5 Ways to Get Happier Starting Today

Welcome to the inaugural episode of Office Hours with Arthur Brooks. I’m thrilled to start this podcast with a topic I’ve devoted much of my life to: how we can be truly happier. This episode draws from my new book, The Happiness Files https://www.amazon.com/Happiness-Files-Insights-Arthur-Brooks/dp/B0F4MFQ6VN, a collection of essays from my How to Build a Life https://www.theatlantic.com/projects/how-build-life/ column in The Atlantic. But more importantly, it’s grounded in science, drawing on a 2020 study where top researchers ranked the most practical and effective ways to get happier. Today I discuss: • The top 5 research-backed ways to improve your well-being • Why investing in your close relationships is the single most powerful thing you can do to be happier • How joining a club or values-based community can restore your sense of belonging • The link between lifelong learning and growing happiness over time • Why transcending your ego through faith, philosophy, or awe brings clarity and peace • How physical exercise reduces unhappiness (and why that matters more than you think) • Why self-esteem alone won’t make you happy—but understanding your emotions might • The three elements of a real happiness strategy (and how to build your own) • How to move on from heartbreak (and why sad music really does help) • And much more! Since it’s the very first episode, we’d love to hear any feedback you have. Please email us at [email protected] mailto:[email protected]. And please leave a review on Apple or Spotify. Thanks for listening! — Where to find Arthur Brooks: • Website: https://arthurbrooks.com/ • X: https://x.com/arthurbrooks • Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/arthurcbrooks/ • Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ArthurBrooks/ • YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCGuyFRjJQFGCKzfHTBvWM6A • LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/arthur-c-brooks/ • Email: [email protected] mailto:[email protected] — Timestamps (00:00) Intro (02:25) Introducing The Happiness Files and “10 Practical Ways to Increase Your Happiness” (07:16) Principle #1: Invest in your relationships (12:20) Principle #2: Join a club (16:26) Principle #3: Be a lifelong learner (20:11) Principle #4: Focus on something bigger than yourself (26:03) Principle #5: Get more physical exercise (29:35) Recap of principles 1–5 (30:22) How to craft your own happiness plan (31:44) Strategy #1: Deepen your understanding (32:30) Strategy #2: Practice regularly (32:42) Strategy #3: Crystallize your learning by teaching others (35:06) Q&A: Getting over a breakup and Arthur’s most surprising research finding — Referenced: • The Happiness Files: Insights on Work and Life: https://www.amazon.com/Happiness-Files-Insights-Arthur-Brooks/dp/B0F4MFQ6VN • Leadership and Happiness course: https://www.hbs.edu/coursecatalog/1885.html • How to Build a Life: https://www.theatlantic.com/projects/how-build-life/ • What the Longest Study on Human Happiness Found Is the Key to a Good Life: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/01/harvard-happiness-study-relationships/672753/ • Ways to Greater Happiness: A Delphi Study: https://link.springer.com/journal/10902 • The Harvard Study of Adult Development: https://www.adultdevelopmentstudy.org/ • The Drive with Peter Attia: https://peterattiamd.com/podcast/ • Huberman Lab: https://www.hubermanlab.com/podcast • America’s Declining Social Capital: https://psycnet.apa.org/record/1981-25768-001 • The Best Friends Can Do Nothing for You: https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2021/04/deep-friendships-aristotle/618529/ • Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community: https://www.amazon.com/Bowling-Alone-Collapse-American-Community/dp/0743203046 • Daily Stoic: https://dailystoic.com/podcast/ • Johann Sebastian Bach: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johann_Sebastian_Bach • Vipassana Meditation: https://www.dhamma.org/ • Insight Meditation: https://www.insightmeditation.org/ — Production and marketing by ⁠https://penname.co/⁠. Production provided by www.thebluewave.net. http://www.thebluewave.net/ For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email [email protected]

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

• 0:01Speaker 00

  Low energy, unfocused, foggy? You might be dehydrated. Whether it's hot yoga, over 100-degree weather, or too much sun. Gator Light, with a specialized blend of five electrolytes, was scientifically designed to help move fluids into the body faster for rapid rehydration. Shop now at retailers nationwide. Gator Light: Hydrates Faster Than Water. Is it in you? Symptoms noted are signs of mild to moderate dehydration. Consult a healthcare professional if symptoms persist.

• 0:30Speaker 01

  Whenever fall comes back around, it always feels like a fresh start. This year, I've been layering in some styles from the new Lululemon Fall Drop, because the weather is shifting and I find I have to be ready for the entire day and not just one part of it. Lululemon's Fall line has some really versatile transitional pieces, so I can just wake up, throw on a matching set, add a jacket or a fleece, and head out, knowing that I'll feel comfortable enough to go wherever the day takes me. Check out the new fall arrivals in store and online now at lululemon.com.

• 0:59Arthur Brooks?

  Do you want to be happier? I assume you do. That's why you're here. And other people do as well. The happiest, healthiest people in their 80s and 90s, they have some things that you can't control, like, you know, pick the right parents. But there's a bunch of stuff that you actually can control. Side note: the self-esteem literature that everybody thought they knew, which is that if your self-esteem is higher, you'll be happier. It doesn't stand up. But happiness and unhappiness are not opposites. They're largely mediated by different parts of the brain, as a matter of fact. Mother Nature designed me to be happy. And when I'm not happy, it means something's wrong with me. That's completely wrong.

• 1:38Arthur Brooks?

  Hi, friends. I'm Arthur Brooks, and this is Office Hours. I'm a behavioral scientist, dedicated to lifting people up and bringing them together in bonds of happiness and love using science and ideas. I'm a university professor. I teach at the Harvard Kennedy School and the Harvard Business School, a class called Leadership and Happiness, to bring along the next generation of leaders who understand the happiness science so they can live better lives and bring more happiness to others. I also wrote a column in The Atlantic called "How to Build a Life." That's a column about the happiness science based in the academic literature and how you can use it. And that's what this show is about as well. This is an opportunity to talk about the biggest issues, something you can watch regularly and pass on to your friends. Do you want to be happier?

• 2:22Arthur Brooks?

  I assume you do. That's why you're here and other people do as well. What I want to do with this show is to inform you so that you can join me in becoming a happiness teacher in your ordinary life. Now, to begin with, because we're just starting this out right now, I'd like to know what questions that you have about happiness. I have a lot of ideas. I've written hundreds of columns on the science of happiness and a lot of books, but I really care about what's on your mind and that's what I want to know. So, so if you've got a question about happiness, please write to me and I would love to hear it and I'll probably take it up in some way, shape or form. The email for that is, okay, ready? It'll be on the screen, right up here or down here. [email protected].

• 3:05Arthur Brooks?

  Write to me and I would like to hear what's on your mind. I'd also like to hear your feedback on this show. This is brand new. What do you think about the format? What do you think about the pacing? What do you think about the lighting? What do you think about my hair? Whatever you want. [email protected]. I'd love to hear whatever you like to talk to me about. Let's get into today's topic. I've just finished a new book that's coming out in early August called The Happiness Files: Insights on Work and Life. It's actually a set of essays from my column in The Atlantic, but it's the most popular 35 essays that are written in the last five years about work and life. Work is part of life, to be sure. It's kind of work focused because it's published by the Harvard Business Review, but it also talks about how work impacts your life and vice versa.

• 3:50Arthur Brooks?

  These are 35 columns that you can really use. And I want to start off today by talking about one of my very favorite of those columns because it's affected me in my life so very much. This is an essay called 10 Practical Ways to Improve Your Happiness. It is just what it sounds like. These are very practical techniques that you can use based in the most cutting-edge science. I'm going to tell you a little bit about where these ideas came from and then I'm going to get into some of the content and give you some ideas that you can use. I don't think I'm going to get through all of them. I think I'm gonna get through about the top five, but these are the best five and I'm gonna tell you why here in a second. Now, to begin with, this research is based on a very important research article that's published in a journal called the Journal of Happiness Studies.

• 4:32Arthur Brooks?

  Side note, in this show, whenever I refer to an academic article, I'm gonna do it a lot, it's gonna be in the show notes. So don't worry about it, you don't have to take notes that quickly or remember exactly what I say when it gets really technical. You can look at the show notes and you can go look up the abstracts and the articles themselves. So that's one thing that we'll be doing in this show and in every episode going forward. So this is an article that came out a few years ago in the year 2020 in the Journal of Happiness Studies, which is a very important academic journal dedicated entirely to happiness topics from the most scientific perspective. It's the lead author, there's three authors on the study, and the lead author is a friend of mine, somebody I really have a lot of respect for and like, it's a guy named Dan Buettner.

• 5:15Arthur Brooks?

  If that name sounds familiar, it's because he wrote a very important book called The Blue Zones, which was then turned into a multi-part Netflix special where he looked at the places around the world where people have lived to 100. So it wasn't just about happiness, it was about longevity. But what he found was that people who live to 100, they're happier than people who don't. Which is kind of, that sort of makes sense, doesn't it? I mean, you're unlikely to live to be old if you don't wanna live to be old. And so he started off by talking about health, but he wound up really talking an awful lot about happiness. And this is the fruit of that. What are the things that people who do really well in life all have in common? What are the most important happiness techniques that people talk about?

• 5:56Arthur Brooks?

  So here's how the scholars actually engaged in this piece of research, which is a really, a really, a good technique. They went out to some of the most distinguished happiness researchers in the world, and there's a lot of people out there that do the work that I do at universities. They look at the happiness science, they, they measure well-being. And in future, um, episodes of Office Hours, I'm gonna tell you how you measure well-being. But suffice it to say that they do that and they do it really well. So these scholars then, they listed the 68 techniques that show up most in the literature for becoming a happier person. And together, they ranked them for their efficacy, for their effectiveness. So 1 through 68. And what I wanna talk about is the top 5.

• 6:38Arthur Brooks?

  So these are really the best techniques that have the best literature behind them.

• 6:44Arthur Brooks?

  Let's back up a little bit. You get all kinds of advice, day in and day out, how to become a happier person. But usually, it's not very helpful. How can I become a happier person? Have a good marriage. Well, thanks. You know, thanks very much. That's not, that's sort of putting the cart before the horse, right? I'm just gonna snap my fingers and have a good marriage? I need something more concrete than that about how to do that? How to get to the place where I meet that person? How do I, once I am married, how do I make sure that it's a good marriage? And so forth and so on. Another one that I hear a lot is to be Danish, right? Or Finnish or something because of those, those crazy happiness comparisons that we have. You know, the happiest country in the world, et cetera, et cetera. They always are the Nordic countries. And so people say, you know, live like a Finn. What does that mean?

• 7:29Arthur Brooks?

  It's not very helpful either, is it? Well, this study that I'm talking about here really is helpful because it looks at the top of the, of the charts and all these happiness, pieces of happiness advice. And I'm gonna give you the top five that they talk about. And all of these ideas are incredibly well validated. Here's what it means. You can do the things I'm gonna talk about starting today and you will see results. Okay, now, these might not be a major philosophical change in your life, but these are things that can make it such that you go to bed happier tonight than you woke up this morning. And that's a virtual guarantee because that's what the science is actually saying. This is like health advice in that sort of vein and really practical kind of news that you can use. So let me start with number one. This is the top of the list.

• 8:14Arthur Brooks?

  The top of the list. This is number one. People. You need more contact with and investment in the people who are close to you. Yeah, maybe it sounds obvious, but it isn't obvious. I talk to people all day long who are neglecting their family members, neglecting their friends because of things that they care about less. I mean, I know you know this, but it's really important to keep in mind that the, the, the research couldn't be clearer that the more you invest in your relationships, the better off you're gonna be. And today, if you make a substantial investment in your relationships, you're gonna see a payoff from that. There's a lot of research that goes in behind that. My favorite of this, by the way, and this is not just the research that they cited in this article.

• 8:57Arthur Brooks?

  This is research that I've been looking at for years and years. The best piece of research from this that I've ever seen that shows this is a study called the Harvard Study of Adult Development. I wasn't behind this. It was a bunch of my colleagues over at the Harvard Medical School. And they started to look and follow the lives of people in the late 30s to see what they did in their 20s and 30s and 40s and 50s. They interviewed them every single year until they died, as a matter of fact. This has been going on for 90 years. It started actually with sophomores at Harvard College. That's the undergraduate part of Harvard University, which isn't very representative of the population in the late 30s. But then they branched out. They actually got another survey of people who didn't go to college, and then it had spouses, and then it had kids.

• 9:40Arthur Brooks?

  And today, it's a very demographically representative sample across the population. And it looks at how they've lived from year to year to year and how those things predict them winding up as healthy, happy people when they're old. It's kind of a crystal ball, as a matter of fact. Now, there's a bunch of things that they did, and maybe in a future show, I'll actually dig more into the big patterns that they find. The happiest, healthiest people in their 80s and 90s, they have some things that you can't control, like, you know, pick the right parents, you know, make sure that your parents, you know, don't suffer from mental illness. Well, you can't do that. I mean, the die is cast by the time that you come along on that. But there's a bunch of stuff that you actually can control. For example, there's seven things that they always talk about that you can do in your

• 10:24Arthur Brooks?

  20s and 30s that are really going to predict a lot whether or not you're a happier person in your 60s and 70s and 80s. Some of them are health-related. Diet, exercise, smoking, drinking, and use of euphoric substances. It's pretty obvious. I mean, diet and exercise, you have to, you know, live like an adult and take care of yourself, is what it comes down to. And that means, by the way, not being nutty about your diet, not having, you know, yo-yo diets that make you insane or give you an eating disorder. It means exercise that doesn't become an addiction, et cetera. I'll talk about that stuff in future episodes of the show because, yeah, healthy behaviors can be almost as unhealthy as unhealthy behaviors if you treat them in the wrong way and lead to unhappiness. But then smoking, of course, I mean, who doesn't know this? I smoked when I was in my twenties. That was a long time ago.

• 11:09Arthur Brooks?

  And even then, I knew I shouldn't be smoking, that it wasn't going to lead anywhere good. I mean, I had to have an emergency to stop. Specifically, I lit my bed on fire. And I was engaged at the time. And I thought, well, I guess it's one thing to have this habit kill me, but it's something else if I'm going to endanger somebody else's life and I stop because of that. But, you know, I knew that it wasn't a good thing to do. And the truth of the matter is that if you're a lifelong smoker, it's going to wind up with health problems that are going to not just hurt your health, but also your happiness. And then there's substances. What you find is that anybody who uses substances irresponsibly, and, you know, look, if you're watching any podcasts on this, whether it's Peter Attia, or Andrew Huberman, or a lot

• 11:52Arthur Brooks?

  of other real experts in longevity, they're very critical of anything more than the most minimal use of euphoric substances. You've got to be really careful about these things because they're fun in the short term and real bad in the long term. If you have any questions about your use, you should stop. Kind of what it comes down to. Okay, that's four. But then the last three are a little bit less intuitive. Number one is lifelong learning. Learners are happier when they're older. Number two is dealing with your problems. You've got to get really good at a technique for dealing with your bad moods and your problems in life. More on that later. But last but not least is number seven, and this is the big one, which is love. Love and the relationships in your life. This isn't just randomly loving people. These are your people.

• 12:36Arthur Brooks?

  These are your friends, and these are your family. Specifically, the happiest people have one or both of two things. A loving marriage and/or really close friends. Now, this is not to say that to be happy when you're old, you have to have a great marriage. No, lots of people don't. Doesn't work out that way for everybody. But if they don't, they have really close friendships. Super important. And ideally, you get both because it's a bonus. It's multiplicative, as a matter of fact. This shows over a long period of time, and it reinforces a big academic literature that happiness is love. Investing in your friends and your family is the number one thing that you can do today and on an ongoing basis. So that's number one. Number two.

• 13:18Arthur Brooks?

  This is interesting because in the study, they say number two is join a club. Like, huh. I looked at it, I'm like, join a club? I don't belong to any clubs. But then I thought about it, and actually I do. I mean, I'm a traditional religious believer. I belong to the, probably the biggest club in the history of the world. I'm a Catholic. It's a club, as it turns out. The point isn't the club. The point is actually sharing ideas and loves that we have in common with other people, which is intrinsically a very satisfying thing to do. And this gets back to the work, to the great thinking on this subject from, you know, the world's greatest philosopher on the subject of friendship, which is Aristotle. Twenty-five-hundred years ago, he was writing in a way that, that really, I mean,

• 14:01Arthur Brooks?

  it's never been, it's never been, it's never been improved upon over the past three millennia on how he writes about friendship. He talks about, you know, the transactional friendships that we have with people at work. I call these deal friends. They're fine, but they don't bring you real happiness. He talks about friendships of beauty, where we admire somebody else really a lot, and that's the basis of our friendship, and that's better. But again, if the beauty goes away, then so does the friendship. The friendships that bring real, real happiness are what he calls virtuous friendships. And what they have in common typically is a shared love for a third thing with somebody that you really know. And it's a beautiful thing, because you kind of walk toward that shared love, shoulder to shoulder. Those, by the way, can also be very useful.

• 14:46Arthur Brooks?

  They're real friendships, they can also have deal friendship in them, but fundamentally, they're about love for each other and love for this third thing. And that's a beautiful thing, when you think about it. That's the reason that the best marriages are based on deep friendship. They're not based on the passion that you had in the first six months. Thank God, you wouldn't get anything done. But, but, but deep friendship, which is called in the literature companion in love, that's the basis of a really great marriage. And what that is, in this Aristotelian framework, is this shared love for something else. Usually the kids, sometimes a religion, sometimes a set of values. And you and your spouse, you walk forward into the future, eyes firmly fixed on this third love, and it's one of the most satisfying things that you can do.

• 15:31Arthur Brooks?

  Okay, that's kind of what they mean by a club. Is finding, you know, your people who have the shared interest and that shared interest is the basis of a deep friendship that's not useful to you, it's just beautiful to you. Now, there's a lot of social science on this. Probably the most famous of this comes from my Harvard Kennedy School colleague, Robert Putnam. That name sounds familiar because in the year 2000, he wrote a very famous book called Bowling Alone. And that was a book not about bowling. It was a book about how people used to join bowling leagues and have a great time with their friends, and now most people go to the bowling alley by themselves or just one other person. And that's a real loss for their happiness. That was his point.

• 16:14Arthur Brooks?

  It was sort of the death of American civic culture. In the show notes, I'll put the original article, which came out in the Journal of Democracy, America's Declining Social Capital. Very, very interesting article. It's sort of the 5,000-word treatment of this argument. And what it shows is that your life is impoverished when you're not doing this Aristotelian stuff. That's what it means to join a club. So practically speaking, what does this mean? This means that, you know, find something you're really interested in and do it with other people. That's really what it comes down to. You'll forge friendships that have a little bit of magic in them that you're probably not going to get with your work friends. Because you're, I don't know about you, I mean, the company you work for is probably not your hobby. Actually, in my case, it kind of is, but, but that's not the case for everybody.

• 16:58Arthur Brooks?

  And so you need something on the outside that you'll actually do. Maybe, you know, like running, join a running club. Whatever happens to be, do something like that. If you practice a religion, get more involved in your house of worship. I mean, look, even if you're, even if your, your beliefs aren't clear, the fact that you're going to be practicing them in whatever way with other people, that's going to be central to your happiness. Okay, that's number two. And they're both based kind of on people and love, right? Number three is a little bit different, and that's to become more active mentally. This sort of relates to that thing in the Harvard study of adult development of, of continuous lifelong learning. That's really important because one of the things that we find is that the happiest people over the course of their life, they have one habit in common, and that's that they

• 17:43Arthur Brooks?

  read a lot. Now, this isn't necessarily the way that you learn. What this is really is about is learning and, and staying mentally active and knowledge acquisition. And the key thing is learning about things that you don't have to learn about. This is really the sort of the secret of happiness is this, not just the uselessness of real friends, but the uselessness of... Real information that's just simply interesting to you. Now, the reason that this is the case is that there's, we, we talk an awful lot about positive and negative basic emotions. There's a lot of research on this. The negative basic emotions, there's only four. We all feel very unique emotionally, we're not. The basic negative emotions are anger, fear, disgust, and sadness. The basic positive emotions are joy, interest, and surprise.

• 18:28Arthur Brooks?

  Some people put another couple on that list. But what's really fascinating is that interest is a basic positive emotion. Human beings, Homo sapiens, are, are made to learn stuff. We love learning stuff, and there's a reason for that. In the ancestral environment, your, your predecessors would be a lot more successful if they were learners, if they got better at stuff. It would give them a fitness advantage. It would give them a survival and a mating advantage if they were, you know, the ones who found the berries on the bush. They found the watering hole that had the gazelles around it. And so the result of it is that we get tons of satisfaction and enjoyment when we're learning things just naturally. It's a basic positive emotion is interest. How do you feed that basic positive emotion such that you have a more constant flow

• 19:13Arthur Brooks?

  of positive emotion, which gives you more enjoyment in your life, which is one of the sources of happiness? The answer is learning, learning, learning, learning. Some of the unhappiest people have stopped learning. They've gotten bad at learning. They, or they never learned how to learn effectively. There's a lot to indict about our education system in America today, but probably the, the biggest area of indictment is that we don't take seriously the fact that learning is inherently pleasurable. And so we need to be really, really good at helping people learn in different ways that suits their style. You know, some, for example, they're not necessarily great readers, and so they need to learn in different ways. They need to be, they're auditory learners, for example. And there's literature on this, that people learn in different ways.

• 19:57Arthur Brooks?

  I would love if the public education system took interest as a basic positive emotion into account because they wanted a happier population. They wanted a happier America, they wanted a happier world. And they could do so much to do that, as a matter of fact. I have three kids, adult kids. Two of them huge readers, one of them not, but he's a huge learner. He knows kinda everything. And, and it's funny, you know, I'll say, I'll say, something's wrong with my washing machine. And he'll say, huh, okay, what's, what's, what's, is it making a sound? I'm like, yeah. He says, what does it sound like? And I'll say, oh, no. Fuh, fuh, fuh, fuh, fuh. He goes, oh, I know what's going wrong. I say, how do you know that? He says, I saw a YouTube video on it. And I say, why did you watch a YouTube video about washing machines?

• 20:41Arthur Brooks?

  And he said, because it's interesting. And so there's new ways to actually learn. And, and that's a great thing if you can avail yourself of it. Learn, learn, learn. Find more ways to learn so you can become and remain more mentally active. And you will become a happier person. That's number three. Okay, let's go on to number four. And for number four, we're going to change directions a little bit. Number four is for you to get out of your daily psychodrama by transcending yourself with faith or philosophy. Okay, now, I'm not saying that you need to practice my religion. As I mentioned before, I'm a Catholic. And I like it. It's great.

• 21:22Arthur Brooks?

  But as a scientist, I have to tell you that for happiness, my way is not the only way. Here's how it works. Mother Nature, she, she focuses you on, on your day to day life. You, you, you, you. For me, it's me, me, me, me. Left to my devices, I'm going to think all day long about, you know, my stuff. All the things that I'm actually doing. And that's really boring. And it's tedious and it's terrifying and it's terrible. It's hard to break out of that, as a matter of fact. It, it's one of the characteristics of clinical depression is, is ruminative thinking about yourself. And it's almost like a prison. It's like you're locked up with you all the time. That's one of the characteristics of, of clinical depression.

• 22:06Arthur Brooks?

  Somebody very, very close to me who had suffered a lifetime of really debilitating depression. I said, you know, what does it feel like? And she said, it's just so boring.

• 22:18Arthur Brooks?

  I said, "What do you mean? It's so boring." And she said, "Because all I think about is myself, and I don't wanna. I don't wanna." Well, none of us do, as a matter of fact. And so the question is, "How do you stop?" The answer is by getting smaller, making the universe larger. There's a funny thing at most universities that, that there's a general science requirement for undergraduates, and one of the classes that they can take, and a lot of them wind up having to take, is astronomy. Astronomy 101. And nobody goes into, you know, freshmen or sophomores at universities, they don't go into astronomy going, "I always wanted to take an astronomy class." I mean, some do, but not everybody does. But here's the weird thing. They go in reluctantly, and they come out enthusiastically. And I've asked many undergraduates, "Why do you love your astronomy class so much?

• 23:02Arthur Brooks?

  You're a psychology major, or a communications major, or whatever. You're not a scientist." And they say, "Because, I can't quite explain. It's just so weird." But, you know, I go in on Thursday morning in my astronomy class, and I'm like bummed out about something, you know? My girlfriend's not talking to me, or whatever. And I come out 90 minutes later, and I'm like, "I'm a speck on a speck on a speck." You get peace and perspective from zooming out into the universe and finding your smallness. It's paradoxical, isn't it? It feels like you should be less happy when you're small, because your self-esteem would be lower. Side note, the self-esteem literature that everybody thought they knew, which is that if your self-esteem is higher, you'll be happier,

• 23:47Arthur Brooks?

  it doesn't stand up. And a lot of really good scientists have questioned that. Why? Because of this autofocus. It's maddening to be thinking about yourself all the time. Me, me, me. I'm so great. I'm so important. I'm so interesting. No, you're not. And thank God. That's important for us to remember. And something that you can do that makes you zoom out, so you're little and the universe is, is, is large, and you do it every day. It's great. It's unbelievably beautiful, as a matter of fact. There are a number of ways to do that, but some of the most efficacious and techniques that you can get really, really good at involve faith, spirituality, or life philosophy. Where you're thinking about the bigger things, you're thinking about the structure of the

• 24:30Arthur Brooks?

  universe, you're thinking about your small place in it, but fundamentally about the macro instead of the micro you. Now, again, lots of ways to do that. I've done work, I've done the podcast of Ryan Holiday, many of you know his work. He's sort of the world's leading spokesperson on popularizing Stoic philosophy. His work is great, his books are phenomenal, I just love his work and I love doing his podcasts, he's a very interesting guy. And what he figured out is that when people study philosophy, that philosophy in particular, which is, "Don't forget, you're gonna die." "Don't forget, the universe is large." So suck it up, buttercup. It's amazing. It makes you feel better. He's figured that out. Why?

• 25:14Arthur Brooks?

  Because of this transcendence. This is really what we're talking about. Other people have other sorts of techniques that they do for this. They find that if they walk in nature, usually before dawn, without devices, that there's a funny thing that happens with the mind, where you put yourself into perspective, you don't become so big. Other people will study great works of art or music. At different points in my life, I would really study intensively the works of Johann Sebastian Bach. I used to be a classical musician for a living, he was my favorite composer, and man, I would listen to that, I'd be like, "It's amazing. There's nothing like this. This is a miracle. A miracle is bigger than me." I've recommended to a lot of people that they study Vipassana meditation, insight meditation,

• 25:59Arthur Brooks?

  where there's a perspective on your thinking and who you are, a perspective that is much bigger than you, as a matter of fact, and it's incredibly effective. I've seen it, I've practiced it myself. And of course, there's a traditional religious faith. Maybe if you're a young adult, you were raised in a religious faith and you've left it. And the reason you left it is because you had this vision of what it was when you were a kid, and when you grew up, you're like, "That's ridiculous." Well, it turns out, there's probably a grown-up version of that faith that you're pretty familiar with, and if you went back and looked again, it might be a different thing. And so I recommend that you just... Maybe try again, without judgment. And in so doing, you can transcend yourself. In transcending yourself, you will get happier.

• 26:44Arthur Brooks?

  And that's what it means to practice your religion or to practice your philosophy. And that's number four. Number five. Number five. And you don't want me to leave this off the list, but this is going to take a little bit of explanation. Number five on the list that the experts put together is get more physical exercise. And a lot of people say this to me. It's like, one of the things that really makes me happy is a hard workout, going for a good run, getting into the gym, picking up heavy things. And the truth is that that's really, really important for me personally in my well-being protocols. I'm extremely disciplined about my well-being. It's important for me because I actually know the science. And one of the things that I do is I get up at 4:30 in the morning,

• 27:27Arthur Brooks?

  and at 4:45 to 5:45 every morning, I'm in the gym. I have a gym in my house. It's a combination of zone two cardio and resistance training. And I've been doing it for decades. I'm super serious about that. People say, "That's a great source of happiness." I say, "Yeah, no, actually." But it is important to well-being. And this is a quibble that I have with this particular study. They talk about happiness techniques. Physical exercise and physical exertion is actually an unhappiness technique. Now, I'm not going to go into all the details about this. I'll do this in a future episode. But happiness and unhappiness are not opposites. They're largely mediated by different parts of the brain, as a matter of fact. Unhappy cognitions and emotions are produced

• 28:10Arthur Brooks?

  in different parts of the brain than happy cognitions and emotions because they exist for different reasons. You have negative emotions because they indicate there's a threat to you that you should avoid. That's why you feel sad or angry, disgusted, or fearful. And the same thing is true with positive emotions. They indicate there's an opportunity that you should approach. So they wouldn't be produced in the same part of the brain to begin with, and that's why they're not opposites. As a matter of fact, they're separable. Some people, for their well-being, they need more happiness. Some people, for their well-being, need less unhappiness. You might be incredibly adroit and well-developed in the production of unhappiness, which is good for your, probably is very good for your survival,

• 28:53Arthur Brooks?

  but it's not good for your well-being, and that happens to be my problem. Is that I'm plenty healthy and happiness, but I'm also plenty healthy and unhappiness, and I need to manage my unhappiness. So here's the point, this is number five. Your well-being will increase if you take care of your, your, your, your physical body. And if you do a lot of exercise, your well-being will rise, because your unhappiness will fall, because you'll manage your negative mood. If you naturally have a very low negative mood, congratulations, you're a quarter of the population that has below average, actually, a half of the population has below average negative mood. We call it negative affect in my, in my profession. Then probably it's hard for you to stay in the gym, as a matter of fact,

• 29:38Arthur Brooks?

  because you won't have a greater, much greater sense of well-being. And I know a lot of people like this, who are just naturally not unhappy people. And they're like, ah, I don't know why, I can't, I can't stay on a fitness protocol. That's why, because you don't come out of the gym going, yeah, I feel alive again. But I do. 5:45, by the time I'm actually going to take my shower, um, I'm like, yeah, I can, I can face it. It's gonna be, I can, why? Because I've just lowered my level of negative affect by getting more physical exercise. Uh, tons of research on this, I'll throw a couple of the articles into the show notes, on what you can actually read about this, but here's my promise. In a future episode, I'm gonna talk more about my morning protocols to manage my affect, so that the positive is higher and the negative is lower. That's one of them.

• 30:21Arthur Brooks?

  I'm gonna give you a whole bunch of things that you can actually use that are based on science, so you can set up your day to have a great day to begin with. So those are the big five. Now, uh, again, I mean, you're gonna see all this stuff in the show notes, but let me go through it one more time. So we've got the list. Number one, family and friends. Invest in family and friends. Number two. Join a club, which is to say, share your interests with people. Number three, stay active mentally by learning a lot. Number four, practice your philosophy, spirituality, or religion, so that you can transcend yourself. And number five, get more exercise, actually move your body, pick up heavy things, run around. These are things that are really going to help you a lot.

• 31:04Arthur Brooks?

  These are great pieces of advice. If we had, you know, seventeen and a half hours for this episode, I would go through all sixty-eight, and I would especially pay attention to the, you know, the ones in the bottom. Because the ones in the bottom are the things you always hear about that don't work. Hmm, save that for a future episode. What I want to do now, in our remaining time, is I want to go just a little bit more macro, on just generally, how can you craft your own happiness? How do you put together a happiness plan? Anybody who's watching this, you probably watch a lot of self-improvement content on YouTube, and on Spotify, and on the other platforms. That's great, good for you. What that means is that you're a life entrepreneur, and your enterprise is you incorporated. I admire that about you.

• 31:46Arthur Brooks?

  That's a great, that's the ultimate enterprise that matters, as a matter of fact. So you're probably watching stuff about your health, and you want to have an overall strategy that you can fit things like I've talked about here into. Okay? So let me talk to you about a structure about that, just so that you've got it in your notes. I have studied a long time, why it is that so much self-improvement, even that which is real and not woo-woo and nonsense, even the stuff that's really science-based, why it's not usually very sticky. And the answer is that it's just a bunch of ideas that give you an epiphany, but then it kind of, it just sort of burns off. Here's how you can take the ideas we're talking about here and make them sticky, so they really have an impact on your life. You've got to do three things.

• 32:31Arthur Brooks?

  Any great ideas that you get, physical health, financial health, and the happiness stuff that we talk about on this show and in all my content, you've got to do three things, so that it will stick around, and you can count on it, you can use it. Number one, understand. You gotta understand. You gotta understand the science. You gotta know what's actually going on. Don't just do, you know, kind of plug and play. Don't just look for some sort of dumb formula. That's ridiculous. You gotta understand the mechanism of action of what's actually going on, which is why I actually talk about the science as opposed to just telling you what I think you ought to do. You need to understand. That's actually the beginning of learning that sticks. Okay, that's the reason that in a math class in college, they talk about how the math actually is working

• 33:16Arthur Brooks?

  as opposed to just giving you formulas for working out problems. But then doing the problems is part two. For happiness and anything else, you need to actually practice. You need to practice the techniques that you're talking about. You need to change your habits. You need to have a plan of life on the things that you can actually do. This is, by the way, like you would learn golf. You need to learn about golf and then you need to go golf. You need to do those two particular things. But then there's one more thing you need to do. When you're learning about happiness or you're getting your health together or you're learning anything that you want to learn about and you want to keep that knowledge, you gotta teach it. This is the thing that people often forget. My dad was a math professor. I mean, we're all just old college professors in my family. And my dad was incredibly brilliant guy.

• 34:02Arthur Brooks?

  And by the time I was old enough to appreciate what a wonderful teacher and what a wonderful person he was, I was in my twenties. I'd gotten through my bad years and I got finished being a jerk to my dad. And I thought, you know, I want to go watch him lecture. I want to go watch him teach math. And so I went to a math class, this advanced calculus class that he was teaching, and he taught the whole class for 90 minutes without a note in his hands. It was like, it was like watching a virtuoso violinist. It was the most amazing thing I'd ever seen. It was my dad, I was just blown away. And afterward, I was like, Dad, how did you do that? How did you, how is it possible that you could explain so clearly? By memory, something that's so complex.

• 34:46Arthur Brooks?

  And he thought about it and he said, because I've taught it 100 times. He said, I own it. I know it. It's mine. And boy, that had a big impact on me because that's the same thing for me and for you. If you want to become a happier person and use your happiness knowledge, you've got to have the knowledge. You've got to change your life and you've got to become a happiness teacher. My appeal to you, so that you can become a happier person, is that you take the material that you've learned in the show and that you share it with somebody else. Print off the show notes if you need to. Watch this one or two times. Maybe watch it again with somebody that you love and discuss it. But when you do that, you'll become the teacher. And that will make you the person who benefits the most from this particular material. And I want you to become happier.

• 35:31Arthur Brooks?

  Okay, now before I close, I want to take a couple of questions because we're already getting questions from our social media audience. And a way for you to contact me by that, by the way, is usually on Instagram, where I have a, you know, sort of the happiness audience that follows my work most closely. I'm Arthur C. Brooks. That's my handle on Instagram. And I want to take a couple of questions from Instagram, as a matter of fact, that have just come in in the past 24 hours. A bunch of questions came in, but here are two that I hear an awful lot. This one is from Devon Sloan on Instagram. It's a classic. How do I get over a breakup? How do I get over a breakup? Yeah, I know. I know. I mean, I haven't broken up in a long time. I've been married for 34 years. Thank God I haven't gone through a breakup.

• 36:12Arthur Brooks?

  But, yeah, I mean, my students, my friends, and I remember decades ago. It's lousy. It's a lousy business. Well, to begin with, it's normal, even though it feels unique and extraordinary and terrible. The average person has her or his heart broken five times. Five times. Five, five bad breakups or your heart is broken. And in 50% of the cases of the breakups, people say it was messy. So it happens again and again and again. And most of the time, in six out of 10, about six out of 10 cases, it's a mess. So there's nothing abnormal about this, Devon, or anybody else who's going through this, which is, I don't know, quarter you?

• 36:54Arthur Brooks?

  Here are two ways that science says that you can get over a breakup faster. Now, to begin with, time heals all wounds. Your emotional system, the limbic system of your brain, fools you into thinking that you're never gonna feel better because that's how it gets your attention. Anything negative gets your attention to say, "This is horrible, it's gonna be horrible forever." And there's a part of your, there are literally physical parts of your brain that are dedicated to making you feel awful, okay? And I can explain in future episodes why you would have this part of your brain, you need it, but you don't like it. It's not permanent, your brain is lying. It's gonna get better. It's gonna get better faster than you think. But there are a couple of ways to urge that along a little bit more. There's one very interesting and funny study that talks about how if you actually think

• 37:38Arthur Brooks?

  about what a jerk your ex is, you feel a lot better about the breakup. In other words, don't just go over the things that you miss, go over the things that you don't miss. And there are things that you don't miss, absolutely. When you think about that, you get over the breakup much faster. And the neuroscience is very clear on this, but it sort of makes sense, probably intuitively as well. Second is a really kind of even more counterintuitive notion, which is that when you listen to sad music, you get over a breakup faster. You'd be like, "Why? Why wouldn't I feel sadder when I listen to sad music?" And the answer is no. Music actually activates structures in the right hemisphere of the brain that give you a sense of meaning. The meaning of your life is mediated in the right hemisphere of your brain, which is

• 38:20Arthur Brooks?

  not where you process language, not where you process sort of rational, task-based thoughts. It's where you understand what's going on in your life at an intuitive level. Sad music puts into perspective your feelings. It helps you understand what your feelings actually are. And when you understand you, you can move on. That's the reason that you listen to a sad song over and over and over and drive all your roommates crazy, because you're actually trying to put your feelings into context. So sad music is actually really good for you. Hope that helps, Devin. And it's gonna be okay. Here's another question. I'll just take this one more. This is from Papa John G. Hi, Papa John G. Pizza fan, perhaps?

• 39:03Speaker 03

  Low energy, unfocused, foggy, you might be dehydrated. Gatorade Zero powders have been scientifically designed to help improve hydration balance in the body. With a clinically proven electrolyte blend and no artificial colors or flavors. Great tasting hydration, no matter where you're going. Shop now online or at retailers nationwide. Gatorade, hydrates better than water. Is it in you? Symptoms noted are signs of mild to moderate dehydration. Consult a healthcare professional if symptoms persist.

• 39:32Speaker 01

  Whenever fall comes back around, it always feels like a fresh start. This year, I've been layering in some styles from the new Lululemon Fall Drop. Because the weather is shifting and I find I have to be ready for the entire day and not just one part of it. Lululemon's Fall line has some really versatile transitional pieces. So I can just wake up, throw on a matching set, add a jacket or a fleece, and head out, knowing that I'll feel comfortable enough to go wherever the day takes me. Check out the new fall arrivals in store and online now at lululemon.com.

• 40:00Arthur Brooks?

  What's the biggest, most mind-blowing surprise you've learned in studying happiness? Man, there's a lot. There's a lot. I mean, every day. This is why I do this. This stuff is so crazy all the time. And I'm learning new things and it's just opening my brain constantly. But I think that probably the one that changed my thinking the most, early on when I was studying happiness, is that I was of the view that I'm supposed to be happy. That Mother Nature designed me to be happy. And when I'm not happy, it means something's wrong with me. That's completely wrong. Mother Nature doesn't care if I'm happy.

• 40:43Arthur Brooks?

  Mother Nature, in other words, the way I'm genetically designed, according to evolution, is for two things: to survive and pass on my genes. And so all of my base urges in life are about survival and gene propagation. Sometimes that's a really good thing, sometimes that's a really bad thing. Because a lot of the times, when I'm doing things that are sort of gene propagation or survival oriented, it might have to do with, I don't know, eating 5,000 calories more than I'm supposed to, of a bunch of sugar that's not good for me. Because in the ancestral environment, that meant, wow, you get all those calories, who knows, if you don't eat for three weeks, you're gonna be okay because of this. Well, that's totally inappropriate in the modern environment. And we do lots and lots and lots of things because Mother Nature gives us an urge to do that, and it doesn't make us happy.

• 41:28Arthur Brooks?

  People often ask, you know, "Why are people unfaithful to their spouses?" That's a complicated question. Boy, oh, boy, do I talk about that a lot in my classes, about why people are unfaithful to each other. But marital infidelity has everything to do with the impulses that people have from Mother Nature that go completely contrary to their own happiness. Nobody ever says, you know, "Sure, I'm glad I got caught having that affair." Well, it's mostly the "caught" part, I guess, but you get my point, that nobody says, you know, "Sure, it's great that I did something that actually doesn't even live up to my own values. Why did I do that?" People question, "Why did I do that?" Because Mother Nature doesn't care if you're happy, is the bottom line. Mind-blowing stuff, as a matter of fact. You know, most religions say that we're a human being.

• 42:11Arthur Brooks?

  Homo sapiens are both animal and divine. The animal part is Mother Nature's impulses. The divine parts are our own moral aspirations, to which we actually try to live up over the course of our lives. Want to be happier? Think of the person you want to be, and then work to become that person, notwithstanding your feelings. Boy, then will you be free. That's just completely molded the way that I see the science of happiness and how we can use it in our everyday lives. Well, that's what we got for today. I hope you've enjoyed it. I hope you'll come back. Bring a friend. No, no, no, no. Bring a million friends. In the meantime, leave a review, if you wouldn't mind, on Apple or Spotify or wherever you're listening to us or watching us for that matter.

• 42:56Arthur Brooks?

  And hit like and subscribe, because, you know, then the bots actually are kinder to us and that makes us happy when bots like us a lot more. In the meantime, any questions or thoughts that you've got, [email protected]. That's the email box that we'll be looking at. Can't wait to see what you're thinking about. And if you want more like this and you want to read it real quick, go get the book, The Happiness Files, by me, Arthur C. Brooks. And that's out from the Harvard Business Review Press. Any place where you get your fine books or online, which is probably where you get your books. So, I'm looking forward to talking to you the next time. I hope this has lifted you up a little bit. Don't forget, I need happiness teachers in the movement with me. So come back next time and together, let's become a school of happiness that lifts up the world. Thanks very much.

• 43:47Speaker 04

  When fall comes back around, there's a sense of a reset. And new pieces from Lululemon's Fall Drop are an inspiration to push your goals and elevate your routines. As your calendar fills, easy-to-layer styles meet the demands of your day. And as you challenge yourself to try even more, versatile sets transition with you. The Lululemon Fall Lineup brings new levels of comfort and confidence, whether you're starting something fresh or starting something over. Check out the latest arrivals in-store and on lululemon.com now.

• 44:17Speaker 05

  Now at Kroger, your points add up to more ways to save every trip. Use them your way to take dollars off groceries at checkout, or save at the pump. You can even save up to $35 on your next fill-up. Same points, more choices. And with low prices on fresh, quality food, plus digital and personalized offers tailored to how you shop, your dollar goes further. Redeem your points online or in the app. Kroger: Fresh for Everyone. Restrictions apply. See site or store for details.