“Are you happy?” asks Atlantic editor Jeffrey Goldberg of happiness expert Arthur C. Brooks. “Next question,” Brooks jokes, before answering: “No one is. Happiness is not a destination. It’s a direction.” In this video, Brooks, a professor at Harvard Business School, joins Oprah Winfrey, coauthor of the new book Build the Life You Want: The Art and Science of Getting Happier, for an intimate, powerful conversation that touches on: the mistake people make in thinking that money, power, and fame will bring them happiness; the importance of managing negative emotions; what Winfrey learned from her depression after a movie she worked on “bombed;” and how to be not necessarily happy all the time, but happier.
Here's a transcript of the full conversation.
Jeffrey Goldberg: Please join me in welcoming to the stage Arthur Brooks and Oprah Winfrey.
[APPLAUSE]
[INAUDIBLE]
Oprah Winfrey: See that baby. Oh, there he is. There's Arthur's grand baby. That's Arthur's grand baby. You want to see?
Arthur Brooks: Yeah. That's my grandson, by the way. That's the special—
Goldberg: Hold up the grandson, first.
Brooks: That's right.
Goldberg: This is a happiness gathering.
[APPLAUSE]
Winfrey: Hey everybody. Hi. Hi. Hi.
Brooks: The secret to happiness.
Goldberg: The secret to happiness is right there.
Brooks: Yeah.
Goldberg: Thank you all for being here. Thanks to the two of you. And let's just jump right in, and ask--
Winfrey: Aren't we a long way from him?
Brooks: Yeah, we're kind of long way.
Goldberg: Yeah. Yeah.
Brooks: Let's scoot over here a little bit. I agree with that.
Goldberg: I'm happier at some distance from Arthur.
Winfrey: Yeah. Ok.
Brooks: Oh, look at that.
Goldberg: Stage management. Oh, nice to see you too.
Brooks: Nice to see you too. [INAUDIBLE]
Goldberg: Yeah. Yeah. The [INAUDIBLE] Oprah, why don't you start by talking about how this all came to pass? And why you grew interested in Arthur's work?
Winfrey: Well, this all came to pass, and I'm not saying this just because you're here, this all came to pass because I was at home during the pandemic. I didn't leave the house for 322 days. But I have a big yard. So, I can walk around a lot. So. And during that time I was looking for ways to inspire and fortify myself.
And I started reading The Atlantic. And The Atlantic got me through the pandemic. I can tell you every week I was looking forward to more articles. I trusted the writers about what was happening with COVID. And I relied on the information. And also, there was a column by Arthur Brooks on how to build a life. And I started reading that.
And then I was like, well, when how many-- how long has he been doing this? And where did this come from? So, then I started looking back, reading other columns. I called him up. I said, you know what? You should make a book of all those columns and put that together as a book.
And he actually did. And bound it and sent it to me. And we-- a leather bound copy of all of the articles that I could read together. And then I started-- I did a podcast with him. And after the podcast, I said to my producer, who I've had since the beginning days of The Oprah Show. I said, this guy is the kind of guest we would have called for almost every show because he has an answer for whatever you're talking about.
I invited him over to dinner. It was one of the best dinners I ever had. And friends came and we just sat there all night asking him questions about the brain and about happiness. And I said, we should do something together. And so now we have. That's how this happened.
“We realized that we've been coming at the same problem from different angles using the same mission, the same philosophy, the same moral understanding of what we're trying to do, which is to, look, you don't get very much time in the world.”
Brooks: That's how-- it was, it was, just amazing. You don't know when you're writing a column. You know - we as college professors, we do our work and we put it out into the world and we bless it. And we don't know. Sometimes Oprah Winfrey is reading it.
You-- and - and, so Oprah called. This is Oprah Winfrey. And I said yeah, I'm Batman. But it was. And and - it was the beginning of this incredible collaboration. Because when we met, we realized that we've been coming at the same problem from different angles using the same mission, the same philosophy, the same moral understanding of what we're trying to do, which is to, look, you don't get very much time in the world.
You better use it wisely. And the best thing that you can do is to lift people up and bring them together in bonds of happiness and love. And when we met each other and realized that we thought, wow, if we could join up forces between all of the people that trust Oprah for so many years with this message. And what we're trying to do at Harvard University to bring these ideas to people, who knows? That was the beginning of this project.
Goldberg: Can I ask you this, Arthur, and this is just a carve out question from the main narrative here. But when Oprah was talking about The Atlantic--
Brooks: Right.
Goldberg: I was very happy.
Brooks: Yeah, that's good.
Goldberg: But is that--
Brooks: Yeah, that's right.
Goldberg: Is that actual happiness? What was that feeling that I was--
Brooks: Yeah. Yeah.
Goldberg: Job security?
Brooks: That was--
Goldberg: Job security.
Brooks: It was like I would take that piece of video and send it to your mother.
Goldberg: Right.
Brooks: That's what I would do. And then you can relive that happiness over and over
Goldberg: OK.
Brooks: And over again to be sure. But don't forget, status will never bring you the happiness that you really seek.
Goldberg: Status--
Winfrey: No, but I don't think it's status. I think, and one of the reasons I said what I said about it informing me, and I said to you back backstage that it actually made me a better person. Reading those columns made me a better person. Because I was more informed, I got information at a level that I felt I could trust. I actually believed what I was reading sounded reasonable, which is difficult sometimes now.
And I think it's more than just feeling happy about it. I think it's like, hmm, we're doing a good thing here. It's a good service that you're providing. And you're I am a reflection of that service. So I have validated you, which is one of the most important lessons I learned in 25 years of The Oprah Show is that everybody is looking to be validated.
Brooks: That's for sure.
Winfrey: So, it's not just happiness you're feeling. You're feeling a sense of validation that what you're doing is actually working and resonating.
Goldberg: I also feel like I should get out while I'm ahead and call this a night. [INAUDIBLE] That's that's very nice. The the -- and I appreciate it. The the question I have for for you is is this. In reading Arthur and and and reading specifically his descriptions of the manifold research that's going on on happiness, did you yourself change your own definition of what happiness is? What did you what did you learn or change?
Winfrey: What I learned is that days where there - you are confronting unhappiness or feelings of, oh, everything isn't perfect, is a part of the balance of happiness. And that you need both in order to maintain being happier. And so I learned to appreciate the times when there is unhappiness. Because that unhappiness has something to reveal to you that is going to later lead to you being happier. That's what I learned.
“There's this misconception that if you feel bad, something's wrong with you. If you feel distress and anxiety and melancholy, you're broken and you need to be fixed. Wrong.”
Brooks: It's amazing teaching at a university how often do we get this wrong. One of the things that students will often ask me is, you know, I don't know how to-- I can manage money. I I studied at the Harvard Business School; I can manage a company. I can't manage my emotions.
I understand that because they're complicated. I get that. But there's this misconception that if you feel bad, something's wrong with you. If you feel distress and anxiety and melancholy, you're broken and you need to be fixed. Wrong. You're at Harvard, of course you feel those things.
This is a high-pressure environment. This is a tricky thing that you're doing. There's nothing wrong with you. You need therapy if you don't feel those things, quite frankly. And, and, so this is important for us to keep in mind because the truth of the matter is that that's true for all of us. That if we don't, if we want to be fully alive then we need to embrace the fact that we have onboard capacity to feel all sorts of things. And our emotions are nothing more than signals.
This is what Oprah and I write about at the beginning of the book. What are your emotions? Signals. The outside world has things going around. You perceive them. You translate those images and smells and sights into into emotions and cravings and desires in the limbic system of your brain. And then you deliver that information into your prefrontal cortex and you decide how to act on it.
And once you understand how that process works, which is what we're writing about in this book. Look, this book is an owner's manual for your, for your emotions so that you can manage yourself. That's the key thing that we talk about. That's that's something, that's something that was actually impactful for you, wasn't it?
Winfrey: Yes, because one of the, one of the challenges, especially when you're going through anything, is allowing those emotions-- not allowing the emotions to take over you. To be able to have metacognition, as, as we describe in the book. As you describe, I didn't know it was such a thing.
To have metacognition and to be able to separate the feeling from who you know yourself to be. And being able to have that little space in between where you can be the observer of the feeling. When you can observe the, observe the feeling and not be absorbed by the feeling. You can feel it. And then take the wheel for yourself.
It's just like, you know, when I was eight-years-old I memorized Invictus. And at the time, I was reciting, "Out of the night that covers me, black as a pit from pole to pole," I didn't know what the hell I was talking about at eight-years-old. But I did know that the last stanza, "I am the master of my fate. I am the captain of my soul." That had meaning for me, even at eight-years-old. And so as I've grown into myself, become more of who I was meant to be, the mastery of that comes when you can separate those emotions and feelings from the who of who you are.
Goldberg: Arthur, could you take half a step back. Right. And define metacognition.
Brooks: Right.
Goldberg: And tell us how you came to this as a kind of central conclusion about a a road to happiness.
Brooks: This is a book--
Winfrey: It's key. It's key.
Brooks: Yeah, for sure.
Winfrey: It's key for everything to be able to separate yourself from the thing that's happening out there.
Brooks: One of the things that, that we discuss in the book is that happiness is not a feeling. Happiness and feelings are related, but feelings are, are evidence of happiness. Like the smell of your turkey is the evidence of your Thanksgiving dinner. If you think that your Thanksgiving dinner is the smell of the turkey, you're going to have a very disappointing dinner. No, no. No, no you have to understand that those feelings that you have, they're related to something tangible that you can understand, that you can actually manage.
But you need to, you need to have knowledge about the phenomenon and knowledge about yourself. That's the reason that the science matters. We have a class, it's a very popular class at the Harvard Business School. Some of you will take it in the spring if you're HBS students in the MBA program second year. It's called Leadership and Happiness. And here's what it says, "Happiness will come to you if you do the work. Doing the work means getting the knowledge, changing your habits, and sharing it with others."
That's what we're doing. You know. We've done the work. We've worked on the science. We're telling people how they can actually change their habits. And the book, which we put out yesterday, is our gift because we want these things as well. And by explaining it and sharing it is how we actually get it done.
One of the concepts of emotional self-management is the word that we just used, which is metacognition. That's understanding your own thinking. That's thinking about thinking. Now most people don't do that. Little kids, you know, they feel an emotion and they they scream. They - something's funny, they laugh. Something's makes them angry, they yell.
That's the reason is because they're reacting according to the limbic system of their brain, this 40 million-year-old structure in the inside of your brain that simply produces desires and cravings and emotions. We don't have to act that way. We don't have to be controlled by our limbic system.
On the contrary, we can manage our emotions by thinking about them, understanding them, getting space between what we feel and what we decide to do. And we we walk through the suite of techniques that you can actually use once you have the understanding. Ideas like looking at your emotions as if they were happening to someone else. And then reacting in an appropriate way that actually will get the reaction from others that you want.
Substituting an emotion that's also appropriate for the one that you're actually feeling or or simply deciding to disregard your emotions, living in the living in the observational state as opposed to constantly looking in the mirrors around you making you so miserable. And we talk about the science of this. But of course, how you can use it and then then how you can share it.
Winfrey: And also having a bank of positive emotions you can go to. Right. Positive actions you can go to when you're in the midst of all of these negative emotions. [INAUDIBLE] Arthur just mentioned-- Professor, we're at Harvard.
Brooks: No, it's OK. It's OK. It's OK.
Winfrey: Arthur just mentioned that this book is a gift. And I know many of you are like, well, OK, I had to pay for it. I wish I could have had them--
Brooks: Everybody gets a copy.
Winfrey: I wish I could have had them all in your seat, right? But I I will have to say that's actually the way from the beginning we started talking about this, that I look at it. I look at it as an offering. And I learn to do that, Jeff, when I had done a movie called Beloved, a book written by Toni Morrison. I worked on that movie for 10 years.
And then it came out and it bombed. For the longest time when I would read people say-- read that people had said it was a bomb, I would get like, oh, clutched because I couldn't even say the word bomb. I couldn't say it failed. It was. It felt like at the time one of the biggest, you know, disasters of my career.
It felt like the saddest thing. It sent me into depression. And what I learned from that experience is what we talk about in the book, is you take the the thing that was the worst thing for you, the thing that was the challenge, and you began to-- you begin to look at what it was that you really benefited or how you benefited from that thing. And what I learned from that Beloved experience, because at the time that it bombed and I went into depression about it, my former depression was eating macaroni and cheese for breakfast every morning.
For real. And about 40 pounds later, I was talking to a friend and they were saying, so why did this take you down so? And I said because I just wanted everybody to feel about that movie the way I felt about it. I wanted people to understand that you could be an enslaved person, come through that, and still have love. And the person said to me, well, I felt that. I said, well, I actually wanted millions of people [INAUDIBLE] to feel that, not just you.
Goldberg: One at a time.
Winfrey: One at a time. And he said, but if you wanted that, then you would have done a different movie. You would have done a different kind of movie. You would have done a more commercialized movie. But it was important to you to allow what Toni Morrison had written to go up on the screen.
So, I realized that. And then I decided that from from all of my work going forward, and that was in 1998 when it bombed, I would no longer be attached to the work. I would allow myself to detach from it and just offer whatever I was doing. Offer it.
Goldberg: But how? How?
Winfrey: I say, this is what I'm doing. This is what I would love for you to receive it in the manner in which I'm giving it. If you don't receive that, then the joy for me was in the giving of it.
“This is a master class in how to use your pain to lift other people up. You just learned that Oprah Winfrey was depressed about a movie. I bet you couldn't have thought-- I bet you never would have imagined that.”
Brooks: Now witness what just happened. This is a case study. This is a master class in how to use your pain to lift other people up. You just learned that Oprah Winfrey was depressed about a movie. I bet you couldn't have thought-- I bet you never would have imagined that. Oh, she's got it all. Everything's great.
Turns out that she feels the same things that you do. Everybody say feels the same things that you do. How did she use that pain? By sharing it with the 1,000 people in this room, the 5,000 people watching us online, the millions of people that are going to see this in the coming days. She converted that bomb into solace for millions of people.
Now, you can do that too. You get to do that too. Your pain is a gift. Your joy is a gift. Your life is a gift. But you have to see it as such. This is one of the big things that we talk about because you know it's true.
Goldberg: Are you happy?
Brooks: Next question. Am I happy? Here's the thing, no one is. No. Still take my class, by the way. You say--
Goldberg: Wait, wait, wait, I have to pause.
Brooks: Yes.
Goldberg: The Dalai Lama is happy. No, I mean, we, I say that seriously. We just went to see the Dalai Lama.
Brooks: Right.
Goldberg: And he was pretty happy. No?
Brooks: OK, he was pretty-- what?
Winfrey: No, go ahead. Go ahead. Answer the question.
Brooks: He was--
Winfrey: Answer the question.
Brooks: Don't drag the Dalai Lama into this.
Goldberg: I'm going to drag him into everything.
Winfrey: Go Ahead. Go Ahead.
Goldberg: And our next guest.
Brooks: Yeah. Man, oh, man. So, he doesn't have a book out. So.
Goldberg: Right. Soon though, actually. Go.
“Emotions are not good things and bad things. Positive and negative emotions are simply information about the outside world.”
Brooks: So, happiness is not a destination. It's a direction. You don't want to be happy, perfectly happy, this side of heaven. No. No, you'd be dead. You need negative experiences to teach you the things that you need to become a better person, a more prosperous person, a person that makes progress in life.
But more importantly, you need negative emotions to keep you alive. Emotions are not good things and bad things. Positive and negative emotions are simply information about the outside world. You need your negative emotions because in the Pleistocene you'd be hunted down by a saber tooth tiger. And today without your negative emotions, you'd get run over by a car.
You need negative emotions. And that means you can't be happy. What you can be with proper information, by changing your life and sharing it with others, you can be, you can be happier. That's the goal. You know. I I've always talked about this, and Oprah and I were talking about this when we were working on the book. We were working on the book at her her home. And we were working on it.
And she said, what's the goal, not happiness? I said, no, you can't-- she said it's happier-ness. And I I started using that in my work. This is how science gets made, folks. You know. This is-- and it's amazing because that's the case.
Am I happy? No. Am I happier? Yeah. You know. The secret of happiness is sharing it. One of the final projects that my students get to do in leadership and happiness is they they have two options. They can write a long paper, boring. Or they can take my slides, PowerPoint slides. Take my name off, put their name on, teach the class, tape the class, and turn it in. Why? Because that's the secret.
Winfrey: Is to pass it on.
Brooks: To pass it on.
Winfrey: To pass it on. So, I would answer that question and say, I am filled with contentment because I have all the elements of happiness. I have enjoyment. I have meaning. And I have deep satisfaction.
So, enjoyment, satisfaction, and meaning all add up to a sense of happiness or being happier. And I love this concept of enjoyment versus pleasure. Because so many people, as we write about, are seeking pleasure, pleasure, pleasure, pleasure. And there's a big difference. You want to explain?
Brooks: Sure.
Winfrey: Yeah.
Brooks: Yeah, happy to. This is one of the things we talk about in the book. One of the biggest mistakes that people make when they're seeking happiness is they follow the old dictum from the '60s. If it feels good, do it.
I remember my dad hearing that for the first time and he said, that's the end of America, right? He was kind of right.
Winfrey: Kind of right. Yeah.
Brooks: Anyway, the problem with that is if you hit the pleasure lever over and over and over again, all you're going to do is wire your brain for a solitary little bit of experience that doesn't last. What you need to do, here's the secret, is don't hit the pleasure lever.
Think of the things that give you pleasure and add people and add memory. Add love to that. Here's the thing, you never watch an Anheuser-Busch commercial for beer with a guy alone in his apartment pounding a 12 pack. Why not? Because that's pleasure and not enjoyment.
Enjoyment is having a beer with your friends, making a memory. You don't eat Thanksgiving dinner alone. There's a reason for that. And so what this does is that you know this basic science, it gives us a formula. This is the first pillar, the first macro-nutrient in your happiness, which we talk about in the book because it's so important.
By the way, she defined the scientific definition of happiness just now. Enjoyment plus satisfaction plus meaning or purpose. And and if you get this this enjoyment thing wrong, you're going to get addiction. Anything that you do that feels good and you're doing it alone again and again and again and again, addiction, not happiness. Add people. Add memories. That's the point.
Goldberg: Let me let me ask you this. One of the arguments you make in this book is that one key to happier-ness is not wanting things. Not wanting everything. So, we're at Harvard Business School, OK?
Winfrey: OK?
Brooks: This is very awkward.
Winfrey: You know what that means.
Goldberg: It's kind of an awkward moment.
Brooks: It's kind of an awkward question.
Goldberg: It's a little awkward with everybody here. But these are-- it is a school where people come to learn how to be very successful in the material world.
Brooks: Yeah.
Goldberg: Right? What are you teaching then about happiness if you're telling us in the book that wanting less is one of the key-- talk about wanting less.
Winfrey: You talk about it.
“The formula for enduring satisfaction recognizes that mother nature wants you to run but she doesn't care if you're happy.”
Brooks: OK. This is the satisfaction part. This is the part that Oprah was talking about a minute ago. And we talk an awful lot about in this book.
Mick Jagger saying, "I can't get no satisfaction." He's been singing it for like 100 years, right? Why? Because it's it's this theme you know we can feel.
It's not a great song, but the message really resonates with us. He's been singing that-- by the way, that was number one on the charts when I was one. That was a long time ago. The reason is because the message endures.
The truth is not that you can't get no satisfaction. The truth is you can't keep no satisfaction. And that's why you try and you try and you try. And this is one of the things that I tell our students at the Harvard Business School but also any place around this university or any place in this great country of prosperity that we have. That you can try and try and try to keep your satisfaction through the things that you have and it will never work because it's the wrong formula.
The formula for enduring satisfaction recognizes that mother nature wants you to run but she doesn't care if you're happy. She wants you to survive and pass on your genes. She wants you to not figure that out too. So, you keep thinking that the solution, that the formula for satisfaction is have more. What do you need? More. More what? Money, power, pleasure, fame, internet exposure, Instagram followers, admiration of strangers.
You fill in the blanks. You know what I'm talking about, worldly rewards, right? But that's wrong. The real formula for satisfaction that endures is all the things that you have divided by all the things that you want. Haves divided by wants.
Now remember you're if you're at HBS you're doing plenty of math. For you Divinity School students, remember back to high school. Sorry. And you can raise, you can raise the value of a fraction by increasing the numerator or by more efficiently decreasing the denominator. You want lasting satisfaction? You don't need to have more. You need to want less. That's the formula.
Goldberg: Can I-- let me ask, since you bring up--
Brooks: Is that tweetable?
Winfrey: That's a tweetable moment. Also--
Goldberg: If there were Twitter, we would be great.
Brooks: Yeah.
Winfrey: There's no longer... There's no longer Twitter, yes.
Goldberg: You can X it.
Brooks: That doesn't sound right.
Goldberg: Let me let me ask you this. On behalf of Harvard Divinity School--
Brooks: His daughter is a student at Harvard Divinity School.
Goldberg: Yeah. One one of my kids is a student at Harvard Divinity School.
Brooks: I made that joke for a reason.
Goldberg: Yeah, yeah, yeah. [INAUDIBLE] And and and I want to just-- I want to be clear that Harvard Divinity School and Harvard Business School have a lot in coon. You know. They both have the word Harvard and school in their titles. The the question is the role-- and you write about this very movingly in the book, the the role of faith as a core component of happiness. That's obviously a little bit of a third rail subject because people think that you might be talking about a specific thing.
Winfrey: I think we made it clear that we were not. We. Because I remember when I first read it, I was like, whoa, hey, we can't like be indicating to anybody.
Goldberg: But tell us your definition of faith then.
Winfrey: Believing and knowing that there's something bigger than yourself. Believing that there's something larger than you. That you're not the center of it all.
And whether that faith is in organized religion or whether it is in whatever you call a higher power or nature or the divine or what whatever it is, just knowing that you are not the center of it all. We were just saying yesterday, it's really it's really hard-- it would be really challenging to maintain a level of satisfaction, enjoyment, and meaning thinking you're the center of it all. So knowing that there's something bigger than you, whatever you call that something.
Brooks: Right. You need you need peace and perspective in your life is the bottom line. And so one of the things that we talk about is that there's a there's a portfolio that the happiest people all maintain. It's an investment portfolio. You can teach it.
Yeah. I teach at HBS. So, I can talk this way. There's an investment but it's a happiness 401K. And you need to put you need to put a deposit in one of-- in all four accounts every day. Your family, your friends, your work that serves other people, and your faith. And by by faith, as Oprah just indicated, that means something transcendent to your daily life.
Look, if you're, if you're left to your devices, mother nature is going to make you focus on your, you know-- my job and my classes and my money and my lunch and my coute. So boring. It's just so tedious. If you zoom out, wow, life changes. And you need to do that every day.
Look, for me, I'm a Catholic. It's the most important thing in my life, right? But as a social scientist, I will tell you, I've seen people who study the stoic philosophers and get the same benefit or get the same sense of relief. Or people who walk in nature before dawn without their devices. Or the people who adopt a meditation practice. Or the people who study the cantatas of Johann Sebastian Bach and do it seriously. You can get that sense of the transcendent. Look, you've got to get small is the bottom line. Because if you're too big, well, that's not reality. That's not-- none of us is that big except for Oprah. And
Winfrey: That's sweet. That's sweet. That's nice.
Brooks: Well.
Winfrey: Thank you.
Brooks: I mean--
Winfrey: Well, I I and this is the other thing I think that's really important and I've come to on on my own. I just realized that you reach a point where you have to ask yourself, what is enough? What is enough? And you know I live a really huge life surrounded by-- and it was actually a goal of mine when I was first doing The Color Purple in 1985. I remember writing in my journal then that if I ever get enough money, I want I want a house surrounded by beautiful things.
And so, I have done that. I have achieved that over and then over and then over. And I look around and I say, OK, you got enough. It's OK. I'm satisfied. I have all the all the things that I need. And so now I can focus on how do I take what I know, what I've gained, what my-- who I've become in the world. And how can I use that in service to other people in a way that makes them happier? And that for me, that's part of what this book is about.
Brooks: Can I give a little testimonial to that just for a second?
Winfrey: Yes [INAUDIBLE] Go ahead. Testify.
Goldberg: Wow. We're going to testify now.
Brooks: Yeah. Yeah.
Winfrey: Bring it on. Yeah.
Brooks: Here here's the reason. You know, you know, I've been doing a lot of media. Some sometimes with Oprah, we do a little bit of TV together. But a lot alone, I've been doing a lot of interviews. And they always want to know what it's like to work with Oprah Winfrey. And they always want to know--
Goldberg: I like that.
Brooks: --is she happy? And I say she's a lot happier than most people I've met. Nobody's happy. But she's doing a good job. Why, they say, why? Is it because of the lovely things? Is it because of the incredible renown? Is it because of the mythical success and the iconic position in American culture? Mm-mm.
It's because how she used those things. Here's the deal. See, you want money, power, pleasure, and fame. That's what you want, right? If you make those things the goals, you're in trouble. You're in trouble.
The the goals are faith, family, friends, and work that serves. You can use money, power, pleasure, and fame but only as a springboard to those other things. This is how she cracked the code. This is what I've learned. This is the reason that on that in dark moments over the past few months, I would say, what would Oprah do? WWOD. I'm going to get a bracelet with that.
Goldberg: OK. You you didn't say that. All right. OK. All right.
Brooks: No, no, no, no, but I've said that in an interview, by the way.
Goldberg: And you just--
Brooks: And what it is is a good thing happening? Is a bad thing happening? How can I use it in service of others? That's how she talks. That's how she talks in private.
Winfrey: I will say this, I will also say this, you all, so The Oprah Winfrey Show was on for 25 years. Was the most successful television talk show in the history of all television. I did it for 25 years.
Never missed a day. Never missed a day. And the reason it was the most successful is because around the second year of it I changed the motivation and intention of the show.
I went from just trying to be a talk show competing with everybody else in the rat race of ratings. And literally sat down with my producers and said, how do we use this show as a force for good? How do we-- and that came after doing three shows in a row. I'd done a show with the Ku Klux Klan. And I realized in the middle of that show that I wasn't helping anybody. But that I was I thought I was exposing their vitriol, when in fact, they were using their appearance on the show to recruit other members.
And so, I could feel that going on in the audience. And then another show that we did with-- on people who had infidelities. And a husband had come on with his wife and his girlfriend. The producers were so happy that they got the husband and the wife and the girlfriend. And in the middle of that show the husband he humiliated his wife and said she's pregnant on national television.
And when that happened, I was so ashamed that that had happened on my platform. I said, this will never happen to me again. And I will never do a show like the Klan again. And so my producers were like, well, what are we going to do? And so I said, we're going to, we're going to turn this around. And we're going to-- nobody bring me an idea that you are not clear about what the intention is.
And we are going to only do shows that come from the intention of how can we best serve the audience? And I'm telling you after every show there was a meeting to say, did we serve the intention? Did we do what we said we wanted to do? And how can we do it better the next time? And that is when the joy, the happier-ness, the level of satisfaction, the level of of pleasure and everything changed for me in doing that show.
And it's also when the numbers took off. It all sort of happened at the same time. But it was because it was intentional. And we were trying to use it as a service and not just as a show.
Goldberg: What do you say to people who don't have jobs where they can have a world-changing-- where they they impose a world-changing intention on what they're doing? They have a regular job. And they go to they go to work and it's fine. But there's no particular-- they don't find particular meaning in it. Where where else can they find the happiness that you're looking for?
Brooks: Mother Teresa talked about this really, really eloquently. Mother Teresa said, we should all be looking to do small things with great love.
Winfrey: Yeah.
Brooks: So, this is the point. You know. It. It. I was doing a program the other day and somebody said, I want to be happy but, you know, I don't like my job. I don't hate it, but it's just boring and it doesn't pay very much. And I don't feel like I'm doing anything really important. And blech. What do I do to be happier under the circumstances?
And and what I said was, look, we all have these moments of tedium. We all have these moments of futility that we feel. But we can always serve with love no matter what we're doing. For example, I mean, you're sitting in a cubicle and you don't like it. And it's pretty pretty boring.
But you could look over to the person in the next cubicle and say, I bet she could use a fresh cup of coffee. And I'm going to go get it for her. And then she smiles when you bring it just completely unsolicited. And then you you become the person who does those random acts of kindness around the office.
And then weirdly your your job starts feeling more interesting and your relationships start getting richer. And this is the point that Oprah is trying to make here and we try to make in the book. That the magic of all of this is that if you want more happiness in your life, show more love to other people in your life.
Winfrey: Yeah.
Brooks: Love of the divine and of your family and of your friends and of your enemies and of everybody else. We we asked each other this question when we were putting together this book. Look, we're going to launch a book into the world and people are going to read it. Is it going to lift people up? And is it going to bring people together? Is it truly a gift?
I was thinking about this for this community too. Like I'm a Harvard professor and I'm darn proud of it. Will this represent you in a way that you'll say, that was a good thing that we did as a community for this world. Will we bring Harvard University to the world and lift people up and bring them together? That was the acid test for what we're doing because that's what she learned on her show. And that's what we learned to do together in this project.
Winfrey: One of my favorite quotes of all time is Martin Luther King, who says, "Not everybody can be famous, but everybody can be great. Because greatness is determined by service." And what I found is no matter what it is you're doing for other people, no matter how tedious or menial the job may seem to you, that if you shift the paradigm of whatever your work is to how do I use this to serve? How can I be of service?
Whether it's your art or your skills, your talents, your whatever it is you're offering. If it is offered in service, the shifting of the paradigm to "I'm going to use this to serve" makes a world of difference in the energy that you and the way you put that energy out into the world and the way that it comes back to you. That's what I learned from doing the show.
Goldberg: Can I ask you this though, you you when you made that pivot--
Winfrey: Yeah. Yeah.
Goldberg: When you made that pivot, you changed America.
Winfrey: Yeah.
Goldberg: You made it a more humane place.
Winfrey: Yeah.
Goldberg: But. But I don't think there's anybody in this room who would right now say that America seems like a particularly happy place. And I was wondering, both of you should address this, it's like what is the source of a kind of national unhappiness?
I mean, we we see this in politics, obviously. A-- A level of behavior that is unusual by historic standards. But politics is downstream from culture. And culture is downstream from psychiatry and theology and all kinds of things. But what what do you think is going on in in America right now to cause this this level of dissatisfaction or unhappiness? I know you've given this some thought.
Winfrey: Yeah, I answered it yesterday. You answer today.
“Faith, family, friends, and work that serves, those institutions are in decline. The level of faith and spirituality or a sense of philosophy is in clear decline with every generation.”
Brooks: Yeah. Well, there's a couple of different things. I mean, you can look at the data and it's very clear. That since the early 1990s there's been a subtle and but pretty constant degradation in the average level of happiness in the United States. And in most developed countries around the world.
Developing countries are doing better because they're making more progress. But developed countries are sort of in a static state and and relatively depressed. Part of that's climate and part of that's weather. Not not literally, I mean, that's obviously what I'm talking about is sort of systemic versus specific effects.
The systemic effects are that we find that the institutions of happiness are in decline. Faith, family, friends, and work that serves, those institutions are in decline. We find them all over the place. You know. You know. The level of faith and spirituality or a sense of philosophy is in clear decline with every generation.
1 in 6 Americans is not talking to a family member because of politics today, which is complete insanity. Unless you like being unhappy, which nobody does, although they often act that way. Friendship is in decline, especially for people in their 20s and 30s.
More and more people know people, you know, virtually or in person. There's a lot-- think about, think about, your own life. You've got a lot of deal friends, but not so many real friends maybe. And the difference between deal and real, right? You know. That's-- by the way, this is incredibly important. If you want to have a little exercise on this, take the 10 people closest to you that you see most in your life. And after each one of their names, write R or D. That does not mean Republican or Democrat. Right. That means real or deal.
If you've got too many D's in there, you need to go out and get some more R's in there. And last but not least, people are not thinking of their work as as an act of service. Fewer and fewer people are reporting that. That's the climate.
And now this is the weather. A couple of hurricanes have blown through. In 2008 a massive uptick in the number of young people who are on social media. What does this do? It it it messes up your brain is what it does. If you want to be happy, you need love. If you have love, it means that you have a a neuro-- a a a you have a hormone in your brain, a neuropeptide, that functions as a hormone called oxytocin.
It only comes from eye contact and touch. It does not come from virtual interaction. It doesn't come from Zoom. It doesn't come from social media. It doesn't come from, you know, the warm feeling that you get on a dating app, on the contrary.
Social media is the is the junk food of social life. And so people are getting lonelier. That was the first big storm. And then there was the coronavirus, which pulled us apart. Made us-- we made decisions that permanently. Look, I mean, our campus isn't what it used to be. I came here in the fall of 2019 and I had lunch with colleagues. And I saw a lot of students. And now I don't see so many people because we're kind of permanently working part time at home.
I got it. I understand how convenience works. But it's corrosive for our happiness. And these are the things that we need to combat. And so, what do you do? Well, we're lucky. We get to write a book.
We get to do the one thing that we-- look, people disagree on politics in here. But we all agree on happiness. And if we can start a movement where people take charge of their happiness and see it as their hobby and their project, we win.
Goldberg: But, but Oprah, let me ask you this, your your intention is to bring more happiness or teach people how to be happier. Is it a losing battle given--
Winfrey: I don't think so.
Goldberg: Well, the power of technology.
Winfrey: Yeah.
Goldberg: I mean, I'm wondering how you frame this in your own mind versus the ubiquity of the smartphone and the way it's changing children.
Winfrey: Yeah. Well, because I've done so much personal work myself, on myself, I know that it's possible because I have done it. I mean, I think the manual that we've laid out in this book one of the reasons I was excited about it. And when we were having our first conversations at my house, it was like, oh my goodness, this is so great. You need to-- everybody can't take your class.
And so wouldn't it be good if you were able to put this in a a manual form so that people could just sort of follow the directions? Because if you actually read the book and follow the directions, I guarantee you will be happier. But you have to actually do the work. And I think that's the mistake that so many people make is they think it's supposed to just come to you.
And the only thing we're going to be able to do, I think, is start to save ourselves, to make ourselves more whole. And in the making of yourself more whole, you will want your friends and your family to also be more whole. And that's how that's how we're going to save ourselves. Otherwise, we're going down the tubes.
It's bad. It's a really bad situation, I feel right now. And that offering this book as a way for each individual to look at themselves and see how they can lift, bring some lift to your own life and meet the rising of your life, meet the reason why you were actually intended to be born, why you were created. And start to measure up to that in a way that makes you feel more whole and fully alive.
And then be able to spread that to the rest of the people in the world. That's what I was doing on a daily basis with millions of people. But you know when I finished the show, one of the last things I said was, this show has been my classroom. It has been my platform. But everybody in this room has their own platform.
My platform was a circle of 22 million people watching every day around the world. Most people don't have that. But you have your world and your ability to influence in that world is just as significant as mine. Period.
Brooks: Yeah. [APPLAUSE]
Goldberg: I I have some a couple of questions from the audience. But before we we get to that, one more big topic, which is-- and this is at the core of the book. These four emotional profiles that you write about. Oh, I love this. Maybe, Arthur, you could talk about the profiles. And and Oprah, you could talk about where you fit into this schematic.
Winfrey: OK.
Goldberg: And where you think Arthur fits into the schematic.
“Happiness is not an absence of unhappiness nor vice versa. However, one of the ways that we all differ is that some people have more intense positive and negative emotions than other people.”
Brooks: Yeah. And why we work so well together. Actually, this is one of the things that we found out. So the beginning of getting happier starts with self understanding. Now, this has facts. For example, fact, unhappiness and happiness are not opposites. They're largely processed in different hemispheres of the brain.
Happiness is not an absence of unhappiness nor vice versa. On the contrary, you need both happy and unhappy, negative and positive emotions all the time for all the reasons that we discussed earlier. However, one of the ways that we all differ is that some people have more intense positive and negative emotions than other people.
People often think when they have very intense negative emotions there's something wrong with them. No, on the contrary, half of the population has unusually intense negative emotions. So one of the things that we do is we use a very famous psychological test called the pannus test, the positive affect negative affect series. And in this test, we can actually classify you through a series of of simple questions.
It's in the book, but it's also on the website for the book. So you can take it really, really easily just with a few clicks. And you can learn something about yourself. If you're an unusually intensely happy person and unusually intensely unhappy person, high negative and high positive emotional affect, high positive and low negative, high negative and low positive, or low and low.
Now we have a word for each one of these. And and by the way, each part of-- each one of these profiles is a quarter of the population by construction. So if you have unusually high positive and high negative affect, you're a high affect person. You feel things strongly. You're a mad scientist.
You know who you are. If you're really positive-- intensely positive and low intensity negative, you feel negative things but it's low intensity. You can see you know that things aren't such a big deal. You're a cheerleader. Everybody wants to be a cheerleader.
Winfrey: That's my friend, Gayle. Good Lord.
Brooks: Yeah. I know. I know.
Winfrey: I say to Gayle, you're walking around with these yellow colored glasses all the time. Everything's just so yellow and rosy all the time.
Brooks: I tell you--
Winfrey: Gets on my nerves.
Brooks: Everybody wants-- everybody loves cheerleaders because they're fun to have around. You should see Oprah yesterday when-- we we went on Gayle's show yesterday. And she saw Gayle and it was just light and sunshine. It was so sweet. It was just so good.
Winfrey: Yes.
Brooks: But the problem with, by the way, with with cheerleaders is they don't see threats. And they don't want to see threats. And they hate negativity. And they often make very bad CEOs because they won't give bad news or give bad evaluations.
And so you know the your boss comes in, your cheerleader boss says, you're doing a great job at this company. You just you're a pivotal player. Yeah. Yeah. And then you hear your boss telling the moron in the next cubicle the same thing. That's very disheartening, you get the point. When two cheerleaders meet and marry, they spend all the money and go broke because they don't see threats.
You you see my point that there's good and there's bad. If you have intense negative and low intensity positive, you're a poet. That's the poetic framework. And and people don't want to be poets, but we need poets. Poets are creative. Poets are romantic. They're melancholic. But they have to understand themselves. And they have to they have to manage their emotions.
And last but not least, low intensity positive and low intensity negative. Very happy and can feel unhappiness but the amplitude is really low. Those are steady, sure judges. Oprah's a judge.
Winfrey: Yeah.
Brooks: I'm a mad scientist. All day long, the maddest to the mad scientists. I -- my students all take this in my class. Oh, they love this because it's super interesting. You can find out who you should hang out with. You should -- you can find out who you should marry with this test.
It's not your twin. The biggest mistake that young people make, by the way, in dating is looking for somebody who's too compatible with them. My-- we have to have the same kind of music. We have to vote the same way. And we have to kind of want to live in the same place. And we have to both think that Austin's cool or whatever a personality goes for these days. And and then-- and that's like dating your sibling, which is my adult kids would say is not hot, right?
You need somebody who completes you, right? That's what you need. Right? And that's the point. Why do we work so well together? Because I'm a mad scientist. High. High. And she's a judge. She feels these things, but she can, she can take it. She's a surgeon, right?
And and that's a really important thing. And that's what we talk about in this book. Nothing? Did I take
your line?
Winfrey: No.
Brooks: Oh. OK.
Winfrey: No, no.
Goldberg: What is it like working with Arthur?
Winfrey: Like working with a mad scientist.
Goldberg: OK.
Winfrey: Yeah.
Goldberg: I got it. Let me let me ask some questions that were submitted by our audience. This is from Janae. How-- what do you recommend for cultivating happiness when you're at a low point in your life?
Winfrey: Mmm.
Goldberg: What's the work?
Winfrey: I was at a low point. You know, I I I was in Maui when the fire started. And I started this big fund to give money to Maui, the Rock and I. And then I got hit online for not doing the whole thing myself, when I thought $10 million was a good start. And and the rest of-- a lot of people in the world thought otherwise that you know we should have done the whole thing. And I was hit with so much vitriol and craziness and conspiracy theories.
And for a day I allowed myself to feel the feelings. I allowed myself to-- I didn't go down the rabbit hole of reading them all. So I was so excited when we initially announced the fund. I was like, wow, this is going to be great. And we're going to make so much money for the people of Maui because I'd read about the fact that Dolly Parton had done it successfully in Gatlinburg when there were fires there.
And they figured out a way to create a fund that got money directly to the people. So I sat down with Rock's team, and we worked it all out. And we brought in the people. And we figured out how to get everybody's bank account numbers and drop the money into their funds. And was really excited about it.
And then got hit with so much vitriol and conspiracy theories that I was really saddened by it. I was deeply saddened. Not just for myself but that, wow, this is the kind of country we live in, when you try to do something really good and and that happens. And I allowed myself to feel those feelings. And was able to turn it around, first, by feeling it and separating myself.
Well, this is a feeling. This isn't you. Anything-- all these people are saying. They don't really even know you. And then I prayed about it. I had a conversation with somebody who I have a lot of confidence in. And we read Psalms 91 together.
And then I sat down on my porch. And I did my-- I wrote in my gratitude journal. I've been keeping a journal since I was 15-years-old. Around the '90s I started to do just gratitude. And normally I would do I do like five things a day sometimes because he said so we could just do it on Sundays. So I moved to Sundays.
But I sat down and I started just thinking about all the things. Not not how far I had to go or not what was coming down on me in the moment, but just how I got to be where I am. And anybody who is here at the Harvard Business School or Harvard Divinity School, any time you start to feel down about yourself just look at how far you've come. Look at what it took to get you in these seats.
I mean, it's incredible. When you think about your life and all the things that happened and all the things that you thought were going to take you out. And how nobody believed you could get here. And how there were times you didn't even believe that you could get here but you did. It's pretty extraordinary.
So that's what I did. I sat down and I actually took a good long look at my life. And I started listing the things in the moment I was grateful for. And before I finished, I had 27 things on the list just for that day.
And I was in tears and had raised my vibration to the point of, I wasn't I wasn't sad anymore. I was much, much, much happier.
And it started with being thankful for, grateful for what I was experiencing in that moment. Not what was happening outside of myself, but for what was really happening inside right here. That's how I turned it around.
[INAUDIBLE]
Brooks: That's metacognition. It's what we call metacognition in the book.
Winfrey: Yeah.
Brooks: It's a perfect example of how we do that.
Goldberg: Let me ask you this question as the mad scientist, why is so often for people negativity felt so much more deeply than positivity? And what I mean here is I'm thinking as Oprah is talking about this, 300 million people in America probably heard that Oprah Winfrey is helping the people of Maui and thought, that's great. That's super. Great.
Winfrey: Right.
Goldberg: People send notes and write. 73 people on the platform formerly known as Twitter--
Winfrey: Yeah.
Goldberg: --criticized her.
Brooks: Right.
Goldberg: And your, and and your brain goes to, what are they criticizing me for? What happened?
Winfrey: Yeah.
Goldberg: And you have to go through a-- what is it about the makeup of our brains that causes that?
Brooks: This is an amazing fact of evolution that we have what we call a negativity bias. That means we literally have more brain space reserved for negative emotions than we have for positive emotions. Why? Positive emotions are nice to have. Negative emotions will keep you alive.
You know. A a a beautiful smile from across the room, so nice. An angry face from across the room, you better pay attention because you don't know what that might not mean for you as soon as you leave the room. That's the reason that humans have evolved and survived to to pay attention to negative things a lot more. There's a lot of research out there that shows how many positive things have to happen to you to give you a neutral affect balance for every negative thing. In the United States it's about 5 to 1. You need five lovely things to happen to you for every negative thing so that you're not under-- you're not you're not in a trough--
Winfrey: Yeah.
Brooks: --emotionally. That's because of this negativity bias. Now this is an opportunity to use to use metacognition to understand yourself and to manage yourself. Because a lot of times, it's maladaptive. Look I got it in the caveman times it's really important that you you focus on your negative emotions to keep you alive. But but you know, and you don't want to be thrown out of your tribe and walk the frozen tundra and die alone. I got it.
But Twitter is not the frozen tundra. Yet, we use our brains in the same way. And and when you actually dominate this by with understanding and doing exactly what Oprah did, she used a technique called emotional substitution or emotional caffeine that we talk about in the book. Where you recognize the emotion that you're feeling, you write it down, you recognize it, you analyze it, and then you choose another appropriate emotion.
We talk about this a lot in the book. And it's interesting, you know, we have a-- Oprah and I have a mutual friend who's an actor who is a comedic actor. His name is Rainn Wilson who played Dwight in The Office for those of you who've seen it. He's very funny.
And you know, he I I asked him one time, I said, why are so many professional comedians depressed? What's wrong with comedy that it makes you so depressed? And he said, no, you've got the causation wrong. We're comedians because we're depressed. And I said, what do you mean?
He said, I feel sad. I feel sad. I feel sad. I make a joke, people laugh, it gets better. This is the point. You feel resentment, you feel put upon. The negativity bias is salient in the experience you have going through the day.
Take out your gratitude list. Choose gratitude over resentment. By the way, it's way more accurate because you're living under your Pleistocene brain. You're living under your troglodyte brain. And it's not giving you accurate signals. This is something that each one of us can do.
Goldberg: This is a question from Brooke, probably a question that's on the minds of many people in this audience. How do you recommend young professionals balance happiness versus hard work and their commitment to their career goals?
Winfrey: That's you.
Brooks: Yeah. Well, I talk to my students about this all the time.
Winfrey: Yeah.
Brooks: You know the whole idea, the the biggest mistake that a lot of people make who are very successful and very hard working is that if they get these worldly goals, then they'll get happiness. In other words, get the goal, happiness comes for free. That's exactly wrong.
Get the happiness and you get the success. You get enough success. Now that's scary for a lot of people, right? Because you know one of the greatest fear, the death fear of my students, you know what it is? Fear of failure.
That's their death fear. They're literally not afraid of dying. They're afraid of getting a bad grade and not a good job offer because that's never happened to them before. Look, these are experiences that they have not encountered in their very successful, very hard working lives.
And so the point of that is that you actually need to understand, the reason I teach leadership and happiness is so that-- and we teach it scientifically. We teach them as a set of skills, like supply chain management it's as it's as technical as that. So that people can understand that if you actually choose to pursue the happiness itself, then the success will come in adequate quantity to give you the life that you really want.
Goldberg: Let me ask you this this, I love this question from Destiny. As you build your life you will inevitably change. How do you rationalize the new and old you?
Winfrey: Hmm.
Brooks: Hmm.
Winfrey: Destiny, where are you?
Brooks: Destiny. Where's Destiny?
Winfrey: How do you rationalize? I don't even know what that means.
Goldberg: I think I think it means that we're not the same people we once were. And do you have regret about the things that you once did or who you were when you were a young person, callow and rude? I I I that's what I'm taking that.
Brooks: Hmm.
Winfrey: Well, this is the thing, I remember years ago during the Beloved period actually when I was being interviewed by a reporter. And then about a decade later I ran into the same reporter. I didn't remember her, but she remembered me. And she said, yeah, I remembered you. I interviewed you during the Beloved.
I said, oh, that was a time. And she said, but no, what I what I realize is that you're the same person, you just have become more of yourself. And I thought, hmm, I actually think that's right. I think that one of the reasons why I am so proud of myself is not just because I escaped apartheid Mississippi and was able to get an education and become successful in life.
It's because I have paid attention. I have paid attention. I am a great observer of my life and the lives of other people. And every day on that show it was a classroom for people who were viewing, but it was a major classroom for me. And so I learned by watching other people's dysfunction, their struggles, their triumphs, celebrating in their joys about the meaning of life and what it means to live a full and engaged life.
And I learned that one of the most important things that everybody is looking for is to be validated, to be seen, and to know that they matter. And that no matter who you are, Barack Obama, the first time he came on the show as Senator he finished the interview and said, is that good? It's all right? Good for you?
And Beyonce when she finished doing-- teaching me how to twerk said, was that all right? When I interviewed a woman who had lost three of her children to cancer she said, did I do OK? And what I realized is in one form or another at the end of every conversation, people would say that. And I started to see the pattern. And understood that what people really want is to know, did you hear me? Did you see me? And did what I say mean anything to you?
Brooks: Hmm.
Winfrey: And in recognizing that, I was able to become a better interviewer because I can give you that thing that you're looking for. I know how to help you be better in that seat, just as you're doing with us here today, be better in that seat. And tell your story in a way that when you leave here, you got what you wanted.
Goldberg: But let me ask you this, and I think this is probably a question on people's minds. When you're so successful and well-known as you are, so many people want something from you.
Winfrey: Oh Lord yes. Oh yeah.
Goldberg: They want something from you.
Brooks: Will you write a book with me?
Winfrey: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[INAUDIBLE]
Goldberg: Random Harvard professors want to write books. The Dalai Lama probably wants to write a book.
Winfrey: I asked, I asked him though, by the way. I'm the one that said--
Goldberg: That is true. That is true.
Winfrey: --we should write a book together.
Brooks: I said yes.
Goldberg: That is a very careerist move on your part.
Brooks: No, no it was just I thought about it.
Goldberg: Yes.
Brooks: For like maybe a second.
Winfrey: Yeah.
Goldberg: I remember you called me after it happened. It wasn't a second.
Brooks: Yeah,
Goldberg: It was like-- [INAUDIBLE] how do you do it when the tank is empty? I mean, people have bad days.
Winfrey: Well, this is when it comes comes back to what we're talking about in the book, family, faith, friends, and work. I mean, out of those elements there is somewhere there to fill your tank. And for me all those years, I mean, I would have to say I never actually had therapy, but I had therapy on the show.
And I had my best friend, Gayle, who from the time we were 21 and 22 working in Baltimore we've had long-- I realized when I finished the show, oh, Gayle's been my therapist. That every evening, getting home 9, 10 o'clock at night we would get on the phone. We'd talk about what the day show. So my downloading with her, my being able to refill my tank through friendship, through my faith, through other things.
And you know, there, one of the reasons why the show worked so well for me is because I was fully myself. Just like sitting here with you today. I am 100% fully myself. So there would be days when my tank would be empty. And I would say to the audience, audience, I'm feeling a little empty or I'm not feeling well today. Can I borrow some energy from you?
Or when you see me not reacting, it's because I have a cold I really have the flu, but I knew that you all came from Colorado, you came from Tennessee, you came-- and you got your cousin and you got your nails done. And I wanted to show up for you. And so help me out here.
So being able to be honest about that is what kept me in that seat for 25 years and not missing a day. Because there's no way you can go through 25 years and not be empty on some days. I. Tell the truth. I say, so tell the truth about it. Say, I'm feeling a little empty right now.
Goldberg: Tell the truth.
Brooks: Yeah. And the interesting thing about this is that you, you know, you're hearing these are true parts of anybody's life.
Winfrey: Yeah.
Brooks: And we have a tendency to want to protect ourselves from our own weakness. And there's a big problem with that. To begin with, you won't experience these things and with the intensity that you need so you can learn and grow and you can become a better person. But there's another thing, you don't understand other people's weaknesses. And when I when I first started having my kids, I I have three kids. And my brother had his kids earlier than I did.
And so I called my older brother, Jeff. And I said, you have any advice? And he gave me a couple of pieces of advice. He said, when they're teenagers, don't freak out. That was good advice. You know. I didn't always follow that one.
But, he, the other thing that he said, he says, have a good memory about when you were a kid. Just remember when you were a kid. Remember when you were rotten. That turns out to be unbelievably good advice for life. Because as you're around people who are really imperfect all the time. And the world is telling you, you know, the world is trying to conscript every single one of us as soldiers into a culture war. They want us to fight. Because when you hate, somebody's making money, somebody's getting votes, somebody is getting clicks or followers or just their jollies, right?
But if you can remember your own imperfections and all the time that you were unkind and all the time and all the things that you actually regret, then you're using it for good because you can be connected in love with the people around you and in a much more meaningful way. And you're no longer putty in the hands of the demagogues that are creating many of the problems that you talked about earlier.
Goldberg: By the way, the the true key to happiness I've discovered in this is watching your--
Brooks: My grandson.
Goldberg: Yeah. Yeah. Having a baby right in front of you.
Brooks: Yeah.
Goldberg: Is a really-- [INAUDIBLE] especially when it's not your own baby, you know?
Brooks: No. Grandparenting is wonderful in that way. It's like--
Goldberg: The-- I could listen to the two of you all night. But a lot of these people have to go off and study and be successful. So I want to I want to wrap this up. And if Arthur, if you don't mind, I want to take the privilege of asking Oprah one last question, which is, you have this audience of of mainly Harvard students or a lot of Harvard students here, undergraduate, graduate, business school, and otherwise. At least a couple of Divinity School students that I know of.
Winfrey: Hello, Sam.
Goldberg: And and advice about happiness that you want to share with them at the start of their lives, the start of their adult lives. Anything that you've derived from accumulating wisdom over the last period of your life? Just want to give you the opportunity.
Winfrey: I would say be easy with yourself. Be easy with yourself. And it's all going to work out. Because one of the primary, I think, principles that has led me to success is intention.
And I think clarifying the intention based on the principles that we set out and the guidelines and manual work that we set out in the book. Clarifying the intention, your reason for being. I mean, we talk in the book about asking yourself the question about what you're willing to live for and what you're willing to die for. And getting clear on that. Because that is really the real work of your life.
Everybody's going to find a job that's going to be able to bring you money and you're going to be successful. You're going to get all of that. But why were you really brought here? By whatever means you you think you got here. Why are you really here?
You've come here to serve and you've come here to love. And how are you going to use your service in love, first and foremost, to yourself. Because you've got-- the work is not to make yourself perfect, but to start to begin to make yourself whole. How are you going to do that?
How do you fill yourself up to be a whole person, a full person of kindness, of grace, and being able to offer that into the world along with all the wonderful skills you all are going to have, how do you offer that into the world in service that lifts you up and allows you to meet the rising of your life and lifts other people up? And so changing the paradigm to how-- not just what am I going to do, but how am I going to serve?
How am I going to serve?
And my prayer for myself since I was a little girl was, God, use me. God, use me. And whether you believe in my God or your God or no God, the question is, how can you be used in service? With all this work you're putting in, all this stuff that you're doing, you're doing that for what?
You're doing that to be of service. First and foremost to yourself, your family, and your community. And then how do you push that out into the world? And if the world is 20 people, 20,000 people, 20 million people as it was with me every day, it does not matter. Because what really matters is that you're building legacy.
And this is the greatest definition of legacy I ever heard. When I opened my school in South Africa for young girls, one of them is here today who's now grown in law school and starting work in New York City, [INAUDIBLE]. But I opened that school for girls who were like me. I grew up in rural Mississippi, no running water, no electricity. My grandmother and I on what I thought was a farm and I went back and realized it was just an acre.
It was so big in my mind. I went back, oh, this is this is not a farm. This is actually just a yard. When when when I was growing up there I had a dream for myself. I remember being out with my grandmother washing clothes in a big iron pot because we didn't have a washing machine, of course. And her putting clothes on the line and saying, you better watch me because one day you're going to have to learn how to do this for yourself. And I will tell you that the voice inside myself that all of us have that feeling, that spirit, that inner voice, that voice at four-years-old old said uh-uh.
[LAUGHTER]
Uh-uh. This is not going to be my life. But I had sense enough not to tell my grandmother. I I had sense enough not to say that out loud. But I could feel inside myself, uh-uh I'm not going to be doing this. And it turned out to be true.
But what I do know now is what Maya Angelou told me about legacy. When I came back from opening the school, I said, Maya, the school is going to be my greatest legacy. These girls are amazing. And I can't even tell you. The Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy is going to be great.
She said, you have no idea what your legacy is going to be. I said, oh no, I'm telling you. It's going to be these girls. You should have been there. You should have seen it. And she was making biscuits at the time, Jeffrey, and she put the dough down. When Maya puts the dough down, get back.
She said, I said you have no idea what your legacy will be. Because your legacy is not your name on a building. Your legacy isn't even the lives of those girls. It's every life you touch. Your legacy is every life you touch. And you are building your legacy here and now.
So, everything that you do going forward, every life that you encounter and experience and the way you treat yourself and the way you treat other people is building your legacy. So think about it in terms of the the bigger goal and meeting the rising that is there waiting for you. And the fact that you've gotten here and all the things that you had to overcome means you've already won. So go forward. That's what I say.
[APPLAUSE]
Brooks: All right. All right.
Beautiful.
Winfrey: And build the life you want.
Goldberg: It is a, it is a, real, real privilege to work with you, Arthur. To listen to you and be with you.
Winfrey: Thank you.
Goldberg: Oprah. I want to let everybody know that thanks to the generosity of a good friend, [INAUDIBLE], there are copies of their book that she's generously provided for everyone here. You'll find them on the way out. I want to thank Harvard Business School, President Gay, and most of all, I want to thank Arthur and Oprah. Thank you very much.
[INAUDIBLE]
Winfrey: Thank you.
[APPLAUSE]
Winfrey: Thank you. Thank you, guys. Thank you.
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