Speaker 1: Well, the word trauma is just now means everything every
Speaker 1: in so there is something in the in the zeitgeist.
Speaker 1: There's definitely something in the zeitgeist that is making us
Speaker 1: more conscious of trauma. And and and the body keeps
Speaker 1: the score is still on the New York Times bestseller list.
Speaker 1: So one could argue, in a nuanced fashion, as we
Speaker 1: like to do, that that's not all, that's not entirely
Speaker 1: a bad thing, that that it's good that we are
Speaker 1: becoming more aware of the extent to which really challenging
Speaker 1: experiences in our lives can play a role in who
Speaker 1: we are today. Hello, and welcome to the Psychology Podcast.
Speaker 1: Today the table is turned and I am interviewed by
Speaker 1: my friend and colleague, doctor Jonathan White about my new
Speaker 1: book Rise Above Overcome a victim mindset, Empower yourself and
Speaker 1: realize your full potential. Does life feel smaller than it
Speaker 1: used to? Does it seem that the people around you
Speaker 1: have taken a step back from doing hard things, preferring
Speaker 1: to stay in their comfort zone. In the era of
Speaker 1: Tiktakis therapy, it's tempting to see ourselves as damaged and powerless,
Speaker 1: defined by our past traumas our emotions and the struggles
Speaker 1: we face. But it's more important than ever to rise
Speaker 1: above the limiting beliefs and widespread anxiety that puts us
Speaker 1: in boxes, lowers our expectations, and holds us back. In
Speaker 1: my new book, which was just released yesterday, April twenty second,
Speaker 1: I unpact the dangerous myths and misleading buzzwords swirling around
Speaker 1: the public imagination, revealing the truth about managing our emotions,
Speaker 1: the double edged sword of self esteem, the surprising gifts
Speaker 1: of sensitivity, and ultimately, the power each of us has
Speaker 1: to overcome challenges and to shape the course of our
Speaker 1: own lives. In this episode, we discuss actionable solutions to
Speaker 1: own your life and reach your full potential. So, without
Speaker 1: further ado, bring you myself. Doctor Scott Barry Kaufman.
Speaker 2: Okay, Scott Barry Kaufman, also known as Okay, how are you?
Speaker 2: And where are you?
Speaker 1: I'm good, Jonathan, I'm good. I'm the last lap here
Speaker 1: in California, in Los Angeles. I'm moving to New York,
Speaker 1: going to be teaching full time.
Speaker 2: Yes, how exciting. Let's hope Columbia is still there when
Speaker 2: you arrive.
Speaker 1: That boy, your mouth to God's ears. Crazy times We're
Speaker 1: living in very crazy times, and I think the best
Speaker 1: we can do is show up according to our values.
Speaker 2: You know, that's right, That's right. How are you dealing
Speaker 2: with it? Do you? What's your attitude towards all of
Speaker 2: the craziness and insanity hitting the country and higher ed.
Speaker 1: You know, I think it is very much in line
Speaker 1: with what I just said about showing it. Just the
Speaker 1: best you can do is show up and like decide
Speaker 1: how do you want to show up in this world?
Speaker 1: You know, like get very clear on that. I like
Speaker 1: to lead with a term I use in my new book,
Speaker 1: Rise Above, which thank you for interviewing me today about.
Speaker 1: There's a term I use called honest love. I had
Speaker 1: felt as though two extremes have not really sit well
Speaker 1: with my own way of being and my own presence.
Speaker 1: On the one end, you see a lot of coddling.
Speaker 1: I think you know you've written something about that as
Speaker 1: an understatement. Yeah, yeah, and in that and I don't
Speaker 1: the coddling way of dealing with the world doesn't seem
Speaker 1: to uh didn't resonate with me. But then the other extreme,
Speaker 1: that pull yourself up by the boots by the bootstraps mentality,
Speaker 1: that ignores contact that ignores individual differences. That didn't really
Speaker 1: suit me either, So I propose a new term which
Speaker 1: just suits is what I feel like is resonates with
Speaker 1: the way I the tone I wanted to set for
Speaker 1: this book, and and also how I try to show
Speaker 1: up in the world. Honest love and honest has two parts.
Speaker 1: The love part is acknowledging the real felt experience of
Speaker 1: someone else, you know, acknowledging where they're at. But the
Speaker 1: that's the love part. But I don't want to stop there.
Speaker 1: I need I need to be honest or how I
Speaker 1: go crazy. The honest part is talking honestly and openly
Speaker 1: about what is as a roote to what could be.
Speaker 2: Well, Scott, I think that's beautiful the way you put that,
Speaker 2: because it's interesting you and I we come from sort
Speaker 2: of different perspectives, we come to a commonplace. A quote
Speaker 2: that I keep close by is from Joseph Campbell. He says,
Speaker 2: participate joyfully in the sorrows of the world. We cannot
Speaker 2: cure the world of sorrows, but we can choose to
Speaker 2: live in joy. The warriors approach is to say yes
Speaker 2: to life, yea to it all, And so a similar
Speaker 2: sort of attitude of you know, however, crazy things get,
Speaker 2: that's just the world, and we shouldn't go along with
Speaker 2: I shouldn't let it sweep us away. We should take control.
Speaker 2: We should have an empowered mindset. I say, what's they
Speaker 2: you Scott? Okay? And this turns us to your to
Speaker 2: your book that Rise Above. So that's yeah. Yeah. I
Speaker 2: was gonna say I should have'b blazed it on my forehead,
Speaker 2: but then I would be able to do it backward.
Speaker 2: Yeah tattoo m Yeah. So okay. So let's so let's
Speaker 2: talk about your your your wonderful new book Rise Above.
Speaker 2: Overcome a victim mindset, empower yourself and realize your full potential.
Speaker 2: So let's start at the beginning here. You and I
Speaker 2: first met when I think as you were post talk
Speaker 2: or you were were you were you were studying creativity
Speaker 2: and you were hosting YEA and you were hosting a
Speaker 2: session with like me and Marty Seligman a few others
Speaker 2: on like on creativity. This was like back, it's just
Speaker 2: like two thousand. I don't even remember when you don't.
Speaker 1: Feel like lifego no, no, fifteen, It wasn't that long ago.
Speaker 1: Twenty sixteen, fifteen fourteen, maybe maybe fourteen fifteen, yeah.
Speaker 2: Okay, twenty fifteen, fourteen, yeah, yeah, So how do you
Speaker 2: how do you get from just telling you know, just
Speaker 2: how do you get from being, you know, an expert
Speaker 2: on creativity and intelligence? You also writing intelligence? How do
Speaker 2: you get from that to the current book?
Speaker 1: So I've always been and it's a very fair and
Speaker 1: good question. I've always been interested in human potential more broadly,
Speaker 1: you know, what does it take to to reach your
Speaker 1: goals in life? What does it take to self actualize?
Speaker 1: To to you, I've always been a big daydreamer and
Speaker 1: and and so that's been a thread running through my
Speaker 1: whole life, even as a kid when the school system
Speaker 1: didn't really have high expectations of me because I had
Speaker 1: some warning disabilities that I have overcome at this point.
Speaker 1: But I always just really pondered these kinds of questions.
Speaker 1: Was it take to kind of overcome our circumstances? And
Speaker 1: a lot of ways, I feel like everything led up
Speaker 1: to this book. So I'll explain that this book is
Speaker 1: like I felt like it was fate fates, you know,
Speaker 1: when I was in as my I tell my personal
Speaker 1: story in this book. But long story short, there was
Speaker 1: this moment. I was kept in special education till ninth
Speaker 1: grade to high school, and there was this moment where
Speaker 1: this teacher took me aside, who had never seen me before,
Speaker 1: this special ed teacher, and she said, you know, what
Speaker 1: are you What are you still doing here? And I realized,
Speaker 1: is that that's just that one question. It just empowered
Speaker 1: me to I thought of my head, Yeah, what am
Speaker 1: I doing here? And it just really a surge went
Speaker 1: through me. And I also had this realization in that moment,
Speaker 1: and it became so crystal clear to me that no
Speaker 1: one is coming to save me, you know that that
Speaker 1: if I want to demonstrate my potential to the school system,
Speaker 1: to the world, you know, I had to do it myself.
Speaker 1: And I took myself out of special education, and I
Speaker 1: became the first kid in my school system for the
Speaker 1: special ed kid himself took himself out, and I said,
Speaker 1: I want to I want to see what I'm capable of.
Speaker 1: And so a lot of the roots were there, Jonathan,
Speaker 1: you know, and I thought when I started my career,
Speaker 1: I thought that the way to study human intentional was
Speaker 1: through studying intelligence and changing the way that we measure
Speaker 1: intelligence in our school system, and that only took me
Speaker 1: so far, you know.
Speaker 2: Oh how interesting In other words, in other words, sort
Speaker 2: of over focus on or narrow conceptualization of intelligence was
Speaker 2: part of what was holding you back. And then in
Speaker 2: the current book, you're going beyond that. You're looking at
Speaker 2: a certain mindset, a certain way of thinking about the
Speaker 2: world is what's holding a lot of people back, and
Speaker 2: you're trying to help people break out.
Speaker 1: You nailed it. And then there was the creativity phase
Speaker 1: of my life too. I thought that was the thing
Speaker 1: to unlock human potential, was the human imagination. I still
Speaker 1: think it's a big I still think all these things
Speaker 1: are important, you know, how we measure intelligence, how we
Speaker 1: use our imagination to think of a better future. But
Speaker 1: there was some research I was conducting over the past
Speaker 1: ten years that just kept I kept being striking data
Speaker 1: and I just I didn't think that it was the
Speaker 1: main part of my research, but it got so so
Speaker 1: much data on it that I just couldn't ignore it anymore.
Speaker 1: And that's the research I did on vulnerable narcissism. And yeah,
Speaker 1: so that's the link into all this. That's the link
Speaker 1: into all this.
Speaker 2: Okay, that's the missing link here.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's the missing bunch, just explain.
Speaker 2: I mean, I guess you know a lot of listeners.
Speaker 2: I'm sure I've heard you talk about it, But just
Speaker 2: give us the thumbnail sketch of the vulnerable narcissism. What
Speaker 2: is it? And can they really be cured? How do
Speaker 2: people overcome that?
Speaker 1: There's different forms of narcissism that are associated with different
Speaker 1: forms of entitlement. Entitlement is a thread that runs through
Speaker 1: all forms of narcissism. That's psychologists trying to converge them.
Speaker 1: That's the thing that's central to all forms. But when
Speaker 1: you have grandiose narcissism, you have this grandiose based entitlement,
Speaker 1: which is, I'm entitled to special privileges because I'm inherently
Speaker 1: superior to others. I was born this way, I was
Speaker 1: born better than others. But with vulnerable narcissism, and I
Speaker 1: find it very fascinating. This different form of entitlement, called
Speaker 1: vulnerable based entitlement kept cropping up, which is, I'm entitled
Speaker 1: to special privileges because I've suffered or I'm fragile, so therefore,
Speaker 1: you know I deserve these special privileges in a generalized way.
Speaker 1: We're not talking about a single instance We're not talking
Speaker 1: about real victimization, where you are rightly should be speaking
Speaker 1: up and saying something was unjust or unfair. We're talking
Speaker 1: about a personality trait. We're talking about it, or even
Speaker 1: a generalized mindset that applies to almost everything in your life.
Speaker 1: From waiting in Starbucks. You know, I deserve you know
Speaker 1: this was a long line, but I deserve my drink
Speaker 1: first because I bet I have a longer day than
Speaker 1: everyone else in this line. You know that, you know
Speaker 1: that kind of thinking, and and it kept cropping up
Speaker 1: over and over again that this was the biggest inhibitor
Speaker 1: to self actualization. More than anything else I had studied
Speaker 1: in my career, more than IQ, more than more than
Speaker 1: creativity intelligence. I found this way of thinking about your
Speaker 1: life and the world was the biggest thing holding you
Speaker 1: back in your life for reaching your goals and dreams.
Speaker 2: Okay, so so when but when it's called vulnerable narcissism?
Speaker 2: So narcissism is a personality disorder, right? Or is it
Speaker 2: just like a trait on which some people try low?
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, we published a paper, A personality Perspective on narcissism.
Speaker 2: Yeah, okay, so okay, so let's go into the themes
Speaker 2: of the book then because ish, well, okay, let's go
Speaker 2: into the themes of the book. So the book starts
Speaker 2: part one, don't be a victim, and you go through
Speaker 2: don't be a victim to your past, your emotions, your
Speaker 2: cogniti distortion, self esteem. So just situate us here, what
Speaker 2: is the what is the problem that you're seeing out
Speaker 2: in the world, What is the you know what? Who
Speaker 2: are the people who you think are limiting themselves by
Speaker 2: embracing this victimhood? And then let's talk about the different
Speaker 2: kinds of victimhood.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Great, I think this is a book for everyone.
Speaker 1: So I make very clear that that all these traits
Speaker 1: and ways of thinking are in a continuum that are
Speaker 1: part of being human as well. Obviously from a trait perspective,
Speaker 1: there are some people that reliably, on average, tend to
Speaker 1: engage in these things more. But I want all of
Speaker 1: us to look within. And that was the biggest challenge
Speaker 1: of this book. Jonathan. You don't see many self help books.
Speaker 1: You don't see many self help books that say maybe
Speaker 1: the problem is partly you. You don't see that, right, the
Speaker 1: ones that sell well, or the ones that say it's
Speaker 1: not you. You it's not you, it's your it's your
Speaker 1: ex husband's narcissistic ex husband's fault, or it's you're it's
Speaker 1: the Jews or whatever you like, whatever, who do we
Speaker 1: want to blame? You know? Today? And and I really
Speaker 1: want us to change our cultural consciousness away from feeling
Speaker 1: the need to knee jerk blame a person or an
Speaker 1: entire group of people on all your problems, and shift
Speaker 1: our societal thinking to how are we showing up in
Speaker 1: the world, How are we uh living by our own purpose,
Speaker 1: our own values, and not be consumed by the need
Speaker 1: for resentment, for uh, for uh hostility, for uh, for
Speaker 1: this kind of victim mindset that I talk about.
Speaker 2: Okay, and have you do you believe that this has
Speaker 2: been increasing? I mean, as of course this has always
Speaker 2: been there. There've always been people like this and doing this.
Speaker 2: But just just do you think that either American culture
Speaker 2: or Western culture, or just as a product of getting
Speaker 2: wealthier and you know, societies get wealthy and more comfort focused,
Speaker 2: just historically, do you think we're facing an increase in
Speaker 2: this or is this a sort of a steady state
Speaker 2: and you're trying to help people get over.
Speaker 1: So the two most popular words most searched for words
Speaker 1: in the past couple of years have been trauma and narcissism.
Speaker 2: What what do you mean? That's what Narcissism is one
Speaker 2: of the most searched for words.
Speaker 1: Yes, usually in this the context of you know this
Speaker 1: other person, you know, why are there so many narcissists
Speaker 1: around me? You know? Not?
Speaker 2: Not?
Speaker 1: What can I do? What can I do about narcissists
Speaker 1: in my life? You know? And and the word trauma
Speaker 1: has has ballooned in importance and.
Speaker 2: In I've been seeing that everywhere.
Speaker 1: And the word you know, talk about concept creep, concept creep, well,
Speaker 1: the word well, the word trauma is just now means everything.
Speaker 1: Every So there is something in the in the zeitgeist.
Speaker 1: There's definitely something that's like I S that is making
Speaker 1: us more conscious of trauma. And the body keeps. The
Speaker 1: score is still on the New York Times bestseller list.
Speaker 1: So one could argue, in a nuanced fashion, as we
Speaker 1: like to do, that that's not all, that's not entirely
Speaker 1: a bad thing, that that it's good that we are
Speaker 1: becoming more aware of the extent to which really challenging
Speaker 1: experiences in our lives can play a role in who
Speaker 1: we are today, and I'm a fan of certain forms
Speaker 1: of therapy, and I think that a lot of people,
Speaker 1: and I'm a fan of healing. So that's the one hand,
Speaker 1: But on the other hand, something is different about what
Speaker 1: we reward in our culture and what we promote. I
Speaker 1: am desperately in this book trying to argue that we
Speaker 1: need to think about the importance of overcoming trauma, not
Speaker 1: just staying and talking about trauma your whole life. There's
Speaker 1: a really much more empowering way about go about this,
Speaker 1: I think.
Speaker 2: Okay, so just just lay it atter us. I have
Speaker 2: not read The Body Keeps the Square. I don't know
Speaker 2: what that theory is, but I see references to it everywhere.
Speaker 2: And of course nowadays, you know, I'm always looking at
Speaker 2: how my book sales are doing and comparing it to others.
Speaker 2: But tell us, like, so, what is the what is
Speaker 2: the way that this this cultural movement, this new increase
Speaker 2: to focus on trauma, trauma informed education, trauma informed counseling,
Speaker 2: trauma informed everything. What is the way that they're saying
Speaker 2: people should deal with bad things that have happened to
Speaker 2: them more with life in general, and then contrast yours
Speaker 2: with that.
Speaker 1: This this gets to the crux crux of it. And
Speaker 1: you know, I don't want to denigrate those with trauma
Speaker 1: informed therapy or those went through that lens because they
Speaker 1: are a lot of them are very, very compassionate people
Speaker 1: that really truly want to help people who have gone
Speaker 1: through terrible things in their lives heal. But like for instance,
Speaker 1: Bessel vander Kock who wrote The Body keeps the Score,
Speaker 1: he has this way of outsourcing it all to trauma.
Speaker 1: So everything is, you know, it's stored in the body.
Speaker 1: The things that the assaults of the of the world
Speaker 1: that have happened outside of us are stored in our body.
Speaker 1: And he posits a particular type of memory that is
Speaker 1: not in the brain but in the body, that remembers
Speaker 1: these traumas. And that's not how it works. That's not
Speaker 1: how it works. I mean, memories as we typically think
Speaker 1: of them in the cognitove science literature can only be
Speaker 1: in the brain. There are certainly, you know I talk
Speaker 1: about survival. Stress is a real thing. Certainly, certain things
Speaker 1: can register in our nervous system and can cause us
Speaker 1: to be very uncomfortable and and painful, especially when similar
Speaker 1: things arise. However, the problem with it. And this is
Speaker 1: the question you asked me, is that it lacks a
Speaker 1: lot of nuance here. It lacks it for first of all,
Speaker 1: it ignores pre existing individual differences. It ignores the role
Speaker 1: of genes almost completely, as though genes don't make us
Speaker 1: who we are at all today, as though genes don't
Speaker 1: color the way we see the world at all. Like,
Speaker 1: for instance, if you have the genes that code for
Speaker 1: the personality trait neuroticism, it's going to really fundamentally give you,
Speaker 1: give you a different view of your life experiences than
Speaker 1: someone who is very, very emotionally stable. And and I
Speaker 1: say this in the spirit of honest love, you know,
Speaker 1: I say it's in the spirit of really peering as
Speaker 1: strongly as possible to the extent to which, yes, terrible
Speaker 1: things happen to us, But what are how what are
Speaker 1: our own mindsets and of reacting to the environment that
Speaker 1: may be holding us back and to just in my view,
Speaker 1: the body keeps the score is one big book of
Speaker 1: a victim mindset about your life experiences. It's it's all
Speaker 1: the world's fault. It's stored in your body. And you
Speaker 1: just to heal, You just need to somehow make contact
Speaker 1: with that.
Speaker 2: Okay, let's work through the case, you know, work the
Speaker 2: case of someone whose parents were violent towards them and
Speaker 2: they had a terrible that some terrible things happen in
Speaker 2: their childhood. On the adverse child experienced scale, they've had
Speaker 2: in a number of those events happen to them. How so,
Speaker 2: how what would they actually do if they come to
Speaker 2: see doctor Scott Barry Kaufman, or at least if they
Speaker 2: read if they read Rise Above, what exactly should they
Speaker 2: should they do to break out of that, to to
Speaker 2: change their thinking?
Speaker 1: Okay, so my colleague a Columbia Georgia Banano, has has
Speaker 1: shown that people are a lot more resilient than we
Speaker 1: give them credit for, even under the worst kinds of circumstances.
Speaker 1: Most people are actually resilient. And then you of you
Speaker 1: sometimes actually dare I say, see post traumatic growth, which
Speaker 1: is something else I bring up in the book. So
Speaker 1: even just pointing that out changes the narrative, you know,
Speaker 1: to someone they you know, going from this mindset of
Speaker 1: it's kind of hopeless. I can't even access it, you know,
Speaker 1: like there's not a lot cognitively I can do here.
Speaker 1: You know, it's stored in my body. I think is disempowering.
Speaker 1: So even just like educating people that you have a
Speaker 1: lot more resilient to within you than you realize. And
Speaker 1: then going through the various things that I go through
Speaker 1: in my book of don't be a victim to various
Speaker 1: things within your own self. That's the spin on this situation.
Speaker 1: Part one. Are all the things that we don't have
Speaker 1: to be a victim to that are happening inside ourselves.
Speaker 1: Not blaming the outside world, but for instance, don't be
Speaker 1: a victim to your cognitive distortions. I know this is
Speaker 1: one that both of us are very interested in. And
Speaker 1: what I mean by that is, you are a victim
Speaker 1: to your cognitive distortions when you take those things at
Speaker 1: face value, right at your catastrophizing you're black and white
Speaker 1: thinking your I talk about inferring malevolent intentions on neutral stimuli.
Speaker 1: That's a big one. That's a big one. Don't you're
Speaker 1: a victim to it if you take all of that seriously.
Speaker 1: And then I talk about don't be a victim to
Speaker 1: your emotions. So we are a victim to our emotions
Speaker 1: when we don't realize that we don't have to act
Speaker 1: or believe everything that our emotions are telling us we
Speaker 1: are allowed to create, We're allowed to do some practices
Speaker 1: that create a bit of a distance between our emotions
Speaker 1: and our cognitive thoughts, so we can meditate on them.
Speaker 1: We can reflect on whether or not there is a
Speaker 1: lot there is value there. How do we want to
Speaker 1: reframe them? There is so much we can do to
Speaker 1: not be a victim to ourselves. And that's the spin
Speaker 1: of this book, Jonathan. I hope that makes sense. That's
Speaker 1: the spin here because we often talk about and everyone's
Speaker 1: so focused on pointing the finger outside themselves to uh
Speaker 1: get rid of their uncomfortable emotions. But I think it's
Speaker 1: I actually think it's more empowering. This is the case
Speaker 1: I make in the book. I think that it's actually
Speaker 1: more empowering to realize there's so many things you can
Speaker 1: change with yourself. Let me read a Joan Rivers quote
Speaker 1: that opens up the whole book. She says, Listen, I
Speaker 1: wish I could tell you it gets better, but it
Speaker 1: doesn't get better. You get better.
Speaker 2: Hmm right, right. All of this reminds me, so I'm
Speaker 2: I think you know what humanistic psychology is for you,
Speaker 2: Stoic philosophy or stoic writings are are for me as
Speaker 2: sort of a perspective that we come back and they're
Speaker 2: very compatible. So as you were talking, I just looked
Speaker 2: up some of my favorite Stowe quotations. Here's Marcus Aurelius
Speaker 2: you don't have, and this is Marcus writing and meditations.
Speaker 2: He's writing this to himself. He's like doing cognitive therapy
Speaker 2: on himself. He doesn't think anyone's ever going to read.
Speaker 2: This is just his notes to himself. He says, you
Speaker 2: don't have to turn this into something. It doesn't have
Speaker 2: to upset you. Things can't shape our decisions by themselves.
Speaker 2: And then in another book of meditations, he says, today
Speaker 2: I escape from anxiety or no, I discarded it because
Speaker 2: it was within me, in my own perceptions, not outside.
Speaker 2: So I think what we're seeing here is is some
Speaker 2: of the greatest human wisdom that comes down to us
Speaker 2: from thousands of years ago, across multiple cultures, and that's
Speaker 2: now instantiated in CBT and cognitive behavioral therapy as a
Speaker 2: way to do this. So so, okay, so you've laid
Speaker 2: out what you need to escape from. Just be more specific,
Speaker 2: how do you actually do this? You can't, you know,
Speaker 2: in my first book, The Happiness Hypothesis, I put forth
Speaker 2: the metaphor the mind is divided into parts that sometimes conflict.
Speaker 2: Like a small rider is conscious reasoning on top of
Speaker 2: a very large elephant, which is our intuitive, automatic emotional processes.
Speaker 2: And you can, you know, you can lecture the rider.
Speaker 2: The writer can say, oh, yeah, okay, I should not
Speaker 2: blame others, I should blame I should I should look
Speaker 2: with it. You know, you can say that, But that
Speaker 2: doesn't change the elephant. That doesn't change the automatic processes.
Speaker 2: And C. B. T As I understand it is a
Speaker 2: way of practicing and catching yourself, and you correct yourself,
Speaker 2: and you go through a process hundreds and hundreds of
Speaker 2: times until it becomes automatic. Is that what you're advising
Speaker 2: people to do? Just be very specific, how if a
Speaker 2: person is plagued by this chronic victimhood mindset, chronically blaming others,
Speaker 2: what exactly do they do to break free? Yeah?
Speaker 1: And I think it's also important answering that question to
Speaker 1: distinguish the majority of this book is not for trauma survivors.
Speaker 1: It's for people who didn't get a memo, didn't get
Speaker 1: the memo that uncomfortable emotions is part of the price
Speaker 1: of admission of being human. You know, we seem to
Speaker 1: live in a society now where we expect happiness is
Speaker 1: the default, and whenever that expectation is violated, we look
Speaker 1: for something to blame, or we don't we don't accept it.
Speaker 1: So I wanted to start off there, and so I
Speaker 1: think that for most the majority of people who I
Speaker 1: am trying directing this book to, you know, I talk
Speaker 1: about the various things to refocus your attention on what's
Speaker 1: good within you? What is I have a whole chapter
Speaker 1: on find the parts of you that aren't broken. You know,
Speaker 1: so much of traumba and form therapy, you keep talking
Speaker 1: over and over again about how you're broken or what's
Speaker 1: broken inside you and your childhood, and you keep ruminating,
Speaker 1: And I would argue that's not productive rumination. There's also
Speaker 1: it's possible to you know, just even take the free
Speaker 1: Character Strength Survey, find out what are your top character strengths.
Speaker 1: Try to see how you can try to deal with
Speaker 1: your your past in a way where you're bringing your
Speaker 1: strengths to bear. You're bringing your Maybe humor is your thing,
Speaker 1: you know, so you use your humor as a way
Speaker 1: to help you cope or your creativity and how can
Speaker 1: you put that into your work, so finding the light
Speaker 1: within yourself. I also talk about creating a gratefulness orientation
Speaker 1: in your life. Really could to a grateful orientation towards
Speaker 1: everything in your life, not cursing all the bad things
Speaker 1: that happened to you, and having gratitude only for the
Speaker 1: good things. But in along the for the root of
Speaker 1: post traumatic growth, really being able to be grateful for
Speaker 1: everything that comes your way. What is it here that
Speaker 1: I'm going to learn from the situation? How do I
Speaker 1: how could I grow from this? So that that's another thing.
Speaker 1: And then I do have very specific techniques for your
Speaker 1: emotions for for not being a victim to your emotions.
Speaker 1: That's a big part of our emotional life often. I mean,
Speaker 1: you're right, your theory is right, John, your theory is right.
Speaker 1: Our emotional life is usually controlling us. It's not like, yeah,
Speaker 1: you our reasoning and we don't. But it doesn't have
Speaker 1: to be that way. I think the research does show
Speaker 1: that we can train our elephants a bit processes. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we can train it. It's not helpless. It's not helpless
Speaker 1: just because it's hidden. We can really read, you know,
Speaker 1: through habits of mind and habits of behaving. We cannot
Speaker 1: let it rule us. I have an example in my book,
Speaker 1: and I talk personally in this book because I am
Speaker 1: not above any of this. I have gone through such
Speaker 1: a journey as a very highly anxious human being overcoming
Speaker 1: a lot of my fears, and I talk and share
Speaker 1: some of the techniques that have really transformed my life.
Speaker 1: You know, I used to be terribly, terribly scared of flying.
Speaker 1: It was a great fear of mine. And then when
Speaker 1: my book und Gifted came out and I had to
Speaker 1: go in the talk circuit and had to suddenly fly
Speaker 1: here and there and everywhere. You know, what was I
Speaker 1: going to do? You know, be a victim to my
Speaker 1: fears and not grow and be the person who I
Speaker 1: want to be.
Speaker 2: No.
Speaker 1: I tried everything I possibly could to get to to
Speaker 1: really be able to deal with it. And I did
Speaker 1: an eight week MBSR course Mindfulness Stress Based Reduction course
Speaker 1: that John Cabins and teaches. I took it at Penn
Speaker 1: with Michael Beam, and it was really really valuable. I
Speaker 1: learned a lot of techniques to deal with with my
Speaker 1: anxieties and my over catastrophizing because I realized it was
Speaker 1: mindful of that cognitivestortion. I'm a big fan of mindful
Speaker 1: cognitive behavioral therapy Seth Guilahean I would direct people to
Speaker 1: and a lot of his work on being mindful.
Speaker 2: Seth is great. I studied with Aaron Becky, I signed
Speaker 2: I signed some of his work in my Flourishing classes
Speaker 2: part of Flourishing. Okay, So, Scott, you've told us a
Speaker 2: great story about about your own overcoming. Can you tell
Speaker 2: us any stories about people who who basically found these techniques,
Speaker 2: people really were able to break out of this mindset
Speaker 2: on their own. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I was really inspired by brothers Ali and Ottmann Smith
Speaker 1: along with their colleague Andrea's Gonzalez. They wrote the book
Speaker 1: What Your Light Shine, How Mindfulness can empower children and
Speaker 1: rebuild communities. And I really like their approach. It really
Speaker 1: encapsulates a lot of what I talk about in my
Speaker 1: book because they go into really underserved communities. They go
Speaker 1: into a lot of communities where there really isn't a
Speaker 1: lot of hope in these children. These children have maybe
Speaker 1: there's it's very gang laden or very poor neighborhoods, and
Speaker 1: they go in and they teach yoga and mindfulness, and
Speaker 1: they have a lot of stories as they told me,
Speaker 1: about how they see a shift in a victim mindset
Speaker 1: that these kids have to really having greater hope for
Speaker 1: their future and just having someone come in who just
Speaker 1: believes in them is also a really big deal to
Speaker 1: these kids because you can stay focused so much on
Speaker 1: what you don't have, but being able to kind of
Speaker 1: get a focus on, you know, what you still can
Speaker 1: contribute to this world despite the really difficult situations. I
Speaker 1: think this was really really inspirational to me because I
Speaker 1: want to make it clear this book is not just
Speaker 1: for the quote privileged, right, this quote is for everyone.
Speaker 1: I really believe that. Of course people have different life
Speaker 1: circumstances and people are coming from different places. But regardless
Speaker 1: of that, I think we as teachers, as coaches, as
Speaker 1: parents need to still be on the lookout for the higher,
Speaker 1: the higher potential of everyone.
Speaker 2: M Right, as someone was well, actually yes, as someone
Speaker 2: was with you, as that teacher was with you your
Speaker 2: turning point, turning point in your life. Right. So let's
Speaker 2: I would be remiss if I didn't ask you about
Speaker 2: social media? What role do you think what role do
Speaker 2: you think? You know? Because you know Facebook. So modern
Speaker 2: social media comes out around two thousand and three with
Speaker 2: Facebook and MySpace and friends there, and at first it's
Speaker 2: all just like, you know, here's my page, here's your page. Here,
Speaker 2: photos of my trip, here, photos of your trip. And
Speaker 2: then it changes once you get the newsfeed and you
Speaker 2: get the algorithms driving This all begins two thousand and
Speaker 2: nine to twenty eleven. If social media really changes becomes
Speaker 2: much more well, all the stuff that I that I
Speaker 2: write about in the Anxious Generation, it all begins the
Speaker 2: early twenty tens. So that's where I'm coming from on
Speaker 2: this question. What role does social media play in changing
Speaker 2: the way the way people think?
Speaker 1: A big one. I think that the reward structure of
Speaker 1: social media has caused people to think they need to
Speaker 1: have a victim mindset in order to get likes, in
Speaker 1: order to be promoted. First all I want to say,
Speaker 1: I really appreciate your work on this, and it's extremely important,
Speaker 1: and your book was a bestseller for a reason. It's
Speaker 1: really it really strikes a nerve right among a lot
Speaker 1: of parents and people who want better for young people.
Speaker 1: In answering that question, I interviewed quite a lot of people,
Speaker 1: and one person I thought. Who gave me some really
Speaker 1: insightful information on this was Susan David. It researched her
Speaker 1: studies emotions. She hasn't she gave She gave me a formula,
Speaker 1: and I want to see what you think of this.
Speaker 1: The reason why I think she a reason why she
Speaker 1: thinks social media is really bringing out the worst in us,
Speaker 1: especially a victim mindset, she said, pathologizing of normal human experience.
Speaker 1: The rapidity with which we label things as quote trauma,
Speaker 1: plus the addictive qualities of social media plus co rumination
Speaker 1: plus social contagion equals disastrous effects.
Speaker 2: Wow, that is a good list. I love it. I
Speaker 2: love it because right I've certainly I've written about co
Speaker 2: rumination back in the calling the American Mind, and then
Speaker 2: emotional contagion. Just when you hook people up sharing sharing
Speaker 2: emotional interpretations of things, we influence each other. So that
Speaker 2: is that is a good list. So sort of like
Speaker 2: whatever whatever these problems were before the great we Wire
Speaker 2: in the period when everyone goes is online a lot
Speaker 2: run early twenty ten, saying whatever was the process before
Speaker 2: that is just sort of supercharged by those four or
Speaker 2: five different processes. Could just say the list again, let's
Speaker 2: just make sure we all get.
Speaker 1: It absolutely pathologizing of normal human experience, and in parentheses
Speaker 1: that she's referring to the rapidity with which we label
Speaker 1: things that we're quick to label uncomfortable experiences as trauma.
Speaker 1: Plus the addictive qualities of social media plus co rumination
Speaker 1: plus social contagion equals disastrous effects. A big part of
Speaker 1: this as I see it, and I want to know
Speaker 1: what you think. I want to just have a conversation
Speaker 1: with you about this. You know, it's no shocker that
Speaker 1: teenagers go through an identity crisis. This has happened since
Speaker 1: the dawn of teenagers, So it's not like this generation
Speaker 1: they having an identity crisis. Every generation, around age fourteen
Speaker 1: to seventeen, or maybe eleven to seventeen, you go through
Speaker 1: identity crisis. But it seems like social media is changing
Speaker 1: the way that people feel the need to create an identity,
Speaker 1: a victimhood identity. Now it feels like there's peer pressure
Speaker 1: among young people to create or to express a victimhood identity,
Speaker 1: not to express I've overcome this, I've overcome that. Look
Speaker 1: at me, I've you know, I'm successful. It's almost like
Speaker 1: that's denigrated. What gets you the likes is you create whatever,
Speaker 1: Maybe it's the maybe it's some label that you say
Speaker 1: you have. And a lot of people legitimately already you know,
Speaker 1: have been diagnosed with these things, so I'm not saying that,
Speaker 1: but a lot haven't. Let's be honest, a lot haven't
Speaker 1: been formally diagnosed. And they there's a peer pressure to
Speaker 1: belong by fitting in with a group, and so you
Speaker 1: desperately try to see what victimhood group can I fit
Speaker 1: in with amongst my peers. Do you agree or disagree
Speaker 1: with that?
Speaker 2: Well? I do, but let me just put let me
Speaker 2: just reinterpret it just a little bit. So when I
Speaker 2: was writing The Answers Generation, I read there's a really
Speaker 2: great textbook on adolescence from Laurence Steinberg, a psychologist at
Speaker 2: Temple University, and Steinberg says that that adolescence is not
Speaker 2: necessarily a difficult or what's the word. It's not necessarily,
Speaker 2: you know, a difficult or traumatic time, but it is
Speaker 2: a time when stress and difficult experiences will have a
Speaker 2: bigger impact on both your brain development because the neurons
Speaker 2: are sort of rewiring much more quickly during adolescence and
Speaker 2: your identity development. So so many people make it through
Speaker 2: adolescents without any identity crisis, without any of this, you know,
Speaker 2: the whirlwind of emotions. I mean, it's a time of
Speaker 2: there's always more emotion, but it's not necessarily a difficult time,
Speaker 2: but it is a time when the sense of identity
Speaker 2: is forming. You don't have a story about yourself when
Speaker 2: you're seven or eight, but by the time you're eighteen
Speaker 2: or twenty, you often have some sort of implicit or
Speaker 2: intuitive stories. That's why I picked up from some some
Speaker 2: earlier work that I read long ago, and so now
Speaker 2: let's look at the need for an identity. So I'm
Speaker 2: kind of a I sort of you know, read all
Speaker 2: the social sciences to try to put them all together
Speaker 2: to understand originally morality in now mental health, and identity
Speaker 2: in you know, an anthropology. It's a big concept in
Speaker 2: anthropology and sociology. Your identity is not something that you
Speaker 2: you make up or invent yourself. It's not up to you.
Speaker 2: So if you're you know, if you're in a traditional society,
Speaker 2: if you're born into the blacksmith guild or you know,
Speaker 2: lineage that you become a blacksmith. If you are now
Speaker 2: you're going to be a mother, in some cultures, you know,
Speaker 2: or a career person, depending on the culture. So your
Speaker 2: identity is ascribed to you by your community, and that's
Speaker 2: the way people will treat you. And so it's kind
Speaker 2: of like saying, you know language, like you know, I
Speaker 2: make up my language, you make up your language. We
Speaker 2: each have to make up our own language. No, No,
Speaker 2: that's not the way it works. Identity is something that
Speaker 2: is ascribed to you by others. So that's at least
Speaker 2: I think the more traditional way, that's the more common
Speaker 2: way in human history that identities are conferred by you know,
Speaker 2: your religion. It could be by your race, your gender,
Speaker 2: all these things will situate you somewhere. And what happened,
Speaker 2: I believe during the Great Rewiring, so this is twenty
Speaker 2: ten to twenty fifteen. What happened I think was before then.
Speaker 2: Teens used you know, they were on Facebook early on,
Speaker 2: but it's and you're putting forward. You are beginning to
Speaker 2: put forward a vision if your fun loving, or you're sexy,
Speaker 2: or you're serious or whatever it is. But once you
Speaker 2: get the sort of the super viral social media with
Speaker 2: people commenting on each other's posts and people spending a
Speaker 2: lot more time now as I see it, teenagers are
Speaker 2: pushed into into working full time as brand managers, and
Speaker 2: the brand that they're managing is their own brand, which
Speaker 2: is the terrible thing to do to a t well
Speaker 2: year own So so, so what I'm saying is I
Speaker 2: basically agree with you that there's been this big increase
Speaker 2: in the degree to which young people have to do
Speaker 2: this job that they're not ready for. It's incompatible with
Speaker 2: the fun and joy and learning of childhood to be
Speaker 2: a brand manager where at any moment there could be
Speaker 2: a brand crisis. You know, you know, someone you know
Speaker 2: made a bad report about our product. There was a
Speaker 2: post on us social media criticizing me. You know, better
Speaker 2: have a team meeting and how do we defend the brand?
Speaker 2: So I do think that identity is part of it here,
Speaker 2: and in some subcultures there would be it would be
Speaker 2: advantage just to claim more victimhood, and others it wouldn't.
Speaker 2: So I wouldn't say it's a universal thing that kids
Speaker 2: are pressured to be victims because of social media, but
Speaker 2: I think there are some some circles in which it
Speaker 2: would And so, yeah, so that's where we would especially
Speaker 2: find I believe higher levels of depression, anxiety, and insecurity.
Speaker 1: We're definitely yeah, thank you so much for that. This
Speaker 1: is that's very exciting, Nuance. I love learning about that.
Speaker 1: We definitely see a trend on TikTok, for instance, for
Speaker 1: everyone to be neurodivergent. So, for instance, neudivergency has is
Speaker 1: so hot on TikTok and amongst young people. And for
Speaker 1: someone who's a big advocate of the nerd diversity movement,
Speaker 1: at first, I'm like, oh, that's great, you know, but
Speaker 1: then I started to look into it, and there's so
Speaker 1: much misinformation. This is what really bothers me, John, so
Speaker 1: much misinformation about different forms of nerd vergency. Everyone's a scientist,
Speaker 1: now everyone knows here are the five traits of ADHD.
Speaker 1: And a scientific analysis was done on TikTok of of
Speaker 1: these kinds of videos and they found that something like
Speaker 1: eighty percent had incorrect, erroneous information, and and so that
Speaker 1: really bothers me and and people feeling the need to
Speaker 1: pick something so that they're special, you know in some way,
Speaker 1: you know, as opposed to well, you know, what what
Speaker 1: do you bringing to the table that you know that
Speaker 1: to really you know, uh, to make the world a
Speaker 1: better place. To uh, you know, what are your strengths,
Speaker 1: leading with your strengths, your character, you know, not not
Speaker 1: just the leading and feeling. The only way to be
Speaker 1: special is by by picking some sort of disability you
Speaker 1: have or something that's wrong in your environment.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's an important point about TikTok and social media
Speaker 2: that you know that at first you might think, well,
Speaker 2: this is great, like, of course they should. Everybody should
Speaker 2: be able to find support groups. Of course, people should
Speaker 2: feel you know, valued and not not ashamed of whatever
Speaker 2: whatever is going on with them, or certainly whatever mental
Speaker 2: traits or certain mental illnesses they have. And so and
Speaker 2: so I agree that it's a good thing that mental
Speaker 2: illness in particularly has been destigmatized. When I was a
Speaker 2: kid in the seventies, late seventies, my mom sent me
Speaker 2: to a couple of different psychologists, and psychiatrists had a
Speaker 2: variety of like nervous ticks and habits, and so she
Speaker 2: thought this was you know, back in the age of
Speaker 2: like Freud. She grew up in that sort of predian
Speaker 2: not that she was around in the nineteen tens, but
Speaker 2: you know, I'm saying in the nineteen fifties sixties, it
Speaker 2: was a very Freudian age, and that was very shameful.
Speaker 2: I mean I was really embarrassed to admit that to
Speaker 2: anybody else. And so there was a stigma on anything
Speaker 2: about mental health, mental illness, certainly in the seventies and eighties,
Speaker 2: and then it really begins to drop in the eighties
Speaker 2: and nineties and into the twenty first it really drops.
Speaker 2: And so agmatization is a good thing. And some people
Speaker 2: have argued against me that all those graphs I show
Speaker 2: of rising levels of depression anxiety, that's just decimatization. That's
Speaker 2: just gen Z is perfectly comfortable talking about it. You know,
Speaker 2: social media's freed them up. They're not embarrassed about it.
Speaker 2: That's a good thing. Well, we want we don't want
Speaker 2: people to feel stigmatized, but we also don't want to
Speaker 2: valorize mental illness. We just have a post today on
Speaker 2: my substack after babbel dot com from Christina Laerman at
Speaker 2: USC on how social media pushes girls into eating disorders
Speaker 2: by valorizing being bone thin. I'm just horrible. Horrible images
Speaker 2: are all you can find easily on Twitter. There's very
Speaker 2: little content moderation on Twitter, So if you just look
Speaker 2: for a thin spo or bone spo well, you know,
Speaker 2: bone thin inspiration, horrific videos praising and encouraging and giving
Speaker 2: girls confidence to go further, further, further into intererrect This
Speaker 2: is really really bad, especially for adolescent girls who are
Speaker 2: the most open, as it were, to sort of interpersonal influence.
Speaker 2: Girls a little more than boys. Girls a little more
Speaker 2: emotionally open and receptive. Boys are a little bit more clueless,
Speaker 2: a little bit not as much affected by each other's emotions.
Speaker 2: So yes, I think we're on the same page here
Speaker 2: that social media in its once it became super viral,
Speaker 2: it put a lot of kids into communities that would
Speaker 2: then encourage this kind of victim mindset, valorizing of are
Speaker 2: what are considered to be mental illnesses, except that they
Speaker 2: interfere with the ability to love and to work. So
Speaker 2: you know, that's so that's why I've been a big
Speaker 2: fan of raising the age of social media to sixteen
Speaker 2: and just recognizing social medisa just not appropriate for kids.
Speaker 2: So any any further thoughts from you on on social media,
Speaker 2: so I could talk all day about what it's doing
Speaker 2: to kids.
Speaker 1: This is a great nuance. This is a really great
Speaker 1: nuance because there is a one hand and on the
Speaker 1: other hand, here and I have a whole chapter in
Speaker 1: sensitivity which which talks about on the one hand, on
Speaker 1: the other hand, so for instance, we do want to
Speaker 1: celebrate some of the strengths of being a highly sensitive person.
Speaker 1: That's that's a phrase that you see a lot, and
Speaker 1: there is research on that. But you don't want to
Speaker 1: have a victim mindset you. You don't want any of
Speaker 1: these traits to become the totality of who you are
Speaker 1: in a way that limits you from a full range
Speaker 1: of expression in your life. And that's a point I
Speaker 1: want to make here so that you can see that
Speaker 1: on social media, where you've come so consumed about this
Speaker 1: part of you that it's all all you are and
Speaker 1: you can't even see the world in a different way.
Speaker 1: You know, I argue that, you know, I think I
Speaker 1: have a highly sensitive person temperament, but I have learned
Speaker 1: throughout my life the ways in which it holds me back.
Speaker 1: By saying I'm a highly sensitive person at all times,
Speaker 1: sometimes I don't want to be the highly sensitive person.
Speaker 1: Do we allow anyone the freedom anymore to have a
Speaker 1: flexible identity or a flexible dare I say ideology? Like
Speaker 1: we don't allow that in our society.
Speaker 2: Mm. And this is helping me see that certain certain
Speaker 2: things that might be in DSM and the Diagnostic and
Speaker 2: Statistical Manual, like anorexia. I don't think there's any strength there.
Speaker 2: I think that's it's a dangerous disease. It's a mental illness.
Speaker 2: Nobody would want their child to have anorexia. And but
Speaker 2: there are but there are some things and I guess
Speaker 2: you're suggesting like being neurodivergent or being a sensitive person.
Speaker 1: So ADHD is, for example, Yeah.
Speaker 2: That's right, that's right. So tell me how you think
Speaker 2: about that, because I like I was going to say, well,
Speaker 2: it is a mental illness, but I think you're saying
Speaker 2: it might cause problems for in some ways, but it
Speaker 2: gives you strengths and and open things up. So tell
Speaker 2: me about how you think about ADHD.
Speaker 1: Yes, I just wrote an article ADHD is not a
Speaker 1: trauma response because the predominant narrative from like ab or
Speaker 1: mate friends and says that ADHD is a result of
Speaker 1: your parents not hugging you enough when you were a kid,
Speaker 1: like ignoring the genetic component. I argue that ADHD it's
Speaker 1: best thought of just like any other personality source of variation,
Speaker 1: a mix of nature and nurture, and it's an extreme trait.
Speaker 1: It's it's extreme constellation of heterogeneic heterogeneity. There's so much
Speaker 1: heterogeneity there, so you have maybe it's impulsivity, Maybe it
Speaker 1: could be cognitive control issues, maybe it could be risk taking.
Speaker 1: Just because you have one of these behaviors doesn't mean
Speaker 1: you're gonna have all the other behaviors. So that's a
Speaker 1: big mess with these kind of diagnoses. So I really
Speaker 1: like this high top approach. I don't know if you've
Speaker 1: heard of the high top approach to psychopathology where they're
Speaker 1: arguing the DSM, we need to move away from the
Speaker 1: DSM that you either have the disorder or you don't
Speaker 1: have the disorder and think of all these things. There's
Speaker 1: traits that lie in a continuum in the general population
Speaker 1: and then a result of just like any other personality trait,
Speaker 1: a mix of nature and nurture. It's not all trauma.
Speaker 1: You can't blame it all in trauma. You can't blame
Speaker 1: it all in your genes either. I mean, it's important
Speaker 1: to view these things with that level of care. And
Speaker 1: it can be a superpower in certain context, and it
Speaker 1: can be a disorder. It can absolutely be it can
Speaker 1: be a disorder, but it's not always a disorder, and
Speaker 1: it's not always a superpower.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: It's almost like I'm the centrist of psychopathology talk, right,
Speaker 1: I'm just trying to be reasonable about this stuff. But
Speaker 1: everyone so talks about everything in such extreme terms these days,
Speaker 1: including disorders.
Speaker 2: Right, once we moralize things, we lose the where it
Speaker 2: damage our ability to really understand what's going on. So
Speaker 2: for listeners who are considering the book, just tell them
Speaker 2: something that you think they'll get from the book, some
Speaker 2: way in which you think they'll enjoy or benefit from
Speaker 2: reading the book.
Speaker 1: Thank you, John. So, this book is for anyone who's
Speaker 1: ready in their journey to rise above. You know, there
Speaker 1: there's a spirit in me that I've always had since
Speaker 1: I was that little kid of like like let's go,
Speaker 1: let's let's not be a passive victim to life. Let's
Speaker 1: take control of our lives and and wean into our
Speaker 1: own values and purpose. And for those that are ready
Speaker 1: in their their self actualization journey to do that, I
Speaker 1: think you'll really get a lot out of this book.
Speaker 2: That's beautiful, all right. I will just end with here's
Speaker 2: the here's the blurb that I sent in a few
Speaker 2: months ago for the book. I don't know if it's
Speaker 2: a on the printed on the printed edition, but here's
Speaker 2: what I said. Okay, good. Scott Barry Kaufman has made
Speaker 2: so many contributions to research on creativity, positive psychology, and
Speaker 2: the science of flourishing and rise above. Kaufman draws on
Speaker 2: ancient wisdom and modern psychology to address some of the
Speaker 2: disempowering ideas and mindsets circulating widely in recent decades. Kaufman
Speaker 2: shows us all how to stay, end up and walk
Speaker 2: through the many doors that are always available. So, Scott
Speaker 2: Barry Kaufman, while I've never really been a podcast interviewer,
Speaker 2: I've always been on the other side of the mic.
Speaker 2: But this is fine, you're talking to you. It's oh,
Speaker 2: thank you. It's a great book. I head listeners to
Speaker 2: check it out.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much.
Speaker 2: M