The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett - Most Replayed Moment: Why You’re Never Satisfied! The 4 Pillars of Lasting Happiness

Episode Date: November 14, 2025

Arthur C. Brooks is a Harvard professor, social scientist, and bestselling author who studies the science of happiness, meaning, and human fulfilment. He advises leaders and high achievers on how to build lives rooted in purpose, satisfaction, and emotional wellbeing. In today's Moment, Arthur breaks down the four scalable areas of life to work on for lasting happiness. Learn the science behind long-term satisfaction, emotional resilience, and building meaning and purpose in a pleasure-driven world. Listen to the full episode here: Spotify: https://g2ul0.app.link/CEreSpaggYb Apple: https://g2ul0.app.link/PrjwL6cggYb Watch the Episodes On YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/%20TheDiaryOfACEO/videos Arthur C. Brooks: https://www.arthurbrooks.com/

A couple of weeks ago, we took all of our team here at the Dyer of a CO to New Yorker, thanks to all of you guys, and thanks to the fact that we'd hit 10 billion subscribers. So we went there to celebrate. And as we were sat in New Yorker talking about a variety of things, one of my team members referenced that they had put their house on Airbnb the day they had left to come to New Yorker to make some extra money. And as we talked through this, it became abundantly clear to me that this is a huge opportunity for all of my listeners.

When you go away, when your house is empty, you have the potential to make some extra money just by listing your house on Airbnb. And as you probably know, Airbnb are a sponsor of this podcast. And it shocks me that more people haven't considered this. Hosting your property on Airbnb when you go away is a no-brainer to me, especially if it's sat there doing nothing. And do you know what? I think that your home, sat there while you're away, might just be worth more than you think. And if you want to find out exactly how much it's worth, go to Airbnb.com.ca slash host. And you can find out how much you could be making while your home is sat empty and you're away on holiday so people in memory turn

pleasure into enjoyment to enjoy that's right so alcohol add people in memory you know the anheiser bush corporation doesn't put out advertisements of you know a dude alone in his apartment pounding a 12 pack that's how a lot of people use the product but that's everybody knows that's an irresponsible dangerous thing to do that can lead to alcoholism What they show is the same guy with his brothers and friends, you know, clink in bottles together, having a great time. That is pleasure, alcohol, plus people, plus memory equals enjoyment and at least happiness, because they want to join their brand to happiness, not just to pure pleasure and certainly not to addiction. Same with like Coca-Cola. All the Coca-Cola ads are like the World Cup with your friends and in summer with your friends.

Yeah, and that's actually less addictive. I mean, there are certain, you know, the sugar and caffeine are certainly addictive. They don't have the same properties of brain capture in the same way, for sure, because they don't, they don't stimulate as much dopamine as, you know, something like alcohol does. And so they're less likely to make you really addicted. But the whole point is that they're, it does give you a little bit of pleasure, but it makes you way happier if you get to enjoyment. And you only get that when you're doing it with people. Satisfaction. Satisfaction is the joy you get after struggle.

You're an entrepreneur. You understand this one really well. You're good at deferring your gratification. All entrepreneurs are good, successful entrepreneurs, are good at deferring gratification, which means I'm going to do this hard thing, and it's going to get big payoff, and that payoff is going to be sweet. That's satisfaction. A really funny thing about humans is that we need struggle and suffering for us to actually get the joy that we seek, and that's a really important part of our happiness.

So you find the people who are better at deferring their gratification, get more satisfaction, and they're happier. There's a lot of that. Remember, you've heard about the marshmallow experiment. Yeah. And people have debunked it, but they actually haven't. So the marshmallow experiment was taking place. It took place in the late 60s where Walter Michelle was a psychologist at Stanford out in Palo Alto. He had a little laboratory setup where he would come in and sit down on one side of a table.

And there was a kid on the other side of the table between four and eight years old. And in front of the kid was a marshmallow. And so he says to the kid, do you want the marshmallow? The kid's like, yeah. He says, I'll tell you what, I have to go take a phone call in the back here. But when I come back, if the marshmallow is still there, I'll give you another one. Can you wait? Every kid's like, yeah, totally, totally worth it.

He comes back five minutes later or so. 80% of the kids had eaten the marshmallow. 20% of the kids hadn't. Now, that's a lot. 80% of the kids could not defer the gratification. So the real question is, who's the 20%? It's Steve Bartlett. These are the people that went on to do distinguished things.

They did better in school. They got better grades. they went on to have more job success, they had better relationships. That's what they found, that the most successful kids. Now, what people fight about now is why, whether it's nature or nurture, it's probably 50-50. Like everything else in life, it's both nature and nurture. But the bigger point is good things come to those who wait. And when you wait, you suffer and you need that suffering as part of the basic satisfying experience.

Now, the bigger problem with satisfaction is that Mother Nature has a big lot of, at the end of it. Mother Nature says, if you get it, you're going to love it forever. And that's not true. See, the brain, the brain works emotionally and physically in an environment of homeostasis. Homostasis means that you always return to your baseline, physiologically and emotionally, because you can't stay in an unusual physiological state. Unusual states are a reaction. You need to be ready to react. And so, you know, you, step off the treadmill, your heart is elevated, your heart goes back to where it was so you're not dead in a week. The same thing is true for you emotionally. Something really good or bad happens to you. You think it's going to last forever so that you have an incentive to avoid or approach the thing, but it doesn't last forever, does it? That's the problem. We actually think that if I get that billion dollars, it's going to be really great. And the first thing that somebody who has a billion dollars says to her himself is, I guess I needed another billion because of homeostasis.

And that puts you on something called the hedonic treadmill, more, more, more, more, more, more, more, more, more. So that's the great conundrum of the striver is that there's never enough, never enough, never enough. I deal with people all day long. I really specialize in people who are incredibly successful, but not happy. And a lot of what I do is explain one simple equation that both explains, that but also gives you the solution, which is that your satisfaction doesn't come from all the things that you have. So have more is not the right strategy. Satisfaction is all the things you have divided by the things that you want, halves divided by wants. Successful people need to manage their wants even more than they need to manage their halves. They need to want less. And that's a whole

kettle of fish, that's spirituality, that's discipline, that's fitness, that's diet. That's a whole lot of things that go into that. And that will help you actually get enduring satisfaction. Sounds like a contradiction, though, doesn't it? It sounds like a contradiction that the striving and the struggle is going to make me happy, but I should want less. Yeah. What people actually who crack this code, and a lot of Eastern traditions actually get into this,

is not that striving is bad, but that striving in itself has a reward to it. that the process and what you find out along the way is that what you wanted was not a rival. What you wanted was progress. And then you start to get the reward from the progress itself. There's a funny thing in the research on dieting. We all know that it's the most expensive unsuccessful industry in the world, right? 95% of diets fail, which means within a year people have gained back all the weight that they've lost. But they're successful insofar as that almost everybody loses weight when they go on a diet.

Here's the thing about diets. every day you're willing to forego the food you like in exchange for the reward which is the scale going down when you hit your goal it's going to be so great it's going to be so great you know what the reward is day you never again get to eat the things that you like for the rest of your life congratulations once you've got there that's why you fail and the arrival fallacy which is an identifiable phenomenon in my field is that it's going to be sweet when I get to the goal it isn't

where you're going to have is homeostasis when you get to your goal frustration and disappointment. Therefore, you need to want less, you need to think about less, about wanting these arrival experiences and get more satisfaction from the progress, from the journey. That's really what it comes down to. And people who crack that code over the course of self-discipline, self-understanding, self-management, they can actually experience remarkably higher satisfaction. The Dalai Lama, I've been working with the Dalai Lama closely for the past 11 years. And I asked him this question, how can I get lasting satisfaction? And he said, you need to want what you have, not to have what you want. And that's what it comes down to.

It's the management of my wants, not my haves. On that point, we're at the time of year now where so many people are thinking about diets. You mentioned that there. So for those people that are approaching that moment, they're going to be setting their goals and stuff and all those kinds of things. What is a better goal to set, if not a weight number or a financial number or whatever? What's a better, more realistic goal to set that has more chance of success? Yeah. It's interesting because there are certain things that we can accumulate that won't homeostatically return us to the baseline,

that won't throw us onto this hedonic treadmill over and over again. Those goals are the goals that actually do lead to the happiest life, and the more you have, the better off you are. where more actually is better, but they don't fall into the categories of money, power, pleasure, and fame, which are the typical kind of goals that we get, or related goals like weight loss or, you know, whatever it happens to be. The four goals that really matter are faith, family, friendship, and work that serves others. Those are the four really great and transcendent goals that we can have. Now, there's nothing wrong with money or power or pleasure

or fame. There's nothing wrong with those things, but only as intermediate goals to make it easier for us to pursue and accumulate deeper faith or philosophical life. I'm not talking about traditional religious faith necessarily. Better family relationships, which are very mystical, poorly understood, even in neuroscience in a lot of ways. Friendship, deep friendship. It's hard for a lot of people, especially successful people. And work where you earn your success and serve other people.

That's what it comes down to. So those are the right New Year's goals that we need. You know, this year, what am I going to do? how am I going to grow closer to the divine? How am I going to do that? This year, what am I going to do to draw closer to my family and to have a more intimate relationship with my family? How am I going to have deeper friendships this year?

And how am I going to take my work and find it more meaningful and satisfying on the basis of serving other people? How am I going to do that? We haven't gotten to meaning yet. Yeah, we haven't got to meaning yet. You said the word there, but I want to make sure I close off on this point

about a better goal because there's still going to be a huge group of people I go, listen, I get it, love it, I believe it. Yeah, but I hate this belly fat. Yeah, I got it. And this belly fat yo-yoes every year. So I get it. So those are intermediate goals.

And there's nothing wrong with those things. The problem is where they become satisfying and self-destructive is when that's the final goal. Because by the time you get there, you think, why? Why? That wasn't as meaningful as I thought. That wasn't as good as I thought. That's the arrival fallacy that when I actually get rid of the belly fat, then I'm actually going to have somehow a more wonderful life.

That's actually not true. The reason that you're doing that is because you want to live longer with your spouse and see your and dandel your 11 grandchildren on your knee. That's the reason you want to do this because you need to do it for some intrinsic reason, as opposed to an extrinsic reason having to do with people will love me more. I mean, it's amazing to me because I do a lot of wellness and fitness and stuff as it interacts with happiness. I work with a lot of people who are very big in the longevity community because I have sort of the happiness console, the science of the happiness console that I put into those things. And so I meet a lot of people that are really

to the fitness part. And what a lot of guys will tell me is that they'll have these fitness goals. Like, I'm going to put on 15 pounds of muscle this year and I'm going to get rid of all my belly fat and the whole thing. And if they stick to it by September or October where they're defining is that they're not getting any more attention or compliments from women. But a lot of dudes are going, looking good, dude. And they're like, that's not what I wanted. And part of the reason is is because the arrival fallacy is you build up this image of what will actually come from the satisfaction that will come from hitting these intermediate goals these aren't the right final goals you got to have the right final goals and then set some intermediate goals along the way but not

let's not kid ourselves and when you think carefully about that that losing your last five pounds of belly fat so you can see your lower abs which by the way is not necessarily that healthy is going to materially improve your life and your relationships. It's not. It just isn't. What's the better end goal then as it relates to fitness? Would it be something more centered on health? Yeah, it is. It's something that's actually sustainable in having you do with health. Also with happiness is the way that this works. So I work out 60 minutes a day. It's not because I'm vain. Look, I've got a face for radio, Steve. I mean, it's like, I don't know what you're talking about. Yeah, I know, but age adjusted, I look good. I think you look good, period. I'm not, you know,

I've got a girlfriend, but credit where credits you. Thank you, Steve. I appreciate that. But you made my week. See, this was my goal. Yeah. The reason that I do this is because I find that for me, that working out as much as I can is much harder than working out every day.

Working out every day is much easier than working out as often as I can. Right? Yeah. And practicing my religion every day is much easier than practicing my religion when it comes naturally to me or when I find it convenient. Eating healthfully is much easier when I do it every day. And so the result of that is that I find that with those particular routines, I program those things into my life. And I'm a much happier guy. Look, it lowers my cortisol levels, which are naturally very high. I'm a very anxious person. And I understand

anxiety. I understand the cortisol production. I understand how to manage it. And this is one of my management techniques. Thing about fitness to understand is when I say it makes you happier, it actually doesn't. It lowers your unhappiness. happiness and unhappiness, largely the experiences of happiness and unhappiness, which is to say positive and negative affect, they're produced in different parts of the limbic system. So you can both be very high happiness and very high unhappiness. I have tests for that that I put my students through. You're probably somebody who experiences both very high positive affect and very high negative effect. We've only met, but my guess is that you're a mad scientist. That's the profile. And so what means is you've got two strategies. You want to keep your positive affect high and you want to manage your negative affect. And one of the best ways to manage your negative affect is physical exercise, vigorous physical exercise. Today, today for me was leg day. I hate leg day, but I feel pretty good right now. Okay, that makes sense. I've got an answer there that I'm super clear on. I should be

aiming at the end goal of happiness ultimately, even if the intermediary goals are things like belly fat and these short-term things, that are measurements of my progress towards the bigger goal. And the real key here is consistency. This was the big unlock for my whole fitness thing, because I was that person, which will be 90% of people listening now, that made the goal every year that I was going to go to, you know, change my life every year. Never worked. Because I was aiming at getting a six-pack for summer. So when I arrived with the six-pack, and it worked. It was great. I looked great. I got, I actually got, I think I got a couple of compliments, which was nice.

However, the minute summer finished or the six-pack arrived, I could not find for the life of me the motivation. So I'd go into winter and I'd become like a willpower. You cannot muscle these things out unless they become a part of your life. Consistency, making my goal consistency. Habits.

Habits. Was the big luck for me. For sure. Because then, okay, the goal becomes, if I go to the gym every day, if I make that part of my habits, I'm going to be healthier, happier, better at my job. Is there anything more important?

Is that less important than a six-pack? And that mindset shift changed my life. For sure. Meaning then. Meaning was the last of the three. Yeah. Meaning is the why of your life. This is the hardest for most people, especially young adults.

This is really, really hard. So meaning is really a combination of three things. It's coherence, purpose, and significance. Coherence is things happen for a reason. And so meaning in your life means you've got to have a theory about why things happen. Like, it's one damn thing after another. I mean, you've got to have some concept of why things happen. Purpose is my life has direction and has goals.

That's what purpose really is. I'm going in this direction toward these things without getting stuck on the arrival fallacy. And the last but not least is significance, which is it would matter if I weren't here. I'm significant. Those are the three parts of meaning in people's lives. According to philosophers and social psychologists. So there's a test that I give my students that kind of encompass these. these three ideas, so you can remember them, into two questions. And you have a meaning crisis

if you actually don't have answers to these questions that you believe. And there's no right answers. She's got to have your answers. You want to play? Yeah. Here's the quiz. Question number one, why are you alive? You can answer that in terms of who created you or what you're on earth to do or both. Okay, so why am I alive? That's something that I get to answer every single day. I get to define that by what I chose to do this morning when I woke up. What was it? I went to the gym. I was on the running machine because I know I've got to, I'm not going to be able to today. And then I came here and had this conversation with you. Yeah. But why are you, why are you doing this conversation with me, Steve? The Ikigai theory comes to mind when you

ask that, which is, it's incredibly selfish. I learned a tremendous amount already just from this conversation. And I know that it pays, pays it forward to other people who are going to learn from it as well and that makes it feel worthwhile so you said two things fun and service yeah right which is more important to you transcendently which is more important to you it's the service part yeah okay good that gives me all my that gives me all my worth right the more you focus on that the better it gets now we uncovered that so now thinking about that you put the order of operations into the podcast to say does it serve is that guest going to serve is this question going to serve is this show going to serve? Is this sponsor going to serve the people who are watching this podcast? Then

suddenly, meaning starts to go, it starts to really spread out of the soil. Because we got to that. If it's like, is it fun? Yeah, good. So look, my whole have a company that rides alongside what I do academically. And everybody that works with me, we have an order of operations. And the order of operations are these are the four goals, but they have to be in this order. You just told me the order of operations is serve other people and have fun for your work. That's what you basically said. It's probably more like lift people up and have an adventure. That's probably an intellectual adventure, right? But the order of operations has to be right. If you're having fun more than you're serving other people, you're not going to find your sense of meaning based on that first question.

So you see where we're going with that, right? So the second question is harder. For what are you willing to die today? There's a couple of people in my life that I'd die for. I'd die for my romantic partner. I'd die for my brothers and sisters, any of them. Interestingly, I don't know if I die for my parents, which is interesting. Would you die for an idea? Do you die for your country? I would die.

When you say for my country, do you mean to save the country? I don't know. I mean, if you were called to, even if it were ridiculous, even if you thought it were ridiculous, would you die because you love your country it depends what you mean by that what's the cost if I die what's the cost if I stay alive

no I know and I and it's everything is context specific to a certain extent but really what I'm from trying to see is what's your what's your kind of reaction is to this you know to see what the there are good things in there you are willing to die for your girlfriend yeah I'm willing to die for your brothers and sisters

yeah mom and dad that's like the jury's kind of it's your mom listen to this podcast. They do, but I'm just being honest because I think, I think, I don't know why I said that, but I just, I don't know for sure. This is good. This is really important. This is worth thinking about right now. The worst answer is, I don't know, or nothing. Those are the worst answers. And that doesn't mean that's a problem. On the contrary, it's a huge opportunity, huge entrepreneurial opportunity to realize you don't have answers to these questions because you don't have to go to, you know, get your PhD in philosophy. You don't have to sit at the,

mouth of the cave with a guru someplace in the Himalayas. You need to look for your answers to these questions. That's it. That's the quest. That's the vision quest. And when you see somebody find these things, like a lot of young adults have, they're nowhere near you where you are on your journey. You're solid, Steve. I mean, this is good stuff. But I meet a lot of people like, why am I alive? Because a egg met a sperm. Really? Yeah. And what are you willing to die for? Nothing really. Or I don't know, right? A lot of people, and then they uncover that they don't have a why is what it comes down to. Repeat the questions again. Why are you alive and for what are you willing to die this very day? There's no wrong answers. What you just listened to was a most replayed

moment from a previous episode. If you want to listen to that full episode, I've linked it down below. Check the description. Thank you. A couple of weeks ago, we took all of our team here at the Dyer of a CO to Mioka, thanks to all of you guys, and thanks to the fact that we had hit 10 billion subscribers. So we went there to celebrate. And as we were sat in New Yorker talking about a variety of things, one of my team members referenced that they had put their house on Airbnb the day they had left to come to New Yorker to make some extra money.

And as we talked through this, it became abundantly clear to me that this is a huge opportunity for all of my listeners. When you go away, when your house is empty, you have the potential to make some extra money just by listing your house on Airbnb. And as you probably know, Airbnb are a sponsor of this podcast. And it shocks me that more people haven't considered this. Hosting your property on Airbnb when you go away is a no-brainer to me, especially if it's sat there doing nothing. And you know what? I think that your home, sat there while you're away, might just be worth more than you think. And if you want to find out

exactly how much it's worth, go to Airbnb.c.ca slash host. And you can find out how much you could be making while your home is sat empty and you're away on holiday.