Passion Struck with John R. Miles - Dolly Chugh on How to Create a More Just Future EP 203

Episode Date: October 18, 2022

Dolly Chugh joins me on the Passion Struck podcast to discuss her new book, A More Just Future. In our interview, Dolly provides a frank yet endearing compass for "embracing the paradox" that America was built on the idea that all people are equal. Yet it was founded on slavery. Chugh interweaves lessons on structural racism, the patriot's dilemma, and settler colonialism. We discuss her study of good people and why we should stop focusing on being a good person so that we can become a better one. We explore the contradictions of US history and how we should learn to view them, connecting the dots between current events and the past. Dolly Chugh is a Harvard-educated, award-winning social psychologist at the NYU Stern School of Business, where she is an expert researcher in the psychology of good people. In 2018, she delivered the popular TED Talk “How to let go of being a ‘good’ person and become a better person.” She is the author of A More Just Future and The Person You Mean to Be. Purchase A More Just Future: https://amzn.to/3fZXLNY  (Amazon Link) --► Get the resources and all links related to this episode here: https://passionstruck.com/dolly-chugh-create-a-more-just-future/  --► For information about advertisers and promo codes, go to: https://passionstruck.com/deals/  --► Prefer to watch this interview: https://youtu.be/GfbPTGIRiCs  --► Subscribe to Our YouTube Channel Here: https://www.youtube.com/c/JohnRMiles --► Subscribe to the Passion Struck Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/passion-struck-with-john-r-miles/id1553279283  Thank You, BiOptimizers, for Sponsoring. This episode of Passion Struck with John R. Miles is brought to you by BiOptimizers who has one mission: to help humans shift from a sick, unhealthy condition into a peak biologically optimized state. Their Magnesium Breakthrough supplement is the only product in the market with all seven types of magnesium. And it's specially formulated to reach every tissue in your body to provide maximum health benefits. Get 10% off at https://magbreakthrough.com/passionstruck. Thank You, InsideTracker, for Sponsoring. This episode of Passion Struck is also brought to you by Inside Tracker, the ultra-personalized nutrition system that compiles data from DNA tests, blood samples, reported lifestyle, and nutrition. Personal health analysis and data-driven wellness guide designed to help you live healthier and longer. Get 20% off the entire InsideTracker store at https://www.insidetracker.com/passionstruck. Where to Follow Dolly Chugh Website: https://www.dollychugh.com/  Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dolly.chugh/  Twitter: https://twitter.com/DollyChugh  LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dolly-chugh-07ab506/ -- John R. Miles is the CEO, and Founder of PASSION STRUCK®, the first-of-its-kind company, focused on impacting real change by teaching people how to live Intentionally. He is on a mission to help people live a no-regrets life that exalts their victories and lets them know they matter in the world. For over two decades, he built his own career applying his research of passion-struck leadership, first becoming a Fortune 50 CIO and then a multi-industry CEO. He is the executive producer and host of the top-ranked Passion Struck Podcast, selected as one of the Top 50 most inspirational podcasts in 2022. Learn more about John: https://johnrmiles.com/  ===== FOLLOW JOHN ON THE SOCIALS ===== * Twitter: https://twitter.com/Milesjohnr * Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/johnrmiles.c0m * Medium: https://medium.com/@JohnRMiles​ * Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/john_r_miles * LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/milesjohn/ * Blog: https://johnrmiles.com/blog/ * Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/passion_struck_podcast * Gear: https://www.zazzle.com/store/passion_sruck_podcast  

Coming up next on the Passion Struck Podcast. I really am invested in this being the greatest country on earth. I'm really invested in us being the good guys. So I consider myself a proud patriot. The dilemma, though, is when I hold onto that image in a very brittle way, like either it is true or it's not, it puts me in an awkward position when you start poking holes. So the Patriots dilemma is if I'm wedded to that very clean narrative, then the complications, the contradictions and the nuances are just going to shatter me.

Welcome to PassionStruct. Hi, I'm your host, John Armeyles. 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 to episode 206 of PassionStruck, ranked as one of the top 40 most inspirational podcasts in the world in 2022. And thank you to each and every one of you who comes back weekly to listen and learn, had a live better, be better, and impact the world. In case you missed my episodes from last week, I interviewed Laura Vandercam, and we discussed her brand new book, Tranquility by Tuesday, and how to improve your overall productivity and enjoyment in life. I also interviewed Dr. Suzanne Gilbert Lens, and we also launched her new book, Menopause

Boot Camp. Please check those episodes out, and if you love them or today's episode, we would so appreciate it. If you gave the show a five star review, those ratings go such a long way in helping us improve the popularity and the reach of this podcast. Now, let's talk about today's episode. Dr. Dolly Chug is a Harvard educated award-winning psychologist at the NYU Stern School of Business, where she is an expert researcher in the psychology of good people. In 2018, she delivered the highly popular TED Talk, How to Let Go of being a good

person so that you can become a better person. She's the author of her book that releases today a more just future, as well as the person that you're meant to be. We discuss how her walking on to her college's varsity tennis team ended up impacting her life and shaping who she is today,

how a family trip that they took to explore little house on the prairie, let her to question her very own biases. Why biases have become such a huge issue in the world today and how we can go about changing that? We go into her study of good people and why, as she said in that TED Talk, we should stop focusing on being a good person so that we can become a better one. We explore different concepts from the book, including the Patriots dilemma, dressing for the weather, the power of paradoxes, contradictions of US history, how we should learn to view those contradictions,

connecting the dots between past events and the present, and so much more. 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. So excited to welcome today, Dolly Chug, to the Passion Struck Podcast. Welcome, Dolly. Thank you for having me, John. Well, as I was doing research on you,

and I always like to start these episodes out by talking with the gas so that the audience can get to know them a little bit, I discovered we both had a passion for tennis. And actually, I was recruited to play tennis in college, I ended up choosing cross country and track instead. When you were at Cornell, not only were you on the varsity team, but you were the co-captain. And if I have a correct and I wanted to ask, what are some of the biggest life lessons that you learned from playing collegiate sports? Oh, wow. What a great place to start.

John, actually, I think my answer to this question is gonna validate your whole mission with this podcast and the larger business. I did not have a passion for tennis. I played tennis. I made the team believe they're not as a walk-on. I was not recruited. I tried out for all the wrong reasons in the walk-on process. I knew I didn't like the game at that point.

My ego did not want to go watch a match and be like, I could have beat her. So I wanted to try out get cut and leave the game behind for the rest of my life. They had a bad recruiting year. I made the team as a walk on. I hustled, I worked hard. I'm the kind of kid who you would probably look for if you were looking for a walk on. And then for the next four years, without passion, without joy, played a very demanding schedule of a college sport.

And I look back at it quite frankly with gratitude for the opportunity, no doubt. For gratitude, it is not only was a big opportunity in college, but it opened up a lot of doors after college because you get a lot of validation and credit for doing something like that. It also really stripped a lot of joy out of my college experience.

And so I would say my biggest lesson, I called my mom crying when I made the team and she picked up the phone and I was crying. She said, oh, did you get cut? And I said, no, I made the team. And she said, why are you crying? I said, because I don't want to play. And she said, well, then don't. And I said, no, no, I have to because I made the team. And so for four years, I paid the price for that ignorance, for that

disgarding of what I was not passionate about. And so my biggest lesson is I should have said, thank you. Well, growing up, I just love playing tennis. I think I started when I was four or five. Wow. But I played so much that by the time I was nearing the end of high school, I was just completely burned out on it. Yes. Yes.

And I never had the sort of mental that steel you need for that game. I was just never my core strength. I played basketball and softball in high school and I wasn't, I started later in those sports so I never quite caught up to where I was in my tennis level, but that personality wise, those were my sports and I loved that. I loved the hustle and the teamwork and the camaraderie.

Yes, well, we're gonna talk a lot about biases today, but I always like to start out these episodes by asking people about defining moments. And you had a finding moment when you were on a trip with your kids that changed how you looked at biases. Can you tell us a little bit about that trip and why it had such an impact on you? Sure. Yeah, so I think it was 2011 around there. My kids at the time were kind of 7, 6, that age range. A lot of things I don't do that society tells moms they should do, I don't cook, I lose my temper too easily. My kids, but the one thing that I sort of nailed at that point in my parenting journey was I read to them every night. And so we like millions of Americans really enjoyed the Little House and the Prairie series. And I read the whole like eight books, 250 pages long, like read every night for an entire year.

We worked our way through the whole series and we were just so connected to the Ingalls and Laura, Mary, and Monpon. It was really a very seminal sort of moment in our family. We even went so far as to make this big road trip where we traveled to Minnesota and South Dakota for a week to drive to each of the sites that we saw and read about in the books and see walnut grove and dismeten. My kids were so into the experience they were wearing

prairie dresses the whole time. I mean, it was amazing. But at some point it started to nibble away at my joy in the moment. But really later, quite frankly, maybe a couple years later, started to really like eat away at my joy. It said that I realized that while I was reading to them all those nights about this house on the prairie, I wasn't confronting in my own mind that that prairie was land that was taken from Native Americans. And this whole story was sort of grounded in colonizing and taking away lives and cultures and economies and heritage from people who were already there, the indigenous

populations, and there were lines in the book too where there's a line in the book when white settlers come into a country, the Indians have to move on, but I didn't really like help my kids understand that and that what we were talking about is hard working wonderful family, the Ingalls family, but a family that was also benefiting from some real systemic wrongs. I just didn't question the story and I didn't give my kids the tools to question it. And so over the years since then, I've come to realize what a missed opportunity was and how the Ingalls family, I've come to realize what a missed opportunity was and how the Ingalls family, I could have portrayed them both as American heroes and as colonizers.

And I could have given my kids, kids at that age care a lot about fairness and justice. I mean, this is playground stuff. It was age appropriate for me to give them a larger context so that they could learn full history rather than having to unlearn what I taught them inadvertently. there was kind of a bit of a fable more than the truth. So that kind of leads me to where writing this book is an effort on my part to think about how we engage with the past emotionally as a psychologist, not a historian to be very clear, like very mediocre history student, but I am a psychologist and I think I can help us engage emotionally with the past.

Well, we're gonna be talking a lot more about this great book that you have, a more just future. Congratulations on its release. I know just how much goes into producing a book and getting it published. So congratulations to you. And we're gonna talk a lot more about it, but I wanted to give the audience just a little bit So congratulations to you. And we're going to talk a lot more about it.

But I wanted to give the audience just a little bit more background on you and set a deeper foundation. I think that story that you just told helps. But I also wanted the audience to recognize you and personally say congratulations to you on your 2020 NYU Distinguished Teaching Award. I know that this is such a prestigious award, and you were one of six out of thousands of people. And as you just talked about, you're a social psychologist, and you studied the psychology of good people.

Can you explain what does that entail? Absolutely, and thank you. Thanks for your kind words. Teaching is probably my favorite part of everything I do and my job as a professor and there's a lot of great things is icing on the cake to be noticed for that. So I'm interested in what I call the psychology of good people. By that I mean the an identity that scientists have found many of us care about being seen as a good person and feeling like a good person, even though we

don't all define it the same. It's an identity that many of us cling to. And yet, what we also know is that because much of our minds work happens outside of our awareness, there's ways in which I will not notice how I have negatively impacted someone, or I will always sort of see my side of the story better than someone else's side of the story.

And so, even though I aspire to be a good person, I won't always be the person I mean to be. That's the psychology of good people that I'm interested in. And I particularly focus a lot of my work on how that ties to issues around race and gender and other social identities. Just to give one very personal example of how sometimes I'm not the person I mean to be, and even though I intellectually try to study this in the classroom, which I care deeply about as you just mentioned, the opportunity to teach students. I had a teaching assistant tracking who I was calling on just to be sure I wasn't favoring

one side of the room over the other or something like that. Class participation is something my students care a lot about. They're sometimes graded on. So it's meaningful who I call on. And my teaching assistant came back and said, well, good news. You're actually doing pretty good with seeing the far ends of the classroom.

And I was like, yay. And she's like, but actually, maybe not yay, because you're calling on men more than women. And you're cutting off women. When you do call on them, you're calling on men more than women and you're cutting off women. When you do call on them, you're interrupting them and you're not interrupting the men. And I was stunned to hear this. Like, how can this be?

I consider myself a feminist, raising two daughters, like these are things I care deeply about, and yet I'm somehow without noticing it, showing up very differently in my behaviors. That's an example of a gap between the sort of good person identity that I care about and my actual behaviors and I'm interested in sort of what explains that gap.

Why has that gap, or you could call it biases, become such an issue in society today, and how do we get people to change this behavior? Yeah, I think what's happening today is greater awareness. We have a few things kind of converging. One, the science of bias is continuing to advance. So we have better data, better methods to study it. For a long time, people have been trying to share their lived experience,

but maybe there hasn't been for those who are more persuaded by data and science, there hasn't been that evidence to back it up. So we have more of that. Also, I think the opportunity right now to see more people's lived experiences, whether that's through social media, giving voice to people who might not have otherwise had platforms,

or through media like movies, TV. We have more fragmented media marketplace, but also it means that there are more stories being told in more ways than in the past. What's happening is we're seeing more of the bias. It's been there, but some people have been keenly aware of it, particularly those people who've been the targets of the bias.

And some people are getting the opportunity to see it now more than before. Okay, well, I appreciate you sharing that. And I'm not gonna go further into it, but I did want the audience to know that you have a fantastic TED talk. In fact, it was ranked one of the top talks by TED for the year 2018.

And it's really about why you should stop desiring to be a good person so that you can become a better person. And I'll just throw that teaser out there so they'll go out there and watch it. And I'll put it in the show notes. Thank you so much. Well, I'm gonna jump into the book.

In a more just future, you start out the book by discussing this concept called the Patriots dilemma. Why is it that when we love our country, it's less likely that we'll do anything to improve it? Yeah, that's a perfect description of what I think of and what I call the Patriots dilemma. This idea that we are invested in a particular identity and narrative.

We can stick with the example with Little House and the Prairie. That's I think a place where you see kind of my patriots dilemma, unfold display. I have a social identity where I care deeply. I love this country so much. My family immigrated here, they gave up everything to be Americans. I really am invested in this being the greatest country

on earth. I'm really invested in us being the good guys. So I consider myself a proud patriot. The dilemma though is when I hold onto that image in a very brittle way, like either it is true or it's not, it puts me in an awkward position when you start poking holes and you're like, yeah, but let's talk a little bit about what happened to the Native Americans. And wait, let's get into slavery. And let's get into the forefathers of our country and Slaven humans while they wrote the Declaration of Independence.

Like, let's get into that. It gets complicated. And so the Patriots dilemma is if I'm wedded to that very clean narrative, then the complications, the contradictions, and the nuances are just going to shatter me. I write about belief grief that my beliefs are just going to die one by one and I am going to grieve them. So the Patience Dilemma, the more I love this country, the harder it is for me to see the places where it could be better.

Not to condemn it all and hate my country or anything like that, is to simply look at my country like I look at my kids, something I love deeply, and I will always try to support to get better and reach its goals. Yes, well, I love how you had a quote. I think it was in chapter two, but I can't remember, because I don't have the book in front of me. You were talking about the biggest secret of history, and that is history is told by the victors, not by the people who were suppressed. And it's interesting

because a few months ago, I had this complete, unexpected, unique experience where I went to do a challenge with a bunch of veterans and a whole gathering of Native American elders joined us for this. And throughout the entire weekend, they started out by doing ceremonies and different dances and ended up culminating that they had the actual pipe from one of their longest-standing elders, and what the culmination of the ceremony was really about was three of these tribes coming to us veterans and the former Secretary of Defense was with us

and they presented him with this peace pipe to make peace. And they described kind of from their standpoint the atrocities that had been done on them and it's interesting when they talk about custard's last stand etc. from their perspective it's told in a completely different way. The reason I bring that all up is it really challenged some of my beliefs about our country and what's presented to us. And what happens when we discover that our longstanding beliefs were more aspirational than actually being authentically true? Yeah, what a powerful experience. Thank you for sharing that. That's amazing.

I'm tempted to, like, I want to interview you right now because you've just shared something so meaningful. And I feel like you probably have a lot that you could teach us from how you experience that. I will welcome anything you want to share, but it's your show, so I will honor the question you've asked. The lizard brain in our brain wants the simple story, right? It wants the unambiguous, good guys with the Native Americans must have been savages who deserved to lose their land and they must have deserved for their population to be taken from 60 million, 60 to 6 million. A drop so stark it actually led to what they called a little ice age because there was so little

pending of vegetation over the course of 100 or so years that that took place at the hands of the white settlers. Our mind wants to sort of give that a simple explanation. That's our lizard brain. But we also have more robust brains that can handle paradox. And I think that's the path out of this that it can be true. There were things that you said that are not in line with our aspirations that we did. And there were wonderful, amazing, heroic things we did. I talked in my book about this fantasy I have that someone's gonna write, maybe someone already has, and I just haven't found it. A double-sided history book. It modeled after my friend Jeff Wilser wrote a book where for 30 days he only ate junk food like stuff you could buy at a gas station. And then for 30 days he

only ate like kale, basically. And then he wrote this double-sided book where it was one side of it was, what's wrong? The good news about what's bad for you. And then the other side was, the bad news about what's good for you. And you sort of get like both sides of it. And so my double-sided history book vision is kind of what you just said.

Like tell history from both sides. And I feel like you experienced that during that weekend where you got to take the one side of the history you knew and then hear the other side and kind of hold both of those, that there's truth in both of it. And that this is where we can use the tools of science. For example, we can tell ourselves

that both things can be true, which is called embracing a paradox mindset. Research by Wendy Smith and others have shown us that when we simply tell ourselves both things can be true, we're able to hold both things in our minds, we're able to be more creative, we're able to be more resilient. It's a really powerful performance enhancer

to be able to hold contradiction in paradox in our mind. So I think that's one path out of this. We'll be right back to my interview with Dolly Chug. When it comes to your health and longevity, you hold nothing back. You understand what it means to push harder, reach farther, and go the extra mile. This relentless drive runs in your blood. That's why InsideTracker provides you with a personalized plan to build strength, speed, recovery, and optimize your health for the long run.

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Please support those who support the show and make it free for our listeners. Avertiser deals and discount codes are in one convenient place at passionstruck.com. Now back to my interview with Dolly Chug. Well, I'll just give you, since you asked, a little bit more of an explanation. Well, first off, it was completely humbling to be presented with Crazy Horses pipe, which hadn't been smoked in over 52 years. Wow. And for them to bring that around us in such a ceremonial way. And following that experience,

I had the opportunity to interview a friend of mine, DJ Vannis, who just published a great book called The Warrior Within. And in that book, and in our conversation, he really talks about the fact that all these movies portrayed Native Americans, and especially the elders and the warriors, in a completely contradictory way, then they are taught to express themselves. He said even himself growing up, he thought that they were bigger than imagination, had superpowers all this.

And he said that the biggest thing about the elders is being a teacher and educating those around them on the ways of the world and how to take care of the earth and how to show humility and how to take care of the earth and how to show humility and how to quiet the ego. And he said it was really the opposite of what you would think it is. It's all about honor, but he also said it's not about them being superhuman or that they do everything right because they make mistakes and it's to realize that but to grow out of it with humility. So I thought that that was really a powerful message that he gave. That's really interesting. That's really interesting.

What brought them to share this weekend with you was this kind of a coincidence that they were there? Did they specifically pick this weekend? No, it was pretty an amazing story. The chief elder who was there dreamt about this 25 years ago that this day was going to come. And he actually reached out to my friend Andrew Marr who's a retired Green Beret to ask if they could come. We didn't realize the death of what they were coming

to experience with us, but it just turned out to be an amazing weekend on Andrew's ranch and just outside of Houston, Texas. So phenomenal. Wow. I'm glad that you brought up Wendy Smith because I just interviewed her and Mary Ann Lewis last week. They have a fabulous new book out too, both hand-thinking.

Yes, I said it heavily in mine, actually. Well, since you brought up paradoxes, I know that they have been studying paradoxes for 20 plus years. And paradoxes for centuries have energized and mystified philosophers, scientists, and psychologists. But why should we embrace them by developing a paradox mindset? And how can we use it to embrace rather than ignore the contradictions that are around us? Yeah. Well, I think they're the path forward for us. I think a lot of us feel stuck right now. We

feel we're living in divided times. We feel distant from people we care about, polarize. I think a lot of people are looking for a path of hope and moving forward right now. And I really think this is the path of finding a way for these strong emotions that are, that we're caring with us, that we're holding, and these contradictory realities, like the ones we've been talking about.

So their research offers us a path towards how can we not get stuck in trying to solve an unsolvable puzzle? Like it's an unsolvable puzzle for us to say where our forefathers exclusively heroes or exclusively doing terrible things. It is both. And the path forward isn't to sit here and argue or take sides or get lost in that argument. It's to hold both in our minds as people who love this country. We talk about you and and those you spent the weekend with who have served our country in such a deep, meaningful, sacrificial way. How do we honor that sacrifice by moving forward, not getting lost in a debate over, let's just take what has already happened and say both can be true and look for what's possible.

I interviewed former New Orleans mayor, Michelin Drew for the book. He got a lot of national attention when he made the decision to try at the advice of his good friend, Winston Marcellus, the famous musician, to take down the Confederate monuments that were on public spaces in New Orleans. And I was so surprised when I interviewed him, it just, gosh, he just speaks

with such, like, he's like a shot of adrenaline this guy. I mean, like the way he talks about his city is just like, so gung-ho. And I kind of in the middle of the interview was just like, I'm sorry, I just have to ask. I'm trying to understand. All you're talking about is how rich and beautiful this, the history of your city is, and you're tearing down these monuments that are been in your city and sort of captured the symbolism

of your city for so long. And he basically said, life is complicated. You got to hold both. Both are true. And this is how I move forward. And I thought he was just a great example of what this looks like. The path forward is through paradox. Well, I think that's a great answer. And I love how throughout the book, you highlight different stories and give practical examples. And one that really caught my attention was in chapter two, which the title of is Dress for the Weather, but in it, you talk about the marriage of Ryan Reynolds and Blake

Lively, and how it was done in this really unique setting of a plantation. And I was thinking back to visualizing that, because I remember seeing pictures of it as I was reading your book. But what did the two of them feel to understand about that backdrop when they originally made that arrangement? And I think came to regret it. Yes, that's what I understand as well. I don't hang out with Ryan and Blake to be clear.

So I, this is all based on what I read of their public accounts. But if they want to hang out, they can Blake to be clear. So I, this is all based on what I read of their public accounts. But if they want to hang out, they can give me a call. The way I understand it is that they're, they kind of went, fell for the like Pinterest Instagram when you're planning a wedding, like the visuals, the imagery. And this plantation weddings apparently are a pretty big thing. It's a big industry. It's a strong motif for a lot of people that they want for their weddings. They loved it and went for it and that's how they had their wedding. I think the internet educated them a little upon their images of their wedding

going public as to what they had ignored while while they certainly, we have to believe that they understood that slavery is tied to plantations, that they hadn't really thought through the reality of what they were celebrating. When the plantation motif was celebrating a certain way of life and that way of life, it wasn't tangential. It rested on, it existed because of, it was literally the product of the labor of people who were kidnapped from their homes and enslaved and human traffic.

That's the reality. And as I understand it, as they kind of, this is a good example of like the psychology of good people, how we can know something but not know something, how we can see something but not see it. This is not so unusual for how the human mind works and I think they, at least their public statements showed that they reflected upon that and really sort of saw what they didn't see before and what they should have seen before and as I understand regret it. Well, I think it's a great tie-in to your chapter four and I'm gonna just read this, but you write that the less we know about the past, the less we will understand its impact on the present.

And I guess what I wanna ask you is, why are we wired to downplay the past and overplay the future? Yeah, so I think we have two really interesting sort of evidence-based insights to offer there from social scientists. One is, Fiya Salter, psychologist with her and her colleagues, they have shown that giving people even a little bit

of historical information, I mean like a paragraph, increases their ability to recognize systemic problems in the present, like racism. Like, those literally see it better. I mean, if we sort of, I'm going to still bring back the Ryan and Blake example, Fiya Salter's research would suggest that if you just gave them a little bit of historical information, it would have completely changed how they understood plantation weddings in the present. So that's one important insight that science offers us

is there's that intervention there. The second thing is there's research in what's called the hindsight bias. The hindsight bias is how what's already happened just seems inevitable. Like you can't imagine once you've run track and field or cross country in college, it's hard to imagine your life

if it had gone any other way, right? You just can't, the tennis version of your life takes a lot of mental gymnastics to manufacture because it just seems inevitable that that's the path you would have taken. The hindsight bias becomes really important in, as you said, sort of downplaying the past and focusing on the future,

because we look at the past, like in the United States, we might look at the civil rights movement and say, well, of course, I mean, obviously, like we no longer segregate legally segregate public spaces, like, of course, but there was nothing inevitable about it. There were many attempts that failed. failed. It's so happened that in the 60s and 70s some attempts finally worked. There's obviously still longstanding efforts for other changes that are underway, but the hindsight bias leads us to be like, well, of course, it's inevitable. Like, that's what everybody wanted. Everybody wanted that change. That's actually not. The majority of Americans opposed those changes at the time. Martin Luther King was looked at as a radical. So it's not at all inevitable that we are today where we are. Our mind wants to just, I guess, rationalize kind of just whatever has already happened as a given, as a form of hindsight bias. Okay. And I wanted to jump to something outside of the book. In 2019, you authored a paper with our mutual friend, Katie Milkman, on diversity

thresholds, which ties very much into this book. In it, you explored how social norms affect decisions about adding members of underrepresented populations to groups. This is something that I think we all experience and see at work. We see in politics, we see in friendships. What did your research determine? Yes, thank you. I'd re-changed, let us on that paper. I'm going to do back in NOLA. It was our other collaborator.

We looked at boards, corporate boards. And thinking about ways in which the term we use was tocanism, like as a play on tocanism. A tocanism might be playing out where a sort of surprising number of corporate boards have exactly two women on them. More than you would expect by chance, for you sort of just through all the boards of the air and like musical chairs and let people fall where they were, you expect some boards to have one, two, three, four, but what we found is that we played musical chairs suddenly like everybody landed on two somehow. And we were interested in why that was and what could explain what we were calling

tokenism in these corporate boards. And it seemed as we drilled into the data and ran some lab experiments that there was this threshold where people wanted to kind of hit a certain level of diversity on gender in this case, and then kind of settle or satisfy as social scientists like to call it. Like that's enough. And the way they decided where it is settled was they kind of looked around into what everybody else was doing. And from a social norm standpoint, to felt right.

And so the narrative we offer is that if we truly want to achieve the kind of strong performance that diverse boards or organizations or teams can generate, we want to be able to push ourselves beyond this psychological threshold mindset if I just got to hit that goal and then withdraw effort and really continue driving towards the bigger picture goal, which is true diversity, true inclusion, and truly strong performance. Okay, and I'm gonna use that as a segue because this really is about a different way of thinking

about the polarizing views and misconceptions that are out there. Why do you think that it's so important that we change the way that we're processing this? And what are some of the ways if a listener is hearing this, that they themselves can apply a different approach to this? Yeah, absolutely.

I love that question because it really just does come down to what can each of us do in our daily lives. I think one start was just a thought experiment of, of, of, consider her family or any friend group, consider any part of the history of that group. And you can actually do it for real or just do it in your head of how would each person tell the story of that time when mom and dad had that big fight, how would every member of the family tell that story?

And pretty quickly, we all intuitively know that there would be a lot of different stories, right? Mom would have their story, dad would have their story, little sibling would have their story, the neighbor would have their story, we'd have all these different versions of the story. And that feels really intuitive, and we can take that and use it to help become the lens through which we think about history, like American history. So if that's true about that time, mom and dad had a fight, why

wouldn't that be true for how we think about every other part of our history? Wouldn't there be multiple perspectives? So I think that becomes makes it just easier to kind of ease into this work of being a gritty patriot as I call it, a patriot who loves our country like I do, like you do, but also has the grit, as Angela Duckworth calls it, to persevere through those road bumps of emotional like, wait, I didn't know that was true or that can't be right. Because if that's true, that means that was an a fair fight. Or how could I not know that? That makes me feel terrible in a shame that I didn't know that.

So it can't be true, disbelief. All of those little emotional road bumps, we can push through those with some grit and be a gritty patriots. So the first place I would say is start is do this like doing history exercise in your head about your own family, your own friend group and see if you can use that to inform now when you think about the Fourth of July, what are the different perspectives one might think about?

Why does Juneteenth become relevant? When you think about Thanksgiving, what are the different perspectives you might think about? No, I think that's a great perspective. And I'm gonna just bring in your 2018 book, The Person You Mean to Be. And I'm going to give you a shout out here too, because it was featured as one of the top six books

by the next idea of book club, which is amazing amongst many other awards. But I think the question that that book answers in many ways coincides with this book, which is, how do we unwittingly perpetuate the forces of sexism, racism, and inequality? My question, you would be, how do we put a stop to that, which is becoming so polarizing for our country?

Yeah, it is. You know, there's obviously many layers to, to tackling a problem that big. What I focus on is the mindset we bring to that work that we want to move from that good person identity that we talked about earlier that's brittle and it's either or and we're very invested in being a good person. And if someone says, yeah, but, you know, I don't think you realize the way you treated me wasn't really fair. They're like, oh, that can't be true. Because I'm a good person.

And we will defend it. I will go red zone defensive defending my good person identity to a mindset of being a good-ish person. This is similar to the work Carol Dweck and others have done on fixed mindset, which is brittle. I have nowhere to grow or learn to a growth mindset or being what I call good-ish, where I have more to learn. I'm always getting better. I'm able to take in some information or feedback, or it makes me a little defensive, but I'm able to take it in and do better

the next time. That's the power, I think, of a growth mindset, is that we're actually better now than we were a year ago, better now than we were 10 years ago. That mindset, I think, is going to be core to all the work we want to do, fighting racism and sexism in ourselves and around us, because it allows us to be constantly learning and growing and getting better. Without that, I don't think anything else works because we just are going to constantly want to defend to the way things are rather than make them better. Yes, I think that's a great point.

And I think it's something that we need to really focus on if we're going to change this country that we love and make it become what I think all of us desire it to be. I think it's like climate change. It's, we keep arguing about the tangential issues on the periphery instead of dealing with the big hairy beast that's right in front of us. And I think a lot of these biases are the same way.

And we could correct them with a system's change mindset about how we're viewing all of this. So that's very powerful. Yes, well, I always like to ask authors, if there was one thing that they would like the reader to take away from the book, what would it be? Thank you. Tough question, though. I would like readers to take away this idea that we can love with a broken heart, that we can love this country so deeply, just like we can love our children so deeply, we can love our partner so deeply, and we can still sometimes have a little bit of a broken heart

where there's a little bit of disappointment where there's a little bit of, oh, we could do better than that, and we can move forward with that. It's possible both things can be true. We don't parent through Instagram. We parent with real people. And I think patriotism is the same. It's a real country with real people. And we can love it deeply, but see it deeply as well.

Okay, thank you so much for that. And if a member of the audience wanted to learn more about you, and I'll make sure I put these all in the show notes, I already talked about your YouTube video and your other book, but what are some other ways that people can reach you? Oh, you're so kind. Well, I have a website, dollychug.com. And I might have a free newsletter that people seem to like. It's kind of zeitgeistie once a month, but tips on how to be the inclusive people we mean to be and some puppy pictures as well.

And that's all on my website as well. It's called Dear Good People. Okay, well, Gullet was a complete honor for me to have you on the show. Congratulations again on the launch of your book. And thank you so much for spending your time with us here today. Thank you, John. Thank you for what you're doing for all of us with us here today. Thank you, John. Thank you for what you're doing for all of us with your work.

It's so important. I very much appreciate that. Thank you. I thoroughly enjoyed that interview with Dolly Chug. And I wanted to thank Dolly, Shida Carr, Atria Books, and Simon and Schuster for the honor and privilege of having her here on the podcast. Links to all things Dolly will be in the show notes at CashInstruct.com. Please use our website links if you buy any of the books from the guests that we feature on the show. All proceeds go to supporting the show and

making it free for our listeners. Everties are deals and discount codes, are all in one convenient place at passionstruck.com slash deals. Please consider supporting those who support the show. If you'd prefer to watch this, you can get to our YouTube channel at JohnRMiles where we have over 400 videos, including short form content that you will only find exclusively on our YouTube channel. I'm at JohnRMiles, both on Instagram and Twitter,

and you can also find me on LinkedIn. And if you wanna know how I book amazing guests like Dolly Chug, it's because of my network. Go out there and build yours before you need it. You're about to hear a preview of the PassionStruck podcast interview that I did with Dr. Nate Zinser who is an expert on confidence. And we explore his new book, The Confident Mind. And it really comes down to everybody understanding that your confidence is not something that is just going to happen out of the blue. It's going to happen because you deliberately, consciously, intentionally, John,

as you put it, intentionally, think about yourself, your life, and all the things that happen in your life in a particularly constructive manner. And that doesn't mean you're a hopeless romantic, nor does that mean you're sort of an arrogant, conceited individual. It's just that you are thinking rationally and constructively. Remember, we rise by lifting others, so share this show with those whom you love.

And if you found this episode so useful, and you know someone who's dealing with biases or who would like to know more about it, Sure, it was someone who can use that advice today. In the meantime, do your best to apply what you hear on the show so that you can live what you listen. And we'll see you next time. Live, life, passion, sera. you