#695 - Happiness Expert Dr. Arthur Brooks

Today's guest is an author and a social scientist. He's a professor at Vanderbilt and a senior fellow at the Harvard Business School, known for his popular class leadership and happiness. He's here discussing his new book, "The Meaning of Your Life," which is available now. I had a great time with today's guest, Dr. Arthur Brooks. ♪ Shine on me ♪ ♪ I was thinking of myself ♪ - Well, the whole idea of Jesus carrying the cross, that has this incredible imagery, that idea that each one of us has to take up our cross and carry it. I mean, you woke up heavy today. - Yeah. - You were carrying your cross. - Yeah, that is true. - And that is meaning. But the whole modern therapeutic culture is as the, you gotta get rid of that feeling. That's a pathology, no it's not, it's an opportunity. That's what that is, that means something. And then we can actually kind of get to the deep meaning of what that is, that can actually help you learn and grow. - Amen. - And to say, man, there's suffering today. Okay, bring it on, put me in coach. - Right. - Right. - Arthur C. Brooks. Thank you so much for joining us. I know that you are an author, a social scientist, and a professor, is that fair to say? - That's right, and I've been teaching the last seven years full time at Harvard, and I just switched out to Vanderbilt here in Nashville, Tennessee, where we're taping this today. - Nice, welcome. - Yeah, thank you. - You have a new book, "The Meaning of Your Life," "Finding Purpose in an Age of Emptiness." And one thing that I even love about the title, is it's the meaning of your life, right? It's not like this, this huge thing of like, "Oh, the meaning of life." - Everybody has the same meaning of your life, and I'm gonna lay it on you. No, I want to lead you to find the meaning of your life. - Right. - Yeah, I'm a trail boss. I'm a Sherpa in this book, and it's basically the brain science and behavioral science that shows that all of us, when we use our brains right, and we stop doing a bunch of dumb things, and we start doing a bunch of old things, old-fashioned things, that we can find the meaning of our lives, and I'm not gonna tell you what it is, 'cause I don't know. I mean, some days I don't know what the meaning of my life is. - Yeah. - I mean, I'm on this journey myself, because I'm like beating up and suffering too. - Yeah. - Right? - Hey, man, bro. - Yeah. - Yeah, even today, it was just like, man, I was like praying right before, like probably 11 minutes ago, I was praying. I was just like-- - What were you praying? - I was just like, God, just let me have some confidence in myself. - Yeah. - You know, let me have some peace today. - Yeah. - Let me not feel this pressure that everything has to be perfect, and this person that I don't know what I'm doing. - You know, it's funny, because-- - So a little more agency, I think I was just looking for a little bit more real agency, and not just like a frenetic energy, like, I'm gonna have another coffee, and I'll be right-- - Yeah, it'll be all set. But there's whatever, two, three million people whoever who watched this episode of the show, the assumption is, and this is a huge thing for them to understand. They think, if I had Theavon's life, it would be so awesome, and everything would be good. That's a lie, that isn't true. That's not how life works at all. You know, it's like we say in my business, well be to the man whose dreams come true, and he finds he had the wrong dreams. Because you always have the wrong dreams. You know, you always think, if I hit the lottery, but we know people with the lottery that wind up miserable, it's a huge problem. I mean, in people who, where the worldly dreams come true, it's a big burden. It's a big problem, the stakes get higher. And then the guy was like, I'm not going to hit the lottery, I'm not going to be a billionaire, okay, whatever. I guess I'll just go to the park and play with my kid. He hit the lottery, he won, he won. He won, and then you got to figure, okay, all right, well, the die is cast, Theavon is Theavon, Arthur Brooks is Arthur Brooks. Good. So what are we gonna do with it? What are we gonna do with it? And the only thing that we can do on the day that's heavy is go love somebody else, is to go serve somebody else. It's all the risk. Hey, man, man, yeah, even when you came in, you just asked me what was going on. Like genuinely, man, I just appreciated that, you know. Sometimes that's what I need. Like last time I was even calling my brother, like, and he was busy with his kids, but I just want to have a moment where he like, you know, just like, like told me everything was gonna be okay. You know, this funny thing, there's this Catholic saint from the year 13, something. She was the first woman ever published in English. I mean, it was St. Juliana of Norwich. And that like there's a-- St. Juliana of Norwich? Of Norwich in Great Britain. And these troops, these enemies were closing in. And it was a huge thing. And she wrote, interjournal, all will be well. And all will be well. And all manner of things shall be well. You gotta have faith, right? And you gotta offer up the suffering. You have to, you know, say, I'm gonna love somebody right now and then all will be well. What does it mean for it to be well? That I won't actually have any discomfort or suffering or having this anymore? No, because that's your lot, man. I mean, there's suffering in your life. Yeah, and there's suffering everywhere. And there's so much, there's a ton of suffering. And a lot of that is part of life. It is. And it's actually weird because it's one of the things I study is that people who have a lot of suffering, they have a lot of meaning too. They have a deep sense of life's meaning. You get like 90 years to figure out how to live with your suffering, you're lucky. That's so interesting, man. Yeah, it's interesting that your book came into my life at this moment. You know, a lot of times I've had a fear of missing out recently. Like I have a lot of FOMO, but even more so, it's become a fear of missing out on myself. You know, it's not like, I keep thinking, I'm missing this game that I'm seeing or I'm missing these people doing this. And there's some of that, but there's this deeper thing that feels to me sometimes like, man, I'm missing out on some opportunity of me or something deeper, there's something deeper and you can't get it. You can't quite get it, right? And I can't quite, you can't focus in on it. You don't, it's like, what is it? And then you're distracted and then it goes away. And it's like, oh, missed it again. Yeah, another day won't buy. Yeah, that feeling? Yes. And so what made you write this book now? So I teach classes in the science of happiness. So the past seven years have been full time teaching a class on the science of happiness at Harvard. And it's super popular. It's like the most popular elective at the Harvard Business School. So like I have hundreds of people in the waiting list for this thing 'cause they want to be happier. They know how to make money, but they don't have to be successful, but they don't know that the ultimate startup is your life, that you're the CEO of the enterprise of you incorporated and you're responsible for it. And that means taking risks where you should in return for explosive rewards, but how are they denominated, not money or power or pleasure or fame or Instagram followers, anything stupid? No. It's love and happiness. And people don't know how to get that. So I've been talking about that. So scientifically, happiness isn't a feeling at all. Feelings are evidence of happiness. Kind of like the smell of the turkey is evidence of your Thanksgiving dinner? Okay, so the smell of the turkey is evidence of the Thanksgiving dinner. That's right. And your feelings of happiness are evidence of happiness. Okay. So don't ever go for feelings. Big mistake that everybody makes and trying to find something big in their lives is like, I want that feeling. I hope I feel happier tomorrow, big mistake. Your feelings lie all, when you woke up this morning and you didn't, I woke up this morning, I felt bad too. And you're like, it's God here. And you know, okay, get it back. If I actually said, okay, my feelings are authentic, I would just really question to a lot of things in my life, but my feelings are the activity, are biochemical activity in my brain, in the limbic system of my brain. It's a bunch of signals saying that there's threats and opportunities. That's all emotions are, and they lie constantly. They lie constantly. Constantly. Your feelings are not to be trusted. Now they're worth listening to, but don't trust them as the authentic truth. The problem with a lot of young people today, is a lot of young adults today, are told that the only thing authentic about them are their feelings, which is why all that safe spaces and I'm offended and all that nonsense, that's based on the feelings based culture, which is a culture of lies. That's what it comes down to. And so what do we wanna look for if it's not feelings? We wanna look for something that's really tangible. Sort of the, you know the macros, when you're trying to eat, right? Protein carbohydrates and fat, that's food. Happiness has three macro nutrients. The things that we really gotta go for are enjoyment to enjoy our lives, not the same thing as pleasure. I've made that mistake, you know, as a reason I drink zero alcohol today, is because I made the mistake of confusing pleasure and enjoyment. - Yeah, I've done that a lot. - Yeah, for sure. I mean, as anybody who's been addicted, they know exactly what that's all about. The pleasure is not the road to happiness. Pleasure is the road to rehab. - Okay. - Now there's nothing wrong with pleasure, but it's incomplete. You gotta add people in memory to it, so you can manage your pleasures and they don't manage you. That's enjoyment. - Okay. - The second macaroni nutrient is satisfaction, and that's the joy of an accomplishment with struggle. - Okay, so the first one is enjoyment. - Not pleasure, enjoyment, right? - Not pleasure, enjoyment. - And the difference between those two one more time? - Is pleasure plus people plus memory equals enjoyment. - Okay. - So it's gotta be conscious and memorable. So that's why when you're doing something really pleasurable and you're doing it alone, you're probably doing it wrong. - Got it. - That's why people are so critically important. You almost never really enjoy, if it's not addictive, like walking in the woods or saying your prayers, good. But anything that actually is pleasurable, like what you eat, what you look at, what you use, if you're just a reason that a beer company doesn't do an ad, a beer ad for a dude alone in his apartment pounding a 12 pack, it's like, that doesn't look good in the ad. And the reason is 'cause it's pleasure not enjoyment. They show the guy with his buddies, right? Because it's pleasure, it's beer, plus people he loves, plus memories that they're making together, that's enjoyment. - Got it. - That's the recipe. - So the first one is enjoyment, right? And you'll get enjoyment if you include other people and making a memory, so it's really conscious. - Got it. - So that you can, enjoyment is permanent. When you remember it is permanent. You know, it's like when I, when I was a kid, you know, my mom was a good cook and we had Thanksgiving at our house every year, just like all of us did, right? You probably did too. And every year we'd open up the oven and it'd be a beautiful turkey, my dad would like, "Get the camera!" And we would take a, it's like we have 30 turkeys in the same oven and we don't, but the whole point was he was trying to make it memorable. And that's what Thanksgiving dinner was all about. That's your life. So it's like, yeah, yeah, there's gonna be pleasure. But if you start doing something for pleasure and you take it away from people and memories, you're gonna be an addict. - Right, so if you're sticking your apartment as playing with your turkey or whatever. - Yeah, exactly right. Or if you're sitting in your apartment all alone, you're isolated and you're gaming or you're looking at pornography because nobody looks at pornography with a bunch of friends. - Yeah. - You know, all these things are so bad. You know, that's the reason they're so bad because they take pleasure away from it and they make them not part of enjoyment, which means they lead to addiction, not to happiness. - But we feel like that's not the truth, right? - Yeah, because your brain, your ancient brain, which is the same as it was 250,000 years ago, lies to you. And all your brain cares about is you actually getting these rewards that will make you more likely to get mates, more likely to get calories, more likely to survive. Mother Nature, she doesn't care if you're happy, she doesn't care at all. And social lie to you and make you follow your animal impulses. - Got it. - And so all the stuff that we're really good at today, opiates, alcohol or pornography, all it is is a way to supercharge the impulses, the animal impulses that we naturally have. - So it's kind of a hijacking of those. - Completely. - There's a much more dense and meaningful way to get those. - Yes, for sure. And the way to get that such that it's deeply fulfilling, but not addictive is to make sure that you're getting the experience the way that was intended. So don't like refine it. I mean, we have natural endorphins in our brain, so that we get injured, we're actually able to function and run away from the predator and not be completely debilitated by the pain. That's what endorphins are for. Well, when we figure out chemically, what they're all about in the brain, and then we refine them and produce them, they turn into fentanyl. I mean, that's what heroin is. That's what opiates are. Pornography, it shears off the physical aspect of a sexual relationship between people who are in love, and all it does is it just preserves that particular part, is the fentanyl, it's fentanyl for sex, right? And that's the reason it's-- - It's a weener fentanyl or whatever. - It's just super addictive. - Yeah. - It's supposed to be addictive. - Right, so they're just high, so a lot of that is the hijacking of just a simple moment to kind of trick your system. - That's right, and so if you make it social and memorable, you'll go to the real thing, right? Then it's enjoyment, and that enjoyment is a beautiful part of life. That's a beautiful part of life. But any of us who've actually really, really struggled with addictive behavior, it's because we got that wrong. Got it, right? And some people are genetically more prone to that than other people. Did you have alcoholism in your family? - Yeah, we got it. - Yeah, so do we. - Yeah. - It's a Brooks disease. - Yeah, for sure. - Yeah. - Is your girlfriend or wife impossible to shop for? And you never know what to get her? Or maybe your own wardrobe is getting a little worn down and it's time to refresh. Well, I'm here to tell you about fabletics. They've got something for everyone. Men's, women's, accessories, holiday styles, and everyday essentials all in one place. Right now, you can get 70% to 80% off your order as a new VIP. You're unlocking incredible value the moment you sign up. And as we head into the holidays, has your partner been begging you to match for the Christmas season? We got a match. But you always said no. Well, fabletics has holiday-themed onesies. So you can cozy up under the tree in style. God, that's nice. Black Friday is coming up. Could be the perfect time to restock your wardrobe or grab those onesies. 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Only homosapiens want to suffer. Yeah. My dog doesn't want to struggle for his reward. He'd eat lying down. They want the easiest path to absolutely everything because they don't have moral aspirations. But you and I, we actually, we don't know if something is actually worthwhile unless we gave something up for it. That's why struggle is so critically important and that's why we teach our kids, good things come to those who wait, defer your gratifications, don't eat before dinner. Study really, really hard even though you're not going to like it so you can get good grades because then you learn this lesson that the reward is way sweeter. The accomplishment is meaningful to you when you've actually struggled for it and that's one of the biggest problems that we have today is we're teaching people that struggle and sacrifice is stupid. That all that does is it ruins the sense of accomplishment that people got. Where are we teaching that at or where are you seeing a lot of this being taught? I see this taught with the sort of immediate gratification that comes around from tech and social media for sure. But also in the therapeutic industrial culture that we've got that says that if you're suffering from something, it's evidence that there's a pathology. That's wrong. I teach my students it's like you're studying at Harvard if you're not depressed and anxious, you need therapy. Yeah. It's hard and you're doing a hard thing on purpose. Of course you're suffering. Good. I mean I don't go to the gym and you don't go to the gym going, this is going to feel so good. No, it's going to hurt. That's kind of the point but the whole, but life is a gym. You put yourself in front of hard things and you're going to suffer for those hard things because you want the sweetness that comes as a reward for what you get in return for the struggle. Is what it comes down to? Yeah. It feels like some point along the way we forgot the value of the squeeze is what makes us love the juice. Totally. And that's absolutely the case. It's so funny that we actually, we fail to realize this kind of thing. But in a culture of immediate gratification, we're not going to have any struggling. And so we start to lose the reps. We start to lose the ability. We get in kind of a doom loop where I don't suffer and so I'm no longer able to suffer. And so I try less to suffer. And what happens? happens to get less and less and less and less satisfaction from life. Life is just like, yeah, whatever. Why should I even try? And you find that people are just like not striving in the same way that they would have before because they can actually get a payoff without any struggle and they don't want the struggle naturally. But that's the wrong approach. It's funny because again, the animal impulses lie. The animal impulses lie. Mother Nature lies all the time. And she says the easy path is the best path because in 250,000 years ago, all of humanity lived in bands of hunter-gatherers of 30 to 50 individuals. And if you could actually sit down and not work better because you're saving your energy, if you could get more calories, get 'em, right? Under all circumstances. But that's not the case today. And so the result is we actually have to put friction back into our lives and not listen to Mother Nature who says, take the easy path. Don't take the easy path. Take the hard path. And this is one of the things that we find, I talked to a lot of young men. I mean, I get tons of unsolicited email from young guys. I graduated from college. I got nothing to do. I'm living with my mom. I'm having a hard time finding a job or even looking for a job. I'm smoking a lot of weed. I'm gaming all the time. You know, what do I do? And my answer is always go do a hard thing. You know, even if it's a hard thing, it's like, get up before dawn every day for the next month. - Your life will change. - I mean, if the sun is up every day, when you get up, you've lost the first battle, right? And there's a whole bunch of neuroscience on this too. It talks about productivity and focus and happiness. The Indians call that the Brahma Mahorta, which in Sanskrit means the creator's time. Brahma Mahorta? B-R-A-H-M-A-M-U-H-U-R-T-A. Brahma Mahorta. - Bring that up and keep that other page up before me. I do want to read that really fast. - There you go. The time of Brahma or the creator's time. It's the sacred, pre-dawn window and Vedic tradition in Ayurveda. - Yeah. - I learned this, I go to India a lot, but when I go to India, I have Hindu teachers in South of India. I've also worked for the last 13 years with the Dalai Lama, which has been really, really helpful for me. But the result of it is I've been able to incorporate a lot of that Vedic physics, all that ancient Indian wisdom into my own work as a scientist in the West. And as a Catholic, maybe a better Catholic. - That's fascinating. I find that so many of the faiths overlap in a lot of ways, with some of the core principles. - Many of the same core principles. Many differences, of course. - And not so much in some of their lore and truths to the faith themselves, but in the principles. - For sure. And a lot of the things, the intense love for the divine, the search for life's deepest meaning, and different ways to actually do that. I've learned a tremendous amount about my own prayer life by actually sitting in meditation with the Tibetan Buddhist monks, even though I'm not a Buddhist. I'm not a, and the Dalai Lama is not a Catholic, but we've shared these ideas with each other in awful lot. And he's a man of great wisdom and love and compassion. And it's made me, I think it's made me a better Christian man. - Amen. - Yeah. - Well, even when Bishop Baron was on, he was talking about how he would sit in front of this statue in the morning and just repeat a mantra for a long time. I remember how long-- - That's just holy hour. - Which is what the Indians call the Brahma Mahurtra. - Oh, I didn't even know exactly that it brings us back to that. But when he was saying that, I was like, oh, well, that's just a meditation, right? It's like creating a pattern within yourself. It's a lot of so much as action, right? It's like when I'm sitting sedentary and when I'm just scrolling on my phone, when I'm just doing things that are sedentary, I'm just stuck in my thoughts, it's not action. And action, when I can put action with something, I don't know, it creates a lot more meaning. I'm noticing for me in my own life. Even that's why I notice in my gratitude list, it's like, well, let me create even a visual action with it. If I am sitting here kind of in a meditative state and writing out things I'm grateful for, like, if I'm thinking, oh, I'm so grateful for my sister, then I will think of things of active moments where I've seen her smile or seen her laugh or joke she tells. So it's just like even if I'm just remembering actions or attaching actions to thoughts. - Yeah, for sure. - It just helps make things more real. - For sure, look, I mean, it's like an unsupervised mind is a dangerous business, right? And the whole thing about actually disciplining the mind, first thing in the morning comes a lot along with disciplining the body. That's why I recommend all of my students that I have morning protocols and doing something that you know is gonna set yourself up for success. 'Cause I wake up and unsupervised, I'm like, I'm all alone. I'm all, you know that feeling where you wake up and you're like, it's real dark, it's in here. - Oh yeah, I feel like a missing person. - You feel like you've been in deep space all night long. And there's a profound aloneness to it, right? - Well, if I don't create a little bit of structure and create some points of structure, then it's just one big whatever. It's a sunrise and sunset of whatever. - It's exactly right, that's exactly right. You have to put together the architecture to be the person that you wanna be. - Right, a lot of my life is filled with a lot of stimulation though where it's like things look fun, you get to go do all these fun, things, and it is fun, but it's like, it's a lot of it is distraction, even though it's great, it is distraction in the end from just my relationship with me, and maybe what more do I want for myself in a human sense? Or I don't know, it's just, yeah, it's a distraction from my relationship with myself and what things might be very important to me that I'm putting on the side just because it's somethings are fun. I wanna read what the, can you bring that up with the bar, do you say it? - The Brahma Mahorta, yeah. Brahma Mahorta is a sacred, pre-dawn period in Vedic tradition and ayur Vedic practice. Let me see, in traditions highlighted by teachers like Sad Guru, it is considered a time when an individual can act as a creator of their own state of mind and energy. So yeah, it's like, it's like swabbing your decks, washing your decks, seeing what's going on and preparing yourself. Oh, when I have those days where I get up and I'm popping and I get to my meeting and I get my workout done, do by 9.30, I am the king. Anything's possible. - But your brain chemistry is not the same every day when you wake up. - Right, so I have to take control of it. - Yeah, yeah, so that's why you gotta have protocols that actually get you back to a baseline. Reliably get you back to a baseline. You know, I can be perfect. I'm gonna slip like garbage last night. - I mean, I'm sleeping it up, yeah, I mean. I'm on tour. - I was like a damn farm animal or whatever. - Oh man, that's like, I'm like a farm animal in the city. (laughing) - You know, that's like that old joke. I slept like a baby every two hours and I woke up crying and reaching out for breasts or whatever. - It's bad, you know, I'm on tour almost every week, 48 weeks a year. - Are you? - Yeah, and you're like traveling and speaking. - Yeah, speaking, speaking to media. So I'm just speaking to media because there's a lot of people wanna hear about happiness. But the result of it is, you know, I'm not with my wife. I'm in hotels and you know, it's okay, but it's kind of lonely. - Oh yeah. - But you gotta have a protocol so you can become human again. - I wanted to come see you today. I'm super pumped to come see you today. I gotta be my best self, right? And you were thinking about that even before. And so the protocols actually that we can actually have the discipline is funny because you know, there's this guy, Admiral McRaven. Remember, he gave that famous speech called Make Your Bed. - Remember this, a few years ago, 2005. - Bring him up, 'cause I feel like. - William McRaven. He was a. - Jordan Peterson kind of became the guy that did that for sure. He gave a speech. This guy gave a speech at the University of Texas at Austin called Make Your Bed. And the whole point was you wanna get started on something good. That was have a protocol that's practical and specific that will set you on the right path. Though making your bed is great, but the whole point that we're talking about here is like make your bed in metaphysical sense. Like really good things. Get up, pump the iron, go to mouth, say your prayers, do your gratitude list. You know, do the things you actually need to do to get your brain, and this girl physiologically into the right possible space, not understanding the fact that you slept like garbage. You went to sleep feeling sad. You woke up feeling a lack of the presence of God. And the biology isn't there for you, so you gotta have a way to get it back. - Yeah. Yeah, he says right here, if you wanna change the world, start off by making your bed. If you have a miserable day, you will come home to a bed that is made. That you made and a made bed gives you encouragement that tomorrow will be better. - It's a metaphor. - I agree. It's getting up. It's like getting up. I go in the kitchen. A lot of times I'll leave my dishes out from dinner, and so then in the morning, the first thing I'll go do is go and put them up, start the dishwasher. It's like, that's the first thing. Then I'll, and I keep ear plugs in too, for the first, like probably 90 minutes of the day. - Do you look at your phone in the first hour? - Dude, if I do, I wait until I'm rolling my legs out, this usually like probably about 50 minutes that I've been awake, and then I'll respond to texts. - Yeah. - But it's just for communication. - Yeah, I recommend actually the whole first 60 minutes without the device for neuro-cognitive programming. And if you don't do that, if you actually don't, you'll be better focused, and you'll have better mood and productivity for the whole day, 'cause you won't get the hijack. It's the kind of thing where it's like, okay, you can go the whole, when things are really, really rough, if you do a bad habit in the first hour, you're gonna do it for the rest of the day, and the whole day is written off, right? But if you don't do it for the first hour of the day, your program, your path dependent toward the better self, And so one of the things that we all should actually do is don't look at it in the first hour. I mean, look at it, nothing's on fire in the business. Okay. Then, not for the first hour, while you eat, because your brain actually wants you to eat with other people, and if you have your phone on the table, it interrupts the neurochemicals that you need to connect to the other person, and then last hour of the day. So, you're looking at a real physical book, you're not getting blue light. If you're, you know, people who are watching us who live with somebody else like a spouse or, you know, somebody they love, they can connect with them better, that's really just those three things that will change your life. Yeah. Oh, well, I mean, I was even thinking on my side, I was reading your book before, I was going to sleep, and I was looking, I was thinking like, there's certainly been times where I will replace my sense of self, like with a sense of screen, right? Yeah. It's like how I feed. That's a simulation. That's the matrix. Right. That's what, and there's actually we know how that affects the brain. So, your brain has two hemispheres, the left and the right. The left hemisphere is what you're using when you're looking at tech. It's a simulation of the experiences in the right hemisphere, which is all like love and mystery and meaning. And so dating on the apps is a simulation of actual courting. Your social media is an actual simulation of friendship. Gaming is a simulation of actual real life accomplishment, and we're living in a simulation. That's what the whole thing is, and your brain knows the difference. So that's why it feels more like a simulation, because everything that was once more tangible and interactive and actually human, we are simulating in that. Exactly right. So, when people say we're living in a simulation, some people think it's like, oh, everything is a computer and it's gigabytes and everything. That's not what I mean. That's not what you mean. We're simulating in real life, love. Right. So, that's why we feel like we're living in a simulation. Yeah. Because in that way, it's truly a literal simulation. Not like Elon Musk says, there's a 90% chance that this is a simulation run by aliens, I don't know. Right. I don't know. We're simulating what our brains really want, which is, we're made for you, there's a reason we're not doing this on Riverside. There's a reason we're not doing this on one, like a zoom right now, because we're having a human connection right now that we can't get otherwise. It would be a simulated conversation between Theo and Arthur, if we actually did it online. Right. And it wouldn't be as good. Right. Because it would be a left brain simulation for the right brain connection between friends. Got it. And this is super important for me to even just, just make sure I'm clear on. So, because a lot of people here, you hear stuff like that, Elon says, and you see all these things like we're living in a simulation and like, you know, I was on, you know, I was on 70 grams of mushrooms and I could see the numbers at the, on the, in the light on the wall. Like you hear a lot of that, right? Like you hear a lot that, and, but as we're seeing, hearing, seeing like clips saying this and hearing this in our world, if at the same time, we are simulating things that are very real. Like, instead of meeting somebody and having to ask them out and having a real moment with them, you are just swiping left or right. That's why it feels that way when we hear those, when we hear those things saying we're living in this like in the matrix, that's why it feels that way, right? It's a digital curve fit for the thing you actually want to see. I want to experience. Got it. You're getting a virtual experience instead of a real experience. Got it. And one thing that I really loved about your book is when you say that one thing that cannot be simulated is meaning. And that's the third macronutrient of happiness and that's the hard one. Right there. Hold up with that. Nice. Nice. See that collaboration? Let's go. So, so meaning is the third macronutrient and that's the hardest. That's what's missing today. So, before we go down, so just tell me the first two again, enjoyment, satisfaction. And those are the macronutrients of happiness. The first two macronutrients. There's three. Got it. Because remember, food is protein, carbohydrates, and fat. Happiness has three also. Got it. It's not. It's a coincidence. Right. So, enjoyment is super important. You got to enjoy your life. Satisfaction. That's like you got to take a deep sense of satisfaction in your accomplishments. For sure. Which means you got to have stuff to do, goals, direction, progress. And the third, the hard one, is the meaning of life. Because that's the why of your existence. You hit that third one. Yeah. That's the why. And that's the one I didn't. Ah. That's so hard to write about because it's so philosophical. So it turns out that the meaning of life, the fact that we have walked into, since 2008, I've been keeping data on this forever. Okay. That since 2008, people have been progressively more and more likely to say my life feels meaningless. That's not coincidentally when we started to actually have screens take over our individual lives. Yeah. Why? Because that's when we started to walk into the matrix. That's when our brains started to work differently. Right. And that's the reason. And not a sense of self. Yeah. And so that meaning of life, that lies behind the explosions and depression and anxiety and loneliness that we actually see. I mean, you won't read the news. It's like, okay, why are so many young people depressed and anxious? And depression is up by three X since 2008 for people in the 30. Oh, one out of six people are on antidepressants. It's insane. And a higher percentage of that in college. For sure. And actually, here's the weird part, Theo, is that ordinarily, you see mental suffering for people who have less privilege and less education. It's more likely, if you have education, if high levels of education gone to college. Which is to say that it's the people that have more education, that have more years of education or more likely to be depressed. And they're more likely to be anxious. So depression, three X makes me feel pretty honest. I know, man. But it's a college. But still, I mean, there's still a way out of all this. Yeah, yeah. And anxiety's up by two X. So everybody's like, okay, it's because the boomers made all the houses really super expensive and we're wrecking the environment. There's too much income inequality. That's all nonsense. Those might be problems. Everybody's got to decide for themselves whether those are problems. But they're not new problems. There's nothing new about the fact that something's wrong with the environment or stuff is getting expensive. I mean, I kind of remember the 70s. It was wayward. Everything was wayward. You had to roll up your windows when you drove through LA because it was too smoggy. And it's a good point. 18% inflation. Well, even if you go back to futile times, it's wayward. You could be walking on the street and somebody would shit out their window and hit you. I know. I know it's like, yeah, third of the population died of the boob on a plague, bummer. Right? No, good old days. What are you talking about? Because I will romanticize stuff like, oh, it was so, you know, so good. I got my son got a blister and he died of sepsis. What? Uh oh, toothache. You're going to die. Yeah, dude. You'd have three or four funerals a week to go to. Oh, yeah, completely. And you know, half your kids would die. Yeah. William Lincoln, the president, Abraham Lincoln, all three of his kids died by the age of like 22. And one of them was playing, no, that was Calvin Coolidge. His son was playing tennis at the White House. Forgot his socks. I kid you not. Got a blister on the back of his heel and died of an infection. The president's son. So I'm like a romanticizing the old days is completely absurd. Yeah, we were bringing it up, Calvin, Calvin, your silent cowl. Calvin Coolidge's younger son, Calvin Coolidge, Jr. on June 30th, 1924, Calvin, Jr. played lawn tennis on the White House south grounds with his brother, John, without wearing socks, a blister formed on his toe. He was moved to Walter Reed Army Hospital where doctors could not stop the infection because antibiotics like penicillin had not yet been discovered or made available. He passed away. And people are like, oh, man, old days were so much, no, that's actually wrong. The reason that we have this explosion of depression and anxiety is because people don't know the meaning of their life and they're not even looking and they're paralyzed from looking because they're using their brains wrong because they're staring at the screen all day long. And before we go too much deeper, can you define meaning for people? Yeah, for sure, because it sounds so philosophical, it's like a New Yorker cartoon. What's the meaning of life, right? Right. And this is also about what's, yeah, but the book, but I did love it in and I'll reiterate is that it's your meaning, right? Right. Exactly right. And it's the answer to three big, why questions in your life. Well, so we'll go through the big three, why questions. So meaning answers three big, why questions? Yeah. Because meaning is always about the why of life. Have you had Simon Sennick on your show before? You know who he is? Simon Sennick, he wrote a book called Start With Why. We don't have him. He's fantastic. And why is fundamentally about meaning? It's like, why? You know, those days when you wake up as dark, Simon Sennick, he's great. I've been working with him for years. And you're like, why? Lord, why? Right? That's a meaning. That's a cry for meaning, right? The first big, why question is why does all this stuff happen? That's, you know, that's called coherence. You got to have some sort of a theory about why things happen the way that they do. I believe the things happen the way they do because of the mind of God and because of the laws of science. And those things work together. That's my coherence theory. That's my why about why things happen the way they do. Paranoid conspiracy theories are a coherence or a way to find coherence. It's like because shadowy forces are doing things behind the scenes, right? But that's a why. That's a, that's, that's number one. So, but, but any of those are okay. You just have to have a why. You got to have a why that actually makes sense to you that you actually believe that you think actually kind of holds water in this works. But we used to have a, we used to have a news, kind of a new system. I feel like in America or it used to feel like we had a new system in America that we believed and trusted. So I feel like when that sort of dissolved, then it made probably the why a lot, it made coherence worse. It made coherence a big problem for people. Coherence a big problem because you, that's a huge thing. You don't know what is real anymore. Why things are happening? Yeah. Why are these things happening? It's like, well, well, the, the mainstream media said, you know, like, yeah, right. Yeah, right. Yeah, the last thing I'm going to trust is them. They're like, you know, they know it's a good obfuscation and, you know, it's like biased whatever for sure. It's a big problem. Right. I mean, I think we all understand that at this point. And, and by the way, that's going to lead to good things. You know, it's like, I do a lot of mainstream media and we all do a lot of mainstream media. I think it's actually getting. better as a result of the fact that people are more skeptical at this point. But it hurts in the meantime, because it ruins the sense of coherence, the through line about why things are happening the way that they are. That's number one. - Right, so that's one of the issues that while we're having trouble with meaning right now is because things feel incoherent. - You don't know who you can trust. You just don't know who you can trust. The second is purpose, which is why am I doing what I'm doing? And that's the question you started with today. It's like, what am I doing this? I mean, it's gotta be perfect, but why? That's this, that means goals, direction, and the ability to make progress. And when life feels futile, like this is dumb, that means that you're lacking a sense of purpose. You're lacking a sense of direction in your life. And it's funny because experiments on like undergraduate students in college shows that you can dramatically raise their sense of meaning and happiness by giving them an arbitrary goal, which gives them more purpose. Like you're getting a B minus in calculus, we're gonna get a B plus for you in calculus. And you set them up on a protocol, which is why the morning protocols we talked about. - As a professor, you mean. - Yeah, as a professor, like campus counseling will do this an awful lot. Like we're gonna raise your grade by one full letter grade. And just that gives them a sense of purpose and they start getting more discipline, they start getting happier. - You mean you're gonna raise the goal of their grade? - Yeah, you got, they need a goal and that gives them a sense of purpose. Even like an arbitrary dumb little purpose like that really helps people an awful lot. Are there easy ways for us to do that for ourselves? - Yeah, to set basic goals about ways in small ways you wanna get better. I wanna get, so for example, purpose in recovery is one day at a time. That's like today I'm not gonna drink. - Yeah. - And that's a doable goal and that gives you a sense of purpose. Now that's, you need more than that, but that's really super helpful. - Right, that's a huge thing. It's a huge thing. - It's a huge thing. - People say, "I can't. I don't get to drink for the rest of my life. I don't know if you get to drink for the rest of your life. I'm just saying, "Can you not drink for today?" - Yeah, exactly. There's a funny thing in my world. We ask a lot, for example, what is the psychology behind the fact that diets always fail? So almost any diet works. Low fat, low carb, low, whatever, man. I mean, it's like fasting, keto, caveman, whatever. - Yeah, sleeping beauty diet, having a tapeworm. - All work, but they don't work in a long run. Now the reason they all work in the short run is you can make it today not eating what you want because the scale's gonna go down. But when you hit your goal, the reward is never getting to eat what you like ever again for the rest of your life, congratulations. That's a big problem that just destroys purpose. - Oh yeah. - Purpose is everything. You just don't have any more goals. You don't have any more direction. You can't make any more progress. And so it's obliterated. It's depressing, as a matter of fact. People hit their goals and get really, really depressed and like eat a whole cake. - Yeah. - Oh yeah, dude, somebody sent me a cake, dude. - And, bro, if you eat a whole cake. - I didn't plan on it, dude, but I woke up in the middle of the night. I wasn't doing well and I ate half that, bro. I ate it standing up. - What kind of cake was it? - I don't even know. Dude, it was dark. - And it was, I ate it standing up, Arthur. - Oh, yeah, yeah, no, I'm not. - I mean, who is that? - It's me, too. - But then I was so jacked up on sugar. I couldn't sleep. - I know. - Now I'm furious with myself. Now I go by a vape, dude. - Now you're full of self-loathing. - Oh, now it's four a.m. dude, and I'm like, I can't live like this anymore. - You know, here's the irony. There's like 200 people that are listening to this conversation right now at three o'clock in the morning standing up, eating a cake. - That's true, bro. - Yeah, and honestly, and somehow I'm envious of them. - Oh. - No, I get it. You know, so this is a, because that's the problem with progress. That's progress. You know, progress means that you actually make goals, and they're achievable goals, and you know what they are. And that's one of the big parts of meaning in life. Purpose is part of meaning in life. - Okay, and so that's why you're doing what you're doing. - Got it. - Because that's my purpose for today, at least. - Yeah. - For today, at least. Now, it doesn't have to be like, I want to be president into the United States. I want to save seven million children. Now, it might be as simple as I'm going to be kind to my wife today. I am going to do one good act for somebody today. I'm going to love somebody who needs my love today. - Yeah, including myself. - Yep. - Sometimes. - Yep. - That's a big one, dude. - Exactly right. I'm not going to eat that cake tonight. - Yeah. - I'm not. - We'll see. - Yeah, we'll see. - It's like don't send Theo a cake, folks. - We'll do, yeah. And when people send a cake, I can't even, and sometimes I'll even curse them or whatever. - I know, I know. - Oh, curse them. - I know. I'm going to think they're doing something so good for you. But you have no impulse control the middle of the night. That's when your willpower is gone. - Dude, I eat freaking 17 peanut butter cups one night. - That sounds so good. 17 peanut butter cups one night in my 40s. - Oh yeah. I'm in my 60s. - Oh yeah. - So it's done. Get better. - Thanks, Art. - You guys know I love acorns, the financial app where you can invest your spare change from transactions into the market and grow it over time. Well, they're trying a new idea I want to tell you about, and it's pretty cool. It's called Invest My Tips. If you're someone who gets tips as part of your job, like a hairstylist or a tattoo artist or a mover, you can set up an acorns account, get a QR code, then customers scan that to tip you. Whatever they tip gets invested for you immediately. Plus, it adds up, $15 a day invested over 40 years could grow to around $1 million. And if you're the customer, you don't even need an account of your own. Tipping is as simple as it is today, except now your tip helps someone save for their future. So now I'm thinking about all the jobs out there where you could use this. Maybe somebody rakes your yard up and bam, you tip them, hit that QR code, help build their future. Or maybe somebody is delivering ice to your house. You got a warm house and you need some ice and then you hit them with that QR code tip. Or it could even be your grandmother. She hits you with that healthy hug, bam, bless her bank account. So let's give a shout out to everyone working for tips out there. The people part of our community that we trust and come back to time after time. Next time you tip someone, ask if they have the acorns code. Help the people you trust in your community to not just get through the week, but build for their future with acorns, invest my tips. You can sign up for it yourself at acorns.com/theo-tips. Hey, non-client endorsement, commentation provides incentive to positively promote acorns, investing in both risk, acorns advisor, LLC, and SEC registered investment advisor. The important is, go to acorns.com/theo. And so that is the second question, the second why question is, why am I doing the things that I'm doing? And if you ask yourself that question, you'll be able to establish some sense of purpose with yourself? That's right. If you basically say, I am doing what I'm doing because XYZ. Because I want to lose some weight. Because I want to get better grades. Because I want to be a more loving person. Because I want to get to the end of the day not having used alcohol. Right. That's the person that I want to be. And you got to see that better person, that better version of yourself. Say, that's me at the end of the day going, yep, still not drinking. That's good. But to visualize it too will help super important, super important. That visualization is, I mean, that's how, that's how this idea of manifestation actually works. There's nothing, no gears in the universe that are turning, although I do believe in the power of prayer. I do honestly believe to, I believe that it's a good thing to say, what is, I'm going to visualize 11 PM Theo going to sleep, not having done the things he didn't want to do. And now I'm going to pray that God will give me the strength and grace to become that person. That's how purpose, that's how you can, you can bring purpose to your real life. That even feels cool when you say it. I mean, I, I feel like there's a sense of, um, say that one more time, say that part. So, okay. So you got purpose means you got goals in direction. And your goal, your direction is sort of goal that is something good, right? It's got to be something tangible, something that you can actually put a pin in. Not something like the universe is perfect. Right. Or I want to be a millionaire. Yeah, a billionaire. Yeah. I don't know. It's, it's something really tangible, something really meaningful to you. And it might be as something as simple as, at the end of this day, I will not have done this. And I will have done that. And I'm going to imagine myself at the end of the day and how I'm going to feel when that has actually come true and visualize that actually you understanding yourself as having achieved that goal, nothing audacious, nothing is somebody else would be like, holy mackerel, you did that in one day. Right. No. It's something realistic. Okay. So today, if I make it to bed like tonight, I would like to make it to bed about 10 p.m., right? Yeah. So that could be my thing. Sober. Stone cold sober. Stone cold sober. Have it worked out, haven't done my job, haven't done a good podcast, haven't, you know, fed my body in the right way, haven't had a couple of conversations and told a couple of people I love them. But now, is that stacking too much on her? You think that's a, okay, basic day. That's a good basic day. Okay. Good. Yeah. Because you've actually fed your needs. Got it. Like relationships in a very, in a very, you know, very modest way. Got it. You know, you didn't call 63 people and say, I love you. Right. Called a couple of buddies, checked in, listened to their, and then you figure it out and then, and then you say, okay, and I really want that. I see myself doing that and then you, then you get help. And the way that you, a good way to get help is say, Lord, help me make it to that point. Help me make it to that point. Yeah. Help me. It's like, be with me until 10 p.m. tonight when I'm looking back on that in this way. Mm. I like that. get to 10 p.m. tonight, I would like to be able to make it through my day. Healthily, I'd like you to be able to take I care my body, my mind, and my soul. I would like to be able to be of service to others, show me examples of ways I can do that. And I would like to get to bed sober. And I would like to get to bed at a decent time tonight. Please be with me until I can get there. - Yeah, there's an ancient ancient ancient Catholic prayer that a lot of priests will pray. And they'll say, "Night has no terror for me, sleeping under God's wings." - Mm. - Right. - Damn, boy, that's a freaking holiday end of the Lord, it's so good, it's so good, it's so good. And then in the last of the why questions is, why is my life matter? Why does my life matter? And to whom? - And to whom? - Yeah. And to whom, because it has to matter to someone. It's like, why does my life matter? It's gonna be like, because something cosmic, no, it's because my mom loves me, because my friends care about me, because God is somebody who's taking care of me. That's the significance question. And you gotta have an answer to that. A lot of people today that I don't know why my life matters and I don't know to whom my life matters. Establishing that is critically important. If you don't know, that's gonna be a problem. - So significance is the answer to the question, why does my life matter and to whom? - That's right, that's right. And that's getting harder and harder to answer, especially when we're mediating a relationship through screens. It's like, why does my life matter to whom? And if it's like all the people I'm dealing with over the entire course of the day, are 12 hours through social media, I'm not quite sure that my life does matter. - Why does this so much create this? Oh, because this is a simulation and it's not real. - Exactly right. It's very hard for me to deny, for us to deny each other that we matter to each other right now, because we're looking into each other's eyes. And we're brothers right now. That's the way life's supposed to work. But if I'm looking at, you know, it's like, hey, Theo, text, text, text, text, text. I don't know. I don't know what else you're doing. I don't even know what's you. - That's crazy. - Uh-huh. And that's how the simulation works. Is it real? Is it not real? That matrix effect actually destroys significance. Our brain is not made to do, and there's a lot of neurochemistry in this. There's a neuropeptide in the brain called oxytocin. You ever heard of oxytocin? - Oh yeah. - Yeah, yeah. It's the love molecule. And it's how we connect with each other. How you connect with your baby. How you connect with your friends. How people who are loved connect with each other very, very deeply for deep friendship. - Okay. - You don't get it through screen. Almost nothing, almost nothing. And so neurochemically, we're not getting the link that we're evolved to actually get to connect with each other as human beings, and that destroys the sense of significance. - And is that true? Bring that up. - Oxytocin? Yeah. Oxytocin, a natural peptide hormone and neuropeptide. - It's often nicknamed the love hormone or cuddle hormone. It influences social recognition, trust, romantic attachment, and mother infant bonding. - Wow. - And the new research on zoom screen, for example, we wanted to know during COVID, how much do we actually get when we're disconnected and we're talking on FaceTime and Skype and over the zoom screen. And the answer is not very much. - When prolonged social isolation settles in the body's hormonal systems undergo a profound shift. Social, social isolation essentially hijacks the Oxytocin system by driving down its baseline production and allowing stress hormones to dominate the brain. So that comes from social isolation. So it hijacks the Oxytocin system by driving down its baseline production and allowing stress hormones to dominate the brain. So not only do you have lower oxytocin, but. - When you're only on screens and not in person. But scientifically, it allows more stress in. - For sure. I mean, basically, that space man's gonna get filled by something. But so the enemies are at the gates and we're the gate. Where are the enemies and the gates? - Yeah, did Bishop Bearon, Bishop B, when he's on the show, did he teach you the St. Michael prayer? This is a great prayer. So St. Michael, the Archangel is one of the three Archangels in the Old Testament and he's believed by Catholics to actually fight the devil. But that's how he talks about it. St. Michael, the Archangel, defend us in battle. Be our protection against the wickedness and snares of the devil. May God rebuke him. We humbly pray and do not do that. Old Prince of the Heavenly Host, you know, and it talks about, you know, cast into hell Satan who prowls about the world seeking the ruin of souls. Okay, good manly stuff, right? - We need that, right? - We need that right now. But look, okay, even if people are watching us, they don't believe literally in Satan. They don't believe in the hijacking of souls. They don't believe in all this stuff. There are problems out there. And you need the sword and shield. - Yeah. - You need the defense. - Oh, Satan is lurking, bro. Satan these days has cleats on, dude. - Yeah. - He is active, bro. That is the realest thing that's become more real than ever. - And you're just like, if you're looking at your phone all day long, you're wandering into battle, unarmed, and naked. - Yeah. - That's what you're doing. It's a good luck to you. - And most two, like a lot of like the, it's just, it's, there's a lot of ill out there that's coming through the phone and it's designed, it's designed to ruin you. - Yeah. - I think a lot of it is, it's designed to ruin you. - I think that more than anything else is designed to leave you vulnerable. It's designed to disarm you. It's designed to leave you completely defenseless. - The devil is here. And it's like, and that ruins a sense of significance. The whole, this gets back to, who loves me? Why does my life matter and to whom? And it's like, I don't know. - No, so people who are isolated get this. So we talked about this a little bit before. Isolation, right? Why isolation is so critically important? This is why all of this leads to loneliness is because of isolation. Not because of solitude. - And so just so we're, just so we're making sure that we're locked in here. And how this is, how is this affecting significance? - So significance is why your life matters and to whom. It's all about love. It's all about the people who value you, people who love you, people who care about you. And one of the main people needs to be you. - Gotta be you. - And a lot of you gets, a lot of you gets hijacked when we're on our screens and we're not usually on ourself. - Yeah, it's almost as if you lost yourself that you don't know yourself. You're not. So it's a funny thing. So I'll say to people, okay, put down your phone for the first hour of the day. Do the Brahma Mahorta that first hour, starting 48 minutes before dawn and go for that walk without your device, without headphones. Just hearing the crunch of gravel beneath your feet and watching the sun come up, you will know you because you're gonna be with you. - Right. - But if you're not, you're, I mean, it's like, so there's a Vietnamese Buddhist monk who died two years ago named Tick Nhat Han. Very, has that-- - Tick Nhat Han? - Tick Nhat Han. Have you heard of him? - No. - Yeah, he had the plum village movement, which was a lot of Westerners actually got into it. Tick Nhat Han. - With Tick Nhat? - Yeah, yeah. He was, and he wrote, his most famous book was called The Miracle of Mindfulness that starts off with this description of washing the dishes. And when you're washing the dishes, you should be washing the dishes and thinking about washing the dishes and fully present while you're washing the dishes. 'Cause if you don't, you're not there. You're missing your life and we're missing your lives. And you're missing your life. So if you're really not missing your life in that first hour of the day, you're there for you. You care about you. You're fully showing up is what it comes down to. - If while washing dishes, we think only of the cup of tea that awaits us, thus hurrying to get the dishes out of the way as if they were a nuisance, then we are not washing the dishes to wash the dishes. - What's more, we're not alive during the time we're washing the dishes. It's the thing, isn't it? - Yeah, it's just about having a sense of presence. Before we move forward, how can we tie a bow on significance? - So, sign it to lock it down and say, "Okay, if I'm with, "if I'm with somebody who live, I'm with my wife, "and every time I'm with her, she's scrolling her phone. "She's not actually with me. "And I don't know if she loves me." And that destroys my sense of significance. If every time I'm by myself, I'm scrolling my phone, I'm not with me, right? And I'm not even significant to me. - And that's what it feels like. - Sure does. You just start to feel like this. - Who am I? I'm nothing. I'm a simulation of me, right? That's super heavy when you think about it. I don't wanna be a simulation of me. I wanna be me, right? I mean, for all the problems that I've actually got and all the dumb stuff that I've actually, I wanna, at least I get one life. Why am I missing it? You know, why am I simulating it? Why am I running it like a some sort of weird blooper reel? What's the deal? How stupid is that? What am I trying to distract myself from? And the answer is I don't, I don't know. I don't know, just doing it. And that's no way to live. - No, it's no way to live. And it's, I mean, it's certainly before I find myself a lot of times, it's like, and also, I don't even notice how it just happens over and over again. And the main, it's just like, oh, it's just another rerun of the same like me finding these little things that I feel like meant something and they don't. And then I just keep going. - It's a doom loop actually. And the problem is that we're very bad at boredom. And you know, life until relatively recently was pretty boring. Your great grandfather. They were plowing fields three generations ago, right? - Oh, I'm sure, dude. They used to smoke on them. - Yeah. And they were, and they were, and you know, moment to moment, your great, great grandfather was basically looking at a mule's butt, right? No headphones, no podcast, not even yours or mine, right? - Yeah. - But his life wasn't boring. Now, you can wipe out every moment of boredom, moment to moment of the course of your life, but life is profoundly boring. See this is the thing, man, this is the irony. If you try to wipe out your boredom moment to moment, your life is gonna be grindingly boring. That's the irony of life. If you're not gonna be alive, you're gonna be dead. That's what happens. - And we're missing out on being alive. - We're zombies, we're walking dead. - And so the things that we can do are we can find some coherence, right? Find things that make sense to us, that we believe in, that are sure to us. And sometimes if you can't find those in the media, you have to find those in personal relationships and like just things that are very sure to you. - Your spiritual life? - Super important, because that's, man, that gets real real fast. - Yeah. - If you're basically like, if you're gonna like, before at that 10 PM hour, you're down in your knees, life gets real very fast. - Yeah. - And a lot of people, it's like a, what, yeah. Like my grandfather, yep, like your grandfather. - And sometimes it's like, people will say like, or people will say to me like, man, I just wanna help other people. People say that a lot of times. And I think about that a lot too. And it's like, but one way I think that we can do that is by praying for others. It's like giving of myself, and my energy, and my time with God, it's like me wanting to focus that onto someone else. - For sure, that's an ancient truth. What you just started to get away with it. - Yeah, for sure. I mean, the monastic tradition is that the monks and the nuns that would be cloistered, meaning that they never go out. Their whole job was praying for others. - Wow. - Full time, man, full time praying for other people, because we believe, Christians believe that intercessory prayer is a real thing. The intercessory prayer actually works. - Intercessory? - Intercessory prayer. You're interceding for somebody else. You're asking God for something for them. That's super powerful. Now, I don't know. How long do they pray for it is for all the time? - Yeah, yeah, like a lot of the day. A lot of the day. - You don't even have for lunch during that or what? - I know, it's like in the corn dog, and praying for Fiona Vaughan. So, you're just over there praying for Kyle Larson, or something. He's having chance on your life. - No, but it's like, it's funny, because I know a lot of people who are not living in religious communities who will have a list of people they pray for every single morning, and actually start their day praying for a list of other people. And I try to do that too. I try to pray for other people every single day, and people who, and the last one was, I was like, and Lord, I'm praying for all the people who asked me to pray for them, but I forgot. - Yeah. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. You got to bundle it. - You got to bundle it. - Sometimes you have to bundle it, man. - I know, but that's really powerful. - And God gets that prayer and He's like, "Oh, God, I got this one bundled." - I know, it's like, it's lame. (laughing) But that's a big deal, what you just said. That's a real thing. - So that's the first one is having things that are creating coherence for yourself. Things that happen. - Things that really help you understand why things happen in the world, got it, right? The second is making sure that you've got direction in your life, and the third thing is knowing who loves you and why. - Got it. - That's, and if you do that, you've got meaning. Now, here's a test to see that kind of bundles all that stuff together. And so it really scientifically validated. I've been giving this test for 30 years. - It is, it's very scientifically validated. - Yeah, so in other words, we've tested all the stuff as in a lot of research, et cetera. Those three, the why questions are super scientifically validated. There's a guy named Mike Steeger, who's a psychologist and in Colorado, and he's done, he's published, you know, books and academic journal articles on why this works, et cetera. - Okay. - But I have a two question exam that I give my students to see where they are on that that makes it easier. And if they're struggling, then they don't need to look for the meaning of life. They need to look for the answers to these two questions. - Okay. - Question number one is, why are you alive? And the way to answer that is like who made me or for what reason? Maker and mission. - Okay. - So, and by the way, you can't Google that. - So, why are you alive? - Why are you alive? I mean, why are you walking the earth? - And that's a question I need to ask myself when. - And you need to start contemplating that question and maybe thinking about it during your holy hour, first thing in the morning when you're out for that walk is thinking, why am I alive? Who did create me and for what purpose am I alive? 'Cause here's the thing. You have been created for purpose, absolutely. But it's obscured, especially on the hard mornings. Like that's when it's hard because that's when old scratch is bothering you. - Right. - When the devil starts wanting to. - That into old scratch. - Is that the devil? - Yeah. (laughing) - What the heck, that's his name? - You're from Louisiana, are you? - Yeah. - Dude, that's an old Catholic Louisiana deal. - Old scratch. - Old scratch, not bad, right? - God, yeah. - When he's got his old pitch fork out and he's distracting you from the things that matter. - Cool. - So, okay, who created me and for what purpose? And let's give that some thought. Second question is, what would I die for right now happily? Is it a funny thing? 'Cause two of my kids are US Marines, two of my three kids are Marines. And one of the things that you find is when people come out of combat roles in the military, that they're thinking of problems, right? I mean, there's PTSD and all this stuff. But they're happier because they have answers, especially to that second question. You know, my son was a scout sniper in the Marine Corps. That's a hard job. That's an elite job. And I said, "So, what would you die for?" After he came out of the Marines, 23, married with a kid, right? And he said, "Easy, I send a contract with the government for that, you know?" I would die for my faith and family obviously, but I would die for my fellow Marines in the United States of America. - Boom. - So, he had his answer. - He had an answer. And he was fundamentally happier because that was defining of his sense of meaning in life, whether he was thinking about meaning and all this esoteric, psychological, whatever he is. - Neuroscience nonsense. - He had something foundational. - Fundational. It's like, "Why are you alive?" Carlos says, "Because God made me to serve others." - Carlos, who? - Carlos Brooks, my son. - Oh, that's his name? - Yeah. - Oh, shout out Carlos Brooks. Bring up a picture of him. Good old Carlos Brooks, is he on the internet? There he is. - That's him. - That's him. - Sheepers, dude. - That's my son. - Bro, if he's freaking, bro, if he's mowing the lawn with that. (laughing) - Yeah, tell him, "That's awesome." - Oh, that's right. - Yeah, that's right. - Thank you for your service, sir. - Absolutely, and his little sister now was an officer in the Marine Corps. She's a second lieutenant out of KV Hawaii right now. - Ooh, that's a beautiful place to be for her, huh? - She's 4-11, he's 6-5. - And he has to salute her because she's an officer. - Really? - Well, he's not active duty, but he gave her her first salute. That was very beautiful moment. - He gave her her first salute? - Yep. As an officer, she was commissioned a year ago in Providence, Rhode Island, after she graduated from college, and she took her first salute from her older brother. - Oh, that's awesome, man. - It was really great. But, you know, he's got answers to his questions. Why are you alive? Because God made me to serve others. - Right. - For what would you give your life? For my faith family, for fellow Marines, you know, I say to America. There it is, there it is, first salute. - Oh, that's cool, dude. That's beautiful, dude. - Yeah. - Yeah, yeah. - And what's her name? - Marina. - Marina. - She was born in Fujo, China. We adopted her in 2004, at the age of 16 months. She had been abandoned at 12 hours old. - No. - In a park bench in China. - Oh. - Parking, you know, it's good, man. She's tough. - Yeah, it's a good, yeah, look, I mean, look, if you spend a night out in a park, I've slept in some parks, dude. (laughing) You know what I'm saying? - At 12 hours old? - Hey, not at 12 hours, bro. - She's tough as nails, man. - She's tough as nails. - She's so strong, and so good, and she loves me, and I love her. - Yeah. - Blessings, thank you for your service. - Yeah. - Marina. - My baby, my baby forever. - Yeah, huh? - And lethal. (laughing) - Lithal babies. - Yeah. - That's what that's what we need more of. (laughing) - We need more lethal babies. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - But that's why people in the military, by the way, and that's one of the things I recommend to a lot of young men who have no answers to these questions. - I recommend the military. - Yeah. - Because the military helps you find answers to these questions. - Just adding structure to yourself, because things can get really unstructured. - Yeah. - You know, things can get extremely unstructured. - Yeah, and for you and me too, I mean, who knows if we would have been better off? - Dude, when I leave out of here, I could go, you know, I'm saying there's nothing, it's just me that's gonna keep me going for the rest of the day. Like there's things, you know, I have responsibilities to my coworkers, and we'll do some stuff together, but it's like, yeah, and I'm sure it's the same for a lot of people. It's like, yeah, they have to be the ones that keep themselves going. And I think if I can create more of a relationship with myself, then it's more, there's something to keep going. 'Cause otherwise you can fall and I'm just this sort of like, thing, I'm this repeating thing. - So thinking about those questions is critical, because what that does is it opens up your brain, so that meaning of your life will find you. It's the cheat code. - Okay, so I wanna say those again, and those questions are. - The questions are number one, why are you alive? Like who made you for what purpose? Why are you alive? Like why are you walking there? If I don't know, random, right now it's more than that. But if you don't think about it, and again, it might take years. - Right, but you have to plant seeds. That's it, then I think about talking with yourself and having a relationship with yourself. I noticed for me, it's like, it'll plant a little seed. I'll start something, and it might not be anything for a little bit. - That's right. - And then it'll come back around when I have some space, or when I have some peace, or when I'm at rest, it's like, oh, okay. I wanna try it. That's right, that's right. And your brain will do a lot of the work for you. - That's right, and that has been fundamental to my life. I mean, the different points of my life when I felt very desperate, really lost as a matter of fact. And by the way, that doesn't stop. I mean, the last time I was very desperate, it was 55. I was retiring from this big job. I was super burnt out. I didn't know what I was doing. And so I went on a pill. I walked hundreds of miles across Northern Spain. - I think I'm gonna say a pill. - No, pillgermage. - Oh yeah. - Pillgermage though. - But that's how things have changed right there. It used to be people who are gonna pillgermage. - I know. - Now they go on a pill. - I recommend the pillgermage. - And I just thought, like, why am I live and for what would I give my life? Why am I live and for what would I give my life? - Why am I live and for what will I give my life? It's a tough thing to answer kind of. - It is, it is. And sometimes you just have an understanding, a deep understanding of it. And you ask for the grace if you're religious to put the understanding of these questions on my heart. Put these, like, grant me this wisdom. - And so that's something I could ask God to do, 'cause I don't even know if I know that is the answer. - Yeah. - I know. And for sure, of course, I mean, it's hard. I mean, those answers change over the course of your life, for sure. But that led me to, I mean, now, I mean, my purpose, my mission is to lift people up and bring them together in bonds of happiness and love using science and ideas. - Okay. - That's my mission in life. I came up with that on the pilgrimage. - Why? - Asking those questions. And I feel like that information was granted to me, because I was in the space to actually get that. But if you don't, if it's like, you know the way to not be in the space? (imitates sound) - Yeah. - I mean, she, and hours pass, and days pass, and your life passes. - Okay, so I wanna say those again, those questions are. - Number one, ask yourself, why am I alive? - So why am I alive? And how do we ask ourselves it? 'Cause you don't wanna ask yourself in a way that's negative, that we're chewing on negative spaces. - No, not as if, you know, I might as well be dead. - Right. - But I'm alive. There's a reason. - Right. - And I wanna know what it is. And the two parts are who created me. And number two is for what purpose? Now that doesn't have to be religious like me, and you, we do our own thing, right? I like my way. - Yeah. - But there's gotta be an answer to that. There's gotta be an answer to that. But the second one is, you know, like this, it gets real fast when you say, for what would I die? Like what? 'Cause a lot of people are like, I don't know why I'm alive, and I don't have any idea what I die for. - What do we, what the hell would live? - Right, right, 'cause if you don't have something you would die for, then what are you living for, right? - Correct. - So there's not a real purpose. So, and I think some of us have some basic things, right? Like if you have a family or if you have children, those will give you some severe purpose. Sometimes it could be work. If you have a work that you're passionate about and you feel like it's helping the world. - If you have kids, most people would die for the kids. - Yeah. - Most people really would die for the kids. Would you die for your friends? Would you die for your country? Would you die for your faith? Would you die for your ideas? Would you die for a stranger? I mean, it's really worth thinking about that, right? Because, you know, I don't know. I don't know, but there's sometimes when I feel more like I would. And, but the act of doing that, what that does is, as a scientific matter, is it opens up the aperture to meaning by actually activating the right hemisphere of your brain. - So it opens up the aperture to meaning by opening up the right side of your brain. - Yeah, the right hemisphere of your brain. - Which is where meaning is calculated? This is where we process issues of meaning. - Okay. - Is in the right side of our brain. That's where intuition happens. Mystery, love, happiness, all the stuff. The quiet questions of life. - Wow. - Like, you know, the how-to and what is what you're doing all day long? You know, you're doing your podcast and it's a really technical thing. And you've got all these stuff, all these, you know, how-to and what questions they answer. - That's left brain. - But it's gonna be really depressing if you don't ask the why question first. Why am I doing the podcast? Why am I doing that podcast? And the answer is to help a whole bunch of people to entertain and help people, right? Because I wanna make my living. - Yeah. - And those are, that's really important. Why is way more important? All the important stuff is on the right. All the technical stuff is on the left. And people are on the left side. Anytime you're looking at your phone, you're on the left side. - Got it. Well, we've also, all of our, the owners of so many of these tech companies and a lot of these sort of tech oligarchs and I'm not blaming them, but it's like, they are all left, they seem very left brainish. - Yeah, yeah, there are. - There's just all these tech lords and a lot of, there's a lot of like, you know, these tech lords nowadays, people say that term, but they all have sort of this, you know, it feels a lot of times like an autism, like where they don't know how to create, like they're trying to connect us more than ever, right? But it's not working. And I don't even know if some of them possess, you know, I believe a lot of them have like an autism, like a tectism or whatever, and that they don't even know how to process, they're just gonna keep trying. It's like, they're just trying to like find the exact formula. It's like, my fucker, it's a hug. - Yeah. - You know what I'm saying? - There's two equations, like four equations. You're two arms and my two arms. It's like, there's not, you know what I'm saying? - I do, I know exactly what you're saying. And one of the biggest problems that we have, and if you back up a couple of hundred years too, they talk about the enlightenment. The enlightenment was this idea that there's a solution to every human problem, that science is gonna come up with a solution to every problem. That was a belief in the enlightenment, that's kind of a religion of scientism. It's completely wrong, it's completely wrong. And it has everything to do with the fact that scientism and science and technological solutions are the solutions to complicated problems. Not the complexities of the right hemisphere, which is all the why stuff, the things you can understand, but you can't solve. I'll give you an example. All of your human relationships, they're not complicated problems like writing software, putting together a jet engine or even building a toaster. Your relationships are complex problems that you'll never solve, but they're easy to understand. - Okay, we say that stuff again. - So complicated problems that tech is really good at solving are problems that are hard to figure out, but once you do, they're solved. That's not the same as complex problems, which are really easy to understand and impossible to solve. My marriage is incredibly complex. It's my most complex problem. Love is a complex problem because it's completely, so that your cat is a complex problem. That's why your mother had a mechanical cat is a complicated problem, which is why you don't love your mechanical cat. Right, and so if the tech guys and the whole culture are saying there's a complicated technological solution to all of our deep human needs, they're gonna keep giving us mechanical cats. And that's why we feel so empty when we spend all day scrolling is 'cause there's one mechanical cat after the other and we want a real cat. - Who don't want a little cat? - Cat's arm. - Yeah. - You don't know what it's gonna do? It's a life. It's a creature. - Oh yeah. - And the machine, it's like it did a proximate, it's a cat. It doesn't poop. No litter box, don't have to feed it. Just kind of plug it in. It's better than a cat. No, it's completely inadequate. It's totally inadequate. And so all of these tech solutions, so yeah, social media is gonna wipe out loneliness. Every hour you spend on social media, you will get lonelyer 'cause your brain knows the difference. That's the, it's like social media, which has its place and is not going away and it can do a lot of good. But it's basically the junk food of our social lives. If you're really hungry and you're coming home from a gig and you pass like a fast food place and you're like, "Yeah, it's gonna be good." And you stop in and it is good, right? You get all your calories but you get hungry really fast later because it doesn't meet your nutrient needs. And so you can binge and get both malnourished and obese at the same time. If you eat stuff, it's high in calories and low in nutrients. Social media is high in calories and low in nutrients. - Yeah. - Which means that we'll binge it and get lonelyer and lonelyer. - Our soul just has a lot of fat on it. - And the reason is because it's a simulation of what we actually want. Fast food is a simulation for the nutrient dense foods that our bodies need. - So why can't we quit it right now? What's going on? Because we're super addicted. - Okay, got it. So we are addicted but also there's this element of the devil is creating it. It feels like they are sharpening the spear every single day. - Well, it's also, here's an interesting thing. So you've dealt with, we understand how addiction substances work. - Oh yeah. - Substance addiction is always the solution to a problem that winds up creating catastrophe. - Okay, so substance abuse, substance addiction. - Yeah, it's always a solution to a problem. - It's always a solution to a problem. - But it always creates a bigger problem. So for example, people who are anxious are in danger. Everybody watching us who has, not clinically, you know, generalizing anxiety, who has an anxious job, who's an anxious person. - Yeah, like real anxiety, like something, you know, like which is unfocused fear, right? That's anxiety. You're in danger for alcohol abuse. And there's a reason for that. We actually understand that you're, the alcohol, I mean, anxiety stimulates the amygdala, which is the part of your brain for fight or flight. And you don't like it, right? And as chronic and it's uncomfortable, you'll cut the connection with your conscious brain, with your prefrontal cortex, with alcohol. Alcohol snips that connection. So you're stressed up, but you don't know it. And that's the reason that when you're really stressed out, like really stressed out, two drinks and you're a new man. - Yeah. - And then in another six drinks, and you're the best version of yourself, and then after that, you don't remember anything. So the problem with that is that then it will rebound. It will create a much bigger problem with escalation and all the things that we understand that are attendant on that. If you're lonely, opiates solve that problem. Because they feel like love. Opiates feel like love. And they hit some of the same receptors as oxytocin, as a matter of fact. The problem is that they create addiction and destroy your relationships in the end. The reason that we're using social media addictively is because we hate boredom. It's boring. And it wipes out boredom. But what it does is it creates the most boring possible life. That's the irony. It's just like alcohol. It's like I'm feeling stressed out. And so I wipe out momentary stress. And all I get is the most stressed out. horrible life ever. - Yeah. - That's the same thing. We're wiping out a little problem or creating catastrophe. That's how old scratch works, by the way. - Right. - That's the devil. - The devil's active. Here's the thing about it too. So funny. Nobody says the secret to my happiness is social media. Just like nobody says, you know the secret to my happiness? - Meth. - Right. - Like words never uttered. - Yeah. - And a lot of people use meth. - Yeah, dude. - I never got to use it. I never, I don't think I would have liked it. I don't like doing a lot of auto body type of shit. - Yeah, it's actually more addictive than cocaine because it actually boosts. It's the substance that we know of that boost dopamine the most. Your crystal meth is a 10X of your dopamine. - Dang. - It's like supercharge. - Dude, it's crazy. They gave it like crystal meth. They gave it as like a kind of a cool name to have overall. You know? So that's the problem with tech. - Yeah, I don't know if I feel like there's a solution. - There is, there is, there absolutely is. But it requires commitment. We don't need, you know, a massive 12 step program. I don't think for social media. What we need is people, it's funny because when people stop using, there's three things that they always do, right? And they stop using. Number one is that they get pissed. That's the first thing that happens. Get pissed off. This thing is ruining my life. This thing is sucking out my soul. And I don't want to live this way and it's not right. They get angry. You got to get mad enough. You know that feeling? - Right, so you have to get upset that you're using this. - You got to get furious. You need to be in a rage about that. - Like when, yeah, like what kind of bottom do people have to hit? Like you know what I'm saying? You need to sit, you know, like. - People's bottoms are different. So set, with alcohol abuse, 70% of people who stop using, stop using before they hit rock bottom and have to go to rehab. - Amen. - So 70% this is really, really good news. I never went to rehab. - Yeah. - I never had to go to rehab. But boy was my life a mess. And so I was in the 70%. I could have taken that elevator down many more floors. - Yeah. - Right? So most people, but I was so mad. I was so mad at what was doing to my life, but it was doing my marriage, what it was doing to my relationship with God. It was tearing me, it was tearing apart my relationships. And I wasn't going to put up with a step one. Step two is actually understanding the science of what's actually going on sufficiently that you can actually engage in what the medical intervention that's appropriate, right? I mean, you actually have to do something about it. Do something tangible about it, which might involve a 12-step program, but usually it has to do with like going to the doctor and saying, "I got a problem here." - For alcoholism, you mean me? - Yeah, or alcoholism or any drug abuse or any addiction. - But are you talking about a screen addiction, a screen too? - That is, it's really important that we actually have an intervention. You know, as a second step, is actually intervening and changing our behavior. - Okay, so the first step is hitting the bottom recognize it, getting angry. - Getting angry. The second is intervening in the process of using. - So you have to intervene for yourself. - Yep. - And the third is you got to live in a new way. You got to live in a new way. I mean, it's like you got to get new friends. And, you know, it's funny because one thing that alcoholics I was doing, that's really interesting, is they try to go to step three first, and they'll like move. I mean, if I move, then all these stimuli, all these kind of loser friends that I've got, it never works, because you didn't do one and two. - Right. - You didn't do actually the, you didn't get mad enough, and you didn't actually intervene. But then you do have to live in a new way. And so that's what we need to do with these screen addictions. People need to say, I'm tired of this sucking out my soul. I'm tired of this actually taking over my life. I'm tired of missing my life. - And I feel like you almost hope you hit a rock bottom with it, you know? I heard my friend Jay the other day shared it in a meeting. He's like, and this is about addiction, like in drug and alcohol, but not screen addiction, but he just said rock bottom is when you break your own heart. - Yeah, I know. - And I thought that that was pretty profound. It was like deep disappointment to you. - And how like, and like, will we get there where we are like, we're just fed up, where like this isn't feeding anything, any more, these are just empty calories for in desperate. - We will, because people do. And then we will, and we do. And it turns out that the second part of the intervention is easy, much easier. - So the first one is over, is letting up and-- - All etching, I got a big problem. - The second is an intervention. - And the intervention, it turns out there's just those three steps that science-based things that we talked about before. First hour, meals, last hour. That in 42 days, your life is different. - So what are you saying, you're gonna quote, "That will help you staff your screen"? - Yeah, it'll make it so that when you use your screen, you're using it as a tool, and you're not using it as a way to actually pacify yourself, you're not using it to hypnotize yourself. You're not using it to miss your life. So it's not the kind of thing where you won't think of it in every single moment. So if you don't use it the first hour of the day, after about, it takes about six weeks. Most, and that's a rule of thumb. Your results may vary, right? It might be less, it might be more. But the whole point is, a few weeks, and what you'll find is that you won't think of it all the time when you're not doing something else. Like when you're waiting at the light, let's kind of take it a long time, it's like, yeah. That's because you don't want your mind to wander. You wanna keep the mind wandering. It's called the default mode network in your brain. You wanna keep it off. That mind wandering is really uncomfortable, and that's why we do it, right? Okay, you won't, you'll get out of the habit of distracting yourself all the time, which is important. You'll also get more oxytocin, because you're eating with other people, and you're not having your phone on the table. We're evolved to eat with other people. - So you're saying that the actual intervention for self is spending time with yourself in the morning, have an experience for an hour. - Eat together with others. - With no phone, even on the table. - With no phone on the table is you engaging in humanity, and you have a connection. - Right. - And then the last hour of the day. - And the phone should never be in the bedroom. - Got it. - If it's the last hour in the first hour, you don't have it, you don't need it in the bedroom. It's plugged in downstairs. - Yeah, at the fun of your bed, you supposed to have your spouse in there. - I know. - I know people that'll sleep with their phone and wanting to sleep with their own spouse. - Well, I know people who are, it's like the saddest thing is a spouse. Two spouses lying in their beds, scrolling their individual Instagram until they fall unconscious. - And they don't even like each other's shit. - It's not even laughing at each other's funny memes. - Dude, that's a worst right here. - You know the light in there, your wife, oh, it's something you like. - It's not funny. - Yeah, so it's sad actually. And so, I mean, you can save a ton of marriages if you just have like read to each other from a real book and then stare into each other's eyes for oxytocin, 99, man. You'll wake up more in love than you would sleep. But you're missing your marriage. It's just those three things. That's the intervention. And then you got to live in a new way. We're actually engaging in life and love. - And beauty and pain and life. - Right, if there's something on a side, it's like, say you have something on the scale, it's heavy, right? Like it's like, oh, this thing's too heavy for me. I'm tired of this, like feeling checked on. I'm tired of this phone addiction. I'm tired of this, like it could be an alcohol. Whatever it is, whatever this thing is. Yeah, you have to put something on the other side of the scale. So you have to replace it kind of with something. - You got to do it. Otherwise, you know what, I mean, I'm sure you know what a dry drunk is, right? - Yeah. - A dry, I mean, for everybody doesn't know, a dry drunk is somebody who doesn't replace the alcohol with something that's positive. They don't get to the bottom of what you were actually trying to the need that you were trying to meet. - Right. - I mean, you remember, you use alcohol abusively because you're trying to solve a problem. So you get rid of the alcohol without solving the problem, you're just gonna be like a mean guy. That's called the dry drunk syndrome. And we can be drive social media users or something, you know, dry screen addicts or something. - You're just staying around looking for something. Yeah, to be like. - My keys on your back, you know, you're super nervous all the time. You're uncomfortable with yourself, you're bored. - Yeah, you don't even, you just feel less human. And I'm amazed that you think that it's repairable that you believe that there's another, that there's a way out of this. - Yeah, for sure. - That some of it feels like there's not. - Yeah, but there is. And I've actually seen it with a lot of young people who are actually developing it and using these protocols. And once again, it comes back to structuring the architecture of your own life the way that you wanna live. Taking back your own brain. I mean, again, it's not easy. If it were easy, everybody would do it. You know, there are actually studies now that show that teenagers would literally pay for there to be no social media as long as nobody had it. They don't wanna be the only ones with that because they don't wanna be alone on Gilligan's Island. They want nobody to have it. They would literally pay, I think it's like 35 bucks or something that they say they would pay on average to get obliterate it, right? There's a good study here, right? - A study led about researchers examine how much people value social media versus a world without it. When asked about individual use participants, typically said they would need to be paid, 59, around $59 to deactivate their accounts. And it was like, however, when asked about a collective deactivating scenario, many users would actually pay to get rid of the platforms. - Yeah, they would pay at average of $28 to deactivate a social media platform and 10 bucks to globally deactivate Instagram. You wanna get rid of both, 38 bucks. Deal? - Good, how nice would it be? Imagine what it would be like. - Yeah, and you know, that's what a lot, and these are teenagers who are saying, this is not like you and me, you know, growing up guys. 'Cause then you gotta be like around some, like if you wanna see people, if you wanna see, you had to go see 'em, dude. You had to hope they were somewhere. - I know, I know. - I know, I know. And so what happens is when young people do that, they'll collectively do that. Groups of friends will do this. You see, there's on campuses and they get so much happier. And what are they doing at night after Saturday night when they come back from a party? They're just like, be asking. They're having those conversations, those late night dorm conversations. They're not waiting for the YouTube algorithm to deliver them some anesthetizing algorithmically derived information they didn't seek. - Super pressing. - Any reminisce, bro. - Yeah. - Dude, laying like if my friends would sleep over, we'd do a sleepover, something, bro. - I know. - And we were reminiscing. - And we could lie to each other. - I know, and think about the right now. - Somewhere not all of them. - We're having a conversation right now. And it's so awesome. I'm just enjoying it so much. Want to know why? - Why? - Because we're talking about real things in real time. - And that's life and life. - Well, dude, remember when you got a lot of your friends, bro? Remember that? - Tell me a lot of you told your friends. - Oh, dude, I remember. So we had to go like we was doing, I don't know if it was Boy Scouts or if it was just like-- - You were Boy Scout? - It might have just been some pedophiles in the area. Nonetheless, we were going camping. And right when we got there, I remember telling everybody, like, "Man, I just can't even believe that." And I'm like, "What happened?" I was like, "Did y'all see that Jay Leno had died?" And they're like, "What?" Even the dads and kids and everybody was like, "What?" And I was like, "Yeah, Jay Leno died." And they're like, "Oh, man." - This spreader rumor, a local rumor. - So for the next two nights, we're out in the woods and stuff, and everybody thought Jay Leno had died. So I'd hear them sit up and talk about it at night. And I would be in my tent, bro. Like laughing at a level that came from like, I can't even tell. - 'Cause there was no internet access. - Yeah, there was no way to fact check that. Like we're like fact checking me in real time right now. Right, like, nah, nah. - And I knew that when they got home, he was gonna be alive for them. And that was awesome, too. - That's pretty funny. - I was like, "Damn, bro." - That was like real life. - Not only am I having so much fun right now, but you guys are gonna get Jay Leno back. - Oh, it's so great. It's like resurrected. (laughing) The reincarnation of Jay Leno, oh, dude. - Oh, God, bro. - Yeah, that's great. So this is, so that's the protocol. That's the protocols, one, two, three. - Okay. - And no phone in the, there shouldn't be, by the way, any phones and classrooms, any place in America. That's completely insane. That's total, that's nuts. - And what would be, at a certain point though, it's obvious that there are bigger entities out there who want us to, they want this. You know, sorta, I think that what's happening is we're finding our way. I know a lot of these guys, and you do too, they want the best for their kids, and they don't want to get sued to Kingdom Club, and they don't want the worst for our kids either, but we kind of, people develop stuff, and we've got this dynamic economy, where people invent things they think are cool, and it turns out that, well, they're dangerous too, and we're gonna figure it out. And when you meet these guys, they're good dudes. They're good people. And they want the best, and it's not just like, profit at any cost. You have to not know them to think that it's profit at any cost. - I don't know. Some of them, you start to wonder if they're even people sometimes less start to wonder. Any of them used to, I start to wonder like, do they care about anything other than profit at any cost? Sometimes what I think that they've created is something that they can't control anymore. - Yeah, and they don't-- - And they don't-- - And they don't want to admit that. - That's right. No, and look, I mean, there were people who, who developed tobacco products, or people who developed the automobile, and there were unintended consequences of those things, and we figured it out. We figured it out. And we're gonna figure this one out too. I'm super optimistic about that. I just don't wanna lose the generation in the meantime. - I love that. - No, I love hearing that because it's like, that's the thing that we do need to hear is that there's optimism out there. - Yeah, no, I'm very optimistic about it because humans are great at figuring stuff out. You know, it's not like the end of civilization. We're gonna be all right. - And the best thing used to be though, dude, when it was like, if you wanted a story, you had to go to your buddy to go and do. - I know, I know. - And that was the guy who told the story, and that's what added so much, like, it added so much value to me. - And it was this? - Yeah. - And it was Oxytocin, and it was friendship, and it was love, and it was good. - Yeah. - And now, what is it? We're actually just getting it virtually electronically, just the facts, just the facts, just the facts, left brain, left brain, left brain, yeah. Which is, of course, a simulation of fellowship and goodness and love, is what it comes down to. So that's the, that's the, that's the, that's the, the way that we get in, that's the way that we, that's the cessation method is actually getting into that. That's the, the way that we can actually solve the problem, but then we have to live in a different way, because we've got to live the rest of our lives. And that comes back to living like your great-grandfather. My great-grandfather is Leroy Brooks. He plowed the fields in Olathe, Kansas. - Oh yeah. - Yeah. - I'm beautiful out there. He married Mary Ellen James, the sheriff's daughter. Her father had been strung up by Quantrail's raiders, you know, like Frank James and those guys. - Yeah. - Strung him up, he was, even they didn't kill him because they were too drunk to tie his hands. - Dang. - He let himself down. Got married, I'm alive today 'cause of liquor. - Yeah. (laughing) - Also not, fortunately not dead 'cause of liquor. - That's true. - Oh, it says a complicated relationship in our lives, doesn't it? But, but he was, you know, he was fully alive. Board moment to moment and completely engaged in his life. - Yeah. - Kids, grandkids, strong Christian guy, married 60 years. I guarantee you his life was not boring. He did not say on his deathbed, honey, that was boring. - Yeah. - 'Cause it wasn't. And so that's, and how did he live? He lived with nature, he lived with beauty, he lived with his faith in God, he lived in love with his wife. He was fully alive and completely engaged in his life. - We lived with all the real things that it's like we see clips of, and we share them and we say, "Well, this is real, this is real." But we're not like, we don't have a taint, like we don't have a true relationship with it sometimes. - Yeah, and so we need to go back and do those things on purpose, whereas there was no other choice. You know, people send out those internet clips now of how people lived in like the late 70s or 80s or something like that, that was my childhood. - Yeah. - And it was like, write our bikes. And if you got to call home, you got to find a pay phone, but you probably don't. And your mom was like, "Make sure you're home before nightfall," and she didn't know any idea where you were or what you were doing. And you're at the arcade, ninging, ninging, ninging, playing ping-ball, and these kids were like 17 years old are feeling sentimental about my childhood 'cause they know. It was real. - That was something real in it. - Something real in it, right? - Yeah. - And that's key is to actually live in this old fashioned way, falling in love, right? Seeking the beauty in life. That's a big one right there. - Huge. - Finding some love out there. - Huge. - And that means in real life, you know, for the guys who are watching us right now within real life. - Love is real. Love is a real thing. - Oh man, that's, my next book is called Falling in Love is Staying in Love. The science of falling in love is so heavy. - Is it? - It's amazing what happens to your brain. It's completely indescribable. It's like a total miracle. Have you ever been in love? - Yeah. - How many times? - Probably three times. - Your heart broken any of those times? - Yeah, my shit was pretty banged up, but some of it was my own fault. But yeah, dude, when it was good, it was good. I think I was always part of me was afraid to be all the way there. - Did you, were you, I was the reason they broke up? Did it broke up? - Probably. In some ways or something, like I just, I don't know. I never had a good, the foundation of it for me wasn't great, but I think it's, I do, like yeah, at the moment, it's where you felt like connected, man. It's really nice. - It's like fourth of July inside your head. - And we actually know, I mean, the chemistry is actually there. We've evolved the chemistry to bond to each other and find your person, to find your soulmate. Human beings are made, we call it pair bond mating. It's just a kind of a clinical way to say, falling in love with your person for the rest of your life. - Love. - And the goal is the deepest possible friendship. - Deepest possible friendship. That's the union of your right hemisphere. - It is? - Yeah, totally. - So that's right hemisphere stuff. - Holy stuff. - Totally. My wife and I, it's like, when we're in the zone, when we're really clicking, it's because, I mean, she's finishing my sentences. And when we're understanding each other to deep and toative level, it's not like, yeah, I can, you know, understand the meaning of those particular words. No, it's just, it's this deep and toative understanding. - We're right there. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's two right hemisphere beating is one. - Damn. - Oh. - It sounds, it sounds like we're romantic. I know, but you know, but that's really, really. I mean, it's that will lead you to meaning. Falling in love and letting yourself fall in love. And that's, you know, it's very hard on apps to do that. - Oh yeah. - 62% of couples today meet on the apps. Some are better than others. I've actually done a bunch of work with Bumble. I like those guys because they're trying to add more human friction into the algorithm. So it's not just, you know, they're trying to find ways to get people out on real human dates faster. And that's the way it's going to have to be. And once again, we'll solve these problems like that. - So you think a lot of it is just kind of a fine tuning of this errant ways that we've gone. - Yeah, well, I mean, we're not going to throw our phones in the ocean, it's just not going to happen. - Right. - I mean, we're not, that ship is sailed. And so we're going to have to figure it out. So like people said, we'll never be happy again because of the telephone. I mean, there was an article early on in the telephone where people are like, people are going to stay in their houses. Somebody's just going to hold a phone up at the church and people are going to listen in their houses and not going to see each other anymore as the death of civilization. No, no, it's just a tool. What's going to have to happen is we figure out that the internet and especially social media and small screens are nothing more than a tool. They got to go from entertainment to tool. Here's the way to think about it for you. If any device or technology is substituting for your in-person relationships, it's going to make you miserable and ruin your life. - There you go. - If it's a compliment, if it actually connects you to other people, it's good. It's a tool. - Okay. - Use it and go forth and, you know, be at peace. - Yeah. - So, you know, I mean, I just, yeah, I mean, yeah. I mean, there's so many good like nuggets in this conversation of just ways to evaluate where you're at to begin to have a little bit more relationship with yourself, right? Which is so key. - Yeah. - Love yourself and others. - Yeah. - Don't distract yourself from yourself. Don't lose yourself. Don't simulate yourself real life. And that's, by the way, when you're not feeling good, that's hard. Yeah. When you wake up and you're like, no, no. I don't want me, I want me with me. But sometimes those are the days you gotta work through. It's like, I know that if I put in the effort right now, then hopefully it'll pay off, you know, that tomorrow will be easier. It's like, you know what I'm saying? Some of the things you start to know and it's just the next foot in front of the other. It's like, my buddy, Mark Dattles has just like, can I take this next step for myself right now? And that is a truth, right? Whatever's going on in here, if it's not thought, then it's like, it's like, 'cause do you ever notice sometimes in your brain, like, I've really started and sometimes my brain is just rattling and I'm rarely thinking. I feel like I'm thinking, but it's not thinking. It's something else. Yeah. It's sort of chatter. It's not deep in its own way. And what's actually, this is the hemispheric lateralization problem. Your right brain is not engaged at all. Okay. All you're doing is just like kind of information that it's like a ticker tape. It's like the, it's like the crawl on CNN headline news. And it doesn't have any content. That's how we feel. Yeah. Sure. Absolutely. That's where we are. We got to get back into the big picture. Oh, yeah. You got to be alive, fully alive. There's this guy in the early church. There was a saint in the fourth century named St. Irenaeus. Great name, right? We got named boys Irenaeus again. And he said, "The glory of God is a man, fully alive." Wow. That's what he wanted. The glory of God, what does God want? He wants you miserable. He wants you happy. He wants all of you. What he doesn't want is this degraded version of you that's like getting filtered through a screen. Yeah. Like, bring it on and bring it on. And so this is, you know, like this thing, early in the morning, all of this, like, there was this old preacher named Norman Vincent Peel back in the day. Norman? Norman Vincent Peel. And he used to have this thing called a power of positive thinking. Oh, yeah. Like one of those old Protestant guys, right? And he used to say every day when you wake up, you can actually get these recordings. They all sounded like that back in the day. Every day when you wake up, they say, "Say the song, this is the day that the Lord has made. I will rejoice and be glad in it." Yeah, but there's more to it than that, I say. Wake up and say, "I'm also so grateful for all the trouble I'm going to face this day. Because I'm going to learn and I'm going to grow and I'm going to feel somebody else's pain and I'm going to get the meaning of my life, bring it on." Amen. Bring it on, man. How do I be a warrior? How do I start to just, how do I have that relationship with myself? Yeah. Yeah, all of it. All of it. All of it. All of it. I want it all. At the end of the day, you want some of it? You want all of it. Yeah. You hear for it. Yeah. I don't want to scoop. I want the Sunday. Mm-hmm. Dr. Brooks, you have your new book, The Meaning of Your Life. Finding purpose in an age of emptiness. And thank you, man. Thank you so much for coming and talking about it. I love being with you. Yeah. I've enjoyed it. Do well to do it again sometime. You're a very, very, very, very special soul. Oh, thanks, dude. Yeah. I'd like you to be alive most of the time. And when I don't feel that way, I've got to find a way to get back to that way. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you run super deep. You run super deep. And that's got, that's got cost. That's got to cost to it. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I'm grateful to have days like this where I can talk with somebody and like, you know, I mean, if anything, I feel way better now than I did when I started. Yeah, man. Let's do it again. What a blessing. Yeah. Thank you. We'll do it again. Thank you, Dr. Brooks. Thank you. [MUSIC]