The Happiness Lab with Dr. Laurie Santos - Build The Life You Want from Oprah's Super Soul

Episode Date: December 15, 2023

Enjoy this episode of another show you might like: the Build the Life You Want Super Soul Podcast. Oprah and Arthur Brooks offer listeners a better understanding of the science behind happiness and why Arthur says, “Happiness is not a destination, happiness is a direction.” Together, they take questions from people across the country who have read Build the Life You Want and are curious how to apply topics from the book to their own lives. They discuss the “The Four Pillars of Happiness: Faith, Family, Friends and Work that Serves” as well as the power of metacognition which Oprah calls “one of the biggest contributions to people getting happier.” Arthur Brooks explains how using “emotional caffeine” can lead to greater happiness and how having “a better storage of emotions” can block anxiety and depression.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Pushkin. dollar you donate count this holiday season, the Happiness Lab has teamed up with GiveDirectly.org. If we all pull together, we can make a huge difference to one African village in 2024. Kabobo, I think, is a great place if people want somewhere to support. People there are living in really desperate situations. They lack almost everything. Rory Stewart from GiveDirectly.org says money from Happiness Lab listeners will go directly to the people of Kobo in Rwanda, who'll be left to decide on their own how to best spend it to improve their lives. Getting a little bit of cash is what will allow you to fix your house, buy a cow which could provide milk for your family, get a relative who's ill to the local hospital. These things are genuinely life-transforming.

So if you can spare just a few bucks and want to join me and other fans of the show to help the folks in Kibobo, then go to this website, givedirectly.org slash happiness. That's givedirectly.org slash happiness. Just a few dollars can make a huge difference. Happy giving. Hey, Happiness Lab listeners. Today, we're bringing you an extra special treat. It's an episode from another podcast that I think you'll like a lot.

It's the new Build the Life You Want series from Oprah's Super Soul. In the series, Oprah and Harvard professor Arthur Brooks offer listeners a better understanding of the science behind happiness, which is something that we constantly aim for on our show. Check out the episode because you'll walk away with tips on how to make your own lives happier. You can also listen to the Build the Life You Want series on Oprah's Super Soul, wherever you get your podcasts. Now, here's the episode. Thanks to the Hartford for supporting this special bonus episode of Super Soul.

So, Arthur Brooks, Arthur, welcome back. Thank you. It all started right here. It did. During the pandemic, I came across a column in The Atlantic magazine and noticed that I started to look forward to reading it every week. It's called How to Build a Life by Arthur Brooks. I knew I had to meet the man who wrote such insightful advice.

So Arthur Brooks, it is my great pleasure to meet you. I am such a huge fan of yours. Arthur Brooks is a world renowned social scientist. Happiness is really a combination of three things, enjoyment, satisfaction, and meaning. The author of many books, including the number one New York Times bestseller, From Strength to Strength. I'm a big fan of your How to Build a Life column

in The Atlantic. I find myself sharing it with my kids all the time. And a professor at Harvard Business School whose course on happiness is so popular, there's always a long wait list. Thought about it, and I thought, it's not about them, it's not about Harvard. This is about everybody who needs the science of happiness. The whole world's on the waiting list for this class.

This year, Professor Brooks and I teamed up to co-write a book we call Build the Life You Want, The Art and Science of Getting Happier. And I am very happy to say it debuted at the top of the New York Times bestseller list. We cooked up the whole book here in this room. It's really, it's incredibly gratifying. And isn't it gratifying also?

I mean, I was really excited to hit number one on the New York Times bestsellers. I mean, one of the reasons why it's so gratifying is because, first of all, number one is always gratifying. It's a nice number. It's a nice number. It has a nice ring to it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I love that. But it also means that the work that we conceived in this room was well received. Right.

Yeah. You remember we talked about it. We discussed not what's going to be in the book, but the why of the book. The why. This was the big thing that we did here. We said, okay, what's the point? What are we trying to do? And it was lift people up and bring them together with science and ideas.

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 going to say, you don't just teach there, you are actually a scientist. Yeah, so I 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 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. You know, 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.

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 students are saying it. Yeah, we need a t-shirt. Before we dive into the book, let's talk about your own journey though, because people wanna 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 talk to the people I love about it, it was very clear my mind, the mission of my life is to lift people up and bring them together in ideas of love and happiness using this 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 called, that we now call happier-ness 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.

There's, 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. 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 option. 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, when, and a couple

of things were happening. So, 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 compare themselves to other 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. It's when you're super hungry and it's like, oh man, I haven't eaten in 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 call it an X.

I don't know what you do. 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. That's a problem.

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 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 you know, this is the problem with happiness is such a funny thing because we all want it. Every philosopher and theologian has talked about it.

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 the 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, and as a destination, what would you, 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, 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. beaches and you know hair their hair blowing in the wind and all that and people think well if i just had that i 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 there's 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, right? And she doesn't want us to figure and pass on our genes. Yes. And the way that you do that is with money, power, pleasure, and fame, right?

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. You like that. 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 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, 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? Yeah. Right?

I mean, our society does aid and abet Mother Nature's lie. Yeah. Because, you know, 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 gonna 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 gonna be happy. But that's a lie is the bottom line.

There's nothing wrong with those things. Yeah. 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, faith. And by that, yeah. Yeah, how do you use that money, power, pleasure, and fame to enhance your faith, family, and work? And friendship. And friendships. Basically your love. Yes, your love. The love in your life. Yeah.

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 i know we have a lot of questions uh from our readers readers people who have already read the book i'm so excited about that yeah yeah okay eric from denver hello hi i'm eric and i learned from this book that you can't be happy, but you can be happier. And that really resonated with me because it makes happiness feel like a thing I can incrementally work towards every day versus this big place to arrive.

My question is for you, Oprah. I'm wondering how, as you've gotten older, your approach to getting happier has changed. Thank you for noticing that I've gotten older, your approach to getting happier has changed? Thank you for noticing that I've gotten older, Eric. Thank you. I think that's actually, I like that question, Eric, because as I've gotten older, and one of the reasons why I was so excited about working with Arthur here is because, Arthur, you confirmed my belief system. So I have known since I was a kid that life is better when you share it. And I learned that with my first Three Musketeers bar

because growing up poor, I so seldom got candy. I would save it until, like, cousins came by because it tasted better when I would save it until like cousins came by. So, cause it tasted better when I could share it. And now I know Eric, that that is one of the principles of enjoyment, which is what actually defines happiness, enjoyment, satisfaction, and purpose. And so being able, so, so to answer your question, I would say that now that I know that the science actually backs me up on life is better when you share it, I want to share it more. So it used to be I would just love doing a random act of kindness or doing something meaningful for somebody that would help them in their lives or enhance their lives. Now I make it a habit. It's a part of my spiritual practice

to include the enjoyment for myself of making other people happier. So I would say, as I've gotten older, that's what I've actually learned about how to enjoy happiness, not just for myself, but how to spread it to other people. So one of the things we talk about in the book is how enjoyment and satisfaction and purpose are the macronutrients of happiness. So let's talk about enjoyment first and the difference between pleasure and enjoyment. Yeah, this is a big mistake that a lot of people make. I mean, one of the things that we do in the book is we disabuse people of mistaken notions of happiness. So happiness is not a feeling. Happiness is not a destination. It's a direction toward happierness,

et cetera. And another one has to do with this idea that I'm going to be happy if I can just hit the pleasure lever over and over and over again. Yes. Here's some words that have never been uttered. I'm really happy because of methamphetamine. Nobody's ever said that. That is not what people say. And the reason is because if you use illicit drugs and drugs of abuse, you're going to hit the pleasure level. It's going to feel good, but it's not going to make you happy. It's going to lead to addiction.

It's going to lead to a super physiological level of dopamine in your brain. And all that does is gives you a tiny little reward and then goes away a tiny little reward and it goes away that's why you have to keep getting more and more and more and it doesn't yeah and then what happens is because that becomes an incredibly isolated thing and that's regardless if it's methamphetamine or if it's your work or if it's shopping or if it's whatever it is that's just giving you pleasure for sure i mean that can be gambling that can be that can be you know eating that can be gambling, that can be eating, that can be all kinds of things. Whatever your thing

is. And here's how you know if it's a problem. If you're hitting the pleasure lever over and over and over again and you're alone, then you know there's a problem. That's what it is. And that actually, inside the diagnosis, there is the solution. That's why

Anheuser-Busch doesn't have a beer commercial of a guy alone in his apartment pounding a 12-pack. That's why that's not the ad. That's because that doesn't lead to happiness. That leads to problems. Because doesn't that look sad and pitiful? Yeah, yeah, for sure. No, what they have is a guy with his buddies making a memory.

The guy with his friends or his family making a memory. And therein lies the answer to this. It's not that you gotta... Lots of advertising does that. Totally. That's what all the beer commercials do. Because they want you to be happier when you use their product. And the reason is they want you to have enjoyment, not just pleasure. Now, a lot of

the problems that we have in kind of a puritanical culture about this would say that the solution is, if you're hitting the pleasure lever repeatedly by yourself, get rid of the pleasure lever. But that's not necessarily the solution. Because pleasure has its pleasures. Totally. Yeah.

You need to add two things. Yeah. You need to add... In order to have enjoyment. Exactly. Okay. You have to... The source of pleasure plus people that you love plus memories.

Yes. Now, what you're doing is you're moving the experience of the pleasure from the limbic system of your brain, which is deep down is evolved over a 40 million year period. All it is is sending signals to you about how to survive. I have the perfect example of this. So all my life from the moment I was working in Baltimore, making $22,000 a year, my first vacation I spent on going to a spa. So I love spa-ing. So I've been to many spas by myself where, you know, massages,

the whole pedicure, manicure, the whole thing, walking around in Europe. And this past April, I went spa-ing. I did a thing that when the first spa I went to, there was a very wealthy woman there. I remember Ann Getty, I think was her name. And she was there with all of her friends. And I thought, wow, what would that be like to have enough money to go with all of your friends?

It looked more fun. It looked certainly more fun than me walking around alone in my bathroom. And this past April, I did that with dear friends. And it's the most fun I ever had at a spa. Because you took the pleasure. Yeah, I took the pleasure. You added the people. You made the memories.

And we made the memories. That's exactly right. That's enjoyment. Now, that means you don't have to forego the sources of pleasure. You have to add the people and the memory. Now, you got to take this. People plus memory makes it enjoyment. Pleasure plus people plus memory. Now you can mess this up, right?

You can have all your friends can be drunks. And then you can kind of go into a cycle like that. A lot of people, you know, I drink too much and he drinks too much and we all drink too much and we all get really drunk together. So, I mean, obviously there are exceptions to this, but that's the basic rule of thumb. You don't have to do less, you have to add more. This is not a subtractive formula, this is an additive formula.

Almost everything in the science of happiness is additive. You've got to add more ingredients to make it good. So I think this is so great. So this is an easy formula. Whatever it is you take pleasure in, find a way to add other people into that pleasure and it becomes more enjoyable. When you make memories.

And you're making memories, babe. That's right. And so, you know, I'm not saying don't go to Vegas. Just don't go alone. 4 o'clock in the morning, go and buy yourself. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Go with your buddies. Go with your spouse.

Go with your friends. And by the way, if you're being compulsive, they're going to say, dude, really? Can you afford that? And you're gonna wanna have more fun with the company as opposed to compulsively pulling the lever again and again and again to get that little spritzer of dopamine onto the nucleus accumbens of your brain,

giving you that little relief and that just goes away and you're still by yourself. So enjoyment is one of the components. And in order to enjoy, you've got to add other people and make it more conscious. Exactly right. OK. Monica, what's your question from Michigan?

Hi, my name is Monica. And when you talked about the difference between pleasure and enjoyment in the book, that really struck me. And I realized that I tend to seek pleasure to cope with disappointment or sadness or anger. So I would love to hear some examples from both of you, Arthur and Oprah, around how to disrupt that pattern when, as you say, pleasure is easy and enjoyment is hard. That's good. Disruption, right? I mean, the whole idea is you get it.

She knows. I mean, by the way, the first, she's good. Yeah. That's good. Disruption, right? I mean, the whole idea is you get it. She knows, I mean, by the way, the first, if she's good, Monica's good because Monica realized she already has got knowledge about this. The basis of getting happier is knowledge. Yeah. You know, this is the thing. A lot of people are just like, I'm going to feel, let me feel something different. No, no, no, no, no, no. The Dalai Lama says, think more, feel less. Okay. Which is really important. So that's why we, you know, we wrote a book that has a lot of science in it because people need this particular knowledge. And she's really, really on her way. And she understands that there's a cycle

in hitting the lever to get the pleasure, hitting the lever to get the pleasure. You have to disrupt that cycle. That gets back to just what we were talking about before. You disrupt that cycle with love, with another person, with people that you care about. You add the person what disrupts that little relationship. When you talk to people who suffer from addiction,

one of the things that they always talk about is that the addiction was like my closest relationship. You know, it was like my... They were consumed by it. Yeah, for sure. It was my lover. It was my best friend. And I wanted to go away with my best friend,

which was booze or whatever it happened to be, gambling. I wanted to go away with them. You disrupt that by adding a real living human being. That's how you disrupt the cycles at a person you love. And also accepting unhappiness. You say without unhappiness, you wouldn't survive, learn or come up with good ideas. Even if you could get rid of your unhappiness, you wouldn't survive, learn, or come up with good ideas. Even if you could get rid of your unhappiness, it would be a huge mistake.

The secret to the best life is to accept your unhappiness so you can learn and grow and manage the feelings that result. I think that's hard for people because what does that mean to accept the unhappiness? When you say accept, it often feels like, so I'm just supposed to do nothing. I'm just supposed to accept it. I'm supposed to like do nothing. I'm just supposed to accept it. I'm supposed to surrender to it. I'm unhappy. Yeah, no, that's not the idea. The truth is that you need to accept it as normal.

And this is a big part of our culture today is that we think that if we feel unhappiness or pain, there's something wrong with us. That there's evidence that something's broken if you feel unhappy. You know, if you're in college, you go to campus counseling and say, I'm really feeling anxious, and I'm really feeling depressed. And, you know, my university is a really hard university. If you're not anxious, when you're at Harvard University,

that's the problem. That means you're not working hard enough. Maybe that's when you need therapy, quite frankly. You know, and I talked to young people, they say, I was feeling really anxious about my studies. Of course like, of course you are. That's a normal thing. That's the acceptance. The acceptance of the fact that you have feelings, including negative feelings, and you'd be dead if you didn't.

That's the acceptance. Because who's walking around at Harvard not feeling anxious, right? Totally, totally. I mean, by the way, including the faculty. Yeah. Yeah. It's like my students, they don't quite figure out that I'm like freaking out too.

Jean from Atlanta has a question about regret. Jean. Hi, Oprah. Hi, Arthur. I'm Jean. Build the life you want has been the gift that I didn't even know that I needed. On page 20, when I read that people who do not regret tend to make the same mistake over and over again, I thought, that's me.

When I was 18 years old, I failed an exam that would enable me to get into the university. And my dad said, no crying, move forward. And I didn't. Now my question is, how do I today begin to use regret as a tool when my African upbringing has dictated that I move forward and get on with it. I love that.

It's a great question. That is great. It really is good because that's a lot of advice that we give our children. You know, it's like, suck it up, buttercup. Suck it up, yep. You know, and like move on, move on, move on. Now there's like a kernel of, I mean, good for her father because what he was really telling her was not forget about everything that happened.

What he was telling her was don't ruminate on it. Don't go over it again and again and again and have it create a constant source of sadness in your life. On the contrary, you got to keep moving and that's true. But here's the thing, rumination is not the same thing as understanding. When something bad happens to you, you benefit from it tremendously if you analyze it like a scientist. So that's one of the reasons that I tell my students, they keep a failure

journal. They give a disappointment journal. We talk about it in the book, absolutely. We talk about how you can do it. When something bad happens to you, write it down and think about it. Don't ruminate on it. Don't have it be kind of a ghost, you know, around haunting the limbic system of your emotions. No, no, no. Use it as an opportunity to think about what actually happened. And when you do that, by the way, when you think about it as if you were analyzing a problem that somebody else had, this is something we talk a lot about in the book, then you will learn and grow.

So the point is, don't ruminate, understand. That's the way that you can actually use the information, take the time to understand these things appropriately and learn and grow. The second micro nutrient of happiness, satisfaction, is that thrill from accomplishing a goal you work for is what you say. Why is satisfaction also the key to getting happier?

We're made to make progress. Human beings are made to make progress. We're, you know, we, we, we want to achieve. The funny thing is that people always think when I get to my goal, then I'm going to be finally happy. But that's just incredible fallacy. That's called the arrival fallacy. You know, like you and I are doing high fives because the book hit number one in the New York Times bestseller list. But if we're like, okay, now Oprah and Arthur are gonna be happy forever. We're kidding ourselves. Next week, we're gonna be in doing a new project,

doing a new thing. That's the truth. The arrival fallacy is once I finally get the money, once I finally get the marriage, once I finally get the car, the house, the boat, then all will be well. The truth is that the greatest joy comes from the progress toward the accomplishment,

even in spite of the fact that it requires a lot of struggle Yeah, satisfaction is that moment that you hit it, which is a real moment of joy Now the paradox in that is it doesn't last and it can't last if you actually if you know That's why he couldn't get no satisfaction. Yeah, that's right. And the truth is you can't keep no satisfaction. That's the real problem I mean Mick Jagger had it almost right Jagger couldn't get no satisfaction that's right and the truth is if you couldn't get it you wouldn't keep trying and trying and trying like he sings the problem is you can't keep no satisfaction and that's what seems kind of like a bitter fruit with a satisfaction dilemma

you need to struggle if you don't struggle by the way there is no satisfaction if my students cheat on my exam and they get an a there's no satisfaction they do an all-nighter and they work really hard they get an a like yeah and you know how it feels i mean you and i were we worked hard on this book yeah i mean it was we it was a it was a quick job a real quick turn and we were yeah from the time that it yeah it's miraculous from the time yeah we decided i'm since you chapter like i don't, and you're like, I don't know. But then, boom, and it's satisfaction. Then the problem is thinking that once we arrive, it's going to be good forever.

And then having a little, the frustration that comes from the satisfaction is dispelled. And there's a way to round that. But once again, you've got to fight Mother Nature. Okay, so you need enjoyment, you need satisfaction and you also need purpose. Those are the macronutrients. Like the protein, carbohydrates and fat. Okay, so explain to people how the macronutrients fit into the pillars. Yeah, so the macronutrients are basically the elements that we find that you need in balance and abundance.

You can't just have a life of enjoyment, you also need satisfaction, you need goals, you need to struggle and you need meaning, which is the why, the essence of your life, you need those things. The happiest people have those three things and they work on them, they take them seriously and we spend tons of time about how to actually do that. This is why this is so great for you all and I mean you all meaning myself, because when we figured it out, I mean, that's the baseline.

You need enjoyment, you need satisfaction, and you need meaning and purpose. And let's talk about what meaning and purpose means, because I think people get all confused about the purpose. It's like, I don't know my purpose. I don't know my purpose. So those macronutrients are just like the macronutrients of food, the component parts of food. Then you got the dishes and the dinner which are the pillars that we'll talk about later. The things to actually be focusing on, the things that you're working on.

But the last macronutrient is meaning or purpose. Meaning is the essence of your life. You know, who am I? It's this whole finding yourself thing, right? Like I gotta find myself. People from the beginning of time is like, who am I? It's this whole finding yourself thing, right? Like I gotta find myself. And people from the beginning of time, it's like, who am I, right? And that's no joke.

That's a hard thing to do. I mean, some people believe that you could discover it because your essence precedes your existence. Yes. I mean, most religious people, you know, people raised in the Christian faith, like you and me, I mean, we believe that we're made in God's image and that's our essence and it precedes us, right?

Other people think that they can create their own essence. This is, you know, different philosophies believe that's a tricky one, right? Some people believe there is no essence. That's a real problem, right? But the truth of the matter is that to do that, and we talk about this in the book a little bit, that there's a quiz that you got to give yourself.

And you have to have real sincere answers to two questions. Now, if you don't have them, it means there's a crisis of meaning in your life. But that's a good thing to know that because then you have the opportunity to go in search of just the answers to just two questions. Yeah. Question number one, why are you alive?

Yes. And again, I can't tell you that. I mean, it's like you gotta have your own answer to that. Yes. Go in search of that answer. And the second, for what are you willing? Yes. And again, I can't tell you that. I mean, it's like you have your own answer to that. Yes. Go in search of that answer in the second. For what are you willing to die today? And and the answer probably shouldn't be nothing. Yeah. Right. There's got to be something.

And once you actually find the answers to those questions, it's extraordinary. Oprah, you know, when you see this, my you know, you know, a lot of my family, you know, my family and one my son you haven't met yet because he's still an active duty Marine. He's a scout sniper in the US Marine Corps. And he struggled in high school because meaning, you know? It's like he was goofing off and he wasn't even having fun. Because he's like, who am I? So I'm a business school professor.

I make my kids do a business plan when they're a junior in high school, you know, a business plan, because the enterprise of life, right? And they're entrepreneurs, I'm VC, I'm venture capital, so I deserve a business plan. I realize it's pretty nerdy, but there you go. I like it. Yeah, and so they, and if it's not original, I send it back for revisions. This is my son Carlos, he's a good boy.

And Carlos, like his business plans, I don't know, I don't believe it. So I say, you need to find the answers to these questions. How are you gonna find the answers to these questions? So in his business plan, he says, I'm not going to college, which is fine. I didn't either until I was 30. You know, it took me a long time to get through college too. I wasn't ready.

He went to work on a farm. He spent two years on a dry land wheat farm in Idaho. Then he joined the Marines. And he's 23 now, he's married. He's got it going on. And he's got answers to those two questions. And I asked him, Carlos, why were you born? Why are you alive? He said, because God made me to serve. For what are you willing to die today? He says, for my family, for my faith, for my friends, and for the United States of America. for my faith, for my friends, and for the United States of America.

Boom. Boom. And, you know, that's not everybody's answers who are watching us. Yeah. But that boy's got answers. At 23. At 23. And his life is different than it was.

His life has meaning. It's beautiful. As a father, I couldn't be prouder. I couldn't be prouder of the enterprise that he's building of his life. Because, you know, he's becoming a good man. Yes, yes, yes, yes. I love that. You're the venture capitalist in bringing the plan.

All right. Business school. Okay. Chapter two is entitled The Power of Metacognition. Yeah. And what I call feel the feel and then take the will. Explain metacognition. I think this is just one of the biggest, biggest, biggest contributions to people getting happier in their lives once you get the metacognition.

It's changed my life. Yeah. It's just changed my life. And part of the reason is because people go through life relatively unexamined in their emotions and just hoping that their emotions will get better and with a complete inability to separate their own essence from their emotions and that's a crazy thing to do you're not your emotions look i'm not my hand you know if it's

it's i'm not my but my hand is not completely independent it was like it's like one of those horror movies but that's how people are with their emotions where their emotions are controlling them metacognition is thinking about thinking it's it's the ability to look at your own self with a certain intellectual remove at a distance it's putting distance between your feelings and your reactions and doing it on purpose when you have that ability your life isn't going to be the same it just isn't because you're not going to wonder like, is something bad going to happen to me tomorrow? By the way, answer yes. Am I going to feel bad about it? I'm going to decide how I'm going to work on this. I'm going to decide my reactions. I'm going to substitute emotions that are more appropriate for what I'm doing. Now, you have emotions for a reason. You're not going to block them out. But once you have

metacognitive skill, where you can put space between the emotions that are simply signals from your brain about what's going on around you, and- The emotions are there to tell you that something's off, and you need to do something about it. It's just information. It's just information.

Your emotions are just information. That's all they are. You can get that. And if you can separate yourself from the thing that you're feeling, feel the feeling and then take control. Exactly right. And the way that you do that is by putting space

between the emotions and your reactions. Tell us how to do that. So you do that by studying yourself. Now, the parts- No, don't you do that also by observing the feeling exactly as though it were happening to somebody else. That's how you identify what this feeling is. You say, Oh, gosh, I'm feeling so sad right now. I'm feeling so put upon. I'm feeling so betrayed, whatever it is, right. But you separate the

feeling from yourself. You're observing all those feelings inside your body, right? So that you see that the feeling is really different from you. You're in control of the feeling. Exactly. And you're able to react in an appropriate way. I mean, we're so maladapted to the way that our feelings occur to us. I mean, I talk to people all the time where, once again, back to social media, I got a bad tweet.

And what did it do? It raised your stress hormones or threw the roof. You've got butterflies in your stomach and the whole thing. The reason for that is because nature wants you to run away from a saber-toothed tiger by injecting stress hormones into your system when you think there's a threat. Or you don't want to wander the frozen tundra and die alone. But folks, look around, no tundra. Twitter is not tundra.

And so the result is metacognition is very important so that we can react... But we make it feel like it is. For sure. And if you don't have an examined life, then you're not going to be able to make those distinctions. And so you can actually laugh at yourself. When you're actually observing your own emotions at a certain remove, as if they were happening to another person, and you see yourself freaking out because of a tweet, you will start laughing.

You'll be like, really, Arthur? Really? Really, yes. It's like you're a grown man, you have be like, really, Arthur? Really? Really, yes. You're really, I mean, it's like you're a grown man. You have a PhD or social scientist. You're supposed to know all this stuff. And somebody said a mean thing to you on Twitter and you're acting as if, you know, an ax murderer is chasing you. Come on, man.

And it's just funny and life gets better. And that's what metacognition can do for all of us if we have the right techniques. Okay, so let's explain the emotional caffeine metaphor you mentioned on page 70. Right. We all love this the first time we heard it. Tell us about it. So emotional caffeine, this is just a metaphor.

Most people, something like 95% of Americans use caffeine on a regular basis. I'm crazy about coffee. I grew up next to the first Starbucks in the world. In the 1970s, there was one Starbucks. My house was near it. I've been drinking. In Seattle? Yeah. I grew up in Seattle in the Queen Anne neighborhood. And we used to walk down to Pike Place Market. That was the first one.

Yeah, the first one. Yeah. I've talked to Howard Schultz about this. He thinks it's quite charming. But I've been drinking caffeine. I mean, taking caffeine regularly since I was seventh grade, which means I have the most enervated adrenal system. I mean, who knows? I mean, taking caffeine regularly since I was in seventh grade, which means I have the most enervated adrenal system. I mean, who knows? I mean, the autopsy is going to be a fun time. Anyway, but what happens with your brain is you think it peps you up because it gives you all this energy. It's not.

What it does is it blocks another neurotransmitter called adenosine. Adenosine is a neurotransmitter that's floating around your brain that goes into these certain receptors and it mellows you out. So it makes you, when you have time to be tired, time to lower your energy, whatever it is. The problem is you got too much of it, like in the morning, you're feeling kind of lethargic, too much adenosine is filling those receptors. You get this caffeine where the molecule is the same size and shape

and it goes into the parking spots for the adenosine, blocking it, so it just can't mellow you out. That's what caffeine does. It blocks the neurotransmitter that you don't want. That's what it's doing. So it's not really perking you up? It's not. It's preventing you from being perked down.

That's not an expression, is it? To mellow you out. You don't want to be too mellow. There's happierness. We can be perked down too. We're creating language here. New language. I love it.

So that's what it is. And so the reason I use that particular metaphor, and you and I talk about this metaphor in the book, is because that's what you can do once you're metacognitive and you're aware of your own emotions and you're studying your own emotions. So many times throughout life, you've got a particular emotion, but it's not the emotion you want. Choose another one. Choose another... You got a particular emotion but it's not the emotion you want choose another one choose another so you should have a store like a little storage of better emotions repertoire you need a better repertoire yeah that's right a repertoire of better emotions so when you're

in a funk when you're perked down yeah you can go to something that perks you up exactly right you can actually block the the anxiety and depression. Give me an example. So, and it's an example from a mutual friend of ours, Rainn Wilson, you know, the actor who was in the office. Yeah. He, I noticed, you know, just through basic observation that a lot of professional comedians are depressed.

So I said, hey man, what is it about professional comedy that bums you out so much, that makes you melancholic? And he said, no, no, no, you got it wrong. It's the opposite. It's that we tend toward depression and we make a joke when we feel down and that solves the problem. That's emotional caffeine.

When you make a joke and other people laugh, life gets better. You lighten somebody else's load and you lighten your own load and you get relief. Yeah. You get a little cup of Starbucks dark roast at that moment. Is it also sort of like, you know, when I, every time I, anybody knows this too, I'm sure this happens to you. You go to the doctor, the blood pressure cuff goes on.

My blood pressure immediately goes up when I see the blood pressure coming. So you got the white coat syndrome? I got the white up when I see the blood pressure coming. I definitely have the white coat syndrome. I've literally, I go to a Cleveland clinic like once a year, and they leave me in the room for a few minutes before so I can calm myself down because I've got the white coat syndrome. And I start thinking about every happy thing, walking in the woods with my dogs. I have always loved water sprinklers on a green lawn, you know, when you're walking and you can see the rainbow in the woods with my dogs. I have always loved water sprinklers on a green lawn, you know, when you're walking

and you can see the rainbow in the water. So I start, I have like this little storage, this little- It's a little happy place. Yeah, a little repertoire of things to calm me down, to think about. So is that what emotional caffeine is like? Emotional caffeine works exactly that way.

And the key thing is thinking about the things that bedevil you, you know, the particular experiences that you have that are the problematic emotions that are maladapted. They're not the wrong emotion. They're just an emotion. It's just information. But you can have another emotion

that's also extremely appropriate and choose that if you're studying yourself and you've got distance between your reaction and what you're feeling. If you're very reactive, if you're like a little kid, you're angry, you yell. You're sad, you cry without thinking about it. On the contrary, when you're something is,

and it's fine, I mean, we like spontaneous people, but that's no way to live. When you have little kids, when my kids were little, my wife would always say, use your words. Let's say being metacognitive. That's what that really means. Because when you use your words,

you've moved the experience of the emotion into your prefrontal cortex, into your executive brain. And there you can make decisions like emotional caffeine. You can decide on different emotions that are more appropriate to the circumstances. So here's the thing. You can think a better thought.

You can think a better thought. And you can think a better thought if you have a repertoire of thoughts to go to, to think. It's hard to think a better thought when you're in the midst of the, if you're all perked down. So give yourself some space. Yes. Get some space in there and say, okay, I'm going to go to the library. I'm going to pick out that one.

Here's a classic one that you do all, you do super well. I've seen it. You do it again and again and again. Right? Are you talking about? I'm talking about gratitude. I was going to say, are you talking about gratitude? Yeah, yeah.

So we feel resentment and we feel bitterness or we feel anger a lot. And the reason is because we're evolved to have those as dominant emotions. This is called the negativity bias. The negativity bias is that, you know, we actually have more brain space dedicated to producing emotions that are negative than positive

because negative emotions on the place to scene keep you alive. Somebody smiling sweetly at you in the tribe, that's great. Somebody frowning at you might be a big problem when you step outside. And you will remember that frown longer than you remember the 12 people who smiled. Oh, yes. Oh, yeah. Because that's evolved to keep you alive.

The problem is it's hugely maladapted, and it'll ruin big parts of our lives because we're negative all the time. It's also unrealistic, the truth of the matter is. It's why in the beginning of the Oprah show, when we were still just taking phone calls and people were writing real letters by snail mail, if somebody wrote something negative or said something, I would track them down. I'd get a thousand great letters. I wouldn't respond, but, oh, that's nice, that's nice, that's nice.

And one negative thing, I would track them down. I'd find them in Louisiana, Alabama, wherever you were. And then call them up and say, excuse me, this is Oprah calling. They're like, what? I know, it's like, yeah, I know. It's crazy, but there's a lot of literature on this. Social scientists have looked at this a lot. If you're out for dinner with your friends,

having a great old time, and there's one point of disagreement, that's what you remember from the whole night. That's the thing that stays with you, right? That Thanksgiving dinner when Aunt Mabel, something, she went after her nephew Jake because they disagreed about President Trump or something like that.

And that's what everybody's like, oh, that was the Thanksgiving where Aunt Mabel went berserk about politics or something. That's what you remember about it. We can't invite Aunt Mabel again. Yeah, because of that thing. You had a great time for three hours or four hours and it was like three minutes. But that negativity bias, man, that's like a

blinking light. So you're saying we're born that way. We're born that way. Absolutely. We're born that way. And, and, and sometimes it's great because it saves your life. But a lot of times it just embitters beautiful things and it's unrealistic. It's not even right. You know, the truth is a lot of the times we're feeling resentment because it's like,

can you believe the quality of this airline food? It's like, dude, you're getting all the way across the country in six hours on your middle class salary. And you're complaining about the fact that you don't like the food. It's nuts. Or it's like, can you believe it? So it's a little bit too cold on this plane or, you know, whatever it happens to be that we that we say that people just allow themselves to be absorbed by that. Yeah. I mean, we have this incredibly privileged lives. I get it that we also have problems and we have suffering and not

everything is perfect and all that. But on balance in modern life, most of the time is pretty good. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And this is the point that we can actually get there. And I've seen you do this a bunch of times. Oh, the gratitude thing is huge for me. And I know it's been since you were a little kid. Yeah. Right. That you basically, when you feel the resentment welling up inside you, when you feel the anger, even when you feel fear, that's when you start to reflect on the sources of gratitude. And not just reflect, because it's not enough sometimes just to think about it. I actually, I have volumes of gratitude journals.

Right. This is a really good thing, because this is the ultimate man. Volumes of gratitude journals. And. This is a really good thing because this is the ultimate. Volumes of gratitude journals. And now I hear like everybody talking about it and I see these reels where people are talking about gratitude. I've been doing it for years and years and years and years. And when you write it down, by the way, it can't stay in your limbic system. Then it's in your prefrontal cortex. The act of writing something down and putting that into words puts it into the executive centers in your brain.

And it sits there. I mean, it's in your memory banks at this point. You're really going to use it and you have it in the most conscious, metacognitive way possible. This is the Mac. Gratitude journals are great. Everybody should keep a gratitude journal.

The failure journal is fantastic. We talk about it in the book and all kinds of ways that you can take your sources of disgust and discontent and turn them into learning and growth. But the gratitude journal is a must for everybody. And there are a lot of ways to you can take your sources of disgust and discontent and turn them into learning and growth. But the gratitude journal is a must for everybody. And there are a lot of ways to do it. You know, the easiest way is every Sunday night,

write down five things you're grateful for. It doesn't matter how stupid they are. It's like my team won, right? I ate a Three Musketeers bars with my cousins. Like you said, right? Whatever it happens to be that delights your heart a little bit. And then, you know, Monday through Saturday, look at those things and ponder them a little bit, give up maybe a word of thanks, maybe a little prayer. Sunday, update it. The data say that on

average after 10 weeks, you'll be 12% happier. I believe that. Yeah. And I believe that in the moment when you are feeling the worst, if you can just take a deep breath and go to the thing that, first of all, grateful for your breath and start, you know, actualizing for yourself. And you're saying writing down is more important than just thinking about it. Uh, the things you're grateful for, you can feel your own vibration change. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. Yeah, absolutely. And for me, also a walk in nature too. Yeah. There's a lot of work on that that's really interesting. To begin with, that's almost a form of worship for a lot of people. It is for me.

You and I have walked here, and it was sort of magic. I remember that. We were working super hard on cooking up this book. We worked all day. We were really, really super tired. And then we took a long walk. At twilight. It was so beautiful, right?

Yeah. Because everything was cool. There's a picture of that. Yes. There is a picture of that. Yeah, that's right. And it was, somebody took a picture of us. Itilight. Yeah. It was so beautiful, right? Yeah. Because everything was cool. There's a picture of that. Yeah. There's a picture of that.

Yeah, yeah, that's right. And it was somebody took a picture of us. It wasn't us, but it wasn't staged. Yeah. And it was, it was, I remember it was relaxed and it was nice. And some researchers are asking what it is about the experience of touching nature and that you can even get more if you're barefoot. That's a whole thing called grounding.

Yeah, I've heard that. As a social scientist I'm like, but you know, it's funny, the data are actually quite compelling. There's some truth to that? There appears to be that your feet on the grass and soil, I mean actually touching the grass and soil has a particularly profound impact physiologically on what we're experiencing. That's really interesting because I enjoy walking outside

barefoot on the grass, but I thought it was because that's the way I was raised. Takes you back to your little girlhood. I thought it was like dirt road Mississippi and you're just like a primal thing. I didn't know that it was. Yeah, there's work on that. And I do, a lot of people, a lot of us remember

when we were kids that out in the backyard or in the neighborhood and running around with our bare feet, it brings us back to those particular times. You can smell certain things from your childhood, but there is more to it than that. Scientists believe that there is more to the experience of touching nature than that.

A lot of times I wind up giving a lot of counsel and support to young people who are in their 20s and they feel quite lost. And I get it. You know, they don't know the why of their life. They haven't read our book yet, you know. And so one of the things that I'll tell them to do is to go on a process of discernment about their life,

to understand the meaning of life. And one of the best ways to do it, I recommend to everybody but not just young people, is to get up before dawn. It's hard for some people. And walk for an hour as the sun comes up. There's something profoundly mystical. It's cooler.

It's quiet. You're alone with your thoughts. No devices, no podcasts, except this one. Do that just with the sounds in your head, with the music of your life. I know somebody who does that every day. It's super important to do that. That's actually one of the ways that you can satisfy the spiritual element

of what a good and happy life actually needs, a transcendent life, one that transcends your day-to-day quotidian, ordinary, boring work existence. Because you get to see how small you are and compared to the largeness of everything else. I'm alive. Yeah. I'm alive. I don't know what this day will bring.

I don't know. And that's okay. I'm just really grateful to be alive this day and to be walking on this road at this moment and to see the sun rising. It puts you in a state of awe. It puts you in a moment of peace. And if that becomes a product, and by the way, you get 10,000 steps

and that's a good thing to do too. Okay, so that's a good place to end, right? That's all the happiness we can squeeze into our first episode. We've only just begun. Remember that song? I do. We've only just begun.

Who sang it? Carpenters. Thank you. I mean, it's like I was a classical musician growing up. It's like I was raised. I know, but I was at every freaking wedding for I know, I know, you know, that we, you know, who knows? We played Bach at our wedding. Okay. So my gratitude to you and to all of our readers for their thoughtful questions, guys. And we so appreciate that you're reading the book. I think, I just want to say this. I think this is a great gift idea for your loved ones. There's something in here for everybody.

I am not just saying that. I think I actually today sent three copies off to people that I know and I think will benefit from it. So next up, episode two of our three-part Build a Life You Want series, and we'll be discussing chapters four and five, specific strategies for you to start taking action and building what matters to you. So thank you, Arthur.

Thank you, Oprah. See you all next time. Thanks to our episode sponsor, The Hartford.