HAPPINESS PROFESSOR: How to Discover the Meaning of Your Life with Oprah and Arthur C. Brooks

What is the true meaning of your life? Does your life have purpose? Are you living a life you love? These are questions many people quietly wrestle with in a time when more individuals report feeling lonely, anxious and uncertain about their place in the world. Oprah is back with the Harvard Happiness professor and #1 New York Times bestselling author Arthur C. Brooks. They explore his latest book The Meaning of Your Life: Finding Purpose in an Age of Emptiness. Arthur explains why so many people today feel stuck in what he calls an “age of emptiness,” and reveals the modern traps that can make life feel like a simulation of endless distraction, doom scrolling and procrastination. These leave people disconnected from their deeper purpose. Oprah and Arthur take questions from listeners including a college freshman caught in what Arthur Brooks calls “the doom loop" struggling to break free from constant scrolling while searching for a sense of direction. The episode also checks in with several of Arthur Brooks’ former students who share how they found meaning through serving others, pursuing achievement with intention and redefining success beyond personal gain. BUY THE BOOK! Buy Arthur Brooks’ new book The Meaning of Your Life: Finding Purpose in an Age of Emptiness: https://amzn.to/4w1w48L And and to take the quizzes discussed in this episode go to www.themeaningofyourlife.com https://hub.arthurbrooks.com/meaning-of-your-life-event-registration During his conversation, Arthur Brooks stated that “animals like Koko never ask questions,” however The Gorilla Foundation / Koko.org has brought to our attention that Koko frequently asked questions. This video, titled “Koko Has a Question,” shows her curiosity and her ability to communicate using ASL to seek new information. https://youtu.be/cdzh32l8IuI 00:00:00 - Welcome Arthur Brooks, author of ‘The Meaning of Your Life’ 00:03:40 - Why he took on the meaning of life 00:04:30 - How campus life changed 00:05:29 - Happiness is a combination of 3 things 00:06:20 - The meaning of the meaning of life 00:09:40 - 5 explanations for why things happen 00:16:28 - What is a doom loop 00:17:50 - Finding meaning and happiness 00:24:26 - Creating impact outside of your own life 00:30:50 - Using success in service to others 00:33:00 - How the sides of our brains work 00:38:15 - Redefining your meaning 00:40:10 - How to use your suffering as part of your calling 00:43:25 - What is moral beauty 00:49:00 - How to stay present to the big questions 00:52:00 - How meaning found Arthur Brooks Follow Oprah Winfrey on Social: https://www.instagram.com/oprahpodcast/ https://www.facebook.com/oprahwinfrey/ Listen to the full podcast: https://open.spotify.com/show/0tEVrfNp92a7lbjDe6GMLI https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-oprah-podcast/id1782960381

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

• 0:00Oprah Winfrey?

  And you describe the problem as a doom loop. You say it is. You're on campus every day. What are you seeing from your students on campus?

• 0:07Speaker 01

  A lot of people who are bored or anxious, they drink too much alcohol because it temporarily relieves their boredom and anxiety. The problem is it comes back with a vengeance. You can get into a doom loop with booze. You get into a doom loop with gambling, with lots and lots of things in life where it helps you a little and then it hurts you a lot. And it creates the problem it's supposed to solve. And so you do it more. That's how doom loops work. And the same thing is true with technology.

• 0:30Oprah Winfrey?

  And the average American looks at their phone 205 times a day. That's 13 times per waking hour or more than once every five minutes. Are you in that group? I would definitely say so. And he says, "The answer is not because they are addictive. It is that people are bored out of their minds."

• 0:57Oprah Winfrey?

  Hi, everybody. Welcome to the Oprah Podcast. I'm out of the teahouse on a trip to beautiful New York. And it's always so great to be in this vibrant city. I wanted to ask you all to take a moment to think about how you would answer these questions for yourself, whether you're driving in your car right now or on a walk or hike right now or in the kitchen doing whatever you do there. I wonder if you can get still just for a second and ask, "Am I living a life I love? Do I feel my life has purpose? Am I living a life I love? Do I feel my life has purpose? And here's the biggie. What is the true meaning of my life?

• 1:42Oprah Winfrey?

  So I know these are intense questions. And if you don't have the answers, don't worry because you're not alone. We have read that in the past decade, there's been an upsurge in people reporting that life feels for them meaningless. That's a word that people actually use, as well as a rise in loneliness, in anxiety and depression. So what is the key to finding the meaning of your life? How do you live a beautiful life you love? My guest is somebody who may have the answers for you. I know for sure he's certainly done the research for you. And he's one of the best people who can guide and help you find for yourself along this path some happiness and some meaning.

• 2:27Oprah Winfrey?

  Arthur Brooks is a world-renowned social scientist who studies happiness. His class at the Harvard Business School always has a waiting list. His columns for the Free Press are a must-read. And now he's an expert contributor for CBS. In 2022, Arthur's book, From Strength to Strength, debuted at number one on the New York Times Bestseller List. A year later, Build a Life You Want, a book we co-authored, also debuted at number one. Now Arthur and I are talking again, this time to discuss his latest book, The Meaning of Your Life: Finding Purpose in an Age of Emptiness. The Harvard happiness professor and number-one New York Times bestselling author. Isn't it good to say that about yourself?

• 3:06Speaker 01

  It does, and it's even better because the number-one New York Times bestselling book was co-written with you.

• 3:10Oprah Winfrey?

  Oh, thank you. It's a book we did together. But this book is called The Meaning of Your Life: Finding Purpose in an Age of Emptiness. Welcome back, Arthur Brooks.

• 3:23Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 3:23Oprah Winfrey?

  I mean, I say you are a bad dude. You're gonna write a book on the meaning of life.

• 3:27Speaker 01

  It's daunting.

• 3:28Oprah Winfrey?

  I mean, that is the number-one question. And you are, you have the nerve.

• 3:32Speaker 01

  I know.

• 3:33Oprah Winfrey?

  Arthur Brooks.

• 3:33Speaker 01

  It's some nerve, I know, I know.

• 3:35Oprah Winfrey?

  You got it to take it on.

• 3:36Speaker 01

  I tried to avoid it for the longest time. I mean, I knew, it was on my mind, it was on my heart. I thought, I'm not a philosopher.

• 3:42Oprah Winfrey?

  Yeah.

• 3:43Speaker 01

  But then I started seeing the science. And once one plus one equaled two and started to add up with respect to what was actually happening in our society, I started to understand it better. That's when the book actually came out. But I've been working on this for five years.

• 3:54Oprah Winfrey?

  Really?

• 3:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:55Oprah Winfrey?

  And so when did this, you called this the hardest book that you've ever written. No surprise when you were tackling, actually, the meaning of life. And you've been working on it for five years. Why did you want it written now?

• 4:10Speaker 01

  I wrote it now because it was actually ready. But I started seeing the problem when I came back to the university. I was gone, I'm an old-time college professor, but I was gone for a long time. I was running a company for 11 years as a CEO. And during that time, I wasn't paying very much attention. I left academia in 2008. I came back in 2019, and the world changed while I was gone. A lot of people know what I'm talking about right now, who are watching us right now. In 2008, university life was better than ordinary life. You're falling in love, you're making friends, you're studying crazy new ideas that are blowing your mind. And in 2019, I came back and there was more depression than I'd ever seen. There was more anxiety, there was more loneliness, there was more anger on campuses. And I thought, this is crazy.

• 4:53Speaker 01

  This is worse than the life outside than I would see. And I said,

• 4:56Oprah Winfrey?

  In 2019, that's pre-COVID, right?

• 4:58Speaker 01

  That's pre-COVID, but boy, it sure was a hard time in the lives of university students. And for that matter, for people under 30, something happened during that decade. So, you know, I'm a scientist. I'm going to be like Sherlock Holmes here. I started getting on the case, right?

• 5:12Oprah Winfrey?

  Say, what happened during that decade?

• 5:14Speaker 01

  Exactly right.

• 5:14Oprah Winfrey?

  Okay, sum it up for us, what happened?

• 5:16Speaker 01

  So what happened was something changed in the way that people were living that somehow put a blockage in their happiness. Now, you and I both know that happiness is a combination of three things. Enjoyment in life, satisfaction with your accomplishments, and the meaning of life. So I started looking at it. Enjoyment, same as it's always been. Young people enjoy life probably more than you and I do.

• 5:39Oprah Winfrey?

  That's right.

• 5:39Speaker 01

  Satisfaction, among my students at Harvard, super high. They have tons of achievements. They're strivers. But meaning, when I started talking about meaning, boy, their faces really fell. And I started looking at the data.

• 5:51Oprah Winfrey?

  So people have satisfaction.

• 5:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 5:53Oprah Winfrey?

  They certainly have enjoyment.

• 5:55Speaker 01

  Right.

• 5:55Oprah Winfrey?

  Outdoing all the things and more things to even do.

• 5:58Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 5:58Oprah Winfrey?

  Okay. But more and more people started telling you there was no meaning to it.

• 6:03Speaker 01

  I don't know what I meant to do. My life feels meaningless. And it turns out the data backs it up. The number one predictor of being depressed and anxious under 30 is saying, my life feels meaningless.

• 6:14Oprah Winfrey?

  Okay, so in the book, you begin the book by actually defining meaning, which I thought was a good thing. So break it down for us.

• 6:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, the meaning of meaning. And that's one of the reasons it took me a long time to write this book. Because, you know, I mean, that sounds like the punchline to a cartoon in The New Yorker or something. The meaning of life is too big right now. It turns out that meaning is really a combination of three things. Three questions, three why questions in life.

• 6:37Oprah Winfrey?

  Yes.

• 6:37Speaker 01

  The first is called coherence. Why do things happen the way they do?

• 6:41Oprah Winfrey?

  Yes.

• 6:41Speaker 01

  You gotta have an answer to that. Some people answer it like you and I are religious people and we believe in science. Science and those are great ways to answer the why do things happen the way they do. Some people, they resort to conspiracy theories for that.

• 6:53Oprah Winfrey?

  Yes.

• 6:53Speaker 01

  And so the people who are watching us.

• 6:54Oprah Winfrey?

  Too many people.

• 6:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, and when when people who are watching us, they have a relative who's gone down the rabbit hole on the internet, really into conspiracy theories, that's a cry for help about meaning. That's what it is. So you can yell out of a say, you idiot. Why don't you respect science? No, no, no, no, they're unhappy because they lack meaning and that's because this coherence thing is missing. You need to meet that with love and give them a better solution for coherence. That's number one.

• 7:18Oprah Winfrey?

  Okay, right.

• 7:19Speaker 01

  Number two is purpose.

• 7:21Oprah Winfrey?

  Yeah.

• 7:21Speaker 01

  And purpose is something to do. Purpose is goals and direction. Why am I doing what I'm doing? A lot of people can't answer that. They feel like they're going in circles, kind of like a cruise ship. You're not going from one place. Humans are made to get someplace. And that's a really important idea for the meaning of life. If you don't know why you're doing what you're doing, no purpose, no meaning, no happiness.

• 7:44Oprah Winfrey?

  Okay, so number one is.

• 7:45Speaker 01

  Coherence.

• 7:46Oprah Winfrey?

  Coherence.

• 7:46Speaker 01

  That's why my, why things happen the way they do. Number two is purpose. Why am I doing what I'm doing? And last but not least, this is the big one, it's significance. Why does my life matter and to whom? You know, if you don't know why your life matters, you know, and it, which basically means you don't have love in your life.

• 8:02Oprah Winfrey?

  Yeah.

• 8:03Speaker 01

  Cause your life matters to people who love you.

• 8:04Oprah Winfrey?

  That's right.

• 8:05Speaker 01

  Your life matters to God.

• 8:06Oprah Winfrey?

  And it's also, Arthur, the one thing that I learned all those years on the Oprah show, that everybody is looking for significance. They're all looking to know that that what I say matters, you see me and that I matter. That's the, that's the number one thing.

• 8:19Speaker 01

  And this is something that you've done in an extraordinary way, that when somebody talks to you who doesn't even know you, you see them. I've been out in public with you. And everybody wants to talk to Oprah Winfrey and you look at them in the eyes. They get a little bit of oxytocin, that neuropeptide, they feel significant because you actually see them. You give them a little bit of meaning. That's a gift. That's an incredible gift.

• 8:41Oprah Winfrey?

  Yeah, we all have the ability to do that with everybody.

• 8:43Speaker 01

  But in this society, you know, we don't really look at people, we don't really pay attention to people. So, so what do people need in life? They need an explanation for what's going on. They need a direction and set of goals and they need to be seen. That's meaning.

• 8:57Oprah Winfrey?

  Yeah, you know, we now live in this age where everybody just thinks you can Google it.

• 9:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 9:02Oprah Winfrey?

  The meaning of life, literally, the meaning of life, you can Google it, you can chat GPT it, you can look it up and there it is.

• 9:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 9:10Oprah Winfrey?

  Explain what we need to do to start. On page 76 of The Meaning of Your Life, Arthur Brooks provides a quiz to readers. It's the same one he gives to his students at Harvard Business School. Arthur writes, "Think deeply about what exactly you do believe and why. Consider five alternative explanations for why things happen in life." He asks, "Do you believe things happen because of the decisions I make freely? Things happen because of decisions others make? Things happen because of the determined physical properties of the universe? Things happen because of the will of a higher being? Things happen out of sheer randomness? What do you believe? Cross out those you reject completely,

• 9:54Oprah Winfrey?

  then put a number in front of the others from most to least important." The author says, "When you do this, you will find a heightened sense of the true meaning of your behaviors and your actions, allowing you to work on your habits and then alter them to be consistent with your beliefs." Is that where we began to help determine?

• 10:14Speaker 01

  Questions are everything. And here's the weird thing. Remember when we were kids, there was this really famous gorilla named Coco? Remember Coco the gorilla? And Coco the gorilla was really famous because this primatologist named Penny Patterson in California trained this gorilla to have a vocabulary of a thousand words in sign language. And so Coco the gorilla, I mean, had an obituary in the New York Times. I'm not going to have an obituary in the New York Times. Had covers on the National Geographic, kids' books, because it kind of blurred the lines between people and animals a little bit. But it turns out it didn't because there's one thing that Coco the gorilla never did, not once. She never asked a single question. The essence of being fully alive as a human is not answering questions. A computer can do that.

• 10:53Oprah Winfrey?

  Or not memorizing words. Yeah, not having the vocabulary.

• 10:56Speaker 01

  It's asking questions. That's what it means to be a fully alive, is to be a curious person about the big questions that actually don't even have answers.

• 11:04Oprah Winfrey?

  And most importantly, what you emphasize in The Meaning of Life is the questions that you are willing to ask yourself.

• 11:11Speaker 01

  Exactly right. Which of these big questions? And here's the thing. It's a meaning question if you can't Google it. If you can Google a question, that just means it's a mechanical thing with a complicated answer. And that's what ChatGPT does. That's the reason that AI will never make us happier, is because all it does is the same thing that Coco the gorilla did, except better, which is answering basic questions like, "What do you want for lunch?"

• 11:37Oprah Winfrey?

  In the introduction, I love this, that you write, "There actually is something missing in people's lives, and people are really wasting huge amounts of time in this simulated life."

• 11:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 11:54Oprah Winfrey?

  Explain what you mean by that.

• 11:55Speaker 01

  So, this is funny, because when I do research, you know, back in the old days, economists would talk about markets and all that. Then they'd go walk around factories and talk to workers. So that's the right way to do research. Look at the data and do the analysis and be a wonk. But then go talk to the humans. And so this is what I do. I start doing a lot of interviews of people and listen to the words that come out of their mouths. The first set of words that come out of their mouths is this thing about meaning. That's how... But then, when the penny really dropped for me, I was talking to this guy, 27 years old, and I said, "Yeah, my life feels meaningless." He was kind of flat in his affect, right? And I said, "Well, tell me about your day." And he said, "Ah, you know, I get up, and the first thing I do is I look at my phone, and then I go to work." That's on Zoom. And then he says, "And after Zoom work, after all day, you know, I look at my dating profile, and you know, maybe I swipe right, you know,

• 12:39Speaker 01

  I'm dating online, and I see all my friends on social media." And then I like to, you know, I do a lot of gaming because it gives me a sense of accomplishment. And he's sitting there, and he says this thing, and boy, it really rocked my world. He said, "It feels like I'm living in a simulation." Because he is. Because we are. You remember that old movie, The Matrix?

• 12:59Oprah Winfrey?

  Mm-hmm.

• 13:00Speaker 01

  That was 27 years ago. So it was a long... I know, I know, the time passes. But that was way before AI. But the plot of that movie is that there's a mechanical artificial intelligence, a supercomputer, that's running all of humanity, taking the energy and attention of humans, and it's placating them by simulating a kind of a pleasant life, where they live in pods. Oprah, we're living in The Matrix. And that's a problem, because what that's doing is it's simulating a real life in the way that we use technology, the way that we overuse technology. But you know the one thing you can't simulate? It's the meaning of your life. That's something you gotta live in real life.

• 13:36Oprah Winfrey?

  And I love the way you titled it too. You didn't say the meaning of life.

• 13:40Speaker 01

  No.

• 13:40Oprah Winfrey?

  But it's the meaning of your life. And what I liked about the book, among other things, are the questions that you force us to ask ourselves, like, why things happen the way they do?

• 13:52Speaker 01

  Right.

• 13:53Oprah Winfrey?

  And why, you know, am I doing what I'm doing?

• 13:57Speaker 01

  Right.

• 13:58Oprah Winfrey?

  Right?

• 13:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 13:59Oprah Winfrey?

  Yes.

• 13:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, and people don't ask themselves those questions very much. And by the way, ChatGPT is never gonna give you the answers to that.

• 14:04Oprah Winfrey?

  Yeah.

• 14:04Speaker 01

  Because it can't.

• 14:05Oprah Winfrey?

  It's interesting. You scored differently than I scored. You talk about your score. For mine, it was universe, it was God first.

• 14:12Speaker 01

  Yes, just like me.

• 14:13Oprah Winfrey?

  Yeah.

• 14:13Speaker 01

  Just like me.

• 14:14Oprah Winfrey?

  But I was four, three, and you were four, one. I was four and then whatever the answer to it was.

• 14:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. So it's interesting. So I'm a son of my father. And so what we're referring to, there is this, the question of why things happen the way that they do. And there's a lot of possibilities.

• 14:27Oprah Winfrey?

  Yes.

• 14:28Speaker 01

  Because God made it that way. Because, you know, people do things that they do because the universe preordains it. There's tons of randomness.

• 14:36Oprah Winfrey?

  Random was my last thing.

• 14:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. So my dad was a statistician, a PhD biostatistician. He believed in randomness in the universe. But he was a super strong Christian, too. And so he said, you know that, he said, you know what the, you know what the greatest thing that God ever created was? And I said, what? And he said, miracles. And you know what miracles are? I said, no, Dad, tell me what miracles are. He said, long-tail events. Now, what that means is, random things that don't happen very often. That's how he thought God made miracles. And so here's the point. None of this stuff is incompatible. You can believe in God and believe in randomness. Because you believe that God made the universe in this wonderful way.

• 15:13Oprah Winfrey?

  Yeah.

• 15:14Speaker 01

  That let things happen, let the chips fall where they may. But you gotta think about it.

• 15:17Oprah Winfrey?

  Everybody needs to take that test. Get the book just to take that test. I love that. And I also love the test about where do you stand in terms of presence and searching. Beginning on page 12, Arthur Brooks offers a quiz that can show you how much you know about the meaning of your life compared to what you are still searching for. Your results place you in one of four categories: hopeful wanderer, lost in place, relentless seeker, or happy homebody. That's me for sure. You can take this test at themeaningofyourlife.com.

• 15:49Speaker 01

  That's a quiz to find out how well you're doing it. Because, you know, if you're gonna be in the search for meaning, you gotta know where you're starting.

• 15:55Oprah Winfrey?

  Right.

• 15:56Speaker 01

  To end up in California, you better know how far you are from California is what it comes down to. And so there's a test that does that.

• 16:03Oprah Winfrey?

  So, social psychologist and author Jonathan Haidt and I have had many discussions, you all have seen them here, about the harmful effects technology is having on young people. And you quote his research in your book, and you describe the problem as a doom loop, you say it is. You're on campus every day. What are you seeing from your students on campus?

• 16:24Speaker 01

  What I see is that people self-soothe using technology. And there's a reason for that. People distract themselves all the time. Now, this is nothing new. A lot of people who are bored or anxious, they drink too much alcohol, because it temporarily relieves their boredom and anxiety. The problem is, it comes back with a vengeance. You can get into a doom loop with booze. You get into a doom loop with gambling, with lots and lots of things in life, where it helps you a little and then it hurts you a lot, and it creates the problem it's supposed to solve, and so you do it more. That's how doom loops work. And the same thing is true with technology. When people, they're bored, or they're anxious, or they're stressed, or they're lonely, the first thing they do is they pull out their phones, and they become very, very addicted to it. The trouble is, it makes things worse. The more you binge on it, the worse it gets, and that's a doom loop. And you gotta clip

• 17:07Speaker 01

  that doom loop. You gotta get out of the doom loop, is what it comes down to, like anything else. I mean, if you go to the doctor and say, "I can't stop drinking," he's not gonna say, "Well, let's deal with the underlying problems that make you drink." I hope your doctor does that, too, but the first thing he's gonna do is to try to get you to stop drinking.

• 17:23Oprah Winfrey?

  Absolutely.

• 17:23Speaker 01

  You gotta get out of the doom loop.

• 17:25Oprah Winfrey?

  Coming up, are you or a young person in your life trapped in what Arthur Brooks calls "the doom loop"? We'll meet some listeners who say they need his advice, next.

• 17:36Speaker 02

  This episode is brought to you by HBO Max. For your awards consideration, HBO Max presents Rooster. Starring Steve Carell, this new comedy series focuses on the complicated relationship between a successful author and his daughter. Don't miss the series IGN called "Hilarious and Brilliant." Rooster is streaming on HBO Max. Watch now.

• 17:57Oprah Winfrey?

  Welcome back to the Oprah Podcast. I'm with the Harvard happiness professor himself, social scientist and bestselling author, author Brooks. We are discussing today his latest book, The Meaning of Your Life. That's a big topic. Let's get back to it. So we have listeners with questions for Professor Brooks. I love calling you Professor Brooks.

• 18:19Speaker 01

  I love hearing it.

• 18:20Oprah Winfrey?

  Max is a freshman at Fairfield University in Connecticut. Hi there, Max. You told my producers that you are trapped in a loop of procrastination and doom scrolling. Tell us about it.

• 18:32Speaker 03

  Yeah, so pretty much I went through like, I mean, obviously, last year I was in high school still. I was kind of going to school all day, every day. I was, had this like structure, this built in structure. It was kind of mandatory in a sense. And then even that continued throughout the summer. I worked at an oyster farm. And like that, like, structure was still there where I wasn't kind of just like, I didn't, I didn't have an excessive amount of free time compared. But then like, even like, I feel like I know it's a super fast when you get to school. Like, I am kind of just like, sitting around most of the day, twiddling my thumbs because I kind of, I realized that, um, it's a bit of a shock how different, how much free time I have. And I think I've kind of, to fill that free time, rather than trying to be productive, like going to the gym,

• 19:16Speaker 03

  I have just turned into like, complete like doom scrolling. I don't know, just complete doom scrolling, nonstop.

• 19:26Oprah Winfrey?

  Okay, I just wanted to read you what Arthur, what professor?

• 19:29Speaker 03

  No, no, Arthur.

• 19:30Oprah Winfrey?

  Okay, okay, okay. Arthur to me, Professor Brooks to everybody, that's okay. Not, he writes on page 30, "Not that long ago, no one held a smartphone," he says. "The first iPhone was delivered in 2007. Today, 5 billion people around the world have one in their pocket, and the average American looks at their phone 205 times a day. That's 13 times per waking hour or more than once every five minutes." Are you in the, are you in that group?

• 20:01Speaker 03

  I would definitely say so.

• 20:03Oprah Winfrey?

  Okay. And he says, "The answer is not because they are addictive. It is that people are bored out of their minds." Would you say so?

• 20:14Speaker 03

  Yeah, I think I also use it as kind of like, I see it as an escape to, in a sense like, I, it's an escape from like this anxiety that I have, or like this depression that I have experienced in the past. And I feel like there's nothing that distracts me more in the moment, or it feels like there's nothing that distracts me more in the moment than technology.

• 20:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 20:35Oprah Winfrey?

  Wow. So you have a question for Arthur?

• 20:37Speaker 03

  Yeah, I was wondering like, how can I find meaningness and happiness while at school?

• 20:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, I appreciate it, Max. And I hear this all the time to begin with, there's nothing weird about you, there's nothing abnormal about that, even though it feels really horrible. Think about it this way, I'm gonna make a prediction about something your great grandfather never said when he came home to see your great grandmother at dinner. He never said, "I had a panic attack behind the mule today." And here's the weird thing about that. To begin with, his brain was working the way it was supposed to work. Our brains were designed 250,000 years ago to work and work hard and have relationships in real life. That's what our brains are designed to do. And when we don't do that, things are gonna be wacky in our lives. And that's what you're experiencing. You're actually looking to self-soothe normal problems.

• 21:24Speaker 01

  I mean, you go away and you go to college and there's anxieties, et cetera, et cetera. And you'll self-soothe in a way that actually torques your brain. It's making your brain work really, really differently than it should. And so the answer is to live more like your great grandfather. Now, you already know this, you worked on an oyster farm. I have a son who, when he was your age, it was the same problem, really addicted to his phone. He went away and joined the Marine Corps. And when you're, he was a sniper in the Marine Corps. And when you're a sniper in the Marine Corps, sorry, no phone.

• 21:54Oprah Winfrey?

  Yeah.

• 21:54Speaker 01

  And it's hard, and it's dangerous, and it's physical. And I'm telling you, it changed his life. You know, he came back after four years of that, married with a kid. And his life has plenty of meaning, is what we actually find. You need to do more hard stuff, Max, is what it comes down to. The problem is this, your great grandfather, who was pretty bored behind that mule, I guarantee you, at the end of his life, he didn't say, "My life was boring," because his life wasn't boring. The problem is, you're trying to get rid of the moments of boredom, one after the other, Result is this adding up to a boring life and that's what's giving you depression. That's what's actually bringing you down. So you need to start doing harder things, picking up heavy things, actually running around. And here's the number one thing I'd recommend. Go serve others.

• 22:37Speaker 01

  Go do something that's actually hard, that requires that you give of yourself. And when you dedicate yourself to those things, the phone will be, maybe not the last thing on your mind, but it certainly won't be the first thing on your mind. You'll rescue yourself. Look, you're completely normal. But the solution is as close as finding a way to make the phone uninteresting to you by being fully alive.

• 23:00Oprah Winfrey?

  Or just being another thing that you use responsibly because it's there for-

• 23:06Speaker 01

  It's just a tool.

• 23:07Oprah Winfrey?

  It's just a tool.

• 23:07Speaker 01

  Just a tool. That's all it should be, is a tool. That's what it comes down to.

• 23:11Oprah Winfrey?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 23:12Speaker 01

  You have, you have the solution, Max. I see it in your eyes. You're gonna be fine. I promise you.

• 23:16Oprah Winfrey?

  Yeah, and it's not something that you can't begin executing today. Because you tell the story in The Meaning of Your Life about this kid who felt meaning when he had just fixed somebody else's garbage disposal.

• 23:28Speaker 01

  Right.

• 23:29Oprah Winfrey?

  Tell, tell that story to Max.

• 23:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, so this is one of the stories that actually begins the book. Where I'm talking to a young man, his name is Mark. And Mark was kind of walking me through his day and, and, and his, you know, he had moved from one city to another and he was working on Zoom and, and the result was, it all added up to he didn't have enough to do and so he spent his whole day, he was winding up spending his whole day online. And it made him feel really, really, really empty. And he wouldn't even date online, he would meet people. And the problem with a lot of dating apps is that you meet a lot of people, but you're not that attracted to them. And that's a kind of another problem that I often talk about. And so he meets this woman and they're having dinner and she starts talking to him about a dumb little problem she has. She says, my garbage disposal's clogged up and I don't know what to do. And he's like really kind of a mechanical guy and he says, I'll fix it.

• 24:15Speaker 01

  And she's like, huh? And he wasn't trying to trick her into letting him come home. He really wanted to fix her garbage disposal. And so he goes to her house and in 30 minutes fixes her garbage disposal. She's blown away, she's super impressed. And he felt intense satisfaction doing this thing for somebody else, using his hands in real life. That's the point, right?

• 24:33Oprah Winfrey?

  Yeah.

• 24:34Speaker 01

  That's the point, Max. And then he goes home to his own house all by himself, and he realizes his own garbage disposal is clogged up, and it has been for a year, and he never fixed it because it's not for somebody else.

• 24:46Oprah Winfrey?

  Yeah. The satisfaction came from doing it for somebody else.

• 24:51Speaker 01

  For somebody else.

• 24:51Oprah Winfrey?

  Yeah.

• 24:52Speaker 01

  For somebody else.

• 24:52Oprah Winfrey?

  I tell you, if you get out of yourself and do something for somebody else, it absolutely changes the way you see yourself.

• 24:57Speaker 01

  I know.

• 24:58Oprah Winfrey?

  Yeah, it does.

• 24:59Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 24:59Oprah Winfrey?

  All the best to you, Max.

• 25:01Speaker 01

  Thank you, Max.

• 25:01Speaker 03

  You too. Thank you for having me.

• 25:02Oprah Winfrey?

  All the best. Thank you. Okay, Madison is a former student of Professor Brooks, and she's living in San Francisco. Welcome, Madison. Tell us what you learned from the professor here.

• 25:13Speaker 01

  Hi, Madison.

• 25:15Speaker 04

  Hi, Professor Brooks. Great to see you. Oprah, nice to meet you.

• 25:19Oprah Winfrey?

  Nice to meet you.

• 25:19Speaker 04

  Thanks so much for having me. I had the pleasure of taking Arthur's class this year at HBS, Leadership and Happiness. Almost everyone really refers to it as the happiness class. I think the first thing we learned on the first day was understanding what true happiness means. It's not just an emotion. It's actually fulfillment and getting to that over time. And I appreciated the pillars that Arthur would bring to you of what actually ultimately drives fulfillment, drives meaning family, faith, and friends. Absolutely stuck out to me as those pillars. And to the point that you all were just speaking about, looking outside yourself, it's easy in business school, especially at Harvard, to be on the hedonic treadmill of just more achievement, more achievement.

• 26:01Speaker 04

  But ultimately, Arthur really created this framework around how we could both achieve for not only ourselves and our goals, but also for the betterment of others and those pillars that we value, the communities that we're in. And so for me, I've really been internalizing post-graduation, entering back into the real world, how I might continue to do that and have a personal mantra of being a door opener, which I try to do through my podcast called The Room Podcast. And the idea is that everyone wants to be in the room where it happens. I'm very excited to be in this room today, but more so being able to do that for others with your platform, with the opportunities you've been afforded. That just keeps you energized to help continue making others feel included and in the room.

• 26:46Oprah Winfrey?

  I hear you have a question for both of us?

• 26:49Speaker 04

  I do. I guess, I loved how earlier you spoke to the fact that you can create little moments of meaning in other people's lives by something as simple as eye contact. Mm-hmm. But of course, you both do that in such a broader stage. I was fortunate to get the Arthur Brooks podcast every Monday, Tuesday in class. And I'm sure that takes from you all, keeping that energy up, still being able to have impact while keeping yourself energized. Do you have any advice for how someone continues to sustainably create impact outside of themselves? Hmm. How would you answer that, Oprah?

• 27:22Oprah Winfrey?

  Um, well, for me, I know that creating impact outside of myself is a part of my calling. It actually is what I was born to do, is to use my life in service to help other people see their lives more fully. That's what The Oprah Show was all those years. That's what all, you know, in the beginning of the young, you know, when I was 21 and 22 and 19, working as a reporter, that's what I was leaning to or moving to and feel fully realized in that now. And this is what I know for sure. I was saying this to a friend recently who has suddenly received a lot of fame and attention, is

• 28:05Oprah Winfrey?

  trying to handle the fame. And the person was saying to me, "Well, how do you, how do you handle going out in public and everybody just wants a piece of you and everybody just wants a selfie and everybody just want..." I said, "What you're doing, when you're doing a selfie, is not actually a selfie. It's validation for that person. It's seeing that person and allowing that person to be seen by you in a way that makes them feel like they matter." And if you are a public figure, that is a part of your service. You are in service to help other people see themselves, not just seeing you as a celebrity, but seeing the celebrity within themselves that matters. And so, for me, it's never, never been an

• 28:49Oprah Winfrey?

  issue because I see that what I do and who I am in the world as a part of the service that is my calling. That's why I've been blessed with this, is to share it. You know, I know what I know because I'm supposed to share it. I'm not supposed to keep it to myself.

• 29:06Speaker 01

  Beautiful, beautiful.

• 29:07Oprah Winfrey?

  What do you, how do you answer that?

• 29:08Speaker 01

  To begin with, I know your work, Madison. You're a phenomenal student, super intelligent, and your career is killing it. I know this for a fact. I keep, I keep in touch. I know this is going really well, but there's a danger behind that, which is that you become a very, very perfect work machine. And that, and that everything that you do is all about success, worldly success, money, power, fame. Why? Because that's how we count our success. That's a really important thing to keep in mind. Now, a couple of different points. And my second point is gonna, is gonna, is gonna, is gonna marry up with what Oprah just said. The first point is that you're not a work machine. You're a human being. You're, you're, you're a child of God. You're made for something besides creating economic value is what it comes down to.

• 29:54Speaker 01

  And that means you need a portfolio of things that you're doing with your life. You need things that are actually creating value and lifting people up, including things that are not acclaimed by the world and don't result in any sort of financial compensation. So that's a really important understanding what leisure is. Leisure is not chilling on a beach. Leisure is really all about cultivating relationships and deepening your understanding of God and learning new things that don't even pay. And you need to be able to have a part of your life that actually does that. And the sooner you do that, the better off you're gonna be, the more endurance your career is actually gonna have. That's point one. But here's the second point, and I learned this from you, because what you just said is not just talk. I've seen you doing this. This is amazing to me.

• 30:36Speaker 01

  People often ask me, you know, what's it like hanging out with Oprah Winfrey? Because we wrote a book together. What's it like working with Oprah Winfrey? It's a case study in how to do it right. You're actually a happy person. Most people who are as successful as you aren't very happy. We know them. They're our friends. They're especially your friends. And, and, and the reason for that is because money doesn't make you happy per se. Power certainly doesn't. And, and fame is the only one of life's rewards that you can only ever be happy in spite of.

• 31:03Oprah Winfrey?

  Yes.

• 31:04Speaker 01

  We got the data on that. Unless you see this as, as an anointing.

• 31:09Oprah Winfrey?

  Yeah.

• 31:10Speaker 01

  You see this not for you, but for somebody else. And this is the first thing to offer up. Your success, Madison, is not for you.

• 31:18Oprah Winfrey?

  Yeah.

• 31:18Speaker 01

  Your success is for other people. You're conforming yourself, I know you're a religious person. You're conforming your will to the will of God. And God's will is to love every other person. And when you have success, you say, what does it mean? What does it mean? How am I going to lift other people up and bring them together with the success?

• 31:38Oprah Winfrey?

  You are so right about that. You're so right about that.

• 31:40Speaker 01

  But you do it. You do it. You live it every single day. That's why you're a happy person.

• 31:45Oprah Winfrey?

  Yeah. And also why so many people we know who are all have incredible levels of success are not happy. Because if you're not using your success in service to something bigger than yourself and something other than yourself, it will eventually, no matter how successful you are, start to make you feel empty.

• 32:06Speaker 01

  It will.

• 32:07Oprah Winfrey?

  Because you've got to give it away. You've got to give it away.

• 32:09Speaker 01

  So when something, next time something really wonderful happens to you, say WWOD, what would Oprah do?

• 32:15Oprah Winfrey?

  No, no, no. But does this make sense to you, Madison? Does it make sense, right?

• 32:20Speaker 04

  This absolutely makes sense. Both your servant leadership mindset that you both described, that you've also been able to use yourselves and showcase is so incredible. And then also rising to the calling. I feel like you both have had specific callings in your heart that you've heard from God, Arthur's point, and then not shying away from them, not being afraid of them, not being intimidated, but stepping into it. So, thank you both so much for that feedback and advice. And thank you so much for helping so many with these thoughts.

• 32:46Speaker 01

  Thank you, Madison. See how great she is?

• 32:48Oprah Winfrey?

  I see how great she is. I see how great she is. And I think this idea of using, no matter where you are in your life, we talked about this a little bit on our last podcast. No matter where you are in your life, using what you do in service to others changes the whole paradigm.

• 33:04Speaker 01

  Right, that's right. I mean, it's interesting because this is how you lift people up and bring them together. Is friendship is a wonderful way, but the admiration of others too. Why do you care if somebody admires you? Because you want to share something that's been good for you with them. Otherwise, it's empty. And by the way, then it'll be taken.

• 33:21Oprah Winfrey?

  Yes, yes, yes. Time for a break. Up next, why Arthur says, "To find the meaning in your life, you shouldn't waste your suffering." I couldn't agree more with him. We'll dive into that next.

• 33:45Speaker 05

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• 34:04Oprah Winfrey?

  Talking with New York Times bestselling author and the Harvard Business Professor, Arthur Brooks. We're discussing his latest book, The Meaning of Your Life. So one of the things Arthur says to get to life's meaning, there's a lot we need to unlearn first and then be able to lean into the mystery.

• 34:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 34:21Oprah Winfrey?

  Lean into the mystery.

• 34:22Speaker 01

  Right.

• 34:22Oprah Winfrey?

  How does that work?

• 34:23Speaker 01

  So this is actually a little bit about the human brain. So I want to talk about the brain here for a second. We have an incredible, complicated, complex, wonderful brain. We're wonderfully made. But one of the most interesting areas of neuroscience that's come about over the past 10 years is called the theory of hemispheric lateralization. I know it sounds fancy, but that's what we do in academia to get tenure. You take a really easy idea and you put fancy words right. Here's what it means. The two sides of your brain do different things. The right side of your brain is all about the why questions, the mystery, the meaning, the stuff that you can't quite describe, but that moves you. So when you hear some music and it makes you sad and it makes you want to cry and you don't know why, that's because the right side of your brain is working.

• 35:07Speaker 01

  It's the mystery side, the meaning side. The left side of your brain is where you deal with complicated problems. You solve stuff, analysis, you know, it all, the engineering solutions. And that's what you're using when you're on your phone. That's when you're using technology. That's the hustle and grind culture of answering every single question is the left side of the brain. The left side of the brain, there's no mystery and meaning over there. It's just how to and what questions all day long.

• 35:32Oprah Winfrey?

  That's the analytical, right?

• 35:33Speaker 01

  That's the problem is when we live in a culture and we use our devices and we live all day long on the wrong side of our brains, we literally can't assess the meaning of our lives because we're not using our brain in the right way.

• 35:46Oprah Winfrey?

  And is it also because, this is why I like The Meaning of Your Life so much, is because we haven't asked ourselves the right questions?

• 35:53Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 35:54Oprah Winfrey?

  And you allow us in this book to ask the right questions?

• 35:57Speaker 01

  And if you do, the right side of your brain will light up. The right side of your brain will become active. And these are the questions that don't have answers that you can put into ChatGPT or Google. Questions like Why am I alive? For what would I give my life? Ask ChatGPT, what would I die for? It doesn't even make sense, right?

• 36:16Oprah Winfrey?

  Yes, right.

• 36:16Speaker 01

  And in point of fact, you might not be able to put your put your your finger on it exactly, and that's okay. Because all the things you care about the most can't be solved. They can only be understood. And I'll give you an example of that, by the way. There's lots of stuff that I solve all day long. I solve all kinds of analytical problems all day long. That's what I did when I was in graduate school, was learn how to solve problems. But the problems that I can't solve are the ones I care about the most. My marriage is a very complex problem without a solution. I've been married 34 years. I mean, I'm so in love with my wife. I'm gonna she's the last person to lay my eyes on as I take my dying breath. But I can't quite tell you why. And we've been married for decades. Anything I say, it'd be like, because she's good to me. So was my third grade teacher, Oprah.

• 37:02Speaker 01

  That's that's not that's the reason that

• 37:05Oprah Winfrey?

  But you all have always had a spiritual connection and bond.

• 37:10Speaker 01

  And that's a right brain connection.

• 37:11Oprah Winfrey?

  That goes beyond words, because you didn't even speak the same language verbally at first. But your heart spoke the same language.

• 37:19Speaker 01

  It was divine.

• 37:20Oprah Winfrey?

  Yes.

• 37:20Speaker 01

  It was divine. It was an uplink to God. And that's how a lot of couples were really religious. They see their marriage as as an antenna to God. Actually, and the reason is because one flesh in real life is not about the stuff that we think it means. It's about the two right hemispheres of the brain working as one.

• 37:39Oprah Winfrey?

  You're a grandfather now. You're both a grandfather and grandmother. How has that changed the meaning of your life?

• 37:45Speaker 01

  It's so incredible. You know, grandparenting is the one thing that's not overrated in life. And it's amazing, because it's not as if, oh, yeah, it's because you're not changing diapers, Brooks. No, that's not it, because I am changing diapers. My grandchildren live with me in my house. Two of them do. We and it's funny, because this is how the left brain helps the right brain. My left brain looked at all the literature and said, you're going to be a lot happier if you have an extended household and you don't have to go visit your grandchildren. You shouldn't visit your grandchildren. You should be real, real close to them. So we had a family meeting. Based on research, and we said, we think it's best if we all live in the same area so we can all help each other an awful lot as a family. Because you know, I don't have very many regrets Oprah, but there's one regret that

• 38:28Speaker 01

  I have, which is that I never got to know my parents that well because I was on the go, go, go. I was living in Europe and I was kind of pursuing my career. I was a musician.

• 38:36Oprah Winfrey?

  Musician, I was gonna say, yeah.

• 38:37Speaker 01

  And, and I thought, you know, they're interesting. My dad was a mathematician, my mother was an artist. They were very interesting people. And I thought, oh, I'll have time. They died. They died young. And it was too late. I didn't get to know them. And, and my kids didn't get to know them very well. They didn't know their grandparents very much. And I said, I'm not gonna screw that up a second time. And so I'm not. So we all moved in a great big moving van to the same area, all the families together. My youngest is 22 and she's still in the military, but, but she'll be back. And my sons, they got married at 22 and 23 and started having kids at 23 and 24. And we're helping, we're helping. And I'm telling you, it's the life in life. The right hemisphere of my brain is fully alive for the first time.

• 39:21Speaker 01

  I, I, it's funny, it's hard to describe how beautiful it actually is. It's the, my heart and my brain are finally united. And it's all the things that the science says, but you don't need the science to know that happiness is love.

• 39:34Oprah Winfrey?

  You don't need the science to know that. Leah, a former student of Arthur's at the Harvard Business School is joining us from Brooklyn. Leah, hi.

• 39:43Oprah Winfrey?

  What was your biggest takeaway? I want to know what your biggest takeaway was from Arthur's Leadership and Happiness class.

• 39:51Speaker 06

  Yeah, yeah, I'd just like to say hi Oprah.

• 39:54Oprah Winfrey?

  Hi Leah.

• 39:56Speaker 06

  And hi Professor Brooks.

• 39:58Speaker 01

  Hi Leah Marie, how are you? Nice to see you.

• 40:01Speaker 06

  So good to be, yeah, so good to see you again. I've just been really enjoying listening to this conversation. It's been very insightful, but I'm a two-time Olympic medalist, Harvard MBA grad of course, where I took Leadership and Happiness. And I've been able to achieve a lot of these accomplishments just through a combination of being goal-oriented, relentless, and historically driven by a need to prove myself. I decided to get my MBA after I retired from swimming because I was like, great, I'm an Olympian, but now what? So let me go to business school to have them tell me what I should do and to also prove to the corporate world that I'm more than an athlete.

• 40:46Speaker 06

  But I realized that as graduation neared and with the catalyst of Professor Brooks' class, it ultimately comes back to you to decide for yourself what you're going to do. So many of us like at HBS or go to HBS to check a box and to have Harvard as that branding like on our resume because it seems like it's something we should do. So my biggest takeaway from Arthur's class is being intentional and taking my career and my life into my own hands, rooted in like frameworks that make it more manageable to reflect and make these decisions for yourself and to not just accept life as something

• 41:29Speaker 06

  happening to you, but something that you have full agency in shaping.

• 41:34Oprah Winfrey?

  Yeah, love that. What's your question?

• 41:38Speaker 06

  Yeah, so my question is, I love how you both are so sure in your calling. I guess, how do you translate everything that you've accomplished so far and even suffered through? I know, Arthur, that's one of the topics that you've covered as well, like meaning through suffering.

• 41:58Oprah Winfrey?

  Don't waste your suffering.

• 42:00Speaker 06

  Right. How have you channeled all that into your calling, into your next step? What did that thought process look like?

• 42:08Speaker 01

  So you're right, Leah. And by the way, for our viewers, Leah's an Olympic athlete who then went to the Harvard Business School, and we've discussed this a lot. She talked in class about how frustrating it is and how empty it is to get to the finish line. And most people would say, if I could only be like Leah and be an Olympic silver medalist, oh, yeah, then I'd be happy. Oh, no, no. If I got an MBA from Harvard, then I'd be happy. Well, she did that, and she's a living testimony to the fact that arriving isn't the deal.

• 42:40Oprah Winfrey?

  Yeah, because then, because arriving, you didn't got to say, then what?

• 42:42Speaker 01

  Exactly right.

• 42:43Oprah Winfrey?

  Now what?

• 42:44Speaker 01

  Exactly right. Exactly right. And she suffered because, and she exposed herself to suffering because satisfaction is the joy you get from accomplishment after suffering. But the suffering is something that we misunderstand today, that people misunderstand. The greatest lie we tell young adults today is that suffering needs to be eliminated. That suffering means something's wrong. I tell my students, "Look, you're studying at Harvard. If you're not sad and anxious, then you need therapy. You're doing something hard on purpose."

• 43:11Oprah Winfrey?

  Yeah.

• 43:11Speaker 01

  And that's the point. Here's how to think about suffering so it will truly bring meaning. Suffering is pain times resistance to pain. That's the formula. That's the arithmetic. Suffering equals pain times the resistance to it. Now, pain is an automatic physiological thing. It's your brain saying, "This is bad." And that means it's sensory, you can feel it, or it's affective, meaning that you don't like it. But that's automatic. Suffering is your struggle that ensues. Your struggle is not automatic. And so, we shouldn't go through life trying to lower the pain level, because pain is inevitable. We should lower our resistance to the pain by saying, "What am I gonna learn from this?"

• 43:53Speaker 01

  And I have a whole set of exercises that I give my students on how to lower your resistance to the pain so that your suffering will be lower. And here's how you know you're doing a good job. Here's how you know you're doing a good job in life. It's when your pain is high, but your suffering is low. You remember my mother-in-law? Remember we talked about my mother-in-law?

• 44:11Oprah Winfrey?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 44:12Speaker 01

  It was the beginning of our book together.

• 44:13Oprah Winfrey?

  Yeah.

• 44:14Speaker 01

  She was bedridden in her last three years of life. It was hard, and she was in a lot of pain. And it was a tough life. But in the most painful part of her life, her suffering was lower because she had lowered her resistance to it. And she found what the meaning of that actually was in giving back to other people. And that's the question that we have to ask. When you're in pain, don't say, "I gotta get rid of the pain right now." No, no, no, no. It's, "What am I learning from this pain?" And so doing, as the resistance falls, you'll find that your suffering falls. And that's a life full of meaning.

• 44:46Oprah Winfrey?

  Thank you. Thank you so much, Leah.

• 44:49Speaker 01

  Thank you, Leah.

• 44:50Oprah Winfrey?

  Thank you, thank you. Let's take a quick break. Arthur Brooks will discuss the meaning of moral beauty. I just love that. And how and where you can find it in your own life. Stay with us.

• 45:03Speaker 07

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• 45:31Oprah Winfrey?

  Welcome back. I'm with renowned social scientist Arthur Brooks discussing his new book, The Meaning of Your Life. If you're enjoying this conversation, go ahead and send it to a family member or a friend. I'm sure they want some meaning in their lives, too. So you devote so many pages to what you call moral beauty. I love that phrase. And I learned from talking with Dacher Keltner on this podcast not too long ago that moral beauty is actually the number one thing that inspires awe.

• 46:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 46:03Oprah Winfrey?

  Can you talk about that?

• 46:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. So beauty is a funny thing. And when I say, okay, think of something beautiful, people often think of, you know, somebody they're attracted to physically. That turns out not to be the kind of beauty that gives you a sense of meaning in life. That leads you to make all kinds of odd decisions, as a matter of fact. Three kinds of actual beauty, however, will illuminate the right side of your brain and show you meaning. It's, number one is natural beauty, beauty in nature. Number two is artistic beauty, like a beautiful song or a painting or a poem. And number three is moral beauty, where you witness acts of selflessness by other people. And that uniquely stimulates the brain to transcend itself in a funny way, to go from, here's what's actually happening, to, wow, that's actually the meaning of life.

• 46:43Oprah Winfrey?

  Wow.

• 46:44Speaker 01

  That's the meaning of life. Now, there's a great psychologist who does that. You know, you and I have a mutual friend, my beloved friend, Rainn Wilson, the actor.

• 46:50Oprah Winfrey?

  Yes, yes, yes, yes.

• 46:51Speaker 01

  His uncle is a psychologist named Rhett Deesner, who actually is the world's leading expert in moral beauty, in moral elevation.

• 47:00Oprah Winfrey?

  Really?

• 47:00Speaker 01

  He's done all of this interesting research on it. He says you have a warmth, a feeling of warmth in your chest.

• 47:05Oprah Winfrey?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 47:05Speaker 01

  It gives you a sense of imagination that you wouldn't have had otherwise. And that's absolutely the case. So one of the things that I I recommend I prescribe to people who are really in a funk. They can't find the meaning of their life as they start looking for moral beauty. Now that starts with the way that you curate your relationships. Start avoiding the gossips around you. Start avoiding the people that are actually trashing other people. Start hanging out with the people that admire others that have positive things to say. That's really important.

• 47:33Oprah Winfrey?

  Yeah, because being around negative people is only gonna make you feel worse.

• 47:37Speaker 01

  And it gets you this like weird sense of relief at first and then.

• 47:40Oprah Winfrey?

  Yeah.

• 47:40Speaker 01

  And then it's empty.

• 47:41Oprah Winfrey?

  Yeah.

• 47:41Speaker 01

  It's emptiness is what comes later.

• 47:43Oprah Winfrey?

  You walk away.

• 47:44Speaker 01

  The second thing is to actually spend your time doing things where you're gonna witness moral beauty. That means do a service trip instead of a beach trip. That's a really beautiful thing to do and feel like, what, I'm gonna spend my vacation putting roofs on houses for poor people? Yep. Yep. That's exactly what I'm saying. And it will be the best vacation you ever had. And the third thing is gratitude, is practicing gratitude. When you practice gratitude.

• 48:08Oprah Winfrey?

  Gratitude is in every practice or principle you're ever gonna have.

• 48:13Speaker 01

  Because it goes against your natural tendencies. We have a natural tendency to be ungrateful wretches all the time. Our brains are wired that way, as a matter of fact.

• 48:20Oprah Winfrey?

  Or just come to accept things as this is the way they are. Instead of having deep appreciation for it all the time.

• 48:25Speaker 01

  And one way to do that is to start the day, you know, you remember Norman Vincent Peale?

• 48:28Oprah Winfrey?

  Of course.

• 48:29Speaker 01

  You know, and he would start each day, you know, with a psalm. This is the day that the Lord has made. I will rejoice and be glad in it. Yeah, it's great. Give thanks for all the beautiful things gonna happen this day. Be grateful for that, but you know what else? Say, and I'm also grateful of the things that are gonna challenge me this day. These things are gonna be hard for me this day because I'm gonna learn and grow from those things. So bring it on.

• 48:48Oprah Winfrey?

  I love that. Bring it on. Ryan was a Fulbright scholar who shadowed Arthur for an entire school year. He's now a PhD candidate in his home country of New Zealand. I was just there. What a beautiful country. Welcome, Ryan. I was just, it's just amazing there. I love it. Every corner you turn is like, oh my God, this is so beautiful. What did you take away from your year with Arthur?

• 49:11Speaker 05

  It's a beautiful country down here at the bottom of the Pacific. Arthur, it's fantastic to see you again and Oprah, nice to meet you.

• 49:19Oprah Winfrey?

  Thank you.

• 49:19Speaker 05

  I was really fortunate to spend a year with Arthur as a part of my Fulbright scholarship.

• 49:24Speaker 06

  And there was so much that I took away from learning from him. But the reason that I wanted to study with Arthur was that I think he's one of the the best in the world at articulating the science of happiness and meaning and living a happy and fulfilling life in ways that are accessible to everyday people. And that's the sort of scholar that I can, that I want to be able to be so I can make a positive impact and share the sorts of things that help me live the happy and fulfilling life with other people around me as well. And I'm sure you agree, Oprah, but I think Arthur is truly one of the best in the world at being able to do that and making sure that the knowledge that we have in scientific articles and research isn't just something that gets hidden away, but is shared with the rest of the world around us as well.

• 50:07Speaker 06

  One of the things that I learned from Arthur, which completely changed how I approach the research and I think about these sorts of things in terms of discerning what I should research and what I should do with my life as well is his framework that he shared for me for finding the paths that are particularly promising. And one of the things that he said was that if you can find a pathway where the contemporary social science, contemporary neuroscience, and ancient spiritual and religious wisdom all point in the same direction, that's the direction to focus on and that's the direction to run in terms of living a happy and fulfilling life and finding your pathway in the world too.

• 50:47Oprah Winfrey?

  Wow. And so have you been able to do that?

• 50:50Speaker 06

  I'm trying my best. I've just been appointed at Victoria University here in Wellington as a lecturer and Arthur teaches his class, Happiness and Leadership, very famously at Harvard Business School. And I'm going to be teaching my own iteration on that class on happiness.

• 51:04Oprah Winfrey?

  Wow, doesn't that make you feel good?

• 51:06Speaker 01

  It feels really good. And Ryan Michin is a great, he's a unique talent. He does work on, on self-actualization and self-realization. That's really, really new. I can't wait to see the new stuff, Ryan. By the way, you can't tell, but he's six foot five.

• 51:17Oprah Winfrey?

  Wow.

• 51:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, he's a big guy. He's a big New Zealander.

• 51:20Oprah Winfrey?

  Did you have a question?

• 51:22Speaker 06

  I do have a question. Arthur very famously asked students to reflect on the two big questions for discerning the meaning of your life. And those two questions are. Why am I alive? And what would I be willing to die for? Or at the very least dedicate my life to? And I think that's an incredible framework for orientating us towards what we think is the meaning of our life. But my question is, when life gets noisy and busy and and on our day to day basis, when we're trying to live our lives, how do we live these questions? How do we stay orientated to these questions on a day to day basis?

• 52:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's a great question, Ryan. I appreciate that because it's easy to have these big highfalutin thoughts and then get stuck in the weeds of moment to moment, absolutely. And this is one of the reasons that we need to have these touchstone questions in our lives front and center. That's one of the reasons that when people have these big ideas, I recommend that they they write them down on a post-it note and put it on their computer screen and look at them first thing during the day. I recommend that couples actually hold each other accountable to these big questions. You know, when I'm too far off base, I'm gonna hear about it from my wife. And I know your wife, you should hear about it from your wife too. And to regularly wire your batteries together and to say, are we living up to the reason that we believe that we've been put on this earth? Are we living as though our lives could be taken from us?

• 52:47Speaker 01

  And if they are, it is for a reason that actually matters. The more that you do that with the person that you love the most, the more meaningful it's gonna be. And then you can go with confidence from moment to moment. But that shouldn't be something you ask just once a year or once in a class. Make sure that the big, big, big things are front and center and you're reminding yourself and reminding each other of these things regularly.

• 53:12Speaker 06

  I love that. I love that. Me and my wife have this little practice of checking in with each other at the end of each week to say, what have we got coming up this week? And what do you need to be supported with? How do we want to love each other this coming week? And those are some easy questions that I can add to this is, are we living up to the meaning of our life in terms of our relationship to one another and what we know is?

• 53:31Speaker 01

  Importantly important to the both of us. Yeah, absolutely. You know, one of the great things about having a, you know, having somebody that you're really close to, somebody who understands you, somebody who is your person, is that you can actually ask these questions together, actually as a couple. In other words, why, why are we on this earth as a couple? What would we give our lives for? What would we dedicate our lives to as, as, as a couple? Not just as, as two individuals.

• 53:55Oprah Winfrey?

  Yes.

• 53:56Speaker 01

  Randomly configured. And so you can answer it for yourself, she can answer it for herself, and you can answer it for yourselves. And soon enough with your, I hope, many, many children, you can answer this as a family as well.

• 54:07Oprah Winfrey?

  Thank you so much, Ryan. Thank you.

• 54:09Speaker 01

  Thanks, Arthur. Nice to see you.

• 54:11Oprah Winfrey?

  Thank you. I have to say that the end of the book really was so moving to me because so many people, myself included, way back in the day, were searching, searching, searching. And some, sometimes the thing that you are looking for most actually finds you instead. And you write, "Life's meaning found me when I was finally in the right place in my life to be found."

• 54:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 54:37Oprah Winfrey?

  What happened?

• 54:38Speaker 01

  So I left, you know, as I mentioned at the very beginning of our conversation, I was running a company and I did that for 11 years. And I was burnt out and tired. And I didn't know what to do. So I did what, you know, many people have done for thousands of years when they don't know what to do. I went for a long walk. That's called a pilgrimage. And people of many religions have been undertaking pilgrimages forever. And there's some weird, almost magical property about pilgrimages. Walk, walk, walk, walk for day after day after day. When they have an intention, they tend to find what they're looking for. I said, okay, okay, I'll try it. So I walked the Comino de Santiago, which is this walk hundreds of miles across northern Spain. People have been, pilgrims have been doing that for 1,100 years. And it finishes up in a medieval city called Santiago de Compostela. And the legend is-

• 55:22Oprah Winfrey?

  Did you do the 100 miles or 500?

• 55:23Speaker 01

  I did, I did the 100, the last 160 kilometers is what I did.

• 55:27Oprah Winfrey?

  Good lord.

• 55:28Speaker 01

  So it was, I wanted to do all 800 kilometers, but my wife said, no.

• 55:32Oprah Winfrey?

  No.

• 55:32Speaker 01

  She said-

• 55:33Oprah Winfrey?

  You don't have that much time.

• 55:34Speaker 01

  It's like, no, we did not have the time. She's like, I just don't have that much will to do that. I have other things I need to do, you know, but, and she knew it was for me. And so that, and that really was enough. And so I started walking and believing, you know, praying and believing that I was going to find what I was looking for. But what I didn't know is it didn't work that way. I got more and more tired and I got more and more sore and I had blisters and- And I was beaten down, and that's what I needed to be. I needed to be properly beaten down because that's when the aperture was open. I had this kind of tenderness. It was like a lobster that had molted. And when that happened, as I was entering into Santiago de Compostela, my meaning found me. I felt that I had discovered it. I didn't find it.

• 56:14Speaker 01

  It hunted me down because I realized what had been there all along, which was my goal in life, my meaning in life, was to lift people up and bring them together in bonds of happiness and love using science and ideas. And after that, after my meaning found me, I did what we're doing right now.

• 56:33Oprah Winfrey?

  Yeah. And you continue to do it.

• 56:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 56:36Oprah Winfrey?

  With this wonderful book. It's always great learning from you, Professor. And the book is, my book is, The Meaning of Your Life. I want to thank my guests for joining us today and for your thoughtful questions, Max and Madison and Lee and Ryan. The book, The Meaning of Your Life: Finding Purpose in the Age of Emptiness. And I hope that this conversation has inspired you to continue to live your best life, or seek it. Seek it with the most meaning, fulfilled life. Thank you so much. Go well. You can subscribe to the Oprah Podcast on YouTube and follow us on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen. I'll see you next week. Thanks, everybody.