Dr. Maya Shankar: How to Shape Your Identity & Goals
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Welcome to the huberman lab podcast, where we discuss science and science space tools for everyday life. I'm Andrew huberman and i'm a professor of neurobiology and optimal gy at stanford school of medicine today. My guest is doctor mashing car.

Doctor mashing car is a cognizant entities who did her undergraduate training at yale university, her PH d thesis at oxford as a road scholar, and a postdoctoral fellowship also in cognitive science at stanford university. Doctor shang kr also served as a senior advisor to the White house, and he founded and served as the chair of the White house behavioral science team. Doctor shang kr is also the host of our own podcast entitled a slight change of plans.

And indeed, doctor's shun cr herself is no stranger to having to make major changes to one's life plans as you learn today. Prior to all of those incredible accomplishments that doctor shang kr has achieved, SHE was a student at the Juliet conservatives of music, preparing her life to become a professional concert violinist. But as you're also soon learn, SHE then experienced a career devastating injury, forcing herself to have to reframe everything about her life plans and her own identity.

And that's really what we talk about today. We talk about identity, not just doctors from cars, prior and current identities, but of course, your identity. We pose a number of questions gear toward getting you to ask, who am I really do my goals align with who I am and what I want. dr. Shankar shares with us the research on identity, goals, motivation and plans, as well as many practical tools to answer those key questions that guide us down either the correct or incorrect trajectories in life.

SHE shares with us, for instance, how to assess on paper goals of the sort that you would see on a cv, so which school, which job, which salary, which spouse at a and how to relate those to the deeper feelings that relate to oneself, ability to continually pursue a given goal, knowing that it's the right goal for us. We also talk about the science of feelings, what they can and cannot tell us, and when they should or should not serve as a compass for guiding our everyday and longer term decisions. By the end of today's episode, you will realize that dr and car is essentially handing you a science supported road map for how to determine and assess your identity and goals and how one influences the other, that is, how your identity influences your goals, and how your goals influences your identity in becoming the person that you want to be.

Before we begin, i'd like to emphasize that this podcast is separate from my teaching and researchers at stanford. IT is, however, part of my desired effort to bring zero cost to consumer information about science and science related tools to the general public. In keeping with that theme, i'd like to thank the sponsors of today's podcast.

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Again, that drink element element dot com slash huberman. Today's episode is also brought to us by waking up, waking up as a meditation APP that includes hundreds of meditation programs, mindfulness trainings, yoga eda sessions and n sdr non sleep depressed protocols. I started using the waking up up a few years ago because even though i've been doing regular meditation since my teens and I started doing yoga ea about a decade ago, my dad mentioned to me that he had found an APP turned out to be the waking up APP, which could teach you meditations of different durations.

And they had a lot of different types of meditations to place, to bring your body into different states, and that he liked IT very much. So I gave the waking up up a try, and I too found IT to be extremely useful, because sometimes I only have a few minutes to meditate, other times have longer to meditate. And indeed, I love the fact that I can explore different types of meditation to bring about different levels of understanding about consciousness, but also to place my brain body into lots of different kinds of states, depending on which meditation I do.

I also love that the waking up up has lots of different types of yoga eja sessions. Those you don't know. Yogananda is a process of lying very still, but keeping an active mind is very different than most meditations.

And there is excEllent scientific data to show that yogananda and something similar to IT called non sleep deep breath or nsd r, can greatly restore levels of cognitive and physical energy even, which is to a short ten minute session, if you would like to try the waking up, you can go to waking up dot com slash huberman and access a free thirty day trial. Again, that's waking up dot com slashed huberman to access a free thirty day trial. And now for my discussion with doctor mia on car. welcome.

So happy you here. Thanks, Sandy. It's great to be here.

I have a lot of questions about identity, about goals and motivation and about change in general. But i'd like to start off with identity, and i'd like to divided into two segments. The first is how we form an identity. And you know, we'll get into your story, and I hope a bit or more detail. But when we're Younger, we tend ask questions about ourselves, but also about the world around us. We want to learn what our parents do for a living, what the workers on the street are doing, that for sa, how much of our early identity do you think is formed by observation of what we are doing versus observation and labels of the people that are around us and closest to us?

Yeah it's a great question. Um I think a lot of IT is based on what we see around us and what we see uh is dem successful and and society privileges. And there is a concept called the identity for closure were actually when you're Young, right? It's not just that you're observing what your parents are doing or what your peer group is doing.

They impose their own structures on you. And so what that can do is I can really limit your mindset in terms of what IT is that you want to achieve and what IT is that you're capable of achieving. And so often times when people experience identity for closure, they have to take a lot of active steps to overcome whatever biases or limitations they experienced as a Young person given what they were projected to do or believe.

Right um so identity you know I can be about what you do, can also be about what you believe in the world, right? And so a lot of those belief systems are also passed and inherit police systems from the people um that surround you when you're Young. And if there's one thing that i've learned is that we we tend to put a huge premium on what IT is that we do, we tend to to find ourselves by what we do.

And you can see this in the questions we asked Young children, what do you want to be when you grow up, right? We never say, who do you want to be when you grow up? What kind of person do you want to be when you grow up? We say, what do you want to be? And the consequence of that kind of mindset is that we end up anchoring our identity is very firmly to what IT is that we do.

And I certainly, you talk, you are looting to my personal story, right? I started playing the violin when I was a little kid, six years old, became absolutely obsessed. And for the large part of my childhood, I was first and foremost, a violin st.

I mean, if I i'd met you, I feel like, hey Andrew, i'm a violinist and then the second up with you, I my that's how tethered my identity was to to being a violinist. And then fast forward to when a teenager, you know, these huge dreams of of going pro and and becoming, you know, yeah just like a hopefully professional violinist for the rest of my life. And then I tell attended in my hand my dreams and overnight.

And suddenly there's this profound loss of identity. Because what I hadn't realized is that in losing the violin, sure, I was losing the ability to play the instrument, but I was actually losing a huge part of who I was. And that was so destabilizing and so disorienting for me.

Because when you define yourself by the what, then as soon as the what goes away, you're like, oh my gosh, who the hell right? What do I do? What value do I bring to the world? And what I experienced at the time is known in cognitive science as identity paralysis.

Um maybe you felt this way during various transitions in your life, but basically who you are and what you're about is suddenly called into question and you end up feeling really stuck, right? You you don't see you don't have the current to imagine what the future could look like. And I certainly fell pray to identity paralysis and IT took me a long time to kind of figure out what my path we'd look like moving forward.

But I learned a really valuable lesson from that very formative experience. I had to change about how IT is that I should define myself. And for what is worth, I I don't think our desire is humans to have identities is going anywhere.

We're not going to be able to dispose of identities and we couldn't because our self identities bring us so much meaning and purpose in our lives. right? You're a pod caster.

I'm a pod caster. You're a scientist. I'm a scientist. These things are actually really helpful and motivating. So we don't want to do away with identities altogether. But what we can be more particular about is what we anchor our identities to.

And I have learned in my adult life to anchor my identity to why I do the things I do rather than what I do. And I found this to be a much more durable, reliable relationship. So to make this concrete, let's think about the violin right. Um sure I loved playing. I love how music sounded. Uh I love the way the violent felt um but when I stripped away all the superferry al features of the violin, what I really, really locked and was so drawn to as a Young child um was the emotional connection that I could form through my music so that might have been with my orchestra mates, my chair or musician friends um playing a solo and performing in front of an audience and ideally we all feel something new that we haven't felt before.

I mean, it's kind of an intoxicating ating feeling when you're little to have the ability to inspire new feelings and people, right? And I was so drawn to human connection, and when I realized that human connection was at the heart of what IT is, that drives me as a person, right? Like what lights me of every single day is a desire to connect with others, to understand other people, to understand their psychology, to understand how their mind's work.

Then, when the violence was taken away from me, even terms the narrative, I tell myself, without my life, I could still find that same core underlying future elsewhere. And I have been able to right I found IT um as an academic, as a continent of scientists, to studies the science of connection and emotion. Um i've seen that I seen that connection play out in the in the work that I did in public policy when I was at the White house.

Obviously with my podcast a slight change plans, you're forming these intimate connections with people every day. And so even though IT feels in my life like i've done such desperate things right there actually is a powerful through line that connects all of them, and that is my desire to connect emotionally. And so what I would recommend to people who are listening, especially in there in the throes of change, and they're feeling destabilized by that threat to identity, that loss of identity, is to try to figure out what their through line is, right? Like, what are the underlying features of the things that you used to do that you absolutely loved? And can you find the expression of that elsewhere?

I love that, and I have so many questions. The first one relates back to childhood identities and how we often can project on to children what they are likely to become. I see that has mostly been evolving.

You observe a child playing with trucks in the sandbox and and we say, um oh you know there are going to come a contractor um we tend to project roles that are fairly high, the within occupation, higher chy right we like any parents you know you wish for the the best possible life for your kids um but I can see that the perils of doing that um if then the could starts to think, well, that's what i'm bound to become because if IT is restrictive, I also fascinated by the fact that when we are adolescence and teens, there is a tendency to ask questions about identity, like, who am I? Yeah I don't know many forty years old that say, who am I? You know, at one's core, one's essence.

And we might change careers, change relationships, change geography, you know, all sorts of things. But there must be something going on in the brain in those adolescent and teen years that forces this question of self, of who am I and teenagers, and notorious for trying on different uniforms, different friend groups, different behaviors, as a way to sort that out, sometimes in that support dominant, sometimes in ways that act as pit falls. So curious about what's known about how we develop our own identity from the inside out as well as from the outside in.

Yeah, that's really interesting. And it's also something very curious about. I mean, we know from neuroscience research that there are significant changes that the brain undergoes during puberty, no other periods of adolescence and and the primary change that we see is the desire for independence.

And so one reason why we see teenagers grappling with this question of who I am is that they're actually breaking from these structures that they grew up around, right, the imposed structures, right, the identity for closure that they might have experienced and are starting to figure out for the first time, are wanting to ask the question for the first time, who do I want to be? What do I want to do outside of the systems that i've grown up in? And I think this is one of the primary reasons why we find that during teenage years um this this sort of question is asked more commonly um I think that one chAllenge that um we can we can face because you you said this one word that really caught my attention, which was what's my essence and you know, one of the things I studied as a cognitive scientist is the psychology of what's called essentialism.

So our underlying belief that there are essential qualities to people that are immutable, able and there's lots of studies with you, Young children and adults showing that we really believe that people do have these essences right and unclear what that even means from the inventive physical sense I don't know what that would even mean um but I think that the chAllenge and believing that we have essences is that IT leads us to believe that there are these truly immutable able states about ourselves that are what we're incapable of changing. And I think this can give rise to feelings of shame, for example. So what is shame? Shame is not the feeling.

Oh, I did something bad. Shame is the feeling. I am bad, right? It's not that I lost that something. I feel that something is that i'm a loser, i'm a failure.

And so the problem when we try to figure out the essence piece is that IT doesn't give you the kind of valuable way of thinking that actually there might not be something that so defining about you that you're incapable of changing as humans. Maybe all we are collections of behaviors and thoughts, right? And there's nothing more to IT than that.

And I find that way of thinking a bit more freeing when IT comes to who we are, because I think IT allows for, I think IT allows us to cultivate of a growth mindset. I think IT prevents us from engaging in these very harmful self narratives that a lot of people tend to have about themselves. I mean, probably a lot of people listening to a podcast or self critical, i'm a very self critical person where we listen to this because if you want to improve, you know, in my friend of your show, because I want to be Better and I want to improve.

But that also is often accompanies by a lot of Operating and questioning himself, right? And so yeah, I think I ve just tried to have a slightly more competitive ous understanding of of who I am and also recognizing that there might not really be these essential features that that are immutable, able. I don't if you resonate with this notion of like the essence, like the desire to feel that .

we have essence yeah I used the word essence without thinking um too carefully about exactly what I meant, what I what are trying to say what I said essence um is you know as a child I did certain things and I joined some of them, didn't enjoy others and I really dislike others. A very famous neo scientists who is that cal tech name markets minster. People literally refer to him as the great mark minister once said.

And I totally subscribe bed to the fact that neural circuits in the brain basically divide our sensory experience along the dimensions of yuck and may. There's not a lot of in between, right? Because the circuits ultimately have to derive either forward movement toward more ah competitive behaviors as in nerd speak or a versions and leaning out.

I don't want that or just kind of a neutral response. So Young yak and may ah seems to be the the trinity response. And there is this component of childhood, I think, where we are forging naturally, using our senses, experiencing yet and maz and hearing Young yaks and maz from our parents. That's good, that's bad. That's whatever is neutral. But at some point I certainly had the experience and i've observed others, I think having the experience of feeling something that's on a different dimension entirely, which is the notion of delight, which is that it's or fills your body with a sense of so much yum that IT gives you energy to do so much more of IT in a way that that is almost on a different plan. And and i'm not trying to be spiritual or metaphysical about IT, but IT feels distinctly tly different and I don't know what IT represents but I think that that that piece that graphs you been as a scientist, I don't really need to assign a neurotic circuit too um so do you think what .

you're describing in part is the feeling of all like when you talk about the light, do you think part of IT is is a feeling of oh.

like the first time I went to new york city is a six year old kid. I remember thinking, and I still feel every time and then I can't believe this place excess. It's it's a human tropical reef like everywhere you look at there is life.

So that was all in delighted though. I saw some things. This was in new york in the seventies, and there are some things like times square in the seventies. I have anyone seen that show the duces I mean like IT looked like that IT was especially as a Young aversive yeah um so IT wasn't always odd and but the delivery for me was in learning and certain animals and certain things for you as the violin and and I want to make sure that .

I and all by the way I mean I can be a verse right so oh isn't necessarily I think the western world we think of inspiring experience says is having a positive emotional violence, but they can also have a negative emotional violence. So um the two criteria for a satisfying and on inspiring experience, and a lot of this work comes from dec calta professor, you see berkely yeah is one there should be some element of preceded vastness.

This is all, this is all reference dependence as all they send your own frame of mind right um but there is a sense of like mystery wonder I just how vast either the physical apparatus is right like times square is is massive you know set of buildings and you kind of overwhelming your senses because of all the lights and sounds that are hitting uh your visual system in your auditory system. There's also conceptual vastness so we can feel all when we um feel the delight of a new scientific discovery right or in my case like for the first time reading a book about how the mind works. I just remember marvel at this organ and just being completely in all of how.

And then the second criteria for an on inspiring experience with which I think might have been met as well when you are in when you are in the new york, is. What's called the need for accommodation. So it's just a fancy way of saying that we have a certain mental model, the world and typically in the presence of all we need to assist late this new information with our existing model because that chAllenges IT in some way and um IT makes us IT actually leads us to have more open minds because we have to we realize me to second um I this existing vision of like what the world is like.

And now i'm experiencing this new thing and I need to kind of make IT work. I need to integrate IT with my existing understanding the world and that's the mind blowing part of IT right? Um but I absolutely I mean I remember my childhood experience kind of miring your experience in new york was I was I was twelve years old and maybe eleven years old.

I was at a summer music camp. IT was late at night. I had my this man, which is how we listened to things back in the day. I had a city in there.

Um IT was the day of violin concertos by on sophie motor and I was I was like, I was so Young, Andrew, so I still don't know how to use words to describe how IT is that. I felt something that was so powerful and so transcended. But I remember listening to the first movement of the violent and chardeh and IT consumed me.

I mean, I thought, chill up and down my spine, my heart would race along with the Melody. IT felt other worldly, right? And I think that was kinds, what you're getting up before, where is like? It's this altered state of mind.

And I what of the language i've used since to code that experiences that I was an on inspiring experiences, I think both things happened, right? I I was, I was, I was impressed by the vastness of the experience that also sent me through time in this interesting way, you know, back to, like the time of bathin, right? So, so vasts can exist along a temporal horizon.

And then the need for accommodation, which was, I didn't studying cognitive science at this point. I remember thinking, I cannot believe a collection of musical notes arranged just so can make me feel this way, and that if you were to tweet IT just slightly, just like take the e flat and move IT down the down the stream of a little bit emotional residents completely gone from the passage. And there is just something so simple and magical about that realization. So anyway, I resonate with with this kind of delight and all experience that you describe yeah.

i'm so glad you described IT that way you know um this is a discussion about my experience for me. I realized now that new york was all inspiring prior to that the only thing similar was discovering animal specialization, something i'm still fascinated by, the sensory systems of animals and how they experienced the world, and how humans experiences the world.

And then ultimately, IT was, well, then I want to escape working in that whole landscape, and then eventually into a new science. Yes, the difference between the new york experience of all, and I do think that's what IT was, and biology, animals and eventually neuroscience. yeah. Is that like your experience with music and realizing that the movement of a note could change something fundamentally? When I came to learning about biology and neuroscience, I felt not just all, but a sense of delight in that I felt there was a place for me there.

And what is made of what you just described really, really resonated in terms of this moving of a note, because IT took something from a passive experience, I believe of that this incredible thing over there like new york city was oh but I didn't see myself having any kind of um verbs state within IT that would change IT or alter IT how IT is or for me wherewith music for you. I think neuroscience, when I realized that you could do experiments, you can actually do some sort of manipulation. And through that hopefully unveiled something fundamental about how the brain works.

I thought there's a place for me here. Yeah and so I think there's something about the a the experience of something just from a raw sensory perspective, music or animals or neuroscience in the examples we're using here. But then realizing that there's a verb state of self like that, I could enact t something within IT that could give me more of that whether I think when, as a Young kid in new york city, I just didn't feel any way that I could plug into IT, except in a passive way, because it's the difference between a kid who and this went have been me who sees a game of soccer, football or baseball or watches the olympics and go, dad is amazing.

And the kid that says, i'm going to go do that, in fact, I could do that, and I could maybe do that even Better, or even half as well. And so the delight, I think, is in the possibility of of engagement of an and unfashioned you know a friend of mine who's a trauma, a therapy he doesn't he's not a newer scientist. I says no, nounce are just very slow verbs, but verbs are far more exciting because they create this anticipatory activity anyway. Um I I love before you .

move on from that I love that you said that because you're helping me realized something really important about how I saw my role as a violinist and in a did you i'm never going to modify the notes on the page because obviously i'm gonna be feel feel to what fatal .

and road this is made you a great musician, by way, was failed. They pulled me out of IT because the neighbor's dogs hold. I was in suzuki method. I was in. I was so terrible at IT that they early made me stop playing music just to protect .

the neighborhoods adorable and we talking about the science kidding maybe later but that was a great choice for you um I I but what I realized is that there was that element of defining self through the pursuit of the instrument and um I saw a placed for myself exactly like you did where I thought I decide how this freezing folks, I decide how much for broader I use.

I decide exactly what the angle of my boat is, the cases in the ping and the emotion that I bring to the experience and when you see a place for yourself, and that takes in all inspiring experience. And then and actually there's a translation process where you become something bigger than then what you thought you could be. And actually so interesting. Imagine this center because of i've been chatting recently with the guy named regional doin bets and he spent nine years in prison, uh, and he's now a international pronounced scholar so uh, he committed a car jacking when he was fifteen years old and then went to an adult prison for nine years and .

fifty years .

as he just turned sixteen by the time he got his sentence yeah I was totally wild and um he he actually talks about the fact that you know there was this underground library in the prison system and he didn't know what he could be in the prison, what identity he could take on when everyone seemed to be defined by what crime they're committed right? IT felt like his imagination was so limited to to the and talk about identity process that is right.

I mean, like you're denied all your basic freedoms in this environment, right? You really don't even have the ability to imagine what more you could be. So one day he gets a book called the black poets, and in in the book he read a poem by average night who had also spent time in prison and had written this incredibly string home about the criminal justice system.

And he goes by dane, but what drain shared with me, as he said. I was, I was all inspired by what I was reading. But the most important thing that happened in reading that book and understanding the author history is that IT gave me something to be.

I saw a place for myself in this world. And he he wrote, I mean, he was so prolific, he wrote a thousand pose in the year after he stumbled upon this book. And he ended up winning in the make artha genius award.

He went to yell law school at me. He's just crushed IT ever since. But I think he's somebody upon a really important point, which is, oh, there's an fascinating science of all and all the benefits that can confer to our well being.

But you can also show an entry point to helping to define our identities and new places. And I just love that. I think that is a wonderful way to think .

about IT yeah when we see ourselves on entering the fear of experience that is evoking I did to get something about IT converts to this delight although I have to acknowledge that language is insufficient to describe a lot of what we're referring to, right? There's that, you know, the even the most reductiones language of biology can't grab the higher order, emotions and complexity. Not yet.

Anyway, we just don't have language for IT. I'd like to talk more about the violin, and not just because I failed miserably at the violin, but actually I figured out for the early on I was going to be a musician. I still have absolutely no ability to read music.

I can memorize lykes very easily. But, and I love music, and I of classical music as well as other forms of music, but a zero musical talent. You, on the other hand, got quite good at violin IT was interesting for me to learn that the violin was a bit of a rebellious choice for you giving your your family history.

And you and I do both share this very, very unusual fact that both of our fathers are theoretical physicists. So did you feel pressure to be a scientist or something else? And being a musician, was that initially looked at as a out to poverty or or or a bad choice, or where your parents a bit more cautious, like a okay, that's great. But maybe make that a supplement to your other studies and pursuits.

Yes, so i'm the Youngest of four kids and kind of stereotypically my three older sibling, ings, for total math wiz. They were taking the S. A. T.

When they were, when they were very Young they were so talented um but I think one antagonist to some of those cultural forces is that my mom, when you'd grown up in india, have felt very stifled by her environment like as a Young woman who was very capable and very smart and me SHE major in physics um SHE was mostly you know kept to the spaces of domestic chores, occasional singing lessons um but mostly her job was like dear homework and then help with cooking right and cleaning and what not and so when he moved to this country with my dad in the thousand nine hundred seventy years, SHE was actually very excited he was twenty one years old by the way so long story short he had met my dad twenty days prior do there getting married so was an arrange meeting and um my dad is a doing uh his post doc at harvard in physics that the society of fellows and my mom just joined him after a winter break uh in the door and ever he was like, hey man. How was your break and there was like, I went snowboarding and I want whatever to tell her. And that's like, I got married.

And so this new couple arrived, and my mom was so lonely in this country. I mean, this was before you could text your parents overseas or use of what's that group, so you can only hand right letters to her family back home. And her her goal was, you know what, i'm going na create a little army around me in the form of children.

So he had four kids. And SHE was absolutely intent on exposing us to as many extra circular activities as SHE cuts by two older brothers and have an older sister, especially her girls, SHE said, you can do whatever you want and give you lay the land when you're Young. But when you find something that you're passionate about, I really want to give you the opportunity to explore IT.

So I think I really benefit from the fact that he had been denied that kind of exposure and the ability to pursue her dreams, artistical or otherwise. And so she's really help them on making sure that we kids were able to, I think they were in older, three siblings played musical instruments, so they cleared that trumpet, flute. I think they were surprised by my invinted for IT, because when I was six, my mom brought down my grandmother's violin from the addict.

So my grandmother had played indian classical music. That's actually where you're sitting cross like IT on the floor in your violence, facing the ground. A very, very different style of music that was like a parting gift. My grandmother given IT to my mom and said he brings this with you to the us. So SHE opened the instrument that day and I just instantly fell love with IT.

And um I asked very quickly for a quarter size violent of my own and while my parents had to judge me to do all sorts of things, they really never had to push me to practice which felt extraordinary the time like okay, clearly the violin is something that mia has a trinities motivation for because how is that that we're not asking her to have to practice all the time. Um similar to you actually, Andrew, I never to this day I have a really hard time reading music so I never I was a terrible site reader. I couldn't if you could have piece of music in front of me, I would not be able to tell you probably what I would sound like today.

I learned entirely by year so I started with this zookeeper third, which as you know was entirely bite year and then um I had an extremely very kind, awesome, but very inexperienced to her. I was his first student. My mom went back stage at a symphony y concert in new haven in which is where I grew up, and just asked the concert aster like, hey, will you teach my daughter? And he's like, sure never taught anyone before of that i'll give this ago.

And so we just made things up along the way. I mean, he would play stuff, and I would mimic IT. I would let my emotions and my, you know, whatever innate musicality guide me. And eventually, I mean, I think what that did actually is really interesting from a skill building perspective.

My technique absolutely suffered in the long term from not having a more structured approach, but I was able to fall in love with this endeavour much more quickly than other kids who had drill surgeons that were forcing them to, like, practice their scales every day and practice atos. I mean, that stuff is so boring, right? And when you're a little kid, if you want to bang your head against the wall, when you're put up against that, when there's so much so many barriers to actually enjoying the the fun parts which are actually playing the pieces. So the one kind of fun outside about my musical jury is I got to jump straight to the fun stuff. And I think that helped me cultivate a much more natural love of the instrument.

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The intrinsic motivation part is so he i've talked a few times before on the podcast about this, I think now famous study that was done that being nursery school, stanford, where they observed what kids did during free time and then they rewarded them or didn't reward them and then they later removed the rewards and the essential takeaway that receiving rewards for something that a child was initially intrinsically motivated to do undermine some of that intrinsic motivation so I have to wonder whether not um the fact of your parents neither encourage nor discourage your violin playing might have allowed you to fully express in and lean tea in transit motivation as opposed to for instance, in my case um there is we are distinctly related, not closer way but there is a great violaine ss by the name ona slave huberman who has a street named after him in israel there's a famous picture of him and einstein playing violin together. And I was told about that early on. And when I failed to play well after a couple of practices, I was convinced that there was no way I was gona live up .

to IT and I quit. It's a high bar. It's A I didn't have any such role models that .

yeah turns out i'm but exactly. And so I think that there is actually more opportunity in um in kids leaning into or an adults probably leaning into the sensory experience of what they're doing and not putting that up against some benchmark. And I worry about that today.

Someone who was social media and with video games, where in a video game or on social media you can see something being done at the very highest level, often buy a someone quite Young. IT were early in their career. So the point can be a little bit overwhelming.

And I think then we start measuring ourselves against, you know, metrics that are not about the experience. That said, your parents, whatever they did, I worked out well enough that you became very proficient, right? You succeeded in getting into Julia ard, which is at least from my understanding, is the most competitive music preparatory.

Is that how you refer to IT? Um that one can possibly go to. And so at that point, had your identity merged with the behavior and where you still enjoying yourself up until the point where you had this injury.

that will also talk about, yeah, I was still enjoying myself around the time when when I audition an fertilize in particular because of exactly what he said, which was everything was kind of beating my expectations and my parent expectations up until this point, right, which is that we didn't really have any. And so IT all just felt like icing on the cake. Wow, our kids found something that they really love. Um this is great written and sometimes take you years, decades to figure out what IT is that you like, what you're passionate about.

And I think we go through this renewal process often in our lights, right? I'd had to have moments in life and like, what do I like again? What do I love again? It's not also one time experience um but there was kind of there is a thrilling aspect of my musical life and I was Young which was again everything kind of felt is like bonus um so one story love sharing is about how we've got into Julia art in the first place um my parents you know so my dad of theoretical physicists, as you mentioned, my mom helps immigrants get Green cards to setting this country.

Neither of them had exposure to the classical music sphere, right? So they were like the opposite of tiger parents. Like even if they wanted to be tiger parents, they wouldn't how to tiger parents in this domain, because they lack the connections and like the wear with all to figure out what that would mean to to go and to access the best teachers or whatever.

So my mom, who is a very fearless person by nature, SHE, knew that at some point my passion for the violin was surpassing her ability to, like, connect me with right resources. And so one weekend we were in new york on fire, new york, and I had my violin with me because I would had another addiction. And we were just walking by Julia, the building.

And my mom was just eager for me to see IT from the outside, because it's just really cool as a kid, right? It's like all your musical idols went to this place. I just wanted to see IT and like, imagine what I would have been like for a proven to go in and out and mid ori to go in and out yoo mob, right? Like is so exciting.

And as we're passing the entrance, my mom looks at me and says, um hey, why don't we just go in and just like what are you talking about? Um she's like critic's coming. What's the worthing that can happen and i'm like security guards and like a lot of other terrible things, mom, right. Um but I had a useful of that like propelled me into the building. That day, SHE strikes up a conversation with a fellow student and her mom finds out that he is studying with, like a top teacher, a Juliet.

I asked if we can get an introduction within an hour and auditioning for this teacher on the spot, right? No idea that this was going to have yeah he tells me um he has whatever prefer to as a like muted enthusiasm about my plane doesn't think i'm great but see something like he told me later like my personality, my enthusiasm so got the personality card coming out about music augmentation great and what he did as he said, look, i'm with you. I don't think that you're ready.

You would not get into Julia if you audition today. However, I take residence at a summer music program in colorado. If you come there for five weeks, we can do in a tense boot camp where I try to kill you up and get you to learn, like your first scale in your first eighty, which you will need to pass the Julia or augment an, and also may be hopefully get you to like read music a little bit Better than you can right now.

And I went to that summer camp, and I worked my butt. I mean, you're also in this incredibly intensive environment where everyone you're age is there and they're all practice in like equivalent, right? And I thought very inspired by that, and I ended up getting into Julia in the fall.

And IT was such a wonderful reminder that when opportunities are not served on a silver platter for you, you just have to have this kind of imagine of courage and what my mom had that day, right? To figure out a path from point a to point b SHE really just like created a plate for me and said, like, okay, like you're prepared for this thing. We're going to get you in front of this teacher and that's a lesson I used time and time again when I felt like there was something cool I could be doing. The opportunity did not exist.

Um so for example, when I was in the White house, the job that I wanted, which was uh to be a practitioner of behavioral science, did not exist and so I sent whole email and I pitch them on the idea of creating a new position for a behavioral science advisor and then I said, hey, by the way, if you create this position, could you like also consider hiring ing me to play that job even though I had no public policy experience and i've been an academic uh for the entirety of my ult life and you know they said yes and so it's just IT was such an energizing lesson to learn as a Young kid which is like you can do the cold call often times there's few consequences, they'll get rejected. I mean, that's truly the worst thing that can happen. But it's one thing to be told that it's another thing to have lived the experience out and to see how amazing the aftermath can be. And that's that's what I got to experience as yg kid. So amazing.

And so let's all express some things to your mom for barging in the door and for you because you also had the agency to to do the audition on the spot. I think a lot of kids and adults would have thought, you know, not ready. I'm not gonna this, but IT IT takes a certain gumption to just do IT right and and also to integrate the feedback. And then i'm curious about this camp. Yeah, I went to a few camps of different types, crashed a few camps that's a different story turns out if you show up you know you get by for a few days before they realize you're not one of the oh yeah there's a whole other set stories there but i'm curiously know your among very driven um maybe even obsessive kids yeah where they nice to one another do you recall the kid .

that was the .

best the there is credible oh my god remember these .

yeah protect I I bristle when people say like, oh like mio was a Young violent protests and like, no, I wasn't and there is no false. And by saying that, I just actually saw what protegees were like and I was not one of them. I mean, truly just talk about all inspiring and like, how is IT that music comes so effortlessly to Rachel? I feel like SHE.

I feel SHE was born with a violin in her hand. I think that's how I felt whatever I watched her play. And it's a double edge sort. On the one hand, your drive, your driving inspiration from the incredible talent you see around you.

On the other hand, you feel demoralized so often because you are running up against whatever uh, limitations exist when IT comes to you a natural talent and you're work at IT like at the end of the day, I was never the hardest working violence. St, my mom insisted that we were well around the kids. I played soccer all through elementary school.

I audition for the school play, uh, really rosy. I did art classes like, I was just really important to both my parents. I think that we had just like, relatively Normal life. And I was studying alongside kids who had literally left half their families behind in their home country, had moved with one parent to a studio apartment in manhattan or in colorado for this camp. And we're devoting their entire lives to this pursuit. And so I felt like, um I was I was a super n VS kid, like I was always looking around being like I suck and mere grade, right? We talked about like having a self critical personality.

I think a lot, I think a lot of kids feel that way. Yes, I think at that age, and this sometimes extends into adulthood, we have a tendency to try and find benchMarks of where we are. Yeah no and and sometimes that but you know turns into a higher cha things, sometimes very lateralization. But trying to figure out where you are in the landscape of things is but just seems like it's fundamental to the teenage experience.

Yeah, your universe shrink too, right? So if you're no longer getting access to what the average kid violence ounds like, I mean, you're in the elite of the elite. And so it's so intimidating.

And I often felt, I felt like what happened is, especially when I became a teenager. So two things happening when I became him a teenager, the first is that my violent life just started to speed forward. So um it's a pro man invited me to be his private island student, you know, consider the best violence in the world.

IT was an incredible experience. I felt so overwhelmed, even by the opportunity. And i'd also stumbled upon mtv and was like, do I even wanted do classical music like Britney spears are doing much cool things?

So that that was my version of, like, teenage rebellion and was coming home from school and what I should have been practicing watching mtv. But the other thing that happened is I went through the natural teenage process, which is I became very self conscious um I became more insecure. I was trying to figure out who I was, who I am.

And I think that was the period of my life, my high school years, when I was the least happy as a violence. So I described you earlier that incredibly all inspiring experience of listening to the veto in violin concerto. And if feeling other worldly and feeling like I could see a world beyond my own personal wants and needs and desires, right? IT really made me feel small against the backdrop, this magnificent world.

And I liked that feeling of smallness. And when I was in my teenage years, you, we're all in this highly arctics stic c state of mind were like consumed with ourselves and how we feel. And I I just felt like I gave some of my worst performances when I was a teenager.

And I often found to your point about um you know these pressure cooker environments, my best performance was sport actually just to the public. My worst performances were when I was in my little studio having to play for my peers like that just stopped all the joy out for me because I was. Yeah, just like really tough on myself that I I lost.

That was a period of time where I lost touch with what IT is, that I loved about music. And of course, there's an event flow. I had magical experiences playing the violent when I was a high school or but I just think if you were to do like the average of joy, like three, twelve, and then post twelve, the average joy was much higher as before I became a teenager.

Yeah, there's there's so many things to extract date from that. I really feel that when we get into a mode of trying to hit milestones that are extrinsic, that I really can undermine our our love of yeah of what we're doing.

But if we keep going and we can reframe what those external rewards are in part by just realizing that they're so transient compared to the the delight that we can experience, what I mean is that I don't think of delights is something that that wells up in us and and then dissipates. I think of IT is something that changes our nervous system in a way that gives us the access to new abilities. I really do.

I made being a fact. Remember at stanford that, you know, you look to your left, you look to your right. And it's like literally in the building. I mean, i've got nobel prize when you below me, like the people by the carthon award winners. All oil plays like everywhere you turn.

And these people do other things to so like, you know, also d one athletes, and they have got five kids, and other kids seem to be doing great, like who are these people? And IT becomes very important in that environment to um to just shrink your spears like what's you know one foot in front of you and just keep going and not pay attention. But it's hard to do not by way of comparison because I actually get excited about being immersed in a group of wherever one's doing well. I do think being among all these other incredibly talented and driven, although you you carefully said and importantly said rather that you do not see yourself as talented, it's very clearly you have a ton of grit and and hard work clearly went into and I think that word talent can be a little bit misleading so you want to underscore the fact you worked incredibly hard um but I think that it's a tough thing. You know it's hard for us to develop much in isolation and is also hard for us to stake connected to the source as a where .

and that's a word that .

I stole from a former guest on this podcast and and a good friend of mine who's the great rick group in one of the most successful music, sea rock music. He talks about the source, you know um so there are so many different trails we can go down here. Just one thing brief ly is I again completely miserable at music but I once saw it's a proven in in the airport with his family.

I was with my father who is a huge classical music fan, and we watched him, and he said, watched. And he turns out he was getting on to our plane. He SAT in first class, next to his eye, presumed straat of various violent.

His violin got a first classy. He got a first classes, and his family SAT across her man. And my dad said his violin is so important that he gets its own first.

classy. I could not believe IT. So so in in any event um I think just one thing .

to your to your point um one reflections i've had this and this kind of goes back to this question of identity, right, which is when you are in these very competitive environments and again, i'm sure a lot of people listening are in very competitive environments, you feel that so much can be taken away from you just in terms of mental well being because you're always looking at the world through a creative lens, right? You're benchmarking yourself, as you said, like because benchmarking, where do I fall on the continuum of, you know, mediocre to grey? I don't know.

And yesterday I I did have a terrible performance and i've gonna me back at um I have found that when i've anchored, when I reaney red myself to know what rick rubin refer to as the source and identify the characteristics of music or other pursuits that really energizes me IT feels like I am actually insulated from a lot of the external noise and I bring a lot more clarity and focus to the work that I do everyday. So there's two things that I think to find me as a person um at least right now, right I allow for that malubay. One is that i'm a deeply curious person and the second is that I really realized getting Better at things I love seeing progress internally and in my violin life a no one to take those two things away from me in my current life.

Um as a copy of scientists as a podcast like you just can't take those for me like no one can take those that joy for me and IT feels protective in a really important way which is for example, I mean I post I mean just like you I mean I see the labor of love that you put into the hearing in lab part as it's extraordinary. I put I put so much time and energy and thoughtless and love into making a slight change of plans. But at the end of the day, when you put the episode out into the world, like you just don't get to control what the reaction is, right? Your favorite episode might not be, everyone else is favorite episode.

That's just something you have to deal with, right? But what I found is that if I really relish the process of making the episode right to feed that curiosity, and I got Better as an interviewer, I got Better as, uh, thinker. I got more clarity on the topic that I was curious about. I mean, it's just IT gives me a foundation that feels really dirty, do you know? I mean.

it's just, yeah well, those things are in transit to you and they they are, I guess, now using nature, but they are not what we will call domain specific, like the curiosity that the desire for progress through effort and through focus on those are music ah they're not music irrelevant, but they're music independent.

Um and and that actually brings me to a very important component of your work and and your life ark, which is this notion of recreating and refining identity in new endeavors. So if I understand correctly, ly hopefull, you'll emlin sh on this. Um you had the unfortunate, perhaps unfortunate right experience of playing the violin and then injuring your finger very badly to the point where he was at least for your music career career ending absolutely. And that happened when you were hold. I was fifteen.

So given how much of your identity and energy was put into violin that there must have been devastating and yet you obviously um I don't want to recreated yourself because I like the idea that this essence within you um has many opportunities informs and I like IT as an example for everybody having some essence of many things that could give them delight and that is something about the feelings associated with a given choice of occupation or hoby your behavior or craps relationship right relationships and sometimes by decision, death or otherwise you know and are devastated. Their identities are completely, at least in their minds, obliterated and then people have this amazing ability, recreate themselves and new circumstances. So if you could take us back to the time when you're fifteen and you have this injury, what was your initial mindset in the days and weeks after that? And then if you would, could you link that up to some of the what I see is incredibly important work that you've done helping people understand not just who they are but had a identify the components of who they are that that are truly indomitable that they just cannot go away yeah like your drive .

for curiosity and hard work and human connection um yeah in the in the days and weeks and months and year after A I felt terrible IT was awful because um I don't I think in my case also you just when your kid is really like bubbly and energetic, you just kind of move forward and you don't know is think about how identity defining the thing you're doing is you just do IT and so it's IT was really interesting, I think, in losing the violin that's actually when IT became so silent to me how much the instrument had meant to me and and had defined who I was. And so I I felt a dampening of some of my more organic traits like I was less curious for a long time could interact .

you on purpose, apologize. But at the same time, i'm not apology because there was something that you said in a prior discussion that just keeps ringing in my mind, which is that your body and your nervous system actually grew up around the violence like that to me was just I I will never forget that statement. I wanted also thank you for IT because that to me is perhaps the most profound way to describe uh, an experience of identity is that your your nervous system in your body isn't grown up with something or along side IT, but that much like A A relationship of a human kind, human human kind, that your body is actually developing around this object.

IT absolutely developed around the organ omics of playing the violin. So to this day, my ride shoulder is slightly elevated to my relative to my left, because of all the hours I spent doing this. IT makes train training really annoying because I always have the slight and and I have a light school leos in my spine as well also from this posture and um yeah IT feels intimate in a way it's like, wow that the shape of my body, right like my architecture was defined by this instrument and so it's left in under not is like a it's let this indelible, you know, if this like imprints on me, that will never go away.

And um I think that a lot of us feel this this disorientation, right? So this might not be that you lost the ability to do something you love IT could be that you lost someone that you love, right? IT could be that you um you lost your mojo, whatever, right? I mean, there are so many types of loss and so many kinds of grief we all experiences as human beings. And I think in all those cases, again, IT really feels like the rug has been pulled out from under you, because this thing that gave you so much meaning and so much purpose and so much energy in life no longer exists.

And so I think for for a while that I felt kind of like lost at sea and I assumed i'll never find anything that i'm as passionate about and um I think what my dad did for me at that time so theoretical physicists so he's an academic and he said. I think you should just read a lot, like read a bunch of stuff. And I was like, okay, I mean, i'm supposed to in china this summer touring with my classmates, I am at home and connective my parents cruising their bookshelf.

So like a slightly less cool summer situation, but you know a lot of time on my hands because I wasn't I was in shanghai so I started to prosing the bookshelf and then I came across this pob sciences book called the language instinct by Stephen pinker and um that was a turning point for me. I mean, I was I was headed to college, maybe later that yeah, I open up this book and IT detailed our marvel ability to comprehend and produce language. And up until this point in my life, I had completely taken language ibi ties for granted, just like something that I did.

And I just like kind of learned IT along the way. And when pinker pulled the curtain back and revealed how sophisticated and complex the conditional machineries that's Operating the behind the scenes that gives rise to language, my mind was truly blown. I was like, wow, I I never thought of that.

I sound like me with three year old. Don't like we sit down with them. We're like, this is a german. This is a passport. Ate whatever they know.

They just learn because they have these kind of lights, which is in the brain that are, you know, activated on enough, depending on what languages are learning. And he was so fascinating to learn about language development, about neural linguistic CS, about syntax and semantics. And and so I just remember thinking, languages fascinating. Cognition is fascinating.

And i'm also now wondering about all these other systems that are in place, right? So this is what's involved in language, what's involved in um you know the complex math equations are dads do right? Like what's involved in um what's the mental processing behind a new discovery and insider and a hot moment or falling in love or falling out of love? I think IT just lit at my imagination and very similar to you.

And er, I love that we have this connection. You said when you learned about like neurobiology and neuroscience, you saw that there was a place for yourself in there. And I remember reading this book, and because I was a pop scientists ook, and I love pop scientist bx, because I you, even if they don't fully do justice to the science, they can take someone who's never had any exposure to the subject matter.

And it's it's thrilling to learn about the thing, right? I would never have gotten the same experience how I opened up an introduction to cognitive science textbook. Okay, would not have have the same impact on me. So like shout out to pop side everywhere.

Thank you for saying that. And I know here i'll just thank you because I think that many of my colleagues in academic science at stanford and elsewhere feel that way. But I think many don't.

They think of IT is quote dummling down of things. But i'll tell you um rarely, if ever, does somebody just wander into a university classroom and here lecture on accident. I mean maybe for your mom was at the at the home, they all was a moms everywhere barge right in.

But but I think it's um I actually I i'll go a step further and I i'll do this so that you don't have to and these are not your words. These are mind. I think that there is actually pretty intense arrogance to the idea within the established scientific community that pop science books, while they might not be exhaustive, provided their accurate and they're making an attempt to educate and draw people in from all sectors.

Yeah I aimed to that. I just can't hear a counter argument in my head or elsewhere where that's not one of the best things that people can do. So um regardless of um you know people's motivations for picking them up in the first place, I think they brought a lot of people into the the curiosity and delight that is science or music or you know I think that we the most positive benevent you know safe sensory experiences that we can expose Young people to the greater properly that we're going to flesh out those professions with the greatest number of diverse minds.

We're going to have the best ideas. I mean, really, I think that there's a ton of forests. What you're describing that you picking up a book is now what you're also now A P H.

D. And I mean cogent science. And you did you post at stanford your scientist um personably because you went into the bookshelf and picked up that book hundred percent.

And I and I think that I was also role model for me because my dad, despite being in a very, very technical field, spent a large part of his career actually working on the translation of complex subjects and trying to convey them to general audiences. And I loved witnessing this because it's like you can figure out a way to communicate about theoretical physics sics to a general audience. I mean, wow, that's a masterful pursuit.

And Richard.

Richard finn, exactly. No one really .

knows what finally did for his nobel prize work, except physicists. You know that most people, you ask him what what was the nobel for? And they're like, I don't know, I don't know, he says something about birds and taxonomy and how it's less interesting than, you know, quantum mechanics.

And I and one of the reasons that I love human lab and I I just love the work you do, is that you are taking concepts that might have been inaccessible to the average percent in you're making science accessible. And I feel so much gratitude to every scientist out there, every researcher out there who thinks that is worth their time to be a practitioner of of their work um because ultimately, I mean think about how many lives you're changing through the show by trying to break down some of these more complicated things into um into concept that people can understand, relate to and actually act on.

And um IT IT also reminds me know when part of my job when I was in, when I was in the obama administration, was translating insights from behavioral science, from cognitive science into interventions that my government agency colleagues could implement in the department of veterans affairs, in the the department of defense department of education and that same translation process was part of that effort to and I I think it's really, really hard to well, I respect IT so much. I respect pop science writers who do a good job so much um and yeah I think it's a one derful service. They don't have to spend their time writing these books. They could just publish more research paper is that which is the currency that academic institutions care about. And so I see IT is just like a public good.

What they are doing I do to and write back at you because you're doing as well and we're all Better off. Thank you. So I wanted to go back to this injury, to summit at home, to discovery of something new was IT at that point that you realized?

H, the feeling of excitement that i'm getting from learning about neural linguistics and related topics is somehow similar to the excitement that I was feeling about the violin, or maybe even superceded that excitement. I mean, at what point did were you able to make the pivot with confidence that you know this this is the new trajectory? yeah.

And and an important component that that I like to understand is you also had to cut ties with the past, something that's very hard to do. I mean, I grow up with a number of kids who became very successful teen athletes, really. And some of them wants they ceased to keep up or add an injury or something.

Their identity stayed attached to the past in a way that did not allow them to move forward. Fortunately, many of them did find new identities in business or other endeavors. Um some became quite successful, but of seen very often that when people achieve really success and then they hit a Cliff, that is very hard for them to part with that former identity. There's one of the perils of release success. Yeah yeah.

I wouldn't say that it's superceded the excitement that I have with the violin. I would say the quality, the excitement felt very different. And that's actually important to convict because I think when someone loses the ability to have a passion, they're seeking exactly the same sensory experience, exactly the same high that they experience the first time around.

And I think that's a really high bar. And sometimes it's the more of an apples and oranges type situation. So with the violin, there was a really deep sensory aspect of the experience.

I mean, I felt things right, you're playing and then you're feeling things emotionally. And IT all felt super visual. And that was where the passion emerged from.

IT was just just like very visual feeling of, like, this is so beautiful and awesome. And I love IT with the cognitive science stuff. My my intellectual brain was delighted and is just like a different expression of passion, right?

I think the big pressure test was not if I had held myself to the bar of do I love this as much as the violin, there's no way that I would have been confident and have to pursue anything at that point. So instead, I really think the question I asked myself at that time, which was a service to me and in my more compromise psychology, was and my curious enough about this thing, to ask more questions about IT. Do I want to learn more? And I found naturally.

Three days later, I went to the library and I got another book on the colgate science of language. And then I got a book on the science of decision making. So I was, there was curiosity. And honestly, that was all I needed. That was the little seedling that I needed to see if I could go somewhere more.

I took IT as a very strong signal, like, I care to learn more about this and I don't care to learn about everything, right and um I remember praising the course book um of my of my undergrad institution and they had a cognitive science major which was awesome because not all schools had one at the time, is a very new major, is inter disciplinary. You approach questions of the mind for multiple perspective so from the perspective of neuroscience, linguistics, philosophy, psychology, gy, computer science and ethnology, right? So you're just like a bunch of different disciplines.

And but that was when I thought, oh, I can at least see if I can get into this major, remember, was like a selected was selected and so I freak out, of course, and had super impostor like i'm not going to get in to the program, but thinkingly, I got in and I think that's yeah that's where I was able to connect like this little seedling of IOS ity to um to the actual pursuit of the thing right and and that's a really important translation because there can often be a mismatch. You're really passionate about something, but you actually hate the process, right? Like you hate the actual work that's involved in getting Better at IT.

And I was lucky in my undergrad because I thought my way, my mom style, barging into classes that like really would only accept, you know, seniors or juniors. And I was like, I am fresh, lowly freshman expect. And I was able to run experiments on adults. And I was actually able to see what I would be like to be a researcher to ask novel questions and to get the delete that you that you feel right when you're in the lab and you're actually testing out new hypotheses. And so IT was really important that I saw that I not only was excited, but that I could actually enjoy parts of the process of getting Better.

I love your description of curiosity because that makes me think that in some way has something to do with a deep motivation and desire to figure out what's next or what's around the corner without an emotional attachment to the outcome. Curiosity is really just trying to figure out what's there is supposed to hoping that something specific is there and sometimes even the surprises are more exciting than that are predictions.

Um I think the quote was initially from dorthy Parker. I think this is debated, but I think that was the cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity.

That's awesome. Yeah, I hadn't heard that.

yeah. I believe I was dorthy Parker sometimes misattributed to the trust I think was dorthy park. And what I love about is that there's something about curiosity that when it's genuine, it's self amplifying.

It's an upward spiral because there is no end point, right? I mean, that's one of the the things that you learn early and sciences, you know, you learn, you test hypotheses, you get answers and you get more questions and inform hypotheses. And you do that until you die basically. And there can be a little bit dark, but when you think about IT is a journey that is just so much fun along the way.

If you just really interested knowing what the answers are without getting to attach to the answers, IT just feels like IT, even as I am describing, and like they just can fill fill you up and IT provides more energy for the next round and the next round and that really came through in your description of of cogent science. I also find an interesting that you couldn't read cheap music, at least not very well. You were so deeply um immersed in an endeavor violin playing that is not a verbal language and then you went into a field that's about in in initially you you were Sparked an interest in a field through an understanding of verbal language.

And earlier you said that the thing that bridges the violin and this what came next as as a passion and pursuit was his desire for human connection. Uh, at what point did you realize that? And and here I just I do want to emphasize that we're talking about your story. I hope um I can only imagine that people are starting to think about you what the the intrinsic points of motivation for what they're doing and what we've done, you know asking the sorts of questions that um I hope everyone is asking, you know what what is IT really that motivates me to love this and to see a place for myself in that um those are ultimately the questions that that everyone should and can ask.

Yeah, I IT took me a really long time. It's actually only been in the last few years that i've discovered this. I discovered this as a result of creating a slight change of plan so I my desire to create the show um came from a very personal place which is that i'm terrified of change so even though i've had these formative experiences will change, i'm a creature of habit.

I'm willing to change my habits. For example, I now take healthy ninety minutes after I get up very well today. Okay, i'm good. Good to know.

Well there. Should I like to think? I like to the people themselves flexibly in the airport, six and the occasional within thirty, if you have to but nobody is perfect. Not nor .

should we ribe. And I there's a couple reasons why we as humans um are scared of change. But I think one of them which is incredibly relatable is that um changes filled with a lot of uncertainty.

And we hate uncertainty. We will go to irrational length to avoid uncertainty. So one of my favorite studies coming out of, uh, cognise ciena is one involving electric shocks. And what they found is that people are far more stressed when they're told they have a fifty percent chance of getting an electric shock than when they're told they have a one hundred percent chance of getting an electric shock. So we would rather be sure, certain that a bad thing is going to happen then to have to deal with any feelings of uncertainty.

Ty and evgueni, that result. I I love that you ve brought up the result is still is wildering to me because you think about IT one hundred percent trial to trial shock, you means you just you d have to take on that, okay, bring IT, just bring IT on kind of mentality. But if you did that for every trial and a half of the trial, you don't get shocked.

You'd get the the we know there's a dopamine released from the lack of punishment. Um so the the the ideal strategy is the same. And yet somehow people are averse to the uncertainty.

just we don't like uncertainty even though again, the uncertainty is what drives that dog mean first right and and yet we bristle certainly at that at that uncertainty. And so I definitely like, uh, please let us go, everyone. We love the status quo even when the status quo has been sub optimal entering.

I've been fine with the quote. So part of IT came from my desire to figure out, okay, how is IT like a slight change of plants, right? IT maries science and story telling to help us figure out strategies for Better managing change.

So I wanted to figure out how are people coming to terms with uncertainty and one of the things that I realized I learned from my um the guests may show and also the scientists there's this concept called cognitive closure and IT is the need to arrive at clear definitive answers to things okay, it's basically opposite of this open ended curiosity that you just describe, which is the cognitive closure. You have a need to you aren't indifferent towards what the answers are. You aren't indifferent towards what the questions are.

You care about everything. You care about micro managing every part of the curious process from point eight to point e. And there's a lot of research showing that when we reduce our need for cognitive closure, right, when we we come a little bit more open to the invitation, right, like to mystery more open to all spiring experiences, we can experience huge boost and well being uh and we can become a lot more resilient in the face of change.

So that's something that i'm working on, which is like, okay, maybe I can reduce my need for cognitive closure. And the other thing um that I am starting to appreciate is one reason that we we kind of we get change wrong and we maybe fear IT more than we should, is that when we anticipate what a change will be like in the future, we tend to imagine how our present day cells will respond to that future change. right? So almost like a magic mirror met and present day going .

to this mirror comes at .

the other side two years or now she's the one who's overcoming the chAllenges of a diagnosis or some other life change. And what we forget is that the big changes in our lives can change us in pretty profound with right and recognize. And I think we all fool, pray to the solution, so called the end of history illusion.

So this is worked by dan gilbert. Basically, what he says is we have fully acknowledge that we've changed considerably in the past. So you think back to your skateboard days, right?

I think back to my high school days, and I think, oh gosh, I of course i've changed. Like I would be evaristo listen to any interview I gay when I was when I was Younger, right? Like what we're the thoughts I was even thinking. So we will see absolutely, we were totally different ten years ago, twenty years ago.

But when he comes to thinking about the future and projecting the future, we are absolutely convinced that who we are right now in this moment is the person that's here to stay and that can lead us to stray when IT comes to thinking about how we will respond to change because we forget that there's actually a lot of wiggle room around who we become. And to your point, I think I love the point you made about curiosity. What that means is we want to be curious, not just about the things we do, we want to be curious about ourselves.

One huge lesson that i've learned from the interviews that I ve had on a slight change of plans is that I need to constantly be auditing myself through my change experience to figure out how I have changed. Because when we experience changed, IT doesn't happen in a vacuum, right? So let's say I get a promotion or I enter into a relationship, or I leave a relationship, or some other, again, narrow slice of my life is altered.

We can think of that change is happening in a vacuum, right, as being confined to just the unique area of our life, that that little, that change existing. But of course, we are incredibly complex creatures are psycho logy is incredibly complex. We live in these remarkably complex ecosystems.

Change in one area of our life will inevitably have spill over effects into all other parts of our lives in ways that are extremely hard to predict. And so I think a lot of your listings are familiar with the research shows we're really bad. Cognitive forecasters are bad at predicting what's going to make us happy, what's a sad, how long we're going to be sad, how long we're going to be happy.

But one of the reasons for that is that we forget that we are a dynamic entity that might change as well, right? That our preferences might change, our choice sets might change. We might change in these really profound ways that we know realized.

And I think there's an inspiring message coming out of this, which is one like what we're capable of right now really might not be what we're capable of later. And what I found in my own experience is that you know what IT comes to our interesting, what IT comes to our self perception. Because we have a first person perspective on who we are.

We tend to think that we have a very a comprehensive like vertical understanding of who we are, right? Like I have pretty good grasp of who I I am and what i'm capable love and what I value in and what my identity is. But the reality is that that understanding. Is based on the random set of data points that i've happened to act over the course of my lifetime, based on the range set of experiences and opportunities and failures and successes that i've happened to.

right? And i'm not mistaken, there's assailants to the negative experiences, often for reasons that makes sense according the nervous systems that wants to keep us safe at saa. But Frances, you remember the name of this child resume? My sister are still talks about. I won't say their names because we know these people are still around fortunately um the names of some of the the the girls in junior high school that were particularly popular and perhaps .

not kind yeah.

perhaps not kind hurt right?

exactly. Perp, not. yes. OK.

yeah. There's a lot of web searching now that is for what these people are up to now anyway um that not by me. This is anyway, I have a sister we occasionally touch into this.

She's doing great, fortunate. So the others there's a silence to the negative experiences. But but I think what hearing that I totally I agree with is that here we'd like to think that we have completer at least adequate self knowledge, but that we likely don't. And and so what are some of the ways that we can get Better data on ourselves in ways that can help us? Is that through um the the application of mentorship is that asking people for an honest assessment of us, of course, the willingness to hear what they have to say um what are some of the that I love zero cost behavioral but what are some of the zero cost behavioral sources that that people have around them in order to ask is what I think are really fundamental questions.

Yes, so true. There's two um information, asim ies, let's say that we're trying to solve for right to two areas where we might not have full knowledge of who we are for one of two reasons. So one is that um we have an incomplete understanding of who we are to space on the random set of experiences. And the second is that going through this big change actually alters us in some way.

okay? So if we're trying to solve for that, I think the second problems actually easier to solve for in that we often just don't even know to look in words during a big change to see how we've changed because we think, oh, well, just pay attention to how i'm performing at work because that was the new variable that was thrown into my life. And we forget to evaluate other parts of our lives, like what impact has has had in my relationship, what impact has has had in my overall well being, right in my different do have a different set of preferences.

Do I care about different things? So in the second category, become very inquisitive about who you are over a longer time frame and assume that it's not a static state when he comes to the first a bucket, which is how do we develop a more complete and rich richer understanding himself. Um I think it's actually about surrounding yourself with that i've verse set of people, people that you wouldn't naturally gravitate towards.

I think this solves for a bunch of social ills, which is that again, we tend to live in our is right and we're really diverse to talking to people who have different points of view. But I will tell you, at times, i've learned the most about myself, i've learned the most about my weaknesses and sometimes my strength from talking with someone that i've be amendments to disagree with. And it's a really hard thing to do.

It's very painful. But in terms of like edifying experiences go it's through those conversations that I almost see this like miro reflected back on me, right like and much more aware of how i'm coming across to that person because they disagree with me about something or they're not someone I would Normally frighten ize with. And um it's just read more self awareness in me.

And so I would encourage people to actually seek out connections in uncomfortable spaces because that will allow you to fill in at least some of the gas. Now some of the gaps will truly only be reveal to you because of life experiences. So i'm thinking in my own life.

So I I thought I grew up in a very particular kind of way. And then during covered my husband, I multiple pregNancy losses with our surrogate, and I found myself breathing in a way that was completely foreign to me. I don't think talking to anyone would have revealed ed to me that I was going to a agree with in this very, in this way where you usually I would reach out to people and I would want to to stay, connect, became.

So shut off and close off and I didn't want to talk to anyone for days after the losses. I was so disoriented there I learned, oh, actually um you can respond to diversity of ways to agree, right? Like you don't have a singular experience with grief.

But I might have only learned that from the actual experience of confronting IT. That said, I do think there's a lot of value in trying to fill in gaps and knowledge or a self awareness through these more. You quit titian conversations .

you have with people I love. Love what you said about deliberately placing oneself into environments where we receive critical feedback from people. That review is quite desperate for us, at least in terms of our experience of them.

You it's IT was the great cross die off another a incredibly complishment our scientists happens with a colleague, stanford, who his psychiatrist, and he said, you know, we think we know how other people feel, but we really have no idea how either people feel unless we ask them. In fact, most of time, we don't even really know how we feel. No, we're not very good at engaging our own emotions. So credit to carl for making that statement. But with that said, I think getting a sense of how other people see us and disagreement in particular um can be incredibly informative.

I just want to say one other point on this which is I think getting feedback from others almost gets a bad wrap these days in society because it's like you should only care about who you are inside, who you know yourself to be and i'm like, dude, we are social creatures that absolutely matters how I come off to others. I think I think that should be a huge, a huge part of myself identity should be how I impacted others.

And I, I, I think we should be shameless about integrating that into understanding itself. If I feel like i'm an excEllent person inside and i'm regularly wounding the people around me, that matters. That's relevant to how I see myself.

And so I do worry sometimes the the current cultural climate that we're pushing ourselves so much worse, the space of like all that matters is authenticity and being yourself. Mean first all sometimes yourself is an awesome. You might want to actually optimize like change of things about yourself to be Better.

I think that's a good thing. And then second, you it's okay to care what other people think. Usually they are great bombers of things that you might not be aware in terms of the impact of having. So IT was going to like be a lobby's for caring what other people think just for a moment .

I agree of this is one of the reasons why I said the end of every episode that I do read all the comments on youtube. Um you know I think I was raised in a culture and academic culture where feedback on lectures you know student feedback was critical. I mean, IT is important.

I believe that would be a selected filter because um you know when in the old day, we'll say there was an opportunity to map the statements to the grade that the student received. You can no longer do this. So you would often see that some of the worst you know some of the .

worst feedback hate the unclear .

exactly and then you look at their trade and you would say, well, OK, this helps explain and yet um IT was also important to understand where that could have represented some fAilings on my part yeah um and a classroom is but one environment. I think the online environment is where this gets tRicky because of the way that um we all differ in our capacity to receive critical feedback.

And sometimes that the harshness of one former feedback since people feeling you back on their heels or feeling or even ego or emotionally injured in ways that they actually feel it's a traumatic. And I think that's part of the problem is that we don't really have a um A A way to gage. I mean, we know inappropriate when we see IT, we know appropriate when we see IT.

But all the stuff in between because it's on a continuum really is, is where IT gets tRicky. I I certainly think integrating the possibility that somebody might be right or is IT that they they say in a certain forms of personal developments like, you know, somebody he's coming at you with an argument about you, the best state of money you could have is you might be right because that lets you hold your ground a bit. IT still maintains a boundary.

But you're not saying you're right and you're not saying you're wrong. You serve on you in in a kind of a flat footed stance where you could movie their way. And I like that this idea, what they might be right. And then you can say no or or yes but in any case, I I just wanted throw out both hands and and as many vote as I can as one individual to say yes I totally agree more more direct feedback and disagreement is great yeah to wonderful and I think in science here used to people saying um harsh things about your work until they eventually say, okay. You can publish the I grew up in the culture escape wording where like nothing's good enough and then occasionally something in's good yeah and in the landscape of podcasting um I think the comments section is is a great way to um get feedback and that way I continue to encourage feedback.

Sounds like you do as well yeah I think you know I I try to just every endeavor I pursue, I try to with a lot of humility. And I think if I were to described you at work, right, I leave this team. And I I think if you were to ask people um what my defining traders as a leader is actually not like strong convictions, is actually a willingness to update her opinions on things, her police systems, her strategy based on incoming information.

I really, really pride myself on having a flexible mindset about stuff and not being stubbing. This is true in my marriage, right? Like my husband, Jimmy and I really pride ourselves like, you know saying, you know what they on what you just shared and changing my mind like you're right and i'm wrong, right? And if you can actually.

Start to value that. If you could start to see that as uh a virtuous quality. Um I think historically, right when we think about leadership, we thought about people who have are incredibly resolute in their convictions.

But that doesn't allow the space to again, based on update, you know, update your mindset when you get new information, or you realized that you errored in some way in terms of the logic that you use or what have you. And i've been extremely intentional in every sphere that I worked in to have this very open mind and to be very open to critical feedback. IT does not mean that I take every piece of feedback.

okay? Obviously I have some criteria. I used to decide whether it's meaningful feedback or is not meaningful feedback, right? But the locus of my pride is not in have being rider having a strong conviction IT is actually in my willingness to have A A more dynamic state of mind regarding lots of issues. Maybe, maybe that's just what IT means to be scientists, right? Like you have to be willing to update in the face of new information.

nodding for those are listening. I'm just noting and thinking yes yes and more yes because I think that um we all need more of that as individuals and if we can't get IT from our workers in or group setting. So asking a friend can be extremely use while a friend.

He happens to be a professor, university back. Yes, I won't embarrass him by disclosing where he's at, but I recall as a junior faculty member, because he knows me well, is a few years behind me and our career rejectors. But asking him for an honest assessment, I asked for the most brutally honest assessment me that he could give, and some of its stone, some of IT dung.

He was relating some ways in which I show up as a friend and super present. And I have this tense. I am pretty introvert. Al disappeared for long trips of time in college. They call me dark because i'd shop at parties.

I'll be there, then I would disappear like two weeks and just be in my books, say hi to people, just keep going, you know, sort of in and out of connection. I've worked hard to to change that over the years. I think I have but who knows in any event, a friend who knows as well that you insist on our dog compliments, you just give me the hard stuff that can be very useful and .

that reminds me of some research um by eating cross so he looks at how we contain our mental chatter and um if you don't have the friend available to you, there is a really easy distinction technique that you can use when you're in the throes of our problem. You are trying to actively frame something or maybe see where your blind spots are.

And that's by thinking about your problem from a third person perspective versus the first percent perspective. So you play the role of someone who's giving advice to a friend in your head, but that friend is actually you, and IT actually promotes some degree of objectivity and like emotional distance from that, again, that that fuzzy, hazy set of feelings that you have around the emotion, right? You're trying to like, get rid of that piece so that you can bring a slightly more sober recommendation, the situation.

So that can be really helpful. And then um the other thing to do is I think when we are when they're facing chAllenges, we are going through a hard time. We do have an instinct to want event right again in this error of vulnerability and what not.

We're told, I guess, share everything that's on your mind IT can actually be counter productive event. And the reason for that is that when you're venting about a hard situation that you're going through or something that you're frustrated about with yourself, um typically the person you've invited into the conversation, they're a nice antithetic person. They want to make you feel Better.

And so what what do they do? They offer emotional bomb in the situation. I like, oh my god, that does sound terrible. You were so wrong and so sorry, you went through that instead of playing the role of what eating calls like a cognitive advisor, which is actively trying to chAllenge the narrative of you're telling about your situation, actively trying to get you to um question whether the way you're portraying the situation is and actually trying to get you to reframe aspects of the situation.

And so when we think about venting when IT comes again, filling in those blind spots about ourselves, you might want to tell your friend at the outset like you would then said, lay off the of the nice stuff. I just want to hear the hard stuff you want. You want to tell your friend of the look.

I'm having this chAllenge with my colleague at work or the sky, the gyms, getting me a really tough time. I don't know what's going on. I'm going to have here's here's the situation, rather than trying to make me feel Better about the situation, I want you to actively find holes, poke holes in the way that i'm thinking about this thing, so I can try and find some reframing strategies to see the situation from a different vantage point.

So these are all called distancing techniques, right? Third person, person first person and actually there's some really interesting neuroscience research showing that when we view our problems in our ourselves from a third persons perspective, neural activity in areas associated with hostility and aggression actually decrease. Um so that can be really when IT comes to you know resolving interpersonal conflict, are trying to see where you might have been wrong.

I love these examples because especially the one work, what does IT on their own that truly doesn't require anything.

You can see the introverted Andrews still do this. You don't even have to go to .

the party and that goes everyone. I don't yeah, back then, I would there no cell phones but smart phones, other, but was a bit of go. I I can reset with small numbers of people that i'm close to.

But I found at that time I need to to go into a and isolated space to do what I need to do to reset myself. And but I realized there are certain forms of communication. They are still required.

Like, i'm alive. I still get this. I still get this from my mother. Everyone, you if if you don't reach out, and not only do I not know what's happening with you, but I also don't know if you're okay and I am a grown man. Of course, someone point and and then of course use the worst possible response at any son or child could give is listening for something happened to me like someone like the police would contact you the hospital country which is not reassure so it's .

everywhere .

all know color of IT more come on you still working on IT just IT is a work in progress um venting I so glad that you brought this up you know I think that there are these buzz ds now authenticity um you know I do think that there are certain forms of communication that that can be um injurious to people and yet I think having some internal buffers to to that all that in coming stuff. I mean, IT is important.

I mean you can't be on the line and I think everyone is pretty much online these days um without having some policies for oneself and how you're going to deal with this stuff. How am I going to be a selective filter? I think knowing the ends that are continue, like you know, this is clearly benevolent, kind discourse.

This is clearly bad. I'm going to block this or get rid of him. But then within that middle, having some rules and policies for how to filter IT, either by time of day that you look at IT or getting input um but considering the you know IT might be true IT might not be true yeah what people are saying .

and like you said you in that memory and how we tend to overweight negative experiences and I did define myself like um I give this speech and I was posted and I I I was looking at the comments and I literally like any time my brain quoted the comment on s positive, I just skipped right past IT. I was I was literally just searching for the .

negative stuff as if, as if the positive is generic and the negative is is somehow genuine.

And I had to make IT a mental I to make a mental note. Hey, it's OK to marinate in the the messages that are saying that this really help them in some way, and they really enjoyed the being and but again, for self critical people, I think IT takes an extra step to remind yourself to also read the good stuff um and to allow that stuff to count to .

well we didn't episode on gratitude. And one of the big surprises that came to me in researching for that episode that the best evidence for gratitude having positive effects on neural circuitry, neo chemistry, comes from when we receive gratitude as supposed to give gratitude. This is what's often lost in the discussion about graduate.

All the more incentive to give gratitude and and to be aware of when it's coming your way and the internalize IT. There is a small category of people out there, I think hopefully small that um so a bask in positive feedback that IT amplifies their narcisso, but it's clear that you are not one of those people. So zero zero minus one risk of of that happening. I want to talk a little bit about goals as IT relates to motivation because you've done you've done a lot of um important work and and what I consider organization of this, what would otherwise be a pretty complex space, you what is more important to most people than being motivated and focused and excited and hopefully on on endeavors that they enjoy and that inspire to light but tell us about what can not just initiate but what can sustain motivation. Um because we've talked about the dolphin inan system on this podcast many times before, but that's a pretty reductionist st way to look at IT and you have a different perspective that I i've really benefit from learning a bit about .

yeah so when he comes to goals, I mean, it's first import to recognize that there's two parts of a goal, okay. So there's the way that we define the goal and then there's the way that we pursue the goal. And I think we tend to overlook the first category, how we define the goal because often times our goals seem like they should be so obvious to us, right? I want to lose weight.

I want to avoid sleeping late so that I get a good night sleep. I want to build muscle mass, right? Like these are things that just seem like they should just be intuit, right? But what research and behavioral science shows is that not all gold frames are made equal.

In fact, really small tweak to the way that we frame our goals can have an outsize impact on whether or not were a successful at return co. So one such framing is whether you frame your goals in terms of an approach orientation or an avoidance orientation. So let me talk about what this means.

So an approach orientation would be, I want to eat healthiest foods, right? Avoidance would be, I want to avoid unhealthy foods. Okay, so in the context of, say, your social life approach to be, I want to be in a relationship, I want to enter a relationship.

Avoidance would be, I want to avoid feeling lonely. Ess, okay, want to avoid feeling isolated. Now, the reason why these two frames are important to consider is that they can have a different impact on our motivational states, and they can also have a different impact on the emotional response that we have to success and failure in these domains.

So what we tend to find is that when you frame something in an approach orientation way, um when you succeed, that success is met with feelings of pride and accomplishment. We find that IT leads to a boost and motivation, boost endurance, IT, boost perseverance. Okay, when you frame something in terms of avoidance, success is met with feelings of calm and relief. So kind of like a who wait the forehead like, think, goodness avoided that calamitous outcomes. Think, goodness, I avoided doing .

that really bad thing usual.

exactly. And so IT is fine to frame goals in terms of avoidance. And actually sometimes it's just personally dependent, like some people are more driven by fear or they need a lot more urgency to drive them.

But IT is important to know that the approach orientation is, on average, more motivating. And so you might want to think of reframing your goal in terms of approach verses avoiding. The other advantage to approach is that when you frame something is avoidant, right? I want to avoid doing X, I want to avoid doing why it's really hard to measure success, right?

Like are you really tracking every time you're tempted by the chocolate of cookie and you don't actually eat IT? That's really hard to measure, right? And we do Better when we can measure success and failure, right?

It's much easier to track the number of times you approach a salad and right, you approach something that's healthy. And so anyway, so it's really interesting to see how to get this really subtle shift. And we see this across this.

The the board and behavioral science can have such a big impact on on behavior and on this framing thing. I'll just show one little anecdote for my time working in government. So we are trying to motivate veterans to sign up for a um employment and educational assistance program.

So this is after their years of service and this is a really important benefit that the government offers for free because the transition from military to civilian life can be very fraught with a lot of, uh, psychological and physical obstacles. And so I remember the department of veterans affairs, they had almost no money to fund a marketing program around this. They said, admired and team, we've got one email and I we're going to send to that and like have at IT, but that's all we're working with.

And my teammates and I ended up changing just one word in this email message. Instead of telling that that they were eligible for the program, we simply reminded them that they had earned IT through the years of service. And that one word change LED to a nine percent increase in access to the benefit and its um it's based in a psychological a principle called the endowment in effect, which says that we value things more when we own them or in this case ever earned them. And so I share this example only to say, like that is such a small change, right? Um but we we just know that again, these small little weeks in the way that we talk to ourselves, way that we fly our goals, can have a really big impact on our behavior.

I'm fascinated by that result. Some people hearing IT might think, okay, nine percent. Is that really that great? But what time had a one word change and .

the scale of the federal government, right?

So big orange za hard hard to hard to argue that things uh change quickly in big organizations discussion for another time. Um but eligible versus earned I mean again I come back to this possibility that there's something about words like earned that invoke a verb bs state within us that makes us more action oriented um similar to being able to see ourselves in some landscape that can evoke delight or all as opposed to just seeing the landscape that evokes the lighter. I'm really hung up on this because I think one of the major chAllenges that seems for behavioral change that most people do wait for the the stick as opposed to feeling in into the carrot, so to speak.

Um I mean all you have to do is look at the enormous number of people who are struggling with health related um issues for which there is now a lot of active debate is a genetically determined or and setting all that aside is just very clear that there a number of behavioral things, sunlight, sleep, exercise, social connection, nutrition um among among them that there is no pill for, there is no injection for, there is absolutely no replacement for so getting people to change their behavior is hard yes. Telling people that they're capable sometimes helps but doesn't seem sufficient. So what what are some more of these are verbs states that people um you think can internalize that give them access to the real sense of possibility and get them changing their behavior .

yeah and behavior changes very hard. I sometimes brial at some of the like hacks that I see online and like think there's a lot of evidence that supports that this work. So um you know what i'm sharing today is actually backed by your really high quality research.

One of my friends and um uh mentorians ioe t fish box is an a lot of this work at the university of chicago and goal setting and motivation, a couple other things for people to consider. And by the way, I love this space because i'm obsessive goals, right? So I love getting Better at things. I amusing all of these insights in my own life, so IT is truly a delight to get to share them okay.

important side bar, I would argue because you live off right you don't just research .

that you live IT. Yes, it's totally researcher whatever they call IT. Um so uh who sets the goal matters. So a lot of us work with coaches, trainers, mentors, bosses. That's great.

It's really, really helpful for people in our lives to bring structure to our goals, to push us along, to motivate us. But when other people are setting our goals, setting our targets for us, IT undermines a really valuable force of motivation, which is being in the driver seat. We love steering in our lives.

We love feeling agency. We love accruing our own agency when IT comes to achieving our goals. And so, you know, we jumped about how people will go to irrational length to avoid a feeling uncertainty. People will also go to irrational lengths to preserve their agency and control over a situation.

So there are some really interesting research that come out just in the last few years showing that humans prefer to use their judgment over an algorithm they know performs Better than their judgment but did not involve them. okay? And the rush were satisfied with the outcomes.

What IT? When is them that's in the driver seat, right? And so what this means, I think in everyday context, is not to do away with like trainers and coaches and what not every trainer and coaches is listening.

Don't hate me. Okay, you're sticking around. But what they can do is they can build some something of a choice set into your data programing, right? So let's say that at work, you have a certain skill that you're trying to build.

Ask for a set of options to choose from, own the targets more. You will see a boost in the motivation. Let's you're working out of the trainer.

They're like it's leg day, okay? I'm going to owe some my targets, right? Are we're going to go have hard on dead lives? Are we going to go hard on squats, whatever IT is. And so build some agency into the experience because nothing the plants that kind of been trying sic drive and the feeling that you own the success or the failure.

Um that again, I I think to your earlier point, what we're really trying to do with some of these behavioral insights is capitalized on our natural state as humans, right? Like what drives us and IT turns out we really love being in control. Well, why don't we monopolize on that when IT comes to, uh, our goal pursuit, right? So we're trying to figure out those areas of the psychology that we can leverage.

fantastic. The word agency is so key here, I think. And that explains that earlier result, the shock experiment, people having agency over one hundred, their response to one hundred percent at the time, you know at least IT is giving them some sense of control and mitigating IT as when it's random fifty fifty yeah or rather when it's random fifty percent of the trials.

Then even though the outcome is Better on the hall, it's it's perceive somehow as a reduction in agency. Um there's something fundamental there for sure. When I started my laboratory and there was an additional pressure to publish papers, this is before getting ten year, I used to ask students in post talks when that the paper would be ready.

Then finally I stopped asking and just said, why don't you tell me when the deadline is yeah and not a single one failed. Or rather, I should put IT in the power, like every single time they succeeded in beating their estimate because they were in control of that end point. So I was at times chAllenging for me.

Yeah, you know but they they set a date and then if and also by the way, they need to extend that date outward. We did. That was their choice. Yes, they said they need more time. You that the rule in science that I think applies a lot of places.

I always like the phrase as fast as I carefully can, because you don't want to rush, right? But but that sense of agency, I like to think, translated to a more a joy for them. And certainly, there was a lot of productivity from them and and there might be listening to this. And so they can put in the comments .

whether I .

am telling the truth here. There are most of the professors now they support your students and post docs and and just get out of their way yeah because the really good ones are, are you can't control them. You you just trying to not screw .

things up for curious about the difference .

between loan pursuits and group pursuits because I know you understand a lot about groups, and I want to make sure that we talk about um group think, although there has such a negative connotation. But the way that we tend to um a revert to the mean when IT comes to our thinking in our opinions and certainly are. Explanations that who's right and who's wrong when we are in a collection of like minded people yeah this could also be phase as what are the dangers of being among like minded people um and and then we will relate that back to motivation. But what are the dangers of being among like minded people .

ah anymore in the context of goals and motivation? IT can be very, very helpful to be in the context of like minded people. And the reason for that is we often don't see failure of close when IT comes to people pursuing their goals. But if we are in the presence of people whose values we share, who have a similar commitment to doing something, and we see up close that they sometimes have those days where they fail or we have the one ability to show when we failed that can actually increase our results, that the goals that we are trying to achieve our actually possible.

Okay, I think the danger of being in the the like minds spaces is around how limits your frame of mind, right? So when IT comes to the ideas that you have, when IT comes to the convictions you have around your points of view, IT can be very dangerous to only be the in the echo chAmber. And again, because I want to give people strategies to chAllenge the way of thinking without them having to socialized for all the introverts out there, a lot of compassion.

I, I, I introvert the tendency. So I get IT. One helpful thought experiment you can use when you feel like maybe you're spending a little bit too much time around people who are just reinforcing whatever view points you have, is to ask how your belief system in your, your ideas and your opinions of things might have been different had you been born during a different time period and in a different family or cultural landscape.

And what happens when IT comes to our a viewpoints is that they become so tethered to our identities that we feel like if we were to jettison a certain belief for a value, we would be justice inning ourselves. And that feels way too threatening its way too destabilizing to engage that. But the minute you imagine what I would have been like to to have been born in a different family, with a different religious belief system, with a different value system, all of a sudden you transport your same self, right? I'm still mia into this new environment and you start to see how non precious some of your release are, right? Maybe they don't have the sacred quality that you thought that they did. And so you might be more open to changing your mind, more open and receptive to chAllenging your own points of view if you engage in that that pot experiment.

I recall you discussing a description of people watching a game of sport that involved bad calls .

to controversial .

referee calls. Um you can share with us a little bit about that result because I find IT really interesting, especially the part where um the experimenters can swap the identities of the teams in in theory and then um well, basically what people come to realize is that our perception of the outside world is strongly informed by the group that we see ourselves in and often to our own detriment.

absolutely. Yeah so this is a study from the one thousand nine hundred and fifties to your point. You know, we tend to think, okay, we're human beings. We're really enlightened.

We're making decisions and where, uh, engaging in judgments of things based on data and evidence and facts and you know, surely my visual system wouldn't lie to me. So whatever I perceive is going to be true and vertical vertical representation of the world and like not true. Okay, a lot of our um beliefs and these are these are strong belief. I mean again, there there what we believe to be factored about the world is informed by our group membership.

So in this study um loyal fans of two opposing football teams wash these controversial place right so where the referee made a call and they weren't quite certain if IT was like out, let's say and um depending on your loyalty to the team, to whatever sports team, right whatever side you're on, you are much more likely to favor calls that we're made on your teams um in your team's favor. And you when you ask people coming out of a study like this, it's not like, yeah I knew I was biased like I knew that I was basing my judgment of these referee calls based on my affiliation and in my love of of tex or team y um you wouldn't think that you think you are an orbital of truth in the situation. You're just for calling what your visual system saw.

And I think that shows how powerful these social forces are, how powerful our group affiliations are. Because I can truly change the way that you see stuff, right? Of course, you can then transform the way that you think about stuff. And so that, to me, is a powerful reminder that when we are in disagreement with someone else um and we just try to embark them with facts right and like you're scientists, right so with you hearing someone say something and your like that, that's not accurate, that's not true.

Your your instinct probably say but have you heard about the twenty seventeen study, the peer review journal article that from put that that did do that right? And but when you recognize that actually a large part of our belief system uh, emerges from the groups that we identify with, I think there's there's an inspiring lesson that comes from that. So we couldn't be too just hearten by the fact that this is true, but IT helps around our understanding of why IT is that people believe the things they do.

And as a result, we have more resources at hand to try to understand how we can change their minds. right? So one of the guys that I interviewed my podcast um his name is David Davis.

He's a black as musician and um he was confronted by a member of the cool as plan at one of his performances and IT LED talk about a slight change of plans I mean he just went on a totally different life path and ended up convincing dozens of people to leave Whites supremacy groups including the good class clan and and I know when IT when IT comes to darl in his approach for one he recruit people's agency so he never implied to them or am trying to change your mind um he inspired he always says like I didn't convince them ya they convince themselves to change their reminds so he recruit their agency um but he also tried as absolute hardest to not question their fundamental and underlying humanity, right? We try to understand, like why are you part of this group, this vial viral c group? And some people would share what you know.

It's a family tradition thing. My father was in the clan. My grandfather was in the clan. Look, none of these excuses being in a hate group OK, but at least gave darell an understanding of some of the the factors that were pushing them towards the group, so that he might offer that sense of community, that sense of baling somewhere else, maybe outside of a hate group, right? But if he thought that he was actually just fighting over facts over whether african americans should treated on equal to everyone else, then he would have lost that that um argument because he was even fighting with the right currency, right what was relevant so um what was so I mean, this is my IT was the first episode of a slight change of plans we ever released and continues to me my favorite.

Because what was so drilling about this interview is that the strategies they are used to convince people to change their minds, to get of these deeply entrenched horrific views were totally corroborated by the science of how we changed people's minds. So he took he's a lot of really effective strategies just intuite vely like he's just a master mind behavioral scientists just fiber to who is um but he he showed genuine curiosity for why did they believe what they did, which is again extremely hardens. I would not have had the equalization to show genuine curiosity for why someone is in the cook's plan but he showed that curiosity he increased um the his question to statement ratio.

So it's really important to ask people a lot of questions um and then and then he would ask people um a really important question, which is, well, what in theory could change your mind and what evidence what I have to give you in order to change your mind about X, Y, Z and the reason that I love asking that question is that I presume ses that someone ought to be willing to change their mind in the face of new information. So this harkings back to the conversation we're having earlier about the importance of having a valuable said to mine and being willing to update the face of new info. Now, if the person in the response says, literally nothing will change my mind, okay, well then, you know, don't worth your time to have the disagreement with them, but if they give you a little bit and say, well, maybe I would change my mind on vaccines if you were to tell me X, Y, R, Z. Maybe I would change my minds on my mind on immigration reform if you were to tell me you this or that. Now you have in right, but you do need to get them into the state of mine where they think, yeah, I guess in theory, I could change my mind about this thing that I feel absolutely resolute about.

I've never worked in public policy, but I feel very strongly that where I see failures and mass of know public health policy or educational policy, almost always there seems to be a failure of even interest in understanding what motivates the other size position and this is where I just this actually gets me um frustrate to the point of motivated where it's like people are saying you're wrong. You're wrong.

Know this, know that to the point of it's almost mainly and far more seldom or do we see people saying, you know, okay, i'm a third person myself, I want to put myself in the other person, choose and say that you, why might they feel that way? Why would this person be listening to this individual, as opposed to this public healthy h individual and look, you know, without taking any stance on this, because it's much bigger conversation than we wanted have right now. I could look at public health officials that just completely failed to understand the other sides position and vice versa and that to me just says it's a communication failure.

And i'll take this out of the covered pandemic um discussion as it's Normally had and say that you know one thing that we know for sure is that in the twenty twenty to really twenty twenty two but still twenty twenty three landscape there were so many mental health concerns, right everybody, right, regardless of where people were on the vaccine debate, debate down debate, regardless of any of that. Everyone stress level was elevated, absolutely. And there were very, very few top down from at the level of government's discussions about how to maintain crating rhythm, sleep pelf, how to maintain health in general in net landscape.

And that, for me, was just really shocking. IT was also one of the reasons why we launched the podcast, Frankly, is that I really feel that the tools were needed by everybody and should be zero cost to everybody. But what was clear, as there were so much pointing of fingers and name calling and and violence even that no one was saying, like why would people feel this way? Why would people trust these sources as opposed to these sources? And we can only conclude for good scientists that um the the landscape was in effective, right just productive and IT continues and many if you go if you have the the desire to take a reduction in dopamine by going on twitter and following this back and forth that continues today。 It's it's pretty ugly still none of IT seems really solution oriented.

There are a few people out there her trying to make a solution oriented but um not really and so I don't want to me going to the the dark aspects here, but but IT does seem like um this willingness to take a look at why others might feel the opposite of how we feel is a very rare quality. And this gentleman daro, what was his last? I think i've i've seen a number things.

I mean he's obviously extraordinary um but we call him that because people like him more exceedingly rare. So what can we do to cultivate that kind of minds? Because i'm not pointing fingers here. I M I think we all have this default tendency to gather evidence the way that we gather evidence, draw conclusions and then stand our ground. And I think it's detrimental to to everyone.

So you're making me reflect on probably the greatest gift that being the cognitive scientist has given me in my life. Um obviously it's fed my curiosity. It's been to delight to set things and learn things.

But the greatest gift IT is given me is empathy towards people. IT is the greatest driver of human empathy to learn how our minds work. And I don't know if there's a substitute for that partly. That's why I started a slight change of plans. We have story episodes where you hear from people like darell, but I interview scientists from all over the world about their areas of partis.

And I genuinely believe that the more we learn about how the mind works, the more we learn from my father, cognitive science, but how we make decisions, how we develop our attitudes and belief about the world, how we come to be the people that we are, the more we can bridge these, employ gaps. And it's been profound for me. I think I feel so lucky to have been stepped in this literature for decades. now.

My hope is to invite people into the conversation, because the more you learn about why people are the way they are, the more empathy you can extend and the more i'm not even saying you've got that you need to extend an olive brand, not saying that you need to compromise your own belief system, but at least you see that there might be an entry point, a reason to have a discussion with this person who believes things that are completely different from you. And I we talked about gratitude, but in this conversation I feel immense gratitude that I have a poster of empathy as I move around in this world, because I regret, I mean, I have, I have strong beliefs on things. I care a lot.

I care about reducing human suffering, and that I meet someone who I think is proof policy that promotes human suffering. And of course, the visceral human instinct is like to help with you in your viewpoint. This is horrible. This is intolerable. But because I have this cognitive science head on, IT allows me to walk around with a slightly different viewpoint, and I really feel that I am a Better person as a result of that.

And I and i've heard from listeners of a slight change of plans when they listen to these science episodes where there's the signs of loneliness, the science of empathy, the science of meditation, like I try to bring this empathetic expand to to understanding, again, neuroscience and psychology. They have found that they are kinder to others. And so that's that's probably the best feedback that I ve ever received on the show is like people are like i'm a nice a person to other people now.

especially once I don't agree with and to themselves. As I know you've crawled up the topic of empathy as a way to prevent burnout, right that and here we're just starting my job burnout. We're talking about the burnout that is inherent to, like any long term pursuit that's chAllenging, raising kids, being in a family.

What is the great room us quote, you think you're enlighten and go spend a week with your parents you you like no matter how the light you are like the like I always, I remind myself that I love my parents. I love my parents. But when you know you just a completely different rame shift. So but also kind of one self, I think I think there starting to be some good neuroscience at the mechanistic level of empathy um clearly IT empathy is not the default state for people, is something that we need to cultivate as a practice and that we can cultivate as a practice along the lines of empathy.

But also returning to the topic that we open today's discussion with, you know we build these narratives about ourselves starting in adolescence, maybe even earlier yeah and through our ten years and we have various experiences but curse how we can continue to build narratives about ourselves and the role of narrative you know the eye statements I am statement yes um and whether or not you uh and we should all spend some time you are doing this. I mean these days you know people exercise because we know it's good for us. I hope people get some like because they know it's great for them um that people perhaps of the meditation practice or a therapy practice or a journal practice. But how is IT that we can continue to evolve our narratives about self in a way that promotes some where are all of the things that we've been talking about today?

Yeah so empathy is really interesting because I think we have a lot of misconceptions about IT, and we have misconceptions about how empathetic we actually are. I would argue people are more empathetic than they think. And let me tell you why.

So this comes from research by my my friend and meal, zac e at stanford. There's three distinct type of empathy why people don't know about. So the first kind is emotional empathy.

And this is the one that feels very intuitive to most of us. So it's this visceral reaction I have. You tell me that you've had a really hard time.

My eye start to well up. I said, I can truly feel your pain, and I just feel what you feel okay. And that typically is that is what people think of.

When they think of empathy, period. They overlook two other types of empathy. The second type is called cognitive empathy. This is the ability to accurately diagnose what IT is that causing you distress in this moment, and what IT is that I could offer up to you to try to help eliminate some of your suffering.

The third kind is called apathy concern, or its known as compassion as well, which is the actual desire to help you, desire to help another person. And what's so interesting about these three type of empathy is that they don't correlate with people. You can be really high and the emotional Anthony scale, right, you can have tears streaming down your face as you hear about your friends divorce. But you might be really bad at diagnosing what IT is that causing them distress.

You might be really bad at actually offering up um a solution to their problem or you might lack the will, right? Like if you're sociopathy, you might just not have the will to help someone, right? And um what's so interesting is that I think in our society and this relate back to identity and and and the labels we give ourselves, I think our society puts a huge premium on emotional empathy and we discount people who don't have that this a response and we just immediately say or there are not empathetic.

And this happens from the time that we're really little, by the way, like the kid who's crying on the playground comforting their friend right there. Like how that kids got a ton of empathy. My older kid doesn't seem to really care about people, but they might excel in cognitive empathy. They might excel when IT comes to impair ic concern. So one of the things I was talking about with jie on a slight change of plans is, you know maybe we ought to think about empathy languages and the same way we think about love languages, people have different ways of expressing their and we ought to value them equally and um that's been wonderful because I think even in the past, like I would have had a really hard situation, I go to one of my friends and they just seem like a little bit more stoic.

And I like, do you think, give IT IT? Like, why do you not care as much as I want you to care IT? Turns out there fantastic at wanting to help me and understand what's wrong with me and um I love the idea of giving a little more of love to those second two buckets because I think IT allow us to Better recruit more empty y from others and also to see ourselves differently to maybe for those people out there like i'm not a very antithetic person, you might actually be more empathetic than you think.

Uh, the second thing I wanted to share is about burnout. right? You talk a little about about burnout. People who rate really high on the emotional empathy scale tend to experience burn out at higher rates. So you can imagine healthy care workers, first responders.

Essentially, what you're doing when you feel emotional empathy is you are you're you're tearing the burden of the other person's pains. So you can easily imagine how that can deplete you. And I think the instinct that we have when we're empathetic is to say, you know what, i'm just onna.

Shut myself off. I had that experience in twenty twenty. I was like there's too much bad stuff happening around me like I prefer to just not feel things.

Thank you very much. And so I tried to close myself off from natural emotional reactions. I would have to things.

But what genuine research shows is that you don't actually have to. If you cultivate cognitive ea, thy empathetic concern, those can actually be protected against burn. So you don't have to do away with empathy altogether. You just have to shift gears and be more selected about the kind of empathy that you're investing in. So I love this research again, just like opens your mind up to this whole world of employ that you might have thought of as more than like the singular, and allows there to be a little bit more Grace face.

I love the idea that there are different categories of empathy that will also ARM me with a response. What if ever, hypothetically, someone says, I don't feel like you're really feeling what i'm feeling and therefore you're not impair tic to my experience, I where I rate on these skills is not important. But this no show cognitive empathy, I think it's really important. Probably ly one that most people haven't heard of. I certainly haven't heard of IT um but .

I like to think that .

I know you'd have to ask the people close to me but um but that IT is at least as important as the emotional empathy before we conclude there is something that um I unfortunately pushed us past too quickly that I want to return to because I think it's something that so many people care about and live with each day which is this issue of chAllenges with ongoing motivation and forgive me for er for um acis m here. I'm sorry jumping back to this because I realized that I I pulled this off to another topic but you've talked about the middle problem before and and it's too important to um to not return to so um tell us about the middle problem and how we can overcome the middle and before I do that.

do you mind if I give just a couple short strategies around goal setting? I just want to make sure around out that section.

not only but I not mind. I I would be .

I just are the wisdom that me so much my personal life okay, so i'll try to be fast.

So the first yeah but people .

have these goals to read try I got to get them them out running um so the first is to make sure that you are so we already talked about approach versus avoided goals, right? We talked about how who sets the goal matters and how if is you is Better, right, that you have some ownership over your targets.

The third thing is to make sure that you're setting goals when you're in the same psychological and physiological state as the one you'll be in when you're actually pursuing the goal. Because we tend to have what are known as this is, again, I fish box, we tend to have employ gaps between our present day cells and our future selves. And that empty gas can lead us to be very compassionate towards four P M.

On sunday watching TV mayer, right, and six, I am mayer, who I hope is going to be at the gym like you cry, killing herself with a really high intensity interval set or what not and so if if IT is four P M on sunday, probably not the best time for you to say i'm going to go to the gym. S six A M, if you actually are at the gym at six am and you are feeling visually the physiological pain, the psychological pain of having gotten up really early to do the work out, then, is a reasonable for you to set that goal. But it's kind of the opposite of, like they say, like to go to the supermarket hungry, right? Actually, in this situation, you want to be an exactly the same physiological and psychological state you'll be in when you're in goal pursuit.

It'll make IT much more likely that you set reasonable goals and you actually reach them. The second thing um that you might want to think about is, so I don't know that you enter, but I feel like i'm a gold purity by nature. So when I set a goal, the minute I fly, fall off even slightly, the goal is gone for me.

Okay, like I messed up. Like, let's start from the beginning. Let start from scratch. I need a new goal. Like i've already messed up and IT doesn't matter.

So I feel like unless I achieve perfection in achieving my goals, I get very frustrated and I just fall off the wagon complete with so one thing that researchers have shown is that is really helpful to build in was called the emergency reserve into your goal setting or slack is another way of putting in. So let's say I have a goal. I want to go to the gym every single day this month.

It's really important and helpful to give yourself and you're not going soft on yourself. I promise to give yourself, for example, three get to to jail free cards, three days where for whatever reason, it's okay that you didn't go to the gym, you got sick. Me be of kids who got sick, you're just not feeling motivated IT doesn't really matter what the reason is you didn't go to the gym, but the important thing is that you're still attract to achieving your goal even if you miss those three days because you build them into the system again.

The final thing i'll say about um setting the goal is to try to capitalize on a phenomenon known as the fresh start effect. So this is worked by my friend kd milkman. She's a professor at warn at the university of pennsylvania.

So what he's found is that in our lives, we have these big milestone moments where we break from the past and we're entering a new future. Okay, this might be moving across the country, could be getting a new job IT could be getting married IT could be whatever. okay.

But IT feels like a big change and that's a wonderful moment to try to introduce a new set of patterns into your life in part because again, um you have a break and identity but too it's really easy to introduce new habits when a lot of your environmentals circum senses are different. So I take a new job, all of have a new route to work. Probably a good idea to not introduce a pastry stop every time I go to work because I no longer passing by that bitchery every morning.

Um you want to capitalize some fresh arts of that kind. There's also a more arbitrary resh start that exists for all of us. And this is in the form of the first day of the year, of course, new resolutions, the first of spring, even the first day of the week, can be very motivating because we all like clean slights. We like a wipe and away the past. We like him barking on a new future um that's clean, a failure and stumbling and what not and so that would be really powerful motivator.

I love these suggestions because I do think that we like a clean start. There's something to that who knows why, but I think it's a universal trait and perhaps shortening the time domain over which we think about our goals and success and failure could help like say the clean started this afternoon because this morning wasn't I didn't go so .

well yeah you know to surrender the whole week .

just you invest up on the yeah and a continue people and I say suffer from perfectionism because I think it's it's a great attribute in in certain domains and can be chAllenging in others. But I love the idea of having a little bit of Grace um with one's goals. And also what you said earlier, of making the carrot compelling, you know and not so much focusing on just the stick, making the carrot more compelling so much there.

What about the middle problem? Because I do think that people uh do tend to go go hard out the gate as IT were and then people drop off. Yeah so yeah other stuff we .

talked about so far has been around defining the goal. And now we need to think about how we sustain our motivation to pursue the goal and this can be super hard um again, behavior change is incredibly, incredibly hard to sustain. Um so the medal problem, so middle problem refers to the fact that we don't have stable amounts of motivation over the course of goal pursuit.

We tend to have a boost of motivation at the beginning of the pursuit. We all feel this visually right. I've decided i'm gonna do in her in fasting, or i'm going to make sure I look at you the sun every morning.

The first moment that I get up or what whatever the goal is in that first day, you are so motivated to get IT done right in fact, the first few days, the first few weeks um and then you experience a boost and motivation, a higher motive motivation towards the end of the al. Um so we experience at the end of the goal what's known as the goal gradient effect. So we tend to experience monotonic increases and motivation, the close we are to the finish line.

So we might even see in marathon runners, right? They are like OK. We have this remaining part to go.

I can expand all my energy now to try to get over the finish line. There's a low though in motivation, in the middle of goal pursuit. And that's something that we want to get ahead of, we want to solve for now.

Obviously, we cannot eliminate medals. Mathematically impossible to eliminate middles. So what do we do? What we do something that you already eluded to, which is actually be short in the time duration of our goals. So rather than setting an annual goal, right, let's say that it's the new year you're inspired to try to make twenty twenty three the best year ever.

But what the problem with that is when you set an annual goal now, your middle is months long, so you're going to experience that decrease and motivation for a healthy chunk of the year, which is not ideal. If you set a weekly goal, by contrast, all of the set, your middles a lot shorter, right? All of the set.

And you're dealing with like a few days, maybe there or two. And so you want to be mindful of of the duration 啊， of the goal. Another thing that can help them keep motivation highs to do when my friend Kitty milk man calls temptation bundle ling.

So this is everyone in the my go to strategy for having done every unpleasant activity in my life that i've had to do. Okay, following laundry, ry doing the dishes actually really like working out like you do. So I don't need as much motivation, but sometimes I still need for high intensity days. I do need the motivation to do like the hard cardy, so to to get on into working out that way.

Um so what is temptation buttling you're pairing an unpleasant activity like falling, wandering, doing dishes, taking out the trash with an immediately rewarding enjoyable activity that can be listening to your favorite podcast, which are of course, the huberman and lab in a slight change of plans, obviously uh IT could be listening to your favorite ite pop music. But the really critical piece of the temptation bungling is that you have to forgo the intel gent. Of enjoying that rewarding activity in all other spaces of your life.

So for example, for me, I feel like a good pop song. I have like twenty five really good listens, and then I kind of becomes old hat. So I just like, you know, the excitement of the song where wears off of that so there have been times we'll be like cooking with my husband and he's like, why don't we play? You know, you love casey masteries, why would we play that album? And i'm like, no, no, that's an I am. I can only listen to you when I am.

Like lifting weights maintain the potency.

You have to maintain the potency, right? You don't allow yourself to get the joint activation of the huge room and lab when you're not taking a walk and getting exposure to that morning sunlight. And you know, it's such a simple strategy when you think about IT. But I have found myself looking forward to really annoying test that I have to get done because I know i'm going to get the enjoyment of something really fun that the companies .

that fantastic is, is important, that the thing that one enjoys be done. Cy, multi eusden, yeah. So falling laundry while watching the netflix thing or listening to a particular piece of music.

yeah, you want them to coexist. Because then again, you can get that immutable. Or most of the time, the things that we limit doing have really positive long term outcomes, right? If I in the habit of keeping my house clean, there's long term benefits and the habit of exercising or eating helpfully, there's long term benefits, but I don't often feel that we're wards in the real time. So what you're trying to do is give yourself that rush of joy and excitement that accompanies the immediately rewarding activity so that in your mind, even just like neurally, the two things are coexisting.

I love IT because IT has such firm grounding in the neutral logy of reward and a version and how to overcome a version. Um there's deep neuroscience around this, but i've never heard IT presented that way so yeah um thank you for those incredibly clear and actionable a tools for motivation because so many people struggle with that yeah and I hear that all the time and I think you know .

you talked about a version and actually this is really important. So when we think about returning to our goals, which is often in the hard things that you do IT on monday and you have that single on tuesday and on wednesday and on thursday and by thursday, you're kind like, oh my god, IT was so hard the first few days so I really want to go back and do that, do the same work on the thursday.

Um what's really helpful here to avoid some of that diversion is to be mindful of the um the way in which our minds processed memory. So when we have reflect back on how much we enjoy IT or didn't enjoy experience, we don't give equal weight to every moment. Each one is uniform weight.

Instead we tend to um give more weight to was called the peak of the experience. So the experience that was most emotionally intense, the part of the experience that was the most emotionally intense and the end of the experience. So this this has worked done by nobel lorrie conomo, danial conomo and and his collaborator in most diversity.

So the peak end rule is what this is called, see, you put a lot of weight on, again, that really emotionally intense moment of the experience in the end. Now, researchers have studied this in the context of lots of unpleasant activities. So in some studies, people are are forced to pledge emerge their hands and like ice cold water where they looked at colonoscopy SE, for example, and how unpleasant those are. And um what they found is that this is so interesting so OK, i'm nursing out a little thing because I just like think that this .

field is so cool. okay? So nursing out isn't just tolerate IT is encouraged .

having a moment with cognitive science. But this is such cal research because what these researchers did is so clever. If you evon gate the unpleasant experience by a couple minutes, let's say so the hands and freezing called ice water or the colonoscopy but you make those last few minutes of the unpleasant experience slightly less unpleasant, then the end of the experience would otherwise i've been right, had you just ended the colonoscopies cedar as planned, had you just taken um the hands right at the ice bucket by, for example, increasing the temperature of the water by a degree or user imaginations, whatever they you are.

call ox less.

There are mechanisms by which the pain can be less .

of physicians everywhere know them. But we, but we are, we are blaming to them anyway.

You guys can do the mental work of figuring out what the google on google. What they find is that people look back on the experience more favorably. They were more positive impression of the experience.

Now again, this is what's so maculate about this finding. The overall duration of the unpleasant experience has been extended. There are more minutes of overall suffering, right? But the last few minutes are less bad than they would have been otherwise.

And so people, are you the experience more favorably? In the case of the colonography, they were actually more likely to return for follow up further annual checkup s. And so what does this mean in daily life? But what I can mean is, let's say, you're like literally killing yourself at the gym.

okay? You have the hardest work out that you ve ever had. Tack on a few minutes to the end of the workout that are still unpleasantly. You're so coating coating them as being part of the unpleasant working out experience but are a little bit less intense and less painful than the workout and would have been otherwise you might be more likely to return and actually do the the hard work out.

Can we also say if somebody really enjoys they're training, that the opposite would be effective as well, that perhaps they really want to push hard at the end because that's the sensation that they particularly enjoy that, that could serve presently the memory systems in the reward systems of the brain, such they are more likely to return to the work out.

Absolutely rays. A fantastic point, which is when we talk about enjoyment in this context, IT is all subjective. So I actually kind of love the feeling like i'm going to die because my heart is is a racing.

So I am forever is that I am just wired to love exercise, right? And I love a hearts strength ding workout, right? And so for me, what enjoyment might look like at the end is like really, really, really intense, right? That might be what brings me back.

But in other domains, absolutely not like call and ask the situation. I would do not want that to be an unpleasant experience. And so there are a lots of other domains in life where if you just tack on a few of few minutes on to something that's really tedious or really hard and really painful, IT can make you more likely to commit to IT later.

But it's an excEllent point. In all of these study, you have to consider who the person and what their natural psychology is like. And for listening, you want to tailor these recommendations to who you are as a person.

Well, there are certain life demands that I find incredibly aversive. So i'm going to use this approach for those. I'm also going to use them in the context of things I really enjoy, because if one has the opportunity, I believe, to further reinforce the things that bring destroy, why wouldn't? Absolutely fantastic recommendations.

So I could ask you a thousand more questions. And my hope is that you'll come back so that I can those thousand plus more questions. I have to say IT is exceedingly rare that I talk to somebody either on the podcast or elsewhere, Frankly, in my life that has such an incredibly wide breath of knowledge and yet has so much a depth of knowledge as well.

It's clear that you're many experiences through music and cogent science, podcasting. And by the way, we're going to provide links to your podcasting in the showed captions so that people can hear more from you and as they should, and also your work in policy. And you've put yourself in a lot of different domains.

And I think that itself is inspiring and um whether or not by way of curiosity, human connection um or both, presently it's both and many other things as well. Um I know I speak on behalf of many, many people. I just say, you know thank you so much for doing the work that you do for continuing along these pursuits. I'm excited to hear where I might evolve in the future still um and Frankly, just for being you because it's clear that your enthusiasm, your curiosity and your generosity with useful information is a meant so thank you ever so much.

Well, that's it's so gracious and kind of you to say Andrew and um these these conversations like the one we just had. I mean, it's why I do the work is so much fun and so interesting and you given me so much food for thought IT really was a conversation, not an interview and that's such a gift and so I just feel gratitude that I can share um you know my body work in and all the insides have learned along the way with with your listeners and I really hope it's helpful to them.

IT certainly is and it's been an honor to have you here. So let's do IT again.

Yes, let's again. thanks.

Thank you. Thank you for joining me for today's discussion about identity and goals and motivation with doctor my a shang car. If you're learning from indoor enjoying this podcast, please subscribe our youtube channel.

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