Passion Struck with John R. Miles - Andre Sólo on Unlock Your Sensitivity for Personal Growth EP 324

Episode Date: July 27, 2023

In a world that expects toughness, sensitive individuals often face challenges and stigma. But what if sensitivity is actually a gift? Join Andre Sólo on the Passion Struck podcast as he explores the transformative power of embracing sensitivity, leaving you with a question: Can you unlock your true potential by embracing your sensitivity, or will you continue to deny your authentic self? Want to learn the 12 philosophies that the most successful people use to create a limitless life? Pre-order John R. Miles’s new book, Passion Struck, releasing on February 6, 2024. Full show notes and resources can be found here: https://passionstruck.com/andre-solo-on-unlock-your-sensitivity/  Unlocking the Power of Sensitivity: Embrace Your True Nature and Flourish - Andre Sólo Are you a sensitive individual who has been told that your sensitivity is a weakness? Have you heard the myths that sensitivity equates to fragility, overreaction, or being too emotional? In this episode, our guest Andre Sólo will debunk these myths and reveal the transformative power of embracing sensitivity, allowing you to cultivate deeper connections, inner peace, and overall well-being. Brought to you by Lifeforce: Join me and thousands of others who have transformed their lives through Lifeforce's proactive and personalized approach to healthcare. Visit MyLifeforce.com today to start your membership and receive an exclusive $200 off. Brought to you by Indeed: Claim your SEVENTY-FIVE DOLLAR CREDIT now at Indeed dot com slash PASSIONSTRUCK. Brought to you by OneSkin. Get 15% off OneSkin with our code [PassionStruck] at #oneskinpod. Brought to you by Hello Fresh. Use code passion 50 to get 50% off plus free shipping!  --► For information about advertisers and promo codes, go to: https://passionstruck.com/deals/  Like this show? Please leave us a review here -- even one sentence helps! Consider including your Twitter or Instagram handle so we can thank you personally! --► Prefer to watch this interview: https://youtu.be/qG7Cq19XI5c  --► Subscribe to Our YouTube Channel Here: https://youtu.be/QYehiUuX7zs  Want to find your purpose in life? I provide my six simple steps to achieving it - passionstruck.com/5-simple-steps-to-find-your-passion-in-life/ Catch my interview with Marshall Goldsmith on How You Create an Earned Life: https://passionstruck.com/marshall-goldsmith-create-your-earned-life/  Watch the solo episode I did on the topic of Chronic Loneliness: https://youtu.be/aFDRk0kcM40  Want to hear my best interviews from 2023? Check out my interview with Seth Godin on the Song of Significance and my interview with Gretchen Rubin on Life in Five Senses. ===== FOLLOW ON THE SOCIALS ===== * Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/passion_struck_podcast * Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/johnrmiles.c0m  Learn more about John: https://johnrmiles.com/  Passion Struck is now on the AMFM247 broadcasting network every Monday and Friday from 5–6 PM. Step 1: Go to TuneIn, Apple Music (or any other app, mobile or computer) Step 2: Search for “AMFM247” Network  

Coming up next on Passion Struck, what happens is that everything in your environment, whether it's emotions, sensory stuff, new ideas and concepts, all of it affects you more. And you have the capacity to do far more with it, but not if you are getting overloaded by it. So you have to take control of your environment. Most other people are not going to do this for you. You have to do it yourself. Welcome to Passion Struck. Hi, I'm your host, John Armiles.

And on the show, we decipher the secrets, tips, and guidance of the world's most inspiring people and turn their wisdom into practical advice for you and those around you. Our mission is to help you unlock the power of intentionality so that you can become the best version of yourself. If you're new to the show, I offer advice and answer listener questions on Fridays.

We have long-form interviews the rest of the week with guest-ranging from astronauts to authors, CEOs, creators, innovators, scientists, military leaders, visionaries, and athletes. Now, let's go out there and become PassionStruck. Hello, everyone, and welcome back to episode 324 Passion Struck, consistently ranked by Apple as one of the top 10 most popular health podcasts and the number one alternative health podcast. Thank you to all of you, come back to the show weekly. Listen and learn how to live better, be better and impact the world.

Passion Struck is now in syndicated radio on the AMFM247 National Broadcast, at just Monday and Friday from 5 to 6pm Eastern Eastern Time links will be in the show notes. If you're new to the show, thank you so much for being here, or you simply want to introduce this, we're friend or family member, we now have episode starter packs which are collections of our fans' favorite episodes that we organize in the community topics. Just go to either spotify or passionstruck.com slash starter packs to get started. In case you missed it, earlier in the week I interviewed Amy Finkelstein, the brilliant mind, behind the groundbreaking book we've got you covered, rebooting American Healthcare.

In our interview, Amy challenges the conventional approach to healthcare reform and offers a fresh perspective on what US health insurance policy should truly accomplish. Please check it out. I also wanted to say thank you for your ratings and reviews. If you loved today's episode or that one with Amy Finkelstein, we would appreciate you giving it a five star review and rating and sharing it with your friends and families. I know we and our guests love to see comments from our listeners. Now let's talk about today's episode.

It's all too common to hear phrases like, you're too sensitive or grow a thicker skin, which suggests that sensitivity is a negative trait. However, sensitivity is actually an important human characteristic and around one in three people are highly sensitive individuals. These people have contributed greatly to society, from the theory of evolution to the Declaration of Independence, and even Netflix. Despite this, sensitivity is often discouraged in children, judged in peers, and weaponized in relationships.

Andrei Solo, co-founder of sensitive refuge, is working to change the negative stigma surrounding sensitivity. In our interview today, we'll be discussing his new book, Sensitive, which he co-authored with Jen Branneman. In it, Sola will reveal the hidden power of highly sensitive people, which she refers to as HSPs, in a world that can often be overwhelming in chaotic. The interview delves into a comprehensive understanding of sensitivity and highlights the unique strengths

that sensitive individuals bring to the world and includes a checklist of the most common characteristics of highly sensitive people and advises on using appropriate language when discussing sensitivity. We also explore the differences in the needs of sensitive people compared to those who are less sensitive, and demonstrates how empathy, a trait often misunderstood and sensitive individuals, can be transformed into a powerful tool for positive change in the world. Andrei is a renowned author, researcher and speaker who is dedicated to promoting the well-being highly sensitive individuals.

In addition to being the founder of Sensitive Refuge, Solo is also the chief make it happen officer at Introvert Dear, another platform that advocates for the Introverted Community. As a recognized expert and passionate advocate for sensitive people, Solo now uses his experience to help others understand and embrace their sensitivity. Get ready for an exciting episode. Thank you for choosing PassionStruck and choosing me. to be your host and guide on your journey to creating an intentional life now. Let that journey begin. I am so excited today to welcome André Solo to PassionStruck. Welcome André.

Thank you, John. I'm happy to be here. Well, today we're going to be discussing your incredible new book, Sensitive, The Hidden Power of the Highly Sensitive Person, and a loud, fast, too much world. And I wanted to ask you wrote this book with Jen Grannement, How did the two of you meet? It's a funny story. So a long time ago, we were both writing about personality and at the time, introversion. And we had never met. We had a friend in common who does podcasts. And he had this idea.

He wanted to do a podcast about that topic, about personality and especially about introversion. And he thought that the two of us would make the perfect co-host. So he set up a meeting to introduce us and see what we all thought of the idea. And the podcast never happened. But Jen and I became creative partners and again working on a lot of projects together.

Most recently, of course, sensitive refuge, the world's largest website for sensitive people. And of course, the book, sensitive. Well, I recently heard you on a podcast and it happened to be one that Jen was on as well. And you were both talking about the influence that Susan Keynes book quiet had on your lives. Susan's a friend of mine. But in addition to being very good at creating books, she is also very good at creating cultural revolutions like she did around being introverted. Can you discuss the impact that book had on your life?

Yeah. So Susan came, we've had the honor of meeting her and we correspond occasionally because we work on similar topics and she's just an amazing, inspiring person. Not only is her writer, but just in the way I think she conducts herself. I would say she knows what her boundaries are and she knows what she wants in life and she just has this vibe of like, I'm here, I'm comfortable with who I am and very confident in that. And I just love being around people who have that. I think that's something we all aspire to. So she's a really cool person, but her books specifically helped take this word at the time, the concept of being an introvert, which I am an introvert

besides being a sensitive person. That word was a dirty word. It had negative meaning. It's so the sort of thing you wouldn't say in a job interview or you wouldn't tell someone in a first aid, or I'm an introvert, because it might sound like you're some kind of social reject or something.

And Susan Cain took that word and managed to turn it into something that's not only not a dirty word, but that people can talk about proudly and that the average person, whether they're an introvert and extrovert or somewhere in between, that they can understand what that means and they think of it in a positive or at least a neutral light. So that was really inspiring.

And of course, we've worked on the topic of introverts quite about ourselves, but when Jenna and I started really writing about the topic of sensitive people and what makes someone sensitive why we hide it, why that scene is a bad thing, and how it's actually this powerful human strength when you embrace it. At the time, that was not a popular buzz word. There's certainly were people, there's certainly books out there

about the topic of sensitivity, there was certainly research out there, and there are people who for decades have identified themselves as I'm a highly sensitive person or I'm sensitive. But that was not the norm and those people were very much even a smaller, cloistered set of online communities of their own, it wasn't well-known. We really started writing about this topic of sensitivity as our passion project,

because we knew it wasn't going to get the clicks. We knew it wasn't going to be the most popular topic, because people just didn't know what it was, but we believed in it. First of our older website began writing about this topic and then it built up enough where we started sensitive refuge and made this community and publication just for sensitive people. And that's grown to become very large with a big mailing list, a big online community, lots of readers. And we started to think about, well, how do we talk about the topic of sensitivity? Because we want to move to a point where I think any time you're talking about building

a change, a social change you want to see for the better. You have to reach a point where you can identify, here's the things that are important to keep talking about in a change, a social change you want to see for the better. You have to reach a point where you can identify, here's the things that are important to keep talking about in our community with people who already believe in what we're doing. But how do we need to talk to people who have never heard of this? How do we need to talk to people who think sensitive? That just means we're weak tough and up. That's the kind of person you need to be able to talk to.

And we started digging into the research and putting together our, you might say, our manifesto, our call to armsress sensitive people and it grew into the book that it is now. I'm not sure if you're familiar with the concept of blue oceans. Tell me more. I don't think I am. Go ahead. It's a great book. If you haven't read it, came out probably 10 years ago. And what they were talking about is that there are some people that are able to create blue oceans by not following the crowd but by creating something new and novel that limits the competition

because you're really not competing with anyone against it. So examples of this would be what Susan did around a whole concept of being an introvert or what Jay Shetty has done with him claiming purpose as his lens or you could say, Brane Brown and her claiming shame. So in essence, what you guys are doing is creating a blue ocean around the concept of sensitive. Yes, yeah, I think that's right. Well, I think that's what's important to do whenever you believe in something, right?

Especially something if it's a part of who you are, if it's part of your identity, that's often seen as a weakness, but you're learning to see this as strength, I think it's important to do that. It's not, I think part of the journey is to accept yourself and embrace it for yourself, but a big part of the journey is to start being proud and how you show it to the world and to change perceptions. And that's really the mission of our site and especially of the book sensitive is we wanted to change the way people think and talk about being sensitive and for a topic that five years ago we just sit at a passion project we knew it wasn't a buzz word now we see articles not just our own but from hundreds of people on major websites right on the New York Times and the Washington Post on Psychology Today, my people who identify with this topic, we see social media hashtags that have hundreds

of thousands or millions of posts. It's really spreading. It's not just us. I want to be really clear about that. We're a small drop in the bucket of people who have pushed this topic forward from the legendary Elaine Aaron, who did the initial research on this topic

to the hundreds of other researchers who work on it, to many therapists and coaches and writers and all kinds of people, podcasters who have pushed this topic out there. But we've tried to do our part, and I think that's what you have to do. If you really believe in a part of yourself and you want to change the way the world sees it,

is you start talking about it. Well, something of interest that the two of us share is as your publicist Emily approached me about this book, I happen to do some research and speaking of journeys, we both like to take journeys on bikes. But I understand you took a much more extensive one than I think I have and I was hoping you might talk about that experience. Yeah, that's fascinating that you dug that up. I used to blog about this many years ago and that's just kind of all long since gone.

But yeah, so when I was in my late 20s, I really reached a point, I certainly knew and I think a lot of sensitive people feel this way. We all feel like we want to do something meaningful with our lives. I think everyone feels that way to a degree, but I think sensitive people feel it very keenly. It's a pain point if you feel like you're not living with purpose or doing something meaningful. And that's how I felt. I had managed to build a good enough career in nonprofits and it was meaningful work in a sense because you're helping the organization, but it wasn't what I wanted to be doing with my life. It wasn't scratching the edge of like, this is my purpose in the universe.

And I wasn't really sure what my purpose should be, but I figured sometimes when you change your scenery, when you change your location, it starts to change your perspective as well. So I think if I go out and travel, I'll find it. And at the time, I had to think about money. How do you travel for months or years if you can't obviously work a regular job if you're doing that. And I had always wanted to be a writer

and I thought, okay, I've written somewhat professionally for my past jobs, but what if I started freelancing? And then I could do that on the road. So I did that. And I thought to about, I've always liked hiking and I've always liked bicycling. And rather than paying for a lot of expensive plane tickets, what if I began riding my bicycle across the country

and traveling and experiencing the world that way. So yeah, I ended up riding from, so I rode across the United States. Not the way most people go east to west. I went north to south from the source of the Mississippi River, which is almost in Canada, all the way down to the Gulf Coast, stayed in New Orleans for a while. I had a west, stayed in Texas for a while. Thought about switching to sea kayaks. I had a mentor there who was teaching me to sea kayak to go down along the Mexican coast of Gulf of Mexico.

But I couldn't find enough other people to go with me, and I wasn't going to go out to sea on my own. So I'm not quite that over the top. So I got back in the bike and ended up crossing Mexico as well north to south and then lived in the Yucatan for a while. And someday I do hope to pick up and continue to Central America and South America. But by the time I got there, I realized I do know what I want to be doing. I've been writing for a couple of years. I really do think that's my purpose. And especially writing about topics that matter. And that's when I came back to the

States and began working on this topic and other topics with Jen. I think periods like that really help us to look inside ourselves and to see where that inner voice is taking us. I just had a friend who's a prominent private equity partner take a year long sabbatical because he'd been doing the one thing for so long. He just wanted time to figure out if that was still the meaning in his life or if he wanted to do something else. So I think periods like that where we give ourselves the chance to be with ourselves are very important. Yeah, and then lots of doing different kind of happiness and fulfillment.

I think the average day on a bike journey across a continent is not always fun, right? You've got weather, you've got the heat, you've got rain, you've got to figure out we're going to sleep the next night, you're exhausted sometimes, the bike breaks down. The day to day, the minute to minute is sometimes really a trial. But the overall experience is just one of the most satisfying and powerful things I've ever done. And I think that's the opposite of the kind of satisfaction we get in our normal day to day lives,

where it's like you want the average day to be pretty content, pretty easy or at least satisfying. But then on the whole, you might look back over a couple of years and say, what am I doing? What's the purpose of all this? So we're kind of flip-flop of how we normally prioritize. Well, thank you for sharing that story. I just have always wanted to do something like that, so maybe I have to figure out a way to do it. I really like to do it throughout Europe. I think that would be a blast. Absolutely.

If you're ever going to go, let me know if you want to buy something, you know, I'll try to make it because that'd be great. Sounds good, man. Well, over the past year, I've done a number of episodes around the importance of emotions, whether it was Daniel Peng talking about regret or Susan Kane, who we mentioned before discussing the importance of the melancholy whether it was Daniel Peng talking about regret or Susan Cain who we mentioned before

discussing the importance of the melancholy or Liz Bossley and discussing big feelings. Sensitivity is one of those things that is an essential human trait, but historically it's not been well understood by the public. Why is that? Yeah, that's a great question. So I think when we hear the word sensitive, we think of being weak or fragile or maybe somebody who overreacts to things, right? And that's just not what sensitive means. As a personality trait, when we say someone is sensitive, it means that they take in more information from their environment and they do more with it. And what I mean by that is the sensitive brain is actually wired to process all information more deeply. So that means that everything you take in, whether it's sensory information, noticing

social cues and emotional cues, ideas, concepts, data, everything that comes into your brain is predisposed to spend a little more time, a little more mental effort, a little bit more energy on rooming on it, and filtering through it, and looking at it again, a second or third time, and starting to get connections between different ideas or file things away that might be useful later.

Of course, everyone does this, but we all have filters, and normally the average person screens out the vast majority of what comes in through their senses. But if you're a highly sensitive person, your brain is going to do a little less filtering and a lot more taking it in and sitting with it. And that has really profound consequences. So on the sensory side, if you're a sensitive person, you're likely to notice the scratchy texture of fabric

or maybe those like fine notes of vanilla in a nice white line. But on the emotional side, that's information too. If you're a highly sensitive person, you might be the only one who notices that slight hint of a smile that crosses someone's face before they manage to hide it. And you start to realize, wait, they're lying. Or they mean something else than what everyone else thinks they mean. And you're onto it. You have this radar. As it has this sensory side and this emotional side. And those two things are so closely connected,

they're almost two sides of the same trait, that in one study it was found that if you take Tylenol to NUMMA physical headache, you will score lower on an empathy test until the medication wears off. Wow. It's one dial that brings down everything. So there's the sensory side, the emotional side,

and of course the deep sinking side. So when you're making these processing, you make more connections between ideas. You do see things other people might not see. And sensitive people tend to be very creative, very innovative, as well as having a high sense of empathy from that emotional attunement. Yeah, in the book, one of the things you lay out in a section is about 30 different

characteristics that are most common and sensitive people. You've just mentioned a few of them, but for the audience, it's a great resource if you're trying to figure out if you're somewhere in this mix. And a couple of them, as I was going through, registered for me in a big way, one of those was when I would go to work and I know this is a trait of being an introvert as well, it's tough to be an introvert or sensitive in a business world where being an extrovert is really a valuable trait. And I remember I would put on my best act throughout the workday, but when I got home, I was just emotionally overloaded and had to completely

desensitize. And another interesting thing was I love going to concerts, but for me, the stimulus of it also wears me out while I'm there or if I'm in a big crowd. So, some other interesting things for people to think about. One of the other comparisons that you made was you said that perhaps a better word for sensitive was responsive, which I found a great comparison. Can you explain? Absolutely. So being sensitive is largely a genetic trait and everyone is sensitive to a degree,

but some people are more sensitive than others. So what we see is just like most healthy traits being sensitive is a continuum. Most people are in the middle, they're average. Some people are at the low end of the continuum and some people about 30% of all people score high for sensitivity. They're at the high end. And that's the same number for men and women, and as far as we know, people of all genders. So how sensitive you are, it's generally going to stay more or less the same over the course of life.

It changes somewhat with life experience, but it's largely determined by your genes. And it's like nature's gamble, right? Every creature in existence has to be able to take in some kind of information from its environment and respond to it in some way. Even plants do that, detecting others at drought, or I'm taking up chemical signals that a plant nearby was wounded. So I'm going to change how I'm using my resources. So we all have to pick up and respond to information. And nature and its wisdom said, what if we try the different variants on that? What if some creatures don't do as much of that? They just make quicker, faster decisions without taking in and thinking about as much information. And other creatures go the opposite way, and they sit with the information more and spend more

resources on it and see if that comes out ahead. And indeed, we see that roughly 30% of people are highly sensitive that gamble has paid off. And we see a similar proportion in a lot of other species. So scientists have found sensitivity at the same where we're redefining it more or less in at least a hundred other species and probably many others have it. That includes some that might not surprise you, like primates or closest cousins,

but it also includes a number of fish and various bugs and all kinds of things. So it really pays off for a species to have at least some people who are gonna be your deep thinkers, your maybe innovators, the people who, or creatures who are going to retain more information and make more connections between it. And what we've seen is that actually pays off

Jan Graniman, my co-author and I, we actually argue in the books that it's an evolutionary advantage. And one reason we think that is because there is this wonderful experiment that involves a computer simulation. And it was a simulation of natural selection and the researchers who did it, basically programmed some of the little units we'll call them creatures, some of the creatures in the simulation to behave more like highly sensitive people, right?

So when they encounter a choice or a threat or a resource, they spend more of their own internal resources storing away information about it, and they spend more time drawing on past information before they make the decision of what to do. Now, the other creatures would act more like average or lower sensitivity. And of course, sometimes it pays off to not be so sensitive.

Sometimes the person who's really fast shoots from the hip and just makes a quick decision, whoop, they gobble up the resource before the sensitive person can act. That happens sometimes. But over the long run, they found that these sensitive individuals in the simulation began massing up resources and doing better and better compared to the other individuals in the simulation. And so it began to the other individuals in the simulation. And so it began to pay off over the long term. And that's why we think it's actually a powerful advantage and probably why it exists

in 30% of people and not just one or two percent. Well I want to come from the other side of this and that is often in society being sensitive, as you mentioned at the beginning, is looked at as a bad thing. It's someone who can't take a joke well, is easily offended. They're hurt. They're angered by comments, things like that. So, there becomes this thing that you bring up in the book called the toughness myth. And I wanted to ask, what is it and who are the biggest targets of this meth? Yeah, so we live in a world that is overstimulating and overwhelming in a lot of ways for just about everyone, whether you're sensitive or not. Our work hours have grown longer,

the amount of data we take in our devices, but in our brains is just massive compared to any other point in human history. We were always on in a sense, right? So even 120 years ago, the sociologist Georg Siml talked about how people were getting mentally overloaded by the amount of stimulation and rushing around and just the increased pace and the increased demands of modern life. That was in 1903. And now we have these devices that were connected to that just give you constant notifications and list streams of content. And in Simuls time, the issue was, well, among other things, you're rushing around, you take the street car to work, you might have to be at work later than before because now there's electric lighting or more reliable gas lighting. It's long hours, but at least when you game home, eventually you were sequestered at home. And today you could get a text or a Slack message

from your boss at 10 p.m. or midnight, and you might feel like you have to respond to it rather than going to bed. We're always connected. So we're all getting overstimulated all the time. And sensitive people are more prone to overstimulation, but it's really, everyone has a limit no matter how tough you might be.

And the way our society has responded to this situation is not by saying this is getting out of hand, we need to pull back a little bit, we need to create some space. Instead, we've responded with the toughness myth, this idea that you can push through it, you can tough it out, suck it up, and if you are not able to get ahead in this world,

that's your own fault, you're not working to get ahead in this world, that's your own fault. You're not working hard enough. Work even harder than you're already doing. And it pushes people across the board. And as Simul said in 1903, there's a part of ourselves that can keep up with it. The part that's driven by achievement, we can push ourselves through this for a while and keep doing what we're expected to do, but not forever.

But there's another part of us, the part that is the side driven by human connection and meaning, what you might call our sensitive side, that cannot keep up. And that is the side where so much of what's beautiful in life comes from, it's the side where our passions and emotion comes from, it's the side where our creativity and our hopes come from, it's the side where our connection to other human beings come from. And again, 120 years ago, Simwell said that humans who were under this kind of sensory overload were becoming blase or apathetic because how can you

possibly consider the other humans around you if you can't even keep up with your own stuff? And we know now from tests on empathy, that's true. The more rushed you are, the more overworked you are, the less empathy you have for others, and the less connected you feel. And how many people right now feel completely alone, even at the most connected time in history, just feel alienated. So that's the toughness myth,

telling you to keep going, keep pushing, don't pull that. And we've had a slight glimpse of what it looks like if we don't do that during the pandemic. The pandemic was not a good thing by any stretch of the imagination and not everyone got to go on a great pause being self-employed. I didn't. I worked the same hours for the whole pandemic, because I did beforehand. But a lot of people in our society did actually get to take a break, even if it was for the worst reasons imaginable. And reconsider their priorities. And I think that we're starting to push back against the toughness myth now. And as a follow on, what are some of the communities that are most susceptible to the toughness myth?

Oh, gosh. Anybody who's susceptible in general, right? So just if you wanted to talk in terms of temperament and personality, sensitive people have many gifts. And it's a good thing overall, but the one drawback is that you often risk over stimulation. The sensitive mind goes deep on everything. And if there's too much going on, if it's in a crowded setting, there's chaotic stuff going on around you, you've got a fast-paced

deadline, someone's yelling, all that stuff, you can't go deep on all of it. There's too much to keep up with. So the sensitive brain gets overestimulated very easily, which comes out as brain fog and fatigue and eventually burnout. So, of course, overstimulated very easily, which comes out as brain fog and fatigue and eventually burnout. So a poorest toughness, Bethes, heart for sensitive people for that reason, but who isn't it hard for? Right? If you're a member of any marginalized group or community, you're already facing more struggles than maybe a white man would have. And of course, the fact that our society is a whole is just saying, Oh, well, all your problems will be solved if you just work hard or put in more hours and suck it up. Stop complaining and don't be so sensitive.

That's a real problem because it does not fix the problems of racism or sexism. And it doesn't fix all the many kind of societal issues that come out of that, the discrepancy and health outcomes during the pandemic, the discrepancy and arrest rates and the way police treat people. All these things don't get fixed if we just tell the people who are already struggling to push even harder and they can pull themselves

up because they're being too sensitive. So Jen and I are both white, but we're really honored to have a number of people color who write for sensitive refuge. And we've heard this from a number of them, we'll quote one of them in the book

talking about how the word sensitive carries a stigma for everyone. But if you're black, it carries a special stigma because it's also used to silence talking about racism white people will tell black people, oh, don't be so sensitive. You're being too sensitive. No, that wasn't racist. And it's like, no, it was actually racist. And they're being very accurate. Black person is accurately capturing what's happening and describing it and being told they're too sensitive. So it takes on a whole added dimension of meaning there. And does it have any difference between males and females? Yeah, absolutely. The stigma around being sensitive is, I don't think anyone's free of it, right? But there's a difference in how it's indoctrinated into men versus women, right? So women are told, don't be so sensitive, which is a phrase we should get rid of. But then get the message that they just shouldn't be sensitive at all. And they get that from a young age.

And that was myself included. I've been sensitive my whole life. It's genetics or a course I have, but I never had the word for that for most of my life. And I actually thought of myself as the opposite. I conjured this self image for myself of trying to be extra tough because that would prove, because I could tell I'm sensitive, right? It's like, that would prove that, okay, I'm not sensitive. There's nothing wrong with me. And I really cultivated that in myself and I really bought into it for a lot of my adolescence. And even as an adult, as I got away from that, I still didn't think

of myself as sensitive. It took a long time. It wasn't until I got under the research behind sensitivity and realized why I checked this box. I checked this box. I checked this box. But then again, to realize, well, yeah, not only am I a sensitive person, but that doesn't mean there's anything wrong or broken about me.

It's actually a gift. It's a great string. Well, I'm gonna go back to Semmel because I love that chapter of the book. And I was not aware of him if people don't know who he is. It's not surprising, but he was a prominent sociologist at that time back in 1903. But the way you describe that situation, here he is in the German city of Dresden. And this crowd is hoping that he's going to speak on this topic of what

innovation at that time has done to progress society, and instead, he goes the opposite direction. And in this lecture, he tells the world that innovation has just not given the world efficiency. It's given the world this non-stop tasking of the human brain and the ability to keep up. And I was thinking as I was reading it, as you alluded to, that was in the 1903, here we are in 2023, and we're on that, but on steroids. And I recently interviewed Seaton Hall,

a law professor, Gaya Bernstein and Squads CEO, Isah Watson, who've both come out with books this year about how this digital addiction or whatever you want to call it, is having such a profound impact on people. Where study after study shows that the average person is on their phone, not including an iPad or their laptop computer, about five to five and a half hours today, and it's even more with youth. And it is so damaging to the human connection that you brought up earlier, and it's causing

all of us to be on this technology overload. However, as you mentioned, how we handle this and the sensitivity to the stimulation differs between all of us. What should you do if you find yourself a sensitive creature in this not so sensitive world? Oh, I love this question. I want to start by saying that there's nothing evil about technology inherently, right? Similar to himself was very much a city boy. He grew up just a few blocks from the city center of Munich. He saw these transformations happen over the course of his life. And he didn't think it was evil. And he saw a modern sanitary sewer is being put in

and improvements in medicine. Things that are really good. But it's more the social effect. And how do we deal with that? Well, today, as you said, it's like even more extreme. So as an individual, there's what you can do, but then there's as a society what we need to do. As an individual, if you're a sensitive person, the most important thing you can do is to take control of your environment. The scientific name for this trait is not just sensitivity, it's environmental sensitivity.

And that's really what happens is that everything in your environment, whether it's emotions, sensory stuff, new ideas and concepts, all of it affects you more. And you have the capacity to do far more with it, but not if you are getting overloaded by it. So you have to take control of your environment. Most other people are not going to do this for you. You have to do it yourself.

And you can do that in a lot of ways. One that we strongly recommend, and I live by this myself, most other people are not going to do this for you, you have to do it yourself. And you can do that in a lot of ways. One that we strongly recommend, and I live by this myself, is to have somewhere at home what I call your sensitive sanctuary. And what that means is it could be your favorite armchair, it could be your bedroom,

it could be your little home craft room, it could be whatever you have, the place in your home, where you just feel like relaxed and comfortable. And you need to take time each day if possible. I think 20 minutes is a good minimum. If you can make more time, great, it'll help. And it could be part of your morning routine before work. It could be the first thing you do when you come home from work, whatever is best. But you need to take that time every single

day, schedule it in. It's an instant obligation that you're not going to bump for everything else under the sun and do nothing. Do nothing. If you want to have a little music playing, that's fine. If you want a journal, that's fine, so you're processing your thoughts. But you're not looking at your phone, you're not watching a movie, you're not reading a book, you're just sitting with your mind and letting it run. And that's how your sensitive brain catches up on that deep processing. It can't do during our overstimulating days. And of course, you could do this for hours. It'd be great too.

But even just getting a very short period, just 20 minutes in, really does make a huge difference because your brain starts to get to process all the stuff that's backed up. And not only will you start to feel better, you'll start to feel more rejuvenated and less overwhelmed. And your emotions will start to calm down a little bit. But you'll start to have these eureka moments because your brain's making those connections that other people might not make as

it ruminates. And you might realize, oh, we could solve that problem at work this way. Or, oh, that person who said this, who I thought was angry at me, I bet this was what was really going on. Or here's how I should address that thing with my kids. You'll just have these click into place and start to have little ah-haz. To do that every day, if you can. The other thing that's important for taking control of your environment is managing your relationships and the people in your life.

And that means learning to set boundaries. Sensitive people are very high in empathy. They score high in empathy tests. They self-report higher empathy. They're just wired to go deep with everything, including other people's emotions. And that means we often struggle with saying no to people or maybe creating space where someone unhealthy wants to be in our life, but we're afraid to tell them they can't be. We're very good at making up reasons to let our boundaries

be crossed. It's crucial that you start to consider your emotional space, your relationship space, just as important as the way you arrange the pictures on your desk or the way that you decorate your home. Well, that those effect you would help you out, right? You're getting natural sunlight, but so does the kind of landscape of your relationship. So that doesn't mean you have to do things that lead to conflict. You don't have to tell someone,

you're a toxic and I'm cutting you out of my life. No, you can just start spending less time with them. Or waiting longer before you reply them, they text you on Monday and you get back to a month, Thursday with a quick answer. Or you can just tell them very gently, but firmly, I'm going through a lot right now and I'm taking some space. So I'm going to ask you not to contact me for a few months and I'll reach out when I'm able to make time. And then stand by that. So these are ways you can start to manage those relationships in your life and create a healthy environment. When you do that as a sensitive person, you don't just like return to normal. You don't just like, oh, I was overestimulated and now I'm okay. When you do that, you start to activate

the sensitive boost effect. And the boost effect is the ability of sensitive people to take the same things that help anyone else and get way more of a boost out of them. And here's a good example of that. So we all know if a kid has a, for child, is a healthy, supportive, loving home environment, they tend to do better in school. But if a sensitive kid gets that same home environment, they don't just do better in school. They tend to go to the top of their class. And we see the same thing in teenagers, the same thing in adults, the people who are highly sensitive in various studies, they're more likely to overcome depression when given therapy than other depressed people are. They're more likely to save their marriages when given a relationship

skills training class than other people are. They're more likely to excel at work when given resources, right? Just time and time again, we see that sensitive people take resources and remember, you're sensitive. By definition, you suck up more information and you do more with it and you respond more to it. So, of course, you'll struggle more in those stressful circumstances, you're taking it all in. But if you create supportive circumstances, you soak in more of that too, and you take off. So you have a rocket engine strap to your back, and you really need to take control of your home environment and start looking at your relationships as well to just create that healthy, supportive group of friends

in your life that builds you up and don't tear you down. That compounding effect is a really interesting way to look at things. So thank you for going into that. And for the audience, a few episodes that you can go to, or on topics that Andre just talked about, as I recently had Terry Cole on the podcast, and we went deep diving into boundaries and how to deal with them.

I also had on Juliet Font and Dory Clark, who both talked about the importance of white space and why you need to create white space throughout your day because you need to give yourself the ability to recharge because doing so allows you to have more innovation creativity and ease because of the overload that you're going through. So I love that you brought those all up. Well, I think the next place I wanted to go is throughout the book, you provide some different examples that demystify things we wouldn't have today

had it not been for people who were sensitive in nature. And one of my favorite ones was a rock star who on the surface I would have never expected to be sensitive and that's Bruce Springsteen. And I was hoping because I love that beginning of that chapter if you could talk about it a little bit more. Yeah, for sure. So Bruce Springsteen, he has this image

of this extremely tough guy, right? Maybe one of the most macho pop stars you could think of and just celebrated by I think a lot of men everywhere is just the guy to aspire to be. And he also is a deeply sensitive person and he's very open about that both in his biographies, autobiography, I should say, born to run in his interviews and just in general, he's open that he was a sensitive kid. He didn't fit in because of it. And especially made it difficult to really to his interviews and just in general, he's open that he was a sensitive kid, he didn't fit in because of it, and it especially made it difficult to relate to his father. Bruce Springsteen grew up with a very working-class family and they did not have a lot of money, his father was a working man, and Springsteen Describson was being built like a bowl, right? Huge guy, tough,

strong, and frankly, Bruce Springsteen was a little bit of a disappointment to his father. He was a sensitive, shy, insecure, dreamy kid. He just didn't have that macho attitude. And his father really pushed him away because of it. There's a scene that Bruce Springsteen described in his biography where his father decided to teach him how to box. And this was a big deal. Bruce was so excited, right? Because, okay, we're finally, I'm getting attention from him and we're doing something cool and manly that he'll approve of. And they did. He started practicing boxing a little bit. And his father hit him with a couple open-handed, just like probably more taps than anything. And Bruce was clear. He did not hurt me,

right? It's done a little bit, which is normal. He didn't hurt me, nothing like that. But suddenly, it just was too much for this sensitive little boy. and he just crumpled to the floor crying, and his father walked out of the room and discussed. And that was what Bruce's experience of being sensitive as a boy was. And thankfully, he didn't try to hide it or make it go away or pretend he wasn't sensitive, which is what a lot of we sensitive people do. Instead, he found ways to embrace it, right? He didn't fit in with other boys. Girls accepted him until it was like high school and he was like, well, who wants to date him really? Okay. No, no thanks. He didn't fit in. But as a teenager, he started to lean into a different type of misfit, the image of the Rebel Outcast Rockstar. And he took

up guitar and he was actually terrible. His family pooled together money. I think it was mom or his grandma who did this. And bottom of he used guitar and he just was terrible at it. So they sold it back to the music store because they needed the money. And it wasn't until a couple of years later that he got another guitar and found another teacher that was more his style and kept plunking away. But it wasn't just his guitar playing, right?

It was the emotions and the lyrics. He would tell whole stories and create whole worlds, life stories of these people in his songs. And you can hear that in so many of those songs today. And he would go deep. And when he would play a show, he would look at the audience and figure out, okay, this audience is more motorcycle guys and leather jaggeds. Oh, this audience is more this kind of person. And he would adjust the set and adjust the way he would present things to really connect with that type of person. And it works because that was his sensitive strengths being used to their fullest. So he knew he was a misfit. He leaned into it. He never

gave up being sensitive. But he did cultivate the stage persona as a tribute to his father. That persona that Bruce Springsteen has on stage of this macho guy is partly inspired by his own dad and what his dad wanted to be. And when we talk about the boost effect and that importance of embracing your sensitivity and building a life around it, building an intentional life, which I know is you're kind of just a project here. Springsteen did that and his father didn't. And Springsteen eventually, when he was much older, he realized something that he was back

visiting his father, that of course his father didn't like all these things being soft and shy and sensitive and creative and dreamy. All those things that the Bruce Springsteen wore on the outside presented into the world. They repulsed his father, but he realized as he got to know him better as an adult, that it's because his father had those same things on the inside. And his father had a lot of things going on in his life. He had some mental health issues as well. It's not just the only factor. But it's quite possible, based on what Springsteen says, that his father's also a highly sensitive person.

He just hid it and stuffed it down his whole life and put on this armor to make it go away. And his rocket ship never took off. But Springsteen activated the boost effect, and his rocket ship did take off. It's one of the most beautiful stories to me, because we don off, but Springsteen activated the boost effect and his rocket ship did take off. It's one of the most beautiful stories to me because we don't think of Springsteen as a sensitive person and he's this perfect story of how you should embrace your sensitivity and why. I love the way you tell that story and it makes me go back to your journey on the bike because oftentimes in this fast paced world, we do what Springsteen's father did, which is we hide behind this mask of who we really are. And a lot of it is because we haven't done the work, but I talk a

lot about on the show of really getting to know our core values, our nature, what matters to us, and living up to something instead of the ideals of success, money, image, and all those things. I think that's a great story of how knowing yourself can propel you as an amplified Bruce Springsteen to where he is. And if I had to wager to guess, I've had another person who was sensitive would be Susan Cain who we talked about earlier. I'm going there on purpose because you have a very lofty I'm going there on purpose because you have a very lofty mission, you and Jen, and that is to create a world where it's as common to introduce yourself as being sensitive as it is to say that you're an introvert or an extrovert. And I remember a decade ago, no one in the world wanted to tell someone that they were an introvert. How do you think you can accomplish this?

Oh, this is such a fun question. Yeah, I think there's a great power in developing some confidence and openly identifying and wearing your sensitivity on the outside as Springsteen said. I think you can start in little ways. I think that some of the hardest places to talk about being sensitive are some of the best ways, right? It's a little easier for a lot of people, not everyone, but it's a little easier to talk to your partner, your spouse, about being sensitive, because they love you, and they'll let you talk about it for a while, and they might not understand

right away, but they'll probably bear with you. It's harder to talk at work about being sensitive, or in a situation like that. But I think that's actually the best place to start. I think that sensitive people are extremely valuable, so sensitivity is linked to giftedness, and we talked about how sensitive people are creative, but creativity does not just begin and end with the arts. That's also where innovation comes from, which is useful in business, technology, science. And there's some evidence to suggest that sensitive people are actually the highest performers in their workplaces, as rated by their managers, but also the most stressed out, which means a lot of employers

are not creating a good environment for their sensitive employees and maybe losing a lot of high-performing sensitive people. So start at work because it's a big difference if you can enjoy your workday or at least be somewhat less overstimulated. And one thing you can say to your boss, it's very reasonable is to say, I'm sensitive to my environment. And I do my best work when I can focus on one thing without distractions. What are good times during the week for me to schedule that? That's a reasonable thing to say. That's not crazy.

You're not demanding that the entire way the company does business change, and you're not making excuses. You're tying this to this is hard to do my best work. And maybe it's two hours on Wednesday from 9 to 11. You just turn off your email, turn off your Slack or Microsoft Teams, put your phone aside, and work on one project. You put on your headphones and you're just going

to do the one thing, not check email. And maybe it's three times a week for two hours each. But you ask your boss, what are good times to schedule that? And you say right up front, I'm sensitive to my environment. So I do better with no distractions. I do better when I can focus deeply. And if you have a supervisor who's even halfway decent, they're going to think, Oh, you'll do better work that way. And you're not asking for 24, seven, no email. You're just saying, Oh, little beats and peas. Yeah,

probably we'll schedule that in. Sure. Here's a time when it'll work. That's a great way to do it. Another place you can talk about being sensitive is for parents. If you have a sensitive child, I love this phrase. When you're talking to their teacher, their daycare provider, anything like that, maybe even another parent, you have to be planning a sleepover or some kind of big event, say so and so. My son is a sensitive kid,

and that's something we're trying to encourage. That's the conversation, right? That's it. Yeah, completely. Yeah, and then the questions come out and say, oh, really? Tell me about that. And they might understand why and for a student courage. Well, sensitivity is tied to giftedness.

And it comes with a lot of strengths. And we want to really encourage that and boost it up. It does mean he gets overstimulated easily. So I'm hoping we can do this. Or would it be OK if he does this? I have a son who is two years old. And however he unfolds, it's fine with me. But I think it's very likely

based on what I've seen in these first two years that he will be a highly sensitive person. So I'm getting ready to have these conversations myself. And yeah, I want to embrace who he is and you can start to talk about it as a positive way that way. When you start to do that out in the world, you start to develop these little phrases that work. You don't have to say, I'm a highly sensitive person. Here's what that means and I need you to understand all the science. You don't have to. You can just say I'm sensitive. Or I'm actually

a sensitive person. So I'd prefer if we do X. And you can start to just say simple little boundaries. That sounds great. That thing you're inviting me to. It sounds amazing. I'm pretty sensitive, so I get overstimulated easily. So I'm just going to come for the first hour. But I appreciate the invite. Or I just don't do well on those big huge venues like that. It sounds like it'll be pretty overstimulating. So I'm gonna have to pass But I'll tell you what come on over next week. We'll have dinner blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah And you can just make these little shifts while mentioning I'm pretty sensitive so blah blah blah, and it's just easy and natural Well, thank you for that answer and I started out this whole conversation by talking about sensitivity As an emotion and another emotion that people who are sensitive often feel is empathy

which is often associated as a vulnerability And I want to ask how can highly sensitive people transform empathy Into a gift and I'm going gonna ask this a little bit differently through self-compassion rather than a perceived weakness. Yeah, absolutely. Oh, I love this question, John. So, first off, I'll say this. So, I've mentioned before that sensitive people

score higher for empathy on average and they feel empathy generally very highly. But I'm not sure that every sensitive person out there sees it that way. And so speaking of myself as a male who's a sensitive person, I never saw myself that way, right? I wouldn't have told you 10 years ago that I'm a high empathy type of person,

at least not more than anybody else. What I would have said is I'm really good at reading people. And that is the same thing. That's the same thing. We're using different language to describe it. If you're good at reading people, if you tell what they're thinking you're feeling, you have a radar for that, you probably have a high sense of empathy. But other sense of people do very much see it as empathy.

And to the point where even we feel like we absorb the emotions of other people and can't not absorb the emotions. It's like a sponge soaking up all the other emotions around you. So when you think of someone who describes themselves as an empath, most likely the scientific explanation for that is they're highly sensitive person. And their brain's doing that deep processing on all the emotional stimuli coming in and living it inside their heads. And since the people experience empathy in many ways, but empathy can be painful.

It's not fun to pick up on all the stress and anger and upset in the world. So frankly, it's a pretty stressed out and angry world, right? And we all go through hard times, and so you're picking up on the hard times of every person around you, friends, loved ones, strangers in a cafe, everybody. And it can be just overwhelming.

So a lot of times people think it has has occurs. But whereas empathy can push us away from other people, makes you wish you could pull back, wish you could turn it off somehow. And we actually know that when people experience empathy, they tend to start to experience a faster heart rate, faster breathing, a release of cortisol, which is a stress hormone, because it's hard to sit with someone else's feelings that you're absorbing and living with them. But compassion is actually a beautiful experience for both people. And the difference is the compassion

is when you start to ask questions. It's when you start to understand the other person's perspective. And rather than just picking up the emotions you're feeling from them, you start to explore what they're experiencing. And that means that you ask them questions and especially questions that are just open

and an emotional questions. Oh, well, that must be really scary. Are you scared about that? And let them talk about that. And ask them another question about they, oh, so are you thinking of doing this? Or is that mean you're gonna lose your job? Oh my God.

And let them talk more. And you do two things. The first thing is you take the focus off of how you're feeling and you put it on the other person. And one empathy researcher that I spoke to put it this way, if a baby is crying, it does not help you to cry back. Right? You have to figure out, do they need to be burped?

Do they need some milk? Do they need a diaper changed? Something scare them. And you have to do that by asking questions or looking for science, right? And then you're focused on fixing their needs and it gets you out of your own head, out of your own feelings.

So reaching out to the other person. But it also helps the person that you're giving the compassion to because it starts to meet their needs or at least help them get perspective on what they're experiencing. And the result is, rather than having your heart rate increase and your breathing increase, we see the opposite. Breathing gets slower, heart rate becomes calmer,

and you start to feel a sense of peace and connection with the other person. Instead of wanting to pull away, you start to move toward each other. And that's just not means, so here we go to self-compassion. That's just not mean you have to do anything and everything that they ask you that might help them

or everything you can think of that might help them. We have limits. And part of compassion is that self-compassion of saying, I'm not able to come over right now and talk about it. But do you have someone else to be able to call? Or I'm not able to come right over right now and talk about it. But I could get together with you for coffee on Saturday with that work. Are you going to be okay till then? You can offer what you can offer, right? Or I don't really know how to give advice on that. I don't know how to handle that. But I think I have somebody who I could recommend who might. You can offer them you can offer, right? Or I don't really know how to give advice and that, I don't know how to handle that, but I think I have somebody who I could recommend who might.

You can offer them the options that are going to work for you for your bandwidth without having to constantly exhaust yourself, helping everybody who needs it. And ultimately, that ends up helping more people because when sensitive people get overstimulated and worn down and they start to feel empathy as a source of pain, then they have to get closed off and that helps no one, including the sensitive person. When you start to practice compassion

and that reaching out for their perspective, you feel better in your own life and you also start to begin, of course, for positive change for other people around you. Andrei, thank you so much for coming on the show and I was hoping you could tell the listeners if And I'm going to be back to you. And I'm going to be back to you. And I'm going to be back to you. And I'm going to be back to you. And I'm going to be back to you. And I'm going to be back to you. And I'm going to be back to you. And I'm going to be back to you.

And I'm going to be back to you. And I'm going to be back to you. And I'm going to be back to you. And I'm going to be back to you. And I'm going to be back to you. And I'm going to be back to you. And I'm going to be back to you. And I'm going to be back to you.

And I'm going to be back to you. And I'm going to be back to you. And I'm going to be back to you. And I'm going to be back to you. And I'm going to be back to you. And I'm going to be back to you. And I'm going to be back to you. And I'm going to be back to you. Well, thank you again for giving the audience and I the honor of having you on the show and congratulations on your great new book. Yeah, thank you. I appreciate it so much and happy to be here. I thoroughly enjoyed that interview with Andre Solo, and I wanted to thank Andre, Harmony,

and Emily Ball for the privilege of having him appear on the show. Links to all things Andre will be in the show notes at passionstruck.com. Please use our website links if you purchase any of the books from the guests that we feature here on the show. All proceeds go to supporting the show and Speaking of books, you can now reorder my new book which launches February 2024 a link to it will also be in the show notes. Avertiser deals at discount codes are in one convenient place at passionstruck.com slash deals. Like I mentioned at the beginning of the podcast, we are now on syndicated radio and you can catch us every Monday and Friday from 5 to 6 p.m. on the AMFM247 national broadcast. Links will also be in the show notes. Videos are on YouTube at both John R. Miles and PassionStruck Clips. You can also find me on LinkedIn,

where you can sign up for my LinkedIn newsletter, and at John R. Miles on all the other social platforms where I post daily. You're about to hear a preview of the PassionStruck podcast interview I did with Dr. Etendra Wadwa, author of the groundbreaking book, Inner Mastery Outer Impact, How Your Five Four Energy Hold The Key to Success. Dr. Wadwa introduces a powerful framework for achieving success which starts from within, specifically focusing on something that he calls one's inner core. The key to the one I offer is that actually the true source of both outer and inner success lie in anchoring ourselves in a core that the movie go in this very sort of adventuresome, the suit of what is at my very core,

who am I truly at my very core, and pull away from our false friends, the false pulls and demands on us, which wants to please others or indulge in myself, what have you, we go to the true source and the truth behind everything, our core. The more we start to feel increasingly true to ourselves, from within. Remember, we rise by lifting others, so share the show with those that you love and care about. And if you found today's episode useful, then please share it with somebody who could use

the advice that we gave here today. In the meantime, do your best to apply what you hear on the show so that you can live what you listen. And until next time, live life Ash and Strut. you