 You're really great at your job. Here's a raise. Here's a promotion. Here's an acceptance into the Harvard Business School or whatever I mean those things give just big big dopamine hits and they and they say I'm coming back for more And so what people do is that they habitually get used to wanting a new hit I mean just wanting the you know the monkey who wants the banana again and again boom boom boom the trouble is you Can't keep any satisfaction from that and But because mother nature wants you coming back for more mother nature loves that hedonic treadmill wants you running on it like a You know, it's like like an animal Sup everybody and welcome to the show today. We drop great content each and every week And we want to make sure that you guys get notified and in order to do that You're gonna have to smash that subscribe button and hit that notification bell And if you've gotten a lot of value out of this make sure you give us a like and share our videos with your friends This idea leads to another key facet of the book that I want to discuss that I hadn't heard before this success addiction Hmm, so many of us and certainly you know this working with MBA students Like we are through school wired to compare ourselves to others to rank to score to place above There's this never-ending comparison that's going on through young adulthood to strive to reach this great success in our career And it seems to me like it does create a success addiction who doesn't want the gold star Who doesn't want to be in the honors class who doesn't want to be accepted to Harvard Business School? What does that say about our mental health and happiness and if we find ourselves in this success addiction state How do we kick it? Well, it's a success addiction is like any other addiction it implicates the dopaminergic pathways in our brains and dopamine as Everybody knows at this point because of the wonderful books that have come out But you know my Anna Lemke at Stanford and you know a bunch of really important books And you guys have talked about in your show that the dopamine is implicated in all addictive processes And it's the rule. It's basically it lights up your reward circuit So you do something you like it you get their little hit you get the little success hit and that gives you a little bit of Dopamine that that might be you know a line of coke. It might be smoking a cigarette It might be you know playing bingo. I don't know but you when you know when you're really gonna get it It is when somebody's like You're really great at your job. Here's a raise. Here's a promotion. Here's an acceptance into the Harvard Business School or whatever I mean those things give just big big dopamine hits and they and they say I'm coming back for more And so what people do is that they habitually get used to wanting a new hit I mean just wanting the you know the monkey who wants the banana again and again boom boom boom the trouble is You can't keep any satisfaction from that and But because mother nature wants you coming back for more mother nature loves that hedonic treadmill wants you running on it like You know, it's like like an animal like keep running man. Keep running that keep and and so that the success addiction is not You know has no indictment of capitalism capitalism is awesome It can happen in any any situation where you know, even it you know most selfish Self-absorbed people never met or in socialist systems where they you know grab all the goodies and I mean This is a human problem not even an economic problem And so you hit it you hit the lever you hit the lever you hit the lever again and again until all you know how to do To the exclusion of your relationships to the exclusion of your interests to your the exclusion of your the education and the cultivation of your Your immoral capacities is all sacrificed on the altar of success because you got to hit the lever again and again and I think when we talk about money power pleasure fame is these false gods a Lot of it is again taking from others right money in the transaction We want more of it whether it's from our boss whether it's from our company or if we sell Power we want to have control over others. We want to be able to boss others around Pleasure we talked about sex again trying to get others to to fall in line and then fame that the chasing of others attention So much of this I see patterns in my own behavior going through school going to graduate school and then getting some success and entrepreneurship and There are moments where you compare yourself to others and you feel much like we talked about looking at some of these guests And even the the passenger on the plane behind you that you look up to them And you're like they have it figured out and a lot of the people we look up to have money have power Have what seems like endless amounts of fame and pleasure in their lives. Why is this? glorified in Society, why are those false gods what are at the forefront and if they're not necessarily the ones that lead to happiness? What should we be pursuing? Yeah, so that the reason that we Idolize the people who are following the idols as it were is because we just don't really know another way You know people are pretty simple creatures. There are people of course who do if you go to the Dalai Lama He's not gonna say, you know work a 16 hour day. He's gonna say call your mother He's gonna say, you know spend time in meditation. He's gonna tell you these things that actually do bring rewards I mean, there's that the four idols money power pleasure and fame and then they're the four Things that really do bring happiness which are faith family friends and and sanctified work in the service of others where you really earn your success and and so We go for the easy lure because our brain keeps lying to us our brain keeps tricking us It's this Goddy plumage of the you know that says, you know over here I'm a you know big and beautiful the whole thing but it turns out that you're just you know a bird that's got that tail and and you know Your brain is is is trained to do that and we just haven't gotten over that a few people do You know, I'm hoping that we could and this is every time by the way when there's a religious revival a whole lot of people are like I'm not happy. I don't like it the world's lying to me This is not enough and then a whole lot of people try to become enlightened And there's a non-trivial number of people who are enlightened But the the lump and masses of people are just running on their treadmills again and again and again Because their brains are lying to them and they're believing the lies. Well, this brings up an interesting Topic or at least a sidebar, which you worked in DC. You were working in a think tank I would imagine then because of that in your career, you know and friends with quite a lot of politicians They know this science as well as anybody else We it's not like this is secret. It's not like you've cracked a code that that that has come out of Sideways, so we know what makes us happy. We know what makes a strong society. We know what makes us Excited to take on the day. So why is the messaging? That we're getting just so all over the map And I'm sure there's many different answers to this But I would like to hear your take on it after Studying this but also working in that atmosphere We drop great content each and every week and we want to make sure that you guys get notified and in order to do that You're gonna have to smash that subscribe button and hit that notification bell And if you've gotten a lot of value out of this Make sure you give us a like and share our videos with your friends Well part of it is that the messages that we get to do the wrong thing are just a lot easier to sell Because they're very short-term and they're intuitively they seem right. I mean this like it's what do you see a billboard for cheetos and Pepsi? You know that stuff is terrible for you, and it'll make you feel horrible It'll it'll taste really good in the moment, but it'll be really bad for your health And if you binge on it, and that's all that I see this big drink of Pepsi though, so they Speaking of which the bubbly That's right, so nobody got this bubbly. Yeah, it's like That you know this is an easier thing to sell I mean the short-termism is easier to sell it's it's more it sounds intuitively correct But it's not you don't see a big billboard saying eat on you know unflavored non-fat Greek yogurt with with protein powder in it, which is my Habitual dessert because I'm a freak right but and so politicians they're people too and they're selling fear instead of love they're selling short-termism instead of something is more nutritious because People hit that bait a lot more frequently Well, we have access to the to the best in and messaging in the world We have access to the best marketers in in the world. We don't need to throw up billboards and say eat this a Terrible tasting thing because it's good for you We can massage that message really well and fire people up about a more healthier lives though Which we all know everybody needs right now in the middle of this pandemic Right. No, that's absolutely true. But but again your brain lies and your brain says and but your your executive function is inhibited by the desires that you have your ancient desires that you have, you know You're 500,000 years ago if there was something sweet something it was highly glycemic You'd go to the top of a tree and risk your life to get it because it would be you know fast calories Well, we're maladapted to that at this particular point in our lives And so the result of that now is that that that Doritos billboard is the the equivalent of the banana the very top of the tree And that and we're still cavemen We have not evolved to the point where we actually desire the stuff that's good for us Well, even if we take that to its logical conclusion that billboard for Doritos Well Doritos are far cheaper than the healthier foods when you load things up with chemicals when you in Artificially sweeten and artificially load up with fat that isn't found in that combination in nature Well, it's the easy way to money. We look at politics It's the easy way to power to stay in power is to demonize the other side That's the easiest way to get reelected again that false God When you talked about the four things that we should be chasing the one that Johnny and I have started to discuss And we're seeing more and more in our clients is work and the lack of meaning found in work We've talked about this great resignation And you can go into the data of who's actually quitting their jobs, but even outside of that I mean some of my coaching clients now that I'm talking to you are asking me questions of how do I find my purpose? How do I find meaningful work? I don't like this current state of work where I'm no longer in an office I don't feel connected. There's no community. My co-workers and I barely interact I'm forced to work from zoom feeling quite isolated and then when I think about what I'm doing Well, I'm helping someone else in a leadership role worship the unhealthy God of money of power of fame I'm not actually doing anything meaningful. How do we? Find what would be meaningful work for ourselves for those who are in our career not happy with our current prospects Yeah, and the same question is how could we actually help create that for people who work for us So a lot of people who are listening to us right now have employees And they don't want everybody to quit and even if they don't quit They don't want them to be miserable because they're ethical decent human beings There's two characteristics to a job that will make it a source of happiness. They have they're not money. They're not They're not position. They're not authority. They're not power. No, no They're earned success and service to others those that I mean I don't care if you're a bus driver or a podcast or a Harvard professor Whatever you happen to do you will be unhappy with your job if you don't feel like you're earning your success if you're if your Accomplishments are not rewarded if you're not recognized for things that you're doing well If your skills don't meet your passions if you're not creating value with your work, that's earned success The opposite is what what psychologists call learned helplessness Where you know, you don't get a reward for what you do But it's you also don't get a penalty when things don't go right your skills aren't meeting your passion So you kind of give up you learn helplessness and there's a lot of experiments with people and with animals And you know, there's a lot of research on this So earned success is number one and number two is the belief that you're making life better for somebody else That's what creates true meaning and then the magic is when you have earned success and service to others in a context of a community Now here's the key thing. I mean people are like, why is there such a great resignation going on? Well, because maybe half of your compensation is your money The other part is is these intangible rewards when you need the money to pay your rent I got it but these intangible rewards of earning your success and serving other people but most importantly doing it with your friends This is a big deal these companies are like I can save tons of money by making everybody really productive by being remote forever And people are like, yeah, it's fine with me because once again your your executive center of your brain is Inhibited by loneliness. It's inhibited by being all by yourself, which is not natural And so you make the wrong choice to say, yeah, I'll stay home forever because working in my pajamas Awesome and and then the result of it is I can't you figure out why you're you feel empty with your job You don't like your job That's because you're a lonely person and you're developing signs of anxiety and depression Which is being foisted upon you by the fact that you're you continue to be you know with this paranoid Society where somebody might get the coronavirus so nobody gets to see each other ever which is insanity It's a mental health crisis that's washing across the country because the the paranoia that we all this collective Insanity that we all have about this whole situation and then the economists are scratching their heads How come everybody's quitting their jobs? Well, how could everybody not be quitting their jobs under these circumstances?