Something You Should Know - SYSK Choice: Your Brain On the Internet & Embracing Your Weirdness

Starting point is 00:00:00 The search for truth never ends. Introducing June's Journey, a hidden object mobile game with a captivating story. Connect with friends, explore the roaring 20s, and enjoy thrilling activities and challenges while supporting environmental causes. After seven years, the adventure continues with our immersive travels feature. Explore distant cultures and engage in exciting experiences. There's always something new to discover. Are you ready?

Starting point is 00:00:27 Download June's Journey now on Android or iOS. Today on Something You Should Know, doodling isn't distracting. In fact, it's a great memory tool. Then, the internet. Constantly being connected to the internet is changing the way your brain works. The more we adapt to this world when there's unlimited amounts of information, what happens is we begin giving priority simply to the newest stuff, rather than to what's important,

Starting point is 00:00:57 whether it's something profound or a picture of a cat. Also, difficult problems come along in everyone's life, and how you prepare for them makes a difference. And the case for letting the world see just how unique, and maybe a little weird, you really are. If you decide not to embrace all the elements of you that make you you, fully embracing your weirdnesses, your interests, your idiosyncrasies, everything. You are not giving the world what you can give it. All this today on Something You Should Know.

Starting point is 00:01:30 This is an ad for better help. 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 00:01:49 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. 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.

Starting point is 00:02:14 Hi, welcome to Something You Should Know. Do you ever remember in school getting caught doodling while the teacher was talking and you probably got in trouble because the teacher assumed that you weren't paying attention because you were doodling. But research shows that you probably were paying better attention than people who were not doodling. Doodling while listening can actually improve your ability to remember what is being said. In a study, a group of people were asked to listen to a boring phone conversation that discussed a party of several people.

Starting point is 00:02:52 Half the group was told to doodle while they listened, and the other half were not allowed to doodle. After listening, everyone was asked to recall the eight names mentioned in the conversation. The doodlers' recall was about 30% better than the non-doodlers'. The reason, according to the researchers, is when listening to boring material, your mind can easily wander into daydreaming. And when that happens, you are so distracted that you don't hear the boring material. Doodling is less distracting than daydreaming.

Starting point is 00:03:27 It is a simpler task. So by doodling, you actually prevent yourself from daydreaming, so you're more likely to actually hear what's being said. And that is something you should know. You most likely have your phone or tablet or laptop nearby, within arm's reach, so you're pretty much connected and available to the entire world. You can receive information from anyone about anything at any time. You can go look up information about anything, any time. The world is at your fingertips,

Starting point is 00:04:07 and in some ways that's a good thing. But in other ways, it may not be such a good thing. According to Nicholas Carr, Nicholas is author of a book called The Shallows, What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains, which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. Hey, Nicholas, welcome to Something You Should Know. Thanks, Mike. Thanks for having me. So what is the internet doing to my brain? All good things, I suspect. Unfortunately, no. I think in general, what the internet is doing, through the way it delivers information to us, is making us shallower thinkers. We get more information to think about, but we think in more superficial ways about it. Yeah, but it's amazing to think that you can pretty much access anything, do anything, buy anything from your phone.

Starting point is 00:05:02 I mean, maybe we're being shallow thinkers, but we have access to so much information, maybe we don't need to think. So what's the problem? There are a few problems, I think. One is that it becomes harder to deal with complexity. We're living in a very complex world and very complex society and technology is part of that complexity and if the technology we use to inform ourselves encourages discourages rather deep thinking kind of conceptual thinking then we're going to struggle to solve any problems that come up and i think we see this all around us But I think there's also a more philosophical issue. I think in order to live a full life, and certainly a full intellectual life, we have to be able to screen out distraction. Sometimes we have to be able to pay attention,

Starting point is 00:05:59 to concentrate, because that unlocks the most profound ways of thinking that we're capable of. And I think if we cut ourselves off from that by being distracted and interrupted all the time, then we lose something important in our lives and in the way we define ourselves. When you say the internet is causing us to be shallow thinkers, that we're losing our ability to contemplate the big questions, which may be true, but how do you know that? I mean, it sounds good, but can you point to some research that backs that up? Yeah, there was an earlier study, and I think it's become kind of a landmark. It was done out of Stanford. And it was a study in which the researchers got two big groups of people, The people who spent a lot of time

Starting point is 00:07:05 online did worse on all six, significantly worse on all six. And I think one of the most interesting to me was they did a test of people's ability to distinguish important information from trivia. And if you think about it, you know, kind of all interesting thinking begins with the decision of what should I think about and what what it showed and what the what the researchers concluded is that the more we adapt to this world when there's unlimited amounts of information that comes at us what happens is we begin giving priority simply to the newest stuff rather than to what's important. We become so kind of caught up in the stream of information that our attention immediately goes to whatever's new, whether it's something profound or a picture of a cat. And to me, that shows the big risk that we are

Starting point is 00:08:00 losing what I think is probably the most essential thing about the way we think, and that is controlling what we think about. More and more, I think, for more and more people, their phones, their devices, their computers, determine on a moment-by-moment basis what they think about rather than themselves saying, no, this is important now, this is what I'm going to think about. And if we sacrifice that ability, it really does seem to me we're putting ourselves at

Starting point is 00:08:31 risk. We're kind of sacrificing something very, very important about the human condition. The criticism of the internet sounds in some ways like the criticisms of television when it first came out. And I've read about this. People were saying that, you know, television's going to rot your brain, that we won't be able to think for ourselves because television will tell us what to think. And maybe it has.

Starting point is 00:08:58 But just like television, it isn't all bad. It isn't all good. And the fact is that, you know, we have access through the Internet to all kinds of information that would have taken maybe weeks to look at the difference between, say, a smartphone and a TV set. With a TV set, you know, people watch a lot of TV, but they tended to watch it in particular times of the day, you know, in the evening or weekends or whatever. They weren't carrying the TV around with them all the time. They didn't set the TV on their desk at work and constantly interact with it and that's what we do with smartphones and other computers today so this is having a much deeper much more

Starting point is 00:09:51 pervasive effect on the way we think than i think any media has ever had before in the past isn't it likely that we will somehow don't know, but somehow we just adapt to this new technology. It becomes the normal thing. And that's how we handle new technology. I mean, what we've seen in the past with powerful new technologies, whether we're talking about automobiles or television or whatever, is that society reshapes itself around the technology. Rather than demanding that the technology change to suit our better interests, we change to suit the technology's interests. We pave lots of roads. We put roads through cities and stuff. And I think we're seeing something of the same thing happen, that we're adapting to being always connected, always interrupted. We're developing new social norms, new work norms, new educational norms that basically say, look, everybody's going to be distracted all the time. Nobody's going to

Starting point is 00:10:51 be paying deep attention. So we just have to take that into account and reshape our norms and our processes to fit this new way of acting and thinking. There does seem to be, and it has certainly been suggested, that there's an addictive quality to technology. What do you think? I think there's qualities of addictiveness to the technology, particularly when you look at social media. I mean, it's very, in many ways, and many people have pointed this out, is similar to slot machines. Whenever you touch the screen of your smartphone, you know you're going to get some new information. You know it might be rewarding or pleasurable, but you're not sure about it. And just like the person who becomes addicted to slot machines, you keep going back for more because it's mysterious and you love that sense that, oh, I'm going to get something

Starting point is 00:11:41 new. So there is an addictive quality, which I think should be a concern. And I think, let's face it, at this point, most of us have felt that kind of compulsive need to grab our phone. But it would seem that whatever happens, it isn't a going back. It never happens that way where people don't like something, so we go back to the old way. We just adapt to a new way. So I don't know what's going to happen, but it doesn't seem like we're ever going to go back to the way things were. In general, I think that's true.

Starting point is 00:12:13 But I think in history you can see moments when people realize that progress, the way that progress is going is not the best route. And I think we saw it back in the 1960s and 1970s with processed food. I was a kid back then, and I can remember, you know, the excitement over things like Tang and everything being frozen and TV dinners. And everybody thought, oh, this is kind of the way we're going to eat in the future. And it's going to be great. We won't have to, you know, cook vegetables and stuff.

Starting point is 00:12:43 And over time, people realized that there are downsides to processed foods. And we saw actually through the 70s, 80s, 90s, continuing today, a growing interest in fresh produce, in organic vegetables and stuff. So I think we have seen, and it's not easy, but I think we can, if not go back, at least realize that some of the things we're losing are actually worth holding on to and so what is it you think specifically that we're losing that we should hold on to at this point there's a lot of psychological evidence neuroscientific evidence that shows that uh being online being on the, being on social media does get in the way of lots of important things. And so one thing is our ability to solve difficult problems. There've

Starting point is 00:13:33 been studies that show that when you're constantly distracted and constantly multitasking, it makes it much harder to deal with complexity, to think through complexity. I think on a personal side, as I said, we're losing the ability to be contemplative and reflective. And for some people, that won't be a loss, but I think for other people, it will be a great loss. There's at least some indication that this is also affecting the depth of our relationships and our conversations with others, that all this distraction and multitasking and connecting online means that even our relationships tend to get more superficial. So I think there's a growing body of evidence that there are costs, very real costs, intellectual,

Starting point is 00:14:18 social, philosophical, to our kind of constant scavenging for information online. We're talking today about what the internet is doing to your brain. And my guest is Nicholas Carr. He's author of the book, The Shallows, what the internet is doing to our brains. 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.

Starting point is 00:14:57 And your Tampa Bay vacation includes good times, relaxation, and great Gulf Coast weather. Visit flyporter.com and actually enjoy economy. At Wealthsimple, we're built for whatever you're building. Built for Jane, who wants to break into the housing market. We're built for Ted, who's obsessed with what's happening in the global markets. And built for Celine, who just wants to retire and explore the world's flea markets. So take a moment and think about what you're building for. We've got the financial tools to help make it happen.

Starting point is 00:15:32 Wealthsimple. Built for possibilities. Visit wealthsimple.com slash possibilities. So Nicholas, when it comes to being online, how much is too much? Where's the line? Because if you look at people, and I know people, I'm sure you do, who rarely go online. They don't shop online. They don't bank online.

Starting point is 00:15:54 They don't do Facebook. And they're almost, I don't want to say they're social outcasts, but they're looked at as like not with it. And so there has to be like an acceptable, you can't not be online and function today. Society expects us all to be online. As you say, sure, there are people who are just going to say no, just as there were people who said no to TV and stuff.

Starting point is 00:16:21 But your ability to operate in society now hinges on your ability to be connected. Does that mean we need to be connected all the time? If you look at patterns of the way most people behave when they're walking around with their cell phone, with their smartphone, and they're always walking around with their smartphone, they're looking at it 80, 100, 150, 200 times a day, every few minutes. So it's intruding on their thoughts constantly. There's no kind of escape from it. So yeah, it's clear that society has reshaped itself to require us all to be connected in order to function in our jobs, to interact with the government and so forth. But there is a possibility

Starting point is 00:17:06 for us to temper our use of the technology and come to a realization that there are some things that we do in life, whether it's having a conversation with somebody else, going out to dinner, taking a walk, that are actually better if they're not intruded upon by the technology. It does seem that phones have become, you know, just part of life. It's hard to find somebody who doesn't have a phone. I mean, everyone you see has a phone in their hand. Do we know what the numbers are? At this point, I think 95% of adults, at least, and a whole lot of kids as well, have smartphones. They tend to use them compulsively.

Starting point is 00:17:49 And even when they're not using them, and this is some of the more interesting recent research, even when they're not using them, the phones are intruding on their thoughts. There was this really interesting study just a few years ago out of the University of Texas at Austin, where they got a bunch of people, divided them into three groups, and had them perform two basic tests of intellectual skill, tests of thinking. One group did those tests with their smartphones in front of them on the table, turned off, but in view. Another group had their phones with them but in their pocket or in a in in a handbag or something out of view and the third group had their phones in

Starting point is 00:18:31 a different room completely on both of the tests the people who performed worse were the ones with the phones in view the people who performed best were the ones with the phones in a separate room and the people who had their phones near them but not in view performed in the middle. And what the researchers concluded from this, and it's pretty dramatic, it was like that, you know, there's a force field in your phone that sucks some of your mental power away. But what the researchers concluded is that our phones are so wrapped up in our lives today. It's where we get our news. It's where we communicate with friends and family. It's where people share photographs of what they're doing. It's where we do our shopping, everything else. They're so wrapped up that even we're so wrapped up in all that information that even when we're not actively looking at our phone or using our phone, we're

Starting point is 00:19:19 thinking about using our phone or suppressing the desire to use our phone and those things even though they're not they're not visible also draw some of our attention away and leave less mental capacity less mind capacity to deal with other things on those rare occasions when I can get away and turn my phone off I really like that feeling you know the first day is a little anxiety provoking because, you know, you feel like you're you should be connected. But but after that, you know, it actually feels really good. Absolutely. Pretty much anyone who does that usually takes more than a day. But anybody who does that will tell you it feels great. There was an interesting study that shows that if you take a person's phone away from them, they'll be in a kind of a state of panic, certainly for the first

Starting point is 00:20:11 day. And also it will extend for about three days because they think they're missing out on stuff, which they've come to believe is important, hearing everything everybody else is doing all the time. But after three days, for most people, suddenly their mind calms down, their ability to attend to other things opens up and they feel both relieved and also kind of liberated. And it feels like their horizons, their intellectual horizons are opening up again. I think that's more evidence of how this technology closes down our thinking and our, and our acuity. But when you give them their phone back, they immediately go back to the the, the kind of compulsive behavior. So it's, it's, you know, I, when I, when I'm critical of what this is doing to us,

Starting point is 00:21:03 I'm not suggesting that it's some easy thing we can deal with because what it is is this kind of deep, instinctive desire to know everything that's going on around us that we've created a technological system that allows us to exercise that desire all the time. And for a lot of people, now you may be different, other people may be different, but for a lot of people, and particularly for a lot of young people, this has become the way they live. Pretty much checking stuff online all the time, from the moment they wake up to the moment they go to bed. And then if they wake up in the middle of the night,

Starting point is 00:21:43 the first thing to do is grab their phone again. So this is really becoming entwined with a lot of people's lives in a way that as I say I don't think we've ever seen with a with a media technology or maybe any technology before yeah I think you're right because it truly is never enough there is never enough there and even if you feel like you've got all the information for the day there's always some new app you need to try or there's some it's it's never and enough yeah and that was that's different than I think then you know in

Starting point is 00:22:15 the old days if you would watch television or go to the movies you know you felt somewhat satisfied okay I'm done you know shows over I'm done I can move on you don't go back and you you know, but with the interest, and what keeps coming back for more. So if you look at, you know, your Facebook news feed or pretty much any other stream of information that comes through social media, that's been, you know, that's been scientifically designed to keep you engaged with the device in the app. It's not any kind of just coincidence that we find these things so addictive. what about the merchants of this technology the facebooks the googles what do they say about concerns that you're expressing

Starting point is 00:23:13 as you might imagine because there's a lot of money at stake here that there's ambivalence to say the least i i you know i've spoken at at at some google offices and stuff and people there they're like everyone else there. They're worried About the hold the technology even their own technology has on them. They're certainly worried about their kids And what it means, you know to be eight years old and have a smartphone But there's also because there's so much money involved, you know,'s very, very hard for the companies to really seriously and sincerely confront some of the problems that they have, in large part, created. So I think at a personal level, there's a lot of people in the technology community

Starting point is 00:23:59 who are very concerned about this. There have been documentary films in which they've spoken about it and in books and articles but I think the companies themselves their interests are so are so deeply aligned with keeping us addicted to their services and their products that it becomes very very hard for them to say no we're gonna take a different approach and we're gonna try to we're gonna try to make this less addictive in some ways it seems like you know the genies already out of the no, we're going to take a different approach and we're going to try to make this less addictive. In some ways, it seems like, you know, the genie's already out of the bottle. I mean, everybody has their phone with them all the time.

Starting point is 00:24:34 They never leave home without it. That's not going to change. This is the new normal. As a society, we really have adapted to the technology in a way that says we have to send signals to everybody all the time that they need to be constantly connected. You need to be connect, you need to respond to emails from work, you know, all through the day and all through the night. In order to be educated, you know, you have to be constantly online to get assignments, interact with teachers and professors. In order to socialize, you have to be online. So it seems to me if we're going to change course or even just alter it slightly, we have to deal with this from

Starting point is 00:25:14 a social, at a social level, saying we need to change some of the messages we send, some of the norms that have been established and tell people it's okay to be disconnected for some part of the day. And then also there are things, I do think there are things, you know, people can do personally. They can go out and do some things during the day without having their phones with them. They can turn off notifications as much as possible. You know, notifications are the way that internet companies and social media companies make sure that even if you're not actively desiring to look at your phone, they can grab your attention. You can keep some distance with your phone, keep it out of your bedroom when

Starting point is 00:25:54 you're sleeping and so forth. So I think there are some practical things people can do that are certainly within the realm of possibility. It means breaking bad habits and starting some good habits, and that's always hard. And when we're talking about something that's wrapped up in our social lives the way the Internet and our phones are, then it's even harder. But I do think there are things that you can do in your own life and in helping out other people as well, that, that will make a difference. Well, I think most people have a sense that this constant connection to the internet

Starting point is 00:26:31 and the ability to check everything all the time and be available all the time to everybody comes with a price. And it's interesting to hear what that potential price is and, and what you can do about it. Nicholas Carr has been my guest. The name of his book is The Shallows, What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains. And you'll find a link to that book in the show notes. Thanks for coming on and explaining this so well. Thanks, Nicholas. Well, thank you. Thank you. My pleasure. Thanks for having me on. People who listen to Something You Should know are curious about the world, looking to hear new ideas and perspectives.

Starting point is 00:27:08 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, 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.

Starting point is 00:27:53 Being curious, you're probably just the type of person Intelligence Squared is meant for. Check out Intelligence Squared wherever you get your podcasts. 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 and went to prison for three years.

Starting point is 00:28:34 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 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,

Starting point is 00:29:02 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. As human beings go, you're pretty special. You're unique. Perhaps your mother told you how special and unique you were when you were young. And in some ways, you're probably also a little weird. Weird in a good way, but still weird. Most of us like to keep our weirdness to ourselves, yet maybe we shouldn't.

Starting point is 00:29:40 At least that's the argument put forth by Chris Williamson. Chris gave a TED Talk earlier this year called Embrace Your Weirdness, and he makes a pretty good case for it. Chris is a coach and host of the podcast Modern Wisdom. Hey Chris, welcome to Something You Should Know. Thanks for having me here. So make the case for me. Why should I let the world see my weirdness, my idiosyncrasies? Why not just conform and let people see what I want them to see? I think that overall, a lot of people curb the interesting, unique, and competitively advantageous parts of their life in order to fit in. They think

Starting point is 00:30:21 that this is what will make them actually more competitive. They think that their bosses don't want someone who's going to come up with odd ideas because if that was what they wanted, everyone else in their business would be doing that. They think that partners want people who are normal and not strange. They think that spiritually, they're going to find more connection as well by rounding off the interesting parts of themselves. And my thesis is that all of that has got the bar stool turned upside down. Perhaps a good place to start, and you start the TED Talk this way, is to give people a sense of just how unique, perhaps weird, but just how unique they are, and what the likelihood of them being here in the first place even is. Yeah. So the likelihood that you exist is infinitesimally small. So some very

Starting point is 00:31:16 smart people ran the figures and they worked out the chances of the correct sperm and the correct ovum meeting for 4 billion years of unbroken evolution all the way back from single cell to multi-cell, prokaryotic, eukaryotic, every single one of your ancestors, unbroken chain right up to now. And the number is 1 in 10 to the power of 2,685,000. So that number isn't just larger than all of the particles in the universe. It's larger than all the particles in the universe if each particle was itself another universe. It's larger than the likelihood of the entire population of Northern Ireland all rolling a trillion-sided dice and each getting a seven.

Starting point is 00:31:57 Basically, the chances of you existing are zero. And yet, despite those odds, here we are. Oh, that's the magic. And that applies more pressure to ensure we should take that seriously. We should take the unlikeliness of our existence as a compulsion to give the world what only we can give it. You're this unique collection of genetic predisposition and the way you've dealt with past traumas and the funny way that you say the letter S and everything. And by its very nature, there's no one else ever that has had that very combination. And if you decide not to embrace all the elements of you that make you you, fully embracing your weirdnesses, your interests, your idiosyncrasies, everything, you're not giving the world what you can give it. To which some might say, yeah, but you also need to fit in and get along with other people.

Starting point is 00:33:01 And you say something in your TED talk that I think is really great is that people aren't applauding you. They're applauding the role you play. And I think whenever anybody hears that, they know exactly what you're talking about as it relates to them. Absolutely. This is the spiritual side of it, that the persona, if you spend your life being someone that you're not, you're playing a persona, right? You're not being yourself. What it means is that any praise or any accolades that you ever get won't actually existentially feel in simpatico with the person that you are because people aren't in love with you. They're just applauding this role. So you're always one degree removed from what's actually happening. People don't love Russell Crowe. They love Gladiator. We don't love Chris Hemsworth. We love Thor. And this is how you can feel alone in a crowd or hollow in victory because you can achieve everything that you want and still not feel connected with it because people aren't in love with you. They're just applauding the role that you played. So what does it mean specifically to embrace your

Starting point is 00:34:12 uniqueness, your weirdness, because you do what differently? I think avoiding fear, the fundamental starting point that most people come at this from is that they're afraid. They're worried that if they show their true weird self, then maybe they won't progress as quickly at work, or maybe they'll never find a partner that actually loves them, or maybe they'll never feel fully connected to the people that are around them. And that causes them to compromise who they are. Embracing that means having faith that the person you are and that the capacities that you have is the direction that you should be going in. In the same way that if you try and steer a boat too hard, anyone that's a sailor out there knows that if you grip

Starting point is 00:34:57 the tiller, which is attached to the rudder, the thing that you steer with, if you grip it too hard and you go against the waves, the boat actually steers more poorly. If you allow the waves to push the boat forward, you get a much smoother path through the ocean. And I'm aware that the waves of life aren't a perfect analogy here, but I think that it does actually map over quite nicely. What is it that only you can do? Why are you here? Combination of nurture and nature. What is it that only you can do? That's

Starting point is 00:35:26 where your competitive advantage lies because no one else can beat you at being you. The same thing goes for finding a relationship with people. Why bother trying to be like everybody else? No one has ever in the history of humankind said, the reason that I fell in love with my partner is because of how much they're like everybody else. I'm so turned on by the bland vanilla nature of how I can predict every word that's about to come out of their mouth. No, we fall in love with people's quirks. We fall in love with their idiosyncrasies and the little things that they do. And yet our fear that showing this is going to turn people off or cause us to not get that promotion, we lose out on not only the richness of presenting ourselves to others, but also the connection that you get when you fully put yourself into the world.

Starting point is 00:36:18 Because again, you're no longer playing a persona. You're being your true self. But you do have to balance that, don't you think, to some degree with the conventions that are set forth in the world. If you, I don't know, if you like to belch, well, okay, great. But that's going to put people off. I mean, you know, every five minutes you come out with a big belch. That may be you. That may be what you love to do.

Starting point is 00:36:44 But that's not going to sit well with an awful lot of people. Yeah, really good point. So there are some social conventions where embracing your weirdness actually is going to put you on the back foot. I think overall, more people are on the side of curbing their weirdnesses too much and losing out, as opposed to embracing them too much and then losing out. If picking your toenails is your favorite pastime, doing it during a business meeting is probably going to go down fairly badly. But those things mostly people know, I think.

Starting point is 00:37:22 And so the people, to the person who has reined it in, how do you convince them to rein it out? How do you get someone to let it go a bit? Yeah. How do you get somebody who's felt pretty unsafe letting people in and seeing what's there? What's the motivation to change it? Yeah, very good, man. I mean, as an example here, I was very heavily bullied in school. I didn't sound like people from the local area that I was in and I was playing cricket and doing other different bits that

Starting point is 00:37:55 were non-typical. So I know this feeling very much. I desperately, desperately tried to be the person that everybody else wanted to like. So I'm speaking to myself here, to a previous version of me. Having faith in yourself is something that you need to build up slowly over time. So start speaking up in meetings, start speaking your mind and telling your friends what you genuinely think. Ask yourself questions after each day. Think about what points did I lie or compromise what I genuinely thought in my own mind? At what points did I do something that didn't feel like a true enactment of my inner logos, the inner self that I have?

Starting point is 00:38:37 Because it happens a lot. It is a scary jump to make. It is challenging because you know that what you're doing now, if you don't stand up with your hand, you know, me as a young kid being bullied, if I cowered at the back of the playground or whatever, then maybe nobody would notice me. And maybe that would mean that I'd get through this lunch break without getting bullied. Standing up was inevitably going to draw attention to me. But as you get out into the real world, that's not how it works anymore. We take a playground mentality and we do map that onto the real world.

Starting point is 00:39:09 And it took me a very long time to realize this. The risks of saying something interesting or potentially a little bit off-piste aren't that great anymore. No one's going to take you out behind the bike sheds and give you a drubbing. There's no catastrophe waiting for you. And learning to become comfortable with that is very, very liberating. In the back of everyone's mind, though, is this concern of what other people think. It's human nature to be concerned about what other people think, because it's important, I guess, from, you know, evolution or whatever that, you know, in know in order to survive you know we all need to be part of the same group to

Starting point is 00:39:48 help each other but people care about what others think you know I mean we are wired to care what other people think pretty much so if you were a hunter gatherer 50,000 years ago ostracism by the group at large meant death. You needed them. You had to have them. But let's say that you've got, here's a thought experiment, right? You've got two different worlds that you can exist in. In one of them, you have to play a role lying to everybody for this kind of like moderate acceptance where nobody really cares. You don't really add any value to the world, but you do your best of trying to be your version of what everybody else appears to be. And then in another version of the world, you actually just embrace who you are. Yes, you improve and you acquire new skills and talents. How much better is the world

Starting point is 00:40:38 when you leave it? How much more fulfilled are you going to be? And the fear and getting past that is the only thing that's stopping you from doing it. That's it. The only thing in between you and a life where you contribute uniquely to the world is fear. And when you think about the successes in your life, the successes aren't typically because you did it the way everybody else did it. That's why you were a success because you did it differently. You maybe did it better. You, you didn't fit in, you excelled and that's what caused you to succeed. Absolutely. So the biggest competitive advantage that anybody has is the fact that nobody else can beat them at being them. So I use this example about Dick Fosbury, who was the inventor of the Fosbury flop.

Starting point is 00:41:31 So he's this crazy engineering student. He jumped at the 1968 Mexico Olympic Games. He missed the opening ceremony to sleep in his van and see the pyramids. And he wore different shoes to jump in and a very eccentric guy, but he used the fact that he's an engineer. Engineering is his uniqueness, right? That was his competitive advantage that he brought to the sport of high jump, to athletics in the Olympic games. And he ended up breaking every record that anyone had ever seen. He set a new Olympic record. And within four years, about 50% of the field was copying his style. And within, I think, eight years or 12 years, the old styles of the scissor kick had completely disappeared. Why did that happen?

Starting point is 00:42:18 Well, it's because Fosbury embraced everything that he was. His competitive advantage was that no one could beat him at being him. So he allowed all of that to come through and look at the outcome. He crushed it. When I think though of people who have embraced their weirdness and maybe the term weirdness is kind of, because you do think of eccentric people, the people that don't fit in, the people that lead a life one step off of everybody else, and that maybe that doesn't seem like that's who I want to be perceived as. Yeah, that's an interesting one. I think some people like the attention, right? And some people don't. I certainly think that you can provide all that you are to the world without standing out as an

Starting point is 00:43:08 eccentric you know not everyone's weirdness let's say that you and myself go out into the world and we are fully uncensored as ourselves there's every chance that no one would even notice you know like you could be slap bang in the normal distribution of normal. And there would be nothing that you would do that would even raise eyebrows. So yes, there are some people that I use Salvador Dali as another example, like an incredibly eccentric man,

Starting point is 00:43:35 like the, the perhaps the most eccentric man that's ever lived. So when he embraces his weirdness, yeah, he stands out and these makes changes to the entire world of art and facial hair for a long time. But I'm not advocating for completely unfettered, uncensored living here. You know, if you feel like you want to walk around without any clothes on, just do it down the street and everyone else can get to hell. That's not what I'm saying. I'm saying that you have something unique to bring to the world.

Starting point is 00:44:06 And all that you need to do is let that through. You need to embrace the things that you are, permit yourself to follow your passions, permit yourself to follow the things that excited you as a child, get rid of the fear, know that you will find success in business by doing that, know that you will find success in relationships and know that spiritually you will be more connected to your own inner self and the others around you by doing that. You've given a few examples of people that have done this and been successful. How about some more? Anybody else that comes to mind that you can point to and say, see, it works? I mean, the Salvador Dali one is just outstanding. For anyone that hasn't looked into him,

Starting point is 00:44:48 he's a fascinating individual. So his parents had another son who died nine months before him, and he was called Salvador. And they were adamant that Salvador, number two, was the reincarnation of his dead brother. So, I mean, when you start your life like that, it only gets odder from there. He had to be wrenched out of a deep sea diving suit once during the middle of a seminar because he was suffocating. He married a woman, bought her a castle and then treated her like royalty.

Starting point is 00:45:21 So she had to send him a formal written invitation so that he could go and spend time with her in the castle that he'd bought for her. And he literally referred to her as his sort of spiritual muse. So this is a man who is outrageously eccentric and that manifests in, I mean, he's the guy that said, don't take drugs i am drugs which kind of tells you everything that you need to know about dali and obviously then creates this crazy movement which is still still going today and he's very influential in the art world so if dali hadn't embraced his weirdness and fully utilized everything that he was, we wouldn't have got his work. If he decided to succumb to social norms or to his fears or his ways that he's dealt with past traumas or any of that stuff,

Starting point is 00:46:15 the world would have fundamentally been less. But your weirdness might be that you like fitting in. I mean, that could be weird, but that could just be who you are. You don't like standing out unbelievable networker. Maybe that's what you should do. Maybe you should lean into that. The opportunity to be what only you can be doesn't mean that you have to be something that's odd. Your weirdness can be perfectly normal. My problem is with people whose weirdnesses are being turned normal by force of will rather than by natural presentation. you know you like to go uh sit on a mountaintop on the weekends um and you know scream obscenities well okay well you know that's that's fine but come monday morning at nine o'clock you're back at the office and everything's in the office not screaming obscenities yeah right hey no i i agree but even that let's say that that's and that's a really good example, right? Because it has almost no bearing on your relationships or on your success in the business

Starting point is 00:47:50 world, which are two of the three. But if that is what you're compelled to do, spiritually, you're going to get into work at 9am on that Monday morning. And I think that you're going to feel better. Would you not agree? Yeah, probably so. As long as you get to do that and that makes you happy, yeah, I guess so. But it's as long as you're not doing it at the office, because that could be a problem.

Starting point is 00:48:12 It's interesting to ponder the idea that if more of us or all of us were more unique and expressed our individuality or our weirdness, as you say, you know, what that would, what that would look like. If we are as a species to reach our full genetic civilizational potential, the only way that we can do that is to utilize the talents that everybody has with the widest range possible. You could imagine a world in which 7 billion people all try to be each other, but you don't get very much variation there. Yeah, sure enough, the most normal job that you can find, slap bang in the middle of that distribution at 50%, everyone's amazing at that, or at least they're trying to be, but you don't get any of the interesting stuff that comes out in the end. So again, the Dali quote, if he doesn't do his work, then the world never gets it. If Elon Musk

Starting point is 00:49:09 doesn't do his work, then we don't get to go to Mars, so on and so forth. If we want to be the species that we deserve and that I think this planet deserves, the only section of the universe that is alight with consciousness as far as we're aware at the moment, is the one that we're in right here, right now. That makes it a duty. I call it the weirdness imperative. It is your duty to give the world what only you can give it, because only you can. Well, that is the perfect message and the perfect note on which to leave it. Chris Williamson has been my guest. Chris gave a TED Talk earlier this year that's available online,

Starting point is 00:49:51 and I've got a link to it about embracing your weirdness, and the link is in the show notes. He is also a coach, and he's host of a podcast called Modern Wisdom, and there's a link to his podcast in the show notes as well. Thank you for being here, Chris. Thanks very much for having me on, mate. It's been said that life is a continuous succession of problems only broken by the occasional crisis. That may be a bit of an overstatement, but sometimes life seems to be overwhelming. Here are some interesting facts according to Brian Tracy, author of several books, including one called Crunch Point.

Starting point is 00:50:33 The average person will have some sort of crisis every two or three months, a personal, health, or financial crisis. Research shows that an interesting trait of successful people is that they deal well with these unexpected reversals, whereas unsuccessful people tend to get angry and fall apart. If you plan in advance for the

Starting point is 00:50:56 inevitable storms of life, you will cope better. Just simply telling yourself that no matter what happens, I'm going to respond in a calm, cool way will help you handle any problem better. When people get upset, they don't think as clearly and they just cannot solve the problem as well. And that is something you should know. I know every podcast asks you to tell a friend about the podcast or share an episode or something.

Starting point is 00:51:25 And the reason they all do it is because it works. It really does help grow the audience. So I would like to ask you the same. Please tell a friend about this podcast, share a link, and ask them to listen. I'm Micah Ruthers. 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. Everyone is quick to point their fingers at a drug-addicted teenager,

Starting point is 00:51:56 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,

Starting point is 00:52:15 her religious convictions, 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 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 called The Search for the Silver Lining, a fantasy adventure series about a spirited young girl named Isla who time travels to the mythical land of Camelot.

Starting point is 00:52:55 Look for The Search for the Silver Lining on Spotify, Apple, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Something You Should Know - SYSK Choice: Your Brain On the Internet & Embracing Your Weirdness

There aren't comments yet for this episode. Click on any sentence in the transcript to leave a comment.