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The gunman's dead. Sadly, we've been through this so many times before. I'll give you the details as we get them, but let's make the transition to happiness. Not easy, but we'll do it. Dr.
Arthur Brooks does it every day. He's a Harvard professor, teaches a course on that, Atlantic columnist, host of Office Hours podcast, and best-selling author. And this book's certainly to be best-selling as well. It's called The Happiness Files: Insights on Work and Life. Arthur, welcome back.
Hey, Brian. Nice to see you, as always. What do you bring to the table here in this? Is this more of what you learned teaching this class or how you've evolved learning more about this?
Well, this new book, The Happiness Files, is the 33 most popular columns I've written in the Atlantic for the past five years. And it's basically a manual on how to enjoy your job more, how to make other people happier around you, and actually how to come home a happier person when you come home from work, is what it comes to. What if you don't like that job? If you don't like that job, then it talks about how you can make it into something that's actually more productive until you can find a new job. Here's the thing: you know, I was doing a show not long ago, a television show, and somebody in the studio audience, I was talking to the studio audience, and somebody said, I feel like a drone in a cubicle.
I hate my job. What can I do? And the answer is, you actually make life better for the people around you. Go to the break room at 2 o'clock in the afternoon and come back with a fresh cup of coffee and say to the guy in the next cubicle, You look like you can use a fresh cup of coffee and look at the look on his face. The truth is, lighten the load for somebody else, you'll feel better today and you'll become that guy.
So instead of focusing on your happiness, you go ahead and try to make somebody else happy and you'll get that reflection. This is the secret. If you want help, be the helper is what it comes down to. Give the thing that you actually want to get. This is the same thing is true in every part of life, Brian.
I mean, you and I have been married men for a super long time, and we all know that when you're feeling hostility towards your wife, the first thing you should give is more love, notwithstanding your feelings, and everything's going to be better. Give the thing you want to get. I actually didn't know I should do that. I just learned something now. I got that for free.
No, when you're actually feeling like I want to avoid her, that's when you say, bring it in.
So, Zig Ziglar had something very similar, if I see if I can get this right. You can get what you want if you help enough people get what they want. That's true. That's certainly true in sales. But one of the great truths in life is you can get what you want by giving other people what you want.
That's what it comes down to, because other people want the same thing. They want courtesy. You don't feel like being courteous because the airline is delaying your flight. Be courteous despite your feelings. You'll manage yourself and you'll get more of the thing that you actually want and feel better about yourself starting today.
When's the last time you really felt like you were angry? And obviously, in your line of works, you probably felt bad about it. But you go to the airline attendant and they're not telling you the truth about your plane, and you could have gone on another plane, and you're late for work, and you've got to get to Harvard. You got to teach a class. You got a column that could have been done, but your computer's in your luggage, and you can't even work on what you're supposed to do.
You're frustrated. When's the last time you felt those emotions and let that dominate your mindset?
Well, you know, it gets - I have an advantage on this, which is that I teach happiness and I do happiness in public, and people sometimes recognize me in airports, and it's a bad look if I'm being a jerk. You know, being committed to being a happiness professor makes you nicer, is what it comes down to. I mean, the truth is, I feel emotions just like everybody else. There's a part of your brain that actually processes emotions automatically. It's called the limbic system.
The problem is that when you're being managed by your emotions, as opposed to managing your emotions, and I've gotten much better, especially over the past 20 years, of managing my own emotions because I know the science on how to get it done, and that's a lot of what I teach. And what I speak and write about. And that's this book, in my podcast, Office Hours, and in this new book, The Happiness Files, you learn how to manage yourself. The relationship between wealth and security and happiness. Yeah, money doesn't buy happiness.
What it does is it eliminates sources of unhappiness, is what you find. And so happiness and unhappiness are not opposites. As a matter of fact, they're processed in different parts of the brain. And what happens with money is that when you have very, very little of it, your unhappiness from avoidable sources is pretty high. And money can actually eliminate those sources.
But don't go looking for the happiness that you really want by getting more money. That's not going to work. What brings more happiness is more love.
So when I talked to Phil Knight, He said, I was reading his book and stressed reading it. He's trying to get the sneakers done. He can't make his payments. He can't make his payroll. He gets the money.
He doesn't get the money. The interest rate's too high. He's worried about the Japanese delivery. And I read this and I said, Man, aren't you glad that's over? Yeah.
You know, when you go through that, he goes, No, I loved it. Can you love something that appears stressful? Yeah, all the time. High performers are addicted to it, as a matter of fact. And everybody can actually learn and grow from the most anxious periods of their lives.
That's one of the reasons that people always look back to the times when they were sad in college and look back on it and laugh with the friends that they had during that period because they learned a lot during that. You know, I say, Brian, tell me about when you really understood best the meaning of your life. You're not going to tell me about that week at Disneyland. You're going to talk about things that were hard for you, hard parts of the early part of your career, that you persisted, that you were resilient. And that's a really important thing.
And really successful people figure that out. What do you do with how do you get if you're trying to get to the mountaintop like an Olympian and you get your gold medal? This is the best example. In life, your gold medal might be CEO of something, or it might be the vice presidency, or it might be graduating from college, or your dry cleaning company finally is sexual, whatever it is. When you get that, Inevitably, they say there's a letdown after.
Does that show you that you were doing it for the wrong reasons? No, what that is, that's called a rival fallacy.
So, we in this, in the world of psychology, it's what the problem is that we love progress toward a goal. We have to have goals in life. You got to have goals. That's called purpose, and purpose is part of the meaning of life. It's like it's a serious business.
And you got to make progress toward those goals, and that gives you a lot of. That gives you desire, that gives you motivation, it gives you a lot of happiness. The problem is that you make the mistake of thinking that when you actually acquire the thing, you get the goal, that then you'll be happier than you ever were before and it's going to last. And that's wrong. That's the reason that a lot of Olympic gold mentalists suffer depression.
Your emotions don't persist, they're not supposed to persist. That's not why they actually exist. And so you need to understand that. And the answer is: intention. with that attachment.
Love it. What a cliffhanger. The name of the book is The Happiness Files, Insights on Work and Life. Arthur Brooks, thanks so much. Pick up the book.
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