Speaker 1: Without passion, nothing would ever happen. I mean, we know this.
Speaker 1: If you think that something is right, you won't do it,
Speaker 1: But if you feel that something is right, you'll do
Speaker 1: it every time. Welcome to the one you feed. Throughout time,
Speaker 1: great thinkers have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have,
Speaker 1: quotes like garbage in, garbage out, or you are what
Speaker 1: you think ring true. And yet for many of us,
Speaker 1: our thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity,
Speaker 1: self pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't
Speaker 1: have instead of what we do. We think things that
Speaker 1: hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not
Speaker 1: just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent,
Speaker 1: and creative effort to make a life worth living. This
Speaker 1: podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in
Speaker 1: the right direction, how they feed their good wolf m
Speaker 1: Thanks for joining us. Our guest on this episode is
Speaker 1: Angus Fletcher, a professor of story science at Ohio States
Speaker 1: Project Narrative, the world's leading academic think tank for the
Speaker 1: study of stories. He has dual degrees in neuroscience and
Speaker 1: literature and received his PhD from Yale. He also taught
Speaker 1: Shakespeare at Stanford and has published two dozen books and
Speaker 1: dozens of peer reviewed academic articles on the scientific workings
Speaker 1: of novels, poetry, film, and theater. His new book is
Speaker 1: wonder Works, Most Powerful Inventions in the History of Literature.
Speaker 1: Hi Angus, Welcome to the show. Hi Eric, thank you
Speaker 1: so much for having me. It's a pleasure to have
Speaker 1: you on. We're going to discuss your book called wonder Works,
Speaker 1: The Most Powerful Inventions in the History of Literature. This
Speaker 1: book was really fun for me to read. I've been
Speaker 1: a fan of reading for so long. It's interesting to
Speaker 1: reflect on what reading does in our lives. And we'll
Speaker 1: get into that in a moment, but let's start like
Speaker 1: we always do with the Wolf parable. There's a grandfather
Speaker 1: who's talking with his grandson. He says, in life, there
Speaker 1: are two wolves inside of us that are always a battle.
Speaker 1: One is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness
Speaker 1: and bravery and love, and the other is a bad wolf,
Speaker 1: which represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And
Speaker 1: the grandson stops and he thinks about it for a second,
Speaker 1: and he looks up at his grandfather and he says, well, grandfather,
Speaker 1: which one wins, and the grandfather says the one you feed.
Speaker 1: So I'd like to start off by asking you what
Speaker 1: that parable means to you in your life and in
Speaker 1: the work that you do. Well. I have to start
Speaker 1: off by confessing that I think about life in exactly
Speaker 1: the opposite way from the parable. So maybe the number
Speaker 1: one thing I would say is that my own belief
Speaker 1: in life is that anything that empowers you you should
Speaker 1: use to empower yourself. So to the extent that you
Speaker 1: find power in this parable, you should follow it to
Speaker 1: the extent that you think that maybe there's more to life.
Speaker 1: I think slightly differently, and maybe the place to start
Speaker 1: is I don't think that there are bad wolves inside us.
Speaker 1: I think everything inside us is a good wolf, including
Speaker 1: things like fear and anger and things like that. And
Speaker 1: I think that really life comes down to not judging ourselves,
Speaker 1: not judging the things inside ourselves, but knowing what time
Speaker 1: is right to let which wolf out. Yes, I tend
Speaker 1: to agree with you, even though I do love the parable.
Speaker 1: I'm curious as I was reading it to you, I
Speaker 1: thought Angus is a professor of literature. I don't think
Speaker 1: that's exactly how you describe yourself, but you know a
Speaker 1: lot about it. Is that actually a parable? I refer
Speaker 1: to it as a parable. Oh no, it's absolutely a parable.
Speaker 1: The reason it's a parable, ultimately is because it's an
Speaker 1: attempt to give us a moral It's an attempt to
Speaker 1: take a narrative and tell us what is right and
Speaker 1: what is wrong. And so we find those parables throughout
Speaker 1: philosophical and religious literature. And the reason I'm a little
Speaker 1: bit different is because I don't take a moral view
Speaker 1: of life. I take a medical view of life. And
Speaker 1: in a medical view of life, you don't judge things
Speaker 1: as being right or wrong. You just identify moments where
Speaker 1: there is pain and suffering, and you say, what is
Speaker 1: the best way to alleviate this pain in this suffering. So,
Speaker 1: for example, if you do something wrong, I would never
Speaker 1: judge you and say you're a bad person. I would say, okay,
Speaker 1: well what do we do to correct that behavior. You
Speaker 1: don't necessarily need to be punished for doing something wrong,
Speaker 1: but let's just kind of figure out the way to
Speaker 1: fix that behavior. And in the case of something like fear,
Speaker 1: I think fear is not a bad wolf because I
Speaker 1: think there's a lot of times in life when it's
Speaker 1: appropriate to be afraid. I mean, if we weren't afraid,
Speaker 1: we can never have courage, and fear can be a
Speaker 1: useful guide if you're in a dangerous situation, to encourage
Speaker 1: you to get out of that situation. So, for me,
Speaker 1: a parable is an approach to life which suggests there's
Speaker 1: a right and a wrong, And my view of life
Speaker 1: is essentially there's a good way of life and there's
Speaker 1: a better way of life. Yeah, I've often said Buddha
Speaker 1: is and being one of my primary orientations in life, Buddhism.
Speaker 1: I've liked the way they use the word skillful and
Speaker 1: unskillful as a way of thinking about our behavior. And
Speaker 1: I've joked that a skillful and an unskillful wolf just
Speaker 1: doesn't quite have the same ring to it. No, it doesn't,
Speaker 1: Although I do like the idea that secretly out there
Speaker 1: in nature there are wolves practicing being more wolfish. And
Speaker 1: in a way, that's really what we have as humans
Speaker 1: have done. We've taken all these kinds of natural things
Speaker 1: in ourselves and we've practiced them, sometimes with good results
Speaker 1: and sometimes with less good results. And I think you know,
Speaker 1: at the end of the day, life really is about
Speaker 1: achieving mastery with our nature. Each of us has our
Speaker 1: own nature, and figuring out how we can become more
Speaker 1: skilled being ourselves, being the person that we are, being
Speaker 1: the most trained wolf. To me, that's kind of the
Speaker 1: goal of everything. Yeah, So let's start with the title
Speaker 1: of the book. You talk about the most powerful inventions
Speaker 1: in the history of literature. So how are you using
Speaker 1: the term invention in literature because that's obviously a slightly
Speaker 1: different way than most of us would think of an invention. Yes. Well,
Speaker 1: first of all, you're being kind. Everything in the book
Speaker 1: is exactly the opposite of what pretty much everybody thinks.
Speaker 1: So I should perhaps start out by being honest and saying,
Speaker 1: even though I am currently employed as a professor of
Speaker 1: literature in a literature department, my background is in neuroscience,
Speaker 1: and so I think about everything from the perspective of
Speaker 1: the human brain and how human brains work. And that's
Speaker 1: one of the reasons why the book is so different,
Speaker 1: because mostly what I'm interested in in the book is
Speaker 1: how literature has evolved and been developed over history to
Speaker 1: help us get the most out of our brains, by
Speaker 1: which I mean both healing our brains, I mean our
Speaker 1: Our brains are filled with all sorts of things that
Speaker 1: can cause us grief and that can cause us pain
Speaker 1: in moments, can be trauma in our brains which literature
Speaker 1: gonna help us heal. But our brains are also just
Speaker 1: feel with enormous amounts of untapped potential in terms of courage,
Speaker 1: in terms of love, in terms of empathy, in terms
Speaker 1: of creativity, in terms of problem solving power. And so
Speaker 1: what an invention is is an invention is a breakthrough
Speaker 1: that was made historically that created a device in literature
Speaker 1: that activates or helps grow some part of our brain.
Speaker 1: And the remarkable thing about these inventions is you don't
Speaker 1: need to know how they work or even that they're
Speaker 1: there for them to give you benefits. I mean, it's
Speaker 1: the same way that almost none of us understand how
Speaker 1: a computer or an iPhone works, yet we still use
Speaker 1: them successfully. But once you do know about them, that
Speaker 1: empowers you in all sorts of exciting ways. Mean, the
Speaker 1: more you know about a computer, the better you can
Speaker 1: use it. The more you know about the phone, the
Speaker 1: more you can use it. And also what it allows
Speaker 1: you to do is realize that most of us approach
Speaker 1: literature is though it's all kind of the same thing,
Speaker 1: that it's all kind of doing the same work. But
Speaker 1: really literature is filled with many different inventions that are
Speaker 1: doing many different things. So in the same way that
Speaker 1: if you went to a text store and you know
Speaker 1: you wanted to make toast, you wouldn't go by a stereo.
Speaker 1: That wouldn't make you toast, And if you wanted to
Speaker 1: listen to music, you wouldn't buy a toaster. And so
Speaker 1: knowing what different works of literature can do and knowing
Speaker 1: what the inventions are that are inside them empowers you
Speaker 1: to get what actually you want out of literature. So
Speaker 1: if you want more love out of literature, there's a
Speaker 1: blueprint and you can identify quickly which works are going
Speaker 1: to give you more love. If you want more courage,
Speaker 1: if you want more curiosity, if you want more spirituality,
Speaker 1: if you want the to kind of activate the spiritual
Speaker 1: zones of your brain. Literature, as far as we know,
Speaker 1: is the first technology that humans invented for spirituality, and
Speaker 1: you can get it in all kinds of ways that
Speaker 1: even replicate the effects of LSD and other types of
Speaker 1: of kind of intense experience. So the idea behind the
Speaker 1: invention is basically to reveal that literature is a series
Speaker 1: of tools. Once you understand what those tools are, you
Speaker 1: can find them more quickly on your bookshelf. You can
Speaker 1: find just the tool you're looking for. Us you're using
Speaker 1: a hammer instead of us all and you can then
Speaker 1: use it better to make your brain to be more
Speaker 1: the brain that you wanted to be. One of the
Speaker 1: things that you talk about is that the way we
Speaker 1: are taught literature these days is not very helpful for
Speaker 1: helping us to utilize it in the ways that you're
Speaker 1: talking about. But nor is just reading it as entertainment.
Speaker 1: And so those are maybe the two edges of the
Speaker 1: extreme right. I read it in a very analytical way
Speaker 1: or I read it in a I'm just looking for
Speaker 1: entertainment kind of way. What are ways that we read
Speaker 1: it in between? And I know that's a lot of
Speaker 1: what you talk about in the book, but if you're
Speaker 1: going to say in general, a way of reading, because
Speaker 1: what I noticed is that a lot of times I'll
Speaker 1: read something and I might have a mild positive negative
Speaker 1: thing to it, but then when I hear somebody else
Speaker 1: describe what they got out of it. And this happened
Speaker 1: to me over and over in your book. You know,
Speaker 1: it's like the lights are going off. I'm like, oh
Speaker 1: my god. You know, I just interviewed George Sanders the
Speaker 1: other day and he's got a great book now about
Speaker 1: what these great Russian short stories teach us about writing.
Speaker 1: And I'm reading it like, well, that's okay. I guess
Speaker 1: it's okay, and then he starts going through it and
Speaker 1: I'm like, it's like my mind is completely open, and
Speaker 1: so I'm kind of curious. How do you recommend people
Speaker 1: use literature? First of all, I should say that there's
Speaker 1: nothing wrong with using literature to have fun, anymore than
Speaker 1: there's wrong with eating chocolate or candy, you know, or
Speaker 1: ice cream. Fun is an important part of life, and
Speaker 1: we should all just preserve some time for having fun,
Speaker 1: including with your favorite movies or your favorite music or
Speaker 1: anything like that. I mean, fun entertainment is fine. But
Speaker 1: of course, if all we do in our lives is
Speaker 1: have fun, it starts to feel very empty, very very quickly,
Speaker 1: and we want something more substantive. And that's why we
Speaker 1: have evolved this system in school that's supposed to give
Speaker 1: us that substance. But instead, what happens at schools we
Speaker 1: all know is you go maybe you love a novel,
Speaker 1: maybe you love a poem or whatever, and you go
Speaker 1: in school. Instead of talking about how that poem fired
Speaker 1: your imagination or inspired your hearts, or made you fall
Speaker 1: in love with the characters, whatever, Instead of talk talking
Speaker 1: about those immediate, obvious human responses, we instead spend all
Speaker 1: this time talking about themes. We spend a nurse amount
Speaker 1: of time analyzing the words. We then write these argumentative papers,
Speaker 1: which are all about what the author is saying. And
Speaker 1: those tools are actually literally imported from the Middle Ages.
Speaker 1: They were used to interpret the Bible. They're known as
Speaker 1: semiotic interpretation and the ideas to somehow extract truth from literature.
Speaker 1: But what I suggest instead is that what you should
Speaker 1: do is lean, first of all, into more of your
Speaker 1: own primary responses. If you like a character, you should
Speaker 1: chase that. If you feel an emotion, you should chase that.
Speaker 1: And then over time what you can start to do
Speaker 1: is you can start to learn how to get more
Speaker 1: of that natural stuff that our brain is naturally processing
Speaker 1: from literature out of literature. Well, how do you do that? Well,
Speaker 1: the first most simple thing you can do is not
Speaker 1: try and be distant from the work lean into the work,
Speaker 1: and in particular, try and listen to the voice of
Speaker 1: the world. Think of it as a story that's being
Speaker 1: told to you by someone. Try and listen to that
Speaker 1: person's voice. Try and connect with that person in this
Speaker 1: same wingy that you connect with another human. I mean,
Speaker 1: this is just basic advice in life. I mean, if
Speaker 1: you hang out on the margins of society and are
Speaker 1: constantly judging or analyzing people, how many friends are you
Speaker 1: gonna have and how much of the benefits of friendship
Speaker 1: are you going to enjoy? Not very much. But if
Speaker 1: you lean in, you listen to people, you care about people, um,
Speaker 1: you open yourself up to forming a new friend, you'll
Speaker 1: start to benefit in all these unexpected ways from other
Speaker 1: people's company. And it's the same thing with literature, just
Speaker 1: starting to kind of lean in in those ways. More
Speaker 1: probably what I talked about in the book is that
Speaker 1: once you know what you want to get from literature,
Speaker 1: of which I say, you know, they're you know these
Speaker 1: kind of twenty five things I talked about in the book,
Speaker 1: and they're literally hundreds. I mean, the only reason there's
Speaker 1: twenty five in the book is because the publisher told
Speaker 1: me that they didn't want the book to be any longer.
Speaker 1: But you know, there's all these things you can do,
Speaker 1: and once you know that, then the simple thing is
Speaker 1: identify the blueprint in the book and then just start
Speaker 1: to practice using that blueprint in the same way. You know,
Speaker 1: like if you just found a bicycle somewhere you didn't
Speaker 1: know how to write it, you'd kind of get on
Speaker 1: the bicycle. You might coast down a hill on it.
Speaker 1: You might think this is kind of fun. I don't
Speaker 1: know what's going on, and then someone points out to
Speaker 1: you the pedals and they say, you know, push on
Speaker 1: these pedals in this way, and you'll go a lot faster.
Speaker 1: It's the same thing with the book, and it's the
Speaker 1: same thing with literature. When someone starts to show you
Speaker 1: where the pedals are, it becomes very quickly intuitive and
Speaker 1: natural and just kind of speeds up the natural process
Speaker 1: you have. But you know, just like anything in life,
Speaker 1: I mean, you kind of have to be taught by
Speaker 1: someone who has wisdom. Wisdom is having done something that
Speaker 1: you haven't done yet. I mean, that's what our teachers
Speaker 1: are supposed to have. They're supposed to say, hey, I
Speaker 1: made a boat, let me teach you how to make
Speaker 1: a boat faster. You know, hey, I made a meal.
Speaker 1: Let me teach you how to make a meal faster.
Speaker 1: And so the book is basically just kind of giving
Speaker 1: you that wisdom, saying here so you don't have to
Speaker 1: reinvent the wheel yourselves. Here's different ways you can get
Speaker 1: more of the stuff you want out of literature. The
Speaker 1: inventions have the best titles. I mean, I'm just gonna
Speaker 1: read a couple of these so listeners get a flavor
Speaker 1: of them. Feed your creativity. Winnie the Pooh, Alice in
Speaker 1: Wonderland and The Invention of the Anarchy Rhymer. As an
Speaker 1: old punk rock lover, I like to hear about anarchy,
Speaker 1: uh banished to spare John Dunne songs, and the Invention
Speaker 1: of the Mind eye Opener. And I wish I could
Speaker 1: get listeners to vote on the one of these they
Speaker 1: most want to hear about, But I'm just gonna have
Speaker 1: to choose. I want to go with one that I
Speaker 1: know is dear to you because I've heard you talk
Speaker 1: about how much my Angelou means to you, and it's
Speaker 1: the belief in yourself. Maya Angelou's I know why the
Speaker 1: cage bird sings and the invention of choose your own accomplice. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so this might be my favorite. I mean, my Angelou
Speaker 1: really is my hero. And the reason I admire her
Speaker 1: so much is because she is so much herself. She
Speaker 1: lived the most extraordinary life. I encourage anyone um who
Speaker 1: just wants to be inspired about the possibilities of being
Speaker 1: a human being on this planet. Well, first of all,
Speaker 1: just read her Wikipedia page. You just see. I mean,
Speaker 1: she just did everything you can imagine, from being the
Speaker 1: first black female cable car operator in San Francisco to
Speaker 1: organizing for Martin Luther King, to running a newspaper in Egypt,
Speaker 1: to being on Broadway, to being a for instance, professor,
Speaker 1: to being just about everything, and every year of her
Speaker 1: life she seemed to kind of transform as somebody else.
Speaker 1: And the question is, how do you have such a
Speaker 1: rich life, how do you have such a full life?
Speaker 1: How are you so empowered to bloom in all these ways?
Speaker 1: And her memoir contains a literary technology for helping you
Speaker 1: get that out of your life. And it's not a
Speaker 1: technology she completely invented. It's once, she refined from earlier writers,
Speaker 1: going all the way back to the ancient Egyptians. But Basically,
Speaker 1: the simple neural trick here is to go back from
Speaker 1: an outside perspective and validates the core person who you are,
Speaker 1: validate your core self. And so you know, for example, um,
Speaker 1: a lot of us when we're younger, my angel talks
Speaker 1: about at the beginning of her memoir, a lot of
Speaker 1: us are filled with various types of joy and rebellion,
Speaker 1: and we do things that you know, might get us
Speaker 1: scolded and might get other people to tell us, don't
Speaker 1: do that, that's wrong, so on and so forth. You know,
Speaker 1: and we learn a time to kind of judge ourselves
Speaker 1: and censor ourselves and reign in ourselves. What the technology
Speaker 1: in her book does, and there's a complicated way that
Speaker 1: she does that. It basically means that she alternates between
Speaker 1: being her previous self, her younger self in the past tense,
Speaker 1: and then jumping into the present tense and validating that self.
Speaker 1: But your brain goes through this process of being there
Speaker 1: and then being in the future, and then being there
Speaker 1: and being in the future and constantly validating itself. And
Speaker 1: what happens over the course of that process of self
Speaker 1: validation is you learn to trust yourself and you stop
Speaker 1: judging yourself and thinking that you're doing something wrong, and
Speaker 1: that allows you to grow and be your best self.
Speaker 1: It's a it's a technique that psychologists called self self affirmation.
Speaker 1: And what happens in the story is that as she's
Speaker 1: telling her story and your experience this as you read it,
Speaker 1: you start to actually hear your own story more in
Speaker 1: your head. You actually start to hear your own biography.
Speaker 1: You start to reflect on your own life reading her life,
Speaker 1: and you start to feel more positive about your own
Speaker 1: life as you read about her life. And so really
Speaker 1: her memoir is actually your memoir. So that technology that's
Speaker 1: one of the kind of more modern technologies, is one
Speaker 1: of the more complicated technologies. But again, if you just
Speaker 1: want to experience it, just read My Angelou and then
Speaker 1: you immediately start to get it. Then you can look
Speaker 1: in the book here are the pedals, and start to
Speaker 1: press them a little bit harder and harder and harder.
Speaker 1: And then the more you read of My Angelou while
Speaker 1: pressing the pedals, the more you'll get of that experience.
Speaker 1: There's a bunch of things in that chapter that I
Speaker 1: think are very interesting. One is you talk about how,
Speaker 1: particularly as parents, we have this dilemma which is that
Speaker 1: we really want to give advice and wisdom to our children.
Speaker 1: Or when you get to be my age fifty, everybody,
Speaker 1: you know, you're the elder to most people. You know,
Speaker 1: you you're like, oh, I've got all this wisdom to
Speaker 1: teach you. And yet you talk about how important it
Speaker 1: is for young people to believe in their own self
Speaker 1: belief right, their own ability to handle things. And so
Speaker 1: if they take the advice of older people, it diminishes
Speaker 1: their belief in their own ability to handle things, you know,
Speaker 1: both the parent and the child. Or in this quandary,
Speaker 1: and you go on to say that you know, a
Speaker 1: wise parent discovered a third option. Can you tell us
Speaker 1: kind of what that third option would be? Yes, So
Speaker 1: the third option is to validate the child's attempt at
Speaker 1: the same time as you correct their method or the
Speaker 1: way that they're doing it. And we've all noticed this
Speaker 1: when we um when we try and help our kids
Speaker 1: or help you know, I'm a teacher. So when we
Speaker 1: try and help students, the more we help them, the
Speaker 1: more actually hesitant they become, and the more they start
Speaker 1: to look to us for affirmation, you know, and we're
Speaker 1: actually eroding their self belief. And this is very hard
Speaker 1: because as as a parent, you want your kids to succeed,
Speaker 1: and so you're always interfering and being like, oh, you
Speaker 1: should do this way, or don't make the mistake that
Speaker 1: I made, and all this kind of stuff. But then
Speaker 1: the more you do that, the more you trigger this
Speaker 1: kind of primal anxiety in them, and they start to
Speaker 1: rely more and more on you and less and less
Speaker 1: on themselves. And so what you have to do is
Speaker 1: you have to figure out a way to empower your
Speaker 1: kids to learn for themselves. But how do you empower
Speaker 1: them to learn for themselves at the same time still
Speaker 1: teaching them? And again, this is what maya Angelos memoir does.
Speaker 1: But the basic technique the psychologists have discovered is that
Speaker 1: you do a kind of two hander. On the one hand,
Speaker 1: you affirm the deep reason that your child is trying
Speaker 1: to do the thing that they're trying to do. So
Speaker 1: you might say, I admire your bravery, you know, or
Speaker 1: I admire you trying to do it your own way.
Speaker 1: I admire your creativity. Whatever it is that you see
Speaker 1: in your child is a kind of deep roots of
Speaker 1: what's causing them to leap forward. And then you say,
Speaker 1: but you know, it might be even braver to do
Speaker 1: it this way, or it might be even more creative
Speaker 1: to do it this way. And so you provide that
Speaker 1: little tweaks at the same time as you're affirming the
Speaker 1: kind of root emotional drive, you're just shifting the behavior.
Speaker 1: And you know, this is the same basic thing that
Speaker 1: psychologists have really learned over the past twenty or thirty years,
Speaker 1: the importance of emotional affirmation while providing a kind of
Speaker 1: shift in behavior. For example, you know, I mean, if
Speaker 1: if you yourself are doing something that's making other people uncomfortable,
Speaker 1: or you have a behavior that you'd like to change,
Speaker 1: it's not effective to shame yourself or say, oh, this
Speaker 1: behavior is coming from a bad place. So, for example,
Speaker 1: I mean a simple one if if you're the kind
Speaker 1: of person like me who can't control himself around chocolate cake,
Speaker 1: you know, it's not helpful to say, angus, you're a pig, Angus,
Speaker 1: you're greedy, and there's something wrong with you. Instead, you
Speaker 1: should say, angus, how amazing that you have such joy
Speaker 1: for life, How amazing that when you have something you
Speaker 1: always want more of it. That is so wonderful. But
Speaker 1: if you really want more life, you're probably gonna eat
Speaker 1: a little less chocolate cake because the more chocolate cake
Speaker 1: you eat, ultimately, the less chances you really have to
Speaker 1: be fun because you're always dealing with this stummying or whatever.
Speaker 1: So you see how that works, where you affirm the
Speaker 1: underlying emotional drive while at the same time shifting the behavior,
Speaker 1: and the more you do that, the more you make
Speaker 1: the person feel positive about themselves while giving them the
Speaker 1: tool that they need to act in the world. You
Speaker 1: use this term self affirmation in here, and it's used
Speaker 1: in a slightly different way than we often think of. Right.
Speaker 1: The parody of self affirmation is the Stewart Smalley Saturday
Speaker 1: Night Live guy looking in the mirror. And so affirmation
Speaker 1: is a really interesting psychological concept because in what cases
Speaker 1: does it work and what cases does it not work,
Speaker 1: because it wouldn't have gotten attraction it's gotten in lots
Speaker 1: of places if it didn't have some sort of benefit.
Speaker 1: But you talk very much about affirming something very different
Speaker 1: than my beauty or how much people like me. You
Speaker 1: talk about affirming my values. Yeah, and that's exactly right.
Speaker 1: I mean, we think in this world that there's something
Speaker 1: dangerous we would call it self love, and we think
Speaker 1: that people who have too much self love or ridiculous
Speaker 1: or vain or dangerous to themselves in the community, and
Speaker 1: the people who spend too much time on Instagram looking
Speaker 1: at themselves and all these kinds of external things, and
Speaker 1: that is ultimately a bad thing, not because it makes
Speaker 1: bad people, but just because it makes you unhappy. I mean,
Speaker 1: the more you focus on external things, the less happy
Speaker 1: you get, the less joyful you get. And you know,
Speaker 1: the less joyful you are. That doesn't just take away
Speaker 1: your joy in life, It takes away your ability to
Speaker 1: give joy to everyone else. It takes away your strength
Speaker 1: and all these important ways in which you can support
Speaker 1: and nurtured people around you. So the real reason that
Speaker 1: it's not good to be superficial is it just ultimately
Speaker 1: makes everyone else less joyful. So what's the alternative, Well,
Speaker 1: how do you affirm yourself in a positive way? Well,
Speaker 1: first of all, you don't affirm superficial things. And by
Speaker 1: superficial things, I don't just mean beauty, but I mean
Speaker 1: anything that is external to you. For example, a behavior,
Speaker 1: a lifestyle, a thing you own, a career, a way
Speaker 1: you have of playing tennis. I mean literally anything that
Speaker 1: is external to your hearts. Those things are all things
Speaker 1: you can change, because that's growth. Growth in life is
Speaker 1: changing the external things around you. For those of us
Speaker 1: who are getting older, growth means our hair turning white,
Speaker 1: you know, or face getting more wrinkled, and that's something
Speaker 1: we should embrace as growth. Well what you affirm them?
Speaker 1: As you said, our values and values are things that
Speaker 1: each of us choose for ourselves. So you know, a
Speaker 1: value might be love. And if at the bottom of
Speaker 1: our heart we really believe that the reason we're on
Speaker 1: this earth is to love other people, then we should
Speaker 1: affirm that part about ourselves. We should say that is
Speaker 1: what makes you good? Is your ability to give and
Speaker 1: receive love. Do that and everything you can do. Or
Speaker 1: maybe our core value is family, or maybe our core
Speaker 1: value is courage. Maybe we say, you know, I think
Speaker 1: really the reason that I'm alive is to be brave
Speaker 1: and to dare to do things, to face my fears
Speaker 1: and to encourage to other people to face their fears.
Speaker 1: We affirm that. Maybe it's creativity. Maybe you're someone who
Speaker 1: wants to create something new, we affirm that. And you know,
Speaker 1: if you're someone who's creative, we don't affirm whether or
Speaker 1: not you wrote a best selling novel, or whether or
Speaker 1: not you're painting made you this much money, or whether
Speaker 1: you know those are all superficial things. What we do
Speaker 1: is we affirm the fact you get up every morning
Speaker 1: and commit to doing something creative. And the more we
Speaker 1: feed that part of ourselves, the more the growth will happen,
Speaker 1: and the more will end up in the life that
Speaker 1: we always wanted to have but just never knew was there.
Speaker 1: And you'll just wake up one morning and used to
Speaker 1: be like, I'm so happy that I have this life.
Speaker 1: This isn't the life I planned. But it's like a
Speaker 1: plant that grows into its place in the sun. You
Speaker 1: will grow into your place in the sun by nurturing
Speaker 1: those deep things in your heart. And because each of
Speaker 1: us has our own thing things in that heart, we
Speaker 1: will all grow in different directions. And that's what makes
Speaker 1: the garden of life. So we don't go around judging
Speaker 1: other people because they're not like us. We go around
Speaker 1: celebrating ourselves because we're lucky enough to be who we are.
Speaker 1: That's beautiful. I love that. I think values are so important.
Speaker 1: You know, we talk on this show a lot in
Speaker 1: a couple of different ways. One is I've been very
Speaker 1: inspired by acceptance and commitment therapy, right, and you know,
Speaker 1: it's basic thing is focus on what you value, you know,
Speaker 1: don't focus on how you feel so much, focus on
Speaker 1: what you value and then committing to those values. It's
Speaker 1: really a way through, at least for me, and I
Speaker 1: think for a lot of people have some pretty rocky
Speaker 1: emotional territory to commit to trying to live according to
Speaker 1: certain values. Oh absolutely, And you know, commitment is the
Speaker 1: ultimate act of courage, but also the most important thing
Speaker 1: we can do as humans, because I mean, the thing
Speaker 1: about commitment is you have to do it in the
Speaker 1: face of uncertainty. We are tiny humans and the world
Speaker 1: is huge, in the future is unknown, and to commit
Speaker 1: is so audacious to say I'm gonna do this thing.
Speaker 1: You know, I'm gonna I'm gonna stand my ground. But
Speaker 1: everything good in life comes out of a commitment to something.
Speaker 1: This is one of these hard things to grapple with.
Speaker 1: But one of the reasons that our emotions are so
Speaker 1: volatile is just because that's kind of the way that
Speaker 1: our brain is. Our brain is not perfect, and you know,
Speaker 1: our brain can get caught in cycles that are not
Speaker 1: helpful to it. And you know, in general, our brain
Speaker 1: also has evolved never to be that happy and also
Speaker 1: to be filled with anxiety. Why is our brain evolved
Speaker 1: this way, Well, because you know, we evolved in a
Speaker 1: very unstable environment where if you relax that could be dangerous.
Speaker 1: And so the ancestors of ours who survived tended to
Speaker 1: be very nervous ones who are just always kind of
Speaker 1: looking out all the time. And you know that's not
Speaker 1: helpful in our current world to be anxious all the time.
Speaker 1: And so to a certain extent, you have to say
Speaker 1: to yourself, it's not weird or assigned that there's something
Speaker 1: wrong with me that I'm anxious. This is just how
Speaker 1: I am. Or you know, if I feel grief, that's real.
Speaker 1: I feel grief, I feel loss, I feel my own vulnerability,
Speaker 1: I feel fear, I fear a loss of meaning. I
Speaker 1: feel all these things, you know, but at the end
Speaker 1: of the day, those aren't what defined me. You know,
Speaker 1: what defines me is the ability to make a commitment
Speaker 1: to something bigger than myself and hold onto that thing
Speaker 1: and then watches that commitment that I make makes me
Speaker 1: bigger than myself, transforms me, grows me, and it's never
Speaker 1: going to get rid of all these emotions. I mean,
Speaker 1: I don't care how successful you are, even on your
Speaker 1: own terms. You're always gonna have grief, You're always gonna
Speaker 1: have anxiety. But just understanding that those things, at the
Speaker 1: end of the day aren't the most important things. And
Speaker 1: they will come and they will go, but what will
Speaker 1: remain is your courage and your commitments. Yeah, there's so
Speaker 1: many things you just said in there that I'd love
Speaker 1: to touch on, but I'm going to use this as
Speaker 1: an opportunity to hop back to a quote from the
Speaker 1: book that I was hoping to find a way to
Speaker 1: put in here. I'm just gonna read it back to.
Speaker 1: It's it's a couple of sentences, but I think it
Speaker 1: sums up so much of what you just said and
Speaker 1: so much of what this book is about. You're talking
Speaker 1: about having a brain, and you say, a brain fueled
Speaker 1: by emotions that propel us forward, but that also causes
Speaker 1: to crave things that harm, and to fear things that
Speaker 1: don't exist, and to rage against age and death and
Speaker 1: other parts of our nature that can't be escaped. So deep,
Speaker 1: so sprawling, and so intangible is this problem that it
Speaker 1: can seem beyond the grip of any technology. That, in
Speaker 1: brief is why literature was invented and what it was
Speaker 1: invented to do. It was a narrative, emotional technology that
Speaker 1: helped our ancestors cope with the psychological challenges posed by
Speaker 1: human biology. It was an invention for overcoming the doubt
Speaker 1: and the pain of just being us. I love that,
Speaker 1: and I love that last line for so many reasons.
Speaker 1: But the biggest part is that it just normalizes, like
Speaker 1: you just did in in what you were saying before,
Speaker 1: you normalize the fact like, yeah, being humans difficult. It
Speaker 1: might be the hardest thing on earth because we have
Speaker 1: this most extraordinary thing in our head, which we all
Speaker 1: know it's is this brain, which is capable of just
Speaker 1: so many miraculous things. I mean, you know, you only
Speaker 1: have to look out at the great you know, works
Speaker 1: of arts, um, the great works of technology and science
Speaker 1: and humans cree. I mean the awe that we feel
Speaker 1: around each other, and you can just look all the day,
Speaker 1: and I mean, I'm just stunned by my own children,
Speaker 1: by other people's children every day, the brilliant, beautiful, courageous
Speaker 1: things that they say and they do. But at the
Speaker 1: same time, this enormously powerful thing we have in our
Speaker 1: head is constantly getting ahead of itself. For some reason,
Speaker 1: this is the thing we always like to talk about,
Speaker 1: least in school. I mean, school is always built about
Speaker 1: reason and logic and all these kinds of things. But
Speaker 1: emotion is the huge driver of life, and it's so
Speaker 1: powerful and without passion, nothing would ever happen. I mean
Speaker 1: we know this. If you think that something is right,
Speaker 1: you won't do it, But if you feel that something
Speaker 1: is right, you'll do it every time. That's how powerful
Speaker 1: passion is. But at the same time, passion is also,
Speaker 1: as we all know, the thing that gets into more
Speaker 1: trouble than anything else. At the same time, our ability
Speaker 1: to ask questions is one of the great beautiful things
Speaker 1: about the human mind, because it's what allows us to
Speaker 1: free ourselves and to free other people and to change things.
Speaker 1: But also the ability to ask questions is terrifying because
Speaker 1: we can ask questions that we can never really answer,
Speaker 1: and the propel us into these states of doubt and
Speaker 1: fear and anxiety. What's gonna happen to us when we die,
Speaker 1: what happens to our loved ones in the future. All
Speaker 1: these questions we can answer that can be just absolutely crippling.
Speaker 1: And that's why I think literature is the most powerful
Speaker 1: technology that humans have invented, because from the beginning, literature
Speaker 1: helped deal with regulating our emotions when we needed them regulated.
Speaker 1: So calming our fears, building our courage, building our love,
Speaker 1: calming our anger, building our empathy, doing all this just
Speaker 1: kind of basic work. Healing our grief, healing our trauma,
Speaker 1: all this kind of basic work, just like getting up
Speaker 1: and brushing your teeth in the morning, you know, just
Speaker 1: kind of basic maintenance work to be a human, and
Speaker 1: also provided us with a sense of purpose and structure.
Speaker 1: That's what a story is. A story is a sense
Speaker 1: of we are going somewhere, We're going on a journey.
Speaker 1: Well where are we going? You don't need to know,
Speaker 1: I mean, that's the wonderful thing about a story and
Speaker 1: a journey. You don't need to know where you're going
Speaker 1: to embrace the journey. And that's what makes a story
Speaker 1: different from say truth. Truth is often beyond us, but
Speaker 1: the story never is, and the story can give us
Speaker 1: the same solidity and comfort and direction as truth. And
Speaker 1: so those basic things or why I think literature is
Speaker 1: the most important thing that humans have ever invented, and
Speaker 1: why you'll see literature in all your favorite philosophers. All
Speaker 1: your favorite philosophers are constantly resorting to stories or using
Speaker 1: therapeutic techniques that come to us from literature. All our
Speaker 1: favorite spiritual guides are constantly using stories, myths. In fact,
Speaker 1: the original meaning of literature is scripture. They mean the
Speaker 1: same thing. They mean that which is writs, and that
Speaker 1: just gives you a sense of how revered it was
Speaker 1: from the very beginning. And it's a tragedy to me
Speaker 1: that in our modern world we just don't realize how
Speaker 1: powerful literature is anymore and how easy it is to use.
Speaker 1: And you know, we spend so much of our time
Speaker 1: just kind of looking for other stuff to give us meaning,
Speaker 1: and it's right there. I mean, many of the books
Speaker 1: you read as children, If you go back to them
Speaker 1: today and just read some of your favorite children's books,
Speaker 1: you'll feel healing, you'll feel hope, you'll feel joy, you'll
Speaker 1: feel creativity, and it's just there on your bookshelf. And
Speaker 1: then sharing those books with your kids or volunteering to
Speaker 1: read to other kids, you know, those kinds of activities
Speaker 1: can bring you just so much fulfillment and so much healing,
Speaker 1: and our ancestors knew that, and for some reason we've
Speaker 1: forgotten it. I love that idea of going back to
Speaker 1: the books you read as a child. I don't know
Speaker 1: why I haven't thought of that. Was one of my
Speaker 1: primary activities as a child was was reading. I love
Speaker 1: to do and I did it all the time, and
Speaker 1: I've never really thought of going back to some of
Speaker 1: those books. Well, you know, I think one reason that
Speaker 1: we don't often think about it is we often think
Speaker 1: of life is kind of a relentless moving forward. I mean,
Speaker 1: this is one of these weird things about the modern world,
Speaker 1: as we're all conditioned to think that everything is better
Speaker 1: in the future, and that we just have to get
Speaker 1: to the future faster, and that the faster we get
Speaker 1: to the future, somehow, the better everything will be. I'm
Speaker 1: not here to to bash the future. I mean, I
Speaker 1: hope the future is great, you know, and I'm not
Speaker 1: a dystopian thinker. But at the end of the day,
Speaker 1: life is about an organic process of growth. It's not
Speaker 1: about a kind of machine leap ahead. And to experience
Speaker 1: organic growth, you need to constantly plug back into who
Speaker 1: you are. Who are you, what is your special heart,
Speaker 1: what are your feelings? What is you? And and you
Speaker 1: find that record in your early childhood literature, because that's
Speaker 1: a moment when you're not afraid of being judged. That's
Speaker 1: not a moment when you have anxiety about what book
Speaker 1: should I read, what books are good for me, what
Speaker 1: books will help me? Instead, you just naturally are drawn
Speaker 1: to certain stories, is to certain characters, to certain worlds,
Speaker 1: and those help reinforce and develop and strengthen who you are.
Speaker 1: And I can almost guarantee anyone that if they go
Speaker 1: back and read their favorite books that they read when
Speaker 1: they were a child, they will feel renewed and strengthened
Speaker 1: in themselves. And it's important to keep some of those
Speaker 1: books around. And that's not to say that, of course,
Speaker 1: you should only ever read your childhood books. But if
Speaker 1: you're at a moment of grief or loss or despair
Speaker 1: or trauma or tragedy, I would say the number one
Speaker 1: thing you can do in terms of helping yourself is
Speaker 1: go back and read something from your past that gave
Speaker 1: you pleasure, that gave you strength, And it will give
Speaker 1: you strength, and it will give you pleasure, it will
Speaker 1: give you courage again, and don't be afraid to read
Speaker 1: and reread and reread it or rewatch it. I mean,
Speaker 1: if you had a favorite TV show when you were
Speaker 1: in high school, go back and watch that now Three's Company, right, No, exactly? Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: I mean I'm not sure that's gonna well, I guess
Speaker 1: I could give it a shot. The thing is, one
Speaker 1: of the things I talked about in the book is
Speaker 1: we have an insistent desire to divide high literature from
Speaker 1: low literature. So, you know, we think a lot oh well,
Speaker 1: you know, there's like, you know, there's like a serious literature,
Speaker 1: and then there's just kind of stuff that was on
Speaker 1: TV when I was a kid. You know. The reality
Speaker 1: is there is no dividing line, because what makes literature
Speaker 1: literature is the effect it has on your brain, not
Speaker 1: what it is on itself. So if a work of
Speaker 1: literature is giving you healing or giving you growth, it's
Speaker 1: good literature. If you go back and watch stre His
Speaker 1: Company and it's just not that inspiring to you, don't
Speaker 1: watch it again, you know. But in my case, I mean,
Speaker 1: I remember, you know, when I was a kid, I
Speaker 1: I used to love reading. You know, these weird French
Speaker 1: comics like Asterix and obelix Um. You know, I used
Speaker 1: to like watching actually the A Team on TV things
Speaker 1: like that, and if I go back and watch them now,
Speaker 1: I will feel I mean, to me, the A Team
Speaker 1: is great. It's about a bunch of weirdos who change
Speaker 1: the world, and when you watch it, you feel like
Speaker 1: anything can happen. This is totally nuts, but I love
Speaker 1: it and I can be friends with anyone and we
Speaker 1: can do anything. It's really inspiring on an emotional level
Speaker 1: to me. And I think if you are at a
Speaker 1: moment of grief or loss or hesitation or I don't
Speaker 1: know what to do with my life right now, that's
Speaker 1: not going backwards, that's going forwards. That's reconnecting with your
Speaker 1: kind of emotional core. That emotional strength is the most
Speaker 1: powerful thing. That's what gives you resilience. So it gives
Speaker 1: you strength, which that gives you for momentum, and reconnecting
Speaker 1: with that is absolutely incredibly therapeutic, incredibly positive. That may
Speaker 1: be the best review the A Team has ever had.
Speaker 1: I absolutely loved it too. All right, let's pick a
Speaker 1: different invention here. I can't resist one that is the
Speaker 1: serenity Elevator float above her Asop's fables, Plato's is It
Speaker 1: Mano Mino, and the invention of the serenity elevator. It's
Speaker 1: quite a jumping off point. Yeah, well, this one drew
Speaker 1: my fascination. Sort of. The origin story for this is
Speaker 1: famous Greek philosopher Socrates at the end of his life,
Speaker 1: he's condemned to death for challenging the traditional gods of Athens,
Speaker 1: and he's sentenced to death by drinking hemlock, which is
Speaker 1: this incredibly painful, awful poison, And we have an account
Speaker 1: of it that was left behind to us ultimately by
Speaker 1: by Plato. Plato is not actually there. It's a kind
Speaker 1: of secondhand account. And what happens is is Socrates kind
Speaker 1: of does his thing, does his philosophy. Then he drinks
Speaker 1: the hemlock, which is just known to cause people to
Speaker 1: scream and cry out in pain, and they just calmly
Speaker 1: lies down and closes his eyes and lays there for
Speaker 1: a little bit and dies gently. And so the riddle
Speaker 1: left by this moment is what did he do? How
Speaker 1: is he able to face both the most excruciating physical
Speaker 1: pain that at the time the Greeks knew and also
Speaker 1: the most excruciating mental and psychic pain, which is you're
Speaker 1: you're about to die. You're dying, you know, and how
Speaker 1: do they do this so calmly? And you know, the
Speaker 1: answer he always gave was, you know, my philosophy. And
Speaker 1: then you sort of ask him what his philosophy is,
Speaker 1: and he says, oh, my philosophy is I know that
Speaker 1: I know nothing, which is famously a paradox or riddle.
Speaker 1: I mean doesn't mean, I mean, how can you know
Speaker 1: that you know nothing? I mean, like you know, I mean,
Speaker 1: that's a contradiction. So what's going on. And what I
Speaker 1: talk about in that chapter is that he gives you
Speaker 1: a clue before he dies. He talks about ASoP and
Speaker 1: um how he spent his last hour's imitating ASoP. And
Speaker 1: ASoP was a satirist. We don't think of Asup as
Speaker 1: a satirist now we think of him as a moralist,
Speaker 1: but he was a satirist. And what satirist is someone
Speaker 1: who kind of pokes fun gently at human folly, And
Speaker 1: so all of Asop's fables, like sour Grapes and the
Speaker 1: rest of it are him kind of poking fun at
Speaker 1: the way that humans behave and saying, don't you think
Speaker 1: maybe you should behave differently from those humans. And when
Speaker 1: I talk about in that chapters that Socrates identified a
Speaker 1: whole bunch of very powerful tools from satire, and I
Speaker 1: won't go through all of them now, and one of
Speaker 1: the obvious ones is irony. And then what he did
Speaker 1: is he did something that ASoP didn't do, and that
Speaker 1: was revolutionary. And instead of applying those tools to other
Speaker 1: people to make himself feel superior to other people, he
Speaker 1: applied those tools to himself. He felt ironic about himself.
Speaker 1: And when you do that, when you feel ironic about yourself,
Speaker 1: it lifts you out of yourself, It lifts your mind
Speaker 1: out of your body. And we can actually demonstrate this
Speaker 1: has an analgesic effect. It numbs pain. That's why people
Speaker 1: in who are doctors, who work in the RS, or
Speaker 1: soldiers often have these kinds of self ironic modes, you
Speaker 1: know what, are very ironic about themselves in the situation
Speaker 1: because it has this kind of numbing, analgesic effect. And
Speaker 1: if you follow the other techniques of satire and laugh
Speaker 1: at yourself essentially make fun of yourself, that becomes an
Speaker 1: enormous gift to yourself in terms of relieving pain and
Speaker 1: also making you feel bigger than yourself and above your problems.
Speaker 1: And this is something most supposed to forget to do
Speaker 1: when something bad happens to us, I mean, most of
Speaker 1: us are something bad happens to us, what do we do?
Speaker 1: We get angry, and then usually we blame someone else,
Speaker 1: or we blame ourselves. We say, oh, this awful person,
Speaker 1: you know, and then when we blame that other person,
Speaker 1: we get angry, we get stressed. That has also some
Speaker 1: horrendous psychological effects, getting angry and getting stressed. Blaming yourself
Speaker 1: is probably even worse, having self judgment terrible. But if
Speaker 1: you laugh at yourself, if you say, oh my goodness,
Speaker 1: what what was I expecting to do? What? You know?
Speaker 1: I mean, what did I ever think? I mean, just
Speaker 1: look at me, you know, I'm just like tiny, ridiculous
Speaker 1: little human running around in this giant world. What did
Speaker 1: I ever think was gonna happen? Of course it was
Speaker 1: going to be a disaster. Of course. Everything I do
Speaker 1: is to tell it. When you start to laugh at yourself,
Speaker 1: that way you release the pain, you release the stress,
Speaker 1: you release everything, And that is ultimately the key to
Speaker 1: getting rid of most of both your kind of psychological
Speaker 1: pain and even quite a bit of your physical pain.
Speaker 1: I don't want to encourage your listeners to drink hemlock.
Speaker 1: I just want to be clear about that. I am
Speaker 1: not saying that if you have a good sense of
Speaker 1: humor about yourself and you drink hemlock, you won't experience pain.
Speaker 1: But I do think that at the end of the day,
Speaker 1: um having that sense of humor about yourself and learning
Speaker 1: to do that through literature, and learning to see yourself
Speaker 1: in ridiculous people in literature and then laugh at yourself,
Speaker 1: which is what happens in me. No, that is giving
Speaker 1: yourself the gift of serenity. Well, it's interesting. Two thoughts
Speaker 1: came to mind there. One is I can vouch for
Speaker 1: this method because when I tried rollerblading, it's just not
Speaker 1: my mind. Because I was just telling it to my
Speaker 1: friend Chris the other day. I was saying it was
Speaker 1: funny because I fell violently and often, and when I
Speaker 1: would fall, my initial reaction was second of anger followed
Speaker 1: by usually laughter, and it was some version of what
Speaker 1: you just said, Like, what did I think was going
Speaker 1: to happen? Like just knowing me and I was bad
Speaker 1: at roller skating, I knew all that and then I
Speaker 1: also have this tendency to be like, well, I'll just
Speaker 1: go really fast. It just makes me laugh to think
Speaker 1: of roller blading. But the other thing that you just
Speaker 1: said there that popped into my mind was when I
Speaker 1: hear the word serenity, I almost immediately jumped to the
Speaker 1: serenity prayer. And I almost immediately jumped to the serenity
Speaker 1: of prayer because A I think it's one of the
Speaker 1: wisest things ever, but B because I was in a
Speaker 1: A for so long, and we use the serenity prayer
Speaker 1: in a A uh so much. And A is a
Speaker 1: place that is so great because people are laughing at
Speaker 1: themselves all the time. It's one of the ways that
Speaker 1: is used to deal with alcoholism. And as you said,
Speaker 1: I think it's really important. If you blame yourself too much,
Speaker 1: that's not really helpful. If you blame others, that's not helpful.
Speaker 1: It's finding this place where blame sort of drops away.
Speaker 1: And that's done very much by this laughter at ourselves
Speaker 1: and at the ridiculous things we did. I mean, that's
Speaker 1: so brilliant and so beautiful and absolutely I mean, because
Speaker 1: you know, the key to healing and growing is to
Speaker 1: acknowledge our own frailty. And if you acknowledge your own
Speaker 1: frailty in a serious mode, it becomes alarming and terrifying
Speaker 1: and horrifying. But if you acknowledge your own frailty with
Speaker 1: a sense of humor um, it becomes joyful. And you know,
Speaker 1: I mean, of course, I mean it's like, I mean,
Speaker 1: I've done the same thing, by the way, with that
Speaker 1: with roller skates, it's like, I mean, I have no coordination,
Speaker 1: and like you and I have no common sense. And
Speaker 1: also what kind of person puts wheels on their feet?
Speaker 1: I mean, you've gotta be nuts, you know. But if
Speaker 1: you do that joyfully, it becomes fun and and you
Speaker 1: laugh and you grow and you realize that you know,
Speaker 1: the mistakes that you've made in your life aren't a
Speaker 1: sign that you did something wrong with that other people
Speaker 1: are terrible. It's just a sign of the fact that
Speaker 1: you know there was more for you to learn, and
Speaker 1: that you're not perfect. And that is a fun and
Speaker 1: exciting thing as opposed to a terriful, terrifying and awful thing,
Speaker 1: And it brings peace of mind, and peace of mind
Speaker 1: really is just the kind of deepest gift I think
Speaker 1: we can give ourselves just that sense of flow in
Speaker 1: the world, just that sense of calm after the storm,
Speaker 1: and that is to me the experience of wisdom. I
Speaker 1: don't know if wisdom has contents in it. I don't
Speaker 1: know if wisdom is, you know, do this or do that,
Speaker 1: or do this other thing. But wisdom is definitely a
Speaker 1: state of mind. Wisdom is definitely a being able to having,
Speaker 1: after lived a hard life and a rough life, and
Speaker 1: a life that didn't go exactly maybe the way you
Speaker 1: thought it was gonna go when you were a kid,
Speaker 1: being able to look back over that life with peace
Speaker 1: and serenity and a sense of perspective. I mean that
Speaker 1: feeling is wisdom. And that absolutely is what I think
Speaker 1: you get from the Surending prayer. It's what you get
Speaker 1: from Socrates, and it's what you get from roller skating
Speaker 1: with a sense of humor exactly. All right, let's hit
Speaker 1: one more of these before we head out. I'm gonna
Speaker 1: give you last chance to pick as a when you
Speaker 1: love to talk about that's on your mind based on
Speaker 1: what we've talked about so far, or do you want
Speaker 1: me to choose. Well, you've you've picked you that we
Speaker 1: haven't talked about you've talked about the anarchy rhymer and
Speaker 1: the Mind's eye opener. I mean, are the either of
Speaker 1: those ones you'd like? Or if you like, we can
Speaker 1: talk if you want to talk about spiritual experience. All right,
Speaker 1: We're gonna do anarchy rhymer now, and we'll do spiritual
Speaker 1: experience in the post show conversation because anarchy rhymer has
Speaker 1: something in it that I really wanted to pick your
Speaker 1: brain on given your neuroscience background. This one is called
Speaker 1: feed your Creativity. Winnie the Pooh, Alice in Wonderland and
Speaker 1: the invention of the anarchy rhymer. We were just talking
Speaker 1: about children's literature, and the wonderful thing about children's literature
Speaker 1: is how creative it makes your children. You know, how
Speaker 1: it stimulates their imagination, how it fires your imagination. And
Speaker 1: you know, being an old person like myself, I thought, well,
Speaker 1: maybe it would be good to be a little more
Speaker 1: creative and be a little more maggative. I should spend
Speaker 1: some time with children's literature and see what's going on.
Speaker 1: And the answer is that child's that are contains this
Speaker 1: amazing invention which goes back to the nursery rhyme for
Speaker 1: activating a part of our brain called the default mode network,
Speaker 1: which is possibly the most boringly named part of human brain,
Speaker 1: the default mode network, but it's the most exciting part
Speaker 1: of the human brain. It's this secret part of the
Speaker 1: brain that goes active whenever we're not working and it plays.
Speaker 1: It's this place of spontaneous creativity, of just mucking about.
Speaker 1: And it was discovered accidentally by UH psychologists when they
Speaker 1: first developed brain scanners, and they put people in these
Speaker 1: brain scanners and they told them to stop thinking. And
Speaker 1: as soon as people stopped thinking, this huge network exploded
Speaker 1: in their minds. And the psychologists kept saying, well, no, no no, no,
Speaker 1: stop that stuff. We don't want this next. We don't
Speaker 1: want this network to be active, you know, we want
Speaker 1: you to relax and stop thinking. And the more they
Speaker 1: stopped thinking again, the more powerfully this network came active.
Speaker 1: And they later called that the default mode network. And
Speaker 1: what it does is it creates anarchy, It creates play, spontaneity, creativity, randomness.
Speaker 1: We experienced it normally as what's called mind wandering. So
Speaker 1: pretty much for me, this is most of my day
Speaker 1: when you're supposed to be doing work and instead your
Speaker 1: mind is drifting. And when your mind is drifting, it's
Speaker 1: drifting about possibilities, things that could happen. And most of us,
Speaker 1: as we get older, those possibilities get caught in ruts.
Speaker 1: We're always thinking of the same possibilities over and over
Speaker 1: and over again, and we're not as creative as we
Speaker 1: are when we're a child. When we're a child, it's
Speaker 1: like we could be a dragon, we could be a platypus,
Speaker 1: you know, we could be anything. But as we could order,
Speaker 1: it's less and less of that. I'm going to interrupt
Speaker 1: there before we go into that part. This is where
Speaker 1: my question was. It was about the default mode network,
Speaker 1: because I've heard the default mode network talked about in
Speaker 1: two different ways, although I don't think they're necessarily different,
Speaker 1: but and I think this is kind of where you're
Speaker 1: driving at. But one is the way you described it.
Speaker 1: It's what happens when our brain isn't doing something else,
Speaker 1: and it's it's wonderful day dreaming and it's putting together
Speaker 1: creative possibilities and it's doing all this good stuff. Right.
Speaker 1: And then also I've also heard the default mode network
Speaker 1: described the same thing, same mechanism of action. You're not
Speaker 1: doing anything else, the default mode network kicks on. But
Speaker 1: it's the place of deep rumination. It's the place of
Speaker 1: worrying about self, it's the place of selfing. There's a
Speaker 1: famous scientific paper by Daniel Gilbert. It concludes a wandering
Speaker 1: mind is an unhappy mind. Um. And so I wanted
Speaker 1: to sort of talk about these two sort of experiences
Speaker 1: of the default mode network. One sounds really positive and
Speaker 1: good and the other which doesn't sound so good. So
Speaker 1: first is is your understanding that both those things are correct?
Speaker 1: And is it really about what you're about to talk about,
Speaker 1: which is how you know rut the default mode network
Speaker 1: gets You're exactly right. So what happens with the default
Speaker 1: mode network is it's basically just a place of mind wandering.
Speaker 1: But that's not necessarily fun. You can mind wander all
Speaker 1: sorts of things which are not fun. And the way
Speaker 1: that roughly speaking, it works is it works in connection
Speaker 1: with our prefrontal cortex and other parts of our brain,
Speaker 1: which which kind of focus it a little bit. And
Speaker 1: if you're in an anxious mood, then that wandering can
Speaker 1: be coming up with all sorts of terrible negative thoughts.
Speaker 1: If you're in a self doubting mood that wandering can
Speaker 1: be all sorts of self dislike and concerns about yourself
Speaker 1: and who you are. It's the same way that when
Speaker 1: children play, it's not necessarily intrinsically good. Children can play
Speaker 1: in dangerous ways, children can play in mean ways. Um.
Speaker 1: But but the point of it is is that it's
Speaker 1: anarchic and it's random, and it's spontaneous. And that's why
Speaker 1: anarchy has both good and bad connotations to most people.
Speaker 1: I mean, anarchy seems kind of fun when you think
Speaker 1: about it as a bunch of people chilling out on
Speaker 1: the beach with no rules, and then it seems bad
Speaker 1: when it's like, you know, the city is on fire
Speaker 1: and there's no cops. So yes, it is just play randomness,
Speaker 1: spontaneous anarchy. And the question is, well, how do we
Speaker 1: have that in a kind of positive framework. How do
Speaker 1: we kind of lightly focus that around possibility and the
Speaker 1: outward world as opposed to our inner ruminations. And that's
Speaker 1: where children's stories and children's literature comes in, because there's
Speaker 1: a balance in them between parts of the literature that
Speaker 1: is anarchic and random like um. For example, I use
Speaker 1: in the book the example of the nursery rhyme, Hey, Diddle, diddle,
Speaker 1: the cat and the fiddle, a cow jumping over the moon,
Speaker 1: and a dish running away with a spoon, all these
Speaker 1: completely random things within a structure of music. And so
Speaker 1: the question is how do we kind of create this
Speaker 1: interplay between the structured nous and the randomness. And most
Speaker 1: children's literature does so by thinking about possibilities and by
Speaker 1: thinking about the outside world. So, what are the possibilities
Speaker 1: for doing things like jumping over the moon or being
Speaker 1: a cat playing with a fiddle, things like that. And
Speaker 1: when you go back and you read, say Winnie the Pooh,
Speaker 1: Winnie the Pooh creates a safe space to play and
Speaker 1: mess around and explore because it creates a universe in
Speaker 1: which nothing really bad can happen to you. It's a
Speaker 1: safe space. And that's the important thing about play is
Speaker 1: that it takes place in a safe place. When play
Speaker 1: takes place in a dangerous place, that's sort of your
Speaker 1: brain constantly thinking what can I do to get out
Speaker 1: of this dangerous place? What am I doing wrong? Um?
Speaker 1: What about this place is dangerous? That's not helpful. But
Speaker 1: when you create a place that is just full of
Speaker 1: nothing that can hurt you, and openness. Then the play
Speaker 1: turns around and so again you're absolutely right. I mean,
Speaker 1: nothing in nature is intrinsically good or bad. Play is
Speaker 1: not intrinsically good or bad. But there are books like
Speaker 1: Winnie the Pooh, and I hope we've all had this
Speaker 1: experience reading WINNI the Pool or The Cat in the
Speaker 1: Hat is another one I talked about in the chapter.
Speaker 1: Those you will immediately feel as you read them the
Speaker 1: good kind of play happening. You will not worry about
Speaker 1: yourself reading The Cat in the Hat. Um, you will
Speaker 1: not worry about yourself reading Winnie the Pooh. You instead think, oh,
Speaker 1: my goodness, there are so many ridiculous fun things I
Speaker 1: can do today. Yeah, it's funny. I had not read Hey,
Speaker 1: Diddle Diddle in a long time, and just reading it,
Speaker 1: I had a just a brief flash of I think,
Speaker 1: similar to what you were saying about if you go
Speaker 1: back and read something from you know, when you were younger.
Speaker 1: I mean, I don't know how long it's been since
Speaker 1: I've heard that, but it gave me just a moment
Speaker 1: of sort of a playful feeling. Yeah, and the extort
Speaker 1: anything about that, It just shows you that anyone can
Speaker 1: invent literature because hey, Diddle Diddle, as far as we know,
Speaker 1: was invented by a mom as she was nursing her
Speaker 1: kid and was trying to sing the kid to sleep,
Speaker 1: and she just kind of comes up with this funny,
Speaker 1: spontaneous rhyme that catches on, and to me, it's an
Speaker 1: invitation to all of us to maybe play a little
Speaker 1: with our kids today. Most wonderful children's literature comes out
Speaker 1: of adults playing with their kids, messing out with their kids,
Speaker 1: telling stories to their kids. My favorite story when I
Speaker 1: was a child, was wread to me by my father
Speaker 1: when I was about four or five, is this really
Speaker 1: wacky book called Watership Down, which is about a bunch
Speaker 1: of rabbits who have like psychic abilla, favorite of mine,
Speaker 1: and that was just invented by a dad telling the story,
Speaker 1: just making up because his daughters just want to hear
Speaker 1: about rabbits all the time. And so a big part
Speaker 1: of that chapter is just to encourage you to play
Speaker 1: with your kids, to read to your kids, and to
Speaker 1: think up stories. You know, when your kid comes up
Speaker 1: with something wacky, don't be like, oh, that could never happen,
Speaker 1: and don't worry that they're never going to get a
Speaker 1: job if they think that way. Engage in the play
Speaker 1: with them. Get out of your worries, get out of
Speaker 1: your anxieties, join in their sense of possibility, make a
Speaker 1: story together. That's the opportunity created by not just Sooners literature,
Speaker 1: but that kind of whole mode of storytelling. That's awesome. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I love Watership Down, one of my favorite books of
Speaker 1: all time. That's the one I'm gonna go back and read.
Speaker 1: Oh absolutely, Well. Look, if there's one thing I could
Speaker 1: do in this podcast is to encourage everyone to go
Speaker 1: back and read Worship Down. It's totally wacky, totally wonderful,
Speaker 1: totally extraordinary, and it's just an indication. I mean, it's like,
Speaker 1: as humans we can do anything. I mean, when you
Speaker 1: read that book, your mind will just be blown and
Speaker 1: how imaginative and how strange and the potential inside us
Speaker 1: to do something that no one else would ever think.
Speaker 1: And we all have that potential inside us to do
Speaker 1: that completely unique new thing. And for me, Worship Down
Speaker 1: is one of those books that I Fristus Adams didn't
Speaker 1: write it, no one was going to write it, and
Speaker 1: all of our lives are that way too. If you
Speaker 1: don't live your life, no one else is gonna live it.
Speaker 1: No one else is going to do that beautiful, extraordinary,
Speaker 1: unique thing that you're gonna do. And I love literature
Speaker 1: that just breaks every mold and reminds us of just
Speaker 1: how unique our own lives can be. Well, I think
Speaker 1: that is a beautiful place to wrap up. If you
Speaker 1: don't live your own life, no one else will. It's
Speaker 1: a wonderful parting message. You and I are going to
Speaker 1: talk in the post show conversation about literature and spiritual experience.
Speaker 1: I'm looking forward to that. Listeners, if you'd like to
Speaker 1: get access to the post show conversation, all our other
Speaker 1: post show conversations, add free episodes and a special episode
Speaker 1: I do each week called a teaching Song and a Poem,
Speaker 1: you can go to One you Feed dot net slash
Speaker 1: join angus. Thank you so much. This has really been fun. Honestly, Eric,
Speaker 1: this has been the most joyful part of my day
Speaker 1: and I'm just absolutely thrilled that I got a chance
Speaker 1: to come on and share with you. Thanks so much.
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