Transcript
00:00:00Today I want to talk about one of the most fundamental areas of happiness, which is friendship.
00:00:04I've noticed in my work that the happiest people have a lot of real friends.
00:00:09They also have deal friends. Both are important, but real friends are required for you to be a
00:00:16happy person. A scourge in our society is people who are so busy, strivers, you, me,
00:00:22that it's all deal, no real. I was the chief executive of a big organization,
00:00:25and I was really lonely. And so I actually started to do the work. And it wasn't theoretical.
00:00:31It wasn't just social science to me at that point. And since then, it's been great. I'm better at it.
00:00:35I've got a bunch of people that I talk to a lot. I make the time, and it takes time. And when you do,
00:00:41you're going to love it. You're going to find that you have something that you could say to somebody
00:00:46that is probably one of the most beautiful things that they could hear, which is that
00:00:50I don't need you. You're useless to me. I just love you. You need more people like that in your life.
00:01:03Hi, friends. Welcome to Office Hours. I'm Arthur Brooks. I'm a social scientist dedicated to
00:01:09lifting people up and bringing them together in bonds of happiness and love, using science and
00:01:13ideas. And this show is all about how you can join me in that movement. I want to bring the best science
00:01:19back to ideas that I can possibly find around the science of happiness to talk to you about how you
00:01:24can improve your life and how you can effectively become a teacher of these ideas by sharing them.
00:01:29Now, to that end, thank you for sharing this podcast. This podcast has been growing in popularity across
00:01:34all the different platforms, and that's really because of you. And I appreciate that very much,
00:01:38because that's why I do the show. So please continue to do so. Please like and subscribe. Leave
00:01:43comments. Send me anything that you want to talk to me about at the email address for the show,
00:01:48office hours at arthurbrooks.com. Any criticism that you have, I want to hear that too. We want to make
00:01:52this show better and better, and we want you to share this as widely as possible. While you're at
00:01:56it, please go do pick up a copy of my new book, The Meaning of Your Life, Finding Purpose in an Age of
00:02:01Emptiness. Thanks to you, it debuted at number one on the New York Times bestseller list. I'm really
00:02:05pleased about that. It gives it a tailwind to get it into the lives of more and more and more people.
00:02:10This is a book about the meaning of your life, but also how you can become a teacher of meaning,
00:02:17and the idea of how we can live differently, such that meaning becomes more accessible to the people
00:02:21that we love. So thank you for that. Thank you for getting the book. Thank you for watching the show.
00:02:24Well, thank you for passing it on. I really appreciate it a lot.
00:02:27You're not broken. You're meaning-starved. I talk to people all the time who are, by any external
00:02:35measure, successful. They've built careers. They have families. They've checked the boxes. And yet,
00:02:41something feels off. Life feels thin. Like you're going through the motions. Like you're watching
00:02:48yourself from the outside. And here's what I want you to know. That feeling is not a personal failing.
00:02:54It's not ingratitude. It's not something wrong with you. It's a meaning problem. And it's an epidemic.
00:03:02The modern world is extraordinary at giving us comfort, achievement, and distraction. It's
00:03:07terrible at giving us meaning. And no amount of success will fix that. I've seen it in my research,
00:03:13and I've seen it in my own life. That's exactly what we work on at MEA, the Modern Elder Academy,
00:03:20in a program I've developed called The Meaning of Your Life. It's not a lecture. It's not a quick fix.
00:03:27It's several days of real work in a small group on the questions that actually matter.
00:03:33If what I'm describing sounds familiar, I hope you'll come take a look.
00:03:39Today, I want to talk about one of the most fundamental areas of happiness, which is
00:03:43friendship. This is something that might seem like the most natural thing in the world to some.
00:03:48But for many people, this is hard. And I have data showing that it's actually getting harder for
00:03:53people. There's more loneliness than we've seen since we've been keeping track of loneliness,
00:03:58as a matter of fact. And there are all sorts of reasons for this. I'm not going to
00:04:02devote this show to the perils of the inappropriate use or overuse of tech. But the truth of the matter
00:04:08is I don't have to. If you've been watching this show, you know perfectly. Anything that substitutes
00:04:12for your in-person relationships is going to hurt you. Anything that makes those in-person relationships
00:04:17easier is going to help you. And when you're mediating your life through tech and through a screen and
00:04:22you're not seeing people in real life, that's a problem. You're going to get lonelier. You're going
00:04:25to become more detached. You're going to become more isolated. All that's pretty obvious. That's not what I want
00:04:30to talk about. I want to talk to you about, practically speaking, the health of your friendships and how you
00:04:35can make your friendships deeper and better starting today, because this is fundamental to your happiness.
00:04:43I want you to start by thinking about your friendships. Some of your friends you text
00:04:49any silly thought to. You know, this one person that I talked to, and we text stuff sometimes
00:04:55serious, sometimes silly, multiple times a week, sometimes multiple times a day. Other people
00:05:02you only talk to a couple of times a year, but you really love them. And when you talk to them
00:05:05after six months, you feel like no time has passed at all because you have this intimacy. Typically,
00:05:10those are people you knew when you were much younger, as a matter of fact, when your neural
00:05:13programming was setting itself. You know how that feels. Some are people that are not close friends,
00:05:19but you really look up to. And the degree of friendship that you have is something that you
00:05:23really value because it makes you a better person. Some are friends that you like, but you don't
00:05:28especially admire, maybe on the contrary. And what I'm trying to point out is that friendship is a very
00:05:33complex phenomenon. The way that we love other people in this philia, that Greek sense of
00:05:40of brotherly or friendship love is something that has a lot of facets to it. I've talked about in
00:05:45this show in the past, the fact that English is a terrible language for love. To love is to will
00:05:50somebody else's good. And we have a word for it, love. And you can love all different kinds of things.
00:05:56You can love your dog and your wife and the Red Sox and a Chicago deep dish pizza. And if you love
00:06:02them all in the same way, well, we got problems, right? But it's just one word. Now, the Greeks had
00:06:08seven different words for love, which is starting to make some sense. But now we just take the one Greek
00:06:13word philia for friendship, friendship, love, and we can break it up across the dimensions that I just
00:06:19talked about here. That means that if you want to have a happy life with a lot of friendship, you need
00:06:24a good repertoire. You need a good technique and a lot of understanding of friendship. And that's what
00:06:29I want to talk about in this podcast. Now, let's start the show by making a simple point,
00:06:35which is it's impossible to be happy without friends. It just is. Now, there are some people
00:06:41that I've met that have very few human relationships, but they're unusual. I wrote a column last year
00:06:48based on a visit that I was granted of with a hermit in the Himalayas. I actually went to a Tibetan
00:06:54Buddhist monk who's a hermit. He sees nobody day after day after day after day. He sees people maybe
00:06:59two times a year. And he granted me an interview, which was an unbelievable honor. He lives up in a
00:07:04little house in the Himalayan foothills, outside, way outside Dharamsala, where the Dalai Lama is
00:07:10located. And it's just kind of him and monkeys. And he gets up at, you know, the crack of dawn and
00:07:16makes himself a little bit of breakfast. Then he meditates a lot and he reads Holy Scripture and
00:07:20goes to bed and walks around to get a little bit of exercise. And this goes on for month after month
00:07:24after month. And I said, "How long have you been doing this?" He said, "27 years." And I said,
00:07:27"Don't you get lonely?" He said, "No, it's just pure bliss." Well, I'm sure it's true, but that's not typical.
00:07:33That's, I mean, your results may vary, but they probably won't. For the vast majority of people,
00:07:37it's impossible to be happy without friends. There's decades of research that actually shows this. I'll put,
00:07:43as always, all of the references to the academic literature into the show notes if you want to go
00:07:48look it up. There's a very interesting paper from the Journal of Happiness Studies from 2011, titled
00:07:55appropriately, "I Matter to My Friend, Therefore I Am Happy. Friendship Mattering and Happiness."
00:08:00That really shows this, that people who don't have friends just are way, way, way less happy. They're
00:08:05lonely. They want to have friends too. The second big point that I want to make that's based on the
00:08:10same research body is that friendships, I mean, how much happier? Friendships account for 60% of the
00:08:17difference in happiness between individuals. So the variance in happiness in individuals, we measure
00:08:23that variance using regression analysis, and friendship on the right-hand side of these regression models
00:08:28soaks up 60% of the variance in happiness between individuals. That's unbelievable. I mean, basically,
00:08:33if you want to know the difference between the biggest variance drivers, it's a successful romantic
00:08:39partnership and close friends. That's kind of what it's all about. And other stuff just kind of pales
00:08:45in comparison. That doesn't mean nothing else is important. I'm just talking about life satisfaction.
00:08:50There are other things that matter. Don't get me wrong. It's not like, you know, it doesn't matter if
00:08:53you make a living. It doesn't matter if you practice your religion. I'm not saying that. That stuff really
00:08:57matters a lot for other things. But just for pure life satisfaction, man, friendship, it's really a big
00:09:02deal. Now, how do marriage and friendship relate? You've seen my podcast on this, I hope. I'll drop it
00:09:09right below me here. If you want to click on it, go watch it after you're done with this one. And it shows
00:09:13that the secret to a happy marriage, you know what it is? Deep friendship, aka companionate love. So it
00:09:19all kind of collapses into this one big idea. Very interesting study from the Journal of Social
00:09:24and Personal Relationships shows the third point that I want to make on this is that that one of
00:09:28the greatest markers, one of the greatest predictors of well-being in midlife, I was going to say like
00:09:33me, yeah, right. That's the guy I used to be in midlife, is whether or not you can rattle off the
00:09:39names of a few close friends. If you're in an honest state and you're younger than me, 10, 20 years younger
00:09:45than me, or certainly my age, and I say, okay, give me three close friends. You're like, well,
00:09:50bad sign. It's like that's a big tell. That's a big predictor in the research on this. This is actually
00:09:57from the Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, as I mentioned a minute ago.
00:10:00That's from Chen and Feely. I'll put that in the show notes too. It's a good paper.
00:10:04And the last point I want to make on this is that people, they change when they talk about their
00:10:09friendships. Their selectivity tends to change as they age, but the number always has
00:10:15to be more than zero. Now, a lot of people will actually down select. So people in their 20s,
00:10:20they tend to have more friends. It's kind of more fresh friendship meat in their lives. They're
00:10:26looking for more experiences. And when you get to be my age, it's a little bit less so. You find
00:10:30you have to be more selective about the people that you're going to spend your time with,
00:10:34but it's got to be more than zero. And the happiest people, by the way, even among introverts,
00:10:38more on that in a minute, they're very close friends with their spouse if they're married or have a
00:10:42permanent romantic partnership. But they have more than one friend beyond that is what it comes down
00:10:46to. In other words, spouse plus one. That's sort of the magic formula. Spouse plus N where N equals
00:10:52one or greater. Let's put it that way. And the size of N has very much to do with the extroversion,
00:10:57introversion continuum that you experience in your personality. So more on that in a second.
00:11:01But the bottom line is even if you get more selective, you don't down select to zero.
00:11:05You don't that, actually, if you want to be happy. So that's why it's all the more important for you
00:11:11to take stock of your friendship health today. Now, a lot of my viewers here for this show
00:11:16are young. A lot of you are in your 20s and 30s. And I hear from you all the time. Now's the time,
00:11:21young friends, for you to be paying attention to the ecosystem of friendship in your life and getting
00:11:27it ship shaped. That's why I'm doing this, because this is the big predictor. This is such a big deal for
00:11:33the prediction of if you're going to get happier as you get older, especially in your 50s and 60s,
00:11:37is how good you are at friendship. So let's look at what a healthy friendship ecosystem kind of looks
00:11:42like. Let's just look at a typical friend group. I have interesting data on this from 2009.
00:11:48This comes from a poll of 2000 Americans and asks about their friends, their friend group. The
00:11:54average American, average adult American, has about 16 people they would classify as friends. Okay,
00:12:0116 friends. Is that a friend? Yes. Friend? No. Okay, 16 people that are in that group that are called
00:12:05friends. Of these, they would classify three of them as friends for life. Like, this is it. We're
00:12:11going to be on rocking chairs, talking to each other, reminiscing about the old days. These are
00:12:16people that I'm going to be talking to for the rest of my life. Friends for life. That means that 13
00:12:21come and go. Now, how long? That sort of depends. Five, besides the three, are people that they really
00:12:28like. Okay, so three friends for life. Presumably, you really like those people. And five others that
00:12:34may not be friends for life, but that you really like. That's what it comes down to. The other eight
00:12:39are not people that you either really like are going to be friends for life. They wouldn't necessarily
00:12:45be people you would hang out with one-on-one. They're probably not people that you anticipate
00:12:51talking to when you're 80. You might or might not know the names of their children, but you'll like
00:12:57them. I mean, you'll like them well enough. They have characteristics. They have friend-like
00:13:02characteristics. And that's what I want to get into now. What are the characteristics of the three,
00:13:07the five, and the eight? And what are the right proportions that are most likely to give you the
00:13:13happiest life? Then what I want to talk about, most importantly, how can you make the proportions
00:13:18better? Okay, because that's really what it comes down to. It's not good enough for me to say,
00:13:22make more friends. I got to tell you how. And the right kind of friends with the right kind of depth
00:13:27that's going to bring you what you actually seek. Okay. All right. Now that 16 is highly variable
00:13:33because that's an average across the population. Introverts have fewer and extroverts have more.
00:13:38When I talk to extroverts, one of the biggest predictors of extroversion,
00:13:42the biggest predictor of extroversion, if I want to do an extroversion test on you,
00:13:45the one question I'm going to ask actually isn't about friendship. I'm going to say,
00:13:48how do you feel after a party? That's what I'm going to ask you. And if you're like exhausted,
00:13:53you're not an extrovert. If you're like wired, I can't go to sleep. That means you're an extrovert.
00:13:56And it really has to do with when you're in a group of people, whether you get energy or whether
00:14:01it takes energy. That's one of the reasons that really highly competent introverts, they can do
00:14:06a party, but they pay for it is what it comes down to. Now, I personally, but the 96th percentile
00:14:11in extroversion, which means that I go to a party or I'm doing a thing. I have an event. I do a lot
00:14:16of nighttime events. I give 150 speeches a year. I'm on the road all the time. And when I have a real
00:14:21nighttime event that finishes at 9:30 at night, I'm not going to sleep at 10. And if you've been watching
00:14:26the show, you know, my morning routine, that's catastrophic. So I'm up at 4:30. So it's a
00:14:31problem, right? You can actually see that it's not all fun and games being super extroverted.
00:14:36By the way, introverts are very skilled at certain parts of the friendship strategies that I'm going
00:14:41to be talking about here in a minute. So there's nothing better about extroversion and nothing
00:14:45worse about introversion. I'm just saying that the number tends to vary with respect to that dynamic.
00:14:49Let's think about the three, the five, and the eight. And, you know, how would we classify those people?
00:14:58What would we call those different kinds of people? And to do that, I want to go to the greatest thinker
00:15:05probably ever on friendship, which is not a recent social scientist. It's not somebody that one of my
00:15:10colleagues at the university. It's Aristotle. This is 2,500 years ago. And his Nicomachean ethics,
00:15:16he talked a lot about friendship, about the importance of friendship, the beauty of friendship,
00:15:22the happiness that comes from friendship. A lot of the stuff that I'm talking about here,
00:15:26and there's nothing new. The new stuff is that we can run regression analyses using supercomputers,
00:15:31and even the supercomputers in our pockets. And that's amazing. We can do a lot more statistical
00:15:36analysis and get more data, and we can actually do more brain scans and actually to see how,
00:15:40you know, the pleasure centers in our brains are touched when we have a meaningful relationship
00:15:44with another person. But the ideas, the philosophy, there's nothing new about them at all. And Aristotle,
00:15:49in writing the Nicomachean ethics, he wrote a lot about different kinds of friends, and there's
00:15:54really nothing better that I can actually find. So what did he talk about? In the ethics, he talked about
00:16:00the fact that there's three types of friends that have three different kinds of functions,
00:16:04and that lead you to three different levels of happiness. This stuff is gold. So let's walk
00:16:10through it slowly. At the lowest level of happiness is what he calls friendships of utility. And when
00:16:15I say the lowest, I don't mean they're unimportant. I don't mean that you should get rid of them. It just
00:16:20means that they're kind of necessary but insufficient. He used mathematical language about it, okay? These
00:16:25friendships of utility. Utility is just what it sounds like. These are useful people. They're useful to you.
00:16:31These are people that you're very friendly with, you like, you work with. The emotional
00:16:37bonds are not necessarily very strong. They might be quite weak, as a matter of fact. Here's the acid
00:16:42test to know if a friendship is a friendship of utility. If you stopped working together, if you
00:16:47stopped doing something that was a mutual financial or, you know, personal benefit to both of you, if you
00:16:53stopped doing it together, you wouldn't be friends anymore. You wouldn't be enemies. You just wouldn't
00:16:57stay in touch. Here's another test. What are the kids' names, right? Those are the eight people of
00:17:04your 16 who are not friends for life and aren't people that you feel quite close to, if you understand
00:17:10what I'm saying here. Colleagues, partners in a transaction that you really like, people who do
00:17:16each other favors that are of sort of mutual benefit. Those are useful friends. These are also
00:17:23telec friendships. They have a telos to them. They have a use or function to them. There's another way
00:17:28that you would think about that. Now, the second type of friendship, according to Aristotle, is what he
00:17:33would call friendships of pleasure. Now, it's not that, you know, you're giving each other back rubs or,
00:17:37you know, something like that. No, that's not what I'm talking about at all. And this is a family
00:17:43podcast. I'm not going to go further than that. I'm talking about friends who like and admire
00:17:49something about each other. And if that admiration were to go away, if that one quality that you admire
00:17:56and the other person were to go away, so would the friendship, right? That's what it kind of is.
00:18:00It's based on something that you really like. Now, these are friendships with somebody because they're
00:18:04they're funny, because they're beautiful, because they're interesting. You know, these are just
00:18:09qualities that you actually admire in the person and find really magnetic. Now, sometimes that's
00:18:13wonderful. Like, you know, somebody is just so fun to be around. Sometimes it's a little, the motives
00:18:18are a little less noble, like the person's famous or rich, and that's why you want to hang around them.
00:18:22That's what also would be classified as friendships of pleasure. But that's not as noble. That's not as
00:18:28admirable to have friends like that. It's really people where it's like, I don't know, I'm around her.
00:18:33I just feel good about myself because she's such a positive person. And you admire that. But if she
00:18:39didn't have that, there's nothing intrinsic. There's no, the telos goes away. So they're kind of like
00:18:47these transactional friendships, but not exactly. They're higher than that. And he classifies those as
00:18:54friendships of pleasure. Now, the highest level, now that would, by the way, so the first would be the
00:19:00eight, these friendships of pleasure would probably be the five, right? That you really like that person.
00:19:05You really like something about that person. Now, the three, the friends for life. These are what he
00:19:10calls friendships of virtue. These are not a telic or they don't have a telos. These are called a telic
00:19:17friendships, which means they don't have a telos. They're not utilitarian. They're useless,
00:19:23if you know what I mean. Cosmically, beautifully useless. They're not worthless.
00:19:28You know, they have a huge amount of work. You know, I've had people in my life like that, too.
00:19:32But no, useless friends are people where even if they did nothing for you with respect to money or
00:19:38power or pleasure or fame or anything like that, you just love them. How many people do you have like
00:19:45that in your life? Those are the three that the average person has who constitute friends for life.
00:19:51That's what it comes with. That's the highest level of friendship. And it's interesting because
00:19:56he talks very movingly and beautifully. I would recommend to you the Nicomachean Ethics. If you
00:20:01can't remember that and you never were subject to that in high school or college, I'll put the Nicomachean
00:20:07Ethics in the show notes as well. You can get it on Gutenberg for free on the internet.
00:20:11You don't need to buy it or anything. And you go through this and he talks very movingly about
00:20:15friendships of virtue where we're useless friends. What they typically have is kind of a mutual love
00:20:21for a third thing. And they kind of walk toward that thing shoulder to shoulder. And their love is
00:20:27refracted from that third thing. And maybe it's something really cosmic, like they're faith in God
00:20:31or they have kids together. You know, my wife and I, we have a virtuous friendship. I mean,
00:20:37we have deep, she's my best friend. It was like, we have deep, deep friendship together. And we have
00:20:41this love for the third thing, which is our Catholic faith, our children, our grandchildren, you know,
00:20:47that kind of thing for sure. And there's a beautiful thing about that. We feel like we're walking into
00:20:51the future together. And it's that characteristic. And I have that with other friends as well,
00:20:55a very close friend named Frank. And, you know, we share so many values. And what do we talk about?
00:21:00We talk about the things that we both love, our faith. We have this mutual love for our faith. And we
00:21:05talk about it a lot, how important it is. And so that's a key thing, looking for somebody who has
00:21:09that mutual love and you love that person radiating off that third thing. I think that's a nice kind of
00:21:15metaphor for how friendship should actually work. Now, this is not a mutually exclusive framework.
00:21:21You can have people who are super useful to you in your life, but they're also friendships of virtue.
00:21:27You know, Frank and I have worked together. We have. I mean, we've worked on projects together. He has a
00:21:33nonprofit organization that he's involved in. And so I got involved in it too. I was president of
00:21:38a big nonprofit and I asked him if he'd be on my board. You know, I mean, somebody was like,
00:21:43look it out for me all the time. And so we have worked together. We've done stuff together
00:21:48philanthropically that's fun. But the whole point is that the working together was a pretext to be
00:21:54together, right? To look for more things to do. So you can commingle these. And by the way,
00:21:59I have tons of admiration for Frank, for his beautiful qualities, meaning there's friendship
00:22:04and pleasure in there too. But most importantly, it's at this top level is what it comes down to.
00:22:08You can also, by the way, move between these categories. You start by working with somebody
00:22:14whom you turn out to really admire and you keep kind of wanting to hang around with them. And then
00:22:18you become very close friends for life. That happens all the time too. I've even seen people who
00:22:24start off as kind of, you know, friendships of virtue and they wind up just kind of working together.
00:22:29I've even seen couples do this. I've talked to couples that have, you know, a family business
00:22:33or a business as a couple, and then they get divorced and keep working together. It's like,
00:22:36okay, man. I mean, it's hard to go from friendships of virtue down to friendships of utility. It's kind
00:22:40of like going from, you know, the friend zone into romance. It's rarely pulled off, but I think it's
00:22:46probably done. Okay. Now, why do I tell you all that? Because that's a really nice
00:22:50framework for understanding friendships. And that's kind of the three, five, eight.
00:22:54Right now, you're like Neo in the Matrix. You can keep scrolling, experiencing a simulation of life,
00:23:01or you can wake up to how your attention is being harvested for profit. It's happening to people all
00:23:06over the world right now. You don't want to be productized like this anymore, but it's hard.
00:23:12Tech addiction is so potent because it's been designed to tap into your dopamine system,
00:23:17just like heroin, porn, gambling. You've got the cravings. You're addicted. You don't like it,
00:23:22and I don't either. But I can't just tell you to stop doing it. That's hard.
00:23:26If you want to break free from the system, you need an incentive. Here's one. Why don't you join a
00:23:31phone company that pays you not to use your phone? If you want to reduce brain rot, get Noble Mobile.
00:23:38It pays you to use less data. It gives you an incentive to unplug. Noble Mobile is the phone plan
00:23:43that finally aligns incentives with what's good for you. Use less data, earn money back. And when you do,
00:23:50you'll be living once again in real life, and you're going to like how it feels.
00:23:54Another way to think about it is even simpler that I've talked about an awful lot in my own work. If
00:23:58you're familiar with almost any book that I've ever written, I talk about it in this way. It's kind of
00:24:03two-dimensionally. And it came from, you know, I was talking to my classes, and I remember describing my
00:24:11kids the fact that I've noticed in my work that the happiest people have a lot of real friends.
00:24:18They also have deal friends, but not just deal friends. And I would encourage my students to say,
00:24:25"Is this friend a real friend or a deal friend?"
00:24:28And my kids would kind of hear me talking about this. And I had to kind of think about what this
00:24:33meant in my own life when I was confronted with it by my son, Carlos. We were on a fishing trip,
00:24:39you know, for when he was a little boy, little boy, I mean, nine until 18. All he wanted for
00:24:45Christmas every year was to go away alone and fishing and hunting with me every Christmas.
00:24:51That's all we did every year. That's all he got for Christmas, was like four days. And we would go
00:24:56down, because we lived in Maryland at the time, so it was cold. We would go down to Florida,
00:25:00we would go bass fishing, or we'd go off the Marco Island, and we would go fishing in the Thousand
00:25:05Islands. It was super fun. It was warm. And we would hunt. And I'm not much of a hunter,
00:25:09but he is. And, you know, he's a good shot. When he was 11, he was a much better shot than me. And then
00:25:14he went on to become a professional sniper in the Marine Corps. So apparently it was early training,
00:25:19maybe aptitude. But the whole point is that Carlos wanted to do that with me. And it was wonderful.
00:25:23And just today, as a matter of fact, he texted me out of the blue. I see him
00:25:27all the time, because he lives very near me. And he said, "Dad, when are we going fishing again?"
00:25:31Right? Just, he was thinking of it. He wants to take me bass fishing, because he's, you know,
00:25:35he's good at it. And he's got the rods and reels. But one time we were on Lake Okeechobee,
00:25:41and we were bass fishing. And we were just about to get out of the car and to get in the boat and go put our
00:25:47lines in the water. And my cell phone rings. And he looks at me, and I said, "I got to take this."
00:25:53So he gets out of the car. He's walking around. And I'm taking this call. And it turns out it's
00:25:57something from, not exactly from my work, but somebody I want to do some work with,
00:26:02I want to do a deal with. And it was a very friendly conversation. And afterward,
00:26:06I hang up and I get up 15 minutes later. And he said, "Who was that?" And I said,
00:26:09his friend. And he said, he looks at me, and he's like, "Real friend or deal friend?" Because he knows
00:26:15that if it's a deal friend, I shouldn't be delaying our bass fishing trip by 15 minutes. I had my
00:26:20priorities upside down. Smart boy, right? The problem with kids, they listen to you, right? So I think
00:26:26about that a lot. And that actually was helpful to me, because it helped me to get my priorities in
00:26:31order a little bit more. So let's talk about your friendships, whether they fall in the categories of
00:26:37real or deal. Real friendships are truly italic. They are based on, they are these virtuous friendships,
00:26:45or they're friendships that are tending toward these virtuous friendships. They might not be there yet,
00:26:52but you're really working toward that. The deal friendships are these friendships of utility,
00:26:56kind of like Aristotle talked about. And they're kind of incomplete, because they don't involve your
00:27:01whole self. They don't involve your whole heart. They're necessary for the performance of a job,
00:27:07and they require a kind of professional demeanor. Deal friendships are good. And by the way,
00:27:12I have tons of deal friendships, and I like them a lot. My life is a lot better because of them.
00:27:17You know, one of the things that you find when you're my age, one of the reasons that on personality,
00:27:21I've talked about the personality dimensions of openness, conscientiousness, extroversion,
00:27:25agreeableness, neuroticism. Agreeableness goes through the roof for the big majority
00:27:30of people once they get past 50 and 60. The reason is because when you're more agreeable,
00:27:35you have more deal friends, and your life goes better. That's how it all kind of hangs together.
00:27:39You figure that out. Being a jerk is just totally not worth it, because nobody wants to do anything
00:27:44with you. And that makes deals harder, and that makes life harder, as it turns out. So I got nothing
00:27:50against deal friendships. The problem I have is when it's all deal, no real. If it's all deal, no real,
00:27:54more on that in a second. You're going to be lonely, is what it comes down to. Okay, so social scientists
00:28:01often call these deal friendships expedient friendships. Interesting study that actually
00:28:07shows this very clearly, counting up these expedient friendships versus the true or perfect or real
00:28:13friendships in a very interesting article called Patterns of Friendship. Very old article,
00:28:18as a matter of fact, from 1961, before I was born considerably. So it'll give you an idea of how
00:28:25we talk about this. But the whole bottom line is that real and deal both exist, both are important,
00:28:32but real friends are required for you to be a happy person. So at the beginning of the show when I said
00:28:39that you can't be happy without friends, I'm going to amend that now, so you can't be happy without
00:28:43real friends. And a scourge in our society is people who are so busy, Stryvers, you, me, that it's all
00:28:51deal, no real. And what I'll find when I talk to CEOs all the time, which is one of the most lonely
00:28:57groups I ever deal with my work, I'll ask them to tell me about the people they spend all their time
00:29:02with. And there's no real friends on these lifts. They might not even be real friends with their
00:29:05spouses. They see them so little and they have such a low level of emotional intimacy with that person.
00:29:11And they have so little in terms of shared loves with that person. It's all deal, man. It's all deal.
00:29:17And the other big mistake that I see for young Stryvers, and I'm talking to a lot of you, they say,
00:29:21I'll have plenty of time for real friends, but right now I'm going to bust my hump.
00:29:25I'll deal, I'll deal, I'll deal. No, don't do it. Because what I'm talking about here is you're
00:29:30asking for trouble. You're asking for unhappiness. So here now we can refine what I'm trying to get
00:29:37at in the show, which is not how to have more friends, it's how to have more real friends than
00:29:42deal friends. And let me make the point again that if you are too much deal and not enough real,
00:29:47it's probably because you're a seeker, because you're a striver. One of the reasons that you watch
00:29:53and listen to the show is because you want to get ahead in life, and that's great. But getting ahead
00:29:57in life shouldn't get in the way of your life. And this is one of the classic ways that we do that,
00:30:02which is really important. Letting your work week turn into something that's a hellscape
00:30:08of striving. It's interesting because a lot of CEOs that I talk to who are so incredibly lonely,
00:30:15I'll ask them, when's the last time you had a real friend? They talk about college,
00:30:18and they'll be my age. College was a long time ago. And the reason was because that's what you do in
00:30:24college. That's your job. That's your gig in college, unless you're not doing college right,
00:30:29is what it comes down to. And so I have to train them. And that's what I want to do with you now.
00:30:36Every single person watching here can benefit from having better friendship skills. That I know.
00:30:41So no matter where you are in this continuum, you can be better. And if you're lonely, you can solve
00:30:47that problem. But you have to have better chops. That's what it comes down to. Now, this is the same
00:30:51thing as saying if your diet is out of whack, you can fix it. You absolutely can. But you have to have
00:30:58knowledge, and you have to have skills, and you have to have habits, and you have to have commitment.
00:31:03So that's what I want to ask from you today. I want you to take your friendship as seriously as you
00:31:07do your diet and exercise and work habits. And I know probably all of you have those first three
00:31:12things pretty well on point, but maybe not your friendship. So let me tell you the basics
00:31:17of regaining a better and healthier friendship balance so that you can have the real friends
00:31:21that you actually need in a proper friendship ecosystem to give you the maximum amount of life
00:31:25satisfaction, and that will serve you as you walk yourself with your real friends into the future.
00:31:31Okay, to begin with, step number one. Friendship step number one. Give yourself a friendship
00:31:36checkup. And there's two tests for this, okay? Test number one. Ask yourself how many people know you
00:31:44well enough that if you were slightly off on a particular day would ask, "Are you feeling okay today?
00:31:51Are you feeling okay today?" That's funny because I've had Frank read something that I've published,
00:31:58my column, and text me, "Are you feeling okay?" Because there was something that was off in what I published in
00:32:05the Atlantic or the free press, depending on where I'm publishing. That's pretty intimate, right?
00:32:12Are there people in your life that would ask you that, and that, by the way, that have the permission
00:32:17to ask you that? Are you feeling slightly off? If you put up so many barriers, or you know so few people
00:32:21adequately well that nobody could ask you that, that's a problem, and that test number one is going the
00:32:27wrong direction, okay? So again, this is not to say that everything is lost. On the contrary, I'm going to tell you how to fix this, but now you've got to figure out if you've got
00:32:34something you need to fix. Test number two, list a few people, not including your spouse,
00:32:39with whom you're comfortable discussing personal things about your life. I mean, saying something
00:32:43really vulnerable about your weaknesses. Now, it doesn't mean that you would be comfortable
00:32:48divulging your deepest, darkest secrets. That's neither here nor there. Maybe you have secrets,
00:32:54maybe you don't have secrets, and there may be things that you'll take to the grave. That's not
00:32:57what I'm talking about. But really personal things about yourself. Now, your deal friends, you're just not going to do that unless you're
00:33:04in the TMI world, unless you're, you know, one of these people is trying to get, you know,
00:33:08internet followers by, you know, talking about things that are way too intimate that you shouldn't be
00:33:12talking about inappropriately. I mean, here's the thing. If it's a deal friends, inappropriate that
00:33:18you get too personal. And that's my point. How many people do you have in your life for whom it's not
00:33:24inappropriate for you to get personal? Okay. Take an inventory of that. List a few people. If you struggle
00:33:30to name two or three, that's a dead giveaway. And if you can, you know, be honest about this. When was
00:33:37the last time you actually had that kind of conversation with that person? Don't make it
00:33:40theoretical. When did you talk about these things? If it's been more than a month, you're kidding
00:33:45yourself. Okay. All right. So take those two tests and it's all green lights. Good for you.
00:33:52Keep going with the podcast nonetheless, because you could still get even better. If these are red
00:33:55lights, then, then, then let's fix it. Here's how to begin with. Here's one of the things that I
00:34:02strongly recommend that when you talk to people, either who are theoretically real friends, but that
00:34:10whom you've been neglecting or could be real friends. I mean, don't force some sort of uncomfortable
00:34:15intimacy, but, but go deep, go deep. I mean, one of the biggest mistakes that people make, and this is
00:34:19sometimes actually quite gendered, as a matter of fact, you know, one of the things about the literature
00:34:24that shows that men, they tend to get lonelier as they get older, especially when they're extremely
00:34:29involved in their work. Whereas women, they tend to get less lonely. They have better friendship chops.
00:34:34And again, your results may differ because I know lots of lonely women and, and, and lots of
00:34:38successful men are not lonely, but typically the pattern is that men get worse and worse and worse
00:34:42as they get older. And the reason is because they get less and less personal with men, with other men
00:34:48in particular, who could be their friends that kind of like talk about like, so what kind of putter do
00:34:52you have? Right. Um, you know, where, where are you taking the family on vacation? It's like, who cares?
00:34:58It's like, I don't want that conversation with anybody that is just not worth the time is what it comes down to.
00:35:05And so the first skill is to actually get it, getting up the courage to go deep or go home.
00:35:11Right. And, and this is really tricky for people who haven't done this, uh, maybe since childhood.
00:35:17And, and by the way, here's a, there's an interesting reference. I want to, I'll put in the show notes
00:35:21that is, this is harder for men than women from the Journal of Community Psychology. It's a, it's a pretty
00:35:25old paper from, you know, the eighties. As a matter of fact, it's a really good paper that shows that
00:35:28women have denser, more supportive friend networks than men do. And they base their friendships on
00:35:33social and emotional support, not just on shared interest in, you know, cars or something. This is
00:35:40really important to, to, to be thinking and talking about with real friends or potential real friends,
00:35:46things that matter, things that actually matter to you in your life and not trivialities to pass the
00:35:51time. My wife and I recognize this and it was really important because we've moved a lot. Since we've
00:35:55been married, we moved 20 times and, and it's not, I'm not in the witness protection program. Um, we've
00:36:01just moved a lot. Right. And that means that we move cities and that means we're alone a lot, especially
00:36:09after our kids moved out, but before they moved back in with their families, we now live in an
00:36:14intergenerational home and very near different families. And we, we've done that on purpose. I've talked
00:36:19about that on a show before, but when we were, for example, we left Maryland, all the kids moved out,
00:36:24we moved to Boston and, and we were like two little clouds, you know, on the, in the sky. And what we
00:36:32learned over the course of doing this is that we, we can actually accelerate the real friend process
00:36:38by, by going deep. And, you know, it, it, it's risky because, you know, we could come off as Mr.
00:36:43and Mrs. Intense, but we would, we would two weeks after we moved to a place, we'd start having dinner parties
00:36:47and inviting people over to our house. We'd have a Bible study at our house. Why? Because
00:36:51people will be there 20 years and they don't know you're lonely. And so we would invite people over
00:36:55and, and we would have these immediate, pretty intense conversations that were actually super
00:37:01interesting and fun because that's what people want when you talk to them. And it's so, it's great.
00:37:07And actually I have all kinds of funny examples of this. And one is actually not one that we
00:37:12initiated, but one of the best conversations we had, Esther and I were in Madrid. Um, I was on
00:37:17a speaking tour and it was some friends of friends that invited us over. So it was like five couples
00:37:23and we didn't really know them. We knew who they were. And this, the woman who was hosting this at
00:37:28her home, you know, she was like, she was great. And about 20 minutes into the conversation, she said,
00:37:35I got a question for the group. We're like, huh? It's all in Spanish mate, mind you. So it was more
00:37:40animated and louder. And she's like, how many of you have had such a big problem in your marriage?
00:37:46You almost got divorced. Dude, that's so heavy. It was great. And we talked about different things
00:37:55that, I mean, most of the couples hadn't gotten to that point, but, but everybody had a lot of
00:38:00conflict. And it turns out that the couple we were talking to, they had almost gotten divorced the year
00:38:04before. And they told us about it. The husband, I have to confess was a little uncomfortable, but
00:38:09you know, it was, it was a very interesting evening and those we've kept up with those people.
00:38:14And you get my point, right? Maybe they're not the three friends for life yet, but they're not just
00:38:18deal, right? There's more to it than that. That's point two, go deeper, go home. Three,
00:38:24make more friends that you don't need. And this is really important because people think that, you know,
00:38:29in the course of my work, maybe I'll meet the people that become friends for life. You actually
00:38:33have to go outside of your networks, your networks of utility to typically define the people who are,
00:38:39they're just going to be friends for their own sake outside the workplace, but also outside all of your
00:38:46professional educational networks. It's really important. And there's actually a kind of a movement
00:38:49for people to, to get together and have dinner, super busy, striving professionals who are lonely
00:38:57to have these dinner parties and they can't say what they do for a living the whole dinner party. Why?
00:39:02Because this is what strivers do. My name is Arthur Brooks and my job is, and what you've just done is
00:39:08you reduced yourself to your job is what it comes down to. And that of course makes, makes it all
00:39:14deal because if you have an important job, then people want to be around you for that particular
00:39:17reason. Or maybe you're struggling to get more professional connections and, and, and that's not
00:39:23the way it's supposed to work. So go outside of these networks on purpose, looking in places where
00:39:27people don't need to be. They just want to be. That's house of worship. That's good. Maybe that's
00:39:33a bowling league and charitable cause or related to your work. It's something in the community. It's
00:39:37getting involved in community affairs and just talking to people. This is where you're going to meet future
00:39:43real friends. When you meet somebody you like, don't overthink it. Invite them over.
00:39:49Okay. This is part of the making friends you don't need. Don't overthink it. Just invite them over.
00:39:55Go out to, Hey, want to have lunch? Right. And, and, and this is especially hard for men.
00:39:59Like women are better at that, but it's especially hard for men to do, but do that. And it's amazing
00:40:05how much fun that can actually be. I mean, by the way, sometimes it can be a dud. Sometimes you're
00:40:08going to go out to lunch with this guy who seems awesome. And then he talks about his putter and then,
00:40:12sorry. Doing this actually will start you on a path of finding a way to create an ecosystem that, that,
00:40:20that has these real friends that you actually need. I hope this is helpful. This has been incredibly
00:40:26helpful to me. Um, and it actually has, I have to tell you, changed the way that I live my life. Um,
00:40:33when, when Carlos said that to me, I realized that I was way too much deal and not enough real.
00:40:37And also recognized I was the chief executive of a big organization at the time. And I was really
00:40:42lonely. You know, it was really long. I was great. It was great going fishing with Carlos, but I needed
00:40:48friends. I needed guy friends. And, and, and so I actually started to do the work and it wasn't
00:40:55theoretical. It wasn't just social science to me at that point. And since then it's been great. I'm
00:40:59better at it. I've got a bunch of people that I, I talked to a lot. I make the time and it takes time.
00:41:05Sometimes you got to put it on your calendar, call Frank, whatever it happens to be your Frank,
00:41:09whoever that is. And when you do, you're going to love it. You're going to find that you have
00:41:16something that you could say to somebody that is one, probably one of the most beautiful things
00:41:20that they could hear, which is that I don't need you. You're useless to me. I just love you.
00:41:28You need more people like that in your life.
00:41:29All right. Let's take a couple of questions and finish. Um, Luciana writes into the website. I
00:41:35hear this one sometimes after an incredible final year studying abroad in Spain, love the, love the
00:41:41year abroad in Spain where I thrived academically, felt healthy and experienced a deep, meaningful
00:41:47relationship. Everything suddenly unraveled when I didn't get a job, my relationship ended and I had
00:41:52to return home to an environment I had outgrown. Yep. Came back to real life. I got it. How can I
00:41:58rebuild my confidence and sense of self, stay grounded in my values and faith and move forward
00:42:03without feeling stuck in what I believe was the best year of my life? It wasn't the best year of your
00:42:07life, Luciana. It wasn't. What it did was it showed you something about yourself that you really liked.
00:42:13Part of the reason that it was so easy for you to do all these things when you were doing,
00:42:17you were living abroad in Spain is because there was a different Luciana. You know,
00:42:20there's a different version of you. There's a version of you that might be more impulsive
00:42:25about a beautiful relationship, maybe finding a real friend and going deep or going home.
00:42:30When people are outside of their home zone, their personality actually changes. When I first moved to
00:42:36Spain, when I was 25 years old, I had to learn Spanish. And, and as I was learning Spanish,
00:42:41I had a completely different sense of humor. I had a different personality, as a matter of fact.
00:42:45And, and the result was I made friends in a very different way. This happens frequently when you're
00:42:49away from home. And a lot of the time you learn things about yourself that you really, really, really
00:42:54like. So that's not, I promise you, Luciana, that's not the best year of your life. The best year of your
00:42:58life is still to come. What you get to do from that year in Spain is to ask three questions and do the work
00:43:05here. Number one, question number one, what did I learn? What did I learn about myself when I was there?
00:43:10What did I learn about the way that I make relationships? What did I do? What did I
00:43:15learn about how I feel healthy? What I put in my body? You know, how I do my work? Second question,
00:43:21what do I want? Because the most important thing you learn about yourself is what you want,
00:43:25is the nature of your desire. And it turned out that what you wanted was different than what you
00:43:29thought you wanted. What do I want in my life? What is it about that that I want to return to?
00:43:36And it's not Spain. It's something about you in Spain. And third, what's my plan for getting there?
00:43:45Because that Luciana is still there and you can recreate it. See, here's the thing. You actually
00:43:51brought home all of the things that you love so much about the year in Spain in you. They're in your
00:43:57suitcase with you, but you actually have to think about it. What do I want? What did I learn? What
00:44:06do I want? And what's my plan for rebuilding that based on the tools and knowledge that I got during
00:44:11that beautiful year? Second, this is from Alan writing into office hours at ArthurBrux.com.
00:44:17Can you share some advice on how to build and maintain consistency, especially when motivation
00:44:21fades? Presumably, this is about habits and you're trying to live differently with respect to diet or
00:44:27exercise or relationships or anything, really. The answer to this is not using your prefrontal cortex
00:44:35when you're trying to do something automatic. Making things automatic so you can save your willpower
00:44:41and your cognitive bandwidth for new things. The key is doing things automatically. And the key to
00:44:47doing things automatically is habits. And the key to habits is starting small. So B.J. Fogg out of
00:44:51Stanford wrote a very interesting book called Tiny Habits. You want to start exercising? He's like,
00:44:56do one pushup, right? Doing that every day sort of wires the brain to be doing that. Now, here's how I
00:45:03think about that, about starting small. And the metaphor is for working out really works really
00:45:09well. So people ask me all the time, because I'm a fitness and health nut, because your body really
00:45:13determines a lot about your ability to be happy, because psychology is biology in so many ways. How do
00:45:19you start a workout? And a lot of people haven't and they don't know how and they want to, but they can't
00:45:23stay on it. And they go to a trainer and the trainer tells them to do 10 sets and, you know,
00:45:27body parts and the whole thing. And they're sore. And I got it. Don't do that. Okay. For the next six
00:45:33weeks, four days a week, do something for 30 minutes. Same thing. Get on an elliptical machine.
00:45:41Usually aerobic activity before you start doing resistance activities is the best way to go,
00:45:46because what we're trying to do is to build the habits. You're not going to try to build all your
00:45:49muscles, but build the habits so that you can go forward. So that means like Monday,
00:45:54Wednesday, Friday, Saturday, do one half hour, same workout for six weeks. That's 42 days.
00:46:03Only then will it have been established as a habit. There's a lot of literature that shows that habit
00:46:07formation takes about 42 days for most things, especially physical activity. And so that's what
00:46:11I recommend. Same thing, same thing, same thing. The sameness is critical for programming in the habit.
00:46:17Don't mix it up. Like that's what I'm telling you. If you want to start eating healthy, I will give you
00:46:22a health maintenance plan, but you got to eat the same eight to 10 things over and over and over and
00:46:27over again until it becomes an actual habit until your body adjusts. So that's what I recommend. And
00:46:32this is the same thing with anything else. Break it down into something small, something manageable,
00:46:36something repeatable, and do it until it actually becomes a habit. And then the consistency takes care of
00:46:42itself because your brain will say, that's the thing that I do. That's true with anything. We're done.
00:46:47Let me know what your thoughts are at officehours@arthurbrooks.com. Like and subscribe. Boom. Hit
00:46:53the subscribe button, please. We need the support and we need the algorithmic gods to help us in all
00:46:59the ways that we reach as many people as possible. That's on Spotify and YouTube and Apple. Leave a
00:47:03comment. I'll read it. Follow me on Instagram, on LinkedIn, on all the other social platforms where we
00:47:08have a lot of content that are not in the podcast. And do order The Meaning of Life. Did I say The
00:47:14Meaning of Life? The title of my book is The Meaning of Your Life. And that's really important to learn
00:47:18more about this book, about this movement, and how you can be part of it. And if you want, there's
00:47:23somebody who's struggling, get them a copy too. Thanks so much for watching. See you next week.
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