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Andy Stanley (00:02):
Hey everybody. Welcome to the Andy Stanley Leadership Podcast, a conversation designed to help leaders go further, faster. I'm Andy Stanley. And before we get into today's content, I wanted to share a special offer from our friends at Belay, from startups and small businesses to large corporations. It's true that we all want to grow our organizations and lead at the highest level in doing both is not always easy. And even with the latest productivity tools, it can be hard to stay caught up on your day-to-day task, leaving very little time for this strategic work that only you can do. And that's where our friends at Belay come in. Belay helps busy leaders just like you and like so many of my friends delegate with confidence, with the nation's largest pool of highly vetted executive assistants, marketing assistants, and financial experts. Belay matches you with a professional who suits your unique needs, no matter how specialized your work is.
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And if it isn't the right fit, they will rematch you at no extra cost guarantee. They're also giving away a free download of their new resource, Five Traits AI Can't Replace. And just the title alone is encouraging for a lot of us, right? So if you've been using AI or you want to start using it, this guide is for you. It explores where AI is most useful, where human touch is essential, and how the right support can bridge the gap. To claim this offer, text the word Andy to 55123. That's A- N-D-Y to 55123 to Lead Better with Belay. And now let's jump into today's podcast episode. Today we are talking about, and this is so personal. Today we're talking about the meaning of not the meaning of life. We're going to talk about the meaning of your life. And since we've never met, that's a pretty tall order and this is no small topic.
(01:54):
But don't worry, you're in good hands because believe it or not, the gentleman who literally wrote the book about the meaning of your life is with us in the studio today. Arthur Brooks, welcome back my friend. It has been a minute.
Arthur Brooks (02:06):
Thank you, Andy. It's so great to see you. And so I'm going to follow your work when I don't see you and you inspire me. And I'm really glad to talk about this with your beautiful followers.
Andy Stanley (02:16):
Well, you're kind to do this. You're super busy. Arthur and I were just talking. You just got out of class. He did two 80 minute lectures. You got three more tomorrow.
Arthur Brooks (02:24):
Three more tomorrow.
Andy Stanley (02:25):
Yeah. Yeah. It makes my 35 minute sermon once a week sound kind of pitiful. But anyway-
Arthur Brooks (02:30):
You pack a lot in, Andy. You pack a lot in.
Andy Stanley (02:34):
Well, Arthur's new book is entitled The Meaning of Your Life: Finding Purpose and An Age of Emptiness. And this book is so good. For those of you, for the four of you out there who are not familiar with our guest today, he's a bestselling author. He's the Parker Gilbert Montgomery professor of the Practice of Public and Nonprofit Leadership at the Harvard Kennedy School. He's a professor of management practice at the Harvard Business School, where he teaches courses on leadership and happiness, and that's how we met. He's also a columnist at the Free Press where he writes a column called The Pursuit of Happiness. He's authored 15 books, including, and I won't list them all, but the one that got my attention and just kind of rocked my world. In 2022, he released a number one New York Times bestseller from strength to strength, finding success, happiness, and deep purpose in the second half of life.
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And Arthur, I know I told you this, and I'm sure everybody does, but I've recommended this book over and over. And that's not what's unusual. What's unusual is how many times people have recommended the book to me. This past week, I'm fortunate to be friends with Jeff Foxworthy, the comedian. And we're having coffee and he's like, "Andy, have you read this book from this strength?" I'm like, "Yes, I have, but thanks for asking." So this is your third time on the podcast and we're grateful for that. And for our podcast listeners, we've had the opportunity to host Arthur live and he's like such the real deal. And you're going to be with us on April the 21st at one of our leadership labs live talking about this content.
Arthur Brooks (04:11):
Yeah, can't wait. Can't wait to get back. And it's a great group. I love the last live appearance. Such a vital audience and people deeply interested in all sorts of ideas and using ideas as kind of the fuel of how we bring the love of the master to people who have not encountered it. It's interesting because for me as a professor, but as a devoted Christian on a secular campus, one of the things that I've found is that ideas are what attract people, new ideas, curiosity and what's what really attracts people. And this is a form of missionary work in its way. Talk about what people really, really want and what they really, really want is to be happier and then show them what they really, really need, whether they know it or not, which is the cross and gospel of Jesus Christ and what a privilege
Andy Stanley (04:57):
Yeah. And the fact that you have so appropriately boldly, not great grammar, but appropriately boldly brought that into not just an academic environment, but an academic environment, not always known for its necessarily friendliness to conservative, not just conservative values, but certainly conservative Christianity. And that's probably a misnomer to some extent, but that's kind of the reputation.
Arthur Brooks (05:22):
Yeah, no, no, for sure. And academia has always had a kind of a Bohemian culture to it. And the result is it's easy to be a little bit timid when you do have a relationship with Jesus Christ in your own personal life, but that's actually one of the key parts of witness is to be excellent in what you do in the secular world and then to be relaxed about the fact that your Christian faith is at the center of your life. Make it as normal as just putting on your shirt. And so I made a commitment when I came back to academia about seven years ago. I was gone for about 11 years running a big think tank in Washington DC. And when I came back, I made a commitment to myself and to my wife that I was never going to leave an audience wondering if I was a Christian.
(06:03):
And that's kind of how witness works. I don't have to kick down the door and shove across in your face. Okay, that might work for some, but that's certainly not going to work on college campuses. That kind of missionary work is, well, it's very sparing or it probably should be, but if you're actually good at what you do and do it in a spirit of love and do it in a spirit of joy, and they discover that the fuel behind that love and joy is your relationship with the Lord, then they want that. Then it actually makes it magnetic. And that's been a privilege for me to be able to try to do that.
Andy Stanley (06:37):
Well, you are certainly leading the way in that. And for all of our podcast listeners, if you live in the Atlanta area or would just like to hear Arthur live, April 21st is this event. And if you'll just go to leadershiplabslive.com, just leadershiplabslive.com, you can register. And if you register, it's inexpensive, you get breakfast, coffee, and you're going to get a copy of his book. So we'd love to see you. And it's a Thursday morning. It lasts about an hour and five minutes. We'll get you out on time so you can get back to work. Anyway, so of all the things to write on, why did you choose to write on the topic of meaning? What triggered this journey for you?
Arthur Brooks (07:18):
What triggered the journey was when I came back to academia in 2019, I found a world in crisis, quite frankly. I left in 2008, and when I left in 2008, academia, college life was happier than ordinary life. People would be make their friends, they would experiment with crazy ideas, they would fall in love. All the stuff that you and I did when we were in our late teens and early 20s, that was the business of being a young adult.
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And when I came back 11 years later, I found triple the rate of depression, double the rate of anxiety, twice the level of loneliness, more substance abuse, more addiction. And I said, "Well, that's why God put me back here, actually. That's why he put me back here is to actually figure out what's going on and find a solution to it. " So I went on what amounted to a listening tour. I'm a data guy. I mean, I'm a social scientist and I do big data analyses, but I started listening to people and saying, "So what gives? How are you living and what's wrong?" And I started to hear the same theme over and over and over again, which is that I don't know the meaning of my life. My life feels meaningless. I don't know what I'm meant to do. And that word meaning kept coming up again and again and again.
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And sure enough, Andy, it turns out that there was an explosion of unhappiness of misery after about 2008, 2009, and it was exactly the same time that people became unable to articulate the meaning of their life, that meaninglessness had exploded. And so I said, "Okay, I get it. This is why I'm here. I need to do basically three things." What is the meaning? What does meaning mean? Why is it harder to find and how do I have to teach people how to live differently so that they can actually find it? And that's what this book is. It's a six-part plan to finding the meaning of life in the next six months.
Andy Stanley (09:01):
And it's so interesting. We're going to jump into the details, but it's so interesting that you would even have to write a book about this. Again, sort of the way you think about the way we grew up, I don't even remember asking the question, but I get the question and I understand why people ask it. And anyway, so jumping in, you suggest that meaning is made up of three components, coherence, purpose, and significance. Unpack those any way ou weant to
Arthur Brooks (09:31):
Yeah
Andy Stanley (09:31):
and talk about that formula,
Arthur Brooks (09:33):
yeah
Andy Stanley (09:33):
because this is amazing.
Arthur Brooks (09:34):
Yeah. Psychologists actually have been trying to define it. And it turns out that you will feel that you understand your life's meaning, whether you can articulate it or not. If you have an answer to three questions, why do things happen the way they do? All things are happening around us all the time. Why are they happening? Now, maybe your answer to that is because that's God's will. Maybe your answer to that is something about science. Maybe your answer is something about conspiracy theories. All of those are coherence questions. The second is purpose. Why am I doing what I'm doing? What are the goals and direction in my life? If you don't have goals and direction in your life, your life's going to be meaningless. And the third is significance, which is why does my life matter and to whom? Now, this is one of the reasons that serious Christian people have such a strong sense of meaning in their life typically.
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They believe that things happen the way they do because of God's will. Their goal and purpose is getting to heaven, man. And the significance is that my life is significant because I'm a child of God and my relationships point to that. But lots of people who don't have that or who are very tenuous in their faith or they're weak in their faith, these are the ones who are actually struggling. And it turns out what I found in the book is that there's something in our culture, in our society, in our economy that's systematically weakening our ability to answer those questions as he is making us literally use our brains wrong.
Andy Stanley (10:58):
Wow. So coherence, purpose, and significance. So let me jump into what ... Again, I'm trying to reflect back what I hear when I have these conversations. The whole idea of what seems like random events that happened to me, that happened in my family, that happened in the world. And again, to your point, and suddenly I find myself trying to make sense of just ... I think the best word is randomness. And you address this directly in the book. You write, I love the statement. We naturally resist this randomness. In other words, there's something in all of us that wants it to make sense. And even the person that decides it doesn't make sense is acknowledging they want it to make sense. So there's something in us that thinks this should make sense. And then you write, this is great. Life feels meaningless. This is so true.
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Life feels meaningless when you see it as totally random and incoherent. You feel powerless and utterly irrelevant in an oppressive universe thrown about by dumb and blind forces. So the person that is sitting in that, you make the case, it's an easy case to make, but you make it so well that if you're sitting in that, you're going to have a pretty much impossible time finding meaning. So dig us out of that hole a little bit and then we'll move on because
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This is a
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Big part.
Arthur Brooks (12:18):
Life feels really random. It really does. It feels like we're being thrown from thing to thing and you know the stock market and the war and the media. And who knows? I might go to the doctor and the doctor's got to test. You just don't know. It's all random. But here's the point. There is some intelligence behind this. We know there's some intelligence behind it. We just don't know exactly how it works. No one sees God, as St. John, the apostle says. I mean, we don't know the mind of God. That's the whole point. And that's one of the reasons that serious Christian people, they can say things feel random. They really do. But I have faith. And the fact is that I put myself in God's hands. I submit to the will of God, understanding that he knows what it is and I don't.
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That's unbelievably comforting. It's like being a little child again. That's why they said what the Bible says. You got to be like a little child because it feels incoherent actually, even though it doesn't. Now it's funny because my dad and I used to talk about this a lot. My dad had a PhD in biostatistics. My dad was a serious scientist and he understood randomness, man. He really did. And he believed that God actually created these distributions of events and unusual events could actually happen. So he believed in that there were statistical probabilities in the universe, but that's what he believed was part of God's genius. Wow. He was serious about his faith as a matter of fact. So there's lots and lots of different ways to see this, but the truth of the matter is that we need to make our own will uniform with God's will if we're going to have a sense of the true coherence of life.
Andy Stanley (13:52):
So is there a way to find coherence without faith?
Arthur Brooks (13:56):
It's very hard thing to do. Now, some people do pretty well by actually getting really well versed in science. And the truth is I have faith and science. I think I believe in the creator and the creation. I marvel in both. I'm kind of like an art historian who knows about Picasso's paintings and about Picasso the man. And I know that you're not going to find evidence of Picasso in the painting. You actually have to have a different kind of knowledge, which is why my faith actually bolsters my understanding of science. But the truth is, people who have faith, they do better.
Andy Stanley (14:28):
And so have you found even in the college environment and a graduate school environment that the quest for meaning or this dissatisfaction with what just seems randomness drives people to faith? Because I think we both would say we've met people that felt like they had it all put together and life was coherent and then they were blindsided by something that seems so random and it undermined their faith. What do you do with that?
Arthur Brooks (14:54):
Now, typically what happens with that is that things will undermine their faith because they feel so random, but ultimately they learn something from that. So what you find is that about in 90% of the cases or more than 90% of cases where something feels random and really unfortunate that people grow from the experience. So what you find is that's usually a temporary phenomenon in people's lives where you have a death of a spouse, somebody gets ill, a child dies, God forbid. And these types of things at the very beginning you say, how you rail at the heavens. This is C.S. Lewis's problem of pain. And it's interesting because the great biblical tale of how people come to understand that, of course, is the book of Job. And Job is a man who is completely righteous and God tests Job with all sorts of misfortunes that he does not understand that feel completely random.
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I mean, the things that are just going to run over him and they're awful. And in Job 1:21, by the way, he says what he's supposed to say, which is that the Lord gives and the Lord has taken away, blessed be the name of the Lord. So you know where he's going with this. But by the end, in chapter 38, I'm telling a clergyman, so I'm bringing Kohl's to Newcastle by acting. I'm on your-
Andy Stanley (16:09):
But I will not try to get in your lane. Trust me,
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Keep
(16:11):
Going.
Arthur Brooks (16:11):
But in chapter 38, that's when Job talks to the whirlwind and God actually dains to talk to Job himself and Job interrogates God and he says, "Look, I'm your boy. I did everything you wanted. I was righteous in every way. And you took away my kids and you took away my family and you took away my livestock and you took away my living and my reputation. What gives?" And the Lord says to Job, "It's a mystery. You can't understand." And here's the great gift because he says, "Look, if you're so smart, then before I tell you why you suffered, tell me why I created the heavens and the earth," which is kind of sarcastic and funny in its own way. But the whole point is basically this, even in the mystery of misfortune in suffering, that's when we can actually find our true selves. And by the way, we worship a man's suffering, what hubris, what nerve that we should think that we won't or that we deserve not to.
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And that's an important thing.
Andy Stanley (17:12):
The way I say it is when I touch on the problem of pain, I say, Christians don't believe in a God who doesn't allow bad things to happen to good people. Christians have never believed in that God. What we believe is stranger, we believe that the worst possible thing happened to the best possible person. So that is the context and the framework for our belief system.
Arthur Brooks (17:38):
Yes.
Andy Stanley (17:39):
And then it's so interesting, you brought up Job. So don't accuse me of bringing Bible verses into the podcast since you brought it up. But it's so interesting that his friends are the ones that are trying to piece to this whole thing together. Job, we're going to help you make sense of this. You must have done something wrong. We're going to piece it together. And finally, Job is like, "You know what? I don't feel the need to piece all of this together and to understand it. I'm going to trust and move forward." And I just want to piggyback on something you said. As a pastor, I have seen what you just referred to work out in the most amazing, amazing ways. In fact, my faith has never been strengthened by people who have wrinkle-free lives,
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But my faith has been extraordinarily strengthened by watching people who walk through the valley of the shadow of death and their faith sustains them. And on the other side, just as you said, there is the unpredictable, the unprecedented, in some cases miraculous, not that they receive a miracle, but something comes out on the other side because of their confidence in God through it. And that's why I brought it up because I grew up in church. I've never not believed. So I wondered for the person who's outside of faith system, who struggles with transcendence, which you talk a lot about in the book, it's so good, how do they, again, come back to these three things, coherence, purpose, and significance. And I guess what you're saying is you've got to have all three to have meaning. What you rested on in terms of making sense out of life, you figure that out.
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But at some point, these three things are critical to meaning. Is that true? Have I got that right?
Arthur Brooks (19:20):
Absolutely. And one more note on suffering. Can I do a little tiny bit of neuroscience, Andy?
Andy Stanley (19:24):
Just have at it.
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And I'll
(19:26):
Pretend like I understand. Go slow.
Arthur Brooks (19:29):
(19:29):
Same thing. So there's a theory of the brain that suggests in modern neuroscience that the two halves of the brain do very different things. The right half of the brain is where you answer the why questions of the meaning of your life. And the left half is where you do what and how to questions. It's the complicated questions of getting from here to there and doing your work is the whole thing. But here's where it gets really interesting. When you're suffering, when you're unhappy, the right side of your brain is more active. This comes from the work of these guys at the University of Wisconsin and Madison. They show, for example, that the right side of the brain is super active. And so the left side of your face is more active when you're experiencing a lot of negative emotions. In other words, suffering illuminates the part of your brain that you need to answer the why questions of your life.
Andy Stanley (20:16):
It forces you there.
Arthur Brooks (20:17):
It does. It does. It opens up the side of your brain that you actually need. So your brain is working in the way that it's supposed to for you to understand the meaning of your life, most especially in your darkest moments, which is why, not coincidentally, people always say, "Yeah, I really think I understood the meaning of my life after that bad thing happened to me and I didn't die, for example." That's why people always have these incredible experiences through suffering and pain.
Andy Stanley (20:44):
Wow. All right. I could stay there for the rest of the time, but I want to talk ... There's a couple of other big ideas and they're all related. Talk a little bit about ... I love this. One of the most practical ideas in the book in terms of getting some handles on this is you talk about the distinction between the me self and the I self. Can you talk a little bit about that? I thought this was great.
Arthur Brooks (21:04):
Yeah. One of the things that you find for people who are trying to find the meaning of their life, they're staring at themselves too much. And part of the reason is because we're modern culture and mother nature, they tell you, they lie to you a little bit. Mother nature lies a lot. Mother nature says, "I'll make you happy. Go make more money. I'll make you happy. Do something you shouldn't do. Drink that thing. Go pal around with that person." And you know perfectly it's the wrong thing to do and she's lying to you. Mother nature's lying to you under the circumstances. And one of the lies that she tells you is by focusing on yourself that you'll actually become happier. And that's actually wrong. And so one of the things I talk about is this concept of transcendence. If you can transcend yourself by looking up to God, if you can transcend yourself by serving other people, the focus goes away from you and you start to sense and understand the meaning of your life.
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Because once again, the right half of your brain actually becomes more active. We're wonderfully made. God has a plan in all of this. But we learn in the gospel that it's better to give than it is to receive and that we should love the Lord our God with all our soul and all our heart and all our mind and all our strength and to love our neighborhoods ourself. That's the secret of happiness. That's the secret of meaning right there because those are forms of transcendence where you can transcend yourself outward and upward. And that's what we need to do. The I self is looking out with awe at the world. The me self is staring in the mirror.
Andy Stanley (22:33):
The reason I love the terminology is I know when I'm doing one or the other. And to think of this in terms of a strategy, when I catch myself doing the one, when I'm totally focused on me, and am I getting that right? The me self is
Arthur Brooks (22:50):
The
Andy Stanley (22:50):
Mirror,
Arthur Brooks (22:50):
Right? It's the language of William James, the great philosopher and the father of psychology who taught here at Harvard. And he was a great Christian. He was a serious Christian his whole life. And he said, God wants me to look out at his marvelous creation, not to look always in at myself. You got to look at yourself sometimes. You got to make sure your tie is straight for Pete's sake. You got to make sure that you know how you're driving so you don't crash into somebody. You have to know if you're doing a good job at work, but most of your time, you should be marveling at the creation and then you'll find the meaning of your own life.
Andy Stanley (23:22):
So in that section, I pull this out. You referenced some earlier research you came across. And of course this would be interesting to me that people who give to charities tend to get more confident and less depressed and less anxious by giving to charities. And this is what you're talking about. Suddenly I've shifted my focus.
Arthur Brooks (23:43):
Yeah. Yeah. What you've done is if you witnessed yourself solving a problem when you're giving to somebody else. By the way, there's a really good study that shows that when you give money to charity, you get better looking. I kid you not.
Andy Stanley (23:56):
Wow.
Arthur Brooks (23:56):
Yeah, it's a great study. It actually has these couples that come into the lab and it's a man and woman. And some have been married for a long time, some are just dating. And the psychologist says, okay, here's how it works. I'm going to give you, sir, to the man, a bunch of change. I'm going to put it in your pocket coins and you got to walk down this little path and my colleague's going to wait for you at the other building and you get to keep the change and go home. Now, what they don't know is that when they're walking down the path, a homeless guy is going to come out and panhandled the couple. And so, and this is part of the experiment. The homeless guy's part of the experiment. They get to the other place and they say, "Okay, did you give money to the homeless man, sir?" And then he turns to the wife and says, "How much do you like him right now?" And it turns out that the more money the husband gave to the homeless man, the more his wife likes him.
(24:43):
So news that we guys can use.
Andy Stanley (24:48):
But in general, no matter how evil a person may be in their heart, there is something transcendent about even seeing a person. When somebody is that generous or that sacrificial, there's something in everybody that looks up and thinks, wow,
Arthur Brooks (25:03):
Yeah
Andy Stanley (25:04):
That's amazing. Okay. So this is every once in a while, I forget that this is a leadership podcast. So let me ask a leadership question.
Arthur Brooks (25:10):
yeah
Andy Stanley (25:10):
Real quick. So in the corporate world, corporate environment, and you've kind of touched on this, is operating out of the me self, how would we recognize that? And what would this look like at work? And whether it's a performance review or middle of a crisis or pressure, give us again, some handles within that context.
Arthur Brooks (25:29):
Yeah. So that's the concept of servant leadership that you talk about a lot that I talk a lot about that we all talk a lot about. Servant leadership is I self leadership, is looking out at other people, is really serving other people. Now, Tom Asaquinas said that to love is to will the good of the other as other. Now there's a lot in there, right? He didn't say it's any kind of feeling. Love isn't a feeling. It's a commitment. And so to will the good of another person as the other person. And that's what really great leadership is all about in the I self. That's what Jim Collins calls level five leaders. These are the people, they're relentlessly tough but humble and humility is about looking at other people and looking out for their good. Now sometimes when you're looking out for the good of other people, you have to say goodbye to somebody.
(26:16):
You have to do something really, really hard, which is why compassion is so critically important. Compassion is not the same thing as empathy. Empathy is feeling somebody else's pain. Compassion is actually being able to act for the good of those that you serve, not withstanding your pain or somebody else's pain. Compassion is doing the hard thing, which is why you have to be a compassionate father to teenagers. You're not trying to be their buddy. You're actually trying to be their dad is what it comes down to. So that's what it comes down to is actually thinking, how can I put myself in the place of the other? How can I be humble enough to be loving that other person? And there's a lot that can go into it. There we Christian leaders that we have a real advantage. I've been a CEO, you've been running a big organization for a long time, and I know you've had to do hard things, but I'm going to make a prediction, Andy, about how you prepare for doing a really hard thing.
(27:04):
I bet you that you're on your knees praying for the person that you're about to give bad news to.
Andy Stanley (27:09):
That's exactly right. And if my heart isn't broken over what they're about to experience, regardless of why they're about to experience, I'm not ready to deliver the information.
Arthur Brooks (27:20):
Right!
Andy Stanley (27:22):
If I'm angry, then I'm not ready. And I had a counselor years ago named Steve. He said, "You need to pray that you get to the place where you feel toward that person, what your heavenly Father feels toward that person, then you're ready." And I'm like, "Well, that's going to take a while." He's like, "Well, get to work. Otherwise, you're going to go in with guns blazing."
Arthur Brooks (27:47):
Yeah, no, the love is always the best thing that you can actually bring to your leadership journey, but remember the difference between compassion and empathy because empathy will hamstring you. Empathy is-
Andy Stanley (27:59):
What do you mean by that?
Arthur Brooks (27:59):
So compassion has four parts to it. Number one is understanding the problem at hand. Dealing with a hard problem, you have to understand the problem. Two is feeling the pain of the people affected enough that you understand why you have to act. Three is having the capacity and the intellect to know what needs to be done, and four is having the courage to get it done. Compassion is a four-part process.
Andy Stanley (28:23):
So go through those again.That's amazing. Those four words.
Arthur Brooks (28:26):
Yeah. So number one is understanding of the problem.
Andy Stanley (28:29):
Understanding, right.
Arthur Brooks (28:30):
Number two is feeling enough of the pain to feel urgency. Gotcha. Number three is having the intellect and the sophistication to know what needs to be done. And number four is having the courage to do it. Those are the four parts of compassion. Empathy is just part two. All it is is part two, separated from everything else. And so if all you have is the pain of somebody who's going to be affected, you won't be able to fire anybody if you need to. You won't be able to give somebody a hard truth. You won't be able to say to your spouse, "I don't like how this is working here. We need to change this. " And honesty is a form of love. The problem is that if all you have is empathy, then honesty very often falls by the wayside.
Andy Stanley (29:12):
Wow. Wow. And we've all seen misapplications of what was considered compassion that actually made things worse or let things go on longer than they needed to. Okay. Changing gears. This came as a little bit of a surprise. You devote a whole chapter in this book to beauty. You warn about our fascination with outrage and cynicism and ugliness, and we've talked a little bit about that. And then you invite us in spite of all that, that's just the reality of life. To focus on beauty. Why is that important and how does that relate to essentially finding the meaning of our lives? And then we'll wrap this up, but
Arthur Brooks (29:48):
Yeah
Andy Stanley (29:48):
This is important.
Arthur Brooks (29:50):
Our world is full of beauty that we're missing right now. And a big part of this book is about the misuse of technology. The reason that meaninglessness shot up after 2008 Right. It's because that's when everybody got a smartphone, Andy. I mean, there's no big coincidence here. That's when social media came onto all of the apps and people were glued to their screens. The best way to miss God's creation is to be staring into your phone. That's the best way to do it. Now, why does it matter that we actually have beauty in our lives? The reason is because that illuminates the right hemisphere of the brain where we can actually ascertain meaning. And that's what I believe why God gave us the gift of beauty in our lives. The gift of box music. The man who said, "The aim and final end of all music is nothing less than the glorification of God and the edification of the soul who wrote the greatest music arguably that ever existed is so beautiful.
(30:41):
How could we miss God's gift like this or the beauty that's all around us? Right now, I'm sitting in my office in Boston and there's beautiful snowflakes falling down. It's marched. Why is it snowing?" But the whole point is that natural beauty is beautiful. And then of course, there's moral beauty. When we stand in awe of Mother Teresa of Calcutta, somebody who gives her life for those less fortunate than her, those three types of beauty are God's gift to us to help us understand the natural meaning in our lives.
Andy Stanley (31:14):
Wow. And that's convicting because I don't pause enough to participate in that. And I think that was maybe why that stood out to me. As we wrap this up, somebody's listening today. A lot of our podcast listeners can probably identify with our conversation about faith. For some of them, it's like, "Yeah, I'm locked in. " Others are like, "Yeah, I need to get back to that. And yeah, my spouse has been, and I need to get my kids in. " Just give us a starting place as we wrap up. The question I wrote is, if a leader feels off in terms of meaning, they're busy, they're successful, but there's just kind of that empty space and not feeling fulfilled and they realize it's not the next car, it's not the next vacation. Is there one small shift that they could make that would start to change the trajectory as it relates to these three critical components?
(32:07):
And I wanna read them back again because I think it's so important. Coherence, purpose, and significance.What's a first step,
Arthur Brooks (32:14):
Yeah
Andy Stanley (32:14):
A baby step?
Arthur Brooks (32:15):
The first step for almost everybody today in our crazy times, our busy times, our hectic and distracting times, is to actually start getting some more silence in our lives. Now what that means is that, and by the way, that used to be normal. I mean, I guarantee you that great grandpa Stanley didn't come home to great grandma and say, "Honey, I had a panic attack behind the mule today." And that's because his brain was working the way God intended his brain to work, right? Because he had a lot of white space in his life. He had a lot of silence in his life behind that mule. I guarantee you, that was boring a lot of the time, but his life wasn't boring. The truth of the matter is that we're so trying so hard to distract ourselves and we're trying so hard to be bored that we're actually missing our lives.
(33:02):
And so what I recommend is that everybody have more time of silence, that people have more time of prayer, that people have more time, not just filling it up with talk and distraction and YouTube shorts and all kinds of nonsense. And so one of the things that I recommend to everybody listening to us, if they have any kind of a faith in God, is that you don't just go to church when there's something going on and the drums are playing and the preacher's preaching.
Andy Stanley (33:29):
Careful now. Yep. I know what you mean. Keep going. Keep going.
Arthur Brooks (33:34):
But you spend more time in silence on your knees in a conversation with God. Yep. I strongly recommend that. And what I recommend is starting with just 10 minutes a day. 10 minutes a day, just thinking about a question like, why am I alive?
(33:48):
A question like, for what would I happily give my life right now? Just contemplating those questions and offering these up to our heavenly Father and just saying, "Lord, speak like Samuel. Speak. Your servant is listening." And then make it 15 minutes a day and then accompany it with something like the Jesus prayer, that the ancient, the Russian Orthodox monks that they'll say, "Lord Jesus Christ, son of the living God, have mercy on me as sinner." Do that a little bit and just get into these spaces of silence and quiet and let your brain work just like good old great grandpa's brain used to work. And here's the thing, it's not that you're going to find meaning. If you have enough silence, meaning's going to hunt you down. Meaning's going to find you.
Andy Stanley (34:34):
Oh, wow. And I will just add to that or certainly not to try to take away, I'm tempted to just stop there is to say for the person who finds that to be strange, let me make you a promise and Arthur, you can second this or correct it. I've never met anyone who did what you just suggested at any level in any form who came back later and said, "That was a complete waste of my time." Ever, never. As strange as it was, as uncomfortable as it was, as what I would hear initially is Andy, those were the longest 10 minutes of my life. I'm like, "Well, isn't that great because the rest of your life is flying by." If nothing else, you just learned how to slow time down, but stick with that habit. No one ever, ever regrets that. So I think that's great advice.
Arthur Brooks (35:31):
Amen.
Andy Stanley (35:32):
This whole book is fantastic. It's practical in business for leaders, for parents. I mean, it could just go on and on. Thank you so much for taking the time to write it. Unfortunately, that's all the time we have. So thank you for joining us, Arthur, and all of our podcast listeners. Thanks for listening. And before we leave, we do have one ask, and that is to subscribe to the podcast. When you subscribe, you help us grow the audience, which allows us to keep improving and bringing you great guests like the one you heard from today, and great content to help you as a leader go further, faster. And also, be sure to visit the andystanley.com website where you can download the Leadership Podcast application guide that includes a summary of this discussion plus some questions for reflection or for group discussion. And join us next week for the fun part, reverb, the reverb episode where Suzy and I will dig even deeper on this topic on the Andy Stanley Leadership Podcast.