00:00:00Today, I want to talk about something that's really been on my mind, which is safety.
00:00:05Almost any place you look today, we talk about the culture of safety.
00:00:09In a lot of schools, for example, we have these safe spaces where people don't feel like they're
00:00:13threatened by ideas that they find especially objectionable.
00:00:18The truth is that when people do really, really, really hard things, the hard part isn't bringing
00:00:22them happiness but having done them because what you learn about yourself is what brings
00:00:26happiness and danger's like that.
00:00:28People who are real strivers, their big fear, their death fear, is the fear of not measuring
00:00:34up.
00:00:35What's the door that you're afraid to open?
00:00:36Open it up.
00:00:37You might just find yourself running right into a greater sense of meaning and happiness
00:00:42in your own life.
00:00:47Hey friends, welcome to Office Hours.
00:00:52I'm Arthur Brooks.
00:00:53This is a show about using science to lift people up and bring them together in bonds
00:00:57of happiness and love.
00:00:58That's my personal mission and it might be something like your mission, too, if you're
00:01:02watching this show, especially if you've been with us for a long time.
00:01:05In that case, thank you very much.
00:01:06If this is your first episode, welcome.
00:01:09We have a whole backlog now of shows that are like this one on different topics.
00:01:13I hope you'll go back and look at the library and enjoy them as much as I've enjoyed presenting
00:01:18them.
00:01:19As you do, please do let us know what you think.
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00:01:55that you've actually been listening to.
00:01:57If that includes the show, thank you.
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00:03:52Today, I want to talk about something that's really been on my mind, which is safety.
00:03:59Almost any place you look today, we talk about the culture of safety.
00:04:04In a lot of schools, for example, we have these safe spaces where people don't feel like they're
00:04:08threatened by ideas that they find especially objectionable.
00:04:13Safetyism is almost a cult among modern parents.
00:04:16One of the things that my friend Jonathan Haidt, who wrote "The Anxious Generation," that big
00:04:21bestseller, he talks about a safetyism where parents have shielded their kids from anything
00:04:27that's even remotely dangerous.
00:04:29And in so doing, he argues, he stunted their development.
00:04:32The idea that we need more safety in our lives to get happier is hugely problematic because
00:04:38the truth is we have kind of a social peanut allergy, if you were.
00:04:44We haven't actually exposed ourselves to enough of the allergens around us, social allergens
00:04:50around us such that we can build up any sort of resiliency.
00:04:53That's Jonathan Haidt's argument.
00:04:54And he has the data to show that that's really true.
00:04:58So there's a couple of options here.
00:04:59If you agree that maybe there's too much safety in our culture and maybe a little too much
00:05:05safety in your life, you can just kind of let things happen the way that they do or here's
00:05:10another option.
00:05:12Maybe you can expose yourself to a little danger, the right kind in the right dose.
00:05:18And if you do, a little danger might help you.
00:05:21Well, that's my argument today.
00:05:23I'm going to show you the best science that shows that maybe what you're looking for in
00:05:27your life, if you're not as happy as you'd like to be, is that you need something that's
00:05:31a little dangerous, a little bit more risky, something that you can do to give your life,
00:05:35I don't know, a little more spice.
00:05:39Maybe make you a little bit afraid.
00:05:41I'm going to try to make the case, if I do my job, you'll believe by the end of this episode
00:05:47that danger in the right dose can really be your friend and I'll set you in search of
00:05:52the danger that your life actually needs so that you can get happier.
00:05:56I was thinking about, you know, how I wanted to introduce this topic and, you know, an idea
00:06:01kept coming to me.
00:06:02It's funny, in literature there's a group of English writers, English and American writers
00:06:08that are weirdly obsessed with the country of Spain.
00:06:11If you look at George Orwell, he writes constantly about Spain.
00:06:14Hemingway, obviously, Ernest Hemingway was writing constantly about Spain.
00:06:19James Michener wrote a great book called Iberia.
00:06:22And for all of these writers in sort of the Anglosphere, Spain has kind of a wild quality
00:06:29to it, a kind of untamed quality to it.
00:06:32I always loved those writers and I wound up, well, not being one of those writers, I don't
00:06:36write novels about Spain, I went one better.
00:06:39Hey, none of those guys actually married a Spaniard.
00:06:41I married a Spaniard.
00:06:42I moved to Spain.
00:06:44That's how obsessed that I actually was.
00:06:47And when I read, for example, Hemingway, it really speaks to me in a kind of a primordial
00:06:52way.
00:06:53I mean, there's so many things that you all know.
00:06:54For example, I mean, you've heard, you all heard the expression, you know, in one of Hemingway's
00:06:59great novels, "The Sun Also Rises" from 1926, there's a character named Mike Campbell who's
00:07:04a drunk and he's bankrupt.
00:07:06And they ask him, "How do you go bankrupt?"
00:07:07And he says, "Well, little by little and then all at once."
00:07:12That's kind of a famous expression on how things happen, right?
00:07:14Well, in the same book, actually, there's another character named Bill Gorton, who is once again
00:07:20another hard-drinking veteran, which Hemingway writes about because he was a drunk too.
00:07:26He's talking about the running of the bulls in Pamplona.
00:07:29And you've probably heard of this tradition.
00:07:31In Pamplona, which is northern Spain, it's the capital of the Navarre region of Spain,
00:07:36which is some people considered to be part of the Basque country, every year on San Fermin,
00:07:42which is the 4th of July, you know, in early July, it's a multi-day festival.
00:07:48They celebrate it by letting a bunch of bulls, like, run through the city.
00:07:52They let them go and there's, like, 1,000-pound bulls running through the city.
00:07:56And there are all these young men dressed in white with red handkerchiefs around the necks,
00:08:00they're called mothos, and they're running in front of the bulls and it's just crazy.
00:08:04You've probably seen it in, you know, different movies and et cetera.
00:08:08It was made famous because Hemingway in "The Sun Also Rises" writes about that as this uniquely
00:08:14dangerous and scary and thrilling Spanish custom.
00:08:19I've spent time in Pamplona.
00:08:21It's a wild place.
00:08:22I've actually never done the running of the bulls.
00:08:24It's never interested me that much, but I actually have gone to the bullfights in Spain a lot.
00:08:29When I lived in Barcelona and when I've been visiting in Seville and different places, it's
00:08:35controversial because, obviously, what's happening with this animal, but it's incredible at the
00:08:40same time.
00:08:41It is wild how this actually happens.
00:08:44Why do people engage in that?
00:08:46And the reason is because there's something about it that affects the brain, about that
00:08:51little bit of danger, that kind of controlled danger, but real danger, not nonsense like
00:08:57roller coasters or haunted houses at Thanksgiving.
00:08:59Thanksgiving.
00:09:00You don't go to haunted houses on Thanksgiving?
00:09:03Weird.
00:09:04Okay.
00:09:05You don't go on Halloween.
00:09:07It's something that's a real danger, but in kind of a controlled way that makes people
00:09:12intensely happy.
00:09:16What's going on?
00:09:17I've talked to people who've done this Hemingway kind of thing.
00:09:20They've run with the bulls.
00:09:21And it says it increases their courage.
00:09:23It shows them what they're actually made of.
00:09:26And that's why they do it.
00:09:27And that's why it's actually a thrill.
00:09:29Well, here's what I want to suggest to you today.
00:09:33Find your bulls.
00:09:35Maybe you're going to go to Pamplona and run with the bulls and sun for me.
00:09:41Probably not.
00:09:42Maybe for you, it's something that seems a lot tamer, but it's something that you've always
00:09:45wanted to do but always been a little afraid of.
00:09:48Maybe it's learning to drive a Vespa.
00:09:50Maybe it's going to somebody and saying, "You know what?
00:09:53I want you to know I've always been in love with you."
00:09:56Very?
00:09:57Yeah.
00:09:58Maybe it's giving a speech in public.
00:10:00There are pretty famous surveys, I don't know if I believe them or not, but close enough
00:10:05to the truth that some people are more afraid of public speaking than they are of their own
00:10:10death.
00:10:11There's a running of the bulls in your life that maybe it's time for you to grab on to
00:10:16so that you can be a modern day Hemingway.
00:10:18Well, I'm not going to ask you to actually become Hemingway for reasons that will be apparent
00:10:22in a second, but to become the best version of yourself.
00:10:25And what I want to talk about is why this actually can help you so much and free you
00:10:30from so many other things in your life that are not the bulls in your life.
00:10:35The people who run with the bulls, they always come home from Pamplona and they say, "My life
00:10:37was never the same."
00:10:38And I don't actually know why.
00:10:39Well, I know why, so stay tuned.
00:10:42There's been a bunch of research on this, of course.
00:10:44I'm going to be referring to...
00:10:46There's a pretty interesting article in The Psychology of Sport and Exercise from 2012.
00:10:50Kind of an old article now, but it's a good article called Multiple Motives for Participating
00:10:54in Adventure Sports, which actually goes to people who do extreme sports, the practitioners
00:10:59of dangerous sports like hang gliding and whitewater kayaking.
00:11:04Pretty dangerous.
00:11:05I mean, look, this is not risking your life every single day, but dangerous enough.
00:11:08People do get hurt and die sometimes.
00:11:11And ask them why they do it and then the benefit that they get.
00:11:14Now, the motives are typically fivefold.
00:11:17Number one is that the number one motive they say is, "I want to feel that excitement.
00:11:21I want to feel something out of the ordinary."
00:11:24The second is, "I want to achieve a particular goal.
00:11:27I want to get good at that thing and I've always wanted to do it."
00:11:29Number three is, "I want to strengthen friendships," because typically you do this stuff with other
00:11:33people.
00:11:34You don't go parachuting into a sinkhole someplace and say, "Nobody knows I'm here."
00:11:41I mean, that would be a foolish thing to do, of course.
00:11:44You do stuff like that with friends.
00:11:46The fourth reason is they want to test their personal abilities.
00:11:48"What am I capable of?"
00:11:49And last but not least, they want to overcome fear.
00:11:52Those are great motives and those are stated, tangible motives.
00:11:56But here's the thing, all that's true and they do achieve that.
00:12:00But the big benefit that they get is actually not on the list of the motives for undertaking
00:12:04a dangerous thing.
00:12:06The benefit that they get is actually beyond words and people can't quite describe it.
00:12:10Now, if you've been following my work, you know actually probably what's going on here,
00:12:15which is to say that you're coming up with motives and you're articulating them using
00:12:19the left hemisphere of your brain as a kind of a complicated problem of something you want
00:12:23to achieve in life.
00:12:24And the experience that you have is in the right hemisphere of your brain, which is mysterious
00:12:27and meaningful and beyond words.
00:12:30In other words, it's ineffable.
00:12:31I want to do one, two, three, four, and five.
00:12:34What I got was this thing that I can't quite put words to, which is sort of amazing when
00:12:39you think about it.
00:12:40And that's what actually happens to people.
00:12:41As a matter of fact, what people who are engaging in slightly dangerous things in extreme sports
00:12:47find is that they achieve what psychologists call a flow state where hours can feel like
00:12:53minutes, where time doesn't have meaning.
00:12:56That comes from...
00:12:57I mentioned it before on the show.
00:12:58That comes from the work of Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, who taught for many years at the University
00:13:02of Chicago and later at Claremont Graduate University, one of the great social psychologists
00:13:06of his generation.
00:13:07He wrote a famous book called "Flow" about how we lose track of time when our brain works
00:13:13in a particular way, and we're completely engaged in something that's hard, but not impossible.
00:13:20It's just at the edge of what we can actually do, and we're exploring the boundary of our
00:13:25possibilities.
00:13:27And you've probably experienced this, but dangerous things, they tend to actually bring this on.
00:13:33Now, one caveat to all this, taking risks is not always evidence that you're exposing yourself
00:13:42to a little danger in search of increasing your happiness.
00:13:45It might be evidence that there's something wrong with you.
00:13:48And this is a distinction between bravery and recklessness.
00:13:53So let me talk about this a little bit, because there actually is a whole bunch of literature
00:13:56on what we call high-sensation seeking people.
00:14:00And of course, neuroscientists have taken a real interest in this.
00:14:02What's different about their limbic system?
00:14:04What's different about their brains?
00:14:05And the answer is they tend to have what's called low amygdala reactivity.
00:14:09The amygdala is a bilateral organ, amygdala is the word for almond in Latin.
00:14:14And that's because it's an almond-shaped thing, like the ends of your fingers on either side
00:14:17of your brain, it's bilateral.
00:14:18And the two sides do slightly different things, but that's not very important here.
00:14:22What they do is it mediates the experience of fear and anger, fight or flight, as a result
00:14:28of that.
00:14:29And so when you're doing something dangerous, you're stimulating your amygdala.
00:14:33So there's a whole class of people, and this is probably mostly genetic, that have low amygdala
00:14:40reactivity.
00:14:41It's hard for their amygdala to turn on.
00:14:43And to feel kind of normal, they have to stimulate, they got to kick their amygdala, right?
00:14:48Now by the way, people who are really super fearful and really risk-averse, their amygdalas
00:14:54work too well.
00:14:55They have high amygdala reactivity.
00:14:57So either way is actually something different from the norm.
00:14:59But low amygdala reactivity people, they're high-sensation seekers.
00:15:02They're always trying to find some way to feel completely alive.
00:15:06And they don't know that they're actually trying to stimulate their limbic system, but in point
00:15:09of fact they are.
00:15:11They tend to exhibit blunted stress and startle responses.
00:15:15They always underestimate the likelihood of bad outcomes, is actually what you find in
00:15:19the experiments.
00:15:20"I'll be fine," they say.
00:15:22And so the Darwin Awards that you see on TV, and people doing these unbelievably stupid
00:15:27things and getting hurt or even killed, those are almost certainly people that have this...
00:15:33They're high-sensation seekers with low amygdala activity.
00:15:36Interesting paper on this in the journal NeuroImage.
00:15:40I'll put that in the show notes as always.
00:15:42And these are the people that you see in ordinary life too.
00:15:44If you go to Yellowstone Park and there's gonna be some idiot who's trying to get a selfie
00:15:49with a bear, it's like, "Don't do that with your baby."
00:15:53It's like, "Me and my baby, we're gonna get a picture of ourselves with a bear."
00:15:57And there's always some sad story that actually comes around.
00:16:00But even more commonly, that's the kid you went to high school with who was always binge
00:16:04drinking, taking personal risks all the time.
00:16:08That's the kind of behavior that we see with sensation seeking, and it's a pathology.
00:16:12It's not somebody who's just living on the edge, man.
00:16:15And that's not the kind of person that you wanna be.
00:16:17That's not normal.
00:16:18That's not what we want.
00:16:19We want bravery in the face of ordinary fear, not recklessness, which is to say, not feeling
00:16:28fear.
00:16:29Fearlessness, by the way, isn't great.
00:16:30There's a whole literature on fearlessness.
00:16:33People that there's an expression to be a fearless leader, "I want a fearless leader."
00:16:36No, you don't.
00:16:37If you actually have low amygdala activity and you become a leader, you're gonna get people
00:16:41killed if you're in the military, for example.
00:16:45Never follow a fearless leader.
00:16:47Follow a courageous leader.
00:16:48More on that here in a second.
00:16:50Okay.
00:16:51So what do we want?
00:16:52We want people who feel fear ordinarily, and this is what we want to find our bowls, to
00:16:56find our running of the bowls in Pamplona, our own version of this.
00:17:00These are brave people and not reckless people.
00:17:03These are people who feel fear in an ordinary way, but they learn how to stand up to it
00:17:09and as such to overcome it, which in and of itself is this incredible challenge that tends
00:17:14to be really, really life-changing.
00:17:16This is the key is to work to overcome that and not to be reckless, not to do something
00:17:21just because I got to do something more and more and more dangerous to actually feel something.
00:17:25Hemingway himself, by the way, is an example of a reckless, not a brave person.
00:17:30His life was filled with these particular experiences, which why is in a way, which is why running
00:17:35of the bowls, while it thrilled me and subsequent works by Hemingway, like death on a Sunday
00:17:40afternoon, which is a magisterial text on bowl fighting.
00:17:45That's how I learned all of these details on bowl fighting myself as an American was reading
00:17:49that particular book.
00:17:50But he himself is a bad example of this.
00:17:52I mean, he was doing all kinds of stupid things, risk-seeking, self-destructive history of dangerous
00:17:59binge drinking and in point of fact, his life ended sadly because he was a pathologically
00:18:06unbalanced person with a whole lot of mental illness.
00:18:09That's not what we're talking about.
00:18:11Now when I'm talking about the benefits that come from a healthy relationship with introducing
00:18:17more danger in your life, I'm really making the case that danger can bring you happiness.
00:18:24So what's that all about?
00:18:27And it's interesting because what you find is when people are doing actually dangerous
00:18:30things, they're not happier while they're doing them.
00:18:34They're happier having done them.
00:18:36It's what it comes down to.
00:18:37What's kind of like for me is like with writers, they're always happy having written books,
00:18:42not happy while...
00:18:43Actually, I like writing books is what it comes down to.
00:18:45But the truth is that when people do really, really, really hard things, the hard part isn't
00:18:49bringing them happiness but having done them because what you learn about yourself is what
00:18:53brings happiness and danger is like that.
00:18:56Doing something dangerous is something you're happy about later but much happier about.
00:19:01The thrills come from taking a risk, from finding your resiliency, figuring out who you actually
00:19:08are.
00:19:10That's why doing something a bit dangerous can enhance your courage and raise your happiness
00:19:14along the way.
00:19:16Okay.
00:19:17That's the science.
00:19:18That's the background.
00:19:19But what you really want to know is how to do that.
00:19:20How can you do that in your life?
00:19:23What's the kind of danger that you can find?
00:19:25And here's a few ways to actually do just that.
00:19:28I wanna give you three ideas on how to go find your Pamplona, to find your running of the
00:19:34bulls.
00:19:35Now, to begin with, it should be something that really is kind of scary to you.
00:19:42I've done some things that are technically scary.
00:19:44I've skydived, skydove.
00:19:47I've jumped out of a plane with a parachute.
00:19:50On my daughter's 18th birthday, all she wanted was to jump out of an airplane with her dad.
00:19:55Isn't that cool?
00:19:56Yeah.
00:19:57That's what we went to.
00:19:58We went skydiving.
00:19:59The scarier than the jumping out of the plane was actually the pilot.
00:20:04He's looking and he's like, "Thunderstorms, really dangerous."
00:20:07Yeah.
00:20:09We ought to be okay now.
00:20:10And we went up in this Cessna from approximately 1951 that had screws that were coming out of
00:20:17the floor of the plane.
00:20:19That was a lot more dangerous than jumping out of the plane, I think.
00:20:22But the bottom line is the skydiving wasn't actually scary to me.
00:20:26I don't think that my pulse even went up.
00:20:28That's not scary.
00:20:30That might sound like an idiotic decision to you, and it did to my wife, by the way.
00:20:33Say, "Honey, you want to come with us?
00:20:35Go skydiving?"
00:20:36She's so stupid.
00:20:37It's just a stupid, dangerous thing to do.
00:20:39Maybe she's right, but that didn't bother me.
00:20:41And lots of things like that don't actually bother me.
00:20:43Things that are objectively physically dangerous don't bother me at all.
00:20:48So that wouldn't be my running of the bulls, and that might not be your running of the bulls.
00:20:52A lot of it for you requires thinking carefully about what takes courage, what you could do,
00:21:01and that would actually take courage.
00:21:02Now, it doesn't have to be existentially dangerous.
00:21:05It just has to feel dangerous to you because of what you're risking.
00:21:10For a lot of people, that's not a physical challenge at all.
00:21:12It's social or it's emotional, which is why I gave you the example at the beginning of
00:21:16the podcast that maybe you should go tell somebody that you're in love with that you're in love
00:21:20with that person, and accept the consequences of that person's reaction.
00:21:25Maybe you get a, "Hey, I've been in love with you too," and you live happily ever after.
00:21:29Maybe you get rejected.
00:21:30But the whole point is you're not going to die, and you'll get a little thrill from having
00:21:38broken through with doing something that's really scary, if that's scary to you.
00:21:42Maybe it's getting serious about a job change that you need to make.
00:21:46And for some people, making a job change is super scary.
00:21:50That would have been just completely terrifying for my dad.
00:21:53He had more or less the same job for four decades, and he wanted to change.
00:21:56But that was just really scary.
00:21:57He was a very conscientious person too, I have to say.
00:22:00Maybe it's going back to school after a long time, and you don't know how it's going to
00:22:04go.
00:22:05I talk to people all the time who later in life, they actually go back to get their college
00:22:08degree or they go back to graduate school, and they're terrified, "Am I up to it?"
00:22:14For example, maybe that's leaving a city where you've lived your whole life.
00:22:20Those are social and emotional challenges that can be way scarier than running with the bulls
00:22:25or skydiving.
00:22:26So that's number one.
00:22:28Do the work and figure out what you're running with the bulls actually is.
00:22:32Two, envision yourself as brave but not reckless.
00:22:36You know the distinction.
00:22:37I told you about the amygdala activity distinction between the two.
00:22:41Envision bravery.
00:22:43Imagine yourself being courageous, not fearless.
00:22:47In other words, feeling the fear and acting anyway.
00:22:50That's what you want to visualize yourself doing.
00:22:53Doing that thing where you're saying, "Yeah, that's super scary.
00:22:56I'm doing it anyway," that has a lot of merit to it.
00:22:59Just that will actually kind of fire you up.
00:23:02Then, of course, the question is, how do you conquer your fear?
00:23:06And the way that you conquer your fear is in no small part by exposing yourself to that
00:23:11fear through visualization.
00:23:13There is a whole literature about death visualization, and there's a whole set of techniques in Theravada
00:23:20Buddhism.
00:23:21Theravada Buddhism, which is practiced in sort of the southern tier of Asia across Vietnam
00:23:26and Myanmar and Thailand, Sri Lanka, Theravada Buddhist monks, they conquer any fear of their
00:23:32own death by looking at photos of cadavers in various states that decay.
00:23:39And they look at each one and they say, "That is me.
00:23:41That is me."
00:23:42And they're exposing themselves to the truth, the reality, the inescapable reality of their
00:23:47own deaths.
00:23:48And only in that exposure can they be truly free.
00:23:50Well, that's the same thing.
00:23:52If there's something, that danger that you actually need to spice up your life, not to
00:23:56make your life better, then expose yourself to it cognitively.
00:24:01That really works, as a matter of fact.
00:24:03Envision yourself doing something that scares you, how you're going to feel about it when
00:24:06you actually take that risk, how you're going to feel about yourself having taken that risk.
00:24:11Think clearly, use your reason.
00:24:13Don't just use your amygdala to feel something.
00:24:15Use your prefrontal cortex to reason it through.
00:24:19Now, you might find at this stage that the odds of failure are so high and the consequences
00:24:25are so dire that this was recklessness and not bravery.
00:24:29Making the right choice is a question of prudential judgment.
00:24:32Usually, however, when you visualize that white whale, that group of six bulls running toward
00:24:40you, you're going to understand what the odds of catastrophe really are and whether or not
00:24:45the problem was actually inside your own head and the kind of person that you want to be,
00:24:49the happier person that you want to be.
00:24:51So that's part two, is visualization.
00:24:54Number three is making a plan and actually following it, making a strategic plan for actually
00:24:59doing that.
00:25:00I don't recommend if he was like, "I want to drive a Harley Davidson at 120 miles an hour,
00:25:05but I don't know how to drive a motorcycle, so I'm just going to go out and buy one and
00:25:08say, 'Hey, good luck, everybody.'"
00:25:11No, you don't do that.
00:25:13That's stupid.
00:25:15You prepare for it.
00:25:16I've talked to people about doing things that they found physically daunting.
00:25:19You know, I've walked the Camino de Santiago across northern Spain, this very, very famous
00:25:24spiritual pilgrimage.
00:25:25I've done it twice, as a matter of fact.
00:25:28And some people find that really daunting because, you know, they're not physically in good shape,
00:25:33for example.
00:25:34They don't think they can actually walk for hundreds of miles.
00:25:37And I give them plans on actually how to do it.
00:25:39You know, I talk to them about reading about the Camino and where they're going to stay
00:25:44and making sure you've got months and months and months of actually walking longer and
00:25:48longer distances and getting to the point where it's possible.
00:25:51It might still be scary, but it's actually possible.
00:25:54Do the work, in other words, because going in unprepared is a reckless thing to do.
00:25:58It's not a brave thing to do.
00:26:01And also, by the way, when you form a plan of something, it allows you to savor the experience
00:26:06before you actually have the experience.
00:26:09And doing that, boy, oh, boy, that's really great because what you do is you extend it.
00:26:13That's the reason people like to think about Christmas from, apparently, from Halloween
00:26:17on, because they like it because they like Christmas and they like the Christmas carols
00:26:21all that time.
00:26:22They don't just start listening to Christmas carols on Christmas Eve.
00:26:24They like to back it up a couple of months.
00:26:27Maybe you don't.
00:26:28Maybe that annoys you.
00:26:29But that's why people actually do it.
00:26:31So these are the three things to think about.
00:26:32So I want you, here's your homework assignment.
00:26:35Notice you're running the bulls.
00:26:38Do the work thinking about that.
00:26:40Second, envision yourself actually doing that thing.
00:26:44And third, make a plan to actually do it.
00:26:48And when you do, I promise you, if it's bravery, not recklessness, your life's going to improve.
00:26:54And that might be not more safety, but more danger might be just what you need.
00:26:59Now, let me tell you what mine actually is.
00:27:02You know what it's not?
00:27:03It's not skydiving.
00:27:04That isn't it.
00:27:07And going to the bullfights is interesting.
00:27:09And at one point, I was in a bullfight and a bull jumped the barrier into the seats.
00:27:14One row ahead of me.
00:27:16I was closer to that bull than I am to this camera right now.
00:27:21That wasn't it either.
00:27:23It wasn't it.
00:27:24Maybe I've got a defective amygdala.
00:27:25I don't know.
00:27:26But I'll tell you what it is.
00:27:28It's failure.
00:27:29I'm frightened of failure.
00:27:33I'm terrorized by the idea of failure.
00:27:36I mean, and a lot of you are too.
00:27:39If you're watching this podcast, you're probably a striver.
00:27:43The reason you're watching this podcast is because you want to be better at what you do.
00:27:46You want to be a higher performer at what you do.
00:27:49My students too.
00:27:50And the result of it is that people who are real strivers, their big fear, their death
00:27:55fear, is the fear of not measuring up to their own standards, the standards of people who
00:28:00actually believe in them.
00:28:01And I've always been that way.
00:28:02And the result of that is that it's kind of held me back until I figured out that I need
00:28:08to face it regularly.
00:28:11Here's how I started doing it in my early 30s.
00:28:15Now, early on, if you follow my work, you know that I was a professional classical musician.
00:28:19That's how I wound up in Spain, was playing in the Barcelona Symphony, as a matter of fact.
00:28:24I was afraid of failing, but I wasn't even enjoying my life.
00:28:27And so I needed to do something differently.
00:28:29And so I quit.
00:28:30I walked away from the thing I'd been doing since I was eight years old.
00:28:34When I was 31, I walked away from it.
00:28:36I literally didn't know how to do anything else.
00:28:38I had no skills, nothing.
00:28:42And I walked away, and I took my career all the way down to the studs, and I went back
00:28:45to school.
00:28:46I had just gotten a bachelor's degree by correspondence in economics of all things, because maybe that
00:28:50would be really interesting, which it was.
00:28:53And I enrolled in and started a PhD program to become a behavioral scientist.
00:28:58Maybe that would work.
00:28:59Now, what that was, was the scariest thing I'd ever done, because that was confronting
00:29:03my fear of failure by taking my beloved career apart, which wasn't beloved work.
00:29:11It was a beloved career, because it was very ego-driven, as a matter of fact, and it confronted
00:29:16my professional failure.
00:29:17And in so doing, I felt truly alive for the first time in a long time, as a matter of fact.
00:29:23And I learned something from that, which is I needed to do that regularly.
00:29:26So I came out of my PhD, and I became a professor.
00:29:28I was, most of that time, at Syracuse, as a matter of fact, and it went super well.
00:29:31I published a lot of stuff.
00:29:33I was doing the traditional academic stuff.
00:29:35But by the end of 10 years, I'm like, "Yep, time to do it again."
00:29:38So I quit.
00:29:39I walked away again, and I took a job working for a nonprofit organization.
00:29:43And that was just terrifying, because I'd never done anything like that.
00:29:47I had to raise $50 million a year, and I'd never raised a dollar.
00:29:51I had hundreds of employees.
00:29:52I'd never had an employee.
00:29:53By the way, that was a crazy decision on the part of the board of that organization to hire
00:29:58somebody with no experience.
00:29:59And it was scary.
00:30:00And the first couple of years were really, really scary.
00:30:03But it did the trick.
00:30:04It did the trick.
00:30:06And the end of that period, the end of another decade, you're starting to see a pattern here
00:30:09probably, it was time to get scared again.
00:30:12So I walked away from that.
00:30:14And I walked to doing what I'm doing now.
00:30:17But you know what?
00:30:18It took a couple of years before I knew what I was doing.
00:30:20It took a couple of years before I felt competent at all.
00:30:23I felt for the first couple of years after I left my CEO job that I came back to academia,
00:30:28but more importantly, where I had this big new field of the science of happiness, like
00:30:32a complete patsy, a total hack, complete fake.
00:30:37And that's how I found my sense of being alive, was by confronting that particular failure
00:30:43every day.
00:30:44Now, of course, it's really a lot easier, because my beloved wife, Esther, always has my back.
00:30:49Like, I don't care if you fail.
00:30:51I don't care if you fail professionally.
00:30:53You're my husband.
00:30:54I love you.
00:30:55And that really, really helps an awful lot.
00:30:56But let me tell you, when I take my career down to the studs, which I do over 10 years,
00:31:00I confront that failure, I feel like I'm running with the bulls.
00:31:04And that's a real source of the life in my life.
00:31:08What's the door that you're afraid to open?
00:31:11Open it up, let the six bulls out, give it a good run.
00:31:16You might just find yourself running right into a greater sense of meaning and happiness
00:31:22in your own life.
00:31:23Let's take some questions before we finish.
00:31:26First one, this is an anonymous question that came into info@arthurbooks.com.
00:31:32I love the work I do, but I continue to dread going to work and come home feeling drained.
00:31:39How do you know when it's time to leave a job?
00:31:41How do you know when it's time to leave a job?
00:31:43Now, this is really common, I was just talking about my career that has had all these different
00:31:47turns and twists.
00:31:48And at the end of 10 years, I always love my work, but I'm dreading going to work.
00:31:52This is really, really common.
00:31:54Let me give you a little rubric.
00:31:56I've mentioned it briefly in the show before, not just for how to know when it's time to
00:32:01leave, but to know whether to take a job or not.
00:32:05The job that's right for you, that's serving your mission, has three gut feelings involved
00:32:11in it, excitement about the job or career or both, fear, and deadness.
00:32:19Deadness means you feel empty inside, the deadness is, by the way, anonymous while you dread going
00:32:24to work.
00:32:25There's lots of deadness in that.
00:32:26Those are the three sensations.
00:32:27Now, this is not just about jobs.
00:32:29Maybe this is when you get a marriage proposal or an opportunity to move to Sacramento, whatever
00:32:36it happens to be.
00:32:37You have an opportunity for something new.
00:32:39You feel those three, and I want you to examine those three things.
00:32:43I'm talking about deciding to do something, but this is also about deciding to leave something.
00:32:48The right levels for taking something or keeping something is 80% excitement, 20% fear, and
00:32:540% deadness.
00:32:55If you can manage 0% deadness, sometimes that's not in your opportunity set.
00:32:59You are feeling too much deadness, and it's time to go.
00:33:04That's what it comes down to.
00:33:05My guess is there's no fear in it anymore.
00:33:07There's a little bit of excitement, but there's a lot of deadness.
00:33:09The ratio is all wrong.
00:33:11Remember, 80, 20, 0.
00:33:13That's what you're looking for.
00:33:14If you're going to take something or if you're going to stay something, you're going to deviate
00:33:17too much from that, either don't take it or stop doing it if you're already doing it.
00:33:22Another anonymous note comes in over the website as well.
00:33:25Can you suggest any information on preparing for the death of a family member?
00:33:31This is really a tough one, and this can be harder than preparing for your own death.
00:33:35It really can be, but the classical techniques for doing that once again are kind of what
00:33:39I talked about on the show today, which is exposure to the idea.
00:33:44Now, I told you about the Buddhist monks who practiced the Marana Sati meditation.
00:33:49That's actually literally a nine-part meditation on the various stages of death, having died,
00:33:56the decomposition of the body, all the way to bare bleached bones that are turning into
00:34:02dust.
00:34:03It's this contemplation of non-not-existing physically in the form that we have before,
00:34:09which is a physical reality.
00:34:10It's an inevitability to be sure.
00:34:12This will cure you of your own fear of death.
00:34:15It will.
00:34:17But maybe you have to do that for the people that you love as well, for the inevitability
00:34:21of them dying.
00:34:23It's not going to help you to avoid the idea because the people that you love are going
00:34:27to die.
00:34:28It's not a great strategy to say, "Yeah, I know the people I love are going to die, but
00:34:32I'm counting on going first so I don't have to confront it."
00:34:34That's a terrible strategy in life.
00:34:37The truth of the matter is that people that you love are going to die, and you have a responsibility
00:34:41to be strong to yourself and to other people.
00:34:45The only way you can do that is by confronting that particular fear.
00:34:48This is another kind of running of the bulls.
00:34:51Maybe that's your running of the bulls, as a matter of fact.
00:34:55Last question.
00:34:56Once again, lots of anonymous questions today.
00:34:58How come nobody wants to give their names?
00:35:01How can I give advice to a person without offending them and without feeling like I'm
00:35:05superior?
00:35:06That's people.
00:35:07I get this an awful lot.
00:35:08So when I'm lecturing, for example, people say, "How do I teach this stuff to my teenage
00:35:13kids?"
00:35:14This is the least receptive audience in history is your teenage children, if you're the parents.
00:35:19They'll take advice from a rando on the street, but not from you when they're 16 or 17 years
00:35:26old.
00:35:27But your results may vary.
00:35:28It depends on the kid, but you get my point.
00:35:29The way to do this is what we call the appeal to authority.
00:35:32The way to do this is when you're trying to give people advice, you say, "You know what?
00:35:36I dealt with something like you're going through right now, and it was really confusing to me.
00:35:41And I read this book, or I saw this video, or somebody gave me this piece of advice.
00:35:45It might be helpful to you.
00:35:46I don't know.
00:35:47It helped me."
00:35:48And what you're doing is you're deflecting it.
00:35:51You're appealing to an outside authority.
00:35:53You're not wagging your finger.
00:35:55You're also not taking credit.
00:35:57You're exposing the fact that you've struggled with something, and you have, by the way.
00:36:01I mean, you have something similar, if not the same problem that somebody is having.
00:36:05And then you solved it, I hope.
00:36:07And if you did, think back to actually what was actually helpful to you and recommend that.
00:36:11Recommend something else as opposed to originating the idea yourself.
00:36:16Another way to do this, by the way, is to say, "I read this book, and I don't know what I
00:36:19think about it.
00:36:20Would you read some of this and tell me your views?"
00:36:23Boy, that really helps a lot, as a matter of fact, because that gets a conversation going,
00:36:28and people can decide for themselves whether it's helpful.
00:36:31And I hope this is helpful.
00:36:32In general, I hope the whole show is helpful to you today.
00:36:35If you need a little bit of danger in your life, let me know your thoughts at officehours@arthurbrooks.com.
00:36:41As always, please like, please subscribe.
00:36:43Look for this show again and again on Spotify, YouTube, and Apple, any place where you actually
00:36:47get your fine podcast content.
00:36:50Leave a comment or read it.
00:36:52Follow me on all of the social media platforms, Instagram, LinkedIn in particular, and all
00:36:56the others as well, and order "The Meaning of Your Life," the book right behind me here.
00:37:00All the things that I'm talking about here, you'll find more of that in the book and all
00:37:04the things that I write.
00:37:05One more thing, by the way, if you want to see my work every single week, I write twice
00:37:08a week in the free press, thefp.com.
00:37:13I have a column on Mondays, I have a newsletter on Fridays, the newsletter is completely free.
00:37:18You can get a lot of this particular content if you like it in written form.
00:37:21But if you do, do me a favor, take credit for it.
00:37:25Take some of the ideas and share them with somebody else because as soon as they go from
00:37:28my mouth to your head, they're all yours, and I need people with me and the happiness movement.
00:37:33I need fellow happiness teachers.
00:37:34So thanks in advance.
00:37:35See you next week.