Arthur Brooks

This is as a diagnostic matter.

Happiness is a combination of enjoyment, satisfaction, and meaning.

We've talked about it on the show a couple of times, as a matter of fact.

These are the three macronutrients of happiness.

You want to be a happy person, you need to enjoy your life, which back to an early part of the conversation, by the way,

One of the reasons that you're moving from a pure achievement orientation in the show toward one where you're having more fun is because you want to increase enjoyment, which many strivers struggle with.

They don't enjoy their lives very much and they want to enjoy their lives more and they don't know how because they're always trying to put points on the board.

So that's a different subject.

I'm going to write a book about how to enjoy your life because I want to figure it out because I need to figure it out before I die.

So enjoyment, which is not pleasure, it's pleasure plus people plus memory, it's a conscious phenomenon, is actually pretty high for most young people.

Satisfaction, which is the achievement of worthwhile goals with struggle, that's pretty high, especially for strivers.

I mean, my MBA students at Harvard, they're real high in satisfaction because they're accomplishing a lot and they're struggling a lot.

It's meaning that's collapsed.

And that's the reason that we have this unbelievable unhappiness crisis in our society today.

Oh no, tell me, Viktor Frankl.

And this is before scrolling even existed.

Yeah, I did.

But you know, it's absolutely the encapsulation of the strivers lament.

You know, it's like, I can't, I can't, everybody else is having a great time and I can't feel it.

I don't, you know, they're out dancing and they're at a club.