'Real friends are useless': Arthur Brooks on true happiness and goals for your tomorrow

“Real friends are useless” means that the friendship doesn’t benefit you in a materialistic or transactional way. Hence, not a transactional friendship. Real friendship is about emotional support, honesty, and intimacy, or as he said, love. I’m blessed to have real friends and this is a great reminder to renew these relationships 🥰

Real friends are the “useless” people in your life. The one that doesn’t have materialistic things to offer or connections that are helpful for one’s career, the one you just enjoy spending time with. Too often people “connect” or move on based on “transactional value”. Time and even relationships have become commodities.

Real friends are very hard to come by…so if you have one you are a very lucky person.

By far, one of the BEST, most relevant discussions I’ve listened to in AGES. And it made total sense to me. Bless you both - and kudos to MSNBC for giving 12 minutes of airtime to a discussion unrelated to politics.

I love my dog. I truly really love him so much it fills my heart and makes me happy.

My formula is: Pursue truth no matter how unpleasant it is. If your happiness is based on errors, it will collapse sooner or later; see the flashy and photogenic lifestyles and personality as the blind, mindless, cultish worship of imagery over content; be satisfied with minimal material and social needs; ultimately you are your own best friend; have a strong sense of what justice and fairness are (reduces chances of exploitation by others) last but not least - help, heal, and uplift those in most need of it.

I’m happy because I’ve been married to the same woman for over 40 years.

What about people who are only happy when left alone to do their own single person activities? I'm only happy when left alone to do my own thing, ALONE. We're all different.

'Friends will always let you down" : my mother. It sounds miserable but it is the opposite - it frees you from disappointment and bitterness. There will always be times when you think you need something, and your friend is going some other way.

"real friends are useless..." so awesomely true. My best friend is as close as anyone could be and yet... totally useless.

"If I had a prayer, it would be this: 'God spare me from the desire for love, approval, and appreciation. Amen.'" ~Byron Katie. This quote changed my life forever. My anxiety plummeted, and I felt a weight lift off my shoulders. We run into problems when we expect other people, especially friends/family, to treat us a certain way. We cannot look to others for peace, happiness. Side note: I only heard Byron Katie on Oprah's radio show years back. It's too bad she didn't have her back on. I think it's too much for a lot of people. We are so addicted to suffering that we think we must suffer or there is something wrong with us. It's the other way around, but most of us don't see life this way.

It's all about Love. Love, Light and Life are all the same frequency. If you are in the frequency of love, you will also be happy because you are filled with LIGHT and LIFE. Friends, relatives, faith all bring that out in us, teaching us to love unconditionally until one day we are able to look at ourselves and achieve full unconditional SELF LOVE. That's what this is really about. Thanks for a great 12 minutes!

As a Taoist, I applaud this book and agree with all four of the principles of happiness as discussed. Amen. 🇬🇧

I go for a 2 or 3 mile walk every day, I never take my phone but I see a lot of people on my walk glued to theirs. I use it to clear my head, go over what I want to do that day and just take in the day. There's an author Harville Hendrix, Ph.D. that I read when I was going through a failed engagement after 8 years of dating. It's really a great series of books that if you're interested in why we hook up with the one we do and why we often fail and also how to hopefully keep it together with the one you love.

Respect to Arthur for making it through talking to her for 45 minutes before the interview and respect to her for recognizing the burden of that.

Buddha’s eightfold path contains right action, right speech and right occupation. Totally in alignment with this conversation. Amen. 🇬🇧

This guy really is like: "my students tell me what makes them happy, and I tell them they are wrong." He rejects the idea that different people have different things that makes them happy. He says satisfaction comes through struggling to accomplish something, but for many people that's not a satisfying feeling, that's just doing something hard that they need to do to survive or keep a job, and happiness for them might come from taking time to clear their mind so they can reflect and recharge. He says happiness comes from interacting with people, but for people who have been abused all their life trying to forge interactions with people might be overwhelmingly stressful with no tangible benefits in sight. I agree that his assessment of what corporate media has told us we need to pursue to make us happy is problematic. But his rejection of what different people might need to make them happy is problematic. For some, following this guy's recommendations would make them stressed out and miserable.

The self help industry is a gaslighting mess.

The most Profound line ....'REAL FRIENDS ARE USELESS' ....YOU ARE WITH THEM FOR THE LOVE OF THEM & NOT TO GAIN ANYTHING MATERIALISTIC ...! .......A very deep deep line indeed !

What a great guy, and message!