Harvard's Arthur Brooks: Happiness is not a societal phenomenon, but an individual one

Well, thank you and congratulations to you in 1929. It's top in the charts, man.

That's called the arrival fallacy. I was alone. I was in a hotel in Richmond, Virginia when I got on the New York Times bestseller list and a friend of mine called and said, 'I imagine you're so happy.' And I said, I almost feel relieved and in truth a little lonely because I was by myself in this hotel in the middle of Richmond.

It's not, it's not every, you know, this is a show watched by some of the most powerful people in business. They're the best show for if you're a CEO to watch, of course. And everybody watching this show knows that if you're living for the arrival at the goal, you're fooling yourself. Now, many people watching us, they have a problem. It's called success addiction. That usually starts when you're a kid and you get, you know, rewarded and you get attention from grown-ups because you do these amazing things. And then you start achieving and achieving and you start to really get your sense of reward from getting these accolades. And so you do well in school and then you go on to get these really good jobs. But the problem with all that is not just workaholism. It's based on this idea that you're finally going to arrive and then the bliss is going to be constant. And that's wrong. This is one of the reasons that Olympic athletes typically have a clinical depression after they win their gold. It's even worse if you win the silver by the way because you're thinking about the gold for the rest of your life. And so the important thing to understand is you got to build your life so that you're enjoying the journey all along the way.

And that's a hard thing to do. We're evolved as a species. Homo sapiens has evolved to be ungrateful, suspicious, hostile, and afraid. And the reason is because in the place 250,000 years ago, our ancestors passed on their genes because of their negative emotions, not because of their positive emotions. You have to make an effort to be grateful. I mean, look, I study this stuff. I'm a professor of this stuff and I found myself two weeks ago saying, you know, first class on United Airlines has really gone downhill. What's wrong with me? It's like I'm such an ungrateful wretch. And the reason is because of my genetics. I'm designed to be ungrateful. And so everybody watching us, not everybody, but most people watching us have really charmed lives. They have really good lives and their spouses always tell them, 'Why don't you stop and smell the roses?' I bet you, Andrew, that your wife is like, 'Andrew, why can't you stop? Can't you just stop and enjoy?'

Of course.

That's all about the fact that your rewards come from winning. They come from winning the next thing. That's what we're built for, progress.

It is. But it's also really how we're built. I mean it's funny. You know, there's a big mystery in the diet literature about why diets don't work. 95% of diets approximately you gain all the weight back even though you lose the weight in the first place. The reason is because all of the gratification in a diet comes from the scale going down each day, right? And then your reward for hitting your goal is never getting to eat what you like for the rest of your life. Congratulations. Arriving at a goal is deeply, deeply unsatisfying. And that's it. It freaks people out. You know, you get the corner office, you're the CEO, and you get all the headache of being the CEO, but you can't actually achieve that thing anymore, that you're not going toward your goal anymore, and that's a problem for happiness.

So we have two problems with happiness. Happiness has been gradually declining in the United States since about 1990. So we're, you know, 35 years in on a gradual decline. That's the happiness climate problem. And it has to do with people are less likely to practice their religion. They're less likely to get married and have children. They're less likely to have close friends. And they're less likely to actually see their work as a calling than they ever did in the past. And the four habits of the happiest people are faith, family, friends, and work. Those are the big four. And you and I have talked about, we've talked about this on the show four or five times. But then there's the storms, the weather of happiness. And this is something we really have to grapple with. Technology has changed the weather of happiness.

I've just finished a book. It's coming out in March. The first stop, you know, when this thing comes out in March is we'll be talking about this and how we've changed our brains with the misuse of technology, that we're actually using the wrong hemisphere of our brain all the time where we can't actually apprehend and understand the meaning of our lives, which is horrible.

Right. The left hemisphere of the brain is the things and tasks. The right hemisphere is the mystery and the meaning. Yeah. And we need to be living in real life, in real love relationships and having metaphysical experiences such that we can understand the meaning of our lives. But the more time that we're glued to our devices using technology, the more that we're relegating ourselves to the wrong side of the brain. Political polarization is another thing that's actually just ripping us apart. You know, we're being effectively manipulated by the 5% extrinsic margins in politics who want us to fight each other. And that kind of polarization is really hurting the mood of the nation a lot. We actually need a rebellion of people who want to be happier, rebelling against their own side, whatever that side happens to be. And that's a hard thing to do. This can persist for a long time. It won't persist forever, but it's a hard thing. We need to do it.

Well, the turn actually, these turns in history, as you know, and I'm not a historian, but what you do find is the mood of a nation tends to follow 50-year cycles. That's generally the case. And 2022 looked an awful lot like 1972.

Yeah, it was very low.

Yeah, it's going to be a long time. But here's the good news, that we tend to actually have sort of an apogee when we get in the 25-year mark. So it's like it's...

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, well, and this, but this is a bigger, this is a broader point. Happiness is not a societal phenomenon. It's an individual phenomenon. And so each person watching us can say, ah, the mood of the nation, it's all screwed up. You know, New York City is going to have a socialist mayor and or I don't like the president of the United States or whatever they're talking about. You want to fix that? Pay attention to your relationship with the divine. Go hang out with your kids. Go make better friends.