Why Happiness Has Nothing to Do With Success — with Arthur Brooks

In the second of a two-part special Office Hours series, Scott Galloway is joined by Harvard professor, bestselling author, and Free Press columnist Arthur Brooks to answer listener questions on fulfillment, work-life balance, finding the right partner, and how to stop letting failure define you. Want to be featured in a future episode? Send a voice recording to [email protected], or drop your question in the r/ScottGalloway subreddit. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:36Scott Galloway?

  Welcome to Prop G on Getting Your Life Together, a special series where we're joined by Arthur Brooks, Harvard professor, bestselling author and columnist at The Free Press. We went to our listeners with one question. What's the biggest thing holding your life back right now? Today, we're going to try and help. We talk about burnout, distraction, purpose and building a life that feels more intentional. Arthur, welcome.

• 0:58Speaker 03

  Hey, thank you. It's great to be with you. How are you today? Are you where are you today?

• 1:02Scott Galloway?

  I'm in London on what is an unusually beautiful sunny day. How about you?

• 1:05Speaker 03

  I'm in Northern Virginia. I live outside Washington DC, actually.

• 1:10Scott Galloway?

  Oh, nice. My son is going to be a freshman at UVA.

• 1:14Speaker 03

  That's great. It's great here. We actually moved back here from Boston to get all the kids and grandkids in the same general area, including in the same house. So I was reading my own research that said you should have your family all in the same place.

• 1:27Scott Galloway?

  Around here.

• 1:28Speaker 03

  Yeah. And it turns out to be great. We've got a got a compound, right? It's a cult, I think.

• 1:32Scott Galloway?

  Nice. That's that. We'll have a longer conversation, but that's that's my plan. Anyways, let's bust right into it. Our first question is, I have a good job, a happy marriage, kids and hobbies, but I still can't get real fulfillment out of any of it. I'm stretched so thin that everything feels like an obligation. Why is that? I built the life I was told I want to and still feel empty. Arthur.

• 1:57Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, I'm going to channel Scott Galloway here because you're doing what you were told you're supposed to want as opposed to doing what you want. You didn't do the hard work of actually figuring out what it is that you want. And what people told you that you wanted was a bunch of, you know, bro shaped protocols, a bunch of lists of things, and you're trying to do all of it. And the result of it is that you're that that's the definition of being stretched too thin. What we need to do as, you know, people of good faith, and by the way, I use that expression on purpose. That's what Jean Paul Startra talked about is actually figuring out the essence of your life is good faith, is to do the work to figure out what actually it is that you want, which is probably a subset of the things that you're currently doing. You don't have to go a bunch, do a bunch

• 2:39Speaker 03

  of new things. You don't need to add more brushstrokes to your canvas. You need to, you just need to start chipping away the, the, the, the marble that is the statue so that you can find the real piece of artwork that's within. You need to start taking some things away, but you have to start with the work.

• 2:56Scott Galloway?

  The only thing I would try and discern between for this gentleman is if he's really unhappy, or if he's just putting in the work and the stress that's part of getting ahead. I, I think young kids are not, I think that's a lie. The young kids are amazing. I think there are a lot of work and a lot of stress. I think marriages, when you're trying to make your career, or get some, get some trajectory in your career, it puts a lot of strain on the, on, on the marriage. So in some ways, it's a distinction between, are you unhappy? And have fallen into the trap you're talking about of thinking that what's supposed to make me happy will, and you made a mistake, or two, are quite frankly, you kind of where you, you should be. And that is putting in the work and making the investments in family,

• 3:41Scott Galloway?

  relationship and work such that you can have a little bit more balance when you're a little bit older. Any closing thoughts, Arthur?

• 3:48Speaker 03

  No, that's great. And actually, that's very astute because, you know, you've seen the The, the data on how people get happier as they get older. And most people think they're going to get happier from their twenties to thirties and forties. And they actually get unhappier from the twenties to thirties and forties. And then in their fifties, it turns around. And you and I can attest to this, your fifties and sixties are freaking awesome. They're awesome. It's a renaissance. If you're not addicted to drugs and alcohol or clinically depressed, there's going to be, it's like a bonanza. And then what really matters is the, the decisions that you make that will determine whether or not you're in the half of the population that gets happier all the way to the end. Or you start back down again, which about half the population does around age 70. And that's a different conversation, of course.

• 4:28Speaker 03

  But the, the, the big surprise for a lot of people is, you know, when my dreams start coming true, because I did all this work, I thought I was going to be happier, but I'm not. And the explanation for that is really in the corner pocket of what you just said, Scott. Happiness is a combination of enjoyment, satisfaction and meaning. And in your twenties, thirties and forties, your enjoyment is falling, but your meaning is rising. Me, the enjoyment is how you measure how happy you are from moment to moment and from day to day. And when that's going down, you feel like you're getting less happy. Whereas actually your life is getting more meaningful and that's the big payoff in your fifties and sixties. And so that's very likely what's happening with our young friend.

• 5:07Scott Galloway?

  I like that. Let's move on to question number two. Our next question is, I'm in my late twenties and feel like I'm constantly having to choose between my career and my relationships. How do I know when to prioritize love? And how do I even find the right person when I'm this busy? Arthur?

• 5:22Speaker 03

  That's a work-life balance question. It's a classic work-life balance question. And that's a generally a misapprehension of how your life is supposed to work. Work-life balance is a huge lie. And, and the reason is because it distingu-, it distinguishes between work and life. I mean, look, you and me, it's like the, some of the best, most fun times we've had in our lives, they're work. You know, that's, that's actually the work, but our work isn't our whole lives. You, you and I are family men, we're married, we love our li-, our wives, we love our kids. In my kid, my case, I, I'm crazy about my grandsons. I got a ton of grandsons. It's the best. And, and the point is that my work makes my home life better and my home life makes my work life better, which means you need work-life integration, not work-life balance.

• 6:05Speaker 03

  And so when you're going crazy, you're going, you know, you're, you're wrapped around the axle and all the decisions that you're trying to make is probably because you're actually trying to adjudicate between work and life, not saying, okay. Is my work making my whole life better or worse? Am I, am I having a screaming argument with my wife all the time? Because I'm spending the 14th hour at the office instead of the first hour with my kids? Or is it that it, my, my home life is infringing on my ability to be successful in my career? And if either one of those is the case, it means you're not integrating the two appropriately. You're thinking about it wrong. What's your view, Scott?

• 6:39Scott Galloway?

  I think it's situational. I think I'm more pragmatic cynical and that is, I gave up most of my twenties when I should have been finding a mate for work. And I, I'm, I'm, I'm trying to be funny here, but there's some truth to this. I say that I had no balance. I agree with you. The work, the work, life balance thing is a myth. I just worked all the time. So, but I got a lot of reward and unfortunately I probably, I get an unhealthy amount of my identity from work. And I would say it cost me my hair and it cost me my first marriage and it was worth it. And I'm being just somewhat tongue in cheek there because I now have a lot of balance now. And the cruel truth of the world is it's, it's very sexist when it comes to this.

• 7:24Scott Galloway?

  And that is, if you're a dude, working just your ass off such that you can get influence and economic security, the payoff, quite frankly, is that men with a certain amount of economic viability, don't lose a lot of sexual currency as they get older. And I think the world is more unfair with women. Now, having said that, I think this myth that women shouldn't work and focus on finding a mate, I also think that's bullshit. As a matter of fact, fertility goes up as women make more money. So the notion you're not going to have a family, kind of the Charlie Kirk myth, that you're giving up kids if you focus on your career, I think that's total BS too. But what, you know, I-

• 8:06Scott Galloway?

  I have found, I would question a little bit of it because I found as a guy, if I found someone I was interested in romantically, I found the time. I just kind of figured it out. Even, I was working at Morgan Stanley where they, I was working 80 hours a week. And if I said I had a date, they were like, wow, that is literally like the solstice, give Scott the night off, let him leave a little bit early. So I don't, I think it's very situational based on who they are, the current situation. I think this is a tough one. I also recognize I don't know what I don't know because I'm so out of the dating market. Help, save me for myself here, Arthur.

• 8:43Speaker 03

  Yeah, no, I completely get it. I'm out of the dating market too. And my chronic workaholism, I've had four distinctly different careers, starting as a, I was a French horn player all the way through my twenties, you know, playing in symphony orchestras. And then I was a, I got my PhD, I was a college professor, and then I was a think tank chief executive. I ran a big think tank in DC and now I, you know, have this happiness business. And four distinctly different things. And the way that I ran those things was by working 80 hours a week through my entire career. And it cost me my hair, but not my marriage. You know, thank God, because I had this partner who was along with me and tried to moderate these ideas for me. And one of the things that's pretty interesting is, is the other side of the sexist coin is this, that women who actually figure out the balance issue

• 9:24Speaker 03

  are much happier than men. So men, you know, in their twenties and thirties who, who, who tried to get enough balance because they know it's the right thing to do, they're not always very happy. But women who do are blissfully happy. And so women who have what's what Michael Driver, the, the great USC psychologist who died a couple of years ago, he talked about the spiral career, which is the happiest professionals are not these linear guys like you and me, next thing, next thing, next thing, next thing. They're people who actually will dial down, dial up, you know, change industries. Women are really good at spiraling their careers. They'll come out of college, they'll do something, you know, move to New York, do something professional, get married, dial back, go

• 10:05Speaker 03

  part-time while they raise their kids, come back into the workforce in a nonprofit role perhaps, change industries. And, and those who do it well, they're happier than men.

• 10:16Scott Galloway?

  Do you, I've said that I think the most important decision you'll ever make is who you choose to partner with, specifically who you choose to have kids with. You can be marginally successful professionally, and if you have a good partnership, you'll figure it out. You can be very successful, and if you have a bad partnership, it's just a life full of disappointment and anxiety. One, I imagine you agree with that, but then how do, I'm trying to think how I reconcile with focusing on work versus the time invested to find the right partner? And do you have any thoughts on how you find the right partner, what the right versus wrong criteria are?

• 10:49Speaker 03

  The right partner, and I'll amend what you said, because I completely agree, obviously, but I'll amend that to say it's very important to allow yourself to be found by the right partner as well. And one of the biggest things, it's interesting, because, you know, people who are in the search mode for anything, for the perfect career, for the perfect partner, they're violating the first principle of what you do when you're lost. If you're lost in the woods, any Eagle Scout watching us right now knows, stay put. Don't start wandering around the woods. You're less likely to be found, and you're more likely to starve to death, or freeze to death, or get eaten by a bear. Stay put and take care of yourself until they actually find you. And that's one of the most important things to do, is to be open to what you want.

• 11:31Speaker 03

  The universe's gears will turn, and to allow yourself to be found, which is really, really critical important. Most people who are real seekers and not finding what they want is because they actually are not allowing themselves to be found. They're not actually, they don't understand that they're sought in this particular way. And so, anyway, that's a slight amendment to what you're talking about here. But I think that, under the circumstances, that the right kind of partner is the one who wants to, I mean, every religious community in the world that believes in an afterlife, they all believe, and again, I realize that this doesn't include you or many of our listeners, but what they all have in common is that they believe that marriage, the permanent

• 12:14Speaker 03

  romantic partnership, is an antenna to God. The Hindus believe this, the Muslims believe this, the Christians and Jews believe this. They all believe that it's an antenna to God, which is why most people have a vocation to marriage, is because they want God, and they're not going to understand God until they actually get married, and especially until they have children. It's a divine thing, is what it comes down to. So therefore, in these religions, you have to look for somebody, or allow yourself to be found by somebody who's going to walk you into heaven. Okay, now, the secular version of this, even if you're an atheist, find the person who wants to help you become a better version of yourself.

• 12:50Scott Galloway?

  I love that. So something you said there, there was someone illuminating for me, or spawned a thought was that you, you know, when you're out and you're serious about finding a mate, you know, I would say always default to yes. You get invited to a dinner party, you're tired, go to the dinner party. You meet someone, it's not sparks, but maybe they ask you out for a second coffee, say yes to the second coffee. You just don't know where it might go. Just be, have a propensity towards yes. You know, one's going to find you at home. But what I have found is that it was never that I found, it wasn't that I found the exact right person and she became my partner. It was that I was in a period of my life

• 13:31Scott Galloway?

  where I was ready to commit to somebody. And I don't buy this notion that of soulmates. You're at, you, you pass each other, hopefully, when you're both in a zone where you're ready to make the investment in a relationship and you build something together. But I don't know, and my partner would kill me if she said this, I'm not sure she was the one. She was the one at the right moment, if you will. Any closing comments, Barth?

• 13:57Speaker 03

  Yeah, no, for sure. And again, if you believe in the metaphysics of this, then the right moment is a divine thing, as well as the person is a divine thing. And so it folds up into being effectively the same solution as the way that this works. But the whole point is that what you just said was you got to a particular point in your life and you allowed yourself to be found and you were. So when I'm talking to a lot of young men and women, which is, you know, my graduate students at HBS, a lot of young people that I talk to, I mean, I'm sort of the, the 28 year old striver whisperer at this point in my career, that I can't find anybody. No, no, no, no, you're not allowing yourself to be found. Let's talk about that. You're wandering around the forest. It's time for you to allow yourself to be saw.

• 14:39Scott Galloway?

  Love that. All right. We'll be right back after a quick break.

• 14:51Scott Galloway?

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• 15:56Scott Galloway?

  Welcome back, on to our last question. I try not to spiral every time I make a mistake at work, but it's hard. Why does failure hit so much harder than it logically should? And how do I stop tying my self-worth to my performance?

• 16:09Speaker 03

  Yeah, this is, this is pretty classic, especially for people who are, have very, very high standards and who have a lot of fear. And that, that describes a lot of people who are gonna, you know, prof G followers and people who listen to my show as well. These are super strivers, people who are really, really hard workers and they're deeply, deeply, deeply afraid of failure. And by the way, me too. I am terrified of failing. I am utterly propelled by a fear of failure, even though I do all kinds of stuff and I fail constantly, right? It's sort of the fear is the kind of fuel. And so these things are tied up together with striving and fear, I get it. Here's a method for actually getting out of that cycle of misery,

• 16:50Speaker 03

  but actually turning the inevitable failures into a source of learning and growth. And this is what we call In my class is the failure journal. So the way that this works is that whenever something happens that's inevitably disappointing, that feels like a failure, that doesn't go the way that you want, you write it down. I mean, write it down. It's actually most cognitively impactful if you do with a paper and pencil, believe it or not. It's actually not as good on your phone. But anyway, whatever, however you do it, leave two lines blank below it in this failure journal. Now, now, obviously, don't let people find it. Come back to it after three weeks and then the first line below the entry, right? What did you learn in the meantime?

• 17:33Speaker 03

  And then the line below that, come back after two months and write down something good that happened. Now, it doesn't mean you're gonna be happy that it happened, but something good has happened. I'll give you an example. You know, you get a bad performance review at work, even though you thought you were doing a really good job. This is classic for 22 year olds. You know, they go into their first job and they've been getting straight A's in college and they've been told that they're very special. And, and they go into the workplace and they're ordinary or maybe below average. They thought they were A pluses and they're getting B minuses. Okay, so that's a huge disappointment, really crushing loss. And their friends are like, just forget it. Your boss is a jerk, the whole thing. No, no, no, no, write it down. I thought I was doing a superior performance. My boss told me I wasn't. And it's really, really bumming me out. Okay.

• 18:18Speaker 03

  Three weeks later, you're gonna come back and you're gonna say, I learned that I wasn't as good a fit as I thought I was. That's what I learned and that is very valuable information. And two months later, you come back and you say, you know, I actually went on the job market and I found something that I think is gonna be a better fit. Then what happens is that the next time you put in an entry, you're gonna see all the ones above you and you're learning and growth. And you're gonna start looking forward to writing down your failures and disappointments because they become a source of generativity as opposed to a source of misery.

• 18:51Scott Galloway?

  I think about this a lot because, so I don't have an answer. I can just have what I do to not solve this problem, but to diminish it because it's a big problem for me. I think everyone has a certain level of addiction in their life. I'm addicted to money. I don't need more and I keep sacrificing relationships and time with family to try and make more money.

• 19:16Speaker 03

  But that's a scoreboard, right, Scott? That's scoreboard.

• 19:18Scott Galloway?

  I think that's right. I also think it's because when I was young, I don't want to say I had trauma, but I grew up with no money and so I always feel insecure about money, no matter how much I have. I just can't. I can't resist a speaking gig because I'm like, okay, this is five years of my mother's salary. I don't care what's going on with my kids. I'm gonna take it. Anyways.

• 19:36Speaker 03

  I grew up the same way. I know it's a problem.

• 19:39Scott Galloway?

  It really is. And then the other addiction, and it's more pathetic, is I'm addicted to the affirmation of others.

• 19:44Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 19:45Scott Galloway?

  And that is, I have a fairly healthy fear of failure. What I've figured out as I've gotten older is I have a bigger fear of shame. And when I screw up or I say something stupid, or I say something that my audience doesn't align with their political views, I get dragged online and it bums me out. Bums me out less than it used to, but it still bums me out.

• 20:04Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 20:05Scott Galloway?

  And my practice for trying to minimize that sense of failure or shame is the following. One, Arthur, I get the sense you're actually quite religious. I'm an atheist and my atheism gives me a lot of power or comfort because I was 21 yesterday, I'm 61 now. That was a blink. The next half a blink, I'll be dead and so will they. And the notion, I find real comfort in knowing we're all going to be dead soon and anybody who's worried about what they think about you is going to be dead soon too. In addition, there's a lot of research. Adam Alter, my colleague at NYU, also has an appointment in the psychology department, did a lot of work on regrets and the three biggest regrets of people are they wish they'd stayed in touch with.

• 20:48Scott Galloway?

  Friends, they wish they'd led the life they wanted to lead, not the life society or their parents wanted them to lead. But their number one regret is they wish they'd been less hard on themselves. And you just need to know that when you look back on that failure or perceived failure at work, one, people go, oh, they're not as good, or they did something stupid. And then they go back to thinking about themselves. And two, at the end of your life, when you have real perspective, you're not, you're not going to regret the failure. You're going to regret how hard you were on yourself. So try to forgive yourself and recognize that when you do something bad or your performance isn't great, all the people you're worried about, letting down, or what have you, they're going to go back to thinking about themselves.

• 21:30Scott Galloway?

  And as you get older, the only, the only upset you're going to have is that how upset you were. Forgive yourself.

• 21:36Speaker 03

  Yeah, that's very wise. That's very wise. Get a head start on not caring, for Pete's sake. This is, by the way, one of the reasons that 80 year olds tend to be happier than 30 year olds is because they, they're disappointed and offended just as easily. But they know themselves emotionally. They actually have an intuitive understanding of the functioning of their limbic system. And they know that what feels like it's going to be permanent misery is actually probably 24 hours of discomfort. And so they get a head start on not caring. That's literally what happens with 80 year olds who are, have an emotional equilibrium. One side note about this, by the way, because I think that this is an area that, that you and I, you were born in 1964?

• 22:12Scott Galloway?

  Oh, God, yes.

• 22:13Speaker 03

  Me too, me too, brother.

• 22:15Scott Galloway?

  When?

• 22:16Speaker 03

  Uh, May 21st.

• 22:17Scott Galloway?

  All right. Yeah, thank God you're older than me. That makes me feel better. But anyways, yes.

• 22:22Speaker 03

  When were you born? What's your birthday?

• 22:23Scott Galloway?

  No, I'm almost technically Gen X. I call myself Gen X. You're definitely a baby boomer, Arthur. Anyways, continue.

• 22:29Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah, no, I'm the, I'm the, I'm such a boomer. Yeah, that's right. So apparently between May and, when's your birthday? November?

• 22:35Scott Galloway?

  Yeah.

• 22:36Speaker 03

  Okay. Between May and November, that's when we went from Catholicism to atheism or something. Maybe that's what, that's what happened.

• 22:42Scott Galloway?

  That's what happened.

• 22:43Speaker 03

  Yeah. But the key thing to keep in mind for a lot of people our age, people who are watching us, and you know, we've, we're the luckiest guys in the world. We really are. I mean, it's just, you know, we've got money, we've got the careers that we want. We have a marriage. We have, it's great. It's completely great. But there's one thing to keep in mind about almost all strivers is that they tend to be quite workaholic, which is downstream as an addiction from addiction to success. And success is all about the feeling of winning. And generally speaking, it ties to a particular pattern in childhood. Where you really only got attention and affection from adults when you did something, when you got a, you know, straight out of the report card or pitcher, you made pitcher on the team or something. And so you, your synaptically plastic brain concludes that

• 23:27Speaker 03

  love is earned. And, and, you know, news flash, love is a free gift freely given. It's a grace. Anybody who makes you earn their love doesn't love you. That includes strangers. That includes sycophantic taker friends, people who want your money. That's what they all have in common. If you're married to somebody who makes you earn their love, your spouse doesn't love you, red flag, bigger than red flag. You know, there's a big problem in your life. But if you're going forth in the world like so many of us do all the time without thinking about it, trying to earn everybody's love, including the approbation of strangers, this torques your relationships and makes true love harder to keep and maintain. I mean, you'll trade away an hour with your, your wife in order to have the applause of

• 24:12Speaker 03

  strangers for peace's sake, if you have this particular pathology and it's not, it's, it's, it's not healthy. And, and I think that you and I and a lot of people watching us suffer from this.

• 24:22Scott Galloway?

  A hundred percent. The, uh, we're going to end here, but there's, I always learn so much when I watch you. And the one thing you just said that really is going to stick, stick with me in terms of the confidence as you get older, is you get a head start on not caring. I love that. I love, I'm gonna, I'm gonna put that, I need, I need a head start on not caring. Arthur Brooks is a Harvard professor, bestselling author and columnist at The Free Press. His latest book, The Meaning of Your Life, is available now. Arthur, that was great. Thanks very much.

• 24:49Speaker 03

  Thank you, Scott. Great to see you as always. Great, like looking in the mirror, kinda.

• 24:53Scott Galloway?

  There you go. Likewise.

• 24:57Scott Galloway?

  This episode was produced by Jennifer Sanchez and Laura Janer. Kami Rique is our social producer. Brad Williams is our editor. And Drew Burrows is our technical director. Thank you for listening to the Prop She Pod from Prop She Media.

• 25:16Speaker 04

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