Finding Mastery with Dr. Michael Gervais - The Science of Happiness: Arthur Brooks on Building a Fulfilling Life

Episode Date: November 13, 2024

What if the pursuit of happiness is making us miserable?On the podcast today to help us answer that question is Dr. Arthur Brooks. Arthur is a Harvard professor, social scientist, and bestselling author known for his work on well-being, leadership, and human flourishing. His journey is anything but traditional—starting out as a professional musician before transitioning to academia, where he’s become a leading voice in the study of happiness… But as you’ll hear in this episode, the path of happiness might not be exactly what you think it is.Whether you’re a high performer seeking more fulfillment or simply looking to understand happiness from a deeper perspective, this conversation offers a powerful roadmap for living fully._________________Subscribe to our Youtube Channel for more powerful conversations at the intersection of high performance, leadership, and meaning: https://www.youtube.com/c/FindingMasteryGet exclusive discounts and support our amazing sponsors! Go to: https://findingmastery.com/sponsors/Subscribe to the Finding Mastery newsletter for weekly high performance insights: https://www.findingmastery.com/newsletter Download Dr. Mike's Morning Mindset Routine! https://www.findingmastery.com/morningmindsetFollow us on Instagram, LinkedIn, and X.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Finding Mastery is brought to you by Remarkable. In a world that's full of distractions, focused thinking is becoming a rare skill and a massive competitive advantage. That's why I've been using the Remarkable Paper Pro, a digital notebook designed to help you think clearly and work deliberately. It's not another device filled with notifications or apps.

It's intentionally built for deep work. So there's no social media, no email, no noise. The writing experience, it feels just like pen on paper. I love it. And it has the intelligence of digital tools like converting your handwriting to text, organizing your notes, tagging files, and using productivity templates

to help you be more effective. It is sleek, minimal. It's incredibly lightweight. It feels really good. I take it with me anywhere from meetings to travel without missing a beat. What I love most is that it doesn't try to do everything. It just helps me do one very important thing really well,

stay present and engaged with my thinking and writing. If you wanna slow down, if you wanna work smarter, I highly encourage you to check them out. Visit remarkable.com to learn more and grab your paper pro today. What if the pursuit of happiness is making us miserable? Welcome back or welcome to the Finding Mastery podcast, where we dive into the minds of the world's greatest thinkers and doers. I'm your host, Dr. Michael Gervais, by trade and training, a high-performance psychologist. Today, I'm really excited to welcome Dr. Arthur Brooks to the show. Arthur is a Harvard professor, bestselling author, and one of the world's leading voices on happiness. But as you'll hear,

the path of happiness might not be exactly what you think it is. Whether you're a high performer seeking more fulfillment or simply looking to understand happiness from a deeper perspective, this conversation offers a powerful roadmap for living fully. So with that, let's dive right into this conversation with Dr. Arthur Brooks. I am so stoked to sit with you to have this conversation. I've been reading your work for a long time. Thank you. Yeah. Thank you. I love the show and I'm really honored to be here. Awesome. That works, doesn't it? Long time listener, first time guest. Is that right? Yeah.

I mean, it's like your show is in all the places I want to be. Oh, that's fun. Because people who are high performers, they want the best information. And this is the best information. This is what you're dedicated to doing. So thank you. Yeah. Thank you very much.

Thank you for including me. That's a great way to start this conversation. Because you've done two things exceptionally well that I'm fascinated by. The way you've designed your life. And I'll start with this basic idea that I think we all want to live a great life. I don't know anyone that says, I want a miserable, below satisfaction way of living. And you've organically lived that way and now you're talking about it using science in an applied way to help others so you have something that i think is incredibly powerful and i want to open that up and celebrate and understand how you've done it and where it's

gone sideways for you right and what we all can learn to be a little bit better. So let's first start by your path. You don't have a normal path. It's not the most traditional path to being an academic. No. At one of the greatest, if not the greatest institution on the planet. So we say. So we say in Boston.

So it says in the brochure. Okay, so Harvard Business School is a very special place. So we say in Boston. So it says in the brochure. Okay. So that's it. Harvard Business School is a very special place. It's a wonderful place. It lives up to its reputation, I think. So let's go back though. How did this thing start?

Because you got to academics late. Super late. So I come from an academic family. My grandfather was an academic. My father was a biostatistician, very brilliant scientist. And I was determined not to take that path. So I was a musician from the time I was a little kid. I was talented first as a violinist, then as a pianist.

And then at eight, I started the French horn. And that really captured my imagination because I was good at it. And it was fun. And that's all I did. That's really all I wanted to do. I was completely driven to be the world's greatest French horn player from the time I was nine, 10 years old. No joke. You remember that? Oh, yeah.

That type of orientation. I not only remember it, so does everybody else around me. I was going to be the world's greatest French horn player as far as I was concerned. I was practicing hours and hours and hours a day. I was taking every competition, belonging to every ensemble that I possibly could. Why? I don't know. Yeah. belonging to every ensemble that I possibly could. Why? I don't know. Because people are driven to greatness. Because people are driven to significance. We want to be somebody. Look,

humans are made to be excellent. We are not made to be mediocre. A lot of people are mediocre because the world says, take it easy. The world says, cut the corner, whatever it happens to be. Or there's bad luck or pathology or whatever it happens to be. But we're not made to be mediocre. And if you've got the opportunity, take it. And I did. That's all I wanted to do. Now, there was a piece missing that I didn't know at the time. But as a teenager, I was good and getting better. And all I wanted to do was go pro. And I did when I was 19. I spent a little over a semester in college at CalArts, California Institute of the Arts, which is a freaky place here. That's a wild place.

Not far from where we are here. Yeah. And for folks that don't know what that means, it's like this beautiful blend of arts and kind of, would you call it edge pushing approach to life? Yeah, totally. It's, it's the most Bohemian place ever basically. And,

and, and, and certainly I was not prepared to live that, you know, live a self-disciplined lifestyle at age 18 at a place like that. But that wasn't really the problem. But you didn't fall off the rails there. No,

I, I, I dropped my required classes and wound up on academic probation because all I wanted to do was play the horn. Oh, you did fall off the rails. Yeah. I didn't completely fall off the rails, but they were encouraging me to pursue my excellence elsewhere. And so I took the opportunity. I bailed. And I went pro. Did you get kicked out? I didn't get kicked out, but I was actually transferring to another conservatory in Philadelphia called the Curtis Institute of Music, which is a very famous place for classical music.

But in the meantime, I was offered a position in a chamber – a touring chamber music group, and I took it. That was not probably the best career decision I ever made because had I stayed and improved my skills and gone through a more traditional academic training, I would have wound up a better musician than I was but all i wanted to do was play all day i wanted to go pro at that time did you have a chip on your shoulder did you have like what was fueling you i wanted adventure um i wanted to see the world and i wanted to do it being a musician but you had a bigger vision yeah so so your your background you have a lot of background in sports. Yeah. And you know that when people go pro too early, it's a problem. For a lot of reasons, yeah.

You know, they can get injured. Psychologically, it's not healthy. And so it's a good idea for most football and basketball players to finish college if they can. It's a bad idea usually to go pro after your freshman year. Because, you know, there's a lot of stuff that can happen and you're also physically maturing. And the same thing is true with these professions in classical music, where you have a lot of fine motor skill, you need more time in an environment where you can develop in a healthy way. And so going pro is hard. You know, I was running with professionals that were 20, 30 years older than me. And, and I, you know, it, it wasn't the best

environment. Anyway, it was fine. I had a great time is the bottom line. And, uh, and, and I had no real thought about going back to college. And after six years of that, I, how did you avoid a 12 step program or jail? How did you do that? Yeah. Well, uh, yeah, Jail came later. No, that's the next thing. I was mostly under the tutelage of people who were pretty well, pretty morally developed people. I was working with a quintet at the time that was really good. And I toured for a couple of years with a jazz guitar player named Charlie Bird as well. And he was a fundamentally grown up guy. I mean, he had gone through the bebop era and the jazz samba era, and he had not got addicted to heroin. I was on tour with him. I said, Charlie, had you not die of an overdose like all your friends? Because I was telling stories about Coltrane, about Charlie Parker and the whole thing. Those guys were all junkies. Had you avoid it? Had you not get addicted to heroin? He said, yeah, man. Yeah. I tell you just good luck. I didn't like it. But then he said, I learned a lot. And I remember kind of learning at his knee about what it meant to be a, you know, a relatively healthy individual. And I came from a good, I mean,

I had a good family, came from a traditional religious background. And although that wasn't my, my thing in my twenties, later it was, but I had this wiring that was actually fundamentally healthy, thank God. And I was super serious about excellence. And you can't take drugs and be excellent. You can't be a drunk and go on stage, can't be done. I mean, it can't be, I don't care what anybody says, you can't be a classical musician. You can do that in rock and roll. Jimi Hendrix. Yeah, but you can't, I mean, if you're playing a concerto in front of an orchestra and you show up drunk, it's going to suck.

Got it. The bottom line. You simply can't. Because the precision. It's all precision in classical music. And that's what I was about, was that level of performance. When I was 25, I fell in love with a girl and I chased her to Barcelona, put my job, took a job in the Barcelona orchestra in a bid to convince her that she should marry me. Wait, wait, wait. Let's pause here because you're still married.

I'm still married. To her. To her. You said it like she's not married, but no, you're still married to her. Yeah. Yeah. So she didn't speak a word of English. I mean, it was the stupidest thing.

No, no, no. It was quixotic. It was like Don Quixote. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. But this is really, there's something very important about how you've approached just these first four things in your life, right? It's not reckless, but you chip all in.

My life's a startup. There you go. I'm the founding entrepreneur of my enterprise. And if I don't take sufficient risk, I'm not going to get big rewards. The rewards in life for the entrepreneurial startup of life is love and happiness. And you're not going to get rich and love and happiness unless you take significant risk and willing to have a complete disaster. You got to go all in, man. Finding Mastery is brought to you by LinkedIn Sales Solutions.

In any high-performing environment that I've been part of, from elite teams to executive boardrooms, one thing holds true. Meaningful relationships are at the center of sustained success. And building those relationships, it takes more than effort. It takes a real caring about your people. It takes the right tools, the right information at the right time. And that's where LinkedIn Sales Navigator can come in. It's a tool designed specifically for thoughtful sales professionals,

helping you find the right people that are ready to engage, track key account changes, and connect with key decision makers more effectively. It surfaces real-time signals, like when someone changes jobs or when an account becomes high priority, so that you can reach out at exactly the right moment with context and thoroughness that builds trust. It also helps tap into your own network more strategically, showing you who you already know that can help you open doors or make a warm introduction. In other words, it's not about more outreach. It's about smarter, more human outreach. And that's something here at Finding Mastery that our team lives and breathes by. If you're ready to start building stronger relationships that actually convert, try LinkedIn Sales Navigator for free

for 60 days at linkedin.com slash deal. That's linkedin.com slash deal for two full months for free. Terms and conditions apply. Finding Mastery is brought to you by David Protein. I'm pretty intentional about what I eat and the majority of my nutrition comes from whole foods. And. I'm pretty intentional about what I eat. And the majority of my nutrition comes from whole foods. And when I'm traveling or in between meals on a demanding day, certainly I need something quick that will support the way that I feel and think and perform. And that's why I've been leaning on David protein bars. And so has the team here at Finding Mastery. In fact, our GM Stuart, he loves them so much. I just want to kind of quickly put them on the spot. Stuart, I know you're listening. I think you might be the

reason that we're running out of these bars so quickly. They're incredible, Mike. I love them. One a day, one a day. What do you mean one a day? There's way more than that happening here. Don't tell. Okay. All right. Look, they're incredibly simple. They're effective. 28 grams of protein, just 150 calories and zero grams of sugar. It's rare to find something that fits so conveniently into a performance-based lifestyle and actually tastes good. Dr. Peter Atiyah, someone who's been on the show, it's a great episode by the way, is also their chief science officer. So I know they've done their due diligence in that category. My favorite flavor right now is the chocolate chip

cookie dough. And a few of our teammates here at Finding Mastery have been loving the fudge brownie and peanut butter. I know Stuart, you're still listening here. So getting enough protein matters. And that can't be understated, not just for strength, but for energy and focus, recovery, for longevity. And I love that David is making that easier. So if you're trying to hit your daily protein goals with something seamless, I'd love for you to go check them out. Get a free variety pack, a $25 value, and 10% off for life when you head to davidprotein.com slash finding mastery. That's David, D-A-V-I-D, protein, P-R-O-T-E-I-N.com slash finding mastery. That sounded very, I can't wait for that soundbite to come back in my head. Like that was awesome.

You got to go all in, man. You got to go on in the enterprise of your life. It's one thing to borrow 10 million bucks from some rich guy and start some internet startup. How boring, how boring. The real startup is you. That's really what it's, where it's at. And so I'll, you know, I tell young people today, I say, look, if you're not willing to give your heart away and have it get broken, you're not an entrepreneur because that's really the risk that matters most. It's the second hit that you said, like, you got to go for it, man. And the idea that it might not work out, that's the real risk. You know, like the classical definition of trust is making something that you value vulnerable because it's giving it to this precious thing, time, money, heart, whatever

it might be, to another person so that you're closer, more connected, so it grows in some way. But there is that vulnerability that's required in the risk-taking process for the great life, whatever that means. And I will tell you that I so connect with how you're talking right now about the entrepreneur thing. I've never heard the framing, being an entrepreneur of self. I've never heard the framing there. But I didn't pull the trigger enough when I was young. Why not? I was afraid. I was edge pushing, but not to the level I knew I could get so what am I trying to say is that the rest of my peers would look like Mike that's whoa and then my true ones that really

understood what edges were were like you aren't even close dude you're definitely holding back in love and you know on the edge of like whether we're surfing and all the adventure sports I did. So I really appreciate this piece of how you designed your life and done it. Yeah. This is the, as far as I'm concerned, these early chances that I took really set the stage for not being afraid or, or at least being afraid, but having courage. So what is it now? You had this practice early on of going for it. Yeah. And then how does that benefit you now? Yeah.

So now I know that you can't do the things that you want to do without taking significant risk. And when they don't work out, it's fine. But that's the part that's hard to embrace. And that's what a lot of young people are really suffering from today. I talk to a lot of my students who have never been on a date. They're in their early 20s and they've never been on a date. How is this possible you never been on a date? When you and I were in our 20s, like, what else do you want to do?

I mean, you want to fall in love. I mean, that's what young adults are wired to do. I was not trying to fall in love when I was 20. You were. Well, I mean, it's not like I want to fall in love. It's like some sort of weird sentimentalist, but I was, you know, once, once I met the girl who didn't speak a word of English, by the way, nor did I speak a word. Oh, she's still smoking. Yeah. There you go.

You're still a musician here. 36 years later. I married my wife at 25. Good. Yeah. So I know, I know that. And there's a, I would say my son is 16. I would not, I support him whenever he wants. Like unconditionally support and challenge is kind of a model that's important for me. And I would say like if he brought home, brought home, that sounds weird. If he was in love with somebody at 25 and was like, I'm all in, I'd say, okay, I want to have a conversation with him. There's some great, awesome. This is special. And there's some unique challenges that I just want to make sure that we're thinking

through. Sure. That's good fatherly advice. Yeah. The ones that showed up for me is that we were young. Our identities were not fully formed and it was like two trees that were growing. And instead of deep roots, strong trunk and our branches touching each other and being able to sway in the wind together, we started, our trunk started to get so close that they got entangled. And where she ended and I began started to get confusing. Are you still married? Oh, yeah, we're still married. Okay. and started to get confusing. Are you still married? Oh yeah, we're still married. And we worked all this out in what I would say was the greatest adventure,

the truest and most honest adventure of my life. It's like, no, wait, hold on. This is at age 30. Mike, who are you? Lisa, my wife, who are you? And we need to do this work to understand each other self better so that we can be there for each other

and not just be kind of this mashed up one person. No, I get that. And you do need to be individuals, but, but the, the data say, and, and your experience shows as does mine, that the most successful lifelong unions, because we're a pair bonded species and we're happiest when we're one and done, that's when people are actually, it doesn't mean it's going to work out. And a lot of people listening to us, it's like, ah, it didn't work out that way, but you know, life is complicated. But the highest chance of it working out that way is when your marriage is, is a startup, is a joint startup. It's a mature joint startup. That's the best. The merger model is not as good.

What's a merger model? The merger model is when you're both independent adults that have your own lives and you merge after 32 or 33. That's the merger model. Yeah, that is the – I know this research where – and what's right underneath of it is – It can work. The habit formation is already pretty established. You're harder to domesticate, especially men. The harder to domesticate is what you just said, right?

Yeah. And that leads me to think that – gosh, who is the evolutionist? His point was like, no, we're actually not monogamous, right? We are more of a tribal communal thing than paired, what you just suggested. So are you familiar with the counterpoint too? Yeah, for sure, for sure. I just think that the preponderance of evidence is that we're happiest and we're most successful as a pair-bonded species.

And again, there's a lot of pair-bonded species in nature and a lot that aren't, right? Right, yeah, that's right. And the question is, which is Homo sapiens? And I think that the best evidence suggests that we do best when we're pair-bonded. And we have enough free will that we can decide. Oh, so we had we had this book called um

sapolsky on oh yeah yeah he was i love he doesn't believe in free will no he was like what are you talking about i believe in free will yeah i do too right we went down the rabbit hole pretty strongly yeah but i understand what he's saying yeah he's just basically pointing to like if we really understood how the system works. No, I understand the science, I understand the neuroscience behind that. But the bottom line is that whether or not it's an illusion or not, we still make decisions.

Correct. And whether or not those decisions are somehow preordained according to circumstances or not, we do best when we make the decision to be pair bonded. And be faithful and to be loyal. Well, the research there is very clear on happiness. Right. For sure.

This is right down your new book. It's very, very clear. Yeah. And so, okay, hold on. We're still on your upbringing, still on your path. We're going to get to happiness, which is really good. The fall in love startup. Yeah.

Well, I think that this is really important that if you're young and you're listening right now, like chip in, take your shots. And if you're older, you're my age, you're 50 something. What am I? 52. If you're 50. You're a kid. Yeah.

I just turned 60. Did you? Yeah. You look great, man. I feel great. If I had your hair, I'd be president of the United States. Would you want to? Look, if called.

If called. Yeah, right. Would you? Is somebody, why? Is, if called. If called. Yeah, right. Would you? Is somebody, why? Is somebody calling? Okay, the answer is yes then. I would line up behind. That'd be terrible.

It'd be so terrible. Do you have too many skeletons? No, I don't have any skeletons. I don't have any significant skeletons at all. But it's just, you know, I just love not being a politician. I've worked with a lot of politicians because I was the president of a think tank in Washington, DC. They got a tough life. They have a tough life. Well, they're intensely public lives. They're taking all kinds of heat all the time for the most innocuous decisions. They're getting abused mercilessly.

They have to constantly re-litigate to get their job back. And by the way, it's a job that pays not that much. And you have to have two homes and you're constantly separated from your family. It's a very, very tough life. Most of them are awesome. Most of them love their country and they're highly competent and they're patriotic and want to serve, but you're tarred with the brush of all the ones that are not so awesome. It's a very tough life. Yeah. Very tough life. I don't have a small violin, you know. No, I hear that. But.

Well, partly because of the bad ones. Yeah. You know. I'm not up and close at all to politics. You would have a much richer understanding, but I do appreciate that like a couple wild ones can paint a picture for everybody, you know, but. A little bit of corruption

there's like one rat in the wood pile yeah yeah i mean the cynic approach for in me is like you've got to trade yourself some some of your moral code to be able to have those positions which i find probably not accurate but all the sudden also at the same time like a pretty egregious yeah as a proposition yeah you know, but okay. Anyway, notwithstanding. Sorry, I keep saying down these weird rabbit holes. I'm sorry. Is that how your mind works? Do you go down rabbit holes? No, I think our mind collectively works that way. Yeah, I think that's probably true. I do like rabbit holes.

We have significant cognitive similarity. Yeah. And that's the reason that we go here and we're going there. Yeah. And we'll, I trust that we'll hold the thread. Okay. Okay. And that's the reason that we go here and we're going there. Yeah. And we'll, I trust that we'll hold the thread. Okay. Okay. I'm in your hands.

Yeah. Okay, good. So chipping all in, early love life. Yeah. Awesome. Yeah. This is not a rabbit hole,

but it's a jump forward in 25 years, if you will. How do you speak to the person who says, I'm divorced twice. Right. And,

or once or whatever, and I'm on my second act. And strength of strength is what I'm kind of pointing. This is a wildly successful book that you wrote that really hit a nerve for folks that are looking at their second act. And in the sport world, your book got a lot of traction, right? Because at age 34, you've chipped all in. You are the best or one of the best in the world. Now what? So your book gets circulated in the transition phases, which is really cool.

Right. Which is people in their 50s in finance and people in their 30s in sports and different times for different careers. That's exactly it. And maybe even the empty nesters. Is that what you're pointing to, 50s in finance? Yeah, well, 50s in finance. And it's different for men and women. But the whole point is change is coming. Or change is here.

You try to avoid it and you're going to have trouble. If you understand what your natural strengths are and you can walk from one curve of excellence to the next, happiness can be yours. But you can't resist. See, life is interesting because a lot of strivers in general, they resist too much. And one of the reasons that they're so successful is because they're strong and resisting the urge to sit on the couch. They're resisting the urge to follow the culture, to go out and drink with their friends. They resist those particular urges, but then they tend to resist the healthy things that are coming in their own lives and their discipline that

worked for them starts to work against them. And that becomes a problem. That's why I wrote my book. I wrote it for me. I wrote it for me. I retired as a CEO when I was 55 and I'm like, and I was very worried. I mean, I retired because I saw change coming and I'd done the research. I mean, that's what we do. It's what you and I were trained to do. And you better treat yourself because how many miserable psychologists have you met? Plenty. How many marriage counselors who can't stay married and have- Yeah, it's alarming. It's a problem. And it's because they're not following their own advice. A cook who doesn't

eat his own cooking, be very suspicious. So I saw it, but I didn't know what to do. So this research actually guided me into understanding what I was going to be able to do best and design this part of my career, which is teaching, writing, and speaking publicly about the best science about human happiness. And I can bring it to a broad public, plays uniquely into my cognitive abilities that come after 50. Which is holding lots of information and data points and reference points into it. Pattern recognition, storytelling, mentoring, teaching. Perspective.

That's what we're good at. The meta. What we're not good at is indefatigable energy, working memory, and innovation. That's what we're good at meta the meta we're not good as indefatigable energy working memory and innovation that's what we're not as good at i mean you and i still innovate yeah but it's much it's where our knowledge and our thinking is more synthetic than innovative that's cool after 50 yeah i feel like i'm um i'm inspired as much as I ever was about what could be. Yeah. And I have better resources to innovate that I did when I was 25.

However, I feel like now I'm part of a system that's not innovating in a way that I once thought I could. Sure. You know, like there's a lot of creativity still now. Creativity and innovation are different. This is how I think about creativity. It's creativity, it's new to me. Something happened. Innovation, it's like, oh, it's new to others as well.

How do you think about the two? So you can be incredibly creative as you get older. Largely, you're seeing the potential in tying together other ideas that you're encountering. Yeah. So the synthetic mind, aka synthesis, as opposed to original innovation, is that in which you see other people's work. In their work, you see things that they don't see, and you tie it to all the other things around you. That's what you're uniquely great at doing. That's where you have the successful podcast, by the way, because you're connecting ideas.

Right now, you're connecting a million different points. When you were 30 years old, you'd be like- I didn't have enough. It's like, can we please stay on the script? I thought about this and we're not- You're extremely linear and you're not linear now because you're actually as linear. I mean, you're getting to a point, of course, but you're getting to the point by connecting it to all these different literatures and all these different ideas and from sports to psychology

and all that because you have crystallized intelligence, which as opposed to the fluid intelligence, which is the innovative innovation and working memory. And the crystallized intelligence, just for the listener says, what is that? It's when there's like information, you know, how to spell, you know, something. Oh, you call that wisdom. Well, wisdom is characteristic of crystallized intelligence. is you know a lot but you know how to use it and have perspective on it yeah so that's interesting because i don't i don't collapse those two yeah i mean they're similar but it's just as a as a shorthand you'd think of as brains and wisdom you know okay where wisdom is a virtue and brains is a characteristic. God, I don't totally,

the sentiment of wisdom that you're speaking, I go, yep, that's it. As pattern recognition. Yeah, insight is what I think is the step before wisdom. Good.

So insight is like, oh, that's how this thing works. And if you get enough insights together, you get to a place of like, I get it. And that's what everybody listening to us who is 30, that's what you get to look forward to. If you let yourself.

If you let yourself. Yeah. If you try to stay in the past, stuck doing what you were doing, you're a star litigator at that law firm, right? I'm going to keep up with the young guys or I'll be damned. You're going to be really frustrated. Well, this is why we see like this hustle hard thing that is – it's like the elders are trying to teach the young people about how to have a good life. And this hustle hard approach to life is surfacing in a way that I look at it and I say, yeah, okay, okay, okay. But that's like, you're speaking to yourself, jacking yourself up with testosterone or growth hormones and like

thinking that you need a six pack when you're 56, maybe you have one, I don't know, or 60, whatever you said you were like, you're pretty fit, you know? Yeah. But, but I have the data. If you actually have a full six pack when you're 60, your body fat is too low. Yeah, this is correct, right? Sub-six body fat at 60 means something's wrong. Yeah, and there's something also like the body is beautifully designed to be a little bit more sensitive as we get older rather than just like Cro-Magnon, the entire arc of one's life. That's correct. That's correct.

There's a lot of, following the nature's path for your best life doesn't mean following what you think was your best life early on in your own life. I mean, that's resistance. That's resisting the natural trends that are actually healthy. That's when your self-discipline is setting you back

in that case. Finding Mastery is brought to you by Momentous. When it comes to high performance, whether you're leading a team, raising a family, pushing physical limits, or simply trying to be better today than you were yesterday, what you put in your body matters. And that's why I

trust Momentus. From the moment I sat down with Jeff Byers, their co-founder and CEO, I could tell this was not your average supplement company. And I was immediately drawn to their mission, helping people achieve performance for life. And to do that, they developed what they call the Momentus Standard. Every product is formulated with top experts and every batch is third-party tested. NSF certified for sport or informed sport. So you know exactly what you're getting. Personally, I'm anchored by what they call the Momentus 3. Protein, creatine, and omega-3. And together, these foundational nutrients support muscle recovery, brain function, and long-term energy.

They're part of my daily routine. And if you're ready to fuel your brain and body with the best, Momentous has a great new offer just for our community right here. Use the code FINDINGMASTERY for 35% off your first subscription order at livemomentous.com. Again, that's L-I-V-E, momentous, M-O-M-E-N-T-O-U-S, livemomentous.com, and use the code FindingMastery for 35% off your first subscription order. Finding Mastery is brought to you by Felix Gray. I spend a lot of time thinking about

how we can create the conditions for high performance. How do we protect our ability to focus, to recover, to be present? And one of the biggest challenges we face today is our sheer amount of screen time. It messes with our sleep, our clarity, even our mood. And that's why I've been using Felix Grey glasses. What I appreciate most about Felix Grey is that they're just not another wellness product. They're rooted in real science developed alongside leading researchers and ophthalmologists. They've demonstrated these types of glasses boost melatonin, help you fall asleep faster and hit deeper stages of rest.

When I'm on the road and bouncing around between time zones, slipping on my Felix Gray's in the evening, it's a simple way to cue my body just to wind down. And when I'm locked into deep work, they also help me stay focused for longer without digital fatigue creeping in. Plus they look great, clean, clear, no funky color distortion, just good design, great science. And if you're ready to feel the difference for yourself, Felix Gray is offering all Finding Mastery listeners 20% off. Just head to FelixGray.com and use the code FindingMastery20 at checkout. Again, that's Felix Gray. You spell it F-E-L-I-X-G-R-A-Y.com and use the code FindingMastery20 at FelixGray.com

for 20% off. I really like how you're using resistance and discipline as a strength on the first arc, but maybe that same thing can get away on the second arc. I really like that idea. How do you help folks understand and work with that incredible discipline to be great at something and then to apply it in the right contour for the next arc? It's important that people understand that their strengths are naturally changing. And you shouldn't use your discipline to not let your strengths change, to resist the own change in your own strength.

So that requires a ton of self-awareness. Paying attention to what you're getting better at, paying attention to what's driving your passion, paying attention to what your purpose and significance appears to be, you're supposed to actually change. That's a normal and healthy thing. And to say, no, no, no, no, if I change, it's evidence of weakness. That's a problem. And so that cognizance of who you are as a person will be your strength. And honesty, self-honesty is at the core of that. The last point is, I was going to go to the first point about awareness.

Right. I think it's at the seat of this whole thing. Right. That is the inside game is like, are you sensitively aware of what's happening inside of you and accurately aware as well what's happening outside of you so that you can pivot and adjust? Yeah, for sure. And do you have an awareness practice that has been important for you? Is it your writing? Are you meditating? Are you... I'm a traditionally religious person, and that's why I take your prayer. That's a process in most

traditional religions. It's called discernment. Discernment is one in which you say, I want to understand the divine will. I want to understand. Even if it's hard and even if it hurts, I want to understand the divine will. I want to understand, even if it's hard, and even if it hurts, I want the truth. I need the truth. Are you Christian-based? I'm a Catholic. Catholic, yeah. So I go to Mass every day. And part of the reason is, and by the way, I teach people about this particular insight that comes from transcendence, which is to say to transcend

yourself, that you can get from a traditional religious practice, but you can also get it by studying the stoic philosophers seriously, or studying the fugues of Johann Sebastian Bach, or starting a Vipassana meditation practice. So I can say as a Catholic, my way is awesome, but I can tell you as a scientist,

my way is not the only way. Yeah, that's accurate. And one of the five quote unquote sources of power from Buddhism discernment And one of the five, quote unquote, sources of power from Buddhism, discernment, is one of those. The process to get down into the truth of something, like how does this really work? And to think deeply about something is the discernment process. And there's lots of ways to do that, to your point. And if you don't have a practice to sharpen your discernment.

You'll fool yourself. Yeah, I was going to say life just kind of will roll over you and you go to fool yourself. That's super interesting. You'll fool yourself. You'll read your own press releases. You'll start to believe these things that people say about you. And you got to want the truth all the time.

People ask me all the time, like, Mike, like who are your favorite ones to work with? Anyone who's committed to the truth. Yeah. I'm all in. Totally. Cause it's honest and it's real. Yeah. Those are the environments and the people I need to be around.

It's incredibly bracing and it's so beautiful. And it's just, you know, it's like, so you're the kind of guy who goes, sooner or later, the doctor is gonna say, Mike, I got your test results back. I need you to come into my office. Sooner or later, that's going to happen. Yeah. Right. Right. Yes. Not today, not tomorrow. I hope not next year, but me too. Right. And work to be the person who's like, just tell me. Yeah. Just tell me. It's good information. I can cope with this. I know I'm not going to like it. I mean, of course I'm not going to like it, but I can cope with it. And what I really don't

want is not knowing. What I really don't want is a lie. Ignorance is bliss is not something that I would point to. It sounds like you're not either. No. And it really depends on what you mean by bliss. I mean, the truth is that real happiness has all kinds of negative experiences and hard growth involved in it. Real happiness is living your life fully alive. Okay. We're going to Zoom past your PhD at Rand. Okay. We're going to Zoom past that.

My dubious academic background. Well, yeah. Well, no. Well, we're going to Zoom past you being in love in, in Spain, you said, right? Barcelona. Got married in Barcelona. Convinced my wife. Playing the French horn in an orchestra. Do I have that right? Yeah. Yeah. And like being an artist and then finding your way back to academics. We're going to zoom past that for a minute and dive right into happiness.

Right. and dive right into happiness. When I looked at where you were going, I was like, okay. And I had a mixed response. But then when I double clicked, I almost exhaled like, okay, great. So my first okay was like, why happiness? And I'll tell you what my thought or concern was. And then how you're approaching it.

I was like, okay, that's cool. So when we ask people, what do you want in life? I want to be happy. I want to be happy. That's what they say. And I was like, man, why is Arthur writing another book? Why is he writing a book on happiness? Like, I think it's overrated.

The way that we understand it popularly, it most certainly is. Yeah. And that's why I was concerned. And I was like, okay, I have great respect for your work. Why happiness? When I double clicked and got underneath it, I was like relieved. Okay, this is what I want.

I want to be happy, yes. I want to be sad. I want to understand fear. I want to embrace the entire spectrum of the human emotional experience. And I don't want to be overrun by any of them. And I don't want to mute or minimize or stay away from some. I want to live a full life. And when I read how you approached it, I was like, we're on the same page. Totally.

Yeah. Happiness gets people's attention, in truth. And I teach a class at Harvard called Leadership and Happiness that's very oversubscribed because of the word happiness in the title. And then they learn what I mean by that, which is not feelings. It's not, I want to feel happy all the time. Oh, golly, what a boring life. Are you kidding me? Muted.

Muted. Completely muted. The truth is, you just told me you want to be fully alive. This is what all the great philosophers have talked about at the end. Eudaimonia, which is Aristotle's concept of happiness, is a good life well-lived. Not bereft of sadness because you wouldn't be fully alive. That's right. Saint Irenaeus, this early Christian saint, he said, the glory of God is a man fully alive. He didn't say a happy dude. He said a man fully alive God is a man fully alive. He didn't say a happy dude.

He said a man fully alive is what it comes down to. And to be fully alive, to be the happiest person that you can be requires tons of suffering. Suffering is sacred, man. I mean, it's indispensable in a full life. Open up to suffering. What does that mean to you? So I study a whole lot about the neuroscience of emotional experiences. And the reason I do that is because I work like you do with high performers. And one of the things that really holds people back from high performance is the inability to manage themselves emotionally. So emotions are poorly understood. People talk about wanting to have good feelings and wanting to avoid bad

feelings. It's a complete misunderstanding of emotions. Emotions are nothing more than signals. They're nothing more than information. system senses the things that are going on from the baser parts of the brain that are below your level of consciousness and translates that information into emotional data. Which is a physiological experience. Exactly. And there's not very many emotions. You can observe, right. Okay. Well, let's do that. But to be concrete, you can observe emotions. Totally. That's what they're supposed to be. They're supposed to be a signal to you that something should be avoided or approached. And sometimes others. Yeah. Right. Yeah, for sure.

Yeah. But to avoid it or approach, they avoid approach. Threats and opportunities. Yeah, that's right. You're in line with Damasio, Professor Damasio's approach on how emotions and feelings work, right? Like you guys are in harmony there. Yeah. And most emotion researchers understand this in the same way, that emotions are not good or bad. They're positive and negative on the basis of what you're trying to ascertain. So you have appropriate information to make decisions.

That's it. Yeah. So a handful of emotions. Yeah. Right? And so will you walk me through what those handful are for you? So researchers disagree on the positive emotions, but don't disagree on the negative emotions. Everybody feels like a very special, unique flower when

it comes to their emotional life. But it turns out we have the same repertoire. So your emotions are kind of like stocking a kitchen with the same equipment and ingredients, but everybody makes different recipes. So that's how- That's really cool. Yeah. So that's how it works. So we all have the same ingredients in our kitchen. I like making Indian food and you like baking desserts, but we all have the same basic stuff. The negative emotions that nobody disagrees on fundamentally are fear, anger, disgust, and sadness. And there are different structures in the limbic system that govern each one of these emotions. So the amygdala of the brain governs fear and anger,

the insular cortex governs sadness, no, governs disgust, and the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex governs sadness. That's what it's all about. I mean, you're supposed to feel pain because when something happens, you should be aversive to something that appears to be a threat and you need a signal that gets your attention now and you want it to go away. Where do you put shame, guilt, and jealousy? Those shame, guilt, and jealousy are complex emotions that mix these other things. Yeah, I was wondering if you were gonna...

So I do primary, the way that I teach it, you know, like a 101, somebody that really needs a base level, is I go four primary. Oh, okay. And this will be fun. For primary negative. Yeah.

I even simplify it even more. Okay. Okay. So I go three negative. I don't include disgust. Okay. Okay. I understand.

I am in agreement with you, but I'm stripping it down to like this even more basic. Yeah. Because you're talking about human behavior and disgust is a little bit less relevant for how you're going to be a leader. Correct. Because you're not going to like, disgust is about not eating that thing in the back of gonna be a leader. Correct. Because you're not gonna like, disgust is about not eating that thing in the back of your fridge.

That's right, yeah. Or something on the bottom of your shoe. It's when, and you can see somebody when they're in a moment of disgust. Yeah, now the problem is when you treat somebody else with disgust, particularly when you're a leader, then you mix it with anger, it becomes contempt. I was gonna say disdain.

And that's horrible leadership, yeah. That's right. So that's the one case in which disgust is relevant. That's right. And so I leave that one for shame, guilt, and jealousy as this other kind of thing that's important to pay attention to, but not yet. And then I just add, so I do them as scales. So I say, imagine one to 10, and there's four scales,

and the fourth scale would be happiness. And if we put each of those words on the median, the five, and there's a 10 and there's a one on each scale. So on, let's call it the anger scale. Anger is a five. What word would you put as a 10 for anger on this scale? So the most- Rage, whatever most rage, right? So we fury. Yeah. Right. So 10, nine, one of those two words is up there. And then what's the smallest amount

of anger annoyance. Okay. Perfect. So then I ask you to fill out that whole list. So there's lots of words. So now I'm going to like step two of emotional intelligence, like have some sort of nuance in it. And then the fun part of this is, hey, why don't you go to your partner or your teammate and have them do it as well? And you'll find that like pissed for some people is like a seven and for other people, it's like a two. And that calibration is the art of the calibrating here

is like really important. Yeah, it's really helpful. It's really helpful for emotional self-management because what you're doing is you're taking awareness of emotions and you're moving the experience of those emotions into the prefrontal cortex, which is the bumper of brain tissue, 30% of your brain by weight right behind your forehead. And what happens is if you leave your limbic system in charge of the emotions,

your emotions will manage you. And if you move the experience doing exactly the kind of stuff that you're talking about, which is also known as metacognition, awareness of your emotions, thinking about thinking, then you will be governing your emotional life from your prefrontal cortex because that's the C-suite of your brain. You want the CEO to be making decisions about the company and not the people who don't have full information. I'm so stoked to hear you to hear you vibe this way or like explain it this way, because as a Harvard professor in the business school, you know, like what the heck is going on in the business school?

Yeah. You're not supposed to be this fluid here. Yeah. It's, it's the imagination. The cynic is like, okay, you get that happiness is trendy and cool. And then you did some interesting research and you cobbled together some points of view and some research and sold some stories

and sold a bunch of books. And, but this is fluid. Yeah. You're fluid on both anatomy, chemistry, emotion, feelings, behaviors, thinking strategies. Like you're really fluid here. You have to be. You have to be to make this stuff really, really work.

And of course, you know, because you've been working at the highest levels of performance in business and sports. Yeah. And that means you have to understand anatomy. And basically the way that it works is this. All the interesting questions about happiness or human performance don't come from science. They come from philosophy. They come from history.

They come from art. They come from spirituality. You better know that stuff. Then you need to understand the mechanisms of causation, which means you need to know neuroscience. So it's 20% philosophy and then 30% neuroscience. Then about 40% is going to be the social science, which exposes ideas to empirical scrutiny to see, does it work? Does it not work? What are the habits that can actually be implemented? And the last is management science where you actually take it onto the field when you're standing next to coach Carol. Management science is like, I've never put, I've never heard anyone frame it with those, those four. Yeah. 20, 30, 40, 10. Yeah. That's cool.

Ultimately. And if you can't do all four. Wait, is it, is this opinion? Is this. That's how I teach. Yeah. So that's how my, my classes are structured for high performers. Okay, great. So this is like a working model for you, untested theoretical working model for you. Is that what changed the sliders on the, on the proportions to see whether or not the performance levels I could elicit would be higher or lower. Yeah. Okay. And it turns out that when I change them materially, I either don't give a good grounding for the reasons we should care about this, or I don't explain the anatomy properly so people trust it, or I don't have enough evidence to get evidence-backed conclusions. And worst of all, when I don't have the management

science, so I can't implement. Yeah, that's interesting. Yeah. And where, okay, before we, I want to go back to emotions, but where are you putting the intersection of psychology and behavior when you speak to high performers about being the very best? Part of it is they want to know that there's evidence that these things work. So this is one of the things. I mean, you know perfectly, it's really helpful to have a PhD. Yeah. Because it takes years and years.

And it's an apprenticeship and linear thinking. And you actually, you get a good BS meter when it comes to what the research actually says. And what you are is somebody who's trustworthy. So that's where it comes in. So the social science that we talked about here is super important so that you can explain it in layman's terms and in a way that's trustworthy so that they know you know what you're talking about. You don't just have a pet theory. Yeah. The American Psychological Association, I'll get the dates wrong, but it feels like it's probably like seven or eight years ago said, or maybe six years ago, somewhere in that range, said, listen, when you do grounded research or you do some sort of research, you also need to become skilled at publishing the so what. So make it simple, which is what

you've been doing for a long time. That's the comparative advantage at the end of the day. Yeah. Can you make it simple, digestible, something that can be actioned? Yeah. And I couldn't have done that at 35. I mean, I was writing academic journal articles that were mathematical theorems. I was doing work on genetic algorithms, which is early artificial intelligence that was so sophisticated that I can't read the math today. Come on. No, totally. And now I have an audience of 500,000 readers a week in the Atlantic where I'm explaining relatively nuanced science that I'm not actually performing, but I'm interpreting for an audience of smart, interested people that are doing important things

like playing sports and running companies. That's my goal. Now, when I was 35, I had a lot of fluid intelligence that made it possible for me to participate innovatively in that literature. And now I have a lot of crystallized intelligence where I can synthetically take these ideas and say, this is what it says.

Here's why it matters. Here's how you use it. And that's what you do too. Awesome. Yeah. On your show every week. Finding Mastery is brought to you by Cozy Earth. Over the years, I've learned that recovery doesn't just happen when we sleep.

It starts with how we transition and wind down. And that's why I've built intentional routines into the way that I close my day. And Cozy Earth has become a new part of that. Their bedding, it's incredibly soft, like next level soft. And what surprised me the most is how much it actually helps regulate temperature. I tend to run warm at night and these sheets have helped me sleep cooler and more consistently, which has made a meaningful difference in how I show up the next day for myself, my family, and our team here at Finding Mastery. It's become part of my nightly routine. Throw on their lounge pants or pajamas, crawl into bed under their sheets, and my nervous system starts to settle. They also offer a 100-night sleep trial and a 10-year warranty on all of their bedding, which tells me, tells you that

they believe in the long-term value of what they're creating. If you're ready to upgrade your rest and turn your bed into a better recovery zone, use the code FINDINGMASTERY for 40% off at CozyEarth.com. That's a great discount for our community. Again, the code is Finding Mastery for 40% off at CozyEarth.com. Finding Mastery is brought to you by Caldera Lab. I believe that the way we do small things in life is how we do all things. And for me, that includes how I take care of my body. I've been using Caldera Lab for years now. And what keeps me coming back, it's really simple. Their products are simple and they reflect the kind of intentional living that I want to build into every part of my day. And they make

my morning routine really easy. They've got some great new products I think you'll be interested in. A shampoo, conditioner, and a hair serum. With Caldera Lab, it's not about adding more. It's about choosing better. And when your day demands clarity and energy and presence the way you prepare for it matters if you're looking for high quality personal care products that elevate your routine without complicating it i'd love for you to check them out head to caldera lab.com finding mastery and use the code finding mastery at checkout for 20 off your first order that's caldera lab c-a-l-d-e-r-l-a-b dot com slash finding mastery okay all right so let's go back you've got four yeah um uh the three plus disgust yeah exactly and then where do you go on

the um favorable the favorable? The favorable, the positive negative emotions, the positive primary emotions are joy, which is usually tapping the ventral tegmental area of the brain. It might come from your beloved saying, I love you. And it might come from an eight ball of cocaine because that will hit the same pleasure centers of the brain over

joy that ebullience that you get the reward the positive reward interest which is a primary positive emotion that gives you a evolutionary advantage because you learn more you get ahead as a species and some people would put surprise in there as well because most surprise is actually positive sometimes surprise is really negative but the whole because most surprise is actually positive. Sometimes surprise is really negative, but the whole point of surprise is evolved to something gets your attention so that you'll be out of equilibrium and you're able to react to something. Yeah. It's more neutral than it is. It's more your psychology that would interpret if that is- Positive or negative.

Yeah. And I go, I hesitated on, I don't know why I said the word favorable, because I was hesitating on positive and negative because I wanted to talk to you about that. I tend to do even one level below that, which is like difficult and easy emotions. Yeah, that's fair. But what we do know is not good and bad. It's not right and wrong. Good and bad feelings.

There's a wrong terminology. And that's one of the reasons that people struggle so much today yeah is because i'm i get a little bit of rash around positive and negative framing in general because of the the site the positive psychology let's hold hands and be great like you know together and kumbaya and everything's okay and just be positive in your thoughts like it's not i don't think a skilled psychologist in the world of positive psychology would say that's not what it is. I understand. But there's a social thing that's happened around positive. Yeah. You could say approach emotions and avoidance emotions. That might be more, that might be a better way of doing it. But the clumping of those,

I agree with the clumping. I really like what you've done there. Yeah. And the surprise one is really interesting because I work on surprise because I'm really interested. I've worked with a bunch of comedians and I'm really interested in what makes something funny. And it's always surprise. Surprise makes something funny. So the way that all jokes work is you go down a particular path and then you suddenly jerk people away from their assumption and the surprise makes you laugh in every case. That's why I find comedians so thrilling to be around the level of intelligence and insight and how quick they are to be able to jerk somebody around. I find them this beautiful balance between like amazing to be around and slightly dangerous.

Right, because you get pulled into the tornado quickly and all of a sudden it's like, wow, like I have no idea how to get my footing here. We actually have been able to do fMRI, I mean we, I say that in the profession, I didn't do it myself, but there are fMRI studies that show what's happening in the brain, what part of the brain is engaged.

We are engaging the surprise centers of the limbic system. It's incredible. This is interesting. This is great for me. Like, I don't know what the surprise centers are. Yeah. Are you fluid there? The anatomy is complicated.

I don't, I've written about it and I don't remember. I actually wrote a column on the anatomy of a joke. I mean, literally the neuroanatomy of a joke and I don't remember it. I can actually, we can find it and put it in the show notes. Yeah, it's great. It's one of my Atlanta columns. But what happens- Hold on, but what happens okay i just appreciate that honesty yeah in the way that you just did that oh allows you not to make up it's the uh you know it's the i just yeah i just really

appreciate that i think that that is something that um we in our world need more of you know like i've studied that a lot. It's actually escaping me. I can't remember. Yeah. I can't remember. I can't remember what it is. And I, you know, it's like, I can figure it out.

I can go find it, but I can't remember it right now. So there's no reason to, you know, to take a stab at it. But I really appreciate that. That's really cool. And what'll happen is that you're, you start to become path dependent when somebody tells you a story and you start tracking with it.

And you can actually see in the brain-to-brain coupling studies where people are in two fMRI machines and you'll see that when you tell somebody a story that is very personal, that the listener's brainwaves will get ahead. And so this makes you highly path dependent.

And then it's like record scratch. That's really, really funny. So dumb, stupid jokes. I mean, let's see an example. I walked into a bar. Yeah. And it hurt. Wait, I didn't do it, did I? That was not good enough, was it? Okay. That's not bad.

When I die, I've thought about how I want to go. And I thought about it a lot. I'm a happiness specialist. And I think I want to die peacefully in my sleep like my grandfather, not screaming in terror like his passengers. So I thought I was going to be really clever. This is like, I don't know, 15 years ago and I was going to open a keynote or I was going to do a keynote

and I wanted an opening joke because I read somewhere that jokes are a good way to start. start yeah you read someplace and you're starting to do a lot of speeches for the first time you got this advice like what am i going to do so i made up a joke yeah and um i'll give it to you now just for the sake of like silliness here and so so imagine there's i don't know a couple thousand people in the audience and I'm on stage and I walk out and people know I've already been introduced. Right. And I say, you know, I want to tell you a story. World Championship, one of the most intense environments,

the emotions were palpable, it was like so intense. It's pregame, we're about to go out as a team. The readiness is real. That vibrance that you can't quite describe is happening inside the room. You can feel it. And then all of a sudden I hear, don't then I hear, this is a contract here. Better get this thing right. And then I hear, oh, this might be too big for you. This might be too big. And then six foot eight lineman walks over to me, puts his arm around me and he says, hey, Mike, you're going to be okay, man. You did not get the joke. Damn it. They didn't get the joke either. The idea that that was in my head. And so, I mean, of course it was a little man inside your head. Thank you for not laughing at my bad joke. I really appreciate it. I like it. I like it. And, and you know, it's perilous business. It's as awkward as it gets now,

right? When you tell a joke in public, it's really hard. I mean, it's a really hard thing to do. I have such respect for it. Oh, my gosh. And, you know, so a lot of people, they don't know how to give a speech. And so speeches, as you and I both know, you have to break them up. You have to modularize them because people can't stay on the bike for more than about six to eight minutes. So every six to eight minutes,

you got to give people a rest to get off the bike. And there's different ways to do it. A story about your kids is a good way to do it. It's just, but it's all pretext to give people a rest before they get back on the bike again, or to tell them about a study that's blowing your mind. I just read the study.

It's amazing. It's all, it's all made up or to tell a joke. Right. So I was at the Aspen ideas festival and I was giving a talk. It was a long talk. It was an i was giving a talk of a long talk it was an hour lecture on the science of love right yeah and and i'd gotten to my six to eight minute mark and so just organically i told this story right and i thought it was i thought it was pretty funny

right and i said so you know that safetyism is so is so virulent in our society today and it's so different from my generation when i was in the 70s, growing up in Seattle. I was 11 years old and I had a paper route at 4.30 in the morning. And it turned out I lived in this working class neighborhood that Ted Bundy had been marauding through. And so my parents, my mother was very worried because serial killers are all about apparently. So she thought that I shouldn't keep the route. And my dad, who was a brilliant biostatistician to defend my ability to keep the route because he was on my side, he said, honey, I've been looking at the data on serial killers and, you know, Arthur doesn't fit the core demographic, so we should let him keep the route.

You left. They didn't left. They didn't left the whole time. God, man, I just blew that. You know, there's people coming up saying, you know, thanks for didn't laugh the whole time. And I'm thinking, God, man, I just blew that. What did I do? That's what I saw afterward. You know, there's people coming up saying, you know, thanks for the talk and the whole thing. And I look at the back of the line and Jerry Seinfeld is in the line. I kid you not. Stop. He's in the line. He's a super cool dude and he's super nice.

And he waited and he got to the front of the line and he said, good job. And I said, I got to ask you. I mean, it's like, why did my joke? Why did my joke fall flat? Oh, what a moment. I know. Yeah. And he said, oh, it's simple. You shouldn't have said Ted Bundy.

You should have just said a serial killer. Because when you personalized it, they were thinking, they saw his face. They saw the face of evil and it wasn't funny anymore. And I'm like, huh? And so the next night I just said serial killer and it brought the house down. Seriously? He was exactly right. He was exactly right. I mean, he's, the guy's a genius.

Yeah. But he knew the one word that I needed to take out to make that thing actually work. That, by the way, is mastery. That is mastery. Yeah. And he probably saw it right when it was happening. Yeah, no, he's like, oh, he was almost there. Oh my God. Oh, that is so, what a moment. That is awesome. I actually, for one brief moment got, you know, coached. Coached by the legend himself.

By the legend himself, by the best, by the goat. Yeah. That's really cool. Okay. So let's go, let's go. We, we hit some emotions. We didn't get to feelings yet. And the punchline there is emotions are observable. Feelings are private. You have to ask people about their feelings. How do you stitch those two together? And how do you tie this back to happiness, the approach to happiness? So I typically spend a lot less time on feelings.

And part of the reason is because the personal part of it is not as relevant for emotional self-management, the way that I tend to talk about it. The way that I talk about feelings, however, with my students is to say, don't make the mistake of thinking that your feelings are happiness. They'll define happiness on the first day of class because I make a cold call. I say, what's happiness? You're in the happiness class. You must know what it is.

And they're like, it's the feeling I get when I'm with the people I love. Or it's how I feel when I'm doing the things that I enjoy. And I say, that's beautiful. It's a beautiful definition. It's wrong. Feelings are not happiness any more than the smell of your turkey is your Thanksgiving dinner. Feelings are your internal feelings are evidence of happiness. Happiness is definable. Happiness includes full human experiences. Happiness has a scientific basis behind it, and happiness is something you can get better at. So buckle up.

Very cool. So you are not suggesting that happiness is an emotion? No. And you're not suggesting that it's a narrow feeling? Exactly. A time fleeting state specific? It's not a feeling. It's not an emotional experience.

On the contrary. Okay. So I should rearrange the way I'm thinking about those scales and not have one of those three be happiness as a scale. I don't, and the reason is because that's, I think of, I write about happiness as a behavioral scientist, as kind of like the way I would write about food if I were a nutritionist, which is to say I would

focus on the macronutrients and not on the food writ large. If I want you to be healthier, I'm going to look at your macros. I'm going to say, oh man, you're way over the top on carbs, dude. I mean, let's get your protein and fat in the right place. And let's start talking about the quality of your macronutrients, et cetera, et cetera. Same thing is true for happiness, basically. Happiness is a combination of enjoyment, satisfaction, and meaning. Enjoyment, satisfaction, and meaning.

Those are the macronutrients of happiness per se. And that has a ton of suffering in it. And that has a full set of life experiences in it. Yeah, you're borrowing from some well-tested, you know, ancient philosophical positions there. Because once again, all the interesting questions come from philosophy. Yeah. I understand. I agree too. And not from, you know, what you and I were doing to get our PhDs, which is, I think I found some data. So that must contain the most interesting question.

No one ever read, you know? Yeah., right. You think about just how remarkable it is that we're still talking about some of the greats. And some of them didn't actually write their stuff down. Oh, yeah. Socrates didn't write a word. That's right. It was recorded maybe by Plato. Neither did Jesus. No? Yeah.

It was remembered by his friends. Yeah. And there were wild ones. There were wild ones. His 12 were wild ones. That was a cosmic rager. Yeah, right. That was the bunch that I feel like I would have been part of. They had to give up a lot, though. They did.

They had to give up a lot. Everything actually. All but one was martyred. All but one. Only St. John was not martyred. Died, you know, and. Oh, God, I didn't know that. Yeah, every single one was martyred, died, you know, and... Oh, God, I didn't know that. Yeah, every single one was martyred.

All, you know, one died, Judas died, but his replacement was... Well, Judas killed himself. Judas killed himself. Yeah. Or he fell down and broke open his head. It's in different gospels. It's described in different ways. Yeah.

And then Matthias took his place. Yeah. And of the 12, including the replacement, 11 were martyred. I mean, it was, the odds were bad. Yeah, right. I mean, people say life is unprecedented, how difficult life is. And I go, hey, man, the dark ages were really dark. You know, like.

Yeah, you want to know how good the Roman Empire was pretty? Think about a toothache. Yeah, right. You know. That would kill you. That would kill you or at least make you completely miserable for like four months. yeah right now you just 24 hours later talk make it go away okay good so then all right so teach a little bit on happiness and maybe what can what can we do better yeah to to be so it i focus on different elements the different macronutrients, depending on the people I'm

talking to. So the people listening to this show are strivers, 100% strivers. There's nobody who's like, yeah, man, I'm just going to slack off with my life and listening to Finding Mastery. That is not us. No, it is not. And so when I'm talking to strivers, like you and me and all of our listeners, I ordinarily talk about the macronutrients that tend to be deficient. The four? Are these the four? No, these are the three. The macronutrients are enjoyment, satisfaction, and meaning. That's in areas in which it's harder for strivers than for other people. Strivers have a lot going for them. Their lives are pretty good, but they often

lack enjoyment. And the reason they lack enjoyment is because they're actually not doing the things that are required. They actually don't have the self-discipline to do things that bring enjoyment. On the contrary, they've learned they should never consume, they should always invest. Invest, invest, invest, invest. That's the reason that strivers have a tendency to workaholism, success addiction, self-objectification, which they obviate, they eviscerate enjoyment. Enjoyment is pleasure plus people plus memory. That's how it works. It's not pleasure. Pleasure is limbic. Pleasure is an animal sensation. People who pursue pleasure as a goal always end badly. I don't have to tell any Finding Mastery listeners that. They know that. But you need sources of things that are pleasurable to you and add people in memory such that you can discipline and subjugate those searches for

pleasure and have it be an enriching part of your life. Finding Mastery is brought to you by iRestore. When it comes to my health, I try to approach things with a proactive mindset. It's not about avoiding poor health. This is about creating the conditions for growth. Now, hair health is one of those areas that often gets overlooked until your hair starts to change. That's when people pay attention. Now, that's why I've been loving iRestore Elite. It's a hands-free red light therapy device that helps stimulate dormant hair follicles, helps to support regrowth. It's a clinical grade device. It's simple to use. It fits right into the rhythm of my day, whether I'm meditating, reading,

prepping for one of our clients here at Finding Mastery. It's really simple. Now, red light therapy has some pretty amazing research behind it when it comes to cellular energy, tissue repair, inflammation control, as well as healing. iRestore is using those same principles to help your hair thrive. I really like this product. I used it last night. I use it on a regular basis. They also offer a 12-month money-back guarantee. So if you don't see results, they'll refund you. No questions. I love that. They have real confidence in their product. And because you're a member of the Finding Mastery community, right now they're offering our listeners huge savings on the iRestore Elite.

When you use the code FINDINGMASTERY at iRestore.com slash FINDINGMASTERY. Again, that code is FINDINGMASTERY at iRestore.com slash FINDINGMASTERY for exclusive savings. Finding Mastery is brought to you by Lisa. Sleep is one of the foundational pillars of high performance. There's no arguing that. And when we have great sleep consistently and deeply, we give ourselves the best chance to operate at our best physically, cognitively, emotionally, sleep affects it all. That's why I care about the environment that I sleep in so much. And of course, a great mattress, it matters. One of our teammates here at Finding Mastery has been sleeping on a Lisa mattress for over a year now, and it's made a noticeable difference. They specifically chose one from their chill collection because they sleep hot, something I know many of us can relate to, myself included. What are they reporting back? Fewer wake-ups, deeper rest, and feeling more

recovered when they jump into their work here at Finding Mastery. Lisa has several models to choose from. So whether you're a side sleeper, a stomach sleeper, or somewhere in between, there's a fit designed specifically for you. And what I appreciate most is their purpose. They've donated over 41,000 mattresses to people in need. I love that. So right now you can get 25% off all mattresses

at lisa.com plus an extra $50 off when you use the code finding mastery at checkout. That's lisa, L E E S a.com. The promo code is finding mastery for 25% off and then plus an extra $50 on us because quality sleep is just too important to leave to chance. So when you put those three together, I can see how to put two of them together. Yeah. People and pleasure, like a great meal and conversation. Totally. Right?

Memory is that call in that moment, calling up times from before that were great. Or are you talking about programming memory so that at a later time, this is an actual, I don't know if you're familiar with this approach, but purposely manipulating the coding of an experience to be favorable. Memorable. Yes. So that later when you're in a moment of duress, suffering, that, that, that, the fill in the blanks, that you have programmed this thing to come forward in a favorable way.

That's right. Yeah. And that's where enjoyment is most intense is where you basically say, I'm going to do something that I like. I'm going to do it with somebody I care about. And I'm going to do it in a way that I can continue to get the positive experience.

Okay. Very cool. So much so that I agree with this, not knowing this piece of So much so that I agree with this, not knowing this piece of your work is that I, for the every year I do, the year of. And it's something that we do here at Finding Mastery is like

do some discernment, do some internal work, and think about what is a main theme for you this year, the year of. It could be anything. There's zero judgment, as we would both nod our heads to. Well, not year of. It could be anything. Like there's zero judgment as we would both nod our heads to. Well, not zero judgment. As long as it's approved by-

This is the year of crashing cars. This is the year of shoplifting. Okay. So in 2023, it was the year of play. Yeah. And I needed to commit to playing more. Yeah, yeah. Because you wanted to get better at that macro nutrient of happiness.

That's right. And I knew I needed it. I need it now. So 2024- Your skill level needed to be higher. Yes. The skill level at play. At enjoyment.

At play. And you're saying enjoyment. Yeah, yeah. I didn't have that word. And well, I did, but I didn't put it there. And then in 2024, I had to run it back i didn't quite get it right in 365 days i need still to play even more and so the panda is my muse nice yeah so i don't know if they're enjoying life or not but the idea that they can just roll around and have fun, carefree, I need more of that. I'm so intense.

And it's going to take more than a year, dude. I mean, look, you're a super high performer. Yeah. I appreciate that. You're super self-disciplined and you're not going to get good at a fundamental discipline in life in a year. I appreciate that. I never had that insight. Oh, yeah. I mean, how long did it take you to get your PhD? Five years? No. No. Well, yes. Yeah. I mean, how long did it take you to get your PhD? Yeah. Five years? No. No.

Well, yes. Yeah. I mean, it's like that was a- Four plus, whatever. Yeah. I mean, you had to, I mean, it takes- I went to the big arc of school. Yeah.

Just PhD. Right. It took, it takes a long time to get good at something. Yeah. You know, the people today, they want to get good at something. And if you think you're good at play after one month playing, like on vacation, then you're suffering from the Dunning-Kruger effect. You're not as good as you think you are, in other words. The ones that think they're really special and really good at something are the ones that know the least.

Yeah. And the ones that know so much are the ones that actually present as that they don't understand it. And the fact that you got to year two and said, I need more work was evidence that you were making tons of progress. So I'm not in a Dunning-Kruger effect. You're out of Dunning-Kruger. My guess is that a couple of months into the year of play, you're like, this is awesome. This is awesome.

I'm pretty good at this. And by the end, you're like, oh, my God, what happened? Well, yeah, my wife is great. She's like, are we God, what happened? My wife is great. She's like, are we still in the year of play? So we've got this thing is when either of us get really intense and we're both very intense. And when we start to get really intense, my son will add in or I'll do it like, okay, okay, hold on. We're still in the circle of love. Right.

And it's just this code like, yeah, we're getting really intense. Like, okay, okay. It's a fun way for us code like, yeah, we're getting really intense. Like, okay. Okay. It's a fun way for us to like shorthand the intensity. It's a safe word. So we can breathe. You know, right. Yeah.

But it's meant to be a joke. Yeah. Like I'm thrashing and she's like, you're okay. You're still in the circle of love. Keep thrashing. And it's a way to. Yeah. Yeah.

Okay. So, so. So that's important. And so you've just given a perfect example to the listeners for enjoyment, for enjoyment and how it's hard and it requires work and it doesn't come naturally. How do you upskill enjoyment? What do you do? It's, it's, it's hard for me to do to be sure, but I need help when it comes to that. So, you know, for me, the easy thing is, you know, when I don't drink any alcohol, for example, because I would do it too much.

I did. I was a musician. I drank too much alcohol. Right. Yeah. That's the whole point. Because I was trying to short circuit it by doing pleasure, hitting the pleasure centers of my brain over and over and over and over again. So what I have to do is to make sure I'm around the people that I really trust and the people I really like and then discipline myself to not work and then do something that

is pleasurable with the people that I love in a way that I'm going to remember. Does music still do that for you? Yeah, I love music. I don't play music at all. You don't? I only listen to music. I love listening to music. Yeah, so playing music does not bring you enjoyment.

No, no, no. It was too much work for too long. Yeah, for sure. That would be basically a lot of former professional athletes don't play the game anymore. That's right. Because it was just, I can't play at a high level. I'm just reminding myself that I'm out of shape. That's right. That's what it comes down to. A lot of performer football players play some golf. Yeah, right. Yeah, right. They don't get on the field and try to play football. And their identity is not wrapped up in that as it once was, which again, performance-based

identity is a toxic pill. So like- That's self-objectification. That is exactly. Yeah. Yeah. And that's a success addiction, which is a primary addiction that implicates the neurochemistry, the same neurochemistry that's involved in any addiction. But I succeeded. I got a pat on the

head, gives you the same amount of dopamine as a bump of cocaine. Amen. And what do you do to kids that do something well? How do you support them? Do you say at a boy or at a girl or like, what do you do? Yeah. It's a good question because my kids are high performers and my kids are all pretty intense in their own way. The key thing is not to talk about how you don't compliment your kid for being smart. That's right. You compliment your kid for being a hard worker. Something that you can control.

A virtue. A virtue. Yeah. And virtuous behavior. Something they can influence. Yeah. Not endowment, only virtue. Not endowment. What you came into the world with. Yeah. I mean, it's like, you're so smart, that'll make them feel good. But that's like saying, you're so awesome, you were born rich.

Yeah. And it also does a thing, you're so smart, does another thing that's more insidious, which is, oh, they think I'm smart, so I better not say anything stupid. Yeah. So I'm about to say something. I don't know if it's going to be smart or not. I don't know how they're going to like it, so I'm not going to say anything. Yeah.

Or I'm going to be overly aggressive to make sure that I don't seem like I don't know. Right. And so, you know, there's a insidious little game inside the game

that happens for folks. Yeah. Complimenting endowments is almost always a problem for child development. I've never heard endowment. It's a fun way to say it. Or windfall,

depending on how you want it. You're born on third base and you think it. Yeah. It's like, I really admire you for having a good facial structure. I mean, Mike, I admire the fact that you've got beautiful hair.

I just, and that's like, it's very meritorious. This is the second time it's come up. So maybe. It may be a soft spot for me. That's so good. Okay. So go back to the three. We got enjoyment.

Yeah. Satisfaction. Satisfaction. Satisfaction is really really really important in one particular way for high performers so for low performers i have to talk about the fact that satisfaction only comes after you've struggled it satisfaction is the joy that you get after struggle you can't get it without a lock it's like oh that's yeah see we want to suffer we're a funny species my dog doesn't want to suffer for

his achievements. No, no, no. He would eat lying down if he could. But we get sweetness only after we suffer. So that's the reason you tell your kids when they're little, don't eat before dinner. Not because it's not good for them, but because you want them to be hungry when they get to dinner. So they'll enjoy their dinner, which is a source of satisfaction. And you want them to learn that satisfaction, which is a part of happiness, comes when you're suffering and you relieve the suffering. That's super interesting. But you say to them, it's like, why not? You say, because it's bad for you. No, no, no, that's a lie. What you're saying to them is, I want you to suffer. But you don't say that. But you do want them to suffer. You want them to defer their

gratification, which is not just a secret to high performance, which it is, but it's a secret to satisfaction. And that's what low performers need to hear. What high performers need to hear is- Wait, what low performers need to hear is- Deferral of gratification will lead to your greater happiness. The marshmallow effect. It's the marshmallow effect. It is the marshmallow test, the famous study, which I'm sure everybody who listened to Fighting Mastery knows the marshmallow study, right? Yeah, they don't. And if they don't right now, they're going, the famous study, which I'm sure everybody who listened to Fighting Mastery knows the marshmallow study, right? And if they don't right now, they're going,

oh my God, I'm the one. I know. Look at Walter Mischel from Stanford University in 1968. Okay. So what high performers need to hear about is not the deferral of gratification because they're not eating the marshmallow. That's right. The marshmallow is sitting there for days and years and decades on end. Yeah. What they need to understand is the greater tyranny, which is that satisfaction doesn't last. Oh, yes. Yeah, this is what I'm saying, right?

Yes. Okay, so, and that leads to the hedonic treadmill for every single high performer. The hedonic treadmill is I want to keep the feeling of satisfaction, but I can't because of homeostasis. My brain is going to return to its emotional baseline. It always does. It has to, because that's what emotions are for, to keep you ready for approach and avoidance, for opportunities and threats. It's not so you can feel something awesome. Mother Nature does not care if you're happy. She wants you to survive and pass on your genes. She has two goals for Mike and Arthur and everybody else listening. Okay. So if that's the case, we will be fooled as a high performer into

thinking if I just get that thing, the famous arrival fallacy where progress is good, so arrival's better. I just get the gold medal. Which is why gold medalists often suffer a crippling clinical depression in the month after winning the medal is because they think the satisfaction is going to come and stay and it doesn't. Mick Jagger was wrong. It's not true you can't get no satisfaction. You can't keep no satisfaction. And that's what every high performer needs to understand. So the way to deal with that is to understand that you need a more sophisticated measure of satisfaction, which is not getting what you want. That's not satisfaction. That's not the formula for satisfaction. The formula for lasting satisfaction is your halves, the things

that you have divided by your wants, halves divided by wants. You need not just to manage your halves as a high performer. You also need to manage your wants, your expectations. That is the critical discipline that comes for somebody who can be at the highest level of performance and not be miserable. So it's be okay with what you have, and then how do you manage the wants? You manage the wants by making sure that you are fully cognizant of the fact that you have cravings and desires,

moving them metacognitively from your limbic system into your prefrontal cortex. So I do a reverse bucket list. High performers always have these bucket lists to motivate themselves. I have cravings and desires. I'm 60 years old High performers always have these bucket lists to motivate themselves. I have cravings. I'm 60 years old and I still have these stupid ambitions

because I'm weak and I'm shallow, just like every other man. Yes. And I write down those cravings and desires and I say, I will not be managed by these cravings and desires and I cross them out. Not because I don't want them to be gone,

but because I want to be the one who's in charge. There you go. And it sets you free. It sets you free it's interesting like on the agency discussion totally so that's what you're doing you're saying look at these cravings right these things that you think are going to bring satisfaction do i have that right that is correct and that's going to be satisfaction that's going to last if you get it which it won't it will not no yeah so that's the fallacy right that's the fallacy that it, that's the fallacy. That it's temporary, it's state specific, and it's fleeting, which is typically

how I think about pleasure. And you're talking, but you're putting satisfaction in that same bucket. Yeah, the joy that you're gonna get. So joy, which is a primary positive emotion, which homeostatically returns to baseline, because it can't stay around. You can't have a ventral tegmental area that's lit up like a Christmas tree forever. You'll be so distracted, you'll get eaten by a

tiger. And we don't trust those people. No. Because it's like they're dealing in some weird fantasy land that's not real. Like get down here and make sure you're scanning the world too for the saber tooth. Correct. Yeah. Okay. Correct. Very cool. So that's important. And another way to think about this for high performers is high performers feel like they're self-created, right? And to a very large extent they are. Do you feel like you were the underdog or the sure thing? I was never a sure thing. I mean, cause I was doing all kinds of things that had no family background and I was just taking the shot. I was taking the shot. I mean, all entrepreneurs who

have some degree of success also have failures and always feel like might not work out, might not work out. I'm still waiting to see if it's going to work out. You know, what's crazy is that that fear for some is electric. It's a motivation. It's not a good source of motivation. It's a bad fuel. Yeah. And I was just going to add to it is that when you take that and this, you were calling it the hedonic treadmill, but I was going to offer another idea here, which is that when you're highly skilled at something, highly motivated, and you're operating in a dangerous environment, the edge keeps getting a little bit higher to get the stimulus required to have that fleeting sense of satisfaction.

That's because dopamine is your, yeah. And it becomes exponentially more dangerous. You become habituated. As your skill, that's exactly the word. As your skill increases, you push further. Satisfaction is fleeting. You push further. Now you're in a very dangerous territory

where marginal fractional mistakes are incredibly costly. And there's an addiction to that whole thing. It all comes down to addiction. Remember, psychology is biology. And that's why you need to understand the biology. Well, I don't know psychology, biology. I think that psychology is the interface for biology. That's how I think about it. But psychology, there's biology behind everything that we're talking about here. And so people think of addiction

as being a purely psychological phenomenon. No, no, no, on the contrary. I mean, anything you get addicted to involves dopamine. Yeah, I mean, Dick Hart tried to pull the, you know, the thoughts and brain apart, you know, body and mind apart. And it's not- He's a dualist. Yeah, but it doesn't, we know, body and mind apart. And it's not dualist. Yeah. It's, but it doesn't, we know it's easier to talk about it that way, but it's, it's, we are embedded. Yeah. We are. And even if you believe that the body and soul are instantiated in different ways,

we have to still recognize that many of the psychological phenomena that, that affect us in our lives, they have a biological basis that comes from evolution. We're still human beings that have evolved since the Pleistocene so that we can be successful. And a lot of the motivation for the things that we experience are anachronistic or not, but they have to do with all, they have an explanation that we need to understand. So we become habituated to levels of dopamine in our brain, which give us anticipation of reward. So dopamine as a neuromodulator, we often hear that it's a pleasure chemical. It's not.

It's an anticipation of reward chemical. That's why it's implicated in all addiction. It makes you say, I want it. I want the cigarette. I want the cocaine. I want the pornography. I want the payoff. I want the cocaine. I want the pornography. I want the payoff at the slot machine, or I want the deal. Yeah. Or I want the praise from stage, or I want the praise from an

app or whatever. I want the admiration of strangers. That's right. I want another million followers, whatever crazy thing it is, but it's the same thing. And the first thing that a person who has a million followers wants is another million followers. And 1 million followers is for losers. I mean, this crazy rock that's spinning in the universe that we're somehow gravitationally pulled to in this body that we have no idea how we've gotten here. And this made up language that we're speaking.

I love to put those three ridiculous ideas together. My mentor said to me at a very young age, he said, Mike, you know, you really matter to people in their lives. It's really cool. I see it. And I was like, wow, thank you. He says, I also want you to keep another thing in mind. I said, what's that? And he said, it's been around a really long time. Keep that in mind. In the big scheme of things, you don't matter very much at all. And you'll be forgotten. Can you hold those two things together for the rest of your life? I know.

Yeah. I know. It's really amazing. And it's really wonderful to feel the admiration of somebody that you admire. It's a really wonderful to feel the admiration of somebody that you admire. It's a really wonderful thing, but it is patently true that it's, it's senseless for us to think that we're going to have some sort of undying legacy. It's senseless for us to do that, which is one of the reasons that actually all work and no play is a bad strategy. Right. Hence the year of play. That's the, hence the year of play. I better enjoy it while we have it. So satisfaction is a funny thing,

right? And satisfaction in how I talk about satisfaction depends on whether I'm talking to a slacker or a striver. That's cool that you have two ways into it. Yeah, totally. Because they have different pathologies. That's right. Yeah. And then meaning.

And meaning, this is the hard one. Meaning is the hard one because you can, everybody listening to us who's very self-disciplined, they are, can go for a long time without enjoyment and a long time without satisfaction, but you can't go 10 minutes without meaning. Now, meaning is not the same thing as purpose. Meaning has three parts to it. That's the why of your life. You need to have a working reason for understanding it. You need to know what the why of your life is, or at least be making progress toward that. And it really has three parts,

coherence, why things happen, purpose, which is goals and direction, and significance, which is that your life matters. That's the three things that you actually need. Now, I have a diagnostic test that I give people to see whether or not they have a meaning crisis. And the meaning crisis is no joke. I mean, you and I are going to be okay on this, but the main reason that I found in my own research that people in their 20s are suffering so much is because they don't have a strong sense of meaning and they're not even looking. And there's a pretty interesting biological theory about that that comes from Ian McGilchrist and his work on hemispheric lateralization of the brain, where the right side of the brain is Yes, yes. Where the right side of the brain

is dedicated toward meaning questions and the left side is toward distraction and technocratic pursuits, analysis, right? The modern world is actually forcing us into the left side of our brain and we're not spending enough time biologically in the part of the brain where we can answer, address and answer meaning questions.

And the result is we feel less and less and less meaning and emptier and emptier and emptier. I'm writing a book on that right now. Nihilism. It's a problem, but it's a physiological problem. And that means we need to simplify our lives and stay away from the things that distract us, that fritter away our time so that we can get back to the right, get back to the right hemisphere. That's a nice, nice nod to biology and modern modernity. Yeah, put down the phone, put down the screen, stop scrolling, be bored, go be bored. You're on the train, put away the screen, fold your hands in your lap, look out the window,

let your, go to the default mode network, which is gonna send you back to the right side of your, it's gonna be very uncomfortable. This is why the counter rotation of mindfulness has been so important for so many people in the last handful of years, let alone the last 2,600 years. Totally, totally.

And that's why it's very hard. So the questions of meaning that are diagnostic are why are you alive and for what would you be willing to die right now? Oh, those are, why are you alive? And for what would you be willing to die right now? Oh, those are the big ones you asked. Yeah. Cause that gets coherence, purpose and significance all in one handy dandy place. And I can tell diagnostically when I'm working with young adults or clients or whoever, whether or not there's a meaning crisis I have to cope with. And, and, and high performers and low performers are absolutely both open to a meaning crisis. Say the two again.

Why are you alive? Why are you alive? And that might mean who created you or for what purpose? Yeah. And for what would you joyfully give your life at this moment? In other words, why were you born and for what would you be willing to not be alive? Why are you alive and for what would you be willing to not be alive?

I've got a long list on the second one. The first one's pretty simple for me. What's the simple one? Tell me number one for you. Why am I alive? And for what would you be willing to not be alive? I've got a long list on the second one. The first one's pretty simple for me. What's the simple one? Tell me number one for you. Why am I here? Yeah. Why am I alive? Why are you alive?

I don't go to like God's creation. I don't do that. I go to what I think my purpose is, is to help people live in the present moment more often. You are alive to serve. Yeah. That's what it comes down to, right? For what would you give your life at this moment? Oh, I mean, I have a long list.

But tell me the top three. I'll do my wife and son. You know, for them to have- The people that you love, your people. Yeah, for my people to- Are you dying for them? But yes, but not just for them to live, for them to live a great life.

Right. Would you die for your country? No. Would you die for your beliefs? No. Would you die for your beliefs? No. That doesn't mean I'm a waver. That's not wrong. These are your answers.

Yeah. I want to qualify that, though. I wanted to know if you know, because sometimes people say, I don't know. And that's. Yeah. No, my beliefs are quite clear, many of them. And I'm really open to more beliefs. They are not the reason to die.

The application of beliefs are a reason to die the application of beliefs are a reason to die but not the beliefs in themselves you think you'd die for stranger um it it is complicated for me i think without my wife and son so if i go back before that i would yeah that was actually quite clear for me and then that dying for that stranger does two things. This has been a conversation my wife and I had a bunch. And it does two things. One, it would send this signal to the ones that I love about what I'm willing to die for and live for, which is a great, important thing. The second is, I don't know if that's significant enough for my loved ones to have that message. So I get caught in between.

My fear is that I would probably hesitate. Yeah, and you don't know, of course. And so adjudicating these questions is super important for finding meaning. And here's the point. You don't have to go sit at the mouth of a cave and ask the guru, what's the meaning of life? You don't have to do that. You have to look cave and ask the guru, what's the meaning of life? You don't have to do that.

You have to look for your answers and look within and think deeply about these questions. And then you're on the path toward finding meaning. And then happiness rises. Yeah. So it's really, and it's like watching a miracle unfold when somebody answers these questions. Two of my kids are military. And as I told you before, we did the show. One was a scout sniper in the Marine Corps

right near where we're sitting. He was at Camp Pendleton and deployed overseas several times. And he didn't have answers when he went to the Marine Corps. Just didn't. Oh, so it wasn't yes? No, he didn't have answers. He was, you know, he's a knucklehead. But he came out at 23, married. Now he has a son at 24. He's married and has a son at 24. But he has, and that's very countercultural, by the way, because there aren't that many. And my sons got married at 22 and 23 because they're countercultural, because they're subversive, right? They don't like the popular culture.

They want, which says, don't do that. You know, wait and see the whole thing. And okay, I mean, whatever floats your boat, but they were rebels in this way and they rebelled in this way. So they had, you know, got married young and have kids. You know, it's like my wife says, raise them Catholic. They do Catholic stuff. Right. But my son Carlos, he got out of the Scout Sniper Platoon in the U.S. Marine Corps.

And his answers were, I'm alive. I asked him because I make my kids write a business plan. Oh, very cool. Because they're entrepreneurs. Yes. And I'm venture capital. Okay, good. And his answers were, I'm alive because God made me to serve others. Very similar to your answer with the religious component. And what would I die for? I would die for my family, my wife and my son. I would die. Maybe he'd die for me. I'm not sure.

I don't want him to. Wouldn't want him to. I would die for my fellow Marines and I would die for the United States of America. And how does he know that? Because he made a commitment to knowing that. He actually knows it. He signed a contract.

That's right. Yeah. And you could sign that contract at the same time, not actually be fully aligned to it. You're like, no, no, no. I made a mistake signing it. You can have, you can have any, but this is, this is your life. Right. He had, but he has evidence of it. This is one of the reasons that ex-military are usually happier than people who are not ex-military. I didn't, I didn't know that. Yeah. Ex-military

tend to be very happy people because they have, they have witnessed that for which they are willing to die. So most people it's like, what am I willing to die for? Or what would I die for? I don't know. Not being able to hang on for one more minute. Come on. I do not want that life. I do not want that life. No, no, no, no, no, no. But people don't know because they don't ask. And when you're in the military, you're confronted with that question. Yeah. It's such a litmus test for an honest way of living. That's right. And everybody listening to us can become more effective with a better journey toward meaning, finding the answers or looking for the answers to these questions.

And it's a thrill. It's an adventure. I love this very applied set of questions that you took me down. Right. And they'll sit with me for a while too. That was my honest response. And then I'll need to go back. You'll think more.

And by the way, none of this is perfect. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Because this is not physics. Correct. I think that this is the hardest science of all. It's invisible. We can't see it. Psychology is something that we live with every moment of our lives,

but we can't hold it. And it's very complicated to deal in the world of the invisible. So it's so interesting, your work, because you're a clinical psychologist and you do sports. And so in mathematics, there's two kinds of problems. There's complicated problems and complex problems. It sounds like I'm splitting hairs, but I'm not. Complicated problems are solvable with enough genius, but they don't change and you've got the solution forever, like creating a jet engine. Complex problems are human and dynamic. They're behavioral. They're

like falling in love or winning the Superbowl. Those are complex problems. You can simulate the Superbowl, the Patriots versus the Seahawks over and over and over and over again. And you're not going to get it right because it's a highly complex and adaptive human situation. So your work is all about the complex. A thousand percent. It's about love, it's about success, it's about human interaction, it's about sports. Interpretation of the experience. The problem in life is that we've got

all these complicated solutions to complex problems, and that's why we feel empty. I love that you did that, because I go complex, complicated, and simple. And so the way I think about the psychology of excellence is that there's a handful of very simple practices. Humans are the most complex ecosystem on the planet. And what's complicated is to try to match a very simple, simple, simple practice for a highly unique, personal, individual, complex ecosystem, that's complicated because it's not like this Lego goes to this, you know, snaps in perfectly

to this unique person. So I see it the same way, complex, complicated, and simple. And the complicated problems are what engineers do. The complex problems are what the psychologists do. It's very complex. And the football coaches do. Yeah. And the people dating do. Very dynamic. Yeah, right.

Telling jokes too. It's very complex. Totally, totally. It's like, is it going to work? I don't know. Oh, man. What a joy to sit with you, to learn with you. Thank you.

Your work is so inflecting in the lives of so many people that I can think some small part of it wouldn't honor. Oh yeah. Like a huge part in the way that this conversation is animated with spirit and backed by discernment. And so thank you. I want to point people to your website. Yeah. Yeah. You know, I think, and of course, your books are great and you got to write something with your website. Yeah. Yeah. You know, I think, and of course, um, your books are great and you got to write something with Oprah. That's pretty cool. Pretty fun.

Beats working. That's my dad used to say. That's pretty cool. She gave me a shout out on my book. Really? Like I found it accidentally. Like I, I don't know her.

I've never met her. And I was like, that was, she's a incredibly voracious reader and unbelievably over the top intelligent. She was before I actually met her in person, before we started working together, she, She's an incredibly voracious reader and unbelievably over-the-top intelligent. She was – before I actually met her in person, before we started working together, she read From Strength to Strength, the book that you've read. I was on her book podcast called Super Soul. Yeah.

And she was quoting me to me by memory. Whoa. Yeah. That's a surreal moment. Very cool. That's a surreal moment. Very cool. That's insane. But that's just shows, you know, that she, her level of absorption of ideas and her ability to apply them in real time. Yeah. I mean, that's the, that's the gift of being, if you make it to this age. It's, um, it's good to be Oprah. Yeah. It is, isn't it? And it's really good to be around her.

Sounds like it's good to be Arthur. Uh, it's a work in progress. Arthur. It's a work in progress. It's a work in progress. It's interesting because a lot of people ask, I'm sure they ask you the same thing. They say to me, you must be a naturally happy guy. And I'm like, nope, that's why I study it, because I want it. Actually, my default is quite anxious. Of course. That's why I got here. In the behavioral science world, we don't do research, we do me search. Yeah, that's right. You want the answers to the questions that bedevil you. Otherwise you would just go do, you know, the economics of widget making or something that's, that's relatively irrelevant. If you want your life to have meaning, it has to be something that's meaningful to you such that it can be meaningful to other

people. So yeah, it's a work in, it's a, it's a work in progress. The whip is a great way to go through life, work in progress. Appreciate you. Thank you. And I can't wait to follow on with you and have more of these. Thank you for having me on. And thanks to all your listeners for finding their mastery and making the world a better place. Let's go. All right. Thank you so much for diving into another episode of Finding Mastery with us. Our team loves creating this podcast and sharing these conversations with you. We really appreciate you being part of this community. And if you're enjoying the show, the easiest no cost way to

support is to hit the subscribe or follow button wherever you're listening. Also, if you haven't already, please consider dropping us a review on Apple or Spotify. We are incredibly grateful for the support and feedback. If you're looking for even more insights, we have a newsletter we send out every Wednesday. Punch over to findingmastery.com slash newsletter to sign up. The show wouldn't be possible without our sponsors and we take our recommendations seriously. And the team is very thoughtful about making sure we love and endorse every product you hear on the show. If you want to check out any of our sponsor offers you heard about in this episode, you can find those deals at findingmastery.com slash sponsors. And remember, no one does it alone. The door here at Finding Mastery is always open to those looking to explore the edges and the reaches of their potential so that they can help others do the same. So join our community, share

your favorite episode with a friend, and let us know how we can continue to show up for you. Lastly, as a quick reminder, information in this podcast and from any material on the Finding Mastery website and social channels is for information purposes only. If you're looking for meaningful support, which we all need, one of the best things you can do is to talk to a licensed professional. So seek assistance from your healthcare providers. Again, a sincere thank you for listening. Until next episode, be well, think well, keep exploring.