Speaker 1: Welcome back to the art of charm podcast, a show designed to help you communicate with power and become unstoppable on your path from hidden genius to influential leader. We know you have what it takes to reach your full potential, and that’s why each and every week Johnny and I share with you interviews and strategies to help you transform your life by unlocking your own unique X factor, whether you’re in sales, leadership, building client relationships, or looking for love you’re in the right place.

Speaker 2: You shouldn’t have to settle for anything less than extraordinary. AGA I’m really excited about today’s episode. I kind of feel like it is connected to the one we had just done with Paul bloom last week. And if you haven’t checked that out, please go back and do so. We talked to Paul bloom about sacrifice and suffering and meaning and what it takes in order to transform. And if you’ve been listening to this show, he will, you know, that suffering and sacrifice is just that it is a part of your transformation. The other part is the self-compassion that you’re going to need to go through that suffering and sacrifice to draw out the best within you.

Speaker 1: And let’s be honest, sometimes that suffering is caused by our inner critic. That self doubt, that fear that’s holding us back. And that’s why today we’re excited to unpack how we can develop the self-compassion necessary to overcome that inner critic and find that confidence to take action in our lives. Today, we are speaking with Dr. Kristin Neff. Dr. Neff is a pioneer in the field of self-compassion research and conducted the first empirical studies on self-compassion almost 20 years ago. She’s currently an associate professor of educational psychology at the university of Texas at Austin. And in addition to writing numerous academic articles and book chapters on the topic, she is the author of the latest book. Self-compassion the proven power of being kind to yourself and fierce self-compassion, which focuses on how to balance self-acceptance with the courage needed to make change log or the show Dr. Neff. We’re so excited to chat with you today about self-compassion.

Speaker 3: Oh, thank you so much for having

Speaker 1: Me, Johnny and I are huge fans of acceptance commitment therapy. We use it with our clients who are struggling with social anxiety and inner critic that keeps them from doing the things that they want to be doing. And what comes up a lot is self-compassion. And I’d love to hear your take on what is self-compassion. How do we define that scientifically? And then we’ll unpack, uh, how our listeners can use that in their daily lives.

Speaker 3: Great. Okay. Well, I mean, the easy way to think of self-compassion is simply turning compassion inward, treating yourself with the same kindness care or support that you would naturally show to a friend you cared about, but the scientific definition, at least my, my model, which I came up with about 20 years ago is that there’s actually three elements to make compassion. Self-compassion first is the kindness, which is kind of the most obvious, but also mindfulness. In other words, in order to give ourselves compassion, we need to be able to turn toward our pain. We can’t ignore it or shove it underneath. At the same time, we can exaggerate it and run away at the drama of what’s happening. We kind of need some perspective, which is offered by mindfulness too, that we can be kind to ourselves when we’re struggling. And then the third thing, which is what makes it compassion and not pity is other people, right? So compassion is isn’t inherently connected stands. It’s not like woe is me. It’s saying, Hey, I’m a human being. I struggle like everyone else. So those three elements together make up a state of self-compassion.

Speaker 1: And when it comes to scientifically speaking, how does self-compassion actually help improve our lives?

Speaker 3: Well, the research is pretty overwhelming at this point is I think almost 4,000 studies at last count, including dissertation. So there’s a lot of research and it shows basically it’s linked to reduce psychopathology. So less depression, less anxiety, less stress, less suicidal ideation, but also increased positive states of mind like happiness and life satisfaction. And that’s because of course, even though it’s aimed at suffering, it helps us reduce our suffering. When we care for ourselves, the feeling of being connected and, and kindness that arises with self-compassion is actually a positive emotion. It’s linked to a more coping and resilience. And in fact, one of the most powerful things that self compassion offers us is the ability to deal with difficult emotional situations without being overwhelmed. It’s like this, this armor we carry with us to life that actually helps us get through the tough stuff. Uh, it’s also linked to increased motivation, right? People, some people think self-compassion is letting yourself off the hook, going easy on yourself. Um, but of course, if you care about yourself, yourself, you’ll want to reach your goals. Not because you aren’t good enough as you are simply because you want to thrive and be happy. So it’s really it’s, um, it’s really amazing the literature on self-compassion and all the benefits it offers.

Speaker 1: Yeah. It’s counterintuitive. I think many in our audience would feel that being extra hard on yourself is how you achieve those goals and is how you push yourself past pain and discomfort. And self-compassion is insane in a lot of ways, especially amongst our male clients as being too soft on yourself and not pushing yourself hard enough to reach those goals. So it does definitely feel counterintuitive.

Speaker 3: Yeah, it is counter-intuitive and I think that’s because we, with, with our children is not. So counter-intuitive like, yes, if he used the paddle, you probably will motivate them to setting, get good grades. But we know now in the parenting literature that you’re probably gonna mess your kid up and cause all sorts of psychological problems. And then that encouragement support means not going easy on your kid. The saying, I believe in you, I want you to achieve, how can I help? That’s going to be more effective. And so the same with ourselves, yes. Self criticism does work. Wouldn’t do it if it didn’t, but again, at least to things like depression, anxiety undermines yourself, confidence. Um, it creates fear of failure. It can make you elite do things like procrastinate because you’re so afraid if you don’t meet your goals, you’re going to beat yourself up.

Speaker 3: So self-compassion is a more effective motivator, right? So again, you, you’re still motivated to achieve and do your very best. Like for instance, we teach this to athletes, top level athletes. They have to be at the best of that game, but if they miss a shot or they, you know, they blow game with, they just beat themselves up. It’s not going to help their performance. They have to say, okay, well it’s part of being an athlete. You know, you miss a shot. I’m just going to get back up on that horse and keep trying. It also allows us to learn from our failures in a way that self criticism doesn’t because it’s like, oh, okay, well, normal to fail. Well, what can I learn from it? And it’s actually more effective in that sense as well.

Speaker 2: I think that’s where the waters get a bit muddy that most people don’t really understand true. Self-compassion they, they see it as perhaps I need to treat myself, I need to do something special for myself. But for a lot of folks, it’s about giving themselves some space, listening to their inner critic and being able to, to navigate it, understand when that inner critic is beating themselves up and then having some tools to work with that inner inner critic. So because of those waters are a bit muddied and a lot of people don’t realize that self-compassionate is their key out of how they’re feeling and their de-motivation and where they feel burnout. What would be the warning signs or symptoms that self-compassion is something to, we need to start looking at?

Speaker 3: Uh, well basically if you’re depressed, if you’re stressed, if you’re free, if you’re anxious, if you’re basically anytime you’re suffering, the remedy is self-compassion right. It’s a way that we relate to any form of suffering in any moment. Um, you know, and it can take a variety of forms. Self-compassion is that desire to help oneself be well sometimes what you need to be well as a good old kick in the butt. Sometimes you need a, you know, to take a break. Sometimes you need to draw boundaries. Sometimes you need to protect yourself. Sometimes you need to rest really know from the outside can tell you what you need. Self compassion says, you know what? My needs are important, not more important, important than those of others, but at least as important, what do I need in this moment to get through and be at my best and be well and happy. And so once, so basically to answer your question, how do you know if you need it very simple tests, you can, you can notice how you talk to yourself when you’re struggling. And again, it’s not just failure or self criticism. Like how are you dealing with the pandemic for instance, or for some difficult situation and notice how you speak to yourself and say what I say this in the same kind of tone of voice to someone I really cared about. And at the answer is no, you probably need some self-compassion.

Speaker 2: I mean, age and I both grew up in very blue collar households. We had factory dads who motivation was a little bit more of a yelling and screaming to the house, which we’ve also picked up on. And I would say that we have learned to use that to, to motivate us. And for myself, the trick has always been when to learn, to let go of that anger as fuel and turn it into something more positive. At least that anger that, uh, that stress at the beginning has always been a good start. But if you allow it to drive you, it can, it can consume you.

Speaker 3: Yeah. So actually my latest work and my latest book is all about what I like to call fierce self-compassion. So compassion has two main forms of probably as more, but at least two main forms. One is kind of a tender, gentle form. This is our ability to be with ourselves as we are floss and all to be with pain and kind of a gentle, nurturing way. But sometimes compassion takes getting angry. You know, anger directed at the alleviation of suffering is very useful. You know, you, you, you should been an issue being with social injustice, for instance, the me too movement. This is the self-compassion movement. As women stand up and get angry and say, it’s not okay for you to treat me this way. So anger has a place in self-compassion. You know, really any behavior that’s used for the alleviation of suffering can be a type of compassionate response that I have a whole chapter about anger. Cause sometimes we think of anger as bad, or we’re supposed to like get over it or like be these peaceful people, you know, anger and motivates us. It makes us brave. It energizes us. It focuses us. It can be very useful. Now of course, the problem with anger is very easily. We, we lose ourselves and it becomes personal and we start causing harm as opposed to preventing harm. But again, if your aim is to prevent harm, anger could has a, is a very effective tool for that end can be anyway.

Speaker 1: Well, you mentioned at the start pity and we don’t want to get to a place of pitting ourselves. We want to stay motivated to reach our goal. So how does pity balance with self-compassion? Is there such thing as too much self-compassion

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Speaker 3: Yeah. So, you know, people ask me that in a way too much self-compassion is a bit of an oxymoron because of compassion is concerned with your well-being and you’re doing something that’s causing you harm. It’s no longer compassion. Right? So yeah, you might, you may think you’re being compassionate when you’re really just pitting yourself or feeling sorry for yourself or just, I really am not going to go into work today, even though in fact wouldn’t be good for you would be to go into work. Right. So compassion is kind of almost defined by the outcome. So it’s always aimed at the self’s wellbeing. Um, so penny, the, the big thing about pity is that it’s an isolated stance. So for instance, um, if I were to pity, you maybe ADA for your leaf blower situation, if I was to like, oh, I feel so sorry for you.

Speaker 3: You’d be like, you know, what, what, what, like this never happened to you. But if I tell you that, actually I was on Dan Harris’s show and I had a leaf blower incident of my own. I’ve been there then it’s like compassion. And is that actually, it’s true, by the way, I did have a leaf blower incident and that, that sense of connection, Hey, I’ve been there. This has happened to me. Or this could happen to me where we’re both human beings, bass actually, what makes it compassion? So that element of recognizing our shared humanity is actually essential and it helps us feel connected to others in our suffering where self-pity makes us feel isolated from others. And that isolation just makes things a lot worse.

Speaker 2: I watched that Dan Harrison,

Speaker 3: Did you, by at least four episodes, we kind

Speaker 2: Of used it as

Speaker 3: A prop.

Speaker 1: I’m in the clear now on the leaf blower. And thank you for that shared humanity moment there. I think the other part of the balance that can be tricky is many of us find it a lot easier to be compassionate towards others. So when we think about friends and family members, even strangers, we can have compassion for. And as Johnny was saying earlier, you know, having rough and tumble dads who are more of the stick than the carrot, it has been a real challenge to lay off ourselves and not be in a place of constantly pushing towards perfection. Why is it that it’s so much easier for us to express compassion outwardly and less?

Speaker 3: Yeah, there’s a couple of reasons. Some are, some are cultural there aren’t cultural barriers against compassion where race thinking, it’s good to be compassionate to others, but there are a lot of barriers of self-compassion. Again, we think it’s going to make us lazier. We are unmotivated. So we aren’t, we aren’t taught that. It’s a good thing. So that’s one problem, but there’s also something more basic. That’s physio physiological. So both self criticism and self and Patrick, both criticism and compassion you might say are kind of evolved responses. So, but compassion mainly evolved to help others. So parents who are more compassionate to their children or group members who are more compassionate to each other, their genes were lucky to survive and be passed down was actually more natural. And you might say at first with ourselves is when we make a mistake or we fail or something difficult as hap happens, we go into threat defense mode.

Speaker 3: This is also very natural. We go into fight flight or freeze or mingle. It gets triggered. You know, this is a very, very, a Quicken, easily triggered safety response. Unfortunately, when the problem is ourselves and the threats to ourselves, we fight ourselves with self criticism thinking we’ll beat ourselves into shape. So it will be safe. Or we flee into shame thinking we’re free from the perceived judgments of others. So it will be safe or we freeze and we ruminate me get stuck, also safety behavior. Now, when your friend makes a mistake, you are personally threatened. So it’s actually easier to tap into the evolved care response. Whereas when you’re personally threatened, basically when we’re freaked out, it’s a little hard to access self-compassion. And so it’s not, as you know, it is a practice for that reason. It’s not difficult because we already know how to do it toward others. It’s not like you don’t have to learn how to meditate or it’s not esoteric. It’s very simple, but it’s not entirely natural instinctually. So we need to kind of train our brains, do a little hack, so to speak. So we start tapping into the care system. That’s normally aimed at others and do a U-turn and aim it toward ourselves

Speaker 2: For that caring system. I would think a lot of that is detaching. And as, as you mentioned from criticism and expectations of others, but there’s also the criticisms and expectations that you’re gonna, that you’re gonna put on yourself as well. Was that you find in your research, any connection between the two,

Speaker 3: Well, you mean being when other people criticize you and if you criticize yourself, do you mean like developmentally? Yeah, so certainly. So in other words, my son’s very self-critical and I’ve never criticized him. And I think it’s just because he has a lot of anxiety. So some of it is just natural. So the way he deals with threat probably won’t surprise you to know, especially with your parents, that people who grow up with parents who are very critical, also learn that is, so my son finally has gotten self-compassion because I’ve modeled it for him. But if I were, you know, but people whose parents model criticism, then they think, oh, that’s the way to be also parents who are abusive or insecurely attached or maybe negligent or, you know, inconsistently there that also gets modeled like the pupae. Some people who grow up who feel their needs aren’t worthy of being met, have a harder time believing that they actually should focus on meeting their own needs.

Speaker 3: So, you know, obviously what’s modeled for us by our parents and our family, early family history affects our here’s the thing, it effects our ability to be self-compassionate in terms of how easy it is. But the really cool thing is what we know is, uh, we can learn to be self-compassionate. We can actually give ourselves compassion for our traumatic early childhood and we can learn to reparent ourselves. Now, typically it takes therapists and in some ways I think, I really think what good therapy is, is the ability to help clients be self-compassionate, you know, it’s kind of, transtheoretical no matter what your approach, good therapy and outcome of good therapy is increased. Self-compassion, you know, sometimes it’s explicit. Sometimes it’s more implicit, but that’s what a therapist does kind of models, compassion models that your, your needs are worthy of being met, that you’re, you know, you’re an important person. So how, you know, it does help to have a therapist along the journey. If you had an early trauma history, for instance,

Speaker 1: Now, when it comes to bringing this into our lives and actually practically using self-compassion I know many in our audience will often share similar stories of upbringings like me and Johnny and being too hard on themselves and being heavily influenced by their inner critic sometimes stuck in that inner critic mode, or they won’t take action that they want in their life. So could you walk our audience through how we could bring more self-compassion to life in our own life?

Speaker 3: Yeah. So it’s actually not, it’s difficult as you might think one really easy way to give yourself compassion. That kind of, if you’re, if you’re really stuck in your brain is just in the loop. In this thinking loop, you can bypass the brain and go to the body. So putting your hands on your heart, or maybe cradling your face, or you can be yourself, a little hug or holding your own hand. What happens is because compassion is rooted in the care system, which is linked to parasympathetic nervous system activity. Without going into that, you guys have probably talked about that, but like heart rate, variability, oxytocin and all those opiates. So we’re designed by evolution to respond to that warm, caring, touch as a signal of safety and care. So if you give yourself some supportive touch, your body can respond physiologically, you know, cortisol gets reduced, heart rate variability goes up and you can actually, you can bypass the brain at least somewhat, and that can help set the stage to have your thoughts be more supportive.

Speaker 3: So that’s one easy way. Another very easy ways to say, what would I say to my best friend if they were experiencing this exact same thing again? So it was like, well, okay, actually, I probably wouldn’t say what I’m saying now. I, you know, what, what would I say that I think would actually be most helpful to my friend medicine means sugarcoating thing, like really helpful, warm kind, supportive, constructive feedback would be most helpful. And the feeling that I’m here for you. Well, then you can just do the same thing for yourself, right? It will feel a little weird. You know, I’m not going to lie. If you aren’t used to it, it’s going to feel awkward at first, but you get used to it over time, right? So that’s one thing you can do. And then another thing you can do is, is you intentionally call in the three components of self-compassion.

Speaker 3: It’s almost like baking a loaf of bread, right? You need one part mindfulness, one part common humanity, one part kindness. So what might that look like? It might look like mindfulness. Wow. This is really hard. I’m hurting. I’m feeling badly. This hurts common humanity. Well, I’m not alone. You know, it’s not like everyone else in the world is perfect. You know, this is part of being human being this, you know, is nothing wrong with me fulfilling this way. This is part of being human. And then one part kindness, again, saying some words of support, encouragement, warrants, care toward yourself. Uh, w when you breathe, I find it in my research that explicitly bringing in these three components all together is really powerful.

Speaker 1: I think the mindfulness component we’ve talked a lot on the show. You’ve actually had Dan Harrison to talk about. That can be really difficult when we find ourselves falling into these very same patterns over and over again. And we don’t even recognize that we’re in the pattern. And if mindfulness, isn’t a big part of our listeners’ lives, what’s a simple way that we can start working on that first ingredient.

Speaker 3: Big mindfulness was just like really the ability to have equanimity and to really be present with the tough stuff and meditation, which is a whole skillset deactivating, the default mode, all those things. That’s big mindfulness, little mindfulness is just noticing that it hurts. That’s all you really have to do to have. Self-compassion just notice that you’re hurting, you know, and be willing to acknowledge it. So if you notice when you’re upset, oh wow. I’m upset. Then that’s all you need that little reminder say, okay, what are you? Oh, that’s part of it. You need compassion. So common humanity. Well, it’s part of being human to be upset, mean wrong with me. It’s not like I’m the only one in the world who’s experiencing this. What might I say to a friend who is experiencing this? You know, so again, it’s not rocket science, it’s just, but it is a practice because we aren’t raised to be this way and it doesn’t come completely naturally.

Speaker 1: And I’m curious in teaching your son, this practice, was there some cues that you, uh, brought in to really give him the space to do that? Is there something that looking for to, to bring it into his own life?

Speaker 3: Yeah, well, it’s interesting because, you know, he was raised by a mindfulness and compassion teacher and I would try to, when he, he, you know, he’s also autistic, so also made a challenge, but if you’d be really upset about something, I try to talk about self-compassion and, you know, cause I, of course, when you resist being upset, it just makes it worse. And he was spiral into these tantrums and I would try to help them, you know, just to acknowledge it and be kind to himself. And he quite literally, he would say, don’t give me that self-compassion stuff, mommy. I don’t want to accept the pain. I was like, cute. I’m gonna fight this pain. I’m not going to accept this pain. And it’s like, okay, well you can try. I mean, good luck with that. I mean, what can you say as a mother except, you know, he had to figure it out himself, that that approach didn’t work.

Speaker 3: And now, so now he’s 19 and he’s been in therapy and he’s, you know, he’s, he’s really doing so well dealing with he’s. Yeah. So as we’ve got it, he’s got put it this way. He’s got a few different comorbid diagnoses. Um, and I’m just so proud of him because I think I must say probably partly because of the way he was raised, he’s really willing to look at it. He wants to work with it and now he won’t put his hand on his heart and say something like, you know, I’m here for you, Rowan, you know, um, you know, um, what do you need? Things like that he’s he can be warm to himself finally, but he had to come to it at his own time. You can’t, you can’t shove this down anyone’s throat. He had to kind of see that the other way was working for him before he was really ready to try something new. And now he, he likes mindfulness and compassion and all of it.

Speaker 1: Well, that’s such an interesting point of wanting to fight the pain. And many in our audience will say they want to fight their inner critic and they want to get an argument with it and try to overpower it with logic in hopes to get it to quiet down. And we know from the science that that just doesn’t really work.

Speaker 3: No, actually, I don’t know if you have had Dick Schwartz on here, internal family systems therapy, but so many ways we have, we can say we have different parts of ourselves. We sh I should probably call it selves compassion, technically, because we have an inner critic, we’ve got a compassionate part. We have a wounded child part, we’ve got a mature wise part. We have all these different parts. And so what happens if you try to shut down the inner critic? Because remember the inner critic is trying to keep you safe. The whole reason the inner critic is there is because, you know, it’s maybe trying to protect you from your criticism of your father or trying to get you into shape. So you don’t make mistakes or trying to, you know, shame you so that you won’t be so wounded by others. It doesn’t work very well, but the motivation of the inner critic is always to keep you safe.

Speaker 3: And if you try to shut it down, it will just scream that much louder. But if you say, so we have a whole exercise in the, in the mindful self-compassion program we developed where we actually give compassion to the inner credit. We say, you know, I see you’re trying to help me. Hasn’t been working out very well, but, you know, thank you so much for your efforts. I hear you. And then once you have kind of some understanding and appreciation for your inner critic, then it can say, okay, she hears me finally. All right, well, okay. I can let this other voice in, which is the more compassionate voice, but what will you resist, persists and grows stronger? I mean, acceptance and commitment therapy. It’s really all about that. I mean, there’s a lot of self-compassion, especially implicitly and acceptance and commitment therapy. I think now they’re starting to bring it in more explicitly. You guys probably more know about, know more about that than me, but it’s definitely totally imbued in the whole approach at least implicitly.

Speaker 2: Well, certainly for all the interviews that we’ve done. I mean, the folks whose always come off the most confident and the most successful all have a great working relationship with the worst aspects of themselves to the, to the degree though, even may even have a pet name for the worst aspects of themselves, of that inner of that inner critic. And they will have that dialogue. They will see that dialogue through to its end. And maybe there might be some, some logic in there as trying to calm them down. They’ll have, there’s probably some heated emotion as well, but it is. That is the drama of a emotional theater that has to happen between the, between the fictional character of your word of self and your to self to be basically to go through all the arguments and say, are we done? Can I move forward? Now? I have, you said everything that you needed to say to me, great, I’m moving forward.

Speaker 3: Well, sometimes we need to be drawing a fierce boundary with their inner critic, right? So sometimes we need to use fierce compassion also in we’re not only protecting ourselves from others, but sometimes from those parts of ourselves, maybe just draw a boundary and saying, that’s enough. I’m not going to listen to this right now, but then we also want the tender self-compassion when we’re able to that kind of more accepting side, that warm side, that’s really the healing power of self-compassion is that accepting nurturing energy. But there is also a place for drawing some pretty fierce boundaries. I call that mama bear self-compassion there’s mama and mama bear, and both are really important aspects of being a caring person.

Speaker 2: Well, it’s interesting that you bring up boundaries, uh, and with our clients, those who seem to be their worst critics also, for whatever reason, it’s always correlated that they have, they don’t have boundaries drawn up from friends and family who are taking advantage of them. So then they get put in this cycle, then they realize I’ve got to take advantage again. So now the inner critic comes out to beat them up. And of course, they’re always going to rationalize it with I’m being kind. I have infinite amount of time and, and opportunities to help everybody. But without setting up those boundaries, you’re giving your S so much of yourself out, and you’re not focusing on the things that matter so that you are able to help people at your best.

Speaker 3: Exactly. And also the reason for help. So, so a lot of the reasons people don’t say no, the real, you know, some people say yes, because they really authentic, really want to help. That’s great. That’s wonderful. It’s admirable. But often we say yes, because we don’t want other people to dislike us. And when we’re doing it, because we’re afraid of the judgments of others, or we want other people to like us, we want them to think we’re a nice person is actually not authentic. And that’s, that’s where you get that correlation because we’re, we don’t feel confident enough in ourselves. We don’t like ourselves enough to risk. You know, maybe they won’t like me as much. If I say no, well, that’s okay. Like myself, you know, this is important to me. I’m going to do, what’s authentic for me. And to be able to do that, to draw boundaries, there needs to be some sense of self-worth that comes from the inside, as opposed to just the approval of others, which is one of the, another thing self-compassion gives us. Non-contingent self-worth less need for social approvals. One of the big, important benefits of it.

Speaker 1: Yeah. I’d like to unpack that a little bit more because I feel like social approval is really a big driving force for many people listening to the show and that that want and need to be accepted in the community. No one wants to be in the outgroup. So we find ourselves battling to others’ expectations of us going outside of our own needs and wants to please them becoming people, pleasers, et cetera. So how does this all come together?

Speaker 3: One way I’ve talked about this distinction is really the distinction between self-esteem and self-compassion. So self-esteem is an evaluation of self-worth self-compassion is giving yourself like unconditional kindness and support whether or not you’re worthy. You know, it’s just kinda like whether you failed or you succeeded, it’s just, you know, being kind yourself regardless. So self-esteem, there’s, there’s healthy. Self-esteem, there’s, [inaudible] unconditional self-esteem, but usually self-esteem is contingent. It’s contingent on through the three main areas. Actually they find in the research are social approval, perceived attractiveness and success, whether that’s business or sports, whatever’s important to you. And, um, that contingency is a problem. Because again, if people don’t approve of us or if we don’t succeed, or if we don’t look the way we want to look, we feel badly about ourselves. We hate ourselves and we start self criticizing and it really is this downward spiral.

Speaker 3: So one of the things we know from the research is that self-compassion reduces the contingency of self-worth right. Again, because you’re you’re whether you succeed or fail, you’re still worthy. Whether you’re looking like you want to or not, you’re still worthy. You know, whether other people like, or not, you’re still worthy because again, your worth is, it comes from this just from being a human being who suffers, like that’s how you got to do to have self, to be a human being who suffers. And that’s a box that can always be checked. And so, because you have this more incandescent, unconditional stable source of self-worth, your self-esteem doesn’t need to be so contingent on these outside sources.

Speaker 2: I think that’s a big piece of why it’s so difficult for somebody who hasn’t set up boundaries in the past to then all of a sudden know that they have to put these boundaries up and they’re going to be terrified of how it it’s going to be taken, because those people have always had that access. And so now they’re being told no for the first time. And that can be a shock because that reaction, that person has now changed. They’re not the same person. They’re not as open as they used to be to these requests.

Speaker 3: That’s why self-compassion is so important every step of the way. So self-compassion helps you draw the boundary because you care about yourself. Self-compassion also helps you deal with the fear of drawing the boundary. Our I’m really afraid. This is hard. And if you do get a bad reaction and let’s face it, you might, you know, how do you hold the pain with it? How do you relate to yourself when your mother’s mad at you? Because you didn’t do it. She won’t, you know, you have to be able to relate to that pain. So self-compassion is really needed every step of the way. And that also sometimes, you know, someone may make a choice will actually add, I really don’t want to say yes, but in this situation, maybe it’s your boss, or, you know, maybe sometimes you don’t have the choice you, you would like to have.

Speaker 3: Sometimes people, it’s kind of a, some people aren’t able to draw the boundaries that they’d like to because they aren’t as privileged, you know, maybe you’re discriminated against, or you’re in tenuous situation, or a lot of external factors come into play. So we also don’t want people to think that if I don’t, if I don’t draw a boundary, I’m a whip, you know, that’s, that’s not good either. We just want to like, do the best we can given our circumstances with as much kindness and support and care as we possibly can. And no one on the outside can tell you what’s right for you.

Speaker 1: It seems to me that self-compassion plays a huge role in resilience and your ability to bounce back from these life events,

Speaker 3: Huge role, huge role. So I’ll just give you one study. As an example, there was a study of a combat veterans who served overseas in either Iraq or Afghanistan and the, and those, those soldiers who are, how self-compassionate they were, were more predict, was more predictive of whether or not they develop PTSD, then the level of combat exposure, right? So in other words, even more important for trauma that how much solver you faced with how you relate to yourself in the aftermath of that trauma. And so soldiers who are self-compassionate, they’re less likely to develop PTSD. They’re less likely to have suicidal ideation. They’re less likely to turn to drugs and alcohol to deal with their pain. They function better, you know, and that’s in so many domains, whether it’s dealing with cancer or chronic pain or raising a special needs kid or, or the pandemic does that.

Speaker 3: So research on the pandemic. So self-compassion really, the reason self-compassion is so absolutely key is because it’s how we are with suffering. Passion means to suffer calm means with how we are with our suffering. How do we relate to our suffering and our suffering? You know, the pain, the difficulty, the distress of fear, you know, physical, mental, all of it. This is what derails us. When we get overwhelmed by our pain, we stopped, it stopped functioning as well. So how do we accompany ourselves? Who the journey of life when suffering comes up? Well, if you have compassion, if you have war support, kindness care, mindfulness, sense of interconnection, this is what gets you through. I mean, F you know, this is why I’m such an evangelist about it. I think very hard to survive well, without it, to be honest, I’m surprised so many people do as well as a say, too, because it makes things so much harder is, is that we have the super power in our back pocket that we can give ourselves.

Speaker 3: It does absolutely. You know, at three in the morning when no one else is around and your mind is just full of the story or the shame you can pull self-compassion out of your back pocket, you can hold the pain of it, recognize it. This is part of life, you’re it, you’re connected. It’s, you know, your part is not, it’s also not just you, you’re part of a much larger story and open your heart to yourself with work, kindness, care support. And I, you know, I’ve, I’ve had those dark nights of the soul, like everyone, and I can tell you firsthand, it really gets you through.

Speaker 1: And I think with that also gives you the context to explore it a little bit more. So when I think of those sleepless nights, those moments of just absolute stress and panic, and I bring self compassion into it, I bring the interconnectedness into it. And then I think in the past 10 years, how many other times have I felt this way? And how long has that been? What’s the duration been and it passes. And it gives you that context to allow that extreme pain and suffering to pass without carrying it day in and day out, and also damaging your relationships. And I’ve noticed during the pandemic, I’ve had moments of high self-compassion, where I’m going to get through this and our business turmoil is okay. And then I’ve had moments of low self-compassion, where I can’t bring myself to be compassionate towards myself. And then of course, I see it impacting my relationship with my fiance. I see it, uh, in me, withdrawing from friends and not wanting to share and be present. So self-compassion not only impacts us. It impacts everyone in our lives.

Speaker 3: Oh, it does. And many levels actually. So, so for instance, people are more, self-compassionate make better relationship partners. People like part department is better. If they’re more self-compassionate for, for, for a lot of reasons. One is that again, you just have more resources to give to others when you’re, when you’re more resourced. You’re, you’ve got more work internally. You’ve got more available to give externally, but also, because the way, the way, the way the brain works with a mirror neuron system, right? So we are constantly impacting each other emotionally at the pre-verbal level. So maybe you’re kind of keeping it under wraps, but if you’re like depressed and like you’re ruminating and you’re hating yourself, other people can feel that to their own mirror neurons. This is just like an evolved capacity, the human brain. So if you’re, if your inside is filled with like warmth and kindness and support and care and feelings of connection, you actually give that gift to every single person you come into contact with. And it can be, especially those people you really close to, you know, just like their secondary traumatic stress, or you feel the trauma of others is you might say there’s secondary self-compassion right. So this is a gift you give to your children, to your loved ones, to your friends is what you bring into the world. Are you bringing a mindful of compassion and love? Are you bringing a mindful of like hatred and criticism and harsh judgment? You know, of course it affects others.

Speaker 1: And I think, especially with us being in this lockdown state where we don’t get much of an outlet to not be around people who might not be feeling that level of self-compassion, I’d love to switch gears a little bit and talk about perfectionism, because I know we have a lot of perfectionists in our audience. It comes up quite a bit in the questions they ask us. And it sounds pretty challenging if you are a perfectionist to bring self-compassion into the equation, especially when you have big goals and dreams for yourself. So what is the relationship there and how do we become more supportive if we are a perfectionist,

Speaker 3: Right? So self-compassion and reduces maladaptive perfectionism. But soon as they call it, adaptive, perfection is basically high standards. Having high standards for yourself. That’s very adaptive. So self-compassion does not lower your standards. That’s a complete misnomer. The idea that somehow, if I’m self-compassionate, I won’t aim as high, I might, you know, what’s so put, put it this way. We confuse our behavior with ourselves. So it was, again, we work a top level athletes. Your standard may be incredibly high and maybe your performance isn’t good enough, but just because your performance isn’t good enough to make you happy. It doesn’t mean that you aren’t good enough. Right. And so what happens with maladaptive perfectionism? Is there, again, our sense of self worth gets wrapped up in our performance. If I don’t reach my goal, if I don’t get that a plus, if I don’t win the national championship, sometimes that means I am a bad person.

Speaker 3: Right. And unfortunately, it just makes it so it’s so much harder to learn from your mistakes to grow, to get back up on that horse again, when you’re full of shame, because you’re a bad person. I mean, shame is not exactly a great motivator. We think it is, but it’s not. So again, you can be as exacting as you want to be with your behavior, with your performance, recognizing that. Yeah. Okay. My perf I was a failure, right? It’s not good enough, but I’m good enough. And because I care about myself and if this goal really is important to me now, of course, you may, you may realize the self-compassion that maybe your goals aren’t so much about your authentic wants and needs may be someone else thinks you should be this person to be worthy. So it also may have you questioned your goals, but if they are truly your authentic goals, you want to be the absolute best. You can be self compassion will support you on that goal. It won’t hinder you.

Speaker 1: That’s such a key point is I know for myself growing up, many of my goals were simply my family’s goals for me. They were the goals of others and bringing in self-compassion in those moments of defeat, in those moments of failure allowed me to reorient. This is not important to me. Yes. This is important to my social group. This is important to my family. And therefore I’m drawing my self esteem from it, but it’s not really that important to me. And that allowed me to make the difficult decision to leave graduate school, to start the business, to make choices in my life for me, for once versus for others.

Speaker 2: I certainly know a lot of people with maladaptive perfectionism. And I would imagine with, with athletes that is quite entwined to, uh, two together, uh, where do you begin to help unwind those two things? So they can make that separation and then start doing the work for building the self-compassion that they’re going to need to reach those ridiculous expectations.

Speaker 3: Yeah. So, so I have a dissertation student right now who we just, she just developed a self-compassionate intervention for top level athletes. She named it fail better because athletes like to do everything better. So it’s really because what athletes really care about most is how to improve their performance. That’s really the name of the game. If you’re at a top level athlete, and we know that we S we know we treat it as a truism, that failures are best teacher, and yet we act like we shouldn’t fail. Well, how are we going to learn if it’s not okay to fail? So again, this thing of separating the performance is, is that it’s a behavior. Is it, you know, that the, the shot good enough or whatever from the person. So when you confuse yourself with your performance and you criticize, or you shame yourself is actually going to undermine your performance because you’ll have anxiety, right.

Speaker 3: Performance, anxiety, as we know, and we, maybe we’re excited about it, but if we like shame ourselves, we’re just like so worried, oh my God, what if I mess up? Or if you miss that shot and like you freeze, then you’ve lost the game. So it was like, okay, Mr. [inaudible], I’ll do it better next time. And like, what can I learn from this constant failure getting feedback? So we, we developed a whole practice of self compassionate feedback, where you use the failure as a way to give you constructive feedback about how to improve. And athletes were all over it. They loved it. They ate it up first. They were a little wary, but once they saw what I actually did, they were all in because of it helps you gain, man, there they’re all over it.

Speaker 1: Well, I think a big part of that is recognizing what you can control and improve. Right? So, as we were talking about earlier, a lot of us fuse our identity to our behaviors. We think about variables that we have no control over, and that impacts the result. And then all of a sudden we’re judging our own performance really harshly. We have to be able to separate those things that we just absolutely can’t control so that we can fail better.

Speaker 3: Right. Exactly. And then we can also really, really important learn from our mistakes. I mean, it is true. This is how we learn. We learn from our failures, we learn from making mistakes and it wasn’t Thomas Edison that said like, you know, something like a thousand times of getting it wrong before I got it right. Or some, some, some quote like that. But, um, but self-compassion is what allows you to learn and grow from your mistakes. And that’s why it’s so such an important key for success in life.

Speaker 1: Now, I would be remiss without asking you, my dad was always on me harshly for any sort of laziness or procrastination. And how do we strike that balance? Because it does seem that if we overcompensate on the self-compassion, we could fall into a place of inaction and not taking those learnings and actually acting on them. Yeah.

Speaker 3: So there’s a pretty strong research literature that shows self-compassion reduces procrastination, right? Because what is press procrastination? Procrastination is basically offered like fear of failure or just like, you know, not wanting to deal with the discomfort of doing a difficult task. So again, anything can be misused. You may think you be, you may fool yourself into thinking you’re being self-compassionate by putting it off, I’ll just have another hit the snooze button. 10 more times. You aren’t really being self-compassionate. You have to be on the look on, look out for it because the brain can be very tricky. If it’s self-compassionate is going to be asking, what do I need to be? Well, what, what, what do I, what what’s most important, by the way, it settles an easy question to answer, but you’re where you’re sincerely asking the question. Um, and if what you need is to get up out of bed, as opposed to hitting the snooze button, that’s what you’re going to do. If you’re, if you’re truly self-compassionate again, like I say too much, self-compassion is kind of an oxymoron. Can you have too much health and wellbeing? Well, again, if, if so, then it’s like no longer health and wellbeing. So it’s,

Speaker 1: Well, that being honest with yourself is key,

Speaker 3: But you have to be honest with yourself. And by the way, you know, it allows you to be honest with yourself. Self-compassion, it’s true. For instance, um, there’s research showing that it helps you take personal responsibility for your mistakes. People think it means you’re gonna blow off in past mistakes, quite the opposite, because it makes it safe to acknowledge your mistakes. It makes it safe to look at yourself and say, wow, I really messed up. Or I really hurt someone or, Ooh, that’s ugly. So if you’re self-critical you, aren’t going to be able to say like, Ooh, what I just said was ugly with self-compassion you’ve got the ability, like the, the mindfulness gives you the spaciousness and the kindness gives you the warmth and say, okay, well this is part of being human, you know, it’s it happened. It happens just because I did something bad. Does it mean like, um, it repairable, I can beyond hope so I can look at it. I can hold it. And then what they find is self compassion actually motivates you to try to repair those farms you’ve made or repair those mistakes. So with, but without the emotional safety to do it, you just aren’t even going to go there.

Speaker 1: Yeah. It actually gives you the opportunity to improve on whatever that action or mistake was versus living in self criticism, which doesn’t provide any opportunity for that improvement.

Speaker 3: And it’s self criticism is usually not clear sighted. It’s not constructive, you know, again, when you’re just saying, oh, you’re stupid. Like, you know, w how does that useful information? You’re a stupid, lazy slob. How’s that going to help instead of saying, well, actually I noticed that you were sitting at your computer for three hours and, you know, maybe if you were to like, you know, get up and take a walk that might actually be more helpful.

Speaker 1: Well, that’s actually really powerful because I think a lot of procrastination is that emotion that’s going on and dysregulation with the emotion that keeps you from taking that action. If you bring in self-compassion, you can actually manage those difficult emotions and not let them lead you to the recliner to be lazy. Right?

Speaker 3: Exactly.

Speaker 1: We love asking every guest what their X factor is, what makes them extraordinary. I have a feeling what your answer might be. It’s been a similar answer, much of the show, but what is your X-Factor Dr. Neff?

Speaker 3: Yeah. Well, I mean, so I certainly didn’t come up with the idea of self-compassion. I learned it when I was studying in a tic, not Han Tsonga ticket hands, a Buddhist teacher who talks a lot about self-compassion. But yeah, so I think devoting my life to self-compassion is not only help the world, but it’s really helped me personally, you know, again, through some really dark times as well. So there’s really no day in which I don’t use. Self-compassionate it’s just part is any, any moment I struggle to suffer, it’s become really habit for me now, by the way, I should also say here’s another quote for your perfectionist. The goal of practice is simply to become a compassionate mess. So I’m still a mess. I still get it wrong all the time. I saw reactive all those things, but I have learned to be a compassionate mess. And that’s really enough, you know, having the open heart, having that compassion, that actually becomes your goal. Not getting it. It’s not about getting it right. It’s about opening your heart. And, um, that’s my, that’s my X factor.

Speaker 1: Well, I think all athletes recognize that perfection is impossible. So when you’re aiming for making every shot, when you’re aiming for winning everyone over, when you’re aiming for every first state to go perfectly, you often are going to fall, fail, fall short, not reach that goal, but we don’t want to live in the mess. We want to be compassionate towards ourselves to move beyond the

Speaker 3: Mess. That’s exactly right. Exactly.

Speaker 1: Thank you so much for joining us. This is a lot of fun and where can our audience find out more about your work and self-compassion, and of course your fantastic new book fear self-compassion

Speaker 3: Well, it’s actually quite easy if you just Google self-compassion I got in early. So all the algorithms lead to me spell it any which way you going even have to use the dash. It doesn’t matter. You’ll find my website, self-compassion dot org. And I have a lot of free guided practices on there. I’ve got a ton of research articles by all sorts of authors, scientists. I have, um, videos. There’s also links to, um, like you can, you know, do an online workshop or a link to the training arm of what I do, which is the center for mindful. Self-compassion like, if you want to take the self-compassion training course online, there’s a lot of those available, and you can link to that through my website as well.

Speaker 1: And our head coach, Michael did take one of your online trainings, a four day intensive, actually. And he said to say, hello, we’ve fused a lot of your self-compassion principles in our unstoppable program to help those who are struggling with social anxiety and fear of failure. Great,

Speaker 3: Wonderful.

Speaker 4: [inaudible]

Speaker 1: Johnny. The episodes I love the most are the ones that are practical that after recording this episode, I’m applying in my own life and self-compassion is one of those areas that I know I need to keep working at. We talked a lot with her today about our background and upbringing and how hard we can be on ourselves and bringing self-compassion to the table. I have no doubt is going to help us overcome that inner critic.

Speaker 2: I got to say, I’ve worked with you for 15 years now, and an entrepreneurial relationship with this podcast and everything that we do at the art of charm. And I will second that you could use a dose of self-compassion. I think all of us can, especially in the turbulent world that we all live in.

Speaker 1: Thanks for that, Johnny. I appreciate your candor. Now let’s get to this week, shout out. It goes to none other than Colin. Who’s a member of our X-Factor accelerator. Now he joined us this past Tuesday to talk a little bit about how his life has evolved since joining the program. In fact, before joining X-Factor, his lifestyle was exhausting. Him and his dating life was taking up way too much of his time with options. He really wasn’t that interested in, and of course it’s difficult when you find yourself in that pattern to start to assert yourself, create boundaries and get that time and space and energy back to develop yourself. When Collin actually learned our boundary drawing framework and started applying it in his dating life. Well, his dating life took off. He’s now found women in his life that he’s excited to meet while carving out time and space for himself to go after his hobbies, his passions and side hustles. That’s right.

Speaker 2: Hey Jay. He even feels lighter and has more energy and is very excited to use that same boundary framework in other areas of his life. And that’s the beauty of the X-Factor accelerator. So what are you all waiting for? Come join us in the X-Factor so we can celebrate your wins, unlock your X-Factor dot com

Speaker 1: That’s right. Apply today and join Collin and the rest of our community at unlock your X-Factor dot com.

Speaker 2: Oh, so could you do us an, the entire art of charm team, a huge favor, head on over to iTunes and rate and review the podcast. It means the world does and helps others find the show and it helps us get great guests.

Speaker 1: That’s right. Thank you for all the support. Go out there and have an epic week.

Speaker 4: Yeah, [inaudible].

Speaker 1: Well, I'll go back to the art of charm podcast, a show designed to help you communicate with power and become unstoppable on your path from hidden genius to influential leader. Now we know you have what it takes to reach your full potential, and that's why each and every week, Johnny and I are here to share with you interviews and strategies, helping you transform your life by helping you unlock that X factor. Now whether you're in sales, leadership, medicine, building client relationships, or even looking for love, we can help you unlock your X factor.

Speaker 2: You shouldn't have to settle for anything less than extraordinary.

Speaker 1: Do you know that you can get the entire art of charm back catalog? That's right. 15 years of podcasts featuring expert guests and toolbox episodes. When you subscribe to Stitcher premium that's right, the show is completely ad-free and you get all of those amazing toolbox episodes jam packed with science drills and exercises. Sign up today@stitcher.com and use code charm to get a free month.

Speaker 2: Hey, Jay today's interview with Paul bloom is so much fun and I'm excited for our audience. They hear it. You know, we're also huge podcast fans as well. And Paul has been a guest on many of the shows that we listened to. So have him in studio with us was super fun. We talk about struggle, meaning sacrifice. It is a killer episode.

Speaker 1: That's right today we have Paul bloom with us. He's a professor of psychology at the university of Toronto. He's won numerous awards for his research. And teaching is the author of six books, including how pleasure works, the new science of why we like what we like and his most recent book, the sweet spot, the pleasures of suffering and the search for meaning is out. And we're excited today to chat about that. Welcome to the show, Paul, thanks for having me on now, your latest book, the sweet spot, the pleasures of suffering and the search for meaning is out. And we'd be remiss without starting with what is the sweet spot?

Speaker 3: The sweet spot is the right balance between different human goals, like, uh, the right balance between pleasure and happiness and meaning and morality. And it's what we all have to struggle to find out ourselves. And what a book is about is the role of pain and suffering and difficulty and struggling and struggle in getting there.

Speaker 1: I think many of us don't view pain and suffering as a way to meaning or happiness. And we're going to unpack some of the science behind what goes on there. I think it's really important for us to at least start defining some terms for our audience as Thanksgiving is approaching. Many of us might consider time with the family as suffering, but what is science consider suffering?

Speaker 3: Um, suffering has different, has different meanings. The meaning I used throughout my book is the sort of experiences you'd normally want to avoid. It could be physical pain. It could be emotional pain could be anxiety and stress and struggle. And it's kind of here because I think some suffering is genuinely bad and I'll call it. Unchosen suffering to take it to extremes, having your child die, getting sexually or physically assaulted, getting a terrible illness. That's suffering. That's just sucks. And you want to avoid it. I'm not telling anything you don't know, but my book is about chosen suffering. And I started, I got interested in this because I noticed that a lot of pleasure, um, involves some degree of suffering, and scary movies, training for a marathon, that sort of thing. And then I sort of started to think about the role of chosen suffering as part of a good life more generally.

Speaker 1: Yeah. You introduced a term that I'd never heard before. Benign masochism and this idea of horror movies, mountain climbing, war rollercoasters. Why is it that we so often seek out sorrow fear and pain?

Speaker 3: It's a great question. And it doesn't have just one answer. So one reason and benign masochism was thought up by my friend, Paul rosin. And he, he really noticed that, well, we know humans are the only animals that like Tabasco sauce. We like spicy foods. Some of us like rollercoaster rides and scary movies, and what's going on here. And a lot of things, one thing is contrast. We like to play with contrast a bit. One reason why it's fun to eat really hot foods is because you drink some beer afterwards. And that makes it feel so nice. A hot bath, hot sauna feels great because of the coolness that that follows. And that's part of it. Part of it is control the feeling of control and mastery over struggles and pain. Part of it is that pain can kind of get you out of your own head. This is, I think what goes on with some forms of extreme exercise or where, you know, there's something very distracting about pain that could kind of take you, take your mind away from its crumbles, and then there's suffering in the, in the service of a larger goal. You know, take raising kids is a good example where, um, where it's difficult, it involves sleepless nights. You lose a lot of pleasure, but it's valuable. And part of the reason why things become valuable is you got to work to get them.

Speaker 1: It also begs the question of how much of our narrative and story-building around these events and experiences, color, the meaning that we have and how much do we control? How much control do we have over that framing in our own lives?

Speaker 3: It's a good question. So my, my interest is in suffering and pain that we choose, but then there's the suffering and pain to just come to us. That's just, you know, part of life and you're right. We're good storytellers. We often try to tell stories where there's an ultimate purpose for it. You know, sometimes these stories are religious. You know, God is testing me. I'll be rewarded in heaven. I'm a, you know, I it's of some sort of divine plan, but sometimes the stories we tell as we would say, everything happens for, for a reason or, um, this is making me stronger and more resilient. Sometimes the stories are true. Sometimes they're not so true, but yeah, we tend to, um, we, I think suffering has real benefits, but even when it doesn't, we tend to think it is. Yeah,

Speaker 1: I know in my own experience when I was training for the half marathon with Johnny and we were going through the pain of running long distances, and now even thinking about potentially running a full marathon, part of that suffering had meaning for me in, I was doing it with others. I was sharing that experience with others. And I know in the book, there are some examples that you can certainly do solitary marathons. You can do mountain climbing on your own, but it was interesting to me, how much of this experience involved others and being connected to others in that shared, chosen suffering.

Speaker 3: There's a lot of evidence, both from the lab and from the real world where, um, joined suffering does bring people together and, um, and it connects people. And you know, this is true. Even for unchosen suffering. There is a wonderful book called a paradise built in hell that looks at, uh, hurricane Katrina and nine 11 and other, you know, major crises around the world. And these often bring people together. They often, often people don't prey on each other and descend the Savage. We actually become much kinder and much closer to one another. So suffering does have that power, but even solitary suffering. Let me just push back a little bit. My bed is training for, well, I remember I trained for a marathon a long time ago and it was really tough. And when we decide to do these things, you don't say, oh, I'm looking forward to the blisters and the body aches and, you know, and maybe failing and exhaustion. But if you didn't have that, he wouldn't have the glow in your eyes when you're talking about it. If it wasn't tough, it wouldn't be valuable.

Speaker 2: I remember thinking during all that training and AAJ, I kept pointing to, to him about the idea of how that beer after half marathon is, is going to taste. And I put a lot of, of energy to thinking about that beer now, however, all done and gone. It wasn't really the beer that I thought about and how good it was for me. It was that summer of training all summer for it and feeling more engaged every day. Then I was like, I felt that I lived more in the moment that summer due to that training, then I have so much. So then I continue to run regularly after that. And at that time, the half marathon was the longest that I run since then, I had run past that multiple times because I just felt so good. There was the amount of chemicals that were released to the brain, how I felt about myself, how I felt about the world around me, the way I would be able to think more clearly as I would translate out during those runs and, and would wander through my mind. Those were the things that even to this day, when I think about training again, or getting back involved in it, that that I'm looking for, not the,

Speaker 3: Not the beer, the beer does taste better afterwards. And, you know, um, and, and you're touching upon a lot of the virtues of suffering in this context. One is it, it makes the beer taste better. It makes it really, it really adds to the pleasures later on. Um, and another is, it makes the whole thing worthwhile looking at you guys while you talk about it, you know, you can tell that this is a worthwhile experience and, but, and yet another while you're doing it and Steve still you right now, there's a feeling of mastery of like, you know, you, you, you have control over your body. You have control over your pain. Yes. It hurts. Yes. It's going to be tiring. Yes. Your heart is going to pound. You're gonna breathe really hard, but you've got it. And maybe, maybe, and that takes time. It takes time to develop the control, the ability to cope with the, you know, the pain training and running hard does to you. And there's a deep satisfaction in doing it. You, none of these things would be possible if it wasn't.

Speaker 1: Well, what I've noticed in obviously humans have been on this planet a while. There really aren't many feats that only one person can accomplish. So whether it's climbing Mount Everest, you join a club of people who've reached the summit, completing a half marathon. I've found, even if I didn't run the half marathon with someone just hearing that I ran, they got excited because they had that shared experience. And I feel a lot of these choices in suffering. And you talk about in the book, those members who join ISIS for instance, are looking for some form of connection, even if they're suffering through the pain to get to that connected place. So

Speaker 3: Offering as a great source of community and, you know, it's, it's something which can happen in a glorious and wonderful way. It could happen in a kind of an awful way, you know, Hitler commented on how suffering brings people together and the value of suffering and struggle. And, you know, you don't want to be like Hitler, but one of the things people say about going to war is that they have, they are never closer to anybody than the people they serve with. And, um, and I think that, you know, without going to war without a military context, endeavors like training for a marathon are climbing, Mount Everest have the same sort of feature.

Speaker 1: And many of our guests have come on to talk about happiness and our pursuit of happiness and finding happiness, chasing happiness. It seems like it's the hot topic. [inaudible] unfortunately what you just talked about. Doesn't really equate to happiness war, marathon training. You know, there, there are certainly moments in there where I found happiness, but it was very fleeting. So how is that balance of our pursuit of happiness and suffering, allowing us to find that sweet spot? Like how do we find that balance in life? And my followup is, do you think there's too much positivity, too much focus on happiness in this pursuit of meaning?

Speaker 3: I like the word balance. And I'll answer both your questions at once, which is, yeah, I think I, I'm not anti happiness or, you know, a lot of my book isn't, it's not necessarily telling you this is how to live the good life. It's, it's exploring what people want, how people get the most out of life, and I'd be lying to you. If I denied that happiness, would everyone wants to be happy. Everybody wants pleasure. And yeah, I think it's, I think living a life without pleasure would be, is a poor choice. Pleasures fun pleasures is great, but I think many people, including many psychologists have been single-mindedly focused on happiness on a maximisation of pleasure. And they think that this is what people only think people want. They think everything reduces to pleasure and they think that the best advice they could give anybody is to seek pleasure.

Speaker 3: I pretty sure all of these things are wrong. We want pleasure and happiness, but we also want to do good things for others we want. And we also want purpose and meaning. If I offered you two guys, a pill that would, uh, give you a certain form of Alzheimer's disease, total dementia, where you lose all your, you become just kind of in a vegetative state, but became deliriously happy. I can't imagine either one of you would take it. If I offered you a pill that would make you into a psychopath, which took away all guilt and shame and regret, and you just really get more pleasure to life now. Cause you could prey on people. I won't bother you. I bet you wouldn't take that one either. You want many people want many things.

Speaker 1: Yeah. It's interesting in that we had a guest on a couple of years ago, David Goggins. I'm not sure if you're familiar with him and his story, but much of his adult life is choosing. Suffering is choosing to be a pull-up champion is choosing to be an ultra marathon runner competing on broken feet. And in that episode, it's one of our more popular episodes to date. It seems like a lot of people aspire to and look up to a pain tolerance and ability to overcome suffering in their own lives. Even if they wouldn't choose it every

Speaker 3: Day. I think that that's right. Yeah.

Speaker 1: You mentioned that there's a, a piece to suffering that leads to more happiness. That that pain actually allows us to find happiness. And that that counterpoint of suffering creates space for us to realize happiness in our lives. Am I on the right track? There?

Speaker 3: You D you definitely are. Um, and, and in two ways, one thing, and this is what I originally got started on. I was originally interested in it is that pain can lead to pleasure. There's a lot of ways in which having a bit of pain, you know, to spicy food example that could lead to pleasure. But then there's the deeper thing we're talking about now, which is ego struggling and suffering is part and parcel of meaningful experiences. And we find those satisfying. We look back on those and we say, that's part of a good life. I'm satisfied. I did that. You know, so many of the things we do are kind of investments in a way, you know, where we're, we're doing this ridiculously long hike. And at every moment we're saying, man, I wish I was back home in a hot bath, you know, or lying on a sofa, watching Netflix. That's what I want to be. I don't want to be God, I have 10 miles to go, are you kidding me? But then when we get back, well, a, the beer tastes a lot better, but B for the rest of our lives, we look back and say, I'm the kind of person who did that. And there's a satisfaction to it.

Speaker 2: You made a case of being able to escape from yourself in some of the earlier parts in the books, certainly when it was dealing with and, uh, and SSI. And the other thing about that for those momentary moments where you're, you're separated, you're, you're not there you're, you're somebody else or you're transferred into another place. But through that, uh, AGA brings up David Goggins. And a lot of his suffering is, is for the person that he becomes due to that suffering the transformation that is there. And I don't know if you, in your research had seen that for, I guess I'm what I'm looking at as the Maslow's hierarchy of needs. And that self-actualization is the top, the top of that. So for those people who are comfortable and content with other areas in our life, here's the next part to the strive for as I, if I don't need to find food every day to put on the table, I'm free to be my best self or to become my best self, to transform into my best self. And that transformation comes from the pressures that I'm going to put on myself to bring out the best qualities on myself.

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Speaker 3: That's a nice way of putting it. I have a friend, a philosopher, Lori Paul, who talks about transformative experiences, and these are experiences or choices that not only, um, change your life situation, like going to war or, um, or becoming a religious convert or having children, but change the kind of person you are. And sometimes we sort of throw our hat over the fence. We, we present ourselves with a Cottonwood city forces, suffering pain, with an idea, becoming a different person on the other side. Typically, if we choose to do it, we want to become a better person. And you know, you're ready to first part of my book. I talk about suffering as an escape from themself. And I give an example of actually, when I had the first time I ever rolled in, in BJJ against somebody much younger and much stronger than me as was everyone else there for like two minutes.

Speaker 3: I'm, you know, struggling not to have my, my head pulled from my body, but I realized during that time, I thought of nothing else. But, but, but the activity I didn't think about, oh, I have to do this. And I did this embarrassing thing in the past. There's total focus in struggle, but, and that's an escape from self, but then there's the added part that you're focusing on, which is a desire to transform yourself. And so many of the big choices we make that involve suffering even I think a half marathon does some extent have that sort of transformative appeal.

Speaker 1: And is there a physiological response in our body that leads to that pleasure after suffering? You know, I think of a hard workout. I think of a long run. I think of these stresses that we put on our body and you hear the runners high, right? Where you just feel escaped from your body and the pain that you just put yourself through.

Speaker 3: There has to be some sort of, sort of neurophysiological story here involving endorphins and various neuro-transmitters and so on. I think we know a lot more about what happens that for something like the runners high and very short term, I don't think we know anything about that. When we talk about things like training for a half marathon, not just, you're not just, you know, a one hour run, but training for it, little lone, having kids or starting a business or going to war, obviously to bring less changes as we're all talking about brain activity in some way, we know very little about what goes on.

Speaker 1: And I think in the conversation that you had with Sam Harris, what I found really interesting is when we introduce money into the equation. So there are a lot of misnomers around money and happiness, and also some of the more meaningful jobs in society don't actually compensate you very much. There isn't financial payoff. So when we talk about balance, how do you view money and its influence on one, our suffering and lack of financial means? And then also in our happiness,

Speaker 3: A good question. Look, one of the big findings in happiness research is money makes you happier as a skin up in that. If you, if you, you want to make more money, well, you kind of smart because money makes you happier. People making 70,000 are happy to making 40,000 better, make a hundred thousand and it's not surprising. Money buys you all sorts of stuff. And particularly if you're poor, you're vulnerable to predation, you're vulnerable to sickness. You have no security, all stuff can make you miserable. Money. Money does make people happy. But, and in fact, there's some evidence suggesting this is true. Even at the high end, people will make $10 million, have $10 million, or it could have a little bit happy to be one at $1 million. But your question is it raises an important point, which is there's other things to maximize than happiness. So you there's in the study of 2 million people where they said, what do you do?

Speaker 3: What's your job? And the people whose jobs had the most meaning included, included members of the clergy, soldiers, medical professionals, education educate educators, and some of these jobs don't pay well. And somebody whose jobs are actually have fairly low status, but they provide a lot of meaning. And so, you know that I wouldn't blame anybody for trying to maximize the amount of money they make because it's connected to happiness. But on the other hand, if you forget that there's other things and happiness, you could end up in a job and there aren't jobs like this, which really provide a lot of money and that that has its benefits, but they're numbing boring ways of spending your life at David Graber, according to term jobs, which are jobs that don't do anything you just shuffle around stuff. And the world is unaffected. And I think these numb the soul,

Speaker 2: There's an argument there that the west is full of people who are doing jobs. And now are trying to figure out how to bring in meaning, or if they're not going to bring meaning into that job, they're going to carry on because if it does have a half the pay, then they're happy about that, but there's still going to need to bring in meaning somehow into their life. For instance, for myself, I was just talking to a friend over the weekend and I am 48 years old and I still play music and bands. And I'm working on a record right now. And I love that pursuit. There's, there's a lot that, that goes about it. And, and of course the art of charm, which AIG and I had created some 15 years ago. I mean, th that both of those have so much meaning in my life and, and both, I, I feel supply each other with a meaning and purpose back and forth from the science that I learned here.

Speaker 2: A lot of that exploratory research ends up in fueling inspiration for the music that I'm writing and, and back and forth the music that I'm writing begs me to ask questions that then I have the opportunity in the art of charm to research an answer. And I enjoy that about having both of those, but for those people who may be doing a job, they either will have to find that in, in, in some manner. Because as I was telling my friend at the end of our conversation, it was the music thing makes everything else tolerable in my life.

Speaker 3: It sounds like you're doing things right. If you want to look at the happiest countries in the world, you just find the richest countries for the most part. And those are people when people say they're happiest. But if you want to look at the countries where people say they have the most meaning in life, you look for the poorest countries where people actually said, anyway, some more meaning, because if you're struggling each day, your work has a sort of meaning. It doesn't have, if you're fairly prosperous and protected. And, um, and so part of the question is what does one do if one's in a job and the glib answer is find a better job, but you know, maybe you can't find a better job, maybe, maybe, or maybe you don't want to take the hit. I mean, you don't wanna lose your health insurance or whatever. So if you can't do that find meaning in other aspects of your life. And, you know, and I have, I have a lot of friends who I live in have very rewarding jobs, but I also have friends who don't have rewarding jobs and they go, they do their stuff, and then they do something else.

Speaker 1: Well, I think we're seeing this with the great resignation, you know, we have more jobs available, but more unemployed than ever. And it's confounding a lot of economists around, well, wait a second. We thought if there were jobs, people would naturally take the jobs. And we're now realizing that compensation and even happiness are not as important as meaningful work. And for many meaning was lost once we had to work from home and we didn't have that connectedness, we were just on screens all day. I wonder as a parent, as you think through navigating raising children and this idea of happiness versus meaning, you know, how do you strike that balance and support your children as they navigate this? I think it's easier for us as we are older to realize meaning in our life, but for many of our younger listeners, that search for meaning in the very beginning of their career is, is very difficult.

Speaker 3: It's tough. And it's particularly tough now. Um, there are so many things trying to pull you away from meaning and purpose and sustained practice everything from, you know, Facebook to Twitter, to TV streaming services and everything. We don't have to struggle boredom anymore. And as modern world, I have my, I have my iPhone next to me. I could always check my email and go online and so on. And so it's actually very difficult to get off your and put down these distractions and focus on something, sustaining and complicated and causing some degree of difficulty and anxiety and many, many young people. I think find it very difficult to do that life. There's just too many other, other distractions. And that's, that's, that's hard. You know, the book that's probably influenced me the most in my life is my Holly chick sent me his book flow talks about sort of sustained experience when you're really into something you lose track of time. You don't, you forget to eat just zoomed in focused on hard intellectual work, but he does these surveys. And a lot of people don't ever have flow in their lives. They're always just, you know, just going around and never fully engaged. So it's, it's difficult. I just appreciate the difficulty, some things get you out of it. Music, musical performance, as a way of, of, of getting a sustained attention, focus on sports, certainly writing, reading sometimes,

Speaker 2: Um, early in the book, you were, you were laying out the argument of being able to explore and especially exploring these emotions in your mind, and for myself, uh, I'm not into horror movies or anything like that. However, the music that I listened to is certainly on can be very dour and it can be very dark and nothing makes me feel the way that that music does. And for the average listener or somebody who just came upon it by chance, I think it might horrify them where for myself, I find it harrowing and lifting and just so dramatic. And, and of course, I think back to Wagner or some of the other more controversial artists whose music was so dark comparatively to the other artists of the times. And we're the first time I, there was a seeing us show live, where I started to weep because of the emotions that I was feeling in, in that performance and how much I chase those moments.

Speaker 3: That's such a good counter argument against those who would say, well, you would just want to have happiness. We just want to kind of boost up on a pleasurable emotions, you know, joy, sexual satisfaction, satiation, you know, exhilaration, all those positive things. It doesn't describe people. We often enjoy sampling negative emotions. We often enjoy sampling here and regret and sadness in, in the right doses, in controlled circumstances. But there's something, um, Michael Norton calls emo diversity, which is the idea that, that we, we want to get a range of different emotions. Sometimes a full life involves getting this and that trying out different things. So, you know, we, you would imagine all of the sort of hedonistic theories of human nature would say we avoid being frightened because being frightened is bad. And yet there we are going to haunted houses and saying the most disgusting and terrifying or movies or listening, listening to songs that, that, you know, that freak us out or make us cry. So this is a wonderful case.

Speaker 1: You touched on religion earlier and you think about all of the great religions, involve characters who suffer good, amazing people who suffer and through suffering. We come to worship them. We don't go to movies to just see people experiencing happy for two and a half hours. We don't go and seek out this entertainment that just is hedonistic and pleasure filled almost all stories that we share as humans across centuries, generations, cultures even have suffering baked into the storyline. They have a hero's journey that we're drawn to. Do you feel that this is something that crosses all cultures and we all as humans are drawn to because you mentioned earlier, you know, some of the more happy culture, some, uh, some of these differences we're seeing in meaning even our cultural,

Speaker 3: Some things are cultural. There's cross cross-cultural differences in the sort of suffering people enjoy in a sort of pleasures. People like, uh, there's also individual differences. Sometimes people don't like horror movies, other people like spicy foods, some people don't, but there are also universals. And I think you're touching on an important universal, which is just like the lives we want to live, require suffering and struggle. The stories we want to watch and listen to and read about. Also involve the same thing, you know, that you ask, what is a story? What does a story have to have to be a story? And one answer, I think a good answer is it has to involve somebody facing an obstacle. It could be funny. It could be the obstacle could be a good ad, a fun romcom with color, threading it together. It could be the most horrible Holocaust narrative of people trying to survive, but you need an obstacle. And this sets up the possibility of a hero's journey is, but also sets up the possibility for somebody who's struggling. And as soon as you get to struggle, you get to difficulty and you're on your way to the suffering. The obstacle doesn't even have to be surmounted. You know, Rocky finished the fight, but he didn't win. I don't want to run to spoil a lot of movies, but some of my favorite sports movie, they don't end up winning it end, but they, they fight or not. And it's interesting that that just catches us my

Speaker 2: Favorite movie that ends that way as the bad news bears, but the struggle that those children go through and what they learned about themselves and the connection that they had with their fellow teammates that they wouldn't have had without the struggle and the suffering of playing on this horrible baseball team. And the only way that they were going to get to a place of feeling good about themselves is to figure out how to connect and win as a team rather than the, uh, individually. And I mean, that, that movie seeing it I'm 48. So I saw it at a very tender age, which also set up probably a lot of wanting to connect with other kids as well. And also feeling a bit of a, of an outcast as that whole team was basically made up about CAS and being able to see something that you could relate to and know, I, we can overcome together. Like we can, we can become something that perhaps we maybe don't feel or are individually class.

Speaker 3: That's a story. Yeah. Ted lasso is the most recent example of that. Um, but you know, the dirty dozen and, you know, get a ragtag bunch of losers together and then watch them struggle. And then, you know, in the middle of fail and it looks like it's all hope is lost and they spring back. Here's the worst idea for a movie ever bring together people who are tremendously successful, have a clear advantage. They get together and they easily win. It's like, wow, it's wow, that's a terrible movie. You want you, you want to see. Um, and, and the reason why we like the bad news bears is cause, cause their struggle because the struggle brings people together. Cause, cause, um, and because it has this, this arc you need, you need this sort of arc. One guy is this data scientist went on Wikipedia and he says, scrubbed it and took out like over a hundred thousand different stories that plays and books and movies. And he analyzed them to see what their structure was. And the most common structure overall is things, you know, get worse and worse and worse and worse, worse. Then they get better at the very end there's victory and that's boom non-necessary, you know, but, but, but that, that's a good thing.

Speaker 1: This search for meaning is universal. I mean, philosophers have thought about it. Many books have been written about it in the book. You make the argument that we can achieve a meaningful life without trying to achieve it or think about it. It's a bit counterintuitive to think we could find meaning without even looking for it. How in your view is that possible?

Speaker 3: Yeah. I'm pushing back on own little philosophers and say an unexamined life isn't worth living. And you gotta be thinking if you're not thinking about meaning it's not meaningful and so on. And you know, I had some of my best friends are philosophers, but, but that's, you know, that's like a barber saying the meaning of life has to have well trimmed here. Uh, these guys are focusing on what they, and what they focus on for me, a good analogy is getting in physical shape, which is one, one way to get in physical shape is to, is to read up on it a lot and plan and I've exercised plan. But you can imagine somebody who is in great shape, who never thinks of being in great shape. They just live a life conducive to being in great shape. Similarly, I don't know, mother Teresa or the Dalai Lama ever spend a lot of time thinking like they would spend a lot thinking, gee, is this meaningful? Am I meeting? Am I living a meaningful life? They just are well, on the flip side, a lot of people, you know, sit, sit under a butts on a couch and they scroll through different TV channels. And I spent hours wondering, what is meaning? Is this, what is the best life? How do I maximize? They're not living meaningful, nicer than thinking about it. So yeah, you could do, you could do it without trying.

Speaker 1: Well, those two examples are extreme acts in service of others. Yes, that's right, right. I mean, we're talking about two of the most charitable people in history. So what role does that service of others play in, in our finding meaning in our own lives, much of what we see in social media and is driven in the narrative today of your own personal highlight reel. Everyone wants to put out what they're doing and what they're up to. We don't spend a lot of time thinking about service to others.

Speaker 3: It's an interesting question. And I'm going to sort of say send it, which maybe is, it will be a bit surprising when you look at what people think of as a meaningful activity, it does involve having an effect on others, having some sort of oomph, some sort of impact on the world. And it's very natural to think of this in terms of helping others. But honestly you can get that in terrible ways, Adolf, Eichmann, whatever you will say about him as he had a plan, the third Reich and the murder of millions of people was, was, was lived a meaningful life. He had, he had big goals that he wanted to achieve. He focused, he had flow and so on. So I think, I think the ingredient for meaning as big impact, we like to think of that in terms of goodness, but it can also be in terms of evil goals. I don't know if I, this is sounding kind of, kind of flippant after talking about Holocaust, but, but fantas in, in, in, in the Marvel series

Speaker 1: Definitely was a guy who had meaning in his life cannot collect infinity stones and kill half, half a descension beings in the universe. That's a goal, not a good goal, but it's a goal. When you think about impact, prestige is often what follows, right? We don't pay close attention or canonize. Those who've had minimal impact on noticeable impact. So is there a link between chasing prestige and, and chasing status and meaning

Speaker 3: It's a good, critical response to me because I want to argue we're after meaning we're after real meaning and you could come and say, well, you know, isn't that strange that these real meaningful things tend to get you a lot of a claim and status and love. Maybe that's really what we're after. And I think there are ways to pull these apart. I think for example, a lot of the meaningful things we do and raising kids is my go to example here, don't get you status and a claim and fame, you know, you're, you're a good dad to some kids. It's no one's going to give you an award or whatever. Um, but still is a value, but in the real world, yeah. I would like to say somebody who climbs Mount Everest is seeking a sort of meaningful pursuit. But if you wanted to push back and say, oh, maybe they just like the fame that comes with having climb Mount Everest, it's hard to argue against it. They're very difficult to pull apart.

Speaker 1: Yeah. There's very few pictures on social media. On the top of Mount Everest, you, you enter a very select company.

Speaker 2: Well, you're also on that journey. You're passing a lot of notable folks whose graves are on that mountain and that have to see

Speaker 3: There's a good question. What distinguishes those people who do it from those people who don't. Yeah.

Speaker 2: The other thing that immediately came to my mind there, as well as how much does procreation or that love come into play, subconsciously we know for evolutionary purposes, how much is driving our everyday thoughts that we're not even conscious of. And if we're not going to be the, the healthy physical specimen will, then we're going to have to figure out other ways to get that attention approval and acceptance that we so crave for ourselves that allow us to know that we're okay. And, and a lot of these pursuits give us build character. They make us individuals, they make us unique to everybody else. So here's my opportunity to separate myself and to get that attention. Yeah,

Speaker 3: You could distinguish two motives here. One is the sort of for myself, mark myself off as distinct satisfy my own desire to be special. You could also say a lot of this is what evolutionary theorists call signaling, which is each and every one of us from a baby to an adult man, woman wants to show off their best self. This is how you get the best mates, the best friends, the best, uh, the best support in the world. And so, and this is in one way in which pain comes in, pain and suffering comes in, which we haven't talked about yet, which is one reason why people choose this offer is because it shows the world how tough they are or, or, you know, you just say, oh yeah, you know, I just have been training for an iron man triathlon, oh, don't pay attention to me.

Speaker 3: It's just something I do. You know, it, it's a way of sort of showing off just as religious suffering people. There's people who get crucified during Easter. And, and to, to, in, in reminiscence of, of Christ's crucifixion, there are people who I talk about this in my book, who goes through protests, religious rituals. And sometimes it's showing how pious they are, you know? And so, so that plays a role too. You guys were both talking about the sort of social nature of suffering. And one thing that's the social nature is I see, as it brings you together to a group, but another way is, you know, you ever see a group of kids together at a table, teenage boys, and they're seeing whomever could eat the most wasabi. This is what we do to,

Speaker 1: Well, you, you bring up kids and you also in the book talk about how the happiest moments are actually when the kids leave the house pain and suffering is in childbearing and the stress that goes along with raising children. So how is it that kids provide that opportunity for meaning yet when we're actually experiencing raising them? It's not tied to the classical markers of happiness or meaning necessarily. It's a lot of stress.

Speaker 3: It's a wonderful illustration of how you could pull apart happiness from other things you take. Um, you know, I was talking to this Ida other day, uh, and he has, uh, two kids and I think they were one and three and the guy looked at me like he hadn't done it over to more. Presumably he hadn't slept in a week and he's like, ah, he's like a zombie and everything. And, and he's going on about how, how exhausted he is now freaked out. He is and overworked and insane. And plainly I, you know, my kids are way are adults now Lam my life, I think was some more pleasure, but, but there's something hugely rewarding and what he was doing. And part of this is, is what we, haven't. Another thing we haven't talked about before, which is love, which is, you know, one of the signs of a life well lived is loving relationships. And the relationship you have with your kids, I don't know, is, is, is intense and special and unusual, sometimes terrible and often wonderful. And, and it doesn't reduce to simple boy, I'm having more hedonistic joy than I had before

Speaker 1: That example of kids, or we look at Gandhi and mother Teresa, much of this is a legacy that, that lasts beyond our time here on earth as well. You know, we hope and pray that our children will outlast us. So is there meaning tied to that legacy that we leave in? The work that we do?

Speaker 3: I think there is, I think one difference between pleasure and meaning is pleasure is kind of fleeting. Pleasure. You have pleasure, you have fun, and then it goes away. And in fact, you would try to recapture. It just gets boring after awhile. Well, meaningful pursuits are long-term and the real meaningful pursuits we imagine are long-term that extend beyond our lives. And, you know, raising kids is a wonderful example is not the only example. I think musicians and artists and writers often aspire to have a ripple effect to have an effect on things after you're gone and as well as people who do good works in general, you know, I helped somebody and I think, well, you know, maybe their life has improved in ways that, that I won't be there to witness.

Speaker 1: Yeah. You think about science and research and, and understanding something that is a mystery you think about creation and art. So obviously we've, we've used the example of raising children quite a bit, but there are plenty of other ways for those in the audience who aren't necessarily considering kids.

Speaker 3: And I should say, I think, I think, uh, I think kids are, are, um, a great source of meaning, but I know a lot of people who aren't parents whose lives are incredibly rich and meaningful. And I think that, I think the balance is such that having kids is kind of a tough call. There are so many other ways in which you could have a rich and meaningful life. Um, and you know, you have kids that it precludes certain options

Speaker 1: And we're not making the argument that kids guarantee meaning in your life.

Speaker 3: No, don't, don't, don't Sue me if you have kids. And then

Speaker 1: Where's my meeting, Paul, and I'm not finding it.

Speaker 3: Sure. My life is, is empty. Meaning you faster.

Speaker 1: No, I'm going to have a lot of kids sent your way,

Speaker 3: Paul, and I'm not going to take care of your kids if you find a day where this steak

Speaker 2: Well, for a lot of parents, I mean, th th the way that they look at their children and the way they raise them for a lot of them, you always hear, well, I want my children to have a better life than I did. And, and you usually hear that across the board, even people who had great lives, aspire to give their children even better lives than, than they have. So obviously there's a lot of meaning that, that goes into that practice that allows them again, to feel good about what they do.

Speaker 3: Yeah, I think so. I think, um, and, and, and there's another component, which is, if you ever meet a cynic who tells you, we just want to be happy and get short-term pleasure, point out to them that most people want their kids to be happy, or their friends or their, their, their, their family people. They love to be happy and flourish even after they're gone. You even when there's nobody there to be happy to, to witness them. And, you know, I know people who make sacrifices for when they're gone so that others will, will live a good life. And it's very hard to reconcile that with sort of simple minded, hedonistic approach.

Speaker 1: And there are many in our audience who are living their lives right now, simply to make others happy and sacrifice their own happiness. Along the way. Another point I wanted to touch on is anxiety. We talk a lot about anxiety on the show and anxiety is really the anticipation of future suffering or pain. And it'll often block us from taking actions that lead to suffering. How do you view anxiety in this balance and sweet spot search for meaning? Yeah.

Speaker 3: I think like a lot of things, anxiety as a kind of sweet spot. I don't want to overuse the term, but we talk all the time about people who have too much anxiety. And because those are people that they such people are unhappy. They, they, they, they end up in psychiatrists, offices, and they end up taking medication. But the evolutionary psychologist Nassi says, what about people too little anxieties, as you know, where you find them, you find them in morgues and prisons, because they're not anxious enough. They don't anticipate bad events enough. And so to get into all sorts of trouble, it's too much anxiety. If I'm afraid to go on a balcony of my, uh, 10th floor, it's too little. If I'm playing tight rope by bouncing up and down on, on, on the ledge, you know, so you want an optimal amount of anxiety and the situation will dictate what the optimal amount is sitting in my nice house in Toronto.

Speaker 3: I need less anxiety than if I was in a maximum security prison, but, um, but we need, we, you want to, you want to have the right amount of anxiety. It's, it's hard to, it's easy to miss this because anxiety is bad. It doesn't feel good, but it's good for us. And that way it's kind of like physical pain, you know, you might think, well, pain sucks and pain does suck. I wish I could have an off switch to shut off the pain, but we know there are people who have neurological disorders where they feel no pain, and they often don't live past adolescence because they don't develop that the natural tendency to protect their bodies from damaged.

Speaker 1: Yeah. It's a guardrail for dangerous behaviors. Exactly,

Speaker 3: Exactly. And negative emotions in general, we might imagine, we want to rid ourselves of them of, um, of anger, jealousy of shame of guilt. But if you have too little of them, it will bite you and in different ways.

Speaker 1: I feel in many respects, we have this need for story. This need to create meaning when we find no meaning and it's meaningless, we, we panic. And oftentimes we'll, we'll write stories that aren't grounded in reality, based on the facts on the ground to help us mitigate or deal with that pain and fear, then you have this other camp that's, you know, positivity for the sake of positivity and rewrite every narrative to be positive to you. So how do you balance the, those who, who rewrite every narrative to be the victim versus those who rewrite every narrative to be the Victor?

Speaker 3: So there's two questions here. One question is what's the sort of psychological benefits of this. There's no neutral stance. So when bad things happen, do I envision myself as to hero rising above them or do I envision myself as crushed by them? And, um, and it's probably beneficial. Dan Gilbert talks about a psychological immune system, which is a tendency to tell stories in which it's okay. I did well to benefit from it. You know, I actually think that as a grownup person, we should try not to tell false stories. We should try to be true to what happens, not just because it's good to know true things, because I think that too, but also because it helps us in the future. And I think that's actually the danger of telling these it's all happens for a reason. And there's a plan and everything, which is, you know, we want to recognize the existence of randomness and treat the world accordingly. Just to take an extreme example. There are people who think that if they have some good fortune, some bad fortune is coming their way and vice versa, they believe in sort of balanced. Siri was not true. Do the universe, the universe doesn't care.

Speaker 1: The universe does not care.

Speaker 3: It's an unfeeling universe that doesn't, it doesn't love you. It doesn't hate you either. So that's nice.

Speaker 1: And I really appreciate the, the focus on balance because I feel that in order to get through the ups and downs of life, the pursuit of balance means there's going to be times when it tilts to either side. And it's completely out of our control. And much of what we know about biology is around this return to homeostasis this return to the middle. And as we now are living through and experiencing in this podcast, suffering, there's a balance happiness, there's a balance. And in that balance, we can find meaning in our lives as

Speaker 3: Beautifully put it's. Uh, it's also Aristotle. I'm told that Aristotelian idea of, of a life of a good life is a well-balanced life among different priorities. And that's to answer to sort of question we began with that's when we're talking about the sweet spot.

Speaker 2: Well, it's interesting Andy talking about balancing, of course, we have a lot of clients who, who, uh, ask, how do I get more balance in my life between everything? And, and I, and I think that question in itself has many answers to it, where for a lot of folks, the new thing is about seasons, about shifting from one to the other and create balance that way, rather than living your day, very balanced, which I can understand what drive people a bit batty as well. I've I I've done this much work. I have to do this. You know, that that has its own thing as well, but looking at your life on a timeline and looking at the seasons and the efforts that you're putting into certain things to derive that enhancement of life or enjoyment out of life, and whether that is pleasurable or the suffering that you're transforming or getting something out of on the other end.

Speaker 3: It's an interesting thought. I never thought of that way of balancing. And I always thought of as sort of a day-to-day thing, it's kind of freaky to think somebody said, well, summer, I'm going to focus on pleasure, but winter's coming up and that's gonna be truth. Then, you know, next year I'll start myself off, live some meaning and then move to beauty. And then, you know, so it's, it's an interesting way.

Speaker 1: Well, I could tell you living in New York city, I definitely pursued pleasure during the summer and stayed indoors during the winter.

Speaker 3: I chose my things wisely. She was pleasure. I'm in Canada, man. Don't, don't go for pleasure in a winter. Winter should be truth, work on truth then. Sorry. I was just going to say that there's these studies that look at how people naturally balance things in their lives. What do you have to suppose later today? There's some good things you're looking forward to, you know, a call with a friend or something and some bad things. I cleaned the kitty litter or something. People balanced them. People naturally to put a balance. Once you do a very good thing, peoples tend to do a bad thing. And so on. There's a natural sense of balance. I liked it. I love the seasons ideas, the coolest thing I've ever heard of. I don't really think it's very tenable

Speaker 2: When it was relayed to us is so that this month or this quarter, I'm going to be focusing on work. And then once I have this situated and got this up to a certain level of where I'm, I'm happy with it. Now, I'm going to this next season because I've invested in work. This season goes, the family make up for the time that I spent focused on

Speaker 3: Well, more power to let me know how that works out.

Speaker 1: We love asking every guest one last question, what your X factor is, what it is that you think makes you extraordinary. Paul.

Speaker 3: So there was a supposition in there. Do any of your guests modestly say, no, I nothing. I'm just not extraordinary. Some

Speaker 1: Do. Definitely.

Speaker 3: I'm going to tone down and under extraordinary, but say a skill that I have, and I'll be out. I'll match this with, um, with a skill I don't have, which is, and this isn't a sort of scholarly research, dummy. I know people who were like laser beams, focusing on somebody with tremendous analytic depth, going deeper and deeper and deep. And I really admire that. That's not my strength. I see my X-Factor as that, I, I tend to be able to integrate things from a lot of different areas and put them together in, in maybe new ways and, you know, I let other people be the judge of whether I succeeded at that, but that that's, that's one of the things I try to do in my book.

Speaker 1: We can definitely appreciate that your latest book, the sweet spot, the pleasures of suffering and the search for meaning is out. We highly recommend our audience. Check it out. Thank you for joining us. Paul fun conversation.

Speaker 3: Thank you for having me. This was tons of

Speaker 4: [inaudible]

Speaker 1: Johnny. The perspective that Paul offered our audience is so important. We often have how to guests on the show, breaking down the science, but it's important to realize that life is about balance when it comes to suffering, when it comes to pleasure and that happiness, that we're all looking for.

Speaker 2: Yeah. I really dug that. Paul had a curiosity. So he wrote this book as an opportunity to research this subject. It has been on his mind and for me, that's why I love discovery and exploration to answer the questions that Moll around in my brain.

Speaker 1: Well, we know there are a lot of questions up there. There's

Speaker 2: Certainly

Speaker 1: This week, shout out, goes to Joshua who wrote us in our Facebook community group to tell us how grateful he is for the skills he learned at his art of charm program. Joshua manages a trader Joe's and told us how much is art. A term skills have helped manage his team and keep everyone in the proper head space. During the pandemic. He is those skills to train the staff on body language and eye contact to help ease customer tensions and keep his staff feeling good. Doing their jobs in a difficult environment,

Speaker 2: Comes to communication. Most people think of the conversations that we have, but we know that communication is something that happens verbally and non-verbally we help our clients finally supercharge their verbal communication, but also make sure that their non-verbals match exactly what it is that they want to be saying about themselves. Remember, your actions speak louder than words.

Speaker 1: If you want to be like Josh had joined us in our Facebook community, head over to the art of charm.com/group to join today. Also,

Speaker 2: You do us and the entire art of charm team, a huge favor, head on over to iTunes and rate and review this podcast. It would really mean the world to us, help others find the show and helps us get great guests like Paul bloom.

Speaker 1: The art of charm podcast is produced by Michael Harold and Eric Montgomery until next week. Have a great one.

Speaker 4: [inaudible].