Imagine a scale between 0 and 10. Zero is the unhappiest person you know. 10 is the happiest person you've ever met. What's your number?
Today we are joined by social scientist and professor Arthur Brooks, previously at Harvard Business School.
The depression and anxiety epidemic that we see all around the world — that's not because of work burnout. You think that when you get into the corner office, you're going to be happier. You're not. I have the data.
He has researched happiness for the past 30 years and has coached hundreds of CEOs, billionaires, people that have achieved incredible success.
People think, "If I get a boat, will I be happier?" No, you won't. "If I get the world's most expensive car, will I be happier?" Nope. A fourth house. These things won't do it. But there are ways that you can spend money on that you actually should that will bring greater happiness. There's five ways you can spend your money.
What are some of the qualities of the happiest people that you've met?
There are four behaviors that I see of the happiest possible people. Here are the rules that we need to teach our kids.
So, I want to go back to the morning. So, set the scene for me.
I get up from 7:30 to 11:30.
I just want to start off with the course that you taught at Harvard, right? And I heard that it was one of the most popular courses ever at the school, almost to the point that there was a Zoom link that was shared illicitly. Is that true?
Yeah. I know that for the longest time this is a class, an elective, that the students would take in the second year, and there's a lot of competition to get into some of these electives, and my class usually had 180 students enrolled and 400 on the waiting list.
So they were looking for ways to kind of get the insight from the class, and they say, "Are there other ways that I can get it?" And it turned out that a lot of them were using the COVID link and passing it around, and so that was the illegal Zoom link they thought I was not aware of. They want to be happier, and that's what people want. That's what people want in their lives. They want to be happier people. They want to have happier children, and they want to bring more happiness to others. And it turns out that just studying business doesn't do that. I mean, business is great. I'm a business school professor. I've been a CEO. You know, I've done a lot of things with my career. But one of the things that I know is that the rewards of the world are not the secret to happiness. And they're figuring that out over the course of their MBA.
Well, I've been doing work on the science of happiness ever since I got my PhD almost 30 years ago. And I have seen big changes in young people and their orientation toward happiness. So my students for sure, my adult kids for sure, but people all over the world largely — the change started happening in 2008, thereabouts.
Is it the financial crisis?
Yeah, that's what I was thinking. It turns out it's devices that actually changed the way that we live. It was kind of a hurricane, a downward force in human happiness. When devices started to take over people's lives, people started to get more depressed and more anxious and lonelier. And the reason is because they were putting a screen between themselves and other people. The secret to happiness is love and relationships. That's what it comes from. And when you're more isolated, what you're getting on your phone is a simulation of relationships. It's not real relationships. And your brain knows the difference. And so a lot of the work that I do is how we've broken our brains with technology, and it's made us a lot less happy.
I want to ask a fundamental question.
How do you define happiness?
Yeah. You know, and that's the first thing that I did when I came into this field. There have been a lot of people writing about happiness over the years, and the biggest problem is they don't have a good definition of happiness. Everybody has kind of their own sense of it.
It could be a hundred different things.
It could be. And when I ask my students on the first day of class, "What do you think you're studying?" — and I always say the same thing — they say, "Well, professor, I can't put it into words, but I know it when I feel it." And what they're saying is that happiness is a feeling. But that's wrong. Happiness and the feeling of happiness are not the same thing. Feelings of happiness are evidence of actual happiness. Like the smell of dinner is evidence of dinner. It's not the same thing, right? And if you're looking for feelings, you're just looking for evidence of something, you'll never actually get it. You need something that's more fundamentally rigorous, something that has content.
And so I went back to the best scientific definitions. And I also noticed what were the attributes of the lives of the happiest people. And what we found in this research is that the best definition of happiness is kind of like the definition of food with macronutrients, which is a combination of carbohydrates, protein, and fat.
Right. The same thing with happiness. Happiness is a combination of enjoyment, satisfaction, and meaning. So you need to enjoy your life to be a happy person from day to day. You have to take satisfaction with your accomplishments. Meaning, you get joy after a struggle, right? And you have to find the why of your existence, the meaning of your life. And those are the three big objectives, as it turns out. So when I'm teaching people how to be happier, I'm working on those three things. I test them to see where they're weak, and I give them techniques to get those things stronger.
I see. What are some of the qualities of the happiest people that you've met?
The happiest people that I meet — and there are so many — about half of it is genetic, you know. So, yeah. So, I don't want that to be true because I want everything to be under our control. You know, we're entrepreneurial people, and this is the entrepreneurial endeavor. Exactly. Right. But the truth is about half of your happiness, half of the difference in happiness that we see between individuals is explained by their genetic similarities.
The science of the brain.
Yeah. Exactly. And so we know this from identical twins that are separated at birth and adopted into separate families, and they're reunited as adults. You could find that most of their personalities is actually genetically predetermined, including their happiness. Half of their happiness. I wish it weren't true. But by the way, that's okay because if you know anything about yourself genetically, you can manage your circumstances to manage your genetics. I mean, people who have alcoholic parents, they tend to be more alcoholic, but that means they should know that so they can not drink, because you can actually change the outcome by behavior.
Another quarter of your happiness is circumstantial. So nice circumstances lead to greater happiness, and not nice circumstances lead to the opposite. But those are transient. It turns out the circumstances don't last very long. So if bad things are happening, it won't last. If good things are happening, it won't last. But that's 25% at any one time. And then 25% are habits. That last 25% are what matter the most because you have direct management over 25% of your happiness, also giving you better circumstances and allowing you to manage your genetics. All you need to think about are the behaviors.
There are four behaviors that I see of the happiest possible people. These are people who practice their faith or life philosophy seriously. These are people who take care of their family relationships. They're paying attention to their families, not neglecting their families, and not having bitterness inside their families. These are people who have real friends, not deal friends. These are people who are doing the work. And these are people who are dedicating their work to just two things: earning their success, which is to say creating real value, and serving other people. That's what they have. And I don't care if they're plumbers or politicians or professors, CEOs or journalists or anything in between. You need to believe that you're doing something that creates value and you're being recognized for it, and that you're serving other people. And those are the big four: faith, family, friends, and work. Those are the behaviors that will give you better circumstances and allow you to manage your genetics and give you the most happiness that you can possibly get.
Okay. So, it seems like finding the meaning and sharing that with other people.
For sure. I mean, that's really what it comes down to. And, you know, one of the reasons that I teach leadership and happiness at the Harvard Business School is because I want to create happiness teachers like me. I want people to see their leadership careers — and by the way, there's a secret to that too, which is when leaders actually become happiness teachers, the leaders get happier.
How do you become happier?
Ever since, so much happier. I'm 60% happier than I was when I started teaching happiness, as a matter of fact, and I measure it every year. I have good measurement techniques for that. And it turns out that it absolutely works.
Well, you measure it by asking. For example, here's a classic question: Imagine a scale between 0 and 10. 0 is the unhappiest person you know. Think about that person. Okay, 10 is the happiest person you've ever met. Think of that person. What's your number? But not right now, at this point in your life, more or less. Not on your best day, not on your worst day, but really on the average day. And when you think about it, you're going to get a number in your head. And that number is very stable. It moves around a little bit, but not that much, unless you change your circumstances a lot and systematically so. And that's what's happened to me. You know, I've moved up by about 60% since I've been teaching happiness and dedicating myself to bringing this to people all around the world. This is my secret to happiness.
What kinds of people have you met? And are there any commonalities among them?
Yeah. So, I specialize in strivers, and strivers are people who just never stop. They never stop working, and they're some of the most successful people in the world because they work so hard at it, and they have particular personality attributes. They have a tendency to think that the harder I run, the better it's actually going to go. They often have a hard time enjoying their lives. They have a hard time taking satisfaction in their accomplishments because they're never quite there, as it happens. And a lot of the people that I work with, the biggest pathology I would say is that they tend to only really get satisfaction from succeeding in business, succeeding in their industry. That makes them quite workaholic. And workaholism is really damaging, especially to your relationships. So a lot of the people that I see are the most successful people in the world that are struggling with their marriages. Okay? They're struggling having a relationship with their children. And I have to coach them on how to do less in their work so they can do more in their lives. That's one of the things that I find.
Now, by the way, I'm very sympathetic to that. I'm a workaholic, too. I like to work. I've been working 60, 80 hours a week my entire career, no matter what I've been doing. And for me, I have to take my own advice. And sometimes people have to give me counsel to take my own advice and read my own books.
Relationships are really just, as you said, they're so integral to us feeling happy in our lives. What are some kinds of people that you should keep very close to you and one should probably keep at a distance in order to maintain happiness?
Of course. Yeah. And we do need to have good judgment when it comes to the people in our lives. For sure. Now, the fundamental relationships that we need to keep close to us are our family members. For some people that's easy. Some people watching us, that's an easy thing to do. But for a lot of successful people it actually isn't. You know, I know a lot of people who have cold marriages, as a matter of fact. And the reason is because the striver in the marriage is gone all the time, and the spouse of the striver is lonely. Yeah. And they become very lonely as that works. Or they don't know their children very well.
So, one of the things that I recommend is remember that when you're old and dying, your colleagues aren't going to be there. You know, the people who work with you are not going to be standing around your bed. And at your funeral, nobody's going to talk about how many frequent flyer miles you have. That's not what's going to be happening. Either your family is going to be gathered around you talking about what a great husband, wife, child, parent, brother, sister that you were, or not.
Exactly. Right. As opposed to the resume virtues. The second is actually to get real friends. And, you know, in my work I talk an awful lot about how strivers struggle with friendship. I mean, all the CEOs watching us today, they have people around them constantly. You never have a moment's peace, as a matter of fact. And you'll say, "These are my friends," but are they real friends or deal friends? And real and deal are not the same thing, you know, and we all kind of know what the difference is. Deal friends are useful people to us, and that's good. There's nothing wrong with that. We all work with all kinds of people that we like. I have lots of people I work with that I really like a lot.
But real friends are useless to you. They don't profit your business. You don't need them in some sort of worldly way. You just love these people. And you need to have a lot of real friends, which takes work and it takes time away from your ordinary work, as a matter of fact. So those are two of the earthly relationships I talk about. One other that I talk about an awful lot is having a relationship with the metaphysical. And one of the things that I find is that strivers often wish they had more religious activity in their lives, but they don't do it because they don't have time to do it. And so I have to talk about...
Sorry, when you talk about metaphysical, you mean faith.
I mean faith. I mean faith or spirituality or maybe even just a deep philosophical life is what it can come down to. I know a lot of high, hard-charging people that learn to study the Stoics and get a tremendous amount of meaning from that.
I do too. Yeah. Yeah. Me too. But, you know, personally as a Catholic, it's a really important thing for me to have a traditional religious faith. And a lot of very successful people, they do have kind of a religious faith, but they don't practice it and they wish they did. And I have to recommend to them that they build a relationship, quite frankly, with God, and they will find a lot of satisfaction and a lot of meaning in that.
Yeah. When you advise those very successful people, find these relationships, invest in them, and they say, "I don't have time. I'm running a company. These people depend on me. You know, this is how we pay the bills." What do you say?
I say, "I have the data on this." And the more that you actually spend time in the relationships, the more efficient and productive you will become. You know, the people who say, "I don't have time, actually, for friendship or for my family," they're spending the 14th hour of the office as opposed to the first hour with their kids. And I've got the data. I'm a quantitative economist. I know what's happening in that 14th hour. You know what it is? Nothing. [laughter] There's no productivity going on in that 14th hour. You're tired. But the point is, you don't have a relationship with those people. And so it's easier to be at the office than the first hour with your demanding children or with friends, and you don't even know what to talk about.
And so the point is you need to allocate your time and set up your time and your schedule in the same efficient and the same wise way that you would your own business, right? You know, you wouldn't actually assign 14 hours of work to one of your employees, I hope. And yet you're your most important employee, and you're assigning 14 hours of work to yourself. And that's a mistake.
When you tell the people that you coach about relationships, not just personal, but do they ever talk about the work relationships? Because it's such a big part of success and about making your mark on the world.
For sure. For sure. They talk about that all the time. And one of the things that they don't know is what are the most common emotions that leaders face that nobody tells them. There's one mistake that you're making, folks. And it's this: You think that when you get into the corner office, you're going to be happier. You're not. I have the data. I wish it were true. I've been a CEO. I was a CEO for 11 years.
I was not happier. And why is that? Well, the reason is because the predominant emotions for CEOs are loneliness and anger. Loneliness and anger. Loneliness. Why? Because all your old friends, they're hanging out with each other. They don't want to hang out with you. The worst time in the average worker's day is time spent with the boss. And the reason is not because the boss is bad. The boss might be great. The reason is because people don't like to be bossed. They don't like to be evaluated. You don't want to have lunch with somebody who might fire you. That's not fun. That's not fun for people.
And so a lot of people, they get elevated into the chief executive position, and then they find that they're really lonely because their old friends are different. They've changed. They become very isolated, and they become angry because they thought they were going to have all this control and they don't, over their own lives and over the lives of other people. These are fundamentally relationship issues, and you need to learn how to relate to people differently when you actually become a leader, is the way that works. And so relationship management for leaders is something I talk about an awful lot.
So is that your way of saying that loneliness is probably — I mean, they say it's lonely at the top, right? And so if you can't change that, you just find a different strategy to make those relationships work where you are.
That is true. But also you need new relationships, is what it comes down to. That's one of the reasons that the CEOs who tend to be happiest are those who have good marriages, because your best friend is your roommate, is the person you're going to bed with every night. That should be your best friend. That's somebody who actually knows your secrets and who cares about you as a person, not as a CEO. I mean, you're not going to come home to your wife and she's going to say, "Hi, boss." I hope not. I mean, "Hi, honey." That's what you want, actually. And that's the kind of relationship you need to cultivate.
You need friends outside, which is one of the reasons I coach a lot of people to go back to the people that they loved the most in college. You know, when they were in college, that's when people make a lot of their early young adult best friendships, and going back and recultivating those friendships and going and golfing with those people.
As opposed to business context.
Exactly right. And I mean, business context, that's business, but you need to actually cultivate the love in your life and the friendship in your life as well. And then I actually recommend that a lot of chief executives, that they get into, they form groups of chief executives.
Yeah. Where these kind of — there's, you know, the group YPO all over the world. It's a fantastic organization. They have the YPO forums. Join one, and they're talking about the struggles that they face in a low-pressure environment because, you know, nobody's going to judge you. You're going to learn from each other, is the way that works. So those are ways that you can take care of that. But don't be lonely. Don't put up with that.
Yeah. Okay. For you, right? Let's say that you had a month off, right? Free from all obligation. How would you choose to spend that time?
Yeah. So, I could take a month off, free from all — because, you know, I have a lot of control at this age of my own life. And I've chosen not to take a month off typically, but when I have, I've spent it the same way in the past. The last couple of times I've taken a month off, I walked the Camino de Santiago, which is a long walk across northern Spain. It's a pilgrimage. It's a religious pilgrimage.
And all you're doing is walking and praying and thinking and being with yourself.
And being with yourself. And it has been incredibly generative. Now...
How many times have you done that?
Twice. I've done that twice. In 2019 and 2021 I did it. And I'm looking forward to doing it again. My wife doesn't love it, I have to say, because, you know, just walking for weeks and weeks is not her cup of tea.
Do you talk while you walk?
Of course. Yeah, for sure. And we spend a lot of time together, and it's really good for our marriage, for sure. But I mean, it's like she likes the beach and likes doing normal things as well. But that's really what I like to do because it gives me philosophical time. And there's a lot of research that shows that pilgrimages, whether they're secular or religious, they're very, very good for the brain, very good for the mind, very good for the soul. And I recommend that everybody take time away. And if you don't know what to do and you have a lot of unanswered questions in your life, go for a long walk. That's the most human thing you can do.
So walking is great. I also have a question about sleep, right? So there's a saying that in order to be happy, you just need a good night's sleep. Based on your research and what we know about the brain and the body, is that true?
Well, it's sort of true. The problem with that is that it confuses happiness and unhappiness. So happiness and unhappiness are not opposites. They're actually processed emotionally in different halves of the brain. Okay? Largely, unhappiness is produced on the right-hand side of the brain, and it's an excess of negative emotionality and negative experiences that's actually the producer of unhappiness. And you're unhappy for good reasons. You need negative emotions as kind of an alarm system for threats to make sure that you stay alive. And you need fear and sadness and anger and disgust. You need these things for...
Sure. The problem is when they start to become obstructive, when they start to take over your life. Sleep is one of the ways that we manage unhappiness more than it makes us happy. And there are a lot of things like exercise that are better for managing unhappiness than for bringing happiness. So one of the things that I talk about with executives is we do an inventory: what's your bigger challenge, happiness or unhappiness? And then you manage to your bigger challenge. And so with a lot of executives, they're pretty happy, but they're also pretty unhappy.
