181. Why Happiness is a Direction, Not a Destination: Communication, Happiness & Wellbeing

[00:00:01] Arthur Brooks: Happiness actually isn't a destination, it's a direction. The truth of the matter is that to be fully alive on planet Earth, you need to have a lot of negative emotions or you'll get eaten by a tiger or run over by a car. 

[00:00:14] Matt Abrahams: Hi, Matt here. The New Year gives all of us an opportunity to reflect and focus on who we are, who we want to be, and our wellbeing. To help you chart your course and write your story, I'm excited to invite you to our four part mini series on communication, happiness and wellbeing sponsored by BetterHelp. Every January brings us three hundred and sixty-five blank pages waiting to be filled. This year, maybe you're ready for a plot twist. Or maybe there's a part of your story you've been wanting to revise or explore further. Think of therapy as your editorial partner. Helping you craft new chapters and create the meaningful story you deserve to live. Therapists from BetterHelp can help you write your story. I believe in you. Everyone should leverage the support of therapists and coaches. Visit BetterHelp.com/ThinkFast to get ten percent off your first month. That's BetterHelp, H E L P dot com slash ThinkFast. 

[00:01:19] By focusing on enjoyment, satisfaction, and meaning, we can find fulfillment and contentment in a world where it is so easy to be overworked, overtired and underappreciated. I'm Matt Abrahams, and I teach strategic communication at Stanford Graduate School of Business. Welcome to Think Fast, Talk Smart, the podcast. Today I look forward to speaking with Arthur Brooks. Arthur is a social scientist, author, and professor at Harvard Business School, where he teaches courses on leadership and happiness. He has authored numerous books, including Love Your Enemies and Build the Life You Want: The Art and Science of Getting Happier, co-written with Oprah Winfrey. Arthur is also a contributing writer for The Atlantic, where he explores themes of wellbeing, happiness, and effective communication. 

[00:02:14] Arthur, thank you for joining me. Before we get started, I need to give a big shout out to our mutual friend, Frances Frei for connecting us. And I really look forward to our conversation today. 

[00:02:23] Arthur Brooks: Me too, Matt. I've been looking forward to this. All the good that we can bring to anybody who's listening. 

[00:02:27] Matt Abrahams: Absolutely. Hopefully lots will. So let's get started. I'd love to start by having you share your thoughts on happiness. I know in your work, you talk about striving for happiness and separating the things that make us happy from the things that work to make us unhappy. Can you elaborate a bit on that? 

[00:02:44] Arthur Brooks: I think that I started off my quest for understanding happiness kind of going in the wrong direction because what I was trying to do was to figure out how to feel happy, and that's full of all kinds of problems. To begin with, happiness actually isn't a destination, it's a direction. The truth of the matter is that to be fully alive on planet Earth, you need to have a lot of negative emotions or you'll get eaten by a tiger or run over by a car. Negative emotions are adaptive, they're protective as a matter of fact. And you're inevitably going to have negative experiences that are going to make you feel unhappy and you're supposed to feel unhappy with negative experiences. You're supposed to learn and grow from those things. So it took me a while to figure out as a person and as a scientist that happiness is a direction you can get happier. 

[00:03:26] The second thing that was important for me to figure out that was that happiness isn't a feeling. Happiness has feelings associated with it. To say that happiness is a feeling is like saying that the smell of the turkey is your Thanksgiving dinner. The feelings of happiness are evidence of happiness and that means there's something a lot deeper that we need to be able to study and get better at. So those are the big ones that we need to keep our minds on, which is that happiness is not a feeling, and it's also not a destination, and that really gets you off to the races on the study of happiness. 

[00:03:58] Matt Abrahams: So what is deeper than happiness? Is it fulfillment? Is it contentment? What's underneath that? 

[00:04:04] Arthur Brooks: Well, happiness itself is deeper than the feeling of happiness, which is the evidence of, and then happiness itself can be defined in a lot of different ways. But the way that I think is most compelling is to look at its component parts, just like the Thanksgiving dinner is made up of protein, carbohydrates, and fat. Happiness has three macronutrients as well that you need in balance and abundance to be a happy person based on all of the evidence and the survey data on the happiest people. They have a combination of enjoyment of their lives, satisfaction with their accomplishments, and meaning, a sense of meaning about their existence.

[00:04:37] So it's enjoyment plus satisfaction plus meaning. And each of those three things is a different kind of goal with different pursuits and different understanding. And at this point in my life where this is what I do full time. You know, all the hours of my day, when I walk into a company or into the classroom, I can tell pretty quickly where there's a problem. Is there an enjoyment problem here, satisfaction problem here, or a meaning problem here? 

[00:05:00] Matt Abrahams: So it sounds like each of us can look at those constituent parts in our own lives and help us invest our effort and direction to perhaps getting closer to that feeling of happiness. 

[00:05:12] Arthur Brooks: To get those feelings of happiness, but to actually achieve a greater sense of happiness little by little over the course of your life, because that's the real goal. That's the real goal that we have. And different people have different challenges. A lot of striving, hardworking people don't enjoy their lives very much, or the bigger mistake that they make is they have a search for pleasure, which is different than the search for happiness. Enjoyment is pleasure plus people plus memory.

[00:05:34] So it's something that can actually give you a sense of joy over the long term in your life and doesn't lead you to addiction. Or they have a satisfaction problem, which is that they can't ever get enough. We know, you and I know a lot of people that can't ever get enough. They get on what you and I call the hedonic treadmill. You run and run and run, run, never have enough. First thing that a billionaire says is, I guess I need another billion. And the reason for that is that they're trying to maximize their haves as opposed to learning how to manage their wants. So I talk an awful lot about how those formulas look mathematically and how you can apply them to your life.

[00:06:06] But the biggest problem that I see with a lot of young adults today is the lack of a sense of why. A lack of a sense of meaning. And we talk an awful lot in my classes about how to break up the meaning question into smaller questions. What to actually search for, what to seek. And in so doing the search itself actually brings the why and a deep, deep sense of fulfillment.

[00:06:27] Matt Abrahams: I really like how you break things down into equations that are easy to understand, which become levers almost in terms of what we can look to work on and develop. The meaning question I find really interesting because I see that in my students, in my kids, and even in some of my friends. Can you give a little deeper advice or insight into what you talk about in class regarding meaning?

[00:06:49] Arthur Brooks: Yeah, so social psychologists and philosophers, they largely agree about the constituent parts of meaning. So, you know, what's the meaning of life is too big a question. When you break it up into smaller questions, however, it's something you really can pursue pretty effectively. Meaning has three parts for people. The first is called coherence. And that's the question, why do things happen the way that they do? You need to have a belief about why things happen. The second is purpose. Purpose and meaning are not the same thing. Purpose is goals and direction. The direction in which your life is going for what particular reason.

[00:07:23] And last but not least is significance. Why does it matter that I'm alive? Would it matter if I weren't alive? You need answers to that particular question. So I get at it with a kind of a two question quiz. You can kind of collapse that into a two question quiz that I give my students. And by the way, that I give my adult children too. The key to finding meaning is to go in search of the answers to new questions. Why am I alive? And for what would I be willing to die? And that's important because the first question is, who created me or for what reason or both, you need a theory about that. You need a belief about that. You need something that you're willing to stake a claim on it. And second is what would you go to your grave with a smile on your face for? What would you give your life for? And if the answer is nothing or I don't know, you just blocked the quiz, but that's good news because now you know what to go in search of. 

[00:08:11] Matt Abrahams: It's so helpful to have guiding questions in what we do, and those two questions around what do you live for and then what are you willing to die for are helpful. I loved the distinction of meaning into constituent parts, coherence, purpose, and significance. And again, allows us to think more deeply, rather than just holistically so we can act. I really enjoyed your book, Build the Life You Want. Our listeners vary in their stages, both personally and professionally. Some are settling into their careers, while others are looking to start families. And folks of my vintage are reflecting on what we've done and what we still want to do. What are your thoughts and guidance for people at varying stages? Is there a theme that you work on across the stages or does it change as we change?

[00:09:02] Arthur Brooks: It changes a lot. So, and that's one of the main areas of research that I've done work on is how happiness changes, how skills change, how strengths change over the course of our life. So, what you find is that people tend to slightly decline in their happiness from their, it used to be from their early twenties. Now, it's about from their early thirties. And the reason for that is that there's so much trouble and happiness right now for young adults in the twenties in particular. Let's say your early thirties until your early fifties. It's a, it's a tough couple of decades and it's a simple reason for that. Your enjoyment falls as the pressure and headaches rise, little kids, mortgage, job, house, it's commute.

[00:09:39] Now, meaning rises, but meaning is a long term happiness play. Enjoyment is a short term happiness play. So there's no reason not to do those complicated things because you're going to get a big payoff. And that usually comes in your early fifties. The average person around the world has a happiness bonanza from early fifties until about seventy.

[00:09:57] Happiness rises for almost everybody, except for those who have untreated mood disorders like anxiety and depression. And especially people with untreated substance use disorders. So people who suffer from alcohol and drug abuse. Now after seventy, that's when it gets complicated because people kind of break up into two groups. Half keeps getting happier and the other half starts back down again. You know, I'll take a wild guess as to, you know, all your listeners, which group they want to be in. And it is pretty surprising because the lower group is not the group you think it is. It tends to be the people who had more worldly success before seventy.

[00:10:32] They tend to get unhappier after seventy. And the reason is because their happiness was tied to their earthly rewards. Those go away and they don't have relationships to rely on behind them. They don't have the real friends. They don't have a close marriage. They have nothing more than a cordial relationship with their kids. And then their career goes away and nobody calls from work anymore. And that was their sense of enjoyment and fulfillment, et cetera. And then they really suffer because that big party is over. So everybody listening to us and anybody listening to this podcast, because they want to be really, really successful. Remember that success is not just your job. On the contrary, you have to work on your love relationships over the course of your life so you get that bonanza that keeps going after seventy. 

[00:11:16] Matt Abrahams: So it's cultivating friendships and cultivating interests beyond work that help you really reap the benefits later. What kind of guidance are you giving to those younger folks who are really struggling, be it from COVID or just the more macro level issues? I see it in my students. I see it in my kids. I see it in their friends. What kind of guidance are you giving for them?

[00:11:38] Arthur Brooks: We found that actually happiness, particularly for young adults, but for everybody in America has been slightly declining every year since about 1990. And then there's been some big down drafts. So it's kind of a climate problem and a weather problem when it comes to happiness. The climate problem comes from the fact that that people are less likely to develop and cultivate a sense of religious faith or life philosophy. There's less and less of the search for meaning that we see. There's a lot of data on that. Family life is really going in the wrong direction. You find people are less likely to fall in love, less likely to get married, less likely to have kids, which are a long term happiness play, really important. People are more likely to be lonely and say nobody knows them well.

[00:12:18] And there's a bunch of reasons for the fact that people have fewer and fewer friends. And last but not least, that the relationship that we have with our work has not to be as vocational as it used to be. So faith, family, friends, and work have been going in the wrong direction in America for a long time. Now, the big storms are a huge down draft in happiness starting in 2008 to 2010, which was not the financial crisis. It's when everybody put social media on their screens, on their phones, and that started to displace real friendships. When you don't have real friendships, which is to say, eye contact and touch, you don't get the neuromodulator of oxytocin, the neuropeptide in the brain that gives you a sense of fulfillment around your people.

[00:12:58] And you're going to pay the price. You're not going to be able to sleep right. You're going to have greater anxiety, suffer more from depression. And that's a neurophysiological phenomenon that we see all over the place. Second is, This culture of activism that we have and political polarization does proportionally hurts poor people.

[00:13:14] And third, less than at least, of course, is the loneliness that's come from in no small part, the way that we're now working after COVID. So COVID and the lockdowns were catastrophic for happiness because you don't get any oxytocin from Zoom. That's really important. And a lot of people are permanently working at a distance. And I know that some people are listening, going, it's great. I get to live in Tucson. I know it's convenient. It's really convenient. I'm unbelievably productive. I can give a speech in Denver and Milan on the same day, but it's not good when it actually comes to building social capital and building real friendship, which you actually need to be happy in your life.

[00:13:48] Matt Abrahams: So for younger folk, they need to step back and see what's happening around them and to them. And they also have to reach out and connect, as you have said. 

[00:13:59] Arthur Brooks: So faith, family, friends, and work, that's your basic happiness 401k plan. And then you need to be actually intervening every single day with respect to the relationships that you need, loving more people, interacting with more people, seeing more people, touching more people, including loving your enemies, including the lying to people that you disagree with. And if you pursue that, you know, the basic happiness 401k, and then people, people, people, more and more and more love, you will defy the trends and get happier.

[00:14:29] Matt Abrahams: I love how you must make your accounting and financial colleagues happy when you talk about portfolios and 401ks. I'm going to use a few moments of our time to get some personal advice that I think will apply to lots of people. This is an issue I struggle with. I am somebody who is naturally driven and I enjoy challenging myself. However, a downside of my drive is that it's very hard for me to appreciate the results of my effort. I either focus on what could have been different or better. Or what's next? How do you help people like me enjoy or at least not feel bad about the things that I have succeeded in?

[00:15:10] Arthur Brooks: I mean, it's funny because you're actually avoiding a big cognitive error. And so I'll talk about the good thing that you're doing and then how you could do it better, right? Because it's either way, every single striver who's practically everybody listening to this show is just like you. And all of the striver's spouses are like, why don't you stop and smell the roses? Here's the good news. You're not falling prey to the arrival fallacy. The arrival fallacy is thinking when I finally get there, it's going to be great. When I finally get there, it's going to be great. Now, there's a reason that we have an arrival fallacy, which is that human beings are built to enjoy progress.

[00:15:48] You want to get better. And that's how we're evolved. We're evolved to get better, not to get there. And so the result of it is that you make this cognitive leap that's incorrect that says since every day is better, getting to the goal will be best of all. So, you know, if I'm on a diet and the scale goes down by one pound this week, I'm like, three cheers for that.

[00:16:07] I don't care if I don't get to eat any potato chips, but when you finally get to your goal, the reward is never getting to eat what you like for the rest of your life. Congratulations. And that's not that great. That's by the way, that's why diets fail is precisely because of the arrival policy that you're not fully afraid of that because you're never getting there. You're never getting there. It's all treadmill. But there's a problem with that too, because when you're doing that, at some point it's going to have to stop. And your satisfaction simply isn't as high as it could be. Now the goal is not to get there and then bask in the glory of your victory. 'Cause that's not going to work.

[00:16:47] And the goal is not to just keep running for the rest of your life, faster and faster and faster as you can do. That's an exercise in futility. The goal is to actually stop and not get there and to enjoy stopping. That's the whole thing. It's very Zen. And that's the whole idea behind mindfulness. Mindfulness is a practice, basically says, mostly two kinds of people that are time traveling. There's the retrospective types who are always living in the past, and there's you always living in the future. And those are the prospective types. Now, the average person spends thirty to fifty percent of their time thinking about the future.

[00:17:22] You probably spend sixty to eighty percent of your time thinking about the future. And that gets harder and harder and harder once you get beyond fifty-five and sixty. Because there's not that much future left compared to what it was in the past. And so you start to reassess and say, what do I do? What do I do now? The answer is you don't have to choose between being retrospective and prospective. You can be here now, but it takes work. That's what we need to do. We need to spend time being here now. There's lots of ways to do it. One way is single point meditation where you learn how to meditate on being here now. 

[00:17:55] Another way to do it that's actually pretty useful is to simply learn some of these metacognitive techniques where you're, as my colleague Ellen Langer in the psychology department, whom you know, of course, here at Harvard, she says, when you're on the train, put away your phone and fold your hands in your lap and look out the window and think about the things that you're looking at. Start doing that more. Once you get used to doing that, you can train your brain to be here now and that lets you get off that treadmill a little bit and to spend a little bit of time just actually being alive and being alive is pretty good. 

[00:18:32] Matt Abrahams: You know, it's interesting that you bring that up because there are absolutely things in my life where I can be present and participate really well. Teaching happens to be one of those for me. When I teach, I'm just in that moment. I'm not thinking about the future. You know, I was very fortunate early in my career, I studied with Phil Zimbardo and did some research with him on time perspective. And it really echoes what you're saying about past, present, and future.

[00:18:54] Arthur Brooks: Right. His work was so great. His work was so, was so inflecting on this and we've all benefited from it a lot. But the whole point is that not that we agree with it, is that we practice it. And that's the hard thing. It can't be theoretical. 

[00:19:08] Matt Abrahams: As soon as we are done, I have this beautiful window that's straight ahead of me. I'm going to look at what's out there and not worry about what my next appointment is. Arthur, this has been fantastic. Before we end, I'd like to ask everybody three questions. One I make up for you and the other two are asked of everybody. Are you up for that? 

[00:19:25] Arthur Brooks: I am up for that. 

[00:19:26] Matt Abrahams: So question one is, I appreciate several of the things you do. You break things down in a very accessible way without oversimplifying them. You use analogies, you play with words and alliteration. How purposeful is this and what advice and guidance do you give to others who are speaking about or communicating complex ideas?

[00:19:46] Arthur Brooks: It's hard to make your way from the world of science into public education, hard to do. The first thing that I tried to do years ago was to study the best communicators in science. I'm a nerd with a Ph. D., fundamentally, but I'm not all about simply writing for fourteen other people in the highest level of esoterica. I mean, I'm dedicated actually bringing these ideas to my own life and to the lives of other people. And that meant actually studying other people who are the greatest communicators that you can find. Today it's easy. They're on the internet, you know, find the scientists are actually doing that. And so it really comes down to is practice, preparation, and mimicry. And that's what it takes. And, you know, early on when I was learning how to do a lot of public speaking, anybody who asked me to give a talk, I came and did it. Like, you want me to go and talk to the local animal shelter? I'll do it, man. You know, tell me a time and a place and I'll show up and get your reps. Get your reps. Get your reps, is what it comes down to. That's the secret. 

[00:20:45] Matt Abrahams: Thank you. And you did a nice job of articulating three characteristics, as I will do here. I always tell people it's about three things. Repetition, reflection, and feedback. That's how you get better at communication. Question number two, dovetailing off what you just said, that you watch a lot of excellent communicators. Who is a communicator that you admire and why? 

[00:21:05] Arthur Brooks: Perhaps some of your listeners are familiar with a Catholic bishop in Minnesota by the name of Bishop Robert Barron. He runs something called the Word on Fire Ministries. Now go watch a video of Bishop Robert Barron. He's the most gifted communicator about very esoteric theological concepts that I've ever seen. He's working to open up the ideas to hostile audiences. He's trying to open the eyes of people who are not hostile, but simply don't understand. And he does it with basically three things. Number one is he's learned. He knows his stuff. Number two, he's humble. He knows what he doesn't know, and he knows that some people are both more expert and, you know, better communicators than he is, and that's fine. And last but not least, he comes out with a spirit of love. He's saying, I love you, and that's why I want to share these ideas. It's expertise, humility, and love. That's what the best communicators really do. 

[00:22:03] Matt Abrahams: And you've just done an expert job of answering my third question, which is, what are the first three ingredients that go into an effective communicator? And all of those are things that we can strive to work on in our own communication.

[00:22:16] Arthur, this has been truly fantastic. I have been an admirer of your work and we have lots of friends in common who speak so highly of you. Thank you for giving us insights into how we can be better in the world and take the time for ourselves so we can actually be better with and for others. There's this notion of enjoyment, satisfaction in meeting, being the equation for happiness is something I will certainly spend some time reflecting on. And I hope everybody listening in does as well. 

[00:22:45] Arthur Brooks: Thank you, Matt. Thank you for your wonderful show. And thank you for the information you're bringing to so many people. It's an honor for me to be part of it today.

[00:22:54] Matt Abrahams: Thank you for joining us for one of our Think Fast, Talk Smart, Communication, Happiness, and Wellbeing mini series episodes. To continue to learn more about this important topic, please tune in to our other three episodes in this series. This episode was produced by Jenny Luna, Ryan Campos, Aech Ashe, and me, Matt Abrahams. Our music is from Floyd Wonder with thanks to Podium Podcast company and our sponsor BetterHelp. Please find us on YouTube and wherever you get your podcasts. Be sure to subscribe and rate us. Also, follow us on LinkedIn and Instagram. And check out fastersmarter.Io for deep dive videos, English language learning content, and our newsletter. Please consider our premium offering for extended DeepThinks episodes, AMAs, Ask Matt Anything, and much more at fastersmarter.io/premium.