The One You Feed - How to Choose Growth with Scott Barry Kaufman & Jordyn Feingold

Episode Date: September 13, 2022

Scott Barry Kaufman, Ph.D., is a cognitive scientist and humanistic psychologist exploring the depths of human potential. He is a professor at Columbia University and director of the Center for Human Potential. Dr. Kaufman has authored 10 books and is host of The Psychology Podcast. In 2015, he was named one of “50 groundbreaking scientists who are changing the way we see the world” by Business Insider.   Jordyn H. Feingold, MD, MAPP, MSCR is a resident physician in psychiatry at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in NYC, well-being researcher, and positive psychology practitioner. Her research and clinical interests involve protecting and promoting health care worker and patient well-being and incorporating positive psychology approaches into health care delivery. In this episode, Eric talks to Scott and Jordyn about their book, Choose Growth: A Workbook for Transcending Trauma, Fear, and Self-Doubt But wait, there’s more! The episode is not quite over!! We continue the conversation and you can access this exclusive content right in your podcast player feed. Head over to our Patreon page and pledge to donate just $10 a month. It’s that simple and we’ll give you good stuff as a thank you!   Scott Barry Kaufman, Jordyn Feingold, and I Discuss How to Choose Growth and … Their book, ChooseGrowth: A Workbook for Transcending Trauma, Fear, and Self-Doubt How practicing what is uncomfortable will lead to growth Understanding the relationship between security and growth The importance of the word “yet” and how it creates a belief that change is possible How growth is about finding the balance between doing and being Healthy transcendance includes fusing the connection of self with the world The self actualization process and getting in touch with our potential Learning to embrace our character strengths as our super powers How we can improve our weaknesses by using our top strengths The importance of defining our values and what matters most to us Closing the gap between how we’re living and the values that we hold Scott & Jordyn Links: Scott’s Website Scott’s Twitter Facebook Jordyn’s Twitter Jordyn’s Website By purchasing products and/or services from our sponsors, you are helping to support The One You Feed and we greatly appreciate it. Thank you! If you enjoyed this conversation with Scott Barry Kaufman and Jordyn Feingold, check out these other episodes: Living a Transcendant Life with Scott Barry Kaufman (2020) Fixed and Growth Mindset with Carol DweckSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Welcome to The One You Feed. Throughout time, great thinkers have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have. Quotes like, garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you think, ring true. And yet, for many of us, our thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity, self-pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't have instead of what we do. We think things that hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking.

Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort to make a life worth living. This podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction, how they feed their good wolf. I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together, our mission on the Really Know Really podcast is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like

why the bathroom door doesn't go all the way to the floor, what's in the museum of failure, and does your dog truly love you? We have the answer. Go to reallyknowreally.com and register to win $500, a guest spot on our podcast, or a limited edition signed Jason bobblehead. The Really No Really podcast. Follow us on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Thanks for joining us. Our guests on this episode, that's two, are Scott Barry Kaufman, who's been on the show before. He's a cognitive scientist and humanistic psychologist exploring the depths of human potential. He's a professor at Columbia University and director of the Center for Human Potential. Scott has also authored 10 books and is host of the Psychology Podcast. In 2015, he was named one of the 50 groundbreaking scientists who are changing the way we see the world by Business Insider. And also on the episode is Jordan Feingold, a resident physician in psychiatry at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City. She's a well-being researcher and positive psychology practitioner. Her research and clinical interests involve protecting and

promoting healthcare worker and patient well-being and incorporating positive psychology approaches into healthcare delivery. Jordan is also co-author of Choose Growth, a workbook for transcending trauma, fear, and self-doubt. Hi, Scott. Hi, Jordan. Welcome to the show. Hi, Eric. Thank you so much for having us on. It's a real honor to be on your podcast. It's good to see you again. I don't know when we had you on. I think it was after your book before this one was released. So it's been a couple years. You and Jordan have just released a new book called Choose Growth, a workbook for transcending trauma, fear, and self-doubt.

And we're going to get into that book in a moment, but we have to start the podcast like we always do with the parable. I'm going to ask this to Jordan because, Scott, you've already had a chance to answer this once. In the parable, there's a grandparent who's talking with their grandchild and they say, In life, there are two wolves inside of us that are always at battle. One is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and bravery and love. And the other is a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and bravery and love. And the other is a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And the grandchild stops and thinks about it for a second, looks up at their grandparents, says, well, which one wins? And the grandparent says, the one you

feed. So I'd like to start off by asking you what that parable means to you in your life and in the work that you do. Oh, I love this so much. And I only wish now that I could remember how Scott answered this, because I worry that my answer is going to be similar to what he said. So Scott, of course, what comes to mind is Rollo May, that we are full of potentialities for both good and evil. And it is the daimonic that can take over the whole being. And of course, we are not just one wolf. We have all of these potentialities inside of us and multiple potentialities toward good, evil, and all of that in between. And the idea in what we talk about in our book and what I help my patients with in the psychiatry setting is that we don't

necessarily want to starve the evil potentiality, but welcome it in and understand from a trauma informed perspective how that wolf got to be who it is. And rather than suppress it or push it aside, learn to welcome it in and nurture it. And maybe with a lot of love and tender kindness, that wolf won't be so evil after all. And how can we bring it into the pack and befriend it and really understand how it came to be, just like we can honor those dark parts of ourselves. I love that. In your book, I pulled that line out from Rollo May also saying that virtually all humans are bundles of both evil and good potentialities. And so, that got my attention

in the latest book. Scott, anything you want to add to that? Well, even Rollo May, you know, made a mistake there by labeling evil, you know, potentialities as evil. I guess he's saying they're potentialities. But we don't always know what potentialities we think are good will actually turn out to be evil, right? There's a lot of things that were done in the name of good that turned out to be evil. So, I think the point there, and I guess I'm correcting Roel May, is that we have lots of potentialities. We have some that we label as bad. We have some that we label as good. We do know that there are certain potentialities that We have some that we label as bad. We have some that we label as good.

We do know that there are certain potentialities that the more we feed them, the stronger they get. And I think it's really important to have an awareness of the extent to which what you're growing stronger in and what potentialities you're realizing are the ones that you really want to be the predominant part of your whole system. Just having that awareness, that awareness is so essential. When you see yourself going down a certain path, you do the thought experiment, where's that going to lead? And you really think it through. The way I read that parable, it makes it sound like an emotion, like fear is a bad thing. It's not that emotion of fear is a bad thing. It's just that fear, if we let it run our

lives, could lead us. There's a whole lot of difference among people. I love about what you do, Scott, is you really honor the fact that what works for me may not work for you and what I want, you know, Jordan may not want and really honoring that sort of wide distinction. And so I'm kind of curious about what made you want to go from the book transcend to the workbook. There's lots of exercises in that book, given the variation among people, how do you think about how to use that book? Will all interventions be good for all people? Only some of them? How might someone know? I'm just kind of curious your thoughts on putting it into practice.

There are a lot of questions in one there, my friend. I know. It's bad interview etiquette. We can talk about the origin of why we created the exercises. We can talk about user manual for the person on how to use it. Let me take it one at a time here. In Transcend, there's an appendix. I think it's appendix two, or it might be appendix one, I'm forgetting. It has some of these activities that can help you become a whole person. And if you look at that page of the book, it says co-authored with Dr.

Jordan Feingold. It says that right there in Transcend. So, this was a way to let that breathe more in a full collaboration with Jordan, who did a terrific job with that appendix in Transcend. And we thought, you know, we're like, we really have a book here, especially during the time of the last two years, you know, in light of the pandemic. We're like, wow, we can actually adapt a lot of these exercises for this moment in particular, and helping people realize their potentials even amidst the unknown and all the confusion that we have going on in the world right now and within our own selves. So for people reading this book, we hope that it's a journey

for them for self-insight. Karen Horney called it self-analysis. I don't know if you're familiar with that term at all, self-analysis. It's a way to also get outside your comfort zone and do these exercises. If you take these exercises seriously, you can't help but grow. It's like there are certain things you do in your life that you don't want to do them, but you know you're going to grow. Every time I talk to, you know, my heart is beating fast and I can't breathe. But, you know, I know that if I do it, I will grow. You know, I will talk to someone, I will get outside my comfort zone every time.

That was just one example. But every time I go and ride a motorcycle, you know, we can get away from that first example. But every time I ride a motorcycle, or every time I know that if I go and even fly, I used to be really scared of flying. I know every time I just make that decision, I know that the outcome is going to be growth. So, it's like you choose growth. You know, you don't choose fear. That's the bottom line here. And I think what's so important about the workbook and why we included the practices in Transcend in the first place

is that there's so much good information and knowledge and theory out there. And as is a goal of this podcast, it's not enough to just know the stuff. We actually have to learn how to integrate it into our lives and actually practice it and do it time and time again. We can know something perfectly well, but perhaps we avoid actually doing it. And then we realize the avoidance magnifies the anxiety. And then we become extra self-critical because there's all this stuff we know we should be doing. We should ourselves to death, another Karen Horney proclamation that we should break free from the tyrannical shoulds in our lives. And this presents readers and listeners

of the audiobook with an opportunity not to generate their own ideas necessarily about how to apply the concepts, but we make it pretty simple. We put the questions out there, we put the prompts out there so that people aren't alone, that they can actually do this in the company of others, in the company of a whole public who's engaging in these practices together. Yes. Yeah. I think we know that writing is a very powerful way of understanding ourselves better, of changing, of growing. And this book has, I mean, a lifetime's worth of prompts, really, right? I mean, if you were to really take the exercises in this book seriously and really sit down and write out all these things, I think you're right, Scott, there would be no choice but to grow. It is about what are we going to apply?

What ideas are we going to apply and where? I wanted to talk about something that's in the transcend model and sort of weaves its way through this book. model and sort of weaves its way through this book. And I know it's a big idea of yours, Scott, but I'm first going to let Jordan take it and then kind of let you follow up, which is this relationship between security and growth. On one hand, it's easy to say, well, in order to grow, I need to have a certain amount of security. It seems to me that a lot of people where psychological safety isn't there, there's a certain amount of growth that has to happen to get to that psychological safety. And so I'm kind of curious how you think about those two things. So I think that the idea that growth necessarily comes after security is a misconception. I think

that these things can happen in tandem and parallel and that they can reinforce one another. And Scott, I want to hear if you disagree with anything that I'm saying. So exactly as you said, Eric, it can take a lot of, how did you put it, that it takes growth in order to bolster our security, and it can take security in order to bolster our growth. And that's why we use the sailboat metaphor that Scott put forth in Transcend, which is not a pyramid, even though Maslow never actually depicted a pyramid, which really seems to suggest that it's like climbing a mountain or unlocking the next level and that these things happen in sequence, that first we

have to be safe and then we bolster our selfesteem, and then we can experience connection. It doesn't work like that. All of these things are integrated processes that reinforce one another. So while I think it can be very helpful to think about the base of our sailboat, being able to open up our sail as distinct parts of achieving transcendence, we're constantly working on all of these. So one example is thinking about self-esteem, which we put in the security cycle, which is part of the base of our sailboat. Self-esteem is generated, and we talk about healthy self-esteem, but self-esteem develops through our development when we are children and implicitly get the message that we are worthy and that we are able to affect change in our environment.

And that often happens when we have love in our lives, which is a higher order need, which we talk about in the growth cycle. And often for many people, self-esteem isn't something that necessarily happens in isolation. It happens from connection in the presence of other people. Self-esteem, it's easier to derive when we feel validation and love from other people, or we feel like we're working towards our purpose, which is another higher order need. So I think it's important, and it actually recapitulates the way we can use this book.

We don't suggest that anyone actually read the book necessarily from start to finish, but that they go through the first chapter and recognize where are my unmet needs. And for some people, they may have a ton of purpose in their life and they don't necessarily feel safe in their relationship or they have low quality connections with neighbors and colleagues, although they are experiencing a tremendous amount of exploration in their environment. So it's not necessarily that we have to go sequentially to meet all these needs. It's about understanding where we are in relation to the needs and starting where we're most compelled and most drawn. Beautifully put. Yeah, I don't want people to think about the hierarchy as an ordering of needs that you must meet to some degree.

The most important hierarchy is the one between safety and growth. But within the finely grained needs themselves, we really shouldn't look at it as you're not allowed to address other needs until certain are met. You can actually address multiple needs simultaneously. You can be extraordinarily poor and be in an environment that is full of violence and still get your needs for connection met through community and through people working together to make the community a better place and helping those around you, right? Like, I just don't understand the concept of some of the ways

people have taken Maslow's theory and have corrupted it. So yeah, we want to make that clear and while still recognizing that there are certain safety needs that are at the table too and are extraordinarily important and do become stronger in prominence the more deprived they are. I want to bring up something, Scott, that you discussed back in a podcast you did with Sean Carroll, the physicist who also has been a guest on our show. Great guy. There was a short conversation that you guys had that I want to take from, you were speaking generally, and I'd actually like to take it and bring it down more individually. You were talking about the idea of this conflict between you as a researcher and as sort of a clinician or a person.

And what you were saying was sometimes you feel like people say, well, we can't make that any better. Everything we've tried to do to make that better hasn't worked. And they almost say that gleefully, you know, and that you're very much like, well, just because we haven't cracked the code on how to make that better doesn't mean we should stop trying. I want to take that from a broad statement about psychology in general. And I'd love to bring that down to the individual. And I'd love to talk about how as individuals, even if we haven't found the growth, the healing that we want, the importance of continuing to try different things. And so I'm wondering if either of you have anything you'd like to kind of say about that piece? I just saw a patient a few minutes ago, and the conclusion

that we came to is that the most important word in her vocabulary is the word yet, which is, I don't believe this yet. I haven't found the solution yet. This is someone who has experienced trauma in her life, serious interpersonal violence, and someone who is in extensive therapy, has been through extensive therapy, and who is so deeply committed to getting better and still struggles with the ability to believe validating things that people are saying about her, the ability to not listen to the own negative internal dialogue. And just by putting that one word into her vocabulary, I don't believe you yet that I am all of these things you're telling me I am, it opens up a window of possibility, of hope. It shows us that there

are still opportunities to have that growth. And it puts the idea forth that change can happen. When we're so closed off to the possibility that change is possible, of course it's not going to happen because with all of these interventions, the belief is so important. As a doctor, I prescribe medications all the time, and I believe that the placebo effect is incredibly important. If I have a patient who doesn't believe that a medication is going to help them, the medication probably won't help them. And I think the same is true for behavioral interventions. Yeah.

Are you referring a little bit maybe to Ali Crum's work? Oh, yes. I'm a huge fan of Ali Crum's work. Me too, for sure. Yeah, the placebo effect. There is a really good point there about being ready and open for growth. You can go out and explore, but having the spirit of exploration is also important. If you can go out and explore and don't have the spirit of it, you know, it's not good.

You know, sometimes I'm in a crabby mood and I go out, I force myself to explore. And that doesn't often go well because I'm just like, I know I really just want to go home. I really don't want to talk to people right now. So opening yourself up to the spirit of exploration is super important as well. And having the desire. I think it's so important. There's a joke in my field. How many psychiatrists does it take to turn in a light bulb? It's one, but the light bulb has to really want to change. So there has to be that degree of motivation present, too. We can't force this upon anybody. It really has to right? You know, the idea, the belief is if you keep trying, and that was certainly that my case with addiction, and I've seen countless other people, it took multiple runs at this before anything looking like lasting sobriety was achieved. And so that word yet is really important. You know, the belief that I can heal. I may not have cracked the code of insanity. I'm curious, Eric, do you remember there being a discrete or acute change in your experience between sobriety and alcohol use or drug use?

Or was it more incremental, gradual change? No, in my case, it was not incremental or gradual. I ended up getting sober twice, once at 24 from heroin addiction. And I had a very low bottom. I was a homeless heroin addict. And I went into inpatient treatment and then a halfway house. So there was a very clear cut. Now, I had gone into inpatient treatment before and it hadn't worked. And then I stayed sober about eight years and I drank again.

And a very similar thing. It was all of a sudden it was just like I had to sort of cut it off. Although now that we mention it, yeah, I think there were incremental steps along the way of trying. When I knew I had to get sober the second time, I went to moderation management, which is a program. And I was determined. I was the best moderation management student of all time because I did not want to give up drinking. I was like, I have got to figure this out because I know what the answer is, which is abstinence. And I don't want that. But in my case, that turned out to be what the answer

was. So there were incremental steps. There are some people I think who walk in the door and get sober immediately, But most people, even if they haven't been actively seeking professional help or support help, have been wrestling inside themselves for a long time. Well, maybe I just won't drink on weekends. Maybe I'll just drink beer, but not whiskey. We're wrestling with ourselves. So I do think there is some measure of incremental change, even in what looks like a sudden story. It's kind of like, you know, you see somebody who's an overnight success. It's just because you haven't seen what they were doing behind the scenes all that time. the idea that life is not a video game. Once you unlock the path of sobriety, it doesn't mean that it's just a clear cut path to the future and no looking back, that that is unlocked forever. Sometimes there's many steps back. So I think this idea of learning from quote unquote failure

and not letting ourselves be so bogged down by the fear of failure that through every experience, there is wisdom to be learned. I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together on the Really No Really podcast, our mission is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like why they refuse to make the bathroom door go all the way to the floor. We got the answer. Will space junk block your cell signal?

The astronaut who almost drowned during a spacewalk gives us the answer. We talk with the scientist who figured out if your dog truly loves you. And the one bringing back the woolly mammoth. Plus, does Tom Cruise really do his own stunts? His stuntman reveals the answer. And you never know who's going to drop by. Mr. Brian Cranston is with us today. How are you, too?

Hello, my friend. Wayne Knight about Jurassic Park. Wayne Knight, welcome to Really, No Really, sir. Bless you all. Hello, Newman.

And you never know when Howie Mandel might just stop by to talk about judging. Really? That's the opening? Really, No Really. Yeah, Really.

No Really. Go to reallynoreally.com and register to win $500, a guest spot on our podcast or a limited edition signed Jason bobblehead. It's called Really No Really, and you can find it on the iHeartRadio app, on Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

The forces shaping markets and the economy are often hiding behind a blur of numbers. So that's why we created The Big Take from Bloomberg Podcasts, to give you the context you need to make sense of it all. Every day in just 15 minutes, we dive into one global business story that matters. You'll hear from Bloomberg journalists like Matt Levine. A lot of this meme stock stuff is, I think, embarrassing to the SEC. Amanda Mull, who writes our Business Week Buying Power column. Very few companies who go viral are like totally prepared for what that means. And Zoe Tillman, senior legal reporter.

Courts are not supposed to decide elections. Courts are not really supposed to play a big role in choosing our elected leaders. It's for the voters to decide. Follow the Big Take podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen. I'd love to ask you guys how you think about an idea that was embedded in what you just said, which is we can get so focused on growth that we never are where we actually are. We always think it's going to be when I heal this, when I heal that, when I'm more confident talking to women, when I'm all these things. And I know we talk about the I'll be happy when story and we talk about it with external things.

I'll be happy when I get the right job. I'll be happy when I get. But we also do it with internal states as if we're going to arrive at a state that which life no longer is difficult. I'm kind of curious how you guys work on that both in yourselves and in the people that you work with. I get that a lot. I get like, hey, can I ever take a break from growth? Because it's exhausting. And so, some growth experiences are growth experiences in themselves, even though you're fully present in the moment with them. So, for instance, we have

lots of exercise in our book for savoring, for what we call the plateauic, living more in the being realm, where you are fully present and you are fully connecting. I would make the case that some of the most profound growth experiences in life come about when you're not intentionally trying to change, but you're engaging in an experience where you're being changed. Never put it like that before, but I like it. I like it. I love that, Scott. Next edition of the book, it's in there. Remember that for our future interviews. Seriously. I felt this tension really strongly when I was writing the book because I don't know,

Scott, if you remember this, I probably texted you a bunch of times. Like I love writing this book and I need to go out and do the things. Like I was thinking about growth so much and through the process of writing and reading all the research and collating the exercises, I was like, and I need to go just live my life. Like I'm spending all this time thinking about growth. And not only do I want to go out and actually do the things, I just want to live and talk to others. And I find that that was a real tension and it was a challenge. It was my first book I've ever written and it made it really hard, this tension of living and doing while also getting the work done. And I think some of the growth that I've experienced through this journey has really just been in talking about

the work, not even in doing the practices myself, but in hearing the perspectives of others and being challenged in my own thoughts when I would bring up a topic with someone else. And yeah, I don't think growth is always necessarily something that we go out, like you said, Scott, and do actively. It's also about the integration of all the stuff when we're like lying in bed at night and all the day residues are in our heads and we go to sleep and sort of wake up feeling like, huh, I feel a little bit different today. Yeah, that paradox is embedded in a lot of areas that I spend time, a lot of contemplative type practices, because you're doing them for a

reason, right? You're not sitting down to meditate without any reason, right? We do things for reasons. And yet, during meditation, it seems that one of the biggest blockers to having, and I don't even like this word, but I'll use it, successful meditation is simply not trying to achieve anything. And so there's always that sort of paradox. And I think that's what's really interesting here. Sometimes we need the energy, the desire for growth to take us to the point where we start to do some of the growth related things. And then I think what you said, Scott, is really important, which is how do we let go enough that the experiences that we're having actually are able to transform us? Because if we take that same grasping spirit, there's an openness we need to grow. I'm just constantly interested in striking

that right balance between those two energies. I was at one of my best friend's weddings this weekend. And something that I noticed was just dancing to live music and losing myself, getting so far out of my head and just into my physical body, dancing and sweating and just not caring about what I looked like. I was so in flow dancing at this wedding. And we spent so much time thinking about how to find ourselves and how to grow and how to be so deliberate. And I think it's so important to balance that with losing ourselves and having those experiences where we are just fully experiencing something out of our heads and more into our bodies. You know, the interesting thing about losing yourself is that you haven't lost yourself forever. There's a psychopathology where you have no idea who yourself is and who you are. I mean,

a lot of people with borderline personality disorder report not feeling like they have a basic sense of self. In my research, I've tried to distinguish between healthy transcendence and unhealthy transcendence. And I think the kind of losing oneself that Jordan's talking about, I have a whole section in Transcend where I try to, in a very minoritally fashion, try to distinguish the finer distinctions, what that really means in the brain, what that really means when that's happening. It's that I actually think what's happening in those moments is, yes, you're not so self-focused, but there still is a really deep, deep connection between yourself and the world. And I think that the self still matters in that

moment, even if you're not being consciously aware of it. You may have lost your attention on your self-focus because it's so integrated with the world. But for me, healthy transcendence is one where you haven't completely lost yourself and you also haven't completely lost the world, but the two are fused in a oneness sort of way. To me, it's an important level of nuance that I don't see discussed even in some of Buddhist discussions about this kind of stuff, dare I say. I know you're not allowed to ever criticize the Buddhists. They're perfect. But yeah. I think that's so important. And I actually think, as you said, being able to lose yourself

in that way temporarily is actually contingent upon having a very strong sense of self. As I was having this revelation, then I was observing people around me and looking at who else was losing themselves. And I think that I know a lot of people who may have some of those interoceptive difficulties, as we see in borderline personality disorder, who lack a clear sense of self, and we can unpack what that really means further, who have a lot of difficulty accessing that temporary loss of self. Because if you don't know who you are in the first place, it can feel incredibly destabilizing to put yourself in situations where you may become further unable to feel where you are or to have that deliberate loss of self-consciousness.

Wonderful, wonderful. Changing direction a slight bit there in your section on healthy transcendence, you talk about a lot of people these days are striving towards transcendence, but are doing so without first building a healthy foundation, which is kind of what we're speaking to here, is that there are some elements of a healthy self that can be very helpful in eventually getting to the point where we're able to let go of that self a little bit more, or be less focused on it. In that section of the book, you say that in healthy transcendence, we don't choose ourselves over others, and we don't choose others over ourselves. There's

a harmonious integration between self and world. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I'm also just wondering if there's an important distinction to be made between self and being, you know, sort of pure being. Maslow talked about the state of pure being and how that's what happens when you're in a peak experience. And I've been trying to understand what that means exactly from a scientific point of view. How can we measure whether or not someone's

in the state of pure being or not? And I think some of it is not being focused on your self-representations, not being focused on your self-critical feedback about what's happening in the moment. Like, oh, what I'm doing is awkward, or this is wrong, or I'm wrong, or I'm bad. So the self-critical parts reflecting on the system aren't active. And I think that's why psychedelics is so helpful for so many people to tap into their pure being because you don't have the self-critical facilities when you're in a psychedelic trip is what I hear at least. What does that mean to tap into pure being? And what I think is beautiful is that so many people describe that when they're in pure being, they all describe love, a sense of oneness and a sense of peace. And I think there's something really,

really deeply profound here. I'm trying to scientifically understand, but I think there's a deep truth about what it means to feel God. Even if you don't believe in God, I believe there is the experience feel God. Even if you don't believe in God, I believe there is the experience of God. Yeah, you're wandering into territory that I think about an awful lot, because we talk about self in so many different ways, and we mean so many different things by it. My experience of having had a few what we would consider sort of classic mystical type experiences, where any sense of separation between me and anything else like truly vanished, it was less that there was no self present. It was more that everything was self. Normally, what we feel, at least for me, normally, what I feel most connected to is me and what I want. In these experiences,

it was the difference between me and the other things wasn't really there. The tree felt as important as Eric felt in that moment. But what I think is totally fascinating is I think there are layers of this, of shedding layers of self. And how am I moving closer to my true self, which is still my individuated self, and then this sort of pure being? And what is my individuated self? Because it's certainly deeply conditioned, you know, it's deeply conditioned by all my experiences. So if I were to strip those experiences away, these topics get very heady very quickly, but I find them fascinating. What we're talking about right now is probably the first foremost on my mind right now in life.

I just constantly meditate on it and try to figure out how I can recalibrate myself. So I'm in deeply touch with, and then the question is what, what, with what, what am I talking about? Yeah. But there, it's something, there is something within me. And I think within everyone that when you can quiet everything else around you, you can quiet the social media, you can quiet all the influences of other people on you. And you get in touch with something that is so uniquely you as unique creative potential that makes you feel alive. If you can get in touch with that, I do think you are getting in touch with the potentiality for a real calling that only you can answer. And I don't know if this sounds too Oprah at this point, but I really do believe this to be

true. It's so interesting because the way that you're describing the dissolution of self-consciousness, that for me harkens the flow state, which requires a certain amount of expertise and ability to meet a challenge. So I think it's hard to find that in areas where we haven't yet cultivated some high degree of mastery. I suppose that that could certainly unlock new potentials in the area in which we've already had this optimal balance of skill and challenge. But are you referring to brand new potentialities, Scott? Or are these born out of areas where we already have some degree of excellence or ordered psychic energy? Well, I do think talent is a thing.

I think that we have some potentialities, they grow greater, greater than other potentialities. My full potentiality for NBA basketball playing isn't as wide in scope as LeBron James's, you know, and getting in touch with which lanes we can really make a real contribution to the world in. If we put our heart and soul into it, if we get into the flow state, if we have grit. It takes a lot. I mean, I'm not saying it's easy to fully realize our potentials. But part of the self-actualization process is getting in touch with those potentials to begin with. And to really get clear on what they are. Humans aren't born with a manual that

tells you all of your genes and what you're capable of if you mix and match certain genes with certain environments. We're in the dark. We're in the dark about all that. That's the process of creating ourselves and discovering ourselves. And what we're capable of is through that interaction between us and the environment and realizing, wow, I really can make a huge, huge difference if I go in this direction versus if I go in this direction, maybe I'm purely having hedonistic pleasures, but am I making a big contribution, you know, and being able to sort all of that out and commit to certain directions. To me, I just see that as part of the transcender journey.

And then meeting the practical concerns of our environments and the needs that we have to contribute to our communities and our families and how we can actually support people. Which I know, Scott, as part of your vision is supporting young people in their journey from very early on in life to figure out and to get on some of those paths. I think, Scott, we struggle with this. Is transcendence an equitable resource in our current world? And how do we make it more equitable? And I think the practices in our book are totally accessible to anyone wherever they are coming from. And I think that we also recognize that the ability to grow can be easier for some than others just based on their circumstances and the very real practical realities of life. I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden.

And together on the Really No Really podcast, our mission is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like why they refuse to make the bathroom door go all the way to the floor. We got the answer. Will space junk block your cell signal? The astronaut who almost drowned during a spacewalk gives us the answer. We talk with the scientist who figured out if your dog truly loves you and the one bringing back the woolly mammoth.

Plus, does Tom Cruise really do his own stunts? His stuntman reveals the answer. And you never know who's going to drop by. Mr. Bryan Cranston is with us today. How are you, too? Hello, my friend. Wayne Knight about Jurassic Park. Wayne Knight, welcome to Really, No Really, sir.

Bless you all. Hello, Newman. And you never know when Howie Mandel might just stop by to talk about judging. Really? That's the opening? Really No Really. Yeah, really. No really. Go to reallynoreally.com and register to win $500, a guest spot on our podcast, or a limited edition signed Jason bobblehead. It's called Really No Really, and you can find it on the iHeartRadio app, on Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. The forces shaping markets and the economy are often hiding behind a blur of numbers. So that's why we created The Big Take from Bloomberg Podcasts,

to give you the context you need to make sense of it all. Every day in just 15 minutes, we dive into one global business story that matters. You'll hear from Bloomberg journalists like Matt Levine. A lot of this meme stock stuff is, I think, embarrassing to the SEC. Amanda Mull, who writes our Business Week buying power column. Very few companies who go viral are like totally prepared for what that means. And Zoe Tillman, senior legal reporter. Courts are not supposed to decide elections.

Courts are not really supposed to play a big role in choosing our elected leaders. It's for the voters to decide. Follow the Big Take podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen. You talk about character strengths, and you also talk about finding values and purpose. Because I think what we're trying to find out is what is my unique stamp? What is my ability to contribute based on some things are going to be external, my family of origin, where I live, my financial situation. Some things are going to be internal, my genetic makeup.

Some things are going to be the conditions my genetic makeup. Some things are going to be the conditions I've had. But how do I start to puzzle out what that is? What's important to me? And I want to talk about strengths for a second, because you guys talk about strengths. And there's something that I love. I think you're quoting somebody else, but it's a really important idea. And you're talking about character strengths. And you say that talent can be squandered, skills can diminish, and resources can be lost, but strengths crystallize and evolve and can integrate with these other positive qualities to contribute to the greater good. So share a little bit about why character strength is such an important piece in this book.

I love that question. That is Ryan Nemec, by the way, that comes from his amazing book, Mindfulness and Character Strength. So we need to give him credit. He is like the strength mastermind. He's at VIA Institute in Cincinnati, Ohio, which is a physical place and a robust online resource with lots of educational programming. And there's actually an inventory that we refer to in the book, and we list the 24 character strengths that VIA has outlined. It was one of the earliest projects in positive psychology to outline

these strengths of character that have been observed in all people in all cultures across the world. And the idea is that with a few pathological exceptions, we all have all of these character strengths in different compositions and perhaps to different degrees, but we all have all of them and they can vary and we can use different ones across different settings and times and developmental stages of our lives. But our character strengths, and especially the signature strengths, those few strengths that really are fundamental to who we are, that if they were taken away from us, we would not be us. That when we use those, they're like our superpowers. They are human superpowers that

help us connect with others, achieve our goals, engage in the world. And like any superpower, there can be too much of a good thing. It's not like we just want to slap these on to everything that we do in our lives in every way indiscriminately, that there is this golden mean of strengths and we should use them deliberately and mindfully, which is the whole goal of Ryan's last book is how to mindfully use our character strengths. But that when we can tap into these, I think that is one very potent potential pathway to do exactly what Scott is talking about, which is to find our path and live our potential. Yeah, I really like that. And I want to make clear that when we talk strengths, yeah, I didn't just mean talents. I do mean aspects of our character as well can be

great seeds for making a real contribution in the world. Even just realizing like maybe humor, maybe humor is your strength. That happens to be one of my top three. For people who, of humor is one of their top strengths, they use it to diffuse tense situations. They can use it to create world peace. Never underestimate how much your aspects of your character can shine a light in the world. I love that part of the book, because you guys said that, you know, one of the ways that people respond to, whether it be doing the exercises in your book or taking the test online from VIA, is they get their strengths, but then we tend to sort of soft pedal them like, well, yeah, but everybody's funny. You know, everybody has a sense of humor.

And no, no, that is clearly not true. But you talk about really learning to sort of step into those and, you know, embrace them. You should see the character strengths, classic Columbia, the section we do in character strengths, and I run through each one and ask the students to raise their hand. And they're so proud of their character, their top strength. I said, who in the class whose top strength is love? And they're like, me, me, you know, like, and that could just be the, you know, college students. But there's a great sense of excitement in revealing to others what is your top strength. It's also just so antithetical to the way we normally think about ourselves. I mean, the way I think the average human being thinks about themselves is probably

not in terms of what they're great at in character. They may think about talents or skills. And I would bet that most often they're thinking about what they can work on and what their weaknesses are because that is how we're wired. That's the negativity bias, the vestigial gift of our evolution. And I'm joking when I call it a gift because it really taints the way we think and focuses us to think about what's wrong with us. And I do the same thing, Scott, with medical students and residents. We spot strengths in one another. And after we do this exercise, I swear the class, it's a different energy altogether. So often, and in medicine and in psychology, we're focused on characterizing a chief complaint

and dissecting every dimension of what's wrong with someone. And then when we can bring character strengths in the discussion, that offers a path forward to how we can actually not just use what's right with us, but how we can start to adroitly move up those lower strengths or start to improve a weakness by using our top strengths. So, you know, maybe self-regulation is something that someone struggles with. And if love is a top character strength, how can we use love and connection to bolster self-regulation and physical activity, for example? Do it with another person. Get an

accountability partner. So I love strengths because they help shine a light on how we can improve the things that the humans naturally default to, which is thinking about the things that aren't so great about us. circle of connection. And we spend a lot of time working on values and, you know, going through a lot of different ways of looking at values. I'm curious for you guys, what are some of the best ways you think for people to elicit what is most important to them? What matters most to them? Well, I think as we talk about in the book, when we've worked together to co-teach and teach in Scott's online Transcend course, what I'm most shocked by is how few people have ever been encouraged to even think about this question of what matters most to me. Given how important our values are in guiding our behavior and our decisions, it's bananas that it's not something that's necessarily on the top of our

minds every day. So the question is so important because I think it's so that it's not something that's necessarily on the top of our minds every day. So the question is so important because I think it's so important to get people to think about their values, to understand their behaviors, and to understand how to live more deliberately in line with those things that actually do matter to them rather than being on autopilot sort of going through the day-to-day slog of life. So I love the Shalom Schwartz's 19 values that we depict in our book in the circular wheel, because that model shows how values can be related to each other and can sometimes conflict with one another or complement each other and lead to intrapersonal conflict, conflict within our own selves when they're contrasting values that

we hold that may be guiding behavior and causing some psychic conflict. And then when we think about the last time we were really mad or had really strong negative feelings about something, it's probably because one of our deeply held values was violated in some way. So I love thinking about how values that oppose each other can cause both intrapersonal and interpersonal conflict. Another thing I like to do is just show people a list of values. I think we do this in the book, and I've seen this done in cognitive behavioral therapy and DBT exercises where people just see a list of values and they can sort of look through it and be like, yeah, like this is so important to me. And we realize how many things we value. And then when we try

to consolidate and condense that to maybe a top five or even a top three, if that can be done, what we encourage folks to do is to define what the value means because maybe family is a value or connection. But those things can mean different things for different people. And then think about how are we living by that value every day or even every week? And how can we close the gap between the way we are currently living and the value that we hold? That's what we encourage folks to do. And I've done this with medical students over the years, and I think it's really awesome. Yes. And sometimes by understanding that some things in life do conflict and don't need to be integrated, the legit conflict allows us to say no to things that are not in our priority list so that we can make room for the things

that are in our priority list. There are a lot of people who might feel guilt in saying no to some things because someone else is so excited about it. But if you're not so excited about it, if it's not a hell yes for you, you have a right to honor that within your soul. I love that. So my last question is directed primarily to you, Jordan. But Scott, of course, I'd love to have you pipe in. But Jordan, a lot of your work, as I understand it, listening to you on other podcasts

has been working with medical professionals on how they take care of themselves. And so I want to tie this to purpose, because we talked about how important purpose is. And I'm not going to say this is the case for everybody. But I would imagine that a lot of people who have gone through medical school and have become doctors did that because of a sense of purpose. We also know that the environments we find ourselves in, the situations we find ourselves in, the circumstances we find ourselves in, often grind that purpose down until intellectually I might go, well, I became a doctor because I care about helping people, but there's no emotional spark to that at all anymore. What are ways of either reconnecting with that purpose, rekindling that

purpose, or concluding that indeed that purpose is no longer the right purpose for us and it's time to pivot. And I know that's a big question, but. Eric, that's exactly right. And I think we choose to go into health care for exactly that, to have a career that is inherently purposeful. And the same is true for psychology and teaching and so many fields. so many fields. And exactly what you said, I think the process, the education, the getting cultured into the field wears down some of our empathy because the day-to-day work just becomes so bereft of the emotional content such that if we felt everything that our patients were feeling, we wouldn't be able to do the job in the first place. Then we go home exhausted, don't want to

talk about it. I literally had this conversation with my husband, who's also in healthcare, at our dinner table last night, and he was actually telling me what a great day he had because he had such a purposeful day. He was really thinking about the human being and how much easier it was for him to do that and feel the purpose when things were going well in the job. He was actually successful. He was combating some of the inefficiencies in the system. He was actually able to do what he needed to do for his patients, and that felt purposeful. But so often, that is the exception to the rule rather than the norm because the system is just, there are so many problems. So what I talk about

is doctors in training, practicing physicians, how do we reflect on the day and think about how you made an impact today in your work in another person's life? Maybe it's not something that you think about in the moment, but retrospectively at the end of the day, similar to the three good things exercise of reflecting on three good things that happen. What are three ways that you enacted your sense of purpose today? And also remembering that as healthcare workers, we are also human beings, again, with a multitude of drives and interests and passions, and that we can connect with our sense of purpose outside of work as well. So thinking about how to nurture those other facets of ourselves to find meaning and flow

those other facets of ourselves to find meaning and flow and not just requiring us to get all of that meaning in our work and remembering we are human beings and sometimes it can be really hard. I'm not going to feel that I'm capping out on my sense of meaning and purpose every single day at work, but that it's a deliberate process of connecting and reconnecting with the things that do matter to us and also finding it elsewhere. Anything you'd like to add to that, Scott? No, I just want to honor Jordan there and her spearheading this field positive medicine that I think is so important. It's going to really revolutionize the healthcare industry because it honors that we're more than just our bodies. Yeah, it's so important. I really admire the work that you're doing there as well, Jordan. Well, Scott, Jordan, it has been a pleasure to have you on. Scott, a pleasure to see you again.

Jordan, a pleasure to meet you for the first time. You too. I really, really have appreciated this conversation and thank you. Thank you. Eric, I'm a big fan of yours and I love your way of being. I almost wish we could talk more and hang out more. Me too. If what you just heard was helpful to you, please consider making a monthly donation to support the One You Feed podcast.

When you join our membership community with this monthly pledge, you get lots of exclusive members-only benefits. It's our way of saying thank you for your support. Now, we are so grateful for the members of our community. We wouldn't be able to do what we do without their support, and we don't take a single dollar for granted. To learn more, make a donation at any level, and become a member of the One You Feed community, go to oneyoufeed.net slash join. The One You Feed podcast would like to sincerely thank our sponsors for supporting the show. I'm Jason Alexander and I'm

Peter Tilden. And together our mission on the Really No Really podcast is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like why the bathroom door doesn't go all the way to the floor? What's in the museum of failure? And does your dog truly love you? We have the answer. Go to really no really.com and register to win $500 a a guest spot on our podcast, or a limited edition signed Jason bobblehead. The Really No Really podcast. Follow us on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.