The Resilient Mind - You’ll Stay Lonely Until You Learn This - Dr. Adam Dorsay

Episode Date: July 2, 2025

Watch the full video interview on YouTube: https://youtu.be/7G1ifdZaaaUFeeling disconnected, stuck, or unfulfilled? A renowned psychologist with over 20,000 hours of clinical experience, Dr. Adam Dorsey, reveals why a lack of "connection" is the true source of modern anxiety, depression, and stress. In this deep-dive interview on The Resilient Mind, discover the four levels of connection that will unlock your potential and help you feel truly alive.Learn More: https://dradamdorsay.com/Superpsyched on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/1pxa5N0prbsBVnS85kD4L3Superpsyched on Apple Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/superpsyched-with-dr-adam-dorsay/id1512883587Take action and strengthen your mind with The Resilient Mind Journal. Get your free digital copy today: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://bit.ly/Download_Journal Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Welcome to the Resilient Mind Podcast. In this episode, you will be listening to. You'll stay lonely until you learn this with Dr. Adam Dorsay. Watch the full video interview on YouTube by clicking the link in the show notes. Enjoy. After about 20,000 hours as a psychologist, I kept hearing the word connection from the people I saw. Connection, connection. And it's my sense that we want to be alive while we are living.

We want to be alive while we're living, and a precursor to feeling alive is connection. So the definition at the heart of depression, anxiety, trauma, and psychosis is disconnection. So if disconnection is at the heart of many of the things that we don't want, would it make sense that connection is at the heart of everything we do want? The reason why we feel like pleasing people or pleasing our parents is because we are seeking that connection to our but maybe we are doing it at the expense of the connection to ourselves. We are wired to please. We are wired to conform. We are not wired to find our truths. We connect with ourselves. We connect with others. We connect with the world and we connect with something greater. Like a pit bull biting my leg saying I'm not letting go until you're done.

Welcome, Dr. Dose. I am super excited to be having you here on the resilient mind and today we are going to be talking about connection, your book and a lot of different fun stuff that is around how to build a greater connection, how to increase more confidence, feel more fulfilled in our lives, and how we can ultimately develop and build a more resilient mind. So I'm super excited to have you here as our guest and I know the audience is also really excited to get to learn from you and get some insights based on what you have uncovered. over the past few years. One of the most popular, well, for me, like when I did discover your work, was around your

book, SuperSight, which you wrote around connection. So for the audience who have never heard of this book before, but know that they want to build connection, what does that book entail and what got you to write that book? Well, I'm so glad you asked Simba. And I'm so happy to be with you. loved our green room conversation. I've started many books, but this is the only book I finished because this was the book I had to write. It took a hold of me, almost if you could imagine, like a pit bull, biting my leg saying,

I'm not letting go until you're done. And the reason I wrote this was because after about 20,000 hours as a psychologist, I kept hearing the word connection from the people I saw. connection, connection, after about 200 or more episodes on my own podcast interviewing some of the best thought leaders in the world, they kept talking about this world, word called connection. But if you look up the word connection in the dictionary, it's got kind of a very boring definition. And it's not the term that people are talking about. It's connecting to ideas, connecting to people, connecting to things, that type of thing.

You look it up in the American Psychological Association, there's no definition. and yet at the heart of most psychological non-well-being, if you look at the diagnostic and statistical manual, at the heart of depression, anxiety, trauma, and psychosis is disconnection, is one of the features. So if disconnection is at the heart of many of the things that we don't want, would it make sense that connection is at the heart of everything we do want? And my contention is yes, and everyone with whom I've spoken,

there have been books that have been written about connecting with your spouse, connecting with your children, connecting with your clients. But to my knowledge has not been a book just about connection as a topic unto itself and looking at the four ways we humans connect. We connect with ourselves. We connect with others. We connect with the world and we connect with something greater. It's my sense that we want to be alive while we are living.

We want to be alive while we're living. And a precursor to feeling alive is connection. So the definition that I and about nine other mental health professionals came up with as a working definition for connection, since there is no good definition for what people seem to be referring to, is aliveness, vitality, life force. So let me ask you a question, just so that we can kind of demonstrate this. Simba, can you think of an activity that if you do it, you are going to feel. feel really, really alive. Really, really just amazing, amazingly good. What is one? For me, traveling is one of those activities. Whenever I'm traveling, visiting a new place, I feel so completely alive in those moments. Now, let me ask you another question. Is there

something that maybe other people like doing that you actually don't like doing at all that does not make you feel like you're going to come alive. Well, I think for those of you that love any of this, I apologize, but people that like me, let's say, carpentry or fixing stuff, that is not my cup of tea. For sure. Yeah. And for me, dancing, I'm not very good at it, even though I would like to. I'd like to get good at it. Painting. I cannot do. It will not make me feel like I'm coming alive. I know great artists who can spend days painting and feel like they. So each of us has a different recipe, a different formula for what makes us feel alive. And yet so many of us may be good at a thing, but we don't love doing that thing.

Or maybe we are told we should do this thing. So we do the thing, but we don't feel alive. When we do it. One last thought that I have on this is many of us are kind of a little bit like this animal I once saw in Shanghai. I was in Shanghai in 1991 and I went to the circus and I saw a panda riding a tricycle. A panda riding a tricycle. The panda actually was able to ride the tricycle. One of the thoughts that I had was the panda does not want to write the tricycle. The panda does not enjoy riding the tricycle and the panda is never going to be very good at

riding the tricycle. And many of us are like pandas on tricycles. Many of us go through life doing things that we don't like, we're not good at, and we don't want to get good at perhaps. We end up being like a limp handshake. We want to be vital. We want to be alive in this lifetime. We need to spend more time doing those things. And so where does it fall apart? Where in terms of our life journey do we end up getting disconnected and being that panda that's riding that tricycle or bicycle? So many ways. We're told in school what a boy is and what a girl is. When I was growing up, they said,

boys are snakes and snails and puppy dog tails and girls are sugar and spice and everything nice. We are told certain things. One kid in the class is really good at math. He's told at a very young age, you know what, you're going to make a great accountant someday. And it's well-intentioned. But the boy, he might be good at,

but he does not want to be an accountant. Or a girl might be told, girls are never good at math. there was a time, believe it or not, when girls were told that, that that is not a job for a girl. To this day, that's still going on that based on gender or other external measures, we are told who we are, and oftentimes that does not resonate inside with who we actually are. So we are shepherded in the wrong direction, or we somehow buy into an idea, well, if I'm a guy, I should not be allowed to fill in the blank. So somewhere along the way, we get disconnected, we get

derailed, and I call these disconnectors. And that's so, I think everyone resonates with that to a certain extent, because again, when we are growing up, we want to make sure that with us, our parents, our guardians, our caregivers are happy with us, right? We want to impress them, we want to make them happy. So we listen to what they tell us about ourselves. And, you know, we buy into those ideas and sometimes we might not even be aware that we've brought into these ideas because they have shaped who they are, who we are right now, but also they let us, I guess, maintain that level of connection with them because if they tell us this when we listen to them, then maybe we are hoping to maintain that connection.

We are all born wired to please our parents. wired to please our elders. And there's, you know, some good aspects to that as well. Oftentimes, the wisdom of our elders is good, but sometimes it's not. Sometimes our elders will tell us that we should be doing something and they don't see us at all. We're getting poorly mirrored. Human beings, we mirror each other. I look at you and I see you, Simba. I know you're in Canada right now. I know you're originally from Zimbabwe, a place that I love very much, have been and I'm a big fan. And I might come to some conclusions. I might decide, oh, well, if he's in Canada and he's from Zimbabwe, then therefore he does not love baseball. It's possible that you don't, but it's possible that

you absolutely love it. In spite of the fact that it's not necessarily the national sport, that's for you to determine. Or how dare I not take you? Maybe I take you to what we call a soccer game down here, a football game internationally. And you say, you know, I absolutely don't love that. I would rather go see American baseball. We just, it's, it's, we make assumptions based on the person that we're looking at. And sometimes those assumptions are taken internally and the person who receives them because we are, we are wired to please. We're wired to say yes.

Oh, okay. I guess I should only be into, you know, international football rather than American baseball. Who knows? I'm using a silly example, but there are many cognitive biases that exist. One of them is the negativity bias. We avoid looking like idiots as we try to learn something. And that's a problem.

We need to look stupid for a period of time while we are learning to do something. And we end up not trying a whole bunch of things. I know a lot of people who studied five years of Spanish in high school. Can they speak Spanish? No. Did they get good grades? Yes, they got good grades. But they can't speak. Why can't they speak? Because they weren't willing to look like fools.

The only reason I can speak Spanish to this day is because I was willing to look like a fool for a very long period of time. And I still am not a native speaker and I'm still not perfectly bilingual. So I'm still making mistakes. And for me, it's worth the cost of admission. I'm willing to look like a fool because speaking Spanish is that important to me. And I think that that's one of the things that keeps us from actually claiming our truths. Fascinating. And there's so much to unpack here because talking about pleasing people, pleasing our parents, will it be safe to assume that the reason why we feel like pleasing people or pleasing our parents is because we are seeking that connection to other, but maybe we are doing it at the expense of the connection to ourselves? Would that be a safe assumption?

Not only would that be a safe assumption. That would be how we are wired in order to survive. If you think about it, not very long ago, if we were thrown out of the tribe, it meant that we would die. We are wired to please. We are wired to conform. We are not wired to find our truths.

Historically, you know, if somebody is going to find their own independent truth, that was not necessarily good for the tribe. But these days, we have the luxury and the mandate to go out and figure out what we would love doing. There's this great Japanese, you may have seen it. I won't call it an algorithm. Let's call it a Venn diagram.

There are four overlapping circles. You've probably seen this. It describes what we love, what we're good at, what the world needs, and what pays. The Iki guy. Yeah. So if you can come to the center of that, that, I mean, And, you know, Simba, you're a great interviewer. And I have a feeling that in terms of the, from the Eiki guy perspective, having the podcast is probably, I don't know if it pays or not, but it probably does something for you professionally.

You're good at it. You seem to like doing it. It's certainly what the world needs. I don't know about the pay part, but regardless, it probably makes you a better professional in some way. I'm wondering how much of the Eiki guy relates to you being a podcast. I think, yeah, I've been very fortunate with the podcast that it hits all for. So definitely it's something that I'm grateful and appreciative to have and to have started and the fact that it's going well. But I think it also touches on what you talked about earlier in terms of not wanting to look stupid, right, when you're learning something new.

because that was one of the things that, whether the podcast or any of the other things that I've started in the past, the first few times, Rajah really worried about what people say, how people perceive you, making mistakes and failing seems to be part of the formula to get to where we actually want to be. And yeah, it can be very scary. I think for a lot of people, and still very scary right now too. That's right. And failure is a necessary cost for doing it. anything that we want. If we're not failing enough, we're probably not trying hard enough.

And the other thing that you said, around, let's just even go back to the podcast itself, one of the ways that we can find out, are we really connected to this, is how do we feel after doing the thing? How do we feel while we're doing it? How do we feel after? Let me ask you this, when you do a podcast and you click off your computer, how do you feel after having met somebody new and having had a really deep, intimate conversation about something that you care about. Enigized. Very energized.

I'm like, I wanted to do it longer or do it again. So I'm going to share with you a formula that I came up with. And it's all based on positive psychology research. But I'm guessing that it feeds you, and I'm going to explain what feed means F-E-E-D. I describe it in the book. But I was working with it. with a biologist. And he has a PhD in biology. He'd drive to work. And here in Silicon Valley,

sometimes the drives are very, very long. And he'd come home and he'd be tired. He'd spoke a lot of weed. He'd watch old like 1970s television and go to sleep and wake up in the morning. And he described himself as being so overweight that he said, I have the dad bod of dad bods. And so I, you know, I was trying to figure out like, hmm, you know, I'm not going to, my goal is not to get him off the weed. My goal is to get him to feel more alive, though. And so I proposed that he'd do something that he absolutely loved doing. And one of the things that we figured out is he loved need forgotten about doing it, but he loved gardening. It's one of the reasons he became biologists. So what he ended up doing was he started gardening. And he'd wake up early in the

morning before work to get some gardening time in. He'd come back home and he'd try to get home early while there's still some sun continue gardening instead of watching 1970s TV and smoking weed he'd be watching videos on gardening or reading books on gardening going to sleep early waking up sometimes going to the gym so he could have more muscle so he could support his gardening the f eED stands for flow energize educate and depth so flow is something that's been rigorously researched and I'm sure you know about by Mihajikset Mihai and it's when we're so into the thing you're doing that three hours could go by but it feels like 30 minutes you're just totally immersed and you're challenged the second and by the way it reduces depression and anxiety being able to

be in a flow state the second the first e stands for energized does it require energy from you just like you were saying about the podcast but does it give you energy back those are the things that feel really good and the second e stands for educate As you do this thing, do you get a little bit smarter in this area? Does it educate? Does it move the needle? And the third is depth. Is it meaningful?

We're not just homo sapiens. We're homo-symbolicus. We are meaning chasing creatures. We are looking for meaning in our lives. The great book, Man Search for Meaning by Victor Frankel, really talks about this, but virtually all existential psychotherapy talks about the meaning. So if you're able to do something that meets all four criteria, F-E-E-E-D, flow,

energize, educate, and depth, you've got a winner and I have a funny feeling that you're doing podcasting meets all four as well. It definitely does. And one of the things that came into mind because I know we're talking about connection, but it sounds like it transcends a lot of different things,

right, getting into flow, finding things that energize you, does it educate you, and does it have meaning and purpose towards you, which I think would love to talk maybe a little bit about as we go through the podcast. But those are a lot of things that it seems like a lot of people are struggling with. And I know you work with high performing leaders, execs, and a lot of famous people. Do you also see that even at those high levels that people, like regular people like myself, are like, wow, they have figured out the F-E-E-E-D, do they do?

also feel that when they are working like at those high levels or this is kind of something more internal that even if things look amazing from the outside it's very personal in terms of being able to find those four key elements so there are some people who captured lightning in a bottle who are doing what they love and it meets all of the things but usually in some area of their life something is out of alignment perhaps they you know went to the right schools they got all the internships they are really good at what they're doing and as we were talking about some in some cases they're really good at it but don't love it in some cases they're really good at it but their

family life is a wreck they don't know how to relate to their wife or their children or their husband or the children however they identify in some cases something serious in one of the four areas of connection is not working and they come to me and oftentimes they're so used to kind of just reacting and doing what they're told they should do in order to ascend this ladder that they haven't really asked themselves, what do I really, really want? And sometimes they don't, sometimes they do ask that question and they don't like the answer because it might not be super convenient. In my own case, I was in the corporate sphere for a number of years. And what I really, really wanted was to become a psychologist. The only problem was I had a

house, a wife, a child, and it didn't seem like the best time in the world to go back to school and start making, you know, very, very little money with no benefits. It seemed reckless, except for the fact that I really, really, really wanted to do it. And we figured out a way. Oftentimes, when I'm sitting with somebody, they didn't really consider, they didn't consider from a real brain perspective who they were going to marry. They, you know, they just said, you know, what, I'm old enough, it's time, or he seems good enough, and now we're in a custody battle. You know, it's really, really awful, and I'm not laughing at them. I'm laughing at just the horror of the absurdity of it all. It's just, it's so sad. We're not taught these things in school,

like how to choose a mate, you know, a lot of important skills. But how to choose a mate, I wish that was part of the curriculum. I wish how to keep the relationship going. A lot of the things I'm talking about in this book, how to connect with yourself, how to connect with others, how to connect with the world, how to reconnect when things are not connecting. And of course, you know, I wouldn't necessarily expect them to do the fourth level of connection, how to connect with something greater at school. But, you know, spending time in nature is a way that we can connect with something greater. And thankfully, some schools already do that. But if it were up to me and I could just wave a magic wand and say, make this part of your curriculum, one of the things I would be. do is I would talk about how to stay in connection when you're disconnected, how to select a good

mate for yourself so that it will go the long haul, that you're not just relying on your heart and your sexuality, but you're relying actually also on your brain, asking yourself, is this person going to be a good match for me? Because love conquers a lot, but it doesn't conquer all. If one person wants children and the other person doesn't want children, if one person wants to own a house and the other person, it says we must rent. If one person wants to live in the city, the other person wants to live in the country, if one person loves travel and the other person absolutely despises it, there may be some serious incompatibility issues. And this happens all the time between couples. Also discussing money well, not something that a lot of couples are very well versed in doing causes disconnection. So what I've noticed is the single most important decision we make in our life is who we choose as our life's partner if we decide to go down kind of a typical traditional monogamous route.

And I really do wish people knew more about that. And it's one of my intentions to provide people with a greater volume of knowledge as it relates to just that. And the book addresses that as well. And so it sounds like this requires quite a bit of self-reflection, right? asking yourself the questions, really determining, okay, what's important to you, whether it's in a life partner, a career, where you want to live and so on and so forth. And you were talking about your own experience. You wanted to go in corporate world and you wanted to go in and become a psychologist. What made you make that shift? Because I think a lot of people feel stuck either

in their career. And again, there might be those valid reasons, right? I need money. I've got a family, I don't have the skill set to be able to make that change or they might be stuck in a relationship and they want to make a shift from that relationship. When we are looking at, let's say, your career, what helped you make that shift to be able to step away from the corporate world and to become a psychologist? Such a great question, Simba. And in some ways, my answer will be typical for many people in other ways, very much individualized. I had undiagnosed learning disabilities, dyslexia, ADHD, the inattentive type, and others, that made me believe I wasn't able to perform academically.

So I was a late bloomer. I was around 27 when things started to kick in, really. By that time, I'd already left graduate school and decided I would not become a psychologist. The one problem was I ended up marrying a psychologist. And every day during dinner, when she would tell me about her day, I'd be thinking, gosh, that was supposed to be my day. I wish I had done this. And she kept saying, honey, you still can. And I'd say, but babe, it's too late.

And she did not want me to be a victim. She said, no, it's not too late. And finally, I came to realize that she would support me in doing this very radical thing, taking night classes and weekend classes, earning my doctorate. nights and weekends and tendering my resignation from a fairly well-paid corporate job with benefits to go into a post-doctoral internship that paid $10 an hour with no benefits. I wanted it so badly, though. They say that when the why is big enough, the how will take care of itself. The why was I wanted, I wanted to be a psychologist the way a dog wants to go for a walk. And if you can imagine this dog wanting to go for a walk for like 15 years, that was what that was like me. I was

absolutely out the door at a sprint. And I was smiling the entire time. I couldn't believe I got to do this. It felt like the greatest gift in my life. I think there are a lot of people who have this. Either they need to consider changing their jobs or perhaps repurposing their jobs. One of the things that we know also through the research

from Amy Resniewski out of Yale through job crafting is that at certain hospitals, the janitorial staff is much happier than the physician. there if they are given the abilities to determine a little bit more about their responsibilities. So this particular janitorial staff in Connecticut was deputized to be kind of the ambassadors of the hospital, the people who not only cleaned the hospital, but they talked to the patients. They developed relationships with the patients. After the patients were discharged, they were invited to the patient's homes, and there were real relationships that happened. They found meaning.

in in my book I talk about my own uh my first round of graduate school when I was a bank teller I did not enjoy being a bank teller because people didn't talk to me like I was a person they would speak to me like I was a kind of a meat based ATM like they wouldn't speak to me like hello Adam even though I had a name tag on they would just say you know cash this money you know deposited this and I realized I needed I needed this job because I was in graduate school it was the only job it was the only job I could take. And I also knew that I was a people person and I could learn how to be better with people while I was a bank teller. I saw 120 people a day and I asked myself, can I make 119 of those 120 people laugh or smile? I'm seeing people from all walks of life. I'm seeing, you know, I'm seeing moms. I'm seeing judges. I'm seeing people who are unhoused. I'm seeing people who are fresh in our country from other places. Can I make 119 of these very, very, you know, I'm seeing people. different people smile if not last. And what it ended up doing was I was, was I still doing the same job I didn't want to do? Yes. But had I repurposed that job? Just the way Amy Resniewski was talking about,

yes, I became the funny bank teller. I still balanced at the end of the day. It wasn't so funny that I didn't balance. But I, I was the guy who people actually wanted to do their transactions. Sometimes people would say, you know what, I'm waiting for that guy. You know, you go ahead of me in line because I want the funny bank teller. And it became one of the most important professional experiences I've ever had. And people can still do that with their jobs. They can repurpose their jobs. They can ask themselves, what is some vocational muscle that I can grow here? I think that's super amazing because a lot of people might not find meaning in what they're doing right now or may not be able to make the change to what it is they want to do. But being able to,

I think you use the word repurpose. and finding that meaning in terms of what you're doing right now can definitely make it more enjoyable and energizing. What about the people that might not know what they want to do, but they know that they're not happy with what they're doing right now? Is there like a thought process or a way for them to be able to figure that out or to start thinking about ways in which they can discover how to find their purpose or maybe just how to just have.

how to find meaning in what they're doing right now. There are multiple ways, and many of these ways the listener probably already knows, but may not be doing. There's often a chasm between what we know and what we do. There's often a big disconnect between common sense and actually common practice. So what I would ask people to do is to, if you have an inkling that you might like a particular job, have informational interviews, ask at least three questions to the people who are in the job that you might consider.

What do you love most? What do you love least? What do you wish you had known before you started this? Give me a sample of a typical day. What is a typical day like in your work? I would also prefer that you ask people who like doing that job. Because if you just ask somebody who doesn't like doing that job, I think the data will be rather crap. That's thing one. Thing two, run simulations. Is there a way you can get an internship or spend a day doing the job? shadowing someone. We all know about this, but do we actually do it? The third thing is I would ask people to look on the VIA, the values in action. It's a questionnaire that's put out at VIA character.org. And what it helps you do is find your strengths. What back in the day, Martin Seligman and Christopher Peterson, two of the pioneers in positive psychology, try to to figure out what were human character strengths that were valued all throughout time, history, I'm sorry, I said history, regardless of religions, regardless of country and culture. So they had an interdisciplinary team of social scientists.

We're talking historians, theologians, psychologists, psychologists, anthropologists, figure out what were 24 character strengths that are valued in and of themselves. Things like curiosity and love of learning, things like justice. What you'll find when you take the questionnaires, first of all, it's forced choice. There's a free version and is a paid version. The free version is quite fine. Is that you'll have difficulty answering the questions because it is a forced choice, but do your best. And it will render the 24 character strengths in order based upon you.

Now, the question is, can you find a novel way? to use those strengths? Is there a profession where those strengths might show up brilliantly for you? So in question one, can you use them in your current job? I use them as a bank teller, for example. I used the social strength in the capacity as bank teller and grew what I called vocational muscle. My muscle as, you know, a social individual grew a lot on that job. I still look back at that job, even though I did not enjoy the job, when I started doing it from that perspective of social intelligence, oh my gosh, did I begin to love the job? I used to, you know, dread the job. Every eight-hour shift felt like 30 hours. And by the end, you know, it felt like

two hours. I was having, I was in flow, is having a great old time. And where else might that social intelligence in my case be applied? Well, I ended up going into various corporate capacities, including sales. I like sales. I saw selling as I saw it could be done with integrity and kindness and really getting to know what the customer needed rather than just trying to, you know, close the sale. I was really more concerned with making sure that the customer was happy with what they bought and that they would tell their friends, you know, or their colleagues, talk to Adam. And it was a useful place for me.

I also grow my vocational muscle. But it wasn't what I ultimately wanted. I had really the privilege of being able to leave and take the risk and find something that I feel a full body yes about. And I hope that people are able to find a full body yes experience for what they do. You and I both know that hurt people end up hurting people. hurt people, hurt people. And the more connected we are, the more the happier will be, the fuller will be, the kinder, the more generous will be. So this isn't just good for you. This is good for the people around you. When you are connected to yourself, it's not selfish. It means that you're going to be much kinder to other people. So the same, so the way I kind of depict connection, I haven't really talked about this, but there are four connection types. If you think of a target, like an archery. At the center is self. The second circle around it is connecting to others.

That could include connecting to your spouse, connecting to your children, connecting. The way you and I are connecting is you and I are connecting to an other. I also include pets because for many people, pet people like me, they are significant others in their lives. For my father, he could go through five lifetimes and never have a pet and be perfectly happy. I can't even make it through a day.

The third is connecting to the world. connecting to the world could include travel, could include work, art, nature, our ancestry. As Dr. Maya Angelou once said, we don't know where we're going if we don't know where we're from. Ancestry is so important. And in the fourth circle, it's connecting to something greater. For some people, for religious people, it might mean going to church on Sundays. For people who are spiritual, it might mean being part of a spiritual community. For people who are Orthodox atheists, and I've worked with many in Silicon Valley. It could be going to the Grand Canyon or to Victoria Falls in your home, your former home,

and saying, oh, my gosh, in experiencing awe. If we experience awe, we are in touch with something greater. Aw has been researched magnificently. And it turns out that when we are in awe, our better selves begin to show up. We are kinder, more pro-social, more generous to people. So that's how I look at connection through those four basic. It's amazing. And I'm just thinking, so do they have to go in order?

No. Like, okay, connection to self, then connection to others. Is one more important than the other? Do they interrelate to each other? How? Or are they separate? They definitely interrelate. So let's imagine you and I are both wearing terrible.

terribly small shoes. Let's imagine you and I put on the tightest, most poorly fitting shoes. And you and I were to have a conversation right now, how well would we connect with each other? We would not connect very well, right? We'd be thinking about the foot pain. So we need to be connected to ourselves first before we can connect to another. But sometimes if we are in pain and we connect with another, like let's imagine I broke my leg and I'm in the hospital and Simba comes to visit me and you bring, you know, some chocolates.

And Simba shows up with chocolates. I got a broken leg. I'm not really connected to myself. I'm on some kind of, you know, pain killer and I'm not happy about my broken leg. And I was supposed to go hiking the next week, but I can't. And I'm really sad. And then Simba shows up with his beautiful smiley face and says, Adam, here's some chocolate. So sorry.

Well, I'm connecting to another. And then I begin to connect with myself. So sometimes the sequence is. opposite. Sometimes it's a chicken and egg question because we don't know which comes first. Sometimes maybe I bump into you. You and I are on an astronomy mission. And let's imagine that I just got some really bad news and I'm really feeling awful. And then you and I get out of our car. We're in the desert. We see the beautiful black sky with stars and shooting stars everywhere. And we start talking. I'm connected to something greater. And then I connect with you and you and I are both going like, wow, can you believe this man?

No, I can't believe this. And suddenly I'm more connected to myself. I'm connected to others in the world. So this can all transpire simultaneously. But I tried to look at them through each lens, just so that people could have an appreciation for how each one could be a target for them. connecting with self does inform all of the other connections, but the other three connections points can inform the others as well.

But I'm going to say if we're impaired in terms of connecting to ourselves, it will impair all the other connections. Oh, you read my mind in terms of my next question. So in terms of people that feel disconnected to themselves, I guess the first part is, Is it possible to be disconnected or to feel disconnected from yourself and not be aware of it? And then the second part is the individuals that are aware that they're disconnected to self. What is the first step or first few steps that they can take to start rebuilding that connection to self?

Two great questions. First of all, very often, and I don't know about you, Simba, sometimes I'm going like, you know, the expression. and sometimes I feel more like a human doing than a human being. I'm just doing, doing, doing, doing, and my wife will say to me, dude, take a breath, like, slow it down. I'm like, no, no, no, you don't understand. And then maybe an hour later, I'm done, and we go for a walk, and I hear birds, and I'm with my dog, and she says that my face changes.

I don't even know it when it's happening. Very often you ask men, how do you feel in particular, in women too. There's something called Alexa Fimea, the image. ability to put words to our feelings. We don't even know it. We're just doing what we're doing almost like an automaton. So very often we are not aware of the internal processes that are going on inside our own bodies. Sometimes, you know, I know people who forget to pee, they don't end up peeing in their pants, but they suddenly realize, oh my gosh, I got to go. And I've been so in this thing that I've been doing that I forgot to even do that. A lot of people forget to

hydrate properly. So hydrate and dehydrate. Oftentimes people forget to do. So very often, we don't, we aren't even aware that we're not connected in some in some cases it becomes almost a habit throughout the years. Like, what do I, what do I want? Is that even a question? You know, like a lot of people don't have any idea. Like I yeah, I don't, I don't know. And that's, by the way, that is one of the most common answers I get in my office when I say. And so what do you want as it relates to this thing. And there's often a long sign, they say, I have no idea.

So in terms of figuring out what a person wants or how a person can feel connected, what I would ask of you is this. And we will show the listener what I mean. Simba, is there something that you used to love doing that would bring you so much joy that you

stop doing for some reason, but something that you know from your own personal history that you loved? Yes, I used to really love playing sports in high school, particularly rugby. Oh, that is so cool. Is that, so I imagine you felt really connected. I imagine you felt a lot of vitality and excitement.

Absolutely. And I'm guessing it met all four for the feed. Oh, yes, yeah. It was definitely, yeah, there's something I really loved doing that I don't get to do anymore. Is it something that you could do, something either rugby or something like rugby again. Yes, I guess I could play another sport because part of it was being part of a team. The challenge of competition, there was a physical activity component of it,

which was good for general health. So all those different components can be found in sports like soccer. For example, I don't think I can do rugby again. I was wondering because it's so violent. My revad one concussion too many. Okay, so that's question one. So that's connecting with a part of yourself as an athlete. So you miss the team.

You miss the physical engagement of the thing. I imagine there's so many aspects to it. And you know from your own history that for sure it met all four criteria for the feed model. So that's thing one. Thing two would be at this. Since we are social beings, Let me ask you another question for connection. Let's be connecting with other.

Simba, is there someone in your life who you lost contact with who you had such a good connection with? You, like, you know, three hours of conversation felt like 20 minutes. Who is that, you're nodding. Who is that person when you think of this person? Yeah, it's a really good friend. I'll probably won't say his name. Okay, it's fine.

Like a really good friend that, yeah, from high. school, that's when we met. And then, of course, like, university things changed, but we could talk for hours. And even when we would see each other, like, once a year, it will literally be like picking up right where we left off. Would you be open to considering, calling her, emailing her, maybe even awkwardly saying, I know I dropped the ball, or whatever it is, or she may have dropped the ball, who knows, I would love to even just meet through Zoom and just say, hey, let's catch up. Absolutely. Absolutely.

And I guess in my head it's almost like you lose contact and you forget about it. Like life happens and then you're like, you don't think about it. It's like a year has passed, three years have passed, but no one has reached out. And then you're like, well, I guess either of us would make a phone call. But again, a person has to initiate it. So definitely there's something I'll be open to doing. Yes, and I respect you for your wishes to not mention this person's name, but it is my sincerest hope that you will reach out to her.

So two of the quickest routes to reconnecting and to becoming more vital, because when we become more vital, then it starts to cascade into other areas. So if you become more vital as you reconnect with yourself as an athlete, as a sports guy, that will be amazing and it will also probably create new friendships while you're playing people are going to love you and after playing soccer or football uh uh you'll go out for a meal and talk about the game and and hang out and and then this person who you know for sure there's a real historic basis for a good connection this is a slam dunk uh It might be a little bit awkward, but these are the two easiest, the most low-hanging fruit of connection.

There are so many others that I describe in the book, but what I also know for sure is that we all have our own connection formula. Simba, you and I have a lot in common. I imagine that you and I have similar connection formulas in certain areas and different ones and others. But it's our job in this lifetime because nature does not create duplicates. No two things created by nature are exactly the same. everything is at least a little different. And you and I have different connection formulas. Fascinating. And I think one of the things is,

for people to have a sense of this information so they can figure out what their connection formula is. And as you're talking about connection to others, one of the things that came into mind was social media. Oh boy. has allowed us to connect with a broader spectrum of others, but on an other hand, some people are feeling even more disconnected than ever.

So how does that come into play for the connection to others component? So it's crazy when you think about it. How is it that I'm holding up an iPhone? Oh, a picture of me and my wife. But how is it that my iPhone is more powerful than the, computers that got us to the moon and we are more connected than ever and yet loneliness is at greater epidemic levels than ever before. People have fewer friends than ever before, except they have, you know, hundreds if not, well over a thousand friends on Facebook. Are they

really friends? Are they people who call in the middle of the night? Have you spent time cultivating trust between the two of you? No, of course not. You've liked their posts. You might have actually felt very, very envious of their posts. So like, oh my gosh, how good for them. So one thing for sure is we are acting as eyeballs on social media and boy, do the social media companies love it. We are passive. We are doom scrolling. We are consuming. We are not creating. We need to create. When you play a sport you are creating, glue between you and the team members, glue between you and the ball you're kicking in football, and going to use the European term,

or the international term, you're creating all kinds of good things by being active. Being creative does not necessarily just mean putting on a beret and painting. It means doing something, but we are passively wasting our time as consumers and not getting into our lives, not actually we may be, you know, giving a comment on a social media post, but what about calling that person, reinvigorating that relationship the way we're meant to? What about creating more and consuming less? Also, on social media, we experience other nasty characteristics of what our brain produces. One of them is FOMO. Patrick McGuinness is the guy who came up with the term FOMO. He calls us FOMO sapiens. He was on my podcast, and he was on my podcast. we talked about it. And very often we'll go to a party and we don't want to go to that party,

but we don't want to miss out. And I would say, let's try the opposite. Jomo, joy of missing out. Sometimes it's far better to say, you know what I'd rather do is just have a nice, quiet evening at home with my wife and son. It'd be great. I don't need to go to this party. I only have so many heartbeats in this lifetime. Let's use them for what matters. Another problem that we have is social comparison. I drive up with my newly purchased car. I live in a neighborhood where people have pretty nice cars. My car is a fantastic, I love my car. And it's the first new car I ever bought, believe it or not. Every other car I've ever had has been used. So I roll up in my new car and on my block there are, oh gosh, so many cars that are so much more expensive than mine. And I could say,

oh my gosh, I feel diminished. Look at social comparison. They got a better car than I do. What's wrong with me in my life. I choose not to do that. I choose to double down on gratitude. I love my car. And every time I drive my car, when I hit the ignition, I focus on that as a practice. Loving my car all the more. What we appreciate appreciates. And at some point, during every ride, because I put new tires on it, I got rid of the OEM tires, I put some really cool, you know, really special Michelin tires on it. At some point, my kids are used to hearing me say, isn't this an awesome car? And they're like, yeah, dad, how do we know? And I'll say, what about those tires? Like, yeah, dad, we know. But it's almost like it's become kind of a family

joke, but I really mean it. I love my car. It is not a fancy car. Nobody walks by my car and says, ooh, sexy. It doesn't happen. Not where I live anyway, but I love my car. It's, in case you're wondering, it's a Hyundai Santa Fe. Plug in SUV. It's great. it's a plug-in hybrid so it's it's it's it's definitely a nice car but on my block let's just say it's not it's not the bell of the ball but as far as I'm concerned it's that my car is my my sweetheart on four wheels and same thing goes for my relationship with my wife every day I let her know on some level just how much she means to me I don't save it we don't actually give each other Valentine's

cards she once said to me honey every day's Valentine's And I think that's, I'm not, and I'm not throwing shade on Valentine's Day, as it turns out, my birthday is the day after Valentine's Day was part of the reason why we don't do it. But the other reason is we really try to make it a daily practice to, you know, to express gratitude for the other person and really make it sincere and measurable. I love that. Like talking about again, we get, we. We. always have a choice, right? We can be comparing each other, our staff to other people's staff and then going to maybe that disempowering or negative mindset,

or we can choose to be appreciative about things that we have because we are so fortunate. Well, I feel very fortunate when you're talking about you. I'm like, same. My car is like over 10 years old. I love it. It starts.

Survives the Canadian winter. This winter we had like minors, I think at one point, like over minus 30 degrees Celsius. Not sure what that is in Fahrenheit. But it started really well and I'm like, thank God. Right. So I love that idea about talking about choosing to appreciate and to shift your mindset

so that you're not falling into some of those, I guess, mental traps that your brain might be falling into because of social media. The other thing that you say that just blew my mind is doing is creative. Creativity is to it. Because I think sometimes we have this idea that creativity is we have to create a masterpiece, whether it be a painting, music or something. But the act of doing something, of being active is actually a creative process. The act of making that phone call.

Setting up or doing those things that you love, all those things are creative, whether it's creating moments, creating connection. So knowing that by taking action, you are also creating. I think that's a huge, like, for me anyways, that way I don't have to worry about painting because no one wants to see my painting, but I can do stuff. So I think that makes me a little bit more creative than I thought I was before. Oh, Simba, I love that so much.

My father stopped playing piano when he was about nine. He's now almost 86 years old. So he started playing piano, I think, at around 79. So for about 70 years, he was not playing piano. And for the last seven years, he's been playing the piano. He is not Herbie Hancock. He is not an awesome pianist. But he loves every second of it.

He's not playing to become great. He's playing because intrinsically, the act of playing piano makes him feel good. It brings up his mood. It reduces his anxiety. And so what we know is when we are engaged, in creation, our anxiety and depression tends to go down. There's a really funny study. It's kind of almost silly, it sounds like, told to put their foot in a bucket of ice, their feet. See how long they could take it. And then they were told to do it while playing Tetris.

And while they were playing Tetris and they were being challenged and they were just kind of in the game, they were able to handle the ice, I don't know how much longer, let's say three times, four times, five times longer. And the fact of the matter is if we can find something that we love doing just because we love doing it. And if we challenge ourselves not relative to the other person, but we challenge ourselves relative to ourselves. One of the things that we could do is, you know, I could, let's imagine you and I go to the gym and you are just running circles around me. You're benching more than I am. You're doing better leg lifts. What I need to do in that moment is compare myself to myself, not compare myself to Simba. What Simba's doing is what Simba's doing. It doesn't

matter. What matters is, am I doing better than I used to yesterday? Am I tomorrow will I be doing better than I was today? So that's the only thing, the only person we can compare ourselves to really is ourselves. And that's one of the things we also get lost on in social media or with the social brains that we have. And we end up feeling diminished. not than saying, hey, wow, look at this. I am on, you know, I'm getting better. No, I'm going to compare myself to Chris Hemsworth's abs. Like, no, let's not do that.

And I love when you're talking about that study when people were putting their feet in cold water versus when they're not playing Tetris versus when they're playing Tetris because on this podcast, we talk about mental resilience, that how to build a stronger mind, the perspectives, the tools, the strategies that you can adopt for you to be able to deal with life's challenges because then all of us have experienced them globally

and we also have the ones that we experience within our own lives. And so how does connection and addressing those four areas of connection help individuals become more resilient when life doesn't work out the way they want to work out? So let's imagine you've woken up after a horrible night's sleep, you slept maybe three hours and you needed eight. How ready are you to take on the world? Let's say you have a massive presentation. Let's say you have a massive physical feet.

You're about to go on a very long bike ride. How ready are you? How resilient will you be? Versus if you did all the things, you ate right the night before, you hydrated, you got a good night sleep, you took a shower in the morning, you felt like a million bucks, you ate the right formula of foods for you to be at your peak performance. When we are connected with ourselves, we are going to be stronger than we would be when we are not. I was watching Court of Gold. It's the documentary of the U.S. Men's Olympic basketball team. And Steph Curry,

who's my favorite basketball player from films, just because he's so cool. I just love him, love him. I'm a Golden State Warriors fan. But there's something about Steph Curry and his resilience and his positivity and his goodness. He's just a good guy and a great athlete. But one of the things he said is he said, I need to check out my self-talk. I need to watch myself talk. Self-talk is something that you and I both know.

If we are going to be performing at our best, if we're going to be at our most resilient, our self-talk has to be good. what's going on between our ears really matters in terms of our performance. I mean, just a funny example in sport psychology. If a quarterback wants to connect with his receiver, it's going to be far better if he says connect rather than no interception. If he says no interception, he's actually more likely to have an interception because the word interception is there and he's going into a negative mind space.

You're not going to get the same outcomes. If we are more connected to who we are, if we're more connected to what we're doing, if we are doing something as authentic, we're going to be stronger. One other really funny piece is we tend to be stronger when we say something that is true. Try bench pressing your max in a safe situation. Of course, this is not medical advice. So, you know, if there's medical contradictions, don't do it. But try lifting your maximum weight saying something that is true versus saying something that is not true.

If you were to, in my case, let's say, back in high school, it was not cool to love George Michael. And I could, I talk about that in my book. He's my favorite singer. He's just, he's amazing. Yes, I love all the music. I love all the Van Halen, the Zeppelin and the ECDC, but I loved George Michael's voice. Now, he had the voice of an angel and best voice I'd ever heard. And yet I had to lie about it.

It was considered a guilty pleasure. And so if somebody said to me, me, you know, do you like George Michael? I'd have to say, no, of course not. No. What do you, you know? And the fact was, I would be weaker in those moments because I knew that I was saying something that was patently untrue. And now that I'm able to feel mature enough to realize that there's no such thing as a guilty pleasure, there's only pleasure as long as we're hurting no one, including ourselves, I own it. And so one of the ways that we become resilient is by being authentic. Love that. For our listeners that want to learn more in terms of your podcast, your book,

where can they find you? Sima, thank you. I'm findable at my website, Dr. Adam Dorsay.com, D-R-A-D-A-M-D-R-A-M-D-R-A-Y dot com. A bit of a long one. My book is available at Amazon and Barnes & Noble. I'm out here in Silicon Valley. You can find me on LinkedIn quite easily. My two Ted X talks are easily findable. I'm available for keynotes and things like that. I love giving those. And Simba, God, I really do hope that I get to hang out with you at some point. I hope that either I get to go up to Canada or you come down here, but this has to happen.

Well, I'm in need of former weather, so maybe I'll be the one to come down there. But love your book, SuperSight. You've got an amazing podcast. So for anyone who wants to learn more about connection, the four different types, and expand on the strategies that we shared in today's interview, please, please, please. We have included those links in the podcast description, reach out to Dr. Dose and become more super-sight. Oh, thank you so much, Simba. I loved being with you. You are such a cool person.

Thank you for tuning in. Continue strengthening your mind by listening to our other episodes.