How to Be Happy — Arthur C. Brooks Interview

Tim Ferriss interviews Arthur C. Brooks on the science and practice of getting happier. Brooks lays out his core model that satisfaction equals haves divided by wants, arguing that lasting happiness comes from wanting less rather than having more, and walks through tools like the reverse bucket list and the Maranasati death meditation. He breaks happiness into three 'macronutrients'—enjoyment, satisfaction, and meaning—and details Aquinas's four idols (money, power, pleasure, fame) that substitute for the divine. Brooks and Ferriss also explore religious conviction, dating and companionate love, friendship and male loneliness, radical honesty, and how suffering is integral to a meaningful life. Brooks shares personal stories including his Catholic conversion in Mexico, courting his wife in Barcelona, and his son Carlos's path to the Marine Corps.

• Brooks found his bucket list from age 40, checked everything off it, yet was less happy at 50; lasting satisfaction equals haves divided by wants, so you increase it permanently by wanting less, not having more.
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• Happiness is not a feeling but is associated with three tangible, manageable phenomena—enjoyment, satisfaction, and meaning—described as the macronutrients (protein, carbs, fat) of happiness.
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• In his Harvard game 'What's My Idol,' based on Aquinas, the four substitutes for God (and the secrets to happiness) are money, power, pleasure, and fame; each person is animated by one or two.
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• The Theravada Buddhist Maranasati death meditation—contemplating photos of decomposing corpses and saying 'that is me'—liberates you from death fear; Brooks does it weekly on his fear of losing his mind to dementia.
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• Meaning resolves into two questions: 'Why are you alive?' and 'For what would you be willing to die?'—you must earn the answers through a quest and hard experience, not be told them.
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• The biggest message Brooks fears people will miss is that you need unhappiness to live fully; Oprah coined 'happierness' as the real goal, and suffering is integral to finding meaning.
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• The biggest dating problem today is people sort for compatibility and sameness, looking for 'a sibling'; what's actually attractive and durable is complementarity—difference—plus a goal of companionate love (best friends in five years).
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• Brooks does blood flow occlusion training with velcro cuffs he travels with, recommending it for anyone over 40 because it builds strength and hypertrophy at lower weights, saving the joints; he's on the road 48 weeks a year.
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• About 50 percent of your emotional baseline mood is genetic, established from identical-twin studies of twins separated at birth.
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• The hedonic treadmill: you get about six months of enjoying good weather after moving somewhere sunny, 'but the taxes are forever.'
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• The Kahneman and Deaton Princeton study found happiness flattens out around $75,000 a year; Matt Killingsworth's reanalysis put it higher but still flattening.
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• Brooks gives away 10 percent of his income, about 75 percent of it to Catholic primary and secondary education, and he and his wife adopted a daughter after research showed turning the whole dial on one life yields more well-being.
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• Brooks met his wife Ester in Burgundy, France while a touring French horn player; she spoke no English, was from Barcelona, and didn't believe in marriage—he won an audition with the Barcelona symphony and took two years to 'close the deal.'
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• Falling in love is neurochemically like being on meth and clinically depressed simultaneously, with spikes in norepinephrine and dopamine and a dip in serotonin, plus a flood of oxytocin.
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• About 60 percent of 60-year-old men say their best friend is their wife, but only about 30 percent of those wives say their best friend is their husband—a story of unrequited friendship and male loneliness.
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• Brooks uses the PANAS (Positive and Negative Affect Schedule) test to classify people into four affect types: the mad scientist, the cheerleader, the poet, and the judge.
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• The book How to Build the Life You Want was Oprah Winfrey's idea; she and Brooks framed it over three or four days at her teahouse in Montecito and she insisted on the final title.
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