Kind: captions
Language: en
humans are not intended to decline
decline is hugely painful because
happiness comes from progress
unhappiness comes from regress
arthur brooks welcome to the show thank
you tom what a joy to be with you long
time
viewer first time guest i seriously
doubt this will be the last time your
book strength to strength blew me away
it was one of those where i actually got
emotional reading the book
because as i was telling you before we
started rolling i've spent a long time
haunted by the idea that genius is a
young man's game
and that ties into
my first question which is why do so
many people feel lost
and unhappy and what can they do about
it
people feel lost and unhappy is
basically part of what it means to be
human and there's a there's an irony in
the having the big brains that we do we
developed a
very large human brain over the past 40
million years for all kinds of reasons i
mean it's that it gives us a it's our
genetic advantage that we could say it
gives us help it's our survival we're
not fast you know we're not very good
climbers you know we don't have a lot of
hair on our bodies but we got big these
guys these big prefrontal cortex of the
brain the problem with that is that we
can understand ourselves we're the only
species as far as we know that knows
that you know tom knows he's going to
die
for example you can understand the
nature of your own existence but you you
can't actually
make your own existence work in a
fundamentally different way and so
knowing yourself that the essence of
consciousness is one that gives you
incredible transcendental information
but at the same time it programs in a
whole lot of misery so for for example
you know we have a tendency to to our
genetic proclivities
force us to
chase money and power and admiration and
pleasure because those are the things
that help you pass on your genes you get
more animal skins and and flints and
buffalo jerky in your cave and you're
going to have more mates basically and
so mother nature wants you to do that
but it's not going to make you happy
and you think that you want to be happy
the big prefrontal cortex says i want to
be happy because you're so conscious
but the things that will help you pass
on your genes are not the things that
are going to make you happy mother
nature doesn't care if you're happy
and that's why it's so much more work if
if you live by if it feels good do it
you're going to be you're going to be a
mess that's what it comes down to that's
so true
[Music]
so
i had a realization a long time ago i'm
very grateful that this happened early
it was of course born of misery but i
became so profoundly unhappy chasing
money i used to show up every day saying
i am here to get rich
and that provided me a lot of energy so
as a child of the 80s growing up in
tacoma so and i really grew up on the
edge of tacoma it's probably more
accurate even though my address really
was tacoma it's more accurate to say i
grew up in puyallup yeah
fair was oh yes we're the western
washington state fair now the washington
state vet that is all accurate and i
it felt almost rural
and so i felt like i was living in the
middle of nowhere and john hughes films
showed me sort of this
upper middle class chicago suburb and i
was obsessed with getting a big house
and so i used to tell everybody i'm
going to get rich i'm going to get rich
and my family was like and i had friends
that like and i could literally walk to
a trailer park it was like that kind of
part of tacoma and so my family who are
all sort of blue collar
just thought that was hilarious and
they're like yeah right
and but that i was really obsessed and
so i
um
i was but i was cheating so i was really
i did very well in high school from
cheating and then encompassing cheating
yeah yeah yeah like i was charming yeah
so i could get away with murder when
they're incredibly clever
oh that's interesting my identity is not
that of someone who is clever so
it was very much somebody who was
charming so i could make people laugh
yeah and so i could get away with things
so whether that was asking my friends to
let me
literally take the test off of their
desk and put it on mine so i could show
my work right but of course i was
showing their work
but when i got to college
and i'm not even sure what gave me this
insight but i was like i'm going to be
spending a lot of money taking on a lot
of debt i should actually learn
what i'm here to learn so i set a mantra
to myself sink or swim a orf i won't
cheat not even once
and so and i ended up doing very well in
fact i did better in college than i did
in high school you're happy in college i
was
i was it when i graduated though i was
like i'll never go back i'm not one of
those people who's like oh i'm gonna get
a masters and then a phd i was like give
me the [ __ ] out of here but it was
it was film so it was amazing yeah and
you were living by the dictates of your
own integrity you're a man fully alive
you were not shading the truth
very true he's very important and this
is what's you know this is there's
there's a famous speech by you know and
and i can't remember who it was the guy
who went on to become the president of
the university of texas who gave he
became famous because he gave an uh
a a commencement speech that was about
make your bed
if you want to actually get your life on
track start by making your bed what that
was was
uh to ask people to become
men and women of integrity
and that means even when nobody's
looking at your bed make your bed
because you're a person of integrity you
went to college and you said to yourself
i'm going to be a person of integrity i
am not going to do that thing because
that thing is not the right thing and so
doing you ordered your mind in a
different way it's really interesting so
i wish that my life was like a straight
trajectory after that but it becomes the
darkest period of my life becomes right
after college
when i feel lost i feel hopeless i have
no sense of how i'm going to put things
together
that was a really scary time because
when you don't feel that you can affect
the change that you want
it really for me any well let's go back
to what you said at the beginning so i
call that the directives of evolution so
if you think of ai ai has to be given
instructions you have to want a high
score or you have to want to stay within
the lanes of your car whatever
and
humans as nature's ai need directives
and so like you said get a mate that's
definitely one of them and man i really
hope at some point later in the
conversation after we've really gone
into your book we get to the fact that
people are 30 less likely to get laid
now which is absolutely [ __ ]
terrifying to me
um
i have the solution for greater
happiness on college campuses really
it's more love
yeah now what do you mean by that though
i mean actually more relationships more
romantic relationships
this would actually solve a lot of the
misery on college campuses today
actually is i mean what were you trying
to do in college you probably wanted to
fall in love right
no
so i i didn't so i had a girlfriend at
the very beginning of college like the
first few weeks
who i'd met in high school right and
i broke up with her and re decided that
to get into film school i had to really
buckle down
and i wasn't gonna date i wasn't gonna
party i wasn't gonna drink i wasn't
gonna do drugs and so i effectively
locked myself in a room for four years
to get good at filmmaking
so it was a very
different different experience yeah a
lot of people but now i want to i want
to get people back to your book
because it is absolutely life-changing
so i would show up every day trying to
get rich that was my whole shtick
as an entrepreneur yep and then because
i wanted to build a studio right
became profoundly unhappy pursuing that
and the lesson that i ultimately ended
up learning was that all that matters in
life is how you feel about yourself when
you're by yourself
and so meaning and purpose matter right
and so i had better figure out that
money wasn't going to bring me happiness
i was living the cliche and so i needed
to attach
meaning and purpose to whatever how did
you figure that out that money was not
going to bring you happiness so on paper
i was worth more money than i'd ever
been worth so i was making more than i'd
ever made i was making like maybe 80 85
000 something like that which for me
that was good at the time it was a lot
of money and on paper i was worth about
two million dollars so i was like okay
theoretically and paper money is very
different than real money but
on paper i was worth millions of dollars
and i was still profoundly unhappy and
did you think what did you think if i'm
just like i'm gonna
see your limbic system of your brain
saying tom
go for the money then you'll be happy so
what did you imagine was going to happen
to you if you had a bunch of money that
would actually make you happy or did you
actually form an image at all you just
thought that if i had more money i'm
going to mysteriously be happy
yes then once i wasn't i asked myself
maybe the right question which is what
did yeah what did i think was gonna
happen
and i realized that i thought i would
feel about myself the way that i felt
about other people when that had money
when i looked at them ah yeah and i
admired
them thought i was a social company got
it and you would actually so social
comparison led you to the admiration of
other people who had been successful so
therefore you would have that as sort of
an admiration of yourself yes and that
self-admiration would have been the
genesis of your of your newfound
happiness on the basis of your money and
if i were as able to articulate that to
myself as you were just now i could have
saved myself a lot of struggle
but i couldn't either at 22 but yeah
yeah was disastrous yes all right my
friend i have a big announcement my
incredible and talented wife lisa is
about to launch her new book radical
confidence in it she has managed to
perfectly capture the process of how to
go from feeling lost and insecure to
taking control of your life and doing
amazing things despite feeling fear
sometimes a lot of fear now let me tell
you nobody knows lisa better than me but
when i read radical confidence for the
first time and heard her describe what
it was like for her to go from having
these big exciting dreams as a kid to
then as an adult scheduling her life
around the tv shows that she wanted to
watch or how lonely and isolated she
felt instead of pursuing her dreams it
was brutal for me i would never say
though that it was worth it for her to
go through all of that just so that she
could write something down that allows
others to avoid it but i will say that
at least she was able to capture the
strategies that she used to break out of
that rut find her voice and begin doing
incredible things despite her
insecurities and fears that she wasn't
going to be good enough to achieve great
things order your copy today because if
you act now you can claim the bonuses
that lisa has created for you at
radicalconfidence.com
then once you've done that we'll get
back to today's episode all right guys
read the book and get ready to be the
hero of your own life peace out
[Music]
so but thankfully i figured that out and
so
reading your book
really began to bring home this idea
that there are
two different types of intelligence and
so at the time i'm haunted by this idea
genius is a young man's game i feel like
a really late bloomer i end up spending
all this time chasing money not i take
this huge break from pursuing my passion
and building that skill set so now i
really feel like i'm behind the eight
ball
and my whole life has felt like that and
reading your book and the whole punch
line of there's these two grand
movements in your life and if you
understand them then you really can
avoid this decline in misery right you
open your book with a story that i will
never forget and when i put the book
down i was like running around the
office like telling anybody who would
listen that story
if you don't mind yeah
walk people through
the airplane
ten years ago i was the president of a
think tank in washington dc and i was
having these
profoundly disturbing thoughts
am i on the right track where does this
lead
what is my goal but you're really
successful at this point yeah i mean
successful for you know for
entrepreneurs in southern california you
know what is successful mean to be the
president of a think tank in washington
d.c maybe not so much but everybody's
got a dream it's a great country isn't
it and i was the president of a
big prominent think tank in washington
dc and i was in my late 40s so that was
more or less the same age that you are
right now i was looking at my life
saying
okay buddy what's the end game
and look i had done research i'm a
social scientist i do work on human
behavior
and i had never really trained these
tools on myself
and i was really disturbed by this
because i didn't actually see what the
future could actually bring
that would be better or i would be
happier
and as i was kind of going through this
i was doing what i always did which is
basically fly around and ask people for
money i was a non-profit organization i
had to raise 50 million dollars a year
and i was giving 175 speeches a year
which is super fun i love jesus yeah
yeah it's almost like running for the
senate and never getting elected
basically which is you know for running
for the senate is probably the best
thing so you don't have to be a senator
and
as i was thinking about this kind of an
existential crisis you know what am i
what path am i on what i'm supposed to
do i mean some of that was evident i was
i have a family i'm in love with my wife
i i love my kids but i didn't have an
understanding of the the course of my
life i mean my religious life is figured
out but i don't understand what i'm
supposed to be doing what is arthur
brooke supposed to be doing such that i
can be happier as a person and frankly i
wasn't very happy
for lots of reasons that anybody can
understand i mean
and
and i heard a conversation behind me on
a plane one night that
changed
my entire direction
it was a couple and i could it was
nighttime it's like about eleven o'clock
at night and i it was dark
and so people were doing what people do
on airplanes at 11 o'clock at night you
know they're drinking or they're or
they're watching a movie or they're
sleeping but i could hear a couple
talking i could tell as a man and a
woman i could tell by their voices they
were elderly clearly old
and i suppose that they were probably
married based on their conversation i
couldn't quite make out the husband's
words because he was sort of mumbling
but the wife's voice was very
penetrating it was coming through the
chairs
and she's he mumbles and he she says
don't say it would be better if you were
dead
and then he mumbles some more and she
says
it's not true that nobody remembers you
it's not true that nobody appreciates
you anymore and i'm thinking this is a
guy who holy cow he's not
he's not a big shot he's not an
entrepreneur he's not you know he's not
somebody who lived up to his own
expectations he got the he got the
experience or the education or the job
that he wanted and now life is kind of
over and he's disappointed
and that makes sense or it made sense to
me because look if you're a big shot
then you're going to die happy huh
and the lights go on at the end of the
flight an hour later so and i'm kind of
curious it's not pre and interest but
look you know this is my laboratory as a
social scientist it is an overheard
conversation perhaps and and so i turn
around and it's one of the most famous
men in the world this is somebody who's
going to do 10 times as much with his
life as i ever am he's rich he's famous
he's universally admired he's not
controversial for stuff that he did
many many years ago
and i thought to myself
my whole model is wrong
the problem that i have the direction
that i'm going is incorrect because my
model of satisfaction is wrong here's
the model the world tells you
here's the limbic system of your brain
the ancient part of your brain that was
extant a million years ago and all of
marketing and entertainment which is a
distributed digital limbic system says
work hard make money be successful be
admired be envied
bank it die happy
and it's wrong
and and you know in your heart it's
wrong
because you're always asking yourself
hey tom what have you done for me lately
that's what your mind is asking you it's
not good enough that you founded a
company a long time ago and it made a
bunch of money it's not good enough we
we need to excel we need to achieve we
need to create value that's how we're
created as people
and this guy was
blowing away the
the world's theory of happiness of
satisfaction
and i said to myself
i don't want to be explaining to my wife
esther on a plane 30 years from now
40 years from now i might as well be
dead
and so i set myself to crack the code
what can i do and by the way the data
are very clear that the people who have
the earliest success the mind-blowing
success
they're the most likely to be
unsatisfied with their lives at the end
of their lives the story that you tell
about darwin was unnerving he could have
been a man on the plane charles darwin
who
is on anybody's list of the three
greatest scientists of all time
he was the talk of the town name rings
through the annals of history he's a
hero this is i think i may have been
even more struck by
the darwin convention than many many
people who we revere today who had early
astonishing success
they died unhappy but we don't record
that we record their success not the
unhappiness with their life later on
charles darwin had his greatest
successes starting when he was 27 years
old we all know that he visited the
galapagos islands on the voyage of the
beagle which is a five-year sailing
voyage around the world to collect
plants and animals and send him back to
england he was getting quite famous in
his absence but when he got back he
drops this intellectual atomic bomb
which is the ideas that led to his
theory of natural selection aka
evolution and for 30 years i mean he was
i mean he's rich he was famous he was
the man but then his progress stopped it
stopped because he didn't have the
mathematical ability to keep up with his
own research
his research passed him by technically
and there was there was actually an
advance that he needed that today we
call genetics that he couldn't
understand it was written in german he
didn't study germany as a bad student he
didn't do his mathematics homework he
never learned very much about statistics
and so the result was that he was left
in the dust which happens to people in
their 40s and at mass most their early
50s based on their early success
and he spent the last 20 years of his
life complaining about the disappointing
i mean he wrote 11 books after that
point but they're all sort of derivative
they're like straw
and he said i don't have the energy to
do any work that i really find
satisfying to his friends and you know
he died disappointed he died
sad the great maybe the greatest
naturalist of all time died sad he could
have been the man on the plane and this
is not what the world tells you
the world says bust your pick
get as as early as you can get bet 10
000 hours man
kill it kill it bank it you know and if
if so what right you know the the scenic
one on of happiness excellence retire at
40. well how many people do you know
who've done that who've actually gotten
happier who retired at 40 i know none
the point is that's not how human
endeavor actually works and so we need a
better model and i saw that i did the
research and i said
time to build a better model that
actually describes the dynamics of human
experience that actually digs into what
actually brings us happiness and that's
what my research is about that's why i'm
dedicating the rest of my life to
exploring
all right so to put a fine point on it
the punchline ends up being there's two
kinds of intelligence yeah so type one
is fluid sort of raw intelligence
darwin's genius was fluid intelligence
his innovative capacity is what made tom
tom which is your indefatigable energy
your focus your ability to get better
and better to be the ninja in your
particular field which gets better and
better in three years it sounds sexy
even as you're saying it that that's
what i find so horrible that's hustle
culture man hustle culture rewards that
and and by the way and it's been an
awesome ride oh and it's
super addictive
it's super it actually works in the same
dopamine pathways as you know
methamphetamines and alcohol and yes it
is my one addiction success addiction
yeah it's a killer and you you know
write about in the book about the
success addiction that virtually all
entrepreneurs virtually all strivers
have you can be you know the ace
electrician and have a success addiction
because we are wired to want to be
excellent and to be admired which leads
you to get better and better and better
what you do using what we've identified
is what psychologists have identified
for a long time now as fluid
intelligence your the structure of your
brain lends itself to just incredible
energy and focus and to get better and
better and better as an individual at
solving any problem faster than others
the problem is
this is the problem that led to darwin's
misery and so many others it peaks in
your late 30s or early 40s and then it
declines and then it declines faster and
if you try to keep your groove you're
going to ride that thing to the basement
and you're going to be the man on the
plane you're going to be darwin you're
going to be bitter and unhappy and most
people think they get one curve
that's the bad news
the good news is that's not your only
curve you have a second curve that comes
in behind it which is not your fluid
intelligence which goes up peaks comes
down it's your crystallized intelligence
your wisdom which doesn't have fast
working memory the innovative capacity
is not as good but it's your ability to
identify patterns to use the information
in your environment it's like having the
new york public library at your disposal
it takes a while to get the information
like
i can't remember that thing because it's
on the fourth floor back in the stacks i
got to send my guy to get it but it's in
there and you can use this information
to be a teacher to be a historian to
have actual wisdom
that's what you get better at through
your 40s and 50s and you can stay high
in your 60s and 70s and beyond that's
your true success curve as you get older
the key is you got to walk from fluid
intelligence over to crystallized
intelligence you got to walk from the
star litigator to the managing partner
from the
from the innovative startup entrepreneur
to the venture capitalist from the from
the mathematical researcher to the
professor
those are the different curves you got
to go from one to the other and if
you're stuck on the first and if that's
your vision of your own greatness and
you can't be thrown off that you'll be
chasing that for the rest of your life
even though it's just it's in it's in
the basement
and you can't get it back
so there are some people that can wake
themselves up out of the matrix other
people that must be awoken i do fear
sometimes that i need to be awoken
uh but you woke yourself up i'm so
curious so you're doing your thing
you're very successful
and i don't know maybe and i guess we
should tell people that you started out
as a musician yeah a french horn player
nonetheless very specific yes and very
esoteric and made a living as a
professional
all right so
you're killing that game but you realize
that you're declining do you think that
going on that is what allowed you to
then consciously step away
while it seems like you were still in
your prime as the leader the president
of this think tank i got very lucky i
got very lucky that i failed my first
career and after having a lot of success
i went into early decline and out of
desperation to support my family and to
have a future out of my 20s i had to
change gears i didn't have a college
education i dropped out of college you
know dropped out kicked out splitting
hairs when i was 19
i and i went on the road as a as a
musician what that's my parents call it
the gap my gap decade right which you
can imagine how fun that was for them
and you know i kind of made a living
kind of made my rent you know but i was
i was living my best life because i was
a young guy i didn't have a health
insurance i didn't go to the dentist for
six years at one point which i'm still
paying for
and
but like i've told friends i um i never
missed a date without cigarettes so you
know you you figure out what my
priorities were at that particular point
in my life
and fortunately i gave that up a long
time ago
but i was going into decline as a french
horn player and things that used to be
easy became hard things that were hard
became impossible and i saw the writing
on the wall i saw a lot of older
classical musicians who were deeply
alcoholic and unhappy and had been good
and now weren't and didn't have the
respect of the younger people that were
having a harder time making a living and
i thought look i'm barely making a
living now i'm ambitious and it's going
well i mean like i was in the barcelona
symphony so i was making a middle class
living and that's a good orchestra but i
knew that i couldn't keep it up and so i
had to change just by necessity i had to
change and i went back to college got my
college degree by correspondence
and at 31 left to start my phd that by
the way that's not just an arbitrary
thing it's the family business my father
was a college professor my grandfather
was a college professor so i knew that
business more better than any other i
know how to do a phd my father was
working on his phd even when i was a kid
so i saw that whole process that wasn't
foreign or exotic to me at all and i
knew what professors do for a living and
i said okay i can do that because i know
that i was very i was very ashamed i was
just i felt horrible about myself that i
had
but i had failed at this thing that it
was everything to me i mean i there were
i would have just as soon died
than to not be a french horn player
because there was nothing else but i
didn't die and i couldn't die because i
was a married man i was in love with my
wife and and you know we were going to
have kids and what what was it going to
do i mean were you honest with her about
what you're going through at that point
yeah yeah she knew well she knew full
well i mean she knows me
i'm an open world i'm an open book with
her and i mean she's also
smart
and you know we she she knows me super
well in no small part because when we
were
dating
um we didn't speak the same language
and we spoke rudimentary
amounts of the same language for the
entire first year of our marriage oh you
got to know each other you get to know
each other in a deep human way when you
actually can't talk because you can't
lie
i recommend this to everybody that's
really unexpected yeah
yeah yeah
how did you fall in love if you guys
weren't speaking man if you saw her
i was 24. she's
a rock and roll singer from barcelona
she's beautiful
and she's
lovely and she's kind and she's smart
and weirdly she liked me
and so
and i threw in big time i moved to
barcelona to try to convince her to
marry me without speaking a word of the
same language
this is what entrepreneurs do right it's
the ultimate entrepreneurial experience
is to give away your heart and and to
take a chance that's what young people
today they're so non-entrepreneurial if
they're unwilling to fall in love
because that i mean forget the companies
forget the money forget all the cool
stuff that you and i've been able to do
professionally
fall in love
that's entrepreneurship
right that's the big bet i have never
heard anybody describe it like that well
entrepreneurs because of risk taking
like entrepreneurship is taking a big
risk in in
looking for major rewards for explosive
returns i'm not going to tell you how to
denominate those returns it's faith and
resources that you don't already have in
hand these are the characteristics of
the entrepreneur when i was writing a
textbook on entrepreneurship i was
looking at that i'm saying it's a it's a
big mistake to talk about this in terms
of money
we should be talking about this in terms
of love because that's the currency of
life
and when a whole generation of young
people are miserable because they're
comfortable putting millions of people
people's dollars at risk to start a
company but they're unwilling to go
bankrupt in their relationships they're
unwilling to have somebody crush them
by breaking up with them they're just
not very entrepreneurial that's the
problem we have people who are too
non-entrepreneurial which is one of the
reasons that we have too few people who
are in love today as far as i'm
concerned so that was the thing man
i took that i jumped i did that i did
that and that that was actually very
good because that gave me a lot of
confidence that i could conquer my fear
i could take a risk i mean look it was
it was a very low chance this was going
to work out and we're going to learn
each other's language and she's going to
realize i'm a hopeless stooge
or something or we're not going to love
each other or something
and we just celebrated our 30th wedding
anniversary congratulations we have
three
adult children
it's incredible it's amazing so so that
was
we know each other deeply deeply deeply
she knows all of my nonsense
because she knows it without the words
you can shade all kinds of truth
with with words
you can't when it's just your heart
you're just a heart to heart
now that's really unexpected that's very
intriguing to me i would because i have
leaned on language so heavily in my life
in fact if there's anything so i once
went live for 24 hours
as a thing like to celebrate hitting a
certain number on facebook i don't even
remember now what number but i went live
for 24 hours and literally i that
morning or the next afternoon whatever i
flew to london
and then
i did an event with no microphone and i
spoke for nine hours so at the end of
that something happened to my
my vocal cords and i was having a hard
time talking and i could feel like my
throat would click
is so distressing go to a
therapist they stick a camera down my
throat the whole nine like trying to
figure out what did i do
and
i start really worrying what does my
life look like if i can't speak and that
was the first time where i was like whoa
like imagine losing that thing that made
you you and i've always been highly
verbal that was always the thing that i
could terrible at math got horrendous
sat scores but
i'm highly verbal you're extremely
expressive you're extremely expressive i
will give you that i'll take that it's
absolutely true
so and i thought oh god what happens if
i lose my voice so i can't imagine
trying to
court the woman who is now my wife yeah
almost 20 years
uh without my voice that's the
interesting thing yeah no no and and me
too look i mean i talk for a living i
literally i mean blah blah blah that's
what i do for a living did it not hit
you then that like oh god i'm taking
away my superpower well because it was
my superpower i was i was a french horn
player okay so you guys connected over
music yeah well we were at a music
festival in france in dijon in france
that's how you met yeah and i was on
tour and she was studying
and she was studying with a teacher an
american teacher there and we met at
this music festival and and and we were
playing music and that's what you did
and so that that made it a little bit
easier i mean we were less reliant on
on talking yeah then than i am today
yeah that's awesome yeah yeah for sure
and so that was you know
when i went into the client as a
musician she was right there to be
helpful and she gave me she gave me the
courage yeah was she warm about it or
was she super warm she said i was deeply
unhappy because i was inclined look
humans are not intended to decline
decline is hugely painful because
happiness comes from progress
unhappiness comes from regress
and when you feel that something is
harder than it used to be so it's
interesting you know you see this the
decline in the fluid intelligence care
we just talked about
if you're really a striver
and that's what i'm working with i'm
working with people who want to make the
most with their lives if you look if you
never do anything with your life you're
not gonna know it's over you're not
gonna have this big crisis at the end of
your life because you never did anything
and i was like i watched a lot of tv
awesome it's like i can still do that
don't you think their whole life is a
crisis not really no actually no no not
really no no no no i know for sure i
mean well here's the thing
it depends on what you mean by happiness
and what a good life is
you know i want my life as a striver but
i also recognize that it's not normal in
many ways to strive
and not to strive to the extent that you
have but is that what you mean by it's
not normal yeah and it creates problems
i mean you you you rain hell on yourself
when you're actually doing the stuff
that you've done and there's a lot of
ways you could have had a much easier
life a much more relaxing life greater
peace frequently yeah for sure so that's
all i mean it's not a very profound
point in that way
but when i you know when i was when
things were going
poorly and i was deeply unhappy because
i was in a state of regress my wife said
you're unhappy you just need to quit and
i said that's insane
i mean like one can't just walk away but
of course
and she said yes you can absolutely you
can do anything you want i said we'll be
poor she said we're already poor
you know wait how do you know it's you
know multiplying by zero is still zero
and uh and so we did we just we bailed
you know we went to we left barcelona we
moved to boca raton florida where nobody
knew us i took a pretty easy teaching
job and i started studying by
correspondence at night nobody knew i
was doing it she had a minimum wage job
she spoke very poor english had not
graduated from high school
and so was learning english and making
you know six bucks an hour or whatever
it was and i was
getting paid to teach the french horn
while secretly working on my bachelor's
degree at night to build my to to
rebuild
the person that i was
and then
finish that went on to and started my
phd which is what i
really thought i needed to do and that
took me a little i came here to los
angeles as a matter of fact i studied
the rand graduate school in santa monica
and then i learned a new trade i learned
i actually learned who i was as a person
again for the first time but it was like
four years of you know it was weird i
couldn't i remember trying to sign a
check during that time and i couldn't
replicate my own signature
and it turns out that's not actually
quite frequent when people in this
period of liminality
between phases of their life that their
handwriting will change what yeah
yeah that's actually a common occurrence
i didn't know i was like i'm trying to
check for the bank
sorry mr brooks this is not the right
signature
is it is it because there's a
subconscious part of you that's like i'm
not that person anymore it's i don't
it's it's not well understood but
there's a the neurophysiology of a lot
of this stuff is
we're just starting to understand
there's no doubt something that where
these things are connected where your
sense of yourself is somehow connected
to you know these motor skills in a
particular way i couldn't replicate my
own signature sufficiently i got like
rejected by the bank for cashing a check
into my own account at one point i'm
like my
my early dementia
early stage something what's going on
here and what it was was i was in this
profound state of liminality which in
retrospect was this
just fertile period you know i tell the
story in the book
is a place that you and i both know is
pacific northwest guys there's a place
called lincoln city in oregon
that's you're near just north of newport
and i used to go there because my aunt
was the receptionist the hotel and she
had she lived in a trailer near the
beach and it was like this bliss i used
to go there and i remember the first
time i was trying to fish off the rocks
in in lincoln city oregon i was catching
nothing this old guy lived in a shack is
watching me and he comes up and says kid
i've been i've been watching you you
know today he'd be arrested but
and and i said he said you're not
catching anything right he said no he
says because you're doing it wrong you
can't catch any fish unless it's a
falling tide that's when the tide is
going out very quickly
rushing out between the rocks and i'm
like well all the fish are gone right he
says no no you'll see it's stirring up
the plankton the fish go crazy it's
happening in 45 minutes he has his
fishing pole we throw our we throw our
lines in and we're pulling him out by
you know by the tens it's unbelievable
and and afterward he's feeling sort of
philosophical he lights up a cigarette
on the rocks i'm 11 or something and he
says hey kid you know during a falling
tide you can only make one mistake i
said what's that said not having your
line in the water
and i have learned this that the time
between the tides of your life the
falling tide of your life looks like
you're losing everything get your line
in the water because that's the most
fertile period of your life
so what does it mean to have your line
in the water you must try new things you
must be fully alive you must try
everything you possibly can i need you
to define fully alive to be to to wake
up each day and to live that day full of
possibility not to nurse your wounds not
to waste your time not to try to do
things that you used to do to be fully
alive is to be alive to the new set of
experiences that's that's coming across
the transom
that's
super important because during this time
of liminality by the way there's a lot
of research on this this is not just an
anecdote about you know this kid fishing
in oregon
this is there's a lot of research that
shows that this time between periods in
your life which there's a guy named
bruce feiler who's who writes a book
about transitions
and he said during these life quakes you
know if your if your spouse just left
you that's a fertile period for you to
learn new things
if you you know you've lost somebody to
death if you've if you're if you're
going through chemotherapy for example
this is and you and you're very
pandemic for example for example if you
during the pandemic
many people find that despite the fact
that they hated it were insecure and it
was horrible that their lives
transformed for the good
that
in terms of what we're talking about
here the two curves fluid and
crystallized intelligence that period
between the two where you're you're
declining in one and the other's
increasing but you don't know how to get
on it or even what it means that's your
most fertile period that's when things
are can be absolutely magic they're not
going to be fun you might not be happy
but that's when magic can happen
so tell me about this then because this
happened to you
you've been in periods between you you
get out you're successful
but you're miserable
and so you had to change
what was the time between the tides for
you what happened
you have a concept
that resonates with me profoundly which
is that suffering is sacred
you have to do it well though
and i think
there's a few key things that you have
to recognize and when you were telling
your story about your wife a i don't
even know who i would be without my wife
and as i think so for a period my wife
and i now i would say are in very a
traditional gender roles but in the
beginning of our marriage it was very
traditional in a way that was profoundly
transformative
so much of the way that she tried to
express herself in the world was through
me
so she was a stay-at-home wife
but very shrewd very sharp and would
push me to be better
and was beyond
supportive when things were not going
well for me and in a very similar vein
of like i don't care for poor i want to
see you happy that's all that matters to
me and so when i was profoundly unhappy
i would come home and i would say don't
ask me about my day i don't want to
think about it i have to separate myself
from that
and so finally it got to the point where
she was like look this is starting to
damage our marriage
and so i'm going to need you to
work less to figure something out
whatever and so that's when i went in
and decided i was going to quit and we
were going to move to a small town in
greece
and i was going to write again she's
greek and
it was i was going to do that which made
me feel alive and so that was the
refrain i want to feel alive again i
want to feel alive again and so i knew
what that felt like because i had
pursued my art so fervently for years
and it made me feel some kind of way and
so i recognized the decline was able to
associate it with well you're just
trying to get rich you've made money it
hasn't changed so there's something here
that you've fundamentally misunderstood
about the world
and my
i guess liminal thing had been it had
been going on for a while because when i
left film school
and did not understand how to break into
the film industry that was a devastating
period and i would just lay on the floor
and i couldn't afford to furnish my
apartment and i would the the plenty of
room yeah like hilarity was not lost on
me i could feel like that cheap nylon
carpet that you get in cheap apartments
and it would leave like an imprint on my
face because i would just lay on the
floor
and i'm like this is so ridiculous
and i started reading about the brain
and i don't remember where that insight
came from maybe something i picked up in
college i don't know but i was like i
need to learn about how the brain works
and so it's late 90s and brain
plasticity is being debated and it
wasn't
there wasn't an answer some people were
like yes it's real other people like no
it's not
and i was like you know what i'm going
to act as if it's true because that's so
much more hopeful
and so i didn't know the einstein quote
back then but the quote of the most
important decision anybody will make is
whether they live in a friendly or a
hostile universe and me deciding that i
lived in a world where brain plasticity
was real was me saying i live in a
friendly universe right
and so i started trying to get better
and i was teaching at the time and so
i'm teaching film and i start noticing i
can make the students films better
if i can make their films better because
by this point i believe i have no talent
that's a whole part of the story so i
believe i'm completely talentless i
thought i was born with talent i clearly
was not
i don't know how to break into the
industry i'm going to teach because
those that can do and those that can't
teach
but i'm reading about the brain
brain plasticity i'm helping the
students make their films better and i
have a question in my mind which is well
if i can make their films better why
can't i make my own better i was like
maybe i could and so that gives me the
hope that i need to be fully alive to
start approaching things with hey maybe
i just need to get better and i can work
on this
and i had read the dow dijin when i was
16 which plants some very profound seeds
in my mind which i will now call a
growth mindset but back then like i
didn't really understand how to put them
to use in my life but i start putting
them to use in my life i start getting
better at filmmaking
and
you couple that with my wife being just
incredibly encouraging not afraid to be
poor wanting to see me happy
and and that was when i went in and as i
said before we started rolling i went
into my partners and i quit and i said
look i can't keep pursuing money anymore
and so i don't know my version of having
my um
my line in the water was
knowing i wanted to feel alive
believing that if i went and did the
thing that i wanted to do that i would
get better at it and that if i got good
enough i couldn't be denied right and so
the steve martin quote this would have
been
it would have been like 28 29. so you're
really on your fluid intelligence curve
in a big way
but you're not feeling it so i have
struggled my entire life have you seen
amadeus for sure okay so solieri laments
to god why did you make me oh my god
you're a musician this will resonate
with you why did you make me just good
enough to realize i'll never be as good
as mozart why couldn't you have made me
like just a another person in the crowd
that can appreciate what he does but you
had to make me just good enough that i
want to be that good and i realize i
never will be that's how i have felt my
entire life i've always had friends that
were just enough smarter than me that i
was like damn i'm never going to be that
smart and so i always tried to find a
different lane and in the beginning it
was being funny and so for a long time i
wanted to be a stand-up comic but it was
all self-deprecating because i had low
self-esteem i would just make fun of
myself all day which only reinforced my
low self-esteem for sure and so while i
was very funny it didn't feel good and
so ultimately end up rejecting that
um
but yeah so at the height of my fluid
intelligence i did not feel intelligent
i felt the exact opposite and you were
getting tons of material success thus
helping you to understand later on as
you
as you increase the wisdom
that the if if you take the
instrumentality of money and make it
your intrinsic focus you're destined for
misery no doubt now this is an
interesting you know insight that that
we we can take back to ancient times but
saint thomas aquinas in 1265 writes his
summa theologica the seminal text of
western philosophy you know forget that
this the theology just western
philosophy and in it he talks about this
very interesting thing he says that that
man
mankind humankind would say today has
four idols
you pursue everybody pursues one or more
of four idols and he calls them the
substitutes for god because his
supposition is that that we all want god
but god is extremely inconvenient a lot
of one-sided conversations and a ton of
rules so we look for substitutes that
have kind of these divine
characteristics
the problem is they're 180 degrees off
god their money power pleasure and fame
fame he says honor which is has
different connotations you have a son
who's a marine who serves with honor
that's not what we mean we're talking
about admiration
and the uh of other people of you which
is
which is people want that or or just
prestige or maybe fame you know some
people actually want to be famous but
let's just call it money power pleasure
and fame
everybody you know i play this game
what's my idol and i'll ask people not
what's your actual idol but what is not
your idol you know of these four money
power pleasure fame what's the one that
least attracts you that you could get
rid of with
total impunity you don't care and then
we'll we'll start eliminating and we're
going to find your idol is the whole
thing now the interesting thing about
that is that what he says
is not that you'll go to hell if you do
that he says you'll be unhappy if you
don't recognize the idol if you don't
recognize the idols in your life the
trouble is the limbic system of your
brain mother nature
that tyrant
tells you that you'll actually be happy
if you get your idol and so you chase it
and you chase it you can't quite figure
out what you're gonna do if you get it
like tom's going to get you know
hundreds of millions or billions of
dollars what are you going to do with
that money that you would actually like
and you can't quite figure out
well yeah because if you articulate it
you know if i say you'll buy a yacht and
you're like i know that sounds like kind
of a hassle to have a yacht
maybe it sounds good but not that good
right
the real reason you want that is because
you want admiration because you want the
the validation of what it represents of
you to you you want to this transference
of social comparison you've always done
with other people
you want to actually feel the thing that
you felt for others about yourself
that's what the idols do that's the
nasty switcheroo that's the that's the
despotism of this of of mistaking the
intrinsic good for the instrumentality
that's why thomas aquinas was so astute
in what he was talking about here so
when we play this game
and we we we see what is actually
holding us back and you experienced this
absolutely you were chasing the thing
chasing the thing and chasing anything
getting more and more and more miserable
because you're actually getting closer
and closer to your idol and realizing it
will not realize one single thing that
you needed for your own happiness it had
no intrinsic worth look
there's anything about money by the way
the research on money is very clear that
it doesn't actually ever bring happiness
it lowers unhappiness which are
processed in different hemispheres of
the of the brain
happiness and unhappiness are not
opposites they're not they're different
experiences and what happens is at low
levels money will lower unhappiness so
when i could finally go to the dentist
i felt better the trouble is i don't
know how to do the sums inside my brain
i just knew i felt better and we always
mistake lower unhappiness for higher
happiness and so early on you're like
wow i went from from you know fifteen
thousand dollars to twenty thousand
dollars a year and i felt better i
actually felt better about myself i was
able to eliminate some of these sources
of of you know misery so i'm happier and
so you get into the pattern early on you
wire your brain when you're a young
person wor