Transcript
00:00:00I've talked an awful lot over the course of the last 50 or so episodes about the importance of
00:00:04being a generous person. I'm going to talk more about that today, but I'm going to take a special
00:00:08twist on that, which is that you should give other people an opportunity to give to you.
00:00:14I had a close acquaintance of my family earlier in my life when I was a young man, a lovely person,
00:00:19very generous. If you needed something, she was there. If you were sick, she had the chicken soup.
00:00:24And she had a saying, which was this, I give, but I don't take. I suppose that she thought that it
00:00:30was best for other people. But the truth of the matter is that that was as lovely as she was,
00:00:36a form of selfishness. When you only give and you don't accept, you're appropriating for the giver,
00:00:45which is you, all of the moral prestige, all of the generosity, all of the joy of giving to yourself
00:00:51while never giving any of it to anybody else. And why are you doing it? Because you want to avoid
00:00:55a sense of indebtedness.
00:01:02Hi friends, Arthur Brooks here, and welcome to Office Hours, the podcast about love and happiness,
00:01:08how you can use the science to get more of it in your life, how you can become a teacher of love
00:01:13and happiness for all those around you. One of the reasons I talk about that at the beginning of
00:01:17every episode is because the basic science is clear. If you want to learn anything that's
00:01:22relatively sophisticated, that isn't straightforward, you got to do three things. You need to understand
00:01:28it. You need to change your life and you need to share it with other people. That's what this
00:01:32podcast is all about. Helping you understand the basic behavioral science and even neuroscience of
00:01:37happiness, give you ideas on how you can change your life and arm you with the information so you can
00:01:42share it with your loved ones and anyone who will listen because the one who will benefit the most
00:01:45is you. Thank you so much for watching the show, continuing with us and recommending it to your
00:01:50closest friends and anybody that you know that could actually use a little bit of it and who couldn't
00:01:55use a little bit more happiness, of course. I appreciate that very much. Please continue feeding back,
00:02:00giving me show ideas, things that you like, things that you don't, ways that we can make this show
00:02:03better. The best way to do that is by leaving a comment wherever that you're watching or listening
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00:02:24what you like and indeed what you don't, which is why we're doing this is because it's all about
00:02:29what's most useful to you. If you want to go deeper on any of this information, please just subscribe
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00:02:39arthurbrooks.com slash newsletter is how you can sign up. It's between three and 500 words every single
00:02:44week on a topic that's usually different than what I'm talking about on my podcast. That's something
00:02:48useful. And as a bonus, you'll get stupid jokes by me because there's no responsible editing going on
00:02:55in the newsletter. I'm recording this episode from the Modern Elder Academy MEA outside Santa Fe, New
00:03:01Mexico. So props to MEA. Look on Instagram at MEA Wisdom is their handle and Chip Conley, who's the
00:03:08great visionary behind this beautiful place. Esther, my wife and I are running a retreat, a marriage
00:03:13retreat, a couple's retreat here for the next few days. What a wonderful place to do that. If you're
00:03:18interested in the kind of retreats that I'm doing these days, doing more of and that people are doing
00:03:22with my work. So with me and without me as well, that gives an opportunity for people interested in this work to
00:03:28get together, to actually get to know each other. Social capital is critical for learning as well. If you want to
00:03:33learn more about that, you can get details at retreats.arthurbrooks.com. Okay, now with that out of the way,
00:03:40let's talk about today's topic. Today's topic is a little bit different than what I've done before. I've talked an awful
00:03:45lot over the course of the last 50 or so episodes about the importance of being a generous person,
00:03:50the importance of giving, being charitable. I've mentioned it. I'm going to talk more about that
00:03:55today, but I'm going to take a special twist on that, which is that you should give other people
00:04:01an opportunity to give to you. You should ask for help more. Do you want to lift people up and make them
00:04:07happier? Do you want to be happier yourself? It's not enough to be a charitable person. You need to be the
00:04:12conduit between other people and their charity and help them help you. If I do my job in the next few
00:04:18minutes, half an hour or so, maybe a little more, we'll see. I'm going to make the case that you can
00:04:25actually lift people up in a very unique way by understanding just the right way to ask for help
00:04:31and to take people's generosity. Now, not too much, not too little. You'll see exactly what I'm talking
00:04:38about. And in so doing, your life will be better and sell. So will other people's as well. Now I've
00:04:43met a number of people over the course of my life that wouldn't agree with this. They believe that to
00:04:48be a virtuous person, you should be all give, no take. I had a close acquaintance of my family
00:04:54earlier in my life when I was a young man, an elderly lady and a lovely person, very generous. If you
00:05:01needed something, she was there. If you were sick, she had the chicken soup. She was really wonderful.
00:05:06She was thoughtful. She remembered birthdays. She wanted to cook you dinner. She had you over
00:05:12anytime you were around. And she had a saying, which was this, I give, but I don't take. And she meant
00:05:20that, by the way, if she came over to your house, she would literally not even accept a glass of water
00:05:24water because it was this system of ethics that she had created for herself that she thought was most
00:05:30virtuous. And I suppose that she thought that it was best for other people. But the truth of the
00:05:35matter is that that was as lovely as she was, a form of selfishness that actually even transcended
00:05:42her physical life. When she died, her family found very clear instructions that her body should be
00:05:49donated for medical science and she would not have any memorial service of any kind. Those were her
00:05:56wishes that had to be followed. But that was a real source of sadness for her family who wanted to
00:06:02memorialize her, who in thinking the kind thoughts about what a wonderful person she was, would have
00:06:08brought them together in point of fact that that last act was a kind of selfishness in its way, as was
00:06:14the, I will never ask for a glass of water. And that's what I want to talk about because the truth
00:06:19of the matter is that when you only give and you don't accept, you're appropriating for the giver,
00:06:26which is you, all of the moral prestige, all of the generosity, all of the joy of giving to yourself
00:06:32while never giving any of it to anybody else. And why are you doing it? Because you want to avoid
00:06:38a sense of indebtedness. Well, your indebtedness to somebody else could be a gift to them if you do it
00:06:44right. That's what I want to show you. Learning how to receive gratefully from others is a sign of
00:06:50fantastic humanity. It's a sign of being a person who's bigger than just yourself. It's good for your
00:06:56relationships. It's good for your own well-being. And it's especially good for those that you would love.
00:07:01Now, as I talk about this, as I try to prove this to you, let me go back to basics, which is the
00:07:07research, the abundant, incredible research showing that giving is really great for you. It's really
00:07:13good for your happiness. And this takes me back to my own roots as a researcher back in my early days
00:07:18before I got tenure as a professor. So this is three, four or five years out of my PhD. I was teaching at
00:07:25Syracuse University and I was doing almost all my research on charitable giving. And I was finding again
00:07:30and again and again, this weird thing in my data that the more people gave to charity, the richer they
00:07:36got. And it looked like it was causal. I would find that people would give more money in one year and
00:07:41the next year they would make more money. Now, I thought that was an anomaly in my data. It doesn't
00:07:46follow the theory, does it? Look, I'm trained as an economist and you don't learn in economic school.
00:07:51You know the way to get rich? Give away all your money. That's not the right investment approach.
00:07:56So I kind of didn't do anything with it. You know, it's like weird. I must be doing something wrong.
00:08:00I was talking to a colleague, a psychologist who did work in the same field in philanthropy. And I said,
00:08:04I have this data problem. I keep getting this weird result that when people give more money
00:08:09to charity, they tend to make even more money than that the year after and in subsequent years. And my
00:08:16friend said, well, duh, we've known that for 30 years in psychology. Tell me more sensei. And he said,
00:08:21yeah, I mean, it's not about the money. That's not it. It's that when you give, you have more
00:08:27self-efficacy. You have more effectiveness as a person. And people who are solvers of problems,
00:08:33they do better at work. They're better at their jobs. They're more confident. They make more money.
00:08:39The real reason that the connection is happiness. That's really what got me into the happiness
00:08:47business in the first place. I wound up writing a book about charitable giving and how it's good for
00:08:51you. And the next book I wrote after that, way back in 2008, was about happiness. And that book
00:08:57didn't do very well. But it got me in the bug that now has, you know, low these many decades later has
00:09:02turned it into, you know, what I do for a living. It really started with charity that I would study
00:09:07happiness in the first place because the link is so strong. And many, many data sources and studies
00:09:13show this extremely clearly. Let me give you an example. There's a study from 2015. So 11 years old
00:09:19now at this point from the Journal of Positive Psychology, excellent journal and happiness and
00:09:24happiness-related topics in which participants were instructed to engage in random virtuous acts
00:09:29towards strangers. As always, I will put this in the show notes. The article is entitled The Impact of a
00:09:35Pay-It-Forward-Style Kindness Intervention on Giver and Receiver's Well-Being. So what did they do?
00:09:40In the experiment, they had the participants engage in random acts of kindness, holding doors open for
00:09:46strangers, feeding a parking meter, presenting a stranger with a small gift like a flower on the street
00:09:51without looking like a creep, et cetera, et cetera. And then they wanted to know what the reactions were
00:09:56going to be. Now, first they looked at the reactions of ordinary interactions that were not
00:10:00charitable versus these acts of kindness on the recipient. And the way that they measured
00:10:05the happiness that it provoked was really quite novel. They measured what I've called in the past
00:10:11on the show, the Duchenne smile. It's a physiological phenomenon in which people smile from authentic
00:10:17happiness. And how do researchers look at that? Well, they noticed a change in the musculature in two
00:10:22parts of the face. The zygomaticus major muscles in the top of the cheek and the orbicularis oculi
00:10:28muscles that surround the eyes. In other words, they'll get crow's feet and scrunch up their
00:10:32cheeks. It didn't matter what was happening with their mouths. It was with the eyes. And they were
00:10:37using high resolution camera equipment to see whether or not people, when they got this random act of
00:10:42kindness, had Duchenne smiles versus those who just had an ordinary interaction, like a conversation on
00:10:47the street. And sure enough, the smile told the story. People who are the recipients of these little
00:10:52acts of kindness were authentically happier. When you help people in unbidden ways for no apparent
00:10:57reason, you will make them happier. Okay, that's a standard result. That's a standard finding.
00:11:01It's really good research. It was well executed by the researchers. That's great. But here's where the plot
00:11:09thickens. Because right after that, they also, without telling the people who are the participants in the
00:11:15experiment, they then registered the happiness of the giver, right? They didn't know it was going to
00:11:20happen. In other words, a surprise to the givers themselves. The researchers knew it, of course. And
00:11:24they measured whether or not the giver was happier versus in an ordinary transaction. And sure enough,
00:11:30for them too, the recipients of the kindness were not the only ones. The givers immediately after the
00:11:36experiment reported and displayed higher levels of wellbeing, higher levels of happiness. Giving
00:11:45makes you happier, makes you happier. Another similar study from the Journal of Happiness Studies,
00:11:51which is a kind of a cousin journal to positive psychology. Psychologists in 2004, this is
00:11:56slightly older, but still it's in the modern era, found that when students were assigned to engage in
00:12:01five minor acts of kindness and sacrifice a week, that practice by itself reliably raised their overall
00:12:09happiness compared with students who didn't engage in these acts. So this is an intervention. It's a
00:12:13treatment control experiments, like a drug test. And sure enough, you can prescribe acts of kindness to
00:12:18people and it'll raise their wellbeing. Once again, this is a standard finding. So I could go through
00:12:23chapter and verse one after the other, after the other, and I can tell you what kinds will actually
00:12:27raise your wellbeing more than others. It turns out volunteering your time, it tends to raise your
00:12:32happiness even more than giving people money, right? And so there's all kinds of things like that,
00:12:36that show that when you give, you get happier. Now, the simple reading is that you should give more,
00:12:43but here's a deeper reading of that. The deeper reading of it is that you should give other people
00:12:50opportunities to give. So this is the cycle of giving. This is the virtuous cycle of generosity
00:12:56inside of society. Why do we want to be givers and give ease? Why do we want to love and be loved?
00:13:03Because the truth of the matter is you can start a virtuous cycle of happiness. I give and it makes me
00:13:08happy. And in so doing, I give to somebody and that makes them happy and that makes them more likely to
00:13:13actually give. And when I give them an opportunity to give, to satisfy that desire to give, to give back
00:13:19to me and to give to other people, they get happier. And when we're all giving, we're all getting happier.
00:13:24So how do you start that cycle? You maybe start that cycle by giving to somebody, but maybe you start
00:13:29that cycle by accepting generosity from somebody. That's what the elderly relative in my family had
00:13:36missed. And that's what I want to talk about with you, how you can be a better getter, not just a
00:13:42better giver. In the Bible, it says that the Lord loves a cheerful giver. Well, I think the Lord probably
00:13:49loves a cheerful getter as well. So how do we do that? Now, I know, I know, I know why you might
00:13:56be hesitant to be going out looking for people's generosity. You don't want to impose,
00:14:02right? But the Journal of Psychological Science says that people who think they're imposing usually
00:14:07aren't. When you're asking people even for favors, you're usually not imposing. There's a wonderful
00:14:12study by two researchers, one of whom is Nick Epley at the University of Chicago, who just does,
00:14:17he's such a great psychologist. This is in Psychological Science, which is an apex journal
00:14:22in psychology called "Surprisingly happy to have helped: Underestimating pro-sociality
00:14:27creates a misplaced barrier to asking for help." This is an answer to your objection that you don't
00:14:33want to impose on other people. He says that many people think they're going to impose when they ask
00:14:38for a favor. And it actually raises the mood of the people who are being asked for a favor.
00:14:43It's really interesting. Borrow somebody's cell phone to make a call, for example, was one of
00:14:47these things. Just asking people for little favors. Could you watch my stuff when I go into the store?
00:14:52People love doing that. It turns out that people feel good about themselves when you're asking them
00:14:57to do that. Now think about yourself. Somebody can annoy you if they ask for too much, but when
00:15:02somebody actually asks you for a small favor and you do it, you feel good. You're like, my mom would
00:15:07be proud of me, right? So one of the easiest ways that you can make somebody happier is to accepting
00:15:13generosity and even asking them for a small favor. Now, there's a cynical application to this, which is
00:15:18the following. The research is clear that if you ask people for favors or accept their generosity,
00:15:25that that's going to make them more positively inclined toward you. And this is an old idea.
00:15:31Benjamin Franklin wrote this. Good old Ben Franklin. He that has once done you a kindness will be more
00:15:37ready to do you another than he whom you yourself have obliged. That's what he's basically saying,
00:15:42is that people like you better if they've been nice to you rather than if you've been nice to them.
00:15:46Okay. That's all feeding into this big theme that we've got. You should accept more kindness.
00:15:50Now, the reason he talked about that is because he wanted you to be a more successful person.
00:15:54What he's noticing is that people, they get this happiness boost and they're also really path
00:15:58dependent. If you accept a small favor from somebody, they're going to say, oh, I like this person. I'm
00:16:02giving them small favors. They're more likely and more inclined to give you a big favor. And
00:16:05psychologists have shown, for example, when you go in for a job interview and they offer you a small
00:16:10kindness and you accept, they're more likely to like you and more likely to offer you the job. Here's the
00:16:15cynical or at least practical application of that idea. You're going to a potential employer.
00:16:20You walk in for your interview. They say, do you want a cup of coffee? The answer is yes. Thank you
00:16:26very much. Cream and sugar. You know, I don't care if you don't drink coffee. The dumbest thing that you
00:16:31can do is say, I don't drink coffee. Why? Because you've just basically turned down somebody's opportunity
00:16:36to do something nice for you. Now, maybe the person offering you the cup of coffee is not the person who
00:16:40would offer you the job, but they will no doubt be offering you something too. You know, they'll be a
00:16:46small act of kind. Always say yes. Always say yes. But it's not just a practical application. It's a
00:16:51moral application because you want to lift other people up by turning them into givers. That's what
00:16:57it comes down to. Right now, you're like Neo in the Matrix. You can keep scrolling, experiencing a
00:17:03simulation of life, or you can wake up to how your attention is being harvested for profit. It's
00:17:09happening to people all over the world right now. You don't want to be productized like this anymore,
00:17:15but it's hard. Tech addiction is so potent because it's been designed to tap into your dopamine system.
00:17:21Just like heroin, porn, gambling. You've got the cravings. You're addicted. You don't like it,
00:17:26and I don't either. But I can't just tell you to stop doing it. That's hard. If you want to break
00:17:30free from the system, you need an incentive. Here's one. Why don't you join a phone company that pays you
00:17:37not to use your phone? If you want to reduce brain rot, get Noble Mobile. It pays you to use less data.
00:17:43It gives you an incentive to unplug. Noble Mobile is the phone plan that finally aligns incentives with
00:17:49what's good for you. Use less data, earn money back. And when you do, you'll be living once again
00:17:55in real life, and you're going to like how it feels. I study happiness for a reason. I'm not a naturally
00:18:02super happy person. I wake up most mornings with pretty high negative affect. For years, I treated that
00:18:09as a fixed trait, something I had to live with. Then I started paying attention to how
00:18:13I'd slept the night before. Here's what the science actually shows. Poor sleep doesn't just make you
00:18:19tired. It can actually make you less happy. You can't build a meaningful life on frequent chronic
00:18:26broken sleep. So I take my sleep seriously. One of the best investments I've made in this area is my
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00:18:45firmness preferences, and other sleep habits. Then they match you with one of more than 20 mattress
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00:18:56your door. It's a simple idea, but it's surprisingly rare. Start with the person, not the product.
00:19:02If you're serious about improving your sleep and your happiness, visit helixsleep.com/brooks for 20% off
00:19:12site-wide and additional offers. Invest in your sleep. Everything else works better when you do.
00:19:19Okay, so accept more. Ask for favors. Say yes. This is the general lesson I'm trying to impart here.
00:19:27Probably I've beat the horse to death at this point, but now I want to give you the cautions. Now I want
00:19:34to give you the caveats to it. The first is that you have to know how much is too much. Not that long
00:19:40ago, somebody I didn't know very well. I had met in professional circles. He emailed me. He said,
00:19:46Hey, Arthur, I'm going to be in town. Didn't live in, didn't live where I live. I live in Northern
00:19:50Virginia. He said, I'm going to be in town. And I'm doing a thing with my kid for a couple of weeks.
00:19:58Okay, good. You know, I thought he was going to say, want to get, grab a cup of coffee. No,
00:20:02here's what he said. He said, would it be okay if we stayed at your house for two weeks?
00:20:08And I felt kind of taken aback. I didn't really know him and, and living with my family for two
00:20:13weeks. Now I get it. Albert Schweitzer, Mother Teresa would have said, mi casa es su casa. You
00:20:18know, I get it, but you know, maybe I'm not that virtuous because basically that guy went from
00:20:23friendville to takerville. That's too much. And there's, there's a very interesting research over
00:20:29the years that some people are weirdly disposed to ask for, for uncomfortably large favors from people.
00:20:36And what that research suggests is that you should actually say no, and they won't be offended.
00:20:43Actually, there's a lot of research that shows that people are less offended when you say no to things
00:20:46than you think. You agonize over the fact that you've got to say no, and they don't care.
00:20:50But, but these people who are in takerville, they'll take, man, they'll take and take and take. And if you
00:20:55say no, they're like, okay, water off a duck's back. Here's my basic point. Friend town comes when you
00:21:01ask for the right things and you accept the right kind of generosity. Takerville is when you push it
00:21:06too far and then you'll go into the category that you want to be. And so have some, some prudential
00:21:12judgment about this. More is not always better in most things in life. And this is no exception.
00:21:18Here's the second caveat. Asking for something as a favor or accepting generosity is very different than
00:21:25demanding something. We have a culture of demands. I know my rights, right? You got to demand what you
00:21:31want. This is the, this is the advice that a lot of young people get in the job market all the time.
00:21:35And, and, you know, I was young once and now of course I'm an employer and I've been on both sides
00:21:40of this thing for sure. But what we find today is one of the worst pieces of advice that we give young
00:21:44people today is to go demanding all the time. Now there's certain times when you have to actually
00:21:48lay down the law. When you have to say, this is something that I actually need. If I can't have this,
00:21:53then, then, then maybe we should part ways. There are all kinds of ways that, you know,
00:21:57you can't come together on a deal, but going around demanding things, demanding your rights all the
00:22:01time. There's a couple of different problems with that. Number one is it's a mark of selfishness.
00:22:06That's how you distinguish yourself as selfish is by making a whole lot of demands. And again,
00:22:12some demands are legitimate, but I'm talking about people who are doing this all the time.
00:22:15But scholars have also found that among those who without real justification are making demands,
00:22:20that when they don't get these things, they tend to feel entitled or wrong. And this is the reason,
00:22:24my friends, that activists always tell you to demand your rights because activists, I don't care what
00:22:30side you're on, what the ideology is. Activists want you angry. They want you aggrieved. They want you to
00:22:38feel like the whole world is against you. And the way that they do that is by tricking you into demanding
00:22:43stuff from people. This will get people's backs up. This will make people say no to you. And so if the
00:22:49activists can convince you that you should demand something and that you're entitled to it, you will
00:22:54be aggrieved, you will be angry, you will be fearful, and you've been set up. That's the bottom line. This is
00:23:00one of the ways that they do that and create a culture of grievance in the meantime. If you want to
00:23:03see the data on this, the journal of personality, social psychology, what a great journal,
00:23:08where this is an article called victim entitlement to behave selfishly. And again, this is peer reviewed
00:23:14research with treatment control experiments. I'm not making it up. This is not an ideological point.
00:23:18As a matter of fact, I can see it all over the political and sociological spectrum. So take it as
00:23:24I intend it. Number three, don't wreck it when you're doing this. And the way that people often will wreck it
00:23:32is by when somebody gives you a favor, here's the best way to wreck the favor, wreck the joy that
00:23:38they get from doing you the favor, trying to return extrinsic benefits. Now I've been in the fundraising
00:23:44game for a long time. Those of you who followed my work know that I used to be the president of a big
00:23:47think tank in Washington, DC. My main job was bringing home the bacon because it was a nonprofit.
00:23:52I had to fundraise. We would raise $50 million a year. And that meant, you know, $250,000 every
00:23:58business day of the year, 200 business days a year. You did the math. My hand was out a lot,
00:24:03right? Is what it came down to. And one of the things that I learned about because I had studied
00:24:07fundraising and philanthropy all these years is what makes donors happy. What makes donors happy is the
00:24:13belief that they're helping from the goodness of their heart. The best way to wreck that is by giving
00:24:17them something tangible in exchange that maybe they didn't even ask for. The worst fundraising is that
00:24:23which is based on premiums. So for example, you get a bunch of address labels in the mail,
00:24:28you've gotten them. And, and, and what they say is here's your address labels.
00:24:32Would you please give us a little bit of money to pay for those address labels? Because they're
00:24:35kind of expensive, by the way, they're not, they're cheap. They're like cranking them out,
00:24:40but they want you to overpay for an item out of a sense of guilt. What that does is it makes you
00:24:44feel worse about the charity. You pay the absolute minimum. If you fall prey to it, if you don't fall
00:24:49prey to it, you'll just be resentful of the charity itself. This is just straight up crummy fundraising.
00:24:56This is a way to put a ceiling on the take and make people like you less is what it comes down to.
00:25:02We do this all the time as individuals as well. We want to give somebody something in return that's
00:25:06a little bit more tangible. Now this does not count if you, you know, somebody does something lovely for
00:25:10you and you write them a thank you note. That's not what I'm talking about.
00:25:14Here's a thought experiment that gets my point across. Imagine that I asked you to help me move
00:25:19a bunch of boxes out to my car. All right. You know, I'm, I'm leaving my office. I'm moving offices
00:25:24a little bit too much for me. We're friends, maybe not super close friends, but we're friends. We like
00:25:29each other. Hey, could you give me a hand with these boxes? And you're like, sure. And then you do it.
00:25:34And I offer you $8. Right. It's like, what that, that, that it was absurd on his face, right?
00:25:42It wasn't all better. It didn't make it better on the contrary. It made it worse. Now this is a
00:25:45principle in psychology called extrinsic benefits. Extrinsic benefits are some outside reward.
00:25:52Intrinsic benefits are the warm glow from your heart. You got warm glow. And I tried to buy that
00:25:58warm glow with a, with, you know, eight crummy dollars. No, almost anything that you do is all
00:26:04it's going to do is going to take away my warm glow from helping you with your boxes. Or I can't remember
00:26:09if I'm helping you with your boxes, you're helping me with mine. The bottom line is the exchange of
00:26:13money is not the way to go. So be very careful with the way that you show your gratitude to somebody.
00:26:18Honest gratitude from your heart is way more valuable to the donor because they get to keep
00:26:23the warm glow than anything you'd get in exchange, which looks like a bad deal. It looks like it's not
00:26:29worth it. All right. You notice I got two glasses of water here. Apparently I'm very thirsty. I'm in
00:26:34New Mexico, as I mentioned, 6,300 feet, real dry, 91 degrees. All right. Fourth way, fourth caution
00:26:42about the cycle of generosity. This is not really a caution as much as it is another lesson about how to
00:26:47execute this. A lot of people conclude that there are some people that simply have nothing to give them.
00:26:54And this sets up an asymmetry in the relationship. It sets up a hierarchy necessarily in the relationship.
00:27:01Let me tell you what I mean. And some of you have heard me talk about this before in speeches,
00:27:05for example, or in one of my books, my latest book, I talk about this. So forgive me if I'm going over
00:27:09old ground. I was giving a talk at a Christian college in New York City. And a student stumped me,
00:27:15by the way, you're probably scratching your head going Christian college in New York City.
00:27:19Yeah. Anyway, he stumped me with this question because I was talking about the importance of
00:27:24of giving and receiving and the circulatory system of generosity, which if you cut it off by not
00:27:31giving or God forbid, not receiving, it's like stopping the circulatory system of blood in which
00:27:36it starts to coagulate and you can no longer supports life. And he said, well, what about
00:27:40people who I don't need anything from? They can give me literally nothing. And I said, well,
00:27:46I challenged him. I said, give me an example. I said, you're in New York City. We're in New York
00:27:50City. There's a lot of unhoused people, a lot of homeless people. What am I supposed to get from
00:27:54a homeless person? It's not even right to ask him for anything, let alone assume that he's got something to
00:28:00give me. And I was stumped for a minute. I really was. And so I went back to my hotel. I was staying
00:28:08in a hotel that night in New York City. And I said, I'm going to consider that. Like I kind of brought
00:28:13it to prayer and meditation. As a matter of fact, I said, you know what, what is it? You know, what's
00:28:17the resolution to that? And then I thought of something and I turned it into a little end of
00:28:21one experiment. The next day in New York, inevitably, you know, I was coming out of a Walgreens or CVS or
00:28:27something. And, and, and a guy asked me for spare change. Now there's a lot of literature out there
00:28:33in the homelessness advocacy community about the appropriateness of giving money for the obvious
00:28:39reasons, but most homeless advocates say it's right to give something right. And especially when somebody
00:28:45says they're hungry, give them food. So I said, are you hungry? And he said, yeah. I said, okay,
00:28:52I'll get you a sandwich. So I did, but I was waiting because I had this experiment, right. And I came out
00:28:58and gave him a sandwich. And then I said, you know, I said, thanks. That's a shirt. And I said, you know,
00:29:03could you do me a favor? And he said, what? And I said, would you, would you please pray for me and
00:29:09my family? And that, that actually wasn't a joke. And that wasn't an act because the truth is I'm a
00:29:17traditionally religious person. My Catholic faith says that God hears the cries of the poor. Do I
00:29:22believe it or not? God, especially hears the cries of the poor. The truth of the matter is if that guy
00:29:28prays for me and my family, that's worth a heck of a lot more than a sandwich to me, I'm getting the
00:29:33better of the deal. And he's like, yeah, yeah. And he did. And it changed me and it changed him.
00:29:40And you get my point, right? Because that's the essence of his dignity. He had something that I
00:29:45needed and articulated it and he gave it to me. And that was beautiful. Now you could say, well,
00:29:50proactively you used extrinsic benefits like the sandwich, but that happened first. That's my point.
00:29:56What can you do in that particular way? How can you not be stumped? Use your imagination because
00:30:01the truth of the matter is that these ideas are much, much deeper than just what you'd see in a
00:30:06treatment and control experiment. This has some metaphysics to it as well. So give, give more.
00:30:13Don't give till it hurts. Give till it feels good and accept, accept the generosity of other people
00:30:19such that you can be in the circulatory system of love and benefit and virtue with other people,
00:30:24because that's the world that we all want to live in. All right. I hope I've given you some things to
00:30:30think about along these lines and some very practical ways to deal with this as well. Let's do some
00:30:35questions before we finish. Number one, this goes from Jack Butler who writes into office hours. He said,
00:30:43your recent episode about finding meaning in life talks about aporia, A-P-O-R-I-A. That's the ancient
00:30:51Greek philosophical method of deep learning through unanswerable questions and puzzlement.
00:30:57Where do you find good texts or questions to contemplate? Good question, Jack. Where do I get the
00:31:01questions that are really good for this aporia therapy? Do you have any resources to recommend? Now,
00:31:09Jack, if you're traditionally religious, your religion has these things. The ancient texts are full of
00:31:13these things. For example, if I read the Bible on any particular day, I try to do something that's
00:31:18called Lectio Divina, which in Latin just means, you know, divine reading. And that's to put myself in
00:31:25the place of whatever scripture it is. And to ask, what does this say to me for my life? That's a very,
00:31:31very deep form of aporia. And that happens in every religious tradition. The Dalai Lama told me that he
00:31:38spends each day in contemplation of sacred Tibetan verses for the first two hours of his day, which is
00:31:45called analytical meditation in Tibetan Buddhism. So what we would call this kind of prayer, a mental
00:31:54prayer, based on Lectio Divina, they have a different way of doing it, but every religion does it the same
00:31:59way. Okay. Now let's say that you're not religious. Okay. For those of you who aren't, Plato's dialogues,
00:32:04which is basically Plato transcribing either by memory or in real time, I don't know, the dialogues of
00:32:10Socrates. You know, Socrates didn't write anything. Plato is our source for everything that Socrates said.
00:32:16And in his dialogues, it's just full of aporia and Socrates' deep, deep questions to people
00:32:24to stimulate puzzlement in their minds. So read Plato's dialogues and you'll find this stuff and it's
00:32:28great for every culture and every tradition, religious or not. Aristotle's metaphysics actually
00:32:34lists aporiae, which is the plural of questions of aporiae. Aporiae, A-P-O-R-I-A-I. We're getting into
00:32:44Greek here. That's not my, that's not my strong suit. So read Aristotle's metaphysics. It's fantastic.
00:32:49It'll just blow your mind and expand your consciousness in all sorts of interesting ways by using this
00:32:54technique. So that's a really good thing to do, all of these ideas. And you can find these in ancient
00:33:00texts, almost any place that you look. Second question from anonymous, also written into the
00:33:05website. Do you think we need to share the same faith to have a successful marriage?
00:33:10Yeah. Yeah. And, and I'm saying, I, I suppose that the we here is you and your beloved, um, anonymous
00:33:17and anonymous and, and Mrs. Anonymous or Mr. Anonymous. Well, that depends. And that depends on a number of
00:33:23things. It depends to begin with, and, and I'll speak empirically. So based on the, on the psychology,
00:33:27the literature on this, it depends on how important religion is to you to begin with. And so what you
00:33:32find is a lot of people were raised in a faith, but don't really practice it. And they'll marry somebody
00:33:36outside the faith and they'll kind of choose to not practice any faith. That's the number one result of
00:33:41people who marry outside of their faith that they, they don't practice either. Typically they don't decide,
00:33:46or they decide not to practice. And so if you're not very religious, it, it, you know, empirically,
00:33:51that's not the case, but if you are either religious or here's the funny thing that I noticed about a lot
00:33:56of my 20 something students, they're not religious, but they're going to be, and they know it. They
00:34:01intend to be religious. You know, that would have been me. I mean, I was raised in a really religious
00:34:06home and in my twenties, I was just kind of lazy about it, but I knew, you know, I had it on this
00:34:11to do list. As a matter of fact, when I was in my twenties, I didn't have any money. My goals,
00:34:16this is so funny to think about my life goals were I was going to quit smoking cigarettes. I was
00:34:21going to quit drinking alcohol because I drank too much. I was going to finally go to the dentist
00:34:26and I was going to get my faith straight by going back to church. That was like literally on my to
00:34:31do list. Isn't that funny? I mean, it took different periods of time to do all that. You know,
00:34:35the quitting drinking was 38. The quitting smoking was 26, 25. I went to the dentist and I, you know,
00:34:41I was back in church by the, um, my early thirties, but I mean, consistently, but the whole point is that
00:34:47even if you intend to be religious, then this is something to think about, you know, the, the
00:34:53greatest hockey player perhaps who ever lived Wayne Gretzky. He, he very famously said that somebody
00:34:59asked him, it was like, how do you, how do you, how are you always there? You know, where the puck is
00:35:04so that you're ready to make a goal. He said, oh, I just, I don't skate toward the puck. I skate
00:35:09toward where the puck is going to be. Okay. Now easier said than done, but that's you and your life
00:35:14friend, uh, anonymous, uh, where are you going to be? And under those circumstances, skate to where
00:35:20the puck is actually going to be, even if you're not with the puck right now. And the puck is I'm,
00:35:25I'm really torturing the metaphor here, but you get the point that I'm actually trying to make,
00:35:28which is that it depends. Um, you have to make that. Now, some couples that are seriously religious
00:35:35of different religions thrive. So I'm not saying that this is a dangerous thing when that's not the
00:35:40case. I know a lot of couples where he's Catholic, she's Jewish or vice versa. There's a, a, a lovely
00:35:47article that was published to the place where I write my column in the free press by Rusty Reno. And
00:35:52Rusty Reno is the wonderful, I mean, the incredibly accomplished editor of a very traditional Catholic
00:35:58magazine, intellectual magazine called first things that I like to read. And his wife's Jewish and she's
00:36:03serious about it. And he talked about what it's like to live in that, in that household and how
00:36:08they come together and how they understand each other, how they expand each other's worldview.
00:36:12So the bottom line is that you can make a lot of things work. There's the whole point. And love can
00:36:18conquer all sorts of obstacles and differences. While I'm done here, I'm going to sign off. Please let
00:36:24me know your thoughts about this episode at officehours@arthurbrooks.com. Like, and subscribe,
00:36:28hit the like and subscribe button, please, please, please on Spotify, YouTube, or Apple, leave a comment. I'll
00:36:33read it. Um, we'll learn from it. We really love your feedback and appreciate it a lot. Follow me on
00:36:38all the socials, especially on Instagram, LinkedIn, all the other platforms and order.
00:36:42My new wish book used to be new. I mean, a few weeks came out a few months ago. The meaning of your
00:36:47life. If you haven't read it yet, a lot of what I'm talking about year, uh, here is expounded in greater
00:36:52detail in that book and I hope you enjoy it. And if you do enjoy it, just buy a couple hundred more
00:36:56copies for your closest friends. Thanks so much. I really appreciate it. Thank you for all the good
00:37:00that you're doing. And by the way, thank you, especially for tuning in. And if you're getting
00:37:05benefit from that, because in so doing, you've given me the opportunity to give to you. And that
00:37:10gives my life a lot of happiness and meaning. I'll see you next week.
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