Transcript
00:00:00You may be under the illusion that it's a good idea to look in the mirror and say "You're perfect just the way you are."
00:00:08That's a problem. If you can't change to be better because you're as good as you could possibly be, you're perfect right now,
00:00:14then the conclusion that the world is all screwed up and tilted against you is going to create a whole lot of bitterness and resentment and helplessness.
00:00:22So we face a dilemma, don't we? We want to feel better and make other people feel better.
00:00:27But people's tendency to do so through self-enhancement and self-esteem boosting is a short-lived solution with possibly high and enduring ultimate costs.
00:00:39The truth of the matter is, you're not perfect and neither am I. And that's incredibly good news.
00:00:44Hey friends, welcome to Office Hours. I'm Arthur Brooks.
00:00:54This is a show about love and happiness, about how you can have more of both.
00:00:58But just as importantly, how you can become somebody who brings more of these to people that you love, to everybody as a matter of fact.
00:01:06One of the things that I try to bring up in the show again and again is the fact that when you become a teacher of happiness,
00:01:12that's how you become a happier person on an ongoing and sustained basis.
00:01:16The secret to happiness is learning the science, I believe, but also changing your habits and teaching those ideas to other people.
00:01:24And that's really what the show is all about.
00:01:26One of the reasons that I have this show is because I'm dedicated to lifting people up and bringing them together in bonds of happiness and love as a scientist.
00:01:33That's what I'm dedicated to my life doing and I'd love to have you in the movement with me.
00:01:36So thank you for watching the show. If you're a long-time viewer, I appreciate it.
00:01:40If you're a first-time viewer, I hope you enjoy it. In either case, please do share.
00:01:44Share these ideas with other people, you as the teacher, share the podcast, share the link, bring more people into the movement.
00:01:51If you have any ideas about future shows, if you have any ideas or criticisms or corrections, please let us know.
00:01:57Office hours at arthurbrooks.com.
00:01:59And don't forget to leave a review and comments on Spotify or Apple or wherever you're watching this show.
00:02:07Also, while you're at it, please do order a copy of my new book, The Meaning of Your Life, Finding Purpose in an Age of Emptiness,
00:02:14which, thanks to you, is the number one New York Times bestseller. I appreciate that.
00:02:18Pick up a second copy for somebody who's looking for the meaning in their life,
00:02:21which, by the way, is everybody.
00:02:22So anyway, thanks to all of you for making the book a success and for making this show a success.
00:02:27It's spreading more every week. We have more listeners and viewers every week than we had in the last.
00:02:32Hi, friends. I'm Arthur Brooks.
00:02:34And I'm Esther Brooks. Hello.
00:02:37If you're married and you and your partner are looking for ways to deepen your relationship,
00:02:41Esther and I have something exciting to share with you.
00:02:44This June, at the Modern Elder Academy's beautiful ranch in Santa Fe, New Mexico,
00:02:49Esther and I will be leading a three-day in-person retreat for couples.
00:02:54It's called The Meaning of Us.
00:02:56My recent work on the science and ancient wisdom of meaning has led me to think more
00:03:01and more about romantic relationships and how they're a unique source of meaning in life.
00:03:07Most couples never stop to ask each other the big questions.
00:03:11Why? Because ordinary life always gets in the way and it happens to us too.
00:03:16But there's another problem that I see today.
00:03:19Many hardworking spouses, strivers, fall into a familiar pattern.
00:03:24They try to earn love in the same way they earn the world's rewards.
00:03:29But love can't be earned. It's a gift freely given.
00:03:33That's a mysterious idea that we'll unpack together with you.
00:03:37This is not a couples therapy.
00:03:39Nope.
00:03:40No, no, no, no.
00:03:41This is for couples who are good together but who want to grow deeper.
00:03:46But most importantly, you will live with a concrete vision for your next chapter.
00:03:51This vision will be rooted in your own values.
00:03:54This is the only time we're doing this together this year.
00:03:56So if you want to take your marriage even deeper, come join us this June in Santa Fe.
00:04:02We'd love to work with you.
00:04:04Come on.
00:04:05Today I want to talk about a trend in our society that I think is deeply mistaken
00:04:14and it may be hurting you even though you don't know it.
00:04:17You may be under the illusion that it's a good idea to look in the mirror and say,
00:04:23"You're perfect just the way you are."
00:04:26This is kind of a central tenet of the self-esteem movement.
00:04:30Or you might think it's a good idea to tell your kid, "You're perfect just the way you are."
00:04:33That's a problem.
00:04:35That's what I want to talk about today.
00:04:37The truth of the matter is you're not perfect and neither am I.
00:04:41And that's incredibly good news.
00:04:44I'm going to give you some relief today in your imperfection and give you permission
00:04:49to start making progress in your life that will bring you tremendous happiness.
00:04:53Today's theme?
00:04:54You're not perfect.
00:04:56When you tell somebody or you are told that you're perfect just the way that you are,
00:05:00which by the way, we hear this constantly.
00:05:03You probably heard this in elementary school.
00:05:05You hear this in kind of internet memes.
00:05:07You've seen this as kind of this bumper sticker psychology
00:05:10that everybody's perfect just the way that they are.
00:05:12I'm okay.
00:05:13You're okay.
00:05:14Man, this started when I was a little kid.
00:05:15This was before my time in the 1960s.
00:05:18There was literally a best-selling book called "I'm Okay, You're Okay."
00:05:21Well, here's the truth.
00:05:22I'm not okay and neither are you.
00:05:24And we can actually get better.
00:05:25Isn't that great?
00:05:26But when you tell somebody that or you tell yourself that or somebody tells you that,
00:05:31here's the problem.
00:05:32Here's the psychological problem.
00:05:33This is a social science show after all.
00:05:35It creates what we call cognitive dissonance.
00:05:38Now, as most of you are aware, cognitive dissonance happens, occurs.
00:05:42It's the idea that there are two competing truths.
00:05:46You hear this truth and you hear that truth and they compete with one another
00:05:49and that creates a whole lot of discomfort.
00:05:51We don't like having cognitive dissonance and so we need to resolve it.
00:05:54Here's how it works.
00:05:56You don't feel perfect.
00:05:58You don't feel perfect.
00:05:59You don't.
00:06:00And somebody says you're perfect.
00:06:02That creates a cognitive dissonance.
00:06:04Are you perfect or are you imperfect?
00:06:06So how do you resolve that cognitive dissonance?
00:06:08You generally do so by reaching one of two logical conclusions.
00:06:13Either I feel crummy even though I'm as good as I can possibly be
00:06:19because the status quo is horrible and there's no scope for self-improvement.
00:06:23You're the best you could possibly be and the best is this?
00:06:27You say to yourself, that's grim, man.
00:06:31I mean, for almost everybody that's grim because life could be a lot better for most people.
00:06:35That's the whole adventure of self-improvement.
00:06:38Making life better.
00:06:40And so when you tell somebody you're as good as you can get
00:06:43and they don't feel like they're worth all that much,
00:06:46one way to resolve that cognitive dissonance is that life sucks.
00:06:50And that's just the way it is.
00:06:51That's not what you meant when you tell somebody that.
00:06:53But that's one way that they could actually resolve that.
00:06:56And I'm going to show you later evidence that that is in point of fact what a lot of people do.
00:07:00The second way you can resolve the cognitive dissonance is saying,
00:07:05yeah, you know, I am perfect the way I am and things are crummy,
00:07:08which is evidence that the outside world is to blame for my unhappiness.
00:07:12In other words, there's something wrong, not with me, but with the whole outside world.
00:07:16And this is a dangerous way of living because there are a lot of people who go through life
00:07:20saying, I can't be happy until the world changes.
00:07:23I mean, there's a lot of things that the world does need to do to change.
00:07:25But the truth of the matter is that your core competency is in you.
00:07:28And if you can't change to be better because you're as good as you could possibly be,
00:07:32you're perfect right now,
00:07:34then the conclusion that the world is all screwed up and tilted against you
00:07:38is going to create a whole lot of bitterness and resentment and helplessness.
00:07:42In other words, this is a problem to believe this about yourself or to tell this to other people,
00:07:47because it leads to either a kind of depression or a kind of bitterness.
00:07:52And neither one of those is good.
00:07:54It leads to a temporary good feeling.
00:07:56And then one of these two scenarios typically, and we don't want either of these.
00:08:00That's why I'm doing the show today, because we can do much, much better.
00:08:04We don't just have to criticize this and kind of lay into the old self-esteem movement.
00:08:08We can just do something better than that.
00:08:10Here's the truth.
00:08:11You're not perfect.
00:08:12And neither is anybody else.
00:08:14But as I mentioned before, that's incredibly good news,
00:08:16because if you accept the reality of your imperfection,
00:08:19you have hope of improving yourself and your life and you'll be happier.
00:08:22That's what we want, right?
00:08:24Okay.
00:08:25Now, why would we want the illusion of perfection even if it's wrong?
00:08:30And the answer to that is what we call self-enhancement bias.
00:08:34Psychologists have been measuring this for a long, long time.
00:08:37There are a lot of ways that social scientists look into this in the research.
00:08:40They look at the self-enhancement bias,
00:08:42which is this tendency to exaggerate our positive qualities
00:08:45and compare ourselves favorably with other people.
00:08:47I'll put an interesting article about this, kind of a classic article from 1999 about this,
00:08:53called "Taking Time Seriously, a Theory of Socioemotional Selectivity,"
00:08:58that lays out the idea of self-enhancement bias.
00:09:01But this leads to all sorts of distortions in perception,
00:09:05that we want to exaggerate positive qualities so we feel good about ourselves,
00:09:09which gives us this kind of ebullience, this ability to get through the day,
00:09:13while we'll exaggerate the bad qualities of other people
00:09:16so that we feel better in comparison to them, because it's all comparative.
00:09:20Remember, I've talked in the show an awful lot about,
00:09:23in evolutionary biology, the fact that people live in hierarchical,
00:09:26that human beings were evolved to live in a hierarchical group of 30 to 50 individuals.
00:09:32And so the result of it is that you're evolved to feel better about yourself
00:09:36if you're rising in the hierarchy, meaning you have better qualities,
00:09:38and they have worse qualities.
00:09:39And so we've developed a psychological bias
00:09:41because of this evolved tendency to want to rise in hierarchies,
00:09:47which we still do today.
00:09:48Now, there's all kinds of novel ways that we show the self-enhancement bias,
00:09:52some of which are pretty funny.
00:09:54Asking people, for example, "Are you an above-average driver?"
00:09:5780% say yes.
00:09:59Well, that's not really possible, is it?
00:10:01And I know a lot of people who think they're above-average drivers
00:10:04who are not above-average drivers.
00:10:06I, for one, recognize I'm in the 20% of drivers like,
00:10:10"Yep, I'm not above average."
00:10:12I drive 2,500 miles a year.
00:10:14So if you see me on the road, look out.
00:10:18Not very experienced.
00:10:20I'm not looking at my phone.
00:10:22I'm just kind of spaced out. Anyway.
00:10:24The point is that in any sort of interaction with other people,
00:10:28we're kind of positioning ourselves all the time
00:10:30and looking for ways that we're coming out on top, right?
00:10:33That we look a little bit more handsome or beautiful,
00:10:36that we look a little bit more clever, a little smarter.
00:10:39We're a little bit more right than the other people.
00:10:41And we exaggerate it.
00:10:42That's that self-enhancement bias, which is kind of an illusion.
00:10:45It's a distortion of reality.
00:10:47Think about it.
00:10:48When there's a lawsuit, a civil lawsuit between any two individuals,
00:10:52they both literally think they're right.
00:10:53I mean, you might think about the person who's suing you.
00:10:56Well, that evil SOB, that person, he knows he's wrong.
00:11:00Actually, he doesn't.
00:11:01He almost certainly thinks he's right and thinks you're wrong
00:11:04and you think you're right and you think he's wrong.
00:11:07It's the judge's job to adjudicate despite the fact
00:11:10that you both have a tremendous amount of self-enhancement bias.
00:11:12Judges are really, really good at sorting through
00:11:15the psychological biases that we have.
00:11:17That's kind of their gig when they're competent.
00:11:20Divorces are all based on the same thing.
00:11:22I've talked to a lot of couples who've divorced
00:11:24and you talk to both of them.
00:11:24It's like, it's always the other person's fault.
00:11:26I mean, not always.
00:11:27Sometimes they'll say, I screwed up, but not generally.
00:11:30Generally, it'll be, she didn't understand me.
00:11:32And she'll say, he was not emotionally available
00:11:37or something like that.
00:11:37It's almost, I was good and they were bad
00:11:40and that's why we broke up.
00:11:42Those are all based on this concept of self-enhancement bias,
00:11:45where you rate yourself more highly on positive traits.
00:11:48People do this on positive moral traits.
00:11:51I'm more hardworking than others.
00:11:53I'm more honest than others.
00:11:54I'm warmer than others.
00:11:56And they tend to rate other people more negatively
00:11:58on they're lazier than I am.
00:12:00They're colder than I am.
00:12:01They're more insecure than I am.
00:12:03Great paper on this from 2017 called
00:12:05"The Illusion of Moral Superiority."
00:12:07I'll put that in the notes.
00:12:08I love that paper.
00:12:09I've written about it.
00:12:10It's in social and psychological personality science.
00:12:13It happened to McKay.
00:12:14Now, this trend is most pronounced for young adults
00:12:18and middle-aged people who rank themselves
00:12:20as better than average on lots and lots of measures.
00:12:22You get, you have less self-enhancement bias
00:12:25as you grow older.
00:12:26You're also less likely to hide a lot
00:12:28of your negative characteristics as you get older.
00:12:30And part of it is 'cause you care a little bit less.
00:12:33And you got to trust me on this.
00:12:34You know, it's, people are more likely to try
00:12:36to hide a receding hairline.
00:12:38I mean, at this point, if I tried to hide a receding hairline,
00:12:41that would be, I'd have to like literally put a bird's nest
00:12:43on my head or something.
00:12:44It would be no way.
00:12:45But people do that when they feel
00:12:48that something is falling behind more
00:12:49when they're in early adulthood and middle adulthood
00:12:52than they do when they get older.
00:12:53By the way, this is one of the great constellations
00:12:56of age is that you're less likely to fall prey
00:12:58to self-enhancement bias, which frees you
00:13:01from the two resolutions of cognitive dissonance,
00:13:05which is either this is the best, that sucks,
00:13:07or everybody's out to get me.
00:13:09Neither one of those is any good.
00:13:10And most people, as they get older,
00:13:12it's one of the reasons that personality scientists
00:13:15have shown that neuroticism dramatically falls on average
00:13:18for people once they get past 50 years old.
00:13:20So if you have a lot of struggle with depression and anxiety
00:13:23and you're in your 20s or 30s, you can look forward
00:13:26to feeling better about it in no small part
00:13:28because you're going to be less biased about yourself.
00:13:30You're going to be more realistic about yourself.
00:13:32Now, what I want to do is accelerate that in this show.
00:13:35I want to accelerate that so that you can get
00:13:37beyond these self-enhancement biases now
00:13:41and get on with the business of living
00:13:43so that you can feel better about your life.
00:13:45Now, why do young adults do this so much?
00:13:47And it has very much to do with the idea of protection
00:13:52against the mental pain that comes
00:13:54with an invidious comparison with other people.
00:13:57And it does hurt.
00:14:00You know, there's, as a matter of fact,
00:14:01when you're judged to be insufficient in something,
00:14:03neuroscientists find that the limbic system is very active.
00:14:06There's a place in your limbic system,
00:14:07I've mentioned it before on the show,
00:14:09called the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex,
00:14:11DACC, little D, capital A, capital C, capital C.
00:14:15You can Google that if you want.
00:14:16And that's one of the parts of your brain
00:14:18that's a pain center of your brain,
00:14:20but it's especially implicated in affective pain.
00:14:23That is to say, emotional pain.
00:14:26Rejection.
00:14:26There's a very interesting paper that shows
00:14:28that when people are playing in an fMRI machine,
00:14:31they're looking at their brains
00:14:32and they're throwing a ball back and forth to each other.
00:14:34And suddenly on the screen that they're looking at,
00:14:37they start to be excluded from the ball tossing game,
00:14:41that the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex
00:14:42becomes more active because they've been socially excluded.
00:14:45In this dumb little trivial way,
00:14:46it makes you feel crummy about yourself.
00:14:48One of the things that you don't want
00:14:50is to feel bad about yourself.
00:14:51You don't want that aversive emotion of affective pain.
00:14:56And so one of the ways that you try to avoid it
00:14:58is by lying to yourself, is what it comes down to.
00:15:01That's what, and by the way,
00:15:03people who love you lie to you
00:15:05so that you don't feel that pain.
00:15:06I mean, I have kids, I have grandkids,
00:15:09but I don't want my kids to feel bad about themselves.
00:15:13I love them.
00:15:14So the result of it is that I'm likely to tell them a lie.
00:15:18You're perfect the way you are, even if they aren't.
00:15:21I want their dorsal anterior cingulate cortex
00:15:23to not be overly active.
00:15:25Boy, am I a nerd.
00:15:27Anyway, you get the whole point.
00:15:28Now, this is also really interesting
00:15:31in the way that we study it,
00:15:33not when we're looking at people
00:15:34who are trying to avoid depressive symptoms
00:15:37or sadness or anxiety,
00:15:39but people who have these symptoms already.
00:15:41There is a phenomenon well-studied in psychology
00:15:44called depressive realism.
00:15:46This is the case in which people who are suffering
00:15:49from mood disorders, most notably clinical depression,
00:15:52they more accurately assess their own characteristics
00:15:55and fall prey to less self-enhancement bias
00:15:58than do people who are not depressed.
00:16:00They're less likely to lie to themselves.
00:16:03And so, for example, when you leave the room,
00:16:06it's very possible that people go like, "Ugh," right?
00:16:11They say they do something that's not flattering to you
00:16:14when you leave the room sometimes, right?
00:16:16People who are not depressed,
00:16:18they literally don't know that.
00:16:20When people who are depressed,
00:16:21they usually assume that's true,
00:16:23and they're often right.
00:16:24They know that.
00:16:25But that's hard.
00:16:26That's hard on your dorsal anterior cingulate cortex.
00:16:29That's a difficult thing to bear up to.
00:16:31But this is another way of pointing out
00:16:34that people will relieve an immediate hit
00:16:37to their life satisfaction,
00:16:39to their mood, to their positive affect
00:16:44by lying to themselves a little bit.
00:16:46Okay, now it might seem like I'm making the case
00:16:48for self-enhancement bias.
00:16:51It might seem like I'm making the case
00:16:53that you should tell yourself you're just perfect
00:16:55so that you can avoid this pain.
00:16:56But I'm going to make the case right now, very shortly,
00:16:59that you shouldn't because the cost is not worth the benefit.
00:17:03The long-term cost is not worth the benefit.
00:17:05And it won't make you clinically depressed.
00:17:08It's just that clinically depressed people
00:17:10don't tend to do it, okay?
00:17:11So this is what I'm going to tell you
00:17:12about being honest with yourself is not going to make you sad.
00:17:15I promise it's minor pain for big benefit down the line.
00:17:18But let's get that straight.
00:17:19But once again, this is not just what we tell ourselves.
00:17:22We don't just have self-enhancement bias.
00:17:24We also have a bias toward the enhancement of people
00:17:27that we love because we want to avoid that short-term pain.
00:17:31And so somebody says, you know, they're wearing some,
00:17:33you know, loud floral pants.
00:17:35Do you like them?
00:17:36And you're like, oh, it looks great
00:17:37when it looks awful, right?
00:17:39You're perfect the way you are,
00:17:41even though you look like a clown in those pants.
00:17:44When somebody is clearly at fault in their relationship,
00:17:46you say, you're not at fault, even though we are.
00:17:49That's a lie.
00:17:50And we do that kind of lie all the time
00:17:52because we want to blow up the good feelings
00:17:55of that person in the short run.
00:17:56Or once again, you're perfect just the way you are.
00:18:00Don't change.
00:18:01I love your little quirks.
00:18:02Oh, I get it.
00:18:04You know, you have a hard time maintaining friendships
00:18:06and romantic relationships with other people.
00:18:07It's just because you're quirky.
00:18:09You haven't found your person yet.
00:18:10You're perfect the way you are.
00:18:12It's a lie.
00:18:13You know, and it's such a lie as we know that there's,
00:18:15you know, hilariously Al Franken,
00:18:16the former senator from Minnesota,
00:18:18but better known even than that is being a comedian
00:18:20who has for a long time on "Saturday Night Live."
00:18:22And he had a character he used to play called Stuart Smalley.
00:18:26Any of you who's my age, you'll remember this.
00:18:27Where he used to, he was a self-improvement guy.
00:18:30His whole motto was "I'm good enough, I'm smart enough,
00:18:34and doggone it, people like me."
00:18:37That's looking in the mirror and saying you're just perfect.
00:18:39But it's idiotic and ridiculous
00:18:42because it's a caricature of what we all do,
00:18:45what it comes down to.
00:18:46Okay, so here's the point that I'm trying to make.
00:18:49I'm not going to deny the self-enhancement
00:18:52that you're perfect the way you are feels good in the short term.
00:18:55But I will make the case that it's a terrible long-term solution
00:18:59to life's real problems.
00:19:01Sooner or later, despite your self-enhancement,
00:19:04you will be confronted with a painful adjustment
00:19:07in the form of the truth.
00:19:09And when that comes after you've been engaging
00:19:11in self-enhancement bias, you're not going to like the result.
00:19:14And I've got a lot of the data here that I want to talk about.
00:19:17Study from 2001 in the Journal of Personality Social Psychology.
00:19:21And again, I don't know how they got this past
00:19:23an internal review board because, man, this would be a hard experiment to run ethically.
00:19:28But two groups of students.
00:19:29One group was told you're phenomenal.
00:19:32And the other got their actual grades, right?
00:19:34One was like, you're good at everything.
00:19:36And the other is like, you're good at this.
00:19:37You're bad at this.
00:19:38You're falling behind here.
00:19:39You're below average, et cetera.
00:19:41And they wanted to know how it actually affected their feelings
00:19:44and then how it affected their performance
00:19:46and then how they felt in the long run.
00:19:48So three basic questions.
00:19:49Number one, how does it make you feel when you're in each one of these groups?
00:19:52How does it affect your academic performance?
00:19:55Because that's really what the compliments or criticisms were all about.
00:19:58And then how do you feel in the long run, okay?
00:20:00And what they found was, sure enough, in the short run,
00:20:04the people who are getting buttered up by the researchers,
00:20:07they felt great about themselves, much better about themselves
00:20:09than the ones who were getting the truth,
00:20:11the unvarnished truth about their academic performance.
00:20:13Part two, those who were having their self-esteem blown up by the researchers,
00:20:19they didn't perform better.
00:20:21As a matter of fact, they did a little worse
00:20:23than those who actually got their true academic performance told to them, right?
00:20:27So in other words, self-esteem didn't improve their performance.
00:20:30And this is super important
00:20:31because the self-esteem movement tells you just the opposite.
00:20:34If you butter these kids up in school, they're going to do so much better.
00:20:37Wrong.
00:20:38The data say it doesn't work.
00:20:40And number three, most importantly,
00:20:42that they tended to fail at their academic expectations,
00:20:44which led to lower self-esteem over the long run, okay?
00:20:48That's the important thing because you know what? We live in the long run.
00:20:51College lasts a couple of years or, you know, in my case it actually took 11.
00:20:57But anyway, I digress.
00:20:59You're going to live for the rest of your life is what it comes down to.
00:21:03And so the truth is much better in the long run
00:21:06so that you can actually make adjustments, be accurate with yourself,
00:21:11have self-improvement and all the things I'm about to talk about.
00:21:14So that's experimental research with human subjects
00:21:16that shows that all that stuff is nonsense.
00:21:18Here's a bigger problem.
00:21:19Here's the meta problem about that.
00:21:21Many people believe,
00:21:23and I tend to think that there's a lot of plausibility to this argument,
00:21:26the self-esteem movement,
00:21:28which has been so incredibly important over the past few decades with young people,
00:21:32has actually led to many of the mood disorders that we see today.
00:21:35How?
00:21:37By telling young people you're a winner, your participation trophies,
00:21:41to say that, you know, everybody's perfect just the way that they are,
00:21:44has led to the cognitive dissonance
00:21:46and the unproductive resolution of those dissonances that I talked about earlier.
00:21:50For example, if you tell young people
00:21:53when they're in a high state of synaptic plasticity,
00:21:57when their brains are forming, in other words,
00:22:00again and again and again, you're perfect just the way that you are.
00:22:03And it turns out that they run into all sorts of problems academically,
00:22:07socially, economically, emotionally.
00:22:10They run into all the problems that people run into, especially in adolescence.
00:22:14Then some of them are going to conclude that life is just crummy,
00:22:17that I'm perfect the way that I am.
00:22:20I can't get any better.
00:22:21They told me, basically, I'm insuperable.
00:22:25I feel terrible about myself.
00:22:26I don't like my life.
00:22:27And that leads to depression and anxiety.
00:22:30There's a very plausible connection
00:22:32between telling kids things that will blow up their self-enhancement,
00:22:36their self-esteem earlier,
00:22:37and their depression and anxiety later.
00:22:39It's very possible that a big part of this tripling of depression,
00:22:42approximately a doubling of anxiety, depending on how you count it,
00:22:45among adolescents and young adults,
00:22:47has everything to do with the fact that we lied to them when they were young,
00:22:49that we didn't give them the honest truth when they were young.
00:22:51That's the first kind of resolution of cognitive dissonance.
00:22:54The second type is maybe even more dangerous,
00:22:56which is how you will learn that the world is against you,
00:22:59that you'll hate the world.
00:23:01And that's happened, too.
00:23:02The angry activism of college students, high school students,
00:23:05and college students from the past decade or so,
00:23:08that's led to huge amounts of misery.
00:23:11I've talked about this periodically on the show.
00:23:13I've written about it a great deal,
00:23:14about the fact that the anger against the world,
00:23:17the idea that previous generations robbed me.
00:23:20I mean, again, I'm not against justice.
00:23:23I'm not against the truth of all the ways
00:23:25that we've harmed each other generationally.
00:23:27But the truth is it's unambiguously the case
00:23:30that we have more anger and fear and sadness from young people
00:23:34than at any other time since I've seen the data.
00:23:37And there's more activism than what we've seen before,
00:23:40which very plausibly is a resolution
00:23:42of the cognitive dissonance that comes from telling them
00:23:45that you're perfect the way that you are,
00:23:47and when they feel crummy,
00:23:48it must be because the world is unjust.
00:23:50Now, the world is unjust,
00:23:52but that's not the right resolution for it,
00:23:55because we want people to be able
00:23:57to take control of their lives.
00:23:58And I know that probably all of you agree with me,
00:24:01which is why you watch a show
00:24:03about how to take control of your life
00:24:05and how to feel better about your life.
00:24:06So we face a dilemma, don't we?
00:24:08We want to feel better and make other people feel better,
00:24:11but people's tendency to do so through self-enhancement
00:24:15and self-esteem boosting is a short-lived solution
00:24:19with possibly high and enduring ultimate costs.
00:24:23So what should we do for ourselves and for others?
00:24:27I'm going to recommend four things, okay?
00:24:29Right now, you're like Neo in The Matrix.
00:24:32You can keep scrolling, experiencing a simulation of life,
00:24:36or you can wake up to how your attention
00:24:39is being harvested for profit.
00:24:40It's happening to people all over the world right now.
00:24:43You don't want to be productized like this anymore,
00:24:47but it's hard.
00:24:48Tech addiction is so potent because it's been designed
00:24:51to tap into your dopamine system,
00:24:53just like heroin, porn, gambling.
00:24:55You've got the cravings, you're addicted.
00:24:57You don't like it, and I don't either,
00:24:58but I can't just tell you to stop doing it.
00:25:00That's hard.
00:25:01If you want to break free from the system,
00:25:03you need an incentive.
00:25:05Here's one, why don't you join a phone company
00:25:08that pays you not to use your phone?
00:25:10If you want to reduce brain rot, get Noble Mobile.
00:25:13It pays you to use less data.
00:25:15It gives you an incentive to unplug.
00:25:17Noble Mobile is the phone plan that finally aligns incentives
00:25:21with what's good for you.
00:25:22Use less data, earn money back.
00:25:24And when you do, you'll be living once again in real life,
00:25:28and you're going to like how it feels.
00:25:29Here's a four-step approach to being truthful with yourself
00:25:32and getting better and making life better
00:25:34and being happier at the same time,
00:25:35or doing the same thing for people
00:25:37that you love in your life, maybe even your kids.
00:25:38Number one, here's the truth.
00:25:42You're not perfect, but you're normal
00:25:44because nobody's perfect.
00:25:46This is incredibly important to understand
00:25:49because once again, our Pleistocene brains
00:25:51that are still back in our tribe or band
00:25:56of 30 to 50 hierarchically arranged individuals,
00:25:59we feel if we're not as good as somebody else,
00:26:03that that's abnormal.
00:26:05And we want to be normal by being better than other people.
00:26:09But the truth is that that's wrong too.
00:26:11You're imperfect, but it's really,
00:26:12really normal to be imperfect.
00:26:14To have pain is normal.
00:26:16To feel uncomfortable, to be sad is normal.
00:26:20To feel inadequate, to feel insecure, it's normal.
00:26:23And it is so important to tell yourself
00:26:25and to tell your kids, yeah, you know, I feel crummy today.
00:26:28That's a really, really normal thing.
00:26:30You know, that's a metacognitive practice.
00:26:32This is something that people do in Vipassana meditation
00:26:35or many forms of prayer to say, I feel insecure about myself.
00:26:39I feel sad about myself.
00:26:41I'm feeling bad about these particular circumstances.
00:26:43Why is that?
00:26:44To be introspective about that.
00:26:46To acknowledge the fact that these are normal human emotions
00:26:49being produced by a human brain that contains a functioning
00:26:52healthy limbic system as a source of signals
00:26:55about the outside world.
00:26:57There's nothing bad about that.
00:26:58There's nothing normal about that.
00:26:59And then to say, this information is actually useful to me,
00:27:03very useful to me.
00:27:05Stay tuned, because we don't want to leave it at that.
00:27:07That's just step one.
00:27:08I'm imperfect, and I'm normal, and so are you.
00:27:13Step two, I accept this.
00:27:16I accept myself.
00:27:17I mean, again, that's sort of the I'm OK and you're OK.
00:27:20And, you know, I sort of trashed that a minute ago.
00:27:23And I still would, you know, if this
00:27:26were the only piece of advice, accepting yourself
00:27:29is one step in this.
00:27:31But it is an important step is to accept this.
00:27:34And again, this is not to say I'm OK,
00:27:35but to accept the fact that this is reality
00:27:37is the way that this actually works.
00:27:39I accept my imperfections.
00:27:41And I treat myself with a kind of compassion.
00:27:44You know, we often are so much harder on ourselves
00:27:47than we are to other people.
00:27:48You know, I recognize that because I'm such a striver,
00:27:51and I'm such a perfectionist in everything that I do.
00:27:54And I realize, like, if anybody talked to me the way
00:27:56that I talked to myself, I'd be so insulted.
00:27:59I mean, I would be scandalized if somebody
00:28:02talked to me that way.
00:28:03It would be hard for me to forgive anybody
00:28:05who talked to me the way that I talked to myself.
00:28:06You moron.
00:28:07Or something dumb, like taking a right
00:28:09when I was supposed to go left.
00:28:10Like, anybody did that and I was the passenger in the car.
00:28:13I'd say, I think you needed to go right there.
00:28:15Oh, OK.
00:28:15But me?
00:28:17You get the point.
00:28:18And so it's having a compassion about yourself
00:28:21is really important.
00:28:22There's a great article on this, by the way,
00:28:24in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin,
00:28:26which is a great journal.
00:28:27From me to you, self-compassion predicts acceptance
00:28:31of one's and others' imperfections.
00:28:33Acceptance.
00:28:33Not celebrating it, but accepting it as normal is step two.
00:28:39Step three, work to improve.
00:28:41Now, here this gets really important
00:28:43because if you stopped with, I'm OK, you're OK,
00:28:46then you can do something that a lot of people
00:28:48have done in the last decade, which
00:28:50is to make your flaws into a sort of identity.
00:28:53Right?
00:28:54My, you know, things about my personality,
00:28:56things that ordinarily you'd want to improve.
00:28:58It's like, no, that's who I am.
00:29:00And use it kind of as a cudgel against other people.
00:29:02Don't do that.
00:29:03Your flaws shouldn't be your identity.
00:29:05You shouldn't relate to yourself through your,
00:29:09you know, the things that you should want to improve.
00:29:11Doing that is to say, is to resolve the cognitive dissonance
00:29:15that life is crummy, the world is against you.
00:29:18And so therefore you're going to try to, you know,
00:29:20not just make the best of it.
00:29:21You're going to use it as a source of self-understanding.
00:29:24Very unhelpful to you.
00:29:27Very bad for your mental health to do that.
00:29:29To say, you should acknowledge I'm flawed in this way right now.
00:29:34That is not to say I will always have this flaw.
00:29:38On the contrary, self-acceptance can
00:29:39and should facilitate improvement.
00:29:41Now, here's a good example of this.
00:29:44I learned Spanish as an adult.
00:29:46I moved to Spain when I was 25 years old.
00:29:48I did that because I was chasing a girl
00:29:51that I had fallen in love with to Barcelona.
00:29:53And I moved there.
00:29:55I didn't know it worked.
00:29:56I knew no Spanish.
00:29:57It was so dumb.
00:29:58I studied German in high school.
00:30:01That's useful.
00:30:02You go to Germany, they all speak better English than we do.
00:30:04You go to Spain, nobody speaks a word of English,
00:30:06including the girl I was in love with.
00:30:08Nothing.
00:30:09So I had to learn Spanish.
00:30:11And I talked like a toddler at 25.
00:30:14It was unbelievably humiliating.
00:30:16I didn't say I'm just crummy in Spanish
00:30:18and then never try to talk to anybody
00:30:20and shut in on myself and say, well, Spanish is stupid.
00:30:24No.
00:30:24I said, you know, I made myself into a kid again.
00:30:28You know, I have my grandsons.
00:30:31I have four grandsons growing every day, it seems.
00:30:34Well, they're growing.
00:30:35But the number appears to be growing every day, too.
00:30:37And when they're learning to talk, nobody's like, you idiot.
00:30:39You just mispronounced hospital.
00:30:42You said it, hopital.
00:30:43I mean, idiot, no.
00:30:46On the contrary, you say that's a funny little flaw.
00:30:49And then you tell them the word.
00:30:50And over time, they actually learn it.
00:30:52And you treat yourself with the same self-compassion.
00:30:54And you work to improve.
00:30:55And over time, sure enough, after about a year,
00:30:58which was slower than some people and faster than others,
00:31:00I could go out of the house without rehearsing
00:31:04what I was going to say.
00:31:05And now, you know, years and years
00:31:07and decades and decades later, I can lecture in Spanish.
00:31:09And I can live in Spain.
00:31:12And the other day, I did live TV in Spanish.
00:31:14It's my second language.
00:31:16I'm almost as comfortable as I am in English.
00:31:18I still have an accent, by the way.
00:31:20But you get the idea.
00:31:21Self-enhancement says that that whole idea,
00:31:25you won't make progress if you pretend
00:31:27you can already speak fluently.
00:31:29And you also won't make progress if you make
00:31:31your lack of fluency your identity.
00:31:33You get my point.
00:31:35Work to improve, step three.
00:31:36Step four, don't blame other people for your flaw.
00:31:40Now, again, sometimes other people are to blame for stuff.
00:31:43But it still doesn't help.
00:31:44It still doesn't help.
00:31:46There's a very interesting body of literature
00:31:48that shows that people who take responsibility
00:31:51for things that aren't even their responsibility,
00:31:53they tend to do better in life.
00:31:56And you can kind of figure out why that's the case.
00:31:58They're sort of life entrepreneurs, right?
00:32:00They find solutions to things.
00:32:02But if you're wallowing in the idea
00:32:04that everything is somebody else's fault,
00:32:07you're very unlikely to be finding productive solutions
00:32:11to the problems in your life.
00:32:12And you're going to get less happy.
00:32:14Marty Seligman, Martin Seligman,
00:32:16University of Pennsylvania, my great mentor.
00:32:19Marty Seligman, he created a whole body of research
00:32:22on something called learned helplessness.
00:32:24Now, learned helplessness occurs when you feel like
00:32:28nothing that you can do can make anything better
00:32:30because everything is out of your control,
00:32:32ordinarily because of the actions of other people
00:32:35that kind of are conspiring against you.
00:32:37And he said that this is a huge predictor of depression,
00:32:40a huge predictor of anxiety.
00:32:42And by the way, it makes it so people can't ever solve problems.
00:32:46Even if they're not the cause of the problems,
00:32:47they have no possibility of solving these problems,
00:32:50which is really, really unproductive.
00:32:52He's shown this with laboratory animals.
00:32:54He showed it with people.
00:32:55And people get just sort of depressed mood
00:32:58and in a sort of permanent state.
00:33:01Learned helplessness is horrible.
00:33:04And it comes because you figure there's nothing you can do
00:33:07because things are out of your control,
00:33:08ordinarily because it's somebody else's fault.
00:33:12Scholars have shown that people with a weak capacity
00:33:14for emotional self-regulation tend to blame others
00:33:17for their poor choices.
00:33:18Now, I'm not going to say that everything is your fault
00:33:21and something's wrong in your life.
00:33:22Sometimes, I mean, there is injustice.
00:33:24There is discrimination.
00:33:25I completely have got it.
00:33:28But the idea of looking for culpability in other people
00:33:33and outside your control is usually the worst way
00:33:35to look at things, at least as the first course of action.
00:33:38Fifth, here's the best part.
00:33:40That's why you're here in the show,
00:33:42is reframing your imperfections and others,
00:33:45not as failings, but as puzzles.
00:33:47So here's the fun about self-improvement.
00:33:49When I first started getting really interested
00:33:52in self-improvement, I remember when I was kind of older,
00:33:54as a matter of fact.
00:33:55I read "How to Win Friends and Influence People"
00:33:57by Dale Carnegie in 1936.
00:33:59I read Stephen Covey's book,
00:34:01"The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People,"
00:34:03and they just energized me, man.
00:34:05Not because I was like, check, I got all this stuff.
00:34:08All these 36 habits to win friends, I got all of them.
00:34:12No, I didn't.
00:34:13The interesting thing was that I didn't have
00:34:15most of these habits.
00:34:16And the fact that I recognized the fact
00:34:18that there was something that I could do was great
00:34:20because it gave me this challenge.
00:34:22It gave me a castle in the sky I could walk toward.
00:34:27It was so wonderful.
00:34:28It was a puzzle for me about myself to solve.
00:34:31That's one of the things that people really like
00:34:32when they're starting a program of physical fitness
00:34:35is that it's not because they're already fit.
00:34:37It's because they have a purpose.
00:34:39They have a direction.
00:34:40They have a goal.
00:34:40And that gives them all this gusto for being alive.
00:34:43It's a puzzle that you can solve that's utterly solvable.
00:34:46And when you do, you're going to be better off.
00:34:49And that's going to make you happier.
00:34:50I'm going to get better grades.
00:34:52I'm going to have a better relationship.
00:34:54All the imperfections of yours are interesting puzzles to solve.
00:34:58Now, I tried to raise my kids this way.
00:35:01When something wasn't right, I wouldn't say that's bad.
00:35:04I would say that could be better.
00:35:07Here's how.
00:35:08And they want to be better.
00:35:10They would do that.
00:35:11And we had, you know, when there was a grades problem,
00:35:12we would deal with it and, you know,
00:35:14whatever it happened to be or behavior problem.
00:35:16And the idea of puzzles to solve without just getting
00:35:19a cookie at the end, by the way, with the satisfaction
00:35:22that comes from being better.
00:35:23This is the most exciting thing.
00:35:25Now, again, I'm preaching to the choir here
00:35:27because you're watching the show because you're into it.
00:35:29You're watching Office Hours because you know
00:35:32that you can be happier and you want the secrets.
00:35:36That's already acknowledging that you're not as happy
00:35:38as you could be, but that you believe that the secrets
00:35:40are there and you're watching the show to get those secrets
00:35:42because you want to apply these ideas.
00:35:44You already understand how to turn imperfections into puzzles.
00:35:48Do that more and do that with your kids and do that
00:35:51with everybody around you and you will become a force
00:35:55for absolute positivity in your life
00:35:57and the lives of other people.
00:35:59Now, that also suggests one last point, which is how boring
00:36:04not to have areas of improvement in life.
00:36:06How boring.
00:36:06What a horrible way to live.
00:36:08You know, that leads to this idea that I've arrived.
00:36:11And I've talked to the show before about arrival fallacy.
00:36:14You get a particular goal in anything in your life
00:36:16and your relationship and your money and your fitness
00:36:18and your health and anything.
00:36:19It doesn't live up to expectations.
00:36:21The goal in life is progress, making more progress
00:36:24and more progress.
00:36:25And when you find something that's an area of imperfection
00:36:28in your life, don't lie about it.
00:36:31Say, yeah, man, that's why I'm alive.
00:36:34That's what it means to be an entrepreneur.
00:36:36That's the kind of progress that I want to make.
00:36:39And that is a big part of the meaning of life
00:36:41because meaning has purpose at its core.
00:36:44Goals and direction at its core.
00:36:46Your imperfection is the source of your excitement in life.
00:36:51And that's a great thing.
00:36:53We've talked an awful lot about this.
00:36:55And I'm not going to go on further.
00:36:56I'm going to come back and talk about this
00:36:58in further episodes as well.
00:36:59But do feedback and tell me what you think about this,
00:37:02about this idea of these statements I made
00:37:04about self-esteem and the problems it might have,
00:37:06about how self-enhancement actually leads to lying to oneself
00:37:10and how we can be a lot better, et cetera, et cetera.
00:37:12I would love feedback in the comments about this
00:37:15because I suspect that some of you
00:37:17have some pretty strong opinions about it as well.
00:37:19So either way, let me know.
00:37:20I would love to hear it.
00:37:21Let's do some questions.
00:37:23Then we're out.
00:37:24Annette Ridenour writes into the show,
00:37:27"I'd love to hear more about people pleasing
00:37:29in this relationship to happiness."
00:37:31Yeah, a lot of that going around.
00:37:33Me too.
00:37:34Thank you so much for your time and for sharing this content.
00:37:38My pleasure.
00:37:38Thank you, Annette, for being a listener
00:37:40and for passing on the ideas.
00:37:42People pleasing is a big problem
00:37:44because what people pleasing is doing
00:37:46is it's outsourcing your understanding of yourself
00:37:49to other people.
00:37:49You're basically, people pleasing is a way for you
00:37:52to try to get people to tell you about your self-worth,
00:37:56generally speaking.
00:37:57If they like me, I'm happy.
00:37:59That is to outsource control.
00:38:01And that's a problem.
00:38:03It is quite related to the things
00:38:04that we're talking about here.
00:38:06You have to in-source your control
00:38:07about who you are as a person.
00:38:09You have to understand your own identity
00:38:12as something that is intrinsic to you
00:38:14as opposed to something that you'll
00:38:15get because you please somebody else
00:38:17and then they'll like you more.
00:38:18This is also based fundamentally,
00:38:20people pleasing is also based on the idea that love is earned.
00:38:23And that's a big problem.
00:38:25Love isn't earned.
00:38:26Love, the free gift, freely given.
00:38:28It's a grace.
00:38:29Anybody who makes you earn their love doesn't love you.
00:38:32That's huge to understand, right?
00:38:35Whether it's parents or friends or your romantic partner,
00:38:39if anybody is making you earn their love,
00:38:42they actually don't love you,
00:38:43or at least as much as they should.
00:38:45And so therefore, if you're people pleasing,
00:38:47you have somehow processed probably in childhood
00:38:50the idea that love is earned.
00:38:51And that's a very important thing to work to leave behind.
00:38:55And by the way, I fall prey to it all the time.
00:38:57Just ask my wife.
00:38:58Wonder if she likes that question.
00:39:02Do you think she'll respect me more
00:39:03because of that question?
00:39:06Cruz Ramnarine writes in, "How can young professionals
00:39:12with families find ways to fit snack-sized happiness habits
00:39:15into their daily lives?"
00:39:16I like that.
00:39:17It's like, sounds like Cruz Ramnarine
00:39:19is packing a lot of school lunches
00:39:20and thinking about these snack-sized things
00:39:22and these little baggies, right?
00:39:23I get it.
00:39:23You're really busy, and you want to punctuate
00:39:27the equilibrium of your life with things
00:39:29that will actually enhance your positive effect.
00:39:33That's what it comes down to.
00:39:34It's a punctuation of the equilibrium.
00:39:36When your equilibrium is all busyness
00:39:38and you're not fully present,
00:39:40that's a problem for your happiness.
00:39:42So Cruz, you're already on the right track
00:39:44by asking this question.
00:39:45So how do you do it?
00:39:47Number one is actually programming savoring into your day.
00:39:51And that means stopping at particular times and savoring.
00:39:54Now, what I do often with my wife is she'll say,
00:39:56like last night, I'm recording this on a Monday.
00:39:59And last night on a Sunday night,
00:40:01we had a stressful weekend because one of our kids
00:40:04is looking at real estate.
00:40:05But then on Sunday, all of our kids were home
00:40:09with all their kids.
00:40:10It was complete chaos in our house
00:40:12because it's like babies, babies, babies, babies.
00:40:15But then it was the end of the day,
00:40:16and we were lying in bed.
00:40:17And she says, what are you most grateful for this day?
00:40:21And I know it sounds corny.
00:40:22I know, I know.
00:40:23But that was a punctuation of the equilibrium.
00:40:25It made us stop and savor.
00:40:27Savoring is so important.
00:40:29But you have to do it on purpose to savor.
00:40:32Like eating a piece of chocolate,
00:40:33you put it in your mouth, swallow, no.
00:40:35Taste it, taste it, right?
00:40:38And savoring good things is a good way to do that regularly
00:40:42and on a schedule.
00:40:43And that's related to another thing I just mentioned before,
00:40:45which is actually being more conscious of things
00:40:47that you're grateful for,
00:40:48which is why I recommend people keep gratitude lists.
00:40:51Both of these ways are these snack bag sized happiness habits,
00:40:56happiness snacks that we can put into our lives on purpose.
00:41:00And finally, David E. writes in and asks,
00:41:03what happiness habits are you encouraging with your grandkids?
00:41:06So my grandsons are not exactly of the age
00:41:11where I can sit them down and give them a lecture.
00:41:14And I keep playing office hours for them.
00:41:15And I don't know, they keep wandering off,
00:41:17mostly because the oldest one is not quite three yet.
00:41:19But the truth is that the way that you encourage
00:41:22happiness habits with grandkids is by doing things
00:41:24that brings out happiness in them.
00:41:27And when your grandfather's the best,
00:41:29because I never have to do anything disagreeable.
00:41:31I mean, I live with two of my grandsons
00:41:33and my whole job is jokes and wrestling.
00:41:37It's unbelievable.
00:41:38And like, I understand how the jokes work
00:41:40in their little brains.
00:41:41There's a piece of your Lumix system
00:41:43called the parahippocampal gyrus,
00:41:45which when you flick it, it gives you positive surprise.
00:41:48That's why dad jokes actually work.
00:41:51And you know, they're so corny and all that,
00:41:52but what it does, it surprises them a little bit
00:41:54and they laugh, right?
00:41:55And so that's what I do all day long.
00:41:56It's like, hey, hey, you know, do you like my new hat?
00:41:59Right?
00:42:00He knows it's not a hat.
00:42:01He knows it's a book.
00:42:02And he cracks up and I can do it, you know, nine times.
00:42:05And it still gets the same laugh.
00:42:06And then of course, there's just lots of little boys.
00:42:09I'm just like tackling them and throwing them on the couch.
00:42:12And one of the things that they really like by the way,
00:42:15is that I'll hold my almost three-year-old
00:42:18as if I'm rocking him to sleep and he knows what's coming.
00:42:21So he's just like laughing like crazy while I'm doing it.
00:42:23And I'll sing him.
00:42:24And then I pretend that I lose my grip and drop him.
00:42:28And I drop him onto the couch and then I apologize to him.
00:42:31And he thinks that's just the funniest thing, right?
00:42:34The same joke over and over and over, especially physical stuff.
00:42:36Anyway, I'm going into detail that goes beyond the scope of your question, David.
00:42:41But the whole point is you encourage kids.
00:42:43One of the best ways that you can do it is by modeling things that people find fun
00:42:48and that make people happy.
00:42:50And when they see you cracking up and being happy,
00:42:53that shows them how to do it.
00:42:55We're done with that note on jokes and wrestling.
00:42:58We're done with another edition of Office Hours.
00:43:01Let me know your thoughts at officehours@arthurbrooks.com.
00:43:04Especially comments, criticism, suggestions for future episodes.
00:43:09What do you want me to talk about?
00:43:10I have an endless variety of things I can bring up,
00:43:12but I would love to know what's on your mind.
00:43:14Please like and subscribe on Spotify, YouTube, and Apple.
00:43:16Leave a comment as I mentioned before.
00:43:19Follow me on Instagram, LinkedIn, and on all the other platforms.
00:43:22And order The Meaning of Your Life, also known as my hat for my grandkids.
00:43:26Finding purpose in an age of emptiness.
00:43:28And maybe just for get ahead of the holidays this year,
00:43:31get some holiday gifts for a million of your closest friends.
00:43:33They're available anyplace for you to buy books.
00:43:35Anyway, it's great to talk to you.
00:43:37Thanks as always for tuning in.
00:43:38I'll see you next week.
Community Posts
No posts yet. Be the first to write about this video!
Write about this video