The Art of True Happiness | Dr. Arthur Brooks

Dr. Arthur Brooks, PhD, professor at Vanderbilt University and senior fellow at Harvard Business School, is an expert on the science of happiness. He shares the three “macronutrients” of true happiness and tools for you to understand what specifically is in the way of you accessing more happiness an

There are three macronutrients to the happiest life. The happiest people have enjoyment, satisfaction, and meaning. Those are the three macronutrients. Now, that’s important because it means you need to enjoy your life and and you need to know the difference between enjoyment and pleasure, which many people don’t. I mean, the pursuit of pleasure is not the secret to happiness.

It’s the secret to rehab. Satisfaction, which is the joy of an accomplishment or an activity after struggle. And last but not least is meaning. The why of your existence. The happiest people have a bead on those three things and they pursue those three things really, really actively.

Now, inside all three of those things, there’s this funny thing called unhappiness. Inside each of the macronutrients of happiness, you find discontent and frustration and a lot of suffering. If you spend your life, which many people do today, trying to avoid unhappiness, trying to avoid and eliminate suffering, they will paradoxically miss their own happiness. Welcome to the Hubberman Lab podcast, where we [music] discuss science and science-based tools for everyday life. [music] I’m Andrew Huberman, and I’m a professor of neurobiology and opthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine.

My guest today is Dr. Arthur Brooks. Arthur Brooks is a professor at Vanderbilt University and a senior fellow at the Harvard Business School. Today we discuss what makes people truly happy and what this thing we call happiness is really all about. What I love about Arthur Brooks and what you’ll realize today is that he looks to experimental data, philosophy, his and others experiences to arrive at specific questions that you can ask yourself to determine what matters most to you and what stands in the way of you actually getting those things.

In fact, I must say this episode with Arthur Brooks is one of my favorite ever on the Hubberman Lab podcast. He is brutally honest. He’s open. He’s generous with knowledge that can help you, the listener. And he’s incredibly humble.

Thanks to Arthur, the conversation you’re about to hear is one that I’m confident you’ll want to think about, act on, and come back to periodically. I can say for myself with certainty that it’s the conversation I wish I’d heard long ago. Arthur doesn’t have all the answers, nor does he claim to, but I do think he has a sort of hardearned compass and a set of maps that we can all apply to have a much better and indeed a great life. Before we begin, I’d like to emphasize that this podcast is separate from my teaching and research roles at Stanford. It is however part of my desire and effort to bring zero cost to consumer information about science and science related tools to the general public.

In keeping with that theme, today’s episode does include sponsors. And now for my conversation with Dr. Arthur Brooks. Dr. Arthur Brooks.

Welcome. >> Thank you, Dr. Andrew Huberman. >> We’re only going to call each other doctor once at the beginning of this podcast. I’m so happy you’re here.

Me, too. >> Yeah. I consider you a friend. And um >> before we became friends, uh >> you were already my teacher. I was learning a ton from you.

You have a a ton of wisdom. before you like step into your humble self and >> push aside. I just really want to highlight that because um that there are a lot of people influencing, educating, uh advising, coaching, etc. But uh you represent like really the the confluence of of ideas and practices and wisdom in ways that I and and people can really understand and benefit from. So really looking forward to having you here.

Thank you. Likewise. I mean, what you’ve done over the past now 5 and a half years with this podcast >> just about. Yeah. >> You changed the whole way that educators can reach a lot of people.

What we want as educators, science in the public interest. We want to touch people’s lives. We want to lift them up and bring bring them together using science, using ideas, and how how how do you do that? You showed the way because what you did was you started this podcast within 6 months. It was a big deal.

And what you showed was a whole generation of people younger and older than you. I’m I’m older than you, that this is something that people can do, that we can reach people. You made that possible. You made that possible for me. It was an incredible gift.

Oh, well, I’m honored and um thank you. Um I realized today that perhaps the toughest part about this conversation is going to be make sure that I keep you focused on you a little bit. You’re so humble and uh but I appreciate the kind words and I consider us colleagues and friends. So you’re known as uh the happiness guy. >> You know a lot about it, what it is and what it isn’t.

So let’s start with um first principles there that people can really wrap their head around and apply. Uh what’s the difference between unhappiness and happiness or is that even the right model? >> Yeah, most people start with the wrong model of what happiness actually is. So you can’t define unhappiness until you can define happiness. And happiness is not what most people think.

Most people conceive of happiness as a feeling, as as an emotion. And that’s quite wrong in the same way that the smell of your turkey is not the same thing as your Thanksgiving dinner. The smell of the turkey is evidence of your Thanksgiving dinner. And the feelings of happiness are evidence of happiness. And when I first came into the field, I mean, I’ve been a behavioral scientist for 30 years, but I started specializing in the science of human happiness exclusively.

I wrote the first book of mine on this in 2008. But but I decided in 2019 after I took a hiatus from academia to go run a big think tank in Washington DC that I was going to specialize for the rest of my career in this thing that most people believe they wanted. I was going to really make it make it work. And there’s of course happiness. People want to be happier.

And the first thing that I realized is there wasn’t a very good definition of happiness. It was just so [snorts] crazy. The thing that everybody wants, they can’t quite define it. Uh, I can’t put words to it, but I know it when I feel it. This is what I would get when I would ask my classes.

So, what do you think you’re studying? Or it’s how I feel when I’m with the people that I love or or or doing the things that I enjoy. And I recognized that this would be completely inadequate in any other area of science. And so, I went back to try to find the right metaphor, the right parallel field to define happiness. And I felt that the field of nutrition did it really well by taking food and breaking it into macronutrients and micronutrients.

So I asked myself, okay, what are the macronutrients of happiness? What are the fundamental elemental building blocks of happiness? And to figure that out, you go and you look at the people who have the highest life satisfaction that’s measured in robust and proper ways, good construct validity, good science behind it. And what you find is doing kind of a factor analysis is that there are three macronutrients to the happiest life. The happiest people have enjoyment, satisfaction, and meaning.

Those are the three macronutrients. Now, that’s important because it means you need to enjoy your life. And and you need to know the difference between enjoyment and pleasure, which many people don’t. I mean, the pursuit of pleasure is not the secret to happiness. It’s the secret to rehab, right?

And so, so you have to understand, right? For sure. And uh um satisfaction, which is the joy of an a