00:00:00You figure out the meaning of your life by residing in the right hemisphere of
00:00:04your brain where big why questions are asked. The main problem is that we're not
00:00:08getting the meaning of our lives because we're doing trivial nonsense and sitting
00:00:13in the wrong part of our brains. Who cares? Why does it matter? Wouldn't it be better
00:00:18just to go through life as Friedrich Nietzsche further suggested that there is
00:00:22no why to life. There is no essence to all this stuff. So all you've got is existence
00:00:27so make the most of it. Is this just a dumb conceit and exercise in futility?
00:00:33The answer to that is absolutely not. There's a lot that you can simulate.
00:00:36There's a lot that you can fake. There's a lot of experiences that in the computer
00:00:41world they say passes the Turing test. You can fool your brain. But the one thing you
00:00:45can't simulate is the meaning of your life.
00:00:53Hey friends welcome to Office Hours. I'm Arthur Brooks. If you're a longtime
00:00:57listener well not that long because this is the show hasn't been around for that
00:01:02long but if you've been here for the very beginning you know the mission of this
00:01:04show. This is a behavioral science program dedicated to lifting people up and
00:01:09bringing them together in bonds of happiness and love using science and
00:01:12ideas. That's my mission in life. I want to share with you and I want you to share
00:01:16with others if you find this show useful. I've been talking over the past couple
00:01:21of weeks about my new book The Meaning of Your Life. Today when this show comes
00:01:26out on the 30th of March 2026, that's a Monday, if you're listening to it on the
00:01:31first day the book drops tomorrow Tuesday March 31st. Please go to the website
00:01:36themeaningofyourlife.com that's right here. It's displayed somewhere on the
00:01:40screen around me right now. You can figure out what's going on in the book where I'm
00:01:44speaking, how you can get a copy of the book, how you get involved in the
00:01:47community, all the different ways that you can understand better the meaning of your
00:01:50life and how you can bring it to other people. It's the book version of the show
00:01:55you might say. I hope you enjoy it. I wrote it for you. If you do like it please do
00:02:00share it with others and share the show with others as well and and give me your
00:02:04thoughts about this show. Go to the to the website and give us some feedback. Write
00:02:09to us at officehowers@arthurbrooks.com or write any place where you're watching
00:02:13or listening to this on YouTube or Spotify or Apple podcast or wherever you
00:02:17like to put comments. We look at all the comments. We read them all. Critical, happy,
00:02:21unhappy, whatever they happen to be because we want to know your feedback.
00:02:24That's how we make it better. If you like the show please do like and subscribe and
00:02:28suggest it to a friend. That's how we get this material to a lot of other people.
00:02:32Now this is the third show in a three-part series. I want to go back a
00:02:36little bit and talk about the book and what the meaning of life actually means
00:02:41and then I want to get today to the problem when you can't find the meaning
00:02:46of your life. So that's where we are today. Let me start with two weeks ago.
00:02:51The first in this three-part series in the trilogy of meaning you might say and
00:02:56that was a show that I did on boredom. Here's the motivation for that. Human
00:03:02beings are incredible at solving problems. This is a great thing. This is the
00:03:06Homo sapiens advantage as a matter of fact. This unbelievable prefrontal cortex
00:03:11that we have 30% of our brain by weight and it's only been in its extant form
00:03:16for about 250,000 years since the late Pleistocene period. That's when human
00:03:21beings became capable of solving complex problems by looking into the future,
00:03:26practicing things that hadn't happened by looking into the past and learning from
00:03:30mistakes. We could really time travel. We had this consciousness of ourselves so
00:03:35not only could I look out and observe things around me I could look inward and
00:03:39see how other people see me. These are unbelievable cognitive abilities beyond
00:03:43any computer what it could possibly do and it made it possible for us to be an
00:03:47unbelievably successful species. We're a problem-solving species and ordinarily
00:03:51that's great but not always. Sometimes we solve annoyances and create major crises.
00:04:00A case in point is boredom which I talked about two weeks ago on the show. We solved
00:04:04boredom. We basically did. With our human ingenuity we figured out a way to
00:04:09not actually be in the state of boredom which we don't like because well it's
00:04:13kind of boring isn't it? I told you about experiments that show how much we hate
00:04:16boredom. Experiments by my colleague Dan Gilbert where people get shocked or
00:04:20they're able to give themselves shocks as opposed to just sitting quietly in a room.
00:04:25Ordinarily they they prefer pain to boredom as a matter of fact and so we
00:04:29found the perfect pain device to keep us not bored which is also known as the
00:04:33device in your pocket, your phone, your access to the internet and social
00:04:39media and email and texts which you look at all day long which the average person
00:04:43looks at two hundred and five times a day so that you won't be bored. What I talked
00:04:48about two weeks ago on the show is that in eliminating boredom we eliminated a
00:04:51minor annoyance and created a huge crisis. That crisis was avoiding the meaning of
00:04:56our life. Why? Well as I told you that shuts off a series of structures in the
00:05:01brain that are on when we're bored that we also need to assess mind wandering
00:05:08abstract thinking and the concept of meaning. You need to be bored more. That
00:05:13was part one. Part two was where I dug into what is meaning? What are we looking
00:05:19for when we want the meaning of life? Are we gonna solve the problem of getting
00:05:22the meaning of life? We need to define it. That was about sort of the meaning of
00:05:26meaning and I defined meaning in terms of three principles of coherence, purpose
00:05:31and significance. Coherence is the answer to the why question, the mysterious why
00:05:36question, why do things happen the way they do? Purpose is the why question, why
00:05:41am I doing what I'm doing and and significance is the why question, why does
00:05:45my life matter? The big three whys. When you answer those questions you've come
00:05:51to an understanding of the meaning of your life. Now that requires a special use
00:05:56of your brain which I suggested a minute ago on boredom and to be more specific
00:05:59about it in this last episode which was last week I introduced you to the work of
00:06:04the great neuroscientist and philosopher at Oxford University Ian McGill Christ a
00:06:09brilliant man a scientist of the highest caliber who talks about hemispheric
00:06:13lateralization the fact that your brain has two hemispheres has two sides and
00:06:18they do different things specifically the left side of your brain is technology
00:06:21and engineering and solving problems and how to and what all the stuff you do all
00:06:26day whereas the right hemisphere is the why hemisphere the mystery and the
00:06:30meaning you figure out the meaning of your life by residing in the right
00:06:35hemisphere of your brain or big why questions are asked now you know already
00:06:39the problem which is that we're foreclosing activity in the right
00:06:43hemisphere of our brains because we're using our brains wrong in the modern
00:06:47world where we've wiped out boredom and that's how it all comes together the main
00:06:53problem is that we're not getting the meaning of our lives because we're doing
00:06:58trivial nonsense and sitting in the wrong part of our brains that was episode one
00:07:03and episode two now episode three right before the book comes out who cares why
00:07:11does it matter wouldn't it be better just to go through life as Friedrich Nietzsche
00:07:15further suggested that let's just suck it up man there is no why to life there is
00:07:20no essence to all this stuff so all you've got is existence so make the most
00:07:24of it have a good laugh and live your life stop trying to find meaning in the
00:07:29first place is this just a dumb conceit and exercise and futility the answer to
00:07:35that is absolutely not and what I want to do today is to show you why you should
00:07:40want to find the meaning of your life why I wrote this book in the first place
00:07:45what you can get if you read this book and if you share these ideas with other
00:07:50people today the importance of finding the meaning of your life now let me back
00:07:56up a little bit about how my quest for understanding the answers to these
00:08:00questions started and it really starts at the big picture level at my natural
00:08:05vocational home I'm an academic in my heart I'm an academic I was born to be an
00:08:11academic I was running around the university campus when I was a baby my
00:08:16dad was a college professor that's all he did from the age of 25 when he got his
00:08:21master's degree and started teaching at a college all the way through to through
00:08:24his PhD and and his whole life as a matter of fact he never he literally
00:08:28never had any other jobs except during the summers when I was little college
00:08:31professors didn't make very much money and so my dad during those days you know
00:08:35he drove a bus for the city to make ends meet but he was fundamentally an
00:08:39academic now why was he an academic because his dad was an academic thing a
00:08:45pattern here right I had told myself I wasn't gonna do it I tried not to do it
00:08:50but I got sucked in all the way through my 20s I was a musician as a matter of
00:08:54fact I didn't go to college until my late 20s some of you heard me tell a story I
00:08:58won't bother you with it but by the time I went to college and graduated the month
00:09:01before my 30th birthday yeah I'm gonna do that too it's the best life I'm made to
00:09:08be on campuses it and and I finished my PhD at 34 and became a full-time
00:09:13academic myself when I got my first professorship it was as good as I
00:09:16thought it was gonna be there aren't that many things that live up to the
00:09:20expectations are there the pyramids and Giza lives up to your expectations that
00:09:25the glaciers in in Alaska that lives up to it Venice that lives up to your
00:09:31expectations and academia the academic life really is great I mean not for
00:09:36everybody obviously but for me I mean the teaching the students the research the
00:09:41curiosity it's so great I've always loved it and I loved it for the very
00:09:46first time when I first took my first assistant professorship at Georgia State
00:09:50University after finishing my PhD in 1998 I was cranking out research papers I was
00:09:56teaching big classes full of students getting better at my teaching it was
00:10:00beautiful and one of the main things I liked about it was the culture among the
00:10:05students they were happy I like being around happy people and and and people in
00:10:10college and graduate school were traditionally according to the data but
00:10:14according to probably your experience too if you're anything like my age that was
00:10:18the happiest time of life that's when you made your friends that's when you were
00:10:22falling in love that's when you were hearing big new ideas that were blowing
00:10:25your mind sometimes scary controversial things and where you could have
00:10:29experiences of those ideas without being all freaked out yeah great that's what it
00:10:36always was I went from Georgia State to Syracuse University I loved it at
00:10:40Syracuse and you're thinking yeah it's probably because the weather right you
00:10:43know no it was the people it was the students it was my colleagues it was the
00:10:49happiness it was the culture well along the way I decided to make a little career
00:10:53change I've made a lot of career changes I went from French horn player to you
00:10:56know social scientists that's a big one but I made another big one in 2008 when I
00:11:01was 44 I left academia to be a CEO to be the chief executive of a great big
00:11:07nonprofit think-tank in Washington DC called the American Enterprise Institute
00:11:12that was a completely consuming job that was the hardest job I ever had by far as
00:11:18a matter of fact it was exhausting it had a high learning curve and I did it for
00:11:22almost 11 years now that was so consuming but I wasn't paying any attention to
00:11:27University life but I vowed to do it for 10 years I did it for actually exactly 10
00:11:33years and six months I lived up to how long I said I was gonna do it and I got
00:11:37out when I said I was gonna leave now I thought about what do I want to do when
00:11:41I'm done with that and I couldn't get it out of my head I had to go back to my
00:11:44home I had to get back on campus that's that's where I made to be and Esther my
00:11:49wife she's like yeah you got to go back on campus that's where your heart is so I
00:11:53did you know about six months before I left and I got a few offers I got offers
00:11:57from about ten universities to go back and to be a professor and I took the one
00:12:01that I liked the most which was at Harvard University in Cambridge Mass they offered
00:12:05the ability for me to actually teach more or less what I wanted and a lot of
00:12:08freedom to get back into my research etc and I thought yeah getting back to my
00:12:13happy place my happy place and I went back to academia in 2019 and it wasn't
00:12:19the same it wasn't the same thing that I left at the end of 2008 it had it had
00:12:25darkened it wasn't just Harvard it was academia in general what had been
00:12:30statistically happier brighter than the rest of the country had become darker as
00:12:37a matter of fact you found that students on on university campuses they were more
00:12:41likely to be suffering depression way more likely than they had in years past
00:12:45this 2008 the rates of clinical depression among college students had
00:12:49tripled through about 2019 generalized anxiety had almost doubled as a matter of
00:12:55fact this was a psychogenic epidemic which is a fancy way that that behavioral
00:13:01scientists like me talk about a source of real misery that doesn't have an
00:13:05apparent biological origin like a genetic epidemic but when I get back to academia
00:13:11in 2019 of course I see this and I'm shocked I'm sad wasn't right but of
00:13:17course I'm also interested I'm a social entrepreneur heart when I see tragedy and
00:13:23trouble I also see opportunity there's an opportunity to do good I'm as a
00:13:28behavioral scientist dedicated to well you know lifting people up and bringing
00:13:32them together and bonds of happiness and love now is the time I thought but I got
00:13:38to figure out what's wrong what's going wrong you already know because I hope
00:13:44you've listened to the last two episodes what's going wrong is that starting
00:13:48about the time I left academia in 2008 we solved boredom that's when smartphones
00:13:54started to proliferate 2007 was when the first iPhone was delivered 2008 it was on
00:13:59in almost everybody's pocket by 29 2009 2010 2011 the apps were on every phone
00:14:05dating apps for about 2012 and on and on it went life became completely online is
00:14:11what it came down to and not just online online faced people around it was sitting
00:14:15in their back pockets all the time and that got rid of boredom which changed
00:14:19our brains we were not using our brains the mysterious the right hemisphere of
00:14:26love and meaning we weren't in the right space to actually do that that's the last
00:14:30two episodes I mentioned before so who cares why does it matter and the answer
00:14:36is that's actually why we had the mental health crisis on campuses and not just on
00:14:43campuses disproportionately among people under 30 was this meaninglessness what I
00:14:50found when I came back to academia in 2019 I started looking at the data is the
00:14:54best predictor I could find of clinical depression generalized anxiety was the
00:14:59answer yes to the question does your life feel meaningless in fact I'll put the
00:15:05link to this in the note in the show notes there's data excellent data that's
00:15:09been collected for a long time by the polling firm monitoring the future that
00:15:13asks does your life feel meaningless that was an odd question without very
00:15:18interesting answers for the longest time it kind of bumped along between you know
00:15:23I don't know five and fifteen percent of the pot of the population until 2008 when
00:15:30suddenly I started taking a dog leg upward now I'm not saying that people
00:15:33felt meaningless about their lives because I left academia obviously it was
00:15:38because of the proliferation of the anti boredom devices of the devices that took
00:15:44meaning away and when meaning goes depression comes here's the reason we
00:15:50should be thinking about the meaning of life you go back to an earlier episode
00:15:52I'll make sure this is linked to it right here happiness happiness in life equals
00:15:58enjoyment plus satisfaction plus meaning if meaning becomes devoid happiness
00:16:05becomes unavailable that's why we have the misery crisis that's why we have the
00:16:11psychogenic epidemic like I've seen the data there's no problem with enjoyment
00:16:17young people arguably enjoy life more than any other cohort they're getting
00:16:21that right in a lot of ways satisfaction on my campus is super high satisfaction
00:16:26is the joy of an accomplishment with struggle that's what they're doing all
00:16:29day long at Harvard University is accomplishing things with a tremendous
00:16:33struggle because it's it's a sacrifice what they're doing with this hard
00:16:37education at this fine institution and many other walks of life and schools
00:16:41around the country the problem is that when you look at the data it is obvious
00:16:46and clear that meaning has imploded and that's what's leading to the unhappiness
00:16:52epidemic in America today that's why it matters I care about love and happiness I
00:16:58want more human flourishing so I need more meaning okay so once I find this to
00:17:06my satisfaction this is before I started this book by the way I wasn't quite there
00:17:11yet I needed to hear the stories that people would tell back in the old days
00:17:16social scientists used to do their their research in the following way Adam Smith
00:17:20who wrote the Wealth of Nations in 1776 that was this treatise based on data
00:17:26about how market economies worked it's kind of the early Bible of capitalism as
00:17:31a matter of fact but it wasn't just a bunch of statistical correlations that he
00:17:35was putting together now Adam Smith said you know when this happens this happens
00:17:39etc etc he was collecting data in his way more importantly though he was talking
00:17:45to people because that's what social scientists do they're supposed to focus
00:17:48on the social part so he would walk factory floors talk to workers he has a
00:17:53long section of the wealth of nations on the pin factory how you know you make
00:17:57little pins like sewing pins and you roll out the wire and you cut it you flatten
00:18:02one side etc he talked about how workers that were in a pin factory how they're
00:18:05actually doing their work and talking to them about how they were living their
00:18:09lives that's the richness in social science and that's important that we not
00:18:13get away from that by just doing experiments and regression analyses so
00:18:18that's what I do too once I see statistical patterns then I start
00:18:21talking to people to understand in real life what these patterns mean and when I
00:18:28did well then I really started to understand this psychogenic epidemic and
00:18:32I realized why I needed to write this book and why I need to be a warrior in
00:18:37the cause for meaning I did a whole bunch of case studies right now you're like Neo
00:18:42in the matrix you can keep scrolling experiencing a simulation of life or you
00:18:48can wake up to how your attention is being harvested for profit it's
00:18:52happening to people all over the world right now you don't want to be
00:18:56productized like this anymore but it's hard tech addiction is so potent because
00:19:01it's been designed to tap into your dopamine system just like heroin porn
00:19:05gambling you've got the cravings you're addicted you don't like it and I don't
00:19:09either but I can't just tell you to stop doing it that's hard if you want to break
00:19:13free from the system you need an incentive here's one why don't you join
00:19:18a phone company that pays you not to use your phone if you want to reduce brain
00:19:23rot get noble mobile it pays you to use less data it gives you an incentive to
00:19:28unplug noble mobile is the phone plan that finally aligns incentives with
00:19:32what's good for you use less data earn money back and when you do you'll be
00:19:37living once again in real life and you're gonna like how it feels what I want to do
00:19:42now is I just want to tell you three stories three stories of real people that
00:19:48I talked to and these are stories in their own words now rather than
00:19:52summarizing these things I'm just gonna read it this is from the introduction to
00:19:55the book okay so I'm gonna read a short section of the book if you've got the
00:19:58audiobook this should be pretty much the same but only for a couple of minutes
00:20:01don't worry I'm not going to read you the whole book but these stories are going to
00:20:05sum up why this is a very important issue as far as I'm concerned story number one
00:20:10is called the garbage disposal mark age 32 is exactly what you would conjure up
00:20:16in your mind if I asked you to imagine a textbook driver he's college-educated
00:20:22hard-working and healthy he's a bootstraps guy his parents broke up when
00:20:27he was young and they never had much money but mark avoided trouble went to
00:20:30college unlike most of the people he grew up with and landed an excellent job as a
00:20:35data analyst mark is a gym rat and in great physical shape if you're writing an
00:20:41advice column for men on how to succeed in life mark would pretty much be the
00:20:45poster child for what you would recommend but when we spoke and he told me all
00:20:50this something sounded off as he described the situation on paper a list
00:20:57of carefully managed accomplishments his voice was hollow as though he was
00:21:02describing a scenario he didn't really believe I pressed him to go deeper he
00:21:08paused and then he said this my life feels empty I asked him what he was
00:21:15missing he thought for a minute and then he told me a story a year or so ago he
00:21:20was on a first date with a woman he'd met on one of the dating apps over dinner she
00:21:25mentioned to him in passing that her garbage disposal was clogged and she
00:21:29didn't know what to do about it he volunteered to help her with it and
00:21:33ended up fixing it for her that very evening he said that this gave him a deep
00:21:38sense of satisfaction and purpose later at his own apartment he remembered that
00:21:43his own garbage disposal was clogged up as well the fix was easy but he had just
00:21:48never got around to doing anything about it a year later he still hasn't now maybe
00:21:55that sounds like a random anecdote but I understood that he was expressing
00:21:58something profound mark wasn't saying that he felt some sort of existential
00:22:02need to become a handyman what he craved was the sense of purpose and significance
00:22:07that came from being needed by someone the garbage disposal date never went
00:22:11anywhere unfortunately nor had any of his dates in years he told me the only way to
00:22:16meet women he felt was on a dating app by his own count he'd gone on 50 first dates
00:22:21but the connections always felt fake he never felt any authenticity with people
00:22:26he met that way so he'd given up on the idea that his soulmate was somewhere
00:22:30online maybe he feared his soulmate simply doesn't exist his friendships
00:22:36haven't fared much better during the lonely coronavirus lockdowns he moved to
00:22:41a new city he'd never been to hoping to meet new people he didn't at least not
00:22:45real humans in three dimensions his job went fully remote and never came back in
00:22:51person his work colleagues were and still are two-dimensional avatars on a zoom
00:22:55screen he only established a few social relationships in the new city and now
00:23:00rarely sees anyone more than once a week he feels stuck on the outside of life
00:23:05viewing the world through a double pane window to pass his overabundant free time
00:23:10mark like almost everyone these days is online a lot rolling social media
00:23:16watching videos to simulate a social life he spends hours listening to podcasts of
00:23:21other people having interesting conversations but it leaves him feeling
00:23:25empty he calls it social pornography but like all digital distraction it's hard to
00:23:32avoid without something better to do and most of the time there's nothing better
00:23:37to do he craves a big meaningful project building something writing something and
00:23:44dreams of finding that project and immersing himself in it but he can't come
00:23:47up with any ideas for what that project might be so it's back online
00:23:53occasionally he panics is this it forever well I die alone will I ever find what
00:24:00I'm looking for but then the fear subsides and he falls back into the
00:24:05zooming scrolling in isolation and the months click by story number two just
00:24:13stay busy Maria's parents are probably bragging about her to the neighbors right
00:24:18now their 27 year old daughter has always been a bright light top grades in school
00:24:23never in trouble she was always a leader and ambitious completing a bachelor's
00:24:28and master's in mechanical engineering joining the military and rising fast as
00:24:32an officer in the cyber and information sciences she holds multiple associations
00:24:37and prestigious academic societies and think tanks on the personal side however
00:24:42things aren't going well for Maria her extraordinary energy the envy of others
00:24:47isn't just her way to succeed but also to distract herself the hustle diverts her
00:24:53attention from an intense sense of emptiness that grows every year she
00:24:58appears hyper focused a woman on a mission but she confesses privately that
00:25:03her life has no coherence she has no idea where she's going nor what she even
00:25:08wants she hopes that through her work a sense of purpose will emerge but it never
00:25:14does she feels no passion for it no calling no sense of vocation when we
00:25:21speak I asked her what big change she would like to see in her life in a year's
00:25:25time she pauses for a long time and fails to come up with a definite answer big
00:25:31questions like this make her feel afraid she says so she avoids them by staying
00:25:36busy what if I never find the answers she asks me or if there are no answers
00:25:43what about her relationships Maria has a boyfriend but she doesn't know where
00:25:48that relationship is going it's just okay for now she's an extrovert and has
00:25:54friends but she says they're more deal friends than real friends she rarely goes
00:25:59deep with anyone in her circle she's not very close to her parents or siblings
00:26:03although she in theory is a religious believer she doesn't practice her faith
00:26:07at all I asked why not she doesn't know when she's too tired to work Maria tells
00:26:14me that she would like to read books or do something productive and creative but
00:26:18somehow doesn't know how to get started instead she finds herself simply on her
00:26:23phone scrolling social media and watching YouTube sometimes for hours at a time
00:26:29this fills her with guilt for wasting time but it keeps her mind off something
00:26:34she knows she's missing but can't quite name and finally furry number three a
00:26:39long hike to somewhere mark and Maria are among the typical high-performing adults
00:26:47I've met in my teaching and travels over the past seven years their lives look
00:26:51enviable from the outside but they feel empty on the inside they're waiting for
00:26:56their purpose to find them but it never does as they wait they distract
00:27:02themselves with work and soothe themselves with tech I feel a paternal
00:27:07concern for mark and Maria after all I'm old enough to be their father Paul
00:27:11however is closer to appear he could be a younger sibling to me in fact and
00:27:16because of that his story leaves me more shaken than the others at 47 Paul would
00:27:22appear to have everything figured out he's smart and friendly he's married
00:27:27with three kids and has a successful career as a social scientist at a top
00:27:31university before I met him I knew about him I admired his work but scratched the
00:27:37surface and a darker narrative emerges Paul's parents divorced when he was very
00:27:42young and he grew up in poverty without much adult attention a clever kid he
00:27:47quickly figured out that adults gave him the approval he craved when he excelled
00:27:50in school love he figured out is earned through achievements so all of a sense of
00:27:57purpose came from getting good grades good test scores the next gold star in
00:28:02his words and to maintain that sense of purpose he essentially never left school
00:28:06winding up as a professor ten years ago Paul was ambitious and full of passion
00:28:11for ideas writing a series of books in his academic field they weren't
00:28:15bestsellers they were too specialized and academically rigorous but he was proud
00:28:19of them and he told himself the right people were reading them the
00:28:23recognition he got for these books was his grown-up gold stars but their luster
00:28:27faded over the decade as his career progress slowed each new book began to
00:28:32feel like the one before and they all began to seem pointless in his words and
00:28:37wrote today he feels like his research has little impact that it makes no
00:28:42difference to the world and and wins little recognition from other scholars
00:28:45he is way behind schedule on a major writing project but doesn't have the
00:28:50motivation to work on it his sense of purpose and direction or fading away it's
00:28:55not as if Paul has no time to work the problem is how he spends the time he has
00:29:00it says if something is eating his brain so that he can't focus an hour that he
00:29:06would have once used to read a research paper he now uses to anesthetize himself
00:29:10looking at social media to block the growing ennui this distracts him from
00:29:16his melancholy but like Maria he feels enormous remorse for wasting his time
00:29:21with the eloquence of Franz Kafka he's a thinker and writer after all Paul sums
00:29:26up his absurd feeling predicament life is like a factory churning out days of my
00:29:33existence in differently prepackaged for my mandatory consumption so what do you
00:29:38want I asked him he pauses struggling to find the words I want to go hiking he
00:29:46says at last for a long time I asked him where he wants to go hiking Paul's
00:29:52answer might be literal or it might be metaphorical I can't tell to where I
00:29:56might find what I'm looking for so what's happening here are these stories what's
00:30:01happening to these people I think you know what's missing in their lives they
00:30:07identified it in all the words that they said there are many many stories like
00:30:11this in the book and one of the things that they all have in common is they
00:30:15talk about not knowing what they're meant to do that life feels meaningless or they
00:30:21can't find the meaning that there's an emptiness a hollowness to everything
00:30:25they're doing some of them talk about the fact that they're they feel like they
00:30:29should be doing something but that what they do feels fake that all their time
00:30:33online behind the screen it all feels like a simulation of real life well
00:30:40that's what it feels like when you're using your brain wrong when you're in
00:30:44the wrong hemisphere as I talked about in last week's episode there's a lot that
00:30:49you can simulate there's a lot that you can fake there's a lot of experiences
00:30:53that well in the computer world they say passes the Turing test you can fool your
00:30:58brain but the one thing you can't simulate is the meaning of your life that's
00:31:03an in real life thing that's why this matters is this you can you relate to
00:31:09these stories can you relate to the sense of emptiness funny you know people in
00:31:16times before we over technologized and over complicated our lives their lives
00:31:22were actually pretty boring for a moment a moment I mentioned the other day you
00:31:27know your great-grandfather of mine Leroy Brooks born in 1862 we never came
00:31:33home to his wife and said I had to leave early today honey because I had a panic
00:31:37attack behind the mule today Oh his brain was working the way it was supposed to
00:31:42and by the way he was bored a lot but here's the irony his life wasn't boring
00:31:47at the end of the day at the meta level there was nothing fake about his life at
00:31:52all the yours you're probably never bored moment to moment but I bet you when you
00:31:57check your phone 205 times a day once every 13 minutes or more that you feel
00:32:02pretty bored at the end of the day that you feel like what you accomplished
00:32:07wasn't real see when our brain works the way it's supposed to we have moments of
00:32:13boredom and suffering and discomfort but it comes together to something really
00:32:16meaningful when we get rid of all of those experiences because of what we've
00:32:21done to solve our little problems those little problems do go away and they turn
00:32:25into a great big problem but ironically is much worse than anything we
00:32:30experienced before this book is a guidebook on how to solve that now
00:32:36fundamentally I've been talking about the problems in the last three episodes but
00:32:39this book two-thirds of it is a six-part strategic plan for you in six months to
00:32:46find the meaning of your life this is all based on science it's all based on the
00:32:50cutting edge ways which aren't cutting edge at all they're living alive in real
00:32:55life to get to the right hemisphere of your brain where mystery and meaning can
00:32:59be found the the problems they can't be solved analytically that can only be
00:33:03lived and understood in a spirit of love but you have to know how to do it and you
00:33:08have to make a commitment to doing that and that's what this really all about
00:33:11here are the six parts and I'll get into it more deeply in future episodes you
00:33:16want to get the details read the book tomorrow and you'll see these are the
00:33:23six protocols for finding meaning the six ways to get to the right hemisphere of
00:33:28your brain number one number one is to ask big unanswerable questions one of the
00:33:38things that all philosophical traditions have in common almost every religious
00:33:41tradition has in common because philosophy and religion are right
00:33:45hemisphere disciplines what they have in common is big questions you can't quite
00:33:50answer I've mentioned in the podcast before Cohen's which are the riddles
00:33:55that they use in in in Japanese and Buddhism to teach novice monks what's the
00:34:00sound of one hand clapping that kind of thing when you contemplate questions that
00:34:05don't have answers it opens up your brain now that was standard fare for dorm room
00:34:10conversations late at night when people who are my age were in college but of
00:34:15course what do you do when you come home from a party at 1130 p.m. in college
00:34:19today you probably scroll your phone which of course has eliminated the
00:34:24conversations that we need to have number one is ask deeper questions the most
00:34:28human thing by the way you know the one thing that no non human animal has never
00:34:33done is ask questions that's the essence what it means to be fully human not to
00:34:39answer questions like an AI but to ask the big questions that an AI could never
00:34:43come up with number two is fall in love is to risk your heart that is the most
00:34:50dangerous feeling uncertain complex experiences is romantic love I've done a
00:34:56whole episode on that a very popular episode about the neurochemical cascade
00:35:01that happens inside your brain the fourth of July inside your cranium when you're
00:35:05falling in love the things you can't explain and in fact the ancient
00:35:10philosophers often talked about the fact that the meaning of life generally starts
00:35:14from the experience of romantic love that's Plato's ladder of love from Diotima
00:35:18of Montaigne I've talked about that on the episode on romantic love as well you
00:35:23start with romantic love and you climb the ladder and you ultimately find the
00:35:28meaning of life give your heart away as part two part three is to seek
00:35:33transcendence now transcendence means to get above
00:35:36yourself the great irony of life is that we're we're impelled to be intensely
00:35:41autofocused me me me me me me me you'll never find the meaning of your life by
00:35:46looking at yourself you'll only find the meaning of your life by zooming out on
00:35:50yourself and standing in awe of something greater the two parts of transcendence
00:35:54are looking up to the divine and looking out to love and serve others that's part
00:35:59three part four is finding your calling you're calling in life what are you
00:36:05supposed to do now whether that's market work or non market work there is
00:36:08something generative where you create value in the world value in your life and
00:36:13with your life and value in the lives of other people that's your calling what is
00:36:17it calling what do they all have in common I don't care if you work for the
00:36:20post office or teach University or trying to become the president United States the
00:36:24only way it will bring joy meaning is if you believe you're earning your success
00:36:29and you're serving other people talk a lot about that and great details about
00:36:34how to do that in the book the next part part five is to seek beauty beauty is a
00:36:40right brain experience and beauty is exactly what's missing when everything is
00:36:45a simulation you can't simulate true beauty I defy you to look into the
00:36:48highest quality computer screen and find something that is as beautiful as the
00:36:54actual forest of which the picture has been taken and transmitted to your
00:36:58screen can't do it I defy you to take a digital representation of any music and
00:37:05have it be as beautiful as what you would hear in person the experience of a
00:37:08painting that you're seeing artistic beauty natural beauty moral beauty I
00:37:13defy you to find the examples of moral beauty you can find in real life with
00:37:17true people to go on social media you won't find on the contrary you find the
00:37:22opposite of moral beauty you need more beauty in your life to make your brain
00:37:26work properly and last but not least and this is a this is a future episode I'm
00:37:30gonna have to do a whole episode of that and that that's the hard one which is
00:37:34suffering never waste your suffering the truth of the matter is that growth that
00:37:40learning that understanding who you are as a person and finding you the meaning
00:37:44of your life requires a non-trivial amount of suffering in your life and and
00:37:49and learning from it as opposed to resisting it there's a lot of research
00:37:52that shows that unhappiness is largely a right hemispheric experience not
00:37:57coincidentally the same hemisphere that you employ to find the meaning of your
00:38:01life I will talk about how the greatest minds the philosophers and the
00:38:06theologians have talked about suffering as a pathway to meaning and make it that
00:38:11way in your life as well but just remember this the key to understanding
00:38:16suffering in life is not to eradicate yourself a pain but rather to learn how
00:38:20to manage your resistance to that pain then more meaning can be yours through
00:38:24the inevitable suffering that is part of any good life you'll get more of that
00:38:28obviously I mean I just gave you a quick synopsis that was a thumbnail sketch two
00:38:32thirds of the book are those six areas and I give you real protocols and real
00:38:36ideas real habits that you can adopt I'm a practical man after all the idea of
00:38:43doing this kind of social science is to give you information that you can
00:38:46actually use and you will find in the book and I hope you use it I hope you
00:38:49pass it on I hope you find meaning people see it in you and they want to
00:38:52find the meaning of their life as well because if we do that well the world
00:38:56really starts to change thank you for supporting this project thank you for
00:39:00sharing the ideas with others if you like this podcast please let me know your
00:39:05thoughts actually critically or uncritically praise or criticism I like
00:39:09it all send it to us at office hours at Arthur Brooks calm please like and
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00:39:17read it even if it's negative especially this negative thank you for taking time
00:39:21to feedback if you've got any suggestions for new topics or what we can do on the
00:39:25show or you have any questions about any of the sources or you think there's
00:39:29someone I need to correct just let me know follow me on on social media we have
00:39:34a big and growing group on social media that that are following these ideas on
00:39:39Instagram LinkedIn and other platforms and and order the meaning of your life
00:39:42finding purpose in the age of emptiness right back there get it for somebody that
00:39:47you love and I hope you enjoy the book go to the website the meaning of your life
00:39:51calm to get started and as always thanks for watching