Motley Fool Hidden Gems Investing - For the Class of 2020

Episode Date: May 12, 2020

Given the pandemic, high school and college commencements just won’t be the same this year. So we decided we’d have Scott Galloway, NYU professor and author of The New York Times bestseller The Algebra of Happiness: Notes on the Pursuit of Success, Love, and Meaning, shares his advice for the graduating class of 2020. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

With a Motley Fool Money Extra, I'm Chris Hill. Because of COVID-19, millions of high school and college graduates will not be getting the commencement ceremony they were expecting this year. Scott Galloway is a professor at NYU, and his latest bestselling book is The Algebra of Happiness, Notes on the Pursuit of Success, Love, and Meaning. And here's Professor Galloway with a few words for the graduating class of 2020. If there's one key best practice, it's pretty straightforward. The largest study on happiness of its kind, the Harvard Grant Study, tracked 400 males over 80 years.

And they found the best practice across the cohort that was the happiest was pretty straightforward. And that is the number and depth of meaningful relationships at work. Do you feel respected and admired? And do you respect and admire other people with your friends? Do you get a sense of joy and camaraderie and you do provide the same thing to them? And at home with your family, do you feel intense levels of love and support? And just as importantly, do you know they feel that same level of intense support and love? And that is the key.

And the first line of this academic study that distills the greatest data set on happiness ever registered is very straightforward. And that is happiness is love full stop. Your goal as a young person is to put yourself in a position economically, spiritually, and psychologically such that you can go all in on a group of people and not love them because you're getting something back. You're either getting intimacy or sex or economic partnership, but you decide to love people completely and not keep score because that is the key to the universe. The universe wants to prosper. When a sun dies, it comes back stronger. The species must propagate, so the universe creates incentives. It makes food enjoyable.

It makes sex wonderful. And it makes complete love and caring for others the most rewarding thing in the world. So put yourself in a position to experience the most rewarding thing in the world, and that is to love other people completely. You're not going to tell these young graduates to go out there and follow their passion? Oh, my God, that is such bull. Anyone who tells you, whether it's Jeff Bezos or Steve Jobs or any number of the billionaires that come speak to us this morning, to follow your passion is already rich. and the person on stage is telling you to follow your passion usually got there and by you know in the business of iron ore smelting or software as a service for health

care maintenance workers young people's job is to find something they're good at invest the time the energy the grit and the perseverance to become great at it and then the accoutrements of being great at something economic security prestige relevance you know a certain amount of pride That will make you passionate about whatever it is. It can be tax accounting. Your key is to find something you like. Follow your passions on weekends. I'm Chris Hill.

Thanks for listening. We'll see you next time.