Speaker 1: I actually think there's a way to reconcile being in
Speaker 1: the present moment in a really beautiful way, with understanding
Speaker 1: that we all have a limited time on this earth
Speaker 1: and what we want to do with it in the
Speaker 1: end should be guiding as much of our daily actions
Speaker 1: as we can. Welcome to the one you feed throughout time.
Speaker 1: Great thinkers have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have,
Speaker 1: quotes like garbage in, garbage out, or you are what
Speaker 1: you think, ring true, and yet for many of us,
Speaker 1: our thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity,
Speaker 1: self pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't
Speaker 1: have instead of what we do. We think things that
Speaker 1: hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not
Speaker 1: just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent,
Speaker 1: and creative effort to make a life worth living. This
Speaker 1: podcast is about how other people keep them selves moving
Speaker 1: in the right direction, how they feed their good wolf.
Speaker 1: Thanks for joining us. Our guest on this episode is
Speaker 1: being a Venkataraman, an American journalist, author, and science policy expert.
Speaker 1: Bena is currently the editorial page editor of the Boston
Speaker 1: Globe Today. Eric and Beana discussed her new book, The
Speaker 1: Optimist Telescope, Thinking Ahead in a Reckless Age, which was
Speaker 1: named a top business book by the Financial Times and
Speaker 1: a best book of the Year by Amazon, Science Friday
Speaker 1: and National Public Radio. Hi, Bina, welcome to the show.
Speaker 1: Thanks so much for having me. Your book is called
Speaker 1: The Optimists Telescope, Thinking Ahead in a Reckless Age, and
Speaker 1: we're going to get into it and talk about it
Speaker 1: in a moment. But let's start like we always do,
Speaker 1: with the parable. There's a grandmother who's talking with her
Speaker 1: grandson and she says, in life, there are two wolves
Speaker 1: inside of us that are always at battle. One is
Speaker 1: a good wolf, which represents things like kindness, bravery and love,
Speaker 1: and the other is a bad wolf, which represents things
Speaker 1: like greed and hatred and fear. And the grandson stops
Speaker 1: and he thinks about it, and he looks up at
Speaker 1: his grandmother says, well, grandmother, which one wins? And the
Speaker 1: grandmother says, the one you feed. So I would like
Speaker 1: to start off by asking you what that parable means
Speaker 1: to you in your life and in the work that
Speaker 1: you do. Well. It's a beautiful parable, Eric, So thank
Speaker 1: you for introducing me to it, and I think for
Speaker 1: a lot of my life, I've felt that there's a
Speaker 1: need to feed the good wolf, or you want to
Speaker 1: be the good wolf, right, you want to to nourish it.
Speaker 1: But it's not always easy to do that. And I
Speaker 1: think about it in the context of short term and
Speaker 1: long term thinking too, because there are often reasons to
Speaker 1: do things in the short term. You feel a sense
Speaker 1: of nourishment and being fed by pursuing instant gratification, whether
Speaker 1: it's actually literally like eating the donuts that are on
Speaker 1: the counter, or whether it's pursuing you know, social media
Speaker 1: likes or retweets. I'm a journalist, I'm an editor at
Speaker 1: the Boston Globe of the editorial page, and you know,
Speaker 1: you could pursue just getting that gratification, getting that like
Speaker 1: quick snack candy. But often that food isn't really food
Speaker 1: for the good wolf. It's it's food for that wolf
Speaker 1: that seeks sort of fame or approval or affirmation. But
Speaker 1: that's not always aligned with what's actually courageous, what's actually meaningful,
Speaker 1: what leads to a life where you can look back
Speaker 1: on it and you can feel like you've done something
Speaker 1: that matters, and that's actually left for the next generation.
Speaker 1: So for my own moral compass, and this is not
Speaker 1: true for everyone, but for my own moral compass, I
Speaker 1: feel that it's important to think about what I'm doing
Speaker 1: that's going to endure past my own life, what am
Speaker 1: I contributing to in society or in communities. And it's
Speaker 1: really hard to feed that wolf on a normal basis
Speaker 1: um with the sort of feedback we get from society
Speaker 1: because of the reinforcement of get that quarterly profit, get
Speaker 1: that good grade on that next test. It's always about
Speaker 1: the next thing, the next thing, the next thing, and
Speaker 1: some of that real building, right Like imagine you wanted
Speaker 1: to plant a forest in a community. You plant the seeds,
Speaker 1: you watch them grow to saplings. Eventually they grow into
Speaker 1: slightly bigger trees, but it's a very slow process. And
Speaker 1: to actually have a thriving forest that's an ecosystem for animals,
Speaker 1: that's a place where people recreate, actually takes a lot
Speaker 1: of time. And so there might not be that much
Speaker 1: short term affirmation readily accessible food for that kind of
Speaker 1: work and that kind of way of being in the
Speaker 1: world and your community. But the good thing is, and
Speaker 1: I would say these are the insights from my book
Speaker 1: The Optimist Telescope, And part of the reason I wrote
Speaker 1: the book is to sort of share what I learned
Speaker 1: about how you actually can feed those long term aspirations,
Speaker 1: how you can become what I call an heirloom keeper,
Speaker 1: a keeper of shared collective heirlooms. And one of the
Speaker 1: things that's really important is community and environment and culture.
Speaker 1: So surrounding yourself with other people who will reinforce that
Speaker 1: building that thing together, doing that thing together is really important.
Speaker 1: Even if it's not immediately gratifying, there's still a nourishment
Speaker 1: from understanding you're doing something that is culturally reinforced by
Speaker 1: those around you, by your peers, by others. There are
Speaker 1: also other ways to give yourself little rewards on the
Speaker 1: way to getting to that long term goal, and we
Speaker 1: can talk more about that, but I would say in general,
Speaker 1: I found that it's it's sometimes hard to feed the
Speaker 1: good wolf, but it's really important to do it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and your book is really all about that basic idea
Speaker 1: of how do we make decisions about the future in
Speaker 1: a good way right? How do we make decisions that
Speaker 1: don't only prioritize where we sit right this minute, but
Speaker 1: are able to look out further, whether that further be
Speaker 1: five hours, five years, you know, five hundred years, you know,
Speaker 1: and you really examine that through both individual lens, through
Speaker 1: the lens of our businesses, our institutions, and then really
Speaker 1: society and community as a whole. We're going to spend
Speaker 1: a lot of our time in this conversation on that
Speaker 1: first part sort of individual, but as you so eloquently said,
Speaker 1: it all ties together. And if there's one thing that
Speaker 1: behavior science has really taught us, one of the big
Speaker 1: things that's taught us is how important our environment is
Speaker 1: in our ability to make the changes we want to
Speaker 1: make in our lives, and that a big part of
Speaker 1: that is who we're surrounded with, our culture, our norms,
Speaker 1: all that stuff drives a lot of who we are.
Speaker 1: And so the more we can align what's important to
Speaker 1: us and make our culture reinforcements line up, the easier
Speaker 1: that all becomes. It's so true, and that's really reinforced
Speaker 1: by the sort of untold story of the marshmallow test.
Speaker 1: If you want to go into that. Sure, you know
Speaker 1: a lot of people think of the marshmallow tests, which
Speaker 1: if for anyone who's listening who doesn't know what that is,
Speaker 1: it's a test that was given to toddlers since the
Speaker 1: nineteen sixties where they're told that they can have one
Speaker 1: treat right away or they can wait for an indefinite
Speaker 1: period of time to be given to treats. And this
Speaker 1: was linked to later high achievement test scores, high achievement
Speaker 1: in career success at the game of life when kids
Speaker 1: could wait for that second marshmallow delaying gratification. Well, there's
Speaker 1: a much richer picture than just that story that was
Speaker 1: told originally about those original studies, and as more and
Speaker 1: more studies of the marshmallow tests have been done across
Speaker 1: different cultures, across different groups, it's been found that what
Speaker 1: actually helps kids pass the marshmallow test is having cultural
Speaker 1: norms and peer groups that reinforce waiting for the second treat. So,
Speaker 1: for example, there's a study that shows that when kids
Speaker 1: are in a peer group that all wears the same
Speaker 1: color T shirt and they're told that everyone in the
Speaker 1: red T shirt waits for the second treat, then they'll
Speaker 1: wait for the second treat if they're wearing a red
Speaker 1: T shirt because they feel an affinity, they feel like
Speaker 1: they're part of the red team. Similarly, there have been
Speaker 1: studies that compare German toddlers to Cameroonian toddlers who are
Speaker 1: the kids of subsistence farmers, that have shown that the
Speaker 1: kids of these subsistence farmers wait at a much higher
Speaker 1: rate for a second treat. In that case, it's a
Speaker 1: puff puff, which is a local treat, not a marshmallow.
Speaker 1: And it's astounding to me that culture and environment can
Speaker 1: play such a big role on whether we can wait
Speaker 1: or whether we can do something uh that's more long
Speaker 1: term oriented. And I think the myth that we're told
Speaker 1: is that it's all about us as individuals, that we
Speaker 1: have to just wait, We just have to have willpower
Speaker 1: and self control. And the reality is that often we
Speaker 1: can get reinforcement to do the right thing, we can
Speaker 1: get reinforcement to do the wrong thing too. We all
Speaker 1: know that. Anyone who's known a teenager or been one
Speaker 1: knows that absolutely. And I think what you're pointing to
Speaker 1: is really important and it's I would say it's one
Speaker 1: of the main themes on this show that we talked
Speaker 1: about a lot, is that change is possible. Right that
Speaker 1: that study originally said, Okay, the kids who can delay
Speaker 1: a marshmallow turn out to be successful and the kids
Speaker 1: who couldn't don't. But one of the things they found
Speaker 1: even very early on is you could teach kids strategies,
Speaker 1: and if you taught them how, they were better at
Speaker 1: resisting the marshmallow. And you know, as you're pointing out,
Speaker 1: there's a lot also follow onto that says, Yeah, your culture,
Speaker 1: who you're surrounded by, there's lots of ways to reinforce behavior.
Speaker 1: I was on a coaching call with somebody today who
Speaker 1: was just so identified with her failings, so identified as
Speaker 1: in that is who I am. A lot of the
Speaker 1: work I do is to break that and go, no,
Speaker 1: that's not who you are. You can change. There are
Speaker 1: possibilities and and there's known ways to do it. You know,
Speaker 1: behavior science has taught us a lot about how we
Speaker 1: do that, and so you know, I really that in
Speaker 1: your book. The other thing that you say in the
Speaker 1: book is not only do we do this individually, do
Speaker 1: we say, oh, I'm just the kind of person who
Speaker 1: can't plan for the future. We do it collectively and
Speaker 1: we just go, well, humans can't plan for the future,
Speaker 1: thus we're just going to be left with bad decisions,
Speaker 1: reckless decisions. There's nothing we can do about what's coming,
Speaker 1: and your book really refutes that absolutely, and I find
Speaker 1: that inspiring that that's the model used for your coaching,
Speaker 1: because I really do think that was one of the
Speaker 1: most surprising things in spending five years researching this book.
Speaker 1: I kind of went into it with the mindset that
Speaker 1: was sort of cynical, like people are too short term oriented.
Speaker 1: There's no way we can do things like solve the
Speaker 1: climate crisis. There's no way that we can wait to
Speaker 1: make the right kind of investments to fix the education
Speaker 1: system some of these huge problems that we see. But
Speaker 1: the reality is that the research and countless examples from
Speaker 1: all over the world, from all different kinds of people
Speaker 1: show us that it is it possible to change. It's
Speaker 1: quite possible to think long term. That people do it
Speaker 1: all the time, And it's so important to demonstrate the
Speaker 1: art of the possible, because I think we can get
Speaker 1: trapped in the mindset that we're just not good at
Speaker 1: this thing, that we're just not capable of long term thinking.
Speaker 1: But if even look at like the vast majority of
Speaker 1: Americans right now are wearing masks, making sacrifices in terms
Speaker 1: of social distancing, not seeing their relatives as much as
Speaker 1: they would like to. Certainly there's a certain faction of
Speaker 1: the country that's having trouble with that. But a lot
Speaker 1: of people have been willing to make sacrifices in the
Speaker 1: short term for their own long term good for the
Speaker 1: greater long term good public health. And I think that's
Speaker 1: pretty inspiring. And it kind of hearkens back to World
Speaker 1: War Two when people were growing victory gardens, or you know,
Speaker 1: looking back at some of the sacrifices that people have
Speaker 1: made to contribute to the greater good over history, and
Speaker 1: I think it doesn't always have to be sacrifice. Being
Speaker 1: oriented toward the long term can actually be fun, it
Speaker 1: can actually be exciting. But we're just not necessarily programmed
Speaker 1: to do it. And I think often when we think
Speaker 1: about the future, we are expecting bad news. We're kind
Speaker 1: of looking at it with dread or anxiety or feeling
Speaker 1: that there's doomsday coming. And a lot of it has
Speaker 1: to do I will take some responsibility for with the
Speaker 1: news and sort of predictions of our future. We often
Speaker 1: predict the negative without offering a sense of agency or
Speaker 1: painting a picture what could actually make that future brighter,
Speaker 1: make it better, what kind of choices we have, But
Speaker 1: I think it leads a lot of people to turn
Speaker 1: the future off. So there have been surveys the show
Speaker 1: looking at people from many countries around the world that
Speaker 1: most people don't look past fifteen years in the future
Speaker 1: at most. The kind of the future goes dark in
Speaker 1: their imagination. And I think a lot of that is
Speaker 1: because we don't really have the tools, right, A lot
Speaker 1: of people don't have the tools to think that far
Speaker 1: ahead in their lives, and it really takes a leap
Speaker 1: of imagination to be able to do it. Yeah, So
Speaker 1: let's talk about that, because that's a real key part
Speaker 1: of your book is that we can't see very far
Speaker 1: out right, but there are tools in way is that
Speaker 1: can allow us to see further than this fifteen years
Speaker 1: that we're talking about. And so maybe talk through for
Speaker 1: an individual, what are some of the things individuals can
Speaker 1: do that allow them to make better decisions for the
Speaker 1: future and envision that future. Yes, so I think it's
Speaker 1: just important to say first of all, why it's so
Speaker 1: hard to think about the future, why this imagination gap exists,
Speaker 1: and that is because we can sense with our senses.
Speaker 1: We can smell, touch, and feel things that are in
Speaker 1: the present, things that are in the past. We've actually
Speaker 1: already committed to our memories, so we have a sense
Speaker 1: of them being imprinted in our senses. But the future
Speaker 1: is purely imaginative. It is all conjured in our minds,
Speaker 1: and it's actually actually miraculous that human beings can conjure
Speaker 1: in their minds something that's never happened before. And we
Speaker 1: rely on our episodic memory are sort of rearrangement of
Speaker 1: episodes of the past or movies we've seen, sort of
Speaker 1: putting together scenes to conjure up the future, and that
Speaker 1: takes cognitive effort. It is not easy to do, but
Speaker 1: we do it all the time we are as humans.
Speaker 1: Is it is a miracle that we can do this.
Speaker 1: So a lot gets in the way of actually being
Speaker 1: able to imagine, forget imagining accurately the future, but imagine
Speaker 1: future scenarios and put ourselves in those scenarios so that
Speaker 1: we can make decisions. Now that affect is for a
Speaker 1: future and a great example of that is, you know,
Speaker 1: thinking about old age. So for me, as I was
Speaker 1: writing this book in my mid thirties, it was very
Speaker 1: hard for me to think about getting older. I'm sort
Speaker 1: of terrible. It's saving for my own future, making decisions,
Speaker 1: thinking about what I'll think when I'm older, trying to
Speaker 1: decide whether to have a kid, whether how I would
Speaker 1: feel an old age about that. And I was doing
Speaker 1: this research for the book, and I was fascinated to
Speaker 1: find that there were people studying. A guy named hal Hirshfield,
Speaker 1: an economist at u c l A, studying basically techniques
Speaker 1: for helping people imagine themselves an old age. So he
Speaker 1: did this experiment with college students where he gave them
Speaker 1: virtual reality avatars of themselves, so it was if they
Speaker 1: were looking in a mirror and an old ver and
Speaker 1: of themselves gestured back at them and sort of mimic
Speaker 1: their moves. And he found stupping that comparing it to
Speaker 1: students who were just exposed to sort of information about
Speaker 1: aging or getting older. These are college students, so you know,
Speaker 1: giving them data or even just pictures of random old people,
Speaker 1: that this experience of seeing their sort of selves as
Speaker 1: in this imagined future actually activated them to be more
Speaker 1: willing to save for their future, more oriented towards the
Speaker 1: future and their decisions. So that's kind of cool high
Speaker 1: tech way of doing that. Another tool that I stumbled
Speaker 1: upon researching the book is a technique of writing a
Speaker 1: letter to your future self. And this is something I
Speaker 1: actually used and multiple points, uh making life decisions over
Speaker 1: the past few years, because I find it really effective.
Speaker 1: And what you do is you kind of empathize with
Speaker 1: that future self, Imagine the scene that that person is in,
Speaker 1: what they might be thinking, what regrets they might have,
Speaker 1: and try to reason or explain your decisions to your
Speaker 1: future self. Some people do this with their kids or
Speaker 1: their grandkids. They imagine writing to someone fifty years in
Speaker 1: the future, maybe not their their own self, depending on
Speaker 1: the age. And it's a way of kind of uh.
Speaker 1: I call it imaginative empathy, a way of kind of
Speaker 1: bringing yourself into the future in a way that allows
Speaker 1: you to understand how your decisions today might affect that. Otherwise,
Speaker 1: you're very likely to kind of just think, Okay, I
Speaker 1: can make that decision later. I can make that decision later.
Speaker 1: When we all know that we make pivotal decisions now
Speaker 1: that affect us for the rest of our lives. Whether
Speaker 1: it's about how much we exercise, whether it's about the
Speaker 1: education we decide to get, whether it's about the job
Speaker 1: moves we make, whether we decide to have children. All
Speaker 1: those things do matter in the long run, and there's
Speaker 1: no perfect life, there's no life without regrets. But there
Speaker 1: is a way to at least help yourself imagine what
Speaker 1: might matter to me in the future and what are
Speaker 1: the trade offs. And I think it just leads to
Speaker 1: more contentment, more wisdom in making decisions to be able
Speaker 1: to do that. Yeah, I think that imagining the future
Speaker 1: self is a is a really helpful exercise. How can
Speaker 1: we inhabit the person? You start the book off with
Speaker 1: a quote that I always love and I always think
Speaker 1: it's funny from Homer Simpson where he says that's a
Speaker 1: problem for future Homer Man, I don't envy that guy,
Speaker 1: and I think we can all relate with that that.
Speaker 1: You know, a lot of times we're just we're just
Speaker 1: putting things off that we know the bill is going
Speaker 1: to come new sooner or later on. But it's a
Speaker 1: way of being there that makes it more visceral. And
Speaker 1: that's the problem with as you said earlier, a lot
Speaker 1: of planning is that short term things are very visceral.
Speaker 1: They're like, oh, I want that doughnut and I can
Speaker 1: smell it, and and long term not so visceral, it's
Speaker 1: sort of very abstract, and so these exercises are ways
Speaker 1: of making the future less abstract, right, And you know,
Speaker 1: it's important to think about also not just imagining negative futures.
Speaker 1: So some people are very anxious and they have the
Speaker 1: tendency to go to the dark side of their imaginations.
Speaker 1: If that's your nature, that's your nature. But I tell people,
Speaker 1: if they're inclined to imagine only positive futures, if they're
Speaker 1: the kind of people who believe that everything will turn
Speaker 1: out fine, it's really important to add some negative futures.
Speaker 1: Imagine some negative futures as well, and possible decision points
Speaker 1: that could lead to that. And if you're the kind
Speaker 1: of person who turns to the dark scenarios of the future,
Speaker 1: try to imagine some positive scenarios and imagine how they
Speaker 1: could come about and what choices you could make. There's
Speaker 1: a technique that I write about in the book which
Speaker 1: is used by an investment firm that I profile in
Speaker 1: the book that does some incredible work with long term investing.
Speaker 1: It's a multibillion dollar investment firm that uses this technique called,
Speaker 1: let's say perspective Hindsight is what one academic has called it.
Speaker 1: You could call it a pre mortem. There are many
Speaker 1: ways of thinking about this, And what you do is
Speaker 1: you imagine a scenario in the future as if it's
Speaker 1: already happened. So you pretend it's already happened. And the
Speaker 1: example I like to use is I pretend I've hosted
Speaker 1: a dinner party and it's gone really well. And in
Speaker 1: pandemic times, this is like a sad scenario that I
Speaker 1: hope is going to happen in the future, but I
Speaker 1: don't know when. So I'm imagining the dinner party and
Speaker 1: I imagine and first that it's gone really, really well,
Speaker 1: and then I start to list all the reasons why
Speaker 1: it went well and how it went well, and so
Speaker 1: I might come up with things like, oh, you know,
Speaker 1: the people were just incredible. The mix of people invited
Speaker 1: were just wonderful people, interesting people. They had a lot
Speaker 1: to contribute. I might also come up with, you know,
Speaker 1: the conversation really flowed throughout the night. It didn't seem
Speaker 1: like anyone was interrupted. And I might say at least
Speaker 1: one of the dishes turned out well, and people complimented
Speaker 1: how well, how how good it was, and it kind
Speaker 1: of puts a little bit of focus on the decisions
Speaker 1: in the present that actually matter to get the outcome
Speaker 1: you want. So often when I've thrown dinner parties in
Speaker 1: the past, I've spent time thinking about what's the weather
Speaker 1: going to be like, and what will happen if people
Speaker 1: arrive at different times? How will I orchestrate that. I
Speaker 1: will fixate on things that don't actually matter that much
Speaker 1: for the outcome that going really well, and they're not
Speaker 1: in my control. Often it's not in my control whether
Speaker 1: the weather is good, and so why focus on those
Speaker 1: things when there are actual points of agency and decision
Speaker 1: that I can have that influence the future outcome I want.
Speaker 1: So then I can also do the opposite, which is
Speaker 1: imagine the dinner party goes horribly wrong, and so I
Speaker 1: describe how is it wrong? Why did it go wrong?
Speaker 1: And I come up with tons of different ways, and
Speaker 1: that helps me also plan for Maybe I don't want
Speaker 1: to invite that person I'm just planning to invite out
Speaker 1: of obligation who's like a real drag at a dinner table.
Speaker 1: Or maybe I don't want to try for the elaborate
Speaker 1: Julia Child recipe for the first time on the day
Speaker 1: that I'm having eight people over for dinner. Maybe I
Speaker 1: just want to try something really simple, because what matters
Speaker 1: is being present to help facilitate the conversation and get
Speaker 1: help people get to know each other. So it just
Speaker 1: helps clarify. And obviously I'm describing a very simple scenario
Speaker 1: of having dinner. But this is a kind of technique
Speaker 1: that can be used to make investment decisions. It can
Speaker 1: be used by country trees, by leadership in countries, and
Speaker 1: it actually is increasingly being utilized by government to look
Speaker 1: at scenarios. What if we actually don't have a vaccine,
Speaker 1: what will have happened to make that scenario carry out?
Speaker 1: What are the failure modes we could have. What if
Speaker 1: we do successfully get a vaccine by early what has
Speaker 1: to happen in order for that to happen. And some
Speaker 1: of those factors are in the control of decision makers,
Speaker 1: some are not. But again it's the same technique. As
Speaker 1: I listen to this, I think a little bit about
Speaker 1: and you mentioned it. You know, some people have a
Speaker 1: tendency just to always inhabit the future in a negative way,
Speaker 1: and we don't always want to be forecasting decisions. We
Speaker 1: don't always want to be living in this like, oh
Speaker 1: my god, what's going to happen? How do I control it?
Speaker 1: How do I make it come out? How do you
Speaker 1: balance that in your own life? Knowing how important future
Speaker 1: planning is, but realizing that most of the joy in
Speaker 1: life comes from sort of being here. Now. I don't
Speaker 1: think these are incompatible at all. So people have asked
Speaker 1: me this question a lot, and I really think that
Speaker 1: being present in the moment and being oriented towards what
Speaker 1: matters in the long term are entirely compatible. The place
Speaker 1: where it's tricky is living in constant anticipation of the
Speaker 1: next moment, that next reward, that next thing that you
Speaker 1: want to get, or that next thing you want to avoid.
Speaker 1: That anticipation is a source of anxiety. It's a locking
Speaker 1: on the incremental. It's very much about the immediate future,
Speaker 1: and it's where a lot of our culture reinforces and
Speaker 1: a lot of our economic factors reinforce us to live in.
Speaker 1: It's in that space, in anticipation of the next hit,
Speaker 1: the immediate future, the next like on your Facebook post
Speaker 1: that a lot of our media culture are social culture,
Speaker 1: our political culture reinforces us to kind of inhabit that space.
Speaker 1: And I think when you have a sense of what
Speaker 1: really matters to you over the long term, you can
Speaker 1: turn down some of that noise. Actually, you can stop
Speaker 1: thinking so much about how much it matters that you
Speaker 1: send emails today, or how much it matters that you
Speaker 1: sit down and just watch your kid at the dinner
Speaker 1: table eat their food with joy, uh, or just take
Speaker 1: that moment to look out at the landscape, look at
Speaker 1: the skies the sun is rising, or setting a few
Speaker 1: moments to do that maybe isn't so bad if it's
Speaker 1: a trade off with something very immediate that is just
Speaker 1: checking off something on the checklist. So I actually think
Speaker 1: there's a way to reconcile being in the present moment
Speaker 1: in a really beautiful way with understanding that we all
Speaker 1: have a limited time on this earth and what we
Speaker 1: want to do with it in the end should be
Speaker 1: guiding as much of our daily actions as we can.
Speaker 1: So I think we often have to carve out specific
Speaker 1: time in our days and our weeks to be thinking
Speaker 1: about our long term goals, thinking about what we want
Speaker 1: for the future, otherwise we'll get so consumed in this
Speaker 1: intermediate immediate future space. Yeah, I really like that idea
Speaker 1: that where we get lost. Is that intermediate space, the
Speaker 1: space that in a lot of ways doesn't matter so much,
Speaker 1: Like now kind of matters. What I'm doing, where I'm at,
Speaker 1: where my attention is, and the way my decisions impact
Speaker 1: things long term really matter. But a lot of the
Speaker 1: very small things that we get consumed with, like the traffic,
Speaker 1: don't matter. One of the questions I love to ask
Speaker 1: myself is will this matter in five hours, five days,
Speaker 1: five months, five years. Use whatever time increments you want.
Speaker 1: But it's a really great way of just for me
Speaker 1: eliminating a lot of stuff that I go not gonna matter.
Speaker 1: It's gonna matter in five days. No, it's not even
Speaker 1: five hours. I'm going to have completely forgotten this even occurred.
Speaker 1: Why am I so upset? I love that perspective. I'm
Speaker 1: going to steal that for the future in my life,
Speaker 1: I really do. I think that's a great way of
Speaker 1: thinking of it. Asking yourself the question over what timeline
Speaker 1: does this really matter? It can make also your problems
Speaker 1: seem smaller and perspective totally. Yeah. Yeah, But I like
Speaker 1: the way you say that I hadn't really thought of that.
Speaker 1: That being present now and thinking longer term, those are
Speaker 1: two useful modalities, but the one that most of us
Speaker 1: inhabit is worrying about what's right next and resisting what's
Speaker 1: happening right, you know, an hour from now, where it's
Speaker 1: a really interesting perspective. The other thing that you said
Speaker 1: that I thought was really good was I'm always a
Speaker 1: fan of the middle way, and you were like, you
Speaker 1: know what, if you only think about positive in the future,
Speaker 1: you probably want to introduce the fact that not everything
Speaker 1: turns out the way you want. And if you only
Speaker 1: think about the negative, you might want to assume something
Speaker 1: could go right. And you know, I used to see
Speaker 1: this in I was in software development for years and
Speaker 1: we're always looking at projects, and I got to know
Speaker 1: over time that people would work with. I'd be like
Speaker 1: that guy, he's gonna tell me it's going to take
Speaker 1: three hours, but it always takes thirty hours. So I
Speaker 1: just know him. He's an optimist. He always thinks it's
Speaker 1: going to happen like that. And that other guy, he's
Speaker 1: a pessimist. He just always thinks the worst thing is
Speaker 1: going to happen. So I've got to take that with
Speaker 1: you know, as you work with people and you realize like, okay,
Speaker 1: and so I think it's really helpful in our own lives.
Speaker 1: That's a really good thing to do. Which side am
Speaker 1: I on there? And let me if I want to
Speaker 1: be more accurate in my looking at what might happen,
Speaker 1: I need to know where my biases are and adjust
Speaker 1: for them exactly. Yeah, and adjusting to your colleagues or
Speaker 1: your friends, your family is another great way that we
Speaker 1: can support each other. Right to be counterbalances and having
Speaker 1: different imaginations, different visions of the future we can introduce
Speaker 1: to each other. And I do love it just to
Speaker 1: go back for a moment to your idea of asking,
Speaker 1: you know, will this matter in five years, will this
Speaker 1: matter in five days or is this just kind of
Speaker 1: a five hour or five minute kind of problem to
Speaker 1: help you decide triage what's most important to do. And
Speaker 1: you know, sometimes you're gonna have to do those things
Speaker 1: that are important in the immediate depending on your line
Speaker 1: of work. I'm on a deadline driven work schedule at
Speaker 1: the moment we put out a daily paper. But at
Speaker 1: the same time, it requires I think extra care to
Speaker 1: make sure that you carve out time. And I have
Speaker 1: found that because there's a sort of self fulfilling cycle
Speaker 1: of instant accomplishment right whether it's getting all those emails cleared,
Speaker 1: whether it's uh, you know, kind of um getting the
Speaker 1: instant feedback from doing something right away, because that's sort
Speaker 1: of addictive, and you then you're like, what's the next
Speaker 1: thing I can do? What's the next thing I can
Speaker 1: check off that. It's nice to start a day, to
Speaker 1: actually open a day. Sometimes it's using the day, but
Speaker 1: finding a way to sort of brack it off, either
Speaker 1: a time of the week or a time of the
Speaker 1: day that you dedicate to thinking about your long term goals.
Speaker 1: It is definitely an area. As I was reading the book,
Speaker 1: I just was like, I could do way better at
Speaker 1: thinking longer, longer term. A little history about me that
Speaker 1: you don't know listeners most of them know. I mean,
Speaker 1: I used to be a heroin attic. You can't have
Speaker 1: a much more my opic short term view of the
Speaker 1: world than that. You know, constant destruction. You know, I've
Speaker 1: evolved way past that, and I'm pretty good at going like, Okay,
Speaker 1: I know exercise helps my mental and emotional health. I
Speaker 1: know that not using does this, I know that meditating
Speaker 1: does this, But I don't think I've taken quite that
Speaker 1: next step to really inhabiting the longer term view. I
Speaker 1: think I've gotten away from the short and immediate gratification,
Speaker 1: but not necessarily taken that next step right. And you know,
Speaker 1: there's not a need to do it for every moment
Speaker 1: of your life, for every aspect of your life. I
Speaker 1: think that's the other aspect of this is that maybe
Speaker 1: long term thinking isn't the right solution for every line
Speaker 1: of work or problem in your family, or things that
Speaker 1: you are trying to accomplish exercise wise, but it's obviously
Speaker 1: something we need more of in our culture and a society.
Speaker 1: We're not doing enough on the long real long term problems,
Speaker 1: whether it's climate change, whether it's personal health and wellness,
Speaker 1: saving for the future. You can really look across the
Speaker 1: population and see that there's a pattern of people forsaking
Speaker 1: the future for the short term. So I think my
Speaker 1: my idea and goal is just to show people that
Speaker 1: they actually can do it, so that when it comes
Speaker 1: to things that they want to do they want to
Speaker 1: be long term oriented because they want to learn a
Speaker 1: new language, or they want to be able to save
Speaker 1: for some amazing trip when we can travel again, that
Speaker 1: they are able to do that using the insights of
Speaker 1: the optimist telescope. That's not to say that long term
Speaker 1: thinking is always going to be better. So I think
Speaker 1: that's important and important distinction. And I will say in
Speaker 1: terms of addiction, I think it's really interesting that there
Speaker 1: are neuroscientists who call some of our technologies that we
Speaker 1: have that I'm very addicted to electronic cocaine. Right. So
Speaker 1: there's an aspect, at least metaphorically right of of how
Speaker 1: we behave with our devices, with that text message notification,
Speaker 1: with social media that makes us all kind of behave
Speaker 1: right like that we're focused on the next fix. And
Speaker 1: so I think in a way we all should be
Speaker 1: empathizing more with addicts and with um recovered addicts, because
Speaker 1: we all have an element of that in our personalities.
Speaker 1: There definitely is something to modern technology that has that
Speaker 1: addictive flavor to it, no doubt about that. I wanted
Speaker 1: to talk a little bit about the fact that we're
Speaker 1: more inclined to make bad decisions when we are facing
Speaker 1: some sort of scarcity, right, whether that be time, whether
Speaker 1: that be we're tired, whether that be we're OK. Right
Speaker 1: like that, the scarcity of different types introduces the tendency
Speaker 1: to make very short term decisions, and I'd like to
Speaker 1: talk about like, well, in some cases that's probably the
Speaker 1: appropriate response, right, Like if you don't know how you're
Speaker 1: going to get dinner tonight and to feed your family,
Speaker 1: that's got to take priority, right, But what are some
Speaker 1: ways for those of us that are not in that
Speaker 1: threadbare of a circumstance. But we face other scarcities time scarcity,
Speaker 1: you know, tired scarcity. How can we continue to not
Speaker 1: let those things drive us into immediate gratification all the time.
Speaker 1: I'm so glad you brought this up, because you're right.
Speaker 1: I sort of used the example of going to the
Speaker 1: pawn shop when you need to buy food, right for
Speaker 1: the groceries for the week. It's obvious that you might
Speaker 1: sell off an heirloom, a family heirloom if you need
Speaker 1: to just feed your family or get the homework done.
Speaker 1: We often neglect that there's scarcity of bandwidth, sort of
Speaker 1: our our mental bandwidth, uh, scarcity of time, and that
Speaker 1: these functional lot like scarcity of money or scarcity of
Speaker 1: resources in terms of people making short term decisions. And
Speaker 1: I write about in the book Doctors. You know, some
Speaker 1: of the most trained, highly educated members of our society
Speaker 1: who are prescribing antibiotics, and situations where they've been seeing
Speaker 1: patients all day long, they're tired, their mental bandwidth is reduced,
Speaker 1: and they're getting pressured by patients to just give them
Speaker 1: an antibiotic. And this is a major contributor to antibiotic resistance.
Speaker 1: And these superbugs we know of which are you know,
Speaker 1: like the next pandemic hiding around the corner. Not to
Speaker 1: be too scary here. So those decisions happen in moments.
Speaker 1: Often there are studies that show that doctors are more
Speaker 1: likely to make incorrect, inappropriate let's say, prescriptions of antibiotics
Speaker 1: when they're fatigued and then when they've had back to
Speaker 1: back patients, they haven't had any rest or haven't had
Speaker 1: any breaks. So in a way, the things that you
Speaker 1: need to do to take care of yourself are the
Speaker 1: things that can help you be better at avoiding impulsive
Speaker 1: short term decisions, so having breaks, taking time to recover
Speaker 1: for a lot of physicians and nurse practitioners in that moment.
Speaker 1: I talk about impulse buffers in the book, so there
Speaker 1: are ways for them too in those moments be interrupted
Speaker 1: when they try to prescribe that antibiotics, Something in their
Speaker 1: electronic health record will pop up saying why exactly are
Speaker 1: you prescribing this and ask them to give a justification,
Speaker 1: which might stop them and make them think, oh, maybe
Speaker 1: we should make sure that this patient actually has the
Speaker 1: bacteria that can be killed by this drug before we
Speaker 1: prescribe it. When teachers are really tired and having lunch,
Speaker 1: some studies show that they're more likely to discipline their students.
Speaker 1: And there's a problem with this because we know that
Speaker 1: there is implicit bias, racial bias in the ways the
Speaker 1: patterns that teachers discipline students, and so a lot of
Speaker 1: black and brown students, particularly males, get sent to the
Speaker 1: principle's office more. And when they get sent to the
Speaker 1: principle's office more, they're more likely to be suspended. When
Speaker 1: they're more likely to be suspended, they're more likely to
Speaker 1: end up incarcerated. Did so there's a whole what they
Speaker 1: call the school to prison pipeline that kind of starts
Speaker 1: with decisions that teachers make in front of kids in
Speaker 1: their classroom when the teachers are overworked, have skipped lunch,
Speaker 1: are tired, or have a student that is just acting up,
Speaker 1: and so one of the things that you can do
Speaker 1: are One of the things that teachers who have found
Speaker 1: some success and controlling the impulse to discipline students sort
Speaker 1: of rashly have done is that they can do things
Speaker 1: as simple as dropping a pencil or having these strategies
Speaker 1: that Peter Goldwitzer at n YU calls if then strategies,
Speaker 1: which means you anticipate the situations we're gonna act impulsively,
Speaker 1: and you come up with a plan in advance, and
Speaker 1: you say to yourself, Okay, if I get into the
Speaker 1: classroom and I'm really tired and I've skipped lunch, and
Speaker 1: if you know, Roger speaks up at a turn, I
Speaker 1: will take three deep breaths before I say anything, or
Speaker 1: I will ring a bell, or I will drop my
Speaker 1: pencil and count ten. And you make up plans for
Speaker 1: kind of situations you might face in the future where
Speaker 1: you're going to act impulsively in your normal way of being,
Speaker 1: and you kind of set up then an action you
Speaker 1: stayed affirmatively what you'll do to fix that problem, and
Speaker 1: you can do it for something like going to the gym.
Speaker 1: You know, I'm not going to the gym these days,
Speaker 1: but I'm still exercising, and if I want to make
Speaker 1: sure that I don't let the weather stop me from
Speaker 1: getting out for a bike ride, I could make up
Speaker 1: an if then strategy. I could say, Okay, if it's raining,
Speaker 1: then I will put on some really great music about rainstorms,
Speaker 1: I will suit up in my favorite rain jacket, and
Speaker 1: I will go out anyway. It's sort of like setting
Speaker 1: yourself up for the scenarios that you might face in
Speaker 1: the future that might lead you to make sort of
Speaker 1: decisions against your long term goals. The term that you
Speaker 1: introduced in the book around these teachers in these moments
Speaker 1: I absolutely love, which is vulnerable decision points. And you know,
Speaker 1: I think again, this is an area as addicts with
Speaker 1: lots of experience that we get very good at because,
Speaker 1: you know, one of the first things you learn in
Speaker 1: like a twelve step program, they say don't get too hungry, angry, lonely,
Speaker 1: or tired, right, because then those things mimic wanting to drink.
Speaker 1: If you're too hungry, if you're too angry, if you're
Speaker 1: too tired, you're gonna want to drink. You've got to
Speaker 1: plan ahead to avoid those scenarios, you know, and we
Speaker 1: do a lot of if then's too you know, if
Speaker 1: I go to this event and I feel this way,
Speaker 1: then I will implementation intentions is what they're called. I
Speaker 1: use them in the coaching all the time, you know,
Speaker 1: and I think it's really important to think about, like
Speaker 1: you said, to kind of know like question. I often
Speaker 1: will ask a client, like, what could go wrong with
Speaker 1: this plan? And if then, if that happens, then I'll
Speaker 1: do this if that happens, you know. And I love
Speaker 1: that idea of impulse barriers also, right, This is why
Speaker 1: it's like very common sense, like if you don't want
Speaker 1: to eat junk food, don't have it in the house.
Speaker 1: Not having it in the house is the impulse barrier, right,
Speaker 1: because you have to get in your car and drive,
Speaker 1: and it gives you time to go, hang on a second,
Speaker 1: maybe I don't really want that brownie, you know, but
Speaker 1: if it's sitting right there on the counter. So you
Speaker 1: just said so many great things in there that I
Speaker 1: just kind of wanted to re emphasize. Absolutely, I'm glad
Speaker 1: to hear that you use the if then strategies and
Speaker 1: what the behavioral science shows on this, which is pretty comprehensive.
Speaker 1: It's not just one or two studies. It's stead these
Speaker 1: of people across all different contexts, and you think it
Speaker 1: sounds sort of like elementary or too basic, or the
Speaker 1: kind of thing that wouldn't work if you were a
Speaker 1: serious addict or if you had serious mental health problems.
Speaker 1: But it turns out it works even better among people
Speaker 1: who are schizophrenic, people who are recovering, people who have
Speaker 1: different kinds of mental health problems mental illness. And it's
Speaker 1: not clear why that's the case, but I think what's
Speaker 1: so interesting is that it also gets at this point
Speaker 1: about agency and choice and focusing on the decision points.
Speaker 1: So when you make an if and statement or an
Speaker 1: implementation intention, as you nicely pointed out, you are stating
Speaker 1: something that you will do affirmatively in the future. You're
Speaker 1: not just kind of passively like ruminating on a plan
Speaker 1: what's going to happen in the future. You're actually saying,
Speaker 1: if this contingency happens, if this wild card gets thrown down,
Speaker 1: this is how I'm going to handle it. And it's
Speaker 1: really affirming to be able to do that and then
Speaker 1: to remember that you did that, and it turns out
Speaker 1: to help people more than if they just you know,
Speaker 1: have a vague sense of what they would do, but
Speaker 1: they don't make that very specific. I will do this statement.
Speaker 1: That's right. It does sound very elementary, but it's not.
Speaker 1: And I agree with you. I think it's even as
Speaker 1: somebody who wrestles with depression, I know it's so critical
Speaker 1: for them because one of the things that seems to
Speaker 1: happen with depression is that my ability to decide make
Speaker 1: decisions is sort of gone. It's like the part of
Speaker 1: my brain that I need the most isn't there when
Speaker 1: I need it the most, which is why it's so
Speaker 1: helpful to have decided ahead of time. The example I
Speaker 1: always give, it's a really simplistic example, though, but it's
Speaker 1: a really good one, is that I know music helps.
Speaker 1: But if I feel depressed and I go, oh, let
Speaker 1: me go look at music, I just look. I just
Speaker 1: scroll the no, no, no, none of it sounds good.
Speaker 1: So I've already got a playlist built and all I
Speaker 1: do is go hit that playlist, turn it up. Okay,
Speaker 1: it works, you know, because I just know in that moment,
Speaker 1: my decision making isn't there. I love that. I'm going
Speaker 1: to steal that, because yeah, you can feel so despondent
Speaker 1: sometimes that you don't have any ability to even summon
Speaker 1: up the tools that will help you. So it's doing
Speaker 1: something on behalf of your future self, right, it's kind
Speaker 1: of baking in that solution and advance. Yeah. I think
Speaker 1: people who deal with mental health, well, often they figure
Speaker 1: out how to sort of patch together an emotional first
Speaker 1: aid kit, right, so they just sort of know when
Speaker 1: these things happen. Here's what I'll do. Often talk about
Speaker 1: this with addicts. It's the problem is that the part
Speaker 1: of your brain that can think clearly about why you
Speaker 1: don't want to use is the part of your brain
Speaker 1: that goes offline when you get really stressed. You know,
Speaker 1: you're stressed in your flight and fight system is activated.
Speaker 1: The parts of your brain that are rational are just
Speaker 1: less active. But that's when you need them because you're going, well,
Speaker 1: wait a second, why don't I want to Well, I
Speaker 1: don't know, and knowing having predecided written it out, you know,
Speaker 1: it just it helps with all that stuff. It's really fascinating. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a great connection to this work that I hadn't
Speaker 1: fully wrapped my head around. But I'm glad to be
Speaker 1: talking about this. There's another quote you have in the
Speaker 1: book that is both really true and strikes me as
Speaker 1: very funny at the same time, which is time is
Speaker 1: a great teacher, but unfortunately it kills all its pupils,
Speaker 1: which I just think is is so good but true. Like,
Speaker 1: you know, we can't only count on time to teach us.
Speaker 1: We run out. You know. That's why it's so helpful
Speaker 1: to learn from other people's mistakes. Well, yeah, that's Hector BerliOS.
Speaker 1: And I think that the challenge there is what do
Speaker 1: we remember? What gets steered in our memory and what
Speaker 1: gets passed down? And we can often be trapped by
Speaker 1: the past, I think, you know. I tell this story
Speaker 1: in the book about the Munich Olympic Games and this
Speaker 1: guy who was hired to anticipate scenarios of what could
Speaker 1: go wrong at the games, and this is sort of
Speaker 1: a cautionary tale about relying too much on scenario planning.
Speaker 1: And he came up with all these scenarios of what
Speaker 1: could go wrong at the nineteen seventy two Munich Olympics,
Speaker 1: and one of the scenarios he came up with was
Speaker 1: so handily what ended up happening at the games. He
Speaker 1: envisioned a group of terrorists climbing the Olympic fence at dawn,
Speaker 1: capturing Israeli athletes, holding them hostage, and some very simple,
Speaker 1: inexpensive precautions like having armed guards around the perimeter of
Speaker 1: the Olympic village or not housing the athletes by nationality.
Speaker 1: Knowing that there were Palestinian athletes who really wanted to
Speaker 1: come to the games, because Palestine is not recognized as
Speaker 1: a country, you know, by the Olympic Committee, were not
Speaker 1: able to come to the Games, and so there were
Speaker 1: groups that were reacting to that. So he was ignored,
Speaker 1: and he was handily ignored, in part because of the
Speaker 1: intention of the Olympic organizers of the seventy two Olympics
Speaker 1: to correct for the past. So they were holding onto
Speaker 1: this memory of the ninety six Olympics, which was the
Speaker 1: last time Germany had hosted the Olympics in Berlin, which
Speaker 1: Hitler had presided over, and so they were trying to
Speaker 1: correct their reputation. Basically, they were trying trying to make
Speaker 1: these games de hydro in spilo, which means like the
Speaker 1: care free Games, the cheerful games. They had this cute
Speaker 1: little docks and that was their mass got and they
Speaker 1: were just so intent on doing that that they neglected
Speaker 1: the risk, they neglected to think and take seriously these
Speaker 1: negative scenarios that they were presented with by someone who
Speaker 1: is actually a pretty good future thinker, future planner. And
Speaker 1: it relates to our own lives, and that I think
Speaker 1: sometimes our most steering visceral memories right becomes sort of
Speaker 1: traps for how we think about what's possible in the future,
Speaker 1: instead of being able to imagine a fuller range of possibilities.
Speaker 1: And we kind of need to need ways to break
Speaker 1: out of just relying on our past. And because I
Speaker 1: mentioned that the ability to imagine the future really relies
Speaker 1: upon our episodic memory, we are kind of projecting the
Speaker 1: past onto our future all the time. And so one
Speaker 1: of the things we need to do, I think, to
Speaker 1: enrich our sense of what can happen in the future,
Speaker 1: to play with more futures, play with more scenarios, is
Speaker 1: to you know, read books, watch films, talk to people
Speaker 1: who are not like us, all the things, you know,
Speaker 1: getting engaged in novels about worlds and societies that you
Speaker 1: don't know well that can sort of populate your mind
Speaker 1: with different kinds of possibilities. I love that idea. What
Speaker 1: you're pointing to with that is that we can't really
Speaker 1: imagine something that we haven't experienced in some way, even
Speaker 1: if it's not directly like we're combining things, but it's
Speaker 1: the input of all these different things that go in,
Speaker 1: like you say, movies, books, films, our own background. It's
Speaker 1: so amazing to me. So often as I'm populating any
Speaker 1: future scenario, I am stunned by how often the geography
Speaker 1: of my childhood is almost always present. It's like, you know,
Speaker 1: I'm thinking about something in a building, and it's a
Speaker 1: building from when I was a kid, or it's a
Speaker 1: trees or a field, or it's just like it's it
Speaker 1: all is, it's all shaped by that. As I'm reading
Speaker 1: a novel, it's like you're you're sort of visualized in
Speaker 1: the worlds, but it's almost always something I've seen before. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And I think, know there's a way in which the
Speaker 1: past can be really helpful to us for the future
Speaker 1: because of that too, right, Because there are there are
Speaker 1: ways in which we can rely on the past to
Speaker 1: help us, but we're often not looking far enough back too.
Speaker 1: So that's the reason for that quote. You know, history
Speaker 1: teach people what it kills. His pupils will we could
Speaker 1: actually have learned, you know, from the nineteen eighteen flu pandemic,
Speaker 1: for the pandemic we're living through right now, we could
Speaker 1: have learned from you know, thousands of years ago tsunamis
Speaker 1: before the tsunami in Japan in eleven and in fact,
Speaker 1: there were a couple of villages in Japan that actually
Speaker 1: had markers that warned them against fleeing to particular sites
Speaker 1: or against building below particular lines. And they were really
Speaker 1: affective because they made specific warnings to the future and
Speaker 1: they were carried over generations, the lesson to not flee
Speaker 1: to this particular place or to not build the lowest
Speaker 1: certain line. So I think one thing we can also
Speaker 1: do as thinking about being alive today, like what is
Speaker 1: it to be alive today? And what do we want
Speaker 1: to leave to the future, or is to think about
Speaker 1: what lessons are useful for the future to know from
Speaker 1: us right Like what do we want people to know
Speaker 1: about this incredible time we're living through, Like we're wearing
Speaker 1: masks when we go outside. We're living in a time
Speaker 1: of incredible you know, kind of transformation and consciousness about
Speaker 1: racial justice and protests, Like there's so many interesting things
Speaker 1: happening in our world today, some of which are really
Speaker 1: hard for a lot of people. But there's a way
Speaker 1: of looking at them sort of in a longer span
Speaker 1: of time and asking the question of what do we
Speaker 1: want to warn the future about? What do we want
Speaker 1: to tell them? And we may not be able to
Speaker 1: put it in uh, you know, message in a bottle
Speaker 1: and a time capsule and have anyone actually pick it up,
Speaker 1: But the methods that seem to work in terms of
Speaker 1: carrying warnings to the future are treated more like heirlooms.
Speaker 1: When people actually passed down knowledge generation to generation, they
Speaker 1: passed down the value placed on that and still the
Speaker 1: meaning in each generation. Yeah, we're near the end of
Speaker 1: our time, and I want to circle around here and
Speaker 1: talk about something that I thought was really interesting and
Speaker 1: useful in the book, and it ties to what you
Speaker 1: just said a minute ago talking about the social justice
Speaker 1: movements that are happening right now, and you describe in
Speaker 1: the book sociologist Martial Gands talking about why certain social
Speaker 1: movements endure over time. And I was wondering if we
Speaker 1: could just close with you know, what is it that
Speaker 1: makes certain social movements able to endure long enough to
Speaker 1: make real change. So Ganz told me about social movements
Speaker 1: having imagined visions of the future that were positive. So
Speaker 1: imagining a world or society in which kids of every
Speaker 1: race can go to school together, play together, people can
Speaker 1: thrive at every level of society, no matter they're race.
Speaker 1: So really concrete visions of the future that drove the
Speaker 1: civil rights movement of the fifties and sixties, concrete ideas
Speaker 1: that helped the farm workers movements that he worked as
Speaker 1: part of. So imagining a better future, whether it's for
Speaker 1: you or your kids, or your nieces or nephews or
Speaker 1: god kids or the next generation, is a way to
Speaker 1: get yourself passed right, the hardship and the blowback you
Speaker 1: get in the short term when you're trying to make
Speaker 1: big systemic change, when you're trying to make social change,
Speaker 1: political change, And I think anchoring ourselves to these vivid,
Speaker 1: positive visions of how we want to make society better
Speaker 1: is kind of how we can keep going, how people
Speaker 1: can keep going at almost everything they do. But certainly
Speaker 1: in the current social justice movements, I think it's worthwhile
Speaker 1: to think about the success of those in the past
Speaker 1: and how they really didn't just offer sort of a
Speaker 1: resistance to something. It wasn't just not this, It wasn't
Speaker 1: just you know today, it's not just not Trump. But
Speaker 1: what does it look like? What does it what does
Speaker 1: the society you want look like? That's a big part
Speaker 1: of what worries me about the progressive agenda right now
Speaker 1: is there's an awful lot of not this, you know,
Speaker 1: and and not as much I think what we do want.
Speaker 1: The other thing that was in that section that Gans
Speaker 1: talked about was how these movements characterized setbacks, right that
Speaker 1: they actually think through like, yeah, we're gonna have setbacks,
Speaker 1: and how we respond to those. And I think that's
Speaker 1: the other pieces realizing, you know, to tie this back
Speaker 1: to the personal I'm working with clients, I'm always like, well,
Speaker 1: you're going to get off track, Like it's inevitable that
Speaker 1: you're going to be doing well and then you're gonna
Speaker 1: get off track. What matters is how you respond to
Speaker 1: that exactly. And I think there's a real analogy there
Speaker 1: to kind of the growth mindset, which is that, you know,
Speaker 1: the successful social movements of the past have often had
Speaker 1: leaders who when there's a major setback, they characterize it
Speaker 1: as a moment of learning and growth for the movement
Speaker 1: instead of characterizing it as they got us and you know,
Speaker 1: now we've got to rebuild from this whole thing. It's
Speaker 1: about saying that we've learned something and we're going to
Speaker 1: be better as a result of this. And I think
Speaker 1: that can be something that applies to leaders in any
Speaker 1: real whether you're leading a social movement, or you're leading
Speaker 1: a company or a neighborhood association or a family. And
Speaker 1: I think it's just something really important to hang onto
Speaker 1: because if you really think about it from a long view,
Speaker 1: a lot of if you think about your past failures
Speaker 1: from a decade ago or fifteen years ago, right almost
Speaker 1: certainly taught you something. So I think the metaphor works
Speaker 1: well whether it's the individual or it's the grand political movement. YEA, Well,
Speaker 1: we are at the end of our time. But thank
Speaker 1: you so much for coming on. I really did enjoy
Speaker 1: the book. I thought it was really really well written,
Speaker 1: and I really enjoyed reading it. And this has been
Speaker 1: a lovely conversation, So thank you so much. I've loved it.
Speaker 1: To thank you, Eric. If what you just heard was
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