Rule Breaker Investing Author Spotlight: Author Brooks and "The Happiness Files: Insights on Work and Life"

Author Arthur Brooks brings along counterintuitive ideas about happiness as a habit, the difference between joy and happiness, public vs. anonymous philanthropy, and how the pursuit of money can sometimes reduce freedom. Brooks and Motley Fool co-founder David Gardner also dive into what makes feedback actually helpful, and finish with a spirited round of Buy, Sell, or Hold: Happiness Edition.

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A full transcript is below.

This podcast was recorded on August 06, 2025.

David Gardner: Two years ago, we welcomed Harvard's happiness maestro, Arthur Brooks, to decode the science of happierness. Since then, the world is tilted. Our headlines have whiplashed, and Arthur has sifted hundreds of fresh Atlantic columns into a brand new playbook, The Happiness Files. What did he keep? What got cut? Most of all, what can you and I borrow today to live with more controlled grace and a lot less outrage? Let's reopen the files and find out. Authors in August is upon us only on this week's Rule Breaker Investing.

Welcome back to Rule Breaker Investing. It is August, which means I get to talk to favorite authors of favorite books this month, and I already see Arthur Brooks waiting the wings, so we're just about to get started. But let me first say that as I shared at the start of the year, my 2025 book, Rule Breaker Investing is available for pre-order now each week until the book launches on September 16th. I'm sharing a random excerpt. We break open the book to a random page. I read a couple sentences. Let's do it. I quote, "Tony Hsieh turned his shoe company Zappos into a billion-dollar enterprise bought by Amazon. His understanding of the power of happy employees made Zappos the envy of its industry. Tony was once asked, "How do you get all your employees to smile?" He dead panned, "Easy, we just hire the applicants who smile." That's this week's page breaker preview to pre-order my final word on stock picking shaped by three decades of market crushing success. Just type Rule Breaker Investing into amazon.com, barnesandnoble.com or wherever you shop for great books. My book comes out September 16th. One month before, just days away is the Happiness Files by Arthur Brooks. That is the subject of our podcast this week. Let me welcome back to this podcast Arthur Brooks, appreciated by many people in many different ways, growing up as Seattle light. As a young man, Arthur became a concert French horn player in Barcelona, Spain. He then later got his college degree, helped run a think tank, and now is a Harvard professor at both the Kennedy School and Harvard Business School. Many will also know him as the happiness columnist for the Atlantic. Well, actually, more formally, I guess, it's the How to Build a Life column. He's written a bunch of good books, including Build the Life You Want co-written with Oprah Winfrey, which he joined me to discuss on Rule Breaker Investing on September 13th, 2023, and I totally recommend you go back and listen to that conversation and read that book. Build the Life You Want; the Art and Science of Getting Happier, and/or you could also read his new book. I have, I loved it. Each of my three adult kids will be getting their copy the Happiness Files out on August 12. Arthur Brooks, welcome back to Rule Breaker Investing.

Arthur Brooks: Hi, David, congratulations on your new book. I've read your new book. I'm one of the blurbs actually on the back cover. I'm so honored to have my name next to yours, and everybody has to go get this book. They're going to love it, and they're going to prosper as a result of reading David's new book.

David Gardner: Well, that is such a kind thing to say. Thank you, Arthur. I really appreciate that. Having just randomized that Tony Hsieh quote, I thought it's a fun place for us to start by way of getting into our subject this and delving into the genius behind the Happiness Files, which is you, Arthur, what do you think of Tony Hsieh's line graded? Since I'm talking to, among many other things, a professor, if you were grading A to F, his line, easy, we just hire the people who smiled. What do you think?

Arthur Brooks: Well, I give it a B plus. [LAUGHTER] The truth of the matter is that you want to find people who can be happy. You want to find people who've got natural happiness hygiene. Maybe you've got talent for happiness. But the truth of the matter is that in a job, there's hard days and there's easy days. One of the best things that a leader can do is to learn how to become a happiness teacher, such that on the hard days, people can actually be happier than they otherwise would. That's the real secret to success. I have a lot of market data on that. I'm an informal advisor to Irrational Capital. I'm a behavioral science guy that has talked to those guys and worked with those guys. That's a research firm on Wall Street. They have proprietary data on the workplace morale inside thousands of companies. Based on that, they've actually ranked companies. They've actually made an index of the happiest companies and even marketed an ETF called HAPY, H-A-P-Y with a few other ETFs. It's marketed through Harvard, as a matter of fact. I don't have any pecuniary interest. I got no economic interest in this at all. I got a research interest in this one, and what they find is when they're buying stocks, when they are buying companies on the basis of how happy they are, they make a lot more money. That's not just people who go to the company who have natural happiness. It has to do with the management principles that lift people up and make them happier over their ordinary workday.

David Gardner: I love that. I love your line, leaders become happiness teachers, the great ones. We're going to get into that in a little while more, Arthur. But first, I want to talk about how this book came together and how you organize. I got a bunch of questions about that. First up, would you take us into the editing base? You've penned hundreds of Atlantic columns. How did you decide which essays earned a slot in the Happiness Files and which ones you maybe reluctantly left on the cutting room floor?

Arthur Brooks: It's true. There's a lot of them. I think at last count, there's 252 weekly columns on.

David Gardner: Who's counting, Arthur? Who's counting?

Arthur Brooks: I know. They're on almost every subject. Last week from when we're taping this episode, I wrote about how to make time slow down, because time feels like it speeds up as you get older. Well, that's not the thing that you're going to put in a book about work and life and how to be happier on the job. There's a lot of stuff that was obviously not a fit, even though it might be interesting. What I did is I down selected across the last few hundred columns and thought, here are the hundred that I think might fit and then I worked with the editor of the Harvard Business Review press to say, OK, I'm not the best judge. At this point, I've down selected. I want you to find the ones that you actually think work best. Part of the reason is because I love having great partners. I have prospered so much from good editors and great research assistants, and the truth of the matter is that people are most successful in business is because they got a great team. I build a good team and I take their advice, and I think they did a terrific job in deciding what goes in and what doesn't.

David Gardner: That's great. In 33 columns, I've read all of them. In fact, I finished your book, driving up through another rainy day in the greater Washington DC area. But I always make a point of making sure I finish my author in August books before we talk. It was a delight reading all 33 chapters, all 33 columns. I'm wondering, let's keep going with how this book came together. Obviously, it was a team. A lot of help. You were the guy who researched and wrote it in the first place, Arthur, but the finished book lands in five movements. You've got, number 1, managing yourself, number 2, jobs and money, number 3, communicating, number 4, balancing our lives, and number 5, how we define success. I'm curious, Arthur, how did you and your team arrive at that architecture? Did you start there or did you discover it?

Arthur Brooks: Well, it came together pretty organically, which is the way that books are supposed to. You start with the big questions everybody's asking, and then little by little, you introduce the ideas that they're asking about, but they probably should. It's an old thing that you do any part of the idea economy. People come to get a particular question answered, and then you give them what they actually need. The way that it starts out is, how can I be happier at work? By the end, we're answering questions like, you think you want this. Here's what you really want if you want to become a happier person. That's how the cadence in the book and how it works out. I'm glad you liked it. You said you listened to it. Did I read it to you?

David Gardner: I didn't listen to it. No. I actually read it aloud because I read all the time to my wife. Sometimes she drives, and I'm sitting there reading, and it's a pleasure because you're such a fine writer. You started with the French horn, Arthur, but I really appreciate your gift for the mujuse and disarming people at different points by reversing questions, having a lot of fun, being authentic, being yourself, being raw with people at different points. Anyway, it was a pleasure to read aloud. I was, in a sense, your audio book reader, even though I wasn't paid, and no one will ever hear it except Margaret.

Arthur Brooks: Well, I'm glad that she was an audience of one and the person you love most in life.

David Gardner: Absolutely true. Let me stick with one more question just about organizing and how this book came to be. Well, you open with Aristotle, "Virtues are formed by action." I'm going to use that phrase. I think you used this Arthur, "controlled grace, rather than uncontrolled entitlement", how has that changed your own daily happiness micro habits, and was that part of the book? Are you journaling yourself into this book? How did the book come together? This is my closing, how did this all happen question. I think it was a mess of a question, but enlighten us.

Arthur Brooks: I like it. The truth is that what I'm talking about with Aristotle and what I teach my students at the Harvard Business School is that happiness isn't a choice, but happiness is a discipline on the basis of the work that you're willing to do. My students come into the class, my science of happiness class under the misperception that happiness is a feeling and they're hoping to get the feeling. They're hoping that that feeling will be visited upon them. I said, no, happiness isn't a feeling. Feelings are evidence of happiness. Like the smell of your turkey is evidence of your Thanksgiving dinner. Happiness is something that you can actually set your mind to through a process of understanding, changing your habits and way of life, and then teaching other people. That's what this book is really all about. You're going to learn about the science behind every aspect of human happiness that you can imagine. Thirty-three topics. It's a lot of topics. Then you're going to learn very practical ways that you can change your life. Every essay has three ways that you can put these ideas into action in work or at home. Finally, it gives you ideas on how you can share these ideas with other people, particularly if you're a leader is what it comes down to, because you're going to do a lot better when you become a happiness teacher. You'll be happier and they'll be more effective, and 1,000 flowers will bloom, as they say. That's really what it comes down to. That's what Aristotle was talking about. Look, virtue is a habit. Virtue is not something that visits you at night and you get really lucky and aren't you lovely? It's something that you have to learn about. What does it mean to be a virtuous person? How do I act in such a way that goes against my natural animal instincts? Of course, most importantly, how do I talk about other people? Happiness works the same way.

David Gardner: Thank you. We're going to talk a lot more about happiness for the rest of our time together today because it's a topic of enduring fascination for all humanity for all time. But another one of those topics, Arthur, and in Part 1 of your book on Managing Yourself, you definitely go there. This is a Motley Fool podcast, so we're going there. Money. Let me quote you a couple of times and then ask you to react. The first quote is, "Money is one of the things Americans worry about most in the world. Even in 2018, when the economy was expanding, a survey by the life insurance company Northwestern Mutual found that more than half of Americans felt anxious or insecure about money sometimes often or all the time. During the pandemic, it didn't get any better." Later, Arthur, you write, "For millions of people, them worrying about money is not a reflection of whether their basic needs are being met. In fact, this anxiety reflects deeper concerns that money can't solve." Would you take us forward from there and enlighten us?

Arthur Brooks: Yeah. As a behavioral scientist, with a background as a behavioral economist, I'm very interested in what money represents besides all the stuff that it can buy. I'm very interested in the relationship that people have with money, and there's a lot of really interesting social science around this. You find, for example, that what happens when you take a person and add a bunch of money to that person? The answer is they become more like themselves. It's not that money corrupts. It's just that people who don't have an opportunity to be very corrupt can become very corrupt when they have enough money, when they can afford to engage in really audacious schemes is what we find. People who are very benevolent and lovely. When you add more money to them, they're actually able to express themselves economically in ways that are very benevolent and philanthropic, which is a wonderful thing, as well. But that's just an example of the fact that money is an expression of who we are as a people, what we're trying to do as a culture, and we use it in a way that exhibits who we are as individuals, what our ethical values are, etc. It also says an awful lot about what keeps us up at night. You find that, of course, people who don't have enough and are worried about paying the rent, etc., that as a real source of anxiety for people. That makes perfect sense. That's so obvious. It's not even really worth talking about. I've done a lot of work on poverty in my life, but that's not the audience I'm mostly talking to in this book. Thank God, that we live in a free enterprise society in the United States, where most of the people that can be reading this book are actually they're doing OK.

David Gardner: Amen.

Arthur Brooks: But they still worry about money. There's a very funny thing that I find for even people who are significantly above average in the economic spectrum. They think about money an awful lot because they're thinking about who they are as people, how successful they are and whether or not they're making progress. Money is a yardstick for a lot of people. It's pretty interesting. I chart happiness data when the market is going up and down, I know you're thinking this is what you're spending all day looking at is, what's actually going on in markets, of course. When markets go down, people get less happy, it's not because they can't pay their rent. Generally speaking, it's because they feel less wealthy, and that says something about themselves, about the scoreboard that they've been keeping of their own self worth. One of the things that I like to talk an awful lot about is one of the ways to get happier is by not putting your scoreboard or at least marking your scoreboard in terms of dollars.

David Gardner: Yeah. I absolutely appreciate that point. In fact, you do talk in Part 2, as you get into jobs, money, and building your career. You go to Abraham Maslow and his hierarchy, and you talk some about how money solves level 1 needs. Can I eat? Can I have a roof over my head? Those kinds of things Maslow talked about. But you also wrote, it can derail at levels 2 and 3. On behalf of all the Rule Breakers listening in right now, Arthur Brooks, how can we pursue wealth without letting self esteem, that yardstick hitch itself to the ticker?

Arthur Brooks: There's a lot in that, and this is one of the things that I talk an awful lot about with my MBA students for the obvious reasons. They're going to make a lot of money. I think the average salary coming out of HBS with an MBA is $210,000 a year. That's a high salary. It goes up from there. It doesn't go down from there, except in very rare cases. People get used to seeing themselves as a reflection of their value. Now, a lot of the people that are following this terrific podcast, they're successful. God love them. It's a really important thing, and I admire that. But there's a problem that a lot of successful people have. This is a psychological issue that I want to talk, and by the way, this is my problem too. Successful people have a bad habit of feeling like they have to earn everything. Now, good, earn your way inside your job. Good. Earn your salary. That's great. I love that. I love a merit-based society. I don't believe in tenure-based systems. I'm a college professor, but still don't tell the boss. I don't believe in loyalty based systems. That stuff is nonsense. I believe in merit-based systems, absolutely. But there are whole parts of life where it doesn't work. One of the things that success-addicted individuals, people who are doing really well, a lot of Motley Fool folks, a lot of Harvard Business School folks that they do is they try to earn absolutely everything. One of the biggest pathologies I find in the marriages, for example, of very successful individuals, is that their marriages aren't as good as they could be because they're trying to earn the love of their spouse. One of the ways that they're doing that is by bringing in as much money as possible. I've talked to any number of couples. My wife and I, we work with couples, sometimes who are on the rocks. We do that together as part of our.

David Gardner: Beautiful.

Arthur Brooks: Mission in life. She does it from a more religious perspective. I do it as a scientist. One of the things that we find is that frequently a man will be saying to his wife or vice versa, depending on who's making a ton of money, look, you're always bugging me about being home, but you want the money. She says, I just actually want you. But if I can't have you, I'll take the money. There's a resolution to that, but the resolution isn't just, hey, work class, man. The resolution is you need to start valuing yourself differently and stop trying to earn her love because love is a free gift freely given. That is the case of grace is the way that works. That's a real, real hard thing for success addicts to get through their thick skulls and I'm the most guilty of all.

David Gardner: One of the little sermonettes I've sometimes given to Motley Fool members over the years goes something like this, Arthur, "Money isn't green and it isn't gold. Money is really synonymous with opportunity. It's the opportunity to retire early, the opportunity to put a child through school, the opportunity to take a trip around the world with your three best friends. When you give away money, what you're actually doing is giving away opportunity to somebody else." Now, what I want to ask you about that is when the market does decline, when we do see our yardsticks coming in, not all 12 inches. We're somewhere around inch eight, we can't get up all the whole foot. It is true that we do feel, at least I do some sense of loss of opportunity, some less agency, etc. I know you make a big thing as we have, as well, that don't buy stuff buy experiences. But even then, you don't have necessarily as much potential energy stored up when the market does drop. Thoughts back.

Arthur Brooks: Well, here's how to think about it. Money is really good in your life if the more money you have, the more freedom you have. Money's not good in your life if the more money you have, the less freedom you have.

David Gardner: Love it.

Arthur Brooks: That is absolutely the case with tons of people. If, for example, the stock market goes down and it is really weighing heavily on you, it's evidence that money was taking away your freedom in the first place.

Arthur Brooks: It's absolutely true. Look, you can say, oh, yeah, but I'm going to have to work at extra six months. No, you're not. You know perfectly that that's not the case. Your freedom has been abridged by understanding yourself as homo economicus. Your degrees of freedom as a human being have actually been circumscribed by what you're trying to do in the market and what you're trying to do with your. Tons of people out there. They get more freedom as the income goes up, and then it starts to go back down again after a certain period of time, because they're looking at their portfolio every single day. They're thinking about their money. They're worrying about the stock market. They're in bondage, David, and that's not good.

David Gardner: [laughs] Staying with money, Arthur, let me turn sideways and go down briefly, a different path. Let's talk briefly about giving money away. Now, I think that there is, as you point out in the book, numerous places. It's just an inherently good thing for our souls, for our happiness, for others, for us to give. But selfishly, it really does reward us as the givers. There was a little debate I had with Margaret in the car at one point about anonymous giving or not. Anonymous giving is often held up as maybe the highest ideal, the ultimate way to give. But there was a little countercurrent at one point in our car, where we started saying, but doesn't public generosity sometimes inspire others to donate? When, if ever, should we let our left hand know what the right hand just gave?

Arthur Brooks: It's a good question, and I ran a nonprofit for a long time. Some of your listeners may know. I was the president of the American Enterprise Institute. Our agenda was public policy that makes it easier to be Motley Fool subscribers. It was really important because we believe in freedom and opportunity in the free enterprise system, and we believe in capitalism, we believe in all these beautiful things, to be sure. I would have these conversations with my donors because we were completely philanthropically funded. We had raised about $50 million a year. But no money from any government in the world under any circumstances, because I don't believe in that, I don't believe that the government should be giving anything tanks any money for Pete's sake. It's not right because that's forcing taxpayers to fund somebody else's opinions is not right. But it was all philanthropically based. I would go to my donors and I would say, it might help your soul to get to heaven if nobody knows that you gave it, but it's going to help me to raise a lot more money if you do. Can I please put your name on this? [laughs] Sometimes they'd say yes, and sometimes they'd say no. My wife and I, we give away 10% of our income. That's a religious commitment for us, but it also has been tremendously beneficial for us in how we see ourselves, how we understand our own values and ethics, and sometimes we do it publicly, and sometimes we do it privately. Everybody has to make their own decisions about that and how it's actually going to change your giving decisions. Maybe privately you give to one thing and publicly you give to something else.

Most people, they don't give anonymously to their alma mater. They give publicly to their alma mater. They give anonymously to the soup kitchen or something because what are you going to do? You go to endow the soup kitchen? That looks weird. People have to actually make these particular decisions. Now, there's a whole ethos on this. I used to do research on this. I've written books on charitable giving. My first commercial book was in 2006, it was called Who Really Cares. It was a book about who gives and who doesn't and who thinks they give, but doesn't. In America, it didn't make me a whole lot of friends, I have to say. [laughs] President Bush liked it. Actually, it changed my life forever because President Bush told somebody he was reading it, and I was getting calls from the press all over the place and wound up briefing him in the White House. It was a very interesting experience, I have to say. It's a super important thing to be thinking about how we want to make our own pedicular and personal giving decisions. This is something I care an awful lot about, and all of us should make that decision as well. The one thing that I do recommend, however, is that everybody give a substantial amount of money away every year and give sacrificially. People say give till it hurts. Now, give till it feels good. I'm finding the feel-good point just around 10%. I don't know, before taxes, after taxes. My dad used to give before taxes. I said, dad, after taxes, why? He's super religious and he's like, just in case.

David Gardner: Well, thank you for those insights. I had not read your 2006 book, but it sounds like one that would stand up to the test of time. It's a timeless question. I love the topic.

Arthur Brooks: I think so. I think it's something we all really need to be thinking about and making sure that we're proactively. Look, if people are interested enough in their money that they're listening to the Motley Fool podcasts and subscribing to the literature and reading your books, which is good and they should, then they need to understand that the resources in our society are like blood flow. Don't clamp it off, man. Don't let it coagulate. Keep it moving. That means, create jobs and opportunity and growth, get out there, hire somebody to do something for you, give the money away to the things that you're passionate about, invest wisely, and watch everybody get richer. That's what I'm all about.

David Gardner: Love that kinetic energy, beautifully said.

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David Gardner: Arthur, Part 3 of your book, communicating and connecting the organizing principle for those essays. I wanted to talk about criticism. This was fun. You wrote the key to criticizing to best effect is to remember the gift/weapon rule. If I'm criticizing to help, I'm doing it right. If I'm doing it to harm, I'm doing it wrong.

Arthur Brooks: That's right. The whole point is with criticism is your criticism should always be a gift. Your criticism should always be a favor that you're doing to someone. That doesn't mean they're going to like it. Not everybody likes every gift that you give them. For sure, you give people what they need. Now, if you're a good leader and you're an ethical person, not always exactly what they want. Again, I'm not giving advice. Folks, don't give your spouse a weed eater for Christmas or something. Even though you might need that, it could be misinterpreted. But my whole point is that when you're talking about criticism, it should be something where people actually can get better and or you're doing it for an organization or a society or something that actually needs a different behavior. That's the rule of giving criticisms, always as a gift, never as a weapon, never use it to harm. It might harm somebody, but that's not the point. Your point should be pure. Then the second thing to keep in mind is that you have to be able to take criticism. If you're going to give criticism, you got to take it. A lot of bosses are watching us here, and a lot of bosses give a lot of criticism, but they don't like to take it. You should be open to it. You should ask for it. You should be thankful for it. The rule of that is non-defensiveness, complete vulnerability, being able to hear absolutely anything. That's hard, man. That's hard in your marriage. Let alone heart inside your company, but don't be defensive and always make sure that you're seeking to help as opposed to harm, and criticism will be a much smaller problem in your life, both directions.

David Gardner: Love it. Because we're all about having fun and you're great at making fun for us, let's have a little bit of fun, Arthur. We're going to role-play very briefly. I'm going to be a boss, and I'm going to speak in all the wrong ways to an employee who keeps missing deadlines. First, I'm going to give you my version, then it'll take about a few sentences. Then maybe on the fly, could you provide a better version?

Arthur Brooks: I'll give it a try. I've been a boss a long time, and I messed this up a bunch of times. Let's see if I learned from my own mistakes.

David Gardner: Here it goes. I'm doing the opposite of everything that you wouldn't want to have happen. When I say, and I quote, "Listen up. This is the third time you've blown a deadline. I'm frankly sick of cleaning up your messes. I don't care what your excuse is, but the rest of us are pulling your weight, and it's embarrassing. Can't handle the schedule, maybe you should look for a slower-paced job, though. I doubt you'd cut it there either. Just hit the dates. Dates I put on the counter, try not to drag the team down again."

Arthur Brooks: That's actually pretty good, David.

David Gardner: [laughs] I think it's the opposite of everything that you say about the care of the recipient and mine and respectful delivery, and the list goes on.

Arthur Brooks: All of it. The whole point is that you actually want better performance. Look, if you don't want better performance, then actually make the termination is the way that works, and then make the termination in the spirit that you should be terminating people, which is OK. This person is going to be more successful someplace else. What am I going to do to make that so? What am I going to do to satisfy two constraints? Number 1, what's best for us and what's best for them? Now, my job as a fiduciary of this company is to do primarily what's best for us, but secondarily, what's best for them, and that does not mean being a jerk. That does not mean opening us up to a lawsuit and abusing another person and hurting another person's feelings, etc. But if I don't want to make the termination, then my whole goal should be actually getting better performance, and fear never does that. What does that is what Daniel Goleman in Leadership That Gets Results, he calls authoritative leadership. That's not authoritarian leadership. That was the example you gave. [laughs] Authoritative leadership says, look, here's the goal that we're all about. You, me, everybody here. Here's the role that you're playing in it. I want you to succeed. There's a bunch of issues going on right now. I need to get to the bottom of what these issues are so that you can succeed more. Let's work on that together. Can we do that? If the answer is, I don't think we can, then we got to go to the next stage, which is we got to find a better place for you. But if the answer is, yeah, really want to, then you put the plan together. If it just doesn't absolutely work, you have to actually confront that with grace and with skill and with kindness and most importantly, with compassion. One side note about this, David, you can go to the other extreme from the example that you gave, which, by the way, I know you were role-playing. That's not real, David, for everybody listening. First-time listeners, that's not David. [laughs] But you can go to the other extreme, and one of the worst pathologies of ineffective bosses is excessive empathy when people are not performing. This happens a lot. Empathy is a real pathology of our time as a matter of fact. Anybody, you're going to get a lot of notes on this. Motley Fool endorses non-empathy. That's not what we're talking about here, but empathy is an insufficient skill. It means feeling somebody else's pain. There's a reason that CEOs, they tend to become less sympathetic. As the years go by, it's because they actually can't feel everybody else's pain. They can't take it upon their own shoulders when they're actually trying to run a business. The right skill is compassion. Compassion is to understand what's going wrong, feeling the pain enough to actually absorb the situation, being able to form a plan, and the courage to carry it out no matter how much people don't like it, but in a spirit of love. That's what compassionate leaders do, and there's never too much compassion. That's what we should be aspiring to.

David Gardner: Love it. Compassion, greater than sign empathy. Earlier, Arthur, you said, leaders should become happiness teachers. That's basically what you've been doing throughout our conversation together, teaching happiness. Just to close the loop on that, in your book, you just mentioned to keep critical feedback in that first category, where you're doing it right, you're doing so to help. You have a list, because you're great at lists. A lot of your essays have lists of the three things or more you should do. But your list of five things, which I'm just going to put out really briefly, you already know this and you've already spoken to it, but the research tells us you say that there are five elements that make up good critical feedback. One, the care of the recipient in mind, you spoke to that. Two, respectful delivery. I think you were more respectful than I was. Three, good intentions. You really started there also toward the purpose of the company and why we're there. Number 4, pathway to improvement. Do you want to do this or not? Number 5, appropriate targeting of the recipients needs. What do you really need? What do we need from you? Let's create that win-win. I really appreciate that point that you're making. Let's move on to Part 4 of your book, Arthur, Balancing Work, Life, and Relationships. Now, in each of the parts of your book, there's five or six great independent thoughts, and each one was a column. Each one was worthy of reading, whether it was one year ago or five years ago. But the one I'm going to pull out here is midlife. We're talking about a lot of us are at or near the middle of our tether, as it's sometimes been put. You say that the second half of life, in one of your essays, should be subtraction, not addition. As somebody who enjoys math, I like thinking in terms of symbols and how to think about things. Arthur, let me start with a personal question for you, if you will. What have you chipped away professionally or personally since we last talked, which was two years ago, 2023?

Arthur Brooks: What I've tried to do is to look at the things in my life that are either obstructing my relationships at home and or things that are actually not critical to my mission, but were important to me in the past. The way that I think about it is chipping away at a block of marble to create a statue. It's not that the marble you're chipping away is evil. It's not bad. It's not defective. It's just not part of the statue, is the way that works. That's how I think about what my goals are more now at 61 compared to what I would have done when I was 31. When I was 31, I was adding brushstrokes to a canvas to get a beautiful work of art. Now I'm chipping away marble to get a beautiful work of art. Doing less is actually a whole lot more, so I can focus on the things that I really care about. I have stopped doing things largely on weekends, so I can be home with my family. I live with a couple of my kids and grandkids, as a matter of fact. We have a big house in Northern Virginia. What a beautiful thing that is.

David Gardner: Love it.

Arthur Brooks: Yeah. I read my own research, David. That's a great way to increase your happiness is to have an extended family actually living together. I got to be with them. Look, I got 1,000 calls for speeches last year, and I could be on the road seven days a week, and I'm a very undisciplined person inside my head because I want to say yes to absolutely everything. The way that I've actually undertaken this of saying no more to things that are violating the rules of conduct, which is away on weekends and out at night when I'm at home, is that I have a layer of staff between me and the opportunities. I have people who are working with me, and their whole job is making sure Arthur doesn't find out about somebody's invitation. Because they know, people can get to me, it's like balloon animals at your kid's birthday party in Fairbanks on a Sunday in February. Yes, baby. Yes, I want to do that.

David Gardner: [laughs] [inaudible] Fairbanks.

Arthur Brooks: Hey, Fairbanks, here we come. My staff was like, no, this is not going to happen because we set up the rules, and that's the way it's actually going to be. Those are the things that I've actually been able to chip away. Now, again, why is it hard to do? Because I'm an earn-everything guy. It's like more points, more Arthur. But that's not right, man, that is not right. I don't have 40 years left of productive work. I have a movement that I'm trying to make, and I have a life that I'm trying to lead at the same time, which means I need to make very careful decisions. There's more chipping these days than brushstrokes.

David Gardner: Really well said. It takes us toward the end of your book. By the way, Arthur, we haven't even talked about this ahead of time, but you said yes last time. I hope you'll play by seller hold with me in just a few minutes.

Arthur Brooks: Of course.

David Gardner: I'll be sharing things that aren't stock.

Arthur Brooks: I love that. [inaudible] Fantastic.

David Gardner: We're headed back there, but a few more questions just to close out for now, the discussion of your book. The final part of your book, Part 5, How You Define Success. Not how Arthur does, necessarily. It's how you define success, dear reader, how you might want to think about defining success, you make a big point with your final chapter that most people think success leads to happiness and we're all if we can get that raise, we can get that spouse, we can get whatever it is, success, that will make us happy. Of course, you make the timeless and important reversal to say, it's in fact managing our happiness that will lead to success. I want you to speak about that if you want in a sec, but I actually wanted to go a little earlier than that in this section because your colleague Teresa Amabile, and the progress principle, and just understanding happy earnest with Oprah, as opposed to happiness. I want to make sure, especially people who may not have read that book yet or heard our conversation in the last couple of years, whether you would speak to happy earnest and progress.

Arthur Brooks: Yeah, for sure. I ask people all the time, what do you want? Why are you coming to my talk? Why are you reading my book? Because I want to be happy. I say, no, sorry. Can be done. Now, that might sound discouraging, but it's not. Life has all headwinds to happiness. There's negative emotions, fear, anger, disgust, sadness. Those things exist for a reason, David. If you didn't have those negative emotions, you'd be dead in a week.

Arthur Brooks: They exist to alert you to threats on the horizon. By the way, they also cultivate a very rich life. It's very important that we understand those things. We also have negative experiences. Look, if you're trying to get happier by investing your money, you're also going to have bad days in the stock market. It just doesn't go up every day. The market of life doesn't go up every day is the whole point. The result of it is that there are things that are going to make happiness more difficult. The result of that is that you can't be cosmically happy. That can't be your goal. It's an unreasonable goal. The goal is to make progress through learning, through habit change, through teaching. You can do that by getting better at the skills of happiness, which is really what each one of the essays in this book is all about. You read it, you put it into action, you make some goals, you make some commitments to your loved ones, and you won't be cosmically happy, but you will sure as heck be happier.

David Gardner: Arthur, I know I'm speaking to a man of Christian faith. I'm curious whether you've developed any kind of view of heaven and what you think about when we think about the afterlife, and what happiness might mean in some future state. It's confusing to me.

Arthur Brooks: It is confusing. Part of the reason is because it's something we can't know. That knowledge about the creator is actually not something that we're given with our experience in the creation. If you're looking at Picasso's painting, you actually don't get any specific information about Picasso the man. That's not the way that it works. But still, you know there is a Picasso the man because you're looking at a Picasso painting is the way that works. There's lots of things that are unknowable, despite the fact that we have faith, and that's a very beautiful thing to have faith. The question then becomes, what is the nature of God? What is the nature of the afterlife in heaven? We don't know, but we have clues, because those of us who have strong religious belief, and I'm including in this not just Christian people like us, but also Jews who are serious about their faith and Muslims and Hindus who have an intense love for the Godhead, for example, one of the things that they all talk about is that god is generative. God is creative and God is love. God is the essence of love. What's love? Love is to will the good of the other. That's how Aristotle defined it. That's how St. Thomas Aquinas defined it. It's not a feeling. The mistake that we make about happiness is thinking that it's a feeling, and that's confusing the smell of the turkey for the turkey itself. I honestly believe that thinking that we're going to feel some sort of wonderful thing by going to heaven that misses the whole point. We will be living in love. Love is a decision, a decision that we made throughout our whole life, and that has to be the most fulfilling thing of all. That's the promise I'm going with. As Nixon said, that's my story, and I'm sticking to it.

David Gardner: [laughs] Maybe one further cosmic question, a little bit easier maybe than the one I just asked. Thank you for sharing your thoughts. Then we're going to play buy, sell, or hold. I often hear words like hope and optimism tossed around, and they sometimes have a technical definition different. Like, I've heard, for example, optimism is when you think it's going to work and the odds are on your side, and hope is when you think it's going to work and the odds are not on your side. There's a distinction that some would draw between optimism and hope. I'm wondering if you could help us understand the difference between happiness and joy.

Arthur Brooks: Yeah, for sure. That distinction between hope and optimism is really important because optimism is a prediction. Hope is a virtue. It says something can be done, and I can do it. That's the reason that hope is a virtue in every religion, and optimism is just how you are. Or it's based on how well you assess probabilities, which is not obviously the same thing. Happiness and joy, very distinct and very important distinction here, joy is a basic positive emotion. Joy is a sensation that actually comes from the fact that your brain is ascertained, that something is an opportunity that you should approach. That gives you this little burst of ebullience. Now, that feeling of joy, which largely comes from touching two parts of the limbic system of your brain, the ventral striatum and the ventral tegmental area. You can get that from your wife, Margaret says, "David, I love you". Or you could get that from a big bump of cocaine. I'm not saying that you would do that, but my point is that the brain is a very thrifty organ, and it will feel that joy from either one of those stimuli. Happiness isn't joy. Happiness is based on the skills of pursuing enjoyment, which has joy in it, satisfaction, which has to do with your accomplishments, and meaning, which is the coherence and purpose, and significance of your life. That's a big project. Happiness isn't a feeling. Happiness is a project. Happiness is something we get to work on. Sometimes you'll get joy, sometimes you won't, but you'll always get the satisfaction that comes along with knowing that you're living the best life that you can possibly live.

David Gardner: Thank you for that. I do feel like I gave short shrift to progress earlier, Teresa Amabile's work. We probably won't spend time there, but the overall point that, since her 2011 book, you referenced it, you're aware of it, is that so much of the joy comes from the journey and from the sense of making regular progress toward something, not this big, hairy, audacious goal that you set for yourself and then in his Olympic skater, when you finally get them gold, you tell the media, I feel empty. I don't really know what to do now.

Arthur Brooks: I know that. Scottie Scheffler, who just actually is the greatest golfer in the world, gave a very famous interview on this just the other day. It's like, no, that's emptiness, man. The real satisfaction comes when I go home and I spend time with my son, but if I'm linking my satisfaction in life to the achievement of winning a golf tournament, woe be unto me. By the way, Teresa Amabile's work is so important because progress really is everything for homosapiens but you got to pin your progress toward a goal, which is why the goal is really important. The Buddhists have a really important concept about this, which is called intention without attachment. Intention sets a goal so you can make progress toward it, but you have to not be attached to the attainment of the goal, and that's the trick in life. I just want to do better. I want every day to be a little better than the last, or at least, on average, a little bit better. I want to be a better person, I want to be a better father and grandfather, I want to be better for society and a good citizen, and then, good things are going to happen. I've got those particular goals, but if they don't, man, easy come, easy go. That's the right way to live if you possibly can.

David Gardner: I love it. It reminds me of another guest on this podcast some years ago, somebody I also deeply admire. Kevin Kelly, co-founder of Wired Magazine, Chief Maverick there. He talks about we're not living in a utopia, in case anybody didn't notice. We're also not living in a dystopia. We're living in Kelly's words, in a protopia, which means there's just a tiny bit of infinitesimally small progress being made, not every single day, but most days. You only notice it when you look at the newspaper of the last 50 years. If you just saw the front page of the 50-year newspaper, it would be full of remarkable progress in a protopia.

Arthur Brooks: For sure. Human beings are wired toward resentment and hostility, and suspicion, and that's why your ancestors, David, that they passed on their genes to you because they were resentful creatures, which meant that they were vigilant about threats. But that's actually not entirely appropriate. That's just evolution. What's really more appropriate is gratitude, and we should be incredibly grateful. It's like I read the newspaper today, and the only thing that left and right can agree on is that America is a crummy country in decline. I'm sorry, man. It's like, there's a reason everybody still wants to come here. Everybody's fighting to get into this country, and I am super grateful to be an American. I am super grateful for the free enterprise system for all its flaws. I'm going to work for it and fight for it for the rest of my life because David, it's just so great.

David Gardner: You and many of us listening to you today. I know there's a lot of head nodding across the foolaverse. Let's go now to buy, sell, or hold Arthur Brooks. It's funny you mentioned gratitude because generally, I try with a softball for my first one, so we're going to go there in a sec. But just to remind, these are not stocks, but if each of these things were a stock, would you be buying, selling, or holding, and a few sentences as to why. I think I've got seven queued up. You're ready?

Arthur Brooks: Yeah. Let's reiterate, David, that neither of us is recommending to people that they actively manage their stock portfolios where they're buying and selling stuff every single day. We're not J traders even in happiness.

David Gardner: That's right, because what we're about is investing. That's the word that's in my podcast title, which is the opposite the antithesis of trading, which is what so much of the media coverage seems to be there to drive. Yes, my friend, you get it. Let's start. These are not stocks, but gratitude journals are practically a cliche in self-help circles now, and yet, the science behind them, I don't think, has gone away. Arthur Brooks, buy, sell, or hold, practicing daily gratitude.

Arthur Brooks: Hold.

David Gardner: Interesting.

Arthur Brooks: You know what I want to buy? I'll tell you what I'm going to buy instead. Can I add?

David Gardner: Yes. This is a headline.

Arthur Brooks: It's that I want a failure and disappointment journal. The reason is because we need to start profiting more from the misfortunes in our lives, from learning to love our lives more, and to grow as human beings from our failures. The way to do that is to write down something that really bums you out, come back three weeks later and underneath it, in your journal, write down what you learned from it, and three months later come back and say how you benefited from it. If you start doing that, you will systematically start learning from your disappointments, as opposed to simply trying to reinforce your gratitude. So hold your gratitude journal and add a disappointment journal.

David Gardner: I love that. That is an awesome answer. It also reminds me another friend of the fool, past guest Dan Pink, his wonderful book, The Power of Regret. Let's feel regret. Let's express it. That's actually how we get better. Let's move on to number 2. Arthur, a dream for many financial freedom for others, potentially an early exit from purpose. Buy, sell, or hold, gunning for retirement before age 40.

Arthur Brooks: Sell.

David Gardner: Why?

Arthur Brooks: Because the truth of the matter is that most people don't know how to retire. They don't know how to do it. Now, look, if you're an expert in retirement and you've got so much stuff that you just can't afford to keep working, more power to you. God bless you. If you've got 13 grandchildren to dandle on your knee, good. If you're building churches in Guatemala and you've got all this stuff going on and you just can't afford to keep working, and you've got the means, great. But if you're only working because you want to stop working and you're thinking that not working is the be-all and end-all, oops, you're not going to like what you find. A little golf goes a long way. Sell on early retirement.

David Gardner: I really appreciate that. One of the major points you make in your book, actually, you're talking about as people approach retirement, your advice probably research-backed is if you're going to go for therapy at any point in your life, maybe you should consider it before you retire so that you think about who you're going to be and what's really happening here ahead of time.

Arthur Brooks: Exactly right. Look, I got the data on the neurochemicals that actually changed dramatically when you don't feel needed in the workplace anymore. It's not pretty. I'm not going to have to rehearse any of that science. Suffice it to say that you better be ready.

David Gardner: Number 3, Zoom culture's future after the you're on mute era. Remote only work as a long-term happiness strategy, buy, sell, or hold.

Arthur Brooks: Sell. Because no, man. I get it. Look, there are 7% of people that got happier during COVID. They're the cats. The rest of us are the dogs. The truth is that people who made convenience decisions for remote work their life is more convenient, to be sure, but they're not getting ahead in their careers, and many of them are suffering from more loneliness than they think. I know we're going to get letters, but I got the data, and my cause is just sell on Zoom work.

David Gardner: Number 4, there are now generative AI apps that endeavor to coach our emotions. Buy, sell, or hold the coming AI revolution bringing net-net happiness.

Arthur Brooks: See, this is a hard one to answer. Sell if these things are substituting for real human interaction. Buy if they're complementing actual human interaction. We're developing an AI app right now called Happiness Professor. Happiness.

David Gardner: Is this you? Are you being embodied by AI? Do I get to get coached by you?

Arthur Brooks: You do day or night, David, but it's not a substitute for your actual human relationships, and we're not going to maximize time in app because one of the things we'll talk about is now turn off the app and we'll talk tomorrow.

David Gardner: Love it. Number 5, it used to be you kept your relationship private; now it's not official until it's optimized for Instagram. Arthur Brooks, buy, sell, or hold, sharing the status of your love life online.

Arthur Brooks: Sell that. It's not for anybody else's consumption. When we're talking about sharing your relationships, I'm only buy when we're trying to inspire other people. Now, maybe you can do that on Instagram, and that really depends on your motives. Most people are doing it because they want to get a little fomo in the lives of other people. That's a really terrible motive for your happiness and theirs. Sell.

David Gardner: A lot of selling. It's the question asker. I don't know. Did I bring danger? In your book, at one point, you mentioned the benefit of a little bit of danger.

Arthur Brooks: I'm going to buy a [inaudible]

David Gardner: Jumping out of a plane, which you and I both have done as younger men, I believe.

Arthur Brooks: I did. Actually, I wasn't that much younger. It was my daughter's 18th birthday. That's all she wanted was to jump out of a plane with her old dad. What am I going to say to that? I say yes. I say buy jumping out of planes if it's with your little girl. By the way, my little girl, who is 4'11'', is now a second lieutenant in Marine Corps. She's a daredevil.

David Gardner: Incredible. In fact, I don't think she's the only Brooks next-gen Marine, is she?

Arthur Brooks: She's not. I'm wearing a T-shirt. You and I are looking at each other, even though this is audio only for our audience. But for folks who can't see us, I'm wearing a banshee T-shirt, which is the official name of the Scout snipers of the US Marine Corps. Motto: suffer patiently, patiently suffer because one of my kids is a scout sniper in the US Marines, as well.

David Gardner: Two more for you. Arthur, you've been very generous with your time. Thank you, once again. Number 6, I'm hearing about this more and more these days. I personally have no intrinsic drive to do this, but there's some serious research, I think, and serious buzz around use of these things for mental health. Arthur, buy, sell, or hold psychedelics in mental health treatment?

Arthur Brooks: I can't hold it because I don't have it is the whole point. I can't sell it because I don't have it, and I'm not going to buy it. I'm a little bit hard on this one. Now, again, very promising research, but the research isn't there yet, and what we do know is that while it's promising, there's also a lot of danger. Here's what I recommend to people. Psychedelics are kind of the cryptocurrency of the happiness world. Watch and wait.

David Gardner: That's awesome. I truly have no interest, but I can imagine how it could be amazing, and for some people, it may be right.

Arthur Brooks: It might be. Now, one of the things that we know is if you have any evidence of mental illness in your family, you should stay away. By the way, you should also stay away from cannabis, and you should probably not even drink alcohol.

David Gardner: Well, I do the latter, so there we go.

Arthur Brooks: Not to excess.

David Gardner: That's right. I know one thing, Arthur, you're in better shape than I am. You're in fantastic shape.

Arthur Brooks: Hey, my kids are Marines. What am I going to do? I'm just trying to keep up.

David Gardner: The last one for you, Arthur, let's go with Marcus Aurelius, is back on the nightstand. Buy, sell, or hold Stoic philosophy as a daily life guide.

Arthur Brooks: Buy it. Now, not just that, but this is a great input into our lifestyles. Even if you don't read the original texts at first, go read Ryan Holiday's books. Ryan Holiday is the maximum exponent on Stoic philosophy, and his stuff is just so very good. You're going to see your life in a new way, you'll transcend your old way of life, and frankly, you're just going to feel better. That's a buy.

David Gardner: Arthur Brooks, thank you for bringing your trademark mix of data, wisdom, and contagious good cheer back to Rule Breaker Investing. Every time we talk, you give us practical ways to be a little smarter, a little happier, and yes, richer in the ways that matter most. Until our next conversation, Arthur, I want to wish you the very best with your book, The Happiness Files. All three adult Gardner kids are receiving a copy this August. Keep leading the charge toward a world that measures success in love, meaning, and well-earned joy.

Arthur Brooks: Thank you, David. All of my kids are getting David Gardner's new book, too, because I don't want them just to be richer in happiness. I want them to be richer in richness.

David Gardner: Thank you, Arthur. Fool on.