The Four False Idols

As Arthur Brooks sees it, our brains mislead us into chasing things that feel good but don’t result in sustained happiness. Those things are often what he calls the four false idols: money, power, pleasure, and fame. Like drugs, they tickle our dopamine receptors, but unlike drugs they’re socially acceptable because they’re all markers of success. Yet a success addiction, like a drug addiction, will still leave you unhappy in the long run. “Nobody is ever like, ‘Dude, you did five grams of cocaine today, congratulations on that, that’s a preternaturally high dose!’” Brooks tells me, with gusto. “But ‘You made a billion dollars!’ is sort of the same thing.”

Instead of chasing those idols, Brooks advises that we focus on what he calls the four pillars of our “happiness portfolio”: faith, family, friends, and work. The happiest people, according to Brooks, adhere to a belief system that helps them transcend their narrow perspective and “understand life’s bigger than the boring sitcom that is me, me, me.” They have deep family ties and strong friendships. And they do work that serves others and allows them to earn their success. 

Clay Skipper writing in GQ

Are you a self-objectifier?

Are you a self-objectifier in your job or career? Ask yourself a few questions, and answer them honestly.

• Is your job the biggest part of your identity? Is it the way you introduce yourself, or even understand yourself?

• Do you find yourself sacrificing love relationships for work? Have you forgone romance, friendship, or starting a family because of your career?

• Do you have trouble imagining being happy if you were to lose your job or career? Does the idea of losing it feel a little like death to you?

If you answered affirmatively to any or all of these, recognize that you will never be satisfied as long as you objectify yourself. Your career or job should be an extension of you, not vice versa.

Arthur C. Brooks writing in The Atlantic

Love is specific

Love is about bottomless empathy, born out of the heart’s revelation that another person is every bit as real as you are. And this is why love, as I understand it, is always specific. Trying to love all of humanity may be a worthy endeavor, but, in a funny way, it keeps the focus on the self, on the self’s own moral or spiritual well-being. Whereas, to love a specific person, and to identify with his or her struggles and joys as if they were your own, you have to surrender some of yourself. 

Jonathan Franzen 

Being a selfish jerk doesn’t get you ahead

“I was surprised by the consistency of the findings. No matter the individual or the context, disagreeableness did not give people an advantage in the competition for power — even in more cutthroat, ‘dog-eat-dog’ organizational cultures,” said Berkeley professor Cameron Anderson.

The researchers found those who scored high on disagreeable traits were not more likely to have attained power than those who were generous, trustworthy and generally nice.

That’s not to say that jerks don’t reach positions of power. It’s just that they don’t get ahead faster than others, and being a jerk simply doesn’t help, Anderson said. That’s because any power boost they get from being intimidating is offset by their poor interpersonal relationships.

Read more in Berkeley News