We spend — on average — 90,000 hours of our life working. So it’s no wonder we want our jobs to bring us happiness. Yet, all too often, work doesn’t make us happy. Why is that? And is there anything we can do about it?
In this episode, we discuss just that.
You’ll hear from social scientist and New York Times bestselling author, Arthur Brooks (Harvard). Arthur talks with Dean of Harvard Medical School, Bernard S. Chang, about happiness, vocation, faith, and physician burnout. They discuss Arthur’s empirical research on happiness, explore the role of transcendence in a happier life, and how to best set expectations about the role of work in our lives.
This Forum was held at Harvard Medical School in February of 2024. Thank you to the Forum planning team at Harvard Medical School for making this event possible.
Enjoyment, satisfaction, and meaning are the macronutrients of a happy life.
Satisfaction is the joy that we get after struggle, which is the weirdest human thing.
Why am I alive? For what would I be willing to die today?
You can actually become more permanently satisfied with your life — not by having more but by wanting less.
The two sources of joy in work are earned success and serving other people.
Happiness doesn’t mean the absence of suffering.
Meaning is basically a combination of three phenomena: significance, coherence, and purpose.
The essence of dissatisfaction is lots and lots of attachment to things. And the solution is to find detachment.
The happiest people are fundamentally paying attention to four things each day: their faith, their family, their friendships, and the work that serves other people.
