Something You Should Know - SYSK Choice: The Anatomy of Love & How Successful People Achieve Their Goals

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Starting point is 00:00:46 If you want to sustain romance, do novel things together. Novelty, novelty, novelty. It drives up the dopamine system in the brain and gives you feelings of romantic love. So this is why vacations, by the way, are so nice and romantic because it is so novel. Then why does your dog twitch and paddle while it's sleeping? Should you be concerned? And achieving your goals, any goal, becomes easier if you change the way you look at it. And the research proves it.

Starting point is 00:01:13 When you can orient your visual attention to your goal, to your finish line, it doesn't hurt as much to make it there. We can walk faster and in fact, it's not magic. It's because it's changed our psychology. All this today on Something You Should Know. People who listen to Something You Should Know are curious about the world, looking to hear new ideas and perspectives. So I want to tell you about a podcast that is full of new ideas and perspectives,

Starting point is 00:01:42 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, discussing the rise of conspiracies and culture wars.

Starting point is 00:02:14 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. Something you should know. Fascinating intel. The world's top experts. And practical advice you can use in your life. Today, Something you should know with Mike Carruthers. Hi, I wanted to mention something because I haven't mentioned this in quite a while, that if you ever want to get in touch with me because you have a question or a comment or you want to get something off your chest or whatever it is you want to tell me,

Starting point is 00:03:02 I read every single email that comes into my Something You Should Know email box. Every single one. And reply when appropriate. So you can get me at Mike at SomethingYouShouldKnow.net and rest assured I will see it. First up today, for as long as I can remember, I have heard people talk about, usually older people, talk about how the cold weather or the damp weather affects their aches and pains, makes them worse. Well, it turns out there is actually no relationship between aches and pains and the weather. None.

Starting point is 00:03:45 An Australian study confirmed other research that says it is all in your head. The idea that weather affects pain in muscles and joints goes back centuries. Centuries. But when studied closely, there is no association between back pain and temperature, humidity, air pressure, wind direction, or precipitation. What they did find is that bad weather makes people more aware of the pain and makes them more likely to attribute the pain to the bad weather. But when people feel pain on sunny days, they make no association with the weather. And that is something you should know. Why is love so difficult? People say they want love, and yet the divorce rate would indicate it's pretty hard to find.

Starting point is 00:04:37 Early on in a love relationship seems a lot easier than later on in a love relationship. Yet people keep trying. And sure, we're biologically driven to find love because we need to keep the species alive. But why does doing that make so many people so miserable? What can we do about that? Well, we can talk with Helen Fisher. She's a biological anthropologist and author of the book, The Anatomy of Love. She was a guest here a while back on episode 147 discussing a related topic,

Starting point is 00:05:11 but this is a brand new discussion about how love really does and doesn't work. And her insight just might help you understand what romantic love is all about. Hi, Helen. Welcome. I'm delighted to be with you. So talk about what love is. I mean, everyone who has felt love knows what it feels like personally, but does science or do you have a definition? Well, I think we're beginning to figure it out, yes. First of all, the question is what kind of love.

Starting point is 00:05:36 I'm quite positive, well, I've been able to prove that we've evolved three different brain systems for mating and reproduction. One is the sex drive, which some people would regard as a certain part of love, the sex drive being one, the second being feelings of intense romantic love, and the third being feelings of deep attachment. And I think that we've been able to prove that there are different brain systems and that they really evolve for different reasons. I mean, the sex drive gets you out there looking for a whole range of partners.

Starting point is 00:06:05 You don't even have to be in love with somebody to have sex with them. I think romantic love then evolved to enable you to focus your mating energy on just one individual at a time. And that third brain system of attachment evolved to enable you to stick with that partner at least long enough to raise a child together as a team. Every love relationship seems to go through stages. There's that excitement stage in the beginning, and then the relationship develops into something else, and so go through the stages. The first thing that happens when you fall in love is the person takes on what I call

Starting point is 00:06:38 special meaning. Everything about them becomes special. The car they drive is different from every other car in the parking lot. Their book bag is different from every other book bag at school. Their workplace is different from every other workstation. So everything becomes special. Then you focus on them. You know, these people can list what they don't like about their partner,

Starting point is 00:07:01 but then they just sweep that aside and focus on what they do. Elation when things are going well, mood swings into horrible despair when things are going poorly, energy, intense energy, walk all night and talk till dawn, real physiological responses. I mean, butterflies in the stomach, maybe weak knees or a pounding heart or a dry mouth when you finally run into the person or talk to them on the phone or even email them. And all kinds of, they call it separation anxiety. You don't want to be apart.

Starting point is 00:07:35 And in fact, I made up a term called frustration attraction when you are apart and you don't hear from them, they don't write, they don't call, you don't know where they are, you like them more. This brain system for romantic love, you know, kicks in even more action of intense craving for the person. You also have a real sexual desire for the person, but the three main characteristics of romantic love are foremost, although sure you'd like to have sex with them, what you really want them to do is to call, to write, to ask you out, to say that they love you.

Starting point is 00:08:08 You're highly motivated to win this person, what people will do when they're madly in love. And last but not least, somebody is camping in your head. That's the single most, largest indication of romantic love. Somebody is camping in your head. You wake up thinking about them. You go to bed thinking about him, you check your email or your text messages or your phone or whatever. And by the way, these characteristics are the same in every country in the world. I mean, ancient Japanese poetry is saying exactly the same thing that poetry from Arabia is saying,

Starting point is 00:08:40 that myths and legends are saying among the Eskimos or people up the Amazon. I mean, this is the basic brain system of romantic love. So is there any sense when people fall head over heels for somebody, what is it about them or that couple or that other person or me that makes that person so special as opposed to everybody else? You know, I'm chief science advisor to Match.com, the dating site, and they came to me in 2005 and asked me that exact question. And there's all kinds of cultural reasons that we do know.

Starting point is 00:09:17 I mean, we do tend to fall in love with somebody from the same socioeconomic background, same general level of intelligence, the same level of good looks and education, same ethnic background, same religious and social values, same reproductive goals. I mean, you want to have somebody who's going to want to have children if you do, et cetera, et cetera. So there's all kinds of cultural things. But I began to think to myself, you know, you can walk into a room and everybody's from your background and level of intelligence and

Starting point is 00:09:45 good looks and you don't fall in love with all of them. So could basic biology play a role? And I've been able to sort of sneak into mother's kitchen and figure that one out a bit. And here's what I found. People who are very expressive of the dopamine system I call explorers. They're novelty seeking,-taking, curious, creative, spontaneous, energetic, mentally flexible people. They go for people like themselves. Curious, creative people want partners like that. People are very high of the expressive of the traits in the serotonin system. I call them builders. They're traditional, conventional. They follow the rules. They respect authority. They're concrete rather than theoretical thinkers. They like rule plans,

Starting point is 00:10:32 schedules, routines. They tend to be more religious. Religiosity, there's a gene for religiosity that's in the serotonin system. And they also go for people like themselves. I think a good example is Mike Pence or Mitt Romney. They've married somebody who's very traditional as they are. In the other two cases, opposites attract. High testosterone people go for high estrogen, and high estrogen go for high testosterone. So the high testosterone kind of thinker is analytical, logical, direct, decisive, tough-minded, good at things like mechanics, engineering, computers, math.

Starting point is 00:11:10 And they go for the high estrogen. I call them negotiators. These people tend to be, oh, they're contextual, long-term thinkers. They can deal well with ambiguity. They're imaginative. They've got very good people skills. They're good at reading posture, gesture, tone of voice, et cetera. And they're quite empathetic and trusting.

Starting point is 00:11:30 They go for their opposite heights of testosterone. But what's different about my questionnaire is that the brain doesn't work in buckets. We express some of the traits in all four of these basic brain systems. So I, for example, I'm very high dopamine. I make my living being creative. I mean, when you write books, you've got to be creative with every paragraph. I travel a great deal, et cetera.

Starting point is 00:11:53 And my boyfriend is the same. So the bottom line is in the dopamine scale, we're very similar, and that works very well. He's very high testosterone, and I'm very high estrogen. That also works very well. He's very high testosterone and I'm very high estrogen. That also works very well because those are natural matches. He's higher on the serotonin system, so he's better at following the rules, at respecting authority, at making plans and schedules than I am. He's more interested in that. And really, I rather like that. So the bottom line is, as I said, 14 million people have taken this questionnaire,

Starting point is 00:12:28 and I've studied 100,000 of them. No two people answered those 56 questions the same way. But there's patterns to nature, there's patterns to culture, and as it turns out, there's patterns to personality and patterns to make choice. Okay. We're talking about love today. We're talking with Helen Fisher, who is a biological anthropologist, and the name of her book is The Anatomy of Love. Hi, I'm Jennifer, a founder of the Go Kid Go Network. At Go Kid Go, putting

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Starting point is 00:13:20 Since I host a podcast, it's pretty common for me to be asked to recommend 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

Starting point is 00:13:48 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 not only prevents pregnancy, it can influence a woman's partner preferences, career choices, and overall behavior

Starting point is 00:14:06 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. So Helen, you say there are patterns to mate

Starting point is 00:14:33 choice, but do these patterns to mate choice result in a mate who is also compatible in the long run? In other words, yeah, you may be attracted to someone initially, but does that necessarily mean it's a good match for the long run? In other words, yeah, you may be attracted to someone initially, but does that necessarily mean it's a good match for the long run? Well, you'd have to discuss what the word good is.

Starting point is 00:14:55 I mean, I would say a good match is people who are happy with each other, want to be there, want to get home, want to keep laughing, want to make love, want to go on vacations together, want to build a life, want to cooperate with her family and his family, etc. But I actually do know we have stumbled on what happens in the brain when you are in a happy partnership. We put some people in the brain scanner using fMRI who kept coming into the lab. These were people in their 50s and 60s, and they kept on saying, I've been married for 21 years, and I'm still in love with him or in love with her.

Starting point is 00:15:32 Not just loving, but in love with the person. So we didn't know. I mean, Americans don't believe you can remain in love. So we put them in the machine, and sure enough, we found activity in basically the same brain regions as among those who had just fallen, just fallen happily in love and were very young. But this is what we found about happiness. There's all kinds of cultural, psychological reasons to get happy, stay happy.

Starting point is 00:15:57 I mean, don't show contempt, don't threaten divorce, listen actively, compromise, all those kinds of things. All good, all good. But this is what the brain says. We put these people who are in long-term love into the relationship in two places, in China and in the United States. And if you score high, we give them a lot of personality questionnaires before we put them in the machine. And if you scored high on happiness in the partnership, in long-term partnership, these are the three brain regions that are active in you.

Starting point is 00:16:28 A brain region linked with empathy, a brain region linked with controlling your own stress and your own emotions, and a brain region linked with what we call positive illusions, the ability to overlook what you don't like about somebody and focus on what you do. And in fact, there's a huge brain region that is linked with what we call negativity bias. The brain is built to remember the negative. And when you're madly in love with somebody, activity in that brain region reduces. So those are the three basic brain regions in a long-term happy partnership

Starting point is 00:17:06 that are associated with happiness. Well, you said at the beginning, you said at the beginning that, you know, when you're madly in love, you can list all the things that are wrong with your partner, but you hide that away, and what comes later is you pull that list out and focus on that,

Starting point is 00:17:22 and so you're saying that some people don't pull that list out. Exactly. Or they know how to handle it. Now, for example, I used to have a boyfriend who was very slow. Oh, my God, he walked so slowly. He talked so slowly. Sometimes it would drive me a little crazy, but then I would think to myself, you know what, Helen?

Starting point is 00:17:42 He might walk slowly. And he was a brilliant man. He actually did 40 marathons, but he was just slow in his off time. And I said to myself, okay, he walks slowly, he talks slowly, but when we go to a museum, he looks so carefully at a painting. And then we go out to dinner, and he really talks about the meaning and this and that. And so I would say to myself, okay, he's walking really slowly. We're not going to make it past this light in New York City. We can stop. That's fine.

Starting point is 00:18:10 But look what I get from that slowness. And so, you know, if you're really in love with somebody, you can train yourself to think, okay, well, I do get annoyed at this, but God, he's so good at this and this and this. So that's the way you do it. Yeah, but that takes some real conscious, deliberate effort to put aside the things that drive you nuts, like your boyfriend's slowness, to really focus on the positive and be empathetic despite the flaws. I would certainly suggest adopting some empathy and controlling your own stress and emotions

Starting point is 00:18:44 and overlooking the negative but also i would keep all three of these basic brain systems alive i mean if you want to sustain romance do novel things together novelty novelty novelty it drives up the dopamine system in the brain and gives you feelings of romantic love. So I would go do novel things with my partner to sustain feelings of romantic love. This is why vacations, by the way, are so nice and romantic because it is so novel. I would keep the sex life alive. Sex is very good for the muscles and the skin. It apparently lowers cholesterol and cortisol and boosts mood and helps with memory.

Starting point is 00:19:31 And if you're in a good relationship, all those hugs and everything drives up the oxytocin system, gives you feelings of attachment. Laughter drives up the dopamine system. So anyway, I'd keep the sex drive alive. I'd keep the romantic love alive. And I would keep attachment alive. And the thing to do there is to stay in touch. Any kind of nice touch drives up the oxytocin system and can give you those feelings of attachment.

Starting point is 00:19:57 So, I mean, walk arm in arm, hold hands in the movies, learn to sleep in each other's arms, at least start that way at night when you go to sleep, get rid of the two big armchairs and sit together on the couch to watch television. I mean, we now know enough about the brain to really make good partnerships if we pick the right person and just do a little bit of tidying up now and then. I've always thought it's interesting that we have this word love that applies to so many things that there is some, like, you know, romantic love is very different than the love I have for my mother. I mean, but it's still called love, and yet it's

Starting point is 00:20:38 not the same thing. And the love I have for someone in an early part of the relationship doesn't feel anything really like it does 20 years later. So why is it all called love? It's a wonderful question. In one of my books, Anatomy of Love, I talk about different causes that do have different words for it. Well, we have the word romantic love, and we have the word sexual love, and we have the word feelings of deep attachment and commitment. So there are some different words, but I agree with you that it is sort of amazing.

Starting point is 00:21:11 You know what? I and my colleagues are among the first people who really studied love. And I started it, you know, I mean, what, in the 70s. I mean, when I wrote my first academic paper on romantic love, one of the four reviewers said, you can't study this. Love is part of the supernatural. And I thought to myself, this is bizarre. This person's a scientist. Anger is not supernatural. Fear isn't supernatural. Startling isn't supernatural. Disgust isn't. We know the brain circuitry for that. Why wouldn't there be brain circuitry

Starting point is 00:21:46 to this powerful mating drive to love somebody? But at its core, isn't it just that? It's a mating, it is a powerful mating drive to keep going, to have children so they can have children so they can have children. Well, it evolved, I think, largely for reproduction. Bottom line is, we came down out of the trees, we began to stand up on two feet instead of four. Females began to have to carry their babies in their arms instead of on their backs. You know, a chimpanzee just walks along with her baby on her back. When you're walking on two feet, you've got to carry it in your arms,

Starting point is 00:22:22 and I don't see how a four-million-year-old woman would have been able to carry the equivalent of a bowling ball in one arm, a squirming bowling ball in one arm, and sticks and stones in the other arm, and feed and protect herself. So pair-binding or forming a partnership began to evolve in women and in men. I don't see how a man four million years ago could really protect a harem of females or even feed them, but he could protect one. And together, we evolved all kinds of brain systems that support pairing up to rear our babies. And one of them is a real drive, or romantic love is a drive. It comes from the most primitive parts of the brain it's

Starting point is 00:23:05 a drive it's going to be around as long as we're a species modern technology can't kill love i mean modern technology is changing courtship but it's not changing love and we also evolved you know jealousy and and abandonment rage and uh uh feelings of deep attachment, and then all kinds of cultural mechanisms, you know, marriage, divorce, I mean, rings, and, you know, churches, ceremonies, and all kinds of things. But the basic brain system, yes, evolved for reproduction. And on we go. And on we will always go. And on we will always go. Well, I think it's always interesting and important to have these conversations because we all want to understand

Starting point is 00:23:50 love better. We all want to do it better. And the more we understand, perhaps the better we can do. Helen Fisher's been my guest. She is a biological anthropologist, and her book is The Anatomy of Love. You'll find a link to her book in the show

Starting point is 00:24:06 notes. Thank you for being here, Helen. Well, thank you. Hey, everyone. Join me, Megan Rinks. And me, Melissa Demonts, for Don't Blame Me, But Am I Wrong? Each week, we deliver four fun-filled shows. In Don't Blame Me, we tackle our listeners' dilemmas with hilariously honest advice. Then we have But Am I Wrong, which is for the listeners that didn't take our advice. Plus, we share our hot takes on current events. Then tune in to see you next Tuesday for our listener poll results from But Am I Wrong. And finally, wrap up your week with Fisting Friday, where we catch up and talk all things pop culture. Listen to Don't Blame Me, But Am I Wrong on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Starting point is 00:24:46 New episodes every Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday. Do you love Disney? Then you are going to love our hit podcast, Disney Countdown. I'm 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. Every goal you set for yourself starts with the best of intentions,

Starting point is 00:25:28 and yet so often goals are never reached. What happens? Lack of willpower? Discouragement? Or are there other forces at work you may not realize? Emily Balchettis is an associate professor of psychology at New York University, and she's really explored this. She's author of a book called Clearer, Closer, Better. How Successful People See the World.

Starting point is 00:25:53 Hi, Emily. Welcome to Something You Should Know. Hi, nice to be here. So it would seem anyway that goals fail because people just don't stick with them for whatever reason. Maybe they decide they really don't care or it's too hard or why? Why? I don't think that the problem is that people don't care. I think by the very fact that we do continue to set goals throughout our life and that we might feel disappointed in ourselves from time to time

Starting point is 00:26:20 at being unable to meet them means, in fact, that we do care. It's just that the strategies we are often using to pursue those goals perhaps aren't the right ones, and we may not be aware of what's getting in our way. But don't you think, too, that sometimes people say things like, I'm going to lose weight, or I'm going to exercise more, or I'm going to do things because lots of other people are doing those things. But there's really no deep motivation internally to do them. It's just that that's what other people say, and that's what you're supposed to do, and the doctor says you'd be healthier if you did them.

Starting point is 00:26:57 But, yeah, maybe. But I still don't have that, whatever that is, to really do it. That's part of the problem, for for sure is that maybe we're externally motivated rather than internally motivated. Somebody told us that we should do it, but we're not really certain we're on the same page with that prescription. And that can be challenging because we may not have that internal drive that's going to help us overcome obstacles. But that's only part of the problem. There are things that we really do care about that despite that internal motivation that we have, we still can't figure out a way forward. And I think a lot of that has to do with the fact that we perhaps don't realize what all the challenges are that stand in front of us as we're setting off on our journey or even as we're in the

Starting point is 00:27:40 middle of it. So how do you fix that? How do you change that thinking so that you have a better chance of succeeding? One of the first steps that we took when we were studying people's exercise habits was trying to figure out, well, what might be some of those unknown obstacles that people are facing? And what we discovered in our research in my lab is actually it's not just what we're thinking and what we're telling ourselves. That's part of the problem, too. But it's literally when we're looking at the world around ourselves that we're looking in a way that perhaps doesn't serve our best interests. We might be seeing the world in a way that stacks challenges against us, and we don't have an awareness of that.

Starting point is 00:28:23 And so we don't know that that's part of the problem. We also don't know that could be part of the solution. So the first step for us was figuring that out, that there is something about the way we're looking at the world around us that's contributing to our ineffectiveness at, say, meeting our exercise goals, and then trying to reshape that to teach people strategies to see the world in different ways that could help them better meet their ambitions. Things like what? Well, one of the things that we discovered was that people's states of their own body

Starting point is 00:28:54 are leading them to see distances in different ways, so that people who are heavier or who are more fatigued, who experience maybe some chronic pains, literally see the distance to a stop sign or to the end of the block as farther than people who weigh less, who don't experience the same sorts of chronic pain or chronic fatigue issues. And then that perception really matters. So if it looks further away to you than it does to somebody else, or than it might to you if you were in a different state of mind or body, then it makes it a little bit more challenging to want to take it on, to feel like you can take it on, and then in fact to make good on that. Well, yeah, if you think it's a bigger job than

Starting point is 00:29:35 everybody else thinks it is, and a bigger job than it actually is, then why would you do that? Exactly. And it's not just thinking. That's what is unique about what our lab has demonstrated. Yes, our thoughts about whether something is challenging, of course, can contribute to whether we feel like we have the resources that this job would take. But it's so deeply ingrained in us, it's changing our visual experience as well. To people, it literally looks further. Not just that they think that it's farther, it looks farther away. And that's not something that people are aware of. Well, you're certainly the expert on this because you've studied this, but I've always thought, well, not always, I've thought that,

Starting point is 00:30:15 especially with something like exercise, that people give up on it because success doesn't enter the picture until much, much later. They don't see success as doing the exercise. They're waiting for some kind of objective result, bigger muscles, smaller waistline. That's success, not that I showed up and did it, and that that's too far away. That's a second strategy, yeah, that is part of the problem and part of the solution for overcoming challenges. Often when we find ourselves in a particular way of being or when we find ourselves in a particular state and we've now decided, all right, this is the day that I'm going to make a change.

Starting point is 00:30:57 Whatever it was that had been building in us, perhaps festering and leading us to this day where we say, today, I'm going to start a new chapter of my life. Often what people do is at that moment, they set a goal that's really challenging to accomplish, that's very lofty, that perhaps reflects what their ideal self might look like. And that's great. We should have those lofty ambitions. But when we leave it at setting the goal at such an perhaps impossibly challenging, far-off future end state, then, yeah, it might look like the progress that we're making from one day to the next is just not quickly enough getting us to that people set goals that are just too challenging at the outset and don't take a second step of sort of breaking that larger goal down into more incremental steps so that going to the gym this day or going for a walk or a run this day actually does look like substantial progress to this micro goal that I've set. And of course, once we meet one of those micro goals, we can relish in that success, know that we have met some sort of objective standard that is an important

Starting point is 00:32:10 marker or milestone in meeting that bigger, loftier, more ambitious goal that we've set for ourselves at the outset. Yeah. Well, I think one of the things that, for example, that keeps me going to the gym is that when I walk out of the gym, that feels great. It's being there is not the most pleasant thing, but when I walk out, it feels great. And that to me is the success. And I think that's a great way to cognitively reframe what success looks like as we're on this journey towards maybe something bigger and better than just feeling good today. If we were to say my goal is to lose 20 pounds and every day we checked in with that scale, which is not something that some instructions or programs would recommend, we're not going to see a pound drop off every day. And in fact, as people change their exercise,

Starting point is 00:33:01 they often change their eating and it might take some time to figure out that equilibrium where what we're burning off is more than what we're taking in. And so sometimes weight actually creeps up when people have set goals to lose it. So rather than deciding every day I need to see progress with that number going lower on the scale, I think that's an excellent strategy of thinking what are other ways that I can index success in the short term that are going to continue to motivate me and benefit me as I pursue something that's going to take a longer haul, like recognizing that it feels good. I feel good at the end of the day. Yeah, my muscles might be sore, but I feel happier. Well, and isn't it true that, especially with exercise, that when people start to exercise, they get hungrier and often add weight? Yeah, exactly.

Starting point is 00:33:49 I was just talking with a friend of mine, another social psychologist who also happens to be an incredible runner. His name is Nathan DeWall. And he was telling me that when he first started going from hardly being able to run a few miles without feeling incredibly winded to being able to run 135 miles through the desert and up mountains. How did he get from that start to that end state? Well, he started off by actually gaining a lot of weight because he didn't realize how metabolism changes, how hunger changes as you start to exercise more. When you have a goal and it's clear that it's not going to work, you've stopped doing whatever you need to do to achieve that goal. When that happens, if you reset the goal, you know, okay, let's try again. Does it become harder?

Starting point is 00:34:41 It would seem that it would in the sense that you failed. You failed at it. And so now you think, well, here I'm going to go do this again, and I'm probably going to fail again. Yeah, that's true. How we think about failure can be part of the challenge. So when we think about failure, we can use that word failure. And, of course, that's demotivating. We feel bad about ourselves because it feels like despite my efforts, despite the energy that I've invested here, I've quote unquote failed. But we can, again, cognitively reframe those blips in the

Starting point is 00:35:17 road. And instead of thinking about them as failures, they're opportunities for growth. And when we think about that, think about a blip as an opportunity to grow or to change, we can more readily accept when we've experienced a setback, we can reflect on that experience and decide what can I do differently or better in the future. It gives us a sense of control that, okay, I know if I experience this temptation or this obstacle again in the future, it's not going to mark the imminence of failure, but instead it will be a new opportunity to apply what I've just reflected on and just learned to overcome a challenge in the future. So, of course, there are things that are going to prove troublesome, problematic, and maybe thwart our best efforts to meet a goal. But if we can, instead of chastising ourselves or using the word failure to describe a setback as we face and attempt to surmount one of those obstacles, and instead reframe that

Starting point is 00:36:18 as an opportunity for growth and for learning, I think we might have a healthier approach to what are the normal stumbles and tribulations that we experience as we work towards our goals. I also wanted to comment in your question, you were talking about experts and how people who are experts might approach this. And I wanted to just put out there in our conversation something else that I learned when I started talking to experts. I found myself invited to go to a YMCA one cold winter night. And I saw a team of runners, a running club that was sitting, stretching on the side of the track. And I was invited to come talk with these people. And when I learned about them,

Starting point is 00:36:58 I saw that there were some high school students who were training for their high school running clubs. And there were some older people that were there as well out of high school. And when I talked with them, I found out that in fact, they were Olympic athletes. Some of them had in fact won gold medals at one of the most recent Olympic games. And what I really wanted to know was how do they go about training? How do they go about running, especially when they're trying to hit a new PR or to break some record of some other sort. And what I found out in these interviews is that part of their secret to success, besides many things, is the way that they look at their environment. And in fact, what they told us is

Starting point is 00:37:37 that they keep this more narrowed focus of attention, almost as if a spotlight is shining on either the actual finish line or sort of a finish line that they envision for themselves if they're running a longer race. It's as if they have blinders on, in a sense, and are just really focused on whatever is the next target that they're hitting. And now that might seem intuitive or like, of course, they're exceptionally focused in that way. But you could also think of the alternative where being aware of your competition and seeing who's coming up upon you on the sides might also be useful, but that's not the strategy that they use. And instead, really their gaze is focused on a target that they've considered to be the finish line for this

Starting point is 00:38:14 micro goal that they've set. And we took that inspiration from these Olympic athletes and that insight that they offered in these interviews, and then tried to see if that could be applicable to just everyday people that are struggling to meet their own exercise goals, not those that are trying to win the next marathon or beat some PR, but people like me, like my mom, who are just trying to get out and exercise more effectively. So what we did was create this intervention where we taught people how to use that strategy that those Olympic athletes use, how to find a target, find a goal that might be your own finish line, a couple blocks ahead or a half a mile ahead, something that they can see. And to imagine a spotlight is shining just on that target and to keep their focus on that target until they hit it. And then to set another goal, find another micro finish line, another few blocks up ahead and keep your attention focused on that. And we compared the effectiveness of that

Starting point is 00:39:11 strategy for exercising against what people just naturally do. We told them, look around the world as you would want to, as you normally do. And what we found is that people who use that narrowed attentional style when they engaged in an exercise, walking to a finish line as quickly as they could in the lab with us measuring how they performed, what we found is that people at the end of that who had narrowed their attention said that the exercise was 17% less painful than people who looked around the world as they naturally would. The distance was exactly the same. The distance was exactly the same. The exercise was exactly the same.

Starting point is 00:39:47 But when they changed their approach to looking at their environment, it didn't feel as bad on their bodies. It didn't hurt as much. And they, in fact, walked faster. They walked 23% faster than people who looked around the world as they naturally would. So what you're saying, if I hear you correctly, is that the secret is to keep your mind on the goal rather than, oh, this hurts, or this is hard, or this is painful, that instead you're keeping your thoughts focused on the goal. When you can orient your visual attention to your

Starting point is 00:40:19 goal, to your finish line, it doesn't hurt as much to make it there. We can walk faster. And in fact, that's, it's not magic. It's because it there. We can walk faster. And in fact, it's not magic. It's because it's changed our psychology. When it feels like that distance or looks like that distance isn't going to be as far, we don't judge the exercise to be as difficult in prospect. And we believe in our own ability to surmount that challenge to a greater degree. It changes our own psychology in a way that can promote more efficient activity. We, in fact, took that intervention that we had tested in our lab, and we taught it to more people, hundreds of more people, and asked them to try to use that strategy, that eyes on the prize strategy, for the next week. We're not there. We're not there in their ear telling them, reminding them about this strategy,

Starting point is 00:41:09 whether they believed in it or not is up to them, whether they would choose to continue to use it was up to them. But we said, if you do happen to go out on a walk and you use this strategy, send us a screenshot of your app telling us how far you went and how long you walked and how many steps you took. And what we found is that, yeah, people said it's a little bit more challenging to do this thing that we had instructed them on to narrow their attention compared to just letting them look around as they naturally would. But they were no less able to go out on walks. And in fact, they went on 20% more walks the following week than people who just looked around the world as they naturally would. They walked more often using the

Starting point is 00:41:51 strategy that they acknowledged was a little bit more challenging than what they had already been doing. And on each of those walks, they walked 50% further distance. So instead of a mile, they walked a mile and a half and they took 85 percent more steps. If you're counting your steps and looking at did I hit my 10,000 steps a day marker in each of those walks, they took 85 percent more, almost double, like just a bit shy of double the number of steps in each walk that they took. So we were really excited about that because it meant that this strategy or this intervention to shape the way that people are looking at the world around them, it's exciting because it doesn't cost anything. You don't have to sign up for a yearly membership.

Starting point is 00:42:34 People, regardless of how healthy they were, whether they were close to meeting their goal or far from meeting their goal, can implement this strategy. And it seemed to be particularly effective. It seemed effective for people regardless of where they're at in the course of trying to meet a health and physical activity goal that they had set. Do you think that health and physical activity goals are substantially different than any other goal? Does this work in, do you suspect in anything or is there something particular about exercise that stymies people? I don't think exercise is unique or a one-off domain in which only this strategy applies. I do think that there's something, this fits into a category of goals that require sort of a lifetime commitment. And that is what makes them particularly challenging.

Starting point is 00:43:29 So if we have a weight that we're trying to hit, that's great. And we can work towards hitting that goal and challenges apply and strategies can apply to help us. But then once we've hit that ideal weight, we have to maintain it. And so really, health is a goal in which it is a chronically active one for us. Whether we've hit our mark, once we've hit our mark, then the goal isn't gone. We're not done. We can't rest on our laurels. But the way that we approach it and what does it mean to have a health goal changes. It's about maintenance now.

Starting point is 00:44:06 But it's never off. And there's other domains of our life that probably share those qualities, something that requires continual commitment, like child raising and anything that might involve relationships or your own personal happiness. These aren't things that once you've hit it, once you've demonstrated you're a good mom or you're a good dad or you're happy today and you don't feel depressed today, it doesn't mean that we're done working. It means tomorrow the goal might look different, the way we approach it might look different, but it's not over. Well, when you think about it, when you're trying to reach a goal,

Starting point is 00:44:45 there is that tendency to kind of focus on how hard it is and how painful it is and the sacrifice. And it's interesting to hear that if you focus more on the goal, it actually, it just simply makes it a lot easier. My guest has been Emily Balchettis. She is an associate professor of psychology at New York University. And she's author of a book called Clearer, Closer, Better. How Successful People See the World. And there's a link to that book in the show notes. Have you ever watched a dog, your dog, when it's sleeping?

Starting point is 00:45:21 And it seems like it's running in its sleep or it's paddling or it's twitching. And you probably think your dog is dreaming about something fun like running or catching a frisbee or swimming. And according to research, that is exactly what it is. It's most common in very young and very old dogs. That's because there's part of the brainstem in a dog that has these two switches that regulate movement during sleep. And these switches are not fully developed in younger dogs and may have grown weak in older dogs, and the muscles are not completely turned off during dreaming. So the animal starts to move. It's nothing to be concerned about unless you think your dog is actually having a seizure.

Starting point is 00:46:05 And the way you tell the difference is if your dog is dreaming, these movements are usually brief, less than 30 seconds, and intermittent. When a dog has a seizure, the limbs of the dog are rigid, stiff, and the movements are more violent. And that is something you should know. Even though the audience for our podcast continues to grow, it would grow a little faster if you would share it with people you know and get them to listen. They'd probably appreciate it. I'm Mike Carruthers. Thanks for listening today to Something You Should Know. Welcome to the small town of Chinook, where faith runs deep and secrets run deeper. In this new thriller, religion and crime collide when a gruesome murder rocks the isolated Montana community.

Starting point is 00:46:58 Everyone is quick to point their fingers at a drug-addicted teenager, but local deputy Ruth Vogel isn't convinced. She suspects connections to a powerful religious group. Enter federal agent V.B. Loro, who has been investigating a local church for possible criminal activity. The pair form an unlikely partnership to catch the killer, unearthing secrets that leave Ruth torn between her duty to the law, her religious convictions,

Starting point is 00:47:16 and her very own family. But something more sinister than murder is afoot, and someone is watching Ruth. Chinook, starring Kelly Marie Tran and Sanaa Lathan. Listen to Chinook wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Jennifer, a co-founder of the Go Kid Go Network. At Go Kid Go, putting kids first is at the heart of every show that we produce. That's why we're so excited to introduce a brand new show to our network

Starting point is 00:47:45 called The Search for the Silver Lightning, a fantasy adventure series about a spirited young girl named Isla who time travels to the mythical land of Camelot. During her journey, Isla meets new friends, including King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table, and learns valuable life lessons with every quest, sword fight, and dragon ride.

Starting point is 00:48:03 Positive and uplifting stories remind us all about the importance of kindness, friendship, honesty, and positivity. Join me and an all-star cast of actors, including Liam Neeson, Emily Blunt, Kristen Bell, Chris Hemsworth, among many others, in welcoming the Search for the Silver Lining podcast to the Go Kid Go Network by listening today. Look for the Search for the Silver Lining on Spotify, Apple, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Something You Should Know - SYSK Choice: The Anatomy of Love & How Successful People Achieve Their Goals

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