THE ED MYLETT SHOW - Fully Live Life with Happiness and Sorrow w/ Susan Cain

Episode Date: July 5, 2022

I think one of the hardest things to do in life is to connect with ALL OF OUR EMOTIONS.Many of us work hard to deny or block out what we perceive to be BAD emotions.  What people don’t realize is that EVERY EMOTION serves a purpose, whether SADNESS and SUFFERING or JOY and BLISS.  Emotions are often paired…UP AND DOWN are two sides of the same mental makeup.If you struggle and sometimes, you’re OVERWHELMED trying to deal with melancholy feelings or depression, pay close attention to what you’re about to hear.That’s because my guest this week, SUSAN CAIN, is an expert at understanding these intense negative feelings and learning how to better manage emotions, especially those that can undermine our happiness. She is the #1 bestselling author of “Bittersweet: How Sorrow and Longing Make Us Whole” and “Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking” which has been translated into 40 LANGUAGES, spent EIGHT YEARS on The New York Times best-seller list, and was named the #1 best book of the year by Fast Company magazine.Susan’s TED TALKS have been viewed over 40 MILLION TIMES and LinkedIn named her the TOP 6th INFLUENCER IN THE WORLD, just behind Richard Branson and Melinda French Gates, among many other well-deserved accolades.Susan is going to teach you why you should embrace negative emotions and answer an important question of imagining what the world would be like with NO SUFFERING OR SADNESS.She’s also going to help you figure out why the way you MEET THE PAIN in your life defines who you are.We’re also going to explore the role of being MELANCHOLY in our lives and dig into the fine line between being melancholy and DEPRESSED.  Those of you who are INTROVERTS (including me!) will be especially interested in what Susan has to say about connecting with others when you’re wired that way.  This week is all about making PEACE with yourself.  Once you understand how all emotions can best serve you, you’ll clear a lot of the mental junk out of your life so you can find BALANCE and HAPPINESS.And Susan Cain is absolutely the right person to help you do that.

This is the end my let's show. All right, welcome back to the show everybody. Today is going to be awesome. And it's this lady in her work has been inspiring me and affecting me for a very, very long time as an introvert. Her work really resonates with me. And her latest book is called Bittersweet, How Sorrow and Longing Make Us Whole. And I'm going to tell you this book spoke to me. I think you're going to learn

a lot today about your emotions, about what is a good emotion or a bad emotion? And why do we label them that way? And I think you're going to learn a lot about yourself for many of us today. And people that you love, and maybe the way they think and operate in different ways. And so I cannot wait to have this conversation. I wish we had five hours with my guest today, Susan Cain. Susan, welcome to the show. And thank you so much. So great to be here with you. It is awesome to have you and your other book, The Power of Introverts in a World that can't stop talking really affected me. And I think these topics are somewhat correlated. So let's let's define some terminology first. Okay. So bittersweet, that's sort of the main title. What is bitter sweetness? I know what it is because I read the book, but I want to get the benefit to the audience. So what's bitter sweetness?

Absolutely. So, you know, we think we tend to think of bitter sweetness as just like a moment in time, right? You know, like you have a bitter sweet experience at a child's graduation, let's say, or walking them down the aisle to wedding or something. And that's true. But bitter sweetness is also a deeper state of mind. It's a, it's a deep recognition of the way that in this life, joy and sorrow are always paired. And that everyone and everyone we know is not here forever, you know, everyone we love best is here for an impermanent moment

in time and that what comes from that recognition somehow, the more you're tuned into that recognition, the more you feel a kind of connection to creativity and human communion and even to transcendence. There feel a kind of connection to creativity and human communion and even to transcendence. There's a kind of deep state of joy at the beauty of the world that that comes from being in that state of mind. Amen. And I felt this, I have felt this since I was a little boy and never had it explained or defined to me. And so when I introduced you and I said that your works deeply affected me, I really mean it because it's explained to me to me in many different ways. In other words, my thick modiance knows me so well by now, but I do. I contemplate the end of life often. And it makes me live more richly in the present, in my opinion. And that

contrast causes me to live richly. I love sad music. And ironically makes me happy when I listen to sad music or just emotional music. And I think we feel like we're supposed to feel sad when we listen to these kinds of songs or have these kind of experiences. But for so many of us, it actually brings us joy. And so it so wonderful, the way that you explain things in this book. And then we're going to go to some tactics and strategies too for everybody to help you, you know, better live if the fact that you kind of are wired like Susan and I are. So the other tandem with bitter sweetness is this concept that we're all longing for something. And I so deeply believe that this is true. And so let's touch a little bit on longing and how it impacts all the areas of our life.

Yeah, and okay, I'm gonna talk about longing in one second, but I just have to say that everything you just said, I can't tell you how much it made my day. I literally have goosebumps as I'm saying this because the thing you said at the beginning of like, oh my gosh, I've been feeling this all my life and never quite understood it. It's like me too.

And that's why I wrote this book. I was like trying to figure out what the heck is this and what's this feeling that I have with sad music. And why does it feel, why does it feel so deep and profound that I can't let it go? It wasn't just like an interesting intellectual question. It was like, I knew there was something really big there. I just didn't know what it was until I started working on this book. So okay, so long. Until you wrote the book. So, so long.

So, longing, I believe that you could call it spiritual longing, you could call it existential longing, if you, you know, to use secular terms, doesn't matter. If, you know, whether you're an atheist or believer, not the point. At the core of the human experience is a kind of deep and existential longing for a place that we feel like we belong to that is more perfect, beautiful, good, true, divine, if you want to call it that, then the world that we currently inhabit. And that's like, we see that manifest in all our religions,

belonging for the Garden of Eden, and Zion, and Mecca, and the beloved of the soul. But then we have all these other manifestations, you know, in Homer's Odyssey. It's like the longing for home. That's what sets Elyseas off on his journey. And Dorothy, somewhere over the rainbow, she's longing for that place, somewhere over the rainbow. There's thousands of expressions of this fundamental longing. And it's the best part of human nature. It's like, it's our core. It is. And it's the acknowledgement that you have in the book that makes me feel so peaceful. And so I'm a, I respect people of all face and all religions.

Anybody listens to my show knows this. I happen to be a Christian. And I have always known that on all of us, there's this calling to want to understand our lives and the purpose of it and to get back to this place that's better than here. And this, I love, this may sound funny to everybody, but it didn't once I read Susan's book,

like I love rainy days. I love it when it's even a little bit right now. It's overcast, I love it the beach, it's an overcast day. And people think I'm strange sometimes, where I go, I actually love the overcast days, better than the bright sunny days. And I found that some people think I'm crazy, but the majority of people, I mean, go, you know what, me too.

And when I listen to sad music, it ironically, the contrast, the duality somehow, the complexity of both emotions. And so why are we starting to show with this? Because I think the overall premise here is that it's okay to embrace these thoughts and these emotions and it enriches our lives, whereas culture, and I'll let you speak to this, society sort of tells us to avoid and to suppress these supposedly negative emotions. I write a new book, The Power of One More. I don't think there are positive or negative emotions. They're just our emotions. I also think maybe the, an overabundance of one or the other can become unhealthy to some extent. And you write about that as well. But just speak to that again about it's okay to embrace these other states of being to enrich

in our overall life experience. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, we actually found, you know, from the different research that I did for the book, that this state of mind that you're talking about, you know, the love of rainy days, love of sad music, all these things, it is intrinsically connected to states of creativity. It is connected to a sense of human bonding. It's connected to a sense of transcendence. And as you said, yes, we were living in a culture that is telling us not to go there

because we're supposed to be so cheerful and upbeat all the time to use your metaphor of weather. You're only supposed to admit to liking sunny days. It's like, as he's saying, it's seen as weird to, why would you like an overcast cloudy day? What's wrong with you? And that's cutting us off, not only from the truth of our emotions, but from some of our, the best parts of ourselves, the best parts of ourselves. That's the, that's the crazy part of it.

I agree. And you also talk about and I'm talking a lot about this myself. I don't know if it's my age or stage of life, but imagine a world you say in the book with no sadness, loss or suffering. And what we think we would want in a world like that is, oh, we would just all be happy all the time, but you submit sort of a different belief system about that. If there was never any sadness or loss or suffering, what do you think the world would be like? Well, I have to say this one's a complicated question because, I mean, no one is giving me this magic wand, but if I had a magic wand and, you know, we're offered the chance to remake the world without sadness, loss, or suffering. Honestly, I probably do it. So my point is not like, yay, sadness,

yay suffering at all. My point is more that this is the world that we live in. The world that we live in is a world that contains joy and sorrow, you know, sadness and happiness, light and dark, all of it. That's that's our world. And in that. So first of all, to be able to look at the truth of that world and speak the truth is a huge thing in and of itself. And in that world that we have, it so happens that being attuned to life's fragility

as all these other benefits to it, you know, that it connects us first of all, because the fact is we're all in it together, you know, we're all in the same strange state of exile from the Garden of Eden. We just are. And the fact that you're an exile and I'm an exile and so is everybody listening, there's no greater bond than that, really. And you just nailed it. I love it. That is what bonds us together. And I think that why I think this is so important, why I wanted to cover it early in the conversation

was that I feel like people who think if they do experience sadness or they do experience some form of suffering or melancholy or even anxiety or fear that somehow now they're disqualified from the other emotions that I'm not supposed to have any if I have any pain or I have any suffering or sadness. That means I also can't be happy, blissful, passionate, or have ecstasy in my life. That's a great lie. It's absolutely not true, correct? Correct, correct, correct.

Yeah, it's like I actually often think on this topic and on all topics, if everyone could just embrace the idea, both these things are true. Like two things can be true at the same time. We'd all be so much better off with our politics with everything. But anyway, we can be and are happy and sad. That's just that is the nature of life. And some people do, you know, 10 more to the cheerful, and some people do 10 more to the gloomy, but that doesn't matter for all humans, we experience it all.

You say that the way we need our pain defines who we are. And I want you to elaborate on that. I've been saying lately that, you know, on the other side of temporary pain, oftentimes we get introduced to another self. DeP the pulling hill says that and think and grow rich. And I find that when I speak about pain, so when I speak about winning and competing and achievement, I get incredible responses from people. But when I speak about pain and suffering and even death and that, you know, that it will come for us at some point, I've been speaking a lot lately about

my father's passing, that the depth of emotion, the depth of the energy, the depth of the feeling is maybe a hundred times greater. What I touch on those topics, then just the good stuff of winning and competing and achievement. So what do you mean when you say the way we meet our pains defines who, their pain defines who we are. We have a choice with our pain, which comes into every life. And the choice is we can either try to suppress it and ignore it. And if we do that inevitably, we are going to end up taking it out on ourselves and the form of depression or something like that, or on the people around us, or we have the choice

of being with it and acknowledging it, and it's not fun by definition, it's not fun. But there's a way in which we can transform or like try to transform that pain into something else. I mean, I think that's that's the heart of the creative impulse for most creative people. They're like looking at something painful in their life. They're looking at their sense of longing and they're trying to turn it into something else and something more beautiful. Is there a practical thing you can do every day to do that. In other words, when you are feeling these emotions of, I don't know, for me, it's not always pain. Sometimes it's just like melancholy or I think that's the right word for it for me. Sometimes it is melancholy feeling about things that I enjoy sitting in for a while. But is there a strategy that you use? Other is because there's a bunch in the book. But is there one thing you would say to someone who says, maybe I'm, maybe I'm OD on Mel and Cully. Now, I need to turn it into something powerful.

I mean, I guess the question is, are you talking about being in a state of mind where you are enjoying it and grieving on it, in which case, I don't think you need to do anything differently? Like when you're in that state of mind, I'm like, oh, you know, the sky is so overcast and I'm loving this music. That, that's the state and of itself that to cultivate. But if you're talking about, well, I'm in a state where, where the pain is actually really painful, that's different. And a great technique for that is something called expressive writing, which I talk about in the book. And it's basically just the sheer act of just writing down what you're feeling without

any thought of publishing it or anything like that, quite the opposite. You know, get it out, write it down, rip it up. And this is based on studies from a guy named James Pena Baker at UT Austin. He's done all these crazy studies showing how powerful the sheer act of writing things down is it improves your health, literally your blood pressure improves your success outcomes in life greater sense of well-being so it's a way of so we have discharging what you're feeling but also what you end up doing when you write it down is your sense making you're like making sense of what's happening And you're figuring out how you want to move forward with whatever is just caused you this pain.

The reason I ask you that is because in the book, you sort of state this belief system that I agree with that maybe these are the emotional states of creativity. And that when we look at art often times, it is born out of these sort of emotions. When we listen to music that really moves us, it's born out of them. Even comedy, ironically, more interesting. Yeah, Ironically, most comedians are touching on something

uncomfortable, painful, or the ironies of life. And so most art, why do I say this to everybody? Because I have the benefit, when I experience these things, I create speeches that I give, or books that I write, or podcasts that I'm gonna do, or content that I create. But a lot of people just sort of sit in these emotions and you asked earlier Which is it for me? And I think most human beings would say this it depends on the day It depends on how long and so I want you to talk about this because I just want to ask you this personally

There's a point in time where I'm in these states of contemplating, you know, you say the fragility of life and how you understand Death has a lot to with how you live I'd like you to touch on that give give you a long answer here, give you a long runway. So there's that. And I do that a lot. Or just allowing myself to sit in a state of it, it doesn't always have to be 150 degrees of bliss all the time. It's okay to sit on an iconic misty day and just enjoy the gray a little bit. Now, having said that, I think most people who have that precivity, predisposition or even disposition, which may be all of us, you can then sit in it a little too long, though. And that's what I mean by the abundance of an

emotion, right? There's a point where you're going, now I'm not creating out of the state. Now it's impacting me the other way where it paralyzes me or freezes me or makes me tired. It can even impact your energy level. So what would you say about all that? Yeah, these are amazing questions. So first of all, in terms of the creative idea, one of the things I say in the book

is whatever pain you can't get rid of make that your creative offering. And as you say, there's just so many studies and so many examples that I talk about the ways in which creators do exactly that. And it's not an accident that so many of our great creatives over time were orphaned before the age of 18, like an astonishing percentage of them lost one or both parents before age 18, because that's what they're doing, clearly. They're figuring out how to take that ultimate longing that they're left with and turn it into something else. But to your other question of, like, how do you know when it's just right or too much? It's a really important point because I, when it's just right or too much. It's a really important point because there's a kind of

happy and creative state of melancholy that we were just talking about. And then I think farther down that spectrum, you get to something that looks more like clinical depression, where it's very difficult to be creative when you're actually depressed. I mean, depression is more about like an emotional numbness and a hopelessness and a sense of disconnection, whereas the happy melancholy we were talking about, you're feeling intensely connected. So the thing to do is to sort of tune in to where you are in that spectrum, right? And if you feel you're slipping towards something that resembles clinical depression, like that's a time to get help as opposed to only thinking, well, how can I, you can keep on trying to turn it into something else, but you also might need to be looking to outside resources for help.

What about this boot? I think it's a Buddhist practice you talk about in the book called Metta. Is that what it's called? Oh, yeah, yeah. What is that? I think this is a tool that could be used by people. It's sort of in all situations, but maybe particularly the one that I'm discussing. If you could just get into that just for a second, I think it's super powerful.

Yeah, absolutely. So meta is a practice that basically means loving kindness, meditation. And, um, and I'm actually, by the way, I'm creating my own loving kindness meditation, which will be up on my website in the next month or so for people who are interested in doing my version of it. And that's Susan Cain.net, if you're curious. But loving kindness meditation, it's basically a form of meditation in which you, you know, actively and consciously wish actively and consciously wish well-being, peace, you know, good things, love to... Interestingly, classically, you first wish it to yourself. And then after that, you wish it to people who you know very well, to acquaintances. Ultimately,

you wish it to the difficult people in your life, in your life. You kind of like move outward from there. What's interesting is for a lot of Americans, they have a lot of trouble beginning with wishing these good things to themselves. So very often, people need to turn it upside down and wish it to other people first before they feel comfortable getting around to their own selves. There's no magic, though. You can do it in either direction. My favorite time in church, I was either direction. My favorite time in church I was raised Catholic. My favorite time in church and when you're a little kid in Catholic church,

there's a lot of stand-up sit down kneel. You know, we're going to say the R-Fod, there's a repetitive nature to the service. And my favorite part of church on Sundays was the one little moment where you get to turn to your neighbor and say, peace be with you. Oh, yeah. And I love that part of church. In fact, I miss it because I don't go to that church any longer. And my dad said to me when I was a little guy, and this is even one of my dad was drinking,

because he was still a really good man. He goes, you know, I do that quietly all the time when I pass strangers. I said, what do you mean, dad? And he goes, oh, when I pass someone like I open a door, I'm in an elevator. I'll just quietly say peace be with you. I wish you peace. And he said, even when people walk by us in restaurants, I'd say, I'll do that. And that's a practice that I've, I've had all my life because a lot of times with parents,

things are caught, not taught, right? Yes. One of the greatest gifts I give myself all the time is on my quiet prayers. When I see somebody, I'll even see a family at the table and just get peace be with you. And just that feeling feels so good to connect with someone's soul who may not even consciously know you're connecting with them, but I have this belief system that subconsciously, spiritually from an energetic soul perspective, they do feel it. And so I love that you bring that up.

I completely agree with you. I have total goosebumps listening to the fact that you do that. And I think not only from a soul perspective, even if you look at it just from a human evolution perspective, we are designed to pick up on each other's cues and we do it in a thousand ways that we're not even consciously aware of, which is so I think people would be picking it up, you know, from you saying that. And that's exactly what practicing meta does. Like I notice whenever I'm not as good as I should be about doing

this all the time, but I notice whenever I do practice it, you know, then I go out into the world and I'm just sort of like automatically doing some version of what you just said. Do you know why it works for someone like you and I and almost everybody listening? Because it's going to go to the other thing I want to talk about, which is that I'm an introvert. And so people say, don't ever label yourself as an introvert. No, I'm introverted. And I love that I'm introverted. And I wanted to, the reason I share this, what do you want to call a technique or strategy that my dad taught me? It's just really an active kindness. It's not really a strategy.

But it's also something an introvert could do because you don't have to say anything to give someone a prayer. So it's my way of connecting with someone in the unspoken way. And I may never, I mean, there's the truth, I've connected with millions of people this way, probably in my life, that I've actually never spoken to.

And what I think a much deeper connection than, hi, how are you? Good, have a great day. I think much deeper connection than, hi, how are you? Good. Have a great day. I think much deeper connection is to say, peace be with you or, you know, I wish you a beautiful day. I wish you bliss. Like I love saying that quietly to myself for another person. Don't you agree? Oh my gosh. I absolutely love it. And I am sure you're radiating something at them when you're doing it. I feel that way too. I do too. I'll give you another version of something like that that I do.

It's almost like the flip side of what you just described. So I wrote in the book about this video that the Cleveland Clinic put out that went viral. Cleveland Clinic is a hospital and the video was designed to teach empathy to their caregivers. And so what this video did, it takes you through the hallways of the hospital and you're passing all these random people who you normally wouldn't think one way or another. Except in this case, there are these little captions that are underneath each random person as you pass them by. And the captions tell you what the person is going through at that moment.

And sometimes it's happy things. Like, you know, just found out he's gonna be a father for the first time. But more often because it's a hospital, the captions are things like, you know, under a little girl going to say goodbye to her father for the last time. Like, like these heartbreaking things,

you cannot watch this video without tearing up. It's impossible. So once I saw this video, I started to do this practice where I just try to imagine what people's captions are as I pass them by, you know, just in every day life. I love it. And I don't know the answers, but there's something about wondering what they are that makes you interact with them completely differently, you know, and care about them in a different way. I love you. I do that too. And I sometimes, perhaps I'm making it up in my mind, and I'm just going to say, so I've never said this before. I've never thought about it consciously to eat your stomach, but we get everyone gets to listen to you and I talk about this, which is cool, right?

thought about it consciously to eat your set of it. We get everyone gets to listen to you and I talk about this, which is cool, right? This is no longer a podcast. It's just you and I talking. But oftentimes, oh my gosh, this just confirms what you believe so much more deeply. It just dawned on me. I do do that quietly when I watch people or I'm in a place and it's harder and harder and more well known. You are to do it intimately because someone sees you than they know you. So that's a little harder than it used to be for me. But I do do it. And I also, ironically, sometimes sense their pain. And I almost project a story onto them in my mind about what they are insecure or they feel invisible. Oftentimes, because I think these folks feel so invisible, this is my way of seeing them, even though maybe auditory-wise, they don't know it. And so I actually, it makes me really even confirm your work even more because I don't usually

picture them in their most blissful or happy state, I picture them in their pain and their sadness, and that just must prove even more deeply. That's how we connect with one another. we connect with one another. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, we're designed to do it, right? Like we, the species wouldn't survive if we couldn't look after helpless children who come into this world as crying infants. Like that's what we do. And because of that, like that, that ability radiates outward from there. So, um, if, by the way, if people wonder whether this is true, given this stat, see, if I'm a business person listening to this,

like, okay, what's the business? I'll give you the research. Yeah, I, the business application of this is, maybe you should stop always trying to connect with people on their victory and their wins and what you or your company can do for them, but begin to connect much more deeply with people which is their pain and their anxieties and their fears and their story, their sadness. I think you'd find you'd connect a whole lot more deeper even as a busy person, but give us the research,

especially the one about the songs on the playlist. Oh, yeah. Okay. It was both. Okay. So the song is on the playlist. Well, there's a lot to say about that. First of all, people whose favorite songs are sad songs like you, we'll start with the other way. People whose favorite songs are their happy upbeat songs. They listen to them about 175 times. People like you who love the sad songs, 800 times. Crazy. And we also know that the songs that make people feel, you know, the chills and the goose bumps and the real feels, they're the sad songs.

They're always the sad songs. And people will say, this is what makes me feel connected to, you know, to the sublime, to the wondrous, to something outside myself. It's always the sad songs. I love it. I love it. I want everyone to know that. And by the way, you and I both always want to give the caveat.

We like sunny days. Yes. We like happy songs too. Just we kind of have a tendency towards the other. So you're also going to talk about this research, where I was talking about from a business standpoint. I think you're going to kind of confirm some of that research. Oh, yeah.

Well, what I wanted to say about people connecting to each other through their sadness. So there's this amazing psychologist, who's story I tell in the book, because name is Dacker Keltner. And he, he's done all this groundbreaking research, proving what he calls the compassionate instinct in people. And compassion, what it literally means that word is with sorrow, like with suffering.

So it means, you know, you're reacting to somebody else's pain or distress, the way you were just saying. So he's, he's located this in our bodies basically. Like if you yeah, just one example and there's a whole bunch of them but we have a what's called a Vegas nerve. It's the biggest bundle of nerves in our bodies. It governs our breathing and our digestion. So it's very fundamental to who we are and to our survival. And also, when you see another being in pain, your vagus nerve becomes very activated. Yes. So it's like the same nerve that's helping you breathe is also telling you to respond to the pain of the person to whom you've just wished well in the grocery store.

Like that's how we're designed. I love it. I just think everyone maybe this could give you a different perspective on how you interact and view humans and one another. I don't think even Susan you know how big this theory is and that I'm validating as a truth. Because I think taken to its logical extension would change the way that humanity interacts with one another. How we treat one another are religious and political differences. Are there slight nuances that make us different?

This is what would connect people in a much more kind way. It would give leaders of companies and teams and businesses and countries a completely different perspective on how to lead and connect with people and bring them together. So I love love this work. I have to share something with you about this connecting with people with their pain and it'll take me a minute. But my audience knows some of this, but here's how correct your work is.

My dad was an alcoholic and a little bit of a drug addict. And the biggest decision of my lifetime was my dad getting sober. And he stayed sober for the rest of his life, like 35 years. But about three weeks ago, I read your book because I were going to do this. And the next night's season, I just want to share with you how profound this work is and these thoughts are for everybody. So I read your book, I read it in a sitting.

And that night I went to bed. Oh, excuse me, the next night when I went to sleep, I had this vivid dream of something I didn't realize that I'm 51 years old and that is that someone helped my dad and some precious soul step forward and helped my father get sober and the darkest moment of his life. When he was losing his family, maybe losing his life and some precious human connected with my dad and changed my family forever, changed my great-grancho and people listening to this, you wouldn't be listening to this. And guess how he connected with my dad? Through their shared pain and suffering, that person was also an alcoholic, also a drug

addict. They knew the shame, they knew the fear, they knew the embarrassment, they knew the frustration, they knew the depression that came with the patterns of behavior. Had that person connected with my dad through bliss and sunshine and rainbows or their own perfection, their own lack of pain, but they would have never been able to help my father. They reached my dad through connecting through shared suffering, through shared pain, and then from there said, here's how I can help you.

So from every perspective in life, the connecting point is here and's how I can help you. So from every perspective in life, the connecting point is here. And then how I can help you. Isn't that a great example? Oh my God. It's an amazing, amazing, amazing example. Thank you so much for sharing that. And I think I don't have that dream if I don't read your book the day before. I don't, because it opens up. That's why art, this podcast, it'll just, I guarantee everybody, there's millions of people listening to this driving in their car on the treadmill or with their family. They're looking at the person, the next person, they see just a little bit

differently, looking at the backseat at their babies and they're looking at someone at the grocery store and they're going to think about their friends differently. And this is where change comes from. The other thing though, I have to ask you about. I just want to say I totally agree. And I have thought this before about our hopelessly divided politics and culture and religion everything that I think what we should be doing is figuring out spaces for people just to be able to share their stories and share the pains that they've gone through without it being connected at least temporarily, without it being connected to any call for policy change or a political agenda or anything like that, just for people from different backgrounds, from red, from blue, from everywhere,

to just tell their stories. That's it. I love it. I've actually believed that, you know, I get asked sometimes about how we're run for office and that's highly unlikely. But I do believe that that's where change comes from. It's just saying, just please hear me and listen to me. And then you can reach your own conclusions. It's when they think that there's a hook coming or a pitch or a close or something we want you to do is when people are turned off.

And I think if you just say, just please hear me. Whatever you believe about guns or no guns or school security or mental health, whatever the issues are, to hear some of these parents that just have this tragedy happen in Texas. And just to hear their pain, just just hear them. Many of them have differing views themselves on what should be done about it. But you would reach a more beautiful and correct conclusion if you just listened to people and heard their pain and heard their suffering. Now, I want to talk about being an introvert. Because it's all linked together for me. Do you think someone is born an introvert,

number one, and why is there power in introverted people? Oh gosh. I think many people are born with a temperament that predisposes them to introversion, but you can't say that for every one person. I mean, what we know is it's one of the more heritable of all the personality traits, but there's no such thing as anything that's all nature or all nurture. But we definitely know that there's a lot of babies who are born into this world with a more sensitive nervous system, which makes them react more to all the different stimuli that come their way. So when those babies are two years old and you put them in a playgroup of kids they've never seen before, they're going to experience that as an over stimulating

event. So those kids are going to react like, you know, they're going to they're going to experience that as an over stimulating event. So those kids are going to react like, you know, they're going to, they're going to clam up until they start to process all the different stimuli and feel like, okay, now I can join in. So yeah, and then there's other kids who are born with a temperament where they don't notice any of that stuff. And so they can just plunge right in, right away. temperament where they don't notice any of that stuff. And so they can just plunge right in right away. Why did you call it the power of introverts? That was interesting. My book's called The Power of One More. There's a common theme here, but why is it the power of introverts? Because I see introversion just the way I see ittersweetness as we were just talking about. I see them both as kind of hidden superpowers,

you know, hidden because we live in a culture that wants everything to be extroverted and cheerful. But like with introversion, the power is that if you are spending more time in quiet, which you're gonna be doing by virtue of your nature. You're, by definition, going to be spending more time listening because you're not as interested in talking. You want to be listening more.

You're going to be spending more time in states of deep focus or the creative process itself involves solitude. We tend to think of it now as this big, you know, festive collaborative activity, and it is partly that. But we know that creativity actually can't happen without some element of solitude, which if you're an introvert, just comes that much more naturally to you. And then there's also the, the less expected powers, like even when it comes to leadership, where people really expect introverts would be at a disadvantage. Yet if you look at the data, introverted leaders deliver outcomes that are as good as or in some cases better than extroverts, in part because, well partly because of that listening

tendency, but also because introverts are more likely to be seeking out what the people they lead have to offer, like hearing from them, finding out what those things are, and then running with those ideas. Whereas if you have a personality that's more dominant, more irrepressible, you're going to be running with your own ideas much more, just because that's your nature. It doesn't come from conceit. It just comes from like a, you know, put a tendency to put your own stamp on things. Yeah. If you made any connection, you're so right between someone who maybe sits in that state of, I don't know what you want to call it, reflection, sadness, sorrow, whatever that state might be and being introverted. Do you think there's a connection between those two things at all? Oh, well, this is so interesting. Okay. So in the BitterSweet

book, you saw there's there's quiz that you can take. And that's on my website too. If for people who want to just do it quickly, take like two minutes, you find out how pro new are to the state of Bitter sweetness. Okay. So then we took the quiz and saw what the correlations were. And I expected that there would be a high correlation with introversion, and there wasn't. But the high correlation was with a different related, sort of cousin state to introversion called high sensitivity, which is the state that Elaine Aaron,

the psychologist discovered. And if you're a highly sensitive person, you basically react that much more intensely to everything that life throws your way. So the beautiful sunsets are going to feel that much more beautiful to you. An upsetting experience with a colleague, a conflict with a colleague is going to probably hurt you that much more or upset you that much more. That's the state of sensitivity. And there seems to be a really strong correlation with sensitivity and bitter sweetness. I love it. Why am I talking about this at length so much, guys? I'd like you all just to embrace this part of you, or at least be open to the fact that you may have more of it than you realize.

Maybe you've been programmed to just any time sadness comes suppress it, any time pain comes, suppress it or frustration, even loss. I mean, and loss can be a loved one, loss can be someone said an unkind word to you, loss can be you missed a sale today in a business. This is loss and how you respond, you ask this question in the book and like you'd answer it to, what do you do when pain comes? And that's a powerful question. Everyone should be asking themselves too. But what do you, what should someone do when pain comes? Susan, what would you say?

That's a tough, tough question. Yeah, and I mean, I think that one really does depend on the nature of the pain and the person involved, because everybody responds so differently to these kinds of things. I just went through, I just went through a succession of bereavements during COVID. I lost my father and my brother. Wow, I'm so sorry. Oh, I mean, thank you. And for me, I was like, partly because I'm an introvert,

I guess, but I'm sure it's other things too. Like I really wanted to process all of that pretty privately. And I turned it into creativity pretty quickly. Like I start writing things down. But then my literary agent, my people of a literary agent, he lost his wife to ALS not long after. And for him, he's been doing this series, like all his clients have come together and we do, we get together with him for virtual Zoom sessions.

It started out as a memorial service, but now we do it like every week or every two weeks. And he says a prayer and we talk together. And for him, that's like incredibly sustaining through his pain. So I think it really is a matter of turning into what each individual heart needs and not expecting that there is going to be one cure all the way to go. Yeah, but as it comes to grieving, you actually say in the book, I told you, I read every page over and over, you talk about in grieving that oftentimes it's again it's the same sort of societal bias against these sorts of emotions. But hey, let it go, you know, right? Like as if sitting with grieving or some pain or discomfort

is such a terrible thing, you talk about use those terminology, that terminology, this soon will pass, you know, and let it go or these other things with grieving, and you say, well, hold on a minute. What would you say about that? Yeah, so let it go to me. Let it go. It's a very complicated concept, really, because I do find a lot of sustenance in it, and at the same time, there's something in that phrase of let it go that's a kind of like more polite version of move on, you know, get over it, get over it. And I think what we need to do is not get over it until we're ready to get over it. And the great news is for many people, we actually are way more, we know this from research, where most people are way more resilient to grief than we expect we're going to be, although never goes away completely. And then some people are not. So there's a different

formulation that I talk about in the book that I like better than let it go. And this one comes from the writer Nora McKinnerney. And she talks about the difference between moving on and moving forward. And moving on is kind of like get over it already. Just get on with your life. Moving forward is much more the idea that you are going to go ahead with your life, but you're going to carry with you forever, the person who you've lost. And you're going to carry that grief with you to some degree forever as well. But your life is going to go on as you carry that person with you. So you don't, you're not asking yourself ever to have to leave that person behind or even to leave your grief behind, but there's a way,

there's a way of kind of having both of moving forward with your life while you carry that person with you. And I'll say, yeah, like this is something I've really, I've noticed this with my father, like, you know, like in the time right after I lost him, like there was, there were just like a million times where I would think, oh, I want to call down and tell him about such and such. Yeah. And I don't do that as much now, but there is a sense of like carrying him with me. Like he's the one who taught me to love music so much and I'll listen to music and be with him. It's in a different way, though. It's in a moving forward type of way, but I like it with me. I like I like this moving forward instead of moving on. That's also true in relationships. We

agree with a lot of things. Not just the pasting of people. We can agree with a relationship and I have a really good girlfriend of mine who all of our friends keep telling me you need to let it go. So let them go. We're of you. Merid. Stop it. You don't even think about it anymore. You know, that's the typical advice. And so she and I were talking and I go, I don't agree with that. And I said, there's some there's some beauty in grieving the relationship. There's also some lessons in that grieving that you might need to carry with you. And I said, sister, I've known you a long time. You keep dating the same dude.

It's just with a different name. It's the same guy. And that's because from every relationship, you just moved on. What she needs to do is move forward and carry some of the lessons of what she's looking for, maybe more importantly, what she's not looking for in her relationships. And without some grieving and reflection, you don't learn those lessons if you just drop it all together. Yeah.

And I think that we have such a circumscribed Understanding of what grief is. I think this is what you keep getting out with these questions and psychologists even talk about this And they call it disenfranchised griefs, you know, so we're like we're we're pretty much okay with the idea that Bereavement like flat-out bereavement is something that's worthy of grieving though even there We want it to last for five minutes and then be done. But when it comes to other kinds of griefs, like the ones you're, you know, breakups or like financial worries or someone said something mean to you online or whatever it is, like those are griefs also that we need to be dealing with as such. And yeah, like thinking about your friend, if she could go into an actual

morning and figure out what she is, what did she lose before? She ever even met the first of those boyfriends. What did she lose first? Because that's what she's still trying to reclaim. Yeah, everything there's a lesson in it. And if you just move on or you're just in bliss and you're just part of the encelebrating all the time, perhaps one of the things that robs you from is the lessons in life that can create a much more deeper level of happiness and bliss, a deeper relationship or a better business so that we grow from it. So I just love this.

So, okay, someone runs into you tomorrow and they said, I heard you on Ed Mylette show, I cannot believe how profound this work is. I've never heard anything like this before. And I wish he would have asked you X, Y, or Z. What did I not ask you today about your work that I should have asked you? Oh gosh, that's such a hard question. I know, that's why I'm giving it to you.

Because I'm thinking, I've got my part, I pull from the book, the things that I, you know, that I want to learn. But is there a tactic or a strategy in the book or a thought process about this overall topic that I just did not ask you? Okay, so you know as soon as we hang up, I'm going to think of the one that I super wanted to tell you. But, but this is a big one that I'm about to think of the one that I super wanted to tell you, but this is a big one that I'm about to say. So, as you know, part of what I did in the book was, I really looked at a lot of different wisdom and religious traditions to understand what they had to say about this bittersweet nature of life. And there's so many amazing things. But there's one parable that comes from

the Kabbalah, which is the mystical side of Judaism. And knowing this one parable has helped me so much to live with the way in which this world has so much joy and so much suffering and like how do you live with those two things together? Okay, so it's like a metaphor and the idea is that all of creation was originally one intact divine vessel, but that the vessel shattered and that the world that we're living in now is the world after the shattering. So it's the broken world. But it's not totally broken. It's not complete bloom because this world has, we have scattered all around us, the shards from that broken but divine vessel. So they're these shards of light scattered all around us.

And we're all going to notice different ones. So you're going to, you're going to spot different ones from the ones that I would. But our job in this life is just to bend down and pick them up, wherever we find them. Just bend down and pick them up, and that's it. So it's not to say we're going to get to perfection, because I actually think that the expectation of perfection or utopia on this earth is incredibly destructive. So it's putting utopia to the side. It's just saying they're glimpses of it and train your eyes on them. Oh my gosh, that's so good, Susan.

I think that you are part of that light in the world. You have been for me very rarely have I read something or experienced someone's work that so deeply helped me understand myself better and affected me deeply. And I know that this is a different topic than what people are used to hearing on every podcast they're on. And I think it may be one of the most important ones I've ever had because of the ability to connect with yourself differently and also connect with other people. And that just makes you a better person, a better husband, wife, parent, business person, person of your faith. These things really,

really matter to you. Susan, I think you're a remarkable woman with with such a kind heart. And I love that you're definitely an introvert as we're connecting here. I connect with you on that level. And you show your power because this book is absolutely incredible and so are you. So thank you for today. Oh my gosh. Thank you so much Ed. I mean, such a joy to be able to talk to you. And I'm sure all your guests feel this way after they talk to you. But I really do hope we can stay in touch because it's amazing to talk and to connect. I love that. I would love that.

And I'll give you my word that will do that. So, hey, everybody, today is special. And I hope that you have already thought of a person or two that you'd like to share this with, share this episode with. And I'd encourage you to do it right now because I think it'll deeply affect them and help them understand themselves, the world, maybe the both of you together with one another. So please share this go get bittersweet from Susan Kane, how Sarwin longing make us whole and

go pick up my book, The Power of One, Morris, the number one book in the world right now. Please go pick that bed. Yep, as well. All right, God bless you. You're amazing. Take care, everybody max out. This is the Edm Mylich Show.