The Wellness Scoop - Adam Grant on Creating a Successful Mindset

Episode Date: March 30, 2021

This week we’re talking to psychologist Adam Grant about upgrading your mindset; looking at the culture of failure, the importance of rethinking and keeping an open mind, how to create constructive dialogue, whether to follow our gut instinct and why ignorance isn’t such a bad thing.   See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

TD Direct Investing offers live support. So whether you're a newbie or a seasoned pro, you can make your investing steps count. And if you're like me and think a TFSA stands for Total Fund Savings Adventure, maybe reach out to TD Direct Investing. Hi and welcome to the Deliciously Ella podcast with me Ella Mills and my husband and business partner Matthew Mills. Hi everyone. Our podcast Delicious Ways to Feel Better is a weekly show focused on everything that matters to us at Deliciously Ella. We believe that feeling good is a holistic 360 degree approach to our lifestyles and that wellness is about so much more than just what we eat or how we exercise. It's also about our relationships, our mindset, our sleep patterns, our stress levels, and how we look after ourselves

on a day-to-day basis. On this podcast, we'll be breaking down all of these topics, looking at absolutely everything that impacts our mental and our physical health and sharing the small, simple changes that will hopefully inspire you to feel better. So we've had a couple of questions one of which is I've been talking about it a bit on our social media which is that we've always talked about the importance of mindfulness incorporating meditation into that as one of our five key pillars of health and how important it is to look after your mental health just as much as your physical health and how the two is just so intricately connected and about six weeks or so ago now I just found myself quite burnt out I think as lots of people have felt after a year

in lockdown and trying to juggle babies and early morning wake-ups and work and all the rest of it and I realised I just needed to put in a bit more time every day for that. And Mei Mei, our youngest daughter, who was waking up quite early around 5am or so. And so to create that bit of headspace first thing while we were up so early, we started meditating every morning. And I decided to set myself the goal of meditating every single day in 2021. I am six weeks in as of this week and I've never felt such a seismic shift in my well-being. I've found things that would normally really rattle me and really stress me out even just sitting in the back seat in between the two girls crying in the car just isn't and I'm finding myself so much more mentally resilient and calm. And I'm just quite

blown away actually by how profound the impact has been. And I've had lots of questions on what I've been doing. And I've been doing a mix of different things to keep it a little bit different each week. I've been doing a lot of the meditations with our friend Gelong Thupten, the Buddhist monk who we've had on here before, and who's got some really beautiful meditations on the app. I really like his body scan. It's something that's quite nice to do first thing in the morning and also last thing at night. I've been doing a lot of that and I've also been doing a lot of breath work exercises with this amazing instructor that I've recently discovered and who we've actually just been recording with this week to join the app in a couple of weeks time. So I cannot wait

to introduce him to the Delicious Yellow community we're actually doing a massive project on the mindfulness and meditation and mental health section of our app which will go live about a month from now mid-May and it is just so so important to look after our mental health just as much as our physical health so that's been a kind of game-changing thing for me and I guess it's really helped address work life balance, which is something that we get a lot of questions on as well. And something that we wanted to talk a little bit about today and any tips that we have on finding a bit more work life balance. So is there anything that you do in particular for a sort of healthier work life balance or anything you're finding helpful? I think it really depends where I'm working. I think when I'm in the office and I come home, I have a pretty good switch off pattern. Whereas during lockdown, it's so easy to increasingly blur the lines

between what's work and what's your home space. And so I've actually found that if I just change clothes at the end of the day, if I put on some shorts and a t-shirt or pyjamas at the end of the day, then that's my cue to switch off work for the evening. And I really try and be disciplined in that. And so I found that to be a really productive and helpful thing for me. I think for me the biggest thing has not been going on my phone first thing I used to wake up look at the time on my phone turn it off airplane mode and immediately open up something at social media open up the inbox in there then I'd open up my emails and I've only been awake three minutes and I've already processed 101 requests or questions and it can be quite overwhelming. I now start with the meditation

every day and then I keep my phone off, go downstairs, make us coffee, come back up, have it in bed while I feed Maymay and trying to have that first hour or so kind of pre-7am off work, off my phone has been a really life-changing thing. In terms of work at the moment what are your big focuses at Delicious Cielo? So we've just had our big chocolate launch which we're thrilled with and we're working on another product launch for the summer which is an entry into the chilled category which we are super excited about. We'll make plant-based cooking at home much more delicious and much easier so we're really really thrilled about that and we'll be providing much more delicious and much easier. So we're really, really thrilled about that. And we'll be providing much more information on that over the next couple of months. We started to get a lot of requests from people who are users of our app, who may have small teams

of people that they work with, or they may be larger employers who wanted to start offering our app to their employees as a perk. And so we've started to build a product that now any employer can give to their team members as a as a free perk that they can give yeah it's really exciting that I think I'm just so personally selfishly really enjoying using all the various components of the app and really enjoying as well building out all the offerings at the moment as I said that especially that mental health mindfulness meditation section and bringing my favourite bits of breath work into it. And we're actually talking a little bit today about our work and our mindset. So it feels quite apt actually for that. And today's episode is with a really renowned psychologist whom lots

of you might know already called Adam Grant. Adam's work really focuses on changing our mindset for success across all aspects of our life. And recently, a lot of his work's about rethinking our old ways and the importance of keeping an open mind. He's very passionate about the importance of embracing being wrong and finding a lot of power in accepting and acknowledging the fact that no one knows it all and that's okay. There's so much learning for us to continuously do in our lives. So really honoured to welcome Adam to the podcast today. Thank you so much, Adam, for coming on the show. I was doing some research on you and your work over the weekend. And I was listening to your

episode of the armchair expert with Dax Shepard. And there was a quote in there. And it's really quite simple, but I found it very succinct, really, which is that if we all understood our own minds better, then we could live more productive more meaningful lives and as far as I understand from your work I read option b and for anyone listening who's not familiar with option b it was a book that Adam co-wrote with Sheryl Sandberg from Facebook after her husband very very suddenly at really quite a young age passed away and the whole concept is that you do need an option B, unfortunately, too often in life. And it's finding ways in which you can pivot your mindset to embrace option B, even if it's not what you want. I actually read it just after Matt's mum, my mother-in-law passed away, and I found it

really profound and really kind of game changing in my mentality. But as far as I understand, reading your new book as well, and all your work and watching the TED Talks and things, that everything that you do is about changing your mindset in order to create more capacity for growth, for learning. And I wondered if we could just start today's episode with a little bit more about you, about your work, about your interest in psychology and why you do what you do. Before I do, first of all, Matt and Ella, so sorry for your loss. Oh, thank you. You're very kind. I really, I wish we didn't have to write that book. It would have been much, much better if we lived in a world where nobody had to confront these kinds of heartbreaks and adversities, but we're stuck with it. So what can we do, but try to grow from it?

One of the things that kept coming up for me when I was looking at your work, both actually in terms of the original Thinker, the book before and a TED talk of yours I was watching, but also this book, was that there seems to be a kind of, the ego seems to be very relevant in terms of rethinking and relearning and the ability to find a bit more humility and perhaps reframing this idea of failure as well. And I wondered if that was something that you felt was very prevalent, because I felt for me that kept coming up as a question again and again in each chapter that I read. I guess it's one of the defining themes of my work, and I hadn't really noticed it until now. But as you pointed out, it's stunning how many people fail and then internalize it and say,

well, that means I'm a failure. And we all know that failing doesn't make you a failure. In fact, if you look at the data, the world's greatest scientists, entrepreneurs, inventors, artists, musicians, they actually fail more than their peers. And the more ideas they try, the better they're shot at achieving great things. And I think that, you know, there are definitely cultures that have tried to look at failure differently, right? When I spend time in Silicon Valley, there's this fail fast mantra. We should celebrate failure as much as possible. And yet, I don't want to throw a party when I fail. I'm usually pretty discouraged. I guess I would say what I want to do is I want to try to normalize failure.

To help people recognize that making a mistake, screwing up, falling flat on your face doesn't have to be fun, but it's part of the learning experience. And if you never fail, you're probably not aiming high enough. And what do you find is the common trait between those who fail and are willing to give it another go and those who fail and say, oh my God, I can't handle this. I'm not going to put myself out there like that again. Well, the usual suspects are probably grit, growth mindset, and then also the three Ps. So I think we're all familiar with grit, right? Having passion and perseverance toward long-term goals, growth mindset, believing that you have the capacity to change and improve and saying, you know what, when I struggle, that's a sign I need to work harder or try a different strategy,

as opposed to a signal that I lack the innate talent or the raw ability to make it. And then the three Ps I think are always helpful. This is Marty Seligman's work where he found that pessimists, when they failed, they tended to see it as personal, permanent, and pervasive. So, you know, hey, this is my fault. It's going to ruin every part of my life, and I'm always going to be a failure. Whereas optimists were more likely to explain events differently. They said, you know what? This isn't personal, right?

There are situational factors at play here. This isn't necessarily pervasive. It's not going to affect every part of my life. Just because I failed at one task doesn't mean I'm going to be horrible at everything. And it's also not permanent. I can find ways to get better tomorrow. And I think these thinking traps, they affect all of us, but some of us are better at stopping ourselves and saying, you know what, wait a minute, let me rethink how I'm processing that negative event so that I can try to bounce back or even bounce

forward from it. I lived in the US for seven years and there was such more of a kind of embrace of failure there. And I think it's the origins of the kind of American dream in the US for seven years, and there was such more of a kind of embrace of failure there. And I think it's the origins of the kind of American dream in the US as well. But it felt like failure was something that was okay, and you tried and that was great. I think in the UK, we very much have this culture where you kind of ridicule people upon failure. And the cultural difference I noticed when I moved home after that, to me was really stark. And I think it probably is a reason for the enormous sense of entrepreneurship in the US. I think you're onto something there, Matt. I lived in Sheffield for a bit, doing some organizational psychology work up there. And I kept getting

accused of being too upbeat, too exuberant, too hopeful, too optimistic. And then I ended up working on a project in London. And was, it was around trying to, to help engineers and salespeople leverage their strengths in a big tech company. And I went in and I said, all right, we're going to try to figure out what you're good at so that we could redesign your job around that. And one of the engineers interrupted and he said, I'm sorry, you Americans always talking about strengths, but we actually have humility here in the UK. So why don't you look at yourself honestly? And I'm like, no, no, no, look, you don't have to claim you're Superman.

I just want to know what you're pretty good at so that we could find out if your job is aligned with that. And he kept arguing back. And finally he said, all right, I'll make a list of my least weak weaknesses, and then I'll call those strengths if it helps you. But I thought it was such a great portrait of the contrast between American and British culture. And I have a colleague who actually coined a term for what you're describing. He calls it British negative affect, which I think is a hilarious way of capturing this sort of, hey, you know what? Nobody's allowed to fail, but also we don't think anyone is actually any good. Yeah, yeah, we are enormously self-deprecating.

Where do you think that comes from? I'm not sure. I think there's a slight charm to it in some ways, but I do think undoubtedly it holds people back as well because there's the kind of the humorous aspect to it that lives on the surface of you all kind of rip on each there's the kind of the humorous aspect to it that lives on the surface of you all kind of rip on each other and you kind of laugh about it but I'm sure deep inside that has an effect on anyone that will then prevent them from from wanting to take more

risk in the future say I'm not sure the origins of it but there is a stark difference it'd be interesting to try and uncover what they are. Yeah, I completely agree. And I think everything that you're talking about, this idea of relearning, I think we would probably be perhaps more hesitant to. And in that, I thought it was interesting how you, right at the beginning of the book as well, talked about how we have to rethink what our definition of intelligence is as well, which again, I thought was quite interesting. It's quite, it's challenging, I guess, the norm of the moment. Yeah, I've always thought about intelligence as the ability to think and learn. And I was stunned by this evidence showing that the better you are at thinking and learning, sometimes the worse you are at rethinking and unlearning. Because smart people are exceptionally

good at finding reasons to reinforce what they already believe and what they want to believe. And I think that would be fine if you lived in a stable world where nothing ever changed, but we live in a dynamic world that's changing rapidly. And that means we have to be as quick to rethink and unlearn as we are to think and learn. And I don't think most of us are good at this. We're very good at forming opinions, but it takes us a long time to reform our opinions. So we see that in what we do the whole time. I see it with other people where you form a conclusion and then before you've even done the work, and then you try and validate that conclusion as you do the work. How do you strip yourself out of that to just start from a place where you can actually have an open mind? Well, I like to think about this through the lens of, do you get stuck thinking too much

like a preacher, a prosecutor, or a politician? So in preaching mindset, you are convinced that you're right and you're trying to proselytize to everyone else. And in prosecuting mindset, you're trying to win an argument and prove everyone else wrong. And those two ways of thinking stop you from rethinking because you've already concluded you're right and everyone else is wrong. And then thinking like a politician is about trying to win the approval of an audience. Where I worry is when it comes to questioning some of our convictions

and assumptions, I think we need a fourth mindset. We need to think more like scientists. And I don't mean that you should immediately buy a microscope or a telescope. You don't have to own a lab coat. I mean that thinking like a scientist is about valuing humility over pride and curiosity over closure. It means when you have an idea, you don't let that become your identity or your ideology. You treat it as a hunch. And there's this incredible experiment that was done in Italy recently with founders. They're all pre-revenue and they take a three to four month crash course in how to start and run a business.

What they don't know is that half of them have been assigned to a control group. They get the regular version of the course. The other half have been trained to think like scientists. So they're told your strategy for your startup, just a theory. Go do customer interviews and come up with some specific hypotheses. And then when you launch your first product or service, that's just an experiment to test whether your hypotheses were right or wrong.

And those founders, they didn't learn anything different, right? They're just encouraged to think like scientists. Over the next year, they averaged more than 40 times the revenue of the control group, which is a staggering effect. And the main mechanism seems to be they were more than twice as likely to pivot. When their product launch didn't work or when their first service failed, when they were taught to think like scientists, they said, oh, well, my hypothesis wasn't right. Let me shift my market or let me rethink my strategy. Whereas in the control group, I think like most of us, they either just kept preaching that their strategy was right. They kept prosecuting all of the people who are criticizing them, or they went and politicked

and basically tried to convince the people that were willing to let them stay the course that they had been right all along. And so I think this idea of thinking like a scientist and saying, all right, got some hypotheses, let me test them and then pivot if they don't work is something we could probably all do a little bit more often. And do you think that's something you see in your career, whether you're leading a company or whether you're kind of more part of the matrix of the company, but also outside? I mean, it feels obviously at the moment, the world does feel like a very complicated and oftentimes very divisive place. And it feels, you know, the political spectrum, it's really a great example

of this divisiveness. And I think it's very easy to have a lot of conflict in your conversation at the moment. Are you seeing that this ability to unlearn is just as important across the board? Yeah, I think so. This is not a skill that's unique to entrepreneurs or leaders. I think it's something that we all need to build. And yeah, we're living in a polarized world right now. I remember being in Europe during the Brexit vote and just being stunned at how, you know,

us versus them it became, right? That there's just one side or the other side. You're either a stayer or a leaver. Actually, this is a pretty complex issue. And there are many different pieces of it, right? We have to think through how it's going to affect cultural identity, how it's going to affect economic opportunity, how it's going to affect travel, right? You can make a long list of all the second order consequences of Brexit. And I didn't hear anybody looking through those nuances in, you know, in everyday conversations. And it seems like it's only gotten worse over the past few

years. I think that what a scientist would do in a situation like this is the opposite of what my instinct is. So my biggest problem is being a prosecutor. If I think you're wrong, I feel like it's my moral responsibility to correct you. And that's what I do as a social scientist, right? I'm supposed to bring logic and data to bear on complex issues. And yet, whenever I get into an argument with somebody who disagrees with me on politics or policy, I find myself just hammering them with facts and evidence and it rarely opens their mind. So what I've been trying to learn to do now is come into the conversation and say, hey, you know what? I have a bad tendency to go into prosecutor mode. I've even been called a logic bully. And I don't want to be that person. Part of the reason I want to have this discussion or this debate is I think I might learn some

things. And so if you catch me lawyering, please let me know. And what I found is the person is more likely to call me out then, which helps me avoid getting off track. They're also, in many cases, they're saying things like, well, you know, I sometimes get really stubborn too, and I don't want to do that either. So, you know, I hope we can learn something from each other. And then it sets the tone for a much more nuanced conversation. And what a scientist would do on a complex issue is be humble and curious, right? To say, hey, Ella, you know, I'd love to hear your views on Brexit. It's way more complex than I can possibly understand, right? I'm not a political scientist. I'm not an economist. And I'd really like to enrich my own knowledge here. So tell me what

you know. And if you're open to it, would love to share my take too. Oh, hi there. I'm Norma, the unofficial mayor of the town of Destiny. Speaking of, FanD's kick a destiny three is happening live Superbowl Sunday. You should watch. It's going to be a hoot. While you're at it, download FanDuel North America's number one sports book. You can bet on touchdowns, turnovers,

heck even total kicker points. Don't you know? Anywho, enjoy your podcast or whatnot. Please play responsibly. 19 plus and physically located in Ontario. If you have questions or concerns about your gambling or the gambling of someone close to you, please go to connectsontario.ca. You're a podcast listener, and this is a podcast ad

heard only in Canada. Reach great Canadian listeners like yourself with podcast advertising from Libsyn ads. Choose from hundreds of top podcasts offering host endorsements or run a pre-produced ad like this one across thousands of shows to reach your target audience with libsyn ads email bob at libsyn.com to learn more that's b-o-b at l-i-b-s-y-n.com one of the things you talk about as well which i think resonated when i was reading it and i'm sure it will for for pretty much anyone is the difference between a task conflict and a relationship conflict and how easy it is I think you said earlier to take something personally so whether you're talking to a colleague or whether you're talking to a family member about something maybe a bit more complicated or maybe just to a partner or a child about something it can so easily spiral

from being about something solely task related or opinion related on something that's totally unconnected to either of the people involved in the conversation, but it can so easily become personal. And that's something that I think a lot of people, definitely myself included, struggle with in terms of learning and opening your mind is the ego, again, that you can take something which has nothing to do with you and see it as a personal attack. Yeah, I'm amazed at how often this happens that we start out in a task conflict, which is we're disagreeing about some ideas or opinions. And then it quickly becomes very personal. And it becomes a relationship conflict where I think you're attacking my values, or I don't like you. And it makes it really hard then to disagree thoughtfully

because we get really heated and we start to insult each other. And I think, you know, it's probably easier said than done, but the thing that's been most helpful to me on this is to realize, you know what? You can disagree without being disagreeable. And not every conflict is divisive. And in fact, a lot of conflict is healthy.

There's some researchers who said that the absence of conflict is not harmony, it's apathy. If you never disagree, it means nobody really cares enough to raise a variety of views. And that obviously stands in the way of all of our abilities to rethink and unlearn. It's a great way to get trapped in a filter bubble or an echo chamber or to get stuck in a pattern of groupthink. And I guess one of the things I've been trying to put into practice more often, which is easier said than done, is to come into a conflict and let people know that I don't believe in agreeing to disagree.

And there may be a point where somebody's impulse is to do that. And if you think we've reached that point, then let me know. Because what I want to do at that point is I want to ask you what I did wrong and how I could have had this conversation more constructively. And that means I'm not arguing to win anymore. I'm actually asking questions to learn. And the hope is I can have a better discussion with that person a different day, or even maybe handle another argument that I have with someone who has similar views the same day. That's really, really interesting.

So if we can kind of take a bit of a step back, I was a concept that I'm really interested by. We were slightly joking about this before we started recording, but which is this first instinct fallacy. And I said we had a fascinating conversation with a researcher before on the podcast about a gut instinct. And you said how you'd much prefer a head instinct rather than a gut instinct, which seems enormously wise. And you give an example about how students taking a multiple choice test and they have the kind of common logic or understanding is that you should always go with your first choice. So that's much more likely to be right. But research has shown that isn't actually the case. And it's not so much about just changing your answer, but it's to the consideration of

whether you should change it that gives the better outcome. Can you explain a bit and expand on that whole point of the first instinct fallacy and the thought process that we should go through of when in the short term, we're convinced that we're right and what we can do to try and challenge that thinking to improve our outcomes? Yeah, let's do that. Let's take a specific example. So what's a gut feeling that one of you had that you want to know whether you should listen to or question? Well, I guess to be honest, the thing I probably feel you see time and time again in any day is just when you meet someone or when you speak to someone and you suddenly have an instinct to

whether or not you've warmed to them or you haven't warmed to them. If you're interviewing someone for a job or getting to know someone, obviously a bit less in COVID, but you know, whether they might be a potential friend even. Perfect. Okay. So meeting, meeting somebody new, whether it's a job interview, a potential friend, or even dating, right? Most of us have an intuition. In fact, my read of the evidence is we have an intuition within five seconds of meeting a person. And sometimes the first impression is positive or negative in less than a second. So a lot of people just act on that and they say, well, I trust my gut. I'm like, really? I do my thinking with my brain. I don't know what cognitive processes are going on in your gut, but tell me more. And eventually what we land on is

that intuition is just subconscious pattern recognition, right? It's your subconscious mind detecting a set of patterns that you aren't fully aware of consciously. And the reason that can be useful information is your subconscious works faster than your conscious. And it also can process a lot more information at once, but it's hard to make it explicit, right? And figure out, okay, what am I actually seeing here? I wouldn't say you should throw out your intuition, but I think you should test your intuition. Instead of blindly following your gut, right? Ask, okay, is this gut feeling valid? And one of the mistakes that I see a lot of people make is they come into a job interview and they say, oh, you know what? I just got a bad vibe about this candidate.

And it's pretty unfair to the candidate to have that vibe in the first minute. And it might be because, you know, they happen to look like the horrible hire that you had last year and really regretted bringing in, right? Or their voice reminded you of, you know, of somebody who was a bad friend a few years earlier, right? There are all these sort of arbitrary or at least idiosyncratic ways that you could have a bad gut feeling about them that wouldn't be accurate. And the reverse could be true too, right? You could have a great gut feeling about someone because they're charismatic. Well, guess what? You know who's most charismatic on first impressions? Narcissists. They are great at projecting confidence and warmth and power and presence because they want you to think the world of them.

And then over time, of course, you get to see more of their true colors and you realize, wow, this person is an arrogant, selfish, egotistical jerk. And so I wouldn't throw that intuition out, right? What I would do is I would say, okay, where's it coming from? Is it reliable? And how do I gather more information to test it? Sounds sensible. I definitely think the more you piece together this whole kind of concept of unlearning and keeping an open mind, it does feel that if we were collectively able to shift towards that way of being as a society,

that we would basically be a collection of better people. I don't know. It's obviously it's a sweeping statement, but I don't know if that's something you agree with. It does feel that we would all as a community really benefit from being less judgmental, less quick to form opinions and more open to other people thinking something totally different from us. Yeah, I think that's right, Ella. I think, you know, in some ways, you can make a pretty clear argument that we evolved to make snap judgments, right? It's overused, but there's a familiar example of, you know, if you're walking in the jungle and you see something moving in the distance, it probably wouldn't serve you well to say, hmm, I wonder what that is. It seems to have sharp teeth and be orange with black stripes.

I wonder if that's a tiger, right? The people who survived and passed on their genes were the ones who instantaneously said, tiger run. And I think the problem is that we're in lots of situations in everyday life that are not survival relevant. And we're still making those visceral snap judgments and relying too much on them. I think if we were more open to rethinking, if we were either slower to form our first opinions or faster to form our second opinions. Yeah, I think the world might be a better place because I think right now, culturally, in a lot of ways, changing your mind is seen as a sign of weakness, right? You're accused of being a flip-flopper. Yeah, yeah, sure.

And Adam, with thinking about that and this kind of deep, entrenched views of the world and of potentially what our paths are, did you find that the research you have been doing more recently for Think Again and this importance of an open mind related to the research that you shared in option B? Because the reality is, is that life throws you all kinds of curveballs. Obviously, COVID has thrown a curveball at every single person in the last 12 months. Yeah, I think we're all living some form of option B right now, right? Nobody wanted to be on lockdown. Nobody wanted to have to worry about getting a deadly disease. Nobody wanted to question whether it's safe to eat in a restaurant or hug people who aren't

in your COVID bubble, right? And we obviously would not have chosen this situation, but we can't control the circumstances. And I think that's been one of the hardest things for people to grapple with over the past year is to say, you know, if I'm not an actual scientist, right, there's nothing I can do to accelerate progress toward a cure or a vaccine or a series of vaccines. And I feel sort of helpless. And when you can't control the events in your life, the best thing you can control is your mindset, right? Your outlook. And I think this has been the perfect time for all of us to think again. I think one of the most relevant concepts from option B for me is the idea of, right? That post-traumatic stress disorder is something that a lot of people will have to face and grapple with. And the data tell us that about 15% of people after traumatic events will come out with PTSD. That's awful. That's the bad news. The good news is over half of people report post-traumatic growth, which is, look, I wish

this hadn't happened, but given that I can't change it, I am going to become better in some way because of it. And I think that's one of the things we're going to see as a mindset shift in the long-term effects of COVID. A lot of people go through adversity and come out with a deeper sense of gratitude and also a greater sense of personal strength, right? I got through that. I can get through almost anything and I'm going to appreciate having a job, right? Being able to see friends and go to places indoors in a way that I took for granted before. A lot of people end up with closer relationships too, especially with the people that you went through that adversity with. And probably most importantly, many people come out of trauma saying, I see new possibilities and I also have a deeper sense of purpose that I've rethought what I want my life to be about. And I really want to make it

mean something. I want to make it count. And I think there's good reason to believe that in the long run, those of us who are lucky enough, you know, not to be permanently scarred by COVID are going to take it as an excuse to rethink how we want to spend our lives. So when you say rethink in terms of exactly, I think for so many people right now, as we look to the other side of this year, that's where so many people's minds are at, but then also taking forward everything that we've talked about today and creating that sense of more, less judgment, more open-mindedness to everybody else's opinions, no matter what they are, colleagues, friends, family. What is really step one? What is the foundation of learning to

rethink, of learning that it's not weak or it's not failure to change your opinion, to change your mind? My favorite first step is to make an ignorance list, just a list of all the things that you don't know. And some of them are areas of knowledge, right? So, you know, my ignorance list includes food, fashion, financial markets, chemistry, still trying to figure out why British accents disappear in songs. Still have not gotten a good answer to that one. If you can help me, I'm all ears. It's such a mystery. I really want to know. that have to do with our identities and our values and our futures, right? I think a lot of us get locked into an image of who we want to marry or how many kids we want to have or what kind of career we want or even where we want to live without recognizing that you can't really predict the future. You don't know how you're going to change over time. You don't know what opportunities are going to be available to you. And I think that's something a lot of people have done during

COVID. You know, some people have questioned, do I want to be living in the middle of a big city or do I want to be more out in the countryside? And I think just having a list of things that you think might be true about who you want to be in the future and how you want to lead your life, but also could be wrong. I think it's a good way to keep yourself open. And what I like to do with that list is I like to have a checkup a couple times a year. So repeating reminder twice a year in your calendar, just like you would go to the doctor even when nothing is wrong, right?

To say, okay, you know, in my job, have I reached a learning plateau or a lifestyle plateau? In my relationship, have I given my partner the space to continue evolving? Have I shared how what I want is changing? And I think it would be dangerous to have those checkups every day because then you'd just be rethinking everything and you get stuck in analysis paralysis.

But there's something about twice a year that I think allows enough time to pass to say, all right, I've got some new thoughts, some new perspectives. I'm reflecting, not just ruminating. And that also reminds me to pause and take stock and consider a change. Yeah, I love that. Yeah, me too.

So stop being so binary and more fluid. Yeah. I think that that could be helpful for most of us, is my guess. I mean, look, there are some people who do too much rethinking, right? And they're constantly second guessing and then third guessing and fourth guessing all their choices. But I think most of us are too far to the other side of that spectrum. And we do our rethinking in hindsight, right? We look back and we say, I wish I had rethought that choice or that commitment. And I think it's better to do it upfront than regret not doing it later. I didn't get to ask you what you're both rethinking right now. It's a great question.

My mom, she had brain cancer and the tumor was in her brain. Depending on where the tumor is, basically, it affects a different part of your functioning. For her, it was in the area that affected her speech. And she was a very eminent politician in the UK. She had an incredible career. She was an incredibly popular figure in politics. And she, basically basically the only words that she could still say when she was very, very ill was the things that she was left with was being

able to say love forever. And I think that that really, really stuck with me. And you talk about the post-traumatic growth. And I definitely felt like I went through a big growth spurt in my own development after she passed away. And I see that most in the kind of most illuminating way through the little girls that I have now. And so I think that, you know, we were getting ready to launch our business in the US before all of this happened. And it would have meant that I was going to have to spend more time there because we were setting up a factory and manufacturing there so that we could make our food products. And I think what it's done for me is it's, it's kind of more centered myself just here with my girls and doing the things that I,

and I think it comes back to this. I'm sure if you read the book essentialism, but just do the things that you can do well, do them really, really well. And like, just be here with my girls, with Ella, with our team here in the UK and do that super, super, super well. and at some point more opportunities will come and we'll be able to go do something further away but for now just just focus on this and have that call be incredibly incredibly strong and I think that I'm sure that that would be a similar conclusion for for a lot of people after Covid. How about you? Absolutely I think I mean there's a lot of parallels there. I think like so many, I mean, our two children are very close in age. Skye, the eldest, is 19 months and May created a more fluid, open mindedness for me that there is more that you can do and there's more that you can achieve. done and I think our sense of work was it was so overwhelming and you know I was still working at 11 o'clock the night before Skye was born at six o'clock the next morning and it was so all-consuming and I think since she was born and Covid happened it really allowed me to rethink priorities and

work is still a massive priority and a massive passion but I went back to school last year back to do my another degree in nutritional therapy taken the next 300 hours of my yoga teacher qualification just a lot of things that I've said I don't have time to do that I don't have time to do that and I think the combination of wanting to grow as a parent and an example to two little girls and the COVID pandemic just showing that things change in an instant after the death of Matt's mom, where that was highlighted more than ever before. Just, yes, push me to rethink what you really want to achieve in any given day. That's awesome. It's such an example of post

traumatic growth. And yeah, I mean, it's been hard not to rethink priorities right over the past year. I think one of the things that I've really shifted my thinking on recently is there was a study of kids and parents here in the US asking the parents, what do you want most for your kids? And then asking the kids, what do your parents want most for you? And the parents overwhelmingly said, I want my kids to be happy and kind. And the kids said, my parents want me to be successful. And I mean, this is the same, the very parents who claimed they wanted happiness and kindness for their kids, their own children said, no, what my parents really care about is that I achieve great things.

Yeah. And Allison and I had a big conversation about that afterward and said, look, you know, of course we want our kids to be successful, but happiness and kindness matter more to us. And then we had a whole debate about which was more important. And she said, happiness is number one. And I said, no, I'd rather have them be kind than happy, right? Happiness is a selfish pursuit. Kindness serves others. And she says, well, wait, so you want, you want a bunch of miserable, depressed, selfless children? No, no, I'm, I'm saying I'd rather have them be an eight on happiness and a 10 on generosity than the reverse. And it was such a, such a fun conversation. It's still ongoing, but I think we should all be thinking more, right? And rethinking more about what we want for our kids. Yeah, I totally agree. I love that. They do highlight

and they create so much growth within you that you see them growing up so much and so quickly that you kind of want to accelerate your own growth alongside the way that they're going. So they are an amazing marker for it. And the best mirror for your flaws. Yeah, the best mirror for your flaws. Yeah best mirror for your yeah that humility i think uh certainly parenting is a great um lesson and if you allow it to be because i think it's also easy to get very stuck in your ways there and i think parenting is probably for me so far the best example in the importance of rethinking yeah same although you you haven't even gotten to the point yet where they just tell you what your flaws are.

That part is fun. I'm sure. Fantastic. Adam, we cannot thank you enough for coming on. It's been an absolute joy talking to you and so much thought provoking comments. Yes, Adam, thank you so much. I will put all the details of the book Think Again and also Adam's other book that we mentioned, Option B, in the show notes below. Thank you.

Thank you all so much for listening. I hope you've taken a lot from it. And we will be back again next Tuesday. Thanks so much. You're a podcast listener, and this is a podcast ad heard only in Canada. Reach great Canadian listeners like yourself with podcast advertising from Libsyn Ads. Choose from hundreds of top podcasts offering host endorsements or run a pre-produced ad like this one across thousands of shows to reach your target audience with Libsyn Ads. Email bob at libsyn.com to learn more. That's b-o-b at l-i-b-s-y-n dot com.