Harvard Professor: 4 Secrets to a Happy Marriage (Backed by Neuroscience)

Have you ever felt like life is moving fast, you’re doing everything right, but something still feels off? In this episode, I sit down with Arthur Brooks, a behavioral scientist at Harvard University, to talk about why achievement doesn’t always bring fulfillment, how busyness can pull you away from the people you love, and why meaning usually shows up through struggle. We talk about marriage, faith, ambition, and the habits that actually lead to happiness. This conversation made me rethink what success really is—and what kind of life is actually worth building. Visit his website where you can take the tests we talked about in this episode, https://www.arthurbrooks.com/ Check out Arthur’s new book, The Meaning of Your Life: Finding Purpose in an Age of Emptiness Order The Next Conversation Workbook: https://www.jeffersonfisher.com/workbook Thank you to our sponsors: Cozy Earth. Upgrade Your Every Day. Get 20% off at cozyearth.com/jefferson or use code JEFFERSON at check out. Mill. Try risk-free for 90 days and get $75 off at https://www.mill.com/jefferson and use code JEFFERSON at checkout. ZocDoc. https://zocdoc.com/jefferson to find and instantly book a doctor you love today. BetterHelp. Click https://betterhelp.com/jeffersonfisher for a discount on your first month of therapy. Order my book, The Next Conversation, or listen to the full audiobook today. Like what you hear? Don’t forget to subscribe and leave a 5-star review! Suggest a topic or ask a question for me to answer on the show! Want a FREE communication tip each week? Click here to join my newsletter. Join My School of Communication Watch my podcast on YouTube Follow me on Instagram Follow me on TikTok Follow me on LinkedIn Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Now, more than ever, we need someone on our side. But Rob Whitman? Whitman's votes drove up costs, cut Medicaid, and risked 350,000 Virginians' health care to pay for tax breaks for himself and his donors. He's not on our side. Shannon Taylor will fight corruption, cut taxes, and bring down costs. This November, vote for Shannon Taylor. She's for us. Paid for by HMP, the HouseMajorityPac.com. Not authorized by any candidate or candidate's committee.

• 0:29Jefferson Fisher?

  Have you ever questioned the meaning of your life? Well, today, I am talking with none other than Arthur Brooks. You know him as the happiness expert. He is a behavioral scientist at the Harvard University, has his own lab. He is one of the best people I've ever met. And this is only the beginning of the year. He has a book called The Meaning of Your Life: Finding Purpose in an Age of Emptiness. You'll find the links down in the show notes. This book is releasing very soon. It's already on sale. I can tell you, this conversation is probably one of the most meaningful I've had because of the topics we went into. He's somebody that's most double my age. And so, we get to dive into topics and lessons

• 1:12Jefferson Fisher?

  about marriage, and faith, and family, and imposter syndrome, and why you should be bored. Why boredom is a good thing. You should be probably bored more often. We dive into these things. And what's best is, he gets to use a lot of the science and research that he already used. This is a conversation that you're really going to get a whole lot of value from. You're going to want to make sure and listen. This is the Jefferson Fisher Podcast, where I'm on a mission to make your next conversation the one that changes everything. Wherever you're listening, same as always, I'm going to ask right now that you find, wherever you're listening, and press the button, subscribe. If you're watching it, listening to it, it's totally for free. And what it does is, it really helps me and my family. And it tells the platform that what you're listening to is good stuff. And that's my promise.

• 1:55Jefferson Fisher?

  If you listen and subscribe to these podcast episodes, I'm going to make you a better communicator, and in turn, hopefully, have a better life. My conversation with Arthur was deep, and way more than I ever expected. I know you're really going to like it. So, enjoy the conversation. But have you always been in, lived in Virginia area?

• 2:15Speaker 02

  No, no, I grew up in Seattle.

• 2:16Jefferson Fisher?

  I would say, I thought you were in Seattle area.

• 2:18Speaker 02

  I grew up in Seattle. I've moved 20 times in the past 30. I've been married 34 years. We've moved 20 times together. Every place, man. We lived in Atlanta, we lived in LA, we lived in Syracuse for seven years.

• 2:31Jefferson Fisher?

  Twenty times?

• 2:32Speaker 02

  Twenty times. We lived in Barcelona for off and on for years and years. Yeah, yeah, we're, we can't, I'm in the witness protection program.

• 2:39Jefferson Fisher?

  Yeah, you might as well be. So with that, like you moving all these other places and here you've been married, we'd say thirty.

• 2:45Speaker 02

  Thirty-four years.

• 2:46Jefferson Fisher?

  Yeah. So then what's, what's giving some wisdom?

• 2:49Speaker 02

  What motivates that? Or what wisdom do you want? Actually, we're recording. You want to talk about, want to talk about how to fall in love and stay in love?

• 2:55Jefferson Fisher?

  No, no. It's, it's, I'm, you know, I, we move, oddly enough, we move like every three years.

• 3:02Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:03Jefferson Fisher?

  And so, and we've been married, it'll be fifteen years. This, you know, so still less than half of years.

• 3:10Speaker 02

  You're on your way. Once you pass five.

• 3:12Jefferson Fisher?

  Yeah.

• 3:13Speaker 02

  Five is the, is the witching year.

• 3:15Jefferson Fisher?

  Five is the witching year. I thought it was seven. Was it seven?

• 3:19Speaker 02

  That's the old seven year itch, but it's actually the data say five.

• 3:22Jefferson Fisher?

  Really?

• 3:22Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. And that's a discontent peaks at five and then declines. And the reason is because the couples that stay together, they learn how to stay together. They learn actually how to make each other better and not how to make each other worse. You're making each other worse for the first five years typically.

• 3:34Jefferson Fisher?

  Yeah.

• 3:35Speaker 02

  Cause you're just like dagger strung, there's competition, and the kids are getting between you, no deal, right?

• 3:41Jefferson Fisher?

  Yeah.

• 3:41Speaker 02

  Yeah, for sure. And then after that, it's, it's the couples that stay together, they're like, look, they're looking at the kids, they're like, it's us against them.

• 3:49Jefferson Fisher?

  Exactly. I feel like it gets to a point where it's like, hey, look, okay, I'm not that great.

• 3:54Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:54Jefferson Fisher?

  You know?

• 3:55Speaker 02

  Yeah. And what happens is the couples that really stay together after about five years, typically, the reason they start getting a lot happier after five years is number one, that they bring more positivity to each other as opposed to bringing more negativity to each other, number one. And number two is they tend to get more religious together. And so couples that get more religious at the same time, they get happier and happier and happier. I've seen that about people, couples who pray together. Yeah, so I can give you the, if you want, we can do it on the show, but the sort of- We're just rolling, we're already going. Are we doing, are we rolling? Yeah. The four secrets to- And don't even worry about like- The four secrets to saving, to either saving your marriage or actually having a happier marriage. And based on neuroscience. So number one is when you're, so you've been married 15 years. It's very easy because you're distracted. I mean, like, it's like your life is changing really fast.

• 4:41Speaker 02

  You're like, I don't know what's going on, man. Like I blew up on Instagram. It was not on my bingo card. Right, right, right. But you're distracted and you're a lawyer and you're doing a podcast. You're doing, you have like nine jobs. Yeah. And your wife's super busy because she's practicing law. And how many children you have? We have two. And you're raising two kids? Yeah. And it feels, they're in a certain age, so it feels like 20? Yeah, it feels like you have five kids. Yeah, so the first thing that, the first bad habit you get into is that, believe it or not, it's simple. You stop looking at each other in the eyes when you're talking. The number one way to rekindle your marriage is every time you're looking at her, you're staring at her in the eyes. Now, women have three times as much oxytocin as men, which is a neuropeptide in the brain of human bonding.

• 5:24Speaker 02

  And the reason is because they bond to an infant with eye contact while nursing. And so when a baby is nursing with, with his mom, her mom, the baby is staring into the mother's eyes. And they're both, it's like bonding, this bonding neuropeptide that functions as a hormone, oxytocin. But the whole point is that you get that with anybody who you love. When you're, when you're, your friends, your parents, your kids, and especially your soulmate. This is how you take somebody who you're not related to and make them an akin. Women need more than men. And so men, they forget to look at their wives in the eyes when they talk to them. Now, when you first were falling in love with her, you're like, staring into her eyes, right? And you stop doing that. And that's what a lot of couples do. And so you basically, I'm going to make a note that every time I'm talking to her, which is every day,

• 6:08Speaker 02

  and before we go to bed at night, I'm just going to look at her in the eyes. That's all I'm going to do. And she's going to be like, I don't know why, but I feel so much closer to you. That's why. Yeah. Because you're creating the neurochemical milieu for her to feel the love that she needs. That's number one. Yeah, all right. Number one. I'm just soaking it up. You don't even have to tell her. Yeah. Number two is something that that it's actually more important for women, but for men, too, is always be touching. Is A B T. The A B T rules, always be touching. That's more important for women to spontaneously touch their husbands. I'm not talking about sexual touch. Right, yeah. I'm talking about just touch. So when you're in church, she's holding your hand. When you're watching TV, she's holding your hand. She's always touching you, and men really, really, really need that a lot. Yes.

• 6:50Speaker 02

  Men need the touch. Men need the physical touch. When you're walking together, she slips her hand through your arm like that, and you feel like you're seven feet tall. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's why. That's actually you're getting some of the neuropeptide called vasopressin. That gives it like, I'm the defender. Yeah, yeah. But also, I'm, I'm, she, she loves me. She loves me. She depends on me. She's, she's holding on to me. She's holding on to me. And so that's number two. Always be touching, A B T. And couples, you know, they're married for a long time. They stop touching. You know, they're like walking together, hands in their pockets. Right. You know, they're watching TV on opposite sides of the couch. Nope. And when you're in bed together before you go to sleep and you're talking, looking each other in the eyes, just hold hands. Just hold hands. Number three is stop rehearsing your grievances, which of course there's plenty because you're living in captivity with another person. It's hard.

• 7:36Speaker 02

  And start having more fun. Because fun will outrank grievance almost every time. And there's could be grievances like, my husband is a philanderer. That's not what I'm talking about. Yeah. Right. I'm talking about not abuse or disloyalty or abandonment, but ordinary things of annoyance that come into a relationship. That's like the stuff that's on the beach that you can't see when the tide is in. And then when the tide goes out, that's all you can see. And so you got to make the tide come back in again. That's fun, having more fun, more positive emotion as opposed to rehearsing negative emotion. That's, so we're going bike rides together. We do stuff. What do we like to do together? Yeah. You know, telling more jokes to each other, actually doing more stuff together. That's why date night is so critically important, especially when you've got kids. Doing more stuff together that you both like. And you know, sometimes it'll be like.

• 8:21Speaker 02

  She likes it and he doesn't. Like, one thing that all wives don't know is that their husbands don't want to go apple picking.

• 8:27Jefferson Fisher?

  Yeah, right.

• 8:28Speaker 02

  It's like, no more apple picking. But, but there is stuff that you do like to do together, and every couple does that. Do more of that. And the last is praying together. Praying together is super important. Not, not everybody's religious. And so, you know, maybe it's meditating together. Another way that you can do this is like, reading to each other. So, read to each other at night, like, in bed. So, you're reading to her and she's reading to you. It has a really, very strong, brain-to-brain coupling effect. But praying together is the single most intimate thing you can actually do together is talking to God. And the reason is because what you're saying is, we are united with the divine. The divine is our uniting force. It's like two keys on a nuclear sub to launch the missiles.

• 9:07Jefferson Fisher?

  Yeah.

• 9:08Speaker 02

  That, that's like, your, that, your marriage becomes an antenna to the divine when you do that.

• 9:12Jefferson Fisher?

  I can tell, in, in my own marriage, it's, Sierra feels way more connected. When we share, we might be on a walk after dropping off the kids or something. And I share what God's doing in my life, and she shares what God's doing in her life, or she's reading. And like, that.

• 9:31Speaker 02

  Super good.

• 9:32Jefferson Fisher?

  Oh, my goodness. She, it like, draws a different kind of connection, and, in a way that just watching like, a show together could never.

• 9:39Speaker 02

  Nothing. There's nothing like it. And, you know, it's, it's a very important thing that people in, in a religious marriage. That they, they will acknowledge that what makes their marriage stronger is that their spouse is not number one. That God is number one. God is number one, and you bring me to my number one.

• 9:56Jefferson Fisher?

  Right.

• 9:57Speaker 02

  And my best way to get to my number one is you. And when you're not giving me my love, when you're not giving me your love, I'm not feeling God's love. See, this is the, this is the reason that in every religion, marriage is divine. Marriage is considered to be a divine institution, because for the vast majority of people, the way they understand God is through the love of their spouse. And so, then you realize, it's like, this is a big obligation to be married. When I'm not loving her actively, I'm denying her the experience of God's love, and that's not right.

• 10:25Jefferson Fisher?

  Right.

• 10:25Speaker 02

  That's not right. The best way to experience that every day is actually praying, and, and, and seeing your spouse talking to her number one is super heavy.

• 10:34Jefferson Fisher?

  Oh, yeah.

• 10:35Speaker 02

  It's super deep, and it's like, way more intimate than like, sex.

• 10:38Jefferson Fisher?

  Yeah.

• 10:39Speaker 02

  I mean, people will sleep with strangers, but they won't pray in front of their spouse.

• 10:42Jefferson Fisher?

  Isn't that funny?

• 10:43Speaker 02

  Isn't it funny? And that's because prayer is more intimate than sex.

• 10:46Jefferson Fisher?

  I also find that. There'll be, when you have these kind of conversations, you realize that there are thoughts, like I'll speak for me, there are thoughts that she's having that are way deeper than my thoughts. And so sometimes I'm like, I gotta get my stuff together. Like she's thinking deep and I'm thinking only two layers.

• 11:05Speaker 02

  It's funny because part of it is that, one of the things that women don't understand about, you know, men, because you'll be silent and in thought and she'll be like, what's he thinking about? He's probably thinking about some other woman. He's probably thinking he doesn't love me so much. And you're thinking about, how big would a bear have to be for me to beat that bear?

• 11:21Jefferson Fisher?

  I'm serious. She'll ask me, she'll go, what are you thinking about? While we were driving and I was like, honestly, I was looking at that sign and I thought that L kinda looked a little funny. And I was like, I wouldn't, I wouldn't have that L on that logo.

• 11:33Speaker 02

  What's wrong with it? I was thinking about, if I got a racing stripe on the car, you know, what would it actually look? Something completely trivial. We're very simple. Men are actually emotionally simpler as a general rule than women are. And so when they talk deep, deeply about things like, you know, what we're talking about, here's the meaning of life. Women are actually, they have more talent at understanding the meaning of life than men do. And part of that is just the way that their brains work differently. Women have more developed right hemispheres of the brain, of their brains. The right hemisphere is the hemisphere where you, you apprehend meaning and mystery. The left hemisphere is where you think about how big the bear would have to be. Or how to actually, you know, create an app that will get you, find you the closest pizza at 10pm.

• 12:15Speaker 02

  Technical problems, technical problems. How to and what? How to and what questions are the left hemisphere? Why questions are the right hemisphere, the deep why questions? And women have generally, I mean, not all, I mean, your results may differ. This is the general cost of population, that women have a more developed right hemisphere. And, and so it's really interesting that they're like, why, why, why aren't you thinking about this? Why aren't you thinking about these emotionally important things? Like, I don't know.

• 12:40Jefferson Fisher?

  Right.

• 12:40Speaker 02

  And how old are your kids?

• 12:42Jefferson Fisher?

  They're six and eight.

• 12:43Speaker 02

  They're six and eight. Boys?

• 12:44Jefferson Fisher?

  So my boy, boy's eight, girl's six.

• 12:46Speaker 02

  Okay. So when you're, you're gonna see this in, in let's say in about seven years. So you'll ask your daughter and it's like, honey, how do you feel about that thing that happened at school today? Buckle up, because you're gonna get an hour long discussion. If you ask your son about his emotions, he'll be like, What do you, I don't know. He'll be like eyeing the exits. Not because he didn't want to talk about it, but because you asked him an unanswerable question. Because he's sitting on the left hemisphere and she's sitting in the right hemisphere.

• 13:13Jefferson Fisher?

  Yeah, I thought was, I saw this, um, I forgot which comedian I saw do this. But it was a, it was a story about, he had just gotten a text from a friend and he said, oh, hey, you know, Rob's been in an accident. And his daughter's like, oh, is he okay? And he's like, well, I don't know. He just got, yeah. Was it Foxworthy or was he on that tour?

• 13:35Speaker 02

  I think it was. And, and you know, he talked, she's been in a big accident and keep him in your prayers.

• 13:41Jefferson Fisher?

  That's right. That's right.

• 13:43Speaker 02

  She wants to know.

• 13:44Jefferson Fisher?

  Exactly. And he's like, she's like, is he okay? Or are they all right? Do you know what hospital he's in? He's like, I don't know. I got like every.

• 13:51Speaker 02

  The same answer again and again and again. It's like men are simple in this way, but the whole point is that we complete each other.

• 13:57Jefferson Fisher?

  Yeah.

• 13:57Speaker 02

  We complete each other hemispherically is the whole point. And that's a very, that's a very beautiful thing.

• 14:01Jefferson Fisher?

  Yeah. I don't, we'd be in a bad state without it. I really do.

• 14:06Speaker 02

  Without, without, without women?

• 14:08Jefferson Fisher?

  Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think as like you said, it's not a good thing for men to be alone.

• 14:13Speaker 02

  Men who, there's one statistic that often comes up in my business, which is that, that men over 30 who have never been either married or partnered seriously have a one in three chance of substance use disorder.

• 14:26Jefferson Fisher?

  Really?

• 14:27Speaker 02

  Yeah. And men just can't, they don't do very well out, you know, they don't do very well alone. It's like in the Bible says in Genesis, man is not meant to be alone.

• 14:35Jefferson Fisher?

  Yeah. That's what I was saying. It's like.

• 14:37Speaker 02

  He's gonna blow himself up or drive off.

• 14:39Jefferson Fisher?

  Exactly. Exactly. I'm like, it makes me laugh every time. Cause I read it and I'm like, I think that's the only time I've seen in the, in the Bible where guys like, you know what? Not the best idea for this guy to not be alone.

• 14:51Speaker 02

  This is gonna end poorly.

• 14:52Jefferson Fisher?

  We need to get him something.

• 14:54Speaker 02

  It's like get him somebody who's gonna help him get his act together.

• 14:56Jefferson Fisher?

  Right. And I mean, Sierra is, she thinks. So much more depth and also can show emotion a lot better. And I find there are times in conflict, in arguments, I have a hard time showing emotion, even if I'm feeling it, I have a hard time expressing it. So it's like this, you know, this limited affectivity.

• 15:20Speaker 02

  Right.

• 15:20Jefferson Fisher?

  Where it's like, I have thoughts, but all she's seeing is stoic.

• 15:25Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. What's actually happening is you're thinking more analytically because you're dealing with problems on the what and how to side, which is the left side of your brain. And she's thinking about the deep why. And the deep why has a level of emotional depth. And again, you need both, you actually need both. That's why couples are such a great team when they're working together.

• 15:45Jefferson Fisher?

  Yeah.

• 15:45Speaker 02

  And when they don't work together because they're competing as opposed to collaborating, that's when things fall apart and that's why divorces start to peak at five years.

• 15:52Jefferson Fisher?

  Do you think that who you're married to also affects your career?

• 15:56Speaker 02

  A lot, yeah, a lot. I mean, one of the things that's really bad is when couples are competing professionally with each other. And the way that you compete is you'll say something like, I took care of the kids yesterday, today's your turn. It's like, no, that's the wrong way of seeing things, obviously. And, you know, the truth is that the couples that are the strongest are when you win, she wins, and when she wins, you win.

• 16:16Jefferson Fisher?

  Yes.

• 16:16Speaker 02

  As opposed to when he won, that means, you know, I didn't. And that's not, that's obviously the wrong vantage that you want for you. You need a collaborative relationship, not a competitive relationship. Yeah, for sure.

• 16:28Jefferson Fisher?

  Yeah, I can definitely see where at times where it's whose job is more important.

• 16:33Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 16:33Jefferson Fisher?

  Well, okay, well, I have this on tomorrow night and you have that. Well, look, my stuff, and you start competing in a way that's gonna...

• 16:40Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's problematic.

• 16:42Jefferson Fisher?

  Bad.

• 16:42Speaker 02

  It's a really, really problematic thing, for sure. And, you know, the truth is that there are issues like that and fairness is really important. Respect is really important, to be sure. But, you know, also men and women do best when they recognize that they have significant differences that are evolved differences. You know, our brains are in the current state as of about 250,000 years ago, at the beginning of the late Pleistocene period. And, you know, that's when human beings lived in bands of 30 to 50 Individuals that were kin based and hierarchical. That's how all human beings lived and our brains are are are intrinsically they're they're built to live and under the circumstances. Which explains a lot of the weird things that people actually do. It's like, why do we care so much about social comparison?

• 17:25Jefferson Fisher?

  Yeah.

• 17:26Speaker 02

  Well, because we want to rise hierarchically in the band. Why do we go insane on social media? Why would you check your mentions and and and drive yourself completely crazy because you're trying to rise in a band of thirty people? But you've expanded that to three hundred million people or something and you can't cope with that cognitively. But there are other things as well. So for example, biological females are they have a big investment in rearing children. That we we don't have, men don't have, at least not biologically, you know, we the the deed is done in a couple of minutes. As opposed to it takes nine months and then you're, you know, you have to be responsible for the care of child. So the result of it is that women are a lot more interested in the resource cues and the commitment cues of a mate.

• 18:10Speaker 02

  That's why when women are interested in men, fundamentally, they're most attracted toward resource cues. Now, if you don't have any resources because you're young and poor, that that means potential resources. That's why it's good to have muscles.

• 18:22Jefferson Fisher?

  Yeah.

• 18:22Speaker 02

  That's the reason that young guys want to have a lot of muscles is because what they're showing is that they'll be able to kill an animal and push a plow.

• 18:28Jefferson Fisher?

  Yeah.

• 18:29Speaker 02

  When they get old, they don't know why they want to have muscles at the whole point is and then later on, they peacock with a, you know, a rented Ferrari. Driving down the, you know, the boulevard in Miami Beach.

• 18:38Jefferson Fisher?

  Yeah.

• 18:39Speaker 02

  Because they want to attract girls, but they don't know exactly why they do that. Because they want to show they have resources and that's the reason that pathologies go and go into these relationships too. Or you're fifty eight years old and and you're still trying to bring home as much as much money as possible because you're showing resource cues. To your wife and your wife is fifty eight years old and getting a lot of cosmetic surgeries, so she'll show fitness cues. She'll show fertility cues. So that's what men are attracted to is fertility cues. Fertility cues are heights, height, uh, uh, hips to to waist ratio. Um, which actually shows how fit you are to have babies and whether or not you're you're pregnant. That is like the length of the hair and whether it's shiny, because that shows whether or not that you're healthy.

• 19:23Speaker 02

  The whiteness of the teeth and the whiteness of the of the eyes. Men notice this without noticing it. They don't know they notice this, but these are fitness or these are fertility cues.

• 19:30Jefferson Fisher?

  How interesting.

• 19:31Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. And so that's what happens. And so the result of that is that you can use this in a very good and holy way. Without being like, okay, I'm just, you know, look, I'm just an animal.

• 19:39Jefferson Fisher?

  Right.

• 19:40Speaker 02

  I gotta go for the youngest possible girl. That's stupid. You're gonna be married to your wife forever. But giving her, not inducing her to try to exhibit fertility cues forever, that's unhealthy. And her not to force you toward resource cues, on the contrary. Just give her what she needs and have her give you what you need, what she needs to be adored.

• 19:59Jefferson Fisher?

  Yes.

• 20:00Speaker 02

  Adore her, and what you need is to be admired.

• 20:03Jefferson Fisher?

  Yeah.

• 20:03Speaker 02

  Now, respect, of course, there's table stakes. Right. Love, respect, these are table stakes. But the whole point is the happiest marriages are the ones where you would fight a tiger for her with your hands and only her. And she is amazed that that is the biggest gazelle that anybody's ever dragged into the cave.

• 20:22Jefferson Fisher?

  Right, yeah.

• 20:23Speaker 02

  You're so big and strong, it's gonna feed our family for two weeks.

• 20:26Jefferson Fisher?

  Right.

• 20:26Speaker 02

  And, and that's, those are the happiest marriages.

• 20:28Jefferson Fisher?

  I'll tell her typical, I was like, look, if you just touch me and tell me I'm awesome, like.

• 20:33Speaker 02

  And tell me how amazing I am.

• 20:34Jefferson Fisher?

  That's all I really need.

• 20:35Speaker 02

  Cause you know it's true.

• 20:36Jefferson Fisher?

  Yeah, that's just like, we say that as a joke, but it's always like, hey, look, that's all you can make me super happy by just saying that.

• 20:44Speaker 02

  So for dudes, I mean, who don't, can't quite figure out relationships, and my average student is 28 years old. I mean, I've got MBA students at Harvard, they're, you know, they've mastered business. And they're gonna make a lot of money, and they're gonna be really successful. But romance can be utterly baffling, cause nobody treats, teaches you about that. There's some simple rules. Number one is adore her. I don't care how you feel right now, adore her.

• 21:09Jefferson Fisher?

  Yeah.

• 21:09Speaker 02

  Number two is be admirable.

• 21:11Jefferson Fisher?

  Yeah.

• 21:12Speaker 02

  And, and cause it's hard for her to admire you when you're not admirable. When you're looking at pornography, or you're gaming all night, or you're smoking weed. That's not admirable, and everybody knows that. That might be fun for some people, but it's not admirable. When you're not true to your word, when you're disloyal, when you're unkind to other people, not admirable. And so what does it mean to be admirable? And say it's like. Who would I admire? How would I admire my dad? For example, I'm gonna be that. And so be at adore her, no matter how you feel, adore her. Cause that's an action and a decision. And be admirable and you'll be fine.

• 21:46Jefferson Fisher?

  Is that how you said you've been married 34 years? Yeah. Married, moved 20 times.

• 21:50Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 21:50Jefferson Fisher?

  Would you say the adoration, being admirable, is that the constant? You know, no matter where you're moving?

• 21:56Speaker 02

  And when I'm screwing up because I'm too busy, because I'm preoccupied. I do adore her, but she doesn't see it. That's the problem. The number one way she's gonna feel it is when I stare into her eyes.

• 22:08Jefferson Fisher?

  Yeah.

• 22:08Speaker 02

  And that's how it ties back to the four fundamental rules of how to save. The protocols for saving relationships is that the act of adoration is like if you, when you adore somebody, you're staring into their eyes. I mean, it's like, it's like, she's awesome. She and, and you know, that, that, that shows you're everything, baby.

• 22:26Jefferson Fisher?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 22:27Speaker 02

  Right? And that's, so that's actually how she sees it and how she perceives it neurochemically.

• 22:31Jefferson Fisher?

  You said something a second ago that got my attention. You said that when you're, when you mess up and you're busy.

• 22:36Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 22:37Jefferson Fisher?

  So how does busyness kill connection, especially in communication?

• 22:42Speaker 02

  It distracts you from the more important things. So that's the whole thing. And Stephen Covey used to talk about urgency and importance. So he would say that you, you attend to the urgent, but you neglect the important. And we all have urgent and important things in life and urgent things distract you. And the important things must get done, but you can actually put them off. And you know, it's like your soulmate, she's not gonna like you'd screw up and you come home a little bit late or you're a little bit snippy with her or you know, you're kind of a grump. She's not gonna divorce you for that.

• 23:08Jefferson Fisher?

  Right.

• 23:09Speaker 02

  It's your, your marriage is way more important than your job. I mean, I know I can do, I can, I know you agree, right? It's way more important, right? But it's not more urgent than your job sometimes. And so urgent things are like pecking at you and they're, they're, they're harassing you all the time. And when your whole life is a series of urgent things, you're gonna neglect the important things. And that's why we actually do the things that we don't wanna do. We get into trouble.

• 23:34Jefferson Fisher?

  I find that. When I have some of the hardest conversations with people.

• 23:38Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 23:39Jefferson Fisher?

  And my, my community is really around communication and conversations that.

• 23:43Speaker 02

  You're good at it too.

• 23:44Jefferson Fisher?

  Oh, same for you.

• 23:45Speaker 02

  I mean, you're a, I mean, that's, that's, you didn't know you're going to be on the map of popular culture by doing what you do really, really well.

• 23:51Jefferson Fisher?

  Thank you. No, you have no.

• 23:52Speaker 02

  Talking and arguing and helping people understand and being persuasive.

• 23:55Jefferson Fisher?

  No clue. And I still want to talk to you about imposter syndrome. We're gonna get there. It's.

• 24:00Speaker 02

  In the age of the internet.

• 24:01Jefferson Fisher?

  Exactly. Yeah. It's that I, I find that usually the, it, it corresponds that the harder the conversation about to have with somebody, the deeper we seem to connect.

• 24:16Speaker 02

  Right.

• 24:17Jefferson Fisher?

  In other words, if I'm going through something really hard with somebody.

• 24:20Speaker 02

  Right.

• 24:21Jefferson Fisher?

  That we come out of it somehow closer when I, I, I wasn't expecting that.

• 24:25Speaker 02

  Right.

• 24:26Jefferson Fisher?

  And I was curious if there was any science of, of what you do at Harvard that, and happiness that might lead to say, hey, these are some things that unlock, you know, that depth of connection when you choose to say the hard thing.

• 24:37Speaker 02

  Yeah, it can. And, and part of the reason is because you're actually digging into these big, more meaningful things. So for example, um, one of the best ways for you to make friends quickly when you move to a new place and, and you and I have some experience in this when we move around a lot.

• 24:55Jefferson Fisher?

  It's hard to make friends as an adult.

• 24:57Speaker 02

  Pretend you've been there for 10 years.

• 24:59Jefferson Fisher?

  Okay.

• 24:59Speaker 02

  Pretend you've already been there for 10 years. And that means two weeks after you get there, you start inviting people over to your house. Don't wait for them to invite them. And, and that's where that, after one month, start a Bible study at your house.

• 25:10Jefferson Fisher?

  Yeah.

• 25:11Speaker 02

  Start a book club, whatever your thing is, do that, right? And when you have people over, don't waste time on the nonsense. Go straight to the, go, go deeper, go home. Right? And so ask questions like when you're having dinner with somebody and you're always like, what are you most afraid of?

• 25:26Jefferson Fisher?

  Yeah, that kind of stuff.

• 25:28Speaker 02

  That kind of stuff. You know, it's what it comes. And some people can't handle it. I mean, it's like, this is one of the things that I'm married to a Spaniard.

• 25:33Jefferson Fisher?

  Yeah.

• 25:33Speaker 02

  And so they're not afraid of deep conversations.

• 25:35Jefferson Fisher?

  Barcelona, right?

• 25:36Speaker 02

  Yeah, from Barcelona. And a lot of Americans, they're like, it doesn't feel polite and the whole thing, but it's like. It, you know, if you're uncomfortable, okay, sorry, but you know, we're, we want it, we, we don't want shallow connections. We only want deep connections because life is short.

• 25:50Jefferson Fisher?

  Yeah.

• 25:50Speaker 02

  I don't know. I mean, I'm five years away from when my dad died. I'm already five years after when my mother became demented. I don't know how long life is going to last. I'm not going to waste any time.

• 26:00Jefferson Fisher?

  Yeah.

• 26:01Speaker 02

  I'm going to talk to you. We're going to talk about real things.

• 26:02Jefferson Fisher?

  Right.

• 26:03Speaker 02

  We're not going to talk about like, so how many draft picks you think the Seahawks, you know, no. I mean, like, I, I realize I love the Seahawks, but

• 26:12Jefferson Fisher?

  For sure.

• 26:12Speaker 02

  No.

• 26:13Jefferson Fisher?

  I find that I absolutely resonate with that, especially at this time in my life where

• 26:19Jefferson Fisher?

  if, if I can't go deep with you, sorry. Like, I'm, you're, you're nice. I'll give you a handshake. Yeah, but it's, but that's, you're just not going to be my person. I know. I'm not going to be, and so I find that when I was younger, I wanted as many friends as possible. Now.

• 26:33Speaker 02

  Cause you're a super extrovert, right?

• 26:35Jefferson Fisher?

  Yes, that's, that too, but it's like you, you, I thought at least the more friends you made, it's, that's a good thing, but I find now I really just want a small collection.

• 26:45Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 26:45Jefferson Fisher?

  And what you said a minute ago struck me because one of the very good friends that I have here, first time, my first conversation with him, we start talking and he was just out of the blue. He's like, so how's your, how's your church life? Like, how's, how's your marriage? And I was like,

• 27:01Speaker 02

  What?

• 27:01Jefferson Fisher?

  Who asked me that? Like, I, I haven't been asked that and I can't tell you when. Usually it's like, oh, what do you do? Have you, you know, do you check the news? And it's like, wait, okay, now I can actually open up and now I can talk. And it's like you, the, somehow the more I, we have self-disclosure.

• 27:18Speaker 02

  Right.

• 27:18Jefferson Fisher?

  And you disclose and we disclose.

• 27:20Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 27:20Jefferson Fisher?

  Oh, we can be real now and now we can actually have a bond. And I think a lot of, I, I think a lot of people struggle with that.

• 27:27Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. I mean, honesty is a form of love is what it comes down to. And like, and again,

• 27:33Speaker 02

  If there's something you're really ashamed of, you're probably not going to disclose it. Right. It's like, yeah, can we talk about my shoplifting habit? I mean, it's like that, right?

• 27:41Jefferson Fisher?

  Yeah.

• 27:41Speaker 02

  On the other hand, look, most of us are married. And guess what? My annoyances at home are the most common things in the world.

• 27:49Jefferson Fisher?

  Yeah.

• 27:50Speaker 02

  And so it's one of the things I was talking about with my class. That I teach this class on the science of happiness at the MBA program. And it's super popular because, you know, it's about the business of living your life and living your life in a businesslike way.

• 28:01Jefferson Fisher?

  Right.

• 28:01Speaker 02

  Right, like, like finding, finding the love of your life with the same seriousness as you would set up a private equity.

• 28:07Jefferson Fisher?

  Sure.

• 28:08Speaker 02

  Fund or something like, I mean, they'll like walk through it. Here's what the science says. And one of the things that I was talking about are the things in families that everybody thinks is uniquely unfortunate. And so there's that, you know, the first line of Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy. Happy families are all alike, but every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. The truth is, every unhappy family is alike.

• 28:28Jefferson Fisher?

  Yeah.

• 28:28Speaker 02

  We all have the same problems. And I gave an example that, that 11% of mothers between 65 and 75 is completely estranged with one of their adult children. 11%. Every single one of those mothers feels uniquely unfortunate and doesn't want to talk about it.

• 28:46Jefferson Fisher?

  In therapy, they say terminally unique.

• 28:48Speaker 02

  Terminally unique.

• 28:49Jefferson Fisher?

  Yeah. Yeah. Like, everybody who goes into therapy or rehab, it's, you think you're terminally unique. Nobody else can be like me and you realize.

• 28:56Speaker 02

  And if you're not a special, I mean, it's like all your problems are the same as anybody else's problems.

• 29:00Jefferson Fisher?

  That's AAA. I mean, it's, it's getting together.

• 29:02Speaker 02

  Recovery communities.

• 29:03Jefferson Fisher?

  Exactly right. You realize, no, you all have the same.

• 29:06Speaker 02

  Yeah. By the way, it's 26% of fathers.

• 29:08Jefferson Fisher?

  That's crazy.

• 29:09Speaker 02

  It's 26% of fathers. 38% of adults listening to us right now is completely estranged from one direct family member.

• 29:17Jefferson Fisher?

  That I can attest to. There are lots of people who come into the community and listen to our content and they are estranged from at least one person in their life.

• 29:26Speaker 02

  And it's horrible and they feel like they're the only ones. And so when you're talking to somebody, don't afraid, never be afraid to go deep.

• 29:32Jefferson Fisher?

  Yeah.

• 29:33Speaker 02

  For precisely the thing that you're talking about because human connection is what it's all about. Now, again, there are certain things you might not want to divulge because they're embarrassing to you or they might incriminate you in some way.

• 29:42Jefferson Fisher?

  Yeah.

• 29:42Speaker 02

  You know?

• 29:43Jefferson Fisher?

  Yeah.

• 29:44Speaker 02

  But, but the truth of the matter is that there's nothing, there's nothing strange about these unfortunate experiences.

• 29:49Jefferson Fisher?

  I like, I like asking the, the, the deep question.

• 29:52Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 29:52Jefferson Fisher?

  Because it truly is, when I choose to say, you know what, I'm gonna talk to that person and I'm gonna, I'm not gonna sugarcoat a thing. When they ask, how are you doing? You know, how's, how are the kids?

• 30:03Speaker 02

  You wanna know?

• 30:03Jefferson Fisher?

  I'm gonna, that's what I say. I'll start talking and I, and I'll tell them, like, hey, you, you asked.

• 30:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. So, so your life has changed a lot in the last five years, right? Is that fair to say?

• 30:14Jefferson Fisher?

  Yeah, that's fair to say.

• 30:15Speaker 02

  What are you most afraid of?

• 30:17Jefferson Fisher?

  I'm, right now, I'm most afraid of that I am not devoting enough time to making sure that I can be as present as humanly possible.

• 30:26Speaker 02

  With?

• 30:26Jefferson Fisher?

  My kids.

• 30:27Speaker 02

  With your kids?

• 30:28Jefferson Fisher?

  And your wife.

• 30:28Speaker 02

  Yeah. And with God?

• 30:30Jefferson Fisher?

  And God, yeah. There's a lot of time where it's, I, I, I read this book, I really like it. It's, uh, The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry.

• 30:38Speaker 02

  Oh, nice.

• 30:38Jefferson Fisher?

  John, John Mark, uh, Comer is his name. If you've read, heard of him?

• 30:41Speaker 02

  I haven't, yeah.

• 30:42Jefferson Fisher?

  Okay, there's him, John Ortberg, these two authors I really like. And it's about how, you know, the instruction is, you, he, the instruction was to lie, he lays me down in green pastures, right? It's not, he signs me up for a half marathon. You know, it's not like, how do I just rest and not find ways? I'm just hurrying all the time. And I talked about this, you and I were saying how we just, you, you will talk about things that are in your lectures and I talk to, alone and myself and my camera. And one of the things I was really struggling with is how much hurry and busy just creep. They just, they creep into everything and then I, I get to where it, it just has a way of shutting

• 31:27Jefferson Fisher?

  me off if I don't, I know you, you talk about be bored, you know, finding ways to just sit because it's not enough now. It's, if I'm in a waiting room at a doctor, if I have to wait 10 seconds for a light to change, or it's, it's, it's, it's that constant, you say the left brain, right brain.

• 31:45Speaker 02

  Yeah, but it's really, it's, yeah. And then this is, and Buddhists call it the monkey mind. But, but the whole point is that we've eradicated boredom with anti-boredom devices and it's made our brains work wrong. And that's the reason we can't find the meaning of life. Because we've actually induced ourselves to sit permanently in the left hemisphere, which is the how to and what, that's what technology does. And the why questions become impossible to access because we're literally geographically in the wrong part of our brain to address these why, to address the big why questions of our lives. And you need more space, you need more time, and you need more relationships. Now, it's an interesting thing, however, that you talk about you're most afraid that by taking all the opportunities that you're taking that are coming at you constantly, that you're neglecting the things that actually matter the most.

• 32:28Jefferson Fisher?

  Yeah.

• 32:29Speaker 02

  I get it. I get it. And what that is, is that's, you know, Mother Nature, who doesn't care if you're happy, just wants you to be successful. Mother Nature wants you to grab the worldly rewards, money, power, pleasure, fame. Mother Nature wants you. And so those proclivities, what they do is they pull you away from, you know, you already told me the source of your bliss. The source of your bliss is your faith and your family and your friendship and doing things that actually serve other people. But Mother Nature says money, power, pleasure, fame. And that's a problem because Mother Nature doesn't care if you're happy. She just wants you to be special.

• 33:02Jefferson Fisher?

  Yeah.

• 33:03Speaker 02

  And so you're special. And people will, they will, they will sacrifice their happiness to be special all day long. But most people have an advantage over you, however, which is they don't have that many opportunities to be special.

• 33:14Jefferson Fisher?

  I'm with you. Yeah.

• 33:16Speaker 02

  And so when you're offered these opportunities, what will happen is that you will walk yourself, you have the danger of walking yourself into deep unhappiness, simply by doing what you have the impulse to do, the impulse to do. Like, I gotta take that opportunity. It's gonna be a pity. I'll regret it if I don't take that opportunity.

• 33:35Jefferson Fisher?

  Right.

• 33:35Speaker 02

  And living in a mindful way, on the basis of what your faith tells you is more important and what your heart says is true.

• 33:41Jefferson Fisher?

  Yeah.

• 33:42Speaker 02

  It's a real danger. And me too.

• 33:44Jefferson Fisher?

  This podcast is sponsored by, you know it, Cozy Earth. I love Cozy Earth because of all of their products are not only soft and feel like a big warm blanket hugging you, they're also top tier quality and they stand behind the product. Now, I just got done seeing some family this past weekend and we were all staying at my brother's house. And my mom came out all ready for bed and guess what she was wearing? Her Cozy Earth pajamas that I gave her. Now, I have known this woman my entire life, of course. I have never seen her this crazy about some pajamas. They're made out of bamboo and it's a whole set and she cannot wait for me to get her more. Cozy Earth pajamas. It's now become a thing and kind of an inside joke in my family about

• 34:28Jefferson Fisher?

  how much he loves these. So if you know somebody in your life who loves pajamas before they go to bed and they want something that feels nice and cool and temperature breathing, Cozy Earth pajamas are what you want. And also, they have 100 night risk free trials, so you can't beat that. Go to CozyEarth.com/Jefferson. You used to go Jefferson and get up to 20% off. That's CozyEarth.com/Jefferson. And you used to go Jefferson to get up to 20% off. And now, let's keep going on the episode. I've always been the type, I've always been ambitious.

• 34:58Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 34:59Jefferson Fisher?

  I wouldn't say I'm a hustle.

• 35:00Speaker 02

  Have you always been special?

• 35:01Jefferson Fisher?

  I know. I've always, I've always been ambitious and

• 35:06Speaker 02

  Since you were a kid?

• 35:07Jefferson Fisher?

  Probably, yeah, since I'm the oldest of four, probably the, I've probably fallen right into the category of

• 35:12Speaker 02

  And your parents are alive?

• 35:13Jefferson Fisher?

  Yeah.

• 35:14Speaker 02

  And you have a good relationship with your mom and dad?

• 35:16Jefferson Fisher?

  Yeah.

• 35:16Speaker 02

  Yeah, good.

• 35:17Jefferson Fisher?

  Yeah, they're coming this evening.

• 35:18Speaker 02

  Oh, that's great. Is your dad a lawyer?

• 35:20Jefferson Fisher?

  Yeah, that is an attorney.

• 35:22Speaker 02

  When you were a kid, did you often feel like you got a lot of attention when you brought home a good report card?

• 35:29Jefferson Fisher?

  Yeah, yeah, it was, it was, you were a representative of the whole family.

• 35:33Speaker 02

  So, high achieving kids, their parents are awesome, of course. The problem that a lot of high achieving kids have is that they, they, they deduce something that's not true, which is that love is earned.

• 35:46Jefferson Fisher?

  Yeah.

• 35:46Speaker 02

  And love isn't earned. Love is a free gift, freely given. It's a grace. You know, you can't earn God's love. You can't earn your wife's love. You can't. And if you try to earn her love, you'll drive her away.

• 35:56Jefferson Fisher?

  Right.

• 35:56Speaker 02

  Which is the paradox of that. And so what, what strivers and super achievers have, they, they weirdly keep being successful. Like, I'm a successful lawyer, and I don't know, I'm a successful on Instagram, and I'm a successful podcaster. What's going on?

• 36:08Jefferson Fisher?

  Right.

• 36:08Speaker 02

  And the answer is, and to a lot, to a certain extent, that a lot of real strivers, they're trying to earn love.

• 36:15Jefferson Fisher?

  Yeah.

• 36:15Speaker 02

  They're trying to, it's like,

• 36:16Jefferson Fisher?

  What's enough?

• 36:17Speaker 02

  Am I lovable yet?

• 36:18Jefferson Fisher?

  Yeah, what's enough?

• 36:19Speaker 02

  Yeah. And, and of course, there is no enough.

• 36:21Jefferson Fisher?

  Do you find that there is a balance or a middle ground for people who are listening right now on this? They're ambitious.

• 36:29Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 36:29Jefferson Fisher?

  To say you can have ambition and be happy versus ambition and be empty.

• 36:33Speaker 02

  For sure. You need the ambition for the right thing and you need to what are your ultimate versus your intermediate goals. There's nothing wrong with money. I'm a capitalist, baby. I believe in the free enterprise system. Look, the free enterprise system is literally what's wiped out poverty around the world and it's the only force that ever has is people lifting themselves up. Eighty percent of world poverty has been eradicated since I was a kid. Nobody knows that. It's the capitalist system that did that. It's not the UN or that, you know, the International Monetary Fund. No, man. It's, it's markets spreading around the world. That's America's gift to the world is the free enterprise system for sure. But you can't be animated by, by the currency of that system, which is money. The currency of your life that matters is love and happiness. That's what the enterprise, the startup of Jefferson, Inc. is, is love

• 37:17Speaker 02

  and happiness. And you have to be able to, to, to, to get those currencies. Now, money, fine. Power, if you're using it for good ends, great. Fame, terrific. If you're refracting people's admiration for you toward things that matter like love and God and the things. If they look at your life and they're like, he's, I really admire him. He's awesome. He's awesome. And he's a big Christian. Good. And they go for that and their life gets better. That's terrific. But those are only ever intermediate goals. If those become your goals per se, you'll never have enough. It'll be like drinking seawater. The more you drink, the thirstier you get. Those simply have to be intermediate goals to get to the things that matter the most, which are your faith and your family and your friendship and the way that you serve the world through the way that you earn your daily bread.

• 38:00Jefferson Fisher?

  How do you find, yeah, daily bread, so good. How do you find, because you've, you've written how many books?

• 38:07Speaker 02

  It sort of depends. Good books or books?

• 38:09Jefferson Fisher?

  I mean, I know, I know. Let's just put it this way. Your book is endorsed by Oprah and the Dalai Lama. Let's, let's go with that. Okay. You've, you teach your class at Harvard.

• 38:19Speaker 02

  If you read it, you'll get inner peace.

• 38:19Jefferson Fisher?

  There we go. I can't wait. And you teach your class at Harvard on happiness.

• 38:24Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 38:24Jefferson Fisher?

  And so I've always, it's at least true for me.

• 38:31Jefferson Fisher?

  For the people who find that passion that they like to talk about,

• 38:34Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 38:34Jefferson Fisher?

  And they stuck to it, and yours is happiness, they either came at it from great personal struggle.

• 38:40Speaker 02

  Right.

• 38:41Jefferson Fisher?

  And personal pain. Or they just made it up.

• 38:45Speaker 02

  Right.

• 38:45Jefferson Fisher?

  You know, and so, and so I, I, I find that with everybody you see on the, it, it takes nobody. There are people who say therapist things that aren't a therapist. People who talk about legal things that don't.

• 38:56Speaker 02

  I know.

• 38:57Jefferson Fisher?

  And so here you are, a behavioral scientist that talks about happiness. And there's plenty of people who are spouting happiness juice and they're not, they don't know anything about it. So like, how with your wife, your kids, and I think you have three kids.

• 39:10Speaker 02

  Three kids and four grandsons.

• 39:11Jefferson Fisher?

  That's awesome.

• 39:12Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 39:12Jefferson Fisher?

  And you've lived all these places and now here you are at a place you probably never thought you'd be when you were back.

• 39:17Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 39:17Jefferson Fisher?

  Playing the French horn.

• 39:18Speaker 02

  No.

• 39:19Jefferson Fisher?

  Right?

• 39:19Speaker 02

  Oh, my goodness.

• 39:20Jefferson Fisher?

  Yeah.

• 39:20Speaker 02

  And so if you told me that, I would have said you were on drugs.

• 39:22Jefferson Fisher?

  Right, exactly. And so it's like, how, how, how is that happiness that you're

• 39:28Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 39:29Jefferson Fisher?

  Gotten there?

• 39:30Speaker 02

  So, the reason I study happiness is because it's what I want and it's not easy for me. It's not the easiest thing. Now, half of your happiness is genetics. So in other words, your, your baseline level of well-being, about half of it is your mom's fault. It's, it's, and we know this from identical, and dads, and grandma, grandma.

• 39:51Jefferson Fisher?

  Of course.

• 39:52Speaker 02

  That, the, the identical twins separated at birth and adopted into separate families. That's a great natural experiment using pretty easy statistical methods to find out what part of your personality, including your happiness, your natural happiness level, not just with, with circumstances, but generally, how much of it is, is in your genes and how much of it is circumstantial? And, or environmental, and it's about half. And I have gloomy genes.

• 40:16Jefferson Fisher?

  Gloomy genes.

• 40:17Speaker 02

  I got gloomy genes, you know, I had, you know, my, you know, my parents suffered a lot. They suffered a lot with, you know, problems and, and issues and, and, uh, and I got to, I got to a certain point where, you know, my life wasn't where I wanted it to be, you know, and, and things had gone great because I'm very special.

• 40:34Jefferson Fisher?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 40:35Speaker 02

  But you know, I'd run a bit. I'd been as chief executive of a company and my academic career had gone well. Even my musical career went well. Part of that was because I'm a super striver. I want to win. I want to win. I want to win. And I every 10 years or so, I'd take my career down to the studs and start again on a new thing and see if I could win that.

• 40:52Jefferson Fisher?

  Yeah.

• 40:52Speaker 02

  So I didn't, you know, play in the symphony orchestra, do really well. Go back to graduate school, become an academic, do that. Go back, be a CEO.

• 40:59Jefferson Fisher?

  Yeah.

• 41:00Speaker 02

  And by the end of that last one, my wife said, Esther, she said, because she loves me. I don't know why. And she said, you know, you need to solve your problem. But like, what are you talking about? She said, you need to, you need to be happier. And I said, what do you suggest? What do you suggest, honey? And she said, don't you have a PhD? Why don't you use it for something useful?

• 41:26Speaker 02

  And so I actually dedicated myself to cracking the code on this. And cracking the code on anything is basically on any skill is kind of three steps. You know, if you want to become a really good golfer, you better learn about golf. You better golf a lot. And if you really want to be good, you better teach somebody to golf.

• 41:42Jefferson Fisher?

  Let's put it in terms of communication. Someone wants to be a good communicator.

• 41:44Speaker 02

  Yeah, you want to be a good communicator. Watch a ton of people's speeches, give a ton of speeches, and teach people how to be good speakers. That's how you become a great communicator. If you want to be a surgeon, you watch a bunch of surgeries, you do a bunch of surgeries, and you teach a bunch of surgeries.

• 42:00Jefferson Fisher?

  Yeah.

• 42:01Speaker 02

  That's literally the method at the Harvard Medical School for becoming a teacher is watch one, do one, teach one. That's what they call it. That's how you get good at something. And, you know, I've seen, you know, my dad was a brilliant mathematician, who's a mathematics professor, and I saw him, you know, giving these incredible calculus lectures. And I would say, how do you know that? He says, because I'd done a lot of problems and I've learned about it. And I've been living with it for 40 years and I've taught this class 100 times.

• 42:23Jefferson Fisher?

  Yeah.

• 42:24Speaker 02

  That's how you get really, really good at something. I know that for a fact. I'm an old school educator. And I said, happiness works the same way. I know it works the same way. So I dedicated myself full time. I mean, I'd done the behavioral science, I'd written about happiness in the past. But I said, okay, from now on until I die, I am going to study the science of happiness, including the neuroscience and behavioral correlates and the philosophy, put it all together. I'm going to change the way that I live, and I'm going to bring it to as many people as I possibly can, because I'm a selfish man.

• 42:55Speaker 02

  And I want to be happier. And that was the genesis of this.

• 42:57Jefferson Fisher?

  And that's what I, what you said stuck with me. And it was because I need to get better at it.

• 43:04Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 43:04Jefferson Fisher?

  And that right there has so much truth.

• 43:08Speaker 02

  Were you always a silver tongue devil?

• 43:11Jefferson Fisher?

  Probably not, you know, but I've always, I've always been a talker. That I know. But I grew up around the courtroom.

• 43:20Speaker 02

  Been a carny. You could have been like an auctioneer.

• 43:22Jefferson Fisher?

  Yeah. Yeah. I could give you the best stuffed toy ever, you know? But I've always grown up around the courtroom.

• 43:27Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 43:28Jefferson Fisher?

  And so that gives you a lot of different elements of how juries react and how courtroom, bailiff, judge, court reporter, everybody. And that's influenced me. But what you said definitely stuck is why'd you go here? It's because I need to get better at it. And so there's, there's so much of that, that when we pick these little things, that it's, I forget what it is. There's like that saying of those that can't do, teach or something like that. It's like, if I have a problem with it, you start talking about it. You naturally start learning.

• 44:00Speaker 02

  Those who want to do, teach. You know, it's the kind of thing where, you know, a lot of people will say, why should I take advice on, on, on how to drink responsibly from a former alcoholic? That's exactly whose advice you should take. Because he wanted to stop drinking abusively. And so he learned what he needed to do. He practiced it and now he's sharing it.

• 44:21Jefferson Fisher?

  Yeah.

• 44:21Speaker 02

  That's expertise. That's how expertise works. You should always go to a former drunk.

• 44:25Jefferson Fisher?

  Yeah.

• 44:26Speaker 02

  If you don't want to be drunk.

• 44:27Jefferson Fisher?

  Yeah.

• 44:27Speaker 02

  That's what it comes down to. That's really what, and so that's what everybody's gotten common is where they're sharing this thing that they're doing because they want to be better at that thing.

• 44:37Jefferson Fisher?

  Yeah. And I know, I want to bring that back to this busyness element of what, things that you want to work on, and I like that you talked about, have gloomy genes. Like there are people listening. They might have gloomy genes.

• 44:48Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 44:48Jefferson Fisher?

  There are people who are more predisposed to certain.

• 44:52Speaker 02

  Right.

• 44:53Jefferson Fisher?

  Or is that, is that what you think?

• 44:54Speaker 02

  Absolutely.

• 44:55Jefferson Fisher?

  More predisposed to a certain behavior. Mentality.

• 44:58Speaker 02

  Most of, most things are genetic. Much of what we do is genetic. Right? Exactly.

• 45:02Jefferson Fisher?

  Yeah. I never thought of it that way.

• 45:04Speaker 02

  Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

• 45:05Jefferson Fisher?

  Like, somebody's more predisposed to be difficult or stubborn.

• 45:09Speaker 02

  Or, you know, 50% of your tendency to be a drunk is genetic. 50%. But if it came to me, it's like, Arthur, I'm in trouble. Both my parents drink too much and all four of my grandparents. So like my granddads were bootleggers. I'm doomed. I'll say, no, no, no, no, no. Because that's only 50%. The other 50% is your habits. And I've got this super habit that can turn your genetics for drinking down to zero. It's called not drinking. And so if you know yourself, you've got power. You can manage your genetics through your habits.

• 45:38Jefferson Fisher?

  Yes.

• 45:38Speaker 02

  It's a beautiful thing. It's an incredible thing. I teach happiness. Because when you have the skills, you can win. And your life is richer and better. And then the best part of all is you become a happiness teacher. This is how we change the world.

• 45:51Jefferson Fisher?

  Right.

• 45:52Speaker 02

  I mean, this is why you're doing your stuff, because you want people actually to, to learn how, how, you know, what you teach them can enrich their lives and you want them to pass it on.

• 46:00Jefferson Fisher?

  Right. Yeah, yeah. I believe, I truly believe a better world begins with a better conversation. That's what I say. And I, but I've never thought about it as genes of things you're predisposed to. And so if it's like you're listening, you're going, I don't know what, do I have, am I predisposed? I'd say first look to your parents.

• 46:17Speaker 02

  Right.

• 46:17Jefferson Fisher?

  What do you, if you have a mom or a dad that seems to be way more difficult in conversation or somebody who's always a victim or like, hello, you have, you are going to have those genes in you. Maybe you're not the victim all the time, but you still have those in you.

• 46:30Speaker 02

  Yeah. And the environment matters too. If your parents are really difficult and they're always screaming at each other and, and you're, or if you're, let's just say that you're struggling with your marriage. And you're arguing with your spouse all the time. And you're yelling at each other and that kind of stuff. Okay, let's, let's, let's figure out how I got into the situation. Part of it is the nature of my marriage that I need to change. But part of it is probably what I saw and part of it is who I am. And none of that can't be changed. All of that, all of that can be changed, but it starts with knowledge and commitment. That's really what it comes down to. And that's what's so beautiful about human existence. You know, um, we have this thing, the most modern part of our brain called the prefrontal cortex, which is 30% of our brain by weight, this console of tissue right behind our forehead. That's like, that's the supercomputer. That's the C suite.

• 47:15Jefferson Fisher?

  Yeah.

• 47:15Speaker 02

  That's the managing partner is sitting up there, right? Is right there. And that's where you actually get the data that's coming to like your emotional data. The limbic system, which is ancient between two and 40 million years old. That, that creates, that creates your emotions and all your emotions are signals about what's going on around you. You perceive a threat, you, you get negative emotions, you get negative, bad feelings, so-called bad feelings. You perceive an opportunity like mates or calories or something, you get positive emotion. Right? And, and what that does is those positive emotions are signals to you that something's up and that you should act. But your prefrontal cortex, the C suite is where the CEO of your brain is like, okay, I'm not going to do this. Okay, I'm going to do that. That's what it comes down to.

• 47:57Speaker 02

  And that's how we need to actually treat our emotional lives and the things that are coming at us all the time. It's nothing more than signals and that we get to make decisions.

• 48:04Jefferson Fisher?

  Yeah.

• 48:05Speaker 02

  Now that prefrontal cortex is amazing because your dog can't do that. Your dog gets the emotional signals and then acts according to animal instinct.

• 48:12Jefferson Fisher?

  Yeah.

• 48:13Speaker 02

  We have animal instincts too, but because of the complexity and size of our prefrontal cortex, we also have moral aspirations. So we get this like emotional signals like you're mad. So the dog would like bite some, bite the postman or something like that. And, and you're mad, so you're going to yell at your spouse.

• 48:30Jefferson Fisher?

  Yeah.

• 48:31Speaker 02

  But you can actually do things like wait and think and use technique such as counting to 10, for example, or a hundred, depending on how bad the conversation is. You can journal, you can go away and come back later and you can decide, I'm going to live in the space of my moral aspirations. I'm not going to live in the space of my animal impulses. That's a miracle.

• 48:52Jefferson Fisher?

  Yeah, amen. That is a miracle. I, I know that often, like I, I think in my own life, there are things I do and say, I'll be like, dang, that was my dad. Like I just know as soon as I did it, or my, my sister, I'll call her and she sounds identical to my mom. And there's so much that is.

• 49:10Speaker 02

  Who is this?

• 49:10Jefferson Fisher?

  I know. There'll be times, yeah, where it's like, is that mom? And I, I catch myself second guessing. And so I find that.

• 49:19Jefferson Fisher?

  So much of how I respond even to my kids, I'll be like, oh my gosh, that was my mom. And I, so much of it is just passed down. And so we mirror how we saw arguments. Because I had friends who, I had a best friend when I was like in first grade. And I'll never forget, I'm eating Cheerios at his house after spending the night and his parents go at it. I mean, I mean, she is screaming, he's screaming and I am like just mortified.

• 49:48Speaker 02

  Yeah, because you've never seen, you wouldn't think of these people, adults like that talking to each other.

• 49:53Jefferson Fisher?

  I've never seen that before and I was mortified. I mean, I was just frozen and my friend is, he didn't even look up from a cereal. I mean, he's just eating like it was no problem. And so.

• 50:01Speaker 02

  It's just another Saturday morning.

• 50:02Jefferson Fisher?

  It's just another Saturday morning. And how many people, and they argue how they saw their parents argue. Or they experience.

• 50:12Speaker 02

  Right.

• 50:12Jefferson Fisher?

  There's some people who it's like, they can't feel love unless you're in an argument and a fight. Like that's the way that they have to, they experience that. And so it's just so funny to me. It really struck a chord with me of so many times were predisposed.

• 50:26Speaker 02

  Yeah, predisposed toward it because of environment or because of genetics, but none of that is deterministic. None of that is path dependent. And we are not path dependent creatures. We're just not. I mean, it might be harder.

• 50:36Jefferson Fisher?

  Yeah.

• 50:37Speaker 02

  I mean, you might have a bad temper. I mean, I can actually, you know, there's a lot of research on people who, you know, when they yell, when they're angry. Those people have a large, have a physically, many times have a physically larger amygdala. You know, the amygdala is, that's a part of the limbic system. It's shaped like an almond. It's a bilateral organ. Amygdala means almond in Latin.

• 50:54Jefferson Fisher?

  Okay.

• 50:54Speaker 02

  And, and the left and right do slightly different things. It doesn't matter. They're about fear and anger. And it's physically larger, they activate faster and they make you, they make you more reactive. They make you more emotionally reactive negatively in the case of, of, you know, something makes you angry. You get angry fast. You jump, man. And so if you know that, then you gotta do more work.

• 51:14Jefferson Fisher?

  Right.

• 51:14Speaker 02

  But you gotta know it. You gotta know it. You're not like, ah, that's who I am. No.

• 51:18Jefferson Fisher?

  Yeah.

• 51:18Speaker 02

  That's what my tendency is to be, but that's not who I want to be.

• 51:23Jefferson Fisher?

  You put this in your book, this is in your, you have to forgive me on the title. You, you broke down the happiness of these four macronutrients.

• 51:32Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 51:33Jefferson Fisher?

  And

• 51:34Speaker 02

  The three macros, the three macros, the protein, carbohydrates and fat.

• 51:37Jefferson Fisher?

  Yeah, tell me.

• 51:38Speaker 02

  Yeah, the enjoyment, satisfaction and meaning. Those are the three macronutrients of, of happiness. There are the four habits are different. That's faith, family, friends and work. Yeah, faith, family, friends and work. So those are the habits of the people who have the most happiness.

• 51:52Jefferson Fisher?

  And you, what I liked so much about that book was that you said it's happiness is not some feeling. There are things that you have to do as an act of will.

• 52:00Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 52:01Jefferson Fisher?

  Like you have to actually make the decision to step into it.

• 52:05Speaker 02

  Completely.

• 52:06Jefferson Fisher?

  Rather than just go, well, I hope that this is.

• 52:08Speaker 02

  And so there's so many things that we, we chalk up to feelings because we're all about feelings in our culture. And, and so people will think, I'll ask my students, what's love? And it's like, it's how I feel, but no.

• 52:17Jefferson Fisher?

  Yeah.

• 52:18Speaker 02

  To love, according to Thomas Aquinas, and this is Aristotelian thinking, this goes way back, is to will the good of the other. It has nothing to do with, has nothing to do with feelings. To like somebody is sentimental, but to love somebody is a decision.

• 52:34Jefferson Fisher?

  Yeah.

• 52:35Speaker 02

  That's what it comes down to. That's how you stay married, by the way, because you love them.

• 52:38Jefferson Fisher?

  Yeah.

• 52:38Speaker 02

  Notwithstanding your feelings. If love were a feeling, I wouldn't have been married 34 years. I wouldn't have been married 34 minutes because that's probably when we had our first big argument. I'm married to a Spaniard. They know how to fight, man. It's like a form of communication in Spain is, you know, all out war. So, so that's really, really important thing to keep in mind and happiness too. It's not a feeling. Happiness is, has feelings attached to it. It's not like the smell of your turkey is, is evidence of your Thanksgiving dinner. Your happy feelings are evidence of happiness. And if you want to get happier, you better know what the macronutrients are. Just like if you want to cook dinner.

• 53:13Jefferson Fisher?

  Right.

• 53:13Speaker 02

  It's going to be worth anything. You need to know actually what goes into the dinner, protein, carbohydrates and fat, plus ingredients and spices and all the different things, the way that you know how to cook. And so what I teach my students is how to enjoy their lives, how to take satisfaction in their accomplishments and activities and how to find the meaning of life. And that's what the new book is about because the big crisis for my students and almost everybody else in America today is that they don't know the meaning of their life.

• 53:37Jefferson Fisher?

  I would probably venture that's something that's been around for a while now, but I don't know if it's ever been as bad.

• 53:43Speaker 02

  Oh, it's much worse. It's much, much worse. I wouldn't have written this book 20 years ago. I wouldn't have written this book. I started thinking about this subject in about 2015 is when I started seeing the crisis and the data. And then I started interviewing young people in particular. And what you found was after 2008, there was a progressive explosion of people saying, I don't know the meaning of my life. I don't know if my life has meaning. For the first time, for the first time, there's always been like 5% of the population would say that.

• 54:12Jefferson Fisher?

  Yeah.

• 54:14Speaker 02

  I've never seen it like it. It took off after 2008.

• 54:17Jefferson Fisher?

  I want to, first, I want to understand the doom loop that you talk about in your book, which is fantastic. And then the other element of this that I'm gonna want to bring it back to is, can somebody, have you seen like the Big Lebowski?

• 54:31Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 54:32Jefferson Fisher?

  Okay, like just the dude, he's just, you know, the people that seem to not be these big striders.

• 54:39Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 54:40Jefferson Fisher?

  Strivers.

• 54:41Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 54:42Jefferson Fisher?

  Versus the people that actually are. Like, these people are, don't struggle as much with the meaning of life, I feel like. And the ones that are ambitious, try to be super successful, they're the ones that struggle so much with what's the meaning of it.

• 54:53Speaker 02

  That's the meaning of life. It's funny, isn't it?

• 54:54Jefferson Fisher?

  Yeah.

• 54:55Speaker 02

  It's really funny. And you wouldn't think that. You know, when I do these interviews with young people, you find that college graduates and people who are doing really well, they'll often say, I have everything and I feel nothing. And they're really guilty about it. And what you find is that college graduates have, struggle more with meaning than people who didn't go to college. People who are earning more money struggle more with meaning than people who make less money, that we find. It's an affliction of the privileged.

• 55:19Jefferson Fisher?

  Affliction of the privileged.

• 55:21Speaker 02

  That's actually the psychogenic epidemic that's, you're most likely to catch the disease when you have this. And the reason for this is actually that our culture of grinding and hustle, and most notably where the tip of the spear is, is a constant use of technology. It induces strivers to use their brains in exactly the wrong way. So when you think about it, it's like, you know, your, you know, the, your great grandfather, you know, he was using his brain the way it was supposed to be used. He never came home and where, where was he in Texas someplace?

• 55:53Jefferson Fisher?

  Yeah.

• 55:54Speaker 02

  Yeah. He never came home, was he a farmer?

• 55:55Jefferson Fisher?

  No, he's an attorney. He's a judge.

• 55:59Speaker 02

  Well, let's go back until there was a farmer who would never have come home and said, honey, I had a panic attack behind the mule today.

• 56:05Jefferson Fisher?

  Oh.

• 56:05Speaker 02

  And the reason was because his brain was working the way it was supposed to because he wasn't constantly plugged in to the technology and to the technologized culture.

• 56:14Jefferson Fisher?

  Yeah.

• 56:15Speaker 02

  We've moved all of our brain activity to, you know, the wonder and the mystery and the meaning and the mind wandering. Behind the mule, life was pretty boring from moment to moment, but life in general was pretty darn interesting. Today, life from moment to moment is never boring, but life overall is pretty boring for a lot of young people today. You know, you get to the end of the day and you don't even remember what podcasts you listened to or what YouTube shorts you watched. You were never bored for a single second, but you're like, that was boring.

• 56:44Jefferson Fisher?

  Yeah.

• 56:44Speaker 02

  And you can get to the end of a year and go like, I don't know how I spent that year. The time just slipped by. And that's the great irony. The reason is neurophysiological. The reason is biological, is the fact that we're using our brains in the wrong way. And what we need to do is to get back to the right side of our brain. This book is a six-point plan to relearn the meaning of your life in six months.

• 57:06Jefferson Fisher?

  To get out of the doom loop.

• 57:07Speaker 02

  It's completely science-backed. It's like, if you do these things, you do six things in six months, you'll know the meaning of your life and your life will never be the same.

• 57:14Jefferson Fisher?

  The ones that stuck out to me the most was when you look at this element of boredom.

• 57:19Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 57:20Jefferson Fisher?

  All right.

• 57:21Speaker 02

  Getting bored is one of them.

• 57:22Jefferson Fisher?

  Yeah.

• 57:22Speaker 02

  It's actually part of the first part about getting clean.

• 57:26Jefferson Fisher?

  Oh, clean.

• 57:26Speaker 02

  Clean, yeah. Well, we're deeply, deeply addicted.

• 57:29Jefferson Fisher?

  Detox.

• 57:30Speaker 02

  Yeah, we need a detox. And so we talk about a doom loop. All addictions work in the same way, where you're, what you're doing to alleviate a problem is actually creating the problem. That's how doom loops work. And so alcoholics, for example, you've met a lot of alcoholics in your life, no doubt. We all have, you know, we've all known a lot of drunks and I don't drink at all, right? Because I've got a lot of it in my family and it's just like, it doesn't, I know where it goes.

• 57:52Jefferson Fisher?

  Yeah. The pain you want to avoid is the pain that you're causing.

• 57:56Speaker 02

  But the pain you're trying to avoid is either, is almost always either boredom or anxiety. So people who are bored make their own party inside their head. People who are anxious, they will actually put out the storm. And alcohol is really interesting as a drug. It's incredibly effective at cutting the connection between the amygdala and the prefrontal cortex. So the amygdala, remember, is the part of the limbic system that gives you fear and anger. Anxiety is unfocused fear. There's activity of the amygdala and you can't quite... Right? And then your prefrontal cortex says, you're super stressed out. You can cut that connection. So you'll be you'll be experiencing a lot of anxiety in your in your limbic system, but you don't know it because the connection has been cut. Alcohol does that.

• 58:39Speaker 02

  Alcohol just shuts it off, shuts off the connection, not the anxiety. The trouble is the anxiety is still there and comes back to your consciousness with a vengeance the next day. So if you're and if you're especially if you're bored and anxious, it's a really big problem. But this is one of the reasons, by the way, that people who are above average income have a greater propensity toward alcohol abuse than people who are below average income. People don't know that. The reason is because people who are above average, they're not in a ditch. You know, they can actually they have the kind of life where they can hide it better. But the truth is that you're more likely, if you have a higher paying job and you have more education and you're working long hours, you're in danger for alcoholism.

• 59:20Speaker 02

  You're in as sure as we're sitting here, everybody listening to us that's working 70 hours a week. They're like, no, more 100 because you're an associate at a law firm. Like you're in danger for alcoholism. You are. And so you have to take care of this is what it comes down to. If you treat with alcoholism, if you treat with alcohol, the next day you're going to be more stressed out. You're going to feel more anxiety the next day, and that's the doom loop.

• 59:42Jefferson Fisher?

  Yeah.

• 59:43Speaker 02

  You actually alleviated pain and it came back and that's going to lead to escalation. And escalation has to do with it actually leads to more and more dependence. And that's even before there's addiction, just dependence. It's like, I just know I can't get through. I can't get through this unless I'm drinking alcohol is the whole point, even before physical addiction. And so that's how every doom loop works. Okay, now back to the current culture, which is a technologized culture and people are very, very addicted to the machines. It's used the same neurochemical pathways for every addiction involves dopamine, which is the neuromodulator of wanting, learning and liking. And so nature put dopamine in our brains so that we get this little reward when something goes right and we like it so that we'll do it again.

• 1:00:26Speaker 02

  You find berries on a bush, you know, 250,000 years ago, and you're like, that's great. The real reward is not the berries. It's how it made you feel. And so you're you're gonna you induced yourself to go back there the next day. You learned. It's how you learn stuff. That's how you learn to do things that are rewarding. The problem is that's also how you learn to go to Vegas and gamble away your paycheck. That's how you learn to actually look compulsively at pornography on the internet. All these things work the same dopamine pathways. Alcohol and also the internet.

• 1:00:54Jefferson Fisher?

  I've always thought that, or no, let me rephrase that. I know in my own life, I get in the biggest amount of trouble when I'm bored.

• 1:01:02Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:01:03Jefferson Fisher?

  Like it's, and what you're also saying is. Yeah, yeah, it, but it's, it's not just when I'm bored. It's when I'm alone, when I, I have nothing, I'm choosing not to have some kind of positive outlet.

• 1:01:15Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:01:16Jefferson Fisher?

  And it's, it's going, going back to it's not good for him to be alone.

• 1:01:19Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:01:19Jefferson Fisher?

  And so it, it, it, it is, to me, what you're saying is be bored.

• 1:01:25Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:01:25Jefferson Fisher?

  Because all of these distractions of screens and busyness is keeping you from higher level thinking.

• 1:01:31Speaker 02

  Detox yourself from the machines and allow yourself to be bored. That's how you, that's actually how you start to get clean.

• 1:01:37Jefferson Fisher?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:37Speaker 02

  And then there's the whole set of plans on how you need to live differently. But the very beginning is, you know, I can't tell you to, you know, get new friends and find a better job. If you've been addicted to alcohol, the first thing you have to do is to get you de-addicted to alcohol. And so the whole, the two big parts are number one, you need to get mad about the fact that you've been hooked on these technologies. And you're frittering away your time and you're distracting yourself from things that really matter. And you're hopelessly bored with your life, but you can't stop scrolling social media. You can't stop, and that's because your brain is, has become dependent on these impulses is what it comes down to. You should be mad about that.

• 1:02:13Jefferson Fisher?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:13Speaker 02

  You should be, because that's the first thing that every former drinker does is they're like, I'm not going to put up with this anymore.

• 1:02:19Jefferson Fisher?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:19Speaker 02

  I, I will not have this thing enslave me anymore. The second thing you need to do is actually take detox steps. You need protocols for detoxing and, and you can't, you know, I can't throw your phone in the ocean, but you can use it in a responsible way. And this book lays out the steps on actually how you can detox from your phone in a way where you're using technology responsibly. And it's not managing you anymore. It's just very simple stuff that you can actually do. And once you, and once you institute these policies in your life, your, your, your relationship with your phone is going to change. And then last but not least, you need to actually induce boredom. So your brain can start working in the right way again. You can turn on the default mode network, which is the structures in your brain that illuminate, that let you mind wander, consider questions of meaning that, that great, great, great, great, great grandpa

• 1:03:03Speaker 02

  did naturally without even having to think about it.

• 1:03:05Jefferson Fisher?

  Yeah. Before we keep going, I want to take a moment to tell you about Mill. Now, listen to me when I talk to you about this. It has become a staple of our kitchen. We love our Mill. My kids love our Mill. And I'm going to tell you exactly the reason why. Mill is the odorless, effortless, fully automated food recycler that handles the cleanup after dinner is over. Now, why we love it so much in our house? Right now, especially my daughter, she's into cooking. And when I say cooking, she likes to make eggs. She finds any reason, even during the day, doesn't matter the morning, to fix eggs. And so it's a very entry level way for her to cook. She has become the rule enforcer that instead of putting eggs in the trash can, we put eggs in the Mill.

• 1:03:47Jefferson Fisher?

  And you can just put eggshells, not just eggshells, you can put just about anything you think of. Anything that you would scrape into the trash can, you can put into the Mill. And it turns it into dry, shelf-stable grounds, which is incredible. And our kids love it. It's really a surprise product. We did not expect to love Mill as much as we do, but we do. It has been incredible, and I can't imagine having a kitchen without it. You can try Mill risk-free for 90 days and get $75 off at mill.com/jefferson. Use code Jefferson at checkout. That's $75 off at mill.com/jefferson. Use code Jefferson. And now, back to the episode. There is a part in your book that I really adore.

• 1:04:27Speaker 02

  What's that?

• 1:04:28Jefferson Fisher?

  And that is, you say, "Never waste your struggle."

• 1:04:31Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:04:32Jefferson Fisher?

  Why should we never waste our struggle?

• 1:04:35Speaker 02

  So, there's a basic scientific point, but a lot of it's really, it comes down to a lot of us who have religious convictions will understand naturally as well. So unhappiness, which is different than happiness. It's not the absence of happiness. Happiness and unhappiness, which are usually registered through the emotions that we feel. All of our emotions exist for a reason. Your negative emotions exist to give you alarms about what's going on in the outside world. If you didn't have them, you'd get run over by a car immediately. You need fear. You need anger. You need disgust. You need sadness. You need these negative emotions. But they're largely processed in the right hemisphere of the brain, which is the same part of the brain where you assess mystery and meaning. And that's one of the reasons that people will say, "I found the meaning of my life when I had cancer.

• 1:05:19Speaker 02

  I found a great deal of the meaning of my life. I understood the meaning of my life more when I lost my mom." When I lost my business, the saddest times, the most difficult times in people's lives is when they learn the most. This is also the reason that you and I as Christian men, that we worship a man who's suffering and dying.

• 1:05:38Jefferson Fisher?

  Yes.

• 1:05:39Speaker 02

  The meaning of my life is my relationship with God. This is the central part of the meaning of my life. And I worship a God made manifest in humanity, suffering and dying on a divisive torture. That's super heavy.

• 1:05:53Jefferson Fisher?

  It's very heavy.

• 1:05:54Speaker 02

  That's crazy by worldly standards, by human standards. How can I understand the meaning of my life by looking at Jesus hanging on the cross? We're coming to Easter, baby. We're in Lent right now. But that's what we need to contemplate because suffering, because death, because struggle, because pain, they're central to the experience of understanding who we are as people. And when we try to eradicate those experiences, experiences will be unto us. What we will be eradicating is the central component of the happiness that we seek. If you try to eliminate your unhappiness, you will accidentally eliminate your happiness.

• 1:06:27Jefferson Fisher?

  Oh, that's a good way to put it. I, I find that when people hit their rock bottom, it's usually the first time they start looking up.

• 1:06:35Speaker 02

  I know.

• 1:06:36Jefferson Fisher?

  And I, I feel, I've had rock bottom and I feel almost.

• 1:06:41Speaker 02

  Have you?

• 1:06:42Jefferson Fisher?

  Yeah, oh yeah, I've had times where I, I don't think I could, could have gone any lower than where I was. And let me tell you that.

• 1:06:49Speaker 02

  And you're 38 years old?

• 1:06:50Jefferson Fisher?

  Yeah, I'm 37, I'll be 38 this year. And, and there's.

• 1:06:54Speaker 02

  So probably.

• 1:06:54Jefferson Fisher?

  I'll have another one, I'm sure.

• 1:06:55Speaker 02

  Well, probably the worst thing in your life hasn't happened yet.

• 1:06:57Jefferson Fisher?

  Yeah, probably so.

• 1:06:58Speaker 02

  Sorry, don't mean to scare you.

• 1:07:00Jefferson Fisher?

  Can't wait, can't wait. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Let me tell you, it was enough for me. If it wasn't rock bottom, it was.

• 1:07:05Speaker 02

  It's hard, super hard.

• 1:07:06Jefferson Fisher?

  It was in the bottom third.

• 1:07:07Speaker 02

  And what'd you learn?

• 1:07:08Jefferson Fisher?

  You know, well, I, I learned that if my day doesn't start with surrender.

• 1:07:13Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:07:14Jefferson Fisher?

  It's never gonna go well. You know, it, it has to have this daily. So how does that show up in conversation? That means, all right, you won't tell me I'm wrong? All right, that's okay. You know, you wanna cut me off and merge right in front of me? You know what? Go right ahead. It's like, and it's not a place of being deferential.

• 1:07:34Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:07:34Jefferson Fisher?

  It's, to me, a higher presence of just being in awe of, I can exist and still feel like I'm every bit as present as I can be.

• 1:07:49Speaker 02

  Yeah, so there's a formula for what you just said.

• 1:07:51Jefferson Fisher?

  Oh, good. I hope you have one.

• 1:07:52Speaker 02

  You spoke it very eloquently. And the formula actually comes from a lot of different philosophical traditions. But here's how the Buddhists put it. But it's completely consistent with our Christian faith, too. And any real philosophy. Suffering and pain are not the same thing. Pain happens to you because things happen to you. You know, pain, physical pain, which we call sensory pain. You put your hand on a hot stove, you break your arm. That's inflammation and nerve endings. And it's processed in a certain part of the brain. Affective pain is the second part where you're like, I don't like that. That's a different part of the brain is actually where that happens. It's called the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex. In case you're keeping score at home, kids.

• 1:08:30Jefferson Fisher?

  Very cool.

• 1:08:30Speaker 02

  And so, but pain happens to you all the time. And you need pain because if you don't have pain, you're in trouble. Pain is a signal that something isn't right and that something is a threat and that something needs to change. That's why you have that signal. But suffering's not the same thing. Suffering equals pain multiplied by your resistance to the pain.

• 1:08:50Jefferson Fisher?

  Okay.

• 1:08:51Speaker 02

  And so, suffering, it isn't optional, but you've got a slider bar. Now, the thing that a lot of people get wrong, especially when they're young, is when they're suffering, they think that they need to lower the pain. And sometimes you can't. The right way to do it is to lower your resistance. Because when you lower the resistance, your suffering goes down even if your pain is high. When you know you're in the zone of living the way you're supposed to live, when you're getting toward the enlightenment that you actually seek, it's because your pain is sky high, but your suffering isn't. And that means you're actually not afraid of the pain. And that you're accepting it a lot. And so something happens to you and the little tiny thing, which is like, he cuts you off and you're like, okay.

• 1:09:30Jefferson Fisher?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:30Speaker 02

  That's non-resistance. You just practice non-resistance. So when you, when you go through your lowest time and, you know, in the stock market, it's, it's interesting, you know, that what, what happens when, when the stock market is really going south, like a bad recession, stock market is going down by 40%. You know, when it's about to turn around again, the tell is what stock traders call the puke. Now, the puke is when institutional investors, they can't stand it anymore and they sell and they sell. And when the institutional investors, they do the puke, when they sell, it's about to turn back up again, traditionally. So what happens is that surrender, that's like stock market surrender. And so when you're at the lowest point in your life and you do the puke, what you do from then on is like, okay.

• 1:10:16Jefferson Fisher?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:16Speaker 02

  Okay. And that's what you learn from pain. What you learn from pain is how to suffer less because you start working the other lever. And that's a source of meaning.

• 1:10:27Jefferson Fisher?

  It doesn't make the pain any less.

• 1:10:28Speaker 02

  No, no, because the pain is the pain, man.

• 1:10:30Jefferson Fisher?

  Well, I agree. And also you're, when you say you're lowering your resistance, you're accepting more pain.

• 1:10:35Speaker 02

  Totally. And there's sometimes, I mean, we're in the serious season of Lent and I'm a Catholic and we practice Lent. We know, we know how to do Lent, maybe. And we bring on pain.

• 1:10:44Jefferson Fisher?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:45Speaker 02

  Such that we can get better at non-resistance to it. And people think about, that's crazy. You know, the monks, they'll be, you know, flagellating themselves or wearing a hair shirt. But, you know, we do this all the time. You know, I go to the gym every day. So do you.

• 1:10:56Jefferson Fisher?

  Right.

• 1:10:56Speaker 02

  It's not because it feels good. What am I doing? I'm, I'm practicing non-resistance to pain that I myself am inviting. I like to benefit from it, but I'm learning about life. This is one of the reasons that I'll tell young guys, go to the gym.

• 1:11:10Jefferson Fisher?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:10Speaker 02

  Go to the gym because the gym, in the gym, you will learn about life. In the gym, you will learn about the, about the relationship between pain, which is under your, I mean, pain, which is not under your control. In this case, it actually is invited.

• 1:11:23Jefferson Fisher?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:24Speaker 02

  But through your non-resistance to it, your acceptance of it, your embrace of it, your love of it, then the suffering actually becomes something that you can. That's something that you can live with because it is under your control. That's a very important metaphor for how we're trying to live. It gets much harder when it's like, when the pain comes because your wife leaves you or because your bank, your, your, your, your, somebody.

• 1:11:46Jefferson Fisher?

  Somebody died. Yeah.

• 1:11:47Speaker 02

  Somebody died, something, you're the victim of a horrible crime, whatever it happens to be.

• 1:11:51Jefferson Fisher?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:52Speaker 02

  But in point of fact, what you learned from your lowest hour was the great message of the cross.

• 1:12:00Jefferson Fisher?

  Yeah. Amen to that.

• 1:12:02Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:12:03Jefferson Fisher?

  I find that it is definitely the more that, that's what the verses like hit me of the, the less I am, the more he is. Like it's, it, that, it's a great way of, maybe the word's humbling. It's continuing to make sure that you, like, it's a daily bread type of mindset to have.

• 1:12:27Speaker 02

  No, absolutely, absolutely. And you know, I, but there's an affirmation that I ask my students to, to recite, which is at the beginning of the day to say, you know, I'm really grateful for all the beautiful things that are going to happen this day because everybody knows gratitude is good. All the beautiful things, all the fun things, all the flowers, all the butterflies, all the kisses.

• 1:12:44Jefferson Fisher?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:12:45Speaker 02

  And I'm also grateful for the trouble I'm going to face this day because that's the source of my learning and growth. Bring it on.

• 1:12:51Jefferson Fisher?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:12:52Speaker 02

  That's the way to start the day, really.

• 1:12:54Jefferson Fisher?

  Count it as joy.

• 1:12:54Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's really interesting. And there's a famous book by Alphonsus Leguory, who's a saint in the Catholic Church, a 17th century Catholic saint. And he wrote a book called Uniformity with God's Will. And so the thing about pain is that suffering, suffering is a, is a mystery, right? There's a, there's a mysterious element. The Book of Job is all about, the punchline of the Book of Job is that a righteous man suffers and he interrogates God and God says, it's a mystery. It's beyond you.

• 1:13:24Jefferson Fisher?

  Right.

• 1:13:25Speaker 02

  It's actually beyond you.

• 1:13:26Jefferson Fisher?

  Which is a relief.

• 1:13:27Speaker 02

  Yeah, for sure. And you find there's, there's a lot of literature out there about people who've had very deep, metanormal experiences, which is, or you know, what they would call paranormal, really metanormal experiences where they felt like they were in the presence of God, like near-death experiences. And what they all say is that they understand suffering for the first time because that's the first time they do the puke on their, on the understanding of the nature of the, of the mystery of their suffering. I don't get it and I can't get it, but the one thing I know is that God is good.

• 1:13:53Jefferson Fisher?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:53Speaker 02

  Even when things are horrible, God is good and I can't explain why this. Now, that's a very right hemispheric experience of mystery and meaning. You're not going to get it if you're on the internet.

• 1:14:02Jefferson Fisher?

  Right.

• 1:14:02Speaker 02

  You're not going to get it if you're on AI. You can't get it if you're on AI. But that's a really important thing to keep in mind is that this, the deep mystery of this is the essence of actually trying, well, how we're trying to live our lives is what it comes down to. And life gets more beautiful, not less, not less. When instead of fighting against your pain, fighting against your suffering, which people are actually doing all day long. You go to campus counseling service and you say, I'm feeling sad and anxious about school. And they're like, ah, we gotta fix that.

• 1:14:30Jefferson Fisher?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:30Speaker 02

  Man, if you're one of my students and you're not sad and anxious, you need therapy, man. Cause that's, it's a part of life.

• 1:14:37Jefferson Fisher?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:37Speaker 02

  Is what it comes down to. And that's what we need to understand to, to find life's deepest meaning and, and in point of fact, to be fully alive. So this is what Alfonso's La Guori talks about, that they, that uniformly with God's will. This is what the elite athletes of meaning actually have in common. They don't just say, I accept this. They say, I want this.

• 1:14:58Jefferson Fisher?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:14:59Speaker 02

  See, that's a desire to, to, to make your will uniform with the divine will. Is to say, I'm gonna, I'm not just gonna, I'm not just gonna accept that I'm gonna love it. And man, I, I'm still not there. I'm still not there.

• 1:15:12Jefferson Fisher?

  Well, I find that in, um, like Paul says, well, I'm weak, he's strong. And there's this whole thing also in recovery circles of, I mean, that's, that's part of the twelve steps is a higher power. Yeah. It's one of the first things that you do, cause your best thinking is what got you there, right? It's, you say, you said a minute ago of how you just have to choose not to do that, you know, the other 50%. Man, there's so many people I know listening to this, like, if I could, I would.

• 1:15:39Speaker 02

  I know.

• 1:15:40Jefferson Fisher?

  Sometimes I wish I could just have the, be so noble as to confess all of my problems. But sometimes the secret has to be shown.

• 1:15:48Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:15:48Jefferson Fisher?

  Right? And, and because.

• 1:15:49Speaker 02

  You need stronger, stronger stuff.

• 1:15:51Jefferson Fisher?

  That's exactly, yeah, that there is something greater than me.

• 1:15:55Jefferson Fisher?

  Before we keep going, I want to tell you about Zocdoc. I don't know about you, but sometimes there's just a big hurdle for me to book a doctor's appointment. Doesn't matter any health professional. We've been trying to find a dermatologist for a while, trying to find a new dentist for a while, and it's just, it becomes such a hassle, right? And the biggest question is who's in-network, who's out-of-network with your health insurance, whether you've moved to a new place, or you're changing jobs, or whatever. And it's also just a pain to try and book it. It becomes this insurmountable task, and I can certainly relate to that. That's where Zocdoc helps people just like you and just like me. It is a free app and free website whose sole goal is to connect you to in-house providers

• 1:16:40Jefferson Fisher?

  and find you doctors and health professionals that you love, and people who take care of you. And best of all, they help you book the actual appointments, which is incredible. Stop putting off those doctor's appointments, that's speaking to me directly, and go to zocdoc.com/jefferson to find and instantly book a doctor you love today. That is Z-O-C-D-O-C dot com slash Jefferson. And now, back to the episode.

• 1:17:05Jefferson Fisher?

  When I'm in some of the best conversations with people, it's when I have surrendered what the outcome will be.

• 1:17:12Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:17:13Jefferson Fisher?

  And knowing that if I can, what you said in a sense of the suffering, of lowering my resistance in conversation to accept it is what it will be, but that doesn't have to affect my belief, the better I walk away from that conversation.

• 1:17:33Speaker 02

  Yeah, I know. I know. That's intention without attachment. That's another Buddhist idea. I quote a lot of Buddhism, even though I'm like a serious Catholic. A lot of Buddhism for a Catholic there, but that's intention without attachment, which means that you have a particular intention, but you don't have an attachment to the outcome. You know, you need a kind of a Euclidean straight line towards something, or you can't make an argument. You can't take on a project.

• 1:17:57Jefferson Fisher?

  You need a goal.

• 1:17:58Speaker 02

  You can't go on a voyage.

• 1:17:59Jefferson Fisher?

  Right.

• 1:18:00Speaker 02

  Unless you know, in principle, where you want to go. But you can't be happy unless you detach yourself from actually attaining that. Which is exactly what you just said, right? I mean, to have a conversation with somebody and are making an argument for something, but and I have to make it coherent, to make it work, I gotta have intention. But you can't be happy if you're attached to actually winning that thing. This is what it comes about. So if you're having an argument with your spouse, then it's a productive argument. It's not a nasty argument with it. You should have intention about the point that you're trying to make, but not attachment to actually who wins the argument. When it comes to your, this extraordinary success that you're having in this moment in time, in your own career, that you didn't anticipate, you have an intention of reaching more people with a podcast and with social media and with your speaking events, without

• 1:18:45Speaker 02

  an attachment to what that actually means. You put a book out into the world, you have an intention to make it popular and have a lot of people read it, but without the attachment of number one on the New York Times Bestseller list.

• 1:18:54Jefferson Fisher?

  Right, yeah, yeah.

• 1:18:55Speaker 02

  And that's, dude, that's hard to do. That's hard to do. That's because we're better at attachment than we are intention. And so the people who are most miserable and can't find meaning, they're super attached to things, but they don't even have an intent, so they have too much attachment and not enough intention.

• 1:19:12Jefferson Fisher?

  That's so good.

• 1:19:13Speaker 02

  We need more intention and less attachment. That's hard.

• 1:19:17Jefferson Fisher?

  I want to take us now to this aspect of leaning into imposter syndrome.

• 1:19:22Speaker 02

  Yeah, you got a little of that these days?

• 1:19:24Jefferson Fisher?

  Yeah, I don't know who does it. I don't know who does it.

• 1:19:26Speaker 02

  Well, as you get older, it's different. You'll see.

• 1:19:29Jefferson Fisher?

  Tell me.

• 1:19:30Speaker 02

  Well, emotional self-management gets much easier and your personality changes as you get older. And this is not just from experience, this is as a researcher I say this, but also from experience, because I'm not 37 anymore. I remember being 37, feels like nine minutes ago, but I'm 61.

• 1:19:47Jefferson Fisher?

  What age do you see yourself, like when you look in the mirror? Like, when people ask you how old you are, what's the age you first go to?

• 1:19:53Speaker 02

  Well, it certainly depends. I'm in better physical shape than when I was in my twenties. So I feel better. Now, it's not because I was horribly out of shape, but you know, I kind of smoked. I drank a lot and I was a musician and I just didn't take care of myself. And now I take really, really good care of myself. I'm, I'm, my emotional acuity and my intellectual acumen are higher in a lot of ways than they were because I'm a more linear thinker. I'm also working all day long to get points across in ways that I hope people can understand. You know, even though I'm, you know, I'm an academic, I'm trying not to, you know, bury everybody under a bunch of, you know, incomprehensible science is, is, is how this works.

• 1:20:34Speaker 02

  So the truth of the matter is that I see myself as a lot younger because I'm better at certain things than I was when I was younger.

• 1:20:41Jefferson Fisher?

  My dad, my dad will always say, he'll say, I'll look in the mirror and say, who's that old man?

• 1:20:45Speaker 02

  I know, but that's when I look in the mirror is when I actually see it because I don't look like I'm 37 anymore. If I were, if I, if you know, if I were actually 37 and I looked like this, you'd be like,

• 1:20:56Speaker 02

  right? Now, if I told you I was 82 and I look like this, he'd be like, great. You know, so it's all relative is kind of the way that this, this, this, where I actually, the appreciation that I have for getting older is number one, I'm way more emotionally self-managing than I was in the past. And that's actually one of the tricks of happiness of older people. Older people tend to be happier than younger people after the early 50s. So happiness tends to decline through your 30s and 40s. And a little bit, don't worry, just a little. And then it bottoms out and you're, yeah, it's, it's your kids, but also because you're not very self, self-managing emotionally and you're experiencing these things and you feel like you're like a, like a, a, a, a car, like a shopping cart in a shopping cart going down a hill.

• 1:21:41Speaker 02

  A lot of the time. In your early 50s, things start to turn around, not coincidentally, it's when your kids move out. But that's, you tend to get much happier from your, in your 50s and 60s. And part of the reason is because you understand what negative emotion means better. So for example, you know, if somebody, you know, cusses at you at the window of a car and insults you when you're 30, it's, you're like, and you stew on it, like you're mad about that. And, and you don't know that that's not a permanent state of affairs. As far as you know, as far as your limbic system is concerned, you're going to be mad about that in two weeks. Now, you're kind of, you sort of intellectually know it well, but that's kind of how it feels. When you're 60,

• 1:22:23Speaker 02

  You think to yourself, you're insulted in the same way, but you think to yourself, I'm completely sure that an hour from now, I'm not going to care about that. So I'm going to get a head start and not care now.

• 1:22:34Jefferson Fisher?

  Yeah.

• 1:22:34Speaker 02

  That's why 80 year olds are much happier than 30 year olds. 80 year olds are happier than 30 year olds. They just are. The second reason is because your personality gets better. By better, I mean, I'm like, these are, these are, these are claims that are sort of unambiguous. Your personality has five dimensions. Openness to experience, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism. Right? And so that the way that you remember that is ocean.

• 1:23:01Jefferson Fisher?

  Okay.

• 1:23:01Speaker 02

  It's like O C E A N.

• 1:23:03Jefferson Fisher?

  Nice.

• 1:23:03Speaker 02

  Your openness to experience, it tends to, it tends to go down and, and, and it kind of, it sort of stays where it is. And that's not really a big driver on your happiness. Some people are more open to experience. Some people are less open to experience. But it's not like being more open to experience is going to make you uniformly happier.

• 1:23:19Jefferson Fisher?

  I'm with you.

• 1:23:20Speaker 02

  Some people are just more conservative than others.

• 1:23:22Jefferson Fisher?

  And is that, does that have an impact on our, kind of the default on imposter syndrome?

• 1:23:28Speaker 02

  Uh, not necessarily. What is it? What it does is it affects your, your willingness and ability to take on new things. So you're super open to experience.

• 1:23:35Jefferson Fisher?

  Okay.

• 1:23:36Speaker 02

  You're a person who's very open to experience, which means that you're going to go from being a lawyer to being, I don't know, what the heck are you?

• 1:23:41Jefferson Fisher?

  What I have.

• 1:23:41Speaker 02

  Like an Instagram influencer or something like that at age 37? It's like, that's weird.

• 1:23:45Jefferson Fisher?

  Yeah.

• 1:23:46Speaker 02

  And that's because you're open to experience. You have a high level of openness. Great. Conscientiousness is correlated with happiness. Extraversion is correlated with happiness. Agreeableness is correlated with happiness. Neuroticism is inversely correlated with happiness.

• 1:24:00Jefferson Fisher?

  Okay.

• 1:24:00Speaker 02

  And all those personality characteristics, they go in the right direction as you get older. You tend to be more conscientious. You tend to be more assertive. You tend to be more agreeable because, you know, being disagreeable has a terrible cost benefit ratio.

• 1:24:16Jefferson Fisher?

  Yeah.

• 1:24:16Speaker 02

  Right? I mean, it's like being disagreeable to your waiter is so dumb.

• 1:24:20Jefferson Fisher?

  Right.

• 1:24:20Speaker 02

  And it's all, it's just impulse control.

• 1:24:22Jefferson Fisher?

  Yeah.

• 1:24:22Speaker 02

  And your neuroticism goes way down. So people are significantly less depressed than anxious when they're older than they were when they were younger.

• 1:24:28Jefferson Fisher?

  That's funny, because I'll tell you, I know some old. There are people who have no problem telling somebody what they think.

• 1:24:36Speaker 02

  Well, they're assertive.

• 1:24:37Jefferson Fisher?

  Yeah, well, they'll also.

• 1:24:38Speaker 02

  And they can also be assertive. So imagine how disagreeable they were when they were thirty.

• 1:24:41Jefferson Fisher?

  No joke. Yeah, I mean, I've seen people run somebody up one side and down the other.

• 1:24:45Speaker 02

  Yeah, no, there are certain things that will will make people buck these trends. And so cer- certain people that have real personality pathologies can become more like that.

• 1:24:53Jefferson Fisher?

  Yeah.

• 1:24:53Speaker 02

  And and they're being old strips off the filters.

• 1:24:57Jefferson Fisher?

  That's what it is. Yeah.

• 1:24:58Speaker 02

  And especially if you're old and rich.

• 1:25:00Jefferson Fisher?

  Yeah.

• 1:25:00Speaker 02

  You know, money makes you more of who you are. So if you're a kind and happy person, money will make you kinder and happier. And if you're a gloomy old, you know, miser, it'll make you worse.

• 1:25:11Jefferson Fisher?

  Yeah.

• 1:25:11Speaker 02

  So there's certain things that come into this that that monkey up the picture. Now, when it comes to imposter syndrome, you become more comfortable with the fact that you're out in front of your headlights. So here's the thing, when you're sharing ideas on a big public stage, like you, like me, you're out in front of your headlights a lot.

• 1:25:29Jefferson Fisher?

  A lot.

• 1:25:30Speaker 02

  And people don't know it. They're like, oh, Jefferson's, he's like, you know, he's a big lawyer and he knows how to make these incredible arguments. And he knows, but you're like, I kind of know. I kind of know. I mean, it's it sounds right to me and it's worked for me and I hope it works for you. But it's not like I've got, you know, five hundred studies showing this. And even if you did, you still like, I kind of know.

• 1:25:53Jefferson Fisher?

  Right.

• 1:25:53Speaker 02

  There's nothing provable, right? And for me, you know, in my work, I can't just hide behind a bunch of studies because I have to triangulate into ordinary life. I'm trying to take real science and say, this study shows this and this study shows that. And no study shows the answer to your question, but I'm going to triangulate to it because it makes logical sense based on what we studied in other areas. And that's beyond my headlights, for sure. And it requires a whole lot of humility, but also it imposes a sense of being an imposter, an intellectual imposter. You don't want to get in trouble. You don't want to misguide people, you know?

• 1:26:25Jefferson Fisher?

  Yeah.

• 1:26:26Speaker 02

  That's what it comes down to. You get more comfortable with the discomfort as you get older.

• 1:26:30Jefferson Fisher?

  That's what it is.

• 1:26:31Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. And so what it comes down to is like, yeah, I don't know everything. I just, I don't know everything and I'm probably wrong on certain things, but this is how it seems to me.

• 1:26:39Jefferson Fisher?

  Yeah. Okay. Well, that makes me feel better.

• 1:26:41Speaker 02

  No, no, it's it's it's weird and hard to a certain extent, but it's normal and funny.

• 1:26:47Jefferson Fisher?

  Yeah, you say lean into it.

• 1:26:49Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:26:49Jefferson Fisher?

  You know, it's like you have to kind of have this.

• 1:26:51Speaker 02

  Stay humble.

• 1:26:52Jefferson Fisher?

  Yeah.

• 1:26:52Speaker 02

  Just stay humble and say, and like you do a YouTube video and somebody points that in error. The first thing you say is, "Good point."

• 1:26:58Jefferson Fisher?

  Right.

• 1:26:59Speaker 02

  Good point.

• 1:27:00Jefferson Fisher?

  Yeah.

• 1:27:00Speaker 02

  You know, one of the, because it is, if it is a good point, you say that's a good, even if they're like, "You jerk, you idiot."

• 1:27:05Jefferson Fisher?

  Yeah, I usually say it's a good take, a good take.

• 1:27:07Speaker 02

  Good take. I mean, it's like, but people make very good points when I, when, there are certain times when I will, because I'm speaking.

• 1:27:13Jefferson Fisher?

  Right.

• 1:27:13Speaker 02

  When I'll make a point with a little more force than is warranted by the evidence. You know, that's one of the things that we do. We're not shading the truth at all, but it's basically like, "This happens like this." And it's like, "This usually happens like this under these circumstances."

• 1:27:27Jefferson Fisher?

  Ah, okay.

• 1:27:28Speaker 02

  And so, but you're too categorical about it. Somebody will point that out. "Yeah, but there was a 19, you know, or a 2013 study that said," and it's like, "Yeah, good point."

• 1:27:38Jefferson Fisher?

  Right.

• 1:27:38Speaker 02

  Yeah, good point.

• 1:27:39Jefferson Fisher?

  And I know you've, you know, you talked too about like the dark triad.

• 1:27:43Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:27:43Jefferson Fisher?

  Right? And how that like.

• 1:27:44Speaker 02

  They're not good at this.

• 1:27:45Jefferson Fisher?

  Right. And so it like.

• 1:27:47Speaker 02

  They don't have imposter syndrome.

• 1:27:48Jefferson Fisher?

  Yeah. And so that's what I, when I came across that body of work of yours, I, I had to, I had to like go for a walk of like, "I want to make sure that."

• 1:27:59Speaker 02

  You're not.

• 1:27:59Jefferson Fisher?

  I'm doing everything.

• 1:28:00Speaker 02

  If you're worried about it, you're not.

• 1:28:02Jefferson Fisher?

  Okay. All right. Good.

• 1:28:03Speaker 02

  No, there's a test on my website, by the way. I've got a whole battery of tests that people can actually take about, you know, their affect profile and their general happiness level.

• 1:28:11Jefferson Fisher?

  Okay.

• 1:28:11Speaker 02

  It's called the happiness scale, but I also.

• 1:28:13Jefferson Fisher?

  Tell them, what's your website?

• 1:28:14Speaker 02

  arthurbrooks.com.

• 1:28:15Jefferson Fisher?

  Perfect.

• 1:28:15Speaker 02

  Yeah. And, uh, and people can go there and take a test and see, you know, their dark triad characteristics or the person they're dating.

• 1:28:23Jefferson Fisher?

  Ah.

• 1:28:23Speaker 02

  Which is really important, especially for women, because women are magnetized to dark triads. There are, there's a category of men that's really good at, at looking like they're falling in love when they're actually not.

• 1:28:35Jefferson Fisher?

  Can you tell like for.

• 1:28:36Speaker 02

  I should define dark triad, right?

• 1:28:38Jefferson Fisher?

  Listener, yeah.

• 1:28:39Speaker 02

  Yeah. The dark triad is a, is a combination of three personality characteristics. Narcissism, it's all about me. Machiavellianism, which is I'm willing to hurt you to serve my ends. And psychopathy, psychopathic traits, which is if I hurt you, I don't feel remorse or empathy for you at all. Those are the three traits. And when it's all about me, I'm willing to hurt you and I don't care. That's super dangerous. Now, it can be really mild, like you're just above the average across these three.

• 1:29:02Jefferson Fisher?

  Yeah.

• 1:29:02Speaker 02

  But people who do fulfill these characteristics are one in 14. Is 7% of the population. It's a lot.

• 1:29:09Jefferson Fisher?

  That would say that's a lot.

• 1:29:10Speaker 02

  That's a lot. Everybody who's listening to us right now or watching us right now has encountered a dark triad. And that was a weird thing where somebody became a friend a little too fast and then betrayed you.

• 1:29:21Jefferson Fisher?

  Yeah.

• 1:29:21Speaker 02

  It's a boyfriend that acted like he was like a love bombed you like crazy. And then he emptied your bank account and used you and abandoned you. Or if you had the bad luck of actually marrying that guy, he cheated on you, you know, over and over and over again. It's everybody's first husband.

• 1:29:37Jefferson Fisher?

  Yeah, yeah, it's usually their ex. Yeah.

• 1:29:39Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly. You worked for one who was very abusive and exploitative and took credit for your work. You know, that kind of thing is actually what they do all the time. You see them in certain areas of business. There's a lot of, a lot in politics. You see a lot in show business. No doubt, there are plenty of lawyers who are dark triads. Right? Not very many CEOs, because CEOs have to do repeat business.

• 1:30:02Jefferson Fisher?

  I'd say surgeons.

• 1:30:04Speaker 02

  Surgeons are funny because they have an affect profile of being very, very low affect.

• 1:30:09Jefferson Fisher?

  I could see that.

• 1:30:10Speaker 02

  Very low affect. So jet pilots and surgeons. But there could be, I don't know, I've never done dark triad tests on these guys.

• 1:30:16Jefferson Fisher?

  I've definitely depose a number of doctors who kind of this god complex.

• 1:30:20Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:30:21Jefferson Fisher?

  And I don't know if it's because they cut on people or.

• 1:30:23Speaker 02

  Yeah, it might be. It might be. What kind of lawyers do you think are most likely to be dark triads? Would be personal injury lawyers?

• 1:30:29Jefferson Fisher?

  Pro, um, I would, I'd say personal injury attorneys would probably be one. And then I would also say like the corporate banking is the ones I would do.

• 1:30:39Speaker 02

  They're most likely to want to, want to really, really get bad guys out of trouble.

• 1:30:43Jefferson Fisher?

  Yeah, like this, like the white collar crime, like attorneys. Well, I definitely say that it's somewhere in law all over the place. I want to, um, I want to ask you this last question, and it's, it's one that's personal for me and my family. We're always in this season as young kids, and I know other people listening have young kids or grandparents or grandkids.

• 1:31:07Jefferson Fisher?

  And Sierra, my wife, her thing is like she wants to have a routine. And we're just in this stage where every week is different. And it's, she always says, well, once this happens,

• 1:31:19Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:31:20Jefferson Fisher?

  You know, we're going to settle into a routine. Once this is over, things are going to calm down.

• 1:31:24Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:31:24Jefferson Fisher?

  And my position is, no, this is just life. This is this, there is no like.

• 1:31:29Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:31:29Jefferson Fisher?

  And so I'm curious, what kind of either research or thoughts that has been married for 34 years? Yeah. What have you seen?

• 1:31:37Speaker 02

  The only thing you can count on is change.

• 1:31:39Jefferson Fisher?

  Yeah.

• 1:31:40Speaker 02

  That's really what it comes down to for sure. Now, routine actually does get easier the older your kids are, because you can actually get into a more stable, stable routine for sure. But one of the things that you find typically in couples is that one partner doesn't want routine. One partner is actually incredibly allergic to routine. It's probably you.

• 1:32:00Jefferson Fisher?

  Yeah, it's me.

• 1:32:00Speaker 02

  Probably you, because you know, you're probably an adventure freak. You're probably somebody who needs a lot of stimulus because you're highly open to experience. And people who are open to experience, they don't like routines that much.

• 1:32:10Jefferson Fisher?

  Yeah.

• 1:32:10Speaker 02

  It's like, you probably like traveling. You probably like seeing things. I mean, I get it.

• 1:32:14Jefferson Fisher?

  Yeah.

• 1:32:14Speaker 02

  It's just like hotels are not great.

• 1:32:16Jefferson Fisher?

  I'm just not big on structure.

• 1:32:16Speaker 02

  No, yeah.

• 1:32:17Jefferson Fisher?

  She, she really likes structure. I don't find structure to be helpful.

• 1:32:20Speaker 02

  And different people like it into, in, in, in different amounts. And that's just, those are personality differences is what it comes down to. And so the whole point is you need to be really, really open about that.

• 1:32:30Jefferson Fisher?

  Yeah.

• 1:32:30Speaker 02

  Such that you're getting what you need and she's getting what she needs. And she's not expecting things. So the, the, the big danger on this is that you keep making promises you can't keep because you don't want to keep them. So the typical thing where, because your, your life, by the way, I, I can see the crystal ball. It's going to get crazy or not less crazy. No, it is. I mean, you're going to do one weird thing after another and you're going to be successful at it. Right. Is what it's going to come down to. And you're going to be saying, honey, no, I promise you, it's just this book release.

• 1:32:56Jefferson Fisher?

  Yeah.

• 1:32:57Speaker 02

  I, I promise you, it's just this one speaking tour and, and, and I, I would love for you to come with me, but I promise you, it's not going to be like this. This is a specially busy time. That's what, that's what adventure junkies always tell their spouse. It's an especially busy time. And then we can really, you know, we can settle down to, you know, the life that we've always talked about. We can have more of the structure, we can have more. Or this routine and and you're kind of convincing yourself of something that's not the truth and and she will believe you and then that thing is always out of reach.

• 1:33:26Jefferson Fisher?

  Yeah.

• 1:33:26Speaker 02

  You can't manage somebody's expectations towards something that's never going to come true. That'll become a constant source of bitterness. And so you it's it's worth two things doing you as a bunny who's an openness person.

• 1:33:38Jefferson Fisher?

  Yeah.

• 1:33:38Speaker 02

  Is is to say, number one, honey, I can't stop.

• 1:33:44Speaker 02

  I can't stop.

• 1:33:47Speaker 02

  I need to stop more. I need you to help me. I need you to help me. I need you to help me to be more like you. And I'm not going to be like you. It's always going to be a little bit crazier. It's always going to be a little bit more. It's always going to be a little more. There's a word in statistics called stochastic. That means it's like.

• 1:34:05Jefferson Fisher?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:34:06Speaker 02

  Stochastic process is one that's has a lot of randomness in it, right? There's a lot of adventure in it. I'm not going to be I I don't but I don't know how to stop and left to my devices is going to be a problem for me and it's going to be a problem for you. So I need you to help me. You need to understand me. I need you to help me.

• 1:34:21Jefferson Fisher?

  Yeah, that's a real conversation.

• 1:34:22Speaker 02

  That's why God put her in your that's why God put her in your life.

• 1:34:25Jefferson Fisher?

  Yeah, no doubt.

• 1:34:26Speaker 02

  Because we're supposed to complete each other. We're not supposed to copy each other.

• 1:34:29Jefferson Fisher?

  Yeah, that's the kind of that's real conversation.

• 1:34:32Speaker 02

  Yeah, man.

• 1:34:33Jefferson Fisher?

  I want to ask you a question. I always ask every every guest and and take all the time you need. What is one conversation that you can remember that has changed the direction of your life?

• 1:34:45Speaker 02

  A conversation that changed the course of my life was not one that I had, but it was one that I witnessed.

• 1:34:56Speaker 02

  I wrote this book called From Strength to Strength and and I tell the story at the beginning of that book because it was the reason I wrote that book. And that book was really a turning point in my life, based on that conversation. I was on a plane, which I was on a plane.

• 1:35:11Jefferson Fisher?

  Yeah.

• 1:35:13Speaker 02

  Flying from LA to Washington and it was it was nighttime. It wasn't a night flight, but it was like 11 o'clock at night and it was dark and I heard a conversation behind me in the row right behind me.

• 1:35:24Speaker 02

  And I could tell by their voices, it was a man and a woman. I could tell by their voices that they were old, not just elderly, old eighties. And I figured they were a married couple. And I couldn't quite make out his words. It was kind of mumbling, but her words were really clear and her voice was penetrating and coming right through the seats. So I heard huh huh huh huh huh. And then she said, oh, don't say it would be better if you were dead. And then I heard huh huh huh huh huh.

• 1:35:52Jefferson Fisher?

  Yeah.

• 1:35:53Speaker 02

  And she says, it's not true that nobody cares about you and nobody loves you anymore. That nobody remembers you. It's not true. And I'm a behavioral scientist, so I'm, I'm putting, you know, a story together in my head. And I figure this is a guy who's in his eighties and time's almost up. And he didn't have the life that he wanted. He's not you. He didn't take a bite out of life, man. He didn't actually build the career that he wanted. He didn't take every opportunity and now it's too late. And the world's passed him by and forgotten. He probably was never remembered in the first place. And they finished their conversation and at the end of the flight, which was an hour later or so, the lights went on and everybody stood up. And I wanted to get a look at the, you know,

• 1:36:34Speaker 02

  the old man that his loving wife had just been telling him convenient lies. And it was one of the most famous men in the world.

• 1:36:40Jefferson Fisher?

  No way.

• 1:36:42Speaker 02

  This is somebody that everybody watching and listening to us right now knows, not personally.

• 1:36:46Jefferson Fisher?

  Yeah.

• 1:36:46Speaker 02

  But he's so famous for what he did. And this guy is not just some actor or politician. This is somebody with a small group of dedicated individuals in the 1960s, 1970s changed the course of history.

• 1:36:59Jefferson Fisher?

  Wow.

• 1:37:00Speaker 02

  And, and I heard him telling his wife that he might as well be dead because nobody remembers him because the good days were in the past and they never came back. And at that time I was the CEO of a company and, and, and I didn't know what my future was. And I went home and I said to my wife, honey, I had this experience and I told her about it. She said, who was it? And I told her, she says, huh? I said, yeah, huh. And I said, I don't want to be having that conversation with you on a plane in 40 years.

• 1:37:30Jefferson Fisher?

  Right.

• 1:37:31Speaker 02

  I don't want to be having, or 30 years. I guess I was in my early 50s at that time. The guy was probably in his early 80s. I don't want to be having that conversation with you. I need to find a way to structure the rest of my life so that when things actually end, I can be at peace. So I can understand the structure of what my life is supposed to be. So I can live according to God's will without always wishing that it were something that could be better, that could be bigger, could be more special, as opposed to me being happy. And that's the beginning of why I'm doing what I'm doing right now.

• 1:38:03Jefferson Fisher?

  That's awesome.

• 1:38:04Speaker 02

  I dedicated my life subsequent to that. I went on a long pilgrimage, a walking pilgrimage across northern Spain to find the answer to the question on how to do it. I'm Catholic. So we do. Long walks.

• 1:38:15Jefferson Fisher?

  Pilgrimage.

• 1:38:16Speaker 02

  And I decided, I think God told me that I was going to spend the rest of my life lifting people up and bringing them together in bonds of happiness and love for His will using science and ideas. And I was subsequent to that conversation on that plane.

• 1:38:27Jefferson Fisher?

  That's, that's how you know if you're one of His. You love one another. Absolutely. Well, have you enjoyed our conversation?

• 1:38:33Speaker 02

  I've loved it. Thank you. You're good at what you do, man. You are good at what you do.

• 1:38:37Jefferson Fisher?

  You too. I really appreciate it. Thanks for coming.

• 1:38:38Speaker 02

  Thank you. God bless you.

• 1:38:39Jefferson Fisher?

  You too.

• 1:38:40Speaker 02

  Thanks.

• 1:38:41Speaker 00

  Now, more than ever, we need someone on our side. But Rob Whitman? Whitman's votes drove up costs, cut Medicaid, and risked 350,000 Virginians' healthcare to pay for tax breaks for himself and his donors. He's not on our side. Shannon Taylor will fight corruption, cut taxes, and bring down costs. This November, vote for Shannon Taylor. She's for us. Paid for by HMP, the House Majority PAC dot com. Not authorized by any candidate or candidate's committee.