Something You Should Know - Understanding Your Passion and Purpose & Why Messy Relationships Are Often the Best

Episode Date: July 2, 2020

Some people really love spicy food. Why? This episode begins with an explanation of that and what to do if you put something in your mouth that is way too spicy. http://lifehacker.com/how-to-actually-enjoy-the-painful-pleasure-of-spicy-foo-1794616828 If you have a passion, does that mean that is what you are meant to do? And what if you don’t really have a passion or you have one that doesn’t lend itself to a career? Before you blindly try to “Follow your passion,” listen to Brad Stulberg author of the book The Passion Paradox (https://amzn.to/2Bjuw4H). Bruce explains some interesting facts and science about what passion really is and what you should – and should not do with your passion. He is also host of The Growth Equation Podcast https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-growth-equation-podcast/id1505257676 If you have outdoor allergies, there are some things you may be doing to make your symptoms worse than they need to be. Listen as I explain what to do and not do to clear the air and breathe better with fewer allergy symptoms. http://www.finlandiapharmacy.com/treating-allergies-naturally/ The assumption is that a harmonious relationship is the best kind of relationship. Well, it turns out a little trouble, messiness and chaos is also good for a relationship. Listen as I am joined by Ed Tronick PhD. Ed is a developmental neuroscientist and clinical psychologist at Harvard Medical School and author of the book The Power of Discord (https://amzn.to/3dHMta6). He explains why striving for a perfectly happy relationship is a prescription for trouble.  This Week's Sponsors -Better Help. Get 10% off your first month by going to www.BetterHelp.com/sysk and use the promo code: sysk -Stroke of Genius. Listen to Stroke of Genius wherever you listen to podcasts. Or here: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/trashing-the-plastic-problem/id1438440166?i=1000478305506 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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You can now make the first move or not. With opening moves, you simply choose a question to be automatically sent to your matches. Then sit back and let your matches start the chat. Download Bumble and try it for yourself. Today on Something You Should Know, why do some people really like spicy food? And what's the best thing to do if you eat something too spicy? Also, how do you take your passion and turn it into a career? Individuals that identify a passion and want to turn it into a full-time job are much more

successful if they do it gradually and if they quote-unquote keep their day job as they do it. And what this allows you to do is that you can actually take more risks by keeping your day job. Then, if you have outdoor allergies, I'll tell you how to keep them under control. And relationships with conflict and messiness may be the best kind of relationships. If you shift your perspective and see the messiness as something that's positive, that allows for growth, it takes away the fear that you're going to break the relationship because there's a disagreement.

All this today on Something You Should Know. 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

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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. 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. Hey, welcome to Something You Should Know. Do you like spicy food? I grew up in a house that didn't have a lot of spicy food, but after I left home, I developed quite a taste for it.

What you may not know is that sensation of spice, of hot in your mouth, is not taste, it's actually pain. It's capsaicin that's the culprit. It creates that burning sensation in your mouth. It's the same compound that they use in pepper spray. So why do we like to eat it? Well, for one thing, capsaicin makes you feel like you're high. When your mouth's pain receptors are activated, they cause your body to release dopamine. And that feels good. This whole process explains why we love the experience of spicy food, not just the taste. You can build up your tolerance to spicy food over time,

but as you do, you should know that when things get too hot, you need the right kind of coolant. Water doesn't do much when it feels like your mouth is on fire. Milk, however, is very effective, as is coconut milk, sugar, rice, sour cream, honey, and lime. And that is something you should know. How often does this conversation happen, where somebody says,

I just don't know what to do with my life. And the response from some well-meaning individual is, well, what are you passionate about? Well, perhaps that's the wrong question, because purpose and passion don't always mix. There's probably a better way to go about this problem. Brad Stulberg is a coach and a writer who has a column in Outside Magazine,

and he's the author of a book called The Passion Paradox. Hey, Brad. Thanks so much for having me. It's great to be on. So it would seem that passion is a good thing. If you're trying to figure out what to do with your life, that following a passion for some pursuit would lead you to great success and satisfaction. On the other hand, decades of scientific research in millennia of wisdom says that being very passionate about a pursuit is also associated with burnout, depression, anxiety, and unethical behavior. So you've got this thing, passion, this quality that is both life-giving and rocket fuel for fulfillment and success on the one hand,

and on the other hand, it can lead to great suffering and harm. And so how can that be? How can being passionate about something lead to great suffering and harm? If you are very passionate about an activity, that's great. If you are passionate about the external results you get from that activity, that's not great. So the example that I like to give is a writer. If I love the act of writing, of trying to communicate, of the research, of the crafting of a book, that's wonderful. If I become more passionate about whether or not my book gets on the New York Times bestseller list, that's not so

good. So the biggest switch here is if you are passionate about the activity itself, you tend to be in good shape. If you become passionate about the external validation that activity brings you, that can lead to all kinds of harm. Because the former you control. I get to choose when I sit down and write. An athlete gets to choose when they practice, they train for their sport. The latter, whether or not my book sells a million copies, whether or not the athlete wins or loses, that's outside of their control. And when you connect your passion to things that you can't control, it sets you up to have a very fragile sense of self and puts you on an unsustainable emotional roller coaster. But it's not necessarily either or. You can love writing a book and love being on the New York Times bestseller list. It's not one or the other. And in fact,

being on the New York Times bestseller list is probably going to give you the momentum to write your next book. 100%. So outside of a Zen monk that's living a very ascetic life, you know, so maybe if you live in a monastery, you can become 100% harmonious passion, we call it, the good passion. But if you're out in the real world, it's going to be a balance of the two. And I think the key is that you just want to keep the majority of your passion coming from within the majority of the time.

Something that is a practice that really helps me and the individuals that I work with as a coach is this notion of what I call the 48-hour rule. And that says that after you experience a big win or a tough loss, you should give yourself 48 hours to celebrate the win or grieve the defeat. So if your book gets on the list, have a freaking party, feel great about yourself, go nuts. If your book doesn't get on the list and you thought it would, let yourself mope around for a day or two. Feel really bad. Feel sad.

But after 48 hours, get back to writing itself. Get back to doing the work. Because there's something about doing the work itself that reminds you that, hey, this is what I really like. This is what I'm in it for. In our brain, it is a creature of its environment. So the more time you spend in that world of external validation, am I happy because the world perceived me as good? Am I sad because the world perceived me as not so good? The more your brain's going to come to crave that kind of external

validation. It's a wonderful example because it's powerful. It's a not so wonderful example because the outcome of this is the cyclist Lance Armstrong. So Lance Armstrong scores off the charts on skills of passion, but his passion is very much obsessive. It's not harmonious. He had to be the best. And when he realized that he wasn't going to be the best, it was an attack on his entire self-worth. So he did what he had to do to close that gap.

In that case, it was cheating. It's a cautionary tale of what happens when you become too attached to external results. So I think you hit the nail on the head. We're social species. It feels good to do well. If you live out in the real world. We're social species. It feels good to do well. If you live out in the real world, you need external validation. As you mentioned, there's momentum to it. It's a good thing. You just never want to become so attached to it. You don't want that to be the driving force behind what you're doing. I don't think you can necessarily separate them, though, the outside validation from

the activity itself. I mean, if I wanted to be a professional ballerina, I'm not going to get a lot of outside validation for that. And without some validation, I'm probably not going to stick with it very long. Passionate though I may be about ballet, but without the validation, it's going to be, well, there's a lot of reasons why, but it's going to be tough for me to continue my passion for being a ballerina. Sure. If you're doing it to try to be a professional ballerina, then yeah, that feedback's really important. But if it's just something you enjoy, then like, who cares? Do it in your basement, have fun with it. Um,

I think again, in this culture, and a lot of this is fueled by social media, even our hobbies, we feel like we have to win at, but that just leads to stress and anxiety. Now, if you want to be a professional ballerina and you, you know, you don't make the cut repetitively, then of course that's good information. The flip side is if you are a professional ballerina and you're already doing it at the highest level, well, then it might take you 10, 15 years to break through. And you might have to endure 10, 15 years of not breaking through. So I think it still stands. A lot of people, though, want to take their passion, whatever that is, and make it their

career, that that's how they want to earn their living. They don't want to write just to write. They want to write because the idea of being a professional writer, and that's how I make my living, is what I want to do. Here is another one of these notions where we get passion all wrong. I'm so glad that you brought this up, Mike. So exactly what you said, kind of conventional wisdom says that, oh, you're passionate about writing, you're passionate about baking, you name that thing, you should quit your job and go all in. As Joseph Campbell said, follow your bliss, follow your passion. Well, what the research shows is the exact opposite.

Individuals that identify a passion and want to turn it into a full-time job are much more successful if they do it gradually and if they quote-unquote keep their J-job as they do it. So if you want to be a professional guitarist, but you're an accountant, you'd be wise to stay an accountant as you develop your guitar career. And what this allows you to do is it's another one of these paradoxes of passion. You can actually take more risks by keeping your day job. And I'm going to switch back to the writing analogy because I don't know enough about playing guitar. But if my passion is writing and I want to be a pro writer and I quit my day job, well,

suddenly I need to have an income stream from writing. And that means I might have to write these list articles on the cutest cats, just nonsense, because that's what gets clicks and that's what's going to get me a couple hundred bucks a week to pay my rent. Whereas if I stay in my job as an accountant and I have that stable salary, I can be more selective about the things I want to write about and I can take more risks. Because if I fail, I can still pay my rent. So my number one advice to people that have a passion that they want to make their career,

but they're not there yet, is don't quit your day job. Stay in your day job, carve out time to do it on the side. Gradually build that skill. And as you build that skill, you have more confidence to leave your day job. And this is what I did as a writer. I was working as an organizational development consultant and coach at 100%, normal employee. Started this as a side gig. Went down to 80% in my consulting role as my writing picked up, went down to 50%. And it wasn't until I had two published books that I was confident enough to say, actually, I'm a writer now. If I would have just gone all in from the get-go,

the first time I had a piece published in a small magazine and said, I want to be a writer, it's my passion, I have no doubt I wouldn't be where I am today because I would have faced so many pressures to make money that I wouldn't have been able to take the big swings because a lot of those big swings fail. I think part of why this gets confusing is the way people throw around the word passion. How many people have said, you know, I'm a people, I'm a, I'm a people person. I'm very passionate about people. So I want to be, and then you could fill in the blank with any one of 500 different jobs. Right. Because I'm so passionate about people. I want to be a coach. I want to be a podcaster. I want to be

a doctor. I want to be, what is passion? I mean, what does that even mean? The way that I describe passion is a enthusiasm or zeal towards a particular activity or in the romantic sense, person. Now, what's fascinating is that passion comes from the Latin root passio, which means to suffer. So passion traces itself. It has a huge religious context all the way back to the purported suffering of Jesus Christ on the cross. So for the first 1600, 1700 years of the word's usage, you would never want to be passionate because passionate meant

that you're suffering. The word shifted during the Renaissance period and then became tied up with this romantic, you're suffering for love. And it wasn't only until like 50 years ago that the word took on this more popular connotation of, oh, you want to be really passionate about a craft, about a career. So again, it comes from this notion of suffering because you're so compelled to do that thing. And I think it's really, it's informative and insightful that that's the root of the word because as mentioned above, in some cases, passion can lead to suffering. Now, I don't think I completely answered your question. In terms of the person that says that they're passionate about people, You're right. That doesn't necessarily narrow them down to what they

should do with their life. I would say that, you know, if you really like people, then you probably want to pursue things that allow you to be with people. But you could be passionate about people as a podcaster, you know, have full autonomy of your schedule and be a creative. Or you could be passionate about people as a middle manager in an enormous bureaucracy, because both are going to expose you to people. We're discussing passion today, and we're talking with Brad Stolberg. He is a coach and a writer and author of the book, The Passion Paradox. 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. Look for The Search for the Silver Lining on Spotify, Apple, or wherever you get your podcasts. 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, 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. Being curious, you're probably just the type of person Intelligence Squared is meant for. Check out Intelligence Squared wherever you get your podcasts. So Brad, it would seem that passion is what you say it is. I mean, it's up to an individual to define what it means to be passionate about something. Totally. And I would say, back to connecting it to, you know, does it have to be a career?

I would say that I've always been passionate about writing, but long before I was a quote unquote professional writer writing pieces for, you know, the New York Times or writing books, I was writing in all kinds of other ways. Way back in the day, you know, even if I think back to when I was in graduate school, I did a graduate program in public health. I never wanted to take the courses that involved statistical modeling. I always wanted to do the ones that were PowerPoint presentations because what is PowerPoint? It's writing.

It's telling a story. When I was a consultant, same thing. I was never the person behind the Excel spreadsheet. I was always drafting the memo or the white paper. So you can, you know, there's this, it's called job crafting. And job crafting says that you can be passionate about something like writing or people. And that doesn't mean that you have to be an executive coach or a professional writer. It just means that you should look at your job and try to craft it in a way that you get to spend time working with other people, telling stories, you know, make your match. Doesn't it make sense that people can have passion, not for a specific activity like writing or painting or acting,

but just have a passion for doing a good job at almost anything? Like, I mean, you could own a tire shop and be very passionate about delivering great service and good prices, and that's your passion, but it isn't the kind of passion where you're up at night dreaming about tires and treads and hubcaps and things like that. That's not your passion. Your passion is that you do what you do, and you do it well, and you like doing it. That's not your passion. Your passion is that you do what you do and you do it well and you like doing it. That's a passion. If you're somebody that works a nine to five, likes your job, turn off at 5 p.m. and that's it. That is wonderful. I envy that person because my brain doesn't work like that. If you're the person that wants to make your craft a bigger part of your life, that's wonderful too. And I also find it so fascinating, Mike, that the grass is always

greener on the other side. So people that work a nine to five, kind of go through the motions, like their job, provides for their family. You talk to them and they wish that they would feel more driven and more energy or there'd be something that would make them tick. People that are wired like me, that are constantly thinking about their work and ideas and their work becomes a bigger part of their life, I freaking wish I could just work a nine to five and then just be content. So I think that, again, it's important to be values neutral, that it's neither nor, and there are also different seasons of one's life. If you are a brand new parent, that's probably a good time to scale down your passion for work because you're going to be A, too tired, and B, you want to focus your energy on your family.

Whereas if you've got kids that are out of the house or that are a little bit grown up, that might be a time to go all in at work. So I don't necessarily see it as this dichotomous thing, like either you're passionate or you're not. I think it's a trait or a quality that can be really helpful in certain circumstances, but you certainly don't need to have it all the time. Yeah. Well, I guess the point is that if you don't have this thing that people identify as passion,

as you're not up all hours of the night sculpting the next... That's great. If you're happy, that's phenomenal. I mean, again, I think that gets back to passion, passio being a curse. What I would say is that if you can develop something that you are passionate about, a craft that you love and that you want to master and that you view a journey of progression where you are putting in effort and you are seeing the

results of your effort, that is a wonderful way to live a highly satiating, fulfilling life. And I do firmly believe that if individuals follow their interests and try multiple things and give themselves a long leash, that it is possible for just about everyone to find a pursuit that they want to pursue in that way, and that that's a wonderful way to live your life if, and it's a big if, you are also aware of all the pitfalls of passion. And that gets back to the becoming too attached to external validation, having total tunnel vision, losing your ability to focus on anything else. So, you know, again, I do think passion is a good thing. I think trying to find a passionate pursuit is a good thing.

You know, the word passion has so much attached to it. I think many people think of passion as what you just described as the curse of that. You're so focused on this, you can't focus on anything else. This is all consuming, that that's what a passion is. And I don't think that's not what you're talking about, but I think that word. That's an addiction, it sounds like what you're describing. But I think people believe that that's what it takes to have a passion. And the guy that likes to go to work and come home and piddle around in the garden, probably not really passionate like we think of passion.

He just likes to piddle around in the garden. Is that a passion or is that just a guy piddling around in the garden? Yeah, I think, again, I think to your point, I think you'd have to ask him. What I would say is that, you know, if you're piddling around in the garden, if you don't really care, but if you care and the more deeply you care about your piddling around in the garden, you're becoming a gardener, then that becomes a passion. And again, it's a gift and a curse because the things that you care deeply about, those tend to be the things that break your heart, right? Because things don't always go well. As the poet David White says, like eventually the kids move out of the house and that causes heartbreak. But that's not to say that you

shouldn't care deeply about the kids. It's just to say that, hey, a part of being passionate, a part of really caring is pain. And you can live a life where you're kind of coasting, going through the motions, not really caring about anything, and that can shield you from the pain. Or you can choose to care deeply, I would argue, have a more rich, fulfilling life, but also experience some pain. So let's talk about that conversation I alluded to at the very beginning of this segment, which is somebody says, you know, I don't know what to do with my life. And the response is, well, what are you passionate about? As if you should find this one thing that you have this zeal for, this passion for, and run with that as if there's your answer.

And that doesn't really necessarily seem like a good idea. I think that what you're hitting on there is this notion that you're told to find your passion. And that, too, is an enormous myth. So if you think that you're going to find your passion, what that tends to mean for people is exactly what you said, that they're just going to stumble upon this thing where it's like lightning strikes and they immediately know this is the thing I have to do. It's also true in a romantic sense, or this is the person that I need to be with. Well, what the research here shows is that it's precisely the opposite.

Individuals that believe that there's a one and only soulmate for them are significantly more likely to end up single. Individuals that think that there's a pursuit that they should be passionate about and there's this one thing that they're going to find, they end up to be not as happy with their work. That's what researchers call either a soulmate theory of love or a fit mindset of passion. Now there's a development theory of passion or a development theory of love, which says that actually the bar shouldn't be finding your passion. The bar should just be following your interests. So, huh, this interests me. I'm going to follow my interest. This, this pursuit interests me. This person interests me. And the reason it's so important, it's, it's a nuanced, subtle shift, but it really matters is because when you lower the bar from, this is something

I need to be passionate about to, this something that interests me when you come across your first doubts or when things don't go well for the first time you don't just quit and if you're holding yourself up to the bar but this has to be passion the thing I meant to do the person I meant to be with well the minute you have a setback or the minute something goes wrong you're gonna stop you're gonna say well this not be my passion. I guess I better try the next thing. Whereas if you shift the mindset to, I just want to pursue the things that interest me, forget about passion altogether, that gives you the best chance of developing a passion. And this isn't just my theory. This is a lot of empirical research. And it makes sense when you think about it, right?

If you have such a high bar of this has to be my passion, well, good luck, because nothing works out perfectly. If I would have said when I was young that my passion's writing and I need to be a writer, the day I got rejected from journalism school, which happened to me, I would have quit and been done. But I never said writing was a passion. I just always liked writing, and I pursued the thing that I liked. Well, and I think that's a heavy burden to put on people of what's your passion? What? Oh, I'm not sure I have one. Oh, yeah, no, you got to have you got to have a passion. Everybody has a passion and you've got to follow it. And that's a heavy load to carry around. Yeah, absolutely. Especially for kids.

I didn't know what I wanted to do when I was 17, 18, 19. You can't know what you want to do. Your brain's not developed until you're 25. It could change quite a bit. I think for a lot of people, it does. So I'm a big believer that it's less about finding your passion and more about following your interests. Yeah, well, I like that because, well, it seems to make more sense and it's a much lighter load to carry around when you're figuring out what to do. My guest has been Brad Stolberg. He is a coach and writer who writes for Outside Magazine, and he has a book called The Passion Paradox. You'll find a link to his book in the show notes. Hey, thanks, Brad. All right. Thanks so much.

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. 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, 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 and 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 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. New episodes every Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday. When you imagine the perfect relationship, whether it's a romantic relationship or a parent and child relationship, you likely think of an easygoing, in-sync, harmonious relationship where people get along at least most of the time. And yet there is good reason to believe that a relationship like that is actually not so great.

A relationship without some trouble along the way is likely not as good as one with problems and discord. That's according to Ed Tronick. Ed is a developmental neuroscientist and clinical psychologist and a research associate at Harvard Medical School. He is also author of the book, The Power of Discord. Hi, Ed, welcome. Thanks a lot for having me. So I think the general consensus is that the calmer, less conflict, the less trouble a relationship has, the better.

And you say that's not necessarily the case, or that's not the case at all. I think it is not really the case at all. It's not that I'm advocating creating problems or troubles in relationships. But when we've looked at relationships, we've found that they're characterized not by being perfectly in sync with each other, but rather by periods of time where there's a lack of coordination and then a movement or a repair to a more coordinated state. So in other words, you're saying it's better to have some trouble in a relationship and repair it rather than have no trouble at all, which I think flies in the face of what many people would say is common sense, that you would want to work towards

a harmonious relationship and reduce or eliminate the trouble. One way to think about it is just to take an example, which would be Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers dancing. They dance perfectly in sync with one another. Each of their steps matches the steps of the other. And while it's beautiful to watch, what we see when most of us are dancing, certainly when I'm dancing, is that there are short periods of time where I'm doing the dance with my partner and our steps are coordinated. And then there are large portions of time when we're out of step with one another. So Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers are always in sync. But most of us are in mismatching states, large proportions of

the time, and then only for some period of time are we in matching states. How does that make the dance better? It makes the dance better in a lot of ways, because when we go from a mismatching state to a matching state, what I call a repair, a number of things happen to us, both emotional and in terms of our relationship. One is that we come to know how to fix mismatches. And mismatches come with some amount of negative affect, some feeling of disconnection. When you repair that match, you now feel connected with the partner and you also repair that negative, even small amount of negative affect that you were experiencing. The repair also gives you a sense of control and a sense of your own self as being effective. Why wouldn't just being in sync all the time do that? Why do you need to more or less break something and fix it to make it, when my car breaks and I fix it, it doesn't make it a better car. What's the magic of fixing it?

Your car essentially never changes. Your car isn't, it does what it does. And if it breaks, it breaks. But humans are not like that. What we need to do is we need to create new things, find new ways to be in the world. One of the problems with being always in sync with one another is that you're always doing the same kind of thing. In our relationships, we really want to create something new. We want the relationship to grow. We want our feelings to become stronger and to have more trust in our partner. And the only way we can do that is if there's this messiness, this variation for us to work on. Should we try this? Should we try that? How can we repair it to make our relationship stronger and better? I know you work a lot with infants, and I imagine that this is not only romantic relationships,

but this also has to do with a mother-child relationship. One example that drove this home for me was we were looking at a mother and a little girl who was about 30 months old. So she's a toddler, and she has a lot of language. And what was striking in their interaction was that they were really well-coordinated with one another. They had a dance in which the mother could finish the little sentences of the little girl, and the little girl could actually finish the sentences with the mother. We were very impressed by how coordinated they were. It was quite exceptional. But when we asked the mother to do what I call the still face, to not respond to the little girl. So she just freezes. And we want to see what happens when the mother does that. What we saw was this little girl

just came apart at the seams. The stress of the mother not responding to her was too great for her to cope with it. And then, and of course, we stopped the interaction and let them repair the interaction. But it took them a long time to get back into coordination. And what I learned from that was that when there's a really high level of synchrony. So this little girl, she had very little experience in changing a mismatching state into a matching state, of going from the negative affect of being mismatched to the positive affect of repair. She really had so little experience that she had

very few coping strategies to deal with the disconnection. So you're saying that in a relationship like that between that mother and that child, which is seemingly so perfect, there's no experience with things going wrong. And so when things do go wrong, the child fell apart, and that's true in every relationship. You have to have some experience with trouble in order to handle the trouble when it comes. But it seems like that's a big price to pay for big trouble. The kind of mismatches that I'm talking about are not big ruptures in the interaction, big troubles in the interaction. We can come to that. There's small mismatches, the mismatches of steps when we're dancing with a partner.

In the marathon hypothesis, for those who do run marathons, you know that you don't run the marathon to train for the marathon. What you do is you have scheduled exercises each week, a scheduled amount of running and a scheduled amount of other kinds of exercises. And then after a period of training, which can be several months long, you actually run the marathon. And what you've done is you've built up a reservoir of capacity to run this really big stress. And you've built up that capacity by stressing yourself little by little each week and building up that capacity. So the messiness in interactions helps individuals to develop capacity, a reservoir of capacity, not only to deal with the small mismatches that we experience, but when there's a big mismatch, that you now have enough experience and enough capacity to cope with it.

So you gave the example of an infant, a toddler, and its mother, but how do you know this also works in adult grown-up relationships? In relationships amongst grown-ups we see very much the same kind of patterns and many of the couples therapists have pointed to this that there's inherently in interactions in relationships mismatcheses. It's simply not possible to be perfectly coordinated. Fred and Ginger were coordinated because they rehearsed for endless hours until they took out any possibility of messiness from the interaction. But with all of our partners, we always have miscommunications. Words don't get heard. The person is thinking about something else. These little mismatches go on all the time. And of course, there are actual disagreements

where one partner wants to do one thing and the other partner wants to do another thing, and they have to renegotiate it. What the couples therapists also know and what we see in our interactions between parents and infants is that with parents, with mothers and infants, the interactions that are most coordinated, most contingent on one another, are the interactions that actually are negative, where the relationship between the parent and the child is a negative sort of relationship. But they have a really well-coordinated dance.

And in adult relationships, therapists see exactly the same kind of thing, that when a couple comes in to the therapist because they're having relationship problems, what one sees, what therapists see, is that the couple has worked out a perfect dance or a very close to perfect dance with one another that involves a negative interchange. One does one thing negative, one reacts to it. That reaction generates another negative change. So while the interaction, quote-unquote,

seems disorganized and problematic, in fact, it's not disorganized. It is very well structured. So I get what you're saying, that it's important for every relationship to have trouble so that you can have experience recovering from the trouble. But I don't know too many people in relationships who complain of having too little trouble in there. I wish we had more trouble so we could fix it and repair it. So other than shining a light on this, which, you know, may be important, but what's the important part of all of this? Certainly one aspect of it is shining a light on it.

But remember that the view that we had about mothers and infants and the view that many people hold about their relationships is that the relationship should be smooth. It should always be attuned. We should always be getting along with one another. But once you see that inherent in relationships are these mismatches, that there is messiness, that there will be discoordination, you can stop pressing for that perfect coordination. You can figure out ways to re-coordinate and actually, in figuring out those ways, make the relationship stronger.

Increase the sense of intimacy in adult relationships. Increase the sense of intimacy in adult relationships, increase the sense of connection that you're feeling with this other person. I would imagine it has a lot to do with how you deal with the messiness, how you clean up the messiness. It does. The little girl that I spoke about before had very few skills, coping capacity, coping skills for dealing with her mother not reacting to her. And in adult relationships, what you see is that there are people who, someone like John

Gottman, a rather well-known couple therapist, referred to as masters of reparation. One or another person in the relationship has a really good sense of how to move on, how not to get stuck in a negative cycle, how not to get stuck in long-term problematic kinds of patterns. And of course, there are other people who have very few skills in doing that. So when they confront it, you're left, they're left unable to resolve what's going on. And in my view, what couples therapists are doing is they're looking at an interaction that is negative, that both parties a relationship in which there's a great deal of contingency, but it's this back and forth negative interchange. And I think what the therapist does is to disrupt that negative pattern, to disrupt

the contingency, to introduce messiness into the interaction. So the takeaway from all of this is what? Is it that the desire for a smooth, harmonious relationship all the time is not only probably impossible, it's also not even desirable. I do think it's impossible. It's not necessarily something you could overcome even if you tried, but if you shift your perspective and see the messiness as something that's positive, that allows for growth, then it takes away some of the anxiety. It takes away the fear that you're going to rupture or break the relationship because there's a disagreement, because there's a mismatch. Which I think, yeah, which I think a lot of people worry about,

that if we're having trouble, if we're having a lot of conflict, that that's a red flag, that's an indicator that something's wrong. But I guess it also depends on how often. I mean, how much trouble is too much trouble? It's a great question, and it's really a clinical question, or it's an individual question. One of the things that might be interesting difference between infants and adults is that infants persist. Infants really, really try to make the connection. It's very difficult to discourage them from trying to repair the relationship. And even when they start to feel helpless and there's a serious problem, if the relationship begins to change for them, they're able to really grab hold of that and move forward. Unfortunately, adults don't necessarily have that kind of persistence.

There are people who will give up right away as soon as there's any kind of problem. Well, as I said before, I don't think there are too many couples or people who work together or parent and children. I don't think there's too many of them that say, gee, I wish we had more trouble. We need more trouble to really cement this relationship. But it is interesting to know that there is a real purpose for that trouble and that it actually can cause the relationship to be better. My guest has been Ed Tronick. He is a developmental neuroscientist and clinical psychologist and a research associate at Harvard Medical School. And he's author of the book

The Power of Discord. And you'll find a link to that book in the show notes. Thank you for being here, Ed. Very good. Okay. A pleasure. There's something you can do to make yourself less attractive to pollen during peak allergy season, and that is lose the hair gel or any other sticky substance in your hair. It's like a pollen magnet. The same thing goes for body lotion. Here are a few more allergy season survival tips. Keep your car windows closed, no matter how nice it is outside. Clean your desk off at work. Dusty keyboards and monitors will just aggravate your allergies. Keep some saline spray handy. This really helps to flush out the pollen out of your

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