1066 Positively Influence Others, Increase Mental Flexibility & Diversify Your Identity w/Adam Grant

Women's health affects more than women. In fact, research from the World Economic Forum and McKinsey suggests that closing the women's health gap could boost the global economy by $1 trillion annually by 2040. Join Dr. Jen Ashton and her guests as they examine the women's health gap through specific topics like maternal health, menopause, heart disease and more. Listen to the new season of the Visibility Gap, a podcast presented by Cigna Healthcare. The School of Greatness is proudly sponsored by Amica Insurance. As Amica says, Empathy is our best policy. That's why they'll go above and beyond to tailor your insurance coverage to best fit your needs. Whether you're on the road, at home, or traveling along life's journey, their friendly and knowledgeable representatives will work with you to ensure you have the right coverage in place. Amica will provide you with peace of mind. Go to amica.com and get a quote today. Fuel your greatness with wonderful pistachios no shells. Wonderful pistachios Pistachios is a great source of protein with zero guilt. Each one ounce serving has six grams of protein, giving you over 10% of your daily value. Pistachios are known for their protein power, fiber, and better for you unsaturated fats for a combination that may help keep you feeling fuller longer. And now there's a new way to snack strong with unsalted no shells holding the salt, not the flavor for a snack that packs a protein punch. Visit wonderfulpistachios.com to learn more. if you've listened to the school of greatness podcast for a while, you know how important acceptance is when it comes to personal growth. And you know who else is big on acceptance? Discover. You see, discover is accepted at 99 of places that take credit cards Nationwide. That's a whole lot of places and a whole lot of acceptance, which is great for discover, but even better for you. Based on the February 2024 Nielsen report, learn more@discover.com slash credit card This is episode number 1066 with number one New York Times bestselling author, Adam Grant.

The advice that we normally get is to practice what we preach. I think that's backward. Finally, we went back and forth for about half an hour, and Jamie said, you,'re a logic bully. Embarrassingly, I got really frustrated, and I said, well, I've never seen a group of smart people act so dumb.

Welcome to the School of Greatness. My name is Lewis Howes, a former pro athlete turned lifestyle entrepreneur and each week we bring you an inspiring person or message to help you discover how to unlock your inner greatness. Thanks for spending some time with me today. Now let the class begin. Author Stephen R. Covey once said, Strength lies in differences, not in similarities. And Steve Jobs said, Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. voice. Today's guest is number one New York Times bestselling author Adam Grant, who is an organizational psychologist at Wharton, author of four books that have sold millions of copies and host of the chart-topping Ted podcast, Work Life. And Adam's Ted Talks have been viewed more than 20 million times, and he has been recognized as one of the world's 10 most influential management thinkers, Fortune's 40 under 40, Oprah's Super Soul 100, and a World Economic Forum Young Global Leader, and received distinguished scientific achievement human awards from the American Psychological Association and the National Science Foundation. And in this episode, we dive in and discuss why we need to create rules for disagreements and frame a conversation first. The reason why humans need to influence others, how to improve your mental flexibility, why we need to embrace people who have different beliefs than us. This is so important. How to find and develop our core values at any stage of life. The importance of diversifying our identity. the difference between imposter syndrome and imposter thoughts, why you need a culture in your business and so much more. This is gonna be a big one. But before we get into it, if you have big goals and dreams this year for your business and your life, and you want to ensure that you do everything in your power to accomplish them without letting any challenges get in your way, then make sure to check out our Greatness Coaching Program. It's your high performance system for 2021 and beyond. It includes coaching, accountability, mastermind, and my new Greatness playbook where you'll reflect, plan, and create clear goals for your business and life. This is your high performance system that will ensure you set yourself up for success this year and beyond. And if this speaks to you, then make sure to go to lewishowes.com/mycoach to apply right now. And if you're enjoying this episode, make sure to share this with someone you think would love hearing this. And a quick reminder, if this is your first time here, click that subscribe button over on Apple Podcasts right now, as well as leave us a rating and review when you're finished to let us know what thought about it. Okay, in just a moment, the one and only Adam Grant. Welcome everyone back to the School of Greatness podcast. Very excited about our guest. My man, Adam Grant is in the house. He's the author of the new book called Think Again: the Power of Knowing what yout Don't Know. And Adam, this is the second time you've been on the show. And I have to ask you an important question to get started. And that is, why is it so hard for people to let go of beliefs that are no longer supporting them in their happiness and in their life?

Well, Louis, it's great to be back here. Thank you for having me. That is a complicated question. So I think it deserves a complicated answer. I think the problem that a lot of us run into is we end up thinking too often like preachers or prosecutors. My colleague, Phil Tetlock, wrote a paper almost 20 years ago where he said that, Look, a lot of us have never worked as preachers or prosecutors, but we still spend a lot of time thinking and talking like them. You know, kind of either convinced that we're right or that the other person is wrong. And I think those ways of thinking and talking are familiar and comfortable for a lot of us because they make the world more predictable, they make us feel more certain. They also give us a sense of belonging with a tribe that either shares the values that we're preaching or the views that we're attached to or agrees that the other side is definitely wrong. And I think if you're convinced that you've already found the truth and your job is basically to proselytize that to everyone else, or if you're only here to try to win an argument and destroy the other side's case, you're not.

Going to change your mind a whole lot. So should we even have conversations with people who are not open-minded to listening and hearing different perspectives?

I think it depends on what your goal is. So if you go into a conversation like that arguing to win, you're probably going to lose. But if you go in and say, Look, I want to either argue or ask questions to try to learn, then I might not open the other person's mind, but I might discover something that will either help me have a more productive conversation with them a different day or even put me in a position to have a better conversation with somebody else who has similar views.

It almost seems like at this point in our culture, if you're not 100% thinking all of my beliefs then I'm unfriending you, I'm unfollowing you, I'm not supporting you, we're not family anymore. If one belief is off, if one value is off, if one ideal is off, should we be, I don't know what the word is there, outcasting the people in our life or even loose ties if we see them like something that we don't like or comment about something that we don't fully agree with and only be connecting with people that have 100% of the views we have. Or is that a really harmful thing for us to not be including relationships and conversations with people that have one idea that's different or maybe all ideas that are different?

Well, you know where I'm going to come down on this one, Louis. I think, first of all, it's not my place to judge what other people do. I think when it comes to my own learning and the kind of communities that I want to be a part of, I don't want to surround myself with people who share all my opinions. That's extremely boring. How are you ever going to learn anything if you live in an echo chamber or if you trap yourself in some kind of filter bubble? So my personal policy has been to say, when I choose to follow someone on social media, I don't necessarily care what their conclusions are. I want to know what's the quality of their thought process. So whether I agree with where they land or not, if they're rigorous about the logic that they use and the evidence that they pay attention to, then that's somebody I wanna learn from. And that's how I evolved my own thinking, right? Last time I checked, when you go to school, you don't go to affirm what you already believe. You show up to evolve what you believe. And that's one of the things I love about the School of Greatness. And I know it's something that you stand for. So it might make us uncomfortable, but.

I think that is where ultimately learning and wisdom lies. What do you think you realized about yourself throughout this process of studying this and researching this latest book, what did you realize about yourself that was wrong? Or maybe not wrong, but maybe you're like, wasn't fully supporting you in your career as a professor, as a teacher, as a thinker, as a leader, and wasn't serving you.

I think I realized I spend more time than I would like in prosecutor mode.

Really?

Yeah, a lot more actually.

And it was- Give me an example.

All right, so I think the example that jumps to mind right away is this is a few years ago, I had a student named Jamie who called me for some career advice and she was trying to think about should I do an MBA or not? And then if so, which school should I go to? And she had a couple of offers. And I feel like when somebody comes to me with a strong opinion, the best way for me to be helpful is to challenge it, right? And really pressure test their thinking. And so I gave her a list of reasons why someone who did an undergrad business degree probably didn't need an MBA, that there's actually no job that requires an MBA, right? It's not like, I wanna be a doctor, I gotta go to med school, or I wanna be a lawyer, I need to go to law school, right? You can run a business without a degree. And I just push her a little bit to explain, okay, why is this really worth two years and a quarter million dollars? And if you could make that investment somewhere else, where would you go? And I realize the irony of being a business school professor asking these questions, but I really want people to think through their decisions, right? So finally we went back and forth for about half an hour and Jamie said, you,'re a logic bully.

Wow.

A logic what? She said, a logic bully. You overwhelm me with rational arguments and data and I don't agree, but I don't feel like I can fight back.

Ooh.

And I was, I have to tell you, Louis, I'm not proud to say this, but my first reaction was, a little bit of joy at being called a logic bully. I thought that's why I'm an organizational psychologist. That's what I love about being a social scientist, is I get to use the best logic and the strongest data. And I want people to know that if I am going to engage in argument, that I'm gonna be as convincing as possible. The more I reflected on this though, and especially As I was writing Think Again, I started to realize that if Jamie doesn't feel like she can take ownership over her own decision and her own beliefs, then I've done her a disservice. I don't want to bully anyone into changing their mind, right? What I want to do is I want to have a thoughtful, curious conversation where we both have an open mind. And then if somebody updates their beliefs, that's their choice, not mine. And so one of my goals for 2021 is to get out of prosecutor mode and spend more time talking like a scientist, which I feel like I spend a lot of time thinking that way. But whenever I see somebody with a strong view, I feel this impulse just to go to the opposite extreme. And it almost never goes well.

Yeah, it's almost like you have all the data and all the information that backs your belief on why it's so much more valuable than the other side of a belief. And you want to share that with someone and look why all the reasons why this is so valuable are why you should take this action as opposed to that one. But if someone just at the end of the day feels like they want to take that other action, sometimes we just got to support them and say, okay, well at least you have the information. But how do we do it in a way that doesn't bully logic, but also gives them a reality of something that might be a better option?

Well, I think the first thing to do is to actually have a conversation about the conversation. So have a meta conversation before you dive into the details. And I've tried this more and more lately as I've realized, you know, sometimes I just get in a heated argument and realized we never really set the ground rules for what we're trying to accomplish here. I think, you know, you're a real athlete. I'm a fake athlete. But one of the things that I.

Think-- what about a junior Olympian?

Diving, right?

It's a nerd sport. That's still an athlete in my mind.

I mean, we got all the people who were too weak for football and too short for basketball and-- Too slow for-- Too slow for-- Exactly, right. So we get the leftovers. But I think one of the things that I've always loved about sports, and I've heard you talk about this a lot too, is the ground rules are clear upfront. Everybody knows how you score a point or who's going to come out ahead based on agreed upon systems. So I think that when we disagree with people, we ought to do the same thing. And even if we're not going to land on the same page at the end of the discussion, we've at least aligned about what we're trying to accomplish here and how we're going to conduct this. And so for me, that means a few things. Number one, instead of thinking about a disagreement as an argument, I want to frame it as a debate. There's some evidence that if you just say, hey, Louis, can we debate this? That people are less likely to take the disagreement personally, they're less likely to feel attacked, they don't get as emotional, they're more likely to say, oh, well, we're supposed to kind of clash with our ideas and it might be a little bit fun to spar. And then the other thing I've started to do when framing the conversation, and this is especially useful when someone comes to me for advice, is I'll start by asking, why are you here? Are you looking for me to validate a decision that you've already made? Right? And you just want me to give you permission? Yeah, yeah.

Exactly, exactly.

And if so, I'm gonna have a very different conversation than if they say, you know, I'm worried that there might be some blind spots in my thinking, and I wondered if you could challenge some of my assumptions. And then the gloves come off a little bit, but it's with their permission, and they've bought into this process and agreed that it's been that it might be helpful, right? I think that framing up front goes a long way.

It's interesting, there's a quote by Ben Shapiro that says, Facts don't care about your feelings. And I don't know if people would consider him a logic bully in some ways, but he is very driven by the facts and data and the science of why and backing his ideas around why the science proves this idea as right. versus another option or a better option? I'm curious, what else have you discovered besides being a logic bully through this process for yourself?

So for me personally, I think one of, I guess one of the other takeaways has been that whenever I have a hard time getting through to someone, I have to take a step back and say, okay, who do I want to be? And one, what are my values? And two, what's going to be effective in this interaction? So I had an experience a few years ago when a bank called me and said, we're trying to figure out how to attract junior analysts and associates. And we used to be the premier job, but now we compete with tech and venture capital and private equity. So we'd love to figure out what it would be that would make us a top choice again. And I went in and I spent two months doing surveys, experiments, observations, interviews. I had outside data, I had data from the bank, and I'm presenting my findings to the co-heads of investment banking. I've got 26 data-driven recommendations. And we get through the first few, and that's a problem right there, right? That's just argument dilution to the max. I should have come in with my three or four best ideas. But one of the co-heads of investment banking interrupts me partway through and says, well, why don't we just pay them more? Why do we need to do all this stuff with making the jobs more interesting and meaningful and trying to teach our supervisors to be more caring? We should just solve the problem with money. If there was one thing, Louis, that was not on my list of 26, it was pay, because these people were already well paid. And by that I mean overpaid. And if money was going to solve the problem, I felt like it probably already would have.

Because they're already overpaid.

Yeah, I mean, you've tried the bonuses, you've tried raising the salaries dramatically, and you're still having a hard time with the retaining these people, it can't be solely a monetary decision, right? So embarrassingly, I got really frustrated and I said, well, I've never seen a group of smart people act so dumb.

Ooh, what did they say? They actually pay clients that are paying you, these are clients paying you.

You know, that's exactly where I should have gone. They laughed. They were kind of amused that I threw the first punch. But that's not who I want to be. And also, it's obviously not gonna help me reason with them. And so it really didn't get me anywhere. And I left feeling like I had violated sort of what it means to me to be professional. And I came out of that thinking exactly what you did, which is, okay, this is a situation where when somebody doesn't buy my data or my reasoning, Instead of getting mad, I should be curious. This is a puzzle. Why in the world did you hire me if you weren't gonna listen to the kind of evidence that I bring to the table? I genuinely wanna know. Can you help me make sense of that? And I've now tried to get in the habit of doing that more often when I feel like I'm an unstoppable force and I've run into an immovable object, instead of just pushing harder, which is my natural tendency, what I want to do is say, hey, it doesn't seem like you find this at all compelling. Why do you want me here? And what do you think I can offer? And then maybe I can be a little bit more helpful once I understand what you're after.

I'm curious, why do we feel the need to want to influence people all the time? I feel like we're always trying to influence our partner and our relationship to do something or believe in something. We're trying to influence our teams, we're trying to influence our boss, friends to do things, but let's go do this tonight. are we always trying to influence people and persuade them? And how can we be better at influencing without bullying?

That's a fascinating question. Why are we so determined to influence other people?

And believing the way we believe something and thinking the way we think about religion, about relationships, about political views, why are we needing that?

I feel like. I think the benevolent answer is we want to help people. And so, you know, when you find a Kool-Aid that tastes really great, you want to serve it.

I have to drink this.

I've seen the light. I want to enlighten you too. And that feels like you're doing a service for someone else. But I also think there's a less noble set of motives here, which is If other people hold beliefs that are different from my core views, then that's a threat to my identity. And it's pretty uncomfortable to live in a world where the way that I define myself, the opinions that I hold dear, might be incorrect. Because then I might be making a lot of mistakes, and I might have to second guess a large number of my choices in life, and I would rather not do that. I think what a lot of people do is they avoid cognitive dissonance. I don't know that we necessarily realize this consciously, but subconsciously, the harder we try to persuade someone else, the more we reinforce our own beliefs, right? We're not convincing them as we are selling ourselves. And I think that that feeling of certainty, of clarity, it's intoxicating.

Yeah, it is. As we age, you can start to see it in your face and feel it in your bones. There are creams that claim they'll give you younger skin and energy shots that'll give youthful energy. Let's look deeper beneath the surface on how we counteract the effects of aging. True Niggin helps us age better by supporting the energy-generating engines that exist in our bodies, helping us restore youthful energy. Tiny repair enzymes work deep in your cells to help you recover from lifestyle routines that are hard on the body, including sleep deprivation, an intense workout or poor diet. TruNiggin supports these enzymes. TruNiggin is safety tested and backed by Nobel Prize winning scientists. Age smarter with TruNiggin. Right now, new customers can save $20 on a three month supply by going to truniggin.com and entering promo code GREATNESS at checkout. Go to T-R-U-N-I-A-G-E-N.com and enter promo code GREATNESS at checkout to save $20 on your first three month supply. trunigen.com promo code GREATNESS. These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease. I see this all the time where, especially when you were talking about that, where people whose parents told them something, whether it be about religion or the way the world works, and then older as they, as we grow up, we realize, oh, maybe that's not the right way. Are my parents bad and wrong? Or, or they'll hold on to that idea to make sure that they have that connection, connection or that relationship with their parents still, or something like that, or around religion, you know, certain things that are supposed to be right and wrong. How do we learn to support and embrace people who might have these different beliefs or who've taught us something throughout our lives and not make them wrong when we find a different way that might work for us? Women's health affects more than women. In fact, research from the World Economic Forum and McKinsey suggests that closing the women's health gap could boost the global economy by $1 trillion annually by 2040. Join Dr. Jen Ashton and her guests as they examine the women's health gap through specific topics like maternal health, menopause, heart disease, and more. Listen to the new season of the Visibility Gap, a podcast presented by Cigna Healthcare. You ever walk out of the grocery store or fill up your tank and just think, how is everything this expensive? Feels like prices are going up everywhere, and how great would it be if just once something actually just went down in price? Well, at Metro, that's exactly what's happening. They've lowered their prices and are giving you a five-year price guarantee on talk, text, and data. One line now 20% lower. Family plans also lowered. Oh, and you also get a free 5G phone, all with no ID required and no activation fees. Stop by your neighborhood Metro store. Visit metrobyt-mobile.com, or call to find out about their amazing offers. Bring your number, not available if currently at T-Mobile or with Metro in the past 180 days. Guaranty covers monthly price of on network talk, text and 5G data for customers activating on an eligible plan. Exclusions apply. Details@metrobyt-mobile.com When I got injured playing football, everything in my life changed. My dream disappeared overnight. I was broke, crashing on my sister's couch, couch stuck feeling sorry for myself. But then I made a choice, stay stuck in that pain or adapt a no bull mindset and build something new. And that choice changed my life. The no bull mentality is what no bull is all about. No bull is the footwear brand for those committed to getting stronger physically, mentally and emotionally. Known for their award winning shoes, no bull continues to raise the bar with the all day rip stop. I am a huge fan of these engineered for versatility, The all-day ripstop is designed to perform from early workouts to late nights and everything in between. With a soft foam midsole for comfort, targeted breathability, and a ripstop upper for extreme durability. They keep me moving comfortably all day long. I am a huge fan of these shoes. No shortcuts, no excuses, just commitment. That's the Noble mindset. Exclusively for our listeners, Noble is offering 30% off your order. Visit nobullproject.com slash greatness for 30% off your entire order. That's nobullproject.com slash greatness for 30% off.

Plus. I don't know if I have any easy answers to that question, but I.

Think I'm asking the hardest questions in the world here.

It's a question worth talking about for sure. One of the perspectives that I like a lot on this is Tim Urban from Wait But why, who says, look, you have hardware. which is basically your brain. And then you have all this software, which is a set of beliefs that were downloaded by people before you really got to read the terms and conditions and say, Yes, you know what? I think this is gonna be good for... That's interesting. This is gonna be the right operating system, or this is the app that I wanna run. And I think at some point we all go through this process. It might be when we leave for college, it might be when we get married, it might be when When we end up joining a brand new group or move to a different country or a different city, that we start to say, Huh, that software that was uploaded by some process that I'm not aware of is actually not a good fit for who I am or where I am in life. And I think at that point, the only thing you can do is you can start to say, you know what? I shouldn't define my identity by my opinions. I should define my identity by my values. So, I've thought about this a bunch recently, Louis, and I think for a long time, there were certain things that I believed were true that were part of my identity.

And.

I know, for example, in college, I thought that it was important to work hard. And if you were somebody who didn't work hard, then you weren't a good person. Okay, that's a lot of moralizing. I think grit has a lot of benefits. prefer to be somebody who has more grit than less grit, but I don't want to judge people who choose a different set of values and might want to be more relaxed and carefree. And so I then said, okay, I've got to let go of these opinions about what's good and bad as part of who I am and say instead, look, I've got some core values. I value generosity, excellence, integrity, and freedom. Those are my top four. And I'm completely open to the best ways to achieve that, right? So if you're not gonna do this, Lewis, because you've built your career on grit. And I think it's served you extraordinarily well. But if you came to me and had an incredibly convincing argument that I would actually achieve more excellence by being a little bit less gritty, I'd wanna be open to that.

Right.

And I think that's true for any of the values to say, okay, I don't know the best way to live a generous life, but I know that I want to lead one. I don't know.

You know that is your value, yeah.

Exactly, yeah. The value is the way of being, and there are a whole bunch of practices that may or may not get me there. And I want to run experiments. I want to figure out which ones work for me, which ones work for other people, and then revise my thinking accordingly.

How should we develop our values and figure out what they are when we're unsure?

Let me turn this around on you and ask you, how did you do that? Because this has been a It's been a major topic in your life. And I think it's one of the things you're known for is having gone from a fair amount of uncertainty when you ran into a brick wall in your early version of your athletic career, right? To then say, okay, I'm gonna find real clarity and I'm gonna go and inspire other people with that clarity.

So how did you do it? I think it, you know, it's evolved in the seasons of my life based on what my current goals and dreams are. and what I desire. So, you know, this season of my life at 37, going on 38 here soon, you know, I'm just thinking about what's the next chapter? What's the next five, ten years of my life? What do I, how do I want to live? How do I want to feel? What do I want to experience? What are the things I want to be working on? What's meaningful to me? Why is it meaningful? So it's a, it's a process of questions that I ask myself. and, yeah, and going from there. But I'm always learning from other people to see how I can upgrade these, or is there something else I could bring in or include into this? But that's how I've done it. So. But I don't know if there's a process from an organizational psychologist point of view that allows people to find their values in a better way.

I don't know if there's one process, but I think there's some steps that I, that I like to build on what you've done, which is. Number one, I think you can learn a lot about what's important to you by observing the things you say and do. Right? So if you pay attention to the patterns in your own behavior, you can see, okay, there are sacrifices that I make that make it very clear to me what's important to me. So, you know, what do you do with your time? Exactly.

It's like, health is a value, but if you never work out, then that's a lie.

Exactly.

It's something you aspire to be a value, but you're not using your time to live that way, right?

Yes, and then if health is a value for you, what are the things that you give up in order to make sure that you're healthy? Are you willing to sacrifice a call with a friend in order to get your workout in? Right, you know what your value hierarchy is.

Sacrificing pizza and alcohol or whatever, you know. Bingo.

So I think that's one thing that's useful. You can do the same thing, by the way, with the claims you make about who you are to other people. the advice that we normally get is to practice what we preach. I think that's backward. I think we should only preach what we already practice.

Ooh, which is... Tell that to every parent. Tell that to every parent ever.

You know what? I don't let my kids hear this because they're gonna throw that back in my face.

But... What do you preach what you practice currently? And what do you preach what you don't practice?

All right, so you want an example of consistency in one of hypocrisy, right?

Yes.

Okay, let's do it. So the consistency one is easy. One of my favorite ideas that I guess I crystallized while I was writing Think Again is, you know how you do health checkups? You go to the dentist and the doctor even when nothing's wrong a couple times a year. I think we should also do that for our careers and run career checkups. It's something I've been informally suggesting to students for years where I just say, look, you don't want to end up on a path and look up after four promotions to realize, I'm in the wrong industry, or I hate the culture of this company I just spent a decade at. So just twice a year, put a reminder in your calendar to ask yourself, okay, have I reached a learning plateau? Is this what I expected coming in? And does my sense of who I want to be or what I want to do with my time has that evolved since I first landed on this path? And I've made that checkup process sort of a, it's a discipline for me. So I check in twice a year and I have these natural points to do it when I finish a teaching semester and then when it's time to start ramping up for a teaching semester again.

And you'll ask yourself what those three or four questions like, am I still learning or do I feel like I've tapped out? Is there more to gain or give at the same time? And am I feeling valued or... Yeah.

Those are the right questions for me, at least. I want to know, am I learning? Am I having the impact that I want to have? And then I go right through my values and say, okay, how well have I really at least lived by my current definition of what it means to be generous, to achieve excellence, to have integrity, and to maintain my freedom, and also not step on the freedom of other people? And I think that's helpful because a couple of years ago, one of the things I noticed when I did my checkup was I was spending about 80% of my time on stage saying things I already knew. So you give a couple of TED Talks and then people want the greatest.

Hits and... You say the same thing over and over. Do you ever get tired of saying these things? I always want to say new stuff. I'm sick of saying the same thing. I feel like everyone's bored, you know?

Completely. Except they're not, because you're giving a performance that you've rehearsed many times, right? It's like a-- They've never seen it, yeah. It's like a band that gets typecast.

And everybody wants to hear, you know...

Don't stop believin' with Journey. I mean, you will never hear the end of that, right? I can only imagine, I mean, it must have been horrible to be the Beatles or Queen. Oh, I'm messed. Anyway, so I decided at some point that, that might be good for the audience, but it's not good for me. I mean, I don't want to be trotting out brand new content every day because then I might deliver a bunch of garbage. But I do want to make sure I'm learning as I go. And the first thing I did was I set a goal that I was going to reinvent 20% of my content every few months. And that way I had a stable base, but I could also experiment on the margins. And that was great. I then started doing the same thing in my classroom. I throw away 20% of the class each year to try to keep it evolving, but also allow students to learn from the things that are working. And then this is actually how I got into podcasting is I said, okay, you know what? What I love about podcasting is you can go and reach out to people that you're curious to learn from, and then you get to share some of your takeaways on the back end. And so that's probably been my favorite investment that I've made in learning over the past few years is to say, all right, I'm gonna do this show on work life, and I'm gonna go into the workplaces that I think we can learn a lot from. And I get to do some learning and some teaching, and it feels like a really nice way to combine those values. So that, I think, checkup has been really valuable for me. I wanna get to the hypocrisy too.

But... Yeah, go for it.

Do you do this also, Louis? Do you have a formal checkup? 'Cause you have a growing number of opportunities. You have so many people who want your time and want to be inspired by you. You can't say yes to everything. how do you make sure that you're not straying from the things that are important to you?

I don't have a formal checkup. It's more of an intuitive checkup. Often every few months I'm thinking, okay, this is what my vision is. Am I on track for my vision or am I saying yes to too many things that are distracting me from the main vision? And our vision is to serve 100 million people a week with our content, our message, our products, our services. And so I know that there are certain things that I'm going to need to do to help with distribution and partnerships and relationships. that may not pay off now, but may pay off later. And there are some things that might be big revenue generators, but it's not serving the main mission of reaching audience. But could it help me build team that could do that? So it's like I have to pick and choose sometimes what I'm doing. And it can be, I can be easily distracted from all the amazing opportunities. And it's a great problem to have, you know, 10 years ago, you'd be dreaming of these problems, I guess, but when you're starting out, but for me, It's harder and harder to stay focused, but luckily I've got a good support team that's reminding me like, no, we shouldn't be doing this. We should be staying the course. So it's more of an intuitive feeling if I'm like, I just feel stretched. You know, stretched a little too much.

Yep.

But that's what I think about. So what about the hypocrisy side of things?

Well, that actually is right on point. So the thing that I preach that I don't practice nearly enough, And I'm hoping that now that I admit this out loud, you have to hold you accountable. I'm gonna need you to check in with me on this. I feel like I spend a lot of time encouraging people to not take on new things until they've been able to cross off old tasks. And I've gone so far as to forbid some people I care about from committing to anything new until they were able to subtract. This is basic math, right? If you're gonna add something to your plate and your plate is already full, you have to subtract something. And I do not follow that principle.

In the real world.

You don't do that yourself. No, I don't. But I want to.

So you add and add and add.

And you never subtract, or maybe it's a little subtraction. No, I think you're right. I think it's, I add and add.

And add, and the only time subtraction really happens is when I finish something. Okay, that's no longer there 'cause I.

Finished it, but I've got these 10 other things I've already added. Yes, and I'm not abandoning commitments along the way that no longer make sense or where I'm not adding value. And so I need to get better at that, and I definitely need somebody to hold me accountable on it.

What would happen in your life if you did that 80% better?

I would be less stressed is the clear first thing that would happen. And then the second thing that would happen is I just have more free time to think, which is something that I always feel like I'm fighting for. And I feel like there are some weeks where I win and there are other weeks where I lose. Yeah.

When you're always doing and creating and never giving that space and time to reflect and think, it's hard to organize ideas in a creative and new way, isn't that right?

Yeah, it is. And it's a bit of a tightrope walk, right? Because you can also fall off the other side of that.

You should be thinking all the time and never doing.

And you're not doing anything and you're not having surprising experiences and enriching your life in any way. Yeah, but I think I'm in danger of falling off the side where I don't make enough time to reflect.

This idea of identity is something that I've been fascinated about over the last year, year and a half. I've been doing research for a new book idea I have about eliminating self-doubt or overcoming self-doubt, I should say. I don't know if we'd ever not doubt ourselves at certain stages, especially when we're taking on new and more challenging things. There's probably always going to be a little of of doubt there, but how do we remove it so it doesn't hold us back from going after the things we want? And identity is something I've been fascinated with because we tie ourselves to so many types of identities. As I was doing an exercise, you know, it's like I have probably a thousand different things that I identify as with myself. I'm an athlete. I am in a relationship. I have these values. I are a part of these clubs. a CrossFitter. I do Marathon running. It's like all these things. I'm from. I'm from America. I'm from Ohio. I'm from this city. It, like, identifies these things. I went to this school. We have all these identities. How important is it for us to be open to adding or subtracting to our identities? And what does our identity do to us that holds us back? And how does it help move us forward? I'm asking a lot in one question here, but just kind of the idea of identities in general.

It's a meaty topic. I think, first of all, my read of the evidence in psychology is that there's a little bit of a resilience advantage to having more identities. Because, you know, let's say you get injured and you can't play handball, Louis. If you don't have any other identities, that is devastating.

You're depressed, because you're like, this was my life. This is all I know. This is who I am. And if your identity is gone, you have nothing, right? Nothing to fall on.

Exactly. And if you don't have all your eggs in one basket, then you can always fall back on some other things that you care about that are interesting and important to you. So I think there's value in having multiple identities there. There's also good evidence that multiple identities can actually help with creativity, because you often experience conflicts or contradictions or tensions between different identities. that kind of, it eats away at us. And so often we resolve that by coming up with new ideas for how to integrate them.

That's what David talks about in Range, which was like the idea of having multiple disciplines where you can actually benefit because you have identities. As an athlete, you play multiple sports, it's going to make you better at one sport. It was just his kind of theory.

I think it's pretty powerful to be open to both taking on new identities and shedding old ones. There's some work by Hermine Ibarra at London Business School who studies how we build our careers. And what she basically shows is that people who end up with fulfilling successful careers run lots of identity experiments where you start your career, you're pretty junior entry level, or you're kind of a fledgling entrepreneur. And so what you do is you look at role models, you observe them, and then you basically try on their identities and say, okay, could Could that be me? And some of those experiments are, they're just horrible ideas, right? And you come out of them saying, nope, that one is not for me. That may have worked for, you know, the partner at the top of our organization or, you know, the really gregarious CEO, but that's not my personality. And then other experiments, you say, all right, you know what? This doesn't feel quite me, but it was kind of an interesting challenge and it stretched my comfort zone a little bit and I want to keep trying it. and then they actually become part of your identity over time. And in order to do that, I think sometimes to your point about self-doubt, you have to lose some identities that were holding you back. I actually experienced this. So I guess I made a decision 10 years ago that I was gonna do, you might call it an intellectual public offering, to say, all right, I'm not just gonna write for other academics and teach in a university. I wanna share my ideas more broadly. And I knew that one of the things that I had to do if I wanted to be effective at that was to do more public speaking. But I did not have an identity as somebody who was comfortable on stage. I was anxious.

I had had- But you were lecturing though, right? You were lecturing students?

Yes, but a few things were really different about that from being a speaker. One is that I got to build relationships with the students. Two is I did a lot of experiential learning, so I'd send them off to negotiate or make decisions, and then we'd actually have a debate and discussion as opposed to, I have to give a lecture, right? So it felt like a real identity stretch for me, and I really doubted whether I could do it as somebody who, my early teaching feedback said that I reminded my students of a muppet because I was so nervous. And I just felt like I would-.

But you're also very young, weren't you like in your late 20s when you were a professor there or something?

Yeah, I don't know if that made it easier or harder. But it definitely was something I had no experience doing. And what I ended up doing, actually, was I watched a bunch of people who were also a little bit anxious and also more on the introverted side of the spectrum give captivating speeches.

Really?

And I saw that happen a few times. I saw Brian Little do it. I saw Susan Cain do it. I saw Malcolm Gladwell do it. And I thought, okay, maybe a little bit of that could be me. And that meant letting go of my identity as somebody who's too self-conscious to be on stage. It meant letting go of my sense of self as somebody who's much more comfortable in a conversation like this than giving a performance in front of a crowd. And ultimately, I'm really glad I did.

How did you learn to let go of that identity and build the confidence to bring in a new identity?

So I had a mentor, Jane Dutton, who, right when I was starting to interview for professor jobs, and I had to do little mini speeches for, they were actually more like teaching a mini class for other professors. which is not that fun.

It's intimidating.

Yeah, it is. And they're there both to, you know, to really tear your research apart, but then also to evaluate whether they think you can teach.

This episode is brought to you by Square. Your favorite neighborhood spots run on Square. And did you know Square can help you turn your small business idea into a big success? Yes, even that wild idea for Squirrel Fuel, your squirrel-themed coffee bar. Square is so much more than just a point of sale for local businesses. What started as a little white card reader is now powering things behind the scenes, helping you manage finances, schedule staff, and cover cash flow gaps. With Square, you could keep things at squirrel fuel, running like clockwork, no caffeine needed, well, except for your baristas, and good luck finding ones willing to wear a squirrel costume. Square gets it. Local businesses can be big business. Yet with growth comes complexity. But whether you're expanding to new locations or building your loyal following, Square meets you at every opportunity. Square helps you handle today and dream bigger for tomorrow. Go to square.com/go/greatness to learn more. That's S-Q-U-A-R-E.com slash G-O slash G-R-E-A-T-N-E-S-S Square meet you there.

Top Reasons yous Dog Wants you to Move to Ohio. Amazing dog parks to stretch your legs. All four of them. Dog-friendly patios, even gourmet hot dogs loaded with the good stuff. Bon appétit. And Ohio has so many high-paying jobs, you'll be top dog in no time. Jobs in technology, engineering, science, advanced manufacturing, and more.

The career you want and a life you'll love.

Have it all in the heart of it all. Go to callOhioHome.com. I don't know what I'm trying to accomplish here, but Jane said something really powerful to me when I was preparing and giving just horrible practice talks. She said, you need to unleash your inner magician. And back when I was 12, I had started doing magic as a hobby, which is easily one of the nerdiest things I've ever done. But one of the things I had to do as a magician was I had to learn to master the element of surprise and to set the audience's expectations up to believe one thing, and then there's a reveal or a twist. And she said, there's no reason why you can't do the same thing and treat your speaking as the same kind of performance where you lead the audience in one direction and then misdirection. They're all of a sudden either shocked and hopefully delighted to land where you've taken them. And that was the beginning of me thinking, okay, this is one of my favorite things about doing magic tricks. And what I love most about psychology is how often it's counterintuitive. So let's try to bring more of that into my my repertoire.

How often should we be thinking about our identity and how it's supporting our goals or our happiness? Should we be addressing this more? Should we be thinking of ways to add new identities consistently? Should we be happy with our identity with where it's at and just say, this is who I am for the rest of my life. Don't try to change me. What do you think is something we can think about there? I think the thing I worry most.

About there, Louis, is what psychologists call identity foreclosure. It's where you get excited about who you are or an image of who you want to be, and you lock in and you end up with a lot of tunnel vision.

Wow.

We see this happen all the time, right? I have generally found that the students who are most certain about what they want to do with their lives at 20 have the most existential uncertainty at 30, because they never really explored any alternatives. And they said, Look, you know what? I'm going to go to law school, or I'm going to become an investment banker, or I'm going to be a management consultant. and two, three years later, they realize, this is not for me, but without this, who am I? And where does my sense of status and contribution come from? I'm not sure. So I think that to avoid identity foreclosure, we need to be open to these kinds of experiments that we've been talking about. And it's something I've talked a lot with entrepreneurs about. One of the things I was most curious about when I started meeting entrepreneurs who had accomplished impressive things was, how in the world did you believe that you could build great business from nothing. I just can't fathom that.

From an idea.

I mean, yeah, you have the idea, you know it's good, but how did you believe that you could pull this off when there are tons of other smart, motivated people with good ideas? And I remember asking Sarah Blakely about how she got the confidence to do Spanx, and then Reid Hoffman, how did you know you were ready to start LinkedIn? And they both had the same answer for me. They both said, I didn't know I was going to succeed at this. In Sarah's case, I've never run a business before. I don't know anything about fashion or retail. In Reid's case, I know a little bit about the tech world, but online social networks, I mean, who knows?

And he's the most introverted person in the world.

Who knows if this is going to be a thing? And Friendster's the competition at the time, right? That seemed big. Neither of them really felt like they had self-confidence in their abilities today. They both said in the moment, what they had was confidence in their abilities to learn tomorrow.

And I think this is one of.

The best identities that we can take on. If you say, look, what am I? Who am I? I'm a learner, then I can have a ton of self-doubt right now. It doesn't matter because I believe I have the energy and the tools and the curiosity to go and pick up the knowledge and skills that I need. And Louis, this is one of my favorite things about the School of Greatness, right? Is you are a learner, but you're.

Also inviting other people to take on this identity with you. Yeah, absolutely. I'm just a firm believer that, you know, when I finished school, that's when my education started. That's when the real life education started, and I've always been curious. I never felt like school was the structure for me to learn that well. I learned some things, and I learned about relationships and how to try to memorize things, but it wasn't the type of learning that was inspiring to me. And that's why I created School of Greatness, because I was like, I want to be learning it from the greatest Minds about how to be better, how to make a bigger impact, how to be more fulfilled, more peace, all those things contribute more. And I'm curious about imposter syndrome, because I think sometimes we have an identity, and I think imposter syndrome is tied into identity in some ways. And a lot of people talk about that they struggle with imposter syndrome. But I believe you argued that it's actually an advantage. Can you explain more about imposter syndrome and how that can be an advantage?

I think it can be an advantage if you use it the right way. So we had a doctoral student at Wharton. Her name is Basima Tufekci. She's now an MIT professor. And she was interested in the fact that when we talk about feeling like an imposter, why do we have to turn that into a syndrome? I mean, yes, we all we all know some people, right, who have this chronic sense that I am unworthy, I'm incapable, somebody's going to find out that I'm a fraud and I've never deserved anything I've achieved in my life. But that is much more rare than the everyday sense of doubt that we all feel. Can I do this? Is this book going to be any good? Are people really going to want to listen to this podcast? Is, you know, is anyone going to watch this TED Talk that I'm about to get? And those doubts are not necessarily a syndrome, right? They're part of being human and taking on challenging goals. They're part of being ambitious, of really wanting to push yourself. And so Basima said, what if we study it that way? What if we just study how often people have those doubts about, can I do it? And then look at what that means for their performance. And she went on to study medical students who are learning to be doctors. She studied investment professionals. and she looked at their decision making as well as their interpersonal performance, and she found no evidence that people who feel like imposters more often are any worse at their jobs or their tasks. And in some cases, they're better. Investment professionals who felt like imposters more often actually performed better because instead of, you know, having supreme confidence in their judgments, they actually second-guessed themselves and they learned from other people, and that allowed them to evolve over time. When medical students were seeing a patient and they addressed what they thought were the major concerns, the ones who had those imposter thoughts were more likely to say, you know, Louis, let me just check in. How is this going so far? Is there anything else I can do to help you out today? And as a result, they were able to be more compassionate and more caring, which of course is part of the job. And I've started to think about not imposter syndrome, right, but imposter thoughts. as an advantage because they keep you humble. They keep you from falling victim to overconfidence, and they allow you to say, okay, maybe I've got to try harder because I haven't yet mastered all the skills that I need. Maybe I have to learn from other people because I don't know all the answers. And I think feeling like an imposter can be a source of fuel. What do you think?

I think so, too. And I'm curious, I mean, you've been around and interviewed and studied a lot of the great leaders and minds as well. Is it better to have imposter thoughts and be semi-confident but also have some imposter thoughts and be learning and developing and have this humility? Or do you think it's more effective to be confident in yourself because you've known you've done the work and live in a state of confidence but also a, hey, I'm open-minded to learn and grow as well but not having as many imposter thoughts? Which one do you think is more effective?

That's a great question. I would love to see the data on that. My hunch is it probably depends a little on your personality. I think if you're an optimist, the confidence is gonna be what fuels you. I think if you're more of a pessimist, my read of some of the related evidence, this is Julie Norem on defensive pessimism, is that it can actually be helpful to imagine the worst case scenario and that- Defensive pessimism. Yeah, defensive pessimism. This is the, when you were in actual school, you got a big test coming up. What do you do a week beforehand? The optimists are imagining, It's gonna go perfectly. I'm gonna ace it. I'm gonna celebrate afterward. The defensive pessimists are waking up at 2 a.m. having this nightmare that not only did they fail the test, they lost points on all their previous tests cuz they did so badly and there's no way they could have earned them in the first place, right?

Right.

And if that's you, anxiety is actually a source of motivation for you. And it can be helpful to say, maybe I'm not good enough because that's.

What then kicks you into gear. To learn, I gotta go focused. I need to work hard. I need to to, you know, to study more so that I'm not going to fail this test.

Exactly. And if you look at the performance of optimists and defensive pessimists, they're equally successful.

Really?

As long as as long as you don't make the defensive pessimists too happy in advance, because then they get complacent.

So yeah, so you either need to be unhappy and defensive pessimists and you'll have great results or you need to be a happy, optimistic, confident human being that also works hard. and you'll get great results and hopefully be less stressed is what I'm hearing.

I think so. I think so.

They both get great results. Yeah, exactly.

One just seems to have a more fulfilling life. I mean, if I had to choose, I would prefer to be the optimist. But I'll tell you what, Louis, if I'm running a big organization, I probably want a few defensive pessimists to worry.

About what's coming around the corner. Absolutely. And I took your personality assessment that you were, I don't know if you were the one developing yourself, but I think there was two or three or four of you working on this with Ray Dalio. I believe you were working on that, correct?

Yes. Yeah, I worked on that with Ray and Brian Little and John Golden.

Yeah, I took that and it went through it and I was, you know, fascinated with the process of asking the questions. And so I thought it was really, it was really powerful. I'm trying to remember what my actual thing was. I think influencer or inspirer, I can't remember what the word was. I've taken some of these tests that, but somewhere around there. So it's interesting and how it's important to have like these different personalities in your organization to make sure that not everyone's just like, oh, it's all gonna be workout Perfectly, everything's going to be fine. You know, we need different personalities in teams, kind of going back to David's range theory about having a range of personalities within teams in small groups and not just everyone thinking the same way, right?

Yeah, I think it's sad how many organizations I've watched fall into a pattern of groupthink. And it usually starts from a really well-intentioned place, which is, you're a startup and you want to have a strong culture and you say, all right, culture fit's gonna be really important to us. We're gonna hire people who share our values and who are similar to what we all stand for. And then pretty soon, you're only bringing in and promoting and retaining people who are all alike. And that actually, it seems to work out okay for startups because you're usually founded on a pretty bold disruptive idea. And what you need is the motivation and the passion to see it through. But then if you study these startups after they have their IPOs, you find that the ones that are all about culture fit, they actually grow at slower rates if you track their market capitalization, for example.

Really?

And that's often because they've weeded out diversity of background and diversity of thought. And I'm not saying that you don't want fit on some important dimensions of your culture, right? What you want to do is you do want to identify probably my rate of the data is three to five core values. that really matter in your organization. And if people are not willing to live by them, it's gonna be hard to get on the same page.

So you want three of the five people to live by, yeah. Yeah, and once you've gone through those.

Core principles, after that, you don't want culture fit, you want what IDO would call culture contribution. To say, okay, if I'm gonna hire someone or promote them, I don't wanna know whether they're gonna clone everything else that exists in our culture. I wanna know, are they gonna enrich our culture by bringing something that's absent, I worked on a project at Google for a bunch of years, and one of the interesting moments was Larry Page was coming back in as CEO after a bunch of years out, having founded the company, and then let Eric Schmidt run it, and now Larry's going to come back in with the founder sort of taking the reins back. And I asked Larry what his biggest fear was, and he said that his biggest fear was that Google would become a cultural museum, that people would freeze the artifacts of the past. and basically glorify the good old days when there were only 14 people here and everyone was a senior vice president. And Larry said, as the world changes, I want our culture to evolve with it. And that is exactly the kind of thinking again that I want to see leaders do, is to say, okay, you know what? We've got some values that we believe are extremely important, but everything else we want to be very flexible on.

How can leaders or people building teams and culture think differently then about how to hire, about how to improve culture, whether they're a startup of five to 10 people or 50 to 5,000.

So I think one of the places I would start is to say, one of my favorite ways to think about strengths is your strengths overused are often your weaknesses. So if you were to make a list of the things that you really excel at as a person or as an organization, Push those to their extreme, and what does that mean you're bad at? So a standard example would be an organization that is extraordinary at efficiency. Maybe not a learning organization, right? Maybe so focused on-- yeah, exactly. Maybe they're so focused on performance, on short-term results, that they're not curious, that they're not trying new things, that they're not innovating. And I think that's a test we should all run personally, as well as professionally, right? To say, okay, what are the strengths that if I use them in the wrong situations or if I overuse them, that actually turn into weaknesses? And then I need to surround myself with people who are strong in those areas. Who are strong in the weakness areas.

So more creative people or more innovative thought people, less efficient people. Yeah, if you're gonna do that from.

A selection standpoint and from a culture perspective, right? You need some routines and practices to say, okay, we need some days where people, you know, it might be something as simple to start as saying, let's run an innovation tournament. or a hackathon, where we're going to collect ideas across the company. We're going to focus completely on this for a day. Maybe we'll then expand it to a couple of weeks, and we're going to give everybody a chance to participate in that creative process. And we'll discover a few things from that. One is there are some people who really enjoy it. Two is there are some people who are really good at it, and they may not be in the first group, but we want to hear from them. And three, we need to make this a regular part of our culture, not.

Just a one-off activity that we do. That's cool. What would you say is your biggest weakness?

Mine?

Based on your strengths, becoming part of the weakness.

I'm going to try to do this in a way that gets around the Michael Scott, I have weaknesses, I work too hard, and I care too much. A real weakness. I think one of my biggest weaknesses, I don't know if this is the biggest one or not, but I've, I've asked the people who work closely with me to tell me where I fall short most consistently. And one of the things I hear most often is, I guess the way this has been explained to me is when I have a strong view about why a project should be done a certain way, I am terrible at explaining why I think it's good. And as a result, I end up kind of, this is back to the logic bully idea, I end up going in this sort of bull in a china shop direction. of trying to force my view on everyone else, them getting frustrated by it because I don't seem open and openness is one of the principles that I want to stand for. And also the other thing that then happens is they feel like I have strong opinions without good reasons as opposed to being able to explain, no, this is why I wanted to go this route. And I think the bigger weakness that stands behind this is, Sometimes I just am too interested in being productive and I want to move forward because I feel like I've already figured out how to solve this problem and I don't want to waste the time to explain it. The reality is it's not a waste of time. This is actually one, how you get other people's buy-in and commitment, but two, also how I find out whether I'm wrong and I might want to rethink what I'm committed to here. And so I'm trying to move the idea of being efficient and productive a little bit more under the back burner when I'm working on things that are important.

And how do you think we can learn to embrace being wrong instead of getting defensive?

So I think the person who's taught me the most about this is Danny Kahneman, who won a Nobel Prize in economics, even though he's a psychologist, for his work on judgment and decision making. And I ran into Danny at a conference a couple of years ago, and I just given a talk about my work on givers and takers and matchers. and he stopped me and he said, that was wonderful. I was wrong. And those two things don't normally go hand in hand, right? Either it was wonderful because I was right, or I was wrong and this is terrible and I'm defensive about it.

Or let me defend my point on why I'm right and you're wrong.

Exactly. And so Danny, it was just, one, I was thrilled that he was intrigued by something that I had said, but more importantly, Two, I wanted to know how those two things went together. How he could experience what looked to me like the joy of being wrong. His eyes lit up, he was smiling. It almost seemed fun.

Wow, okay. How did he do it? Yeah.

Yeah, how did he do it exactly? So I followed up with him and he said, the key for me is recognizing that I don't ever like being wrong, but I benefit a lot from having been wrong. and finding that out. Because if I know I was wrong, I am now less wrong than I was before. And so he takes that as a sign of learning or a mark that he's discovered something new. And I have to tell you, it's really basic, but I've found that to be such a helpful way of framing this. Every time I find out I might be wrong about something, my new practice is to say, okay, is this a sign that I've learned something? And if so, it's a little bit less likely to make me defensive and angry and much more likely, I hope, to experience, to bring in that experience of curiosity and joy and excitement of saying, this is a thrill because I just discovered something new. And at some level, that's something I've always felt. It's what I've loved about psychology from day one, is I would read these experiments where I expected one thing to happen, and then all of a sudden the opposite or something completely different happens. And that was joyful, but it was because I didn't have a stake in my preexisting opinion. But when it's about you, then, It's a whole another story, right? So Danny's view is that ideas should not become part of our identity, that our attachments should be provisional, and that we should say, you know what? Whatever I believed in the past, if my present self doesn't believe those things anymore, I could treat that as a sign of growth.

So not to be attached to our identities or our beliefs, or what was this specifically?

Yeah, his idea was to treat your your opinions as provisional.

Like, whatever you think is not attachments.

Yeah, whatever you think is true. That's a hunch. It's a hypothesis. You could test it.

I'm gonna loosely hold on to this for as long as it supports me until I find another example that might support me in a better way.

Yeah, and maybe even then go and instead of falling into confirmation bias and just finding information that validates what you already believe to be true, you get curious enough. to wonder, well, who might see this topic or problem a different way?

Going back a little bit, we were talking about wanting to influence people and persuade people into our beliefs and our thoughts and our way of thinking as right. I believe you mentioned this as well that we're always trying to get by. Top Reasons yous Career Wants yous to Move to Ohio.

So many amazing growth opportunities, high paying jobs in technology, advanced Manufacturing, Engineering, Life Sciences, and more. You'll soar to new heights, just like the Wright Brothers, John Glenn, even Neil Armstrong. Their careers all took off in Ohio.

And yours can too.

A job that can take you further and a place you can't wait to come home to. Have it all in the heart of it all. Launch your search at callOhioHome.com.

Hey, everybody. Ted Danson here to tell you about my podcast with my longtime friend, and sometimes co-host Woody Harrelson. It's called Where Everybody Knows yous Name.

And we're back for another season.

I'm so excited to be joined this season by friends like John Mulaney, David Spade, Sarah Silverman, Ed Helms, and many more. You don't want to miss it. Listen to Where Everybody Knows yous Name with me, Ted Danson, and Woody Harrelson. Sometimes, wherever you get your podcasts. I am. What's the best way to enroll people into our thoughts and our beliefs and our values? or our vision or our mission, whether it's a company or to date me or whatever it might be, let's go on this trip together. What do you think is the best way to enroll people, even if our values and truths and beliefs are wrong or they're not the right thing? But what's just a strategy you've learned in enrollment process without making people wrong, but also getting them excited?

The approach that comes to mind right away is what counseling psychologists have called motivational interviewing. It comes out of actually addiction counseling, where you're trying to get people to quit problematic drinking or smoking, and you discover very quickly that preaching doesn't work and prosecuting is even worse. And these two psychologists, Bill Miller and Steve Rolnick, came up with this idea that, what if we just interviewed the person? What if we came in much more like a scientist saying, You know what? I don't know the person I'm trying to motivate or enroll, and I don't know what's gonna motivate them to change, and it's not my place to tell them to change. So what if I come in with a stance of humility and curiosity, and I say, you, know what? My job is to try to help you find your own motivation to change. It's a subtle shift, but it's a meaningful one, because now I'm not here to twist your arm.

Right?

I'm not here to sign you up. I'm here to help you clarify your own thinking. And so my job then is to ask you open ended questions, to reflect back what I'm hearing, to help you see that whatever the change is, you might be ambivalent. You might have reasons to stick with the status quo. You also might have reasons that you're kind of curious about this new direction. And I just wanna ask you enough questions that you recognize that you might have some reasons for change, as well as some reasons to be hesitant about it. And then if you're interested in it, I'm trying to help you achieve that goal, I'll then follow up and ask you, okay, how might you do that? And I found myself doing this more and more as I've gone deeper into motivational interviewing. And my favorite thing about it is it just, it takes away the tug of war element.

That dynamic. You're not convincing someone or telling them you're wrong. why are you doing this? What does this look like for you? Or how would this feel?

Yeah, exactly. And some of the most useful questions are, you know, just when you've thought about, you know, you could pick the domain. Let me ask you a question, actually, so we can illustrate this concretely, Louis.

Sure.

What are you trying to motivate people to change around right now? I know self-doubt is a big theme. What else is on your radar?

Healing the the trauma of your past, the hurts of your past, the resentments, the angers, the frustrations. Because when I started to, I was holding on to a past identity for so long until seven years ago when I started opening up about my story of sexual abuse. And when I actually started to heal the past and heal the emotions of the past and not hold on to that identity, I felt peace for the first time in my life. And I've been able to sleep at night. peacefully, quickly, and it's, I feel happier, I feel more joyed. I don't feel as triggered, and I don't get as defensive. I think you're, it's not always going to be a process of learning and growing. But when someone, when I feel under attack or when I feel someone's trying to abuse me verbally, emotionally, take advantage of me, that type of abuse is a trigger based on childhood experiences, and so I always would just say, well, this is who I am. Don't try to change me. I just get defensive. But then I realized that doesn't support me. It doesn't support the people who are surrounded by me in those moments. It doesn't support my vision because I'm holding on to a frustration or wanting to get back at something. And it's a waste of energy. It gives me a reward of a feeling of entitlement, of a fairness or whatever it might be giving me. There's a reward and a payoff, obviously, for everything everything we do, but there are bigger consequences and those consequences were holding me back from peace, love, connection, intimacy, vulnerability, all those things. So that's something I see it a lot with my, with people that'll email me or message me that they're holding on to a lot of resentment or anger or some type of thing from the past. And so I'm trying to get people to overcome doubting themselves and healing the emotions that are holding them back. from believing in their future.

Wow, that's powerful. Okay, we can do a lot with that. So first of all, I'm sorry that you went through that. And I think it took extraordinary courage for you to open up about that, right? I think...

Thank you, yeah.

And so having gone through that, right, the prosecutor's instinct would be to tell these people, look, here are all the bad things that will happen. You know, don't go down this path that I did. I want to save you from that wrong.

Right?

I think you're much more drawn to the preaching approach because you're so positive. And so my guess would be, you know, when you get an email like that, your first impulse is to say, let me tell you about all the great things that have happened since I let go of some of these past hauntings. And by the way, I don't think there's anything wrong with doing that if the person has bought into wanting to be inspired by you, and they probably have if they're reaching out to you.

If they're asking for help, like, can you help me with this?

What can I do or whatever?

Yeah. Yeah.

So if they've come to you, right? And that's what they're signing up for. bring it on. I think that what you were raising when you asked the question is sometimes you get resistance and maybe some of the people you even care most about who are less likely to put you up on a pedestal.

Sure.

Which by the way, drives me crazy that sometimes the people I know best are the ones who are least likely to listen to me.

I know. Well, they knew you when you were six and, you know, and they know better, right?

You've steered them in the wrong direction before.

Yeah.

So I think when you run into that, what a motivational interviewer would advise you to do is to say, Look, I'm not here to tell you what the right decision is for you. I don't know what's best for you. I could tell you a little bit about what's worked for me, but I'm much more interested in what's worked for you in the past. So have you ever had other traumas in your past? Did you suppress those? Did you actually try to confront them? How did that go for you? What was that like? And now when we talk about the particular issue that you want to let go of, let's say there's a person who's wronged you and you're not sure whether you should forgive them or not, as one of the examples that you brought up. Tell me about, you know, about where you stand on this. What do you think are the possible upsides of going the forgiveness route? What are the downsides? And then I'm just gonna hold up a mirror and help you see your own thoughts more clearly.

Have you, I love that, the motivational interviewing style of persuasion as a, you.

Were born for it.

Yeah, I mean, I feel like that's, I feel like that's what I do. But I'm sure I can be preachy or prosecutory at times as well with certain people. So it's learning how to let go of that and be more motivationally interviewing style. I'm curious, has there been, an instance in your life where with someone, a close tie or a loose tie, that you tried the preacher-prosecutor approach for many, many times or years and nothing would ever change. But then you actually shifted and did the motivational interviewing style and actually that person recognized their own reflection and started changing. Have you experienced that personally?

Yeah, I've had it happen a few times. The example that comes to mind right away is I had a friend who was on again, off again with her significant other, and she was trying to decide after they broke up, should I give him another chance or not? And I had, this has gone on for years, and I- and you were.

Like, I've told you not to do this, I've told you to, yeah.

Yeah, exactly. And I happen to be a big fan of the relationship, and I was friends with both of them independently, and so, you know, I'd preached his virtues, I had prosecuted the vices of, you know, it's actually not you, it's not him, it's both of you together. Like there's a bad pattern that's evolved in the way that you interact, and if you could change that rhythm, I think you would be really happy together. And eventually I decided, you know what, I think that they might end up getting married. but the timing hasn't been right yet. And they're not at a stage in their life where they're quite ready to make that commitment. And so they feel the connection, but they also are afraid of getting too deep into it. And so I think eventually I gave up on trying to persuade them. And it was exhausting. You're like, okay, no matter what I.

Say, they just keep going in the same pattern.

Same conversation over and over again. And then I'd been doing all this research on motivational interviewing, and I thought, okay, I'm gonna, I'm just, this is a great learning opportunity for me to practice these skills. So my friend calls, she says, I don't know what to do. And I just start asking her questions and say, well, tell me what you missed about the relationship. Tell me about what you're glad is gone from your life because of that relationship. And every once in a while, I kind of summarize what I've heard and ask her a few more questions. And she ends up persuading herself that all the things things that she didn't like about the relationship were sort of idiosyncratic to the time that they had connected. And so they ended up getting back together and they're still together. And there was none of that tension, right? I didn't have to feel like I was trying to fight for anything.

You know, it's interesting, just as you said that at the end, I realized you're not right or wrong in that process of preaching and prosecuting you're not the one because you don't have to convince someone that you're right or they're wrong. And you're not right or wrong whether they agree with you or don't agree with you because you're not convincing.

Exactly.

And so it's not a I need someone to buy into my belief otherwise I'm writing them off as someone who doesn't think the way I am. It's not that way. It's just, okay, let me ask you some questions and see if this belief works for you, this way of thinking works for you, and then you can go and make your own decision.

That's exactly the orientation, and it's really liberating because you don't come out of that conversation feeling like you failed if it didn't go the way you wanted, because there isn't a way for it to go. You're there to help.

And you don't have to be a logic bully anymore.

No, no, because even if I think, I mean, I hope that all the times I've gone into logic bully mode, I'm doing it because I think I have the other person's best interests at heart.

Of course, yeah.

But I don't know what their best interests are. And so- Exactly. I can't tell them where to go. I can have a tentative opinion, right? I can think, you know, if you're in an abusive relationship, I think you would probably be better off getting out of it. But it's not my place to tell you that this is the time to do it, or this is the way to do it. or that you might not end up in a more abusive relationship with the next person. So I think there's, yeah, just letting go of a goal that you're trying to accomplish in the conversation means you don't ever feel manipulative and you're also not even just trying to persuade you, right? You're there to support, to help, to guide.

But when we are in a, we do have a vision of influencing someone to buy into something that we have. Let's say, You know, that's in one example, but say, you know, we're trying to get people to buy into something though, where we have a team, we have a company, we have a new idea, we have a book, we're trying to get people to buy, whether it's with our voting, dollars, whatever. What is the approach to get buy-in, to get enrollment on an idea that you need people to support you in? Otherwise, the idea failed. The business doesn't succeed. No one buys your book. What is that process, enrollment, strategy, conversation look like?

I think if it's a conversation, I think there's still a little bit of interviewing that comes into play. And let's be clear, we are now leaving the land of motivational interviewing because I have a goal if you're asking me to do this, and it may or may not be your goal. So I guess the best way to influence you to open your mind to what I think is going to be beneficial for both of us, is to try to persuade you on your terms. So what I might do there for starters is to say, you know what? Instead of giving you my whole pitch for why I think you should read Think Again and preach at you about it, what I would do is I would say, you know, Louis, I've had really interesting experiences over the past few years where I have really regretted not rethinking some convictions that I held. And I've also had some fustrating experiences of really struggling to get other people to open their minds in situations where they turned out to regret being so close too. And so I wrote this book to try to really explain the science of rethinking our own opinions and helping other people do that too, and building cultures where people are so excited to learn that they're willing to reconsider things they took for granted. What's your reaction to that? Do you think that's interesting? Where does that apply in your life? And from what you just heard, what should I rethink? Maybe I've made some false assumptions and I should be questioning some of what I've written because, you know, yes, I had to turn in the book at some point, but I want to keep learning. And so let's start the conversation about, you know, what do you think about when I bring up this idea?

What specifically with that?

So tell me, we've talked about a bunch of different themes.

Yep.

We've also known each other for a while. What's something that I've voiced that you think I should rethink?

I think you're a very strategic thinker that is always looking at both sides to say, what's the best solution? So I'm trying to find a- Find a hole. -something.

Yeah. Well, I'm always open if you come up with one, but I appreciate the compliment and I'll try to earn it. I think another version of this question that I would love to hear your reaction to is, when you think about your own experiences with embracing versus resisting rethinking, what is it that tilts you in one direction or the other?

I would say that I'm, I would say that I'm very open to embracing new levels of thinking because it's what I do all the time. I'm always asking questions, but I also probably have some type of, like, bias on what I feel has worked the best for me. on certain beliefs that I feel are true to me. And I might be looking to persuade people to speak into that specific belief that I have, like ask the question that will benefit my belief as well. So it's probably trying to get people personally to not try to defend my belief, but actually even be more open minded to asking questions that don't believe in or not curious about or something like that. I'm not, I'm not sure exactly, but that's what I would think. Okay.

I love that. So there's, you know, it's just because.

Of, like, an unconscious bias of, like, oh, this has worked for me. So, of course, I want to get someone to defend this idea or speak.

More into this idea. Yep. So you want to balance things out a little bit?

Yeah.

Yeah.

But I feel like, I feel like I'm doing that, too, because I'm always, you know, I'm pushing my team. I'm like, we need to have people that are controversial on my show as well. It can't just be every person who thinks the same way as everyone else on here. Like, we should also have some people who are completely opposite. But, you know, sometimes they're like, well, we can never share those types of ideas sometimes. And I'm like, well, let's just be open-minded so it's. It's also trying to balance that and, you know, make sure that I'm not hurting my audience with. a level of thought that might be aggressive or frustrating or something and protecting the audience, but also, hey, let's have an open mind and just try the idea on.

It sounds like you feel a tension sometimes between openness and truth.

Yes. Yes. And sometimes, well, because I'll put something out there that someone will share at times, and then there might be sometimes this backlash How dare you put this idea out into the world? How dare you put this person out into the world? How I'm offended, I've been following you for years, I'm unfollowing you now, type of reaction, which to me shows that it's gone up against their beliefs, it's gone up against their identity and making them wrong or making them, their idea is not true or not real anymore. And so I understand it. I understand like, Hey, if you've been confronted with an idea that drastically goes against your entire life's beliefs, you're probably going to be mad at the person who put the idea out there.

Yeah.

And I, yeah, but I, so I feel a responsibility to, yeah, again, share truth, but also let's just explore ideas and not just be stuck in something. Sure, let's keep this our core and our center, but let's also rethink or at least explore the ability to think and say, oh, that doesn't work for me. Okay, I'm gonna stay with this true core value. So how would you approach that if you were me?

I mean, first of all, I think you want those values to be intention, right? Because if there's no openness, then at some point you are going to leave the truth behind, right? Because what's true evolves as the world evolves. And so if you freeze your beliefs in the past, I mean, just imagine for a second, Louis, if we still held the beliefs that people clung to in the 1700s about what effective medicine is, for example, it would be a very dangerous world to live in, right? And at some point as knowledge evolved, we needed to evolve with it. Yeah. So I think the openness in the long run actually gets you closer to the truth. But if you're too open, then you might actually compromise the best information or the highest quality evidence. so I think you're doing the right thing to encourage people to have a core set of principles and ideas that you stand for, but take some risks around the margins of that. And when you do that, to be clear that you're doing it because you're invested in keeping people's minds open to discovering new things, which is, again, one of the things that you're all about, is somebody who's a lifelong learner.

Yeah. So it's setting the context before the information comes out of- I think so. You know, this is- yeah.

And I think, and being clear then that that's one of your principles, right? That you believe in curiosity. And sometimes that means you're so curious that you explore things that turn out to be really bad ideas.

Yeah, exactly.

Oops.

It happens for sure. So yeah, so that's something I would think about, yeah.

Yeah, and I think, I mean, there's a, right, there's a whole framing of that. to your audience so that they're on the same page with you about that. And you're not gonna, not everyone is going to agree with it. But then the people you lose from your community are the people who are maybe not willing to do the level of rethinking that you believe in.

Right.

And then I guess the other thing I would say on this, Louis, is, so you asked me this in the context of, you know, how do I enroll people? How do I get people excited about a book? Well, honestly, I'm not here to sell you my book. Right. I wrote, I took two years to write Think Again because I believe it's an important set of ideas. But I don't think I'm right about everything I wrote. And this, you know, this set of.

Ideas... What do you think you're wrong about?

I think I understated probably the value of preaching in particular and a little bit of prosecuting.

If you have... You understated the value of preaching?

Yeah. If you have an audience or a tribe that's already receptive, I think, yeah, I was so interested in getting people out of that mode that I might have overcorrected a little bit.

So getting them out of preach mode. But if someone's coming to you and saying, Hey, what should I do? I realize this is not working for me. Give me the solution or support me, then, hey, you know what? This is what worked for me. I highly recommend this is a path that you take. Do this. Here are the steps.

Yeah, and let me know how it goes. And I might update what I say to the next person in your shoes, right? Right.

That's interesting.

I think that if you're interested in this topic, which you clearly are as somebody who does a lot of thinking again, one of the dangers for me in writing this book was, I don't want you to agree with all my conclusions. I want my thought process and I want my evidence to get you thinking. And wherever you land, that's up to you. And so you tell me, is this a book you want to read? I'll let you be the judge, right?

Yeah, for sure. Wow, that's powerful. What would you have added in the book that you didn't get to add after the fact? You're like, oh, this would have been actually amazing.

This is my favorite and least favorite part of a book launch. I felt like, okay, I covered everything. Yeah, exactly. It's done. And then, of course, I get to interact with all kinds of people like you who have new questions. Oh, I missed a chapter.

Yeah.

I think that one of the questions I left hanging because I still don't know how to answer it goes to what you were just raising, which is how do we know when it's the right time to rethink something versus, you know what? No, we're in a good place right now.

Yeah, I think it's hard. You kind of addressed it with these six-month check-ins.

I think that's kind of my workaround, right? To say, let's have a practice so that you do it you know, you're not doing it so often that you're in this mode of analysis paralysis, but you also don't turn a blind eye to the idea of rethinking. But, you know, what's the optimal range? I don't know. I really wanted to write a chapter on it. I couldn't find enough helpful guidance to really do it. And so the place that I left that hanging basically was there's research on super forecasters who are unusually good at predicting future world events. which shows that the single-- you- mean the Simpsons?

Exactly, yes, the Simpsons.

Ever seen those videos of like the.

Simpsons predicting things 10 years before? Yeah, everything. It's crazy, right?

It's amazing. And then you wonder, was that prediction or was that causation? I don't know.

A lot of people want to put it's like putting it out into the world is actually manifesting it or something.

A seed was planted. Who knows? Maybe it was that could that have been the first time Donald Trump thought about seriously running for president? I don't know. I bet he saw it. But to your point, it's crazy. I mean, it is crazy. And I think one of the things we see when we study super forecasters is it's helpful to be smart, it's helpful to be gritty, but more than either your work ethic or your intelligence, what really matters for how accurate you are in predicting what's going to happen in the next six months or a year. is how frequently you change your mind. So you can study these forecasters predicting, okay, is the euro going to go up or down, or who's going to win the next World Cup? And what you see is that the best forecasters update their predictions about twice as often as everybody else. So the average person will only make one or two updates. The super forecasters will make four updates in a typical tournament. I found that really reassuring, actually, to.

Say, look, you don't have to rethink-- what do you mean by that?

They're making these updates in a tournament. So what I mean is, when Phil Tetlock and his colleagues run these tournaments, what they do is you could actually go and participate in one. It's called the Good Judgment Project. They run both closed and open tournaments. And if you go onto the Good Judgment Project website, you'll see they might have a tournament right now to, let's say, to predict whether somebody is going to be sued for an accident caused by a self-driving car. in a major city in the next six months.

Got it.

And so you register your prediction today, and then you can update as many times as you want. So you have to say yes or no, and then you have to give a confidence interval around it. So, am I really sure of my prediction or am I highly uncertain about it? And then you get scored on not only your accuracy, but also whether you were calibrated. So you had a narrow confidence interval when you were right, and a wide confidence interval when you were wrong. And when the superforecasters do that, what I found so encouraging is they're not making 943 predictions on the same question, right? They're just changing their mind four times instead of two. And so it seems like there's a sweet spot there of saying, okay, I want to rethink a few times, but I don't have to do it constantly.

So in this, it's a six month tournament or whatever this example is, they'll rethink it every month and a half, and they'll update their prediction in a meaningful way. the closer it gets based on data, based on whatever they're seeing in the news or something.

Yeah. One of the people that I learned the most from and think again was a super forecaster named Jean-Pierre Bégam, who has... I think the data suggests he's the world's best election forecaster. So he predicted the Trump Republican nomination in November 2015 when Nate Silver had him at 6%.

Wow.

And Jean, how did he do all this? I mean, what he did was he, well, he did a few things. Number one, he looked at the data in a really different way than most people. So instead of just writing, you know, a celebrity entrepreneur sort of TV host off as a joke, he looked at the polls and he saw evidence in the polls that Trump was not a factional candidate, that he was actually starting to gain momentum from lots of different subsets of conservative voter pools. And then the second thing he did was he said, okay, let me, as I start to form my forecast, let me make a list of the conditions where I would change my mind. And so he was initially early on, if you go back to summer 2015, he had Trump at something like 2%. And then he said, here are the things that would have to happen in order for me to radically revise that forecast. and one of them was, candidates gotta have real name recognition, check. Another one was, there has to be a winning issue, and the wall emerged as something that a lot of people got behind, you know, love it or hate it, right? And so as those boxes were checked, he had already predetermined the rules for when he was gonna be open, and he had to hold himself accountable to that commitment. And that, I think, is such a, I don't think most of us are gonna be super forecasters, Louis, it's certainly not one of my hobbies, But this idea of saying, when I form an opinion, I'm gonna make a list of what it would take to change my mind, and that will keep me honest. I think that's a practice we could all test out.

That's smart. You could predict, in a marriage per se, you could say, yeah, I wanna be with this person. I'm committed to this person. We've had this great relationship. But here's the game. If these five things change in the future, we're not gonna be together forever, or we might break up. you know, it's like you can make these predictions, I guess, based on a set of rules you predetermined. If someone breaks the rules over and over and over again, okay, we're not gonna be together, even though maybe for 10 years we have been in this certain way.

What I think is amazing about what you just said is that we have these rules going in, but we don't have them for coming out, right? Everybody has a dating list of deal breakers, right? But they don't have a list of deal breakers for- I don't know, I no longer- yeah, I no longer want to be in this relationship. Same thing is true in a job or in a culture, right? To say, okay, there are certain things that I would never join a company that does X, Y, and Z. Well, how about I would never stay at a company that does X, Y, and Z? We should have that list too.

I like that. That's powerful. Well, with friendships too. It's like all this stuff. We briefly mentioned the idea of essentially the Simpsons, for the example, put out a video of Trump 10 years before walking down the escalator with the same thumb movement and it happened, right? In the law of attraction world, they would call that putting out an intention.

And then it manifests.

And it meant manifesting in the future through actions, obviously action steps, but what is your thoughts on the law of attraction as an organizational psychologist on the theory?

So I don't believe in laws.

Okay.

Not in this sense anyway. I believe that countries should have laws, right?

Sure, sure, sure.

I don't believe in laws of human behavior in the same way that I don't believe in laws of meteorology or weather, right? I believe in conditions. And I think that, you know, maybe it's semantics, but I think that, yeah, it's hard to argue, and we have at least three decades of good evidence in psychology that if you are clear on your intentions and then you make a public commitment to them, you're more likely to follow through on them because you don't want to feel like or look like a hypocrite. Other people are more likely to hold you accountable who are there to help you and support you. And so I can see a lot of that playing out effectively. But to me, this is maybe a little bit controversial for anybody who's a big fan of the law of attraction. To me, just calling it a law is too strong because there are circumstances where it backfires, right? Peter Goldbergr has shown, for example, that let's say your intention was to become a vegetarian. if you put that identity intention out into the world, you are actually less likely to follow through in his data. Really? And that's because for a lot of people, they don't really want to do the behaviors of being a vegetarian. They just want to earn the moral status. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so because only the people that you eat meals with will ever know, it becomes a little too easy for you to claim the identity without actually having to earn it. And so I think the data suggests there's some nuance that we have to be careful with identity intentions. that if other people can give us credit for the thing that we said we're all gonna stand for now, and we don't actually have to show up and live it, then maybe it doesn't go the way we expect. And so I would say, well, I would say the public commitment is a powerful effect, but there are contingencies, there are boundary conditions, there are times when sometimes our public commitments get us in trouble.

I think maybe it's the semantics of calling it a law, the law of attraction is more of a packaging, of what you think about and what you want to create, thinking of a mental movie and putting it into the future and bringing it closer to you now. There's also maybe more tied to your give and take book, the Law of Reciprocity or that title, the packaging of when you give something, people want to give in return. This give and take mentality. But that's interesting.

Yeah, to me those are principles, right? As a principle.

Yeah, yeah. Packaging it.

Yeah, it's a way of packaging it, interestingly, that kind of, it's just a tiny red flag for me because it sounds a little too preachy.

Sure. Ah, there you go.

Yeah, sometimes it holds, sometimes it doesn't. It's not an iron rule, therefore.

Right.

It's probably not a law.

Yeah, yeah, gotcha. It's a principle that could happen.

That often works.

Right. And final idea I want to go into before we wrap things up is we may have to do another part to this episode on this topic of mental flexibility. I know Tony Robbins in the personal growth world, he'll talk about mental fitness and really having mental fitness to increase your levels of happiness and not be really a prisoner to being mentally weak around ideas or identities or conflict or what's happening in the world so that you can respond from a place of more peace or calm and resolve as opposed to stress and anxiety. In your mind, what are some ways we can start to improve our mental flexibility? As I know you talk about this a lot.

Yeah, I think there are a few things that we can do that we haven't covered yet. The first one is to just make time for rethinking. So I actually have a little note in my calendar once a week to say, what's something I should rethink this week? And it's an excuse for me to go back and reflect on the week. and say, all right, you know, maybe there's a disagreement or a debate that I had, or maybe I read something that I was, you know, kind of annoyed by. And why was that? Is there, you know, is there an opinion that that was shattering or is there an identity that was being poked a little bit by that? So I think that's, that's a practice we could all, we could all test out. And again, it may work for you. It may, it may not. I think the other thing that I would be excited to see more people try out is to say, okay, if mental flexibility is your goal, then you probably want to burst your filter bubble as much as possible. And I think one of the best ways to do that is to find not just any old people you disagree with, because you're going to end up with some trolls probably, right? To find people that you disagree with who you think are smart and that you might have trouble winning an argument against, even though you think they're wrong. Instead of just putting up your defenses, read through their arguments or listen to their arguments and watch how they make their case. And what you'll do is you'll find yourself a little bit more detached from what you think is true and a little bit more curious about, well, how did they get there? And what did this assumption, if I relaxed it, what would that do to change my current thinking? And I think it's a fun exercise to go through.

That's powerful. You got a new book, man. This has been inspiring. I want everyone to get this. You don't have to influence anyone. I'll influence them for you. So make sure you you guys get the book, think again, the power of knowing what you don't know, which I think, you know, a lot of times in our teens and 20s, we think we've figured it all out. We have all the answers, and then we realize we don't know anything. The more we learn, we continually say, I actually don't know that much at all. And there's so much more to be curious about. And I want to encourage everyone to, to get the book, buy a copy for your friend as well, and, and, and continue to be a lifelong learner. I think at the end of the day, if they get something from this conversation with us, being in a curious mind is a good place to be. Having a set of values that you're aligned to, but also being open to being curious and trying on if those values or those beliefs or those thoughts are supporting you and your friends and family in this environment right now, then constantly question them as well to see what else you could try on. So think again, the power of knowing what you don't know. Adam, you're an inspiration. I acknowledge you for constantly pushing the boundaries, constantly doing the research, constantly diving into the science, working with students, and then applying it into the outside of the academic world as well for the rest of us. So, I acknowledge you for showing up, my man. You've got a great podcast as well that people can listen to. You're on social media, AdamGrant.net as well is the website AdamGrant on all of our social media platforms. How else can we be of support to you in this moment?

Thank you, Louis. I think you might be a giver. It's pretty clear. I have to tell you of all the things that I appreciate about what you do in the world, the thing that stands out most for me is you have a remarkable ability to take things that seem difficult or unpleasant and get people fired up about them. And I just, I think we need more of that boundless energy and inspiration in the world, so keep it up.

I appreciate it, man. Thank you very much. And again, make sure you guys check out Adam Grant and get the book. Thank you so much for listening to this episode. I hope you enjoyed it. And again, if this is your first time here, please click that subscribe button over on Apple podcast or Spotify right now and leave us a rating and review to let us know what you got out of this episode, the value it brought to you, and what inspired you the most by subscribing and leaving review, you are spreading the message of greatness to more people. So if you want to see more people thrive in their life, then just subscribe and leave a review right now. Also, make sure to text the word podcast to 614-350-3960 if you want inspirational messages from me every single week sent to you via text. And I want to leave you with this quote from Henry David Thoreau who said, It is never too late to give up your prejudices.

Who?

My friends. Again, thank you so much for being here. I'm so grateful that you took the time today. And if you know someone that you think would be inspired by this, make sure to share this with them over on social media or just text them right now. A link to go listen to this episode. And I want to remind you, if no one's told you lately, you are loved, you are worthy, and you matter. Never forget that. I'm so proud of you. I'm grateful for you. And you know what time it is. It's time to go out there and do something great. Top reasons your career wants you to move to Ohio.

So many amazing growth opportunities, high paying jobs in technology, Advanced manufacturing, engineering, life sciences and more. You'll soar to new heights, just like the Wright Brothers, John Glenn, even Neil Armstrong. Their careers All took off in Ohio.

And yours can too.

A job that can take you further and a place you can't wait to come home to. Have it all in the heart of it all. Launch your search at call Ohio home.com.