Parenting and happiness.
Two things that don't always go hand in hand.
But for anyone listening who might not be enjoying parenting right now, that's okay.
And there's hope. I'm Dr.
Becky, and this is Good Inside.
My guest today is Arthur Brooks.
He's a social scientist, author, and Harvard professor, who blends behavioral science and neuroscience research with philosophy and wisdom traditions to teach people how to live better, happier lives.
And his ideas around happiness are probably going to be surprising.
Today we're going to talk about how all parents can figure out their happiness equation and bring more happiness into their lives.
Let's start with you. Are you a happy person?
How do you think about that for yourself?
Yeah, I mean, the answer is no.
Not naturally, and that's why I study happiness.
You don't do research in social science.
You do me search. If you have the tools to understand human behavior, you look for the answers of the questions that you have.
I realize that's egotistical, but it's human nature nonetheless.
You know, I grew up in a family that had some issues.
You know what I mean? I had a great childhood and wonderful parents, but they were pretty gloomy.
And we know from studies of identical twins that about 50% of your baseline mood or affect level is genetic.
So I don't have great genes for happiness.
And I grew up as kind of, you know, with, I was a little blue, maybe a little melancholic.
And when I began with social scientists, I said, you know, I wonder if it's possible not just to observe behaviors, but to change life with this science.
And I've dedicated myself to doing just that and I can tell you, Becky, it works.
It works, meaning you can be someone who says, maybe even I know, I'm predisposed to some, you know, depression or to not the happiest of genes.
And through learning, through practice, through certain behaviors, I can get closer to happiness or I can even get there.
Yeah, for sure. The science is very important for us to understand because we don't naturally, our state of nature is not necessarily to be happy.
We think, you know, often if I just do what I want to do, then I'm going to get happier.
But that's wrong. Mother Nature doesn't really care if you're happy.
We don't select on happiness.
Mother Nature wants us to meet our caloric needs and have mates.
I mean, it's just pretty basic stuff in the place to see.
But today, you know, we can do a lot better than that.
We understand how human happiness works, not perfectly, but a lot better than we did.
And on the basis of the science, we can change our habits, which I've done for myself.
And that's what I teach at my university.
That's what I write about and that's what I travel around speaking on because I want through knowledge and science and ideas.
I want more love and happiness in the world.
I've gotten more of it in my life and I want to bring more of it to others.
So yes, yes to this. And I love that you said, you know, it's so true.
We study, we talk about in sophisticated ways, usually all the things that are hard for us.
And whenever people say that to me, they're like sitting with emotions and tolerating emotions instead of trying to fix them.
Like, you're so good at that.
I'm like, why do you think I'm good at that?
Like, why do you think I talk about it all the time?
It's because I need to work on it.
So I went on a trip with some of my girlfriends a couple months ago.
And we are all busy parents.
It is so hard to coordinate schedules.
And honestly, it's even challenging to allow myself to really prioritize that trip for myself and two things are true.
I know it's so important to do.
So we booked an Airbnb and it was just the best decision for us because we rarely get uninterrupted time together.
In the hotel we had been considering hotels just don't give us the kind of space we actually needed because we just realized the best part of those trips isn't meeting over a meal or an activity.
It's kind of like those in between moments, those conversations, those memories that we have when we're just having coffee in our pajamas or getting ready for dinner and together in the bathroom.
And naturally only possible because we were all staying together.
Airbnb gave us the best of both worlds.
I mean, we each had our own bedrooms which felt important in adulthood.
And we had shared space for all of that in between best time.
So if you're looking to plan a trip with your friends or family to take some dedicated time to really bond and come together, this is it.
Go to Airbnb and find your weekend getaway.
You deserve it. Okay. So I think we always have to understand things before we intervene about them.
So my guess is people might not understand happiness in the most helpful or accurate way.
So let's start with an understanding.
Like what is happiness and maybe what do some people think happiness is that you might, you know, I don't know, paint a different way.
Yeah, for sure. People misunderstand happiness all over the place in radical and completely sometimes counter two to ways.
The first thing that people think that is not true is that happiness is a feeling.
So happiness is the feeling I have when I'm with the people that I love or the feeling that I get when I'm doing what I enjoy.
That's wrong. Feelings are evidence of happiness.
Happiness is not feelings in the same way that that your Thanksgiving dinner is not the smell of the turkey.
The smell of the turkey is evidence of Thanksgiving dinner.
And if you mistake the two, you're going to have a very frustrating Thanksgiving and pretty unsatisfying of that.
And the same thing is true if we're looking for feelings.
We'll be kind of chasing vapors all throughout our lives.
So that's number one. The second thing that's important for us to understand is that happiness is actually not a destination.
We have unhappiness in our lives for a very, very good set of reasons.
We actually need unhappiness or we would be dead.
Negative emotions keep us literally alive.
Fear and anger and sadness and disgust.
They're incredibly important and they don't bring happiness.
They bring a sense of unhappiness.
And we need that. And if we didn't have that, we would be in just a world of trouble.
In point of fact, there are no bad feelings.
There are negative feelings, but there are no bad feelings because feelings are nothing more, or emotions are nothing more than information.
I know we'll talk about that a little bit later.
So the result of that is that we need to get past the two big mistakes.
Number one, that happiness is a feeling.
And number two, that happiness isn't a state that you can arrive at.
Happiness is a direction, not a destination.
So I just think about how often people say, I just want to be happy.
I just want my kids to be happy.
That makes me think that's destination mindset.
Yeah, it's also incredibly dangerous to want your kids to be happy for a bunch of different reasons.
Number one, you really don't want that because your kids would be in danger if they were happy too much.
They wouldn't learn, they wouldn't grow, and they would be literally unsafe from the outside world if they didn't have negative emotions.
The second thing is that you'll be a really horrible parent.
If that's your goal, look, I'm on your territory now, but there is a lot of research out there that says that the extent to which we've helicoptered our kids into oblivion, that we've tried to save them from all the vicissitudes of the outside world, the slings and arrows about rage is fortunate, that we've protected them so much.
That's one of the reasons that the explosion of anxiety and depression comes when they go away and they're on a college campus or they start to experience bullying for the first time.
They just have no defenses.
We have a social peanut allergy that actually comes from the over parenting where we say, I want my kids to be happy all the time.
It's a dangerous ambition for your kids.
It doesn't actually help them.
Do you agree with that? I mean, this is one of my favorite chapters of my book where I talk about resilience, ever happiness and how childhood focused on optimizing happiness leads to an adulthood of anxiety because every time you feel distress, it feels like an alarm.
That's wrong instead of information to use and that you've learned to cope with.
I think yes, we're in complete alignment there.
I'm thinking about the parents listening.
I think we both get the intention.
We want our kids to... Maybe that's worth breaking down.
What is it that we want? Do we want them to lead fulfilled life when we say happy or what are the components when you think parents are saying, I want my kids to be happy when they're older?
That are worth preserving, but maybe shifting our perspective on a little bit.
What's the goal? Well, that really comes back to a question that you asked before, but I didn't really answer and I showed it before, which is, okay, if happiness is not a feeling and it's not a destination, what the heck is it?
Happiness is really a combination of three macro nutrients.
It's kind of like Thanksgiving dinner is protein carbohydrates and fat.
Happiness is a combination of enjoyment, satisfaction and meaning.
Those are the three things that we need to have a kind of a balanced diet that can lead us to getting happier without trying to be perfectly happy.
By the way, all three of those things have unhappiness and discomfort embedded in them, which is one of the great ironies of happiness as you can't get happier without also being unhappy a good deal of time.
To begin with, and all three of these objectives are the objectives that we have for our children.
I'm the father of three adult kids and I'm a grandfather's matter of fact.
I really, really want in my heart my kids to be happy, but I actually don't because I know that that's a curse.
I want them to be happy year and I break that into wanting to help them understand the three macro nutrients and the strategies for getting greater enjoyment, greater satisfaction and having a greater sense of meaning in their lives.
The first of these is enjoyment and this is a big misunderstanding.
People often think it's pleasure.
Back in the 60s, you and I weren't kicking around in the 1960s.
If you go back, you see at the Woodstock Music Festival, the motto is, if it feels good, do it, that is an incredibly good way to ruin your life because that's the pursuit of pleasure.
The pursuit of pleasure is an awful, awful goal.
It's basically tapping a part of your limbic system called the ventral straight-um, but that's a part of the brain that's your reward center and you can do it with drugs.
You can do it with alcohol.
You can do it with gambling or highly glycemic carbohydrates.
You can do it with pornography.
But all those things have a common, is if you're searching for pleasure by touching the ventral straight-um again and again and again, you're not going to get happier, but you're going to get addicted and that's really, really bad for you.
That's not enjoyment. That is not enjoyment.
Enjoinment is the source of pleasure plus people and memory.
Why? Because you want to move the experience of pleasure, which is nothing more than a brain phenomenon, a signal to you saying that this is a good way to get mates or calories or something.
Then you turn it into something that the executive center of your brain actually is experiencing and that can be the source of happiness.
You do that by doing it socially and making a memory, which in turn brings it to the prefrontal cortex of your brain, which is the C-suite of your brain.
That's the human, that's the conscious part of your brain.
Here's the rule of thumb for young adults and for our teenage kids and everybody else in between.
And for all of us, by the way, you don't have to shy away from pleasure.
That's not the problem.
But if something can be addictive and you're doing it alone, you're probably doing it wrong.
Now, there's a lot of stuff you do alone that's great.
Like walking in nature and saying your prayers.
But if I find you at four o'clock in the morning in Las Vegas in the casino, all alone by yourself pulling the lever on a slot machine, yeah, not the cigarette happiness.
That's one of the most important things that we can actually learn.
If it's addictive and it brings pleasure, don't do it alone.
And then you're going to be on a much healthier track to be getting enjoyment, which is one of the macro-night trans-have happiest.
I'm thinking about the parents listening who are thinking about their kids and their phones and video games, right?
Right? Right. So that would be social media, right?
Highly addictive and you always do it alone.
Now, you say, okay, no, no, no, I'm with my friends on social media.
No, you're not because in real life is actually social.
You need oxytocin, which is a neuropeptide in the brain, functions as a hormone, and it gives you bonding in response to eye contact and touch.
So virtual relationships are inadequate.
And especially virtual relationships for the other person isn't really, really present at this moment.
They give you no oxytocin.
So therefore that doesn't count.
And these things are highly addictive.
They're designed to be addictive.
The social media, the screen applications and especially social media on the devices is made to affect your brain much the same way that a slot machine does.
It adicts you. It gives you tiny little spritz of dopamine.
And what that does is makes you go, that's great.
And it adicts you and it makes you lonely.
And it's sort of this junk food.
It's the big max and fries of social life.
You know, it makes you fills you up for a minute, but then it leaves you hungry later.
You know, it makes me think I play a lot of board games with my kids are kind of like, maybe not board games, but like physical games, right?
Yeah. Like we're really into sushi go right now.
And we played as a whole family.
And I'm thinking like my kids would never say that sparks, you know, whatever happens inside their body or their brain the way a video game does.
But the best I would say, it's very enjoyable.
But hearing what you're saying, that's actually like, that's the best it should get is a component of happiness.
Like, that's good. It's enjoyable, but maybe not that same like, addicting.
Oh, yeah, totally. No, no, it doesn't give you nearly as much of these big taps on the ventral strain.
Right. But it gives you a little bit of that plus the people plus the memory equals the enjoyment which is the first part of happiness.
Exactly. Okay. So, talk to me about satisfaction.
Okay. So, satisfaction.
Now, satisfaction is not just content, mineral fulfillment.
It's the joy that you get after struggle.
You work for something, you wanted it, you suffered, you deferred your gratification, you got it.
It's so sweet. If we don't suffer, we don't enjoy.
That's just the way it is.
Humans are so funny this way.
You know, my students, if they cheat to get an anmit exam, there's no satisfaction.
If they step all night studying for my exam and they get an A, it's phenomenal.
They just really, they really, really enjoy it.
And that enjoyment, that joy that comes at the end is satisfaction when it's at the end of this process of struggling for something.
Now, that's important for us to understand because that's why we always tell our kids to, to, that they shouldn't eat in the afternoon.
So they'll enjoy their dinner.
We want them to actually get some satisfaction from eating.
My father-in-law lived through the Spanish Civil War and he was a little kid.
He was in a refugee camp during the Spanish Civil War and he was on the wrong side.
His family was on the wrong side of it.
They really suffered a lot.
He went hungry night after night after night.
It was a really rough business.
He told me one time, he's kind of a sensible grumpy guy.
And he said, you know, you know the problem with people today, they don't enjoy their dinner.
That's why they're not happy because they don't enjoy their dinner.
And I said, okay, why not?
You know, I'm playing along.
He says, because they're never hungry.
And you get the point, right?
I'm not saying the people should go hungry.
That's not my point at all.
My point is don't snack in the afternoon so you enjoy your dinner and so doing that that will give you a little bit of satisfaction because there was a little bit of waiting for it.
The problem then becomes that the satisfaction doesn't last, right?
And this actually leads people into another kind of doom loop of actually, yeah, it's like I've met a lot of, you know, very wealthy people that said, you I'm sure.
And the one thing that a billionaire who's not very self reflective thinks is, I guess I needed another billion because they get to that and they struggle for it and they got a lot of satisfaction from getting there.
But they didn't keep the new car smell, the new billion smell for very long.
And so they kept running and running and running and running and running and running.
That's a different problem.
That's called the hedonic treadmill.
It's a brain process called homeostasis where you get used to stuff really, really fast.
And so when I'm working with people about that, especially young people, but you know, people my age as well, I say you have to remember that the lasting satisfaction doesn't come from having more.
It actually comes from wanting less.
Your satisfaction is really all the things you have divided by your wants, have divided by wants.
And you got to work on the denominator of that fraction.
Anything less and managing your wants is the secret to lasting satisfaction.
The other day, I was thinking about how many of us parents don't eat our own breakfast.
Do you know how often I've scraped the bottom of my kids half eaten yogurt container or snagged two bites of their soggy cereal while running out the door?
Well I'm calling BS. This deserves to eat and to enjoy our own food in the mornings.
And I know that fueling my mind and body helps me show up as a sturdier leader for my kids.
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I have too many things pinging in my brain right now, but I have something about that.
But I actually want to go back to satisfaction because I want to give listeners this concrete strategy and I think you're going to like it.
If not, be like, Becky, I don't like that.
But I'll test it out. Because one of the things I talked to parents about a lot is not taking away your kid's struggle.
It's not. Like down to your kid is small and they can't open play dough yet, but they're working at it or they're working on a puzzle or your older kids are working on things too.
And so many guys always say to my kids and it reminds me of maybe this thing with satisfaction.
I was like, I can't do this puzzle.
I can't do this piece for me.
Do this. And this is what I'd say.
I notice them on the press of us.
I'd say, sweetie, I see working hard on this.
Okay. I see working hard.
And here's the thing. The best feeling in the world is when you think you can't do something and then you work and work and work and watch yourself do it.
And I don't want to take that feeling away from you.
So I'll sit with you and take a deep breath.
We can take a break. You can come back when you want.
I'm not finishing it for you because I don't want to take away that feeling.
And I can't even tell you my kids will still and maybe the feeling of satisfaction just to know to name it, but they still will say like I got, they just call that feeling, right?
And you only get it through the struggle.
That's exactly right. That's it.
That is satisfaction. The problem is going to be as they grow up that they always think it's going to hang around and it doesn't.
This is one of the ways that Mother Nature lies to us.
She lies to us constantly, right?
And the reason is because she wants us to be in the hunt.
Mother Nature wants us to be literally in the hunt, back in the old days.
But now she wants us to be trying to get our calories and meet her goals.
And so she keeps lying to us by telling us that if we get that thing, then we will enjoy it forever.
And the truth is it wears off very quickly because we have to get ready for the next set of circumstances.
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You know, a few years, but with your parents is the same thing.
It's like all these happy families and everybody's just getting along great.
No, lower your standards and treat people like people and start treating them the way that you would if you didn't have these unbelievably unreasonable expectations for perfection in these relationships.
And only then can you actually start working with people as people and have the relationship that you want.
That's what I mean by an important family.
Then you can communicate better with them.
You can actually start moving into an adult relationship with your aging parents.
And all sorts of ways you can actually deal with it when there's conflict and not be freaked out and think that there's something wrong with you or something wrong with them.
And my guess is that this is a lot of what you're doing your practice is helping people to lower their standards and have a human relationship with these people that were put on earth and that they didn't choose.
Absolutely. I think the number one relationship strategy, definitely parenting strategy I share a lot about is repair.
If you're going to get really good at something, get good at repair because what that means also is mistakes and struggles and yelling.
It's inevitable. We all do it.
You talk about forgiveness.
Can you speak about that related to happiness?
I think people often think, if I just didn't have this happen or if someone didn't do this thing, I'd be happy.
But forgiveness is related to happiness.
Then that also makes me think you believe that messing up this imperfection is inherent in happiness too.
Yeah. So forgiveness is like being able to let go of a hot coal in your hand.
When you're holding onto a hot coal that you want to throw at somebody else, you're the one who's getting burned the worst.
I mean, I didn't come up with that metaphor.
That was the Buddha. So I say that with appropriate humility.
But it's really important and it's really true.
And there's a whole lot of research on this that forgiveness is hard to do.
And there's evolutionary biology behind why forgiveness is hard.
You keep grudges because you have to remember things about slights so that you can take care of yourself, etc.
But it's so counterproductive and the way that we use it in our modern lives and the way that we've configured our families.
And so the number one skill that you've actually find in family life for families that do have a relatively high level of harmony is forgiveness.
And you're going to need to forgive and forgive and forgive and forgive.
And this is one of the things that they actually should teach you.
And everybody should go through a course and marriage counseling before they actually get married.
And this is the number one thing, the technique that you should have forgiveness techniques.
But it really comes down to forgive and forgive and keep forgiving.
Now I get it that this can get to a logical limit.
So it's going to be listening to us to say, what about abuse?
That's not what I'm talking about.
That's not what I'm talking about.
You may need to forgive in the case of abuse, but that doesn't mean you need to forget it and stay in the situation.
I mean, you do need to take care of yourself as well.
So that's not the situation that I'm talking about right now.
Yeah, when I think about my own kids getting married one day or a partner, I'm so unromantic.
But I think what I'll say to them about their potential future partners is just like, is this the set of problems you need to take care of yourself as well?
Is this the set of problems you want to deal with the rest of your life?
Because when you're getting partnered with someone, it's just about like everybody has some set of problems.
And I think you're right, especially so many people now they're looking for this perfect person or the perfect family.
And if you go in knowing, OK, so everyone has a set of problems, just kind of choosing, is this the one I want to deal with?
Then I'm going to have to forgive over and over.
And to me that like really sets the baseline at a much more realistic place, because I think we all get very surprised and very almost like taking personally.
The fact that like we all do just kind of carry around a set of struggles.
Yeah, and it's very disappointing early on in a marriage.
It's usually the first five years of a marriage are very tricky because you're moving from what we call passionate love to ideal, what we call companion at love.
You know, companion love is pretty plenty of passion in it, but really it's best friendship.
And that's where you want to get.
And so one of the things that you find and you'll talk to people.
I mean, anybody who has a successful love life, almost anybody has had some ugly breakups.
You know, beforehand, you kind of need ugly breakups because you need experience and pain gives you a lot of experience.
Kind of like being an entrepreneur with a startup where you know, the average successful entrepreneur has four failed enterprises in her or his past.
Very important. So this is basically the same thing with the startup of romantic life is what it comes down to.
And the relationships that really last are the ones that have ignition in passion, but then they actually become friendships really, really close intimate friendships.
And that's what you really want to get to after the first two to five years.
Otherwise, what happens is when the passion wears off and there's not friendship, you find out that you're not even friends and never liked each other and you can't imagine what you saw in that person.
That's what all of those things really are.
Is it never got to companion at love?
So you have to have the right goals as well and really close friends.
They have realistic and they have realistic understanding of the other person.
I mean, with your really close friends, you don't think that person isn't perfect.
So I can't be friends. No, of course your friends are horribly imperfect.
You laugh about their imperfections.
That's kind of the same thing.
You just have way more margin of forgiveness for your friends.
And that's the kind of margin of forgiveness you actually need for your spouse too because companion at love is the best kind of love.
I want to kind of end by asking you for on behalf of all the parents listening.
Like I think especially when you're parenting young kids, it's a stage where you're like, this is not the happiest time in my life.
It's exhausting. It's hard.
It's stressful on a marriage or partnership.
Right. For people who are hearing you, I think it's like, yes, that makes sense.
And that makes sense. And still left at the end of this podcast.
Like, I don't know. I don't know.
I don't know. Do I feel that happy?
I want to be happier. Anything you leave people with or something they can make with them that again doesn't put them on the destination of happiness.
That's not a thing, but puts them on that pathway.
Yeah. So one of the ways that we measure happiness is by asking people how high they're well-being is.
And you have to ask another of the right circumstances.
It has to be anonymous. You can't ask somebody down in front of their spouse because they'll lie.
And you know, there's all kinds of things that you need to do.
And one of the best way to ask that is think of the happiest person you've ever met.
And that's a 10. And the unhappiest unfortunate person you've ever met is a one on average at this point in your life.
Not this moment. What's your number?
And that turns out to be a very good way of doing it.
Now, what you find when you ask people that question is that generally speaking, most people, they slightly decline year after year from the early 20s until the early 50s.
And then it turns around and they get a lot happier from the early 50s until about 70.
And then the population breaks up into two groups.
One that keeps getting happier and happier and the other that starts going back down again.
That's a lot of what I write about about what to do earlier in life to get on that upper branch after 70.
That's really important.
But one of the big questions that people have is I thought, because everybody thinks, my students at 28, they think they're going to be happier at 38.
Because they're optimistic.
They think they're going to get what they want.
And by the way, they're right.
And what do they want? They want to start their families.
They want to get a good job.
They want to make good money.
And they want that. The problem is that homeostasis, hedonic treadmill, the stuff we were talking about earlier, that doesn't actually bring the happiness.
And the result is that they're quite surprised when they find at 38 when everything is going right and they're a little less happy than they were.
That's normal. And here's what's happening.
They're trading off very short term happiness for very long term happiness.
And it's a good trade. Remember, happiness is enjoyment plus satisfaction plus meaning.
All the things that you're doing when your kids are crying at 3 a.m.
And all the things that you're doing, it lowers your enjoyment and it raises your meaning.
That's what's going on.
You're making a big old trade off.
And you're going to get the promise everybody watching us here who didn't have a good sleep last night because of their little kids.
You are going to be much richer as a result of that.
And it's not even close.
There is nobody who says when they're 55 or I'm 59.
Grandfather, 59. Look, there's a, I'm a Catholic and we always say that being a grandparent is God's reward for not killing your children.
I mean, it's a hardcore joke.
But you get the point, right?
Because when they're teenagers or when they're, you know, they're little, it's so totally worth it.
But there is a short term versus long term trade off.
That's the enjoyment versus the meaning.
And you do it because you know what's the right thing to do.
But you also do it because you have a sense that is going to work out in your favor and the abundance that comes from that is not even remotely close.
To me, that is such like an offering of hope of like, oh, right.
Like I always say like this stage feels hard because it is hard.
It is hard. That's why it feels hard, right?
Okay. And like there is, you're like maybe you're on that pathway to happiness of like all this, all this work you're doing right now.
So I love that so much. Thank you.
Thank you for your book.
Thank you for your work.
And thank you for your time.
Thank you, Becky. Thank you for what you're doing to, you know, bring families together and lift them up in bonds of love and happiness.
There's nobody listening or watching or pretty much anybody in the world who would deny that a happier world requires happier families and happier families require people who actually understand how to love each other and keep loving each other through thick and thin.
And your dedication to doing that means that I get to live in a happier world.
So I'm really grateful to you.
That means so much. Thank you.
Thanks, Arthur. Thank you.
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