Kind: captions
Language: en
you know control over ourselves
is
a prerequisite for just about everything
in life for for
emotional management for
um for sustained work sustained effort
long-term projects often being moral
not losing our temper hold you know
controlling things is just it's just
really
really important
[Music]
everybody welcome to another episode of
impact theory i am here with paul bloom
paul thank you so much for joining the
show oh thanks so much for having me
this is great
dude i'm really excited to talk to you
to talk about your book sweet spot
to give people a little bit of context
so you're a psychologist you're
obviously an author you're touching on
some really really interesting ideas and
i don't want to go too far back in terms
of what we have to define to have a
conversation so i want to set sort of an
axiomatic floor and if you'll give me
that then we can build from there so um
my axiom would be that there is such a
thing as a life well lived and that we
should be trying to optimize for that if
we can set that as the one thing that we
um can accept as true what a life well
lived will be a very interesting
conversation that i think will get into
this pleasure pain dynamic that you have
written about
so interestingly does that sound fair
that sounds totally fair i mean every
every book starts by assuming a sort of
a set of axioms a shared framework and
if somebody's listening and um and they
don't think there's such a thing as a
good life and they don't think that you
could compare different lives well you
might find this interesting but there's
not enough common ground for for us to
come to an agreement but i think most
people would agree with axioms you set
up you know you could live your life
while you could live less well
all right so to me
when i think about what is a life well
lived i would say that you want to
minimize human suffering your own and
others
as much as is plausible maybe is the
right word and i've thought a lot about
what is it that people should be aiming
at is it happiness and of course we
would have to define that or is it
something else you talk a lot in the
book about eudemonia but also make fun
of the word is sort of ridiculous and so
you keep it more um
easy to talk about ideas which i think
is smart but
where i've landed is that optimizing for
fulfillment which is the word that i
sort of
hide the complexity or or use because it
allows me to get at the complexity of
this pleasure pain balance
i'd be curious to know if what word you
prefer if it's happiness or if it's the
balance between pleasure and pain how do
you think about the thing that we should
be optimizing for so the book is is
about pain chosen pain chosen suffering
chosen anxiety chosen stress why we
choose it and maybe why we we should
choose it all in the service of
optimizing something
but
i'm curious whether weather disguise of
your own view i sort of in principle
refuse to give a one-word answer to what
we're optimizing because
as you know from the book i'm a
pluralist i think that um that people
there's a huge temptation all we want is
pleasure all we want is meaning all we
want is to be good
and
i think we have we have a family of
motivations it includes happiness which
as you point out could mean different
things it includes pleasure it includes
meaning whatever that is
it includes morality maybe includes
beauty includes truth and so we have
these many many motivations and a good
life
is um sort of
trying to maximize and balance them as
best possible
okay so
the reason that i feel comfortable so i
actually normally will tell people and
this is evolved i used to just say
fulfillment and i have a whole sort of
formula of what that is i'll go through
that in a second
now i talk more about joy and
fulfillment because i
let me define fulfillment i'll tell you
why i've started appending joy to that
so my definition of fulfillment is based
on what i think nature has
compelled us to do so we have directives
buried deep inside the brain that were
things that were designed to keep us
alive long enough to have kids that have
kids and so it's like okay if that's my
directive and i you know have come up
over
hundreds of thousands or even millions
of years of evolution sort of depending
on where you start that clock
i have been in a very different
environment than the one that i'm in now
but to understand how these things would
have been useful to keep me alive you
know on the the savannah
it becomes very interesting as a way of
recognizing why i feel compelled to do
certain things the people who were most
likely to survive were the ones that got
a
positive feeling
from working hard because working hard
was going to be necessary to keep
everybody safe and to hunt gather build
shelter
deal with inner personal dynamics all of
it's very difficult so for the person
who gets a positive sense of oh wow like
i really did something by working hard
that's
you understand why that would be
incentivized from uh an imperative
perspective coming from the inside and
why you might feel badly simply not
doing it which is why i think one of the
reasons
kids that grow up wealthy end up
struggling if things all things have
come too easily for them
so you work hard
but you're working hard towards some
goal that's exciting to you
and honorable and by honorable i mean
that it elevates not only you but the
group
so basically you become an individual
contributor to the group and if there's
nothing that you uniquely can supply to
the group you will feel that absence and
you will conversely be rewarded if you
are individually contributing to that
group in a way that's unique to you and
so you put that together you work really
hard to gain a set of skills that have
value to not only yourself but to the
group that to me is fulfillment
now because i think you can sort of get
into a death spiral of just work work
work work work trying to be valuable
that you end up not necessarily having
enough fun and optimizing for the
moment-to-moment
pleasures in some sort of balanced way
seems important so that's why i put
forward those two
ideas how does that jive with your
research with your experience
perhaps very well i mean we're darwinian
creatures um to some extent this
reflects our own specific evolution as
hominins to some extent it reflects the
fact that we're we're creatures we're
critters and so you know
we're not we don't clone so we have sex
and so
a sex drive pleasure and sex
is a natural thing as is love for our
children
um
as this desire for food and drink
and status caring for the group um
certainly aspiration of a sort because i
think you're right i think to some
extent um
sort of it's a
darwinian foot race and the creatures
that get out of the head header wants to
try harder uh it's i think one
explanation for the so-called happiness
treadmill which is sooner or later you
get things really good you think you'd
stop but we don't stop we keep on going
we keep on striving
the only thing i would add and i'm not
sure you disagree with this is
we're also
have an intelligence and we could we
could come up with our own goals and my
favorite example here is morality so a
darwinian morality says i should care
more for my kids and for everybody else
i should care about my group and not
care about anyone you know they could
all die
i don't think that
i actually you know like a lot of us
sometimes give money to people in
faraway lands and i care about strangers
and everything because
you know through a case of moral
progress the combination of our
instincts and our intellect we come to
some moral truths and we want to be good
people and what it is to be a good
person
for you and me uh differs from what it
would have been to be a good person 500
years ago because we know more stuff now
so we have a darwinian foundation but i
don't think that exhausts our
motivations does that job of your views
no doubt so now the where your book
really goes into fascinating waters and
and i'll
there's two things that i want to talk
about one is juicier so we'll start with
that but there's man's search for
meaning and then there's bdsm two things
i never thought i would mention in the
same sentence but as they come up in
your book uh i will i will tie them
together so
bdsm
seems super surprising and for people
that that don't know it's uh bondage
discipline sadomasochism is that what it
stands for for sure um okay so people
who basically like to skirt that edge of
pleasure and pain in sex
what do you think has led us to this and
what can we learn from it
in terms of a life well lived it's one
of the you know i was driven to write
this book because of the sort of puzzles
that emerged from you you and i started
with which is we're darwinian creatures
we have certain appetites you know we
could work out what kind of foods we
like and how that all works but and then
there's no great mystery there but then
you look and we do all sorts of things
that just just are inexplicable from
that framework and we could talk about
horror movies we could talk about hot
bass spicy foods but you landed on bdsm
so let's let's go there um
the first thing to keep in mind is some
people are probably listening or
watching and saying well okay that's
that's a weirdo appetite and in some
sense if you do polling and you ask
about bdsm it's a minority appetite but
an interest in it and excitement in it
and imagination is is
very very common and popular so 50
shades of grey was the most popular book
not of a year but of the entire last
decade
the second most popular book was the
sequel the third most popular book was
the end of the trilogy did you read any
of it i did i actually as i was writing
the book i was talking about 50 shades
of grey so i read it it is not
it is not well written but
it is compelling
it was far racier so i read an excerpt
because i remember when this happened
and it was such a phenomenon and i'd be
very interested to see how it broke
along
gender lines certainly seemed to be far
more skewed female but my wife and all
of her friends were reading this book
and so i was like all right i gotta
check this out and i was like whoa like
that's
whoo that was racier than i expected uh
so yes you were just about to say what
is going on here and that is my exact
question
i think in some way bdsm
i'm very interested both in in suffering
as part of a meaningful life we could
talk about that a bit that's the that's
the other part but also suffering is
part of pleasure
and bdsm is in some way a perfect storm
and it brings together different ways in
which suffering can bring you pleasure
i'll mention two of them
one is um
i'll just mention one i'll focus on one
which is sometimes pain
can be an escape from the self chosen
pain in the right doses in the right
time can be an escape from the self and
that sounds like really kind of hippie
garbage but but but you can make it
explicit
if if we're often in our heads and it's
uncomfortable we're thinking about the
future we're mulling over the past we're
very conscious of our bodies we're
conscious of how we look we're conscious
of this voice in our heads and sometimes
sharp and sudden pain
can bring us out of it
it can just clear the mind there's a
quote from a dominatrix that people in
the field like like to um talk about and
quote something like you know like when
when the whip comes out all eyes go to
it and you can't think of anything else
and there's something about capturing
your attention your focus
it also liberates you a lot of the sort
of acting and bdsm to being dominated to
dominate
takes you away from your everyday life
and
one thing to stress here which is really
important
i wrote something
a summary of this in wall street journal
my night book and i got an email right
away saying you are the worst person in
the world i can't believe you were
saying suffering is good i i live in
chronic pain suffering is the worst
thing in the world you're like a monster
and my response to that is i'm a chosen
suffering and this is really clear for
the question you're asking bdsm which
often involves
sex and involves domination involves
constraints um it's a source of pleasure
because it's chosen
and in some sort of second-order way you
have control over take the very same
things that show up in bdsm
and take them outside of the domain of
consent under the worst crimes ever and
give no pleasure at all but something
about receiving pain pulling away from
yourself under the proper sort of
self-control we find really pleasurable
talk to me about this idea of getting
outside of yourself this is very
interesting to me so
to set this stage
a large part of my success is due to
what i'll call obsessive thinking i
can't stop myself
and so once i get a problem in my head
as being important to solve i will loop
on it endlessly and meditation ended up
saving my life might be hyperbolic but
man it's so close that it's like
i i don't hesitate to use that phrase i
will say that
and
i think that's doing a very similar
thing for me is it's quieting my mind
it's stopping that loop now the loop is
great and it finds all these solutions
and maybe that's why it exists
but man sometimes it's just it's so
continuous and if it's continuing around
something that gives me a positive
emotion amazing but when it's looping
around something that's a negative
emotion it's like all i can think about
is is like how do i break this cycle
and
one i'd love to get your thoughts
why do we loop
so endlessly that we need outside of our
minds
and then we'll get to the the second
part of that in a minute yeah and we'll
talk a bit of a meditation meditation is
an interestingly mixed bag which is when
you're good at it it does exactly what
you what you say but when you're
starting off on it it actually makes
everything worse in some way which is if
i'm sick of the voice inside my head and
you say okay fine so for 10 minutes just
sit there
this that's just that's just makes the
problem and
then can be confronted with the voice
inside me and why meditation was so
difficult at first to get going but you
asked why we have the voice in our head
and it's a good question
um why do we ruminate why do we obsess
why do we worry and the answer is
because it's good for us it's good for
us it doesn't make us happy but it's
actually useful
i really worry when i send my kid off to
school something will happen and this
worrying makes me extra scrupulous and
extra conscious i feel humiliated at
what i said at the party last night i
mulled it over and over in my head and
then it is not it's horrible
but it means i won't do it again
and so
you know natural selection did not
evolve us to have a good time it
involved us to you know survive and
reproduce and just mulling over an
obsession it speaks to a broader
question which is
everybody talks about you know when you
think about anxiety
he says well anxiety is a bad thing and
too much anxiety you're you're in a
shrink's office you're taking medication
you have problems
but this uh evolutionary psychiatrist uh
nessie i think says you know we never
talk about too little anxiety and you
know where you find those you don't find
notes in psychiatrist office you find
out people like that in prisons and in
morgues
too little anxiety is not good for you
some degree of buzzing in your head is
actually important not fun but important
but we like to get control over things
we like to be able to have it now but
not not some other time and so
meditation is one is one technique to do
so
do you meditate i have tried so many
times i have so many friends
you know including a friend who says you
can't do it for five minutes i want you
to spend a week in a silent meditation
retreat
that that strikes me as as the wrong way
to introduce it to people i would think
but
i i think of meditation like sushi so my
most terrifying food experience ever in
my life which i won't spend everybody's
time on right now but just trust that i
really mean it's one of the more
stressful things i've ever been through
my life and it was around sushi
and now i love sushi and have it almost
every week so what i realized was
everybody like sushi you just have to
find the right the the kind of sushi
that you like now i'm not being literal
in terms of
you know raw fish on rice i'm saying at
a sushi restaurant there is something
that you can find which will introduce
you to those flavors and things and you
can then slowly work your way to seeing
the joy in certain true sashimi or sushi
meditation is the same in that
if somebody can find what i call a
physiological hook meaning breathing
from your diaphragm
is as far as i can tell
for whatever reason
it is
because the sympathetic nervous system
and the parasympathetic nervous system
are you're either in one or the other
you cannot be both calm and excited at
the same time so they you know they're
opposites
that breathing from your diaphragm
will shift you whether you want it to or
not into the parasympathetic nervous
system the rest and digest the problem
is that people are so in their own head
that they don't stop to focus on
breathing from their diaphragm and so
they stay in the the fight-or-flight
mode but
every time and i've been in some
insanely stressful situations where
hundreds of millions of dollars are on
the line i mean it's just like i i have
not been through things that are more
stressful than that and even in those
moments
it was i was never more than 45 minutes
away from total equanimity
and i have to remind myself because when
you're going through something horrible
your brain is telling you meditation
isn't going to fix this
but then if you do the process it shifts
your brain
into that calm and creative state
and suddenly you can see solutions it's
crazy but like my own wife so she's got
me i'm over here telling everybody in
the world that they should be meditating
breathe from your diaphragm the whole
night she hates it and thinks i'm out of
my mind so i don't know if i'm like a
hyper responder to diaphragmatic
breathing or if she really just isn't
being consistent enough
um
i think meditation is the sort of thing
like a lot of things which work for some
people and not for others that um you
know there's some evidence people have
done these controlled studies and
meditation by and large has positive
effects but it's not like you know
it it's not it's not this magic thing
where everybody can do it it sounds like
it sounds like some combination of your
nature
and also your experience and what you
did with it has caused to be
tremendously powerful for you
but in some ways a little bit like bdsm
which is which is certainly that's not
for everybody either
um you know
or or intense exercise or some degree of
certain engagement so i'm a little bit i
point out that when i ever try to
meditate i i kind of as i've run into
problems um but i tell the story in my
book of the first time i did brazilian
jiu jitsu which was you know as
against somebody who is like everybody
else in the room much younger and much
stronger than me and for whatever moment
we did we rolled we did sparring
for those periods i think later on like
afterwards is that during that period i
thought of nothing else i wasn't
thinking i hope my book sells well and
you know and do my children love me and
you know am i gaining weight whatever i
didn't think any i was totally immersed
and i'm told that people who are who are
profoundly into meditation can do that
and i'm
it it's in some way connects with state
of flow and one of the great things
about the state of flow is you're out of
your head
and i don't doubt for a second that for
the right person in the right way
meditation to do exactly that
yeah there's no doubt so my wife would
fall into the heavy exercise category
and i remind her that that's your
meditation like she gets into a zone
she's focused on music and the the
physicality of the lift and in the way
that she looks at my meditation and
wishes she could do it i look at her
exercise and wish like whatever you're
getting out of that i just don't get
like everything when i work out i'm like
worried about getting injured it's
exhausting i don't get any big sort of
crazy endorphin rush
so yeah that's very interesting um i
want to keep going on this idea of
getting out of one's head it is
it
maybe
i will speak for myself the ability to
stop my thoughts is the single most
useful skill i have developed in my life
bar none and i feel like i've developed
some pretty interesting skills but that
one is
it's
it is directly correlated to
my ability to um
not get overwhelmed
and to reach for big things in my life
because there
were times where i was heading towards
overwhelm just like anybody else or
burning out or whatever and i just
learned different tactics to
be able to get my physiological symptoms
to zero so my blood pressure back down
my heart rate slowed my mind not racing
and those things end up becoming
incredibly important and i think are
exactly
tied to getting out of negative
rumination
so sticking on the bdsm theme when i was
reading your book have you there's a
documentary called sick
the life and death of bob flanagan's
super masochist have you seen it
i have not i do not have much of a
stomach for these things
yeah this one was pretty tough i saw it
when it came out in the theater and just
a
if you have kids in the room now would
be the time to plug their ears whatever
i'll tell you something that actually
happens in the movie so this is a guy
with cystic fibrosis
and when he's very young he's in pain
constantly
and he said one day he went into the
bathroom
and he put needles
into a belt
and he whipped himself with it and he
was like there was blood spraying all
over the bathroom and i you know ended
up spending like 30 minutes cleaning it
up my family wanted to know what the
hell was going on
and he said for the first time in my
life i felt in control of the pain
and that changed everything for him
and so he becomes a masochist and he
marries his dominatrix and they have
this very complex relationship that is
explored in graphic detail in the movie
um
but at one point and i can't tell you
how
until i read your book i could not have
contextualized this movie in that way
but again if you have kids now is
definitely the time to um put them away
in the movie
they show this i could i have never been
unable to watch something without
putting my hands in front of my eyes
before i couldn't i couldn't do it i had
to have my hands in front of my eyes
it's crazy he puts his penis on a board
and hammers a nail through it
and i was like what is happening
it
it was
insane i literally couldn't believe it
and
but then you hear him like explain why
he does all this stuff and it is and i'm
putting words in his mouth now i'm
definitely paraphrasing but after having
read your book it's very much somebody
who needs to choose their suffering they
they just simply cannot let it be in
somebody else's hands and in the act
he's out of his own mind
and when he revisits it he was in
control and that combination seems to
have like some pretty profound results
you know i never thought he'd be saying
the sentence but um there's a world of
difference between putting a nail
through your own penis
and having someone else put a nail
through your penis
this is a world of difference um and and
part of what we're talking about here
which makes the connection with
meditation as well
is mastery
you know there's um there's a line from
c s lewis we're going to go right right
into the fancy theological stuff after
that it's kind of a bit of a contrast
but
he talks about about um fasting
he says there's such a difference
between somebody who says i'm not going
to eat today
versus somebody who can't eat today
because he has no money or someone took
this food the second is just suffering
you're just hungry the first one and c.s
lewis being who he is this kind of says
is a bit disapproving but you feel pride
look what i'm doing i'm controlling my
appetite i'm a master of myself
and
you know the guy you're talking about in
the movie it's it's not a direction i
would take it but but but there's a
sense of i'm doing it tonight look at
look at what i'm doing look at my
control over things
and and sometimes
the the purposeful self-inflection of
pain usually a lot more mild than that
is a way of asserting control
not only over your environment but also
over yourself
what do you think about the pride of
mastery in that
um
i'm not i i'm not i'm not a christian in
a way c.s lewis was i don't actually
think there's such a problem with prime
i think i think mastery is is a very
useful skill it's it's actually you were
telling how proud you were of your own
meditative skills that's one example of
this it's worth being proud of it's
worth being proud of and we're talking
about it and it should be
and it should be respected
um
i think
you know control over ourselves
is
a prerequisite for just about everything
in life for for
emotional management for
um for sustained work sustained effort
long-term projects often being moral
not losing our temper holding you know
controlling things is just it's just
really
really important and so the mastery we
find when we deal with self-imposed pain
is yet another instance of it and
something we're talking about pain
self-imposed pain as if as if it's some
sort of you know weird freaky separate
thing but but it includes somebody who's
training for a marathon who's climbing a
mountain who's engaged in a long and
difficult musical performance where
maybe the pain isn't so physical but
it's effort it's difficult um
and i think
if you can't do that
then your life is to a large extent
incomplete
so to that point how do you deal with
this is one of the reasons i chose not
to have kids
um
it seems necessary that kids suffer in
order to grow up strong and resilient
and i worried that i would
find so much
discomfort in either having to create
artificial ways for them to suffer
or
that i would want to make that suffering
go away at all costs
so
how do you
deal with that how do you
or do you agree that kids need to suffer
to to grow up well maybe that's the
right way to ask it
the evidence and that is unclear there's
some reason to believe and i review this
in my book that the lucky minority of
people who grow up without any strife or
any difficulty um
in some ways turn out a little bit worse
they have lower pain tolerance or tend
to catastrophize they're uh
it's it's um there's just a few studies
on this
i mean here's one way to look at it
which is no matter how wealthy pampered
protected we are life is going to
contain a lot of suffering you're going
to love somebody who doesn't love you
back you're going to try for something
and fail you're going to be humiliated
um certainly i'm not being a relative if
you're if you're born in poverty if
you're going to start if you're starving
that's much worse than being than being
wealthy and protected but even the most
pampered protected people their lives
are full of suffering we're mortal our
bodies our minds fail us
so so your kids no matter how loving and
protected you would have been would have
found your suffering most likely
yeah how do you deal with that though do
you
give them the space to suffer do you try
to come in to mitigate the suffering
it's really hard i you know my book
before this was called against empathy
and it was about the problems of
empathic connection
margie can you go into that a little bit
i'm super curious about that i haven't
read that book yet yeah um
well the subtitle is the case for
rational compassion
and the idea is empathy putting yourself
in other people's shoes it might seem
like the right thing to do and a lot of
people think it's a force for good but
basically one problem is that empathy is
uh we naturally feel empathy for people
who uh who look like us
who speak our language who you know i
feel empathy for you you'll feel it for
me we'll both be a lot less likely to
feel empathy for somebody far away
someone whose skin is a different color
who speaks a different language maybe
who um who threat
who we're frightened of in some way
we're much better as moral people when
we don't try to get into other people's
shoes and apply more abstract impartial
principles
and in the case we're talking about now
my worst moments as a father i have
these two sons i'm deeply proud of and
they're both adults and out in the world
and great great guys but when i when
they were young my worst moments weren't
when i was indifferent it's when i got
too caught up in things you know my kid
would be freaking out that oh my god i
have so much homework due tomorrow
or i like this girl and she doesn't like
me and i get oh no and i get really
upset and i think good parents and i
when i try to be good parents to say
okay well no don't work out you can
handle it
and step back
and you need some sort of distance you
can't solve all your kids problems for
you then they'll hate you if you're
trying
but it is it is one of the many many
many many anxieties about being a parent
that you're
nicely sketching out
i can imagine
all right when you were
writing the book you said there were two
books that you really held in mind one
we've talked about flow chicks at me
high the idea of getting out of your
head but the other was man's search for
meaning which
man the older i get the more i think
about life i guess the more i come back
to that book as just this profound
insight into the human condition um why
was that book important to you what what
is its role in this idea of the pleasure
pain sweet spot
yeah um
i mean this my subtitle of the sweet
spot is the pleasures of suffering in
the search for meaning and that's like a
shout out to frankel um
so so
frankel was um you gotta tell us have to
tell the story he was in austria he was
a psychiatrist working with actually
suicidal adolescents and depressed
adolescents and then um the nazis came
to power and he didn't leave his elderly
parents were there and he couldn't get
out without abandoning them and el the
whole family ended up in concentration
camps in auschwitz and back out
and frankel tells the story in man's
search for me and the thing about it is
he's a scholar and so he's in the
concentration camps under the worst of
human conditions and he asks himself
this question he says um some people
give up
either they kill themselves or they
simply stop eating or they
run away so it'll get shot
and some people don't and he says what
distinguishes them and very informally
but later on he built it up in books in
a therapeutic practice he said the
people
who are resilient
are those who have some sort of meaning
and purpose in life
it could be uh their profession it could
be a long-term project could be a love
but but this
is um
this is what is so central to our lives
and again it's not only thing let's not
give up on pleasure and morality and
truth but this meaning is is very
central and the funny thing is as i was
working on my book i came across this a
tweet by greta thunder
the young climate activist
and she just said she said the same
thing she said you know my life was
miserable and empty and then i
discovered this cause and it transformed
me in so many ways
and i think frankel's insight is the
importance of meaning and purpose to
life
so one thing i get asked a lot is i
think people understand it intuitively
and it makes sense but they don't know
how do i find my meaning how do i find
my purpose
how do you think about that i try to
move people away from the idea of
finding it but i'm super curious
what your approach is
i don't know it's a good question um
i think there's something a little bit
weird about somebody waking up when i
said i gotta find find a purpose in life
you know i gotta i'm gonna do it next
couple of hours really working out that
purpose and life to some extent it tends
it tends to fall out from other things
you're doing
um
freud said actually ford never said this
but it's often attribute him is a great
line which is the two
the two aspects of a mentally healthy
rich good life are love and work
and by love he meant
relationships deep committed
not non-superficial relationships and by
work you didn't necessarily mean take
this 815 into city he meant like um
a sort of any long protracted projects
that have difficulty
and i think that's where people tend to
find meaning i mean some people find
meaning in a spiritual realm
some people find meaning in other ways
some people find meaning in sports
certain hobbies
but i think for the most of us it's in
relationships and in work
and um and so one should try to find
relationships and work that would give
one a sense of meaning and certainly a
lot of people find it in children
that to me is a great punchline of life
so i often so i try to be cognizant of
the
you know quote unquote advice that i
give people and
one of them is okay i've chosen a
certain path in my so if relationships
and work if we can you know say those
are two different paths that you have
and maybe you should do both uh but
certainly they are different paths that
you have to meaning and purpose
kids seem like an inbuilt way to get
that
um
whereas doing it through work is maybe a
more high risk endeavor it's certainly
going to take a lot more out of you it's
not necessarily guaranteed to give the
kind of lasting results that you want
it's a it's what i will call a very very
high risk path to meaning and purpose um
so that to me is really interesting
and it ties into why i'm obsessed with
viktor frankl which is
i think ultimately
this comes down to you know going back
to ruminating thoughts
the reason i tell people not to try to
find their meaning and purpose is i want
them to realize they're going to define
it
you have to decide that and this may
seem even weirder to you than finding it
but ultimately to me it's there is no
i was put on this earth to do this thing
there is given the time that i'm living
in given my genetics given my
experiences and you know all of that
i could
find great
fulfillment in the way that i defined it
at the beginning of the episode by
pursuing this end
so my last company my mission was to end
metabolic disease but when i left that
company i didn't carry that meaning and
purpose with me it sustained me
beautifully while i was there and
thought i would be there forever but
that's not the way that it ended up
playing out and so when i moved it was
well now i need a new meaning and
purpose i could have either built
another food company and stayed on that
same path but it seemed so clear to me
that i could now reattach myself to a
new mission as long as i found it as
exciting as i found the previous one
that i could continue to pursue it and
it would be wonderful and that has
played out
perfectly in my life but
making that decision and applying
yourself to something seems to me the
like great takeaway from frankel's book
and i remember
in that period where he talks about
people with meaning and purpose they're
the ones that survive and if i remember
right he outright says that you could
predict with almost perfect accuracy
within 72 hours of when somebody would
die because it would be 72 hours after
they gave up
and he said once they no longer told
themselves a story about why they were
suffering and so now it was just
meaningless
that there was no reason to keep
fighting but if you said hey i'm doing
this because i'm going to
survive so i can go find my family and
bring them back together and of course
this is a man who lost his entire family
but but saying that to himself
that's why i'm going through this
assigning meaning and purpose to it
was the thing that got him through
that's right that's right um you know
i think one of the dumbest questions and
it's almost a joke question right now
you could ask is what's the meaning of
life um and because it's not it's just
it's
it's like saying what does a bicycle
tire worry about you know life isn't the
kind of thing that has an intrinsic
meaning
people can choose meaningful activities
that are meaningful because they meet
certain criterias of an objective
criteria but also subjective one what
might be meaningful for you meaningful
for you might not be for me and vice
versa
um
and yeah we
we have to discover it and some of us
it's right there
um people in poor countries report more
meaningful lives than people in rich
countries and that may be because
helping you and your family survive is
of course a very meaningful and
important activity and if you're forced
to do that that solves that problem
um
all i would say to add to what you're
saying is um
i think a meaningful activity typically
involves pursuing some sort of goal some
sort of end in mind but it doesn't
require satisfying it
mountain climbing for many people is a
very meaningful activity but you don't
have to actually get to the top you
could fail it is still a meaningful
activity
starting a business with a certain goal
in mind most businesses fail but that
doesn't mean it's not a meaningful
pursuit
and so there's a bit of meaning is more
in a sort of process and in the end
i agree with that violently uh i think
that
that is the big mistake people make as
they tie their identity to whether they
achieve the outcome or not and to your
point most businesses or most grand
pursuits are probably going to fail uh
certainly most businesses do fail
so how do you think about helping people
conceptualize that idea i imagine in
writing the book
you want it to be a framework that
people can think about and use to some
advantage in their own life
so how do you
now that people have this information
there's like pleasure and pain there's
you know this balance in here meaning
matters a lot
um
how do people
use that in their life what is what is
the utility of that idea i wouldn't mind
if people find my book useful i hope
they do but i'll say something sort of
uncharacteristic for a book author who
wants people to buy his book which is
this isn't a self-help book this isn't a
book that you read and it will you know
tell you what to do
i'm more kind of interested in what's
going on with people
and just at a raw fascination
yeah
for the most part yeah i just
i this is my whole career i study what i
find cool and i try to sort of explain
stuff you know and like all goals i
often fail in that goal too but that
that's large part of my meaning now
having read about what people it's like
it's like the book flow by cheek sent me
i sadly passed away a couple weeks ago
and he taught me flow experience and
described him in detail and studied them
and he didn't in the end have here's a
checklist of ten things and whatever you
know uh it was before books were
supposed to do that but but you read
about it and say wow
you know i i didn't know that you're
going to make a good life this way and
then it's valuable
and so
the connection i have is i think people
some people i think think they're just
supposed to be pursuing pleasure and
maybe my book is a reminder that there's
other ways to go
but the question is to how to find
meaning
i don't know or or the question of in
all of these priorities we're talking
about the darwinian ones the pleasure
ones hard work meaning morality truth
how do you properly balance them is a
question i think each person has to
struggle with
maybe the service that my book does is
reminding people there is this question
and if you're not
consciously thinking about it you're
answering the question just by default
maybe what other people tell you
and do you seek out things in your own
life that are hard or do you just let
the suffering come to you
um
uh well none of my kids are edited out
of the house um
less less suffering uh comes to me um i
do i do choose my own suffering yeah
in fact um
every morning i i write i try to write
for like an hour
and i don't there's some people who
writing is bliss and wonderful and
everything for me it's agony but but
it's good agony um i'm curious why is it
agony
oh you know
because
struggling
through you know why it's agony because
right next right on the same computer it
has that it has twitter and email
and youtube videos of adorable cats and
i just i'm drawn to that just sitting
and and just enjoying this stuff
production
trying to be creative trying to be clear
is work
and work is
both
immensely pleasurable and satisfying and
also really miserable
and so i do that i am
i try to i
since writing this book i've sort of
been trying to say
to realize that the temptation is always
to lie on a sofa and watch netflix
the real satisfaction
is doing things that are difficult
and complicated
and and taxing
what do you think about that duality i
find that duality equally fascinating to
pleasure and pain of the like i want to
do something rad but i also just want to
sit here and do nothing yeah yeah you
could graph it on a timeline which is
you know doing something rad is this is
really good but in order to get to the
rad space uh you have to go through a
valley you have to you have to get up
and put on your running shoes and start
running you have to go buy the plane
ticket you have to go get a copa test
you have to go do all this stuff well
the easy stuff is less and less
satisfying less part of a good light but
it's right there
it's just at your keyboard
and um and so and you know chick samia
says there are some people in their
lives maybe a majority under some
studies who never achieve flow
they never achieve intense focus and
concentration because getting there is a
pain and ass
you got to get really good at somebody
got a struggle and so on it's much
easier just to to zone out
and i think there's a great value in
getting there and doing the incredible
things or the difficult things but but
i'm not going to pretend it's something
which comes natural to us we just it
requires a degree of motivation and to
some extent going back to what you were
saying before it's one thing for kids
and she sent me i was very into this
that for kids to get in the habit of
intensive difficult work
my younger son really was sort of
struggling at school a little bit
dissolute when he got into rock climbing
bouldering actually and just it just
transformed him he began to expose
enormous energy to bouldering and then
it spilled out to everything else this
exactly happened to me with um lifting
weights but what's going on there i
don't know there's a metaphor that
psychologists hate because it's probably
not true and not good unless the will
power is a muscle so that's a confusing
metaphor in your case we're lifting
weights you're building up not only
physical muscles but the willpower
muscles and then your willpower muscles
are then free to help you write books
and do podcasts and and stay up all
night and do other things
most psychologists say this is nonsense
there's there's limited the idea of
willpower is like a muscle just simply
isn't true it works in different ways
and yet
i think there's something transferable
about the skills required to say train
for a marathon
and the skills required to write a book
simply you get used to denying yourself
immediate pleasures you get used to
setting yourself a schedule you get used
to just saying this is unpleasant but
long term it's right
and so so i'm one of these people who
think at least anecdotally getting kids
into sports or i don't know reading
russian literature or whatever something
hard
is actually good for them in general
because it's developing that discipline
that will power muscle yes yeah so that
let's not call it a muscle i hate that
but but but it's developing something
that's transferable
it's interesting i so
while it clearly isn't
literally a muscle
uh
would you
hackle in the same way if i said that
willpower is a skill
yes that's actually no i wouldn't hackle
sorry okay i would not yes thinking of
it as a skill is actually a very
a very good way of doing it there are
people around say kids certainly kids i
i'm a developmental psychologist my day
job so i study kids there's any kids who
have no idea what it is to sort of get
to work on something it's just not it's
just and it's and it is a skill you have
to learn it
um
and um and then there also i've seen
adults who are
really good at it who have a sense of
discipline and it's easy to to dismiss
it and say oh
they have this gift like they're taller
than me or better looking or stronger
that's just the way they're born but but
it's actually they have a gift like
being good at the piano which is you
know you you genetics probably play some
role but then you you work on it you
practice it
and i think discipline is like that
and and part of it brings you into an
intimate relationship with pain and
difficulty and anxiety and struggle
and feeling good about it like we talked
about this earlier i know c.s lewis
doesn't want me to be proud of it but
it's like here's a reality man like you
cannot just tell yourself that you love
yourself and then you suddenly respect
yourself it doesn't work like that i
wish it did that'd be a lot easier but
the reality is if you want to have
self-respect you have to do things you
think are worthy of respect
and i don't see a way around that same
with self-worth if you want to have
self-worth you have to do things you
think are worthy and so
knowing that all of that is like a real
thing i don't see how people get around
doing things unless you can convince
yourself which i doubt because of the
evolutionarily implanted uh directives
that we talked about earlier unless you
convince yourself that laying on the
couch and watching netflix is like the
ultimate existence
i what ends up happening is it's fun for
a while and then that that directive in
your brain is just like yo you're gonna
die like you have to go out and do
things you have to contribute you have
to work hard you have to do things that
are are worthy and for darwinian reasons
what you said at the beginning is this
definitely true we are not wired up so
that we can simply feel good about
ourselves just fight into wishing itself
there's a lot of sort of weird weird
movements that have tried to to get you
to feel this way but the truth is that
your sort of self-esteem
is exquisitely calibrated to how well
you're doing
and this is good it would be as if the
alternative is like i said gee
when i don't eat for long periods of
time i get hungry that sucks i'd rather
not be hungry ever
well i might rather that but it's stupid
being hungry is really good because it
motivates you to eat when you run it
when your body's running out of food
well same with with
your sense of self-esteem and self-worth
it's good that it that it's calibrated
to the world because otherwise you think
i'm terrific i'm just going to stand pat
and standing pad is is awful
tell me in what way is our self-esteem
calibrated to the world that's
interesting
so people talk about it in terms of is
essentially psychologists conceptualize
it really literally as as a scale in our
head or as a as a dial and
we're we're we're primates we're we're
very geared to um
to our status and where we stand in the
world and some of this could be a bad
thing like status in some way status
could relate to dominance and some
people bully others and terrorize others
and threaten others and become try to
become high status in the sense that
other people are frightened of them but
there's other ways to satisfy the sort
of sociometer the sort of how am i doing
scale one is gaming good at stuff
becoming really good at stuff everything
from you know from rock climbing to
pokemon go to to and and you get to say
this in that another is being kind
you can get status because people look
at you and say you're a mensch
good to have you around you're a good
member of my group
but if you do none of those things
if you do not do not dominate do not
help do not show expertise you're
probably not going to feel good about
yourself
and
you know i an old time shrink would say
oh my god you've got to learn to love
yourself
but maybe the advice is you've got to
learn to do something that would make
yourself
you know
more
makes your self-esteem more deserved now
as i'm saying this i realize it sounds
kind of kind of harsh you know we're all
good i think it's true i was like really
i was waiting to see if you would say
you have to do things that are worthy of
love
i'm not saying that it should be that
way i won't fall prey to the natural
holistic fallacy or whatever it's called
but i will say it is that way like the
way that your brain is wired if you
aren't doing things that
match the directives that are compelling
you which my guess as a non-scientist is
that a big part of that is contributing
to the group so you're doing things
being a mensch certainly a great way
contributing skill set a great way
but you're if you're not doing something
that the group values and by the way
that the group is telling you that they
value so that you're actually getting
feedback that hey the way in which
you're contributing you're great at the
guitar you're a fantastic chef you're a
loving mother whatever if the group
isn't giving you that feedback of like
word thank you for this
there uh internally it starts to become
a problem and it if you've read lisa
feldman barrett's book around how
emotions are made and that a lot of this
stuff starts in the body and then your
brain tries to explain
why you feel this way you get into
people just have this sense of malaise
they don't know what's going on they
feel terrible and they have no idea why
things are going wrong
and
my thing is go do something hard go
contribute to the group if you do those
two things the odds of your
sense of well-being
moving up are extraordinarily high but
like you i've gotten negative feedback
on that of like hey if you know this is
a depressed person these are such
flippant answers
and you know they didn't say you're a
monster but that was certainly the idea
right like this is such fundamentally
flawed advice
and w