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I've been looking at the basic neuroscience of these why questions that you've been grappling with for decades now.

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And there's all this correlation between how much you use your devices.

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So you use your devices to make your life really efficient and you free up a whole lot of time, which you then waste by distracting yourself with devices on trivialities and nonsense.

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Right.

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It's like and people are like, I don't know.

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The irony is thick.

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I know.

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And it's like it's a self licking ice cream cone is kind of how the thing works.

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And not very surprisingly that, you know, happiness is a combination of enjoyment, satisfaction and meaning.

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There's no evidence that people under 35 have lower levels of enjoyment and satisfaction, but meaning has cratered.

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Why?

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At some point in our lives, every single one of us has asked ourselves the question, can I be happier?

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There are competing theories.

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Some people think we have to learn to be grateful for what we have.

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That's the secret to happiness.

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Others think we have to learn to change our lifestyle, our habits, or our routines, that that's the secret to happiness.

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Enter Arthur Brooks.

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Arthur would challenge both those theories.

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He has lived many lives and made some remarkable career changes, from French horn player to CEO of a think tank with no think tank or fundraising experience to best-selling author.

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And through all the changes and challenges, he has learned exactly what it takes to be happy.

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In fact, his insights are so good, he actually teaches them in one of the most popular classes at Harvard Business School, an entire class on happiness.

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Arthur is one of my favorite people to talk to.

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He's fun.

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He's whip smart.

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He has a big heart.

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And whenever I'm done talking to him, I feel, well, happier.

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This is a bit of optimism.

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I'll be totally honest with you, which is I use this podcast simply as an excuse to hang out with you because you're so busy.

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You're so busy.

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The only way I can get you on the phone is to schedule you for a podcast and then we get to catch up.

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That's why I always thought I was doing the podcast is to get to you, to get into you, to worm my way into your Google calendar.

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You and I have known each other a very long time.

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Uh-huh.

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Years and years and years.

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You were still at AEI back then.

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One of my favorite things about you is you practice what you preach.

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And I know that should be standard fare for people who are out there teaching or who are out there writing philosophies and theories about how to live life, etc.

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But you and I both know a lot of people who give talks and write books on living lifestyles that they don't live.

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But you do the things you talk about and write about.

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You do the things that you teach in your happiness class.

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You do the things in how you've reinvented your own career.

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that you wrote about in your book.

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How have you reinvented your career this time?

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You know, it's funny, and thank you, by the way.

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It's like you're doing the same thing, Simon.

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I've known you for years.

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And I mean, I read your books before I knew you.

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And I start with why had a huge impact on me.

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It had a huge impact on me when I was still at AEI.

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And it was operative in helping me understand the trajectory of my own life as well.

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I had a real early in life, major, major career change.

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And, and you know this, but not everybody listening to this is going to, is going to have any awareness of this.

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I was a classical French horn player from the time I was eight years old until I was 31.

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So I, for, for 23 years, that's all I did.

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And I went pro at 19 after, you know, first run at college.

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It didn't, I mean, I didn't want to go to college.

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I wanted to go pro.

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So I went pro at 19.

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And all the way through my 20s, I toured playing chamber music.

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I played two years with Charlie Bird, the jazz guitar player.

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Then I played a bunch of seasons in the Marcellona Orchestra in Spain.

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And then I tried to become a soloist unsuccessfully.

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And the whole point is that by the end of that, I had to do something else.

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And so I had to retool my own professional life.

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I had to reinvent myself, which I did in my 30s, my early 30s.

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And I kind of figured out how to do it.

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I figured out how to go from becoming a classical French horn player to getting a PhD and becoming a behavioral scientist.

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And it was hard.

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That was a hard one.

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All the changes after that have been easier because I figured out how to funge the best from my past life into my next life.

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And this is something I talk about an awful lot with my students, my MBA students at Harvard.

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They're going to have four distinctly different careers.

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if they follow the norm and that means that they're going to have to understand their career is not a straight line i mean you understand this careers are not a stair-step straight line for most people they're more like a spiral where you have seven to 12 year mini careers of your own imagination and if you're too paralyzed by fear and you don't know how to reinvent yourself and you're not willing to go backwards in terms of money and power and prestige you're screwed and you're screwed you're not going to be able to do it

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I just got lucky.

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I had to change.

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But this is really, really important because your case is more exaggerated than most, right?

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To go from a horn player to political scientist, pretty wide deltas.

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Pretty big difference.

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Pretty big difference.

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And most people's deltas won't be that big, which is why your case is really important because if you can do it, pretty much anybody else can do it.

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I think where people get stuck is they look at what their skillset is.

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So in your case, it'd be like,

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I know how to play a horn.

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So they look to reapply a skill set, thinking that's reinvention.

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So reapplying a skill set of instead of being a horn player in an orchestra or, you know, with a jazz guitarist, maybe, I don't know, maybe I can do video game music, you know?

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And it's the reapplication of skill, which they mistake for reinventing themselves.

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That's correct.

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There's that the problem with that is, and there's a huge behavioral science literature on this that I didn't know until much later, until I became a behavioral scientist.

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And I started and I can look retrospectively and understand that what had happened to me and then look prospectively at what the next set of changes are going to be.

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People have a tendency to say, okay, what, what have I already, as you suggest, gained skill at, and I could be also good at, so I can hit the ground running.

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Wrong question.

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The right question is, what am I most interested in?

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What is my greatest area of interest?

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That almost never fails.

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But the most interesting thing to you is a blend.

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So here's the.

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We have intuition, which is also known as gut, AKA data.

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We have a lot of data because we've all had a lot of experiences in our lives.

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When anybody's facing a new opportunity, a new threshold, whether it's a marriage proposal or moving to a new city or having a new career or whatever it happens to be,

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There's three sensations that you're going to feel based on the data inside the right hemisphere of your brain, sort of the episodic memory beyond words.

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That's your gut.

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When you feel like you have a gut feeling, that's why your stomach feels that because your stomach is actually on the left is weighted to the left side of your body, which is controlled by the right hemisphere.

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That's why we have that emotional feeling.

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Okay, so those three feelings when you're facing an opportunity are excitement, fear, and deadness, which is that sense of emptiness where you're looking at an opportunity and makes you feel dead inside.

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Like I really should get married to that woman, but it makes me feel dead inside to imagine myself 80 years old with her.

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Right.

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That kind of thing.

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The right that the right mix that you should actually when you know it's the right step to take is 80 percent excitement, 20 percent fear and zero percent deadness.

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That's the right combination where you're most.

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By the way, it's not zero percent fear because you might fail.

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But that's the point.

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If it's zero percent here.

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Totally.

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And if there's no risk associated with it, it's going to be boring.

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You're going to be poor.

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You're explaining almost everything worth doing.

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I mean, every entrepreneurial venture has to be more excitement than fear, because the chances of you failing or things going badly are very, very high.

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And so you have to have the irrational excitement to get over that fear to say, we're going to do this.

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It's not a rational thing to do these.

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And sometimes, by the way,

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it's a little bit out of your control.

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When I left being an academic, I became a professor.

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And in the second career, in the third career, I was the president of a think tank.

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And I had never had a single employee or raised a single dollar.

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And I had to go start raising $50 million a year.

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That's $250,000 every business day of the year.

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And I had raised $0 in my life.

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It was a completely foolish decision on the party board of that organization to hire me into that role.

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But they were out of time and out of options.

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They're like, ah, what the hell?

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I think, which is not a great position to be in.

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And so when I took that job, it was 20% excitement and 80% fear.

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And that's because it was just too unknown.

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It was foolish in retrospect.

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I got lucky in retrospect is the way that worked out.

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Generally speaking, if you're going to change jobs or go back to school or marry that girl or move to Topeka, it should be 80% excitement, 20% fear, and 0% of sadness.

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The other thing that I think is very, very important, which is the willingness to go backwards and you touched upon this, which is to lose money, lose what appears to be momentum, lose power.

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I think a lot of people think that if you only maintain forward momentum, that's the only way to advance.

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But the reality is it's kind of more like a slingshot, which is at some point you have to go back and then it fires forward a lot faster than if you were just walking the stone forwards.

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Heck yeah, absolutely.

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And by the way, your case study is a perfect example of this.

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When you were starting out, I mean, you're very well-known, very highly compensated public speaker.

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If you want to get Simon Sinek, you got to book him a year in advance and you got to have some money in the bank.

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Because that's a big part of how you make your living, but also you just don't take anything.

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You got a lot of stuff going on.

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Okay.

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I know your humble origins on that because you told me when you were starting out, you said, I want to do a lot of public speaking because I have a lot of ideas and I want to share them with my fellow humans.

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Yeah.

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You actually said that you took every opportunity you could possibly find to talk about ideas in front of people.

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And so six people would say, Simon, can you come to my apartment and talk to us about whatever?

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And you'd be like, yes, I will do that.

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You took every single opportunity.

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And what that sounds an awful lot like is using your precious time with very little compensation.

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And you have to be willing to do that because you got to get in your reps.

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Right.

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You actually have to train yourself.

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You have to go back to school.

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You got to have the confidence in actually the learning process.

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And lots of people do this, by the way, going backward.

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There's nothing going backwards in this.

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I talked to a lot of my students, for example, 65% of my happiness students at Harvard are women, 42% of the students, the MBA students at Harvard are women, but 65% because they're more interested in happiness than the, I mean, the guys are across the hall of the supply chain management elective or some damn thing.

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I don't know.

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They're in a success class.

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Something like that.

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And women are in the life success class.

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And one of the things that I'll talk about is if you're going to be a real spiral in your career, you might come out and go work for McKinsey.

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And then you might work part time for eight years while you're raising your kids, if you decide to have kids.

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And then you might go and work for a nonprofit.

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And after that, you might go and go back to school and do something else.

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But

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The enterprise is not the company you're working for, not even the company you're starting.

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The enterprise is your life.

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It's you incorporated and you're the founder.

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You better treat it as a startup.

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I also, I think the concept of backwards is a misnomer, right?

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Right.

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Because what it is, is education.

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It's re-education.

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When you go to school, you stop your life temporarily and you go to school.

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You know, and I always and I tell I tell young people this who are, you know, for example, one of the things I think is wonderful about Europe, the Europeans is they take a gap year between high school and if they go to college or if they start in the workforce.

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And that's a good gap decade.

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Yeah.

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And it's got nothing to do with financial resources.

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You know, well, I mean, it does have something to do with financial resources, which if you have to work, you go straight to work.

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But but the point is, is is that you.

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They're not living the life of Riley in that year off.

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They might actually go volunteer, or they might just travel a little bit, or they might go do a job that just interests them, that pays them a living wage, but is not the thing that they want to do for their career.

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It's just something to give them a little bit of space for a year.

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It's go do something for a year that's not your career.

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And then I talk to young people in the States, and I'm like, I don't know what to do.

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And I say, well, why don't you take a gap year?

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Why don't you just go get a job?

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where you're teaching, you know, Teach for America or something like that, or if you have the means to travel a little bit, you know, and they all say the same thing to me.

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I can't because I'll fall behind because I can't afford to take that year off because everyone will get ahead.

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I'm like, what race are you in versus everybody else that you're going to be quote unquote behind?

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Yeah.

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And the idea that anytime you do anything that's not in the plan is actually part of school.

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And even people who take their first job, their entry-level job, or their second job, or the third job, and like, oh, this job isn't perfect for me.

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My boss isn't great.

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It's not toxic, but it's not my thing.

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I think I'm going to quit.

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I'm like, you've only been there two months.

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I know I think I'm going to quit.

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I'm like, stay longer.

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And instead of treating it like this is my career, treat it like school.

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Go learn how not to lead from your boss.

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Go to school every day.

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And your attitude is totally different when you're coming to school versus trying to make this a thing.

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Yeah, yeah.

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Every step aside for me, even in my own career, is going back to school.

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Yeah, for sure.

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I mean, your whole life in school is what it comes down to.

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And especially if you love the process of learning.

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And if you love the process of the process, which by the way, if you don't, the whole idea of I'm going to get behind suggests that you're in a race towards something, which means there's a finish line.

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And that's what you're looking forward to the most.

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And that's the arrival fallacy, which I probably read about for the first time in one of your books.

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The arrival fallacy is this misapprehension that since progress is sweet, that getting to an ultimate goal is sweetest, and that is completely wrong.

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That's the prescription for clinical depression.

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I mean, literally, there's a big group of Olympic gold medalists that have suffered a clinical depression starting about a week after they won their gold medal.

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Yeah.

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Because they don't understand how human emotion is designed.

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It's designed to give you ebullience and joy and then go back to the baseline.

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If you thought that winning the gold after all that suffering was going to keep you in a happy place for the rest of your life, you don't understand it.

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You don't understand how humans are.

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Mother Nature doesn't care if you're happy.

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She just wants you to win.

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And so the divine force within you is to live up to your own moral aspirations and build your life in such a way that the progress that you make toward being a better person, toward creating better things, to lifting other people up, that's what gives you the inherent satisfaction.

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So I tell my students this all the time to get back to this point that you have about people coming out of school.

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A lot of young people listen to this podcast.

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And when they're coming out of school and you're giving this advice for a for a gap year, that's great advice, by the way.

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It was a gift to me that I couldn't continue in college, that I had done everything wrong because I was able to back up and assess what I was actually trying to do with my life.

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You know, I was the first person, you know, first person to go to college in my family.

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I was the first person not to get a Ph.D. in my family.

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You know, and so it was very controversial when I when I told my parents, yeah, I think I'm.

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I think I'm going to go on the road as a traveling French horn player.

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Is that a thing?

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Is that even a thing?

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My dad was a college professor.

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His dad was a college professor.

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And it was great because I actually, by the time I was in my late 20s, I'd grown up.

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And that actually made me a better father, by the way.

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I've got three adult kids.

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My first kid comes out and went to Princeton at math and econ, very bright valedictorian in his high school class.

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His brother wasn't up for that.

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His brother was a different person.

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And he's talking about going to some college someplace.

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I knew it was gonna be nothing more than a waste of time and a bunch of partying.

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which is what people do.

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I mean, by the way, it's pretty stupid to send your kid thousands of miles away from home to be raised by other 18-year-olds.

250
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It's pretty stupid.

251
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It's a pretty foolish thing to do, right?

252
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And so, and my son, Carlos, man, this is like stupid times 10.

253
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So I said, no, like, you don't want to go to college, do you?

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He's like, no, I don't, Dad, I don't want to.

255
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I said, then don't.

256
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Go get a job.

257
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And he found a job as a dry land wheat farmer in Grangeville, Idaho, lived in the farmer's basement, made a bunch of money for 15 months.

258
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And then he joined the Marine Corps, became a special operator, became a scout sniper in the Marine Corps.

259
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He did that for four years.

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And by the time he got out at 23, he was married and his wife was pregnant, 25 now, working for a construction company, making bank.

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His second son will be born in a month.

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And he's going to, at some point, go back to college because he's going to be ready is the whole point.

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And do something that he's actually interested in that he wouldn't have been interested in before.

264
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Your point is incredibly well taken.

265
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Look, if your life isn't being treated as an adventure, as a pilgrimage, and as a startup, you're doing it wrong.

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What about for adults?

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What about for people who have, you know, they've got some tenure, they've got some skill set, they've got some experience, they've got 20 years, 10, 15, 20 years of career under their belt.

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This is what I know how to do.

269
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Sometimes they leave because they get bored.

270
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Sometimes they are asked to leave because the company doesn't exist anymore.

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They've been replaced by someone, something.

272
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The company misses its...

273
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projections, they get laid off and now they're forced to figure it out.

274
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How do you apply this advice to somebody who thinks they have a pass?

275
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So I think they're on a pass.

276
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Yes.

277
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And so there's a couple of different possibilities in this case.

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In the first case, there are some people who don't have any money.

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And that's just like getting laid off and they're really hard up.

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And that's hard.

281
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I mean, that means like find a job, any job as fast as you can.

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And I'm very, very sympathetic to the circumstances.

283
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There are a lot of people like that in the United States.

284
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And when we go into it,

285
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an economic dip, which inevitably we will because we always have, that that's going to be the case for lots and lots of people.

286
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But you're talking about a different case where people have a little bit more good fortune in their lives and they have maybe a little bit more money and they can sort of figure out how to reinvent themselves, even though they've never done it before.

287
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And that's a really exciting set of circumstances.

288
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The reason is basically this.

289
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You know Bruce Feiler, right?

290
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Do you know Bruce Feiler?

291
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He's written a whole bunch of books, but one of his recent books was called Life is in the Transitions.

292
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And it's a very nice book where he talks about the fact, based on pretty solid data that

293
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People have a pretty substantial life transition every 18 months, and they have what he calls a life quake every five years.

294
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And a life quake is a huge change in your life, usually uninvited and therefore unwelcome.

295
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Like, you know, you got sick, somebody died, you lost your job, something like that.

296
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Like something really bad happened.

297
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And not necessarily bad, but something you didn't, you didn't want to change because you didn't, yeah, you didn't expect it.

298
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And he says, and he finds, and this is really the salient point of the book.

299
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In the big majority of the cases, like more than 90% of the cases, people see those life quakes in real time as unwelcome and later as beneficial.

300
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So this is super interesting because what that is in my profession as behavioral scientist is called fading affect bias.

301
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So you have negativity bias in the status quo because change itself is really, really uncomfortable and change feels like risk and risk feels like danger.

302
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And that gets the limbic system all revved up right now.

303
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But in retrospect, change feels like learning because that's what it's left with.

304
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You know, when most students...

305
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I observed this having been an academic now for a long time.

306
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They're super, super lonely and therefore unhappy because they feel isolated their first semester.

307
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But then they remember that first semester unbelievably fondly because of all the new experiences that they had and the new people that they met, which is a source of learning.

308
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So in real time, they're hating their lives.

309
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And when they come back for their reunions in five and 10 and 20 and 30 years, they just spend the whole time laughing about their first semester of college.

310
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And that's a really important case.

311
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And so the key thing to remember is when you are induced to make major life change as an adult, you're in what's called a liminal state, a phase of liminality, which is to be between states.

312
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That's the most fertile generative learning period.

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And you can remember that notwithstanding your discomfort, you're going to do a lot better.

314
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That's how you reframe discomfort is excitement.

315
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It is, is...

316
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Is reinvention only for those who can afford it?

317
00:21:34.835 --> 00:21:35.015
No.

318
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I mean, you said it.

319
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You said like if somebody loses a job and they need to just get a job immediately, you know, but if you have some means, you have the opportunity.

320
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So that seems unfair.

321
00:21:45.063 --> 00:21:45.864
Yeah, no, it's true.

322
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It's actually.

323
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And the reason I said that was to be sympathetic to the people who are involuntarily laid off and have a whole lot of needs that they have to meet and have fewer degrees of freedom in the reinvention process as regards the labor market.

324
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But everybody should see it in this particular way.

325
00:22:00.295 --> 00:22:02.157
Look, a lot of people who don't have any money, they have a

326
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You know, their marriage breaks up.

327
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Right.

328
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You know, that kind of thing.

329
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That's a reinvention to a lot of people.

330
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Most people who get divorced against their own will look back on it years later and say that wasn't a bad thing for me.

331
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I thought it was a bad thing at the time, but it wasn't a bad thing for me.

332
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So to the extent that you can see any changes in your life as an opportunity for learning and growth, you're going to be a lot better.

333
00:22:26.217 --> 00:22:27.377
The other thing is this.

334
00:22:27.397 --> 00:22:35.200
I talk to a lot of people who spend time between jobs and careers a lot and more time than they want sometimes.

335
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And that's an opportunity for edifying self-development.

336
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That's not to be missed.

337
00:22:41.882 --> 00:22:42.963
It's super important.

338
00:22:42.983 --> 00:22:57.533
So I recommend to people all the time that they walk a pilgrimage, which is what people have done for thousands of years in every major religious tradition, in the Hindu tradition, in the Christian tradition, for sure, the Muslims, they walk, you know, the Shinto, their Shinto pilgrimages.

339
00:22:58.033 --> 00:23:05.679
And the whole point is when there is time between things and you're looking for what your next thing is, make it into a physical metaphor.

340
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And what will happen is you won't find it.

341
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It will find you on the trail.

342
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That's the ancient idea from that.

343
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And I did that, by the way.

344
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When I left the presidency of this big think tank in Washington, D.C., and I didn't know what I was going to do next exactly.

345
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I know I was going to go to a university and do what?

346
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I don't know.

347
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And so I walked the community of Santiago across northern Spain.

348
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And every day I prayed.

349
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I said, Lord, guide my path.

350
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guide my path.

351
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Just me and my wife, worshiping and walking and praying.

352
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And on the last day, entering Santiago de Compostela in northern Spain, I was granted the information.

353
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Just like the legend says, it was to spend the rest of my life lifting people up and bringing them together in bonds of happiness and love, using science and ideas.

354
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And I said, all right, game on.

355
00:23:56.985 --> 00:23:58.286
Let's go back and talk about process.

356
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Process.

357
00:23:59.638 --> 00:24:01.067
I think it is underappreciated.

358
00:24:02.316 --> 00:24:12.102
I think we're so results obsessed, we forget about the mechanisms and steps to getting to, hopefully, what somebody would define as success.

359
00:24:12.763 --> 00:24:17.166
And the education comes in the process, not in the outcome.

360
00:24:17.866 --> 00:24:19.867
The growth comes in the process, not in the outcome.

361
00:24:20.868 --> 00:24:27.532
The wisdom comes in the process, not in the outcome.

362
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And...

363
00:24:30.594 --> 00:24:44.483
And if I talk to people and I say, you know, tell me about a time in your life that you loved being a part of some project or some event or something, like something that if all the things in your life are like this one thing, you'd be the happiest person alive.

364
00:24:45.164 --> 00:24:51.068
Almost always they tell me about something that was not a commercial success or didn't go well in the outcome.

365
00:24:51.548 --> 00:24:58.512
But it was the process of coming together with other people in common cause that leaves them feeling...

366
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joy and fulfillment that they carry that feeling with them for the rest of their life.

367
00:25:03.055 --> 00:25:11.521
But we, for some reason, well, I know the reason, but we have seemingly abandoned or devalued the value of process.

368
00:25:13.039 --> 00:25:14.460
Yeah, no, that's right.

369
00:25:14.560 --> 00:25:16.320
And it's a very normal human thing.

370
00:25:16.380 --> 00:25:19.021
It's not, you know, the fault of capitalism.

371
00:25:19.062 --> 00:25:19.762
It's Mother Nature.

372
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I mean, Mother Nature says, since you enjoy progress, you're a progress-oriented species, we want today to be better than yesterday.

373
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We want to get further down the trail today than we did yesterday and the day before.

374
00:25:33.547 --> 00:25:39.350
That therefore, ergo, when we arrive at the destination, that that's going to be bliss.

375
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Now, every major religion and philosophical tradition says that's wrong from the Stoics to the Tibetan Buddhists say that that's actually wrong.

376
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There is an end point in Tibetan Buddhism, which is to break out of the constant cycle of birth and rebirth and attain Nirvana.

377
00:25:56.920 --> 00:26:02.607
But short of that, man, it's not going to be that great when you actually achieve a particular thing.

378
00:26:02.927 --> 00:26:08.774
You're trying to actually make progress in your life and make progress in improving the world one step at a time.

379
00:26:08.794 --> 00:26:13.579
And so the result of it is that all of these traditions, they come together around this concept.

380
00:26:14.180 --> 00:26:18.783
of how to make process the point, which is called intention without attachment.

381
00:26:19.223 --> 00:26:24.866
And the whole point is you have to have intention and intention means you have to have a goal because you don't know which direction you're going.

382
00:26:24.886 --> 00:26:30.229
You'll wander in circles if you don't have a, in, in sailing, this is called the rum line.

383
00:26:30.729 --> 00:26:36.713
The rum line is a straight Euclidean line between where you're starting and where you want to end up.

384
00:26:37.458 --> 00:26:41.019
But you know when you're setting out on a sailboat that you're not going to be on that straight line.

385
00:26:41.039 --> 00:26:42.580
You're going to get blown off course.

386
00:26:43.180 --> 00:26:46.541
You might like Columbus wind up in the wrong continent.

387
00:26:47.421 --> 00:26:49.582
You don't know, but you got to have a rum line.

388
00:26:50.002 --> 00:26:59.865
The whole point is not being attached to the end of the rum line, but understanding that the end of the rum line gives you the rum line so that you can make progress and have good process all along the way.

389
00:27:00.105 --> 00:27:01.466
That's the whole point of goals.

390
00:27:02.632 --> 00:27:04.694
I would push a little bit there.

391
00:27:05.474 --> 00:27:11.719
I agree with you that since the dawn of humanity, we're dopamine-driven, results-driven animals.

392
00:27:11.979 --> 00:27:14.982
It's the thing that Mother Nature helps ensure our survival.

393
00:27:15.502 --> 00:27:26.871
I would argue, though, that because technology is so helpful that it shortens process to such a degree that that's where the devaluation happens.

394
00:27:27.251 --> 00:27:29.332
It used to be if you wanted to...

395
00:27:30.529 --> 00:27:39.055
do calculations, you had to do it out on paper because you didn't have a choice, and the technology just makes it shorter and quicker.

396
00:27:39.396 --> 00:27:51.724
But there's a point where we are now where things are so quick and so short, and I would argue that AI is making things quicker and shorter as well, so as to remove process, so as to remove, I'm going to write a blog.

397
00:27:52.925 --> 00:27:56.949
Now, I'm grateful for technology for fixing my spelling or fixing my grammar.

398
00:27:57.409 --> 00:27:57.910
Love that.

399
00:27:58.330 --> 00:28:03.675
That condensing is very helpful and I don't think, quote unquote, does damage to process.

400
00:28:04.295 --> 00:28:11.241
But if the machine is going to do the work for me, I miss out on process in order to achieve result.

401
00:28:12.150 --> 00:28:23.154
And what I'm missing out is education, opportunity for wisdom, opportunity for learning and self-growth, for struggle, for difficulty, for all of these things that are good for me, which I would call process.

402
00:28:24.214 --> 00:28:32.877
And because the Internet allows us to measure everything immediately, we can measure every like, every view, how many minutes somebody...

403
00:28:33.277 --> 00:28:57.415
is watching our video we can measure the efficacy of our advertising in real time you know it's not like old tv ads where you had to wait six months to find out if anything happened and then we still weren't 100 sure it was the advertising that did it you know uh like we used to say 50 of advertising works we just don't know which 50 now we can say we know exactly what's working my point being is the metrics obsessed society that we have become

404
00:28:58.428 --> 00:29:04.793
we've forgotten the value of the part that's not measured or easily measured, which is the value of process.

405
00:29:05.154 --> 00:29:10.338
Or at least the measurement is not an affirming outcome.

406
00:29:11.159 --> 00:29:12.079
Yeah, no, I agree with that.

407
00:29:12.119 --> 00:29:15.342
I mean, we've lost the living part of life.

408
00:29:16.463 --> 00:29:19.906
And I'll go a step further, which is AI may destroy wisdom.

409
00:29:24.922 --> 00:29:26.663
that we started talking about gut decisions.

410
00:29:27.444 --> 00:29:32.566
That gut decisions are, our guts are educated.

411
00:29:33.146 --> 00:29:37.268
They come from life experience, they come from things going right, things going wrong.

412
00:29:37.629 --> 00:29:45.152
It's stored somewhere in the limbic brain though we don't necessarily have a conscious access to all of those memories and experiences at all time, but our minds do.

413
00:29:45.473 --> 00:29:48.354
The limbic brain does have access to it, which is why you get that gut decision.

414
00:29:48.634 --> 00:29:49.935
But if we keep removing

415
00:29:50.515 --> 00:30:01.676
all the struggle, all the work, all the stuff that we have to do manually, arguably, you could live a life of 10 years and have a gut filled with cobwebs and flies.

416
00:30:02.757 --> 00:30:03.217
That's right.

417
00:30:03.277 --> 00:30:09.741
No, you actually haven't put any volumes on the shelf of your episodic memory in the hippocampus.

418
00:30:09.881 --> 00:30:12.783
I mean, there's just like nothing on those shelves except nonsense.

419
00:30:12.823 --> 00:30:16.125
Process fills the gut, not the outcomes.

420
00:30:16.966 --> 00:30:17.526
No, for sure.

421
00:30:17.546 --> 00:30:30.954
I mean, it's like, so in the whole discussion that you've been having for a long time, and me too, about the whole why of life, the why of life, it winds up not being because I like the outcome.

422
00:30:32.030 --> 00:30:35.314
The why of life is because I've been fully alive during the process.

423
00:30:36.255 --> 00:30:39.598
And, you know, that is the whole, you know, the key to the treasure is the treasure.

424
00:30:39.658 --> 00:30:41.581
The journey is the destination, et cetera, et cetera.

425
00:30:41.601 --> 00:30:50.190
But there's one wrinkle on this that I've been thinking about a lot because I've been looking at the basic neuroscience of these why questions that you've been grappling with for decades now.

426
00:30:50.370 --> 00:30:54.051
and there's all this correlation between how much you use your devices.

427
00:30:54.631 --> 00:31:03.713
So, so you use your devices to make your life really efficient and you free up a whole lot of time, which you then waste by distracting yourself with devices on, on trivialities and nonsense.

428
00:31:04.553 --> 00:31:04.853
Right.

429
00:31:04.934 --> 00:31:07.514
It's like, and, and, and people are like, I don't know.

430
00:31:08.234 --> 00:31:08.514
I know.

431
00:31:08.574 --> 00:31:18.697
And it's like, well, it's like, it's a self licking ice cream cone is kind of, kind of how the thing works and, and, and not very surprisingly that, you know, happiness,

432
00:31:19.717 --> 00:31:22.481
is a combination of enjoyment, satisfaction and meaning.

433
00:31:22.982 --> 00:31:29.770
There's no evidence that people under 35 have lower levels of enjoyment and satisfaction, but meaning has cratered.

434
00:31:30.111 --> 00:31:33.254
Why the why question has cratered for people under 35.

435
00:31:33.815 --> 00:31:37.760
So like, okay, what is it about technology, technology use and modern life

436
00:31:38.461 --> 00:32:00.803
has made that happen it's not good enough to say the machines there's something about the brain that's being used differently and the new research this actually comes from this guy ian mcgill chris he's a neuroscientist at oxford and a psychiatrist he wrote the master in his emissary that talks about hemispheric lateralization where the right side of the brain asks the why questions and

437
00:32:01.243 --> 00:32:05.324
And the left side of the brain asks and answers the how and what questions.

438
00:32:05.984 --> 00:32:09.285
So the right side of the brain is like, here's the meaning of life.

439
00:32:09.645 --> 00:32:11.365
And the left side of the brain goes out and does stuff.

440
00:32:12.106 --> 00:32:20.187
The problem is that in modern life, that is not process oriented, that is not learning oriented, that is not mystery oriented.

441
00:32:20.988 --> 00:32:22.528
Everything's on the left hemisphere of the brain.

442
00:32:22.588 --> 00:32:26.769
And we don't have access to the parts of our brain that will address questions of meaning.

443
00:32:27.469 --> 00:32:29.270
This is a huge crisis.

444
00:32:29.910 --> 00:32:32.552
And so then the question becomes, what do you do?

445
00:32:33.613 --> 00:32:38.896
And so I'm thinking about, I mean, the first prescription, by the way, is to start with why.

446
00:32:39.816 --> 00:32:48.241
You know, your big why questions in all of your work, it's not like easy questions, like, you know, why is my phone sitting on this desk?

447
00:32:48.861 --> 00:32:51.563
It's why questions like, why am I alive?

448
00:32:52.844 --> 00:32:54.605
And why would I be willing to give my life?

449
00:32:55.701 --> 00:33:01.629
Which are complex questions that you can understand but never really answer.

450
00:33:01.729 --> 00:33:10.401
The way I would frame it when I first started talking about the ideas, I said, why should I get out of bed this morning and why should anyone care?

451
00:33:10.421 --> 00:33:11.202
Yes.

452
00:33:11.222 --> 00:33:11.383
Yes.

453
00:33:11.935 --> 00:33:12.095
Yeah.

454
00:33:12.155 --> 00:33:19.142
And that's what that is, is that's so, so meaning or why has three parts to it philosophically, coherence, purpose and significance.

455
00:33:19.542 --> 00:33:22.365
Coherence is why things happen the way they do.

456
00:33:22.565 --> 00:33:27.109
Purpose is what are my goals and direction in life?

457
00:33:27.710 --> 00:33:30.252
And significance is why does it matter?

458
00:33:30.993 --> 00:33:33.495
And so, you know, why should I get out of bed and why should anybody care?

459
00:33:33.515 --> 00:33:34.616
That's purpose and significance.

460
00:33:34.877 --> 00:33:37.079
Those are the, those are two of the three aspects of meaning.

461
00:33:38.020 --> 00:33:39.380
Yeah.

462
00:33:39.480 --> 00:33:50.383
As we're talking, one of the things that occurs to me as we're talking about process versus outcome and how it relates directly to our ability to thrive and find joy and happy, and I would even add survives to that list.

463
00:33:50.784 --> 00:33:52.044
And I think of prisoners of war.

464
00:33:53.644 --> 00:34:06.228
And the prisoners of war, Vietnam in Take Your Pick, you know, the ones that their mindset was outcome, I hope I get out by Christmas.

465
00:34:08.466 --> 00:34:08.706
Right?

466
00:34:10.167 --> 00:34:11.828
They said I'm going to get out by Christmas.

467
00:34:11.848 --> 00:34:14.109
I'll count the days until I get out by Christmas.

468
00:34:14.410 --> 00:34:16.191
Okay, I really hope I get out soon.

469
00:34:16.231 --> 00:34:17.271
I hope I see my family.

470
00:34:17.572 --> 00:34:23.655
This idea of a deadline, of a finishing line where this suffering will end.

471
00:34:24.796 --> 00:34:26.217
Whose paradox is that again?

472
00:34:26.357 --> 00:34:26.797
That's the...

473
00:34:28.378 --> 00:34:29.860
Whose paradox?

474
00:34:29.960 --> 00:34:35.045
The naval admiral who was imprisoned in the Hanoi Hilton?

475
00:34:35.105 --> 00:34:36.026
Not Stockdale, was it?

476
00:34:36.387 --> 00:34:36.767
Stockdale.

477
00:34:36.787 --> 00:34:37.888
It was the Stockdale paradox.

478
00:34:37.908 --> 00:34:40.411
He was the vice presidential candidate with Ross Perot in 1992.

479
00:34:40.772 --> 00:34:41.432
That's right.

480
00:34:41.773 --> 00:34:43.094
So Admiral Stockdale.

481
00:34:43.174 --> 00:34:44.315
So those guys...

482
00:34:45.672 --> 00:34:46.773
often died, actually.

483
00:34:46.913 --> 00:34:48.614
They just couldn't hack it.

484
00:34:48.915 --> 00:34:57.982
We're the guys who let go of outcome, and they just decided to embrace process.

485
00:34:58.002 --> 00:35:01.885
So I had Leopoldo Lopez on the podcast.

486
00:35:02.386 --> 00:35:07.990
He's part of the Venezuelan movement for democracy.

487
00:35:08.250 --> 00:35:09.592
He lives in exile right now.

488
00:35:10.372 --> 00:35:17.354
And he was put in, he was a political prisoner for seven years and held in solitary confinement for, I think, four or five of them.

489
00:35:18.194 --> 00:35:21.975
And before he turned himself in, he knew this was a political thing.

490
00:35:21.995 --> 00:35:23.215
He knew that they were after him.

491
00:35:23.975 --> 00:35:26.176
And he was the mayor of Caracas at the time.

492
00:35:27.576 --> 00:35:35.038
And he prepared himself to go to jail, knowing that it was going to be offline, also knowing that he didn't know when he was going to get out.

493
00:35:36.038 --> 00:35:38.819
And he said, I committed to three things.

494
00:35:39.459 --> 00:35:42.600
One, I was going to every single day do something to keep my body healthy.

495
00:35:43.520 --> 00:35:48.701
Two, I was going to do something every day to keep myself mentally healthy.

496
00:35:48.761 --> 00:35:52.242
So I would write, I would draw, I would read.

497
00:35:52.942 --> 00:35:56.243
And the third thing I would do is to keep myself spiritually healthy.

498
00:35:57.243 --> 00:36:02.785
And he went to he was a lapsed Catholic and he went to his priest to say, I haven't prayed in a long time.

499
00:36:02.805 --> 00:36:04.145
I'm going to jail.

500
00:36:04.945 --> 00:36:05.946
I need to know how to pray.

501
00:36:06.666 --> 00:36:09.747
And his priest said, most people pray incorrectly.

502
00:36:10.847 --> 00:36:20.150
He says, most people pray to get something or to have something end, some sort of pain or suffering to end or to have some sort of bonus or bounty.

503
00:36:20.430 --> 00:36:20.610
Right.

504
00:36:21.751 --> 00:36:22.832
He says that is incorrect.

505
00:36:23.373 --> 00:36:28.118
He says the correct way to pray is to pray with gratitude, just to be grateful.

506
00:36:28.358 --> 00:36:28.719
That's it.

507
00:36:29.640 --> 00:36:32.543
And so every day, Leopoldo prayed with gratitude.

508
00:36:32.643 --> 00:36:36.988
Look how beautiful the sky is today that I can see through the crack in my window.

509
00:36:37.446 --> 00:36:40.308
Look how I saw an eagle go past my window today.

510
00:36:40.368 --> 00:36:41.309
How grateful am I?

511
00:36:41.889 --> 00:36:43.210
How grateful that I have a family.

512
00:36:43.430 --> 00:36:45.692
I don't know when I'm gonna see them, but how grateful that they are out there for me.

513
00:36:45.992 --> 00:36:47.613
And that we never had a deadline on it.

514
00:36:48.534 --> 00:36:50.055
And he made it through.

515
00:36:50.455 --> 00:36:54.198
He is one of the healthiest people you'll ever meet, mentally, physically, spiritually.

516
00:36:54.978 --> 00:36:56.918
He has no PTSD whatsoever.

517
00:36:57.619 --> 00:36:59.579
And he said he had other prisoners go through there.

518
00:36:59.599 --> 00:37:01.820
And the ones that had deadlines, it broke them.

519
00:37:01.960 --> 00:37:02.420
It broke them.

520
00:37:02.460 --> 00:37:03.980
To this day, they are broken people.

521
00:37:04.360 --> 00:37:05.040
Yeah, yeah.

522
00:37:05.080 --> 00:37:09.481
But I've always wanted to ask you this because about the Stockdale paradox.

523
00:37:10.562 --> 00:37:13.002
How does this – I know you've thought about this.

524
00:37:13.943 --> 00:37:15.483
How is this related to optimism?

525
00:37:15.503 --> 00:37:15.743
Yeah.

526
00:37:16.633 --> 00:37:18.454
I mean, you're a professional optimist.

527
00:37:19.414 --> 00:37:21.975
An optimist, because this is the thing about the Stockdale Paradox.

528
00:37:21.995 --> 00:37:24.375
When people talk about this, they say the optimists died.

529
00:37:24.975 --> 00:37:26.396
But that's not right, is it?

530
00:37:26.836 --> 00:37:27.596
That's not right.

531
00:37:27.716 --> 00:37:28.316
That's not right.

532
00:37:28.857 --> 00:37:30.677
I think the hopeful died.

533
00:37:32.137 --> 00:37:33.858
I hope that this will end soon.

534
00:37:35.775 --> 00:37:42.081
I hope to get out, whether they talked about it to end the suffering or to regain the freedom, doesn't matter.

535
00:37:42.682 --> 00:37:47.686
It's when they put artificial finish lines where you have no control over the finish lines.

536
00:37:48.888 --> 00:37:50.889
And then you hope for this work of fiction to come true.

537
00:37:52.260 --> 00:37:53.661
And you're constantly disappointed.

538
00:37:54.321 --> 00:37:56.702
You're constantly disappointed.

539
00:37:56.722 --> 00:37:59.683
And what you keep doing then, what you keep doing is moving the finish line.

540
00:38:00.023 --> 00:38:01.423
Okay, this Christmas I didn't get out.

541
00:38:01.983 --> 00:38:03.664
Next Christmas I'll get out.

542
00:38:03.704 --> 00:38:05.585
And then you apply that to life.

543
00:38:05.885 --> 00:38:07.505
I'll be happy when I make my first million.

544
00:38:07.625 --> 00:38:08.466
Okay, my second million.

545
00:38:08.846 --> 00:38:10.206
I'll be happy when I get the promotion.

546
00:38:10.326 --> 00:38:11.467
Okay, the second promotion.

547
00:38:11.887 --> 00:38:15.188
And it goes directly to your work, which is the finish lines come and go.

548
00:38:15.288 --> 00:38:17.689
You might have a thrill if something goes well.

549
00:38:17.969 --> 00:38:20.670
That elation goes away.

550
00:38:21.970 --> 00:38:23.651
That high goes away pretty quickly.

551
00:38:24.012 --> 00:38:26.853
And then what we end up doing is living a life, moving a finish line.

552
00:38:27.414 --> 00:38:33.017
Whereas what Leopoldo did and Admiral Stockdale did was they embraced process.

553
00:38:33.537 --> 00:38:35.638
In other words, they found joy.

554
00:38:36.659 --> 00:38:37.920
in the mundane.

555
00:38:37.940 --> 00:38:39.401
They found joy in the daily.

556
00:38:39.722 --> 00:38:41.763
They appreciated the struggle.

557
00:38:41.863 --> 00:38:46.927
They saw themselves, to use what we were talking about before, they saw their struggle as education.

558
00:38:47.188 --> 00:38:49.630
My body is getting fitter from this exercise.

559
00:38:49.670 --> 00:38:50.971
My mind is getting keener.

560
00:38:51.551 --> 00:38:53.453
What I'm writing, what I'm reading is interesting.

561
00:38:54.671 --> 00:38:56.893
And they could have very difficult days.

562
00:38:57.273 --> 00:39:02.097
They absolutely had days where they were depressed, but they embraced process over hope for outcome.

563
00:39:02.257 --> 00:39:12.485
My fear is that with technology and especially the rise of AI, we are not talking about our absolute complete abandonment of process.

564
00:39:12.526 --> 00:39:21.593
And if process is the thing that not only teaches us, fills us, fulfills us, and makes us happy, then what happens?

565
00:39:21.613 --> 00:39:21.873
Yeah.

566
00:39:22.709 --> 00:39:23.670
Yeah.

567
00:39:23.770 --> 00:39:23.991
Yeah.

568
00:39:24.791 --> 00:39:28.676
Then what happens is that we, our learning disappears.

569
00:39:29.116 --> 00:39:33.621
We've outsourced our learning about what it means to be fully human and to live a good life.

570
00:39:34.282 --> 00:39:35.404
We've tried to outsource.

571
00:39:35.444 --> 00:39:39.028
And we wind up asking those particular questions about a good life to an AI.

572
00:39:39.048 --> 00:39:40.289
The idiocracy becomes real.

573
00:39:40.549 --> 00:39:41.711
The idiocracy becomes real.

574
00:39:42.473 --> 00:39:43.194
Yeah, yeah.

575
00:39:43.274 --> 00:39:45.335
I'm afraid that's the case.

576
00:39:45.515 --> 00:39:47.577
I'm afraid that that's, and that is increasingly the case.

577
00:39:47.617 --> 00:39:53.241
It's funny because one of the things that I see among my students is that use Chad GPT as a therapist.

578
00:39:53.321 --> 00:39:56.143
I mean, they're literally using Chad GPT.

579
00:39:56.443 --> 00:40:00.086
And Chad GPT, not just Chad GPT, AI is a psychopath.

580
00:40:01.127 --> 00:40:02.448
AI is a dark triad.

581
00:40:02.548 --> 00:40:07.652
A dark triad is a person who is high in narcissism, Machiavellianism, and traits of psychopathy.

582
00:40:08.359 --> 00:40:09.200
And that's AI.

583
00:40:09.621 --> 00:40:17.672
And so you're asking a true psychopath, a dark triad to give you advice on how to live a happier life.

584
00:40:17.972 --> 00:40:18.373
That's insane.

585
00:40:18.413 --> 00:40:19.755
And it'll tell you everything you want to hear.

586
00:40:19.875 --> 00:40:21.197
And it's an affirmation machine.

587
00:40:22.460 --> 00:40:22.800
For sure.

588
00:40:22.820 --> 00:40:24.241
That's a great question, Simon.

589
00:40:24.621 --> 00:40:25.761
That's a brilliant question.

590
00:40:25.881 --> 00:40:29.442
You know, you really, if look, if she's toxic, it's her fault.

591
00:40:29.542 --> 00:40:30.602
It's not your fault.

592
00:40:31.183 --> 00:40:32.143
You know, you should break up.

593
00:40:32.243 --> 00:40:33.123
It's like, I don't know, man.

594
00:40:33.423 --> 00:40:34.063
I keep breaking up.

595
00:40:34.444 --> 00:40:40.906
Well, you know, I just announced that they have programmed the machine not to advise anybody to break up with their partners.

596
00:40:41.206 --> 00:40:45.467
Like, yeah, no, I mean, it's like they had to put restrictions on the psychopath.

597
00:40:46.624 --> 00:40:55.568
They try to, but the whole point is interesting because the guys at Anthropic are trying to understand the misalignment between what we really want and what we inadvertently have asked the machine.

598
00:40:56.068 --> 00:41:03.632
And so these really interesting new experiments have shown that when you set it up to optimize an email program,

599
00:41:03.952 --> 00:41:08.233
And then in the email, you send emails to each other saying we should disengage the AI.

600
00:41:08.613 --> 00:41:10.454
The AI will start playing dirty tricks.

601
00:41:10.494 --> 00:41:20.697
I mean, there's one simulation in which it started blackmailing people on the email chain about an extramarital affair saying, yeah, you can turn me off if you want, but this is going out to the whole company.

602
00:41:21.818 --> 00:41:27.725
And in other words, and that's what happens when you, that's what, that's what dark triads do.

603
00:41:28.406 --> 00:41:30.768
It's my way and only my way.

604
00:41:30.968 --> 00:41:33.952
I'm willing to hurt you and I feel no remorse.

605
00:41:34.392 --> 00:41:35.613
That's what it means to be a dark triad.

606
00:41:35.654 --> 00:41:40.359
That explains AI to a T. And you want that for advice in your life about how to get happier?

607
00:41:41.506 --> 00:41:45.209
Maybe many therapists might be dark triads too, but that's not my point.

608
00:41:45.709 --> 00:41:52.954
If you can compress your entire happiness class into a couple of bullets, here's the idea.

609
00:41:54.199 --> 00:41:58.502
Happiness is a big problem in life because people don't know what it is.

610
00:41:59.262 --> 00:42:01.664
People think it's a feeling and it's not.

611
00:42:02.444 --> 00:42:04.045
Feelings are evidence of happiness.

612
00:42:04.446 --> 00:42:11.010
Happiness is a combination of three things you can measure and study and get better at.

613
00:42:11.350 --> 00:42:15.353
Those things are enjoyment, satisfaction, and meaning.

614
00:42:16.538 --> 00:42:22.961
And then, only then, can you actually come to terms with the fact that unhappiness isn't your enemy.

615
00:42:23.981 --> 00:42:25.362
Because that's the process.

616
00:42:25.382 --> 00:42:34.326
That's part of the process of enjoying your life and getting real satisfaction after struggle and finding meaning after the discomfort that comes from everyday experiences.

617
00:42:34.406 --> 00:42:36.387
And only then can you be fully watched.

618
00:42:36.947 --> 00:42:42.330
This is so important for people to remember, right?

619
00:42:42.610 --> 00:42:44.932
We never learn anything when things go well.

620
00:42:44.952 --> 00:42:46.672
We only learn things when things go badly.

621
00:42:47.293 --> 00:42:48.193
Correct.

622
00:42:49.834 --> 00:42:53.837
We can have fun, which I think is different from enjoyment or satisfaction,

623
00:42:55.182 --> 00:43:21.740
right uh um well it's part of it's part of enjoyment it's a part of enjoyment is actually one of the component parts of enjoyment yeah fun is part of enjoyment but definitely not satisfaction no correct i satisfaction definitely actually is more says struggle is what's what this goes back this goes back to everything we're saying which is process struggle you know all of these things are actually a thing that produce what we would describe as the feeling of happiness

624
00:43:23.043 --> 00:43:23.743
Yeah, yeah.

625
00:43:23.843 --> 00:43:25.684
It's interesting because... Not the feeling, the evidence of.

626
00:43:25.784 --> 00:43:26.144
The evidence of.

627
00:43:26.164 --> 00:43:27.165
The evidence of the happiness.

628
00:43:27.185 --> 00:43:34.448
You know, Jung talked about the fact that unhappiness is so critically important for well-being.

629
00:43:35.668 --> 00:43:37.889
And this is one of the things that my students most often get wrong.

630
00:43:37.909 --> 00:43:39.590
To begin with, they don't understand emotions.

631
00:43:39.630 --> 00:43:47.333
Emotions are the universal language to tell you what's actually going on below your level of awareness.

632
00:43:47.353 --> 00:43:47.793
Yeah.

633
00:43:48.263 --> 00:43:53.326
Negative emotions, aka bad feelings, tell you that you perceived a threat and you should avoid it.

634
00:43:53.626 --> 00:43:55.227
And we have different kinds of threats.

635
00:43:55.848 --> 00:43:58.249
Some about losing people and things that you love.

636
00:43:58.269 --> 00:43:58.709
That's sadness.

637
00:43:58.909 --> 00:44:00.390
Some about you might be poisoned.

638
00:44:00.450 --> 00:44:01.051
That's disgust.

639
00:44:01.471 --> 00:44:03.312
Some about things that might attack and hurt you.

640
00:44:03.352 --> 00:44:04.133
That's fear and anger.

641
00:44:05.042 --> 00:44:09.505
And then there's emotions that you want more of, like joy and interest and surprise.

642
00:44:09.986 --> 00:44:16.030
And all those are a perception that something is an opportunity and that you should approach it.

643
00:44:16.251 --> 00:44:16.951
That's all it is.

644
00:44:17.512 --> 00:44:18.612
That's what emotions are.

645
00:44:18.792 --> 00:44:21.455
And to have good – I just want to have good feelings.

646
00:44:21.495 --> 00:44:22.155
I don't have bad feelings.

647
00:44:22.175 --> 00:44:24.637
You'd be dead in a week without your so-called bad feelings.

648
00:44:24.677 --> 00:44:28.140
And that means that you need to be very appreciative and it gets back to the sense of gratitude.

649
00:44:28.700 --> 00:44:31.301
that you should be grateful for all of your emotions.

650
00:44:31.321 --> 00:44:37.623
And so what I want to do with my students in this full understanding of that happiness is being fully alive.

651
00:44:38.304 --> 00:44:46.167
Great Saint Irenaeus in the fourth century said the glory of God is a person fully alive, which is this Aristotelian notion of eudaimonia, right?

652
00:44:46.187 --> 00:44:53.890
A full life that you should be able to get up in the morning and say, and I urge all of your fans watching this now to do this.

653
00:44:54.738 --> 00:45:02.563
to get up tomorrow morning and the first thing, get on your knees and say, I'm really grateful for all the fun, happy things that are happening today.

654
00:45:03.063 --> 00:45:07.646
And I'm also really grateful for the stuff I don't like that's going to happen today.

655
00:45:07.666 --> 00:45:15.171
Because that's what's going to make me a more serious, better, more educated, more complete person.

656
00:45:15.691 --> 00:45:19.754
So when it comes to the suffering, man, bring it on and then start.

657
00:45:19.914 --> 00:45:23.236
I've also found one's attitude towards the unexpected.

658
00:45:24.726 --> 00:45:29.531
play significance into optimism and the ability to appreciate and enjoy and learn the lessons.

659
00:45:30.031 --> 00:45:41.763
When something unexpected happens, and I'm talking simple stuff, it doesn't have to be major life things, like something happens at work or that people go, oh, no, this is not going according to plan.

660
00:45:42.623 --> 00:45:43.024
Yeah, I know.

661
00:45:43.064 --> 00:45:43.384
You know?

662
00:45:43.785 --> 00:45:44.285
Oh, no.

663
00:45:44.746 --> 00:45:44.906
Right?

664
00:45:44.926 --> 00:45:45.286
I know.

665
00:45:45.306 --> 00:45:48.749
Versus, ooh, okay, what's the opportunity we can find in this?

666
00:45:49.570 --> 00:45:50.391
This is weird.

667
00:45:50.411 --> 00:45:51.071
What's going on?

668
00:45:51.111 --> 00:45:51.391
I know.

669
00:45:51.411 --> 00:45:51.952
Yeah, yeah.

670
00:45:51.992 --> 00:45:52.973
What's going on here?

671
00:45:53.373 --> 00:45:54.934
Like, oh, I didn't expect that.

672
00:45:55.414 --> 00:45:57.075
Can we make something good out of that?

673
00:45:57.656 --> 00:46:01.819
And I think that the quality that underlies that reaction is curiosity.

674
00:46:06.342 --> 00:46:11.243
that I think when you have curiosity, when things don't go according to plan, you're curious about what happened.

675
00:46:11.563 --> 00:46:17.824
When I think when you lack curiosity and things don't go according to plan, the plan is the thing.

676
00:46:19.605 --> 00:46:28.147
I think so the question is, can one cultivate curiosity or is it something you're born with or you have it or you don't?

677
00:46:28.267 --> 00:46:34.088
There's literature on this and most facets of our positive and negative emotionality,

678
00:46:35.207 --> 00:46:37.209
are between 40 and 80% check.

679
00:46:37.949 --> 00:46:40.952
But that means they're between 20 and 60% environmental.

680
00:46:41.412 --> 00:46:46.437
And environmental means if we create the right environment, we get more or less of these things.

681
00:46:47.417 --> 00:46:48.518
Okay, so that's really important.

682
00:46:48.538 --> 00:46:55.284
I mean, your personality and your affect profile is mostly genetic, but it's also hugely environmental.

683
00:46:55.304 --> 00:46:56.485
And you can do a lot to change it.

684
00:46:56.505 --> 00:46:58.747
Okay, so that answers the question that we can learn curiosity.

685
00:46:58.767 --> 00:47:00.809
So then it begs the question, how does one learn curiosity?

686
00:47:00.829 --> 00:47:02.010
Well, curiosity...

687
00:47:02.750 --> 00:47:07.812
is related to positive emotion through the channel of interest.

688
00:47:08.012 --> 00:47:10.073
Interest is for sure a positive emotion.

689
00:47:10.554 --> 00:47:11.774
Humans love to learn.

690
00:47:12.294 --> 00:47:13.275
Humans really love to learn.

691
00:47:13.335 --> 00:47:17.677
And the only reason we don't think we love to learn is because our education system is so screwed up.

692
00:47:18.377 --> 00:47:30.805
I mean, it's like we have this Bismarck German education system where you take kids at age five and you sit them down in groups of 30 and they go one year after another, all learning the same thing at the same pace with the same people of the same.

693
00:47:31.105 --> 00:47:34.207
It's just so boring.

694
00:47:34.287 --> 00:47:39.591
It's just I hate it every day of school from kindergarten through my Ph.D.

695
00:47:39.991 --> 00:47:42.913
I did not enjoy school and I didn't know for years what it was.

696
00:47:42.933 --> 00:47:45.395
It was because it was extinguishing interest.

697
00:47:45.975 --> 00:47:47.676
Yeah, I love learning and I hate school.

698
00:47:47.756 --> 00:47:48.236
I'm the same.

699
00:47:48.776 --> 00:47:53.818
Yeah, I mean, it's like, and learning is the best because learning is, we're evolved to learn more.

700
00:47:54.458 --> 00:48:08.044
Of course, you're going to get positive emotionality from learning because your ancestors, the ancient cynics on the African savannah, they were, it's like, one of them found berries on a bush and gazelles around a watering hole and said, this is awesome.

701
00:48:08.104 --> 00:48:09.644
And that's why they passed on their genes.

702
00:48:09.684 --> 00:48:12.866
And so they got positive reinforcement and dopamine, et cetera.

703
00:48:13.606 --> 00:48:15.248
from the learning process.

704
00:48:15.308 --> 00:48:17.350
And so we still love to learn.

705
00:48:17.390 --> 00:48:18.091
How do we teach it?

706
00:48:18.251 --> 00:48:19.172
How do we teach curiosity?

707
00:48:19.192 --> 00:48:26.158
We teach it by actually figuring out how people learn best and then help them in that lane to learn the things that they're really interested in.

708
00:48:26.178 --> 00:48:33.806
So there's a lot of research now about neurodivergent people who have dyslexia and AC, AC, AC, DC, no, ADHD.

709
00:48:33.926 --> 00:48:34.326
ADHD.

710
00:48:35.007 --> 00:48:35.247
Right.

711
00:48:35.448 --> 00:48:38.811
You know, and one of my kids, you know, one of my kids was diagnosed with ADHD.

712
00:48:38.831 --> 00:48:44.576
And what you learn when one of your kids is diagnosed with ADHD is that it's mostly nonsense what they're telling you.

713
00:48:45.357 --> 00:48:52.483
What they're what they have a hard time doing is sitting still and suffering through the stuff that they think is boring.

714
00:48:53.104 --> 00:48:54.465
They have a super strength.

715
00:48:54.545 --> 00:48:58.769
ADHD kids have a super strength in focusing on the things that they think are interesting.

716
00:48:59.449 --> 00:49:00.030
Super strength.

717
00:49:00.150 --> 00:49:01.431
So when my son, yeah.

718
00:49:01.851 --> 00:49:15.323
And when my son Carlos, he became a sniper, you know, he'd be like, yeah, dad, I spent six hours in a bush in 110 degree heat and in a forward operating base of the United Arab Emirates.

719
00:49:16.003 --> 00:49:19.665
And there was a tarantula on my arm and I'm like, oh, it sounds awful.

720
00:49:19.705 --> 00:49:20.946
He says, it was awesome.

721
00:49:20.966 --> 00:49:23.627
And it's like, this is the kid who can't concentrate in school.

722
00:49:24.548 --> 00:49:28.750
And so you got to look for the super, the super strength, the super skill of these kids.

723
00:49:29.050 --> 00:49:35.454
That's why the stakes are so much higher with people with ADHD to find that number one, what is the thing that fascinates them?

724
00:49:35.594 --> 00:49:37.855
And number two, how do they like to learn?

725
00:49:38.395 --> 00:49:39.776
And there's lots of ways to do that.

726
00:49:40.176 --> 00:49:42.438
That's where technology is a blessing and not a curse.

727
00:49:43.250 --> 00:49:46.791
Because the technology that we have today is not that it gives you the right answer.

728
00:49:47.231 --> 00:49:52.773
It provides you with the means to investigate what the answers might be in your own learning style better.

729
00:49:53.453 --> 00:49:56.534
In my case, that's where teamwork mattered or it still matters.

730
00:49:56.594 --> 00:50:08.977
Like I have to be on a functional team and like making that being part like being whether formally or informally, I have to contribute to the leading of that team to help keep it functional because of the team is not functional.

731
00:50:09.757 --> 00:50:17.261
I'm screwed because if I'm not interested in something, I just don't do it.

732
00:50:17.721 --> 00:50:18.282
It's terrible.

733
00:50:18.442 --> 00:50:19.162
I'm not proud of it.

734
00:50:19.382 --> 00:50:22.684
My whole life, I've been accused of all kinds of things.

735
00:50:23.205 --> 00:50:23.865
You're unreliable.

736
00:50:23.885 --> 00:50:24.745
Why don't you get that done?

737
00:50:24.986 --> 00:50:25.906
It's because it's not interesting.

738
00:50:26.366 --> 00:50:31.269
But if I'm on a team with other people who find that stuff interesting, we're off to the races.

739
00:50:31.969 --> 00:50:34.131
I just want people to recognize that

740
00:50:35.932 --> 00:50:44.596
the way that everybody tells us we have to succeed, both on purpose and by accident, done the opposite and it's worked out okay.

741
00:50:45.136 --> 00:50:49.018
I'm living proof that having a plan, I don't have one.

742
00:50:49.279 --> 00:50:49.739
I've never had one.

743
00:50:49.759 --> 00:50:51.019
People are like, what are you going to do in five years?

744
00:50:51.039 --> 00:50:51.660
I'm like, I don't know.

745
00:50:52.280 --> 00:50:54.623
Like, how the hell should I know what's going to happen in five years?

746
00:50:54.643 --> 00:50:55.384
And I've got no plan.

747
00:50:55.684 --> 00:50:57.307
I've never had a plan, right?

748
00:50:57.647 --> 00:51:02.333
I'm living proof that you don't need great grades in college, right?

749
00:51:02.553 --> 00:51:05.136
My GPA was fine, right?

750
00:51:06.618 --> 00:51:10.162
I'm living proof that you don't have to be a voracious reader.

751
00:51:11.240 --> 00:51:13.480
You know, my ADHD, I really struggle to read.

752
00:51:13.520 --> 00:51:15.781
And, you know, I carried a lot of shame about this for many years.

753
00:51:15.821 --> 00:51:18.381
But the fact that matters is I've written more books than I've read.

754
00:51:19.042 --> 00:51:20.602
That is a true statement.

755
00:51:21.482 --> 00:51:22.642
And I've started a lot of books.

756
00:51:22.682 --> 00:51:24.003
I like the idea of books.

757
00:51:24.103 --> 00:51:26.563
I wish I could read more because I'm so curious.

758
00:51:26.603 --> 00:51:27.623
I want to read the books.

759
00:51:29.004 --> 00:51:29.624
But I struggle.

760
00:51:30.504 --> 00:51:31.984
And same with, look, oh, what about audiobooks?

761
00:51:32.064 --> 00:51:32.224
Nope.

762
00:51:32.744 --> 00:51:35.625
I'll have to listen to it six times because I get so distracted.

763
00:51:36.420 --> 00:51:42.686
So, and so what I've done is let go of how other people tell me I have to learn.

764
00:51:43.146 --> 00:51:46.109
And thank goodness, figured out how I learned how I learned.

765
00:51:46.970 --> 00:51:54.317
And so I hope that my entire sort of career is a sigh of release for people who are struggling the way they've been told they have to do things.

766
00:51:54.980 --> 00:51:55.800
Yeah, no, that's right.

767
00:51:56.000 --> 00:51:59.921
And the basic rules of how things are supposed to be done is for the average person.

768
00:51:59.981 --> 00:52:01.521
And there isn't an average person.

769
00:52:02.001 --> 00:52:02.721
There's no average person.

770
00:52:02.741 --> 00:52:03.902
There actually isn't an average person.

771
00:52:03.962 --> 00:52:10.603
I mean, there's one person right in the center of the standard normal curve, but we're all some weird thing.

772
00:52:10.643 --> 00:52:21.484
And the whole point is that learning how you learn, learning what's interesting to you, building your own life, treating your life as an enterprise in this particular way is the way that we all should be living, is the bottom line.

773
00:52:21.825 --> 00:52:24.125
And that's very process-oriented approach to life.

774
00:52:25.580 --> 00:52:38.672
And that's where I get to the, that's where I think we are, which is, I think the conclusion I have from this conversation, which is success, happiness, wisdom, gut, all of that.

775
00:52:39.570 --> 00:52:41.351
is learning to find joy in process.

776
00:52:42.172 --> 00:52:43.973
Learning to find joy in the doing.

777
00:52:45.174 --> 00:52:47.836
I mean, it sounds so hackneyed.

778
00:52:47.876 --> 00:52:57.163
It sounds so, so like, again, like how many fricking different ways that, you said it before, it's not the destination, it's the journey, like learning to let go of outcome.

779
00:52:57.183 --> 00:53:04.129
It's so Buddhist and like, how many philosophies for millennia have to reinforce the same damn message over and over again?

780
00:53:04.529 --> 00:53:08.012
And our job, your, my job as sort of social commentators

781
00:53:08.672 --> 00:53:13.535
is not to remind people of what people have been saying for millennia.

782
00:53:14.075 --> 00:53:19.098
Our job is to translate it into words that resonate today.

783
00:53:19.559 --> 00:53:22.620
And that's one of the reasons why, start with why was a coup.

784
00:53:23.021 --> 00:53:27.443
It's not that I was the first person to start talking about, you know, meaning or even meaning at work.

785
00:53:28.164 --> 00:53:31.426
It's that I found a language that was right for the times.

786
00:53:31.566 --> 00:53:33.167
I abandoned the old language.

787
00:53:33.887 --> 00:53:41.112
You know, and that's, I think, why it allowed people who needed to listen to listen.

788
00:53:41.452 --> 00:53:42.973
It was no longer preaching to the converted.

789
00:53:43.594 --> 00:53:51.139
And so this idea of process as opposed to the journey, which sounds a little hippy-dippy, you know, love the journey.

790
00:53:51.179 --> 00:53:54.341
It's like I want to punch somebody in the face the next time somebody tells me that, you know.

791
00:53:55.081 --> 00:54:00.305
But to appreciate the process, which means learn to write your own blog, you know.

792
00:54:01.545 --> 00:54:12.853
Learn to have a difficult conversation with somebody on your team or with a loved one without memorizing a script from ChatGBT.

793
00:54:14.494 --> 00:54:16.215
Learn to sit in discomfort.

794
00:54:17.616 --> 00:54:21.098
All of these things are, it's just, it's called, it's process.

795
00:54:21.138 --> 00:54:21.879
It's process of work.

796
00:54:21.919 --> 00:54:22.640
It's process of life.

797
00:54:22.680 --> 00:54:23.520
It's process of learning.

798
00:54:24.381 --> 00:54:27.503
Process is messy, ugly, and very imperfect.

799
00:54:28.846 --> 00:54:32.069
Yeah, that's for sure, because it's actually in real time.

800
00:54:33.089 --> 00:54:33.830
It's actually in real time.

801
00:54:33.850 --> 00:54:34.871
The process is happening right now.

802
00:54:35.632 --> 00:54:37.993
Anyway, I guess this is the point.

803
00:54:39.334 --> 00:54:39.935
Be alive now.

804
00:54:40.736 --> 00:54:41.736
Be alive now.

805
00:54:41.917 --> 00:54:45.740
Don't be alive later.

806
00:54:46.100 --> 00:54:47.141
That's crazy.

807
00:54:47.221 --> 00:54:48.202
This is a great place to end.

808
00:54:48.422 --> 00:54:50.544
We've all been alive before.

809
00:54:52.005 --> 00:54:53.626
We can't plan to be alive before.

810
00:54:54.775 --> 00:55:19.867
later the only thing might not be what the only thing we can do is be alive now and how would you like to do that right now that's right well i'm glad i'm alive right now with you i'm glad i'm alive with you right now too i love you you you i've always and any conversation with you smarter than i began i love you and i can't wait to see you in the same city one day soon i love you too

811
00:55:21.010 --> 00:55:29.038
A Bit of Optimism is brought to you by The Optimism Company and is lovingly produced by our team, Lindsay Garbenius and Devin Johnson.

812
00:55:29.852 --> 00:55:38.336
If I was able to give you any kind of insight or some inspiration or made you smile, please subscribe wherever you enjoy listening to podcasts for more.

813
00:55:39.037 --> 00:55:44.640
And if you're trying to get answers to a problem at work or want to advance a dream, maybe I can help.

814
00:55:45.160 --> 00:55:47.101
Simply go to simonsynic.com.

815
00:55:47.641 --> 00:55:49.422
Until then, take care of yourself.

816
00:55:50.042 --> 00:55:50.723
Take care of each other.