Good Life Project - Divine Feminine, Creative Suffering and Word Traps?

Episode Date: March 23, 2016

Today's Good Life Project Roundtable™ is the third and final week for our current guests-in-residence Emiliya Zhivotovskaya, MAPP and and Bob Gower.Emiliya is a leading voice in the world of positive psychology and the science of flourishing, and is the founder of the Certificate in Applied Positive Psychology program, which is the largest in the world. In a past life she was a party entertainer and knows pretty much every group dance ever invented.Bob is a deep systems-thinker, author of Agile Business, organizational-dynamics consultant to some of the largest companies in the world. He's also an ex-cult member, and that comes out in interesting ways in the conversation.Our three topics in this episode:What's up with the "divine feminine?"Does creative genius demand suffering?Are we trapped by our past actions and statements? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Y'all need a pilot? Flight Risk. This is Jonathan Fields with this week's Good Life Project Roundtable. So that's a format where I have guests in residence. And we go around the table and we each throw out one topic and jam until we're, well, pretty much done jamming. My guests in residence today and for actually for three weeks now are two dear friends of mine. We have Amelia Zivotowskaya, who is a scientist. She has a master's in applied positive psychology,

runs the largest certification in applied positive psychology program in the world. And it's just a stunningly brilliant mix of deep academic and scholarship and also a pretty soft metaphysical side. And she blends it in a way which just makes you think. Also joining as a guest in residence for today and for three weeks now is Bob Gower. Bob is a deep systems thinker with a strong background in philosophy and agile development for those in the sort of technology world. He's worked with teams at the highest level in some of the largest organizations and also startup entrepreneurs. He also has a background in cults and in all sorts

of worlds where people influence others to make decisions. And that comes out in a lot of really interesting ways in the conversations over the next couple of weeks. So really excited to share these conversations with you. I'm Jonathan Fields. This is Good Life Project. And hanging out with you on a roundtable day with our guests in residence, Emilia Jovatowskaya and Bob Gower. Gower, Gower, Gower, Gower. So this is our third round with these two fabulous guests in residence. And we're going to start things off this week with Amelia.

What are you thinking about? I have been thinking about how do we balance divine masculine and divine feminine energy within us? I believe that each person has both feminine and masculine qualities. And I find that it's so easy for me to get caught up in my divine masculine, like get to get things done, very focused, very action-oriented doing whereas the divine feminine energy is like receptive and relaxed and go with the flow and and creative and i've just been thinking about how do we balance these two energies within us and for me even like how do i remember to soften when i want to be in control and be masculine and And we can stay that balance. And how do you guys find that balance of your feminine?

Why do you want to do that? Yeah, I was curious about that too. Well, I have two curiosities. One, what do you mean? Like why divine versus just masculine or feminine? And then why do you want to balance it? Say the first one again. Why not just masculine versus feminine?

Why is it divine masculine oh um i think of it i think that's the divine element of it is just like the more energetic quality of it i think it's just more woo-woo language-ish than anything else it's like but i think of it the reason i use the word divine is i feel that it's it's just uh kind of zooms out the lens a little bit and kind of like a more energetic quality. But I really just mean like masculine and feminine energy. And I guess it's just me, like I'm thinking about in my own personal relationship with my partner, I sometimes notice I want to be in the more feminine role. I want him to be in a more masculine role. But why is it that we walk into a restaurant, like I walk ahead and I kind of like take his hand. I'm like, all right,

here's where we're going, you know? And then I say, oh, but I want you, I want to be more, you know, swooped away by you. And yet I just like, you know, spearheaded through the restaurant. It's like, sit down right here. So I just, I, so I feel like I constantly am working on, am I, am I in balance? Am I showing up in the world the way that I want to, or am I out of balance? And I feel like it's so seductive to get caught up into that like masculine, productive, doing, doing, doing, and just harder time being and receiving kind of energy. And maybe the way you two are looking at me, audience, if you could see the way that they're looking at me right now, clearly I'm the only one who experiences this we're like you are the alpha

we're not looking we're just a little scared that's all do you feel like that someone needs to be in that role like in that situation that's let's walking let's say walking to the restaurant that one person needs to be in the masculine role and one person needs to be in the feminine role. And because your partner is not going to take that role, then you take that role. Well, have you ever walked through a New York City restaurant? You can't walk side by side. Somebody has to take the role. Somebody has to take the lead.

Have you ever – so you could be in your masculine role before it, right, in the car on the way there or whatever right in the car on the way there or whatever and or in the subway on the way there and you could say when we get to the restaurant i want you to take the lead but that's me being in the masculine role in that moment but in the moment when you're in the restaurant it's you being in the feminine role you have generated in a very feminine way you have been generative and you have generated the state that you want to be in but but does then giving him that won't cut But then it's like you're giving him permission. Exactly. Because you're saying like- I'm taking control of the situation.

Right, to be masculine, which kind of like emasculates. Yeah, no, I think if anything, I would just have to just sit there and wait until he took the lead and walked in it. And I actually, I mean, my partner is incredibly masculine in that way. I think I'm just too domineering because I'm just in this, you know, you think I was an Aries. No offense to the Aries out there in the world. It's like, you know, this bullheaded, just spearhead away. I don't think, I think if I just stood there, eventually someone would take the lead.

I just, I don't remember to. Have you ever played the other role? Have you ever not been the masculine, divine masculine? Sorry. Thank you. Thank you. Because otherwise, I want to know what you're talking about. I have at times, and I know I want to be, I want to be, but again, not just the romantic side of life. I mean, just like in everything, how to keep that balance. All right, fine. I'll keep talking about my romantic life. I have at times, but not nearly as much as I would like to be, though. I think the majority of my relationships, even when I start off with a very strong masculine energy, I think it's my inner control freak.

Like that masculine kind of takes over. I don't know if it's a vulnerability or softening into that other way. I know I would like to be balanced. It may also be. or softening into that other way. I know I would like to be balanced, but. It may also be. I'm going to go back. This has just turned into a therapy session for Amelia. I'm going to go back to my,

and maybe we can back it up even before the subway. It's not the subway on the way in, but it's maybe just being able to set up that context in your relationship. Because what I know about men being one myself and having talked to a lot of us is we men, and correct me if i'm wrong jonathan we'd like to please the women around us like that's one of the things that we really tend we want to we're we don't necessarily some men don't necessarily like pleasing women but they want the woman to be pleased nonetheless and then they turn into jerks in order to like berate the woman into being pleaded anyways it's

a really bad strategy for that. But often I find like, it feels like in couples, like we don't talk about the context that we want to set, like what you would enjoy and letting your partner know that. So when they get to that moment, because he may just feel like, well, she seems to like this, so I'm just going to let her do that. And so even though he's fully capable of it doing that, it might not occur to him because his focus is on you having the experience you want to have. And with him not being aware of you having, of the experience that you do want to have, they just turned into a therapy session. It's a common, this is a common conversation. This

is a conversation I have a lot, but yeah. Well, I mean, and I recognize within me the vulnerability that it takes to ask for my needs and the, what if I do ask for my needs and then they don't get met? Like I definitely see that coming up and, and taking it out of the therapy session realm. I just, I think my even bringing it to the table is I feel like I am constantly working and trying to find that balance. And sometimes I'm aware of when I'm stepping out of balance in my life where I'm doing too much and not receiving or being enough. And other times, like my relationship, it will take me months of the same exact behavior. And I'm perpetuating, like you said, if he's watching me

enjoy playing this role or taking charge or taking the lead, and it will take me, and yet I'm feeling slightly snippy or dissatisfied. It'll take me a long time before it hits me that how am I perpetuating this? I mean, it all feels, there's a, I always think of life as we have assets, we have desires, and all of our strategies are about taking the assets we have into creating the things that we want to create with them it's funny actually elon musk talks about this in great detail there's a there's a wonderful this is like how he's created his business he's like i have my assets i have my things i want to create and my understanding of my assets is always evolving and so i have to kind of constantly be evolving that my understanding

of that thing that I want to create is also always evolving. And I have to kind of keep thinking about that. And then my strategies to connect the two is also very much a test and learn and always evolving. And I, and he, and he really like hacks his brain in order to think in a new way. So he can think strategically about all three of those, those sort of buckets. And so even in our personal life, you know, like i want to have this experience well i you know i have this boyfriend who's willing i have this asset i mean it's it's it's i don't know he is quite the asset he is quite the asset but then but then i can create you know i can use that i can use this in order to create and but it's about i think maybe it is about vulnerability it's like getting getting

explicit because getting explicit about what we want man that's some scary stuff at least it is for me most of the time like yeah and also i want i guess i keep going back to the if the vast majority of your life you've always been they played the role of divine masculine how do you actually know that you don't want to be primarily in that role and like that your idea of balance meaning like there is equal or you're more towards a divine feminine is actually right for you is it just a gut it's a great question i think i have to give it some more thought as to whether or not it's like you should be more balanced um as opposed to what is what is my baseline. I think when I really go deep down inside,

the discomfort with the really, really, really receptive side of it makes me want to challenge myself to step into that more. So I think that might be where the vulnerability of really receiving, because you give up control in that. And I think we can zoom the lens out like around that. It's not just you. I think all of us have that same,

you know, like, well, A, if I actually give up that role, will somebody rise up and sort of like, you know, like play the compliment adequately to my needs, to the way that I feel that role should be played, which is also a big expectation thing.

And then am I willing to actually play the role of more of the receiver? Which is funny because for you, as we've talked about before, you are the consummate helper. You are like the consummate take control. Not just in your life, but in every part of your life, you run it. Your business, your relationships, your family, your friendships. And again, zooming the lens out, I think when we look around, it's like if we kind of say, okay, what are the patterns that exist in every part of our life?

And if we persistently say, I want something different, but the patterns we manifest in our lives for years and sometimes decades are the exact opposite. And the question is like, well, if I say I want something opposite, do I really? Or is this just the role that i'm actually comfortable in um or am i looking for the you know like um then the night to come and just shake me into that place of like you know finally being okay with what may be a fantasy i don't know the answer but yeah i wonder if also like i wonder if things change too for you like i mean your business has been since the time i've known you for a couple years now and it feels like your business you know like what your business requires of you

is expanded and expanded and expanded to you know where you have to be in this masculine role or this let's call it this on role all of the time and maybe your need for having somebody take care of you role from time to time also expands can i reference one of a project that i'm working on that's still in stealth mode nope sorry i can't no i can't talk about all right all right i'll give a little plug for it we actually have a site up for it now already or a landing page if people want to know about it's dominating the boardroom.com and we're interviewing dominatrices. That's the plural of dominatrix, by the way, dominatrices.

And we're asking them specifically about how they take control. But one of the things that's emerged from this is these are women who, like, work with, like, really, really powerful men mostly. And I keep asking, like, is it true the more powerful the man, the more submissive they are? And that seems to be kind of a universal truth. Like these men are like controlling corporations or, you know, they're big sports players. And these are like, you know, people who are, I guess, at the top of their career or whatever, the top of their industry. And in their personal life, they seem to require being more submissive. But then they go to somebody where they're paying that person for it.

And they've contained it. They've created this particular experience for themselves in this very kind of contained way i think there's other ways to do that for yourself right but what's interesting about that to me is that by not going to the person that they have a true intimate relationship with in their life and asking for that to be their relationship, but actually by paying for the service and the container within like, you know, like within a container where the rules are defined, not by the nominations, but by them. They've in a way like still not relinquish control yeah yeah yeah it's i we talk about that as well like the true power dynamic and i guess you know one of our theses or one of the things we're trying to understand is within that dynamic where one person is really in control and the other person in many ways is not like if you're a sex worker your your level of social status is much lower than if you're a say

a ceo right and yet in that moment, that person has to take control of the other person and has to mean it in some way. And so we're kind of looking at this idea of leadership as positional or something. It reminds me of this silly memory I had when I was pretty early on into my business. I think I've been in business for a decade now. And I remember I'd finished,

it was a couple of years after grad school and someone suggested I try print modeling, like just advertisement kind of stuff. And at the time, the real motivation was, hey, if I land one print job, I could pay back my loans from Penn, and that would be really great. And I realized how much I loved getting my picture taken because someone just told me what to do. And so I went from being a business owner, constantly making hundreds of little decisions from that space of uncertainty. Am I doing the right thing? Is this the right place to go? Will this continue? And just to have someone say, do this, go here, move that. It was like, I really like this. And I guess it's

the balance, the need to have contrast. I'm seeing a dominatrix in your future, man. Just saying. I know a few I can recommend. Wait, no, no. I want to be told what to do. He's got a long list. I got some numbers. I have PhD loans to pay back now, so I never know. Dominatrix photographer, same thing.

Yeah, me too. Bob, what's on your mind today? You know, it's actually in the last one I i brought up the kink keeps coming up in this but uh you invited me so you knew that probably this topic would come up but in that article about the the composer one of the things he also references is he talks about tchaikovsky and tchaikovsky which I didn't know struggled with homosexuality or his you know like his feeling closeted and I think this guy one of his concerns we actually talked about this earlier I can't remember if the mic was on or not but like if my if I if I take away my devils will my angels leave too it's a great it's a Tom Waits line which I think comes from somebody else anyway

but but there's this idea like do we have to suffer in order to create great art because this this composer is actually he's kind of worried in some way, or he sounds kind of worried in this article that, like, my home life is pretty happy now. And I'm kind of out and self-expressed and I'm feeling pretty good. Is my work still going to have the pathos to it that I'm famous for? Am I going to be, and I wonder sometimes, as my own life gets happier, am I just, am I producing crap now? Or I just wonder what your guys' relationship is between suffering and your creativity. Well, apparently I can't help much because I'm more of a helper than I'm a maker. Because I think the helper answer is entirely different than the maker answer.

Well, what's the helper answer? They'd be like, you're doing great. I'd be like, it's crap. Your work is crap. I'm like, but you're serving so many. Yeah. and great i'd be like it's crap your work is crap but you're serving so many yeah yeah i i think of it as like as as just such a broad and a bill that that when i'm in the more i feel i personally feel so much more resourceful and i feel joyful and i feel like i'm in alignment and but again the

things that i create are more outward focused and so so I feel more like we know in psychology and research that positive emotions broaden our thought-action repertoires, what we think about, what we're capable of. And negative emotions will actually narrow our focus and our tendencies. And so I feel like the more I flourish, I don't expect that it will always stay the same. There's still a pulsation where you move forward and you move back and you move forward and you move back. But I think the nature of the time spent moving back is different. So I don't go to a deep, dark place, but maybe I might go to uncertainty or judgment or just kind of taking a critical eye, but then I keep moving forward. For me, the dark has never been a motivator. The dark for me has just always made me feel really stuck. I've never been able to leverage that energy. Whereas when it comes to positive emotions

and it comes to excitement or gratitude or curiosity or joy or love or support, then I feel like, yeah, I can leverage that. I can make something from that. It's just, I don't know if that's just me. I agree with that. And I would build, and I have, I'm a little bit weird also in terms of. A little? Yeah. Okay.

I'm a lot of bit weird. Being like a helper and maker and sometimes swinging violently between the two. But my experience has been that the dark can provide extraordinary grist for creation at an exceptional level, but it doesn't fuel the action that lets it turn from suffering into manifest outcomes. So it gives you the story to tell, but it doesn't give you the energy to tell the story. In fact, like Amelia said, very often, it may do the exact opposite. So it gives you the story, it gives you the experience, but it almost traps it inside of you. And the thing that lets it out, the thing that turns it into great art, inventions great you know beauty awe delight companies businesses is some more positive energy that says like this thing must get out and it's something something needs to move you from that place where you're you're you're stuck in a dark alley to like taking that and like releasing that out into the world and my sense is that that, you know, so while we've all heard, you know,

like great art has to come from great suffering. But I think great suffering can be one source of great art. But A, it's not the only source. And B, my experience has been that it never becomes great art until great suffering meets resolution, and some other positive energy that moves somebody to bring it to the surface and transmute it into the thing that we experience then as art.

But at the same time, positive stuff can be, here's where I zoom the lens out to. It's not about suffering. It's about engaging and feeling. However you do that, that may be through suffering. That may be through moments of awe. That may be through profound pain. It may be through sadness.

It may be through the happiest thing may be through like the happiest thing ever. That provides the raw experience that then your job is to somehow figure out how to move that from the raw experience to something that then becomes motivation to create something in the world. But so suffering can be one form, but it's not the only.

And if you stay in that place, like if you just stay in a place of suffering your whole life, to me, that's not the way to, and even if it does create like a moment of great art, what a freaking awful way to live. I think a lot about Ben Zander's work, the art of possibility. He has a line in there, how fascinating. Good

thing happens, bad thing happens, quote unquote. He used to say how fascinating. And one of the things I've been finding in my own life is that I've worked really hard to amass coping skills. And I think I have a fairly high baseline level of positivity that I might be part genetic and or resiliency at the very least. But I've just been watching my life for the past couple of months from a zoomed out perspective where things that happen that many people would be like, wow, that's a bad thing or that's a traumatic thing. Like my father was hospitalized and I needed to make decisions about whether or not I was putting him into hospice. And of course, there's more surgeries and nights spent at the hospital overnight and da, da, da. And people would be like, wow, that was such a difficult thing. And I feel like I've been working so hard to just be like, I don't know.

Like, I just, it's my life. I just kind of go about it. Like, I don't feel that I suffer when negative, quote unquote, negative things happen because I can kind of watch them. Like I kind of find myself zooming out the lens and I'm watching them happen. Things that used to really rub me the wrong way or throw me off my center point. And I'm not necessarily happy that they're happening. I feel like my life is at a fairly calm place. And so when those negative thing happens, like whether it even just be projects not going my way, a lot of uncertainty in my life, things that used to really bring

fear, keep me up all night or things that used to really make me doubt myself and spin in my wheels, those similar things are happening. I'm just not suffering from them in the same way. And that doesn't mean I won't at some point suffer, I don't think. But I just think that it's like, I think that challenges happening in your life is going to be a given. How it affects you and how you deal with them, that's up to us. And so I think that's a guarantee that no matter how joyous or happy you become, you will still be up against things that are going to really challenge your resilience. But when you work with it, then I don't think it necessarily has to be suffering. I mean, I feel like in my own life, having been through, you know, kind of several tumultuous relationships and kind of a, you know, like, I guess even up through about, say, 45 or so, like my life was, I'm 50 now. And, you know, my life was, was fairly

tumultuous and there was a lot of confusion and suffering and, you know, like I did. Okay. I always made money. All right. But I never quite figured out relationships that I was, I suffered a lot, but I was not terribly productive because I couldn't, I think as you say, Jonathan, I couldn't find the will to actually do anything. I knew I had like great things inside of, or I, you know, I was sure, right. I had great things inside of right you know i was sure right i had great things inside of me so hopefully everybody is right but those things actually weren't coming out because i was always dealing with the next crisis i was always dealing with an you know with the next thing it traps you yeah and now that my life is pretty pretty happy you know and pretty good um and that i've kind of put this maker time in my schedule, as we were talking about earlier, right?

Like that I'm able to, you know, I don't know if the work is great. I don't know if it's not great. In many ways, it doesn't matter. In many ways, it's just the work. It's just like you show up in the morning, you know, and you do the best you can. And if you do that often enough, then you produce something. And if you produce something often enough, hopefully you iterate and you get better and better over time. And maybe lightning strikes and you produce something amazing.

Yeah, I agree. What's interesting is I've seen people construct suffering because they feel like they're not suffering enough to have those experiences, which will allow them to create the next level of good work. And it's not, man, life's going to serve up all you need if you actually face it. You don't need to fabricate anything. You just need to open your eyes and own it. And that's enough. Nobody gets out without experiencing something.

It's like you were saying, Amelia, it's like your ability to experience and move through's like, you know, your ability to experience and move through it and develop skills that allow you to be like, okay, this is happening. There's literally nothing I can do to make the circumstance better, but I can learn how to move through it differently with more equanimity and maybe more grace. And then, you know, like take some actions that in some way leverage it and transform it into beauty. I think that's where the power is.

I have a theory on that earlier part of what you said, the Zivotovsky theory. You can say it in Ukraine. The Zivotovsky theory. That what it means to be human is to feel emotions. And that's what makes us feel alive that's why people would rather suffer through mental illness than become vegetative and and how important that is to the human experience and when i see this all the time with my clients and students that when life starts when they are so used to the chaos

and they're so used to the fear or the drama and things become neutral for just a point in time. There's a discomfort there. One, because it's unfamiliar, but two, because they need to feel. And the negativity bias of our brain makes the negative emotions a lot easier to access. The positive emotions take effort and take work to sustain. You have to actively, in the beginning, actively look for what you're grateful for. You have to actively experience kindness or love or compassion towards others or hopefulness or contentment or curiosity.

They just take a little bit more work than the negative. If you want to find something to be angry about, you can step outside and just find about anything. You can also step outside and find something to be grateful for, but it's going to take a little bit of searching. So my theory is that because we have a need to feel and negative emotions are easier to access and tap and conjure, we'll keep going back to those negative emotions because they're actually more comfortable than neutral. Neutral is very unfamiliar and unnerving and uncertain. That's the Zivotofsky theory. Interesting. So I had a business idea that a journalist friend says that he could get funded for me. I want to create a website called The Daily Outrage. And what we'd do is we'd have a typology test that you would take when you joined up,

and we'd figure out what your buttons were, whether you were right or left leaning didn't doesn't really matter to me and then we would serve up a custom you know maybe two or three stories to you a day that were sure to make you feel really really really upset because it feels like that's what people use the news for anyway right like that's the like we're hitting that lever because we want to have that we want to feel as you say like people people want to feel it's like a different like dopamine hit but and and see that gives me the heebie-jeebies just to begin with like those are the oh it's an evil idea i think i think about people like scary movies like i'm like you pay to get that like heebie-jeebie feeling i know i'm the'm the same way. I'm like, I never like scary things.

But it was interesting, too. And what brought up for me is that when soldiers come home who have seen duty, and especially for like a number of tours, that very often your brains habituate to extreme danger and extreme speed and extreme risk, literally rewire themselves. And all of the neurotransmitters, yeah, basically they're altered so that when you come home and then all that stimulation goes away, you get adapted to a very high level of dopamine

and very high level of just massive stimulant, like electrical and chemical stimulation, and then it goes away, and you fall into a profound depression. And so part of it, I think, is, you know, and that's an extreme example. But sadly, these days, it's actually, you don't even need to go to war to experience that, like many people are experiencing that in their daily lives. And I almost wonder if what's going on with like politics right now, and especially during an election year in the United States, I know we have a very international listenership, but here it's like you have to run and hide and like, you know, put your fingers in your ears and sing la la la if you don't want to be barraged nonstop with rage. And I almost

wonder whether like this barrage of nonstop, just really heightened rage, like what's the long-term effect that'll have? And then when this all goes, like the day after the election, when it all goes like largely, I mean, there'll still be rage, but like the money won't be there for it to be transmitted on such a mass level.

Are you gonna see millions of people just kind of falling into a malaise because we've been reset for so long? Overlook for something else. I feel like people don't realize how much we need to, after those sort of experiences, heal and learn how to taste and feel and connect again. So you take the example of the person coming back from war,

that adrenaline rush that they're so used to, or even the dopamine, like the release that they're getting of what they should be motivated to do. Those neurons in their brain will atrophy from the huge, it's like someone doing hardcore drug that releases their body, flooding them with dopamine. If you keep doing that, the brain is going to have a harder time noticing the beauty of a rose or the scent of something and actually experiencing it and i see so often people will get detoxed of something or they'll they'll get some physical healing but yet nobody ever teaches them how to see or to taste and i feel like savoring is so overlooked so when you are in a culture where we're being bombarded

with stimulus so much it's like you have to cover your ears in order to get silence. And then when you actually are, then you expect people to listen to one another where I've had to, I've had to quiet and like block so much information out. I have to be retaught how to listen to someone and how to taste again and how to smell again and how to see again, as opposed to what happens when we just, we have to desensitize

and just become numb like i think people are going to have to numb themselves so i think the answer to this is basically we're all moving to the forest i'm really glad you brought up savoring and because i was thinking we haven't mentioned we've mentioned the concept but not the words but hedonic adaption right that we adapt to a certain level of stimulus and we tend to find that level of stimulus in the new environment and And I know for myself, having been in, you know, a few bad relationships or very intense relationships and then in a cult, which was, I think kind of the ultimate, let's call that the ultimate bad relationship in some ways, which was highly stimulating. And I thought of it as passionate. I thought of it as exciting.

And maybe like a, somewhat like a combat veteran, a combat veteran, I was adapted to that level of stress. When I developed the relationship that I have now, which is a much more caring, loving, quiet, peaceful, happy, really great relationship, I kept having to bump up against this thing. It was like, oh, this doesn't feel like a relationship to me. This doesn't feel like love to me because it's not drama filled. It's not exciting. It's not like, you know, make up and break up and, you know, all of that. And so I actually had to, I feel like, and it was savoring that allowed me to kind of rewire my brain in order to interpret the thing that I have, which was the thing that was really serving me as the thing that I wanted.

It's, it's,'s uh yeah thumbs up for savoring um so why don't we bring this full circle i'll throw out the last uh thing here and i guess it kind of like builds on the whole the politics that's been weaving in and out of this and i i like to not keep the show or have the show be political at all um so this won't be about parties or anything like that. But there's, there's an interesting phenomenon that happens with human animals. You know, we're so much closer to dogs than we like to think in terms of our just baseline reactions. And when I was back in the day where I was really studying language and influence to learn how to build companies and market and write copy, you know, the Bible for that

was a book called Influence. And it was written by Robert Cialdini. And he identified basically a series of six sort of fundamental influence triggers. And one of them was something he called the consistency principle, where the idea is that, to use as an example, if you went up to knock on a stranger's door and you're out there, you're campaigning for somebody, and you decide you're going to go and knock on somebody's door because you're just going down the block trying to get people to vote for somebody, and you knock on a stranger's door, hey, can we put a billboard in your front yard that says, I support X candidate and person?

No, no way. Okay, well, could we at least put this tiny little six-inch lawn sign on a little piece of wire just out in the front? and like, no, no way. Okay, well, could we at least put this tiny little, you know, like six inch long sign on my little piece of wire just out in the front? Okay, right? Now, if you go back to that person a week later and ask them if you could put something slightly larger, they'll say yes. And if you go back to them,

and so eventually you could work up to the billboard. And the idea is that once we put a stake in the ground, once we say or do something, and we make it public, and sometimes even if we don't make it public, but once we say or do something, we have this innate need to act and speak in a way that's consistent with whatever we've said, or however we've acted before that. And that leads to, especially in times of politics, but also just in everyday life, that leads us to dig our heels in. And it leads us to just say like, well, I said I supported this, or I said I'm in favor of this, or I said no to this before.

And even if you're kind of like, between the time that you said that, or you did that, you've seen a whole bunch of new information, which shows that you're clearly wrong. Like this was not the right thing to say or do, right? But you've gone public with your statement or your action, and then somebody comes back and asks you to take a slightly bigger action or say something that would continue to support what initial said

you're probably going to do that even though you know that it's really not legit and you get to a point and i see this happening and i think it happens a lot of us you know a lot of big decisions that we make in life and we're seeing it like in a massive way in politics is that we get to a point where we become staunch supporters for something, but there's a voice inside of us that knows, that just knows. But we have now publicly said 10 times at elevating levels that this is what I believe, and taken action to support it, that we can't back away anymore. And it's like, we're trapped.

But I think there's a voice deep down, you know, that says, we know this isn't it. We know this isn't right. But we're such creatures of our previous statements and patterns that we lose the capability to actually step away from what we know is no longer valid for us. And I see that being preyed upon more than ever these days. And in a way, you can leverage that phenomenon to create astonishing good in the world and in individual people's lives. But you can also use it to do the exact opposite. So that's what I've been thinking about heavy topic just a little tiny topic okay deconstruct yeah so i mean i look at this we i've talked about this a little bit in the in the

writing i've done about cults and cult psychology right that we we'd get people to double down on like we we first start you know it's like like we first start, you know, it's like first it's internal language. It's the old, the elevator experiment, you know, that one, like where someone would enter the elevator and the elevator would be filled with other people and the other people would turn towards the back of the elevator and the person would like look uncomfortable for a little while and then join in with the group. Like inevitably, like nine times out of 10, like overwhelmingly do something really stupid and ridiculous with the group. Like inevitably, like nine times out of 10, like overwhelmingly do something really stupid and ridiculous

because the group they were in would do that thing. And I think in many ways, like culture and cult is just sort of like the collection of those little things that we build up over time. And those things don't necessarily need to make any sense, right? In order to be self-reinforcing, that we tend to want to double down down and what's interesting about that to me is that the people that say they are the most oh that could never happen to me are actually the most likely for that to happen to

them they're the most easy to influence people who think they're you know like people who think they're going to catch the magician's trick who are sure that they can't be fooled are the ones who the magician fools every time right they're they're the easiest to be fooled and it's not about it's funny because i had this conversation i had a piece of it with um marie konnikova wrote this book um oh what was it called she was on the podcast recently about the long con about grifters yeah and like the big the big awakening is it has nothing to do with whether you're smart or not. The smartest people in the world are still going to fall, quote, prey to this, to a set of fundamental human biases. You know, it has nothing to do with how intelligent, like there's no protect, there's no thinking your way at it. There's no beings like so smart that this can't affect me. The model that I teach in positive psychology is that self-awareness enables

self-compassion, enables self-care. The more aware you can be of human biases, the more likely you might be to catch them, or the more aware of yourself, the better able you are to catch them. So that feeling that you're saying when someone has that little teeny tiny voice inside of them that says maybe this isn't it or hey this doesn't feel right to me we can strength i believe we can strengthen that voice i know i've strengthened it within myself that it's not a whisper it's usually pretty loud these days and i've learned the painfully hard way to not ignore that um as and and so i think it takes a lot of cultivating self-awareness, which is not just understanding yourself. It's understanding how you think. It's understanding what pushes your buttons, what motivates you, what manipulates you, what is your carrot and your stick, and also knowing what human beings are wired for.

And I'd be curious of those people that you see easily manipulated, have they read Influence? Are they aware of the strategies? Well, it was interesting because when the book's like 30 to 35 years old now, I can't remember when it first came out. And it's as relevant as it ever was because human nature is human nature. Our biases are what they are. And when it came out and a number of books, many books have come out that are derivative of that since then. And these are from academicians. These are from people who are doing research. On the one hand, people are like, this is fascinating.

Marketers are like really interesting tools. And then activists and social psychologists and other people are like, this is horrible for society. You're arming people. Like you're teaching people how to manipulate and influence people. And then the response has always been, this is what's happening every day, all day, all the time. Hopefully, what we're actually teaching is for people to actually be able to now understand these things that are actually sort of being imposed or leveraged to try and move them to do things that might not be in their best interest so they can actually spot them more easily. And at the same time, like you were saying, maybe just pause long enough to say,

huh, am I being led by some sort of internal and irrational bias or is this actually the thing that's meaningful for me to do? It's the defense against the dark arts class. Yeah, exactly. And I guess there's maybe one layer deeper. I don't know if I can express this. This thought is not fully formed, so I apologize. But there's something around, like, what does it really impact and does it really matter? story of the planet is this sort of like in many ways nonsensical complex contradictory

process full of weird dead ends and full of a lot of strangeness and if this and i firmly believe that our ability we talked about this earlier our ability to gather together in groups is one of our evolutionary advantages if the reason that we're gathering together in that group is not and and working together and collaborating and working and and cooperating if the foundation of that doesn't make any sense if it's not you know you know like we believe in in the person in the sky you know if it's religion or whatever it may be if it doesn't make like really like specific logical sense there may or may not be like what did like like like there's different ways to measure that right like what does it matter does it does it really if it's producing if i'm happy in the group if i'm enjoying being a part of this particular group and this particular group isn't hurting

other people and it's not contributing to global warming which is highly unlikely you know does it matter all that much do we have to be logical i think expecting humans to be logical is the ultimate irrationality i think people have different agendas like some people they're they want mastery of their lives and they they want to thrive and they want to flourish and other people say um i just want to make a lot of money and you know like what do we want and what's important to us and how is that different i could be biased in that i think that there's an element of personal self-awareness, self-compassion, and self-care that goes into mastery. Like I remember someone tried to use the game, like that pickup artistry book to pick me up once.

And I was like, oh, so you read that black book, eh? Because he like, I think he- He was negging you? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think he made fun of something I was wearing or something like that. It's like, oh, I've read that black book, A, because he like, I think he- He was negging you? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think he made fun of something I was wearing or something like that. It's like, oh, I've read that book too, you know, and- Busted. Busted.

And I enjoyed reading it. Kind of, there's like a self-empowerment that can come from it. And I think that otherwise, to your point about, you know, it doesn't matter. I think we're living a pretty reactive life. And obviously, we always are reacting to things that come our way. But if we can have the ability to choose, I think it's powerful. And I think it makes us happier in the long run. Yeah.

So in the name of maybe hopefully arming us a little bit, you know, kind of coming full circle to the consistency principle is that, you know, kind of come in full circle to the consistency principle is that, you know, maybe the message, maybe the thing I'm really, that I really want to get out is just understand yourself a little bit more, you know, understand your biases, understand how like there's a set of inner workings that influence your decisions and your actions that you have no idea are running the system or running the board for you. So do a little bit. I mean, I think everybody should reach out in his book, not because you want to necessarily leverage it, but so you can actually understand all these forces that are coming at you

that play a substantial role in your decision making. And especially in this time where there are a lot of big decisions that need to be made by a lot of people. Really go a little bit deeper and understand what's guiding you to say and do what you may be saying and doing. And is it a true reflection of what you know deep down intuitively to be right for you? I think that the self-awareness, self-compassion, self-care model is really powerful even here around what to do when you do realize you're being a hypocrite and you recognize your own hypocrisy. So if I realize I've got billboards and posters all over my lawn of something I don't subscribe to and I just feel shame and I can't go out and go against my word or any of these other things. Well, yeah, you can. shame and you know i can't go out and go against my word or any of these other things well yeah you can you can say i realize i made a mistake or and that that self-awareness of understanding hey this is i i did this thing and it was a mistake or it was an error or this really is an alignment

with myself i think people can be more authentic once they understand that like you first soften into the self-compassion for yourself sort of saying it's a brain bias or I'm being a hypocrite or, you know, this was true for me then. It's not true for me now. And things change. And then you can do something about it. And then you can communicate or you can apologize. Or it's like I think we live in a world where it should be okay to change your mind. Yeah.

I mean, going back to the political context, I think people give politicians a really hard time for flip-flopping. Right. And I don't necessarily always see it that way. I see it as they've allowed themselves to evolve or the culture has evolved to the point where they can publicly now publicly hold a position that they held privately, or it's simply expedient, you know, politically expedient for them to hold a position that I happen to agree with. And I think all of those things are kind of fine with me if they show a willingness to evolve. It's the ones that get, that are very rigid, that don't hold a position. And I will say that I don't believe, you know, when I say that, you know, what does it matter? Like, I don't necessarily require us to be

logical at all times. But at the same time, I think, you know, what makes a cult a cult to me is not necessarily the social control that's used. Because I think social control is functioning in every corporation in the world. It's functioning in every culture in the world. We all want to be a part of the people that are around us. We all want to kind of participate. But it's when that social control begins to have us generate a reality or a life for ourselves that is somehow not the thing that we wanted for ourselves or it's somehow inconsistent with our own happiness or our own thriving. And I think that's when I look back on my experience in the call, that's ultimately what I saw. I generated was over and over and over again.

I kept on, kept making choices that really didn't work out very well for me. And yet I was somehow sure that we were changing the world and making the world a better place. And so I was going to sacrifice and double down. And, you know, the organization of of course, thrives because people keep doubling down on it while the individuals within that organization kind of wither in some ways. When you look back on the experience now, did you have that little voice that was telling you? Every day, I think. I think every day I woke up and I was like, is this? Yes, it is. You know, like you, you know, and also they design, the world's designed to, you know like you you you know and and also they design the world's designed to

you know you're sleep deprived generally speaking and you're surrounded and you're not alone very often and you're sort of surrounded by people who are reinforcing the behaviors and so i mean they're really designed to kind of keep that voice at bay or to keep you sort of unwilling you know i mean many people who have left cults will describe how lucky they were to get in the car accident that landed them in the hospital for a week because all it took was a week away from the group. And then all of a sudden, you know, and that was very much my experience as well. I had a kind of happy accident, led me away for a little while. And I was like, really within a couple of weeks, I was like, wait, what the hell was that?

Why did that happen? And it took years to kind of recover from it in many ways. But it didn't take long to get away from the attachment to it. Hard to read the label when you're stuck inside the jar, says Charlie Gilkey. Yeah. Yeah. Well, we could all geek out on this, I think, for a long time. But in the name of letting everyone get back to their days, love jamming with you guys.

Thank you so much for being my guests in residence for these three weeks. It's been awesome hanging out for you listening. If you have not listened to the last two weeks of round tables with Amelia and Bob, be sure to go back really just brilliant, kind, generous human beings and fascinating conversations. Amelia,

where can people find you? They can find me at Amelia.com. E M I-I-L-I-Y-A.com. And Bob? At BobGower.com, B-O-B-G-O-W-E-R. Awesome. Thanks, everybody. Thank you. Thanks, Jonathan. Hey, thanks so much for listening to today's episode. If you found something valuable,

entertaining, engaging, or just plain fun, I'd be so appreciative if you take a couple extra seconds and share it. Maybe you want to email it to a friend. Maybe you want to share it around social media. Or even be awesome if you'd head over to iTunes and just give us a rating. Every little bit helps get the word out, and it helps more people get in touch with the message. I'm Jonathan Fields, signing off for Good Life Project.

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