00:00:00My students have an expression. My kids have an expression. Anybody who's under 30 knows this, and most people over 30 as well,
00:00:07that when you're behind the computer screen all day and maybe getting wrapped up in some stupid conversation on social media,
00:00:14you're losing touch with reality. You're getting sucked into the matrix, into the simulation of life,
00:00:21that you gotta turn it off and go touch grass. The average child today spends between 4 and 7 minutes a day outside.
00:00:29By the way, also, more than 4 to 7 hours online, this is an evolutionary argument.
00:00:36You know, our brains are the same thing that they were about 250,000 years ago in the late Pleistocene.
00:00:41Sitting around the campfire outside, talking to each other while we shove pieces of yak meat into our mouths or whatever it is,
00:00:47that's how our brains were made, to understand each other, to find meaning in our lives,
00:00:53and when we deviate from that too much, well, we're gonna suffer.
00:00:59[Music]
00:01:04Hey friends, welcome to Office Hours. I'm Arthur Brooks.
00:01:07This is a show dedicated to lifting people up and bringing them together in bonds of happiness and love, using science and ideas.
00:01:13This is how I do my work, is getting these ideas out, the deepest ideas in the research on social sciences, on neuroscience,
00:01:22on all different areas that can actually help us understand human flourishing.
00:01:25And my job is to bring those ideas to you, whether you have a background in science or not.
00:01:30Why? Because when you understand these ideas as a layperson, then you become the teacher to the other people who listen to you.
00:01:37And that's how we together lift people up and bring them together.
00:01:41My mission, perhaps it's yours too, I want you to live a happier life and help other people to do so as well.
00:01:46So thank you for listening to the show and for suggesting the show.
00:01:49The show is getting more popular by the week, and I'm gratified by that.
00:01:52It's a wonderful thing. It makes it possible for us to have a bigger and bigger impact on other people.
00:01:58Please do continue to give me your thoughts and ideas.
00:02:01Make sure you write to me at officehours@arthurbrooks.com,
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00:02:32Thanks for that.
00:02:33I hope that if you haven't gotten the book, The Meaning of Your Life, it's out.
00:02:37Here it is behind me on that beautiful sand, zen cover, The Meaning of Your Life, Finding Purpose in an Age of Emptiness.
00:02:44I'm delighted to say that a lot of people are reading the book.
00:02:46I hope you will, too.
00:02:47If you haven't, please go to the website, TheMeaningOfYourLife.com, and you can learn how to join our community,
00:02:53get all sorts of special benefits from being part of the community that we have of people who are reading the book
00:02:57and getting involved in the work and passing it on to others.
00:03:00All right.
00:03:01Now, one of the things that I've been talking about in my work and on episodes of the show in the past
00:03:05is how one of the ways that people find meaning and happiness is through beauty.
00:03:11And there are three kinds of beauty -- artistic beauty, moral beauty, but especially natural beauty.
00:03:16It's funny because we kind of know that, that if you want to get more meaning into your life, it's good to get out of the house.
00:03:23It's good to get out into nature.
00:03:25People know this intuitively.
00:03:27It's funny because my students have an expression, my kids have an expression, anybody who's under 30 knows this,
00:03:33and most people over 30 as well, that when you're behind the computer screen all day
00:03:38and maybe getting wrapped up in some stupid conversation on social media and you're losing touch with reality,
00:03:45you're getting sucked into the matrix, into the simulation of life, that you've got to turn it off and go touch grass.
00:03:52Man, I'm going to go touch grass.
00:03:53That's what my kids will say.
00:03:55And what that means is go into real life and to get out into something that's actually growing and good.
00:04:02And, of course, there's an intuition behind that, that when you're in the matrix, your brain isn't working right.
00:04:07You're getting a simulation of real life.
00:04:09And if you've been watching the show, you know exactly why.
00:04:11You're sitting in the left hemisphere of your brain, which is the complicated part of your brain for complicated problems.
00:04:17And for reality and satisfaction and meaning and happiness, you need to get to the right hemisphere of your brain.
00:04:23And you can't simulate one with the other, so you've got to go get into the part of the world that will stimulate that right hemisphere of the brain.
00:04:29And the fastest way to do that is to go touch grass.
00:04:33But I want to talk about touching grass today. I want to talk about why you need more nature in your life.
00:04:38I'm going to tell you about the trends that we actually see and the problems that we see in modern life where people are doing so less and less and less.
00:04:45The deleterious consequences of that.
00:04:47The benefits that you can actually get from spending more time outside in nature.
00:04:52I'll tell you specifically what the research is saying.
00:04:54And most importantly, the steps for actually doing so progressively in your life.
00:04:59I'm not going to go ask you to go live outside, but I am going to give you some very specific suggestions on how you can use the research to get what you actually deeply want in your brain and in your heart.
00:05:10Okay, now the data are very clear. Fewer and fewer people are spending leisure time in nature.
00:05:16And this is one of the reasons that, of course, meaning is becoming more and more elusive.
00:05:20That's what this whole book is about. Meaning is harder to find.
00:05:23And we're using our brains less well.
00:05:25And that's one of the reasons that happiness has been in decline.
00:05:29These are intimately tied to each other.
00:05:31First, let me give you the evidence on that, not that you need it, that people are spending less and less time outside.
00:05:37The Velux group in 2019 published a really interesting survey that found that Americans went on one billion fewer outings in nature in 2019 compared to 2008.
00:05:48That's a lot. That's something like three fewer per year outings.
00:05:54I mean like trips out into nature per year per American, as a matter of fact.
00:05:59Now, similar to this, 85% of adults today say that their kids, that kids in general, spend less time outside than they did when they were kids.
00:06:08Everybody my age spent more time outside than kids do today. We just did.
00:06:13Now, a part of it is you might, you know, be critical of parenting.
00:06:16I remember my mother saying, "Don't come back before it's dark," right?
00:06:19That might seem like under parenting, but suffice it to say that there's a lot less.
00:06:24Jonathan Haidt and his work in The Anxious Generation, which is a great book, I strongly recommend.
00:06:29I'll put that in the show notes if you haven't read it yet.
00:06:31He knows that the average child today spends between four and seven minutes a day outside.
00:06:38By the way, also more than four to seven hours online for many kids today is between 10 and 12 hours online.
00:06:46Four to seven minutes outside? That's obviously upside down, isn't it?
00:06:51If you're falling away from nature, you're almost certainly lowering your well-being and increasing your unhappiness.
00:06:56So, I'm going to try to prove that to you.
00:06:59But, you know, as spring is upon us and summer is on the horizon, this is a perfect time to make some new resolutions,
00:07:06to be spending more time where you can find the meaning of your life.
00:07:09Okay, now, why is it that we're spending so much less time outside?
00:07:13Number one, and this was even true more than 30 and 40 years ago, that the world's population has been urbanizing for a long time.
00:07:21And urban life is largely inside life.
00:07:23I mean, you can walk around New York City, and people do, as a matter of fact.
00:07:26But the point is that when you live in a city, you spend a lot more time in the house than you do when you live in the country.
00:07:32And there's all sorts of reasons for that, but I don't think I really need to prove that.
00:07:35I think it's probably pretty intuitive.
00:07:37Now, life was really different in 1800, to be sure.
00:07:40The average American, which is to say that more than 50% of Americans, never left a 20-mile radius of the site of his or her birth in his entire lifetime.
00:07:50Yeah, so that was a different time of life, and, you know, there was less transportation and fewer roads.
00:07:56But only 6.1% of the American population lived in a city in the year 1800.
00:08:01You know what it is today? 79%.
00:08:04So 6% to 79% in 200 years.
00:08:07200 years is a long time, but that means a fundamental change in the essence of life.
00:08:11I'll give you a quote at the very end about somebody who could have lived in a city and didn't.
00:08:16Somebody that you've read before that describes the result of that.
00:08:20I'll put the references to all these statistics into the show notes in case you want to check them or you want to use them or whatever they happen to be.
00:08:26So urbanization is the first big force that's actually keeping us inside and keeping us from touching grass, maybe even seeing grass.
00:08:32The second, of course, is technology, which is, you know, over the past 30 years in particular where technology has displaced outdoors in our attention.
00:08:40In other words, going outside is just not something to do when you're completely addicted to wiping out any semblance of free time and boredom in your life by staring at your devices.
00:08:50The average American looks at her or his phone 205 times a day. That's every 13 minutes, and sometimes a lot more than that.
00:08:57Adults behind screens, not just little screens, but behind computers, et cetera, spent an average of 10 hours and 39 minutes a day behind the computer last year.
00:09:06That's a lot of time behind the screen. There's not that much time to touch grass when the better part of your almost, I mean, a big majority of your waking hours are actually spent behind the screen.
00:09:15And by the way, what a trade-off. You know, it's like a lot of people are, what is their screensaver?
00:09:20Some beautiful vista from, you know, the Rocky Mountains or Rolling Green Hills. Why? Because the good folks at Microsoft or Apple are trying to give you the semblance of touching grass.
00:09:31But remember, if you've been watching my show, you know it won't pass the Turing test. You can't fool your brain and say, wow, that's such a beautiful picture of the beach.
00:09:41That's such a beautiful picture of, you know, Mount Shasta or something like that. But all it is is a complicated simulacrum for the right brain mystical experience that the real thing would bring.
00:09:53I dare say, looking at the neuroscience research on that, that the most beautiful picture of the most beautiful mountain doesn't compare to simply going outside in the backyard and looking closely at a clover.
00:10:05And that's because it uses your brain appropriately when you do the real thing. Now, maybe you're not an outdoorsman or woman, but the truth is that my guess is that you've done some outdoor activities, outdoor play, and that's going down like crazy.
00:10:22Hunting, fishing, camping, these things have massively declined over the years. Some people still do them, but they sound like a weird thing to do. And, you know, at one point they actually weren't. Why did we camp when I was a kid?
00:10:36Because motels were expensive, that's why. You know, you sleep outside because being in a tent is cheaper than being in a motel.
00:10:45So that probably sounds familiar to you, especially if you're an urbanite with an indoor job and you're tied to your devices all day long, and the time that you spend outside is walking from your house or your apartment to the car or the train, and you haven't spent serious time in nature in months or even years.
00:11:02So what's the result? The research is really clear that what the result is, based on a lot of studies, throw some of them into the show notes, but these are easy to find, this is an easy Google search, that the less time you spend in nature, the more stress you're going to feel.
00:11:17Stress is the physiological response to anxiety, so therefore the more anxiety you're going to feel, and the more depression you're likely to suffer, the more malaise that you're actually going to feel.
00:11:27Because frankly, once again, I've said it again and again and again, psychology is largely biology. These aren't just psychological phenomena, these are biological phenomena that your brain won't work right unless you're outside a lot.
00:11:39And again, this is an evolutionary argument. Our brains are the same thing that they were about 250,000 years ago in the late Pleistocene.
00:11:47We lived outdoors, or at least pretty close to outdoors, in bands of 30 to 50 kin-based individuals, hierarchically arranged and depending on nature to make our living.
00:11:59Hunting and gathering and sitting around the campfire outside, talking to each other while we shove pieces of yak meat into our mouths or whatever it is, that's how our brains were made, to understand each other, to find meaning in our lives, and when we deviate from that too much, well, we're going to suffer because we're too far away from our factory settings.
00:12:20That's just the way it is. So these findings about stress and anxiety and depression and loneliness and alienation, there's no surprise in this at all. It's exactly what evolutionary biologists would suggest.
00:12:30Okay, now, what happens when you reverse that? In other words, there's nothing that says that you can't try to replicate a state of nature, at least a little bit more.
00:12:40If you're somebody who's getting four to seven minutes outside and you start getting half an hour outside, that's a big improvement. An hour outside, you're going for a walk? Substantial. That's a big deal.
00:12:51What will happen when this occurs? Now, there's great research that says what happens when you start to add in time outside, and especially time in natural beauty?
00:13:02So it's not just walking across the Walmart parking lot five times to get your steps. That's not what I'm talking about. I mean, that fresh air is better than nothing, but getting out into plant life and nature, and especially seeing green, and as you'll see in a minute, touching things outside has special properties.
00:13:17And I'm not going to try to get all woo-woo on you here. I'm research-based, but you'll see what I mean in a minute. What happens when you start to add in more of this nature into your life?
00:13:28And the answer is there's a bunch of really interesting benefits that actually occur that have been shown in randomized treatment-controlled experiments.
00:13:37For example, people get a perspective on life that they didn't have before. In other words, they're able to zoom out on life and see life from the outside in a way that they couldn't see when they were stuck inside.
00:13:51I'll give you an example. There's an interesting study that has nature walkers, people who go walk in nature, and then the control group are going to be people who are just hanging around in an urban setting.
00:14:03So they're outside, but they're in an urban setting versus people who are walking in the woods. And then they were asked about statements such as the following.
00:14:12"I often reflect on episodes of my life that I should no longer concern myself with." In other words, do you ruminate a lot on things in the past that are really sort of trivial but they're bothering you?
00:14:26A lot of people do, right? It turns out that the ruminators were the ones who were controlled in the experiment to be the urban ones versus the nature walkers.
00:14:37The nature walkers were less likely to say that they reflected on episodes of life that they shouldn't concern themselves with. They had perspective on life. They were able to zoom out, to look at life in a neutral way.
00:14:49And wouldn't you love that? Yeah, well, you can get it. It's easy. Go outside in nature. You'll get that. You'll start to be a more philosophical person.
00:15:01Things will start to roll off you more. That's what that research suggests, and that's probably what your own experience suggests as well.
00:15:08The second is really interesting, which is this. It's related to the first, that you have a tendency to fall prey less to social comparison when you spend time outside.
00:15:17It's interesting, right? Because why would that be the case? Once again, it's because you're getting perspective. You're zooming out. And when you get more perspective on your life, you're less likely to compare yourself socially to other people.
00:15:27Now social comparison, man. I mean, it's like the famous old quote that's attributed to Teddy Roosevelt, who knows if it came from him or not, that social comparison is the thief of joy.
00:15:38I mean, you know it's true. I've got these interesting studies that show, I didn't do them. I've seen the papers that show that if you take pictures of your vacation to post on social media, that you enjoy your vacation about a fifth less than you would otherwise.
00:15:52And the reason is because you're not actually there. You're in the future, imagining somebody looking at your photos and being envious of you now, and meanwhile you've missed the experience.
00:16:02That's how social comparison works. Plus, you're probably insecure because you know that maybe somebody, probably somebody's having more fun with somebody who loves them more than what you're experiencing right now.
00:16:12Social comparison is terrible. We do it because we're evolved to understand our place in a hierarchy, but overdoing it, especially on social media, it's terrible. You want to be free from social comparison? Well, you'll never be free from social comparison.
00:16:25You want it to be less of a problem in your life? Go outside. Transcend. You're going to zoom out. Now again, there's a lot of hypotheses about exactly why this is the case, but it's manifestly clear in the data that this is the case.
00:16:40Here's what we find. Researchers find that people who walk in a city for 15 minutes are 39% more likely to agree with the statement, "Right now, I'm concerned with the way that I present myself," than people who spend the same amount of time walking in nature.
00:16:56Once again, this is being in an urban setting outside versus being in a natural setting. All the worse if you don't even leave the house in your urban setting.
00:17:08Right now, you're like Neo in The Matrix. You can keep scrolling, experiencing a simulation of life, or you can wake up to how your attention is being harvested for profit.
00:17:19It's happening to people all over the world right now. You don't want to be productized like this anymore, but it's hard.
00:17:26Tech addiction is so potent because it's been designed to tap into your dopamine system, just like heroin, porn, gambling. You've got the cravings. You're addicted. You don't like it, and I don't either. But I can't just tell you to stop doing it. That's hard.
00:17:40If you want to break free from the system, you need an incentive. Here's one. Why don't you join a phone company that pays you not to use your phone?
00:17:49If you want to reduce brain rot, get Noble Mobile. It pays you to use less data. It gives you an incentive to unplug.
00:17:56Noble Mobile is the phone plan that finally aligns incentives with what's good for you. Use less data, earn money back. And when you do, you'll be living once again in real life, and you're going to like how it feels.
00:18:09Okay, now you might say, "Great, but I can't afford it. I can't afford to spend all this time outside because of my job." I get it. Actually, you probably can't afford not to. Here's a great study.
00:18:21A 2012 study in the journal PLOS One, P-L-O-S One, which is an apex journal in all fields of science.
00:18:28Researchers showed that four days immersed in nature without technology increased people's creativity and problem-solving abilities by about 50%. You're going to be better at your job if you spend more time in nature because your brain is going to work better.
00:18:41Creativity in the wild, improving creative reasoning through immersion in natural settings. It's a great piece. You've got to see that. It's a really good article.
00:18:49So, if you're not spending time in nature, you're going to be unhappier than you should be, more neurotic than you should be, more open to social comparison than you should be, less perspective-taking than you should, and less productive in your job than necessary.
00:19:05So, let's fix it. Now, how do we fix it? Let me give you a few to-dos here, okay? I'm going to give you three, as a matter of fact, with some subcategories along the way, some sub-bullets along the way.
00:19:20Number one, spend as much time outdoors of your discretionary time as you actually possibly can.
00:19:29So, here's the deal. I mean, there's a lot of time that you can't do it. I mean, if you work in an office, it's unlikely that you're going to be able to tell your boss.
00:19:36I tell you what, can I set my desk up outside? It's funny because when you're a college professor, you always ask the question, "Professor, can we have class outside?" I mean, who the heck has class outside?
00:19:46And yet, every professor hears this. It's funny because I always thought, "Nobody's ever had class outside." Then I found an old photo of my dad doing a calculus lecture on a chalkboard on wheels outside and all of the students laying around in the grass.
00:19:59Okay, so apparently that does happen. That said, I bet that you're not going to have too much success convincing your boss to take your desk and computer outside.
00:20:08But you have a lot of discretionary time and you can actually spend it, make a point, make it into a habit of spending as much time outside. You've got a vacation coming up, I bet. I bet you've got some kind of vacation coming up.
00:20:19Select an outdoor vacation. I mean, maybe you're not going to go hunting and fishing. Maybe that's not your thing.
00:20:24But there's something. I mean, I started doing the Camino de Santiago. I've talked about it a couple of times on the show where I walk across northern Spain in the summertime. I've done it twice in the past few years.
00:20:33It's just the best. Day after day after day after day. I'm 16 hours a day outside. And the first day you're so stressed.
00:20:40But as you get more tired because you're walking hundreds of miles, you actually find that life starts to make more sense.
00:20:48And I always thought, "Well, it must be because I'm in so much pain I can't focus on anything else because I'm sore and I have blisters."
00:20:55No. It's because all the stuff I just talked about a minute ago. It's because social comparison is melting away. It's because anxiety is declining.
00:21:04Because my stress hormones are lower than they were and they're probably within physiologically healthy parameters.
00:21:11It's just the way I'm supposed to live is what it comes down to.
00:21:14Now, let's say you can't do that. There's a lot that you can actually do. I had a friend who had this really interesting idea.
00:21:20During the 2008-2009 financial crisis, and he lost his job, and he had no discretionary income.
00:21:28I mean, he was just barely holding it together with his savings to stay in his house. Had a little house.
00:21:33And so it came time for his two-week vacation. I mean, it was like it was a staycation, man. He wasn't going anyplace.
00:21:40So he took his tent and he slept in his backyard for two weeks. He camped out in his own backyard.
00:21:46He lived not in his house. And he said it was like the best vacation. It was just so refreshing.
00:21:52It was probably good that he didn't, you know, make a campfire and burn down his neighborhood.
00:21:56But, I mean, use your creativity. You've got discretionary time. Use it appropriately.
00:22:01Second is to therapeutically have moments in your day that you either witness or touch nature.
00:22:13Now, two areas of research I'll call your attention to.
00:22:16Number one is something that Andrew Huberman has talked an awful lot about, about the neurobiological benefits of actually witnessing the sunrise.
00:22:24And I've talked on my show a lot about the Brahma Muhurta, which is to wake up before the sunrise.
00:22:30You've kind of lost the first battle, if it's already light when you get up. And, you know, sorry, don't turn off the show.
00:22:35I understand that's hard for some people. And it's not possible for everybody because of your schedule.
00:22:39But if you can, get up before the sunrise. And especially if you can, let the natural sun, when it's really horizontal, actually enter your eyes and witness the miracle that is the sunrise.
00:22:52I see the sunrise most days, as a matter of fact. And the reason I do that is because I get up early enough that I finish my hour-long workout while it's still dark.
00:23:00And then Esther and I, we go to mass. And usually, depending on the time of year, either when we're going into mass, the sun is coming up.
00:23:07Or when we come out of mass, we're walking out is when the sun is coming up. So I get to see it every day.
00:23:11But there are biological properties to, you know, how that's affecting you. That early morning sunshine in your eyes is actually affecting you.
00:23:20But that will affect your psychology. And that's just a little therapeutic self-treatment that you can give yourself every day of nature.
00:23:27The second is an area that's been really controversial in the research, which is called earthing or grounding.
00:23:35And I'm going to put something into the, a very nice paper actually on this, a peer-reviewed article that changed my thinking on this.
00:23:40The first one I thought, oh yeah, all right, go touch grass, literally touch grass, and like the vibrations of the earth will enter into you.
00:23:47And like, okay, okay, no. Well, it turns out there's a pretty interesting paper.
00:23:52This is a paper in the Journal of Science and Healing, which is a good journal, called "Integrative and Lifestyle Medicine Strategies Should Include Earthing," in parentheses, grounding.
00:24:03Review of research evidence and clinical observations. And what it shows is that when people are in physical contact with the earth in ways as simple as walking barefoot,
00:24:12their self-reported health and mood improve, just from the touch, the way this happens.
00:24:17And there's a lot of hypotheses about why that might be the case. I don't know. But I do it. And then I like it. I recommend it to you.
00:24:26Okay, here's the third approach. I would build in, and this actually has a whole lot of benefits to it.
00:24:31I would build more walking outside, just sort of into your health and wellness routine.
00:24:38A lot of people are wearing fitness trackers. I mean, I do. A lot of you do, too.
00:24:42And you've watched probably my show on morning and evening protocols about my workout routines and what I try to do at night, et cetera.
00:24:51A lot of you are trying to get 10,000 steps. That's an arbitrary measure.
00:24:54It came from a Japanese pedometer company that basically just tried to popularize the idea that 10,000 has some special properties. It doesn't.
00:25:01Most of the research shows that you get a lot of benefit once you get to 7,000, but there's almost no upper limit on the benefit.
00:25:08It just gets flatter in terms of the benefits, highly concave. But still, more is better when it comes down to when it comes to steps.
00:25:15And so, you know, you manage what you measure. And so if you're actually measuring your steps, that's great.
00:25:20But getting your steps outside is an especially good thing to do when you can.
00:25:25And so in the episodes, as I mentioned before, on my protocols, in the evening protocols, if you go back to that show, and we'll put the link in here if you want to go watch it,
00:25:35I talk about the fact that my wife and I, we like to do 30 or 40 minutes of walking after dinner.
00:25:41And one of the reasons for that is that walking after you eat is really, really good for glucose management.
00:25:47I mean, it's excellent, as a matter of fact. There's a ton of research on that.
00:25:50Just good for you, for your digestion and your mood and the way that you're actually managing your glucose.
00:25:56So you don't get these big glucose spikes, which isn't good for you as you're digesting your meals.
00:26:00But also, it feeds this other need that you've got, which is actually walking outside and getting fresh air.
00:26:05And if you live in a beautiful place, Esther and I are lucky that we live in a suburb that's got, it's like living in a forest, and we'll walk on forest paths outside.
00:26:13If you can do anything like that, but the best you can do any place outside is really a good idea.
00:26:17And getting into the habit of doing that as much as you can when you're home and the weather permits,
00:26:24if you're physically able to do a walk after dinner, and if it's dark, all the better.
00:26:29Put lights on your jacket so you don't get run over. Anyway, these are three things that almost anybody can do.
00:26:35Now, maybe you're not an outdoor person because of the weather and the bugs.
00:26:40By the way, if you are an indoor person, you might very well be underestimating the benefits
00:26:46and overestimating the discomfort of actually doing that.
00:26:49One interesting study shows exactly that. By the way, a 2011 study in Psychological Science, great journal,
00:26:55that people think they will enjoy walking in nature less than they actually do.
00:26:59And why? Because you are evolved to want the couch.
00:27:03You're evolved to want inactivity because people are trying to conserve their energy.
00:27:09There's more research that shows that. And so the result is that after dinner, you're like,
00:27:12"I want to sit on the couch. It's going to feel better if I sit on the couch.
00:27:15I won't like it if I go walk around. What a pain. I'm so tired."
00:27:18You'll always like it more than you think. The data don't lie on that.
00:27:22Here's my last thought, and we're going to do some audience questions.
00:27:25So this isn't the last thing I'm going to say, but I really love the work of the American transcendentalist philosophers.
00:27:32Anybody who watches the show, for any length of time, I'm always quoting Ralph Waldo Emerson.
00:27:37That's my favorite philosopher. But his great friend, Henry David Thoreau,
00:27:41they were both in Concord, Mass. in the 1840s.
00:27:44Henry David Thoreau, of course, of Walden fame, you know, that's a little bit dubious.
00:27:48Walden were the Walden Pond. He built his cabin on Walden Pond.
00:27:52And he saw nobody. He was a hermit. Wrong.
00:27:55There was a train track right behind him. His friends were visiting him all the time.
00:27:58His mother brought him food and did his laundry.
00:28:00But be that as it may, he wrote some very beautiful words about nature.
00:28:04This is one of the things that Thoreau said that I think is really beautiful.
00:28:07It kind of sums up what we're talking about here.
00:28:09"I was walking in a meadow, the source of a small brook,
00:28:13when the sun at last, just before setting, after a cold gray day,
00:28:17reached a clear stratum in the horizon.
00:28:20Till one day the sun shall shine more brightly than ever he has done,
00:28:24shall perchance shine into our minds and hearts,
00:28:27and light up our whole lives with a great awakening light,
00:28:31as warm and serene and golden as the bank site in autumn."
00:28:36That's what we're saying here.
00:28:38More nature, more meaning, more love and happiness than your hands.
00:28:44A couple of quick questions and then we're out.
00:28:46David Ahern wrote in at the website at officehours@arthurbrooks.com,
00:28:51"I've wondered for a while why you choose the word happiness over joy."
00:28:55Good question.
00:28:57"The reason is because joy for behavioral scientists like me,
00:29:00it describes an emotion and a feeling, and happiness isn't a feeling."
00:29:05Remember, feelings are related to happiness,
00:29:08like the smell of your dinner is related to your dinner.
00:29:11It's evidence of your dinner.
00:29:13So joy, feeling joy, which is largely the activity of the limbic system.
00:29:18For example, there's a part of your limbic system
00:29:20in the reward center of your brain called a ventral tegmental area.
00:29:23If I tap it by somebody you most, most, most love saying, "I love you,"
00:29:30that'll tap that ventral tegmental area.
00:29:32A big bump of cocaine will do the same thing because our brains are very thrifty.
00:29:35You're going to feel this rush of ebullience, joy.
00:29:38That's an emotion, and that's different than happiness.
00:29:41Again, it's evidence of happiness in its way.
00:29:44So that's one of the reasons.
00:29:45The second reason is because in every religious tradition, joy means something else.
00:29:49In Christianity, my religion, for example, joy means the beatific vision
00:29:55to lay your eyes on the face of God when you get to heaven.
00:29:58And so what religious people believe in many religious traditions
00:30:02is you get to heaven, you're going to get unremitting joy
00:30:04because you're going to get to be with and look at God.
00:30:07That's obviously different than the psychological definition
00:30:10or the neurophysiological definition,
00:30:14but that's the reason because neither of those is the same thing
00:30:17as happiness on earth as we understand it,
00:30:19the imperfect happiness that we're striving for.
00:30:21It's a great question, and thank you for that.
00:30:22Sahiz Kaur writes, and also to the website at Office Hours,
00:30:27"How can I continue to show up in service of others
00:30:30while also protecting myself from resentment?"
00:30:33Yeah, that's a good balance, isn't it?
00:30:35That's a good balance that you need for yourself.
00:30:37You want to show up for other people because you want to be focused on others.
00:30:40You want to try and send yourself in the service of other people.
00:30:42But at the same time, a lot of it, when people go from friend to taker,
00:30:48that's going to actually spawn a whole lot of resentment.
00:30:51And that requires understanding balance.
00:30:55It's an understanding of balance between the I self,
00:30:57which is truly in service of other people,
00:30:59and the me self, which is resentful.
00:31:01You will start to notice yourself in a negative way
00:31:04when people are taking from you.
00:31:06Or, by the way, when you feel like you're doing something out of obligation,
00:31:09this will lead to resentment and not the feeling of peace that you're looking for.
00:31:13So the result of it is that you need to calibrate what you're doing
00:31:17and think about the motives of what you're doing in showing up for other people.
00:31:21Now, you can get better at this.
00:31:23The skill can be really important.
00:31:25And this is what a happy marriage is all about,
00:31:27is showing up and showing up and saying,
00:31:30"Yeah, I could be resentful, but I choose not to be
00:31:32because the love that actually is in my heart,
00:31:35which is to will the good of another person as another person,
00:31:38that's the essence of who I am.
00:31:41That's the essence of who I want to be."
00:31:43But in the meantime, it's really important that we distinguish
00:31:45between doing something out of our commitment to help
00:31:50and the joy in doing so and a sense of obligation,
00:31:53even against our will, that we can avoid that resentment.
00:31:57That prudential judgment and finding that balance,
00:31:59well, that's one of the great skills of life, isn't it?
00:32:01Thanks for that question.
00:32:03We've come to an end.
00:32:04Please let me know your thoughts right into the show
00:32:07at our email address, which is on the screen right now.
00:32:11Like and subscribe on Spotify, YouTube, and Apple.
00:32:13Leave the comments.
00:32:14That's another way to ask questions.
00:32:15We're always looking for the comments there.
00:32:17Please follow me on my social media.
00:32:19I'm very active on Instagram.
00:32:21I'm not personally active.
00:32:23Our team is actually putting up my content all the time.
00:32:25And it's content you won't find generally in the podcast itself,
00:32:28Instagram and LinkedIn and other fine platforms
00:32:31where you're getting good information.
00:32:33Try to put out stuff that's really good for other people
00:32:35and that will lift them up in joy and happiness.
00:32:39And if you haven't ordered it already,
00:32:40please do get The Meaning of Your Life
00:32:42and share it with other people.
00:32:43And share this episode if you found it useful.
00:32:47Refer back to it if you need reminders.
00:32:49And in the meantime, I hope you have a wonderful week
00:32:51and I'll see you next Monday.