Office Hours with Arthur Brooks - Why You Should Let People Help You More

Starting point is 00:00:01 Whether life serves you an ace or an unexpected backhand, the high-protein yogurt, Oikos Pro, is there to feed your strength and help you turn every challenge into a smash. Oikos Pro helps build strong muscles and support muscle recovery with high protein and contains no added sugar. Because true strength isn't about being able to take the hits. It's about being able to bounce back. Oikos Pro, feed your strength. Visit oikos.ca for more details. I've talked an awful lot over the course of the last 50 or so episodes about the importance of being a generous person. I'm going to talk more about that today, but I'm going to take a special twist on that,

Starting point is 00:00:39 which is that you should give other people an opportunity to give to you. I had a close acquaintance of my family earlier in my life when I was a young man. A lovely person, very generous. If you needed something, she was there. If you were sick, she had the chicken soup. And she had a saying, which was this, I give, but I don't teach. I suppose that she thought that it was best for other people. But the truth of the matter is that that was as lovely as she was, a form of selfishness.

Starting point is 00:01:08 When you only give and you don't accept, you're appropriating for the giver, which is you, all of the moral prestige, all of the generosity, all of the joy of giving to yourself while never giving any of it to anybody else. And why are you doing it because you want to avoid a sense of indebtedness? Hi friends, Arthur Brooks here, and welcome to office hours, the podcast about love and happiness, how you can use the science to get more of it in your life, how you can become a teacher of love and happiness for all those around you. One of the reasons I talk about that at the beginning of every episode is because the basic science is clear. If you want to learn anything that's relatively sophisticated, that isn't straightforward, you've got to do three things. You need to understand it. You need to change your life and you need to share it with other people. That's

Starting point is 00:02:01 this podcast is all about helping you understand the basic behavioral science and even neuroscience of happiness give you ideas and you can change your life and arm you with the information so you can share it with your loved ones and anyone who will listen because the one who will benefit the most is you thank you so much for watching the show continuing with us and recommending it to your closest friends and anybody that you know they could actually use a little bit of it and who couldn't use a little bit more happiness of course i appreciate that very much please continue feeding back giving me show ideas things that you like things that you don't, ways that we can make this show better.

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Starting point is 00:03:25 on in the newsletter. I'm recording this episode from the Modern Elder Academy, M.E.A. outside Santa Fe, New Mexico. So props to MEA, look on Instagram at MEA Wisdom is their handle. And Chip Conley, who's the great visionary behind this beautiful place. Esther, my wife, and I are running a retreat, a marriage retreat, a couple's retreat here for the next few days. What a wonderful place to do that. If you're interested in the kind of retreats that I'm doing these days, doing more of,

Starting point is 00:03:51 and the people are doing with my work. So with me and without me as well, that gives an opportunity for people interested in this work to get together, to actually get to know each other. Social capital is critical for learning as well. If you want to learn more about that, you can get details at retreats. Dot Arthur Brooks.com. Okay, now with that out of the way,

Starting point is 00:04:09 let's talk about today's topic. Today's topic is a little bit different than what I've done before. I've talked an awful lot over the course of the last 50 or so episodes about the importance of being a generous person, the importance of giving, being charitable. I've mentioned it.

Starting point is 00:04:24 I'm going to talk more about that today, but I'm going to take a special twist on that, which is that you should give other people an opportunity to give to you. You should ask for help more. Do you want to lift people up and make them happier? Do you want to be happier yourself? It's not enough to be a charitable person. You need to be the conduit between other people and their charity

Starting point is 00:04:44 and help them help you. If I do my job in the next few minutes, half an hour or so, maybe a little more. We'll see. I'm going to make the case that you can actually lift people up in a very unique way by understanding just the right way to ask for help and to take people's generosity. Now, not too much, not too little. You'll see exactly what I'm talking about.

Starting point is 00:05:08 And in so doing, your life will be better and so will other people's as well. Now, I've met a number of people over the course of my life that wouldn't agree with this. They believe that to be a virtuous person, you should be all give no take. I had a close acquaintance of my family earlier in my life when I was a young man. an elderly lady and a lovely person, very generous. If you needed something, she was there. If you were sick, she had the chicken soup. She was really wonderful.

Starting point is 00:05:36 She was thoughtful. She remembered birthdays. She wanted to cook you dinner. She had you over anytime you were around. And she had a saying, which was this, I give, but I don't take. And she meant that, by the way. If she came over to your house,

Starting point is 00:05:51 she would literally not even accept a glass of water because it was this system of ethics that she had created for herself that she thought was most virtuous. And I suppose that she thought that it was best for other people. But the truth of the matter is that that was as lovely as she was, a form of selfishness. That actually even transcended her physical life when she died. Her family found very clear instructions that her body should be donated for medical science and she would not have any memorial service of any kind. Those were her wishes.

Starting point is 00:06:26 They had to be followed. But that was a real source of sadness for her family who wanted to memorialize her, who, in thinking the kind thoughts about what a wonderful person she was would have brought them together. In point of fact that that last act was a kind of selfishness in its way, as was the I will never ask for a glass of water. And that's what I want to talk about.

Starting point is 00:06:48 because the truth of the matter is that when you only give and you don't accept, you're appropriating for the giver, which is you, all of the moral prestige, all of the generosity, all of the joy of giving to yourself while never giving any of it to anybody else. And why are you doing it because you want to avoid a sense of indebtedness? Well, your indebtedness to somebody else could be a gift to them if you do it right. That's what I want to show you. learning how to receive gratefully from others is a sign of fantastic humanity. It's a sign of being a person who's bigger than just yourself.

Starting point is 00:07:26 It's good for your relationships. It's good for your own well-being. And it's especially good for those that you would love. Now, as I talk about this, as I try to prove this to you, let me go back to basics, which is the research, the abundant, incredible research showing that giving is really great for you. It's really good for your happiness. And this takes me back to my own root. as a researcher back in my early days before I got tenure as a professor.

Starting point is 00:07:50 You know, so this is, you know, three, four or five years out of my, out of my Ph.D. I was teaching at Syracuse University and I was doing almost all my research on charitable giving. And I was finding again and again and again this weird thing in my data that the more people gave to charity, the richer they got. And it looked like it was causal. I would find that people would give more money in one year and the next year they would make more money.

Starting point is 00:08:13 Now, I thought that it was an anomaly in my data. It doesn't follow the theory, does it? Look, I'm trained as an economist, and you don't learn in economics school. You know the way to get rich? Give away all your money. That's not the right investment approach. So I kind of didn't do anything with it.

Starting point is 00:08:27 You know, it's like, weird. I must be doing something wrong. I was talking to a colleague, a psychologist, who did work in the same field in philanthropy. And I said, I have this data problem. I keep getting this weird result that when people give more money to charity, they tend to make even more money than that the year after.

Starting point is 00:08:44 in the subsequent years. And my friend said, well, duh, we've known that for 30 years in psychology. Tell me more, Sensei. And he said, yeah, I mean, it's not about the money. That's not it. It's that when you give, you have more self-efficacy. You have more effectiveness as a person. And people who are solvers of problems, they do better at work.

Starting point is 00:09:05 They're better at their jobs. They're more confident. They make more money. The real reason that the connection is happiness. That's really what got me into the happiness business in the first place. I wound up writing a book about charitable giving and how it's good for you. And the next book I wrote after that way back in 2008 was about happiness. That book didn't do very well.

Starting point is 00:09:28 But it got me in the bug that now has, you know, low these many decades later has turned it into, you know, what I do for a living. It really started with charity that I would study happiness in the first place because the link is so strong. And many, many data sources and studies show this extremely clearly. Let me give you an example. There's a study from 2015, so 11 years old now at this point from the Journal of Positive Psychology, excellent journal and happiness and happiness-related topics in which participants were instructed to engage in random virtuous acts towards strangers. As always, I will put this in the show notes.

Starting point is 00:10:03 The article is entitled, The Impact of a Pay It Forward-Style, Kindness, Intervention on Giver and Receivers' Well-Being. So what did they do? In the experiment they had the participants engage in random acts of kindness, holding doors open for strangers, feeding a parking meter, presenting a stranger with a small gift like a flower on the street without looking like a creep, et cetera, et cetera. And then they wanted to know what the reactions were going to be. Now, first they looked at the reactions of ordinary interactions that were not charitable versus these acts of kindness on the recipient. And the way that they measured the happiness that it provoked was really was quite non.

Starting point is 00:10:39 They measured what I've called in the past on the show, the Duchesne smile. That's a physiological phenomenon in which people smile from authentic happiness. And how do researchers look at that? Well, they noticed a change in the musculature in two parts of the face. The zygomaticus major muscles in the top of the cheek and the orbicularis aculi muscles that surround the eyes. In other words, they'll get crow's feet and scrunch off their cheeks. It didn't matter what was happening with their mouths.

Starting point is 00:11:05 It was with the eyes. And they were using high-resolution camera equipment. to see whether or not people, when they got this random act of kindness, had Duchenne smiles versus those who just had an ordinary, ordinary interaction, like a conversation on the street. And sure enough, the smile told the story. People who are the recipients of these little acts of kindness were authentically happier. When you help people in unbidden ways for no apparent reason, you will make them happier.

Starting point is 00:11:29 Okay, that's a standard result. That's a standard finding. It's really good research. It was well executed by the researchers. That's great. But here's where the plot thickens. Because right after that, they also, without telling the people who are the participants in the experiment, they then registered the happiness of the giver, right? They didn't know it was going to happen.

Starting point is 00:11:50 In other words, a surprise to the givers themselves. The researchers knew it, of course. And they measured whether or not the giver was happier versus in an ordinary transaction. And sure enough, for them too, the recipients of the kindness were not the only ones. the givers immediately after the experiment reported and displayed higher levels of well-being, higher levels of happiness. Giving makes you happier. It makes you happier.

Starting point is 00:12:18 Another similar study from the Journal of Happiness Studies, which is a kind of a cousin journal to positive psychology. Psychologist in 2004, this is slightly older, but still, it's in the modern era, found that when students were assigned to engage in five minor acts of kindness and sacrifice a week, that practice by itself reliably raised their overall happiness compared with students who didn't engage in these acts. So this is an intervention, so treatment control experiments, like a drug test. And sure enough, you can prescribe acts of kindness to people and it'll raise their well-being. Once again, this is a standard finding. So I could go through chapter and verse

Starting point is 00:12:53 one after the other after the other. I can tell you what kinds will actually raise your well-being more than others. It turns out volunteering your time. It tends to raise your happiness even more than giving people money, right? And so there's all kinds of things like that that show that when you give, you get happier. Now, the simple reading is that you should give more. But here's a deeper reading of that. The deeper reading of it is that you should give other people

Starting point is 00:13:20 opportunities to give. So this is the cycle of giving. This is the virtuous cycle of generosity inside of society. Why do we want to be givers and give ease? Why do we want to love and be love? Because the truth of the matter is you can start a virtuous cycle of happiness. I give it. It makes me happy.

Starting point is 00:13:38 And in so doing, I give to somebody and that makes them happy. And that makes them more likely to actually give. And when I give them an opportunity to give, to satisfy that desire to give, to give back to me and to give to other people, they get happier. And when we're all giving, we're all getting happier. So how do you start that cycle? You maybe start that cycle by giving to somebody, but maybe you start that cycle by accepting generosity from somebody. that's what the elderly relative in my family had missed. And that's what I want to talk about with you,

Starting point is 00:14:08 how you can be a better getter, not just a better giver. In the Bible, it says that the Lord loves a cheerful giver. Well, I think the Lord probably loves a cheerful getter as well. So how do we do that? Now, I know, I know, I know why you might be hesitant to be going out looking for people's generosity. You don't want to impose, right?

Starting point is 00:14:32 But the Journal of Psychological Science says that people who think they're imposing usually aren't. When you're asking people even for favors, you're usually not imposing. There's a wonderful study by two researchers, one of whom is Nick Epley at the University Chicago, who just shows such a great psychologist. This is in psychological science, which is an apex journal in psychology, called Surprisingly Happy to Have Helped, underestimating pro-sociality creates a misplaced barrier to asking for help.

Starting point is 00:15:00 This is an answer to your objective. that you don't want to impose on other people. He says that many people think they're going to impose when they ask for a favor, and it actually raises the mood of the people who are being asked for a favor. It's really interesting. Borrow somebody's cell phone to make a call,

Starting point is 00:15:15 for example, was one of these things. Just asking people for little favors. Could you watch my stuff when I go into the store? People love doing that. It turns out that people feel good about themselves when you're asking them to do that. Now, think about yourself. Somebody can annoy you if they ask for too much,

Starting point is 00:15:31 but when somebody actually asks you for a small favor and you do it, you feel good. You're like, my mom would be proud of me, right? So one of the easiest ways that you could make somebody happier is to accepting generosity and even asking them for a small favor. Now, there's a cynical application to this, which is the following. The research is clear that if you ask people for favors or accept their generosity, that that's going to make them more positively inclined toward you. and this is an old idea.

Starting point is 00:16:01 Benjamin Franklin wrote this. Good old Ben Franklin. He that has once done you a kindness will be more ready to do you another than he whom you yourself have obliged. That's what he's basically saying is that people like you better if they've been nice to you

Starting point is 00:16:14 rather than if you've been nice to them. Okay, that's all feeding into this big theme that we've got. You should accept more kindness. Now, the reason he talked about that is because he wanted you to be a more successful person. What he's noticing is that people, they get this happiness boost

Starting point is 00:16:27 and they're also really path-dependent. If you accept a small favor from somebody, they're going to say, oh, I like this person. I'm giving them small favors. They're more likely and they're more inclined to give you a big favor. And psychologists have shown, for example, when you go in for a job interview and they offer you a small kindness and you accept, they're more likely to like you and more likely to offer you the job. Here's the cynical or at least practical application of that idea. You're going to a potential employer. You walk in for your interview.

Starting point is 00:16:52 They say, do you want a cup of coffee? The answer is, yes, thank you very much. Cream and sugar. you know, I don't care if you don't drink coffee. The dumbest thing that you can do is say, I don't drink coffee. Why? Because you've just basically turned down somebody's opportunity to do something nice for you. Now, maybe the person offering you the cup of coffee is not the person who would offer you the job,

Starting point is 00:17:11 but they will no doubt be offering you something too. You know, they'll be a small act of kind. Always say yes. Always say yes. But it's not just a practical application. It's a moral application because you want to lift other people up by turning them into givers. That's what it comes down to. Right now, you're like Neo in the Matrix.

Starting point is 00:17:31 You can keep scrolling, experiencing a simulation of life. Or you can wake up to how your attention is being harvested for profit. It's happening to people all over the world right now. You don't want to be productized like this anymore, but it's hard. Tech addiction is so potent because it's been designed to tap into your dopamine system. Just like heroin, porn, gambling. You've got the cravings. You're addicted.

Starting point is 00:17:55 You don't like it. and I don't either. But I can't just tell you to stop doing it. That's hard. If you want to break free from the system, you need an incentive. Well, here's one. Why don't you join a phone company that pays you not to use your phone? If you want to reduce brain rot, get Noble Mobile Mobile. It pays you to use less data. It gives you an incentive to unplug. Noble mobile is the phone plan that finally aligns incentives with what's good for you. Use less data, earn money back. And when you do, you'll be living once again in real life, and you're going to like how it feels. I study happiness for a reason.

Starting point is 00:18:30 I'm not a naturally super happy person. I wake up most mornings with pretty high negative affect. For years, I treated that as a fixed trait, something I had to live with. Then I started paying attention to how I'd slept the night before. Here's what the science actually shows. Poor sleep doesn't just make you tired. It can actually make you less happy. You can't build a meaningful life on frequent chronic broken sleep.

Starting point is 00:18:57 So I take my sleep seriously. One of the best investments I've made in this area is my Helix mattress. What I like about Helix is that they recognize something obvious but important. Different people sleep differently. Their website has a short quiz that asks about your sleep position, firmness preferences, and other sleep habits. Then they match you with one of more than 20 mattress models designed around you. your specific needs. Once that choice is made,

Starting point is 00:19:25 the mattress ships directly to your door. It's a simple idea, but it's surprisingly rare. Start with the person, not the product. If you're serious about improving your sleep and your happiness, visit helixleep.com slash brooks for 20% off sitewide and additional offers. Invest in your sleep. Everything else works better when you do. Okay, so accept more.

Starting point is 00:19:52 Ask for favors. Say yes. This is the general lesson I'm trying to impart here. Probably I beat the horse to death at this point. But now I want to give you the cautions. Now I want to give you the caveats to it. The first is that you have to know how much is too much. Not that long ago, somebody I didn't know very well. I had met in professional circles. He emailed me. He said, hey, Arthur, I'm going to be in town. I didn't live where I live. I live in Northern Virginia. He said, I'm going to be in town. and I'm doing a thing with my kid for a couple of weeks. Okay, good, you know. I thought he was going to say, want to grab a gum of coffee? No, here's what he said. He said, would it be okay if we stayed at your house for two weeks? And I felt kind of taken aback. I didn't really know him and living with my family for two weeks.

Starting point is 00:20:43 Now, I get it. Albert Schweitzer, Mother Teresa, I would have said, Micasa Sukasa. You know, I get it. But, you know, maybe I'm not that virtuous because basically that, guy went from Friendville to Takerville. That's too much. And there's a very interesting research over the years that some people are weirdly disposed to ask for for uncomfortably large favors from people. And what that research suggests is that you should actually say no and they won't be

Starting point is 00:21:12 offended. Actually, there's a lot of research that shows that people are less offended when you say no to things than you think. You agonize over the fact that you've got to say no and they don't care. But these people who are in Takerville, they'll take, man. They'll take and take and take. And if you say, no, they're like, okay, water off the duck's back. Here's my basic point. Friendtown comes when you ask for the right things and you accept the right kind of generosity. Takerville is when you push it too far and then you'll go into the category that you'll want to be.

Starting point is 00:21:39 And so have some prudential judgment about this. More is not always better in most things in life. And this is no exception. Here's the second caveat. Asking for something as a favor or accepting generosity is very different than demanding something. We have a culture of demands. I know my rights, right? You've got to demand what you want.

Starting point is 00:22:01 This is the advice that a lot of young people get in the job market all the time. And I was young once, and now, of course, I'm an employer. And I've been on both sides of this thing for sure. But what we find today is one of the worst pieces of advice that we give young people today is to go demanding all the time. Now, there's certain times when you have to actually lay down the law, when you have to say, this is something that I actually need. If I can't have this, then maybe we should part ways. There are all kinds of ways that, you know, you can't come together on a deal. But going around demanding things, demanding your rights all the time, there's a couple of different problems

Starting point is 00:22:33 with that. Number one is it's a mark of selfishness. That's how you distinguish yourself as selfish is by making a whole lot of demands. And again, some demands are legitimate. But I'm talking about people who are doing this all the time. But scholars have always found that among those who without real justification are making demands, that when they don't get these things, they tend to feel entitled or wrong. And this is the reason, my friends, that activists always tell you to demand your rights. Because activists, I don't care what side you're on, what the ideology is. Activists want you angry. They want you aggrieved. They want you to feel like the whole world is against you. And the way that they do that is by tricking you into demanding

Starting point is 00:23:12 stuff from people. This will get people's backs up. This will make people say no to you. And so if the activist can convince you that you should demand something and that you're entitled to it, you will be aggrieved, you will be angry, you will be fearful, and you've been set up. That's the bottom line. This is one of the ways that they do that and create a culture of grievance in the meantime. If you want to see the data on this, the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, what a great journal, where this is an article called victim entitlement to behave selfishly. And again, this is peer-reviewed research with treatment and control experiments. I'm not making it up. This is not an ideological point. As a matter of fact, I can see it all over the

Starting point is 00:23:50 political and sociological spectrum. So take it as I intend it. Number three, don't wreck it when you're doing this. And the way that people often will wreck it is by when somebody gives you a favor, here's the best way to wreck the favor, wreck the joy that they get from doing you the favor, trying to return extrinsic benefits. Now, I've been in the fundraising game for a long time. Those of you who followed my work, know that I used to be the president of a big think tank in Washington, D.C. My main job was bringing home to bacon because it was a nonprofit. I had to fundraise. We would raise $50 million a year. And that meant, you know, $250,000 every business day of the year. 200 business days a year you did math.

Starting point is 00:24:32 My hand was out a lot, right, is what it came down to. And one of the things that I learned about, because I had studied fundraising and philanthropy all these years, is what makes donors happy. What makes donors happy is the belief that they're helping from the goodness of their heart. best way to wreck that is by giving them something tangible in exchange that maybe they didn't even ask for. The worst fundraising is that which is based on premiums. So for example, you get a bunch of address labels in the mail. You've gotten them. And what they say is, here's your address labels. Would you please give us a little bit of money to pay for those address labels? Because they're

Starting point is 00:25:05 kind of expensive. By the way, they're not. They're cheap. They're like cranking them out. But they want you to overpay for an item out of a sense of guilt. What that does is it makes you feel worse about the charity. You pay the absolute minimum if you fall prey to it. If you don't fall prey to it, you'll just be resentful of the charity itself. This is just straight up crummy fundraising. This is a way to put a ceiling on the take and make people like you less is what it comes down to. We do this all the time as individuals as well. We want to give somebody something in return that's a little bit more tangible. Now, this does not count if you, you know, somebody does something lovely for you and you write a thank you note. That's not what I'm talking about. Here's a

Starting point is 00:25:44 a thought experiment that gets my point across. Imagine that I asked you to help me move a bunch of boxes out to my car. All right? You know, I'm leaving my office. I'm moving offices a little bit too much for me. We're friends. Maybe not super close friends, but we're friends.

Starting point is 00:25:58 We like each other. Hey, could you give me a hand with these boxes? And you're like, sure. And then you do it and I offer you $8. Right? It's like,

Starting point is 00:26:08 what? That it was absurd on his face, right? It wasn't all better. It didn't make it better. On the contrary, I made it worse. Now, this is a principle in psychology called extrinsic benefits. Extrinsic benefits are some outside reward. Intrinsic benefits are the warm glow from your heart.

Starting point is 00:26:26 You got warm glow, and I tried to buy that warm glow with, you know, eight crummy dollars. No, almost anything that you do is all it's going to do is going to take away my warm glow from helping you with your boxes. Or I can't remember if I'm helping you with your boxes, you're helping me with mine. The bottom line is the exchange of money is not the way to go. So be very careful with the way that you show your gratitude to somebody. Honest gratitude from your heart is way more valuable to the donor because they get to keep the warm glow than anything you'd get in exchange, which looks like a bad deal. It looks like it's not worth it. All right.

Starting point is 00:27:01 You notice I got two glasses of water here. Apparently I'm very thirsty. I'm in New Mexico, as I mentioned, 6,300 feet, real dry, 91 degrees. All right. Fourth way. Fourth caution about the cycle of generosity. this is not really a caution as much as it is another lesson about how to execute this. A lot of people conclude that there are some people that simply have nothing to give them.

Starting point is 00:27:24 And this sets up an asymmetry in the relationship. It sets up a hierarchy necessarily in the relationship. Let me tell you what I mean. And some of you have heard me talk about this before. In speeches, for example, in one of my books, my latest book I talk about this. So forgive me if I'm going over holding around. I was giving a talk at a Christian college in New York City. and a student stumped me, by the way,

Starting point is 00:27:45 you're probably scratching your head going, Christian College in New York City. Yeah, anyway, he stumped me with this question because I was talking about the importance of giving and receiving in the circulatory system of generosity, which if you cut it off by not giving or, God forbid, not receiving, it's like stopping the circulatory system of blood in which it starts to coagulate and it no longer supports life.

Starting point is 00:28:09 And he said, well, what about people who I don't need anything from, they can give me literally nothing. And I said, well, I challenged him. I said, give me an example. I said, you're in New York City. We're in New York City. There's a lot of unhoused people, a lot of homeless people. What am I supposed to get from a homeless person? It's not even right to ask him for anything, let alone assume that he's got something to give me. And I was stumped for a minute. I really was. And so I went back to my hotel. I was thinking at a hotel that night in New York City. And I said, I'm going to consider that. I kind of brought it to prayer and meditation, as a matter of fact.

Starting point is 00:28:45 I said, you know what? What is it? You know, what's the resolution to that? And then I thought of something, and I turned it into a little end of one experiment. The next day in New York, inevitably, you know, it was coming out of a Walgreens or CVS or something. And a guy asked me for spare change. Now, there's a lot of literature out there in the homelessness advocacy community about the appropriateness of giving money for the obvious reasons. But most homeless advocates say it's right to give someone.

Starting point is 00:29:12 something, right? And especially when somebody says they're hungry, give them food. So I said, are you hungry? And he said, yeah. I said, okay, I'll get you a sandwich. So I did. But I was waiting because I had this experiment, right? And I came out and gave him a sandwich. And then I said, you know, I said, thanks. That's a sure. And I said, you know, could you do me a favor? And he said, what? And I said, would you please pray for me and my family? And that actually wasn't the joke and that wasn't an act because the truth is I'm a traditionally religious person my Catholic faith says that God hears the cries of the poor do I believe it or not God especially hears the cries of the poor the truth of the matter is if that guy prays for me and my family that's

Starting point is 00:29:59 worth a heck of a lot more than a sandwich to me I'm getting the better of the deal and he's like yeah yeah and he did and it changed me and it changed him and you get my point right because Because that's the essence of his dignity. He had something that I needed and articulated it and he gave it to me. And that was beautiful. Now you could say, well, proactively, you used extrinsic benefits like the sandwich, but that happened first. That's my point.

Starting point is 00:30:26 What can you do in that particular way? How can you not be stumped? Use your imagination because the truth of the matter is that these ideas are much, much deeper than just what you'd see in a treatment and control experiment. This has some metaphysics to it as well. So give. give more. Don't give till it hurts. Give till it feels good. And accept, accept the generosity of other people such that you can be in a circulatory system of love and benefit and virtue with other people because that's the world that we all want to live in. All right. I hope I've given you some things to think about along these lines and some very practical ways to deal with this as well. Let's do some questions before we finish.

Starting point is 00:31:06 number one this comes from Jack Butler who writes into office hours he said your recent episode about finding meaning in life talks about Aporia A-P-O-R-I-A that's the ancient Greek philosophical method of

Starting point is 00:31:22 deep learning through unanswerable questions and puzzlement where you find good texts or questions to contemplate? Good question, Jack where do I get the questions that are really good for this aporea therapy you have any research sources to recommend. Now, Jack, if you're traditionally religious, your religion has these things. The

Starting point is 00:31:42 ancient texts are full of these things. For example, if I read the Bible on any particular day, I try to do something that's called lectio divina, which in Latin just means, you know, divine reading. And that's to put myself in the place of whatever scripture it is and to ask, what is this say to me for my life? That's a very, very deep form of Aporea. And that happens in every, every kind, every religious tradition. The Dalai Lama told me that he spends each day in contemplation of sacred Tibetan verses for the first two hours of his day, which is called analytical meditation in Tibetan, in Tibetan Buddhism. So what we would call this kind of prayer, mental prayer, based on Lectio devena, they have a different way

Starting point is 00:32:27 of doing it, but every religion does it the same way. Okay, now let's say that you're not religious, for those of you who aren't. Plato's dialogues, which is basically Plato transcribing either by memory or in real time, I don't know, the dialogues of Socrates. You know, Socrates didn't write anything. Plato is our source for everything that Socrates said. And in his dialogues, it's just full of the, of Aparea and Socrates's deep, deep questions to people to stimulate puzzlement in their minds. So read the Plato's dialogues and you'll find this stuff and it's great for every culture and every tradition, religious or not. Aristotle's metaphysics actually lists Aparei, which is the,

Starting point is 00:33:06 plural of questions of Aporea. Aporea, A-P-O-R-I-A-I. We're getting into Greek here. That's not my strong suit. So read Aristotle's metaphysics. It's fantastic. It'll just below your mind and expand your consciousness in all sorts of interesting ways by using this technique.

Starting point is 00:33:24 So that's a really good thing to do, all of these ideas. And you can find these in ancient texts, almost any place that you look. Second question, from Anonymous, also written into the website. Do you think we need to share the same faith to have a successful marriage? Yeah, yeah. And I suppose that the we here is you and your beloved, Anonymous and Mrs. Anonymous and Mrs. Anonymous. Or Mr. Anonymous.

Starting point is 00:33:51 Well, that depends. And that depends on a number of things. It depends to begin with. And I'll speak empirically. So based on the psychology, the literature on this, it depends on how important religion is to you to begin with. And so what you find is a lot of people were raised in a faith but don't really practice it. they'll marry somebody outside the faith and they'll kind of choose to not practice any faith. That's the number one result of people who marry outside of their faith that they don't practice either.

Starting point is 00:34:15 Typically, they don't decide or they decide not to practice. And so if you're not very religious, it, you know, empirically, that's not the case. But if you are either religious or here's the funny thing that I noticed about a lot of my 20-something students, they're not religious, but they're going to be and they know it. They intend to be religious. You know, that would have been me. I mean, I was raised in a really religious home, and in my 20s, I was just kind of lazy about it. But I knew, you know, I had it on this to-do list, as a matter of fact.

Starting point is 00:34:43 When it was in my 20s, I didn't have any money. My goals, this is so funny to think about. My life goals were I was going to quit smoking cigarettes. I was going to quit drinking alcohol because I drank too much. I was going to finally go to the dentist, and I was going to get my faith straight by going back to church. That was literally on my to-do list. Isn't that funny? I mean, it took different periods of time to do all that.

Starting point is 00:35:05 You know, the quitting drinking was 38. The quitting smoking was 26. 25. I went to the dentist. And, you know, I was back in church by my early 30s. But, I mean, consistently. But the whole point is that even if you intend to be religious, then this is something to think about.

Starting point is 00:35:22 You know, the greatest hockey player, perhaps, whoever lived, lived, Wayne Gretzky, he very famously said that somebody asked him, is like, how do you, how are you always there? you know, where the puck is so that you're ready to make a goal. He said, oh, I just, I don't skate toward the puck. I skate toward where the puck is going to be. Okay, now easier said than done. But that's you and your life, friend, anonymous. Where are you going to be?

Starting point is 00:35:48 And under those circumstances, skate to where the puck is actually going to be, even if you're not with the puck right now. And the puck is, I'm really torturing the metaphor here, but you get the point that I'm actually trying to make, which is that it depends. You have to make that. Now, some couples that are seriously religious of different religions thrive. So I'm not saying that this is a dangerous thing when that's not the case.

Starting point is 00:36:11 I know a lot of couples where he's Catholic, she's Jewish or vice versa. There's a lovely article that was published to the place where I write my column in the free press by Rusty Reno. And Rusty Reno is the wonderful, I mean, the incredibly accomplished editor of a very traditional Catholic magazine, intellectual magazine called First Things that I like to read. and his wife's Jewish and she's serious about it. And he talked about what it's like to live in that, in that household and how they come together and how they understand each other, how they expand each other's worldview.

Starting point is 00:36:42 So the bottom line is that you can make a lot of things work. There's the whole point. And love can conquer all sorts of obstacles and differences. While I'm done here, I'm going to sign off. Please let me know your thoughts about this episode at office hours at arthurbricks.com. Like and subscribe. Hit the like and subscribe button.

Starting point is 00:37:00 Please, please, please, please. Spotify, YouTube, or Apple, leave a comment. I'll read it. We'll learn from it. We really love your feedback and appreciate it a lot. Follow me on all the socials, especially on Instagram, LinkedIn, all the other platforms. And order, my new wish book used to be new. I mean, a few weeks came out a few months ago.

Starting point is 00:37:16 The meaning of your life, if you haven't read it yet, a lot of what I'm talking about here is expounded in greater detail in that book. And I hope you enjoy it. And if you do enjoy it, just buy a couple hundred more copies for your closest friends. Thanks so much. I really appreciate it. Thank you for all the good that you're doing. And by the way, thank you especially for tuning in.

Starting point is 00:37:34 And if you're getting benefit from that, because in so doing, you've given me the opportunity to give to you. And that gives my life a lot of happiness and meaning. I'll see you next week.

Office Hours with Arthur Brooks - Why You Should Let People Help You More

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