Shadowing Practice: How to Enjoy Your Life - Learn English Speaking with Video
Creating lesson...
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As a kid, I would come home from school
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and I would practice my French horn and then I would paint with my mother and it was just bliss.
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But my mom was better than me, not just because she was older, but because she had more ability.
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I remember asking her, I was probably 13 or 14 years old, how I could improve as an artist.
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She said, look deeply at the thing you're trying to draw, that you want to draw.
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Think about it and look at it again.
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Stare at it.
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Look at the nuances then try.
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Savoring experiences in life, neutral experiences, good experiences, even bad experiences, can be fundamentally game -changing in your well -being.
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One of the biggest ways that we miss our happiness is we're not here, we're not fully alive, and I promise you that if you learn to savor your life,
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your life's gonna change.
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Hi friends, welcome to Office Hours.
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I'm Arthur Brooks.
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This is a show about how you can lift people up
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and bring them together in bonds of happiness and love using actual science and ideas.
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This is a show that actually shows you how research can be in the public interest and indeed your interest.
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If you want to lift people up, if you want to help people to become their best selves, this show is for you.
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Why do it?
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I want to be happier.
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I want you to be happier.
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And I want you to help other people to be happier.
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And furthermore, this is not just a self -improvement idea.
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This is one that's actually based in data.
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And that's what we'll be talking about.
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This is an evidence -based program about how to live your best life.
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Hope you've enjoyed it so far.
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If you do, please recommend this show to other people.
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Hit like and subscribe wherever you're listening or watching this show.
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That actually helps the algorithms find other people, as a matter of fact.
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And I appreciate you doing that an awful lot.
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If you have questions or criticism or comments, we want to hear it leave it in the notes, leave it in the comment sections wherever you're consuming this content,
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or send me a note at officehours .arthurbrooks .com.
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Don't forget to leave a review.
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We want to know what you think.
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And once again, that's really helpful to the show so
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that we can continue to spread as we are bigger audiences almost every week.
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So thanks to you for that.
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You're not broken.
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You're meaning starved.
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I talk to people all the time who are by any external measure successful.
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They've built careers.
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They have families.
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They've checked the boxes.
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And yet something feels off.
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Life feels thin.
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Like you're going through the motions.
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Like you're watching yourself from the outside.
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And here's what I want you to know that feeling is not a personal failing.
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It's not ingratitude.
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It's not something wrong with you.
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It's a meaning problem.
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And it's an epidemic.
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The modern world is extraordinary at giving us comfort, achievement, and distraction.
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It's terrible at giving us meaning.
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And no amount of success will fix that.
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I've seen it in my research, and I've seen it in my own life.
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That's exactly what we work on at MEA, the Modern Elder Academy, in a program I've developed called The Meaning of Your Life.
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It's not a lecture.
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It's not a quick fix.
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It's several days of real work in a small group on the questions that actually matter.
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If what I'm describing sounds familiar, I hope you'll come take a look.
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I am recording this a little bit before Mother's Day 2026.
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It's going to play pretty close to Mother's Day, as a matter of fact.
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And so you're probably thinking about mom, whether mom is still alive or not.
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And I hope you had a good experience growing up with your mom.
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I hope you love your mom.
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Everybody deserves to, for sure.
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Not everybody does.
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I want to tell you a little story about mine.
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Not because this is a show about Mother's Day, but because this is going to help me explain a very important phenomenon for your happiness.
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My mother was my late mother.
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She died relatively young, 73.
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She suffered a lot because she was very ill for most of her life, as a matter of fact.
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She was, however, a terrific artist.
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She was an artist of some renown in the Pacific Northwest.
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I grew up in Seattle, Washington, and she was a terrific mixed media artist.
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Many people in the Pacific Northwest own her paintings.
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She did this to the exclusion of most other things over the course of her life.
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She was also an amateur violinist and pianist.
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So she was really into the arts and a creative soul, to be sure.
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One of the reasons that she was so dedicated to her art, if you've been a listener of this program over the last few weeks, you'll recognize this argument.
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It is that when you participate in the production of beauty, you illuminate the right hemisphere of your brain and you find the meaning of your life.
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When my mother would wake up in the morning, She was, she was really in a lot of, uh, really in a lot of agony.
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She suffered from tremendous mental health problems.
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And I mean, every day was a chore.
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It just was.
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And then she would come down and have a cup of decaf and because, because of her medication, she couldn't take caffeine and,
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and she would have a little breakfast and then she would head up to her studio and, and life started at that moment.
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She was a different person.
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It was extraordinary.
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As a matter of fact, how I saw that.
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And she was a great artist.
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She was fantastic.
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She had excellent technique.
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If she decided to paint a naked guy holding a guitar, much to my mortification as a teenager, it actually looked like that.
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And it was beautiful to boot, I guess.
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Although once again, as a teenager, I wouldn't have been able to discern that.
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Now growing up, I was very interested in the arts myself.
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I was more of a musician.
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As a matter of fact, I made my living as a classical musician for many years until I was 31 years old.
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But I was interested in all different kinds of creativity.
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I wrote stories and poetry, and I painted with my mother.
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As a kid, I would come home from school, and I would practice my French horn, and then I would paint with my mother.
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And it was just bliss.
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I loved it too.
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Not knowing, of course, that my little right hemisphere was fully illuminated, and I was experiencing the meaning of my life.
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But my mom was better than me, not just because she was older, but because she had more ability.
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I remember asking her, I was probably 13 or 14 years old, how I could improve as an artist.
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And I expected her to say, do it a lot, did the reps, which certainly is true.
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That's not what she told me.
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She said, here's the reason that people can't draw.
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Here's the reason, because they actually never look at the thing they're trying to draw.
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She said, look deeply at the thing you're trying to draw, that you want to draw.
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Think about it and look at it again.
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Stare at it.
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Look at the nuances, then try.
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So So I was actually trying to draw a tree, simple thing, right?
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And I would look at it and try to draw the tree.
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It didn't look like a tree.
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It didn't look very good at all.
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Then I really stared at it.
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I really took in the details of what I was looking at.
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I wasn't relying on my brain to fill in the details.
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I was actually observing the details, the contours, the colors, the shadows.
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And I drew a pretty good tree.
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Now, here's the point of that.
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I was also happy.
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when I was, I remember being really happy, not because the tree looked good, but because the whole experience was rich.
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What was that?
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It turns out that that was an experience of what we call savoring.
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Savoring experiences in life, neutral experiences, good experiences, even bad experiences can be fundamentally game -changing in your wellbeing.
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And that's what I want to talk about today.
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In our hustle and grind culture, where everything is fast, where we're distracted constantly.
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One of the biggest sources, one of the biggest ways that we miss our happiness is we're not here.
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We're not fully alive.
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Now, this is not just a call for some sort of mindfulness meditation technique.
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This means simply savoring life as it's happening right now.
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I want to tell you why it's so important, and I want to tell you how you can do it in your ordinary life.
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And I promise you that if you learn to savor your life, your life's going to change.
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Let's start off with some basics of what savoring actually means.
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Savoring is to pay attention and to say, I want to be doing this right now.
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I want to be fully absorbed in this thing right now.
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That's what savoring really is.
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So you savor the experience of eating a piece of chocolate.
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You don't just gobble it up.
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You actually put it in your mouth and you taste it on your tongue
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and you feel the texture of the chocolate and you're conscious of it.
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Say that's, that's smooth or that's sweet or whatever it happens to be.
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That's what savoring really is all about.
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Or if you savor moments with your beloved, before you say goodbye, you're experiencing the look in her eyes and the,
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the smell of her skin and you're conscious of that.
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That's what savoring really is.
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Now, there's been a lot of research on how that affects you psychologically, how that affects you neurophysiologically.
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And it's pretty interesting what researchers have come up with.
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When you're savoring, when you're paying attention, when you're immersive, when you're here now on something neutral, positive, or perhaps even negative, I'll get to that later,
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actually it stimulates the reward processing centers in your brain, your brain's ventral striatum.
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There's two parts of your limbic system that principally are responsible for you feeling pleasure.
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What is the ventral striatum?
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The other is called the ventral tegmental area.
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You tap those things.
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Now they're very thrifty, which means there are lots of ways to tap it.
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If you say, if my wife says to me, I just love you so much, it will tap these pleasure centers and I'll say, joy, right?
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That's positive emotion.
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If I had a huge bump of cocaine, it would do the same thing because of my thrifty brain.
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By the way, I don't do that.
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But you get the point that I'm actually trying to make.
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So when you savor, you will actually stimulate that ventral striatum, that part of your brain, and there's interesting research on that that,
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of course, as always, I'm going to put into the show notes.
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This is a paper called Savoring the Past.
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Positive Memories Evoke Values Representation in the Striatum from Neuron, which is a terrific journal, neuroscience journal
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so all you have to do to do that is to pay attention
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and say i want to be paying attention to this i like paying attention to this
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and then really look like i was looking at that tree
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that day you can even savor completely ordinary things like right
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now i am walking to the post office that's the essence
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of what the great vietnamese buddhist monk thich not han of course one of the most famous Buddhists in the world.
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Um, a Theravada Buddhist, Hmong Vietnamese.
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When he wrote his famous classic, the miracle of mindfulness, which starts off with this, just an explanation, this description of washing the dishes when I'm washing the dishes,
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I should be fully present in the act of washing the dishes.
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What he's saying is savor washing the dishes.
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Don't rush through it.
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Be fully present.
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Be saying, this is what I'm doing now.
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I like the fact that I'm savoring this.
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I like the fact that I'm fully present and that will.
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stimulate, once again, I'm here to tell you that's going to stimulate your pleasure centers.
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You're going to get pleasure from washing the dishes, but only if you savor washing the dishes.
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The second thing that it does, this is an interesting study from 2022, is it lowers symptoms of depression and increases higher levels of reported happiness.
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Probably that's related to the first effect that I talked about, because when you stimulate the parts of the limbic system that elicit the feelings of joy,
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that's not consistent with the affective pain that we actually get which is the activation of the anterior cingulate cortex,
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a different part of the limbic system.
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And third, it leads to these higher levels of reported happiness, not in looking at people's brains,
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but just asking for people's experiences.
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There's one study where researchers ask human subjects to record the frequency and intensity of their daily positive experiences.
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half of the subjects in these experiments were asked to savor
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savor their events in their lives to be fully present to be paying attention
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and they found
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that these subjects were significantly happier after the experiment than those
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who were not given any specific instructions in other words i
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just remind you to be fully present you're going to be happier you're going to enjoy your life more
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this is especially clear for people who experience here's here's the irony for people who experience fewer positive events.
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In other words, if you're living a life that is tough
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and you're going through a really tough time right now and you savor the moments that you like, you know, this, all of us go through these things.
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We're really stressed out or really, really too busy or, but there's going to be a moment like, you know, sun coming through the clouds a little bit.
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You stop and you say, yeah, sunshine on my face and you savor it.
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That will have a disproportionately joyful impact on you.
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The less good there is, the more good you get.
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That's one of the benefits of savoring.
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It also leads to happier memories later on, which is interesting that the more that you savor the present.
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the more you're going to remember the present when it becomes the past.
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Because you lay down more intense memories in the hippocampus of your brain.
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The episodic memories are actually more distinct when you savor them.
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It makes perfect sense, doesn't it?
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You remember the things where it feels like time slowed down because you were fully present.
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By the way, this is one of the reasons that when you're in the middle of a car accident, it feels like time slows down.
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Because you're laying down hugely complex memory tracks in those moments.
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you're savoring the experience of getting t -boned by a semi
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or something which you know not so great i suppose actually more on that later
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because i want to tell you how negative events can be savored much to your advantage as well
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but we're not there yet
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so savor more have happier memories later now this is important
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this one's really important to me personally i'll tell you why
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i don't have very many happy memories it's not like i had some trauma some terrible childhood
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but i don't have happy memories.
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I just don't.
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I don't like remembering the past.
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I don't like looking at childhood photo albums.
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I don't like it.
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I don't like looking at old videos.
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It just bugs me.
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It bothers me.
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It makes me uncomfortable to do that.
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I mean, I practically don't drive looking in the rearview mirror.
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I'm a dangerous driver.
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But I mean, I go through life not looking in the rearview mirrors through the windshield of the car.
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It's just for some reason, that's how I'm wired.
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I don't like talking about the good old days.
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And so it's hard for me to keep up with my old friends as a matter of fact
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because just passed i don't know i mean i have this one set of really really happy memories
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when somebody says what are your happiest memories from childhood they're
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all the same thing i used to go down to the oregon coast with my aunt marie um and
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lincoln city lincoln city oregon and it's funny
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because those of you who've been a long time uh viewer of the show you know
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that i'm great friends with rain wilson the actor
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and um his wife grew up going to the Oregon coast in the exact same places as me.
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And we reminisce about that actually, which is sweet and really good, but, but generally I don't like it.
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I don't like that.
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And what I've learned from the literature, this is how I try to engineer my own life is by, by using the research to live better is right now.
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What I'm trying to do with my life is savor more now, because I want better memories.
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I don't want to be the kind of guy that can't remember the past in a positive way.
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So why is it hard?
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Why don't we naturally do it?
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If this were such a great thing that we'd be savoring everything all the time and life would be sweet, right?
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Well, it's hard because we're not evolved to savor anything.
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We're evolved to rush through everything and pay attention to the negative.
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That's what we're designed to do.
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Now, why?
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You as a viewer of the show, you know that I rely a lot on evolutionary biological and psychological arguments.
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And because they're compelling and because they're ordinarily right.
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We have brains that were designed in more or less a current form, something like 250 ,000 years ago in the late Pleistocene era.
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And that was a dangerous time to be Homo sapiens.
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You know, you had to pay attention a lot or you're going to be a wild animal's lunch.
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There was no law.
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Somebody could come and, you know, take your buffalo jerky and animal skins and, you know, kill you summarily if you're not paying attention.
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So we have more brain space dedicated to negative emotions and positive emotions.
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That's what gives us what we call the negativity bias in our lives.
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Negativity bias means that life isn't that great all the time, but we're more likely to get to tomorrow.
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We're more likely to survive the night.
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That makes perfect evolutionary sense that your suspicious, nervous inner troglodyte is trying to survive and pass on your genes.
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You're not a saber -toothed tiger's lunch, but that negativity bias is now maladapted it's basically an error that we would do that, that we would not savor,
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but rather that we would be suspicious and vigilant
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and trying to get into the future as quickly as possible as a survival tactic that doesn't actually lead us to happiness.
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One quick note, mother nature who did that doesn't care if we're happy.
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That is an important thing to keep in mind.
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Mother nature wants us to survive and pass on our genes, but that's why we have a wonderful prefrontal cortex so that we have decisions, we can make conscious decisions,
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not just to live according to our animal impulses, but to live up to our moral aspirations.
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That's the beautiful thing about being human, that even though I have a negativity bias, I can override it with my consciousness.
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And that's what we're talking about here.
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Savoring is rebelling against yourself.
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And oh, how freeing that is, isn't it?
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To stand up to your worst impulses.
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It's an error because Because a negative disposition, it's maladaptive today because the negative disposition makes us error prone in our predictions.
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You're always going to overpredict the worst.
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You're going to assume the worst all the time.
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And that's a heck of a way to live.
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And it lowers our quality of life, to be sure, of course.
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Lots of interesting work on this, by the way.
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I'll put in a great article in the notes titled The Brain is Adaptive, Not Triune, How the Brain Responds to Threat, Challenge, and Change.
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And that's in Psychology, Therapy, and Psychopathics.
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It's a nice article.
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Thank you.
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So savoring is the secret degree to happiness, but it doesn't come naturally.
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How are you going to savor your life more?
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And that's what I want to tell you now.
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What are the techniques for actually savoring more?
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What are the techniques for overriding your negativity bias, your tendency to rush into the future,
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to not pay attention, savor the ordinary moments of your life that you actually need?
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And I'm going to give you three ways to do it.
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Three ways that you can savor your life more.
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Number one, technique number one for savoring your life do it in all three time zones.
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Okay, now, what do I mean by that?
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I don't mean literal time zones.
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I'm talking about savoring the past, savoring the present, and savoring the future.
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This comes from the work of the psychologist Fred Bryant, who created something called the Savoring Beliefs Inventory,
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which asks people to talk about their tendency to seek and enjoy positive experiences and memories.
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And so how does he talk about it?
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richness of reminiscence.
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In other words, what do I need to do as somebody who struggles with the past is think back to the past and think, what was good about that?
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And you know what?
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I just did that in the opening of the show, didn't I?
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I mean, I could have talked about the fact that my mom was sad all the time.
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It seemed to be as a little kid sometimes.
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She wasn't sad all the time.
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She was painting beautiful paintings and those were moments of bliss for her.
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And I remembered that on purpose.
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Why?
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Because I was savoring the memory of me savoring the present.
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This recursive structure created by time travel, the prefrontal cortex, it's a miracle, isn't it?
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I'm able to edit my memory in this particular way, in a positive way.
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Richness of reminiscence is doing exactly that.
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It's to savor the past on purpose by paying attention to the positive parts.
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And by the way, the editing of memory is a very interesting area of research.
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You can say, oh yeah, you know, Thanksgiving of, you know, 1996, that's when, you know, you know, uncle Chet, he,
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you know, got so drunk and he barfed in the front yard and, and went and beat up the neighbor.
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There was something good that happened that day too, probably.
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I'm just going to guess.
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Um, second time zone is the present and that's the degree of conscious enjoyment.
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That's really kind of the main focus of what we're talking about here.
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Savoring the present, being here fully, thinking about the good that is in this, the experience, the full experience.
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That full experience has almost theological overtones.
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The great Catholic Saint Irenaeus of the second century, his most famous quote is that the glory of God is a man fully alive.
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And to be fully alive is to be fully present.
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Why?
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Because only in the present can you love.
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You can't love in a different time.
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You can't love in the past or love in the future.
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Love is now.
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If you're not here now, you're not loving.
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By the way, important for your relationships.
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Why should you savor your marriage?
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Because she needs love and so do you.
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And then here's the third time zone, the future.
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And that's something to look forward to.
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That's keenness of anticipation.
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Now that could, a little of this can go a long way.
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According to Marty Seligman at University of Pennsylvania,
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the average homo sapiens spends 30 to 50 % of the time thinking about the future because it's incredibly adaptive.
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You practice future scenarios, see the dangers, come back to the present, and don't choose those roots and those paths into the future.
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That's why human beings are so awesome is
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because we're able to make mistakes in our minds and not make them into real life.
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And so the average person is literally 30 to 50 % of the time in the future, but the average striver, and I'm looking at you and I'm kind of looking in the mirror,
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spend something like 80 % of their time in the future.
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These are estimates.
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Your results may vary as they say in the commercials.
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But if you're 80 % of your time in the future and it's all castles in the sky, this can go a long way.
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But if you're the kind of person who lives with a little bit of dread, then thinking about things that you can look forward to is all about the savoring of the future.
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So you got to figure out, is that your challenge or not?
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If it's not your challenge, good.
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If it is, that's what to do.
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You don't have to really choose.
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I recommend that you choose all three, but I do recommend that you think once again, as I'm emphasizing here, that one of these things is harder for you.
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And that's what you should actually work on.
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If you have a hard time being here now, then present saving is important.
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If you have a hard time in the past, you need to edit your memories.
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That's me.
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If you have a hard time actually getting out of the future, right?
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Or if you have a hard time actually not being in the future because you have so much dread, then that's what you need to is to find something you look forward to.
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What do you need to do?
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What's your challenge?
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What's the time zone in which you need to savor?
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Go do that.
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That's number one.
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Number two is to expand your repertoire of savoring techniques.
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This is great stuff from 2010, where psychologists found four savoring techniques that were really, really effective.
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So here's your savoring chops.
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Here's how we're going to put it together.
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Number one.
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It's what they call behavioral display, which means expressing positive emotion with non -verbal behaviors.
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Here's the deal.
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Smile, even if you don't feel it.
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I think I've mentioned it on the show before, the Duchenne smile, which is the only smile that's actually associated with true human happiness.
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It involves two sets of muscles in the face, the zygomaticus major and the orbicularis oculi muscles.
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You can actually simulate that by holding a pencil in your teeth like this.
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and kind of God, because happiness is seen in the eyes and not in the mouth.
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That's the Duchenne smile that was invented.
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That was no, that was named, discovered and named by a physiologist named Duchenne, because he wanted the happy smile to be named after himself, of course.
412
But you can do that, by the way.
413
I mean, you can put the pencil in your molders and go grin in the mirror that way.
414
You'll, you'll fool your brain.
415
You'll be happier because of this behavioral display, because of what you're doing.
416
This is a, this is actually a savoring technique in its own way smile
417
more pretend you're happier go act happier behavioral display is number one way to to savor
418
when you're doing something behave with joy second is be present
419
which is mindfully focusing on the pleasant experience and what
420
that means is saying to yourself i am doing this thing
421
i am sitting on the train looking at it a beautiful seascape
422
if that's what it is being present means actually saying the thing to yourself
423
because you want to bring it from your subconscious into your prefrontal cortex, into your consciousness where you're really thinking about something.
424
And the way to do that is by saying it.
425
And it's really unbelievably effective.
426
There's a famous piece of avant -garde music from the 1970s
427
by a French composer named Alvin Lussier called I am sitting in a room.
428
And the whole thing is just, I am sitting in a room.
429
And he talks about sitting in the room.
430
It's just like studying, savoring, and over and over and over and over again.
431
I thought, how silly.
432
And now I'm thinking, I kind of like it.
433
So say what you're doing to yourself.
434
That's number two.
435
Number three is capitalizing, which means talking about and celebrating positive experiences with others.
436
So don't just say it to yourself.
437
Say it to other people.
438
Talk about the experience that you're actually having.
439
Notice things to other people, which makes this even more conscious, even more concrete, even more permanent.
440
And last but not least is what they call positive mental time travel, which is once again, vivid reminiscence or anticipation of positive events, just what I talked about in the last one.
441
So those are your four techniques, your repertoire for savoring.
442
Number three, I'm going to talk about how all this works for me, right?
443
Okay.
444
So this is kind of how I'll put it together.
445
I promised you three, it's actually two, but now I'm going to talk about how I'm trying to do this in my own life.
446
Here's how I do it.
447
I use the research
448
that I'm talking about by starting my morning with a quick reflection on two
449
or three things that I'm looking forward to, right?
450
When I wake up in the morning, the first thing that I do is I say a prayer.
451
That's how I start my day.
452
Um, at some point in the show, I'll give you my daily prayer.
453
Um, if you're interested, put it in the notes.
454
If you are, if you're not, say don't do that.
455
Okay.
456
But then I reflect on two or three things I'm really looking forward to.
457
And for me, it'll be my morning workout routine i just i want to
458
do it man i'm just super grateful to wake up
459
and to be able to go down to the gym even
460
when i'm tired i'm getting to do this podcast having dinner with my wife whatever it's going to be whatever
461
that day is going to bring just kind of looking ahead a little bit savoring
462
that i imagine each of these events vividly for a few seconds
463
and i make an effort to smile when i'm doing it
464
because what i'm doing i'm neurocognitively programming myself to savor that thing,
465
to remember it more, to imprint it in a positive way so that the episodic memory of that event, when it actually becomes the past will be positively valenced.
466
Boy, there was a lot of jargon in that last sentence.
467
Forgive me for that.
468
And then finally, before I go to bed, I think back vividly on each one of these experiences when it is now a memory with a sense of gratitude.
469
And I'll express that gratitude with whoever I'm with.
470
And it's almost always with my wife at luck when I'm going to sleep is either with my wife or alone.
471
now i screw this up um i fail to carry this out
472
because my caveman limbic system wants to hijack the process
473
and wants me to worry about somebody looting my cave
474
and stealing my jerky and animal skins and so i start again
475
and that's how i try to live so far
476
so good one last note i promised you i was going
477
to talk about savoring bad things too the research focuses entirely on savoring pleasant events and experiences.
478
But there are difficult parts of your life.
479
And if you savor them correctly, these can be unbelievably enriching as well.
480
And here's why I recommend you do that.
481
Here's how you savor the bad.
482
I've mentioned this briefly, but I want to bring it up again in the show.
483
I keep a failure journal.
484
Look, everybody has a lot of failure in their life, disappointment in their life.
485
Lots of things are happening you don't like.
486
When something bothers me, I write it down.
487
Now, sometimes I keep it electronically and sometimes I keep it in pencil and paper.
488
It's actually better in pencil and paper.
489
You're more likely to remember it.
490
But I leave two blank lines under each entry.
491
And I come back to the first one after a month.
492
I go back and I read the thing that bothered me.
493
It might be something stupid, right?
494
It might be something kind of important, but I come back and I say after a month, after that first blank line, and I write down what I learned in the intervening period, thanks to that bad experience.
495
There's always something.
496
It might be, you know, I thought that the argument that I had with somebody I care about, which really bummed me out.
497
I thought it was going to bum me out for a long time, but I actually stopped thinking about it almost immediately and didn't hurt the relationship.
498
I learned that.
499
How interesting.
500
Then after another month, I'll go back to the second blank line that I left after the entry,
501
read it again and read the thing I learned and then write something positive, something good that happened as a result of the experience.
502
I might say, we ended up making amends and our friendship was actually stronger as a result of that.
503
A good thing happened as a result of our ability to make amends, which deepened our relationship.
504
Now, trust me, if you give it a bit of thought, you'll have something worthwhile to say about almost any negative event.
505
You're not going to say, I'm glad it happened, but you might.
506
And you're going to get benefit from learning and benefit in creating a more positively valenced memory from that,
507
which is a form of savoring of something negative, which will add depth to your life, learning to your life, growth to your life.
508
and that's something that makes every minute of your life worthwhile.
509
Let's finish with a couple of questions.
510
This comes from Eugene Zhao.
511
Thanks for the email.
512
How should someone earlier in their career
513
think about intentionally maintaining and investing in relationships when so much of the feedback and momentum is pulling them toward work?
514
Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah, I get it.
515
Eugene, we're all strivers, aren't we?
516
Workaholics, I get it.
517
And the answer to that is actually the work of Josef Pieper, I've done a podcast before on the importance of leisure.
518
Josef Pieper said that there's three kinds of leisure.
519
They do not include chilling on the beach.
520
Because I tell you, fellow strivers, you go to the beach and like the first couple of hours, you'd be like, this is awesome.
521
It's so nice and warm.
522
By the third hour, you're like, I want to go back to work.
523
I want to go back to work.
524
Why?
525
Because your monkey mind is going to be back in the office or in front of your laptop or wherever it is.
526
This is how you're wired to get it.
527
Josef Pieper, the German philosopher, said that you should engage your leisure, which which is defined as generative,
528
positive activity for which they don't pay you.
529
That's leisure.
530
Three kinds of things.
531
Deepening yourself spiritually, deepening your relationships, and learning something deeply.
532
That's the three things to do.
533
And so that's actually how to think about that, how to not go back with your monkey mind to the office is
534
because you're dedicating yourself to something that's meaningful under these circumstances.
535
And you need that kind of leisure.
536
William Page writes in to the Office Hours email address.
537
How would a person raised in a non -religious family choose a religion to begin your recommendation to start first practicing?
538
Yeah, that's good.
539
That's good.
540
I mean, it's funny because it almost sounds like, oh man, there's just so many choices out there.
541
It's like going to the supermarket and deciding what kind of breakfast cereal.
542
And William, I know that's not what you mean, but you know, look, it's a huge world out there, right?
543
The most important thing that you're telling me is that you want something, that you know there's something deeper and that you're looking for something.
544
Here's the algorithm.
545
Start by reading then start by observing like a front row seat
546
and then start by practicing a little and only then start believing
547
and last but not least maybe start feeling that's the way to think about it a lot of people
548
when they're when they're looking for they know they need some sort of a faith
549
or life philosophy at least
550
or coherent spirituality they say i gotta i'm gonna feel something
551
no no no no that's the wrong way to think about it feelings are just the activity of your limbic system
552
That's not how you should pursue your marriage either, is by saying, I got to feel it all the time.
553
You're going to end up divorced.
554
No, no. It's really all about finding something that you can practice every day, believe a lot, and occasionally feel.
555
That's your marriage, and that's the religion that you'll actually find, if that's what you're in the market for.
556
And the way to do that is by doing the work, is by learning, which is by reading and then observing, because it's not enough just to read, you have to observe, and then actually experimenting with practice.
557
From there, belief will come and occasionally feeling as well good luck on your journey last
558
but not least
559
and i don't know how to pronounce this one i'm sorry masyaj bouzouk was enough in your research
560
and experience what is the most important what is the most
561
important for someone in a situation of high competence genuine contribution
562
but a persistent inability to translate inner value into outer reward
563
now this sounds an awful lot like you've got an adolescent kid who is unbelievably smart i'm just guessing here unbelievably smart,
564
really, really creative, but not posting like in school and in life, not maybe launching as a young adult.
565
And the answer to that is.
566
fundamentally to help that person, even if it's you to find calling.
567
And the way to find calling is the two questions of meaning.
568
This is the meaning exam that I've talked about on the show before.
569
Think deeply about this.
570
Where do I need to go?
571
And what do I need to do to find the answers to the two questions?
572
Why am I alive?
573
And for what would I die?
574
Why am I alive?
575
And for what would I die?
576
Maybe that's who created you.
577
Maybe it's what you're on earth to do.
578
And most importantly, for what would you give your life?
579
What are you going to do?
580
Where are you going to go?
581
What are you going to read?
582
Who are you going to ask?
583
What experiences are you going to have?
584
So you can find the answers to those two questions.
585
When you do, what you will find is your calling.
586
That's what you're supposed to be doing.
587
And that will solve the problem of high competence and low performance, virtually always.
588
We're done.
589
Let me know your thoughts at officehours at arthurworks .com.
590
Like and subscribe on Spotify and Apple and YouTube and leave a comment.
591
We want to hear it.
592
Negative, positive.
593
We like it all.
594
Follow me on Instagram, LinkedIn, the other platforms.
595
There's all kinds of content over there that's in shorter form, but it will reward your scrolling as opposed to frittering away your time.
596
I promise.
597
Order The Meaning of Your Life, my new book, to learn more about all the topics I'm talking about here.
598
And last but not least, happy Mother's Day.
599
See you next week.
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Learn English with Videos: A Real-Life Chat About Happiness
Imagine sitting down with a friend who’s sharing stories about growing up, life lessons, and even their favorite protein bars. That’s exactly the vibe of this video, where Arthur Brooks talks about savoring moments, happiness, and staying healthy. It’s a casual, relatable conversation—perfect for practicing English speaking and listening. You’ll hear natural phrases, everyday questions, and tips that feel like a chat over coffee, making it easy to connect with the language.
Useful Chunks & Collocations to Master
- "game-changing in your well-being": A great way to say something has a huge positive impact on your health or happiness. Example: "Regular walks are game-changing in my well-being."
- "lift people up": To help others feel better or succeed. Example: "Her kind words always lift people up."
- "evidence-based program": A plan or method backed by research. Example: "This is an evidence-based program for learning English."
- "macronutrient profile": The balance of proteins, carbs, and fats in food. Example: "I track my macronutrient profile to stay healthy."
- "savor your life": To fully enjoy and appreciate each moment. Example: "I’m learning to savor my life instead of rushing through it."
Your Shadowing Challenge: Practice "Shadow Speak" Today!
Ready to improve your English pronunciation and fluency? Try this shadowspeak exercise: Pick a 30-second clip from the video (like Arthur’s story about his mom or his protein bar tip). Play the clip, then pause and repeat it immediately, copying his tone, speed, and stress. Focus on matching his rhythm—even if you miss a word, keep going! Do this 5 times, then record yourself. Compare it to the original. You’ll notice how much clearer your pronunciation gets when you "shadow" a native speaker. This is one of the best ways to practice English speaking and feel more confident in real conversations.
Remember, every small step counts. Keep using videos like this to learn English, and soon you’ll be speaking with ease. Happy practicing!
Grammar in this video
The structures the speaker uses most, with the exact words from the video:
| Structure | In the video |
|---|---|
| Conditional sentences if + clause, will/would + verb — a condition and its result | If you buy four cartons, they'll give |
| Present perfect have/has + past participle — a past action that still matters now | you've enjoyed · They've built · They've checked |
| Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it | is called · were asked · were not given |
| Relative clauses who / which + clause — extra information about a person or thing | thrifty, which means · Neuron, which is · get which is |
What is the Shadowing Technique?
Shadowing is a science-backed language learning technique originally developed for professional interpreter training and popularized by polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. The method is simple but powerful: you listen to native English audio and immediately repeat it out loud — like a shadow following the speaker with just a 1–2 second delay. Unlike passive listening or grammar drills, shadowing forces your brain and mouth muscles to simultaneously process and reproduce real speech patterns. Research shows it significantly improves pronunciation accuracy, intonation, rhythm, connected speech, listening comprehension, and speaking fluency — making it one of the most effective methods for IELTS Speaking preparation and real-world English communication.