So have you ever had that moment where you just kind of feel like the world, or maybe in one person or community, was kind of conspiring against you or holding your back or keeping you stuck or trapped, or small kind of like you're a victim without a whole lot of power to change things?
If so, you are not alone.
But sometimes there is a meaningful difference between feeling trapped or beaten down and the actual facts of our experience.
And that's at the heart of today's conversation about the surprising difference between being a victim and living with what psychology now calls a victim mindset, and what we can do about it.
Think about those moments when you catch yourself feeling like the world is against you, like just every circumstance is a conspiracy to hold you back.
What if that feeling itself could become a signal not of hopelessness, but of an opportunity to transform your entire relationship with life's challenges?
And this is not also saying put your head in the sand and ignore the reality of circumstance.
And what if boredom, of all things, could be a gateway to unlimited possibility along the way?
So my guest today is Dr Scott Barry Kaufman, a professor at Columbia University and one of the world's most cited researchers on intelligence, creativity and human potential.
As director of the Center for Human Potential and founder of Self-Actualization Coaching, Scott has dedicated his career to understanding how we can realize our fullest potential.
In his latest book Rise Above, Overcome a Victim Mindset, Empower Yourself and Realize Your Full Potential, he offers a really fresh perspective on moving from victimhood to empowerment.
One of the things that really fascinated me in our conversation was Scott's surprising take on boredom as a state of infinite possibility rather than limitation.
We explore how changing just one word and how you talk to yourself can dramatically shift your entire experience of daily challenges.
And you're gonna wanna hear his perspective on why lowering your expectations about life might actually be a key to finding greater joy.
So excited to share this provocative conversation with you.
I'm Jonathan Fields, and this is Good Life Project.
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Scott Barry Kaufman, SBK.
Scott, it's good to be hanging out with you again.
It's been a couple of years since we sat down with mics in front of us.
You've been focusing on something that I think so many people are feeling in some way these days.
I almost don't know somebody that hasn't dropped into this state of mind.
It's this notion of feeling like you're a victim.
Yeah.
And...
Really, we're going to drop in and explore that in a lot of different ways.
But I want to make a distinction because you tease out this distinction in the beginning.
And it's the difference between victim mindset and being a victim.
Tease this out for me a little bit.
Yeah, I think that it's very important, first of all, to distinguish between these things.
Having been the recipient of a terrible event.
It can be anything abuse in childhood, it can be going through a pandemic.
I think we kind of went through a collective event situation there where we're all victims for sure of something that was out of our control.
But the victim mindset is when you stay there perpetually and you blame all your current problems on that one thing that happened to you.
And you stop taking responsibility, and even you might forget that you have agency left and you stop trying to be productive and hopeful.
It can lead to a very dark place.
It can lead to a real sense of helplessness and we can forget the resiliency that we actually have within us.
So does a victim mindset always get precipitated by actually being a victim?
That's a thing.
People do that.
People do that.
People pay the victim to get attention, to get social status, get rewards.
I tend to have less empathy for those people than I do for those who have really had truly had horrible things happen to them.
And the only thing they know how to cope is by having a victim mindset.
And I want to show compassionately, I want to show people that it's not their only option to cope.
Yeah.
I mean, I think that word compassion is really important in this conversation too.
Extremely.
Because so often you know, like somebody, maybe they are a victim, maybe they aren't an actual victim, but somehow they end up in this place where they feel like the world is against me.
Like everything's inspiring against me.
And we tend to look at that person.
And if we can't point to something objectively that put them there or maybe it was like a decade ago Like there's this tendency, that sort of like, even if you don't verbalize or say this to the person, you kind of be like seriously.
Still?
Like can't you get?
And there's like there's a level of shame and blame that we tend to sort of like offer into the.
They know it.
They feel it.
They're not... They don't like it themselves.
I mean every time they hear themselves saying, you know in conversation oh sorry, I can't go into Starbucks.
My trauma when I was three.
And...
Like they know it in their own bones.
We don't need to like doubly shame them.
And they already feel the sense of shame and they want an escape.
I mean, so many of these individuals feel stuck and imprisoned in their past.
Irving Yalom has this wonderful quote sooner or later you have to give up all hope for a better past.
Yeah.
Yeah, I love that quote.
How do we know if we're in this?
Yeah, somebody's listening to this.
And maybe they're on the other side where like all these people like, oh, yeah, they're that person.
Or maybe somebody's listening to this and they're like huh, how do I know if I'm actually like walking around carrying a victim mindset myself?
Well, really my book is about – it's funny.
I'm trying to get the subtitle changed for the reprint edition.
Really my book is about the science of self-empowerment.
And a lot of the interviews really do focus on the victimhood part.
But really what I wrote is a book about how to harness the most optimal mindset for your own success, no matter what you've been through in your life.
So, yes, it is about overcoming a victim mindset.
But I don't want to get so hung up on – diagnosing you yeah, figuring out like precisely whether or not you have the victim mindset.
Look, you know, you have the thing, you know that you're stuck.
If you feel stuck in life, you know, you're stuck right, you know and um, there's a whole science.
Yeah yeah, just to push back a little, is that true that you don't?
You don't know, that you really, you really do know?
I mean if, do you walk around?
Because do you walk around, and is there a voice inside of that?
Everyone who's experiencing this, like where they feel like the world is against them, where they're, like they really know it's not against him.
It's like if I'm the, the single unifying factor in all these different circumstances, me or me.
Are there folks who walk around and legitimately they're like?
I really do feel like the world is conspiring against me at every place in my life and I have no idea why.
And it's not me.
It's all too easy to slip into that way of thinking, which I think is a very human thing.
And I want to argue that we all fall prey to it every now and then.
Even throughout the course of our day, we might, you know, we're looking for someone to curse.
Curse the gods, curse the person in front of us, the car in front of us, whatever.
If you're in New York, you curse everyone.
Yeah, in New York, everyone's cursing each other.
And it's a very human thing.
I wanted this book to not be about like It's not just about your ex-boyfriend or it's just about your mother.
It's about our potential to kind of hold ourselves back, also through our own being a victim to ourselves.
So you know that you're harnessing this mindset when you A, you take your emotions way too seriously.
Yeah.
And you can become a victim to your emotions.
I talk about, you know, you identify with them.
You feel a little anxiety and then you think, oh, I'm an anxious person.
And that's holding you back.
You're becoming, you're victimizing yourself.
Cognitive distortions as well.
There are a whole, a whole bunch of ways in which the way that we um uh interpret situations so like.
Give me an example of cognitive distortion.
One big one, associated with the victim mindset, is seeing malevolent intent in ambiguous stimuli, which is a nerdy ass way.
A nerdy ass way, like the phrase nerdy ass.
It's a nerdy ass way of saying that um you, um You assume the worst about people.
Okay.
Even in situations where you have no information one way or the other.
And I think we do that a lot.
If we smile at someone, they don't smile back at us.
Let's say they just have a neutral facial expression.
To us, that's an act of aggression.
Yeah, comedians feel that a lot when they're on stage like, even if there's just neutral facial expressions, they feel like that's personal right, it's like the audience is against me.
Yeah, but it's very easy to kind of fall prey to and personalize things in our daily life constantly.
If someone doesn't text us back when we want to.
You know we want to have some semblance of control, but we can't really have a control over other humans.
Or you know whether or not someone's interested in us, whether or not you know there are a lot of things that it's very easy to fall into that victim mindset right.
Think of what you're grateful for in your life that's going well.
I mean, there are so many things that are much more empowering.
Yeah.
And I want to get into the empowerment side of this.
Sure.
But I do want to linger on this a little bit more, also because I'm trying to really understand the mindset.
Sure.
And also I want folks joining us to understand that this is one of those there.
But for God's grace, go I, and I will be that person at some point.
And I may be in and out of it on a regular basis.
Rather than saying, I mean, is having a victim mindset a dysfunction?
Yeah.
I think that it can lead to dysfunction in our lives, and that's where I see it often heading.
Not in and of itself.
In fact, someone asked me a really interesting question the other day.
She said, when is it good to have a victim mindset?
And I was like, okay, you know what?
I like the way you think about this.
It's not maybe always bad, but I think that on net – compared to what I call an empowerment mindset.
It often leads to a sense of helplessness.
It leads to a sense of a lack of agency.
It could give us a false sense of harmony in the moment.
It could make us feel like we're getting attention that we desperately crave, but it's not authentic connection.
It's not long-lasting connection um, people tend to.
I i really believe in the goodness of humans.
I think that um, when someone signals victimhood, i think that most humans really care about that and they really want to jump in and help.
You know that impulse to sort of like yeah, like the compassionate impulse yes, but it's also yes, and i also think that humans, at the end of the day, want um to be seen for something deeper than just their victimhood.
Does that make sense?
Yeah no, it totally does.
Well, i mean then, like What does the victim mindset want?
Yeah, I think that attention is a big one.
And help.
Sometimes, when people have been through terrible things, it's so natural to want to signal I need resources, I need help.
And in a lot of ways, that's a beautiful thing.
Right.
Mm-hmm.
We can feel it in an instant going on Instagram and you're scrolling and let's see, you see, like you know, Andrew Huberman or someone doing better than you.
You're like, oh, goddamn Andrew Huberman.
Do you know what I mean?
And then you start to get a victim mindset.
I don't know where that example came from.
Two podcasters sitting talking to each other.
But do you know what I mean?
Like it's so much healthier to catch yourself mindfully going into that headspace and not spiral downward but say huh okay, I can see where this is going.
And instead, I'm going to focus my day on what makes me unique.
What my live most unique center of being is?
What's my unique value proposition in the world?
What can I do even in the smallest way?
Just call my mom and see how she's doing today to help me appreciate again that I'm still alive.
The people I love are alive.
There's so many things to get out of that.
It doesn't lead down the best pathway.
Does that make sense to you?
Yeah.
I mean, so it's really interesting, right?
Because the way you're describing it is like, and tell me if this makes sense to you.
Sure to either deepen into a place of stuckness or, almost like activation energy, to somehow act in a more constructive way to bring us out of it.
Does that make sense?
Yeah, absolutely.
And, I think, being in touch with these different energies through regular mindfulness practice and and non-judgmentally playing around with the different energies.
I love, love doing that.
I just took a 21-day course by my friend Corey Moscaro, who I can't talk more positively about.
And I just took a 21-day course.
I take all his classes.
He's like a walking hog with wisdom.
I agree.
He's one of the most wise individuals I've ever known.
And I just took this 21-day course on overcoming your compulsions and your addictions.
And what I really like about his approach and it's one that I would like to say is my approach too is, I believe in unconditional positive regard, which is Carl Rogers.
Letting people experience things as valid non-judgmentally, and kind of figure out for themselves what works and what doesn't work.
But playing around with different energies is really beneficial.
So I practice playing around with like getting into like some things that I feel like I'm afraid I might be having compulsions and kind of seeing how that feels.
And it feels much more restricted.
It feels much more like my options are limited.
But then I started playing around in the space of embracing boredom and started to reframe boredom as actually the greatest source of possibility.
You know, starting to love boredom.
And when you're in the state of boredom, you're actually in a greater state of possibility than when you're addicted in your addicted state.
And that was a huge insight for me.
But I want to skip over that because that's what you just said is like an astonishingly powerful.
Mind-blowing.
Actually mind-blowing.
She said that a little bit more.
Yeah.
Yeah.
When you're in this compulsive or an addictive state, all your options actually narrow to your system, only wanting to reach a very, very narrow goal.
And you suddenly don't care about anything else in this world.
And that's not the state of pure possibility, pure bliss, inner peace.
Yeah.
And wanting something so desperately that you can't bear taking your attention away from it is not the path to inner peace.
Yeah.
And also, like you said, it narrows the field so much that possibilities are off the table.
Yeah.
There's one thing, one focus, one choice.
That's the only thing that you must have.
Right.
But what's so interesting there is that if you said to somebody, what's the opposite of that?
I doubt many people would say boredom.
Right, right.
They might say aliveness or excitement.
Right, which is more than that, like the next step after boredom.
It's a great point.
Corey has this example of his girlfriend or his wife, who's now his wife, walking past a bakery.
And his wife is Brianna.
Her name is Brianna.
It was like you know what Corey, let's go in the bakery and not buy anything, but let's smell everything.
And in a way, that's boredom.
That's like, oh, that sounds boring.
But the more you can kind of live in that space of, I wonder what that would taste.
Sometimes that's more exciting ultimately, than the feeling you have eating the big donut and all the consequences that come from that afterwards.
Sometimes you can actually just...
Boredom itself is getting more exciting now that I'm reframing it.
Yeah.
So reframing it as a space where there is no clear direction.
There's only possibility.
There's no compulsion.
Right.
You know what?
I could go in that direction.
But I also could go in that direction.
I'd be equally okay going in that direction.
I'd be okay if that direction I didn't go in that direction.
I'd be okay with that.
And that's a sense of compulsion.
Okay, it's boring.
Okay, I'm not jumping into anything.
But there is a kind of peace that comes along with that that I think is underestimated.
Yeah, and a peace that we have all but annihilated from our lives with digital distraction.
The minute we hear it, there's even a hint of boredom.
It's like, what can I reach?
And we can reach for something all the time, like 24-7 now.
24-7.
But it's a really interesting hypothesis to say that, by removing boredom from our experience, by basically saying, every time you're online, every time you're in a stoplight, every time you're in the bathroom, like there's yeah something right there where you're immediately distracting yourself, we're not just we're not just sort of, you know, like treating the anxiety of the moment, but we're actually doing something which is taking out of us, taking us out of a state that would open the door to unlimited possibilities.
Yes, and I love yes-ending things.
And we've become so used to the feeling of anxiety that we treat the absence of anxiety as boredom.
But it's not actually boredom.
Like, if you actually think about it, it's peace.
And we're so uncomfortable with peace.
And I think really kind of changing – it's game-changing if you can shift your relationship to the feeling of peace and not conflate it with boredom.
You know.
Yeah.
But um now, when I have a moment where there's not a lot of chaos going on around me, I take a deep breath and I'm like oh, this is good.
Like, no, I, I like this.
This is what I actually want.
And, um, I don't know.
I think it's a pretty radical for a lot of people who maybe, like me, you know, have a history of being workaholics.
You know it's, it's a.
It's a kind of a not kind of.
It is a better place to live.
Yeah, and it's a place that is not really centered or valued.
It's not valued.
It's like if you're bored, do something.
Or how could you be bored with so much to do?
But it really is that space.
I mean, how would you distinguish between something like boredom and meditation?
Meditation for a lot of people is boring, and I think they don't realize that's the point.
Yeah.
They're like, oh, this is boring.
I can't do this.
And you actually, it's kind of in a way, it's a practice to get comfortable with boredom.
It's like you're literally building your boredom muscles, your tolerance of boredom muscles, so you can have greater flexibility to move in a direction you want.
Ultimately, meditation gives you freedom, you know.
Um, but it might not seem that way, you know, when you're just sitting there and like you're thinking all these thoughts around your head like oh my God, I could do this this, this and this right now, as opposed to sitting down and just thinking about it.
Yeah.
No, that makes a lot of sense.
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I do want to wrap the conversation around the victim mindset and some of the empowerment exploration too.
There are a couple of other things that you talk about in this context.
One is the notion of self-esteem, which is this loaded word in conversation these days.
Talk to me about this a bit.
Yeah, I don't think it's always such a bad thing to have low self-esteem.
That's one thing I talk about in the book is the benefits of low self-esteem.
Self-esteem is just how you regard yourself.
And it's different than narcissism.
Well, narcissism is, I guess, a way of regarding yourself in a way that is superior to others.
High self-esteem is when you just feel worthy.
You know, I regard myself as worthy.
I regard myself as competent.
Worthy and competent are the two main aspects of narcissism.
And usually our self-esteem takes a hit when either a social situation happens where we don't feel as worthy in life or we don't reach our goals, and then our competence takes a hit.
It's usually one of those two things and our self-esteem takes a hit.
But as I talk about in that chapter, there are benefits of feeling bad about yourself.
We don't –
It's very counterintuitive.
It's so counterintuitive.
But I would say if people get the reverse, is it always good to feel good about yourself?
I think most people are like, actually, no.
That's the same thing I'm saying, just in the other direction.
But mathematically, they equal the same thing.
But do you want to protect yourself like a fort at all times where, when you legitimately aren't reaching your goals or legitimately hurting someone's feelings –?
You do all you can to restore that feeling of feeling good about yourself.
Is that what you're solving for?
Or are you solving for making an impact in the world, for finding the meaning out of the situation, for maybe correcting a wrong you made?
You know, a lot of people with this incessant need to be seen in a positive light.
Can't bear the thought of feeling bad about themselves.
And that means more to them than making other people feel bad.
Do you know what I mean?
Yeah.
I mean, there's such a social context around all of this.
Also, I remember years ago doing research on the Ellsberg paradox where you basically, you know.
There are so many versions of it, you know it well.
For those who've never heard of it, it's effectively a scenario where you have to make a decision and you assume that there are significant stakes and you don't have enough information.
And I've seen studies that actually fMRI studies that show that the amygdala in the brain lights up.
So the fear centers really come alive when you have to make decisions that tilt you towards uncertainty.
But I also saw a version of that that um effectively had the same experiment and you would make a decision, but people were told in the beginning no one will ever know what your decision is.
You don't have to tell anyone, you have to share it like you write it down and put it away.
There's, there will be zero social context, social stakes at all.
It eliminated the bias away from uncertainty, you know so, which is kind of like it ties into what we're saying here because, like we, It wasn't that people were afraid of making a decision when they didn't have all the information.
The stakes were high.
It seemed, at least from the data, that they were afraid of making a decision without good information.
Stakes were high, being wrong and then being socially judged for having made the wrong call.
That's the big one.
Yeah.
The social judgment is the big one.
The amygdala is an interesting brain region which is the source of so much debate in the field about what exactly it is for.
And people have concluded there seems to be an emerging consensus that it has to do with just emotional significance.
Without it, we don't register an emotional significance of something.
So, like, psychopaths really don't activate their amygdala that much.
I guess that would make sense where their brains are constantly feeding them negative thoughts and anxiety.
They would prefer a certain negative outcome over an uncertain outcome that could be good.
They can't stand the uncertainty.
Yeah.
Yeah, they just want to know.
Either way.
Even if it's bad, I'd rather have that and know.
They prefer the devil you know.
Right.
Huh.
Yeah.
I mean, it kind of makes sense.
And I think probably anyone joining us now has been that person.
Yeah.
I would hope.
It's like nobody's immune.
I hope we don't have too many psychopaths listening.
No.
One of the other things you tease out in the context of this and then we'll bounce over to the empowerment side is this notion of meaning to please other people.
Yes.
And of course, nobody's experienced that before.
Oh man, this is just such a tough one.
For kind, empathetic humans.
This is an eternal struggle and one that there's no quick fix, and I don't think there should be a quick fix because –.
Those who try to do the quick fix, you'll see an overcompensation effect where like no more, Mr Nice Guy, you know, and it's like I'm sick of people pleasing and they become an asshole.
And that's not the way.
That's not the answer.
But you are people pleasing whenever you're totally putting your own needs aside for someone else in a way that causes you harm.
You're allowed to stand up for yourself.
You're allowed to have healthy assertiveness.
I call it healthy selfishness, actually, in the book.
I think a lot of people with people-pleasing tendencies could learn some of the tools of healthy selfishness and not feel like they're always being selfish when they're just taking care of themselves.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And there is, again, social context, right?
Yeah.
There's so much cultural stuff around the orientation of like, you're just doing that for you.
Yeah.
There are a lot of shoulds.
At a time like this also, it's like, seriously?
There are a lot of shoulds.
Yeah, you probably get tons of requests.
And do you ever feel bad saying no to a request even though you just know you don't have the time for it?
I mean, you're allowed to just be in charge of your own schedule sometimes.
Yeah, i mean it's interesting and this has been a journey for me and, i would imagine, for you as well.
Um, you know, i i've been doing this, i've been public facing in some way shape or form, for you know, like the two decades or so now, and amazing um, and yeah, you do have a lot of folks who are like, they resonate with something that you might share, a way that you see the world, or a piece of insider information and and there's a sense that maybe that person can help me.
And um, And it's a really interesting phenomenon to have people who you don't know reach out to you and say like I'm in need.
And I feel like something you shared really made a difference for me.
It landed for me.
Is there any way that I could X, Y, Z?
We could work together.
What I get a lot is, hey, can we put 10 minutes on a Zoom call so I can pick your brain?
Yeah.
And that's a trigger for me.
And it's a beautiful, because you would love to be able to say yes to all of that you know, and it's like it is a real privilege and a blessing to be in a position for people to have.
Yes, and it's also a trigger.
Right.
So how do you handle that now?
Like, are you, when you say it's a trigger, like, do you still have an emotional rail?
I have an yeah, I feel a great conflict, a great inner conflict, which maybe is okay if the feeling never goes away, you know, because then maybe you reach a state of indifference and i'm not convinced i ever want to reach a state of indifference to human, my fellow humans.
But um, there is like this feeling of like, you know uh, my mom not to go to a real psychoanalytic level, but you know, like her oh, just call me honey whenever you want.
All i want is 10 minutes of your time.
It's never only 10 minutes of my time.
You know, it's like energetically, i have to experience that.
And then, and then the conversation usually goes on, and then i, once i made it, i feel bad to say like hey, i really have to go now, i really have to go now.
I keep saying it over and over again, i have to go now, and so that was a little bit of a trauma for me, you know, is kind of feeling trapped right in a situation where i can't go, i can't leave a conversation, And so it's hard, you know, with complete strangers.
I don't have any – I mean, where's the trust there, you know?
Like, I don't know who you are at all, you know?
So, I mean, I try to help as much as I can through email.
I'm like, hey, ask me your question through email.
Like, do you have to talk to me?
Yeah.
Yeah.
And I think it's also.
I found it really helpful maybe anyone joining us to be fairly public about your boundaries.
I remember literally, I write a sub stack and I wrote a piece and it generated a lot of comments.
And in a subsequent piece somebody wrote in the comments hey, if you really care so much, why didn't you answer my comment in that last piece?
And I was like, an arrow through my heart.
I was like, oh, am I a terrible person?
Like, wow, I didn't answer that person.
But then also, I'm very clear at this point that I have a general policy.
So I don't make sort of like.
My general policy is, if I'm offering something on a platform and that platform also happens to have functionality for direct messaging to me, just because that functionality exists doesn't mean that i need to make that another door into my psyche um, and i make that just an across the board policy.
And i actually i responded in the comment has this listen, i completely understand your feelings.
Thank you so much for sharing it.
I really honor that and appreciate it.
Just i want you to understand more clearly just how i approach this.
You know because um, Honoring my own personal commitments and responsibilities and also my commitment to making and creation and offering is so strong and it takes all of my time.
I've just created a very clear universal boundary that I don't respond to DMs and to messages.
And it's not even you.
I don't even see it.
So I hope you understand that and maybe even invite you to explore it.
Do you have a similar policy or boundary?
This person was actually appreciative.
Thank you.
I understand and I agree.
And now I understand it wasn't personal also.
That's what you're doing is depersonalizing that for people.
That's beautiful.
Was it Oliver Berkman who said that?
Yeah, that's the best way to do it is create a general rule and make it very clear to people that's your general rule, so everyone knows what's up.
That's the best you can do.
But you know, some people really do just take the path of just saying as their general rule they're like look, I'm an asshole, you know.
And there's actually a certain freedom in that, you know just saying you know what I'm, not what you all want me to be in this world, and take it or leave it.
And there's a certain attraction to that way of being as well.
That I you know.
I don't want to rule that out.
Yeah.
You're being really nice and polite, but I'm like you know, maybe I'll try experiment a year, the year of being an asshole and write a book about it.
That experience.
I feel like that's something my friend, you know AJ Jacobs?
Yeah.
Yeah, I feel like that's something he would do.
I could tell.
The year of being an asshole, but I think it could be kind of fun.
There's a certain kind of freedom there.
I mean, it is interesting just getting crystal clear and seeing how people respond.
But it's also a really interesting task, right?
Because what you're effectively saying to people is is the value that I'm able to offer you, because I'm really focusing on doing the work and then sharing what I do.
Is that enough alone?
Yeah, to give you something that's worthy, even if you know that there's no other access beyond that.
So it's an interesting experiment to run.
I think a lot of people would probably want to run something like that.
They might not call it my year of being an asshole, but effectively it's like the same thing.
But that'd make a good TED Talk, wouldn't it?
It probably would, actually.
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Let's kind of turn the page a little bit to the empowerment side.
You talked about the victim mindset and some of the contributors that go into this, the things that raise your head.
And you said early on, you're like, this is really about empowerment.
So there's data within the context of this experience, within that experience of the victim mindset, that we can turn around and use as that activation energy.
Some of the things that you talk about, you describe as finding the light within.
It's kind of like the opening move here.
So take me into this.
Well, there are parts of us that aren't broken.
And I think that if we focus so much on our victimhood, we can not get in touch with those parts of ourselves.
In a lot of ways, where you put your attention is where you put your life, right?
And a lot of people really... identify so strongly like, oh, my trauma, my trauma when I was two.
And that, just that's their overarching thing for how they live and experiences whenever they're interpreting everything through that lens.
If they're thinking, oh, don't want to go on this trip to, no, I can't fly my trauma when I was two.
And so okay well, do you have any parts of you, any character strengths that are craving exploration?
Are there parts of you that values creativity, values meaning?
Are you letting those parts of you suffer by only focusing on this small part of you?
It's not all of you.
And so that's what I mean by that, finding the light within.
And there's some cool examples.
The Atman brothers and their friend Gonzalez go around to schools where a lot of these kids' underserved communities are really ridden off.
Yeah.
And just the kids themselves probably feel in a lot of ways broken.
And he teaches them yoga.
They teach them yoga and mindfulness techniques.
And they start to feel good about themselves.
They start to realize that they have resiliency.
They have coping skills.
They have a future.
In some ways my book is kind of a response to a cultural kind of sense of helplessness I see in a lot of even underserved communities.
Yeah.
You know minorities, you know I, you know, and I try to make clear I believe in the higher potential of all people, regardless of your skin color or where you came from.
You know, and I think the more we can kind of give people hope, the better.
Yeah.
I mean, the notion of helplessness is really interesting also.
I think we're having this conversation at a moment in culture, in the world where- It's a moment.
We're going through a moment, man.
We are.
And I think a lot of people are looking out and the feeling of helplessness has probably never been higher for so many people.
They're looking at it and they're like, this is so big.
This is so heavy.
This is so complex.
Yeah.
What can I do?
Literally, there's nothing that I can do to make a difference.
And there's this feeling of helplessness.
You don't always have to do something either.
Yeah, tease that out.
Your value in this world is not always tied up one-to-one with what you're doing in the world to help others.
I mean, I think we need to get rid of that mindset.
I saw once.
I forget what it was, but someone said the real key to life is find ways to have joy and find ways to bring joy to others.
And I'm like, I actually like that.
Yeah.
I mean, you know you can watch one of these bro podcasters and feel like your life is crap because you haven't gotten up at five in the morning and that you didn't like do that.
You know, 50000 burpees by nine.
Yeah, sure.
You can feel like crap about yourself, but I'm not convinced they haven't figured it out, even as though they think they haven't figured out.
I'm not convinced that's the key to life.
Yeah.
You know, I think the key to life is experiencing life.
To be grateful for the consciousness that we've been given, to be grateful for others who are on this planet with us and who are.
You know who are.
We're all in this together, you know.
And that feeling of helplessness sometimes comes from a false sense that you can only feel hopeful to the extent to which you're tackling your goals right.
But not everything in life is goal-oriented and needing to be goal-oriented in order – that's very masculine, you know.
It really is.
So tell me the other – the alternative to a goal-driven life?
Yeah, or to just like the alternative approach to helplessness.
Like if it's not about what do I do to remove this feeling of helplessness from me?
Like how do I reframe that?
What experiences do I want to create for myself today and for those around me?
What kind of feeling do I want to?
How do I want to show up?
And what kind of energy?
If I'm going down the street to the coffee shop...
What frame of mind do I want to be in when I enter this coffee shop?
Do I want to be on the lookout or have an openness for connection, for bringing some sort of joy to someone?
I mean, I recently took up magic, a mentalism.
I saw that on your website.
Nice, nice.
It's a thing.
It's a real thing.
It's like I'm so into it.
And the reason why I'm into it and I almost feel like it's like the thing I'm most excited about these days is because, no matter how crappy my day is or whatever is going on wherever I go, I have something in my pocket that can bring someone joy, right?
And whatever it is, whatever you have in your pocket, to bring others joy or bring yourself joy amidst the crap of life.
I mean, I think that's what it's all about.
So I really do kind of want to push back against this idea.
This bro goal goal-oriented, crushing it culture that makes people feel as though their value is only tied up to how many things they've checked off their to-do list.
And if that makes me a little controversial for saying that, so be it.
I'll work on my people-pleasing skills, but that's where I feel aligned these days.
Yeah, I mean, that lands well with me also.
Like I love, like I have big things on my list.
You know, there are big aspirations that I want.
And at the same time, you know I love sitting on my front porch when I can catch the sunrise and just sort of like see that first glimmer of light and hear like the birds starting to come alive in the background.
And then you realize this is life.
Yeah.
This is life.
Right.
Life doesn't exist in the trying to reach my goals.
Right.
It's like all the doing basically lands me back in that seat, being able to do the exact same thing.
It's like huh like, where is life really really?
You know yeah, it's not out there.
It's like not the thing that happens after the big thing.
You know, it's every moment along the way.
As cliche as that is um, i guess there's a reason that people keep repeating it to generations.
Um yeah, you brought up something also, and this is in the book as well.
Um, it's this notion of um Not just having one self.
I think the phrasing was a symphony of selves.
Yeah, I'm glad you brought that up.
Glad you brought that up.
Walt Whitman has a phrase like, do I contain multitudes?
Yeah, I contain multitudes.
What are you going to do about it?
It is what it is.
And this idea or notion that we have a real self, I really want to challenge that.
Some spiritual self-help space can in touch with your real self.
I mean, I think it's all real, but I think we have certain aspects of ourself that feel more centered grounded, alive.
There's a fertile soil there for growth.
And I think we have other sides of ourself that feel like it's entering like a black pit, maybe of despair but also addictions, I think is like entering a black.
It's a black pit of greed in a way.
You constantly need that thing, that thing, that thing.
It's a greedy feeling, you know?
But you know, like I said, we talked about sort of playing with the different energies of your different selves and finding the selves that like, oh I like being there and working, committing to living a life where you're there as often as possible, I think is a life well lived.
Where do you land then?
I feel like the hot thing in therapy for probably the last five, 10 years or so has been IFS internal family systems parts work.
A lot of people really like it.
I've talked to a number of people who are sort of like in that space.
A lot of people really like it.
What do you think is going on there?
Interestingly enough, I'm currently seeing a therapist who specializes in IFS.
So what's your take?
I mean, does that tie into what we're talking about here or is that something entirely different?
I think it's relevant.
I do.
I do think it's relevant.
And Dick Schwartz, the originator of IFS, has been on my podcast and did a session with me about my fear of women.
Yeah.
This particular thing happened to me in summer camp, where this woman, age 12, this girl rejected me and made me really shy talking to women.
Anyway, he did this, like, he got in touch with that part.
I think there's a lot of wisdom there.
I think it's also important to recognize that this IFS isn't that scientifically validated.
It's not that well accepted amongst, like, the you know serious scientists um because just because it hasn't been tested rigorously and scientifically but there's got to be something there when you look at the way that it resonates with people who go through it even me even me you know when when when dick schwartz did it with me on my show i felt like i wanted to cry I felt like I released – I wanted to release that self once and for all.
What I also like about it is it is so in line with a lot of other traditions.
So, this notion of facing your beautiful monsters, which is a very Buddhist kind of concept.
Rinpoche has wrote a book about that.
Getting into and doing the handshake practice.
I see it associated with that.
If you can really make deep contact and really try to understand and wrap your head around what a particular self wants, what is it really asking for?
What is it really craving?
And not being scared of it, and not being scared of that self and even treating it with tenderness.
There is a real softening of it and a wholeness feeling that you can have.
Yeah.
Yeah, I like it.
Yeah, I mean, it's interesting, right?
Because you know the fundamental, if I understand it properly, like the fundamental idea with parts work is that we are made up of a whole bunch of different parts.
And those parts have different jobs.
And often they feel like those jobs have been set in motion.
When we were little kids, you know when something happened to us like oh, I need to go protect you.
And that forms a pattern that just kind of stays with you for like the fireman, right?
Yeah, exactly.
You know um, and so we have all these little parts running around us with roles, had been assigned like oftentimes, like decades before, and they're still doing them, even though our life is very different, our circumstances are different, we are different, yet they're still in there fighting the fight.
But my curiosity, which kind of wraps it around to this conversation too, is like what is the part that is aware of all of those other parts?
I have this conversation with Corey all the time, all the time.
I want to think this through in a different way.
You know, Dick is very big in saying we all have multiple personalities and that's a big part of all this.
But I actually think that that's not true for everyone.
There are people who've done the work in such a way.
That I think they're really well integrated and I don't think they have all these different parts that are constantly pulled in different directions.
I actually see a great consistency of who they are, and it's very clear what that sort of –
Whatever that unitary self is, we'll call it another part.
Dick would say that's just another part of the integrator.
Okay, fine.
Hey, I know that's what he would say.
And that's fine.
Okay, if that's what we want to say, it's just another part that's the integrator.
But I see some people who are more in touch with that meta, the meta part, than they are with the lower order parts.
Yeah.
And I want to be like those people.
So I want to study those people.
And I think what's really interesting about them is that they hear the other parts.
They hear, they're like, I see you, I hear you, but I have no desire to engage further with it.
And just talking to people who, I've sought out people who I think are great.
They have a real clear unified self, a real sense of mission, purpose.
They're like, I'm not going to mess this up.
I think Kobe Bryant was like that maybe later in his life.
He's like I'm just going to do – I'm going to put away all the crap, maybe the bad sides of me, and just go all in on the part that I really want to engage in the most frequently.
Yeah.
And we think of lots of other examples.
That name just came up to me because I knew him personally in middle school and high school.
I mean, it's interesting, right?
Because they're –
This word equanimity has really been in and out of my life a lot lately.
Yeah, I love this word.
I love it.
And I think a lot of times.
If you're familiar with the word, we tend to define it as finding a way to find center and to be at peace, no matter what's happening around you, without the need to grasp and control it.
But I think part of what's going on here also is, and again, that's probably just my overlay here.
I can't really define it in a detailed way.
Part I think the conversation is here like that person who's really able to touch equanimity on a consistent basis.
Maybe it's not just about the external circumstance.
It's about like, okay, so there are these other pieces of me.
There are these parts of me.
And they feel like they have jobs to do also.
And I see you.
And cool.
Like, good on you.
And I'm still going to just sit here and breathe and be okay.
Like it's the internal and the external.
That equanimity is about not just being okay with the circumstances of the world around you.
How does that land?
Well, it's got to be the internal and the external.
No, I think that that's got to be right.
Earlier in our conversation, and this is something that you come to in the empowerment conversation too, is this notion of, I don't know if it's being of service, finding things that put you in a state of gratitude and generosity.
When you're experiencing a victim mindset, how does this help?
I like to refer to gratefulness rather than gratitude.
Gratitude is something that you have to wait for something to happen to you and then be like oh, I'm so great.
I have so much gratitude for this.
But gratefulness is an orientation towards life.
No matter what happens to you, you can kind of see, well, what's the upside here?
What can I learn from this situation?
What can I still be grateful for even amongst?
I just made up a word, amidst.
I always invent words that are silly.
There's all this chaos.
My friend, Christy Nelson, wrote a wonderful book called Wake Up Grateful, which is about her journey with stage four cancer and how she was committed to still waking up grateful every day, regardless of the uncertainty and the fear she had about her life and what she was still going to face.
So I think that harnessing that practice takes you away from a victim mindset.
If you get yourself caught up in this mindset that you know you're going down a path that doesn't lead to hope, doesn't lead to connection with others, take a pause and enter a different way, a gratefulness mindset.
And you can enter a gratefulness mindset like that.
It could be as simple as you catch yourself going down the mental pathway.
Oh, I have to do this today.
I have to do that today.
I have to do that today.
God, let's curse my assistant for adding that to my schedule.
And then you go, you know what?
Nope, nope, nope.
Let me think.
I get to do that.
I get to do that.
I get to do that.
Oh, my gosh.
I get to help at 7 p.m. tonight.
I get to have that on my counter and help that person.
And in an instant, you've shifted into a different mindset.
So, I think it's possible.
And I mean, I wouldn't have thought so if I didn't write this book.
Yeah.
Yeah, and I love how simple things like that are.
Because a lot of times you're like, okay, so what's the technique, the process, the strategy?
Give me the whole method.
Self-talk.
Right, and it's like, literally change a word.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
It's like, oh, wait.
But then you hear something like that, you're like...
It can't be that easy.
Try it.
You'll see it is that easy.
Right.
Because people are just like, if it's that simple, it couldn't possibly make a difference.
I love the fact that you're saying here, saying naturally it does.
It totally does.
Tension.
Nah.
Somebody's finding themselves now in this victim mindset.
Is there sort of like a...
An easy first step in.
Like you're sitting here, you're listening, you're like, oh, wait, this is me.
Yeah.
Like everything I'm hearing right now, this is actually landing in a way that I kind of wish it wasn't.
Good.
I would say awesome.
Right.
And then what would you say?
And then...
Yeah, I mean it's great that you have that self-awareness and now try to be more mindful of when – like, catch yourself when you start to enter this mindset.
We've defined it pretty well in this episode and think to yourself okay, I'm way personalizing this situation.
Or even ask yourself, am I – overly personalizing this thing that happened to me.
Is this really, am I overgeneralizing this?
I know that you know this, this.
I got turned down by something you know, or like a job opportunity or a person, but am I overgeneralizing to think that, like everyone's going to turn me down?
Yeah, I probably am, you know like, just like, challenge yourself and you'll realize that that gives you a greater sense of agency.
Yeah yeah, challenge yourself to be better in a gentle way.
What do you say in a gentle way?
Not a not aggressive um yeah and, and even that, like what we're just talking about literally like.
I appreciate that.
Even though I'm not in love with what just happened in this moment, there's something I And maybe you can even tell a different story about it in the moment.
It's like, huh.
And also...
Well, I find in a cheeky way I like to lower my expectations about life.
Yeah.
I have a section of my chapter, of chapter one.
The intro says warning you might have a case of life.
Right.
Look, you know, if you think that you're supposed to be happy all the time, or that, like if you're feeling anxiety, that's an indication you have to immediately go to a therapist and get medicine.
As opposed to, like, okay.
I'm feeling a human emotion now.
Okay, I'm feeling another human emotion now.
In 10 minutes, I'm going to feel a completely different human emotion.
Or traffic sucks or this.
It'll get better.
There's a very Buddhist thing there, obviously, about impermanence and everything changes.
But also there's a point here about not identifying so much with these things now and forever.
Yeah.
Yeah, I love that.
Feels like a good place for us to come full circle as well.
So I've asked you this question in the past, but I'll ask it again.
It's years later in this Container of a Good Life project.
If I offer up the phrase to live a good life, what comes out?
I wonder how I answered it before.
But now I would probably say...
I want to repeat what I said earlier.
I think living a good life is finding ways to experience joy and to share that joy with others.
Thank you.
Yeah.
I think it maybe has changed a little bit.
Yeah.
I'm going to look back and check it myself.
Yeah.
Awesome.
Thanks, man.
Thank you.
We're all set.
Hey, if you love this episode, safe bet you'll also love the conversation we had with Brene Brown about embracing vulnerability to fuel creative growth.
You can find a link to that episode in the show notes.
This episode of Good Life Project was produced by executive producers Lindsay Fox and me, Jonathan Fields.
Editing help by Alejandro Ramirez and Troy Young.
Christopher Carter crafted our theme music.
And of course, if you haven't already done so, please go ahead and subscribe.
And I'll see you next time.
Then invite them to talk with you about what you've both discovered, to reconnect and explore ideas that really matter, because that's how we all come alive together.
Until next time, I'm Jonathan Fields signing off for Good Life Project.
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