PSYCHOLOGIST REVEALS The #1 Thing HOLDING YOU BACK In Life! | Scott Barry Kaufman & Lewis Howes

Self-worth should be taken as the assumption of the starting point, not the thing that you're trying to build. And the reason why I say it that way is because I think you gotta have a dream.

The School of Greatness. Really?

Yeah.

Please welcome the School of Self-Actualization. The new science of self-actualization, what you're talking about in your new book, Transcend, is stuff that I'm fascinated with because we're all looking to improve the quality of our life. We're looking to have more love, more connection, more purpose. We're looking to have more fulfillment, happiness, self-esteem, all these things. And you have broken down and reimagined Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs essentially. And created a new process, a new framework for living a great life. And what we need in order to go through the waves of life in order to transcend to be the best version of ourselves.

I like the way you put this.

So I love to break it down. And first here, if you can share, what is Maslow's hierarchy of needs for people that don't understand it fully? What does that process and framework look like? And then what is your Kaufman sail belt in order for us to learn what that is too?

So a lot of people might not have heard of like Maslow's hierarchy of needs, but surely they've seen the meme on the internet with maybe toilet paper at the bottom of like it's a pyramid, you know, with various levels of needs that one needs to fulfill in order to be able to focus your on self-actualization, which is becoming all that you're uniquely capable of becoming. So the needs for connection, the needs for self-esteem, the need for safety, and all these things that clearly, if your mind's preoccupied, if you're hungry, you're not focused on self-actualization. So it's contextual as well throughout the course of our day. If you feel very lonely, your mind is preoccupied with the deprivation of your loneliness. If you don't feel like you're getting any respect, your whole consciousness is directed towards Respect me and you're kind of in part onto the world. You know, you want the world to kind of bend to your will in a way. Where is respect on that chain? In Maslow's original it was the highest up before self-actualization. Respect. Esteem.

Esteem.

He calls it esteem.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So we want, we need, we can't eat, the only thing we're thinking about is food. Yes. If we're sick, the only thing we're thinking about is getting healthy. If we have nowhere to sleep, the only thing we're thinking about is shelter.

Yeah.

And then once we have that foundation, it's the next level of loneliness, then.

Loneliness, social connection, and then esteem.

Then esteem, which is respect, credibility, I guess, or being respected within your community.

Respecting yourself and then getting respect from others. Yeah, so he had both of those forms of esteem he talked about.

Okay, and the next one is-- so.

The connection comes before belonging and connection, the need to belong, the need to you know, make connections with others, and then esteem was higher in his original model.

And then the top is-- Then you self-actualize. And it's-- what does self-actualization mean?

You know, Maslow, here's some like cheeky, not cheeky things, but things that like reveals, grand reveals. First of all, Maslow never drew a pyramid. Oh. You know, people don't know that. It's in all the textbooks, and it's like management text, all these management business schools, they learn it. There's no pyramid. Also, he didn't like the term self-actualization. I found in an unpublished essay, because I read all of his unpublished stuff, like just researching, I found in a footnote, he said, I hate that damn word self-actualization. Oh my God, I should send you a copy. You know, take a picture of it, because it's like, when I discovered that.

I almost fell off my chair.

He actually preferred the term. He never said the words. He did. He definitely used the term self-actualization, but towards the end of his life, he started to think of it more, he preferred the term fully human.

Ooh, I like that.

Yeah, yeah. And that's how he started talking about it later in his life. He just didn't use the term as much.

What does fully human mean in your mind?

Sure. I'll tell you sort of like in his earliest years what he meant by self-actualization first. He thought of self-actualization as becoming your unique creative potential. You know, like what is the thing within you? What's the song within you, right? Sort of thing. That's definitely how he viewed it in his early life. becoming fully human as he started to think about this concept more broadly was how can you kind of bring your whole self to the table? You know, not just like your talent, you know, you can become self-actualized and not be very transcendent, not be very, you know, not give back to others, not kind of get outside yourself. And towards the end of his life, he started to distinguish between self-actualizing non-transcenders And self-actualizing transcenders, two different classes of self-actualizers. The self-actualizing non-transcender is the person who goes to work, they clock in, they do their job, maybe their job isn't something that necessarily contributes much to society, but they're good, they go home.

It's not fulfilling to them personally.

It might even be a little bit fulfilling, but it's not something that's really getting outside of themselves. you know, and doesn't have B in line with what Maslow called the B values. The B values.

The B values, the values of being itself.

So these are values that you don't need to do them for any other reason. Truth, justice, beauty, meaningfulness. He has a long list of the B values. He calls them B values. Perfection. Excellence. Excellence is one of his B values. You know, you strive for excellence for excellence's sake. You strive for beauty for beauty's sake. You strive for truth for truth's sake.

Not to get likes, not for any followers, not for accomplishments, but just to be in that state. To be, you know, you want more.

Meaning in your life, not so that you get famous. You want meaning. Right.

Yeah.

Okay.

So self-actualization and then self-actualization plus transcendence.

Transcendence.

And what's transcendence mean?

Well, I wish I had a really pithy def- well, actually I do have a pithy def- I have a definition, but it ain't pithy. I have a complicated definition. because I just want to distinguish between, as I do in my book, between healthy transcendence and unhealthy transcendence.

Okay, what are those?

So you see a lot of these gurus who preach transcendence and then they kind of molest everyone, you know, in their parish or whatever, you know, and it's like, you're like, oh, you're really transcending, really? You know, you know, it's built on a very faulty foundation, as Maslow put it, you know, he called it pseudo-growth, growth built on a faulty foundation. And I call it pseudo-transcendence. Yeah. It's transcendence built on, really you're trying to get your esteem needs, self-esteem needs met. You know, you're really trying to get, you know, you're lonely, so you, you know, you've built all this stuff to have connections with others. But healthy transcendence, this is a viewpoint of, I didn't even get to my.

Sailboat model, so maybe we're going to.

We'Re skipping ahead, but yeah, it's the view of the sea bird. Yeah. A bird that's looking above your life.

You know what I love about you? I love that we just like jumped transcendence. We're like, Let's get there. Let's just go right to.

Well, this is what everyone wants, right?

Everyone wants, well, you want safety, you want connection, you want to feel loved, you want to feel purpose, mission, but.

Ultimately you want to feel like what's.

The connection to the rest of humanity? Yeah, what's the greatest potential for my life? What's the meaning of my life? Why am I here? How can I serve my purpose and do it fully? That's right. And so what is healthy transcendence?

Healthy transcendence is an emergent phenomenon and I'll explain every part of this. How the transcendent is an emergent phenomenon resulting from the harmonious integration of one's whole self in the service of cultivating the good society. I can break that down.

For me, that's kind of like my definition of greatness. I always tell people that.

Isn't that interesting?

The way that I view greatness is it's discovering your unique talents and gifts that are inside of you and pursuing your dreams using those gifts and making an impact on the most people you can in the pursuit of those dreams. So it's figuring out who you are to pursue the things.

Yours is pithier.

And then helping as many people as you can along the way. Maybe helping as many people as 10 people. Maybe it's your whole community, it's your city or your country. Maybe it is, but maybe it's just your family and that's fine too. helping as many people along the way that you're capable of helping.

And yeah, I love that. And the key thing I try to point out there is also that it's important to have integration there of all the various sides of yourself. Because, you know, and I feel like you, I don't know, can we get personal about you for a second?

Yeah, of course.

I mean, I feel like you've really, your whole growth process has really been a process of integration. You know, you had certain sides of yourself you weren't proud of at certain points in your life. and you didn't like, and you brought it into the rest of you. You didn't like, you started to have acceptance, right?

Yeah, absolutely. Well, it was very shameful for most of my childhood, I mean, most of my adulthood. I was shameful of things that had happened or things that I had done, happened to me or things that I created in the world. And I hid those shames. I didn't talk about them, which made me suffer. So when I started to talk about them and forgive myself and forgive others and heal, then it allowed me to go beyond that state of being that I was in. I was able to create and accomplish a lot, but I still wasn't feeling connected. I wasn't feeling like things mattered as much. I was still suffering. So I was wondering why am I...

You felt a disconnection between self and world.

Absolutely. And I was like, why am I feeling this? Let me just do more and work harder and win more, but it wasn't supporting my overall growth.

Yeah, and see now you're very comfortable in your own body. It's obvious to me. You're very at ease with your being. Absolutely. Is a phrase LIT is.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So transcendence, healthy transcendence is essentially the definition of greatness. And we're all trying to get there essentially. Is that what I'm hearing you say? Or we should all be striving to get there, but it's going to take safety connection, self-esteem first before we can really get to those levels.

So I'll explain my new revised Kaufman Self-Determination Model. So my revised hierarchy of needs, there's no longer a higher, like a pyramid, you know, because Maslow never even drew a pyramid. We're a whole vehicle that needs to be integrated. That's why a sailboat works. You know, all the parts have to work together optimally in order for that sailboat to really move in its most purposeful direction, you know?

I'll put up a graphic or something here as well for people so they can see.

Wow.

That can zoom in or something.

We can do that, yeah.

You've got mad, mad technology here, you know? So how is yours different than his? What is it?

Well, it keeps the spirit of what Maslow, remember there was no Maslow pyramid, he never drew a pyramid. If you actually, people betrayed the spirit of his original theory, so I'm trying to bring in the original spirit with my own flavor. So in his original theory, he distinguished between the being realm of human existence and the deficiency realm, D versus B realm of human existence. When we're in the deficiency realm or we're deficiency motivated, so another way of saying is deficiency motivation versus growth motivation. When we're in the realm of deficiency motivation, we're motivated by what we are lacking. And like I said earlier, we basically are screaming for the things we're lacking in the world. Like if we're hungry, feed me! If we're lonely, be my friend! Which paradoxically makes people not want to be friends with you because you come across as needy. And that's really an interesting paradox. But if you're really needy, like woe and respect, You demand respect.

You need to respect me.

Demand it, you demand it. But the growth realm of human existence is a whole different realm. If you can get to the growth realm of being, you no longer want the world to conform to you. You actually start admiring the world on its own terms. You start to admire people on their own terms and that's called be love, love for the being of others. That's what Maslow called it. So in the D realm, you have the need for connection, but in the B realm, you have B love, which is just love for the being of others, not for what they offer to you. Maybe someone doesn't even offer you connection, but you can still admire them, you can still love them, you can still be curious about them. So the B love is a whole different realm. So what I did with the sailboat is the boat itself is the D realm. If you have too many holes in the boat, the boat's gonna sink, right? The water's gonna come in and sink. If you're too deficient in the needs for safety, the need for connection, the need for self-esteem, and they all work together as a system is another point I wanna make. It's a feedback loop. I call it the insecurity cycle. People who are deficient in any one of those three tend to start quickly becoming deficient in the other two, right?

So if safety is deficient, then your self-esteem and your connection are gonna be low. If your connection is low, then you don't have self-esteem, you don't have confidence, and you don't feel safe. That's exactly right.

And if you have low self-esteem, then you feel disconnected and lack of safety as well. That's right. Wow. Yeah, yeah. And you feel like nobody respects me, nobody cares about me, you know? So it's a cycle. So that's the boat. But if the boat is safe and secure, you're still not gonna go anywhere unless you open up the sail, right? So it's not enough to just be safe and secure. Some people are acting these days like the ultimate is just to be the lack of what they have, no longer lack what they have, and then they're going to be happy. It's like, no, no, no, there needs to be something above zero. You can't just get from negative 50 to zero. You go to a psychologist and you're anxious, you have generalized anxiety disorder. A lot of people, are you just satisfied if you leave the psychologist no longer being anxious in the world? There's still nothing added to that. Once you can open the sail and move with a vulnerability against the inevitable winds and waves of the sea, you move in a purposeful direction with a spirit of exploration, be love, and purpose, despite knowing that the waves could come crashing down on us at any time. And even though we're all in our own boat, we're moving in the same sea together. So that wave can come crashing on many boats at the same time. So we need to be connected to rest of humanity, and also still have that bravery and exploration drive to just go despite our fears. I was nervous today. I was nervous this morning. This is the first time I've put on a suit in a year. This is the farthest I've driven in over a year.

Five miles, yeah.

Six miles. You know, and it's like, I was a little nervous. But the thing is, you have to move in life. You have to keep moving, you know? And that's the cell boat metaphor, is you have to open that cell ultimately, or else you're not gonna grow. you have to get outside your comfort zone.

And when you open the sale, there's exploration, love and purpose.

Yeah, yeah. So another way of putting that is, whereas security is, the base of security is safety, the base of growth is exploration. Does that make sense?

So safety and exploration. Because you could have safety, connection, self-esteem, but if you don't have exploration, if you're not growing, then you feel stagnant, you feel, Disconnected, you probably feel less safe than also, right? Yeah, that's exactly. Something's missing, I gotta shake something up in my life.

Yeah, and sometimes we might not even feel safe and still say fuck it, I'm gonna choose exploration. Sometimes we don't want to wait till we're fully safe in order to explore. Why is that? Why are some people like take two people, some people have the fear and they don't grow and some people have the fear and they do, is that kind of the question? That's a great question.

Yeah, I like that. You guys want to be close, just.

Zoom in on the question. You know, 'cause it's like, I wish I knew the precise answer. Some have done personality differences. Maslow did write that like the self-actualizers he studied seemed to, as opposed to being frightened by the unknown, they were turned on by the unknown. Excited. He used the word excited.

I get excited. I get excited because I don't, I don't know if there's ever been like a bad moment when something didn't work out or I failed or like I was humiliated. I don't, I can't look back and say that ruined my life.

Yeah.

Like it might have been a moment of embarrassment and might have affected me earlier in my life when I didn't know how to use those emotions for good or I didn't know how to transcend the feeling of embarrassment or loneliness or rejection. But as I look back at my life, and you talk about this in your book about the history of looking back, we should look back at the history of our life like a historian, I think you mentioned that. Yeah, yeah. And as we look back like a historian, like, okay, look at all these different moments and years and timelines and chapters and pages that we turned. And if I look back, I'm like, every decision I made that had a risk that was scary turned out for the better.

Yeah.

Like, even if it turned out for the worst, it eventually, it built some, a foundation of, like, I can do this. I can go after what I want and I'm still gonna be alive. And my family's still there for me, my friends, it's going to be okay. And I think a lot of people live in a state of deficiency realm or the state of fear that they don't want to go after what they could be or what they are interested in doing because that risk is too big and they're too afraid of, I guess, feeling a lack of safety connection and self-esteem. If I risk and I fail, then I'm gonna lose my house, no one's gonna be my friend, and I'm gonna have zero confidence in myself. Which makes it very, then there's no foundation to the sailboat.

You got it. You nailed it. A lot of people who fear their self-esteem need is so important to them, what's really going on with them underneath it is they have a fear of shame.

In terms of what? Like if I fail, if they fail.

They'Ll be shamed, you know, they'll be like revealed as not as smart as they thought they were or not as great, you know, as they thought they were. I mean, you've interviewed so many great, you know, great people and do you find a common theme in terms of like there are many moments in their life where they definitely weren't great. Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. And they were okay with that. Like it didn't put them in a downward spiral of depression where they were no longer able to pick themselves up again, right?

So how do we free frame life in a way so we can actually take on risks, take on growth, take on challenges, and it not hurt our self-esteem when we do fail? Because we're all going to be failing in order to grow. It's not going to be like, I'm going to win at everything and be perfect, and it's always going to be a New York Time bestseller, and everyone's got to praise every decision I make.

That's right.

So how do we build our self-esteem foundation so that no matter what happens, and the results of our life, we're still confident and esteemed in who we are.

I think the best way to look at self-esteem and the healthiest form of self-esteem is, again, I'm going to use the phrase emergent phenomenon. I'm a really big fan of that phrase. It's not something that you shoot for. The problem with people who show mental health issues is that they have made self-esteem itself the goal, as opposed to the outgrowth of a natural outgrowth of pride healthy pride in something you built, some form of mastery, as well as your social relationships. Psychologists distinguish between hubristic pride and authentic pride. And I think the healthiest route to self-esteem, the kind of self-esteem that will really lead to growth, is authentic pride.

What's the difference?

Authentic pride versus? Hubristic pride is driven by the path of the need for dominance, the need for power. The self-esteem becomes the goal in itself.

Being confident, commanding respect is the goal.

It's the goal, yeah. It's having the accolades as much as possible so that it reflects on your ego.

Why do people live in that state? What do you call that? The hubristic pride. Hubristic pride. Why do people and what happens when we come from that place if that is our goal.

You know, both evolutionary psychologists have studied this because both evolve, and there's a reason why it exists in the human gene pool. Both paths evolved over the course of human history for different purposes. They both served its function. Dominance, being able to be the top person in your clan on the savannah certainly had its meeting benefits, you know what I'm saying? But, you know, sure. that wasn't the only pathway to meeting. See, the thing is, there was also people in the tribe who were the experts, the professors who were getting laid just as much. The wise men. Yeah, the wise, yeah, exactly. And both pathways evolved and still exist in our gene pool. And there also are some genetic factors here. Some people are actually more predisposed to one path or the other. Some people, you know. But it doesn't mean we can't change or can't grow in our life and we can't kind of shift our pathway.

Yeah, okay. So the authentic pride, so what happens when we live from that state of hubristic? Hubristic?

Yeah.

Hubristic pride. Will we ever feel fulfilled? Even if we get command the respect and get all the accolades and accomplishments and money and houses, if that is the goal, will we be fulfilled and happy inside?

No, it really is like a hedonic treadmill. Yeah, you keep running on this treadmill, but you never get to the end of the treadmill.

Have psychologists studied people that have lived in that state of being who have actually are happy?

I'm sure they exist. I'm not the kind of person who will say that there's never, never, or that one must live their life. In fact, I want to be clear about something in my book, is I'm very clear that self-actualization and the path to self-actualization is one where you find the path that works best for you. and your own unique constellation of traits, characteristics, life experiences, only you can choose what path works for you and you should own it. I think there are a lot of people who have made their life work for them, who know that who they... At various points in their life, these things change. The thought of... For some reason, Tucker Max is coming to my mind. There was a point in his life where... He changed. He did, but I also, There was a point in his life where he owned being an asshole. And this is what I think is interesting is that I don't know why that example, I think that it's irrelevant actually, that example. Because I feel like I knew him before and then after as well. And then, you know, he put on his website at one point, he's like, I am Tucker Maxon, I am an asshole. And I don't know if he was fulfilled in that moment of his life, but he found something that met his own unique constellation of traits. and I think it's interesting because I'm not a judge, I'm like the least judgmental person. Maybe not the absolute least because you've met a lot of cool people, but I'm very non-judgmental. So I, for instance, I do personal coaching now, right? And I have like 17 clients. And for every single one of them, I just like, I be love, you know? I sit, it's not my job to like condemn someone. It's my job to sit back and listen to them and see what is at this moment in their life, what kind of life works for them, you know? And maybe at this moment in life, for some people, they have such an excess of anger and excess of that they need to get out in a way that I want to kind of help them cultivate it in a productive direction. But, you know, I'm not here to say what works and what doesn't work, if that makes sense.

Right, of course. But the authentic pride is more in a state of being as I'm doing this for the art of it. I'm doing this for the process of gaining excellence in the process and being prideful in what I accomplish for myself, not what others recognize as something great.

Yeah, it's the more sustainable path. I'll say that. It's more sustainable overall. If you're thinking about this over the long haul, you're not about flash and burn, right? For some people, maybe they just want to flash and burn, you know? But if you're thinking about a life well lived, I teach the course the Science of Living well. It really is about this kind of authentic mastery of yourself, the world, and other people.

I love that. So how do we rid ourselves of insecurity?

I wish there was a magic wand.

Is it possible to? Are we always going to be insecure if we're seeking growth? Where there'd be insecurity in our life?

As I write about in the book, I think it's unrealistic to say that anyone gets it to zero because we're such a social species. And if you were to get to zero, you probably would dip into the realm of psychopaths.

Really?

They're a unique breed of humans that don't seem to give a about anyone, you know? And I'm not saying that we should get to that point. So I think the fact that we do have a little, you know, that we don't get to zero is actually means that we're human.

Is there a way to be compassionate, caring, and completely secure, like not insecure?

Yeah.

Self-confident.

I do.

And being aware that, hey, if I fail, it's going to be okay, and I still love myself.

Yeah.

Is that possible?

I do think so. I think you can still keep caring about what people think of you to a certain degree, because it'll help you be better, but without personalizing it so much. and without it stopping you or you dead in your tracks. I do think we can get to that state, absolutely.

And you also talked about in the book that I saw around self-esteem versus narcissism.

Like, I love that distinction.

Competence versus narcissism.

You read my book.

I went through it. It's hard for me to finish any book, but I went through it. I'm impressed.

I'm a big fan of that distinction.

How do we know when someone is a narcissist versus someone who's just extremely self-confident? Yeah, no, and how do we make sure we don't cross over from confidence to narcissism?

I got into a Twitter fight with Scott Adams. Did you see that? I didn't see it. He's like, psychologists who study narcissism are stupid, basically. They don't know what they're talking about. Narcissism is a great thing, you know? It's just what they're doing is people who are just confident and we're just calling them narcissists. Now, I beg to differ with that because I actually think there's a really important difference between confidence and narcissism that needs to be recognized. People who score really, really high in narcissistic traits and by the way, I think we all are somewhere on the spectrum so I'm actually not a fan of saying there are narcissists and then there are not narcissists.

You know, people who score high in.

Narcissistic characteristics is like how I like to phrase it. Which is what are those characteristics? Well, the core of it that distinguishes it from just run-of-the-mill not confidence is entitlement. That is the narcissism. That's like you're throwing darts, where's narcissism? Center? Oh, entitlement.

Anyone that thinks they're entitled to anything, to everything, everything.

They think they're entitled to everything in the world, even things they haven't earned, things because they think they were born special. Ooh, that's the thing.

That's the heart of a narcissist. Yeah, that's the heart of the narcissist.

Yes, yes, that's the heart of a narcissist. Yes! Yes, beautifully put. People with confidence can think they're enough without thinking they're the best or superior. And even people who are great, who do great things in their life, can still be great without thinking they're the greatest human being. You see what I'm saying? You can own that you're great at what you do and that you've put in the work, you've mastered it. You're not entitled to special privileges more than anyone else who's suffering in this world, because we're all suffering in this world, you know, with the Buddha. As you noticed, right? You're not entitled to everything. If you're in line at an airport, the person who scores high narcissist will be like, I demand to be the first one in line. It's like, why? Exactly? But you absolutely have a cultivated sense of confidence, And in a lot of ways, the most authentically confident people tend to be the least narcissistic, which is an interesting paradox.

The least entitled.

Yeah, I find that really interesting. There's an ease of being about them. I'm going to go back to that phrase.

So how do we get to a place of that confidence level? What's the keys to confidence?

So the two major forms of confidence are mastery and self-worth. Self-worth is I'm enough. There's nothing else I have to achieve in order to be any more worthy as a human being.

How does someone believe that when everything is against them? When they're broke, they just got dumped, they just got fired, they're 100 pounds overweight, they're sick. How does someone believe I am enough with all the breakdowns they might be going through? Or even one breakdown? this person left me. I'm worthless. How do we change that?

You know, it's such a good question and I would say that no matter your circumstances, no matter how dire things are, if you just go out and you just smile at a stranger on a street and make their day, they see you as worthy.

You improved their life in a moment, which means you're worthy.

And you just proved to yourself that you're a worthy human being. See, this is the thing, is like there are little things you can do to just remind yourself. Because I think the fact is that we're worthy without doing anything else, you know? But the problem, as you describe, is that we forget it because we have so many things telling us that we're not.

Or we isolate ourselves.

Does that make sense?

Yeah, of course we isolate ourselves and we stay in this story, in the script that keeps us small, stuck, worthless feeling, even though it's not truth.

Go volunteer for a soup kitchen, you know, for one day and then you'll be reminded of the humanity of others and be reminded, oh, I'm human too. Now there are things I need to work on so that I can have a sustainable life and maybe even be great at something. It's wonderful to aspire to greatness, right? But you're not aspiring to be superior as a, you know, the puffed up kind of narcissism.

Yeah, someone else. So confidence equals mastery plus self-worth.

Self-worth. Yeah.

And what are some other ways that we could build self-worth Besides just remembering that we are worthy. Even if we remember, but we look at our body in the mirror and we say, But I'm not proud of the person I see in the mirror. I'm not proud of the actions I've had in the past. I'm not proud of losing my job or my partner leaving me. How can I build self-worth besides just smiling at people?

-Right. Well, I would frame the question a little differently, if I may, because I think that Like the self-worth should be taken as the assumption of the starting point, not the thing that you're trying to build. And the reason why I say it that way is because what if you flipped it around and you looked at your fat... Not you, but the person looks at themselves in the mirror and they're like, I'm a... COVID has made me a complete slob. Then I would argue the best framing of it is, well, I'm worthy, so therefore I'm gonna lose the weight. The unworthiness start is what motivates you to get to work.

Not the desire to be worthy.

As opposed to I need to get to work so that I can be worthy. Wow.

So self-worth is the starting point, not the goal.

I'm worth it. I'm worth it to take care of my body once and for all.

How do we realize that?

I mean, can you just like just start telling yourself? Sometimes we can believe things, you know, that we over time if we if we tell ourselves enough. Now, I'm starting to sound a little bit like Stuart Smalley from the Saturday Night Live skits in the 80s. I don't know if you remember those. I'm good enough, I'm smart enough, and by God, I'm worth it. I'm hearing myself talk right now. I'm like, I'm Stuart Smalley.

But in a way, there's a truth to it. Affirmations are not the worst things in the world. So now you're a psychologist, and I'm hearing you talk a lot about... I think you drink too much. Go for it. I'm hearing you talk a lot about not being needy in society because then I'll actually repel people.

Maslow distinguished between needing love and unneeding love.

What is the difference?

Or you can even say needy love and unneeding love. Needy love is like where you're demanding, love me, you know, because I love you, you must love me. You know, where unneeding love is you don't ask for anything in return from the other person. You actually just admire them like you're watching a sunset. Carl Rogers, the humanistic psychologist, said, when you watch a sunset, you don't say, oh, it's a beautiful sunset, but I wish the bottom corner was just up a little bit this way, and that the hue of the redness was a little bit lighter. You know, you admire the fucking sunset, you know?

Why don't we admire humans like we admire sunsets?

Why do we demand love and return in certain ways? Why do we need that from each other? It's conditional. Other people's love is conditional on the extent to which they return your love. you know, but that it shouldn't be that way. Yeah, yeah. But you're. But I'm sorry. I feel like interrupted because you were getting at the paradox of being needy.

No. Yeah, I think I love you're a psychologist at Columbia. You, you write these deep research books on all these topics around human behavior and psychology, and there's another world that you're starting to sound like to me, which is this law of attraction world.

Oh, no.

Which is. You know, don't be needy because then you'll repel people.

Is that one of the principles in.

The law of attraction? It's like, you know, be a magnet for attracting what you want in your life. And in order to be a magnet to attract, you know, great business relationships or the career opportunity or the right intimate partnerships, you can't be chasing them. You can't be like, I need you. Please pick me. Please, will you be my boyfriend? Will you be my girlfriend? Please, will you hire me? You can't be in this begging, needing state. You need to be unattached.

You have to let it go.

You gotta let it go.

That's true.

You gotta be unattached and you got to build your own confidence, your own self-worth in order to be a magnet to attract those things to you. And you have to start looking at yourself in a more positive light and things like that. So you're sounding similar to what I hear in the Law of Attraction woo-woo world, if you will.

Oh shit, well I've made the case there can be wisdom in the woo-woo. I've made that case.

Is there science in the woo-woo as well?

Yes. So that's where I said, where I say it, Ken, that's what transcend is. I'm trying to do the science of woo-woo. Right, right, right. That's exactly what transcend is all about. By the way, to your point, there was this cat who I emailed almost every week when my podcast first started. I was like, Woo-bee, woo-bee, woo-bee, woo-bee. And he was like, Get away from me. He ignored me, you know, like, then.

I would talk to his people and.

They'D be like, you know, Yeah, like, yeah, no, he's really busy.

Too needy.

Yeah. No, they didn't say that explicitly, you know, but I'm just like two, three years, and then I was like, you know, f*** it, I'm just not gonna even just, maybe like two, three years went by. I get an email from this cat, you know, he's like, all my friends keep like mentioning you and every conversation I'm having these days, like they're like, do you know Scott Barry Kaufman? And he's like, can I be in your podcast?

And of course my immediate reaction was like, You're like, inside. Screw you, I asked you for years. Now you want to be on my show? Yeah, now I'm big enough for you.

I'm not even gonna lie. I'm a big visual reaction like, oh, I'm busy. Sorry, I didn't have my assistant respond. But once that ego subsided, we ended up having a talk and it was just a wonderful conversation.

I used to do this 15 years ago when I started salsa dancing.

Really.

I did the same strategy in a sense for just kind of like a cheeky ego, I guess, that I had back then where I was very passionate about salsa dancing. I still am. I haven't done it as much because of the pandemic, but for 15 years I've been salsa dancing around the world. I've traveled the world to the best salsa clubs. I've danced with some of the greatest professional dancers at clubs, right? And it's been a joy of mine. It was a skill that I learned to master which built self-worth and confidence and all these different things. things in me because it was hard because it wasn't something I was good at. And when you get good at something that you are afraid of, man, your confidence level goes up to another level. At least it does for me.

Yeah.

Anyways, I stand out in a salsa club, if you can imagine. There's mostly, mostly Latin people that are mostly about a foot taller than me. I'm this tall white dude, right? That doesn't speak the language.

They're taller than you?

No, I'm a foot taller than like pretty much everyone. Yeah, yeah. what I'm dancing with essentially, right?

Gotcha.

Guys, girls, everything. And I would walk into a club and I would observe and I would look for the best dancer on the dance floor. The one that scared me, the one that intimidated me that she was so great that I was like, I don't know if I can dance with this girl. And I would look to see who she was. And then when there was a moment after a song would end and a new song would start, I would go up and ask them to dance because it scared me. It was terrifying. Terrifying, because it was a new city, it was a new place I'd never been to. I didn't know the people. They didn't know who I was. But I don't look the part in a salsa club. I look like I'm an outsider. And most of the time, these girls would reject me. They would say, no, I'm okay. I would go up there and kind of be like, Hey, I'd love to dance with you. They would reject me. Then what I would do is made it my mission by the end of the night for them to come-- To.

Show that you're good. Yes.

And I would go find other girls and dance right next to them. with them for hours. And I wouldn't go approach them until they came back to me. And most of the time they'd be like, hey, you wanna dance?

I'm like, no, I'm good.

So I did the same thing as you. I can really resonate with that.

I was like, no, you didn't wanna.

Dance with me before 'cause you judged me and now you see me and now you want to. But it was, you know, I stopped.

Doing that after a while. That's ego, it too. But I really resonate with it. I feel like a lot of people can really resonate with that. Of course. Yeah.

So, what is this, where is the science of neediness in terms of like, why does that repel people? The need to chase something, to have something that you don't have. Is there science behind it? Why that doesn't work?

I have often thought that there needs to be a book on this topic. The paradox of neediness, you know, could be the title of the book or something. Because, People always asking, why do people, why do young women, why do they like the bad boy? It's not that they love asshole. It's not that they're like, oh, I love people who are mean to others. There's a detachment there where you feel, and I think what might be going on to a certain degree is what you do is you feel like you're the one who has agency in making the choice. When you feel coerced, if the other person is needy. You want to, because humans want to feel like, you know, I want to hear what you think of this take. But for instance, if someone is completely not interested in you or whatever and you approach them, you feel like, you know what? I'm the one that's in control of this situation. I made the choice. I want this person. You know, there's also the obviously supply and demand aspect of it as well. We all want what we can't have. That's the obvious one. But I think there's a more subtle thing going on. Where we, you know, like if someone, we want to feel like we made the choice, you know? Like even in the case where they saw you later on, like killing it on the dance floor, and then they approach you, they feel like, okay, now I'm the one that has, I'm in control of my life. I've made the decision, you know? As opposed to if they're coming at me and I say, okay, we kind of lacks agency.

Interesting.

What do you think of that take?

I think so, yeah. Us making a conscious decision of what we want to do, not like, not that I was like needy or begging, but when someone's like, please stay in a relationship with me, I can't live without you, it's like, ah, it's like.

Do I want to do that? No.

Do I want that responsibility, that weight of someone who can't live without me or someone that needs me right now for this business deal or needs this job? If someone is in that state, it's almost like you can sense they're lacking confidence. If they need something, that means they're lacking something. They're not complete human being. They're not a whole healthy human being. And that energy is kind of repels people, I think. And we've all been there.

We've all been there. I mean, I've been there.

I've been needy in relationships and totally.

You know, I wish we had more compassion for needy people.

But it's, yeah, it's so hard.

It's the paradox, you know? Like, I wish, like, in an ultimate world, we would be able to have a common humanity there. Like, even on, like, you know, like, I just, I remember the dance club is in the 20s, you know, that's a traumatic experience to approach, you know, and they, you know, they're like, oh, you know, It's like, what do you mean ill? Like, I'm a nice guy. My mother tells me I'm great. You should talk to my mother. But no, it's such a, when you're young, 20s, 21, 22, that's like traumatic.

Traumatic?

You know what I mean? When a girl rejects you. It's traumatic. But you know, also you can also see it from the women's perspective as well. It must be traumatic to them to have these guys like grinding up on that. Like all around, it's, you know, for everyone. I don't feel like, dance clubs are a really wonderful situation.

So how do we learn to detach the outcome of what another person says about us to us? How does someone learn detachment? Because it sounds like detachment is the key to helping you attract certain things. Remember, not always all the time. You want to have a goal. You talked about you want to have an aim. You want to have a goal. You put your sail up and be in a direction towards something, but not being attached. It's Buddha.

To the results. Buddhist non-attachment. Buddhist non-attachment. And here's an interesting psychology finding. People, you know, have you heard of attachment theory? You know, like secure and insecure and anxious attachment? Yes. Avoidance. Avoidance. Well, researchers were curious, how does the Buddha concept of non-attachment relate to attachment theory? They found that those who scored high on a scale of Buddha non-attachment scored up the kazoo high in secure attachment for attachment theory.

In secure attachment, is that the best one we want to be?

Yeah, we want to be secure. But it's the healthiest.

The healthiest, yeah. It's the greatest. It's the healthiest attachment style.

Yeah, yeah.

From secure.

Yeah. For if you want to cultivate a healthy relationship. Yeah. Some people, by the way, score high in avoidant attachment style and Perfectly content with that. They just don't want to be in relationships. It's the anxious attachment that's really most problematic. What is the anxious attachment? You're clingy, clean. It's the needy. It's the needy. It's needy. But isn't that an interesting finding that those Buddhist non-attachment like, I don't need this outcome to define me. I don't need this out. You're not so tied to the outcome, right? They tended to feel more secure in their attachments with people. They tended to feel less anxious in their attachments with people. I think there's an interesting, how do.

We get there though?

Yeah, you love those questions, how do we get there, which are good questions. I'm like, I'm better at the descriptive than the prescriptive. Kind of, I am getting more in the prescriptive world. There are cheesy answers to that question, like meditation, that are true, cheesy but true. I say cheesy because that's what they answer to everything nowadays. like, well, how do I meditate more, you know? But it does help a lot to help you detach from your thoughts, you know, because the key there is you want to not identify with yourself as much as we do. And we automatically identify with ourself, and then it causes us to, without thinking about it, act. Act in ways that we later regret, you know? But the more that we can create that space, you know, between stimulation and self.

Yeah, yeah.

And not. It's not. We're not identified. We actually see it. as for what it is, but it's not who we, it's not, you know, there's a higher eye.

It's transcendence. It's in the book where the bird is above the sailboat.

Yeah.

Where you're looking down at the perspective.

Of the sea bird.

That's looking down at yourself.

Yeah. And humanity, you know, all of humanity.

It's interesting because when I went to India for a few weeks to study meditation about five years ago now, I guess it was, and we practice.

Did you stick out there?

I did stick out there too, yeah. But we practice many times in a weird way, leaving our body, like in meditation practice, our mind leaving our body and like seeing ourself mentally kind of rise above and looking down at ourselves, right? And then it got to the point where it was like, okay, we're above ourself 10 feet, then we're in the clouds looking down at ourselves, then we're going beyond the world looking down at all of humanity, and then we're going into other, it sounds weird and woo-woo, but it's like going into the universe and seeing the Earth as a speck, and then going farther and expanding out and seeing the Earth gone. And if you expand yourself from yourself mentally, visually, and some type of practice, then you can look at things from a different perspective like you talk about in your book.

Yeah.

I think that's the key is seeing yourself from a different perspective than in the chaos of self all day long. Absolutely.

I have a friend, David Yaden, who is my research collaborator. He now does a lot of work on LSD and well-being at Johns Hopkins. But he has this virtual reality device and he brought me into his office once. He's like, Put this on, put this on. And then it was the View from Space. He called it the Overview Effect and.

Wrote a really cool paper on the Overview Effect. How did it feel when you experienced it?

A different perspective. My whole self-reference changed. It was the view from space, from the view from an astronaut looking at Earth. And it really does shift. It shifts everything around. You're like, wow, where's myself now? Where's myself when I'm not on Earth, when I'm not even on Earth?

It's crazy, man. What's a psychological practice that you think we could take on a daily basis? Three, four or five things that you think, hey, no matter what you're going through, life is great.

-Masl had a whole list of, and I reprinted them, they were unpublished ways to get into the B realm of existence.

-Really? -They weren't published.

Yeah, no, no, I gathered them together through various things.

Research seeker. You're just diving into all of it.

I am a nerd. That's what you're trying to say. Live more in the B realm. And there are a whole bunch of things. I'm just going to rattle through things. Sample things. Keep your eye on the ends, not only on the means. Fight familiarization. Seek fresh experiences. Get out of the deficiency world by deliberately going into the B realm. Seek out art galleries, libraries, museums, beautiful or grand trees in the mountains or seashore. Avoid dichotomizing the D realm and the B realm. They should be hierarchically integrated. An either/or choice is not necessary. The firmest foundation for the being realm is to have satisfied deficiency needs, such as for safety, connection, or self-esteem. But the important thing is to know that it's still part of you. Efficiency is a part of it. Efficiency is always going to could be at any moment. You know, at any moment you could be hungry again, you know? It's not like once you get in the B realm, you're above others, you know? You're above humanity. And I think that's the point he was trying to make there. It's important to keep your grounded in humanity.

So we want to be in both realms or more in the B realm?

Well, we want to live more in the B realm, for sure. But we want to not suddenly think, like life's a video game where we've reached that level and then we're now seeing other humans from a higher view to advantage. We're still human. We're still human. I think that's the point you're trying to say. Cultivate periods of quiet meditation, getting out of the world and getting out of our usual locality, immediate concerns, apprehensions and forebodings. Periodically get away from time and space concerns, away from clocks, calendars, responsibilities, demands from the world, duties and other people.

Go into the dreamy state. I've often said, the daydream, you should create daydreaming time in your day. I call this strategic messing around. Yeah, so it's like the time where you schedule it so where you can just do nothing and allow yourself, I want to play a game, I want to read, I want to explore, I want to brainstorm, I want to just daydream.

It should be on your to-do list.

It should be.

You know, spontaneity, embrace your past, embrace your guilt rather than running from it. Be compassionate with yourself, be understanding, accepting, forgiving, and perhaps even loving about your foibles as expressions of human nature. Enjoy and smile at yourself. Ask yourself, how would this situation look to a child, to the innocent, to a very old person who's beyond personal ambition and competition?

Ooh, wow.

Isn't that good?

This is good. Older people, I would say the generation, I think it's the, in Bronnie Ware's book, the Five Regrets of the Dying, it's like they wish they didn't, there's so many wishes that they wish they didn't have done, looking back, and they're like, okay, this just doesn't matter. at this stage of my life, you know?

I love that. Yeah.

It doesn't matter.

It's a different vantage point.

Yeah, when you've got five years left or two years left, you're like, this stuff doesn't matter.

Doesn't matter. Yeah. Doesn't matter. This stuff's so good that I read a couple more. Go ahead. Do not conceal your ignorance. Admit it. Do not let anyone force roles on you. That is, do not act the way other people think that a doctor, minister, or teacher should act if it is not natural for you. I like this one, engage in deliberate, experimental philanthropy. If sometimes you are no good for yourself, depressed, anxious, at least you can be good for someone else. Isn't that good? Isn't that good? And this perhaps is my favorite one. If you find yourself becoming egoistic, arrogant, conceited, or puffed up, think of mortality or think of other arrogant and conceited people and see how they look. Do you want to look like that? Do you want to take yourself that seriously? To be that un-humorous. This is a sampling of things.

Wow. So the B realm is the Sounds good, right? that we want to be in more frequently.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

But even if we're in there frequently, the deficiency realm will pop up from time to time.

It's human nature. Maslow said human development is always two step forwards, one step back. It's not like a video game. And that's, I think, how we need.

To think about it.

You're not always leveling up? It's not a leveling up. You need to choose growth. Here's this quote, you know, you can move back towards fear, you can move forward towards growth. You just have to keep choosing the fear option again and again and avoiding, no, choosing the growth option again and.

Again and avoiding the fear option again and again. And that's life. Well, and the growth option is probably leaning into the fear and not holding back and saying, I'm afraid, so I'm not gonna act. this is the fears. I feel fearful, so I need to move towards it. I need to grow, I need to overcome. And there's never a stage in our life, at least I haven't realized, I just turned 38, and there's never a stage in our life where it's like, oh, I've got to figure it out. I've grown so much, I don't need to grow anymore. There's always a new experience or level that we need to grow into, right?

Yeah.

What happens if we stop growing?

Yeah, I would say, with growth is, again, it's not like levels. I know a lot of people use that metaphor. We never stop growing. I mean, Karen Horney, one of my favorite, most underrated psychoanalysts, says we have the potential to learn and grow until the day we die. This is a quote of hers. And I really do believe that to be true. And I think that even there are examples of people the last two days of their life, They're on their deathbed and they look back at their life and they decide they're gonna like forgive someone, you know, like they're going, they can make a big decision, you know, they're going and even in their last breath they have made it, they've chosen growth, you know. So I think we can choose growth until we die, yeah.

What's the thing that you're most afraid of these days that you haven't chosen to grow into?

Oh, interesting. Yeah, okay.

Or you're struggling.

This is a really personal question.

Yes.

But committing to a long-term romantic relationship. Wow. That's a really personal admission.

So, are you a voidant attachment style? What is that attachment style?

You know, I'm secure attachment. But I like to play. I don't know how else to say this. I don't know how else to say this. I do believe in honesty.

Yeah.

You asked me a question. You know, I love, my need for exploration is so freaking high that I love partners and lovers that are high in that as well, but it can make it hard to commit one monogamy, one person, and maybe I don't have to make that choice, so I'm working on that. It's a very personal admission, I feel like. I've never admitted that on an interview before. That's interesting. Yeah, yeah.

So why is that something meaningful to you right now, like a committed, intimate relationship? Why is it meaningful?

Well, after COVID, after being so alone for so long and reaching a level, a depth of loneliness that I have not experienced my whole life prior to this year, I feel like I'm yearning for something, a higher form of spiritual love that I've been content not having up to this point really to the degree that I've had. And so I definitely, that's where my mind is going these days.

Interesting. You've been okay without that deeper spiritual love up until now.

With one person, yeah.

Right, yeah. But now that's something you're seeking.

I can see the merits of it, you know, and I can see the merits of it.

Do you feel like once you create that, you'll be like, oh, but I really, that exploration stage of me is like, now that I have it, It's not as exploratory like and you feel like that part of you will have to die?

No, I think the ideal thing would be and I am, you know, this is why I am seeking it, you know, find someone you don't have to compromise yourself. I don't think that's that's what anyone should do. You have to find the life that works for you. So I'm in the process of finding the life that works for me and owning it and and you know, finding someone who is on that same journey of self-actualization. you know, so, you know, I'm dating, trying to find someone who's on that same, you know, you know, someone whose openness to experience levels are as high as mine, which is hard to find because my openness to, quite frankly, quite frankly, my openness experience levels are three standard deviations above the mean, which means high.

Three standard deviations about what does that mean?

Bell curve, bell curve. After one standard deviation of the mean, you know, you have like 85% you have to two standard deviations, point top 2%. Once you hit a three, we're talking.

0.00000001 of a standard of living or of a standard deviation.

No, no, it's statistics. You have to take a statistics course to really understand what a standard deviation is. But when you have a bell curve, it's all normalized, what percentage, proportion of the population are various things. When you're in the middle, that's like the most people are the most populous.

And you're the tail, some of the tail of the very tail is just based on what you're your standard for living or your quality of life or what's your- no, what are we calculating?

Openness to experience. How high am I relative to other people?

Threshold for experiencing newness.

I'm so open.

Right.

And that sometimes if you want to commit to something, you gotta close something.

Right, right.

Sometimes you gotta close.

Someone may not feel safe next to you in that situation if they're on the other side.

Oh yeah, I mean if you're all the way extreme, like close-minded, if you're close-minded, to that degree. Those people I don't really feel comfortable with, you know? But I think, you know, striking maybe a healthier balance in my life would be good. You know, I'm so open. Like, I don't care who you are. Like, you know, if you're a serial killer, I'm like, well, don't, A, don't.

Kill me, but B, tell me all about, you know, what it's like to.

Be a serial killer. Because isn't that interesting? It's interesting. They probably shouldn't, they should be in jail, but yeah. Yeah, like, A, like, don't kill me. Like, I don't want that. I'm not that open. If you're a curious mind. I'm so curious about people, about I don't like to limit my options, my freedom to explore. But, you know, I mean, look, I am so anyway, you asked me, I'm telling you what I'm struggling with, you know, is kind of finding the right life for me.

How does a psychologist who studies this stuff approach a committed long-term relationship? if that's the fear or the uncertainty in your life.

Yeah. I think it's just one of those things that maybe I will decide. I'm still in exploring mode. So people are explaining to me what the polyamorous life looks like. And I haven't fully explored it, but I'm still in exploring.

You're in the right city for that.

Yeah, right.

I have some friends in Venice, Santa Monica.

Do you know what I'm saying? The people who are into that world, they love it. Like they swear by it. And I'm not a hundred percent convinced.

I also don't know anyone who's been in that world for over 10 years and it's still healthy and still swears by it.

That's really interesting.

I haven't met people who are like 3 to 5 years in and still okay. But I haven't met couples like after 10, 15, 20 years who are like, this is the way we swear by this. It's worked for two decades for us, it still works today. I just haven't maybe because I'm not in those circles necessarily, but I hear you. I don't see that being talked about a lot.

The reason why I'm not 100% sure it's for me is because I feel like I'm not gonna say dealing with one person is hard enough, but I did kind of just say that. But cultivating a healthy, meaningful relationship with one person is hard enough.

Well, I think also cultivating a spiritual loving relationship with one person is a.

Higher form of spirituality.

It's a full-time energy commitment.

Feels like it.

And if you're in three to five, it's hard to give that spiritual love.

I'm ADD. I feel like that would be so, I know that I would inadvertently f*ck it up. You know, there'd be one woman to be like, how come you didn't attend to my needs with it? And it's like, look, I didn't mean to not do it. I just, my brain scattered across five women here. You know what I'm saying?

Like, give me a break.

It's a lot of needs. But, you know, and if one of.

Them are needy, you're gonna repel them and say, you,'re not for me.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's the callback in improv that you just did. I love that. So, you see what I'm saying is like, I feel like I would rather commit, and this is where I think I'm going is really just trying to commit to really building something beautiful. because I think I could. I mean, I do it with my work. You know, when I wrote a book, you know, Transcend, I put my heart and soul into it, you know? You know, I feel like I could certainly put my heart and soul into a relationship.

Do you think human beings can put their heart and soul in their purpose, which is the top of the sailboat, the purpose and their love life? Can you put your heart and soul in both? Full energy, full commitment, and both thrive to accomplish the levels of...

I want to know. I want to know. That Casey and Jodi song you're saying? Yeah, but I really want to know the answer to that question. And I've devoted so much of my life to my work, you know, and like nine books, and it's like just like, and then it's like, you know, I'm curious if I put that same energy into cultivating a relationship, but you're saying can you cultivate both? And that's the very same time. And that's the really truly interesting question that I want to know the answer to. Can I ask you a personal question? Sure. Are you in a relationship right now?

Yeah.

How has that process been? Were you skeptical that you could do it and then now you've realized... I'm still skeptical.

Okay. I mean, was I skeptical? I've been in long-term relationships for the last decade, so I wasn't skeptical I could be in a long-term relationship. Gotcha. But it's always for me the fear lies in Is this going to take me away from my mission or support me in going after my mission more? Because for me, it's weird to say, I hate to say this. Maybe I shouldn't say I hate to say it, but I feel guilty sometimes saying that the most important thing to me in my life beyond my health and my personal, I guess, the health of my mind, my body and my spirit, is my mission. That's the most important thing at this stage of my life. Now, maybe when I'm 70 or 60 or whatever, in a few years, I might say the most important thing is my family.

Yeah.

My family is important. It is a priority. It's not the only the top priority. And I feel guilty sometimes saying that publicly even, because I know so many people say family is everything. The only thing that matters is family. The relationships you have are the only thing that matters. The intimate relationship is the most important thing.

And I think pressure, societal pressures, Yeah.

And I agree that it is an important thing. And I want it to be a high priority. I just don't know at this stage of my life if it's a greater priority to put more time and energy and attention into that over my mission.

How does your girlfriend feel about that?

Well, it doesn't mean I don't neglect her. I mean, I spend a lot of time and energy, a lot of commitment.

A lot of-- you- tend to her needs.

100%. At least I do my best.

Right. You 100% do your best.

I do my best and I believe I'm there for all of her needs. But it means if the rest of my time is on my mission, I'm letting go of other things that I wouldn't be able to do as much based on just time. So it's learning how do I evolve, how do I grow into a new version of myself so that I can be 100% in my mission. And what I've learned in the last couple of years is like, okay, I've got to build a team. It can't just be all me and a couple of us doing it all all day long, obsessing over the mission. We've got to build team, let go of responsibilities, trust people. It's like you have to elevate and grow into the sailboat. It's like you got to reach out beyond what you're comfortable with, learn new skills, master new things, build confidence, fail, take a step back, whatever, in order to be able to be there in the relationship, my health, and the mission. And so it's been a definitely been a journey. It's beautiful, but it's challenging at the same time. So I think for you it'd be like, okay, you're obsessive in the books every year, and this is all you do, but maybe you have to hire a couple more people to help you with that. You've got a researcher now, but maybe you need three researchers in the future if you want to have three hours a day with your partner and explore. Great point. That's the challenge.

It's a challenge. I think it's also one of the things once you find the right person, things kind of take care of themselves as well. I could definitely see a universe in which I found the right person and then these issues wouldn't be an issue anymore. It'd be nice to have an adventure partner, a life adventure partner. I really would like to support someone else in what they're doing. I don't want it to be all about me. But it's gotta be the right person. Until then, I'm gonna play.

She play away, man. So exploration, love, and purpose.

Yes.

Is once we have safety connection and self-esteem, those are the next three things we're saying. By the way, can I just say.

I want to show someday my wife, I want her to watch this episode.

Sure.

Yeah. I feel like I'm glad we documented this pre-pre me finding the one, but I feel like I do get a feeling someday I'm gonna find the person and then I'm gonna have them watch this episode. Watch this episode.

I love that.

Yeah.

Sorry to interrupt you. No worries. We got safety connection and self-esteem are the things that We need as our foundation. And then after that, it's exploration, love and purpose. Why is love not something, is that the same thing as connection?

Be love, love for the being of others, it's different than connection.

Higher sense of love.

Higher form of spiritual.

Loving humanity, the world, the universe, everything.

Treating each human as sacred, each individual existence as sacred, love for the being of others. not what they do for you or what they can provide for you or even if they offer a way to satisfy your loneliness independent of all that.

Independent. And how do we discover our purpose?

That's a good question. I don't know if there's one purpose that we discover, but I think that there are a lot of callings that if we're listening outside of ourselves, we can hear them. and we can see ourselves as having a reasonable number of skill set to be able to contribute to it. I don't think it's any more dramatic than that. People act as though like, what if I never find my one true purpose? It's like chill. Trust me, there's a lot of needs in the world that need fulfilling, and you can offer that.

I love the idea of just listening. I think we're too caught up in reacting to things. Constantly on our phone, observing other things or responding as opposed to being still listening from a young as a young child, I was alone a lot. And I remember feeling very insecure. I didn't have safety connection or self esteem for many years of my childhood. I didn't feel those things. And I would sit alone. I didn't have many friends and I would sit alone and just ask questions. So it's like, why am I here? What's the purpose of this? What's the reason of my life? Am I even should I even be here. And I would listen and I would eventually get out of all the noise and I'd listen and I'd hear be like something was calling me. Like I could hear something inside when I listened, when I was still, when I wasn't stressed and anxious, I could hear something saying, no, stick around. Like go after this, try this thing. Like go do this, keep going after it. Like there's a reason behind it all. And the I didn't know what it all meant, but if we're a historian of our past, like you write about in your book, it starts to make more sense every chapter that we're in in our life. And in 10 years, I'm going to be looking back at where I am now and be like, oh yeah, this made sense for what I'm doing then. I think if we look at it that way, it's more beneficial, but it's scary because we don't know what our purpose is a lot of the times. But I think if we can be purpose in the moment, If we can say, I'm going to be purpose, I'm going to live in purpose by contributing to the person I see next to me, by working on myself, by helping others, and just being it, not trying to find purpose, then it's going to be a little easier.

Do you realize you just added a new term to the sales model? There's be love and there's be purpose. You just added that. I love it.

I thought that was already it. Be purpose.

I never used that phrase.

Be purpose.

Yeah. Being purpose.

Knowing that's being amazing.

I can do that with love. You extrapolated that to purpose.

It's brilliant.

We'll add that as a footnote in the next book. No, I'm not even joking.

Yeah, thanks. It referenced this interview.

There you go.

So I think that's interesting. Even if we don't know what our purpose is, we can be it though. Yeah, that's exactly right. Just showing up today is knowing that I am enough, building a self-worth and.

Saying, I don't need to have something to be enough. That's exactly right. I am it. That's exactly right. That's exactly right. And I just don't like that idea of the, you know, I've had a lot of my students, you know, what is the one true purpose? You know, I just don't like the way of thinking about that, you know, that's put way too much pressure on someone and limits you from seeing all of the callings, listening, listening to all of the callings, you know, that are coming outside of yourself. The key there is getting outside of your ego, getting outside of your own self needs and be aware of the needs of others. You know, your purpose can be small. Well, I wouldn't even call it small, but, like, if you're just a stay-at-home mom, you know, like, and you raise a child, that's actually a bit.

It could be a big purpose, you know?

Yeah. Yeah.

It's. I adopted a cat about a month ago, and how's that going for you?

It's been great, actually.

I've been thinking about adopting. I adopted this cat. I have a dog already with my girlfriend, and I have.

Your dog was your girlfriend?

I have a dog with my girlfriend. Oh, my God.

Yeah.

I have a dog with my girlfriend.

Different.

But I've been. I had a cat, like, a. Eight years ago that I loved. It was a great cat that I adopted as well. Okay. But I gave him to my mom when I started moving. I moved to New York City, and I was traveling a lot, so I gave it to my mom. And I've always been like, for some reason, when you find a great cat, it's like it adds so much joy to my life. Really? It's. You got to find the right cat, though. Yeah. Like finding the right partner, you know? It's like, if it's the wrong cat, it's gonna be a nightmare. Just like if it was the wrong.

Yes.

This cat has been a great addition to my life and the purpose of just caring for the animal and supporting the cat and feeding the cat and petting her and just being in that energy. She brings me calm and peace. She purrs on me. I'm contributing to her life well-being hopefully. And that sense of like, oh, I've got somewhere to go tonight to like, take care of. Yes. That purpose, just even with an animal, is meaningful to me. It's added value in the first month of adopting her. So there's things we can create in our life to develop that sense of purpose and being purpose on a daily basis.

But that's it. You create it. You don't discover it, you create it.

We just nailed it. That's it. But I have a theory and a thesis Help me flesh this out in your psychological researching approach that it is near impossible to achieve greatness if we doubt ourselves. If we lack the belief in ourselves. If we constantly live in self-doubt, it's really hard to accomplish. I think that there's, I've seen so many different great athletes over the years who were way more talented than me. Freaks of nature, but they didn't believe in themselves. The coaches believed in them. Teammates were like, you,'re the best on the team. You're a freak of nature, but for whatever reason inside they didn't believe it.

And.

I have a theory that it doesn't matter if the world believes in you and says, you,'re the greatest. You're the greatest of all time. You have the most talent, the most skill, the most potential. but if the person doesn't learn to build that self-esteem, that self-belief, that they will never be able to fulfill that potential or that purpose or whatever it is for them. And I also have this belief that it doesn't matter if everyone says you're the worst in the world or something, if everyone's against you, if you learn to build that confidence within and eliminate that self-doubt that you can go accomplish what you're supposed to do, that what you want to do. So I'm curious your thoughts on this from psychologist researcher point of view about self-doubt. If we learn the ability to build confidence or if we only doubt ourselves, can we still fulfill that with that doubt inside of us?

It does make it more difficult for sure. The interesting thing there is that your self-doubt can be separated from your confidence in your specific skill set. You might have a very, I don't know, like Michael Phelps, Michael Phelps suffered from depression, but I think he would understand that he was pretty darn skilled in swimming. But these things can separate from each other. So this sort of sense of self, the kind of a core belief, it comes down to what psychologists call core belief within cognitive behavioral therapy. The core belief there is sometimes I'm unworthy. or I'm rotten at the core of me. And that can form completely independently of your whole mastery journey. That can form very young, that belief can form very young in your life.

Like I'm bad, wrong, rotten.

Yeah, it often forms in the result of maybe if you're bullied when you're young or maybe even you had parents who.

Who were passive aggressive.

Verbal abusive, verbally abusive or passive. There's actually a long list of things that parents can do to you, including giving you bad genes, by the way. That's another way they kill you. It's not always the way they treat you. They give you their genes. But we don't talk about that.

Sure.

But these are things that can be unlearned. and I think that it takes an active process of word hopefulness to do it. Because word helpfulness is the default response. That's Martin Seligman's most recent discovery is that the research he's done in the word helplessness, or in helplessness, where we feel like we do have things that are open to us, but we have gone so long thinking that we're not capable of it, so we no longer We don't get what really we could have. We do hold ourselves back. We have to actively learn hopefulness. It's not a process that just comes automatically because we get older.

Learn hopefulness.

It's a whole process. We have to learn all the skills that allow us to recenter our attention and focus on our real chosen values. in alignment of our values with what we're doing in our lives and to constantly shift that focus away from a self-concept to what we're doing in the what are we doing, not who are we? Just take for granted that who you are is enough. Okay, move on. Move on. And now the focus is on what am I doing? That's my focus. You just have to keep exercising that muscle day in and day out. You wake up in the morning, boom, you spring out of bed. What am I doing today? You don't wake up, spring out, say, who am I today? Get over that. Get over that. If your self is going to shift from every morning you wake up, that's not a very healthy way of being in the world.

Yeah, I have a contract that I created with myself about seven years ago, that is a mantra, a statement or a contract that I created with myself that says, I'm a loving, passionate, wise man. And I say that because previous to seven years ago, I didn't think I was that. And so I created a process where I would say this to myself on a daily basis, and I would find evidence to continue to prove to myself why I'm a loving, passionate, wise man. Because I always felt like I was, this stupid ignorance, unworthy type of mentality. I had confidence in certain areas of my life, in sports and other things, but then I also had doubts. And I found evidence on why I was like the dumbest in the class and, you know, dyslexic and all these things. But now I'm just like, well, I'm a loving, passionate, wise man, and I find evidence, and I create and I do things daily that support that evidence, that support that belief. So good. So it's not just like, fake belief. It's like, okay, no, I am this. I need to remind myself that I am this. And I can do little things on a daily basis to show myself that I'm a loving man.

You grew into it.

Yeah, that I'm a passionate man, that I'm a wise man. And, you know, I don't need to be the most intelligent human being, but I'm a wise man and I make better decisions every day. You're intelligent, though. Yeah.

Yeah.

Appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you. But it's. I think it's that learned hopefulness. you know, sometimes we're, I believed that I was bad at the core of me for many years. I felt like I was rotten. I would have dreams that my teeth were falling out all the time. And I remember talking to a dream analyst that was like, oh, that's actually a common dream.

Right?

And she was like, yeah, it's because you think you're a rotten person. That's why your teeth fall out in your dream. And you're like, wake up, you're like.

Ah, we're my teeth, you know? It's like, or there's a string stuck in the back of your throat and.

You keep pulling it out.

I can't. That's another one. Yeah.

And so I had this dream for many, many years, and my teeth were, like, falling out or something, and I'd wake up in fear, and I was like, why is this happening? And that's what I heard. So I have no idea if that's true or not, but I think when we start to shift our, our level of thinking about ourself and create different values and then act accordingly to fulfill on those things, how important is it? from a psychologist point of view, the way we think and the things we say to ourselves internally on a daily basis.

That's very important. Self-talk is so key.

What do you mean? So it's not woo-woo?

No, there's science to that woo-woo.

There's science to self-talk.

Yeah. Give me the science to self-talk. You know, the secret is, you're referring to the secret earlier. I mean, the woo-woo would be saying that whatever you conjure in your head automatically happens in the world.

That would be woo woo.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, like, I'm gonna have a lot of money in my bank account and then I'll check my bank account.

Boom!

I wish the world operated that way. But yeah, self-talk is very important and particularly the narratives we tell ourselves, you know, about who we are and what we're capable of are really, really important.

What is the science or the research proving about self-talk. Is there studies around this?

Oh, for sure. I mean, there's certainly studies about various mindsets. You know, if you want to go in that direction. Growth versus fixed. Yeah, that's one of them. Yeah, there are a lot of healthier mindsets versus unhealthier mindsets. You know, there's the whole victimhood mentality, right? I mean, that's a version of self-talk in my opinion. If you have convinced yourself that because you were a victim in the past, you will never, ever out of it and be able to have hope in your life. If you tell yourself that story, you start to live that story.

So how do we get out of that victimhood mentality and negative self-talk mentality if that's been a narrative we lived with for decades?

Yeah, I mean, you can't rip people's defenses as a clinician. One thing you learn is you need to gradually until someone's ready. You can't force it. And also you can't talk to someone who's in that mentality and let's say they're screaming at you and you think it's going to work if you say, you know, you have a bit of a victimhood mentality right now and it's not the healthiest for your growth and development. I read Transcend by Scott Barry Kaufman. They're going to get even more angry. You can't rip it off of people and you can't rip it when you're not ready yourself. I think it needs to be a gradual process where you keep testing the waters. That's one of the, I teach an online course around my book where I have these growth challenges and one of them is called Test the Waters. And it's about, so if there's a certain type of person you fear, like a lot of women, it's a great shame that they've been abused. sexually abused, but then they start to generalize a fear of men, right?

In general, I can't trust all men. All men do this.

So, they visually react whenever they see any man. They visually react like men are horrible. And then, so testing the waters, you know, like what if you engage in a conversation with a man, you know, and did it go that bad? Are all men like that? And I don't mean to just pick on women. They can happen in anything. That was just one example I used. People in all sorts of ways can start to generalize a fear of a whole general class of something, whether it's a whole general class of people or a whole general class of water. I'm scared of water. Talking about test the waters. And then what you do is, you know, a little bit, but exposure therapy is the only way forward. It's the only way. You have you have to move in the direction or else you stay in the fear option your whole life.

Exposure therapy, what does that mean?

Little by little, not having experiential avoidance. Experiential avoidance is constantly avoiding anything that could even so lightly give you the experience again of what you had. So slowly starting to integrate yourself into the world, into the thing that you fear the most. And of course, you still want to be safe. I'm not saying you escape the clutches of a serial killer, you go back to that serial killer and test the waters with a serial killer. That's not what I'm saying. I'm saying be reasonable. But the point is the problem becomes when we generalize the fear to everything in the world and it holds us back from realizing our full potential.

Yeah, I have this thing called the fear list. Since I was younger in my teens, I would create this fear list because I had many fears, tons of them, a lot of insecurities, doubt, things like that. And I would write down my fears every year. And in order to become more Fearless, I had to overcome the fear list and check them off the list. So I realized that in only, the only way that I could have more confidence, the only way I could believe in myself more was by going all in on the fear until the field, the fear disappeared.

That's right.

And I was fortunate enough to find that out in my teens and it's been a huge gift for me over the last two decades, I guess, by, okay, what's missing in my life? Where am I not willing to take risks? What am I still afraid of? What am I still resistant to? And I'll write these lists and I'm like, oh, that's the top of the list. That's the biggest react. I'm nervous about that one the most. Dang it, means I gotta go all in on that. And what I like to do is create an experience or a game around executing it. And one experience, I've told this on my show before, is I was terrified of girls when I was a teenager. I don't know if you ever were or if you've just been this confident human being.

It definitely was. Definitely was.

And I remember saying like, I'm sick and tired of just like being nervous around girls. Like not even being able to have a conversation.

You feared rejection.

Absolutely. That was the biggest fear. judgment, humiliation. It was the biggest fear. And I created the experiments and games for the last 20 years to overcome that fear, to throw myself into rejection, to do things that I shouldn't succeed at. In order to see, what can I do if people reject me? I'm still here. I'm still here. Feel it all. Feel the pain, the embarrassment, the loneliness. But I still have this skill and this tool and this relationship. I'm still here. And I did that with girls in my teens where I was like, I created an experiment for a summer for two and a half months where every day, whenever I saw a girl that I was nervous around, I had to go right up to them and have a conversation. And it was terrifying the first few weeks because I got rejected and laughed at. One girl literally ran away from me. Can you imagine being a 16 year old and a girl running away from you? I was just like, I am worthless.

No one loves me.

Why am I doing this? stupid, right?

Yes.

But you learn new strategies, you learn ways of being, you learn how to overcome that the more you do it.

Yeah.

And if you take that rejection or failure as feedback and information, then you can apply it to the next thing that you're doing.

I would even add one thing. I love everything you said. I would add that if you can cultivate be love, you start to realize the sacredness of each existence. And if the person if the girl is running away from you, you cultivate a B-love for her, where you say, oh, you know what? She made that choice and I totally respect that.

I'm gonna accept her for the years.

Yeah, you know what I'm saying? Not what she offers to me, but I'm gonna show B-love to her, you know? Like, obviously, like, whatever was going on there, like, it wasn't a good match, you know? And she made her choice, you know?

Honor it, you know?

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. How do we-- Isn't B-love great? It changes your life.

It does. How do we create these, how do we discover these core beliefs and values that will support our journey? And what are some of the more supportive values and beliefs that you've seen or studied?

Yeah. A lot of these deficiency-motivated ways of thinking really do hold us back. And the kind of thoughts and habits of pattern that allow us to move in the direction of growth are ones where we ask ourselves, what is going to lead me to more wholeness and integration and growth as opposed to what is going to make me look better than others, make me achieve more than others. They're very much, we call it an exploration mindset. And once you kind of adopt an exploration mindset, everything changes in your life. You're curious about everything. You become kind of a little adventure seeker. Even within your own mind, you become a little adventure seeker. Exploring adventures outside, but you can have a rich fantasy life. You can have rich ideas.

And.

I think it's really keep choosing those habits over and over again. And committing yourself to it.

I like that, man. How do you think we can let go of limiting beliefs?

Isn't it a matter of practice little by little? These things don't happen overnight. There are people, I think both of us and everyone listening to this interview can think of yourself when you were 16. Everybody right now listening to us, think of yourself when you're 16 and think about those limiting beliefs you had. Now think of yourself now. I imagine there's a lot of people listening that will be like, they don't even recognize who that person was. So clearly you proved that you were capable of shedding it. But it happens over time. You need to have patience and self-compassion with yourself. I think I'm a big proponent of cultivating both of those things with yourself, patience with yourself and self-compassion.

The challenge is most of us beat ourselves up when we do something wrong or we fail or someone rejects us. Oh, we beat ourselves. At least I did. For many years of my life, we say, oh, you're an idiot, you shouldn't have done that, that was stupid, why did you do that? And we don't move beyond that. Why do we kind of tend to go back into this beat up mode, do you think?

Yeah, and I'll also say, and narcissists tend to beat up others for their failures. They don't beat up themselves.

They don't beat up themselves.

They're godly. They blame it on every single person in their orbit, and they never blame it on themselves. They never take responsibility. So there's an inverse of that too, that's unhealthy.

That's the heart of narcissism.

Yeah. The heart of narcissism.

I love that. The first one was entitlement. Entitlement. The second one would be they blame.

They don't take responsibility.

When you fail, you beat up on.

Everyone else but yourself.

You got to take accountability and responsibility.

I'm a huge fan of responsibility. Yes. And you can take responsibility for your.

Actions without beating yourself up. And I think that's what we're trying to nail. That is key.

That's what we're doing. How do we take responsibility?

For our actions and not beat ourselves up in a negative way.

Because you can acknowledge that if something didn't land, you can be like, huh, you know, I need to work on it. I need to improve it, you know? But the point where you don't beat yourself up on is believe yourself belief that you're capable of change, you're capable of growth. I wrote a tweet the other day. It did not land the way I wanted it to. Boy, did it not land the way I wanted to. But I thought to myself and I started, I got a lot of like trolls and stuff. But then I responded to the trolls and I said, you know what? I clearly didn't explain it the way that I meant to explain it. I think in the future I'm gonna try to be clear what I meant. And they're like, like, you know, they didn't like they know how to respond to that. But I meant it, you know? It's like, you know, clearly that's what it is, you know? I'm not, I'm gonna take responsibility, but I don't feel like I'm a loser, you know? I don't feel like I, you know, any, any, some deep core I revealed about my, it's like, wow, I really, That didn't land. I'm gonna take responsibility for that, you know?

What's something you discovered in the last year since writing this book, new research or new findings about human beings, about psychology? Is there anything that you've discovered new?

I'm really fascinated with the LSD research. It's like, research has come out recently showing that people are healthier physically when they do more else? Really? Like where did that come from? Right? Like that's amazing. You know, it can decrease, you know, I'm not talking about the abuse of it obviously, but you know, used responsibility. I feel like you always had that in the back of your mind. Yeah, used responsibly. It seems to be decreasing depression, you know, like expanding your sense of self. I'm fascinated with that line of research. I'm fascinated with other techniques that are being used, like technologies like transcranial direct stimulation, these like caps you can put on your head.

You go in the brain, you put something in there.

It doesn't go in the brain, no, it's like a thinking cap. You're gonna be able to buy it from Walmart someday. What is it gonna do? You put in your head, it deactivates certain parts of your brain and turns up the juice on the creative parts of your brain. It allows you to overcome thinking blocks, you know, like... But it's also showing some promise for depression. Yeah, it's not a placebo. I have never been under, but it's non-invasive. And apparently people who say it just feels a tingle. And it doesn't last forever. I mean, it's time limited as well. It's not like your prefrontal cortex is forever going to be deactivated. So that's kind of interesting. I think there's a lot of hot areas. I find the narcissism research on the topic of vulnerable narcissism that I've studied.

Yeah, I saw this in your book too. What does this mean? vulnerable narcissism.

It's a more, it's, it's, it's, it's, you feel like you're entitled to special.

Privileges not because you think you're great.

But because you've suffered in the past. Who?

Explain that. That opens up a whole, that opens up vulnerable narcissism.

That opens up a whole can. So, because I'm a victim. Because in my past, I've been wronged.

I've been wronged in particular. I deserve everything.

Who?

Man. That's a hot topic.

I know.

That's a touchy.

But at the end of our interview, we don't want to. Yeah, that's a whole other interview. So why.

Well, let's talk about it briefly. What does vulnerable narcissism do to the person who is being that state? What is the benefit to that? And what is the negative side of saying, I'm entitled to this because this happened to me when I was younger, or this happened to my family or my parents, or this happened you know, I didn't get what I asked for.

It's a very self-limiting viewpoint. It really does hold you back from growth. It closes your interactions with others. It makes you miss out on opportunities for growth with others, you know? And it's not a good way to make friends. It's not a good way to be trusted by others. It's not a good way to, it's not the best way to live one's life, a good life.

So vulnerable narcissism equals entitlement essentially, right?

Well, here's the thing. I'll tell you my three-factor narcissism model.

Give it to me.

Entitlement is the thread that runs through all four. It is the heart, as you put it. It is the heart of all forms of narcissism. But they're moderators. So people who tend to be more extroverted tend to become more grandiose narcissists, whereas those who are introverted tend to become more vulnerable narcissists. Now, I'm not saying that most extroverts are not grandiose narcissists, most introverts are not vulnerable narcissists, but I'm saying if you have the entitlement plus extroversion or do you have the entitlement plus the neuroticism. It's actually actually more less introverts and I would say more the trait neuroticism. So you can be an entitled, you can be an entitled neurotic or you can be entitled grandiose extrovert and they're two forms. Sure. Does that make sense?

Yeah, of course. Okay.

And if you're neurotic, you see threat everywhere. You think everyone's out to get you, you start to get a complex. That's vulnerable narcissism. I've been wronged and I don't trust anyone. The slightest criticism, you go crazy. You're fragile and you're fragile within, so you tend to be more prone to inner depression. whereas grandiose narcissists tend to take out their anger on others, but they tend to be content and happy. Actually, we found research showing that grandiose narcissists score higher in life satisfaction, even.

Though everyone else around them shows lower life satisfaction.

Because they get all their anger or frustration out on everyone else. They take it out on everyone else. They fire everyone in your cabinet, for instance. It's not my fault. But the vulnerable narcissist tends to be the one that shows up in in the clinical realm, I think, because they.

Keep it all inside.

They keep it all inside and they implode instead of exploding.

Interesting.

In a way, I think it's a lot easier to have compassion for the vulnerable narcissist. It's harder to have compassion for the grandiose narcissist, you know?

Sure, sure. Wow.

Even though we should have compassion for everyone.

Of course, of course, yeah. How does someone Command respect. As opposed to saying, you need to respect me, what's the person that is actually well respected? What is their way of being? How do they build themselves up so that they actually do attract respect, opportunities, love? What does that mean?

We answered that earlier though, with the respect. Yeah, you answered that with the dancing example. You didn't command the respect at a certain point of time. There are people who command respect by their presence, by their essence, their being, and I think that crosses introversion, extroversion, alliance. There's a lot of quiet people who command respect, not even by talking. Some people can just enter a room and sit down, and everyone's like, who's this person?

What have they done in order to command that, you think?

They do have a very, very strong core belief in themselves.

You mean self-esteem? They have a strong confidence level, they have a strong belief, calm, what is that?

I would say, I would go further, I would say in my sailboat metaphor, their boat is rock solid. And that's all the things that I put in the boat. They feel safe, they don't feel like they need people to be happy. For their own, even loneliness. You know, they don't feel, they don't need people to satisfy that hole. And then they feel a sense of self-worth and they feel like they've mastered things in their lives. I think when you get the complete package of the boat, you know, I think that probably you start to witness someone who commands respect without commanding it.

One of the things that was on my fear list was When I was younger, in my early 20s, I remember thinking like, I'd never had a spare hour by myself, really. It was always like, okay, I'm in school, I'm in sports class, and then right afterwards, it's like, I go hang out with friends until I go to bed. And there was never this, and when I was alone, I was like insecure. So I remember saying, I need to be alone. I get to be alone to master this. insecurity. This is a fear of mine. And for years, I said, I'm going on dates by myself. I'm going to lunch by myself. I'm going to movies alone, which was, like, terrifying to go to a movie by myself. I was like, this is weird. I would do everything that I could alone. Not my whole life, but I was.

Like, I'm scheduling alone time. Do you feel like you're a loner now?

No, no. Did you feel like. No, I felt like I was insecure. I needed to be. I I only could be around other people to be happy. I see. And so I was like, I need to be alone, learn how to be happy on my own, enjoy my own company, which I didn't enjoy. And then I started to really like fall in love with myself, if that sounds weird, by being like, okay, like I just enjoy being here. I enjoy my own thoughts. But before I didn't enjoy. I love being with myself.

Exactly. No, it's great.

And I think it is great, yeah.

I think that's-- I laugh at myself all the time. Yeah.

And be okay with it. Yeah, happy of being alone. So it's now become like, something I'm really grateful to be alone a lot of time to have the space and time. But something we talked about as well is in terms of confidence, self-worth knowing that I am enough. But mastery, you said, is also another element. Is it mastering one thing? Is it mastering many things? Is it the more things you master, the more confident you become? Or you can just be the, you know, an excellent researcher for your whole life, and that will still give you confidence in other areas of your life?

I don't know if you have to achieve. Mastery seems like a different concept than necessary external achievement. Abraham Maslow distinguished between self-actualization and achievement. He actually thought that he wasn't self-actualized, but he thought his wife Bertha's mother was self-actualized. And his wife's mother was just very good person. He actually viewed self-actualization as a project of understanding who are good people in the world. He started his whole project with the Good Human Being Notebook, the GHB Notebook, he called it. I got access to it. It was really cool.

Really?

Yeah, it was cool to see. He has the Good Human Being Notebook where he just took notes of people. That's how his whole research started. People don't realize that. It started with him just observing who are the best specimens of humanity that he could find. He called it, and that's really what his search was, to understand. And that's not always tied to achievement.

Yeah, success and money doesn't mean you're the best human being.

And you can master things. You can master a craft without getting the accolades, without getting the achievement. The question is, are you proud of your life? I mean, isn't that it? That's right. You know, like you have to be, you can make that decision. You can't, people read so many self-help books, they have gurus, they have this and that, thinking that someone else is going to ask, and you can pay people to make that answer for you. You know, there are people that would be happy to take your money and tell you what you should do in your life before you can be proud of your life. But I hate to break it to you, but you know, it's like you're the only one you know, they can decide, you know, and if you're just, if you're proud of, you know, like, the relationships you've cultivated and, and your, your, your job, you know, and you're like, that's enough for you. That should be, that should be enough for you. Yeah. Yeah.

I love this, man.

Yeah.

What's the thing you think you were prepared?

You're like, you really came prepared.

I love this stuff, though. I love this stuff. Yeah. A couple final questions for you. What's the question you wish more people would ask you about this topic around transcendence and self-actualization?

I think like, I don't know if it's a cop-out to say, I wish people would ask me less around this topic. They often ask me how-tos, you know, how do you self-actualize? It's like, you know, the point of the whole point of self-actualization is what does it mean to be the best you in the whole freaking world? Like no one else has as much potential to be you than you. People who spend their whole lives trying to be someone else, like it's like, for instance, they play basketball and they're like, I'm gonna be Michael Jordan. Basically what you're saying is, Hey Scott, how do I self-actualize someone else's self? What the hell does that mean? What a stupid question! How do I self-actualize someone else's self? That doesn't make any sense. That's the shortest way to waste your life. The question that is a good question, but that people don't ask me, that I want people to ask me, is not how to, but what does it mean to live a self-actualized life? Not how to self-actualize. What does it mean? And it means finding the life that works best for you, owning it, creating yourself who you want to become like you did, you created it, you know, you create it. And you take full ownership over what you are and what you've decided. That's it.

Not vulnerable narcissism. I love that. I want people to get the book, powerful book, Transcend: the New Science of Self-Actualization by Scott Barry Kaufman. Make sure you guys check this out. Really powerful. It's like the researched version of a great self-help book with all the data science that's in there that backs all these nerdy self-help. It's really cool. and I enjoy it very much. For me, it's you've got a lot of great stuff in here that helps you just improve the quality of your life, your relationships. So many great exercises and examples in here. Really love what you created. Very excited for the growth and success of this book. Make sure you check out Transcend.

Thank you.

Two final questions. This is called the Three Truths. I don't think I asked you this the last time. 'cause I don't think I started asking this question until later. But I'd like you to answer a hypothetical question scenario. That you get to live as long as you want to live, and you get to accomplish all of your greatest dreams. But at some point, you gotta turn the lights off in your life and transcend into the next realm. You gotta leave your body and go to the next place. And you've accomplished everything. But for whatever reason, you gotta take all of your written or audio or video work with you. So, no one has any of your written word or recordings of your content anymore. Wow. It's all gone to the next place with you.

Holy shit.

But you get to leave behind three lessons that you know to be true. The three lessons you've learned that have helped you and supported you throughout your life that you would then share with the world that this is all we would have to remember you by are these three lessons or what I like to call the three truths. What would you say would be your three truths?

Don't play the games people impose on you. You have a choice to love. And are you getting this down? Yeah, yeah. 'Cause I don't know what's coming out of my mouth next. And trust yourself. Are they good? Are those good? I don't know. Of course. Yeah. It's just what I felt. It's your truth. It's what I felt. Yeah. I didn't know what was gonna come.

Out of my mouth. That's what I felt. It's your truth, yeah, I like that. I wanna acknowledge you for a second, Scott, for your constant pursuit of finding these answers in science and in research. Thank you. You do the work that most people don't have the patience or time to do. You study things deeper and deeper. then people are willing to study them to find... and then you bridge the gap from hard things to understand, science of things, into making it more accessible, which is what I really appreciate about you, is bringing the nerdy science into practicality, into a place where we can understand it and use it for our benefit. And so I acknowledge you for making this art, the work, and bringing it to life for your authenticity and constantly showing up for who you are and the journey that you're on, man. I really acknowledge you for this. Thank you. Likewise. I want people to get the book. They can follow you on social media. Is there one website that they should.

Go to as well to learn more about you? Yeah, you know, scottbarrykauffman.com has like all the goodies. I also host a podcast called the Psychology Podcast that you've been on. Yes, great. And people might be interested in some of those interviews. But can I just praise you for a second as well? Sure. Would you mind if I... I am so proud of just like Be Love watching you with Be Love over the years and what you've built up and the way that the manner you have, the way you command presence by selflessly getting outside of yourself in your interviews.

Thank you.

It's a beautiful thing to behold.

I appreciate it, man. Thank you very much. I've learned that hiding or trying to pretend that I'm better than I am or that I have it all put together, that I'm perfect in some way or polished for me was the old version of me that didn't serve me about eight years ago and I realized that like, oh, I've got a lot of crap I need to let go of. So, it's a constant journey of being love and I think it takes being vulnerable and talking about what you said, well here's why I'm out of my life and relationships and stuff. I think the more human beings are being that way, we drop the narcissism, we drop the entitlement, and we're saying, well, we're just figuring it out.

And sometimes when you're vulnerable, you never know what happens. And who knows?

Maybe my Instagram will light up with women who want to be the one. I love that.

But I'm not needy. I'm not needy. You don't need it right now. I don't need it. I don't need it. I'm cool.

I'm cool.

I'm cool.

But really love this interview.

I'm so glad we were able to do this.

Appreciate it, man. Final question, what's your definition of greatness?

It's a wonderful question. Geez, I think I need to think about that. Greatness for me is realizing your full powers of your entire being. bringing your entire being to the table. So not leaving any part of you on the table, but bring your entire being on the table so it can have the maximum positive impact on the world.

Scott, thanks my man. Appreciate it.

Thank you. Appreciate you too.

If I saw something was difficult, I wanted to master it. I was driven to do that.

Just to see how far I could go in these multiple multiple directions. And that left me vulnerable to one thing. It left me vulnerable to being in a situation where I wasn't healthy enough to manage it.