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Author Arthur Brooks inspires science of happiness through personal journey: “You can do the work”
Bestselling author and columnist Arthur Brooks is inspiring people through his writing to embrace happiness.
The behavioral scientist, who is also a professor at Harvard University, started researching happiness because he too wanted to be happy.
“I always kind of viewed happiness like astronomy,” he said. “An astronomer doesn’t think he is going to change the stars. He is going to study the stars and that’s how I looked at happiness.”
He credits his wife for helping to change his viewpoint when he was in his 50s, saying he is 60% happier than he was five years ago.
“My wife said ‘It is kind of ironic that you study happiness but you are not a happy person’ … She said, ‘Why don’t you see if you can change your own’ … I changed my habits and then I started teaching a class on it at Harvard and my life started to change. It’s really true,” Brooks said.
Brooks’ work has inspired the likes of Oprah, actor Matthew McConaughey, former Presidents Barack Obama and George W. Bush, along with people all over the country, including David Cornbrooks from Arlington, Virginia.
Cornbrooks said Brooks’ writing helped him find meaning in the face of a heartbreaking diagnosis. A little over two years ago, Cornbrooks found out he had stage four lung cancer.
“I frankly, I didn’t know that you could get lung cancer without having smoked before,” Cornbrooks said. “I don’t think I dealt with that initial shock right away. I kind of went back to my regular life, probably denial.”
Cornbrooks said he had the same reaction as a high school senior when his father died. Years later, he struggled with those feelings as a father with two young kids.
“I think before the diagnosis, I cried maybe a handful of times in my whole life. One of which was right after my dad passed away, like in the hospital,” Cornbrooks said. “I’ve cried probably a dozen or more times alone, with my wife, you know, around my kids and I think I live a deeper, you know, more rich lifestyle now.”
He credits Brooks’ writing for helping him through this time in his life and said his piece “The Red Pill of Humility” in “The Atlantic” resonated with him.
“So, humility, I think has been the one word and concept that he has written about that has resonated the most and that’s sort of the full acceptance of the truth about yourselves,” Cornbrooks said.
Brooks said Cornbrooks is turning his terrible diagnosis filled with pain and sadness into inspiration and a lesson for others.
“‘The Red Pill of Humility’ is that we don’t want to be humble … Mother Nature really doesn’t care if we are happy. Mother Nature wants us to survive and pass on our genes and so she imprints these behaviors in us that are not optimal, that are not the best,” Brooks said. “Like make yourself look better than other people, focus only on yourself and when you fight against that you find that the secret to being fully alive, the secret to becoming a happier person is sometimes doing the opposite.”
Brooks said he’s done a lot of research on loneliness. When someone feels lonely, the immediate cure is often to go find someone else who is lonely and relieve their isolation.
“It’s amazing,” he said. “It’s the same thing as anything else. If you want more of something, give it away. Mother Nature doesn’t tell you that, but it is a cosmic truth.”
While Brooks explains that feelings are associated with happiness, happiness itself is not a feeling.
“Happiness is more tangible, which is great news,” he said. “You can do the work. Happiness is a combination of enjoyment of your life, satisfaction with your accomplishments and a sense of the meaning of your existence.”
Enjoyment, satisfaction and meaning in life will increase a person’s well-being, Brooks said. He explained that meaning is a macronutrient, one element of happiness.
“Meaning is really why things happen the way they do, the goals and direction in your life and why your life matters.”
To think about meaning, Brooks suggests asking yourself two questions.
“Number one, what’s your answer to ‘why am I alive?’ The way to pass that test is to have an answer. The way to fail is to go ‘I don’t know.’ Second question, ‘for what would you gladly give your life on this day?’ If the answer is nothing, that is a problem. A sense of meaning is to have an affirmative answer that is written on your heart to those two questions.”
If people don’t know, Brooks said that’s good news because it tells you to go and search for the answers, “and a miracle will happen in life,” he said.
The International Brotherhood of Teamsters says workers at seven Amazon facilities will begin a strike Thursday morning in an effort by the union to pressure the e-commerce giant for a labor agreement during a key shopping period.
The Teamsters say the workers, who authorized walkouts in the past few days, are joining the picket line after Amazon ignored a Dec. 15 deadline the union set for contract negotiations. Amazon says it doesn’t expect any impact on its operations during what the union calls the largest strike against the company in U.S. history.
The Teamsters say they represent nearly 10,000 workers at 10 Amazon facilities, a small portion of the 1.5 million people Amazon employs in its warehouses and corporate offices.
Amazon is ranked No. 2 on the Fortune 500 list of the nation’s largest companies.
At a warehouse in the New York City borough of Staten Island, thousands of workers who voted for the Amazon Labor Union in 2022 and have since affiliated with the Teamsters. At the other facilities, employees – including many delivery drivers – have unionized with them by demonstrating majority support but without holding government-administered elections.
The strikes happening Thursday are taking place at an Amazon warehouse in San Francisco and six delivery stations in southern California, New York City, Atlanta and the Chicago suburb of Skokie, Illinois, according to the union’s announcement. Amazon workers at the other facilities are “prepared to join” them, the union said.
“Amazon is pushing its workers closer to the picket line by failing to show them the respect they have earned,” Teamsters General President Sean M. O’Brien said in a statement.
“If your package is delayed during the holidays, you can blame Amazon’s insatiable greed. We gave Amazon a clear deadline to come to the table and do right by our members. They ignored it,” he said.
The Seattle-based online retailer has been seeking to re-do the election that led to the union victory at the warehouse on Staten Island, which the Teamsters now represent. In the process, the company has filed a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the National Labor Relations Board.
Meanwhile, Amazon says the delivery drivers, which the Teamsters have organized for more than a year, aren’t its employees. Under its business model, the drivers work for third-party businesses, called Delivery Service Partners, who drop off millions of packages to customers everyday.
“For more than a year now, the Teamsters have continued to intentionally mislead the public – claiming that they represent ‘thousands of Amazon employees and drivers’. They don’t, and this is another attempt to push a false narrative,” Amazon spokesperson Kelly Nantel said in a statement. “The truth is that the Teamsters have actively threatened, intimidated, and attempted to coerce Amazon employees and third-party drivers to join them, which is illegal and is the subject of multiple pending unfair labor practice charges against the union.“
The Teamsters have argued Amazon essentially controls everything the drivers do and should be classified as an employer.
Some U.S. labor regulators have sided with the union in filings made before the NLRB. In September, Amazon boosted pay for the drivers amid the growing pressure.
NEW YORK — The Teamsters union is launching a strike against Amazon at numerous locations across the country, including in Maspeth, Queens.
The Teamsters are calling it the largest strike against Amazon in United States history, and it’s set to begin at 6 a.m. Thursday. In addition to New York City, workers will be joining picket lines in Atlanta, Southern California, San Francisco and Illinois.
In a video announcement released Wednesday night, workers voiced their frustrations.
“Us being strike ready means we’re fed up, and Amazon is clearly ignoring us and we want to be heard,” one worker says in the video.
“It’s really exciting. We’re taking steps for ourselves to win better conditions, better benefits, better wages,” another worker in the video says.
The union says it represents about 10,000 Amazon employees and that Amazon ignored a deadline to come to the table and negotiate. The $2 trillion company doesn’t pay employees enough to make ends meet, the union asserts.
At the height of the holiday season, many are wondering what this means for packages currently in transit.
Teamsters President Sean O’Brien said, “If your package is delayed during the holidays, you can blame Amazon’s insatiable greed.”
Amazon says Teamsters are misleading the public
An Amazon spokesperson says the Teamsters are misleading the public and do not represent any Amazon employees, despite any claims.
“The truth is that the Teamsters have actively threatened, intimidated, and attempted to coerce Amazon employees and third-party drivers to join them, which is illegal and is the subject of multiple pending unfair labor practice charges against the union,” the spokesperson said in a statement.
An Amazon representative says the company doesn’t expect operations to be impacted.
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