Transcript
00:00:00As a kid, I would come home from school and I would practice my French horn and then I would
00:00:04paint with my mother and it was just bliss. But my mom was better than me, not just because she
00:00:08was older, but because she had more ability. I remember asking her, I was probably 13 or 14 years
00:00:12old, how I could improve as an artist. She said, "Look deeply at the thing you're trying to draw,
00:00:19that you want to draw. Think about it and look at it again. Stare at it. Look at the nuances.
00:00:25Then try." Savoring experiences in life, neutral experiences, good experiences, even bad experiences,
00:00:32can be fundamentally game-changing in your well-being. One of the biggest ways that we
00:00:36miss our happiness is that we're not here, we're not fully alive. And I promise you
00:00:43that if you learn to savor your life, your life's going to change.
00:00:53Hi friends, welcome to Office Hours. I'm Arthur Brooks. This is a show about how you can lift
00:00:57people up and bring them together in bonds of happiness and love using actual science and ideas.
00:01:02This is a show that actually shows you how research can be in the public interest and
00:01:07indeed your interest. If you want to lift people up, if you want to help people to become their
00:01:11best selves, this show is for you. If I do it, I want to be happier, I want you to be happier,
00:01:16I want you to help other people to be happier. And furthermore, this is not just a self-improvement
00:01:21idea. This is one that's actually based in data, and that's what we'll be talking about. This is
00:01:25an evidence-based program about how to live your best life. Hope you've enjoyed it so far. If you do,
00:01:30please recommend the show to other people. Hit like and subscribe wherever you're listening or watching
00:01:36the show. That actually helps the algorithms find other people, as a matter of fact, and I appreciate
00:01:41you doing that an awful lot. If you have questions or criticisms or comments, we want to hear it. Leave
00:01:45it in the notes. Leave it in the comment sections wherever you're consuming this content, or send me
00:01:51a note at officehours@arthurbrooks.com. Don't forget to leave a review. We want to know what you think,
00:01:56and once again, that's really helpful to the show so that we can continue to spread as we are.
00:02:00Bigger audiences almost every week, so thanks to you for that. Hey friends, a lot of you know that
00:02:05I keep a very high protein diet. That's important for me in my 60s because I want to maintain a good
00:02:10level of muscle protein synthesis, and I don't always have time to eat as much protein as I want
00:02:15from whole foods. That's the ideal, but it's just not manageable all the time. For that reason,
00:02:19I'm always looking for supplements that can actually get me where I need to go with respect
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00:03:55store locator. So enjoy. You're not broken. You're meaning starved. I talk to people all the time who
00:04:04are, by any external measure, successful. They've built careers. They have families. They've checked
00:04:10the boxes. And yet something feels off. Life feels thin, like you're going through the motions,
00:04:17like you're watching yourself from the outside. And here's what I want you to know. That feeling
00:04:22is not a personal failing. It's not ingratitude. It's not something wrong with you. It's a meaning
00:04:29problem. And it's an epidemic. The modern world is extraordinary at giving us comfort, achievement,
00:04:36and distraction. It's terrible at giving us meaning. And no amount of success will fix that.
00:04:42I've seen it in my research, and I've seen it in my own life. That's exactly what we work on at MEA,
00:04:49the Modern Elder Academy, in a program I've developed called The Meaning of Your Life.
00:04:55It's not a lecture. It's not a quick fix. It's several days of real work in a small group on
00:05:01the questions that actually matter. If what I'm describing sounds familiar, I hope you'll come take
00:05:06a look. I am recording this a little bit before Mother's Day 2026. It's going to play pretty close
00:05:18to Mother's Day, as a matter of fact. And so you're probably thinking about mom, whether mom is still
00:05:22alive or not. And I hope you had a good experience growing up with your mom. I hope you love your mom.
00:05:26Everybody deserves to, for sure. Not everybody does. I want to tell you a little story about
00:05:31mine, not because this is a show about Mother's Day, but because this is going to help me explain
00:05:36a very important phenomenon for your happiness. My mother was my late mother. She died relatively
00:05:44young, 73. She suffered a lot because she was very ill for most of her life, as a matter of fact.
00:05:49She was, however, a terrific artist. She was an artist of some renown in the Pacific Northwest.
00:05:55I grew up in Seattle, Washington. And she was a terrific mixed media artist. Many people in the
00:06:00Pacific Northwest own her paintings. She did this to the exclusion of most of the things over the
00:06:06course of her life. She was also an amateur violinist and pianist. So she was really into
00:06:09the arts and a creative soul, to be sure. One of the reasons that she was so dedicated to her art,
00:06:15if you've been a listener of this program over the last few weeks, you'll recognize this argument.
00:06:21It is that when you participate in the production of beauty, you illuminate the right hemisphere of
00:06:27your brain and you find the meaning of your life. When my mother would wake up in the morning,
00:06:30she was really in a lot of agony. She suffered from tremendous mental health problems. And
00:06:39I mean, every day was a chore. It just was. And then she would come down and have a cup of decaf.
00:06:45Because of her medication, she couldn't take caffeine. And she would have a little breakfast.
00:06:50And then she would head up to her studio. And life started at that moment. She was a different person.
00:06:56It was extraordinary, as a matter of fact, how I saw that. And she was a great artist. She was
00:07:02fantastic. She had excellent technique. If she decided to paint a naked guy holding a guitar,
00:07:09much to my mortification as a teenager, it actually looked like that. And it was beautiful to boot,
00:07:14I guess. Although once again, as a teenager, I wouldn't have been able to discern that.
00:07:17Now growing up, I was very interested in the arts myself. I was more of a musician. As a matter of
00:07:23fact, I made my living as a classical musician for many years until I was 31 years old. But I
00:07:27was interested in all different kinds of creativity. I wrote stories and poetry. And I painted with my
00:07:32mother. As a kid, I would come home from school and I would practice my French horn and then I would
00:07:37paint with my mother. And it was just bliss. And I just, I loved it too. Not knowing, of course,
00:07:43that my little right hemisphere was fully illuminated and I was experiencing the meaning
00:07:47of my life. But my mom was better than me, not just because she was older, but because she had
00:07:51more ability. I remember asking her, I was probably 13 or 14 years old, how I could improve as an
00:07:56artist. And I expected her to say, "Do a lot. Get the reps." Which certainly is true. That's not what
00:08:02she told me. She said, "Here's the reason that people can't draw. Here's the reason." Because
00:08:08they actually never look at the thing they're trying to draw. She said, "Look deeply at the
00:08:14thing you're trying to draw, that you want to draw. Think about it and look at it again. Stare at it.
00:08:20Look at the nuances. Then try." So I was actually trying to draw a tree. Simple thing, right? And I
00:08:28would look at it and try to draw the tree. Didn't look like a tree. Didn't look very good at all.
00:08:32Then I really stared at it. I really took in the details of what I was looking at. I wasn't
00:08:39relying on my brain to fill in the details. I was actually observing the details, the contours, the
00:08:44colors, the shadows. And I drew a pretty good tree. Now, here's the point of that. I was also happy.
00:08:51I remember being really happy, not because the tree looked good, but because the whole experience was
00:08:56rich. What was that? It turns out that that was an experience of what we call savoring.
00:09:02Savoring experiences in life, neutral experiences, good experiences, even bad experiences,
00:09:10can be fundamentally game-changing in your well-being. And that's what I want to talk
00:09:13about today. In our hustle and grind culture where everything is fast, where we're distracted
00:09:20constantly, one of the biggest sources, one of the biggest ways that we miss our happiness is
00:09:27we're not here. We're not fully alive. Now, this is not just a call for some sort of
00:09:32mindfulness meditation technique. This means simply savoring life as it's happening right now.
00:09:40I want to tell you why it's so important. And I want to tell you how you can do it in
00:09:44your ordinary life. And I promise you that if you learn to savor your life,
00:09:49your life's going to change. Let's start off with some basics of what savoring actually means.
00:09:54Savoring is to pay attention and to say, "I want to be doing this right now. I want to be fully
00:10:02absorbed in this thing right now." That's what savoring really is. So you savor the experience
00:10:09of eating a piece of chocolate. You don't just gobble it up. You actually put it in your mouth
00:10:14and you taste it on your tongue and you feel the texture of the chocolate and you're conscious of
00:10:19it. That's smooth or that's sweet or whatever it happens to be. That's what savoring really is
00:10:24all about. Or if you savor moments with your beloved before you say goodbye, you're experiencing
00:10:30the look in her eyes and the smell of her skin and you're conscious of that. That's what savoring
00:10:37really is. Now, there's been a lot of research on how that affects you psychologically, how that
00:10:44affects you neurophysiologically. And it's pretty interesting what researchers have come up with.
00:10:49When you're savoring, when you're paying attention, when you're immersive, when you're here now
00:10:54on something neutral, positive, or perhaps even negative, I'll get to that later.
00:10:59Actually, it stimulates the reward processing centers in your brain, your brain's ventral
00:11:05striatum. There's two parts of your limbic system that principally are responsible for you feeling
00:11:10pleasure. One is the ventral striatum, the other is called the ventral tegmental area. You tap those
00:11:14things. Now, they're very thrifty, which means there are lots of ways to tap it. If you say,
00:11:20if my wife says to me, "I just love you so much," it will tap these pleasure centers. They'll say,
00:11:26"Joy." That's positive emotion. If I had a huge bump of cocaine, it would do the same thing
00:11:32because of my thrifty brain. By the way, I don't do that. But you get the point that I'm actually
00:11:36trying to make. When you savor, you will actually stimulate that ventral striatum, that part of your
00:11:44brain. There's interesting research on that that, of course, as always, I'm going to put into the
00:11:48show notes. This is a paper called Savoring the Past. Positive memories evoke values representation
00:11:53in the striatum from Neuron, which is a terrific journal, neuroscience journal. All you have to do
00:12:00to do that is to pay attention and say, "I want to be paying attention to this. I like paying attention
00:12:06to this," and then really look like I was looking at that tree that day. You can even savor completely
00:12:12ordinary things like, "Right now, I am walking to the post office." That's the essence of what the
00:12:19great Vietnamese Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh, of course, one of the most famous Buddhists in the
00:12:25world, a Theravada Buddhist monk, Vietnamese, when he wrote his famous classic, The Miracle of
00:12:30Mindfulness. It starts off with just an explanation, this description of washing the dishes. "When I'm
00:12:36washing the dishes, I should be fully present in the act of washing the dishes." What he's saying is
00:12:40savor washing the dishes. Don't rush through it. Be fully present. Be saying, "This is what I'm
00:12:47doing now. I like the fact that I'm savoring this. I like the fact that I'm fully present,"
00:12:52and that will stimulate, once again, I'm here to tell you, that's going to stimulate your pleasure
00:12:57centers. You're going to get pleasure from washing the dishes, but only if you savor washing the
00:13:01dishes. The second thing that it does, this is an interesting study from 2022, is it lowers
00:13:06symptoms of depression and increases higher levels of reported happiness. Probably that's related to
00:13:12the first effect that I talked about because when you stimulate the parts of the limbic system that
00:13:16elicit the feelings of joy, that's not consistent with the affective pain that we actually get,
00:13:24which is the activation of the anterior cingulate cortex, a different part of the limbic system.
00:13:29And third, it leads to these higher levels of reported happiness, not in looking at people's
00:13:38brains, but just asking for people's experiences. There's one study where researchers asked human
00:13:45subjects to record the frequency and intensity of their daily positive experiences. Half of the
00:13:52subjects in these experiments were asked to savor their events in their lives, to be fully present,
00:13:58to be paying attention. And they found that these subjects were significantly happier
00:14:02after the experiment than those who were not given any specific instructions. In other words,
00:14:06if I just remind you to be fully present, you're going to be happier. You're going to enjoy your
00:14:11life more. This is especially clear for people who experience, here's the irony, for people who
00:14:18experience fewer positive events. In other words, if you're living a life that is tough and you're
00:14:24going through a really tough time right now, and you savor the moments that you like, you know,
00:14:30all of us go through these things really stressed out or really, really too busy. But there's going
00:14:35to be a moment like, you know, the sun coming through the clouds a little bit, you stop and you
00:14:38say, yeah, sunshine on my face. And you savor it. That will have a disproportionately joyful impact
00:14:46on you. The less good there is, the more good you get. That's one of the benefits of savoring.
00:14:53It also leads to happier memories later on, which is interesting that the more that you savor the
00:14:58present, the more you're going to remember the present when it becomes the past, because you lay
00:15:02down more intense memories in the hippocampus of your brain. The episodic memories are actually
00:15:08more distinct when you savor them. It makes perfect sense, doesn't it? You remember the things where it
00:15:13feels like time slowed down because you were fully present? By the way, this is one of the reasons
00:15:17that when you're in the middle of a car accident, it feels like time slows down because you're laying
00:15:21down hugely complex memory tracks in those moments. You're savoring the experience of getting t-boned
00:15:29by a semi or something, which, you know, not so great, I suppose. Actually, more on that later,
00:15:35because I want to tell you how negative events can be savored much to your advantage as well,
00:15:39but we're not there yet. So, savor more, have happier memories later. Now, this is important.
00:15:44This one's really important to me personally. I'll tell you why. I don't have very many happy
00:15:48memories. It's not like I had some trauma, some terrible childhood, but I don't have happy memories.
00:15:53I just don't. I don't like remembering the past. I don't like looking at childhood photo albums. I
00:15:58don't like it. I don't like looking at old videos. It just bugs me. It bothers me. It makes me
00:16:04uncomfortable to do that. I mean, I practically don't drive looking in the rearview mirror. I'm
00:16:08a dangerous driver, but I mean, I go through life not looking in the rearview mirror. It's through
00:16:12the windshield of the car. It's just, for some reason, that's how I'm wired. I don't like talking
00:16:17about the good old days, and so it's hard for me to keep up with my old friends, as a matter of fact,
00:16:21because it's just past. I don't know. I mean, I have this one set of really, really happy memories.
00:16:26When somebody says, "What are your happiest memories from childhood?" They're all the same thing.
00:16:30I used to go down to the Oregon coast with my Aunt Marie and Lincoln City, Lincoln City, Oregon,
00:16:37and it's funny because those of you who've been a longtime viewer of the show, you know that I'm
00:16:42great friends with Rainn Wilson, the actor, and his wife grew up going to the Oregon coast in the
00:16:47exact same places as me, and we reminisce about that, actually, which is sweet and really good.
00:16:52But generally, I don't like it. I don't like that. What I've learned from the literature,
00:16:56this is how I try to engineer my own life is by using the research to live better,
00:17:00is right now what I'm trying to do with my life is save her more now because I want better memories.
00:17:05I don't want to be the kind of guy that can't remember the past in a positive way.
00:17:11So why is it hard? Why don't we naturally do it? If this were such a great thing,
00:17:14then we'd be savoring everything all the time and life would be sweet, right? Well,
00:17:17it's hard because we're not evolved to savor anything. We're evolved to rush through everything
00:17:22and pay attention to the negative. That's what we're designed to do. Now, why? You as a viewer
00:17:29of the show, you know that I rely a lot on evolutionary, biological, and psychological
00:17:34arguments. And because they're compelling and because they're ordinarily right,
00:17:37we have brains that were designed in more or less the current form, something like 250,000 years ago
00:17:43in the late Pleistocene era. And that was a dangerous time to be Homo sapiens. You know,
00:17:48you had to pay attention a lot or you're going to be a wild animal's lunch. There was no law.
00:17:53Somebody could come in, you know, take your buffalo jerky and animal skins and, you know,
00:17:59kill you summarily if you're not paying attention. So we have more brain space dedicated to
00:18:03negative emotions than positive emotions. That's what gives us what we call the negativity bias
00:18:08in our lives. Negativity bias means that life isn't that great all the time, but we're more likely to
00:18:14get to tomorrow. We're more likely to survive the night. That makes perfect evolutionary sense
00:18:20that your suspicious, nervous inner troglodyte is trying to survive and pass on your genes.
00:18:27So you're not a saber-toothed tiger's lunch, but that negativity bias is now maladapted.
00:18:33It's basically an error that we would do that, that we would not savor, but rather that we would
00:18:37be suspicious and vigilant and trying to get into the future as quickly as possible as a survival
00:18:43tactic that doesn't actually lead us to happiness. One quick note, Mother Nature, who did that,
00:18:47doesn't care if we're happy. That is an important thing to keep in mind. Mother Nature wants us to
00:18:52survive and pass on our genes. But that's why we have a wonderful prefrontal cortex so that we have
00:18:57decisions. We can make conscious decisions, not just to live according to our animal impulses,
00:19:03but to live up to our moral aspirations. That's the beautiful thing about being human,
00:19:06that even though I have a negativity bias, I can override it with my consciousness.
00:19:10And that's what we're talking about here. Savoring is rebelling against yourself.
00:19:15And oh, how freeing that is, isn't it? To stand up to your worst impulses. It's an error because
00:19:23a negative disposition, it's maladaptive today because the negative disposition makes us error
00:19:29prone in our predictions. You're always going to over-predict the worst. You're going to assume the
00:19:33worst all the time. And that's a heck of a way to live. And it lowers our quality of life, to be
00:19:38sure, of course. Lots of interesting work on this, by the way. I'll put in a great article in the
00:19:42notes titled The Brain is Adaptive, Not Triune, How the Brain Responds to Threat, Challenge, and Change.
00:19:49And that's in Psychology, Therapy, and Psychobatics. It's a nice article. So savoring is the secret to
00:19:54greater happiness, but it doesn't come naturally. How are you going to savor your life more?
00:19:58And that's what I want to tell you now. What are the techniques for actually savoring more?
00:20:02What are the techniques for overriding your negativity bias, your tendency to rush into
00:20:08the future, to not pay attention, savor the ordinary moments of your life that you actually need?
00:20:12And I'm going to give you three ways to do it, three ways that you can savor your life more.
00:20:18Number one, technique number one for savoring your life. Do it in all three time zones.
00:20:24Okay, now what do I mean by that? I don't mean literal time zones. I'm talking about savoring
00:20:31the past, savoring the present, and savoring the future. This comes from the work of the psychologist
00:20:36Fred Bryant, who created something called the Savoring Beliefs Inventory, which asks people to
00:20:43talk about their tendency to seek and enjoy positive experiences and memories. And so how does he talk
00:20:48about it? Richness of reminiscence. In other words, what do I need to do as somebody who struggles with
00:20:53the past, is think back to the past and think, what was good about that? And you know what? I just did
00:20:59that in the opening of the show, didn't I? I mean, I could have talked about the fact that my mom was
00:21:03sad all the time. It seemed to be as a little kid sometimes. She wasn't sad all the time. She was
00:21:09painting beautiful paintings, and those were moments of bliss for her. And I remembered that on purpose.
00:21:14Why? Because I was savoring the memory of me savoring the present. This recursive structure
00:21:21created by time travel, the prefrontal cortex, it's a miracle, isn't it? Able to edit my memory
00:21:27in this particular way, in a positive way. Richness of reminiscence is doing exactly that, is to savor
00:21:33the past on purpose by paying attention to the positive parts. And by the way, the editing of
00:21:38memory is a very interesting area of research. You can say, oh, yeah, Thanksgiving of 1996.
00:21:45That's when Uncle Chet, he got so drunk and he barfed in the front yard and went and
00:21:51beat up the neighbor. There was something good that happened that day too, probably.
00:21:56I'm just going to guess. Second time zone is the present. And that's the degree of conscious
00:22:02enjoyment. That's really kind of the main focus of what we're talking about here. Savoring the
00:22:07present, being here fully, thinking about the good that is in this, the experience, the full
00:22:13experience. That full experience has almost theological overtones. The great Catholic
00:22:20Saint Irenaeus of the second century, his most famous quote is that the glory of God is a man
00:22:26fully alive. And to be fully alive is to be fully present. Why? Because only in the present can you
00:22:33love. You can't love in a different time. You can't love in the past or love in the future.
00:22:39Love is now. If you're not here now, you're not loving. By the way, important for your
00:22:45relationships. Why should you savor your marriage? Because she needs love and so do you. And then
00:22:52here's the third time zone, the future. And that's something to look forward to. That's keenness of
00:22:58anticipation. Now, a little of this can go a long way. According to Marty Seligman at University of
00:23:02Pennsylvania, the average homo sapiens spends 30 to 50% of the time thinking about the future because
00:23:09it's incredibly adaptive. You practice future scenarios, see the dangers, come back to the
00:23:15present and don't choose those routes and those paths into the future. That's why human beings
00:23:21are so awesome is because we're able to make mistakes in our minds and not make them in real
00:23:25life. And so the average person is literally 30 to 50% of the time in the future, but the average
00:23:31striver, and I'm looking at you and I'm kind of looking at the mirror, spends something like 80%
00:23:36of their time in the future. These are estimates. Your results may vary as they say in the commercials.
00:23:41But if you're 80% of your time in the future and it's all castles in the sky, this can go a long
00:23:47way. But if you're the kind of person who lives with a little bit of dread, then thinking about things
00:23:51that you can look forward to is all about the savoring of the future. So you've got to figure out,
00:23:56is that your challenge or not? If it's not your challenge, good. If it is, that's what to do.
00:24:01You don't have to really choose. I recommend that you choose all three. But I do recommend that you
00:24:04think, once again, as I'm emphasizing here, that one of these things is harder for you and that's
00:24:09what you should actually work on. If you have a hard time being here now, then present savoring
00:24:13is important. If you have a hard time in the past, you need to edit your memories. That's me.
00:24:16If you have a hard time actually getting out of the future, right, or if you have a hard time actually
00:24:21not being in the future because you have so much dread, then that's what you need to is to find
00:24:24something you look forward to. What do you need to do? What's your challenge? What's the time zone in
00:24:29which you need to savor? Go do that. That's number one. Number two is to expand your repertoire of
00:24:36savoring techniques. This is great stuff from 2010 where psychologists found four savoring
00:24:42techniques that were really, really effective. So here's your savoring chops. Here's how we're
00:24:46going to put it together. Number one is what they call behavioral display, which means expressing
00:24:52positive emotion with non-verbal behaviors. Here's the deal. Smile even if you don't feel it. I think
00:24:58I've mentioned it on the show before, the Duchenne smile, which is the only smile that's actually
00:25:02associated with true human happiness. It involves two sets of muscles in the face, the zygomaticus
00:25:06major and the orbicularis oculi muscles. You can actually simulate that by holding a pencil in your
00:25:12teeth like this. Because happiness is seen in the eyes and not in the mouth. That's the Duchenne
00:25:19smile. That was invented. That was named, discovered and named by a physiologist named Duchenne because
00:25:25he wanted the happy smile to be named after himself, of course. But you can do that, by the
00:25:29way. I mean, you can put the pencil in your molders and go grin in the mirror that way. You'll fool
00:25:35your brain. You'll be happier because of this behavioral display, because of what you're doing.
00:25:39This is actually a savoring technique in its own way. Smile more. Pretend you're happier.
00:25:45Go act happier. Behavioral display is number one way to savor. When you're doing something, behave
00:25:53with joy. Second is be present, which is mindfully focusing on the pleasant experience. And what that
00:25:59means is saying to yourself, I am doing this thing. I am sitting on the train looking out at a beautiful
00:26:05seascape, if that's what it is. Being present means actually saying the thing to yourself because you
00:26:11want to bring it from your subconscious into your prefrontal cortex, into your consciousness, where
00:26:17you're really thinking about something. And the way to do that is by saying it. And it's really
00:26:22unbelievably effective. There's a famous piece of avant garde music from the 1970s by a French
00:26:29composer named Alvin Lussier called I am sitting in a room. And the whole thing is just I am sitting
00:26:35in a room. And he talks about sitting in the room. It's just like studying savoring and over and over
00:26:39and over and over again. I thought, how silly. And now I'm thinking I kind of like it. So say what
00:26:45you're doing for yourself. That's number two. Number three is capitalizing, which means talking about
00:26:51and celebrating positive experiences with others. So don't just say it to yourself. Say it to other
00:26:55people. Talk about the experience that you're actually having. Notice things to other people,
00:27:00which makes this even more conscious, even more concrete, even more permanent. And last but not
00:27:06least is what they call positive mental time travel, which is once again vivid reminiscence or
00:27:12anticipation of positive events, just what I talked about in the last one. So those are your four
00:27:16techniques, your repertoire for savoring. Number three, I'm going to talk about how all this works
00:27:21for me, right? Okay, so this is kind of how I'll put it together. I promised you three. It's actually
00:27:26two, but now I'm going to talk about how I'm trying to do this in my own life. Here's how I do it. I
00:27:31use the research that I'm talking about by starting my morning with a quick reflection on two or three
00:27:36things that I'm looking forward to, right, when I wake up in the morning. The first thing that I do
00:27:40is I say a prayer. That's how I start my day. At some point in the show, I'll give you my daily
00:27:47prayer if you're interested. Put it in the notes if you are. If you're not, say, "Don't do that."
00:27:51Okay, but then I reflect on two or three things I'm really looking forward to. And for me, it'll be my
00:27:55morning workout routine. I just, I want to do it, man. I'm just super grateful to wake up and to be
00:28:00able to go down to the gym, even when I'm tired. Getting to do this podcast, having dinner with my
00:28:06wife, whatever it's going to be, whatever that day is going to bring, just kind of looking ahead a
00:28:09little bit, savoring that. I imagine each of these events vividly for a few seconds, and I make an
00:28:15effort to smile when I'm doing it. Because what am I doing? I'm neurocognitively programming myself
00:28:20to savor that thing, to remember it more, to imprint it in a positive way so that the episodic memory of
00:28:26that event, when it actually becomes the past, will be positively valenced. Boy, there was a lot of
00:28:32jargon in that last sentence. Forgive me for that. And then finally, before I go to bed, I think back
00:28:36vividly on each one of these experiences when it is now a memory with a sense of gratitude. And I'll
00:28:41express that gratitude with whoever I'm with. And it's almost always with my wife. Look, when I'm
00:28:46going to sleep, it's either with my wife or I'm alone. Now, I screw this up. I fail to carry this
00:28:52out because my caveman limbic system wants to hijack the process and wants me to worry about
00:28:57somebody looting my cave and stealing my jerky and animal skins. And so I start again. And that's how
00:29:04I try to live. So far so good. One last note. I promised you I was going to talk about savoring
00:29:09bad things too. The research focuses entirely on savoring pleasant events and experiences. But there
00:29:17are difficult parts of your life. And if you savor them correctly, these can be unbelievably enriching
00:29:22as well. And here's why I recommend you do that. Here's how you savor the bad. I've mentioned this
00:29:27briefly, but I want to bring it up again in the show. I keep a failure journal. Look, everybody
00:29:33has a lot of failure in their life, disappointment in their life. Lots of things are happening you
00:29:36don't like. When something bothers me, I write it down. Now, sometimes I keep it electronically
00:29:43and sometimes I keep it in pencil and paper. It's actually better in pencil and paper. You're more
00:29:47likely to remember it. But I leave two blank lines under each entry. And I come back to the first one
00:29:54after a month. I go back and I read the thing that bothered me. It might be something stupid, right?
00:30:00It might be something kind of important. But I come back and I say after a month, after that first
00:30:04blank line, and I write down what I learned in the intervening period, thanks to that bad experience.
00:30:09There's always something. It might be, you know, I thought that the argument that I had with somebody
00:30:15I care about, which really bummed me out. I thought it was going to bum me out for a long time, but I
00:30:20actually stopped thinking about it almost immediately and didn't hurt the relationship. I learned that.
00:30:24How interesting. Then after another month, I'll go back to the second blank line that I left after the
00:30:30entry, read it again, and read the thing I learned, and then write something positive, something good
00:30:36that happened as a result of the experience. I might say we ended up making amends and our
00:30:41friendship was actually stronger as a result of that. A good thing happened as a result of our
00:30:45ability to make amends, which deepened our relationship. Now trust me, if you give it a bit
00:30:50of thought, you'll have something worthwhile to say about almost any negative event. You're not going
00:30:53to say, "I'm glad it happened," but you might, and you're going to get benefit from learning and benefit
00:31:00in creating a more positively valenced memory from that, which is a form of savoring of something
00:31:07negative, which will add depth to your life, learning to your life, growth to your life,
00:31:12and that's something that makes every minute of your life worthwhile. Let's finish with a couple
00:31:17of questions. This comes from Eugene Zhao. Thanks for the email. "How should someone earlier in their
00:31:23career think about intentionally maintaining and investing in relationships when so much of the
00:31:28feedback and momentum is pulling them toward work?" Okay, yeah. Yeah, yeah. I get it. Eugene, we're all
00:31:34strivers, aren't we? Workaholics, I get it. And the answer to that is actually the work of
00:31:41Josef Pieper. I've done a podcast before on the importance of leisure. Josef Pieper said that
00:31:46there's three kinds of leisure. They do not include chilling on the beach, because I tell you, fellow
00:31:51strivers, you go to the beach, and like the first couple of hours, you'll be like, "This is awesome.
00:31:54It's so nice and warm." By the third hour, you're like, "I want to go back to work. I want to go back
00:31:58to work." Why? Because your monkey mind is going to be back in the office or in front of your laptop or
00:32:03whatever it is. This is how you're wired. I get it. Josef Pieper, the German philosopher, said that you
00:32:08should engage your leisure, which is defined as generative positive activity for which they don't
00:32:15pay you. That's leisure. Three kinds of things. Deepening yourself spiritually, deepening your
00:32:22relationships, and learning something deeply. That's the three things to do, and so that's actually how
00:32:28to think about that, how to not go back with your monkey mind in the office. It's because you're
00:32:31dedicating yourself to something that's meaningful under these circumstances, and you need that kind
00:32:36of leisure. William Page writes in to the office hours email address, "How would a person raised
00:32:41in a non-religious family choose a religion to begin your recommendation to start first practicing?"
00:32:46Yeah, that's good. That's good. I mean, it's funny because it almost sounds like, "Oh man, there's just
00:32:51so many choices out there." It's like going to the supermarket and deciding what kind of breakfast
00:32:55area. And William, I know that's not what you mean, but you know, look, it's a huge world out there,
00:33:00right? The most important thing that you're telling me is that you want something, that you know there's
00:33:04something deeper, and that you're looking for something. Here's the algorithm. Start by reading,
00:33:09then start by observing, like a front row seat, and then start by practicing a little, and only then
00:33:16start believing, and last but not least, maybe start feeling. That's the way to think about it. A lot of
00:33:21people when they're looking for, they know they need some sort of a faith or life philosophy at least, or
00:33:27coherent spirituality. They say, "Oh, I gotta feel something." No, no, no, no, that's the wrong way to
00:33:32think about it. Feelings are just the activity of your limbic system. That's not how you should pursue
00:33:37your marriage either, is by saying, "I gotta feel it all the time." You're going to end up divorced.
00:33:41No, no, it's really all about finding something that you can practice every day, believe a lot, and
00:33:46occasionally feel. That's your marriage, and that's the religion that you'll actually find, if that's
00:33:50what you're in the market for. And the way to do that is by doing the work, is by learning, which is by
00:33:56reading and then observing, because it's not enough just to read. You have to observe, and then actually
00:34:00experimenting with practice. From there, belief will come, and occasionally feeling as well.
00:34:05Good luck on your journey. Last but not least, and I don't know how to pronounce this one,
00:34:09I'm sorry, Maciej Buzuk. That's enough? In your research and experience, what is the most important
00:34:17for someone in a situation of high competence, genuine contribution, but a persistent
00:34:22inability to translate inner value into outer reward? Now, this sounds an awful lot like you've
00:34:27got an adolescent kid who is unbelievably smart. I'm just guessing here. Unbelievably smart, really,
00:34:34really creative, but not posting. Like in school, in life, not maybe launching as a young adult.
00:34:41And the answer to that is fundamentally to help that person, even if it's you, to find calling. And
00:34:48the way to find calling is the two questions of meaning. This is the meaning exam that I've talked
00:34:52about on the show before. Think deeply about this. Where do I need to go, and what do I need to do to
00:34:57find the answers to the two questions? Why am I alive, and for what would I die? Why am I alive,
00:35:03and for what would I die? Maybe that's who created you. Maybe it's what you're on earth to do.
00:35:07And most importantly, for what would you give your life? What are you going to do? Where are you going
00:35:11to go? What are you going to read? Who are you going to ask? What experiences are you going to
00:35:14have? So you can find the answers to those two questions. When you do, what you will find is
00:35:19your calling. That's what you're supposed to be doing, and that will solve the problem of high
00:35:25competence and low performance, virtually always. We're done. Let me know your thoughts at office
00:35:31hours at arthurbrooks.com. Like and subscribe on Spotify and Apple and YouTube, and leave a comment.
00:35:37We want to hear it. Negative, positive, we like it all. Follow me on Instagram, LinkedIn, the other
00:35:41platforms. There's all kinds of content over there that's in shorter form, but it will reward your
00:35:45scrolling as opposed to frittering away your time, I promise. Order The Meaning of Your Life, my new
00:35:50book, to learn more about all the topics I'm talking about here. And last but not least,
00:35:55Happy Mother's Day. See you next week.