The 1 Macronutrient High Performers Skip After 60 | Arthur Brooks, PhD

**Arthur Brooks** (0:00)
The macronutrients of happiness are enjoyment, satisfaction, and meaning. Meaning is a component of happiness.

**Dr. Gabrielle Lyon** (0:06)
Right.

**Arthur Brooks** (0:06)
In early work on this that said that happiness and meaning were different because they were talking about happiness as a feeling, which it isn't. People want to be happy, but nobody knew what it was.

**Dr. Gabrielle Lyon** (0:16)
Meaning and happiness are not the same thing. If you make decisions when you are younger or continue to make poor decisions, does it become more difficult to find meaning and happiness?

**Arthur Brooks** (0:27)
You have tons of data any time you need to make a decision, especially if you are over 30, because you have lived a long time. It would have been better if we could wind back the clock and take you back to 22 and have you not be drinking every single night in college. But we are where we are and you can get better.

**Dr. Gabrielle Lyon** (0:44)
Would you say that it's dangerous?

**Arthur Brooks** (0:46)
To not have enjoyment, for sure.

**Dr. Gabrielle Lyon** (0:47)
Well, for the striver, when they reach a level of enjoyment, does that set off red flags?

**Arthur Brooks** (0:55)
All kinds of alarm bells, for sure.

**Dr. Gabrielle Lyon** (0:57)
What are some of the biggest things that you see that sabotage happiness or even just greatness in general?

**Arthur Brooks** (1:03)
A lot of it is just these misconceptions that people actually have. The biggest problem for sabotaging your happiness is trying to...

**Dr. Gabrielle Lyon** (1:18)
Arthur Brooks, how are you? I'm doing great.

**Arthur Brooks** (1:21)
I'm so happy to see you. I'm so happy to be with you and here in the studio.

**Dr. Gabrielle Lyon** (1:24)
Unbelievable. Long time coming, lots of mutual friends.

**Arthur Brooks** (1:27)
We've talked privately a whole bunch of times about so many things, but we've never sat down actually in front of the microphones to talk to your wonderful audience and your great show.

**Dr. Gabrielle Lyon** (1:35)
Incredible.

**Arthur Brooks** (1:36)
Yeah.

**Dr. Gabrielle Lyon** (1:37)
Tell me about happiness. Yeah. But define it for me.

**Arthur Brooks** (1:40)
For sure. Now, happiness is something that I've been looking at over my whole career. I got my PhD almost 30 years ago, and I started by studying charitable giving and beauty, and I found that all the things I was studying, we're coming back to this taproot, that people want to be happy, but nobody knew what it was.
I worked on that obliquely a little bit off and on until about seven years ago, and I decided that I keep talking about it, but it's insufficiently defined, and I actually can't dig in and dedicate myself to this completely until I have a working definition that people can actually use. Here's where the story starts. Most psychologists and behavioral scientists like me, they talk about it as something that you feel and that you believe that you have, which is to say a non-definition.

**Dr. Gabrielle Lyon** (2:32)
Yeah. That makes you very nervous as a scientist or a science person.

**Arthur Brooks** (2:36)
Yeah. It's circular.
Tell me something I can use.
I went back to basics, and in the literature you find that the people who have the highest level of well-being and happiness and unhappiness are not opposites. So that's a whole different kettle of fish is unhappiness, which is super important and super interesting, and to be taken into consideration and not eliminated. So we can talk about that too.
But well-being per se is most correlated with three big phenomena, which are the macronutrients of well-being. So it's the same thing as if you decomposed food into its macronutrients. Then you could figure out as a nutritionist how macros and balances are actually coming together in balance and abundance so you can be a healthy person. The macronutrients of happiness are enjoyment, satisfaction, and meaning.

**Dr. Gabrielle Lyon** (3:29)
Enjoyment, satisfaction.

**Arthur Brooks** (3:31)
Those are the three things. So those are the things to pursue. So if good old Tom Jefferson had taken my class at Harvard.

**Dr. Gabrielle Lyon** (3:37)
He would have been great.

**Arthur Brooks** (3:38)
He would have written the... No, it's like what he wrote on my part. But the Declaration of Independence talks about pursuing happiness.
That's hard to do. What you need to do is to pursue three things. You need, in the same way that you need to pursue a diet that's balanced and abundant in protein, carbohydrates and fat appropriately, mostly protein, right?

**Dr. Gabrielle Lyon** (3:59)
Yes, look at your biceps. That's exactly right.

**Arthur Brooks** (4:01)
And especially when you get to, when your muscle protein synthesis becomes inefficient, like after 60, like I am.