Modern Life Is Designed to Leave You Empty. Here's the Antidote. | Arthur Brooks
4/1/20261 hr 15 min
Six steps to reclaim your brain, find purpose, and escape the doom loop.
Arthur Brooks is a professor at the Harvard Kennedy School and the Harvard Business School, where he teaches courses on leadership and happiness. Brooks is the author of 15 books, including the #1 New York Times bestsellers, Build the Life You Want, co-authored with Oprah Winfrey, and From Strength to Strength: Finding Success, Happiness, and Deep Purpose in the Second Half of Life. His latest book is The Meaning of Your Life: Finding Purpose in an Age of Emptiness.
In this episode we talk about:
- The three essential components of a meaningful life
- Getting comfortable with boredom
- Why we need to be asking questions that google can't answer
- The neuroscience behind "authentic love"
- Strategies for finding meaning in your work
- What Arthur means when he says "don't waste your suffering"
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Clips
Transcript preview
First 90 secondsDan Harris· Host0:00
[upbeat music] This is the Ten Percent Happier podcast. I'm Dan Harris. [upbeat music] Hey, gang. Back today with another of my favorite frequent flyers on this show, and we're going back to a theme that is incredibly important and highly resonant, and it's this: how modern life often makes you sick, the idea that we have these ancient brains that are ill-equipped for the world that our modern brains have created. Specifically, in this case, we're talking about how a culture of achievement and productivity and hustle porn and clout-seeking and perpetual distraction can really activate the unhelpful parts of your brain and make life seem empty. My guest is gonna talk about six ways to bring meaning back into your life, or if you already have meaning, how to turn the volume up on it. Said guest is Arthur Brooks, a professor at the Harvard Kennedy School and the Harvard Business School, where he teaches courses on leadership and happiness. Arthur is also the host of the weekly podcast Office Hours with Arthur Brooks, and he's the author of 15 books, including his latest, which is called The Meaning of Your Life: Finding Purpose in an Age of Emptiness. In this conversation, we talk about the three essential components of a meaningful life, how to escape what he calls the doom loop, getting comfortable with boredom, why we need to ask questions that Google