 You are tuning into the world's number one fitness health entertainment podcast on YouTube. This is mind pump. Okay. Today's giveaway is awesome. So if you leave a comment underneath this video in the first 24 hours that we drop this podcast and we pick your comment, we say it's the best one. Doug says, I like this one the best. Here's what you get. You get a free container of pulse pre-workout from Legion. This is my favorite pre-workout. The ingredients are legit. Of course, citrulline in there for the pump. Beta alanine, caffeine to give you that energy. Theanine to balance it all out. Alpha GPC. It's a great product. One of our favorites, bubblegum flavor. This is the mind pump version of Legion pulse. It's bubblegum flavor. So leave a comment in the first 24 hours. If we pick it, you get this. Also subscribe to the channel and turn on your notifications so you can be one of the first people to comment when we post these videos. Okay. Today's podcast is with Arthur Brooks. He is a behavioral scientist, a professor at Harvard University, a very, very smart man. We're going to talk about the science of happiness. This interview blew my mind several times. You'll actually hear me say that several times in this interview. Also, before the podcast starts, let me remind you all the phase two bundle still going on. This is maps performance is our workout program that is athletic minded and maps aesthetic, which is a bodybuilding minded workout program. Both of them about three months long each. Normally at retail cost you about 300 bucks, but right now you can get them both in the phase two bundle for $79.99. So this is your workout videos. We tell you how many sets, how many reps, what exercises, everything you need to follow the programs, one time payment, $79.99. Go check them out. Go to mapsfebruary.com. But other than that, enjoy this interview. Arthur, it's great to have you on. You're one of my favorite people. Well, favorite people in the world. You're just such a positive wise individual. You communicate so well, but I really consider you to be one of my go-to people on the subject of happiness, an expert on happiness. Thank you, Sal. And by the way, before you continue, you've done so much for me too. I mean, your guests probably don't know, but you and I met, I met you long before you met me because I'm a mind pump listener for years now. And, you know, I was wondering at some point, how many of the Harvard faculty are mind pump listeners? I'm kind of wondering that, but I bet you there's more than just me and you've been so helpful. I mean, your attitude about self-improvement about how each of us is responsible for through personal responsibility, but more than anything else that we have this accomplishment mentality that you guys at Mind Pump are serving people. The reason it's the most popular fitness health and entertainment podcast in the world, by the way, is not because just because you're giving great fitness tips. It's because you're helping people live better, happier lives. And me as a guy who does work as a scholar on happiness and on the side trying to stay in really good shape because of you, you know, this is a natural synergy, I have to say, but you've done a lot more for me than I've ever been able to do for you. Oh, well, I really appreciate that. So let's talk about happiness. Let's talk a little bit about, you know, first off, how do we define it? You know, sometimes I'll read articles and studies and they'll say things like people in Denmark are the happiest in the world or people over here are happier than over there. Is it just simply asking people if they're happy or how do we define it? Is it is it the good feeling of joy that I'll get if I, you know, drink a nice bottle of wine or hang out with my kids? Like how do we define it first off? So a lot of people different, a lot of different scholars and ordinary people define it in different ways. Happiness means everything and nothing. It's one of these contentless words. It gets people's attention because the one thing that we know is we all want it. The trouble is when you ask people to define it, most people, particularly Americans and people in the West will say, well, I feel good. They'll talk about their feelings. And that's actually not very helpful because feelings are really transitory. The way that we measure it in the social science business. So I'm a behavioral social scientist. The way that we measure it is we ask people to to assess their own level of general well-being. And that mixes a whole bunch of stuff together I'll talk about. But basically you'll say all things considered. Life has got ups and downs. How happy would you say you are about your life? And they give you these incredibly stable and honest answers as long as they're answering anonymously. You don't ask that. You don't answer that in front of your wife. For example, you got to do that, you know, you know, in the in the conscience of your own heart. But the way that people actually answer that question is that they're thinking about three different dimensions. And this is what the science has uncovered. They're thinking about, they're thinking about enjoyment of their life. They're thinking about satisfaction or fulfillment with their life. And they're thinking about purpose and meaning in their life. All kind of a glomerated together. So you kind of mush those three concepts together. And if you got all of one and none of the other, you won't feel very happy. So if you're all enjoyment and no purpose, let's call that, you know, college life. Then you're basically party in and drink it and hang it out, you know, meet and girls and fantastic, right? But you won't actually call yourself happy according to the data. Or if you're all purpose and no enjoyment, it's kind of grim, you know, it's like American Gothic. It's just not that fun. So you've got to have those three and satisfaction is in the middle. And if you've got this balance between the gets this golden mean between those three dimensions, you're going to say you're happy person. Oh, very interesting. So because I have always, that's what confused me is that, you know, I thought of as a feeling, a feeling of enjoyment, but that makes perfect sense. One dimension. So how do you, okay, let's talk about each one and the things that we can do or that you've seen in the studies and the work that you've done that help contribute to each of those. You said satisfaction, enjoyment and then purpose and meaning. Yeah. Yeah. So the first one is enjoyment and enjoyment means actually trying to be fully present in your life. The main reason that people don't enjoy their lives, they can have something chronically wrong, like, you know, major depressive disorder or, you know, health problems or one of the things that you talk about an awful lot of the show is the fact that people just aren't happy enough when they went back in the old days when you were actually coaching people, when you were keeping your head clients that you were training, they would come to you and they wouldn't be happy because they didn't feel good. And, you know, they're making these, these unforced errors about their life. They weren't enjoying their lives enough. So when people are, you know, morbidly obese or where they're suffering from diabetes or they're just too sedentary and have the cold morbidities of sedentary behavior, then, then they're just not going to enjoy their life very much. So that's one of the things where you have particular expertise. So being fully present and ready to enjoy what life has to offer is number one. And so the one thing that I, you know, I talk about is we go through an inventory of, of, you know, there, what's going on in your life, you know, one of the things that really the barriers from holding you back to full enjoyment of your life. The second is satisfaction and satisfaction is really, really hard. There's this one concept that we talked about an awful lot in my business called the hedonic treadmill. Hedonic means feelings. And the hot on hedonic treadmill is basically the problem with satisfaction where you're running, you're running, you're running, you run and you don't actually get any more satisfaction. So something good happens to you earn a bunch of money and the next day you feel like you were before you buy a two million dollar house and you're actually not happier. You get that car you've always wanted and as you're driving it off the lot, you're dreaming about the next better model. That's the treadmill. The reason is because your brain processes your emotions in a way that don't let you have very much satisfaction from worldly things. That's a process that's called homeostasis in which you're always returned to an equilibrium because your brain has to be ready for the next circumstance to keep you alive. You have to be ready all the time. So if you're like elated because something happened to you for weeks and weeks and weeks, you would not be prepared for what was going about to hit you next. And you know, back in the old days you probably, you know, I love that meal so much and you're beaming about it and you're not paying attention to sabertooth tiger eats you and you don't pass on your genes. So there's an evolutionary reason why this would be the case, but it's super frustrating because you can't get satisfaction. So that's the satisfaction problem and the answer to that is, you know, this by the way Mick Jagger saying that song I can't get the satisfaction. That's the biggest Rolling Stones hit ever not because it's a good song because it isn't it's because it speaks to the human condition. And it's like, oh yeah, man, Mick says, I can't get a satisfaction and neither can I. Wow. So so that's important. So the weight but there is a way to short circuit it and the way to short circuit it is to remember that satisfaction is not a product of what you have. That's what we think all be satisfied. If all the stuff that I want I have right out of the car the job the money the success the relationships the fun right satisfaction is actually what you have divided by what you want. It's your haves divided by your wants and everybody remembers and of their high school math that when you've got a fraction you can lower the value by increasing the denominator when the denominator gets bigger the whole fraction falls so your satisfaction falls when your wants go up. So one of the things that I counsel people are when I'm working with executives and I'm working with people is that I say you know you feel dissatisfied even though you're rich how come is because you haven't been managing your wants and you know that denominator has been sprawling like the suburbs of San Jose. It's just like it's going freaking crazy and you haven't been paying attention to it. So what you need to do is get a reverse bucket list where you you look at all that stuff in your bucket list is the dumbest idea for happiness ever. You should look in that bucket of all your wants that you've been worshiping and craving and desiring and just pull out a handful of wants and say I'm going to get rid of this one and that one and that one I'm going to detach myself if I get that stuff great but these aren't my wants anymore to be free. The last one is purpose and purpose is tricky because purpose and this is the part of happiness that people don't usually understand. True happiness requires unhappiness why because purpose requires pain to find meaning in your life or and there's a pain is is just incredibly sacred. If we miss out on pain we miss out on post traumatic growth we miss out on experiences we miss out on learning and you and I have in our personal lives have talked about these experiences that have been painful for us for you and for me and and you know when we talk about the things that we know would make us the men that we are it's never like I went to this party when I was 18 it was so awesome you don't even remember that you remember the bad thing that happened to you the painful thing the lesson that you had to learn and that's where you actually get your purpose and meaning in life so the key thing that I I ask people to do if they don't have enough purpose if they need to be more fully alive and take more risk they need to fail more they need to learn more they need to ask for they need to ask for for to say they're sorry they need to make amends more they need to be fully engaged in their life and stop usually if they if you don't have purpose it means you're running away from pain hmm this is why I love talking to you every time I I talk to you end up blowing my mind and I'm thinking of a few different things you were talking about satisfaction I thought that was so so awesome to talk about changing your wands and it reminds me of the conversations that you know I've had many times with my father my dad is a it was a poor Sicilian immigrant okay it was a you know one of many children they lived in a small you know concrete house and he looks back on he talks about how how happy he was how he was so happy when he had an extra you know quarter to get some ice cream because he was so poor that was such a big deal I think you know to myself as I I get more things like this never ending well so changing your wands that's so absolutely brilliant and I've never even considered sitting down and taking those things down have you done that with yourself have you sat down oh yeah what are the what are some of the things you've had inventory what are some of the things that you've had to remove that you wanted in the past that you've taken out well there's a whole set of categories of things that that are chronic wants that that that ever brings satisfaction that always sprawl so for example there you know the great philosopher and the allusion who wrote in 1265 this this this this TALM the suma theologic God it's one of the most important books in in Western philosophy as matter of fact reintroduced Aristotle to the west among other things in the suma theologic guy he talks about these four idols that everybody has and it's incredible so it was written yesterday the four idols that we all worship usually inadvertently our money power for most people it's not like you know you're famous because mine pump such a big deal but most people it's prestige like you know to be well regarded in your community so money power pleasure and prestige and you know these these are the four idols Aquinas call some of the four substitutes for God where you know like people really really want God but God's very inconvenient because a lot of one-sided conversations and misunderstandings and a lot of work and a lot of rules as I like now forget that so I'm going to go for four things that they have kind of a God like appearance to them money power pleasure and fame but they're all wants that never brings satisfaction and so when I go through my my reverse bucket list I'm looking in there for the cravings that I have in money power pleasure and fame you know what am I doing am I you know going around the horn all the time you know looking for more dough you know and for the more I can this is a good party game by the way is to to ask people what their idol is I'll do it with you sell so money power pleasure and fame tell me the thing that least motivates you that you care the least about out of those for yeah yeah because those are the four of these are the idols in life of fame has got to be the the the bottom one and then probably you don't care so you know it's like it's people that sell the Stephano it's like I don't know who's that some guy now I could care like all the time the Stephano from Sicily right that's that's good job the next one might be what was the pleasure you know I enjoy feeling good but yeah you know I've I've done a good job I think of trying to kind of separate myself from that so it's not super high on my list money and power I would say you know money might be next power might be next I think mainly because both of those make me feel like I have more control over my life so money and power give me more control over the things that I can do I would say yeah so knowing that is super important incredibly important self-knowledge because then you can manage your reverse bucket by knowing that now the key thing is is putting stuff into your basket that that you should be go so there's that's the bad for money power pleasure and fame and you know a lot of people will feel kind of prideful because of the worldly rewards that they don't care about not paying attention to the fact that they're being completely controlled on some other dimension I see this constantly it's like yeah I don't care about money it's like great but you're a freak for power right or you know you're like addicted to drugs because you're a pleasure guy you know so that's that's really important for for people to keep in mind that that you know just because you're good on one dimension just you're probably following that another the big four that you should have and this is the second part of this exercise and these are the things that truly enduringly bring happiness actually let me back up from that a little bit people will say you know what is the what are the sources of happiness which is enjoyment satisfaction and purpose if I'm going to measure your number so let me start by asking your number so it's like we always do on a one to seven scale it's called a Likert scale where one is complete misery and seven is total bliss the happiest person you could possibly be what's your and I'm talking across sort of the cadence of your life in general so we'll look in past the past couple years what's sell Stefano's number Oh I'd say probably close to a five so I'm not a seven and I'm closer to the middle maybe a little better than the middle what would Jessica say about you she would probably put me she might put me at a six maybe a little higher she put your little six okay now that's interesting because what that suggests that minor mismatch that you'd probably be surprise she's probably closer to your number than you think yeah if she were asked anonymously about you but if she's a little bit higher that means that she actually might be a better judge of your true us are actually better at that than we are okay now when I've got a whole sample of people across the population and by the way your partners at mine pump you're a really good judge of their number two okay right and so and so if I got a whole sample across the population I want to disaggregate the parts of that number you know what what goes into that I've got three and I've got three parts three components that go into it one is your genes one is your circumstances and another I mean a lot of people think that genes don't really matter that it's all and that it's all nature nurture not nature but the truth is about 48 percent of your happiness is genetic this is super important to keep in mind because if you had like you know if your dad was gloomy you're going to have gloomy genes that doesn't mean you're that doesn't mean you get it all I mean some people look more like their parents look less like their parents but you're going to have across the population more of a proclivity you're going to kind of tend toward that half of your happiness coming from your parents if you've got really bubbly happy a bully and parents you know lucky you but you know my parents were pretty dark right and so you know my mother was an artist to my dad as a college professor and they lived in Seattle was gloomy all the time so I got blue I got gloomy genes and the half of the other half for 25 percent is circumstantial and that's what everybody's going for that's what I think is really going to ratchet their happiness is that 25 percent because it's like yeah if I win the lottery I'll be happier if I get into a bad accident I'll be unhappy but that's completely wrong because circumstances are transitory there's a study on paraplegics and lottery winners and it turns out the six months after the big event whether it's tragic or or you know victorious and happy that people have returned basically to their old happiness levels six months later you're not a product you're happy you're happy this is produced inside your head not outside your body is the bottom line and so never chase circumstances that's the reason that money, power, pleasure and fame don't give you satisfaction and put you on this treadmill of of frustration is that so what's left is the 25 you can't control your genes you shouldn't try to control your circumstances is your habits that really matter and that's 25 percent so Sally I'm going to give you your whole 25 percent under your control and this is the big four there are only four things in your happiness portfolio faith faith family friends and work those are the four and so you got to put a deposit in each one of those accounts by faith by the way I don't mean a traditional religious faith necessarily I mean I recommend my Catholic faith that everybody who will listen but the truth is I got the data and anything that gets you out of your head and brings you to 40,000 feet about the nature of existence I mean for example you're super into all different sorts of stuff you named your son after the you know Marcus Aurelius you know the great Stoic philosopher and emperor studying Stoicism I mean I had I had Ryan holiday the you know the guy who does the Daily Stoic on my podcast last week and we were talking about you know where he's just wonking out on the Stoic philosophers and people who are super into Stoicism they get the faith bonus but if you're only ever thinking about yourself and not about the bigger transcendental things that's like involuntarily watching the same TV show over and over and over again until you want to die so that's why faith family self-explanatory friendship is super important and then always neglected and work is very simple work it doesn't matter what job you do whether you're a professional podcaster or professor Harvard University or whatever we're driving a bus or you know you know laying bricks in Sicily as long as you believe that you're earning your success and you're serving others then it will be meaningful and then you're going to get the gusto from us so the big mistake that people make is they're chasing money, power, pleasure and fame and what they should be doing is working on their happiness they're cultivating their diversified happiness portfolio family, friends and meaning for work oh that's that's very powerful so I have a question around this is I notice so I read an article Scientific American put out an article I think it was either this morning or yesterday and in the title of it was why bronze medalists are happier than gold medalists yeah that's a great study I love that study okay so very fascinating so essentially it's saying something like along the lines of you know the bronze medalist it's essentially what you're comparing yourself to I could have not gotten a medal but I did versus a silver medalist who's like I could have got gold but I only got silver what role does how we compare ourselves to others play in all of this and I can't help but think of in my space and fitness the the social media space and how people are just they can accomplish incredible accomplishments with their fitness and their physiques but then they look at these pictures of other people and just these impaired impossible comparisons and they just end up feeling terrible yeah so that's an old study of the Olympic medalists and it shows that that for example the silver medalist dies significantly earlier than both gold and bronze medalist gold and bronze medalist die about on average four years later than silver medalist to and in the meantime silver medalist are less happy and the reason exactly as you suggest the silver medalist go through the rest of their life saying it could have been me whereas bronze medalist are comparing themselves to the rest of the world that didn't win any belts that's actually how it works now you can be the recipient of a positive social comparison but as a general rule Teddy Roosevelt president theater Roosevelt was right when he said that comparison social comparison is the thief of joy you know if you want to ruin an experience compare yourself to other people it should be intrinsically satisfying if you're actually getting in shape and feeling good but put yourself on Instagram you can't win you're you're going to lose because there's somebody else I mean this is by the way one of the reasons that the literature on social media is so alarming I mean we're finding out that increasingly social media is a public bad and brings people down in almost any dose and anything any amount of time over half an hour a day you're spending on social media you literally get lonelier and more depressed and it has everything to do with the fact that you're crowding out in-person relationships for happiness is love full stop I mean remember faith, family and friends are all love categories and if you do anything that's a substitute for love you lose everything you should do is anything you should do technologically should be a compliment to your relationships never a substitute for your relationships and it's even worse it's metastatically dangerous if you're actually if you're substituting for your human relationships and comparing yourself to everybody else's fake life you know Instagram influencers especially in the in the fitness space they don't actually look like that are you kidding me it looks like that one day and they're so completely desicated and miserable and food obsessed and you're yelling at everybody and it's like I finally got to my you know I'm finally you know 4.5% body fat get the camera quick before I kill everybody it's like we all know what's going on and a lot of what I know from this is because you know I'm a fan of yours you know one of the most inflecting things that you taught me when you're on my podcast but also just because on your show when you talked about the the cosmic beauty of the dad bod you know and it was really helpful for me and I have to say because you know during coronavirus there's everybody doesn't matter you know if you study happiness or not there's only four strategies for life in coronavirus you know and during lockdowns which is like drunk chunk hunk or monk right and and it's ready and so you know I was like I don't know I'm going to get in the best shape of my life and I was getting more and more and more and more miserable and I heard you talking about you know that don't do that that's crazy don't never don't become food obsessed don't be stupid but a lot of people become unhappy because they're trying to be perfect and then and then put up this this facade of perfection and happiness on social media and in so doing they're lying and they're making everybody else miserable through social comparisons so the one way that we can completely defend ourselves is to get off all of those sites and ration all of our social media consumption to 30 minutes a day or less with the rule that it's only to get information that we need and to communicate with people we love that I think that's excellent advice you know I have a so I have a way of explaining it I would love your opinion because this is your expertise but I think you know it's natural for us to kind of rank ourselves socially to see where we are I mean it's part of our evolution and when you're on social media you just turn your tribe into this much bigger tribe but the people that tend to pop up on social media are anomalies they just you know for example I read the statistic that more rare than millionaires I mean I managed gyms for decades and so this is already a a selection bias where you already have people who work out and nobody in there was super ripped in the gyms it was actually quite rare in the gyms that I managed to see that but when you're on social media it looks like it's everywhere and so then naturally you're just like wow I'm not only am I not in the middle I'm so far far down at the bottom I should you know I look terrible is that am I explaining kind of what's happening people who are complete outliers or actually who who depict themselves as outliers because this is what you want you know it's like nobody puts on social media you know my kid just flunked math brutal you know there I was like little Johnny is is super outstanding yet again today or like you know my girlfriend screamed at me and told me I was a complete loser I should get off the couch and go get a job no they're like out hiking today beautiful in North California and and so you want to look like an outlier on the positive side you don't want to look like you have a normal life that's the point of of actually broadcasting yourself that's the way that you actually climb the social hierarchies that are part of the human condition the problem is that there's a lot of research that shows that we're incredibly bad at discerning that when we're looking at social media we have a tendency to believe the things that people depict in the positive way and make a negative comparison of ourselves is a very normal thing to do we're strivers is the bottomline so you see you realize how hard it is to get six back abs I mean it's like you really know what it means to get to 8% body fat that is you're giving up a lot of life it's really hard and it hurts especially trust me so when you're 56 like me it's really hard and frankly as you will often say it's not worth it that's it's not worth it to feel good it's not worth it to be healthy it's not worth it to sacrifice your relationships and so so because it's natural for us to compare I think this is kind of part of you know being a human what would be I guess a fair person to compare yourself with would it be just yourself I guess who you were yesterday well the pursuit of excellence means continuous improvement I mean that's really what we're talking about and then and it's improving to across your own set of goals toward and making making the key thing that I often talk about is not can is not confusing goals that will impress others with those that will bring you to higher levels of moral perfection and so this is you know I've I've written about this and there's a very tenuous link between fitness and happiness and so very there's a very interesting set of papers I mean I'm very very big into fitness as you know I mean I'm really I really believe in it the problem is that if you do it because you think when you get more beautiful that you'll be happy from about the 50th percentile and beauty that's right in the middle of the population you're neither ugly nor beautiful and you move to that 85th percentile which is like you got to going on I mean you're you're you're more beautiful than 85 percent of the population right that will move you from the 50th the 51st percentile and happiness it's just totally not worth it because you know you got to have surgery for that you got to spend three hours a day in the gym for that you got to you know you need a like a divinely inspired miracle for that in many cases it's just not worth it you need to do these things for intrinsic reasons I want to challenge myself I owe it to my family to become healthier and to to to live longer to be able to you know dandel my granddaughter on my knee that's what I want because you remember faith family friends and work baby that's what actually is going to make you happier and so these goals that we have should be personal improvement goals toward those more cosmic goals that we have and then doing yeah you're I I'll echo that I mean as a I trained people for years and years and years and I would always get that I want to lose weight so I can be happy and I would have to eventually I'd have to work with them and train them and show them we got to be happy before you lose the weight because it's never going to it's never going to work out you know earlier you were talking about you know enjoyment satisfaction and purpose enjoyment is about feeling good purposes about pain it almost it's like they're they're contradicting how do we how do we reconcile that yeah so the the key thing is balance and everything in life is balance it's balance between the time you spend in the gym and the time you don't spend in the gym it's balance between you know the days that you you know you eat free and the days that you're on a diet this kind of moderation is a matter of prudential judgment the happiest people actually find this balance in their life the the unhappiest people that the people who suffer from addiction for example they they they really have a hard time with balance is like if that feels good a little then a lot is going to feel great and that's wrong in almost every case you know you can get into these addictive behaviors and by the way there's there's brain chemistry that aids and abets this mistake there's a neurotransmitter neuromodulator called dopamine and everybody at this point knows that dopamine is this implicated in all addictive substances and processes so you can get addicted to and I know a ton of people in my world were addicted to success people were addicted to work their workaholics but also people would get addicted to drugs and alcohol and gambling and you know pornography and bad stuff the reason is because your brain your dopamine signals they say like I like that give me more I want more right now and then you start responding to your brain your your brain chemistry starts pulling you and you need to retrain your brain and the way that you do that is you become a master and the master is one who actually finds balance so that's the key everything in balance if I'm basically looking for pure enjoyment I'm not going to be happy if I'm so stoic that I'm willing to put up with any amount of pain then I don't have the balance either I see you know you're a a fitness fanatic so and you worked out all the time so you feel the physical pain of squats or barbell rows or deadlifts have you changed your relationship with pain to make it something that you then can I mean it's not enjoyable the sensation but rather you have a different relationship to it is that part of the key because I I'm using fitness because I notice I do that with fitness but with other things I have I have a tough time with it yeah for sure you know when you actually see when you start to associate the you know the progress toward your goals and and ultimately the person that you want to be with the pain itself and the pain becomes not just more bearable but it it becomes more sanctified you know it's interesting that you know we do this all the time that you know the ancient the monks during the middle ages you know we laugh at them because they were doing things like you know using a core you know cords and whipping themselves or wearing hair shirts or something like that and yet you know you know we're working out you know and and it's the whole point was they were looking for spiritual perfection through mortification I see and there's a form of mortification that we're actually getting and I love it I mean I just you know I jump out of bed every morning and I can have a gym in my basement and I just love it it's not because squats feel good squats are going to feel bad every day for the rest of my life if you remember Jack Lillane of course that guy absolutely he was he was the you know he was the fitness guru when I was a kid my mom had his records you know she put on a record it's like music and leg lifts and the whole thing in the living room and she was because my mom was sort of in like in shape before being in shape was cool and and Jack Lillane you know I I started following a little bit when he was old he died when he was late 90s because he was so healthy and on his 90th birthday you know he pulled a tugboat in his teeth across San Francisco May or some crazy thing you know and he said you know he had these funny sayings he would say for example if it tastes good spit it out and he would and he said that he he he he hated every minute of every workout his whole life and he wasn't a masochist the point was you hate the pain but you don't you have a relationship with something that actually mortifies you for your own positive good because yeah you know it's like you know they got describing tomorrow Saturday and you know you got me doing full body workouts as opposed to you know it's like funny for the for our listeners I was I met you in person I was 55 and I was still doing a like a stupid brosplit and wondering why my back hurt yeah yeah that's like yeah get a clue man it's like Dr. PhD can't even figure that one out you're like dude fine you got to go to a full body three times a week and so anyway then so tomorrow I'm going to start off and it's going to be like five o'clock in the morning and I'm going to be down there and you know what it feels like you do five o'clock in the morning doing squats but it's it's good it's good because it's good for me and it's kind of good for my soul in a way and all of these things that we do you know all the sacrifices that we make the most sanctified kind of suffering by the way and I've got my column in the Atlantic that's coming out you know the day after Lent starts in February this year into a couple of weeks from now the reason that sacrifice for other people is so pleasurable it's because this sanctification because of the sacredness that actually comes and so you find for example you sacrifice for your baby son and it's it's it's good you know it's good it's like you don't want to wake up at three o'clock in the morning but when you do and it's dark and you're tired and your son's you're giving him a bottle and he's sitting in your lap and you're like thank you Lord this is a beautiful thank you for making it possible for me to do this for my son and and that's the way to live that's the way to live I'm doing it for people that I love I'm doing it for reasons that matter and then pain is different yeah that's again that's great so okay so we're looking I read these polls and these statistics and it seems like people are more anxious more you know of course polarized we hear that all the time people seem to be more unhappy materially up until recently people were doing better in America so we had more stuff we had more money we had less crime but people are not as happy and you know from your perspective what do you think is causing this of all those things you've talked about what do you think is the reason why people seem to be less happy today than they were 20 years ago or 30 years ago yeah so it's true and so I've got data on the percentage of people that say that they're thriving and I can look at it and don't look at it during the coronavirus epidemic because you get these radical dips and happiness given the fact that people are living under unusual circumstances so that's an outlier so don't even don't even put that in but if you look at just you know from right before the financial crisis until you know a year or two ago you'll find a secular decline the percentage of people that say that they're thriving which is a good way Gallup does this to measure how happy people are and at the same time every income group has been increasing in purchasing power which is the way you want to look at it and people want to cook the data a lot of people out there that want to say that rich are getting rich and the poor are getting poorer it's a lie it's like it's completely not true and so you look at purchasing power and it's been it's radically increasing so for example the the person at the 10th per income percentile in America today has the same living space as a person at the 50th percentile in 1980 I mean you were alive in 1980 it wasn't that long ago and so that's the 50th percentile has gone to the 10th percentile and that's that's in living space not to mention all the conveniences of life and you know that that they're very very few calorie deficits and just all the stuff about life and yet thriving has been decreasing so the key thing to look at and that you know the diagnostic mechanism is to look at a portfolio of happiness and what's going on faith family friends will work we have all kinds of you know we basically we have made it harder that you know the number of people who say that they have no religion at all has gone from you know about 6% to 36% since the 1970s and again you know maybe they're substituting stoic philosophy for it or you know something that that is a good substitute but for a lot of people what you find is there's there's on emptiness that when you talk to people that they have because they don't have this this transcendental sense whether it's prayer meditation or philosophy there's just less of that for young people that's number one family more and more people are estranged from their families today 44% of people are completely estranged from a family member 17% from a direct family member which means a sister or brother a child or a parent mean literally not talking 70% one in six Americans has stopped talking to a family member that's insanity so that's a big source of unhappiness friendship you find that we have this epidemic of loneliness I just have my podcast a woman named Norina Hertz who's got this you know this new book out to a big best seller across Europe and coming to the States now and she talks about the data that show that that people are lonelier than they've ever been that mean and there's a bunch of reasons for it she's sort of thinks that you know the government should be building more parks or something but now you know I think that you know social media is fueling a lot of our loneliness I think there's a whole bunch of you know interpersonal reasons that modern life is doing this and then work you know people are not thinking about their work in the right way they're not thinking vocationally about serving other people in work and so when these all these dimensions are going the wrong direction you're actually going to see prosperity increasing and happiness declining Do you think this is connected to materialism because I know I mean obviously in this country in many you know democratic free countries we have this great markets that produce what we want we can get more and more of it and of course it's look it's part of sales and marketing to tell you you need this product you need this thing it's going to make you happy we've been told this now for decades and so do you think it's part of materialism where we're just so obsessed with more stuff because that's what we think is going to do it and so we're forgetting everything else yeah I mean it's again it goes back to Aquinas money, power, pleasure, fame it's basically instead of faith, family, friends and work it's money, power, pleasure, fame you know people are looking for the easy fix and going for the idols and a lot of this has to do with the fact that we're really do for a big spiritual renewal in this country and it happens I mean we go through these cycles there's nothing new under the sun you know people say that we're in a secular decline America's got his worst years you know ahead his best years behind us I don't believe it because I've actually seen these cycles where people go into kind of a spiritual funk where they you know they're at each other's throats you get a lot of this like crazy political populism from both sides where we're encouraged by leaders to hate each other and be afraid of each other and then you get this backlash where people like no I refuse to be unhappy and that's when you get people will get more interested in religion people get more when they start falling in love more I mean so consider this people were in their 20s today or a third less likely to be in love than people were when I was that age I mean you basically have people that they're they're shutting themselves off from the the most important single source of human happiness which is long-term romantic love I don't think to have to tell you you're happily married man and me for 30 years and the idea that I would be in my 20s and not dating and not in the market and not trying to lock down it's just it's really really unthinkable but that's kind of what we've got going on our values are ready for and we need spiritual we need happiness entrepreneurs and you know that's what you are by the way the nice thing about it is you know people come they they look I you know talk to people who listen to mind pump they why did I go to mind pump because I wanted to be I wanted my fitness routines to get better and you guys had a really good reputation and I stayed with it because I felt happier when I was listening to you guys you know and you were talking about you know just that you know the banter for the first 45 minutes of the show is like I tried this thing and like what about did you see that movie actually it's weird you know the craziest thing was I was listening to mind pump in the gym back in the old days when we could all go to the gym before I met you about three months before I met you four months before I met you for the first time and you were talking about my movie is the craziest thing that really made me happy but you're a happiness entrepreneur I mean you're a guy who is going in through the back door of fitness to help people understand fulfilling life and that's why the first 45 minutes are stuff like you know transcendental things and family and you're talking about your friends and and it's it's good there's a reason it works awesome thank you you great by the way the pursuit great movie I think everybody should watch it I think it's absolutely phenomenal you know I know that growth comes from being uncomfortable or from pain I wonder if it's a blessing that we're all getting like we're going to get everything that we think we want and then we're going to realize this is this is not giving me what I want and maybe that's what it's going to take to do what you're talking about get this kind of this upheaval the spiritual transformation so maybe we're heading there I think so and you know this is also a pair a key thing for parents you know that a lot of people listening to us have kids or who gonna have kids I hope I hope we all have tons of kids and you know it's I mean my time is past I hope I have lots of grandkids at some point not too soon and you know but this is the thing that parents do wrong is they try to shield their kids from discomfort and pain and we've gotten so good at it because we've gotten so rich that our kids are it's like they're you're getting the measles because they're not getting their their vaccine at this point they're you know one of the things it's really interesting you find that their parents helicopter parent their kids and give them everything they need and drive them around a little Johnny's got to go to soccer practice and he got into a tiff with some kid and it's like I'm gonna call the coach it's really really bad because they get to college and then the kids demand you know you know safe spaces and and and they protest and do cancel culture is because of fear like there's only two modes of culture it's love and fear and if you're if it's not a love-based polarity you're gonna get a fear-based polarity which is all over college campuses as they go through and then the colleges protect them and then guess what they get out in their 20s and they're ill-prepared for any sort of conflict any sort of pain any sort of rejection and they're walking around really really fearful and they're getting lonely you know that's that's like that does this guy named John Hyatt Jonathan Hyatt he teaches he's a psychology teaches at NYU visionary guy and he's talking about how everybody's afraid this this you know epidemic of fear among people in the 20s these I said who who's responsible for that he's like you are like what are you talking about what I do he said well he says how old were you the first time that you went out on your own like for running Aaron for your mom all alone I'm like I don't know five he says how old was your daughter is like I don't know 14 said that's it he said you have not you're not exposing your head that really really changed my perspective and and you know I changed my parenting a little bit I have to say and the result has been really really good because I'm you know I'm willing to you know my daughter I'm not going to I'm not going to check in every second my son you know I've I've told you about my son Carlos he you know he said dad I'm not going to go to college and I didn't fight him I said make your business plan I'm your venture capitalist make your business plan he became a farmer and now he's now he's like you know shooting bad guys he's in the he's in the Marine Corps and you know forward deployed member of the infantry he's protecting America that that I'm proud of because he built his life that's excellent yeah that's tough too as a parent because you just want to shield your kid as much as possible I have challenges with that myself all the time that's something I'm constantly constantly battling with you know the thing that drove me so hard to learn so much about fitness actually came from a dark place I was very insecure about my body I've talked about this on the podcast as a kid as a 14 year old were you driven by something darker as well to to become this expert on happiness I mean you you know so much about it you study it so so much you're so good at communicating it did you have did you struggle with it with yourself so interested in learning about it yeah my happiness levels are low I am not I'm not I mean it's and again I mean I I have gluey parents I had gluey parents they died young my circumstances have been really really good but my baseline this isn't very good you know and you know you don't study air when you've got a lot of it it's funny you know you know really well that people become super interested in something that's scarce so and one of the reasons that you know you've talked about this in the show and I've talked about this I've taught this concept the reason that 95% of diets fail which is to say people gain back all the way and then some after a year is because when you when it's scarce and you become food obsessed you do weird stuff you think about it all the time you would never eat a whole cake under an ordinary circumstances but you would when you're starving right and so when somebody is really really missing something I mean you were you were had a really bad body image your skinny kid and you felt bad about it and all that you were thinking about it an awful and you remediated it and I guess I'm going to go out on a limb that you didn't remediate it always in a healthy way right you know you went too far and then you actually had to dial back and now you're really really healthy space for happiness for me it was just elusive you know my wife and I'm married for a super long time and on a one to seven scale she's like a 6.8 and and she would never study happiness because that's a why would you study air there's lots of air out there what a weird thing to study it's like you know I don't know I mean it doesn't even make sense so that's the main reason that I really got into it the other thing is that you know I early on I this is a complete like fourth career for me I started out I was I was a professional classical musician from the time I got kicked out of college when I was 19 for dropping all my required classes goofing off and you know taking Indonesian dance and you know North Indian drumming and all the things anyway therein lies another dubious tale of my past and tired 20's traveling is a professional classical musician that's super super taxing that's many hours a day it's like a it's like you know bodybuilding it's it never stops it's completely relentless it's totally self-driven it's all about you know the validation that comes from excellence all the time and so I kind of got into this groove when you do something you do it all in super effectively as much as you possibly can so then I went you know when I was I went to college when I was 30 and and I treated my academic work the same way that I treat classical music which is just you you get gas pedal all the way down and then it impossible to do something like this I thought okay what do I need happiness how am I going to do it like a classical musician boom great that's great so so those four things you talked about which were family friends work what was the fourth one again faith faith there you go yeah so those four things how would somebody let's say somebody's listening right now because I like to give people takeaways right and let's say somebody's listening they're like you know what I want to I want to construct for lack of a better turn of routine I want to be able to put those things together so that I can control the 25% I think you said of my happiness through habits through those four things what would that look like in a day or a week so the key thing is to do a serious inventory you know a self-examination you know whenever it's convenient I would say you know some sunny Sunday afternoon we've got a little bit of time and say okay where am I on these where am I realistically in these dimensions most likely you have goals that you're there unmet in these dimensions most people are like yeah I really want to have a better relationship with my parents and you know I really should call my mom more or you know why don't I have any friends or you know I've always wanted to read more wisdom literature all those are basically goals in the faith family and you know friends people are not who are listening to you because people who are listening to you are excellent I mean they're people who are achievers that's because you have a culture of high achievement and high effectiveness so most people are listening to us right now are you know they're they're already good on the work dimension and this is interesting because a diversified portfolio is every bit as important as you know getting the parts right I mean diversification only paying attention to work is like putting your entire pension it's like are you right I mean you can do it but I don't recommend it and it might work out but probably not so what I recommend is like just really doing a serious inventory of this and saying where do I need to make where do I need to make gains where do I need to make progress and then at the end of the day do a little examination of conscience at the end of each day and say did I put a deposit into each one of these accounts or did I not and and if you didn't you got to make a resolution that you're going to do it tomorrow it because either you did or you didn't right I mean it's not like oh I forgot to go to work today no you didn't you didn't forget to go to work today you got up and because it was part of a routine and the same thing is true with respect to your faith in your family and and your friends and so what I recommend is that you actually put it into your schedule so you know every day you know when I wake up in the morning I set I like I like pen and paper because this role and I put my thing together and I have time for prayer you know I start off I go to mass with my wife every morning and then we come back and we eat breakfast marriage and our faith and I make sure that I call family members and I have time you know in my day it'll say what I'm going to call one of my friends and and I remember people that I'm actually going to talk to because you know this is serious business your happiness portfolio is a serious business at the end of the day I'll say I fell down on the friends category you didn't make that call I'm not going to do that tomorrow so do the four buckets and put something into each one of the buckets and each Sunday assess the extent to which you're you're going toward your happiness goal and if you do that boy oh boy you're going to feel you know better that is that is a very powerful takeaway I'm I'm actually going to implement that I appreciate that okay honest opinion looking at the state of things and the way things are right now and a lot of people would say they're kind of gloomy do you think we're going to change you think we're going to improve do you think it's going to get better before it gets worse or or worse before it gets better to say I think it's well I mean that's what we in my business called a stochastic process which is like a random walk you can't say if it's going to get better or worse but one thing you can say is not going to stay the same okay and I do believe strongly that that before too long we will see significant improvement and the reason is because things that can't stay the way they are won't you know people don't like it 93% of Americans hate how divided we become as a country and when you see that that's a huge entrepreneurial opportunity I mean that's like you know people walking around going I can't believe there's no restaurants in this town that's a huge opportunity you know open a restaurant man you make a boat load of money and so politicians I was just talking to a big group of politicians in Washington today as a matter of fact and I said look guys you want to get rich and famous now as you're up you're opening people are sick of what's going on in this country doesn't matter if you're conservative or a liberal you voted for Biden or Trump you don't like it and for the more you love somebody who disagrees with you politically and you're tired of having people on your own side trashing the people you love that's a big opportunity so I think that the bitterness that we see in our country the polarization is is actually people are going to jump on that and we're going to see kind of a populism of virtue coming along that's traditionally what's happened to as an historical matter we've been like this a bunch of times it's not it's been worse than this and we've seen dips in the amount of our ability as a country to actually get along love each other and that's when people pick up the ball so we're due for something like that when it comes to the happiness revolution I think that we're actually due for some spiritual entrepreneurship where people are going to be and and I don't just mean religious people are going to be thinking about matters of the soul a love revolution is going to come along my parents were super freaked out because in the late 60s early 70s I was a really little kid I barely remember this but they're like are these filthy hippies you know they're having sex all over the place and they don't understand the nature of love and and it's like okay now it's exactly the opposite problem grim and nobody loves each other and you know I realized that you know the the Woodstock was was a nightmare but give me Woodstock over an unhappy college campus any day and so I think that there's going to be you know that tendency coming as well and these are welcome things I mean we have to we have to you know hit the brakes on ourselves so that we don't fall you know prey to our appetites but but man I think that a spiritual revolution a love revolution a revolution in which where the polarity goes from fear of love in our politics you know I think that sooner or later we are going to see these things and you know I just hope I can be part of making it happen that's great that makes me feel good you talk to a lot of very influential powerful people you talk about politicians I know you you know have lunch with ex-presidents and and senators and when you talk to them about this stuff are they receptive are they receptive to hearing you know what you have to say about happiness and helping other people become happy yeah they are and and part of the reason is well part of it is the people you know the good ones but but it's also their people you know their people too you know that they might lack ambition to do the right thing and they might and they face a ton of risks too I mean you could basically say stop being a hater they say if I'm not a hater I'm going to get you know primary and voted out of office that's true and there's these you know these political realities that they face but you know you got to say at some point what are you willing to go down for man I mean you know and they don't they they're eager for this progress as much as you and I are actually you know this it was funny you know I move to Washington because I was the the president of a think tank in D.C. a really big think tank in D.C. for 11 years and when I first got to Washington I was very cynical about politicians like you know political pros they'll say anything they're really shallow and that's actually I was wrong I was really impressed at the quality of the people and the dedication to service and how much they suffer when people attack them and and you know I'm I'm less cynical than than most of the people that I know but that doesn't mean they're perfect and they can actually use coaching and and you know what else they need friends you know I've got and I got it I got a text from a senator while you and I were taped in this he's my friend and I like him and he's a good person and there's going to be you know I think finding my job you do your job and if they they do better if they all listen to mine pump by the way then we can all make a better world but we have to nudge our friends to do the right thing Arthur thank you so much for coming on the show you make me feel good every time I talk to you and you know I I encourage everybody listen to this guy's podcast find anything he has on YouTube because you do you just feel good and empowered after watching you so I appreciate I really appreciate your friendship and I appreciate you coming on thank you my friend I appreciate it a lot I think of you and you know we text pretty regularly but you've helped me so much and you're helping so many people around the world nothing gives me greater satisfaction the fact that mine pump is going from strength to strength thank you thank you again now is that you know a valid question for a potential client to ask you know the trainer like how many people are you servicing 100% I think it should be how many clients do you work with how closely do you work with your clients right if you're a client and you're asking potential trainer like think of all the scenarios where you've been disappointed before on your come up