Hello and welcome back to Chasing Excellence, a show about chasing what truly matters.
My name is Patrick Cummings.
I am here as always with Ben Bergeron.
Good to see you.
How are you, my friend?
Doing great, Patrick.
Excited to chat about this.
This is going to be fun.
Yes, me too.
Thank you everybody out there for joining us.
We're going back to Hopper Talk.
Hopper Talk is where I clip out some interesting bits of wisdom from things I've been watching, reading or listening to, and present them here for fodder for our conversation.
Last time we did this, we had clips from Elizabeth Gilbert and Simon Sinek.
This time around we've got bits from a TED Talk by Kelly Corrigan and an old clip about happiness from a psychologist named Hillel Einhorn.
Before we get into it, I wanted to mention something.
Ben, you know this.
Some folks out there know this.
I wrote a kid's book.
It's called The ABCs of Being Happy and Healthy.
26 Little Lessons for Kids Who Want to Grow Up to be super wonderful.
And it's on Amazon for folks out there.
Super cool.
It's good, Patrick.
You should be proud.
Thank you very much.
Yeah.
So if you've got kids out there, if you've got friends who've got kids or colleagues who have kids, with the holidays coming up, I think it might be a great gift.
It's kind of written for the seven to 12-ish age range.
So again, it's called The ABCs of Being Happy and Healthy.
You can find it on Amazon, or I will also put a link in the show notes too, if you want to make it easy.
Okay.
First one first, we're going to do a little clip from a TED Talk.
I love this TED Talk.
We'll link to all this stuff from Kelly Corrigan.
The TED Talk is called To Love is to Be Brave.
So we're going to listen to just a two, two and a half minute clip.
And on the other side of it, Ben and I will chat.
I've interviewed 228 people from my PBS show and my podcast people with huge careers, Grammys and Pulitzers and NBA championships.
And I listen to their stories, and I'm duly impressed.
But I'll tell you the ones they know the best, the ones they can't tell without choking up.
The moment when Bryan Stevenson's grandmother or Steve Kerr's father or Samantha Power's stepfather or Cecile Richards' mom was right there with the right words or the right silence at the right moment.
This bravery I'm talking about might even be better understood if you look at the smaller moments of injury in family life, when there's not really an answer.
Or it might be your fault, or it might remind you of something you'd rather forget, or because people are so suggestible and the wrong tone or expression or phrasing might somehow make things worse.
Say your kid was dropped from a group text.
They were in it, they mattered, they belonged, and then poof, or your husband blew the big deal at work.
And how should we calibrate the exquisite bravery to respond productively when someone in our family looks at us and says do I know you?
I weigh myself before and after every meal.
I hear voices.
I steal.
I'm using again.
He raped me.
She says I raped her.
I cut myself.
I bought a gun.
I stopped taking the medication.
I can't stop making online bets.
Sometimes I wonder if more life is really worth all this effort.
Bravery is the great guts to move closer to the wound.
Tell me more.
What else?
Go on.
That's how the brave shine, that's all they do.
They say, tell me more.
What else?
Go on.
Even if they're scared of what might happen next, even if they have no training or experience to prepare them for this moment.
In families, bravery is mostly just sitting there with a posture that communicates.
I can hear anything you want to tell me and a nice, warm face of love that says this is so hard, but you will figure it out.
I'm just going to pull up the one thing out of that that was really resonant to me.
Bravery is the great guts to move closer to the wound.
As composed as a war nurse, holding eye contact and saying these seven words tell me more, what else?
And go on.
Really, really good.
Again, Kelly Corrigan, to love is to be brave.
I first came across this months ago and I think I actually sent you I think maybe James sent a clip of this and then I found the full TED Talk and I just made a note to do something with this.
And we just wrapped up The latest book club inside the Chase Club, which was we read the Build the Life You Want.
And as I was preparing for this conversation, a bit from Build the Life You Want by Arthur Brooks and Oprah popped out or came to mind.
And so I found it.
And I just want to read a little bit of that because I think it provides a bit more context, a bit more layer for us to sort of chat with.
And it's the distinction between being empathetic and being compassionate.
And so a little bit from the book.
Making empathy a full-fledged virtue and a protective emotional caffeine requires adding a few complementary behaviors that convert it into compassion.
One comprehensive study of compassion defines it as recognizing suffering, understanding it and feeling empathy for the sufferer, but also tolerating the uncomfortable feelings they and the suffering person are experiencing and crucially, acting to alleviate the suffering.
The key is to use your conscious faculties to push beyond your feelings.
Do the work to become strong in the face of pain and you will benefit yourself and others.
To become a more compassionate and thus happier person, start by working on your toughness.
To be tougher in the face of another's pain doesn't mean feeling it less.
Rather, you should learn to feel the pain without being impaired to act.
So let's just start there.
Okay, so first off, Kelly's TED Talk is phenomenal.
And I think the most powerful part is the examples that she gives, right?
When someone says that to you, she lays it out well.
It's like, well...
I don't want to say the wrong thing.
I don't even want to say the right thing with the wrong tone.
I'm afraid of being a part of this conversation.
So you don't lean in and you avoid.
And that's the opposite of bravery, right?
And that's what her whole point is.
And as she says in you know, a family setting, like bravery is love.
And it could just be a matter of sitting there with.
I think she said like the posture that shows I can hear every word you're saying.
She says in terms of like a war nurse, which I agree is like that.
If there's the appropriate kind of dovetail from her message of bravery into that of compassion, it is that war nurse right.
Which the war nurse... is really the conversation between empathy and compassion.
And maybe to back up a little bit I think we've talked about this before because I know we certainly did a lot as my internal team.
Empathy was a big area of focus for us for a very, very long time because Brene Brown brought it to light.
And the way she brought to light was it is the necessary and effective step forward and past sympathy.
And most people wanted to be.
You know, before she kind of explained this thought of sympathy as a very strong personal trait.
And the way she explained it was sympathy is Looking over the well at somebody that's fallen into it and saying, oh my gosh, that's so terrible.
I feel so bad for you.
And that's what sympathy is, right?
You've lost a loved one.
You lost your job.
It's I feel bad for you.
The way she explains empathy is getting down into the well and feeling the feelings with them.
Which, if you stop there, does feel like, wow, that is a much more meaningful emotion.
That is way more connected.
But what you realize and what I think Arthur Brooks has done such a nice job of, and the way that Kelly espouses it in the TED Talk with the Warners, is that might not be the most productive thing.
And if empathy is feeling the feel that they're feeling –
Well, if they are distraught anxious overwhelmed, you're feeling anxious, distraught and overwhelmed.
Whereas compassion is that tolerance for discomfort.
And it is productive.
It is that intersection of toughness and sensitivity.
And it brings with it a certain strength that's required to face this without being overwhelmed.
And if we are to think about what is going to move people forward, It is not just the nurse by the side of the bed that will cry with you.
It was somebody that can help you heal, help you become better.
And I really love that kind of is greater than is greater than framework of.
Certainly, sympathy is better than disconnectiveness.
Indifference is the right word, right?
It's certainly there is indifference.
Well, sympathy is greater than indifference.
Empathy.
I'm going to get in the well with you is greater than sympathy.
But compassion is.
I will not only relate, I will not only feel the feel, I will not only be here with the posture that shows I am listening wholeheartedly to everything you have to say, But I'm also going to have the toughness to withstand this discomfort and help climb us both out of the well.
That is a powerful place to be.
I think it really does start with her seven words.
Tell me more.
What else?
Go on.
As opposed to the very first thing, which is indifference, right?
That like, whoa, this is too heavy.
This is too much.
I don't want to make this thing worse.
So I'm going to feel bad for you as I walk past the well being like, sorry about that.
Wish that wasn't happening to you.
And moving on.
Getting in the well and then going down there and go, tell me more about this.
And then working your way out of it together.
Yep.
I think the interesting part as well is the focusing on others, is the turning point between certainly sympathy, empathy and then compassion, because Sympathy is like.
I'm so sorry for that.
I hear you.
I understand that this is difficult.
But you're protecting yourself to a large degree.
It's not until you move into again the way that Brooks defines it, until you move into compassion, that you're actually putting yourself on the hook for a little bit right.
It's like, I might not say the right word.
I might actually make this worse before I make it better.
But in order to do that, you've got to put yourself on the hook a little bit as well.
And I think that's the part that distinguishes or differentiates between the empathetic and the compassionate, or certainly empathetic, and the brave is they're willing to put themselves on the line, at least to the degree that is necessary.
And everybody else isn't.
Right.
I like that a lot.
And that's where I think the bravery comes in, right?
Yeah.
If you're being empathetic, doesn't necessarily take a level of bravery, because I'm just going to jump in the well.
We're going to be in this mess together.
But me trying to give suggestions on how to climb out of the well and maybe my suggestion isn't right because you slip and you fall and you actually get more hurt along the way takes a lot of bravery.
It takes a real lot.
You know, we went pretty deep onto this as a team for a while.
And I didn't realize this until I read our book club.
I didn't have the language for that.
It's so funny because Brene Brown is the one that's so into like.
Language is so powerful when you have these different words.
People can only usually describe three emotions. happy, angry, or sad.
Like if they feel frustrated, but they can't say frustrated, then they go to anger.
It's like they mislabel it.
And it's like, oh my God, like, wow.
Like having a ability to have the language to describe things is so powerful.
And that's what I found when I found this difference between empathy and compassion.
Had I known that when we were exploring empathy as a team, we could have shortcut a lot of the words I come to mind is like hardship or troubles, but then we got ourselves into a bit of a mess.
Because that's what we were doing as a team was like, well, tell me about it.
I want to feel this with you.
And I don't know if it's his terms or not, but I came across this shortly after reading it.
There's a term called toxic empathy because it immobilizes you.
You're immobile.
You are also becoming overwhelmed.
You are also becoming anxious.
You are also becoming distraught.
You are also becoming fearful.
That's not helpful.
As opposed to productive compassion right, and one immobilizes, one activates.
And if we're really trying to actually move this thing forward, i don't want to discount empathy right, because empathy is so much farther along.
You know it's, it's the b right, like indifference is an f.
You know sympathy is a c, You know empathy is a B, but compassion is the A Like, and of course we want to strive for that.
Well, it takes work though, is the deal.
There's an eight week course at Stanford that teaches compassion.
Not empathy, not sympathy, but teaches this.
It teaches it in all different settings from work to family, to trauma, to all these other things.
And the big take home is not the course.
The big take home is that it is teachable.
They've done plenty of neuroscience to support it where the parts of the brain that light up during empathy are the same ones that light up during compassion.
But the difference is there are other areas that light up as well, like the prefrontal cortex, which is the decision-making.
So it's like, you're not just leaving it to the feeling thing.
I don't want to feel like people come off as like a hard-O, because you're still feeling all the feels.
This is the difference.
All of the feels are still there.
You're just doing it in a productive way.
And so I said, it's the intersection of toughness and sensitivity.
It's not leaving sensitivity to be tough.
And I really like in terms of like a team, dynamic at work, or even like parents, like what better place to be as a parent than to be a compassionate parent rather than empathetic?
She said, your kid gets cut out of a group text.
What do you do?
Yeah.
Like the sympathy one goes, that does suck, Johnny.
I'm so sorry about that, right?
The empathetic one feels that, feels what that must feel like.
The compassion one not only feels that as deeply, but also goes, okay, now what?
Now what are we going to do?
The last little bit from that chunk from build the life you want, I just think is a great metaphor.
And it fits into what you're saying, which is compassionate.
People are like Marines after training just as likely to feel pain as anyone else, but able to bear it and function as a tough thing.
That's such like if you just like a mental image of yourself in those times, in those conversations is yeah, we've been here before and we know the way out.
And that's the difference.
I came across this.
Compassion is acting decisively.
It's a tolerance for discomfort.
It is the strength required to face suffering without being overwhelmed.
Yes.
The war nurse.
I love that.
Okay, we're going to wrap it up there.
Again, that TED Talk is called To Love Is To Be Brave by Kelly Corgan.
We are going to jump into our second, but first let's say thanks to a few sponsors real quick.
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Okay, let's get into our second clip here.
This is from.
He was an American psychologist, played a role in the development of the field of behavioral decision theory.
His name is Hillel Einhorn.
And here is, it's a short clip, about a minute.
Now there are some interesting issues there by looking for evidence opposed or evidence about non-occurrences.
And this was brought home to me dramatically in a Chinese restaurant one night.
After the meal, I bought the usual fortune cookies and I opened the cookie and I read my fortune.
It was a very interesting one.
It's a don't think about all of the things that you want that you don't have.
Think of all of the things that you don't want that you don't have.
Oh, that kind of stopped me dead.
I don't know who writes these things.
This is a very interesting one.
So I immediately draw a little two-by-two table.
Want, not want, have, not have.
And of course, you think about what we want, that we have.
What we want that we don't have.
What we don't want that we have.
But rarely do we ever think about what we don't want and what we don't have.
And because that don't want, don't have set of settings large.
We're actually a lot happier than we think we are.
The audio in the last bit got a little bit wonky.
I couldn't fix it.
This is an old clip, but randomly on YouTube.
So I'm just going to read that last bit.
And this is what he says.
And because that don't want, don't have, sell is so large.
We're actually a lot happier than we think we are.
I'm going to do a little bit more context to this before we dive in.
I found this clip on David Epstein, who's the author of Range on his newsletter, his sub stack.
A little bit of interesting tidbit.
He wrote.
Einhorn shared this wisdom just a few months before he died of cancer at the age of 45, which just provides a little bit more poignancy.
But more than that, I wanted to try to describe and on the blog, and again, we'll link to it.
Epstein put, he created this two by two.
And a two by two for those folks to imagine it's like.
The Eisenhower matrix is another one we've talked about.
Four quadrants, split it in the middle.
Top left quadrant are things you want and things that you have and that makes you happy.
Top right quadrant, things that you want that you don't have and that makes you unhappy.
Bottom left quadrant, Things that you don't want, but you have, makes you unhappy.
And then the message here the bottom right quadrant where, if you think about it in the way that Einhorn is describing it, is massive is filled with things you don't want and you don't have.
And when you recognize that, it will make you very, very happy.
So that's just the context to this.
I'd love to know first thoughts.
Okay so, without seeing the matrix, maybe we should give some examples of that, because it's Yeah, that's great.
Okay, so the top left is the...
Things you want and things you have.
I have this and I want this, right?
So I have my two working legs.
I have an awesome wife.
I have great kids.
I have a job I love.
I have safety and security.
I have freedom.
All those things, right?
I have abundance of friends, food and like.
Those things make us happy.
Um correct um, i want, but i don't have it right.
I want that kind of car, i want to make this much money, i want that job title, i want that many followers, i want that body, i want that ability, i want right those things, exactly Yep.
Then in the bottom left, that's the don't want, but I have.
Yep.
And that makes us unhappy.
That makes us unhappy.
A crappy car.
I have a job I don't like.
I live in a place that my friends don't live in.
I live in the Northeast and it's always crappy weather.
Exactly.
So the things that I don't want, but I have.
And that makes us, of course, unhappy.
And then his contention is the biggest of those buckets is the things that I don't have, that I don't want.
Don't want.
I don't have cancer.
My kids don't have... major health issues.
I don't have smallpox right now.
I don't have a toxic relationship I'm dealing with.
I don't have any addictions in my life.
I don't have the fear of losing my job tomorrow.
I don't have war at my front door.
I don't have to walk home from work.
I don't have to, like all of those types of things.
And you're getting at the point, which is that you could go through that list forever.
We could do this for 30 minutes and you would never run out of things that you don't want and you don't have.
Yes.
And it's just a brilliant message on what we focus on is what we get.
So yeah, it's another framework to exemplify how we misjudge happiness.
We give so much attention to certain things and omit the other ones.
I like Mo Goddard's Saul for Happy.
His book that he wrote, which is happiness, is reality, minus expectations.
It's the simplest I've ever come across and I've yet to see it not stand up.
Give it to us one more time.
It is reality minus expectations.
Yeah.
So let's put that into some practices, right?
You're up for a job review.
You think that you might get a 5% pay raise, right?
What actually happens is they give you a 10% pay raise.
Okay, so your reality exceeded your expectations.
That makes you happy.
You're expecting a 5% pay raise and they give you a 3% pay raise.
That makes you unhappy.
If they give you that 10 pay raise, but you were expecting 20, the reality didn't change, but you're pissed off because it did not meet your expectations.
The example is you're going to go compete at the CrossFit Games.
You expect to be on the podium.
You come in fifth place.
You're pissed.
The alternative, you're going to go to the CrossFit Games.
You didn't even think you were going to make the games.
You're just happy to be there.
You think that maybe you might be able to make the first cut.
I mean, you might be able to finish in the top 30.
You finished in fifth place.
You're ecstatic.
You're so happy.
Same exact result.
The only thing that changed was your expectation.
Well, if our expectation, so where does this all come from, right?
Where does this all come from?
And I think that there's a small handful of things that really make us misjudge our happiness.
And the first one is that focusing on the wrong things, which is, you know, it's this Daniel Kahneman, thinking fast and slow.
Nobel Prize winner.
Nobel Prize?
I think it was a Nobel Prize winner.
He calls this misguided focus, which is we think that the rays, we think that the car, we think that the things in that, things that I don't have, that I want, we think that getting those in that quadrant, we think that when we get those, that will make us happy.
They bring us short-term pleasure and then they go away.
That's what ends up happening.
So pay raises, job titles, accolades, awards, increase in pay, getting more different possessions.
Exactly.
We get it, right?
As opposed to...
More meaningful things like better relationships, living with purpose and meaning, your health right.
Those are actually the things that science tells us actually bring happiness.
It's one of the big differences.
We seek as human beings, we seek the transient instead of the long-lasting, because we have a presence bias right, which is we wanted this thing now.
We want the thing now.
And we are so bad at visualizing what's going to make ourselves happy in the future that we go for the short term now.
Instead, we remember that the last time we got a raise, we felt good.
So we think that that's the thing.
I need that thing again.
I need that little burst.
I need that little thing.
Remember how good that piece of cake felt, right?
So we go for that thing.
And what this ends up causing us to do is when we get home from a long, tiring day of work, We have a choice of.
I mean, they're going to sit on the couch, veg out with some Chinese food and we'll get a fortune cookie.
Maybe we're as lucky as he was to Einhorn to get the awesome fortune at the end.
So we get some Chinese food, watch Netflix, such a long day at work.
That's going to feel so good.
That's going to make me so happy right now.
As opposed to the thing that won't make me happy right now, which is go to the gym.
But which of those practices done over a decade are going to create the long-term lasting happiness?
And the answer is so obvious, it's not even worth stating.
The other part about this is that we get the misguided focus of those accolades awards possessions, those things.
But what also happens is they go away really quickly because of what's called hedonic adaptation.
And what that means is these things that make us happy last for very, very short periods of time, because we are so so hardwired for improvement as human beings that what is new and exciting now immediately becomes the new bar.
It's kind of like when you're going to look to buy a new house.
You're like, I'm going to look for a house.
I think that $400,000 is the price range we should be in.
I think we should be in the $400,000 price range.
And then by mistake, you just sort of look at one that's 500, half a million.
You can't even look at $400,000 houses anymore.
You're like, okay, well that's the new low bar, right?
It's the same thing.
Here is A really poignant example of this, in terms of like, how quickly we adapt to things that were once amazing, that we take so for granted right now.
Just 60 years ago.
Just 60 years ago very very, very few people in the United States had a hot shower.
Like talk about something that we just take for granted.
Meaning our grandparents grew up without hot showers.
They did not, they came about, they became mainstream in the 50s and 60s.
Only 1% of households had indoor plumbing in the 1920s.
That's a hundred years.
Like there's no one like kind of waking up going like, thank God my toilet flushed today.
Like that's just a miracle.
That is amazing.
Like I am the luckiest dog alive.
Like my toilet flushed and I lifted up this faucet and water came out of it.
Water is in my house. because we so quickly adapt to these new circumstances.
It's just like hedonic adaptation.
It's like, okay, that's the thing, now what's next?
And we're problem seeking beings.
Once we have something solved, we go to do the next thing.
It's what made our species so amazing.
We should like, done, got that.
What's next?
Make it better.
That is status quo.
It's like we all drive around in cars.
Like that is insane.
And we've realized this is only like three generations ago.
We're not talking about like ancient Rome.
We're not talking about like when Jesus was around.
We're not talking about like cave and Paleolithic times.
We're talking about our grandparents and their parents.
Our grandparents' parents were on horses.
The fastest that news could spread was as fast as a horse.
If something happened in Europe and we want to hear about it here, it had to get on a horse, be ridden to the coast, be put on a sailboat, sailed across the Atlantic Ocean, then put on another horse.
And that letter was then delivered to somebody.
That's how fast information traveled.
And now we're like pissed off because like, you don't have cell phone coverage.
It's like somebody who doesn't respond to your text message right away.
Oh my God.
Right.
And then the other one on top of that is we have, you know, negativity bias.
So we just we talked about this a fair amount, but it's hardwired into us for survival mechanisms to know and seek out the bad things.
Because if you don't remember which berry you like better, do you like blackberries or blueberries better?
Your DNA being passed on doesn't matter, right?
But you remembering that that berry killed your buddy Fred is really important to remember.
So we just have these things working against us for our happiness.
And the last one I'll just kind of layer in there because We'll pull it back to his grid.
But it's just like social comparison.
And it's, I want these things in the grid.
I want that thing.
I want the thing that they have that I want.
And whenever we do that, we never socially compare down.
We never go like, thank God I have running water when a big portion of the world does not.
Thank God I have my ability to read when a big portion of the world does not.
Thank God I don't have trash piling up in feces outside my home when the big percentage of the world does not.
We go.
I don't have the automated toilet seat, you know, the one that goes up and down.
I don't have the Bentley.
I don't have the latest iPhone.
I don't have those earrings.
I don't have those shoes.
I don't have that body.
I don't have that earning potential.
And again, it's that... that's going to create the gap between our happiness.
And all this is like.
Well, if you can override the negativity bias, the social comparison, understand the hedonic adaptation and that treadmill that we're on, that we're always trying to keep up, keep up, keep up, that we're had this bias towards recency that's present bias.
You get to start to understand why people don't pay attention to that bottom right-hand corner.
And when you do do that, and this is like gratitude practice, right?
And a lot of times when I'm doing gratitude practice, the way that they teach it is not just...
Like I'm so grateful that I have a dog.
I'm so grateful that I have a car.
I'm so grateful that I have a loving family.
It's I'm so grateful that I don't.
I'm so grateful that I don't have X, Y and Z, And you realize that that practice could go on forever.
To your point.
I think it's both obvious but worth mentioning, which is, like the whole point of this, why I think this idea is so powerful.
Is that something we've talked about before, which is like the power of our attention and the power of what we focus on creating what we see more of what we give our attention to creates our perspective, and our perspective creates literally what we believe the world is.
It's nothing more than that.
And so if we can focus more of our attention, more of our focus on, in this case, the things that live inside, that don't want, don't have bucket, we will see more of it and we will begin to live in a world that is filled with things that we do not have, that we do not want versus, if we spend all of our attention, or enough of our attention, on things that we want but don't have, we will spend all of our time, all of our energy, chasing those things, even when those things, as we know, aren't the things that actually make us happy.
And so it's like writing the script for ourselves, when we take control of our attention, when we own our attention.
It's writing the script that we are going to then live by.
It's creating the world in which we exist.
And so this isn't just like a frou-frou like yeah, we should be more grateful and we should have a gratitude practice.
Like.
No, this is creating literally the world outside of yourself that you see, that you pay attention to, that you exist in.
And it's easy to forget that.
It's easy to forget like meditation.
It's not like a thing we do to be healthy people.
There's a point to it.
And it's to create the focus, create the attention, so that we are existing in a world that we want to be in.
So well said, Patrick.
Love that.
It's, yeah, owning the attention which leads to perspective, which shapes the storytelling.
And storytelling, that narrative is our lives.
Yep, exactly.
That is our lives.
I love that you brought that in because that's what it is.
Yeah, that's the right word for it.
Love that, man.
Yep.
Cool.
Okay.
And again, I'll put links to both those clips or both those little videos.
If folks want to watch them for themselves, dive even deeper again, especially that Ted talk.
I'll put those links in the show notes.
And that was fun.
That was always fun.
Thank you so much.
Thank you everybody out there for listening.
Thank you for your ratings and your reviews.
And I'll be back soon for a brand new episode of Chasing Excellence.
