly. And if we did that, then all the dark tries

would be out of business. I love that. Yeah. Yeah, it should be like that. That's how you stand up to the man, is by loving people more. Yeah. But right now, people are too scared to speak up

at college, right? Well, it's getting, I think, tightest turned. I think we're past peak cancellation at this point. I say this sitting on a college campus. And I think that 2019, 2020 was crazier. And I think that things are actually getting better. Yeah, I agree. I think cancer culture isn't as powerful as it used to be.

Yeah, and part of the reason is because people in their 20s are starting to say, I'm unhappy. And what people are telling me is going to make my life better is actually making my life worse enough. And they're starting to stand up to people that have been using them. They're tired of being productized for somebody else's political agenda.

Now it's like a badge of honor to be canceled. It's a good thing these days. Well, I mean, to be quite frank, to be in most elite colleges, to be conservative is like the new punk rock. Yeah, definitely. Conservatives, Republicans, today's punk. Yeah, especially on a college campus of your prestige. But I mean, in the 1980s, to be punk,

to be on a college campus was sort of out there and radical. And people are kind of like, dude. And so people are actually using it. Again, this is not the reason that you want people to be politically conservative. You want people to have the conviction of their values, as opposed to trying to just stand out. But this is the way that things work. This is the way that things actually change,

is people rebel and say, I refuse to conform to your concept of what a virtuous person must think. No, I'm going to think for concept of what a virtuous person must think. No, I'm gonna think for myself. And then things start to get interesting and I actually see all kinds of green shoots. Absolutely, can't wait for that. Yeah, me too.

Well, Arthur, I know you got a podcast you're about to launch, you got some books, anything else you wanna close off with? Yeah, I mean, it's, thank you for putting some highlights around what we can actually do in our lives. The whole point is that you have this big following of people that not everything is great every single day. I get it.

It's not easy to be in your 20s. I remember that in my 20s. And a lot of what I know today, I wish I had known then. There's nothing abnormal about any adverse feelings that people are experiencing. On the contrary, learning how to manage them as opposed to eliminating them will make life better and deeper and richer. The key to actually making things better is to dig more deeply into your faith,

into your spiritual life, to be thinking more about how your family life is what you can experience and learn and to show you who you are as a person, to have real friendships, real friendships, not deal friendships. And we kind of know the difference between a real and deal. And to work in such a way that you're making progress with your life. Your life has value in meaning faith, family, friends, and work. Thinking about those things are the way that even the bad times can help you learn and grow. And that's really what your 20s is all about. So I know

this following that you have of people that admire you justifiably from the success that you've had can learn from the life that you bring into the show about how to build their own lives as well and that's what I want to help you do. Thanks so much for coming on man. Thanks for watching guys. I got those links below. See you next time. famous for when you play classics like MGM Grand Millions or popular games like Blackjack, Baccarat, and Roulette. With our ever-growing library of digital slot games, a large selection of online table games, and signature BetMGM service, there is no better way to bring the excitement and ambience of Las Vegas home to you than with BetMGM Casino. Download the BetMGM Casino app today. BetMGM and GameSense remind you to play responsibly. BetMGM Casino. Download the BetMGM Casino app today.

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