Ten Percent Happier with Dan Harris - 19: Emma Seppala

Episode Date: June 5, 2016

Success and happiness: Can you have one without the other? Many may assume that these two things are at cross purposes but Emma Seppala, the science director of Stanford University's Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education, argues that that assumption is actually dead wrong. The Ph.D. holder and author of "The Happiness Track" sat down with Dan Harris to tackle this subject -- a central theme in Dan's own book, "10% Happier." See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

It kind of blows my mind to consider the fact that we're up to nearly 600 episodes of this podcast, the 10% happier podcast. That's a lot of conversations. I like to think of it as a great compendium of, and I know this is a bit of a grandiose term, but wisdom. The only downside of having this vast library of audio is that it can be hard to know where to start. So we're launching a new feature here, playlists, just like you put together a playlist of your favorite songs.

Back in the day, we used to call those mix tapes. Just like you do that with music, you can do it with podcasts. So if you're looking for episodes about anxiety, we've got a playlist of all of our anxiety episodes. Or if you're looking for how to sleep better, we've got a playlist of all of our anxiety episodes, or if you're looking for how to sleep better, we've got a playlist for that. We've even put together a playlist of some of my personal favorite episodes. That was a hard list to make. Check out our playlists at 10%.com slash playlist. That's 10% all one word spelled out..com slash playlist singular.

Let us know what you think. We're always open to tweaking how we do things and maybe there's a playlist we haven't thought of. Hit me up on Twitter or submit a comment through the website. From ABC, this is the 10% happier podcast. I'm Dan Harris. Today we're tackling a subject that has been a been one of my primary preoccupations for a long, long time.

I write about it at length in my book. It's been one of the central themes. So the question is, how do you balance the drive for success with happiness? In other words, can you be a really ambitious person as I am? And I assume many of the listeners of this podcast are while also being not crazy and having some degree of peace in mind are these two things, I think a lot of us assume

that these two things are across purposes, but my guest today argues that that assumption, whether it's conscious or subconscious, is actually dead wrong, that in fact, happiness and success are mutually supportive. And in fact, I think she would probably go so far as to say you can't have success or real success without some degree of happiness.

But I'll let her speak for herself. Her name is Emma Cepala. Am I pronouncing that right? That's correct. Full title is Emma Cepala PhD. And she's the science director of Stanford University's Center for Compassion and Alarism Research and Education. By the way, if you may recall, one of our recent guests was Thutton Jimpa, who also works for that center at a Stanford.

And she's the author of an intriguing new-ish book called The Happiness Track, which I just listened to and is really, really good. And the central thesis, and I don't want to, I don't, I hope I'm not mistating this, is what I said before that, that you, that you need happiness in order to succeed. It's not that the two are across purposes. That's correct. First of all, thank you for inviting me today. Absolutely. Pleasure. We just met. We've been in touch on the phone and on email for months, but it's really nice to meet you in person. You too. And you're absolutely right. The book is about this misconception that we have that in order to be successful, we need to postpone or sacrifice our happiness somehow. The two don't go together.

And there's a story that I share about this, about a Stanford student who came up to the co-leader of the psychologist, psychologist's class that we have at Stanford. I said, I have to drop out of the class and my friend, my colleague said, well, why? And the student said, because it goes against everything I've ever learned. And then when she said, what do you mean? The student said, well, my parents told me that in order to be successful, I have to work very hard. And when I asked, how do I know if I'm working hard enough, they said when you're suffering.

And so there's this misconception and you see it and I saw it so much in Silicon Valley, just looking around. There's so much exciting stuff happening and yet people are burning themselves into the ground. Whether it's at Stanford or at Yale, the students I was working with. On the one hand, they were brilliant doing amazing things. On the other hand, there was pain there. It's a pain point. And I just spoke at Google the other day and really saw, you know, remembered why I wrote this book in the first place because you're these incredible people doing amazing things. And yet, there's this pain that you can see from the burnout.

And across industries, we see 50% burnout. It doesn't matter what industry you're working for, that's the average. And we're also seeing that 70% of the US workforce is disengaged. industries we see 50% burnout, doesn't matter what industry you're working for, that's the average. And we're also seeing that 70% of the US workforce is disengaged. So that goes to show that there's a crisis going on and what we're doing is not working. So here's the question I always ask at the beginning, which is how did you come to meditation? Well, the first time was in college and I was at Yale and it was a pretty stressful place and I was really shy and I had a crush on this guy that I didn't know very well but I

someone told me he goes to meditation so I thought okay I'll give it a shot so I went to a this meditation class which was very austere it was one hour stare at the floor it was a Korean Zen yeah very intense for an 18-year-old. That's, you know, and I came out of there thinking, I'm never going to do this again. And the next day I felt amazing. And so that was the beginning of my, I never ended up dating that guy,

but I ended up a long love affair with meditation. What, let me just stop here for a second. Why do you think you felt amazing the next day? Well, I'll tell you, this is quite personal story, but I struggled with an eating disorder at the time. And what I would do often is I would binge and then I would cry. And that next day I came back to my room feeling, you know, not so good. And in that mood to binge and there was a pizza sitting there. And all of a sudden this light bulb came up in my head and said, why don't you

cry first? And then you can binge as much as you want. And so I did that. I want to just done crying. I didn't want to binge. So it was very enlightening for a 18-year-old kid really to see, wow, I sat for an hour yesterday. And now today, that was, I would say that was the end

of my eating disorder. Wow. I can really, and honestly say that that was the end. Now, I'm not advocating that this can help anyone with addiction overnight the way it did me, but it gave me that sense of that, well, there's a way to attain a freedom from my own impulses and more clarity and awareness of my emotions and what's going on. Yep. You know, people ask me all the time, you know, because I often tell my story on a

truncated form, people ask me, so you use meditation and stop doing drugs. And the answer is no, I didn't. I think that meditation is, and it's right there in AA, they recommend prayer and meditation. I think meditation is extremely useful, but it should be one of many things when you're fighting addiction. I think it should be just one of many things when you're striving to be a happier person. It's not a panacea. Anyway, that was my long interruption of your otherwise extremely compelling story. So keep going, what happened next? So what happened next was I went to China for two years after college

and did also do random things, but while I was there, I also still continued to be the anxious teenager that I had been before. And I got to rent an apartment with this elderly Chinese gentleman who was by far the happiest person I had ever met in my life. And he had been through the culture revolution as a professor he'd been sent to the fields where there was starvation. He'd lost his wife in the process. He had had a hard life.

There was no doubt. And yet he was in bliss. Like I would just, just being around him, you was no doubt. And yet he was in bliss. Like I would just just being around him, you felt uplifted. And he would look at me and I'd have these stressed stomach aches and he would tell me, hey, you know, just go sit on those sofa, look at the bamboo breath. You know, it was a very informal way of telling me to meditate, but I could see this piece inside of him. And I thought, wow, like that's something I want more of. So he wasn't telling me to sit and load us or do anything formal, but there was that meditation was in the air in the elderly

Chinese people that I'd met who'd been through a lot of traumatic situations, but somehow I'd come through with this very light spirit despite it all. And so when I came back, I did a masters in East Asian studies at Columbia with Uma Thurman's dad, Buddha Bob. Bob Thurman, yes, I want him on the podcast. He's phenomenally entertaining and insightful and amazing. You know, I took his intro to Buddhism class and I felt like I'm a convert. That's it, this is it, and he just flipped my way

of seeing everything. And yet, as I was preparing to even go and maybe do a PhD in religion with him, one day one of the students in the class said something to him, said, Bob, you know, you talk about compassion, but sometimes you can be a little stern with people or you talk about no ego, but do you live that? And Bob was incredible in his reply. He said, you know what? I don't have time to practice. And that changed my life, because I realized I'm not going to go and do a PhD in religion. I'm not going to argue

about Tibetan translations of this or that text. This is not about this is not an intellectual exercise. I have to practice and that's when I went all over New York to every meditation teacher I could find yogic tradition, Hindu tradition, Buddhist tradition, Tibetan tradition, whatever you name it and tried to find what worked for me and that was the beginning of my realization that this is something I have to experience and live, not just something that is gonna be an intellectual exercise. So between the moment with a pizza and the crying

and the moment where Budabab admitted that he didn't have time to practice, were you practicing or was it for that whole period of time an intellectual pursuit? It was, I had never had an instructor, really. So I was very informal in China. I tried to practice, but I never had any, so it was here and there, and it was yoga. And I'd been doing a lot of yoga in New York, but I realized that yoga is great,

but it only takes you so far in terms of that piece that I was looking for, that insight that I was looking for. So you went around, you did a little taste test at the contemplative cafeteria here in New York City, and where did you land? Well, one place where I learned to practice it really helped me was through the art of living workshop. It was started by an Indian guru called Tree Tree Ravi Shankar. And so here I was in this workshop, and I was thinking, gosh, I really want, you know,

to learn from a Tibetan master. I'd been told the Tibetan masters. I was persuaded. That was the way to go. And here's I did the, the, that more Hindu, more yoga based, breathing practice, meditation practice. And I realized it really worked for me. So I always tell people to, you know, find the shoe that fits because I had struggled with mindfulness.

I found it really hard. I found it very, for me, it raised a lot of anxiety. And maybe because I already had an anxious temperament, it really hard, I found it very, for me it raised a lot of anxiety. And maybe because I already had an anxious temperament, it really helped to take a different approach that worked better for me, the breathing. So what is, can you just describe for me the most basic terms, what is that practice, the Stratury, the Ribeshankar? Yeah, the practice that's taught through his workshop, it's also called the Happiness, I think it's called the Happiness Program Program through the Art of Living Foundation.

They teach a combination of pranayama, which are basic yoga breathing exercises, with something called Sudarshan Kriya, which is a Sanskrit term, which is like rhythmic breathing for a certain period of time, and then you get a home practice, it's about 20 minutes. And when I did that, I finally felt like I can really meditate now. What do you do with the 20 minutes?

Just do different breathing exercises. Like what? Breathing and different rhythms is hard for me to explain. So first with pranayama, I mean pranayama, you might have done in yoga class. I've taken a few yoga classes. Yeah, so one example is of a pranayama, you might do in yoga class is called ujibreth, which is, in fact, I can do it right here into the microphone so people can hear it.

It goes like this. Kind of like that. So you'll notice if you take a yoga class, they might ask you to breathe like that. Yes, on the movement you do it. You kind of can time it to the movement. Yeah, so that's one of the exercises and then there's a bunch of different ones that you do in a row. And then the Solution Korea is breathing in different rhythms. So, you know, like a faster rhythm and a medium rhythm. And all got, it's guided when

you do it. And it's about your practice now is 20 minutes a day of that. Well, I do that, but I meditate twice a day as well. But what I was saying was that I only was able to meditate after being able to calm myself with that practice. So it's kind of an intro to, for me, it was a way to settle everything so that I could actually meditate. So when you say I meditate too, what do you mean by that? I have a mantra meditation that I do twice a day

for 20 minutes. And is that also a Hindu meditation? Yeah, it's not TM, but it's also through free free rubbish on cars, teachings. So you're doing two 20 minute mantra based meditations a day and then also... 20 minutes. And then also doing the 20 minute breathing. So that's 60 minutes a day.

I try to do 12 sense hallitations a day too. That's about all I can fit in with a baby. Well, we both have one year olds. Yeah, exactly the same age in fact. December 9th. Oh, wow. I know. So it's like have one year olds. Yeah, exactly the same age and fact. December 9th. Oh, wow. I don't know. It's like a six day difference.

I know. I think my son is six days younger than you. What's your son's name? Michael Andrew. Michael Andrew, my, his, Alexander, is, because Alexander is like a terrible person and just, I mean, he's a, I'm kidding, but he's like really testing his parents and, and look, his latest

move is this. He'll walk out in the morning and put his hand on the electrical sockets and look around for people to freak out. And then if you don't freak out enough for him to be pleased, he will put his mouth on the electric sockets. And I look at this and I say, that's me. Like, that is the type of person I am. I like to piss people off, and my son is a car mctorpedo headed at my cabbasa.

Anyway, I digress again, but I wonder, when you have a one year old at home, how do you carve out 60 minutes a day by my math of meditation breathing, and then 12 sudden salutations on top of it all? Well, I'm lucky. I first think in the morning my husband takes, baby, so I have that, you know, 45 minutes of time

to quickly do what I need to do before I take over. The next 20 minutes, I'll sometimes have to do right before sleep or I'll do it in the evening when my husband comes home. I've noticed that if when I do it, I'm just a better mom, a better person. I'm a happier person. I'm a calmer person. I mean, you know how it is when you meditate. One of your pieces of advice

for being a happier parent is actually to be selfish. And that sounds a little bit like what you were just saying. Yeah. I think, you know, the impulse is to just take care of this little being. That's our priority in life we have to. And yet, if it comes so so much that it's the cost to yourself, it actually removes from your ability to take care of them to the best of your ability. So that's why it's important, for example, to carve out that time to meditate so that I can be there for him. And this morning even, I was meditating and I was feeling so much longing and yearning to hold him. And it just made me all that much more loving when I actually went to the kitchen and finally got to hold him, but I also...

I do let you hold him, mine swarms away or smacks me. He's my biggest fan right now, which is great for myself esteem. Oh, that's true. But I've been traveling a lot for the book and I think that makes him even more wanting to have me around. So we are really close right now. I'm just going to enjoy it while it lasts because I don't know how long it will last. So how would that translate to other parents? What would be with a move in terms of being wisely selfish? Yeah. I would just say what it takes to do whatever it is that helps you be your best person,

that helps you feel good and be happy. Because whether that's, you know, going to play basketball with your friends or whether that's taking some time out to take a bubble bath or whatever it is, go to the movies or get your nails done. I mean, whatever rocks your boat and that puts you into a frame of mind in a state of mind where you can be your best self, do that. You know, we all have five minutes here or there. How are you using the five minutes before bed?

Let's say you put your baby in bed and then you have a little bit of time. What are you choosing to do? Are you choosing to be on Facebook? Is that nurturing you? The choices that you're making are they fundamentally nurturing you? Are you watching the news right before bed?

And is that putting a lot of bad luck? Not have you speak ill of the news in this podcast. But whatever it is that you do, just look in to yourself. You are making choices every day for how to use your time. Is it nurturing you and putting you into a state of mind that makes you feel optimal, that makes you feel like you're at your best self? That's what I would say.

Very good advice. Is your baby sleeping? Because the last time I spoke to you, your kid was not sleeping at all. He's sleeping more. No, I'm really grateful. But not sleeping through the night. No, he's sleeping through the night now. Not sleeping as much as people say they're supposed to sleep, but I'm just grateful for what we've got. So we're happy. Because that can literally drive you crazy.

It has. Thank you. You don't seem crazy right now. No, because I've been sleeping the last couple months primarily because I've also been sleeping in a separate room and my husband's on duty, so that if you wait. He's in the middle. Oh, your husband's on duty overnight. Yeah, he's no longer in the military, but he's on duty overnight with the baby. Okay, that's correct. Yeah. All right, so let's talk about the book, the Happiness Track. So let me ask you a sort of foundational question. How do you define success?

For success, I think is defining a personal way. So if you're a ballet dancer, then, you know, maybe your income is not how you define your success, but your level of performance. And if you're someone in the financial world, then maybe you'll be through your income. So success is defined by a very personal metric. If you're a stay at home mom, it's that you're able to be your best self for your kids every day.

So that's how I would define it. Just curious as an aside, how would you define it for you? For myself. I hope to be successful by contributing to others and in the greatest way possible I can in this lifetime. That's my goal. It sounds like the Buddhism did a rub off on you.

I remember when Buddha Bob talked about Bodhisattvas and introduced that concept and what that concept means is that some people who are born with a unique intention to help other people. I remember when he taught that class, I think I cried and I just thought that's what I want. So. When you cried, were you thinking,

oh, that's describing my internal inclination, or were you crying thinking I would love to have that aspiration? No, I was crying thinking that's so beautiful and that's what I want. That's what I want to do. That's what I want to be. That's what I want to be. Because I find the bodhisattva ideal to be awesome,

I guess the idea that you are here to serve other people, but I don't feel that way. I don't feel that way to the extent that I would like. Do you struggle with that? Or do you seem to be your little bit more? I don't think it matters. Honestly, because you're already contributing, like what you're doing right now, what you've been doing and you're writing, everything that you're doing is uplifting

other people. So it doesn't matter whether you feel like you're doing it or not because you're doing it. Yeah, I guess that's just that I see the self-interest in so much of what I do that I'm not sure that I keep pushing you off of your conversational target. But here we go. I feel like the outcome of what I do is good for other people, but I just don't know that my internal compass is set at altruism all the time. I think that's okay. And also there's a certain thing that we are who we are

and the way we are is a gift. And so sometimes we don't need to fight against, for example, self-interest. There's nothing wrong with being self-interest. That's also a very protective mechanism so that you can be your best, right? If we are constantly working against your self-interest, maybe you wouldn't be able to make as much impact.

And so, you know, sometimes the way you've been designed is just perfect. You know, the other thing I started to take comfort in, one of the things I like about Buddhism and not to be sectarian, I mean, I don't think close listeners will know that my view on Buddhism is not that it's a religion, but that it's something to do. Say, training, a series of, like, sort of mental exercises for the brain in the mind. And if you want to be gooey about it, you could also say the heart. I think that you can, over time, train yourself to boost your inclination toward altruism.

And generosity, compassion, all those things. I think that's what's sort of incredibly exciting about Buddhism. That's absolutely what the research suggests, too. Right, I mean, that's been one of your areas of focus. Yeah, absolutely. So people have done compassion training. And we did a seven minute loving kindness meditation intervention at Stanford

and found that in seven minutes people were able to feel closer to strangers. And it wasn't just us asking them, hey, do you feel closer to strangers? We used computerized tasks, so we were measuring their automatic responses, so they couldn't control them. It was sort of their subconscious kind of inclination. We could tweak how close they felt to others in just seven minutes of loving kindness. And then there's much longer research studies seven eight weeks of compassion training And you see that people get up for someone who's on crutches and are more likely to get up and offer them their seat

So it's very powerful that these trainings can do and when you say loving kindness or compassion intervention or training You're just you're talking about a kind of meditation where you sort of systematically sent good vibes to people internally and that over time can actually change your external behavior. Absolutely, right? Yeah. It's pretty cool. I mean, I've been open about this. I mean, my, it's pretty, it's a little gooey and a syrupy and saccharine at first, especially for somebody like me. But the science, and there's a lot more, and obviously you have a much firmer handle on this than I do, but there's a lot more on top of what you just described that really does suggest it's good for you, your own personal health, but also can change your behavior in the world.

So, I'm fully on board, and I often, I believe that, and I think this may be something that we see more of in the future. I wish there was as much hype around compassion or whatever you want to call it. I call it just not being a jerk. I wish there was as much hype around not being a jerk as there is around this whole mindfulness thing. I do too. In fact, Dr. Doty's the director of our center and I are writing an op-ed on this exact topic. But the loving kindness, meditations, and compassion meditations are really powerful. In fact, when I ran with the study with these Stanford students, we'd have countless students walking in, you know, their obligatory psychology credit that they had to get was through these studies that we ran.

And remember one guy just sitting in there doing the loving kindness meditation, which involves and Sharon Salzburg, I know has just recently been on the show and so she may have described it, she collaborated with us. The first part of the meditation involves feeling love coming to you from people that love you. So you imagine people that love you around you and you feel filled with that love and then you generate it outward to others. And so we're in this room watching the participant in the other room

through a one-way mirror just to make sure everything's going according to plan because sometimes they'll bring in a hamburger and just start eating it and then you just you're just like okay experiment over. That would be me and Kale. That's to do this experiment but anyway carry on. And this guy was all of a sudden and I could hear them too and all of a sudden this guy in the other room's got his earphones on he he's meditating, and he goes, oh yeah. I just love that, you know.

So these meditations are also very nurturing. They can be very, very fulfilling. More so than spending an hour on social media, comparing your lifestyle to others. Yeah. So I keep doing this, too. But let's get back to the questions that I had and written down here on my little handy dandy cheat sheet about your book, The Happiness

Track. So I asked you to define success. The other thing I wanted to get you to define is happiness. Happiness. What is happiness? That's an excellent question. And again, I think a very personal one, but if we all know when we feel at our best, and it's a very intangible thing, but scientists have tried to hack at it and see what is it that it is. So happiness in scientific terms has been divided into two types. One is hedonic happiness, which is basically the pleasure of the senses of sex drugs, rock and roll, food, money, material, things, a new car, like all those things that people get excited about. But when you look at the brain, the happiness,

that level of excitement comes in a short burst that then dissipates very quickly, which is why you'll have a piece of chocolate cake and then you'll want another piece. Yes, all right, I already talked to you about my time with cocaine. It's very similar. Exactly. Yes, all right, I already talked to you about my time with cocaine. It's a very similar... Exactly, right, exactly right. So that's the hedonic happiness in which is great.

It's the fun in our lives. And then there's another form of happiness that is called udemonic happiness. And these are Aristotelian terms, by the way. But then the udemonic happiness is that happiness derived from a sense of purpose, of service, something greater than yourself. For some people, that takes the form

of spirituality, religion, anything that brings you beyond the self, and that may involve relationships. So we also see if we look at research on happiness, the greatest predictor of happiness, is positive social relationships with other people, and altruism. So when you look at the inflammation levels and people's bodies, depending on what type of happiness they prioritize in their life,

people with hejonic happiness only who prioritize that, who are more focused on the pleasurable aspects of life, actually have as high inflammation levels as people in very high stress situations. And on the contrary, we see that people with who value eutomonic happiness above other things, who have a life characterized by greater sense of purpose, of service, meaning, they actually have very low levels of inflammation. Now, that could also come from the fact that, you know, living a high pleasure lifestyle, maybe with lots of alcohol and other things, can increase inflammation,

but even when controlling for those things, we see that somehow those two types of happiness are very different impact on our health, but also on our longevity. So individuals who live a life characterized by compassion, for example, end up actually being buffered from the negative impact of stressful situations and living longer. So that's really interesting research that's been repeatedly shown. There it is, the self-interested case for not being at your right there. Exactly. You can be self-interested and compassionate at the same time. In fact, I would say, I would argue, and this is for personal experience,

and from the research that altruism and compassion are some of the greatest secrets to happiness, and the best kept secrets to happiness because I don't think everybody really understands it profoundly, and so it is in a sense both self-interested and another interested. But there's one interesting study that shows that if you do altruistic acts with a selfish intent, you don't actually reap the benefits psychologically and health wise. So that's interesting. If you donate in order to get your name on a plaque, it may not benefit you as much.

Interesting. Yeah, really interesting. So what about compassion, generosity? I use compassion as a blanket term for not being a jerk in lots of ways, you know generosity empathy compassion Being taking joy in other people's achievements etc etc as a as a whole bucket of kind of good stuff is all of that a hindrance in a competitive world, especially in the professionals fear.

Well, research suggests no. Assuming you don't let yourself be take an advantage of or be a doormat, if you are a kinder person, if you're a very collegial person, someone who goes out of their way to help other people, you will actually generate much greater loyalty, people will like you more. They will be more willing to help you. If you're a leader, like I said, have more loyalty, less turnover, but if you're a colleague to people are much more likely to help you in the future. So one of the examples

I give is, you know, some of us have been, had the good fortune of having a mentor at some point in our life who has gone out of their way to help us with no interest to them. And if you, maybe you can call someone like that to mind. Yeah. So if you think back to that person, if they called you today and said, hey, I have a favor to ask you, wouldn't you just drop everything to help them? Yeah.

Yeah, that's how it is. So that's what it is. So when you're the kind of person who is there for other people who's compassionate, who's empathic, who's helpful, you're actually going to do better than that person who elbows everyone out of the way. And you know, thinks only about themselves. And if you, you know, Adam grants me a great case for this in his book Give and Take, which is one of my favorite books of all time.

And again, this does assume that you have the skill not to let yourself be taken advantage of, you know, I'm not saying that, but, yeah, kindness is really the way to go. All right. In fact, I mean, there's an example. If you want me to give a longer example about that. Yes, yes, the like, the floor is yours. Well, I write about this in my book, The Happiness Track. I interviewed an investment banker.

I think he was a managing director. And when he got there, he was really surprised because everyone else at his level, they wouldn't even say hello to him in the hall. It was such a doggy dog, such a crushing atmosphere people were trying to steal each other's clients, take credit for each other's work. It was, that was the atmosphere that was encouraged. And it was, it was terrible. I remember when he first took the job and he was like, I can't believe this place.

But he's not that kind of guy. He's from the Midwest and he's very, he's just a really friendly person who doesn't, he doesn't treat people badly. And he look around and see his colleagues really abusing the younger staff, the associates and so forth of the vice presidents that were working for them.

They'd make them come in on Sunday night and work all the way through Monday morning for something that wasn't even due Monday morning, and then make them stay through that day as well. So he just thought that was really wrong. And so he knew that he couldn't do anything about the atmosphere there but he could definitely decide how he was going to treat the people working for him. So that's what he did. And he ended up treating them really well and in fact bringing them into client meetings, helping them do stuff they would never do otherwise, giving them responsibility to present to the clients because that's just the way he was, that's the way he is. And soon he started winning some of the biggest deals

that that firm had had. His colleagues started coming to him and saying, what are you doing? And also, the other thing is that all the younger staff, they could bid on who they would work with. So usually they would just bid on the person who is most likely to be the biggest winner because they were gonna be treated badly

no matter who they went to. Now everybody wanted to work with him. And so the other MDs would come up to him and see what he's doing. But you said at the beginning that when he got there, the other people at his level, I was not managing directors, MDs, wouldn't talk to each other because they were too busy like stealing each other's clients and taking credit for each other's work. What did he do when others did that to him? Did he not retaliate? No, he didn't retaliate. I think he just didn't, there's nothing he could do. No one was even't retaliate. But I think he just didn't, there was nothing he could do,

no one was even talking to him. But what he could do is he created his own culture with the people that work for him. And he ended up being more successful than anyone in that firm, which is really interesting. But the proposition of sort of a compassionate stance, a giving stance in the professional sphere

is not that you should allow somebody if one of his fellow MDs had trespassed against him in some way, what's the move if you're trying not to be a jerk in that position? How do you not be a doormat? What do you do? Well, that's also where self compassion and self respect comes into play.

So being compassionate in no way means that you don't have that same amount of respect and compassion for yourself. So I would say if that kind of thing happens, you have to do something about it. There's no doubt about it. But that didn't happen to him. Hey there listeners. While we take a little break here, I want to tell you about another podcast that I think

you'll like. It's called How I Built This, where host Guy Razz talks to founders behind some of the world's biggest and most innovative companies, to learn how they built them from the ground up. Guy has sat down with hundreds of founders behind well-known companies like Headspace, Manduka Yoga Mats, Soul Cycle, and Kodopaxi,

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how I built this, wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen early and add free on the Amazon or Wondery app. Let's get back to your book. One of the things I think is interesting is you sort of lay out the myths of success, the things that we believe that we need in order to be successful that are actually wrong. Could you talk about some of these? Well, one of the misconceptions that we have is that we can have success without stress. So we'll see, and this is what we see all around us. People are overcaffeinating, waiting

till the last minute to get things done, over-scheduling themselves, and there's this sense that the only way that I can be productive is if I fuel my life with this hard core adrenaline. And I think that's one of the reasons that we're seeing a high level of burnout, because what we're actually doing is we're burning through our energy really, really fast. And that's why when you come home at the end of the day, people are completely exhaustive and wiped out from sitting at their desk all day. It doesn't make any sense. And yet, it doesn't make sense because if you're constantly tapped into your fight or flight response into that adrenaline-filled stress, high stress response, then you actually are taxing so many different parts of your body.

You're taxing your immune system. You're taxing your attention of memory. You're taxing your entire body is mobilized to fight, but it can't do that on a chronic permanent basis. And that's why we're seeing so much exhaustion, but also stress-related diseases that are really cropping up. And again, stress is great to get you through a deadline and so forth in a short term.

So you're not saying no stress, so that was both to jump in and say, I need some stress. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it's fantastic to get you over the, you know saying no stress, that was both the jump in and say, I need some stress. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it's fantastic to get you over the, you know, the street, if there's a car coming at you, it's great to motivate you to get through that deadline. Again, if you have surgery,

the stress response is what helps you heal faster. So that it's really good in those cases. But if you activate it chronically and all the time, you're wearing yourself out. And that's really something that I, I really hope people can understand, because in particular, let's take caffeine, for example. I mean, caffeine is a favorite of most people,

but if we are constantly, I can't have it, by the way. Okay. It makes me panicky. Yeah, well, if we have caffeine, like let's say you're really tired and you have caffeine so you can keep going, what are you doing?

You're not really, you're maybe it'll help you keep going, but you're just taxing a nervous system that needs to rest, and you're ignoring that rest, that you're need for rest, and you do that every day over and over and over and over, you're really wearing out your system,

you're wearing out your body, but we have a very natural ability ability also to relax at night, but a lot of people come home at night, and then they need to take a Z-Nax, or they need to take an ambient, because they can't sleep, because they're hyped, because they're working on fight or flight, adrenaline, you know, high stress, high caffeine mode all day.

So when what we're doing to our body, I mean, one analogy that I heard once that I think is fantastic, it's like taking a frozen pizza, sticking it in the microwave, then put it back in the freezer and then put it back in the microwave. That's what we're doing with our system when we're having, you know, for example, caffeine all day and then have alcohol at night

just so you can be able to rest and relax and back and forth and back and forth. You know, again, nothing wrong with any of these things in small doses, but if we're using them to totally hijack our system one way or the other, what are we doing? What are we doing to ourselves? But if you look in nature, or if you look at your child, like, we have a very natural energetic response, we have a natural way to have energy and then to a natural response

to rest and relax at night. So the classic example you hear about all the time is like the antelope running in the savanna and being chased by whatever a tiger lion. So in that moment, she feels stressed. And there's a professor at Stanford who wrote, Robert Sapolsky, he wrote, why is he a bris don't get ulcers? He's fantastic.

He has, I heard him say once, you're only supposed to feel stressed five minutes of your life right before you die. The idea of being that if you're this antelope in the savanna and you're being chased, you have this high stress response, you can get away from your predator as fast as you can, then more of the things that happen. Either you die at the hands of your predator

or you get away from your predator and then you relax completely. And they don't then go on keep stressing and worrying about is the, you know, and so forth. And the reason that they relax completely so their body can restore ourselves themselves. So, you know, I've been talking for a long time to make this point that we need to find, tap back into our own ability to restore ourselves so that we are then naturally energetic to keep going.

But let me play devil's advocate. I am not an antelope in any way, and Norma Azibra, and I was raised by a father who cleathed the motto, the price of security is insecurity to me. And I still believe, I'm a dyed in the wool meditator and practicing Buddhist, and I still believe in what I call constructive anguish. My wife and I have long conversations, not infrequently about what is the future

arc of each other's career. There's a certain amount of creativity and pleasure in those conversations, but the certain amount of worry that comes with that kind of strategizing. I feel, and I could be wrong, and I would be happy to be corrected on this, that that falls into what I said before. Constructive anguish, that it makes sense. You need some stress and some worry and some anxiety in order to be on the game. Just not too much. Absolutely. And as an emotional researcher, I would completely agree. I mean, all the different emotions that we have help motivate us.

So if you have that, you know, certain anguish or anxiety that comes up around planning a career, for example, that helps motivate you to have these conversations that might lead you to have a greater insight. Even negative emotions like anger can motivate us to do something about a situation to correct it, for example. So all of the emotions have their purpose, and I think you're absolutely right. Wish all of my podcast guests would say you're absolutely right all the time. Let's keep going with these myths of success. What are the other myths of success that you think we buy into?

Well, another myth of success is how to be our most innovative creative self. So, especially these days, everyone's always trying to think about what's the best way to disrupt my industry, to have these breakthrough solutions to existing problems blah, blah, blah. And if you look at CEOs across the board and across industries and internationally when they're asked, what is the number one thing you look for in an incoming employee, they say creativity above everything else. And so, but a lot of people go about trying to be creative by learning absolutely everything

there is to know about their field. Reading every latest book, every blog, keeping updated, really focused on their field because that's going to help them come up with solutions because there's such experts. And yet, if you look at when we are our most creative in terms of when our brain is most capable of coming up with insights, it's actually when we're being idle,

when we're not doing anything. For example, it's the proverbial idea in the shower, it comes to you in the shower, or when you just lie down to go to sleep and all of a sudden you have an aha moment right in that dosy place before sleep, but it's when our brain is in delta mode. And-

I don't even know what that means, but I like the sound. Yeah, it's the delta way, it's when when our friends and that basically that day dreamy space. Also a great band name potentially. Yes. And but if you think about it these days, we could go an entire day without day dreaming. In the past, maybe you'd stand and wait for the bus and you'd have nothing to do but space out. Let your mind wander or you'd be sitting, be sitting standing in line at the grocery store and

doing the same thing. But these days- Now you're on your phone. Yeah, we're on their phone. Actually, it can be sometimes from the moment you wake up. I think 35% or more people have their phone right next to their bed. So first thing, as you wake up, it's what you look at. You could go an entire day without ever accessing that space that you used to go to a lot as a child. So children are some of the most creative individuals in our society because they spend a lot of time

in that place, they create castles in the sky, they turn a bunch of cushions into a fort. They are in a place of inventive genius, actually. You think my son's in Delta mode when he puts his mouth on the lid? I don't know what he's imagining that is, but it could be the pain of his parents. Yeah and I mean the other thing that we get other insights from this is also I've interviewed some really creative individuals for the chapter that I

wrote on creativity and happiness track and another thing that comes up a lot is diversification. So these are people who read completely outside their field or do things that are completely different from what they would usually do. And that helps them to actually see the forest rather than being stuck in the trees. It helps them build patterns. I'm actually writing an article right now for Harvard Business Review and interviewing some, again, incredibly creative leaders. And they are telling me the same thing that they go and they get involved and learn

about things that are completely different from what they're doing, the problem they're working on and they find the solutions elsewhere. And we're seeing that again and again even in the research, there's a platform called Inocentive that asks, so big companies like NASA will put a problem down. They'll be like, we want to build an engine that does this and this, with this kind of fuel. And a study that was conducted on that platform saw that the people who are most likely to come up with solutions to the problems are not people that are directly in that field. Let's say it's a biochemistry problem, the person who's more likely to come up with

insight into that problem is someone who's in mechanical engineering or something outside of that field. So it's really interesting. And it's partially why open sourcing, I would imagine, has been so successful in so many areas. Absolutely. And the third thing, and I just want to add that because I want to add it because it ties into what you're sharing about meditation is the third thing that these people have been sharing with me is making time for silence in their lives.

So the two people I interviewed for that chapter in particular, one of them is Myron Shoals, who's a Nobel Prize winner in economics, a long-time meditator. The other person is Pico Iar, who's an award-winning writer and with the New York Times and Time Magazine. Myron meditates and Pico takes retreats,

silent retreats, and he says, I'm a current events journalist and I take time completely away from everything. He also says when I come back, really nothing much has changed. But he has a lot greater insight and his TED talk, his writings are very profound and they come from a different place

because he says, I've taken a break from the time square of my head. So let me just get back to some of you said at the beginning. So the myth we're talking about here is the idea that we think we need to be on all the time in order, just in order to succeed, but you're actually saying that if we allow ourselves to do nothing, either in silence or daydreaming, we will be more creative and innovative. But, and you were talking about, to back to my favorite term, the Delta mode, this idea

that, you know, ideas come to us in the shower or right before we're going to sleep. But I thought the deal was that in order for that idea to come to you in the shower or as you're falling asleep, you need to do a reasonable amount of work. Yes. So you need to do a bunch of research and then drop it. Or like Don Draper says in Mad Men when asked how he comes up with his slogans, it was that he would work, work, work all day and then go to the movies. Then the idea would come. So it's not just as simple as giving yourself permission to be lazy. That's absolutely right.

So you do need to have that training in your field, whatever it is. And it reminds me of a story of the Beatles. Apparently George Harrison was, I don't know if you know that the Beatles. Apparently George Harrison was, you know, I think I don't know if you know, but the Beatles went to India and they had a group of Maharishi Mahishyogu and they learned, you know, the T.M. T.M. Yeah, right. So they learned how to meditate and one day George asked Maharishi, his guru, you know, I get these songs coming my head when I meditate. What should I do? And Maharishi

just said, you open your eyes, write the song down, close your eyes, keep meditating. But it's not surprising that these insights, I've certainly had creative insights come during meditation too. It's just whenever your mind is, you're allowing your mind to be at rest and all of a sudden you're getting these insights. All right, so I mean, when I go on long retreats,

I am filled with ideas. I mean, I constantly having to write things down on tiny scraps of paper that I find, you know, the kitchen or whatever, when I'm on retreat. It is like almost embarrassing how much stuff is coming up. A lot of it turns out later to be complete baloney, but some percentage of it, I mean, huge ideas for my book or mostly actually around the book come in those contexts.

So let's keep going with your myths of success. One of them, I believe, is that when you talk about myths of success, is that we believe we need to be our own toughest critic. That's right. So we have the sense that self-criticism leads to self-improvements. You know, you've got to see your flaws in the face and so forth. Again, here we, there is a misconception. So when you look at the research, individuals who engage in a lot of self-criticism are actually less resilient in the face of failure and less likely to grow from their mistakes.

So, and those who are more likely to actually be much more resilient and have less anxiety and depression in the face of failure and to grow are individuals who engage in self-compassion, which sounds like a soft term, but there's a lot of hard data to back up that term, self-compassion. Self-compassion is in brief, it's the ability to treat yourself as you would a friend. And I'll give you an example. Imagine you're training for a marathon, your first marathon, you've been training for months and months, and you're doing it, you're running, and you tripping fall.

And someone on the sideline says, you are such a loser. You think you're a runner? Like there's no way you can do this. And then another person on the other side says, everybody falls, it's no big deal. Get right back up, you can do this. That's the difference between self criticism and self compassion in your own mind, self criticism basically is self-submarriage.

And if you look, and I'm really that metaphor that I'm giving is a reflection of the research. But don't we need some sort of internal cattle prod? I mean, I write about this in my book that you need some kind of get off the couch overcome inertia internal impulse, no? Yeah, and self-compassion is it doesn't necessarily mean letting yourself off the hook So it's like a mom who's trying to get her child to eat vegetables It's you know, I might not like it, but that's the best thing for it. So self-compassion does not mean

It's vegetables, it might not like it, but that's the best thing for it. So self-compassion does not mean taking, you know, giving, making excuses for yourself or to be lazy at all. It's not lowering standards. No, it's not lowering standards. It's basically the ability to treat yourself like a friend in the situation where you're failing or made a mistake. The ability to say some three things, a particular one, the ability to remember the universality of it, everyone makes mistakes, the ability to remember the universality of it.

Everyone makes mistakes, period. Remembering that. The second is the ability to be mindful around what's happening to you. So rather than catastrophizing and going into all these emotions, like, I'm such a loser, there's no way that I can run. What am I even thinking? I'm so not, you know, we can go into a big drama about it, or you can be mindful about it.

And just kind of watch those emotions come up and not necessarily dive deep into the drama. So those are, and the third is the ability to treat yourself like a friend, so to be able to say the things to yourself that you would to someone very close to you to whom this has happened. Right. It doesn't mean the way you treat a real friend is you tell them the truth, but you don't have to like, lacerate them. Exactly. So, I think we've worked through three of your myths of success.

What have I missed? Something around energy management? Yeah, the energy management. This is a really interesting one. So if you ask Americans to define happiness, they're going to define it with high intensity, positive emotions, like excitement, thrill. And that's why you hear people say I'm so excited this is going to happen and those are the words we use. If you ask East Asian cultures,

Korea, Japan, China, to define happiness, what do you think they use? Well, I know the answer, A, because I read your book and B, because I'm steeped in this stuff, but it's going to be contentment, calm, peace. Exactly. Low intensity positive. So all are positive, but there's this difference in intensity. Now there's nothing wrong with the American view. I mean, we love to have fun. We love excitement. That's part of what we like.

The trap we fall into though is that we believe that we have to live in a high intensity mode all the time. So whether it is the fact that we embrace this high adrenaline lifestyle, which I described earlier, is extremely taxing on our body, or even in our leisure time that we embrace this high intensity at all times, the body registers both as a stress response.

The body registers both as something that's actually quite taxing. So what I recommend is energy management. People are always talking about time management. You know, there's only so many time management apps and to-do list apps you can get. And that are going to really help you. There's not much you can do about that,

but your energy is something you can do a lot more about. So here's some just simple take-home points that people can do for one. Distribute your day along high intensity versus low intensity activities. For example, you have to prepare a presentation that's going to require a lot of concentration. Do that in that first hour. And then in the second hour, a presentation that's going to require a lot of concentration. Do that in that first hour. And then the second hour, do something that's less intense, like rearranging your desk, entering data, filing things, whatever it is.

And then altering that, alternating like that throughout the day can really help you manage your energy so that you have a little bit of rest. Those, you know, the entering data type of activity doesn't require as much energy. It allows you to recuperate and it allows you to tap back into your creative energy because as we mentioned earlier, part of your brain can be in that relaxation mode. So it has a kind of, there are a lot of benefits

to doing this. And the other thing is to remember you don't need to be in high intensity mode all the time. So let's say next thing you're gonna do is tackle your email. Well, that might not be the best time for you to like over-calfinate yourself and get all jazzed up. You can do this and relax and try to make this

a calm moment for yourself so that you can manage your energy. So I would say valuing calm more and engaging in calming activities to balance out all the high energy activities we do and also to help us manage the energy. So at the end of the day, you're not completely worn out. Do you, you had some really good stuff in the book about email management? Can you talk to me a little bit about that?

I find that, as I was listening to you speak about high intensity versus low intensity managing that during the day, I realized realized I do a terrible job of that. And also that pruning my inbox and getting it down to zero and just ramming through all that stuff is actually a source of constant stress for me. Absolutely. And research shows that when we open our inbox, start working on it, our stress response is activated. And the other thing with email that's really

interesting is that you're getting all this different kind of messages through or not. So in the past, we would have gone through our day with maybe a couple of intense experiences, like maybe you get in a spat with your spouse in the morning, and then you have some kind of uncomfortable interaction with a colleague, and maybe you're stuck in traffic in the evening. So you have a couple of to disagree of all unpleasant experiences. Now you can open your inbox and within the span of 30 minutes, you can go through 25 emails

that all elicit different emotions. It's like a bee in a jar. It's like, you know, one email says you're getting a promotion. The other you're in a creative difference with a partner and the third is, you know, whatever. And then the third is your wife? Your girlfriend's baking up with you. Exactly. So it's unbelievable that you roll her coaster of emotions that the inbox can

do to us. And then think about it. If we have our smartphones and we're checking email all day long, you know, you could be finally your home, finally you're with your child or with your spouse. Finally, you get those few precious moments to be with your family, but you check your phone, you get this unpleasant email from your work or wherever, and all of a sudden, the whole moment is ruined. So we need to really establish boundaries, and I don't think we figured out how to do that yet. But it's really important for us to notice what's impacting the state of our mind and what choices are we making that are impacting the state of our mind and

this, you know, in our daily activities and our interactions with technology. So what do you do at night not check email? My husband and I actually decided to stop checking email at 7pm, which we did consistently for a while and it was actually really great because it really allowed us to honor that time together. Sounds like it ended though. Well it did and especially with the baby because now that we have the baby sometimes the work hours are at night after he's yeah, gone to bed. But we do very much try to not have our phones around when we're together.

That's something that we try not to do unless there's some in emergency but usually there's not such a life threatening emergency that you need your phone. So I'll often leave it at home even. And on the weekends, it's really precious time where we actually try to not have our computers on if possible. Another area where I'm terrible. The other thing is, I mean, you're seeing a lot of kids really interested in just being on their screen rather than being with their external world.

And for kids, especially the world is a place of wonder. It always has been for all of the generations prior. And now by limiting them to this screen, because we're doing it, and so they're feeling very, very compelled by the screen, because they see their parents are like so enamored with it, that maybe we're creating a little bit of imbalance. Again, this is personal opinion, not research-based, but I'm trying, we're striving to model something more balanced for a son who will inevitably be on a screen, you know, because that's just how things are gonna be, but we're trying to model a balance.

But my kid's been doing this thing lately where he picks up anything that's got a cord, like a headphone or even just a cord for the lamp, and he says hello into it. He realizes because I use headphones when I'm talking on the phone and I'm always on the phone or you know taking me these around the house and he sees me doing that. So like he'll just pick up the you know shoe strings and say hello into it. It's cute but it's kind of sad at the same time. Well you've been a great guest.

Well it's been a pleasure to be here. Thank you so much for these awesome questions. Just a totally random question. Do you have a slight accent? I do. I'm from France. I was born in recent France. My mom is originally from Germany and then grew up in France. Where do you grew up in France? Paris. You've got that accent down to just a taste. I don't really hear much of a French. Oh, my dad is British American. So I was raised in English French and German and and then I moved to the US to attend

College when I was 17 so and then I've been here except for two years in China since so you speak English French German and Mandarin Mandarin and Spanish are Conversing but the the other three out. I was really fortunate. I'm trialing goal because of how my parents raised me Yeah, wow, but I guess I have an accent in each one but the other three out I was really fortunate I'm trialing gold because of how my parents raised me. Yeah. Wow. But I guess I have an accent in each one Hey, that's your inner critic Well, such a pleasure having you on. I really appreciate it. I appreciate it. It's been a pleasure Thanks as always to the producers of the show, Lauren, Efron, Josh Cohen, Sarah Amos, and Dan Silver.

You can hit me on Twitter at Dan B. Harris anytime you like. If you liked the episode today and you want to hear more like it, you can subscribe to the podcast, rate it, and leave a review. Thank you for that, and we'll talk you next week. Music Hey, hey, prime members. You can listen to 10% happier early and add free on Amazon Music. Download the Amazon Music app today, or you can listen early and ad-free with Wondery Plus in Apple Podcasts. Before you go, do

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