Ten Percent Happier with Dan Harris - 381: What Does it Actually Mean to Be a "Whole Person"? | Scott Barry Kaufman

Episode Date: September 22, 2021

In this episode, we’re going to demystify concepts such as: self actualization, personal growth, authenticity, and bringing your “whole self” to the table.  Scott Barry Kaufman is a cognitive scientist and humanistic psychologist. He is the founder and director of the Center for the Science of Human Potential at the University of Melbourne’s Centre for Wellbeing Science. He also hosts the #1 psychology podcast in the world - The Psychology Podcast. And he is the author of a new book called Transcend: The New Science of Self-Actualization. We talk about the meaning of “transcendence” and the difference between transcending in an unhealthy and healthy way; being compassionate, understanding, accepting, forgiving, and perhaps even loving about your foibles and ugliness; and the difference between authenticity and “pseudo-authenticity”. You can download the Ten Percent Happier app here today: https://10percenthappier.app.link/install Here are the steps for sending us a question for our upcoming Work Life Series: 1. Go to a quiet place and open the default voice memo recording app on your phone. 2. Hold the phone about 8-10 inches from your face, then tap “record.” 3. Tell us your name, where you’re from, and what your question is. Try to keep it to about a minute or so. 4. Stop the recording, then check it to make sure it sounds clear. 5. Email it to us at: [e-mail] by September 27, 2021. Full Shownotes: https://www.tenpercent.com/podcast-episode/scott-barry-kaufman-381 See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Before we jump into today's show, many of us want to live healthier lives, but keep bumping our heads up against the same obstacles over and over again. But what if there was a different way to relate to this gap between what you want to do and what you actually do? What if you could find intrinsic motivation for habit change that will make you happier instead of sending you into a shame spiral? Learn how to form healthy habits without kicking your own ass unnecessarily by taking our healthy habits course over on the 10% happier app. It's taught by the Stanford psychologist Kelly McGonical and the Great Meditation Teacher Alexis

Santos to access the course. Just download the 10% happier app wherever you get your apps or by visiting 10% calm. All one word spelled out. Okay on with the show. to Baby, this is Kiki Palmer on Amazon Music or wherever you get your podcast. From ABC, this is the 10% happier podcast. I'm Dan Harris. Hey, hey, party people. Today on the show, we're going to do one of my favorite things. Rescue and Revivify.

A bunch of gauzy, somewhat incomprehensible, but nonetheless, game-changing cliches. We are going to demystify and make practical concepts such as self-actualization, personal growth, authenticity, and bringing your whole self to the table. We've got a guest too instead of just throwing these terms around, can actually explain what they mean in plain English and how to put them to use in your actual life. Scott Barry Kaufman is a cognitive scientist and humanistic psychologist. He's the founder and director of the Center for the Science of Human Potential at the University of Melbourne's Center for Wellbeing Science. science. Dr. Kaufman has taught at Columbia University Yale and why you the University of Pennsylvania and elsewhere. He also hosts the number one psychology podcast on earth, which is called the psychology podcast, and perhaps

most importantly, he is the author of a new book called Transcend, the new science of self-actualization. In this conversation we talk about the meaning of transcendence and the difference between unhealthy and healthy transcendence. What it means to have peak experiences and plateau experiences, existentialist philosopher Abraham Maslow and his ideas on self-actualization, being compassionate, understanding, accepting, forgiving, and perhaps even loving about your foibles and ugliness, bringing your whole self to the table, as mentioned forgiving, and perhaps even loving about your foibles and ugliness, bringing your whole self to the table, as mentioned earlier, and the difference between authenticity

and pseudo-authenticity. All that coming up, first though, one quick item of business. If you've been listening to this show for a while, you've probably heard me talk about our companion meditation app, which is also called 10% happier. The app is a place you can go to practice, what we talk about here on the podcast, and you can do so with meditations that are led by some of our most popular podcast guests.

It's sort of like science, class, and college. The podcast is the lecture and the app is the lab. So whether you're interested in treating yourself with a little bit more compassion, having hard conversations without hurting your relationships, or pausing and taking a breath instead of snapping at your children, you can learn about the skills here and then practice them over there in the app. But just like that college lab section, motivating yourself to actually put in the practice

time is hard. Those few milliseconds between closing the podcast app and firing up the meditation app are rife with possibilities for distraction a New email a breaking news alert the temptation to doom scroll on Twitter whatever it can all derail you pretty quickly That's why this show the 10% happier podcast is now available inside our companion app so that you can toggle seamlessly between listening and Practicing learning and doing so now when you subscribe to app, you'll be able to transition very easily to meditation right after listening to the podcast. Not to mention, you'll receive access to our many courses, which contain a whole lot

of video, our sleep meditations, and the podcast episodes are ad-free. And good news as promised, the ad-free podcast is available. Now both on iOS and Android. So to get started, download the 10% happier app wherever you get your apps and then tap on the podcast tab at the bottom of your screen. Okay, here we go now with Scott Berry Kaufman. Scott Berry Kaufman, great to have you on. Thanks for coming on.

Dan, so excited to talk to you on. Thanks for coming on. Dan, so excited to talk to you today. So I understand you were kind of going through a bit of an existential crisis while writing this book. Can you, can you, I feel like that's a good place to start. What's the story there? Yeah, about 2013, 2014, I went in for a, I thought would be be a pretty nine procedure and it was very high probability that I would live, like extremely, extremely high. But I was like, you mean there's a chance that I might die and it was like the first time in my life, like that thought occurred to me that like,

wait, there's a chance I might die someday as well. I mean, it's such an obvious thing to know that you're gonna die someday and we have it in the background of our mind. But it really came to the forefront of my mind. And I had this existential panic. I tried to find every book I could possibly find on the topic to help me to make peace with this realization, this profound realization I had. Did you make peace with it? I did make peace with it to a large, very large extent.

And part of that journey was writing this book and all the amazing thinkers that have written about this topic throughout the ages, but not only in Abraham, Mazzle, as well as East Indian philosophy to just the existential philosophers. But there's a whole field called existential psychotherapy and Irving Yalm and his writings really helped me as well. We're going to go deep on this, but just for the, to, to, to, to start of this conversation, what was, what's the punchline? Like, what, what did you learn that allowed you to, to, as you say, make, make some peace with mortality? I suppose it to a very large degree, as you say, make some peace with mortality. I suppose to a very large degree, the punchline is that there is no punchline, that there

really is no there there, that the greatest moments of transcendence in one's life don't come from these peak experiences, but I mean they may periodically fool us into thinking they come only from the peak experiences. But if we train our mind in a certain way, they actually come from what Maslow called the Plato experiences, which is the finding the miraculous in the everyday. And he says it's like lounging in heaven, not getting so excited about it. And these peak experiences are these things that we think we're striving for and that when we reach them, then we've reached the top of the mountain, then we're done. And then we're always constantly disappointed. Everyone's disappointed by these. And yet we

somehow can't remember the fact that we get to the point. So there are a bunch of terms, I think, would be useful to define here. Well, terms and names. So who's Abraham Maslow? What are peak experiences and what are plateau experiences? And what is transcendence? I mean, you you really started this interview. Do you realize you started this interview like jumping into the deep end? That's how we do it here. Okay. Abraham Maslow is a humanistic psychologist from the 50s and 60s where he gained the most prominence in the public culture. Yet to understand the time period then, the hippies and the whole human potential movement just fit really perfectly with Maslow's ideas of self-actualization and youth were so

hungry for self-actualization and youth were so hungry for self-actualization and freedom of expression. Actually, Maslow did not really appreciate the way the youth interpreted his ideas of self-actualization. He actually railed against that a lot in his life. He's like, oh, the young people think it just means impulsively self-expression yourself and he thought it actually involved a lot of hard work and ethic and character It's funny, you know how the my little you know the social time period took his ideas and they braced it But it didn't brace it in a way he really loved so he was a humanist like I'll just humanist psychologists in general are Interested in the whole person the whole what does it mean to be an experientially vital human? And what are the factors that predict that, you know, and scientifically,

psychologically, experientially? And the second question asked was, what are peak experiences? This is a phrase, Maslow, I don't know if he coined it, but he, he definitely is associated with it heavily. He referred to peak experiences, any experience you have that gives you this great sense of aliveness and getting outside of yourself in a way where you're not so focused on your trivial concerns and your ego and all self-related concerns, but you really see a broader connected

ness to all of humans. And he says it comes from lots of things. It can come from a sports performance to overcoming something big and mastering something to the sexual experience, to artwork, to aesthetics, to nature, to beauty. He found a lot of women reported and we actually found this in our own research. A lot of women reported childbirth is a great source of peak experiences. I'm going through this really quick. This is like peak experiences cliff notes version. The plateau experience is a term that he adopted from his East Indian colleague, Uey Azrani. So have you ever heard of Uey Azrani? Most of you

haven't. No, I haven't. And you read it. He was like a East Indian mystic and Yogi, his writings were wonderful on the Poto experience and Maslow fell in love with him as well and it co-opted that term and talked about them as these kinds of experiences in life where you have immense appreciation of the moment but you also see the impermanence of it at the same time. You're able to hold in your mind the state of these two things at the same time that give you a greater sense of transcendence for the moment, just a real walking into the moment. It's like staring at a loved one and having your heart, your love for them, but also being able to imagine their death. You know, he has some beautiful descriptions of this, seeing the eternity, also just seeing the continuity

of humanity in any situation. It's like, Dan, do you ever like talk to people, and you're like, oh, that person, remind me so much of my friend Bob from high school, you know, you start to live long enough, and you start to see people, and you can start in your head. I mean, I guess that's not good.

It's called stereotyping, but you started your head. You're like, oh, that's that kind of person. Oh, that's that kind of person. You know, like, oh, that person has that phenotype. You start to see that. And then I think you can start to generalize it actually in a beautiful way, not a stereotypical hateful way whatsoever. Don't get me wrong, I'm trying to say, you know, but you start to do it in kind of aent way. Where you start to realize that we're all, including ourselves, we're part of a long lineage of humanity, and going way, way, way back. My stick to the way I talk, the way I look, everything about me as well as part of a long recharited, will continue after me.

There will be 500 years from now, if the humanity still exists, something resembling a Scott Barrickoffman on a podcast with someone resembling a Dan Harris, they might not even know, remember us. I mean, it'd be nice if they did. Wouldn't that be nice if we, if we transcended 500 years? But even if they never even met us, there will exist something very much resembling this moment that we're in right now. And if we were alive to look at it, we would laugh to each other and be like, see, you

know, like that person is so scotmaric off of me. That person is so, but there's this kind of beauty in that, a kind of appreciation of the continuity of the human existence. You're doing great here with these terms. I think the fourth on the list and bad news for you is I have some more to add to the list, but transcendence, which is a word that keeps coming up. But I think it's, these are fast and any concepts. So I think it's great to just to get you to describe them so that we can then have a level

set for the rest of the conversation. So let's, let's go transcendence if you're up for it. I'm definitely up for it. You got me started. You revved up the engine. I'm definitely up for it. You got me started you revved up the engine good I define transcendent I distinguish between healthy transcendence and unhealthy transcendence And I a lot of big part of my book is actually distinguishing between the two because there's a lot of things that are that they call themselves Transcendence these days and I think they're just what I would call spiritual narcissism

I think they're just what I would call spiritual narcissism. So in my book, I define healthy transcendence as an emergent phenomenon resulting from the harmonious integration of one's whole self in the service of cultivating the good society. It's not a level any human ever actually achieves, but it's a North Star for all humanity. In a nutshell, healthy transcendence involves harnessing all that you are in the service of realizing the best version of yourself so you can help raise the bar for the whole of humanity.

It's not about being outside of the whole or feeling superior to the whole, but being a harmonious part of the whole of human existence. So it's very much horizontal, more than vertical. So it's very much horizontal, more than vertical. So you're not just talking about transcending the ego, the small self. No, I'm not just talking about that. In fact, Maslow proposed, he has this beautiful article,

Variety is a transcendence, he puts forward 150 meanings of the word transcendence. I mean, that word is used to refer to so many things. I think that there's a form of transcendence where you're integrated with the world so much, just by being who you are. You've transcended your body in a way. Maybe that's what I'm trying to say. You're transcending the physical limitations of the body in a way. You know, you're being just by who you are is so synergistic. This is a word that Maslow used, which he adopted from his anthropologist friend.

There's such a synergy between self and world that just by being who you are and your purpose and your goals is making the world a better place is really is raising the vibration of the universe. But you know, there's just a great synergy. My friend Dr. Mark Epstein, psychiatrist, author, has an expression, there is no self apart from the world. I mean, that gets right at the synergy. You mean, we do exist.

Mark would argue, you know, we on some level, I am Dan Harris and you are Scott Berry-Coffman, but we don't exist as in such a solid way as we might imagine. And our existence is contingent upon our web of interrelations with other people and the physical world, et cetera, et cetera. Is that hunting in the direction that you're talking about here? It is. I still to this day, I haven't cracked the code of, I don't think anyone's cracked the code of what is the self and how does that instantiate in the brain and what actually does exist there.

I have some thoughts about that from a cognitive science perspective. Maslow really did view self-actualization as a merely a bridge to transcendence. He argued, he has this beautiful essay that's unpublished. He said, it seems like the purpose of self-actualization is to erase itself. That's the purpose of it, you know? But I think along the way, there is value in having a strong sense of self. You know, I talk very much in this book about how a deep integration is one not where you just have complete self-sacrifice.

You know how there's some people, they're like, there, well, maybe you, maybe you would make this argument. There's no such thing as the self, everything should be in the service of others. And I mean, there's always trite statements that some people say, and I'm not saying I've heard you say it, but I'd love to hear your thoughts on this.

I actually think that there's a middle ground here. I think that there is a great value in owning your highest values and owning, having a stable sense of self. I talk in the book about the psychological research we have done on vulnerable narcissism, for instance, in other forms of psychotic stores where people suddenly feel like

they have no identity anymore to an unhealthy degree. So I try to figure out what is healthy identity, what is healthy self versus unhealthy self. So what I do in my book, I don't make the argument, there's no self, I make the argument that we can distinguish between a healthy self and an unhealthy self. So what's healthy and what's unhealthy? Okay, so I do have a chapter on self-esteem trying to delineate these boundaries. So a healthy self or a healthy self-esteem is one where you feel worthy. You feel not that you're better than others, but that you're just your worthy human being in this world. You know, so many psychological issues can arise from someone who feels unworthy.

You know, so I'd also try to take a psychological perspective to why this and argue that a complete lack of self sometimes can be psychopathological. So how do we distinguish between these different things? And then the second form of a healthy self-steam is having a healthy sense of mastery and pride, authentic pride for something that you've legitimately put into the world through your hard work, through your dedication, your devotion. That's something I think that you should be proud of. You should just say, I have no self. I shouldn't be proud of what I've done. I mean, I've had debates about this.

I had a four-hour debate with the other Harris, Sam Harris, about free will. Because we don't agree on this. And I think that there is something to be you that has a free will worth wanting. And that is something that I think that there is something to be you that has a free will worth wanting. And that is something that I think we should, we're allowed to take a little bit of credit for. Now, the problem is people take too much credit for it.

Narcissists. Narcissists take too much credit for it. And people with psychopathology take too little credit for their existence. But I think there is something there that we're allowed to take a healthy credit for it. Just to really fully check the box, can you say more about exactly what an unhealthy self is in contradiction to or a contrast to the two aspects of a healthy self which includes self-worth and taking a reasonable amount of pride in what you do in your life, your mastery. Yeah, I'd be happy to. I've studied narcissism and it's many manifestations. And there are a bunch of manifestations in

narcissism. Some that some people might not even be aware of that. I mean, they may be aware of it. Like, and when I put a name to it, I'll be like, Oh, that's, that's what that's called. So a lot of people, most people only think narcissism, they think of the chest thumping, it's called the grandiose narcissist. That's the one who's like, I'm the greatest. Right. When I say narcissists, almost people think of that kind of narcissist. So the thing is there are not a lot of psychopathological implications of grandiose narcissism. Very few grandiose narcissists end up on the psychotherapy couch because they don't meet the criteria for that. They're happy with their lives. of grandiose narcissism. Very few grandiose narcissists end up on the psychotherapy couch,

because they don't meet the criteria for that. They're happy with their lives, even though they're creating havoc and they're weak, they actually score high on our life satisfaction surveys. But if you survey everyone else around them, like their lovers, you know, they score low in the life satisfaction, but they score high in life satisfaction.

They're not the ones that are gonna end up on the therapist's couch. So what we've been looking at is in different flavor of narcissism. Who are the narcissists that end up on the therapist's couch? That's an interesting question, right? That's an interesting psychological question empirically. We find it's the vulnerable narcissist, some research, some psychoanalytic tradition, they call it the covert narcissist.

So that's the one that has such a fragile, uncertain ego that they don't think they're entitled to special privileges because they think they're better than others. They think they're entitled to special privileges purely because of their suffering. So I would call that an unhealthy self. Well, I would call the grandiose narcissist unhealthy self as well. I would call the vulnerable narcissist that an unhealthy self. And I can keep going further. There's another kind of narcissist

called the communal narcissist that's been discovered by psychologists. And that's the person who thinks that they and only they will save the world. Now, I see a lot of the communal narcissist in the spiritual world. I see a lot of that in the meditation world. Maybe controversial thing to say. I wrote an article for scientific American on this on the science of spiritual narcissism because there's some studies coming out actually trying to quantify this and like look at this within the context of meditation and yoga retreats. The problem with communal narcissism, they're mixed bagged because in a lot of ways they do tend to help others, but it all tends to crash and burn because they take over credit and they also have overconfidence.

And so they will think like, oh, I can solve this. And then destruction happens because of their overconfidence. So that's another flavor and I wouldn't call that a healthy self either. By the way, there's more, but I would have just paused there for a second. Well, feel free. I love talking about narcissism. So If you want to say more about that, go for it. Well, first of all, we're all narcissists. These are, we're talking continuums, you know, which is what I really love doing in the books that gave questionnaires. I wanted to be like, one of the first self-help books that gave you a questionnaire to figure out how much of a

**** are you? Because these self-help books don't do that. They lie to you. They say they have book titles like you are great. It's like no, you're not, you know, like, now look, like you need to be honest, you need to be honest with yourself if you want to grow. One way to grow is to really take a look at Your capacity for narcissism your capacity for being a jerk etc. etc Absolutely my own personal process of self of growth. It was important Yeah, I don't I'm not a claim. I'm above any of this stuff like I I noticed when I was looking when I started studying this this research I was like, oh my gosh in my 20s. I was such a vulnerable narcissist

I always try to you know like so much of my decisions and things that were trying to prove people wrong. You know, like that was my main motivation. It was like someone said I was stupid. I'm gonna prove them wrong. He was like, well, that's not the healthiest sense of self. You know, that's not the healthiest way to grow. I mean, I really feel like I grew much, much more

when I, when I really was honest about, you know, tendencies and things. I think that's the best way to growth. Mass or distinction between pseudo-growth and real growth as well. I love these distinctions he made. I'm trying to carry on in that tradition as I go through lots of things. I talk about pseudo-authenticity versus healthy authenticity. I actually, at a certain point, I have a framework where I think nothing is healthier and healthy by itself. I think I can slot anything into this framework. You can have healthy aggression and unhealthy aggression.

You can have healthy humor, unhealthy humor. You can have healthy altruism, unhealthy altruism. I kind of went, started going down the list. That makes, I mean, I don't know the framework per se, but as I compute it in real time, I can see why healthy aggression would be protecting somebody from an armed aggressor. So if you're going to do counter aggression,

that might be healthy aggression. Am I on to what you're talking about here? Oh, yeah, that's right. Exactly. I think, like Martin Luther King talked about this, just the difference. He said, aggression in the service of love, is the highest form of aggression, something like that.

I mean, I'm misquoting him, but that's the general sentiment. And I agree. I think that a lot of people in certain movements use aggression in a healthy way. But I want to say that I'm seeing a lot of vulnerable narcissism in a lot of. But I want to say that I'm seeing a lot of vulnerable narcissism in a lot of modern day social justice movements. So I also see a lot of unhealthy aggression

going on these days as well. I can see it so clearly too, because I study this stuff. And sometimes I'm like, I don't want to see it so clearly. It's like, doesn't make you friends to call out certain things. But I really do firmly believe that the greatest sense of outcomes in life for growth, for justice, for your goals, I really need to rest on a firm foundation of reality, and a firm foundation of a healthy sense of self, not a egoistic or fragile sense of self.

Just to get back to your comments about social justice, that could be to use a bloated phrase here, triggering for some. Well, that's a radioactive topic. Yeah. Yeah. No, it is. But it's important. And so I try to, I try to regularly to the best of my ability to touch the third rail on the show. I'm imagining what you're saying is it is great to try to help other people. Yes. However, if you're setting yourself up as somebody who deserves special privilege because you are, I don't know, uniquely put upon that is that can have pernicious effects.

Is that what you're trying to say? Well, absolutely. Yeah. There is a emerging research program that I've been writing about. I've been actually working on a couple more articles about it called group narcissism. And I'm writing an article, The Rise of Group Narcissism.

And I think that we really need to, from a psychological point, from a sociological point is, we'll really wrap our head around this and think this through, because you see a lot of groups that are fighting with each other, more so in the radical extremes of every spectrum. But they're all very much more similar to each other than they like to admit.

There's a very common sort of theme of like, it's a battle and control for power. It's like a battle control for wanting to dominate the culture, you know, but they all want to do it, you know, and they're all fighting each other. And there's a lot of violence being spread over this. And it's very detrimental to society. But isn't there some groups that are just sort of quantifiably put more put upon and doesn't that give them more of a right? Yeah, more of a right to feel like they have been genuinely victimized.

Yeah, absolutely. It's interesting because this topic in all the podcasts is the one that the guest, the host loves zooming, double clicking on. I guess it's very interesting and important, right? There is a legitimate victimhood, 100%. I mean, there are individuals and groups who have faced horrible atrocities, no doubt. But I want us to all think through, and I even want the groups themselves to think through,

what is the goals that they have? What are the best methods to actually be reaching those goals? What are the best sort of, what leads to growth? Isn't that what we're all interested in at the end of the day is what's most likely to lead to growth? And even transcendence, dare I say. Again, just to put a fine point at it, I'm going to try to summarize your point and you'll correct me, hopefully.

It may be true that you come from a group that has genuinely been transgressed repeatedly throughout history. But if what's important to you is your own personal growth and the growth of society writ large is a mentality of there's a possibility that you can take victimhood too far. Is that basically what you're saying? Well, yes. I try to look at it from a very bird's eye view. As a psychologist, sometimes I quite frankly feel like

an anthropologist in Mars to borrow an expression from Oliver Sox, who I adore. If you take the most bird's eye view of the situation, what I see are a lot of groups fighting over who's suffering the most. And I think that that's not going to be mostly, that's not, that's not the method that's going to most likely lead to empathy for each other, for growth, for societal uplifting, for transcendence.

If you had to advise a person from a group that has been, you know, victimized, what would your advice be about how to move forward with personal and societal growth in the healthiest possible way? Have you read the sum of us by Heather McGee? No. Heather McGee. Well, you know, the sort of idea, the subtitle of her book is what racism costs everyone and how we can prosper together. You know, I think she's doing beautiful advocacy work and social justice work in that space

and showing that racism, how it's bringing the whole society down. You know, no one's benefiting by that kind of hate. Even people who are aggressors who are causing a racism are not benefiting from that. I do think that less of these kind of zeroes, some ways of thinking about things and more of zero positive ways of thinking about society and increasing and ways of increasing empathy

would be a huge step forward? Right. So the stance would be instead of focusing on all of the injustices, it would be to focus on how we would all benefit if there was less racism, because even those who are racist are suffering whether they know it or not as a consequence of their racism. Yes, that's true to a very large extent, but just focusing on what transcendence means. The idea of how can we foster a society where we rally around common basic human needs, you know, that we realize that we all at the end of the day want a matter. We all want to have connections with each other.

We all want safety, security, and being able to foster a society where we can start to see that even our enemy wants those things as well. You are not easy things to solve, easy problems to solve, but I've been just trying to think through what would that look like? Interesting. So you're talking about transcending there. You're talking about transcending your own point of view, your own biases and getting into the heads of the people

who not only you may disagree with, but who you may feel and you may have good evidence to argue have hurt you. Absolutely, I had a wonderful chat with Julie with Codhames. I don't know if you know she is. I really had to be an adult. She was on my podcast and she was telling a story of racism in her childhood. A really heartbreaking story where she went back to her locker and there were things written in her locker that were really racist. And I was, I recounted her, a very similar situation I had when I was in special education as a kid for an auditory disability that I had,

I was bullied a lot. And we both were like breaking out in tears here. I felt such a strong connection to her, you know, and she felt such strong connection to me. And I keep returning to that kind of experience that I had and think, you know, well, how can I bring humanistic psychology to the table here to make more of those kinds of experiences in this world? Much more of my conversation with Scott Barry Cuffman coming up right after this. Like the short, and it's full of a lot of interesting questions. What does happiness really mean? How do I get the most out of my time here on Earth? And what really is the best cereal? These are the questions I seek to resolve

on my weekly podcast, Life is Short with Justin Long. If you're looking for the answer to deep philosophical questions, like what is the meaning of life? I can't really help you. But I do believe that we really enrich our experience here by learning from others. And that's why in each episode, I like to talk with actors, musicians, artists, scientists, and many more types of people about how they get the most out of life.

We explore how they felt during the highs, and sometimes more importantly, the lows of their careers. We discuss how they've been able to stay happy during some of the harder times, but if I'm being honest, it's mostly just fun chats between friends about the important stuff. Like if you had a sandwich named after you, what would be on it? Follow Life is short wherever you get your podcasts.

You can also listen to Add Free on the Amazon Music or Wondering App. Okay, you'd probably back to definitions. I do have a few two others I want to add to the list. You talked briefly about humanistic psychology earlier and the notion of a whole person, I believe. Yes. I would, I could benefit from hearing that more about what exactly you mean by that.

And then the other definition I want to add to your notepad is self actualization, which is a phrase that's come up a lot. And I've been a terrible host and not getting you to define it thus far. This is going to be a fun one. Um, so a whole person is, you know, how the world need to find such a thing. I was going to call my book transcend. I was going to call it my working title was how to be a whole person. And, you know, a lot of people were like, now that shouldn't be your title, Scott. Like, I was even going to have a scale, a test, a scientifically valid test that tells you how what percentage you're, you're

30% of a whole person. If you like Scott, you can't do that. You can't do that. So I mean, I do have a whole person scale, a validated scale, but with all that said, what all I mean by it is, you know, to what extent, you know, I could pass the buck to another phrase and say, I just mean, what does it mean to be fully human? And then you'll be like, okay, that's cheating. What is fully human? By the way, it turns out, Maslow didn't even like the phrase self-actualization more close to the end of his life.

He preferred the term full human. And I think that the way he thought about full human, the way the humanistic psychologist thought about it, because Carl Rogers, the humanistic psychologist, talked about becoming full human as well. So they meant, you know, what does it mean to be a fully vital integrated person, where you don't leave parts of you on the table, that you're really operating at your full capacity, but you're also able to access the full depths of humanity. You know what it feels like to be sad. You have access to a very broad range of the human experience, but you are operating at full power. So to speak, your full strengths, your full sort of, you know, what is your highest potential?

And I think that's basically what Maslow meant by self-actualization. He actually co-opted the term from neurologist Kurt Goldstein, he wrote the book, The Organism, where he found, Kurt Goldstein found in his brain damaged patients that the brain had a will to self-actualize, that even with trauma injury to the brain,

there were other parts of the brain that desperately wanted to take over those functions. And Maslow really loved that and co-opted that term and used it as more broadly as the human will. Carl Rogers, the humanist psychologist, called it the self-actualizing tendency. We all have this tendency for growth. We want to, at the end of the day, move toward growth. But there are so many things that take us away

from internal things as well as external constraints and various things. We share a lot of needs with each other, with our common humanity, the needs for connection, like I said, the needs to matter, the need for safety, the need for respect and self-esteem for others. The need for self-actualization is what is the need to express and to put into existence that unique aspect, yourself, that you don't share with others necessarily.

What is the most unique thing about you that can have the most maximum sort of, if not impact on the world, that can bring it to its greatest expression that you would feel most alive and creative. So it seems like there may be a distinction between self-actualization, which is understanding what makes you special and then operationalizing that and materializing it in the world, and being a whole person or a whole human which is

Bringing all the parts of yourself to the table in a way that like yeah, I do have parts of me that are Less functional than others, but can I come into a relationship with those parts of me so that I'm harmonizing it into a hole Yeah, absolutely and I feel like that's very much in line with your own sort of journey, right? Your own learnings, teachings, and your meditation journey, right? Hasn't it hasn't been a constant journey of integration for you into self-acceptance and awareness of all sorts of anxieties you may have had in the past and stuff like that? Yeah, I would say the arc of it thus far has been, first of all, getting some degree of self-awareness, which allowed me or mindfulness, just being able to see what was going on in my mind at any given

moment so that it doesn't own me. I can see, oh oh yeah, I'm getting angry, but I don't have to be owned by the anger. And then the next step in that was actually having a warmer relationship to the angry or defensive or jealous parts of me and seeing that those neurotic programs are trying to help me, however unskilledfully, but I don't have to be owned by them. And so I realized that for me, this sort of first step of mindfulness, I thought I was being mindful, but there was a kind of aversive flick in there when I would notice anger coming

up or something like that, and then adding in the extra reading of warmth has really been useful. Yeah, I just want to say your meditations that have been helpful to me. I'm a fan. Thank you. It's quite an honor to be on your podcast. Yeah, reading about your journey has been helpful

for me and my own journey as well. Reading about other people's journeys as well. I like people who are brave enough to be very brutally honest about their journey. I find that really helpful to me. So thank you. Thank you for saying that. I appreciate it.

What is the core thesis of your book and what advice do you provide in terms of how we can all vector toward transcendence? What practically can we do? What would a self-actualizing society look like? More of a society where we give people the opportunity resources to, first of all, to self-actualize, so we help them at a basic minimum, not live a life of insecurity and feeling unsafe. But we must do more than that.

And this is, Mazzle made this clear. He's just helping people with their lack of safety is not moving them in the towards of growth necessarily. And this is actually why I have the revised hierarchy of needs, which is a cellboat metaphor. You have your basic boat, where you can have too many holes in the boat of the foundation or else, of course, water will get in and you won't move anywhere, but just having a secure boat doesn't assure that you're going to move anywhere unless you open up that cell and be open to moving

in your most valued direction, knowing that the ways can come crashing down and us at any time, knowing that also knowing that we're all in the same C together, even though we're in our own boat going in our own direction, you know, having that awareness that we're all in the C together. A self-action society would provide both safety needs as well as growth needs and offer, I'm an advocate of things like gifted education. I think we need a balanced, equity and excellence. And our society has not really done a good job of balancing the two. You know, we need to do a good job of promoting and offering encouragement

at discovering people's talents, discovering people's unique potentialities and giving them an outlet for them. I focused a lot of my career on what would a human centered schools look like or what would self-actualize and schools look like. Our education system is doing everything at possibly can to not self-actualize students. And it does not provide the safety needs or the growth needs. It's not doing it.

It's a great model of failing students in every direction, imaginable. But also, it's one where a self-actualizing society is one where virtue pays as a mazile puppet. We reward a lot of things monetarily in our society that are things I don't think we should be rewarding. And we don't reward a lot of things that we should be rewarding, such as character

and virtue, and people who's being just by who they are is uplifting the world. I mean, you get them or a piece of the conversation into positions of power. I've thought a lot about power, and I've thought a lot about this research program I've initiated with my colleagues on the dark versus the light triad Which is a whole other research program for the past 15 years psychologists that studied the dark triad which are things like narcissism psychopathy and macchi-valonism and my colleagues and I have been trying to balance out that psychological literature by creating the light triad test and trying to look at the way that plays out at politics and positions

of power. You can actually go on my website, scottberrycalfman.com and for free take my Star Wars test. They'll tell where you are in the force, you know, or in the dark side of the force or the light side of the force, or you're more Yoda or Darth Vader. We've scientifically validated that test so you can take that. Be curious to see where you are on that Dan, but I really do think that we need to promote more into positions of power. People who have these light triad characteristics that my colleagues and I have identified, things like humanism, seeing the dignity

and worth of each individual, faith in humanity, people who basically have a deep abiding faith and the goodness of humans. And we call contentism, which is the opposite of our cute thing, which is the opposite of macchi-valianism, which is cons second imperative. Do you remember from inter to philosophy class, cons second imperative? No. Tategorical imperative.

Treat people as ends into themselves, not means to an end. So I do think there will be a better place if virtue paid more. Yeah. Fascinating description of how society could be nudged in the direction of self-actualization, transcendence, whole humanity. What about individuals? What do you recommend in your book or elsewhere for those of us who listen to you talk about these growth potentials and might want to march

in that direction? What do we do about it? I'm actually working on a follow-up book right now of just activities to get you. What's what's what Mazzo called the B realm of human existence? Basically, I'm going to reframe your question as Scott, how can people live in the B realm of human existence. Basically, I'm gonna reframe your question as, Scott, how can people live in the B realm of human existence more? Great question, dude. I think. So I'm a little cheeky, that's my personality, but I love it.

Yeah, cool. I like to have fun and be serious at the same time. So I think the B realm is, Mazzo called it like the being realm of human existence. And he, he, called it like the being realm of human existence. He distinked that from the deficiency realm of human existence. You know, when we're motivated by deficiency all the time, we have a certain lens upon which we see the world. Everything we want the world to conform to our deprivation.

So for chronically hungry, everyone looks like a potential hamburger to us or a broccoli if you're vegan. Like if you're chronically lacking friends, everyone looks like a potential friend. You know, if we're chronically lacking in respect, we demand respect. You know, you see the villains, you know, in the superhero movies, you see the villains who, when they're 10 years old or whatever, they had an idea at a science festival, they got shut down, the big someday I'll take over the world. It's like, well, calm down. That's quite an extreme deprivation sort of way of growing from that.

But when you can be in the growth realm or the being realm of human existence, it's like, it, Maslow said, it's like replacing a quality lens with a very clear lens. You see the world and you see people for who they are. You see their imperfections. You see their humanity. And you're not trying to change the world to conform to your deprivations. But you are trying to grow as a human. And you're trying to see and seek out more beauty, more

meaningfulness, the be values of life. I was able to find, and I put into the book, Maslow's, he called them be exercises. He started to call everything be, be love, be what is love for the being of others look like. But he called them be exercises. All sorts of things like sample things. Keep your eye in the ends, not only on the means,

fight familiarization, seek fresh experiences, embrace your past, embrace your guilt rather than running from it, be compassionate with yourself, be understanding, accepting, forgiving, and perhaps even loving about your foibles as expressions of human nature, enjoy and smile at yourself. Ask yourself, how would this situation look to a child, to the innocent, to a very old person

who is beyond personal ambition and competition? And then I'll just, there's a bunch more I'll end with one that's probably one of my favorite. If you find yourself becoming egoistic, arrogant, conceited, or puffed up, think of mortality, or think of other arrogant and conceded people and see how they look. Do you want to look like that? Do you want to take yourself that seriously to be that unhumorous?

It kind of brings us back to the beginning of the conversation in your existential crisis around mortality. How have you systematized all the things you learned during the writing of this book into your life now in ways that have made you happier? There's definitely like a more easeness of being than I used to have. I'm still, man, I'm still on the journey. I mean, I, again, I'm not like I'm in Whitton, and you're not Dan. So I'm still definitely very much on this journey. But I have noticed significant changes that I would like to take a little credit for.

You know, remember I told you that how it's okay to take a little credit? I would like to take a little credit for some things. I think that I've worked very, very hard to accept. There are actually certain aspects of myself that they ain't going away. That could be so hard for some people to recognize. There's some preference to have desires.

You know, like nothing like too horrible. I don't like the human imagination here to like think. But there are things that like I wasn't proud of, you know, like, you know, even some of my food preference, and all of us I think can relate to the just food prep. You know, look, it's not gonna go away. You're always, when you see that chocolate, you're gonna like the chocolate. And I think there's just a lot of things like that that I've

started to just see with a more humorous light than a self-condemning light. And that's really freed me. It's freed me to have greater flexibility, to indulge when I want to also free and flexibility to laugh at it and walk on, walk on and do something else, you know? And in a loving way, that's been a big change for me, a big change for me, lowering those perfectionistic tendencies. And are there practices you use in order to lower the perfectionistic tendencies, or is it just something you've just come to organically and are able to practice in your life without any sort of formal practice? Yeah, I do think that living a life intentionally is important. So I have worked on intentionally integrating things. To me, it's a fun little game. It's a fun puzzle. Let's say I have panic attacks,

and I know I have panic attacks when I give talks, and while I'm not going to, like, be afraid of giving talks, I mean, that was a big one for me, by the way. I became a keynote speaker, and I was like, I have a choice here. I can, like, just not go with that life because I know that I could have a panic attack on stage, or I could figure out, like, a game. How can I know that I could have a panic attack on stage and that, or I could figure out a game. How can I integrate that into the game? You know what I'm saying? Like, okay, let's have a panic attack on stage. How can I make that part of the game?

And I just, I've been on this journey through all these kinds of things to bring my whole self to the table. Like, I remember I was on stage in Brazil and I remember being on stage and having this out of body experience where I thought it myself, wow, wouldn't that be interesting if I had a panic attack right now? And then that thought was like, wait, why did you, why do you think of that, Scott? Why do you think of that? And then, and I'm by the way, I'm still giving my talk in this moment. I'm still talking about, you know,

we need to help the children. We need to help. But then my, my head, I'm thinking, oh my gosh, what if the ground beneath my feet would fall right now? You know, what if I just, and then I suddenly started to feel like the ground falling beneath my feet? And I'm like, wow, you're really talking your inches. And then I had this thought to myself, because actually, I actually, I paused. I paused for my speaking and I thought to myself, I could run off the stage right now. What are my options thought to myself, I could run off the stage right now. What are my options? You know, I could run off the stage, just like collect myself, calm down, I bet I could come back and like make a joke, be like, I look at what I just had a pack of tech and I bet that I could go,

go through with this and I actually did believe that I could. But then I also thought to myself, you know, wow, if I just talk myself so easily into having this panic tech, Scott, you are one absurd. That means that you could just as easily talk yourself out of it. So then I talked myself out of it and I continued and actually went through

the rest of the thing and I was fine. I guess what I'm saying here is I don't really know exactly the moral of the story, but I am giving you an example of how I've learned to just like live life like just embrace it You seem like you're talking about not an end state, but a result of sorts on a journey or a leveling up on on a growth path But I'll be we a few minutes ago you listed these practices that Maslow recommended

I'm just curious are there practices you do that either recommended by Hammers or that you would recommend or that you found elsewhere that have helped you get to this state? Or is it really just that you've had some insights and as a consequence, you're able to laugh at your desire for sleep of Oreos at two in the morning instead of just acting on it? I mean, a lot of reading, like research and reading, reading about what leads to human potential.

And I'm not just saying this because I feel like it's the obvious thing to say, and it's the elephant in the room that I would try to avoid because I don't want to sound trite. But meditation, I wrote an article for a scientific American called a skeptical scientist mindfulness journey, or something like that, those roughly, because I used to be very skeptical meditation. And I took a eight-week MBSR course, I've now taken MBSR course twice, and find that that is wonders for me.

And then, most recently, I've really been getting into Lock Kelly's flavor of mindfulness. And I know if you've ever heard of him, but non-dual mindfulness, I'm sure you've heard of non-dual mindfulness. Have you ever heard of any Lock Kelly's teachings? I know the name, but we don't know each other. He was on my podcast recently and I blew my mind

because there's something that I really like about non-duality and that whole tradition of mindfulness that has done even more wonders for me personally, then the MBSR brand, brand of mindfulness. Can you describe what it is and how it helped you? It's not like a return to the breath. It's a return to one's natural state of being. It's tapping into this natural state of love and pure being that Maslow talked about. You know, when Maslow talks about living in the B realm of unexistence,

in a lot of ways he's saying it's getting back in touch with the child within us. It's getting back in touch with this primal, primal state of being. And what I also like about this form of mindfulness, he calls it effortless attention. He calls it effortless attention. Because you're not trying to transcend the ego. You're actually not trying to transcend anything. You're not trying to get rid of anything. You're not trying to get anywhere.

In fact, if you feel ego, you fully feel it. And then, and this is where the science stops for me. And I start getting into language that is the only kind of language I can use to describe the feeling. Because I still haven't found the certain scientific terms that help me know what it experience, she feels like. This is where that stops.

The science stops in terms of the language. But I start to feel this life energy that is the closest thing I can call to God. I've written about this. I've written, I wrote an article called, What Does God Feel Like? Because it seems to me like it just crossed all different traditions. There still is a common experience. And that's what I'm interested in as a scientist.

But also, you know, as a human who's trying to forge a common connection across all humans. What does God feel like? And there's gotta be something in common. And there is a certain life force that I, when I tap into it, I feel this lightness of being that is so self accepting. But when I tap into it and what's unique for me is it is absurdist as well. There's a certain scop area called

been flavor to it, you know, where I realize, you know, that my contradictions are just absurd is this other person's contradictions. I'm not going to condemn this other person's contradictions because I feel such a great affinity to them. I feel such a great affinity to them. I feel such a love for them. So is this what you were driving at? Low these many minutes right back

at the beginning of our conversation when you said, I asked you what's the punchline? And you said, well, there is no punchline. It's really about, it's really about these plateau experiences that the, I believe use the term lounging in heaven. But he said lounging it's like lounging in heaven but not getting so excited about it. He's saying that because like he used to say that peak experiences were like entering heaven, you know? So he was contrasting at the way he used to talk. He's making fun of even himself.

You know, like yeah, yeah, this is what I love about Masle as well. He used to, like, when he started to have a potto experience, he started kind of rolls eyes at how his descriptions of the peak experience is like the be all and end all of life. And the only way that he faced it is with his own mortality. He had a heart attack about 18 months before he died. The doctor said he needed a rebuild, he needed to rebuild his heart. He could have another heart attack at any point.

And he said, at that point, he started living what he referred to as the post-mortem life. He said, I wish everyone could live a post-mortem life. I wish everyone could die and then come back and be given a certain amount of months to live so that they could experience this. He said it gave him such a deep abiding sense of the miraculous in the everyday that he had taken for granted his whole life. He really believed this is what transcendence is all about. And so the miraculous in every day, which is just a nice way of talking about the plateau

experience, what are the quotidian plateaus that you experience? I'm curious. I get excited by this conversation, like, is to me a plateau experience, being able to be in the flow state with another human to be in the flow state with nature. See, for me, I find the plateau experience experience most likely to happen when I can find something exciting and new in something I talk about all the time. So when I enter these kind of podcasts, I know a rough outline of what I'm gonna say, but I really want to go and I wanna say things

I never said before, I want to learn something new that I never learned before. So I can genuinely say, like, you know, I love this conversation I had with you today, but I love it because I don't really ever know what's going to come out of my mouth. Now, now, and I like that. I just want to go back to just in case you think I'm not listening to you. You, there were a few times where you would say things and I would write it down and I would let, um, now I've let dozens and dozens of minutes go by before I circle back to it. But I feel like now might be the right time

to go back to a very intriguing phrase you dropped a while ago, pseudoauthenticity. What is that? Oh yeah. I wrote an article called Authenticity Under Fire, where I really go into great detail about the science of that. I think that there's a great myth that there's something that we can call the true self or the real self. People keep throwing that phrase around in the spiritual world like it's something that exists. The same people who say there's no such thing as a self, well, then in the next sentence, say, for $5,000,

take my seminar and learn how to discover your true self. It's like, okay, well, I think the next sentence say for five thousand dollars take my seminar and we're not going to discover your true self. It's like, okay, well, I think the right way to look at it is that, you know, authenticity, there's a healthy authenticity that and an unhealthy authenticity. There's a kind of authenticity where it's in the service of growing and forming connections with others. And I just think there's been all different types of unhealthy authenticity. I say, you know, they're people who speak their mind

no matter what, no matter what enters their mind and they view themselves like, so I'm just being authentic. And I say my book, no, you're just being a... You know, there are some people, they're like, well, I actualize all my potentialities and being authentic. It's like, no, you're, you're, um, you have to be a little bit more judicious than that. You know, if you want a healthy form

of authenticity, it's going to help you grow as a whole person and, and form a deeper connection with others. You know, maybe you want a little more intentionality about that. I do think that authenticity can, you're allowed to have a intentionality about your authenticity. You know, it's like these are not dicholomist things, right? And so, again, this is just like my whole framework for healthy and unhealthy. I think that there is a healthy formula of authenticity, which is what side of yourself do you want to be true to? Because I don't think that there is a true self.

I think that part of a route to growth is actually realizing that because a lot of people will do things, you know, you see these politicians, you know, they do all sorts of things and then they have right there, there's their apology on Facebook and they it says like, look, you know, that wasn't the real me, you know, that was, I don't know who that guy was, you know, but as my wife can tell or my friends can tell you the real me is loving care It's like, okay, look hold on like that was the real you But they're also are other real you there are all their aspects of you that are loving There are other aspects of you there. They're beautiful for sure. I'm sure there are yeah

I'm not denying that but I do think a big part of Of root to growth is taking full responsibility for your whole self. On psychological questionnaires, you actually, if you ask people on psychological questionnaires and I call this the authenticity bias, and you ask them which size yourself are, would you call it the real you? You can actually do this in psychological studies, ask people to give them a whole list of adjectives and you say, what's the real you?

People are actually really predictable about this. They put their most moral things as the real them. They say, the moral stuff, that's the real me. Everything else is, that's this person's fault. That's my mom's fault for the way she raised me. You never blamed the mom for your moral stuff. You know, Karl Rogers said that his patients were obsessed with coming to him with the question, who am I doc? Who am I? Now, look, this is such a common reason why people enter psychotherapy. They reach a crisis point of meaning. They reach a crisis point of connection where they say, doc, I don't know who I am anymore. Help me know who I am. But I think that's the wrong question. I think that's the wrong question.

I think that if you do, if you spend your whole life trying to figure out who you are, you wasted your life. I think that the question is, what potentialities within me? Do I want to devote my limited time and space on the surface, cultivating, growing, developing? That's a tangible question you can ask yourself right now and that can fundamentally transform the way you live your life moving forward. To me, that's a good question. I think the who am I question is one that you should just stop worrying about. I think it's a beautiful place to leave it. Just can I get you before we set you free here to plug your podcast, your book, any other resources that we should know about, go for it.

Thank you. Yeah, thank you. I wrote the book called Transcend the New Science of Self-Axualization. I have a podcast, which Dan's been a guest, do you remember being guest on my podcast? Years ago? Of course I do, yes, of course. It's called the Psychology Podcast.

And I just started the center for the science of human potential. And I'm really excited about that and I offer courses and stuff You can check that out at humanpotential.co Thanks. Thanks a lot for giving me the opportunity and just to chat with you today as well Thank you for coming on my cat and I Both thank you Toby. What are you gonna say here? He's saying feed me human All right Scott, thank you.

Appreciate it. Thank you. Thanks again to Scott. That was really fun. We do have one last order of business before we let you go here. And it's a little invitation to participate in this show. We here on the 10% happier podcast are very busy preparing a series of episodes that will be posting in the coming weeks about how to navigate one of the most complex and dominant a lot of people are not going to be able to get a lot of money.

So, I think that's a lot of people are going to get a lot of money. So, I think that's a lot of people are going to get a lot of money. So, I think that's a lot of people are going to get a lot of

money. So, I think that's a lot of people are going to get a lot of Add into the mix the changing nature of work at will employment remote work the gig economy and You have a recipe for frustration burnout and more so in this series of podcast episodes We're going to explore how to better handle your co-workers to boost your resilience in the face of what can sometimes seem like a Sisyphean mountain of work and how to cultivate skills to handle the combination of these two dynamics. We don't want to do these shows without your participation, however. So we're right now, officially inviting you to send us some questions so that we can

learn more about what kinds of challenges you're facing so that we can better craft these episodes to help you out. And we'd like to hear your questions via voice memos so that we can play the questions right here on the show for our experts. To submit a question, just follow the five easy steps that are listed in the show notes. And yeah, thanks. I encourage you to participate. This show is made by Samuel Johns, Gabriels Zuckerman, DJ Kashmir, Justine Davy, Maria Wartell, and Jen Poyant with Audio Engineering by Ultraviolet Audio. And as always, a shout out to my ABC News Comrades, Rye DeTester and Josh Cohan. We'll see you all on Friday for a bonus meditation with one and only Jeff Warren.

Hey, hey, prime members. You can listen to 10% happier early and ad-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 us a solid and tell us all about yourself by completing a short survey at Wondery.com slash survey. Do us a solid and tell us all about yourself by completing a short survey at Wondery.com slash Survey.