The Megyn Kelly Show - The Keys to Happiness, Embracing Weakness, and the Importance of Friendship, with Arthur Brooks | Ep. 263

Episode Date: February 16, 2022

Megyn Kelly is joined by Arthur Brooks, Harvard professor and bestselling author of the new book "From Strength to Strength," to talk about the three keys to happiness, how we can achieve happiness in modern day America, the difference between pleasure and enjoyment, satisfaction and purpose, the "striver's curse" and the challenge with being a workaholic, free will vs. nature, how the lures of fame and money undermine happiness, the difference between goals and habits, the importance of friendship, living in the present instead of the future, fear and death, how embracing weakness can help our happiness, the power of humility, how social media is empty calories, the wisdom curve and the power of wisdom, how to stay happy later in life, and more.Follow The Megyn Kelly Show on all social platforms: YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/MegynKellyTwitter: http://Twitter.com/MegynKellyShowInstagram: http://Instagram.com/MegynKellyShowFacebook: http://Facebook.com/MegynKellyShow Find out more information at: https://www.devilmaycaremedia.com/megynkellyshow

Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, your home for open, honest, and provocative conversations. Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show. Are you happy? According to recent polls, you're not. You aren't. And we're going to fix it today. Could be politics, our culture, the pandemic, or something else, but happiness is feeling like it's in short supply these days, and you are not the only one who may be experiencing that reality. My guest today, however, would like us to rethink what it means to be happy and what it means to feel satisfied and successful. He is an expert on the subject of happiness and teaches at Harvard on this very thing in a class that you cannot get into. No one can get into it.

They line up to get those 180 seats and it's very tough to get in for a good reason, but you're going to get them for free today. You don't have to sign up or get into Harvard. You're going to talk to Arthur Brooks through me right now. He's a bestselling author. He's a columnist for The Atlantic. He used to run conservative think tank AEI. And now he, as I said, is a professor at Harvard. More importantly, he used to be a professor at Syracuse, which is the Harvard of upstate New York. His new book is called From Strength to Strength, Finding Success, Happiness, and Deep Purpose in the Second Half of Life. He's here with me now. Welcome, Arthur.

So great to have you. Thank you, Megan. Wonderful to be with you. Thank you for your interest and happiness. Yes, very much so. And I mean, like you, I eventually concluded it probably wouldn't mean living in Syracuse where they only get 100 days of sun a year, just 100. The people are great,

the weather, not so much. Yeah, well, they give away houses for free. There's that, right? Oh, so yeah, that could make you happy. Yeah, absolutely. So that's true. And interesting, there's this whole, believe it or not, there's research on happiness and sunshine. And only a small percentage of the people will really be bummed out by not having enough sunshine. And this is one of the mistakes people make by moving to California. I'm going to be happy with the sun. Well, that'll wear off after six months and the taxes are forever. Is that right? I thought like the Pacific Northwest, there was a reason that coffee was invented there because people needed to pick me up because of the dreary weather. Is that not true? There's a lot of hypotheses about that. I actually grew up in Seattle, walking distance from the first Starbucks. So I've been hopelessly addicted to caffeine

since I was in eighth grade. So I'm not an impartial witness on that one. Okay. So people wherever you live are happy and unhappy. Here in the United States, and probably in a lot of places, increasingly unhappy in today's day and age. It's been a rough couple of years for the world and certainly here in America. So let's just start with a little bit of your background because you didn't wake up an expert on happiness. As I said, I remember when you were at AEI from which we got the unbelievable Mark Thiessen and I made him a star night after night on the Cali file. You did. You did you did i mean people recognize him in the airport but they don't come up to him and say i love you they come up to him

and say i love megan kelly he was so great because he used to come on he was so nervous was a little clipboard and he would read off his clipboard and you know roger ailes who had very little patience for people developing on tv who weren't like blondes with long legs would say what are we putting him him on TV for? And I would say, be patient. He's going to be amazing. He's brilliant. And I was right. A hundred percent right. And he's not a sex symbol. That's for sure. You know, but for some, one never knows. Hate to disparage Mark. You know, there's, there's beauty and nerdiness. Yeah. Well, we're hoping because you got me for two hours today. So let's look for the happiness and beauty and nerdiness, shall we? It's funny because I've seen you in interviews.

I've listened to you. You write about yourself in this book like you are 88. I think you're 57. I realize you're sort of looking at, and it's not just about back half of the life. It's about happiness in general as well. but it's also about planning for happiness in the back half and i guess you know life expectancy not generally being 114 you know i think it's fair to say you're in the back half i'm 51 so i think it's probably fair to say i'm in the back half but i'm at the very beginning of the back half god willing yeah but i mean it's interesting

to hear yourself talk about yourself like you're so much older than you are about decline beginning and you wrestling with it. So have you really been feeling that? Well, the interesting thing about it is that it's not that I feel old. On the contrary, I'm physically in better shape than I was when I was in my mid-30s. I feel physically better really than I ever have in my life. And the truth is, according to the statistical tables from the life insurance organizations, the companies that sell me life insurance, I have equal odds of living to 95. So what that says is basically I've got almost probably or at least 50-50, I've got at least 40 years left. But here's the interesting thing about it. As I'm

doing research on happiness in the second half of life. You find that you get basically two success curves. And a lot of people, they have this early curve in their 20s and 30s where they get really good at their jobs and very, very skillful. But those skills, they tend to decline in your late 30s and 40s. And you get another success curve in your 50s and 60s, which is a different set of skills. The problem is that a lot of people sense that decline. The way that they sense is they get less interested in their job. They get kind of burnt out a little bit. And it's very frustrating for them. They start to feel old, even when they're not, because they don't actually know that there's this big bonanza of happiness and success that if they choose to look for it and grab it, it's right there for them.

You just have to sit down and be conscious about coming up with a plan for nurturing this second curve, which you write about in the book. I love that. So the second half and the second, whatever, 50, 40 years can be even better than the first in terms of success and satisfaction and indeed happiness. But before we get to that, let's start with the definition, right? Like what is happiness? Yeah.

A lot of people, and this is the first question that I asked for my Harvard business school MBA students. The first question I asked them on the first day of class is what is happiness? And one by one, they talk about feelings. And this is a very common thing, especially in modern America or modern life. What's happiness is feelings, but that's actually obviously wrong. If I said, hey, Megan, what's Thanksgiving dinner? You wouldn't talk about the smell of the dinner. That's one part of it. That's a

secondary condition of it. You know, the turkey is not the smell of the turkey and the happiness is not the feelings from the happiness. Happiness is something a lot more tangible than that. Now, people have been writing about it philosophically for millennia, of course, but only in the last 30 years have we been able to kind of nail down what the parts of happiness are. And so basically, here's the definition. Happiness has, just as food has macronutrients, protein, carbohydrates, and fat that you need in balance and abundance to get proper nutrition, there are three parts of happiness. If you're going to feel happy, you need three things. You need enjoyment in your life. You need satisfaction in what you're doing and you need

purpose in your life. And if you don't have all three of these things, you're simply not going to be happy. Those are the happiness macronutrients. And so those are the three big areas that we study in my field as social scientists and neuroscientists. We're looking at what brings enjoyment, what can actually give you lasting satisfaction and, and what is the, the root of meaning and purpose in life? Those are the big questions. And the answer overall, I'll start with sort of, we won't bury the lead in, in reading your book is love. I mean, that's number one, relationships and love, having love in your life. Absolutely. As a matter of fact, it's interesting, you know, then when in the New Testament, Jesus is asked by a Pharisee, it's like, sum up the 10 commandments. It's a hard thing to remember. 10 is a lot to remember, right? And so he says, love the Lord

your God with all your soul and all your might and all your heart and all your strength and love your neighbor as yourself. Love and love. And then later, 300 years later, St. Augustine was asked, you know, the great saint, he was asked, you know, even those two, boil it down. And then later, 300 years later, St. Augustine was asked, you know, the great saint, he was asked, you know, even those two, boil it down. And he said, I don't know, love and do what you will. Now that's the secret to a good life. You can only remember, there's a lot of details. Like I write books that say, like in this book, Strength to Strength, it gives you the seven habits that the happiest people have who are old. When people get the people who get happier as they get older, do these seven things that's in the book. Okay. But if you can only

remember one is love. If you can only remember to do one thing, it's give more love so that you will get more love. Okay. Now let's break down those three components of happiness though. Enjoyment. I feel like we get that, right? Like what do you enjoy doing? It could be watching TV, could be listening to a podcast. It could be skydiving. It could be that, right? Like, what do you enjoy doing? It could be watching TV. It could be listening to a podcast. It could be skydiving. It could be walking, right? Anything. The things that you feel pleasure while doing, right?

Does that sum up number one? Except that it's more, it's sort of, sort of. It's actually a little bit more complicated than that. Pleasure and enjoyment are not the same thing. Pleasure is kind of an animal thing. It's an actual reaction to outside stimuli. So a little bit of grain alcohol gives you pleasure. Vegetating on the couch in front of some mindless show on Netflix can give you pleasure. But if you want enjoyment, it requires some elevation. The reason

that your show can bring enjoyment, whereas vegetating on the couch in front of something mindless brings pleasure but not enjoyment,'s because people have to think when they're listening to your show. And when you add your education, your interest, your curiosity to the source of pleasure, then it becomes enjoyment because it actually makes it permanent. Here's the deal. With pleasure, you're stimulating a part of the brain called the limbic system. It's part of this like tissue in the back of your brain, very automatic. Every animal has it or every sentient animal has it. But we have something in addition called the prefrontal cortex, the big meaty lobes of the brain.

And when you have enjoyment, it means you're conscious of the pleasure and you're cultivating the pleasure with your human brain. And that makes it into a source of happiness. It requires work. Well, that's interesting. So if trying to cheer somebody up who has fallen into a funk, it's not as easy as like, get off up off the couch and let's go like see a movie together. You might think about at least layering in something that will cross over into more enjoyment and not so much just pure pleasure for the person, something that gets their mind

stimulated and gets them a little bit more actively involved. Absolutely. If you're finding that you're kind of bored with your life and you're just kind of hanging around and you're doing these easy things that always brought you pleasure, learn more. One of the things that the happiest people have when they get older is they have a continuously kind of active mind. They read a lot. They like to watch documentary films. They listen to things that kind of challenge them. They look for friends who are different than they are. Instead of getting drunk, they learn about fine wine because that actually requires some elevation. Instead of listening to something mindless on the radio, they listen to your show because you actually talk about elevated topics. That's what happy older people have in common is enjoyment, not just pleasure. Okay. And then the second component is satisfaction. What does that mean? Expand on that.

Yeah. Satisfaction is the joy you get for meeting a goal, for a job well done, for earning your success. We all have goals. We all have things that we want. For some people, they're crazy goals, like I hope I hit the lottery. But for most of us, it's a reward in return for our hard effort, for our hard work that pays off. The problem is that you can't keep satisfaction. Mick Jagger in Rolling Stones, his most famous song, which by the way, I'm no spring chicken. And that song came out when I was one year old and he's still singing it. It's like he's still croaking it out. I can't get no satisfaction. It's unbelievable. And it's sort of true, except that actually it's not quite accurate. You can get satisfaction. The problem is you can't keep no satisfaction because it's,

as we say, it's evanescent. It just dissolves. It kind of disappears really quickly. And there's a whole brain science literature that explains this. Your brain doesn't want you to be permanently satisfied because you'd stop striving. Your brain actually gets this satisfaction, this burst of joy in response to or in return for a goal that you've satisfied. But then you can't keep the satisfaction because you have to be ready for the next set of circumstances. And so people who don't understand that, they get on this treadmill of satisfaction, of getting a little what we call dopamine. It's a little neurochemical in your brain that gives you this feeling of elation to get the hit and get the hit and get the hit.

We become kind of like monkeys on cocaine for success after success after success. And we always kind of wonder why, oh, this is going to be great when I finally get the car and you get the car in a month later, like it's just a car. Well, that's because satisfaction, you can get it, but you can't keep it. So you need better techniques for actually doing things that bring you lasting satisfaction, which is once again, one of the things I write about in the book, what do happy old people have? They look for their satisfaction in the places that are permanent, as opposed to the things that are temporary. This is taking me back to when I used to practice law and I practiced

for about 10 years and really burnt out. And I was about to make partner at Jones Day, which is a great firm, loved it. It was the brass ring, loved my colleagues, knew I couldn't do it. Like I knew I couldn't do it for one more day because I was completely burnt out. But somebody asked me, you know, what is it you don't like about it? In addition to just being, and I know you cover this at length and have prior to writing the book, a workaholic in that job because it was required of me. The highs of winning were nowhere near the lows of losing. Like the joy you'd feel about winning a big case or a big motion didn't come

close to the nonstop pain of losing a case or screwing something up. It was so totally unfulfilling in that way too. And in the end, I just knew it had to go. Yeah. This is an interesting thing. There's a whole phenomenon in psychology. It's called the hedonic treadmill. And it's just a fancy name for a really easy idea. The whole thing is that you're looking for satisfaction, but you're running on a treadmill and the treadmill is running as fast as you are in reverse. So you always think you're going to get ahead, but you don't. And as soon as you get an inch ahead, you come right back. And that's that whole thing of resetting in your brain, the whole thing. Well, the problem is that the more you do that, the more some evil guy in the corner of the gym is turning up the speed on that treadmill. So you've

got to run faster and faster to stay in place. And then what happens is what happened to you at the law firm, which is that you stop running out of ambition, think you're going to get ahead. You start running out of fear about falling behind or, or God forbid, face planting on the back of the treadmill, which is, you know, what happens if you suddenly stop on a treadmill and that's a really bad situation to be in. You learned it really good and early, and that's fantastic. I mean, 110 hours as a law associate or whatever you had to work a week that will burn you out like crazy. But a lot of people don't quite figure it out until it's a little bit later than it should be in their lives. I mean, you actually found your passion,

explaining ideas, helping people, lifting people up. Not everybody finds that so early. Well, and that leads us to the third, I don't know, contingent quotient part of happiness, which is purpose. It's not enough to have enjoyment, have great relationships, have things that are meaningful to you that stimulate the mind and to be satisfied with what you're doing and your approach and the people you've surrounded yourself with and all of that. If there's no sense of meaning, sense of purpose, that comes back to haunt you. Absolutely. Purpose or meaning is really the most metaphysical of these macronutrients and happiness. And for many people, it's the hardest to attain. The reason is because this has a real paradox, a kind of a contradiction inside it. Purpose and meaning. If I ask anybody who's listening to us or you or me, when did you really figure out what you were made of? What made you resilient? What gave you the most growth? You wouldn't be like,

I don't know, that week at Disney World. No, no, no, no, no. You talk about something really hard that happened to you, somebody who you love who died, a scare, a professional setback, a heartbreak, you know, somebody you were in love with who broke up with you. This is what people talk about, what my students talk about, what we all talk about. Now, we don't want those things, but here's the thing. When it comes to pain and suffering, we need them. We need sacrifice. We need challenge because we simply won't have meaning in our lives unless we're able to actually see what we are made of, to live through the trying times, to have the full set of experiences, good and bad in our lives.

The biggest mistake that I see that young people make today, that people, my students make today, people in their 20s, is that they've been told, it's kind of like the opposite of the 60s. When I was a little kid, I was really little. I mean, I'm way past, I'm way younger than the hippie generation, but the hippies used to say, I remember because my dad was derisive and he didn't like this at all, if it feels good, do it. Today, the anthem is not that. It's more like, if it feels bad, get rid of it, Fight it. You got to live in a constant state of good feelings. It's this psychological hedonism. Run from one good feeling to another. Run, run, and try to avoid at all costs feeling bad. Well, here's the paradox of that, Megan. If you try to never feel bad, you're not going to actually find meaning and purpose in your life,

and therefore, you're not going to get that source of happiness. Happiness requires meaning. Meaning requires suffering. Suffering brings unhappiness. So if you dedicate your life to never being unhappy, you will paradoxically actually avoid happiness. This is so interesting. This is helpful for me as a mother, because of course, my kids are still young. And I look at them thinking, maybe I will be the one who gets them through life without any heartache. Maybe somehow, and you know, you know, it's, it's a joke, but of course, when it actually starts coming in to your child in particular, it hurts more than it hurts when you, when it happens to you, but you're kind of making the case that, and I know this inherently, you should welcome it. Every time a challenge comes their way, even if it's painful, you should welcome it. Yeah, for sure.

And as they get older, my kids are a little bit older than yours. My kids are 23, 21, and 18. And they've got adult problems. My oldest son, he's engaged. My middle son, he's a forward-deployed combat Marine. Wow. And my little girl is a freshman in college in Spain. She made a run for the border after COVID.

And she's living in a, I mean, it's not a completely foreign country. Her mother is Spanish. I mean, my wife is Spanish. She speaks fluent Spanish, but it's still, she's 5,000 miles away from her parents. And so my kids are in these situations and I want to talk to them every day. I want to counsel them on every situation. I want to take away the sacrifice and the suffering that they're getting. And in the case of my middle son, I mean, he's a Marine. You don't know. I mean, this is suffering at a different level than most of us.

He would die for America and you're afraid, but you can't take those things away because they deserve to be fully alive. Your children deserve to actually be alive and to get to this point in their life when we're gone, where they can say, I've had a full range of experiences. And the reason that my life has meaning is because my parents didn't protect me from every challenge, every conflict, every hardship, every heartbreak. This is one of the reasons that people in their 20s are a third less likely than when you and I were in our 20s to fall in love. They're a third less likely to be married, a third less likely to be living together. They're a third less likely to do the things that people do with romantic love.

And part of the reason is because they have more fear, fear of rejection. And one of the reasons they have fear of rejection is they've been protected from hardship by their parents. But can I ask you, so I have understood that great challenges in my own life or those of the people I love will lead to strength and resilience and some wisdom if handled well. I mean, I've known that, but I never, until I read your words, concluded it will make you happier, right? Like it will give meaning to your life. So can you just sort of split that hair for me? Like, how do we go? I get being stronger and all that, but like, how does having trauma create meaning in your life? So trauma is an interesting thing because it actually has a clinical definition to it. And psychologists talk about this a lot. We talk and we hear about post-traumatic stress disorder constantly. And it's no joke. I mean, people who go through war, people who see

terrific violence, people who've been abused in abusive relationships, they can have a lot of post-traumatic stress. But most people who suffer from great trauma wind up having net-net growth in their lives. And they look back on the sources of their trauma and they see the growth that they've experienced. They find that their relationships are deeper. The experience of love for them is more vivid. They find that they're more likely to be in touch with their spiritual lives much more than before the trauma. They also have this weird superpower. People who have outrun a cancer, for example, they have the superpower of not caring what other people think. When you get hammered by something like that, you're like, I don't care anymore. You can't hurt me. I beat

cancer. You can't hurt me anymore. And this happens a lot to people. And those things, this incredible source of strength that people get. I talk to people who, after trauma, they say, I just can't be bothered by the fact that it's raining. I can't be bothered by the fact that I got a nasty email from something because life is short. And I want to concentrate on all the things that I hold dear and that I actually love. This is an example of how suffering, it can and usually does bring out the best in us. Right, gives you a new sense of perspective. As Brit Hume once said to me, he was speaking about getting older. It applies, you would agree with that, I know, but also to difficulties. Your give a shit meter changes. That's what he said. Give a shit meter just changes the

more challenges you have. Yeah. This is a great thing also about that you find that one of the great secrets to happiness, and you find that most people between early fifties, your age and 70 is that almost everybody gets happier during that period. And one of the reasons is that you, without even quite realizing it, you realize that, that when something hurts your feelings or something gives you negative, basic emotions like anger, disgust, or sadness, or fear that you know intuitively is not going to last. See, young people think when they're feeling sad, I'm going to feel sad forever. Well, no, you're not.

Next week, it's going to be a lot better. The week after that, you're practically not going to remember this for most things. Old people kind of intuitively know that and they get a head start on feeling better. So basically what they say is like, somebody just flipped me off in traffic or insulted me at work or rejected my manuscript or whatever, right? Somebody sent me a nasty tweet because they didn't like me on Megyn Kelly's show. Well, guess what? I'm going to be like, yeah, that kind of hurts my feelings, but in 10 minutes, I'm going to have forgotten it. So I'm going to get a head start on forgetting it right now. That's one of the consolations of age. I love when I upset people on Twitter,

it makes me happy. That does make me happy. I got in your head. You shouldn't have let me there, but you didn't say anything. Like if somebody beeps at me on the road, honks like in a nasty way, I always just smile and wave at them.

Like, oh, thank God. As if I've missed it. I know that you wave at them. There's like, oh my God, I accidentally just honked at Megyn Kelly. That's actually what they're thinking. Maybe, maybe not. Either way, it makes me happy just to show them like, oh my God, I accidentally just honked at Megyn Kelly. That's actually what they're thinking. Maybe, maybe not. Either way, it makes me happy just to show them like, hi, couldn't care less. There's so much more to talk about. I want to talk about that thing,

workaholism and how bad it is for your happiness. We are chasing the wrong goals, people. More with Arthur right after this. Don't go away. There's a reason people become workaholics. And it's I think it's related to what you write in the book is called the strivers curse and the chasing of these false idols. Also a story from, you know, the beginning of time that we continue to not learn the lesson on. But people start out in earnest, you know, the land of the free, the American dream. We can do anything. We can build a career. We can be successful. We can spike the ball in the end zone. We can have that moment if we just work a little harder, get a little bit more success, and then we'll have that moment. I don't know what the moment looks like. Different for every person. But, you know, maybe it's actually spiking the ball. It's Tom Brady. Maybe it's Paul Newman with another Oscar back in his day.

You tell me, how do people get lured in to this driver's curse? Yeah, your brain wants you to think that this is the case. Here's the key point. This took me years to figure out. I mean, I suffered through a doctoral dissertation on this stuff, Megan. Mother nature doesn't care if you're happy. Mother nature just wants you to pass on your genes. That's basically our job is to actually be happy. I mean, this is the thing. It's quite interesting. People will say, how can you be religious if people have these terrible, evil, natural tendencies? I think that's why I'm religious. That's why I'm a Catholic is because I want to be in charge. And I actually think that, you know, nature might push me in one direction, but God wants me to have free will and do something else. Okay. Now maybe people who

are listening to us aren't religious. It doesn't matter. We're talking about your free will to be the master of your life is what it comes down to. Your brain says, you know, you're going to get satisfaction. It's like a, it's like you know how you're going to get satisfaction? It's like a trick. I'm going to make you run on the treadmill and run on the treadmill. And I'm going to tell you year after year after year that sooner or later, you're going to get there. Now, you're looking down at the band that's turning under your feet. You're like, I don't think so. But my brain is telling me I'm actually going to get there. So run, run, run, run, run. That's an unexamined life. Here's the key. We actually have to be in charge and say, yeah, I realize that I keep having these tendencies. I have these, you know, the great medieval

philosophers would say there's four idols in life. They look kind of God-like because they have this, they're so attractive, right? They are money, power, pleasure, and fame. And fame doesn't necessarily mean you want to be famous. It means prestige. It means the admiration of other people, which we all want to be admired by other people. And those things, those lures will make you run and run and run. And they promise satisfaction, but they're liars. And sooner or later, the sooner we figure that out by actually saying, no, I refuse. Look, money's great, but only if it's an instrument to something more important, to serve other people, to support your family, to support the relationships and the love in your life. Only then can it be a conduit to your satisfaction.

If it's the object of your satisfaction or your power or your pleasure or the admiration of other people, you will be frustrated because you will never get there. And most people wind up running on that treadmill and never quite figuring it out and wondering why they didn't get the satisfaction that they were seeking. How did that happen? I want to get to the others as well, but let's stay on money for a minute. How do we get to the place? Because I'm thinking about advertisements when you watch television. They don't usually show rich people on yachts. They usually show families snuggling into the couch together. So I don't think this is a situation like the magazines and the girls getting anorexia back in the 80s and the 90s or Instagram

and, you know, manipulating you in a negative way today. I feel like the media actually knows to prize relationships and the hearth and coziness and so on, not news media, but you know what I'm saying? So we must be doing it. In the school system, in the home, we must be sending our children in America, because not every country is like this, the message that money is something to idolize. Yeah, for sure. I mean, as part of our culture, it's very easy for that to happen. And the biggest problem is that we have less and less of a culture that creates the good values. I mean, some people, I mean, they'll say, oh, the problem is capitalism. The problem is the free enterprise system. Well, capitalism

is an accelerant for materialism because it's so good at creating material prosperity, to be sure, but it's not capitalism's fault. I mean, it's not your car's fault that you drove drunk. I mean, the problem is that you did the wrong thing. And when we have the love in our lives, when we form the families, when we have a right relationship with our spiritual lives, when we have real friends, not just deal friends, then we're going to have the basis on which we can layer on an economic system. When we can go out to work, when we can search for our daily bread, but it won't occupy us as the be all and end all, then our brains can't lie to us quite so much by saying there's an emptiness in me. How am I going to fill it? Oh, I don't know. I'll make some more money. I know. I'll try to get more internet followers, more followers on Twitter. Then I'll finally feel good. That's run, run, run, run, run and never get there. So it's interesting. I've talked before about the would-be Hollywood stars who moved to Hollywood in hopes of becoming famous, rich, famous, glamorous, thinking this will solve. I mean, a lot of the folks who choose that as their profession have an emptiness inside.

And they're seeking to fill it. And they think that those things will fill it. You know, that if you have the life of a Tom Cruise, everything will be great. And this is why we see so much unhappiness from this crowd because it doesn't fill it. They learn the hard way. It fills nothing. It's something to do. It doesn't fill the voids that make up who you are. But you're saying- That's absolutely right. You're absolutely right.

But it's not just the Hollywood folks. It can be all of us. It can be the tech giant. It can be the news anchor. It can be the truck driver pursuing these false idols. It could be more money or the next promotion or just a little bit more work to make you feel a little bit better, a little bit harder working than the next guy. I don't know if you'd say it's pointless, but it certainly doesn't lead to happiness. You're absolutely right. And furthermore, it actually leads to unhappiness because you're distracting yourself from the things that matter. So here's the right way to think about it. Your brain wants you to chase four things.

I talked about it before. And what you need to do is for your heart and your mind to reorient you to four different things. So, and these are the habits of people who are really, really happy. These are the things that are completely in our control. So the four idols are, as I mentioned before, money, power, pleasure, and honor or fame or prestige. Okay.

Now those things are not bad, but they're really destructive when they are the end, when they are the intrinsic thing that we're seeking as opposed to being instrumental. So money can help you support your family. Power is something that you can use for great good if you're a virtuous person. Pleasure leavens heavy days for sure. And it can be part of, it's an element of satisfaction. And fame, the admiration of other people. I mean, look how you're using the fact that you're admired and you have a lot of prestige. You're using it to lift people up, Megan. That's really meritorious. But if the fame per se becomes the goal, then it becomes a huge problem. You will be miserable. This is what we need to do. And this is the best thing about being human. You don't

have to just live in your lizard brain. You don't have to live according to your impulses and your desires and your attachments. You don't have to, like dog Chucho. He just lives according to what's next, right? But I can do better than that. I can say, aha, money, power, pleasure, honor. Those things are manipulating me. Here are the big four. Here are the things that all happy people have in abundance and balance. They have faith and family and friendship and work that in which they feel like they're earning their success and they're serving other people. Now, faith by that, I don't mean my faith.

I recommend it. But the truth is anything that gets you out of your, the rhythm of focusing exclusively on yourself, my money, my job, my, my, I mean, my possession, my car, so boring. You got to get the big view on things, the big wisdom on things. When you're really interested in the bigger picture, as the Dalai Lama says, remember, joy comes when you remember that you're a one in seven billion, is what he says. It's not that you're insignificant. It's just that your part is something much bigger than yourself, which is interesting. Family life, friendship, work that serves other people, faith, family, friends, and work. That's your good four.

Every time you feel tempted, actually reorient yourself in this direction and you will find your happiness rising remarkably. You want people to be conscious about how they approach all of this. You should sit down and say, all right, how am I going to spend my week? And how did I spend today? Did I make time for my kids? Did I make time for my friends? Did I make time for my friends? And you can't necessarily do it every day. I understand that's how things go. But too many days will go by and too many weeks will go by and then months and years of you not nurturing those things, which hurts those people and yourself without that

conscious commitment to doing so. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, the unexamined life, as Socrates says, is not worth living. And I don't know if it's not worth living, but I do know that the unexamined life is only through sheer luck going to lead you to happiness. You know, the truth is we all can, I'm not going to say everybody can be perfectly happy, but we all can be a lot happier by doing the work. And doing the work means thinking about your habits. That's the number one thing. Habits are way more important than goals. People are always like, I got to have good goals. I got to have a bucket list. Wrong.

You need good habits every single day. And that means doing an inventory at the end of your day. Exactly. This is what I do every night. And I say, did I serve my faith? Did I say my prayers? Did I do the things that I need to do to cultivate my spiritual life? Did I spend time thinking about and serving my family, my family life? And not just my immediate family, my adult children and my wife. And I do that for sure. But did I do enough of that? Did I actually serve my family in the right way?

Third is like, am I cultivating my friendships? Like, I mean, it's like, we're all have really busy lives. It's very easy, especially for people in their fifties to have all deal friends, no real friends, but real friends take time. They actually take work. It's a reason you can't have more than, you know, five to seven really close friends because it's just too time consuming, but, but you got to have some and more than just your spouse. It's very important. And you got to cultivate those friendships. And finally you say, did my work truly serve other people? Do I believe that I lifted people up with my work?

Now, sometimes it's easy. I mean, people are writing to you all day long for sure saying, Megan, I loved your show. You really helped me. I see life in a new way. Other people might be very indirect. Let's say you're a bank deregulator or something like that. But you can, with a little bit of serious thought, think about how you can serve other

people. Do your inventory about your faith, family, friends, and work at the end of the day and watch your satisfaction start to grow. I'm just thinking, when I was doing the Kelly file, there were definitely a lot of people who loved the show and would send me notes like that. But I didn't feel that sense of meaning. I felt like I was in the outrage stoking business. And the setup of those shows, which is really only 38 minutes of content an hour because of the ads, doesn't allow time for meaningful conversations. You know, you got to get up and down on a segment quickly. And it's rare that you actually get true meaning out of

it. It can happen, but it's the exception, not the rule. It was one of my great frustrations. I knew I could be doing more and more that would make me happy and that would make my audience happier. And that's one of the great meanings, purposes I found in the job that I'm doing now, right? Like you'd have real conversations like this. How would you and I have had this conversation in three minutes? It would have been empty and have no calories and we both would have walked away a bit wanting as would the audience have. I think that's right.

And this is one of the great things that we've been able to achieve in the technological era of the podcast, for example. So long form conversations are something that everybody just assumed nobody had the attention span for, you know, that we're all like goldfish at this point, you know, after three seconds, we're all, you know, onto the next thing, but it's actually not true. Podcasts are unbelievably popular precisely because they're long form conversations that go into depth.

You know, you and I are not talking about this like a PhD dissertation. I mean, we're not talking about, you know, the, the, the really scientific brain science stuff that I discussed with my class or in my research. We're talking about why it matters and how people can use it in their lives. And that takes some time, just like anything else. You can't have a three-second relationship with somebody. You need the time to develop the relationship. And this is a perfect example of how fulfilling it is to go deep. Like my wife always says, we've moved around. We moved 19 times in the last 30 years because I'm not in the witness protection program, by the way.

And when we move into a place, the way that we actually become comfortable quickly is by pretending we've lived there 10 years. So the second week we're there, we'll invite somebody to our house for dinner. And then we have a real conversation. And my wife calls it go deep or go home. Right? I mean, we're not going to talk about trivialities and dumb stuff. It's like, I'm going to ask you about how you worship and your relationship with your children and whether you grew up in a place that you liked and why. And we're going to learn about each other. I love that. Yes. I accept. I'll be there. Doug and I will come. Boston's not that far away. You got to be someplace in Massachusetts. Not that far away. You're welcome in

Needham, Massachusetts in my happy home. We can make it happen. All right. So let me back up on a couple of those though. Friendships. I've heard you talk about this. This is an area in which I could use some help. I'm going to be honest, not very good at nurturing them. And it's for some of the reasons you talk about, you know, I've overwhelmed my life with all these other demands. You know, I've got three relatively young kids and I've got a great marriage and I've got a great job and I nurture all those things. And then everything else falls off, right? From exercise to friendships is there sort of for, next tier down in terms of immediate priority. But you say you got to change that. They need to be first tier. So let's get into friendships and why they matter so much. Right. So friendships are something that for strivers, for people who are working really hard, and it doesn't necessarily mean that you have the level of notoriety that you have where people recognize you on the street. That's not what I'm talking about with strivers. I'm talking about people who are doing their job. And part of that means that if you're... A lot of people think that if I'm not giving everything to my job and all the rest to my family, that I'm cheating somebody. I'm cheating my employer.

I'm cheating myself. I'm cheating my family. Well, you really are cheating yourself by doing what you're doing. And this is really hard for me too, Megan. So when I say I'm looking in the mirror and giving myself this advice, you know, the truth is, as a happiness researcher, it's actually me search, not research. I want the answers. I mean, it's like, I'm like a surgeon taking out my own appendix every day here. So it's, this is, I mean, it have really deep relationships, really deep platonic, you know, friendships, philia, as the Greeks called the love of others as friends. It's hard for me. You know, I don't have that much time. I've been working 12 hour days for many, many years

because I love my work. I'm obsessed with my work. I mean, I get like, I get to do this. I get to this, this is you and I are working right now. It's the craziest thing ever. I mean, it's bliss, right? But what's left over? What's left over is for the people that you're living with and maybe going to the gym or church and then it's pretty dry. You have to carve off a different part of your life for that and making sure that you're having at least some contact every day. And then thinking about the two or three people outside your family that you want to know more about, that you want to give more time to and figuring out how to do it. And a couple of years ago, when I was doing research for the book that we're talking about here, I recognized that this was the key thing,

the key practice of people who grow old and happy that I just wasn't cultivating. I was on the wrong track. And so I started cultivating my friendships and I have two or three really close friends. I mean, the guy I consider my closest friend, he lives in Atlanta. I live in Boston. I've known him for many years. We do, we've done business stuff together, but we don't really need to. Aristotle called the perfect friendship, the friendship where you have a mutual love for a third thing. So you don't need, the other person is sort of cosmically useless to you. You don't need that person to put your career forward. It's not, he's not useful.

He's not excessively useful. I just love him. And so we make a point. We talk one or two times every week. We don't talk about, we occasionally talk about stuff that's going on in our professional lives. And he's a big entrepreneur and I'm a college professor.

But we don't talk about that. We talk about our families. We talk about things that we're thinking about. We're talking about things that are bothering us. And that's really what is very, very important to cultivate if we want to grow old in a happier and healthier way. You know, I'm going to mention my friend Donna from law school because, and she's probably listening to this, but she and I reconnected. She's from my hometown and she still lives there. And I visit my mom up there, but we reconnected after 20 years of not seeing each other. And we were so close in law school. I was there for the birth of her daughter and she got me through a lot. And we reconnected one time up

by my mom's. And then we started sort of, I don't't know this is going to sound weird but like a text friendship um yeah and you know you might think that that doesn't that's not good but it's great and i look forward like when i see you know i get that dopamine flow when i see her name pop up and we have these deep meaningful texts and it can come out of the blue it can i can pick up just oh my god you know this and it doesn't need any setup. There's no buildup. And I'll get a deep, meaningful text back. And for whatever reason, we're both busy professionals and so on, it's working. It's become such an important piece of my life. So you can nurture it in, I think, a number of ways. Absolutely. There's lots of ways to win this thing. The only way to lose it is by not doing

it at all. And considering at some point it will just happen naturally. I'm going to have good friends. It happens spontaneously. No, here's the thing. The craziest thing is that when it comes to almost every element of happiness, the biggest mistake people make is thinking that just by wishing for it, it might come or that it's serendipity, that it's just kind of good luck. That's not true. I mean, if somebody asked you, say, hey, Megan, I want to learn more math. I wish I knew more math. You'd say, well, pick up a math book, buddy. You got to do the work. And there's so much information out there. You can read the ancient Greek Stoic philosophers. You can read

the New Testament. You can read the medievals and you can read modern social science. And there's all kinds of information about out there. I mean, my book is my books, the things that I write, the classes that I teach are dedicated to trying to bring this information to people, but you got to do the work. You know, you got to buy a ticket if you want to win a lottery. I hate, hate the t-shirt slash sweatshirt, choose happiness. I hate it because it's just so pointless. It's like, what does that mean? If you're depressed or you're sad, you can't just say today I resolved to be happy. That's not how it works. But what you're saying is, okay, fine. That overall messaging could, there could be something there,

but you actually do need real points of attack. There are ways you can meaningfully change your life, your approach to life that don't involve reading a thousand pages a day. These small changes you can make in terms of your priorities and what you make time for that day after day will just build it. You'll get yourself there. Absolutely. You got to build a system.

I mean, it's not a single choice. It's like, ah, you know what I did yesterday morning? The big thing is I chose unhappiness. I mean, nobody does that. That's idiotic. It's like, yeah, well, I mean, a lot of people act like they do, but that's a different matter. You know, that's actually known as politics, right? I'm going to choose unhappiness today and bring misery to hell around me.

But the key thing is you got to have a system that works. And having a system that works requires some information. You don't have to study it like I do. You don't have to teach it like I do. It's actually pretty easy. When I say remember faith, family, friends, and work, anybody can remember that. And if you're finding that you're unsatisfied and you're unhappy because you're chasing the wrong things, then torque your habits back in the right direction. And almost every area of happiness

has these ideas. It's like, do I feel lonely, but I'm in a crowd? It's because you got all deal friends. You don't have enough real friends. That's an easy thing to remember under the circumstances. And I've heard you short form that by real friend, the person you can call it to in the morning crying. Exactly right. And a deal friend is somebody who's like, who is this? Right, exactly. And who, once you lose, once you, I mean, this happened to me when I left, I left Fox on my own. People think I got fired from Fox.

I did not get fired from Fox. Things were going very well for me there. I left to go to NBC. That's another ball. I remember that was a big deal, but that was a big coup. It was a very big deal. And NBC didn't make me happy, but my life today is much happier than it's ever been. But I will say, having been in that powerful position on Fox News and then gone to NBC

and then having a couple of years off and people saying terrible things about me, you do find out who your true friends are, right? The people, and I never really gave much thought to it. It's like, oh, whatever. But you do find out in retrospect, oh, who are the glommers? Who are the people who are just trying to be around me because I was in the prime time of Fox News? So that's a blessing, right?

It's a blessing to figure out like, oh, great. I got rid of the glommers. And can I say something even more irritating? Are that they come back. And like now that I'm back on the air, it's like then they come back and it's so fun ignoring them. Yes. Like as a Megan, I always believed in you.

It's like weird because I didn't hear from you during those two years. Yeah, so strange. It's actually interesting. Listen, Paula, I'll go ahead. Yeah, stand by because I got to squeeze in a break here and then we'll come back. And I want to hit the faith thing too because faith means more than you think it means. More with Arthur right after this break. Don't go away.

Don't forget to check out the show every day. Serious XM Triumph Channel 111 at noon east. Full video show and clips by subscribing to our YouTube channel, youtube.com slash Megyn Kelly, or the podcast is always available. We put it out a couple of hours after the show ends at Apple, Spotify, Pandora, or Stitcher for free. And there you will find more than our full archives with more than 260 shows. And we get tons of downloads of the archives every day people dig in the archives which i appreciate let's pick it back up on one of those pillars um family friendship faith and meaningful work faith faith doesn't necessarily have to mean start going to church again. It could. And you've made the

point that like, there are actual real ways that you can get yourself back into a religion you may have followed in your childhood or what have you. But it could also be much more expansive than that. Explain. Yeah, for sure. So, you know, I've studied this an awful lot. And one of the things that you find is that people who say that they have a faith or a spiritual life or a very strong sense of life's meaning philosophically, they're just much happier on average. They're calmer. They have more peace than people who don't have this.

And you can say basically, okay, well, you're fooling yourself, but there's really something there that we just can't deny it. Now, I look at it, and I don't find that my own Catholic faith is inherently better for that happiness than the Jewish faith or the Buddhist faith or or for that matter, atheism married to a real sense of meditative practice and a real sense of what life's purpose, the life's secrets might be about. But this is about basically. And again, this is not to say who's right. You know, it's to say actually the effect on happiness, two different questions. And what you find is that when people don't have a sense of faith or spirituality, a meditative or prayer practice, or even just a practice of learning about the big secrets of life, trying to study the ancient Greek philosophers, whatever it happens to be, they're too focused on their little world. And it's horribly, horribly boring. I mean, it's like if I said, Hey, Megan, I got this great

show I've been watching on Netflix. And you got to go watch the first episode, you're gonna love it. You might say, Okay, Arthur's a pretty clever guy. I'm gonna go watch that. You go watch it, you come back the next day and say, July, he said, I really loved it. Okay, today, go home, watch the same episode over again. So what are you crazy? And now if I said, you need to watch that episode every day for the rest of your life, you'd say that's misery. Well, that's kind of what it is. It's like your life is this TV show that has a lot of monotony. All of us, no matter how exciting your life is, you're obsessed with it, but it's really not that interesting in a lot of ways. You need relief. And one of the ways to get that is actually to cultivate your spiritual life. You write about mindfulness. That's a big buzzword these days. But one of the things you wrote about, which actually,

I agreed with, I was like, you know, I never really thought about it like that. It was mindfulness, short form, living in the moment, you know, not obsessing like what happened? Why didn't I take that other job? Why didn't I go to that other school? Why didn't I marry this other person? You know, people obsess over what they did or what they didn't do or why their life is the way it is. Instead of like taking the walk in the woods with their kids and enjoying looking at them being joyful and smelling the fresh air and like literally enjoying the moment you are in. But you raise the opposite side of that as well. It also means not obsessing about tomorrow, not worrying about the future, not thinking like,

what do I have to do to get ahead? You're supposed to sort of close out the back and the front to be in the actual moment that you're in. That's right. And a lot of people think that a spiritual path means that you're thinking constantly about heaven. Yeah, that's actually not right. Even religions that believe in a very distinct sense of heaven, the main benefit that people actually get from their spiritual and religious lives is that it makes the present more meaningful. It helps us to accentuate the loves in our life, that it puts things into proper perspective right now. Now, the way that we talk about in my business is thinking about the future. There's a special word for it. It's called prospection. We have to put a fancy word on everything. That's how we get tenure. But the bottom line is that living in the future is this uniquely human thing that people can do.

My dog can't do it. My dog is very, very mindful. You see, you know, it's like, see the cookie, eat the cookie, right? That's, and little kids, they tend to be very mindful because they actually don't have the brain circuitry formed such that they can be highly prospective or live in prospection. But if you take an average adult, the average adult, you put them in a functional MRI machine and you say, think about nothing. Literally, we have experiments that do this. And their mind starts to wander to what they call the default mode network, just in the natural kind of place where your mind goes.

And it's in the part of the brain associated with thinking about the future. That's what we do. 30% to 50% of your time is thinking about the future. That's what we do. 30 to 50% of your time is thinking about the future. That's a big problem because when you're in the future, you're kind of not alive now in a very real sense. It's kind of like being so sentimental. You're always thinking about the past. Look, you're alive now. I know some people who are spending 80% of their time planning the future, 10% thinking about the past, and they're only kind of alive right now. If, for example, I'll give you a more concrete example. You go

on vacation. You're like, this is a beautiful place. I'm going to snap pictures every three seconds and put them on Instagram. What you're doing is you're thinking about the future, somebody looking at your Instagram post and envying or admiring your vacation, or you looking at your pictures later so that you can enjoy them in the future when they are the past. Well, guess what you missed? You just missed your vacation. And you will be less happy if you miss your life. This is how you wrote it in the book, which I loved.

I have this like circled and underlined and highlighted. Fulfillment cannot come when the present moment is little more than a struggle to bear in order to attain the future because that future is destined to become nothing more than the struggle of a new present and the glorious end state never arrives the focus must be on the walk that is life with its string of present moments of that, I love that. The focus must be on the walk that is life with its string of present moments. Oh, I love that, Arthur. That's exactly right. Thank you, Megan. I wrote that because I struggle with that. I'm not going to lie. I've been living in the future my whole life. I'm always thinking, what's next? What's next? I've had four completely different careers. And it's fun. And it's truly

an adventure, I have to say. But I've been missing too much of my life. And so when I retired, as you mentioned before, I was the head of a think tank in Washington, DC. And it's a wonderful job. And I loved it. And I stepped out when I was 55 years old and I said, you know what? Like I've been doing the research I'm talking about in this book. And I said, I'm going to eat my own cooking here. And I have the evidence that I'm missing my life by thinking too much in the future. So I went on a walk. And when I say I went on a walk, I went on a walk. Many of the people watching and listening to us right now, they know Martin Sheen's famous movie, The Way, which is about him walking this ancient trail, the Camino de Santiago in Northern Spain, walking across Northern Spain. And I did that. I did that after I stepped down. I didn't do the whole thing because the whole thing is 800 kilometers, 500 miles. And I didn't have enough

time. I didn't have 33 days to do it, but I did eight straight days. I walked a hundred miles and you got to be present when you're walking a hundred miles because it's unbelievably boring, but it's unbelievably fulfilling. And you're just, I got the chops. I got the flavor for it. And I never, the weirdest thing is I came home and I never stopped walking. I never stopped. You know, I take long walks. I never like a walk guy. I'm like, like the weird walk guy in the neighborhood. Like who's the walking guy, right? It's like, it's Brooks. I'm on my Camino. And when I walk, this is kind of the walking prayer. The Buddhists talk about the walking meditation. This is the string of present moments. And this is how I remember my string of present moments

is by getting up and going out and no devices, no devices. Sometimes I pray, but I'm always thinking about what am I seeing right now? And I'm telling you, it's a thrill. And I never got that thrill before of being alive right now. Okay. So, and this is not a bring the room down moment, but the book also advocates thinking about death. So there are some points in getting happy that require you to think about the future we talked about sort of sitting down going into the week of being mindful about nurturing the things that are going to bring you happiness or your relationship with your kids with your spouse with your friends with your faith and so

on um but you all also argue that we need to think about death we need to accept death and we need to stare right in the face and come to grips with the fact that it We need to accept death and we need to stare right in the face and come to grips with the fact that it's going to get us. And what does that mean? So can you expand on that? Yeah, sure. One of the key things that people often don't understand is that everybody wants more love, but what actually prevents love is love's opposite. And love's opposite is not hate. Love's opposite is fear. Now, all of the ancient philosophers talked about that, but modern psychology shows that as well. The most important negative emotion is fear. It takes up the most brain tissue. The most

important positive emotion is love. So they're opposites from each other. The main reason people don't have enough love in their life is because they have fear. They're blocked by fear of rejection. They're blocked by fear of the future. They're blocked by fear of what might happen to them. The result of that is that it leaves them unable to be fully available to what's going on in the world around them. One of the things that I recommend is that we think very deeply about the things that we're afraid of.

I'm afraid of failure, like most people are afraid of failure. I'm afraid of being forgotten. I'm afraid of being irrelevant. Most of my fears are pride. A lot of people are really afraid of death or not actually literal death. A lot of people are afraid of their career ending or the admiration of other people stopping. That's a form of death. That's kind of like, I'm still alive, but I'm walking dead. And so one of the things that I recommend is basically the oldest advice there's ever been. If you are truly afraid of something, you need to look at the face, you need to take it on and it will become ordinary and the fear will vanish. It's just, it's just like, it's like magic. It's the most amazing thing. Now, again, there's a ton of research behind this with controlled experiments and human subjects

and all this stuff. It actually kind of makes sense. If you go to a psychiatrist and say, I am morbidly afraid of snakes, they're going to show you pictures of snakes. Not because they're sadistic and want to freak you out, but because you need exposure therapy. If you're afraid of flying, the first thing you'll do is you'll drive by the airport and then you'll go into the airport and then you'll look an airplane, and you will gradually actually make it more ordinary. If you're afraid of death or something like death, the end of something, you need to expose

yourself to it. So actually, there's a very famous Buddhist meditation called the Maranasati meditation from Southern Asia where people will think about themselves in various states of death and decline and decay. And it sounds really morbid and really gross, but when people do that, they conquer the fear of this inevitable thing. And, and only when you conquer the fear of death, can you truly be alive? I would say I'm not afraid of death. Um, I, I worry about dying too soon and, you know, leaving my kids, right? Like I don't worry for myself about crossing over. I worry about premature death. And of course, this happened in my family.

I lost my dad when I was 15 to a sudden heart attack. You know, I don't want my kids to have to grow up without me. So I have that fear. And I just don't know any way of resolving that. You know, it's like there's no positive spin you can put on such a thing where, oh, it'll be a benefit for them. You know, like it would be a horrible tragedy.

No, it's not good. It's not good, Megan. It's not good if it happens. But the key thing is it's much, much worse if it's a phantasm. It's much worse if it's a ghost that haunts you. If it's something that you say, I probably won't die and my kids will grow up

and when I'm old, I'll be dandling my 10th grandchild on my knee. It's probably true, Megan. But if it isn't, if it isn't true, you have to know kind of what it looks like and what it would mean. And the only way to do that is to take it out of the realm of the ghosts that will haunt you and bring it into the realm of the real and say, look, we will deal with this. In point of fact, we will deal with this. In point of fact, we will deal with this. And then it's not scary anymore. Well, it dovetails in with what I was saying in the

tease earlier, which is you want people to get very honest about their weaknesses, about their weaknesses. Don't deny them, embrace them, put them out there, be public about them even. I mean, for most people, they're like, this is crazy talk. Talk about weakness and it's important to our happiness. It's the most counterintuitive thing because we all know that. And the thing about it is in this celebrity obsessed culture, I mean, it's like how many people when something that you didn't like in your career happened to you, were people talking about it in public? And that's because people are funny that way. I mean, people enjoy the misfortune of others and especially the misfortune of the fortunate.

It's kind of a bad thing about the human character. And so the result of it is that we have this tendency to think, okay, well, then hide the bad things, hide the aging, hide the misfortune, hide the setbacks, hide the aging, hide the, you know, the misfortune, hide the setbacks, hide the weaknesses. Well, that turns out to be a really terrible strategy. Number one, because hiding things, it's not your authentic self and you'll always be uncomfortable. The second thing is that what you need the most is love. And the best way for you to get love is to connect with other people and your strengths don't connect you to other people. It's like, you know how I can really, I can really make know how I can really make people feel like they're one with me and love me as another individual, talking about

all the things I'm good at. Say, oh yeah, my career is going right. I got a book on the bestseller list. You can relate to me. I just got into Mensa. Yeah, I just got into Mensa. It's like, I just got measured with the highest IQ in my neighborhood. This is not relatable. It's like, I just got measured with the highest IQ in my neighborhood. This is not relatable. It's like, so I tell my students, for example, you want to relate to ordinary people. Don't say that you went to Harvard in the first five minutes. There's this old joke that there's three identities that you know about in the first five minutes of meeting a person, Harvard graduate, Marine, and vegan, right? And it's good because they have to tell you, right? That's so true. The key thing is if it's a strength, it's great. It's meritorious. Congratulations. Good for you.

But it's not relatable. There's a lot of cases of this. It's really interesting. You talk, Stephen Colbert, he talks often about the fact that the worst thing that ever happened to him was when his brother and father died in a plane crash when he was 12 years old. And he talks about how that really made him who he is. And it was a source of tremendous sadness. He's not talking about that as a source of glory. He talks about how that weakness made him the person that he is. And that in point of fact, this incredibly famous and successful person has to go through the same tube that we all do.

Megyn Kelly has the same sadness as any listener to this program, that we all have to work for the people who love us. And when we hide these things, we hide them from ourselves. A very, very close friend of mine, he got extremely wealthy because he's clever and hardworking and entrepreneurial. And I asked him, what's the biggest mistake you made in your thought about getting rich? And I can talk to him this way because we're really close friends. And he said, thinking that my problems were going to go away. And I said, what do you mean?

He said, it turns out when you have $800 million, it's possible your wife still doesn't love you. And she's not going to love you because of the $800 million. And so unless you're in touch with your weaknesses, and by the way, unless you share your weaknesses, you're not going to make authentic human connection with other people. It's not about getting rid of the weaknesses. It's about defanging them. Totally. It's the phantasm of the fear of death.

It's the same idea. You know, St. Paul the Apostle, he always, he, you know, by the way, the greatest entrepreneur in history, you know, we talk about, you know, Steve Jobs or someone who's phenomenal and the iPhone, which is great, but let's just see how many iPhones are out there in the year 4,000, shall we? I mean, it's like St. Paul, he was like this entrepreneurial guy creating, basically building this theology around this religion and it's lasted this incredible test of time. And how did he sell it? He saw it by saying there's a thorn in my flesh and in my weakness, I find my strength.

That's a terrible pitch. That's like saying, look, I'm weak. I'm sad. Nobody's following me. I feel horrible. Hey, want to join? It's like, this is the worst pitch ever, right? And yet look, 2 billion Christians, 2000,000 years later. It's so true. Gosh, it's scary for people to do. But all the messages to us are to do the opposite of all these things. You know what I mean? Like work hard, make a lot of money, be strong, all those things.

And then we look around and say, why are we so unhappy? My God, we're so unhappy. I'll just switch jobs. Maybe I'll switch jobs. And then you bring all the same baggage. You don't change anything else about your life. Maybe you free up some free time, but you probably spend it working. You probably just study at home, what have you. Or we do probably one of the worst things you can possibly do, which is go on Twitter, go on social media, which is totally mindless and a terrible fill-in for the real

relationships that we need to foster love, to foster well-being, to foster happiness. Absolutely. By the way, everybody knows that's true. Not everybody knows why. Exactly the example that you gave, the mistakes that we make, one of them right now is that we use social media as a substitute for real human interaction. During the coronavirus epidemic, there was an explosion for people who are lonely of looking at social media. It's the junk food of social life. Just as eating burgers and fries and milkshakes every time you're hungry will blow up your calories, but it won't give you the nutrients that you need, thus leaving you hungry and getting too many calories. Social media does that because it starves you of something called oxytocin. This is a brain chemical produced by the brain. So you remember when your children were born and you first made eye contact with them and it was

like the 4th of July going off inside your head, that was oxytocin. And we need eye contact and touch with other individuals so that we can get oxytocin, which is so intensely pleasurable and links us to other people. When we're lonely, we try to get it any place we can and we look for it in social media and we get none of it. And so it's kind of like empty calories that we get again and again and again. And if we do it, God forbid, if even we can see people, we don't because it's easier to look at Twitter, Instagram, or TikTok or something. We're just basically walking into a vortex of loneliness. It is easier for a lot of people, especially people who are introverted and they feel connected when they go on there. Like, oh, here's this person who says nice things about my tweets or who posts about whatever on Facebook,

things that I find appealing to the detriment of the real living world around them. And so I think it absolutely can become a defense mechanism for people who are not as extroverted or out there or socially adept as they'd like to be. Absolutely. And a lot of people do this. They also do it when they're tired. They do it when they're more lonely. One of the interesting things about loneliness, there's such an epidemic of loneliness in this country, is that it actually inhibits your ability to do the right thing. It actually inhibits the prefrontal cortex of the brain, your executive center, for you to make really good decisions for your own care. So one of the things when people are really lonely they do is they cocoon. They buy themselves and they'll lie on the couch and open a Haagen-Dazs and watch Netflix.

That's the worst thing to do when you're lonely. You should call a friend, go outside, take a bike ride, talk to other people. And the other thing that they'll say, instead of talking to other people when they're feeling lonely, they'll actually go on social media because it's much, much easier. But that's an inhibition of your own natural ability to take care of yourself. So one of the things that I recommend to my students, I recommend to everybody is when you're feeling lonely, use an opposite signal strategy. Do the opposite of what you feel like doing at that particular moment. If you want to cocoon, don't. If you want to lay on the couch, exercise. If you want to cut yourself off from other people,

call your mother. That's actually the right strategy when you feel lonely. That's like me when I'm trying to figure out directions. That's what I do. Just go do the opposite. Whatever my instincts are telling me to do, do the opposite. It works. Well, actually, and your husband, when he wants directions, the first thing he does is he says, I won't ask for directions. He needs an opposite signal strategy.

Ask for directions. Oh my God. I heard the funniest comedy bit once. I can't remember who did it, but they were talking about this difference between men and women. And they were like, ladies, if you want your husband to give you exactly what you want in the sack, you've got to tell him. You've got to volunteer to your husband exactly what you want and the way you want it. And she was making the point, this comedian, like they won't even ask for directions to get on the highway.

They're not going to ask for directions down south in Rio, if you know what I'm saying. Yeah. Yeah, that's right. It's like if you want to know what to south in Rio, if you know what I'm saying. Yeah. Yeah, that's right. It's like, if you want to know what to do in bed, look to the GPS. Wait, that's different. That's like, it's the wrong metaphor. Ways cannot help you in there. All right.

Let's turn the page to the elderly. And by that, I mean you and me. So, second half. By 50, you get your AARP card, right? No, isn't it 55? Do you remember getting your AARP card? I thought it was 55. Did they lower it? It's 50. It's 50. I'm telling you. I'm 57. I feel much physical. I'm in better physical shape than when I was 37. The trouble is I look in the mirror and I'm like, whoa. Who's that guy's that guy? Yeah, but you know, but you're honest about like everyone,

you know, from the sort of mid 40s point forward is probably on like a little bit more of a decline in terms of mental acuity, sharpness and so on than when they were 35. And I love the example. I mean, you bring it home when you talk about the tech industry. I mean, that encapsulates exactly what happened to you.

The reason why they're all so young. Right. No, absolutely. Part of it is this obsession with youth, but part of it is the fact that entrepreneurial ability, it tends to peak in your early 30s for lots of reasons. This gets back to this whole idea, you get two success curves and your first success curve is kind of your entrepreneurial success curve where you're figuring out new problems faster than other people. The second success curve is what you get in your 50s and 60s is your wisdom curve, where you can figure out what things mean. Now, an interesting thing about the tech industry is it's dominated by young people, but it's not dominated by wisdom. I was giving a talk at a big tech firm in Northern California.

I mean, this is what I do for a living. It's great. I get to ride around in an airplane and go and talk to people. It's the best life ever for me. And I was giving this speech in this tech firm, and they were talking about diversity in their industry, which is really important. They want more minorities and women who are in engineering. I think it's super important.

I agree. And then I said, but speaking of diversity, how many old people work here? They're like, you mean over 30? I said, you punk. Are you kidding me? And that's actually the problem with the tech industry in America today and all around the world is that you don't have enough people on their second curve who are very wise, who've been through the school of hard knocks. This is a big problem. And my view is one of the movements that I'm hoping to start in the coming year is an aftermarket labor movement for over 70 executives. The truth is, if you want to be a successful company that can innovate, but at the same time, not make stupid errors, every

company is at least one over 70 executive in the C-suite. We should be cruising for the best executives who are over 70 who can say, oh, I've seen that 20 times before. Trust me, if you do that, it's like putting your finger in the light socket. Because what's going on in the tech industry, they've gone in social media, for example, they've gone from the most admired sector in entrepreneurial America to the least in 15 years. And the reason is because they've made every mistake that no over 70 person would ever make. So fascinating. So, I mean, a lot of people are dealing with this. Like a lot of people are wondering, is it time to get depressed, right? Like is the best behind me

or the best years of my life behind me? And I've heard you talk about how if you ask your students at Harvard, you know, what do you think life's going to be like? And the average age is 27 in 10 years. They say, it's great. By 37, I have my life figured out. At 47, what do you think? Great. I'm going to have money, blah, blah, blah. What about 77? And Arthur is pushing back on that, believe it or not, right? Why he says you might actually enjoy 77, perhaps even more than you enjoyed 37. That's where we're going to pick it up right after this. Then Arthur Brooks will stay and take your calls. It's like office hours at Harvard, but you don't have to pay for it.

You get to do it right now. Okay, Arthur, let's talk about the back half and the difference between, I want to get it right, fluid intelligence and crystallized intelligence. Yeah. So this is a real revelation. When I started this research project, I was asking this question, it was about eight years ago. And I'm a trained social scientist. I study human behavior, but I'd really never thought about what the dynamics of trying to get happier as you get older are. So trying to bring the best science to bear.

What I did was I went out and I looked at the happiest people who are old and who had gotten happier as they got older and tried to see what they did. I mean, that's a pretty normal thing to do. I interviewed a lot of people. I looked at a lot of data. I read a lot of studies on it. And I was really shocked. One thing that I noticed that shocked me the most is that the most successful people early on in life were not the happiest people later in life. On the contrary, this is what I call the striver's curse. And by this, I don't mean rich and famous people. That's not what I mean. I mean, people who've just tried to do a lot with their lives. They've tried to, with a lot of merit and hard work and personal responsibility, they've tried to get ahead. They're strivers. And you find that

these people, that they have a lot of success in what they do. They work hard. They do well in their jobs, their respect in their communities, and they do better through the twenties and thirties, but things kind of start to slip in their forties and fifties, even though they've got all of their mental acuity and they're even in good health. Something's weird. They just get less interested in their jobs. They don't like it.

And a lot of them spend the rest of their lives kind of wishing for the old glories. They kind of wait it out and they tend to be very frustrated as they get older. What they don't know is that there's a second curve of success. Now, the first period when you're successful in your life in any profession, that's based on what psychologists call fluid intelligence. That's your analytic capacity. That's kind of your version of your Elon Musk brain where you invent stuff, you think of stuff, you can work harder, you have tons of energy. But later, and it tends to actually start going down in your late 30s and 3 or 40s really fast.

But there's this second wind that people get called their crystallized intelligence curve. That's their wisdom, their ability to understand why things are the way they are and their ability to explain it to others. So that's your Dalai Lama brain. That's your master teacher, your professor brain comes right. You don't have to become a professor. You just have to start doing what favors that, to mentor other people, to teach other people, to create teams. If you're a sole proprietor, CEO early on, lead teams of people later on. move from Elon Musk to the Dalai Lama, whatever that means in your life. And if you do that, that's the first big practice of people

who have actually discovered that jump from one curve to another in terms of what they're dedicating their life to, which by the way, is so joyful because the second curve is about love. The second curve is about serving other people and sharing with other people and teaching other people. It's really the best. And if people who learn that, they just get happier and happier and happier. All right. So how does that work, you know, as a practical matter? Because I think about my own life. I'm in a job where both of those skills, you know, both of those curves are useful. You know, I mean, wisdom would certainly be useful in the current position I'm in and I've got some. But the linear thinking and all that, like that's that's sort of what got me here. And I still feel it in abundance.

But if you're the CEO of a big corporation or if you're at a hedge fund, you know, and you're thinking about this, do you have to leave? Do you have to, like, go into academia? Like, can you continue doing those jobs? Or let's take it even to, you know, like how about people who are waiting tables or driving trucks? Like, how are they supposed to move into, I just dispense wisdom now. Yeah. The first, well, the first curve is I'm going to be a star.

The second curve is I'm going to make other people stars. That's really what it comes down to. So if you're, let's just hear it. You're a, you're running some sort of a financial services firm early on. You're picking the stocks. You're creating a strategy. You have fast thinking. You have clever ideas that nobody else can come up with.

Later on, you need to hire the hot shots to teach them the ropes, to, to be the coach, to be the mentor to them. And in so doing, they'll be doing what they do really well. You'll be doing what you really do really well. But if you try to keep up with the kids, oh my goodness, that's really a frustrating thing. So if you look at journalism, for example, you find that journalists and people in the media business, early on, they're really good at sussing stuff out faster than other people, coming up with stories that other people wouldn't be able to come up with. Later on, they're like great teachers. So what are you doing here in this program with me, Megan? Now you're still young, but you're going to get better and better and

better at this. And you're already good at it, which is that you're talking to this guy who teaches happiness at Harvard, and you're molding this conversation so that all the listeners can understand it and benefit from it. You're the teacher. You're the tour guide. You're the trail boss of this, which is crystallized intelligence. I like that. Okay. This is helpful, like where this is going. So how long can it be a boon to you? I mean, is it true that really you could enjoy 77 more than 47? Oh, yeah. You really find this. And so it's quite interesting. So people who are in crystallized intelligence professions, like historians, you got to know a lot and be able to explain a lot of disparate ideas to people concisely. So they'll buy your

books. David McCullough, the greatest historian and maybe in American history, 88. The thing is that what we find is historians have only done half their work by age 65 and the better half of the second half. So if you want to have a lot of crystallized intelligence, you got to take care of your health because your best years can come much later. And all of us control our skills and our ideas. Now, you have to not be prideful because prideful people are always trying to get back their past glories, things that they used to be good at. It's kind of like that famous movie, Napoleon Dynamite, that has Uncle Rico, who's like pretending he's on the last play of the football game from high school. And he's like 45 years old. People who are doing that, you're living in the past,

you're going to be miserable. You're actually never going to be able to get back those past glories. And you're missing some of your best years, your teaching years, your coaching years, your mentoring years, your sharing years is really what that's all about. So what I talk about in the book, and I give step-by-step instructions in the book about how to get on your second curve, no matter where you are. And it's, by the way, it's never too late. And the best part of all is that you can stay really high on that in your 70s and 80s and even your 90s. As long as you've got your marbles and as long as you've got the right kind of health, you can be at your most successful and happiest at literally the last

years of your life. Well, hopefully, I mean, one of the things just on a basic level is that hopefully that wisdom you're gaining has brought you to realize the folly of, of prizing these idols we talked about earlier, you know, that you can have all the money in the world, you can have fame, you can have all these material things and it doesn't make you happy. It doesn't. I mean, abject poverty can make you very unhappy. I mean, I think that's true. Not being able to pay your bills every month is a stressor that I've had and I know it's awful. So having money definitely alleviates a bunch of that, but I've had all that other stuff too, you know, and it doesn't make you happy. It has to come from someplace else. So hopefully you've learned that as a, as a lesson, as sort of a life, you know, plan, but then there's about,

then there's having to set out about doing it, right? You've neglected these relationships. You haven't built up these skills. You've been the workaholic. And so you look around and maybe you don't have love in your life. Maybe you don't have a lot of friends in your life. Maybe you don't have faith in your life. Where to begin? Yeah. Well, to begin with, you begin, you have to get after it because no matter what, if you wait, then it just takes that much longer. And starting almost any place brings tremendous rewards. By the way, you said something that reminded me that's really important that it's so wise what you just said that that money doesn't bring happiness, but it can lower unhappiness. And that's actually true. Happiness and unhappiness are not opposites. They're actually processed in different parts of the brain. And one of the

things that we make a mistake of thinking is that early on in your life, when you don't have very much money and you get a little bit more money and you feel better, you think, ah, money's making me happy. When you get to a point, it's actually lowering your unhappiness. You get to a point where that stops and you chase that feeling for the rest of your life, which is why we get on this treadmill. Our brain is lying to us. Our brain is fooling us because of our early experiences. Now, with all the things that we're talking about, remember, being happy is a skill. Being happy takes work, but there's information out there for all of us. I write books so that people can understand exactly what these things are. And it's literally, Megan, it's changed my life. I am remarkably happier than I was five years ago. And the reason is because I

actually ate my own cooking. I mean, I don't just write these books. I actually try to take my own advice. And I'm finding that I'm repairing my relationships. I'm walking my spiritual path. I'm breaking my success addiction. I'm firmly getting on my second curve. I'm acknowledging my weaknesses without shame, without embarrassment. I'm thinking about the inevitabilities, even these things that are unpleasant to me. And I'm telling you, I've never felt this way before.

I know you write about the importance of the arts and how everybody says, oh, sure, I like the arts. But when you actually look at the numbers, they don't go to the arts. They don't actually take in the arts. They may like it in theory. Can you talk a little bit about that? Because I do feel, I feel like, I'm just going to say it, like a cultural wasteland. I don't remember the last time I went to a museum. It's even hard just to read for pleasure. I always read, you know, something that is nonfiction. So I feel like I'm advancing my brain or my skills or my job, you know, and you make a strong argument that all that other stuff is important and actually does advance your

job and your work and your wholeness as a human being way more than just being studious and making sure you have the latest history book. Yeah, that's absolutely right. You know, there's a very strong tendency to think that all of the aesthetic stuff, it's a nice to have. And that if you want to be a good worker, you want to have your nose to the grindstone, you have to do these non-aesthetic things. And a lot of people actually think that way and have been trained to think that way. But that's actually not consistent with the research. The research shows that the more we consume beauty, the actual more clearly we see the world, the more effective we are, even in our day-to-day jobs. We need a lot of beauty in our lives. And there's a lot of ways to get it. There's some specific and very particular properties to music, actually.

And part of the reason for this is that we absorb music in different parts of our brain than we do the sort of logical exercises that we undertake. So you're reading a lot of nonfiction. You know, I read research, tons of it. I have to write a weekly column in the Atlantic. I read, you know, 15 or 20 long hair and academic journal articles every week. It's very easy for me to like, I'm exhausted. I don't want to read a book. I don't want to do something, you know, that's words on the page, right? But that could be a mistake. It's also the case that even if you are exhausted from that, there are other ways to get beauty into your life visually. If you're going to read something, read poetry. A lot of people haven't read poetry since they were literally, since they were in high school. And they remember really liking it, you know, read Shakespeare's 29th sonnet, uh, uh,

you know, they, which is the, the, the most beautiful, maybe the most beautiful love poem ever written, you know, uh, the, the idea that no matter, it basically says no matter how, how, how poor, how, how, how, uh, unhappy I can possibly be by the world's events, that just thinking on thee and then I scorn the wealth of kings. I mean, it's just the beauty that is an ordinary life actually used in language. Or listen to the music that you truly love, but be present when you do it. And your brain will improve, your attention will increase, and you'll find that you're actually more

effective, not less effective in the ordinary day-to-day duties. My God, I literally am listening to podcasts in the shower. Maybe I should turn on some music here or there, but I love them. It's not just to stay up on my job. I love them. I'm like a news junkie. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, part of it is you actually, it's clear. I mean, one has only to watch one hour of Megyn Kelly to know that you love your job. You actually really, really like doing what you do. Not every day and not every way, and certainly not under all circumstances. I mean, you've had good work situations and bad work situations like everybody, right? And once again, everybody has to remember that no matter how well you're doing or how much notoriety you

have, you still go through the slings and arrows of normal emotional ups and downs to be sure, but you love what you do. And that's beautiful. It's a beautiful gift to be able to actually like your job. And 80% of Americans, actually 89% of Americans say they like or love their jobs. So it's not true that everybody's going through drudgery. Librarians love their jobs. Bus drivers love their jobs. My son, the Marine, loves his job. My other son, the middle school math teacher, loves his job. I mean, this is a very normal thing.

And even if you just like it, that's a real blessing to be sure. But you also need a break. Your brain needs a break. Your brain needs music. Your brain needs beauty. Your brain needs art. And your heart needs these things as well. That makes such perfect sense. I'm prioritizing this today. Was the 29th Shakespeare's 29th sonnet. Is that what you said? 29th sonnet. Yeah. That's right. Beautiful, beautiful. Yeah.

I make my students read it in my happiness class. Now there's also the problem of, you know, for lack of a better term, having real problems in your life, you know, whether it's a bad diagnosis or, you know, something, whatever you suddenly you're facing bankruptcy, how to, how to handle that. And that, if you don't mind, I'm going to, I'm going to bring in a caller because I can see sort of some headlines of what's on their mind. And there's one of our listeners, Sue in Pennsylvania. She's, she's got a situation. That's a real thing. May not be that easy for her to get to the happy place. Sue, how are you? And what's your question for Arthur?

I guess I just wanted some advice on I am a 24-7 caregiver to my son who has severe disabilities. And there is no break. I'm in. I guess, you know, I try to find beauty through him. Like I'll take him on a walk every day and put him in the wheelchair and push him around, but it's really hard. And I understand trying to see beauty, but there's just no time for you. Sue. Yeah. So I'm so sorry to hear that. And I know you love your son, which is why you do this.

You're not doing this out of obligation. You're doing this out of love. It's an act of love, isn't it? Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. So Sue, do you have a strong religious faith? I actually, I lost my faith when they wouldn't give him his communion, but of recent, I started again and it is helpful. Like I try to read every night a little bit, um, about, you know, it's,

it's Bible related. It's Catholic Catholicism, but you're a Catholic. You're a Catholic like me. Right. And it's hard, you know, because it's, you know, the difficulties of everyday life, they can obscure a lot of the things that the clergy will talk about. And they say, well, walk a mile in my shoes, Father. Walk a mile in my shoes. I completely understand that. But there's one important thing that's really, that your Catholic faith and that many religious faiths that they have in common in times of tremendous hardship, which is that these trials, they're not for nothing. These trials actually

have meaning. And one of the things that people have recommended to me and that I've seen be really effective is to start each day, if you're a Roman Catholic, for example, to say, I am going to join the suffering that I see this day to the suffering of Jesus, my Savior. And in so doing, I am going to be part of trying to lift up the whole world. This is the cosmic significance of this. And it's not successful every day, but the truth of the matter, Sue, is that your suffering has meaning. Your suffering is truly metaphysically meaningful. You truly are helping the world in this way. There's so much suffering in the world. And you know what? There's so many suffering people in this world, and you're bearing part of it. You're doing your part for some of the

suffering that's in this world. And that's a very, very beautiful thing. Yeah, man, Sue, you're quite a woman. Thank you for calling in and for sharing that with us. All the best. I think Arthur and I will both say a prayer for you and your son. Thank you. Thank you for what you're doing. And we'll pray for you and we'll pray for your son. What about it, Arthur? So you get a bad diagnosis, right? Like something like that, like you're going to be facing a period of unhappiness in all likelihood. So do these techniques work in those situations or is it basically just a matter of raising the floor of your overall happiness so that when disaster strikes, you're just better, it's just one of the things people ask me to say, I always talk about the meaning behind suffering. People say, oh, I should go suffer, right? No, no, no, no. Trust me, suffering will find you. Yes. Because it does find us. Some people suffer more than others to be sure, but every life has suffering in it. And the mistake is actually trying desperately at all costs to avoid it because by the time it does find you inevitably, it will be that much worse because you'll have no resiliency. You'll have no strength to actually deal with the suffering.

To begin with, we have to give ourselves permission to suffer, to say, look, this diagnosis, the doctor said, I just got your test results. You need to come into my office. You're going to suffer from this. It's perfectly normal and give yourself permission to do so. You don't have to go home whistling a happy tune. You're not made of stone. That's a perfectly normal and give yourself permission to do so. You don't have to go home whistling a happy tune. You're not made of stone. That's a perfectly normal thing. But then to start asking yourself this, what am I going to learn from this? I talk to young people a lot and they don't get a terminal

cancer diagnosis and they're not the permanent caregiver for somebody like Sue, but they do suffer. And a lot of it is because they'll have a misbegotten romantic relationship and they'll have their hearts broken. I mean, this is a really a very, very common thing. And one of the things that I recommend is that we keep kind of a journal of our sufferings. We keep kind of a journal of the pain that we feel in our lives. And we write down actually how we're feeling. In so doing, we actually can manage it much, much better. But more importantly, with a little bit of distance from it, after time, we can then write, what did I learn from this? What did I learn from this suffering? What am I learning from this pain? And at that remove, you find that as your life progresses, you look back in your journal and

you say, when that thing happened, I learned this and I'm benefiting from it right now. And you know what? I'm going to be learning something from this experience as well. A very close friend of mine who was diagnosed with terminal cancer really taught this to me. And, you know, he lived past his diagnosis, but the doctor said, there's a wolf at the door. Sooner or later, he's going to get in.

And he did get in. The wolf did get in. He did pass away from this after a certain point, but he lived every year of the rest of his life remembering that this suffering that he had and the fear that he had, it actually had meaning for him. And he got, he savored every minute more as a result of it. I know you write in the book that you ask your students, how many Thanksgivings do you have left? And I was like, and for me, I, but I ask myself that, not that I always say how many autumns left because fall is so beautiful with the change of colors in the Northeast. I've always grown up loving it. And, um, you know, it does, it is a

good way to reset, right? Like, am I doing the things I want to be doing? And am I going to be okay if I get bad news with how I've chosen to live my life so far? Yeah, for sure. For sure. I mean, the Thanksgiving question, the reason that I put that in the book is because it's very important to focus on the time that we have left so that we can use the time that we have left. And it's not as many as, I mean, it's not infinite. And so never act as if your life is infinite.

Never act as if your day is infinite for that matter. And that doesn't mean you need to fill every nook and cranny with work. You need to fill every nook and cranny with consciousness, with a sense that there is meaning and we should be doing things that have meaning. And it's interesting. When I think about it, I wrote that down because if I live like my parents did, I'm 57. My number is probably nine. Nine, Megan? That's not very many, is it? I better enjoy these Thanksgivings. And you will. And I hope our audience will enjoy theirs and make sure of it by buying the book, by giving some thought to it, by prioritizing this, right? Happiness is achievable. It's not an attitude. It, so much more than that. And we didn't even touch politics today. I'm so glad you changed your career path in the way you did and love talking to you. Good luck with all of it.

Thank you, Megan. Thank you for this beautiful show and thank you for the service you're providing to me and millions of other people. Oh, God bless. I'll see you at Sunday Mass. The book is called From Strength to Strength, Finding Success, Happiness, and Deep Purpose in the Second Half of Life. Go get it right now, BNN.com. What a great discussion. Don't you love Arthur? He's so insightful.

And tomorrow we have more insight coming your way. Thanks to the guys from The Ruthless Podcast who are back with us. We have a lot to talk about with them. Did you see the news, the update on the CNN, Jeff Zucker, Alison Gales thing? I predicted she would be gone. And within two weeks, yeah, she's gone now too, with the New York Times dropping a bombshell last night. Some more information. We'll get to it all, that and everything. And in the meantime, download the show, follow us on YouTube, and we'll talk tomorrow. Thanks for listening to The Megyn Kelly Show. No BS, no agenda, and no fear.