How to Make Your Personality Work FOR You (and Not AGAINST You) In Life
DDr. Arthur Brooks
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Transcript
00:00:00I want to talk today about personality and how personality affects happiness.
00:00:04Specifically, I want to talk about one aspect of personality, extroversion.
00:00:08How extroversion versus introversion affects happiness.
00:00:11Extroverts are not a lot happier.
00:00:13Extroverts are a little happier on average.
00:00:16Not only do they have sort of more intense periods of well-being,
00:00:20but their general well-being is punctuated by frequent moments of joy.
00:00:25And so I want to talk about why that is.
00:00:27How can introverts, as introverts, be happier people?
00:00:31And then, what can extroverts learn from introverts?
00:00:34Because it turns out that there are some very important things that they can learn
00:00:38that can lead to a lot greater happiness for everybody.
00:00:48Hey friends, welcome to Office Hours.
00:00:50I'm Arthur Brooks.
00:00:51This is a show about love and happiness.
00:00:53How you can live a better life using science and ideas.
00:00:56And that's my mission in life.
00:00:57Thank you for joining me in that mission, for learning these ideas, to give yourself a better life,
00:01:02but also to teach these ideas to other people.
00:01:05We are a movement of happiness teachers, based not just on woo-woo,
00:01:10really based on the best science that's available,
00:01:12the best that's been written and thought by academics and sensible people all over the world,
00:01:17which I know includes you.
00:01:19I'm grateful to you for joining me on this journey.
00:01:22Before we get started, I would like to ask you for one favor.
00:01:24Please subscribe to this YouTube channel and to this show,
00:01:28such that you can have these episodes delivered to you directly.
00:01:32Most of the people who actually see this show aren't subscribed, strangely.
00:01:36And so that's an efficient way to do it.
00:01:37It also helps us in the algorithm so that we can reach more people.
00:01:41The algorithm will say, who's like the person who just subscribed?
00:01:44And it will show up in their algorithm so that they can benefit from this information as well.
00:01:49So thank you very much for that.
00:01:50One more thing.
00:01:51If you have anything to tell us to improve the show, to suggest topics,
00:01:54we're more than a year in at this point.
00:01:56And we need ideas.
00:01:58We want ideas.
00:01:59We want to know what's most on your mind.
00:02:00Please let us know.
00:02:02You can write to the show itself, officehours at arthurbrooks.com.
00:02:06That's the email address.
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00:02:17Once again, it helps the algorithm.
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00:02:22We want to have a process of continuous improvement for your happiness and for the show's success.
00:02:28If you want more information like this, subscribe to the newsletter.
00:02:31The newsletter that accompanies the show, it's not always on the same topic.
00:02:35It's 300 to 500 words a week, comes every Friday morning, and it's completely free.
00:02:39Go to my website at arthurbrooks.com slash newsletter.
00:02:43And last but not least, if you're interested in meeting other people in person, retreats on these particular subjects.
00:02:50We have a series of retreats based on all of this material, some of which I'm involved with and some of which I'm not in person.
00:02:55But you can find out more about that in a very, very beautiful place in Santa Fe, New Mexico of all sites.
00:03:02What better place to think about love and happiness?
00:03:05Go to retreats.arthurbrooks.com.
00:03:07Right now, you're like Neo in the Matrix.
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00:04:07What are we talking about today?
00:04:09I want to talk today about personality and how personality affects happiness.
00:04:13Specifically, I want to talk about one aspect of personality, extroversion.
00:04:18How extroversion versus introversion affects happiness.
00:04:21Whether or not there are things that extroverts and introverts can learn from each other.
00:04:25And my answer to cut to the chase is, yeah, they absolutely can.
00:04:28I'm going to talk to you about what gives the greatest tendency toward happiness, but why
00:04:32that's not a set thing.
00:04:34On the contrary, when we learn from each other, for the great gifts that extroverts and introverts
00:04:39uniquely bring, when we can adopt, no matter who you are, adopt the other styles approach
00:04:44to life, your life can get a lot better.
00:04:47And it gives me an opportunity to talk about this fascinating field of personality science.
00:04:52There are many personality psychologists out there, and I want to give you a little glimpse
00:04:55into their work, because it's something that I like to talk about an awful lot.
00:04:58I think you'll find it interesting.
00:04:59And if you find it interesting enough, I'll know because of what you leave in the comments.
00:05:03And I will do whole shows about each aspect of personality going forward.
00:05:07It's really up to you.
00:05:08Now, some time ago, um, a friend of mine who also does a lot of work on, on, on, on mass
00:05:15education around social science.
00:05:16He's not an academic like me.
00:05:18He's actually a journalist.
00:05:19He's a columnist for many years, but he's very interested in how social science and
00:05:22behavioral science can be used in the public interest.
00:05:25And he sent me a link to a survey based on academic research that rates personality traits
00:05:32on a numeric scale.
00:05:33They might think that seems so subjective.
00:05:35How can you rank personality traits?
00:05:37Well, it turns out people have been doing that for a very long time.
00:05:40More on that in a second.
00:05:41What he was most keen to know was my extraversion score, where extraversion is one element of
00:05:48somebody's personality.
00:05:50He wanted to see if the test was accurate and, and because he had just taken it, he had
00:05:55scored at the 15th percentile for extraversion.
00:05:58That meant he's an introvert, obviously.
00:06:00So extraversion zero to a hundred 15th percentile means that you're at the lower end.
00:06:05And that means you're more introverted than extroverted because they're opposite constructs
00:06:08in this particular scale.
00:06:10He wanted to know if that was accurate by having me take it as well as the most extroverted
00:06:15person that he knew.
00:06:16Like, I, it's kind of a dubious distinction.
00:06:19It's not a flex, my friends, even if it is a fact.
00:06:22If you want to know about how to look at the markers, the, and the, and the, the, the percentages
00:06:28and the, the metrics on this, I'm going to, I'll, I'll throw something into the show notes.
00:06:32Uh, this is an article from psychological assessment from, um, from Lewis Goldberg from 1992.
00:06:38This is a classic article called the development of markers for the big five factor structure.
00:06:43In other words, it's how can you numerically measure, um, personality if you're interested
00:06:47in that.
00:06:47So I took the test and sure enough, I scored the 96th percentile, which means that some
00:06:53freakish 4% of the, of the population is actually more extroverted than me.
00:06:58Um, but that kind of makes sense.
00:06:59I, I know I'm a very extroverted guy, um, when I was a kid, for example, you know, we
00:07:03had both extroverts and introverts in my family.
00:07:06We're a family of four, me and my brother, my parents, and my dad and my brother were less
00:07:10extroverted.
00:07:11My mother and I were more extroverted.
00:07:13And, and I remember when my brother and I were sitting in the backseat of the car and
00:07:16my brother was talking to my dad, my dad would say, I can't hear you.
00:07:19And when I was talking, he said, keep your voice down.
00:07:21Um, and that's a classic kind of way that little kids will express their extroversion or introversion
00:07:27with respect to the timbre and tone and volume of their voices.
00:07:31Anyway.
00:07:31So I get back that 96th percentile and I sent it to my friend in the 15th percentile and
00:07:35says, yep, that's, that's, I know it's accurate now, but then he said something else.
00:07:39It really struck me.
00:07:40He said, lucky you.
00:07:41I said, why?
00:07:42Why lucky me?
00:07:44And he said, because extroverts are a lot happier than introverts.
00:07:48Well, he was kind of right.
00:07:49It turns out extroverts are not a lot happier.
00:07:52Extroverts are a little happier on average.
00:07:55Decades of research have shown that extroverts have a significant, by that, I mean, statistically
00:08:01significant, not a large happiness edge, but one that does show up in the data consistently.
00:08:07Um, over introverts, not only do they have sort of more intense periods of, of, uh, wellbeing,
00:08:12but their general wellbeing is punctuated by frequent moments of joy.
00:08:18And so I want to talk about why that is, but I also want to talk about the cases in which
00:08:22introverts can be happier than extroverts and what both can learn from each other.
00:08:27It's not a huge difference.
00:08:29And so if you're watching this and you're an introvert, I'm not dumping on introverts.
00:08:32On the contrary, I'm going to talk about ways that they have very, very special gifts,
00:08:36which when developed properly can give them a happiness edge and ways in which in my own
00:08:42family, I've learned from introverts that has given me a lot more happiness than I otherwise
00:08:48always would have had.
00:08:49And I want to talk about what to know about personality science in general.
00:08:53What can you actually use?
00:08:54Now, here's the point.
00:08:56Um, people often think my personality is my personality.
00:08:59It is what it is.
00:09:00Yeah.
00:09:01You have a genetic baseline for sure.
00:09:03I mean, almost all of the identical twin studies where identical twins through a series
00:09:08of weird circumstances, these were not evil experiments.
00:09:11They just kind of happened naturally, were separated at birth and adopted into separate families
00:09:16and then reunited as adults and given personality tests.
00:09:19Because if you get a bunch of 40 year olds who didn't know they had identical twins altogether,
00:09:24you're going to have nerds like me with white lab coats and clipboards following them around,
00:09:28asking them questions.
00:09:29Trust me.
00:09:30This is a near ideal set of quasi-experimental circumstances to get a whole bunch of data.
00:09:35And so sure enough, I mean, I've never actually directly participated in these things because
00:09:39these things were done a long time ago.
00:09:40But what they found was that between 40 and 80% of the variance in people's personalities
00:09:46is explained by genetics.
00:09:48So that's a lot, right?
00:09:50That really, that is significant.
00:09:52And that includes extroversion.
00:09:54So I want to talk about that a little bit, but I also want to make the case,
00:09:57and the reason I'm doing this episode is because you can change your personality,
00:10:01or at least you can intervene in your personality with your behavior.
00:10:05If it's 40 to 80%, that's, you know, that's the variance is explained by genetics.
00:10:11That means there's, there's 20 to, you know, 20 to 60% that's not.
00:10:15And that means you've got significant control over the expression of your genes,
00:10:20the expression of your personality, even if it does have this big genetic component.
00:10:24So how do you do that?
00:10:25That's what I really want to talk about.
00:10:27And how can you do it in such a way that you actually get happier?
00:10:29Okay, let's back up a little bit and talk about this fascinating field of personality per se.
00:10:35We always use the word, you know, my personality, your personality.
00:10:38I don't like her personality.
00:10:40I think he's got a beautiful personality, whatever it happens to be.
00:10:42What do we mean by that?
00:10:44And that gets us back to the work, believe it or not, of Carl Jung.
00:10:48Almost everybody who's watching this knows the work of Carl Jung.
00:10:50You wouldn't be a follower of Office Hours if you didn't know some of the, you know,
00:10:54some of the, the, the goats in, in our field.
00:10:57And Carl Jung, the Swiss psychiatrist, student colleague of Sigmund Freud,
00:11:01who later broke with Freud because he thought that Freud's, many of his theories were, were,
00:11:06were unfounded, or at least they didn't go far enough in directions that he wanted to go.
00:11:11Carl Jung was one of the first people to study the whole concept of the unique personality
00:11:16that people have.
00:11:18And this is the early part of the 20th century.
00:11:19So it's not that old.
00:11:20It's only a little over a hundred years ago that people really started talking about the
00:11:24personality of human beings like we do.
00:11:28And by the way, we even use that, the concept of personality when we talk about our dogs or
00:11:31horses, or, you know, my cat has a funny personality.
00:11:35That's a very anthropomorphic idea.
00:11:37And yet it's real.
00:11:39You can tell the difference between two dogs' personalities.
00:11:42And there are people who do sort of animal psychology who try to measure that.
00:11:46Not nearly as much as people.
00:11:48We're going to talk about people here, not about dogs.
00:11:50I love dogs.
00:11:50They're the best people, but you get my point.
00:11:52But Jung, the way he waded into this concept was really that first aspect of personality,
00:12:00which is extroversion versus introversion.
00:12:02He was the one who first really talked about introverts and extroverts as this binary kind
00:12:06of switch that people have.
00:12:09He's the author of that very concept and those words, they were first popularized by him in
00:12:161921, as a matter of fact.
00:12:19And, you know, he talked about it in a way that, you know, introverts, they seek to establish
00:12:23autonomy and independence.
00:12:26Extroverts, they're not so keen on those things.
00:12:29They're not trying to establish autonomy and independence.
00:12:32What they're trying to do is to establish community and reach out all the time.
00:12:36And their sources of happiness are fundamentally different.
00:12:39Extroverts seek to seek union with others.
00:12:42And there's a whole lot written about that.
00:12:45But let me expand the concept of personality a little bit to how it developed over the next
00:12:51few decades.
00:12:52Personality, as we came to understand it a little bit later, largely through the work of the
00:12:58German psychologist Hans Isink, expanded from introversion and extroversion to a five-factor
00:13:05model.
00:13:06We, as human beings, and I've talked about it very briefly on the show before, so you might
00:13:10remember me referring to these ideas in the past, that the human personality has five elements
00:13:16to it that we can measure.
00:13:17And there's a whole series of statistical methods to actually do this.
00:13:21This wasn't just made up by some self-improvement author.
00:13:24This is largely a method that comes from something called factor analysis or principle components
00:13:30analysis, a statistical technique in which you take up a huge battery of questions and you
00:13:35let the data decide what the individual elements that are popping out of the answers to the questions
00:13:41actually are.
00:13:42You can Google it if you want, factor analysis, and you can learn more or less how it works.
00:13:47But it's a very robust technique for figuring out what the elements of something actually
00:13:51are, statistically.
00:13:52What they found is that the human personality has five dimensions to it.
00:13:56Now, this can be easily remembered using the acronym OCEAN, O-C-E-A-N, because each one
00:14:02of the elements starts with one of those letters.
00:14:04Obviously, that's how acronyms work.
00:14:06The O is openness to experience.
00:14:08This is a very distinct personality characteristic.
00:14:10Some people, it's like, don't give me anything new.
00:14:13They want to go to the beach every year on vacation.
00:14:16They want to watch the same shows on television.
00:14:18When they go to their favorite restaurant, they always order the same dish.
00:14:21You know, they like to go to bed at the same time every night.
00:14:24They like to see their friends.
00:14:26They're not super open to these new kinds of experiences.
00:14:29These are the people you go to them and you say, what do you say?
00:14:30Let's try skydiving.
00:14:31They're like, what are you crazy?
00:14:33Why would I even want to do that?
00:14:35Like, I've got my routines.
00:14:36I've got the things that I actually like.
00:14:37Other people are just, they're junkies for new experiences.
00:14:43They love the newness.
00:14:44They have what many psychologists would call neophilia, the love of new things.
00:14:50They like, you know, new kinds of art and feeling new ways.
00:14:54Now, neophilics, they, it's great, right?
00:14:58I mean, it's great.
00:14:58It's the spice of life, but also it has a downside.
00:15:00Neophilics, they tend to experiment with drugs and alcohol.
00:15:03They tend to have more sexual partners.
00:15:05You get the point.
00:15:06And which can lead to all sorts of trouble in their lives.
00:15:09So, you know, everything has got a good side to bad side is what it comes down to.
00:15:13But that's number one is openness to experience as a personality dimension.
00:15:17That's the O.
00:15:18C is conscientiousness.
00:15:20Conscientious people live up to their word.
00:15:23If they, their word is their bond, as they say these days.
00:15:27And, and conscientious people, while they tend to be older, one of the things about personality
00:15:32that's most interesting is how it changes and people get more conscientious as they age.
00:15:37One of the reasons for this is that they realize that being not conscientious, being unreliable,
00:15:43for example, that that actually is bad for them.
00:15:46People don't like hanging out with non-conscientious people, people who don't show up when they say
00:15:50they're going to show up, people who don't do what they say they're going to do.
00:15:52And so they actually become more conscientious as a matter of living a better life, but also
00:15:56because they want to be better people.
00:15:57Now, some people are just naturally more conscientious than others.
00:16:00It's about 50% explained genetically.
00:16:03And, and, and you know, people like that, even little kids who are just always can count
00:16:07on them.
00:16:08They're just conscientious people.
00:16:10Three, or the third one, the E is extroversion.
00:16:14That's the one that we've been talking about.
00:16:16And, and I, introversion doesn't get its own letter because it's the opposite of extroversion
00:16:19in this particular construct and the way that we're talking about it.
00:16:22Extroversion is this idea of wanting to be in union with others, being highly social.
00:16:27Extroversion has, has two sub-elements to it.
00:16:31Two sub-particles, you could say.
00:16:33They're gregariousness and assertiveness.
00:16:36To be extroverted means you're gregarious.
00:16:38You're super outgoing.
00:16:39You want to be with people, but you're also say what you think.
00:16:42That's the difference between gregariousness and assertiveness.
00:16:45And here's the interesting thing.
00:16:46As people get older, one of them actually declines and the other increases.
00:16:52So gregariousness tends to fall as people get into their fifties and sixties and especially
00:16:56seventies and eighties.
00:16:57They become less likely to want to go to that party and stay out late.
00:17:01You know, they're more likely to say, what time is it over?
00:17:05I don't think I'm going, but they tend to become more assertive.
00:17:08You know, I'll tell you, I'm 62 years old.
00:17:10And when I was 32, I, you know, they gave me French fries instead of mashed potatoes, um,
00:17:15accidentally in the restaurant.
00:17:17I'd be like, okay.
00:17:18And now I'm like, life is short.
00:17:20I asked for mashed potatoes.
00:17:21I'm not going to be a jerk about it because I'm trying to, you know, get the next element
00:17:25of personality I'll tell you about as I get older, but it's, I am more assertive than
00:17:30I certainly was in the past.
00:17:31So gregariousness as an aspect of extroversion tends to go down as you get older and assertiveness
00:17:38tends to go up.
00:17:39That's E.
00:17:41A is agreeableness.
00:17:42That's the one that I really want to, I want to have higher.
00:17:45That's one of the reasons that when I send my, my French fries back, I'm not being a jerk
00:17:50about it because I want to be agreeable in no small part because I've learned through bitter
00:17:54experience in my life that when I'm disagreeable, I don't get what I want, right?
00:17:58I try to be more agreeable with my family.
00:17:59I try to be more agreeable with my friends and certainly more agreeable with service personnel
00:18:03in my life.
00:18:05Also, I want to be a good person because I, through conscientiousness, I want to be more agreeable,
00:18:09but I've also figured out that that's an effective strategy for leading a better life.
00:18:14Agreeableness does tend to rise as you age and agreeableness is just what it sounds like.
00:18:18It's somebody, you don't agree on everything, but you're, you're not disagreeable when you
00:18:22disagree is what it comes down to.
00:18:24A lot in there, but you get my point.
00:18:26That's A.
00:18:27Last but not least is N.
00:18:28And N is a tricky one because that's neuroticism.
00:18:31That's a very Freudian term to be neurotic.
00:18:34Largely what it means today is to suffer from mood disorders, either subclinically or clinically.
00:18:39The mood disorders we'd largely talk about are generalized anxiety and, and, and, and depression.
00:18:46You know, sort of melancholy is what Sigmund Freud would have talked about it, how he would
00:18:51have talked about it.
00:18:52And, and of course, these are big, these are a big deal today.
00:18:54Since 2008 or so, clinical depression, particularly among people under 35 has tripled.
00:18:59Generalized anxiety has doubled.
00:19:01I mean, these are the scourge of our times.
00:19:03And if you've been listening to my show, you know exactly how I talk about this.
00:19:06The truth is that we use our brains wrong largely with the interface of technology into our lives.
00:19:11I'm very, very glad that you're watching or you're listening to this podcast right now,
00:19:14but you need plenty of time in your life when you're not watching this or listening to podcasts
00:19:18and certainly not letting the algorithms just feed you stuff all the time, especially shorts.
00:19:23What that does is it makes you, your brain work in such a way that you, you don't even assess
00:19:28or think about questions of meaning in your life.
00:19:31And that tends to make you more depressed, anxious, and lonely.
00:19:34So neuroticism, which has always existed, there have always been people who are anxious and
00:19:39depressed is something that, that is dramatically deleterious for human happiness and wellbeing,
00:19:44life satisfaction, obviously, but they're increasing.
00:19:47People are becoming more neurotic.
00:19:49And there's a ton of interesting studies on this that show that people under 35 have become
00:19:54significantly higher on the neuroticism, on the end dimension of the big five factor
00:20:00personality traits than they've been in the past.
00:20:03This especially exploded, not just after 2008, but during COVID, which compounded all the problems
00:20:08through loneliness and isolation.
00:20:10For everybody, by the way, for people my age, but also if you're in your twenties, for people
00:20:14your age, the problem is that for people in their twenties, it didn't snap back.
00:20:18Whereas for people my age, it did.
00:20:20Autism came back to its baseline largely, and it didn't for people who are younger.
00:20:24So this is a significant area of concern and something that I'm, I'm looking at a lot as
00:20:27are a lot of behavioral scientists, because we want to make this better.
00:20:31Okay.
00:20:31So those are the personality dimensions.
00:20:33I'll put a, um, I'll put some, uh, a link to the Jung 1921 research in there in case you're
00:20:40looking at it.
00:20:40And once again, the, the article that I referred to before by Lewis Goldberg, the classic 1992
00:20:45article on the personality dimensions, that's already in the show notes.
00:20:48So you can read more about that.
00:20:50Now the, the, the person who really popularized these in the 1960s was that German psychologist,
00:20:55Hans Eysenck that I talked about before.
00:20:57And Hans Eysenck was, um, as he developed this five factor model, he strongly believed
00:21:03that, that there was kind of a neuroscientific dimension.
00:21:06There's a neurobiological reason for all of this stuff at which kind of makes sense, given
00:21:11the fact that we found that, you know, that these aspects are explained at about, you know,
00:21:16the 40 to 80% level by genetics.
00:21:18The difference between people is explained a lot by genetics.
00:21:20So you'd think that there'd be a structural explanation that we'd be able to find in the
00:21:23brain.
00:21:24Eysenck believed very strongly that, that, for example, in the case of extroversion, which
00:21:29we're focusing on here, it came from cortical arousal.
00:21:32That is the brain's level of alertness as some people just genetically have, you know, a higher
00:21:37level of alertness.
00:21:39And furthermore, he found that it was harder for some people to maintain cortical arousal
00:21:44sufficient to be successful than others, that some people, they were just not naturally that
00:21:50alert.
00:21:51And here's the interesting part.
00:21:52He believed that extroverts tended to be low in cortical arousal.
00:21:56They tended to be less alert.
00:21:57That's the opposite of what I presume you thought I was going to say, but it's going to make
00:22:02sense in a second.
00:22:03He thought that maintaining a level of sufficient, sufficiently high level of alertness to function
00:22:10properly was more difficult for extroverts than introverts.
00:22:13So extroverts have to seek the stimulation from others.
00:22:17That introverts have an endogenous alertness.
00:22:20So they don't need to be talking to other people all the time and interacting with people so much.
00:22:26Whereas extroverts are not as alert as much.
00:22:28That cortical arousal is actually inhibiting their performances.
00:22:31So they actually need to get more alertness.
00:22:33And the way that they do that is by interacting more with others.
00:22:36That was Eysenck's observation based on data.
00:22:39And it has some empirical backing, as a matter of fact.
00:22:43Furthermore, he believed that extroverts tend to be more reward focused, especially when
00:22:48it comes to social stimulation.
00:22:50Whereas introverts tend to rely more on internal processing and reflection.
00:22:53Those are two ideas that are obviously pretty similar.
00:22:56I'll put Eysenck's 1960s research in here on intelligence assessment, etc.
00:23:02And also just how more recent work has evaluated the legitimacy of this research.
00:23:09Mitchell and Kumari, 2016, about Hans Eysenck's interface between the brain and personality,
00:23:15modern evidence from cognitive neuroscience.
00:23:17That's in Personality to Individual Differences, which is a great journal, highly reputable.
00:23:22I'll put in a couple of more references on that if you're interested in that.
00:23:24I know some of you really are.
00:23:26Okay, so what about happiness?
00:23:28Okay, so that explains, you know, why some people, it potentially explains why some people
00:23:32are just more extroverted than others.
00:23:34But what about the fact that we find in the research that extroverts tend to have a happiness
00:23:39edge?
00:23:40Why do they tend to be a little bit happier?
00:23:43This kind of blends together a bunch of psychological theories.
00:23:46But here's the typical explanation for why that is the case.
00:23:49Humans, we know, are inherently social animals.
00:23:51You've heard me go on and on about the fact that we are a hierarchical kin-based pack tropical
00:23:58species.
00:23:58Homo sapiens are.
00:24:00And our brains are suited to live in bands of 30 to 50 individuals that have to be really
00:24:05together to survive, to pass on our genes and to survive.
00:24:08We have to know our kin and be close to our kin and be highly social with our kin.
00:24:13So we're like wolves in this way.
00:24:15We're like many, many other pack animals.
00:24:17We have to be together.
00:24:18So that being the case, that we are inherently social animals and that contact actually gives
00:24:26us a sense of satisfaction.
00:24:28Extroverts who seek out contact to get this cortical stimulation, they're going to be happier
00:24:33as a result of doing this thing.
00:24:35We're highly rewarded for being social.
00:24:38We get a happiness reward for being social.
00:24:42Okay, part one, part two, extroverts look for the stimulus because their brain needs it.
00:24:48Ergo, when they try to go get that thing that their brain needs, they get happier naturally.
00:24:53That's the whole idea.
00:24:54They're social.
00:24:55Being social makes you happy.
00:24:57Extroverts love people.
00:24:59And so by doing what they naturally want to do, they become happier than introverts.
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00:26:08The fact that introverts prefer solitude and struggle with sociability doesn't mean that
00:26:14avoiding contact makes them happier.
00:26:16And this is an interesting thing.
00:26:17So, you might say, okay, so extroverts, they're happier because they're in contact with others.
00:26:22So, therefore, introverts must be happier when they're not in contact with others.
00:26:25This is absolutely the case.
00:26:27And this is the argument that psychologists have always made, that being an introvert and
00:26:32avoiding people is an example of meeting a need, but that need not bringing you happiness.
00:26:38We do this all the time.
00:26:40We do all kinds of things here that meet a need in our life or a perceived need in our life
00:26:45that actually make us less happy.
00:26:46Because, once again, Mother Nature doesn't care if you're happy.
00:26:49Like, we have to be responsible for that, not just following our animal impulses.
00:26:53All right.
00:26:54Now, there are other reasons, more contemporary reasons than all of this.
00:26:57I mean, I realize that some of that was relatively esoteric, but there are other more common sense
00:27:01reasons why you would find in the literature that natural extroverts tend to be a little
00:27:06bit happier than natural introverts.
00:27:08To begin with, extroversion in American society in particular is hugely rewarded.
00:27:13Much, much less so in other societies, by the way.
00:27:16In East Asia, for example, American-style extroversion is considered to be really weird.
00:27:22And it makes people extremely uncomfortable, as a matter of fact.
00:27:26I mean, if you go out to dinner with a bunch of your friends in East Asia and you start
00:27:29talking about, you know, personal issues in your life, it's not going to be rewarded.
00:27:35That's more of an American thing.
00:27:36It's also more of a Latin American thing.
00:27:38I spend a lot of time, as some of you know, in Spain, because my wife is Spanish, and so
00:27:42we've spent, we've lived off and on in Barcelona for the past 35 years.
00:27:45And when we're there, I mean, it's like, it's extroversion.
00:27:48It's like 10, whereas it's less than that in the United States.
00:27:53Relatively speaking, it's a far more extroverted place.
00:27:56And the result is that you can have conversations that you never would.
00:27:59I mean, I recounted in one of my columns some time ago about a wonderful dinner that my
00:28:04wife and I had with complete strangers in Madrid last year.
00:28:07And within 15 minutes, the hostess at this dinner of eight couples, we didn't know them.
00:28:14She said, you know, I meant to ask all of you, what's the closest you all came to getting
00:28:20a divorce?
00:28:21And it's like, strangers.
00:28:22Gulp.
00:28:23I mean, that would make people uncomfortable in the United States.
00:28:25It would make people, you know, run screaming from the room in Japan, probably.
00:28:29But in Spain, it's like, ah, interesting conversation.
00:28:31Go deeper, go home, man.
00:28:33And that's, that's, that's based on this naturally highly extroverted culture.
00:28:36In the United States, it's rewarded, not just socially, it's rewarded economically.
00:28:41Extroverts make a lot more money.
00:28:43There's an interesting study that shows that extroverts make about $12,000 more per year
00:28:47than extroverts, which at the general level is like, that's no joke.
00:28:51When the average family of four in the United States makes about $75,000 a year, that's,
00:28:56that's very significant.
00:28:57That's almost a 20% differential in what the average family is going to make.
00:29:01As a matter of fact, they also extroverts, they tend to attain other advantages in the
00:29:05workplace, such as promotions to leadership positions and high performance evaluations.
00:29:09And there's a ton of studies on that.
00:29:10There's one from the Journal of Applied Psychology I'll put in the notes called Extroversion
00:29:14Advantages at Work, a Quantitative Review and Synthesis of the Meta-Analytic Evidence.
00:29:19Yeah, you got to see this because, you know, it turns out that we really rewarded.
00:29:23Now, I've seen it over the course of my career, not in my case, but, you know, I've taught
00:29:28in business schools for a long time.
00:29:30I go back teaching at business schools for 30 years and business schools, they love extroverts.
00:29:36I mean, you know, I, I've taught classes where the, the grading criteria involved, uh, class
00:29:43participation up to 50% of the grade.
00:29:45I've seen classes that are 70% of the grade are class participation, and that's just like
00:29:50a root canal for, for introverts, putting your hand up and just going blah, blah, blah,
00:29:55blah, for the sake of the blah, blah, blah, because you want to get your grade up.
00:29:58Now, when I taught my classes, I tried very, despite my extroversion, because I'd be the
00:30:03guy like this all the time.
00:30:05Again, not a flex, but I, I didn't want to reward that in the same way, because, you
00:30:09know, being a behavioral scientist, I got the data.
00:30:11I don't want to unduly penalize people who just happen to be natural introverts.
00:30:15So I would give them all different ways to participate.
00:30:18And I would make sure with my calling patterns for people who were not having their hands up,
00:30:22that I would give them a particular opportunity at the beginning of class to get their comments
00:30:27in if they're getting counted.
00:30:29Right.
00:30:29But most professors don't do that.
00:30:31In business schools, it's like, wherever you got their hand up, gets called on, they get
00:30:33higher grades.
00:30:35This is an example of the advantages that we're actually talking about.
00:30:38That, quite frankly, can be extremely unfair.
00:30:42But it's the law of the jungle.
00:30:44I mean, particularly when you're making your way into American culture.
00:30:47Very interesting book that talks about how unfair that is and how, how inefficient that
00:30:52is, is a very famous book.
00:30:54Maybe some of you already know about the wonderful author, Susan Cain, has the book, Quiet, the
00:30:59power of introverts in a world that can't stop talking.
00:31:02You know, I know she's not big on extroverts like me.
00:31:06I get it.
00:31:06But it's a wonderful book.
00:31:07And it's really worth reading because she talks about examples of many wonderful things that
00:31:13have been created by introverts.
00:31:15And, you know, theory of gravity, you know, Isaac Newton was an introvert.
00:31:20Google was developed by introverts.
00:31:23And she argues that admiring and rewarding extroversion isn't just unfair, but it actually
00:31:27hinders progress.
00:31:28And so we should do something about that.
00:31:30It's, it's actually, that book has been influential among readers and have been influential with
00:31:33me too.
00:31:34I mean, one of the reasons that I watch my call patterns to not marginalize the introverts
00:31:38in my class is precisely because of Susan Cain's work and how important it is.
00:31:42So if you ever feel disillusioned in the United States or any other place about our habit of
00:31:49elevating egotistical and charismatic leaders, you'll probably admit that Susan Cain has a point
00:31:54and that it's, it's, it's not just unfair, but it's kind of unwise for us to be marginalizing
00:32:00introverts or not paying attention to them.
00:32:02Okay.
00:32:03Let's get to the really applied part of how this all comes about.
00:32:05I hope you found this interesting, but I want you to be able to use this as well, whether
00:32:08you're an introvert or an extrovert.
00:32:10How can introverts increase their happiness?
00:32:14They're not going to change fundamentally their personalities.
00:32:16Now, now some introverts are, are so skilled as thespians, like as actors, that they can
00:32:23put on extroversion all day long, but not when they come home.
00:32:27And one of the things that I talk about an awful lot is happiness and relationships and
00:32:31how one of the big barriers to happiness and relationships is for people who can't feel
00:32:35like they can be themselves with their partners.
00:32:36You have to have your personality.
00:32:38Now, again, work on your neuroticism.
00:32:41Don't, you know, dump the garbage on your partner when you come home every day with your
00:32:44sadness and anxiety.
00:32:46I mean, work to actually manage that, especially with the people that you love the most, but you
00:32:51have to have a baseline of who you are, otherwise you'll be uncomfortable and you'll never really
00:32:54be happy at home.
00:32:55How can introverts as introverts be happier people?
00:33:00And what can they learn from extroverts?
00:33:02And then what can extroverts learn from introverts?
00:33:05Because it turns out that there are some very important things that they can learn that can
00:33:09lead to a lot greater happiness for everybody.
00:33:12Let's start with what introverts can learn from extroverts.
00:33:14Number one, introverts can get a lot happier, not just by, you know, going and talking to
00:33:21strangers, although there is literature on that.
00:33:24Nick Epley at the University of Chicago, a psychologist who does incredible work, has
00:33:30talked about the fact that when people talk to strangers, everybody gets happier.
00:33:34Now, that's brutal for introverts.
00:33:36For extroverts, they're like, yeah, no kidding.
00:33:37I've always done that.
00:33:38You sit down on a plane next to an extrovert.
00:33:40So where are you from?
00:33:41And which might actually drive you crazy.
00:33:44What introverts can do, however, that isn't hard is to focus more on the future like extroverts
00:33:51do.
00:33:51Now, this is a tricky topic.
00:33:54Human beings have an incredible ability to travel time.
00:33:57There's three time zones inside your brain.
00:34:00They're called prospection, mindfulness, and retrospection.
00:34:04Retrospection, the last one, is thinking about the past.
00:34:07Mindfulness is thinking about right now, and prospection is thinking about the future.
00:34:12You're probably, anybody who's a fan of this show, knows about mindfulness meditation techniques.
00:34:18And what that is, is this observation that most homo sapiens, most of us, we don't spend
00:34:24enough time in the mindful present, and we kind of miss our lives.
00:34:27And there's all kinds of reasons that we should try to be more mindful.
00:34:30Sophos and theologians have pointed out forever, that you can only love in the present.
00:34:36You can't love in the future or love in the past.
00:34:38Loving happens right now.
00:34:40And if you want evidence of that, think about when you're with your beloved and when you're
00:34:44having the most intense experience of love.
00:34:46It's when you're sitting together, locked in.
00:34:49It's not when you're sitting together thinking about tomorrow at work.
00:34:52That's not when you're expressing or receiving love.
00:34:55It's when you're together and looking into each other's eyes and being present right now.
00:34:59And so presentism, mindfulness, is a very, very important skill.
00:35:05Now, that said, one of the things that we also know as an element of happiness is prospection
00:35:11to the extent that you always have something to look forward to.
00:35:14You have something that gives you a sense of anticipation.
00:35:16Why?
00:35:16Because purpose, which is an element of meaning in our lives, requires goals and direction
00:35:22and progress.
00:35:23Goals, direction, and progress.
00:35:24You want to be a happier person?
00:35:25You need goals.
00:35:26You need a direction in life.
00:35:28And you need to make progress toward those goals, following that direction.
00:35:31That's a really important part of meaning.
00:35:33And meaning is an incredibly unreplaceable element of happiness.
00:35:37That's one of the things that I write the most about, as a matter of fact.
00:35:40And so the result of it is that you need to have something that you can look forward to.
00:35:45You have to have something that is this goal.
00:35:47Don't be insane about it.
00:35:49Don't be super attached to it.
00:35:50But you have to have something that gives you a sense of anticipation of reward.
00:35:55Extroverts always do that.
00:35:57Extroverts are great about thinking about future rewards, which is one of the sources of their
00:36:02happiness.
00:36:04There's a 2001 study.
00:36:06That's a 25-year-old study now, believe it or not.
00:36:08Sorry to depress you.
00:36:09From Oxford University that broke a sample of survey respondents into four groups.
00:36:14Here are the four groups.
00:36:15Happy extroverts, unhappy extroverts, smaller group, happy introverts, and unhappy introverts.
00:36:22Okay, now what are they really, really interested in?
00:36:24They're interested in what drove the happy introverts into higher well-being.
00:36:30Because, you know, these are the out-groups.
00:36:32I would also want to know why the extroverts were so unhappy in that group.
00:36:36But happy introverts, what were they doing differently than the unhappy introverts?
00:36:40That's what the scholars were really into.
00:36:42And they found that they were doing something that extroverts do naturally, which is that
00:36:47a sense of optimism, a sense of life purpose, a sense of direction, a sense of goals, a sense
00:36:52of progress.
00:36:54That article came out in Personality and Individual Differences.
00:36:56Same journal I talked about a minute ago.
00:36:58It's called Happiness, Introversion, Extroversion, and Happy Introverts.
00:37:02Now, extroverts do this naturally.
00:37:06They think about the future, and they dream about the future naturally.
00:37:09They love to talk to people about their future.
00:37:11They talk about their dreams.
00:37:12They talk about life's purpose.
00:37:14They talk about it all the time.
00:37:15This is what I talk about with my kids a lot, not mine, theirs.
00:37:19Because they've got a much bigger future than I do.
00:37:22We tend to act according to the commitments that we've articulated to others.
00:37:26And the result of it is that when extroverts, when they express their thoughts and hopes and
00:37:31dreams to others over the course of their extroversion and sociability, their gregariousness,
00:37:37that they tend to live according to these dreams.
00:37:41They tend to follow these goals.
00:37:42They tend to take that trajectory.
00:37:45And that's one of the secrets to their great happiness.
00:37:48What do happy introverts do?
00:37:50Here's the answer from that research.
00:37:52Happy introverts have figured out a way to envision the future without all of the uncomfortable
00:37:58personal sharing with other people.
00:38:00In other words, they envision the future.
00:38:01They think about the future such that they can, I guess, in the new age world, you'd say
00:38:06manifest that.
00:38:07I've written a lot about manifesting.
00:38:09It doesn't come from turning the gears in the universe that I'm aware of.
00:38:13What it does is it turns the gears in your head.
00:38:15It makes you behave a little bit differently subconsciously.
00:38:17So when introverts not blah, blah, blah, blah, blah about their future to everybody, but
00:38:23when they think, think, think, think about their future, when they're more future oriented
00:38:27without marginalizing the mindful present, when they do that, they tend to manifest that
00:38:33better future.
00:38:34And that's what makes them happier.
00:38:36There's another thing that introverts naturally do, which gets me to my second point on how extroverts
00:38:42can actually learn from introverts.
00:38:43There's one big skill that introverts have that extroverts don't, which is deep, deep,
00:38:49deep friendship with just a few people.
00:38:52Now, we have limited time and cognitive bandwidth in everything, in work, in play, in studying,
00:38:58in everything, and also in friendship.
00:39:01And so you can spread out the amount of friendship that you can cognitively manage among a few
00:39:08people or among a lot of people.
00:39:09And, no, I see this a lot with my students, and I even see this with my kids.
00:39:14Two of my kids are super extroverted, like me and my wife.
00:39:18We're a family of dogs.
00:39:19But we have one daughter, our youngest child, and she's not a dog.
00:39:23She's a cat.
00:39:24She's one cat living with four dogs.
00:39:26And she talks hilariously about it because she's an introvert and we're all extroverts.
00:39:30And she's like, it's just, it's, you know, it's almost as if, here's her joke, it's almost
00:39:35as if we're not related, right?
00:39:37Because it turns out we're not genetically related.
00:39:39She's adopted.
00:39:40She, I mean, she's so one of us.
00:39:42And in so many ways, she understands me at such an unbelievably deep level.
00:39:46But the result is that we've come to appreciate her catness, and she's come to appreciate
00:39:51our dogginess in a lot of ways.
00:39:53She also, you know, calls us out when we're being, you know, too loud or obnoxious, to
00:39:57be sure.
00:39:58Keep it down in there, says my youngest daughter.
00:40:01But what she has an advantage of over the rest of us is that she's got usually a couple
00:40:08of really, really, really deep close friendships.
00:40:11She's good at deep friendship in a way that, you know, it's harder for me.
00:40:15It's easier for me to be like, fresh meat, you know?
00:40:19It's easier for me to like, I want to be friends with everybody, and she doesn't.
00:40:23Which means that she partitions her friendship, time, and effort, and cognitive energy toward
00:40:31just a few people.
00:40:32And those are deep, intimate relationships that bring a huge amount of satisfaction.
00:40:36So who do they talk about their futures with, if not everybody who will listen?
00:40:41The answer is their few actual friends.
00:40:44They forge close friendships with people with whom they have nothing to gain as an intense
00:40:48source of their satisfaction.
00:40:50Okay, now that turns out to be hard for extroverts, because they want new, new, new, new.
00:40:56Their extroverts also tend to be highly open in experience, in appetite for experience.
00:41:01They tend to be neophilic.
00:41:03But when they actually will deepen their friendships and focus on fewer as opposed to more, extroverts
00:41:09can get a lot happier as well.
00:41:12So how do you do that?
00:41:13If you're an extrovert and don't know how to begin, you should just watch a happy introvert
00:41:17do it, you know, I learned to do that by actually watching my wife and I'm a much better friend.
00:41:23And here's a side note before I get to a couple of things, a couple of pieces of homework that
00:41:27I want to give you.
00:41:28Beyond the specifics of introversion and extroversion, there's one important lesson in all this.
00:41:34Watching and learning from people very different from you is a great way to be happier.
00:41:39So what have I just told you, that introverts can get happier by watching extroverts and
00:41:43behaving like them.
00:41:45And extroverts can get even happier by looking at introverts and behaving like them.
00:41:48But that's just generally true across personality and across different aspects of human life.
00:41:55Happiness actually will come to you when you embrace human diversity of all types and appreciate
00:42:01that diversity from culture to character, even to politics.
00:42:06As a matter of fact, one of the things is that's so threatening to so many people in modern life
00:42:09today is like, if you disagree with me, I'm not going to date you.
00:42:12I'm not going to hang out with you.
00:42:13If you voted for that guy, whoever that guy is, I'm not going to specify.
00:42:18It doesn't really matter.
00:42:19It means that you're morally reprobate.
00:42:21And what you find is when people relax that and say, I'm really, really interested in people
00:42:26who have what I consider to be extremely weird views, that they get much happier just by observing.
00:42:32Even if you don't take on these characteristics politically, I know you're not going to, as
00:42:37somebody else, when you just observe it with an attitude of interest in the other person,
00:42:41you get much happier.
00:42:42The broad point is that observing other people non-judgmentally is one of the greatest happiness
00:42:48lessons that we can actually get.
00:42:50For the happiest world, we're going to have cats and dogs, but cats need to watch the dogs and dogs
00:42:55need to watch the cats and we can learn from each other.
00:42:58Okay.
00:42:58Here's my challenge for the week ahead.
00:43:00Here's my happiness homework for you.
00:43:02Number one, if you're an introvert, okay, for the introverts who are watching the show,
00:43:06take time this week to call an old friend with whom you'd like to reestablish some contact,
00:43:11right?
00:43:11Make a new friend.
00:43:12Again, I'm not going to ask you to call 50 friends, one friend that you want to establish
00:43:16contact with.
00:43:17This will harness your natural one-on-one power as an introvert.
00:43:23And what I want you to do when you're talking to that friend is to say, I want to learn what's
00:43:29going on in your life and I want to tell you what's going on in mine.
00:43:32And then talk about these hopes and dreams.
00:43:35Establish a new relationship.
00:43:37In other words, it's a small act of extroversion within the context of your natural strengths.
00:43:43This is going to make you happier.
00:43:45That's your homework.
00:43:47Here's your homework if you're an extrovert.
00:43:48I want you to focus on one friend in your life this week.
00:43:52I know you got a lot and you got a lot, a big circle.
00:43:55Schedule a coffee or a lunch or a dinner with her or him in a one-on-one setting.
00:44:01Don't invite anybody else.
00:44:02Just that one-on-one person.
00:44:04Put your phone away.
00:44:05I mean, literally wait.
00:44:06Not even down on the table.
00:44:08So that you're completely undistracted from that particular person.
00:44:12And you're uninterrupted by this as really an exciting adventure.
00:44:18Okay?
00:44:18And do this bilateral, this dyadic experience.
00:44:22And what you're going to find is that that's going to give you an enormous amount of sort of depth and satisfaction that you don't get from the ordinary experiences of your life.
00:44:31This is you practicing the power of introversion by focusing intently on one person at a time.
00:44:38So that's your homework if you're an extrovert.
00:44:40Okay?
00:44:40Try that.
00:44:42Write in the show notes.
00:44:43Tell me how it goes.
00:44:44If you'd like more on this, on personality in particular, let me know.
00:44:48I would love to talk about agreeableness or conscientiousness or openness to experience.
00:44:52I'll talk more about neuroticism.
00:44:54I'll talk about all of it.
00:44:55I think personality is absolutely fascinating.
00:44:57So if you do too, let me know and I'll do more episodes like this.
00:45:01Let's do some questions before we finish.
00:45:03Sophia asks, she writes in through the email address, does having a budget increase happiness while on vacation?
00:45:10I don't assume she means a budget of time.
00:45:12I assume she means a budget of money, literally.
00:45:14Does having a budget or even being financially aware in general increase happiness?
00:45:19Okay, so there's been no studies that I'm aware of that talk about how constraining your budget on vacation and how it affects your happiness.
00:45:24My guess is that when you don't have enough money on vacation, it's not great.
00:45:28And that's probably pretty straightforward and maybe even trivial.
00:45:30But there are a couple of questions here that are really worth addressing.
00:45:35One of the things that we know is when people overspend on vacation, that's really bad.
00:45:39And one of the reasons is that getting behind the eight ball financially is horrible for your happiness.
00:45:44And it's especially bad.
00:45:45The worst possible thing that you can do is to borrow money to go on vacation.
00:45:49That, my friends, is regress with respect to happiness.
00:45:54Now, some of you will remember in episodes I've done in the past about how to use money to get happier.
00:46:00Buying stuff will not make you happier.
00:46:02Buying experiences with your family and friends, that's the vacation, will bring you happiness.
00:46:07Buying time and spending it with your family or friends, which you can be doing on vacation as well, will bring happiness.
00:46:12Giving your money away will bring happiness.
00:46:15And saving your money, getting ahead financially, will bring you happiness because it gives you the sense of purpose and progress and goals and direction and some of the stuff I've talked about here today, as a matter of fact.
00:46:25But, on the other hand, going backwards with respect to saving, a.k.a. borrowing, especially for consumption.
00:46:31I've got the data on this.
00:46:33This is not just conjecture.
00:46:34The data are very clear.
00:46:36Borrowing for consumption, including for vacation, will give you negative happiness, a.k.a. unhappiness.
00:46:43Don't do that.
00:46:44Okay, so if you're living within a budget, fine.
00:46:47If that's the way it has to be, okay.
00:46:49Don't break it.
00:46:50Because if you go into debt and you're running up your credit cards on vacation, you will have gone into the red numbers, not just financially, but with respect to your happiness as well.
00:47:00Second question here is from Anonymous at officehours at arthurworks.com.
00:47:04I struggle with my relationship, in my relationships, with failure.
00:47:08How can I keep trying despite feeling discouraged by it?
00:47:11I hear this a lot from people in their 20s, and I know people who are, you know, 25 years old who feel like they're a disaster with respect to relationships because nothing's ever worked out.
00:47:20Well, you're 25!
00:47:21Okay, easy for me to say at 62, but I say that with appropriate humility.
00:47:25If you've had a few relationships not work out, I get it.
00:47:28You're going to start to wonder, is it ever going to happen for me?
00:47:31Let me give you one statistic.
00:47:32The average person, before they find their soulmate, before they find the person that they're going to marry, they have five heartbreaks.
00:47:40That's the average.
00:47:41Right?
00:47:42Your results may vary.
00:47:43You know, one of my kids fell in love for the first time and got engaged and got married, has an incredibly happy marriage, has kids.
00:47:50Really?
00:47:51Good.
00:47:51Your number comes up.
00:47:52There are entrepreneurs who do their first startup, and boom, it goes to IPO in five years, and they're billionaires.
00:47:58You know, my son's a billionaire in love and happiness on his first try.
00:48:00It's great.
00:48:01I mean, it's actually because his wife is so awesome.
00:48:03But, you know, other people, typically, they don't have that experience.
00:48:07Some people, you know, the average is five, meaning that there are people in the other tail who are, it's like 10.
00:48:12But that doesn't mean that they're a failure.
00:48:15On the contrary.
00:48:16You know, the same thing is true with startup businesses.
00:48:19This is a startup life.
00:48:20Your romance is the startup of your life, and it requires reps, and it requires experience, and failure is generative in this particular way.
00:48:28The average startup entrepreneur in business has 3.8 failures, almost four failures, has four things that didn't work out before something it actually does, and they learn from each one of those.
00:48:38So the cycle is basically this.
00:48:39Try, fail, suffer, recover.
00:48:45Try, fail, suffer, recover.
00:48:47I get it.
00:48:48You will heal.
00:48:49I mean, I've done a lot of work on heartbreak.
00:48:51I know the timing and, you know, how, actually, how grief works.
00:48:55I even know the part of the brain, the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex, that is actually highly active when you're in the middle of a breakup.
00:49:01I get it.
00:49:02Brutal.
00:49:02It's supposed to be brutal.
00:49:03But, but, but if you're having failure in your relationships, it means you're out there, and it means you're actually trying, and that's good.
00:49:09It's not evidence of, of you're doing something wrong.
00:49:12It's probably evidence that you're doing something right.
00:49:14Now, you can always get better at it.
00:49:16You can always be better at relationships, but that's the point of actually going through the cycle, is getting better.
00:49:21And learning from what went wrong the last time, and making sure you don't, you don't choose the same wrong person over and over and over again.
00:49:28So, anonymous, I struggle with relationships being a failure, you say?
00:49:32Yeah, you and a lot of other people, stay in it.
00:49:35The fact that you're writing this and continuing to struggle with that is evidence that I strongly believe, and I predict, that permanent love is coming your way.
00:49:45Well, we're done, my friends.
00:49:47Let me know your thoughts by writing to me at the, at the, on the website at officehours at arthurworks.com.
00:49:53Leave comments, criticisms, any place you're watching or listening to this.
00:49:57We read them all, and we love them.
00:49:59Like and subscribe.
00:50:00Please hit the subscribe and like buttons on Spotify, YouTube, Apple.
00:50:04Follow me on Instagram, on the social media platforms.
00:50:07I know social media has so many things that we don't like about it, but it can be good for learning, and that's exactly what I'm trying to do with mine.
00:50:13Instagram, LinkedIn, X, TikTok, wherever your thing is, I'm probably there.
00:50:18If you're interested in these topics and many more, please get my latest book, The Meaning of Your Life.
00:50:23It's still pretty new, came out the end of March, and it's still, it's still selling a lot of copies.
00:50:29It's also now in, I think, 20 languages?
00:50:32We get a couple new languages every month, and I would love to hear what you've got to say about that as well.
00:50:37I hope you have a wonderful week, my friends.
00:50:39I'm looking forward to seeing you next week.
00:50:40Thank you for tuning in.
00:50:42Go love other people in your own way, whether you're an extrovert or an introvert.
00:50:45That's what makes the world a better place.
00:50:48See you soon.
00:50:48Bye.
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