We all want to feel happy, but few are able to get it on a regular basis and in a purposeful, sustainable and conscious way.

In this life-changing interview by «Diary of a CEO» with Arthur C. Brooks, we can learn important concepts and practical behaviours to become happier, according to science.

A few key ideas:

• Positive and negative emotions are there to keep you alive. It would be deadly to feel happy all the time. The brain works in an environment of homeostasis, which means that unusual physiological states (like pleasure) are momentary reactions.
• Happiness is the pursuit of three things: enjoyment, satisfaction, and meaning. We need to know how to get them in efficient and healthy ways and we need them in balance.
• Meaning is a combination of three things: coherent purpose, significance, and a theory about why things happen. If you don’t have answers to these questions, you have a meaning crisis.
• The worst answers to the questions «Why are you alive?» and «What are you willing to die for?» are «I don’t know» or «Nothing». But that doesn’t mean it’s a problem, it’s an opportunity to realize you don’t have answers to these questions.
• Enjoyment is not the same as pleasure. Pleasure (sugar, sex…) is a lymbic message to guide us towards survival or reproduction, but it’s been hacked by modern technology and companies in a way that doesn’t make us happy or healthy.
• Enjoyment + memories + people make you happy. Spend time sharing memorable and fun experiences with the people you like.
• Entrepreneurs are good at deferring their gratification, which means they do hard things to get big payoffs, and those payoffs are sweet (remember the Marshmallow experiment). This is why entrepreneurs are happier.
• Diets fail because people think that the reward is getting to the goal and not the journey itself. People who crack the code of self-discipline, self-understanding, self-management experience remarkably higher satisfaction.
• Dalay Lama said that «you need to want what you have, not have what you want«, to get lasting satisfaction.
• Carl Jung said that «the basis of happiness is figuring out what you believe and acting according to it«. You’re hurting yourself when you do something not in accordance with the way you want to live.
• The four goals that really matter are faith, family, friendship, and work that serves others. Money, power, pleasure, and fame are only intermediate goals.
• Exercise lowers cortisol levels, which is a hormone that makes you anxious. Exercise also lowers your unhappiness, and the two can co-exist in the same person, so you can have both high positive affect and high negative affect.
• Start with five minutes of contemplation of life every day, and stop distracting yourself.
• Gratitude listing is really important, because we are resentful creatures because we have a negativity bias, and the way to not let that become all adapted is for you to contemplate the sources of your gratitude.
• When people fall in love, their brains react with testosterone, estrogen, noradrenaline, epinephrine and dopamine, which causes a feeling of anticipation of reward and Euphoria, followed by a dip in serotonin, which is what psychiatric drugs try to manipulate.
• People are happier when they help others than when they take care of themselves. If you’re lonely, the most important thing you can do is volunteer.
• Negativity is a virus, and so is positivity. This is why the mood and emotional well-being and emotional self-management of Ceos is so critically important.
• When your friends become obese you become more obese, when your friends get divorced you get divorced, when your friends get happy you get happy, and the more proximity that your friends have to you measured geographically or in terms of the intimacy of the relationship, the stronger the transmission mechanism.
• Extroverts tend to get more short term happiness and introverts tend to have more long-term happiness. So what you find is that extroverts tend to get more enjoyment and introverts tend to get more meaning.
• Modern life is full of vague threats that are giving us a little drip of cortisol into our brain all the time. Anxiety is unfocused fear. The solution is to focus the fear and move it from the amydala to the prefrontal cortex where it can be turned into a logical kind of fear.

Time and content of the interview:

00:00 Intro

02:13 Are You a Professor of Happiness?

07:28 Is Hope Important to Be Happy?

10:21 Follow the Science to Be Happy

13:05 Personal Responsibility

18:05 Enjoyment, Satisfaction, and Meaning

20:01 Addiction and Temporary Rewards

23:10 How to Turn Pleasure into Happiness

28:32 Diets: How the Process Is More Important Than the End Goal

34:48 What’s a Good End Goal for Fitness?

38:13 The Why of Your Life

43:48 Finding Purpose and Link to Unhappiness

50:58 The Power of Meditation

01:00:14 Personality Types

01:04:49 Finding the Right Partner That Compliments You

01:08:21 How Your Brain Works When You’re in Love

01:10:25 Does Being in Love Make Us Happier?

01:12:12 Focusing Less on Yourself Brings You Happiness

01:14:15 Is Happiness or Negativity Contagious?

01:19:31 Are Introverts or Extroverts Happier?

01:21:05 What Is Metacognition and Its Role in Happiness?

01:25:31 Last Guest Question

You can purchase Arthur’s most recent book, ‘Build the Life You Want: The Art and Science of Getting Happier’, here: https://amzn.to/3SmH5B2