Something You Should Know - How to Exude Self-Confidence & What it Means to Be a Better Person

Starting point is 00:00:00 This is an ad for BetterHelp. Welcome to the world. Please, read your personal owner's manual thoroughly. In it, you'll find simple instructions for how to interact with your fellow human beings and how to find happiness and peace of mind. Thank you, and have a nice life. Unfortunately, life doesn't come with an owner's manual.

Starting point is 00:00:18 That's why there's BetterHelp Online Therapy. Connect with a credentialed therapist by phone, video, or online chat. Visit betterhelp.com to learn more. That's BetterHelp.com. Today on Something You Should Know, where does all that dust in your house come from? And what is it exactly? Then, how to have more self-confidence and let everyone see it shine. My major premise is to help people to manage these negative emotions in a mature, confident way, so you can not sail through life,

Starting point is 00:00:52 but you can really go through life in a state of calm and comfort, knowing that you can competently deal with whatever comes your way. Then, the power of reward to motivate people. It's a lot stronger than most of us think. And how to be a better person? It requires three things, productivity, morality, and happiness. The most important thing for happiness, and it turns out longevity, is socializing, having valuable, positive social interactions with people you care about is the number one factor in predicting people's happiness

Starting point is 00:01:24 and in changing people's happiness. All this today on Something You Should Know. This winter, take a trip to Tampa on Porter Airlines. Enjoy the warm Tampa Bay temperatures and warm Porter hospitality on your way there. All Porter fares include beer, wine, and snacks, and free fast-streaming Wi-Fi on planes with no middle seats. And your Tampa Bay vacation includes good times, relaxation, and great Gulf Coast weather. Visit flyporter.com and actually enjoy economy. Something you should know. Fascinating intel. The world's top experts and practical advice you

Starting point is 00:02:08 can use in your life. Today, Something You Should Know with Mike Carruthers. Hi, welcome to Something You Should Know, where we start today with the subject of dust. It's everywhere. You get rid of it, it comes right back again. So what exactly is dust, and where does it come from? Well, you're not going to like this, but a team of scientists in Arizona say that it consists basically of a potpourri of dead skin shed by people, fibers from carpets and furniture, and airborne particles and dirt tracked in from outside. They even say it can include things like lead, arsenic, and other bad things from air and soil outside the house. The best way to reduce household dust is to have efficient doormats at every entrance,

Starting point is 00:03:00 wash sheets and towels often, that's where the dead skin cells are usually hiding, and vacuum everything. And that is something you should know. Some people just exude confidence. They're so sure of themselves, they seem to know what they're talking about, they control the room, and people pay attention to them. Other people struggle with confidence. They doubt themselves. They worry about what other people think, and they think others are thinking very critical thoughts about them. So how can we be more self-confident? How can we not let what other people think, or what we think other people

Starting point is 00:03:41 think about us, crush our belief in ourselves. Sheena Hankin is a psychotherapist in New York City, and she has spent a long time working with people to help build their confidence. And she is author of the book, Complete Confidence. Hello, Sheena. So why, in your experience, why do you think that some people are just more naturally self-confident than others? I think some people are more fortunate in their backgrounds. I think they're brought up by people who have more confidence than others. They don't know it, but they in fact give that to their children

Starting point is 00:04:15 just as we give everything else to our children. I think if confident parents, or at least one confident parent, or grandparents and influences like that, we can grow up seeing the world as a safe place that's manageable and that when bad things do happen, as they do to everyone, that you can react to it maturely in a problem-solving fashion. The rest of us, including me, didn't get so fortunate. We can be loved a lot, but we may not be given the guidance to do that, Mike.

Starting point is 00:04:43 But it would seem that if you grew up with this general lack of confidence, that as an adult now, it would be hard to get. I think that's a way to, in fact, sound a bit powerless around it, Mike. I mean, I think the brain's always in a state of adaption. You know, that's a wonderful thing about a human brain. We're always striving at some level to be mature, to do better. I mean, people, you know, you look at the self-help books like mine. I mean, people read things, they try things, they listen to the internet, they look to find ways to do better in life. And so I think

Starting point is 00:05:15 I'm appealing to that strong sense of survival to say, no, it's not a, it is, it isn't a daunting task. It's a wonderful thing to try and do. And like any new skills, it's always more difficult at the beginning. But even if you learn to drive, it's tough at the beginning. You think you can't put it all together. But when you learn to drive your brain, it gets easier. And one day you do it automatically. So we can make confidence an automatic thing if you really start out and see it as a skill. You know, there are those people who can walk into a room and just exude confidence,

Starting point is 00:05:45 and people are drawn to them. And then there are the people who walk into a room and immediately start to think, you know, people are looking at me, people are judging me. The thought process is like in reverse. Absolutely, and that's a good place to start, because people like that are actually creating their own painful anxiety and shame by having that point of view that everyone feels about me the way I feel about me. And having done a lot of research on that, Mike, people make very, very sort of innocent judgments about people. And it's very much like this.

Starting point is 00:06:18 Do I like this person? Do they seem safe? Does this person seem risky and somehow dangerous to me? Very simple animal responses. safe does this person seem risky and somehow dangerous to me very simple animal responses so if you go in there and you're in your own head and you're worrying about what people think you come across sometimes even as arrogant or distant and hard to reach and that's the way a way not to be popular so what you've got to do is say we have no clue what people think and it really doesn't

Starting point is 00:06:40 matter what people think we've got to go in there and be open look people in the eye and tell myself you know know, I am myself. I'm not going to make up stories about what's in other people's heads. And I don't do that, Michael. I'm a shrink. You said a moment ago that we think other people think of us the way we think of us. So you're saying then that if you walk into a room of people and you immediately think that these people are judging you, they're thinking less of you, they think you're less than they are, that that's what you think of you? That is what you think of you. It is what you feel about yourself.

Starting point is 00:07:16 And that's what the problem is. You have a habit of feeling this way about yourself. You never got over that, you know, early stage. All kids are self-critical. We know what it's like to be a kid and your friends don't like you and you're devastated. Kids don't have a strong sense of self. But if we go on into adulthood for whatever reason, still being self-critical, still judging ourselves, calling ourselves stupid, fat, old, ugly, or a loser, that's my favorite five, you know. They're the five most common things people say about themselves.

Starting point is 00:07:43 I'm stupid, I'm fat, I'm old, I'm ugly. Use any combination of those things. And we're feeling shame all the time. We're going to think that other people are seeing what we feel. We have no way of doing that. So what I want people to do is to work on not being self-critical. I have a formula for doing that in my book, challenging their thinking and comforting that feeling that's really not real.

Starting point is 00:08:03 Feelings are not real, and feelings are not to be trusted. That's what I keep saying. You know, we were raised in the 70s, 80s to think feelings should be trusted. Well, you know, I'd have killed all my children, Mike, if I trusted my feelings at times. They're bad things to listen to if they're negative like that. I love that, that feelings are not to be trusted. But can you go through those five things again that you mentioned very briefly? Can you go through them again in a little more detail?

Starting point is 00:08:31 Yeah, the five most common thoughts or habit of thinking that people have go like this, categories. First one is, I'm stupider than other people. The second one is so prevalent and so painful, I'm fat. And I'm fat and people are not going to respect me like I don't because I'm fat. In the sort of generation now, baby boomers, I'm old. I'm too old. I'm too old to be taken seriously and respected. I'm too old to do anything new. Stupid, fat, old, ugly. You know, there's something ugly about me. I'm a short guy. I'm not as a pretty woman as I'd like to be.

Starting point is 00:09:10 I have wrinkles. All kinds of ways that people put themselves out there being so-called ugly. And the collective noun of all of those things is somehow in life I'm a loser. And that's a feeling. It's not a fact. But if you feel it, you'll act on it. And you'll act against yourself. So I'm extremely keen on people giving up any of those five combinations.

Starting point is 00:09:33 And you get a room of people, you'll find the stupids, you know, the fats, the olds, the uglies and the losers. It's a common category and all of us have had some of those things. And that's the first place to start. Self-criticism is self-defeating. Do you think that feeling that way, feeling that self-criticism causes you to act a certain way which is self-defeating or do you think that you can change the action and that will help change the feeling? You can do it all at once. You can challenge your thinking, you can really really really decide to do

Starting point is 00:10:04 what's right in life and not what you feel like sometimes that means taking a risk that means lifting up the phone and calling that person you're frightened to call it means asking for the raise asking for the date you can plan an action and take it and and the third thing most important thing and manage the feeling manage it to reduce it so you're freer to begin to change your life. And I'm really talking about life-changing policy, changing your thoughts, changing your feelings,

Starting point is 00:10:32 and managing your behavior all at the same time. But how do you change a thought? Hey, by challenging it. I mean, people believe their feelings. You know, if I think I'm a stupid person, you're going against a theory of mine that I think has a lot of weight. People are very smart.

Starting point is 00:10:50 Everybody is very smart. Anyone else who calls others stupid or themselves stupid, particularly others, is making a big mistake and underestimating other people. I've worked with hundreds and hundreds of people, all kinds of educational levels, even no educational

Starting point is 00:11:05 level. I find people to be extremely smart. And if they're going to go around calling themselves stupid, you know, they're really going to undermine their actions. They're not going to be ambitious. They're not going to believe they can do it. They'll tell me, I didn't do well in school. Well, school's no measure of intelligence at all. Some people have academic aptitude, others don't. But it's no measure of intelligence at all. People are very, very smart. In fact, I think people are brilliant. But people whose brains are full of shame and self-pity are underachievers.

Starting point is 00:11:38 And I think in this country really suffers from something very serious, and that is the fact that we talk about the price of gas being such a problem for the economy. What about the price of lack of confidence? All these people in the country are not fulfilling their potential, their dreams, their ambitions, however big or small, who have difficult relationships and don't know why. And if we could only get them to work on the things that I lay out for them,

Starting point is 00:12:02 which is done as a handbook, you know, you can work your way through it, you can find that you can release all your potential. It's really true. I did it myself. I came from nothing. No money, four kids, you know, and not much hope. I've helped an awful lot of people at various levels of their lives to do this, and I wanted to go to a larger public. How big a part do you think hope plays in confidence? I think hope plays a lot of a part because it's a thought. Hope is a belief in the future. You see, everyone who's depressed, and I don't believe that most of these people who are on antidepressants are depressed. I think a small category I know of tend to be negative about the future. They tend to, you know, see the world from a dark perspective. Bad things are going to happen.

Starting point is 00:12:47 It's all disastrous in the future and I've got to be prepared against that. Well, no one can fortune tell the future. You can look at history if you like and see that things come and go. But I want people to see the world as, luckily for us, living in America as we do,

Starting point is 00:13:02 as a safe place, as a place that has a lot of opportunity, that is not out to get you, that is not out to defeat you. I'm not saying it's easy, but the opportunity lies out there and you're sort of well able to take charge of whatever you have and make that happen for you, whatever that is, whatever that is. I'm speaking with Sheena Hankin. She's a psychotherapist in New York City and she's author of the book Complete Confidence.

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Starting point is 00:14:02 looking to hear new ideas and perspectives. So I want to tell you about a podcast that is full of new ideas and perspectives, and one I've started listening to called Intelligence Squared. It's the podcast where great minds meet. Listen in for some great talks on science, tech, politics, creativity, wellness, and a lot more. A couple of recent examples, Mustafa Suleiman, the CEO of Microsoft AI, discussing the future of technology. That's pretty cool. And writer, podcaster, and filmmaker John Ronson,

Starting point is 00:14:41 discussing the rise of conspiracies and culture wars. Intelligence Squared is the kind of podcast that gets you thinking a little more openly about the important conversations going on today. Being curious, you're probably just the type of person Intelligence Squared is meant for. Check out Intelligence Squared wherever you get your podcasts. So Sheena, is this a long process or is there kind of a first aid approach? If you're in a situation where your thinking starts going down that rabbit hole, that spiral of self-criticism and all this is terrible and I'm losing my confidence, is there something you can do in that moment to stop it? Yes, really. First of all, write down all your negative thinking. Make a list of

Starting point is 00:15:25 all your darkest thoughts. Take a deep breath, breathe slowly, and read it back to yourself. It'll begin to look dramatic to you, short of some major, you know, crisis that we're not dealing with. You know, if your house burns down, it's a bit different. But if it, look at, read them back to you. No, I can't stand this. This is terrible. I'm overwhelmed. I'll never get out of this hole. Just listen to that, right? Wait a minute. Let's reduce the emotion in that. Let's rewrite, then rewrite the list.

Starting point is 00:15:52 I'd say this is a difficult situation. I have a set of decisions to make. I can calm my anxiety if I breathe slowly and tell myself that somehow it'll work out. And then you can begin to make decisions. It's a whole different way to look at it. But write down your feelings. I used to do that thinking all the time, and I was almost embarrassed reading it back about how dramatic it was. Do you know what I mean? Sure, sure. But does it really come down to what you're trying to do here in gaining confidence?

Starting point is 00:16:22 Is what you're really doing is trying to convince yourself that you're really not as bad as you think you are? It's convincing yourself you're not bad at all. I mean, what a judgment that is. I mean, are human beings bad? No, I don't think so at all. I mean, if you look around you, I can walk down the street. I don't expect anyone to hurt me. I don't expect anyone to treat me badly.

Starting point is 00:16:42 I might find some bad-tempered person who's a little nasty for a minute, but that hardly makes them bad. Human beings are very good people who want to get along. And that itself is a whole change of attitude. Even your bad-tempered husband or your difficult mother-in-law, she really wants to get along. You know, people are social animals unless they're extremely disturbed, and very few people are in that category.

Starting point is 00:17:03 So give me a couple of examples from your experience, some how-to things that can really help kick-start this process of gaining more confidence. Well the first thing is the one we've covered, I want to do it again, is write down your thinking, write down all of your negative thinking and write a challenge to it, particularly take the drama out of it. Look for self-criticism and self-pity and try and squeeze that out of your thinking. Rewrite it and look at it again. You can text it. You can do all kinds of, put it on your computer so you can revisit it.

Starting point is 00:17:36 And then you'll see that you're actually overreacting. The next thing you can do is really, really look at self-criticism in your life. Practice walking into rooms and just not doing that. Practice walking into a room and speaking up and saying, I'm going to say what's on my mind. I'm going to say it simply and kindly and directly, and I'm going to let it hang where it may. I'm not going to make up that people won't like me, will like me,

Starting point is 00:18:01 and cease to impress people. I think stop pleasing people. This is a surprising one to say, but an awful lot of women spend their lives like me, will like me, and cease to impress people. I think stop pleasing people. This is a surprising one to say, but an awful lot of women spend their lives trying to be good people by pleasing others, by not putting their own needs second, and being very resentful and sorry for themselves because it's a tough way to live. Instead, follow my great belief, my philosophic belief that we have to sit with ourselves and say, Sheena, what's the right thing to do at this moment in time?

Starting point is 00:18:28 And if the right thing is to disappoint somebody, let me do it kindly. But let me do the right thing, not what somebody else wants. So don't be a pleaser. That's one of the most common things people get depressed eventually about. And finally, manage your feelings. No raging and sulking. Raging and sulking is for three-year-olds. If you're angry, make a statement about what you're angry about, if it's appropriate, without blame. Like I was upset when you inadvertently, I don't know,

Starting point is 00:18:57 whatever, took something of mine that you didn't mean to, or you forgot to do something you said you'd do, or you left me waiting for half an hour when we were supposed to meet. I was upset. It troubled me. I didn't love that. But don't say, you know, what kind of person are you to do this to me? Take the blame out of your language. Take the blame out of your language in your head. I think blame is something that really gets us out of the responsibility

Starting point is 00:19:20 for our part in the problem. It just causes fights. So there's a few things to do. My major premise is to help people to manage these negative emotions in a mature, confident way, so you can not sail through life, but you can really go through life in a state of calm and comfort, knowing that you can confidently deal with whatever comes your way. You know, just hearing you talk about this in the way that you do is comforting

Starting point is 00:19:45 to people that this is not only possible, this is very doable if you're willing to make it a priority and make the effort. Because I think a lot of people don't see this as a choice. No, they don't. They label themselves, I'm an anxious person. I'm a depressed person. I have a terrible metabolism. I can never lose weight. I can't really expect. I don't know enough to run a business. Do you know what I mean? I just can't do it.

Starting point is 00:20:15 I'm too stupid. They really damage their own confidence by having fixed ideas about the human brain, about their own brain. I mean, none of us are inadequate. None of us are stupid. None of us have the handicaps that we feel we have. You know, people, mostly people, if they have hopes and ambitions, they're usually reasonable. I'm not talking necessarily work. I'm talking about getting a relationship or, you know, a hobby, a new thing you want to do. If you have an idea of doing that and it's not happening,

Starting point is 00:20:47 then you're in your own way. If you're procrastinating, it's a way to make yourself not succeed. It's a terrible feeling. And you're not going to get there. I always say therapy shouldn't cost you money. People come and say, I'm not cheap, Mike, I have a big practice in Manhattan. But it shouldn't cost you money

Starting point is 00:21:03 because you should achieve what you want to achieve as a result of it. Wait a minute. You just said that therapy shouldn't cost money, but you charge people a lot of money. I charge people a lot of money, but I expect them to go out and get the benefits they want. And I feel it was worth it. I have people say to me, and I don't want to be self-congratulatory, but it's a true quote. I had somebody say to me, you know, it was worth double what I paid you. Look where I am now. How much of this problem that you're talking about, how much of this lack of self-confidence

Starting point is 00:21:34 comes from the worry of what other people think? Well, you know, I like to say there's really basically three kinds of procrastinators. The first kind is the perfectionist, who thinks they can avoid criticism, right, by producing a perfection in whatever they're trying to do. And, of course, it's a nightmare to do that. You put hours and hours into things that don't necessarily need that long, and you eventually get tired of it, and you can't get yourself to do it.

Starting point is 00:22:01 You know, all perfectionists, to a degree, are procrastinators. Then you've got the true slackers in life, And there's less of these, often younger teenagers think it should be easy. You know, it should be easy. Why is it so difficult? Poor me, that's the self-pity. Poor me, this is too much for me. I'm overwhelmed. They use dramatic, you know, victim words. And they don't really seem to know that if you could manage that feeling and put that energy into saying, I'll give it two hours and see what it looks like, you know, you'll begin to get a new pattern of behavior. I overcame some of that. And the final one are the people who are so anxious, so anxious that they just can't, you know, they can't bear the feeling of starting anything. They just can't because they're so self-critical.

Starting point is 00:22:43 It's not going to work. It's not going to be any good. I'm going to get a C an F a D my boss isn't going to like it it's above my pay grade you know all those negative critical statements that they put off doing this thing because they feel it'll be terrible they tell themselves I do better under pressure that's one of the ultimate lies in the world no one does better under pressure and the research indicates that. So we have to give up our excuses, and we really have to comfort ourselves, which I

Starting point is 00:23:10 tell people, teach people how to do. Comfort that brain, and do the things that we fear. My ambition for everyone is to do everything you fear that isn't actually dangerous. Ooh, imagine if everybody did that. Do everything you're afraid of that isn't actually dangerous. That would be a real confidence builder, wouldn't it? Sheena Hankin has been my guest. She's a psychotherapist in New York and author of the book Complete Confidence. There's a link to her book in the show notes for this episode of the podcast. Since I host a podcast, it's pretty common for me to be asked to recommend

Starting point is 00:23:47 a podcast. And I tell people, if you like something you should know, you're going to like The Jordan Harbinger Show. Every episode is a conversation with a fascinating guest. Of course, a lot of podcasts are conversations with guests, but Jordan does it better than most. Recently, he had a fascinating conversation with a British woman who was recruited and radicalized by ISIS and went to prison for three years. She now works to raise awareness on this issue. It's a great conversation. And he spoke with Dr. Sarah Hill about how taking birth control

Starting point is 00:24:21 not only prevents pregnancy, it can influence a woman's partner preferences, career choices, and overall behavior due to the hormonal changes it causes. Apple named The Jordan Harbinger Show one of the best podcasts a few years back, and in a nutshell, the show is aimed at making you a better, more informed critical thinker. Check out The Jordan Harbinger Show. There's so much for you in this podcast. The Jordan Harbinger Show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Do you love Disney? Then you are going to love our hit podcast, Disney Countdown. I'm

Starting point is 00:24:58 Megan, the Magical Millennial. And I'm the Dapper Danielle. On every episode of our fun and family friendly show, we count down our top 10 lists of all things Disney. There is nothing we don't cover. We are famous for rabbit holes, Disney-themed games, and fun facts you didn't know you needed, but you definitely need in your life. So if you're looking for a healthy dose of Disney magic, check out Disney Countdown wherever you get your podcasts.

Starting point is 00:25:30 It's hard to imagine anyone who doesn't want to be a better person. There's something that happens inside you when you do something good. It just feels good. But what does it mean to be a better person? Better according to who? And according to what standard? What is it you have to do to be a better person? And is being a better person a never-ending quest? Can you always be better?

Starting point is 00:25:54 Or is there some point at which you're simply a good person, and that's good enough? Well, someone who has actually looked at this is Jim Davies. He is a professor at the Institute of Cognitive Science at Carleton University in Ottawa, and he is author of a book called Being the Person Your Dog Thinks You Are, The Science of a Better You. Hi, Jim. Welcome. Thank you so much. You know, when you stop and think about it, probably one of the reasons that we have dogs as pets and we like dogs is that your dog always thinks you're amazing. My dog loves me to death no matter what. But not everybody thinks I'm as spectacular as my dog thinks I am.

Starting point is 00:26:37 Still, I mean, I like to think that I'm a good person and I try to be my best. And yeah, I suppose I could be better, but is this just a never-ending quest? No matter how good I get, I can always be better? It's never-ending. And I think that this is something that makes people shy away from it, is they feel that for being like a good person or something, there's some end point.

Starting point is 00:27:02 But I like to think of all these things as more like nutrition. You can understand better and better what a perfectly nutritious diet is, even if you're unable to achieve it. It's just a matter of how good can you do, right? How happy can you get? How productive can you be? And how morally good can you be? And you'll never be perfect, but it's something that you're always working on. And those three things, being productive, being happy, and morally good, those are the three things that make you a better person. So let's talk about them.

Starting point is 00:27:33 Being productive like how? What I do that I'm maybe not doing now? Well, I think the two most effective and easiest things that a person can do are get enough sleep and turn off as many notifications on their smartphone as they possibly can. Most people in the modern world are underslept. And getting more sleep is good for many things, productivity, health, longevity, happiness, and productivity. But also getting more sleep is one of the most pleasurable ways to improve your life. So it's not really a trade-off. So I would put sleep up there. But the other thing is that for productivity in particular, but also for happiness, getting constantly interrupted

Starting point is 00:28:15 with whatever you're trying to do is a large drain. It makes people more anxious and it keeps them from getting things done. So I would recommend that people shut off like vibration, sound, watch notifications from their phone for as many apps as they can stomach and only check social media and whatever else on your phone, maybe like every half an hour. So at least you get half an hour chunks of dedicated time to focus and concentrate on work. And that's the kind of thing that in the long term results in the kind of things that people feel productive about when they look back on their life. And how do we know this? How do we know this isn't just your preference, but that there's real science here? Yeah, well, we know that people prefer it because

Starting point is 00:28:59 people constantly do it. And the thing is, it feels productive. Like when people are juggling like emails coming in and answering tweets, it feels productive. Like when people are juggling like emails coming in and answering tweets, it feels productive because you're kind of knocking things down in a way that doing the things that are actually productive in the long run, they don't always have the same immediate reward. So it doesn't feel as productive in the short term. But they've done careful studies of how long it takes you to recover from an interruption, for example. And although the studies vary a lot in what their estimate is, everyone agrees that it's an unacceptably large interruption. I'll just take one example from a study of actual workplace interruptions. Like you're working on the budget and somebody pops by your desk to talk about

Starting point is 00:29:40 their weekend or something. Sometimes people take up to an hour to get back to the original task. And sometimes they just never do. So these interruptions by your phone or by coworkers or something like that can really interfere with getting things done. So in addition to productivity, one of your three pillars of being a better person is morality. So what do you mean by morality? So morality isn't something a lot of people think is scientifically invest, uh, investigatable, but, um, when people do things that they think are good, um, it's very hard to compare them. So is it better to like, uh, you know, work an hour at a food bank or to donate 50 bucks to the local theater? And I think a lot

Starting point is 00:30:23 of people don't really think that there's a way to compare these things. But I've done an analysis where I try to put everything in some kind of a common currency. And that common currency I use is saving a year of a human life, right? So everyone can pretty much agree that if someone's going to die a year early, if you're able to let them live that extra year that they wouldn't have had, that's a good thing, right? And so what I try to do is put everything in those terms and then you can compare doing one action versus another action or doing something bad or something else bad and then compare them, right? That's what I mean by morality is like doing good for the world. And if you want to maximize your morality,

Starting point is 00:31:01 you have to like find a way to put things into some kind of common currency so you can try to do the things that have the most impact. And so take that theory, that example, and apply it into real life here. A lot of people, when they say donate to charity, they're very opportunistic about it. If they were going to invest in a company, they would certainly do their due diligence and figure out how much that investment would return in terms of money. And when you're trying to do something good, you should try to figure out how much return you're going to get in terms of goodness. And so what you can do, there are several charities out there that actually have measurements of how much good they're doing. And you can use those to try to do the most good that you can, let's say, if you're going to donate your money or your time. Sometimes I think people, you know, the problem with giving to some big charity is it doesn't feel very real. You're fairly far removed from how it actually helps anybody, which I think

Starting point is 00:31:57 makes people reluctant. So maybe they give 10 bucks to the guy standing on the corner with the sign, but, you know, how much good does that do either? And so I think people get very kind of confused. They want to help, but they don't know what to do to help. That's, those are great examples because giving, giving like 10 bucks to somebody on a street, at least, you know, you're giving 10 bucks to that guy and you know who you're helping and it feels good. And when you give to a large organization, let's say like one of the best that I know of is buying bed nets for people who are in danger of malaria. You're buying bed nets and you don't know who the nets are going to. You don't even know if

Starting point is 00:32:36 a mosquito would have bitten them that night. And it feels very distant. This is another reason why it's important to separate your emotions and how your instincts about being good from actually being good, right? You should be using reason and data if you want to maximize your goodness because your feelings are going to lead you astray. And so when somebody comes up to you and asks you for money, it'll feel good because you have that personal interaction in a way that mailing a check to a company and not meeting anybody doesn't. Right. But you wonder when you hand that guy the 10 or 20 bucks, what's he really going to do with it? And is it really going to help?

Starting point is 00:33:11 And, you know, it almost feels as if it's making you feel better more than it's really doing much of anything else. Well, the other thing is, if you're giving money to people in your community, you're probably giving to people who are fairly rich. Now, let me let me phrase that because I know people are thinking, what? A homeless person rich? But even like a street person in Canada or the United States is quite a lot more wealthy than many, many people on this earth. And so basically, helping poor people in the rich world is far more expensive than helping poor people in another part of the world.

Starting point is 00:33:47 So that's another result of this scientific analysis of morality, that you should be helping the poorest people on earth and not the people who are in your community because you basically get less good bang for your buck. You can save a year of human life for an estimated about 80 bucks donated to the most effective charities, but 80 bucks is, you can't do anything like save a year of human life in the modern world with that kind of money. Yeah, but there is something about community spirit and wanting to help out the community that's a pretty strong pull for a lot of us. Yeah, so this is what I'm getting at and what I started with, is that that strong a pretty strong pull for a lot of us. Yeah. So this is, this is what I'm getting at.

Starting point is 00:34:25 What I started with is that that strong pull you're talking about is exactly the kind of thing that you need to resist. If you really care about maximizing, uh, goodness and productivity and all that kind of thing, your emotions will indeed leave you astray. I mean, the question is like, yeah, there's a value maybe to, um, helping your own community, but you got to ask a hard question. It's like, okay, even if you think the people in your community's lives are worth more than somebody who might die of malaria, how many? Like one person's life in your community is worth four people in Africa? You know, those are hard questions to answer, but like if the answer

Starting point is 00:35:00 is less than or is more than you need like 16 African lives to be worth one American or Canadian life, the number's got to be larger than that for it to be worth it for you to help the community. No. Your local community. I don't think that's— Yeah, that's the way it works out. Well, but I'm not sure that's the right question to ask. I mean, if you save somebody's life just because they're local, I mean, good for you. Yeah, good for you. And there is some good done. The problem is that reliably saving somebody's life with, say, a donation or by

Starting point is 00:35:31 volunteering is much more expensive than saving lives in a poorer place in the world. So for the amount of effort you put into saving a local life, you could have saved several lives elsewhere. Maybe. Well, the data show that that's the fact. So this is one of the things I'm trying to do here is that when you look at the numbers and you look at the effectiveness of various charities, you can see that it costs many, many thousands of dollars to save one year of life in rich countries. And it costs only 80 bucks to save a life using the most effective charities in really poor countries. Well, I'm not sure I buy your premise.

Starting point is 00:36:09 Sorry, but by your constraints, everybody should be giving to the most efficient charity in the world. And that charity should be focused only on saving lives or adding life to people's longevity. But there are plenty of charities that focus on the arts or medical conditions that are not life-threatening, but those charities improve the quality of the life of those people. And there are people who really want to help people, but the help has nothing to do with adding years to their life. And there are people who just like helping in their community. And I'm not saying, you know, that it helping your local community is bad. You understand what I'm talking about is maximizing your goodness. Okay. If you're

Starting point is 00:36:54 just happy being sort of good and just doing a little bit of good, then, then fine. Right. But my, my analysis is about trying to be the best person you could be. I mean, if you donate only a few hundred dollars a year to the best charities in the world, you're probably doing more good than you've done in the entirety of your life before that. That's just the way the numbers work out. Yeah, but I, okay, but it just doesn't seem like that should be necessarily the test. If I feel good about what I'm doing, then that's my contribution. I feel better. Somebody benefits and it may not be the most efficient donation in the world, but people benefited from it and they're pretty happy and life goes on.

Starting point is 00:37:38 Yeah. I mean, if that's, that's a, that's an attitude that one can have. Right. And you know, what, what my analysis is about is, you know, trying for people who want to do better than that, right? You know, people can, let's make an analogy with like eating, right? You might say, well, yeah, this is more nutritious, but this tastes good. And so my instincts say to eat this. So I just eat whatever I want. And, you know, it's fine. You know, you can branch out and think about how much the charity is doing for you and how much it is actually doing good. If you're just donating to charity for the warm glow of donating, then maybe that's enough for you. Right. But that's that really is separate from the good you're doing for the world.

Starting point is 00:38:18 So I'm pushing on this, though, because, you know, this is the common reaction that people get. Yeah. Well, I mean, I would, I just disagree. So, but, you know, you're looking at the numbers, but I'm not sure that that's the test. I just don't, I don't think that some people... Well, let's look at it this way. Let's imagine that you're in a room and for the same amount of money you could save five people's lives or one person's life. Do you think that just, you know, it really doesn't matter because saving a life is good and whatever choice you make doesn't matter? That doesn't happen.

Starting point is 00:38:53 Well, it does happen if you're talking about making donations to charity, however. So if you donate $1,000 to save people from deworming or to save them from malaria, you can have an expected value of saving many, many years of life. So I feel like that actually is a choice that people make every day when they donate or don't. So let's talk about happiness. What is that in your view? Scientists separate happiness into two basic constructs. One is sort of your moment-to-moment happiness. And we get that by just asking people how they're feeling at random times during the day. And the other form of

Starting point is 00:39:30 happiness is what we call life satisfaction. And that's when you ask someone to kind of reflect on their life and make a judgment about how well it's going. And so that's how we measure happiness. There are those two constructs. And they're not always in line, but they're often in line. And so what we can do is by looking over lots of data and how people live their lives and, you know, the choices they make and even genetic factors, we can try to see what will, you know, increase those levels of happiness. And what will? All right. So there are two things I want to, I think are the most important to emphasize. One is that If people are looking for the secret to happiness i'm here to say that doesn't work that way Okay, because just knowing something does not automatically make you happier A lot of what makes you happier is putting into practice a way of living and that requires changing your habits, right?

Starting point is 00:40:20 So that's the first thing just learning something is not going to make you happy. It's a matter of changing how you behave. That said, the most important thing for happiness, and it turns out longevity, is hanging out with people that you really care about. Socializing, having valuable, positive social interactions with people you care about is the number one factor in predicting people's happiness and in changing people's happiness. And the reason people don't do it very often, or they don't do as much as they should, is because it particularly in the modern era, it takes a lot of effort to coordinate times, like people are booked two weeks in advance or whatever. And sometimes people just throw up their hands and say, I'd rather watch TV. But over time, watching television does not make you as happy as hanging out with people that you care about. Well, that certainly makes sense. And I think people have a sense of that. You know, when you when you hang out with people, there is that feeling that you get of, you know, being part of the group and and it's the interaction is

Starting point is 00:41:20 stimulating and it feels very good. But like you say, sometimes it's just easier to go watch TV. Yeah. And the nice thing about this is that there's really no downside. Some things that people chase in this world, like fame and other things are kind of zero sum games where you have to take away from somebody else to make yourself happy. But when you hang out with people you care about, everyone benefits, right? The people you're hanging out with get happier, you get happier. There's really no downside to it. So it's a really nice finding. So we've talked about your three building blocks to being a better person, productivity, morality, and happiness. Is there anything else that adds to being a better person besides those three? Yeah.

Starting point is 00:42:05 So one thing I found really interesting is animal welfare. I think a lot of people know that factory farming is very cruel to animals. But what a lot of people might not realize is cows are way bigger than chickens. Well, everybody knows that. But it turns out you got to eat like 200 chickens to make up the meat of one cow. So again, this is like all about like um optimizing the good you do if you eat beef for like 300 days of the year you still would not eat an uh an entire cow but i can eat a chicken in one sitting right so like the the the mass of animals uh affects the

Starting point is 00:42:43 calculation that one would think about if they were trying to, say, minimize their harm on factory farmed animals. Right. And one of the cool things is that when you encourage people to, say, cut the meat that they eat, often people will reduce eating pork and beef and eat more chicken, which actually ends up hurting animals more. You see how that works? Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. So, so it's just, it's interesting. These counter, the sometimes counterintuitive ways that the science can, can manipulate these things when you're trying to maximize, I think is really interesting. Another thing that's really cool that I think should give people some hope is that doing,

Starting point is 00:43:22 doing good. And this is true for the kind of good you're talking about like local helping people out around you and also uh donating to charities is that it really does give back uh in terms of happiness and in on some analyses even financially people who donate more tend to make more money and why exactly uh giving away money makes you money is still being investigated but one thought is that there are side social benefits to generosity that have paybacks in terms of social relationships with people. Well, as you said in the beginning, you know, this is a never ending quest to be a better person. And I think it's also a personal choice. And what makes me a better person may not be the things you would do to make you a better person,

Starting point is 00:44:05 but being a better person is certainly an interesting and worthy goal, and I like the criteria that you've set out. Jim Davies has been my guest. He is a professor at the Institute of Cognitive Science at Carleton University in Ottawa, and he is author of

Starting point is 00:44:21 the book, Being the Person Your Dog Thinks You Are, The Science of a Better You. And there's a link to that book in the show notes. Thank you for being here, Jim. I'm sure it comes as no surprise that people do better work when they're rewarded for it. Research has proven that when celebration is pre-planned into a project, people work harder and better knowing there's a payoff. And the payoff has to be more than just a paycheck or being told, hey, nice job.

Starting point is 00:44:58 This is also true at home with kids and in relationships. When people have something good to work toward, there's going to be more energy, more dedication, and more sense of ownership. The result is always going to be better. On the flip side, if people work hard and receive no reward, they often become cynical and resentful. The rewards and celebrations don't have to be big, they just have to be thoughtful. That's according to Dr. John Hoover, author of the book, The Art of Constructive Confrontation. And that is something you should know. And now that the episode is over, do me a favor and just leave a rating and review of this podcast on whatever platform you're listening on. I'm Mike Carruthers. Thanks for listening today to Something You Should Know.

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Something You Should Know - How to Exude Self-Confidence & What it Means to Be a Better Person

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