Something You Should Know - Why You Are SO Not the Person You Used to Be & How to Face the Unknown

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Starting point is 00:00:27 Download June's Journey now on Android or iOS. Today on Something You Should Know, what do the initials RX actually mean when it comes to medicine? Then, how the human mind works and how it's constantly changing who we are as we get older. And what you find is as people age, their personalities on average get a little bit better. They become less belligerent, more understanding, more agreeable. They're more conscientious, you can trust them more. They're less neurotic. We seem to mellow out maybe

Starting point is 00:00:59 once we pass 30 or 40. Also, the difference between a road, a street, and an avenue. And how to make the best of uncertainty, because many of us fear what uncertainty may bring. When you spend your whole life running away from uncertainty, you also spend your life running away from possibility. You know, sometimes you take a risk and it doesn't work out. But on average, if you're taking thoughtful risks, it leads to such a more exciting life. All this today on Something You Should Know. This winter, take a trip to Tampa on Porter Airlines. Enjoy the warm Tampa Bay temperatures

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Starting point is 00:02:18 When you hear the letters RX together, you probably think of medicine. I mean, you see RX at the drugstore, on signs, and on bottles of medication. But what does RX have to do with medicine? Well, the R part of the symbol stands for the Latin recipe, which means take this. The X part of the symbol is derived from the symbol for the Roman god Jupiter. It represents a prayer or invocation to Jupiter that the treatment would result in a cure with divine help. So our X really means take this and pray. And that is something you should know.

Starting point is 00:03:12 Trying to understand the human mind, what it is, how it works, how it shapes and creates who you are, it all sounds really interesting, but also seems like a difficult thing to get your head around. I mean, part of the problem is there's a lot about the mind and the brain we don't really know or understand. But there's also a lot we do understand. And here to explain that in a way we can all grasp and understand is Paul Bloom. Paul's a professor of psychology at the University of Toronto and professor emeritus of psychology at Yale. And he's author of a book called Psych, the Story of the Human Mind. Hi, Paul. Welcome to Something You Should Know. Hey, thanks for having me here.

Starting point is 00:03:57 So let's start with happiness, because I think we all want to be happy. Everybody has a sense of what makes them happy personally. But on a scientific level, what is it that makes brains, minds, human beings happy? I'll tell you two obvious things, then I'll tell you two less obvious things. Money makes people happy. For a long time, psychologists were saying the opposite. And of course, I don't mean everybody who has money is happy and everybody who's poor is unhappy, but there's a definite relationship in how much money you make and how happy you are, both for individuals and also within countries. So richer countries have happier citizens than poorer countries. And like I say, that's kind of obvious.

Starting point is 00:04:37 Money buys things like health care and luxuries and freedom and protection from various harms, lets you pay for luxuries, lets you travel, lets you take time off work. That's obvious fact number one. Obvious fact number two is the tremendous value of social connections. I mean, your grandmother could have told you this, but it's good to have friends. It's good to have families. We have people who love and respect you.

Starting point is 00:05:02 Yes, there are happy loners, but on average, being alone is not good for your soul. So that's some obvious things. I'll tell you two non-obvious ones that you may not have known. One is happiness changes in the lifespan. And I'll ask you, yeah, let's see, maybe you'll prove me wrong. When are people the happiest in their lives? I would think in childhood. That's a good guess. And they are not unhappy in childhood. They're pretty happy as children.

Starting point is 00:05:34 Childhood depression is rare. But that's not the answer. People are happiest on average in their 70s and their 80s. In fact, what happiness shows, if you graph it over time, is a perfect you, where you start off pretty happy, you got childhood, you tip, tip, tip, till you're about your mid-50s. And honestly, for a lot of people, that's the worst time of their lives. And then it creeps back up again until when you get to your 70s and 80s, until the very last period when maybe bad health really takes over. You are typically happier when you were an adolescent, happier than as a child,

Starting point is 00:06:13 happier than in midlife. And this finding has been replicated all around the world. A lot of the reason that I think people look back on their childhood as happy is because you're looking back. You kind of forget the bad things and nothing bad can happen in your past because that's all done. So you can look at it through these kind of rose colored glasses where today God knows what's going to happen. I could get hit by a bus. And so that makes me maybe less happy.

Starting point is 00:06:42 I don't know. It brings us back to memory where if I think about my childhood, sometimes I just dredge up some happy pictures, happy events, and forget about all of the times where I was miserable. And, you know, if you have young kids, young kids are very sad a lot of the time. They're bored, they're lonely. You wouldn't think old age is a time for happiness because, you know, your health is declining, your power is declining, maybe your social status is declining. But the mindset changes. Your personality shifts in various ways.

Starting point is 00:07:12 You're less neurotic. You're more conscientious. And you could become satisfied and attain a sort of wisdom. And I think a lot of talk of wisdom is often nonsense. But the happiness data is just clear. People who are much older will tell you that they're much happier. It would seem to me that one of the reasons you wouldn't be happier when you're older is you're so much closer to the edge of the cliff that you will one day fall off that

Starting point is 00:07:38 you weren't 25 years ago. Honestly, you would think that. And certainly, no matter how old you are, death, if your life is going well, is an ugly and horrible prospect. And there's a certain point, it's not that they welcome it, but there's an acquaintance to it.

Starting point is 00:07:56 At least to a point where it doesn't interfere with their happiness. The second mystery of happiness is a genuine mystery, and it goes back to what we don't know, which is there's a lot of debate over whether having children makes you happy. Some initial studies found it doesn't. Some later studies find that in some countries, parents are happier than non-parents. There's a difference between men and women, mothers and fathers.

Starting point is 00:08:23 But the data is complicated. I've written about this before and the response to it by, I get, by parents is often like, yeah, it's complicated. Well, but it's also, you often hear something like, it's the greatest thing I ever did and it's the hardest thing I ever did. I think that's exactly right. And I actually think that asking about happiness is sometimes the wrong question.

Starting point is 00:08:52 We want to maximize different things in our lives. We want to be happy, we want to get pleasure, but we also want to be good and we want to live meaningful lives. And I think having children is an extraordinarily, for many of us, deep and meaningful and important decision. It means a lot. It matters a lot. My children are now off in the world, but I define myself as a parent.

Starting point is 00:09:17 And that's different from saying, oh, it made me happy. Like a hot foot Sunday would make me happy. So let's talk about good and evil i've always been fascinated by why some people do good for the world and feel compelled to and feel rewarded by doing that and other people take the other path there's even the broader question before that which is why do we do good at all why is an animal that evolved through natural selection capable of kindness and love and caring not just to its kin there's evolution explanation why you take care of your kin but to friends to strangers we care a lot about things like natural disasters across the world

Starting point is 00:10:02 we we give money to say people we haven't, you know, we had never met. I think that's extraordinary and beautiful. And there's being, studying moral psychology is my day job as a researcher. And I find it extremely interesting and really important. But your question about differences also weighs heavily. And I guess I just say two things about that. One is there's natural variation in every aspect of a person, every physical aspect. We're taller, shorter, where we burn in the sun or we don't. Our knees ache when we walk or they don't. There's all these variations. And the same holds true once you go above the neck. Some of us are extroverted, others aren't. Some of us are timid. Some are fearful. Some like to joke around, others more

Starting point is 00:10:51 serious. And the variation extends through morality. Some people are more aggressive than other people. Some people care more, are more sympathetic, are more empathetic. And there's natural variance you see. Some of it's that genetic that you will see even in a kid. You know, some two-year-olds are not all the same when it comes to how they treat others. So that's part of it. The other part is, I think we're too quick to see the behavior of others that we see as evil. I don't know, take an example from a while ago, the bombing of the Twin Towers on 9-11. We see this as evil, I think correctly so. But what we forget is that the perpetrators don't see themselves as evil. The perpetrators often

Starting point is 00:11:37 see themselves as good. And some of the very terrible acts in our lives are done not through a sort of psychopathy or some perverse desire for evil, but instead through a genuine desire to do good just in a different way. Something I've always wondered about is just as your body ages throughout your life, you change. You don't look anything like you did when you were 10 I wonder if your brain and mind and who you are changes in in such a way that you wouldn't really recognize yourself if you went back and talked to that ten-year-old who was you all those years ago it's an interesting question a lot of my research involves I said I study moral psychology, I often study in children. So there's a profound difference between a five-year-old and a 10-year-old,

Starting point is 00:12:32 and a 10-year-old and a 15-year-old. And this is in part could be explained because the brain's a physical organ and grows and ages and atrophies, just like our knees and our bellies and our spines do um and it could be part explained in terms of experience as as you get more and more experience you change but we know even in adulthood or profound changes some of them are bad your um your mental speed gets slower after a certain point you might know a lot you might have what they call crystallized intelligence but you're just not as quick. The quickness fades. That's one part of it. On the positive side, there's been these studies, not just in America, but of dozens of different countries, finding regular personality changes in aging. And what you find is as people age their personalities on average get a little

Starting point is 00:13:27 bit better they become less belligerent more understanding more agreeable they're more conscientious you could trust them more um they're less neurotic about things we seem to kind of to some extent mellow out maybe once we pass 30 or 40. Oh, thank God. I'm speaking with Paul Bloom. He's a professor of psychology at the University of Toronto and author of the book, Psych, The Story of the Human Mind. This is an ad for BetterHelp. Welcome to the world.

Starting point is 00:14:00 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. 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 to learn more that's betterhelp.com bumble knows it's hard to start conversations hey no too basic hi there still no what about hello handsome who knew you could give yourself the ick that's why bumble is changing how you start conversations you can now make the first move or

Starting point is 00:14:46 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. So Paul, since you study children, and here's something as somebody who has been through the foster parent and adoption business, you often hear people talk and they will offer their opinion about, well, I hope you intervened early because once a kid hits and fill in the blank, eight, ten, it's too late. It's too late. Is there any evidence that that's true? Or is that just some wives tale theory that people come up with? It's sort of in between. There's some truth to the fact that both events and interventions that happen early are more powerful, have more an effect

Starting point is 00:15:42 than those that happen later in life. Something as simple as brain damage, the brain recovers from it quicker if you're two years old than if you're 22 years old. Some capacities, like learning a language and some social skills, are best learned early in life. The brain seems to shut down a bit, maybe after adolescence or after 18. But the story's been so oversold. So in a strong way, you're putting it, no, it's not true. It's not true. Oh, once somebody's four, you can't do anything with them. Once somebody's eight, they're a goner. If they're introverted, they're going to stay introverted and so on. It may be more difficult, but I think change

Starting point is 00:16:21 is possible at any point in the lifespan. One question I've always wondered about, and I think everybody's pondered this, in a family, you have kids, siblings, and they turn out very differently, even though they were raised in the same house, by the same parents, with the same rules. So why is that? Why does one kid go one way and another kid go the other way studies of why people turn out differently which is one of the big and most exciting areas of psychology where it connects with behavioral genetics and other fields find that there's really two the two big factors that shape our personalities one is genetics and in which case you and your genetic sibling a child and his genetic

Starting point is 00:17:05 sibling would have the same 50% of the same genes. A child and his adopted sibling would have none of the same genes in particular. So that's one of it, genes. Say that counts for 50%. So you might think the other 50%, that must come from parenting. But it appears not. It appears that a lot of the other 50% comes from experiences, life experiences. You get bullied in school. You fall in love. You win a prize. You try something and you're really good at it. You know, these life experiences that different kids in the same family experience pull their

Starting point is 00:17:38 personalities apart. As you can have identical twins, right, raised in the same family. Same, there's no same family same there's no firstborn there's no second born they share a hundred percent of the genes they have the same parents same family environment yet their lives will pull them in different ways and they can end up quite different in all sorts of interesting ways but they can also end up not quite different in some similar ways it's the more genes you share the more likely you are to be similar and so

Starting point is 00:18:07 identical twins are on average gonna be a lot more similar than any two siblings who aren't twins and certainly than any two strangers but the very fact that they don't come out exactly the same I know I know I know twins were ones one's very liberal and one's very conservative, for instance. And I think that's interesting. That shows that factors of life can shape you in different ways. But what about things like, you know, I think isn't Albert Einstein's brain in a bottle somewhere that they wanted to examine it? Because how could somebody so brilliant, you know, be one of us? He's just so amazingly smart. But is there any idea of why somebody is just so head and shoulders above everybody else when it comes to anything?

Starting point is 00:18:56 Whether it's for good or evil, you know, Jeffrey Dahmer or Albert Einstein. I mean, these are just extraordinarily extraordinary people. Why? I think for all of this, let's focus on the good side, on Einstein's, put the dominoes aside for a bit. Part of his genetic gifts. So everyone's noticed for a long time these things run in families. There are these families of geniuses.

Starting point is 00:19:21 Even if they're raised very differently, certain genius abilities, mathematical abilities, say if they're raised very differently. Certain genius abilities, mathematical abilities, say, or musical abilities crop up. They get a very lucky throw of the genes. But that can't be enough because you need the opportunity, right, to have the genes flourish. I bet there's a thousand Einsteins raised in parts of Africa and parts of Asia where they never get a mathematical education. They never learn physics. Nobody supports them. They don't go to school.

Starting point is 00:19:50 They're not nurtured. For a long time, roughly half the world, women, whatever abilities they have, would not be given environments to flourish. And so you need both, right? You need the genetic gifts. Without the genetic gifts, you're not going to be an Einstein. But without the environment,, right? You need the genetic gifts. Without the genetic gifts, you're not going to be an Einstein. But without the environment, you're not going to be it either. You know, take your favorite athlete. You could have somebody born with exactly the

Starting point is 00:20:16 same skills of that athlete. But if they never meet a coach and never see the inside of a gym, they're just going to die and, to die and I've never known. You mentioned earlier that experiences that we have help shape who we are. And we all have big experiences. Sometimes, very oftentimes, we have very bad experiences, traumatic experiences. And then there's that saying of, you know, what doesn't kill you makes you stronger. So what does the science say about how trauma impacts who you are? You know, there's a story going around. Everyone knows about post-traumatic stress disorder when trauma damages you. But there's a story going around about what sometimes people call post-traumatic growth, where they argue that certain sorts of trauma, you come out of it on the other side better than you were.

Starting point is 00:21:09 And I've always been very skeptical about that. And it turns out that when the big studies are done, it turns out not to be true. Trauma is very rarely good for you. And so, again, more common sense advice from a psychologist, try to avoid bad things from happening to you. So you're not going to get tremendous benefits from trauma. But now here's the good news. The good news is we are far more resilient than we thought we were. The typical effects of even the very worst experiences are they mess you up for a while and then you get over them and you're back to normal post-traumatic stress disorder psychological harm and so on are the exceptions and not the rule that's interesting so the the notion that what doesn't kill you makes you stronger is

Starting point is 00:21:57 not true at all total total nonsense wishful thinking wishful thinking which by the way can lead i think is often cruel someone whose child dies you say well you're gonna come out of this a better person you know stronger wiser what a horrible thing to say how could you say that well I know people I know people who believe it and I even there was an article in New York Times recently that somebody said I went through some terrible trauma yet I don't seem to be a better person what's wrong with me and I'm gonna I want it to scream no I don't seem to be a better person. What's wrong with me? And I wanted to scream, no, you're not supposed to be a better person. Something bad happened to you. Work to recover. And again, the good news is we're good at

Starting point is 00:22:33 recovering. But what doesn't kill you makes you stronger. I guess one of Nietzsche's aphorisms has to be the dumbest thing a philosopher's ever said. The person that I think I am, and what I mean is how good a person I think I am, is that the person other people see? Does it tend to match up, or are we somewhat deluding ourselves into how good we are that other people don't necessarily think we're so great? Oh, we are often deluding ourselves. People's perception of how others see them is often deeply distorted. And sometimes it's distorted in that people, psychologically healthy people, often see themselves as better than other

Starting point is 00:23:19 people see them. People overrate their own intelligence, their own attractiveness, their own sense of humor, their own kindness. And what is it when it is sort of a psych 101 finding that better than average effect. But there's another way in which we get things wrong which I always found very reassuring to hear and it's called a spotlight effect. The spotlight effect is it's right in the title where the spotlight effect is we each feel as if we're more the focus of attention of other people than we really are. So experiments often get people to put on a funny t-shirt and walk into a room and then later ask people, how many people noticed you? Oh, everybody noticed me.

Starting point is 00:24:02 No one's talking about me. But what we miss is that people, everyone else isn't focused on you everyone's focused everyone else is focused on themselves we're all focused on ourselves and it's kind of good to know that what you do and how you act matters a lot less to other people than you think it does people's people's big regrets in life later on when they're asked are, tell me what they don't do. They didn't talk to this person. They didn't make this decision. And then when you ask them, why didn't you do it? They said, I didn't want to look foolish. And nobody wants to look foolish, but it is a bit liberating to realize that people don't

Starting point is 00:24:43 notice us as much as we worry they do. Well, that should come as a relief to a lot of people. This has been interesting. I've been talking with Paul Bloom, who is a professor of psychology at the University of Toronto. And he has a book out called Psych, The Story of the Human Mind. And you'll find a link to that book in the show notes. Thanks for being here, Paul. Appreciate it. Thank you. This was a lot of fun.

Starting point is 00:25:07 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. She now works to raise awareness on this issue. It's a great conversation.

Starting point is 00:25:42 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 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. 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, looking to hear new ideas and perspectives.

Starting point is 00:26:30 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 00:27:09 Being curious, you're probably just the type of person Intelligence Squared is meant for. Check out Intelligence Squared wherever you get your podcasts. Life is uncertain. You can't be sure what the future will bring. Now that can be exciting, and it can also be scary. The fact is we're wired to be afraid of uncertainty because, well, bad things can happen.

Starting point is 00:27:38 So can good things, but often the fear of the bad things prevents us from going after the good things. And that fear does seem to affect some people more than others. So what can we do about this? How can we make uncertainty our friend? Well, joining me to discuss this is Nathan Furr. Nathan is a professor who studies and teaches about innovation and technology. He's the author of four books on innovation, and the latest one is one he co-wrote with his wife, Susanna, called The Upside of Uncertainty.

Starting point is 00:28:12 Hey, Nathan, welcome to Something You Should Know. Thank you for having me. So as you look into the future, the uncertainty of the future, good things can happen and bad things can happen. We as human beings seem more afraid of the bad things that we're more concerned about bad things happening than we are about the prospect of the good that comes if good things happen and and so why is that well you know think about it you know 10 000 years ago there wasn't a lot to be

Starting point is 00:28:46 gained from going far from your normal routine, right? You know, you're probably going to get lost, get hungry, get eaten, get something, you know, and so over, you know, million years, our brains wired us to fear uncertainty, but something fundamental has changed. And that is we no longer live in that environment. In fact, we live in an environment where actually there's a lot of benefits to stepping into the unknown, taking a risk. We've created a safe environment for ourselves physically, and then technology has lowered all the barriers to create new things and transact

Starting point is 00:29:21 and interact. So we actually live in a realm of immense possibility, but with wiring for something that's different. And for me, my interest in this came because I've been interviewing innovators for 20 years and I noticed something about them. And that is that we see the thing they create. We see the possibility. We see the innovation. We see all that great stuff. But there's a part of that story we never talk about. And that is that they all had to first face some unknowns. They had to step into the dark. They had to take a risk.

Starting point is 00:29:56 And I was so curious because I wouldn't say I'm naturally good at that. And so I wanted the possibility piece. I could see that that was only one side of the coin. The other side of the coin was the uncertainty. So I wanted to know, how could I get better at facing this uncertainty, overcoming this evolutionary wiring that we all have? Well, that does, that wiring does seem to be an obstacle because, I mean, you think about it, as you look at the possibilities of something that might happen in the future, it does seem that we go to the negative, like, well, what bad thing

Starting point is 00:30:31 could happen more than we rush to the possibility of great things happening? We just, we just have that negative bias. Yeah, it's actually, this is a well-known effect in the psychology literature called worst case scenario. We naturally do it. What happens is you build it up in your mind as the pivotal event in your life that everything else depends on, which is, of course, not true. And to prove it to you, look back in your life and how many of those decisions really mattered that you made every single day. Not very many, yet we have lots of tries, lots of chances. That's the truth. But then we look at the situation and we say, oh my gosh, if I don't get it, it'll be so terrible. And so we tend to adopt this binary thinking with a very fuzzy worst case scenario. And I think what innovators do,

Starting point is 00:31:37 one of the things I learned they do really well is they actually think much broader than that. They actually see there's a lot of possibilities here. I don't get the job, but I get an interview the next day for a job I like even more. And then they assign probabilities to that. And then they also unpack the worst case scenario. Anyway, the point is often we obsess about the worst case scenario. It's often not as bad as we think. And it rarely, rarely actually happens. Sometimes it does. And I want to acknowledge that for people, but it rarely turns out the way I mean, Michel de Montaigne was a very famous philosopher.

Starting point is 00:32:12 And he said, you know, most of the terrible misfortunes in my life never happened to me. Are there people who are naturally good at this and are naturally good at facing uncertainty, seeing the uncertainty and just moving forward anyway, without being thrown off course? Well, let me say this. My collaborator, who is an applied neuroscientist summarizes the field by saying everything in life is a function of genes, how you were born, experience, what happened to you, and learning. Those three factors. So some people do come a little bit more predisposed to that, or they grew up in, let's say, a family environment where the world was basically a safe place, or maybe it wasn't

Starting point is 00:32:56 a safe place. So they learned to face uncertainty, whatever it may be. But it's very clear we can learn this. And I guess what I would add to that is just when I look at innovators, people sometimes say, oh, they're so different. And I guess I feel like having done this research now, I kind of feel like they've just learned a secret that the rest of us haven't learned. And that is, you know, sometimes you take a risk and it doesn't work out. But on average, if you're taking thoughtful risks, it leads to such a more interesting, exciting life. And what I see in them is almost an energy or an enthusiasm or an addiction to that new thing. And I've gotten there myself as somebody who, again, who struggles a bit with it now to being like, where's the next uncertainty? Because I realized that's what makes life rich and vivid and

Starting point is 00:33:50 interesting and worth living where you do your best work. And so I think they've just learned that secret and that uncertainty and possibility are two sides of the same coin. And when you spend your whole life running away from uncertainty, you also spend your life running away from possibility. Right. Well, I've always thought that, you know, if life were so certain, well, it wouldn't be very interesting. It would be pretty dull if you knew that everything you did worked out. Well, where's the fun in that? Oh, yeah.

Starting point is 00:34:22 It's terrible. That's a terrible world. And I actually take great comfort in a very idiosyncratic principle from quantum physics, which is called the uncertainty principle, which is this idea that the more precisely you measure the velocity of a particle, the less precisely you can measure its position and vice versa. And what it says to me is that the universe itself, some fundamental building block level has some fundamental uncertainty in it. And I love that because otherwise we could build a world with enough computing power and enough

Starting point is 00:34:58 machines that everything gets predicted and deterministic, and that would be a horrible place to live in. It would be so boring. It would be so constricting. And we need uncertainty. We forget that. In fact, one of my favorite interviews was with the head of a major gambling organization. And he said, oh, you know what we call what we do in gambling? We call it reverse insurance. And our prime customer is that person who we just made the mistake we just talked about, which is everything in their life is so boring. They've made it so certain that they will come to us and they will pay us for the chance that something different could happen.

Starting point is 00:35:37 And I just think that illustrates that need, that tension we have. So we have this evolutionary wiring for, you know, we're afraid of uncertainty and we seek certainty. But if we follow that too far, we create a really boring life. Right. So there are times when you do want uncertainty. Uncertainty, lack of uncertainty makes a boring life. Uncertainty would make things kind of exciting. So one of my colleagues, it was when he did his dissertation at Harvard, went and studied some of the world's top chefs and the most innovative chefs in the world. And what he found is they would actually sometimes purposely make things more uncertain as an effort to increase their innovation. So they'd shake it up and they'd open three

Starting point is 00:36:23 restaurants in three different geographies at the same time. Or right when they're supposed to be redesigning the menu, they rip out the kitchen because it allows them to unfreeze the rules and habits and roles they've been operating on. So you've got to judge what situation am I in? Am I freaking out? Well, that's a great time to reduce uncertainty. Or are we having a hard time escaping the trap of the old ways we're doing things? Well, that might be a place where you need to inject some uncertainty. So how do you approach this systematically? If you're facing something that you're feeling very uncertain about and you want to do the kinds of things you're talking about, step one, two, and three are what?

Starting point is 00:37:05 The first thing to do is we call reframe. My thesis and my argument to you is that in life, uncertainty and possibility are two sides of the same coin, whether it's planned or unplanned. If it's planned, you want to do something new, there's uncertainty attached to that. If something happened to you that feels really uncertainty, it feels terrible, but there's probably some possibility still to be pulled out of it.

Starting point is 00:37:30 So that's really your attitude towards it, right? I mean, if you look at a situation, you can see the possibilities or you can drown in the misery. It really depends on your outlook. With the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, I got to see how many leaders responded to this uncertainty. And there were some leaders who framed it in terms of the uncertainty. They said things like, this is the worst thing that's ever happened. This is worse than the Great Depression. And what do you think happened to everybody inside that organization? They started freaking out. They started feeling anxiety. And all the energy, and you may have been in this situation and an organization where this happened, all the energy that could have gone to doing something about it, a lot of that went

Starting point is 00:38:15 down the drain as anxiety and checking your bank account and should I get another job and all that kind of stuff. By contrast, I love the example of how Brian Chesky, who's the CEO of Airbnb, framed it. Now, they lost 80% of their business in eight weeks. If anybody had the right to say, this is the worst thing that ever happened, it was them. But how did he frame it? He said, yeah, this is a crisis, but this is our moment. Great companies are forged in moments of crisis. This is our chance to show what we're really made of. Now, when I say that, how do you feel? You feel differently.

Starting point is 00:38:54 You feel ready to take action. And so in your own life, whatever happens to you for yourself, and Brian Chesky talks about the hardest thing to manage at that moment was his own emotions, his own reaction. So something happens to you or something happens to the people you're leading, a team you're leading or your family, whatever it may be. How do you see the possibility, not just the uncertainty and frame it in terms of the possibility? Here's the thing though. It's, it's one thing as I listened to that example, it's one thing to say that, to say, oh, you know, look at the opportunity here and still feel very fearful that just logically this could be a disaster. Oh, yeah. Yeah. And there are disasters and we want to acknowledge that. And so it's kind of like making the best of the situation. So when we think about it, I mean, I do want to say there are three other categories of things to do

Starting point is 00:39:50 beside reframing. I mean, reframing is very cognitive. There is second, you can prepare in advance. So this is about priming for the events so that when it happens, whatever it is, you're calmer in the face of that. The third is do. Taking action is one of the best ways to resolve uncertainty. And there are better ways to take action than others. Like for example, breaking something uncertain down into a series of small experiments. And then lastly, four, which is sustain, which is to acknowledge that there are setbacks and frustrations in uncertainty. And how do we sustain ourselves, acknowledge the emotions, acknowledge the reality and face that with courage? Yeah, well, that take action thing is one that I really pay attention to because I find that sitting around

Starting point is 00:40:45 kind of wringing your hands feeds the beast of uncertainty. And doing something, almost anything, is better than not. Absolutely. And, you know, there's great research

Starting point is 00:41:00 that supports the value of taking action on uncertainty, that the best way to do it is to take something big, thorny, and complex and break it down into a small experiment. And you say, well, how does that play out? You can do that in life and business. You know, you've got a new job offer. Well, you know, what would it look like to try it out for three years or a year?

Starting point is 00:41:20 It makes the decision a lot less kind of, you know, permanent. Another thing is there's great research that shows you may feel, by the way, you may feel like, well, it sounds great to take action, but I don't have everything I need. I don't have all the resources I need, all the time, the money, whatever it may be. But there's a whole domain in my field that we call bricolage, which is this idea that the way entrepreneurs and innovators really operate is they just get started with what they have at hand, like make do. Bricolage is literally make do with what you have and get started and start learning. And actually, sometimes that's the path to success. And so I would really emphasize the importance of action

Starting point is 00:42:02 in most circumstances. There are some cases where it's good to wait a little bit. One trap you can fall into is when you feel so anxious in the face of uncertainty that you'll grab for what we call premature certainty. You'll grab for the suboptimal thing that feels certain when you really just need to say, I have to wait for this uncertainty to resolve. So how do I take good actions? How do I be learning? How do I be testing? How do I be trying? But realize that I don't have to make a decision today, maybe because that might be forcing it. And so there's a wisdom. There's a little bit of art in the science as well about recognizing the right time to act. It is so interesting that uncertainty has this weird balance, like without it, life

Starting point is 00:42:49 would be dull, but with it, life can be stressful. And how you balance that out, I guess, really helps determine where you go and how well you do. Yeah. And, you know, I am hoping as we practice these skills, and I've seen it myself, we build up our tolerance for uncertainty. You know, like if you think of a thermometer, right, there's a certain amount of heat that you feel in any situation. But as you build up your uncertainty ability, you actually get the capacity to tolerate a little higher heat. And what that means is that, you know, we have this old saying, no risk, no reward.

Starting point is 00:43:30 That's really the essence of the idea, right? And so how do we tolerate the risk so we can get the reward? You'll get more rewards. But the other way I think about it, if I wish people could take away one thing, we call it transillions, which is an idea from an old word from my field of technology strategy, which is about this moment of phase shift. So think about the moment that water becomes steam or an iron ingot melts and becomes molten. It's this phase shift moment. And to acknowledge that as overwhelming as uncertainty can feel, that it is possible to be transient, which is to take that thing and to transform it and say, well, what's the possibility that could happen here?

Starting point is 00:44:15 And I think everybody's had that experience where you're like going down a dark pathway and things aren't going well. And you flip it in your mind, or you do something and it like changes in an instant. And so I guess I would say, I hope people walk away from this saying, instead of uncertainty, how do I avoid it? It's so terrible. This is awful to say, okay, this is what is, and how can I, how can this make me stronger? How can this make me better? And that's the transillient moment. That question leads to the, and I think that transillience is what's beyond resilience. Resilience is like, you can take a punch and stay standing.

Starting point is 00:44:53 I want you to take that punch and like be stronger. Well, there are also, I don't know, maybe it's just me, but I have to fight back on this feeling that if I make a wrong decision, it's forever. And so often it's not. If you do make the wrong decision, if you do something goes wrong, you can probably fix that. It may be more difficult, but nothing's forever. That's a common, by the way, a common psychological bias we have

Starting point is 00:45:24 where we think the next decision will determine everything. But one way to unpick that for yourself is to look back at your life. And I'd say in the last week or the last year, how many decisions did you make? How many of those were really completely irreversible? And even sometimes when something goes different than you expected. I told you about, I applied to jobs something goes different than you expected, you know, I told you about, I applied to jobs. I got turned down from all of them. That was one of the greatest learning moments of my life and led to the next success.

Starting point is 00:45:53 And I guess I would say my view is that life is a highway with many, many on-ramps and that it is a myth to think there's only one on-ramp. And I can't tell you how many people I talk to. Well, if you dig down deep and you find a failure, that is often their moment of transformation as well. And this is even at a wide scope. So Randy Comisar, one of the legends of Silicon Valley, when he says, what makes Silicon Valley different from the rest of the world? It's not smarter people. It's not more money. It's not all that. He says the attitude towards failure. He said, look back at some of our

Starting point is 00:46:35 greatest successes. They're almost always rooted in failure if you dig deep enough. And so what's failure? What's success? What's the optimum? Life is a freeway with many, many on ramps. Well, I think for anybody, and probably that's everybody, who has feared the future or felt a little uneasy about what's around the corner, this has been really helpful. I've been speaking with Professor Nathan Furr, and the name of his book is The Upside of Uncertainty. And if you'd like to read it, there's a link to it at Amazon in the show notes. Thank you, Nathan. Yeah, yeah, it's a fun topic. So cool. Thank you. Do you know the difference between a road, a street, an avenue, and a boulevard? Well, the rules aren't hard and fast, but generally, a road describes any

Starting point is 00:47:28 throughway that connects two points. Streets, on the other hand, are public roads that have buildings on both sides. So while a street is a road, not all roads are streets. Now, often streets run perpendicular to avenues. Avenues have trees or buildings on both sides as well. And although they run perpendicular, which way they run depends on the city. For example, in Denver, streets run north-south. Avenues run east-west. In New York and Manhattan, it's just the opposite. Avenues run north-south. Streets run east-west. In New York and Manhattan, it's just the opposite. Avenues run north-south,

Starting point is 00:48:14 streets run east-west. A boulevard is a wide street with trees on both sides and a median in the center. Smaller roads, such as ways, lanes, and drives, tend to split off from a major road. And both places and courts are roads with dead ends. Courts usually end in a cul-de-sac. And that is something you should know. If you'd like to support this podcast, we don't ask you for money. All we ask you to do is help us get new listeners by telling someone you know to give it a listen. I'm Mike Carruthers. Thanks for listening today to Something You Should Know. for hilarious shows every week designed to entertain and engage and, you know, possibly enrage you. And don't blame me. We dive deep into listeners' questions, offering advice that's funny, relatable, and real. Whether you're dealing with relationship drama or you just need a friend's

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Something You Should Know - Why You Are SO Not the Person You Used to Be & How to Face the Unknown

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