Modern Life Is Designed to Leave You Empty. Here's the Antidote. | Arthur Brooks

This is the 10% Happier Podcast. I'm Dan Harris. 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 going to 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 cannot answer, the neuroscience behind authentic love, strategies for finding meaning in your work, what Arthur means when he says, don't waste your suffering. and much more. As we all know, one great way to generate a sense of meaning is by being part of something, something larger than you, having a sense of purpose, community, and belonging. And that really is the core idea around which my team and I have built our new meditation app, 10% with Dan Harris. We've got all sorts of stuff that a regular meditation app might have, you know, guided meditations, courses, etc.

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