Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to the Psychology Podcast with doctor Scott
Speaker 1: Barry Kaufman, where we give you insights into the mind, brain, behavior,
Speaker 1: and creativity. Each episode will feature a new guest who
Speaker 1: will stimulate your mind and give you a greater understanding
Speaker 1: of yourself, others, and the world we live in. Thanks
Speaker 1: for listening and enjoy the podcast. So today I'm really
Speaker 1: excited to have Tom Wrath on the show. Tom is
Speaker 1: an author, researcher, and speaker whose books have sold more
Speaker 1: than five million copies and have been translated into sixteen languages.
Speaker 1: His books, all of which become bestsellers, include How Full
Speaker 1: Was Your Bucket, Strengths Finder two point Zero, Well Being, Eat, Move, Sleep,
Speaker 1: and his latest book is Are You Fully Charged? The
Speaker 1: Three Keys to Energizing your work and life. Thanks Tom
Speaker 1: for being on here today. Thanks so much. I've been
Speaker 1: looking forward to talking with you me too. I've been
Speaker 1: a long time admirer of your work and the path
Speaker 1: that you've gone on, which has been a bit of
Speaker 1: a different path than the path of the development of
Speaker 1: field of positive psychology. I thought we could actually talk
Speaker 1: about these two different paths. One, you know, the great
Speaker 1: work that your grandfather, Donald Clifton did many call him
Speaker 1: the father of strength based psychology and kind of talk
Speaker 1: a little bit about how that relates now to the
Speaker 1: latest science of human flourishing. So maybe you could just
Speaker 1: start off by telling me a little bit about your
Speaker 1: grandfather and his great work. Yeah, you know, I've got
Speaker 1: a kind of an interesting personal backstory as it applies
Speaker 1: to positive psychology. I was at the EPO event earlier
Speaker 1: this year and I was joking with a you people,
Speaker 1: I kind of feel like Forrest Gump walking through all
Speaker 1: these things as an observed in the history of that.
Speaker 1: And I think it's when I had started at Gallop
Speaker 1: way back in ninety eight ninety nine, and after college,
Speaker 1: I went to Michigan and went to join my grandfather
Speaker 1: Don Clifton to help him figure out He was trying
Speaker 1: to determine whate of the best ways to use this
Speaker 1: new Internet thing that was the rage at the time
Speaker 1: to help people to learn a little bit more about
Speaker 1: their strengths and who they are. And Don had been
Speaker 1: doing a lot of that with telephone interviews and face
Speaker 1: to face interviews for thirty forty years at these strength
Speaker 1: assessments that we'd interview people and figure out do they
Speaker 1: have the right talents that match a job in teaching,
Speaker 1: or a job in sales, or a job driving a
Speaker 1: truck a variety of professions. We were essentially trying to
Speaker 1: answer the question, can you aggregate a lot of these
Speaker 1: themes of human personality and bring that to the surface
Speaker 1: in one web based tool. And so we went through
Speaker 1: a lot of iterations of that and started the conversation.
Speaker 1: At about the same time, Don had reached out to
Speaker 1: Marty Seligman, who had been working with at Deaner and
Speaker 1: me I Cheeks, me High and a host of other
Speaker 1: top psychologists who I admired growing up with that as
Speaker 1: my major and when I was in my undergrad and
Speaker 1: he was saying, what can I do to help because
Speaker 1: there was this burgeoning thought about positive psychology and what
Speaker 1: it was called at the time. There was this well
Speaker 1: Springs assessment that I think evolved into via that Don
Speaker 1: was trying to help and contribute with. And then eventually,
Speaker 1: after those conversations advanced, I was at the first kind
Speaker 1: of positive psychology summit that we hosted in Lincoln, Nebraska.
Speaker 1: I think it was somewhere around ninety nine or two thousand,
Speaker 1: and that's really when I saw the energy around positive
Speaker 1: psychology coalescing and it started to create an important mainstream
Speaker 1: conversation there. So anyhow, then Don and I continued to
Speaker 1: work on Strengths Finder and trying he wanted to. He
Speaker 1: kind of had this thought, do you think we can
Speaker 1: get this out to one hundred thousand people someday? And
Speaker 1: that was a big dream at the time, and that
Speaker 1: since gone on to I think reached maybe fifteen million
Speaker 1: people to give them some initial clue about their strength.
Speaker 1: So it was successful beyond his dreams back when he
Speaker 1: was around and so Don and then Don and I
Speaker 1: worked on my first book, Helpful as Your Bucket together
Speaker 1: when I was traveling around with him to as a
Speaker 1: part of his cancer treatment. He kind of had stage
Speaker 1: four gas orsovagio cancer and we were moving around to
Speaker 1: different parts around the country because I've had a lot
Speaker 1: of personal background with cancer, and he challenged me to
Speaker 1: help him work on this book about this different bucket,
Speaker 1: which was kind of a real basic idea in metaphor
Speaker 1: related to positive psychology. So we had a chance to
Speaker 1: pull together a lot of the best high level research
Speaker 1: from that emerging field in that first book we worked
Speaker 1: on together and then Don we finished that first draft
Speaker 1: before Don passed away, and I think it was around
Speaker 1: three we did in the book came out four, and
Speaker 1: then my connection to positive psychology really kind of kept
Speaker 1: going after that point because as soon as Marty decided
Speaker 1: to start the first applied positive psychology degree program at PAN,
Speaker 1: I dropped out of the graduate program I was in
Speaker 1: mid stream at Hopkins and jumped into that program right
Speaker 1: away because I was so excited about it and got
Speaker 1: to be a part of the first class there, which
Speaker 1: was a great experience, and since spent a lot of
Speaker 1: time teaching that class and meeting a lot of the
Speaker 1: great thinkers both teaching the program and professionals coming out
Speaker 1: of it now, which is even more fun to watch.
Speaker 1: So it's it's been a really unique way to kind
Speaker 1: of have a front row seat from a lot of
Speaker 1: the people I've admired most over the years. Absolutely, and
Speaker 1: I you know, I want to emphasize the field of
Speaker 1: positive psychology owes major debt or not to gratitude. I
Speaker 1: should say to Donald Clifton and and his his thinking
Speaker 1: that we need to learn and study what is right
Speaker 1: with people, And that's a sentiment that's echoed over and
Speaker 1: over again in falls of psychology. You know, some people
Speaker 1: will say, you know, the field of pop psychology is
Speaker 1: about what's best within us, right, So a lot of
Speaker 1: those roots were there with Donald. So you know, I
Speaker 1: think there's it's kind of fun. There's a fundamental concept
Speaker 1: that I think your listeners might enjoy that. You know,
Speaker 1: it's an icy it with My kids are four and
Speaker 1: six right now, where there's a natural disposition that I've
Speaker 1: observed and studied over the years, where it's kind of
Speaker 1: our nature when we're raising kids or managing people in
Speaker 1: the workplace to focus on that. You know, you've got
Speaker 1: someone who's had a negative seven, how do you get
Speaker 1: them back to negative three or maybe zero? And it
Speaker 1: is important to do that. It's important to address big,
Speaker 1: glaring weaknesses for kids and for people in the workplace
Speaker 1: and everything else. But I also have a lot of
Speaker 1: fear that Don talked about NonStop, and I've heard many
Speaker 1: others in posits ichology talk about, which is that we're
Speaker 1: ignoring the ability to take someone who's already a plus
Speaker 1: four to a plus eight or a plus nine where
Speaker 1: there may be even more room for growth in that
Speaker 1: area of the curve where someone does have a little
Speaker 1: bit more natural talent than the next person in that
Speaker 1: specific area. Oh well, that's a very interesting point. I mean,
Speaker 1: that's that that does tells nicely with some of my
Speaker 1: interests in gifted education and gifted talented education, and what
Speaker 1: do you do with an education system where we have
Speaker 1: this kind of one size fits all approach and people
Speaker 1: are able to self actualize at different rates through you know,
Speaker 1: the learning program, you know, and our school system is
Speaker 1: not set up very well at all for for that.
Speaker 1: So I'm glad you brought that up. Actually, yeah, I'd
Speaker 1: be interested to hear some of your thoughts on the
Speaker 1: I mean, just have you what are the best ways
Speaker 1: to individualize not only based on just general intelligence levels,
Speaker 1: but at more of a personality level as well in schools.
Speaker 1: I think because there's, in addition to the well studied
Speaker 1: dynamics of kind of emotional intelligences and general malability and
Speaker 1: so forth, I think there's a much broader range of
Speaker 1: human personality that really gets tailored to perhaps even less
Speaker 1: across some of those spectrums in the educational system today.
Speaker 1: I coulpully agree. I wonder how much you've worked with education,
Speaker 1: because I think a very worthy project, and something I
Speaker 1: would definitely be interested in working on is to see
Speaker 1: how we can bring the strengths finder, bring the character
Speaker 1: strength survey, because I was going to ask you later
Speaker 1: in the show, you know, what's what are the similarities
Speaker 1: and differences because I know you did your your thesis
Speaker 1: on that topic, but maybe we don't have No, we
Speaker 1: don't need to, We don't need to choose one or
Speaker 1: the other, right, I mean as holistic an assessment as
Speaker 1: possible I think would be really valuable to educators. And
Speaker 1: then you know, something I would be very interested in
Speaker 1: working on is to to to see how when we
Speaker 1: just like you've done in the business world, you found
Speaker 1: the you know, really important findings like managers who focus
Speaker 1: on the strengths of their employees uh, significantly significally reduce
Speaker 1: their their disengagement at work for instance. These are really
Speaker 1: important findings and and I would love to show this
Speaker 1: in the education world as well. So this is a
Speaker 1: conversation I wasn't even expecting to have it right now
Speaker 1: with you, but it's uh, I'm glad that I'm glad
Speaker 1: we went there because I think that there's a great
Speaker 1: untapped potential to use lots of these current assessments that
Speaker 1: go beyond, go beyond standardized test scores and IQ tests
Speaker 1: scores and h and identify character strengths as well as
Speaker 1: themes of talent. We can we can assess, we can
Speaker 1: use both skills and more. Right, yeah, I think so.
Speaker 1: I think we need a lot more than we have now.
Speaker 1: One of the one of the fun things that Don
Speaker 1: and I were doing a long time ago, we were
Speaker 1: trying to figure out how low can you go in
Speaker 1: terms of assessing or observing more natural tendencies and talents
Speaker 1: of young children and school systems with how far can
Speaker 1: you go with an assessment? And then when do you
Speaker 1: need to get into observation? And then when I was
Speaker 1: at the program in at Penn, Chris Peterson was my advisor,
Speaker 1: and I know he and Nansuk has been a lot
Speaker 1: of time looking at how how far can you go
Speaker 1: with kind of early self reports to get at some
Speaker 1: of the dynamics of personality and value at those ages.
Speaker 1: And then when do you need to rely on the
Speaker 1: observations of outsiders and teachers and parents, which takes even
Speaker 1: more time and effort, but may be worth it at
Speaker 1: some of those young ages. For no other reason than
Speaker 1: the big boost and self efficacy you get out of
Speaker 1: it or kids. So I know, I'm at Gallup and others.
Speaker 1: We've kind of tried to get down to those ages
Speaker 1: of anywhere between eight to thirteen and then Strengths Finder
Speaker 1: we've used as people older than that with very basic
Speaker 1: self assessments. But I'm just as interested in how do
Speaker 1: you help kids to build on some early victories and
Speaker 1: help parents and teachers to see that well before you
Speaker 1: can do reliable self assessments with pictures and words and
Speaker 1: stuff like that. So it's interesting where a lot of
Speaker 1: the work that you've done with studying natural content that's
Speaker 1: produced from people and online networks, I think my hunch
Speaker 1: is that maybe you start to get there in terms
Speaker 1: of I mean just looking at some of the coding
Speaker 1: of words kids are using at a young age to
Speaker 1: figure it out or something like that. Anyhow, Yeah, and
Speaker 1: that's and you're referencing the great work work that the
Speaker 1: Well Wellbeing Project are doing and Johannes and others, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that could be one potential tool. I you know, I uh,
Speaker 1: I'm very interested like creativity and intelligence and imagination and
Speaker 1: do those are those included as part of the Is
Speaker 1: that a theme of talent imagination? Yeah, it's there's a
Speaker 1: whole set of I mean what we looked at originally,
Speaker 1: this was kind of in the factor structure when we
Speaker 1: were developing strength randing from the outset is there are
Speaker 1: these large clusters of themes that naturally hold together and
Speaker 1: for the business world, you know, in the leadership book
Speaker 1: I or what we called that strategic thinking, but most
Speaker 1: of those themes are really the Those are the people
Speaker 1: on a team who are have maybe a more natural
Speaker 1: disposition to spend time alone musing, and they enjoy that
Speaker 1: and think more about where things are going in the
Speaker 1: future in that vision versus is some of the more
Speaker 1: relationship or operation oriented or selling influence oriented talent. So
Speaker 1: a strengthmander kind of clusters out into four meta categories
Speaker 1: instead of it being kind of an individual theme in
Speaker 1: isolation because that's such a big part of any successful
Speaker 1: team more live that makes sense. I wonder what the
Speaker 1: relationship What is conceptually the difference between a character strength,
Speaker 1: a talent and a personality treat Boy, that's a question, right,
Speaker 1: I guess, I mean we can discuss it. It's I
Speaker 1: you know, I'm wondering too. Yeah, what do you think.
Speaker 1: I think that the talent in I mean, in the
Speaker 1: work that I've done at Gallup in the past, talent
Speaker 1: has been kind of a narrow band in that definition
Speaker 1: of what are some of the least malleable personality traits
Speaker 1: that you can count on consistently over years, real specific,
Speaker 1: which is different, very different from the way a lot
Speaker 1: of other books talk about the concept of talent real broadly.
Speaker 1: And then so really what's interesting is that, you know,
Speaker 1: GalF of course I was a part of this maybe
Speaker 1: not so great decision, but we called it Strengths Finder,
Speaker 1: And really what that thing measures is talent, not strength,
Speaker 1: which is more the product of bringing in a lot
Speaker 1: of knowledge and practice and skill and all those other
Speaker 1: things that are important. So that's talent and personality traits
Speaker 1: in the work I've been a part of are pretty
Speaker 1: closely aligned. When I study the not only the origins
Speaker 1: which I followed being close to it of the via
Speaker 1: the Values and Action assessment, it seems to me that
Speaker 1: that was based on more of a review of experts
Speaker 1: over time and current thoughts and leadership thought leaders about
Speaker 1: what are some of the most universal values. And then
Speaker 1: this has been a long time but in one of
Speaker 1: my classes, Chris Peterson was showing us how within the
Speaker 1: VIA having a lot of strength across many of the
Speaker 1: domains is an asset in terms of predicting positive outcomes,
Speaker 1: whereas a little bit different than a lot of the
Speaker 1: work that we've done around talent that is measured by StrengthsFinder,
Speaker 1: where you'd essentially want to spend a maximum amount of
Speaker 1: time investing in the top three or five themes in
Speaker 1: your sequence instead of trying to balance out a round
Speaker 1: out the entire continuum of thirty four. So that was
Speaker 1: one of the key distinctions I could see on the
Speaker 1: surface plast And have you mapped on your strengths your
Speaker 1: talent areas to the Big five framework? Yes, very early
Speaker 1: on we did a lot of mapping back then with
Speaker 1: a couple of researchers at UCLA and at Harvard, Chip Anderson,
Speaker 1: phil Stone through not only we started with kind of
Speaker 1: Big five is conceptual routes, but then also looking at
Speaker 1: a lot of the very popular assessments are out at
Speaker 1: the Myers Briggs and discs and some of those other
Speaker 1: tests to look at where the conceptual overlaps are. And
Speaker 1: there are more papers out there available on the Internet
Speaker 1: that I can kind of keep track of in terms
Speaker 1: of specific mapping, and that, honestly, the one that I'm
Speaker 1: most interested in studying for the future is how do
Speaker 1: you how do you help people to make better decisions
Speaker 1: about their work and careers in those foundational years, in
Speaker 1: particular based on where they have some natural talent. I
Speaker 1: don't know that anyone's done enough to connect those dots yet, No,
Speaker 1: they haven't. And you know, the archers who study talent
Speaker 1: are I think stuck in so many of these academic
Speaker 1: debates that that they're not really even they're missing some
Speaker 1: of the most important questions in a way, you know,
Speaker 1: so you'll see back and forth, is it nature or nurture?
Speaker 1: You know, these kinds of you know, and it's it's
Speaker 1: obviously both. But then you know, behavioral geneticis will use
Speaker 1: twin studies and show, look, all these talents have a
Speaker 1: heritability coefficient, and then you know, like researchers investigating child
Speaker 1: development will say, look at the environment matters. And then
Speaker 1: but but but in a way like once we just agree, okay,
Speaker 1: it's nature and nurture, fine, and let's move on. You know,
Speaker 1: I think I think there are bigger questions to answer.
Speaker 1: I'm absolutely with that. I mean, I you know, it's
Speaker 1: kind of the people say, well, should just focus on
Speaker 1: your strengths and not your weaknesses. I'm like, that sounds
Speaker 1: pretty reckless to me based on everything I've looked at.
Speaker 1: It's gotta you mean, there's always a balance there. And
Speaker 1: another big I think misnomer on some of the talent
Speaker 1: personality research is that, you know, we think that these
Speaker 1: are things that you can just change anything and you
Speaker 1: want to be be anything you want to be, And
Speaker 1: obviously that's very hard to do on the other end
Speaker 1: of the continuum as well. So I'd like to figure
Speaker 1: out smarter ways to help people map some of those
Speaker 1: things back. And along those lines, I was wondering, based
Speaker 1: on the some of the most recent work you've been doing, Kin,
Speaker 1: what what do you see as some of the most
Speaker 1: interesting or innovative ways to help people have more self
Speaker 1: awareness about what they're naturally good at without it being
Speaker 1: as without it taking a lot of their time to
Speaker 1: provide some of those insights. I mean, I even step
Speaker 1: back sometimes and think that, you know, asking people to
Speaker 1: go through a thirty sixty minute questionnaire to yield that
Speaker 1: kind of self awareness and insight has proven to be
Speaker 1: very effective in some cases. It's kind of the other
Speaker 1: end of the spectrum from a quick little quizy take
Speaker 1: on the internet with no reliability at all. But have
Speaker 1: you seen some other means to give people pretty useful
Speaker 1: insights there? Yeah, that's a great question. So I think
Speaker 1: that in addition to being interested in what people are
Speaker 1: good at, I'm also interested in learning what makes people,
Speaker 1: what inspires people, And that's kind of a different question.
Speaker 1: You can be like inspired by someone's great like Michael
Speaker 1: Jordan's Great Dunk or humanitarians wonderful without actually being good
Speaker 1: at it yet, and that inspiration in itself can be
Speaker 1: a driving force to excellence in that. So what I'm
Speaker 1: really interested is whole literature on inspiration. And you know,
Speaker 1: I don't know if you're familiar with Todd Thrash's work,
Speaker 1: I'm not. Yeah, And he's done this great work and
Speaker 1: inspiration showing that it has these specific qualities that when
Speaker 1: people encounter a stimulus, it's a very spontaneous thing. So
Speaker 1: when you're really inspired, it's not usually a willed thing.
Speaker 1: It's usually something you've come and you've come in contact
Speaker 1: with a stimulus that inspires you and it makes you
Speaker 1: see greater possibilities for yourself. It's it and and that
Speaker 1: does change everything. They they've they've they've had like they've had,
Speaker 1: they've they've measured the creative creativity of writing samples. For instance,
Speaker 1: they had it rated for the creativity and they found
Speaker 1: and they had people keep track all along the process
Speaker 1: how inspired they were to while they were writing. They
Speaker 1: found that after the moment of inspiration, there was much
Speaker 1: greater efficiency of word choice, the creativity was there's much
Speaker 1: greater creativity in what they were doing. It's almost like
Speaker 1: the person took on a whole different persona a whole
Speaker 1: different being. So what I what I found increases this
Speaker 1: sort of inspiration is is really just giving people opportunity to,
Speaker 1: you know, expose them to as many different potential identities
Speaker 1: as possible. Like you need to like really expand the
Speaker 1: breath of possible points of inspiration that you could you
Speaker 1: can do and you you put them in uh contact
Speaker 1: with lots of inspiring role models, lots of different subjects.
Speaker 1: So you just expose lots of different subjects without knowing
Speaker 1: beforehand what what what is going to be there there?
Speaker 1: You know, what what might be calling them or what
Speaker 1: might be inspiring them. And also project based learning is
Speaker 1: another big one that I found is important. Usually when
Speaker 1: people start working on personally meaningful projects, even if they're
Speaker 1: not good at it, it's it almost is like it
Speaker 1: builds on each other that every time they make progress
Speaker 1: towards the goal, it slowly transforms their whole being, you know,
Speaker 1: not just one aspect of themselves, but their whole being.
Speaker 1: So I think what I'm saying, you know, it relates
Speaker 1: a lot to the work you've done, even the work
Speaker 1: you've done on well being. Right, Yeah, and it's interesting.
Speaker 1: I think you're getting into suns in there that's been
Speaker 1: It's very important in terms of exposure to these kind
Speaker 1: of potential inspirations and identities because I kind of grew
Speaker 1: up through the lens of looking at assessments and personality
Speaker 1: through an iopsychology lens where for many, many years the
Speaker 1: field of iopsychology least have been pretty dismissive of interests
Speaker 1: and passions because unlike general mental ability or personality traits,
Speaker 1: it didn't predict job performance, especially in entry level roles,
Speaker 1: very well. So just because you're interested in being a
Speaker 1: pharmaceutical salesperson, doesn't you're gonna be good at us? Right. However,
Speaker 1: the more recent research i've still when you look through
Speaker 1: the lens of well being, it matters a lot for
Speaker 1: the individual's well being. It's just the companies who were
Speaker 1: paying the bills for these tasks. Before I didn't care
Speaker 1: about that as much. So I think that's a whole
Speaker 1: new perspective that we kind of need to bring into
Speaker 1: this science of how do you help people find optimal
Speaker 1: track and career there? And I'm also really interested in
Speaker 1: your thought about how, in this day and age, what
Speaker 1: are some new ways to expose people to new possibilities
Speaker 1: of their identities, because you know, as I was doing
Speaker 1: some of the research for the Are You Fully Charged? Book,
Speaker 1: I think I was going back and if you look
Speaker 1: at the number of people over kind of twenty thirty
Speaker 1: year lounge JUNI studies who are still in the same
Speaker 1: job or career as their mother or father, it's just
Speaker 1: frightening how hard it is for people to see out
Speaker 1: of a narrow band of a lens, just in terms
Speaker 1: of what's possible. Right, So there's got to be better
Speaker 1: ways to do that nowadays. There's got to be better
Speaker 1: ways there's got to be better ways that that that
Speaker 1: you as as an individual can is from like a
Speaker 1: self determination point of view without the help of others,
Speaker 1: can figure out how to do that. And then there's
Speaker 1: also got to be a way for for people in
Speaker 1: a position to be able to do that to help
Speaker 1: support that, like if you're a manager or a teacher's
Speaker 1: so there's like both ways, right, both perspectives. Right, So
Speaker 1: you write a lot of really terrific and in preparation
Speaker 1: for this interview, I like have all your books on
Speaker 1: myself right now that i've and uh, I've been going
Speaker 1: through them. It helps that they're they're they're they're concise,
Speaker 1: So thank you for that. A lot of books can
Speaker 1: be really jargony and can really convolute the message, but
Speaker 1: you get right right to the point. But your your
Speaker 1: books are doing great service for both perspectives because the
Speaker 1: individual interested in in gaining great insight in themselves can
Speaker 1: pick up one of your books and take one of
Speaker 1: your tests and can gain insight without even if they're
Speaker 1: in an environment where they're managers or other people around
Speaker 1: them just have no clue how to how to inspire
Speaker 1: or to do that. But also, you know people like
Speaker 1: managers et cetera, can read your books and gain great
Speaker 1: insights how to bring out the best in their workers.
Speaker 1: So your books do a great service of that. But
Speaker 1: the you know, the question is even going beyond these books.
Speaker 1: You know, how can we change UH structures so that
Speaker 1: people are always seeing greater possibilities? And and if you
Speaker 1: don't mind, I'd like to bring in maybe an elephant
Speaker 1: in the room here, maybe, which is I think a
Speaker 1: valid criticism of the field of positive psychology, and that's
Speaker 1: that you know, in very very poor, poor, you know,
Speaker 1: low socio economic status areas a lot of a lot
Speaker 1: of racial and ethnic minority groups, they don't have the
Speaker 1: luxury of of that level. Yet you know, from a
Speaker 1: maslow perspect of, they can't shoot right to the self
Speaker 1: actualization stage right they're trying to like, So the question
Speaker 1: also is how can they see greater possibilities even though
Speaker 1: they're in an environment whether there doesn't seem like there's
Speaker 1: much hope. Is that a fair question? I think it's
Speaker 1: a fair question, and I think it's an important point
Speaker 1: for people who have interest in psychology and positive psychology
Speaker 1: because I think I think it was Adam Grant who
Speaker 1: was writing recently about how you know if you say
Speaker 1: you're doing something with behavioral economics, that sounds so different
Speaker 1: than if you say you're coming in and talking about
Speaker 1: positive psychology just on the surface, right, And the problem
Speaker 1: I've talked to many classes and people in positive psychologizers
Speaker 1: are sometimes it's easy to assume that because you put
Speaker 1: the word positive in front of psychology, that that throws
Speaker 1: people in a different direction with they're thinking, oh, it's
Speaker 1: only a luxury or whatever. But it's really easy. I
Speaker 1: have my both my undergrad and graduate degrees are in psychology,
Speaker 1: and it's and I've grown up in a household psychologist.
Speaker 1: It's really easy for me to see that the word
Speaker 1: psychology is a much bigger problem than the word positive
Speaker 1: in that equation, because the average American who here's the
Speaker 1: word psychology, they barely delineate it from psychiatry and think
Speaker 1: of it as something that people use when they're in
Speaker 1: need of counsel. And so it's the stigmas there with
Speaker 1: a label are very different in some cases from the
Speaker 1: actual science of the influence it has on people across
Speaker 1: socioeconomic groups. So I want to delineate that a little
Speaker 1: bit because I think the tools that I've seen coming
Speaker 1: out of teams at PAN and elsewhere, and the things
Speaker 1: that I've been a part of a gallop where we're
Speaker 1: working in inner city school districts to help kids uncover
Speaker 1: their talents and share that with teachers and parents. That
Speaker 1: does as much for post outcomes like self confidence and
Speaker 1: direction and altruism across that spectrum. And I would argue
Speaker 1: that in some of my own personal experiences my wife's
Speaker 1: taught in several schools around the DC are I hear
Speaker 1: that the kids who are often in more need of
Speaker 1: time and attention because they don't have as much time
Speaker 1: with parents who are working real hard and who are
Speaker 1: in more need of that confidence boost that you get
Speaker 1: from some of these interventions are in the schools that
Speaker 1: are less advantage. So I when I look at the interventions,
Speaker 1: I don't see the ones that I've been close to
Speaker 1: or studied at least is having any more or less
Speaker 1: benefit for kids who grow up in a high socioeconomic
Speaker 1: status area, for example. Well, that's really good news. That
Speaker 1: is good news because and again I think I see great,
Speaker 1: great potential for adapting a lot of the work you've
Speaker 1: done into gifted and talented identification practices as well as
Speaker 1: just general education for all students, because you do the
Speaker 1: reality of the matter is that ninety eight percent of
Speaker 1: students and gift and talented programs in this country are white,
Speaker 1: middle class, so we're obviously missing out on a whole
Speaker 1: lot of talent and as well as the whole diversity
Speaker 1: of of of humankind. So I just see great, great,
Speaker 1: great potential for adapting these kinds of things. And you know,
Speaker 1: it's interesting on that thought that one of the I've
Speaker 1: spent most of the last year working on this documentary
Speaker 1: around Fully Charged, and one of the groups featured in
Speaker 1: there is the KIP Schools in Dave Levin who's been
Speaker 1: a big part of that. He was one of the
Speaker 1: co founders. And I mean they have a they use
Speaker 1: a lot of the concepts. I spend time with their
Speaker 1: teachers on some of the emove sleep elements from this,
Speaker 1: and they use a lot of the general constructs from
Speaker 1: positive Psychology, but they put it into their own programs,
Speaker 1: they put into their own words, they put it into
Speaker 1: their own language, and I've seen it have real powerful,
Speaker 1: uh messaging and mission and efficacy there over the years.
Speaker 1: So let's move on to this topic of well being,
Speaker 1: So just cultivating your strengths from a talent perspective, even
Speaker 1: that will not necessarily give you high well being in life. Right,
Speaker 1: There's more too well being than just a talent and
Speaker 1: then just developing a talent. So let's let's talk about
Speaker 1: some of the things you've discovered. Going back to your
Speaker 1: book on Wellbeing, which I just read, really liked it,
Speaker 1: you make a statement in there that much of what
Speaker 1: we think will prove well being is either misguided or
Speaker 1: just plain wrong. Would you say that that's still the
Speaker 1: case since that book came out that you see in
Speaker 1: the media or you see in the public a lot
Speaker 1: a misguided notion of what it means to have well being. Yes.
Speaker 1: When we worked on that book well Being, it was
Speaker 1: interesting because we were looking at what are the core
Speaker 1: dimensions when people look at, think about, and evaluate their
Speaker 1: lives in a very general sense. And that's how we
Speaker 1: kind of define well being for their Gallop research, and
Speaker 1: it divided into these five areas overall that were kind
Speaker 1: of your career well being, social wellbeing, financial wellbeing, physical
Speaker 1: well being, and community well being. And after we did
Speaker 1: that research, I said to one of my colleagues on
Speaker 1: our research team, you know, we see the pretty even
Speaker 1: waiting across those five factors in terms of how they
Speaker 1: contribute to both daily experience and overall life SAT life satisfaction.
Speaker 1: And I said, what if we ask people to make
Speaker 1: their own waiting? And I said, we should we allow
Speaker 1: people to just kind of shift the weighting themselves for
Speaker 1: these domains. And so we put that question out on
Speaker 1: a national survey and said, here are these dimensions of
Speaker 1: your well being. How would you assign the points overall?
Speaker 1: If you had one hundred points, how would you break
Speaker 1: them out? And I don't know if we have a
Speaker 1: publisher piece, but the people who most people assign disproportional
Speaker 1: points to physical health, physical well being, and financial well
Speaker 1: being far more than social well being or their career
Speaker 1: or purpose anything like that, or their community. And that's
Speaker 1: not consistent with the best way to get there. Based
Speaker 1: on what we saw, and it was almost kind of
Speaker 1: paradoxical where we found overall, we found that the people
Speaker 1: who assigned the highest waiting to their financial well being
Speaker 1: had the lowest overall well being, and the people who
Speaker 1: assigned the highest waiting to their community well being had
Speaker 1: the highest overall well being. So I think for people
Speaker 1: to step back and say, what is that I'm really
Speaker 1: trying to do here in terms of a meaningful impact
Speaker 1: on others in a community versus building up a file
Speaker 1: of cash that gets taxed and expires when you die.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's a very very different things. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: this individual difference is thing I don't think is really
Speaker 1: discussed enough in the field of positive psychology. You know,
Speaker 1: like this perma model, that are these that that Martin
Speaker 1: Seligman has, that these are these are important things, but
Speaker 1: some people might really really really care about more like
Speaker 1: achievement more than the others for instance. And not only that,
Speaker 1: but I find, like you know, in the business world,
Speaker 1: are entrepreneurs. I mean, there are people legitimately like like
Speaker 1: Donald Trump really loves money. Do you think he was
Speaker 1: well being would be higher if he if he suddenly
Speaker 1: woke up tomorrow, if you like, went through an addiction
Speaker 1: program and like discovered that he cares more about his
Speaker 1: community than he does about winning. Do you think he
Speaker 1: actually would do Do you think positi psychology applies to
Speaker 1: Donald Trump? People? Like I think if he did that,
Speaker 1: I think it would really freak people out right now.
Speaker 1: And you know, and in seriousness. I think there's a
Speaker 1: huge there's such a continuum of individual differences in terms
Speaker 1: of what we want and need and how we want
Speaker 1: to get there that you know, the first project I
Speaker 1: worked on at Gallup, we were trying to put together
Speaker 1: a StrengthsFinder based programs just for all the other books
Speaker 1: and stuff for college freshmen because they go to these
Speaker 1: orientation programs where it's usually one credit and you don't
Speaker 1: really get a lot out of it, and we're trying
Speaker 1: to say, is there's something that they can go through
Speaker 1: that helps them figure out how to pick classes based
Speaker 1: on their individual personality traits. It helps them figure out
Speaker 1: how to build relationships based on whether they're more achievement
Speaker 1: oriented or whether they're more empathetic. And it was called
Speaker 1: Strength Quest and has kind of caught on with colleges
Speaker 1: since then. But I think it's that kind of mapping
Speaker 1: where there were were telling kids, if you have let's
Speaker 1: say you have the theme of intellectual We're always thinking
Speaker 1: what are the right extracurriculars you might want to get
Speaker 1: involved with. We need to help people have better maps
Speaker 1: of what to do to create meaning and well being
Speaker 1: that are more personalized. And I still just I don't
Speaker 1: see much of that at all in the workplace today.
Speaker 1: It's more common general guidelines exactly exactly good. So I
Speaker 1: think we're definitely on the same page in that. But
Speaker 1: regardless of what your your emphasis is in life, you
Speaker 1: make a really good point in your book that that
Speaker 1: the single biggest threat to our world being tends to
Speaker 1: be ourselves. So we tend to get in our own way.
Speaker 1: Can you unpack how we how we do that in
Speaker 1: a in a instut in terms of our time perspective? Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, That's what's been most interesting to me in
Speaker 1: the most recent work that I've done, is that to
Speaker 1: a large degree. Uh I. I would now argue that
Speaker 1: I think daily experiences Masseurder call it daily experience. I
Speaker 1: call it daily well being is a more important element
Speaker 1: to focus on than long term life satisfaction that people
Speaker 1: usually measure with kind of that Cantrall Ladder of live
Speaker 1: question that's reflective over many years and has more of
Speaker 1: a financial dependency. For no, even if you even if
Speaker 1: someone disagrees with me and they think, well, I want
Speaker 1: to really I want to think I did really well
Speaker 1: when I reflect when I'm seventy five, Still the way
Speaker 1: to get there is through the daily well being metrics.
Speaker 1: So what I've seen there is that there are certain
Speaker 1: things that we need to think about and build into
Speaker 1: our days on more of a momentary basis that contribute
Speaker 1: to not only a sense of well being, but a
Speaker 1: sense that you're chipping away at something bigger than yourself
Speaker 1: from a meaning context, and that it's the sum of
Speaker 1: those days that leads to very different outcomes. And it's
Speaker 1: been You probably find this interesting that you know, I've
Speaker 1: had this impression studying well being for well over a
Speaker 1: decade now that you know you always have these countries
Speaker 1: in Western Europe. You get the Switzerland's, the Denmark, spinlans
Speaker 1: of the world that have these huge well being scores
Speaker 1: when you ask people reflective life satisfaction questions. But in
Speaker 1: some data that Gallop put out just in the last year,
Speaker 1: if you look at daily experience measures of positive affect
Speaker 1: and stress and feel whether people feel blue throughout the
Speaker 1: day and positive experiences. The countries at the top of
Speaker 1: those lists, they're all in Central to South America. You
Speaker 1: get you get the Panama, Paraguay, and and several other
Speaker 1: countries in that region. Four of the top five on
Speaker 1: that daily experience measure are in the bottom half of
Speaker 1: the I M, S, G d P per capita rankings
Speaker 1: of national wealth. So it's a it's kind of a
Speaker 1: telling me a very different picture about overall well being.
Speaker 1: I think that a lot of what's going in there
Speaker 1: is also the community aspect, right the the in some
Speaker 1: of these particular nations that that that's course uh high will.
Speaker 1: When you examine and go to the nations, you see
Speaker 1: that there's a there's a lot of support even even
Speaker 1: if they live in very poor environments. There's a lot
Speaker 1: of value pleased on social relationships. Would you say that
Speaker 1: that's right? Yeah, And when I get into these kind
Speaker 1: of elements of the daily experience and well being, if
Speaker 1: you go back to Teresa Momba Blay and Steven Kramer's
Speaker 1: work studying journal entries of workers across professions, it's these
Speaker 1: little moments throughout the day where you realize that you
Speaker 1: made something a little bit better than otherwise would have been.
Speaker 1: So if someone calls me because they're really frustrated about
Speaker 1: a product or a book or something I've worked on,
Speaker 1: and I kind of get them back to neutral, I
Speaker 1: need to step back and acknowledge that's a little win
Speaker 1: throughout the day. And if I'm reading a book to
Speaker 1: my son tonight and last night we recognized a new word,
Speaker 1: that's a real victory. That's got to count towards my
Speaker 1: experience that I'm doing that day. And so when you
Speaker 1: think about our forward progress we make it work, or
Speaker 1: just our brief interactions with the loved ones, do we
Speaker 1: smile and laugh a lot throughout the day? And then
Speaker 1: the thing that I'd spent time on a few years
Speaker 1: ago with even more intensities, how do we make sure
Speaker 1: people have enough physical energy each day just to be
Speaker 1: their best? But I forget about all the long term
Speaker 1: health outcome stuff for a minute, because that doesn't really
Speaker 1: motivate people to make different choices today. How do I
Speaker 1: move around enough so that I can keep up with
Speaker 1: four year holds in a six year old at five
Speaker 1: o'clock today? And then that gets me moving along. So
Speaker 1: the more I study the science and more, it all
Speaker 1: comes back to these moments, And how do you help
Speaker 1: people to make slightly better decisions today that lead to
Speaker 1: wood Barb Frederickson would call kind of that word spirals. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: that's a great, great question, And your latest book fully
Speaker 1: Charged goes beyond your book and the well Being identifies
Speaker 1: these three factors really important in the workplace and in
Speaker 1: your daily life. But I bet that people in the
Speaker 1: workforce have really embraced this book because of these things.
Speaker 1: You can just see how they're lacking all across corporate America.
Speaker 1: One is meaning, where you talk about the importance of
Speaker 1: again going beyond what you mentioned this also in well being,
Speaker 1: going beyond just the pursuit of happiness to find it
Speaker 1: sort of a higher calling. And second is interactions. And
Speaker 1: then the third is energy, and energy can include eating right,
Speaker 1: sleeping longer, and these sorts of things. How do you identify,
Speaker 1: by the way, I know how you identified those five
Speaker 1: factors and well being, tell me how you came up
Speaker 1: with these three factors and fully Charged. Coming up with
Speaker 1: the three factors in Fully Charged was mostly going through
Speaker 1: a lot of research that I had been accumulating on
Speaker 1: those topics more qualitatively. But then it also did involve
Speaker 1: we did some outbound surveys looking at what were the
Speaker 1: keys to people reporting that they had days where not
Speaker 1: only they had the highest levels of daily experience daily
Speaker 1: well being, but also that they were engaged in their work.
Speaker 1: So that's and it's rooted in the biggest concern that
Speaker 1: I have from a especially from a workplace standpoint, But
Speaker 1: it extends beyond that, which is that I mean, most
Speaker 1: people have enough basic energy or their charge enough to
Speaker 1: make it to work today. But the vast majority of people,
Speaker 1: somewhere between eighty and ninety percent by my estimates, are
Speaker 1: going to show up to work today or tomorrow and
Speaker 1: be running at nowhere near their real capacity for a
Speaker 1: majority of their waking day. And that's what seems immediately
Speaker 1: fixable to me for people in most circumstances in life,
Speaker 1: where there are some things you can do to start
Speaker 1: to move that curve backwards. And I think out of
Speaker 1: the ten thousand people we surveyed for that work on
Speaker 1: fully charged, there were just it was tanner twelve percent
Speaker 1: a pound samples we look at who said they had
Speaker 1: a great deal of physical energy yesterday, and roughly I
Speaker 1: think it was in the range of twenty percent said
Speaker 1: they had really positive interactions or did a lot of
Speaker 1: meaningful work yesterday when you ask him to think about
Speaker 1: the whole day. So it's we've got to help people
Speaker 1: to work on those kind of one to time and
Speaker 1: figure out how do you build those three elements more
Speaker 1: into your daily routine. It's it's funny. So we've worked
Speaker 1: on this documentary about the book Fully Charged for quite
Speaker 1: a while and one of the people who's interviewed in
Speaker 1: it and featured prominently is Brian Wensenk, who originally wrote
Speaker 1: the book mindle was Eating and does all the fascinating
Speaker 1: experiments with how our choices and structural set up determines
Speaker 1: what we'll eat throughout the day. But if you take
Speaker 1: his little tips, so if you've got a glass jar
Speaker 1: that has candy in it sitting down and people can
Speaker 1: see it, they'll far more than they would if the
Speaker 1: jar wasn't glass, or if it was hidden our away
Speaker 1: from arm's reach. And so that what that tells you
Speaker 1: to do or to have. At our house, we have
Speaker 1: jars of mixed nuts sitting out, and apples and fruits
Speaker 1: and vegetables all over because we eat what we see
Speaker 1: and what's convenient and easy, right And when I travel,
Speaker 1: I keep those little packs with me everywhere I go,
Speaker 1: so I'm not tempted in the airport to make a
Speaker 1: bad choice, which is a lot easier. But what I've
Speaker 1: learned from Brian Wansink and his work is that we
Speaker 1: can do some of the same things with our interactions,
Speaker 1: where you can structure your day where you see more
Speaker 1: of and spend more time with the people who always
Speaker 1: pick you up a little bit, instead of spending as
Speaker 1: much time around the relative who passes along her second
Speaker 1: hand stress every time you interact, right, and when we
Speaker 1: do the same thing with our work and our structure
Speaker 1: our work, we can make sure that we do little
Speaker 1: things to bring the humanity back into our work. Whether
Speaker 1: it's a having a thumbnail of someone in a contact
Speaker 1: file so that you can see the person you're serving
Speaker 1: instead of an anonymous Google letter next to their name,
Speaker 1: or whatever. They are these little tricks that just make
Speaker 1: it a little bit easier, less resistance to make good
Speaker 1: choices that boost daily well being. I love that, and
Speaker 1: it contributes to this adding up all of these moments,
Speaker 1: all these moments of our life matter. I really like that.
Speaker 1: What does it mean to build a cumulative advantage in
Speaker 1: terms of interactions? I wanted to ask you that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was, you know, that's a word combination that struck me.
Speaker 1: Maybe ten years ago, I was reading a academic paper
Speaker 1: from Tim Judge, who was at Florida at the time,
Speaker 1: I think and he looked at that National Launch gueneral
Speaker 1: study of youth over many years and essentially found that
Speaker 1: each year you gained more I believe it was self
Speaker 1: efficacy or confidence. He was studying that each year you
Speaker 1: gained a little edge. So you did between sixteen and
Speaker 1: eighteen that continued to amplify the game in the next
Speaker 1: time period interval. So you kind of build this advantage
Speaker 1: where it's not just a little bit better would have
Speaker 1: been expected if you went from zero to one, but
Speaker 1: when you go from one to two, you get a
Speaker 1: little bit more of a boost because of the way
Speaker 1: that changes the dynamic there. And so I think you
Speaker 1: see that with your interactions as well, where and a
Speaker 1: part of this is because of I mean, we've seen
Speaker 1: a lot of the work from christ Taxis and Power
Speaker 1: and others about the way those social social interaction. You
Speaker 1: can debate the degree to which, but it has some
Speaker 1: contribution to the social dynamic that extends beyond an individual.
Speaker 1: And so if I have a great interaction with my
Speaker 1: wife or my daughter says some of the meaningfuls I'm
Speaker 1: walking out of the house that day, that carries on
Speaker 1: to the first person I interact with at work and
Speaker 1: amplifies that just a little bit more so, if we
Speaker 1: think about setting up our day like that, not only
Speaker 1: does this set us on the right trajectory, but I
Speaker 1: mean there's also a dynamic of the It gets debated
Speaker 1: sometimes as well about willpower by the end of the day,
Speaker 1: where it's a lot easier if you set yourself up
Speaker 1: to have to not have a lot of tough food
Speaker 1: choices or a lot of tough interactions early in the
Speaker 1: day to be at your best when you need it
Speaker 1: later on in the day most likely. I really really
Speaker 1: like that we just have a you know, maybe ten
Speaker 1: fifty more minutes. And I wanted to get personal. If
Speaker 1: any questions I ask you make you a cumfortball, of course,
Speaker 1: just feel free to go into the next question. But
Speaker 1: there's something I want to discuss with you. One is
Speaker 1: that and you have spoken about some various occasions that
Speaker 1: you were diagnosed at age sixteen with a very rare
Speaker 1: genetic disorder that causes cancer cells to appear various parts
Speaker 1: of your body. And I found it very interesting how
Speaker 1: you've been I read that E've ben experimenting with ways
Speaker 1: of slowing down the growth of tumors. So what sort
Speaker 1: of research have you done along those lines and what
Speaker 1: have you found. Yeah, I've been very open in recent years,
Speaker 1: especially with this most recent video, about my own personal battles.
Speaker 1: I've essentially been battling cancer since I was first diagnosed
Speaker 1: when I was sixteen years old. And I have a
Speaker 1: really rare disorder that essentially shuts off the body's most
Speaker 1: powerful tumor suppressing gene, and so I lost an eye,
Speaker 1: all my vision in my left eye to cancer when
Speaker 1: I was sixteen, and the doctor said, you know, you
Speaker 1: will have cancer and your kidneys and pancreas and spine
Speaker 1: and all over your body over whatever long of a
Speaker 1: lifetime they thought I could live at that point. And
Speaker 1: I currently am battling cancer in all those areas, which
Speaker 1: is an annual thing of doing CT scans, MRIs and
Speaker 1: all that. So it's kept me very focused on what
Speaker 1: are all the things that I can do, not just psychologically,
Speaker 1: but with my choices on food and diet and exercise
Speaker 1: activity all that, and also with just traditional medical scans
Speaker 1: and sciences and drugs that are in trials right now
Speaker 1: in order to hopefully decrease my odds of new cancers
Speaker 1: growing and growth rates slowing down, and existing cancers spreading,
Speaker 1: number tastasizing, and it's I think, I think it's important
Speaker 1: that you know, I've been studying this long enough to
Speaker 1: know that you know, anything that promises there's some miracle
Speaker 1: cure if you just eat right and exercise or whatever,
Speaker 1: you won't get these cancers or any other ailments. You know,
Speaker 1: that's the first sign to start looking somewhere else not
Speaker 1: believe it. But I am increasingly convinced that the choices
Speaker 1: we make do significantly increase and decrease our odds. And
Speaker 1: it's always I mean, it's kind of at the margin.
Speaker 1: So if you you really do the right things and
Speaker 1: eat a lot of healthy vegetable instead of fried foods
Speaker 1: and sugar and just loading up on carbride rates and
Speaker 1: things like that, will that help over time with inflammation
Speaker 1: and potentially slow down cancer growth rates. I'm convinced based
Speaker 1: on the work I've studied that it will help to
Speaker 1: some degree. But everything's just kind of chipping away at
Speaker 1: the odds there. So I also do the traditional So
Speaker 1: I've tried multiple approaches over time from the kind of
Speaker 1: change in my lifestyle dramatically, which I have done and
Speaker 1: written about two different clinical trials and chemotherapeutics, and just
Speaker 1: I call an interview and read the research from top
Speaker 1: medical researchers on my condition all these topics every few months,
Speaker 1: and also do just a whole week that's the battery
Speaker 1: of MRI and CT scans and blood tests and everything
Speaker 1: else at least once a year, just so I can
Speaker 1: stay ahead of this situation as much as possible. So
Speaker 1: I've I've learned a lot about managing cancer, hopefully as
Speaker 1: a chronic ailment for many years to come through that.
Speaker 1: When you were sixteen and you got diagnosed, I want
Speaker 1: to go back to your frame of mind at that age,
Speaker 1: were you did you go through some existential like angst?
Speaker 1: Do you do you back then? Did you did you?
Speaker 1: And and do you now fear death? You know, it's
Speaker 1: it's a it's a good question, especially given some of
Speaker 1: the topics that you're interested in have been talking about
Speaker 1: with students and growth and development at that age. I
Speaker 1: when I've looked back on that experience, it's almost hard
Speaker 1: for me to even believe my recall today. But I'd
Speaker 1: taken a lot of notes and written about it earlier
Speaker 1: on and because I essentially grew up in a household
Speaker 1: where they were practicing positive psychology to an extreme every day,
Speaker 1: and I was doing all the ror shocks and block
Speaker 1: tests and with all the with parents as teachers in
Speaker 1: psychologists and academics. That was my childhood. When I found
Speaker 1: out about this disease and started to do sight in
Speaker 1: my eye and had a lot of surgeries and so forth,
Speaker 1: I'm still mind boggled by how little it threw me
Speaker 1: off my normal course of well being and development. It's
Speaker 1: it's really remarkable. I mean, I kept doing all the
Speaker 1: same things with my friends and athletics, and of course
Speaker 1: it was difficult news and I had to react by it.
Speaker 1: But everyone around me was from day one was saying
Speaker 1: what can we do, how do we stay ahead of it?
Speaker 1: What are the next steps? And they weren't dwelling on
Speaker 1: something that was beyond their control, and their actions and
Speaker 1: words both said to me that, you know, we're going
Speaker 1: to keep figuring this out and stay ahead of it
Speaker 1: and things will be okay. And boy, I mean, in hindsight,
Speaker 1: I am so glad that I have not spent the
Speaker 1: last whatever twenty four years since then stressing out or
Speaker 1: dwelling on something that hasn't come to fruition yet. I've
Speaker 1: had a pretty good life since that. Well, you know,
Speaker 1: I think that you're actually quite inspirational for people who
Speaker 1: you know, a lot of people just have generalized anxieties.
Speaker 1: Are just anxious and there is no specific reason. It's
Speaker 1: not like there's an impending you know, like high probability
Speaker 1: of cancer or not. And I think a lot of
Speaker 1: what you're saying is, you know, really all that like
Speaker 1: worry is just really kind of wasting your life in
Speaker 1: a way. You know, you can really be working on
Speaker 1: the things that you know you can do to increase
Speaker 1: your moment to moment experience in life. That's a great thought.
Speaker 1: I mean, I haven't thought about it that way before,
Speaker 1: but it's there. There are so many things that and boy,
Speaker 1: I mean I see this. I worry more now about
Speaker 1: my kids having children than I ever did about myself
Speaker 1: for that. And I mean just there's so much worry that,
Speaker 1: even in that capacity as a parent, that I build
Speaker 1: up for things that never really come through or cause anything.
Speaker 1: So that I mean, it'd be it'd be fun at
Speaker 1: some point to study the amount of wasted worry out
Speaker 1: there in our society today. And I just got back
Speaker 1: from a trip. It was my fortieth birthday with some
Speaker 1: friends last week and thank you, and it's it was.
Speaker 1: It was interesting and we didn't have a television or
Speaker 1: watch any news, and boy that helped my I mean,
Speaker 1: there's you don't have as much worry about when you
Speaker 1: don't watch the news for eight days. It's a really
Speaker 1: good point. And I wonder as well, and is likes
Speaker 1: well being a potential buffer against death anxiety. I think
Speaker 1: it is from my experience it clearly. I mean my
Speaker 1: grandfather Don kind of raised me talking about you know
Speaker 1: when you have a full bucket. This was this metaphor
Speaker 1: he went on about from the seventies was you know,
Speaker 1: when you have a full buck it builds a reserve
Speaker 1: when things are trying to dip into it. That was
Speaker 1: the root of that book. I love that, And it
Speaker 1: really was like that my bucket was so full at
Speaker 1: that point that, yeah, something was really trying to empty
Speaker 1: it or dip from it. But the people around me
Speaker 1: were so good they essentially built that reserve for me
Speaker 1: that lasted through a really tough time. And I was
Speaker 1: just reading a study small ones like seventy five participants
Speaker 1: this morning but they were looking at reactivity to stress,
Speaker 1: and they found that when people were focused on others
Speaker 1: and giving as you might expect, that essentially created a
Speaker 1: buffer for the momentary physical reaction to stress throughout the day.
Speaker 1: And so it's fun for me now to see at
Speaker 1: kind of a micro level how that's being proven out,
Speaker 1: which is essentially what I experienced when I was sixteen.
Speaker 1: Based on my recall and something that speaks very highly
Speaker 1: of you is almost what I talked to. Really, really
Speaker 1: he does think highly of you. And we were having
Speaker 1: a discussion the other day and I was telling some
Speaker 1: of my colleagues that I was going to have you
Speaker 1: in my podcast, and they said, you know, he's really
Speaker 1: a guy that lives his work. He is a very
Speaker 1: high character individual. I think. Is how how my colleague
Speaker 1: phrased it, who really lives it? And you know, it
Speaker 1: is very inspirational to a lot of people, and to
Speaker 1: me in particular, because I do as from over age,
Speaker 1: had a lot of these existential you know, just waking
Speaker 1: up in a in a sweat at three in the morning, like,
Speaker 1: oh my god, I'm going to die someday, you know,
Speaker 1: like I mean, does that ever happen to you anymore
Speaker 1: or what kind of buffer does that ever happen to you? Ever?
Speaker 1: Has that ever happened to you? No? You know, it's
Speaker 1: it's interesting where I I mean, I have stress about
Speaker 1: things that I think a lot of us do from
Speaker 1: more of a more of an immediate threatned standpoint when
Speaker 1: you've got kids running around near the street or flying
Speaker 1: on a short runway on a prop plane or whatever.
Speaker 1: But outside of that, I one thing I learned early on,
Speaker 1: probably before I had this experience. Thinking back to it,
Speaker 1: it's a good question, is that. I mean, it's the
Speaker 1: you know, the one thing that I've got in my
Speaker 1: control today is that I know I've got the rest
Speaker 1: of this data, do at least a few, even if
Speaker 1: they're small, meaningful things that might have an influence on
Speaker 1: other people outside of my presence, whether I'm doing something
Speaker 1: else tomorrow, whether I'm not here tomorrow right, and so
Speaker 1: that's it's it's oriented my kind of focus of a
Speaker 1: day for a long long time. Where it's it's it also,
Speaker 1: I mean, it creates some urgency to say, I want
Speaker 1: to do something that has more of a lasting impact,
Speaker 1: and that helps me to prioritize because nobody's gonna sit
Speaker 1: around ten years from now and say, oh my gosh,
Speaker 1: Tom got the inbox zero on December fifteenth, right, So
Speaker 1: that's I mean, that helps me to at least get
Speaker 1: focused on a few things on a day to day
Speaker 1: basis that uh make somewhat of a difference. And then
Speaker 1: it's been a fun part of working on all the
Speaker 1: books and videos and teaching as I'm sure you see
Speaker 1: and things like that, where I mean hopefully that's that's
Speaker 1: an influence that makes a difference for kids and for
Speaker 1: students and people that continues to grow in your absence. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I can, I can definitely say that the work
Speaker 1: you've done will will continue to impact a lot of people,
Speaker 1: you know, one hundred years from now. You know, it's
Speaker 1: really it's really important work and and maybe even beyond
Speaker 1: one hundred years. Uht. Let me just end with this
Speaker 1: one question. So what matters the most to you personally
Speaker 1: in life? I think, I mean one thing is it
Speaker 1: matters a lot to me that I can make a
Speaker 1: contribution to something larger than myself that continues to grow
Speaker 1: when I'm gone. And that's and so I try and
Speaker 1: orient things around that thought. And there are ways I
Speaker 1: do that that are I would call very intensive, which
Speaker 1: is time with my wife and kids and closest friends
Speaker 1: and family members, where that's that's intensive and hopefully even
Speaker 1: more long term help in terms of development and influence.
Speaker 1: Then there are things that might be a quick fleeting
Speaker 1: thought that changes someone's day, that I'll that I'll never
Speaker 1: meet that those those really count to me and aggregate too,
Speaker 1: and so it's you know, it's kind of I guess
Speaker 1: an interesting insight into how I think about my progress
Speaker 1: would be one when I learned this from Don, my grandfather,
Speaker 1: is that we used to get it when we were
Speaker 1: first and earliers working on Strengths Minder. We'd get a
Speaker 1: little report each morning talking about how many people had
Speaker 1: receive their top five and gone through the assessment and
Speaker 1: so forth, and we looked at that a lot more
Speaker 1: than we ever looked at any day to day or
Speaker 1: financials or anything like that, just to say how many people.
Speaker 1: Is some of this behind the scenes science having an
Speaker 1: influence on I think even in analytical roles, I've learned
Speaker 1: it's important to help people to do that. So there's
Speaker 1: not only can you see the person you're serving, but
Speaker 1: there's some measure of the mission as well, because it
Speaker 1: helps you to do more a week later, a month later.
Speaker 1: Thank you, Tom, and I really do feel truly honored
Speaker 1: to be able to chat with you today, So thank
Speaker 1: you so much for your time, and thank you. This
Speaker 1: is the topics you're boring are very important for where
Speaker 1: I think the future education's head and we're all thinking
Speaker 1: about from a personal development and insight standpoint. Thanks Tom,
Speaker 1: have a great day. Thanks so much. Thanks for listening
Speaker 1: to the Psychology Podcast with doctor Scott Barry Hoffmann. I
Speaker 1: hope you found this episode just as informative and thought
Speaker 1: provoking as I did. If you don't like to read
Speaker 1: the show notes for this episode or here past episodes,
Speaker 1: you can go to the Psychology Podcast dot com