This week I'm joined by Arthur C. Brooks, Harvard professor, bestselling author and one of the world's leading experts on the science of human happiness, and someone who has spent his life answering one of the most fundamental questions we all ask and what does it actually mean to live well?
We explore happiness, meaning, love and what the science really says about building a life that feels worth living.
Arthur Brooks is a professor at Vanderbilt University and senior fellow at Harvard Business School. He is the author of 16 books including three number one New York Times bestsellers. He has spent decades studying happiness not as a feeling but as a skill and teaching people how to practise it.
What we explore together:
- Why happiness is not a destination and what the arrival fallacy is really costing you
- The four idols your brain tells you will make you happy and why they never do
- What the neuroscience of love actually looks like and the two things that keep couples bonded
- How the failure journal works and why writing down your disappointments makes you happier
- Why meaning and happiness are not the same thing and which one actually lasts
- What it means to love and be loved and why Arthur believes that's the whole answer
Love, Sarah Ann 💛
My book 'Healthy Shouldn't Be This Hard': https://www.amazon.co.uk/Healthy-Shouldnt-Be-This-Hard-ebook/dp/B0G1DHNRV5
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Chapters
00:00 Introduction
02:59 Arthur's personal journey and finding purpose
05:59 How grief can be a doorway to meaning
09:07 Why knowing everything doesn't make you happy
15:04 What Stoicism teaches us about happiness
20:57 The four idols — money, pleasure, power, fame
23:57 Why the four idols are a dangerous trap
33:00 Arthur's worst day and what it taught him
38:57 The arrival fallacy
42:03 The neuroscience of dopamine
48:00 The failure journal
54:07 The neuroscience of love — oxytocin, touch and eye contact
57:03 How to keep connection alive long term
65:58 Why the silent treatment is so damaging
72:02 How your emotions are made in the brain
78:00 Finding meaning beyond achievement
87:08 Where Sarah is two years on
93:00 What saved Viktor Frankl
98:28 Final thoughts on living well and being well
