652: Arthur Brooks - The Power of Teaching, The Arrival Fallacy, The Mad Scientist Profile, Lifting Heavy Weights, & The Two Best Practices To Be Happy

Apply to be in my next Learning Leader Circle - https://learningleader.com/leadership-circles/ This is brought to you by Insight Global https://insightglobal.com/learningleader/. If you need to hire 1 person, hire a team of people, or transform your business through Talent or Technical Services, Insight Global's team of 30,000 people around the world have the hustle and grit to deliver. www. InsightGlobal.com/LearningLeader https://www. InsightGlobal.com/LearningLeader Notes: Key Learnings The Mad Scientist Emotional Profile – High achievers typically have both high positive and high negative affect. "Hustlers, hard workers, strivers, entrepreneurs, ambitious people, they're in that quadrant of high positive, high negative affect." This creates intensity but requires management of negative emotions. Dangerous Negative Affect Management – People try to manage high negative affect through alcohol, excessive internet use/pornography, and workaholism. "The isms, the addictions, they're almost all negative affect management techniques." Two Best Ways to Manage Negative Affect: Faith, Spirituality, Philosophy - "Every day, go deep" into transcendent practices Physical Exercise - "Go pick up heavy things" - resistance training moderates negative emotions Arthur's 4:30 AM Protocol – Wakes at 4:30, works out 4:45-5:45, attends mass 6:30-7:00, then has high-protein breakfast with dark coffee at 7:45 for 4 hours of peak creative focus. "I get four hours of creative concentration with maximum dopamine." Exercise Reduces Unhappiness, Doesn't Create Happiness – "Working out hard... moderates negative affect. It makes you less unhappy" rather than directly increasing positive emotions. The Failure Journal Method – Write down failures/disappointments, return after 3 weeks to note learnings, return after 2 more months to identify good things that resulted. This installs learning in the prefrontal cortex rather than letting it "float around limbically." Early Success Can Be Dangerous – Scholars rejected for early research grants outperformed those with early success. "Much better is when you do the work and build yourself up... be a wholesaler before you become a retailer." Management Doesn't Provide Flow – "There's one kind of job where you don't get flow, and that's management... you're getting jerked from thing to thing to thing." Being CEO was "satisfying, but not enjoyable." Intelligence Must Serve Others – "Intelligence is just another gift... whether or not it makes you happier depends on whether or not you're using it to make other people happier." Denigrating others for lower intelligence indicates misusing your gift. The Arrival Fallacy – Olympic gold medalists often experience depression after winning because positive emotion comes from progress toward goals, not achieving them. "Your positive emotion doesn't exist to give you a permanent good day." Two Midlife Crisis Solutions: Focus on what age gives you rather than takes away Choose subtraction over addition - appreciate what you no longer have to do Making Changes Stick Requires Three Elements: Understand the science - Know why something works Change your habits - Actually implement different behaviors Teach it - Explain it to others to cement learning in the prefrontal cortex The Happiness Formula – "Use things, love people, worship the divine" instead of the natural impulses to "love things, use people, and worship yourself." Multi-generational Living Benefits – Arthur lives with adult children and grandchildren: "The research is clear that the closer you are to your grandchildren... the better it is for everybody." Quotes: "I get four hours of creative concentration with maximum dopamine in my prefrontal cortex... ordinarily I would get an hour and a half, two hours of real clarity." "The isms, the addictions, they're almost all negative affect management techniques." "Working out hard... makes you less unhappy. The research is very clear." "Being the boss isn't that fun. It just isn't." "I have carefully accounted for all of my days of happiness. They add up to 14." (Emir of Cordoba) "What's first prize in a pie eating contest? The answer is pie. So I hope you like pie." "Beware the corner office boys. Beware the corner office." "Use things, love people, worship the divine." "Watch one, do one, teach one." (Harvard Medical School) "Don't trust your impulses. Your impulses are to love things, use people, and worship yourself." Life Lessons Develop Daily Discipline Early - A Consistent morning routine with exercise and spiritual practice creates optimal brain chemistry for peak performance throughout the day. Manage High Achievement Personality - If you're a driven person, recognize you likely have high negative affect that needs healthy management through exercise and transcendent practices. Reframe Career Setbacks - Early failures often build stronger foundations than early successes. Use disappointments as learning opportunities through systematic reflection. Question Management Ambitions - Consider whether you enjoy management or just want the status/money. Management roles inherently provide less flow and enjoyment. Use Intelligence to Serve Others - Your cognitive gifts should lift others up, not put them down. Intelligence without service leads to unhappiness. Focus on Progress, Not Arrival - Derive satisfaction from forward momentum in meaningful work rather than achieving specific goals that won't provide lasting happiness. Embrace What Age Gives - In life transitions, focus on new capabilities and freedoms rather than what you're losing or leaving behind. Teach What You Learn - The most effective way to cement new habits and insights is to explain them to others. Teaching accelerates your own learning. Choose Subtraction - Happiness often comes from eliminating negative elements (bad meetings, toxic relationships) rather than adding more positive ones. Build Multi-Generational Relationships - Prioritize time with family across generations. The research strongly supports benefits for all parties. Exercise for Mental Health - View physical training as medication for negative emotions rather than just physical fitness. Cultivate Transcendent Practices - Whether religious, philosophical, or spiritual, daily engagement with something larger than yourself moderates negative emotions and provides meaning. Time Stamps: 00:10 Arthur's Fitness and Health Routine 02:01 Link Between Fitness and Happiness 04:03 Managing Negative Emotions 06:23 Morning Routines 13:24 The Importance of Failure 22:26 The Reality of Promotions and Leadership 27:56 The Power of Intelligence: A Double-Edged Sword 28:28 Using Gifts to Spread Happiness 29:20 The Impact of Helping Others 33:28 Avoiding the Arrival Fallacy 36:36 Redefining Retirement and Midlife 47:39 The Importance of Teaching and Learning 51:28 Life Advice 53:01 EOPC (End of the Podcast Club)

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

• 0:00Ryan Hawk?

  Jim Collins told me on episode number 216 that the single greatest determining factor in my long-term success or failure would be my who, who I chose to surround myself with. And that conversation has had a huge impact on how I've designed my business. And one of the most important elements or services that I provide is my Learning Leader Circle. And I open up applications one time per year, and that time is now at learningleaderscircle.com is where you can apply. Now, this is the most inefficient element of my business because

• 0:41Ryan Hawk?

  I personally read every application and I personally choose who will go on to the next round and then who will ultimately be one of the 12 people to be in my next Learning Leader Circle. And I only do it one time per year, and that time is now. If you are intentional about surrounding yourself with others who will push you, challenge you, make you think differently, if you're willing to self-reflect and do some work, this could be for you. And you can apply at learningleaderscircle.com. We meet once per month on Zoom, and then we meet one time per year in person for our Leadership Retreat for members of my Learning

• 1:21Ryan Hawk?

  Leader Circle. So if you'd like to apply, go to learningleaderscircle.com.

• 1:30Ryan Hawk?

  Welcome to the Learning Leader Show presented by Insight Global. I am your host, Ryan Hawke. Thank you so much for being here. Go to learningleader.com for show notes of this and all podcast episodes. Go to learningleader.com. Now, on to tonight's featured leader, the great Arthur Brooks is back. He teaches courses on leadership and happiness at Harvard Business School. He's a columnist at The Atlantic, where he writes the popular How to Build a Life column. He's also the author of 13 books, including the number one New York Times bestseller, Build the Life You Want. His co-author on that book, Oprah Winfrey.

• 2:11Ryan Hawk?

  He's also written From Strength to Strength, Finding Success, Happiness, and Deep Purpose in the Second Half of Your Life. During this conversation, we discuss failure. Specifically why it benefits you to experience it regularly and how we can grow through it. Then we discuss the progress principle, how to create positive momentum in both your personal and professional life. And then Arthur shares the best way to learn a challenging concept. It is a three step process that ensures you'll be able to learn it and then execute. Ladies and gentlemen, please enjoy my conversation with Arthur Brooks.

• 2:59Ryan Hawk?

  All right, Arthur, thank you so much, man, for coming back on the Learning Leader Show. Welcome.

• 3:03Speaker 01

  Delighted to be with you anytime you call. I'm coming on. I love your show.

• 3:06Ryan Hawk?

  Let's go. Okay, I couldn't help it. This is not where I planned to start, but you pop up on the Zoom, you got this beautiful lighting and you are jacked out of your mind.

• 3:16Speaker 01

  I don't know. Is this jacked out of my mind?

• 3:17Ryan Hawk?

  Yes, look at you, dude. You're 61. You look like you're 40. I gotta know, I'm serious here and I don't, and you can maybe talk about how this deals with happiness, too. What are you doing? What are you doing every day to be in such good shape?

• 3:30Speaker 01

  Thank you. Thank you, Ryan. I appreciate that an awful lot. I'll send you flowers for that. I don't, to begin with, I don't touch my hormones. I don't do anything with my hormones. And you know, a lot of guys-

• 3:39Ryan Hawk?

  No TRT, none of that stuff.

• 3:40Speaker 01

  Nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing. My natural standing total testosterone level, I just had done 14 days ago for my semi-annual blood work was 812. And so that's so, I mean, look, there's some guys who are 1200, that's terrific and the whole thing, but 812 for me is a good place to stand. And I don't want to see it go down very much. And the way that I deal with that is, is the way that I eat, the way that I try to sleep, which is actually tricky, and the way that I lift is how it comes out. Hormonally, a lot of people can kind of stop the clock, but you have to do the work is what it comes down to. So I've been doing zone two cardio, but mostly resistance training for the past 30 years and just being really, really serious and consistent about it and watching my diet, making sure that I'm eating right, making sure that I'm actually getting into the gym

• 4:24Speaker 01

  for 60 minutes a day, seven days a week, keeping the body in shape. That's actually how I do my work. And I have a very, very kind of disciplined protocol, starting at first thing in the morning, that takes me from the moment my alarm clock goes off with great regret on my part, to when I actually get to lunchtime where I've done four hours of creative work. And so the brain chemistry is all calibrated to do exactly that, making sure my body is up to it.

• 4:50Ryan Hawk?

  So you're the happiness guy, right? You're maybe the number one person in the world to talk about happiness based on all of your hard work, your research, you teaching, where you do. What is your morning routine slash your fitness routine slash your diet? What does that have to do with your happiness?

• 5:06Speaker 01

  So it's a great question and people often say, I work out every day because it makes me happy. It doesn't. It makes you less unhappy. The research is very clear that working out hard, picking up heavy things, and there's a lot of different kinds of exercise, of course, and I've done the research on the different mood advantages from different modalities. But what it does is it moderates negative affect. So our wellbeing is experienced. You know, happiness is not a feeling, but happiness has feelings associated with it. That's called affect. And affect, positive and negative, is produced by the limbic system of the brain, which is a console of tissue that's between 2 and 40 million years ago, that translates the stimuli that we're perceiving outside of us into the universal language of emotions, so that

• 5:51Speaker 01

  we know if something is perceived as a threat or opportunity, and that's whether something is negative or positive. Now, half of the population is above average on positive affect in intensity, and half of the population is above average on negative affect. A quarter of the population is above the median on both, meaning they're incredibly high affect people, and that's most of the people watching your show. I know this because hustlers, hard workers, strivers, entrepreneurs, ambitious people, they're in that quadrant of high positive, high negative affect. That's called the mad scientist emotional profile. For your listeners who want to find out where they are, if you go to my website, arthurbrooks.com, at the very top of the website, there's a test that you can take that we've administered

• 6:36Speaker 01

  to hundreds of thousands of people. And you can find out, I mean, it takes about, you know, two minutes and you can find out if, sure enough, you're a mad scientist like me. Okay, so back to your question. That's great to be a mad scientist. The problem is that you have unusually high negative affect, a lot of intensity of negative emotion, which can actually hurt your well-being, and you need to manage it. Now, high negative affect people, they always try to manage their negative affect, and a lot of them do it in very dangerous ways. Number one, drinking alcohol is a dangerous way to moderate your negative affect. Number two, out-of-control internet use, especially pornography. Pornography is horrible way to manage your negative affect. It's just terrible for you in all sorts of ways.

• 7:15Speaker 01

  Number three, workaholism. You know, just distract yourself, just another 16 hours with your nose to the grindstone.

• 7:23Ryan Hawk?

  Is that one you struggle with, though?

• 7:25Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah, for sure.

• 7:27Ryan Hawk?

  The first one's drinking, not much, no porn, the too much online, maybe, maybe sometimes. Workaholism?

• 7:34Speaker 01

  Workaholism, for sure. The isms, the work, the isms, the addictions, they're almost all negative affect management techniques. So anybody watching us today who has a tendency to get addicted to stuff, you know, everything from highly glycemic carbohydrates to, you know, gambling, those are all attempts to manage your negative affect. And you don't even know it. You're just doing that. It's like, I don't know why, but I feel some relief. Of course, you feel some relief. What these things are doing is they're severing the connection between your limbic system and your prefrontal cortex, so that you're actually having the negative emotion, you're just not aware of it in the same way because of what you're doing. But those things, they'll ruin your life. You know, those things, subjugation and addiction are no joke. The two best ways to deal with negative affect, and again, don't be mad about it, about negative affect.

• 8:19Speaker 01

  On the contrary, be thankful for it. It's one of the reasons you're, everybody watching us, that you're strivers and on your way to big success. But you gotta manage it. And the two best ways to do that are, number one, faith, spirituality, and philosophy. Number one, it's like every day, every day, go deep, go deep. And that means if you're raised in a religion, think about it again, think about it again. If you want, and if you weren't, I mean, this is what Ryan Holiday is talking about, our mutual friend, Ryan Holiday. He's the leading proponent of Stoic philosophy. That stuff makes you transcendent to your ordinary life and will moderate your negative affect really effectively as well. But you need something like that, or go pick up heavy things. Go pick up heavy things. And the truth is, I do both every day.

• 9:02Speaker 01

  So this gets back to your question. I start my day every day at 4:30. 4:30 is when my clock goes off. I'm not a natural morning lark chronotype.

• 9:12Speaker 01

  On the contrary, I mean, left to my devices, I would stay up late and get up when the sun is warm. But that's a big mistake to begin with. I've tried to change my chronotype. It's harder for me than for other people, but it can be done. I mean, I used to think I was just naturally, you know, just stay up super late and do my work. Actually, I was mostly, I was just a professional musician who drank too much. But I've shifted it with some effort over the years. I work out from four forty-five to five forty-five at a gym in my house. This is the number one thing, getting the equipment and all the stuff that you need, which is a really, really important investment. After that, I get cleaned up and then I go to mass. I'm a Catholic. I go to church every morning. So I go to mass from six thirty to seven every morning. When I'm in town, I'm on

• 9:55Speaker 01

  the road forty-eight weeks a year. And so when I'm on the road, I have to adjust to whatever is around me. But I only stay in hotels with good gyms. And my staff make sure that I'm near someplace where I can go to mass in the morning, too. So all this, this is almost never interrupted when I'm on tour. And then I come back and my brain is wired with lower negative affect and is perfectly suited because the adenosine, the inhibitory neurochemical that makes you feel groggy and sleepy, it is naturally cleared. Now I'm ready to apply psychostimulant to my brain, AKA caffeine. So I'm not doing that thing where you use caffeine to wake up. Don't do it. Use caffeine to focus you. Wait till you're no longer sleepy. Right? And so I do that usually

• 10:38Speaker 01

  about two and a half to three hours after I've got up, I have my first cup of coffee and I eat a very high protein meal. That's also high in tryptophan. Greek yogurt is the best. I mean, don't eat a turkey. That's gross. But you know, with Greek yogurt, it's all get sixty grams of protein in one bolus with very, very, very dark roast coffee because I grew up in Seattle and you know, that's what we do. And then dude, I'm ready to go at seven forty-five in the morning. I am loaded for bear. I get four hours of creative concentration with maximum dopamine in my prefrontal cortex, which is the neuromodulator of creativity and focus. Where ordinarily, I would get an hour and a half, two hours of real clarity and real focus. I get four hours.

• 11:21Ryan Hawk?

  You know what it says, Arthur? This is not an accident.

• 11:26Ryan Hawk?

  All the stuff that you've done, the impact you've made, the impact you're currently making, the lives you're changing, it's just not an accident. It can be done. It's hard. It takes discipline, but it's possible for literally every single person can make the decision to do that, right? It's probably easier not to, right? But I think you're, we're all much better off if we say, hey, what is that version for me? What could that be? It doesn't have to be exactly yours or exactly mine. It's funny that ours are very similar though, almost the exact same time. So I wake up at 4:45. I like to stretch and drink a lot of water and I like to read for like, literally like 10 minutes and then write,

• 12:09Ryan Hawk?

  get the thoughts out of my head onto the page and then it's gym time, punish the body, lift heavy weights, run, and then I like to do like elliptical or walking for, you know, like 20 to 30 minutes when I read. And I love reading while doing, I don't even know if it's called cardio. Some might call it, I think it's basically like cooling down. And then I like to go on a walk with my wife and that's usually how the day starts, most days. And it's the best. And then after that, you know, a little family time before kids on the bus. And then let's go, let's get to the day. And I think that's, that's a great, great morning. It's a great way to get started. When we can do it, certainly that takes me being home, but I don't, I don't travel a ton.

• 12:49Speaker 01

  That's a good, that's a very good protocol, Ryan. I like it a lot. And you know, this is a tried and true thing. This is not some new fangled thing that Ryan and Arthur are proposing to the world. I've been working for the last 13 years very closely with the Dalai Lama.

• 13:03Ryan Hawk?

  No big deal, really?

• 13:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. So we've written a bunch together and we're actually, we've done a lot of documentary footage that's going to be coming out in this year. But I go to his, his ashram, his monastery, once or twice a year in Dharamsala in the Himalayan foothills. And he's come to the United States and we've done stuff together here a bunch of times too. I'm going next March, for example. I've known him for years and he just turned 90 as a matter of fact. His day starts like yours. He gets up at 3:30 every day. Now, he goes to bed at your dinnertime. Cause he can, and also this is a very, very common thing for Tibetan Buddhist monks is man, it's like Benjamin Franklin on steroids. And so he goes to bed very early. He gets up at 3:30 in the morning. The first thing he does is he gets on his little exercise cycle.

• 13:48Speaker 01

  He's got a little exercise bike. He does half an hour cardio. This is before he has any, you know, hit water, right? I mean, yeah, me too. When I'm working out, when I first wake up, I have a lot of water. It's actually really important because you're pretty dehydrated. So he works out and then he meditates for two hours. And, and this is not the single point meditation, sort of the spaced out meditation that Americans are always trying to do. It's called analytical meditation, which is a different technique. This is one in which he will contemplate scriptures in Tibetan, in Tibetan. So Tibetan Buddhist scripture, I wish there's an enormous amount. I've, I've learned and sat in meditation with the Tibetan Buddhist monks while they do this. And he'll think, who am I in this passage in scripture?

• 14:29Speaker 01

  What is the world? And so he thinking analytically, thinking, thinking, thinking about two sentences for two hours, which is incredibly helpful thing to do. It's like as much as possible, listen to as much as possible. No, no, no, no, you're too unfocused. Focus on the thing so that you'll really learn it and remember it deeply. And it really speaks to you. That's two hours, man. And then he eats a little bit and that's when he's starting his day. So it's very similar to yours and that's his holiness the Dalai Lama. So, you know?

• 14:58Ryan Hawk?

  Wow. I, I am fascinated by routines of people and it usually, like I said, there's usually some discipline involved. There's some routine. Some might call us regimented. My wife calls me that, like pretty regimented person, which is fine. I'm okay with that. You know, I, I call it maybe being consistent. But anyway, it's funny, Arthur, uh, that's why I love talking to you so much. I had no idea that it was going to start like this for the first almost 15 minutes. I wanted to get into some of your, your book, which by the way, congratulations. Normally you come on ahead of time to promote the work. You're not doing that. We're here just to talk. You already hit the New York Times bestseller list. You've done all the stuff with this book, but I still loved it and I still want to dig into it. If you, uh, can I, can I riff on a few things and then you?

• 15:41Speaker 01

  You bet, man. Yeah, let's do it.

• 15:42Ryan Hawk?

  Okay. So let's go, uh, let's go to failure, actually. Okay. So you have a chapter called how to succeed at failure. And you share like a bunch of research scholars who were narrowly rejected for research grants. Early in their careers, they went on to outperform others who enjoyed like early success. What do you think that teaches us, teaches leaders about early wins versus early setbacks?

• 16:07Speaker 01

  So to begin with, there's something in my business because I, you know, I've been in sort of the book writing business for, I mean, this book I just published my 15th book and it's never easy, you know, it's still brutal. It's like the stages of death and dying. It's, you know, as you're getting ready for it and it's really, really hard. There's a lot that you don't know. And so sometimes what happens with especially young authors who are highly intelligent and they've been working on something for a long time, you know, they get six years of clever work into their first book and then it just hits the news cycle in exactly the right way and they get a big bestseller on their first book. That's terrible luck. And, and it's like, hooray. But why? Because everybody thinks that they're going to be Stephen King or something. Everybody thinks that they're going to be this like the Rolling

• 16:52Speaker 01

  Stones, hitmakers or everything they touch, Picasso, you know, a little scribble and it's $150 million or something. But that's not the way it is because they almost always get a second book curse. The second book curse is that your publisher comes to you and says, let's write a contract for book two and they get a really nice advance, which feels awesome. But what an advance on a book is, is basically handcuffing yourself to a pipe in your editor's basement and then they, they'll, you know, throw food down the stairs and flip the light back off and say, right. I mean, it's tyranny is the way that this is. And so the result of it is they get one year to do something that's as popular as the last book, which was based on seven years and their main set of ideas. And so the second book doesn't do

• 17:33Speaker 01

  anything. And that's horrible because it throws a complete monkey wrench into the trajectory of their careers. Much better is when you do the work and you build yourself up. So if you want to be a public intellectual, for example, I mean, do the work, go to graduate school, do the research, publish in academic journals, do research, don't be an autodidact and just kind of try to be a, you know, grazing on the, the research that happens to come across you on a Google search. That's not the right way to do it. I mean, be a wholesaler before you become a retailer is kind of how that works. And then little by little by little, it builds and it builds and it builds. And that is a super, super solid foundation. A

• 18:14Speaker 01

  lot of it feels like failure early on. It's not. It's building. It's building a strong foundation is how that works.

• 18:21Ryan Hawk?

  I feel like part of the takeaway from that chapter and from what you just said is Let's say you are the one who's experiencing some big challenges, failures, and you're getting started in your career, or maybe you're already into your career quite a bit. That's actually kind of the natural way that you want it to work. That could better set you up than if maybe you got lucky or something hit right away. The natural progression of things is let's keep working, let's keep at it. Don't get discouraged when the initial thing or the initial few things or the initial few jobs aren't like dream jobs or they're not great, or you get passed over for a promotion, maybe which happens to people. Those are actually good things for you.

• 19:05Ryan Hawk?

  It's like stay in the work, stay after it.

• 19:08Speaker 01

  Totally, totally. I mean, what happens if you have super early success and you expect that? Is that you start becoming more dependent on the rewards as opposed to enjoyment of the work itself. And that's as old as the hills. I'm saying, you know, Plato talked about, you know, that the key to the treasure is the treasure. There's nothing new about that basic observation. But you know, that all that rewards orientation, that arrival motivation for something, it sucks the life out of life and it makes you mediocre. It makes you rigid, it makes you weak. So, you know, one of the things that I do with my students, my students are MBA students at the Harvard Business School. I mean, these are the titans of the universe, right? And the average starting salary coming out of our MBA program, I think is $210,000 a year. It's a lot of money and they're not used to failing at all. I mean, they've never gotten a B.

• 19:51Speaker 01

  That's how they got to the Harvard Business School, right? They went to Duke or some fancy undergraduate and then they worked at Goldman Sachs or McKinsey or something for three or four years and then they came to the Harvard Business School. And I talked to them about the fact that you need a bunch of failure. You need to fail so you're not afraid of failure. You know how it feels and you have the learning and growth that uniquely comes from failure. Just what you just said, Ryan. So I make them keep a failure journal.

• 20:15Ryan Hawk?

  Oh, really?

• 20:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. So, and, and this is, you know, a lot of people have.

• 20:18Ryan Hawk?

  Do they have much in it?

• 20:20Speaker 01

  They do when they start paying attention to it. So a lot of people have a gratitude journal, but that's just so boring. You know, what's really, really good is a disappointment and failure journal. And that's because that's how you grow. So the way that it works is this, and this is what everybody can do who's watching us here. You have failures and disappointments a lot. I'm talking about the ones that happen like once a month and I still get them by the way. The great thing about being 61 as opposed to being 31 is that when you have something that really disappoints you, you're like, yeah, that emotion that I feel is intensely negative, but it's not going to last. I know that because I'm old, so I'm going to get a head start on not caring. Right. And so that's, that's what, that's why the 61 year olds are generally happier than 31 year olds. But so what I tell them to do is like, it's going to be a disappointment like that girl doesn't like you.

• 21:04Speaker 01

  You know, that kind of thing, or you applied for that job and you didn't hear back, that sort of thing. Put it in there and then leave two spaces blank under each disappointment or failure. Come back after three weeks and on the first blank line, write, what did I learn about this in the last three weeks? What was my learning in this? And then come back two months after that. Put alarms on your phone for this. Two months after that and write down what good thing happened because of that. So you won't get the learning if you don't actually install it in your prefrontal cortex by writing it down. It'll just sort of float around limbically and that's not the source of learning. You got to make it explicit. So you know, you get a bad performance review at work and you're not expecting this.

• 21:49Speaker 01

  Like your first job at a college, you're like, I thought I was killing it. And your boss is like, you're not killing it. This is B minus work and you're super bummed. And you're like, I gotta go home for the day, the whole thing. And then your, and your friends are like, your boss is a jerk. And you're like, I just gotta forget this thing. No, put it in the journal, write it down. I thought I was getting doing A plus work. He said, I'm doing B minus work. I'm very, very disappointed. I am disappointed. Come back in three weeks and you're going to be like, you know what I learned? I learned that I thought I was a good match for that job and I'm less a good match for that job than I thought. Two months later, you come back and you say, I started to pay attention to other jobs on the market. And now I'm talking to employers that I think might have a job that'll be a better match for me.

• 22:32Speaker 01

  And you don't like having gotten nailed on your first performance review, but now you learned and grew from it, but you can't do it if you don't take the job seriously and do the work.

• 22:41Ryan Hawk?

  I love the idea of a failure journal as well as taking ownership of it. You're not being a victim or just blaming others and then, because the problem is you blame others and be like, well, it's not my fault or I didn't do anything wrong. You play the victim card, then you don't learn from the failures. I think failures become really bad failures if you don't learn anything from, you're probably going to repeat them. That's like the big part, I feel like a failure journal will help you learn from those times and then be better in the future as opposed to continuing to make those same mistakes.

• 23:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, even, by the way, even if you are a victim, it still helps. Let's say that you're dating somebody who's sociopathic, which has happened. I mean, especially for all the women who are watching us right now. That's like your last boyfriend was what we call a dark triad, which is narcissistic, Machiavellian and having traits of psychopathy.

• 23:28Ryan Hawk?

  Jeez.

• 23:29Speaker 01

  You know, and like, no joke, my, I have this new podcast called Office Hours and I've got an episode coming up on how to, how to identify a dark triad and avoid them. But if you have one and it was a terrible breakup, for example, then you've been victimized for sure. Put it in your failure journal. This wasn't a personal failing on your part, but it was a failed relationship. Underneath, you're going to come back and say, I learned that that person was a dark triad. And then underneath that you said, the good that came from it is that the breakup actually made it possible for me to move on to a better relationship in the future. And then by about the fourth entry, fifth entry, you're going back and going, I'm looking forward to writing that down because I get to look at the other good things that actually came to me only via nasty gifts.

• 24:13Ryan Hawk?

  Hmm. So good. Okay. You have a part about big promotions, a chapter called, think twice before taking the top job. You cite research again, showing people's satisfaction. It doesn't necessarily recover to pre-promotion levels until two years into a new role, leadership role. And so sometimes their anger actually can increase and doesn't go away for five years. So how should, as you already mentioned, the type of people that listen to this show are ambitious, growth focused, I'm the same way, but think twice, right? Can you go into this research?

• 24:43Speaker 01

  So really highly motivated people who are extremely competent, there's no Peter Principle. Peter Principle is you tend to be promoted to your level of incompetence.

• 24:52Ryan Hawk?

  Right.

• 24:52Speaker 01

  That's not true for the people who are watching us. There is a version of that, though, where you're promoted to your level of unhappiness.

• 24:59Ryan Hawk?

  Hmm.

• 24:59Speaker 01

  And this happens when you're put into more and more management roles. There aren't that many people that get a lot of intense positive emotion from management very often. And there's a neurocognitive reason for this. We've all heard of the phenomenon called flow that was invented by the great social psychologist Michai Chiksemiti, who wrote about this intensely pleasurable state where you're in the zone, like what you're really good at. For me, it's in writing. I used to be a classical musician for a long time. So when I was up on stage, when I was playing my instrument, I'd be totally in a flow state where an hour would feel like five minutes, where you lose track of time. Well, there's one kind of job where you don't get flow, and that's management. The reason for that is you're getting jerked from thing to thing to thing to thing. And it's not the kind of thing where you can show mastery in a particular skill. I mean, you're kind

• 25:44Speaker 01

  of doing everybody's job when you're the manager in some way, shape, or form. And the result of that is that people go from jobs that they truly enjoy to ones that are important and maybe lucrative and on the stair step up to great success, but they don't enjoy them as much and they think it's because of them. No, no, no, no, no. Being the boss isn't that fun. It isn't that fun. It just isn't. I've been a CEO. I was a CEO for 11 years and it was really, really hard. I didn't enjoy it that much. It was satisfying, but not enjoyable. Those are two different things. I'm really glad I did it. We did a lot of good. I think we helped America. But there were a lot of days when I just wasn't getting enjoyment from it. And that's the thing to keep in mind.

• 26:26Speaker 01

  Manage your expectations. If you're going to try to conquer the world, you're going to learn that being the conqueror of the world isn't that fun. Emir of Cordoba in the 14th century, Abdal Rahman, you know, in southern Spain and during the Moorish rule of Spain, you know, he was this absolute, absolute ruler. I mean, he had hundreds of concubines. His enemies fell at his feet. He never lost a battle. He was the great warrior. He was just worshipped almost as a god. And he wrote at the end of his life, he said, "I have had everything a man could want in life. I have lacked for nothing." And he goes through all these lavish gifts that he's had. And he said, "I have carefully accounted for all of my days of happiness. They add up to 14."

• 27:14Speaker 01

  Beware the corner office, boys. Well, beware the corner office.

• 27:17Ryan Hawk?

  We got a lot of those though here, Arthur. So how do you make, I know they're meaningful and it's probably part of people's purpose to lead and inspire others. And that's, I could see, I mean, I've been in those roles. What advice would you give to the SVP of Sales at a Fortune 500 company who is stressed, but also like likes the juice. They like the competition. They like hiring people and promoting them and, and helping them get better. Yes, it's hard, but how do you make those jobs better, more, I don't know if I should say more enjoyable, but maybe I do hope there's something there.

• 27:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, oh, for sure. And the answer to that is that like when you do anything that's truly hard and competitive and stressful, and you're doing it on purpose, you have to be mindful about the fact that this is your choice and the impact that you're having outweighs the discomfort that you're experiencing is what it comes down to. In other words, mindfulness of what's actually going on is the key. You know, there's lots of things that we do. I tell young parents constantly, I mean, you have, how old are you? I can't remember how old your kids are. They're, they're not little, little.

• 28:16Ryan Hawk?

  No, we have seniors in high school down to 10.

• 28:18Speaker 01

  But you remember when you were getting up at two o'clock in the morning? It's like the baby barfed again, you know? And it's two o'clock in the morning and you got to get up at 4:30 and, but you remind yourself, this is my baby. I love my baby.

• 28:31Ryan Hawk?

  Right.

• 28:31Speaker 01

  And what you're doing when you say that is that you're reminding yourself that this is passing the cost benefit test, but that the cost isn't zero. So this is one of the things that I recommend, that you not be managed so highly by your negative affect when you're on the ladder, that you can continue to remember why you're doing this thing. Why am I doing this thing? And cut to the chase, if you're only doing it for your own ambition, it doesn't pass the cost benefit test. Nobody has the baby for their own ambition. They have the baby because babies are pure love. Babies are the essence of what it means to be fully alive. And, and that passes the cost benefit test because it's about the baby, not because of you. And your job has got to kind of work that way, too. I know you want a successful career. I know we're all ambitious.

• 29:15Speaker 01

  We all want a better future, but it has to be fundamentally because what you're doing is important. What you're doing is impactful and many days what you're doing is, is just awesome. And right now, it kinda sucks.

• 29:27Ryan Hawk?

  Yeah.

• 29:28Speaker 01

  It's okay.

• 29:29Ryan Hawk?

  Got you. Okay. Along those same lines, you quote Hemingway, happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know. You're right about how intelligence can lift you up or pull you down.

• 29:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 29:39Ryan Hawk?

  Depending how you use it. So what's your advice for growth focused, ambitious, intelligent leaders?

• 29:45Speaker 01

  To begin with, a lot of people watching us are blessed with high intelligence.

• 29:49Ryan Hawk?

  Right.

• 29:49Speaker 01

  That's why they're, you know, watching this kind of content as opposed to, I don't know, Love Island or something. And that's great. You know, that's great. You're not wasting your time, you know, watching stupid shorts right now. But the point is not that you're better because you're intelligent. On the contrary, it's good that you cultivate your intelligence, but intelligence is just another gift. It's like being born over an oil well or with a bunch of money is what we find. A lot of it actually is, you know, thanks, mom and dad is what it comes down to. So the result of it is that like any other gift that you have, whether or not it makes you happier, it depends on whether or not you're using it to make other people happier. That's what it comes down to. Money will make you happier if you use it to make other people happier.

• 30:31Speaker 01

  Anything, your power will make you happier if you use it to make other people happier. That's just the truth. It's a truism in life. It's a cosmic divine truth. Your fame will make you happier if the admiration you have from other people is reflected in the virtue that they bring to their own lives. That's the reason that the admiration that other people have for you can make your life better, but not if you're like, yeah, I just want to be famous. I just want to be famous. You'll be miserable if you do that. And the same thing is true with your intelligence. Now here's a key thing to know whether or not you're using your intelligence in the right way. Do you denigrate other people because they're not as intelligent as you? If you're like, that waiter is so stupid. Can you believe it? How stupid that bus driver was? Can you believe it?

• 31:13Speaker 01

  If you denigrate people on the basis of their exhibited intelligence because it's lower than you and you put yourself above another person because you believe, you might be wrong, but you're probably right that your intelligence is higher. You're using your intelligence in the wrong way. I can guarantee you, you are. On the other hand, if you look at other people as people not assessing their intelligence, but thinking about this gift that I have of thinking clearly and working hard, what can I do to lift up the world? What can I do to unite people? What can I do to bring people to more happiness and love?

• 31:43Ryan Hawk?

  We talked about this last time, but it's less focus on you, more focus on the impact you can have on other people to help them. That literally scientifically makes you happier.

• 31:53Speaker 01

  Totally. I mean, there's so much research on this. By the way, we don't even need research because every religion and philosophy and your grandma agree that this is the right way to live and that you'll have a happier life if you do that. But people who need it, there's all kinds of randomized treatment controls and experiments, et cetera, that show that one of the fastest ways that you can get happier is by lifting somebody else up.

• 32:18Ryan Hawk?

  Yeah, it's funny. You know, sometimes I'm sure you do this all the time. Well, people may ask you, how can I write a book? How can I start a podcast? How can I get into Harvard Business School? Whatever it may be. And you help them, right? Because you're a good guy. And I like to do the same thing, help them, do whatever I can do. And they'll say, oh, my God, I gotta repay you. Let me take you out to dinner. Or I'm like, look, I'm cool to go out to dinner, maybe, but you don't need to repay me. Like, you don't understand how good it makes me feel. I can't do it nonstop 24/7 because I have to get work done. But it genuinely makes me feel really, really good if I felt like I helped you. If I felt like I benefited your life, I felt like you're better off because of something that I happen to do. That's the biggest gift I can get, man. Like, it's the coolest feeling in the world.

• 33:00Speaker 01

  I know, I know. And, you know, it's interesting. I'm sure you're finding this because you're more and more prominent. Are you getting to the point where your show, where you go to the airport and people recognize you? Is that happening to you?

• 33:09Ryan Hawk?

  It's happened. I mean, not a lot, but sometimes, yeah, it's cool.

• 33:12Speaker 01

  This is the way the world right now, where people recognize podcasters.

• 33:16Ryan Hawk?

  Oh, yeah.

• 33:17Speaker 01

  I mean, it's crazy, right? I mean, that's kind of how, that's the behold the power of YouTube, the way that this works. What's more and more satisfying is the extent to which you help other people and you don't need them at all. And you do it just because you love them and they accept the help that you give them, even though they don't need you. They don't really need it. You know, this is how a peer relationship is really supposed to work. This is what Aristotle talks about is the virtuous friendship. You know, one in which you just love each other and lift each other up. And neither one of you needs the other to have a better career. And you walk together, shoulder to shoulder, toward these values that you both really, I mean, it's like I have this really, really close friend in Atlanta. His name is Frank. Frank and I are the same age, early 60s, and I've known him for many years.

• 34:02Speaker 01

  And I don't need technically anything from Frank. He doesn't need anything from me. But we're just looking for ways to build each other up. Right? And it's just great. It's just a beautiful thing. And so that's one of the things to look for as well.

• 34:14Ryan Hawk?

  I love it. Okay. I probably personally need to help with some of this stuff, but I'm a big like momentum slash progress. Slash, I need to look back and feel like I'm growing, I'm improving, I'm getting better. And you cite research from the progress principles showing that satisfaction comes from forward momentum and meaningful work, not these like giant, like you hitting Newark Times is cool. I'm sure you're like, great, nice. You know, we didn't even really have a big marketing campaign and we hit it anyway. But I would consider that it's still a pretty big audacious win. But really, what satisfaction comes from is this forward momentum and meaningful work. So those people who again, who are ambitious, they're goal setters, they want to like climb the mountain. What advice do you have from them that you learned from the progress principle?

• 34:55Speaker 01

  So don't fall prey to the arrival fallacy. You know, for the longest time, people thought it was so weird that Olympic gold medalists tend to fall into a clinical depression in the month after they win their gold medal. And like, why is it? Is there something about them that that's naturally mentally ill? Is there something about the training? Is there something? No, no, no, no. What it is, is that they had so much positive emotion that came from making progress toward the Olympics in their mind, because they're such goal oriented people. This is called the teleological tendency in Greek, you know, that they're so goal oriented that they assume that when they hit their goal, that's when the maximum bliss point will occur. And it doesn't because biologically can't.

• 35:36Speaker 01

  Your positive emotion doesn't exist to give you a permanent good day. If it did, you'd be distracted from your life and get eaten by a tiger on like day two. You need to be all about what's going on around you, meaning that you can't maintain positive emotion, just like you can't maintain negative emotion. You know, maintaining high levels of negative emotion, that's a dysregulation. We call it generalized anxiety or clinical depression, as a matter of fact. And it's also dysregulated to be so blissful all the time that you're not paying attention to what's going on around you. And so you don't. And so you don't. You homeostatically move back to your baseline and you're like, well, that's disappointing. And so the first thing that a guy who hits a billion dollars in his bank account says, I've known plenty of them.

• 36:17Speaker 01

  I guess I needed another billion to get the feeling that I was trying to find, that I thought I was going to have. That's the arrival fallacy. That's why, by the way, that people who go on very, very serious diets, it's very easy to lose weight. I mean, again, people are like, oh, so hard to lose weight. It isn't hard to lose weight. It's hard to keep weight off. Reason is because when you hit your goal, your reward for hitting your goal is never getting to eat what you like ever again for the rest of your life. Congratulations. That's what I was like, that's first prize? It is. That's first prize. And it's the only prize. And that's the reason that people who go on very strong diets have about a 30% chance of developing an eating disorder because they want to keep getting the reward of the scale going down. And so the scale keeps going down, even when the scale going down is dangerous.

• 37:03Ryan Hawk?

  You've never arrived. You're always becoming, JJ Reddick said that on this podcast like seven years ago. I think about it all the time, no matter what. What is the reward for this, Arthur, for me, that I get to keep doing it? That's the reward, right? I like that this podcast does so well because I want to be able to talk to Arthur Brooks every six months or so. You know what I'm saying? Like, that's the reward.

• 37:26Speaker 01

  That's a big point, Ryan. And you just made a very profound point because there's an old saying, what's first prize in a pie eating contest? The answer is pie. So I hope you like pie. More pie. And so, look, and so if you hated podcasting, but we're looking for some reward, the ultimate sponsor, a million downloads per episode, you're gonna hit it. But if you don't like podcasting, you wasted your life.

• 37:52Ryan Hawk?

  Right, right. The reward is the work. I love that. Okay. The two choices that keep a midlife crisis at bay. So choosing to focus on what age gives you rather than what age takes away and choosing subtraction over addition. You referenced Eric Erickson's concept on this, generativity versus stagnation.

• 38:14Speaker 01

  Right. So that's right. So number one is when people are feeling, when they're in a period of liminality. Liminality means you're between phases in life. And that's not necessarily a midlife crisis. I mean, I had my first big liminality in my late twenties, when it was clear my classical music career was not going to last me for the rest of my life. And I started to have to make a difference. So I quit when I was 31 and I went to get my PhD. And during the time I was in my PhD, it was a great liminal thing. And you know, I would paid a lot more attention than I should have to the fact that people weren't clapping for me for being a really, really good French horn player. Now, again, everybody's watching is like, who cares if you're good French horn player? That was my thing, man. I mean, that was my weird thing. That was my bench press.

• 38:53Speaker 01

  And I was super good at it. And I'd been good at it since I was nine years old. And it was my entire identity, et cetera. What I should have been doing that time is paying attention to the things that I was accumulating, the new skills that I was getting, that what lay ahead as opposed to what was behind that which I was shedding. And that's true at any age. You know, a lot of retirees, they're like, I went from who's who to who's he like six months. Yeah, but your grandkids are seeing you for the first time. Yeah, because you and your wife, you actually get to do some pretty interesting things. Yeah, but you're sitting on the board of your community foundation. I mean, you're doing, you should be structuring your retirement so that it's so exciting that you can't even afford to keep working is the way that that works.

• 39:34Speaker 01

  That's the whole important thing. And that leads to the second trick that all successful people have in in midlife or retirement or forced unemployment or whatever liminal state that they're in. Is that they start paying attention to how much satisfaction comes from not doing things as opposed to doing things. So when I'm helping people to retire and I coach people on retirement all the time. I say, okay, let's not start by the thing that you're not going to get to do anymore. Let's talk, talking about the things that you don't have to do anymore. And I know, by the way, for every single busy person watching us. The thing they hate the most, which is that they feel completely harried all the time. Zoom meetings all day and you have to pee so bad.

• 40:16Speaker 01

  Because you don't have time, five minutes between Zoom meetings. You're like, I don't know, can I go in this bottle? And will they see? And it's awful. And the higher up you are in an organization, the less free time that you have. And then you're stuck in traffic and then your spouse is mad at you. Because you left work late again and you hate that. You hate it. You hate it. I got it. Okay, good news. That's gonna stop. So what does that mean? That means you get to redesign your whole schedule and put in things that are valuable to you in such a way that you go from an 80 hour schedule to what on paper looks like a 15 hour schedule, but which will, because fellow driver will be a 40 hour schedule. But if you're having lunch with somebody, it's really fun. You're going to go an extra half hour because you don't care. If you're having an awesome workout, it's like leg day.

• 41:01Speaker 01

  And for the first time in six months, leg day feels good. You're going to go an hour and 45 minutes instead of an hour because you can't. That is so unbelievably empowering. And that's the power of withdrawal of subtraction. That's chipping away your schedule as opposed to larding it up. What will retirement look like for you? It's a good question, but it's not going to be, it's not going to be golfing in Florida. I can guarantee you that. Part of it is because I don't know how to golf and part of it is because Florida is too hot. But the truth of the matter is what I'm going to do is progressively make sure that I have more and more time so that the parts of what I do right now that I love the most, I'm doing more of. And I'm not actually crying them out.

• 41:45Speaker 01

  And for me, that's writing and speaking, writing and speaking. I love writing and speaking. What about the travel that comes with all of the speaking stuff? I love it. Do you really? Crazy. I'm crazy. Does your wife go with you or like, what do you? Sometimes, sometimes, but you know, I started touring seven months a year when I was 19. That's when I went pro as a musician. So the open road for me, Ryan, I mean, it's just, I love. Do you like airplanes? You like, you like hotels. By the way, complete separate question. What do you do on airplanes? I only work. So you're writing, thinking, reading? I'm not looking at the television. I'm not having conversations. And so if I'm not sleeping, I'm working. And that's, I mean, I'm sitting in an expensive seat and, and so I'm going to use it like an office where the phone. Do you fly private?

• 42:31Speaker 01

  I do private some, but I, you know, I'm flying first class when I'm not in private because it's a good investment for me.

• 42:36Ryan Hawk?

  A hundred percent agree. Yeah. It actually makes me look forward to them in the, the quiet time, the non Wi-Fi time.

• 42:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 42:42Ryan Hawk?

  Thinking time, the writing time.

• 42:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 42:44Ryan Hawk?

  Sometimes sleeping, I guess, when we're really tired. Some people think that's a crazy investment. I think it's the most no brainer.

• 42:49Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. You know, I take a lot of red eyes too. So when I'm coming back from the West Coast, I almost always take a red eye. I mean, it's not like I sleep that well anyway. And so sleeping four hours instead of six hours.

• 43:00Ryan Hawk?

  Yeah.

• 43:01Speaker 01

  If I were an eight hour a night guy with my fluffy pillow and I went, you know, as soon as my head hits the pillow, one of those annoying people, then it would probably be a different kettle of fish. But no, I take a lot of red eyes and I'm going back and forth to Europe a lot. So, you know, those are the times when I'm actually going to sleep and the rest of the time I'm, it's my office and I'm working. And I've been on the road so long that I'm able to actually get in the zone pretty quickly.

• 43:20Ryan Hawk?

  Yeah, you're used to it. You got so many reps. I, I like that idea of your retirement style. I, I just had a meeting, in fact, this morning with my financial advisor. And every time we talk about like retirement, I'm like, dude, I'm not going to retire. Like, why would I retire? I have the greatest job in the world. Like, I just want to keep doing this. Maybe I'll cut out a few of the parts of it that I don't like. But for the most part, you're telling me, I get to talk with these brilliant people and then share what I'm learning from them with other people who become clients of mine and/or speak on stages. Why would you ever want to stop doing that? Like, that's the coolest thing ever, you know, like.

• 43:52Speaker 01

  Yeah. And your, your preferences will change.

• 43:54Ryan Hawk?

  Yeah.

• 43:55Speaker 01

  You'll like other things at different points in your life. But the point is chip away the stuff that's actually distracting you from the real person that you are. Things also change when your kids grow up. So you have one or two going to college next year, right?

• 44:07Ryan Hawk?

  Yeah.

• 44:08Speaker 01

  I mean, I'm a grandfather.

• 44:09Ryan Hawk?

  Yeah.

• 44:10Speaker 01

  You know, by Thanksgiving, I'll have four grandsons and they're coming thick and fast. And then you want time for that. It's the best thing ever. It's awesome. You know, it's so great. I have them living in my house. As a matter of fact, we have a multi-generational household.

• 44:22Ryan Hawk?

  Really?

• 44:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 44:23Ryan Hawk?

  They live with you?

• 44:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. We made a decision as a family that the research was clear. I try to eat my own cooking. Intellectually and the research is clear that the closer that you are to your grandchildren, the closer your grandchildren are to their grandparents, the better it is for everybody. So neurocognitively for the grandchildren is really, really good to live with grandparents if possible and grandparents are just much happier. So we kind of had a big family decision. We have three adult kids, two of them are married and have kids. They got married at 22 and 23, our sons did, and had their first kids at 23 and 24, you know, old school.

• 44:57Ryan Hawk?

  Love it.

• 44:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, yeah.

• 44:59Ryan Hawk?

  Love it.

• 44:59Speaker 01

  And, and

• 45:00Ryan Hawk?

  It's going, that's not happening anymore.

• 45:01Speaker 01

  I know. And we all moved to the same place. We made a decision, a joint decision to all move to the same place and they're going to raise their kids in this place because the schools are really good, the Catholic schools where they want to go. And one of the families moved in with us and the other one up the street and my other, my youngest, my baby is 22, she's still in the Marine Corps. So when she gets out.

• 45:20Ryan Hawk?

  I was gonna say, that takes like a lot of agreement with spouses and you're, you know, like all of that, like that can get messy. You guys figure that out though, huh?

• 45:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, we figured it out and part of it is that we made the commitment. So, you know, we have a deal that my wife and I are going to pay for everybody's college. And that's easy. You just actually set up a fund when they get their social security number, six weeks after they're born and then rely on the power of compound interest.

• 45:42Ryan Hawk?

  Yep.

• 45:43Speaker 01

  And then hope the markets don't tank or that universities don't continue to abusively increase their tuition for, you know, stupid nonsense, like lazy rivers and climbing walls and, you know, et cetera, all the dumb stuff and the administrators of useless nonsense. And if all goes well, you know, that's going to be sort of taken care of and then be easy to live with. Treat your adult kids like adults is the way that that works. Let them raise their children the way that they're going to raise their children. What I'm finding in my sons are better dads than I was.

• 46:10Ryan Hawk?

  That's really cool. I love that idea. I think that's super, super old school, but I hope that comes back.

• 46:15Speaker 01

  It's so good. I strongly recommend it. I really do.

• 46:18Ryan Hawk?

  Well, you write, you write to start your book to my grandsons, Joseph and Charles, who are the secret to my happiness, right? You could tell like, it seems like they genuinely bring you so much happiness.

• 46:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, Joseph and Charles and, and they're, they're both getting little brothers in the next two months. So, yeah.

• 46:33Ryan Hawk?

  That's really cool.

• 46:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 46:34Ryan Hawk?

  What's it like at Harvard? You know, you see a lot in the news, but like, I'd rather hear from somebody who's actually there. What's it been like there? Has it changed over the years? What's your experience teaching there?

• 46:45Speaker 01

  It's been very positive. I mean, people, everybody's super nice to me. I teach the happiness class, what's not to like?

• 46:50Ryan Hawk?

  Pretty nice.

• 46:50Speaker 01

  I teach, you know, the science of happiness at the Harvard Business School. I teach nonprofit management at the Harvard Kennedy School. I have some of the greatest students in the world. My colleagues are super nice. It's been hard, you know, academia has been really tricky because academia has made a lot of bad moves. Harvard is no exception. I mean, the truth is that there was a period in which activism was way, way, way too prominent.

• 47:11Ryan Hawk?

  Yeah.

• 47:11Speaker 01

  There's always been activism at universities, but fundamentally they're about inquiry. They're about learning. They're about open debate. They're about scary, strange ideas. And when activism takes over, then you get a party line and you hire faculty and recruit graduate students who say there's one way to think, and that's just antithetical to the intellectual experiment. And that's what made the universities turn upside down and get to kind of where we are today and get to the point where there's a lot of, there has been at many universities, open discrimination against certain points of view, which is a very, very bad and dangerous thing. You know, that said, I'm a super proponent of capitalism and the free enterprise system. I'm a traditional Catholic and the way to live my life and nobody's bothered me. Nobody's bothered me. But it's been hard on other people.

• 47:53Speaker 01

  And, and now I think that reforms are taking place that are painful for some schools, including ours. And I think they're going to make us a lot better. You know, I know the end of the story. Harvard's going to be fine.

• 48:01Ryan Hawk?

  Yeah, I would think so. You also write in your book about getting practical. So you reference this 2020 study or 18 distinguished happiness experts rated all these ways to improve happiness. And some of them are obvious ones, you know, invest in family and friends, join a club. But Gretchen Rubin and you were talking about this and it's one thing to know what those ways are of the 68 ways. It's another thing to actually implement and take action. What are some ways that people can take all the things they've learned from you, they learned from Gretchen Rubin, who's also been on the show a few times and execute on that so that it actually works?

• 48:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, I know. It's a big difference between getting ideas and, and making them sticky in your life. There's one of the reasons that self-improvement is so unsuccessful. Self-improvement gives you a flush of epiphany. Like, ah, wow, you know, you read something, you read, you know, the, the meditations of Marcus Aurelius and you're like, ah, so true, so true, you know, and. What that does is gives you a recognition of a truth. That's not sticky. That's gonna burn off like really quickly. To make something sticky, you gotta do three things. And this is really well documented in the behavioral science research. Number one, you need to understand why it's true. And that's why I'm a scientist. That's why I do behavioral science. And that's why about 30% of what I teach is neuroscience.

• 49:16Speaker 01

  Cause I wanna know what the experiments say, what the mechanism of action inside your head is, how the biology works. I wanna know and I wanna teach it. You need to understand, not just, "That feels right." Sorry, not good enough. That's like, "I believe that's right for the following reasons." Okay, that's one. That's a lot, you know? So, reading my books is not enough. Number two, is actually committing to habits. Committing to changes. Doing something different in your life. That's why everything that I write, you notice the chapters in the book, The Happiness Files. The third section of every essay of every chapter in that book is do these three things. Here are the habit changes. I have this column in The Atlantic, comes out every Thursday morning. It's called "How to Build a Life."

• 50:01Speaker 01

  Every edition of that has how to put these ideas into action, how to make the changes. Now, how do I know it works? Cause I'm 10 weeks ahead of my column and I'm doing those things 10 weeks before it shows up in the magazine. So that's how I know. And so I'm trying, I'm a, I'm a living guinea pig on these things. That's two. Then, number three. Now, the thing to really make it sticky, where you really move the experience into your prefrontal cortex, where you remember it, be accountable to it, teach it. So what everybody needs to do who wants to become happier, or by the way, who wants to stay in the gym or have a better relationship or be more successful at work, is understand the science, number one. Change your habits, number two. And go explain it to somebody else, number three.

• 50:44Ryan Hawk?

  Teaching is like the greatest tool in the world for learning.

• 50:48Speaker 01

  Oh yeah.

• 50:48Ryan Hawk?

  Every leader I work with, I'm like, when is the next training you are leading? When is the next meeting where you're going to teach somebody something? I don't care what it is.

• 50:56Speaker 01

  Oh yeah, totally.

• 50:57Ryan Hawk?

  Put yourself in the position, I mean, you're a teacher, right? This is what you do for a living. You also teach through your books. But I feel like if you really want to learn about something, like you really want to know yourself and you care, like you actually care to be good at your craft, teach it. Because then you're going to, you're going to for sure gain an understanding both in the prep process, right? To get ready, to make sure that you do a good job. Then you actually do it and then you usually get feedback afterwards. And that loop is where a lot of learning happens.

• 51:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, there's in, in the medical school at Harvard, they have a saying, when you're in a surgical residency, to become a surgeon, watch one, do one, teach one.

• 51:36Ryan Hawk?

  Hmm.

• 51:37Speaker 01

  Watch a surgery, do a surgery, explain a surgery. That's how you become, and that's my, my father was a math professor, most brilliant man I ever knew. And he said that that's really how it worked. When there was some new thing he needed to understand, he would learn the science, he would learn the theory, he would do a whole bunch of problems and then he would teach a class in it and then it would be his.

• 51:59Ryan Hawk?

  Watch one, do one, teach one. This hour's flown by, Arthur. I asked you this last time, but I'm asking you again because you grow and learn and improve. You're meeting with one of your Harvard grad students. Okay. So they're, you know, smart people. They want to leave a positive dent in the world, but they're not exactly sure how they're going to do it yet. What are some general pieces of life slash career advice you give to that person once they're leaving Harvard?

• 52:22Speaker 01

  You know, there are some basic principles and there's a lot that you can do. Some of it is specific to the person, but there's kind of this, you know, the rule of thumb is to not trust your impulses. You've got three basic impulses that are almost right, but they're actually a little bit wrong to become a happier person. Your impulses are to love things, use people and worship yourself. Those are your impulses.

• 52:47Ryan Hawk?

  Really?

• 52:47Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah, yeah. I was like, love things, like more stuff, more stuff, more stuff. Cause mother nature says more resources means you're going to be more successful through the winter and get more mates. Use people because you know, you want to climb on top of people and use them for your gratifications, what people do, because we're egomaniacs and narcissists. And number three, worship yourself because you're the center of the world. You're the center of the universe. That's what mother nature tells you. But those are lies. That are just close enough to the truth that we believe them. Here's the truth, just move the nouns and verbs around, and here's the formula. Use things with pleasure and abundance, man. I think, I mean, I got, I'm a capitalist. It's great. I want an abundance world. That's what I want. Use things, but don't love them because love is only for people.

• 53:32Speaker 01

  Love people, and last but not least, worship the divine. And that's a different thing for different people. I get it. I got my version, but people have their version, something bigger than you, something transcendent to you. And if you can remember that, use things, love people, worship the divine. Everything will go well for you in life.

• 53:49Ryan Hawk?

  God, this was the tightest hour ever, man. You killed it. The book is called The Happiness Files: Insights on Work and Life. As we already said, book's already out, book's already hit the list. It's crushing it, you know, I cited 2% of it. It is really, really good. I highly, highly recommend people read it and then most importantly, take action on it and you'll be better for it. Arthur, I love this man and I'm excited for us to continue our dialogue as we both progress, man.

• 54:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, baby. Thank you so much. Thank you for the, and congratulations on the success of the show. Part of it is because you deserve it, but I'm mostly congratulating you because I'm glad for the impact that you're having on the world. You're making the world a better place and I appreciate that a lot.

• 54:31Ryan Hawk?

  That's really cool, especially coming from you, man. I really appreciate that. Thanks so much, man.

• 54:34Speaker 01

  Thanks. See you soon.

• 54:39Ryan Hawk?

  It is the end of the podcast club. Thank you for being a member of the end of the podcast club. If you are, send me a note, [email protected]. Let me know what you learned from this great conversation with Arthur Brooks. A few takeaways from my notes, watch one, do one, teach one. The best way to learn something is to watch it, then do it, and then teach it. That is a great flywheel to become a learning machine. Then the progress principle, do not fall prey to the arrival fallacy. You never arrive. You're always becoming. The reward for the work.

• 55:20Ryan Hawk?

  Is that you get to keep doing it. Then I love this life slash career advice. Our initial impulse is to love things, use people and worship yourself. Hmm, that's wrong. Instead, we should use things for pleasure. Love people and worship the divine. That is not our initial impulse. We need to understand that so we can flip it and do it right. Once again, I want to say thank you so much for continuing to spread the message and telling a friend or two, hey, you should listen to this episode of the Learning Leader Show with Arthur Brooks. I think it'll help you become a more effective leader because you continue to do that. And you also go to Spotify and Apple Podcasts and you subscribe to the show and you rate it

• 56:04Ryan Hawk?

  hopefully five stars and you write a thoughtful review by doing all of that. You are giving me the opportunity to do what I love on a daily basis, which makes me very happy. And for that, I will forever be grateful. Thank you so, so much. Talk to you soon. Can't wait.