Why You Literally Need to Touch Grass

In a previous episode on leisure https://www.arthurbrooks.com/podcast/the-science-behind-being-good-at-leisure, I talked about how fewer and fewer people are spending time outdoors. Today, the average child spends just minutes outside each day, a dramatic shift from how most of us grew up and from how humans have lived for thousands of years. In today’s episode of Office Hours, I explain why reconnecting with nature is essential for your happiness and well-being. Drawing on research from psychology and neuroscience, I show how time outdoors can reduce anxiety and depression, improve cognitive function, and even help you break free from the constant cycle of comparison and rumination. You might think your life is not compatible with spending more time outside. But the evidence suggests the opposite: you can’t afford not to. I share with you three practical ways to bring nature back into your daily life. I hope you try them and get outside to touch some grass! — Brought to you by: Noble Mobile https://noblemobile.com/arthurbrooks—With Noble, there is only one plan: The No-Bull Plan. It’s simple. It’s transparent. And if you use less data, you get cash back. Get an exclusive offer at: https://noblemobile.com/arthurbrooks — Where to find Arthur Brooks: • Website: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://arthurbrooks.com/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ https://arthurbrooks.com/ • Newsletter: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.arthurbrooks.com/newsletter⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ https://www.arthurbrooks.com/newsletter • X: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://x.com/arthurbrooks⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ https://x.com/arthurbrooks • Instagram: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.instagram.com/arthurcbrooks/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ https://www.instagram.com/arthurcbrooks/ • Facebook: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.facebook.com/ArthurBrooks/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ https://www.facebook.com/ArthurBrooks/ • YouTube: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCGuyFRjJQFGCKzfHTBvWM6A⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCGuyFRjJQFGCKzfHTBvWM6A • LinkedIn: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/arthur-c-brooks/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ https://www.linkedin.com/in/arthur-c-brooks/ • Email: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠[email protected]⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ mailto:[email protected] — Timestamps: (00:00) Intro (05:14) How much time do people spend outdoors today? (07:10) Why we’re spending more time inside (11:05) What happens when you don’t get enough time outdoors (12:31) What happens when you add nature back in (19:08) #1: Spend as much time as you can outside (22:04) #2: Witness/touch nature (24:27) #3: Start a walking routine (26:36) Why you’ll enjoy being in nature more than you think (27:23) Lessons from transcendentalism (28:46) Q&A: The difference between happiness and joy (30:24) Q&A: Serving others without resentment — Referenced: • The Meaning of Your Life: Finding Purpose in an Age of Emptiness: themeaningofyourlife.com http://themeaningofyourlife.com • Meaning Membership: https://hub.arthurbrooks.com/the-meaning-membership • Arthur’s newsletter: https://www.arthurbrooks.com/newsletter • The Happiness Scale: https://learn.arthurbrooks.com/the-happiness-scale • The Pursuit of Happiness with Arthur Brooks: https://www.thefp.com/s/the-pursuit-of-happiness-with-arthur • Global survey finds we’re lacking fresh air and natural light, as we spend less time in nature: https://press.velux.com/new-global-survey-finds-were-lacking-fresh-air-and-natural-light-as-we-spend-less-time-in-nature • The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness: https://www.amazon.com/Anxious-Generation-Rewiring-Childhood-Epidemic/dp/0593655036 • Stanford researchers find mental health prescription: Nature: https://news.stanford.edu/stories/2015/06/hiking-mental-health-063015 • Why Is Nature Beneficial? The Role of Connectedness to Nature: https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5d8921893ec7066969f68df5/t/5d94da7035bc6f4984f509d1/1570036337561/the_role_of_connectedness_to_nature_on_positive_affect_2009.pdf?utm_source=chatgpt.com • ... References continued at: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.arthurbrooks.com/office-hours⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ https://www.arthurbrooks.com/office-hours — Production and marketing by ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://penname.co/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ https://penname.co/⁠.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Arthur Brooks?

  My students have an expression, my kids have an expression. Anybody who's under 30 knows this, and most people over 30 as well. That when you're behind the computer screen all day and maybe getting wrapped up in some stupid conversation on social media, and you're losing touch with reality. You're getting sucked into the matrix, into the simulation of life. That you gotta turn it off and go touch grass. The average child today spends between four and seven minutes a day outside. By the way, also more than four to seven hours online. This is an evolutionary argument. You know, our brains are the same thing that they were about 250,000 years ago in the late Pleistocene. Sitting around the campfire outside, talking to each other

• 0:44Arthur Brooks?

  while we shove pieces of yak meat into our mouths, or whatever it is. That's how our brains were made, to understand each other, to find meaning in our lives. And when we deviate from that too much, well, we're gonna suffer.

• 1:03Arthur Brooks?

  Hey friends, welcome to Office Hours. I'm Arthur Brooks. This is a show dedicated to lifting people up and bringing them together in bonds of happiness and love using science and ideas. This is how I do my work, is getting these ideas out. The deepest ideas in the research on social sciences, on neuroscience, on all different areas that can actually help us understand human flourishing. And my job is to bring those ideas to you, whether you have a background in science or not. Why? Because when you understand these ideas as a layperson, then you become the teacher to the other people who listen to you. And that's how we together lift people up and bring them together. My mission, perhaps it's yours too. I want you to live a happier life and help other people to do so as well.

• 1:46Arthur Brooks?

  So thank you for listening to the show and for suggesting the show. The show is getting more popular by the week, and I'm gratified by that. It's a wonderful thing. It makes it possible for us to have a bigger and bigger impact on other people. Please do continue to give me your thoughts and ideas. Make sure you write to me at [email protected] or you can actually leave the comments wherever you leave comments on any platform where you're seeing this, on YouTube or Spotify. Apple, we read the comments and we really take them seriously and we value them very much. So thank you. As always, please do like and subscribe. That actually makes the algorithm gods smile on us. It makes it possible for us to get into other people's feeds so they can experience this, whether they've heard about it previously or not, but most importantly, it's word of mouth.

• 2:28Arthur Brooks?

  If you like it, tell other people about it and so we can build our audience and build our community. Thanks for that. I hope that if you haven't gotten the book, The Meaning of Your Life, it's out. Here it is behind me in that beautiful sand zen cover. The Meaning of Your Life, Finding Purpose in an Age of Emptiness. I'm delighted to say that a lot of people are reading the book. I hope you will too. If you haven't, please go to the website, themeaningofyourlife.com and you can learn how to join our community, get all sorts of special benefits from being part of the community that we have of people who are reading the book and getting involved in the work and passing it on to others. All right. Now, one of the things that I've been talking about in my work and on episodes of the show in the past is how one of the ways that people find meaning and happiness is through beauty.

• 3:10Arthur Brooks?

  And there are three kinds of beauty, artistic beauty, moral beauty, but especially natural beauty. It's funny because we kind of know that, that if you want to get more meaning into your life, it's good to get out of the house. It's good to get out into nature. People know this intuitively. It's funny because my students have an expression, my kids have an expression. Anybody who's under 30 knows this and most people over 30 as well, that when you know you're behind the computer screen all day and maybe getting wrapped up in some stupid conversation on social media and you're losing touch with reality, you're getting sucked into the matrix, into the simulation of life, that you gotta turn it off and go touch grass. Man, I'm gonna go touch grass.

• 3:53Arthur Brooks?

  That's what my kids will say. And what that means is go into real life and to get out into something that's actually growing and good. And of course, there's an intuition behind that, that when you're in the matrix, your brain isn't working right. You're getting a simulation of real life. And if you've been watching the show, you know exactly why. You're sitting in the left hemisphere of your brain, which is the complicated part of your brain for complicated problems. And for reality and satisfaction and meaning and happiness, you need to get to the right hemisphere of your brain and you can't simulate one with the other. So you gotta go get into the part of the world that will stimulate that right hemisphere of the brain. And the fastest way to do that is to Go touch grass. So I want to talk about touching grass today. I want to talk about why you need more nature in your life.

• 4:38Arthur Brooks?

  I'm going to tell you about the trends that we actually see and and the problems that we see in modern life where people are doing so less and less and less. The deleterious consequences of that. The benefits that you can actually get from spending more time outside in nature. I'll tell you specifically what the research is saying. And most importantly, the steps for actually doing so progressively in your life. I'm not going to go ask you to go live outside. But I am going to give you some very specific suggestions on how you can use the research that to get what you actually deeply want in your brain and in your heart. Okay, now, the data are very clear. Fewer and fewer people are spending leisure time in in nature. And this is one of the reasons that, of course, meaning is becoming more and more elusive. That's what this whole book is about is meaning is harder to find.

• 5:23Arthur Brooks?

  And we're using our brains less well. And and and that's one of the reasons that happiness has been in decline. You know, it's it's these are intimately tied to each other. First, let me give you the evidence on that, not that you need it, that people are spending less and less time outside. There's the Velux Group in 2019 published a really interesting survey that found that Americans went on 1 billion fewer outings in nature in 2019 compared to 2008. That's a lot. That's something like three fewer per year outings. I mean, like trips out into nature per year, per American, as a matter of fact. Now, similar to this, 85% of adults today say that their kids, that kids in general, spend less time outside than they did when they were kids.

• 6:08Arthur Brooks?

  Everybody my age spent more time outside than kids do today. We just did. Now, a part of it is you might, you know, be critical of parenting. I remember my mother saying, don't come back before it's dark, right? That might seem like under parenting, but suffice it to say that there's a lot less. John Height, Jonathan Height, and his work in The Anxious Generation, which is a great book. I strongly recommend I'll put that in the show notes if you haven't read it yet. He knows that that the average child today spends between four and seven minutes a day outside. By the way, also, more than four to seven hours online. For many kids today is between 10 and 12 hours online. Four to seven minutes outside. It's obviously upside down, isn't it? If you're falling away from nature,

• 6:53Arthur Brooks?

  you're almost certainly lowering your well-being and increasing your unhappiness. So I'm gonna try to prove that to you. But you know, as you know, spring is upon us and summer's on the horizon, this is a perfect time to make some new resolutions, to be spending more time where you can find the meaning of your life. Okay, now, why is it that we're spending so much less time outside? Number one, and this was even true more than 30 and 40 years ago, that the world's population has been urbanizing for a long time. And urban life is largely inside life. I mean, you can walk around New York City, and people do, as a matter of fact. But the point is that when you live in a city, you spend a lot more time in the house than you do when you live in the country. And there's all sorts of reasons for that, but I don't think I really need to prove that. I think it's probably pretty intuitive.

• 7:37Arthur Brooks?

  Now, life was really different in 1800, to be sure. The average American, which is to say that more than 50% of Americans, never left a 20-mile radius of the site of his or her birth in his entire lifetime. Yeah, so that was a different time of life. And you know, there was less transportation and fewer roads. But only 6.1% of the American population lived in a city in the year 1800. You know what it is today? 79%. So 6% to 79% in 200 years. 200 years is a long time, but that means a fundamental change in the essence of life. I'll give you a quote at the very end about somebody who could have lived in a city and didn't, somebody that you've read before, that describes the result of that. I'll put the references to all these statistics

• 8:22Arthur Brooks?

  into the show notes in case you want to check them or you want to use them or whatever they happen to be. So urbanization is the first big force that's actually keeping us inside and keeping us from touching grass, maybe even seeing grass. The second, of course, is technology, which is, you know, over the past 30 years in particular, where technology has displaced outdoors. In our attention. In other words, going outside is just not something to do when you're completely addicted to wiping out any semblance of free time and boredom in your life by staring at your devices. The average American looks at her or his phone 205 times a day. That's every 13 minutes, and sometimes a lot more than that. Adults behind screens, not just little screens, but behind computers, etc., spent an average of 10 hours and 39 minutes a day behind the computer last year.

• 9:06Arthur Brooks?

  That's a lot of time behind a screen. There's not that much time to touch grass when the better part of your, almost, I mean, a big majority of your waking hours are actually spent behind a screen. And, and by the way, what a trade-off. You know, it's like a lot of people are, what is their screensaver? Some beautiful vista from, you know, the Rocky Mountains or rolling green hills. Why? Because the good folks at Microsoft or Apple are trying to give you the semblance of touching grass. But remember, if you've been watching my show, you know it won't pass the Turing test. You can't fool your brain and say, wow, that's such a beautiful picture of the beach. That's such a beautiful picture of, you know, Mount Shasta or something like that. But all it is is a complicated simulacrum for the right-brain mystical experience that

• 9:51Arthur Brooks?

  the real thing would bring. I dare say, looking at the neuroscience research on that, that the most beautiful picture of the most beautiful mountain doesn't compare to simply going outside in the backyard and looking closely at a clover. And that's because it uses your brain appropriately when you do the real thing.

• 10:11Speaker 01

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• 10:41Arthur Brooks?

  Now, maybe you're not an outdoorsman or woman, but the truth is that my guess is that you've done some outdoor activities, outdoor play, and that's going down like crazy. Hunting, fishing, camping, these things have massively declined over the years. Some people still do them, but they, they sound like a weird thing to do. And, and, you know, at one point, they actually weren't. Why did we camp when I was a kid? Because, because motels were expensive, that's why. You know, you sleep outside because being in a tent is cheaper than, than, than being in a motel. So that probably sounds familiar to you, especially if you're an urbanite with an indoor job and you're tied to your devices all day long. And the time that you spend outside is walking from your house or your apartment to the car

• 11:26Arthur Brooks?

  or the train and, and you haven't spent serious time in nature in months or even years. So what's the result? The research is really clear that what the result is, based on a lot of studies, throw some of them into the, into the, into the show notes, but these are easy to find. This is an easy Google search, that the less time you spend in nature, the more stress you're going to feel. Stress is the physiological response to anxiety. So therefore, the more anxiety you're going to feel and the more depression you're likely to suffer, the more malaise that you're actually going to feel. Because frankly, once again, I mean, I've said it again and again and again, psychology is largely biology. These aren't just psychological phenomena. These are biological phenomena that your brain won't work right unless you're outside a lot.

• 12:08Arthur Brooks?

  And again, this is a, an evolutionary argument. You know, our brains are the same thing that they were about 250,000 years ago in the late Pleistocene. We lived outdoors, or at least pretty close to outdoors, in bands of 30 to 50 kin-based individuals, hierarchically arranged and, and depending on nature to make our living, hunting and gathering and sitting around the campfire outside, talking to each other while we shove pieces of yak meat into our mouths or whatever it is. That's how our brains were made, to understand each other, to find meaning in our lives. And when we deviate from that too much, well, we're going to suffer because that we're too far away from our factory settings. That's just the way it is.

• 12:51Arthur Brooks?

  So these findings about stress and anxiety and depression and loneliness and alienation, there's no surprise in this at all. It's exactly what biological evolutionary biologists would suggest. Okay, now, what happens when you reverse that?

• 13:05Arthur Brooks?

  In other words, there's nothing that says that you can't try to replicate a state of nature, at least a little bit more. If you're somebody who's getting four to seven minutes outside and you start getting half an hour outside, that's a big improvement. An hour outside, you're going for a walk? Substantial, that's a big deal. What will happen when this occurs? Now, there's great research that says, what happens when you start to add in time outside? And especially time in natural beauty. So it's not just, you know, walking across the Walmart parking lot five times to get your steps. That's not what I'm talking about. I mean, that fresh air is better than nothing, but getting out into plant life and nature, and especially seeing green, and as you'll see in a minute, touching things outside has special properties.

• 13:47Arthur Brooks?

  And I'm not gonna, you know, try to get all woo-woo on you here. I'm research-based, but you'll see what I mean in a minute. What happens when you start to add in more of this nature into your life? And the answer is, there's a bunch of really interesting benefits that actually occur that have been shown in randomized treatment-controlled experiments. For example, people get a perspective on life that they didn't have before. In other words, they're able to zoom out on life and see life from the outside in a way that they couldn't see when they were stuck inside. I'll give you an example. There's an interesting study that has nature walkers, people who go walk in nature. And then the control group are gonna be people who are just hanging around in an urban

• 14:32Arthur Brooks?

  setting. So they're outside, but they're in an urban setting, versus the people who are walking in the woods. And then they were asked about statements such as the following. "I often reflect on episodes of my life that I should no longer concern myself with." In other words, do you ruminate a lot on, you know, things in the past that really aren't, that are really sort of trivial, but they're bothering you? A lot of people do, right? It turns out that the ruminators were the ones who were controlled in the experiment to be the urban ones versus the nature walkers. The nature walkers were less likely to say that they reflected on episodes of life that they shouldn't concern themselves with. They had perspective on life.

• 15:14Arthur Brooks?

  They were able to zoom out, to look at life in a neutral way. And wouldn't you love that?

• 15:23Arthur Brooks?

  Yeah, well, you can get it. It's easy. Go outside in nature. You'll get that. You'll start to be a more philosophical person. Things will start to roll off you more. That's what that research suggests, and that's probably what your own experience suggests as well. The second is really interesting, which is this, it's related to the first, that you have a tendency to fall prey less to social comparison when you spend time outside. It's interesting, right? Because, you know, why would that be the case? Once again, it's because you're getting perspective. You're zooming out, and when you get more perspective on your life, you're less likely to compare yourself socially to other people. Now, social comparison, man, I mean, it's like the famous old quote that's attributed to Teddy Roosevelt. Who knows if it came from him or not? That social comparison is the thief of joy.

• 16:08Arthur Brooks?

  I mean, you know it's true. I've got these interesting studies that show, I didn't do them, I've seen the papers, that show that if you take pictures of your vacation to post on social media, that you enjoy your vacation, about a fifth less than you would otherwise. And the reason is because you're not actually there. You're in the future, imagining somebody looking at your photos and being envious of you now, and meanwhile, you've missed the experience. That's how social comparison works. Plus, you're probably insecure because you know that maybe somebody, probably somebody's having more fun with somebody who loves them more than what you're experiencing right now. Social comparison is terrible. We do it because we're evolved to understand our place in a hierarchy. But overdoing it, especially on social media, it's terrible. You want to be free from social comparison? Well,

• 16:53Arthur Brooks?

  you'll never be free from social comparison. You want it to be less of a problem in your life? Go outside. Transcend. You're gonna zoom out. Now, again, there's a lot of hypotheses about exactly why this is the case, but it's manifestly clear in the data that this is the case. Here's what we find. Researchers find that people who walk in a city for 15 minutes are 39% more likely to agree with a statement, "Right now, I'm concerned with the way that I present myself", than people who spend the same amount of time walking in nature. Once again, this is being in an urban setting, outside versus being in a natural setting. All the worse if you don't even leave the house. In your urban setting.

• 17:38Arthur Brooks?

  Right now, you're like Neo in The Matrix. You can keep scrolling, experiencing a simulation of life, or you can wake up to how your attention is being harvested for profit. It's happening to people all over the world right now. You don't want to be productized like this anymore, but it's hard. Tech addiction is so potent because it's been designed to tap into your dopamine system, just like heroin, porn, gambling. You've got the cravings, you're addicted. You don't like it, and I don't either. But I can't just tell you to stop doing it, that's hard. If you want to break free from the system, you need an incentive. Here's one. Why don't you join a phone company that pays you not to use your phone? If you want to reduce brain rot, get Noble Mobile.

• 18:22Arthur Brooks?

  It pays you to use less data. It gives you an incentive to unplug. Noble Mobile is the phone plan that finally aligns incentives with what's good for you. Use less data, earn money back. And when you do, you'll be living once again in real life, and you're gonna like how it feels. Okay, now, you might say, "Great, but I can't afford it. I can't afford to spend all this time outside because of my job." I get it. Actually, you probably can't afford not to. Here's a great study. A 2012 study in the journal PLOS One, P-L-O-S-E One, which is an apex journal in all fields of science. Researchers showed that four days immersed in nature without technology increased people's creativity and problem-solving abilities by about 50%.

• 19:06Arthur Brooks?

  You're gonna be better at your job if you spend more time in nature because your brain is going to work better. Creativity in the wild, improving creative reasoning through immersion in natural settings. It's a great piece, you gotta see that, it's a really good article. So, if you're not spending time in nature, you're going to be unhappier than you should be, more neurotic than you should be, more open to social comparison than you should be, less perspective-taking than you should, and less productive in your job than necessary. So...

• 19:37Arthur Brooks?

  Let's fix it.

• 19:39Arthur Brooks?

  How? How do we fix it? Let me give you a few to do's here, okay? I'm going to give you three, as a matter of fact, with some subcategories along the way, some subbullets along the way. Number one, spend as much time outdoors of your discretionary time as you actually possibly can. So here's the deal. I mean, there's a lot of time that you can't do it. I mean, if you work in an office, it's unlikely that you're going to be able to tell your boss, "Tell you what, can I set my desk up outside?" It's funny, because when you're a college professor, you always ask the question, "Professor, can we have class outside?" I mean, who the heck has class outside? And yet, every professor hears this. It's funny, because I always thought, "Nobody's ever had class outside." Then I found an old photo of my dad doing a calculus lecture

• 20:24Arthur Brooks?

  on a chalkboard on wheels outside, and all of the students laying around in the grass. Okay, so apparently, that does happen. That said, I bet that you're not going to have too much success convincing your boss to take your desk and computer outside. But you have a lot of discretionary time, and you can actually spend it, make a point, make it into a habit of spending as much time outside. You've got a vacation coming up, I bet. I bet you've got some kind of vacation coming up. Select an outdoor vacation. I mean, maybe you're not going to go hunting and fishing. Maybe that's not your thing. But there's something. I mean, I started doing the Camino de Santiago. I've talked about it a couple of times on the show, where I walk across northern Spain in the summertime. I've done it twice in the past few years. It's just the best, day after day after day after day. I'm 16 hours a day outside. And, you know, the first day, you're so stressed.

• 21:10Arthur Brooks?

  But as you get more tired, because you're walking hundreds of miles, you actually find that life starts to make more sense. And I always thought, "Well, it must be because I'm, you know, in so much pain, I can't focus on anything else, because I'm sore and I have blisters." No, it's because all the stuff I just talked about a minute ago. It's because social comparison is melting away. It's because anxiety is declining, because my stress hormones are lower than they were, and they're probably within physiologically healthy parameters. It's just the way I'm supposed to live, is what it comes down to. Now- Let's say you can't do that. There's a lot that you can actually do it. I had a friend who had this really interesting idea.

• 21:49Arthur Brooks?

  It was during the 2008, 2009 financial crisis and he lost his job and he had no discretionary income. I mean, he was just barely holding it together with his savings to stay in his house, had a little house. And so it came time for his two week vacation. I mean, it was like, it was a staycation, man. He wasn't going anyplace. So he took his tent and he slept in his backyard for two weeks. He camped out in his own backyard. He, he lived not in his house. And he said it was like the best vacation. It was just so refreshing. It's probably good that he didn't, you know, make a campfire and burn down his neighborhood. But I mean, use your creativity. You've got discretionary time. Use it appropriately.

• 22:31Arthur Brooks?

  Second is to therapeutically have moments in your day that you either witness or touch nature. Now, two areas of research I'll, I'll call your attention to. Number one is something that Andrew Huberman has talked an awful lot about, about the, the neurobiological benefits of actually witnessing the sunrise. And, and I've, I've talked on my show a lot about the brahman mahorta, which is the, is to wake up before the sunrise. You've kind of lost the first battle if it's already light when you get up and, you know, I'm sorry, don't turn off the show. I understand it's hard for some people and it's not possible for everybody because of your schedule. But if you can, get up before the sunrise and if you, especially if you can, let the natural sun,

• 23:15Arthur Brooks?

  when it's really horizontal, actually enter your eyes and, and witness the miracle that is the sunrise. I see the sunrise most days, as a matter of fact. And, and the reason I do that is because I get up early enough that I finish my hour long workout while it's still dark. And then after tonight, we go to mass and usually either, depending on the time of year, either when we're going into mass, the sun is coming up or when we come out of mass, we're walking out is when the sun is coming up. So I get to see it every day, but there, there are biological properties to, you know, how that's affecting you. That early morning sunshine in your eyes is actually affecting you, but that will affect your psychology. And that's just a little therapeutic self-treatment that you can give yourself every day of nature.

• 23:57Arthur Brooks?

  The second is an area that's been really controversial in the research, which is called earthing or grounding. And I'm going to put something into the, a very nice paper, actually, on this, a peer-reviewed article that changed my thinking on this. The first one, I thought, oh yeah, all right, go, go touch grass, literally touch grass and like the vibrations of the, of the earth will enter into you and like, okay, okay. No. Well, it turns out this is a pretty interesting paper. This is a paper in the Journal of Science and Healing, which is a good journal, called "Integrative and Lifestyle Medicine Strategies Should Include Earthing", in parentheses, "Grounding: Review of Research Evidence and Clinical Observations." And what it shows is that when people are in physical contact with the earth

• 24:39Arthur Brooks?

  in ways as simple as walking barefoot, their self-reported health and mood improve, just from the touch, the way this happens. And there's a lot of hypotheses about why that would, might be the case. I don't know. But I do it. And then I like it. I recommend it to you. Okay, here's the third approach. I would build in, and this actually has a whole lot of benefits to it. I would build more walking outside, just sort of into your health and wellness routine. A lot of people are wearing fitness trackers. I mean, I do, a lot of you do too. And, and you've watched probably my show on morning and evening protocols about, you know, my workout routines and, and what I try to do at night, et cetera. A lot of you are trying to get 10,000 steps. That's an arbitrary measure.

• 25:23Arthur Brooks?

  It came from a Japanese pedometer company that basically just tried to popularize the idea that 10,000 has some special properties. It doesn't. Most of the research shows that you get a lot of benefit once you get to 7,000, but there's almost no upper limit on the benefit. It just gets flatter in terms of the benefits, highly concave, but still, more is better, is what it comes down to when it comes to steps. And so, you know, you manage to what you measure. And so if you're, if you're actually measuring your steps, that's great. But getting your steps outside is an especially good thing to do when you can. And so in the episodes, as I mentioned before, on my protocols, in the evening protocols, if you go back to that show, and we'll put the link in here if you want to go watch it,

• 26:05Arthur Brooks?

  I talk about the fact that, that my wife and I, we like to do 30 or 40 minutes of walking after dinner. And, and one of the reasons for that is that walking after you eat is really, really good for, for glucose management. I mean, it's excellent, as a matter of fact. There's a ton of research on that. Just good for you for your digestion and your mood and the way that you're actually managing your glucose. So you don't get these big glucose spikes, which isn't good for you as you're digesting your meals. But also it feeds this other need that you've got, which is actually walking outside and getting fresh air. And if you live in a beautiful place, Esther and I are lucky that we live in a suburb that's got, it's like living in a forest and we'll walk on forest paths outside. If you can do anything like that, but the best you can do, any place outside is really a good idea and getting into the habit of doing that as much

• 26:49Arthur Brooks?

  as you can when you're home and the weather permits, if you're physically able to do a walk after dinner. And if it's dark, all the better. Put lights on your jacket so you don't get run over. Anyway, these are three things that almost anybody can do. Now, maybe you're not an outdoor person because of the weather and the bugs. Find a way. If you are an indoor person, you might very well be underestimating the benefits and overestimating the discomfort of actually doing that. One interesting study that shows exactly that, by the way, a 2011 study in Psychological Science, great journal, that people think they will enjoy walking in nature less than they actually do. And why? Because you are evolved to want the couch. You're evolved

• 27:33Arthur Brooks?

  to want inactivity because people were trying to, to conserve their energy. There's a lot of research that shows that. And so the result is that after dinner, you're like, I want to sit on the couch. It's gonna feel better if I sit on the couch. I won't like it if I go walk around, "What a pain, I'm so tired." You'll always like it more than you think. The data don't lie on that. Here's my last thought. I'm gonna do some audience questions, so this isn't the last thing I'm gonna say, but I really love the work of the American transcendentalist philosophers. Anybody who watches the show for any length of time, I'm always quoting Ralph Waldo Emerson. He's my favorite philosopher. But his great friend, Henry David Thoreau, they were both in Concord, Mass. in the 1840s. Henry David Thoreau, of course, of Walden fame, you know, that's a little bit dubious.

• 28:17Arthur Brooks?

  Walden, where the Walden Pond, and he built his cabin on Walden Pond. And he saw nobody, he was a hermit. Wrong. There was a train track right behind him. His friends were visiting him all the time. His mother brought him food and did his laundry. But be that as it may, he wrote some very beautiful words about nature. And here's one of the things that Thoreau said that I think is really beautiful. It kind of sums up what we're talking about here. "I was walking in a meadow, the source of a small brook, when the sun at last, just before setting, after a cold gray day, reached a clear stratum in the horizon. Till one day the sun shall shine more brightly than ever he has done, shall perchance shine into our minds and hearts, and light up our whole lives with a great awakening light,

• 29:01Arthur Brooks?

  as warm and serene and golden as the bank side in autumn." What we're saying here. More nature, more meaning, more love and happiness than your hands. Couple of quick questions, and then we're out. David Ahern wrote in at the website, I at [email protected]. I've wondered for a while why you choose the word happiness over joy. Good question. The reason is because joy, for behavioral scientists like me, it describes an emotion and a feeling. And happiness isn't a feeling. Remember, feelings are related to happiness, like the smell of your dinner is related to your dinner. It's evidence of your dinner.

• 29:43Arthur Brooks?

  So joy, feeling joy, which is largely the activity of the limbic system. For example, there's a part of your limbic system in the reward center of your brain called a ventral tegmental area. If I tap it by, you know, somebody you most, most, most love saying, "I love you", that'll tap that ventral tegmental area. A big bump of cocaine will do the same thing, because our brains are very thrifty. You're gonna feel this rush of ebullience, joy. That's an emotion. And that's different than happiness. Again, it's evidence of happiness in its way. So that's one of the reasons. The second reason is because in every religious tradition, joy means something else. In Christianity, my religion, for example, joy means the beatific vision, to lay your eyes on the face of God when you get to heaven.

• 30:28Arthur Brooks?

  And so what religious people believe in many religious traditions, as you get to heaven, you're going to get unremitting joy because you're going to get to be with and look at God. That's obviously different than the psychological definition or the neurophysiological definition. But that's the reason, because neither of those is the same thing as happiness on earth as we understand it, the imperfect happiness that we're striving for. It's a great question, and thank you for that. Sahes Kaur writes in also to the website at Office Hours. "How can I continue to show up in service of others while also protecting myself from resentment?" Yeah, that's a good balance, isn't it? That's a good balance that you need for yourself. You want to show up for other people because you want to be focused on others. You want to transcend yourself in the service of other people.

• 31:12Arthur Brooks?

  But at the same time, a lot of it, when people go from friend to taker, that's going to actually spawn a whole lot of resentment. And that requires understanding balance. It's an understanding of balance between the I self, which is truly in service of other people, and the me self, which is resentful. You will start to notice yourself in a negative way when people are taking from you. Or, by the way, when you feel like you're doing something out of obligation, this will lead to resentment and not the feeling of peace that you're looking for. So the result of it is that you need to calibrate what you're doing and think about the motives of what you're doing and showing up for other people. Now, you can get better at this. The skill can be really important, and this is what a happy marriage is all about, is

• 31:57Arthur Brooks?

  showing up and showing up and saying, "Yeah, I could be resentful, but I choose not to be because the love that actually is in my heart, which is to will the good of another person as another person, that's the essence of who I am. That's the essence of who I want to be." But in the meantime, it's really important that we distinguish between doing something out of our commitment to help and the joy in doing so, and a sense of obligation, even against our will. That we can avoid that resentment, that prudential judgment and finding that balance. Well, that's one of the great skills of life, isn't it? Thanks for that question. We've come to an end. Please let me know your thoughts right into the show at our email address, which is on the screen right now.

• 32:41Arthur Brooks?

  Like and subscribe on Spotify, YouTube and Apple. Leave the comments. That's another way to ask questions. We're always looking for the comments there. Please follow me on my social media. I'm very active on Instagram. I'm not personally active. I'm, you know, our team is actually putting out my content all the time and it's content that you won't find generally in the, in the podcast itself. Instagram and LinkedIn and other fine platforms where you're getting good information. Try to put out stuff that's really good for other people and that will lift them up in joy and happiness. And if you haven't ordered it already, please do get the meaning of your life and share with other people and share this episode if you found it useful. Refer back to it if you need reminders and in the meantime, I hope you have a wonderful week and I'll see you next Monday.

• 33:32Speaker 02

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