Finding Mastery with Dr. Michael Gervais - Find Happiness in Your Melancholy | Susan Cain

Episode Date: April 27, 2022

This week’s conversation is with Susan Cain, the author of the bestsellers Quiet Journal, Quiet Power: The Secret Strengths of Introverts, and Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking.Quiet has been translated into 40 languages, spent eight years on The New York Times best seller list, and was named the #1 best book of the year by Fast Company magazine, which also named Susan one of its Most Creative People in Business. Her record-smashing TED talk has been viewed over 40 million times, and was named by Bill Gates as one of his all-time favorite talks.Susan also has a new book, Bittersweet: How Sorrow and Longing Make Us Whole, which is one of many reasons why I was excited to speak with her. We talk about what it really means to feel sorrow and longing as part of the human experience, as well as the power of introversion._________________Subscribe to our Youtube Channel for more powerful conversations at the intersection of high performance, leadership, and meaning: https://www.youtube.com/c/FindingMasteryGet exclusive discounts and support our amazing sponsors! Go to: https://findingmastery.com/sponsors/Subscribe to the Finding Mastery newsletter for weekly high performance insights: https://www.findingmastery.com/newsletter Download Dr. Mike's Morning Mindset Routine! https://www.findingmastery.com/morningmindsetFollow us on Instagram, LinkedIn, and X.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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It was named the number one best book of the year by Fast Company Magazine, which also named Susan one of its most creative people in business. It's awesome. And I'm stoked to have her on and share her insights with you. Her record-smashing TED Talk has been viewed over 40 million times and was named by Bill Gates as one of his all-time favorite talks. Pretty cool. So she's got a new book out. It's called Bittersweet, How Sorrow and Longing Make Us Whole. I love it. It's deep.

It's rich. And there's many reasons why I wanted to have her on, but I was really excited to talk about her investigation into what I would call difficult emotions and how important it is for us to go into that territory to be able to experience all of the human experience. And there is a limiter.

If you can't go into the difficult emotions and stay and play and understand and be in those spaces, it's like an equal opposite limiter to the upper reaches and the ability to experience the deep joy and happiness, even excitement. And with that, let's get right into this week's conversation with Susan Cain. Susan, I know you're going to answer this question honestly. How are you? I'm actually doing really well. It's a, it's kind of a funny day today, because we are talking, literally, like about two hours after my book, Bittersweet came out. And this is a book that

I've been working on for a gazillion years. And yeah, so it's just kind of, it's a bit of an otherworldly moment, let's say. Okay. So let's start with bittersweet. Let's start with actually the definition. What does that name mean to you? Well, it's a kind of state of happiness and sadness at the same time, which is probably the state in which I live more or less. And I know this because the reason that I started down this path in the first place, and I have been on a kind of five-year or more quest to look at the bittersweet tradition

and the way that it has spanned centuries and continents, and it's in our wisdom traditions and our artistic and literary traditions. So our artists and thinkers and theologians have been talking for thousands of years about the fact that joy and sorrow are forever paired. And that in that understanding, there is a curiously piercing joy at the beauty of the world that comes from this knowledge. It's a kind of gateway to creativity and connection. But I started down this path just because all my life for decades, I have loved sad music, you know, bittersweet minor key music, especially the music of Leonard Cohn. And I just became kind of transfixed by this

paradox of why it would be that something ostensibly sad could make the listener happy. You know, and it's not just me, like there's studies that find that the people whose favorite songs are bittersweet, listen to them 800 times on their playlists. While people whose favorite songs are happy listen to them only 175 times. So there's something about that kind of music that kind of makes us feel like we're closer to touching the sky in some way. And that was what I really wanted to understand. And it started out as kind of this small question, but it became an inquiry really into the deepest states of being alive and the strongest gateways that we have to creativity and communion. And those strong gateways, meaning the depth of emotion? Yes, but also there's two aspects to it. One aspect is sorrow

and one aspect is longing. When you look at sorrow, it turns out like we're evolutionarily designed to respond to each other's sorrows. And this is because, because the species, and this is true of all mammals, couldn't survive if we didn't respond to the cries of our infants. But because we have that capacity, that kind of radiates outwards from there to respond to the distress of all beings. And we like, we actually have the vagus nerve, which is the biggest bundle of nerves in our body. And it's very fundamental to us. It's the vagus nerve that helps control our breathing and digestion and sex drive. And it's also the vagus nerve that responds when we see another being in distress. Like that's what makes you feel the wave of compassion.

So, so, so this ability to express sorrow and to hear it in other people and to have a culture that could do that more readily than ours does. That's one of the greatest powers that we have to coming together. So like artists and writers do this naturally. Like that's kind of why they're writing in the first place in a way, or why they're making their art is to express these things. But we don't have as ready a vehicle for expressing these things in everyday life. When I, I was early in my practice and it was a professional athlete that I was working with. She was deeply depressed and she kind of sat back in her chair and she was okay. You know, like it wasn't like this was a dangerous depression, but she sat back in her chair and she said, you know, I kind of like

it. I don't wish it every day, but there's an aliveness to being in touch with this sadness that I feel more often than not. And I thought, whoa, okay, this is not how I understand it. This is not what the books talk about. And right on the spot, she was teaching me about this intimacy that she feels and the aliveness that she feels with sorrow and sadness and longing and like this deep crave to be connected. And she was making a decision on the fly. Like, do I actually want to extinguish this feeling? And the answer was clearly no.

She wants it. She just doesn't want to be run by it. is running the system as opposed to the ability to go deep within, feel deeply, convey that connect and to have that range of emotions. And you nailed it. You really did a deep dive. And when I was doing my work, okay, Quiet, I think it was your first book, but it was definitely- Yeah, it was.

And then Bittersweet. I was like, oh, I just assumed you're a psychologist. Come to find out you are like the rare bird that studied law and has a deep understanding of emotion. Like I do not want to insult my lawyer friends, but like, holy moly, how did you do this? Okay. I'll answer that question in a sec, but I want to first come to the point that you made about your depressed. I'm not sure if you said client or friend, someone in your life client. Yeah. Because one of the, one of the things I'm really getting at here is the distinction between depression and melancholy and that our culture doesn't have a way of doing that. So these 2000 year old traditions that I'm talking about just assumed that there was a state that

tapped into the sorrows and longings of the world that wasn't a clinical depression. And, you know, clinical depression, I think of as a kind of emotional hole that swallows everything up, including your creative capacities. So I'm actually not making an argument for that and hope that anyone suffering from that is reaching out for help to feel better. What I'm saying is that there's an ocean of difference between these two states of a kind of happy melancholy versus a clinical depression. But you're right. Like if you look in PubMed, let's say, and type in the word melancholy, all you get is a whole bunch of articles about clinical depression. So like this distinction has been erased from the mainstream contemporary literature, even though it's there. I don't know

if it's a difference in kind or a difference in degree. That's one of the things I've been wondering about, and I don't have the answer yet. At first pass, I would say degree. At first pass, but there's going to be much more sensitivity into that answer. But please finish your thought. No, that's all. I actually tend to agree with you. Like, I don't have the empirical data to say it, but that's where my instincts lie, that it's probably a difference in degree. But the difference in degree leads you to such profoundly different places that it ends up being experienced as a difference in kind. I love it. And there's an insight I wanted to share with you and just get your take on it. It was nineties, 1990s, somewhere in that range. And I remember reading a bit of research

that when you ask people what they want, most people respond with, I want to be happy. Okay. And then I started studying, maybe we're studying some of the same text, the muted nature of just being happy, right? There is an entire range for humans to experience. And if the goal is to be happy, oh boy, that means like, we don't want to be angry when somebody, you know, like breaks into your home or scared if some, if you're on the edge of a cliff or sad, if you know, a loss of a loved one or like, hold on a minute, because I think the response that I've come to understand is people are so that the difficult emotions are so difficult that they're looking for relief away from those difficult

motions and think that, oh, well, I just want to be happy. And what you've written about, and I just want to get your take on, on make sure that I'm calibrating correctly is that no, no, no, no. You want to experience the full range. You want to experience everything so that you can enjoy the depth of, um, the more eloquent and easy to experience emotions such as joy and happiness and, and, um and a sense of elation in life. If I had had my way, I actually might have called this book. Well, I mean, I love the title that we have, but I'll say originally I was going to call this book, The Happiness of Melancholy. And in my computer files, that's actually what it's still called. And the only reason I didn't is because

the feedback that I got was the very word melancholy is like, is so off-putting to so many people that they won't even hear what you have to say. So, so I haven't gone there, but. Whoever, whoever titled your book was better than you. Yeah. Okay. Bittersweet is great. No, I know. I mean, I do love it. I, I, I totally love that. And I kept using that word and what I was. I mean, I do love it. I, I, I totally love that. And I kept using that word and what I was writing. I just didn't have it as the title. So yeah. Yeah. But the reason I say that is because I'm not at all anti-happy. I like, I, I love to be happy. I think it's a very worthy goal. What, what I'm saying is more that there is a deeper form of happiness than the just like, yay, smiley, like I'm feeling great all the longing side of what I talk about in the book. We are beings. You can't be happy unless you're like being fully human and actually being who you are,

as opposed to denying half of who you are, which I think is the state that we're in right now. And what humans really are, we are creatures who come into this world with a sense of a longing for a more perfect and beautiful world that we kind of feel like is always at a distance. And maybe we've been banished from it in some way. Like this, this is why the narrative of so many of our religions is like, you know, over there is the garden of Eden over there is Mecca over there is Zion. And I'm going to reach for that state. That's the human experience. Like that's the religious expression of it, but there's also a secular expression of it too, that we've lost sight of. The very word longing means to reach for,

to grow longer. And, and, and historically longing was understood as the catalyst to our adventures and as the catalyst to our drive to create things and do things. So like in the Odyssey, which is the seminal story of epic adventure, that story begins with Odysseus, the great adventurer, weeping on a beach out of longing homesickness for his native homeland of Ithaca. And it's understood, it's called Potos in ancient Greece. And that means like the longing for everything great and beautiful and unattainable, but worthy of seeking. And it's understood that it's like potosism, that's the animating force of what drives us forward. So I'm not against happiness. I'm against a, like a tamped down version of what happiness can be. And there, there's a reason that, you know, going back to kind of the religious expression of these things,

the mystical sides of most religious traditions are in touch with a kind of ecstasy, which they under a religious ecstasy of like a union with a design, with a divine that is understood to come from the state of longing for the design divine. It's like the longing is what brings you to that ecstatic state of union. So I'm just advocating for getting more in touch with all of those deeper states of our nature. Finding Mastery is brought to you by Momentous. When it comes to high performance, whether you're leading a team, raising a family, pushing physical limits, or simply trying to be better today than you were yesterday. What you put in your body matters. And that's why I trust Momentus. From the moment I sat down with Jeff Byers, their co-founder and CEO, I could tell this was not your average supplement company. And I was immediately drawn to their mission, helping people achieve performance for

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Again, that's Felix Gray. You spell it F-E-L-I-X-G-R-A-Y.com and use the code FindingMastery20 at FelixGray.com for 20% off. If you can't go really deep, you're probably not going to have a whole lot of happiness. And if you can't feel the longing, that difficult feeling of being separated and not having right now, you're going to maybe not enjoy the depth of the connection on the other side. Yeah, Yeah. And, and, and there's something about like when you tune in to this deeper existential longing or even just to the, the, the longings in your life there, like I say, follow your longing where it's telling you to go that what you're longing for is one of your best guides as to what the center of your life should be. And I mean, I, I can tell you now, you know, a story that's in the book,

but for your listeners now. So I had, I had wanted to be a writer since I was four years old, but I became, for various reasons, I became a Wall Street lawyer, which seriously was like the least likely profession for me. I should have been, if not a writer, a psychologist, as you said. Um, but somehow I became a corporate lawyer and, um, and it's a whole long story that we could get into, but I'll tell you this piece of it that, um, Oh, we need, we need to get into this. Okay. Should we just, should we just start at the beginning and then we can talk about the longing part? Okay. Yeah, because this is materially important. I mean, you went to two of the best universities on the planet.

And that's not by accident. And so I do want to understand some of that early path because you made, it feels to me that you've made tremendous sacrifices for something. And not that I mean, sacrifices are cool, but not at the cost of self, complete self. And so I do want to understand this path. So did you hit your head on the desk one day and be like, what am I doing with my life? Like, how did the crisis happen? Well, I mean, no, it's a funny thing. You know, even when I was in law school, like I went to law school because my, you school because my father grew up in the Great Depression and really had the mentality, which he passed on to me, of you've got to be a writer when you're 15, 16, 17, but when you're 35 and you're having trouble paying the bills, it's not going to feel as romantic. And I thought, you know, there's

actually a lot of truth in that. And I had taken a fiction writing class when I was in college, and that didn't really click for me. And I didn't understand at the time that that was just the wrong genre. So I was thinking, well, you know, maybe those were just youthful dreams and this really wasn't for me. So I went to law school and, and I actually loved it while I was there. I just like, I found it intellectually fascinating. Like, I mean, I felt like an alien. I didn't feel like I was really in the me place, but, but it was fascinating. And then I became a lawyer and that was fascinating too. And again, I became a corporate lawyer. I did not know the difference between a stock and a bond. I had no idea what was going on. I remember I had these clients who were bankers and

I would be on the phone with them and they would be telling me what their issue was. And I didn't understand a word they were saying. I was just like taking notes as fast as I could to try to decipher it later. But I kind of got a kick out of being able to figure that world out. You know, it was like being in a foreign country and plop down and you don't know the language. And then suddenly you're learning it and you're like, wow, it's cool that I can actually speak this language. So I felt that way for a long time. Yeah, I just got into the whole thing and I really wanted to make partner. And I had this dream that I would make partner and live in a house in Greenwich Village, which was the neighborhood that I loved because I love that neighborhood because it was like the place where artists and writers from the previous century had lived. And there were, there were now plaques in

their names commemorating the people who had lived there. So I felt like that was my home. So I had this whole cockeyed dream about becoming a wall street lawyer so that I could live in that neighborhood inhabited by the artists of the previous century. That's what was happening. Oh, you are complicated. You are complicated. Okay, good. All right. But you played the safe bet, right?

In some respects that you said, okay, I'm going to, listen, I'm going to, dad's probably right. And I'm smart. I get this thing. I mean, you ended up at Princeton, like I said, not by accident. And then Harvard Law. I mean, these are academic titans. And so go back to the micro choices. At some point, you're like, I'm going to Princeton, or did you say, I'm going to study something and Princeton happens to be the place? Or did you have legacy there? How did that happen?

Oh, no, I didn't have any kind of legacy anywhere, really. But I don't know. I mean, I came from a family where like, learning was everything that was like the culture of my family. And that's how I had always been. And that's kind of where I like to live my life. And I really, I really, really, really wanted to go to a college where I'd be surrounded by other students who loved learning as much as I did, because I had felt like a fish out of water in high school because there was nobody else who loved books and stuff the way that I did. Did you have a community in high school? I had friends in high school, but no, I didn't really feel like I had a tribe in high school. I felt like I was living in someone else's tribe because there wasn't really an intellectual

culture in my high school. And that's what mattered so much to me. So yeah. Of course, made the bridge between the longing. So during that phase, 12 to 18, we're trying to figure out identity, right? According to Eric Erickson's developmental psychology arc there is that that is the age where we're trying to figure out our identity versus like being confused by the role that we're inhabiting. And that's the crisis marked by that phase.

And it sounds like you were in crisis because you were, you were in, you were not authentically inhabiting a role and you didn't quite know exactly what your identity was, but you're, you're trying to just figure out how to survive the high school years. Cause you were different. Yeah. And I don't, I don't even know if I would say I didn't know my identity. I think I knew what my identity was pretty strongly. It was more that I couldn't really find that. Yeah. You didn't have the tribe. I like how you said I was inhabiting somebody else's tribe. Yeah. Yeah. It was like that. Okay. So that's, that's cool. So then, but there was a longing. There was a longing for sure. Oh, yeah.

To say, I want to just be part of a community of people or a small tribe or even have a couple friends that are like, hey, did you read this and think about it this way? Or like just where you could go deeper into the learning experience. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I remember the feeling of like arriving at Princeton and feeling like, oh my God, this is like amazing. It was like heaven, you know, to be in an environment where you could talk about the things that I like to talk about. So you had decent social skills or did you find yourself like totally ostracized on the outside? Oh yeah. Yeah. No, I was never like the ostracized kid. I mean, I'm shy by nature.

So like, I just didn't feel comfortable in high school culture where, you know, so much of the currency is about like being the super outgoing person, you know, the one who's like behaving socially in a way where all the attention goes to them, that kind of thing. So I just didn't thrive in that, but I was fine socially. You know what I mean? So you just had a crisis like 12 years later and then wrote a bestseller about it. I had just been thinking about it. You're talking about quiet. Yeah. I've been thinking about that all my life too. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So hold on. Let's not get to quiet yet, but let's stay on bittersweet

so was so you were in touch with the longing for um at least in your high school years if you go back even further did you have longing at any point totally totally this is why i say like follow your longing because like even i i can even think when i was a kid i mean i my parents subscribed to the new yorker magazine and i used to like cut out, you know, poems and illustrations from the New Yorker and put it in a scrapbook. And I don't even know why I was doing it, but it was like that scrapbook. Most nine-year-olds do that. Yeah. We just don't talk about it. No, it just sort of represented the literary world I wanted to be part of. Oh my God. Okay. So what were you longing for?

I describe longing as an ache or a deep crave and not like a craving of some sort of immediate satiation, but like a deep ache. And then I also, if I layer on some of the Buddhist traditions on it, it starts to get really complicated for me because I hear you say, follow your longing. I associate that with, sorry, I just hit the microphone. With Buddhist craving that you're supposed to not do. Yeah, right. Yeah. So I get a little confused here. And so that's why I would love for you to describe longing. And then I'm going to try to map that onto a sense of craving. Yeah, sure.

Okay. So first of all, I'll just say I had that same confusion that you did of knowing instinctively that the state of longing was a generative state. I knew it instinctively. And I also saw it in the mystical realms of the various religions, but, and I couldn't figure out how to square it with what I was reading in Buddhism about, you know, craving being the,

kind of one of the great traps. But, and so I actually talked to you a Sufi teacher about it and I wrote it, I wrote about this in the book that this state of longing that I'm trying to articulate, it's actually quite different from Buddhist craving. It's much more of, it's a kind of existential state of longing to merge with that, which is beautiful, that which is good, that which is divine. You could say if you're religiously inclined, but you could talk about it in secular terms, it doesn't matter. And that's why it's a generative state, because if you're following it correctly, it's bringing you in the direction of these higher states. How is longing different than love? similar to love because love is one of the things that we long for. I mean, it's like longing for,

what are we longing for? We're longing for an ultimate communion. And there's a lot of manifestations of that. And one of the great manifestations in earthly terms is romantic love or love of children or love of anybody. And are you working from a spiritual or more secular design? So I started out working from a completely secular place. I've always been deeply agnostic, but I really have gone through quite a transformation in writing this book. I mean, I'm still just as agnostic on an, from an intellectual point of view, let's say, as, as I ever was, but I've become much more aware of how the experiences, the beings, the art forms, everything that I value most, that I'm like, that the reaction to them is the same reaction that religious people talk about when they talk about God. I don't think

there's really a difference. I think we have a false dichotomy in our culture because we have this great political tradition of separation between church and state. We unfortunately also have a kind of intellectual dichotomy between the secular and the spiritual, when in fact, I think they're the same thing, but just different manifestations, different language used for the same experience that all humans have. A fundamentalist that I know would disagree so radically. As an agnostic, you say, basically, just to clarify, agnostic means, I'm just not sure. I don't know. Yeah. I mean, so it's not an accident that throughout the book, I quote C.S. Lewis a lot, who the fundamentalist person who you were talking about probably loves, as do I.

So we both love him from maybe a different perspective. But, you know, C.S. Lewis, like he started his whole religious journey, began with this sense of longing. Like he called it sensucht, but it basically meant the exact same thing as what I'm talking about. You know, he, he talked about how he would behold things that were incredibly beautiful and suddenly be beset by these feelings for, he called it the inconsolable longing for, we know not what. And, and he wrote about this all his life. And in his case, when he was in his thirts, he ended up concluding, I don't remember his exact words, but it was basically like, if we have a hunger for something that can't be, if we have a thirst that can't be quenched, and if we have a hunger that can't be sated, it must be because we belong in a different world, in a more godly world. So that was his conclusion. I'm taking the exact same human experiences and I'm reaching a slightly different conclusion, but my, my belief is that

there's, you know, like a very, very transparent veil between his conclusion and the one I'm coming to. And then, and I invite anybody listening or reading to come to their conclusion. We're all going to take it someplace different. But I feel like the piece that I can bring to it is just to make people aware in the culture that we're in about of this fundamental impulse that we all have as humans that doesn't get talked about. And why do you think it doesn't get talked about in and or experienced? Well, I mean, partly because it's so, there's something so ineffable about it. It's very hard to put it into words. You know, I could try, I could say it's the feeling you have when like you look at something so gorgeous that it brings

you to tears and like, why are you crying? You're crying because it's a representation of this state of perfect love and beauty or whatever that we're longing for. But it's hard. It's very ineffable. So that's reason number one. And reason number two is that you can't really talk about it without speaking of a kind of sorrow. You know, it's like a sorrow that we're, we're not in Eden, we're here. And we don't like to talk about sorrow. We, we, we see that as distasteful and we can talk about why that is. There's a whole historical answer to that question, but, but we don't like to go there. We, we, we see it as a, as disempowering and vaguely embarrassing. Yeah. I will even try to make it even more simple to me, at least it's hard. It's just hard to sit in it. And this is, so I just got done with a three-day, 16-hour day meditation with Jon Kabat-Zinn and his brother and his son. Amazing experience. emotions that are heavy or prickly or like almost like a very heavy blanket,

like sadness and longing. There's a heaviness to it. And to me, it almost feels like it's pulling on the upper parts of my respiratory system. There's like a weight that takes place. It's just hard. And you know what's easy? Social media. You know what's easy social media you know it's easy staying on the surface you know beer and pizza is much easier than uh wine and deep conversations i'm making i'm mixing some metaphors in here but no i totally get it yeah there's just something that is difficult about it so can you can you just kind of transition our thinking a little bit to your take, both like this bridge between bittersweet and quiet, and quiet being a watershed modern book on introversion, and then map your take on the last couple of years with those insights.

I mean, the last couple of years. Come on, you can do it. I know it's a big one. It's so big, but we can do it together. We can do it, Susan. I mean, the last couple of years. Yeah. It's so hard to know where to start. And maybe one aspect of the question is about how did the pandemic figure differently maybe for introverts and for extroverts? Or what did it reveal about our true preferences of how we want to spend our time I think that's been really interesting because there's so much discussion now of the resistance that that people are having to going back to work the way it was before, you know, before remote work

became such a feature, just an accepted feature of everyday life. And what I'm seeing is that we did not realize pre-pandemic the extent to which everyone was expected to be on 24-7. And introverts were acutely aware of it because there was such a mismatch between an introvert's preference of how they want to spend their time versus what the expectation was. But we're starting to see it with extroverts as well, you know, of there being a kind of mass reclamation of wanting to spend time in quieter ways, more time with family, less time in an airplane, less time spent fixing up your self-presentation so that you can be out there and on, you know, which, which you can understand, like the act of putting on your work clothes and all the different things that you do in order to get ready for a day at the

office or all those things. And, and as humans, humans, we actually, we enjoy those things too. So the answer is not, I'm not saying that the lesson is to swing entirely in the other direction, but rather to get to some kind of a place of balance. And I think that's what we're seeing in kind of the push pull of, you know, to what extent are people going to go back to a real workplace versus the remote one? And no one knows where the right place to land is. I And that's why I've built intentional routines into the way that I close my day. And Cozy Earth has become a new part of that. Their bedding, it's incredibly soft, like next level soft. And what surprised me the most is how much it actually helps regulate temperature. I tend to run warm at night, and these sheets have helped me sleep cooler and more consistently,

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introversion, extroversion as a way of gathering energy. And let's for sure double click on that in a minute. But the first time I took an inventory to differentiate, I got the result back and it was like a 99 percentile in extroversion. And I was like, wait a minute, That's what my dad wanted me to be. I got to take this again. I don't think this is accurate. And so it was me even in my own self report assessment presenting in a way for what I was trying to do, the right thing by this man that was helping shape my understanding of becoming. And I was like, wait, I've kind of lost my way. That's not me. And so I share that story with you because my experience, I am more on the extroverted side than introverted. And

I've come to appreciate, my wife is introverted and I've come to appreciate- That's really common by the way. Yeah. You know, mixed couples. Yeah. Oh, it's great. Yeah. It is. Yeah. Two extroverts. Like we'd just be talking way too much. Yeah. And my, my husband's an extrovert. It's not an accident. Right. Yeah. There's a good counterbalance there and yeah she has um elicited an appreciation for the contemplative side of gathering of gathering energy you know like of really sitting and feeling and thinking and mulling and like contemplating and so so anyways i've got this counterbalance but my point long way is that this this team slash zoom slash this uh visible meeting where there's a camera in front has been exhausting yeah it that that in itself has been exhausting so that's for from an extrovert you know slightly extroverted at this point in my life but what what has it been like

for an introvert to be on, on the social video, not social, but on the video profiles that we're using to communicate? Yeah. I feel the same exhaustion that you talk about. But one great thing or fortunate thing for me is I guess, because I've been writing about this subject for such a long time, I, um, I manage my calendar really, really, really carefully. So like I'll set things up so that I only have one or two of those kinds of things a day. And when I was writing, I would try to set it up so that I'd have many days where I didn't have any of that at all. Um, and I, I think we need to be much more intentional about that. So yeah,

like my colleague who helps me with my schedule, like she knows, you know, and every so often, cause now we're in book launch free. So there are a million things that I need to be doing publicly and she'll say, is it okay if we schedule an extra thing? I know it's a lot. Yeah. So, so I think one of the most helpful things people can do is pay attention to their calendar and, you know, not everybody has as much control over the quantity of the times they're going to go on their zoom calls, but you can still control to some degree, like how you buffer it, you know, and you can make sure to take a walk around the block in between, or, you know, sit and sip your coffee or or whatever it is for you that's recharging. So to come at it from the perspective of knowing, yes, this is a load and I'm entitled to be

recharging after that load. I think that the hardest and the first and the most important step is the sense of feeling entitled to recharge from experiences that feel like an overload to you. You're saying people are more, they feel more entitled to take care of themselves. No, I'm saying they should feel more entitled. I'm saying what I'm really saying is I think many people feel kind of like the way you were describing of like answering the quiz is 99% because you had your father in your head of telling you the way you should be. So I think many people are feeling like, oh, well, I should be fine on these zoom calls all day long. So I'm just going to power through it, but they'd be much better off if they knew they were entitled to not be fine

with it and therefore mindfully create a schedule where they can recharge. So let's move into some of the practices that if people are connected and they're like, I want a more full experience. I want the bittersweet. I want to experience the fullness of what life has to offer. And I think I'm an introvert or I'm leading introverts or I am married to an introvert. Like how, if I am an introvert, how can I be, what are some practices to be more at home with myself? And if I'm leading some, how can I have some best practices? So can you take those three things and start to populate some ways that people can grow and get better? Yeah, sure. I mean, in terms of like having sort of the full depth of experience, I would say one thing is to practice what I call daily shots of beauty, you know,

and start your day with them. During the whole time I was writing my book, I actually, I fell into this habit where, well, I started following all these art accounts on Twitter and pretty soon my whole feed was full of art. And this was like a conscious reaction to the doom scrolling that I had been doing before that. So I suddenly had this, you know, all this art coming at me. And, and so I started every day taking a favorite piece of art and then pairing it with an idea or a poem or a quotation or whatever that went along with the art. And I would share it on my social channels. And sometimes it took me like an hour a day to do this, to find exactly the right pairing before I would start writing. But there was something about, you know, like immersing in, in beauty like that, that was incredibly grounding for my creativity for the day. And just for me as a human.

Um, and there's a lot of ways to do this. Um, I actually have a bittersweet playlist that I just created and I put it up on Spotify. So right now it's my top 40 songs that you can listen to, but I'll probably be adding to it over the years. You know, I looked at it. Did you, I couldn't, I didn't, I quickly scanned it. I haven't listened to it yet, but one, I love Leonard Cohen too. Oh, do you? Yeah. Yeah. Who can't listen to Hallelujah or Anthem and just go wow but um but did you put beethoven's patatik on there you know i can't remember if i did but i love i love his pot it but i don't know how to pronounce it but i i love it i used to ice skate to it right like yeah oh you ice skated yeah

yeah like when i was a kid i figure skated and i mean oh my gosh. It's hauntingly sad. I know, I know, but upliftingly beautiful, right? At the same time. Have you ever seen that flash mob of people performing his ode to joy? No. Oh my gosh. It's so extraordinary. Yeah. It's created by Banco Sabadell. They orchestrated the whole thing in Spain. It's just so magnificent. And like, and it brings all these random people who happened to be walking through the plaza when the flash mob happened and this orchestra is suddenly performing Ode to Joy. And these people are just like beside themselves. Tears of joy. Yeah. You have to watch it. It's fabulous. Yeah. But I'm always struck by that one because Ode to Joy, it is so incredibly joyous in its nature. And yet you can just feel

echoing throughout it, these waves of longing and sorrow. And that's part of what makes it so magnificent is that it's bringing these two states together. Okay. So this is the bittersweet conversation right now. Before we do the introversion part, let's make this applied in business okay oh okay yeah i'll give you some more things okay but let's do bittersweet in business like the range of experiences of emotional experiences in business like how would you if you're the you know if you're guiding a large firm 100 000 people plus how would you knowing you know, how would you help your workplace be more dynamic by having more space for people to feel? Right. So as with all things, it's really

helpful when it's modeled at the top by respected leaders. I can't tell you, I do a lot of virtual talks about harnessing the powers of introverts at work and so on. And I can't tell you how often, I'm sure you've seen this, like you come onto the talk and there's an organizer and they say, how's everybody feeling this morning? And everyone's typing into the chat box, you know, like I'm in Idaho and I feel great, you know, and I'm in Connecticut and I'm pumped and you know, it's like that. And they're always great and they're always pumped and they're always thrilled. And, um, and those are amazing emotions, but someone has to take the lead of being willing to say, willing to be willing to introduce other emotions too, in order to make those acceptable for others to share. A practice that's incredibly useful. It's called expressive

writing. I'm sure you've come across this. It comes from the work of James Pennebaker at UT. And he's basically done this radically astonishing series of studies showing the power of the simple act of writing down the troubles that are on your mind. And he's proven's proven it like in study after study that the simple act of doing this, and it can take two minutes and then you throw it away when you're done. That's all it takes. And it like lowers your blood pressure and it improves your work performance and it deepens your sense of wellbeing. So we had one of these studies where he compares a group of 50 year old depressed engineers who have been laid off and they think they can't get another job. And he has half of them writing down what they're wearing

every morning and the other half are writing down how they feel. And the half who wrote down how they felt were significantly more likely to have found work a few months later. Their health markers were better. It's, it's just sort of crazy results. So we could be doing this in our workplaces, you know, it could be just encouraging people to just hear like, like take a little bit of company stationery, you know, make it look beautiful, like a little notebook, hand it out. And we have a daily practice of everybody scribbling things down before our morning meeting. There are ways to do that at the same time that you could be introducing your daily shots of beauty that everybody shares with each other. That could become a unifying team building practice.

You don't come from the AA background, right? Shots of awe or shots of God. I don't. I don't. Yeah, that's a practice in the aa community which is like god shots or all shots or something you know there's a phrase that depending on what group you're in so so i love that yeah and the idea is just to capture you know like when when you experience something this is one of the things i introduced not it was it was uh adapted from

uh seligman's work which was was, you know, three good things. Yep. And so I introduced it to Microsoft, which has become the researcher of amazing. And then many, like Satya, the CEO, and many of their leaders start their meetings with one thing, the research is three, but just one thing that you experienced that was amazing today at, you know, on campus. And it's amazing what that does, but that, that is a, that's a hydration of the good. And the counterbalance is like, Hey, write down whatever is true. If you're feeling sad or agitated or like overwhelmed, just write it down and you don't have to get completely lost in it, but you're honoring that part of you.

You put it down. You got it from the invisible to the visible. So you made it concrete and then close the book, rip it up, leave it, memorialize it, like kiss it, whatever you want to do. You know, like it's just being true. It's being honest. It's telling the truth. Exactly.

And then I would say you can actually, for companies, take that a step farther into creating cultures that are truly compassionate and that that affects the bottom line. And I'll give you an example of this. I write about it in the book. It was done at University of Michigan of an organization called Midwest Billings. And this was a unit whose job was to collect unpaid bills of people who had been in the hospital. So that's really dreary work. No one likes to do it. The turnover rate in this industry is super high. But in this organization, they had created this culture where everybody would like tell each other what was truly going on in their lives. And then they took the further step of,

there was just this culture where people would rally around to help each other. And maybe you just had a cold and maybe your, your parent had just died or domestic abuse. Like it didn't matter what people talked about it and helped. And this unit had a turnover rate that was like 2%, you know, compared to gigantic amount in the industry and they collected their bills much faster. So like all their markers were so much higher as a result of this one practice. And the practice was at the beginning of a meeting or at some point talking about what was actually happening. Was this a scheduled meeting? We're going to talk about this. As far as I know, it wasn't, they had somehow managed to create a culture where this was the

norm. So if someone's listening and thinking, well, I'd like that culture. I don't know how I think the kinds of practices that we were just talking about can help you get there. Modeling it at the top is really useful, but also calling it out when you see one worker doing it for another worker, celebrating those acts. And they could be really small acts of kindness, but calling those out for everyone to see helps create the role models. There's lots of types of leaders. One very important part of leadership is setting an agenda. Yes. Like we have a 75-minute meeting or a 45-minute meeting,

and this is what we're going to cover. And let's say that you are more business- more business minded than humanity minded. I don't know why I would create that orthogonal kind of difference because they do work hand in hand, but let's just say that you're more bottom line orientated than relationship stuff. Okay. So you need somebody on your team to help you because what great leaders in the, in this new wave of business, it's not going to be business as usual. There's a new thing that's taking place.

Great leaders will understand psychology. Yes. Right? They're not going to be psychologists. But like yourself, they're going to understand what really is working for people from the inside out. And belonging and connection, guess what? It's like one of the

biggest rocks we can get the container. And if you don't hydrate at all, that wanting to grow from the inside out, well, guess what? People are going to make money and then they're going to leave or they're going to be agitated that they're not making the money that you promised them to make. And so, yeah, it's just, it doesn't work anymore. So what I would say, if like, if you're listening and thinking, okay, I am that kind of, you know, bottom line leader, and I only have a limited amount of patients for all this psychology stuff. I get it. One of the most self-aware things that any leader can do is know what you're good at and where your limitations are. And so if you feel like your strength is in the other realm and not in this one,

have someone, have a lieutenant or a co-leader, whoever it is who can do those things for you. Like, I think one of the big myths is that the one leader has to do it all. And I really started with this insight out of my work on introversion because, because the best companies and the best teams are benefiting from a more introverted outlook that tends to like really think things through and see the potential downsides of, of, of a course of action before you follow it, um, you know, really be thoughtful and intentional and then a more extroverted approach, which is more like, you know, the, the joy of like, seize the day and go for it. You really need both of those. Um, so it's really important if you're a leader to know where you fall and to make sure you've got somebody else who's complimenting you and filling in where you can't do it. And that's true of what you just talked about also. So what do you do to help people create the space that are introverts? What practices do you have for folks, organizations, or teams to have those voices heard more often? What is the best practice for that? To have introverted voices heard most often,

more often. Yeah. This is probably one of the biggest problems that I hear about, maybe the single biggest. And we know, you know, there's research from the Kellogg school that found that in your typical large meeting, you have three people doing 70% of the talking, which is disastrous. If you assume that everyone has the same amount of good ideas on average, you're only hearing from a few of them. Um, so practices like, um, going around the room when it's something important, making sure that you're actually calling on everyone, you have systems, you're not singling anyone out, but everyone gets heard from, um, or conversely, like if you know, you have someone on your team who has good ideas about

topic X and tends to be quieter in meetings, you can go up to them beforehand and say, hey, I know you've got a lot to share with us about topic X. Mind if I look to you today during the session? And not only will they feel positively singled out for that, but also introverts like to be able to process ideas inside their minds before they articulate them out loud. So you're now giving that person the space and the time to prepare before they're going to be on the spot. And I'll add to that in sport. you can imagine the team meeting before the game or whatever, is that oftentimes when coaches want to deliver something, this is like the night before the game, they want to deliver something and they don't want it to just be like a top-down type of rah-rah speech or compelling narrative. They'll seed a couple athletes prior to it saying, Hey, I'm, this is

what I'm thinking about talking about. Can you maybe gather a few thoughts? I'd love to hear from you. I've seen this in sport for years. And that practice is exactly what you talked about. And, uh, it gives people a chance to prepare themselves because what happens when somebody, when the leader says, okay, anyone want to say anything? Most people are like, uh, not me yet. Uh, you know, I don't, I don't, yes, but you know, and so there's a, an overthinking or thinking that takes place. And so it's a, that's a, I've seen that for years. I love that you you're introducing that. Yeah. Yeah. And I, I'll, I'll, sorry, I'll throw out just one more of like the idea of brainwriting where you have something you want people to brainstorm or solve a problem or whatever.

So instead of opening the floor and everyone's jockeying for space, just everybody writes down their idea on a post-it or whatever. And then you've got the facilitator who reads it all, who reads all the inputs once they're all done. And now all the inputs have equal footing instead of, you know, who's the loudest, who's the most senior or whatever the other hierarchies are. That's really cool. You know, I, we just did this practice with a, with a large firm. It was about reframing and the power of reframing something. But if you just say, okay, somebody throw out a problem. Okay. Somebody could do that. And then, okay, let's work on reframing. And then the extroverts jump in. So we just had everyone on a post-it note, write down a real thing that they're working

on. And it was like 15 people. And then just pass it, pass it, pass it to the right, pass it, pass. So you'd lose track of where yours is or whatever. And then somebody, so it's an introverted practice and somebody reframes like a logic sound way of reframing that doesn't dismiss the problem and pass it, pass it, pass it. Now you get a second one, pass it. And then we put it up on the board. Now you can go, if you want to be, you know, what's covert, if you want to covertly go up and see where yours is, or, you know, garishly go up and say, look at mine, you know, whatever it is. You can see like, oh, these are some real reframes. So you get that power of like quiet, contemplative processing, which I'm not saying that this is the only way to do things, but it is a way to invite the introverts

into the experience in a meaningful way. Yeah, no, I love it. I love it. So, okay, really quickly, two things. One is your definition of introversion. I really like the kind of definition that we all hear a lot about being a question of where we get energy from. I also think it's important to understand that, and I'm sorry, and I'll, I'll say one way to think about it is kind of like the battery, the internal battery that we all have. And like, if you imagine

yourself going to a party that you're truly enjoying, um, for an extrovert, their experience of the party is that the battery is getting charged. And so now they're like full of energy after two hours and they want more. And for an introvert, no matter how much they're loving the party, their battery's draining. So they're like wishing they could suddenly be beamed home after about two or three hours. Two or three minutes sometimes. What am I doing here? I'd rather be in bed reading a book. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. But then the other piece that I always want people to understand is that idea of the battery. It's like, it's a reflection of what is happening neurobiologically, you know, that introverts and extroverts in general tend to have literally different nervous systems where the nervous system of an introvert responds more, reacts more to stimulation. So it's easier for us to feel kind of overstimulated when there's too many things coming at us and we're in our sweet spot physically when things are mellower. And for extroverts, it's the opposite. Extroverts tend to

have nervous systems that react less to stimulation. So for an extrovert, the sweet spot is when there's lots of inputs and the liability is that when it's too, too quiet, not enough going on, you can feel a kind of sense of, of listlessness and sluggishness and kind of disengagement because your nervous system is understimulated. And I find that just like, it's a useful insight for people to understand, but it's also a way of showing that these aren't just like personas that we've decided to adopt. You know, these are, these are often deep and physical aspects of ourselves that you can trace in babies who have just been born. Do you have any experience of being afraid of what people might be thinking of you?

Oh gosh, sure. Sure. Do you, do you think you have it as an introvert more than an extrovert has? Um, I think there are certain realms in which I have it more, not because I'm an introvert, but because I tend towards shyness. And I only have it in certain realms, other areas, I don't really care that much. But there really is a difference between shyness and introversion. Like shyness is much more about that fear of what people think of you and the fear of social judgment. So you could be an introvert who just prefers the quieter environments without having any kind of excessive fear of social judgment.

And how do you notice that fear of what people might be thinking about you? How do you notice it in your life? Oh, well, for me, the form that it took was I used to be so terrified of public speaking, you know, to an extreme degree. Like if you had told me 15 years ago that I would have a career as a public speaker, that would have been like saying you will have a career as an astronaut who goes to Mars. Like, that's what it was like. So I can talk about how to overcome that kind of fear, if you would like. I would love your insights. Okay. Cause this is battle tested. This is something psychology has been looking at for a really long time. You know, that basically the way to get over any fear for me, it happened to be speaking, but it could be anything

is to expose yourself to the thing you're afraid of. I know, you know, this in really small doses. Um, so I started out, this all happened. Okay. The whole time I was a lawyer, I was always terrified of public speaking, but I just ridden my teeth through it and suffered. But then when I switched to writing, I really, really cared about getting these ideas and books out. I didn't want my fear to stand in my way. So I signed up for this seminar and public for people with public speaking anxiety. It was based on this idea of desensitization. And the first day of class, all you had to do was stand up and say your name and sit back down, declare victory. You're done.

You know, and then you'd go back a week later and the exercise was slightly, slightly more challenging, but not very much. And that's how you do it. Like, so you don't start by giving a TED talk. You start by saying your name and sitting down again. And little by little. And you put that work in. Oh, yeah.

Oh, yeah. And what was underneath of it was that you were afraid that you would be ridiculed or that you would be judged or critiqued. Underneath, what was happening for you? that you would be ridiculed or that you would be judged or critiqued? Like what, underneath what was happening for you? Underneath, it was two things. There was a visceral and there was an intellectual. Visceral was, it was just a primal horror of being in the spotlight and having a whole group looking at me. I, you know, People have tied the fear of public speaking to kind of like that primal fear of being a prey, being prey in the jungle, and the eyes are looking at you, or like the fear of social ostracism, which evolutionarily speaking basically meant death,

you know, because if your group tossed you out, you were done for. So I, I think it was really operating on that kind of visceral level, but intellectually what it was for me was that I had the idea that to be a good speaker, you had to be like, you know, the, the showman, you know, like the, the super charismatic, super energetic show person. And I knew that wasn't really who I was. Um, so when I was getting ready for my first Ted talk, I worked with his brilliant speaking coach. His name is Jim Fife, F Y F E for anyone who wants to work with him. He's since coached many other Ted speakers, um, since then. But so we worked together and I told him that I had this feeling. He said, okay, you know, the first few days working together, you're just going to

give me your talk, but we're going to sit on the sofa, just talking to each other one-on-one. And I'm very comfortable chatting with people. That's never been an issue. So we just chatted my talk and that kind of transitioned me psychologically into being able to be myself and be on a stage. And, you know, and now I think that's become, it's become my greatest power as a speaker is that I'm like talking to you for real. I'm like telling you the truth. I try to speak as if it's just, you know, me and you. And I find that works for me. Yeah, it's really refreshing. And so, okay. And then is your sense that introverts would have a deeper challenge with a fear of other people's opinions? Or do you think that it cuts across

both introversion, extroversion? It's that introverts are disproportionately more likely to also be shy, but not necessarily. So you could be a shy extrovert who like really loves social life and all that, but still feels shy about how people are judging you. And you could be like the best example I could give. I think somebody like a president Obama was quite introverted by nature, but also not at all shy, just as an example of how the two traits don't necessarily go together. And are you shy? I know you're an introvert, but are you shy? Yeah. I mean, it depends what you mean by it. Like in many

situations now I'm not, but I feel like fundamentally I'm a shy person and that's part of where my speaking came from or my speaking phobia came from. Yeah. Yeah. Listen, thank you. I'm doing a bunch of research on this fear of what they might be thinking and how it constricts our micro choices. And it alters the way that we make decisions. There's a contort. We contort ourselves. Yeah. We preempt.

And we compromise in many ways from like excessive thinking about what they might be thinking about me. And it's, you know, there's a need, there's a reason for it, but it's, it's actually not as productive as it once was maybe a hundred thousand years ago. So I'm taking a deep dive on that and I haven't looked into the introversion extroversion bit at all. Oh, that's really interesting. Yeah. So, I mean, what you find like in the realm of public speaking, for example, that you'll find introverts are disproportionately likely to have a fear of public speaking, but then there's this subset of introverts who are really comfortable with it because for them, they experience it more as a social situation that they can control that doesn't have as many inputs coming in at them.

So many actors and comedians will say they're introverted for that reason. All right. Listen, Susan, like it is a it's just a delight to speak with you and to hear you choose words and to explain things that are difficult to explain. And so I know we didn't get into like some of the heartbreaks that you've had in your life and some of the deeper pains that you've experienced. Oh, that's okay. People can read about those. I wanted to, but you know, this has been wonderful. And so thank you for what you've introduced to the world, how you've done it. And thank you for the, just the delicate authenticity that you have

in this conversation as well. It's noted and appreciated. Well, thank you so much. I mean, I guess I had a chance to tell you before we started, but I really have been an admirer of you and your work for years now. And as I was saying to you, I can still remember exactly where I was standing in our house when I first heard you over the airwaves on a podcast. And just the quality of your voice and the nature of your questions, really, it's very distinctive. And I loved it right away. So thank you for your work. That is deeply appreciated. So thank you for that. Would it be okay if I took a moment and described how I understood you in our conversation?

Sure, of course. conscientious, you have just that right balance of neuroticism to do the deep, long work, you know, and the patience required to bring that to truth of what it feels like to you. Obviously hydrated on the introversion side, have a deep understanding of it, but you also have the practice to be able to gather energy in social settings and to develop that skill. So you've got maybe more of a balance now than maybe before you wrote the book but you're definitely you know rotated on that introversion side and then I think your attention to detail is probably meticulous mm-hmm and you can go wide in you can cast your gaze but then you can narrow down. It doesn't feel like you get

constricted in like, um, uh, a narrowing of attention in such a way that it's restrictive that you can just hold competing ideas and allow for that, which is, um, uh, a skill in and of itself. It feels like you would be fun to be around that you have a positive approach that you're supportive of others. I think that you challenge ideas. I said something in our conversation. You said, I think you're not intellectually competitive, but you challenge ideas, which is definitely reinforcing or refreshing. And then I think your sense of autonomy and agency is really high. You're choosing how to do your life. And I think it's because you came to a crisis.

At some point, you're like, I'm not doing this way anymore. And I'm carving my path, which means that you have the ability to take risks. And I imagine they're calculated. Yeah. Yeah. Calculated risk taker. You know, I think you like rules, but you also understand the value of breaking some rules. Yeah. I don't know if I love rules that much. You don't love rules?

I don't think so. Oh, that's cool. Everything else seemed really, really spot on until you got to the rules part. I'm not so sure. Yeah. So you're a rule breaker? I don't know if I'm a rule breaker. I'm just like not interested in rules so much. Like I think this sentence. That is a great response. That is really cool. Yeah. Okay. All right. Very cool.

All right. So like those are, I think those are some of the high notes that came through in the conversation today that, you know, and I think you use your imagination. I didn't hit on this, but I think you use your imagination in, I think there's vivid, a vividness in your imagination. And somehow in your imagination, you're able to pull your heart and your head together in what you see. So I'm imagining you feel what you see. Yeah. Yeah. Oh my gosh. That's really, really spotted. All of it is so spot on. How do you do that? You've just been sitting here for an hour and then it all just comes spilling out. Well, it's that thing of discipline, study and psychology. It's a beautiful

science. It really is. It can get weird for folks, but it's a beautiful science. Okay. So listen, let's sell some books. What do you think? Bittersweet. You can find it anywhere. I'm holding it now. I love it. And is there any place you want to direct people to? Probably your website. That's a good question. Yeah, my website, it's susancaine.net. So, you know, you can find directions to buy the book there and also sign up for my newsletter there. Let's go in the newsletter.

Let's drive people to that. That's a currency that's worth, you know, a lot. So newsletter and buy the book. How about that? Newsletter and buy the book. That's perfect. And it's all at susancaine.net. And thank you so, so much.

Oh, appreciate it. Okay. All the best, Susan. Thank you. You too. You too. Take care. Bye now.

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