00:00:00you shouldn't care about your feelings so much. Feelings are liars. They lie to you.
00:00:03You will never get anywhere with that. Feeling, belief, practice is the wrong order of operations.
00:00:11The way to actually bring this into your life, to get the benefits that I've talked about before,
00:00:15is to start with practice. Practice first, feel later. And I want to give you a three-part plan
00:00:22to actually explore parts of your life that may have been unexplored.
00:00:30Welcome to Office Hours. I'm Arthur Brooks. This is a show about love and happiness,
00:00:36about faith and hope, about your life, how you can make it better using science and ideas,
00:00:42and how you can bring these ideas to other people. I want you to be a teacher of well-being. That's
00:00:47what I am. That's literally how I make my living. And I need people with me in this, whether you're
00:00:52doing it for a living or not. The information that I give you in this show is based in science. I'm
00:00:58not trying to make you into a behavioral scientist like I am, but I want you to have enough
00:01:02information that you can share these ideas in the spirit of public education, but more importantly,
00:01:07in the spirit of bringing the best life to the most people. That's the world that we want.
00:01:12And we need to do that together. So thank you for joining me in this. And as always, thank you for
00:01:16feeding back. If you have a question or a comment or a criticism about anything that I say, you have
00:01:20a correction that you need me to know about, I want to hear it. That's at officehours@arthurbricks.com.
00:01:26That's our email address. You can also contact me personally or anybody on my team by going to
00:01:32my website, arthurbricks.com. You can also leave a comment at Spotify or Apple or YouTube or wherever
00:01:39you're watching or listening to this. Please leave a review and like and subscribe so that the
00:01:45algorithm gods smile on us and so that these videos and this podcast reaches more people who might need
00:01:52it even though they don't know about it yet. And as always, also please do recommend it to your
00:01:56friends because word of mouth is the best way to do that. Today, I want to talk to you about faith
00:02:01and spirituality. This is a topic that people have been asking about and asking about since the
00:02:05inception of this podcast and today I'm bringing it to you. Why? Because this is one of the most
00:02:09important ways for you to find more meaning in your life. And as you know, this is the topic that I'm
00:02:15all about these days because that's my new book, "The Meaning of Your Life, Finding Purpose in an
00:02:20Age of Emptiness." That's it back there. That's "The Meaning of Your Life." That's my new book.
00:02:24And faith and spirituality or at least life philosophy are one of the most important powerful
00:02:29ways that you can invite more meaning into your life and that is one of the most important ways
00:02:34that you can become happier. Do you know the meaning of your life? If you don't or at least you don't
00:02:40enough, then this episode is really going to be for you. Now full disclosure, let me talk to you
00:02:46about faith in my own life. And the reason I do this is because I want you to know where I'm
00:02:51coming from. I am a traditional practicing Roman Catholic. I go to mass every day. Now
00:02:59that hasn't been the case every year of my life. On the contrary, I was raised in a pretty traditional
00:03:04Christian home, Protestant as a matter of fact. I had a mystical experience when I was 15 years
00:03:09old at the shrine of Guadalupe in Mexico where I discovered I was Catholic. Some say it's adolescent
00:03:15rebellion. My parents said, "Well, I guess it beats drugs." One way or the other, I became Catholic and
00:03:20I'm really glad that I did. It's really worked for me. I also married a Catholic girl and we built a
00:03:25family that is practicing in our Catholic faith. It's really important to me. It's a really important
00:03:30source of meaning. It's a source of consolation in times of trouble. It's the way that I can connect
00:03:38with a lot of other people. It's sense-making in so many different ways. But I'm not going to tell you
00:03:44that my path is your path. On the contrary, what I'm going to tell you is you need to find your path,
00:03:50whatever that happens to be. I invite you to try mine. It's great, but I want you to find yours.
00:03:56That's what I'm really all about in this episode. I'm not trying to convert you to my particular
00:04:01religion. I want to talk to you about the effects of religion per se and non-traditional experiences
00:04:07that are spiritual and even philosophical experiences that expand your understanding of
00:04:13coherence, why things happen the way they do, purpose, why you're doing what you're doing,
00:04:17and significance, why your life matters by using parts of your brain that you typically don't use
00:04:24when you're just going about your daily business and surfing and scrolling Instagram and doing all
00:04:30the kinds of stuff that you ordinarily do. I want you to actually explore parts of your life that
00:04:36may have been unexplored. Now, let's start with the data on faith and spirituality. It's in decline.
00:04:44It has been for a long time. Millennials and Gen Z have been more likely than any generation since
00:04:52we've been keeping data of declaring their religious affiliation as none. And I don't mean N-U-N,
00:04:57like wearing a habit. No, not that kind of none. N-O-N-E, none, like no religious affiliation. That
00:05:04was really unusual back in the day. I was born in 1964. Do the math. I'm old. And in 1964, 1% of the
00:05:12American population listed none as their religious affiliation. Not much. One percent is a very low
00:05:18number. Today, especially for people under 35, it's in the low 30s of people that are saying,
00:05:26"And it's been going up for quite a long time." One caveat on that coming up. Now, I'm not regretting
00:05:31that. I'm just reporting that. You decide whether that's a good or a bad thing or whether it's
00:05:37neutral. In general, Americans are still far more likely than people in other developed nations to
00:05:45practice religious behavior. Okay? So, if 30 something, 30 low 30s, 32% of millennials,
00:05:53for example, say none, that still means that most don't say none. And traditionally, we find that
00:05:5925 to 30% of Americans attend some sort of weekly religious observance. That's way higher than most
00:06:06countries. I mean, there are countries where it's much higher, like the Philippines, for example,
00:06:10is a much more religious country than the United States. But the United States compared to Europe,
00:06:13for example, is far and away more religious. I lived in Barcelona. I have lived in Barcelona
00:06:19off and on for 35 years, as a matter of fact. And in Barcelona, 3% of the population goes to religious
00:06:25services every week. That surprises a lot of people. They think, "Spain, such a Catholic
00:06:30country." No, no, no. It's a post-Christian country, to a very large extent. 3% is like Denmark,
00:06:36for example, and the United States is trending in that direction, is the way that that goes.
00:06:40Some people really celebrate that because they think religion is a bad thing. I'm going to try
00:06:44to make the case that whatever your religion and observance of that religion is, that religion
00:06:50on its face is a generally very good thing for you, for your sense of life's meaning,
00:06:56or spirituality, or whatever it is that we're talking about in your case.
00:07:01In 2017, the Pew Research Center, the gold standard for research in the United States on these topics,
00:07:07in 2017, 18% of Americans claimed to be neither spiritual or religious. 48% said they were both,
00:07:15and 27% said they were spiritual but not religious. I don't think there's very many people who say
00:07:20they're religious but not spiritual for some reason. That's what the lay of the land is,
00:07:26but once again, that's higher when it comes to non-spiritual, non-religious than we've seen
00:07:30in the past. Social scientists, people in my job, have always predicted that our societies can move
00:07:37towards secularization. They've been saying that since the onset of the Enlightenment,
00:07:41and it seems to be at least recently coming true. Until just very recently, more on that in a second.
00:07:47The percentage of U.S. adults saying religion is important in their daily life fell 17 points
00:07:53from 66% in 2015 to 49% in 2025. That's the largest 10-year drop that polling organizations have seen
00:08:03before. Now, here's the little caveat to that. Some of these, Gallup and Pew and other places,
00:08:09have started to see a little uptick, just a little fishhook at the bottom of this downward trend,
00:08:17especially among men in their 20s. There's really interesting findings that we're starting to see.
00:08:21Men in their 20s are more likely than before to be practicing a traditional religion. That's starting
00:08:28to uptick a little bit. We don't know. Is that the beginning of a trend? Is that a blip? Is that a
00:08:33statistical anomaly? With women, it's still going down, but with men, it started to tick back up
00:08:38again. Time will tell what actually that means, but the general story has been one of decline in
00:08:43religious activity. Now, why do we care about this? We're going right to the science here because this
00:08:52stuff is so cool, as you're going to see. This brings me to the work of a friend and colleague
00:08:56of mine who teaches at Columbia University. This is Lisa Miller. She's a psychologist and
00:09:00neuroscientist at Columbia who studies the brain on faith, how faith affects neurological activity
00:09:09is what she studies. It's really interesting the stuff that she does. For example, she shows a lot
00:09:14of the benefits that having religious experiences of all types actually have. In experiments, she
00:09:19will have... I'm going to put this in the show notes. By the way, this is the book to read. It's
00:09:24called "The Awakened Brain, the New Science of Spirituality, and the Quest for an Inspired Life."
00:09:29It's a great book. I really, really strongly recommend this book. She is practicing. She
00:09:34practices Judaism quite seriously. Last year, I was giving a Sukkot meditation at Temple Beth
00:09:43Elohim in the outskirts of Boston in Wellesley. It turns out she was watching me online of all things.
00:09:50She said, "Not bad for a Catholic." Anyway, she has found in her research that if you remember a
00:09:57spiritual experience versus remembering a stressful experience, that that memory of a spiritual
00:10:05experience which mimics the spiritual experience itself, it activates the medial thalamus which is
00:10:11a region of the brain associated with emotional processing. In other words, you're having a unique
00:10:15emotional experience just from the experience or memory of an experience of something spiritual.
00:10:22In other words, there are unique neurocognitive experiences that come from spirituality. They
00:10:28come from religion. This is what she finds in her work over and over again. Similar work shows that
00:10:35spirituality is linked with a part of the brain called a periaqueductal gray. That's a brainstem
00:10:40region. That's an ancient part of the brain that's associated with a moderation of fear and pain and
00:10:45feelings of love. In other words, less fear, less pain, more love when you're having spiritual
00:10:51experiences is what happens in this primordial part of the brain, in the reptilian brain itself.
00:10:57Now, this is in accord with a finding that a lot of anthropologists have suggested which is that
00:11:07human beings are made to worship in some way, shape, or form. They're all made to worship the
00:11:11same way. And certainly, that has changed over time. But the assertion is that there's never
00:11:18been an organized group of Homo sapiens that has not had religious experience. We're just
00:11:25born for it. And this work by Lisa Miller and different neuroscientists suggests why that is,
00:11:32which is that these spiritual experiences, they come with ancient parts of the brain. We have
00:11:36onboard capacity. We have onboard processing that naturally occurs. Interesting stuff using
00:11:44electroencephalogram technology that are on memories of strong spiritual encounters.
00:11:49And this is among nuns and monks. We typically see this. There's a bunch of studies. Some are
00:11:55on Carmelite nuns, Catholic nuns, and some are on Buddhist monks. And they show a lot of the same
00:12:03results. One of those that are quite interesting is that when Carmelite Catholic nuns in one study
00:12:08are instructed to recall really, really mystical experiences. And these are people who are very
00:12:14adroit at deep prayer. And what happens is very clearly that when people are just good at praying
00:12:21because they pray a lot, they have more mystical experiences because their brains are trained to get
00:12:28into a trance-like state when they do that. And when they do or when they even recall their most
00:12:33mystical experiences, that they see a significant increase in theta wave activity in the brain,
00:12:40which is associated with dreaming, which means that they kind of have experiences that are very
00:12:47different than their conscious experiences where they'd have, but they're still awake.
00:12:50All quite interesting, all quite beneficial is what we see. In other words, when it comes
00:12:56to your brain, spiritual experiences and religious experiences are pretty good for you. Now, over to
00:13:01the psychology side, spirituality protects against depression. It protects against anxiety. I mean,
00:13:07these are almost blanket statements. And again, I know, I know, you're gonna write in the comments
00:13:12and I welcome you to talk about your experiences in which really bad religious experiences,
00:13:16they provoke depressive episodes and generalized anxiety. I know, almost anything that we do as
00:13:24human beings, we can screw it up. We're very good at screwing stuff up and that includes religion,
00:13:29to be sure. So I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about in general that you have that
00:13:35religious activity, healthy religious activity and spiritual activity, and even philosophical depth
00:13:40has a neuroprotective effect against major depressive disorders and generalized anxiety.
00:13:48It's not perfect. It's not a, you know, a silver bullet. I know lots of very, very religious people
00:13:54who also are being treated psychiatrically for major depression, people in my family,
00:13:58under those circumstances. But this is really, really good adjunct to therapy for sure.
00:14:04Spirituality and religion are also really good for relationships. They strengthen social bonds.
00:14:09Good 2019 study. This is in the psychology of religion and spirituality journal. 2019 study
00:14:16asked 319 people to evaluate statements like, "I have a personally meaningful relationship with God."
00:14:22That has a strongly negative correlation with loneliness. The more that you say,
00:14:28"I have a good relationship with God," notwithstanding all your other relationships with people,
00:14:33you're a lot less likely to be lonely. This is protective against loneliness. So protective
00:14:38against depression, protective against anxiety, protective against loneliness. And these are the,
00:14:43that's the kind of the three-part problem that we see with the psychogenic epidemic of unhappiness,
00:14:51especially for adults under 30. So there's one thing that I could recommend to a lot of young
00:14:56people who are suffering from those three maladies that are going together so strongly for people in
00:15:02their 20s today. It's not just my religion. It's religion and/or spirituality and/or a deep
00:15:09involvement in philosophy. These things are neuroprotective. So how do you do it?
00:15:17What are your protocols for that? And again, I could go on for days talking about the neuroscience
00:15:23and the psychology of all this, but I think I've made the point. And if you're like me,
00:15:28you actually, at this point, you want to get to what to do. Because here's the question I get.
00:15:33I get this in office hours all the time, which is not just the name of my show. It's kind of
00:15:36what I do with my classes. That's why I call my show this. People say, "How do I get started?"
00:15:43Maybe I was raised in a completely secular household. My parents were really non-religious.
00:15:49I want to do something, but I don't know what to do. I don't know how to get started. I don't know
00:15:55even how to think about it. Or maybe they say I was raised religious, but I walked away from it.
00:15:58I didn't like it. It didn't seem right. It didn't make sense. I'm going to talk about that too here
00:16:03in a second. And I want to give you a three-part plan. And again, you can use this if you're talking
00:16:08about a traditional religion. You can do this if you're talking about trying to start some sort of
00:16:14a spiritual practice that's non-religious. You can do this even if you're trying to get into a
00:16:19mainstream philosophy as an organizing principle in your life. My old buddy, Ryan Holiday,
00:16:24the world's leading expert on popular stoicism. I should say stoicism in popular culture.
00:16:30He's not religious, but he practices stoicism. And it's tremendously beneficial in much the
00:16:36same way that religion is in my life. So either one of those three paths, how do you get started?
00:16:43Here's the way to do it. Number one, practice first, feel later. One of the biggest mistakes
00:16:51that people make about religion and spirituality, about faith, about philosophy is this.
00:16:56To be a person of integrity, I can't do something unless I feel it. That's wrong in almost everything
00:17:03in life. That's wrong in your relationships. You know, if I said, "I'm going to be a good husband
00:17:08only when I feel like being a good husband," I wouldn't be a very good husband very often,
00:17:12quite frankly. I know what it means to be a good husband. I fail a lot, but I also do that
00:17:20notwithstanding my feelings because my feelings are very transient. You know, if you watch this
00:17:23show a lot, that feelings are a limbic phenomenon. They're a neurobiological phenomenon. They're
00:17:29about threats and opportunities that my reptilian brain is sensing out there. And if I'm relying on
00:17:35my feelings for the way that I'm going to treat the people that I love the most in my life,
00:17:38I'm going to be horrible as a partner, horrible as a family member, a terrible friend.
00:17:42I don't want to do that. I want to decide how I'm going to behave
00:17:46notwithstanding my feelings. That's what it means to be a self-governing individual.
00:17:50And the same thing is true with my religious practice. Like I mentioned before, I go to mass
00:17:55every day, every morning at 6.30 when I'm home with my wife. And when I'm on the road, I find
00:17:58a church wherever I am because, you know, the Catholic church is like Starbucks. It's, you know,
00:18:03a franchise system. They're easy to find. But I don't go because I feel like going. I go because
00:18:10I've decided to go. And then sometimes I feel it. So here's the wrong way to understand religion.
00:18:15You feel these religious things. And then you develop some actual beliefs.
00:18:20And after you have your beliefs, then you actually practice that religion. You will never get anywhere
00:18:25with that. Feeling, belief, practice is the wrong order of operations. The way to actually bring this
00:18:32into your life, to get the benefits that I've talked about before, is to start with practice.
00:18:37You start with practice, and then you just practice something. And then you'll develop some belief some
00:18:43of the time, and then occasionally you'll have feelings. That's the way to do it also with your
00:18:48marriage. That's the way to do it with almost anything that really matters, with your job,
00:18:53for example. You start by practicing your job. You start by showing up and doing a good job.
00:18:58And then you develop beliefs around it, and sometimes you actually have feelings for it.
00:19:01And that's the way to live. So that's how to think about it. So people say, "Okay,
00:19:06you know, I grew up in a practicing, observant Jewish household." My students will say to me,
00:19:12for example, "And I want to get back into it, but I don't feel it. What do I do?" I say, "I don't care.
00:19:16I don't care about your feelings. You shouldn't care about your feelings so much." Feelings are liars.
00:19:20They lie to you. What you do is you start going. And then on the basis of that and what you're
00:19:28seeing and hearing and reading and reading on your own and treating as an interesting intellectual
00:19:34experience, you'll develop some beliefs around it. And then occasionally you'll have deep feelings
00:19:39as well. And that's what it means to actually bring this into your life. Then the miracle
00:19:45really happens for you. That's when you start to experience the difference in your periaqueductal
00:19:50gray and that stuff in the brain stem. It requires a conscious act. And this is why it's so important
00:19:56to understand that the discipline, the moral aspiration, how it's linked to the animal impulses,
00:20:02how the miracle of what we have is minds, bodies, heart, souls, and brains, how it all hangs together
00:20:09in this glorious miracle that is each one of us. This is a classic example of how that actually works.
00:20:15So run the algorithm in the right direction. Practice first, feel later. That's step one
00:20:23of the protocol for bringing more faith, spirituality, or philosophy into your life.
00:20:28Step two, get smaller. What do I mean by that? Mother Nature,
00:20:34with whom I'm very impressed, obviously. I mean, I talk about all the things that Mother Nature
00:20:39does all the time. Nonetheless, lies to you in many ways. And a case in point is the lie that
00:20:45you're the center of everything. The psycho drama of your life is me, me, me, me, me, my job, my car,
00:20:53my money, my television shows, my lunch. It's so boring. I mean, think how many dreams you had last
00:21:01night. You were the star of all of them. I mean, if you're left to your devices, you're gonna be
00:21:07looking in a mirror all day long. Why is it that it's hard to pass a mirror? Because the psycho
00:21:11drama where you're the star, why is it that you check your notifications on social media?
00:21:16Because you want to hear what people are saying about you. But that will drive you stark raving
00:21:21mad. It will make you effective in some ways to understand your position in the hierarchy
00:21:27of homo sapiens, I guess. That'll make you an expert in social comparison. But you already know
00:21:33that social comparison is the thief of joy. You need to actually fight that tendency. And the way
00:21:40that you do that is not by getting bigger, the world-famous star in your psycho drama. It's getting
00:21:46smaller. It's a funny thing. I've worked for the last 12 years, as many of you know, with his
00:21:52Holiness, the Dalai Lama. And it's a treasured and beloved relationship for me. I've learned a huge
00:21:59amount from him. I've learned a lot about Tibetan Buddhism along the way, which has been incredibly
00:22:03enriching to me as a person of faith, but just him as a person, extraordinary. And as one time,
00:22:08he told me that there's this one photo that he saw in 1969 that really affected him. I said,
00:22:14"Oh, really? What photo affects the Dalai Lama?" He says, "The photo that was called Earthrise." And
00:22:19for those of you who don't know it, go Google it. Earthrise was the first photograph of the earth
00:22:25taken from the moon. And you'd see it now. He'd be like... He was like mind-blowing. My dad told me
00:22:33when he saw it. He was like he just rocked his world. He saw the world. He saw the earth from
00:22:38space. And it was like this blue orb from the surface of the moon. And the Dalai Lama said it
00:22:45blew him away too. And I said, "Well, he didn't say that because he doesn't use that kind of
00:22:48American vernacular." He said it was amazing to him. And I said, "Why?" And he said, "Because
00:22:54it helped him remember how small he was and what a gift it was to remember that he was simply one of,
00:23:01at the time, 4 billion people, which is important in and of itself, but that the smallness puts
00:23:08into perspective what each one of us actually is." And he said it brought him peace and perspective.
00:23:13Now, if that's the Dalai Lama, that's me too. And that's any of us. And you will see it for yourself.
00:23:19Why is it that at most universities, one of the most popular classes is astronomy? If you ask them,
00:23:25which I have, I've asked undergraduate students, they're like English majors and communications
00:23:29majors. "Why do you love your astronomy class?" They're like, "I don't know. On Thursday morning,
00:23:34I go in and I'm super stressed out because I had a big argument with my mom and because my boyfriend
00:23:39is probably going to break up with me. And an hour and a half later, I come out of my astronomy class
00:23:44and I'm like, I'm a speck, I'm a speck, I'm a speck, and I'm at peace." Transcendence is what
00:23:52we need to actually be at peace. And to do that, we need to get smaller, not larger. One of the best
00:23:58ways to do that is your observance of your religious faith or your spirituality, is to stand
00:24:03in awe of something much, much, much greater than yourself. This is one of the reasons that when
00:24:07people go to church or their house of worship, that they feel so much better because they've been small.
00:24:12Now, again, that doesn't mean they're nothing. I mean, if you're a Christian like me or if you're
00:24:16Jewish or you're Muslim or for that matter, if you're a Hindu especially, there's this intense
00:24:22love that God has for you as you, as an individual. But you're small and in awe compared to the Godhead,
00:24:31compared to Brahman, compared to the Creator, the divine. And that in and of itself, that smallness
00:24:37creates a perspective on a life that's accurate. It can put you at peace. And in doing that,
00:24:45you'll actually experience in that moment many of the benefits. And it's short-lived, but it'll give
00:24:52you a little bit of those benefits that I was talking about, this relief from the melancholia
00:24:57that characterizes our day-to-day, the anxiety, the loneliness. That smallness per se will give you this
00:25:05intense kind of equanimity that you may not have felt in a long time. That step too is get small.
00:25:17And here's number three. Number three is about how to get over what I found is the biggest barrier
00:25:23that a lot of people actually have toward religion, which is their own dogma. You know, we hear all the
00:25:29time about religious people being so unbelievably dogmatic, "My way or hell," or whatever, right?
00:25:34I got no time for that, right? Obviously, I have no time for that. I love all of it, really. I mean,
00:25:41I have my way that I really believe in. And I'm not making the case here who is metaphysically right.
00:25:46That's above my pay grade. I'm not clergy. I have my opinions, but that's not the opinions I'm
00:25:52talking about here. I know as a social scientist that these things are really, really good for you.
00:25:56And I hear all the time people who are super dogmatic about their faith. People are fanatical,
00:26:02people who are even violent with respect to their faith. And I have the same opinions that you do
00:26:07about that. It's horrible, right? But another kind of dogma that I often see are people who reject
00:26:13faith. It's unbelievably dogmatically, or spirituality, or even, you know, a philosophical
00:26:18life. There's a rejection about it. And when it comes back to the nuns that I talked about before,
00:26:23N-O-N-E-S, increasing percentage of the population, now increasing especially quickly among women under
00:26:3030, this nun is a dogma in and of itself, this I'm nun. I've rejected it. Now, why? Now, this gets back
00:26:38to the why about why people actually do this. It gets to the work of a sociologist named James
00:26:44Fowler, who talked about different kinds of religious experiences that we go through at
00:26:50different phases of life. He's got all the, like the, I think it's five stages of religious
00:26:54observation that typically happen at different points in our lives. And one of the things he
00:26:59talks about is why young adults often walk away from the faith. And what he talks about is generally
00:27:07that there's this cognitive dissonance. Whereas a kid you grew up thinking, for example, if you grow
00:27:12up in a traditional religion, God is good and loves you. And God is all merciful and loves all of us.
00:27:19And then you look around, you're like, yeah, but starving kids and war and pestilence and suffering.
00:27:26So what gives? You know, what's the deal, right? And that's an ancient, ancient thing. The book of
00:27:34Job in the Old Testament, where Job was a righteous man, a man of God. And then God really tests him.
00:27:41All these horrible things happen to him. And at the end of the book of Job, he like kind of has
00:27:45God in the dock saying, you know, I was your boy and I did everything right. And you said I was
00:27:52righteous. And then you did all these horrible things to me. Why? And then what God says is this,
00:27:57God says in no small, I mean, again, I'm paraphrasing. So those of you who are theologians,
00:28:01please forgive me. God says, well, I mean, yeah, I'll tell you. And they're having a direct
00:28:08conversation at this point, which is awesome. He says, I'll tell you, but first you tell me,
00:28:12why did I create the heavens and the earth? You must know because you're so smart. I mean,
00:28:16you're so smart, you're asking me for an explanation about your own little suffering.
00:28:19So since you're so smart, before I tell you why you suffer, tell me why I created the heavens and
00:28:24the earth. Huh? Huh? Smart guy? Huh? Huh? It's awesome. Right? Here's my point. Yeah. Hard to
00:28:31understand. And a lot of young adults walk away from their traditional faith because it's, you
00:28:36can't sort that out. Right? But here's the thing. That's why people often come back after 40. They
00:28:42come back after 40 because they have that Job moment where they say, you know what? There's a lot I don't
00:28:49know. There's a lot I can't figure out. It's super messy. Life is super messy. And since I can't
00:28:57figure out a lot of things that I know exist, I don't know why I would rule this one out in my life.
00:29:02That ability, that maturity to be able to live with a cognitive dissonance of a great deal of
00:29:10suffering, including your own and a theology that as imperfectly translated into human terms as it is,
00:29:18talks about God in a particular way, that ambiguity is something that people tend to be able to live
00:29:24with a little bit better after 40. And one of the things that makes it harder is if you've defined
00:29:29yourself as saying, nope, nope. So step three in the protocol is just don't be none. At least
00:29:38question that. I recommend that if you're a traditionally religious person, you question it
00:29:42your whole life. I do. I interrogate my faith all the time. But I would recommend that you also
00:29:48interrogate your non-faith. That's kind of what it means to be fully alive is to be questioning
00:29:55everything, including all the things that you believe so that you can learn and grow. And people
00:29:59who don't get tied down to something that they believed when they were 21 are able to change
00:30:05what they think and live in a way that they find more satisfying and deeper in all the ways that
00:30:10we're talking here when they're in their 30s. So step three of the protocol is don't stay
00:30:16tied down to anything because it just might change. And as it does, you might just get happier.
00:30:23Now, if you want to know more about the science of this, all the things that we're talking about here,
00:30:26about the psychology, about the neuroscience, about the philosophy, about the protocols,
00:30:30go to my book, The Meaning of Your Life, Finding Purpose in an Age of Emptiness. There's a whole
00:30:35chapter on transcendence. It doesn't just include faith, also spirituality, also philosophy, also
00:30:42charity and love for other people because that's another way to transcend is by transcending
00:30:47yourself by serving other people. Okay. So lots I'm leaving out of this episode here. Go read the book
00:30:54if you want to actually know more about it. And I promise you it's not going to be threatening. It's
00:30:58not going to be weird. I'm not going to be doing something that actually suggests that it's my way
00:31:02or the highway because that's not the only way. It depends. I want you to find yours.
00:31:09All right. Some audience questions, folks. Here's one from my old friend Anonymous by email.
00:31:17"In spite of my exercising, spending time with friends, eating a healthy diet, talking with a
00:31:23therapist, getting good sleep." Good for you. "My spouse's anxiety and depression makes me unhappy."
00:31:29Is this my wife writing it anonymously at this point? "Do you have any suggestions on how I can
00:31:34feel happiness again?" You can't give somebody else happiness. You can't. You can't do it.
00:31:39And I wish you could. You can help people by teaching them, by making suggestions to be sure,
00:31:47but you can't make somebody else happier because that's something outside of yourself to be sure.
00:31:54Two things to do. Number one, go on a learning journey together. And this is one of the things
00:31:58that I recommend to a lot of people who say, not just about their spouse, they say, "How do I give
00:32:03these ideas to my teenage kid?" Now, teenage kids are horrible about this because when you say,
00:32:08"You need to do..." Is that in one ear and out the other or complete rejection because you said it?
00:32:13I know. I've had teenagers. In those scenarios, I suggest saying, "I just read this book by this
00:32:24nerd who has a podcast called "Love is Ours," and I don't know what I think about it. Would you read
00:32:29it and tell me what you think about it?" Or I just saw this podcast. Maybe this is not the one to show
00:32:34them because it'll be in on the trick. But I just saw this podcast and it's kind of making me think,
00:32:40but I would love to know your point of view. That's the appeal to an outside authority and that's when
00:32:45you're studying something together. That really works with teenage kids, so that can also work
00:32:48with your spouse. Second, model the behavior. The greatest gift that you can give to somebody
00:32:54who's depressed is to not be depressed. That's a really great gift. That's why they say on the
00:32:59airplane, "Put your own oxygen mask on first." You got to take care of yourself first along these
00:33:04lines. The greatest gift you can give to somebody who's sad is not being sad. That's what it comes
00:33:09down to. And I realize it actually brings you down, but you got to do more work on yourself,
00:33:13understanding that your happiness is under your control and not under the control of another
00:33:20person, and that your happiness is not a betrayal of an unhappy person. Your happiness is a gift
00:33:25to the other person. Next, this is from Jack V by email. "What explains why missionaries are happier
00:33:35and psychologists more depressed than the general population?" I know the first is true,
00:33:40that clergy and missionaries are happier than the general population for all the reasons I talked
00:33:45about in this episode. I don't know that psychologists are more depressed than the
00:33:49general population. I'll take you at your word for that, that you're looking at data on that.
00:33:54It's not opposites of the same phenomenon. What we find is that missionaries and clergy,
00:34:01they're doing all the things right that we're talking about here. This is probably one of
00:34:04the reasons that highly spiritual people who are not missionaries or clergy are much happier than
00:34:09the general population. This episode is the reason for the first one. For psychologists,
00:34:15and for that matter, for behavioral scientists who study happiness, who are below average in happiness,
00:34:19right? We've talked about this in the show. I'm getting better, way better. I'm up 60% of my
00:34:24happiness since I've gone full-time in the happiness trade, my friends. Why? Because I studied happiness
00:34:30because I wanted it. A lot of therapists that I meet, they go into therapy because they have
00:34:35problems that they want to solve in their own lives. It's not research. It's me-search for a
00:34:39lot of people. Behavioral science says that this is what people are really into is issues that they're
00:34:45dealing with themselves. There's a reason that my wife Esther, she wouldn't actually become a
00:34:49happiness specialist because she's super happy as a person. That would be like me studying oxygen. I
00:34:54got plenty of it, right? If it got scarce, I'd want to learn a lot more about it is the whole idea.
00:34:59That's probably one of the reasons that we actually see. Finally, last email today from
00:35:04Patty Peterson. Will you suggest resources for grief? I lost my husband unexpectedly and I'm
00:35:11officially lost. I'm really sorry for your loss, Patty, I am. Grief, which is a form of very intense
00:35:19and elongated suffering, it's not going to help you for me to talk about the neurobiology of what
00:35:24actually is happening in your brain. But suffice it to say that your brain is working the way it's
00:35:29supposed to. If you're grieving the loss of your husband, it means you're healthy and you're normal.
00:35:34It will lessen over time, which actually is paradoxically really painful for people when
00:35:39they're seeing their grief lessen and they're able to do something for the first time like
00:35:44go someplace alone or go out on a date and they have a good time and they feel really guilty and
00:35:50horrible about that. Grief is a funny phenomenon in a way that it actually makes us feel. But it's
00:35:57evidence that you're alive. It's evidence that you could love as a person, which is a beautiful thing
00:36:02in and of itself. Let me just say this. There's one way that people who are experiencing grief,
00:36:08grief from the loss of a spouse, which is very intense, that's generally speaking not as intense
00:36:13as losing a child because that feels wholly unnatural to very many people. And so there are
00:36:18some studies on losing a child and how to provide some relief. And there's one thing that actually
00:36:24works and here it is. It's helping somebody else who's also experienced that loss, somebody who's
00:36:29newer in that loss. You find that if you've lost a child, which is this unremitting sadness, and it's
00:36:36permanent because not the same intensity of sadness, the sadness does lessen. It does because you're
00:36:42moving on with your life and you're supposed to be able to move on with your life, but you'll never
00:36:46forget. But the people who actually make more from their grief, something more productive with their
00:36:53grief, and who actually have more relief from it, who are able to actually have more moments of joy,
00:36:59are those who actually find a way to serve other people who are fresher in their loss.
00:37:03And so that's what I recommend. There's a lot of people out there who are suffering the same
00:37:07thing that you are. And as the months go by, you're going to meet people for whom the wound is fresh
00:37:12and serving those people you're going to find is probably the most efficacious way that you
00:37:19can actually turn your grief into a source of benefit, into a source of love. And that's what
00:37:24you deserve. Let me know your thoughts, folks, on this episode or any other episode of Office Hours
00:37:29at arthurbrooks.com. That's our email address. Like and subscribe on Spotify, YouTube, Apple.
00:37:35Leave a comment. I'll read it. Even if it's negative, that's all good. And if I've gotten
00:37:41anything wrong, as far as you can tell, I want to hear about it. Follow me on Instagram, LinkedIn,
00:37:46other platforms for content that's original on those platforms. Order The Meaning of Your Life,
00:37:52Finding Purpose in an Age of Emptiness. And while you're waiting for it, go back and listen to some
00:37:56of the episodes that you haven't heard before and make sure you share them with your friends.
00:38:00Thanks for listening. I'll see you next week.