On Purpose with Jay Shetty - Adam Grant ON: How to Rethink Your Assumptions & Become More Effective at Communicating with Others

Episode Date: February 22, 2021

This is a special TWO part episode! You love On Purpose because it inspires your life. Have you tried Jay’s Genius workshops and meditations to access even deeper well-being? Learn more at https://shetty.cc/OnPurposeGenius Adam is a world-renowned psychologist at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. So you’d think he understands his mind enough to get things right the first time, right? Think again. This week, Jay Shetty speaks with Adam Grant about his new book Think Again and the importance of being open to rethinking what you once thought you knew. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The One You Feed explores how to build a fulfilling life admits the challenges we face. We share manageable steps to living with more joy and less fear through guidance on emotional resilience, transformational habits, and personal growth. I'm your host, Eric Zimmer, and I speak with experts ranging from psychologists to spiritual teachers offering powerful lessons to apply daily. Create the life you want now. Listen to the one you feed on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Jay Shetty, and on my podcast on purpose,

I've had the honor to sit down with some of the most incredible hearts and minds on the planet. Oprah, Kobe Bryant, Kevin Hart, Lewis Hamilton, and many, many more. On this podcast, you get to hear the raw, real-life stories behind their journeys and the tools they used, the books they read and the people that made a difference in their lives so that they can make a difference in hours. Listen to on purpose with Jay Shetty on the iHeart Radio app Apple Podcast or wherever

you get your podcasts. Join the journey soon. I am Yann Levan Zant and I'll be your host for The R-Spot. Each week listeners will call me live to discuss their relationship issues. Nothing will tear a relationship down faster than two people with no vision. Does y'all are just flopping around like fish out of water? Mommy, daddy, your ex, I'll be talking about those things and so much more. Check out the R-Spawn on the iHeart video app Apple Podcast or wherever you listen to podcasts.

Hey guys, we have a pretty unique episode of on purpose for you all today. So, I had the absolute honor of speaking with Adam Grant, the renowned Wharton psychologist. Not just once this year, but twice. I spoke to him back at the end of last year, but then was so excited about his new book, Think Again, that I decided to speak to him again just a few weeks ago. Both interviews were just so excellent and about different themes that I decided to combine them into one epic episode for your enjoyment. The first interview you will hear is the most recent one, and then an hour in you will hear our

interview from a few months ago. Take your time, listen to one today and to add them for this special episode of On Purpose. Enjoy. Hey everyone, welcome back to On Purpose, the number one health podcast in the world. Thanks to each and every single one of you that come back every week to listen, learn and grow. Now, I know that we talk a lot about learning, we talk a lot about growing, we talk a lot about thinking differently, but today we're actually talking about unlearning. We're talking about all the things that we need to reflect on and maybe rewire and renew our thoughts about

because I'm speaking with one of our favorite guests on on purpose, one of the few people who have appeared twice. The one and only Adam Grant, an organizational psychologist at Wharton, who's been recognized as one of the world's 10 most influential management thinkers. He's also a New York Times best-selling author who has sold millions of copies of his books on generosity, driving success, non-conformist, moving the world, and building resilience after adversity. He currently writes for the New York Times about work and psychology and host WorkLife, a

podcast on how to make work not suck. His latest book Think Again is the topic of our conversation today. Adam, welcome back to on purpose. I can't wait to talk about your new book, And I'm so glad that you're joining us again. Thank you, Jay. I'm thrilled to be here, although I think it might be by accident because I know it's supposed to be one in done. So I don't know how I got back a second time,

but I'm grateful to be here. Well, I'm happy to have you back. You know, I get into you about so many different topics. So I'm glad that we're getting to go deeper again. Today I wanted to start slightly a wild card and I didn't know this before actually, but I saw on your website that you have a section called Wondering where you answer fascinating questions by readers. I was wondering what's the most crazy off-the-world question you've ever had? And I want to know how you responded.

Oh, the craziest question I think I've ever gotten was, can you help me fight my medical malpractice lawsuit? No, I'm not a lawyer or a doctor. I have no idea what to do here. I said, let me at least suggest a few people who I think might be helpful and I never heard back. Well, that's very kind of you to introduce them to some people when they've come for unsolicited random advice. And it's nice that you are honest with them. I could imagine a few people having a bit of fun and giving some advice. So. That just sounded cruel. I felt like this is obviously somebody who does not know where to turn for help. And I'll do what I can to try to point them in a productive direction,

but I'm not really sure what came of it. Well, you're doing the same with your new book, Think Again. You know, when I've been diving through the pages and looking at all the themes and topics you're covering, I feel like this book seems to cover so many of today's biggest challenges and mindsets that we're all struggling with, challenges that we're all having in our lives. Tell me why you thought now's the time to write, think again, based on obviously all the years of study that you've done for it,

but why was now the right time to get people to think again? I actually didn't realize it was when I started working on Think Again. It was, I think it was three years ago that I started writing it and it just grew out of my frustration with people who were clinging to knowledge that was no longer accurate for a world that had changed a lot or who were stuck to opinions that clearly it was time to question and maybe complicate a little bit. And I felt like, okay, this is a great time to say, I have spent my career as an organizational

psychologist thinking again, right? And I felt like, okay, this is a great time to say, I have spent my career as an organizational psychologist thinking again, right? My job is to rethink how we work, how we lead, how we live our lives. But I never really explored the process of thinking again and done a deep dive into the question of, how do we update our own opinions and assumptions? How do we open other people's minds

and how do we build cultures of learning? So I set out to write this book and then the pandemic hits when I'm about halfway through writing it. And suddenly we are all forced to rethink all these things that we've taken for granted most of our lives. Even something as basic as can I hung my grandparents or can I go and eat in an indoor restaurant or will there be live sports on TV?

And given all the rethinking that we've had to do because of the pandemic, it seemed like the right time to try to give people a general framework for how to think about it. Yeah, asking people to think again is quite a bold thing to do because we feel so safe in our regurgitated pattern oriented thoughts. Like, I feel that even now, a lot of what I hear is, are when are things going to go back, right? I'm still hearing that. And we hear things like, well, when are things going to be normal again?

And it feels like we have such a stronghold as humans on safety, security, stability, certainty, and this idea of things staying the same, that when you say think again, it's like, well, actually, that's a lot of work. Like, it's almost like we're scared of that. So, tell me about what you found

and why are we so obsessed with things staying the same and having that same thought, and where's the root of that? Jay, it's ironic that you're asking me this question, right? It's a monk. You specialize in helping people understand and accept impermanence. So, let me ask you, why do you think we're so attached to our ideas and opinions as opposed to being willing to question them? Oh, Adam, look at you switching the interview over already, getting everyone to think again,

how they should structure their interview questions. Never to allow for this. From a very monk spiritual perspective, the idea would be is that we are all wired for spontaneity, for growth, for ever expansion. But through our education, through our parenting, through the conditioning of what we've experienced in this material world, we've become safer or feel safer

in this false safety net of stability. And from a spiritual point of view, the idea would be that there is no such thing as stability. There is no security. Everything from the cells in our body, through to our minds, through to every part of us in this material world is constantly changing. And so the idea of holding on to something, the root of that is because we feel, or we've been trained to believe that that's how you survive. That's how you're happy.

That's how you're scared of almost taking a risk of what may happen if I let go of this, when actually when you live in a spiritually abundant life, you already know that movement and growth and expansion is the only way that you feel happiness. So from a very spiritual point of view, I could answer in many different ways, but from a very spiritual point of view, that would be seen as the root. Well, that tracks very closely with what we would say in psychology, which is, first of

all, there's just a basic ego threat that comes from admitting that your opinions have changed because that means you're saying, you know what? I was wrong. And for a lot of people that makes them question their intelligence, it makes them worry that everyone else is gonna find out that they're a fraud and it plays into imposter syndrome. And then there's also a challenge of unpredictability that if I need to change my opinions every day

or every hour or even every week or month, then how do I make sense of a world that is not standing still under my feet? And I think a lot of people are uncomfortable with that idea and they like to maintain a sense of control by saying, look, if I stick to the comfort of conviction and avoid the discomfort of doubt, then I can feel like I have a grip on the world around me.

And then I think there's a social piece of this too, which is belonging. If I am willing to rethink some of my views, I'm putting myself at risk for being expelled from my group. I might be in some ways challenging my tribe, and that sense of exclusion, that risk of loneliness is obviously something that's easier to see or clear of.

Yeah, so where do you draw the line between thinking again and being stable and feeling like you're in a safe space? How do you draw that line? Because I feel like, from your studies, I'm sure you found places where it was good to not think again or good to not question and almost sometimes over questioning leads to over thinking and overanalyzing and procrastination. Tell us about that boundary. Yeah, I think it's very tricky.

It's probably a tightrope walk for a lot of people, but my read of the evidence is that when people start to make their opinions their identity, they get in trouble. So you believe a bunch of things and you say, well, that's who I am. And I just, I would love for people to imagine rewinding the clock half a century or a century or more and say, okay, if you made your opinions or your beliefs, your identity, and let's say you're a teacher, you might have seen yourself as a corporal punisher, right? His job is to discipline students. Or if you were a doctor, you would have said, all right, I'm a professional lobotomist.

And what I do is I, you know, I solve all kinds of medical problems by taking out part of the frontal lobe. Or if you are a police officer, you might have seen yourself more recently as a stop and frisker. And the problem with all these identities is they're attached to policies and practices

that we now know are counterproductive. I think what we want is to build our identities around our values. And that's where we're looking for a little bit more stability and groundedness. So I want to go to the doctor who says, my values are around protecting and promoting health. And I'm open to rethinking what are the best procedures to do that, right? I want to go to the police officer who says, I'm here to promote justice and safety. And I'm not sure what the best ways to do that are,

but I'm gonna look at the data. And I definitely wanna send my kids to the teacher who says, I'm here to help kids learn first and foremost. And I'm not gonna commit to any one way of doing that. And I don't know that we should always freeze our values, right? I think they should evolve too, but it's a lot easier for me to say, my core values are generosity, excellence, integrity, and freedom.

And I'm going to be pretty flexible about learning the most effective ways to live by those values. What do you think about that? I think that's such a great distinction. I've never heard it put that way, but I really appreciate that for me that's been really clarifying about how your values, as you said, they don't need to be frozen. They can evolve as well. But the idea is that you have a set of values, but you're flexible and adaptable about how they come to life at different times in your life. And I often say to people, like, I love the books that I studied, living is among.

And I got so much value from them. And I obviously shared them, but I'm always open to discovering something, some new spiritual truth that I'm not accustomed to or aware of when I'm speaking to someone because I just want to be a seeker of the truth. And I think that allows me to have this very deep affinity for the work that I've done, but not a sentimental attachment to them, if that makes sense. And I think that's what I was getting from you is that often we create this sentimental attachment to our beliefs because we feel they define us as opposed to feeling, well, I have this very strong loyalty, but I'm still able to peruse and search and discover. I think you nailed it.

Attachment is such a barrier for so many people to rethinking opinions and ideas that are no longer serving them well. And this isn't just true with the things we believe about the world, right? It's also true for the plans that we make. So you mentioned a lot of people are asking, when are we going back? And obviously I think you and I would both say, well, actually let's just try to move forward.

But it's so common for people to get attached to early images that they formed of how they wanted to live their lives and who they wanted to be, right? Anybody who ever was asked the question as a kid, what do you want to be when you grow up? And had an answer like, well, I'm going to be a lawyer or I'm going to be a doctor. And then 20 or 30 years later, it's still locked into that plan. Never really questioning, does that make sense for me?

There's a there's a term in psychology for that. It's called identity foreclosure. And it's the idea of sort of seizing and freezing too early on a sense of who you want to be before you've really explored alternatives. And I think the danger of that is what you want, what you value, what you're looking for in life is gonna evolve over time.

And I think we need our identities to evolve with that. Yeah, absolutely. I couldn't agree more. And I guess people struggle with thinking again because we're almost like, where do we start? Like, what value do you start on? What part of your life do you start on? In your studies, where did you find a good place to start thinking again? Like, because I feel like you're opening up a kind of worms of like childhood trauma. You know, it's like people don't know what's going to start.

So where did you start? Yeah, I honestly don't know the answer to that question because I think it's gonna be a little different for everyone, but let's just continue on the plan path for a second and say, okay, a lot of people have career regrets, right? They started down a path and then they fell victim to escalation of commitment to a losing course of action, which is where you invest time and energy and money in a path and then you

discover, you know what, this isn't quite what I wanted it to be. And instead of cutting your losses, you double down. And economists will say that's because of some costs, right? You don't want to admit that you've wasted all that time and money. But the psychological factors are even more important. You go an image. I don't wanna look in the mirror and admit to myself that I made a stupid decision.

And I wanna prove to everybody else that I made a smart one. And so I get caught in this self-justification spiral where I'm rationalizing my past choices as opposed to rethinking them. And what I've advised my students to do for years is to say, look, you know what, you go to the doctor or the dentist

when you're healthy a couple of times a year, just for a checkup, maybe we should have career checkups. Put a reminder on your calendar twice a year, to ask yourself, have I reached a learning plateau in my job or a lifestyle plateau for that matter? Have I learned something new about what my strengths are or my values are, and is it possible

that this culture is no longer serving those? And I think having that kind of checkpoint is a great way to keep yourself honest and make sure that you do some rethinking about what your plans are. And I don't think it has to be limited to career, right? I think we could do occasional marriage checkups. We could do all kinds of life decision checkups.

I think a lot of people have done this during the pandemic saying, wait a minute, where in the world do I wanna live? I don't need to be tethered to the city that I've been for the last eight years. That's such a practical piece of advice and I love that one. And we're almost scared of asking that.

I wanna talk to you a bit about that fear of addressing that because we're scared of asking that question because of the idea of, well, what if I hate my job? And then now from tomorrow, I know I hate my job. And then I'm just going to be depressed. Or if I ask that question about my partner, then maybe we need to get a divorce or maybe we need to break up. How do we curb our fear of even asking that question and thinking again? Because that seems to be one of the biggest

blocks to even getting to that point of doing that check-up. I think it is. And the place I would probably start, Jay, is to say, let's, let's consider regret. In the long run, our biggest regrets are not our inactions. They're typically our actions. Sorry, I said that backward. Let me try that again.

Jay, I think a lot of this is about regret. In the long run, the decisions that we tend to regret are not our actions, they're in actions. They're the chances that we didn't take. And I think in a lot of cases, right? Rebooting your career or rethinking a relationship is scary. You know it's even scarier, never even considering that possibility in the first place.

And so, look, I think everybody's afraid of taking a risk or failing at some level. What we wanna do is remember that we should be even more afraid of failing to try. I'm Jay Shetty, and on my podcast on purpose, I've had the honor to sit down with some of the most incredible hot some minds on the planet, Oprah.

Everything that has happened to you can also be a strength builder for you if you allow it. Kobe Bryant. The results don't really matter. It's the figuring out that matters. Kevin Haw. It's not about us as a generation at this point. It's about us trying our best to create change.

Luber and Hamilton, that's for me been taking that moment for yourself each day, being kind to yourself, because I think for a long time I wasn't kind to myself and many many more if you're attached to knowing You don't have a capacity to learn on this podcast you get to hear the raw real-life stories behind their journeys and the tools They used the books they read and the people that made a difference in their lives so that they can make a difference in hours. Listen to on purpose with Jay Shetty on the I Heart Radio app Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

Join the journey soon. This is what it sounds like inside the box car. I'm journalist and I'm Martin in my podcast City of the Rails. I plung into the dark world of America's railroads searching for my daughter Ruby who ran off to hop train. I'm just like stuck on this train, not where I'm gonna end up. And I jump. Following my daughter, I found a secret city

of unforgettable characters living outside society, off the grid and on the edge. I was in love with a lifestyle and the freedom this community. No one understands who we truly are. The rails made me question everything I knew about motherhood, history, and the thing we call the American dream. It's the last vestige of American freedom.

Everything about it is extreme. You're either going to die, or you can have this incredible rebirth and really understand who you are. Come with me to find out what waits for us in the city of the rails. Listen to city of the rails on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Or cityoftherails.com. Not too long ago, in the heart of the Amazon Rainforest, this explorer stumbled upon something that would change his life.

I saw it and I saw, oh wow, this is a very unusual situation. It was cacao, the tree that gives us chocolate, but this cacao was unlike anything experts had seen, or tasted. I've never wanted us to have a gun fight. I mean, you saw this tax of cash in our office. Chocolate sort of forms this vortex, it sucks you in. It's like I can be the queen of wild chocolate. We're all lost, it was madness.

It was a game changer. People quit their jobs. They left their lives behind, so they could search for more of this stuff. I wanted to tell their stories, so I followed them deep into the jungle, and it wasn't always pretty. Basically, this like disgruntled guy

and his family surrounded the building armed with machetes. And we've heard all sorts of things that you know somebody got shot over this. Sometimes I think all these for a damn bar of chocolate. Listen to obsessions while chocolate on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or whatever you get your podcast. Yes. Yeah. Yeah, I think regrets is such a big one that I've often thought about a lot and has helped me so much in my life. I remember even before I started creating content,

it was I remember asking myself, would I regret not trying? Because obviously when you start something, and I'm sure you felt this, when you started studying, or when you became an author for the first time, it's almost like, will I regret not trying? Because you don't know if it's going to work. And you're so right that now I look back

and I think, wow, I would have had massive regrets. Not because you know where things can go, but to be in that same place again and again and again and again and again. And I think that's what we don't remember is that we're always worried about what if the next step doesn't work out, not realizing that this step we're on right now isn't feeling great either. I think there's so much wisdom in that. And a funny place that you can see it is with students who are taking tests,

where you see that students are really reluctant, once they've come up with an answer, to change their response. Even though the data show that on average, if you're willing to override your first instinct, you actually improve your score. And hilariously, when we tell students this, they still are reluctant to rethink their answers.

And I think regret is a huge factor here, because imagine the pain of saying, I had the right answer, and I undid it. As opposed to, if I just stick to my gut, and I don't rethink it, well, it doesn't seem like I was ever gonna get it right in the first place. And I think if we're not careful,

that can obviously steer us in the wrong direction. That's crazy that even when you tell people, students in that example, that they still don't change. Like, how many times do we have to hear something? To know that it works out of him. Have you figured this out? Like, what do we need? What is needed to genuinely change?

Like, what is needed to genuinely think again and act on that thinking? I think probably the most relevant data I've seen is from studies of leaders introducing organizational changes and trying to bring a new vision into a team or into a company. And on average, in the classic data, leaders under-communicated their visions by a multiple of eight. Eight times less often than people needed to hear the vision.

They explained it. And I think a lot of that is because once you come up with the vision, it makes perfect sense to you. It's crystal clear in your head, right? You spent days or weeks or months or maybe years thinking through this. And so the first time you say it, you assume everyone else gets it.

But obviously they don't the first time you explain it. And I don't know for any person whether that multiple is under communicating by three or seventeen, but I think on average, we probably under do it for the most part. And what I often tell leaders is the moment you'll know that you've really gotten through to people is when they say, okay, enough already. I get it. I'm tired of hearing it. And that's when you know you've really gotten your point across.

Yeah, it's almost like you don't know. Every time you feel you've overset it, you haven't until that person thinks you've overset it. Exactly. I guess until you feel your team or your partner can complete your sentence, right? It's almost like looking at Google. Like Google can auto complete because it knows what most of us are asking all of the time. And

the idea that if I was going to say something and you could complete my sentence, chances are I've said it way too much. It's like that feeling of when your friend or your partner says something like, yeah, you've told me that story like 72 times. Like I know exactly what your, I know exactly what your mom does in that scenario, whatever it may be. Yes. That's a good checking system. I like that.

I really like that. I think I undervalue that too. We assume everyone thinks like us. We do. And I would say the most, the most powerful form of persuasion is self-p persuasion. And that means that instead of having to repeat your vision over and over again, you explain it once or twice

and then you ask people to articulate it in their own words. And what they often think they're doing is trying to get other people fired up about it. But really what they're doing is they're internalizing it and convincing themselves that this is a good idea. Yeah, absolutely. You mentioned in your book that people tend to slip into three,

well, there's a few, but there's one more, but the mindsets of three different professions when they think and talk, and I love this, I really, really like this. So you said preacher, politician, and prosecutor, tell us a bit about those and give us some examples of those so that we can understand. And everyone who's listening and watching what I want you to do is reflect on when you fall

into one of these because we all fall into them at different times in our life. So if you're listening right now or watching, please reflect on as Adam's guiding us through when in your life you do one of these things. So Adam. Jay, this is such a fun direction to go. I hardly even know where to start, in part because when I think about my life as an organizational psychologist, it is incredibly peculiar to me that although I've never worked as a preacher, a prosecutor, or a politician, somehow all of those occupations managed to waltz

into my mind during my daily life. And I think that's true for all of us. So the original idea comes from a brilliant paper that my colleague Phil Tattlach wrote. And the idea is that we are social creatures, right? That we're very concerned with our standing in the world and what other people think of us. And that a lot of the time, when we think

we're making rational decisions, we're actually paying a ton of attention to where we fit into a social hierarchy. When we're in preacher mode, we believe that we have found the truth. And our job is to go out and proselytize our sacred beliefs and get other people on board with them. Prosecutor mode is sort of the reverse. That's about saying, you know what?

I've got to win an argument. You are wrong. And then politician mode is essentially campaigning for the approval of an audience, trying to lobby to get a tribe on board with whatever you think they want to hear or trying to earn their admiration in some way. And I think the thing that I worry most about

is if you're in preacher or prosecutor mode, you don't do enough rethinking because you already believe you're right, and everyone else is wrong. So why would you ever change your mind? And in politician mode, we see more flexibility, but it kind of looks like flip-flopping, right? I don't really believe what I'm saying.

I'm just trying to appease my audience and cater to what they want to hear. And so, you know, it looks like I'm rethinking at the wrong times and maybe for the wrong reasons. James, curious, of these three modes, which one is your biggest advice? Which one is my biggest advice? It would definitely, for years, I would say it's the preacher one for sure. Like, I think, I think for years, and I find that especially when you're in an early stage, formative stage of a set of beliefs, preachers very natural.

So I remember when I first started getting involved in spiritual teachings, it was like, I was preaching to my parents. I was like preaching to all my friends. And you're like, Here's how you should have raised me. Exactly. And you like push everyone in your life away from you

because you think you've figured it out. And you forget that this person has a bit more age They have a bit more maturity. They have a there's there's things that come and come with life and time and experience And so I think for long parts of my life in especially in early stages of anything I think I've naturally shifted into that and then slowly tried to move away From that as much as I can. Hopefully into the fourth mindset, which we'll talk about. But yes, in answer to your question, I'd say my biggest vice has definitely been the preacher mode.

That's so interesting. I thought about this over the years and whenever I encounter somebody who I think is pretty frequently in preacher mode, I just think, okay, you know what? Highly effective for appealing to their existing followers, right? Because there's a group of people who are already drinking

that Kool-Aid, and it's very inspiring, and it gives you a sense that you've found some kind of enlightenment. But to everybody else, like, why are you trying to force to feed me your wisdom, right? I didn't sign up for this back off. And so I think the more resistant or skeptical in audiences, the more likely that preaching is to backfire. Yes, I couldn't agree with you more.

And I think that's where I started to realize. And it was more so, it was luckily, I feel like I caught it early, where I was just like, well, actually, I only want to, you know, I just want to discover more and hence the podcast has been phenomenal for that because I'm sitting with people who can share ideas and insights that may be different to what I've grown up with or challenging sometimes and sometimes even sparking debate in a positive sense.

And so I think that's why sitting down with people from different, I mean, me and you didn't grow up in the same area. We didn't grow up around the same group of people. And we don't even stay in fascinated and necessarily the same types of thought on a daily basis. And therefore, this conversation allows me to do that. And that's why I think the podcast or the idea of sitting down with someone is so powerful. It is. Even though one of us is having a very bad hair life. Ha ha ha.

Or a great one, or a great one, you know, or a great one. So, but the fourth mindset, which you say is, almost like the best mindset to be in, or one that you encourage, is the mindset of the scientist. Tell us about how we shouldn't just look at that as like, oh, I have to be like a scientist,

but what that mindset actually means. Yeah, I'm not suggesting that anybody has to go and become Einstein or Bill Nye, the science guy, right? The thought is, you don't have to work in a lab, you don't have to wear a white coat or carry around test tubes. I think about being a scientist as a way of seeing the world

and a way of navigating your life. I think about being a scientist as a way of seeing the world and a way of navigating your life. I think that what scientists value is truth. I'm trying to get closer to truth even if they might never really find it. And that means whenever opinions they form are attentive, they're hunches. They might be hypotheses. And what I need to do as a scientist is when I have an idea, I wanna go out into the world and explore whether it's true

and better yet when it's true. That means I might run some little experiments, I might do observations, I might interview people, right, if I were gonna go into sort of anthropologist mode, and the hope is that I'm gonna discover sometimes that I was wrong, and I'm gonna discover information, the challenges, my beliefs, not just that affirms my beliefs.

And after all, I think that's what learning is about J, involving our beliefs, not just validating what we already think is true. And I'm actually starting to rethink this a little bit, because I think the data are really compelling. So you know there's an incredible experiment with Italian founders, where some of them are randomly assigned. These are entrepreneurs who are pre-revenue.

And there's a control group who basically takes a couple of month entrepreneurship course. And then there's another group that gets the same education in how to start a business, only they're taught to think like scientists. And this is a little bit foreign for business people, right? But they're encouraged to just say, look, you know what? Your strategy, that's just a theory, about a future state of the world and how your company can succeed in it. Your customer interviews, those are ways

to develop hypotheses about where your theory would be successful. And then you build a minimum of viable product, that is an experiment to run. And then what data do you need to find out if your experiment worked or didn't? So the control group over the next year makes less than $300 US dollars in revenue on average

per startup. The scientists group makes over $12,000 US dollars in that year on average per startup. It's a staggering effect. And it's driven by the fact that the scientists are more willing to pivot, that when they're encouraged to think like scientists, they say, you know what, my strategy might have been bad,

my hypotheses might have been wrong, I'm willing to change gears. And so I stopped there and said, wow, if we can teach business to people to think more like scientists, if we can teach entrepreneurs to be a little bit more disciplined that way and experimental in their approach, that's actually good for their success and growth. And I was excited there, but I have a hunch

that you know why I'm rethinking this now. What do you think is maybe missing from this perspective? That's interesting. I wasn't thinking along those lines. I was agreeing with you. Now that you're asking me. Oh, interesting.

Yeah, yeah, I was agreeing with you. I felt like that makes a lot of sense. What's missing from that? Interesting. I'd love to reflect on that for a moment. Give me a second. Let me think. Please do.

Yeah, let me think about what do I think's missing from that? I was in agreement with you because I found in my life, and even as simply as a content creator, which isn't what I am as a total, but if I look at that part of my life, that rule holds so true is that if you just say, oh, I only want to make this and I'm as a total baby, if I look at that part of my life, that rule holds so true is that if you just say, oh, I only want to make this and I'm going to put it out, people may never watch it or connect it or communicate with it, engage with it. So what is missing?

I wonder whether the missing layer is the idea of, and I could be totally wrong, the only thing I can think of is the idea of, and I could be totally wrong, the only thing I can think of is the idea of discovery and then commitment, like when do you actually finally commit rather than continually testing, testing, testing, testing, and that could just go on forever. That's the only thing that came to mind and that may be way off, but no, that's fascinating.

That's one of the couple of things that have been on my list right now. I guess one of two to be more specific. So yeah, I think there's a risk that if you're a scientist, you're always rethinking. You're always questioning. You never believe that you found the truth. You've just, you ruled out a bunch of hypotheses that were wrong, but you know you only have a model and it's just an approximation of reality. I think the best antidote that I've come across to that is something that Bob Sutton has said for years, which is in his view, an attitude of wisdom is acting on the best information you have while constantly doubting what you know.

And I think a good scientist probably does that. The other thing that I've been questioning a little bit is the scientist's mindset pushing people too much toward sort of formal, quantitative inquiry, right, saying you can only arrive at knowledge through rigorous AB testing. And I think you're such a great person to toss this around with because I think if I were to broaden maybe what I really mean is you want to be in the mindset of a scholar, right? Somebody who has the humility and the curiosity to know what they don't know and always be searching

for new insights. And of course, science is one of the tools to do that. But as you've discovered in your life, there are also more spiritual paths to that kind of inquiry, right? And so I wonder what your take is on the scientists versus the scholar, the framing. Yeah, yeah, it's a great question.

I'm so glad, by the way, the direction in which you're taking this. And I love rethinking this with you. It's the first time I've done this out loud. So we'll see where it goes. It's great. I really, I try and approach my life. And I haven't used these terms before as how I see myself, but in the way you are discussing it,

of like a spiritual scientist. And what I mean by that is, I feel like to get things done, you have to have the scientific approach, but I love looking at insight with intuition, or like data with the dynamic nature of spirituality. And I love trying to find that, almost like the middle of the Venn diagram

of where that collides, because that's where I find like, real creativity is Venn diagram of where that collides, because that's where I find like real creativity's found. That's where I find like energies created. It's almost like I never feel satisfied if I'm only seeking internally, if I don't test that externally, or if we're just testing loads of stuff externally, but it's not inspired from within.

And so to me, I love the juxtaposition of both of those elements, like the scholar and the scientist. And as you said, because I feel like too many of us, and this is part of thinking again, too many of us, are trying to be just one thing. And I often get the feedback of like, Jay, he used to be a monk. How can you be in media now?

Like how can you be on social media? Yeah, usually goes the other direction, right? And I just opened my heart, and I'm like, Jay, you used to be a monk. How can you be a media now? Like how can you be on social media? Yeah, usually goes the other direction, right? And I just opened my heart and I'm honest, I'm literally just experimenting with what feels right to me. Like, it felt right to me to become a monk when I was 22. And I'm 33 now and at this age, it feels really right to be doing what I'm doing now.

And I'm allowing myself to grow and evolve and not have a simplified identity. And so I feel that the scholar and the scientists together, or the spiritual scientist together, can be really fascinating place for people to live. That Fenn diagram is such an exciting thing when you're able to see the overlap. There's actually an example that jumped out at me when I was writing Think Again. We had a doctoral student Danielle Tussing who is now a professor at SUNY Buffalo. And Danielle decided she was going to rethink the importance of ambition and leadership. And she said, you know, I wonder if there's something to being a little bit reluctant as a leader, to having some hesitations about taking the helm. You might be concerned about the implications for

work-life balance. You might be da about the implications for work-life balance. You might be daunted by the responsibility and worried about being racked with guilt. You might just be concerned that you're not qualified. And she ended up, it was hard to study this because there aren't that many people who rise to leadership roles that said, no, I don't want it.

Keep me out of here. No, thank you. But she ended up studying charge nurses in hospitals who get rotated and whether they seek the leadership role or not on every, every so, well, a certain number of shifts will go by and then it's basically your turn. And so she was able to measure how reluctant they felt

about leading. And she found that a little bit of reluctance actually predicted higher leadership effectiveness as rated by the people they worked with. And that was in part because the reluctant leaders were more willing to empower the people around them. They were less likely to assume, I know all the answers. They were more likely to seek out second opinions.

And I thought this was such a cool finding. And then we were talking about this and we started thinking through, okay, where else has this idea appeared? And it turns out that Plato had this insight, right? So ancient Greek wisdom was, you know what, the person that we want to elect to a leadership role is the one who was very hesitant to be in charge.

And then Douglas Adams wrote about it and the hitchhiker's guy to the galaxy, right? That the only person we should want as a president is the one who had no interest in doing the job. And that's one of those moments where the Venn diagram comes together and you say, okay, if one of the great ancient Greek philosophers, one of the great modern British sci-fi writers and empirical evidence are converging, there might be something here. Yeah, yeah, I love those examples. I'm so glad you shared those. Because that is, it's such a refreshing way of thinking.

I think we always believe that the person who should get it is the person who puts themselves forward, the person who's confident about it. It's, you know, it has that kind of self belief that they were meant to be that person. And I'm guessing there's truth in that too. Sometimes the best athletes in the feet order people who believe that they were going to be the best athletes of all time. But at the same time, when you look at

leadership and business and even spiritual traditions, I mean, that's very true of, that's very true of a monk culture and looking at spiritual rankings that the person who went on to be the master, the master teacher would rarely be the person who thought on to be the master teacher would rarely be the person who thought they were the master teacher. It would always be almost like humility was the key to the door of that person not feeling they were worthy, allowed them to be the best in caring leader. Wow, we could use a lot more of that humility in the world right now.

I think a lot of people write it off and they misunderstand humility as having low self-esteem or having just a low opinion of yourself. And if you go back to the Latin root of humility, it's actually being grounded. It means from the earth, right? And so humility is about recognizing, hey, we're all human, we're fallible, we're flawed,

we have limitations and weaknesses. And I think if you see it that way, it becomes a source of strength because if you can see your weaknesses more clearly, then you can figure out how to overcome them. Yeah, and I think the challenge, that I mean, you probably see this more working with organizations so deeply that we keep,

we reward, sorry, what we reward, we repeat. And so we're seeing people always rewarded for not being vulnerable or not being honest and transparent. And I remember looking at some basic studies on how men and women approach job specifications and job descriptions. And it was showing how women look at a job description and be like, oh, I can only do 25% of that. And whereas a man would look and be like, oh, I can only do 25% of that.

And whereas a man would look at it and be like, oh, I can do over 50% of that. And so it's like, they feel confident based on what they can do, whereas a woman may not. And so what I was finding fascinating about that, the over amplification in one's beliefs is almost rewarded in a job interview. How do you start to reconstruct that?

For an, and even me as an employer and you work with some of the biggest employees on the planet, how do you reconstruct that in a healthy way so that it's, you are hiring the right person eventually because there's a bit of that, there's a bit of a dichotomy there. There is, I think the place I would start is to say we've got to stop confusing confidence for confidence. The fact that somebody believes they can do something is not a good proxy for their actual ability to do it. In fact, you're familiar with the Dunning Kruger effect in psychology. The finding is that the people who have the lowest emotional intelligence scores

and also the poorest logical reasoning abilities are the most likely to overestimate their abilities. And you could just say, okay, some of that's ego, but some of it is also, if you have no idea what emotional intelligence looks like, then it's really hard for you to judge whether you have it or not, right? And the same thing is true for logical reasoning skills. And I think in a job interview context,

the place I'd like to start is to ask people to demonstrate what they're bringing to the table. I'll give them a try out. I'll let them do a little bit of an experiment to show me their skills. I also, though, have started betting on people who underestimate themselves a little bit. There was a great study at Google

a few years back of engineers. And this speaks to the gender differences you were just highlighting. It turned out that when you looked at self ratings of how great you are as an engineer on a 1-5 scale, in order for women to make it at Google, they had to give themselves a 5. They had to have this unassailable confidence to say, look, I know I'm one of the best engineers in the world. Otherwise, they were just constantly feeling discouraged and probably facing more gender bias than anybody should.

The most successful male engineers gave themselves a four, not a five. The fives were arrogant, like, I'm the best, and they closed their minds to learning. And I think the fours were like the experts that you and I would both admire. They didn't boast about how much they knew. They were constantly marveling

at how much more they had to learn. And I would love to live in a world where everybody who self-rates is a four is more successful, and I think we have a lot of work to do there to remove some of those barriers that women face. A good way to learn about a place is to talk to the people that live there. There's just this sexy vibe in Montreal, this pulse, this energy. What was seen as a very snotty city, people call it Bosedangeless. New Orleans is a town that never forgets its pay.

A great way to get to know a place is to get invited to a dinner party. Hi, I'm Brendan Francis Newdum, and not lost as my new travel podcast where a friend and I go places, see the sights, and try to finagle our way into a dinner party. We're kind of trying to get invited to a dinner party. It doesn't always work out. I would love that, but I have like a Cholala who is aggressive towards strangers. I love dogs. We learn about the places

we're visiting, yes, but we also learn about ourselves. I don't spend as much time thinking about how I'm gonna die alone when I'm traveling, but I get to travel with someone I love. Oh see, I love you too. And also we get to spend as much time thinking about how I'm going to die alone when I'm traveling. But I get to travel with someone I love. Oh, see, I love you too. And also, we get to eat as much... And I love you too. I have so many therapy bills behind that. You're so white, I love it.

Listen to not lost on the iHeart radio app or wherever you get your podcasts. Our 20s are seen as this golden decade. Our time to be carefree, full in love, make mistakes, and decide what we want from our life. But what can psychology really teach us about this decade? I'm Gemma Speg, the host of the psychology of your 20s. Each week we take a deep dive into a unique aspect of our 20s from career anxiety, mental health, heartbreak, money, friendships, and much more to explore the science and the psychology behind our experiences, incredible guests, fascinating topics, important science, and a bit of my own personal experience. Audrey, I honestly have no idea what's going on with my life.

Or, Dread, honestly, I have no idea what's going on with my life. Join me as we explore what our 20s are really all about. From the good, the bad, and the ugly, and listen along as we uncover how everything is psychology, including our 20s. The psychology of your 20s hosted by me, Gemma Speg, now streaming on the iHot Radio app, Apple podcasts podcasts or whatever you get your podcasts. The therapy for Black Girls podcast is the destination for all things mental health, personal development, and all of the small decisions we can make to become the best possible versions

of ourselves. Here, we have the conversations that help Black women dig a little deeper into the most impactful relationships in our lives, those with our parents, our partners, our children, our friends, and most importantly, ourselves. We chat about things like what to do with a friendship ends, how to know when it's time to break up with your therapist, and how to end the cycle of perfectionism. I'm your host, Dr. Joy Harden Bradford, a licensed psychologist in Atlanta, Georgia, and I can't wait for you to join the conversation every Wednesday.

Listen to the Therapy for Black Girls Podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts, take good care. Absolutely. I'm really glad you shared that with me. In a small way, I found even with my own teams, we always did a self-assessment and then a manager assessment of the individual. And I always found that I always rated people higher. The people that I rated higher and they rated themselves lower

were always my top performers. So I actually saw them as better than they saw themselves. And that was such a beautiful thing where I'm like, well, I think your score is like 45 out of 50 and they're like, I see myself as like a 38. And I'm like, what? Like, that's amazing. You're hired.

Yeah. And then the opposite was true also where I saw people as like a 38 or a 35 and they saw themselves as a 50 and I was just like, okay, well, there's something wrong here. And you're so right about that. We could probably add a few other explanations to that puzzle. One is Angela Duckworth has shown with grit that the grittiest people often rate themselves more in the four range than the five, because they have much higher standards for what

counts as having real passion and perseverance, and they never feel like they've made it. And then another factor is we had another student, Basima, who's now an MIT professor, and she studied how often people have imposter thoughts, feeling like, you know, other people might find out that I'm a fraud, that I'm not as good as they think I am, that I don't deserve my successes. A lot of people see if you had a chronic imposter syndrome, they see that as debilitating, and it can be if you're just plagued by those doubts. But the more ordinary imposter thoughts that we all feel occasionally, you know, gee, I wonder if I'm good enough, or wonder if I've lost it and I'm no longer at my peak.

People who have those thoughts more often actually were motivated to perform better. They didn't get complacent, right? They didn't fall victim to what's often called a fat cat syndrome. They said, you know what? I might not be that good. I've got to work that much harder.

I've got to learn that much more in order to make it. And that's why I know you talk about this, that imposter syndrome actually has some benefits. Like, it can actually be used. And I feel like now, when we feel imposter syndrome, we often think like, I don't want to feel that way anymore. Some, I'd love for you to talk a bit more about more of the benefits of imposter syndrome. I think that could really benefit our community because that's been a really hot topic and important topic for us.

I know for me, Imposta syndrome has always showed me my skills gap. So I've never seen Imposta syndrome as an identity issue or issue of like myself, confidence or a steam. It showed me a skills gap. So if I feel, I don't know how to, it was the first time I think I sat at a table with investors or whatever it was and I was like, oh, I've never invested. I don't know what this means. And all of a sudden you fill the sense of imposter syndrome.

And I realized it was just a skills gap every time and I love using it as a signal of asking myself, is that a skill I want to learn? And sometimes it's like, no, I don't care. And sometimes it's like, yeah, I'd love to learn that. So tell us a bit more about the benefits of impostor syndrome. I think you just framed that so beautifully. And I think it probably calls the mind a caveat before we go into how did build on that,

which is the response you're describing, basimaphines is more common for men than women. When men experience those impostor thoughts, we've had the, often, the luxury of going through our lives with other people assuming that we were competent, right? So people here you speak and they hear how eloquent you are and they say, you know what, this guy clearly knows what he's doing.

And so it doesn't end up really crushing your motivation when you question yourself. Whereas I think in a lot of places women, you know, especially if they've been raised in a male dominated world or a less egalitarian or more paternalistic culture, are more likely to have these ongoing fears about, well, am I worthy? Do people really think I can make it? And they haven't had these constant jolts of confidence that maybe even were unearned

in a lot of cases. And so that response is rare among women than men, but we see it across the board with all genders. And I think the starting point is to say, look, there is a difference between doubting yourself and doubting your skills. And that's why I love how you described your skills gap. Right?

You're never saying, I think I'm an idiot, or I think I'm completely incapable of being a good entrepreneur, or a great investor, or a successful content creator. You're just saying, I don't know if I'm completely incapable of being a good entrepreneur or a great investor or a successful content creator. You're just saying, I don't know if I'm there yet. I think I have work to do. I have knowledge to pick up. I have expertise to gain. And I think what that is is basically just having confidence in yourself as a learner, as opposed to as an expert or a master.

I love what you just said. The idea of having confidence in yourself as a learner. And you develop that when you learn how to learn things. Like it's almost like that feeling of like, I know that if I wanted to, I could learn this. How do we develop the ability to learn? Because an unlearn of course is part of that. Because I feel like that's what's missing.

We don't believe that even if we had the time and even if we made the effort that we'd quite get there, because we've never been taught how to learn, we've never been taught how to pick something up and roll with it. Where do you start in that process? Well, in the growth mindset research,

there's a simple exercise that really seems to help people. And it's one that I've used in some of my own experiments and been surprised by how effective it is. What you ask people to do is just reflect on the time when they started out terrible at something and then got halfway decent or even good. And you say, look, you know what? You've been learning your whole life whether you realize it or not. And if you analyze some of your own moments of progress and improvement,

you're probably gonna pick up patterns. And so in some cases, what people notice then is, okay, I learned through observation. And I had a role model that I was able to watch closely or I found the right videos on YouTube and I was able to pick this up. Other people will say, you know what, those, the pattern behind my moments of growth

is I had a coach who was in my corner and who saw more potential in me than I saw in myself. And so now I need to find that person to raise my aspirations. And then for other people, it's as simple as saying, you know what, when I learned best, when I was most motivated to grow, was when I had a curiosity gap,

I really wanted to understand something, and it almost hurt. I wanted to scratch that itch so badly, and I couldn't stop myself from then going and digging deeply into that phenomenon. And I think there's obviously there are dozens and probably hundreds and thousands of possible stories that come out that way,

but I think reflecting on your own moments of learning is probably the best way to figure out where your confidence in learning should come from. Yeah, for sure, because it could go back is, I remember, like, if someone asked me, what was the first time I felt like I was learning something, I was probably in grade four, I had the best teacher of all time, I'll never, his name was Mr. Foxwell and I'll never forget him because it was, he just made learning so fun. And I was probably like, what, I don't know, eight, nine years old, maybe.

And so, you know, super young and not necessarily thinking about being a learner or thinking I'd be sitting talking to you about learning. But I remember that really strongly. And I remember it was being with someone who made learning so infectious. And now, if I think back to anything that I've learned in my life, coaching has been the number one part of it, like being around someone who is energy is contagious and infectious because they love this thing so much, whatever it may be.

And I think that's what it's been. I haven't just been around experts. I've been people who I've been around lucky to be around people who love what they did and were very compassionate with it. And I think those two qualities are so beautiful because when you learn just from an expert, it's different from learning from a compassionate expert. Like that has some very special passons, I feel.

It does. And at the risk of just rattling off a study that tells you something you already know, that pattern is one of the clearest findings in the development of talent. There's a classic study by Benjamin Bloom where he looked at people who are elite in all sorts of different fields.

Uh-oh, Jay, did we lose ya? No, I mean, I can hear ya. Okay, your video went out for a sec, you're about good. All right, so there's a classic study by Benjamin Bloom where he looked at people who had been elite across a lot of different fields. He looked at Olympic swimmers, world class tennis players, scientists, musicians, chess players,

and he wanted to know what in their upbringing was common. And he found that they were rarely the most talented. And even in their city, when they were 12, 13 years old, but one of the distinguishing factors that set them apart from their peers was they had a first teacher or a first coach who made learning fun, which is exactly what you're getting at,

where all the deliberate practice, all the hard work that a lot of people would say, it's a grind, it's not gonna be pleasant. They actually learn to experience that as rewarding and that motivated them to keep going. And it sounds like you had that experience too. I'm curious, what did Mr. Foxwell do that made learning so fun?

I think he was one of the first people that introduced a lot of games at school as part of the learning process. So I can't remember what we're learning in grade four, but the idea of everything was gamified. I didn't know what that word was then, but it was this opportunity where everything was play. I think that was a big part of it.

He was also extremely animated and charismatic, and he was providing a lot of energy in what he was sharing and teaching. And I'd say at the same time, he was able to change the classroom. He was one of the first teachers we had that would, and this is, I know, I'm talking about, if we're, I took my like 25 years ago, he was taking classrooms outdoors.

He was, you know, taking the class in the playground. He was taking on the lawn. He wasn't trying to keep us cooped up in this, in this building. And so I felt like he was, he was quite a visionary for, you know, a small class in a small suburb in London. He was really taking risks and trying new things, I guess. He sounds a lot like this incredible teacher that I got to know while I was working on Think Again, Ron Berger.

Ron of all the teachers I've met since I finished school, he's probably the person I most regret not getting to be in a classroom with. He, for years, taught in rural Massachusetts in a tiny town where today his nurse and his firefighter and his plumber are all his former students. And Ron was interested in teaching students in ethic of excellence. And he's sort of a, he's a do-it-yourself kind of guy.

He's very crafty. And he decided that he was gonna do exactly what Mr. Foxwell did, which was he would take students out into the world to learn. And so when they were trying to learn about gas and radon, they actually went and did measurements in local communities. When they were trying to understand scientific

classification and taxonomies of animals, he had the students come up with their own taxonomies. And you know, some people sorted animals by size, others did it by whether they had sharp teeth, others did it by color, or habitat, and they realized, oh, there are all these interesting choices that scientists make, and those are always open to being rethought.

My favorite Ron Berger practice is teaching students to recognize that rethinking and revising your work is actually an enjoyable opportunity as opposed to it's sure. And what he would do is he would send first graders even off to draw a house. And then instead of saying draw a house, he says, we're going to do four different versions of a house. And they accept that their first draft is just a work in progress. And a lot of people told him, don't do this because you're going to leave students frustrated. They're going to get discouraged very easily. How many first graders want to do the same

drawing four times? And he said, you have no idea. After they do the first draft, they can see problems in their drawings. And they are so excited to rethink them and refine them. And his students will often then after that experience insist on doing seven or eight different drafts before they turn something in. And I was just blown away by this and I had our kids try it. And our nine-year-old daughter and our six-year-old son were working on some art and I said, okay, you know what? You can draw whatever you want and then we're going to try a second and a third. And they just lit up, and then the next day, they said, I'm gonna do a few different traps,

and I don't want you to frame the first one. And I think teaching that joy of rethinking is something we should all be lucky to be part of. Yeah, because the truth is, most of us get it right on after a couple of goes anyway, and the idea that you had to get it right the first time is actually what's... That's actually what's created this whole issue is we've been trained to believe you had to get it right the first time. And that was the only way that you got the reward and then you got the

mark. And you're reminding me actually of my art teacher. So I loved art at high school. And art at high school. And I was always very good at graphic design and digital art or collages as opposed to fine art. I'm terrible at painting. But I had that. And my teacher would always, always ask me why I did that, like why I put that color next to that color or why I put this image next to this image. And if I couldn't explain to him coherently why I did that, he wouldn't want to grade that piece. So he wouldn't give me a bad grade, he would just delay the grade until I could explain to him or come up with a real reason for why it was done.

And it's so fascinating that when I think about where did I develop the mindset to act intentionally, it all came from him saying to me, why did you do that? Why did you do that? Why did you do that? And the idea of having to explain it and rethink why I did it was the only way

that he was satisfied as opposed to how it looked or how it appeared. That's very powerful. And I'm wondering if part of what happens then is you know he's going to ask you. And so you actually think through your choices up front in the next time. Yeah, and then he would still do it.

He would ask about a part that I would, and he would annoy me. Like, I would be really frustrated because someone else in the class would get a good grade and, you know, mine would be delayed grading and whatever. And I'd be like, well, mine looks better. And, you know, you'd have all those thoughts. And he would just keep challenging me.

And I think that was such an important, important piece of teaching that has stayed with me for so long. But I wanted to move forward in a few other topics that you talk about in the book. One of the big ones you talk about is charged, conflicted, debate level conversations. And these exist in the workplace, they exist at home. When I think about this, I think about relationships and marriage and in families where we constantly

argue. And I think that's one of the places where we do the least unlearning, because we have such strong views about our family and our upbringing versus our partners or other people in our family that it's so hard to let go of it. Tell us a bit about what you learned about these, about depolarizing a child's conversation or a debate where you just keep arguing the same point every week, which is very common. Yeah, I feel like this is happening everywhere now and the world has just gotten more polarized. One of the funnier studies I came across during the research for the book was that a third of women said

that their pets were better listeners than their partners. And I mean, I guess all your pet can really do is listen. So maybe, I don't know, our cat has an advantage, right? Cause she can't talk back. But I think we talk a lot about the importance of listening. I don't think that we actually really build skills in how to do it well. My favorite approach to listening that I came across

is this idea called motivational interviewing. Comes out of counseling psychology. And the premise is that it's very hard to change somebody else's mind. But it's more likely that you could help them find their own motivation to change their mind. And what that means is, let's say, but it's more likely that you could help them find their own motivation to change their mind. What that means is, let's say, you've got an uncle who you think has a really hateful

set of beliefs. Instead of telling him, here's what you should believe in prosecuting him for being wrong and preaching about why you're right, what you should do is say, I was really interested in how you landed at this set of views. I was curious about what the pros are of having that viewpoint, if you've ever experienced any negative consequences of that. And can you just walk me through that? Because I actually don't understand your perspective that well. And then you listen.

And what most people do when they're asked to talk about the pros and cons of some stance they have is they'll give you a little bit of both. And then your job is to hold up a mirror and help them see that they might be a little more ambivalent than they thought. That there's more nuance in their own views than they saw before. And then you might just elaborate on

there are two kinds of talk that you hear here. This one is called sustain talk, which is basically a bunch of reasons why they would they would stick with the status quo. Change talk is here are some rationales for my, well, I might wanna make a shift in my beliefs or my behaviors. And when you hear Change Talk, the recommendation is

not to manipulate people, not to try to influence them, but to say, you know, it actually sounds like you've considered revisiting this view. I was curious, you know, what do you think would be the consequences of making a shift? And what, if you wanted to do that, what might your plan look like? And I've tried this in a bunch of conversations recently, and it is shocking how much less friction it creates,

and how much more openness not only the other person brings, but how much openness it creates in me. Because I'm not here to give you answers. I am here to learn from you, and I guess that's part of the science-istor scholar mindset and action. Yeah, I completely value that because I feel that that's what way you become a mediator in your own conversation.

Yes. And you become an observer in your own conversation of rather than looking at it as like, this is my ego versus this person's ego. And you talk a bit about, I wanted you to mention this because I love this. You talk a bit about how it's better to bring up only one or two reasons for your viewpoint in a debate rather than providing a lot of reasons. Tell us about that because we often think like we have to re-loaf ten reasons why this

person's wrong. Yeah. To you're telling us to limit that. Tell us a bit about that. Yeah, I'm tempted to pile on too many studies to support this point, which I'll try to avoid, but I will say studies of expert negotiators compared to average negotiators show that the experts use fewer reasons on average because they're afraid of deluding their argument. And they know, look, Jay, if I give you nine reasons why my proposal is fair and compelling,

and you don't like it, then you're just going to pick the least compelling reason, any nor the other eight. Whereas if I just give you my one or two strongest reasons, you're a lot more likely than to take them seriously. And I think the number of reasons obviously matters. There's also the question of how the reasons fit together. And I've done an experiment at a university a while back where we were trying to get non-donors

who'd never given a cent in their lives to their alma mater to think about making a small gift. And we sent them letters and the big test was, is it better to appeal to the more egoistic or the more altruistic reasons for giving? So some people are told, look, alumni say giving feels good. Others are told alumni really appreciate the opportunity to do good through giving.

And we found that both reasons were equally effective. We were able to get over over 6% of alums who had never given, often in 30, 40, 50 years, to write a check, which was exciting. Then we said, all right, two reasons are better than one. Let's put them together. And the giving rate dropped in half. There was a little bit of a conflict between, hey, this is going to make you feel good.

And hey, this is going to do good and help a lot of people. And when we gave these conflicting or sort of mixed reasons, people were more likely to realize that a persuasive attempt was happening. And they put their guard up and they said, wait a minute, you can't influence me. And I think that just strengthens the case to say, look, you want to be careful not to dilute your argument. You also want to make sure there's some clarity and consistency

in the perspective you're bringing to the table. I love that. And I would say that for anyone who's listening or watching, that's a great takeaway because I feel like when we're trying to create change, we try and give way to many reasons and way to many ideas and options. And actually when you really believe

something's an issue and there's a challenge and you just speak about it with passion and empathy and you focus in, the other person actually gets more clarity. So often find like when you're talking to someone, the reason it's hard for them to listen is because you're making it harder for them to listen by speaking about far too many things when actually most of our minds can't focus on more than three things I guess that bringing up any more than the two or three you suggested just goes over people's heads and they don't actually understand what you're trying to say.

Yeah, it's amazing how many times I have to relearn that you cannot bully people into agreeing with you. They'll either fight or they'll choose flight. And I think if you have to watch out for preacher mode, my biggest challenge is prosecutor mode. I think that there's just, there's something about my personality, my values, and also my training as a social scientist

that says if somebody believes something that's inconsistent with rigorous evidence, I feel like it's my responsibility to try to correct their view. And I can't remember the last time that went well. Yeah, absolutely. Well, that's why those three, the preacher, the prosecutor, and the politician are such great reminders. Anytime we feel we've got one of those hats on, we can politely take it off and go back to being the scientist.

And that's the one that gives you so much joy in the long term. You learn more about your partner, you learn more about your colleagues, you learn more about, and when you learn more about someone, you know how to approach them every time. And whereas when you don't learn about them, you approach them in the same way every time and you get the same result.

I think there's so much truth to that. And in fact, I've seen it recently in that I've started telling people that I've increasingly noticed myself, yeah, this is a great example of self persuasion, right? I wrote a whole book about how we need to watch out for slipping into these other mindsets. And I have a habit of going into prosecutor mode when I'm exploring ideas.

And if somebody believes one thing, the way that I really try to understand it is I argue with the exact opposite. And I know that drives people crazy sometimes. So I started telling people, you know, occasionally, and then I have to stop and say, okay, more often than not, when I'm in a disagreement, I become a prosecutor. And if you ever catch me doing that, please feel free to call me out. And I've had people do it.

I've also had some early readers of the book now say, hey, you know that lawyer thing that you wrote about, you're doing it right now. And it's a great sort of check yourself moment to say, okay, I just caught a glimpse to my reflection in the mirror. I do not like the person who's staring back at me right now. That's not who I want to be. I love that Adam.

Adam, we end every episode of on-purpose, as you know, with a segment called the Final Five, which you have to answer in one word, to one sentence maximum. This is your Final Five. Are you ready? I'm ready. Let's start with this question. What's something you wish you had rethought earlier? I decided not to study abroad and I wish I had rethought that. What's the time when you

rethought something where you realized your original thought was actually right. I actually, the title for Think Again was an example on this. The title clicked for me one day. Think again, the power of knowing what you don't know. I love it. That's the book I want to write. And then I gave an early draft to my challenge network, the group of readers who brought a lot of criticism. And some of them said, well, don't you want a different title? Like, what if the book was called, I might be wrong,

or unlearning. And I rethought it a bunch. And I said, well, I'm actually pretty excited about those titles. And I think they're really novel and compelling. And every time I explained the book to people, there was just something sticky about saying, you know what, whenever you think about that,

you might wanna think again. And I realized that's a phrase I use all the time, and it captures something that I stand for, and I couldn't let it go. I love it. I love thinking again. I think it's a great title, and it's interesting. I went through the same thing with things like a monk.

So I had pretty much every publisher and imprint that I went to meet tell me they didn't think the book should be called Think Like Among. Are you serious? That is one of the best book titles I've ever seen. No, seriously, honestly, and I was so insecure about it for a long time, even up until the day before we launched it, because I'd heard that from like,

I met 17 imprints and I heard that from like 14 to 15 of the imprints. Why? That they believed that we should change the title. They were just like, well, Jay imprints and I heard that from like 14 to 15 of the imprints. Why? That they believed that we should change the title. They were just like, well, J, who wants to be a monk? What does a monk mean to people? And I, and I was struggling with alternatives because this was the only true thing that the book was trying to do. And, and I felt was, was my unique offering in the world that I'm, I'm trying to, you know, pass

along. And so it was so hard, and, and, you know, I'm glad that we stuck with it. But I've rethought it a million times, you know, so it was, it was very, I was very scared up until the day we got like, results, and all the less rest of it. I was so scared. Well, it sounds like the imprints you met, you met with were not your target audience. but I actually think it's an ingenious title for the exact reason that they're highlighting, which is, I don't think most people want to be monks, but we all aspire to have the wisdom and also the equanimity that you model.

And so the idea that I could, even if I don't have the patience or the discipline to immerse myself in a spiritual tradition like that, that I could learn to if I don't have the patience or the discipline to immerse myself in a spiritual tradition like that, that I could learn to think more like one, that's right at my fingertips, right? Yeah, well, you're my target. Adam Euro is gonna be my target audience. From now on, no, I love that title.

I think that anybody who told you to rethink it clearly should rethink their role in titling books. I love that. Well, thank you for that. All right, question number three. We've been spending so long on these. This is great, but I love it. Sorry.

No, no, no, it's great. Question number three is, what's the worst piece of advice you've ever received? The worst piece of advice that I ever received was not to give credit to undergraduate co-authors on a paper I was writing because they were just research assistants and everyone has them. Wow, interesting. That's a great one. Thank you for sharing that. What's the worst piece of advice you've ever given someone? The worst piece of advice I've ever given someone is probably don't go back to school. Ah, interesting. Okay, I should talk to you about that.

I've been thinking of going back to school. So interesting, for what? So that's a big question, which I could go into all that, there's like three different areas that I'm fascinated by. And I think I don't know enough, again, I don't know enough about what I would end up studying if I end up choosing any of the three.

Oh, broad terms, neuro sciences is definitely one of them. I'm fascinated by, my passion's always been to find the juxtaposition or the intersection between timeless wisdom and modern science. And so for me, I'm always trying to find, like, I love reading studies about how meditation impacts the brain, how a lot of my old monk practices affect the brain. And so neuroscience is definitely one of the big ones.

I'm behavioral economic, economics books have just been my, my passion forever. And so anything around human behavior, but wanting to know what to study. Some still exploring it, but I shared it with you prematurely, but it's definitely been something I've been considering. So it's good to hear you say that, so I like that. I like that a lot.

This is a longer conversation, but when you have a moment, look up a colleague of mine, a Michael Platte. He's an economic neuroscientist, and he basically, he uses brain imaging to understand behavioral economics, which there are a few others like him. And I wonder if that's a synthesis of your interests. Oh, that's great.

Well, thank you for sharing. I will definitely pick your brain properly when we... Please do. I look forward to that. I thank you so much. I really appreciate that. And fifth and final question. What is something that you don't know about yet that you're fascinated to learn about?

This is such a long list. I think one thing that is just a total, I'll give you a macro and a micro one, and you can pick. On the microside, I really wanna know why it is that you can't tickle yourself. That's genius. I, everyone's trying it right now at home, right? Like everyone,

I mean, they're all, I've, I've asked neuroscientists, I've run Google searches, cannot get to the bottom of this one. So that's the next book. Tickle, tickle something. Yeah, maybe the best. I'm not sure I'm the first to write that book, but I definitely want to read it. The best answer I heard was, well, you can't surprise yourself. And, you know, if you go to tickle yourself, your brain already knows it's going to happen. And it took me about four seconds to debunk that because I said, you know what, Jay, I'm going to tickle you right now. Did you still laugh? You would have, right?

And so even if you know it's coming, it doesn't seem to matter. Anyway, that's one thing I would love to understand better. Should we do a macro one, too? Yeah, tell us macro two. I love that. That's a great answer, though. It's fun. Bigger picture.

I think one of the things I'm curious about is how we can establish some common ground across very partisan divides. For example, take any political leader that you think is great or terrible today. The moment that you try to point out flaws in their character or shortcomings in their confidence, people accuse you of being partisan. And I would like to have an independent standard where we say, look, this is what we mean by

leadership skill. This is how we judge values so that we can try to get on the same page. I love that. And I hope you go on to create what that is. And then we start using that. I think that's such a, not just noble approach, but it's what's needed right now. The idea to look at things objectively

without sentimentality, without attachment, without, you know, to be really approached something and go, well, what is best for everyone? And to approach conversations like that in a way driven through data, but also through intuition, that would be amazing. So I think it would be fun. It is, I have to ask you, Jay, before we wrap, one thing that I'm adding to my list as I do the book tour is I would love to know something you think that I should be rethinking.

Oh, okay, that's fascinating. What do I think you should be rethinking? This is hard, do you know why this is hard? Because I agree with you on so many things. Well, that's a mistake. Yeah, that you need to rethink. Like I've read all your books and like, I find them so fascinating and I agree with you

on so and so. I think I don't know, this is interesting and it's because I don't know this about you. So you may, this may open up a whole another conversation. Because you're so open to so many things, I would love to know how open or how much you've allowed spiritual thought to match your scientist mind into your life because I think someone who's as open as you, and maybe you already have, and you're like, you've already done that and that's why you are who you are.

But... No, you just hit the bulls eye. I would be fascinated because I just think that you are, I think your thoughts are already so spiritually evolved. And if that's where you've got from studying organizational psychology and behavior, then I'm fascinated to see what you'll go on to achieve with that added to it. So yeah, that would be my addition.

And thank you. You nailed it. It's a gaping hole in my learning and my, and my, really in my training too, right? Which is anytime I came across spiritual ideas, I would either, you know, look for evidence or I would say, well, how do you know? And it's only more recently that I've recognized how many of the fundamental principles of psychology that have resonated with me do have these roots in very ancient religious traditions in philosophical wisdom.

And I think I have a lot to learn on that front. Now, I love that you're extremely humble, modest, and kind, and so I love all the time we ever get to spend together Adam. I recommend to everyone to please go and grab a copy of the book. Think again, you will not regret it. I do believe that it's a skill that everyone needs right now

and we need desperately in our careers, relationships, family, the world, you know, leaders, it's such a big need and I'm so glad that you're helping us think again. So Adam, thank you so much. Is there anything else you want to share that you like, Jay, I have to share this and you haven't let me share it.

I'm open to that. Now, Jay, this has just been such a thrill. I will say, since you raised the politician, prosecutor, preacher, scientists, I put together a little question error that people could take to figure out where they stand and which of those modes they fall into most often. So if anybody wants to take it, it's just at atomgrant.net.

Oh, I love that. Yeah, definitely. I love finding out more about myself. So that's great. Adamgrant.net, if you want to go and figure out which of the prosecutor, preacher, politician, or scientist who are, so please go and we'll put that in the show notes as well. Adam, thank you so much for tuning in and so grateful to have spent this time with you as always and excited for lunch or dinner next time. I can't wait. Thank you so much for having me Jay. This was really fun.

Thanks Adam. Hey everyone, thank you so much for listening to On Purpose and I really hope you enjoyed that conversation with Adam and like I said at the beginning, it's your lucky day because there is a whole other conversation waiting for you. Thank you all and enjoy part two. Hey everyone, welcome back to on purpose, the number one health podcast in the world. Thanks to each and every single one of you that come to listen, learn and grow. It means the world to me that we've kept this incredible

community throughout the pandemic, throughout lockdown, where we've continued to learn, trying to expand our minds and get the information and knowledge that can help us move forward in our lives. Now today's guest is someone that I have been a fan of for a long time. His books are absolutely incredible. I've had to speak digitally, never physically,

but digitally and it's been an absolute joy. I'm so grateful to welcome to unpurpose none other than Adam Grant. Now Adam has been a Wharton's top rated professor for seven straight years. As an organized psychologist, he is a leading expert on how we can find motivation and meaning and live more generous and creative lives.

All values that I absolutely love. And he has been recognized as one of the world's 10 most influential management thinkers and fortunes 40 under 40. He's the author of four New York Times bestselling books that have sold over two million copies and translated into 35 languages, give and take originals, option B and power moves. His books have been named among the years best by Amazon, Apple, and the Financial Times and the Wall Street Journal. Adam is the host of Work Life, a chart-topping

TED original podcast, which I really love and want you all to tune into. His TED talks on original thinkers and give-as-and-takeers have been viewed more than 20 million times. His speaking consulting clients include Google, the MBA, Bridgewater, and the Gates Foundation, and he writes on work and psychology for the New York Times. Please welcome with a very warm and loving welcome to on purpose, Adam Grant.

Adam, thank you for doing this. Don't thank me yet, Jay. We'll see how this goes. Thank you for the overly-generated centered introduction. I can pruss you. We're going downhill for care. I love it. I've been following you, you know, I think I'm trying to remember which was the first book I read. I think I read Give Is and Take, given Take, sorry, and then originals. And then I did a bit of auction B and I need to grab power moves. But like I said, I've really followed your work for quite a while and have just been deeply impressed by how you've spoken about so many themes through your research that I feel

are so tied into my life's work and what I'm really focused on. So this is a treat for me and I want to start off by asking you a question maybe that you don't get asked so much. I find it very interesting that you are actually a diver or you used to be a diver. And I wanted to know if it's still something you do and where that even stems from. Yeah, well, I'm long retired. Let's be clear. I think it was the summer before high school when I was playing video games all day and my mom told me I had to get out and get some fresh air So we went to a local pool and I saw one of the life cards on break doing these amazing flips and twists

And I said I have to learn how to do that Never mind that I walked like Frankenstein. I was afraid of heights and I could hardly jump at all But I basically became obsessed with diving and spend the next six years kind of living and breathing it and with diving and spend the next six years kind of living and breathing it. And I retired, gosh, it's I retired about 20 years ago. And last summer, I got back in the pool for the first time and and did some of my old dives, which was a good reminder that it's not always true that it's just like riding a bike. I love that. What was your retirement dive worth it? Was the last dive you ever did a proud moment? Oh, you know, the funny thing is I retired, I retired between seasons. So I didn't even have a retirement dive, but if I did, I was, I was learning a front three and a half on three meter,

which is just more flips than any person should do before hitting the water. which is just more flips than any person should do before hitting the water. And I crashed a few times and then said okay, I feel like I've exceeded the expectations I had for myself as an athlete and I'm nowhere near talented enough to make the Olympics so it's time to move on. I love that. I think there's a bit of breakthrough when you're speaking to me. I don't know if that's because of the video or I don't know if we did try without video to disappear, but let's if there's a delay on my side, I'm just waiting so just clarifying

that and we can edit that out. But I also read that you're a big movie guy. I'm massively into movies. I wanted to ask you what's been a movie that's impacted you the most or has almost, would you say embodies some of your work? Like if if given take was a book a movie that's impacted you the most or has almost, would you say, embodies some of your work? Like, if given take was a book, a movie, what would be a movie that would represent it? Or if a original was a movie, what would be a movie to represent it? So, I've never been asked this before. It's such an interesting question. I think if given take was a movie, it would have to be either love actually or pay it forward. That's also my love hearing those answers around the book.

One of the things I really want to dive in with you is, you know, you have a great way of communicating, often tough messages or ideas. And there's a quote by Albert Einstein that definitely I try and aspire to live towards where he said that if you can't explain something simply, you don't understand it well enough. And that's always been a big bedrock of how I try and think and work and the content that

I try and create. But, you know, you've been ranked Wharton's number one professor for seven years straight, which is insane, by the way. What is it that has made your teaching style so attractive? Or what have you built to try and not get that accolade? Because I know that's not your goal. But what is it about your teaching style that you've worked on or developed or learned along the way?

That's helpful for teachers, guides, speakers, leaders, communicators. I might be the worst person to answer that question. I've never sat in my classroom. So I'm not entirely sure, but I've collected a lot of feedback from students, especially earlier on when I was struggling a lot in the classroom and tried to figure out when there are sessions that really work, what's behind them. And I think the thing that I love doing most in the classroom is bringing in the element of surprise.

When I was a teenager, I used to perform as a magician. And there was something incredibly exciting and curiosity-provoking about setting up an expectation that a trick was going to go one way and then boom, something completely different happens. And that was very much what hooked me in psychology early on. That idea that I thought one thing was going to be true and then I discovered the opposite was actually true. And so I think a lot of the time that I spend in the classroom is trying to challenge conventional wisdom and figure out, okay, what are the assumptions that my students hold about how to build a fulfilling career, how to make wise decisions, how to lead effectively,

and then turn those upside down. And I think that that immediately creates a sense of intrigue as if you know, hey Maybe I didn't know everything. I thought I needed to know in order to be successful Absolutely great answer more more commonalities. I love I absolutely love David Blaine and Darren Brown I think I think they're genius and I was fortunate enough to see Darren Brown this was when he was he's now on Broadway Well, he was, he's now on Broadway, well, he was on Broadway,

but he was testing his show, The Secret, and I got to be in one of the test events that he did, and it was a genius. I don't know if you follow either of that, but I love the idea of magic and teaching and surprise. What's, I guess, with that question, what's one of the things that you think, seeing as you're trying to teach through surprise,

and that's what fascinates you in psychology. What lesson or teaching if you come across that is surprised you the most in your journey, where you were just like, that was something that I had no idea was gonna be the case. You know, I think one of the defining surprises of at least in my career was when I started to write give and take. I'd

spent about a decade studying generosity and success at work and I thought I understood it pretty well. I assume you spend ten years studying a problem and you have a pretty good handle on it. And I remember I was pitching, it was my book proposal. I went around to meet with a bunch of different editors and have them react to the ideas. And one of them just asked me a question that really got me questioning my own assumptions. And I went back and re-analyzed a bunch of my own data.

And I discovered something that I had not noticed in a full 10 years. So as you know, I was really interested in the dynamics of giving take in matching, where givers are the people who are always asking, hey, Jay, what could I do for you? Takers are the opposite. They want to know, well, what can you do for me? And most of us don't want to be too selfish or too generous. So we end up being matches. And we say, look, I'll do something for you if you do something for me. And the paradox that I found in my data when studying the productivity of engineers,

the grades of medical students, and the revenue of salespeople, was that the givers were consistently the worst performers, because they were constantly sacrificing themselves for other people, and sometimes they were getting burned and taken advantage of by takers as well. And then I found that the givers were also overrepresented among the best performers, not just the worst performers. And it was such an eye-opening discovery to say, hey, this idea of trying to help others with no strings attached, that could actually hold your career back, or it could accelerate

it. And we've got to understand how to blend success in generosity. Yeah, I'm so glad you raised that one because I had that question down here. I really wanted to ask you that. Like, you know, I think that that is such a remarkable thing because sometimes we hear these cliches or if they're not cliches, we hear, you know, these repeated statements where it's like,

oh, if you're a giver or you serve and make a difference and you'll be successful and if you're always much, and you found obviously from what you've just said is that actually they were the most successful but also the least successful. What was the pattern of doing it in a successful way if there was one? What did you find to be that insight? Yeah, so I think there's a short-term long-term distinction that really matters here. Taking is often effective in the short run, but in the long run, ends up being too transactional. It burns a lot of bridges. It sort of destroys relationships

and reputations. And so if you just stretch out the time horizon long enough, a lot of givers who struggled early on would over time discover, okay, I build a lot of trust. I'm able to connect what I do to a really great sense of purpose that's bigger than me, and that's motivating. And I also learn a lot through sense of purpose that's bigger than me, and that's motivating. And I also learn a lot through solving other people's problems. But even if you look at the long term, there were still a lot of givers who failed, along with those who succeeded. And I think the big differences broke down to the choices they made around who they helped,

when they helped and how they helped. So the failed givers would basically help all the people all the time with all the requests. And that's kind of a recipe for saying, OK, look, no good deed goes unpunished, right? You get a reputation for being helpful and also pretty competent and then pretty soon everyone wants them. Successful givers said, if you have a mystery or reputation of selfish behavior, if you might be a taker,

I'm not going to be as generous with you as I am if you're a giver or a matcher. And I'm also going to make sure I block out time to get my own work done so that I'm able to advance my own goals and priorities and take care of my own well-being, not just help other people. And I'm going to try to give in ways that I enjoy and excel at so that when I do help it's energizing and in some ways makes a unique contribution as opposed to being Distracting and exhausting and so I think just just recognizing that every time you say no That's an opportunity to say yes where you can make more of a difference. That seems to be something that really helps givers

I love them. So I'm so glad we're diving into this topic because I think so much of my community and my audience diving into this topic because I think so much of my community, my audience, often has that question of like, I'm so empathetic and I'm giving my time and, you know, this person doesn't value it or they misuse it. And I love what you said there. It's like actually when you give in a way that you enjoy and you give in a way that empowers you and feels nourishing to you, you actually end up having more of an impact on that person. I guess we all get trapped in, and I wonder if you've done anything. We all get so much, we get so trapped in this feeling of guilt and kind of judging ourselves when we think people think we might not be good people or we think people think that we're not generous people. And I feel like so much of it becomes so

heady and mental around what we think people think of us. What have you found in that regard where how do you start to untie that not almost of getting lost in just like I want to be perceived as generous or helpful or useful or, you know, likable? Well, first of all, I don't think there's anything wrong with caring about your image, right? I think if we don't care at all what other people think of us, then it's pretty easy to slip

into being a taker. I think when we run into trouble is when concern for our reputation outweighs concern for the people we're trying to help. And so ideally, the primary motivation for saying yes and trying to support somebody else is you believe in their potential and you care about their well-being and their success. And then, secondarily, you know what, if you think that's going to strengthen your relationship or they're going to think that you're a kind giving person, that's okay, right? That's actually going to then affirm your identity and your value system.

And I think one thing we have to do, I found this over and over again when I've studied people across professions, is the most sustainable giving comes out of a combination of self-concerned and other concern. So we don't want to be totally selfless. It's not to say that, you know, I want to help anyone because I want something back. But I want to make sure when I'm helping other people, I'm not depleting my own reserves.

And so I think just saying, look, it's okay to want to both do good and look good. Just make sure what's in the windshield in front of you is the doing good. And then every once in a while, you can check the rear of your mirror and ask, okay, to this look horrible. Yeah, I think that's really, that's a really refreshing way of looking at it. You know, that's, that's a really elevating way of looking at it. I think sometimes we get lost in this, trying to chase this artificial mindset

of I don't care what anyone thinks of me. And that's not very true for 99.9% of us. I mean, I don't know anyone who doesn't completely care of how someone perceives them and how they are perceived. And you're so right that it's okay to want to do good and look good. And I love that principle you just shared with us of like not making looking good, overweighing,

doing good. And you know, you don't want it to outweigh that, that reputational impact. Where, where are you seeing that, where are you seeing the biggest mistakes we make in, in starting that journey? Sometimes we feel we don't have a lot to give. And I think a lot of people feel like this for a lot of their life. They're like, well, what do I give? I have nothing to give. I don't have money, I don't have time,

I don't have skills, I don't have confidence. And so they naturally default to being takers. How does that journey start for someone who's sitting and watching and listening to this thing? Like, okay, Adam, you're best selling all of the J.E. got this podcast, but I'm just struggling to get started. What do I give? How do I build that connection with people? This is something I hear all the time from my students.

And early on when I was first starting to teach, I'd have these students come into office hours and they'd say, look, my goal is to have the most successful career I can for the next 35 years. So then I have enough to start giving back. And that just fell backward to me because the people that had achieved success who I admired the most started giving for. Long before they had accomplished something that was noteworthy. And then to your question, well, what then can I give before I've succeeded? And I actually think we all have a lot to give.

So let me throw out a few ideas. The first one is an entrepreneur and Adam Riffkin taught me that one of the most effective things we can all do is a five minute favor. Just finding a small way to add value to other people's lives. And if you break down the kinds of five minute favors that people love to do, listening counts as one, helping other people feel seen, heard, valued, and appreciated. Giving people a quick bit of feedback

on something they're working on, just providing a reaction, even if you're not an expert. Making an introduction between two people that you think could benefit from knowing each other, but currently are not connected. All really simple things we can do that matter a lot to other people, but cost us relatively little. I think that's the place that I would start personally.

Yeah, I think there's a great great answers and I'm glad that people have asked you that a million times before because it's fascinating to me. So when I was 18, which is the first time I interacted with the monk, the monk was speaking about selfless service and talking about how the goal of life was to use our skills and the service of others. And that message really attracted me when I was 18 years old and it really became a big part of why I made the decisions I ended up choosing to do.

And I remember just a couple of years ago when I was giving a corporate talk and I remember one of the executives coming up to me afterwards, and they were just like, how old were you when you realized that service was the goal? And I was like, well, realized probably much later on, but I understood the point at age 18, although realization will take a lifetime,

but I started to practice it. And he was like, the first time I felt that life was beyond me was when I had my first child. And he was saying he was like 35, 36 years old when he had his first child. And he was just explaining that that thought of service beyond. Tell me about the difference between serving your family or serving people you know and serving people you don't know. I mean, treat by that extension and expansion. And if you've done any work in that space of looking at both not just satisfaction, but also impact and growth and where that comes from.

Yeah, this has been one of my favorite questions to think about in organizational psychology. I was, I actually was part of my own career dilemma. I wanted to have a career where I could, I could have a positive impact on other people. And I had no idea what line of work was going to fulfill that goal. I knew I didn't want to be a doctor, even though that was a very high impact profession because blood made me squeamish and biology was not my strong suit. And then I thought about, okay,

I'd fall in love with psychology, maybe I should be a psychologist, but it felt kind of limiting to only help one person at a time. And I wanted to try to have a broader impact. And so I want to and gather data from over 30,000 people across industries and countries. And I looked at what kind of impact they felt they were having through their work. Was it on people they knew, was it on strangers, and then what did that mean for their ultimate sense of satisfaction and meaning. And it was as clear a pattern as I've

ever seen as a social scientist. It was much more powerful from a purpose standpoint to help a few people that you know in really significant and lasting ways than it was to touch millions of people in ways that might be much more trivial or forgettable. And I think that's something that a lot of us get backward, especially when we're young, right, to come in and say,

okay, making a difference is all about the number of people that I reach. As a post is saying, no, it's actually how much your work counts in the lives of the people that you know personally. And I'm curious, you've had this journey of, starting out very, very local in your impact as a monk. And now reaching millions and millions of people with your podcast and your videos. So do you still experience that that person the

person impact or is it harder to see that today? You know what? That is such a good question and it's something actually that so I have a group of I have a small group of people that I still teach meditation to weekly and this is a group of this is a new group of people I have one back in London where I'm born and raised and And this is a group of people. I have one back in London where I'm born and raised. And I also have a group of people here locally in LA. And we haven't been getting together because of the pandemic.

We've been doing it digitally. And literally, it's just like 15 people that show up. And it's not that they are more important or less important than anyone. It's just a group of people who are really enthusiastic about learning meditation in a deep way and allow me to share the depth of what I've learned and experienced. And I always say to them every week, I'm like, thank you so much for giving me this opportunity. Like they're really grateful I'm making time. They're like,

you're making time for us. I'm like, no, you don't get it. Like this is so fulfilling because I get to speak from the heart completely openly about anything and everything that I've learned in my journey. And not to say that I don't find my podcast and videos fulfilling, of course I do, I'm so grateful to have these platforms. But I agree with the point that you're making that from a personal satisfaction,

well, not just the point, the research that you've done, that the personal satisfaction I gain from having a deep meaningful exchange with a few people, definitely outweighs reading a million comments or whatever it may be, because there's just such a story of word. There's such an intimacy with that journey and seeing someone progress from stage one, stage two, to stage three, there's so much intimacy with that journey and seeing someone progress from like stage one,

stage two to stage three. There's so much joy in that. So that, yeah, that's my answer. And I wasn't expecting to answer that question, but that's that's the first thing that gave me my mind. Yeah, that may, I mean, that makes a ton of sense to me. It's, it's something I was, I was first studying when I was in grad school, just doing experiments to say, look, if you have a job that benefits anyone, it's one thing to know that intellectually. It's another thing to come face to face with that person and see the impact that you make in their life. And I've done some experiments where I got people

in call centers who were raising money for universities, just to meet one scholarship student who benefited from their work. And after we're just that five minute face toto-face interaction with that one person who's been touched by the work they do, dramatically increase their efforts. And they spent about 142% more weekly time on the phone and then raised 171% more money. Just from that one five minute face-to-face connection, and I was stunned by that. And I think what it left me thinking is, you know, a lot of us do work that matters, but

we don't really get to see the end result. And it's worth reflecting everyone's so while on, when people were soft, Bob didn't exist. So, you know, if you weren't doing your work, who would be heart or who would be helpless? And then those people, those people are the meaning and purpose of your work. And the more you know about them and the more connected you are to them, the greater sense of purpose that you experience day to day. Yeah, absolutely.

And I love how real that is. Like anyone and everyone right now can do that. And I know people who during the pandemic were delivering groceries to their next door neighbor because their neighbor had a young child or was elderly or, you know, I know people that were teaching their friends, kids, English while they taught their friends kids math. Or, you know, because the parents were doctors and they couldn't be doing homeschooling at the time.

There was just so many beautiful exchanges and moments where people were just impacting the people around them. And I think there's so much greatness in that because it's just accessible to everyone. No one has to suddenly build a brand or building a company or all the other things that we think we have to do to feel satisfied and connected. I guess how does that work with criticism at them? Because I think in the same way, how do you understand that? You work with incredibly influential people and thinkers

who go through a lot of stress and pressure. What do you find with the same with stress and pressure? Is it also that an intimate pain and exchange is also outweighs the pain of negative comments or negative press and all of that. Are you seeing that only on this spectrum? That's a great question. I think the jury is still out on that one. I would say one thing we know is emotionally bad tends to be stronger than good.

So it often will take three doses of praise to equal the emotional force of one piece of criticism. My general sense is that criticism from strangers can hurt more in a lot of ways because it comes completely on the outside of the context of a relationship that has some care. It will seem to it. But it can also hurt a lot less because you can say, I don't care what those strangers think of me. And I think the same, the reverse can be true for criticism that comes up close. I do find it really interesting

that both in work relationships and in friendships, a lot of people will say, the closer the relationship, the harder it is for me to criticize people. And to me, that means the relationship is not as close as it could be, because I think in a truly trusting relationship, your intentions are so well understood by the other person that whether you say something that might be praise

or criticism, they immediately know that you're offering it to try to help them. And so I think, you know, for a lot of us, that means getting a little more comfortable, having uncomfortable conversations. It means, you know, for a lot of us, that means getting a little more comfortable having uncomfortable conversations. It means, you know, sort of previewing a psychologist often recommend our criticism by saying, look, I'm about to give you these comments because I have very high expectations of you and I'm confident you can reach them.

Yeah, no, no, I think that's, yeah, that's a great way of looking at it. And I think for so many people that it is, it's really tough to imagine. I started to realize that when I started to work with people who, you know, are here from people who perform in front of hundreds of thousands of people and when I was working with them as a coach or as teaching meditation or whatever it may have been, and I started to realize just how much,

even chemically, what's happening in the brain when you are adored by millions and then all of a sudden the next day you are demonized by hundreds of thousands or whatever it may be. And it's just like, it is such an extreme that most of the planet doesn't get to experience. That it's really hard to comprehend and understand

because for a long time, I think before I was in touch with that, I used to think, oh yeah, but people are rich, they'll get over it. Or people are, people are rich, they have beautiful homes, they have beautiful partners, they'll get over it. But we've realized that that doesn't substitute it either. And have you seen that in your work about how your bank balance or your access to a network,

whatever, that doesn't substitute the emotional pain that comes with any of that? No, it doesn't. In some cases, it helps a little bit because it feels like you don't have all your eggs in one basket. And even if there are a few million people who don't like me over here, I've got a bunch of other fans to lean back on. You don't have a lot of the hardships that my face

is, I think, is a commoner, if you look at the data. There's also those some really interesting evidence. This is Jennifer Carson, Mar and her colleagues, showing that the more status you have, the more it hurts to lose it. It's like falling off a one-foot ledge for just a 30-foot roof. There's a big difference there.

It hurts a lot more to fall from a serious eye if it does to fall when you've hardly climbed at all. And so I think that just the distance of the drop is significant for a lot of people. And then there's also the fact that you've worked really hard to earn the status that you have. And so you become more attached to it, it becomes more part of your identity, and it maybe hurts you a little more viscerally. The most helpful thing I've seen Jay on this is I did a podcast episode a couple years

ago on how to love criticism, where I went on inside with Ray Dalio at Bridgewater and a bunch of his colleagues. And I've been studying them for years and all the things that I learned about how to take criticism. I think the best insight came from Doug Stone and Sheila Keen, who are conflict mediators. And they said, look, you need every time somebody criticizes you, you need to give yourself a second score,

which is basically a score for how you took the criticism. So let's say you're in school and somebody gives you a D minus on a paper, right? You can't change the D minus. It's already been given. The best thing you can do is to try to get an A plus for how well you took the D minus. And I think that every time I get a piece of criticism, or I'm talking to somebody who's trying to, you know, to get a little bit less defensive, is to say, look, the criticism's already out there. Whatever people think of you or your work, you're probably not going to say a whole lot that's going to change it.

And the more you try to change it, the more defensive you're going to look. So instead, why don't you just try to ace the response to the criticism? I love that insight. What a brilliant insight. And what I love about is, is that that's so much more about changing your own perception of yourself rather than trying to change someone else's viewpoint that they have of you, which is usually our reaction

to criticism or feedback is how do I now change to be perceived differently as opposed to change my own perception of myself, which often is what kind of holds us back from trying new things out or opening ourselves up to failure or making mistakes. to change my own perception of myself, which often is what kind of holds us back from trying new things out or opening ourselves up to failure or making mistakes. That's a great insight. That's huge.

I love that one. Ray was a great guest on the podcast and been a voice. I'm glad to hear that. It's interesting to see how people have mastered... I forgot the names of the two mediators that you mentioned, the conflict mediators. But it's interesting to see how there are so many deeper insights when we think of giving feedback. That one's truly, truly unique.

One thing I'm thinking about, though, is let's say, I want to go back to give and take for a second before we move forward. If someone's listening right now, Adam, and they're saying, you know, Adam, I've been, I've been a giver, I've been taken from, and now I feel like I can never give again. Like I feel like I can never trust again. I'm stuck.

It's now ruining my current relationship or current marriage or current work situation. Where does someone in that position start? What is the healthy choice for them? I've seen this enough times that it seems to be a really common experience. And I think the first thing I would say is, Satya and Adela had a great observation on this front recently. He said, look, a lot of times,

whether it's the pandemic or whether it's a personal struggle, we think we then have to flip a switch. And that's what a lot of people do. They say, okay, I've been a giver. I've gotten burned one too many times. And now I've got to put myself first or else no one else will. And they're overcorrecting.

And they're switching from one extreme of giving to the other extreme of taking. And Sajji said, no, we want to think about it much more like a dial that we're constantly tuning and adjusting, which I thought was a good metaphor. And I think that's what I've seen successful givers do. It's something that I've also seen in the data over and over.

Is you want to start by saying, OK, let me scream the people that I interact with when somebody asks me for help. Instead of just immediately saying, yes, let me figure out first if they seem to be somebody who's really worth the investment in my time. And maybe I could test the waters a little bit by offering to spend five or ten minutes with them and seeing if they're actually appreciative or grateful or if they show a sense of entitlement.

And then maybe I'll go an extra step and I will ask them to help someone else that I'm trying to help. And see if they're willing to pay it forward that way, which is one of my favorite tests personally. And then the other, I guess the other thing I would do, Jay, is I would say every giver needs some mattress to protect them. The beauty of mattress, matching being most people's default in new relationships,

is they believe in an eye for an eye, of just world, what goes around comes around. And so, matches are extremely tough on takers because they feel like that's a violation of fairness and justice. And so, they're very good at protecting givers from takers. And they do it in part because they really want to see takers get what they deserve. But they also, they believe the generosity should be rewarded. And so, matches are kind of like the karma police who make sure that should be rewarded. And so, matches are kind of like the karma police who make sure that, you know, that fairness is maintained in the system. So, find some people who really believe in justice and get them to be your protective

shield. Yeah, there's a rough rule that I remember we had in the monastery in the Ashroom and it was like you should always have, you know, if you had to break down your connections or your relationships, it would be like 20% It was like you should always have, if you had to break down your connections or your relationships, it would be like 20% should be people that you're learning from, 20% should be people that you're teaching, and then 60% would be people that are at the same level.

And that was kind of like how we were recommended to construct our, I wouldn't call it a network, but construct our teaching and coordination in the atrium. Because we found that for so many people, they were just teaching. So they were like 80% surrounded by people that they were teaching and guiding and giving to you.

And then I 20% at the top, but then there was no one that they had to share their pains with or share their real stories with. And we were always recommended that. And I always liked that because it just, very much put into perspective how many people I needed. And it's kind of like what you're saying, like matches, you need those people on your level as well as being a giver and a takeer in some places. That is such an interesting breakdown. To say, look, there are people you should be learning from and there are people you should be teaching. I wonder, where do you draw the line on that?

Because one of the things I really admire about a lot of actually a lot of our mutual friends is that they're totally committed to being lifelong learners. And one of their core philosophies is that you can learn something from, excuse me, let me say that again. I think one of the core philosophies of a lifelong learner is that you can learn something from every person you meet. And so if I only have 20% of people that I'm learning from, am I missing out on the wisdom

that I could be cleaning from the other 80? Yeah, that's a great question. I guess I should clarify more what I meant. What I meant is the people that are naturally seen as your teachers or seniors. So correct. Right. That yes, 100% we should be learning from everyone. You can learn from the people that you teach. You learn sometimes more from your students than your teachers, but just recognizing that you need people in your life that you do naturally seek wisdom and guidance from.

I feel like we haven't necessarily built a strong culture apart from school. Like if you think about it, after water or after school or where anyone of the studies, rarely does anyone have a mentor or a coach or a guide. Like we don't really have that as part of Western culture. Like it's not, it doesn't have a stronghold. If you, I don't know if you did a research study and asked people how many of them have a coach or a mentor or a teacher or whatever you want to call it, we know all the successful people do, whether it's athletes or CEOs, but a lot of the majority of the population

wouldn't say that. So I would say that to clarify that point, it would be that 20% of your life should be surrounded by guides, mentors, coaches, and teachers as a role, as opposed to you being a learner. You should always be a learner in all areas of your life. Does that make sense? Yeah, that resonates. And I think you're right. We need much more mentorship than we have. And I think the sad reality is that if you look at most Western countries,

many people don't even have one friend at work, let alone a mentor. And so I remember when one of the questions I got a lot when given take first came out was, okay, how do I be a good mentee so that I'm not being a taker in this relationship? And, you know, first, I would just say that people look, you know, your job as a mentee is just to try to achieve the potential that your mentor sees in you. I think a great mentor is someone who sees more potential in you than you see in yourself. And if you can work to try to make that vision a reality, then you have made your mentor feel like, okay, my time was well spent, right?

I've really invested in the meaningful way in this person. And as I started giving that feedback, a lot of people came back and said, you know what, I'd love to be able to do this, but I don't even have a mentor. So how can I be a good mentor? Where do I find a mentor? I think you're right. We need a much better both cultural norm and infrastructure,

so that everybody who's trying to build a career or a life has access to wisdom. Yeah, no, I'm glad to hear that reflection from you and and get that assurance and that idea. I was saying to a group of young people in London that I mentor. I was sharing with them the other day that I was saying to a group of young people in London that I mentor, I was sharing with them the other day, that I was saying that part of a role of a friend is to remind you of how far you've come, and part of the role of a mentor is to remind you of how far you have to go. And you need both.

You need your friends saying, because I was reminding one of them of how far they have to go. And they were asking me in a challenging way. They were like, why are you doing that? It's making them feel uncomfortable. And I was like, no, that's part of my, in your life. But you guys shouldn't see that as a right for you to do that to him too.

You need to encourage him and notice the greatness here. So it's nice hearing that thought. Let's talk about work for a moment. You spoke about work, there are people not having friends at work. There's a lot of people let's say, well, work isn't everything. And there is other people that say,

well, we spend most of our lives at work. And I know you obviously, you've spent your life studying the workplace and our relationships. And I'm with you that we spend far too much time there to not take it seriously. And I work, so I give you a quick example. I turned down corporate offers to become a monk and then I worked at Accenture for three years

and so I've worked in that corporate space for not a significant part of my life but enough to know what it feels like. And one of the biggest challenges I saw is that people not feeling like they were noticed and recognized and led. And I was in a group of very talented people who I felt everyone had different degrees of that emotion and feeling of like, well, you know, I've got so much to offer, but no one notices me. If someone's feeling like that right now in an organization, what's the step process

for them to go through in that? With their feeling, they're not led, they're not inspired, they're not surrounded by motivators, they don't have you giving the keynote every Monday morning in the meeting, like, yeah, what where is it? We wish that on anyone. Yeah, no, the funny thing is no matter who it was,

we'd all get familiar with it and everything. But I think the point I make is just, no, the funny thing is no matter who it was, we'd all get familiar with it and everything. But I think the point I make is just, yeah, I think so many people, today we have such a higher expectation of leadership because we're exposed to so many more inspirational people online and through books in the world, whereas before you didn't really have that. So I feel like the expectation on leadership is higher, but that also makes us more disappointed. Yeah, I think that's true. I think we definitely expect more from our workplaces and from our leaders than we did in the past. If you look at the change in what's often called the psychological contract, the unwritten set of expectations and obligations that we exchange with our employers, it used to be enough to say, hey, you know what, I'm going to show up here,

and I'm going to give you loyalty in exchange for job security, and hopefully you'll support my family and my lifestyle. And then over time, we got more and more to, well, wait, no, I also want this to be a family, and I also want you to give me a noble cause or a purpose to work toward. And I think it's harder and harder for leaders to fulfill those expectations. So if you're in an organization where you don't have that or a job where you're missing that, I think the first thing to do is to go and find people who are doing work that you think is worthwhile and ask them if they need any help. Right? Often there's a side project that you can get involved in, a committee, a task force, and that can be a step in the right direction.

I think a second option is to pick up a hobby outside of work. There's been a big debate for the last few years about whether the passions that we have outside work to track from our jobs or whether they enrich our jobs, and they can do both. But it turns out that if you have a hobby that you really love that's unrelated to your work or that gives you a sense of meaning, that can spill over into your job and actually energize you.

And then I think the third option I might put on the table is to say, there are a few things more powerful than volunteering with your coworkers. There's good evidence, and I've found this in some of my own research and I've got a bunch of colleagues who have tested this as well, that if you feel like your job doesn't make a difference and your leaders aren't that inspiring, being part of an organization that allows you to lend your skills or share your knowledge with other people who might not have had the privilege

of benefiting from them can serve as this. All right, Lisa belongs to an order of cares and I'm in a position where I can do some good with the expertise that you have. And I think that volunteering can frequently be done in groups. So setting up a mentorship initiative for high school students or for people who might not have access to your resources or your education level,

I think that can make a huge difference. I think there's a really wise suggestion because I think the point you're making, if I can say that is, is that there are just so many options. And I think we sometimes sit in the feeling of like, this is the only option I have right now, and it's not working, and you've just kind of given us three or more

alternative parts that anyone could at least explore. And having been in that position, I can definitely say in Vatch for what you're saying is just, I remember that knowing I had other parts always freed me from the pressure of something not working where I was. And that's just such a freeing thing in general. I feel like people should always know their options

because it just relieves you and liberates you from this overwhelming stress and pressure that we often put on ourselves. Yeah, I think so too, Jay. And I think one of the mistakes a lot of people make is they actually underestimate their own strengths. So there's an exercise that I've found extremely powerful both doing it myself and offering it to leaders and students.

And I think for anyone who hasn't tried it, it's called the Reflected Best Self-Exercise. It was created by Lauren Morgan Roberts and Jane Dutton and their colleagues at the University of Michigan. And what they do is they say, look, you know, if you really want to understand your strengths, it's not enough just to fill out a survey and rate what you think you're good at and what you could offer. What you want to do is see yourself through a mirror that other people hold up for you. And so they ask you to reach out to maybe 10 to 20 people that you know well and have them write a story about a time when you were at your best. Yeah, I like this one. And then you collect the stories and your job is to create a portrait of what

are the common themes. And I found typically 20 to 30% of those stories highlight strengths for people they didn't even know they had. And it's such an uplifting way to see through the eyes of the people that you really look up to or respect and trust. Hey, you know what, there's a lot I can contribute that I haven't really been thinking carefully about. Yeah, no, I think that's such a good exercise. And yeah, I think just doing that with people that know you through different methods and means, like maybe someone that, a charity that you volunteer at and a leader there and it may be someone at work

and it may be someone that you helped on the side. I think it's so important getting that refreshing feedback from people and asking for it very intentionally and specifically, because I from people and asking for it very intentionally and specifically. Because I think sometimes we ask for feedback which is too broad without reflection and it's almost like in the requesting of feedback there needs to be reflection and intention. I agree and I think we can give it to. I remember gosh, years ago in the middle of a very cold gray Michigan winter and I just felt lonely and depressed,

and I decided that I was going to make a list of the people who mattered most to me. And I was going to write them a quick note about what I appreciated most about them. And I ended up sending a hundred of these over the course of a week, because everyone that I wrote, I felt like, it was the ultimate five minute favor, right? It didn't take that long to say to somebody who I cared a lot about. Hey, look, here's why I appreciate having you in my life. It was such a meaningful way to reconnect with people that I'd lost touch with. And so I just kept going and eventually a week had gone by. You know, I actually have some work to do.

I should probably stop writing these gratitude notes, but it just, it's another example of a way that we can both open ourselves up to receiving feedback, but leave by offering something that's probably profound for other people and that they don't hear very often. Yeah, no, no, absolutely. And I hope everyone is listening and watching, gives these great examples that Adam's giving a go,

like actually telling me to practice, because sometimes you hear it and you're like, oh, that would be cool, that would make sense, but we don't actually do it. And I would recommend that if you can just do one of those, if you can just go and ask someone for that feedback this week, just try it with one person. And if it's useful with one person,

then try it with someone else. But just don't let it be a theoretical idea that just stays there in the back of your head. I really want you to try and bring that to life for everyone who's listening and watching. Adam, I've loved listening to your podcast, Work Life. And I know that season three is now available and I'd highly recommend everyone go and listen.

But one of the episodes I picked out, which is very critical to a thing that I'm trying to develop right now. So as a business owner and founder myself, I love the episode you had called reinventing the job interview. Because this is something that I think the skill that I'm trying to develop the most in my life right now is to be a good recruiter and to be a good hireer of talent and also nurture of talent as well. And this is something that's

kind of like, I believe, is from a professional level, one of the biggest top priorities in my life right now. And one of the things that I love is you talked about how, you know, the fact that obviously Walt Disney and Tom Brady and other incredibly successful people were all rejected at one point in their life. How do you, and it's not just about the great, the greats like them or the rare people, but how do you get good at judging someone's potential in a format that has been created to lead to just people giving the right answer or, you know, it comes with so much baggage.

It always feels like dating, like sitting across the table with someone, and then sitting across the table with someone asking questions, they both seem like terrible ways of getting to know people. They're worst, they're horrible. I mean, look, there are some experts, Jay,

who even go so far as to say that it's not like we learn nothing in job interviews, but the signal is surrounded by so much noise that it gets drowned out, and maybe we should just not do them at all. I don't know if I'd go that far, but I think the most powerful thing you could do is to say, look, you're always

going to misjudge people's potential if you think it can only be found on a piece of paper or on a digital resume. And so I think we need to throw out credentials. I'm shocked that there are still employers that require a college degree for any job, right? There is nothing you learn in college that you could not learn somewhere else. If you wanted to even just go to YouTube, right? You can pick up most of what you want to learn there or go Sarah or On a couple of podcasts, right? It's not that hard

And yes, of course there are jobs like a surgeon or a pilot that require professional training But I'm talking about a basic liberal arts degree. You're relevant to job performance So I think I think we need to get to what candidates are able to learn and willing to learn and what they're willing to contribute to other people. And so that means we should pay less attention to what's on people's resumes, what basic experience they have, less attention to what they say, and much more attention to what they can do. And so I would say, let's take an example.

What's a job that you're hiring for? So I'm looking for a head of content. So I want to bring someone in who can manage my content and partnerships from a very senior position who has the ability to look at everything from video to podcasts through to books and everything else. but from a content and brand point of view. Perfect. Okay, so you could probably spend eight hours talking to a bunch of candidates and think you know something about what their values are and skills are, or you could actually collect a work sample from them. So, first thing I would do is when you put out this job posting, I'd ask for a list of

the five podcast guests that you need to have that you've never heard of, and see how interesting the people are that they come up with and whether they're a fit for on purpose, right, whether they understand your value system and what you're trying to bring to the world. I would ask them to critique your social media posts and tell you what the one thing is that you should change moving forward, and what one what the one thing is that you should change moving forward and what one thing you've done occasionally that you should be repeating more often. And then I would ask them to take a look at your book and to give you a pitch for the next book you should write.

And you may not adopt any of their ideas, but you're going to very quickly see how well they apply their worldview and their skills to the problems that you're trying to solve. Yeah, that was great. I love those. I've tried the second one, but I really like the first one about people trying to find people for the podcast that have never heard of before. I think that is such a great question, because it's very easy for people to be like, oh, you've had Adam on. Why don't you have, you know, so it's like to kind of be similar, but you can find people that are never heard of. And you know, is such a great way of testing if someone's aligned with you.

I think that's a brilliant one. I loved that one. That's what we, I'll be very curious to hear how it goes if you try it. I mean, it almost feels like it could be framed as, okay, you know, it's imagined that it's 2014 and find me the next Jay Shetty. Yeah, no, it would be fascinating.

I love that. I genuinely love those. I think they're great ones. And I think the last part of that is always like, how do you trust someone can execute on those ideas? I think that's always the hardest part. I find like, we're surrounded by the world where people have lots of good ideas and very creative, but we struggle to find people around us or people in general.

I knew I had to become one of these people. I for a lot of my life was an ideas person. And at one point I had to shift to bring my ideas into reality and it's the best choice I ever made. And every day I would love to go back to being an ideas person. But I know the value in actually doing it and making it to reality. Yeah, I think that's a false dichotomy for a lot of people. Okay. To say, okay, I've got to either be an ideas person or an execution person.

Last time I checked, we all have the capacity to be thinkers and doers. But to your point, not all of us have developed the habits and routines that make us good at executing. And so I would then, I guess, the next level of the work sample is to say, okay, once they've generated some ideas for, let's say they're coming up with podcast guests, have them write you an interview guide.

For the most interesting questions you've been asked to have them go through the past interviews that some of these people have done, or their past work, and give you a synopsis that would help you really understand how to have a meaningful discussion with those people, and give them a tight timeline on it and see whether they can step up. You could even, I even would go further and say, give them a try up offer a two week internship and give a little bit more involved set of projects and tasks and see who's able to deliver.

I love the internship one. I've done that with creative talent like videographers, where I've just said, come and travel with me for a week. And they've had to travel me around and create content on the go. And I found that that was, that's probably my favorite way so far of finding the right person. Because it's like, do I enjoy their company?

Do they enjoy mine? Very important both ways. You know, can I be around them for a lot of time? And can they be around me? And ultimately, can they perform on the job? And I love that internship idea. I think there's a lot of, there's a lot in that I need to explore a lot more of, especially for different roles.

So thank you for that. I'm getting free consulting. This is great. This is like fighting me through my recruitment versus I love it. No, I wanted to say this out of like, you know, I love your Twitter account. And I was going to read two tweets before we do this final segment in the podcast. But these are two tweets from Adam Grant's Twitter.

If you don't follow, make sure you go follow. So Adam said, we listen too much to people who think fast and shallow and too little to people who think slow and deep. Being quick on their feet may make them sound smart, but it doesn't mean they're wise. I love that tweet. And then you went on to say this one, you don't have to agree with every idea

in a book, article, or podcast to recommend it. Sometimes the ideas that challenge our thinking are the ones that teach us the most. The point of learning is not to affirm our beliefs. It is to evolve our beliefs. So, two of my favorite reads from Adam, but the reason I read that first one out is because I'm now going to get you to think on your feet quickly. So, it's a piece of tears out. But these are the final five, fast five, which have to be answered in one word to one sentence maximum.

I'm ready. So Adam, are you ready? I'm ready. OK, great. All right. So the first one for you is, what do most people misunderstand about their potential? They think their potential is driven by fixed talent. When in fact, it's driven much more by their motivation to learn. OK, great.

Second question. What do you know to be absolutely true or something you're very confident about that lots of people disagree with you on? Or some people disagree? Oh, the Peter Tiel question. What do I confident about that most people think is not true?

Yeah, like what are you sure about that you think people may not be, you know, people disagree with you on it? I'm very confident that nobody should be that confident. That's it. I like that. Let me restate that. I would say this might be more of a liability than an asset.

Ooh, I like that one. I like that. We have not had that before. That is a great answer. Okay, question number three for you. Okay, this one I love and I'm excited for your answer. If you could create a law that everyone in the world would have to follow, what would it be? Do I only get one?

You're only your one. I never asked that. I can't believe you would. You won't like this. This is the worst thing to do to a social scientist. It's like you find a genius a lab, but you only get one wish instead of three. Yeah.

You can do three if you want. I don't know. No, no, no, I'll try to boil it down to one. If I could only get people to follow one law, it would be, oh, this is so hard. I think, okay, let me, I don't know if this is my best law, but I'll throw out a first law. I think the law would be that you're not allowed to ask a person for something until you figured out how you can help them. Oh, nice. I like that. I think that's a great though. Okay, awesome. Question number four, what's the worst piece of advice you've ever received or given?

The worst advice that I have received actually was to not write a book because it's a huge huge investment of energy and probably no one's gonna read it. Wow. I'm very glad that you did not listen to that. The reason why I asked that question is, I think so many people have been told things that they had to intentionally avoid. And so I love hearing that because, I mean, you've got four New York Times best sellers and more on the way, so it's beautiful to hear that.

Okay, great. And the fifth and final question is, what was your biggest lesson that you've learned from the last 12 months? I think in the last 12 months, I actually had a really interesting experience where I launched a book and then a podcast season and a friend asked me what I was going to do to celebrate. And I said nothing because I'm an author and I'm a podcast host now and this is what

we do. You release content, right? And I realized this is more than a sentence, but she said, well, don't you think you should celebrate an accomplishment? It's a milestone. And I said, yeah, I probably should. And the less I took away from this, and this is one sentence, is that when you're having trouble appreciating your achievements

or enjoying any of your success, it's worth rewinding for your five years. And saying, if the younger version of me knew I would go on to achieve what I've accomplished, how would I feel? And that immediately brought me a sense of appreciation and excitement that was missing. I love that.

And yeah, I'm so glad you raised that. Oh, so glad you raised that. I'm glad you went into it. Thank you for going over the one sentence on that one. Because I can so relate to that in so many ways. And I've been saying to a lot of people that, you know, the challenge is that, you know, why is it that negative emotions or negative memories

have such a stronghold in our mind? It's because when we lose or we something goes wrong, we cry for a month. And when something goes good, we kind of talk about it for an hour. And then that's it. And so it's like, you've got this massive dichotomy between how much you obsess over a loss or a failure and how quickly you let go or how superficially you celebrate. You may celebrate, but it may just be a night with a bunch of people that don't even care

about what you're doing and you don't care about them. And so there's so much of a superficiality. And I remember last year I did an event at the Ace Theatre. And I was on my way home and my wife had left early because she'd left with our friends and I was doing meet and greets and everything afterwards. And it was a great event. It all went beautifully and everyone showed up. It was amazing.

And I was on my way home and I was feeling like that. I was like, I didn't plan a celebration. Like I didn't think about, it was just such an anticlimax. It felt so empty in that moment, after having like, with 2,000 people in the audience in the show went great. And I was feeling emptied for the first time in a long time.

And I was really just entertaining that feeling and just trying to figure out where it's coming from. I got home and my wife had organized a surprise celebration for me. I was all my best friends and it was such a like, it was, I've never stopped to celebrate. There's so many times I've not celebrated enough and I've got to learn that as well. So I'm thank you for reminding me of that. No, Jay, I mean, it's a point you made earlier.

That wasn't it, that we need to pause every once in a while and look at how far we've come. Yeah, no. And I think we struggle with that when we're excited by what we're doing and we feel like the passion is in the work. And I feel that way. I love writing. I love reading.

I love teaching and guiding and sharing and recording and content creation. But that doesn't mean you can't celebrate. And it's not either all, right? I think sometimes we create this, oh, I love my work. So I don you can't celebrate it. And they're not, it's not either wrong, right? I think sometimes we create this, oh, I love my work, so I don't need to celebrate it. But I think that's exactly right. And, you know, I guess the,

I'm thinking a little bit about this in the context of, okay, if I were applying for your head of content job, what would I say? And I think you've got a book sequel that's waiting to happen. It should be called Talk Like A Monk. And what you should unpack, this is the worst thing to do to someone, by the way. You should write this book. Well, really, if I believe in it, I should probably go write it.

But only you are going to write this book, Jay. If you wrote Talk Like A Monk, you could explain to people how to convey the sense of passion and optimism and clarity that you bring to all of your communication. And I think that's a lot of people can benefit from. Well, no, thank you, Adam. That's a great tip. I appreciate it. When it comes out, I will pay you your royalties. Adam, you know what? I could talk to you for hours. There are so many more questions I want to ask you. I'm glad that you're going to come back on next year. And I'm glad that you hopefully are going to turn into a friend that I can talk to you for hours. There are so many more questions I want to ask. I'm glad that you're going to come back on next year. And I'm glad that you hopefully are going to turn into a friend

that I can talk to very often because I've got so much out of this. And I only have to go because I have to go, which makes me even more sad and mad at my team for scheduling it this way. But I want to say a big thank you to you, because in a very short period of time, I feel like we just dove so deep and have covered so many incredible angles and perspectives and viewpoints.

And I just wanna thank you for doing what you do in the world because I think sometimes it's hard to recognize there's so many books and leaders and ideas in the world, but I think the ideas that you've focused on are truly impactful to people's daily lives. And I think that those make it some of the most meaningful ones because just applying one of these principles could change someone's day. So thank you for what you do in the world.

I'm really grateful to have spent this time with you. I hope we get to meet in person one day. And I hope we get to do lots more together. Well, I do too, Jay. Thanks for having me. It's a real privilege to be here. I know you have many, many adoring fans and lots of opportunities to bring anyone you want on the show.

So I really appreciate you bringing me and also just how deeply you've engaged with my work. It's not something people do every day, and it really stands out. Oh, awesome. That means a lot to me, too. Thank you. I'm glad.

I would have only would have wanted to do it justice So trying my try my best in that regard, but everyone who's been listening or watching these little folks we've been talking about give and take and Originals these are the two books that we do have into a bit today like I mentioned before You can go and listen to work life as well and follow Adam across social media on Instagram and Twitter as well. I promise you, you will be liking and commenting a lot on his ideas and takeaways. Adam, thank you so much again for coming on. And everyone, look out for the next episode and make sure you share and tag me and Adam on the best takeaways, the best insights on what you're going to be practicing from this

episode. Thank you so much, everyone listening. Thank you, Adam, and I hope to see you again soon. MUSIC or quick things before you leave. I know we try to focus on the good every day and I want to make that easier for you. Would you like to get a short email from me every week that gives you an extra dose of positivity? Weekly wisdom is my newsletter where I jot down whatever's on my mind that I think may uplift your week. Basically little bits of goodness that are going to improve your well-being. The short newsletters all about growth and sending positivity straight to your inbox.

Read it with a cup of tea, forward it to a friend, and let these words brighten your day. To sign up, just go to jshetty.me and drop your email in the pop-up. If you have trouble finding it, just scroll to the very bottom of the page, and you'll see the sign up. Thank you so much, and I hope you enjoy my weekly wisdom newsletter. much and I hope you enjoy my weekly wisdom newsletter. This podcast was produced by Dust Light Productions. Our executive producer from Dust Light is Misha Yusuf. Our senior producer is Julianne Bradley.

Our associate producer is Jacqueline Castillo. Valentino Rivera is our engineer. Our music is from blue dot sessions and special thanks to Rachel Garcia, the dust light development and operations coordinator. I am Dr. Romani and I am back with season two of my podcast, Navigating Narcissism. This season we dive deeper into highlighting red flags

and spotting at narcissists before they spot you. Each week you'll hear stories that you can see in the video. Navigating Narcissism. This season we dive deeper into highlighting red flags and spotting a narcissist before they spot you. Each week you'll hear stories from survivors who have navigated through toxic relationships, gaslighting, love bombing, and their process of healing. Listen to Navigating Narcissism on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Regardless of the progress you've made in life, I believe we could all benefit from wisdom

on handling common problems, making life seem more manageable, now more than ever. I'm Eric Zimmer, host of the One-Dee Feed Podcast, where I interview thought-provoking guests who offer practical wisdom that you can use to create the life you want. 25 years ago, I was homeless and addicted to heroin. I've made my way through addiction recovery, learned to navigate my clinical depression, and figured out how to build a fulfilling life. The one you feed has over 30 million downloads and was named one of the best podcasts by Apple podcasts. Oprah Magazine named this is one of 22 podcasts to help you live your best life. You always have the chance to begin again and feed the best of yourself. The trap is the person often thinks they'll act once they feel better.

It's actually the other way around. I have had over 500 conversations with world-renowned experts and yet I'm still striving to be better. Join me on this journey. Listen to the one you feed on the I Heart Radio app Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. The world of chocolate has been turned upside down. A very unusual situation. You saw the stacks of cash in our office.

Chocolate comes from the cacao tree. And recently, Variety's cacao, thought to have been lost centuries ago, were rediscovered in the Amazon. There is no chocolate on earth like this. Now some chocolate makers are racing deep into the jungle to find the next game-changing chocolate. And I'm coming along.

Okay, that was a very large crack it up. Listen to the obsessions of wild chocolate on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or whatever you get your podcast. or wherever you get your podcast.