Most Replayed Moment: Why You’re Never Satisfied! The 4 Pillars of Lasting Happiness

Steven Bartlett (0:03)

So, people in memory, time, pleasure, and enjoyment.

Arthur Brooks (0:07)

That's right. So, alcohol, add people in memory. You know, the Anheuser-Busch Corporation doesn't put out advertisements of, you know, a dude alone in his apartment pounding a 12-pack.

That's how a lot of people use the product. But everybody knows that's an irresponsible, dangerous thing to do that can lead to alcoholism. What they show is the same guy with his brothers and friends, you know, clinking bottles together, having a great time. That is pleasure, alcohol, plus people, plus memory equals enjoyment, and that leads to happiness. Because they want to join their brand to happiness, not just to pure pleasure and certainly not to addiction.

Steven Bartlett (0:43)

Same with like Coca-Cola. All the Coca-Cola ads are like the World Cup with your friends, and in summer with your friends, and outside.

Arthur Brooks (0:49)

Yeah, and that's actually less addictive. I mean, there are certain, you know, the sugar and caffeine are certainly addictive. They don't have the same properties of brain capture in the same way, for sure, because they don't stimulate as much dopamine as, you know, something like alcohol does. And so they're less likely to make you really addicted. But the whole point is that they're, it does give you a little bit of pleasure, but it makes you way happier if you get to enjoyment, and you only get that when you're doing it with people.

Steven Bartlett (1:15)

Satisfaction.

Arthur Brooks (1:16)

Satisfaction is the joy you get after struggle. You're an entrepreneur. You understand this one really well. You're good at deferring your gratification. All entrepreneurs are good, successful entrepreneurs, are good at deferring gratification, which means I'm going to do this hard thing, and it's going to get big payoff, and that payoff is going to be sweet. That's satisfaction. There's a really funny thing about humans is that we need struggle and suffering for us to actually get the joy that we seek, and that's a really important part of our happiness. So you find the people who are better at deferring their gratification get more satisfaction and they're happier. There's a lot of, remember, you've heard about the Marshmallow Experiment. And people have debunked it, but they actually haven't. So the Marshmallow Experiment was taking place, it took place in the late 60s, where Walter Michel was a psychologist at Stanford out in Palo Alto. He had a little laboratory set up where he would come in and sit down on one side of a table, and there was a kid on the other side of the table between four and eight years old, and in front of the kid was a marshmallow. And so he says to the kid, do you want the marshmallow? The kid's like, yeah, he says, I'll tell you what, I have to go take a phone call in the back here. But when I come back, if the marshmallow is still there, I'll give you another one. Can you wait? Every kid's like, yeah, totally, totally, totally worth it. He comes back five minutes later or so, 80% of the kids had eaten the marshmallow. 20% of the kids hadn't. Now, that's a lot. 80% of the kids could not defer the gratification. So the real question is, who's the 20%? It's Steve Bartlett.

These are the people that went on to do distinguished things. They did better in school, they got better grades, they went on to have more job success, they had better relationships. That's what they found, that the most successful kids... Now, what people fight about now is why, whether it's nature or nurture, it's probably 50-50. Like everything else in life, it's both nature and nurture. But the bigger point is good things come to those who wait. And when you wait, you suffer. And you need that suffering as part of the basic satisfying experience. Now, the bigger problem with satisfaction is that mother nature has a big lie at the end of it. Mother nature says, if you get it, you're going to love it forever. And that's not true. See, the brain works emotionally and physically in an environment of homeostasis. Homeostasis means that you always return to your baseline physiologically and emotionally, because you can't stay in an unusual physiological state.

Unusual states are a reaction. You need to be ready to react. And so, you know, you step off the treadmill, your heart is elevated, your heart goes back to where it was, so you're not dead in a week. The same thing is true for you emotionally. Something really good or bad happens to you. You think it's going to last forever, so that you have an incentive to avoid or approach the thing, but it doesn't last forever, does it? That's the problem. We actually think that if I get that billion dollars, it's going to be really great. And the first thing that somebody who has a billion dollars says to her himself is, I guess I needed another billion because of homeostasis. And that puts you on something called the hedonic treadmill. More, more, more, more, more, more, more, more. So that's the great conundrum of the striver, is that there's never enough, never enough, never enough. I deal with people all day long. I really specialize in people who are incredibly successful, but not happy. And a lot of what I do is explain one simple equation that both explains that, but also gives you the solution, which is that your satisfaction doesn't come from all the things that you have. So have more is not the right strategy. Satisfaction is all the things you have divided by the things that you want, have divided by wants. Successful people need to manage their wants even more than they need to manage their haves. They need to want less. And that's a whole kettle of fish. That's spirituality, that's discipline, that's fitness, that's diet. That's a whole lot of things that go into that. And that will help you actually get enduring satisfaction.