Revisited: Your Instincts Know What You Want with Happiness Expert Arthur Brooks

About this episode

Team Simon here! A Bit of Optimism is on a short break, and brand-new episodes return October 27. Until then, we're revisiting a few conversations we keep coming back to. This week it's Arthur Brooks, a longtime friend of Simon's and one of his favorite people to talk to. Have you ever felt like you're falling behind? Everyone else seems to have a plan, a timeline and the next rung on the ladder lined up. Any detour, like a gap year, a pivot or a job that isn't quite right, feels like losing ground. Arthur Brooks thinks you're running the wrong race. Chasing a finish line is one of the surest ways to end up unhappy. He argues that happiness lives in the process, not the outcome. Arthur is a bestselling author and teaches one of the most popular classes at Harvard Business School: a whole course on happiness. He lives what he teaches, too. He played French horn professionally from 19 to 31 and then reinvented himself as a behavioral scientist. After that, he became president of a Washington think tank without ever having raised a dollar. When he left that job with no idea what came next, he walked the Camino de Santiago to find out. In this conversation, Arthur explains how to