3 Steps to Embracing Your Fears

Some of the experiences that scare us most are also the ones that can change us for the better. The right kind of challenge increases confidence, deepens courage, helps us feel more fully alive, and connects us to a deeper sense of meaning. But not all risk is the same, and learning the difference matters. In this episode of Office Hours, I explore why deliberately stepping outside your comfort zone is almost always beneficial when approached wisely. I discuss how to distinguish bravery from recklessness, how to think about fear in a healthier way, and how to identify challenges that are genuinely right for you. Because our fears are deeply personal, the challenges that build happiness and meaning differ for each of us, and only you can decide which ones are right for you. But I offer advice to help you uncover what is most beneficial to you. If you’re ready to discover what else can give your life meaning, pre-order my new book The Meaning of Your Life https://www.arthurbrooks.com/the-meaning-of-your-life, available March 31. — Where to find Arthur Brooks: • Website: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://arthurbrooks.com/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ https://arthurbrooks.com/ • Newsletter: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.arthurbrooks.com/newsletter⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ https://www.arthurbrooks.com/newsletter • X: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://x.com/arthurbrooks⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ https://x.com/arthurbrooks • Instagram: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.instagram.com/arthurcbrooks/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ https://www.instagram.com/arthurcbrooks/ • Facebook: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.facebook.com/ArthurBrooks/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ https://www.facebook.com/ArthurBrooks/ • YouTube: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCGuyFRjJQFGCKzfHTBvWM6A⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCGuyFRjJQFGCKzfHTBvWM6A • LinkedIn: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/arthur-c-brooks/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ https://www.linkedin.com/in/arthur-c-brooks/ • Email: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠[email protected]⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ mailto:[email protected] — Timestamps: (00:00) Intro (05:57) Why you should find your “running of the bulls” (13:37) Bravery vs. recklessness (16:50) When the benefits of risk actually arrive (19:20) Find your running of the bulls (22:31) Envision facing the danger (24:54) Make a plan (31:27) Q&A: How to know if it’s time for a new job (33:23) Q&A: Preparing for the death of a loved one (34:55) Q&A: Giving advice without offending — Referenced: • The Meaning of Your Life: Finding Purpose in an Age of Emptiness: https://www.amazon.com/Meaning-Your-Life-Finding-Emptiness/dp/0593545427 • The Happiness Scale: https://learn.arthurbrooks.com/the-happiness-scale • The Pursuit of Happiness with Arthur Brooks: https://www.thefp.com/w/arthur-brooks • The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness: https://www.amazon.com/Anxious-Generation-Rewiring-Childhood-Epidemic/dp/0593655036 • Multiple motives for participating in adventure sports: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1469029212000490 • ... References continued at: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.arthurbrooks.com/office-hours⁠⁠ https://www.arthurbrooks.com/office-hours — Production and marketing by ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://penname.co/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ https://penname.co/⁠.

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

• 0:01Speaker 00

  This episode is brought to you by State Farm. Football has a play for just about everything. You can go deep, keep it on the ground, or draw up something nobody sees coming. And whether you want to run a flea flicker or the tush push, you need a plan to fit your unique situation. That's why State Farm takes the time to get to know you so they can help personalize coverage for your life and budget. Now that's a solid game plan. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there.

• 0:29Arthur Brooks?

  Today, I want to talk about something that's really been on my mind, which is safety. Almost any place you look today, we talk about the culture of safety. In a lot of schools, for example, we have these safe spaces where people don't feel like they're threatened by ideas that they find especially objectionable. The truth is that when people do really, really, really hard things, the hard part isn't bringing them happiness, but having done them, because what you learn about yourself is what brings happiness and dangers like that. People who are real strivers, their big fear, their death fear, is the fear of not measuring up. What's the door that you're afraid to open? Open it up. You might just find yourself running right into a greater sense of meaning and happiness in your own life.

• 1:19Arthur Brooks?

  Hey, friends. Welcome to Office Hours. I'm Arthur Brooks. This is a show about using science to lift people up and bring them together in bonds of happiness and love. That's my personal mission, and it might be something like your mission too, if you're watching this show, especially if you've been with us for a long time. In that case, thank you very much. If this is your first episode, welcome. We have a whole backlog now of shows that are like this one on different topics. I hope you'll go back and look at the library and enjoy them as much as I've enjoyed presenting them. And as you do, please do let us know what you think. [email protected] is the email so that you can feedback. Also, you can leave comments on any of the platforms where you might be watching or listening to this show. We pay attention to the comments. We learn from them.

• 2:03Arthur Brooks?

  And especially when you ask us questions, we always take some questions at the end of the show. So do write in and let us know what you're thinking and what's on your mind and how we can make this better. And especially, please recommend this to your friends. Word of mouth is incredibly important for us because people trust their friends to give them what's really best in a world of options. It's really up to you to give people the best that you've actually been listening to. If that includes the show, thank you. Hey friends, a lot of you know that I keep a very high protein diet. That's important for me in my 60s because I want to maintain a good level of muscle protein synthesis. And I don't always have time to eat as much protein as I want from whole foods. That's the ideal, but it's just not manageable all the time. For that reason, I'm always looking for supplements that can actually get me where I need to go

• 2:47Arthur Brooks?

  with respect to my macronutrient profile. A bunch of my friends were telling me that David Protein is a really good source. The reason is because protein bars in general, they're handy, they're convenient, but they can be very high in calories and they can actually be really high in carbohydrate, especially in the form of sugar. David Protein, I heard, was better. Sure enough, it's got a great profile. It has 40% more protein, 57% fewer calories than most of the protein bars you find out there. 28 grams of protein, 150 calories, zero grams of sugar. That's actually quite a feat to put that together. And by the way, they taste great. David Protein has a new bronze line with 20 grams of protein, 150 calories, and zero grams of sugar.

• 3:29Arthur Brooks?

  That comes to 53% calories from protein. Another industry-leading protein-to-calorie ratio, as most leading protein bars on the market average 40% or lower. Each bronze bar features a smooth, decadent marshmallow base with a flavor-filled layering, airy crisp, and a chocolate-flavored coating, providing a different taste and texture profile compared to our Hero Gold line. I started buying David Protein bars and now I'm pleased that they're sponsoring this show as well. So whether you're on the go or hitting the gym, if you're trying to meet your protein targets, David Protein is a good way for you to do it. That's the way I'm doing it and it's what I'm carrying when I'm on the road. So head over to davidprotein.com/Arthur. They've got a special offer for you. If you buy four cartons, they'll give you the fifth carton for free.

• 4:14Arthur Brooks?

  You're gonna love that. And you can also find David Protein in stores by looking for the store locator. So enjoy. Today, I want to talk about something that's really been on my mind. Which is safety? Almost any place you look today, we talk about the culture of safety. In a lot of schools, for example, we have these safe spaces where people don't feel like they're threatened by ideas that they find especially objectionable. Safetyism is almost a cult among modern parents. One of the things that my friend Jonathan Haidt, who wrote The Anxious Generation, that big bestseller, he talks about his safetyism where parents have shielded their kids from anything that's even remotely dangerous.

• 4:58Arthur Brooks?

  And in so doing, he argues, he's stunted their development. The idea that we need more safety in our lives to get happier is hugely problematic, because the truth is, we have kind of the a social peanut allergy, if you were. We haven't, we haven't actually exposed ourselves to enough of the allergens around us, social allergens around us, such that we can build up any sort of resiliency. That's Jonathan Haidt's argument, and he has the data to show that that's, that's really true. So there's a couple of options here. If you agree that maybe there's too much safety in our culture, and maybe a little too much safety in your life, you can just kind of let things happen the way that they do, or here's another option.

• 5:41Arthur Brooks?

  Maybe you can expose yourself to a little danger. The right kind, in the right dose. And if you do, a little danger might help you. Well, that's my argument today. I'm going to show you the best science that shows that maybe what you're looking for in your life, if you're not as happy as you'd like to be, is that you need something that's a little dangerous, a little bit more risky, something that you can do to give your life, I don't know, a little more spice. Maybe make you a little bit afraid. I'm going to try to make the case. If I do my job, you'll believe by the end of this episode, that danger, in the right dose... Can really be your friend and I'll set you in search of the danger that your life actually needs so that you can get happier.

• 6:25Arthur Brooks?

  I was thinking about, you know, how I wanted to introduce this topic and you know, an idea kept coming to me. It's funny, in literature, there's a group of English writers, English and American writers, that are weirdly obsessed with the country of Spain. If you look at George Orwell, he writes constantly about Spain. Hemingway, obviously, Ernest Hemingway, was writing constantly about Spain. James Michener wrote a great book called Evaria. And, and for all of these writers in, in, in sort of the Anglosphere, Spain has kind of a wild quality to it, a kind of untamed quality to it. I always loved those writers and I wound up, well, not being one of those writers, I don't write novels about Spain, I went one better. Hey, none of those guys actually married a Spaniard.

• 7:10Arthur Brooks?

  I married a Spaniard. I moved to Spain. That's how obsessed that I actually was. And when I read, for example, Hemingway, it really speaks to me in a, in a kind of a primordial way. I mean, there's so many things that you all know. For example, I mean, you've heard, you all heard the expression, you know, in, in one of Hemingway's great novels, The Sun Also Rises, from 1926. There's a character named Mike Campbell, who's a drunk and he's bankrupt and they ask him, how do you go bankrupt? And he says, well, little by little and then all at once. That's a kind of a famous expression on how things happen, right? Well, in the same book, actually, there's another character named Bill Gordon, who is once again, another hard drinking veteran, which Hemingway writes about because he was a drunk too.

• 7:55Arthur Brooks?

  He's talking about the running of the bulls in Pamplona. And you've probably heard of this tradition. In Pamplona, which is northern Spain, that's the capital of the Navar region of Spain, which is, some people consider to be part of the Basque Country. Every year on San Fermin, which is the, the 4th of July, you know, in, in early July, it's a multi-day festival, they celebrate it by letting a bunch of bulls like run through the city. They let them go and there's like a thousand pound bulls running through the city. And there are all these young men dressed in white with, with red handkerchiefs around the necks, they're called mothos and they're, they're running in front of the bulls and it's just crazy. You've probably seen it in, you know, different movies and et cetera. It was made famous because Hemingway in The Sun Also Rises writes about that.

• 8:40Arthur Brooks?

  It's this uniquely dangerous and scary and thrilling Spanish custom. I've spent time in Pamplona. It's a wild place. I've actually never done the running of the bulls. It's never interested me that much. But I actually have gone to the bullfights in Spain a lot. When I lived in Barcelona and when I've been visiting in Seville and different places. It's controversial because obviously what's happening with this animal. But it's incredible at the same time. It is wild how this actually happens. Why do people engage in that? And the reason is because there's something about it that affects the brain, about that little bit of danger, that kind of controlled danger.

• 9:23Arthur Brooks?

  But real danger, not nonsense like, like roller coasters or haunted houses at Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving. You don't go to haunted houses on Thanksgiving? Weird. Okay, haunted houses on Halloween. It's, um, it's something that's a real, it's a real danger, but in kind of a controlled way that makes people intensely happy. What, what's going on? I've talked to people who've done this Hemingway kind of thing. You know, they've run with the bulls and it says it increases their courage. It shows them what they're actually made of. And that's why they do it. And that's why it's actually a thrill.

• 10:00Speaker 00

  This episode is brought to you by State Farm. Football has a play for just about everything. You can go deep, keep it on the ground, or draw up something nobody sees coming. And whether you want to run a flea flicker or the tush push, you need a plan to fit your unique situation. That's why State Farm takes the time to get to know you so they can help personalize coverage for your life and budget. Now that's a solid game plan. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there.

• 10:28Arthur Brooks?

  Well, here's what I want to suggest to you today. Find your bulls. Now, maybe you're gonna go to Pamplona and run with the bulls and son for me. Probably not. Maybe for you, it's something a lot, that seems a lot tamer, but it's something that you've always wanted to do, but always been a little afraid of. Maybe it's learning to drive a Vespa. Maybe it's going to somebody and saying, you know what? I want you to know I've always been in love with you. Gary? Yeah. Maybe it's giving a speech in public. You know, there are pretty famous surveys. I don't know if I believe them or not, but close enough to the truth, that some people are more afraid of public speaking than they are of their own death. There's a running of the bulls in your life

• 11:12Arthur Brooks?

  that maybe it's time for you to grab on to, so that you can be a modern day Hemingway. Well, I'm not gonna ask you to actually become Hemingway for reasons that'll be apparent in a second, but to become the best version of yourself. And what I want to talk about is why this actually can help you so much and free you from so many other things in your life that are not the bulls in your life. The people who run with the bulls, they always come home from Pamplona and they say, "My life was never the same, and I don't actually know why." Well, I know why. So stay tuned. There's been a bunch of research on this, of course. I'm gonna be referring to, there's a pretty interesting article in the Psychology of Sport and Exercise from 2012. Kind of an old article now, but it's a good article called "Multiple Motives for Participating in Adventure Sports", which actually goes to people who do extreme sports,

• 11:56Arthur Brooks?

  the practitioners of dangerous sports like hang gliding and whitewater kayaking. Pretty dangerous. I mean, look, this is not risking your life every single day, but dangerous enough. People do get hurt and die sometimes. And ask them why they do it, and then the benefit that they get. Now, the motives are typically five-fold. Number one is that the number one motive they say is, "I want to feel that excitement. I want to feel something out of the ordinary." The second is, "I want to achieve a particular goal." I want to get good at that thing and have always wanted to do it. Number three is I want to strengthen friendships because typically you do this stuff with other people. You don't go, you know, parachuting into a sinkhole someplace and say, nobody knows I'm here.

• 12:39Arthur Brooks?

  I mean, that's, that would be a foolish thing to do, of course. You, you, you do stuff like that with friends. The fourth reason is they want to test their personal abilities. What am I capable of? And last but not least, they want to overcome fear. Those are great motives and those are stated tangible motives. But here's the thing, all that's true and they do achieve that. But the big benefit that they get is actually not on the list of the motives for undertaking a dangerous thing. The benefit that they get is actually beyond words and people can't quite describe it. Now, if you've been following my work, you know, actually probably what's going on here. Which is to say that you're coming up with motives and you're articulating them using the left hemisphere of your brain. As a kind of a complicated problem of something you want to achieve in life.

• 13:22Arthur Brooks?

  And the experience that you have is in the right hemisphere of your brain, which is mysterious and meaningful and beyond words. In other words, it's ineffable. I want to do one, two, three, four, and five. What I got was this thing that I can't quite put words to, which is sort of amazing when you think about it. And that's what actually happens to people. As a matter of fact, what people who are engaging in slightly dangerous things and extreme sports. Find is that they achieve what psychologists call a flow state. Where hours can feel like minutes, where time doesn't have meaning. That, that comes from, I mentioned it before on the show. That comes from the work of Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, who taught for many years at the University of Chicago, later at Claremont Graduate University. One of the great social psychologists of his generation.

• 14:05Arthur Brooks?

  He wrote a famous book called Flow, about how we lose track of time when our brain works in a particular way. And we're in completely engaged in something that's hard, but not impossible. It's just at the edge of what we can actually do and we're exploring the boundary of our possibilities. And probably you've, you, you've probably experienced this, but, but dangerous things, they tend to actually bring this on. Now, one caveat to all this. Taking risks is not always evidence that you're, that you're exposing yourself to a little danger in search of increasing your happiness. It might be evidence that there's something wrong with you. And this is a distinction between bravery and recklessness.

• 14:51Arthur Brooks?

  So let me talk about this a little bit because there actually is a whole bunch of literature on what we call high sensation seeking people. And of course, neuroscientists have taken a real interest in this. What's different about their limbic system? What's different about their brains? And the answer is they tend to have what's called low amygdala reactivity. The amygdala is a bilateral organ. Amygdala is the word for almond in Latin. And that's because it's an almond shaped thing, like the ends of your fingers on either side of your brain is bilateral. And the two sides do slightly different things, but that's not very important here. What they do is it mediates the experience of fear and anger, you know, fight or flight as a result of that. And so when you're doing something dangerous, you're stimulating your amygdala.

• 15:31Arthur Brooks?

  So there's a whole class of people, and this is probably mostly genetic, that have low amygdala reactivity. It's hard for their amygdala to turn on and to feel kind of normal. They have to stimulate, they gotta kick their amygdala, right? Now, by the way, people who are really super fearful and really risk averse, their amygdalas work too well. They have high amygdala reactivity. So either way is actually something different from the norm. But low amygdala reactivity people, they're high sensation seekers. They're always trying to find some way to feel completely alive. And they don't know that they're actually trying to stimulate their limbic system, but in point of fact, they are. They tend to exhibit blunted stress and starvel responses.

• 16:13Arthur Brooks?

  They always underestimate the likelihood of bad outcomes is actually what you find in the experiments. "I'll be fine," they say. And so, you know, the Darwin Awards that you see on TV of people doing these unbelievably stupid things and, you know, getting hurt or even killed. Those are almost certainly people that have this, they're high sensation seekers with low amygdala activity. Interesting paper on this in the journal NeuroImage. I'll put that in the show notes as always. So, and these are the people that you see in ordinary life too. If you go to Yellowstone Park and there's gonna be some idiot. Who's trying to get a selfie with a bear. It's like, don't do that with your baby. I was like, me and my baby, we're gonna get a picture of ourselves with a bear. And you know, there's always some sad story that actually comes around.

• 16:58Arthur Brooks?

  But even more commonly, that's the kid you went to high school with, who was always binge drinking. You know, taking personal risks all the time. That's the kind of behavior that we see with sensation seeking, and it's a pathology. It's not, it's not somebody who's just living on the edge, man. And that's not the kind of person that you want to be. That's not normal. That's, that's not what we want. We want bravery in the face of ordinary fear, not recklessness. Which is to say, not feeling fear. Fearlessness, by the way, isn't great. There's a whole literature on fearlessness. People, there's an expression, to be a fearless leader. I want a fearless leader. No, you don't. If, if you actually have low amygdala activity, you become a leader, you're gonna get people killed. If you're in, in the military, for example.

• 17:43Arthur Brooks?

  Never follow a fearless leader. Follow a courageous leader. More on that here in a second. Okay, so what do we want? We want people who feel fear ordinarily. And this is what we want to find our bulls, to find our running of the bulls in Pamplona, our own version of this. These are brave people and not reckless people. These are people who feel fear in an ordinary way, but they learn how to stand up to it. And as such, to overcome it. Which in and of itself is this incredible challenge that tends to be really, really life-changing. This is the key, is to work to overcome that and not to be reckless. Not to do something just because I gotta do something more and more and more dangerous to actually feel something. Hemingway himself, by the way, is an example of a reckless, not a brave person.

• 18:28Arthur Brooks?

  His life was filled with these particular experiences, which why is in a way, which is why Running of the Bulls, while it thrilled me, and, and subsequent works by Hemingway, like Death on a Sunday Afternoon, which is a magisterial text on bullfighting. That's how I learned all of these details on bullfighting myself as an American, was reading that particular book. But he himself is a bad example of this. I mean, he was, he was doing all kinds of stupid things, risk-seeking, self-destructive history of dangerous binge drinking and...

• 18:59Arthur Brooks?

  In point of fact, his life ended sadly because he was a pathologically unbalanced person with a whole lot of mental illness. That's not what we're talking about. Now, when I'm talking about the benefits that come from a healthy relationship with introducing more danger in your life, I'm really making the case that danger can bring you happiness. So what's that all about? And it's interesting because what you find is when people are doing actually dangerous things, they're not happier while they're doing them. They're happier having done them. It's what it comes down to. So it's kind of like for me, it's like with writers, they're always happy having written books, not happy while, actually, I like writing books is what it comes down to.

• 19:43Arthur Brooks?

  But the truth is that when people do really, really, really hard things, the hard part isn't bringing them happiness, but having done them, because what you learn about yourself is what brings happiness and dangers like that. Doing something dangerous is something you're happy about later, but much happier about. The thrills come from taking a risk, from finding your resiliency, figuring out who you actually are. That's why doing something a bit dangerous can enhance your courage and raise your happiness along the way. Okay, that's the science. That's the background. But what you really want to know is how to do that. How can you do that in your life? What's the kind of danger that you can find? And here's a few ways to actually do just that.

• 20:26Arthur Brooks?

  I want to give you three ideas on how to go find your Pamplona, to find your running of the bulls. Now, to begin with, it should be something that really is kind of scary to you. I've done some things that are technically scary. I've skydived, skydove. I've jumped out of a plane with a parachute. On my daughter's 18th birthday, all she wanted was to jump out of an airplane with her dad. Isn't that cool? Yeah. And sure enough, we went to, we went skydiving. The scarier than the jumping out of the plane was actually the pilot. You know, he's looking, he's like, thunderstorm's really dangerous.

• 21:07Arthur Brooks?

  Yeah, that we had to be okay now. And we went up in this Cessna from approximately 1951 that had, you know, screws that were coming out of the floor of the plane. That was a lot more dangerous than jumping out of the plane, I think. But the bottom line is the skydiving wasn't actually scary to me. I don't think that my pulse even went up. That's not scary. That might sound like an idiotic decision to you, and it did to my wife. By the way, I say, honey, you want to come with us, go skydiving? She said, that's stupid. It's just a stupid, dangerous thing to do. Maybe she's right, but that didn't bother me. And lots of things like that don't actually bother me. Things that are objectively physically dangerous don't bother me at all. So that wouldn't be my running of the bulls. And that might not be your running of the bulls.

• 21:50Arthur Brooks?

  A lot of it for you requires thinking carefully about what takes courage. What you could do, and that would actually take courage. Now, it doesn't have to be existentially dangerous. It just has to feel dangerous to you because of what you're risking. For a lot of people, that's not a physical challenge at all. It's social or it's emotional, which is why I gave you the example at the beginning of the podcast, that maybe you should go tell somebody that you're in love with, that you're in love with that person, and accept the consequences of that person's reaction. Maybe you get a, hey, I've been in love with you too, and you live happily ever after. Or maybe you get rejected, but the whole point is you're not going to die.

• 22:32Arthur Brooks?

  And you'll, you'll get a little thrill from having broken through with doing something that's really scary, if that's scary to you. Maybe it's getting serious about a job change that you need to make. And for some people, making a job change is super scary. You know, that would have been just completely terrifying for my dad. He had more or less the same job for four decades, and he wanted to change, but that was just really scary. He was a very conscientious person, too, I have to say. Maybe it's going back to school after a long time. You don't know how it's going to go. I talk to people all the time who later in life, they actually go back to get their college degree, or they go back to graduate school, and they're terrified, you know? Am I up to it? For example, maybe that's leaving a city where you've lived your whole life.

• 23:17Arthur Brooks?

  Those are social and emotional challenges that can be way scarier than running with the bulls or skydiving. So that's number one. Do the work and figure out what your running of the bulls actually is. Two. Envision yourself as brave, but not reckless. You know the distinction. I told you about the amygdala activity distinction between the two. Envision bravery. Imagine yourself being courageous, not fearless. In other words, feeling the fear and acting anyway. That's what you want to visualize yourself doing. Doing that thing where you're saying, yeah, it's super scary. I'm doing it anyway. That has a lot of merit to it. Just that will actually kind of fire you up.

• 24:00Arthur Brooks?

  Then, of course, the question is, how do you conquer your fear? And the way that you conquer your fear is, in no small part, by exposing yourself to that fear through visualization. There is a whole literature about death visualization. There's a whole set of techniques in Theravada Buddhism. Theravada Buddhism, which is practiced in the sort of the southern tier of Asia, across Vietnam and Myanmar and Thailand, Sri Lanka. Theravada Buddhist monks, they conquer any fear of their own death by looking at photos of cadavers in various states of decay. And they look at each one and they say, that is me. That is me. They're exposing themselves to the truth, the reality, the inescapable reality of their own deaths.

• 24:45Arthur Brooks?

  And only in that exposure can they be truly free. Well, that's the same thing. If there's something, that danger, that you actually need to spice up your life, know to make your life better, then expose yourself to it cognitively. That really works, as a matter of fact. Envision yourself doing something that scares you. How you're going to feel about it when you actually take that risk? How are you going to feel about yourself having taken that risk? Think clearly, use your reason. Don't just use your amygdala to feel something. Use your prefrontal cortex to reason it through. Now, you might find at this stage that the odds of failure are so high and the consequences are so dire that this was recklessness and not bravery. Making the right choice is a question of prudential judgment.

• 25:30Arthur Brooks?

  Usually, however, when you visualize that white whale, that...

• 25:36Arthur Brooks?

  Group of six bulls running toward you. You're gonna understand what the odds of catastrophe really are and whether or not the problem was actually inside your own head and the kind of person that you want to be, the happier person that you want to be. So that's part two is visualization. Number three is making a plan and actually following it. Making a strategic plan for actually doing that. I don't recommend if you was like, I want to drive a Harley Davidson at 120 miles an hour, but I don't know how to drive a motorcycle. So I'm just gonna go out and buy one and hey, good luck, everybody. No, you don't do that. That's stupid. You prepare for it. I've talked to people about doing things that they found physically daunting.

• 26:17Arthur Brooks?

  You know, I've walked the Camino de Santiago across northern Spain, this very, very famous spiritual pilgrimage. I've done it twice as a matter of fact. And, and, and some people find that really daunting because you know, they're, they're, they're not physically in good shape. For example, they don't think they can actually walk for hundreds of miles. And I give them plans on actually how to do it. You know, I talk to them about, you know, reading about the Camino and where they're gonna stay and making sure you've got months and months and months of actually walking longer and longer distances and, and getting to the point where it's, it's possible. It might still be scary, but it's actually possible. Do the work, in other words, because going in unprepared is, is a reckless thing to do. It's not a brave thing to do.

• 26:59Arthur Brooks?

  And also, by the way, when you form a plan of something, it allows you to savor the experience before you actually have the experience. And doing that, boy, oh, boy, that's really great because what you do is you extend it. That's the reason people like to think about Christmas from, apparently from Halloween on, because they like it, because they like Christmas and they like the Christmas carols all that time. They don't just start listening to Christmas carols on Christmas Eve. They, they, they like to back it up a couple of months. Maybe you don't, maybe that annoys you, but that's why people actually do it. So these are the three things to think about. So I want you, here's your homework assignment. What's your running of the bulls? Do the work thinking about that. Second, envision yourself actually doing that thing.

• 27:42Arthur Brooks?

  And third, make a plan to actually do it. And when you do, I promise you, if it's bravery, not recklessness, your life's gonna improve. And that might be not more safety, but more danger might be just what you need. Now let me tell you what mine actually is. You know what it's not? It's not skydiving. That isn't it. And going to the bullfights is interesting. And at one point, I was at a bullfight and a bull jumped the barrier into the seats, one row ahead of me. I was closer to that bull than I am to this camera right now. That wasn't it either. It wasn't it. Maybe I've got a defective amygdala, I don't know. But I'll tell you what it is. It's failure.

• 28:27Arthur Brooks?

  I'm frightened of failure. I'm terrorized by the idea of failure. I mean, and a lot of you are too. If you're watching this podcast, you're probably a striver. The reason you're watching this podcast is because you want to be better at what you do. You want to be a higher performer at what you do. My students too. And the result of it is that people who are real strivers, their big fear, their death fear, is the fear of not measuring up to their own standards, the standards that people actually believe in them. And I've always been that way. And the result of that is that it's kind of held me back until I figured out that I need to face it regularly.

• 29:08Arthur Brooks?

  Here's how I started doing it in my early 30s. Now, early on, if you follow my work, you know that I was a professional classical musician. That's how I wound up in Spain, was playing in the Barcelona Symphony, as a matter of fact. I was afraid of failing, but I wasn't even enjoying my life. And so I needed to do something differently. And so I quit. I walked away from the thing I'd been doing since I was eight years old. When I was 31, I walked away from it. I literally didn't know how to do anything else. I had no skills, nothing. And I walked away and I took my career all the way down to the studs and I went back to school. I had just gotten a bachelor's degree by correspondence and economics of all things, because maybe that would be really interesting, which it was.

• 29:51Arthur Brooks?

  And I enrolled in and started a PhD program to become a behavioral scientist. Maybe that would work. Now, what that was, was the scariest thing I'd ever done, because that was confronting my fear of failure. By taking my my beloved career apart, which wasn't beloved work. It was a beloved career because it was very ego driven, as a matter of fact. And I confronted my professional failure. And in so doing, I felt truly alive for the first time in a long time, as a matter of fact. And I learned something from that, which is I need to do that regularly. So I came out of my PhD and I became a professor. I was most of that time at Syracuse, as a matter of fact. And it went super well. I published a lot of stuff. I was doing the traditional academic stuff. But by the end of 10 years, I'm like, yep, time to do it again.

• 30:36Arthur Brooks?

  So I quit, walked away again. And I took a job working for a nonprofit organization. And that was just terrifying because I'd never done anything like that. I had to raise $50 million a year and I'd never raised a dollar. I had hundreds of employees. I'd never had an employee. By the way, that was a crazy decision on the on the on the part of the board of that organization to hire somebody with no experience. And it was scary. And the first couple of years were really, really scary. But it did the trick. It did the trick. And the end of that period, the end of another decade, you're starting to see a pattern here, probably. It was time to get scared again. So I walked away from that. And I walked to doing what I'm doing now. But you know what? It took a couple of years before I knew what I was doing. It took a couple of years before I felt competent at all.

• 31:21Arthur Brooks?

  I felt for the first couple of years after I left my CEO job and I came back to academia, but more importantly, where I had this big new field of the science of happiness, like a complete patsy, a total hack, complete fake. And that's how I found my sense of being alive was by confronting that particular failure every day. Now, of course, it's really a lot easier because, you know, my beloved wife, Esther, is always has my back. Like, I don't care if you fail. I don't care if you fail professionally. You're my husband. I love you. And that really, really helps an awful lot. But let me tell you, when I take my career down to the studs, which I do every 10 years, I confront that failure. I feel like I'm running with the bulls. And that's a real source of the life in my life.

• 32:06Arthur Brooks?

  What's the door that you're afraid to open? Open it up. Let the six bulls out. Give it a good run. You might just find yourself running right into a greater sense of meaning and happiness in your own life.

• 32:22Arthur Brooks?

  Let's take some questions before we finish. First one, this is an anonymous question that came into [email protected]. I love the work I do, but I continue to dread going to work and come home feeling drained. How do you know when it's time to leave a job? How do you know when it's time to leave a job? Now, this is really common. I was just talking about my career. That has had all these different turns and twists. And at the end of 10 years, I always love my work, but I'm dreading going to work. This is really, really common. Let me give you a little rubric. I've mentioned it briefly in the show before. Not just for how to know when it's time to leave, but to know whether to take a job or not. The job that's right for you, that's serving your mission,

• 33:06Arthur Brooks?

  has three gut feelings involved in it. Excitement about the job, or career, or both. Fear and deadness. Deadness means you feel empty inside. The deadness is, by the way, anonymous. Why you dread going to work. There's lots of deadness in that. Those are the three sensations. Now, this is not just about jobs. Maybe this is when you get a marriage proposal, or an opportunity to move to Sacramento, whatever it happens to be. You have an opportunity for something new. You feel those three, and I want you to examine those three things. I'm talking about deciding to do something, but this is also about deciding to leave something. The right levels for taking something or keeping something

• 33:49Arthur Brooks?

  is 80% excitement, 20% fear, and 0% deadness. If you can manage 0% deadness, sometimes that's not in your opportunity set. You are feeling too much deadness, and it's time to go. That's what it comes down to. My guess is there's no fear in it anymore. There's a little bit of excitement, but there's a lot of deadness. The ratio's all wrong. Remember, 80, 20, 0. That's what you're looking for. If you're going to take something, or if you're going to stay something, when it deviates too much from that, either don't take it, or stop doing it if you're already doing it. Another anonymous note comes in over the website as well. Can you suggest any information on preparing for the death of a family member? This is really a tough one. And, and this can be harder than preparing for your own death. It really can be.

• 34:34Arthur Brooks?

  But the, the classical techniques for doing that, once again, are kind of what I talked about on the show today, which is exposure to the idea. Now, I, I told you about the Buddhist monks who practiced the Maranassati meditation. That's actually literally a nine-part meditation on the various stages of death. Having died, you know, the decomposition of the body, all the way to, you know, bare bleached bones that are turning into dust. They just, it's this, this contemplation of non, not existing physically in the form that we have before, which is a physical reality. It's an inevitability, to be sure. This will cure you of your own fear of death. It will. But maybe you have to do that for the people that you love as well.

• 35:18Arthur Brooks?

  For the inevitability of them dying. It's not going to help you to avoid the idea. Because the people that you love are gonna die. And, and so it's not a great strategy to say, yeah, I know the people I love are gonna die, but you know, I'm counting on going first, so I don't have to confront it. That's a terrible strategy in life. The truth of the matter is that people that you love are going to die. And you have a responsibility to be strong to yourself and to other people. The only way you can do that is by confronting that particular fear. This is another kind of running of the bulls. Maybe that's your running of the bulls, as a matter of fact. Last question, once again, lots of anonymous questions today. How come nobody wants to give their names?

• 35:59Arthur Brooks?

  "How can I give advice to a person without offending them and without feeling like I'm superior?" That's people, I get this an awful lot. So, you know, when I'm lecturing, for example, people say, "How do I teach this stuff to my teenage kids?" This is the least receptive audience in history is your teenage children, if you're the parents, right? I mean, they'll take advice from, you know, a rando on the street, but not from you, when they're 16 or 17 years old. But your results may vary, depends on the kid, but you get my point. And the way to do this is what we call the appeal to authority. The way to do this is when you're trying to give people advice, you say, "You know what? I dealt with something like you're going through right now, and it was really confusing to me. And I read this book, or I saw this video, or somebody gave me this piece of advice. It might be helpful to you.

• 36:44Arthur Brooks?

  I don't know. It helped me." And what you're doing is you're deflecting it. You're appealing to an outside authority. You're not wagging your finger. You're also not taking credit. You're exposing the fact that you've struggled with something. And you have, by the way. I mean, you have something similar, if not the same problem that somebody's having. And then you solved it, I hope. And if you did, think back to actually what was actually helpful to you and recommend that. Recommend something else as opposed to originating the idea yourself. Another way to do this, by the way, is to say, you know, I read this book and I don't know what I think about it. Would you read some of this and tell me your views? Boy, that really helps a lot, as a matter of fact, because that gets a conversation going. And people can decide for themselves whether it's helpful.

• 37:29Arthur Brooks?

  And I hope this is helpful. In general, I hope the whole show is helpful to you today. If you need a little bit of danger in your life, let me know your thoughts at [email protected]. As always, please like, please subscribe. Look for this show again and again on Spotify, YouTube, and Apple, any place where you actually get your fine podcast content. Leave a comment or read it. Follow me on all of the social media platforms, Instagram, LinkedIn in particular, and all the others as well. And order The Meaning of Your Life, the book right behind me here. All the things that I'm talking about here, you'll find more of that in the book and all the things that I write. One more thing, by the way, if you want to see my work every single week, I write twice a week in the Free Press. VFP.com. I have a column on Mondays, I have a newsletter on Fridays.

• 38:13Arthur Brooks?

  The newsletter is completely free. So you can get a lot of this particular content if you like it in written form. But if you do, do me a favor, take credit for it. Take some of the ideas and share them with somebody else because as soon as they go from my mouth to your head, they're all yours. And I need people with me in the happiness movement. I need fellow happiness teachers. So thanks in advance. See you next week.

• 38:44Speaker 00

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