Kind: captions
Language: en
humans are not intended to decline
decline is hugely painful because
happiness comes from progress
unhappiness comes from regress
arthur brooks welcome to the show thank
you tom what a joy to be with you long
time
viewer first time guest i seriously
doubt this will be the last time your
book strength to strength blew me away
it was one of those where i actually got
emotional reading the book
because as i was telling you before we
started rolling i've spent a long time
haunted by the idea that genius is a
young man's game
and that ties into
my first question which is why do so
many people feel lost
and unhappy and what can they do about
it
people feel lost and unhappy is
basically part of what it means to be
human and there's a there's an irony in
the having the big brains that we do we
developed a
very large human brain over the past 40
million years for all kinds of reasons i
mean it's that it gives us a it's our
genetic advantage that we could say it
gives us help it's our survival we're
not fast you know we're not very good
climbers you know we don't have a lot of
hair on our bodies but we got big these
guys these big prefrontal cortex of the
brain the problem with that is that we
can understand ourselves we're the only
species as far as we know that knows
that you know tom knows he's going to
die
for example you can understand the
nature of your own existence but you you
can't actually
make your own existence work in a
fundamentally different way and so
knowing yourself that the essence of
consciousness is one that gives you
incredible transcendental information
but at the same time it programs in a
whole lot of misery so for for example
you know we have a tendency to to our
genetic proclivities
force us to
chase money and power and admiration and
pleasure because those are the things
that help you pass on your genes you get
more animal skins and and flints and
buffalo jerky in your cave and you're
going to have more mates basically and
so mother nature wants you to do that
but it's not going to make you happy
and you think that you want to be happy
the big prefrontal cortex says i want to
be happy because you're so conscious
but the things that will help you pass
on your genes are not the things that
are going to make you happy mother
nature doesn't care if you're happy
and that's why it's so much more work if
if you live by if it feels good do it
you're going to be you're going to be a
mess that's what it comes down to that's
so true
[Music]
so
i had a realization a long time ago i'm
very grateful that this happened early
it was of course born of misery but i
became so profoundly unhappy chasing
money i used to show up every day saying
i am here to get rich
and that provided me a lot of energy so
as a child of the 80s growing up in
tacoma so and i really grew up on the
edge of tacoma it's probably more
accurate even though my address really
was tacoma it's more accurate to say i
grew up in puyallup yeah
fair was oh yes we're the western
washington state fair now the washington
state vet that is all accurate and i
it felt almost rural
and so i felt like i was living in the
middle of nowhere and john hughes films
showed me sort of this
upper middle class chicago suburb and i
was obsessed with getting a big house
and so i used to tell everybody i'm
going to get rich i'm going to get rich
and my family was like and i had friends
that like and i could literally walk to
a trailer park it was like that kind of
part of tacoma and so my family who are
all sort of blue collar
just thought that was hilarious and
they're like yeah right
and but that i was really obsessed and
so i
um
i was but i was cheating so i was really
i did very well in high school from
cheating and then encompassing cheating
yeah yeah yeah like i was charming yeah
so i could get away with murder when
they're incredibly clever
oh that's interesting my identity is not
that of someone who is clever so
it was very much somebody who was
charming so i could make people laugh
yeah and so i could get away with things
so whether that was asking my friends to
let me
literally take the test off of their
desk and put it on mine so i could show
my work right but of course i was
showing their work
but when i got to college
and i'm not even sure what gave me this
insight but i was like i'm going to be
spending a lot of money taking on a lot
of debt i should actually learn
what i'm here to learn so i set a mantra
to myself sink or swim a orf i won't
cheat not even once
and so and i ended up doing very well in
fact i did better in college than i did
in high school you're happy in college i
was
i was it when i graduated though i was
like i'll never go back i'm not one of
those people who's like oh i'm gonna get
a masters and then a phd i was like give
me the [ __ ] out of here but it was
it was film so it was amazing yeah and
you were living by the dictates of your
own integrity you're a man fully alive
you were not shading the truth
very true he's very important and this
is what's you know this is there's
there's a famous speech by you know and
and i can't remember who it was the guy
who went on to become the president of
the university of texas who gave he
became famous because he gave an uh
a a commencement speech that was about
make your bed
if you want to actually get your life on
track start by making your bed what that
was was
uh to ask people to become
men and women of integrity
and that means even when nobody's
looking at your bed make your bed
because you're a person of integrity you
went to college and you said to yourself
i'm going to be a person of integrity i
am not going to do that thing because
that thing is not the right thing and so
doing you ordered your mind in a
different way it's really interesting so
i wish that my life was like a straight
trajectory after that but it becomes the
darkest period of my life becomes right
after college
when i feel lost i feel hopeless i have
no sense of how i'm going to put things
together
that was a really scary time because
when you don't feel that you can affect
the change that you want
it really for me any well let's go back
to what you said at the beginning so i
call that the directives of evolution so
if you think of ai ai has to be given
instructions you have to want a high
score or you have to want to stay within
the lanes of your car whatever
and
humans as nature's ai need directives
and so like you said get a mate that's
definitely one of them and man i really
hope at some point later in the
conversation after we've really gone
into your book we get to the fact that
people are 30 less likely to get laid
now which is absolutely [ __ ]
terrifying to me
um
i have the solution for greater
happiness on college campuses really
it's more love
yeah now what do you mean by that though
i mean actually more relationships more
romantic relationships
this would actually solve a lot of the
misery on college campuses today
actually is i mean what were you trying
to do in college you probably wanted to
fall in love right
no
so i i didn't so i had a girlfriend at
the very beginning of college like the
first few weeks
who i'd met in high school right and
i broke up with her and re decided that
to get into film school i had to really
buckle down
and i wasn't gonna date i wasn't gonna
party i wasn't gonna drink i wasn't
gonna do drugs and so i effectively
locked myself in a room for four years
to get good at filmmaking
so it was a very
different different experience yeah a
lot of people but now i want to i want
to get people back to your book
because it is absolutely life-changing
so i would show up every day trying to
get rich that was my whole shtick
as an entrepreneur yep and then because
i wanted to build a studio right
became profoundly unhappy pursuing that
and the lesson that i ultimately ended
up learning was that all that matters in
life is how you feel about yourself when
you're by yourself
and so meaning and purpose matter right
and so i had better figure out that
money wasn't going to bring me happiness
i was living the cliche and so i needed
to attach
meaning and purpose to whatever how did
you figure that out that money was not
going to bring you happiness so on paper
i was worth more money than i'd ever
been worth so i was making more than i'd
ever made i was making like maybe 80 85
000 something like that which for me
that was good at the time it was a lot
of money and on paper i was worth about
two million dollars so i was like okay
theoretically and paper money is very
different than real money but
on paper i was worth millions of dollars
and i was still profoundly unhappy and
did you think what did you think if i'm
just like i'm gonna
see your limbic system of your brain
saying tom
go for the money then you'll be happy so
what did you imagine was going to happen
to you if you had a bunch of money that
would actually make you happy or did you
actually form an image at all you just
thought that if i had more money i'm
going to mysteriously be happy
yes then once i wasn't i asked myself
maybe the right question which is what
did yeah what did i think was gonna
happen
and i realized that i thought i would
feel about myself the way that i felt
about other people when that had money
when i looked at them ah yeah and i
admired
them thought i was a social company got
it and you would actually so social
comparison led you to the admiration of
other people who had been successful so
therefore you would have that as sort of
an admiration of yourself yes and that
self-admiration would have been the
genesis of your of your newfound
happiness on the basis of your money and
if i were as able to articulate that to
myself as you were just now i could have
saved myself a lot of struggle
but i couldn't either at 22 but yeah
yeah was disastrous yes all right my
friend i have a big announcement my
incredible and talented wife lisa is
about to launch her new book radical
confidence in it she has managed to
perfectly capture the process of how to
go from feeling lost and insecure to
taking control of your life and doing
amazing things despite feeling fear
sometimes a lot of fear now let me tell
you nobody knows lisa better than me but
when i read radical confidence for the
first time and heard her describe what
it was like for her to go from having
these big exciting dreams as a kid to
then as an adult scheduling her life
around the tv shows that she wanted to
watch or how lonely and isolated she
felt instead of pursuing her dreams it
was brutal for me i would never say
though that it was worth it for her to
go through all of that just so that she
could write something down that allows
others to avoid it but i will say that
at least she was able to capture the
strategies that she used to break out of
that rut find her voice and begin doing
incredible things despite her
insecurities and fears that she wasn't
going to be good enough to achieve great
things order your copy today because if
you act now you can claim the bonuses
that lisa has created for you at
radicalconfidence.com
then once you've done that we'll get
back to today's episode all right guys
read the book and get ready to be the
hero of your own life peace out
[Music]
so but thankfully i figured that out and
so
reading your book
really began to bring home this idea
that there are
two different types of intelligence and
so at the time i'm haunted by this idea
genius is a young man's game i feel like
a really late bloomer i end up spending
all this time chasing money not i take
this huge break from pursuing my passion
and building that skill set so now i
really feel like i'm behind the eight
ball
and my whole life has felt like that and
reading your book and the whole punch
line of there's these two grand
movements in your life and if you
understand them then you really can
avoid this decline in misery right you
open your book with a story that i will
never forget and when i put the book
down i was like running around the
office like telling anybody who would
listen that story
if you don't mind yeah
walk people through
the airplane
ten years ago i was the president of a
think tank in washington dc and i was
having these
profoundly disturbing thoughts
am i on the right track where does this
lead
what is my goal but you're really
successful at this point yeah i mean
successful for you know for
entrepreneurs in southern california you
know what is successful mean to be the
president of a think tank in washington
d.c maybe not so much but everybody's
got a dream it's a great country isn't
it and i was the president of a
big prominent think tank in washington
dc and i was in my late 40s so that was
more or less the same age that you are
right now i was looking at my life
saying
okay buddy what's the end game
and look i had done research i'm a
social scientist i do work on human
behavior
and i had never really trained these
tools on myself
and i was really disturbed by this
because i didn't actually see what the
future could actually bring
that would be better or i would be
happier
and as i was kind of going through this
i was doing what i always did which is
basically fly around and ask people for
money i was a non-profit organization i
had to raise 50 million dollars a year
and i was giving 175 speeches a year
which is super fun i love jesus yeah
yeah it's almost like running for the
senate and never getting elected
basically which is you know for running
for the senate is probably the best
thing so you don't have to be a senator
and
as i was thinking about this kind of an
existential crisis you know what am i
what path am i on what i'm supposed to
do i mean some of that was evident i was
i have a family i'm in love with my wife
i i love my kids but i didn't have an
understanding of the the course of my
life i mean my religious life is figured
out but i don't understand what i'm
supposed to be doing what is arthur
brooke supposed to be doing such that i
can be happier as a person and frankly i
wasn't very happy
for lots of reasons that anybody can
understand i mean
and
and i heard a conversation behind me on
a plane one night that
changed
my entire direction
it was a couple and i could it was
nighttime it's like about eleven o'clock
at night and i it was dark
and so people were doing what people do
on airplanes at 11 o'clock at night you
know they're drinking or they're or
they're watching a movie or they're
sleeping but i could hear a couple
talking i could tell as a man and a
woman i could tell by their voices they
were elderly clearly old
and i suppose that they were probably
married based on their conversation i
couldn't quite make out the husband's
words because he was sort of mumbling
but the wife's voice was very
penetrating it was coming through the
chairs
and she's he mumbles and he she says
don't say it would be better if you were
dead
and then he mumbles some more and she
says
it's not true that nobody remembers you
it's not true that nobody appreciates
you anymore and i'm thinking this is a
guy who holy cow he's not
he's not a big shot he's not an
entrepreneur he's not you know he's not
somebody who lived up to his own
expectations he got the he got the
experience or the education or the job
that he wanted and now life is kind of
over and he's disappointed
and that makes sense or it made sense to
me because look if you're a big shot
then you're going to die happy huh
and the lights go on at the end of the
flight an hour later so and i'm kind of
curious it's not pre and interest but
look you know this is my laboratory as a
social scientist it is an overheard
conversation perhaps and and so i turn
around and it's one of the most famous
men in the world this is somebody who's
going to do 10 times as much with his
life as i ever am he's rich he's famous
he's universally admired he's not
controversial for stuff that he did
many many years ago
and i thought to myself
my whole model is wrong
the problem that i have the direction
that i'm going is incorrect because my
model of satisfaction is wrong here's
the model the world tells you
here's the limbic system of your brain
the ancient part of your brain that was
extant a million years ago and all of
marketing and entertainment which is a
distributed digital limbic system says
work hard make money be successful be
admired be envied
bank it die happy
and it's wrong
and and you know in your heart it's
wrong
because you're always asking yourself
hey tom what have you done for me lately
that's what your mind is asking you it's
not good enough that you founded a
company a long time ago and it made a
bunch of money it's not good enough we
we need to excel we need to achieve we
need to create value that's how we're
created as people
and this guy was
blowing away the
the world's theory of happiness of
satisfaction
and i said to myself
i don't want to be explaining to my wife
esther on a plane 30 years from now
40 years from now i might as well be
dead
and so i set myself to crack the code
what can i do and by the way the data
are very clear that the people who have
the earliest success the mind-blowing
success
they're the most likely to be
unsatisfied with their lives at the end
of their lives the story that you tell
about darwin was unnerving he could have
been a man on the plane charles darwin
who
is on anybody's list of the three
greatest scientists of all time
he was the talk of the town name rings
through the annals of history he's a
hero this is i think i may have been
even more struck by
the darwin convention than many many
people who we revere today who had early
astonishing success
they died unhappy but we don't record
that we record their success not the
unhappiness with their life later on
charles darwin had his greatest
successes starting when he was 27 years
old we all know that he visited the
galapagos islands on the voyage of the
beagle which is a five-year sailing
voyage around the world to collect
plants and animals and send him back to
england he was getting quite famous in
his absence but when he got back he
drops this intellectual atomic bomb
which is the ideas that led to his
theory of natural selection aka
evolution and for 30 years i mean he was
i mean he's rich he was famous he was
the man but then his progress stopped it
stopped because he didn't have the
mathematical ability to keep up with his
own research
his research passed him by technically
and there was there was actually an
advance that he needed that today we
call genetics that he couldn't
understand it was written in german he
didn't study germany as a bad student he
didn't do his mathematics homework he
never learned very much about statistics
and so the result was that he was left
in the dust which happens to people in
their 40s and at mass most their early
50s based on their early success
and he spent the last 20 years of his
life complaining about the disappointing
i mean he wrote 11 books after that
point but they're all sort of derivative
they're like straw
and he said i don't have the energy to
do any work that i really find
satisfying to his friends and you know
he died disappointed he died
sad the great maybe the greatest
naturalist of all time died sad he could
have been the man on the plane and this
is not what the world tells you
the world says bust your pick
get as as early as you can get bet 10
000 hours man
kill it kill it bank it you know and if
if so what right you know the the scenic
one on of happiness excellence retire at
40. well how many people do you know
who've done that who've actually gotten
happier who retired at 40 i know none
the point is that's not how human
endeavor actually works and so we need a
better model and i saw that i did the
research and i said
time to build a better model that
actually describes the dynamics of human
experience that actually digs into what
actually brings us happiness and that's
what my research is about that's why i'm
dedicating the rest of my life to
exploring
all right so to put a fine point on it
the punchline ends up being there's two
kinds of intelligence yeah so type one
is fluid sort of raw intelligence
darwin's genius was fluid intelligence
his innovative capacity is what made tom
tom which is your indefatigable energy
your focus your ability to get better
and better to be the ninja in your
particular field which gets better and
better in three years it sounds sexy
even as you're saying it that that's
what i find so horrible that's hustle
culture man hustle culture rewards that
and and by the way and it's been an
awesome ride oh and it's
super addictive
it's super it actually works in the same
dopamine pathways as you know
methamphetamines and alcohol and yes it
is my one addiction success addiction
yeah it's a killer and you you know
write about in the book about the
success addiction that virtually all
entrepreneurs virtually all strivers
have you can be you know the ace
electrician and have a success addiction
because we are wired to want to be
excellent and to be admired which leads
you to get better and better and better
what you do using what we've identified
is what psychologists have identified
for a long time now as fluid
intelligence your the structure of your
brain lends itself to just incredible
energy and focus and to get better and
better and better as an individual at
solving any problem faster than others
the problem is
this is the problem that led to darwin's
misery and so many others it peaks in
your late 30s or early 40s and then it
declines and then it declines faster and
if you try to keep your groove you're
going to ride that thing to the basement
and you're going to be the man on the
plane you're going to be darwin you're
going to be bitter and unhappy and most
people think they get one curve
that's the bad news
the good news is that's not your only
curve you have a second curve that comes
in behind it which is not your fluid
intelligence which goes up peaks comes
down it's your crystallized intelligence
your wisdom which doesn't have fast
working memory the innovative capacity
is not as good but it's your ability to
identify patterns to use the information
in your environment it's like having the
new york public library at your disposal
it takes a while to get the information
like
i can't remember that thing because it's
on the fourth floor back in the stacks i
got to send my guy to get it but it's in
there and you can use this information
to be a teacher to be a historian to
have actual wisdom
that's what you get better at through
your 40s and 50s and you can stay high
in your 60s and 70s and beyond that's
your true success curve as you get older
the key is you got to walk from fluid
intelligence over to crystallized
intelligence you got to walk from the
star litigator to the managing partner
from the
from the innovative startup entrepreneur
to the venture capitalist from the from
the mathematical researcher to the
professor
those are the different curves you got
to go from one to the other and if
you're stuck on the first and if that's
your vision of your own greatness and
you can't be thrown off that you'll be
chasing that for the rest of your life
even though it's just it's in it's in
the basement
and you can't get it back
so there are some people that can wake
themselves up out of the matrix other
people that must be awoken i do fear
sometimes that i need to be awoken
uh but you woke yourself up i'm so
curious so you're doing your thing
you're very successful
and i don't know maybe and i guess we
should tell people that you started out
as a musician yeah a french horn player
nonetheless very specific yes and very
esoteric and made a living as a
professional
all right so
you're killing that game but you realize
that you're declining do you think that
going on that is what allowed you to
then consciously step away
while it seems like you were still in
your prime as the leader the president
of this think tank i got very lucky i
got very lucky that i failed my first
career and after having a lot of success
i went into early decline and out of
desperation to support my family and to
have a future out of my 20s i had to
change gears i didn't have a college
education i dropped out of college you
know dropped out kicked out splitting
hairs when i was 19
i and i went on the road as a as a
musician what that's my parents call it
the gap my gap decade right which you
can imagine how fun that was for them
and you know i kind of made a living
kind of made my rent you know but i was
i was living my best life because i was
a young guy i didn't have a health
insurance i didn't go to the dentist for
six years at one point which i'm still
paying for
and
but like i've told friends i um i never
missed a date without cigarettes so you
know you you figure out what my
priorities were at that particular point
in my life
and fortunately i gave that up a long
time ago
but i was going into decline as a french
horn player and things that used to be
easy became hard things that were hard
became impossible and i saw the writing
on the wall i saw a lot of older
classical musicians who were deeply
alcoholic and unhappy and had been good
and now weren't and didn't have the
respect of the younger people that were
having a harder time making a living and
i thought look i'm barely making a
living now i'm ambitious and it's going
well i mean like i was in the barcelona
symphony so i was making a middle class
living and that's a good orchestra but i
knew that i couldn't keep it up and so i
had to change just by necessity i had to
change and i went back to college got my
college degree by correspondence
and at 31 left to start my phd that by
the way that's not just an arbitrary
thing it's the family business my father
was a college professor my grandfather
was a college professor so i knew that
business more better than any other i
know how to do a phd my father was
working on his phd even when i was a kid
so i saw that whole process that wasn't
foreign or exotic to me at all and i
knew what professors do for a living and
i said okay i can do that because i know
that i was very i was very ashamed i was
just i felt horrible about myself that i
had
but i had failed at this thing that it
was everything to me i mean i there were
i would have just as soon died
than to not be a french horn player
because there was nothing else but i
didn't die and i couldn't die because i
was a married man i was in love with my
wife and and you know we were going to
have kids and what what was it going to
do i mean were you honest with her about
what you're going through at that point
yeah yeah she knew well she knew full
well i mean she knows me
i'm an open world i'm an open book with
her and i mean she's also
smart
and you know we she she knows me super
well in no small part because when we
were
dating
um we didn't speak the same language
and we spoke rudimentary
amounts of the same language for the
entire first year of our marriage oh you
got to know each other you get to know
each other in a deep human way when you
actually can't talk because you can't
lie
i recommend this to everybody that's
really unexpected yeah
yeah yeah
how did you fall in love if you guys
weren't speaking man if you saw her
i was 24. she's
a rock and roll singer from barcelona
she's beautiful
and she's
lovely and she's kind and she's smart
and weirdly she liked me
and so
and i threw in big time i moved to
barcelona to try to convince her to
marry me without speaking a word of the
same language
this is what entrepreneurs do right it's
the ultimate entrepreneurial experience
is to give away your heart and and to
take a chance that's what young people
today they're so non-entrepreneurial if
they're unwilling to fall in love
because that i mean forget the companies
forget the money forget all the cool
stuff that you and i've been able to do
professionally
fall in love
that's entrepreneurship
right that's the big bet i have never
heard anybody describe it like that well
entrepreneurs because of risk taking
like entrepreneurship is taking a big
risk in in
looking for major rewards for explosive
returns i'm not going to tell you how to
denominate those returns it's faith and
resources that you don't already have in
hand these are the characteristics of
the entrepreneur when i was writing a
textbook on entrepreneurship i was
looking at that i'm saying it's a it's a
big mistake to talk about this in terms
of money
we should be talking about this in terms
of love because that's the currency of
life
and when a whole generation of young
people are miserable because they're
comfortable putting millions of people
people's dollars at risk to start a
company but they're unwilling to go
bankrupt in their relationships they're
unwilling to have somebody crush them
by breaking up with them they're just
not very entrepreneurial that's the
problem we have people who are too
non-entrepreneurial which is one of the
reasons that we have too few people who
are in love today as far as i'm
concerned so that was the thing man
i took that i jumped i did that i did
that and that that was actually very
good because that gave me a lot of
confidence that i could conquer my fear
i could take a risk i mean look it was
it was a very low chance this was going
to work out and we're going to learn
each other's language and she's going to
realize i'm a hopeless stooge
or something or we're not going to love
each other or something
and we just celebrated our 30th wedding
anniversary congratulations we have
three
adult children
it's incredible it's amazing so so that
was
we know each other deeply deeply deeply
she knows all of my nonsense
because she knows it without the words
you can shade all kinds of truth
with with words
you can't when it's just your heart
you're just a heart to heart
now that's really unexpected that's very
intriguing to me i would because i have
leaned on language so heavily in my life
in fact if there's anything so i once
went live for 24 hours
as a thing like to celebrate hitting a
certain number on facebook i don't even
remember now what number but i went live
for 24 hours and literally i that
morning or the next afternoon whatever i
flew to london
and then
i did an event with no microphone and i
spoke for nine hours so at the end of
that something happened to my
my vocal cords and i was having a hard
time talking and i could feel like my
throat would click
is so distressing go to a
therapist they stick a camera down my
throat the whole nine like trying to
figure out what did i do
and
i start really worrying what does my
life look like if i can't speak and that
was the first time where i was like whoa
like imagine losing that thing that made
you you and i've always been highly
verbal that was always the thing that i
could terrible at math got horrendous
sat scores but
i'm highly verbal you're extremely
expressive you're extremely expressive i
will give you that i'll take that it's
absolutely true
so and i thought oh god what happens if
i lose my voice so i can't imagine
trying to
court the woman who is now my wife yeah
almost 20 years
uh without my voice that's the
interesting thing yeah no no and and me
too look i mean i talk for a living i
literally i mean blah blah blah that's
what i do for a living did it not hit
you then that like oh god i'm taking
away my superpower well because it was
my superpower i was i was a french horn
player okay so you guys connected over
music yeah well we were at a music
festival in france in dijon in france
that's how you met yeah and i was on
tour and she was studying
and she was studying with a teacher an
american teacher there and we met at
this music festival and and and we were
playing music and that's what you did
and so that that made it a little bit
easier i mean we were less reliant on
on talking yeah then than i am today
yeah that's awesome yeah yeah for sure
and so that was you know
when i went into the client as a
musician she was right there to be
helpful and she gave me she gave me the
courage yeah was she warm about it or
was she super warm she said i was deeply
unhappy because i was inclined look
humans are not intended to decline
decline is hugely painful because
happiness comes from progress
unhappiness comes from regress
and when you feel that something is
harder than it used to be so it's
interesting you know you see this the
decline in the fluid intelligence care
we just talked about
if you're really a striver
and that's what i'm working with i'm
working with people who want to make the
most with their lives if you look if you
never do anything with your life you're
not gonna know it's over you're not
gonna have this big crisis at the end of
your life because you never did anything
and i was like i watched a lot of tv
awesome it's like i can still do that
don't you think their whole life is a
crisis not really no actually no no not
really no no no no i know for sure i
mean well here's the thing
it depends on what you mean by happiness
and what a good life is
you know i want my life as a striver but
i also recognize that it's not normal in
many ways to strive
and not to strive to the extent that you
have but is that what you mean by it's
not normal yeah and it creates problems
i mean you you you rain hell on yourself
when you're actually doing the stuff
that you've done and there's a lot of
ways you could have had a much easier
life a much more relaxing life greater
peace frequently yeah for sure so that's
all i mean it's not a very profound
point in that way
but when i you know when i was when
things were going
poorly and i was deeply unhappy because
i was in a state of regress my wife said
you're unhappy you just need to quit and
i said that's insane
i mean like one can't just walk away but
of course
and she said yes you can absolutely you
can do anything you want i said we'll be
poor she said we're already poor
you know wait how do you know it's you
know multiplying by zero is still zero
and uh and so we did we just we bailed
you know we went to we left barcelona we
moved to boca raton florida where nobody
knew us i took a pretty easy teaching
job and i started studying by
correspondence at night nobody knew i
was doing it she had a minimum wage job
she spoke very poor english had not
graduated from high school
and so was learning english and making
you know six bucks an hour or whatever
it was and i was
getting paid to teach the french horn
while secretly working on my bachelor's
degree at night to build my to to
rebuild
the person that i was
and then
finish that went on to and started my
phd which is what i
really thought i needed to do and that
took me a little i came here to los
angeles as a matter of fact i studied
the rand graduate school in santa monica
and then i learned a new trade i learned
i actually learned who i was as a person
again for the first time but it was like
four years of you know it was weird i
couldn't i remember trying to sign a
check during that time and i couldn't
replicate my own signature
and it turns out that's not actually
quite frequent when people in this
period of liminality
between phases of their life that their
handwriting will change what yeah
yeah that's actually a common occurrence
i didn't know i was like i'm trying to
check for the bank
sorry mr brooks this is not the right
signature
is it is it because there's a
subconscious part of you that's like i'm
not that person anymore it's i don't
it's it's not well understood but
there's a the neurophysiology of a lot
of this stuff is
we're just starting to understand
there's no doubt something that where
these things are connected where your
sense of yourself is somehow connected
to you know these motor skills in a
particular way i couldn't replicate my
own signature sufficiently i got like
rejected by the bank for cashing a check
into my own account at one point i'm
like my
my early dementia
early stage something what's going on
here and what it was was i was in this
profound state of liminality which in
retrospect was this
just fertile period you know i tell the
story in the book
is a place that you and i both know is
pacific northwest guys there's a place
called lincoln city in oregon
that's you're near just north of newport
and i used to go there because my aunt
was the receptionist the hotel and she
had she lived in a trailer near the
beach and it was like this bliss i used
to go there and i remember the first
time i was trying to fish off the rocks
in in lincoln city oregon i was catching
nothing this old guy lived in a shack is
watching me and he comes up and says kid
i've been i've been watching you you
know today he'd be arrested but
and and i said he said you're not
catching anything right he said no he
says because you're doing it wrong you
can't catch any fish unless it's a
falling tide that's when the tide is
going out very quickly
rushing out between the rocks and i'm
like well all the fish are gone right he
says no no you'll see it's stirring up
the plankton the fish go crazy it's
happening in 45 minutes he has his
fishing pole we throw our we throw our
lines in and we're pulling him out by
you know by the tens it's unbelievable
and and afterward he's feeling sort of
philosophical he lights up a cigarette
on the rocks i'm 11 or something and he
says hey kid you know during a falling
tide you can only make one mistake i
said what's that said not having your
line in the water
and i have learned this that the time
between the tides of your life the
falling tide of your life looks like
you're losing everything get your line
in the water because that's the most
fertile period of your life
so what does it mean to have your line
in the water you must try new things you
must be fully alive you must try
everything you possibly can i need you
to define fully alive to be to to wake
up each day and to live that day full of
possibility not to nurse your wounds not
to waste your time not to try to do
things that you used to do to be fully
alive is to be alive to the new set of
experiences that's that's coming across
the transom
that's
super important because during this time
of liminality by the way there's a lot
of research on this this is not just an
anecdote about you know this kid fishing
in oregon
this is there's a lot of research that
shows that this time between periods in
your life which there's a guy named
bruce feiler who's who writes a book
about transitions
and he said during these life quakes you
know if your if your spouse just left
you that's a fertile period for you to
learn new things
if you you know you've lost somebody to
death if you've if you're if you're
going through chemotherapy for example
this is and you and you're very
pandemic for example for example if you
during the pandemic
many people find that despite the fact
that they hated it were insecure and it
was horrible that their lives
transformed for the good
that
in terms of what we're talking about
here the two curves fluid and
crystallized intelligence that period
between the two where you're you're
declining in one and the other's
increasing but you don't know how to get
on it or even what it means that's your
most fertile period that's when things
are can be absolutely magic they're not
going to be fun you might not be happy
but that's when magic can happen
so tell me about this then because this
happened to you
you've been in periods between you you
get out you're successful
but you're miserable
and so you had to change
what was the time between the tides for
you what happened
you have a concept
that resonates with me profoundly which
is that suffering is sacred
you have to do it well though
and i think
there's a few key things that you have
to recognize and when you were telling
your story about your wife a i don't
even know who i would be without my wife
and as i think so for a period my wife
and i now i would say are in very a
traditional gender roles but in the
beginning of our marriage it was very
traditional in a way that was profoundly
transformative
so much of the way that she tried to
express herself in the world was through
me
so she was a stay-at-home wife
but very shrewd very sharp and would
push me to be better
and was beyond
supportive when things were not going
well for me and in a very similar vein
of like i don't care for poor i want to
see you happy that's all that matters to
me and so when i was profoundly unhappy
i would come home and i would say don't
ask me about my day i don't want to
think about it i have to separate myself
from that
and so finally it got to the point where
she was like look this is starting to
damage our marriage
and so i'm going to need you to
work less to figure something out
whatever and so that's when i went in
and decided i was going to quit and we
were going to move to a small town in
greece
and i was going to write again she's
greek and
it was i was going to do that which made
me feel alive and so that was the
refrain i want to feel alive again i
want to feel alive again and so i knew
what that felt like because i had
pursued my art so fervently for years
and it made me feel some kind of way and
so i recognized the decline was able to
associate it with well you're just
trying to get rich you've made money it
hasn't changed so there's something here
that you've fundamentally misunderstood
about the world
and my
i guess liminal thing had been it had
been going on for a while because when i
left film school
and did not understand how to break into
the film industry that was a devastating
period and i would just lay on the floor
and i couldn't afford to furnish my
apartment and i would the the plenty of
room yeah like hilarity was not lost on
me i could feel like that cheap nylon
carpet that you get in cheap apartments
and it would leave like an imprint on my
face because i would just lay on the
floor
and i'm like this is so ridiculous
and i started reading about the brain
and i don't remember where that insight
came from maybe something i picked up in
college i don't know but i was like i
need to learn about how the brain works
and so it's late 90s and brain
plasticity is being debated and it
wasn't
there wasn't an answer some people were
like yes it's real other people like no
it's not
and i was like you know what i'm going
to act as if it's true because that's so
much more hopeful
and so i didn't know the einstein quote
back then but the quote of the most
important decision anybody will make is
whether they live in a friendly or a
hostile universe and me deciding that i
lived in a world where brain plasticity
was real was me saying i live in a
friendly universe right
and so i started trying to get better
and i was teaching at the time and so
i'm teaching film and i start noticing i
can make the students films better
if i can make their films better because
by this point i believe i have no talent
that's a whole part of the story so i
believe i'm completely talentless i
thought i was born with talent i clearly
was not
i don't know how to break into the
industry i'm going to teach because
those that can do and those that can't
teach
but i'm reading about the brain
brain plasticity i'm helping the
students make their films better and i
have a question in my mind which is well
if i can make their films better why
can't i make my own better i was like
maybe i could and so that gives me the
hope that i need to be fully alive to
start approaching things with hey maybe
i just need to get better and i can work
on this
and i had read the dow dijin when i was
16 which plants some very profound seeds
in my mind which i will now call a
growth mindset but back then like i
didn't really understand how to put them
to use in my life but i start putting
them to use in my life i start getting
better at filmmaking
and
you couple that with my wife being just
incredibly encouraging not afraid to be
poor wanting to see me happy
and and that was when i went in and as i
said before we started rolling i went
into my partners and i quit and i said
look i can't keep pursuing money anymore
and so i don't know my version of having
my um
my line in the water was
knowing i wanted to feel alive
believing that if i went and did the
thing that i wanted to do that i would
get better at it and that if i got good
enough i couldn't be denied right and so
the steve martin quote this would have
been
it would have been like 28 29. so you're
really on your fluid intelligence curve
in a big way
but you're not feeling it so i have
struggled my entire life have you seen
amadeus for sure okay so solieri laments
to god why did you make me oh my god
you're a musician this will resonate
with you why did you make me just good
enough to realize i'll never be as good
as mozart why couldn't you have made me
like just a another person in the crowd
that can appreciate what he does but you
had to make me just good enough that i
want to be that good and i realize i
never will be that's how i have felt my
entire life i've always had friends that
were just enough smarter than me that i
was like damn i'm never going to be that
smart and so i always tried to find a
different lane and in the beginning it
was being funny and so for a long time i
wanted to be a stand-up comic but it was
all self-deprecating because i had low
self-esteem i would just make fun of
myself all day which only reinforced my
low self-esteem for sure and so while i
was very funny it didn't feel good and
so ultimately end up rejecting that
um
but yeah so at the height of my fluid
intelligence i did not feel intelligent
i felt the exact opposite and you were
getting tons of material success thus
helping you to understand later on as
you
as you increase the wisdom
that the if if you take the
instrumentality of money and make it
your intrinsic focus you're destined for
misery no doubt now this is an
interesting you know insight that that
we we can take back to ancient times but
saint thomas aquinas in 1265 writes his
summa theologica the seminal text of
western philosophy you know forget that
this the theology just western
philosophy and in it he talks about this
very interesting thing he says that that
man
mankind humankind would say today has
four idols
you pursue everybody pursues one or more
of four idols and he calls them the
substitutes for god because his
supposition is that that we all want god
but god is extremely inconvenient a lot
of one-sided conversations and a ton of
rules so we look for substitutes that
have kind of these divine
characteristics
the problem is they're 180 degrees off
god their money power pleasure and fame
fame he says honor which is has
different connotations you have a son
who's a marine who serves with honor
that's not what we mean we're talking
about admiration
and the uh of other people of you which
is
which is people want that or or just
prestige or maybe fame you know some
people actually want to be famous but
let's just call it money power pleasure
and fame
everybody you know i play this game
what's my idol and i'll ask people not
what's your actual idol but what is not
your idol you know of these four money
power pleasure fame what's the one that
least attracts you that you could get
rid of with
total impunity you don't care and then
we'll we'll start eliminating and we're
going to find your idol is the whole
thing now the interesting thing about
that is that what he says
is not that you'll go to hell if you do
that he says you'll be unhappy if you
don't recognize the idol if you don't
recognize the idols in your life the
trouble is the limbic system of your
brain mother nature
that tyrant
tells you that you'll actually be happy
if you get your idol and so you chase it
and you chase it you can't quite figure
out what you're gonna do if you get it
like tom's going to get you know
hundreds of millions or billions of
dollars what are you going to do with
that money that you would actually like
and you can't quite figure out
well yeah because if you articulate it
you know if i say you'll buy a yacht and
you're like i know that sounds like kind
of a hassle to have a yacht
maybe it sounds good but not that good
right
the real reason you want that is because
you want admiration because you want the
the validation of what it represents of
you to you you want to this transference
of social comparison you've always done
with other people
you want to actually feel the thing that
you felt for others about yourself
that's what the idols do that's the
nasty switcheroo that's the that's the
despotism of this of of mistaking the
intrinsic good for the instrumentality
that's why thomas aquinas was so astute
in what he was talking about here so
when we play this game
and we we we see what is actually
holding us back and you experienced this
absolutely you were chasing the thing
chasing the thing and chasing anything
getting more and more and more miserable
because you're actually getting closer
and closer to your idol and realizing it
will not realize one single thing that
you needed for your own happiness it had
no intrinsic worth look
there's anything about money by the way
the research on money is very clear that
it doesn't actually ever bring happiness
it lowers unhappiness which are
processed in different hemispheres of
the of the brain
happiness and unhappiness are not
opposites they're not they're different
experiences and what happens is at low
levels money will lower unhappiness so
when i could finally go to the dentist
i felt better the trouble is i don't
know how to do the sums inside my brain
i just knew i felt better and we always
mistake lower unhappiness for higher
happiness and so early on you're like
wow i went from from you know fifteen
thousand dollars to twenty thousand
dollars a year and i felt better i
actually felt better about myself i was
able to eliminate some of these sources
of of you know misery so i'm happier and
so you get into the pattern early on you
wire your brain when you're a young
person working your way up the ladder
more money feel better that means more
happiness
and you realize that going from 250 to
300 000 is not doing it that because
it's not big enough jump apparently so
you go and you go and you go and you go
and you go and you're basically just
chasing a lure
it's a real tyranny
what is up my friends i have huge news
for you about one of the most exciting
and important projects i've ever worked
on in my life as you guys know it is my
mission to help teach people about how
to build a mindset and the skills that
they're going to need to live an
extraordinary life and over the last few
months i've been working hard behind the
scenes to create a brand new tool that
will help you do exactly that it's
called project kaizen and i'm proud to
announce that i'll be bringing it to the
world later this year project kaizen is
a web 3 based game like experience that
is a story based world that's going to
allow you to get inside build an avatar
that is aspirational of who you want to
become and then take the path of the
warrior seeking continuous improvement
inside of a story world and game
experience all right my friend i cannot
tell you how excited i am about this
amazing new project which i think ushers
in a whole new form of entertainment and
i want to meet you inside of project
kaizen and help you have fun with these
ideas of always getting better right
click the link and join me in discord
and until then my friends be legendary
take care
no doubt and that's what you experienced
and that's why you were miserable right
because you couldn't get there from here
it's interesting yes
i put different words to it and i'm
curious to see what you think about this
so i think about it from an evolutionary
standpoint so we have directives in our
brain that there is going to be a sense
of dis-ease if you don't do certain
things
i think that deep and profound
unhappiness can come from
pursuing the wrong thing so that you're
spending your time doing things that
just they rob you of energy instead of
giving you energy but i also think that
people end up profoundly unhappy by not
doing things that nature wants them to
do right and i think one of the things
that nature wants us to do and so just
not doing it will be a problem is work
really hard to turn your potential into
skill set yeah and so if things come
easily to you even though you're on top
of the world and everybody else admires
you and wants to be you that there will
be a sense of disease for you because
you're not working hard it doesn't feel
meritorious yeah nature has to find a
proxy right so
nature wants you to have children so it
makes sure that sex is intensely
pleasurable but that's really just a
proxy for have kids
so
that i find really interesting that that
nature is working in these weird proxies
so people end up like you think you're
supposed to do one thing chase money
power fame whatever
you're like why does this suck but all
of those things actually do have utility
and so the thing with money is people
are always going to pursue it the thing
with fame is people are always going to
pursue it why because it actually has
utility
so money for instance is more powerful
than people think not less but
it isn't what you've been told so it's
never what myself and everyone else
included is trying to do is feel better
about themselves right it won't help
with that it cannot touch your
self-esteem and that's like the biggest
like mind [ __ ] ever your wife won't love
you more
your children won't respect you more
when you have more money exactly more
troubling yes you won't respect you more
yes which is ultimately the because
other people will like people treat me
differently because i have some micro
fame and then because it's actually
troubling too because when you know
somebody is instrumentalizing you when
you know somebody's objectifying you
because of this outside characteristic
it makes you profoundly uncomfortable
it's interesting people hate that you
know it's the one thing where we will
allow people to objectify us you're well
known you're successful and people will
be nice to you because of that and deep
down you know that they they
they don't love you
and it's not how it plays out in my head
how does it play out in your head that i
have no ability to be vulnerable around
them no i see and so that's the same
self-objective does the same part of
objectification
and if when you're objectified you can't
be a full person
there's another interesting thing that
might actually apply you're creative
you're fundamentally a creative
when you were doing your work you were
thrown off the creative process now why
is creativity intensely pleasurable
you get you've read the work of michael
cheeks
the great social psychologist who wrote
a book a very famous book called flow
f-l-o-w flow and what it talks about is
how minutes how hours turn to minutes of
sheer pleasure when you're in this flow
state when you're doing something that
you can master your you can it's not too
easy it requires
your ability but you can master it
because of your skill
and you can get into this groove
creatives must create if creatives are
not creating they will be miserable
because they can't attain a flow state
it's very possible tom that when you
were in this part of your career you
needed to create you wanted to quit and
go to greece to do creation you were
basically craving that it's like you had
no protein in your diet for a year or
something it's like i don't know i just
can't stop thinking about peanut butter
well because you were create you were
you were you were craving this
macronutrient in your psyche
and and you were never getting a flow
state and if you're denied the flow
state that uniquely comes to you through
creativity you're gonna you're gonna be
practically suicidal
yeah it was it was definitely a rough
period that's interesting i've never
thought about it as being intrinsically
a reflection of the pleasurability of
flow
but you might be right it's just i feel
i feel alive that is the right word i
feel alive when i'm creating i am never
happier than what i'm creating it's
amazing people who are fundamentally
creative look same thing you know when i
retired as a ceo and i came back to
writing speaking and teaching
um i'm a new man
i'm a new man for the past three years
it's extraordinary you said something a
while ago i didn't want to interrupt you
but i want to go back to it now you said
you rediscovered yourself yeah what does
that mean like you need a sense of
identity is that a core part of this
like is when you say you rediscovered is
it a self-narrative it's you you know
who you deeply are as a person you're
acquainted with yourself you're
acquainted with your true self and just
as with people who are around you you
can you can create a an identity that's
actually not
authentic
you can create an identity to yourself
that's not authentic you can be giving
yourself a self narrative that's not
true to actually who you are as a person
what does it mean who you are what are
you good at what you love it generally
speaking has to do with being in the
zone of what you actually love to do and
what you appreciate most in your life
when you're in line with your own values
when you're living a court with your own
value so jung would have put it this way
carl jung his definition of his
understanding of happiness was that you
need to understand your own values what
you value what you think is proper and
correct and moral and if you know what
that is and can articulate it and live
according to that you will be happy
if you agree with that i think it's
actually there's a lot of truth to that
because you know you have to figure out
what you think what your model of the
world actually is what you think truth
is and then living in accord with your
own values with your own integrity is
really critically important because when
people live outside that groove they're
they're never in equilibrium they're
just never the problem is that they're
not comfortable they're not comfortable
in their own skin and i've noticed this
you know i was working you know it was
it was it was good being the president
of a think tank i was lucky to be
president of think tank i believed in
the work but
it wasn't who i was
and so i was kind of out of my groove
for 10 years 10 and a half years and
when i started going when i went back to
writing and speaking and teaching and
doing creative work i said ah
it's always who you were or was that
because you switched into christmas
i was always a creator you know as a kid
i was painting and writing and composing
music and i just always wanted to be i
was
creativity is the most important thing
in my life or curiosity and creativity
are the or the most important thing that
i can not most important thing in my
life the most important thing that i can
do and when i'm actually happiest
and when i was managing a large
workforce
managing a lot of creatives to their
best selves i mean it was certainly
creative moments to it to be sure but it
wasn't comfortable to me and when i my
second curve which was much more
crystallized intelligence is a lot also
a lot more creative so i was kind of out
of equilibrium for a long time during
that period as well which compounds the
problem of my declining
fluid intelligence
also not being in a creative role
but it's just so much better i mean i
i teach at a great university which i
love i write for a magazine every week
about things that i'm really interested
in i get to talk to you about it
this is
well beast's working
so true for some reason i was just
thinking today like
i was
pacing listening to you and i was like
i'm technically working right now weird
i was like this is
cool
it is super cool and you know there are
people that i've met it's interesting
you know i talk to lawyers who don't
feel like they're working
i talked to a guy who's putting in
cabinets in my house
and and he's super into putting in
cabinets he loves making cabinets he was
talking about all the details and he's
so proud of his work and i say
do you do do you like your work and he
said
it doesn't feel like work
you know i went on a fishing expedition
deep sea fishing expedition with my son
carlos we we he loves the fish we go
fishing
and uh and the guy says every morning i
wake up and he says today i'm going
fishing
and so this is what we all need to find
i mean we need to eat each person
because we have the blessing of living
in an economy where you can do a lot of
different things
the problem is that people chase these
extrinsic lures the money power pleasure
and fame and they get out of the groove
of what they're supposed to do and then
they wonder why they're unhappy
i want to go back to young and this idea
of values so as you were saying it i was
like yes part of me agrees but then as i
run the thought experiment sort of check
it against other things
um other people to see if it holds up
i feel like right now we're living
through
maybe a weird moment or maybe a
completely normal moment in time where
people are using their values to cudgel
each other
and it doesn't when i look at them it
makes me deeply uncomfortable and does
not
resonate
with how i think about values
so is this just a bastardization of the
word value or do the people that that on
either side of the aisle that are just
viciously going after each other right
do they really believe what they're
saying because it seems like a super
dark energy yeah so so this is a
variation on the theme they're
these these are people's true values but
in a fear equilibrium where we're
culturally in a polarity of fear fear
and love are cognitive and philosophical
opposites so fear is the master emotion
it occupies a part of the limbic system
called the amygdala it actually uses
more brain tissue than any other basic
emotion because it's what keeps you
alive if it were not for fear you would
have been you know your lineage would
have died out hundreds of thousands of
years ago by being eaten by a
saber-toothed tiger which weirdly you
were not afraid of
and so so fear is really important love
is the opposite of fear love will
actually neutralize inappropriate fear
or excessive fear fear i did not see
those opposites coming yeah because we
think of love and hatred but hatred is
downstream from fear hatred is always a
byproduct of fear downstream from fear
so what happens is i love the way you
say that like ultra profound [ __ ] like
yeah obviously
never thought of that before and so and
so when when when people come to me and
they have too much fear
the prescription is surround it with
more love
neutralize it with greater amounts of
love it's ph and it's it's alkaline and
acid
if you on the other hand if you're
looking for more love and you don't have
enough love in your life i'm going to
ask you questions about what you're
afraid of because i'm going to try to
work on your fear god damn yeah and so
this is and this is how we actually deal
with you if you have a fear problem i'm
going to work on a love dimension if you
have a love problem i'm going to work on
the fear dimension okay so now when all
the way this all this comes together
ultimately in our lives is we have to
figure out what the problem is and what
we have in our society today is a fear
polarity in our politics and our
ideology and our culture
and what that meant the way that
manifests in our values is we don't use
our values which are beautiful and good
as a gift
we use them as a weapon
now think how counter
effective that is how how how
destructive that actually is but when
you're in a fear polarity you're
actually through fear you're going to
use your own values antagonistically
toward other people which is incredibly
uh ineffective you're using coercion
instead of persuasion the point of
values and sharing your values is to
persuade each other that's the fruit of
the enlightenment but it's also just you
know the basis of human nature if you
cuddle other people with your
with your with your values and use them
as a weapon there's zero percent chance
you're going to convince anybody of
anything but you're trying to use force
zero so the problem that we have is we
could move from a fear to a love
polarity then people would go back to
using their values as a gift we might we
will disagree we will disagree but
disagreement is beautiful it's the
competition of ideas which is
fundamental to a free society you and
your wife there are things you'll never
agree on and you will die married and in
love
that's a you can live in permanent
harmony with somebody with whom you
disagree
but only if you have a love polarity in
your life and you use your values which
are in contrast to the other person's
values as a gift and not as a weapon
what we see today in politics on
campuses in media
is that people are trying to kill each
other with their values you know you're
a traitor well you're a racist i mean
the things that people are throwing at
each other is basically never going to
convince anybody of anything because
there's too much fear
damn
so what are people afraid of
people are afraid
we go through these
these sort of sign waves of these
cultural polarities a lot and
emotional contagion is a very profound
thing
facts yeah
and so emotional contagion is one in
which
it's uh that the culture actually starts
to become infested so when when i was a
kid for example growing up in the
pacific northwest um in the 1970s there
was deep fear of serial killers cults i
remember it's a fear-based polarity of
cult and what that that led to was
unbelievable
um bitterness in politics where left and
right just as bad as today or almost as
bad as it is today um between the
democrats and the republicans between
the conservatives and the liberals and
it all came from the fear that it
infected you know from in the in the
aftermath of vietnam and you know the
the culture wars that were going on and
the and the the the cold war these were
very it was a very fear-based society on
the basis of this there was a break in
that but then you know it comes back
again is the whole thing the the
opportunity for us as social
entrepreneurs the opportunity for us is
to
is to change the polarity is to
encourage people to live by love to have
the courage of actually living by love
in a fear of culture
and that's you know you can fire people
up with that
it's what does it mean how do you do
that you basically to make people commit
to only using their values as a gift to
being around people who are different
than they are to listen to different
points of view to go to people that with
whom they would ordinarily not be in
communion and say i want you to know i
love you
to say those
incredibly transgressive words
this is the most transgressive message
in all of human history is love your
enemies pray for those who persecute you
that's the gospel of saint matthew that
changed life on earth actually
is to say that led to that concept led
to the western enlightenment which
basically said we don't have to use
force we can actually live by persuasion
that was a profound difference in the in
the culture that led to the progress
that would create an economy where
tom can become a successful entrepreneur
quite frankly one thing leads to another
but we're in regress right now the fear
polarity in our culture is leading us
we're devolving culturally
and because of this so if we really want
a better world i mean i know i sound
like a just like an unrepentant hippie
of which i've been credibly accused
that we need
we need love
we need to stand up
to
the people on our own side whatever that
side is and say i refuse to hate i'm
just i'm just not going to do it
i'm i'm done man i'm done i love you
it's interesting so
i
can't articulate it that
cogently because i probably haven't
spent as much time thinking about it as
you
but i've come to a similar conclusion so
what i've been saying so i never thought
that i would ever utter a word that had
anything to do with the culture war and
then i started to really get freaked out
by watching people run in opposite
directions like just seemingly as fast
as i can you're not super political
right i'm not political in the slightest
i don't find politics interesting it
seems to encourage people to be divisive
right and so my thing is to your earlier
point about you can be married to
somebody and love them deeply and
passionately and disagree about things
so in business as is true in marriage if
you both think alike one of you is not
necessary and
the i heard the same thing about so when
when you really ask why are there two
parties which i'd never stopped to
contemplate that so ray dalio says there
are only so many human personalities and
that's why history repeats over and over
and over
ah it's really interesting yeah that
there are only so many personality types
and that there are basically two big
buckets that you can break people into
people that are we'll call compassion
dominant and people who are
conscientious dominant so not that
they're exclusively either but people
who are like you can't leave anybody
behind and then people over here like
you have to be responsible for yourself
right so this is sort of the liberal
conservative yeah exactly economy that
we often think about popularly exactly
yeah and so
that cool all makes sense
and then in business i watched this play
out so i had two partners previously
and
there were times where they didn't see
eye to eye
and i remember the
contribution i felt most strongly that i
had brought to the dynamic was i'm on
the outside going you're both
extraordinary
so
value each other for being different
right like value that friction right and
that in the friction lies the magic and
that either one of you would be a
problem on your own but when you have
that countervailing force it actually
creates something really incredible but
only if you respect the other person's
view and so then i started going okay
politically it's the same thing whether
you're conservative or liberal it's like
you have to respect the friction you
have to understand that either one if we
only had one spirals into madness and it
is only in the friction i won't even say
the balance it's in the friction between
the two that you sharpen your ideas yes
spoken like a great entrepreneur look
the the private proverbs say that iron
sharpens iron i was giving a talk to the
assembled members of the republican
party on the house and the senate side
the members of the house the members of
the senate all republicans at a retreat
some years ago
and i said
i asked how many of you wish we lived in
a one-party state no hands and no hearts
let's be honest i said how many of you
are grateful that we live in a democracy
that has
multiple parties or at least two every
hand goes up i said you just told me
you're grateful for the democratic party
axiomatically i wasn't trying to be
tricky but it's actually true if you're
grateful that you ca that they're that
we live in a country where we can
actually have disagreement without a
knock in the night and the jack-booted
thug you are
by axiom by construction grateful for
the people who disagree with you look
the yankees are grateful for the red sox
they don't want to blow up the red sox
bus on the way to the game that's not
how competition works competition
requires collaboration it requires rules
it requires respect you know
i like the red sox one of the yankees
but i want their yankees to show up with
their best pitching and beat them fair
and square
i don't want them to forfeit that's
actually there's no good in that there's
no good in that whatsoever and
remembering this is really really
critical you know the whole idea that
we're in right now and this is how the
fear-based polarity breaks down the iron
sharpens iron how it breaks down the
whole idea of competition
it basically says that do whatever you
have to because you know war i mean the
you know scratch of the eyes you know a
knee to the groin i don't actually care
what happens in politics because
the biggest threat to this country is my
neighbor who votes for the other party
that is simple insanity
not to mention the fact that that is
factually incorrect you know it's
actually possible that vladimir putin is
going to bring this country back
together again it's actually possible
that somebody who's your people are you
know looking at like
oh
that's non-democratic that's what that
thing means it's actually not the
democrats right it's something else and
that's one of the reasons by the way
that that threat brings people together
that a common enemy actually brings
people together the great the the
greatest pity that i can imagine is that
the coronavirus epidemic didn't make us
love them for a minute though didn't
feel like it was going to sure did it
sure did we politicized that because of
the deep fear in our country and the
fact that we have leaders
that are encouraging us to kill each
other rhetorically
that are encouraging us for their own
the outraged industrial complex in media
and politics is trying to drive us apart
because outrage industrial complex i
like that
it's an old plan eisenhower's
military-industrial complex but the
outrage industrial complex remember you
know everybody's watching us now when
you hate somebody's profiting and not
you
bottom line
well said yeah
that's exactly how it feels yeah and
it's crazy and it's interesting so i'm
definitely not an unrepentant hippie or
credibly accused uh of being hippie i'm
super weirded out by that stuff but
the only thing i can think is that we
have to race to the middle and love each
other yeah like that's it and love has
been or even not in the middle even just
like standing stay in the science and
still love each other it's like keep
your opinions absolutely you know i'm
not saying get rid of your opinions yeah
yeah but isn't it the party that's
closest to the middle always gets
elected nah it's not necessarily the
case i mean we've been kind of
oscillating back and forth between
between political positions that are
actually not representative of the
middle and this is a different kind of
sort of a
it's a different political dynamic which
you're kind of going rail to rail and
you're going rail to rail because you
know you basically because you can have
bashing yeah rail on youtube
for example you can say that you know
given the fact that we we go between
parties might mean because people are so
close to the center or it might be
because you have two blocks that are
incredibly strong
that are relatively equal in power but
very very different than one another so
this is the key the key is basically
either one can be fine you can have very
i mean i always had dinner with a couple
an older couple a couple of weeks ago
and the the wife is super liberal like
pro-choice and the democrats all the way
and the husband is just he's just as
right-wing as they get i mean just
very pro-life on abortion i mean all
these issues that down the line what
you'd expect from conservatives and
liberals and they're they've been
they've been married for 50 years and
they and it's like and privately says
gosh i admire her so much she's just so
wonderful in the whole thing and and it
reminded me that this is the key thing
that you can be in permanent
disagreement but in love equilibrium we
just have to be people that can do that
you know we've been convinced somehow by
people who are making money and getting
power and followers and their jollies
from our fighting that we have to that
we that we can't be around people
disagree with us that's insanity that's
a that's a that's quite frankly a
mistake and you know and you would not
be a successful entrepreneur
if that had been the case where
everybody has to agree because as you
quite astutely point out
um you know if you surround yourself
with people just like you
you're not going to succeed i love the
idea of lincoln's a team of rivals
exactly right getting people to think
differently getting people that will
push you like in in business i will just
tell you right now if you don't have
people that are willing to tell you when
you're wrong
you are [ __ ] at least so i
going back to my own insecurities i
don't see myself as smart enough to just
run the company by decree so i've had to
create a structure where people are not
afraid to speak to power
and because i have not invested anything
in my self-esteem around being right i
don't mind like hey just tell me where
i'm wrong i'm so like obsessed with
getting the result i don't care if it's
my idea i just need it to be the right
idea
but man it's really hard to get people
in in a company dynamic where ultimately
there's an imbalance of power and of
course i can fire them at any second but
they could leave at any second which is
equally distressing for me except
multiplied they only have you know two
people my wife and i who co-founded the
company to worry about we have all 50 of
them
uh you know to worry about so and if
you're a tyrant and they leave
you're cooked yeah no doubt yeah because
it's hard to find good people and the
secret to success actually is a good
team it actually is good people it's
interesting i do this test for my
students i teach this class called
leadership and happiness at the harvard
business school and i
take them through a battery of
personality and happiness tests over the
course of the semester and the one they
like best is the positive affect
negative affect battery and what that is
is is your positive and negative affect
emotion levels and what they learn is
that you can be both very positive and
negative you can be a high happiness and
a high unhappiness person because you're
a high affect person and you can also be
a low unhappiness person but a low
expression of happiness person you're a
low affect person you can be high
positive low negative that's the
cheerleader
you can be low
positive and high negative that's the
poet
low low is the judge and high high is
you he's the mad scientist
right and what you need and what i show
is actually you know using the you know
the research on this that you got to
figure out which one you are and you
must surround yourself with what you're
not
the biggest predictor of success on
teams and entrepreneurial startups or
even established companies is making
sure that the ceo is not surrounding
herself or himself with people who have
the same affect profile
and there's a role for everybody there's
a role for the poets there's a role for
the judges it's interesting it's a guy
who you know is actually a woman in my
class this year and she's like i don't
know if i can be a successful business
leader she's a doctor um and she's
getting her mba super high super strive
or superstriver she says i don't know
you know if i get i've got this judge
profile you know this low low affect
profile i don't i don't know i said
what'd you do for a living before this i
was a surgeon i said that's perfect i do
not want a high fx surgeon you know
somebody who opens me up and says oh my
god
and so there's a role for everybody and
we actually need that
iron sharpening iron on our teams and we
need to value it we need to love it we
need to actually resist the tendency to
want to surround ourselves with people
like us and this is exactly what we're
not doing in our politics and our
country is in decline as a result
i also think we need to have a healthy
distrust of ourselves you're not going
to like those words but
i am skeptical enough of myself meaning
that i know i'm high high that i can get
very excited about something i know that
emotions make dots feel like they
connect that don't actually connect and
so it's like i have to make sure that i
seek that disconfirming evidence that i
don't think well i feel it and therefore
we all need to get behind this idea
right i'm like no no i tell people put
on your cynical hat like tell me where's
the problem yeah i completely agree with
that and you know you if you had adam
grant on the show
no adam teaches it at wharton at you
know penn and social psychology is
fantastic his newest book was called
think again which is exactly the case
that you're making he makes the case
that if you really want to be successful
don't trust you and it doesn't mean that
you can never trust you but you know
look for the
evidence to the contrary look for ways
that where your confirmation bias is
probably leading you astray don't look
to feel good about yourself because you
were right on everything look you're
wrong on lots of stuff you just don't
know on what stuff
yeah so have people around you who can
and it's probably not that fun to have
somebody around you who every single day
says you're wrong in every single thing
you got to find some sort of balance for
pete's sake and if you're the boss
you're probably right on most things
but do
if you if you're wrong you should want
to know first not last if you want to be
successful yeah it's crazy to me how and
i won't say it's crazy i understand it
when you are right it feels good even
now when i know better it still feels
good when i was right yeah i just don't
invest in that i don't encourage that in
myself i'm like yo you've got to be
careful with that yeah but when people
would
actually rather
like they get angry when people point
out a flaw in the idea i'm like what are
you doing like that you are headed
towards an iceberg and you're actively
discouraging people from letting you
know yeah it's ego threat ego threat is
really deep for people who are living
their heads
because they don't want people to think
they're incompetent failure's real
totally failure's coming no but they
will they'll resist tooth and nail it's
it's like you're trying to cut off my
finger by telling me my opinion was
wrong it's unbelievable how the
evolution has led us to this place
you want to be right you want to be
right because you feel like an almost
physical need to be right being
contradicted
um is is socially painful and there's a
um the same part of the brain the
anterior cingulate of the brain
processes both physical and social pain
we have a very practical brain a very
parsimonious brain and you know
stimulating the same part of the brain
so it's like you know being being told
you're wrong and being embarrassed for
something that you were wrong feels like
somebody punching you in the face oh
it's your brain at least and so you'll
resist that because you're trying to
protect yourself it's deeply sub-optimal
and dangerous you're right yeah if i
could just in fact my success is because
i'm not afraid to be embarrassed i never
like it it sucks every time
but a willingness to be embarrassed is
how i have learned
yeah i know and humility of course is a
great is one of the great secrets of
happiness too
that's interesting why yeah humility is
in is because it gives you peace
humility allows you to relax because
you're not trying to protect yourself
yeah you're not actually trying to
protect your fortune you're not standing
in front of your stash of gold all the
time you know walking back and forth
with a shotgun you know
you could basically just walk away and
take it you know you can you can
relax into the reality of your
fallibility
for for once and a lot of people never
quite and i'm sure that people are
listening to our words right now and
some people are going like actually i
think that might be true
you know i've never actually let down my
guard you know and once you actually get
into it it's actually it's a very
interesting rhetorical habit when you're
having a conversation with your spouse
or your friend or
your any luck interlocutor of any kind
and they make a good point say huh
that's a really good point
i think i might be wrong i think i'm
i think i might be wrong no that's
really hard secret to marriage it is oh
man god if you can do that
it's amazing it is amazing now part of
the problem is that you often don't
think you're wrong
that's part of the problem yeah and so
you know being conciliatory in a way
that that you know saying i think i'm
wrong when you actually aren't
or or where truth is you just don't know
you just don't know i mean a lot of
marital discord comes because you know
somebody's saying you got to do
something differently and you literally
don't know what to do you don't know
what to do i mean there are probably
times when you're miserable i'm just
going to guess in your work and you were
going you're working 80 100 hours a week
and you're going in a million different
directions in your wife so you need to
be happy you need to let this go you
need to do less and you're like i don't
know what to do less i don't know how to
do less and that's really tough because
that's giving you directions that you
can't quite take and a lot of marital
discord actually comes down to that it's
directions you don't know how to follow
that's really interesting
yeah
the that is
money and i think that when people are
confused they are not necessarily at
their worst but it's not a great place
to be
the confused mind says no if you have a
defense mechanism against being wrong
then you're gonna throw that up you've
got self-delusion in the mix
so yeah it can be a pretty potent
cocktail yeah but one thing that served
my wife and i extraordinarily well is
when the other person is like oh man
you might actually be right i think that
i'm wrong or is like you know what
you're absolutely right i completely
apologize we reward them like oh my god
like thank you that really means
something and so it isn't see i told you
you finally recognized it it's oh my god
like thank you that's really in good
relationships that's true and loving
relationships that's true but when when
you're in the there's a phenomenon in in
the work on on conflict called motive
attribution asymmetry mode of
attribution of symmetry actually yeah it
explains it's actually a complicated
set of words for a pretty simple idea
which is what we do to get tenure in my
business
and the whole idea of mode of
attribution to symmetry is that i know
my motive which is love but i attribute
hatred to you
and almost all um of irreconcilable
conflicts whether it's you know the
balkans or the palestinians and israelis
or the rwandan genocide or almost any
divorce comes down to this mode of
attribution of symmetry which is a
mistake because two sides to a client
i'm loving but you're a bit yeah and if
they both think that one is wrong or
both because you can't be both motivated
by hatred and love at the same time now
the secret to to when couples are in
this dynamic according to john gottman
who's you know the world's leading
expert in marital reconciliation he's
got this thing called the gottman
marriage laboratory in seattle see the
one that came up with the idea of the
four horsemen of the apocalypse yes
exactly right of contempt and sarcasm
etc etc avoidance etc yeah and he also
talks about the five to one list where
you have to say five loving things for
every that's the magic number where a
marriage can thrive with criticism as
long as there's five acts or expressions
of love for every criticism no no i mean
it's just it's this he's he's fantastic
at these particular heuristics but he
notices that you know if they can even
get couples to start talking to each
other
truly to say i'm angry right now but
don't forget i'm madly in love with you
then that that diffuses that that short
circuits the mode of attribution of
symmetry but when you don't say that the
other person actually does think that
you hate even though and both sides
think that the other side hates us as a
result of that and this is where a lot
of the problems actually come in in in
the way that we're you know we become
defensive because the other person hates
us and we're trying to defend ourselves
you defend yourself when somebody's
actually attacking you through hatred
but if you can get past the the
communication problem
where neither side actually understands
the other then suddenly you can say when
she's right she's right man when she's
right she's right
because she loves me she actually does
love me she's not nice to me all the
time but she actually loves me and
that's how i feel about my wife by the
way at the end of the day
she loves me
yeah yeah my wife introduced that to our
marriage she said when we're in the
middle of a fight she will always ask
herself does he love me
and she said as long as the answer is
yes then we navigate through and if the
answer is ever no we have a totally
different problem yes and i was like
damn that's really smart and so she
actually bought these coins that said
love on them
and if we were ever in the midst of a
big fight she said she would hand it to
me or i could hand it to her and so we
each carried them with us
and we only had to do it once and it was
so profoundly like disarming she pulled
the love token out and slid it across
and i was like
[ __ ] yeah and we had agreed when we were
emotionally sober that if if somebody
pulls that out no matter what you stop
arguing yeah and so yeah it was
incredible and
just doing that once gave us like the
emotional memory to be like the next
time we're in a fight to just remind
ourselves wait this person loves me i
love them like let's it doesn't mean you
sweep things under the rug because we've
learned that is not a winning strategy
like you have to keep discussing arguing
sometimes until you actually get to
resolution
but doing it with a constant internal
reminder that this person loves me and i
love them
it's pretty transformative it is and
it's actually very important also to of
course to be together
um it's damaging to be a part too much
and this is one of the big mistakes that
a lot of young people make is you know
commuter marriages tend to be very
difficult to maintain is that like a
thing now
for sure for sure living in different
cities yeah a lot of couples live in
different cities
for sure the other part that's even
sleeping in separate bedrooms every
alarm bell i have would go off yeah yeah
yeah for sure yeah absolutely and you
know when you're just not together
enough like i'm on the road all the time
i'm on a book tour you know i'm doing
all kinds of cool stuff and it's really
fun but i understand that i can't do
this forever i need to be
and i need my wife to hear my snoring
man
yeah it's interesting proximity there's
no substitute for proximity sure there's
nothing like it this is one of the
reasons that the chronovirus epidemic
was so profoundly
uh deleterious to our mental health
because we have a mental health crisis
just rolling across the united states
right now ordinarily about nine and a
half percent of the population is
exhibiting symptoms of clinical
depression right now it's about 28 oh my
god yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah and has
everything to do with loneliness in the
wake of the chronic virus many people
are much lonelier than they think
because of the isolation from other
people you know social media is
the junk food of
what you need which is actual human love
with real contact eye contact and touch
it's sort of interesting you know this
is so much better this conversation
because we're actually in the same room
this is so much better than if we were
talking on zoom profoundly different
because we've got the mind meld and
we've gone through
50 topics
already we couldn't have done it on zoom
and the reason is because we would have
established a link of oxytocin which is
the hormone that links people together
through eye contact we wouldn't be and
and if you're not physically proximate
to build this
this this neuro modulator link with the
person who's closest to you in your life
on a regular enough basis will be unto
you look out it's gonna be trouble
yeah no doubt you said in an interview
at some point that zoom is really making
us lonely yeah for a while i thought it
was pretty rad
really honest like at the beginning of
the pandemic i was like because i'm an
introvert so i was like hey working from
home this is amazing yeah right and then
about i don't know probably 18 19 months
in i started to feel isolated and alone
and i've got a loving wife i see my
sister every week like i was like man if
i'm feeling it then i know people are
really getting ready for it's like me
man i was climbing the walls got a lot
of work done got a whole book written
but i was
sincerely less happy sincerely and the
weirdest thing about it is i mean look
zoom is great this technology is really
great
but it's also done
even bad when we don't need to use it i
am too productive
i am too productive we're in los angeles
fantastic i could talk to you and
tomorrow morning i'm going to give a a
speech by zoom and then walk into a
speech in person
you know last friday i gave a speech in
madrid followed by a speech in dallas i
was in dallas you know that's too
productive
you know i'm actually a work machine
and i need to be very disciplined to
because i want to do more more and more
more but we're more machines we're wired
for more and and what zoom has
given us the ability to do is to stack
productivity on top of productivity on
top of productivity
and we need to sort that out
that's really interesting
because i'm such a fiend for efficiency
yeah i am not prone to seeing the
problem but i actually understand what
you mean there's no like there used to
be down moments where i was traveling
from one thing to another even if it was
small like in an uber or something like
that but now when you have literal where
you have to say hey guys i'm so sorry i
just need to go pee
because there's no break no right zoom
zoom zoom it's
bad it's bad for you it's bad for your
brain yeah no i hate it yeah i hate it
too i hate it too and and thank god the
world is more or less open again and
let's hope that we can keep it that way
because our happiness requires that our
love requires it yeah i agree yeah all
right really fast i want to go back to i
was super freaked out when i heard so i
knew in japan they were having trouble
that people were i think it's called the
hikikomori or something like that these
guys that live in their house they just
play video games they don't want to
engage with real women
and but i didn't realize that people are
30 percent less likely now to get
married to have sex and i was like what
yeah
that's startling
so
if we know that this is a fear of being
crushed how do we begin to claw our way
back out of this and what caused it well
what they're
this is the work of gene twenge who's a
social psychologist at san diego state
university down the road from here and
she's shown all these numbers that were
30 percentage points less likely to date
than we were when you know that when i
was in my teens and 20s and i mean like
that's what
i cared about you know love that's what
i wanted was love that was the most
interesting thing ever it was absolutely
captured my attention and she talks
about the reasons for this and there are
a bunch of different reasons for this
there's a sort of safetyism culture
where we brought up our kids to feel
afraid of other people which is weird
because you know growing up where you
and i in the pacific northwest when when
you did or even especially when i did
the 1970s was way more dangerous there
was more crime there was more drugs
than and and yet we were largely
unsupervised as kids right and we were
probably running around puyallup oh my
friend yeah i could ride my bike like
four miles away unsupervised yeah ten
your mom was like don't come home before
dinner
or whatever right yeah if i was in the
neighborhood she would just whistle but
i remember my mom without a helmet on i
would ride my bike
three or four miles away to a bike track
right and like do bmx jumps and stuff
like that yeah all unsupervised no
adults
and you know this is no small part of
your success quite frankly yeah yeah
good for your indeed you need to be
letting your kids put themselves in
danger now how i survived my childhood i
will never totally it was more dangerous
unambiguously was more dangerous but
you were less fearful as an entrepreneur
in both life business and love that's
and you have to figure out how to deal
with [ __ ] yeah for sure like you go to
the bike track and there are bullies
there but there's no parents yeah so
nobody's adjudicating your disputes et
cetera so you're asking for safe spaces
on campuses no and you weren't afraid to
ask your wife out
that's step number one the second thing
is the really
disastrous consequences of life on
social media
social media has made it much much
scarier for us to fail much scarier the
social comparison to be much worse than
it is in the past so people have lower
self-esteem and more social fear because
of what social media has brought to them
and the last which is a really
interesting phenomenon is the research
on on internet dating or social media or
uh dating apps on how that's actually
lowered our ability to love each other
and that comes down to
a big problem in the algorithm actually
believe it or not they
we look when with
dating apps they match us in in ways
that where we're too compatible
um love and interest come from people
who are compatible
sort of but not that much real love is
complementary not compatible that's
interesting yeah and so there's a lot of
research that shows this so even
biologically there's a famous set of
experiments the 1990s where these uh
these researchers they would have guys
you know guys in college uh wear a
t-shirt they love this stuff you know
the study right and they weren't they
didn't shower for two days and they wore
the t-shirt and they took the t-shirts
off and they put them in cardboard boxes
and punched holes in the boxes and women
who didn't know them they would have to
sniff the box gross right and then they
would say on the basis of this which of
these guys is most attractive on the
basis of the smell of their sweaty
t-shirts and it turns out that that
uniformly they found most attractive the
guys who are most different than they
were in terms of their immune systems
you need a big repertoire of it's very
important that your parents not be sibs
for you to have a strong immune system
we all know that inbreeding and you know
incest actually leads to children who
have
are are prone to all sorts of
preventable diseases because their
immune systems tend to be weak you need
people who are very different have a
different immunological profile from
each other and you can tell that with
your olfactory sense that's crazy yeah
yeah and so that's a that's an example
biologically of a greater psychological
principle too which is
you find attractive people who have the
qualities that you don't have now it
creates conflict too i get it but what
do we match on and and in your your
dating profile it's like
republican
it's like
and so this ideological conformity and
it's it's you know i said this i was
telling my kids you know my kids are you
know 24 22 and 19. and uh
telling my 24 year old my son he's
getting married this summer
and uh and i was telling him about this
i said it's basically
you're inadvertently with a dating app
which he never used but all his friends
did you're inadvertently trying to date
your sibling oh and my son says
not hot
[Laughter]
agreed yeah that's not ideal yeah so all
of this adds up you know social fear
safetyism in the way you were raised and
too much compatibility one two three 30
points down
wow
that's crazy
yeah like man
i i love modernity yeah i love it but i
in the same way that i'm skeptical about
myself and the ways that i think i am
skeptical about modernity and some of
the things that it's introduced yeah
it's very interesting because i am the
i'm a gen xer so for me it was like
i didn't get i was married before dating
apps came about thank god right thank
god i am a
me too waiting to happen because my wife
it was a school for adults but i was the
teacher and she was the student
but like when you really break
more or less i'm three years older yeah
same age more or less so
it was me at my best
and there's this whole thing around
whoever is the center of attention women
tend to find more attractive yeah and so
i was a center of attention because i'm
literally at the front of the class
teaching
and
there was like a power imbalance that
she found attractive yeah
it's like maybe she shouldn't maybe
that's bad like maybe now this is a
social construction that says this
shouldn't happen but and i understand
that because there is plenty of abuse
but
you can't rule out an entire class of
behavior because of cases of because of
some cases of abuse look 17 this year 17
percent of people have met their spouse
at work
bad enough that everybody's on zoom
you're not going to find your spouse on
a zoom screen very very unlikely but and
on top of that if you're making rules
saying no love
no love at work then you've you've over
corrected as a as a company owner though
i'm super paranoid i got it it's like oh
i got it yeah but i'm the same right i
want people to be able to find each
other and so we've always made it in
every company i've had a policy that as
long as you tell hr or whatever right
it's all good because damn like how was
you meeting people love is awesome yes
love is the best you know 70 of people
who have a best friend
at work love their jobs yeah 58 of
people who have a best friend at work
wouldn't leave for more pay this is the
life in life at the friendship level and
now you add now on the other hand
25 of relay of romantic relationships at
work have involved one person who is
married and that's bad ooh that's bad
right and so look but but nobody thinks
that there's no balance in here nobody
thinks that there's not going to be
abuses when there's something good but
to rule it out because the liability
this is an overcorrection that is i
think that's indicative of the
the way that we see love in our society
that leads to these patterns that are
lowering our happiness we need love love
is happiness is love full stop
arthur brooks
that feels like the right place to stop
that was [ __ ] on the money man where
can people find you
arthurbrooks.com or you know
at the greyhound station i don't know
they i'm um
i do my research at harvard university
and i write for the atlantic and i write
a column on the science of happiness
every thursday morning called how to
build a life and all the stuff and the
podcast and the books and anybody
anything anybody wants i offer up with
love and you can find it on my website
arthurbrooks.com i love it
guys the book is strength to strength
buy it read it it
it made me emotional it was that good i
don't care what age you are this is
information that you want to have at
your fingertips and speaking of
something that you want to have at your
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sure to subscribe and until next time my
friends be legendary take care peace
we're we humans are gifted with a form
of consciousness as far as we know it
there's no other animal on this planet
that has it perhaps on another planet
there's something similar we don't know
yet