Cultivating happiness, emotional self-management, and more | Arthur Brooks Ph.D.

**Peter Attia** (0:11)
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Our returning guest this week is Arthur Brooks, who was originally on the podcast in October of 2022 I wanted to have Arthur back again on the podcast to talk about his new book on happiness called Build the Life You Want. As some of you may recall, Arthur is a Harvard professor, a Ph.D. social scientist, and a columnist at The Atlantic, and also the bestselling author of From Strength to Strength, one of the handful of books I keep in multiple copies at my house to share with anyone who comes over who doesn't have a copy. Arthur's work specializes in using the highest levels of science and philosophy to provide people with actionable strategies to live their best lives.
In this conversation with Arthur, we focus on the idea of happiness. And again, that sounds like a very vague concept. And if you're anything like I was a couple of years ago, you would sort of reject the idea that this was something that could be studied. But here we speak about the difference between happiness, happy feelings, unhappiness, the evolution and heritability of happiness, and the different types of emotions we have. And I think that Arthur has a really helpful way to think about this. In fact, one of the most important things that I have noticed myself observing since reading this book and also talking with Arthur is that in the moment, my emotions may not necessarily reflect my overall state of happiness. And I shouldn't confuse in the moment feelings of uneasiness or even negatively valence emotions with an overall picture of the, what Arthur calls macronutrients of happiness. We speak a lot about the positive and negative affect schedule and a test that you can take to help understand your predisposition to types of happiness and to your compatibility with others. And as I said, we then focus on what Arthur calls the macronutrients of happiness, enjoyment, satisfaction and meaning. And while all of these words are familiar, they in this context have a very specific set of parameters. And I think it's worth understanding them because it's what I keep coming back to as I examine my own life. And I suspect you'll find value in doing that as well. We also talk about the importance of metacognition and transcendence in our happiness and the idea of meself versus iself. Finally, we end the conversation looking at what potential biomarkers or a dashboard of happiness might look like. And by biomarkers, I don't mean blood-based biomarkers, but I use that term kind of loosely to refer to other questions that one might ask of themselves to get a sense of their overall health in terms of happiness, just as we might look at our own blood-based biomarkers to look at a sense of our overall health.
The deeper I get into this world of longevity, the more and more convinced I am of the importance of a topic like happiness. As I wrote about in Outlive, there really is no clear reason to want to live longer if you are unhappy. And I think for that reason, I find myself especially drawn to this kind of work. I consider myself to be constantly on a journey to understand this better in myself and of course to understand how I can help my patients with this. So without further delay, please enjoy my conversation with Arthur Brooks.
Arthur, thanks for making the trip to Austin, although maybe it's only partially to see me.

**Arthur Brooks** (4:38)
It's mostly to see you, Peter. I love seeing you. It's the best. Doing this in person is great. Last time we did it by Zoom. This is better.

**Peter Attia** (4:44)
Congrats on the book.

**Arthur Brooks** (4:46)
Thanks.

**Peter Attia** (4:46)
This is not your first, second or third rodeo, but I'm sure each time it's a little bit of a, what's the world gonna think?