Modern Wisdom - #156 - Scott Barry Kaufman - The New Science Of Self Actualisation

Episode Date: April 2, 2020

Scott Barry Kaufman is a Psychologist at the Columbia University, a writer and podcaster. The world has quantifiable metrics of success, our objective measures of wealth or status and even happiness. So why are so many people feeling disconnected and unfulfilled? Scott takes us through a new way to look at transcending our nature and going beyond our potential to fully actualise our life. Get Surfshark VPN - https://surfshark.deals/MODERNWISDOM (Enter Promo Code MODERNWISDOM for 83% off & One Extra Month Free) Extra Stuff: Buy Scott's book Transcend - https://amzn.to/2UxEx58 Check out Scott's Podcast - https://scottbarrykaufman.com/podcast/ Follow Scott on Twitter - https://twitter.com/sbkaufman Take a break from alcohol and upgrade your life - https://6monthssober.com/podcast Check out everything I recommend from books to products - https://www.amazon.co.uk/shop/modernwisdom - Get in touch. Join the discussion with me and other like minded listeners in the episode comments on the MW YouTube Channel or message me... Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chriswillx Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/chriswillx YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/ModernWisdomPodcast Email: https://www.chriswillx.com/contact Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Oh yes, hello friends, welcome back. My guest today is Scott Barry Kaufman, host of the Psychology podcast, psychologist at Columbia University, and writer. Today we are talking about his new book, Transcend, the new science of self-actualization. We all live in a world where there are quantifiable metrics of success, these objective measures of happiness or wealth or power or whatever it might be, and some of us spend a lot of time chasing after them, and yet so many people feel unsatisfied and deeply unconnected to the world and those around them.

So why is that the case? How can we transcend our nature, become more than we are, and maybe more than we could ever hope to be as well? And today we get to go through some amazing exercises from Scott. He has a beautifully calming voice, so if you're feeling a little bit anxious at the moment with the state of the chaos that's going on outside, I'm confident that Scott's calming dulcet tones are going to help you wind down. But for now, please to the show. Thanks Chris, a great chat with you today.

Really excited to speak to you today. So we're talking about Transcend. We're going to be speaking about self-actualization. Kind of at the moment I suppose the way that people view their own lives and what they can do with them is probably a pretty timely topic at the moment, right? I would say so. I think people are struggling in a lot of ways that they are perhaps losing sight of the self-actualization that's possible within them. It can be very easy

to lose sight of the greater possibilities for yourself and for your fellow humans when you're pitched in a state of insecurity. Hmm. So I know that you're a big fan of Maslow and you base a lot of what you do on top of some of his work, I guess he's okay. He's all right. He's pretty cool. I'm gonna guess at a time like this where people are very concerned about some real basics,

the bottom of the pyramid, who worried about the health, the family's health, there's food and water shortages. You see these images of Costco and everyone's ripping shit off the shelves and stuff like that. Like, does that, I know, and toilet paper, the rip of the toilet paper, you know, or the toilet paper is the maddest thing because it doesn't affect your digestion, but that we could go on forever about that.

How does that relate do you think to the way that people are seeing their lives at the moment, the fact that they're more immediate primal needs are kind of brought to the forefront? more immediate primal needs are kind of brought to the forefront. So what is the question exactly how do I what like how do I perceive the situation? So at the moment, we're going to be talking about self-actualization and transcendent. Is there an upper bound that's being placed on that by the immediacy of people's songs at the moment? I see what you're saying. Well, there certainly is. And that's the great tragedy of of a falling prey to insecurity and uncertainty. When I mean by falling prey is there, there's always going to be uncertainty in our lives. We're in this, it's funny. People are just are acting as though this situation is like the first time in their life that

There's great uncertainty. I mean there's there's there's equally probabilities Actually greater probabilities of things when you cross the street every day and you're like you know You don't think about all these things, you know, but here there's a there's a thing we can see on the media There's a thing we can see on TV where you know people are talking about it every day is this is nothing but it turns out and I hate to break it break the news you hear breaking news Scott Bear Kaufman breaking news you know CNN's like breaking news yeah breaking news you have lots and lots of things shit they can go wrong. In your, your, your day. Tell them I can use the weight.

You have my terms of my priorities of things that can go wrong. The COVID-19 is prevalent, but I, I would say that's my number one thing I'm concerned about in my day. I'm just trying to be mentally good through the day. So look, there are lots of things. And I think the managing uncertainty is a lifelong skill. And if there's any silver lining to the moment we're in right now is that maybe we can maybe now is now the time to practice, you know, hopefully all the listeners and people around the world will make it through this healthy and safe. I certainly have that wish for everyone.

But if there's any silver lining once we get through to the other side, it's that maybe this is a great opportunity to learn some of those important uncertainty management skills that we probably should have been learning throughout the rest of our lives, not just in this moment. I couldn't agree more. There's this great example about uncertainty that Rory Sutherland, my friend from Ogilvy advertising, told me. He was talking about London Heathrow, and he was saying that the wait times at London Heathrow to get through the security scan section were just causing abhorrent amounts of complaints. It was taking too long. People were getting isolated.

So originally they went to London, he throw, and they said, what have you tried? What have you been looking at doing? And because of the sort of people that run an airport, logistics, operations, optimization stuff. So they'd looked at, can we rotate the staff in a different way to make sure that they can move quicker? Where can we condense the lanes down so we can fit more lanes of people in?

Can we do? They looked at it as a logistical optimization problem. And they brought, I can't remember if it was Rory or one of his friends in. And they said, right, before you do that, before you spend several million pounds on new staff and new equipment, let's just try one thing. And along the queue where you waited to get into the security scanning area, they just placed little posters that said 45 minute wait from here, 30 minute wait from here, 15 minute wait from here, all the way around.

Yeah. And the number of complaints dropped by like a factor of 10. They're just completely annihilated because people don't mind waiting. They don't mind being in discomfort. They just want to know when it's going to end. And that is that's the uncertainty, right? We don't know when this is going to end. That's exactly that's exactly and it's particularly stressful for those who score high on a personality trait called neuroticism. Particularly stressful for those who score high on a personality trait called neuroticism So people who score high neuroticism would prefer the devil they know to the devil they don't know So I imagine there are some that maybe they wouldn't admit it in play company But they're almost like give me the fucking virus already, you know Like let me get over with it over with it because it's actually more painful to my mental health

to not know when it's coming because they say it's coming. They say there's an 80% chance that you're going to get it probably, you know, not that you're going to die from it may be clear, but that you'll even, you know, you might even be symptomatic, but you'll get it. That some people are probably like secretly being like just given to me. But wait, am I allowed to curse on your podcast? You know, I just curse away all you want, Scott. Thank you. Thank you. So let's let's get into it. What is how do you define self-actualization? What is it? I've heard people speaking about it, but I don't know what it is.

So say a one more time. What is self-actualization? How do you do that? I'll go with the question. That's the question. Well, people have to misrepresented Maslow's ideas of self-actualization. And for instance, David Brooks, who's a New York Times columnist, really was hating on Maslow a couple of years ago and wrote something about how Maslow's ideas of self-actualization or the cause of the self-esteem movement we had in America where people could be like, oh, I can be anything I want because, you know, I'm good enough and not gone at people like me, you know, that's the skit from Siren-Out Live. I don't know if you're familiar with that skit. But it turns out it's not true. I mean, that's not fair.

And when I read that, I was like, oh, hell no. You know, like, and I actually got broke some of my podcasts and I said, oh, hell no to him. You know, anyway, it was a little awkward, but whatever. I still have great respect for him, but I was just being S.B.K. being S.B.K. But you know, this is the thing is like he, that Maslow really made it clear that to fully self-actualize, we have to eventually transcend ourselves. That self-actualization is really only a bridge to transcendence.

You can't reach your full potential if you're not helping to reach the full potential of others. Like, you're not reaching your full potential. You know, people talk about reaching their full potential as though they develop, that it stops when you develop your talents to its full capacity. And there's a lot of people in the self-help space. People, you're probably very familiar with this, that have that conceptualization.

Their highest level goal is greatness. That's it, and then you're done. As though greatness defined by them might only mean outachieving everyone. But that's not full greatness. You know, that's not the fullest potential. Maslow really tried to show people a vision of what humans really could be. What are what are highest ceilings of human nature really could be. What are what are highest ceilings of human nature really could be kind of pulling the way forward for that. And that's what I tried to do in this book as well. And that same spirit and show that full self-actualization is not just an individualistic pursuit. It's becoming all you're capable of becoming.

That is true. We can define self-actualization as quite simply as becoming all that you're capable of becoming, but that all you're capable of becoming part actually requires uplifting other people. That makes sense. So that's what's greater than greatness. Greater than greatness is you making other people great as well. Transcendence. Greater than greatness is transcendence. Yeah. I like it. Yeah. There's a past modern wisdom guest, Aubrey Marcus has this really beautiful quote where he talks about how in order to serve, you have to be fit for service. He says, you don't serve other people from your cup. You serve them from the saucer that overflows around your cup.

What I'm wondering here is, we've talked about the peak of greatness, the transcendence above self-actualization, being raising others up as well. Can you raise others before you've raised yourself, or do you have to conquer your own mountain before you move on to them? Great question. I think that you do have to conquer your own mountain. You really have to do a lot of the inner work first. What I try to do in this book is show that in order to transcend yourself, you need a self that's transcended. You don't need to sacrifice

yourself. There are some people who are trying to transcend and have a sense of self-sacrifice where they almost feel guilty to first be great. You know? And I don't think that's the best way to help the world is to squander your own talents in any way. I don't see these things as mutually exclusive. I think the best thing is for a transcendence, the best thing for a transcendence to be most effective

is when there's a seamlessness between yourself and the world because yourself that you've developed or your talents and capacities and strengths have been developed to such a degree that you're being, just by being in the world, helps uplift others. So there's a seamlessness between self and world. That's the greatest thing is when there's a harmonious integration between self and world,

not when you've made a self-sacrifice to such a degree where you feel as though you don't matter and the only thing that matters is other people. I wouldn't say that's the healthiest thing. I think some people as well, they fall prey to being, they sacrifice their own progress or they perhaps recount trying to have objective measures of success.

And they do that in order to avoid having to play the game of success and prove themselves. I was wondering, I asked Orbra this same question of how many people that follow an ascetic tradition now, you know, modern day, I'm not bothered about money, man, I'm not bothered about possessions, man, do it simply because they don't want to have to get down to brass tax of doing some hard work. And it's very easy to signal that you're being very charitable and altruistic and helping other people, but all the while, having never conquered your own mountain, you know? Yeah, it's true. I phrase it as pseudo transcendence or pseudo growth.

There are a lot of people that are trying to, you know, do you like that? There are a lot of people that are trying to grow on a faulty foundation. And we all know what happens when you try to build anything on a faulty foundation. You get the Trump tower. No, I'm joking. I'm joking. I'm joking. Don't, don't, don't put no one cares, no one cares over here. I mean 50% of the audience isn't America, but no one cares over here. You got no enemies in the UK. Okay. I'll go say edit that out. Yeah. No, but, but, um, you know, when you, when you build anything on a faulty foundation, where there's where it's being, and what I mean by that is that the higher levels are being fueled by deficiencies that haven't been taken care of.

Maybe it's a incessant quest for glory or an assessed in quest for to be liked or for connection or safety. When transcendence is being fueled by those deficiencies. It's not a well-integrated unit. You know what I'm saying? Really the most effective forms of growth and transcendence, we call real growth, is one that is not motivated any more by the deficiencies of our basic needs, but is motivated by exploration and love for the love in the sense of humanitarian love for

all humankind to help uplift the species, not just yourself. And they have very different flavors to them. These two forms of growth. So how do we get started? I think, right, Scott, this sounds great. I'm going to get me some of that self-actualization. I'm going to help raise everybody up. Where do I start?

It's interesting. I think that you need to do a real honest assessment of where you're at. Because you're asking me Because you know you're asking me where do you start but there's such individual differences in where people are starting at. You know who are listening to this podcast, you could have some people starting at the point where there's basic safety needs are the most pressing at the moment. And that's very fair considering the state of the world right now, this you know what did I'm looking at my calendar? March 18th, 2020. I couldn't even remember the year. I've been a whole, I've been hold up in this,

in this place for so long, you know, with, you know, scared, you know, to leave that I don't even know what the day is or year, but... Time will. Yeah, yeah. But people start, you have to really have an honest, real honest assessment of where you are. And I do, my website, I try to have free personality, self-actualization personality test to help you kind of assess what I have a self-actualization test of 10 different dimensions. You can see which of the dimensions are you most efficient in at the moment

and what you want to work on. Because this path of self-actualization is so unique to each individual. So I stay away from advice of like you need to start here because I want to know where really do you need to start from. So that would have said, which of your needs is it the safety one? Is it your connection that's holding you back from self-actualizing it?

Maybe you feeling lonely these days. You should listen to that. You know, I think a lot of people pseudo grow or become pseudo great. Sudo great sounds even funnier doesn't it? Like you. Yeah, pseudo everything. I want some pseudo cake. Sudo toothpaste. It sounds funny actually pseudo to be you're only pseudo great Yeah, yeah, it's like it's like a put down yeah like a wrap battle put down. It's like a wrap out. Yeah, exactly But the first time I've ever used that phrase, but I'm saying like

You may think you've achieved greatness and people might tell you you're great, but maybe you're suffering with profound loneliness and that's important. That's an important signal. I would say you need to start there. Don't start with how great you think you are. Start with the loneliness part. Maybe you actually struggle with the steam issues, self-esteem issues, and maybe that's where you need to start. Maybe you're getting your validation from others too much and you feel like who am I anymore, apart from my likes on Twitter. Maybe know, maybe that's confusing you. And so you should start there.

So I think that there are lots of places, a lot of entry ways, that's what I'm saying. Depending on where you're at right now. I wonder how many people that are listening, feeling a little bit of a pang there as we go through some of the common issues that you've got, the safety, perhaps talking about financial worries, you know, money worries, future worries, basic stuff, or connection, did an episode with Lydia Denworth who's just written a book called Friendship, talking about this loneliness epidemic, which is apparently sweeping America, you know, this lack of connection that we've got and how online friendships don't supplement for real world ones or then on top of that later on, on again, about this potential lack of self-esteem. We're using likes and

likability online as a proxy for the way that we feel, you know, for our actual self-esteem. So yeah, I think there's probably a few people now that are feeling that pang inside. So I want to, um, a lot of people, more than a few. Yeah, for sure. I want to talk about peak experiences. Can you tell us about what you looked at to do with that in the book? That's a phrase Maslow used to talk about what are the most wondrous moments of our lives that make life worth living.

No big deal. NBD. Sounds like I want more of them. Yeah, yeah, and he really said, I set out to discover what are all the different ways people can satisfy that can have peak experiences and they could take a lot of different forms satisfy that I can have peak experiences and they could take a lot of different forms And interestingly enough he found a lot of women reported childbirth as being their greatest peak experience and

How do you have one eyebrow go up and the other one stay put that was from when I was in school And I really really wanted to be Dwayne the rock Johnson and Practice and practice and practice but I can only do it on one side. It's amazing. Now, does testosterone predict whether you can do that? Because I can't do that. I don't think it's got nothing to do with testosterone. I think it's got everything to do with me being a closet WWE nerd throughout most of my secondary school.

And that being like the one didn't do the DDT or the German suplex, but I could raise, I could do the people's eyebrow. And now it just comes out when I'm slightly intrigued. I'm like, oh, yeah, interesting. So I'm intrigued, so go on. That was impressive. Well, do you remember what I actually said

that caused that eyebrow to go up? No. We lost it, lost the thread. We've lost the thread. In my defense, I'm dealing with coronavirus. Yeah, no, I know. So we were talking about, like, I'm not going to work because that might not be true, right? It might just be a call some virus at the moment. Yeah, I mean, if I've got a virus and I'm self-isolating and it's not COVID-19, I'm going to be so pissed off Because I'm just at home for I know During this time and also it's the trendy virus that everyone wants at the moment, right?

You know, I don't want I don't want last year's virus. I want this year's virus Do you watch do you watch Kirby or enthusiasm? Yes bits and bats. I've not seen all of it Yeah, that this is something why David would do is to just as using an excuse whenever people like hey Why are you being such a man? I got I got the corona It's an effort in a fever who to thought of that yeah, like you know like being really awkward on a first date You know and like and they're like and the lady girls like why, the way he's like, why are you speaking so awkward? Like, I got Corona. Like, oh, thank you.

Yeah, it's a gal of jail free card. Uh, peak experiences childbirth. That was it. Oh, he experienced a childbirth. Wow, what a tangent that was. And the guy, the guy with coronavirus brings it home. Let's get it. Yeah, what a tangent that was.

Well, I've been known, this is what I've known for, my legacy is tangents. Yeah, so there are lots of different things from childbirth to watching a sunset, to overcoming a great challenge, to coming up with having an insight and idea. I'm sure Albert Einstein had moments of peak experiences on his desk, you know, not on his desk, you know. So, you know, these sorts of very, very varied things can be triggers of peak experiences. And yet, Mazzo realized the last year, last year and a half of his life that maybe peak experiences weren't

the most profound moments of transcendence we could have as a species. He started to discover what he called plateau experiences, which a lot of people don't know about in his writing. And plateau experiences he described it as like lounging in heaven, not getting so excited about it. It's basically being able to cultivate a mild form of peak experiences throughout your whole day, where you have, you cultivate more sustainably a sense of wonder and a sense of gratitude and and all for things in your moment-to-moment experience,

not these one-off, profound peak experiences. And he only discovered that when he confronted his mortality, when he confronted his potential for a heart attack that he could have at any time, because he had one and survived it. And he said that living this post-mortem life, as what he called it, turned out to be the biggest trigger of transcendence, and I ever realized in all my theories. So I think that peak experiences are very important and can really help open us up to greater possibilities for ourselves and others. But I think ultimately

the wisdom there that Mazel was talking about and which a lot of Buddhist practitioners talk about. He drew a lot on the Buddhist and Indian traditions as well. His colleague, UA Ansari, actually is the one who really brought to prominence the idea of the plateau experience. He just co-opted the term from his East Indian colleague. But these are things that we can cultivate in our moment to moment experience, because this is all we got. This is the moment. It's it. Shy of childbirth. Shy of me having to get myself pregnant, which there's a number of hurdles for me to overcome there.

Your voice is way too deep. Well, that's another one I hadn't even thought of that. How can I have more? You're saying to be, yeah, I understand. How can I have more transcendent experiences in my day-to-day life? I don't want to have to jump off a skyscraper. I don't want to have to give birth every day. Well, some of the most... What are some of the triggers that you can think of that you've noticed in your past have been a trigger for peak experience. What are some of the themes? So visual beauty, certainly I like to travel. I like to go places.

Recently went to Bali in Indonesia and there's a tiny little island called Gilly T, which has just the most phenomenal sunset you've ever seen out in the middle of the ocean. That was just outrageous. Certainly some of the conversations that I have, you know, when I get to podcaster, and I'm in full flow, when I don't look at the clock, when I don't think about anything else, you know, I'm just fully engrossed

in what I'm talking about. There's flow between me and the guest. During a work. It's a big one for me. Yeah, I really do a pity people who don't have that outlet in their life, you know, that don't have the outlet for a genuine, deep, rigorous conversation, because there's so it's the freest thing you're ever going to get. You just need you and a buddy. And yeah, it really can be unbelievably unbelievably. Workouts, a hard workout in a buddy and yeah really can be unbelievably unbelievably

fun. Workouts, a hard workout in a class with my friends again as well maybe or you know doing a wad somewhere. Reading sometimes as well like reading a book at the moment the moral animal by Robert Wright I just can't put the thing down. I talked to him yesterday. No way. Yeah, yeah. He's a G. I've got told to read it for ages. Reading, reading a book. Oh my God, that's so cool.

Oh my God, that's so, and you just keep on going, keep on going, chewing it up, chewing it up. Seven eaves by Neil Stevenson as well. That was a sci-fi book that I read. And that just, I was staying up until two in the morning to read a book. That haven't done that since I was, well, I don't know if I've ever done that before.

You know, like stuff like that. So there's some of mine. Beautiful. So trying to, I'm trying to think of the common theme among all those, all those things that you just mentioned. So the first one that comes to mind for me is presence. Before for sure, for sure. Yeah, that's, that's undeniable aspect,

and that's a common characteristic of anyone in the throws of the peak experience, so to speak. I mean, there's a modern day term that is used a lot, which is flow, that Mihai Chik-Sem-Ihi has talked about. But the flow concept has been tied so much to performance. And that wasn't really the spirit of Maslow's notion of peak experiences. If anything, the peak experiences when you're not trying to perform at all, right? You're a really being. He called it, he called it moments of pure being is what he referred to. That sounds a little woo-woo. But what

does that mean? It can be unpack the notion of pure being. And you're kind of bringing your whole self to the table and all of your powers to the table and you're not being self-critical of it. You have as many degrees of freedom as possible in the moment, because you're not being inhibited by your fears and by your anxieties and my grandma would say, oh, you're me shiguna. You just totally unencumbered, right? And I get it as well. The flow dynamic that always did sit a slightly askew for me. I'm not trying to do something which is both challenging and worthwhile at the limits of my performance

when I watch a sunset. I'm not trying to watch the sunset. I said that before. Yeah. I said there's exact words before. Scott, we are, we are brothers in mind, my friend. Yeah, I'm not, I'm not trying to watch the sunset better than last time. Watch the sunset better than the person next to me. Um, you could definitely use it as a meditative experience to be like, right? Okay, well, I want to be as present as I can be.

I don't think that that's, that's trying to push it too far. But yeah, there's, there's no, there's no top leaderboard of who watched the sunset the best. That's exactly right. And it also doesn't explain why people report their greatest peak experiences when they're in tune with another human being. And you mentioned that as one of your triggers. It's a great trigger for me too

when there's a great synchronicity between you and another person. And it usually happens when you're not trying to change the person at all. I mean, Carl Rogers does have a beautiful quote about that. Carl Rogers is a humanistic psychotherapist. And he's like, when you're looking at sunset,

you're not like, oh, I wish I could just change that corner a little bit, move it up a little. You just admire for what it is. And treating humans like that as well is going to make it increase the likelihood that you'll have a peak experience with that person. There's no challenge there. Like the concept of flow doesn't seem to apply in so many experiences that we could call peak experiences. apply in so many experiences that we could call peak experiences. I think you're right. So how do we move from the peak experiences to the peak plateau?

How do I make the sunset last all day? I don't know if the goal is to make the sunset last all day, but I think the goal is more how can we make the moment last while the sunset is still there? That might be subtle, subtle difference. Because part of this highest state of consciousness that Mazel was talking about in the Pato experience is your ability to simultaneously be present in the moment but also be aware of the impermanence of the moment. It's actually this juxtaposition that allows us to have that sense of transcendence. have that sense of transcendence, he would have exercises where he would say, you know,

talk to someone and imagine why you're talking to them that this is the last time that you'll ever talk to that person forever or how does that change your presence with this person, you know? And I think that he actually, he came, came with the whole list of these activities of pure being, which I have in the book Hit us hit us with some I want to know some of them Scott Yeah, this is how living in the realm of pure being Perceived the eternal intrinsic laws of the cosmos no big deal easy one easy one. I do sometimes I do that before breakfast of the cosmos, no big deal. Easy one. Easy one. Sometimes I do that before breakfast. Yeah, me too. To accept or even love these laws is Taoistic in the essence of a good citizen of the universe. Embrace your past. Embrace

your guilt rather than running from it. Be compassionate with yourself. Be understanding accepting, forgiving, perhaps even loving about your, I don't know if I pronounced the word Fowl-Blaw's, Fowl-Blaw's, F-O-I-B-L-E-S, as expressions of human age, foibles, foibles, there we go, foibles, as expressions of human nature, enjoy and smile at yourself. Ask yourself, how would this situation look to a child, to the innocent, to a very old person who is beyond personal ambition and competition, try to recover the sense of the miraculous about life. For example, a baby is a miracle. Think for that baby now, anything could happen, and the sky is the limit. Cultivate the sense of infinite possibility, the sense of admiration,

all respect, and wonder. May I'll just give you one more, one of my favorites. I really like this one. If you find yourself, and I actually practice this one, I try. If you find yourself becoming egoistic, arrogant, conceited, or puffed up, think of mortality, or think of other arrogant and conceited people and see how they look. Do you want to look like that? Do you want to take yourself that seriously to be that unhumorous? I really like that. That third party perspective is it's so powerful.

I'm sorry, go on. Just the ability to look at yourself as if you were a friend, you know, as if you were a friend looking at you, watching your actions, because you just strip away all the biases, all of the attachments and you go, yeah, if I saw my friend do that, that would be, that would be kind of weird. Absolutely, and I think that I often know who I wanna be by seeing great examples of people I don't want to be.

Do you ever, you know, do you ever just like see someone and you're like, that's not, that's not my, that wouldn't be my best self. Man, I learn from other people's failures more than other people's successes, I think. Boom. Well, drop the mic on that one. I love it. I love a mic drop, man. That's what I'm here for. But yeah, I honestly, I think. Boom. Well, drop the mic on that one. I love a mic drop, man. That's what I'm here for. But yeah, honestly, I do. What's that quote?

I can't remember the guy. It might be Peter Teal. Does he say any idiot can learn from their own experience I prefer to learn from the experiences of others? Yeah, yeah. I mean, there's so much. That's why gray literature stands the test of time. Some of the greatest literature are great stories that transcend the ages of people failing in all sorts of ways.

And yeah, there's not a lot of examples of great literature there about. Do to do a story of a person who had it all great, lived their life great. And it was fine. Yeah, it was all good. You know, we passed down from generations to generations, archetypes of failures

that we can all resonate with and learn from. I wanna talk about familiarization and fresh experiences and how this relates to transcendence. Can you talk to us about that? Yes. So I can talk about different levels of nerdy-ness, pick a level from one to five. I want five being super nerdy. I want five, please. Thank you. Oh, you are. Okay. All right. Well, you chose it. Throw us a deep end. Come on, Scott. Well, you chose it throws it at the defense come on Scott psychologist have studied a

Concept called lead in inhibition which is a biological geating mechanism that we share with other animals That automatically tags our experience as relevant or irrelevant To a goal that we have in our mind Our brain does it at a very subconscious and automatic level. It turns out that people who are very creative tend to have a very low lead into inhibition. They're very unlikely to tag any experience automatically as irrelevant and inhibit the experience or idea or things coming into their visual field as irrelevant and market away and take it away from the experience. So people who are creative in the other way of saying that is that they treat experiences

that they may have experienced before is irrelevant, they experience it as fresh every time that they see it. This lead inhibition mechanism that we evolved from other animals is important so that we don't, as the existential philosopher, Soren Kurgegard said, we don't as the existential philosopher so are in kirkegard said we don't drown in possibility you know it's important to have some sort of gating mechanism. But it's also important not to have too much you know it's important yes it's true to learn from the past what is relevant what's relevant and and to tag things as a relevant if we experience them again in a particular context. relevant if we experience them again in a particular context. But for creative people, often what seemed irrelevant becomes a great insight eventually, becomes relevant someday. You have to be open to the fact that what was once irrelevant may become relevant.

I had an example that on Twitter just yesterday where an idea I was obsessed about during my dissertation for five years. I wrote the published the paper and no one cared about the paper. A whole decade later, you know, feel like, you know, a failure for my dissertation. I saw it's relevance of the study to the world we live in today and I tweeted it out. I think when viral, it went viral amongst nerdy scientists, but that's still, that's something. That's still something. And I is suddenly relevant. So you have to constantly have that faith as a creative human being that things that

you believe in or things are meaningful to you that they'll matter. But also it's important to have a newness of appreciation of things constantly. It's great to have gratitude for new things in your life that are good, but it's even better to have gratitude for the things that have become stale to others. That makes sense. Absolutely. Yeah, there's a million, a million doorways that I've got open at the moment. So I'm going to guess this relates to the learners brain or the learners mind in a way where the beginner's mind.

Yeah, the beginner's mindset where the first time you see something, you kind of take more of it in. I had Laura Van De Kam, who wrote off the clock on last year, and she was talking about how one of the best examples of a beginner's learner's mindset is when you go on holiday. And it's, for instance, I can't tell you anything about my drive to work from the last six months. But I can tell you the type of shoes and the book that the guy that walked us to our boat in Africa two years ago was wearing. You know, I know the exact color of the book. I know how it looked in his hand. I know the way that he walked

and I know the color of his jacket. Why? And her argument, you may be able to tell us, her argument was that when your brain gets exposed to new novel experiences it doesn't know what it'll need to remember. Therefore, it kind of opens up and tends to sponge in more. I also guess that just generally when you're somewhere new, you're desired to be present, you're not distracted, you're not looking at your phone, you're not thinking about something else. You're like, oh, holy fuck, I mean, Africa, look at this, look at this guy, look at his book, look at his shoes. I mean, I'm not really a fan of the whole thing. I mean, I'm not a fan of the whole thing.

I mean, I'm not a fan of the whole thing. I mean, I'm not a fan of the whole thing. I mean, I'm not a fan of the whole thing. I mean, I'm not a fan of the whole thing. I mean, I'm not a fan of the whole thing. I mean, I'm not a fan of the whole thing. I mean, I'm not a fan of the whole thing. I mean, I'm not a fan of the whole thing.

I mean, I'm not a fan of the whole thing. I mean, I'm not a fan of the whole thing. I mean, I'm Oh, cool. Let me see if I can find the actual title of it. So I don't make up the title on here in the spot. I love your own article up, Scott. That would be a bad look. That would be a bad look. Let's see, I try to avoid bad looks. Okay. Emotionally extreme experiences, not just positive or negative experiences, are more meaningful in life. So what really is actually the peak experiences thing. Peak experiences tend to be the most memorable moments in our lives. And it's not just the positive or negative aspect of it.

So that also applies to negative aspects of our lives. They still become the most meaningful moments in our lives. Not saying we don't, we wouldn't rather not have some of those negative moments, but it's really the emotional valence of it, just how much it impacts us, that touches us at our emotional level, that is a source of meaning for us, not just whether it was positive or negative. that is a source of meaning for us, not just whether it was positive or negative. I've been thinking about this a little bit recently, actually, as I was talking about living on the edge, and everybody that's listening plus yourself will have some friends who

tend to shy away from the bottom 25 and the top 25% of Extremeness within experience both good and bad right they like to live in that interquartile range They like to live in that middle 50% and it does feel quite comfortable But there's a reason that edges are there right edges wouldn't be there if they weren't there for you to stand on them and there's nothing more exciting than staring over the edge of a building. And I really do think that as we start to push ourselves out towards, obviously you need to do it safely, like I am not your doctor, every disclaimer under this one. But you need to allow yourself to go out and experience it.

And I wonder as well whether in a world where we have so much more convenience, I can get my Uber to the store to deliver room, my gourmet burger back to the house where I watch my Netflix and I then get Amazon Prime my next outfit through the door. I wonder whether we are nerfing the edges of the extremeness and the intensity of experience in the modern world.

Yeah, we are, and people like to fear monger because fear mongering sells. When I say people, I mean marketers. By people, I mean douchebags, not jingles. Do you know what I mean? That's what they do, whatever sells, they'll do it. So, you know, right now, the coronavirus scare, you see on Facebook everyone selling, like, oh, I have the best P95 face mask.

I don't know, and 95 face mask out of everyone else. Fear mongering. Well, what actually is better for growth is to be excited by the challenge, you know, as opposed to fear it and avoid it. There's a form of psychotherapy called Act Acceptance Commitment Therapy. You know, if you've heard of it, where it shows that experiential avoidance is one of the greatest sources of mental illness and that the reverse of that which which which psychologists call psychological flexibility or Maslow would actually refer to that refer to that as well. I would I would scop or a coffin would refer to that as exploration. Yeah, you know, go you like the spirit of exploration

allows us to even to be actually excited by things that most people would fear as a challenge to overcome. Life is not lived from the comfort of your couch, man. Like it really isn't. And the more that I spend time being able to do what I want, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, check myself to make sure that I'm not taking the path of least resistance because it can become painfully convenient. Does that make sense? It becomes destructively convenient. I need to consistently try and find novelty, intensity, new people, new things to do. But I also think it can also, it totally identifies why we might have a crisis

of meaninglessness and existential dread and all this sort of stuff. Because when you're not fighting the lion at the door who's trying to eat half your family or worrying about where your next meal comes from, well, why should you really bother about anything? I can just get Amazon delivered through the door. I can, you know, everything's chill, it's fine.

But that does lead to the crisis because you're so, the bottom of Mazda's hierarchy of needs is so well-served that we now have to actually make a decision about what to do to get to the top. And in a meritocracy, if the people who fail, if the people who succeed were the of their own success and the people who fail are worthy of their own failures, and I think that that means that people can get real, real scared.

That's not my idea. That is the idea of a lander bottom on, but thank you a land for that one. Yeah, I know. It's quite right. And I know that a land has ridden about massive harcuit needs as well. No, no, that was, that was well said. Can we do a contemplate your life from a historian's point of view? That sounds really cool.

Well, that's one of the exercises. The exercise of pure being. I was I was running down the list of the things. Yeah, if you view yourself from a historian's perspective, you know, what what is this time period and putting it in context of prior context. In a lot of ways, the world is the best it's ever been in terms of poverty, in terms of almost any metric you look at, Stephen Pink has written about that. You know, and know that our data that's called comfort for our day-to-day living and what

may seem like a catastrophe, but it's certainly better, you know, from a historian's perspective, certainly better to live in 2020 with a virus than 1918, you know, within influenza pandemic. I think it was called Spanish flu or something like that. You know, the kind of technologies we have and progress we've made, this is probably the best time in human history to have such a pandemic, right? So I think the historian's perspective one is putting things in a certain perspective of the rest of humanity and the rest of human history and also thinking about 100, 200 years from now, how will people view the actions we made as well as is important to think about

when we take certain actions? Should we be scared or frightful or worried about the fact that realistically in 75 years time, no one will remember our name or what we did? The only part of you that scared of that is your ego. And if you can transcend the ego, then that just won't be a concern for you anymore. That question won't matter. And it's not easy transcending the ego because it's so powerful. It seems like such a driving force for so many of us, but you look at those who've managed to transcend their fear of death as well. And some of that comes from just taking one good LSD trip, quite frankly, and seeing what it means to be ego-less.

And you can enjoy, then if you could find it's sort of like a relief for these people who can reach those moments. And people reach it not just through a holistic route, I should say, mindfulness meditation through a lot of inner work on integration and getting outside yourself and helping others. And you realize that it doesn't really matter. What really, it matters what you do in your day-to-day life

to help other human existence. But it doesn't always have to be this grandiose, you know, I started a non-profit, a humanitarian non-profit. You know, the stereotypical, I have a humanitarian nonprofit person, you know, and they're always talking about how the humanitarian nonprofit, they want to shut up about it. But, like, but, I say this in a cheeky way because I don't think we appreciate the person who just by their being in the world every day, they're ablifting others. They're not going on Twitter immediately and announcing it, but they're giving a smile to a stranger on the street. Well, that counts. I mean, they're, you know, they, there's so many things throughout the course of the day that

count in terms of your existence. You just maximize your existence on a day day basis. I think that's good enough. It's like the stereotypical great mom, isn't it? Shout out to my mom, Kathy, who'll be listening. Thank you for smiling at strangers in the street and doing stuff like that. Yeah, no, that's exactly right. In fact, Abraham Maslow thought that his wife's birth

as mom was more self-actualized than he was. So funny, let some woman who probably can't even didn't even know, wasn't really that bothered. Abraham, stop talking about work at the dinner table, let all that stuff. And then she's somehow managed to achieve what he, like more than he did. Yeah, I mean, Abraham Asseld, he did his mom, but he really was quite fond of his wife's mom. It was interesting. And he really did resent his own mom.

That wasn't a whole other story, because she was superstitious and stuff. But yeah, but he really thought that his wife, birth of his mom was really self-actualist. And she was not high achieving. So it's very clear he didn't quite self-actualization with achievement. He really equated it with this what he called being love,

literally being love. And that's not doing what. There's so many a lot of people that do love in this kind of grandiose virtue signaling sort of way, you know, but are just assholes to everyone in their daily life. And that's not being love, you know? It's the same, it goes back to what we were talking about before to do with the aesthetic who's recounted all worldly possessions, but it's just a signal. You know, I had Robin Hanson on a year and a bit ago and you know, he's the man for signals,

the elephant in the brain, right? And Paul Bloom had this great quote as well, when I spoke to him where he said, there is no such thing as not giving a shit. There is only seeming like you're not giving a shit. It's like everybody's signaling all the time. It's the people for whom, like I don't think that my mom is, I don't think

that my mom will go and do something nice for one of the ladies at work, like take her some flowers in for a birthday or do whatever. I don't think she's doing it. So other people see her taking those in, you know? That's right. That's exactly right. Yeah, at the end of the day, when Maslow's whole project of self-factualization, and maybe people don't realize this, he started off, just take, he started what he called the good human being notebook. And he just took examples of people he saw that he thought were good human beings.

He didn't start off like with even the concept self-actualization, it started off with just, I want to study the greatest specimens of good human beings. And he really believed that by studying them, he could like, understand human potential. He really believed that we should study the growing tip of humanity, which is what he called it. You know, all trees have a point of their growth where they grow the most at the top. He calls it the growing tip. There's a lot of parts of the trees that do not grow anymore. So he wanted to study the growing tip of humanity to see what we're all capable of. And that was really about

the good human being. It wasn't about the one who dominated all the competition, you know, or who had their face on the cover of time, the most amount of times, you know. How do we, we've touched on Robert Wright earlier on, and because I've got Eve Sike in the back of my mind all the time at the moment, I want to, I want to kind of touch on that. We spoke about this transcending of the ego bypassing some of the mechanisms which exist or they were created because we needed them. We needed to do play the game of hierarchy, dominance game. I am, look at me, I am here, I am better than this person because it was all relative and we lived in a band of 50 people. We needed to have a fear of death because it was fitness enhancing. We needed to the XYZ all the way along. Just what does this mean for the future?

What does this mean for us as we move forward now as a race, as a species? What are the humans of the future going to be like? Is the hope that we're all just going to become these kind of banobow, super chill, free love man kind of animals? Do you think that that's ever achievable? I feel like you're asking a really quite profound question. Could you maybe ask it again?

Yes, sure. Essentially my question is can we transcend our nature? That's a question. Yeah, I mean it's a question I wrestle with and not only do do I think we can so yes, the answers I do think we can This is the spirit of the book. This is the spirit of the book transcend is that I think that in order to transcend ourselves We have to become greater than the sum of our parts We have to ultimately realize that human beings are We have to ultimately realize that human beings are not just a combination of all of our evolutionary modules that we can actually become integrated and a whole unit that works towards a conscious purpose of some sort, and that really makes us different than other animals. A lot of evolutionist psychologists get a great glee from pointing out how similar we are to other animals.

Like, look, we have the same meeting patterns as the gorilla, but whilst, and I say whilst because you're in England, that may be true, They're not wrong. I think there's so many aspects of humans that make us human. And that was the spirit of Maslow and the humanist psychologist, and I'm trying to bring that spirit back. Man, I love it. My final quote that I've got is from a guy called Daniel Schmackton-Burger. Do you know him from Civilization Emerging? He's a good friend of mine. No way. So I was supposed to speak to him. I was supposed to speak to him is from a guy called Daniel Schmackton-Burgard. You know him from Civilization Emerging? He's a good friend of mine. No way.

So I was supposed to speak to him on Sunday, but we got the time, we got the times wrong. And he's got from that talk on Emergence that he gave on YouTube. And in that, he has this brilliant quote, which is that as human beings, because of our level of consciousness and the fact that we can

interject into the way that we're programmed from nature, we're not just passengers, we're the captains of the ship. And that distinction between the two, between being a passenger and being the captain, that's, it would appear that that's kind of what we're talking about here. For sure, Dan O'Neil andil had some good conversations about just that topic, strolling along San Diego's streets. I remember that. I tell you what, if you'd recorded that, I would have listened. Well, actually, you can listen to me and him talking on his podcast.

A couple of years ago, you had me on his podcast and we had a great chat about self-actualization. That's awesome. I'm conscious that I've taken up a bunch of your time and I need to let you get back because you got with Ada coronavirus out there. Transcend it is out 7th of April so link will be in the show notes below to pre-order and if people want to hassle you online where should they go? Oh, I'd really like it if people could check out the psychology podcast which is my own podcast SkatBerryColfman.com has all the episodes as well as Free self-actualization personality tests they can take So it's got very cool.com and then also on Twitter I'm very active on Twitter. If you want to see my half-paked ramblings go on Twitter. I want to watch you go viral with a bunch of

a bunch of psychology nerds. That's what I want to see. Oh well yes. My most recent tweet did did pretty well showing that IQ is different arguing and study I did my dissertation, my doctoral dissertation, that IQ is not the same thing as the motivation for truth-seeking. There are different things. Now that, if ever I've heard a title that is Daniel Schmacktonberg, it is that one. Wonderful. You know what I mean? Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure. Scott, man, thank you so much for your time. Links to everything that we've spoken about will be in the show notes below. Of course, Transcend, new science of self-actualization will be in there. Psychology podcast, scottburycoffmanker.com.

All that good stuff, you know what to do. Like, share and subscribe. If you've got any questions, feel free to get in touch with me. But for now, Scott, thanks, man. Thank you, Chris. It was a great chat.