Pod Save America - Build The Life You Want, Episode 1 with Oprah Winfrey

Episode Date: February 20, 2024

From the first official primaries to the unofficial ramp-up of the general election, this has been a long year, which is a problem, because it’s only February. So we’re excited to share an exclusive clip of “Build The Life You Want” from Oprah Winfrey’s Super Soul podcast that will help you prepare your mental being for the stressful year ahead. Each week, she finds new ways to awaken, discover, and connect to the deeper meaning of the world around you, none of which are “spend more time staring at poll numbers.”

Hey, everybody, John Lovett here. We're in a stressful election year, and we can't stay engaged if we don't find ways to stay sane and happy. You think Joe Biden's tense all the time? No, he's eating an ice cream cone. He's playing fetch with his terrifying attack dog. He's taking care of himself.

So while we're away today, please enjoy this episode of Oprah's Super Soul Podcast, Build the Life You Want, Episode One, to help you gird your mental loins for these chaotic months ahead. In this clip, Oprah talks about social media's impact as a platform for negativity and how to take control of enhancing your own happiness. Take a listen. And if you like what you hear, make sure to follow Oprah's Super Soul podcast wherever you get your podcasts. I'm glad we could be here to help give

Oprah the bump she needs. Yeah, me too. I think she's going places. And of course, you're going to like it. It's Oprah. Roll the clip. So we decided to do a three-part series, y'all, to dive further into the book here on SuperSoul because my intention for this platform has always been to enhance the human experience and to bring you information that will open up your life. So I know that you listeners are interested in learning new ways to explore a life

with meaning and purpose, which is what you, Arthur, are all about. And before we get started, I think you should tell everyone actually about your day job or what you do. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So my day job is I'm a teacher. I'm a college professor.

I teach the science of happiness at the Harvard Business School. I also teach at the Harvard Kennedy School, which trains people to go work in government. And I research and think and teach about behavior, human behavior, what motivates people to do what they do. I'm a social scientist. Yes, I was gonna say, you don't just teach there. You are actually do what they do. I'm a social scientist. Yes, I was going to say, you don't just teach there.

You are actually a scientist. Yeah, and I've been a social scientist for the past 30 years. That's what I've been doing with my life. A PhD social scientist. Indeed, indeed. And so that's, and I teach, people ask, you know, you're a professor. I say, yeah, Harvard Business School.

They say, what do you teach? Accounting, finance, marketing, supply chain, management. You know, something really practical like that. I say, no, I teach? Accounting, finance, marketing, supply chain management, something really practical like that. I say, no, I teach happiness. And they think I'm lying. But I teach happiness with the same seriousness that you would teach supply chain management. Look, your life is an enterprise.

Your life is your startup. Treat it as such. Treat it with seriousness. Treat the inside of your head the same way you would treat your P&L statement is the bottom line. Your life is your startup, the biggest startup you're ever going to have. Totally, it's the best enterprise you could be part of

and the most serious one at that. Yeah. So on this series, we're exploring the ideas in the book where Arthur, the author, offers science-based practices and wisdom that anybody can use to become happier.

I call it happier-ness. It was so good that you coined that. It's helpful to me because for the longest time, people would say, you know, the goal is happiness. And I would say, no, it's getting happier, but that doesn't have a ring to it. And I told you that for the first time. And you said, so the goal is happier-ness.

It's happier-ness. It's the right word. Yeah. Yeah. I love it. And now people are saying it. My's the right word. Yeah. Yeah. I love it. And now people are saying it.

My students are saying it. Yeah, we need a t-shirt. Yeah. Before we dive into the book, let's talk about your own journey though, because people want to know your story because you are the professor of happiness. And how did you get here? At age 55, you left a very successful career and you were chief executive of a think tank. And now you, then you started studying happiness.

Was it to bring greater happiness to yourself? For sure. And other people. You go through kind of a, not necessarily a dark night of the soul, but at certain points of your life, there are hinge points when you have to ask yourself, why am I doing what I'm doing? And what is the mission of my own life? And the truth is, as I thought about it and prayed about it

and talked to the people I love about it, it was very clear. The mission of my life is to lift people up and bring them together. And ideas of love and happiness using a science of love. Well, you were also doing that with the think tank, right? I was trying, but it was good. It was good. I was grateful for having done that. I did that for 11 years.

But it was time for somebody else to do that. And at 55, I still had plenty of gas in the tank. And I wanted to use everything that I knew for other people and quite frankly, for me too. I wanted to dig into this thing that we now call happierness and see whether or not it was achievable in my own life. And if it was, could I bring it to others? Well, you know, studies are showing that America is in a happiness slump.

I don't think you even need a study to figure that out. You just look around you or you turn on your computer, you look at your phone. I mean, the news, the conspiracy theories, what is going on? Yeah, no, it's true. I mean, the data are unambiguous. The experience that we all have that it feels like people are less happy, it's true. And there's kind of two things that we need to understand. You could say that there's problems in the climate and problems in the weather. The climate has been changing for happiness for decades now. Since the late 80s, maybe the early 90s, people have been gradually getting a little less happy year after year after year, just a little tiny bit. And that has to do with the fact that people are less likely to live a spiritual or religious life or find a life of meaning in those institutions. They're less likely to have a close relationship with their families.

People have fewer and fewer friends who know them well. People have less of a sense that they're serving others with their work. That's the climate. And that's been a problem for a long time. Then there's weather, storms. There have been two big storms in the past couple of decades that we have to pay attention to. The first was around 2008, 2009. Now I know everybody watching us is like, oh, obviously the financial crisis.

Uh-uh, that wasn't it. I thought it was. It was social media. Same time. That's when everybody started looking at social media. Everybody had the upside down. That's right, 2009. That's when I got on what used to be Twitter.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, the artist formerly known as Twitter. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Exactly right. And that's when, and a couple of things were happening. So Twitter, for example, became a platform for people to be intensely negative. Instagram is not the same way.

It's more of a platform for people to compare themselves to others. But that had a big impact, especially on young people, especially on women and girls, 15 to 25 years old. It created a new kind of culture that was intensely comparative and problematic. So social media actually, where people think it's bringing you closer together and you're communicating on Facebook,

it's actually made people less happy. Lonelier. Lonelier. Here's the weird thing. When you're super hungry and it's like, oh man, I haven't eaten in hours and hours and hours. And you pass by a fast food place. You're like, good, that'll get the job done.

And so you gorge yourself and you're stuffed. You don't feel so good. An hour later, you're hungry again. What's up with that? The answer is you didn't meet your nutrient needs. All you met is your caloric needs. And so the result is you stay hungry, even though you don't need the calories. Social media is the junk food of social life. It's like getting all of your calories. That is a tweetable moment, but we don't tweet anymore. We X, what do we do? We X, is that what we call it? I don't know what you do. I don't know. But so that's like getting all your meals at 7-Eleven. Social media is the junk food. Of social life. Social media is the junk food of

social life. You'll get too many calories and not enough nutrients. That's the reason you'll binge and get lonelier. Yes. That's a problem. Yes. And a lot of young people have never developed in a way where they can finally figure out how to use it responsibly. What's going to happen to the generation that was born at that time and that's all they've ever known? We don't know. That's a big social experiment. That's a massive social experiment. That we're in the midst of right now. Yeah. It's not as if social media is all evil. I mean, you can use it responsibly. Absolutely. If you would not let somebody into your house who bears you ill will,

you shouldn't let them into your head. And that means you shouldn't be looking at the social media where somebody can be tweeting at you or X-ing at you or telling you that you're this, you're that, frankly. That's a big problem. That's the storm. That's sort of a century. Wow.

So let's get happier. Let's do that. Let's the storm. That's sort of a century. Wow. So let's get happier. Let's do that. Let's get happier. On page five, you say, happiness is not a destination. Happiness is a direction. I know that was a shift in mindset for many who are reading this book. Can you expand a little bit on that? Yeah. And this is, the problem with happiness is such a funny thing because we all want it. Every philosopher and theologian has talked about it. Everybody, I mean, how many times have people said that on your show? I know, that's what I say in the beginning of the book.

Thousands of times. I became interested in this subject because every time I would sit with the audience and I'd say, what do you want? Everybody would always say. Multiple people would answer, I just want to be happy. I just want to be happy. But yet,

when you ask them, what does that look like for them? Hard to define. For sure. And part of the reason is because it's not something that you can define in any meaningful way. We think it's a feeling. We think it's a destination. It isn't either. Happy feelings are nothing more than emotions. And emotions are nothing more than information that we need in reaction to the outside environment. And as a destination, why would you want to be completely happy as the destination? You'd be dead in a week because you actually need negative emotions and experiences to train you, to keep you vigilant, to keep you safe, and to be happy. Yeah, to keep you alert, to keep you on it. Yeah, yeah. I mean, maybe when I die

and I'm in heaven and I see the face of God, the beatific vision will be pure happiness. But on earth, I'm telling you, I need my negative emotions to keep me alive and safe. I need my negative experiences to learn and grow. And so that's what people, they want to stay alive and safe, but they don't want the feelings

that keep them alive and safe. And that's this conflict that they have, which is why they feel so unsettled. Okay, so I think, particularly in this world of social media, people think if I just get that, I mean, I see people toasting on private jets and I see them on beaches

and their hair blowing in the wind and all that. And people think, well, if I just had that, I could be happy. But we know you have the science to back it up, that there are really four pillars. And if you don't have all of those pillars working in your life, you will eventually end up feeling not necessarily sad, but lonely or distanced or disconnected. That's right. So the four pillars are. Yeah, the four pillars.

There's kind of the four pillars you think that you need and those four pillars that you really do need. The idols, the things that look right but aren't, are money, power, pleasure, and fame. Those are the things that Mother Nature says. You get those, you're going to be happy. Money, power, pleasure, and fame. That's right.

But she lies. Mother Nature lies. She lies a lot because she wants us to keep running, running, running, running, running, right? But is Mother Nature telling us that or is society telling us that? Because I think Mother Nature is telling us that it's the four pillars.

Well, Mother Nature gives us these imperatives because she wants us to be hungry, you know, and she wants us to survive and pass on our genes. Yes. And the way that you do that is with money, power, pleasure, and fame. And she doesn't want us to figure out that those things never really satisfy so that we'll keep running and running and running.

That's called the hedonic treadmill. What we really want, and this is backed up by a lot of psychology, neuroscience, behavioral economics, all the research that we want, is that there's kind of four things that are the virtuous things that we should be looking for. The mother nature doesn't necessarily tell us,

but that if we take the divine path in life, religious or not religiously understood, a better path in life, we'll be happy. And those are faith, family, friends, and work that serves. Now, if you give any teenage kid the choice between money, power, pleasure, and honor, or faith, family, good friends, and good times, and a work that serves others, I mean, what are they going to take? I mean, our society does aid and abet mother nature's lie. Because

the marketing colossus tells us that if you get that car, man, you're going to be really happy. If you get that job, you get that money. If you get that 100,000 Instagram followers or whatever your number happens to be, it's never high enough, by the way, you're going to be happy. But that's a lie is the bottom line. There's nothing wrong with those things. But if you get those things, if we are so lucky to get those things, they should only ever be in service of the big four, the good four. They should only ever be in service. They should be intermediate goals, a rest stop in the New Jersey turnpike, Manhattan, where you're trying to get, is faith. And by that- Yeah. How do you use that money, power, pleasure, and fame

to enhance your faith, family, and work? And friendship. And friendships. How do you do that? Basically, your love. Yes, your love. The love in your life and the love in the lives of the people around you that's really what those those worldly goals should be used for if you want to have any shot at true happiness yeah you just heard a clip from super soul a weekly podcast where oprah discovers ways to connect the deeper meaning of the world around you and you loved it right because it's oprah you don't need my endorsement op Oprah. You're Oprah. Make sure to listen to and follow Oprah's Super Soul wherever you get your podcasts.