Harvard Professor: 4 Secrets to a Happy Marriage (Backed by Neuroscience)

With Kindern, the back of the back is located in the right.

The upper-left table is a very quick and easy to find. The center is a very large area. Our cars are in the absolute way. The Negaler Brod Trip or the Geschäftswizer.

“If you have a flight to the airport, you can go to the airport or you have to go to the right.”

What do you have to open up here? Yes, we are here too. Enter price. Here for you. Have you ever questioned the meaning of your life? Well, today I'm talking with none other than Arthur Brooks.

You know him as the happiness expert. He is a behavioral scientist at the Harvard University. He has his own lab. He is one of the best people I've ever met. And this is only the beginning of the year. He has a book called "The Meaning of Your Life." Finding purpose in an age of emptiness.

You'll find the links down in the show notes. This book is releasing very soon. It's already on sale. I can tell you one of these conversation is probably one of the most meaningful I've had because of the topics we went into. He's somebody that's most double my age. And so we get to dive into topics and lessons about marriage and faith and family and

and positive syndrome and why you should be bored. Why boredom is a good thing. You should be probably bored more often. We dive into these things and what's best is he gets to use a lot of the science and research that he already used. This is a conversation that you're really going to get a whole lot of value from.

You're going to want to make sure and listen. This is the Jefferson Fisher podcast where I'm on mission to make your next conversation. The one that changes everything.

Wherever you're listening, same as always, I'm going to ask right now that you find

wherever you're listening and press the button subscribe. If it's you're watching it, listening to it, it's totally for free. And what it does is it really ups me and my family and it tells the platform that what you're listening to is good stuff and that's my promise. If you listen and subscribe to these podcast episodes, I'm going to make you a better

communicator and in turn hopefully have a better life. My conversation with Arthur was deep and way more than I ever expected. I know you're really going to like it. So enjoy the conversation. Have you always been and lived in Virginia?

No, no, I grew Seattle.

“That's how I thought you were in Seattle area.”

I've moved 20 times in the past 30. I've been married 34 years. We moved 20 times. Every place, man. We live in Atlanta.

We live in Syracuse for seven years. Twenty times. Twenty times. Twenty times. We live in Barcelona for often on for years and years.

Yeah. We can't. I'm in the wait and this protection front. Yeah. You might as well be.

So I'm with that like you moving all these other places and you've been married. We say 34 years. Yeah. So then what's what's. What's the most.

What motivates that? Oh, no. No. I actually were recording. You want to talk about.

I want to talk about how to fall in love and stay in love. No. No. It's. I'm.

You know, we move. Oddly enough. We move like every three years. Yeah. And so.

And we've been married. It'll be 15 years. There's. You know, so still less than half years. underway.

Once you pass five. Yeah. Five is the is the witching year. Five is the witching year. Yeah.

Just content was seven. No. That's the old seven year edge. But it's actually the data say five. Really.

Yeah. And that's the disc content peaks at five and then declines. And the reason is because the couples of state together. They learn how to stay together. They learn actually how to make each other better and not how to make each other

worse.

You're making each other worse for the first five years typically.

Yeah. Because you're like. Dagger strong. This competition. And the kids are getting between.

Yeah. No. Yeah. And then after that, it's it's the couples of state together. They're like, look, they look at the kids.

They're like, it's us against them. Exactly. I feel like it gets to a point where it's like, hey, look. Okay. I'm not that great.

Yeah. You know. Yeah. What happens is the couples that really stay together after about five years. Typically the reason they start getting a lot happier after five years is

number one that they bring more positivity to each other is opposed to bringing more negativity to each other. Number one. And number two is they tend to get more religious together. And so couples that get more religious at the same time.

They get happier and happier and happier. I've seen that about people couples who pray together. Yeah. So I can give you the if you want. We're doing a show.

But we're just rolling. We're already going. Are we doing it? Yeah. We're rolling.

Yes. Four secrets. Two. Don't even worry about like how we're seeing like the saving. To to to either saving your marriage or actually having a happier marriage.

And based on neuroscience. So number one is when you're seeing me married 15 years. It's very easy because you're distracted.

“I mean, it's like, it's like your life is changing really fast.”

You're like, I don't know what's going on. Man. Like I blew up on Instagram. It was not my finger cracked. Right.

But you're distracted and you're a lawyer. And you're doing a podcast. You're doing, you have like nine jobs. Yeah. And your wife's super busy because she's practicing law and how many children you have.

We have two. And you're raising two kids. Yeah. And it feels like they're in a certain age. I feel like 20.

It feels like you have five kids. Yeah.

So the first thing that the first bad habit you get into is that

Believe it or not, simple, you stop looking at each other in the eyes when you're talking. The number one way to rekindle your marriage is every time you're looking at her, you're staring her in the eyes. Now women have three times as much oxytocin as men, which is a narrow peptide in the brain of human bonding. And the reason is because they bond to an infant with eye contact while nursing. And so when a baby is nursing with his mom, her mom,

the baby is staring into the mother's eyes and they're both is like bond this bonding neural peptide. Yeah. The function is a hormone oxytocin. But the whole point is that you get that with anybody who you love. When you're when you're your friends, your parents, your kids.

And especially your soulmate. This is how you take somebody who you're not related to and make them into kin. Women need more than men. And so men, they forget to look at their wives and the eyes when they talk to them. Now when you first were falling in love with her, you're like,

“yeah, staring into her eyes, right? And you stop doing that. And that's what a lot of couples do.”

And so you basically, I'm going to make a note that every time I'm talking to her, which is every day. And before we go to bed at night, I'm just going to look at her in the eyes. That's all I'm going to do. She's going to be like, I don't know why, but I feel so much closer to you. That's why. Yeah.

Because you're creating the neurochemical milieu for her to feel the love that she needs. That's number one. Yeah. All right. Number one.

I'm just soaking it up. You don't even have a teller.

Yeah. Number two is something that it's actually more important for women, but for men too, is always be touching.

Is ABT. The ABT rules always be touching. That's more important for women to spontaneously touch their husbands. I'm not talking about sexual touch. Right. I'm talking about just touch.

So when you're in church, she's holding your hand. When you're watching TV, she's holding your hand. She's always touching you. And men really, really, really need that a lot. Yes.

Men need the touch, men need the physical touch. When you're walking together, she slips her hand through your arm like that. And you feel like you're 70 tall. Yeah. That's why.

That's actually, you're getting some of the neuropeptical vasopressants. That gives it like, I'm the defender. Yeah. Yeah. But also, she loves me.

She loves me. She depends on me. She's holding on to me. She's holding on to me. And so that's number two.

Always be touching, ABT. And couples, they're married for a long time. They stop touching. You know, they're like walking together. Hands in their pockets.

Right. You know, they're watching TV. I'll put it sides of the couch. And when you're in bed together, before you go sleep and you're talking, looking at each other in the eyes, just hold hands.

That's hold hands. Number three is stop rehearsing your grievances, which of course there's plenty because you're living in captivity with another person. It's hard. And start having more fun.

Because fun will outright grievance, almost every time. And there's could be grievances like, my husband is a flanderer. That's not what I'm talking about. Yeah.

I'm talking about not abuse or disloyalty or abandonment. But ordinary things of annoyance that come into a relationship. That's like the stuff that's on the beach that you can't see when the tide is in. Mm. And then when the tide goes out, that's all you can see.

And so you gotta make the tide come back in again. That's fun. Having more fun. More positive emotion as opposed to rehearsing negative emotion. That's true.

So we're going to buy cries together. We do stuff with what do we like to do together? You know, telling more jokes to each other. Actually doing more stuff together.

“That's why date night is so critically important,”

especially when you've got kids. Doing more stuff together that you both like. And you know, sometimes it'll be like. She likes it. He doesn't like one thing that all wives don't know is that their husbands don't want to go apple picking.

Yeah, right. It's like no more apple picking. But, but there is stuff that you do like to do together and every couple does that. Do more of that. And the last is praying together.

Praying together is super important. Not not everybody's religious. Sure. So, you know, maybe it's meditating together. Another way that you can do this is like reading to each other.

It's a read to each other at night, like in bed, so you're reading to her and she's reading to you. It has a really very strong brain to brain coupling effect. But praying together is the single most intimate thing you can actually do together is talking to God. And the reason is because what you're saying is we are united with the divine. The divine is our uniting force.

It's like two keys that are nuclear sub to launch the missiles. Yeah. That's like your marriage becomes an antenna to the divine when you do that. I can tell when in my own marriage it's here. It feels way more connected when we share.

We might be on a walk after dropping off the kids or something. And I share what God's doing in my life. And she shares what's in God's doing in her life or she's reading and like that. Super good. Oh my goodness.

It like draws a different kind of connection and a way that just watching like a show together could never.

Nothing.

“There's nothing like it and you know it's a very important thing that people in a religious marriage.”

They will acknowledge that what makes their marriage stronger is that their spouse is not number one. Yeah. That God is number one. God is number one. And you bring me to my number one.

And my best way to get to my number one is you.

See, this is the, this is the reason that in every religion, marriage is divine, marriage is considered to be a divine institution.

Because for the vast majority of people, the way they understand God is through the love of their spouse. And so then you realize it's like, this is a big obligation to be married. When I'm not loving her actively, I'm denying her the experience of God's love. And that's not right. Right.

That's not right.

“The best way to experience that everyday is actually praying and seeing your spouse talking to her number one is super heavy.”

Oh, yeah. It's super heat. It's like way more intimate than like sex. Yeah. I mean, people will sleep with strangers, but they will train for another spouse.

And that's funny. Isn't it funny? And that's because prayers more intimate than sex. I also find that there will be, when you have these kind of conversations, you realize that there are thoughts like for outspeak from me. There are thoughts that she's having that are way deeper than my thoughts.

And so sometimes I'm like, I got to get my stuff together. She's thinking deep, and I'm thinking only two layers. I know, it's funny because part of it is that one of the things that women don't understand about men because you'll be silent and in thought. It should be like, what's he thinking about? It's probably thinking about some other woman.

He's probably thinking doesn't love me so much. And you're thinking about how big would a bear have to be for me to be that bear? Yeah. I'm serious.

She'll ask me, she'll, what are you thinking about while we were driving?

And I was like, honestly, I was looking at that sign and I thought that L kind of looked a little funny. You know, like, I wouldn't have the L on that logo. Like, what's wrong with it? Yeah. I was thinking about, if I got a racing stripe on the car, you know, what would it actually look?

Something completely trivial. Yeah. We're very simple. Men are actually emotionally simpler as a general role than women are. Yeah.

And so when they talk deeply about things like, you know, what we're talking about here's the meaning of life. Women are actually they have more talent. I don't understand the meaning of life than men do. And part of that is just that the brains work differently. Women have more developed right hemispheres of the brain of the brains.

The right hemisphere is the hemisphere where you you apprehend meaning in mystery. Yeah. The left hemisphere is where you think about how big the bear would have to be. Right. Or had to actually, you know, create an app that will get you find you the closest pizza at 10 p.m.

Technical problems, technical problems. Yeah. How to and what? How to and what questions of the left hemisphere? Why questions of the right hemisphere?

The deep why questions? And women have generally, me not at all. I mean, your results may differ. This is the general cost of population that women have a more developed right hemisphere. And so it's really interesting that they're like, why why why aren't you thinking about this?

“Why aren't you thinking about these emotionally important things?”

Like, I don't know. Right. And how old are your kids? There's six and eight. There's six and eight.

I boys. So my boys eight girls six. Okay. So when you're you're going to see this in let's say in about seven years. So you'll ask your daughter and it's like, honey, how do you feel about that thing that happened?

It's cool today. Buckle up because you're going to get now or one discussion. Right. If you ask your son about his emotion, so be like, what do you. I don't know.

I'll be like, I'm the exits. Yeah. And that because he didn't want to talk about it, but because you asked him an unanswerable question. Because he's sitting on the left hemisphere. And she's sitting in the right hemisphere.

Yeah. I saw this. I forgot which comedian I saw do this. But it was a story about he had just kind of text from a friend. And he said, oh, hey, you know, Rob's been in an accident.

And his daughter's like, oh, it's okay. And he's like, well, I don't know. I just got to go. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. It's at Fox Square. Yeah. I think it was. And you know, he talked.

Yeah. He's been in a big accident. Keep in your prayers. That's right. That's right.

Yeah. She lost the note. He's actually true. And he's like, oh, she's like, it's okay. Or are they all right?

Do you know where hospital is. And he's like, I don't know. I got like every. I know. The same answer again.

And again. Yeah. So men are simple in this way. But the whole point is that we complete each other. Yeah.

We complete each other. Ham is theoretically is the whole point. And that's a very, that's a very beautiful thing. Yeah. I don't.

We'd be in a bad state without it. I really do. Without what. Without what? Yeah.

I mean, I think it's like he said. It's not a good thing for me. Yeah. I mean, men. Um, who.

There's one statistic that often comes up in my business, which is that that men

are over 30 who have never been either married or partnered seriously.

Have a one and three chance of substance use disorder. Really. Yeah. And then just can't. They don't do very well.

You know, they don't do very well alone. It's like in the Bible says in Genesis, man, it's not meant to be alone. Yeah. That's a good thing. I mean, it's like, I, that's the first blow himself up or drive off.

Exactly. Exactly. I'm like, it makes me laugh every time because I read it.

“And I'm like, I think it's the only time I've seen in the Bible where”

I was like, you know what? Not the best idea for this guy. This is the alone. This is going to end poorly. We need to get him sometimes. I don't know.

Yeah. Get him get exactly the other. Right. And I mean, Sierra is she thinks so much more depth and also can show emotion a lot better.

I have a hard time showing emotion.

Even if I'm feeling it, I have a hard time expressing it. So it's like this, you know, this limited effectivity. Right. I'm where it's like, I have thoughts, but all she's seeing is stoic. Yeah.

Yeah. What's actually happening is you're thinking more analytically because you're dealing with problems on the what and how to sign, which is the left side of your brain. And she's thinking about the deep why and the deep why has it has a level of emotional depth. And again, you need both.

You actually need both.

“You know, that's why couples are such a great team when they're working together.”

Yeah. And when they don't work together because they're competing is about collaborating. That's when things fall apart and that's why divorce is starts to peak at five years. Do you think that who you're married to also affects your career? A lot.

Yeah. A lot. I mean, one of the things that's really bad is when couples are competing professionally with each other. And the way that you compete is you say something like, I took care of the kids yesterday. Today's your turn.

It's like, no, that's a wrong way of seeing things, obviously.

And, you know, the truth is that the couples that are that are the strongest are when you win she wins and when she wins you win.

Yeah. As opposed to when he won, that means, you know, I didn't. And that's not that that's the obviously the wrong vantage that you want for you. You need a collaborative relationship. You want a team of intelligence.

Yeah. I can definitely see where at times where it's who's job is more important. Yeah. Well, okay, well, I have this tomorrow night and you have that will look my stuff and you start competing in a way that's going to. Yeah.

That's problematic. Mad. It's a really, really problematic thing for sure.

“And, you know, the truth is that there are issues like that in fairness is really important.”

Respect is really important to be sure. But, you know, also men and women do best when they recognize that they have significant differences that are evolved. You know, we're, we're brains are in the current state as of about 250,000 years ago at the beginning of the late place to same period. And, you know, that's when human beings live in bands of 30 to 50 individuals that were kin based and the hierarchical. That's how all human beings lived in our brains are are intrinsically there.

They're built to live under the circumstances, which explains a lot of the weird things that people actually do. It's like, why do we care so much about social comparison? Well, because we want to rise hierarchically in the band. Why do we go insane on social media? Why would you check your mentions and drive yourself completely crazy?

Because you're trying to rise in a band of 30 people, but you've expanded that to 300 million people.

Right. And you can't cope with that cognitively. But there are other things as well. So, for example, biological females are, they have a big investment in rearing children that we don't have men don't have. At least not biologically.

You know, the deed is done in a couple of minutes. As opposed to it takes nine months.

“And then you're, you have to be responsible for the children child.”

So, the result of it is that women are a lot more interested in the resource cues and the commitment cues of a mate. That's why when women are interested in men fundamentally, they're most attracted toward resource cues. Now, if you don't have any resources because you're young and poor, that means potential resources, why it's good to have muscles. Yeah. That's the reason that young guys want to have a lot of muscles, because what they're showing is that they'll be able to kill an animal and push a plow.

Yeah. When they get old, they don't know why they want to have muscles at the whole point. And then later on, they peacock with a, you know, a rented Ferrari driving down the, you know, the boulevard of Miami Beach. Yeah. Because they want to attract girls.

But they know exactly why they do that. Because they want to show their resources. And that's the reason that pathologies go into these relationships too, or your 58 years old. And you're still trying to bring home as much money as possible, because you're showing resource cues to your wife. And your wife is 58 years old, and getting a lot of cosmetic surgery.

So she'll show fitness cues. She'll show fertility cues. So that's what men are attracted to is fertility cues. Fertility cues are hypes, hypes to waste ratio, which actually shows how fit you are to have babies and whether or not you're pregnant. That is like the length of the hair and whether it's shiny because that shows whether or not that you're healthy.

The whiteness of the teeth and the whiteness of the eyes, men notice this without noticing it. They don't know they notice this, but these are fitness, these are fertility cues. Yeah, yeah. And so that's what happens. So the result of that is that you can use this in a very good and holy way without being like, okay, I'm just, you know, I'm just an animal.

I get to go for the youngest possible girl. You're going to be married to your wife forever, but giving her not inducing her to try to exhibit fertility cues forever. That's unhealthy and her not to force you toward resource cues on the contrary. Just give her what she needs and have her give you what you need, what she needs to be a door. Yes.

A door her and what you need is to be admired. Yeah. Now, respect, of course, this table stakes, right love, respect, these are table stakes, but the whole point is the happiest marriages or the ones where you would fight a tiger for her with your hands and only her.

Right. Yeah, you're so big and strong.

“It's going to feed our family for two weeks.”

Right. And that's those are the happiest marriages. That's the typical, like, look, if you just touch me and tell me I'm awesome. Like, that's how amazing I am. That's how I really am.

Yes, you know, it's true.

We say that as a joke, but it's always like, hey, like, that's all.

Yeah. You can make me super happy. Yeah. So for dudes, I mean, who don't can't quite figure out relationships. And my average student is 28 years old.

I mean, I've got MBA students at Harvard. They're, you know, they've mastered business. And they're going to make a lot of money. They're going to be really successful. But romance can be utterly vaffling because nobody treats it.

It teaches you about that. There's some simple rules. Number one is a door her. I don't care how you feel right now a door her. Yeah.

Number two is be admirable. Yeah. And because it's hard for her to admire you and you're not admirable. When you're looking at pornography or you're gaming all night or you're smoking weed, that's not admirable.

And everybody knows that that might be fun for some people, but it's not admirable. When you're not true to your word, when you're just loyal, when you're unkind,

other people, not admirable.

And so what does it mean to be admirable and say it's like, who would I admire? How would I admire my dad? For example, I'm going to be that. And so be at a door her, no matter how you feel, a door her.

Because that's an action and an decision and be admirable. And you'll be fine. Is that how you've been married 34 years? Yeah. How many times would you say the adoration being admirable?

Is that the constant, no matter where you're going to think? And what I'm screwing up because I'm too busy, because I'm preoccupied. I do adore her, but she doesn't see it. That's the problem. The number one way she's going to feel it is when I stare into her eyes.

“And that's how it ties back to the four fundamental rules of how to”

save the protocols for saving relationships. Is that the act of adoration? Like, if you, when you adore somebody, you're staring at their eyes. I mean, it's like, she's awesome. And you know, that, that, that shows, you're everything, baby.

You're right, exactly. That's right. So that's actually how she sees it. How she perceives it, neurochemically.

You said something in the second go that got my attention.

You said that when you, when you mess up and you're busy. Yeah. So how does busyness, kill, connection, especially in communication? It distracts you from the more important things. So that's the whole thing.

It's Stephen Covey used to talk about urgency and importance. So he would say that you attend to the urgent, but you neglect the important. And we all have urgent and important things in life. And urgent things distract you. And the important things must get done.

But you can actually put them off. And you know, just like your soul mate, she's not going to, like you screw up and you come home a little bit later. You'll have a snippy with her. You know, you're kind of a grump.

If you're not going to divorce you for that. Right. Your marriage is way more important in your job. I mean, I know I can do it. I know you agree.

Right. It's way more important. But it's not more urgent than your job sometimes. And so urgent things are like pecking at you. Right.

They're harassing you all the time.

“And when your whole life is a series of urgent things, you're going to neglect the important”

things. And that's why we actually do the things that we don't want to do. We get into trouble. I find that when I have some of the hardest conversations with people. Yeah.

And in my community's really around communication and conversations. That's the same for you. I mean, that's that's you didn't know you're going to be on the map of popular culture by doing what you do really, really well. Thank you.

No, you have no talking. Are you doing it? No. People understand and be persuasive. No clue.

And I still want to talk to you about imposter syndrome. We'll get there. It's an age of the internet. Exactly. Yeah.

It's that I find that usually the. It corresponds at the heart of the conversation, but the have a somebody. The. Deeper we seem to connect. Right.

In other words, if I'm going through something really hard with somebody. Right. That we come out of it somehow closer when I I wasn't expecting that. I was curious if there was any science of what you do at Harvard that. And happiness that might lead to say, hey, there's some things that unlock.

You know, that depth of connection when you choose to say the heart thing. Yeah. Yeah. I can and part of the reason is because you're actually digging into these big more meaningful things. So for example, one of the best ways for you to.

Make friends quickly. When you move to a new place and you and I have some experience. Yeah. It's hard to make friends. Yeah.

Pretend you've been there for 10 years. Okay. Pretend you've already been there for 10 years. And that means two weeks after you get there. You start inviting people over to your house.

You don't wait for them to invite them. And that's for that. After one month sort of bottle study at your house. Yeah. Sort of book club.

Whatever your thing is do that. Right. And when you have people over. Don't waste time on the nonsense.

Right. And so ask questions like when you're having dinner with somebody.

And you're always like, what are you most afraid of?

Yeah. That kind of stuff. That kind of stuff. You know, it's what it comes to. And some people can't handle it.

I mean, it's like, this is one of the things that I'm aware of. Yeah. And so they're not afraid of deep conversations. Yeah. And a lot of Americans are like, it doesn't feel polite.

And the whole thing. But it's like, you know, if you're uncomfortable. Yeah. Sorry. But, you know, we don't want shallow connections.

We only want deep connections. Because life is short. Yeah. I don't know. I mean, I'm five years away from when my dad died.

I'm already five years after when my mother became defensive.

“I don't know how long life is going to last.”

I'm not going to waste any time. Yeah. I'm going to talk to you. I'm going to talk about real things. Right.

We're not going to talk about like, so how many draft picks do you think the sea hawks? You know what I mean? I know. I mean, I like, I realize I love the sea hawks, but for sure. No.

I found that I absolutely resonate with that, especially this time of my life, where if I can't go deep with you. Sorry. Yeah. You're nice. I'll give it a hand.

Yeah. But that's just not going to be my person. I'm not going to be. And so I find that when I was younger, I wanted to. There's many friends as possible.

Right. Now because you're super extrovert. Right. Yes. That too.

But it's like you. I thought at least the more friends you made. It's. That's a good thing. But I find now I really just want a small collection.

Yeah. And what you said a minute ago struck me because one of the. Very good friends that I have here.

First time I first conversation with him.

We start talking and he was just out of the blue. He's like, so how's your, how's your church life?

“Like I was, how's your marriage? And I was like, what?”

Who asked me that? Like I haven't been asked that. And I can't tell you when. Usually it's like, oh, what do you do? Have you, you know, you'll check the news.

And it's like, wait. Okay. Now I can actually open up. And now I can talk. And it's like you.

Yeah. Somehow the more I. We have self disclosure. Right. And you disclose and we just closed.

Yeah. Oh, we can be real now. And now we can actually bond. Yeah. And I think a lot of.

I think a lot of people struggle with that. Yeah. I mean, honestly, is a form of love is what it comes down to. And again, if there's something you're really ashamed of, you're probably not going to disclose it. Right.

It's like, yeah. Can we talk about my shoplifting habit? I mean, it's like that. Right. Yeah.

On the other hand, look most of us are married. Hmm. And guess what? My annoyances at home are the most common things in the world. Yeah.

So it's one of the things that I was talking about with my class. I teach this class in the science of happiness and the NBA program. And it's super popular because, you know, it's about the business of living your life and living your life in a business like way. Right.

Like finding, finding the love of your life with the same seriousness as you would set up a private equity fund or something. Like, I mean, they'll walk through it. There's no science says. And one of the things that I was talking about are the things in families that everybody thinks is uniquely unfortunate. And so there's that, you know, the first line of Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy.

Happy families are all alike, but every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.

“The truth is, every unhappy family is alike.”

Yeah. We all have the same problems. And I give an example that 11% of mothers between 65 and 75 is completely estranged with one of their adult children. 11%. Every single one of those mothers feels uniquely unfortunate and doesn't want to talk about it.

And therapy, they say, it terminally unique. Yeah. Yeah. Everybody who goes in the therapy or rehab, it's, you think you're terminally unique. Nobody else can hop you like me and you realize.

And if you're not a special, I mean, just like all your problems, the same as anybody else's problem. That's AA. I mean, it's getting together and recovery community. It's exactly right. You realize, I know you all have the same.

Yeah. By the way, it's 26% of fathers. That's crazy. It's 26% of fathers. 38% of adults listening to us right now is completely estranged from one direct family member.

I can attest to there are lots of people who come into the community and listen to our content. And they are estranged from at least one person in their lives. And they feel like they're the only ones.

And so when you're talking to somebody, don't if it never be afraid to go deep.

Yeah. For precisely the thing that you're talking about because human connection is what it's all about. Now, again, there are certain things you might not want to divulge because they're embarrassing to you. Or they might incriminate you. Yeah.

But the truth of the matter is that there's nothing strange about these unfortunate experiences. I like asking the deep question. Yeah. Because it truly is when I choose to say, you know what? I'm going to talk to that person and I'm not going to show you a good thing.

When they ask, how are you doing? How's the kids? You want to know? I'm going to. That's what I say.

I start talking and I'll tell them. Yeah. You asked. Yeah. So your life has changed a lot last five years.

Right? Is that fair to say? Yeah, that's fair to say. What are you most afraid of? I'm right now.

as humanly possible with my kids.

We have kids here and your wife. Yeah. And with God. And God. Yeah.

There's a lot of time where it's. I read this book. I really like it. It's the ruthless elimination of hurry. John.

John Mark. This is his name. If you have him. Okay. There's him.

John Orberg. These two authors are really like. And it's about how. You know, the instruction is. The instruction was to lie.

“He lays me down in green pastures, right?”

It's not.

He signs me up for half marathon.

You know, it's not like how do I just rest and not find ways. I'm just hurrying all the time. And I talked about this. You know, seeing how we just you will talk about things that are in your lectures. And I talked to alone in myself in the camera.

And one of the things I was really struggling with is how much hurry and busy. Just creep. They just they creep in everything. And then I get to where it. It just has a way of shutting me off.

If I don't. I know you you talk about be bored. You know, finding ways to just sit because it's not enough now. It's. If I'm in a waiting room at a doctor.

If I wait 10 seconds for a light to change or it's it's it's it's a constant. You say the left brain right brain. Yeah, but it's really it's yeah. And then this is in in Buddhist called at the monkey mind. But with the whole play is that we've eradicated boredom with anti boredom devices.

And it's made our brains work wrong. And that's the reason we can't find the meaning of life. Because we've actually induced ourselves to sit permanently in the left hemisphere, which is

“the how to and what that's what technology does.”

And the why questions become impossible to access. Because we're literally geographically in the wrong part of our brain. To to address these. Why to address the big why questions of our lives. And you you need more space.

You need more time and you need more relationships. Now, it's an interesting thing. However, that you talk about your most afraid that by taking all the opportunities that you're taking that are coming at you constantly. That you're neglecting the things that actually matter the most. Yeah, I get it.

I get it. And what that is is that's, you know, mother nature. Who doesn't care if you're happy. Just wants you to be successful. Mother nature wants you to grab the world of rewards.

Money, power, pleasure, fame. Mother nature wants you. And so those proclivities, what they do is they pull you away from you. No, you already told me the source of your bliss. The source of your bliss is your faith and your family and your friendship.

Yeah. And doing things that actually serve other people. But mother nature says money, power, pleasure, fame. And that's a problem because mother nature doesn't care if you're happy. She just wants you to be special.

Yeah. And people will, they will sacrifice their happiness to be special all day long. But most people have an advantage over you, however, which they don't have that many opportunities to be special. Yeah. And so when you're offered these opportunities, what will happen is that you will walk yourself.

You have the danger of walking yourself into deep unhappiness. Simply by doing what you have the impulse to do, the impulse to do. Like I got to take that opportunity. It's going to be a pity. I'll regret it if I don't take that opportunity.

“And living in a mindful way on the basis of what your faith tells you is more important.”

What your heart says is true. Yeah. It's a real danger in me too. This podcast is sponsored by, you know, a cozy earth. I love cozy earth because of all of their products are not only soft.

And feel like a big warm blanket hugging you. They're also top tier quality. And they stay in behind the product. Now, I just got done seeing some family this past weekend. And we were all staying at my brother's house. And my mom came out already for bed and guess what she was wearing.

Her cozy earth pajamas that I gave here now. I have known this woman, my entire life.

Of course, I have never seen her this crazy about some pajamas.

They're made out of bamboo and it's a whole set. And she cannot wait for me to get her more cozy earth pajamas. It's now become a thing and kind of an inside joke in my family about how much he loves these. So if you know somebody in your life who loves pajamas before they go to bed. And they want something that feels nice and cool and temperature breathing.

Cause your pajamas are what you want. And also they have a hundred night risk free trial. So you can't beat that go to cozier.com slash Jefferson used to go. Just to go Jefferson and get up to 20% off. That's cozier dot com slash Jefferson. And you used to go Jefferson to get up to 20% off.

And now let's keep going on the episode. I've always been the type. I've always been ambitious. Yeah. I wouldn't say I'm not.

You've always been special. No, okay. I've always been ambitious. And since you were kid. Probably yes.

Yeah. I'm the oldest of four. Probably the. I probably fallen right into the category of your personal life. Yeah.

And you're going to let's share with your mom and dad. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

I think I'm a deceit.

Are you that lawyer? Yeah. That was an attorney. Yeah. When you were kid.

Did you often feel like.

“You got a lot of attention when you brought him a good report card.”

Of course. Yeah. Yeah.

You were a representative of the family.

It's a high achieving kids. The parents are awesome. Of course. The problem that a lot of high achieving kids have. Is that they they they they deduce something that's not true.

Which is that love is earned. Yeah. And love is an earned. Love is a free gift for you. The given is a grace.

You know, you can't earn God's love. You can earn your wife's love. You can't. And if you try to earn her love, you'll drive her away. Right.

Which is the paradox of that. And so what what strivers and superchievers have. They weirdly keep being successful. Like I'm a successful lawyer. And I don't know.

I'm a successful on Instagram. And I was successful podcast or what's going on. Right. And so what's going on is to a lot to a certain extent. That a lot of real strivers.

They're trying to earn love. Yeah. They're trying to it. It's like it was enough. And my level will get.

Yeah. What's enough. Yeah. And of course, there is no enough. Do you find that there is a balance.

Or a middle ground for people who are listening right now in this. They're ambitious. Yeah. To say you can have have ambition and be happy versus ambition and be. For sure.

You need the ambition for the right thing.

“And you need to what your ultimate versus your intermediate goals.”

It's nothing wrong with money. I'm a capitalist. Maybe. I believe in the free enterprise system. Look, the fri-nipri system is literally what's wiped out poverty around the world.

And see, only force that ever has is people lifting themselves up. 80% of world poverty has been eradicated since I was a kid. Nobody knows that. It's the capitalist system that did that. It's not the UN or that, you know, the international monetary fund.

No, man. It's markets, fri-nipri on the world. That's America's gifted world. It's the fri-nipri system for sure. But you can't be animated by the currency of that system.

Which is money. The currency of your life that matters is loving happiness. That's what the enterprise, the start-up of Jefferson Inc, is loving happiness. And you have to be able to get those currencies. Now, money, fine.

Power. If you're using it for good and great. Fame, terrific. If you're refracting people's admiration for you toward things that matter. Like loving God and the things that they look at your life.

He's really admire him, he's awesome, he's awesome. And he's a big Christian. Good. And they go for that in their life gets better. That's terrific.

But those are only ever intermediate goals.

If those become your goals per se, you'll never have enough.

It'll be like drinking sea water. The more you drink the thirst you get. Those simply have to be intermediate goals to get to the things that matter the most, which are your faith and your family and your friendship and the way that you serve the world through the way that you're earned your daily bread.

How do you find a daily bread so good? How do you find? Because you've even written how many books? It's sort of a bad good books or books. I mean, I know, let's just put it this way.

Your book is endorsed by Oprah and the Dalai Lama. Let's go with that. Okay. You've teacher-classed Harvard. There we go.

I can't like that. And you teach your class at Harvard on the happiness. Yeah. And so I've always, it's at least true for me. For the people who find that passion that they like to talk about,

and they stuck to it, and yours is happiness. They either came at it from great personal struggle in personal pain or they just made it up. And so I find that with everybody you see on it, it takes nobody. There are people who say therapist things that aren't a therapist.

You talk about legal things that don't. And so here you are behavioral scientists that talks about happiness. And there's plenty of people who are about happiness, juice. And they don't know anything about it.

“So like how with your wife, your kids, and I think you have three kids.”

Three kids and four grandsons. That's awesome. Yeah. You've lived all these places.

And now here you are at a place you probably never thought you'd be when you were back.

Yeah. Playing the French one. No, right? Oh my goodness. Yeah.

And so it's like, how? How is that happiness that you're. Yeah. Got in there. So the reason I study happiness is because it's what I want.

And it's not easy for me. It's not the easiest thing. Now half of your happiness is genetics. So in other words, your baseline level of well-being about half of it is your mom's fault. Yeah.

Yeah. And we know this from identical end-dats and grandma grandpa. Of course. The identical twin separated birth and adopted into separate families. That's a great natural experiment using pretty easy statistical methods to find out what part of your personality, including your happiness.

Your natural happiness. Well, not just with circumstances, but generally how much of it is in your genes and how much of it is circumstantial. And our environmental. And it's about half. And I have gloomy genes.

I get gloomy genes.

They suffer a lot with problems and issues. And I got to a certain point where my life wasn't where I wanted it to be. And things have gone great because I'm very special. Yeah. Very special.

I've been a chief executive of a company and my academic career had gone well. Even my musical career went well. Part of that was because I'm a super striver. I want to win. I want to win.

And every ten years or so I take my career down those studs and start again on a new thing. And see if I can win that. Yeah. So I didn't, you know, play in the symphony orchestra to really go back to graduate school, become an academic. Do that.

Go back. Be a CEO. Yeah. And by the end of that last one, my wife said. That's true.

She said, because she loves me. I don't know why.

“And she said, you know, you need to solve your problem.”

But I, when you're talking about, she said, you need to, you need to be happier. And I said, what do you suggest? What do you suggest honey? And she said, don't you have a PhD? Why don't you use it for something useful?

And so I actually dedicated myself to cracking the code on this. And cracking the code on anything is basically on any skill is kind of three steps. You know, if you want to become a really good golfer, you better learn about golf. You better golf a lot. And if you really want to be good, you better teach somebody to golf.

Let's put it in terms of communication. Someone wants to be a good communicator. Yeah. You want to be a good communicator. Watch a ton of people's speeches.

Give a ton of speeches. And teach people how to be good speakers. Yeah. That's how you become a great communicator. If you want to be a surgeon, you watch a bunch of surgeries.

You do a bunch of surgeries. And you teach a bunch of surgeries. Yeah. That's literally the method of the Harvard Medical School for becoming a teacher. Is watch one, do one, teach one.

That's what they call it. That's how you get good at something. And you know, I've seen, you know, my dad was a brilliant mathematician. He was a mathematics professor. And I saw him, you know, giving these incredible calculus lectures.

And I was like, how do you know that? He says, could I done a lot of problems? And I've learned about it. And I've been living with it for 40 years. And I've taught this class a lot of times.

Yeah.

“That's how you get really, really good at something.”

I know that for a fact. I'm an old school educator. And I said, happiness works the same way. I know it works the same way. So I dedicated myself full time.

I mean, I'd done the behavioral science. I'd written about happiness in the past. But I said, okay, from now on until I die, I'm going to study the science of happiness, including the neuroscience and behavioral correlates in the philosophy. Put it all together.

I'm going to change the way that I live. And I'm going to bring it to as many people as I possibly can. Because I'm a selfish man. I want to be happier. And that was the genesis of this.

And that's what I, what you said stuck with me. And it was because I need to get better at it. Like, and that right there has so much truth.

Are you always a silver tongue devil?

Probably not. You know, but I've always, I've always been a talker. That I know. But I grew up around the court. Could have been a carny.

You could have been like an auctioneer. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, I could give you the best stuff toy ever. Yeah. But I've always grown up around the courtroom.

Yeah. And so that gives you a lot of different elements of how jury's react. Yeah. The courtroom, bailiff judge, court reporter, everybody. And that's influenced me.

But what you said definitely stuck is why do you go here? It's because I need to get better at it. And so there's, there's so much of that that only pick these little things. That it's, I forget what it is. There's like that saying of those that can't do teach or something like that.

It's like if, if I have a problem with it, you start talking about it. Yeah. You know what I'm saying? Yeah. You know, it's a kind of thing where, you know, a lot of people will say, why should I take advice

on, on, on how to drink responsibly from a former alcoholic?

“That's exactly who's advice you should take because he wanted to stop drinking abusively.”

And so he learned what he needed to do. He practiced it and now he's sharing it. Yeah. That's expertise. That's how expertise works.

But should always go to a former drunk.

Yeah. If you don't want to be drunk. Yeah. That's what it comes down to. And so that's what everybody's got in common is when they're sharing this thing that they're doing.

Because they want to be better at that thing. No. No. And I want to bring that back to this business element. If what things that you want to work on and I like that you talked about,

glue me jeans. Like there are people listening. Yeah. They might have glue me jeans. Yeah.

There are people who are more predisposed. The certain. Right. Or is that? What do you think?

Absolutely. The behavior, mentality. Most of the most things are genetic. Much of what we do genetic. Exactly.

Yeah.

I never thought of it that way.

Yeah. Yeah. Like somebody's more predisposed to be difficult. Or 50% of your tendency to be drunk. Is genetic?

50%. But if you can't do me it's like. Arthur. I'm in trouble.

And all four of my grandparents. So like my granddad's were bootleggers. I'm doomed. I'm saying no, no, no. Because that's only 50%. The other 50% is your habits.

And I've got the super habit that can turn your genetics for drinking down to zero. It's called not drinking. And so if you know yourself, you got power. You can manage your genetic through your habits. Yes.

It's a beautiful thing. It's an incredible thing. I teach happiness because when you have the skills, you can win. And your life is richer and better.

And then the best part of all is you become a happiness teacher. That's how we change the world. Right. I mean, this is why you're doing your stuff. Because you want people actually to learn how,

how, you know, what you teach them can enrich their lives. And you want them to pass it on. Right. Yeah, yeah.

“I believe I truly believe a better world begins with a better conversation.”

Yes. What I say.

And I, but I've never thought about it as

genes of things you're predisposed to. And so if it's like you're listening, you're going, I don't know what it did. Do I have my predisposed? I'd say first, look to your parents.

Right. What do you give a mom or a dad that seems to be way more difficult in conversation or somebody who's always a victim or like, Hello, you are going to have those genes in you. Maybe you're not the victim all the time.

But you still have those in you. And the environment matters too. But if your parents are really different, they're all screaming at each other. And you're, or if you're, let's just say that you're struggling with your marriage.

And you're arguing with your spouse all the time. And you're yelling at each other. Yeah. And that kind of stuff. Look, let's, let's figure out how I got into the situation.

Part of it is the nature of my marriage that I need to change. The part of it is probably what I saw and part of it is who I am. And none of that can't be changed. All of that, all of that can be changed. But it starts with knowledge and commitment.

Mm-hmm. That's really what it comes down to. And that's what's so beautiful. A lot of human existence. You know, we have this thing, the most modern part of our brain,

called the prefrontal cortex, which is 30% of our brain by weight. This console attissue right behind our forehead. That's like, that's the super computer. That's the sea sweet. Yeah.

That's the managing partner. It's sitting up there, right, is right there. And that's where you actually get the data that's coming to your emotional data,

the limbic system, which is ancient between two and 40 million years old,

that creates your emotions. And all your emotions are signals about what's going on around you. You perceive a threat, you get negative emotions. You get negative bad feelings. So called bad feelings.

You perceive an opportunity, like mates or calories or something. You get positive emotion, right? And what that does is those positive emotions are signals to you.

“So that's something's up and that you should act.”

But your prefrontal cortex, the sea sweet, is where the CEO of your brain's like, "Okay, I'm not going to do this. Okay, I'm going to do that." That's what it comes down to. And that's how we need to actually treat our emotional lives.

And the things that are coming out of us all the time is nothing more than signals and that we get to make decisions. Yeah. Now, that prefrontal cortex is amazing because your dog can't do that. Your dog gets the emotional signals and then acts according to animal instinct.

Yeah. We have animal instincts too, but because of the complexity and size of our prefrontal cortex, we also have moral aspirations. So we get this like emotional signals like your mad. So the dog would like bite something like that.

And your mad so you're going to yell at your spouse. Yeah. But you can actually do things like weight and think and use technique such as counting to ten, for example, or a hundred depending on how bad the conversation is. You can journal, you can go away and come back later.

And you can decide, I'm going to live in the space of my moral aspirations. Yeah. I'm not going to live in the space of my animal impulses. That's a miracle. Yeah.

Hey, man, that is a miracle.

“I know that often, like, I think of my own life.”

There are things I do and say, I'll be like, "Damn, that was my dad." Like I did that. No, as soon as I did it, or my sister, I'll call her and she sounds identical to my mom. And there's so much, there will be times. Yeah, well, it's like, is that mom?

And I catch myself second guessing. And so I find that so much of how I respond even to my kids. I'll be like, "Oh, my gosh, that was my mom." And so much of it has just passed down. And so we mirror how we saw arguments.

Because I had friends who had a best friend when I was like, "I can first grade." And I'll never forget. I'm eating Cheerios at his house after spending the night in his parents. Go at it.

I mean, I mean, she is screaming. He's screaming. And I am, like, just mortified.

Yeah, because you never see.

You would think of these people adults like that talking to each other. I've never seen that before. And I was mortified. I'm just frozen. And my friend, he's even looked up from a cereal.

I mean, he's just eat like it was no problem. And so-- Just another Saturday morning. It's just another Saturday morning. And how many people--

Yep. And they argue how they saw their parents argue or they experience. Right. There's some people who, it's like, they can't feel love unless you're in an argument and a fight.

Like, that's the way that they have the experience that.

I've really struck a core with me of so many times we're predisposed.

“Yeah, predisposed to it because of an environment or because of the genetics.”

But none of that is deterministic. None of that is path dependent. None of that is path dependent. And we also have path dependent creatures. We're just not.

I mean, it might be harder. You might have a bad temper. I mean, I can actually-- There's a lot of research on people who-- You know, when they yell, when they're angry.

Those people have a lot of physically-- Many times have a physically larger amygdala. You know, the amygdala is that's a part of the limbic system. It's shaped like an almond. It's a bilateral organ.

Amygdala means almond and Latin. Okay. And the left and right do slightly different things that doesn't matter. They're about fear and anger. And it's physically larger.

They activate faster. And they make you more reactive. They make you more emotionally reactive negatively. In the case of, you know, something makes you angry. You get angry fast.

You don't, man. And so if you know that, then you've got to do more work. Right. But you got to know it. You got to know it.

You're not like, "Ah, that's who I am." No. Yeah. That's what my tendency is to be. But that's not who I want to be.

You put this in your book. This is, and you're going to have to forgive me on the title. You broke down the happiness of these four macronutrients. Yeah, and the three macros. It's three macros. Three macros. Three carbohydrates and fat. Yeah, the enjoyment satisfaction and meaning. That's the three macronutrients of happiness. There are four habits are different. That's faith family friends working. Yeah, faith family friends working. So those are the habits of the people who have the most happiness.

“And you, what I liked so much about that book was that you said it's happiness is not some feeling. There are things that you have to do as an act will.”

Yeah, I don't know. Like you have to actually make the decision to step into it. To believe it. Right, then just go for what I hope to do. Yeah. And so there's so many things that we, we chalk up to feelings, as we're all about feelings in our culture. And so people will think, "I'll ask my students what's love." And so it's how we feel about it. No. Yeah. To love according to Thomas Aquinas. And this is Aristotelian thinking. It goes right back. It's the will to go to the other.

And has nothing to do with has nothing to do with feelings. To like somebody is sentimental. But the love somebody is a decision. Yeah. That's what it comes down to. That's how you stay married, by the way, because you love them. Yeah. Notwithstanding your feelings. If love were a feeling, I wouldn't have been married 34 years. I wouldn't have married 34 minutes.

Because that's probably when we had our first big argument. I'm very do a Spaniard. They know how to fight, man.

That's like a form of communication in Spain is, you know, all that war. So that's really, really important thing to keep in mind. And happiness, too. It's not a feeling. Happiness has feelings attached to it. It's not like you're the smell of your turkey is evidence of your Thanksgiving dinner. Your happy feelings are evidence of happiness. And if you want to get happier, you better know the macro nutrients are. Just like if you want to cook dinner, this can be worth anything. You need to know actually what goes into the dinner.

Protein carbohydrates and fat, plus ingredients and spices and all the different things the way that you know how to cook. And so what I teach my students is how to enjoy their lives, how to take satisfaction in their accomplishments and activities, and how to find a meaning of life.

“And that's what the new book is about because the big crisis for my students and almost everybody else in America today is that they don't know the meaning of their life.”

I would probably venture that's something that's been around for a while now, but I don't know if it's ever been as bad as it is much worse. It's much much worse. I wouldn't have written this book 20 years ago. I wouldn't have written this book. I started thinking about this subject in about 2015 is when I started seeing the crisis and the data. And then I started interviewing young people in particular. And what you found was after 2008, there was a progressive explosion of people saying I don't know the meaning of my life.

I don't know if my life has meaning. For the first time, for the first time. There's always like 5% of the population would say that.

I've never just took off. They took off. After 2008. I want to first, I want to understand the, the doom live. When you talk about in, in your book, which is fantastic. And then the other element of this that I, I'm going to want to bring it back to is, can somebody, if you seem like the bicklebowski, okay, like just the duties, just seeing the, the people that seem to, not be these big striders.

Yeah. Strivers. Yeah. Versus the people that actually are like, these people are, don't struggle as much with the meaning of life. I feel like, and the ones that are ambitious try to be super successful, they're the ones that struggle so much with the meaning of life. It's funny, isn't it? Yeah. It's really funny. And, and you wouldn't think that, you know, when I do these interviews with young people,

you find that college graduates and people who are doing really well, they'll often say, "I have everything and I feel nothing." And they're really guilty about it. And what you're finding is that college graduates have struggle more with meaning than people who didn't go to college. People who are earning more money, struggle more with meaning than people who make less money that we find. It's an affliction of the privileged.

And that's actually the psychogenic epidemic that's your most likely to catch the disease when you have this.

where the tip of the spear is a constant use of technology.

It induces drivers to use their brains in exactly the wrong way. So when you think about it, it's like, you know, your, you know, your great grandfather. You know, he was using his brain the way I was supposed to be used.

“He never came home and where was he in Texas someplace?”

Yeah. He never came home. Was he a farmer? No, he's an attorney. He's a judge. Let's go back until there was a farmer who would never have come home and said, "Honey, I had a panic attack behind the muel today." And the reason was because his brain was working the way it was supposed to,

because he wasn't constantly plugged in to the technology. We've, we've moved all of our brain activity to, you know, the wonder and the mystery and the meaning and the mind wandering. Behind the muel, life was pretty boring from moment to moment, but life in general is pretty darn interesting.

Today, life from moment to moment is never boring, but life overall is pretty boring for a lot of young people today. You know, you get to the end of the day and you don't even remember what podcasts you listen to or what YouTube shorts you watched.

You were never bored for a single second, but you're like, "I was boring."

Yeah. And you can get to the end of a year and go, "I don't know how I spent that year." The time just slipped by. And that's the great irony. The reason is neurophysiological. The reason is biological.

Is the fact that we're using our brains in the wrong way. And what we need to do is to get back to the right side of our brain. This book is a six point plan to relearn the meaning of your life in six months. To get out of the demo. It's completely science-backed. It's like, "If you do these things, you do six things,

and six months, you'll know the meaning of your life." And your life will never be the same. The ones that stuck out to me the most was when you look at this element of boredom. Yeah. All right.

Getting bored is one of them. Yeah, it's actually part of the first part by getting clean. Oh, clean. Clean it down. Well, but we're deeply, deeply addicted.

We need to detox. And so we need to talk about a doom loop. All addictions work in the same way. Where you're doing to alleviate a problem is actually creating the problem. That's a doom loop's work.

And so alcoholics, for example, you've met a lot of alcoholics in your life. No doubt. We all have. You know, we've all known a lot of drugs. And I don't drink at all, right?

Because I've got a lot of it in my family. And it's just like, it doesn't. I know where it goes. Yeah. The pain you want to avoid is the pain that you're...

Yeah.

But the pain you're trying to avoid is almost always either boredom or anxiety.

So people who are bored make their own party inside their head. People who are anxious that will actually put out the storm. And alcohol is really interesting as a drug. It's incredibly effective at cutting the connection between the amygdala and the prefrontal cortex. So the amygdala river is the part of the limbic system that gives you fear and anger.

And anxiety is unfocused fear. That's activity of the amygdala. You can't claim that. Yeah. And then your prefrontal cortex says you're super stressed out.

You can cut that connection. So you'll be experiencing a lot of anxiety in your limbic system. But you don't know it. Because the connection has been cut. Alcohol does that.

Alcohol just shuts it off. Shots off the connection. Not the anxiety. The trouble is the anxiety is still there. It comes back to your consciousness with the vengeance the next day.

So if you're... and if you're especially if you're bored and anxious, it's a really big problem. But this is one of the reasons, by the way, that people who are above average income have a greater propensity toward alcohol abuse than people who are below average income. People don't know that.

The reason is because people are above average. They're not in a ditch. You know, they can actually have the kind of life where they can hide it better.

“But the truth is that you're more likely if you have a higher paying job and you have more education”

and you're working long hours, you're in danger for alcoholism. You're in... is this service we're sitting here, everybody listening to us? That's working 70 hours a week. No more. Because you're an associated law firm.

You're in danger for alcoholism. You are. And so you have to take care of this. What it comes down to. If you treat with alcoholism, if you treat with alcohol,

the next day you're going to be more stressed out. You're going to feel more anxiety the next day. And that's the doom loop. Yeah. You actually alleviated pain and it came back.

And that's going to lead to escalation. And escalation has to do with actually leads to more more dependence. And that's even before there's addiction. Dependants. I can't get through this.

I'm drinking alcohol. That's the whole point. But even before a physical addiction.

“And so that's how every doom loop works.”

Okay. Now back to the current culture, which is the technologized culture. And people are very, very addicted to the machines. It's used to the same neurochemical pathways for every addiction involves dopamine, which is the neuromodulator of wanting, learning and liking.

And so nature put dopamine in our brain so that we get this little reward when something goes right and we like it so that we'll do it again. You find berries on a bush.

And you're like, that's great. The real reward is not the berries. It's how it may do feel. And so you're going to, you reduce yourself to go back there the next day. You learned.

It's how you learn stuff.

“That's how you learn to do things that are rewarding.”

The problem is that's also how you learn to go to Vegas and gamble away your paycheck.

That's how you learn to actually look compulsively at pornography on the internet. All these things work the same dopamine pathways. Alcohol and also the internet. I've always thought that, or you know, let me rephrase that. I know in my own life, I get in the biggest amount of trouble when I'm bored.

Yeah. Like it's, and what you're also saying. Yeah. Yeah. But it's not just when I'm bored.

It's when I'm alone. When I, I have nothing, I'm choosing not to have some kind of positive outlet. Right. And it's going back to, it's not good for him to be alone. And so it, it, it, it is, to me what you're saying is be bored.

Yeah. Because all of these distractions of screens and busyness is keeping you from higher level thinking. Detox yourself from the machines and allow yourself to be bored. That's how you, that's actually how you start to get clean. Yeah.

“And then there's the whole set of plans on how you need to live differently.”

But the very beginning is, you know, I can't tell you to, you know, get new friends and find a better job.

If you've been into alcohol, the first thing you have to do is get you de-addicted alcohol.

And so the, the two big parts of the number when you need to get mad about the fact that you've been hooked on these technologies. And you're fruiting away your time and you're distracting yourself from things that really matter. And you're hopelessly bored with your life, but you can't stop scrolling social media. You can't stop. And that's because your brain has become dependent on these impulses.

It's what it comes time. You should be mad about that. Yeah. And you should be, because that's the first thing in every former drinker does. So they're like, I'm not going to put up with this anymore.

Yeah. I will not have this thing enslaved me anymore. The second thing you need to do is actually take detox steps. You need protocols for detoxing. And you can't, you're not going to throw your phone in the ocean.

But you can use it in a responsible way. And this book lays out the steps on actually how you can detox from your phone. And in a way, you're using technology responsibly. And it's not managing you anymore. Yeah.

It's just very simple stuff that you can actually do. Once you institute these policies in your life, your relationship with your phone is going to change.

“And then last but not least, you need to actually induce boredom.”

So your brain can start working in the right way again. You can turn on the default mode network, which is the structures in your brain that illuminate, that let you mind wander, consider questions of meaning. That great, great, great, great, great, great grandpa. Did naturally without even having to think about it.

Yeah. Before we keep going, I want to take a moment to tell you about milk. Now listen to me, when I talk to you about this, it has become a staple of our kitchen. We love our milk. My kids love our milk.

And I'm going to tell you exactly the reason why. Milk is the odorless effortless, fully automated food recyclers that handles the clean up after dinner is over. Now why we love it so much in our house. Right now, especially my daughter, she's in a cooking. And when I say cooking, she likes to make eggs.

She finds any reason. Even during the day doesn't matter the morning to fix eggs. And so it's a very entry level way for her to cook. She has become the rule enforcer that instead of putting eggs in the trash can. We put eggs in the milk.

And you can just put eggshells, not just eggshells. You can put just about anything you think of. Anything that you would scrape into the trash can, you can put into the milk. And it turns it into dry shelf staple crowns, which is incredible in our kids love it. It's really a surprise product.

We did not expect to love milk as much as we do, but we do. It has been incredible. And I can't imagine having a kitchen without it. You can try mill risk free for 90 days and get 75 dollars off at mill.com/jeverson. Use code Jefferson at checkout that's 75 dollars off at mill.com/jeverson.

Use code Jefferson. And now back to the episode. There is a part in your book that I really adore. Outside.

And that is, you say, never waste your struggle.

Yeah. But why should we never waste our struggle? So there's a basic scientific point, but a lot of it's really, it comes down to a lot of us who have religious convictions. We'll understand naturally as well. So unhappiness, which is different than happiness.

It's not the absence of happiness. Happiness and unhappiness, which are usually registered through the emotions that we feel. All of our emotions exist for a reason. Your negative emotions exist to give you alarms. But what's going on in the outside world, if you didn't have them, you get run over by a car immediately.

You need fear. You need anger. You need disgust. You need sadness. You need these negative emotions.

But it largely processed in the right hemisphere. The brain, which is the same part of the brain where you assess mystery and meaning. And that's one of the reasons that people will say, I found the meaning of my life when I had cancer. I found a great deal of the meaning of my life.

I understood the meaning of my life more when I lost my mom. When I lost my business.

This is also the reason that you and I are Christian men that we worship a man who's suffering and dying. Yes.

“The meaning of my life is my relationship with God.”

This is the central part of the meaning of my life. And I worship a God made manifest in humanity, suffering and dying on a device of torture. That's super heavy. It's very heavy. That's crazy by the world's standards, my human standards.

How can I understand the meaning of my life by looking at Jesus hanging in the cross? Yeah. We're coming to Easter, baby. Right. Right.

But that's what we need to contemplate because suffering, because death, because struggle, because pain. They're central to the experience of understanding who we are as people. When we try to eradicate those experiences, we'll be able to us. What we will be eradicating is the central component of the happiness that we seek. If you try to eliminate your unhappiness, you will accidentally eliminate your happiness.

Oh, that's a cool way to put it.

I find that when people hit their rock bottom, it's usually the first time they start looking up.

I know. I know. I know. I feel... I've had rock bottom.

And I feel almost... Have you? Yeah, I've had times where... I don't think I could have gone any lower than where I was. Didn't you tell you that in your 38 years old?

Yeah, I'm 37, I'll be 30 this year. And there's... I'll have another one I'm sure.

“Probably the worst thing in your life hasn't happened yet.”

Yeah, I'm probably so sorry. Don't be scared. Yeah, wait. Yeah, yeah. I want to tell you, it was enough for me.

If it wasn't rock bottom, it was... It was hard. Super hard. It was a problem for me.

I learned that if my day doesn't start with surrender, it's never going to go well.

It has to have this daily... So how does that show up in conversation? That means... All right, you won't tell me I'm wrong. All right, that's okay.

You know, you want to cut me off and murder Drought in front of me? You know what? Go right ahead. It's like...

And it's not a place of being deferential. Yeah. It's... To me, a higher presence of just being an all of... I can exist and still feel like I'm...

Every bit as present as I can be. Yeah, so there's a formula for what you just said. Oh, good. I hope to have you spoken very eloquently. And the formula actually comes from a lot of different philosophical traditions.

But here's how the Buddhists put it. But it's completely consistent with our Christian faith, too. And any real philosophy. Suffering and pain are not the same thing. Pain happens to you.

Because things happen to you. You know, pain, physical pain, which we call sensory pain. You put your hand on a hot still, you break your arm. That's inflammation and nerve endings. And it's processed in a certain part of the brain.

Effective pain is the second part where you're like...

I don't like that. That's a different part of the brain. It's actually where that happens. It's called the Dorsal Interior Single It Cortex. I guess you're keeping score at home.

Yeah, it's very cool. And so the pain happens to you all the time. And you need pain because you don't have pain. You're in trouble. Pain is a signal that something isn't right.

And that something is a threat. And that's something that needs to change. That's why you have that signal. But suffering is not the same thing. Suffering equals pain multiplied by your resistance to the pain.

Okay? And so suffering... It isn't optional. But you've got a slider bar. Now, the thing that a lot of people get wrong, especially when they're young,

is when they're suffering. They think that they need to lower the pain. And sometimes you can't. The right way to do it is to lower your resistance. Because when you lower the resistance, your suffering goes down even if your pain is high.

When you know you're in the zone of living the way you're supposed to live. When you're getting toward the enlightenment that you actually seek, it's because your pain is sky-high, but your suffering isn't. And that means you're actually not afraid of the pain. And that you're accepting it a lot.

And so something happens to you.

“And the little tiny thing which is like, he cuts you off, you're like, okay?”

Yeah. That's non-resistance. You just practice non-resistance. So when you go through your lowest time, and you know, in the stock market, it's interesting.

You know, what happens when the stock market is really going south, like a bad recession. Stock market is going down by 40%. You know, when it's about to turn around again, the tell is what stock traders call the puke.

Now the puke is when institutional investors, they can't stand it anymore, and they sell, and they sell. And when the institutional investors, they do the puke. When they sell, it's about to turn back up again, traditionally. And what happens is that's surrender.

That's like stock market surrender. And so when you're at the lowest point in your life, and you do the puke, what you do from then on is like, okay? Yeah. Okay.

And that's what you learn from pain. What you learn from pain is how to suffer less. Because you start working the other lever. And that's a source of meaning. It doesn't make the pain any less.

Well, agree.

“And also, when you say you're lowering your resistance,”

then you're accepting pain.

Totally. And sometimes, I mean, we're in the series season of length. And I'm a Catholic. And we practice length. We know how to do length.

And we bring on pain. Yeah. Such that we can get better at non-resistance to it. And people think about that. That's crazy.

You know, the monks, they'll be, you know, flagulating themselves or wearing a hair shirt. But, you know, we do this all the time. You know, I go to the gym every day, so do you. It's not because it feels good.

What am I doing? I'm practicing non-resistance to pain that I myself am inviting. I like to benefit from it, but I'm learning about life. This is one of the reasons that I'll tell young guys. Go to the gym.

Yeah. Go to the gym because the gym in the gym you will learn about life. And the gym you will learn about the, about the relationship between pain, which is under your, I mean, pain, which is not under your control.

In this case, it actually is invited. Yeah. But through your non-resistance to it, your acceptance of it, your embrace of it, your love of it. And then the suffering actually becomes something that you can,

that something that you can live with because it is under your control. That's a very important metaphor for how we're trying to live. It gets much harder when it's like when the pain comes because your wife leaves you or because your, your, your, your, your, your, somebody. Somebody died.

Yeah. Somebody just strength something. You're the victim of a horrible crime. Whatever happens to be. Yeah.

But in point of fact, what you learned from your lowest hour was the great message of the cross. Yeah. I mean to that. Yeah.

I find that it is definitely the more that,

“that that's what the verses like hit me of the,”

the less I am the more he is. Yeah. Like it's, it's a great way of, maybe the words humbling. It's continuing to make sure that you,

like it's a daily bread type of mindset to have. No, absolutely. Absolutely. And you know, I, but there's, there's an affirmation that I asked

my students to, to recite, which isn't beginning the day to say, you know, I'm really grateful for all the beautiful things going to happen this day because everybody knows gratitude is good. All the beautiful things, all the fun things, all the flowers, all the butterflies, all the kisses.

Yeah. And I'm also grateful for the trouble I'm in a face this day. Because that's the source of my learning and growth. Bring it. Yeah.

Yeah. That's the way to start the day. Yeah. Yeah. It's really interesting.

And there's a famous book by Alfonso Sligore. He was a saint in the Catholic Church in 17th century, Catholic Saint. And he wrote a book called "Udiformity with God's will." And so the thing about pain is that suffering. Suffering is a, is a, is a mystery, right?

There's a, as a mysterious element. The book of Job is all about the punchline of the book of Job. Is it a righteous man's suffers? And he interrogates God. And God says, "It's a mystery."

It's beyond you, right? It's actually beyond you, which is a relief. Yeah. For sure. And you find, there's, there's a lot of literature out there about people who've had very

deep, metanormal experiences, which is, you know, what they would call paranormal. It really metanormal experiences where they felt like they were in the presence of God, like near-death experiences. Mm-hmm.

What they all say is that they understand suffering for the first time.

Because that's the first time they do the puke on their, on the understanding of the nature of the, on the mystery of their suffering. How's that? I don't get it. And I can't get it.

But the one thing I know is that God is good. Yeah. Even when things are horrible, God is good. And I can't explain why this. Now, that's a very right hemispheric experience of mystery and meaning.

You're not going to get it if you're on the internet. All right. You're not going to get it if you're on AI. I can't get it if you're on AI. But that's a really important thing to keep in mind.

Is that this, the deep mystery of this is the essence of actually trying, well, how we're trying to deliver lives is what it comes down to. And life gets more beautiful, not less. Mm-hmm. Yeah. If you're one of my students and you're not sad and anxious, you need therapy, man.

Yeah. Because that's a part of life. Yeah. It's what it comes down to.

“And that's what we need to understand to define life's deepest meaning.”

And, and point of fact, to be fully alive. So this is what Alfonso's Logori talks about. That's a uniformity with God's will. This is what the elite athletes of meaning actually have in common. They don't just say, "I accept this."

They say, "I want this." They say, "That's a desire to make your will uniform with the divine will." Mm-hmm. I'm not just going to, I'm not just going to accept it, I'm going to love it. And, man, I'm still not there.

I'm still not there. Well, I find that in like Paul says, "I'm weak. He's strong." And there's this whole thing also in recovery circles. I mean, that's part of the true steps is a higher power.

Yes, one of the first things that you do because your best thinking is what got you there.

You say, "You set a minute ago of how you have to choose not to do that."

You know, if you're other 50%. Man, there's so many people. I know listening to this. If I could, I don't know. I know.

Sometimes, I wish I could just have the be so noble as to confess all of my problems.

“But sometimes, the secret has to be shown.”

Right? And because... You need stronger, stronger stuff. That's exactly it. Yeah.

There is something greater than me. Before I keep going, I want to tell you about Zokdok. I don't know about you. But sometimes, there's just a big hurdle for me to book a doctor's appointment. Doesn't matter any health professional.

I've been trying to find a dermatologist for a while, trying to find a new dentist for a while. And it's just, it becomes such a hassle, right? And the biggest question is, who's in that work, who's out of network with your health insurance, whether you're moved to a new place, or you're changing jobs,

or whatever. And it's also just a pain to try and book it. It becomes this intermanable task. And I can certainly relate to that. And that's where Zokdok helps people just like you and just like me.

It is a free web site. Who's so cool is to connect you to in-house providers and find new doctors and health professionals that you love and people who take care of you.

And best of all, they help you book the actual appointments, which is incredible.

Stop putting off those doctors' appointments. That's speaking to me directly. And go to Zokdok.com/JeffersonToFind and instantly book a doctor you love today. That is ZocDoc.com/Jefferson. And now, back to the episode.

When I'm in some of the best conversations with people, it's when I have surrendered what the outcome will be. And knowing that if I can, what you said in a sense of the suffering of lowering my resistance and conversation to accept, it is what it will be with. That doesn't have to affect, you know, my belief.

The better I walk away from that conversation. Yeah, I know. I know. That's intention without attachment. That's another Buddhist idea.

I go to a lot of Buddhism, I mean, I'm like a serious Catholic. But a lot of Buddhism for a Catholic there. But that's intention without attachment, which means that you have a particular intention. But you don't have an attachment to the outcome. You need a kind of a Euclidean straight line towards something or you can't make an argument.

You can't take on a project. You need to go. You can't go on a voyage unless you know, in principle, where you want to go. But you can't be happy unless you detach yourself from actually attaining that. Which is exactly what you just said, right?

I mean, I have a conversation with somebody and I'm making an argument for something. But, and I have to make it coherent to make it work. I got to have intention. But you can't be happy if you're attached to actually winning that thing. This is what it comes about.

So if you're having an argument with your spouse, then it's productive argument. It's not a nasty argument with it.

“You should have intention about the point that you're trying to make.”

But not attachment to actually who wins the argument. When it comes to your this extraordinary success that you're having in this moment in time and your own career that you didn't anticipate. You have an intention of reaching more people with a podcast with social media and with your speaking events. Without an attachment to what that actually means. You put a book out into the world.

Do you have an intention to make it popular and have a lot of people read it. But without the attachment of number one of the New York Times, that's all of us. Right. And that's. Dude, that's hard to do.

That's hard to do. That's because we're better at attachment than we are in tension. And so the people who are most miserable and can't find meaning, they're super attached to things. But they don't even have an intent. So they have too much attachment not enough intention.

That's okay. We need more intention unless attachment. That's hard. I want to take us now to this aspect of leaning into imposter syndrome. Yeah.

You got a little of that these days. I don't know who does it. I don't know who does it. Well, as you get older, it's different. You'll see.

Tell me. Well, a emotional self management gets much easier and your personality changes as you get older. And this is not just from experience. This is as a research I say. But also from experience.

Because I'm not 37 anymore. I remember being 37 feels like nine minutes ago, but I'm 61.

“What age do you see yourself when you look in the mirror?”

When people ask you how old you are, what's the age you first go to?

Well, it started depends. I'm in better physical shape than when I was in my 20s. So I feel better. No, it's not because I was horribly out of shape. But I kind of smoked.

I drank a lot. And I was in music. And I just didn't take care of myself. And now I take really, really good care of myself. I'm my emotional acuity and my intellectual acumen are higher in a lot of ways than they were.

Because I'm a more linear thinker. Yeah. I'm also working all day long to get points across in ways that I hope people can understand. You know, even though I'm an academic, I'm trying not to, you know, bury everybody under a bunch of.

And so the truth of the matter is that I see myself as a lot younger because I'm better at certain things that I was when I was younger.

“My dad, my dad will always say, "I'll look in the mirror and say, "Who's that old man?"”

I know. But that's when I look in the mirror as when I actually see it because I don't look like I'm 37 anymore. And if I, if, you know, if I were actually 37 and I looked like this, you'd be like, "You got to tell me that, right?" Yeah.

Now, if I told you I was 82 and I looked like this, you'd be like, "Great!" Yeah. You know, so it's all relative. It's kind of the way that this, this, this, where I actually, the appreciation that I have for getting older is number one,

I'm way more emotionally self-managing than I was in the past. And that's actually one of the tricks of happiness of older people. Older people tend to be happier than younger people after the early 50s. So happiness tends to decline through your 30s and 40s. And a little bit, don't worry.

Hey, a little bit. And then it's like your bottoms out and your, yeah. It's, it's your kids, but also because you're not very self-managing emotionally.

And you're experiencing these things.

And you feel like you're like a, like a, a, a, a, a cart, like a shopping cart. In a shopping cart going down a hill. Yeah. A lot of the time. Yeah.

And your early 50s things start to turn around. Not coincidentally, it's when your kids move out. Yeah. But that's, you tend to get much happier from your, in your 50s and 60s. And part of the reason is because you understand what negative emotion means better.

So for example, you know, if somebody, you know, cusses at you out the window of a car and insults you. When you're 30, it's, you're like, you're still on it. Like you're mad about that. Yeah. And, and you don't know that that's not a permanent state of affairs.

As far as you know, as far as your limbic system is concerned, you're going to be mad about that in two weeks. Now, you kind of call, you sort of intellectually know it. Well, but that's kind of how it feels. Yeah.

When you're 60, you think yourself, you're, you're insulted in the same way. But you think yourself, I'm completely sure that an hour from now. I'm not going to care about that. So I'm going to get a head start not care now. Yeah.

That's why 80 year olds are much happier than 30 year olds. 80 year olds are happier than 30 year olds. They just are.

The second reason is because your, your personality gets better.

By better, I mean, I'm like, these are, these are, these are claims that are sort of on a big US. Your, your personality has five dimensions. Openness to experience conscientiousness, extroversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism. Right.

“And so that the way that you remember that is ocean.”

Okay. It's like OCEA ed. Nice. Your openness to experience that tends to, it tends to go down. And, and, and it kind of, it's sort of stays where it is.

And that's not really a big driver on your happiness. Some people are more open to experience. Some people are less open to experience. But it's not like being more open to experience is going to make you uniformly happier. And with you.

I'll be able to just more conservative than others. And is that, does that have an impact on our, kind of the default on imposter syndrome? Not necessarily. What is it, what it does is it affects your, your willingness and ability to take on anything. So you're super open to experience.

Okay. Your person is very open to experience. Which means that you're going to go from being a lawyer to being, I don't know. What the heck are you? Like, like, if you Instagram influencer or something like that at age 37, it's like, that's weird.

Yeah. And that's because you're open to experience. You have a high level of openness. Great. Conscientiousness is correlated with happiness.

Extraversion is, is, is, is correlated with happiness. Agreableness is correlated with happiness. Naroticism is inversely correlated with happiness. Okay. And all those personality characteristics, they go in the right direction as you get older.

You tend to be more conscientious. You tend to be more assertive.

“You tend to be more agreeable because, you know, being disagreeable has a terrible cost benefit ratio, right?”

I mean, it's like being disagreeable to a, your waiter is so dumb. Right. And it's all it's just impulse control. Yeah. And your neuroticism goes away now.

So people are significantly less depressed than anxious when they're older than they were when they were younger. That's funny. Because I'll tell you, I know some older people who have no problem telling somebody what they think. Well, they're assertive. Yeah.

And they can also be disagree. So imagine how disagreeable they were, they were 30. No joke. Yeah. I've seen people run somebody on one side and down there.

Yeah. No, there are certain things that will, will make people buck these trends. And so certain people that have real personality pathology can become more like that. Yeah. And, and they're being old strips off the filters.

Yeah. And especially if you're old and rich, you know, money makes you more of who you are. So if you're a kind and happy person, money will make you kind or happier. And a gloomy old, you know, miser, it'll make you worse. Yeah.

So there's certain things that come into this that that monkey up the picture. Now when it comes to imposter syndrome, you become more comfortable with the fact that you're out in front of your headlights. Hmm. So here's the thing. When you're sharing ideas on a big public stage like you, like me, you're out in front of your headlights a lot.

A lot.

They're like, oh, Jefferson, he's like, you know, he's a big lawyer.

And he knows how to make, he's incredible arguments and he knows.

But you're like, I kind of know. Yeah. I kind of know. I mean, it sounds right to me and it's worked for me and I hope it works for you. But it's not like I've got, you know, 500 studies showing this.

And even if you did, you still like, I kind of know. Right. There's nothing provable, right? And for me, you know, in my work, I can't just hide behind a bunch of studies because I have to triangulate into ordinary life. I'm trying to take real science and say, this study shows this and this study shows that.

And no study shows the answer to your question, but I'm going to triangulate to it because it makes logical sense based on what we studied in other areas. I'm that's beyond my headlights for sure. And it requires a whole lot of humility, but also it imposes a sense of being a imposter and an intellectual imposter. You don't want to get trouble. You don't want to misguide people, you know, it's what it comes down to.

You get more comfortable with the discomfort as you get older. Is that what it is? Yeah, yeah. And so what it comes down to is like, yeah, I don't know everything. I just, I don't know everything and I'm probably wrong on certain things.

But this is how it seems to me. Yeah. Okay, well, that makes me feel better. No, it's, it's, it's weird and hard to certain extent, but it's normal and funny. Yeah.

You say lean into it. Yeah.

“You know, it's like you have to kind of have to stay humble.”

Yeah. Just stay humble and say, and like you do a YouTube video and somebody points that narrower. Yeah.

The first thing is say it's good point.

Right. Yeah. You know, one of the, because it is, if it is a good point, you say that's a good, even if they're like, you jerk you idiot. Yeah.

They say it's a good take. A good take. I mean, it's like, but people make very good points when they're certain times when I'm well, because I'm speaking, when I'll make a point with a little more force than is warranted by the evidence.

You know, that's one of the things that we do. We're not shading the truth at all. But it's basically like, this happens like this. And it's like, this usually happens like this under these circumstances. Okay. And so, but you're too categorical about it.

Somebody will point that out. Yeah. But there was a 19, you know, or a 2013 study that said, and it's like, yeah, good point. Right. Yeah.

Good point. And I know you've, you know, you talked to about like the dark triad. Yeah. Right. And how that like, they're not good at this.

It's just, right. And so it like, they don't have imposter syndrome. Yeah.

“And so that's what I came across that body of work of yours.”

I had to, I had to like go for a walk of like, I want to make sure that you're not. I'm doing everything. If you're worried about it, you're not. Okay. All right.

Good. No, there's a test on my website, by the way. I've got a whole battery of tests. So people can actually take about, you know, their affect profile and their general happiness level.

Okay. That's all the happiness scale. Okay. I tell them what you website. Or the books dot com.

Perfect. Yeah. And, and people can go there and take a test and see, you know, the dark triad characteristics or the person they're dating. Which is really important, especially for women.

Because women are magnetized to dark triads. There's a category of men that's really good at looking like they're falling in love when they're actually not. Can you tell? Like, for I should define dark triad, right?

Yeah. The dark triad is a combination of three personality characteristics. Narcissism. It's all about me. Machiavellianism.

Which is I'm willing to hurt you to serve my ends. And psychopathy. Psychopathic traits. If I hurt you, I don't feel remorse or empathy for you at all. Those are the three traits.

And when it's all about me, I'm willing to hurt you and I don't care. That's super dangerous. Now, it can be really mild like you're just above the average across these three. Yeah. But people who do fulfill these characteristics are one in 14 is 7% of the population.

It's a lot. That's a lot. Everybody who's listening to us right now are watching us right now. Has encountered a dark triad. And those are a weird thing where somebody became a friend a little too fast.

And then betrayed you. Yeah. It's a boyfriend that I've acted like he was like a love bomb to you like crazy. And then he emptied your bank account and used you in a band in you. Or if you had a bad luck of actually marrying that guy, he cheated on you.

You know, over and over and over again. It's everybody's first husband. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, exactly.

You worked for one who was very abusive and exploitative and took credit for your work. You know, that kind of thing is actually what they do all the time. You see him in certain areas of business. There's a lot of a lot in politics. You see a lot in show business.

No doubt there are plenty of lawyers who are dark triads. Right. Not for many CEOs because CEOs have to do repeat business. That's a surgeons. Surgeons are funny because they have an affect profile with being very very low affect.

That's a very low affect. So jet pilots and surgeons. But I think there could be. I don't know.

I've never done dark triad tests.

I used to go with the number of doctors who kind of just got complex. Yeah. And I don't know if it's because they cut on people or. Yeah. It might be.

It might be.

“What kind of lawyers do you think are most likely to be dark triads?”

Would be personal injury lawyers? Pro.

I'd say personal injury attorneys would probably be one. And then I would also say like the corporate banking. As the ones I would do. They're most likely to want to want to really really get bad guys out of trouble. Yeah. Yeah. Like the this like the the white color crime like attorneys.

Well, I definitely say that it's somewhere in law all over the place. I want to. I want to ask you. This last question and it's it's one that's personal for me and my family.

But we're always in this season as young kids and I know other people listening have young kids or grandparents.

They're grandkids. And see her on my wife her thing is like she wants to have a routine. And we're just in the stage where every week is different. And it's she always says what once this happens. Right.

You know we're going to settle into a routine once this is over. Right. Things are going to calm down. And my position is now this is just life. This is this there is no like.

Yeah. And so I'm curious what kind of either research or thoughts that has been married for 34 years. Yeah. Yeah. What have you seen?

“The only thing you can count on is change.”

Yeah. That's really what it comes down to for sure. Now routine actually does get easier. The older your kids are because you can actually get into a more stable stable routine for sure. But one of the things that you find typically in couples is that one partner doesn't want routine.

One partner is actually incredibly allergic to routine. It's probably you. Yeah. It's probably you because you know you're probably an adventure freak. You're probably somebody who needs a lot of stimulus because you're highly open to experience and people who are open to experience.

They don't like routines that much. Yeah. It's like you're probably like traveling. You're probably like seeing things. I mean I get it.

Yeah. It's just like. I don't think on structure. Now yeah. She really like structure.

Yeah. I don't find the extra to be helpful. And different people like it into in different amounts. And that's just those are personality differences. This is what it comes down to.

And so the whole point is you need to be really, really open about that. Yeah. Such that you're getting what you need and she's getting what she needs and she's not expecting things. So the big danger on this is that you keep making promises you can't keep because you don't want to keep them. So the typical thing where because your your life by the way,

I can see the crystal ball is going to get crazy. You're not less crazy. No it is. I mean you're going to do one weird thing after another. Yeah.

And you're going to be successful at it. Right. It's what is going to come down to. And you're going to be saying, honey, no, I promise you it's just this book release. Yeah.

I promise you it's just this one speaking to her. And I would love for you to come with me. But I promise you it's not going to be like this. This is especially busy time.

“That's what that's what adventure junkies always tell their spouse.”

It's an especially busy time.

And then we can really, you know, we can settle down to the life that we've always talked about.

We can have more of the structure. We can have more of this routine. And you're kind of convincing yourself of something that's not the truth. And she will believe you. And then that thing is always out of reach.

Yeah. You can't manage somebody's expectations or something. It's never going to come true. Then we become a constant source of bitterness. And so you, it's, it's worth two things doing.

You as a, oh, bunny who's an, an open this person. Yeah. Is, is to say, number one, honey, I can't stop. I can't stop. Um, I need to stop more.

I need to help me. I need to help me. I need to help me to be more like you. And I'm not going to be all, like you. It's always going to be a little bit crazier.

It's always going to be a little bit more. It's always going to be a little more. This is a word. And it's the test. It's called stochastic.

That means it's like, you can. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Stochastic processes.

One that's, that's a lot of randomness in it, right? There's a lot of adventure. Yeah. I'm not going to be, I, I don't, but I don't know how to stop and left to my devices. This is going to be a problem for me.

It's going to be a problem for you. So I need to help me to understand me. I need to help me. Yeah. That's the real conversation.

That's why God put her in your life. Yeah. No doubt. Because we're supposed to complete each other. And we're supposed to copy each other.

Yeah. That's the kind of, that's real conversation. Yeah, man. I want to ask you a question.

I always ask every, every guest.

And in take all the time you need.

“What is one conversation that you can remember that has changed the direction of your life?”

A conversation that changed the course of my life was not one that I had, but it was one that I witnessed. Hmm. I wrote this book called From Strength The Strength. And, and I told the story at the beginning of that book because it was the reason I wrote that book. And that book was really a turning point in my life based on that conversation.

I was on a plane, which I'm always on a plane. Yeah. Flying from LA to Washington and it was night time. It wasn't a night flight, but it was like 11 o'clock at night. And it was dark.

And I heard a conversation behind me and the row right behind me. And I could tell by their voices, it was a man and a woman. I could tell by their voices that they were old, not just elderly, old, 80s.

Now, couldn't quite make out his words. It was kind of mumbling.

“But her words were really clear and her voice was penetrating and coming right through the seats.”

So I heard her. And then she said, "Oh, don't say it would be better if you were dead." And then I heard her. Yeah. And she says, "It's not true that nobody cares about you and nobody loves you anymore.

That nobody remembers you. It's not true." And now I'm a behavioral scientist, so I'm putting, you know, a story together. And I figured this is a guy who's in his 80s and times almost up. And he didn't have the life that he wanted.

He's not you. He didn't take a bite out of life, man. He didn't actually build the career that he wanted. He didn't take every opportunity and it was too late.

“And the world passed him by and forgotten.”

He probably was never remembered in the first place.

And they finished their conversation. And at the end of the flight, which was an hour later or so, the lights went on and everybody stood up. But I wanted to get a look at the old man that his loving wife had just been telling him convenient lies.

And it was one of the most famous men in the world. No way. This is somebody that everybody watching and listening to us right now knows. Not personally. Yeah.

But he's so famous for what he did. And this guy is not just some actor or politician. This is somebody with a small group of dedicated individuals in the 1960s, 1970s, changed the course of history. Wow.

And I heard him telling his wife that he might as well be dead because nobody remembers him.

Because the good days were in the past and they never came back.

And at that time, I was the CEO of a company. And I didn't know what my future was. And I went home and I said to my wife, honey, I had this experience that I told her about. She said, who was it?

And I told her, she says, huh? I said, yeah, huh. And I said, I don't want to be having that conversation with you on a plane in 40 years. Right. I don't want to be having 30 years.

I guess I was in my early 50s at that time. The guy was probably in his early 80s. I don't want to be having that conversation with you. I need to find a way to structure the rest of my life. So that when things actually end, I can be a piece.

So I can understand the structure of what my life is supposed to be.

So I can live according to God's will without always wishing that it were something that it could be better.

It could be bigger, it could be more special as opposed to me being happy. And that's the beginning of why I'm doing what I'm doing right now. That's awesome. I dedicated my life subsequent to that. I wanted a long pilgrimage, a walking pilgrimage across northern Spain to find the answer to the question on how to do it.

I'm Catholic. Yeah. So we do. My walk. And I decided, I think God told me that I was going to spend the rest of my life lifting people up and bringing together in bonds of happiness and love for his will using science and ideas.

And other subsequent to that conversation of that line.

“That's how you know if you want to hear it.”

You love one another. Absolutely. Well, have you enjoyed our conversation? I've loved it. Thank you.

You're good at what you do, man. You're good at what you do. You tell really appreciate it. Thank you. God bless you.

You too. Thanks. God bless you.