Something Is Very Wrong With Modern Life - Arthur Brooks

00:00:00Why do so many people feel like modernlife is simulated rather than real?>> Because it is. We're living in theMatrix. That movie, The Matrix, came out27 years ago. I hate to shock and saddenyou. It'll make anybody who was alivethen feel old. But the plot of thatmovie was that a great artificialintelligence was dominating the humanrace and kept the human race placid in apleasant simulation so that it couldfeed off human kinetic energy. It keptthem in pods and ran a simulation. Andand the truth of the matter is that weare subjugated not by peoplenecessarily, but by algorithms thatfundamentally are creating a simulatedversion of a real life that's pleasantenough, keeps us from being bored andthat feeds off our attention and energyand money. We're living in the matrix.And that's why people say, "I don'tknow. It doesn't feel like real dating.Is it does it doesn't feel like realfriends?" Scroll. Scroll. Scroll. Itdoesn't feel like real achievement gamegamebecause we're living in a simulation.>> What's happening neurologically though?>> So what's happening neurobiologically isthat we're literally in the wrong halfof our brains. So this is the work ofIan McGillchrist, the great Have you hadhim on the show?>> Friend of the show.

00:01:15>> He's fantastic. He's an Oxfordneuroscientist. He's, you know, a greatgenius. And and he brought back thewhole idea of hemisphericlateralization. That's the the conceptthat the two halves of your brain dodifferent things. I mean, they do a lotof things the same, too. But the fact isthat they have different corecompetencies. Now, when I was a kid inthe 70s, this is long before youyoungsters were born, there was thisbelief that there were right andleftrain people. Right people werecreative. Leftrain people wereanalytical. My mom, who was an artist,was a right-brain person. My father, whowas a mathematician, was a leftbrainperson. Growing up, I was a right-brainperson like my mom because I was amusician. and I was a classical musicianand I painted and I wrote poetry and andthen I got my PhD and I becameapparently a leftrain person because Ibecame a scientist. Well, the truth isthat that theory didn't work. What doeswork, however, is what Ian McGillbrought back to show that we have we askand answer different questions with thedifferent hemispheres of our brain. Theright hemisphere is the complex why, themystery and meaning of life, the thingsthat set us out in the hunt for thethings that matter in life. The leftbrain is the how to and what. It's howwe execute. It's the linear side. It'sthe analysis. It's the engineering. It'sthe apps of life or the leftbrain side.And what's happening

00:02:30is when we'rerunning a simulation of life, we'rerunning a leftbrain simulation to meetour rightbrain questions of love andmystery and meaning. And you can'tsimulate the meaning of life.>> Is it not a good thing for people to bemore rational and analytical andobjective? Is this not something thatonly a couple of decades ago we weretrying to push more on people?>> Yeah, I suppose. Except that we needboth. The truth is that we need bothbecause life is full of both kinds ofproblems. Look, if you if you don't knowthe why of the things in your life, thehow to and what mean nothing. But if youonly know the how to and what, then thewhy and the and the why is elusive. Imean, you get the point that I'm tryingto make. I mean, you can either beincompetent in executing anything inyour life or you'll have no purpose inthe life that you lead. You actuallyneed both. You know, I go to work everyday. I'm, you know, traveling arounddoing my job. It's great. I know how todo it. I'm competent at it because myleft brain is working properly. I knowhow to get where I'm trying to go and>> do what I'm trying to do. I can write myspeeches and my columns and books, etc.>> But I got to know why, which is that Iwant to do something good for the world.I want to support the people that Ilove. I want to glorify God. That's whatI want. That's the why side. And thatoriginates on the right side of ourbrains. And furthermore, all the thingswe really care about are not theanalytical things. The things that we

00:03:45care about are not the physical, they'rethe metaphysical. That's what we reallycare about. So, I'll give you anexample. A big left brain question ishow does my car work? I actually don'tknow. I have the slightest idea, right?[laughter]It's just I mean it's a car, right? Andbut I could know because I couldactually get a book or I could, youknow, get a guy and come teach me or Icould watch a bunch of YouTube videosand that's knowable because those arecomplicated leftbrain questions. Mymarriage is a right brain problem. It'scompletely unsolvable. I have to livewith it. I can't figure it out. I willnever figure out my marriage. Dude, I'vebeen married 35 years before you just,you know, an hour ago. She texts me, "Ilove you. Good luck on the podcast." I'msure it's true. She loves me. Tonight, Icould call and she might be completelypissed off at me. I I don't know. Ohyeah, but you did decide to datesomebody with Latina blood.>> It's Well, that that adds that adds alevel of complexity, I grant you.>> Correct. It's like a Yeah, it's amultiplier.>> She's a big pulsing right hemisphere,right? [laughter]

00:04:56>> Sure enough. But but this is the thing.The reason I love my marriage is becauseit's unsolvable, right? The reasonpeople want to get a a real cat, not amechanical cat, is because it's alive.And things that are alive are rightbrain problems and things that aremechanical are leftbrain problems. Andso what we've done is we've we've solvedlife. We've solved life. I mean we haveI mean everything we're trying to thethe engineering the Silicon Valley setof solutions for everything that we'retrying to do that actually pops throughthe screen at us that dominates ourculture that increasingly can besimulated and understood throughartificial intelligence. All that'sdoing is it's a curve fit through themessy business of life using theseleftbrain algorithms and that's notgoing to get done what we need to getdone. It is going to leave us>> lonier and more depressed and moreanxious. Here's the thing. Your brainknows. So, for example, this is one ofthe reasons that the more pornographypeople look at, largely young men,because more than 85% of pornography isbeing consumed by men. Now, you'rethinking yourself, I know what you'rethinking. Who are the 15%?>> Old men. No.[laughter] So,>> is it you?>> Thank you. Thank you very much.[laughter]

00:06:14So, they the more pornography that menlook at, the the lonier they get. So, inthe moment they feel less lonely and themore satisfied they feel, but the moreunsatisfied and the lonelier theyactually get because it's a simulationfor the experience they're actuallyseeking and it's unsatisfactory as aresult of that. You want actual humanconnection with another person. That'swhat you actually want. And you'resettling for a a two-dimensionalsimilacum for it.>> What are some of the other counterfeitsources of meaning that people mistakefor the real thing?>> Achievement is a counterfeit source issomething that you actually get thatdoesn't build anything real of any realconsequence in life. So, the idea islike the score in a game gives you areal uh short-term sense of ofachievement, which is a source ofpurpose, which is a component ofmeaning,>> but it isn't real. It's fake. It's ait's a it's counterfeit. It's a it'ssimulated. And that's one of the reasonsthat you'll find you got to do more andmore and more and more and more to keepup with it. You don't you know, theyused to say if you want to if you reallywant to live a good life, you know, youneed to do you need to have a son, planta tree, and write a book.I don't know. I've done all thosethings. I don't know if I planted atree. [laughter]

00:07:30>> That's what you're missing.>> I don't have a green thumb, you know.So, this isn't my problem. I mean, plantmore trees. But the whole point is thatwhat those things have in common is thatthey're real.>> They're in real life. They're realachievements in real life. They don'tsay, "Plant a tree online, you know,pretend you're planting a tree, youknow, get really good at doing it. Havea sun online." You know, the whole ideaof simulating these experiences isunsatisfactory. What it does, it itsimulates the experience in the moment.That's another example. Having friendsis another way is another way we thinkabout it. Virtual friends, they theysimply don't meet your needs. And one ofthe ways that we know this is that themore virtual friends that you have, theless that you're actually illuminatingin the experience of interacting withthem, the right hemisphere of yourbrain. You know, one one of the reasonsthat you don't like to do your showvirtually is because you don't have thesame experience. And the reason is thatyou and I are connecting with our rightbrains right now. our right. You and Iare friends. I mean, we text and talk toeach other even when we're not doing ashow, which is great>> because we're friends and we have thattexting relationship because we'veactually looked at each other in theeyes and had real no foolingconversations with each other. Andthat's how you have to link with otherhuman beings. Otherwise, it's asimulated friendship. It's one of thebiggest realizations I had[clears throat] when I was trying towork out what I wanted to do with mylife toward the end of my 20s.

00:08:45I had allof these friends because shock horror inthe nightlife industry in the northeastof the UK, there weren't many peoplethat were into the things I was gettinginto. There weren't many people that,you know, maybe they'd heard about SamHarris and they were thinking aboutdoing meditation or they'd read a bit ofRobert Green and then got stuck after acouple of pages and then were strugglingwith that and then felt real bad becausethey couldn't sit still. Like all ofthese things that I was going through,it was I was finding it difficult on thefront door of a nightclub to find peopleto resonate with. So I made friendsonline that were into the same sort ofthings that I was. And I found thatthese friends kind of distilled out intotwo str of people. Even if all that I'ddone was as I was going through a cityon a train,>> stopped off for a 30inut coffee withsomeone, that person immediately wentinto a different bracket of I'veactually met this person. They're real.In three dimensions, they're real.>> And uh cuz your brain actuallyapprehended that person in a differentway. Yeah,>> what you did was you had an imprint ofthat person in you know flesh and bloodin real life which is by the way how thebrain was evolved. You know, we are ourbrains are more or less the same sizeand shape. Slight physiologicaldifferences, but trivial for what we'retalking about here as they were 250,000years ago in the mid in the middle placeto scene.>> And during that period, all human beingslived in bands of 30 to 50 individualswho are kinbased and hierarchically

00:10:01related. And that meant that therelationship they had with each otherwas absolutely paramount. And our brainsare wired for in-person relationships.That's one of the reasons that you getoxytocin when you look at somebody inthe eyes. You and I have a betterconversation when we have this bondinghormone that's actually going throughour brains when we're looking at eachother in real life. You don't get itthrough Zoom screens. There's a lot ofresearch on this at this point. You geta different kind of experience when youhave the in real life experience. And soone of the things that I do when I'mtalking to couples and my my wife and I,we do we do work, you know, we do we'lldo these marriage retreats, for example.One of the things that we'll do withcouples, we'll say, "Okay, before you goto sleep, you need to stare into eachother's eyes before you go to sleep."And you're lying on the, you know, lyingin the bed, you know, on your sideslooking at each other. Stare each otherin the eyes for for 5 minutes.>> That that's it. That's the prescriptionbecause you want to establish this thingthat probably they haven't had for areally really long time>> and that your brain actually needs sothat your brain registers that's myperson. You can't get it any other way.>> Why is it that meaning can't besimulated? Meaning can't be simulatedbecause meaning is this fundamentallycomplex right hemispheric experience.And so when you're the simulation isalways in the wrong side of the brain.And so it'll look like it's meaningful,but it isn't>> is

00:11:16what it comes down to. It'll feellike in the moment like love, but itisn't. It'll feel like friendship, butit isn't. so interesting with thisconversation because a lot of peoplewhen when I think about how this landson the internet there is a kind ofcohort of people that will say somethinglikethis is good enough this is actually asgood there's a a disbelief that youactually do need to go into threedimensions uh there is a a I'm happy towait for the sector robots to come I'mhappy to have the AI partner there'seven a company that makes AI versions ofyour ex's So, if you don't ever want toleave the relationship with them, youcan just keep on texting. Um, and Ithink that kind of when I read thosecomments, it makes me sad. It makes mesad because I think>> it sounds like somebody who's got hurtor is scared that the world isn't goingto be able to give them something thatthey know that they can get compliantlyonline uh permissionlessly uh with lowerrisk of rejection or zero risk ofrejection. And um it makes me it makesme sad. But yeah, it's so much of whatwe're seeing in the modern world ispeople getting what they want but notwhat they need.>> And this is something that people needbut don't realize that they want.>> Yeah. Well, they do know that they wantit.

00:12:31They just don't know how to get it>> and is ordinarily what's actuallyhappening. I mean I I rarely meetsomebody who would say I actually wouldprefer not to meet anybody in real life.I mean there are people who areagorophobic for example. There arepeople that have particular pathologiesalong these lines. But the truth is it'sthey feel like it's the best that theycan actually get under thecircumstances. Look, when when 62% ofcouples are forming online, then it'svery hard to form. It's increasinglyhard to form a a couple offline.>> Mhm.>> And and if you're an exceptionallyonline person or you're living in aremote location or you, you know, cameof age during COVID, which means thatyou you don't have social skills thatwere wired into you at a tender age,then then you're going to struggle iswhat it comes down to. But here's thething to keep in mind. The biggestpredictor of depression and anxiety isis to say I don't know the meaning of mylife or my life feels meaningless.That's the number one predictor>> why that well it it it all gets down tothe fact that these pathologies thatactually follow from this sense ofemptiness, you know. So people oftensay, "So why has depression tripled? Whyhas anxiety doubled?" Which theyliterally have clinically since about2008. Why? and they'll say, "Well,because generational difficulties,because you know, boomers wrecked theeconomy and created income inequality

00:13:47and and and made houses expensive orsomething." They have all of theseexogenous economic explanations for thisstuff. These are all wrong is what itcomes down to. Since 2008, when life hasbecome increasingly online and we, youknow, the average American is nowchecking her his phone 205 times a day,what you've done is you shoved yourselfinto the wrong hemisphere of your brain.And in so doing, you haven't been ableto naturally experiencethis meaning. And that's what leadsempirically, that's what actually leadspeople to feel empty, to feel depressed,to feel anxious, to actually feellonely. That's the big predictor is whatit comes down to. We have a meaningcrisis. Most people have no idea wheretheir testosterone levels sit. But whatif I told you there was a solution?Something that identifies low tea fasterthan a high school bully, and it won'tcost you all your lunch money. That'swhere Function comes in. Gives youaccess to over 160 lab tests, includinga deep dive into your full hormonepaddle. Every result is reviewed byclinicians. Anything out of range isflagged and you get clear explanationswith a personalized protocol withactionable next steps. So, ifsomething's off, you know exactly whatto do about it. Whether you just need togo to the gym more or you need to playCreed Louder in your car, Function will

00:15:02tell you exactly where your testosteroneand everything else stands. Normally,this level of testing would usually costthousands, but with function, it's $365a year. That's $1 a day to stop guessingwith your health and start knowing. Andright now, you can get $25 off, bringingit down to $340 bucks. So, get the exactsame blood panels that I do and save $25by going to the link in the descriptionbelow or heading tofunctionhealth.com/modernwisdomusing the code modernwisdom at checkout.Let's say that you're going to design alife for someone to have as littlemeaning in it as possible.>> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.>> What would that consist of?>> It would start by um waking up um whenthe sun is warm. You know, making sureyou don't start your day like beforedawn. Make sure you start your day whenkind of when you get up. Make sure thatif you have an alarm clock that is yourphone. Um look at your phone before youroll out of bed, right? Uh then makesure that the first thing that you do iseat a bunch of, you know, highlyprocessed foods high in sugar. Make sureyou get your coffee in the first fiveminutes. Uh, so you get a big dose ofcaffeine and make sure that you'relooking and scrolling on your phonewhile you're eating your first meal.That's a really important thing to do.Make sure that your whole first hour isneuro is is neurocognitively programmedto be on the screen.

00:16:17Then make sure thatyou have a remote job. It's veryimportant that you go to work back inyour bedroom and and you look at ascreen and you look at a screen all daylong so that your colleagues are kind ofsquares on the Zoom screen and you seethem sometimes in the clients and etcetc and you don't actually know whereanybody lives and you don't have arelationship with anybody, right? It'sactually better if you don't see anybodythe whole day as a matter of fact. Now,if you're going to date, make sure thatit's it's swipe right, swipe left, swipeleft, and so that you're only getting atwo-dimensional understanding of theperson that you might want to fall inlove with as well. like nomulti-dimensional,multi-ensory understanding of who theperson is. Make sure you can't smellthat person, right? I mean, that'sreally important because, you know, thealactory bulb does all kinds of meaningrelated things in the brain. So, makesure you rule that out, right? Um, andmake sure that on your own datingprofile you're lying a lot. That'simportant, too, right? [laughter]Then, uh, let's make sure that that forfun that you're spending sort of theevening not doing anything of of realimportance. I mean, you're not workingon a big project. you're not going outand seeing people that you're kind ofstaying in and scrolling uh and andwatching YouTube shorts and and ifyou're doing something that's kind ofcompetitive and achievement oriented,make sure it's gaming. Make sure thatyou know it's really oriented towardthat.

00:17:32So, it's kind of writing your lifein disappearing ink.>> Um and and then go to bed. Make sure youdidn't do any exercise. Important not todo any exercise at all, right? And umand thenrepeattimes where n equals any number that youcan conceive of so that that that you'renever bored. You're never bored, butyour life is grindingly boring. See,here's the key. If you want your life tohave no meaning, make sure that there'sno boredom moment to moment, but thatday to day and week to week and month tomonth, life is boring. That's whatyou're actually going for. as opposed ifyou want your life to be reallymeaningful, make sure you got plenty ofboredom moment to moment and then thenyour life won't be boring at all. Isn't>> that a strange paradox?>> It is. I mean, my my great-grandfatherum Leroy Brooks, he was born in Tha,Kansas. He married the sheriff'sdaughter. John James was the sheriff.Was strung up by Quantrell's raidersduring the Civil War. Kid you not. Thisis Americana in my family, Chris.and and and and he married Mary Ellen inTa Kansas. And that's pretty much what Iknow about him. But I'm gonna make a aprediction about good old Leroy. Henever came home

00:18:47to Mary Ellen and said,"Honey, I had a panic attack behind themule today." [sighs]His brain was working the way it wassupposed to. I promise you that his lifebehind the mule looking at a mule's buttwas was pretty boring moment to moment.But he was not bored. his life wasn'tboring because he was living a reallife. But a lot of people today who havefigured out a way by checking the screenand living online and and living thehustle and grind culture that's beenengineered out of Silicon Valley andvarious other places around the world,hide or bad and wherever you want, thatnot being bored from moment to momentgives them the most boring livespossible.Is it the case that ambitious people areparticularly susceptible, vulnerable tomeaninglessness? [sighs and gasps]>> So, asking for a friend, right?>> Of course. [laughter] Of course.>> Me, too. I'm I'm like a senior versionof you, man. [laughter]Except you're not going to be bald.>> That's right. I'm going to have to losea lot of hair to>> You're going to have to lose a lot ofhair. I know. If I had your hair, I'd bepresident of the United States rightnow.>> I think you would. [laughter]Um,yes and no. So, one of the the theproblems that really ambitious peoplehave

00:20:02is that they they they don't knowhow to live with themselves. So,ambition, striving, busyinessum is is is really a way that peopleanesthetize themselves because they'revery very uncomfortable. So, you know,one I'll give you an example. One time Iwas talking to a great friend of mine umwho traveled constantly for work,constantly for work. And and his wifewas just in his grill. It's just like hehad kids and and she says that I missyou and and you always every year youtell me that this year is going to bedifferentand and I realized getting to know thisguy really really well. The problemwasn't that his job made him travel toomuch. The problem was he didn't want tobe home.>> He didn't want to be home. He wanted tobe distracted because his life stressedhim out so much. This is what it's liketo be a stver is is like having thisunbelievably chaotic life and and andyou need to distract yourself all thetime. And so sometimes your ambitionwill be distracting you. Sometimes yoursuccess will be distracting you.Sometimes your your overriding need tobe special or to be applauded by othersis your way to distract yourself fromall the things that are actually goingon, all the storms and things insideyour head, right? and and and when youhave a down moment then you panic andthat's

00:21:17when the screen comes out or orfor that matter that's when alcohol anddrugs come out. There's very interestingdata from the OECD that show that aboveaverage busier than average people areabove average risk in alcohol in alcoholabuse. So you don't think you think ofsomebody who's an alcohol abuser or asan alcoholic as somebody who's down andout, you know, you know, a bum, right?No, it's more likely to be an investmentbanker. It's more likely to be awealthy, successful podcaster. And andthe reason is because successfulstrivvers anesthetize themselves withdrugs and alcohol, with pornography,with screens, with anything that willactually make you like, "Don't leave mealone in here, man. I don't want to bealone in there.">> Which is why they're strivvers in thefirst place. How often do you thinkpeople are pursuing goals because theygenuinely want them versus because theywant approval?>> So, everybody pursues goals becausehuman beings, homo sapiens, only getsatisfaction in their life when they'remaking progress. It's that satisfactionis the joy of an accomplishment ofmaking progress toward an accomplishmentwith struggle. That's what satisfactionis all about. That's why that's whygoals are incredibly important andstruggle and pain are incrediblyimportant. That's what it comes down to.These are the two things to teach yourkids

00:22:33is have goals, accomplish stuff,and struggle and don't be afraid ofpain. Those are the things that youteach your kids and they'll get a lot ofsatisfaction. Satisfaction is one of themacronutrients of happiness to be sure.The trouble with that is that if it'ssomebody like you, highly intelligent,super hardworking, unbelievablyenergetic, then you can actually startfooling yourself into thinking it'sactually not about making the progressand the struggle and the hustle andgrind of life itself. It's actuallyabout if I finally get that thing, thenit's going to be okay when I finally getthat thing. So, you know, I've I've I'veworked with Olympic athletes and and andit's funny because you'll often theythink they're alone in their strugglesand you'll say, "Did you when you wonthat gold, were you depressedafterwards?" They'll be like, "How'd youknow?" Like, cuz it's always true.>> Every other gold medalist. It'sliterally called gold medalist syndrome.>> Yeah. It's called gold medalist. And andwhat it is, it's al in in my field inbehavioral science is called the arrivalfallacy.>> And the arrival fallacy is just like I II I got to get there and when I getthere, I'm going to feel that thing.Now, what what is the thing I'm going tofeel? And this gets back to yourquestion. I'm going to feel like I'mworthy.>> I'm going to feel like I'm something.I'm going to feel like I'm special. I'mfinally going to feel like I'm special.And you don't.

00:23:48And you don't. And that'sthe problem. That's what a big part ofthe driver's curse.>> You know what's fascinating about thearrival fallacy? No one's ever been ableto make it popular.>> So, the concept.>> Yes. Yeah.>> Correct. has tell me the most well-knownbook on the arrival fallacy that pointsit out exactly.>> Yeah, I know.>> [ __ ] So, I was on my way out toAustralia texting Mark Manson about thisand I was explaining one of the problemsI was trying to navigate with the show,this live show that I was doing that Iwas putting together and one of them isthat a good bit of it is kind of aboutthe the arrival fallacy. It's a PGversion because I'm aware that it's>> chronically the most unsexy topic toever talk about and his response was,"Good luck. I've tried to talk aboutthis publicly and every single time it'sfallen flat. It's not just not mimemeticthat people don't want to talk about it.It's not just mimemetic neutral thatpeople will accept it and maybe bring itup and maybe not. It's activelyanti-mimetic. People don't want to hearit and won't tell their friends aboutit.>> It is.>> No, I know. I know.>> It feels saying to people that are stillclimbing, which everybody is,>> the view from the top of the mountain isnot as good as you think it's going tobe, feels like you're sucking the gasout of their fuel tank.while they're still on the way up. It'slike you as a fat person

00:25:03>> saying to someone who's starving, well,you food's not that nice in any case.And it's an unteachable lesson. And theonly way that you can learn it is bygetting there. And because the thealternative to this with the arrivalfallacy is that every successful personever in history has been inducted intosome kind of cult that pulls the ladderup after them where everybody gets thesame memo which is so I know that youall of the problems that you had, all ofthe internal voids, your feeling ofinsufficiency, the chip on your shoulderfrom when you were a child, yourdesperate desire for validation fromrandom humans on the internet. I knowthat all of that was fixed when you gotthe 30,000 foot house, but we need totell the poor that that's not the case.So, you now are a part of this elitegroup of people that are trying to sighup everybody else into not trying tostrive for it. That's the alternative,which is or is it more likely>> that that's just the sense that the goldmedalists got? And that's not to saythat it's everyone, but it does seem tobe a pretty big cohort, way more thanthe people that are striving would thinkit is.>> Yeah. Yeah. So there that there's areason that is antimmatic and that'sbecause it goes against mother nature.Mother nature wants you to be fooled.The reason that that the that the theancient Williamsons,

00:26:19right, from someplace, some Anglo-Saxon tribe ofsomething something Scotland. Yeah.Yeah.>> The reason they passed on their genes isbecause they were fooled by mothernature. That they were fooled that theyactually they they chased the arrivalfallacy again and again and again andagain and again. The reason that you'renot going to be satisfied, the reasonthat it can't be satisfied is becausemother nature needs you in the hunt. Butthe only way you're going to stay in thehunt is with a promise that you'refinally going to get there. Now, there'sa side note to this. There's ametaphysical side note to this, by theway. This is kind of a this is a littlea little bit of of a a side note thatkind of takes us in the transcendentdimension. We'll come back to thearrival fallacy in a second. But youknow there is a philosophical set ofarguments for the existence of somethingwhich is that the the desire forsomething is actually proof of theexistence of its object. So for exampleproof that water exists is that I feelthirst.>> Proof or or or evidence that food existsis that I feel hungry. Now I wantunremitting happiness. I want it and Ifeel like I can actually get it somehow,but I I can't. I can't. But thatphilosophically is a proof that it doesexist.>> Not here.That's

00:27:34actually proof of a divineafterlife. Actually, it's evidence of adivine afterlife that you have thishunger for unremitting happiness whichsuggests that it actually does exist,but you can't get it in this life. Maybeyou can get it someplace else is what itcomes down to. And this is one of thegreat proofs in most of the bothAbrahamic and karmic religions for theexistence of nirvana heaven whatever ithappens to be. Anyway, mother natur backto this the question at hand. Why wouldmother nature play this trick on us?Because because we got to stay hungry.She wants us to stay hungry. So she'swired in a mistake. She's wired in amistake. He's wired in something that itis such a deep mistake that we makeagain and again and again that even whenpeople speak a manifest truth thatpeople deeply believe they still willreject it. I remember when David Brooks,you know, the author David Brooks, heand I are super old friends. We're notrelated. Share a surname. It's commonsurname. It's a common surname, right?And so, um, my Brookses, you know, snuckout of Lancaster in in 1630 toMassachusetts, one step ahead of thecounty sheriff, but in his came later.Anyway, David Brooks, he said, Iremember years and years and years ago,he said, you know, being number one inthe New York Times bestseller list,

00:28:49it'sreally not that great. We're havinglunch and I said, "Let me try. Let mesee how it feels." Right? And and thatwas exactly the point that you made.Now, now Ryan Holidayiday talks aboutthat, too. The first time he had a bookthat was number one in the New YorkTimes bestsellers, he's like, "This isgreat." And the next week it was someyo-yo who had a stupid book as numberone. And he realized how how little itactually meant, but he wanted the nextone to be number one, too. Actually,it's more tyrannical than that becauseif your next one doesn't make numberone, now you used to be great. Andthere's almost nothing worse than that.>> Yeah. The only thing worse than neverhaving made it is having fallen off.>> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I I almost I I wantedto do a show at one point. I talked to aproducer about the idea of a TV show umcalled I used to be famous where youknow I as a behavioral scientist will gotalk to people who are like livingrelatively ordinary lives and they usedto be famous. Some are happy, some arenot. Some are addicts, some are crazy,some are like normally married.>> Fascinating show. Wildly unpopular,[laughter]>> you know, like just it's just>> Yeah. But if you if you if you want tohave that, it's the underdog story.>> Yeah.>> Right. It's from zero to hero, not fromher to zero. Although it's prettyinteresting when you when you hear aboutpeople who are living who are much

00:30:04muchmuch happier than they were in thelimelight.>> You know, when people are livingordinary lives um and and they're theyused to be really famous and people go,"Oh, I remember he was so and so in thePartridge family or something. Now he'sgot a happy marriage and four kids andyou know he you know he works for acardboard box company or something." Howcan people work out the meaning thatthey've got in their life? What are thebig questions they should ask?>> Yeah. So um there are three big whyquestions that constitute meaning. Andthis actually comes from the work ofMichael Steager who's a a really good umsocial psychologist at uh u in Coloradoand he uh he has the three parts thethree elements of meaning which arecalled coherence purpose andsignificance and there are three whyquestions. Number one is you have tohave an answer to the question, youknow, why are things happening the waythey are in my life? You know, thingsare happening all around me all thetime. Why? Part of meaning is having ananswer to that. Maybe that's a maybethat's your religious answer likebecause of the mind of God. Maybe that'syour scientific answer because these arethe laws of the universe. Maybe you're aconspiracy theorist and say becausepowerful people are doing these things.>> Conspiracy theories are nothing morethan crying out for an answer to thecoherence question which is

00:31:20a meaningproblem. You know, when so so if youhave a a relative who's going down therabbit hole on the craziest conspiracytheories, don't you don't throw data intheir face and say, "You [ __ ] that'sthe wrong way to approach it. They'rethey're having a meaning crisis. They'rehaving a happiness crisis is the reasonthey're doing this in the first place."So coherence, number one, you know, whythings happen the way they do. Second,why am I doing what I'm doing? That'spurpose. Purpose and meaning are not thesame. Purpose is goals and direction soyou can make progress. So why am I doingwhat I'm doing? And if the answer is Idon't know, then you can't make progressbecause you're just going in circles.You're just a a Carnival cruise shipjust kind of randomly going around andround and round and around. It's thereason I find cruises unbelievablydepressing. They don't go someplace,>> right? I'm a teological individual likeyou. I want a goal, right? And that'spurpose. And and so in the in the in theresearch, you know, Sonia Luba's stuff,have you had her on the show?>> She's coming on next week or the weekafter.>> Super good. Yeah, she's awesome. andshe's at UC Riverside and she does thesework on goals and you'll give studentsthese just random goals like you'regetting a B minus in physics. You know,let's get a B+ this semester. Just thatgoal, they get happier, they get moredirected, life seems better because theyhave more meaning in their life. That'swhat it comes down to.

00:32:35Even arbitrarygoals work better to have meaningfulgoals.>> And last but not least is significance.And that's my life matters. you know, mylife matters to someone, you know, to mydog, to my wife, to to God, to my kids.And so that's the love question. And allthese things are completely missing inmodern culture for so many people. Youknow, why do things happen the way thatthey do? It's just random. I don't know.Why am I doing what I'm doing? I have noidea. I get up and I scroll. I get upand I surf. I get up and I go on a Zoommeeting for a company I don't reallycare about. And and and you know, whatis the significance of my life? Why doesmy life matter? I don't think it does.>> And that's those are the three things toactually keep in mind.>> Before we continue, most people in their30s are still training hard. Theirprotein is dialed in. They sleep betterthan they did in their 20s. Disciplineis not the issue, but recovery feelssomewhat different. Strength gains takea little longer. The margin for errorstarts to shrink. And that is why I'msuch a huge fan of timeline. You see,mitochondria are the energy producersinside of your muscle cells. As theyweaken with age, your ability togenerate power and recover effectivelychanges even if your habits stay strong.Mitoure from timeline contains the onlyclinically validated

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00:34:31and modernwisdom at checkout. Whathappens psychologically when life feelsrandom? When life feels random, then itfeels like anything could happen at anytime and there is no control. There areno levers that you can actually pull. Soyou you're not an active player in yourown life when there is no coherence.When you don't see a pattern, it's a bigproblem. You know, when you when you theyou remember when you learn to drive,>> how old do you have to be in in the UK?>> 17.>> Okay. And and when you first, you know,you got a lot of confidence, but whenyou're looking at the traffic and likeand it's like it's like chaos,>> wildly intimidating. I learned to drivein a mini, which is a very British wayto do it, but it's [ __ ] terrifying.You're like half the height of everybodyelse.>> Yeah. [laughter]And you know, any any system that you'rein that doesn't seem to make sense,that's that that that it tends to feelreally really meaningless because youdon't know what you can actually do tohave some sense of agency. There's nosense of agency when there is nocoherence is what it comes down to. Sofor example, if you believe that thingshappen the way they do because that'swhat God wills, then you're going to tryto work that lover. You're going topray, for example, you're going to havea relationship with God. If you believeit's because of the laws of science,you're going to learn more about scienceand you're going to actually enter intothat particular dimension. So forexample, I'm a behavioral scientist. Ireally believe

00:35:46in science. I reallybelieve that it's just like it gives youincredible amounts of power. My job isto explain the science and explain howpeople can interact with the science.It's a pure coherence play is what itcomes down to. And if it's all aboutconspiracy theories, then I'm going toget online and, you know, share themwith my friends.>> So that that's why coherence reallymatters. So that you can have agencyover your life.>> And why are directionless people sopsychologically fragile?>> They're fragile because they don't knowactually in which direction that they'regoing, which means they can't makeprogress. Now remember, this whole ideaof happiness comes from making progresstoward a goal. And there's tons ofreally interesting examples of this. Theweight loss literature is superinteresting in this. So, diets are alleffective and they're all catastrophicfailures is what it comes down to.Effective in so far as that almost anydiet will make you lose weight, but theyhave between an 80 and 95% failure rateafter a year, meaning you gain all theweight back and then some.>> It's a weird industry. It's like a $40billion industry in the United Statesthat fails.>> Bora Boros of nutritional advice.>> It's craziness. you know nine out of 10times they fail. Um now now why why arethey successful? Because in ineconomically it's because temporarilythey make you make progress

00:37:02but theyultimately fail because once you get toyour goal your goal weight the reward isnever getting to eat what you like everagain for the rest of your life.Congratulations>> that and then you get the arrivalfallacy is what it comes down to. Sowhat you want in life is something whereyou can just make constant progress. Iwant to be like I want to be a betterdad. I want to be a better person. Iwant to create more value with my work.And that's there's no end to that. Ican't be like, "Yeah, well, I got to thebest dad I can possibly be, so that'sall good.">> No, I'm I'm I can always work to be abetter husband. I can always work to bea better friend. I can always work to bea better citizen. I can always work tolove my country more. I can always workto actually do something more importantin my work and reach more people withthe with the the the moral objectivesthat I have. And that's what I need. Ineed goals I can't meet.>> [snorts]>> I don't I think that the confusing thingis it if significance is about beingvaluable to others and not famouswhy is it the case that modern peopleconfuse the two>> part of the reason is because um whatstrivvers they get into there's actuallya pathology that that that is in themiddle of this um so what you find isthat certain peoplelet me back up a little bit um I workI'm

00:38:17sort of a strive whisperIn my work, I specialize in people whodo incredible things, right? And notjust because that's fun, although it is,but because that's the kind of booksthat I write. You know, people who doamazing things and still don't haveperfect lives. That's kind of my area ofresearch. As a matter of fact, they havea common childhood. And it kind of lookslike this. You know, super strivvers whoare never satisfied and struggle.They generally speaking um found thatthey only got attention and affectionfrom their parents when they didsomething, when they got good grades,when they made pitcher on the baseballteam, when they made first chair in theorchestra, when they right when they,you know, set up a lemonade stand andmade more money than anybody thoughtpossible, whatever it was, right? Andand their parents often their parentsare immigrants or or came from poverty.and they'll reward their kids when theydo a thing thinking that they'reactually wiring in success and happinessfor their kids. What they're tellingtheir kids is that love is earned.They're teaching their kids that love isearned. And they kids will learn that.And when your brain is synapticallyplastic, boy, will you ever learn thatlesson. And then you will go throughlife trying to earn love over and overand over and over again. You'll look forif you're a man, you'll look for womenwho make you earn their love, right?

00:39:32andand that you'll spend your marriagetrying to bring in more and more andmore and more money. For example, womenwill try to stay young forever by tryingto earn their husband's love. You'llfind that they will surround themselveswith sycopants and yesmen who are justlike fake friends who make it make thesepeople earn their love um with gifts andfavors and fanciness and and you'llsurround yourself with people becauseyou believe that love is actuallyearned. Well, the truth is that's wrong.Real love isn't earned. It's a freegift, freely given. It's a grace.Anybody who makes you earn their lovedoesn't love you. That's what it comesdown to. But they don't learn thatbecause that's actually what they'vewhat they've what they've they've um uhevolved over the course of their lives.And they they become success addicts,winning addicts, looking for thespecialness. And and in the moderneconomy when you can metastasize thatfrom one to your family to yourcommunity to your church to your city tothe whole world on the internet thenyou're going to be searching for theadoration of strangers because it's thebest possible dopamine hit that you canget and life is going to feel gray ifyou don't get it. So this is a pathologythat actually people have and the moretalented you are the more danger you'rein.

00:40:48One of my favorite ideas of yours isthis difference between specialness andhappiness. Like it's so good when yousee it. It's something you kind of can'tsee anymore.>> Yeah. And and it's it's a lot of peoplewho are, you know, there people watchand listen to Modern Wisdom because theywant an edge. You know, it's good. It'sgood entertainment. I'm I'm I'm a fan.Long before I met you. Yeah. But it'sit's actionable material for people.>> Well, I'm I'm I'm actively making lessactionable material.>> Yeah. I know. which is an interestingpivot at the moment. I think there's a anew term floating around which you mightnot have seen yet. It's called grindslop. And uh grind slop is kind of this[ __ ] your feelings, just work harderachievement and progress andoptimization at any cost.>> Yeah.>> And I think that people are feeling alot of fatigue. I've felt that for awhile. And you know, ifI go back and look at what I was talkingabout 2 years ago, 18 months ago, a lotof that was I'm going to try and feel myfeelings a little bit more. I'm going totry and see if there's something alittle bit deeper. I'm going to have alittle bit more fun. I'm not going tooptimize for outcomes at the expense ofexperience. And that has really come toa head. Uh I think for a lot of people,I think it's worsened by AI. I thinkthat if you can have a oracle in yourpocket, which you always had, but now anoracle that speaks to you personally andknows

00:42:03exactly everything that you needand kind of gives you this very curated,idiosyncratic, customized version ofwhat it is that you want in a chatformat is almost as if you're speakingto your best friend that happens to beGod. [sighs and gasps]>> People have got information overload andwhat I don't think that they necessarilyneed more of is just getting like howfuagra is made, right? just forcefeeding that high velocity like highdensity stuff.>> Um, and I think that at least for me,what I'm finding myself enjoying lots ofis I took something away from that.>> Yeah.>> And I had a good time>> as opposed to optimizing for you know,you think about short form or Blinkistor Spark Notes or you know what,whatever your favorite book summaryservice of choice was like what is itthat you're doing? You're like trying toget to the outcome.>> Yeah. Yeah. No, you're you're to getpoints on the board. You're trying toget points on the board. Yeah.>> No. And and>> I can't remember. We that that was adigression from something from theoriginal that that we>> me saying if significance is about beingvaluable to others and not about beingfamous. How can people confuse thosetwo?>> Oh yeah. And so specialness andhappiness. Correct. Yeah. So specialnessand happiness is really reallyinteresting because the idea of I mean Iwill literally hear people say

00:43:18look anyloser can have a family. You know anyloser can have an ordinary job andprovide for his wife and kids>> but not everybody can start a company.Not everybody can be CEO. Not everybodycan have a famous podcast. Not everybodycan do those things. And and in otherwords, they're saying, I know what wouldmake me happy, and I'm going to forgothat happiness for what I think is a asa happiness beyond it, which isspecialness. And that will always leadto ruin. It always does. I mean, again,I talk to people my age. I've talkedabout people who are older than me. Imean, it's like this classic thing. It'sa friend who is um 25 years older than Iam. um an icon in finance, an absoluteicon of finance. And I said when I said,"How old were you when you figured outyou were going to be rich?" He said,"32." He knew when it was. I was 32years old. He said, "It was like I youknow, I actually left this bank and Iactually went and opened my own firm andand it was starting to make money andand we weren't rich yet, but I Irealized I was going to be rich." And Isaid, "You must have thought, what's itgoing to be like to be rich? What's itgoing to be like to be rich? What'sgoing to happen?" He said, "Yeah, he'snot a very materialistic guy. He doesn'thave a boat. He doesn't have 15 houses.He

00:44:33doesn't have any of this stuff. He'sreally, really wealthy man.>> Scott Galloway. [laughter]>> My doppelganger. You know, I should go Ishould I said I I said to Scott theother day cuz I we were doing a thingtogether and I said, you know, we shouldgo on tour together with Stanley Tucci.>> I said no. [laughter]Like>> and put you should be under a big redcup.>> It's like you three card Monty orsomething like that. It's like which onedo you get? Which one?>> Three card Baldi. [laughter] Right.And so I and he said and he I said, "Sowhat did you think when you're when yougot rich how life was going to bebetter? How did you really think lifewas going to be better?" Because this isinteresting for me as a behavioralscientist. I mean, this is this is deep.And he he thought about it for a while.He said, "I thought that when I got richthat my wife would love me. Really loveme."And I said, "So what happened?" And hesaid, "She didn't."[sighs] They just stared at me. And itwas this moment of pathos, right? It wasthis moment. It's like this what'spathos?This moment of deep understanding andfeeling, right? That and it's almost asif when he he had never said it before.When he articulated it, he

00:45:48understood itfor the very first time.>> Do you think he'd selected a wife thatwas the sort of person whose love neededto be won?>> Of course. Of course. Because you know,if you believe that love is earned, thenyou're going to surround yourself withpeople who make you earn their love.Yeah.>> Every single time.>> You've got you've got cause and effectgoing on here.>> Of course. I've got>> this line from an essay I wroterecently. What you are praised for inpublic, you will pay for in private.>> Nice. Give me an example.>> Uh your psychological resilience. Youknow, in the boardroom, people call itstrength, they call it decisiveness,assertiveness. Uh they call it uh uhanti-fragility. Yeah,>> but around your kitchen table it makesyou put up with a relationship that youshould have left long ago.>> It makes you impenetrable to the actualpsychological and emotional needs thatyour spouse needs.>> I had a a Navy Seal sat here, AndyStump, and he said, you know, I builtmyself up like my entire career was madeout of being a person who doesn't quit,>> right?>> That caused me to stay in a marriagethat was toxic for 10 years longer thanI should have done.>> Your strengths are your weaknesses, butyour weaknesses are your strengths.What's that mean?>> You tell me. I'm [ __ ] [laughter]You've Uno reverse carded me on a alimmerick that I don't understand.

00:47:03>> But I mean, think>> the Riddler sat opposite me here.>> Yeah, [laughter]I'm a Batman villain.>> Correct.>> The the bald man, the baldy, the um theum>> What is your greatest weakness?>> Uncertainty.>> Uh-huh. How have you turned that intoone of your greatest strengths in whatyou do?>> Paying attention to every differentpermutation of how things could go toensure that the plan is in place.Hypervigilance,>> uh,galactically unreasonable attention todetail.>> Exactly. Right. What's your next biggestweakness?>> In the similar sort of circuit is thatoverthinking.>> Uh-huh. You fear failure,right?>> Fear.>> You fear shame. Fear shame more thanfailure.>> How does your fear of shame and like I'mnot I'm not divulging anything to to ourfriends.>> No one's no one's [ __ ] surprised.>> No one's surprised here. It's nothingthat I haven't said on stage in front ofthousands of people with tears in myeyes.>> It's like [laughter]the shamefaced boy part of the program.>> Yeah, exactly. Um>> so so how does sh how does it feelshame? Which by the way is very commonfor for>> success working hard enough so that youdon't have to feel it. you know,overachieving, outstripping

00:48:18what anybodythought to this the point where nobodycould ever think that it would besomething shameful, right?>> But it does cause you again what youwhat you are praised for in public, youpay for in private. It means that youhave>> um>> opening up about how you feel,especially about weaknesses andvulnerabilities.>> That's hard to do because you go, well,I'm supposed to have it all together.the reason that the world gave me thelove that it gave me is because of lookat my competence and here it is ondisplay and I'm and then you go I needto I there's a there's a hole in thisarmor and I need to show it to somebody.>> Uh and I and the map that I have ofreality from the real world gets portedacross into the relational world.>> Yeah. And that's very very difficult tothat's a a tough thing to watch. Itfeels like being Batman and Robin for alot of people. Sorry. It feels likebeing Batman and Bruce Wayne for a lotof people. You know, it feels like youhave one life out there,>> right? And then when you come home, youcan either choose to keep the mask on,>> but taking it off means that you have tostart living this double life where youneed to not feel the things that you doprivately when you're in public and notuse the tactics that you have publiclywhen you're

00:49:34in private.>> Right?>> So,>> right, and that actually is can bereally disconcerting and it can behighly damaging for personalrelationships.>> And this is one of the reasons that youfind that when people start to getreally famous that they're much more atease in front of a thousand people thanthey are in front of one person. M>> because they actually have to use adifferent set of social skills. They'vegot the theater ability in front of athousand people. But when they'reactually talking to mom or, you know, anactual no fool and girlfriend, life, itgets real dicey real fast, right? Iswhat it comes down to. But but what youput your finger on is that look, youwill pay in private for what you'reapplauded for in public,>> but you will also, you know, what you'repaying for in private is the source ofyour strength in public. And that whatthat means is that you shouldn't justtry to you shouldn't just be thankfulfor what they're applauding you for inpublic on the contrary. You should bedown on your knees thankful for theweaknesses that you have as well.>> And that's that's the that's the promove. That's what it comes down to.That's actually how we ultimately learnto manage ourselves is that we recognizethat we have these frailties, that wehave these weaknesses, that we havethese, you know, feet of clay>> and and we say, "Thank you. Thank you.Thank you for that weakness." becauseand indeed that is a source of mystrength.>> Yeah. Most of the things that you'remost ashamed of

00:50:49are just the dark sideof something light that you're reallyproud of.>> And you know, if you've got a sword,most swords are double-edged. Andsometimes it nicks you on the backswing. That doesn't mean that you throwthe sword away.>> Yeah.>> Just means that you learn how to hold itproperly.>> Yeah. And [clears throat] then the theace move is being grateful for the woundfor the wound itself. It's reallyinteresting because actually what youfind in a lot of Eastern philosophy isthat you know we have a tendency to bevery stoic about the way we talk aboutproblems and suffering and weakness inour life to say I will bear up under it.>> I will I do accept it. I do accept it.But it's not enough to accept it. Youneed to love it. That's really that thatthat ultimately is the is what makes youfully human is to actually love it andto accept it as the divine will. this isthe way it's going to be and becauseit's happening that's what I want I mywill I want what I want is what ishappening sort of aimatically I realizeit's sort of philosophical in its waybut ultimately I think this is what weneed to get where we need to get in ourlives is is recognizing that there areboth strengths and weaknesses that weactually have and we should be asgrateful for our weaknesses as we arefor our strengths you might not believeme but this is what peak sleepoptimization looks like not talkingabout the night gown that's just for sexappeal. I'm talking about my EightLe.

00:52:04The Eight Sleep Pod 5 comes with a smartcover you throw on your mattress thatactively cools or heats each side of thebed up to 20°. And now they've added theworld's first temperature regulatingduvet and pillowcase, so you've got 360°coverage for deep uninterrupted rest.It's like being Walt Disney without thecryogenic chamberand the racism. Best of all, theirautopilot feature learns your sleeppatterns and makes adjustments toimprove your sleep in real time. It evendetects when you're snoring and liftsyour head a few inches to help youbreathe better. That's why eight hasbeen clinically proven to add up to 1hour of quality sleep per night. Theyhave a 30-day sleep trial, so you canbuy it and sleep on it for 29 nights. Ifyou don't like it, they will give youyour money back. Plus, they shipinternationally. Right now, you can getup to $350 off the Pod 5 by going to thelink in the description below by headingto eight.com/modernwisdomand using the code modernwisdom acheckout. That's ei.com/modernwisdom and modern wisdom a checkout.I had this idea the parental attributionerror like the fundamental attributionerror that>> we are often prepared to especially inthe modern world right um blaming ourparents for stuff is basically a rightof passage in modern psychology moderntherapy culture. Uh but if we're notprepared to lay our strengths at thefeet of our parents then maybe weshouldn't be so quick to

00:53:19call them thevillains for what's wrong with us. So,you know, you say that your desire towork hard is because you were neverfreely given love at home, but>> isn't that also the same thing that'smade you so driven and ambitious?>> You say that your hyper vigilance wasbrought out because people didn'tobserve your needs ahead of their own.>> Isn't that also the same reason thatyou're so concerned to ensure thateverybody else's welfare is put beforeyours? All of these things are they'renot even two sides of the same coin.It's just a single [ __ ] piece ofmetal. This thing exists. It's woventhroughout it all.>> Right. Right.>> And uh>> well, you're what you're doing is rightnow you're being very subversive becausewhat you're doing is subverting theculture of grievance.>> Mhm.>> And which actually you're pretty good atthat at this point. I've noticed that.But>> people got really angry when I when Italked about that. Maybe didn't like it.>> Well, the whole point is that you knowthe unhappiest people are people who arewhose identity it revolves aroundgrievance and victimization. And thatthis is by the way one of the ways thatpeople in positions of relative culturalauthority and power keep you subjugated.The way that I a baby boomer like metechnically in the last year of the babyboom can conscript culture warriors whoare Gen Z into my movement is byconvincing they're victims and theyshould be agrieved>> about how the world treats them, abouthow older people treat

00:54:34them, about howthe culture treats them.>> It was easier before you, so there's nopoint in trying now.>> Yeah. Well, or you should be really madabout it. You should be angry about it.you should be, you know, carrying a asign in the streets.>> Apply your efforts to complaining aboutthe problem as opposed to>> go Starbucks. Yeah. Yeah.>> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, it seemslike a lot of what you're laying at thefeet here, the issue is largelytechnology that that is one of thebiggest movers. Is that a fair?>> That's the tip of the spear. It'sactually what it is. It's a thetechnology is a manifestation of the waythat the culture of engineering hasgiven us this scientism this conceitthat every problem is a complicatedproblem that can be solved as opposed tothe most important problems which can'tbe solved. They can only be lived withand understood. That a more humanapproach to what we're talking about isthat there are plenty of complicatedproblems that we can solve but the mostimportant ones are the ones we can'tsolve. And that's what uh properly it'sinteresting because that's what most ofthe you know Buddhist teachers will saythat the the wrong turn of the west wasthat was the scientism that said thateverything is a solvable complicatedproblem whereas you what we need isbalance between complex and complicatedthe complex problems of the righthemisphere and the complicated problemsof the left hemisphere and they exist ina system and there are many things thatwe shouldn't try

00:55:49to solve because wecan't we should live with them>> we should understand them>> we should leave them as permanentmysteries that actually give our lifeflavor. But the truth is that especiallyover the past 25 years in the era ofhyperdevelopment of technology that isan expression of the idea that no, we'regoing to hit the singularity, man. We'regoing to live forever. We're going to beactually be able to figure out how toupload our brains. we're going to beable to solve any problem with whateverapp or douad or or orsupplement or whatever it happens to bethat we will have the scientific acumento solve everything that actually u is aproblem in our lives. And that's justaxiomatically wrong. And how do I knowthat? Because we're solving more andmore of these problems and we're gettingless and less and less happy. It's thesame kind of thing to say, for example,if we had enough therapists, we wouldn'thave any more depression. Well,depression has tripled and the number oftherapists has tripled. So, what's goingon here? Obviously, there's a cause andeffect problem and a a glitch in ourlogic. I wonder if this is part of thereason why people are feeling exhausted.They've got personal developmentfatigue.>> Yeah.>> That permanently

00:57:04asking the whyquestion, permanently trying to optimizeeverything becomes exhausting. uh thekind of cost that you pay of trying tooptimize everything is worse than beingunderoptimized.>> Yeah.>> That the process of trying to be perfectwill kill you more quickly than theimperfections would.>> And yeah, all of this together is like,dude, I got enough on my plate.>> I got enough on my plate. Do I need morehomework? Yeah.>> Do I really need more homework rightnow?>> As opposed to like [sighs]>> ah I'm trying. I'm trying. I'm I'mtrying and I'm trying hard. And that'sthat's pretty good.>> Yeah. And you know, there's nothingwrong with these big why questions. Theproblem is having these big whyquestions and believing that if youwatch enough internet videos and takeenough supplements that you'll be ableto answer these things. And and this isone of the this is a big generationaldifference that we actually find. Sothere every philosophical school um ofnote and of merit has something that theancient Greeks called aporeia which isto sit in a state of puzzlement overquestions that can't be answered. So,Zen Buddhism is based on coins. Cohensare riddles. You know, what is the soundof one hand clapping? And a strangeunanswerable question. You're supposedto ponder that. And in the pondering,you gain a certain kind of complexknowledge, which we know

00:58:20is, you know,the the dominantly processed in theright hemisphere of the brain. Right? Abig generational difference is thatwhat's very what's missing for a lot ofpeople's lives today is that at nightwith their friends, they're not havingthese BS philosophical conversationsabout big questions that can't beanswered.>> That was what you did right at 11:30after you came home from a party withyour friends in college in 1985.Is it like I don't know, dude? Do youthink God exists? Right? It's like[gasps] wow, dude. and and and now it'slikeso we've stopped doing that one thing.There's nothing wrong with big whyquestions. The problem is that we onlyask either ask questions that can beaddressed by Google or Chad GBT or webelieve that if we have enoughscientific knowledge that thesequestions can be answered. Both of thoseare a big big wrong turn. They're a bigwrong turn philosophically but they'realso a wrong turn neurobiologically.>> Weird, isn't it? Because the promise ofmodern technology, culture, science,being able to answer a lot of questionsand fix a lot of the problems thatpreviously were huge. Infant mortalityand [ __ ] cuts on your you know howIgnise died.>> No,>> bro. This is [ __ ] money. Tell me.>> So

00:59:35guy that discovered the germ theoryof disease, he's finds that child bedfever is being transmitted from corpsesto uh newborn babies because the doctorsweren't washing their hands in between.begs his colleagues to adopthandwashing. He gets laughed out ofevery single institution he's trying todo it to. Uh he keeps on talking aboutit for so long that he drives himselfinsane. Everybody thinks that he'sinsane. And his wife helps to commit himto an asylum. While he's being removedfrom his own home by the nurses that aretaking him away to the asylum, he gets acut on his leg. The cut on his leg istreated by a doctor who doesn't wash hishands after touching a corpse and hedies due to the infection.

01:00:16>> [laughter]>> like the most>> like tragically ironic way to die.>> Uh>> but yeah, we we've got all of thesepromises made by by by the modern world.And the problem is no one. It's thefirst time that we've had the oracle,>> right? It's the first time thathumanity's gone through the wow, maybewe could answer everything, maybe all ofthe problems as opposed to some of theproblems.>> Yeah. Yeah. And um>> and the whole idea is that if we we wedig a little deeper, we'll find it. Wedig a little deeper, we'll find it.>> But you're saying that there's aparticular category of challenge whichis simply unsolvable.>> You're dig like when you're in a finalstop or something.>> Yeah. Yeah.>> Now, this is important because this is,you know, a classic mistake that peoplemake. There's a conceit that peoplehave. I talked to a guy one time who wasa big part of the war on poverty inAmerica, which was this idea that we'regoing to be able to wipe out povertywith social programs, with socialwelfare services. And it did a lot. Imean, social welfare programs did a lotto lower caloric needs and and make surethere's more public access to educationand all kinds of good stuff. But thetruth of the matter is that after acertain point, it starts to wire inpathologies. Actually, it makes itharder for people to actually becomeindependent, etc.>> Because they become reliant on

01:01:31themoney.>> That's the idea. Yeah, that's that's thewhole idea of of this and it's certainlynot true for everybody but is certainlytrue for other people and and I and Iasked him who is one of the architectsin this war on poverty what would havemade it that would truly have won youreally wiped out poverty once and forall and he said just a little more money>> but that's what a lot of people in thevalley think today is that we're goingto get an out for that that these areworld we just need to go deeper we needto go deeper>> I mean you saw the the testuh experiments with UBI from a couple ofyears ago.>> They failed.>> Both of them failed. They failed.>> Failed massively. Yeah. Yeah.>> Why? Now tell me don't say let's saywhy. What did they do? You remember?>> Not fully. I mean I know that peoplethey looked at the discretionary spend.They looked at where people were puttingmoney away. They looked at how much ofit was being spent on things that peoplesaid they needed to prioritize. Stufflike healthare wasn't going onhealthcare. What the quality of the foodwasn't increasing.>> It wasn't going to education. Yes. Thewhole point is that it if it went towardhuman capital development, if it wenttoward what my parents would have put itinto, right? Um it would have beengreat. It would have been this fabulousthing. And the whole thing is is basedon this idea that everybody has the samevalues, that everybody has the samepriorities,

01:02:46which they don't. And itwasn't a question of money. Furthermore,when you actually give people fornothing, you strip away their sense ofearned success. And earned success ispart of this idea of satisfaction. Itgets into this idea of progress. It getsinto the wiring of homo sapiens>> is what it comes down to. It it deniesthe primacy>> and respect due to human evolutionarybiology, which I know is something youlove, right? Me too. Right? Because itexplains so much of the odd behaviorthat people have. And so every time thatwe try to reorder the way that humanbeings are wired evolutionarily withsome utopian idea that we've got thistechnology, we've got this economicpolicy, we've got I got I got I've gotthis new idea for how the how thegenders are going to behave toward eachother. Yeah. No, from now on we're nolonger going to be like people were50,000 years ago. It's gonna fail.>> It's gonna fail. And we you you need toyou need to go with the the current. Youneed to actually swim with the currentor you're ultimately going to fail iswhat it turns out.>> Getting back to the technology thing,how do you interrupt this doom loop thateveryone's on?>> So the doom loop is that I'm, you know,I don't want to be bored. Um because Idon't like boredom because it's boring,right? And so I distract myself. Andwhen I distract myself, what

01:04:01I do is Ibecome less tolerant of boredom. Um mylife feels less meaningful because I'mactually illuminating the parts of thebrain that are necessary for that. Andso I'm more at loose ends. And so Ispend more time online, more timescrolling, more time, you know, doingwhat people do when they're when they'rereally bored. And that makes the problemworse. Much the same way with drugs andalcohol, you know, and that's howescalation and dependence actuallyworks. Um, the two biggest predictors ofalcoholism are anxiety and boredom. Andso when I'm anxious and bored, I drink.>> Well, that makes boredom and anxietyworse the next day. And so I drink somemore. And then down and down and downand down it goes. And so what you haveto you're in a doom loop. Any addictiveprocess is a doom loop. The same thingis true with the way that we usetechnology. The same way is true youknow anything any>> which is totally hidden under the radarby the way. Completely you know and youmost people despite the fact thatalcohol is having a resurgence onlyafter it was recently sort of strippedaway. Uh um>> most people understand I I I I'm I'mdoing this and I didn't used to do thisand when I do this I keep it seems to beratcheting up. I'm drinking more than Iused to. I'm I'm That's probably notgood.>> Well, it depends on how much you drink.It might be good.>> Well, I mean, if you're getting to five,six, seven

01:05:16drinks a night, I don't think>> that's a big problem.>> Yeah, but but how many times does thatentropy start to build because yourtolerance you're chasing you're notchasing having the drink, you're chasingthe sensation of the drink and yourtolerance I>> Yeah, exactly.>> I'll drink that's a doom loop.>> I'll drink>> 10 20 times a year maybe at most now.And that means half a Corona in I'm likethat's nice. It's like being 14 again,you know, that's cool. Uh, but>> a half rack at 14. I don't know what'swrong. [laughter] Yeah. Yeah. Uh,>> the problem with using your phone inthis way is it's a completely sociallyacceptable, under the radar. Nobody isever going to say, no one's ever goingto come over. How many time like someonewill make a joke about, "Dude, you're onyour phone a lot tonight." It's verydifferent to, "Dude, you're pissedagain." And it's five nights in a row.>> Like that's different, right? It's muchmore obvious.the gambling thing, the porn thing,these kinds of compulsions, these kindsof habits are significantly moreobviously destructive,>> right,>> than using your phone is. And then whileI'm doing it, I can feel myselfinternally [ __ ] rolling my own eyes.Yes. Okay, too much time on the phone istoo much. Like, you know what I mean?>> I know. And there are other, by the way,there's a whole spectrum of these thingsof these dependencies that are allinvolving the the, you know, thedopamine cycle in your brain. Some ofwhich are not just sort of neutral andhidden

01:06:32like the phone. Some of which areare are applauded. You know, if you're aworkaholic,>> nobody will say, I mean, if like ifyou're a pathetic alcoholic, nobody willsay it's like, Chris, you were a youdrank,>> you know, you drank 750 milliliters ofgin last night. I saw you put that.Congratulations. You're excellent.Correct.>> They're going to say you you got someproblems. I mean, I think you got to getthat looked at, right? But if you work16 hours a day and neglect your family,you're going to get a promotion and araise. You're going to get rewarded forthat. So there's some addictions thatthat that you know people actually lovebecause it works in their favor. Itenriches them and it actually leads tothe world's rewards which people admire.>> Yep.>> So the point is that we have aresponsibility to look after ourselves,look after the pathologies that areactually in inherent in our behavior andto see is it actually making my lifebetter or is it making my life worsenotwithstanding the reaction of the restof the world.>> What does fixing the doom loop looklike?>> What does fixing? It means clipping. Itmeans cutting it at a particular place.So um all addictions getting out ofaddictions they have sort of three stepsin common. It's it's really behaviorallythey have three steps in common. Now I'mnot talking medically. I'm not talkingabout the medical interventions becausethat's different for different thingswith gambling and drinking andmethamphetamine whatever.

01:07:47But the threebehavioral steps in getting out of anaddiction are number one, you got to getpissed. You got to get pissed. It's likethis is subjugating me. This is I'm in acage and I'm tired of it. I'm tired ofactually being a wholly owned subsidiaryof that company or this behavior or thisculture. I'm tired of it. I'm not goingto put up with it. You need to fightback by rebelling. That's number one.You need the spirit of rebellion. Ifyou're not ready to rebel, you're notgoing to get out. Number two is you needto figure out how to stop. You need toactually have an algorithm. And that'sdependent on what the substance orbehavior actually is. There aredifferent ways to do it, but there'stons of science in every area. If youcan get addicted to it, there's sciencethat tells you how to stop. And then thethird is you have to learn how to livewith yourself again because you've beendistracting yourself from yourself. Ifyou're addicted to something, it meansyou didn't like being home in your head.That's what it comes down to.>> And you know, it's like I I haven't hada drink since I was 38 years old, right?And I remember in my 30s, I didn't likebeing home in my head. Didn't like it.Didn't want to be there, right? And so Ileft, right? I got a little relief. alittle vacation in the bottle and it itjust it was going nowhere good and itwas really clear and then my dad diedand and and you know a couple of peopleI cared about said this your

01:09:02that's yourfuture. You just saw your future, right?And so I stopped.But it was the hard part was step three.The hard part was actually being alonewith myself, being awake with myself,being alive with myself is what it comesdown to. And that's probably even moreextreme for people who are very veryonline because you're trying to breakthe doom loop of a technology isbreaking your brain, not letting youfind the meaning of your life, makingyou angry and depressed and anxious andlonely.>> You're addicted, which is why you keepdoing these self- terribleself-destructive things to yourself. Youfirst you get pissed and second you gotto quit. And look, I got the algorithmsto help you do that. But then, man, youneed new friends.Like, you know, you need you need tolive in a society. You need to live, youknow, in people who are alive in reallife. And you have to be able to sitbehindthe wheel of your car at a red lightwith nothing to do in your thoughts,right? and be in a supermarket checkoutline without your phone and and walkbefore dawn without a device and hearthe crunch of the gravel under your feetand say that's the sound of my feet onthe path and that takes work.

01:10:19>> How easy is it to recover from this? Ithink a lot of people feel like they'relost and totally unreoverable.>> It's absolutely possible. I've seen itagain and again and again and again. Imean, look, this is this this is notheroin that we're talking about here. Imean, the the the process of detox, forexample, isn't you don't even have togive up your phone. You just have to putit in proper boundaries and have somerules in your life, right? And andactually have some proper habits. And,you know, we're our life is if you havea fairly functional life, you've gotgood habits already, right? I mean, youget up at a certain time, you work outevery day, you you eat something youdon't eat like an 11-year-old. I mean,you have good habits and then you justput protocols around it. You know, it'slike Huberman talks about protocols andwhich has kind of infected the culture.It's a culture of protocols. Um, and andI'm I'm an absolute believer in thatwhen it comes to your phone. I mean, youyou wake up in the morning, if you can,don't look at it at all for the firsthour for neurocognitive programming. Ifyou're a journalist or, you know, youhave your job, you got to look at it,make sure nothing's on fire. That's it.Put it down. That's it for the hour,right? First hour of the day. While youeat, neurocognitive programming whileyou eat is critically important. is bestnot to eat alone and never eat with yourdevice.>> Why?>> Brain is is actually your the theneuropeptides in your brain, mostnotably oxytocin, they flow

01:11:34veryliberally when you're eating withsomebody. This is how, you know, homosapiens would establish and and fosterkin bonds, is by sitting around acampfire, putting pieces of yak meatinto their mouths, discussing their day,and looking into each other's eyes.That's how we're wired. If you have aphone on the table while you eat, or godforbid, if you're looking at it, there'sno None of this neurochemistry happens.>> What if you're on your own?>> Then um you might read a book, you mightlisten to music, but don't look at yourphone.>> There's a meme online of uh guy starvesto death even though he had food becausehe couldn't watch YouTube. Yeah.>> Cuz his phone had run out of battery.>> Or it's like or died of sepsis becausehe didn't go to the bathroom.>> Yeah. [laughter]>> He couldn't take his phone in there. So,and last but not least is the last hourof the day. Now, that part of that issleep architecture and blue light, etc.,etc., the pineal gland, melatonin, yadayada. We all know the physiology ofthat. But part of that is just the waythat you actually understand yourself atthe end of your day and get ready torest. If you're living with yourpartner, that's critically important toyour relationship is not to be lookingat your device in the last hour so youcan be fully present as you drift off tosleep together. That's super superimportant for your relationship. Butjust those three things. Then there'sphone free zones. You shouldn't haveyour phone in the bedroom ever, ever,ever,

01:12:49ever because I mean, God forbidyou get up to pee at 3:00 in the morningand look at your phone. That's a bigmistake.>> Get over.>> Well, I mean, it's it's your pinealgland shuts off, right? No moremelatonin for you and and so which isproblematic on its face, but it's alsoyou just you you spike your cortisol. Imean, it's bad stuff happens to you. Sothe phone should be in a different floorin a closet plugged in someplace fromthe hour before you go to bed untilafter an hour after you get up. That'snumber one. It's a phone free zone.Second is that that I mean this is justyou know basic public policy. Thereshouldn't be a a phone in any classroomin any school in the world betweenkindergarten and PhD. It is completeinsanity because it interruptseverything that we're actually trying todo. And it's it's child abuse. thatthere's phones in classrooms, you know,and and the most important hour theyshouldn't have phones is during lunch,by the way,>> because they need to.>> So, it's even worse. You should be in aclassroom, and it definitely youshouldn't be in the cafeteria.>> I mean, most of what's going on in theclassroom is not that interesting tobegin with. I mean, I don't think I everlearned anything in public school. Ithink it was mostly babysitting, but>> but you know, at least I had friends andand and they don't have friends.>> And then and then people need phonefasts. They need technology

01:14:05fasts. Irecommend 96 hours a year is kind ofthis is and there's a little bit ofresearch on this that shows that thisactually can break the relationship thatyou have. So you prove to yourself thatyou actually don't need it and you'rekind of in a state of bliss by thefourth day.>> You know, it's really really I mean I goon a spiritual retreat every year for 4days. No phone. Oh, it's great. Firstday it's like children screaming in myhead.>> Yeah.>> Second day I'm calming down. Fourththird day I like it. The fourth day Iwish it were the whole year.>> That's what it comes down to. But justthose things, phone free times, phonefree zones, phone fasts can re can cancan can do this part two. This does notgive you part one, which is rebellion,or part three, which is you got to getcomfortable back with yourself.>> Mhm.>> Different processes.>> How important is romantic love tomeaning?>> That's one of the best ways you can turnon the right hemisphere of your brainbecause that's something you will neversolve. How do I know that? Because if wecould have solved algorithmicallyromantic love, we wouldn't still haveapp developers that were trying to makethe ultimate dating app. The dating appsare fundamentally a leftbrain solutionto a rightbrain problem. Right now,they're getting better, but the way thatthey're getting better is by figuring

01:15:20out ways to add more human friction intothe algorithm as opposed to taking humanfriction out of the algorithm. So, forexample, you're finding earlyexperiments would suggest that a goodway for you to find your matches on anapp is to have your matches, some ofyour app matches go to your best friendand have your friend decide which onesyou're going to go out with [laughter]>> because you're adding a right brain intothe mix. You're adding your friend'sright brain to the mix, for example. Orhaving a whole bunch of potential peoplein a group that I will actually meet ina mixer, you know, that's a good way todo it, too.>> Yeah. Uh-huh. uh and then pair up ifit's meant to be or make friends if it'snot. And so that that's those are waysthat we actually do that. But the pointthe point of the matter is that thehuman brain um is is highly attuned tothis incredibly complex indescribableexperience of falling in love. That'sone of the reasons that all country andwestern songs are about romantic love.That's the reason that the greatestpoetry is about romantic love becauseit's not described scientifically. It'sdescribed artistically>> because it's a right hemisphericexperience. So you want to you want toturn on the meaning in your life.>> Go get your heart broken.>> I mean go take a risk. I mean that'sthat's when you find the meaning of yourlife, right?

01:16:35I mean when you've had yourheart broken, that's horrible and that'shard, but that's meaning rich. That'swhen you ask all those big questions.>> You're definitely alive.>> You'll learn a lot about yourself. Youlearn a lot about yourself, right?Unless you stay drunk.>> What's the ladder of love?So, Deoteim of Montinea was thisprophetus that Socrates sought out. So,Socrates sought out the the Deote ofMontinea um and and and she described tohim that the way to find the meaning oflife starts with this ladder and eachrung of the ladder gets you closer tothe meaning of life. And the first rungof the ladder is falling in love. Thefirst rung of the ladder is actuallyattraction toward the beautiful other.Romantic attraction, not just like, youknow, Chris is awesome. He's so smart.He's got such a great show. It's such agreat conversation. Such a good friend.>> Thank you.>> But it's it's like that spark that youcan't quite understand. No, actually, wedo understand neurochemically what'shappening when you're falling in love.We know how the sex hormones start andthen we get the the catacolaminesactually involved along the way and thenwe get a really dramatic drop inserotonin and then we get theneuropeptides and in and the sequence.We know when the sequence is off betweentwo people is why they don't is why theydon't actually succeed in arelationship.

01:17:50There's all kinds ofreally fascinating neuroscience offalling in love, but it's still amystery. I tell you that that theneuroscientists who are doing thiscutting edge research, they can fallhard in love just like anybody else.They can like, I don't know whathappened. I don't know what happened.Yes, you do. You wrote that paper,right? But still, I mean, it's like I II I teach this stuff to my students atthe Harvard Business School about thethe neuroscience of falling in love, butI don't understand this relationshipwith my wife. I just love her, you know?I just It's like, okay, yeah, a lot ofoxytocin and vasopressin and, you know,and there's some amount of dopamine andand and norepinephrine involved and andthere drops in serotonin when you'refighting and[laughter] that's not it. It's becauseit's this deep metaphysical experience.Most religions believe as Montine of ofof Deotima, Socrates's prophetussuggested that romantic love is thebeginning of an antenna to the divine.That and and most religions believe thatif you're in a serious marriage and youdeny your spouse love, you're denyingyour spouse God's love.>> That's how rightrained and complex thisactually is. Well, just because you can

01:19:06explain how gravity works doesn't meanthat you're not going to hit the groundif you jump out of a a skyscraper.>> You can understand it plenty well.>> Yeah.>> Still at the mercy of these things.There's that uh interview that Sam didwith Daniel Carnean Mr. Thinking Fastand Slow, Nobel Prize winner. Aftermany, many decades of studying thefallacies of the human mind and mentalmodels and all of the different waysthat our rationality goes ary, has itmade you any more rational?>> Not really.>> Not really. I know. I know. No, it'sinteresting, too, you know, and and Samand I have had one conversation um moreor less along these lines. He's the mostsoulful atheist I've ever met.>> Yeah,>> he really is. He's a soulful guy. Ireally have.>> He'd be a great believer apart from thelack of belief. But that's the pointbecause his soulfulnesswould seem might seem on the outside toto contradict his his uber rationalityas an atheist. But it doesn't becausethese things coexist. These things canreside next to each other and becauseSam's brain has two hemispheres to it.So does mine. So does all of ours. Mostpeople don't realize how much beingdehydrated impacts their performance.Which is why for the last 5 years I'vestarted pretty much every morning withElement. Element is a tasty electrolytedrink mix with everything that you needand nothing that

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01:21:03wisdom. Do you think people think enoughabout transcendence?No, I don't. And transcendence isimportant because it once again itcontradicts mother nature's tyranny. So,mother nature wants you in the psychodrama of your utter stoaltifyingChristmas from moment to moment tomoment. My job, my flights are late. Youknow, my podcast guest, you know, itmight be good. I got to prepare for thatthing and my stomach is rumbling. Iforgot to eat lunch and uh oh yeah, thepayment didn't come in for that thing.It's so boring. But mother nature wantsyou to be the star of that psycho dramaall day long in your head. [snorts]That's what uh William James called theMI self. The MI self. It's looking atyourself and thinking about yourself allday long. And you need that forself-reference to make your way in theworld. If you don't understand whatyou're doing, you're going to be apretty bad driver. You're going to be ina traffic accident pretty quickly. Butthere's also the eye self, which islooking out at the world, which istranscending yourself by looking at outat the world in which you're one player,but you're only one player in it. Andand it's interesting becausetranscendent experiences are those wherethe mei self disappears and the I selfbecomes dominant. There are timesactually when when they they

01:22:18becomeconfused and that's kind of what a fuguestate is psychologicallywhere the where you become disassociatedwith yourself in this weird way and youall of us have experienced this. Iremember one time um I had a lot on mymind and I was putting gas in my car andI was just like really worried aboutsomething. this back when I was a CEOand my life was like a living likedystopian hell hole, right? Andeverything was a problem every singleday and I was putting gas in my car andit was like 8:00 at night and and I andI finished and and I got back in my carand I was driving. My daughter was withme in the car and she was a little girlthen and there was this like weirdclanking sound behind me like somebodyhad a muffler down right behind me andlike they were following me and I said,"Honey, what is that sound?" She said,"I don't know." Like clankity clankityclankity clank. They following me.what's going on until people startedpointing to me at my car and I realizedthat I had driven away with the hose inmy gas tank and I pulled it out of thegas pump and I was dragging it behind methe whole mechanism behind me. Clankityclankity clank, right? And so I thoughtsomebody else was doing a thing that Ihad actually done. I'd confused the meself and the ice self. I was in thislike weird fugue state. It got real realfast

01:23:33when I took it back to the gasstation and these four Iranian dudeswere standing around the gas pump reallymad like who destroyed our pump. I alsoalso found out how much it cost to fix agas pump. It's expensive. But the wholepoint is that that that what we want isnot to get into a fugue state. We wantto have these experiences where we canbe in the eye self where we can stand inawe where we can get outside ourselveswhich is religious experiences andthat's spiritual experiences andphilosophical experiences and andexperiences of service and love towardother people unbidden by anyself-interest. And that's where lifegets really interesting and beautiful.And when you do that, when you truly arein a transcendent state, that's whenyou're in the right hemisphere of yourbrain. And you don't find meaning,meaning finds you. Which is why I'lloften recommend to people, it's like, Idon't know. How do I find the meaning ofyour life? Go volunteer. Go volunteer.Go pray. I'm not religious. I don'tcare. It's not what I said. Go pray.Why? Because when you do that, you willinduce a state in your brain and you'llwant to do it more.

01:24:38What is it that people are missing? Whyis transcendence so rare withoutengineering it in that way? At least inthe modern world.>> Yeah, it's it's especially true in themodern world that it's rare because themodern world is a big mirror. It's a bigme self. That's especially true inonline. Uh online you're looking in themirror constantly because you're lookingnot in the at the the dialogue you'rehaving with other people looking atthem. What you're doing is that you'reit's it's think about it as the Zoomproblem. The problem with Zoom whenyou're in a Zoom meeting is you'realways looking at yourself in the Zoommeeting. It's really hard. It's a reallygood idea to turn off your own camera umor at least your own view of your owncamera so you can focus on the otherpeople. But one of the ways that Zoomhas has made communication a lot harderfor people is because you're always inthe me self even when you're trying tobe in the eye self and and this is truecertainly with social media as well.You're looking at your likes and yourmentions and how did people interactwith what I was doing and it's this onebig virtual mirror of everything thatwe're doing. It's become very it'sinduced narcissism where it wouldn'thave existed otherwise which isincredibly misery provoking because itit it kills meaning in the crib from thevery beginning. You can't get out ofyourself. You can't get out of yourhead.

01:25:54>> And that is increasingly true. Now it'sinteresting because people who haveexperimented with trying to stay in theeye self [snorts] um in in in literaturebut also just in real life have hadthese incredible results. I had this PTthis guy worked on my back. my backhurts. And so you get to my age, yourback hurts, right? And um and he alwayshe worked on my back every week. Greatguy, unbelievable. I mean, just liketalented,full of love, you know. And uh and Isaid, "How did you get these skills?" Imean, is this did you were you always aphysical therapist, acupuncture? Hesaid, "No, no, no. I used to be a I usedto be a fitness influencer." I'm like,"Dude, tell me more. I got to know. Tellme more." Said, "Yeah, you know,basically took off my shirt onInstagram. And I was kind of soldsupplements and it was all about theabs. And and and I said, "How was that?"He said, "It was the worst. It was theworst. I didn't eat what I wanted for 10years. I was so miserable. I didn't haveany normal relationships at all. Icouldn't have any functionalrelationships with women because I'd beso jealous about the fact that I'mshowing my body off for other people.I'd be looking at my I'd be I I got toget a photographer because this guydoesn't understand the shadows." And hesaid it was horrible and it wasmiserable and I was sad and I didn'tknow what to do. So he said, "I finallyI gave up. I deleted all my accounts. Iuh I

01:27:09enrolled in acupuncture school, buthere's the most important part." Hesaid, "I got rid of all of the mirrorsin my apartment, every single one ofthem, and I showered in the dark for ayear, so I couldn't see my abs. And thenI finally was free."And he's happy. Most people, I think,look to their work for something that'ssupposed to be transcendent.>> Yeah.>> Uh>> calling.>> Yeah. What do you think people What doyou think people think they're talkingabout when they talk about finding yourcalling?>> Yeah. They think it's going to be thething that they Well, I mean, there'skind of two versions of it. They're thethe two graduation speeches. You know,graduation speech number one is go finda job that that you love and that's funand you'll never work a day in yourlife. Now, that speech is being given byum a cardboard box magnet who's soseverely workaholic that he's had threeheart attacks and two divorces by theage of 40, right? So, don't believe it,right? Or the second speech is go savethe world. No pressure. You know, it'slike I well, my generation wrecked theworld. Go save the world. You know,that's uh that's the second speech.That's both of those are wrong.Fundamentally,your calling,

01:28:24generally speaking, findsyou as the thing that you can't stopthinking about. It's the mostinteresting thing, right? It's not thething that you think, I'm going to bethe savior. I'm going to be the greatMessiah. And it's not the most fun thingnecessarily. The thing that's mostinteresting to you is often not thatfun. Actually, a lot of the time, it'sactually not that fun. It's justsomething you can't get out of yourhead. It's something you feel you reallyneed to do. Second, the goal is creatingvalue with your life, is earning yoursuccess, is being rewarded for somethingthat you do well, where you create realvalue with your hard work and and andand personal motivation. And moreimportantly, where you're servingsomebody where somebody needs you.That's what it comes down to. Are youearning your success? Not only are youreally earning, are you recognized andacknowledged for real value that you'recreating? Not kissing up to the boss andnot because somebody's trying to be niceto you. No, no, no, no. you're reallycreating value and does somebodyactually need you? That's what it comesdown to. That's your calling.>> How do you know or how does somebodyknow when they're chasing status insteadof their calling, instead of meaning?>> Mostly people deep down know. Becausewhat it comes down to is when you'recreating true value and people need you,then you can it it I mean you can sort

01:29:39of imperfectly measure that with respectto status, but you actually know whenthere's true value behind it. Mostpeople have an innate sense of that, astrong innate sense of that. And andI've interviewed a lot of people aboutthis. You know, I talked to a guy um whobuilds homes, home builder, right? Hehad a uh he got his master's degree inum in biochemistry from MIT and wasgoing on to get his PhD and his parentsreally really wanted him to be ascientist is the whole thing. But herecognized that he he his he only felttruly alive. He was only trulyinterested when he was building stuff iswhat it came down to and he became ahome builder as a result of that. Soit's really really important to listento what your heart is telling you aboutthis. Status is a very very badbarometer. A lot of people are usingstatus or using fame or power or moneybecause they don't want to look at thetruth. They don't want it's like lookinginto the sun of something. And a lot ofpeople make big mistakes for a long timeas a result of that. Like they're doingsomething they don't that's not theircalling and that burns them out. Theydon't like it but they should like it.is paying so much. They should like it.They got so many followers for Pete'ssake, but they're unhappy.

01:30:55That's what people need to be payingattention to. Look, if you're doingsomething that's highly rewarding, butyou're unhappy, it's not your calling.>> I wonder how many people said in thatbucket, what proportion of>> I mean, a lot. I meet a lot. Look, Iteach at a big business school. I meet alot of people who honestly think thatthey go into business school thinking umI will I will find my calling becauseit's going to be something that's goingto pay me so well, which means I'm sogood at this thing that it's got to bemy calling. No, no, no, no,>> no, no, no. On the contrary, look, I I Iwalked away from a career in classicalmusic when I was 31 years old. Um Icould have done it for the rest of mylife, right? It wasn't my calling. I'ddone it since I was eight. I'd beendoing it since I was a little boy,right? But it wasn't my calling. And andI made a living and I made some recordsand I was so unhappy. It wasn't mycalling. I'd spent many years on it. Ispent decades on it, as a matter offact, but there was no choice but towalk away because it wasn't my calling.>> What about the fear that comes up whensomeone is faced with that realization?They've got the inertia, the momentum,the sunk cost fallacy.>> Yeah. Yeah. No, no, it's

01:32:10it's no joke.It actually requires an unbelievableamount of personal entrepreneurship.Look, entrepreneurship is not aboutbuilding a business, about building yourlife, right? Great entrepreneurs, theychange all the time. They make all kindsof changes. You know what crummyentrepreneurs have in common? They havea bad business idea and they chase ituntil they're broke. That's what badentrepreneurs have in common, right?Good entrepreneurs, they try this andit's not quite right and they change andthey go from this thing to that thingand they sell when it's time and start anew venture. That's what greatentrepreneurs have in common. If youwant to be an entrepreneur in thebusiness of your life, you cannot affordthe sunk cost fallacy with your owncareer or your own relationships or yourown interests.>> Agile.>> You have to change is what it comes downto. Now>> there's a very interesting theory aboutpeople who need to change the most. Thepeople and and these are called spirals.This is the spiral career pattern.There's there's four career patternspsychologically. There's linears whojust kind of go up and up and up and upand up and up and up in their careersand they only change when something isbetter. There are transiitories who kindof just skip around all over the place.They don't live to work, they work tolive, right? They, you know, I'm goingto be a barista, then I'm going to run,you know, drive a moving van and I fellin love with a girl in San Diego. So,you don't

01:33:26there are what's called expert, which islike slow and steady. Yeah. It'slifestyle, right? I have my dad had thesame job for 42 years, for example. Andthe reason is because it was secure andbecause uh it was low stress, right? Andthat's what he wanted. The post officeis an expert career path. But a lot ofpeople, probably disproportionately alot of the people who are watching thisshow are spirals where every seven to 12years, what they need is to take theircareer down to the studs and start again>> and take everything they learned in thelast one and funge it into somethingthat's meaningful in the next one, butto have a new adventure. The first turnis hardest. For me, leaving the Frenchhorn and becoming a scientist, that wasbrutal. going back and and getting a PhDwhen I didn't know what I was doing. Itwas really, really, really hard. Right.Second turn, easier. Third turn, easier.I'm on my fourth turn right now. Whoknows? Maybe in>> 10 years I'll be a circus clown orfirefighter or something. But the wholepoint is that that's what it means tolive an entrepreneurial life whereyou're pursuing your calling because youhave the agility and the courage to bean entrepreneur in the enterprise andthe business of life.>> What about the role of beauty?>> Physical beauty. any kind of beauty.Beauty is a transcendent experience.

01:34:42Soone of the things that a lot of peoplehave observed about the moderntechnocratic life is it's not beautiful.It's bereft of beauty. Now why is that?Because stuff that goes on in the lefthemisphere of the brain neverprioritizes beauty. Beauty is a righthemispheric experience. You know it'sit's when people see a beautiful sunsetsometimes they'll cry. You know, whenpeople hear a work of music, you know,people listen to Boach B minor mass andit's like they they weep. Why? And andthey they can't exper as a matter offact, anytime that you become emotionalum and you can't quite explain it, itmeans you're having a right hemisphericexperience,>> something that moves you weirdly, right?When some people when they talk aboutreligion, they get really choked up.Some people when they listen to music,they get really choked up. It's reallyinteresting how this works. But thoseare right hemispheric experiences anddisproportionately that's when it comesto beauty. So if we have a societythat's entirely left hemispheric that'stechnocratic that's complicated and notcomplex is not going to be beautiful.And that's exactly what we find. I meanthere's compelling evidence that musicis less objectively beautiful than itwas in the past. Newer music is lessobjectively beautiful than it was in thepast. I can't really judge that.

01:35:57But,you know, this is what uh this is whatwe pay, you know, musicologists to do orsomething. Um, that moral beauty isharder and harder to find. Moral beautyis just kindness toward others for noapparent reason. You find very little ofthat on X. You know, you find verylittle of that online,>> right?um that that natural beauty is harder tofind when you're when you're never innature, [gasps and sighs] which is sortof axiomatic, but a lot of people willsay, you know, it's got this incrediblescreen saver of El Capitan and Yusede.It's like, there's the real thing. It'sgoing to blow your mind, right? And thereason is because it is an entirelydifferent neurobiologicalu experience for people when they'reactually out in nature. If you're behinda screen, you're not getting beauty iswhat it comes down to. And so artisticbeauty is absent. Moral beauty isabsent. Natural beauty is absent. Andthe reason is because we're trying tofilter everything through the lefthemisphere. The simulation isn'tbeautiful. If you want to know if you'retoo much in the left hemisphere of yourbrain, it's whether you ask yourself, isthere enough beauty in my life? And ifthe answer is no, it probably means thatyou're too far left.>> What about if there's not enoughsuffering?>> Yeah, that's the hard one.

01:37:13I leftactually I wrote about that in this inthis book and and uh I left that to thelast chapter because I was putting itoff. I was putting it off. Um sufferingis the ultimate meaning makingexperience and we've talked about that.You we've talked about heartbreak,talked about loss, talked about grief.Um there's a little part of the lyicsystem called the dorsal anteriorsingulate cortex that that is reallyreally active when you experience socialexclusion, when you experience loss.It's it was evolved. So that you wouldbe averse to sadness. Sadness issupposed to be really really painful andyou don't want it. So people actuallythey don't suffer so much from sadness.They suffer a lot from fear of sadness.You know you're trying to avoid sadnesswhich is what motivates a lot of ourbehaviors. Most of the things most ofthe reasons we do what we do is becausewe're afraid of bad. We're afraid ofnegative emotions. But at the same time,most people will talk about the mostmeaningful periods of their lives wereat times of the greatest negativeemotion in their lives. Negative emotionbrings meaning unless unless we try toeliminate it. And this is another wrongturn that we've taken because once againin our our left hemispheric conceit ofthe complicated world, the singularityis one in which we will have eliminated

01:38:28pain, eliminated sadness, eliminatednegative emotionality, eliminatednegative experiences. That's not onlyimpossible, it's actually suboptimal.It's death for what it means to be fullyalive. We don't want to be, we don'twant to suffer, but we must suffer.>> Strange the things that people want andwhat they need.>> Yeah, I know.>> And the fact that those two don't crossover all that much.>> And and mother nature is a wickedtyrant. She's kept us alive forgeneration after generation. But animalimpulses are not the same thing as moralaspirations.Seems like you're saying that enjoymentand satisfaction haven't collapsed. No>> in the same way that meaning has.>> No. That's right. That's right. It'sreally interesting. I mean, I didn'tknow, you know, when I see a bighappiness problem and I when I look atthe the depression explosion, theanxiety explosion, I know that one ofthe channels of happiness is blocked.This is as a diagnostic matter.Happiness is a combination of enjoyment,satisfaction, and meaning. We've talkedabout it on the show a couple of times.As a matter of fact, these are the threemacronutrients of happiness. You want tobe a happy person, you need to enjoyyour life, which back to an early partof the conversation, by the way. One ofthe reasons that you're moving from apureachievement orientation in the showtoward one, having more

01:39:43fun is becauseyou want to increase enjoyment, whichmany stvers struggle with.>> They don't enjoy their lives very muchand they want to enjoy their lives moreand they don't know how because they'realways trying to put points on theboard. So, that's a different subject.I'm gonna write a book about how toenjoy your life because I want to figureit out because I need to figure it outbefore I die. So enjoyment, which is notpleasure, it's pleasure plus people plusmemory. It's a it's a consciousphenomenon,is actually pretty high for most youngpeople. Satisfaction, which is theachievement of worthwhile goals withstruggle, that's pretty high, especiallyfor stvers. I mean, my MBA students atHarvard, they're real high insatisfaction because they'reaccomplishing a lot and they'restruggling a lot. It's meaning that'scollapsed. And that's the reason that wehave this unbelievable happinessunhappiness crisis in our society today.Have>> I ever told you my idea about Frankle'sinverse law?>> Oh, no. Tell me, Victor Frankle.>> Yeah. So, there's that famous quote,when a man can't find a deep sense ofmeaning, they distract themselves withpleasure.>> Yeah.>> Right. He's arguing lack of meaningcauses people to seek temporary reliefin superficial pursuits rather thanaddressing some before scrolling evenexisted.>> Yeah. Uh perhaps

01:40:58for many maybe evenmost people this is a big issue. Butthere is another group who suffer withthe opposite problem. Frankle's inverselaw. When a man can't find a deep senseof pleasure they distract themselveswith meaning.>> Nice.>> If ease, grace, joy, and playfulnessdon't come easily to you, one solutionis to just ignore momentto momenthappiness entirely and always pursuehard things. You become a world championat winning the marshmallow test. Youconvince yourself that delayedgratification in perpetuity is noblebecause you struggle to ever feelgrateful. The TLDDR is you prioritizemeaning over happiness because happinessdoesn't come easily to you.>> Yeah, dude. But, you know, it'sabsolutely the encapsulation of thestrivers lament.You know, it's like I can't I can'tEverybody else is having a great timeand I can't feel it. I don't, you know,they're out dancing and they're at aclub. I mean, think about it. So, you'rea club promoter in your heart. I'm aFrench horn player in my heart. You're aclub promoter in your heart, right?>> And everybody's having a great old timeand you're like, "No, no, this is mybusiness. [laughter]>> Go and enjoy yourself. I'm going tosuffer over here.">> I think in a real way, and the meaningpart is quite right, but I thinkordinarily strivvers are addicts forsatisfaction from achievement. And sothey will put points on the board andwhen they can't feel

01:42:13they can't feelenjoyment and so they put points on theboard>> and and part of the reason is becausethey've actually never they've neverlearned how to do it appropriately.They've actually never learned how to dothat. So [clears throat]>> enjoyment once again is is it takes hasthe at its root things that actuallymake you feel good. But that's not theright you know feeling good justpleasure is a terrible goal. I mean thethe the the end of the road for pleasureis not happiness. It's it's detox,>> right? Because you that's just addictionis what it comes down to. If it feelsgood, do it was the hippie motto and itdidn't end well, right?>> Um so, so that's so that's importantthat that you add people in memory toit. So, it's a conscious experience.It's in the prefrontal cortex, not justin the lyic system. Um but it's notapparent for everybody how to do that,especially if you're brought up in thisway where I got to do more. I got to domore. I got to do more. Because whathappens is that this idea that you'restopping and smelling the roses feelslike waste [clears throat] of time.Maybe you have parents who say that,"Are you practicing?" I remember thatthey would yell through the door,"Practice." I was practicing five hoursa day when I was in fifth grade.>> And and and so then the whole idea ofstopping and going and having fun feelslike you feel kind of guilty about it.And so you're you're frankly just bad atit.

01:43:28And you don't like to do thingsyou're bad at. you don't learn how to.And then my wife is really good atenjoyment. Really, she just reallyenjoys life. She's Spanish. I mean,that's like it's a it's a whole countryof people who enjoy life, right?>> And in the States, we're a little bitless good at it. And I'm especially badat it.>> So, part of that actually, one of theone of the [gasps]the protocolsfor helping people like you and me isunderstanding leisure and actuallyhaving a structured, disciplinedapproach to leisure. M>> and actually take it if you don't knowhow to do it, take it seriously.>> You need to work hard at not working sohard.>> But but it turns out there's aphilosopher who specializes inunderstanding leisure and that's YsephPeeper who wrote leisure the basis ofculture. Have you read it? Oh, it'sgreat. It's a little thin book that hewrote. He's one of the greatest, youknow, 20th century German philosophersuntainted by Nazism. Thank god. And hewrote, you know, the four cardinalvirtues. He wrote these really beautifulbooks. But his his probably his mostinfluential book was leisure the basisof culture where he define culture as aserious business. It's not chilling on abeach which is called aidia also knownas laziness or torpour you know it'slike I can do that for like>> an hour>> and then you want to run away screamingit's the worst. He says that leisure

01:44:44issomething that you're not beingcompensated for by the outside world butthat's creating value. That's leisureand that's what will bring youenjoyment. He talks about in terms ofdeepening your spiritual orphilosophical life, deepening yourrelationships, and learning things youdon't need to learn. Just learningthings you don't need to learn.>> So, when you think about what you'redoing with the podcast, right? You'redeepening relationships.>> You're talking about things you don'tneed to talk about, right? You're doingpeople would say, "Yeah, I'm not sure,you know, I'm not sure I can fit intothis table, but that's leisure." Becauseyou want enjoyment. I have a friend whowas given a a [snorts]exercise by a coach. He was told that heneeded to start doing a hobby, but thathe wasn't allowed to try and get betterat it.>> Yeah.>> And he decided to take up watercolorpainting, I think, and did the first fewclasses or sessions or whatever, andimmediately found himself going toYouTube to find out what exactly thebest kind of paintbrush was to do thething. And I'm going to find actuallywhat's the best class in Austin that cando it because I can get better. if I cando this and what's the cadence? Do Ineed to be doing it three times a weekin order to maximize my it's going to bestruggling it's going to be difficultbut three times a week cuz I got theknee and uh>> turn into a job>> coach came in and said no you're>> not

01:45:59allowed to try and become better atthis thing.>> Yeah.>> Doing it like telically.>> Yeah.>> Not exotic.>> It should be atelically atelically. Sothat that's you know and and it'sinteresting because Aristotle talksabout that with people that realfriendship is based or is atelic.>> Mhm.>> You know it's the same idea right so ifyou have your friends because it'srelationship it has a tilos it has ifthey're useful it's not it's kind ofdeal friends but real friends are atelicthey're actually useless. It's the samething with your activities therelationship that you have with the withthe activities in your life. If it has aa really really strong>> tilos, I'm going to get better at itbecause I don't know. Yeah. You knowwhat? I bet I could sell that.>> You'll strip the strip the love out ofit. My My brother and I were both verytalented classical musicians. He's threeyears older than me. He's a bass player,string bass, classical string bass.>> I was French horn. I had that. I wassuper telic. He was. He's And he stillplays. He plays in community orchestras.He's a extremely skilled amateur. Heloves playing the bass. He loves music.He loves it so much he doesn't earn adime from it. That's why he loves it.[laughter]>> Let's say that someone feels completelyempty right now.>> Yeah.>> Where should they start? What

01:47:14are themost important habits in order toincrease the meaning in your life?>> Yeah. So the things to be the things tobe thinking about are along the linesthe the sustaining activities that willactually use your brain the way it'ssupposed to be used. So number one isunderstanding that your emptiness is notsome sort of psychological weakness.That notwithstanding what anybody'sgoing to tell you, there's not somethingwrong with you. On the contrary, yourbrain is working the way your brainworks and you're living in the world andit's the malfunctions are not yourfault. The malfunctions are you're goingwith kind of the slipstream of theculture. The culture is being driven bythe technology. It's making you work ina way that's completely contrary to yourancestral habitat. And that's what'smaking you feel like garbage. That'swhat it comes down to. It's kind of likeyou're eating meal after meal ofTwinkies and wondering why yourdigestion is wonky and weird. That's whyis what it comes down to. What [snorts]we need to understand then is you needto become aligned. You need to have abrain that's properly uh hemisphericthat's properly um balanced between thehemispheres of what you're doing, whichmeans you need to change your behavior.So number one is getting right withtechnology. That's the number one thingthat almost everybody today needs to do.Almost everybody's addicted.

01:48:30Almosteverybody has a dysfunctionalrelationship with it. Some more, someless. Me less because I'm older. Iremember the before times, right? Imean, I could you could throw Instagramup in front of me. I'm like, "Okay, youknow, good. Good. This is really goodfor my business." You know, this isgood. I could wildly interesting forfor, you know, sharing my ideas withother people, right? You know, clips ofyou and me talking. people really likethem and that's great makes me feelgreat but I'm not going to get I'm notgoing to scroll for an hour like rightbut many and the younger you are themore prone you are because you don'tremember the before times so actuallychanging your behavior with respect toit and there's ways to do it that's whatI write about then you got to live in anew way you got to live in a new way thefirst thing I recommend to almosteverybody is go get bored go get boredget get good at it Right. I don't meanlike this whole thing where you stare atthe front of the seat in front of youfor a 9-h hour flight on the way toGreece.>> Raw dugging.>> Raw dugging a flight. Yeah. It's a greatexpression, isn't it? Yeah. Yeah. It'sdisturbing. But the whole I mean, I'mnot talking about that. I'm talkingabout actually living moment to moment.You know, putting your hands in your lapwhen you're in the on the train lookingout the window and saying, "Huh, it's atree." You know, being fully alive

01:49:45andsaying, "I'm fully alive right now." So,you know, one of the ways to do that isto become more comfortable with, youknow, repetitive prayer or meditativeideas that you would actually bring intoyour life. So, you can be more mindful.Just bring in some of those ideas so youcan become more comfortable with yourbrain working the way it's supposed to.Which, by the way, ignites the defaultmode network in your brain, which youknow about the set of structures thatthat allow you to mind wander. Mindwandering leads to meaning just as as aspredictably as as night turns to day.That's the second thing. And then isactually having the experiences thatthat naturally open up the righthemisphere of your brain. That meansallowing yourself to actually fall inlove and make friends and doing thingsin real life with other people inrelation to other people and takingrisks in your relationship. It meansactually entertaining the idea ofsomething metaphysical beyond yourself.The left hemisphere is profoundlyphysical. The right hemisphere ismetaphysical. It says there is somethingmore. And again, you don't have to do itmy way. I'm a Catholic. I go to massevery day. You don't have to do it thatway. You can do it like Sam Harris. He'ssuper right hemispheric guy, right?Because he has a sense of soulfulness.He has a sense of

01:51:00things beyond what wecan actually see and touch. He believesthere are things that we can't see andtouch that exist. He doesn't think it'sGod. So, you know, you do transcendenceyour own way. Looking for calling. How?By serving other people and beingneeded. by doing something, you know, byallowing yourself to be served andloved. This is actually how you can findthese things. Looking for beauty,actually experiencing more beauty, realbeauty, real beauty. You're not behindthe screen. It's not there. It ain'tthere, man. I don't care how long youlook at it. It's not going to be there.That means going someplace in nature,listening to music that really sendsyou, I don't know, read a poem, go to amuseum, right? Witness somebody helpingother people just for no reason. Andlast but not least is uh lean into yoursuffering. Bring it on. You know, it'slike I have this I make my students saymy suffering is sacred, right? Andthere's a there's a you know, do youremember Norman Vincent Peele? Does thatname ring a bell? Okay. He had a veryfamous self-help book in the 60s calledthe power of positive thinking. Thatthat sound that rings a bell, right? Hewas a minister at a at a Protestantchurch in New York City. And he wouldsay every single day when he started theday the psalm, this is the day that theLord has

01:52:15made. I will rejoice and beglad in it. And he would actually re,you know, he was like the gratitude listoriginator and the whole thing. Allthese good things, good things, goodthings. List all the good things thatare happening in your life. List the badthings and say, "I'm grateful for that,too. Bring it on." Right? Say as youwake up in the morning, it's like, "I'mreally grateful for the beautiful thingsthat are going to happen this day. Iwoke up today. It's like I get to seeChris. It's going to be great. I'mreally grateful for that. Butsomething's going to happen today. I'mgoing to get a phone call or a text oran email that I'm not going to like.Bring it on. I'm grateful for that toobecause when I lean into that, then I'mgoing to be fully alive. That's themoment that I'm going to be fully alive.And that attitude of nonresistance topain will actuallylower the suffering paradoxically as itraises the meaning in life.>> Heck yeah. Arthur Brooks, ladies andgentlemen. Arthur, you're awesome. Iappreciate the heck out of you, man.>> Thank you.>> Where should people go? new book. Whatelse is going on?>> Yeah. Uh, so I'm all about, you know,looking for the sources of meaning inlife. And so my my my website,arthurbrooks.com, actually has all kindsof ways people can interact. We have themeaning experience, which is a acollaboration of people from all overthe world on the internet that meet oncea month and and and talk about differentways to find the meaning in life. And Igive a like a an academic lecture

01:53:30andthen we have this great discussion. Sowe have all kinds of stuff and many waysto survey and measure where we are inour meaning journey. Uh, many ways tointeract with each other. It's all atall the websites.com.>> Heck yeah. All righty. See you nexttime, everyone.>> Dude,>> thank you. Thank you.>> You're great. I mean, you're you're thebest.>> Thank you for having me.>> Thank you very much for tuning in. Ifyou enjoyed that episode, another onethat I know you love is just here.