How to Know What You’re Supposed to Do With Your Life | Arthur Brooks

Arthur Brooks (0:00)

If you get up before dawn, and walk for an hour with that devices every day with an intention, the information will find you. There's three emotions that you feel when you're facing a decision that's ambiguous to you. Number one is excitement, number two is fear, and number three is deadness. Here's what you want. 80% excitement, 20% fear, 0% deadness. Happiness for most people is a feeling, and that's wrong. Happiness isn't a feeling. Feelings of happiness are evidence of happiness. Happiness is a combination of enjoyment of your life, satisfaction with your accomplishments, and the meaning of your existence.

Alex Clark (0:56)

How do we actually become happier? Not just, you know, temporary, feel good for a few hours, or think like we just have to really earn it, but actually building a life where we experience more joy, satisfaction, meaning and love. Today's guest has spent decades studying the science of happiness. Arthur Brooks is one of the world's leading experts on the science of human happiness. He's a professor at Vanderbilt University and a senior fellow at Harvard Business School, a best-selling author, speaker and former president of the American Enterprise Institute. He's written 16 books including the number one New York Times bestsellers, The Meaning of Your Life, Build the Life You Want with Oprah Winfrey, and From Strength to Strength. Watch this episode on the real Alex Clark YouTuber Culture Apothecary on Spotify. On this show, we invite guests to share their unique remedy to heal us at culture, physically, emotionally, and spiritually. Before we start, please pause, take three seconds to leave a five-star review on Apple or Spotify. This show is free and to keep it that way, that's the only thing I ask you to do because it helps the show remain high in the charts and discoverable to new people. Now, another thing that helps, sending episodes to friends and family and telling them, you better listen to this show or else. Please welcome author, speaker, and professor of happiness at Harvard, Arthur Brooks to Culture Apothecary.

What is happiness?

Arthur Brooks (2:17)

What is happiness? It's like this is the biggest mistake that people make. The reason that people are searching and searching and not succeeding, and the thing they most want in life is because they have the wrong definition.

If you wanted to get to Tacoma, but didn't know it was a city in Washington state, you'd be in big trouble.

Happiness for most people is a feeling, and that's wrong. Happiness isn't a feeling. Feelings of happiness are evidence of happiness. The smell of dinner is evidence of dinner. If you're just going for the smell, going for the smell, your health is never going to improve. You're not going to eat what you need.

What you need to do is to actually approach it scientifically. Happiness has macronutrients like food, and that's what you need to look for. Happiness is a combination of enjoyment of your life, satisfaction with your accomplishments, and the meaning of your existence. Enjoyment plus satisfaction plus meaning. Those are the three things to pursue. Those are the protein, carbohydrates, and fat of happiness. That is the definition of happiness.

Alex Clark (3:14)

Is it healthy to want to be happy? Like, is that something we should be trying to pursue and find? Or is that unhealthy to be thinking like, I want to be happy?

Arthur Brooks (3:23)

Well, so there's a couple of things in there. Everybody wants to be happy. Everybody wants to be happy. I mean, that's what Thomas Aquinas said. Everybody wants to be happy. Aristotle said that. This is true that not everybody acts like they want to be happy, but they do.

But saying, I want to be happy all the time and pursuing happiness per se, that's a problem because that's just like saying, I want to be healthy. No, no, no, no. Pursue things to get healthier and don't just walk around wishing you were healthier. That's what it comes down to. So yeah, you want to be happier, now go do something about it and pay attention to that. Pay attention to the process and you will get happier. You won't be happy perfectly. Actually, you will, just not here.

Right? But in this life, but you can be a lot happier if you actually know the science and have good strategies.

Alex Clark (4:09)

So you became a happiness expert because you said that happiness didn't come naturally to you. Now, obviously, you study this and do this for a living, and you believe that you are truly happy.

Arthur Brooks (4:21)

I'm happier, I'm not truly happy. I will only be truly happy in heaven. That's what I believe. And by the way, everybody wants to be completely happy, and they can't on earth because you have negative emotions and you have negative experiences, and you're going to until the day you die, but you feel like you can be perfectly happy. The reason is because that hunger is evidence of the truth that it exists. You're, I believe as a religious person, I believe that your hunger for pure happiness is evidence of heaven.