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Speaker 1: Pushkin. The Happiness Lab's summer break is almost over. After

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Speaker 1: Labor Day, we'll be bringing you a new season with

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Speaker 1: a back to school reading list featuring some of my

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Speaker 1: favorite psychology books of the year. As usual, this new

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Speaker 1: season will be packed with happiness tips that I'm sure

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Speaker 1: you'll love, and our list includes some of my personal heroes.

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Speaker 1: So get ready for your favorite podcast host to be

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Speaker 1: nerding out of it. But before all that, I want

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Speaker 1: to share a conversation between two longtime friends of The

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Speaker 1: Happiness Lab. Today you'll get to hear a recent episode

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Speaker 1: of the ten Percent Happier podcast where the amazing Dan

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Speaker 1: Harris interviews my former mentor, Professor Bruce Hood. Bruce teaches

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Speaker 1: the same happiness class I teach at Yale to his

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Speaker 1: own students at the University of Bristol in England. If

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Speaker 1: you liked the episode, and really, why wouldn't you be

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Speaker 1: sure to add ten Percent Happier with Dan Harris to

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Speaker 1: your podcast?

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Speaker 2: Hey? Hey, everybody, how we doing Today? We're going to

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Speaker 2: talk to one of the world's leading happiness experts about

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Speaker 2: how to boost your levels of okayness and optimism while

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Speaker 2: turning down the volume on distraction. Ego centrism, self consciousness,

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Speaker 2: and toxic comparison. Pretty good recipe. Bruce Hood has been

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Speaker 2: the Professor of Developmental Psychology in Society at Bristol University

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Speaker 2: since nineteen ninety nine. He got a PhD in neuroscience

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Speaker 2: at Cambridge, followed by appointments at University College London, MIT

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Speaker 2: and a faculty professorship at Harvard. He researches child development,

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Speaker 2: origins of superstition, self identity, and ownership. For the past

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Speaker 2: five years, however, he's really been concentrating on how to

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Speaker 2: make his students happier. As you'll hear him say here,

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Speaker 2: he noticed a steep decline in happiness levels among his students,

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Speaker 2: which tracks with the overall data on this front. And

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Speaker 2: so he's written a book. I don't want to call

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Speaker 2: it new, but it's his latest book, and it's called

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Speaker 2: The Science of Happiness. Seven Lessons for Living Well. In

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Speaker 2: this conversation we talk about how do you define happiness

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Speaker 2: it's a pretty slippery term, actually, How to be happy

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Speaker 2: when you're in the middle of a shit show. How

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Speaker 2: to shift from being egocentric or self focused to allocentric

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Speaker 2: meaning essentially interconnected, The impacts of social isolation and how

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Speaker 2: to avoid that, the challenge of optimism and how to

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Speaker 2: overcome it and actually boost your optimism quotient, finding a

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Speaker 2: flow state through meditation, How to enhance your social connections

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Speaker 2: where quote unquote true authentic happiness comes from controlling your

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Speaker 2: attention and rejecting negative comparisons, the role of nature, and

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Speaker 2: much more. By the way, if you want to learn

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Speaker 2: how to reduce your overthinking, specifically which is a big

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Speaker 2: problem for many of us, myself included, if you want

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Speaker 2: to learn how to turn down the volume on that,

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Speaker 2: we have a custom guided meditation for you, specifically tailor

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Speaker 2: to this episode. It comes from our teacher of the month,

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Speaker 2: Don Mauricio. Throughout this entire month, we're offering these meditations

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Speaker 2: only to paid subscribers who sign up at Dan Harris

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Speaker 2: dot com. The analogy we like to use is that

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Speaker 2: you can think of this podcast as the lecture like

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Speaker 2: when you were in school, and the guided meditations are

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Speaker 2: like the lab where you pound the wisdom of the

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Speaker 2: conversation into your neurons. You can get all the meditations,

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Speaker 2: plus add free versions of this podcast and access to

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Speaker 2: my live video sessions where I guide meditation. You can

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Speaker 2: get all of that and much more over at Dan

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Speaker 2: Harris dot com. Join the party, Professor Bruce Hood, Welcome

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Speaker 2: to the show. Hello, Don, I'd love to get a

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Speaker 2: little backstory on this book on happiness. I understand it,

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Speaker 2: and you'll correct me if I run a foul of

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Speaker 2: the facts here. But you spend much of your career

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Speaker 2: as a neuroscientist studying childhood development and also teaching, and

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Speaker 2: you started to notice a change in your college students

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Speaker 2: which prompted you to pivot into looking at happiness. Am

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Speaker 2: I roughly in the zone here?

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Speaker 3: Yeah? Absolutely. I mean I've had a long and varied

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Speaker 3: career and i have a bit of a magpie. I'm

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Speaker 3: really interested in anything which stimulates my curiosity, and I've

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Speaker 3: always been fascinated by the human mind and how it develops.

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Speaker 3: So that was my interest in the neuroscience of child development,

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Speaker 3: and I've studied everything babies as young as twenty three

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Speaker 3: minutes up in the majority hospital, all the way up

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Speaker 3: into adulthood. But about twenty eighteen we had a tragic

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Speaker 3: set of events at Bristol University with a loss of

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Speaker 3: several students, and this was really the peak of a

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Speaker 3: rising tide in student mental health issues. And I was

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Speaker 3: feeling quine of desperate with all these unhappy young adults,

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Speaker 3: because for me, university should be the best time of

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Speaker 3: your life, the most rewarding, and yet they were so

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Speaker 3: preoccupied with their mental health and their performance that they

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Speaker 3: were becoming almost impossible to teach because they were really

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Speaker 3: so distressed. And by coincidence, I was looking around I

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Speaker 3: discovered that a former student of mine, Laurie Santos, who

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Speaker 3: I believe is a good friend of yours. Laurie had

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Speaker 3: encountered a very similar problem at Yale, and this led

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Speaker 3: me to think, well, it wasn't Bristol per se, It's

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Speaker 3: actually a sector wide issue. A whole generation of students

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Speaker 3: are increasingly unhappy. And she put together a course I

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Speaker 3: think it was called Psychology and the Good Life. And

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Speaker 3: I contacted Laurie, so this sounds really, really great, and Laurie,

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Speaker 3: being typically generous as she is, sent me in her

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Speaker 3: notes and some slides, and I put together my version

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Speaker 3: I called the Science of Happiness. I really just did

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Speaker 3: it on the off chance that might make some difference.

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Speaker 3: It wasn't a credit bearing course, it was just offered,

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Speaker 3: and I was at lunchtime. I remember it vividly. Six

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Speaker 3: hundred turned up and I didn't even have to advertise it,

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Speaker 3: so clearly there was a demand for this sort of information.

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Speaker 3: So that's how it started. And then the university were

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Speaker 3: so delighted by the response they said, look, can you

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Speaker 3: turn this into a credit bearing course, and that became

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Speaker 3: the unit that I now teach since twenty nineteen, and

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Speaker 3: like Laurie's course is very.

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Speaker 2: Popular and now a book, and now a book.

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Speaker 3: I mean, I've written a number of books, and as

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Speaker 3: I said, my interests are really in the human mind.

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Speaker 3: I'm fascinated by aspects of human thought that at first

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Speaker 3: glance doesn't seem more surprising, and then when you drill

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Speaker 3: down into it, it can be really interesting. And I'm

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Speaker 3: really fascinated by the theory behind the mechanisms. So there's

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Speaker 3: more than enough happiness books out there, but I thought

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Speaker 3: I could contribute something from my perspective, which is more

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Speaker 3: about why, more about the mechanisms of what generates or

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Speaker 3: gets in the way of achieving happiness, And that's what

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Speaker 3: I felt was the contribution to the literature.

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Speaker 2: Do you have a definition of happiness?

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Speaker 3: A question I'm often asked for me. I just simply say,

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Speaker 3: it's a sense of things being comfortable. I mean that

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Speaker 3: in a very general term, it's emotionally comfortable, a sense

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Speaker 3: of fear being comfortable, just that sense of not complacency,

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Speaker 3: but comfort. Things are okay. That's what I mean by happiness,

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Speaker 3: though of course people use it in different ways. Sometimes

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Speaker 3: they're referring to your mood and your relation or your joy.

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Speaker 3: Sometimes it's people are referring to success, they're content. But

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Speaker 3: for me it's comfort.

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Speaker 2: Comfort Or would you say okayness would be a synonym okayness.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, if that was a word, yeah, it would be okayness.

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Speaker 3: Things are just going okay. Yeah.

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Speaker 2: Can you have okayness and happiness and comfort even in

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Speaker 2: the midst of life's inevitable ups and downs.

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Speaker 3: Well, that's the interesting thing, isn't it. I mean, in

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Speaker 3: many ways it could have been the size of unhappiness,

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Speaker 3: because that's more or less the default. Our lives are

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Speaker 3: full of challenges, and it's the extent to which we

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Speaker 3: can address these challenges and rebound back for them, I

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Speaker 3: think is really what marks the difference between someone who

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Speaker 3: regards their life as being relatively happy compared to someone

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Speaker 3: who feels unhappy, someone who's unhappy tends to feel that

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Speaker 3: they're not progressing, they're uncomfortable, they're feeling stressed, they're not

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Speaker 3: joying many aspects of it, and very often it's because

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Speaker 3: they're unable to address whatever obstacles are happening to them.

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Speaker 3: And we all face them and on the course, that's

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Speaker 3: what we kind of teach. It's really how to process

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Speaker 3: those negative events, how to deal with them, how to

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Speaker 3: resolve them, how to build resilience. And I think that's

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Speaker 3: really what we're trying to achieve.

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Speaker 2: In the dharma and Buddhism by which I'm deeply influenced.

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Speaker 2: The word that's coming to mind is equanimity, which I

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Speaker 2: think of as like an okayness in the face of

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Speaker 2: life's catastrophes.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, I think that captures it very well. And the

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Speaker 3: other thing, of course, is that there's no such thing

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Speaker 3: as permanent happiness. That would be a very awkward and

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Speaker 3: weird state of mind. In many ways, you have to

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Speaker 3: experience the negative in order to appreciate when things are

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Speaker 3: going well for you. But again, it's this stability to

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Speaker 3: overcome this in the speed at which you can do that,

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Speaker 3: it's when you're wallowing in misery and wallowing in those

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Speaker 3: negative thoughts. That's generally what um happiness is to me

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Speaker 3: at least.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm just thinking of my own life. I've been

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Speaker 2: very public about this. I went through a three plus

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Speaker 2: year divorce from my former co founders of a meditation

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Speaker 2: app that I co founded, and it was very traumatic

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Speaker 2: for me. That's not to cast dispersions at my former

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Speaker 2: co founders. It took two to tango in this separation,

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Speaker 2: but the amount of anger and anxiety that I felt

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Speaker 2: in those years was intense, probably the most difficult thing

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Speaker 2: I've gone through as an adult. And yet I was

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Speaker 2: generally happy during the whole thing. Yes, my relationships are

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Speaker 2: really good, and my outlook was reasonably positive, and there

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Speaker 2: were challenges in my life insomnia, anger, anxiety, and also

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Speaker 2: they were great years in my life.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, And I think it reflects the effort you put

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Speaker 3: into that business and the personal attachment to it, and

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Speaker 3: those are exactly the sorts of situations where you can

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Speaker 3: feel really, you know, not so much desperate, but it

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Speaker 3: really can impact on you more than you would imagine.

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Speaker 3: I've done a startup in the past, and it's your

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Speaker 3: little child, it's your baby. You know you want it

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Speaker 3: to grow, and you want it to thrive, and you're

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Speaker 3: very protective of it, and of course when it starts

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Speaker 3: to be threatened or taken away from you, it's a

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Speaker 3: separation anxiety, a separation loss. So I totally get it.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, my point was less about the loss and more

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Speaker 2: about the fact that you can be happy if you're

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Speaker 2: working on the skills that we're going to talk about

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Speaker 2: that you describe in your book. One can be happy

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Speaker 2: in the midst of a shit show.

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Speaker 3: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, No, I agree with that as well.

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Speaker 3: I mean, we all have facets of our life and

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Speaker 3: sometimes it's not always working perfectly. But in general, going

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Speaker 3: back to that opening statement, it's a general sense that

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Speaker 3: things are okay as it were on balance.

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Speaker 2: Yes, the book is rctured around seven lessons. Let's walk

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Speaker 2: through them. I don't know if we'll get through all

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Speaker 2: of them, but they're really interesting. Lesson one is alter

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Speaker 2: your ego, which I really like as a phrase. What

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Speaker 2: do you mean by that?

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Speaker 3: So one of the problems I think is that most

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Speaker 3: of us live inside our heads. What I mean by

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Speaker 3: that is our conscious awareness and our feelings, our emotions

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Speaker 3: are the contents of our minds, and so we start

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Speaker 3: off as a very egocentric individual. As children, we literally

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Speaker 3: have difficulty conceiving other people's minds and imagining what other

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Speaker 3: people are thinking about. And that's actually one of the

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Speaker 3: major developmental processes over childhood is learning to appreciate that

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Speaker 3: other people have different thoughts and have different feelings and

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Speaker 3: reading other people and then learning to cooperate and communicate

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Speaker 3: and interact with them in a way. But we never

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Speaker 3: lose the egocentric bias or dominance, so we still tend

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Speaker 3: to see things from our own perspective. That can be

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Speaker 3: okay unless you start to turn in on yourself and

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Speaker 3: start to become your own word critic. And I think

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Speaker 3: this is the point, because children are very egocentric. They

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Speaker 3: think they're the fastest runners, and they're there. They always

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Speaker 3: kind of tried to show up to their parents. But

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Speaker 3: as they start to become unculturated and mix with other children,

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Speaker 3: then a lot of the anxieties and social statuses start

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Speaker 3: to enter into that kind of those thought processes, so

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Speaker 3: they start to develop aspects which are threatening self esteem,

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Speaker 3: and we start to become more aware of our status

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Speaker 3: and our standing and hyper sensitive to criticism. And that's

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Speaker 3: why adolescence is very much typlified by a sense of

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Speaker 3: wanting to belong, wanting to be accepted, and why rejection

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Speaker 3: is so painful because we're such a social animal, and

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Speaker 3: I know you've talked about this on previous podcasts, that

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Speaker 3: is absolutely imperative to kind of get on with everyone,

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Speaker 3: because the worst thing you could do is isolate ostracize.

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Speaker 3: So when I say alter your ego, I think you

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Speaker 3: should shift from a kind of very sod inward looking

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Speaker 3: sense of self to considering and integrating with other people.

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Speaker 3: So I call it shift from egocentric to allocentric thinking.

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Speaker 3: And the reason that really helped is I think it

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Speaker 3: reduces the pain or the pressure that you feel when

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Speaker 3: you see things in context, because you can start to

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Speaker 3: see other people have things going on in their lives.

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Speaker 3: And when you become more appreciative of other people's lives,

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Speaker 3: then I think it puts yours into perspective. And of

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Speaker 3: course you get the benefits of social connection or the

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Speaker 3: support that others can give you. If you're just dealing

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Speaker 3: with your own shit show, as you say, then it

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Speaker 3: can be incredibly isolating and amplified. And that's why I

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Speaker 3: think we need to become more integrated, and all the

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Speaker 3: evidence is totally in support of the notion of social connection.

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Speaker 2: So how does one move from egocentrism to allocentrism.

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Speaker 3: Well, many of the positive psychology interventions that people typically

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Speaker 3: do are effectively doing that. So if you think of

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Speaker 3: expressing gratitude or acts of kindness where you're actually force

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Speaker 3: fully taking into consideration other people's circumstances. If you're doing

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Speaker 3: an active kindness, you're literally reaching out to other people

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Speaker 3: and trying to help them, so you kind of have

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Speaker 3: to be a bit mindful of what their thoughts are about.

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Speaker 3: If you're writing gratitude, you're starting to see yourself in

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Speaker 3: the context of not only how lucky you are, but

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Speaker 3: the way that other people have helped you along the way,

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Speaker 3: and therefore you're sort of expressing that connectedness with others

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Speaker 3: around you. So those are two simple ways you can

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Speaker 3: do that. One of the techniques I like, and I

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Speaker 3: use it often in my public lectures is Ethan Cross's

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Speaker 3: work on psychological distancing, where you use language literally to

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Speaker 3: get out of your head. So most of us think

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Speaker 3: in the first person, you know, I, me, and so on.

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Speaker 3: But if you start talking about yourself in the third person,

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Speaker 3: like Bruce is having this conversation with Dan. That linguistic

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Speaker 3: shift tricks the mind of this ecocentric perspective, and one

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Speaker 3: of the benefits of that is it reduces sort of

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Speaker 3: the impact of negative thoughts. But we never, unless we're royalty,

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Speaker 3: we never talk about ourselves in the third person. It's

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Speaker 3: very unusual thing to do. So it's a kind of

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Speaker 3: neat little party trick that I use to show that

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Speaker 3: if you think about a problem and I say, okay,

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Speaker 3: imagine something that's gone really terribly wrong for you at

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Speaker 3: the moment I talk about it using IE and express

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Speaker 3: your feelings using I and me, people will then feel

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Speaker 3: pretty rubbish. But if I say, now, repeat that, but

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Speaker 3: talk about as Bruce is having this discussion and he

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Speaker 3: thinks it's not going so well and he's worried about.

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Speaker 3: When you distance yourself using language, then somehow it doesn't

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Speaker 3: seem to affect you as much. So that's another kind

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Speaker 3: of simple trick you can do. But yeah, a lot

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Speaker 3: of the things that we do are social interactions by

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Speaker 3: their very nature take us out of this very inwardly

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Speaker 3: looking way in order to kind of interact and communicate

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Speaker 3: with other people.

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Speaker 2: Hard to do in an era of increasing isolation driven

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Speaker 2: by rampant individualism and technology. I want to pick up

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Speaker 2: on and elaborate upon. You had three suggestions when it

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Speaker 2: comes from moving from ecocentrism to allocentrism, and I want

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Speaker 2: to just expand on two of them. The list was

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Speaker 2: acts of kindness, expressing gratitude and psychological distancing. So in

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Speaker 2: terms of acts of kindness, one little hack within a

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Speaker 2: hack comes from my meditation teacher, Joseph Goldstein, who I

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Speaker 2: quote all the time to the point of closing in

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Speaker 2: on plagiarism, except for I do give him credit. One

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Speaker 2: of his little techniques is if you have a thought

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Speaker 2: to do something generous. These thoughts come to us all

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Speaker 2: day long, but mostly we squelch them. Ah, they may

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Speaker 2: not want it, or I don't have time to do that,

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Speaker 2: or actually that's too expensive. But we have these thoughts.

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Speaker 2: If you can try to make a practice of tuning

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Speaker 2: into the thoughts and not getting suckered by the second thoughts.

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Speaker 2: So when you have a thought to give, do the thing.

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Speaker 2: Joseph's been practicing this for many, many years, and I'm

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Speaker 2: more recently started. I don't always follow through, but when

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Speaker 2: I do follow through. It's incredibly useful. Like walking down

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Speaker 2: the street in New York City and I see somebody

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Speaker 2: asking for money, but like, you know, my spare changes

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Speaker 2: in my backpack and I'm gonna rush, and then like

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Speaker 2: I'll get ten feet down the street and be like,

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Speaker 2: you know what, fuck it. Let me just get the

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Speaker 2: money out and go back and do it. And it

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Speaker 2: always feels good. Yeah, And then the other thing to

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Speaker 2: pick up on on psychological distancing. Ethan Cross has been

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Speaker 2: on the show several times. I'm deeply influenced by this

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Speaker 2: note of psychological distancing, especially in moments of suffering where

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Speaker 2: you can use your own name or I'll say dude,

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Speaker 2: like dude, yeah, this is a brutal situation. I use

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Speaker 2: it a lot with insomnia. You're likely to get two

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Speaker 2: hours of sleep tonight, and you are likely to be

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Speaker 2: reasonably unhappy most of tomorrow. But you have been through

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Speaker 2: this a million times. You will be fine and the

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Speaker 2: next night, you know you will get sleep. So you're good.

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Speaker 2: You're good, and it's enormously powerful.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, I agree entirely. And it's like, rather than being

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Speaker 3: a critic, it's like being your coach, yes, and hearing

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Speaker 3: that support from someone else is just what you need

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Speaker 3: sometimes to get perspective. But left to our own devices,

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Speaker 3: we have this kind of tendency to spiral inward and

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Speaker 3: blow everything out of proportion. So that's really what that

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Speaker 3: kind of chapter is trying to unpick. And also the

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Speaker 3: whole sense of self is something that's fascinating me. If

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Speaker 3: you're a Buddhist, then you'll be fairly aware of the

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Speaker 3: kind of controversy of the whole issue what is the self?

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Speaker 3: And for me, I love the idea it's constructed, which

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Speaker 3: means can change. And so I really embrace the Buddhist

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Speaker 3: approach on that, which is to see ourselves as a

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Speaker 3: story unfolding and a story which can be rewritten and

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Speaker 3: change over time, which means that nothing is inevitable. And

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Speaker 3: I think that's a hopeful message because very often when

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Speaker 3: you speak to people who are in the depth of despair,

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Speaker 3: one of the things they think is that things can

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Speaker 3: ever change. But they do change.

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Speaker 2: Yes, I think that is enormously powerful, enormously powerful. Just

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Speaker 2: on a definitional tip, I should have asked this earlier,

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Speaker 2: but can you define alocentric versus egocentric? I'm guessing that

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Speaker 2: egocentric is that your sense of self really is based

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Speaker 2: in your own ego, and alocentric is based in a

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Speaker 2: sense of all.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, so if you imagine we call them sociograms, if

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Speaker 3: you imagine yourself at the center and then all the

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Speaker 3: people around you and your spheres that were, and you

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Speaker 3: represent that as a series of arrows and how you're

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Speaker 3: connected to people. Someone who's overly egocentric will first of

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Speaker 3: all represent themselves as big and large and everyone else

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Speaker 3: is more diminutive, and it's all going in one direction.

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Speaker 3: It's all about me. We call them narcissists and sometimes

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Speaker 3: are very successful and rise to positions of power. But yeah,

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Speaker 3: we're not going to go there. That's all very well,

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Speaker 3: But unfortunately we can't all be narcissists because if that

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Speaker 3: was the case, then nothing would ever get done. You need,

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Speaker 3: as a social animal, we need to interact with each other.

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Speaker 3: Alocentric again, you can represent that as a socioground. But

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Speaker 3: now you can see the connections between the people outside

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Speaker 3: of your circle. You start to see that it's all

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Speaker 3: reciprocal and it all requires give and take, and you

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Speaker 3: see yourself as more interconnected with others around you. So

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Speaker 3: it's really that kind of distinction between yourself at the

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Speaker 3: center of your own universe, and anyone with a kind

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Speaker 3: of a young child will know what they're like. They

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Speaker 3: can be incredibly ecocentric, shifting from that kind of natural

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Speaker 3: developmental tendency to one where you're starting to take into

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Speaker 3: consideration the impact you have on others and also reciprocally

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Speaker 3: interact with them. And I think that's what I mean

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Speaker 3: by alo. It means other other folks are alcentric. So yeah,

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Speaker 3: that's the kind of general story that I think is

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Speaker 3: But we never lose the egocentric view, is what I'm saying.

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Speaker 3: We've got to keep fighting that, We've got to keep

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Speaker 3: working on that, and that's why I think a lot

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Speaker 3: of the positive psychology interventions work. Even something like meditation,

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Speaker 3: you know that works because it tries to quell the

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Speaker 3: disturbed mind. As you well know, if you're focusing on

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Speaker 3: your breath, you're shifting it away from the internal dialogue.

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Speaker 3: You're monitoring either your breathing or you're monitoring external sources,

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Speaker 3: So you're shifting the attentional focus away from the inner monologue,

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Speaker 3: is what I'm saying.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, just a slight tweak, it's not so much quelling

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Speaker 2: the disturbing mind. It's accepting the disturbing mind, which then

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Speaker 2: leads to a kind of calming or dissipation, because you're

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Speaker 2: seeing that it consists of fluxing constituent parts.

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Speaker 3: That's right, the form of callague of mind. Dan Wagner

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Speaker 3: used to talk about this ironic thought suppression. So if

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Speaker 3: you try to stop your thoughts, so you try to

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Speaker 3: suppress them, then you get a stronger rebound effect because

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Speaker 3: the act of trying to stop yourself having a thought

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Speaker 3: makes it paradoxically stronger. So that's why the acceptance is

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Speaker 3: a better way of dealing with it, rather than drawing

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Speaker 3: attention towards them.

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Speaker 2: I want to go back to your social graph. Is

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Speaker 2: that what you were calling it social sociogram sociogram?

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Speaker 3: So, Dan, if you were to draw a sociogram, it

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Speaker 3: would include obviously your nearest and dearest, and you'd have

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Speaker 3: the strength of your relationship there, and then there'd be

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Speaker 3: people on the further away from you in your circle

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Speaker 3: of friends, and then there'd be the people that you

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Speaker 3: encounter on a daily basis. So you can represent these

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Speaker 3: as interconnections. You can represent the strength of that as

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Speaker 3: the thickness of the line if you like, but as

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Speaker 3: the extent to which you feel that you're reciprocating. So

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Speaker 3: you might feel this very strong reciprocal relationship with your

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Speaker 3: spouse hopefully, or you're near some dearest, but then if

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Speaker 3: it's others outside of that, you could see as being

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Speaker 3: weaker or stronger, more reciprocal or not. So it's really

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Speaker 3: how you kind of visualize our interactions. It's used by

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Speaker 3: psychologists and sociologists to represent our map out the networks

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Speaker 3: that we engage in.

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Speaker 2: The reason why I went back to it is that

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Speaker 2: thinking in visual analogies, and I'll run one by you.

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Speaker 2: The self in the era of social media seems to

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Speaker 2: exist in a hall of mirrors where everything reflects back

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Speaker 2: upon you. If you're looking at other people, you're comparing

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Speaker 2: yourself to them, and if you're posting things, you're waiting

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Speaker 2: for people to like it. It really reinforces, and I think

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Speaker 2: a quite insidious way, egocentrism. Whereas in the Dharma, the

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Speaker 2: analogy they use is Indra's net, where you are a

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Speaker 2: node in a vast web, and at each node of

431
00:22:54,236 --> 00:22:57,196
Speaker 2: that web there is a mirror that reflects all the

432
00:22:57,276 --> 00:23:00,996
Speaker 2: other nodes. So basically your head is pulled out of

433
00:23:01,036 --> 00:23:07,236
Speaker 2: your ass. You're not stuck in sollabsism, you are embedded

434
00:23:07,276 --> 00:23:10,916
Speaker 2: in a larger universe. That view is really soothing.

435
00:23:11,876 --> 00:23:14,716
Speaker 3: Yes, I agree with that entirely. I think your comments

436
00:23:14,716 --> 00:23:17,356
Speaker 3: about social media are spot on. In many ways. It's

437
00:23:17,396 --> 00:23:21,076
Speaker 3: antisocial because it's this sort of compare and despair phenomena

438
00:23:21,076 --> 00:23:24,516
Speaker 3: that we keep hearing about. That people are only validating

439
00:23:24,556 --> 00:23:27,676
Speaker 3: themselves or seeking validation the entire time, which is like

440
00:23:27,716 --> 00:23:30,276
Speaker 3: a very needy child. So I go back to this

441
00:23:30,396 --> 00:23:32,636
Speaker 3: sort of ecocentric bias that a lot of us are

442
00:23:32,636 --> 00:23:35,396
Speaker 3: born with. Well, we're all born with it. It's the

443
00:23:35,436 --> 00:23:37,396
Speaker 3: extent to which we can relinquish it and let go

444
00:23:37,476 --> 00:23:40,636
Speaker 3: of that and see ourselves as more interconnected is really

445
00:23:40,716 --> 00:23:43,836
Speaker 3: the path of becoming a happier person, because otherwise you're

446
00:23:43,876 --> 00:23:46,036
Speaker 3: always going to be comparing and you're always going to

447
00:23:46,036 --> 00:23:49,636
Speaker 3: feel inadequate, and it doesn't matter on whatever dimension you're

448
00:23:49,636 --> 00:23:52,396
Speaker 3: thinking about, there's always someone who's doing better than you.

449
00:23:52,436 --> 00:23:55,516
Speaker 3: And if you succumb to social media and try to

450
00:23:55,596 --> 00:23:59,716
Speaker 3: measure up to all these unrealistic measures of success, you're

451
00:23:59,756 --> 00:24:02,596
Speaker 3: just never going to really do. So that's why it's

452
00:24:02,676 --> 00:24:05,236
Speaker 3: really not the best place to spend your time. I

453
00:24:05,276 --> 00:24:07,036
Speaker 3: think people are kind of wising up to it. But

454
00:24:07,716 --> 00:24:10,236
Speaker 3: you know, I look around around on Metropolis, So you

455
00:24:10,236 --> 00:24:12,316
Speaker 3: go through a city, everyone is staring at their phones.

456
00:24:12,716 --> 00:24:17,196
Speaker 3: They're taking away what were the basic niceties of exchanging information,

457
00:24:17,396 --> 00:24:20,116
Speaker 3: like asking for directions or whatever. All the sorts of

458
00:24:20,116 --> 00:24:23,916
Speaker 3: things which required us to have those little subtle communications

459
00:24:23,916 --> 00:24:28,156
Speaker 3: have disappeared. And that's why I think we're becoming increasingly isolated.

460
00:24:28,196 --> 00:24:31,796
Speaker 2: As you say, it's counterintuitive because you would think the

461
00:24:31,796 --> 00:24:33,836
Speaker 2: best way to get happy is to focus on yourself,

462
00:24:33,916 --> 00:24:36,596
Speaker 2: and yet that's only partly true.

463
00:24:37,156 --> 00:24:39,716
Speaker 3: Yeah, and I think there is a generational thing here.

464
00:24:39,756 --> 00:24:42,196
Speaker 3: I mean this whole identity thing which was driving a

465
00:24:42,236 --> 00:24:45,316
Speaker 3: lot of the younger generations focusing on the self, prioritizing

466
00:24:45,836 --> 00:24:49,556
Speaker 3: self care. I mean, yeah, sure you should look after yourself,

467
00:24:49,556 --> 00:24:51,636
Speaker 3: but not to the exclusion of others around you. And

468
00:24:51,676 --> 00:24:54,636
Speaker 3: I think it's getting the balance right. What I'm not suggesting,

469
00:24:54,636 --> 00:24:55,956
Speaker 3: by the way, I should just say, is not that

470
00:24:55,996 --> 00:24:59,316
Speaker 3: you become self less. I think that's equally bad. You

471
00:24:59,356 --> 00:25:02,396
Speaker 3: need to get the balance right because it's the interconnection

472
00:25:02,516 --> 00:25:05,316
Speaker 3: of things which is the importance. I think we talked

473
00:25:05,316 --> 00:25:07,276
Speaker 3: about that in the later chapter, which we're not there yet.

474
00:25:07,196 --> 00:25:10,916
Speaker 2: But yeah, I just put up button on this first lesson.

475
00:25:11,236 --> 00:25:13,436
Speaker 2: I have a little tattoo that says for the benefit

476
00:25:13,476 --> 00:25:17,236
Speaker 2: of all beings, and that is not a call for

477
00:25:17,476 --> 00:25:23,556
Speaker 2: calamitous altruism because all beings includes me, So it really

478
00:25:23,596 --> 00:25:26,156
Speaker 2: does speak to a balance. Yeah, you did use the

479
00:25:26,156 --> 00:25:28,596
Speaker 2: word isolation, and that does bring us to lesson number two,

480
00:25:28,596 --> 00:25:31,756
Speaker 2: which is to avoid isolation. Can you say more about that?

481
00:25:32,516 --> 00:25:36,516
Speaker 3: It stems from this well established finding that of all

482
00:25:36,556 --> 00:25:40,556
Speaker 3: the things which contribute to our earlier deaths, it turns

483
00:25:40,556 --> 00:25:43,156
Speaker 3: out that isolation loneliness seems to play one of the

484
00:25:43,196 --> 00:25:46,476
Speaker 3: most important factors, which I think was really striking when

485
00:25:46,476 --> 00:25:49,676
Speaker 3: this data started to merge. It's not just our physical

486
00:25:49,676 --> 00:25:52,956
Speaker 3: but it's our mental. Health depends on our social connections,

487
00:25:52,956 --> 00:25:57,396
Speaker 3: and that's why we're so sensitive to any potential threat

488
00:25:57,436 --> 00:26:00,796
Speaker 3: of being isolated or ostracized or rejected. That's why we

489
00:26:00,836 --> 00:26:04,916
Speaker 3: feel it emotionally. Emotions have the same word as motivation

490
00:26:04,996 --> 00:26:08,076
Speaker 3: that come from the Latin meaning to move, So emotions

491
00:26:08,156 --> 00:26:10,916
Speaker 3: drive us to do things. They move us to do things,

492
00:26:10,996 --> 00:26:12,476
Speaker 3: and one of the things we're driven to do is

493
00:26:12,476 --> 00:26:16,996
Speaker 3: avoid being isolated because it's so critically important to us

494
00:26:17,316 --> 00:26:20,476
Speaker 3: in our evolution. No old people, by the way, I mean,

495
00:26:20,516 --> 00:26:22,396
Speaker 3: I would say whenever I've said those people say, well,

496
00:26:22,436 --> 00:26:25,476
Speaker 3: I kind of like my isolation, So I would say,

497
00:26:25,476 --> 00:26:28,036
Speaker 3: of course, there are moments of solitude which can be

498
00:26:28,196 --> 00:26:32,356
Speaker 3: very beneficial, but in general, most of our behavior is

499
00:26:32,476 --> 00:26:35,476
Speaker 3: driven towards our social interactions. Yeah.

500
00:26:35,516 --> 00:26:39,516
Speaker 2: Look, there's a spectrum introversion, extraversion spectrum, and if you're

501
00:26:39,596 --> 00:26:42,956
Speaker 2: further along the introversion spectrum, you don't need as many

502
00:26:43,036 --> 00:26:45,796
Speaker 2: social interactions or close friends, but you do need some.

503
00:26:46,476 --> 00:26:49,476
Speaker 2: And also there's a question of agency. Are you isolated

504
00:26:49,556 --> 00:26:53,076
Speaker 2: because you've chosen in a healthy way to get some

505
00:26:53,196 --> 00:26:56,276
Speaker 2: alone time, or are you isolating because you've chosen in

506
00:26:56,316 --> 00:27:00,796
Speaker 2: an unhealthy anger or fear based way, or because you've

507
00:27:01,036 --> 00:27:06,316
Speaker 2: been shunned or excommunicated by your own personal tribe. That

508
00:27:06,516 --> 00:27:08,676
Speaker 2: agency factors matters a lot.

509
00:27:09,436 --> 00:27:12,436
Speaker 3: Yeah. Nelson Mandela wrote about it in his autobiography The

510
00:27:12,476 --> 00:27:14,436
Speaker 3: Long Walk to Freedom. He talked about his time on

511
00:27:14,556 --> 00:27:17,836
Speaker 3: Robin Island when he was put into solitary confinement, and

512
00:27:17,876 --> 00:27:19,756
Speaker 3: he said it was the worst. People prefer to be

513
00:27:19,876 --> 00:27:23,556
Speaker 3: physically tortured rather than isolated, So that just speaks to

514
00:27:23,636 --> 00:27:26,316
Speaker 3: the power of that is for people who require.

515
00:27:25,956 --> 00:27:28,196
Speaker 2: That you have some data in the book about the

516
00:27:28,196 --> 00:27:32,796
Speaker 2: impact of social isolation on pain tolerance and reaction to stress.

517
00:27:32,876 --> 00:27:34,276
Speaker 2: Can you say a little bit more about that.

518
00:27:34,876 --> 00:27:37,316
Speaker 3: Yeah, this is not my work directly. I'm referring to

519
00:27:37,796 --> 00:27:40,076
Speaker 3: a series of Actually, there's a bunch of researchers doing this.

520
00:27:40,516 --> 00:27:45,116
Speaker 3: There's work with his epidemiology work looking at morbidity risks. Famously,

521
00:27:45,956 --> 00:27:50,196
Speaker 3: loneliness has a morbidity risk which is equivalent to fifteen

522
00:27:50,196 --> 00:27:53,516
Speaker 3: spooking fifteen cigarettes today. I think it is a famous biteline.

523
00:27:53,676 --> 00:27:57,796
Speaker 3: But then there's more experimental studies looking at inducing pain. So,

524
00:27:57,876 --> 00:28:01,156
Speaker 3: for example, you can give people electric shocks and people

525
00:28:01,196 --> 00:28:04,236
Speaker 3: will tolerate much higher levels of pain if they're with

526
00:28:04,316 --> 00:28:07,276
Speaker 3: somebody with her with a partner. All of these sort

527
00:28:07,316 --> 00:28:10,036
Speaker 3: of speak to the beneficial effect of having the support

528
00:28:10,156 --> 00:28:12,756
Speaker 3: around you. I know you were speaking to Robert Woldinger.

529
00:28:12,796 --> 00:28:15,796
Speaker 3: I think there's some evidence from the Harvard study showing

530
00:28:15,836 --> 00:28:19,396
Speaker 3: again that social isolation is a really major contributing factor

531
00:28:19,556 --> 00:28:22,556
Speaker 3: to earlier death. So I think these are all pointing

532
00:28:22,636 --> 00:28:26,116
Speaker 3: along the same lines that there's a real benefit to

533
00:28:26,236 --> 00:28:30,076
Speaker 3: having good, strong social relationships. And now, of course social

534
00:28:30,076 --> 00:28:32,836
Speaker 3: support provides the law practical things as well, you know,

535
00:28:33,116 --> 00:28:35,796
Speaker 3: just looking after your health, having someone tell you, you know,

536
00:28:35,836 --> 00:28:37,676
Speaker 3: maybe you shouldn't be doing this, maybe you shouldn't be

537
00:28:37,716 --> 00:28:39,876
Speaker 3: doing that. So I think there's lots of benefits.

538
00:28:40,476 --> 00:28:43,876
Speaker 2: Yeah. Waldinger's work has been very influential on mine. For

539
00:28:44,036 --> 00:28:47,516
Speaker 2: those who don't know him, he's the latest director of

540
00:28:47,596 --> 00:28:50,076
Speaker 2: the Harvard Study for Adult Development. It's one of the

541
00:28:50,116 --> 00:28:53,196
Speaker 2: longest running studies in the history of science and following

542
00:28:53,196 --> 00:28:56,356
Speaker 2: many generations of families in the Boston area trying to

543
00:28:56,356 --> 00:28:57,996
Speaker 2: get a sense of what are the variables that lead

544
00:28:58,036 --> 00:29:00,636
Speaker 2: to a long and healthy life and dumb most important

545
00:29:00,716 --> 00:29:03,876
Speaker 2: variable is the quality of your relationships. And I often,

546
00:29:04,556 --> 00:29:06,436
Speaker 2: you know, wag my finger at people and say, look,

547
00:29:06,476 --> 00:29:09,556
Speaker 2: we're in an era of optimization. Everybody's tracking their steps,

548
00:29:09,596 --> 00:29:12,756
Speaker 2: tracking their sleep, trying to achieve kotosis, whatever it is.

549
00:29:13,076 --> 00:29:16,076
Speaker 2: But this is the thing to optimize, and very few

550
00:29:16,076 --> 00:29:18,836
Speaker 2: people are talking about this on social media. So let

551
00:29:18,836 --> 00:29:21,276
Speaker 2: me put it to you. If lesson number two in

552
00:29:21,316 --> 00:29:24,036
Speaker 2: your book is to avoid isolation, what are the practical

553
00:29:24,076 --> 00:29:26,156
Speaker 2: steps we can do to get there?

554
00:29:26,596 --> 00:29:29,076
Speaker 3: Well, I think reaching out to people in a way

555
00:29:29,076 --> 00:29:32,796
Speaker 3: that doesn't necessarily involve technology. I mean a phone, of

556
00:29:32,836 --> 00:29:35,596
Speaker 3: course is a good way to connect, but basically reconnect

557
00:29:35,596 --> 00:29:38,876
Speaker 3: with people in a way which is meaningful, rather than

558
00:29:38,916 --> 00:29:42,476
Speaker 3: just sending a text or something which is cursory. People

559
00:29:42,516 --> 00:29:45,316
Speaker 3: generally don't do that because they're kind of fearful that

560
00:29:45,476 --> 00:29:47,956
Speaker 3: maybe it'll be awkward, maybe they don't want to impose.

561
00:29:48,796 --> 00:29:51,036
Speaker 3: But I think I'll talk about this in a lated chapter.

562
00:29:51,196 --> 00:29:53,556
Speaker 3: It turns out, and this is Nick Apley's work from Chicago,

563
00:29:53,636 --> 00:29:58,636
Speaker 3: that actually people really enjoy the spontaneous connections. Other things

564
00:29:58,636 --> 00:30:00,876
Speaker 3: I've talked about in the book are all about joining

565
00:30:00,916 --> 00:30:03,676
Speaker 3: a choir, finding the third place, which is disappearing. It

566
00:30:03,756 --> 00:30:06,796
Speaker 3: used to be the sort of opportunities just to spontaneously

567
00:30:06,836 --> 00:30:09,676
Speaker 3: meet other people. So you know, you get a dog,

568
00:30:09,876 --> 00:30:11,596
Speaker 3: go for a walk with the park of the dog,

569
00:30:11,636 --> 00:30:13,916
Speaker 3: and you soon start talking to other dog owners. This

570
00:30:14,116 --> 00:30:17,156
Speaker 3: is phenomenon that when you've got a shared interest, then

571
00:30:17,196 --> 00:30:20,036
Speaker 3: you can start interacting with other humans. So I think

572
00:30:20,036 --> 00:30:24,516
Speaker 3: it's just recognizing every opportunity you can to forge those

573
00:30:24,636 --> 00:30:27,516
Speaker 3: social connections and take it and speaking exchange and a

574
00:30:27,556 --> 00:30:31,476
Speaker 3: compliment with a barista or whoever's ser You know, very

575
00:30:31,476 --> 00:30:33,516
Speaker 3: often their days are very mundane, and people are not

576
00:30:33,556 --> 00:30:36,356
Speaker 3: talking to them, but make the effort just to reach

577
00:30:36,396 --> 00:30:39,156
Speaker 3: out to others because they will probably enjoy it more

578
00:30:39,196 --> 00:30:39,996
Speaker 3: than you imagine.

579
00:30:40,396 --> 00:30:42,716
Speaker 2: Barbara Fredrickson, who's been on this show, has done a

580
00:30:42,756 --> 00:30:45,596
Speaker 2: lot of good work around what are called micro interactions,

581
00:30:45,636 --> 00:30:48,556
Speaker 2: talking to the barista, the mailman, people you're passing in

582
00:30:48,556 --> 00:30:51,996
Speaker 2: the hallway on the street, and that's like an under tapped,

583
00:30:52,156 --> 00:30:55,996
Speaker 2: overlooked source of happiness in your daily life. But just

584
00:30:56,036 --> 00:30:58,276
Speaker 2: want to go back to something you said about third places.

585
00:30:58,356 --> 00:30:59,956
Speaker 2: What can you define that for people?

586
00:31:00,436 --> 00:31:03,356
Speaker 3: Well, the third places were basically not work and not home.

587
00:31:03,516 --> 00:31:05,636
Speaker 3: And they used to be the bars or the clubs

588
00:31:05,796 --> 00:31:08,836
Speaker 3: or all those social gatherings that where people could meet.

589
00:31:09,156 --> 00:31:11,676
Speaker 3: They didn't necessarily have to be their spouse or their

590
00:31:11,756 --> 00:31:14,676
Speaker 3: work colleagues. It was other people where they could talk

591
00:31:14,716 --> 00:31:17,036
Speaker 3: about things that they wouldn't necessarily talk about with their

592
00:31:17,076 --> 00:31:18,996
Speaker 3: spouse or with their work colleagues. And I think that

593
00:31:19,516 --> 00:31:23,116
Speaker 3: is rapidly disappearing, the Bowling Alley culture. I can't remember who.

594
00:31:23,196 --> 00:31:25,916
Speaker 2: It's a Robert Putnam bowling alone.

595
00:31:25,596 --> 00:31:28,876
Speaker 3: That's right, Yeah, I think he coined that term. It's

596
00:31:29,116 --> 00:31:32,076
Speaker 3: what's fast disappearing in a world of technology, where you

597
00:31:32,116 --> 00:31:35,516
Speaker 3: can immerse yourself entirely in virtual worlds, and so a

598
00:31:35,556 --> 00:31:38,036
Speaker 3: lot of the third spaces are disappearing. I mean they're disappearing.

599
00:31:38,076 --> 00:31:40,316
Speaker 3: In the UK, we used to have youth holes and

600
00:31:40,476 --> 00:31:43,356
Speaker 3: places where the kids were hanging out and doing things,

601
00:31:43,436 --> 00:31:47,436
Speaker 3: but now that seems to be rapidly evaporating. So yeah,

602
00:31:47,476 --> 00:31:51,756
Speaker 3: it's those places which facilitate communications with people who aren't

603
00:31:51,796 --> 00:31:54,556
Speaker 3: necessarily your immediate family or your work colleagues.

604
00:31:54,676 --> 00:31:57,716
Speaker 2: Yeah. The Surgeon General are now former Surgeon General of

605
00:31:57,756 --> 00:32:02,236
Speaker 2: the THEI Murthy. His recommendation here is volunteer. You know,

606
00:32:02,276 --> 00:32:04,876
Speaker 2: if there's no bowling league near you, just volunteer at

607
00:32:04,876 --> 00:32:08,836
Speaker 2: a soup kitchen or a had adoption agency or whatever.

608
00:32:09,156 --> 00:32:11,076
Speaker 2: It is a great way to meet other people and

609
00:32:11,156 --> 00:32:13,436
Speaker 2: also it's ennobling.

610
00:32:13,956 --> 00:32:16,636
Speaker 3: Yeah, my wife does that now. She was a physician

611
00:32:16,676 --> 00:32:19,316
Speaker 3: and she retired several years back. For the past year

612
00:32:19,356 --> 00:32:22,356
Speaker 3: now she's been volunteering with a soup kitchen. It's one

613
00:32:22,356 --> 00:32:24,676
Speaker 3: of her most enjoyable experiences. She just loves to talk

614
00:32:24,716 --> 00:32:27,316
Speaker 3: to people anyway, so it's a real opportunity to kind

615
00:32:27,356 --> 00:32:30,436
Speaker 3: of connect. So yeah, it's surprisingly rewarding.

616
00:32:34,276 --> 00:32:36,476
Speaker 2: Coming up, Bruce Hood talks about how to control your

617
00:32:36,516 --> 00:32:42,356
Speaker 2: attention and reject negative comparisons, the challenge of optimism and

618
00:32:42,356 --> 00:32:45,716
Speaker 2: how to overcome that challenge finding a flow state through

619
00:32:45,756 --> 00:32:57,876
Speaker 2: meditation and much more lesson number three is reject negative comparisons.

620
00:32:58,396 --> 00:33:01,396
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, this is because we have a brain which

621
00:33:01,436 --> 00:33:05,516
Speaker 3: has really evolved pay special attention to negative information. And

622
00:33:05,556 --> 00:33:08,476
Speaker 3: the argument is along the lines that it's much better

623
00:33:08,636 --> 00:33:11,716
Speaker 3: from a active evolutionary point of view to sort of

624
00:33:11,756 --> 00:33:14,396
Speaker 3: attend to things which may potentially eliminate you from the

625
00:33:14,436 --> 00:33:17,916
Speaker 3: gene pool. So that's why you paid more attention to

626
00:33:18,116 --> 00:33:21,316
Speaker 3: bad news or threats than sitting on your laurels and

627
00:33:21,676 --> 00:33:24,596
Speaker 3: just thinking life is going fine, because only takes one

628
00:33:24,636 --> 00:33:26,516
Speaker 3: really bad thing to take you out of the equation.

629
00:33:26,676 --> 00:33:29,876
Speaker 3: So this is a line of work which fits with

630
00:33:30,276 --> 00:33:32,716
Speaker 3: a series of really quite different studies showing that we

631
00:33:32,836 --> 00:33:36,956
Speaker 3: seem to focus more on negative information. So if you're

632
00:33:36,956 --> 00:33:40,556
Speaker 3: listening to stories or you're reading the paper. There's one

633
00:33:40,596 --> 00:33:42,676
Speaker 3: great study where they got people to they thought they

634
00:33:42,676 --> 00:33:46,116
Speaker 3: were actually doing a study of reading papers, but they

635
00:33:46,116 --> 00:33:47,916
Speaker 3: were looking at the eye movements and they were noticing

636
00:33:47,916 --> 00:33:51,116
Speaker 3: that people were focusing on all the negative information. So

637
00:33:51,196 --> 00:33:53,636
Speaker 3: there is this sort of bias in our brains to

638
00:33:53,956 --> 00:33:57,836
Speaker 3: really pay attention to that. Visually, we spot people sprowning

639
00:33:57,876 --> 00:34:00,836
Speaker 3: more than we spot smiling, and screens are more attentive

640
00:34:00,876 --> 00:34:03,916
Speaker 3: than so everything is wired from a very sensory basic

641
00:34:03,996 --> 00:34:06,796
Speaker 3: level to pay attention to negative information, and then of

642
00:34:06,836 --> 00:34:09,916
Speaker 3: course at a more cognitive thought pro level, we tend

643
00:34:09,996 --> 00:34:12,476
Speaker 3: to ruminate and fixate on things when they've gone wrong

644
00:34:12,876 --> 00:34:15,356
Speaker 3: more than when they're going right. And as a writer,

645
00:34:15,556 --> 00:34:18,436
Speaker 3: I assure you, you know, I can't stop myself, you know,

646
00:34:18,516 --> 00:34:21,116
Speaker 3: looking at that negative review, despite the fact that everyone

647
00:34:21,116 --> 00:34:23,356
Speaker 3: thinks it's a great book apart from that one person,

648
00:34:23,356 --> 00:34:24,996
Speaker 3: and that will just niggle and either way at me,

649
00:34:25,276 --> 00:34:28,316
Speaker 3: and I've got to really use that third person distance

650
00:34:28,356 --> 00:34:31,356
Speaker 3: they stop yourself. That's just silly. But yeah, that's part

651
00:34:31,356 --> 00:34:33,956
Speaker 3: of the reason we seem to be specially attentive. Also,

652
00:34:34,316 --> 00:34:38,396
Speaker 3: we form impressions are stronger when we hear negative information,

653
00:34:38,516 --> 00:34:40,836
Speaker 3: and it's really difficult to overcome something when we've heard

654
00:34:40,876 --> 00:34:44,556
Speaker 3: something bad about somebody. So being balanced is quite a challenge.

655
00:34:44,996 --> 00:34:46,516
Speaker 2: So what can we do about this?

656
00:34:47,196 --> 00:34:49,716
Speaker 3: Well, being mindful of it is good, as I said,

657
00:34:49,876 --> 00:34:53,196
Speaker 3: and also trying to deliberately avoid well see social media,

658
00:34:53,396 --> 00:34:56,436
Speaker 3: I think is also I think a recipe for it's

659
00:34:56,436 --> 00:34:58,596
Speaker 3: at least a solution to some expent, especially if you

660
00:34:58,636 --> 00:35:02,236
Speaker 3: are a sensitive to criticism. Just be mindful of what's

661
00:35:02,276 --> 00:35:04,076
Speaker 3: going right in your life and focus on that. I

662
00:35:04,116 --> 00:35:06,916
Speaker 3: think that's what I would suggest, and I really should

663
00:35:06,956 --> 00:35:10,036
Speaker 3: probably mentioned this earlier. But the act of writing things down,

664
00:35:10,196 --> 00:35:13,596
Speaker 3: I think is an incredibly powerful exercise. And one of

665
00:35:13,636 --> 00:35:16,036
Speaker 3: the things we recommend is actually writing down things which

666
00:35:16,036 --> 00:35:18,236
Speaker 3: have gone well for you. So this is the writing

667
00:35:18,276 --> 00:35:20,476
Speaker 3: of the Three Good Things. Now, I don't know, it's

668
00:35:20,516 --> 00:35:22,556
Speaker 3: probably Sonny a little bit Merski or one of these

669
00:35:22,596 --> 00:35:24,356
Speaker 3: other guys who've done this as well, but the Three

670
00:35:24,396 --> 00:35:27,636
Speaker 3: Good Things. Marty Siligman will doubtedly have done work on this.

671
00:35:28,316 --> 00:35:31,636
Speaker 3: But it's the proactive behavior of writing things down in

672
00:35:31,636 --> 00:35:35,276
Speaker 3: a journal. And the reason that's very powerful is, first

673
00:35:35,316 --> 00:35:37,116
Speaker 3: of all, it gets you off your phone and secondly,

674
00:35:37,796 --> 00:35:39,916
Speaker 3: it allows you to keep a record, and I think

675
00:35:39,956 --> 00:35:43,996
Speaker 3: that's a very important device keeping a diary. Keeping a

676
00:35:44,116 --> 00:35:48,076
Speaker 3: journal is a very tangible bit of evidence or data

677
00:35:48,676 --> 00:35:51,276
Speaker 3: to see and review you. In a month's time, you

678
00:35:51,276 --> 00:35:53,036
Speaker 3: can review your life and you can see how things

679
00:35:53,036 --> 00:35:55,356
Speaker 3: are actually going a lot better than you often imagine.

680
00:35:55,396 --> 00:35:58,116
Speaker 3: So I'd do it for recommending writing down three good things,

681
00:35:58,156 --> 00:36:01,276
Speaker 3: but also for processing when things are not going right

682
00:36:01,316 --> 00:36:04,116
Speaker 3: for you. And I think keeping that external journal takes

683
00:36:04,116 --> 00:36:06,316
Speaker 3: it out of your mental space, as it were, and

684
00:36:06,356 --> 00:36:08,636
Speaker 3: it makes it a kind of piece of evidence that

685
00:36:08,676 --> 00:36:11,236
Speaker 3: you can reve you and it gives you a real

686
00:36:11,276 --> 00:36:13,876
Speaker 3: context that you often lose if you're just trying to

687
00:36:13,876 --> 00:36:15,436
Speaker 3: remember how things were all the time.

688
00:36:15,996 --> 00:36:21,356
Speaker 2: I love that Lesson four. Become more optimistic.

689
00:36:22,716 --> 00:36:26,516
Speaker 3: Well, that is a challenge these days, isn't it, especially

690
00:36:26,556 --> 00:36:29,076
Speaker 3: given the fact that we tend to focus on negative information.

691
00:36:29,756 --> 00:36:34,316
Speaker 3: Optimism can be partially tweaked. Like happiness. I think there

692
00:36:34,316 --> 00:36:38,716
Speaker 3: are dispositions to being optimistic or pessimistic, but I would

693
00:36:38,716 --> 00:36:41,036
Speaker 3: also point out that you know, you can be optimistic

694
00:36:41,076 --> 00:36:43,836
Speaker 3: in one facet of your life and pessimistic in another.

695
00:36:43,876 --> 00:36:45,796
Speaker 3: So it's not as if it's kind of just generically

696
00:36:45,836 --> 00:36:48,156
Speaker 3: you're one or the other class half full or half empty.

697
00:36:48,716 --> 00:36:50,996
Speaker 3: That said, I think there are ways in which you

698
00:36:51,036 --> 00:36:53,876
Speaker 3: can start to be more balanced, because you know, getting

699
00:36:53,916 --> 00:36:56,796
Speaker 3: back to lesson three about the focusing on the negative,

700
00:36:57,356 --> 00:37:01,076
Speaker 3: if you start to try to deliberately reappraise your life

701
00:37:01,156 --> 00:37:03,796
Speaker 3: in a more positive way over time, and this is

702
00:37:03,836 --> 00:37:07,276
Speaker 3: Marty Siligman's work. Over time, this will tend you to

703
00:37:07,316 --> 00:37:10,236
Speaker 3: be a lot more flex in the way you processing

704
00:37:10,276 --> 00:37:12,916
Speaker 3: negative information rather than going to the worst case scenario.

705
00:37:13,596 --> 00:37:16,356
Speaker 3: If you actually spend the time processing it in a

706
00:37:16,356 --> 00:37:19,076
Speaker 3: way which is more balanced or indeed looking for the

707
00:37:19,276 --> 00:37:22,076
Speaker 3: silver lining on every cloud, then over time you will

708
00:37:22,116 --> 00:37:24,276
Speaker 3: eventually sort of that will become the default way of

709
00:37:24,316 --> 00:37:26,996
Speaker 3: thinking rather than always going to the worst case scenario.

710
00:37:27,516 --> 00:37:30,156
Speaker 3: So the event suggests that that actually will change. And

711
00:37:30,196 --> 00:37:32,956
Speaker 3: again I would go back to recommending journaling, writing a

712
00:37:32,996 --> 00:37:36,276
Speaker 3: situation down if you're having a terrible day or something's

713
00:37:36,316 --> 00:37:40,236
Speaker 3: on really wrong, rather than being pessimistic about the consequences

714
00:37:40,276 --> 00:37:42,716
Speaker 3: of that, try and review it in a way which

715
00:37:42,796 --> 00:37:45,276
Speaker 3: looks for the best possible outcome. That will be a

716
00:37:45,316 --> 00:37:47,436
Speaker 3: way of actually sort of shifting the needle away from

717
00:37:47,436 --> 00:37:49,156
Speaker 3: pessimism to a more optimistic view.

718
00:37:49,956 --> 00:37:52,636
Speaker 2: So, if you've just been laid off, just to take

719
00:37:52,676 --> 00:37:58,116
Speaker 2: an example, and you're having trouble summoning any optimism, writing

720
00:37:58,196 --> 00:38:03,156
Speaker 2: about it while deliberately trying to consider a more optimistic

721
00:38:03,316 --> 00:38:06,716
Speaker 2: view can nudge you in that direction.

722
00:38:07,476 --> 00:38:11,076
Speaker 3: Yeah. So in the ceiling technique, it's called ABCDE. There

723
00:38:11,076 --> 00:38:14,396
Speaker 3: are two parts to ABC and then ABC stands for

724
00:38:14,436 --> 00:38:18,916
Speaker 3: adversity belief in consequences. So in that first phase, you

725
00:38:18,956 --> 00:38:21,956
Speaker 3: write down what happened. So you've just been laid off

726
00:38:21,956 --> 00:38:25,356
Speaker 3: at work. What do you believe that reflects. You might think, oh,

727
00:38:25,356 --> 00:38:27,196
Speaker 3: that means I'm not good at my job. And what

728
00:38:27,196 --> 00:38:28,756
Speaker 3: do you think the consequence as well, I'm not going

729
00:38:28,796 --> 00:38:30,556
Speaker 3: to have any money and i might lose my house.

730
00:38:30,556 --> 00:38:34,156
Speaker 3: And so you're right down everything and you articulate every

731
00:38:34,196 --> 00:38:36,636
Speaker 3: worst case scenario. And the reason you do that is

732
00:38:36,676 --> 00:38:38,676
Speaker 3: because you're laying out on the table if you like

733
00:38:38,876 --> 00:38:43,396
Speaker 3: every scenario possible. Having exhausted that, all right, you then

734
00:38:43,436 --> 00:38:46,716
Speaker 3: switch gear and go to the dispute and DN is

735
00:38:46,756 --> 00:38:50,116
Speaker 3: dispute or defend and energize. And so what you're supposed

736
00:38:50,116 --> 00:38:51,476
Speaker 3: to do in this phase is you supposed to look

737
00:38:51,476 --> 00:38:53,036
Speaker 3: at this and say, look, okay, look, you're not the

738
00:38:53,036 --> 00:38:55,516
Speaker 3: only one who was laid off. It's not you alone.

739
00:38:56,116 --> 00:38:58,516
Speaker 3: You've been in the situation before. This might be an

740
00:38:58,516 --> 00:39:01,916
Speaker 3: opportunity to reskill, it might be an opportunity to look up. So,

741
00:39:01,956 --> 00:39:04,036
Speaker 3: in other words, you step out of yourself. You've become

742
00:39:04,076 --> 00:39:06,156
Speaker 3: like an attorney or a defense lawyer and say okay,

743
00:39:06,196 --> 00:39:08,676
Speaker 3: you say this, but actually another way of looking at

744
00:39:08,796 --> 00:39:11,116
Speaker 3: is X, Y and Z, and with a lot of

745
00:39:11,196 --> 00:39:15,396
Speaker 3: creativity and imagination, you can start to find some glimmers

746
00:39:15,396 --> 00:39:18,476
Speaker 3: of positive outcome even in the worst case scenarios. And

747
00:39:18,516 --> 00:39:20,876
Speaker 3: then having done that, this leads to you to be

748
00:39:20,996 --> 00:39:24,036
Speaker 3: energized to realize that something that was really obsessing you

749
00:39:24,076 --> 00:39:26,516
Speaker 3: and compelling you for you know, fifteen minutes ago, that

750
00:39:26,596 --> 00:39:29,156
Speaker 3: you were so concerned about you should feel a bit

751
00:39:29,196 --> 00:39:31,316
Speaker 3: better about. So it shows that you can change in

752
00:39:31,356 --> 00:39:33,876
Speaker 3: the space of fifteen minutes just by reviewing the situation

753
00:39:33,956 --> 00:39:36,556
Speaker 3: and thinking about more positively. It's a case of trying

754
00:39:36,596 --> 00:39:40,116
Speaker 3: to process information in a much more adaptive way rather

755
00:39:40,116 --> 00:39:41,956
Speaker 3: than just resorting to the worst case.

756
00:39:42,396 --> 00:39:44,636
Speaker 2: What is the WOP technique?

757
00:39:45,156 --> 00:39:50,836
Speaker 3: Whooping It sounds for wish outcomes obstacles processes. It's Gabrielle

758
00:39:50,836 --> 00:39:54,116
Speaker 3: Ottogen's work, her research. I mean, most of us would

759
00:39:54,116 --> 00:39:56,676
Speaker 3: like to lead better lives, we'd like to better habits,

760
00:39:56,796 --> 00:39:59,236
Speaker 3: we'd like to do things better, but very often we

761
00:39:59,676 --> 00:40:01,476
Speaker 3: don't actually follow through with it. And part of the

762
00:40:01,516 --> 00:40:04,116
Speaker 3: reason is is because just wishing for something to be

763
00:40:04,116 --> 00:40:07,196
Speaker 3: better isn't good enough. You actually have to make a plan,

764
00:40:07,756 --> 00:40:10,596
Speaker 3: and that's what this technique is about it's called mental contrasting.

765
00:40:11,156 --> 00:40:13,076
Speaker 3: And so what you do is, if you want to

766
00:40:13,196 --> 00:40:15,276
Speaker 3: change your lifestyle, if you want to develop a healthier

767
00:40:15,276 --> 00:40:18,156
Speaker 3: lifestyle or eat more healthy, or give up smoking or

768
00:40:18,196 --> 00:40:20,316
Speaker 3: drinking whatever, you have to have that wish at the

769
00:40:20,396 --> 00:40:22,836
Speaker 3: beginning to motivate you so that you imagine the best

770
00:40:22,836 --> 00:40:24,756
Speaker 3: case scenario, saying, Okay, I'm going to be a healthier

771
00:40:24,756 --> 00:40:28,796
Speaker 3: person if I do exercise. Okay, having done that, that's

772
00:40:28,836 --> 00:40:31,516
Speaker 3: not enough. You then have to consider what are going

773
00:40:31,556 --> 00:40:33,876
Speaker 3: to be the obstacles. So you got your wish, what

774
00:40:33,956 --> 00:40:35,716
Speaker 3: you want, what is the outcome you're hoping for, But

775
00:40:35,756 --> 00:40:37,476
Speaker 3: then what are the obstacles that get in the way

776
00:40:37,516 --> 00:40:39,996
Speaker 3: of that. So it might be well I kind of

777
00:40:39,996 --> 00:40:42,276
Speaker 3: eat at McDonald's all the time and it's really convenient

778
00:40:42,396 --> 00:40:44,276
Speaker 3: and that sort of thing. Well, then you have to

779
00:40:44,316 --> 00:40:46,436
Speaker 3: sort of make a contingency plan. Say, well, if that

780
00:40:46,436 --> 00:40:48,556
Speaker 3: comes to mind, then what you do is you get

781
00:40:48,636 --> 00:40:50,716
Speaker 3: rid of your loyalty car from McDonald's. I'm not sure

782
00:40:50,716 --> 00:40:52,796
Speaker 3: if they have one, by the way, but you avoid

783
00:40:53,036 --> 00:40:55,756
Speaker 3: the circumstances which lead to that sort of behavior. So

784
00:40:55,796 --> 00:40:59,636
Speaker 3: you make a contingency plan to overcome or bypass the

785
00:40:59,676 --> 00:41:02,756
Speaker 3: obstacles again your way. So that is a combination of

786
00:41:02,876 --> 00:41:05,836
Speaker 3: kind of wishful thinking, positive energy to drive you towards

787
00:41:05,836 --> 00:41:08,516
Speaker 3: a goal. But then actually, what do you need to

788
00:41:08,556 --> 00:41:10,276
Speaker 3: do in order to achieve it? So that's what's meant

789
00:41:10,316 --> 00:41:13,676
Speaker 3: by whoop, wish outcome, obstacles and plan.

790
00:41:14,276 --> 00:41:16,796
Speaker 2: Just one last question on an optimism, is it possible

791
00:41:17,156 --> 00:41:18,356
Speaker 2: that we can take it too far?

792
00:41:19,516 --> 00:41:22,916
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's when you become reckless. So there are three

793
00:41:22,916 --> 00:41:26,476
Speaker 3: dimensions by which optimism and pessimism differ. Okay, so what

794
00:41:26,676 --> 00:41:29,236
Speaker 3: is the extent to which you think situations are never

795
00:41:29,276 --> 00:41:32,676
Speaker 3: going to change? The tendency to overgeneralize, and the tendency

796
00:41:32,676 --> 00:41:36,236
Speaker 3: to internalize. So, for example, if you fail an exam,

797
00:41:36,476 --> 00:41:38,596
Speaker 3: you might sort of say I failed in an exam,

798
00:41:38,996 --> 00:41:40,676
Speaker 3: I'm never going to be able to pass. So that's

799
00:41:40,676 --> 00:41:42,836
Speaker 3: where you think things can ever change. And then if

800
00:41:42,876 --> 00:41:44,756
Speaker 3: you ever generalize that, you say I failed an exam,

801
00:41:44,996 --> 00:41:48,956
Speaker 3: I'm bad at everything I do. That's where you generalize, extrapolate,

802
00:41:49,396 --> 00:41:51,196
Speaker 3: and you might internalize that and say I failed in

803
00:41:51,196 --> 00:41:54,716
Speaker 3: an exam, It's my fault. An optimist would say, Okay,

804
00:41:54,756 --> 00:41:57,356
Speaker 3: I failed one exam, but I'll get better next time.

805
00:41:57,916 --> 00:42:00,196
Speaker 3: Or they then might say, oh, I failed one exam,

806
00:42:00,276 --> 00:42:02,516
Speaker 3: but I'm good at other things, or they might sort

807
00:42:02,516 --> 00:42:04,716
Speaker 3: of externalize and say, I failed an exam, but it

808
00:42:04,716 --> 00:42:06,556
Speaker 3: wasn't me. It's that professor hood. He thinks he's a

809
00:42:06,556 --> 00:42:09,396
Speaker 3: great lecture. Wasn't my fault, it's his fault. So you

810
00:42:09,436 --> 00:42:11,716
Speaker 3: can see how you can deviate on how you make

811
00:42:11,796 --> 00:42:16,436
Speaker 3: attributions to the situation. But if you never take responsibility,

812
00:42:16,636 --> 00:42:19,156
Speaker 3: if you never actually appreciate that maybe the exams are

813
00:42:19,156 --> 00:42:21,316
Speaker 3: really quite important and maybe you do need to pay attention,

814
00:42:21,436 --> 00:42:23,636
Speaker 3: you do need to change, then you're never going to

815
00:42:23,676 --> 00:42:27,196
Speaker 3: actually adapt or pass your exams. So you can become

816
00:42:27,236 --> 00:42:31,156
Speaker 3: reckless if you don't actually take into consideration reality, So

817
00:42:31,196 --> 00:42:35,796
Speaker 3: being overly optimist that can turn into unrealistic expectations and

818
00:42:35,836 --> 00:42:36,636
Speaker 3: reckless behavior.

819
00:42:37,396 --> 00:42:41,076
Speaker 2: Okay, so less than number five is to control your attention,

820
00:42:42,396 --> 00:42:43,876
Speaker 2: please say more to me.

821
00:42:43,916 --> 00:42:45,956
Speaker 3: And I think this has been one of the most

822
00:42:46,276 --> 00:42:50,836
Speaker 3: remarkable areas of research that I've become incredibly interested in it.

823
00:42:50,916 --> 00:42:53,476
Speaker 3: And this is the reality that we spend a lot

824
00:42:53,516 --> 00:42:57,676
Speaker 3: of the time not actually being aware of our circumstances

825
00:42:57,916 --> 00:43:00,956
Speaker 3: or our minds are wandering remarkably a lot of the time.

826
00:43:01,596 --> 00:43:04,476
Speaker 3: This comes from a former colleague in mind, Dan Gilbert.

827
00:43:04,636 --> 00:43:08,276
Speaker 3: Collingsworth and Gilbert did this study where they just randomly

828
00:43:08,636 --> 00:43:10,916
Speaker 3: contact people at different points of the day using an

829
00:43:10,956 --> 00:43:13,156
Speaker 3: app and so, what are you thinking about, what you're doing?

830
00:43:13,196 --> 00:43:16,316
Speaker 3: Are you happy now? And what they discovered that people

831
00:43:16,356 --> 00:43:20,156
Speaker 3: were mind wandering actually fifty percent of the time effectively,

832
00:43:20,236 --> 00:43:22,316
Speaker 3: so they weren't thinking about what they were doing. Their

833
00:43:22,356 --> 00:43:26,116
Speaker 3: minds were off. And what was remarkable about the swinding

834
00:43:26,196 --> 00:43:28,756
Speaker 3: was that a lot of the time, even though they

835
00:43:28,756 --> 00:43:32,556
Speaker 3: were just thinking neutral thoughts, they were relatively unhappy. And

836
00:43:32,596 --> 00:43:35,996
Speaker 3: so that was kind of surprising. So when we're mind wandering,

837
00:43:35,996 --> 00:43:38,596
Speaker 3: you might think it's pleasant daydreaming, but actually a lot

838
00:43:38,596 --> 00:43:41,756
Speaker 3: of the time we're kind of ruminating over things, you know,

839
00:43:41,796 --> 00:43:44,916
Speaker 3: we're worrying about unresolved conflicts or thinking about problems up

840
00:43:44,916 --> 00:43:48,076
Speaker 3: and coming. We just recently ran a study of our

841
00:43:48,116 --> 00:43:50,836
Speaker 3: students and that we found mind wandering sixty percent of

842
00:43:50,876 --> 00:43:54,516
Speaker 3: the time, so it's happening a lot. And actually, just

843
00:43:54,556 --> 00:43:58,036
Speaker 3: like Killingsworth and Gilbert, we found that when their minds

844
00:43:58,036 --> 00:44:01,356
Speaker 3: were wandering, they were generally relatively unhappy compared to when

845
00:44:01,356 --> 00:44:05,076
Speaker 3: they were fixated and focused on a task. So our

846
00:44:05,196 --> 00:44:08,836
Speaker 3: default appears to be drifting all the time. Paying attention

847
00:44:08,956 --> 00:44:11,076
Speaker 3: is really tough, and I think that's one of the

848
00:44:11,076 --> 00:44:13,996
Speaker 3: reasons that social media is so pernicious and so powerful,

849
00:44:14,076 --> 00:44:17,876
Speaker 3: because it captures our attention, and that's why you can

850
00:44:18,036 --> 00:44:21,396
Speaker 3: be sucked into this sort of vortex of information overload,

851
00:44:21,916 --> 00:44:24,436
Speaker 3: and we tend not to be very mindful of the

852
00:44:24,436 --> 00:44:26,516
Speaker 3: things that we're doing. And that's unfortunate because when you

853
00:44:26,556 --> 00:44:29,596
Speaker 3: do draw your attention or you do focus your attention

854
00:44:29,636 --> 00:44:33,036
Speaker 3: on a task, or a task is so engrossing that

855
00:44:33,116 --> 00:44:35,316
Speaker 3: it really requires you to pay attention. Then you get

856
00:44:35,316 --> 00:44:38,236
Speaker 3: those moments of flow, which is this very positive state

857
00:44:38,276 --> 00:44:41,076
Speaker 3: where time appears to elapse and you just you feel

858
00:44:41,156 --> 00:44:44,196
Speaker 3: very content as you're kind of drawing your attention and

859
00:44:44,236 --> 00:44:47,396
Speaker 3: your resources onto the task. So, yeah, control your attention

860
00:44:47,516 --> 00:44:49,556
Speaker 3: because otherwise it's going to be captured.

861
00:44:50,316 --> 00:44:52,596
Speaker 2: We've talked about flow a million times on this show,

862
00:44:52,596 --> 00:44:55,996
Speaker 2: and I always find it a little bit maddeningly elusive,

863
00:44:56,236 --> 00:45:01,236
Speaker 2: because I don't know how often I get into flow personally,

864
00:45:01,356 --> 00:45:03,716
Speaker 2: or what I could do to make that happen more frequently.

865
00:45:04,196 --> 00:45:09,516
Speaker 3: It's probably most likely in those circumstances our activities which

866
00:45:09,796 --> 00:45:11,756
Speaker 3: match your skill set. So this is the kind of

867
00:45:11,756 --> 00:45:14,796
Speaker 3: definition that if there's something that you're pretty good at

868
00:45:14,796 --> 00:45:17,156
Speaker 3: doing and you're in a situation where you have to

869
00:45:17,196 --> 00:45:21,436
Speaker 3: really deploy that expertise, that will then become absorbing. So

870
00:45:21,836 --> 00:45:24,236
Speaker 3: for me, it's writing. I'm a relatively good writer, and

871
00:45:24,276 --> 00:45:26,076
Speaker 3: I can write for hours and hours, and I forget

872
00:45:26,116 --> 00:45:29,356
Speaker 3: sometimes to you know, have wasted or not waste spent

873
00:45:29,436 --> 00:45:32,956
Speaker 3: so much time writing. Sports athletes can find moments of

874
00:45:33,236 --> 00:45:36,596
Speaker 3: flow when the challenge is sufficiently good that it gets

875
00:45:36,636 --> 00:45:39,316
Speaker 3: them into it. Lots of hobbies, I would argue, could

876
00:45:39,316 --> 00:45:42,876
Speaker 3: be inducing that sense of flow. It's really tapping into

877
00:45:42,956 --> 00:45:47,156
Speaker 3: competence and matching your ability with the circumstances or the

878
00:45:47,396 --> 00:45:51,916
Speaker 3: requirements of the situation. If you are overwhelmed by a challenge,

879
00:45:51,956 --> 00:45:54,836
Speaker 3: then it can be an anxiety reducing. If it's not challenging,

880
00:45:54,876 --> 00:45:57,316
Speaker 3: then it's boring. The equation is really to find those

881
00:45:57,356 --> 00:46:01,236
Speaker 3: situations which really stimulate your ability to address them.

882
00:46:01,476 --> 00:46:03,156
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm just trying to think of my own life, Like,

883
00:46:03,276 --> 00:46:05,516
Speaker 2: I write a lot, but I hate it. I exercise

884
00:46:05,596 --> 00:46:08,916
Speaker 2: a lot. I don't hate it, but it's rarely in flow,

885
00:46:09,236 --> 00:46:12,716
Speaker 2: I think, except for maybe when I'm exercising with a

886
00:46:12,716 --> 00:46:16,196
Speaker 2: big group of people. And we're all kind of moving through. Yeah,

887
00:46:16,196 --> 00:46:18,356
Speaker 2: maybe there are a few moments there. But the one

888
00:46:18,436 --> 00:46:21,356
Speaker 2: place where I realized maybe I'm in flow is I like,

889
00:46:22,036 --> 00:46:24,436
Speaker 2: I give a lot of speeches, and I don't like

890
00:46:24,556 --> 00:46:28,596
Speaker 2: the beginning part of it, where I have to do five, ten, fifteen, twenty,

891
00:46:28,756 --> 00:46:31,476
Speaker 2: sometimes thirty minutes of a rehearse speech. But the Q

892
00:46:31,636 --> 00:46:35,356
Speaker 2: and A is almost always I think a flow state

893
00:46:35,436 --> 00:46:35,676
Speaker 2: for me.

894
00:46:36,356 --> 00:46:38,916
Speaker 3: Yeah, I know what you're talking about. I love lecturing

895
00:46:38,956 --> 00:46:41,476
Speaker 3: as well, and when it's going really well, that time

896
00:46:41,556 --> 00:46:45,476
Speaker 3: just disappear as evaporates. It seems very fluid, and that

897
00:46:45,596 --> 00:46:47,956
Speaker 3: is you're thinking on your feet. You literally are havn't

898
00:46:47,956 --> 00:46:50,476
Speaker 3: you use your brain in a way that you wouldn't

899
00:46:50,476 --> 00:46:52,876
Speaker 3: normally be doing, So I think I would call that flow. Yeah.

900
00:46:53,076 --> 00:46:57,356
Speaker 2: Yeah, So my friend George Mumford, who teaches meditation to

901
00:46:57,436 --> 00:47:01,076
Speaker 2: elite athletes he worked with Michael Jordan Kobe to this

902
00:47:01,156 --> 00:47:04,676
Speaker 2: day is working with professional athletes. He often describes meditation

903
00:47:04,836 --> 00:47:07,036
Speaker 2: as a way to get you flow ready.

904
00:47:07,756 --> 00:47:08,116
Speaker 3: Yeah.

905
00:47:08,236 --> 00:47:09,116
Speaker 2: Would you agree with that?

906
00:47:09,636 --> 00:47:11,756
Speaker 3: I would, indeed. And one of the things I didn't

907
00:47:11,756 --> 00:47:14,876
Speaker 3: mention earlier I should address this is that we now

908
00:47:14,916 --> 00:47:18,556
Speaker 3: know that when you're not focused on a task, there's

909
00:47:18,556 --> 00:47:20,476
Speaker 3: a state of the mind called the default mood network

910
00:47:20,516 --> 00:47:23,676
Speaker 3: which kicks into action. This is discovered by chance, by

911
00:47:23,676 --> 00:47:26,396
Speaker 3: the way. It was a network in the brain. They

912
00:47:26,396 --> 00:47:28,636
Speaker 3: discovered when they started the first imaging studies where you

913
00:47:28,636 --> 00:47:31,396
Speaker 3: measure blood flow in the brain using magnetic resonance imaging

914
00:47:31,516 --> 00:47:34,996
Speaker 3: from RYE and they ask the various participants just lie

915
00:47:35,036 --> 00:47:36,676
Speaker 3: in the scanner and don't move, because we need to

916
00:47:36,676 --> 00:47:38,996
Speaker 3: get some baseline measures before we get you to do anything.

917
00:47:39,356 --> 00:47:41,636
Speaker 3: And so they assumed that basically the brain would shut

918
00:47:41,636 --> 00:47:44,556
Speaker 3: down or go into a steady state. Paradoxically, what they

919
00:47:44,556 --> 00:47:47,196
Speaker 3: found was actually an increase of activation in the front

920
00:47:47,196 --> 00:47:49,476
Speaker 3: of the back of the brain as a network, and

921
00:47:49,476 --> 00:47:52,356
Speaker 3: that's why they call it default mode network. That's the

922
00:47:52,356 --> 00:47:55,156
Speaker 3: default when you're not actually doing something. Now, the reason

923
00:47:55,156 --> 00:47:57,996
Speaker 3: that's relevant is that when your mind is wandering, your

924
00:47:57,996 --> 00:48:01,636
Speaker 3: default mode network is actually active. And also the default

925
00:48:01,636 --> 00:48:04,756
Speaker 3: mood network is related to being relatively unhappy. And I

926
00:48:04,756 --> 00:48:06,956
Speaker 3: think the linking explanation and going back to what I

927
00:48:06,996 --> 00:48:10,676
Speaker 3: said that I love explanations of mechanism, is that when

928
00:48:10,676 --> 00:48:13,596
Speaker 3: you're not engaged in the task or in flow and

929
00:48:13,636 --> 00:48:16,356
Speaker 3: you're just simply your mind's wandering, your default mode network

930
00:48:16,436 --> 00:48:19,076
Speaker 3: is kicking in, and that is sort of I think rumination.

931
00:48:19,636 --> 00:48:22,876
Speaker 3: And by the way, there are studies by Brewer showing

932
00:48:22,916 --> 00:48:26,556
Speaker 3: that if you meditate meditators you put them in a scanner,

933
00:48:26,836 --> 00:48:28,916
Speaker 3: they don't have activation of the default moon network, or

934
00:48:28,916 --> 00:48:31,756
Speaker 3: at least it's not as much. So I think what's

935
00:48:31,836 --> 00:48:35,956
Speaker 3: going on in the meditation it's turning off that internal

936
00:48:36,036 --> 00:48:38,356
Speaker 3: story that we're telling ourselves or that criticism that we're

937
00:48:38,356 --> 00:48:40,636
Speaker 3: telling ourselves. So that's how I see it as a

938
00:48:40,716 --> 00:48:43,116
Speaker 3: kind of it's a mechanism of explanation here.

939
00:48:43,596 --> 00:48:46,516
Speaker 2: Yeah. Doctor Judson brow as a friend and freaking flyer

940
00:48:46,556 --> 00:48:49,436
Speaker 2: on the show, and it's really interesting. My understanding of

941
00:48:49,476 --> 00:48:54,596
Speaker 2: his work is that the untrained mind has a default

942
00:48:54,596 --> 00:48:59,756
Speaker 2: mode network that can be quite unpleasant. You're comparing yourself

943
00:48:59,756 --> 00:49:03,276
Speaker 2: to other people, ruminating about your past mistakes, worrying about

944
00:49:03,316 --> 00:49:06,996
Speaker 2: things that might happen in the future. Yeah, Whereas if

945
00:49:07,036 --> 00:49:10,476
Speaker 2: you've got some meditation under your belt, you have a

946
00:49:10,516 --> 00:49:14,196
Speaker 2: new default mode, which is being awake and aware in

947
00:49:14,236 --> 00:49:14,956
Speaker 2: the present moment.

948
00:49:15,516 --> 00:49:19,116
Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly. So the network is also associated representation of

949
00:49:19,156 --> 00:49:21,716
Speaker 3: self in relation to others, so that ties it back

950
00:49:21,756 --> 00:49:25,436
Speaker 3: into this kind of rumination about how you're measuring up

951
00:49:25,476 --> 00:49:27,236
Speaker 3: and what's going on in your comparisons.

952
00:49:27,796 --> 00:49:33,596
Speaker 2: Yeah, coming up, Bruce talks about the role of nature,

953
00:49:33,956 --> 00:49:37,916
Speaker 2: how to enhance your social connections, where quote unquote true

954
00:49:37,956 --> 00:49:47,876
Speaker 2: authentic happiness comes from, and much more. One of the

955
00:49:47,916 --> 00:49:51,916
Speaker 2: other ways you list to control your attention. So we've

956
00:49:51,916 --> 00:49:54,956
Speaker 2: talked about getting into flow states, you know, doing things

957
00:49:54,956 --> 00:49:57,676
Speaker 2: that are engrossing. That's one way to control your attention.

958
00:49:57,796 --> 00:50:02,916
Speaker 2: Another is to meditate, which can redound positively toward your

959
00:50:02,956 --> 00:50:05,396
Speaker 2: capacity to get into flow. And then another thing you

960
00:50:05,436 --> 00:50:06,516
Speaker 2: mentioned is nature.

961
00:50:08,076 --> 00:50:10,476
Speaker 3: This is an interesting slo the controversial one because I

962
00:50:10,516 --> 00:50:13,316
Speaker 3: think the data on it is a bit mixed. But

963
00:50:13,716 --> 00:50:16,476
Speaker 3: I'm a convert to. I think it's it's definitely something too.

964
00:50:16,516 --> 00:50:19,476
Speaker 3: I live in the countryside, and I certainly really enjoy

965
00:50:20,196 --> 00:50:22,636
Speaker 3: the countryside, but not as much as people who've never

966
00:50:22,636 --> 00:50:24,276
Speaker 3: seen the countryside when they come out to visit me.

967
00:50:24,316 --> 00:50:27,236
Speaker 3: They really do. They do love it. And I think

968
00:50:27,276 --> 00:50:32,036
Speaker 3: probably why it works is that our environments. And I

969
00:50:32,076 --> 00:50:33,716
Speaker 3: haven't got the data yet to prove it, but my

970
00:50:33,796 --> 00:50:37,476
Speaker 3: hypothesis is urban environments are very much the same. They're organized,

971
00:50:37,476 --> 00:50:40,676
Speaker 3: they're structured, and you can navigate them on autopilot. You

972
00:50:40,756 --> 00:50:43,556
Speaker 3: literally can just kind of go through your daily commute

973
00:50:43,716 --> 00:50:45,716
Speaker 3: and very often, you know, you don't even remember how

974
00:50:45,716 --> 00:50:47,716
Speaker 3: you got where you are because we're so used to

975
00:50:47,756 --> 00:50:51,236
Speaker 3: the routine of travel and commuting. When you're in nature,

976
00:50:51,316 --> 00:50:52,836
Speaker 3: unless you live there all the time, you follow the

977
00:50:52,836 --> 00:50:56,436
Speaker 3: same path. It's much more unpredictable. It's also esthetically more

978
00:50:56,476 --> 00:50:58,836
Speaker 3: pleasing because it's full of, you know, very interesting sites

979
00:50:58,876 --> 00:51:01,276
Speaker 3: and so on. But I think what it forces you

980
00:51:01,316 --> 00:51:03,476
Speaker 3: to do is actually be mindful of where you're stepping

981
00:51:03,476 --> 00:51:07,756
Speaker 3: and where you're walking, and just really engaging with the environment.

982
00:51:07,836 --> 00:51:10,636
Speaker 3: So that would be my my understanding what's going on

983
00:51:10,716 --> 00:51:12,996
Speaker 3: in nature. And of course there are some studies showing

984
00:51:12,996 --> 00:51:15,076
Speaker 3: that if you look at brain imaging, looking at the

985
00:51:15,076 --> 00:51:18,156
Speaker 3: default moon network, it's subdued when you're out in nature

986
00:51:18,156 --> 00:51:21,076
Speaker 3: compared to going around the urban environment. So I suspect

987
00:51:21,116 --> 00:51:24,796
Speaker 3: the urban environments because they're very predictable and they're structured

988
00:51:24,836 --> 00:51:27,196
Speaker 3: in such a way is that you literally go on

989
00:51:27,276 --> 00:51:29,076
Speaker 3: autopilot when you're navigating them.

990
00:51:29,556 --> 00:51:34,156
Speaker 2: Also, you're surrounded by advertisement, which is inducing toxic comparison. Yeah,

991
00:51:34,236 --> 00:51:36,636
Speaker 2: so less than six is connect with others and I'm

992
00:51:36,676 --> 00:51:40,316
Speaker 2: just wondering lesson two is avoid isolation? Is this the

993
00:51:40,356 --> 00:51:41,796
Speaker 2: same thing said differently?

994
00:51:43,076 --> 00:51:45,196
Speaker 3: Yeah, I guess. So what I was trying to do

995
00:51:45,436 --> 00:51:47,596
Speaker 3: in less than six is really kind of talk about

996
00:51:48,036 --> 00:51:51,436
Speaker 3: some of the really fascinating research talking about synchronicity, talking

997
00:51:51,516 --> 00:51:54,036
Speaker 3: about the studies which are revealing our brains literally do

998
00:51:54,156 --> 00:51:58,676
Speaker 3: become synchronized whether're doing group activities. Also, I try to

999
00:51:58,956 --> 00:52:03,436
Speaker 3: emphasize how to enhance your social connection, talking about active

1000
00:52:03,516 --> 00:52:07,076
Speaker 3: listening and just really kind of learning to trust others.

1001
00:52:07,596 --> 00:52:10,996
Speaker 3: So this is a child which is it goes back

1002
00:52:11,036 --> 00:52:13,156
Speaker 3: to work by a bunch of people with Nick Eppley

1003
00:52:13,156 --> 00:52:16,316
Speaker 3: comes to mind, showing that we tend not to engage

1004
00:52:16,356 --> 00:52:19,036
Speaker 3: in social connection because we think it will be awkward,

1005
00:52:19,596 --> 00:52:22,796
Speaker 3: We misjudge it in many ways, and we under estimate

1006
00:52:22,916 --> 00:52:25,676
Speaker 3: how important and how satisfying it will be for not

1007
00:52:25,756 --> 00:52:29,076
Speaker 3: just ourselves but other people as well. So it's really

1008
00:52:29,116 --> 00:52:31,916
Speaker 3: a cul to action to try and get people to

1009
00:52:32,716 --> 00:52:35,676
Speaker 3: go out there and start to actively engage with others

1010
00:52:35,716 --> 00:52:38,876
Speaker 3: in a way which is beneficial. It's the flip side

1011
00:52:38,876 --> 00:52:41,236
Speaker 3: of avoiding loneliness, but with much more kind of focused

1012
00:52:41,236 --> 00:52:44,436
Speaker 3: activities on what you can do to actually stimulate those

1013
00:52:44,476 --> 00:52:46,156
Speaker 3: sorts of positive interactions.

1014
00:52:46,676 --> 00:52:47,796
Speaker 2: What is synchronicity.

1015
00:52:48,196 --> 00:52:51,836
Speaker 3: Well, synchronicity is just the natural timing of brain waves.

1016
00:52:51,996 --> 00:52:53,796
Speaker 3: You can now do imaging studies where you actually get

1017
00:52:53,836 --> 00:52:56,956
Speaker 3: two people experiencing the same thing. It could be listening

1018
00:52:57,036 --> 00:52:59,676
Speaker 3: to a story or some other and you can find

1019
00:52:59,676 --> 00:53:02,436
Speaker 3: out that the brains start to synchronize as if they're

1020
00:53:02,476 --> 00:53:04,796
Speaker 3: resonating in the same frequency as it were. So it

1021
00:53:04,836 --> 00:53:06,876
Speaker 3: sounds a bit spooky and supernatural. I don't think think

1022
00:53:06,876 --> 00:53:09,276
Speaker 3: it's anything like that, but it does fit with the

1023
00:53:09,316 --> 00:53:12,636
Speaker 3: findings that we are kind of we're biological computeris in

1024
00:53:12,636 --> 00:53:15,236
Speaker 3: any ways, and so when we're processing things in unison,

1025
00:53:15,716 --> 00:53:18,836
Speaker 3: it tends to amplify the experience. So people who like

1026
00:53:18,876 --> 00:53:22,516
Speaker 3: each other tend to walk and step. Conversations are extremely synchronized.

1027
00:53:22,516 --> 00:53:25,316
Speaker 3: We're having a synchronized activity. Now I'm talking and then

1028
00:53:25,356 --> 00:53:27,596
Speaker 3: you're responding, and if we were both talking at the

1029
00:53:27,596 --> 00:53:30,436
Speaker 3: same time, that wouldn't work well. And I think you know,

1030
00:53:30,756 --> 00:53:33,156
Speaker 3: when you're getting on with somebody, you feel that natural

1031
00:53:33,236 --> 00:53:37,356
Speaker 3: rapport that synchronicity reflects. They ease a conversation, which is

1032
00:53:37,396 --> 00:53:40,156
Speaker 3: this sort of give and take. So I think that's

1033
00:53:40,196 --> 00:53:41,476
Speaker 3: what I mean by synchronicity.

1034
00:53:42,516 --> 00:53:45,676
Speaker 2: You also mentioned active listening. What is that so?

1035
00:53:45,796 --> 00:53:49,116
Speaker 3: Active listening is paying attention to what someone is saying

1036
00:53:49,196 --> 00:53:52,276
Speaker 3: and then asking them questions relative to what they've just said,

1037
00:53:52,636 --> 00:53:54,876
Speaker 3: rather than just nodding away and kind of, you know,

1038
00:53:55,396 --> 00:53:57,436
Speaker 3: looking at them. I mean, you can listen to someone

1039
00:53:57,436 --> 00:54:01,116
Speaker 3: but not really pay attention. Active listening is really processing

1040
00:54:01,116 --> 00:54:03,676
Speaker 3: what they're saying then coming up with something which reflects

1041
00:54:03,716 --> 00:54:06,516
Speaker 3: the fact that you've actually understood what they've said. And

1042
00:54:06,556 --> 00:54:09,596
Speaker 3: when people have that, they really enjoy. That creates a

1043
00:54:09,676 --> 00:54:13,476
Speaker 3: really strong bond between the recipient. If they're having someone

1044
00:54:13,636 --> 00:54:15,996
Speaker 3: who's clearly been listening to what they're saying, it's very

1045
00:54:15,996 --> 00:54:18,796
Speaker 3: satisfying when you're talking to someone who really clearly understands

1046
00:54:18,876 --> 00:54:19,716
Speaker 3: what you're talking about.

1047
00:54:20,156 --> 00:54:23,236
Speaker 2: Yeah. It's a benevolent manipulation technique.

1048
00:54:22,796 --> 00:54:28,116
Speaker 3: It is, Yeah, and very good politicians and interviewers will

1049
00:54:28,156 --> 00:54:30,716
Speaker 3: know how to do it very effortlessly.

1050
00:54:31,916 --> 00:54:34,716
Speaker 2: You also mentioned learning to trust other people. What are

1051
00:54:34,716 --> 00:54:35,876
Speaker 2: you pointing at there?

1052
00:54:36,236 --> 00:54:39,876
Speaker 3: Well, actually, in one of the lectures, I make a

1053
00:54:39,956 --> 00:54:42,516
Speaker 3: virtue of talking about failure. To me, failure is a

1054
00:54:42,556 --> 00:54:47,476
Speaker 3: really important thing to disclose vulnerability. We're fearful sometimes of

1055
00:54:47,556 --> 00:54:49,756
Speaker 3: being judged negatively by others, and so we always want

1056
00:54:49,756 --> 00:54:52,476
Speaker 3: to put on a very impressive best face, as it were.

1057
00:54:53,036 --> 00:54:56,676
Speaker 3: But actually when people disclose information which reveals that they're

1058
00:54:56,756 --> 00:54:59,996
Speaker 3: human in many ways and they also have vulnerabilities, we

1059
00:55:00,156 --> 00:55:02,236
Speaker 3: like them more. We can appreciate them more, we can

1060
00:55:02,316 --> 00:55:04,956
Speaker 3: identify with them more, because I think it shows a

1061
00:55:05,076 --> 00:55:08,516
Speaker 3: level of trust, and trust is really important. Going back

1062
00:55:08,556 --> 00:55:11,596
Speaker 3: to Rob Putton work, looking at those nations which seem

1063
00:55:11,636 --> 00:55:13,916
Speaker 3: to have really good levels of happiness if you like,

1064
00:55:13,956 --> 00:55:17,156
Speaker 3: or social connectedness, what they really have is trust. They

1065
00:55:17,236 --> 00:55:20,556
Speaker 3: trust each other. They have community systems which are much

1066
00:55:20,556 --> 00:55:24,436
Speaker 3: more open to interconnectedness. So the Nordic countries typically have higher

1067
00:55:24,476 --> 00:55:28,516
Speaker 3: social trust than more individualistic societies like the UK and

1068
00:55:28,596 --> 00:55:30,556
Speaker 3: the US, where we tend to be a little bit

1069
00:55:30,556 --> 00:55:34,956
Speaker 3: more fearful and aware or frightened of others, whereas those

1070
00:55:35,036 --> 00:55:38,156
Speaker 3: countries which have good social trust tend to have overall

1071
00:55:38,196 --> 00:55:39,876
Speaker 3: general better happiness, as it were.

1072
00:55:40,596 --> 00:55:44,556
Speaker 2: So you're saying we should take some risks, trust people,

1073
00:55:44,636 --> 00:55:45,596
Speaker 2: and be willing to fail.

1074
00:55:46,076 --> 00:55:48,116
Speaker 3: I think all those things are good. I think failure

1075
00:55:48,276 --> 00:55:51,796
Speaker 3: is and this is something which is very obvious in

1076
00:55:51,796 --> 00:55:54,316
Speaker 3: the younger generation, certainly in my students. They are really

1077
00:55:54,396 --> 00:55:57,436
Speaker 3: risk adverse. They will take the easiest path. They won't

1078
00:55:57,516 --> 00:56:00,716
Speaker 3: challenge themselves, and they get overly upset if they thinks

1079
00:56:00,716 --> 00:56:03,276
Speaker 3: they'll go according to plan. They tend not to put

1080
00:56:03,316 --> 00:56:07,396
Speaker 3: themselves in situations where they could actually advance by challenging

1081
00:56:07,436 --> 00:56:09,996
Speaker 3: themselves more. And I think that's fortunate when it comes

1082
00:56:09,996 --> 00:56:12,076
Speaker 3: to education, because that's really what we need. We need

1083
00:56:12,156 --> 00:56:14,796
Speaker 3: people who are willing to take risks, and so I

1084
00:56:14,796 --> 00:56:19,156
Speaker 3: think failure is something that we should disclose. They look

1085
00:56:19,196 --> 00:56:20,916
Speaker 3: at me and they think, oh, you've never failed, you're

1086
00:56:20,916 --> 00:56:23,596
Speaker 3: a successful professor and so on. But what they don't realize,

1087
00:56:23,636 --> 00:56:25,796
Speaker 3: of course, I have a history, as we all do,

1088
00:56:26,196 --> 00:56:28,556
Speaker 3: of setbacks and failures, and I think when you learn

1089
00:56:28,596 --> 00:56:30,876
Speaker 3: about that, and you'll know this, Dan, you've talked about

1090
00:56:30,916 --> 00:56:33,676
Speaker 3: your startup. I think when people hear about that, I

1091
00:56:33,676 --> 00:56:36,196
Speaker 3: think it makes you much more personable. It makes people

1092
00:56:36,276 --> 00:56:39,036
Speaker 3: much more real. When you're presented with someone who seems

1093
00:56:39,036 --> 00:56:42,276
Speaker 3: never to have had any setbacks, then I don't particularly

1094
00:56:42,316 --> 00:56:44,676
Speaker 3: trust someone like that. So that's why I think trusts

1095
00:56:45,076 --> 00:56:46,636
Speaker 3: enamors ourselves to other people.

1096
00:56:48,316 --> 00:56:49,956
Speaker 2: What is the liking gap?

1097
00:56:50,596 --> 00:56:55,596
Speaker 3: It's basically it's a misjudgment about how we're perceived. When

1098
00:56:55,636 --> 00:56:58,516
Speaker 3: you ask people to have conversations and then you ask

1099
00:56:58,596 --> 00:57:00,996
Speaker 3: them afterwards, how much do you think this person liked you,

1100
00:57:01,036 --> 00:57:03,956
Speaker 3: people will typically underestimate the degree to which the other

1101
00:57:04,036 --> 00:57:06,636
Speaker 3: person likes them. So again, it's one of the reasons

1102
00:57:06,636 --> 00:57:09,516
Speaker 3: why people are reluctant to enter into conversation because they

1103
00:57:09,556 --> 00:57:11,036
Speaker 3: think they're not going to be liked or they think

1104
00:57:11,036 --> 00:57:13,916
Speaker 3: it will be awkward, and so again it's a miscalculation

1105
00:57:14,436 --> 00:57:17,316
Speaker 3: based on an assumption that interactions are not going to

1106
00:57:17,316 --> 00:57:19,196
Speaker 3: be as pleasant as they generally turn out to be.

1107
00:57:19,876 --> 00:57:23,676
Speaker 3: And I think that's got worse, possibly because of technology,

1108
00:57:23,676 --> 00:57:26,476
Speaker 3: and we've lost the art of conversation. We've lost the

1109
00:57:26,476 --> 00:57:29,596
Speaker 3: opportunities for interacting on a much more regular basis. And

1110
00:57:29,636 --> 00:57:31,836
Speaker 3: I think that all of that comes with practice, and

1111
00:57:31,876 --> 00:57:35,036
Speaker 3: once you start to become more comfortable with those interactions,

1112
00:57:35,036 --> 00:57:37,236
Speaker 3: then you're probably a bit more accurate about how they're

1113
00:57:37,236 --> 00:57:37,596
Speaker 3: going to go.

1114
00:57:38,396 --> 00:57:40,036
Speaker 2: What is the spotlight effect?

1115
00:57:40,756 --> 00:57:45,316
Speaker 3: Okay, the spotlight effect is the assumption that everyone notices

1116
00:57:45,356 --> 00:57:48,436
Speaker 3: your weaknesses and flaws, and so we all think, because

1117
00:57:48,476 --> 00:57:52,276
Speaker 3: we're so egocentric, we've got this kind of obvious gaping

1118
00:57:52,596 --> 00:57:55,316
Speaker 3: flaw on our personality or how we look and whatever.

1119
00:57:55,356 --> 00:57:58,836
Speaker 3: So we assume everyone notices our weaknesses and flaws, but

1120
00:57:58,876 --> 00:58:01,436
Speaker 3: in fact people generally don't. They don't know when we're

1121
00:58:01,436 --> 00:58:03,796
Speaker 3: screwing up. We think we're doing worse than we really

1122
00:58:03,876 --> 00:58:06,156
Speaker 3: are in conversations, but actually it's going a lot better

1123
00:58:06,156 --> 00:58:08,756
Speaker 3: than you imagine. So again it's a bias to assume

1124
00:58:08,756 --> 00:58:10,556
Speaker 3: everyone thinks worse of you than they really do.

1125
00:58:11,716 --> 00:58:15,476
Speaker 2: Helpful to name this lesson seven, Get out of your

1126
00:58:15,476 --> 00:58:16,076
Speaker 2: own Head.

1127
00:58:16,916 --> 00:58:20,836
Speaker 3: Yeah, well that's the kind of ultimate chapter in the book.

1128
00:58:20,956 --> 00:58:24,596
Speaker 3: It's all a story about becoming less egocentric. I talk

1129
00:58:24,676 --> 00:58:26,716
Speaker 3: about some of the recent work where you literally are

1130
00:58:26,916 --> 00:58:29,356
Speaker 3: experiencing altered states of consciousness, and this is the work

1131
00:58:29,436 --> 00:58:33,436
Speaker 3: on Duke and University College London on hallucinogenics, which have

1132
00:58:33,556 --> 00:58:37,516
Speaker 3: found out to be actually reasonably good for people who

1133
00:58:37,516 --> 00:58:40,796
Speaker 3: have intractable depression. Now I'm not advocating everyone breaks the

1134
00:58:40,876 --> 00:58:44,396
Speaker 3: law or starts going taking hallucinogenics. Well, what is interesting

1135
00:58:44,396 --> 00:58:47,596
Speaker 3: about them is the impact directly on the default mode network,

1136
00:58:47,716 --> 00:58:52,716
Speaker 3: their serotodinergic activities. And for people who've never had an

1137
00:58:52,756 --> 00:58:55,436
Speaker 3: alter consciousness like that, one of the things they commonly

1138
00:58:55,476 --> 00:58:59,796
Speaker 3: report is their sense of self is deconstructed. You don't

1139
00:58:59,836 --> 00:59:01,596
Speaker 3: have to do something like that to have an altered

1140
00:59:01,636 --> 00:59:03,796
Speaker 3: sense of self. You can get that from all sorts

1141
00:59:03,796 --> 00:59:09,556
Speaker 3: of experiences, from communal experiences, all experiences, if they're One

1142
00:59:09,556 --> 00:59:11,916
Speaker 3: of the most powerful things you can do is if

1143
00:59:11,916 --> 00:59:13,636
Speaker 3: you're wealthy enough. I don't know about you, dam but

1144
00:59:13,676 --> 00:59:15,276
Speaker 3: if you can go out into the space and look

1145
00:59:15,316 --> 00:59:17,836
Speaker 3: back of the earth people and often kind of report

1146
00:59:17,876 --> 00:59:20,516
Speaker 3: that there a sense of self is It's not diminished.

1147
00:59:20,556 --> 00:59:24,436
Speaker 3: It's more a sense of connectivity with humanity, a sense

1148
00:59:24,476 --> 00:59:27,236
Speaker 3: of belonging. And that's what I mean by getting out

1149
00:59:27,236 --> 00:59:30,436
Speaker 3: of your head. It's becoming interconnected with those around you

1150
00:59:30,476 --> 00:59:34,076
Speaker 3: in a way which is meaningful because the happiness that

1151
00:59:34,116 --> 00:59:38,316
Speaker 3: you experience is more authentic when it's directed towards others

1152
00:59:38,356 --> 00:59:41,116
Speaker 3: and derived from others than the happiness that you try

1153
00:59:41,116 --> 00:59:43,676
Speaker 3: to turn in on yourself. You could treat yourself to

1154
00:59:44,236 --> 00:59:45,996
Speaker 3: I know, you could go on a shopping spree and

1155
00:59:46,076 --> 00:59:47,956
Speaker 3: you have some retail therapy, and that'd make you a

1156
00:59:47,956 --> 00:59:51,476
Speaker 3: little bit happy, but that happiness isn't authentic and it

1157
00:59:51,516 --> 00:59:55,196
Speaker 3: will soon dissipate. Whereas if you use your energies to

1158
00:59:55,356 --> 00:59:58,796
Speaker 3: enritual lives of others around you, well, you'll benefit from

1159
00:59:58,836 --> 01:00:00,596
Speaker 3: the fact that they'll like you a lot more. But

1160
01:00:00,636 --> 01:00:03,036
Speaker 3: also it's more authentic and it's going to last a

1161
01:00:03,076 --> 01:00:07,116
Speaker 3: lot longer because the reason is if you're the instigator, purveyor,

1162
01:00:07,236 --> 01:00:09,676
Speaker 3: and recipient of your own acts of kindness, well you

1163
01:00:09,756 --> 01:00:12,756
Speaker 3: know when they cease to give you any benefit, whereas

1164
01:00:12,796 --> 01:00:14,956
Speaker 3: if you direct it towards others, you never know when

1165
01:00:14,956 --> 01:00:16,516
Speaker 3: they get fed up of it. So you can always

1166
01:00:16,596 --> 01:00:18,996
Speaker 3: kind of reflect the fact that, yeah, that guy Bruce

1167
01:00:19,076 --> 01:00:20,316
Speaker 3: is a really good guy. He just bought a whole

1168
01:00:20,396 --> 01:00:22,196
Speaker 3: round of coffees on my sky is and then you

1169
01:00:22,236 --> 01:00:24,036
Speaker 3: can walk away thinking they think well of me.

1170
01:00:24,956 --> 01:00:29,556
Speaker 2: One of my little brants that I've gone on before

1171
01:00:29,596 --> 01:00:32,356
Speaker 2: on this show many times and will go on many

1172
01:00:32,396 --> 01:00:34,796
Speaker 2: times in the futures. But I say this with some

1173
01:00:35,356 --> 01:00:39,676
Speaker 2: sheepishness or apologeticness, if that's even a word, to the

1174
01:00:39,836 --> 01:00:41,956
Speaker 2: frequent listeners who have heard me say this before. But

1175
01:00:42,996 --> 01:00:45,316
Speaker 2: as you point out in the book, making other people

1176
01:00:45,356 --> 01:00:50,076
Speaker 2: happy makes you happy. And in my view, I'm like

1177
01:00:50,236 --> 01:00:53,996
Speaker 2: fifty one nine percent optimistic about the future of the species,

1178
01:00:54,436 --> 01:00:59,676
Speaker 2: so not like overwhelmingly optimistic, but slightly more optimistic than pessimistic,

1179
01:00:59,876 --> 01:01:05,996
Speaker 2: and that optimism is based on this design feature in

1180
01:01:06,036 --> 01:01:10,076
Speaker 2: the human operating system that doing good makes you feel good.

1181
01:01:10,756 --> 01:01:13,276
Speaker 3: Yeah, and I think that's a lesson that we learned

1182
01:01:13,276 --> 01:01:15,636
Speaker 3: too late in life. You know, once you've kind of

1183
01:01:15,756 --> 01:01:19,876
Speaker 3: satisfied the initial drives for success and wealth and whatever,

1184
01:01:20,236 --> 01:01:23,836
Speaker 3: and you've got spare capacity, then you realize, actually, why

1185
01:01:23,956 --> 01:01:25,796
Speaker 3: was I wasting all that? Especially when you're reaching the

1186
01:01:25,876 --> 01:01:27,476
Speaker 3: end of your life and you realize you haven't got

1187
01:01:27,556 --> 01:01:29,636
Speaker 3: much more in front of you. Then people suddenly have

1188
01:01:29,676 --> 01:01:32,316
Speaker 3: this epiphany that actually, wow, you know, I wish I'd

1189
01:01:32,356 --> 01:01:35,356
Speaker 3: spend more time with other people and making their lives better.

1190
01:01:35,436 --> 01:01:37,676
Speaker 3: So this is, you know, younemonia, the old concept from

1191
01:01:37,676 --> 01:01:41,516
Speaker 3: Aristotle and the Greek philosophers that really the value of

1192
01:01:41,556 --> 01:01:43,356
Speaker 3: the worth of life is the extent to which you

1193
01:01:43,476 --> 01:01:44,796
Speaker 3: enriched the lives of others around you.

1194
01:01:45,796 --> 01:01:48,716
Speaker 2: I've definitely learned it later in life and in my

1195
01:01:48,796 --> 01:01:51,476
Speaker 2: late forties and fifties. But I actually am of the

1196
01:01:51,556 --> 01:01:55,956
Speaker 2: view that I would have been more successful earlier if

1197
01:01:55,996 --> 01:01:58,076
Speaker 2: I had had this insight.

1198
01:01:58,716 --> 01:02:00,636
Speaker 3: I think that's true, and that goes back to what

1199
01:02:00,676 --> 01:02:02,956
Speaker 3: I was saying, is that when you do take the

1200
01:02:02,996 --> 01:02:06,356
Speaker 3: time and effort to enrichual lives of other people around you.

1201
01:02:06,476 --> 01:02:08,396
Speaker 3: That makes you liked, and that has a feed forward

1202
01:02:08,556 --> 01:02:11,916
Speaker 3: or an amplifying effect on your success because people like

1203
01:02:11,996 --> 01:02:14,596
Speaker 3: to be around people who are like that. Nobody really

1204
01:02:14,596 --> 01:02:17,316
Speaker 3: wants to be around someone who's so narcissistic and selfish

1205
01:02:17,356 --> 01:02:20,796
Speaker 3: and self focused, because they're just drawing all the energy

1206
01:02:21,116 --> 01:02:24,516
Speaker 3: you need. People who are brilliant and efforescent and you know,

1207
01:02:24,956 --> 01:02:27,756
Speaker 3: full of energy, impulsitive. That's who we like to be around,

1208
01:02:27,876 --> 01:02:30,116
Speaker 3: and that's generally directed towards others.

1209
01:02:30,596 --> 01:02:35,236
Speaker 2: Yes, yeah, Joseph Goldstein to quote him again. In Buddhism,

1210
01:02:35,276 --> 01:02:40,196
Speaker 2: there's this concept of enlightenment, which can be it's controversial

1211
01:02:40,316 --> 01:02:43,436
Speaker 2: in many ways. Joseph says that one way to think

1212
01:02:43,436 --> 01:02:48,556
Speaker 2: about enlightenment is lightening up and lightening up, meaning you're

1213
01:02:48,596 --> 01:02:51,636
Speaker 2: taking yourself less seriously, and we like to be around

1214
01:02:51,716 --> 01:02:55,476
Speaker 2: people who are allocentric in that way.

1215
01:02:55,636 --> 01:02:56,236
Speaker 3: I agree.

1216
01:02:56,436 --> 01:02:58,556
Speaker 2: Okay, so we've gone through the seven lessons, yeap. My

1217
01:02:58,676 --> 01:03:03,476
Speaker 2: understanding is you've done some research on the students to

1218
01:03:03,516 --> 01:03:06,676
Speaker 2: whom you've taught these seven lessons, and I'd be curious

1219
01:03:07,116 --> 01:03:07,876
Speaker 2: what did you find.

1220
01:03:08,316 --> 01:03:11,116
Speaker 3: What we found is it's really the title of your work,

1221
01:03:11,356 --> 01:03:13,836
Speaker 3: ten percent Happier that's roughly what we find when they've

1222
01:03:13,836 --> 01:03:16,796
Speaker 3: done our course. They're ten to fifteen percent happier, depending

1223
01:03:16,796 --> 01:03:18,996
Speaker 3: on which measure as part of the course. And I

1224
01:03:19,076 --> 01:03:21,756
Speaker 3: think this course is fairly unique in that as part

1225
01:03:21,796 --> 01:03:23,916
Speaker 3: of their engagement. First of all, there's no exams in

1226
01:03:23,956 --> 01:03:26,716
Speaker 3: our courses, but they have to undertake all the sorts

1227
01:03:26,756 --> 01:03:28,676
Speaker 3: of activities, and they have to document it, and they

1228
01:03:28,676 --> 01:03:30,076
Speaker 3: have to keep a journal, and they have to beet

1229
01:03:30,076 --> 01:03:32,636
Speaker 3: in small groups. So we practice what we preach. Okay,

1230
01:03:32,636 --> 01:03:35,396
Speaker 3: they literally have to do all these positive activities and

1231
01:03:35,516 --> 01:03:37,836
Speaker 3: if they do that for ten weeks on average, they're

1232
01:03:37,876 --> 01:03:40,756
Speaker 3: about ten to fifteen percent happier. We use different measures,

1233
01:03:40,756 --> 01:03:43,716
Speaker 3: but that's very reliable. We find that every year we've

1234
01:03:43,796 --> 01:03:45,796
Speaker 3: run it, and there's good and bad news. That's the

1235
01:03:45,796 --> 01:03:48,796
Speaker 3: good news. The bad news is after about six months

1236
01:03:48,836 --> 01:03:50,716
Speaker 3: of a lot of them have gone back down to baseline. Again.

1237
01:03:51,356 --> 01:03:53,716
Speaker 3: The good news is that if you follow them up

1238
01:03:53,796 --> 01:03:55,516
Speaker 3: up to two years, those who've kept up with the

1239
01:03:55,556 --> 01:03:59,276
Speaker 3: activities maintain their elevated levels of happiness. So it's like

1240
01:03:59,476 --> 01:04:03,316
Speaker 3: physical wellbeing, mental will being requires consistent effort. It has

1241
01:04:03,356 --> 01:04:05,796
Speaker 3: to become a habit. There's no silver bullet, there's no

1242
01:04:05,836 --> 01:04:08,356
Speaker 3: simple thing you can do and then you're happier forever after.

1243
01:04:08,596 --> 01:04:10,716
Speaker 3: It's a stay to mind as an approach to life.

1244
01:04:10,716 --> 01:04:13,156
Speaker 3: It's a way of dealing with things. As I said earlier,

1245
01:04:13,396 --> 01:04:16,196
Speaker 3: I think that explains why some people are just happier

1246
01:04:16,236 --> 01:04:19,156
Speaker 3: because they process things more effectively, whereas the ones that

1247
01:04:19,196 --> 01:04:21,156
Speaker 3: go back down the baseline, I think they resort back

1248
01:04:21,196 --> 01:04:24,156
Speaker 3: to their kind of all the biases that we've been describing.

1249
01:04:24,636 --> 01:04:27,476
Speaker 2: Yeah, so I take from that that happiness is a

1250
01:04:27,516 --> 01:04:30,556
Speaker 2: skill and that you need to practice in order to

1251
01:04:30,716 --> 01:04:35,396
Speaker 2: hone that skill. And if you ignore these lessons, you'll

1252
01:04:35,396 --> 01:04:39,036
Speaker 2: stay at baseline and good luck with that. I'm wondering

1253
01:04:39,116 --> 01:04:41,756
Speaker 2: would you agree with me? You may not agree with me,

1254
01:04:41,836 --> 01:04:45,556
Speaker 2: but my view. Having made up this ten percent happier

1255
01:04:45,636 --> 01:04:48,716
Speaker 2: number completely, you know, as a joke or partially as

1256
01:04:48,716 --> 01:04:52,716
Speaker 2: a joke, I now argue that the ten percent compounds annually,

1257
01:04:52,756 --> 01:04:55,236
Speaker 2: which is also somewhat tongue in cheek, but that if

1258
01:04:55,236 --> 01:04:59,436
Speaker 2: you keep practicing these skills, actually you will over time

1259
01:04:59,556 --> 01:05:03,276
Speaker 2: be significantly more than ten percent happier at the point

1260
01:05:03,276 --> 01:05:04,036
Speaker 2: of origination.

1261
01:05:04,436 --> 01:05:07,196
Speaker 3: Right, well, compound interests that ten percent annually would be

1262
01:05:07,396 --> 01:05:11,356
Speaker 3: exponential rise. This is a call but yeah, I certainly

1263
01:05:11,396 --> 01:05:13,796
Speaker 3: think it does strengthen over time, and I think the

1264
01:05:13,876 --> 01:05:17,276
Speaker 3: mechanism is not only addressing all your own setbacks, and

1265
01:05:17,636 --> 01:05:20,116
Speaker 3: we all face things over the course of our life,

1266
01:05:20,396 --> 01:05:24,476
Speaker 3: but as you become a more settled person, I think

1267
01:05:24,556 --> 01:05:27,196
Speaker 3: then you start to carve a path through life which

1268
01:05:27,236 --> 01:05:30,756
Speaker 3: is less difficult. And it also means that you're someone

1269
01:05:30,796 --> 01:05:33,396
Speaker 3: that people navigate or migrate towards because you seem to

1270
01:05:33,436 --> 01:05:36,076
Speaker 3: be comfortable. There's a number of ways in which it

1271
01:05:36,116 --> 01:05:37,916
Speaker 3: can work. But I would agree with you. I think

1272
01:05:37,956 --> 01:05:40,756
Speaker 3: that it can accumulate, and I would call that practical wisdom.

1273
01:05:40,956 --> 01:05:43,636
Speaker 3: Some of us get it indirectly. It used to come

1274
01:05:43,676 --> 01:05:45,196
Speaker 3: through the church, It used to come through a lot

1275
01:05:45,196 --> 01:05:47,756
Speaker 3: of our spiritual leaders. But in a world which is

1276
01:05:47,756 --> 01:05:51,556
Speaker 3: increasingly becoming fractionated because of technologies, we got to keep

1277
01:05:51,596 --> 01:05:52,996
Speaker 3: working on it. We've got to keep trying it.

1278
01:05:54,276 --> 01:05:55,996
Speaker 2: Bru said, this has been a pleasure. Let me ask

1279
01:05:56,036 --> 01:05:59,276
Speaker 2: you my two habitual closing questions. One is is there

1280
01:05:59,316 --> 01:06:01,156
Speaker 2: something you were hoping we would get to that we

1281
01:06:01,276 --> 01:06:01,956
Speaker 2: failed to get to.

1282
01:06:02,356 --> 01:06:05,236
Speaker 3: No, I think we covered most of the territory pretty adequately.

1283
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Speaker 3: I'm good.

1284
01:06:06,876 --> 01:06:08,836
Speaker 2: Can you remind everybody of the name of your new

1285
01:06:08,836 --> 01:06:12,396
Speaker 2: book and your older books, your website, your social media handles,

1286
01:06:12,396 --> 01:06:13,196
Speaker 2: et cetera, et cetera.

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01:06:13,796 --> 01:06:17,196
Speaker 3: The book I'm promoting is The Size of Happiness, Seven

1288
01:06:17,276 --> 01:06:21,836
Speaker 3: Lessons for Living Well. And my previous books are The

1289
01:06:21,996 --> 01:06:25,316
Speaker 3: Super Sense, which is all about supernatural thinking, The Self Illusion,

1290
01:06:25,556 --> 01:06:28,076
Speaker 3: which is a very Buddhist inspired book about the illusion

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01:06:28,076 --> 01:06:31,076
Speaker 3: of self. Then I wrote a book called The Domesticated Brain,

1292
01:06:31,196 --> 01:06:34,196
Speaker 3: which is about the evolution of sociality and humans. And

1293
01:06:34,236 --> 01:06:37,476
Speaker 3: then my second last book was Possessed, Why We Want

1294
01:06:37,516 --> 01:06:40,836
Speaker 3: More Than We Need, which is all about relentless consumerism

1295
01:06:40,836 --> 01:06:42,196
Speaker 3: and the psychology of ownership.

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01:06:42,516 --> 01:06:43,516
Speaker 2: And do you have a website?

1297
01:06:43,636 --> 01:06:45,996
Speaker 3: Ah, yeah, you, I've got Bruce food dot com. I

1298
01:06:46,076 --> 01:06:48,876
Speaker 3: managed to get that, So I've got a very egocentric

1299
01:06:48,996 --> 01:06:52,676
Speaker 3: kind of tag, which is kind of ironic given what

1300
01:06:52,676 --> 01:06:53,436
Speaker 3: I've been promoting.

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01:06:54,556 --> 01:06:57,356
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, I have Dan Harris dot com in my email,

1302
01:06:57,796 --> 01:07:00,196
Speaker 2: and that of everybody who works for me is you know,

1303
01:07:00,276 --> 01:07:02,476
Speaker 2: fill in the blank at Dan Harris dot com. So

1304
01:07:02,556 --> 01:07:06,196
Speaker 2: it's keep eccentric. I think we're going to change that eventually.

1305
01:07:06,916 --> 01:07:08,996
Speaker 2: Bruce great to meet you. Thank you so much.

1306
01:07:09,396 --> 01:07:10,716
Speaker 3: I appreciate it. Thank you, don.

1307
01:07:15,316 --> 01:07:17,196
Speaker 2: Thank you a Bruce Great to talk to him. As

1308
01:07:17,236 --> 01:07:20,116
Speaker 2: you may remember, we talked about the problem of overthinking,

1309
01:07:20,476 --> 01:07:23,156
Speaker 2: with which I am deeply familiar. We've got a guided

1310
01:07:23,196 --> 01:07:27,116
Speaker 2: meditation designed specifically for you to use after you listen

1311
01:07:27,156 --> 01:07:29,916
Speaker 2: to this conversation to help you deal with overthinking. It

1312
01:07:29,956 --> 01:07:32,676
Speaker 2: comes from our teacher of the Month, Don Mauricio. We're

1313
01:07:32,676 --> 01:07:35,716
Speaker 2: now in this mode where we're releasing guided meditations with

1314
01:07:35,756 --> 01:07:38,796
Speaker 2: all of our full length Monday Wednesday episodes. As I

1315
01:07:38,836 --> 01:07:41,316
Speaker 2: said earlier, you know, it's all about helping you to

1316
01:07:41,716 --> 01:07:43,716
Speaker 2: take the great stuff you hear on the show and

1317
01:07:43,796 --> 01:07:46,756
Speaker 2: actually get it into your mind in an abiding way.

1318
01:07:47,316 --> 01:07:49,756
Speaker 2: So if you want that meditation, head on over to

1319
01:07:49,836 --> 01:07:52,756
Speaker 2: Dan Harris dot com and check it out. If you're

1320
01:07:52,756 --> 01:07:55,756
Speaker 2: a subscriber, you get lots of benefits, including live guided

1321
01:07:55,796 --> 01:08:00,116
Speaker 2: meditations on video with Me and the ad free version

1322
01:08:00,116 --> 01:08:02,516
Speaker 2: of the show and much more. Before I let you go,

1323
01:08:02,556 --> 01:08:04,196
Speaker 2: I just want to thank everybody who works so hard

1324
01:08:04,236 --> 01:08:07,796
Speaker 2: to make this show. Our producers are Tara Anderson, Caroline

1325
01:08:07,876 --> 01:08:11,116
Speaker 2: Keenan and eleanor vision A. Recording and engineering is handled

1326
01:08:11,116 --> 01:08:13,716
Speaker 2: by the great folks over at pod People. Laurence Smith

1327
01:08:13,796 --> 01:08:16,956
Speaker 2: is our managing producer. Marissa Schneiderman is our senior producer.

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01:08:17,076 --> 01:08:20,596
Speaker 2: DJ Kashmir is our executive producer, and Nick Thorburn of

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01:08:20,636 --> 01:08:22,316
Speaker 2: the band Islands Rhode Ar theme