Arthur Brooks on Happiness, Meaning, and Why Nothing We Chase Ever Feels Like Enough | Full Interview

0:00just introduce yourself, what you do. My name is Arthur Brooks. I'm a specialist in the science of happiness. I teach at Vanderbilt University, and I write books and columns for as many people as I can possibly reach. For do you tell me about the arrival fantasy? Yeah. I specialize in strivers, hard working people that have big ambitions, and I love working with these people, but they have problems. The truth is that highly successful people who are working and striving over the course of their lives, they have certain pathologies. I guess that's intuitive, but people don't think about it when they start their journey of success. The number one thing that they mistake that they make is thinking that love is earned. Why is that? Because all successful strivers are good at things when they're kids, and they get congratulated from adults, and they get attention from their parents when they do these amazing things, and they're a little synaptically plastic brains, they learn the lesson that you'll get enough love when you do enough things,

1:01which is a warp theory of love. Love can't be earned, it's a grace, it's a free gift, free of the given. And so a lot of strivers will go through the course of their life, thinking, am I there yet? Am I worthy? Am I lovable? They'll marry people who try to make them earn their love, which is not real love. They'll surround themselves with friends, we're sick authentic kiss-ups, who will make them earn their love, and they'll never truly be loved. It's a problem, and they'll never get there. Now they have this vision sooner or later, I'll finally feel that thing that I want, that colonists, I'll finally fill it through this acquisition, through this sale of my company, through the IPO, whatever, right? But you never get there. To believe that you're gonna get there somehow is the arrival fallacy. When I arrive, all will be well, but that's not right. Sooner or later, your dreams are gonna come true, and you'll realize that you have the wrong dreams. What is the fallout from that? Like, what does the trajectory of somebody

2:03who is living that life? And like, I'll put my hands up, like, for me, I've been there still, I'm there in many aspects, like, once I arrive in the film industry, for me, like, I'm in a bath door, or whatever it is, I'll arrive. But I also know that that's not true. I've just, there's, so I'm trying to overcome that. But what is the fallout for somebody who is constantly sort of chaining onto the next thing, trying to earn that? Yeah. People who think that sooner or later, they'll feel it. They just scratch hard enough, the itch will go away. And they get into what we in the behavioral science world call the hedonic treadmill. Hedonic just means the feeling. And it's the treadmill that's trying to get the feeling, but never quite getting it. And so running faster and faster and faster. That leads to frustration, it leads to the destruction of relationships, it leads to a sense of unworthiness along the way. It's a deeply unsatisfying thing. And so I have to retrain the greatest strivers, to understand that there's a Buddhist concept that really helps this an awful lot called intention without attachment.

3:04You need an intention, you need goals. You need these great goals. But you have to be unattached to those actual goals because it's the intention per se that gives you the satisfaction that you seek. Another way to think about it is that you won't find ultimate satisfaction by having everything that you want. Ultimately, you need to want everything that you have. And that's an inside out concept. Your satisfaction is your hands divided by your wants. That you can work the numerator, but that's not gonna work at all. You need to work the denominator and make it smaller. Fewer wants, fewer wants, want less. And when that happens, your satisfaction will grow and stay high, but that's hard to do. Wow, okay. And it really is tough to let go of that. I think once you associate happiness or fulfillment with achieving the next thing, it's so hard to let go of that. What are the things that you do to break that down for somebody? You need to help people understand

4:05that what they really seek is the experience that they're having in their lives along the way. If, for example, we're having this conversation right now, and the only reason that it matters to you as a filmmaker, as a podcaster, is the numbers that this episode garrows. It's gonna be deeply unsatisfying to you. You have to enjoy the conversation that we're having right now. You have to find it inherently fulfilling to do the thing is how this comes about. So I worked with a lot of my students. I worked with some of the most talented students in the world for the past seven years I've been teaching in the business school at Harvard University. These are great students. I have to urge them to do the most interesting thing they can possibly find. Not the thing that pays the most, not the thing that's most glorious because that's leading them to the arrival fallacy. What I want them to do is the most interesting thing that they can get paid to do. Why? Because I want them to look forward to doing it every day. Look, it took me a long time to treat this one out.

5:05I'm 62 years old, right? And still look here, by the way. That's crazy. That's crazy. And I still struggle with this. I still struggle with life. Oh man, yeah. I want this. I want to invest in this thing because it's going to pay off in such a big way. It's going to be so great when I actually get there. But the truth is that my greatest satisfaction actually comes from getting up in the morning and saying, I get to come talk to you. I get to come talk to Jordan about this thing that I'm really super interested in. And that's way more satisfying than our episode got 3.2 million downloads. That's a number. It's so funny because I said that I've been reading your book and some of it really clicked. And that was one of the things that really clicked with me was this idea of meanin. And to I wrote down the specific thing that you said, and I'm not going to find it, achievement has gone up, but meanin' has gone down. Like the idea that you can achieve all these great things

6:07but your mean has gone down. And I think take me back five or six years when we were flying up the achievement ladder. I never ever would have expected by the end of those five years that the meaning would have gone down. And so there was this huge transition period for me of realizing what the core of this is the meanin'. And then you posed this question in the book of, if you died, the loved ones around you, what would you want them to say about you? And the last thing I could think of was like, oh, he got loads of views, he was a success. It was like, it was things like. Who million miles on British Airways? Yeah, exactly. It was about protecting them and inspiring people and doing fulfilling work. And that really resonated with me of like, that's what should really lead you. That's the thing that should lead me is like, when I'm thinking of doing these things, it should be in that vein. Absolutely, no, every day, no. I mean, there are certain things that you gotta pay the rent.

7:09You gotta take up the garbage. I mean, you have to do these things that are not inherently satisfying. I mean, I suppose if I were the Dalai Lama, then even taking up the garbage would have the same meaning as speaking to an arena with 20,000 people in it. But for the rest of us, that's not gonna be the case. But we have to enjoy our lives. We have to take meaning from the journey per se, because if not, then man, this thing is over in 10 minutes. And at the end of the day, if you've got to count, is an arbitrary number on a ticker on some website. Well, that's not satisfying at all. How do you convince somebody who has that innate desire to follow the achievement ladder, that you want to find that meaning first, or you want to be invested in that meaning, like that's an important part of it? So a lot of people have to figure that out the hard way. A lot of strivers figure that out the hard way. And they figured out when they've wrecked a couple of relationships,

8:09when a couple of their dreams have actually come true, and it turns out they kinda had the wrong dreams. The sad thing is when you see people much later in life, I was doing research on a book about how to attain greater happiness than the second half of your life. It's a book I published a few years ago called For a Strength of Strength. And I was talking to some of the most successful strivers in the world who were my age, at the time of late 50s and early 60s. I was talking to a woman just my age, and she was an incredible striver, unbelievable achiever, billionaire. And she was telling me about the things in her business and all that. I said, congratulations. She said, yeah, but I'm so unhappy. And she said, huh, talk to me sister. All right, this is what I do for a living. And she starts telling me this story. She says, you know, I made all the money. I thought it was gonna make. I haven't affirmed with my name on it, but my husband and I were just roommates. I have a cordial relationship, I guess, with my adult children. I don't know them very well. I don't think my employees,

9:11I don't think they like me. I think they're afraid of me. My health isn't that great anymore. My doctor says I drink too much. When I was a kid, I used to go to church, and I loved that, and I haven't done that in decades, and I don't know why. She said, what do I do, professor? And I said, you don't need a professor. You just made your own prescription. I mean, go away with your husband and get to know him, sell your firm. Take a souvenir in it. Guess I know your kids and grandkids. Go back to church. Get into the gym and stop drinking. I mean, get help. She's not, I know, I've always known. I said, so why did you do it? And she thought about it for a long time. It was like a silence. And she said, I guess I've always chosen to be special rather than happy. Oh, and it was like me too. There was a knife to my heart, you know, because I can't tell you how many times

10:12I spent the 14th hour of the office, instead of the first hour of my kids when they were little. I was a CEO for a long time before I came back to the university. I took 11 years off in the middle to run a company. And I mean, it was all about the success of the company because I was trying to arrive, and I was trying to finally get that feeling of being really special. And my kids grew up, you know. I'm not screwed at it at the second time. Now I have four grandsons, and I see them every day. They can't escape me. But the truth is that we all make these mistakes. And the sooner that we can get our minds around it, the sooner that the striver will say, okay, I'm gonna be successful, but the real success is gonna be the satisfaction that I take and the people that I love along the way. Why doesn't awareness create action? Awareness doesn't create action because we don't quite believe it. Look, we are a species with a brain that's accommodated into the environment for the middle place to see,

11:13from 250,000 years ago. At that point, all of Hobo sapiens lived in bands of 30 to 50 individuals, largely hunters and gatherers, in the Savannah, on the Tundra, in hierarchically arranged kin-based groups, were largely at tropical species. So we do best in hot weather. And what the species was supposed to do, what our brains were developed to do is to keep us alive and safe, pass on our genes. Basically, get enough calories, make it through the night and the winter and find mates. That's what your brain is supposed to do. And how do you do that? You do that through these material accomplishments. You do that through more animal skins in your cave and more buffalo jerky, all stored up in the corner and making sure that you can be stronger and fight the next tribe over a little bit better. You're not made to be happy. Mother nature didn't make your brain to be happy. So the result is that we've got these urges. We've got these primal urges to acquire,

12:14to accumulate, to achieve. Good. But don't think that that's the secret you're happiness because it isn't. That's the secret to making it through the winter and having 75 children, which by the way, you don't want. How can you get so far from that contentment? Because like, I've had it. I think in the book, you speak about the period of time with through COVID. And like, people have this, that's transitional. Is this like almost like a global transition or process that had happened? And I felt it. That's why again, I really think that book resonated because there was a period of time where I was content and or I could access that contentment a little bit more. And then the achievement cycle that's got bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger. I'm sorry. Tell me about that. How that all been directed. I'd say through the process of COVID. So maybe pre-COVID, I could find being at home with family, spending time with my brothers and my sisters.

13:18And it'd feel happy in it. It'd feel fulfilling and rewarding. Post, I chased so much stuff and tried to become successful through achievement. Those times only happen if I really, really dedicate, like maybe I take a week away. And I really put the laptop down, put the computer down, all that kind of stuff. And I can start to access that part of me again. But it feels so much more distant than it used to be. That part of meaning and fulfillment, I guess. That's your brain. Let's say your brain works. Now, success affects the human brain in the same way that drugs and alcohol and gambling affect the human brain. It neochemically, it's engaging the dopamine cycle in our brain, which is the neochemical reward system. Dopamine gives you the anticipation of reward. You get a little splash of it when you find some gazelles around a watering hole. And you think the next day, I'm going to get more gazelles. You get a little bit of dopamine. You find even more gazelles, a big spritzodopamine. It's this reward system that makes you want and like and learn.

14:18And humans wouldn't have succeeded at all if we didn't have an intro reward system. You don't care about the gazelles. You care about the dopamine from the gazelles. That's the real reward that we get. Maybe you like eating gazelles, but that's a different matter entirely. Well, the same thing is true with our success today. We think about success, material success, the world's rewards, and it gives us nice. And then what it happens, even more. And we can become very, very addicted. I mean, you look here, you have a charmed life. You're very successful. Successful show making a lot of money. Young guy making a lot of money. That's a dream come true. There are tons of people who think they want your life. Because their reward system says, that's what you want. That's what you want. You get into cycles in your life when things are going really, really well. The irony of that is that's basically like a preponderance toward or a propensity to misuse alcohol. To be an alcoholic and then living in a liquor store.

15:20Successful people are alcoholics living in liquor stores. During COVID, life slowed down. You had less opportunity, quite frankly. And so the result is like, OK, I have less opportunity right now. I guess what I'm going to do, blame whatever. I guess I'll hang out with my family. And I'm like, how is this kind of nice? Kind of nice. And then COVID finished and all the opportunity came back. Like, drink me. And it started calling for your basic primordial brain chemistry once again. And it made you a pulled you away from the ultimate source of your happiness. And ultimately, we are responsible to live not in the space of our animal impulses, but in the space of our moral aspirations, which by the way, only humans can do. If you've got a dog, you have a dog. Oh, do I have a dog? No, no, no. Dogs can only live in the space of their animal impulses. They have a prefrontal cortex that's way for thin. And so the result of it is that they're not self-governing like we are.

16:20We can choose our moral aspirations over our animal impulses. So we can say, for example, I'm not going to have that second beer. I'm not going to have that piece of cake. I'm not going to chase that girl who's not my girlfriend. Of course, my brain says do that, but I've choose not to. We do that all the time. That's self-governance, that self-management, that's self-discipline, that's so good. But we also have to do that with worldly rewards, with aspiration. We have to do that too. I have to do that too. Look, I could work all the time. I could work. I could be on the road seven days a week. I do about 150 public talks a year outside the university. And they come in. We get 1,000 calls a year for public appearances. I want to do them all. I'm starving. I want to do them all. I'm a complete junkie for it. But I don't. I don't do it because the space of my moral aspiration says that my true bliss lies in the ultimate reason

17:24that I'm alive, which is the love and be loved. And to get rich and be richer? No. To be famous and famous, sir, it's not a word. No, I want to love and be loved. And so that means I have to live in this, to the extent that I can in the space of my moral aspirations. Sometimes I make the mistake. We obviously, we interviewed a lot of successful people, or what people would perceive as success. And it's very far and few between that we find somebody who has had extreme success, but also has like a balance of a family life, or you can see that they have true contentment and happiness in other areas of their lives. That now has become my new sort of definition and standard of success. But it's very rare. Is it possible? And is there a reason why we don't find balance in to achieve that? Yeah. So the very, very successful people are successful in no small part because they're

18:25pursuing radical amounts of success. And the reason they are is because they're addicted to success. Well, it's basically who's a truly outstanding ex, and I'm really excellent drinker. Well, also, when you drink a lot, you've got a very high tolerance for alcohol. You've met those people. You went to probably university with those people. I mean, they were just like, holy cow, I can drink a lot. He's excellent at drinking. You don't congratulate it on him on it because it's pathetic. But if he has the same kind of addiction for success, he'll be like, wow, you worked 16 hours straight. You've got your first company going public. Today's 28th. That's wonderful. He's a success addict. It's what it comes down to, which is why he works so much, which is why he's so successful. Adaciously successful people are almost all violating cost-benefit analysis in their lives. They want the hit. They want the reward. And in so getting it, they're doing something that's more costly than it is beneficial. They're sacrificing something that's way more

19:26ultimately rewarding because they're addicted. The same way that people who are addicted to gambling, for example, they'll gamble away their family's sustenance and resources because they want the quick hit. And that's what success addicts are doing as well. Some people have the presence of mind to be able to curb that. Usually it takes time. Usually you'll find people start to get that together when they're in their 40s or 50s. I met some of their 20s and 30s who were able to do it. But it's a hard thing to do. When they're doing that cost analysis, or not doing that cost analysis, what is the thing that I miss in? What is the thing that they all sacrifice in? They're sacrificing their love relationships. Because ultimately, if you will work 14 hours and sacrifice the first hour with your kids, you're sacrificing love. And it's never coming back. Those years are not coming back. Okay, they aren't trust me. And you'll look back on it and say, I don't even know what I did in that 14-hour. But I do know when I missed in that first hour. That's the problem. And even when you know it's happening, sometimes you'll still do it.

20:27Which is very funny because addicts, I've studied addiction medicine for a long time. Addicts will admit they knew they were sacrificing something that was even more valuable for what they were to get their next hit, but they were doing it anyway. Fully conscious. How does that cycle break? That cycle breaks largely and sort of in three ways. So anybody's addicted to anything, whether it's the internet or pornography or alcohol or drugs or gambling or what a success whatever it happens to be. It starts off first by getting really angry. By getting really angry, it would be being subjugated to something. To say, I'm tired of this. I'm tired of this thing capturing my brain. I'm tired of this thing actually ruining my relationships. I'm tired of it. The second, there's a second part, which is that they start to understand actually how a science works. Most recovering alcoholics, they understand what was going on in their brains. It's very helpful to understand what's going on in your brain. That you're the neuromodulators in your brain or actually have been captured.

21:28It's a capture process. How does that work? The more you understand the science, the better off you are and you engage with the biology, the medicine. Every addictive process usually has a different protocol and you do the work. You actually do whatever the 12 step program or the rehab or whatever it happens to be. And last but not least, here's the hard part. You have to live in a new way. You gotta live with yourself. You gotta, it's funny. It's one of the people who are like, one of the things that alcoholics almost do, very, very common practice, is that they move. They move and it's like one of the things that they've, they're like, I'm gonna drink alcohol. My friends are a bunch of losers and everything reminds me of drinking. I'm gonna move. You're from nodding him. I'm gonna move to London. And then London, everything's gonna be okay. I'll have different friends and it'll be a change of pace. Never works. Never works. Cause you know who's there? You. You know the first thing that jumps out of your suitcase? You do. Here I am.

22:30And the same thing is true with any other addictive process. You have to learn to live in your head. People get addicted to success or drugs or alcohol or gambling to meet a need. They have this need that they wanna meet. We already talked about it. The reason we able to become addicted to success is because they want love. Because they have a need for love and they don't understand how love works. This is like, I wanna be loved in my loved yet. Especially in the world of the internet, by the way. I wanna be adored by strangers. That's the weirdest thing ever. And yet people's brain chemistry is dependent on that particular feeling. They have this need. You have to address that particular need. Have it met in a different way and learn to live with yourself. That's step three. The addiction of alcohol drugs, what we can see is typically destructive addictions. They have this bad image and I think socially, they're less acceptable. With success, I feel like it's difficult. If you're a real high achiever in your career,

23:33it's almost some kind of positive image. How do you tear that down? How do you get to a point to be able to tear that down? Because I feel like it's less of an issue because the friction's not there. It's probably less likely to tear that back down. Not even a lack of friction in the country. There's positive reinforcement. I mean, nobody's like, you are an excellent drunk. No, it's like, I saw you put away a liter and a half of vodka last night. Congratulations. You're a master. No, nobody does that. No, but you work like 16 hours a day for three years, ruin all your relationships, become hopelessly lonely, wreck your health, everybody's congratulating you. Everybody wants to be you. Absolutely, the problem with success addiction, the problem with self-objectification of workaholism is it is valorized. We're recording this right now in the United States. We're the absolute world beating capital of success addiction.

24:34Play your hair. Welcome, welcome home, son. Not wrong to be there. We spoke about my dad actually just before this, before he started rolling and interestingly, I just wanted to ask you, he, him and his family and that side of my family all our colleagues, a lot of them are died from alcohol, but also he's very addicted to success as well, successful in his business that we spoke about. And he's very successful at building these sort of businesses or. He's probably highly intelligent. He is, yeah, I would definitely say it's highly intelligent. But is there a correlation? Like people talk about addictive personalities or addiction running in like families like that? Is that true? Absolutely true. About 50% of the tendency to become addicted to alcohol or drugs is genetic. And we know that from identical twins that were separated at birth and adopted into separate families, which is an almost perfect, perfect quasi-experimental set of conditions to test that hypothesis. 50% of the variance, 50% of the likelihood

25:38is explained by the shared genes of that, which is overwhelming. And what that basically means is for anybody who's watching us right now, if you have alcoholism in your family, you shouldn't drink at all. That's our rule. Like we have alcohol family, yeah, seven of the assistants. Me too, I mean, there are trouble with alcohol in my family and my late 30s, I was like, I've seen the future and I quit. I should have quit 20 years earlier. I wish I had. We've just, just to finish this off and like the hyper successful, the CEOs of the world, the top end sports sportsman on my mind, what do those people typically find the contentment and happiness? Or is it a mixed bag? Like is it the, they eventually figure it out or most people don't figure it out and end up sort of dying at even all this greatness, but you know, not finding. So I've worked with, I've been privileged to work with some of the greatest strivers in the world. Hollywood actors, famous athletes,

26:40billionaires, people in the financial industries all over the world. And they are all over the map. Some of them never figured out and some of them do. Some of the luckiest ones are the ones who have very early success and then it comes to a halt and there's nothing they can do except adjust. So I've worked with Olympic athletes, for example. Olympic athletes are done in their 20s, right? Some of them were done in their, gymnasts, they're done in their like 16 and their career is over. Now here's an interesting statistic. Olympic gold medal athletes have a strong tendency to fall into a clinical depression after they win their gold because of the arrival fallacy because they assumed that I worked and worked and worked and that was incredibly satisfying. And so hitting my goal will be the most satisfying thing that ever happens to me and it isn't. And so one Olympic gold medalist told me, I went back to my room and I said, now what? Now what? Now the rest of my life and I'm 16 years old. She has to be unbelievably happy now.

27:43She has a family now and she loves her family and she has a business and does all kinds of cool stuff that she really likes is and that's the way it has to be. That's the way it ultimately works out. But I see it all over the map. There are some people who in finance, for example, they make a billion dollars. And the first thing that conclude is, well, I didn't feel it. So I guess I needed another billion and they'll chase and chase and chase for the rest of their lives. Meanwhile, sacrificing the things that really would bring satisfaction like faith and family and friendship and their community and they'll never find it. So it really depends. My brother actually wrote this one out for the Idol Game. Are we able to do the Idol Game together? He's that's what he asked. So which one is that? We figure out my idol basically. Oh, yeah, what's my idol? Sure, what's my idol? Is that possible to do with our camera? Yeah, for our camera. We can do that. So I play it with you. Yeah. He told me to subject myself to this. Okay, good. So with my striver students,

28:46I teach them the work of the great 13th century philosopher and theologian Thomas Aquinas. I know you raised them in Catholic family. So you probably, did you go to Catholic schools? I went to the Catholic school, but that part of my life is a little bit of a friend. So Aquinas, the good doctor, he was, he's the patron saint of scholars, as a matter of fact, but he's really the most important, arguably the most important philosopher of the Middle Ages because he brought Aristotle to modern people. I mean, until then, until the 13th century, everybody read Plato, but he said, Aquinas said, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. The student of Plato is the one we need to be reading. He's much greater in that's Aristotle. And people like, who, who, what? We all know that Aristotle now, but that's because of Aquinas. And Aristotle had a concept of what love meant and what faith really was. And that's kind of what we see today, because of Aquinas. Aquinas said that we have a tendency to follow these idols. You know, what we really want is to love and be loved. We want happiness.

29:47We want divine love. We want God. That's what Aquinas said. I mean, as a Catholic saint, he's got to say that, right? That's kind of the business. He said, but, but, you know, God is inconvenient. A lot of rules, a lot of one side of conversations. So people look to the world at things that seem like they kind of have divine characteristics. They're just incredibly magnetic. He said, and this is unbelievably good social science, way before we had data, that they fall in four categories. Okay, ready? Money, power, pleasure, and honor. Now, money just means any kind of resources that you can exchange for other stuff. Power is influence over other people. It's not bad, necessarily, but it's like you're in charge. Pleasure is feeling good or comfort or security. So it's like, I like how that vodka feels or I'm checking my stock portfolio every day or I had trouble getting out of bed in the morning, right?

30:50Because the covers are so nice and comfortable. And honor means fame or prestige or adoration or applause. That's what that means. Okay, his contention was that everybody falls prey disproportionately to one of them. And if you know what it is, you have power. Because then you'll recognize it. And he says that he believes that everything that we regret later in life owes to following our idol. Right? So if you have, you can recognize it. You've got at least a shot from time to time of not falling prey to it. Okay? And then maybe doing something which you really wanted to wish it to love your family and to love God and to love your friends as opposed to ignoring those things and going through your idol. So with my students, successful people like you, I play a game called What's My Eye? And most of the time my students don't actually know because they never thought about it before. Do you want to play? I want to play. Yeah, I'm ready. Yeah, go. Okay. So I'm not going to ask you what it is. I'm going to ask you what it's not.

31:50And this is a very classic social science technique. I'm going to make you eliminate idols. Now what this means is I'm going to make you one by one eliminate what you don't, what doesn't baguille you. What does not magnetize you? And that doesn't mean you don't have it at all. So for example, if you get rid of money as an idol, that just means that you go to the population average, which in the UK or the United States is pretty darn high. But if you're a striver and that's your idol, being average is the worst, right? Okay. So let's think about these four idols and let's think about what attracts you the least among them that you would happily give away. And this will be an easy question. It's going to get harder as we go along. Money, you got to get rid of one power, pleasure, or fame. Which one do you get rid of first? Fame's really easy. Yeah. Really? Yeah. You'd take that one away. 100%. So I mean, look, you're pretty famous. So unless you're a trust you. No, you're well known. No, look, I mean, this is a big show. This is a big deal.

32:51You didn't do it for the applause? Not at all. No, we used to shoot this without the camera on me. We already put it on. So we could articulate for advertisers. But yeah, no, that's the least. That is the idea. Yeah, yeah. You do not care if you have nobody recognizes you. Yeah, yeah. I'm not bothered. Yeah. Okay. Okay. I believe you. I think that you got three left. Money, power, and pleasure are left. Now it gets a little harder because you got rid of the easy one. You got to get rid of one meaning. It doesn't mean that you don't like it. That you go to the population average. And the reason you're getting rid of it is because the other ones are more. So which way do you get rid of it? I'd probably say power of it. It's getting tougher, I would say, with those three. Power of me. Somebody else will call the shots. You're just like the most average person in terms of, in terms of your average. Like, you don't have any more power or any less power than anybody else out there. I, you know, when you say it, I like to be the leader. When you say power, like, I'm not, I don't want to, there's no desire to wield power over any more. I mean, you're in charge. Yeah. I like to be in charge.

33:51You like to be in charge. Maybe that's the hard one. OK, so maybe not power of advice. OK, this is tough. Well, the next one was I was thinking would probably be pleasure. I think that's right. So you're, are you an austere guy? Which time do you get up? At the moment, not early, but usually it's like a 5, 6 AM thing. Like, that's for a guy in his 20s. That's pretty early. Yeah. Yeah. Good. OK. How often do you think about money? I don't know. How often do you think about your own personal security with respect to money? It's most security. Yeah. That's a pleasure. That's a pleasure. I know more than a money item. Actually, weirdly, right? So OK, let's say that you're going to get rid of pleasure next. You've got money and power left, which is the one that you have to get rid of. You know, I know you like both because these are your last two. Yeah. I'd say I probably get rid of power and probably get rid of power. And that what that means is that money is your money is your item. Most of my students think that money is their item, what it isn't.

34:54For most of my students, it's fame. Most of my students are success addicts and they want to earn love and they want people to adore them and they want people to appreciate them and they want people to applaud them for their accomplishments. That's what they really, really want. And if they could be like the most middle class person in the world, but everybody's looking at them in the airport going, that's that entrepreneur. That's what would that's what they think would make them happy, but it isn't true ultimately. So I find that a lot of people think it's money, but it's actually fame. Yeah. So if I had a big pile of money and no one recognized me, I'd be really happy and content with it. Yeah. Why would you do some money? I'd have security. I think it's because from a poor family, like I say, single mom, family of seven, like I feel like there's probably some kind of thing there that's interesting because what you find is the people who are most likely to have the money idling, you know, who they are. They grow rich or poor, not in the middle. Because they're fear motivated, which is sort of related to that pleasure item on that side.

35:54Or they judge their, their own self worth with respect to money, which is what a lot of very wealthy people do, right? My own self worth is denominated in dollars. That's not your case. But you are is like, I don't want to go back there. I don't want to go back there. I don't want to go back there. You got to be toxic. I mean, that's what runs most of the stuff that I do or did run a lot of the stuff that I do is I don't want to go back there. Now, one thing that militates against this in your own life is that you've chosen a road that's very, very economically difficult. So if you truly were motivated by, by the fear of having no money being extremely intelligent like you are, you would have done something that's sure. Well, I have an awareness that I could do that. That's the problem. Yeah. So it was a winner take all market, which means you were willing to take risk with something. So I question this a little bit. If I really had you on the couch here, we would be digging into it a little bit deeper

36:54and we would see if that's the case. But it's really important to understand. I mean, on its face, if you will make decisions that you later regret because of money, you need to know that. If you will actually do take a gig for money that you don't enjoy and it's not meaningful to you, to the exclusion of a relationship that you truly value, you need to know that. So that's so interesting because that wouldn't be the case at all. Yeah, I have very strong morals with that kind of thing. So maybe it's leaning towards the pleasure side of things. It might be. It might be. Interesting. That's what we're thinking about. Yeah. Yeah. For everybody watching us, that's really, really worth it. So people can go, I think you had a website that they could go through to do this themselves. To order your eye on it. I have my website or other works like for them, you can dig this test. Okay. So people go do it because I think it's like you say, if you are aware of what could be the thing that could trip you up, like that is something really powerful to have on your side. Yeah. That's right. Yeah. For me, it's it's honor. It's honor. You know, it's a so dumb, so stupid. I'm so embarrassed. It's true. You know, I would gladly give way power. I was a CEO for a long time.

37:55I hate it when people call me boss. Hate it. Money, whatever. I'm pleasure. I'm super austere. It's I'm a 430 AM guy. Right? And then looking at my stock portfolio, whatever. Right? But for me, I want people to be like, it's so dumb. It's so embarrassing. But it's true. It's just and there's all kinds of reasons that we're motivated by the idols that were motivated by what is the psychology of having these idols? And I feel like when I've seen people who've been successful, it's usually the thing that's not their idol they're able to achieve quite easily, but the idol they struggle with. Yeah. Yeah. The psychology behind, well, the psychology behind each idol is a little bit different. And so for example, you talked about the fact that you have a fear motivation and that's a very, very powerful motivator. Fear is an unbelievably powerful motivator. Certainly in my own case is that, you know, I got all kinds of attention when I did something really well as a kid. And I don't trust people to actually love me unless I do something that's really good.

39:00I don't trust them. I mean, it's so crazy. It's like, I told my wife that I don't trust you. If I stopped doing good things, you'd be out of here and she laughs because of course it isn't true. And I know intellectually that that's the case, but deep down, really, he's not really, if I didn't bring anything to the table, if I were actually a burden instead of a bone, instead of a blessing, then I'll be out of here. That's what my heart tells me. Yeah. Interesting. Just on that last thing, because I've just given you sort of a profile of my idols there, that is also a thing for me. I do not believe that people will love me outside of who I am. What you can do. What I can do. You're not a human being. You're a human doing. Yes. For sure. That's the strivers paradox. Absolutely the case. And then you have to get over that when you finally find your person, when you finally

40:00find your soulmate, when you find the woman on whose face you will be gazing as you take your dying breath, you must trust her to truly love you for you. There is no other way. I'm just curious. Is there any like pinpoints in your life where you can really see where there was huge transition periods that I mean, you mentioned about being a CEO and having that understanding there, but is there like a real snapshot of like your development over the last 62 years? Oh my gosh. Yeah. I started off doing anything like I do now. I was an artist. I started off as a violin when I was four piano when I was five, the French horn when I was eight years old. My idol was a British French hornist by the name of Dennis Brain. He was a principal French hornist in London Philharmonic, the greatest French horn player over the world. I had a picture of a woman wall when I was a kid. And I wanted to be the greatest French horn player in the world. I studied with all the best players I possibly could. I went pro when I was 19. I spent my 20s, a lot of my 20s in the Barcelona city orchestra.

41:03And I had a wall when I was in my 20s. I couldn't get better. I wasn't getting worse. I wasn't getting better. I had no idea why. This often happens in sports or music and people can't explain. It was completely heartbreaking. I thought that my life was over. I thought there was nothing I would ever achieve that would amount to anything because it was my whole self concept was what it was. Fortunately, I married a girl who cared more about me than my French horn. And she said, there's all kinds of good stuff that you can do. So I went to college in my 20s. And I studied economics and psychology and mathematics and statistics. And I became a manual scientist. One of them took me to PhD. I got my bachelor's degree a month before my 30th birthday. I did professionally until I was 31 and then started my PhD. And that point of actually moving into science, moving from art to science, was hugely transformative.

42:04Because what it taught me is that I wasn't just a pair of lips with some metal attached to it. I always actually, I really was notwithstanding all the neuroses and all the fears and insecurities that I face, like everybody faces. I'm a real person. And I have all kinds of different things that I can actually do. The big finding for me, the big epiphany for me, was when I actually became a social scientist. After being a professional classical musician and understanding that it was more to me than what I had previously understood. How did the break become a CEO? Come along. So I finished my PhD and I became a professor. I was a professor for about 10 years at Syracuse University in New York State. And happily so. But in the middle of that, I was actually teaching a bunch of classes on how to run a nonprofit organization. And I met all these nonprofit CEOs. I don't think they'd be able to do that. Somebody offered me a CEO job running a big nonprofit in Washington, DC. It's a think tank. They research institutions called the American Enterprise Institute, dedicated to an opportunity

43:10society. And one of the very oldest think tanks in the world as a matter of fact, big place. And for whatever reason, for whatever idiotic reason, they offered me the job as the CEO. I think they were out of options actually. And I took it. I did it for 11 years in the middle, which was the second turning, the second career turning. It was really the third career as it were. But I had a lot more confidence at that point because I'd done it. I'd retooled my career after 10 years. And then in another 10 years, I said, I can do this. I can do it. It was hard. It was really, really hard. I mean, I had to raise $50 million a year in philanthropy. Yeah, and I had 300 employees. And it was really, really tricky. But I did that for 11 years. And then I completely retooled again. And by the fourth turning, I was able to have a lot of confidence that I can read about myself. So at 55, I left and I walked the community in Santiago, which is that long, long, long walk all across Northern Spain, which pilgrims have done for a thousand years to find out

44:13within the kingdom of life. I think they did. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Just to figure out what next meant, you know, to find what God wanted for me in my life. And by the end of it, all my last day, when I entered into Santiago, really a couple of Stella, that great medieval city. I felt God was telling me that I was supposed to spend the rest of my life lifting people up and bringing them together in bonds of happiness and love using science and ideas. And so I took a professorship and started a company to bring the science of happiness to a billion people. At 55. Like, I love that story. So many people in the mid 20s, mid 30s, mid 40s will be like, my life's over now. Like, it's done like you've had three quite big transitions. Yeah. Three big transitions and four very distinctly different careers in that way. Who knows? Maybe in my mid 60s, they'll become a firefighter or circus juggler. I don't know. What is it with the pilgrimage? Because I did my own pilgrimage two years ago, which was like a 500 mile from Scotland

45:14to Nottingham, carrying a stone. And it was the most... What road did you walk? So I'll give you the snapshot of it. So my son passed away 10 years ago. So he was still born. Cool. Sorry. Yeah, it was... This all came of that, like at the time. Yeah. I saw my businesses, we started doing this together with my brothers. And something wasn't healed inside of me. It was blocking me for a long time. And I met a church pastor out in LA, Irwin McManus, and he said, you know, you need to find a place to... I know him. You know Irwin? Yeah. Like, he changed my life, like Irwin changed my life. And it was him and a few people around me who were selling me that you're living in a lot of pain because you're still sort of attached to the connection with Jacob, the loss of him and all the pain. But you're not connected to the love of him. And Irwin was brave enough to tell, like, say this to me and said, you need to find somewhere for him and like, you need to pull your love into it and maybe find an outlet for it. And then on Montflete, I was in Scotland and I found this big 220 pound lump of granite

46:16that looked like the shape of a headstone. So I was like, if I could carry that back to my son, we could have it carved and I could turn it into his headstone because he didn't have a headstone still. So that became the mission I trained for it. I carried the stone for the first 30 miles. How for? So it was in the Scottish Highlands. So the first 30 miles was to the stone mason. So I strapped it onto my back, carried it for 30 miles. 20 pounds? Yeah, yeah. It was very brutal going. And he carved it down to a 55 pound stone and then over 10 days we did an extra 480 miles back to nothing. So just ran with the stone and went back. And when I arrived, I had such a monumental shift in my grief. And like, I tried to explain it to people, but that unless you were around me and you understood how much pain I was in and how reactive I was maybe to somebody making a joke about something or you wouldn't understand that this burden had gone completely, but it had. And I've tried to articulate it. I've tried to share this idea of like, maybe there is something in pilgrimage dedicated

47:21to certain things. It is the science. Yeah. There's lots of things to that. So pilgrimages are part of every religious tradition. And part of the reason is because you ambulation is a very natural human part of human physiology. People are able to, our physical advantage in nature is walking. You can walk a gazelle to death. It's, if you know how to track the gazelle, of course, in which ancient people would have been able to do. And then you just walk and walk and walk and walk. Because it all runs for a while and stops and then rests and then you keep walking and walking and walking. And you can walk farther than the gazelle can run. And if you can track the gazelle, you will kill the gazelle. We are a walking species. We think best when we walk. We have our best ideas when we walk. We're built for pilgrimages. Now when you walk a very interesting thing happens, you eliminate the right hemisphere of your brain, which is the hemisphere of your brain that the envy Gilchrist, you know, the great Oxford neuroscientist and psychiatrists talks about is that the side for meaning and

48:21mystery, meaning and mystery. You were looking for the meaning of your son's death. And it seemed meaningless. Like some guys, some still born. That's a meaning. And every atheist out there will tell you, it's like, yeah, you're all the nice. You have kids. And life is just like, you know, it's a, it's a, it's a frog on the side of the road. It's a squirrel in the park. No, it's not. But you don't know what it is. And you can't articulate it. You can only understand it. Things in the right hemisphere of your brain are the why things, the complex things. They're not the what and how to, the complicated things. This is not how your car works. This is something that has deep, deep, deep meaning. And you can't, you'll never find the words to find the meaning of your son's life. But you have to understand the meaning of your son's life. And only the way that you can do that is by putting yourself, putting yourself into the space where you walk yourself into that understanding. Now other ways to do it, I mean, you can do it by, by having a silent retreat or there

49:25are other ways that actually really work. And a way to accelerate that by is, is to have your pilgrimage with somebody that you love. But the truth of the matter is that you did exactly what you needed to do because you still can't articulate the why of your son's death. It's, here's why. No. But now you, you had peace because you found understanding and you walked your way into it. I'm so glad you said that because when you were talking about finding the meaning is that I didn't, yeah, you're right. I didn't, there was no way I can articulate why it happened. But I think what centers are the left side of it. By understood, like the shift for me was so monumental in the fact that I would worship his grave, I would find so much, there was so much pain attached to the whole thing. But by the time I arrived, because I had been carrying that stone and I'd been talking to him the whole time, he'd been helping me through, I had visited his grave every Sunday for 10 years and cried over his grave and like got, I thought that was like sort of a

50:26center of a universe for me where my pain was and all that kind of stuff. But when I got to the grave, I realized that he's not there anymore and that he'd been with me the whole time. And that was, that was my understanding that I took away from it. And when Irwin said, you need to move him into your heart and you need to be able to, to do this with love and like be able to express the love for him. There's so much more powerful than the pain. And to change everything. But this is a, there are certain times in our lives when we're finally able to accept mystery. You've read the Book of Job in the Bible. The Book of Job starts off with Job, a righteous man, a truly righteous man, the only righteous man. And it's an allegory. God and Satan are throwing dice. And Satan's like, see your boy, Job down there. And God says, he's a righteous man. He would never curse me. And Satan says, oh no, give me a try. And I bet you I can get him to curse you and God's like, no way, give him a try.

51:26Right. I mean, this is an allegory, right? This is not supposed to be taken literally. And so everything bad happens to Job. I mean, his kids are all killed, right? His livestock are taken away. All of his possessions, his, his disgraced. And okay, the first thing that he does is that he says, it's very famous. You'll know these words. This is in Job one, one, twenty one. The Lord giveeth and the Lord takeeth away. But here's the important part. Blessed be the name of the Lord, right? And then the whole middle of that book, his friends coming around trying to explain it to him, just like your friends came around trying to explain to you what possibly happened. And here's why he shouldn't feel so bad. And at the very end of the 38th chapter of Job, that's when he had his pilgrimage. That's your pilgrimage. He gets, he gets to talk to God in the whirlwind. Like the old Testament, they get to talk to God in the burning bush or in the whirlwind. And he puts, it's funny because he puts God in the dock. He says, you always said I'm your boy.

52:27You always said I'm the only righteous man. And then you let this happen to me. Explain yourself. Imagine the nerve, right? And this is you because you're a Christian man. You're like, my son was taken from me. Explain yourself. And God says to him, sure. Okay. But first, since you're so smart and you deserve an explanation, first you tell me why I created the stars of the sky and the fish of the ocean. You're so smart. Tell me. And it's like, it says, and then when you do, I'll explain why you suffered. And here's the point. It's a mystery. And that mystery can never be articulated. That mystery can never be sorted out. They can only be apprehended. What you did was you learned to live with the mystery of suffering. You learned because that's part of your life. Your life is a pilgrimage. Your whole life is a pilgrimage. And everybody gets a different pilgrimage.

53:27And that was part of your pilgrimage. Why? I don't know. But it's part of your pilgrimage. And at the end, it becomes a sacred part of your pilgrimage. And it probably art is. Yeah. So for yourself, for your pilgrimage that you talk, what was the conversations you were having? What were the messages that were coming to you as you were going through that? So my literal pilgrimage in the community said, Yago, I mean, it was trivial compared to yours. I wasn't carrying the headstone of my child. It wasn't. I was simply asking Lord, what's your will for my life? What do you want me to do next? How can I bless others? How can I lift other people up? I feel I'm tired. I feel like I'm done. I feel like I'm out of gas. What do you want me to do? What do you want me to do? And he told me what my mission was. This is what it came down to, trivial compared to yours, for sure. But the truth is there are no trivial pilgrimages. And we all have to ask is what it comes down to. We all have to understand that there is a sacredness to this world. And we have no time.

54:29We have to use our time appropriately. We have to do what we can to serve and love. And to allow ourselves to be loved is what it comes down to as well. And that's what I explored. And that's what I found. I've done another pilgrimage since then. Both times I did it with my wife. She's not doing it again. She's like, no, it's a lot of locking. But it was good. And it also was very, very good for my spiritual life. I'm serious about my faith. I'm a, I'm, I will, I mean, I'm Catholic. I go to Mass every day. And that was very, very helpful for that spiritual journey. That's a spiritual pilgrimage as well. Did you always grow up with that? Or did you find faith? I grew up as a Christian family and a Protestant family. I converted as a teenager probably because of adolescent rebellion. I don't want to make that sound too profound. Had a mystical experience at the Shrine of Guadalupe in Mexico. But that was 15 or so. I don't know. And, but I've been on, I've been, I've been Catholic ever since. And more seriously Catholic because I've gone through the course of my life.

55:30And the more, the more I study science, the more I appreciate my relationship with God. The more I delve into what can be known, the more I marvel at what cannot be known. Just, have you shared the experience that you had? It was full of fun. I talked about it a couple of times. I mean, it's just, I was there with a, with a musical group with a band that I had, and I was playing with 15 years old. And they were marching us through these boring churches. And I was sitting there trying to go to Lupe. Have you been there in Mexico City? It's just, it's marvelous. It's incredible. And I was looking at this, the till of Juan Diego. And, you know, Juan Diego was this Mexican indigenous peasant who had an apparition of the blessed Virgin Mary. And, you know, the Spanish at the time were having a terrible time getting conversions. Because they had a very uncompelling offer, which is, you know, converter die. It's just not that great. And so then, I mean, it's like they were bad at marketing the faith. And the Virgin Mary appears to Juan Diego, the seditionist peasant.

56:33And she appears to him as a mestita, which is a combination. She's half Spanish, half indigenous, which for us, we look cool. No. In an early 16th century, in 1531, that is like super subversive. Nobody would have done that. And what she was saying is, I'm all, I'm all of you. I love you. And I'm all of you. And, and nine million converted in the next year. When they laid eyes on this imprint of the blessed Virgin Mary, of his garment, which was then displayed, if he'd roll it, I'd heard this. I'm going to look at it. And I'm like, I couldn't stop thinking about it. It was imprinted on me. And within a year, I was Catholic. Wow. OK. So just on this point, you're deeply into science, right? You're the man of science. I was scientists. You're scientists. Because we got my heart and soul, man. What do you think of like unexplainable spiritual happenings or events? Like, why are so my pilgrimage?

57:36Like miracles. Miracles. One thing happened to me, I've shared before, but absolutely saved my life. And it was very much real. It happened. I have evidence from witnesses, but why it's not strong evidence. But it's unexplainable too. So what happened? So I was on the trail at one point. It was a 10-mile stretch. And Neve was my support crew. My brothers were my support crew. They had to drive 50 miles around this mountain to get to the other side. The shortage route was over the top. So I took the stone over the top. And in halfway through my GPS cut out, I'd run out of water and food at that point. But I wasn't dehydrated. I was obviously I've been going for a long time. And the sun stopped to go down. And then my phone died. So I had no communication. Wasn't contactable. GPS was a dangerous situation. Very dangerous situation on this mountain. In the middle of Scotch Highlands, and it was getting pitch black. And then I started to lose direction.

58:36The markers on these trails are very small. You can't really see them. And again, no torch, nothing. And all of a sudden, I'm starting to really get disorientated. And then on the other side of the valley, like probably about three or four miles away, this huge light shines across the valley. And what I thought was my brother on the other side, with his arms out in like a silhouette screaming my name. Here it clears day. I scream back in happiness. And I can see the gap between the hedges now of where to go. And there's like a little bit of moonlight. So I can see the route to take instead of like going up for these other paths. So I stopped bombing it for this gap in the fence. Thinking that what my thought was is that it was my sister drove round. Come to the other side, flashing the high beams on the car. And that was the light coming across the valley. And my brother was still in front of it screaming. When I eventually got to the valley, the other side, the gap in the trees that I could see. And climbing with the fence, I realized it was just this tiny little path. And a vehicle couldn't get out there. And I carried on running for another 20, 30 minutes.

59:37Got to the end of the path, got to the road, reconnected to the road. Nobody was there. So these guys hadn't even arrived at that point. But I was back on the path of where I needed to go. Carried on running and maybe five minutes later, maybe less five or seven minutes later. These guys pull up, getting the car. I was like, how did you get down from the top of the air? I know like what you want about. We just arrived. And I was like, 30 minutes ago, you was up there, you screamed, you shouted. And then the weirdest thing about it all, they would have been 20 miles away at the point of the actual scream or the shout. They had had a conversation 30 minutes prior, saying, did you hear, like, Luke, my brother Luke had said, did you hear that, that scream, that shout? So they had heard the same thing I had heard, but they was, would have had to have been 30 miles away. It was real as day. But even as I describe it, like I go to the science and go, maybe I was dehydrated, maybe I imagined it and these things happen. But is there any science and stuff like that? Or is, yeah, the, I don't know what you would call it,

1:00:40but the spiritual side of things. Well, these supernatural, supernatural phenomena. Phenomenal, yeah. People have been asking about this from time immemorial. And the truth is that even traditionally religious people are not required to believe in these things. And so, you know, Catholics think about the apparitions of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Like I talked about a minute ago, Catholics are not required to believe literally that these things are happening. But the truth is there's lots of things we can't explain. There are lots of things below our level of ability to comprehend. And we know this for sure. I mean, there's all kinds of weird things in particle physics that don't make sense that are beyond our ability to comprehend. You know, these subatomic particles that exist, we know for sure they exist, but they have no mass. So they exist and they don't exist with respect to how we would measure the existence of something. We know that their dimensions, we know they exist, but we can't see them. There are senses that some animals have that we don't have.

1:01:41There's lots of things that are actually unseen. They're phenomena that we can't explain and how we apprehend these things. Well, it's, you know, my father was a biose, there was a PhD biostatistician, most brilliant, not ever new, and an ardent depression. And I asked him that one time, I said, what about miracles? What about miracles, dad? I thought I was being really smart because I was a teenager then. And he said, yeah, they exist, of course, these are long tail events. You know, what that means is there's a distribution of events. He's a statistician. Even these things exist in a, in a distribution of events. And the further out you get in the tails, the lower the probability. And their long tail events means that they're very, very, very unlikely to happen. But they do. And he thought that that's what God did, that God created randomness in the universe. And he allowed long tail events to occur. That's how he actually saw the marvels of God's creation brought him closer to God. They're, you have to find the explanation that suits you. Even if you say, this was a representation to me in my mind.

1:02:43And somehow it gave me, it gave me a vision of God's love. Whatever happens to be one way or the other, it happened to you. I mean, it did, yeah. It did. Long tail events, I love that. So I can work with that one. I think that's it is like sometimes when, when some of things logically is hard to accept certain things like that happen in. But like when, I mean, I experienced it, so I have to accept it. But it happened. Yeah, it happened. I mean, that doesn't, by the way, that doesn't mean it literally happened. But it happened. Yeah, yeah. I know you said, yeah, yeah. Yeah. How do we have a meaningful life? Yeah, so that's a big question. Is it, it starts with actually understanding what the meaning, meaning is. And a meaningful life is one that has three characteristics, three qualities to it. The first is coherence that things happen for a reason that we believe we, we have a concept of why things happen. And you know, maybe that's God's plan or maybe that's the laws of science or maybe that's

1:03:45conspiracy theories. Those are all coherence. The second aspect of a meaningful life is one of which we have purpose. Purpose and meaning are not the same thing. Purpose is the answer to the question, why are you doing what you're doing? You have to know, you have to have a concept and an understanding of why you're doing what you're doing, which means you need to have goals and you need to have direction and need to be able to make progress in your life. And the third, which is most important, is that your life has to have significance, which is to say that it would matter if you weren't here. And that means it would matter to someone. It would matter to your family, it would matter to your friends, it would matter to the creator, it would matter. You would actually matter, your life actually needs to matter. And so what it means to have a meaningful life is to have an explanation that sufficient for you of why things happen the way they do, you need to have purpose in your life to be moving forward and you need to be significant in the lives of the people who you love and who love you. That's a meaningful life. Wow, okay.

1:04:46What's the difference between a wound you've made peace with? And I love this one. Yeah, sorry. Yeah, what's the difference between a wound you've made peace with and a wound that you've just been good at hiding? We all have wounds. And there's a whole school of psychology these days. It's like about trauma. And we're all walking around with all this trauma all the time. I don't subscribe to that. I don't think that trauma defines us. I think that we have traumas in our lives and we have wounds in our lives, but they don't really have to define us. They only define us when they're serious and unresolved or undelp with. That's when they can actually become a fixture of who we are. They can actually become our identity end of those circumstances. And the reason that we do that is because we have a misunderstanding of suffering. And I talked about Job. We talked about your son.

1:05:47These are areas of actual suffering. Suffering is unbelievably important to finding a meaningful life. The biggest mistake that we make today, that young people in particular make today, is believing the fiction from the modern therapy industrial complex that suffering is something that we have to avoid. That suffering is something that boil away. If you're suffering, it's evidence that something's wrong. No, no. If you're suffering, it's evidence that something's right. It means you're alive. It means you have negative emotions. It means you have negative experiences. That's evidence that you're alive and walking around on the earth and your brain is working the way it's supposed to. Congratulations. That's a really, really important thing. What we need to understand more and more is what suffering is and what suffering means. Unresolved trauma, unresolved wounds, unhelp, wounds that are open and oozing and becoming our identity are those in which we simply were unable or unwilling to understand the

1:06:49nature of what suffering is. Suffering is pain multiplied by resistance to pain. That's what suffering actually is. One way to lower your suffering is to lower your pain. But sometimes you can't. Your son passed away. You can't bring her back. So what you did was you lowered your resistance to the pain and you're suffering a client. And that's how you dealt with the wound. That's how you cured the wound. And that's what we have to learn. When people have suffering through childhood and that, you know, is that is that hard for people to pick up and to objectively look at and try and heal through or work through? Yeah, there could be long-term wounds and problems and traumas and things that we actually get because of it, especially that bad background. I mean, one of the most common is the boys who have absent fathers. I mean, we take it for granted at this point. We have whole suites of our society that are relative and fatherless, not understanding

1:07:52that that's an absolute epidemic of trauma that's actually going on. It's so critically important, but it doesn't mean we can't get over it. We just have to recognize it. We have to help each other and people need to actually take on what this means, what this means in their own life. You know, it's funny because, you know, you grew up in relative poverty, I know. And you probably, or there are a lot of families that you grew up with where dad was absent, right? Probably most. Yeah, most of it is in your state, yeah. What do you find among men who do really well and who are happy, not just successful happy? What are they having common among those whose fathers bailed when they were kids? What are they having common? They're religious. They're religious. Why? Because they found the heavenly father. So that was my question I was going to follow up with then is if you are from a fatherless home, like what is the action that you can take? That's it. I mean, there's many things that you can actually do. Many people will spend, you know, decade after decade after decade therapy.

1:08:54And some people will find that it doesn't take that much, you know, actual diving into faith that will solve that part of that particular problem. Because ultimately what they want is they want to be they want to love and be loved by their father. That's what it comes down to, which is why religion is such an incredibly efficacious way for for for men in particular, but women as well, who have felt abandonment by their father to actually come to terms with their life actually means and and and move forward in a very, very productive and happy way. Why listen to sad music? I studied the effects of music on the brain a lot because I was a musician for the longest time. You know, you always return to the scene of the crime and your work. It would seem given the fact that that music has such a big effect on your mood that when you're sad, you should listen to like susom marches or something, you know, something happy, happy. And yet you don't want to you don't want that. So for the I started doing a little bit of research on that.

1:09:56It's like, is that is that one of the classic mistakes that we make? Should we actually prescribe happy music to be who just had a bad breakup? The answer is no. One of the ways that we use music is to understand our own complex emotions. So our emotions are very, very difficult to understand sometimes because they're literally produced in parts of the limbic system of the brain that are ideally suited for that particular emotion. When you're feeling rejected and sad, you have a really bad breakup, not of your own choosing. That stimulates a part of your brain called the dorsal anterior singular cortex, which is stimulated, it gives you sadness over social rejection. That exists for a reason. I mean, it's like evolution has not eliminated that because you need to be averse to being socially rejected. Not that long ago you'd walk the frozen tundra and die alone if you were socially rejected. You better be afraid of it and hate it. You better have intensely negative experiences of that. That's why sadness is evolved is the way that that works.

1:10:59But it's hard to understand. It's a very, very difficult emotion to understand. So what you need is a prescription that will translate your feelings to you and the single best way to do it is to listen to sad music. That's like Taylor Swift's entire career is translating young women's emotions to them. So for me, Ludovico, someone like that, I feel like that really catches a depth of something for me. But is there anything to regional instruments that hit people? Because if I listen to bagpipes, that catches me more than anyone. Are you part Scottish as well? I've got the Scottish in there. Yeah, I've got some Scottish in there. So, primarily, perhaps that's actually the case, there are regional variations in the way that we experience music for sure. I mean, it's like an Oculus New Diger, you do all day and it's not going to do anything for my emotional life. But you play some kinder-totally leader to the song for a dead child by Gustav Moller.

1:12:02Like, that's my background is what it comes about. So who knows if it's nature and nurture, but the whole point is we find the music that actually suits us. What is the dark triad personality? Why is it important for people to be aware of this? The dark triad personality is, it sells like a Batman movie, you know, the dark triad. But really what it is is a coincidence of three personality characteristics. Narcissism, Machiavellianism, and psychopathy. So narcissism, it just means to be above average, the population average, on all three. Narcissism is to say it's all about me. It's really everything revolves around me. I care most about me. Right? Of course, we all care most about ourselves. But we, at least we know that that's not legitimate. Narcissists are completely comfortable with it being all about me. Machiavellianism is for my sake, for my smallest advantage, I'm willing to harm you. That's Machiavellianism.

1:13:02And psychopathy to be psychopathic is to say, it's not to be an expert or it simply means to be lacking in remorse, lacking in empathy for you. In other words, it's all about me. I'm willing to hurt you to get what I want and I'm not going to feel bad about it. And just to be above the population average, the top half of the population across all three is 7% of the population. They're coincident. That combination is uniquely dangerous. These are the people who steal your work. These are the people who use you in relationships. These are the people who would gladly harm you for their advantage in any part of your business life. It's everybody's first husband. His dark triad basically. And at least the way that they would describe it. And everybody's run across them. It's one in 14 people. It's 7% of the population is what we find. So they're especially dangerous from romantic relationships because they tend to be very successful. They're very, very good. Male dark triads are incredibly good at seducing women.

1:14:04Incredibly good at it because they show super well. What they do is they know how the neurochemical cascade of falling in love occurs and they stimulate it really, really well in women, especially women who fall in love quickly. We're women who have a characteristic called emophelia, not with an age. That's a blood disorder, emophelia. Emophelia is to fall in love unusually quickly. And dark triad men, they can they can suck that out in a second, even online. And they will make women fall in love with them very, very quickly. They don't fall in love, by the way. And they'll use women physically. They'll use women for money. They'll use and they'll just break hearts again and again and again and again. And just as you're saying that, like the those characteristics that you spoke about capture my dad, like that is when you say that, like that really captures my dad. Well, I was going to say that because he sounds like a dark triad in so far as he's highly in, when dark triads were highly intelligent, they tend to prosper in antisocial activities. They tend to be criminals. Yeah, yeah.

1:15:05So what are the other characteristics that you could spot somebody maybe from afar? So anybody who's actually jamming you in a relationship who's trying to make move a relationship forward very, very quickly, who's trying to make you feel things a little bit too quickly. Somebody who's trying to be your best friend after one day, somebody who's actually trying to sleep with you on the first date. Somebody who actually is becoming too intimate too quickly under any circumstances. These are people that you should be on the lookout. Doesn't mean they're necessarily dark triad, but these are characteristic behaviors of the dark triad. They're going to be who's unbelievably charming, a little too charming. Why? Because they're actually trying to make you fall in love romantically or platonically when they're not trying to fall in love. The normal relationship is we're getting to know each other. You know, I'm just seeing if I want to do going to business with you, but I'm auditioning you not just trying to convince you, right? I want you to convince me too. That's a normal progression of human relationships. When it doesn't look like that, when it's asymmetric, it would go.

1:16:07Wow. How do you know what goal is true to you? How do you set that? How do you yet decipher that? Do you know what your goals are? Yeah, yeah. If it's a true goal versus just, you know, being pulled by some of the... Yeah. So to begin with, know your idols. So your idols will always be galley you and they will give you false goals. They will offer false treasures for you. If you know actually what your idols are, you can be on the lookout for them. You need things that actually offer deep, deep, deep fulfillment, deep, even spiritual fulfillment. That is almost always has to do with relationships, love relationships. The greatest goals they revolve around, you know, deepening your metaphysical life, deepening your family life, and building your family life, deepening your friendships, and deepening your work vocation insofar as it's in service of others. Those are the three types of goals that ultimately will satisfy. Yeah. I know a lot of people who don't have those goals and all they really have is money to

1:17:10our pleasure and fame goals, but those people will be frustrated. They're talking of the phone usage. Why is it so crucial? Like when people use their phone too much or too hooked into the algorithm and like to obsess with mobile phones or technology? The phone is as addictive as drugs and alcohol. The result of it is that it will do exactly what drugs and alcohol do, which is they will supplant normal human relationships and thus render you lonely, anxious, depressed. They will do the same things that any other addictive substance or behavior will do for you. They will take the place of people and that's a mistake. Now there's deeper neuroscience than just that. One of the things that we find is that excessive use of technology has a unique ability of breaking your brain. It will move you from a whole brain activity, write hemisphere, why left hemisphere, what and how to, to only left hemisphere, what and how to rendering the why side inactive.

1:18:16The average American looks at her has fallen 205 times today. It's got to be the same with you. It's got to be the same every place all over the world as a matter of fact. The result of it is that we're forcing ourselves into the hemisphere of our brain where meaning is unavailable. Our meaning is simply not present and that's one of the biggest problems that we can actually find. We're trying to meet a need and in meeting the need, we're actually doing something that makes our brain work wrong and makes us less mentally healthy and lonelier and more depressed and more anxious. That pretty much sums up what's going on with adults that are 30 today. Do you think the way that the algorithm has developed over the last three or four years has made that worse? I felt that for a period of time, I was getting even more hooked into it and I was finally, is that the case? Also, how long does it take to pull away from that addiction and your brain return back to it's sort of baseline function? They're getting better at designing algorithms to make them more addictive and there's all

1:19:19kinds of techniques that you can do based on casino technology, for example, and it has everything to do with greater addiction. Make no mistake about it, which is not good, not even ethical, as far as I'm concerned. You can beat it without getting rid of your phone. You don't have to join a curfusion monastery and through your phone into the ocean. You can do it basically by doing just three things over the course of the day. First hour of the day, no phone. Now you have a business, you're going to get up and you want to make sure nothing's on fire in some other part of the world. So you look at it, nothing's on fire, put it down first hour. First hour. That's where neural cognitive programming is occurring. That's where it is in that first hour of the day. The first hour of the day is the whole year. That's the most magic hour of the day. I recommend getting it before dawn for all sorts of neural cognitive reasons. If you get up when the sun is warm already, probably you've lost the first battle. So get up and experience the dawn and experience it clean. Right? Second is while you're eating, don't have your phone during meals, try not to eat alone.

1:20:22It's good for your brain, for the production of the Neuropeptide oxytocin to be eating with other people and be looking at them in the eyes. And you'll cut off the flow of oxytocin by having a phone on the table, even face down, actually. And the third is the last hour of the day. The last hour of the day is really important for sleep architecture and blue light, functioning the pineal gland, all that stuff that we already know about because we're all super into optimization these days. But the truth is it's most important for your relationships. The saddest thing that I ever, the image I ever see is like a couple in bed looking at their phones. Like, no, that's a really, really holy time in the life of a couple that wants to be in love and stay in love. And so the result is that that last hour is phone off limits as well. If you just do those three things, which is a lot, by the way, then you're not going to be subjugated by the technology and your life's going to improve a lot. Interesting as well, because they are probably the most drawing points to go on your phone.

1:21:24Like a lot of people drawn when they're eating first out and wanting to last hour of that. That's right. It's quite interesting. That's right. Because the neural cognitive programming that they're used to is pulling them toward the device. What came in during the night? Nothing. No one cares. There's nothing there for you. The news is the news are not in effect. It's not no. You know, what happened in markets in Japan? Who cares? Really? I mean, unless you're a trader, you know, Wall Street? Absolutely. It's ridiculous. My notifications and Instagrams like shoot me. It's so boring. But the truth is that we're really trying to do with that boring thing is get rid of the boredom of a lack of distraction. We solve this problem of boredom. And here's the irony that actually comes from this. My students who are deeply addicted to their phones like most people today, especially in most people under 35 today, they're never bored moment to moment because they're in the supermarket checkout line or the behind the car and traffic or whatever. They're never bored moment to moment, but their lives are boring.

1:22:26It's like, what'd you do this week? Their lives are intensely and grindingly boring. My great grandfather, Lee Roy Brooks from Olay, Fakansas, his life was moment to moment pretty boring. He had no iPhone. He had no devices. He had no headphones. He was like looking at a mule's butt all day long, right? But his life was boring. His life was super interesting. He had his long and happy marriage and a bunch of kids and a farm and friends and he had his life. He didn't get to the end of his life and go, honey, that was boring, right? By the way, he didn't have any panic attacks behind that mule either. His brain was working the way it was supposed to work, right? And that's the irony of the whole thing. To wipe out boredom, we've made our lives boring. And it does not ever, I think it's so funny. Once we stop that cycle, it does not ever fulfill the need we're trying to fulfill at all. I've recently, I've spent the last four months of Instagram, like I've not used social

1:23:26media at all. Somebody's using it on behalf. I need a half, I assume. She's open here. She's actually taking care of it. Yeah, yeah. I still get back to messages and people like we have a time period where we do that. But like, I won't be on the algorithm scrolling through it. But that time period I was talking about, I did. I was constantly cycling through that. And a lot of it was through how am I going to create content? Or it was the idea that this is going to help my business inspire me as an artist and a filmmaker and all this. But the algorithm was so strong that it would lead you down a path of like I'm just watching mundane rubbish stuff right now and trying to get that dopamine spike constantly. Yeah, yeah. I'm trying to get the dopamine spike, but also trying to chase away the moment to moment boredom. That's what it comes down to. There's really, I mean, social media can be good if you put it in proper place. And then you're having it somewhere between 30 and 60 minutes a day, total across all platforms at the same time of the day and on purpose. And when you do that, you'll sort of use it for three things that are worth using it for. Instagram or or Twitter or whatever your thing is, tick tock, but the whole, it's learning

1:24:31loving and laughing. So learning, you'll use it, you'll curate your feed. So you're learning about things. I'll get like all the neuroscientists or something will be in my feed loving, meaning people that you actually love. You don't love Kim Kardashian. You're looking like who? Right. And I'm sure she's very lovable for her family, but you're a stranger, right? So you'll follow people that you actually know to know it's actually going on in their lives and they'll know what's going on in yours and laughing. Stuff that's actually funny. Like for me, my feed always has raccoons getting into people's garbage. I have no idea why I find that intensely hilarious. I have no idea. But that's if you have limited time for it, you'll use it for those three things. That's fun. One one thing I recommend everybody to do is to go on their phone, look at their screen time and just genuinely look at how much time they're spending on particular apps. So you can see the issue straight away. Again, you can and people don't want to do it. They don't want to be confronted by this truth. And by the way, people in my age too, it's not just people who are 25. There are people in the 60s who are like intensely stuck on this as well because the brain

1:25:33is the brain. Yeah. And it's just constant scoldings. It's easy to do. That's it. Yeah. And you probably like a lot of the time I was doing it. I mean, I had just one more and I'll come off. But you can one more and come off in two hours, three hours and times. It's just, yeah, you need to be careful. Boredom. That was that was something I've tried to embrace a lot recently. But why is it important to be okay with being bored? Like I don't know if you agree with that. I do. I do. I do. You know, and it depends on what we're talking about. I mean, boredom is we're sort of casting as perjions. We're talking about boredom, but what we're talking about is it's important to be undistracted and to not look for distraction. And the reason is because when we're undistracted, our brain, a set of structures in our brain eliminate all the default mode network. And those are the structures of the brain that facilitate mind wandering and flights of fancy and new ideas you didn't know where they came from. And and and this is where we we grapple with the meaning of our lives. This is really what's, you know, this right hemisphere activity of meaning is this is a switch.

1:26:38It's an on switch. And it's an on switch that we would have had on a lot in the old days, but it's almost permanently off. Every time you open up your phone, you turn it off. You turn off the default mode network. And we turn it off on purpose by opening up our phones, even though we know there's nothing on our phone that we're remotely interested in. It's like, I wonder what's in the Wall Street Journal? You looked at it four minutes ago, nothing. Nothing. You know, it's like share prices have fallen or risen. But you just don't want the default mode network to be turned on. There's experiments on how much we hate boredom. As a matter of fact, there's one experiment in which students are asked to sit quietly in a chair for 15 minutes and given the choice of doing nothing or pressing a button and self administering a painful electric shock. Two thirds of the guy shocked themselves. One quarter of the women and two thirds of the men shocked themselves, which is basically an experiment showing the difference between boys and girls. And one guy shocked himself 190 times and 15 minutes.

1:27:38And he got thrown out of the experiment because he kind of liked it. What? So just on the two pots of the brain, like, what are other things we can do? So we can be bored. I feel like running, exercising, those kind of things they can lead to being up to. They can, but you need to do those things without distractions. So I recommend working out with that headphones because ideas come, like, like you say, like ideas, because they're not really shower. Okay. Yeah. So what are the, what are the things that you're like? These, these are things that we know, access that part of brain and allow us to access that creativity or the, it does allow emotional processing and all that stuff as well. Yeah. So boredom is one of the things that we need to actually become make great again is one of the things we need to do. And that means actually inducing boredom in our lives. My great grandparents were bored all the time. It was natural. It's not natural now, which means we have to do it on purpose. We have to take time in our day to be undistracted. That's one thing. But there are whole areas of life that are naturally consistent with right,

1:28:41hemispheric activity, religious experiences for sure, serving other people and not think when we don't think about ourselves, like volunteering for other people. It's a deeply right hemispheric suffering is deeply right hemispheric time in nature. Experience of artistic beauty is clearly that it's actually finding the mission and meaning in our work, trying to find vocation in our work is clearly dedicated to that. One of the things that people can actually do right now, that's not these big categories. It's just to ask big questions that you can't Google. You know, why am I alive? For what am I willing to give my life? You put that into chat GPT, it was a crap. I mean, you'll get, you know, first little compliment you by, because well, that's a very good question. And then it'll give you like what five philosophers that are about to complete nonsense, right? It's not useful to you in your life. But thinking about things that don't have answers that, which by the way, you were doing on your pilgrimage, you were thinking about a question that didn't have an answer.

1:29:46Why? What does this mean? And just asking the big question, made you deeply, deeply, deeply human and stimulated the right hemisphere of your brain. I recommend more philosophical conversations with friends, you know, so get together with your friends. If you want to know the meaning, then everybody, you get together with your friends for dinner, everybody puts their phone away. And then you ask, what are you most afraid of? And watch your guy and watch it go deep. Like go deeper, go home, right? Love a deep conversation. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No stupid nonsense. No trivia. No golf. Well, it's interesting. You're saying nature walks because I think a lot of people associate the idea of being out in nature and it's the nature that brings it to you. But I think if I, my experience of going walks for walks in nature sometimes is that it is a bit boring. Like it can, it can be boring. There are beautiful places we can walk. Of course, but there's also the some boring places as well. That's the point. But it brings it to spring out that side of you.

1:30:48Yeah, for sure. And there's a whole thing that's actually pretty interesting. There's one, there's one very interesting paper that shows that being in your urban environment versus being in nature, and especially walking in nature, you're 39% more concerned with other people think of you when you're in the urban environment. So one of the best ways to care less what other people think is to get out in nature. Why? Because you're actually thinking about the meaning of your life. How do I imagine is caring about what other people think of you? A lot. Some believe this president of the theater Roosevelt one time said, but somebody said that social comparison is the thief of joy. It takes joy out of your life. You know, if you, you can enjoy your vacation 20% less if you take pictures and much less even than that if you take pictures to post on social media. Because you're not, you're not on vacation. You're in the future looking back on your vacation and imagining other people envying your vacation.

1:31:50It's just terrible. It's funny because there's all this new research on consciousness. This is a big area of neuroscientific and philosophical research, actually. There's a good book by Michael Poland called The World of Wates. This new, very, very important book about the nature of consciousness and all these philosophers that do work in it. And consciousness, the height of human consciousness is an awareness of yourself, which is also the reason for your misery. It's a, you know, that Buddhism is all about shaving off that top level of human consciousness. That incredible cognitive feat that only the human prefrontal cortex can bring it. Your dog is not conscious of himself. Your dog is conscious of you, but your dog is not conscious of himself. You, on the other hand, spent all your time thinking about yourself and it's an unbelievable source of misery. So we need to actually reduce our human consciousness in this particular way so that we can actually be fully alive and not looking to renew the whole time.

1:32:52Oh, it's horrible. Why, why do people get that way? We are, we're made that way. Our brain is so unbelievably sophisticated. We're successful because we don't just see the world. We also see ourselves in the world. That's the secret to our success. That's also the secret to our misery. Yeah. You said real friends are useless and that's a good thing. Yeah. What do you mean by that? There's two kinds of friends. You know, actually Aristotle said there's three kinds of friends. There's friendships of transaction. These are the people that you do business with and good, good. They're useful. They're friendships of beauty. We just admire somebody so much because of some characteristics they have. But the highest level of the friendships of virtue, where you just love them. These are people you just love. These are your childhood friends that you, I mean, it doesn't matter how successful or unsuccessful you are. They love you, right? And those are useless friends. They're the word in Greek is a telly. There's no tea loafs to the friendship.

1:33:52There's no usefulness. There's no purpose in its way. No material purpose to the friendship. And you need those people. So I call them different people, real friends and deal friends. You know, deal friends, good, good, good. But if it's all deal and no real, you're going to be a very lonely person. You need real useless friends. What's the difference between being kind of being nice? Yeah, people often use kindness and niceness as synonyms and they really aren't. To be kind is to be is to want the best for another person. To be nice is to express it is to want it versus expressing it. And so here's the way to think about it. You've spent a little bit of time in the United States and you've been in New York and L.A. Right? In L.A. people are nice but not kind. In New York, people are kind but not nice. So if like you get a flat tire on the freeway in an L.A. You know, somebody will stop and be like, or if they're stopped, they'll say,

1:34:53I'm so sorry. Oh, that really sucks. Bye. And in New York, they'll say, you idiot. This thing with these tires are bald. I mean, it's wrong with you. You know, it's like, all right, give me your jack. Let's get this thing fixed. Right? That's the difference. Clignness is action. Niceness is expression. Now ideally, you're both kind and nice. Right? But if you got to be just one, choose kindness. I love that. I love the example between the Eau-Kennabai as well. That's good. Yeah, they'll be cussing you out but still taking the tire off at the same time. I know. Look, I'm a West Coast guy. So, you know, strivers, I want to finish on this because I think a lot of people who watch these videos are strivers. In fact, I would say 90% of them are like those ambitious people. They want to be successful. It might come from a place of wanting to be loved. I suspect a lot of people who watch the channel are doing it from that place. I have done it from that place. Yeah. I mean, what is your message to strivers? Like, what is the sort of overall message that they can take away and that they could

1:35:57possibly achieve those things they really deeply want to achieve but also have a balance and fulfill in life outside of that too? Yeah. I admire people who strive and work hard. I mean, I'm an American. This is built. I mean, my first ancestor, Henry Brooks, came from Lancashire in 1630. And I'm like, poor. Anybody built a farm and acquired 130 acres, which was subsequently whittled away through bad business decisions. But the whole point is that, you know, I kind of admire this. I admire this American spirit and the whole thing. But this is not the guarantee it happens. It just absolutely is not. And so for every striver, good for you. Thank you for what you're doing for growth and prosperity and the ambition that's actually bringing the spirit to everything that we do. But this is not a substitute for being loved. It just is not. And the sooner the striver learns that, the better off they're going to be. Now, here's the good news. You deserve love. You do.

1:36:57You're lovable. And you're lovable without a billion dollars. You're lovable without the best-selling book. You're lovable without these things because you are you is what it comes down to. And when you surround yourself with people that actually love you for who you are, then you'll find what you actually seek. That's a future that you can actually count on. Follow up. How do you trust that people love you for you? The trick is believing that. And the only way that you come to believe that is because people demonstrate that. Now maybe you've spent years surrounding yourself with users and takers. Maybe you married somebody who only loves you for your looks or only loves you for your money. Right? Clearly I didn't marry somebody from my looks. And maybe that's hard for you. Maybe that is true. Or maybe it's just that you don't trust. Ultimately, you're going to have to trust that because sooner or later you're going to be left without your looks.

1:37:57And you're going to be left without what made you strong and big. And then you'll find out. But more than likely, most people actually do have people who love them. And the sooner you can actually learn to trust, notwithstanding you and the securities, the better off you're going to be. And the last one, because you mentioned billionaire, I think this idea, this image comes up with a lot of people who strive on this channel to either become dearly athlete or they have this idea of being the billionaire entrepreneur or the CEO of the Fortune 500 company. What is the... I think those people who are watching these videos can definitely achieve those things. But what is the path that they're leading to if they don't try and access this part of themselves? Yeah. It's great working with young entrepreneurs. It's fantastic. People who want to achieve great things with their careers, I really admire that a lot. But the one thing that they have to remember is that the ultimate enterprise that matters the most is the enterprise of their own lives.

1:39:00Every person watching us is a CEO, the founding entrepreneur of themselves incorporated. Your life is an enterprise. Your life is the ultimate adventure. Don't miss it. Don't miss it because you're actually trying to get more and more and more worldly success that nobody will really appreciate, but you will not give you the feeling that you seek. The enterprise of your life means that you're willing and able to take risks with your heart. And what you're actually gambling for is explosive rewards with respect to love and happiness. That's what the business of life. That's what the enterprise of life is all about. Don't miss that because you're trying to do something with money. Risk your heart and get the major rewards. Get the explosive rewards of love and happiness. Then everything else is just dessert. I love that. I think the entrepreneur who watches this channel are getting it so much from it. So thank you so much. Thank you. Where can people follow up? Where would you send them to follow up right now?

1:40:00I really recommend the book that we'll link down below. But is there anyone else there with you? I get my website. It has all my resources on it. All my columns, all my, you know, a lot of videos, a lot of surveys that people will actually take and video workshops and things so they can learn how to be a happier person based on science. And that's at ArthurRooks.com, just like it sounds. Thank you so much, man. Appreciate it. Thank you. That was amazing.