In this special episode of The Drive, Peter presents a curated “best of” conversation with bestselling author and previous guest Arthur Brooks, organized around four core themes: happiness itself, the forces that undermine it, the tools and practices that help cultivate it, and the courage required to live and love well. The episode brings together the most meaningful moments from two past interviews into a single, focused discussion that distills Brooks’ most insightful ideas and offers practical takeaways for building a life that’s both successful and deeply happy.
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We discuss:
Timestamps: There are two sets of timestamps associated with the topic list below. The first is audio (A), and the second is video (V). If you are listening to this podcast with the audio player on this page or in your favorite podcast player, please refer to the audio timestamps. If you are watching the video version on this page or YouTube, please refer to the video timestamps.
- Happiness vs. happy feelings, and how happiness and unhappiness can coexist [A: 2:15, V: 1:20];
- The six fundamental emotions [A: 5:30, V: 4:43];
- The three main “macronutrients” of happiness [A: 15:00, V: 14:18];
- Enjoyment: one of the three macronutrients of happiness [A: 22:45, V: 22:02];
- Satisfaction: one of the three macronutrients of happiness [A: 30:45, V: 29:55];
- Sense of purpose: one of the three macronutrients of happiness [A: 38:45, V: 37:53];
- Fame: one of the traps that hijack our happiness [A: 46:30, V: 45:39];
- Success addiction, workaholism, and their detriment to happiness [A: 49:15, V: 48:34];
- The reverse bucket list: one of Arthur’s tools and practices he recommends for moving past the traps that hijack our happiness [A: 59:15, V: 58:32];
- Metacognition: one of Arthur’s tools and practices he recommends for moving past the traps that hijack our happiness [A: 1:01:00, V: 1:00:08];
- Taking charge of your happiness: discipline, transcendent experiences, and other deliberate actions for “happier-ness” [A: 1:11:30, V: 1:10:36];
- Tracking happiness: the biomarkers and micronutrients behind the macronutrients of happiness [A: 1:22:45, V: 1:10:36];
- The value of minimizing the self and looking outward [A: 1:30:45, V: 1:29:48];
- How Arthur surprised himself with his ability to improve his happiness [A: 1:34:45, V: 1:33:57]; and
- More.
Show Notes
Happiness vs. happy feelings, and how happiness and unhappiness can coexist [A: 2:15, V: 1:20]
- Peter congratulates Arthur on his new book and adds, “This is not your first, second or third rodeo, but I’m sure each time, it’s a little bit of a what’s the world going to think?”
- Arthur thinks writing a book is like having a child, “A book is something where as you bring it into the world you go through…” [stages]
- He remembers Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, the Swiss psychiatrist who wrote that famous book about death and dying
- You have to go through five stages
- Most of that research has been questioned since then, but it’s pretty interesting
- When writing a book, you go through bargaining and denial and rage, and finally there’s acceptance but you’re still nervous for sure
What’s the difference between happiness and happy feelings? Are they the same thing?
- They’re not the same thing, and this is a really important misconception
- Most of us live in the era of feelings
- Arthur adds, “If you’d talk to my parents or, god knows, my grandparents about feelings, they would scratch their head. What are you talking about?”
- You’re talking about your emotions all the time, ephemera
- Feelings seems so counterproductive
“Our grandparents were right. Feelings are not happiness, any more than the smell of the turkey is your Thanksgiving dinner.”‒ Arthur Brooks
Feelings are evidence of happiness, and that’s incredibly good news
A lot of people think that happiness is a feeling. It’s quite incorrect.
- There are many better technical definitions of happiness, but they produce a lot of feelings
- They’re associated with a lot of emotions, which is limbic system activity (a part of the brain)
- A 40-million year evolutionary process that developed the limbic system to create emotions
- That signals information and is what emotions come from
- If you mistake these feelings for the underlying phenomenon of happiness, you’re going to be chasing it all over the place
- You’ll be chasing ghosts: how I slept last night, what I ate for breakfast, if my spouse yelled at me this morning
- If you mistake the feelings of happiness for the underlying phenomenon of happiness, you wind up being managed as opposed to having any prayer of managing your own happiness
That’s the first thing to keep in mind: it’s not feelings
Peter reflects, “It’s hard to differentiate though… you have to remind yourself when you’re in the throes of what I just referred to as negatively valenced feelings, that this is not a statement of my overall state of happiness.”
What’s the relationship between unhappiness and happiness? Are they polar images? How do they coexist?
- If you go back to the ancient philosophers, there was the idea that happiness and unhappiness exists on a spectrum
- So unhappiness would be the lack of happiness
- We know a lot better now given the explosion of neuroscience and the way that emotions are produced that in fact, you can be happy and unhappy
- Or have happy and unhappy feelings in parallel
- For example, the average person spends about 40% of their time with predominantly positive feelings
- It sits in a neutral idle of positivity
- Most people do, not everybody
- About 16 or 17% of the time, the average person has predominantly negative feelings, something is going on
- That’s more intense
- And part of the reason is because negative emotions get your attention and they’re supposed to
- Evolution favors negative emotions
- Positive emotions are nice to have, but negative emotions, pay attention because that could cost you your life
The six fundamental emotions [A: 5:30, V: 4:43]
What are some of the most powerful negative emotions that would drive action?
If you think about his evolutionarily, and not even going back to millions of years ago but just going back hundreds of thousands of years ago to the origin of our species as homo sapiens
- There are basically 6 fundamental emotions or basic emotions
- These are the building blocks of all emotional life that are produced by the limbic system of the brain
- 4 negative and 2 positive
- The 4 negative emotions are sadness, anger, fear and disgust
- All 4 of those have a very strong evolutionary basis
Fear and anger have to do with threat
{end of show notes preview}
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Arthur Brooks Ph.D.
Arthur C. Brooks is the William Henry Bloomberg Professor of the Practice of Public Leadership at Harvard Kennedy School and Professor of Management Practice at Harvard Business School. Before joining the Harvard faculty in July of 2019, he served for ten years as president of the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), a public policy think tank in Washington, DC.
Brooks is the author of 12 books, including the national bestsellers: Build the Life You Want: The Art and Science of Getting Happier (2023), From Strength to Strength (2022), Love Your Enemies (2019), The Conservative Heart (2015), and The Road to Freedom (2012). He is a columnist for The Atlantic, host of the podcast How to Build a Happy Life, and subject of the 2019 documentary film The Pursuit. He serves on the board of the Legatum Institute, a think tank in London.
Brooks began his career as a classical French hornist, leaving college at 19, touring and recording with the Annapolis Brass Quintet and later, the City Orchestra of Barcelona. In his late twenties, while still performing, he returned to school, earning a BA through distance learning at Thomas Edison State College, and then an MA in economics from Florida Atlantic University. At 31, he left music and earned an MPhil and PhD in public policy analysis from the Rand Graduate School, during which time he worked as an analyst for the Rand Corporation’s Project Air Force.
Brooks then spent 10 years as a university professor, becoming a full professor at Syracuse University’s Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs in his seventh year out of graduate school and occupying the Louis A. Bantle Chair in Business and Government. During this decade, Brooks published 60 peer-reviewed articles and several books, including the textbook Social Entrepreneurship (2008). [Harvard Business School]
Instagram: arthurcbrooks
Website: arthurbrooks.com
X (formerly twitter): @arthurbrooks
