Harvard Professor's Guide To Achieving Real Happiness - Arthur Brooks

what do most people get wrong when they think about happiness they think that they can be happy and happiness is not a destination it's a Direction one of the most important things that we've lost sight of particularly in the current generation of young adults is thinking that if you're unhappy for any particular reason something's wrong something's abnormal and that's completely incorrect we have negative emotions for a reason they they make us feel unhappy the negative emotions are a signal that something's aversive outside of us and that's not going to change we need sadness and anger and fear and disgust furthermore we actually need negative experiences so that we can learn and grow happiness is a direction and therefore we shouldn't be trying to attain happiness we should be trying to attain Happyness which is obviously a neologism but that gets the point across that's that's mistake number one what is an analogy that people can use to understand how happiness isn't a destination we we think of Happiness as a thing we think of Happiness as a feeling a state an affect that we arrive at um what's a what's another way that you can explain this uh disquieting of What happiness is happiness as we talk about it is really a state compared to something else and it's along a kind of a number line we we're getting happier means happier than what is what it comes down to and it's a it's a it's kind of a it's a a status in which we have these macronutrients more or less in equilibrium you'll never be perfectly healthy but you can be healthier you you're you're never going to eat a perfectly nutritious diet but it can be Mor more nutritious than yesterday what's more nutritious than yesterday well you have a good for example macronutrient balance to your diet I'm a health and nutrition nerd as are you and and we know that you you got to get your Macros right you have to have you be paying attention to your protein carbohydrates and fat and have them more or less in balance in proportion and relative abundance the same thing is true for your happiness so I start happiness discussions by saying there's three macronutrients for happiness just like there's three macronutrients for food that you have to get right they are enjoyment satisfaction and meaning those are the three things to pursue and everybody can get better at those three things that's an analogy that people can actually particularly people that would be wanting to improve themselves that's why they're listening to Modern wisdom that they would actually help them understand the whole process what is the TR behind people who try to be happier make themselves less happy what they're trying to do is to feel good all the time you know back in the 60s uh you don't remember this I barely remember this the hippies used to say if it feels good do it and I remember my dad hearing that and saying that's the end of America he was kind of right the problem is that that people still think that feeling good is is is the happiness State and they're trying to feel good all the time as opposed to having a a tangible set of goals like I am going to enjoy my life in a better way that's more stable and it's not just looking for pleasure I am going to try to achieve things in my life with goals and direction that gives me adequate access to satisfaction and I am going to do what it takes to find the meaning of my life even if it hurts those are strategies that actually lead us to live live a much better life with actually a lot more happiness right so what is the relationship between feelings and happiness then because presumably this uh conglomeration of different contributing macronutrients arrives us at a state of some kind there is an outcome of some kind if that isn't happiness what is it so feelings are evidence of Happiness like the smell of your dinner is evidence of dinner what happens is if you're you're you're you're achieving these states adequate states of enjoyment satisfaction and meaning you will get a better mood balance such that you're enjoying more joy and interest and you know positive surprise and you're you're suffering less from avoidable levels of disgust and sadness and anger and fear and that mood balance will be evidence that you're actually on the right track with the macronutrients that you're getting in the same way by the way Chris that you'll have a lot more energy if your macronutrients in your diet are are actually on point right so in this way is it advisable for people to sort of turn the bar stool upside down and think rather I'm not happy that is a problem to my current state is not one I would describe as happiness that's an indicator that one of the three macronutrients is missing from my life diet that's right and and every single person I've ever met in my whole life and I perhaps besides the dolly llama has has issues in their macronutrient profile that can lead to progress this is really good news by the way you know one of the most dous things that we say to young adults today and our kids is you're perfect just the way you are what could be more depressing than that it's like I feel I feel a garbage and you're telling me I'm perfect just the way I am that means I can't make progress the truth is everybody can make progress because I've never met a single human being that is perfect in enjoyment and satisfaction and meaning and I have a whole set of protocols that will help people understand where they can make progress and where they need to make progress what is the current state of modern happiness what does the research tell us because we here stories feelings of listlessness and hopelessness and disconnection and all the rest of it what is the weather report for 2024 happiness so well like they always say in the in the in the advertisements your results May Vary right because you can be doing a lot right when Society isn't unfortunately society as we understand it particularly in the oecd countries in the western industrialized countries happiness is going in the wrong direction and we actually understand why but here are the basic data most of the Western countries the industrialized nations have been ticking about a half Point down every year in the percentage of the population that says I am very happy about my life so typically you know going back to about 1980s 1990 in the United States for example um about 35% of the population said I'm very happy about my life about 15% said I'm not happy about my life and the other half was I'm somewhat happy that's kind of the the general proportions and there's better ways to measure it with greater granularity but that gives you an idea what's happening you've been finding that that's ticking down so such that for the first time now not happppy is higher than very happy and that's consistently happening now over the past few years so that's been just this gradual decline now some people are getting a lot happier but Society in general is seeing this and this is largely being pulled down by certain demographics you find young adults are less way way less happy than they used to be especially young women especially young women with very Progressive Ive political views they're ex I mean really really declining and there's one little subgroup which is men my age that and and this has to obviously this has to do with macroeconomic factors etc etc so this is these are interesting questions from a kind of a policy perspective a sociological perspective but more importantly from a psychological and personal strategy perspective such that we can live better lives what do you lay the decline of happiness at the feet of psychologically there's kind of climate factors and weather factors and I don't mean that literally that's a metaphor too it's kind of like you and me dating is a metaphor so the climate is the climate of Faith Family friendship and work in this country those are the habits of the happiest people there's tons of literature out there that give you 10,000 happiness habits okay but they're all trivial compared to the big four which is your faith or life philosophy the the why of your existence metaphysically that will make you small and the universe large you must transcend yourself you'll be stuck in the tedious Psycho Drama of of christas I mean it's like it's it's great for a minute but 24 hours a day you're going to lose your mind you need to zoom out is the bottom line and I've got a bunch of ways that you can do it I have a folder full of ways that you can actually achieve this which up to and including the faith of your youth but not not exclusively second is Family Life Family Life is critically important and is woefully neglected and it's societally increasingly neglected as well which which which is accounts for a lot of this decline friendship friendship is actually getting harder and harder to come by we find that more people say nobody knows me well and last but not least we have more of a dysfunctional relationship with work than we've had in the past it's less like a vocation it's less like a mission those are the climate factors I know you're going to want to talk more about specifics in each one of those silos then there's the storms the storms have been have created downdrafts of Happiness from which we have not recovered in 2008 to 2010 it was screened smartphones social media especially among young adults this is we understand the brain science on how this is incredibly delerious to happiness second starting in about 2014 across most oecd countries but really in the United States and the UK was the was the culture war was the incredibly polarizing ideological conflicts where malignantly narcissistic polit political and media leaders were conscripting child soldiers into their culture War by saying if somebody disagrees with you politically they're denying your right to exist and you must hate them unbelievably terrible for happiness and last but not least was the loneliness that came from the coronavirus epidemic for young adults that were coming of age synaptically in the plasticity of their brains they literally didn't learn how to make friends and and have proper in-person love relationships which is probably the worst thing that's happened to happiness in the last 100 years why hasn't happiness been so robust that it's bounced back what has locked in these losses in the market well if you if I could do one thing for somebody to make them happier one thing it's eye contact and touch that's the one thing why because you know the neurophysiology is straightforward you've talked about this in your show the the the the neuropeptide of connection is oxytocin it's intensely pleasurable and and again we don't want to be reductive about the brain chemistry but this is a really important thing for us to understand we're a kin based species we know ours and ours know us and we get pleasure from being close to our kin such that we are averse to walking the frozen tundra and dying alone okay that that natural impulse is actually guided in no small part by this neuropeptide that functions as a hormone of the human brain called oxytocin we don't get it when we don't have eye contact and touch how do you not get eye contact and touch by conducting your friendships through an iPhone with social media by going to school on Zoom by never going into an office and I mean it's it's it's crazy look if I were in Austin we'd be doing this in person because it would be it would be better it would be better because we'd have more eye contact and because we'd be getting more oxytocin over the course of this conversation young people who've never gotten that have wired their brains differently and the result is it's not clear that they're ever going to be able to recover from what we've done I mean not I mean I don't I don't mean to be you know catastrophic about it but I'm not entirely convinced that this that we're not losing a generation to oxytocin deficit and and loneliness this uh is bad news predictably for The Lone Ranger Sigma male guys out there who don't need friends and I'm going to make it on my own and it's too hard to get out there and I I I'm just going to retreat myself to my little digital cabin in the woods and not spend any time together um it's one of the reasons why I'm such a a Critic of sin ISM on the internet that things won't get better and people who say that it can are the problem um it is so I mean look if you have managed to convince yourself that things aren't going to get better and you are robust in your thinking and it's not going to change all right whatever like I don't want you to leave Society but so be it but it's [ __ ] evil for you to convince other people of the same like for you for you to somehow convince other people that no it's not there's no point in trying to get into a relationship there's no point in trying to have friends there's no point in trying to contribute to society all right well I mean look all of those things will very reliably make you miserable and you're basically saying My Philosophy is the one to follow despite the fact that we know the direction it's going to take you in yeah yeah yeah no let me let me let me make sure that I'm not I'm not actually guilty of that by saying that I'm worried about losing a generation you can rewire your brain the question is whether or not that you have the that the society is is giving us adequate opportunities to do so and if it isn't take those opportunities yourself nobody is permanently lost if they actually will will um will will do what actually needs to be done and adopt the attitudes that show that for example you're better off when you're around people you need real friends you'll be a lot happier all the young men listening to Modern wisdom if you fall in love and get married and have children you'll be happier you'll be a lot happier it's not true what the red pill Community is telling you that you'll be subjugated and miserable your whole life I got the data trust me on this this is the whole point I'm worried about losing a generation precisely because the messages are coming out that these things are stupid and don't make sense that's the wrong set of of messages I want to be transgressive and countercultural against the the technology that's saying that you don't need to be in person and against the culture that's saying that not being around people is better than being with people Bravo okay Faith Family friendships contributing in terms of work right you faith I'm a non religious person non-believing person right many people listening will be if they don't have a direct route to access Faith what are some of the highest return strategies they can do so remember the point isn't Faith per se it's Transcendence you need to do something that will make you small and the universe big that's what the that's what the science really says and you know and mother nature doesn't want you to do that mother nature is like it's all about you you are the star of your Psycho Drama and why because you know that that's you know evolutionarily it sort of makes sense that you'd be focusing on yourself all the time but also it's worth pointing out that mother nature doesn't care if you're happy Mother Nature uh only cares that you survive and pass on your genes and so therefore happiness that's that's your problem in your business that's the key thing for us to keep in mind I think just to interject there I think that that realization that humans are not designed to achieve happiness that that's a state which might be it's it's neither necessary nor sufficient for you to do what Mother Nature wanted you to do it was just it was like a byproduct of it so realizing you know it's not like you're swimming Upstream but that most of the set points and motivations that your system will try and push you toward are not going to be conducive to happiness so on the question of why why is it so hard to be happy or why is happiness in a big dir in the modern world it's like well it's been in a big dir for a very long time there is no reason for your system to try and encourage you to be happy in the first place yeah that's right and and and to speak in terms that you've often used in your show that is to be managed by your lyic system as opposed to actually drawing the experience es of your life into your prefrontal cortex the sea Suite of your brain where you're making decisions that the Divine path actually comes from being fully human the animal path comes from not being fully human that that leaving these Sensations in the emotional centers of the lmic system of your brain which say do this because you feel that that's no way to live that's a really important thing to keep in in mind Mother Nature says you're the star of your Psycho Drama you want to be happy you have to leave that behind and the way to do that is to achieve Transcendence from yourself here's a really good way to do that you and I are you one your neighbor out there in Austin Texas is is Ryan Holliday our mutual friend Ryan holiday he's great he's the world's leading expert on the modern understanding of the stoic philosophers he reads Sena for fun and epicus and Marcus Aus and he's talking about well Cicero said it's just amazing how he does that why because he actually wants to achieve Transcendence by doing the hard things that come from the denial of the visceral Pleasures that are embedded in the in the impulses Olympic system that's really what stoicism is all about that's the Divine path of transcendence using pure philosophy many philosophies will do that I don't recommend n that's what a lot of sort of the modern crowd is is talking about which leads to some of the problems that we were just discussing a minute ago there are better paths some people will actually get this by getting out of their head in a meditative experience using nature so one of the things that I recommend to a lot of young people today a lot of young guys coming out of college will call me say ah I feel lost I thought I was going to be so clear about my life when I got out of college and so what do I do professor and one of the things that I often recommend is I'm not going to you know tell them to go find some specific Faith or sit in the mouth of the cave and talk to the guru or learn how to meditate immediately what I say is get up an hour and a half before Dawn that's called the Brahma mahura in Sanskrit and that's that means in Sanskrit the Creator's time that is a very special time for for the development of your own brain because what you find is is if you get up systematically before Sunrise you're going to be more focused uh you'll learn more quickly and your attention will be better throughout the course of the day there's a lot of research that shows this get out of the house when it's nice and dark and cool a and walk for an hour be ambulatory for an hour a and and such that you're doing it as the sun is coming up by the end of your walk and you can hear the crunch of the gravel on the trail Beneath Your Feet you don't have your device you're not I mean I I I strongly recommend listening to Modern wisdom not then that's not when you're listening to your podcast you're listening to your heartbeat you're listening to the birds you're listening to the the sound of the trail in your feet etc etc this is a very good way to do it and there's a lot of science to back it up this is not just Romanticism another way to do this is to is to actually stand in awe of great genius I recommend learning about the fugues of yan Sebastian Bach and listening with utter seriousness for example to his Canadas he's got hundreds of them they fell off his pen learn about that it's just going to it's going to blow your mind you'll be small trust me you could start a apasa meditation practice why not or I go to mass every day you can practice your faith and and by the way Chris I understand that you don't have a faith or you know a sense of this you might after 40 and being open to the impulse to actually find the Divine in your life that's a critically important way to actually practice this as well just the openness I went to my first American Bible Church service on Easter Sunday this year and boy was that that was an experience there was a rock band there was an LED wall there was pyrate Technics I pulled up behind a uh like super fast American muscle car that had God now as the number plate so I found that it was enjoyable and I can totally see why people do it so I'm absolutely open to I'm open to the potential of that all right that's Faith Family yeah so this should be pretty obvious not everybody by the way has access to functional family relationships I get it and some people actually have to kind of assemble a family but I'll tell you it's a kind of a funny thing I mean I didn't quite understand this until later in life and part of the reason is because I had at best kind of a cordial relationship with my parents it was there's nothing wrong they were they were good parents but you know I was doing my thing I was living in Europe through my 20s I was I was a professional musician when you were you know throwing people out of bars I was playing in a symphony orchestra which is a different lifestyle but you know it Bears certain similarities as well you know you're out late at night and you're far away from home and you're living your dream and the whole thing and I can't I remember thinking in my 20s I should get to know my parents my mother was an artist my father was a mathematician they were very interesting and intellectual and and cultured people and then they died they just died young now my father was pretty close to my age now and uh and it was too late and I thought you know what does that mean does that set me back and it turns out that I could fix that because now I have adult children I'm a grandfather at this point and I talk to all of my kids every single day I see my grandson I'm moving because my kids are moving and my grandchildren living in a different place and I'm not going to commute to them as what it comes down to you must have family relationships or manufacture family relationships in your life and you must not have Schism for stupidities like differences of political opinion the narcissists and politics will tell you to stop talking to people in your family because they I don't know voted for Trump or didn't vote for Trump or whatever the thing is it's so idiotic that you would sacrifice your own happiness for somebody else's political cult it's completely nutty is the way that that works out you need to have it keep it or make it and make get a part of your life that you exercise every day all right friends friendship is should be the easiest because we're all surrounded by people all day long and it turns out it's the hardest for a lot of people I'm kind of a striver Whisperer in my practice I specialize in people that really want to make a lot with their lives that are serious about the entrepreneurial venture of their own life they're the startup entrepreneur of me Inc I really admire that and it's something that I teach the problem with that is it's very easy to no longer have real friends they have deal friends but not real friends and and real and deal are different deal me deal friends they're useful they're very useful right and it's good to have people who are useful to you and it's good to be useful to others don't get me wrong but you need useless friends too people who just love you you need useless friends I don't mean worthless friends I have those two you need people who who are not useful to you and you're not useful to them they just love you Chris and and we have fewer and fewer of that that's the reason that six % of 60-year-old men today say their best friend is their wives and 30% of their wives say their best friend is their husband that's a a sad story of unrequited love from M my age it's really important to keep this in mind it's also because women seem to be able to hold on to uh that Alo parenting adjacent group of close friends better than men do I mean this is one of the reasons why during divorces men have a worst time of it for many reasons but one of them being that they often subjugate their friend group for their wife's friend group and when the wife goes away the friend group goes away yeah yeah so for in in traditionally organized families in in in pastimes in particular when dad left and and made a living outside the home at work he would be cheating his family by hanging out with his friends and and so he didn't and the result is that he lost his friendship chops over the years and got lonlier and lonlier and lonlier now you think could be much better now it's much worse because everybody's doing that now everybody's men are doing that women are doing that and you find that women and men under 30 are now the loneliest cohort in our society and the more successful they are in their lives the lonelier they tend to be in their lives they're they're more likely to say that nobody knows me well the reason is real and deal and you got to do the work I mean for a lot of people they haven't had close friendship since college or from high school a and when they're you know 28 years old or now 35 years old they're 45 years old and everybody's incredibly useful to them now to be sure the the most successful marriages are the ones that are based on on on deep friendship we call it companionate love which sounds you know distinctly not hot I get it but it's important because that's the the closest friendship you're going to have but it's not enough you find that the happiest people they have they're very close friends with their spouse but they have one really close friend at least besides that introverts usually have one really close friend besides a spouse extroverts have more like five they don't 20 because you don't have the time to maintain that but it's really important how often do we need to see our friends how do we determine whether somebody is real or deal what's the amount of time that we need to spend with them per week etc etc yeah there's lots of rules for that and again this falls into the year results May Vary category but there's one thing that I do know when somebody says oh yeah no no I mean it's like I have some real friends I say think about your most real friend who's not your spouse okay when's the last time you talk to him I don't know two months ago not a real friend I'm sorry I'm sorry I mean it's like you if it's your real friend you keep up to date with your real friends I have two guys that I talk to every week and they one lives in San Francisco and one lives in Atlanta I live in Boston I see them in person I saw one of them for breakfast yesterday in New York City we take opportunities with one of them we go on vacation together with our wives That's the effort that you make because you you want to see the people you love you want to see him in person you make the effort you want to talk to him you miss them you actually miss them if if you don't miss the person it doesn't kind of hurt your heart because you haven't talked to him in a while in a week it's not a real friend what's the difference between real and deal how can someone tell a lot of the time we feel like real friends are also impressive if you're on the personal growth Journey it's difficult to uh distinguish re real and deal from real or deal yeah the difference is that with a deal friend there's something from there's it's trans there's a transaction that's happening that's more important than the emotion transaction trumps emotion there's nothing wrong with that with people in your life by the way it's not like you should fire all of your transactional friendships no because you don't wind up without a career to be sure it's very good to help each other but if the emotion that you feel for the person is more important than the transaction you could undertake okay that's good in which case you can actually have deals with your real friends but that's the key component and if for all of them it's like I care a lot more about how the person is useful to me than the person's life that's when you know got you final one work yeah work is you know people listening to us right now um they want an edge in their lives and I and I understand that and a way that they measure that edge frequently is is is in their and their success you know I think I probably I first listened to you three years ago maybe the first time I heard your show and I think you just passed I don't know a 100,000 YouTube subscribers or something that was a long time AG go because you have a lot more than that right now and I remember you're like I can't believe it man and your career was kind of blowing up I remember thinking that because I was thinking yeah this young guy is doing great it's very inspirational I love people who are in the hunt I really really love people who are in the hunt the problem is that when it comes to work the hunt itself doesn't give you doesn't give you the satisfaction that you're going to desire Mother Nature lies to you in many ways but and we've talked about it before but but here's one of the biggest lies that mother nature gives you if you're successful and making progress in money and power and the admiration of other people then you'll be happy you get happiness for free success first happiness second so you don't have to worry about happiness you just have to be successful money power admiration maybe a little pleasure thrown in there along the way those are the worldly Idols by the way St Thomas aquinus in paraphrasing Aristotle in the Suma theologia written in 1265 classified those as the world's Idols he was an excellent social scientist because it turns out that those are the intermediate Goods nothing wrong with those things by the way I'm not condemning those things they're just incomplete for your happiness if you you have those as the goals you're in real trouble okay so what are the right goals from work it's twofold number one earn your success that means create value with your life and work in your life in the lives of other people and you have to be rewarded and acknowledged and recognized for the the real value that you're creating tenure is nonsense loyalty n sense Merit hard work and personal responsibility and you're rewarded and recognized for it and you believe it that's earned success that by the way that's why I'm a complete advocate for the free enterprise system not because I you know it's like rah rah raah capitalist I'm Adam Smith no because it makes people happy when they're succeeding in the in the in a in a system that rewards Merit and personal responsibility it's not perfect but it's the only system we got that really does that that's number one two now I'm going to sound like a commi service to others service to others you need to actually believe actually that's not communism that's capitalism too I take it back service to others is incredibly it's it's this will bring you Joy to your work you have to know that people need you the essence of human dignity is about being needed it's like feeling it like an asset in society the essence of Despair is feeling like a liability to be managed by your family by the welfare system by anybody else which is why it's so terrible to be in poverty because of the way that we treat people in poverty we don't look at them as assets to develop which they should be because human beings are human beings with equal dignity we treat them like you know liabilities to manage by the by whatever system that they're they're talking about to create value in the lives of other people to to to to serve others means that they need you and that is the true secret to everything else now you get it like crazy because you know you don't you don't have gunned in anybody's head to listen to Modern wisdom they're coming you voluntarily and that is this affirmation they need me they like it it's in the comments thank you my guess is you get 20 emails a day from people who say that that podcast really changed my thinking they need you well everybody needs that every single person needs that whether you're you know picking apples or you know trying to you know running for congress you actually need that in your life those are the two service to others and and earning your success I had an essay that I wrote probably about a year go now I want to read it to you about the tension between success and happiness one of the most tensions one of the most common tensions I talk about at the moment is between a desire for success and a desire to feel like we're enough success is a strange thing presumably we want success because we think a more successful life will bring us more happiness meaning and fulfillment here's the problem we sacrifice the thing we want happiness for the thing which is supposed to get it success failure can make you miserable but I'm not sure that success will make you happy one of the most common Dynamics I see amongst high performance is this parents want their child to do well parents encourage their child to do well by praising when they succeed and criticizing when they fail the child learns that praise and admiration is contingent on succeeding this lesson metastasizes through early adulthood into I am only worthy of love acceptance and belonging if I succeed now powered by an internal feeling of insufficiency this person is driven to achieve many things they're prepared to outwork out hustle and outs suffer everyone else because they're not just running toward a life that they want they're running away from life that they fear success and progress ameliorates the feelings of insufficiency therefore success and progress becomes prioritized above everything else now don't get me wrong many high performers genuinely love the work that they do and many are driven by a well-balanced simple desire to maximize their time on this planet rather than trying to fill a void inside of themselves but if I was to place a bet I'd guess that the majority of high performers are driven by fears of insufficiency rather than a holistic desire to be better I think people who are high Achievers on average are more miserable than the average person so what does it mean that the people we admire most are the ones with the least admirable internal States if the pursuit of success is in an effort to make us happy and in the pursuit of success we make ourselves miserable why not just shortcut the entire process and just be happy is that even possible now external accolades count for a lot and I don't think that recanting all worldly possessions and retreating to a cave in the woods is an optimal strategy some degree of external material success is important to make us feel validated and satiate our desire for status and respect but external success will not fill an internal void and insufficiency adaptation is this if your drive comes from a fear of insufficiency and you continue to disprove those fears with success in the real world and yet the feeling of insufficiency persists what makes you think that the answer to this problem is more success nice very astute you're a natural social scientist I admire it and it's all true look everything is there's a ton of science that backs all that up but you don't need it everybody knows that that look if you go for the success to get the happiness you're going to get the success because we'll be unto you if you have the wrong dreams your dreams are going to come true if you work hard on them but you're not going to get to the happiness the right strategy is to shoot for greater happiness and then you'll have enough success now those words for a guy like you striver like you they give you a little chill don't they because enough success doesn't sound right right no no man I I'm not doing this for enough success I know tons of guys back in high school who have enough success I don't want that I want to be I want to be special Chris I want to be special how many people with a success addiction which is the fundamental brain delivered underlying dopamine uh uh uh uh moderated or mediated addiction which lies behind workaholism by the way how many of those people people have chosen specialness over happiness that's what you're talking about any loser can cultivate all these relationships and all these friendships but not every loser can work as hard as I do and become a Navy SEAL and do you know 50 pull-ups and and have you know 40 million Instagram followers I don't know if that's specialness and and by the way Mother Nature is driving you once again Mother Nature does not care if you're happy but Mother Nature wants you to be speci so that you'll be able to survive more easily by having a higher rank in the kin group and being able to pass on your genes because you'll be the alpha but that's not what you want that's actually not even what you want you're going to get enough food and you don't want 750 kids you what you want is a really really good life and you're being driven by these ancient impulses that's exactly what you're saying and you've walked into a dopaminergic moderated and I don't know why I actually had this thing come up on my screen right now fine it's fine it's a why we we we we walk into a a a a success addiction that makes your brain look more or less like a methamphetamin addicts brain how can people learn to unwind and detach themselves from their desire for Success you don't need to unwind your desire for Success you need to understand and manage your desire that's what we need to do on all these things you don't need to want different things you need to manage your wants for these different things look does that I don't drink I don't drink alcohol I don't drink alcohol and the reason I don't drink alcohol is because there's a lot of alcoholism in my family and I drank way too much when I was your age I drank a lot when I was your age and so I stopped and I stopped a long time ago I stopped over 20 years ago I still want alcohol I'm not going to stop wanting alcohol what I do is I manage my desire for alcohol through Vis A my behavior that's what we need to do look of course you're ambitious of course you're driven for tremendous success that's wonderful but it can't manage you that that that drive that ambition that that that intense visceral sense that that you'll only be special if you have enough success you can't let it manage you is what it comes down to of course you have these desires by the way Chris you're gonna get married at some point and and after you're married you're going to look at a woman and she's going to be incredibly beautiful and you're going to have a sense of natural human desire for her and you're not going to act on it that's the same thing is true when when you could work the 14th hour instead of spending the first hour with your kids you're going to make the decision to sublimate that desire and manage it yeah that's interesting I remember David bus told me this story uh that a reader sent into him saying that his book had saved his marriage because this guy had been married for a while maybe between 5 and 10 years something like that and he'd found himself being attracted to other women and he took that attraction as some sort of sense that his existing relationship was wrong if I was fully totally Renaissance period boted with my partner I wouldn't have eyes for any other woman for the rest of time and David explained that there is a very very well embedded reward system that men get when they look at even a pair of rocks that slightly resemble boobs like you are driven to just like sexualize and look at anything whether it's like geological or otherwise and he said that sort of liberated me from this sense that I can't the desire itself is wrong and that I must tell myself a story about it it feels a little bit to me like this um line that we have drawn between when I get enough success I will allow myself to be happy or I will I will have Justified happiness happiness will come as a product along for the ride with success that it's kind of the same look your desire to continue to chase this thing may not really cease all that much but your choice about whether or not you do work the 14th hour today is one of those and it's not just about you know it's kind of further Upstream I'm going to guess what you need to do is go further Upstream than this and think about how many hours a day do I want to work how much work do I need to put on my plate in order for me to need to work those number of hours because otherwise what you're going to end up doing is failing at things that you've intended to do like if you've put 14 hours of work on your plate like you kind of need to do it until you no longer need to do it and that is a more sort of Life design uh position that's right and the the unfortunate fact is that you won't know how to do anything else once you become hopelessly addicted because these behavioral patterns feed on themselves notwithstanding the fact that you're getting unhappier and unhappier and furthermore there's one other thing that's keep that's worth pointing out if you were a an you know an untreated alcoholic nobody would say like dude last night you put away two bottles of vodka that was impressive I admire you for that they'd be like get some help man that was it's pathetic but if you work 14 hour days they're going to be like man you're gonna be the next Elon Musk what do you admire about Elon Musk he works all the time he and you know people will admire the fact that he says I haven't taken a day off since 2008 or something like that we love Workaholics in our culture we love success addicts we love people who are self-objectify but let's just think about that a little bit I mean I bet when you were a kid did you have a good relationship with your dad yeah not bad and I bet that he said that you shouldn't objectify women you shouldn't look at them and say that they're nothing more than sex objects or that that you should treat them like real people right you know why because you you're a boy and you have an Impulse to not do that for the all the reasons that David bus has has made very clear in your show okay well you shouldn't objectify yourself either Chris and and a self- objectifier is somebody who looks in the mirror and says that's a success machine that's somebody and you know these affirmations it'd be like looking in the mirror and saying that's somebody who can say stay stoned all day you wouldn't do that that' be pathetic it'd be weird and yet that's kind of the thing that we do with the self-objectification which is Downstream From Success addiction which actually is related to work AOL ISM which all these weird patterns of behavior that we establish often before even before adolescence all right let's get into the macronutrients the component parts of Happiness we've got three to go through what are they yeah enjoyment satisfaction and meaning and they seem self-evident but they're not the the to be I'll give you an example enjoyment sounds like pleasure but it's completely different for all the reasons that we've kind of discussed pleasure is a lyic phenomenon pleasure is uh is a an it's a set of signals in your lyic system saying that something is either really good for helping you survive to get calories or really good for getting mates and passing on your jeans that's really the and and we become ingenious at in the laboratory creating new ways to get those Sensations so you know everything from gambling to pornography to methamphetamine to fentanyl to alcohol all these things do is they mimic different ways that in the pine before we had substances and these behaviors that we would get pleasure from something that actually helps us survive and pass on our genes unfortunately all those things that I just mentioned are addictive and bad for you because you know what you're doing is you're artificially stimulating something you don't need to do and in a way that you're your body and brain are not accustomed to and so they're incredibly unhealthy a lot of guys especially your age don't realize how dangerous pornography is for the brain for example but what it is is just it fires up that impulse to pass on your jeans in an artificial way okay so why do I bring that up because all those limic searches for pleasure are different than enjoyment which is fundamentally an experienc in the prefrontal cortex of your brain and you don't have to not have pleasure by the way I'm not I'm I'm Catholic I'm not I'm not a Puritan and what you need is the source of pleasure plus people plus memory thus delivering the experience into your prefrontal cortex which is part of Happiness so I'll give you an example I was doing work with a big beer company and we were talking about these ideas and I said look associate your product with enjoyment not pleasure I said what do you mean well don't run a commercial of a dude alone in his apartment pounding a 12pack why because that's the pursuit of pleasure and everybody knows it's addictive and dangerous and irresponsible and pathetic do the ad where the guy is having a beer with his brother or his friends you've taken beer plus people plus memory and that equals enjoyment and that's part of Happiness if you're doing something that's pleasurable and and it can be addictive and you're doing it alone you're probably doing it wrong that's where pornography comes in that's where gambling by yourself comes in that's where eating a whole cake by yourself comes in that's where using what drinking alone comes in all of these particular behaviors and that's an example of how the the Neuroscience of this can be intensely practical in helping you to lead a better life and change your habits what else is that to say about the way to use pleasure people and memories is there something you should do to embed memories more effectively are there types of Pleasures that seem to be better for happiness or not are there types of people is there a way that you can reinforce this do I need an ebbing house forgetting curve flash card anky deck to be able to remember all of the [ __ ] that I did I mean hey man let's make it let's make some money so that's a I mean see you're such a natural entrepreneur it's it's unbelievable you go WR your product it's great um yeah the people shouldn't be addicts you know it's not going to be helpful to you if you're a community of people who help you enjoy things that are pleasurable are also drunks so so it's obviously the case that you want people who are trying to enjoy each other's company as opposed to Simply focusing on the the source of the pleasure the the chemical or behavioral source of the pleasure that's really important actually Ju Just to inject there I wonder whether I wonder whether there's an analogy to be drawn between um let's say that you know a bunch of people in a crack Den all of whom are just smoking crack and the only reason that they're there is to like be around other people that also do crack that's just environment that they they exist in I wonder whether there is kind of an equivalent if you were to let's say be a professional athlete of some kind training in a facility with a bunch of other individual athletes but all of whom were only there because they also needed to use the facility individually that they were there for the personal Pursuit now obviously the pursuit of training versus the sort of direct pleasure that you get from taking drugs but my point being that there's a lack of uh interaction between each of those individuals they're very much siloed within their own experience of whatever the pleasure might be U you were at a a gaming a games um place where tons of people can play Call of Duty but none of you are playing against each other and none of you are speaking to each other right like you're with people it's doing it in community but it's not integrating with the people yeah interaction is critically important you're not with other people you're not with other people if you're just in a crowd I mean you can feel unbelievably lonely walking down the street in New York City you're technically all walking down the street in New York City this is with little kids you'll see this when you have children before they learn how to interact with each other they do they do something called parallel play where you'll bring two little kids two little two-year-olds together and they'll be playing with blocks but not together parallel like they want to be looking at each other the way that that works that doesn't stimulate oxytocin and so what if you want to get into the neurochemistry of what we're talking about here you're you're not going to get the benefit of pleasure plus people plus memory unless you're doing something that really stimulates oxytocin which means intense interaction eye contact and ideally human touch as well right okay so this is an argument to you know give your friends a hug when they just win at a board game to like reach up in high five I play a lot of werewolves have you played werewolves no I haven't okay so werewolves is like a it's a role playing card game where everybody in a circle is given a particular character some are good guys some are bad guys and you don't know who's who and you have to Bluff your way through the game and C be killed off yeah there's another game called Mafia which is basically the same but with different characters uh and I have observed people that have been married for 15 years with a completely straight face just lie to their partner about what their role is no of course not honey I love you I would like so we've had to make a rule that like what happens during werewolves stays during werewolves because the potential blast radius of sort of the loss of the the loss of certainty um yeah exactly there's a lot of uh I play with a lot of like worldclass Pro poker players too which is just like a kind of to be honest an unfair fight my point being that with that as soon as the game's finished everybody gets up everybody's sort of high five there's been a ton of tension for a long time some people have been working together some people have been working against them but they've been working together too and everybody's sort of high-fiving and all the rest of it and it's very enjoyable um what is is there to say just to round this out what is there to say about memories um what can we do to maximize the yield of memories when it comes to enjoyment the key thing is actually to do something that's not part of your ordinary routine the more that you'll actually dise equilibrate your experience around for example a particular occasion or in a particular place that will add the memory such that it will be easier to recall to put together and to recall and you'll be able to do it to to to to recreate that enjoyment again and again and again what you want is to do something where the experience doesn't stop at the end of the action that's what you really want and what do you mean when you say dis dise equilibri but dise equilibrate what your ordinary routine is so so you'll notice that that you the things that you do every single day you don't remember them the things you don't do every single day you remember them and that's how the the recall so you can have the duration of the experience be richer and longer to do to to you know when you're going to hang out with friends go someplace with your friends right as oppos to is this a degree of novelty yeah and that's one of the reasons that I recommend that couples for example leave the house that they do things together outside of the house so they're not you know they don't get into too much of a domestic routine which is a very un sort of uninteresting way to run your marriage is to do the same thing over and over and over and over again you're just not going to get the benefits of enjoyment in the same way I had uh Susanna henen on the show forever ever ever ago now remember she had this really great book uh talking about how to make time move more slowly and uh it was so fascinating and it seems to me at least my current sort of conception of it which may need to be updated now is uh novelty and intensity those seem to be two of the things that increase the frequency of memory blocks sort of being dropped in that you know someone that's listening has driven to work a thousand times that's a thousand Journeys but it was always the same route so you have condensed a, 15 minute half hour blocks down into essentially one memory apart from that one time that there was a car crash next to me and it was different because novelty and intensity and um yeah I think just trying to keep that in mind to you know turn left instead of turning right when you go to the shops to go to a different restaurant to travel to a different hotel to do the whatever um I think important it is important and and there's a lot of ways that you can do that my wife and I have tried to do that we've moved 20 times in the 35 years that we've been together uh I mean we we I mean it sounds like we're in the witness protection program I realized but it's it's part of it is just because when we decide that we want to do a new thing we do a new thing we've moved three times in the past five years because you know where do we want to live not here I try that and and and this this it's not a search for novel it can become a pathology to be sure you know you actually can't stop any place but the whole idea that you can live in a new way try a new thing and not letting it turn into kind of a Groove one of the reasons that the perception of time speeding up happens as people get older is because their openness to experience starts to decline particularly after 55 your openness to experience increases um through your teenage years into your early 20s and it stays relatively constant until your mid-50s and then it really takes a big dip as a as a matter of this is the way that we've typically measured it and what we see your love of new things starts to decline you you got to fight against that if you want if you don't want time to go terrify inly fast and and and and suddenly life is over one of the best ways to do it as you correctly point out is to inject more more you know newness of the ways that you do things in your life and to do that with your partner as well all right satisfaction yeah satisfaction is a weird one so satisfaction is you know we talk about it all the time you know but we don't really Define it satisfaction is the joy that you get after struggle and this is the weird human mystery only humans want pain we only humans want to sacrifice and struggle because then the rewards are sweeter the more you struggled before the more and and everybody kind of knows that's true and yet we don't follow through on that very often we're always looking for the easy way out that's the reason that there's this kind of this Call of the Wild that people have when they listen to people like David gogins or Joo willink because their whole or or Rich role you know these are all mutual friends of ours obviously and it's like the the the thing that's kind of calling from nature to people when they hear this and they find it so attractive it's like yeah yeah man I need more pain I need more pain in my life because then my life will be sweeter and yet they're going through life trying to find the easiest way out this is a real mystery actually it's not you know the Divine path requires struggle and the animal path wants convenience and ease and a complete lack of pain it wants sort of an analgesic existence so one of the things that we do is we try to teach our kids this you know when you're kids are little you say Don't eat before dinner all parents say this and the and the kid is always like why and you make up a bogus excuse like it's bad for you you know you're not going to get your proper nutrients that's all nonsense you don't want your kid to eat before dinner because you want your kid to be suffering a little bit of hunger before dinner so they'll enjoy their dinner and be happier that's what you actually want but you can't quite articulate it and you don't want to tell the kid it's because I want you to suffer you want the kid to suffer and so that's an important thing to keep in mind and that's a real conundrum and the more that we can understand that the more that we can expose ourselves to suffering for the right reasons you really should get up before you're ready and while it's still dark it's best for you to do that you should work out in the morning it's a good thing to do I mean I get it not everybody can do that you should do these things that actually hurt and your day will be better and your life will be happier that's the first mystery is you know trying to sort that the second Myster his however is bigger in satisfaction which is that mother nature tells us that if we get that thing like that millionth YouTube subscriber you're gonna love that forever how long did you enjoy that like half an hour five minutes yeah that's pretty good all right five minutes right and but but your brain told you the whole way that when you got that it was going to be awesome you know so so Mick Jagger saying I Can't Get No Satisfaction that's wrong you wouldn't try and try and try and try if you couldn't get no satisfaction you can't keep No Satisfaction that's the real problem and you try and you try and you try and that's what that the reason for that is what neuroscientists call homeostasis which of course you know about and homeostasis is the tendency of any physiological system to go back to its Baseline so you're ready for the next set of circumstances it's true for your emotions it's awesome it's awesome forget it I got to go back so that I'm not distracted from then so I can stay in the hunt is what it comes down to otherwise I'd starve to death after I got food you know be like that was good enough and then you die and you you don't want that so that's the key thing and we the the mystery is that really smart sophisticated people never figured that out and they conclude that they just didn't have enough and this gets back to your success problem this gets back to the success conundrum it's like yeah I got that thing but I'm still not satisfied so I guess I needed five million I guess I needed 50 million the first thing that a billionaire concludes is that he needed another billion that's have you seen that study where when pretty much anybody is asked what level of wealth would you be satisfied with it doesn't matter what level of wealth you're at it tends to be almost ex exactly three times your current income it's like about three times where I'm at now that's that's my S settling point but it scales all the way up to a billion yeah yeah there are different studies that what one of the studies I mean some studies say it's 40% some studies say it's 300% the bottom line is more because that's what you're brain is telling you that the secret to satisfaction that endures is more more what more money more power more pleasure more honor more Instagram followers more sexual partners more more and and the problem with that is that it doesn't recognize that there's a Divine version of that that actually works there's a I did it again I keep getting these weird effects on my camera that there is a way to hack this this this neurophysiological Matrix this evolutionary Matrix and the way to think about this so that you're not subject to this you can be free Forever by the way is by remembering that satisfaction that endures is actually a function of all the things you have divided by the things that you want haves divided by wants is the right mental model for you to pursue and that means of course you have a have more strategy of course you do you also need a want less strategy you need to manage your wants just as much as you need to manage your Hales I realize it's very Buddhist but it's actually in every spiritual and philosophical tradition and so the way that I do that there a couple ways to do that one one way to think about that is to think about the metaphor the metaphor of success for entrepreneurs is kind of like you're an artist and and you're putting uh brush Strokes on a canvas of your life the right metaphor is is at some point in your life at least is actually the sculpture where you're chipping away the Jade or the marble to find the true work of art within and that means getting rid of the detrit the part of the block of marble that's not the horse or the rider so that you can find the Horse and Rider inside and one way to do that that I often do is I I I I used to have a bucket list everybody who listens to this podcast knows what a bucket list is I have a reverse bucket list now where I take my worldly cravings and desires and Ambitions which I still have I'm turning 60 in two weeks and I still have the these dumb you know at this Craven trivial desires I'm a weak weak but I'm I actually will write them down on my birthday and I will cross them out not because I'm not going to get them but because I want the management of those cravings and desires to be in my prefrontal cortex and not in my lyic system and can give some examples of of what you cross out yeah so one of the things will be for example these worldly metrics of success in my particular industry that are trivial so for you it would be a certain number of of YouTube subscribers for me it would be a certain number of sales of my latest book or or Prestige inside the University or whatever it happens to be now and I realize I know you know I I authentically know as do you that these things are trivial and yet we we look at them as a marker of our own specialness and our own sense of accomplishment when I write them down I acknowledge that I have the desire when I cross it out I say I I have the desire but I will not be attached to this goal that you're you're you're physically negating the attachment from the goal that I mean of course the attachment on understanding you know dukka is that concept the first Noble Truth of Buddhism that life is suffering because of duka because of this sticky craving for the inadequate things but it is not saying I'm not going to do that I'm not going to get that it's saying that I'm not going to be attached to that and it's incredible this year on my birthday by the way I got a big one coming man with a zero my attachment that's bothering me right now I'm going to admit it I have too many political opinions I really do they're they're weighing me down they're they're making it harder to have friends than they should be so I'm going to write down my 10 strongest political opinions and I'm going to cross them out not that I'm saying that I don't believe these things but I'm not going to be attached to my rightness that humility is going to set me free and that's a kind of a metaphor tick not Han the great Vietnamese Buddhist monk he wrote that our our great greatest attachments are to our opinions and that's you know triply true for me right now so man I I I need freedom and and and I'm going to get it by by talking about the wants not just the house that practice the exercise of writing down the things that you want and then Crossing them out sounds great symbolically lovely the writing the physical writing of something lovely presumably that's not just a master key that Downstream from that and yes I'm still going to have it but where are you going in your mind is there a practice which is more repeatable and robust that when your desire to correct somebody about their view on abortion arises that what where are you going to there to permanently be Crossing it out you what it does is it makes you remember the attachment in the moment of behavior that's what that thing does that's what the important thing is because when it's in your prefrontal cortex then it's not then it's a behavior that is that is manageable Bowl in in the executive centers of your brain and so what will you do instead when somebody sits down next to me and says something that I really just I don't believe about abortion and I think that I think now I have my opportunity because my prefrontal cortex is managing and I say tell me why you think that would you please tell me why you think that and and and you listen to learn it's an extraordinary thing and by the way you get smarter and you're wrong less often and you get less embarrassed and you lose fewer friends and and when you do that the other person you're talking to I just gave a long lecture on the on the on the Neuroscience of the absorption of messages in political Communications today I just gave that lecture today and one of the things that you find is the more that you do that the more people think that you're that that you're a very smart person who makes very good points and that your point of view is actually quite persuasive it's a shocker how that happens can you you mentioned earlier on something I've heard you talk about before to do with the common Idols that uh people kind of get way La by can you just go through those yeah that was we mentioned that just a minute ago that was the aquinus four Idols money power pleasure fame money power pleasure frame now aquinus asserted this is 1265 he didn't have data but man he was the best and aquinus said that everybody falls prey to one of these things more than anything else that this is an exhaustive list of the things we care about the most now money is pretty obvious money or wealth or you know Financial Resources anything that actually allows you to buy stuff and shows that you're a very important person you know that these markers these um medium of exchange and store of value the second is pleasure we've talked about and or power power is is the ability to control the behavior of others and the last is actually a really kind of a you know a lot of people listening to us are like I don't care about Fame you know I don't want to be Instagram famous but that's not it it's really The Prestige and the admiration of the right people I mean if you can be completely screwed up if you were on the Disney Channel as a kid and what you want is the admiration of strangers and they're literally people's brains who were wired like that because they got famous before they were while their brain was still in formation and they'll be like somebody who got addicted to methamphetamine as a 14year old they'll they'll never be normal is what we actually know um but but most aren't like that but they still want to be considered somebody for the people whose whose opinions actually matter those are the four idols and I play a game with my students what's my idol because once you know your idol you can actually control your behavior and manage yourself in a much more effective way you have to know your weakness is the way that this works out a lot of people actually don't so do you want to play the game Chris hit me you want to play what's my idol okay right the way to play what's my idol is not for me to say which which of the four really controls you is to say which of the four do you not care about and start eliminating them because then we're going to wind up on the one that's really harder for you so money power pleasure honor you got to give away one which one are you going to give away power how come I don't notice in myself a desire to really accumulate power of any kind okay so I'm going to make a prediction about you you hate it when people have power over you oh yeah that's it people who hate having people having power over them are averse to having power over other people as well you're a non hierarchical person you're a non-h hierarchical guy right yeah yeah the the org structure of the business would suggest that as well yeah yeah that's it's and that's almost always the case okay good so now we've got money pleasure and fame or honor or Prestige admiration you gotta give another one away and it's harder now what are you gonna give away next uh money money how come one of the of all of the different mental pathologies that I have uh materialis a desire for sort of Flash in terms of possessions is just not something that I have I have a degree of scarcity mindset um which a abundance kind of ameliorates but for me it's just it's it's not something that I really think about very much did you grow up with nice things um we were like lower working class I think okay lower middle class kind of like I lower working class oh lower working class okay like my wife grew up in Barcelona so it was you know sometimes you paid the light bill and sometimes you didn't pay the light bill okay you didn't grow up with nice things this might be the case now when it comes to this there's a very interesting set of sociological theories that you can never be actually comfortable more than one and a half classes above that in which you were a child so if you were if you were kind of lower working class that means that the tastes above upper middle class are going to be like that stuff is boring man that's it's like you want me to collect art art why would I spend my time collecting art I want to talk about stuff and ideas and things that actually excite me and so that might be part of it but also you've had a pretty a pretty I mean at age 36 you've had economic success beyond your wildest dreams right and you probably figured out that there's not that much stuff that you can buy that's really that fun all right as soon as you as soon as you can fly business class and not have to think about the cost of a coffee most stuff Downstream from that I mean you know there'll be some things once I get a family there'll be I think that you kind of transcend your own desires in that way and it's more to do with providing for the kids and so on and so forth uh but yeah you know I'm very very glad of that and I think lots of people don't realize that they're kind of blessed by having no or a limited materialism set point that like if you look at how much money you need in order to be happy with the worldly possessions that you have with the degree of keeping up with the Joneses that you're motivated by with the shows of affection and love and and gifting that you need to do to other people or that you need from other people in order to feel loved if you don't have that that's basically like you needing you being a much more efficient system financially like there is somebody else out there who needs 10 times your salary to get the same level of satisfaction out of life so I I refresh framed that probably about 5 years ago uh and just it's one of the things that I'm I genuinely feel blessed about whether that's from genes or or environment I'm like I don't need it and it's by the way it's great but it's not a super virtue because we haven't gotten your idol yet we're getting that don't worry don't worry back down to soon and what you find is that there are certain there are certain guys who are way I mean they they they they objectify themselves with their relationship to money in the same way that women often do for the same reasons evolutionarily and and their in their physical appearance why because this is going to predict your you know sort of as a as a a predictor of your success in mating markets despite the fact that you're not even in mating markets so a lot of that's primordial and has to do with you know what the Idol is for all kinds of reasons that we could talk about okay now it's getting uncomfortable because there's two left and you've already through process of elimination told me that these are the things that you care about okay so number one um you know let's let's put these in order because you got to get rid of one of these pleasure and honor you got to get one you got to get rid of one pleasure can go you like pleasure don't you but but now I know what you really like I found out what you really want Chris it's not a surprise to anybody my desire for Prestige to be recognized and validated by the world I yeah no I know because you're doing this you're doing you're doing something you're performing in public and most people who are you know you're a strong extrovert clearly you have openness to experience you have an agreeable nature you're probably not highly neurotic you've got all the things that actually go intoed if if you do a Big Five on me uh I come in uh neuroticism is uh moderate uh get most of my energy from being on my own I'm an only child uh I choose to work on my own so you know that turn it on turn it off thing um is definitely there but yeah I I'm I'm glad that I've managed to LP as an extroverted low neuroticism person but uh I I fear that the source code may be slightly different it might be it might be and you know you don't know until you know and and you know there are people who present in a particular way and have a a habitat that's quite different because they've been able to they're they're so good at getting along in society but what we do know now is what your weakness is going to be so five years from now I predict you're going to be married and the argument you're going to be having with your wife is because you're going to be doing something that's going to bring you new of success and your wife is and and then you're going to have this argument with your wife who's going to say I don't want you to I want you to be around more Chris and you're GNA say yeah but you love all the great things that this lifestyle brings and then you're mad at me for doing the things that it takes and she said I'll take you I I mean I'm GNA accept those things that I don't have you but I'd prefer to have you that's what I predict as the argument that you're going to actually have with your wife because you love success you love success it feels good that's the thing that actually and what do I mean by it feels good that means it give there's a lot of dopamine that comes from success which gives you anticipation of reward and when you get the success it Taps the ventral tag mental area of the crisp brain which gives you this little burst of Joy that's what's happening when this when these weird things these markers of success actually happen and those things happen to be that centering around the admiration of other people that you got to keep your eye on because all the mistakes you make in your life that you look back on with regret going to be because you followed that particular Idol meaning final Horseman of the Apocalypse yeah so this is the most important meaning I can go because I'm very disciplined I can go long time without enjoyment and I can go a long time without satisfaction but I can't go 10 minutes without meaning and be a happy person and this is the biggest problem that we have among young adults today I have all kinds of tests that I give people to see whether or not they have a proper sense of meaning in their life and I'm not judgmental about what that meaning is going to be but I do know I can tell people when they have a crisis of meaning and this is the biggest predictor of unhappiness for people in their 20s today now most people in their 20s are actually not in the in the active pursuit of meaning whereas in about 1960 most people were in an active pursuit of meaning that's a big gener SEC set of generational differences that we have and it's a big one of the big uh the biggest explanations for the things that we talked about earlier which is the degradation of of General societal happiness particularly among the young so meaning is actually kind of a combination of three things it's coherence why things happen the way they do you have to have a a theory of the case about why things happen it doesn't mean it has to be right or it has to be mine you have to like this is why things happen yours tends to be very scientific about why things happen second you have to have a sense of purpose purpose and meaning are not synonymous purpose is a subset of meaning that is Direction and goals purpose is I'm going in a particular direction toward specific things that's what it comes down to and significance is the belief that your life matters so it's it's coherence purpose and significance now there's a test that I give my students and by the way that I give my children my kids are younger than you my kids are in their all three of my kids are in their 20s and all three of my kids had to answer these questions I made them write a business plan when they were when they were coming out of high school you know which is like a business plan for the Enterprise of their lives for the next five years I'm a b School Professor I can do this and uh and I'm the venture capitalist so you know I deserve a business plan and and the point was what are you GNA do to find the answers to two questions the two meaning questions why are you alive and for what are you willing to give your life joyfully at this hour you need answers to those questions you need to be alive for a reason and you need to be willing to stop being alive for a reason those are the meaning questions so what are your answers why do you believe you're alive why are you on earth a sperm and an egg is not the right answer and a storic isn't either I think the thing that I often come back to when I ask myself this question is uh to understand myself and the world around me I get so much joy I'm at my best when I'm learning about things and engaging in with ideas Dan stream from that I can teach it to other people and do all of the rest of the stuff but um maybe I'm revealing my sort of only child bonafides here but so much of it is just me understanding myself and the world around me like that's it's been the single lineage trajectory throughout uh all of the good things that I've done yeah no and and you just told me what you want to do with this life that you have what you enjoy the most where you find the greatest productivity but this is a little bit different why do you think that you were placed on this Earth what is the purpose for which you were placed on this earth now if if you're a radical materialist you might say it's just all random man I wasn't ibody yeah yeah for sure but my guess is you don't believe that why why did the universe create Chris Williamson I think to find and talk about good ideas that seems to be the thing that comes to me you want to serve others you just told me why why do you want to talk about things otherwise you wouldn't bother we wouldn't be having we're having a conversation in public why because we want people to listen to it and it might just be completely venal on your and my part because by the way my Idols map exactly onto yours I'm the 60-year-old version of you sorry I know I know it's like maybe you you'll still have hair if you're lucky but but okay if it's purely venal that's just not good and that's a that's that's a bad answer to the question but if it really is I want to serve the World by uncovering its Mysteries and in so doing people will be able to lead better informed better lives in other words you were created to serf in a certain way solid now it gets harder for what would you give your life joyfully at this at this hour Mom Dad and like perhaps a golden retriever that's younger than five years old would you really give your life for your mom and dad yeah you would die for them despite the fact that they're significantly older yeah I mean they would they would be I would be in a lot of trouble uh but it's something that I would be prepared to do um there would absolutely as with almost anything I've ever had to do with them there would be a very long protracted negotiation uh which would all of us would be dead before that was finished so it might be a Mot it's a hard one and it's especially hard question for young adults who don't have children yet it's a really hard one right where get that deepest sense of meaning from what is there that we transcended ourselves with like you know from the utilitarian perspective when you think W how much longer have Mom and Dad got left and what do they really wanted you know what you look at what you can give the world you haven't even passed on their genes yet like even from their perspective they would probably say even [ __ ] you like just don't let especially cuz I'm an only your child like don't let the bloodline end here like God damn it like at least you know like come into a cup before you do this so that we can you know some some lady in a turkey base to somewhere can actually keep this guy I don't know but yeah it's uh it's difficult one it's difficult one man like to think about it wouldn't it wouldn't be it wouldn't be my uh country of birth and it wouldn't be my uh new country of adoption it wouldn't be the faith that I don't have uh it wouldn't be the sports team that I barely keep up to date with what's your sports team by the way Texas Rangers really oh yeah I'm a bar I'm a Barca man the um well look we both we both swapped Sports I've followed an MLB team and you've followed a like Spanish football team I I married a Catalan there's no other way there's no other way to to to to keep family Harmony well do you have a best friend yeah would you would you would you die for him i' definitely consider it I bet you would he's younger than me the utilitarian in you again yeah I [ __ ] just can't get out can't get out the front of my brain yeah but this is the point this is that this is the introspection that's required to actually find a full sense of meaning this is worth going away for five days on a silent Retreat and thinking about these questions and it's funny because you know my adult kids have come to very different Revelations about this because I push them push them push them push them I have a I have a son who's a a sniper I have a son who's a marine sniper um and he just got out of the Marine Cory now he's he's he's in the reserves but he was active duty for four years as a marine sniper this is a this is a scary job man um for me as his father and he went in as a knucklehead you know and he came out at 23 married he's now five months out his wife is pregnant um and here's his answers I mean because he found his Answers by by actually putting his life in danger and doing all these really like wicked things um my I was created because God made me to serve other people he believes that these are not the right answers these are his answers um I would joyfully die for my faith and for my family and for my fellow Marines and for the United States of America and our allies Chris so this is this is solid stuff and and he's I'm telling you he he he actually has called me I screened his call because he called while we were talking sorry sniper don't don't shoot me through the window is Carlos he's the best and he's six foot five and he's you know covered in tats and um he's he's happy because he has these answers to these questions but he did the work is really what it comes down to and this is what I recommend to a lot of people who feel that little bit of hollow that slight bit of deadness within where things that I'm doing every day you know it's like I don't know I don't want to stand in this line what's the meaning of me actually drive sitting in traffic and doing this when you have the answers to those questions there's a why for the most trivial things that you're doing in your life and that's a really really beautiful thing if I can do one thing for people it's actually to encourage them to look for the answers to those questions how can we improve our coherence so our coherence is the why things happen the way that they do and uh that theory of the case is really tricky but it gets back to the sense of transcendence if you pursue a strategy of transcendence coherence comes in its wake even if you can't quite articulate why things happen the way they do you have a sense of why things happen the way that they do if you studied stoic philosophers with the utmost seriousness the understanding of why things happen the way they do even if they're random and even if they're unfair becomes acceptable to you and that acceptance of that is a sense of coherence on his face maybe you're a complete radically physicalist atheist who denies the utter existence of free will if you study the science with enough seriousness of that you can you can make your peace with a coherence that actually comes from the randomness of the universe my father was a PhD biostatistician he's the smartest guy I've ever that and um he said when he was dying of cancer when he was more he was just a little bit older than me and I said it's just sucks it's not fair and he said somebody's got to be on the left side of the distribution [Laughter] spoken spoken like a man that looked at a lot of graphs throughout his career it's coherence baby but you can get coherence in a lot of different ways you just have to do the work to figure out what you believe purpose purpose to to to to create the goals and the directionality of your life now this is not a sense of attachment a lot of people will say well I'm going to make my bucket list and I'm going to earn this and I'm going to do that and I'm going to meet this person and I'm going to you know shake hands with the president I don't know whatever the dumb thing is that people are really into that's not it the Buddhists talk about intentionality without attachment now there's a there's a the way to think about purpose there's a do you you speak Spanish right Chris okay there's a word in Spanish it's a very evocative word is roombo which is in English is it's not common it's called rumline rhu M rum line it's a navigational term that's the straight line that goes from where you are to where you want to wind up to do navigation properly you need a rum line roombo is actually used in Spanish in the vernacular to say this is your directionality this is to figure out your purpose in life what you need to figure out is where you think it would be good to end up to have a straight line to get there and then have a complete utter lack of attachment on whether or not you're sitting on that rum line that turns out to be the way to understand purpose that's intention without attachment of course I'm going to lay out the things that I want to do of course I'm going to and I'm completely flexible if life takes me in another direction for something that actually meets my moral metaphysical my love goals in a better way that's the way to actually be thinking about purpose if suffering and difficulty is so important to meaning how do you advise new parents who are successful because of the challenges their past but now have more resources to make life easier for their kids than their parents did when they were growing up that by using the things that they've worked for they may rob their children of the very challenges that would make them happy yeah Guilty By the way guilty guilty is charged you know it's a it's a the greatest privilege is feeling like you've had a lot of success and you earned it that's an incredible privilege the greatest I mean the the the worst thing you can do for your children is making them wonder whether or not they earned their success like did I did was it me or is it my dad you know was somebody kicking down the door for me am I a baby Neo I mean what what what right that's a real problem and a lot of that has to do with the fact that that we're we're we're simply trying to make it so that the difficulties are cleared away exactly as you say this leads to a lot of problems that we see today safetyism you know the fact that we're we're completely freaked out about a lot of difficulties that don't exist and we're were inured to the problems that really do exist so we don't let our kids walk to the store but we give them you know as you know unlimited access to smartphones and social media at age 13 and like predators and creeps and God forbid politicians and you know dictators on Tik Tok yeah are are climbing out of the screen and into their brains and you know and and and destroying their sense of self-worth and and creating social comparison and all these delerious things what we need to do is to set our kids up to do really hard things and and and it's telling them that it's okay if they fail not because what we tell them when we're when we're protecting them from everything is that it's not okay to fail and we create a pathological fear of failure which is a death fear we're giving our kids a death fear death all death is is the death of who you are to you there's an Essence to you so ainus would say that your soul is your crispness that a dog soul is its doggin each one of us has an Essence to us now we Define that Essence on the basis of who we see ourselves and if you are never allowed to fail you've become the person who doesn't fail and failure becomes a death fear for you why would you install a death fear on your kids well because you want to keep them safe and that's a terrible thing to do so the way to get beyond that even if you're blessed with tremendous Financial Resources so they don't have to worry about making rent when they're kids they don't have to worry about getting their caloric needs is you have to say I expect you to be doing difficult things and I don't expect you to succeed all the time if you're not failing enough you're not doing it right that's and and and okay now you're gonna say how do I do that okay here's how you do it do it yourself it does not matter what you tell your kids all that matters is what they see if you want your kids to grow up in the Catholic faith make sure that they see you on your knees on Sunday that's all that matters if you want your kids to do hard things do hard things if you want your kids to deal with failure fail and and have them see see how you fail and that's why these lessons in modern wisdom are important for 60y olds and 20- year olds and kids talk to me about the difference between happiness and unhappiness is unhappiness simply the absence of Happiness are they different networks the ways to avoid them separately happiness is not the opposite opposite of unhappiness on the contrary so the they experience of happiness has a lot to do with NE with positive emotion and the experience of unhappiness has a lot to do with negative emotion we go through life with different kinds of positive and negative moods and they're largely produced in different with different structures of the lyic system of the brain because we're reacting to different outside circumstances some of which are opportunities and some of which are threats so it makes perfect sense that that unhappiness is not the absence of Happiness these are different Sensations largely unhappiness is experienced on the right side of the brain and unhappiness on the left side of the brain and we know this because of the musculature of the face when people are experiencing a lot of negative emotion the left side of the face is more active and you can tell you know when somebody's about to cry the left side of their face is more active it Twitches a little bit you get when you're married you'll see this and you're like uh oh uh oh and you get like a five-second warning it's just amazing is if you you know it's like it's what it's like if your husband is studies Neuroscience so it's important that we understand that because then we can manage both our happiness and our unhappiness and we can see which is a greater which is a greater challenge happiness or unhappiness in our lives for me happiness is not the greater challenge for me unhappiness is a greater challenge I have very high negative affect I'm a normal I'm a naturally negative affect person because I fall in this personality characteristic called the mad scientist which is unusually high positive mood and unusually high negative that's important thing for us to understand that that that that you know which is your challenge and so I'm spending a lot of my effort managing my unhappiness as opposed to trying to boost my happiness and there Lots there terrible ways to do that like drinking alcohol looking at pornography gambling workaholism the best way to do that by the way is vigorous physical exercise seven days a week and so that's what I do to start my day the first hour of the morning not because I'm some sort of you know look vanity doesn't favor me the reason that I do that is because um I I want to feel less unhappy so there are different Pathways for making people more happy versus making people less unhappy correct and all of the stuff that we've gone through so far although fantastic and maybe great for refining your happiness level you can still be pressing the accelerator harder whilst you've still got The Brak pushed down if you don't look at these things which cause unhappiness so what are the other biggest strategies Beyond high-intensity training that you do 7 days a week what are the highest return uh tactics that you use Clear away the barriers to your happiness because one of the sources of unhappiness is not having access to that the sources of happiness in your life that's a source of aggravation and frustration so clear away the barriers by by by getting rid of your prejudices against trying to develop your faith or spiritual life um clear away the barriers to the prejudices that you have and and the the difficulties that you have toward Family Life friendship um the the behavior and attitudes that you have toward work etc that's really important third and probably for many people the most important is taking seriously the uh mood disorders that are so common in our society today understanding the essence of what what chronic and and and generalized anxiety is all about in people's lives what what clinical depression actually means and how to treat it because the greatest source of unhappiness and misery for a lot of people is just straight on common mood disorders and they can't actually even get to the better things in their lives because of these barriers that are actually coming in the in terms of these sources of unhappiness that's the big ones that I'm talking about General high levels of negative affect that do not go into mood disorder I strongly recommend physical diet and exercise you know the the kinds of self-care that that have a lot of discomfort attached to them always be thinking about the hygiene of removing barriers your happiness and taking care of your mental health those are the best ways to think about it why do you think it is in the modern world that anxiety appears to be the most prevalent emotional state that people are in why has that one emotion grabbed a hold of the 21st century so much anxiety is unfocused fear fear is a natural physiological phenomenon that that that comes from a stimulus that that that then lights up the amydala in the brain passing a uh a signal through the hypothalamus into the pituitary glands thus leading to the adrenal glands putting out epinephrine and later on cortisol stress hormones in response to some sort of a threat that should be intense and episodic the problem in Modern Life is that that we don't have these intense episodic episodes of fear on the contrary we have we have minor threats that are very diffuse but chronic and that is that leads to an focused fear AKA anxiety which is a very slight drip of cortisol going into your brain again and again and again and again and how do you get it by opening up Twitter how do you get it by by being on a you know an overly long Zoom call when you need to pee how do you get it by actually being in a you know a work relationship that's ridiculously tense that you're not doing anything about modern life is all about not having your life threatened but feeling constantly under a little bit of threat which gives you unfocused fear that leads to a stress response that comes from your adrenal glands and that gives you a tremendous amount of Agony that's just spread out in constant I I one of the things that you've mentioned there you you said that you have a disposition toward negative uh emotional states how much have you found in your practice and also with yourself that people can rewrite their childhood and their past history because I think a lot of people feel trapped by their past and that they're stuck in their patterns and that you know this all sounds well and good Arthur but really what you're talking about is sort of putting a little bit of icing and some sprinkles on the top of a dog [ __ ] cake you can rewrite your past you can't actually make a different past what you can do is is understand your memories in different ways and this starts with an understanding of how memory actually works in the brain memories are not extant they're reassembled from all different kinds of parts that's the reason that memory is so unreliable you can remember with Incredible vividness what happened on 911 I was in New York on 911 I saw the first plane hit the first Tower I mean it was I remember it vividly but but the data show that what I remember vividly is probably not completely accurate because I'm reassembling that memory so frequently from different literally I mean the different parts of the memory is stored in in different locations in the brain and those will get corrupted just like s will get corrupted in a computer from time to time and one of the ways that they'll get corrupted is because of the biases that I have in my ordinary life this is the reason that you and your sister I realize you don't have a sister but if you had a sister you and your sister could be looking back to a Thanksgiving 15 years ago which I realize you didn't have it have because you're British but and and one of you could say oh that Thanksgiving with Uncle Mark and Aunt Betty it was so great and your sister's like wasn't that the wasn't that the one where Uncle Mark got you know blind drunk and and then beat up the neighbor and passed out in the front yard that was terrible that year you're both right but you're assembling the memories from different places with biases and emphases placed in different parts of the memory with different Corruptions that have happened across the decades that's a really important thing because you can reassemble your memories in different ways by by helping people to emphasize the parts of the experiences in your past that were positive and not just negative some people are retrospectively unbelievably negative and and that has everything to do with the way that they've stored and are reassembling their memories and and you don't have to do that you can actually choose to look back on the parts of your childhood that actually were sweet and the more that you do that the better you'll get at doing that and the more that you'll naturally reassemble those memories in ways that favor you more and you're not wrong you're just looking at different parts of the experience and repairing the you know the memory the memory assembly process yeah I love that what about the role of Envy another emotion that's very prevalent in the modern world what what is that to say about Envy it's evolved and the reason is because we live in a hierarchical kin based species we actually we're tropical we're a tropical species uh evolv to live in kin groups that are hierarchical now some of that we can get Beyond like you know we invented coats so we don't have to live in really hot places anymore but some of it we haven't gotten Beyond we're still kin based and we are still very hierarchical and the way that you you tend to see your likelihood of survival and Gene propagation is rising in the hierarchy and the way that you know that you're rising in the hierarchy is paying attention to people who have more than you and wanting what people have who have more than you AKA NB now that's a big I mean that's a that's a survival tendency in in the place to scene but it's a it's maladapted to the to the modern world and it's exacerbated by the technological innovations that we've had such that we're aware of the hierarchy of the entire human race all the time on social media the biggest problem that we have is you don't feel envious of you know the loser you know down the street from you who has a slightly different you know RV up on blocks in his yard compared to yours you envy the Kardashians which is completely absurd you have you you envy somebody who's got you know all the wealth in the world you envy a billionaire despite the fact that you've never met one in person so that's the biggest problem that we've taken an evolutionary tendency and we've blown it up with techn with our technological means and turn it into an actual form of mental illness that means that we have to take it on on his face and use our prefrontal cortex to combat these lyic tendencies that are ruining our lives that's a lot of what I talk about I mean making sure that you're you're you're consciously not comparing yourselves to people outside your group to you know to if you need to get rid of the apps and stop paying attention to these rich people people only because you enjoy watching the lifestyles of these rich and famous folks that's an unhealthy thing for you to do a lot of the things that I often talk about to get rid of this as well is to is is to to to separate your Envy from from benign from the malicious malicious Envy is that you feel envious of people who have something that you don't feel that they've earned ignore that and pay attention to where you have benign Envy where you think that they've done something that's really virtuous and turn your Envy into admiration and then you've actually made into something that's really beneficial that will benefit you and won't make the world worse yeah it's so interesting to think about how that very adaptive impulse that we had I need to track my place within the hierarchy but you know that was 150 people if that it was probably actually 70 people probably 30 70 yeah yeah just speaking of what we were talking about earlier on when we we were discussing the slot that your intimate partner takes up I had Robin Dunbar he's been on the show twice now maybe three times he's so fantastic first time I ever recorded with him it was I think 8:00 P.M on a a Friday evening in the UK 2 p.m. here in Austin and he just had a big glass of wine that he slowly worked his way through as he was just unloading uh evolutionary psychology social psychology insights um but uh one of the you know you've got this sort of small group within Maybe a slightly larger tribe and you can track your place within that hierarchy relatively easily but if Envy is the only one of the seven deadly sins that doesn't feel good which is kind of an interesting Insight um not even fun not even not even fun not even fun to do it um you have essentially an unlimited way that an envious mind can find to subjugate you below someone else well yeah sure I've got more money than them but they seem to be a little bit better educated than me or their wife slightly hotter or they drive a faster car or you know they seem to be a bit more muscular or or whatever like you know there's a million different ways that you can do this with now essentially an unlimited Global Marketplace hierarchy within which you can compare yourself yeah this is one of the reasons that men have now become orthorexic you know that men men are now weirdly um comparing their biceps men my age are paying attention to you know the the you know their physical prowess by looking at you know these YouTube channels in ways that we wouldn't have any concept of they would have live happily but instead they're like I don't know man I think I need to go on trt why because I don't know I mean I'm looking at all these other guys they look great you wouldn't even have a you wouldn't be conscious of this you'd be you know happily living your life in your own Silo but this exposure that we have to this massive comparison group is unbelievably unhealthy because you're always doing this hierarchically evolved thing this tendency this habit that we actually have and you have to combat it on purpose there's no way that you're just going to make it go away by by changing your environment this bring this brings up one key Point by the way because of all these things that we're talking about it's very efficient inefficient to try to improve your life by changing the whole outside world it's very inefficient to curate the entire outside world it's efficient to work on it yourself by moving your experiences from your lyic system into your prefrontal cortex AKA to be metacognitive that's why that's what I talk about all the time we've gone through a lot of the big sexy things I think from your recent thesis is there anything from your book or from your work and from this kind of domain of work in general that people you wish people paid more attention to is there something that is seemingly unpopular unsexy but has more bang for its buck that you wish you could bestow more people to remember it when you when they read stuff that you've put out yeah I mean there's a concept that people don't pay attention to very much because our world is largely be been organized over the past 30 years by by technicians engineers and bureaucrats we've actually we've handed the keys in our culture over to people that say that if we can solve a series of complicated problems will live in peace and happiness forever that's a completely misguided understanding of of The Human Experience there's two kinds of problems in life there's complicated problems that Engineers solve these are problems that are ferociously hard to solve but once you solve them you can replicate them with effortless ease that's like making a toaster or a jet engine those are complicated problems all the problems that we really care about in life are complex problems which is to say that they're very easy to understand the solution and completely impossible to solve because they're dynamic in nature y your toaster is complicated your cat is complicated is complex It's You Know What It Wants it's warmth and scratches and a litter box and food but you never know what it's going to do that's why it's interesting your your marriage is complex right it's very comple you know what it means to be happy in your marriage but you can't get there with any amount of stuff and any amount of money and any amount of Technology a war is complex I win they lose that's the solution how do you get there I don't know a football game look you like sports I like sports I love Bara I love watching soccer I love watching Spanish premier league soccer you know the best days Barca wins but I don't know that's why I watch because it's a complex thing the biggest mistake that we make is thinking and a lot of what we've talked about in this episode comes down to this is thinking that my complex human problems are going to be solved by external complicated solution and that's what the world keeps trying to tell me the world says if you take this and you try that and you buy this and you adopt that then you're finally going to be happy and it's not true it isn't true here's the thing about life life comes down to the complex problems of the heart which are all about love and you can't solve that with a product you can only you can only live that in real time you want a better life live it in real time be fully alive right now suffer with it experience it that's what you have to do that's what we had to do two million years ago and that's what we still have to do today hell yeah Altha Brooks ladies and gentlemen Altha it's been really great I I Adore this sort of blend that you have of eastern and western of sort of Neuroscience with the mindful with it's it's really really great I'm very very glad that we stopped circling each other and finally managed to sit down look forward to speaking to you again soon as well where should people go they want to keep up to date with all of the things that you're doing where do you want to send them Arthur brooks.com that gives you you know links I write a column every week in the Atlantic on the science of happiness every Thursday morning and it has the books and it has you know the videos and the workshops a lot of free stuff and and surveys and and and and clips to my favorite podcasts like modern wisdom well that is the way that I wanted to hear you finish out dude I really appreciate you it's been really really great to catch up thanks thanks for what you're doing you've made my life better better and you're making millions of people live more mindfully and better in their lives with more love thank you for doing it I appreciate you thank you man if you enjoyed that episode you will love a selection of the best clips from the podcast over the last couple of months and it's available right here go on give my watch