The key to growth with Scott Barry

Bulletproof radio, a state of high performance. Do you have to be vulnerable to grow?

Oh, well, now that's a whole topic that I just am obsessed with lately. I can't believe you just asked me that. It's like.

Well, I mean, you said that in your words, kind of, but it feels like you can grow if all you are is defending, but you just like grow bigger walls. So vulnerability is a really big thing. I had to learn how to consciously be vulnerable so I could be who I am today. But tell me more about that.

This is on my mind so much right now. I can't believe that is the sliver of what I said that you picked up on. You're an astute human. So I think there's become a cult of vulnerability, quite frankly. And I've been wanting to push back on it lately because as I go in great detail in my book on the self esteem chapter, there's a thing that I've been studying lately called vulnerable narcissism. Yeah, yeah, it's. I published papers on this topic.

Vulnerability signaling. It's like virtue signaling. Is that what we're saying here?

What it is, is it's, you know, you think because you've suffered that you're entitled. It's entitlement because you've suffered as opposed to entitlement because you think you're great. So grandiose. Grandiose narcissism is the kind that has. You normally think of. When you think narcissism, you think like for politics, chest thumping, you know, like, I'm great, you know, but therefore I'm entitled to all special privileges because I'm the best. But we've studied this really interesting, not as well known version flavor. It's a more introverted flavor of, Of. Of narcissism. More vulnerable. More vulnerable form where, you know, that's the kind of person that they'll lay in their bed all day and why is that motherfucker succeeding and I'm not? You know what? I don't know. Am I allowed to curse in your show? Why is that person succeeding and I'm not? You know, there's a lot of resentment.

You know, it's a victim mindset.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

I'm entitled because I'm a victim.

Okay. Yeah, basically.

Is that. Am I saying the same kind of thing? Okay, yeah, but I like that you're putting in the. Because I've been vulnerable because I've been harmed, therefore, you know, I deserve this. Wow. I never thought of it as being a form of narcissism. But it's totally obvious when you said that.

Yeah, I'm working on that might be my next book actually. Yeah, I'm just like fascinated with this topic and I'm.

Please write that book. That is something that needs to exist because I have seen that now because I get to work with a lot of people in my different companies and yeah, there's a certain mindset sometimes and it is. They behave exactly like narcissists, like without self awareness when you're stuck in that loop. Exactly the same as someone who's like, I'm the world's best, which is why I can't see my own mistakes. Right. Wow.

It's self appreciative.

I can't wait to read that book.

Yeah, cool, cool. Well, I would be honored to come back to talk to you at any point about that in the future. But yeah, no, it's a fascinating this whole idea because I used to be fully on the Brene Brown train. I was like, vulnerability, yes, Sensitivity. And I wrote books on this. My book Wired to Create was all about how sensitivity and creativity are linked. But then I think what happens with these kind of things, the pendulum can swing too much in a particular direction where suddenly you're like shamed if you're not being vulnerable, you know, and if you say anything like, no, actually I feel pretty confident like you're viewed as evil.

Or entitled or something.

There's something where things have flipped around where we don't empower people to want to be. Have agency. Now we empower people to be a victim.

Yeah.

Does that make sense?

Oh, it makes a lot of sense. I'm seeing it as a major trend. And the bottom line is the people I've come to respect the most, having interviewed, we're pushing almost a thousand coming up here this year. The people who have suffered greatly and learned and stepped out of it and become leaders. In fact, it's one of the things I studied in one of my books. About 500 people have been on the show to find the commonalities of the things that they thought were most important. And yeah, it's that, okay, A lot of them really went through near death experiences, great trauma and shame and whatever else in their life and then pick themselves up, work their asses off, learned and don't identify with that as something that happened. And it almost feels like that mindset is out of vogue right now.