How Faith, Neuroscience, and Meaning Work Together | Arthur Brooks

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Your brain is designed to ask all the big why questions on the right and then to solve

how to and what questions on the left and the reason people are depressed today is because

they're avoiding the big right side questions.

The whole culture of technology and hustle and grind and online presence is all about

staying in the left hemisphere of the brain.

That's the reason the people don't know the meaning of their lives.

He's a Harvard professor, international keynote speaker, New York Times bestselling author.

He spent the past two decades studying and teaching the art and science of happiness

to millions of people.

Dr. Arthur Brooks in the house, here's what's crazy about when you're living in the wrong

side of your brain because you're living in the matrix.

You're living in the simulation of ordinary life.

Your great grandfather never came home and said to great grandma, I had a panic attack

behind the mule today.

It's laughable.

How could someone start going to the right side of their brain to find more meaning and

purpose in their life rather than stress and chaos.

So to begin with...

We have two kinds of dilemmas as human beings.

We have complicated dilemmas and complex dilemmas in life, two kinds of problems.

Complicative problems are the how to and what problems that we're dealing with all day

long.

Like how do I get from Orange County to Los Angeles, which I was dealing with this morning,

right?

Or how do I think about the next five years of the School of Greatness podcast, which

we were talking about, such an interesting, complicated problem, how to and what problems.

But those are the problems that you care about, because what are we really talking about?

We were talking about your babies and your marriage and your faith.

Those are complex problems, which are impossible to solve.

They're easy to understand, impossible to solve.

You only live with them.

And the reason is, believe it or not, these two types of problems are processed in different

hemispheres of the brain.

This is a theory called hemispheric lateralization, which is a fancy way of saying the right side

and the left side do different things.

The left side does complicated problems, like how do I get to LA?

How do I build a toaster?

The right side says, why do I love my wife?

Who's God?

What's the meaning of life?

What's the meaning of life?

The mystery and the meaning.

And you'll never come to a conclusion.

And part of the reason is because that's not how your brain is designed.

Your brain is designed to ask all the big why questions on the right and then to solve

how to and what questions on the left.

And the reason people are depressed today is because they're avoiding the big right side

questions.

They're not even asking meaning questions because the whole culture of technology and hustle

and grind and, you know, online presence is all about saying in the left hemisphere of

your brain.

That's the reason that people don't know the meaning of their lives.

That's this whole book.

How do you find the meaning of your life?

It's go to the right side of your brain.

How do you do that?

That's the challenge.

How can someone start going to the right side of their brain to find more meaning and

purpose in their life rather than stress and chaos?

Yeah.

So to begin with, most people don't realize that that's the problem, that they're using

their brains in the wrong way.

The way that our brains have not been designed.

And again, whether you believe in God or not, our brains have unambiguously been designed

with two halves for a reason.

The y-half and the what-and-how-half.

And they don't realize that our culture or technology or economy have ruled out the

y-half systematically over the past two decades.

So I'll give you an example of this.

You know, I started seeing this when I was out of teaching for a long time.

I went and I ran a company for 11 years and I came back in 2019 and it was a different

world.

And when I left academia in 2008, academia was happier than the rest of the world.

People were following it.

Love and they're making it.

Remember college?

All of them.

All of them making friends, exploring big ideas.

You went out the world.

Yeah.

Having your mind blown?

Yeah.

2019 tripled the rates of depression, doubled the rates of anxiety.

Why?

Exactly.

So I started asking them and they started talking about meaning.

It's like, I don't know what I'm meant to do.

I mean, I'm going through, I'm studying this, I'm doing that, I'm trying to get a good

job.

But my life feels meaningless and saying my life feels meaningless is the best predictor

of depression and anxiety for people under 35.

Saying that.

Saying that.

That's the predictor.

So then you start talking to them and how they figure out how they live and it turns out

that life dramatically changed after about 2008.

Social media?

Yeah.

Well, social media, but devices, the screens, the technology radically changed it.

You talk to young people, they're like, it's like I'm living in a matrix.

You know, it's interesting you say that, not to cut you off here.

I saw a video recently speaking of being on my device, but I saw a video talking about

a guy who's probably in his 40s by around my age with a, I don't know, 8, 9, 10 year

old son having a conversation and he said, you know what, our punishment used to be growing

up, you know, back in the 80s and 90s, staying inside, I don't know.

Not being able to go outside was our punishment and the sun was like, what do you mean?

I know.

Like, I want to be a punishment for me because I want to be on my phone or a computer

on like, video games all the time.

We're living the punishment voluntarily.

Here's the weird thing about it.

Here's what's crazy about when you're living in the wrong side of your brain, because

you're living in the matrix, you're living in the simulation of ordinary life.

Your great grandfather, like great grandpa house, never came home and said to great grandma,

I had a panic attack behind the mule today, it's laughable because his brain was working

the way it's supposed to work.

They might have hard days and stress, but not this type of thing.

And here's the weird part, his moment to moment life was actually pretty boring because

he was behind that mule, but his life wasn't boring.

A lot of young people today who are living in the matrix, living in the left hemisphere

of their brains, moment to moment, they have zero boredom, but their life is grindingly

boring.

See, that's the thing.

There's the micro boredom and the metabordom, and that's the way to think about it.

To say, have I eradicated boredom for my life, but my life is actually boring, then you

know you're on the wrong side.

And you'll never find meaning until you can break out of that because no one's actually

bored anymore.

Because we solve the problem.

They can find, you know, all day long, getting a dopamine hit or something, watching something

entertaining or funny or what's next or gambling or whatever it might be, some type of hit

that they don't allow for space to listen to what they're meant to do.

I have a colleague at Harvard, a guy named Dan Gilbert, you ever had Dan Gilbert in

the show?

I haven't, but I know that you know him, right?

He's the world's leading expert on boredom, he's a visionary social psychologist, he's

the best in the business.

And he's done these experiments where you bring people into the lab, young people like

undergraduates, they do anything for 20 bucks, right?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And he makes them sit in a room where there's nothing on the walls, nothing to do, completely

silent.

They have one choice besides sitting there quietly, whether they have a little key fob with

a button on it.

If you touch the button, you self-administer a painful electric shock.

I don't know how he got through this, this to the internal review board, right?

Right?

Right?

He can do because he wants to know whether they choose boredom or shocks, boredom or pain,

a quarter of the women shock themselves.

Wow.

Two thirds of the guys.

I was like, I can't take any more, give me something to do, you need to know men or women.

Right?

But all together more than half of the people gave themselves pain over boredom.

We solved the boredom problem.

Your iPhone is the solution to your boredom problem, your device.

The problem is that it makes your brain work wrong because when you're never bored, you

don't use what's called the default mode network set of structures in your brain.

You won't find meaning.

You'll be in the wrong side of your brain all day long.

If you wake up and the first thing is your phone next to your bed, big mistake, and you

look at your phone, then your brain is programmed to that for the rest of the day.

You're looking at it while you're having your coffee and breakfast and then you go to work,

which is in your guest room, which is a Zoom screen, and then you're going to date by swiping

right and then your friends are a lot of them mostly on social media, and then you do a

lot of gaming because, you know, that's how you get your sense of fun and accomplishment.

In connection.

And then you're 12 hours a day online.

And guess what you don't have?

There's one thing.

That's a simulated life.

That's the matrix.

That movie was popular, I'm going to shock you, 27, 1998, 99, I know, I know, but that

movie said that there was a great artificial intelligence, a mechanical artificial intelligence

that was subjecting the human race.

There was sucking energy out of them in the form of attention, keeping them in these pods

and giving them a simulation of real life that was pleasant.

And the reason that there's a rebellion against that is because Neo, can't arrive, wants

meaning.

Lewis, we're in the matrix.

And the one thing you can't simulate is the meaning of your life.

And that's what's actually happening.

So how do we start to simulate the meaning of our life?

We got to live like granddad house.

Right.

The first thing that we need to do is get clean.

The first thing that we need to do is to actually break out of the addictive cycle like

a cleanse.

Yeah.

Like detox, actually.

Digiblet deep down too.

Digiblet deep down too.

And the problem is you can't just recommend abstinence because somebody asks you, did I

drink all the time?

You're going to say, stop drinking completely, obviously.

But you can't do that with your technology because you can't get into your bank account

and that ship has sailed completely.

Which means you need moderation.

It's a much harder thing to do.

But there's a lot of data.

There's a lot of research, neuroscience research that shows how you can actually moderate

your device use that will revolutionize your relationship to the devices.

You can solve this problem with basically three steps.

Tech free times, tech free zones and tech fasts.

That's all you need to do.

And the tech free times are first hour in the morning, meal times, and last hour at night.

That's all you need.

Just those tech free times.

Because of the neural programming that's going on first hour of the day, the neurochemistry

of what's actually happening while you eat, which is that you're looking into other

people's eyes while you're having a conversation.

We're evolved to do that.

Over the last 250,000 years since the beginning of the Pleistocene, Homo sapiens have actually

communed with their kin while they shove pieces of yak meat into their mouths around the

fire.

If you see your phone on the table, it cuts off the Neuropeptum.

That is occurring to bond you to others called oxytocin.

You cut the oxytocin flow by looking at your phone, literally it's an experience to

show this.

So what you said first hour, meal time, and last hour, last hour, because that's when

you should be communing with your babies and your wife.

And also you don't want to interrupt the functioning of the pineal gland, which as you sleep,

melatonin, et cetera, you won't be able to wind down.

You'll be stressed out.

So that's the times you said zones.

There are certain zones.

This is physical zones, number one is the bedroom, no devices in the bedroom.

And you don't just say I'm going to stop scrolling, leave it downstairs, plugged in in a closet,

and take a book to bed.

I get crazy idea.

You get two things.

A book and an alarm clock.

Nuts, right?

Changes, I listen to the hallow app.

I know.

That's the challenge.

No, it puts me to sleep.

But it's like in the morning, too, I listen to it.

I know.

And so you got to figure out a way to get around this.

And there are ways to do it with notifications officer.

And then the second zone is there shouldn't be a classroom in the world from kindergarten

through PhDs.

That has a phone in it.

I don't understand how teachers can teach today.

I don't know how teachers can do it.

Well, allowing kids to have a phone at their desk.

They were really teaching when I was a kid either, but it's even harder now.

And I feel like there's 27 states that still don't have completely unfettered access

to telephones in public schools.

It's craziness that we do this.

And there's a complete lack of will of imagination and moral will on the part of politicians and

educators, for sure.

And the last is tech fast.

Everybody should have.

I recommend spiritual retreats to people all the time.

Buddhist retreats, Hindu retreats, Jewish retreats.

I go on a Catholic retreat four days a year, silent retreat, no devices.

Oh, it's max, like magic.

It's a total cleanse.

Yeah, I've done it a few times where I've put a notification and I've left the phone

at home.

It's hard.

First time was like, what do you do?

I was like, how do I get to the hotel?

How do I get my car?

I was like, I don't know.

I know it's like your brain doesn't work.

The other day.

It was such an adventure.

I was like, I just stopped at a gas station and asked for a direction.

How do I get here?

It was like, I know.

I know it's like, 90s again, you know, it's like, let's go.

I feel like losing floor.

And so the other day when that big Verizon outage, you just, where you wear this, I was

in New York and I came out of it, you know, taping a show.

And my phone didn't work.

It was the SOS thing and I had to call an Uber and get to the Newark airport and fly

back to LA.

How'd you do it?

And so I had to find a Wi-Fi network and actually call the Uber and there was no phone

calls and there was no text and then I got to the airport and got on the plane and there

was no Wi-Fi on the plane for six hours.

What do you do?

I had the monkey on my back.

I felt like I was like, what do I do?

You have to be bored.

I know.

You have to be on a plane and read a book or.

And like a heroin addict detoxing in jail or something, you know.

So that's really helpful.

The first day is hard.

The second day is easier.

The third day is good.

The fourth day is bliss.

It's like, I never want to go back.

I know.

All 40 days.

Right.

And all 40 days.

So these are the three things to do.

The first thing you do is you get clean.

Yeah.

And you get clean by doing those three things and then you start living in a new way.

That systematically opens up the right hemisphere for brain.

That's really what my research is about is the six ways you can do it.

I mean, again, it's in a way it's gimmicky because there's six big ways that you can

do it.

But if you do this in six months, you'll know the meaning of your life.

100%.

Yeah.

We're talking about your book, the meaning of your life, which I think a lot of people

are struggling to figure out these days.

And I'm curious because you are such a devout.

Well, you've been 45 years.

You've been all in on Catholicism.

Yeah.

Right?

45 years.

Yeah.

I'm practically a cradle Catholic.

Right.

So I'm 61.

For a long time, all in, you go to Mass every morning, 6 a.m. or almost every morning.

You know, maybe once in a while you miss or something, but you're like in it.

Yeah.

But you're like best friends with Dalama.

Yeah.

And other spiritual leaders.

And you actually invited me to go.

I know.

I want you to go next time.

I want to go.

Please.

And so how do you navigate being all in as a Catholic, believing what you believe?

Being very close to other spiritual leaders of other faiths that don't believe what you

believe.

Right.

How do you co-mingle, find connection, and not judge others beliefs, but also be close

with them and find fulfillment and meaning from those relationships and those spiritual

practices as well, which are different or maybe aren't in alignment with the Catholic

faith.

Yeah.

So it's one thing to think that you're right is something else to think that somebody

else is wrong.

And we want to solve every problem.

The left brain solution is always, let me figure it out.

And once I figured it out, then I know that this is right and everything else is wrong.

I have a right brain orientation toward my faith, which is I believe that this is what

God wants for me.

I don't know what God wants for others.

I don't know.

And I can't know.

I believe that God puts people in my life for a reason.

I believe that you and I met for a reason.

You met a thing in Idaho's awesome.

I'm like, God, man, I feel like I've known this guy for years, for some reason.

There's a reason that you meet people that people are actually put into your life.

And for you to adjudicate that on the basis of whatever beliefs that you have, that's

hubris a lot of the time.

You know, it's a God put you here for a reason to to me to learn and grow in the Dalai Lama.

Boy, oh boy.

He told me, I want you to be a better Catholic.

Really?

Because he believes that that's God's will for my life, that's what he actually believes.

And I learned so much, you know, from my Hindu teachers, from my Jewish teachers, from

my Muslim teachers, people that I've talked to that made me so much stronger in my own

faith.

I believe my faith is what God wants for me.

I don't know what's right.

I don't know.

I just know that I believe that this is right for me.

And I'm not a universalist, you know, good.

I mean, I want everybody to be Catholic.

I want everybody to go to Mass with me.

Absolutely.

That's the world that I want.

But that's not the world that I find.

And I believe that there's a reason that I'm finding the world that I am.

But isn't part of the Catholic faith to preach the gospel and invite and have a crude

but convert others to Catholicism, to the faith?

Yes.

And there's different ways to do that.

There's different ways to be a missionary.

A one good way to be a missionary, like I teach at Harvard University, which is not known

as a big Catholic institution, right?

But Boston is, isn't it?

That's kind of, except, you know, it's the Northeast.

It's post-Christian, man.

The way that I actually, I bring people closer, I believe, to my faith, is by how I live

my life and the excellence that I bring to things.

But is that enough?

Just being a good person.

I think that that opens the door because people will see, there's two things to do.

Be impeccable and great at what you do and have people know that you have a strong belief.

That's really important.

So people watching this are like, Lewis is on a spiritual journey and he's gone to Catholic

mass and he's unbelievable, he's literally the best in the world at what he does.

That's missionary work right there.

That's the mission field.

I mean, it's like, it's a Mormon missionary told me this one time.

A guy worked for it, the Rand Corporation.

I was a military operations research analyst, early, early, early on in my career.

I was doing math modeling for the Air Force and this guy was an old school applied mathematician

and he was Mormon.

And let her say, and he told me about his mission in France.

I said, missionary in France, because they all go on a mission.

Two years.

Yeah.

And I said, how many people do you convert?

So precious for you.

I think there's a lot.

Precious for you.

The French, you know?

Yeah.

And he doesn't speak the language.

He has to learn the language.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And I said, so how did you, how did you, you know, maintain a good attitude about it?

And he said, I would say, Lord, have them not shut the door all the way because he figured

out that his job was getting the door open an inch and his beliefs were that God would

do the rest.

Wow.

So here's the thing.

People, you meet people at different points in their own journey, you're at a different

point in your journey.

I'm at a different point in your journey.

A lot of people watching us are at different points in their journey and all we can ask

them is to not close the door completely to open the door one inch.

And if we believe what we say, we believe about God and his goodness, God will do what

he's supposed to do in their lives.

Our job is to not close the door.

And if you go in and you say, repent or die, the door's closing, right?

That's going to close the door, not open the door.

Your excellence will open the door.

How do you navigate in your soul and in your mind that if you're with the Dalama or another

spiritual teacher or anyone who's on their own journey of life, that if they don't convert

and baptize and become Catholic, like they're not going to heaven essentially, like how

do you understand?

How do you reconcile with that knowing that you care deeply in love with this person and

you want them to live a beautiful life here and after here, how do you navigate that

world?

Well, part of that is that there's a kind of a there's a fundamentalist version of that

a lot of people learn in the United States, which is literally if you're not done, then

this, right?

But the truth is that Catholics in particular, they don't believe that.

I mean, there's a lot, we believe that there's a lot a lot of people going to heaven who

are not Catholics or even Christians on the contrary, that they have a different set

of experiences from different parts of the world and they're implicitly baptized effectively.

And they have a lot to teach us, you know, what that says is that if you were raised as

a Catholic, then the standard is different for you.

The obligation is different for you.

The will be unto you if you're not living up to it.

But that the Dalai Lama has a, you know, has a, there's a, God had a different plan in

the Dalai Lama's life.

And there's a, there's a different trajectory for what he believes.

And so I think that it's, it's fair to say that there's a lot of ways to interpret that

and it doesn't have to be literal.

Interesting.

Do you think it's possible for someone to find meaning without having some type of faith

or belief in God?

Yes.

I do.

And that's really comes from this idea of transcendence, which is one of the six ways of

finding the meaning of your life is transcending yourself.

My path isn't the only path to meaning.

It isn't.

Now, religion is really, really good for this.

Yes.

Spirituality is really, really good for finding meaning.

But what you really want to say transcend yourself, because, you know, left your advice is

you're going to be in a psychodrama, me, me, me, me, my job, my car, my money, my, so

tedious, Lewis.

It's so boring, but, but Mother Nature wants you to be the star of your psychodrama.

I mean, think of all the dreams you had last night.

You were the star in every one.

Yeah.

It's like, ah, and, and what are the great truths of that we find in all of the experiments

in social psychology?

If I can get you to think about others and stand in awe of something bigger than yourself,

you will find meaning why, because that's what illuminates activity in the right hemisphere

of the brain.

You'll start using your brain in a more meaningful way.

There's two ways to do that.

One is to stand in awe of something greater.

Our mutual friend, Brian Holliday, right?

He talks about stoic philosophy.

That's a great way to actually be looking down at or looking at standing in awe, walking

in nature before dawn.

The Hindu is called the Brahma Mahorta, which means the creator's time in Sanskrit, without

devices.

Yeah.

Let the sun come up as you walk to, to start of a positive meditation practice, to listen

to the fugues of Johann Sebastian Bach, to do what you need to do to stand in awe of

something that's not just my little psychodrama.

The other way is to transcend yourself by serving, serving other people.

It's one of the weirdest things is that we always want to serve ourselves.

But when we're induced to serve other people, then meaning, meaning pours into the vessel

that is your life.

And you've told me about this.

I mean, you've been doing this people watching the show.

They don't know all the service stuff that you're actually engaged in.

And you think, well, Lewis House, what a great guy.

Truly, truly is true, but, but it's also you need it.

You actually need it to feel fully alive.

I'm, every day I wake up and I just say thank you, God, thank you, God, and I really reflect

on the beauty, the abundance, the relationships, the health, the opportunities, because there

weren't always there.

Yeah.

There's when I didn't have those things, I really suffered for years and decades.

I had an internal suffering because I was thinking of self so much.

Right.

Oh, it'll make you suffer, baby.

Suffering.

Why me?

Why this?

Why that person?

Why am I experiencing this?

Why me?

Me, me, me.

Right.

Right now.

And I had a big wake up call around 30 where I was like, man, I'm a selfish ego maniac.

You know, I wasn't really.

I was still a happy guy.

You're a monster.

I wasn't.

To myself.

I was like, I'm beating myself up constantly, focusing on myself.

Sure, I was still giving and adding value to the world.

I wasn't, and I was like loving and happy and joyful outwardly, but inwardly, I wasn't.

No, no, because you're doing something that's, so this is, this is a distinction that William

James, the father of psychology in 1890, he called the me self versus the I self.

Human beings are, you know, what, the, the homo sapien advantage neurocognitively is the

existence, is the existence and size of the prefrontal cortex.

That's the bumper of tissue behind your forehead, this 30% of your brain by weight.

That is the super computer of the ages.

There's, you know, AIs never going to come close to that.

Just isn't.

I mean, we say that it's going to become more human now.

The prefrontal cortex does amazing things among other things.

It allows you to be two people in time travel.

I'm going to pass it in.

Oh, it's amazing.

So you go, you think about, you know, I did that thing and I feel I really regret it.

And what if it had turned out differently, then the present would be different.

You're practicing to be better in the future.

Yes.

By time travel, I think I'm going to do this tomorrow, but maybe I'll do this.

Maybe I'll do this.

You know, you and I were talking about all the cool things that are happening in your business

and five different things that could happen in your business.

We were time traveling.

Yes.

Five years into Lewis House.

Magic in the world.

Exactly.

And then we come back to the present and say, which one of the paths do we want to take?

That's time travel.

It's amazing how that works.

We also can think about me looking out or me looking in to understand myself.

William James said, the more time you spend in the me self looking in, the less happy you're

going to be.

And the more the time that you spend in the eye self, you need both because you got to

know what you're doing in the world and what's going on, but you also have to understand

your place in the world.

Yes.

So you need both.

The problem is that Mother Nature wants you to think me, me, me, me, me.

Happiness comes by looking out at the world.

There's really interesting experience with this guy who did physical therapy for me because

my back hurts a lot.

That's where in tear, man.

That's like, kids, when you're 61, you'll understand.

But he's a beautiful person and he's a loving person.

Physical therapists are funny because you've even noticed that the best ones, they're

full of love.

Sure.

And that's their actual strength.

I'm going to listen to you.

They want to know you.

They want to heal you.

That's what it comes down to.

And this guy was a classic.

He did acupuncture and physical therapy and he was really helping me with my back a

lot.

I said, you have crazy gifts and how did you get here as a young guy is your age.

And he said, I was a long path.

I said, tell me more because now I'm a behavioral scientist.

I want to know, right?

He says, yeah, no, I used to be a fitness influencer.

Really?

He said, yeah, he says, I was selling my body.

I was selling pictures of myself, my shirt off, diet plans, exercise routines, et cetera.

And he said, I realized I was just completely, I was miserable.

He said, I hadn't eaten what I wanted to eat for 10 years, chicken and rice every day.

Yeah.

Because he's trying to stay at sub 10 body fat.

Yeah.

So hard.

So hard.

Yeah.

10% body fat.

Either you got weird genetics or you're unhappy.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I got weird genetics.

But that's because of my genetics, not because I'm making myself miserable because nobody

wants me to take my shirt off on the internet.

So you should.

Put it on.

Put it on.

Anyway.

So human did it.

It's full out of the internet.

I know.

I know.

He broke the internet.

I know.

But somebody took a picture of him and he allowed it and he posted.

But probably.

I don't know.

But, you know, he said that he realized that he was thinking about himself too much.

And he needed to fix it.

So he's a smart guy.

So he, the first thing he did, he's got rid of his social media accounts.

Step two is he enrolled in physical therapy school.

He got to get some others.

He got to learn something new.

The third thing he did was, he took every mirror out of his house.

I love that.

Every mirror gone.

I was just thinking about a single one day about how mirrors, that invention of mirror

has probably ruined awful human psychology.

I know because it basically had torqued I self-measal.

Yes.

And then, and then, and then he's showered in the dark for a year, so he couldn't see

his abs.

He didn't see the water rushing down to look at my abs, but he can't see it because he

was so attuned to criticizing himself and belittling himself.

Shaming himself.

Yeah.

Yeah.

What is this little fact?

I got to eat more.

I got to, I got to, whatever.

The me self does this to you.

It makes you crazy.

It makes you completely nuts.

So the whole point is that you need to look out more.

That's self-transcendence.

Standing in awe, serving others puts you into the eye self and you find the meaning of

your life because your brain works right.

So this comes from the philosophy, the theology, the neuroscience.

It all works together.

Yes.

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Around 29, when I was 29, 13 years ago, almost 14 years ago, I had gotten off my sister's

couch where I was like suffering and broke and had no purpose.

I started building a business.

I started pursuing these things and five, six years later, 28, 29, 30, and I make my first

million dollars and I'm building a little personal brand that I have some influence and

I'm like making a name for myself in this online marketing world.

And I feel like I'm the most miserable I am after about six years of this because I was

like so focused on me.

Right.

And more and...

Well, it was also another error that people make that really hurts their search for meaning

and it's very common.

It's not...

You never cast this person, it's for people making this error and this is what I say on

my first day of class.

I teach MBA students at the Harvard Business School.

They want to be unbelievably successful and they're going to be.

Right.

They want to raise a bunch of money.

They want to sell companies all this.

They want to be masters of the universe.

They want to be rich for a reason they think.

If I get the money.

If I get the power.

If I get the fame, then I'll be happy, right?

And I say this on the first day of class and it makes them panic and you're going to see

why because you're a striver, par excellence.

I say, go for the happiness and I'm going to teach you how and then you'll be successful

enough.

And the rest doesn't matter.

But you know what makes them panic?

What?

Enough.

Yeah.

Because at the Harvard Business School, there's no such thing as enough.

And for all the strivers who, you look, why do you watch the school of greatness?

You want more.

You want more.

So enough.

And I admire strivers.

I admire strivers.

But this is the key thing and this is what you were experiencing.

If you think that the money and the power and the honor, but mostly the money for what

you're doing with direct marketing, right?

All the stuff that you were doing, you thought that that would bring you, that you would

arrive at some level, that first million dollars would help you arrive at some level

of happiness.

A little piece.

But now look at your life.

Your life is full of love.

You have a friendship with God.

You have a, you have a, you're living with, you're living with your guru.

Yeah.

You got your babies.

It's crazy, man.

For the future you, that's, that's really the source of happiness and makes you successful

enough.

Yeah.

That's the beautiful thing.

That's what people need to actually focus on and that's what will happen when you take

the mirrors out of your life.

Yeah.

Whether that's literal mirrors or you know, other metaphoric mirrors like notifications

because you know, or view counts or whatever my be because I remember reflecting at this

time, I had to kind of a big breakthrough and I'm like, maybe over a three to six month

window of my life during that time where I had it all, but all my relationships were

falling apart.

Business relationships.

I was with a girlfriend that was falling apart, friendships like things were falling apart

and I was at the center of all those.

So in the beginning, I'm like, this person's doing this and she did it.

And then I go, oh, but it's all happening.

I'm at the center.

Right.

I'm the common denominator.

The me self was saying something is happening so that I'm not being loved enough.

The I self says, I need to go love more.

And that's what I started doing.

I said, I went through my own healing journey around that time and started opening up

about the different things that I was going through from childhood sexual abuse and other

things that I've talked about.

They've been very many times.

Yeah.

And I realized I need to serve more.

I was like, I felt my first big calling was like, you've got to serve those that can't

serve themselves.

And I thought about, what is something that's meaningful for me?

I struggled in school my entire life.

I struggled at learning, sitting in a classroom reading textbooks.

It didn't work well for how I, or you're just like, very, yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

And I was always in the bottom of my class.

I was always like, and they used to rank us on our grade cards back in the day.

I don't know if they still do it.

So I was always in the bottom four from middle school through high school.

And I just struggled.

And I just felt like, man, I'm never going to be smart enough.

Do you feel stupid?

Right.

Very stupid.

Every day, not enough.

Stupid.

The way I learned was through sports, through mentors, through coaches and because you're

super athletic.

Yeah.

I mean, you're professional athlete.

I leaned into that and I was like, okay, I can find value here.

But I, I was like, I need to start serving.

What is the thing that I care about?

I care about education and I care about kids.

Yeah.

Because I struggled as a kid.

Right.

So I said, I need to find ways to serve children to have education.

And that's something I did.

I've launched my first school with an organization called Pens the Promise, it was 14 years

ago.

And I don't know how many schools I've built for the last 14 years and brought others

to serve and travel the world in these communities and seeing the joy of these children, having

a place to go to learn, at least I had a school, even though I didn't feel like it worked

well for me.

I had somewhere to go.

So many kids that don't have that and I'm, it's something I'm doing through this mission

now.

Instead of just selling something to make money, I was like, how can I build something that

serves?

How can I do both hand?

Yeah.

And it was, is intensely satisfying, intensely because it, it just jams you into the

I self.

Yes.

You're loving outwardly, constantly, notwithstanding anything that comes back.

Exactly.

Without expectation of return.

Yeah.

That's what we're built to do.

Serving.

I don't know what I think about that.

How can I continue to serve at the highest level?

Use my gifts and talents.

And serve people at the highest level.

It's the most rewarding feeling.

I know.

I know.

It's the most rewarding feeling.

That's transcendence.

It is?

It is.

That's what they need.

But but but.

But mother nature and the current environment and the culture and the technology.

We'll force you away from that.

And that's why we need to live in a very propulsive way, we need to live in an entrepreneurial way where we're living the startup of our own lives, doing something that, you know, people, people are very, very, and very positively interested in a lot of content on the internet that, that, that, and urges them to do uncomfortable hard things, right?

I mean, all the broadcasts are out there like grind it out harder, work harder and tons of dudes are like, yeah, give that to me.

I mean, it's interesting because Jordan Peterson, my friend Jordan Peterson, I mean, he's very, very, very successful giving hard advice, giving really hard advice.

And I understand why, because people have this sense that there's something bigger, there's something better, they're looking for meaning.

And so they're willing to walk towards something that's incredibly uncomfortable, by the way, this is a second avenue toward meaning is understanding suffering.

Do hard things is doing hard things, but understanding suffering, because when you understand the way that suffering actually works and you're no longer resisting it, you will find meaning, your brain will work right at the bottom line.

Yes.

And that's what a lot of people are grasping toward, a lot of young people on the internet are grasping at this, this kind of thing.

And that's the kind of thing that we're talking about here, that when you're doing something that's an uncomfortable thing, it's a morally uncomfortable thing, it's an emotionally uncomfortable thing,

it's a spiritually uncomfortable thing, or yeah, it's a cold plunge or whatever.

You're doing this thing, so you're exploring the space, you're transcending yourself, you're exploring the space of actually non-resistance towards suffering.

Yes.

And you're saying, I don't know why I feel better, because the right hemisphere of your brain is illuminated and you have an understanding and then co-ate understanding, a wordless, ineffable understanding of the meaning of your life.

I mean, you work with a lot of high achievers, I feel like a lot of people that watch and listen to this show, they're cautiously trying to achieve something greater in their life, that's where they're here.

And I love this kind of like speech that I heard Jim Carey give, I think it was at the Golden Globes one year where he said, you know, I'm two time Golden Globe winner, Jim Carey.

In fact, I can become three time Golden Globe winner, Jim Carey, then I'll be enough.

It's like this kind of anecdote of like how many was making a joke and people laughed.

They laughed.

Yeah.

But it's like, you know, I'm talking about this.

I do, I do.

I know that's very, he's a very profound guy.

I kind of want to interview him so he's a very good one.

I want to interview him.

I bet he won.

He Jimed.

Come on, Michelle.

I know I want to interview him so vastly.

The best show.

I think it'd be fascinating, but I love his thought process around that.

And I'm sure he struggled many years because he never maybe didn't feel enough for a long time.

Yeah.

But I think he's, I think he's talked openly about his struggles, actually.

Yeah.

And there was another interview he did where he said he was going to retire a few years ago and someone said, no, you can't retire.

Like you're too talented.

But the journalist was saying, like, please don't retire.

And he goes, I'm going to say something that most celebrities will never admit to.

And he said, I've done enough.

I have enough.

I am enough.

Mm-hmm.

And most celebrities will won't admit to that.

Right.

Now, ease of him to say at his age and his career and his self.

But it's not, you know, it just gets harder and harder.

Right.

It just gets harder and harder.

A good need for validation.

A good need for being in the game.

For sure.

You talked about the more famous you are, the more famous you need to be.

Gosh.

The richer you are, the richer you need to be.

That's just, and the reason is because you're, you're on the hedonic treadmill.

There isn't enough.

There isn't enough in the world.

It's a, these rewards, these worldly rewards.

This is what St. Thomas Aquinas, he called the world's idols.

And, and the world's idols are the things that beguile you.

And they have a kind of a divine feel to them.

But they lead you away from what you truly want.

Which is the mission and meaning of your life.

They lead you away from it.

Because they look like they're going to bring you to it.

But they actually don't, so they're like drinking salt water.

The more that you drink, the thirstier you get.

And, and actually every single one of the, all the strivers watching us right now.

And you and me.

There's one, the beguiles, that's more than the others.

And if you have information, if you have knowledge about which is your idol, you got power.

You want, you want to play what's my idol?

What's your idol?

Yeah.

I'll play with you.

What's your idol?

So, let's find out.

Let's find out.

Kids, you can play along at home.

I played.

Who knows what you're idol?

So, I play this game with my students.

Because if they know their idol, their power, your idol is what will always lead you astray.

And when you look back to the times of your life where you suffered the most,

it's because you were beguiled by that idol the most.

And it's always one of four things.

Money, power, pleasure, or honor.

And honor means, like internet famous baby or something.

Yeah.

Prestige, admiration of the right people or admiration of lots of people.

Success, addicted people who get famous when they're young, they seek the admiration of strangers.

That's the honor idol.

And we can talk about that one because that was super dangerous.

What was the third one?

Pleasure.

Pleasure, money, pleasure.

Money, power, pleasure, honor.

Those are the four.

Now, this comes from Aristotle via Thomas Aquinas in 1265 and his summa theology.

He was an unbelievably adroit behavioral scientist way before his time.

And all this stuff that I'm talking about here has been completely validated by modern neuroscience behavioral science.

Okay.

But it was the 13th century.

It's unbelievable.

Okay.

So, here's how it works.

Here's how it works.

What's my idol?

So, what I'm going to do is I'm not going to ask you what it is.

I'm going to ask you what it's not.

Okay.

Before we do that, what is the idol of most Harvard Business School students coming in?

What is most of their idol?

They think it's money and it isn't.

What is it?

Well, see.

Okay.

Okay.

Josh.

So, we're going to take the idols away.

And one of the reasons is because this is an elimination technique that's the most accurate way for you to figure out all kinds of things in life.

This is cognitively a very powerful technique for finding something.

So, I want you to look at these things and I want you to get rid of one you care about the least, which doesn't mean you don't have it.

Doesn't mean you have the population average.

Which, you know, you take away money, for example, you're the population average in the United States.

That's pretty darn good.

But the problem is this, you're not extraordinary in it, which means it sucks if it's your idol.

Gosh.

Okay.

So, money power pleasure fame, which one do you get rid of first?

Which one do you care about the least?

What if you feel like you have all four?

Because you do have all four inside it.

Because you're Mr. Bigg.

And of course you care about all four of them.

But which one would you could you kick away?

Most easily.

I can make a prediction for you already.

What's not your idol?

Power means influence over the people.

I guess power is going to be the one.

Because I'd rather have honor than that.

Yeah.

I don't want to look with your honor is kind of power.

No, no, no, no.

It's power spec.

It's like, oh, how is influence over other people so they do what you want?

Now, how do I know that about you?

Because you're a highly intelligent.

You'd be a CEO of a big company right now.

And you're not.

You're running an enterprise.

That's an idea enterprise.

It's not on a skeleton crew.

I mean, there's a bunch of people around us right now that are doing good work.

But the whole point is you'd have a big company.

You'd be running a big public company.

And you'd be the chairman of CEO.

And Lewis House could absolutely have that gig.

Yeah.

If power were the thing, okay, good.

So you got three left.

Money, pleasure.

I already know what.

I already know my.

What's that?

Lewis eliminates a little bit more.

Okay.

Which one do you get room next?

It gets harder.

I feel like.

Gosh, that's interesting.

Because I was just telling Martha last night, I go, you know, I could live in a two bedroom apartment and be fine.

Yeah.

You know, I'm like, it's actually not money.

Yeah.

I mean, I like having it.

Like as a security, I guess.

I don't see the thing is security.

I don't buy stuff.

Security isn't.

Security isn't a money item.

Yeah.

Security is a pleasure item.

Yeah.

Okay.

What it is is, if you and one of the things that people manage, they'll say, well, I can't.

I'm not going to be that pleasure.

How often do you check your stock portfolio every day?

Right.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So I don't ever.

Yeah.

And so comfort, security and feeling good are all the same item.

That's interesting.

Because money.

I know it's not.

I mean, listen.

It's driven business entrepreneur that needs to make money to pay for people's lives and my

livelihood.

But I just the score.

I turn down money all the time.

Yeah.

Like the reason I know it's not my own because I get sponsorship but deal offers all the time

to pay me.

And I'm like, no, I don't want to.

I don't want to make money to do that.

I get it.

And so for me, it doesn't mean I don't want lots of it.

Mm-hmm.

But I want to do it the right way.

I get it.

And it's nice.

It's nice.

But the two bedroom apartment wasn't.

I was living the dream and it's too better.

It wasn't a lot worse than a huge house.

I was living the dream and I had less things to manage.

Yeah.

No, I'm grateful for my home.

Right.

But I was still living the dream.

Okay.

We've got number two.

It's gone.

Now it's gets real hard.

Because there's a lot of pleasure mean versus on pleasure means there's three things that

pleasure could be.

Number one is feeling good, feeling good.

Number two is comfort.

Number three is security.

That's the pleasure.

And then fame is there are very many different kinds of fame.

One is, you know, the internet famous, which, yeah.

Which by the way you are, there is prestige in the eyes of the right people.

And there's the admiration of people.

Those are different kinds of fame.

But they're all the same model.

And so what's the difference between pleasure and honor?

Pleasure and honor is honor is the reflection of other people's feelings toward you.

Uh-huh.

Pleasure is how you feel.

Man.

So you got to get rid of that doesn't mean I know you want both.

Yeah, yeah.

I want to feel good and I want.

And you want other people to, you want other people's feelings about you.

You care about what you think.

Yeah.

I want to feel like.

So you got to get rid of one of a what really is motivating you more.

And again, this is not that, this is not to live a, a life of vice and.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

No, this just means you're trying to find what actually would lead you straight.

Okay.

It's the one that I care about the most.

Like the one that actually kind of, the one that drives you a little bit more.

The one that I want more.

Yeah.

But the one that I want to, that's less holding me on.

Um, I feel like it takes work.

I know.

Yeah.

I mean, I might need to dive deeper on this because there are.

In some ways, I'm working more and more to care less what people think about me.

That's why I'm taking the honor of the reason, right?

Tell me.

It's because it's your idol.

Maybe that's probably, that's probably it.

In the last four years, I have done so much work.

Maybe I talked about this with you when we're at the mastermind where I've had to create so many boundaries with.

Influential people, billionaires, celebrities or just everyday people that want things or that expect something from me.

Right.

They expect me to be the good guy that always delivers that's like willing to do whatever it takes to help them.

The fact that you're concerned.

It indicates that you're self-aware, but that is the tendency.

Yes.

Here's the deal.

When you were a kid.

When you were a kid.

You learned something about yourself.

Yeah.

Which is that you got attention and affection when you did stuff.

Yes.

Right.

And you felt crummy about yourself when you didn't, when you weren't able to do so.

Why?

Because you were, you had a learning disability, which made it hard for you to do things with me.

You feel crummy about yourself.

Yes.

But then when you achieved, especially as an athlete, that adults gave you attention and affection.

And what you learned from that is that love is earned.

You learned that love is earned.

That's actually wrong, by the way.

Martha doesn't love you because of what you give her.

She loves you as a grace.

Love is a free gift freely given.

Yeah.

It is.

The problem is that when you wire that in, when you have the programming as a child that love is earned,

you will become a success machine.

Yes.

And the success machine has to understand whether or not it's functioning.

And how do you know it's functioning?

Because of points on the board.

And the points on the board comes from the affection of strangers and the admiration of other people and the,

and my view and numbers and the bank account.

That's an honor, idle.

Yeah.

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Number one, two, four, zero, zero, three, eight.

So in the last few years, I've really worked to knock that down.

Yeah.

For sure.

And you're working on it.

And it's going to be a lifelong journey.

I'm sure.

But it's, it was, and it was scary.

The moment I started to say, I need to create boundaries with all these people.

Right.

And get on the phone and say, you're not a good friend.

And now I'm not going to do this for you.

And take the reactions and know that they might talk bad about me.

And know that they have a different viewpoint of me.

And like the grieving, the loss of that, like, clinging on to that idol was scary.

Yeah.

For two, three years ago.

Yeah.

And so I don't feel it as much.

Like sure.

I want to, like, look good in the eyes of other people.

Right.

But not at the detriment of my own habits.

Right.

And here's the point.

That's great.

Yeah.

The point is in your weak moments.

You'll snap back into the oner idle.

Hopefully not.

Well, I mean, there's.

Yeah.

We're all weak.

That's not like you're going to go on a bend.

You know, of that.

You're going to become a monster.

Because you're not a monster.

But the whole point is that self-knowledge is critically important.

Here's mine.

Yes.

I would get rid of power.

I was a CEO.

The thing I hated most about being a CEO is having power over the people.

Okay.

When people called me boss, it bummed me out.

And the reason is because I hate people having power over me.

Uh-huh.

You always admire the people who have your idol.

And so if you look at a politician who kind of admires demagogic,

tyrannical despots in other countries, it's because that's what he wants.

Right?

You always admire.

If somebody who admires billionaires wants to be a billionaire.

Yes.

That's what I can.

Admires the richness in a life.

Okay.

Power.

I don't even like it.

Let alone have it as an idol.

Okay.

Number two is money.

So we have the same.

We've had it.

I haven't had it.

Yeah.

Number three.

I would get rid of.

I would get rid of pleasure.

Because I actually am a pretty austere guy.

Comfort isn't not important to me.

I get up before dawn every single day, including Sundays.

I work out every day.

I let bring pain.

Yeah.

Right?

I'm in that place too.

My problem is the same as yours, man.

Yeah.

I mean, I want the admiration of strangers.

Love is earned.

I got the attention of adults when I played the French horn as a little kid.

That was when I felt special.

That's when I felt like you were sitting around.

Yeah.

And then teacher.

And so the result is that I'm a success addict.

And I'm a self-objectifying success addict.

And the result is that my worst moments, Louis,

or when I spent the 14th hour at the office looking for the admiration of strangers,

as opposed to the first hour of my kids, when they were little and they grew up,

I wanted to be special more than I wanted to be happy.

Wow.

And that's my weakness.

And consciousness of this has allowed me to take my life back.

And when I take my life back, I understand what the real meaning of my life actually is.

That's why everybody needs to play this game.

What is the real meaning of your life?

The real meaning of my life is to love and be loved.

The meaning of my life is to lift people up and bring them together

and bonds of happiness and love using the gifts that I've been given,

which is science and ideas.

That's what it is.

But I can't do that when I'm just trying to get a pause.

It's like, hey.

Why do so many smart, intelligent people

sabotage their own happiness?

Because they're in, well, there's a couple of different things going on.

Because they're extremely smart.

They'll leave this.

So they'll leave their happiness on the table.

And then there's something that will actually sabotage their own happiness.

And there's two different problems.

Number one, many strivers will forego happiness.

Because they actually know what they need.

I was interviewing this woman in my research.

There's a billionaire.

I mean, in finance.

Iconic in the industry.

My age at the time.

I was in my 50s at the time.

And she was confessing to me that she was horribly unhappy.

She said, I got everything I wanted.

I'm unhappy.

And I said, well, talk to me, sister.

And she says, well, my husband and I were like roommates.

I'm cordial with my adult kids.

I think my employees are afraid of me.

I'm not taking care of myself the way I should.

I drink too much.

I'm not going to the gym.

I used to be religious when I was a child that gave me so much joy.

But I never even practiced my faith.

What should I do, professor?

And I'm like, you need a Harvard professor to tell you.

You just gave yourself your own prescription.

I mean, go away with your husband.

Get to know your kids.

Step back from your firm.

Go to AA.

Go back to church.

Do your thing.

And she said, I know.

I know.

I said, so why not?

And she thought about it.

And she said, because I've always chosen to be special rather than happy.

See, here's the calculus.

Any loser can have love relationships.

But not everybody can build a company.

People will.

Homosapiens were weird, dude.

We will.

We will choose specialness over happiness all day long.

Can you be special and happy at the same time?

Of course.

Except there are sacrifices in your specialness that you need to do what every other person can

do because we are built to love each other.

We are built to love our kids.

We are built to serve our marriages.

We are built to do that.

And that's.

It's not special because everybody can do it.

And here's the thing.

Most people would look at you and say, man, if I had to lose houses, money and prestige,

then I would actually be happy.

But I can't get it.

So I guess I'll do this dumb thing.

I'll just take my kid to the park and play ball.

That's the secret.

And because they feel like they can't be special, then they choose their happiness and they have a good life.

But people.

But here's the thing.

Probably 89% of the world has these things.

Has the ability to be happy because they're not special.

And yet they're still not choosing how to be happy.

Yeah.

They're still not leaning into.

They're still alive.

This is the life that I have.

I have a good life.

But I'm still not happy.

I know.

Because I'm missing the special.

I know.

So they have it.

And they still diminish it because they don't have what they unsatisfy with what they actually have.

And so they want that thing.

And they don't get that thing.

They're frustrated about that thing.

And they're also missing the opportunity to do the things they need to do.

And that's.

There's a lot of desperation that goes into that.

I wind up talking about that and off a lot.

And just my general work on the science of the past.

Yes.

Yes.

But when it comes to the struggle of striving and this paradox of striving,

this is your whole audience.

Want to know why?

Because your show is not called the School of Good enough.

No.

It's not the School of Average.

It's not the School of Okay.

School of Awesome.

You know, it's the School of Gradeness.

And I really admire that.

But you can't sacrifice the love in your life

on the altar of what you're trying to do in the world's eyes.

Yes.

Because that's not greatness.

That's not greatness.

If you're, if you're special.

Yeah.

But you have no great relationships.

Yeah.

I don't think that's greatness.

Yeah.

If you're pursuing money, power, pleasure, and fame, there's a problem.

Per se.

I mean, there's nothing wrong with those things.

But they should lead you to what you should truly want.

Which is your faith, your family, your friends, and work the serves.

Faith family, friends, and work the serves.

Those will bring authentic happiness.

Yeah.

And if you, it sounds like what I'm here to say,

if you focus on your faith, your family, your friends,

and work that serves, it may lead you to more money, more power, more...

I got the data.

It will, actually.

More, you know, honor.

You'll be successful.

It'll be a byproduct of you doing that.

And then there'll be your responsibility to not give too much emphasis on that.

Right.

It'll be the, you know, Ryan Holiday,

Marcus Aurelius, you're needing someone to say you're just a man.

Right.

Like reminding you you're just a man.

That's why you get married.

You're just a man, right?

Even when you're this like God or in your own world or something,

it's like, you need a reminder daily that you're just a man.

Yeah, for sure.

And it's going to be taken.

It's going to be taken away.

All of it.

Your life will be taken away one day.

Right.

That's right.

You and I were talking about this earlier that, that, you know,

a great CEO one time told me who had managed.

He was a private equity manager, meaning that he bought his old companies.

And he had seen the careers of thousands of CEOs.

And I asked him because I was a CEO at the time, close friend.

How do I understand the end of my career as a CEO?

And he said, there's two ways you can quit before you're ready.

Or you can quit under somebody else's terms.

Those are the only two doors.

So he is recommendation was quit before you're ready.

Yeah.

The point is things end.

Here's what doesn't end.

Love.

Love doesn't end.

You know, what do you want to be doing on your last day?

What do you want people to say at your funeral?

Lewis House had five million miles on Delta Airlines.

I mean,

Who couldn't use chairs?

Who cares?

And we all kind of know that.

It's funny because, you know, that was the premise of a great George Clooney movie

up in the air was that he was looking for meaning and counting it in airline miles.

Crazy.

And then he finally got that he arrived.

Yeah, he arrived in the middle of a flight, right?

Like he, the captain came out and said next to him and said, what was it like?

I know.

Like you got the most points in the world.

And the captain sat next to him.

And he's like, and then it's just, what do you want to do now?

What do you want to do now?

What do you realize how empty it was?

His new, his, he's got that George Clooney.

Put a great actor.

He's got that new movie on Netflix.

J Kelly.

Have you seen it?

It's called J Kelly.

It's the same movie is up in the air.

He's a, he's, he's a movie star playing an aging movie star.

Who's looking for the ultimate role?

Because then he'll, he will have arrived.

There'll be enough.

And he sacrificed all of his, his happiness and his love relationships to be special.

He's, he chose specialness over happiness.

That's, that's, that's the premise of the movie.

It's a very, very beautiful movie, actually.

Why is this drug or idol of specialness over happiness seem to captivate most of the world?

Yeah.

So, and that's evolution.

And there's an actual actual, we have an evolutionary biological explanation for this.

We're born, homosapiens are not, are not made to be happy.

We're, we're made to be special.

We're, homosapiens, the brain of homosapiens is the same as it was at the beginning of the

place to see an era 250,000 years ago.

When all of humanity lived in bands of 30 to 50, kin-based individuals, hierarchical,

kin-based groups of 30 to 50.

And what do you want?

You want to maintain and rise in that particular hierarchy, which is like, and the way that

you do that is with more hunting skills, et cetera, why?

Because you get more food and you get more mates.

We're that simple in its way.

And that is metastasized in modern society and wanting more internet followers,

more Instagram followers, having a lot of likes.

Yeah.

That's how we're actually, you know, being rewarded for dragging in a slightly bigger gazelle into the cave.

But that explains that, Neil, you explain so much of our relationships.

You know, for example, one of the things that we find in relationships between husbands and wives,

the reason that marriage is fail is because women are not adored by their husbands

and or husbands are not admired by their wives.

This is the fuel of happiness in these traditional relationships.

And so what she needs to hear because of the evolutionary biology, like she has a huge

commitment and investment in raising kids, carries them.

I mean, your wife just carried your babies for months and she's taking care of them.

They die without her, right?

And so the result of it is that she needs the protector who has a complete commitment to her

and how does she know the commitment through the adoration?

And so she wants to hear honey.

I would fight a tiger for you with my hands and only you.

Right.

And what do you need to hear?

That is the biggest gazelle anybody's ever dragged into this cave.

Yeah.

You're so big and strong, you're going to feed our family for two weeks.

And that motivates all of this behavior.

And we go on risk our lives again.

Again, and again and again and again.

I mean, like I do 150 toxic year, public toxic year.

And the two weeks ago, I was in Columbus, Ohio.

And I was smart from.

It's great.

People are awesome.

Cold right now though.

Cold.

17,000 Catholic missionaries in the audience.

17,000, right?

And I was super nervous.

You want to know why?

Why?

Because Esther was in the front row.

My wife.

Because she was in the front row.

Because she was nervous.

That was why I was nervous.

Because I want her to admire me.

All I want is my wife's admiration.

Not the 17,000.

Yeah.

And so this is the night.

The example of how the evolutionary biology man, it has teeth.

And when we understand ourselves in this context,

we understand all the things that we do.

This is why we go after those worldly idols.

It's because we want to rise in the kin-based hierarchy

of 30 to 50 individuals.

Which has been.

Now it's bloated in the billions of people.

That's crazy.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And when you know that, you got power.

Because then you don't have to be a prisoner of the more of the animal impulse.

You can get into the space of your moral aspiration.

That's what the amazing human brain allows you to do.

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Speaking of marriage, you've been married for 34 years.

34 years.

Yeah.

You've got a lot of great wisdom on marriage and relationships.

And in a time where it feels like people are struggling the most in relationships

that themselves, but also in intimacy with the committed partners.

Right.

What are the keys to having a successful happy marriage or relationship?

And why do most marriages fail?

Yeah.

So there's so much on that these days.

But the biggest problem that we see is that your marriage is not a problem that you can solve.

Your marriage is not a left brain complicated problem.

It's not an algorithm.

And our culture has actually told us that we should be able to solve every problem.

And with proper information, we should be able to solve the problem.

And when people conclude that when they can't solve their marriage,

that something is actually wrong with the relationship.

So the approach is wrong.

Your marriage is a right brain phenomenon.

You'll never solve it.

You only live in it and love in it.

It's a permanent state of disequilibrium.

That's what your marriage is supposed to be.

My wife might be totally pissed off at me at the end of the day.

I know she loves me.

We'll have a conflict.

I know we'll have a conflict.

We'll have 10,000 arguments.

Because of me, because of her, because we're human beings living in this complex relationship.

The number one thing is not understanding the nature of living with another person.

That's what it comes down to.

And appreciating the complexity of that.

And trying to force it into this complicated problem that you can Google.

That you can ask chat GPT.

See, we think that those are the things that...

Yeah, and this is a wrong kind of...

In other words, they're dealing with a wrong kind of problem.

That's number one.

Number two is that the way that we've now entered into relationships is through complicated tools.

You don't just meet somebody and let sparks fly a little bit.

It's funny because the way that the human brain is designed for relationships to start is kind of a four-step neurochemical process.

Number one is attraction.

And attraction is largely governed by testosterone and estrogen, sex hormones.

Men and women both have both, by the way.

I mean, men have both and so do women.

Men obviously have more testosterone, women have more estrogen.

That's why you spark, which is why no matter how emancipated and modern you are, you still want to look nice.

Yes.

And the reason is because that's what actually sparks in the brain.

Absolutely.

That you're...

That you want to connect to.

Interesting.

The second part is where it gets really complicated and interesting.

This is when the neurochemistry actually really starts to flow in terms of a noradrenaline, a norapenephrine, and dopamine.

And that's anticipation of reward and euphoria.

So when you're kind of interested in somebody, you have this undue interest in like, I think I'm going to...

I think I just got a text from her.

Is that text?

Who cares?

You asked, want to get dinner?

Are you waiting for the text?

That's because your neurochemistry is really, really hopped up.

You've got high levels of norapenephrine, which is stress hormone, and dopamine, which is anticipation of reward.

Then when you're falling in love, this weird thing happens, which is that your serotonin tanks by like a third.

Now, when serotonin is low in the synapse, that provokes the feeling of clinical depression.

And that starts this process of rheumatoid sadness.

When you're falling in love.

When you're falling in love, it's actually almost indistinguishable from clinical depression.

And the reason is because you're ruminating on the other person.

That's why you'll send a thousand stupid text messages when you don't hear from the person.

You're getting digger and digging yourself into a deeper, deeper hole.

That's because you're doing insane things because your brain is slightly insane.

Because you're bonding the other person.

You ruminate almost depressively on the other person.

Because you're bonding to the other person.

Because you're basically creating kin for somebody with whom you're biologically unrelated, ideally.

And the last is what you want to get to is oxytocin and vasopressin, which are these neuropeptides in the brain, where actually you are kin.

And that's your person.

This person is part of your tribe.

You've actually adopted somebody into your family.

Crazy.

That's you and Martha were.

And you feel like you've been together forever.

That's oxytocin.

It's the way that it works.

And you want to go one, two, three, four.

When it doesn't work, when relationships are a skew, it's because they go in different speeds through that neurochemical cascade.

Or somebody stops after stage two.

That's when things aren't working.

Yeah.

There's some people who go through them too fast and freak out their other partner.

These are people who have hemophilia, not with an H.

It's not a blood disorder.

Hemophilia, which is excessively quickly falling in love.

There's a lot of what I teach my students.

You know, it's about actually having this neurochemistry of actually how all this stuff works.

You've got to slow the falling in love process down.

I feel like.

Oh, yeah.

You want to walk through this.

Not sprint and jump in.

Right.

Yeah.

Well, in the older you are, the slower it is.

Yeah.

If you fall in love in your people in their 80s, we'll fall in love.

But when you're 16 years old, it'll be like four days and you're going through the entire process.

I love.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Anyway, this is how I teach an awful lot about it.

And this is a miracle.

I mean, our brains are amazing on how this whole thing works.

So in modern life, the problem is that we're with technology.

We're torquing this entire process.

Yeah.

And it's not working right.

You know, I'll give you a classic example.

Most dating apps allow you to curate your profile in a way that you're looking for yourself.

Because we're so narcissistic.

I want somebody who votes like me.

You know, for example, in, in, I'm not going to say which political side it is, but one political

side, 71% of people say they won't, they won't date somebody who's not on that political

side.

And the other side is 41%.

So use your imagination anyway.

So, but the whole point is that that we, we curate for compatibility.

But the human braid wants complementarity.

It wants sexy difference.

And, and the applications, but they do it.

It's compatibility is a left brain solution.

Complementarity is a right brain phenomenon.

And so all the technology is making us fall in love wrong.

So we're not.

I mean, if someone's been in a relationship for a few years, they've been married for a while.

And it's not working.

Right.

How do they improve their relationship or marriage?

Yeah.

So I have a lot of, my wife and I actually do a lot of this stuff together.

But there are a lot of, you know, deep work that you can actually do.

But I've got to kind of a break glass thing to think about actually believe it or not.

There's an algorithm of things that will save most relationships.

Some of it's biological and some of it's actually more in terms of learning.

So number one is, is believe it or not, it's eye contact.

So most couples when they're on the rocks is they've stopped looking at each other in the eyes.

Believe it or not, that's characteristic of relationships that have gone cold.

And part of the reason is because men in a heterosexual relationship, a man and a woman,

the man has stopped talking and looking at his wife or partner when he's talking to her.

Because and the reasons because guys are really good at that.

You know, I can talk to each other and have a, you know, men when they're together, they tend to.

Look at all this stuff.

Yeah, they're like talking to each other deeply about things watching a football game.

That's called parallel play.

Men have deep relationships as they're walking together towards something side by side.

Right? Eye contact is not as common.

And it's actually not as necessary.

Because men have less oxytocin, about a third is much oxytocin.

And oxytocin is pumped out when you're making eye contact.

Why?

Well, the reason is because women get a lot of oxytocin as they lay eyes.

I have eye contact with their babies.

So when babies nurse, they're looking into their mother's eyes.

It is powerful, man.

And that baby is staring at you with her eating your life.

I know, I know.

And they're staring at you.

They're staring at you and you're freaking me out.

And what they're doing is that's pumping oxytocin into mom's brain,

which is really important for milk production.

So this is kind of how the biology works.

But the whole point is that women get three times as much oxytocin.

And that's how they bond to people more.

And when, dude, when you're not looking at her in the eyes when you're talking to her,

you're denying her the feeling of love.

Man.

And so the number one rule.

Eye contact.

Number one rule is never say a word to her.

Say a word to her without looking at her in the eyes.

When you're talking to her, you're looking at her.

Wow.

And she'll be like, I'm happy.

I don't know why.

That's why.

Number two, ABT.

Always be touching.

Always be touching.

If you're with each other.

If you're watching TV, you're touching for sitting in church.

You're touching.

If you're walking down the street, you're holding hands.

When you're driving, she's got her hand on your arm.

Touch, touch, touch.

That's actually more important for men than it is for women.

Because when she, you know, like you're walking on the street with her,

and she puts her arm.

Yeah, yeah.

It's like, that's a vast press and pull.

Oh, man.

You know, yeah.

I know.

You feel like you're, you are like seven feet tall.

But, you know, even I feel seven feet tall.

Yeah.

And okay.

Always be touching.

Always be touching.

Number three.

Have more fun.

Yep.

Now, that's important because couples that are on the rocks,

they rehearse their grievance a lot.

And a lot of couples therapy is about rehearsing grievances.

Talking about the past, constantly, constantly.

The problem.

You're talking about problems.

You got a problem.

You go to therapy.

You have more fun.

Fun makes you forget problems.

Add more fun if you're a plate.

Yeah.

Add more fun.

Wash out the dirt in the glass by pouring a gallon bucket of water into the glass.

Not by looking at the dirty glass and talking about it all day.

And not by stirring it up.

Yeah, just the spoon.

You know, pour fun into it.

Right.

And last but not least, prayer meditate together.

Yeah.

The single most intimate thing that couples do together is prayer meditate together.

And most couples never do it.

I mean, I talked to a Catholic couple who had been married for 60 years.

You pray together.

They're like, oh, that's kind of embarrassing.

But you have sex.

You're not praying together.

Because praying feels more intimate.

And the reason is because one flesh in terms of sex is one thing.

One flesh in terms of the right hemisphere of your brain.

That's, you're looking into the soul, man.

Gosh.

And you're praying in front of each other.

It's scary.

Do you pray with Martha?

Yeah.

And when you first started doing this.

I'm not staring in her eyes like praying together.

Well, no, I mean, you're praying together.

You're praying together.

But you're praying to God together.

And the first, it was probably awkward.

Very.

And the reason is because it was intimate.

It was the most intimate thing.

And I was also used to kind of praying alone.

Right.

And like, do my own practice, spiritual.

Now it's like we're doing it together in some ways.

Yeah.

And that's a really, really super, super deep, right brain bonding experience.

Yeah.

This is the protocol.

You know, dude's protocols.

This is the protocol.

Four things.

Eye contact.

Always be touching.

Have more fun and pray together.

That's it.

That's it.

That should make any marriage last and be better.

Yeah.

I know.

And I know people would be like, yeah, well, what if there's abuse?

I got it.

Sure.

What if there's infidelity?

I got it.

I mean, I understand these radical exogenous circumstances.

What we're talking about is the cooling of the ardor that naturally happens.

Yes.

And so if there's not these big, audacious, crazy problems, you're just kind of cold.

As I get it back.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Walking through life.

Yeah.

Going through the motions.

Uh-huh.

You're basically your brains are not neurochemically connecting.

With all this information that you have and you've studied and you've taught and you've written

about what is the one thing you wish you would have done earlier in your life that maybe you don't

work right?

But you're like, now that I know I could have done this better with my wife or with my kids

or with my purpose or with my whatever.

What is the thing that's like, uh, this is the thing I really wish I would have done differently.

Yeah.

There are things.

There really are things.

Um, I wish I'd chosen more happiness or a specialness really when my kids rule.