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Sean has had some good ideas over the years.

But using Canva was a really good one.

Sean designed some social posts to promote his friend's car boot sale.

They looked good.

Really, really good.

Next thing he knows, someone came and bought the lot, including the car.

Now Sean doesn't know how he's going to get home.

Thanks, Canva.

One of our all-time great guests, Dr. Arthur Brooks is here, Harvard Professor, Atlanta columnist, host of Office Hour's podcast, best-selling author of The Happiness Files, Insights on Work and Life. And he has a new book coming out, too, which I can't wait to find out more about. And also he's got a new article of how to heal our country, which is a big thing to say. And also how to make your individual life better, healthier, right, Arthur? Yeah, for sure. I teach happiness at Harvard. And that's wrap around happiness, man. How do you do it for a country? How do it for yourself? How to do it for family? And it's all based on science. So this is not just self-improvement. This is the neuroscience and behavioral science and how to be a happier person. And are you still learning of this? Oh, yeah, for sure.

So it's a goal for the rest of my life.

You know, I got my PhD about 30 years ago and I've been studying this stuff. But over the past seven years, I've dedicated myself completely to human happiness and what it actually means. You know, the science of how this actually works, how you can change your habits and protocols and then teach it to other people so your family and people around, you can get happier too. And did you teach this past semester? Yeah, I mean, I teach, I teach in the spring. So I teach in the spring up at Harvard. And, you know, I'll have 180 students in my class starting in January. I'll have 400 in the waiting list. There will probably be an illegal Zoom link they think I don't know about. Right. And it must feel good to have that type of... It's fantastic. It's the best. You know, we get one pass through this mortal coil, man, and you can make life better for people. You can make life worse for people. And I dedicated myself, look, I'm a Christian. And I said, I'm going to dedicate my Christian faith to my secular job. And I want to make people happier. I want to help people understand how to have more love in their life is what it comes down to. And I'm a scientist, so I've got to do the science behind it. It's great. What's the relationship between success and happiness? So that's an interesting thing that most people don't get right. And here's the key thing to remember. Mother Nature doesn't care if you're happy. Mother Nature wants you to survive and pass on your genes. Happiness is your job is what it comes to. Everybody listening to us, happiness is something that you have to choose and do things that actually stand up to your natural impulses. So you want to have more money, more power, more pleasure,

more admiration of other people. And that'll give you more, you know, all of the stuff that the

world promises, but it won't bring you more happiness is the problem. So what I tell my

students is you think success will bring you happiness. Going for happiness directly,

which comes from faith, family, friendship, and work that serves other people, then you'll be successful enough. So what role does in more practical purposes? Let's say you have this. You have great friends. You have a great family. But they have the stress every day, which a lot of people listening to us right now. Yeah. Was it the number of 70% of all Americans live paycheck to paycheck? Yeah.

They worry one thing goes wrong, they don't worry about the safety net. So, Social Security won't be enough. Yeah. That's real worry. How do you figure happiness? How do you work happiness into that? Yeah. So the problem with that is that these real world tensions and anxieties. They actually don't hurt your happiness, but they raise your unhappiness.

And happiness and unhappiness are not opposites.

So you can be a very happy person and also have a lot of sources of unhappiness. The key thing to keep in mind is that you do the best you can to lower these sources of unhappiness. You find the best job that you can. You have a good relationship with other people who can help you, et cetera, et cetera. But then focus on the real sources of your happiness, which all come from love. Love that you have with God. Love that you have with your family and friends. Love toward the whole world through the way that you're trying to serve is the way that that works. So you think about, you know, obviously a balance through that. Yeah, for sure. You can't change the whole world, but you can change yourself. Focus on the things that you can actually change to become a happier person. And is it the voice? What do you do with the voice in your head that wants more? I know. Well, that's Mother Nature once again. And that's one of the reasons that every religion and every philosophy, as I was said, stand up to your nature, man. I mean, there's kind of two parts about being a person. Your dog, you have a dog, Brian, too.

You have two dogs. Your dogs really only have animal impulses. They're awesome. They act like humans, but they really have an animal impulse. We have this part of a brain called the prefrontal cortex, right behind our foreheads. It's huge. it's a supercomputer that gives us more than animal impulses. We also have moral aspirations.

We can make decisions. right behind our foreheads. It's huge. It's a supercomputer that gives us more than animal impulses.

We also have moral aspirations. We can make decisions in spite of our animal impulses. And that's what we're trying to do all day long. If you live with your animal impulses, you'll just get drunk every night. You'll sleep in every morning. You won't show up for work. You'll cheat on your spouse. and that's because your animal impulses say,

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