Finding Mastery with Dr. Michael Gervais - Social Psychologist Dr. Dacher Keltner on Emotions, Awe, Power

Episode Date: November 16, 2016

Dacher Keltner is a social psychologist who focuses on the prosocial emotions, such as love, sympathy and gratitude, and processes such as teasing and flirtation that enhance bonds. He is Co-Director of The Greater Good Science Center and the author of Born to Be Good. In This Episode: -Parents enabling to him search for what he loved -The cost of a passionate life -Utilizing your imagination to tackle anxiety by constructing alternatives -Being overwhelmed with panic attacks that exhausted him -Strategies for controlling emotions through breathing -The difference between feelings, emotions, and sensations -The 15 basic themes in life that matter to us -Showing compassion in the right context -How people acquire power -The problems that arise once people obtain heightened power -Key signs that power has corrupted someone -Helping on the movie “Inside-Out” -The pathways to happiness + joy: compassion, awe, and gratitude -The tensions between compassion and power -Understanding when exerting tough compassion is necessary_________________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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when you head to davidprotein.com slash finding mastery. That's David, D-A-V-I-D, protein, P-R-O-T-E-I-N.com slash finding mastery. So in this conversation, it's with Dacher Keltner. Now he's a social psychologist who focuses on the pro-social emotions that we experience, such as love and sympathy and gratitude and compassion and awe. And very often, most often we focus on emotions that are problematic on our pursuit. And we talk about emotions like they are something that we, you know, are run by or overrun by. And so we think about anger and fear and those types of emotions. So he's flipped the script on it and focused on the emotions that support us to be great. As an evolutionary and biological basis, he wants to understand why we have them,

and then how to harness them, how to control them, how to guide them. And so that's what this conversation is about. It's fantastic. I love it. He's also, Dacher is also the co-director of the Greater Good Science Center and the author of Born to Be Good. And so you can find out more information from him there. And he's also written the book, The Power Paradox. Now, you might also recognize where I first came in contact with Dacher is my family and I were watching the movie Inside Out, the animated movie. And they got it so right. It was just so clever, so on point. And I loved it. And so my family and I were waiting for during the credits to roll to see who the consulting psychologist was. And there's his name, Dacker. So this, I love this

conversation. He's a beautiful man and he just really is on it and his humility is present. And it was just fantastic. So we get into stuff about, you know, the cost of a passionate life, how to utilize imagination to work with anxiety. We talk about the 15 basic themes that humans are engaged in. What do we get into? The problems that arise once we obtain power. And like, what are some of the signs that people have been corrupted by power? We talk about the pathways to happiness and man, this is loaded with insight and gems. So

I hope you appreciate it. Um, the whole goal of this is to make sure that we are finding very up. No, let me say this more clearly. We're looking for people that are highly switched on and then we're wanting to understand their path and then very applied strategies and practices that we can use based on what they've come to understand from, find us on social media at Michael Gervais is on Twitter. Instagram is Finding Mastery. And then you can also find us on our Facebook community page called, no, not called, but go to www.findingmastery.net forward slash community. Okay. With that, let's jump right into the conversation with Dacher. Dacher, how are you? I'm doing well, Michael. It's good to be with you. Oh yeah. Thanks for carving out the time in your busy schedule to be able to sit down. I really want to go on this conversation with you about power and lab i know you've been studying compassion and awe and love and power and and people that are

familiar with the conversation on the finding master podcast will say oh yeah this is about to get good so yeah so okay so can you can you just share with us like what it was like growing up i i've read that you were born in mexico came to the country. I don't know what age upbringing and the childhood that I have. And then my parents. And, you know, I was really lucky, Michael, because my parents, my dad was an artist and my mom was a literature professor. And they both really encouraged my brother and me to really in an open ended way to discover what our core passions are about. Right. What really drives us, what makes us get up in the morning, what makes us want to change the world. And they really

emphasize that you'll find what those core passions are. And I think that the science bears this out in feelings, right? In emotions that you have. And, you know, for me, a sense of compassion for people who are less well-off or a sense of justice or for, you know, for me, a sense of compassion for people who are less well off or a sense of justice or for, you know, going around with my dad and just feeling extraordinary awe at art and being out in the Sierras. And so my childhood, you know, in the late 60s and early 70s in a slightly countercultural place, really taught me the lesson and the wisdom and the purpose of the emotions and how important they are to our identities. Okay.

So early on, your folks, there's a general message from your folks, which is about following your passion. Yeah. Okay. And then they stitched together that it would have to do with feelings for you, or you found that secondarily? You know, it's so interesting because, uh, you know, part of it was just going to, you know, art museums with my dad and looking at art and just having these emotional reactions to beauty, you know, and then part of it, my mom in particular was interested in romanticism

in literature and, and, you know, the writings of, people like virginia wolf or um or george elliott or others and they're one of the central themes is how we connect to people and what we find meaningful in our relationships in our daily lives is in emotion you know is in feelings of love or a sense of mirth or wonder. And our house was emotional. Okay. Okay. All right. So I love, I love, you know, so often people want to know how, and I do, I do want to know how as well. And what I'm hearing you say is something that feels really organic, which is my mom. Tell me if I put this in my own words, if this is close, my mom and dad lived authentically themselves and they were on their own journey. So conversations at our home had emotion because they valued emotion conversations at, um, wherever we went were about observing beauty or the interests of the human experience. And so those were the

conversations that we generally had. So it wasn't like this one conversation that was so important, or the seven steps or the three tips to enlightenment. It was more organic, and they were on their authentic journey, and you, as a youngster, happened to be part of that. Yeah, you know, that's so well put, Michael, that we had this sort of free-form home, and it was just this organic part of our daily lives and what we talked about at the dinner table to be, you know, and this is the late 60s. So we were, you know, upset about the civil rights issues.

And and we were you know, my parents were really politically sensitive. We watched the Watergate hearings. And then we, you know, my parents allowed me, my brother and I, to kind of range in the country that we grew up in, or kind of be a little bit wilder and have that opportunity to discover what really mattered to us, right, and that carries forth to the present day. So it was just part of how we were as a family it's just a lot of uh intense emotion okay and then what age are you conjuring up right now

yeah yeah you know so i would say that what i'm talking about is for a while i was in laurel canyon and when my mom was getting her phd at ucla and that was the late 60s. But how old were you? I was eight years old. Eight years old. Okay. It's the same age as my son, so I feel like I'm going to ask you a lot of questions about this part of the conversation right now. I'm getting a feel and an image that it was like a hippie type of environment that you grew up. So in the 60s, really kind of loose,

but then at the same time, mom was in the rigors of science. Exactly. At a high, at one of the highest levels. So how did that, can you talk about that balance? Because I'm finding that really attractive. Thank you. Well, well, that's fun. That's the core of my identity, Michael, which is that, you know,

I grew up in this counterculture. I mean, you probably know Laurel Canyon. It was pretty wild in the late 60s. We moved to the country in 1970, and we grew up around people who were nearly living on communes and the like. And yet my parents, at the same time, and you used the word rigor, right? They worked hard. My dad worked hard as an artist. My mom is a professor.

She wrote a book. And they were interested in capturing passion in their work, right? In how they taught, in the literature that they taught or what they painted. And so it was just this minute by minute upbringing in what is the meaning of passion in our life. So they talked about that? They talked about passion or they lived it? Both. Okay, okay.

I love it. All right. So mom and dad, did they study passion or they just valued it? And so it was organically part of the conversations. Sorry. Yeah, please. They worked on it. It know, it was it was definitely part of our family life. We were an emotional family. It was definitely part of what we talked

about and how we looked at the world. My mom, one of her favorite writers is D.H. Lawrence, who is all about the passions between women and men and how complex they are and how they they catalyze us and move us in different directions. And she would cite quotes from D.H. Lawrence or William Blake about, you know, various excesses in passion. You know, Walt Whitman was in the air. It's one of my dad's favorite poets. And so we learned about, you know, the passion, the great passion of the American society, which is inclusiveness and, you know, in question today, but, you know, just embracing the varieties of the human form. So it was just everywhere in our lives was the centrality of the passions. So your mom, if she was influenced by D.H. Lawrence, what I remember or recall is the

importance about living fully. Like, I feel like that was a central treatise. Fundamental. Yeah. Right. So living for, okay. So mom was influenced by the concepts of living fully. Um,

and she was also part of her living fully with studying it, but then those are the natural conversations. Okay. I think I got that piece. Yeah. Mom and dad were risk takers though. So as artists and academics, that tends to not like,

I'm, I'm having a tough time merging what that was like because academics sometimes tell me if I'm wrong because you know I know that's the world you're squarely sitting in tend to not be the the biggest risk takers yeah well my you know but my mom is pretty much, she is interested in dissent and providing alternative perspectives upon the status quo. And she just gravitates to alternatives and risk. And my dad was a profound risk taker too. It's interesting in writing The Power Paradox, I was thinking about this, Michael, that my parents moved my brother and I from Laurel Canyon

in Los Angeles, which had great schools and was a nice, solidly middle class neighborhood. And we moved to this really poor place where no one went to college and the kids really struggled. And that was very risky to do that, but it was part of this passionate vision they had about family life and and cultural life so they they really gravitated to challenging the status quo and by implication taking risks there you go okay so you know into your second part of your question both my brother and i were we grew up in this kind of slightly chaotic passionate passion-driven world and we both are a little bit more conventional than our parents in some ways you know i became a scientist and we're the measure of this stuff and our brother's a speech

therapist so we'd be that's interesting yeah that's really interesting okay so So what I want to know, like in your family structure, because you've spent your whole adult life studying emotion and applying that to insights that people can use to help themselves through the emotional responses and training, I think is what I'm, why I'm so interested. But so was it growing up, was there a downside or a dark side to living in a passionate and emotionally vibrant family structure were they good at emotion or was there like was it kind of like machine guns spraying everywhere with emotion like what was that like well you know I you, you know, just to be very personal, they, their marriage ended in a very bitter divorce.

And I think, you know, that in part was, you know, they were part of that divorce revolution in the mid seventies where, you know, suddenly half of America was getting divorced. And I think that that was in part a product of their commitment to passion, right? And differing passions and conflicting passions. And that, that was complicated, you know, just to be quite frank for brother and me. I think that the, you know, I think that when you have such a passionate life, and I think that this is born out in the science. And this is also an interesting part of my upbringing. One of the things that you really

want to sort of complement the passionate life with are modes of contemplation and reflection and what scientists might call regulation, like just being mindful or being patient. I'm so glad you brought that up like especially the part like the cost of a passionate life because yeah yeah yeah and what's interesting just to sort of segue to that which is that my dad um was very interested in eastern philosophy in the late 60s as it you know and it really took hold in california you know zen buddhism taoism and other forms of eastern thought and he was giving it to to my brother and me and i read a lot of it when i was a young kid and that's all about how we find peace and calm amidst the passionate life

and i would say without that i could have gotten into some serious trouble uh and did emotionally in some ways so that was a very important addition to the very rambunctious, passionate life that we led. Okay. I'm so stoked that you talked about that because so often in modern times, we talk about going for it and taking risks and the value of failure. And then we forget to talk about but hold on now when the majority of people that take risk it doesn't always work and when failure happens it can sting and living a passionate filled life that means there's vulnerability involved and you know and so i'm all about all of those by the way i love taking risk i love you know the uh being on the frontier of whatever it is and then living

passionate so i'm all about it. But I'm also wanting to make sure that there's another foot grounded in, hold on now, if you're going to go that way, there are some costs to that as well. There's some costs to playing it safe and small that I think are more profound than playing on the frontier. But that being said, I'm stoked that you just helped to anchor and reinforce that concept. Yeah. And, you know, just back to my parents, and I really appreciate this, that no one's asked me these kind of questions. You know, my dad gave me this sense of mindfulness, both in Zen Buddhism and Taoism, and just embracing complexity, being patient with passion. And my mom really taught me the imagination, right? Which is, you know, I'm vulnerable to anxiety, as is most of my mom's side of the family. It's a genetic

trait. I was prone to anxiety as a young kid, still to this day. And she taught me how to use the playful imagination as an alternative to anxious thoughts, which, and we know now scientifically, that if you can use the imagination and think about alternatives to your current feelings, if you can find peace and mindfulness, in whatever state you're in, right, using these frontal lobes, if you will, you'll find a healthier emotional balance. And, and they gave me some good tools early on. Okay, so let me recap that, because what you you just said was significant as a, as a base point for people to be well and then potentially to optimize their gifts and talents and skills.

So, so when a person feels anxious, there's two things that you just mentioned that mindfulness and being aware and then using imagination to be able to create other alternatives to either the current state or the future state that might or might not take place. Exactly. Right? Okay. So is it in that order? Is it awareness first? I have to index on that. So I'm going to be biased when I answer that question, but I i want to learn from you would you say awareness first and then imagination i do you know i you know i have been really persuaded by the rich literature on mindfulness and mindfulness really reduces and i'm sure you teach this michael is you know just being non-judgmentally aware of what's happening

in your life and in your emotions and body. As a young kid, when I learned about Zen Buddhism and Taoism, which also emphasizes there are a lot of mysteries in life we can't immediately make sense of, just to be aware of them. When I learned that, my whole life changed. When I taught that to my daughter, who also is vulnerable to anxiety, very high-performing kid, student, her life changed. And so mindfulness comes first. I think that on this anxiety piece for just a moment is that in the amphitheater where people are publicly taking risk to demonstrate if they have skill or they don't, or if somebody else has more skill on a particular day than they do, there's incredible openness to go for it.

So there's a prerequisite for risk-taking, but intelligent people that take risks also entertain that it could go wrong, and there is this circular loop that feeds the anxious mind and the anxious brain, if you will. So intelligence is linked to anxiousness. And then so what you're saying is, yeah, now also be aware of that link, be aware of the internal feelings and the thoughts or the emotions and the thoughts, as well as entertain possible other alternative experiences. And that's the imagination piece, right? Exactly. It's really the construction of alternatives, really well done. So on the construction of alternatives, do you help people in a very applied way to use imagery in the imagination, like to train imagery? Or do you just

say, listen, use your imagery or use your imagination to not be boxed into just one outcome? How do you invite people to evoke that response or that training? So, you know, what I do, so for example, I teach this large human happiness class to, um, 400 undergraduates and tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of people worldwide in our edX class. And what I talk about is, you know, so the imagination, which is one of the great achievements of the human mind, which my mom rooted me in with literature and all the things that she taught me. It can move away from the present moment when you're captured by emotions like anxiety in terms of time, right? So you can think about like, you know, I feel like

I'm having a heart attack right now in a state of anxiety, but I know this is going to pass. And I know in a future state, I'll be calm. It can move like you're suggesting to a different physical space where you're like, wow, I'm really, and I do this with, you know, the various groups that I teach, Michael, which is like, you know, yeah, it's hard right now, but let's, let's think about the most beautiful walk you've ever been on and conjure up that beautiful imagery. And my lab's very interested in natural beauty as a counterpoint to anxiety. And that process of imagining a different physical space that you could be in is powerful. And then you can imagine, you know, um, when like loving kindness, the meditations

and loving kindness, I just heard Matthew Ricard do this brilliant one at this panel, you know, it's just conjuring up being with a different person in a really tense moment of a child you love, a person who inspires you. Those are all acts of the imagination that, that I do teach to my big classes and they are pretty powerful for calming the capturing power of anxiety. Okay, so you're using imagination to conjure up almost a transporting of a person's experience, so a purposeful disassociation to have an alternative experience than what's happening now. And then do you ever use the mindfulness piece to help people just become completely aware of now

and say, oh, look at that, my heart's beating faster. Huh. That's interesting. You know, one of the things I do, you know, because I've worked through years of anxiety. On your own laboratory. Yeah. And then I consulted the scientific literature on this, where mindfulness is a very powerful tool for anxiety, as well as physical pain and other complex states that are, that can really bear on the psyche. Yeah. You know, I, those are very explicit tools that I give to the leaders that I teach in

executive education. The undergrads I teach who are feeling more stressed out today than before. It's just like, Hey, you know, right now it feels like your world is over. You got the B minus. But you know what?

In eight years, you're going to be doing good things and it's different. So the transporting, as you said, Michael, is one of the great tools to handling anxiety and difficult circumstances. Do you have anxiety still? You know, I don't. I mean, I and it's so interesting. I, you know, this just runs through my entire mom's family of worrying about dying as a young kid and slight obsessions as a young child. And then kind of the panics of social stuff as a teenager. And then, you know, when I I was 30 I got my first academic

job and moved to Madison with my wife Molly I was I had three years of massive panic attacks which are no fun you know like full-blown panic attack I think I'm gonna die full-blown you know and I would say every couple weeks you know be honest or in a movie theater or on an airplane or in front of a lecture hall or, you know, going out shopping. Big time panic attacks that exhaust the body. And we now know, regrettably, panic and anxiety is underappreciated in the mental health space. But we know panic, a lot of panic attacks really wear out your cardiovascular system and i started to do the breathing and the mindfulness and and and today i you know i didn't have to take

medication and and i'm in good shape you know i feel the the rumblings of anxiety uh like a lot of people but it doesn't transform in a panic panic. Okay, so you have deconditioned the anxious response, or a more positive way of saying it is that you've trained to be more grounded, to be more present, to be more aware, and to have the mental tools to be able to adjust. And you know that that's totally possible. You lived it, but the literature also supports that. And then do you have – so I call it front-loading, right? So that's the concept that I like to think about is like let's front-load training so that when we get on the frontier, on the edge, or in the amphitheater, whatever that analogy is, that we've trained. We've prepared ourselves to adjust eloquently to the demands of the moment. What would be your, I don't know, three things that you would suggest to people, even people listening that like, okay, if these three things that I've done to be more grounded

and to be more swift and accurate with my thinking, this is the three things that I would suggest you do. And I know you're going to say mindfulness, but maybe even mine that just a little bit further. Like, is it six minutes, eight minutes, 12 minutes, 20 minutes, one second, like, you know, and if you could give us some of the steps, that would be really cool. Yeah. You know, well, I'll tell you, Michael, um, uh, and you know, this is what I teach. And I had the most poignant test of this with my daughter, who in seventh grade, I got a call. And there are there's some very actionable principles in this. And I got a call from the dean of students. And she said, Dacher, you know, you need to talk to Natalie right now. So I was like, okay. I got on the phone, and she's like, Dad, she's only 12. I think I'm dying. I'm pretty sure I'm dying right now. I'm like, oh, here's my family.

And you're a father, Michael, and you have an eighth grader? No, an eight-year-old. Eight-year-old. So you know what it's like. It's like, oh, this is the truth. Here we go. So it was really simple. It's like, oh, this is the trick. Here we go. So it was really simple. It's like, okay, let's start taking some deep breaths.

So the first thing you can do is just always return to deep breathing. Because we know when we breathe deeply, it activates the vagus nerve, which is something I study in my lab, and slows down your heart rate. There are studies that show that simple deep breathing reduces anxious symptoms. Then there's the power of the word, the simple label like, okay, Natalie, you're just feeling anxious right now. Like I felt anxious. It's okay, right? So we know from scientific studies that the use of language and simple words to make you aware of things actually engages the frontal lobes and calms down anxiety responses when i first get what i'm sorry i want to get to your third one but when i first came across that that it blew me away and that was like i don't know what was it like 10 years ago or 15 years ago that just labeling accurately

labeling the emotion diffuses it it is to me me too my thoughts like oh my god i can't believe this finding i gotta tell everybody you know yeah so can i can i can i interrupt one more time like um respectfully so that i want to insert and i'd love for you to calibrate what you think this is ridiculous or on the money is that so um Let's call that a component of emotional intelligence. What I'll do is have people start with basic four scales, four emotions. Just start with four. You know the four that I'm going to go to, the more primary like happy, sad, glad, mad, whatever. Just imagine four scales with a one to ten hash marks.

If we're on the anger scale, the word that we use for the smallest amount of anger, a 1, would be I don't know, and I ask people, what is that? And they say usually something like annoyed. And then I say, okay, well what's a 10? And they say rage. And I say, great. Now I want you to do the same for all the others, but I want you to fill in one to 10. That's nice. Okay.

And then, so then I go, then I want you to do it with your loved one. Yeah. And then, because what happens with pissed and ticked and furious and furiated, they're all over the map for people. And then, so then it's like this calibration tool. And so did I hear you say that, like, okay, yeah, that would help for the scientific response that we just talked about? Yeah, yeah, no, absolutely. And that's a wonderful exercise. And in fact, I'm going to be doing it tonight with my family. But, you know, so that is the kind of foundation of emotional intelligence is to develop just a fine vocabulary that helps us sort out these states that they catapult us around during

the day okay brilliant brilliant so i i got one and two from you now what's the third one so it was uh let's go back it was deep breathing yeah and then the second was uh properly labeling the emotion that you're in non-judgmentally just labeling it like there it is and then the third is you know the recognition and this comes out of the emotion literature. And I actually learned it from Paul Ekman, which is emotions change, you know, and sensations change and anxiety changes and your body changes and pain changes, except for intense, you know, with my daughter was like, hey, you know what? This is just a passing state. Your heart, you feel like your heart's beating too fast right now. You're a little worked up and that's going to change. And in a minute or two, you're going to be calmer.

And so that's foundational to embracing these more complex emotions is the recognition that they change. They move through your body like waves and then they're going to move on. And you'll have them again, but you will also move out of them again. And once you, and that's right at the heart of mindfulness, right, which is a non-judgmental awareness of these sensations, thoughts, and feelings. And I remember hearing Jon Kabat-Zinn, who's a good friend, you know, say, like, you know, you aren't your thoughts and feelings. And I remember hearing John Kabat-Zinn, who's a good friend, you know, say like, you know, you aren't your thoughts and feelings. They're just transient. And that's a very Eastern thought

of the transient nature of our minds. And so once we appreciate that, anxiety becomes a lot easier, as with my daughter. Okay, so brilliant. So those three steps, do you think about breathing training as a method of training? Or is it more awareness, like have 1,000 deep breaths throughout the day? Or do you fall into an idea more like, okay, I'm going to set a timer for 6, 8, 12, 20 minutes. Yeah. Yeah, I think of it as, I believe it's as important as the crunches people do in the morning and the physical training that they do and the dietary training that we do now. I think breathing is as important as any of those. And I treat it as a physical exercise, which is at several points in the day, I personally will count, I'll do deep breaths

where I breathe in for six, breathe out for six, feel the breath through my nasal passage, feel the expansion of the abdomen and the like. I'll do that for 21 counts, 21 times, 21 breaths. And I'll try to do that several times in the day, and then I have very abbreviated versions do that several times in the day. And then I have very abbreviated versions where at any moment in the day, I'll just start to concentrate on the breath. I was in LAX in a long security line, felt like I was going to miss the plane. I get a little

panicky in airports and I just start breathing. And suddenly when I walked by the, you know, the TSA person, I was feeling good, didn't worry about things. So I think it's the most important thing that people can do for well-being. So, okay, that's a powerful statement that you just made. And I just want to laugh with you a little bit is that TSA, I do TSA training as well with athletes that are traveling domestic or not domestic, but what's it called when you're not chartering a plane? Whatever that's called. Like if you have to go through TSA, a lot of athletes don't have to go through TSA, but they do. Like it's a wonderful little moment to see if you can be grounded and poised.

And to do that, you have to be aware. Exactly. And then you have to breathe. Okay. So you're doing like, if you're doing six inhales, six exhales, six seconds, 12 seconds of breath, 21 breaths, it's around four minutes, right, of work. Yeah, that feels about right. Yeah. So you're doing about four minutes of work. And is that once a day or is that twice a day?

I probably do that twice a day. Michael, I'll do it. I like to, like, you know, I'm a late night person. And so I'll do it at night, you know, just get into the breath. And then I'll do it usually in the morning for a bit. So one of the ways that I was trained in breathing work, and in this, maybe, I think that you and I and many people listening have been trained in lots of different ways of mindfulness. There's thousands of ways to practice with some very core principles that are germane to what most people would say is a mindfulness approach. And so again, which is awareness

is one of them. And then the second is like working towards insight and wisdom, and non-judgmentally is a path through that. And so one of the ways that I've done this work is, and I just, I latched onto this and I'd love to hear your thought of it, is master the inhale as if a loved one's life depended on you getting it right. Wow. That's great. Yeah. And then, so that conjures up for me, this really powerful, like I got to have someone's back. And so it pushed it. It's not, I don't feel pressure from it i feel like i gotta have someone's back so it forces me into this like other compassion but i gotta i gotta have my

stuff right yeah and then the intensity of that work is like like there's there's an erect the uh erect spine there's like a dignified posture and so i'm wondering if you could just bounce off that am i indexing too high do you think on intensity when i you know it's interesting my mom taught me early on and i and i think you're onto something that i don't hear a lot in the mindfulness literature which is you know you see it in the loving kindness literature of like think bring images of people you care about and into your mind which is similar, which is you're doing this for somebody, right? Or this is a relational experience. And my mom taught me early when I was really struggling with anxiety as a 13, 14 year old, like use words to accompany your breathing.

And so for me, I'll use, compassion on the exhale on the exhale exactly breathe in compassion breathe in peace breathe in strength and just use words and return to words like like tm did but integrate them with your breath and now i find i do that like a lot of your listeners probably intuitively right i'm in a tough moment in my family I start breathing and suddenly the word compassion comes to mind and and we also know when you think of these important concepts they tend to trigger important behaviors so very useful to think of to index at that intense level like you're recommending okay great so can you teach us like from a um this is going back for you to 101 the difference between feelings and emotions

yeah and how that syncs or stitches with sensations yeah so you know when i when i teach the human emotion class at berkeley um we so so the, there are a variety of different feeling states, right? Or sort of phenomenological states where we experience things. So there are purely mental states where you're appreciating information in the world, like you're doing a crossword puzzle. There are emotions which are broad, they're very specific, intense, fairly brief, focused feeling states, like I feel angry or fearful or awe or mirth. There are broader mood states that we differentiate from emotions, and mood states are a little bit more like feeling states, right? You're kind of feeling something, you don't know what it's about, it's going to last a little bit longer than an emotion.

Importantly, you don't know what it's about in the moment. You're like, God, I kind of feel grouchy today. And, you know, is it the election or economy or my partner or whatever? And then we set apart those things from sensations, which are really physical, awareness of physical responses in your body that don't necessarily apply to your personal goals and striving. So I can be aware of an itch in my foot, or I can be aware of, you know, sort of tension in my neck. And then those become feeling states once they are implicating your personal goals. So we do a lot of tension in my neck and then those become feeling states once they are implicating your personal goals So we do a lot of work in the field and there are complexities here to sort out moods from emotions from feeling state from sensations and then mental states and a final one you got to put in the mix is what

philosophers have written about which are Sentiments like you know. And sentiments are these enduring feelings that you have that really cut across time and are a low layer of your mind, right? They're not brief and have distinct boundaries like an emotion. So I have a sentiment about the environment, which is I just always enduringly feel like protecting it and and that's different from a specific emotion hmm okay so okay so tell me if I've so there there's five components here that you've listed about feeling state so five different feeling states. So five different feeling states. Mental, emotional, mood, sensations, and sentiments.

Do I have that right? Okay. Tell me about this. I don't know if I've just gotten too far away on the frontier and I'm making stuff up now in my own life. I so value research, but I can't begin to keep up with the volumes of literature that's being published in modern times. So I think like, tell me if I'm wrong on this, but, and maybe I'm going back to my roots where it's, but it was wrong is that thoughts, emotions, and sensations are like kind of a bang bang experience and they happen very quickly they're intimately tied together and at the time when i was studying this um back and when i was in my training i orientated more to the research that thoughts preceded emotions yeah and i do know that there is some literature now that is suggesting, well, I don't know, it might be going the other way as well. But from a training perspective, I've just over-indexed maybe on helping people become aware of either one of those, but guiding the thoughts to influence emotions.

I think that's wise. I think in the emotion literature, we talk about those as appraisals, which are a little bit different than thoughts or knowledge about the world or beliefs that it's a sunny day or, you know, that I'm six feet tall or whatever it is. Appraisals are ways of perceiving your environment, both outside and inside that have to do with your goals. Right. And so the mind is this big computational machine that's looking at the environment in all its complexity and saying wow this is really this

is a chance for you to really do something good or this is this is a threat to your identity or there's a source of injustice in your world that you want to fix and so the mind is appraising the environment for these different themes and these are really the thought processes that give rise to emotions. And I think you're right. Like the smart money says, if you have an emotional bias you want to work on, like you're always angry. Or let's say, like in my case, I was really anxious. You've got to really zero in on those thoughts, right? Those appraisals of, hey, you always think you're going to die.

And that's an irrational thought. You're still thoughts, right? Those appraisals of, hey, you always think you're going to die. And that's an irrational thought. You're still alive, right? And work on challenging those thoughts or remediating them or improving them. And I think that's an effective decision on your part. Okay, cool. Dacher, one day I believe that we're going to be able to measure thoughts, see how much they weigh, see where they go, see where they, you know, where they begin. Like we'll be able to have some sort of more tangible experience about it. Do you, do you think that all of us have like these five or 10, I'm just making up numbers, like particular number of appraisals that get in our way and a particular number that facilitate

growth. And if we could just get a little bit better at over indexing on the ones that help us grow yeah that would be better off or is that way too simplistic no i i think that i think that's getting there how i how i sort of look at the scientific literature um i do think that we have probably 15 basic themes in life that matter to us that the mind is appraising for right themes like am i being valued by other people or is that fair or gee i just lost somebody uh to death or that's really funny or oh that's spectacularly beautiful or i'm learning something here so let's say, let's say there are 15 existential themes in life that the mind has been evolved to identify and respond to. And I think that, um, you know, I, and this is one of the hardest problems in the

science of emotion, which is, you know, when do emotions become destructive? When do we become over indexed to use your language on a theme? Like, God, I just, I'm always thinking things are fearful and worthy of dread. And I really take the wisdom of Aristotle, who has this principle of moderation where he says, you know, it's, it's really healthy to be aware of all these themes in your life and to respond to them emotionally but make sure your emotions are good for the situation they're appropriately calibrated they are they're fitting for what you're doing in the current world right it's sometimes it's important to be angry and to really

go after what's unfair and seek change but it's not good to be angry all the time or in places that don't concern injustice. So I think Aristotle's principle of moderation, all of the themes are important, challenges us to find balance and harmony in them. That's one of the great challenges of the emotional life. Okay. So where can I learn more about the 15 basic existential appraisals or those themes? Well, you know, so one of the really influential persons in the field of emotion, this was the core of his theory, which was Richard Lazarus. Oh, yeah. He wrote a book, Emotion and Adaptation, in 1991.

And that's what he said, is that we've got maybe 20 emotions, and they're all centered. Each is centered on a very important theme in your life that matters to you. So jealousy is about some rival is potentially going to take your romantic partner, and you get jealous, right? And that's an age-old theme that's universal. It's expressed in Shakespeare and the like. Anger is about injustice, And you could go on. So he's be skilled at them, basically. When we ask people, what do you want in life? They say, I just want to be happy.

And then that begs the question, would you not want to be sad if you lost a loved one? Would you not want to be pissed if you were watching some injustice? Would you only want to have compassion? And so I get confused on that because I understand that the core tenets of loving kindness and for, for Buddhism at the same time. One of my, I'll tell you a quick story. One of my mentors was Walt Rutherford, Dr. Walt Rutherford. And he was telling me a story about one of his mentors. And his mentor was a monk in Tibet.

And he was walking into his hut, basically. And he was watching three people take all of his possessions. And you can imagine. He had a rug and maybe kind of a mattress. And people were robbing him. And so he walked in, and he put his hands up in a nonthreatening way with his palms facing forward and said, please, take everything you want. There's no bad karma in this house, so take anything you want. And the robbers kind of were just alarmed by that.

And then as the story goes, they put the stuff down. They're like, man, this old man's on to something. I don't even understand what's going on, so let's just put this rug down. Obviously, he doesn't care. So let me finish the story. So he knew, my mentor knew that that's the man he wanted to be. And I struggle with that. Like, hold on now.

I might want to fight for something. So I'm still sorting that out. Like, I value love and kindness for sure. But also, like, I want to fight for what I believe is to be right. And so, and anyways, I'm taking this down a red herring. Not at all. No, I mean, you know, there are very serious cultural debates about, you know, and debates within, you know, the Tibetan Buddhist community and the scientific practitioners associated with them. Like, do you always want to be compassionate?

And I think, you know, you want to be compassionate in the right context. Although the more you cultivate it as a default setting, probably the better you'll do in your life. What about anger? We look around us and we see everyday examples of how anger leads us astray. But we do know that scientifically that the right kind of anger leads people to create more fair relationships in societies, which is foundational to healthy societies. What about sadness? Our culture pathologizes sadness and we medicate people and tell them to stuff it and, you know, keep a stuff stiff upper lip. But like you said, Michael, sometimes sadness gives us this deep wisdom about the value of the people that mean a lot to us. So we have to kind of engage in this questioning of

emotions and when they're right and when they're not love it and if we just fall the sandbox men would be these muted reptilian aggressors and you know like that's that's not that's not right okay tongue-in-cheek but not really okay so let's go let's can we jump into your work on power? Yeah. I feel like this is a nice little segue. So your newest book, I think, is called The Power Paradox. Yeah.

And I read about you that you had this alarming insight. And tell me if this quote is right. That people usually gain power through traits and actions that advance the interests of others, such as empathy, collaboration, openness, fairness, and sharing. And when they start to feel power or enjoy a position of privilege, those qualities begin to fade. Yeah. Yeah. And then so it's almost like power becomes corruptive or coercive to loving kindness and togetherness and collaboration. Yeah. Well, I think, I think that was the, you know, I had been studying,

how do people get power? You know, how do you get power in the US Senate or, you know, on the basketball court or, you know, in social groups. And then at the same time, my lab was looking at, well, what happens if you randomly give people power? Or people feel like they're at the highest station in society? And we discovered this paradox, which is you get power by stirring other people and advancing the interests of the social collective, right? What was that first word, stirring them? Stirring people, yeah. What does that first word, stirring them? Stirring people, yeah. What does that mean? It means inspiring and pointing to a course of action that they believe will advance their interests.

Ah, okay. And, you know, there are studies, you know, and this you see is this very deep principle of the acquisition of power, like in hunter-gatherer societies, it's really the individuals who, in that context, know how to advance the interests of the group, who can get food or protection or relaxation or whatever it is that that group gives power to. So it is about focusing on others and advancing their interests. And then regrettably, what happens once you feel powerful, right? Whoa, what happens once you feel powerful, right, whoa, I just got the big promotion, or look at me, I've got a lot of money,

is you start to become less empathetic, you become less considerate of other people, you become more selfish. So lots of, so you know, a lot of data speak to this paradoxical quality of power. And do you have a thought of why that is? Is it some sort of mutant gene trait that gets exercised? Or is it a laziness? Or is it a pro-social behavior that, you know, we need people in power to be a little less

empathetic because they need to make different types of decisions? Or is that like, I'm just making stuff up, but what is the reason for this? Well, I think we always look at the psychological processes, right? And what you know is when you feel like you're on top of your game and you're winning and you're the best in the group and you've made a lot of money or whatever the form of power is, your mind shifts and you feel a little euphoric. You feel like you're invincible.

You're less aware of the risks around you. You are more aware of the things that gratify your own desires and how you should get them and how people embody those things. And it kind of shifts your mind out of this really astute, empathetic, sort of, you know, disciplined way of looking at the world to a little bit more of a sloppy, self-interested way. And it causes a lot of problems, you know, a lot of big societal problems from sexual harassment to bad investments can be be traced back to this feeling of power. Okay, so what do we do with this information?

Yeah, well, I think what we do is we listen to shows like yours, and we take very seriously and humbly this fact about the human condition, that right when we're at the top of our game we're very vulnerable to fall and and then we do the things that people have been teaching for hundreds and thousands of years about you know you you become aware of your power you become you stay focused on other people a kind of a classic ethical principle you practice mindfulness right so that suddenly you're like hey i'm feeling like i'm i'm i'm i'm a little arrogant right now and they're vulnerable to hubris um and and i think you know

you stay focused on serving other people um and if you can do those things and just keep them in your daily interactions with others you'll be, even in spite of your success. And there are particular behaviors that we can monitor for ourselves and others that are discrete abuses of power. And so it looks more like ADD disguise, but it's really a disregard of another person that's in front of us. Yeah. Right. Like checking your phone or sending a text while somebody is talking to you or looking

over their shoulder at a party or, you know, I don't know, not letting people finish their sentences and talking over them and rolling their rolling one's eyes. Those are all like position, I think, right. Like discreet, abusive positions of power. And I'm wondering if you could elaborate on some of that. Yeah, you know, I mean, the scientific literature started rolling in on the abuses of power, and to me, I literally, before I wrote The Power Paradox,

and I wrote about this in a Business Review piece recently, too, on how to avoid having power corrupt you. I heard about this scientific literature, and it was so actionable that I just try to stay close to it in my own life. So we know when people feel powerful, they stop looking at other people when they're speaking, right? So if somebody's talking to me and I feel powerful, I look away, I look behind me, and that's disrespectful. So I make sure I really focus on other people. We know when people feel powerful, they're more, like you said, Michael, they're more likely to interrupt others and cut them off, right? Well, that's impolite and uncivil and a sign you're disrespecting other people. We know when people feel powerful, they're harsher in their statements to others, in their critiques, in the language they use.

So if you're swearing at somebody or, you know, using really critical, humiliating language, that's an abuse of power. You know, you could go on. You know, we know when people feel powerful, they are more inspired by their own experiences and less inspired by other people's good things happening in their life. And that, again, is this sudden sign that if you're not feeling really moved by what people say, that suggests your power is getting in the way of healthier leadership. So do we want people to feel powerful? Or are you suggesting that power... Yeah. There's a play on words here I'm not quite syncing up on because I want to feel as though I have autonomy that i i can relate to other people that i um i have the ability to keep growing and at the same time that i can do a lot

and i can get after it right i've got a command and i can put myself in unfamiliar territory and still come through it with my head and my hand and my feet like intact, right? Like because I've just tested those three. Yeah. And maybe my spirit. Okay. So I'm thinking about my message to myself and then also my message to my family and to athletes I work with. I like want them to be powerful but not abuse power. Yeah.

Can you kind of pull on this thread a little bit for me sure and and you're right to be kind of calling out this tension in this which is you know in serving the scientific literature the practical literature on power um in the power paradox yes we want people to feel powerful it is it's a pathway to happiness it's a pathway to agency it's a pathway to purpose right what does agency mean agency means I feel like I can get think that things I want to get in this situation okay it's also good for your body you know I review in the power paradox all the problematic effects on your nervous system from your brain to your immune system of not feeling empowered.

So we want people to feel powerful and we want those around us to feel powerful. But we want to, like the great ethicists have always advised and also the people who really think seriously about leadership, we want to we want to always be grateful for our power, to feel like it's a privilege to lead or influence other people, and to be humble about it, right? To know. You know, it's so funny. I know I talked about this with you earlier, Michael. I worked on Inside Out with Pete Docter, the great director over there. Okay, so let me interrupt you on the idea of power. I just, I have to say that that's how you and I, that was why I was so interested in meeting you,

is because of the work that you did on that movie. And just at the end of it, my wife's like, okay, let's go. Like, that was great. Let's go. And I said, wait, I've got to see who the psychologist that was guiding this was. And so, like, that's well done. Like, seriously, like, I don know your how much influence you had but whatever influence you had it maybe was all of it was just i just loved it i think it's such a good little

movie for like making it really simple and fun and just yeah uh just well done well you know that i mean pete doctor and ronnie del carmen and their team are geniuses and they took the literature you and i've been talking about about the passions and about mindfulness and the brain they took it very seriously and you felt it in the movie and you know just to get back to power and humble power you know i you know i was part of that project for five years and dropped into pixar and gave little lectures on the brain or dopamine or emotional expression. And Pete doctor, the director would email me and read the scientific literature. And they produced this incredible film that I think changed our cultural conversation about emotion

like you and I are having. And I remember getting together with Pete and, you know, he had won the Academy award. He'd run the British Award. It was the best grossing non-sequel, I think, in film history. You know, it was just this transcendent movie. I was like, man, Pete, you know, you know, this is just so you must feel done better on the film, and B, his next movie. You know, he's like, well, there's better work to do. I was blown away. You know, I was like, this guy's changed tens of millions of people's lives. And in his humility, he's thinking about better work to do. So to me, that's, you know, a lot of people write about how important humility is when you have power. Okay, so humility is like the counterbalance.

Yeah, and I think your question points to these counterbalances, these things to be mindful of when you feel powerful. Like, your power depends on other people. You can always do better work. You're vulnerable to the abuse of the power. Just keep those things in mind as guidelines, ethical guidelines. Yeah yeah and the abuse cycle is mired by control and power yeah so those two variables together become abusive in relationships so if you did power and humility maybe it's obviously not an abusive relationship but it's a relationships with yourself and others with regard. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. That might be an interesting little, like, I don't know,

play on research. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So can you, can you talk us through gratitude preceding joy and happiness? And that's my assumption. And so you can please say, you can please say no no you got that wrong but the the reason i think about that is um brain structures when we talk when we ask people to be grateful like where gratitude tends to light up is lower in the brain structure um and and so uh can you can you guide me through this and make sure that i'm thinking about this correctly because when people say that they want to be happy, I don't roll my eyes, but I have compassion for them. But one of the beginnings part of the work that I do with people is gratitude training. And as a primer for joy and peace and happiness.

So even while being one of the best in the world, kick an ass at what you do. So can you teach us on gratitude sure so you know and it's so it's gratifying to hear how deeply you thought about this and applying it michael so you know in the philosophical traditions there's this idea know, articulated by different philosophers and Martha Nussbaum at the University of Chicago, that there are these master passions that are pathways to happiness and joy. And in general, there are three that are really important. Compassion, which we've talked about. Awe, which is like, oh, I'm amazed by this thing I'm around. And then gratitude. And, you know, Adam Smith

felt that gratitude was the key ingredient for healthy societies. And I think that's right, which is that when you engage in practices that you're teaching that make people feel grateful for the things that are given to them or make them feel wonder and amazement at what the spectacular things around them are kindly towards other people those basic shifts in your mind you're right are really we're starting to learn neuroscientifically are down in the older parts of the brain so we did studies showing compassion activates an old region of the mammalian nervous system called the peri-archoductal gray. So by shifting those older settings in your brain and also shifting ways you look at the world, like, boy, there's so many gifts in life,

which is core to gratitude, then your mind is prepared to appreciate things as you move through the day, to appreciate what you get to eat or the chance to walk in a beautiful park or the chance to be with people you really care about and that's really the process that gives you joy and happiness downstream is these core emotions activating these more momentary ways of perceiving things and then joy and happiness that follows. So you're absolutely right. Ah, okay. There we go.

Good. Okay. When people say, like, I just want to be happy, in a way that's the wrong question. What they should be thinking about is, like, I would love to strengthen my capacity for gratitude or compassion. That's right. Yeah. I feel like in some ways I know, I know, what am I trying to say? Is that I didn't know exactly those three tenets that you talked about. I did kind of know them in some kind of way, but I didn't know the science of it.

But I was more familiar with the science of gratitude. But I understand the value of compassion. I really do. And I really do. And I live that way. And I don't teach it as much. And so as I'm hearing you talk, and I would love if you could help sort this out, is that I don't teach it as much because sometimes I feel like that gets in the way of the alpha experience that I want people to be able to face down really difficult scenarios where, I don't know, I'm in a journey right now where alpha and power is not an abuse of those two, but becoming alpha and being in an alpha situation. No, I'm sorry.

Being an alpha in an intense situation feels so different than compassion. And I'm having a hard time wrapping my head around it, even though I live it and value it in my own life. So I'm at a crossroad in my own life. Yeah, well, it's a complicated relationship, right? But what I can tell you is there are studies of great U.S. presidents. And one of the things that the great ones had is kind of an ability to cultivate empathy and compassion. So Abe Lincoln, you know, was observed by Thurlow

Weed to hear everyone who comes to him and see everybody who's interested in him. So he really had this foundational sort of connection with others and appreciation of their circumstances, empathy, and then compassion. You know, I think that it'd be really interesting to look at the great athletes. You know, you think about somebody like Magic Johnson and how deep compassion runs through the way that they comport themselves on the court. You know, we did this funny study of NBA and found that the more the players kind of encouragingly gave other players high fives and fist bumps.

Was that your work? Yeah. Like patting on the ass? Yeah. That was your work? Okay. I read your work. I didn't know that was you a while back. That was really good. The more the players did that, the better their teammates played. And in a way, that's an act of compassion, right? If your teammate blows it and you're the guy like Kevin Garnett does who walks by and puts your arm around them or pats them on the butt, that's a sign that you care and things will get better, right? So there are tensions between compassion and power, no doubt. Sometimes you have to be dominant but in general the right kind of compassion enables power okay so that's a really cool insight because I think you need

both so let's say that somebody who is a scrub and doesn't have a strong scrub meaning like they're not very good they're not very talented and they also don't have a deep relationship with the the strong man that stumbled okay or a strong woman who stumbled and that person tries to go over and console or put their arm around that athlete that just um yeah it not work. It does not work. No, no. And in a way it's, you know, in team settings, it's incumbent upon the leaders to do that kind of, that kind of reassuring supportive work.

Which is the position of power. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And then, so if you're going to assert that type of compassion with somebody else, it can't, but you're low on that totem pole, can't do it publicly you have to do it privately yeah or you do it as you know you do it kind of in the background of the team where you're the guy who's off cameras you know saying encouraging things or joking about stressful situations you know it's interesting i was um on a panel with the Dalai Lama and, you know.

I love how you just kind of like just mentioned that. I was going to talk to you about it. I'm like, that is so rad. Yeah, that is really cool. Well, it was a great privilege. And he's a great leader. And he is, you know, he practices compassion hours a day. And people who are around him feel this deep warm but we were having this

conversation about when is it you know should we just show compassion to everybody uh all the time he's like no that's stupid compassion i was like oh uh so what do we do if you know there's somebody who's acting out should we help them out you know or is really behaving inappropriately it's like no you need to practice tough compassion. You know, so sometimes, you know, like in my life, I do science. I have a big lab and we make mistakes and we do things that are inappropriate or somebody isn't fulfilling their duties in the lab. And that doesn't require soft, warm, gooey embraces. requires tough compassion which is you got to get this stuff done or where we're not working well together right so i think again it's almost back to aristotle's recommendation like cultivate these these positive emotions like gratitude and compassion but use them in the right

ways that benefit the collective okay brilliant so could So could you take us home and really guide us on a couple very concrete activities that we could do? If somebody wants to generate compassion, more compassion, more gratitude, more power properly, have better control or awareness. Oh, wait, wait, that's a good question. Can we control our emotions or just just harness them well i you know there's this really so take that question first um there is this really interesting distinction between awareness and suppression right and and the scientific literature shows you and i've talked about, Michael, if I'm just aware of feeling angry, like, hey, I'm pretty agitated right now, or I'm irritable or annoyed, that'll help me handle that emotion more effectively.

If I suppress it, hey, I'm aware right now, shut that down, that actually increases stress and physiological arousal. So awareness is important as opposed to shutting down so that i do feel the mindfulness exercises the ways of sculpting the thoughts that give rise to emotions are ways that we indirectly control emotions in beneficial ways okay so you would say that we can control emotions i do i think that part of the contemplative practice of gratitude mindfulness and loving kindness and language and is the you know things we've talked about are ways that we gain some control over our passions you know it's funny because i the way that i think about is once i'm flooded yeah

and i have the emotion it's like the best i can do is ride that stallion and slow it down. I don't feel I can really control it. Yeah. For those two or three seconds that I'm thinking I'm having a panic attack, that's true. But there's a lot of mental activity before and during and after that helps me change. I'm nodding my head to that completely. If there was a model, once it spills over, that helps me that's okay yeah i'm nodding my head to that completely so it's almost like there's some sort of if there was a model it's like it spills once it spills over it's like you you just

there's so much cortisol in the brain in the system that you've just got to ride that thing and manage it as opposed to tell it to stop yeah yeah okay yeah all right beautiful um okay so bring us home on some some how can you help the world get better based on your science and your your your path and what would be a few things that you could suggest that we could do better yeah well you know it's a very important topic these days um you know i think that uh so you know one is um uh you know i do feel you've got to find your core passions in life and a lot of people at work for example don't feel like they're fulfilling core passions and they are things like you know what what do you feel really amazed by or where do you

where do you are you really feeling like you're remedying injustice? Or how do you think you're minimizing the harm that people feel? Or how are you really fulfilling excellence and competition, right? So there are these ways of being in the world, these core themes to life. You've got to find the one that really matters to you at the individual level. I do feel a lot of the data show I really side on the compassion end of people really are, you know, for the most part, trying to do their best, that they suffer like you suffer. That mindset will benefit your work. It will benefit your health.

It will benefit your relations. It will benefit society. And then I think that, you know, I think each person has to do what you're teaching, Michael, which is find your set of five things that will make you a good person in society. They will help you transcend stress, transcend greed and narrow self-interest, and find what those things are. For me, it's what we've talked about. It's breathing. It's a little bit of yoga.

It's being with people I love. It's getting outdoors and in the woods uh just find those five things that even if you just do them you know a couple minutes a day that they're really there to to really pursue the good life and so those are the things that i always return to so good you make it sound so simple. It's hard. Isn't it? Okay, so brilliant. Thank you so much for your time and like being able to walk us through your path and what led you here and then your commitment to it. And if there's one thing that you're most interested in, is it compassion? Is it awe?

Is it love? Is it power? Well, you know, I'm lucky enough to cycle through my life. And right now it's awe, Michael. It's, you know, understanding like when we're out in beautiful nature, how that makes us a better person, which we're starting to document. And then how do you give that away to people? So how do you give it to veterans and kids in the inner cities who don't get nature as part of their daily life and to attract the benefits of awe for our society? Can I tell you about a way that I'm competing every day for awe?

Tell me. So for me, awe is experienced when um when i get goosebumps yeah and there's a moment when i'm so immersed and so engaged in the present moment and i'm so it's like i understand that i i've somehow felt the vastness and the intimacy of this with this one moment and so my my uh i think i don't know how to say it it's either pilo or phylo erection. Do you know which way? Pilo? Yeah, pilo erection,

where our hair stands up on the edge of our skin. And so down in the most recent Olympics, Karch Karai, one of the best volleyball players to ever play the game, and is now coaching the women's national team. He says, every conversation he and I have, there's like two or three moments where we stop and we look at our arms and we like point

to the hair on our arms and we're like, look, it's happening. And so that became a conversation of competing. Who's got more throughout the day? So in every, like in many of my relationships now, and I've got a bunch of athletes and coaches and whatever, and so we're on a little text chain. How many do you – how many did you get today? So we're competing.

Yeah, so we're competing. So – You've got to send me your data. Dacher, do you want – do you and I want to compete on this? Huh? Let's do it. I've got goosebumps on my spine. All right.

So listen, let's for the next week. How about when this launches? For the next week, you and I will compete to see how many times we can each individually in our own lives get pilar erection. That is awesome. I'm in. All right. I'm in too. And then if you want to do some research or like you want to partner up on doing some stuff with some elite athletes based on your your work i'd love to spend some time with you on that that'd be cool that'd be really

i think we could do a really interesting study brilliant so um where can we find out more about you where can where can folks go and uh dig deeper into your work well they so i have a couple of books the power paradox and then born to be Good, The Science of a Meaningful Life, where I talk about awe and compassion. And then most importantly, the Greater Good Science Center, which is greatergood.berkeley.edu, is free. It has 15 years of wisdom. We've got a great team of journalists and scientists working there. And I think your readers and listeners will love it. And then do

you have a social media engagement as well uh through the greater good science yeah okay it's all there you'll get more fun and we'll put that in the show notes as well okay dacker thank you for your work thank you for uh getting my hair to stand up during this conversation and um yeah thank you for your contribution to people being more grounded, more in love and compassionate and finding on beauty in their life. So it's, I am grateful to have this conversation with you. It's been a wonderful conversation, Michael. Thank you.

Very cool. So for folks who are still listening, if you enjoy this conversation, punch over to finding master.net to get more of these conversations. Find us on iTunes. Please write a review. And that helps build our base. And then you can find me at social, it's at Michael Gervais on Twitter,

and then on Instagram, it's Finding Mastery. Hey, Dacher, right before we go, would you mind answering some questions on our Finding Mastery community page? Sure. Yeah, so I'll send you some information. People are intense there, and I know they're going to want to ask you questions. Sure. Yeah, so I'll send you some information. People are, they're intense there and I know they're going to want to ask you questions. Sure.

Okay, brilliant. All right. Okay, have a great day. You too, Michael. Thanks. Bye. Bye. All right. Thank you so much for diving into another episode of Finding Mastery with us.

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