# Most Replayed Moment: Why You’re Never Satisfied! The 4 Pillars of Lasting Happiness

An episode of [The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1291423644), 14 Nov 2025, 21 min.

Audio: https://pdst.fm/e/pscrb.fm/rss/p/mgln.ai/e/1390/claritaspod.com/measure/p.podderapp.com/2544644999/mgln.ai/e/1651/episode.flightcast.com/01K9YFBW1FZNMFHSERRTWQPJ75.mp3

Arthur C. Brooks is a Harvard professor, social scientist, and bestselling author who studies the science of happiness, meaning, and human fulfilment. He advises leaders and high achievers on how to build lives rooted in purpose, satisfaction, and emotional wellbeing. In today's Moment, Arthur breaks down the four scalable areas of life to work on for lasting happiness. Learn the science behind long-term satisfaction, emotional resilience, and building meaning and purpose in a pleasure-driven world. Listen to the full episode here: Spotify: https://g2ul0.app.link/CEreSpaggYb Apple: https://g2ul0.app.link/PrjwL6cggYb Watch the Episodes On YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/%20TheDiaryOfACEO/videos Arthur C. Brooks: https://www.arthurbrooks.com/

## Transcript

[0:00] So people in memory, time, pleasure, and enjoyment to enjoy.
[0:08] That's right.
[0:09] So alcohol, ad people in memory, you know, the Anheuser-Busch Corporation doesn't put
[0:12] out advertisements of, you know, a dude alone in his apartment pounding a 12-pack.
[0:20] That's how a lot of people use the product.
[0:22] But that's, everybody knows that's an irresponsible, dangerous thing to do that can lead to alcoholism.
[0:26] What they show is the same guy with his brothers and friends, you know, clinking bottles together,
[0:32] having a great time.
[0:33] That is pleasure.
[0:34] Alcohol plus people plus memory equals enjoyment and at least happiness.
[0:38] Because they want to join their brand to happiness, not just to pure pleasure and certainly
[0:42] not to addiction.
[0:43] Same like Coca-Cola.
[0:44] All the Coca-Cola ads are like the world cup with your friends and insommer with your
[0:48] friends.
[0:49] Yeah.
[0:50] And that's actually less addictive.
[0:51] I mean, there are certain, you know, the sugar and caffeine are certainly addictive.
[0:54] They don't have the same properties of brain capture in the same way for sure, because
[0:58] they don't stimulate as much dopamine as something like alcohol does.
[1:04] And so they're less likely to make you really addicted.
[1:06] But the whole point is that it does give you a little bit of pleasure, but it makes you
[1:10] way happier if you get to enjoyment and you only get that when you're doing it with people.
[1:15] Satisfaction.
[1:16] Satisfaction is the joy you get after struggle.
[1:20] You're an entrepreneur.
[1:21] You understand this one really well.
[1:22] You're good at differing.
[1:23] You're gratification.
[1:24] All entrepreneurs are good.
[1:26] Successful entrepreneurs are good at differing gratification, which means I'm going to do
[1:29] this hard thing and it's going to get big payoff and that payoff is going to be sweet.
[1:35] That's satisfaction.
[1:36] A really funny thing about humans is that we need struggle and suffering for us to actually
[1:42] get the joy that we see.
[1:43] And that's a really important part of our happiness.
[1:46] So you find the people who are better at differing their gratification, get more satisfaction
[1:50] and they're happier.
[1:52] You've heard about the marshmallow experiment.
[1:55] People have debunked it, but they actually haven't.
[1:57] The marshmallow experiment was taken place.
[1:59] It took place in the late 60s, where Walter Michelle was a psychologist at Stanford out
[2:03] in Palo Alto.
[2:05] He had a little laboratory set up where he would come in and sit down on one side of
[2:09] a table and it was a kid on the other side of the table, between four and eight years
[2:13] old.
[2:14] In front of the kid was a marshmallow.
[2:15] So he says to the kid, do you want the marshmallow?
[2:17] He's like, yeah, he says, tell you what, I have to go take a phone call in the back here.
[2:22] But when I come back, the marshmallow is still there, I'll give you another one.
[2:27] Can you wait?
[2:28] Every kid's like, yeah, totally, totally worth it.
[2:30] He comes back five minutes later.
[2:32] So 80% of the kids that eat in the marshmallow, 20% of the kids hadn't.
[2:37] Not a lot.
[2:38] 80% of the kids could not differ the gratification.
[2:40] So the real question is, who's the 20%, it's Steve Bartlett.
[2:46] These are the people that went on to do distinguished things.
[2:49] They did better in school.
[2:51] They got better grades.
[2:52] They went on to have more job success.
[2:55] They had better relationships.
[2:57] That's what they found that the most successful kids now that what people fight about now is
[3:02] why, whether it's nature and nurture, it's probably 50, 50.
[3:06] Like everything else in life, it's both nature and nurture.
[3:09] But the bigger point is good things come to those who wait and when you wait, you suffer.
[3:14] You need that suffering as part of the basic satisfying experience.
[3:17] Now, the bigger problem with satisfaction is that mother nature is a big lie at the end
[3:22] of it.
[3:23] Mother nature says, if you get it, you're going to love it forever.
[3:27] And that's not true.
[3:29] See, the brain works emotionally and physically in an environment of homeostasis.
[3:36] Homeostasis means that you always return to your baseline physiologically and emotionally
[3:40] because you can't stay in an unusual physiological state.
[3:46] Unusual states are a reaction.
[3:48] You need to be ready to react.
[3:50] And so you step off the treadmill, your heart is elevated.
[3:55] Your heart goes back to where it was so you're not dead in a week.
[3:58] The same thing is true for you emotionally.
[3:59] Something really good or bad happens to you.
[4:02] You think it's going to last forever so that you have an incentive to avoid or approach
[4:06] the thing, but it doesn't last forever, does it?
[4:10] That's the problem.
[4:11] We actually think that if I get that billion dollars, it's going to be really great.
[4:16] And the first thing that somebody who has a billion dollars says to her himself is, I
[4:21] guess I needed another billion because of homeostasis.
[4:25] And that puts you on something called the hedonic treadmill, more, more, more, more, more,
[4:29] more.
[4:30] So that's the great conundrum of the striver is that there's never enough, never enough,
[4:35] never enough.
[4:36] There's a lot of people all day long, I really specialize in people who are incredibly successful,
[4:41] but not happy.
[4:42] And a lot of what I do is explain one simple equation that both explains that, but also
[4:48] gives you the solution, which is that your satisfaction doesn't come from all the things
[4:53] that you have.
[4:54] So have more is not the right strategy.
[4:56] Satisfaction is all the things you have divided by the things that you want, have divided
[5:02] by wants.
[5:04] People need to manage their wants even more than they need to manage their halves.
[5:09] They need to want less.
[5:11] And that's a whole kettle of fish, that spirituality, that's discipline, that's fitness, that's
[5:17] diet, that's a whole lot of things that go into that.
[5:21] And that will help you actually get enduring satisfaction.
[5:24] Satisfaction.
[5:25] It sounds like a contradiction though, doesn't it?
[5:27] It sounds like a contradiction to that the striving and the struggle is going to make
[5:31] me happy, but I should want less.
[5:33] But people actually who crack this code, and a lot of, you know, Eastern traditions
[5:38] actually get into this, is not the striving is bad, but the striving in itself has a reward
[5:46] to it, that the process and what you find out along the way is that what you wanted was
[5:51] not arrival, what you wanted was progress, and then you start to get the reward from the
[5:56] progress itself.
[5:57] There's a funny thing in the research on dieting.
[6:00] We all know that it's the most expensive, unsuccessful industry in the world, right?
[6:04] 95% of diets fail, which means within a year people have gained back all of the weight
[6:07] that they've lost, but they're successful in so far as that almost everybody loses weight
[6:12] when they go on a diet.
[6:14] Here's the thing about diets.
[6:16] Every day you're willing to forego the food you like in exchange for the reward, which
[6:21] is the scale going down.
[6:23] When you hit your goal, it's going to be so great, it's going to be so great, you know
[6:26] with a reward as they, you never again get to eat the things that you like for the rest
[6:30] of your life.
[6:31] Congratulations.
[6:32] Once you've got that.
[6:33] That's why you fail.
[6:34] And the arrival fallacy, which is an identifiable phenomenon in my field, is that it's going
[6:39] to be sweet when I get to the goal.
[6:40] It isn't where you're going to have this homeostasis when you get to your goal, frustration
[6:44] and disappointment.
[6:45] Therefore, you need to want less, you need to think about that, about less about wanting
[6:51] these arrival experiences and get more satisfaction from the progress, from the journey.
[6:57] That's really what it comes down to and people who crack that code over the course of self
[7:01] discipline, self understanding, self management, they can actually experience remarkably higher
[7:07] satisfaction.
[7:08] The Dalai Lama, I've been working with the Dalai Lama closely for the past 11 years.
[7:11] And I asked him this question, how can I get lasting satisfaction?
[7:16] He said, you need to want what you have, not to have what you want, and that's what
[7:22] it comes down to.
[7:23] It's the management of my wants, not my halves.
[7:33] On that point, we're at the time of year now where so many people are thinking about diets.
[7:37] You mentioned that there.
[7:38] So for those people that are approaching that moment and they're going to be setting
[7:41] their goals and stuff and all those kinds of things, what is a better goal to set if
[7:44] not a weight number or a financial number or whatever?
[7:48] What's a better, more realistic goal to set that has more chance of success?
[7:52] Yeah, but it's interesting because there are certain things that we can accumulate that
[7:57] won't homeostatically return us to the baseline that won't throw us onto this hedonic treadmill
[8:03] over and over and over again.
[8:05] Those goals are the goals that actually do lead to the happiest life and the more you have
[8:09] the better off you are or more actually is better.
[8:12] But they don't fall into the categories of money, power, pleasure and fame, which are
[8:16] the typical kind of goals that we get or related goals like weight loss or whatever it happens
[8:21] to be.
[8:22] The four goals that really matter are faith, family, friendship and work that serves others.
[8:29] Those are the four really great and transcendent goals that we can have.
[8:33] No, there's nothing wrong with money or power or pleasure or fame.
[8:35] There's nothing wrong with those things.
[8:36] But only as intermediate goals to make it easier for us to pursue and accumulate deeper
[8:42] faith or philosophical life.
[8:44] I'm not talking about traditional religious faith necessarily, better family relationships,
[8:48] which are very mystical, poorly understood, even in neuroscience in a lot of ways, friendship,
[8:55] deep friendship, hard for a lot of people, especially successful people and work that where
[9:00] you earn your success and serve other people.
[9:03] That's what it comes down to.
[9:04] So those are the right New Year's goals that we need.
[9:07] This year, how am I going to grow closer to the divine?
[9:12] How am I going to do that?
[9:13] This year, what am I going to do to draw closer to my family and to have a more intimate relationship
[9:17] with my family?
[9:18] How am I going to have deeper friendships this year and how am I going to take my work and
[9:23] find it more meaningful and satisfying on the basis of serving other people?
[9:28] How am I going to do that?
[9:30] We haven't gotten to meeting yet.
[9:32] Yeah, we haven't got to meeting yet.
[9:33] You said the word there, but I want to make sure I close off from this point about a better
[9:36] goal because there's still going to be a huge group of people that go, listen, I get it,
[9:40] love it, I believe it.
[9:42] But I hate this belly fat.
[9:43] Yeah, I got it.
[9:44] And this belly fat yo-yos every year.
[9:46] So I get it.
[9:47] So those are intermediate goals.
[9:48] And there's nothing wrong with those things.
[9:49] The problem is where they become satisfying and self-destructive is when that's the final
[9:53] goal because by the time you get there, you think, why?
[9:57] Why?
[9:58] That wasn't as meaningful as I thought.
[9:59] That wasn't as good as I thought.
[10:00] That's the arrival fallacy that when I actually get rid of the belly fat, then I'm actually
[10:04] going to have somehow a more wonderful life.
[10:07] That's actually not true.
[10:09] The reason that you're doing that is because you want to live longer with your spouse and
[10:12] see your and you're dandelier 11 grandchildren on your knee.
[10:16] That's the reason you want to do this because you need to do it for some intrinsic reason.
[10:19] It's supposed to an extrinsic reason having to do with people will love me more.
[10:23] I mean, it's amazing to me because I do a lot of wellness and fitness and stuff as it interacts
[10:29] with happiness.
[10:30] With a lot of people who are very big in the longevity community because I have sort
[10:33] of the happiness console, the science of the happiness console that I put into those
[10:36] things.
[10:37] I mean, a lot of people that are really into the fitness part and what a lot of guys will
[10:43] tell me is that they'll have these fitness goals.
[10:46] I'm going to put on 15 pounds of muscle this year and I'm going to get rid of all my belly
[10:50] fat and the whole thing.
[10:51] And if they stick to it by September or October where they're defining is that they're
[10:58] not getting any more attention or compliments from women.
[11:01] But a lot of dudes are going, looking good, dude.
[11:03] And they're like, that's not what I wanted.
[11:08] And part of the reason is because the arrival fallacy is you build up this image of what
[11:12] will actually come from the satisfaction that will come from hitting these intermediate
[11:17] goals.
[11:18] These aren't the right final goals.
[11:20] You got to have the right final goals and then set some intermediate goals along the
[11:23] way.
[11:24] But let's not kid ourselves.
[11:26] And when you think carefully about that, that losing your last five pounds of belly fat
[11:30] so you can see your lower abs, which by the way is not necessarily that healthy, is going
[11:38] to material improve your life and your relationships.
[11:40] It's not just isn't what's a better end goal than as it relates to fitness.
[11:44] Would it be something more centered on health?
[11:46] Yeah.
[11:47] It is something that's actually sustainable and how you do with health also with happiness
[11:51] is the way that this works.
[11:52] So I work out 60 minutes a day.
[11:53] It's not because I'm vain.
[11:55] I've got to face for radio, Steve.
[11:57] I mean, it's like, I don't know what you're talking about.
[11:59] Yeah, I know, but it's age-adjusted.
[12:01] I look good.
[12:02] I think you look good.
[12:03] I think you look good, period.
[12:04] I don't know, you know.
[12:05] And I'm better girlfriend, but kind of way credits, too.
[12:08] Thank you, Steve.
[12:09] I appreciate that.
[12:10] But you made my week.
[12:12] See, this was my goal.
[12:17] The reason that I do this is because I find that for me that working out as much as I
[12:20] can is much harder than working out every day.
[12:24] Working out every day is much easier than working out as often as I can, right?
[12:29] Yeah.
[12:30] And practicing my religion every day is much easier than practicing my religion when it comes
[12:35] naturally to me or when I find it convenient.
[12:38] Eating healthfully is much easier when I do it every day.
[12:40] So the result of that is that I find that with those particular routines, I program those
[12:44] things into my life and I'm a much happier guy.
[12:47] Look at lowers my cortisol levels, which are naturally very high.
[12:49] I'm a very anxious person.
[12:52] And I understand anxiety, I understand the cortisol production, I understand how to
[12:55] manage it.
[12:56] And this is one of my management techniques.
[12:58] Thing about fitness to understand is when I say it makes you happier, it actually doesn't.
[13:02] It lowers your unhappiness.
[13:04] Happiness and unhappiness, largely the experiences of happiness and unhappiness, which is to
[13:09] say positive and negative affect.
[13:12] They're produced in different parts of the limbic system.
[13:15] So you can both be very high happiness and very high unhappiness.
[13:19] I have tests for that that I put my students through.
[13:22] You're probably somebody who experiences both very high positive affect and very high
[13:26] negative affect.
[13:28] We've only met, but my guess is that you're a mad scientist.
[13:31] That's the profile.
[13:32] And so that means as you've got two strategies, you want to keep your positive affect high
[13:37] and you want to manage your negative affect.
[13:39] And one of the best ways to manage your negative affect is physical exercise, vigorous
[13:43] physical exercise.
[13:44] Today, today for me was leg day.
[13:46] I hate leg day, but I feel pretty good right now.
[13:50] OK, that makes sense.
[13:52] I've got an answer that I'm super clear on.
[13:55] I should be aiming at the end goal of happiness ultimately, even if the intermediary goals
[14:01] are things like belly fat and these short-term things that are measurements of my progress
[14:04] towards the bigger goal.
[14:06] And the real key here is consistency.
[14:09] Yeah.
[14:10] This was the big unlock for my whole fitness thing, because I was that person, which
[14:13] will be 90% of people listening now, that made the goal every year that I was going to
[14:16] go to change my life every year, never worked, because I was aiming at getting a six pack
[14:22] for summer.
[14:23] So when I arrived with the six pack, it worked or some, it was great.
[14:27] I look great.
[14:28] I actually got, I think I got a couple of compliments, which was nice.
[14:31] However, the minute summer finished, or the six pack arrived, I could not find for the
[14:36] life of me the motivation.
[14:38] So I'd go into winter and I'd become like a real power that can, like you cannot muscle
[14:42] these things out unless they become a part of your life.
[14:46] Making my goal consistency and since, habits, was the big unlock for me.
[14:50] For sure.
[14:51] Because then, okay, the goal becomes, if I go to the gym every day, if I make that part
[14:55] of my habits, I'm going to be healthier, happier, better at my job.
[14:58] The fact that there's anything more important, is that less important than a six pack?
[15:03] And that mindset set shift changed my life.
[15:06] For sure.
[15:07] Meaning, then, meaning was the last of the three.
[15:10] Yeah.
[15:11] Meaning is the why of your life.
[15:12] This is the hardest for most people, especially young adults.
[15:15] This is really, really hard.
[15:17] So, meaning is really a combination of three things.
[15:21] It's coherence, purpose, and significance.
[15:23] Coherence is things happen for a reason.
[15:26] And so, meaning in your life means you've got to have a theory about why things happen.
[15:29] Like, it's one damn thing after another.
[15:31] I mean, you've got to have some concept of why things happen.
[15:34] Purpose is my life has direction and has goals.
[15:38] That's what purpose really is.
[15:39] I'm going in this direction toward these things without getting stuck on the arrival fallacy.
[15:43] And the last but not least is significance, which is, it would matter if I weren't here.
[15:48] I'm significant.
[15:50] Those are the three parts of meaning in people's lives, according to, you know, philosophers
[15:55] and social psychologists.
[15:56] So, there's a test that I give my students that kind of encompass these, these three ideas
[16:01] so you can remember them into two questions.
[16:04] And you have a meaning crisis if you actually don't have answers to these questions that
[16:09] you believe.
[16:10] And there's no right answers.
[16:11] You've got to have your answers.
[16:12] You want to play?
[16:13] Yeah.
[16:14] Here's the quiz.
[16:15] Question number one, why are you alive?
[16:20] You can answer that in terms of who created you or what you're on earth to do.
[16:24] Yeah.
[16:25] Okay.
[16:26] So, why am I alive?
[16:28] That's something that I get to answer every single day.
[16:29] I get to define that by what I chose to do this morning when I woke up.
[16:33] What was it?
[16:34] I went to the gym.
[16:35] I was on the running machine because I know I've got to not going to be able to today.
[16:39] And then I came here and had this conversation with you.
[16:41] Yeah.
[16:42] Where are you?
[16:43] Why are you doing this conversation with me, Steve?
[16:45] The Ike guy theory comes to mind when you ask that, which is, it's incredibly selfish.
[16:50] I learned a tremendous amount already just from this conversation and I know that it pays
[16:56] it forward to either people who are going to learn from it as well and that makes it feel
[17:00] worthwhile.
[17:01] So you said two things.
[17:02] Fun and service.
[17:03] Yeah.
[17:04] Right.
[17:05] Which is more important to you.
[17:06] Transcendently, which is more important to you.
[17:09] It's the service part.
[17:10] Yeah.
[17:11] Okay.
[17:12] That gives me, well, my, yeah, the more you focus on that, the better it gets.
[17:17] Now we uncovered that.
[17:19] So now thinking about that, you put the order of operations into the podcast as they
[17:23] did it.
[17:24] Does it serve?
[17:25] Is that guest going to serve?
[17:26] Is this question going to serve?
[17:28] Is this show going to serve?
[17:29] Is this sponsor going to serve the people who are watching this podcast?
[17:35] Then suddenly, meaning starts to go, starts from really spread out of the soil because
[17:40] you.
[17:41] And then you're going to have to go to the other side of that.
[17:42] If it's like, is it fun?
[17:43] Yeah.
[17:44] Good.
[17:45] So look, my whole have a company and that that rides alongside what I do academically and
[17:50] everybody that works with me, we have an order of operations and the order of operations
[17:55] are these are the four goals, but they have to be in this order.
[17:57] You just told me that the order of operations is serve other people and have fun for your
[18:01] work.
[18:02] That's what you basically said.
[18:03] It's probably more like lift people up and have an adventure.
[18:07] It's probably an intellectual adventure, right?
[18:11] But the order of operations has to be right.
[18:13] If you're having fun more than you're serving other people, you're not going to find your
[18:17] sense of meaning based on that first question.
[18:19] So you see where we're going with that, right?
[18:22] So the second question is harder.
[18:24] For what are you willing to die today?
[18:26] There's a couple of people in my life that I die for.
[18:28] I die for my romantic partner.
[18:30] I die for my brothers and sisters, any of them.
[18:36] I think that I don't know if I die for my parents, which is interesting.
[18:39] You die for an idea?
[18:42] You die for your country?
[18:45] I would die.
[18:47] When you say for my country, do you mean to save the country?
[18:50] I don't know.
[18:51] I mean, if you were called to, even if it were ridiculous, even if you thought it would
[18:56] were ridiculous, would you die because you love your country?
[19:02] It depends what you mean by that.
[19:03] What's the cost if I die?
[19:04] What's the cost if I stay alive?
[19:05] No, I know.
[19:06] Everything is context specific to a certain extent, but I'm trying to see what your reaction
[19:16] is to this.
[19:17] To see what the, there are good things in there.
[19:19] You are willing to die for your girlfriend?
[19:21] Yeah.
[19:22] You want those who die for your brothers and sisters?
[19:24] Yeah.
[19:25] Mom and dad, that's like Jerry's kind of interested in this podcast.
[19:28] They do.
[19:29] But I'm just being honest because I think, I don't know why I said that, but I don't know
[19:34] for sure.
[19:35] But this is really important, right?
[19:37] This is worth thinking about, right now.
[19:39] The worst answer is, I don't know, or nothing.
[19:43] Those are the worst answers.
[19:44] That doesn't mean that's a problem on the contrary.
[19:45] It's a huge opportunity, huge entrepreneurial opportunity to realize you don't have answers
[19:50] to these questions because you don't have to go to get your PhD in philosophy.
[19:55] You don't have to sit at the mouth of the cave with the guru, someplace in the Himalayas.
[20:00] You need to look for your answers to these questions.
[20:02] That's it.
[20:03] Yes, that's the vision quest.
[20:07] And when you see somebody find these things, like a lot of young adults have their nowhere
[20:11] near you, where you are in your journey.
[20:13] You're solid, Steve.
[20:14] I mean, this is good stuff.
[20:15] But I meet a lot of people like, why am I alive?
[20:18] Because the egg met a sperm.
[20:21] Really?
[20:22] Yeah.
[20:23] And what are you willing to die for?
[20:25] Nothing really.
[20:26] Or I don't know.
[20:27] A lot of people, and then they uncover that they don't have a why is what it comes down
[20:30] to.
[20:31] Repeat the questions again.
[20:33] Where are you alive?
[20:34] And for what are you willing to die this very day?
[20:39] There's no wrong answers.
[20:42] What you just listened to was a most replayed moment from a previous episode.
[20:46] If you want to listen to that full episode, I've linked it down below.
[20:50] Check the description.
[20:51] Thank you.

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