What Is Post Traumatic Growth? with Dr. Scott Barry Kaufman

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2:31The Anxious Achiever: I'm Maury Ahrens-Mele, and this is The Anxious Achiever. Now, if you're listening to this show, obviously you've heard of Abraham Maslow's hierarchy of needs, right? Starts with the basics, safety, food, ends at the top, self-actualization, right? Well, my guest today, Dr. Scott Barry Kaufman, SBK, as he is known in the community, is a humanistic psychologist who has studied Maslow deeply for decades. And Scott also studies human potential, transcendence, loving the whole being that is ourself. He's one of my favorite psychologists. And he says that we've got it all wrong when it comes to Maslow.

3:19The Anxious Achiever: Actually, Maslow never made a pyramid. This is a creation of 1950s management scholars. Shocking, right? Because when we have a pyramid of things to actually achieve, we can check off the box. When we've achieved self-actualization, which is actually not what Maslow ever intended, says Scott. Instead, self-actualization, the loving and accepting of yourself. I like to think of it almost as I understand my values, what I stand for, the credo of how I show up in this world, and I do it without apology or shame is a process. We can feel self-actualized one day. We go home. Life kicks us in the butt.

4:05The Anxious Achiever: We take a step back. It's a process. And that is why Scott has a philosophy and a deep body of research on choosing growth. We as humans are never formed. We mess up all the time. Scott and I are both neurodivergent. We talk about that. We talk about sticking our foots in our mouth, feet in our mouth, see. But we can choose growth. We can choose to love ourselves and leave with self-compassion. This is such a rich conversation. I just love talking to Scott. I could talk to him forever. And I also love how he takes us deep into human-centered leadership, humanistic psychology, and what Maslow really stood for.

4:46The Anxious Achiever: So enjoy my conversation with S.E.K.

4:53The Anxious Achiever: Well, Scott, welcome back to The Anxious Achiever. Oh, thanks. Yeah, I really loved our last chat. So I'm looking forward to this. I remember exactly where I was in our last chat because I was in a tiny Airbnb and I was trying to do this setup and it was like MacGyvering everything and we got it to work. Totally. Well, I was in my basement by the cat litter, but I'm not. Now I have this cute little studio. Beautiful. So we have so much to talk about. As I was telling you before we started, I have literally four double-sided pages of notes. but that's only because I'm really excited because I have a lot I want to talk to you about but I do I do want to start with a project we're both working on but just to give the audience a little overview of where I think we're going to go today who knows if we're actually going to go there is I want to talk a little bit about your work studying Abraham Maslow the Maslow's hierarchy of needs that we all talk about and kind of yap about and why a lot of us don't quite get it right.

5:54The Anxious Achiever: I want to talk about your work on transcendence and post-traumatic growth. And then I also would like to speak a little bit about, I think, our shared experience identifying as neurodivergent, as neurodivergent leaders. I want to hear more about your experience with that. Yep. And unlearning shame. That's something that you've written about. And then you can talk about your new career in mentalism. Sure. That sounds good. All in an hour? Maybe not. You know, we'll start. Okay, so let's start. Let's start with this book that we're both really excited about. And I'm going to ask you to talk a little bit about it.

6:40The Anxious Achiever: But the framework is really around human centered leadership. Yes. The science of human potential. What is human-centered leadership and why are you passionate about it? Yeah, this is a book that I'm editing with Chris Shipley and is done in collaboration with Silicon Guild and Thinkers 50. We should see what those are for people who don't know. A lot of contributors from something called Silicon Guild, which up to this point has been kind of like the secret society of people that were coming out, you know, we're coming out to help the world. And it's a bunch of business authors and thinkers and people in the technology world.

7:24And I think we're all united by the common purpose of wanting to create a human centered world. and unlocking potential in everyone, I think. And some of the nicest people I've ever met in my life are in this group. And I've been blessed to have the opportunity to work with Chris, first of all, and then secondly, to be able to work with the contributors to, yeah, really, really craft a really amazing chapter. So yeah, that book comes out in, I think, July. And what's it called?

8:02The Anxious Achiever: called weeding humans what is human centered for people listening out there who like to nerd out on leadership theory what is i mean it's kind of self-explanatory but what is human centered leadership human centered leadership is um actually we hold on the book is actually called leading for tomorrow i was gonna say i don't actually think it's called leading you okay i think i think i like the title leading humans better but All right. We'll strike that from the record. We'll strike that from the record. We all have our title battles. It's okay. I think that's what I wanted it to be called. No, but leading for tomorrow.

8:36Okay. It's not bad. Not bad though. Yeah. Human-centered leadership is when you really design a system around human needs. And I'm not just talking about basic human needs, which are very important. They are very, don't get me wrong. but we're talking about growth needs, growth human needs as well. So I tie this a lot in the foreword to the book, to my sailboat, the metaphor of self-actualization, where we have the needs that keep us afloat. We feel like if we don't feel a sense of belonging, if we don't feel a sense of connection for our self-esteem, if we don't feel safe and secure, we can feel like we're drowning and we can feel like all of our attention is being put to just make sure that the boat doesn't sink.

9:25However, I also want to emphasize that just being safe and secure is not enough. We have to take risks. We have to open our sail if we want to move in the direction of the port we want to sail to. So purpose, so growth needs are purpose, creativity, exploration, all infused with this pro-social motive for making humanity better. um and so human-centered education is a consideration of all that it's a consideration of human needs the the security needs as well as the growth needs and then you know if we're really lucky we could talk about transcended needs um but uh it's uh it's not every day that

10:11The Anxious Achiever: we get to transcend well now um i'm going to show you someone who is transcending oh wow Oh, I'm a baby and I'm for incended. He's climbing on my legs. Okay, well, now might be a good time to talk about Maslow. Maslow's become a household name. And we talk about Maslow's hierarchy of needs. That's right. Different image than a sailboat. Talk about, you've spent many, many months, years with Maslow in your head, I would imagine. you sometimes write as if you're almost in a dialogue um tell us about who maslow was what the hierarchy or what the the needs in his framework really meant and where self-actualization and even transcendence fit yeah i feel like i'm friends with maslow yeah i when i read you i feel that way he's like a dear friend that i never met and he actually talks in some of his lectures about he had friends from the past that from the past meaning that they're they're no longer alive from the long long past that he says he feels a an affinity to and he quotes spinoza saw and he felt that too and spinoza interesting yeah it is interesting and i felt that toward him toward abraham as well um and uh i during the course of writing this book Transcend I met with his only remaining daughter and his granddaughter and I read the preface of the book to them and I cried and it was very emotional.

11:47Wow. But yeah he was a humanistic psychologist. He really spearheaded the field of humanistic psychology in the 60s. What is

11:58The Anxious Achiever: humanistic psychology? I'm just going to ask you to define terms because you know people have varying Yeah, I think it's important to define. Thank you. Humanistic psychology is the study of the whole person and what it means to live a vital life full of meaning and purpose. And, you know, the humanistic psychologists were reacting against two main schools of thought at the time in psychology in the 60s. One was the Freudian idea that all we are are destructive and our sexual impulses. And the behaviorist approach, which was arguing that all we are is whatever environment tells us we are. And, you know, the Skinner, we're all just rats in a Skinner box.

12:47So just to give you some context, humanistic psychologists were like, hold up. Can we study humanity? Is there maybe more to humanity than just those two things? Maybe there's intentional responsibility we can take for our lives. We can be the creators of our own life. We don't just have to be at the whim of our impulses or our most debased impulses or the environment. I never quite put it that way, but I like that.

13:16The Anxious Achiever: I love that. or our parents frankly it's that's a very that's a whole other topic yes it requires loss of therapy yes but but change is possible i mean i think that's a major thread in all of my life's work is you know growth i have a book called choose growth that that sums up my life's work like we can choose to grow and i'm not saying it's easy we can have lots of days where we feel like we've really fallen and we're back at square one but it doesn't mean we're back at square one maslow said life human development is constantly this two-step forward one step back dynamic we have to keep overriding the fear response and choosing growth again and again and that's just life and people who try to depict his theory as a pyramid as though life is some video game where you reach a certain level of need and then you don't have to worry about you know congrats you've unlocked connection and then you don't have to worry about safety anymore.

14:18Maslow he did that way of thinking and never drew a pyramid so that's why I think a sailboat is a better depiction of what he meant and I hope if he was alive he would he'd be like that's that's clever.

14:30The Anxious Achiever: If he never drew the pyramid where did the pyramid come from? Came from a bunch of uh in my view sexist uh management textbook writers in the 50s and 60s who they the first I saw the evolution of it because a couple of researchers Todd Bridgman and colleagues published a really important paper kind of tracing the origins of it and it started off not as a pyramid but as a step ladder with the self-realized man with a flagpole at the top right like you know like subtle yeah yeah yeah Yeah, exactly. And then and then and then it morphed into a static pyramid, which really fits the management approach.

15:13You know, you know, I will be honest. Can I be honest with you about something? Please. I've never cared much for the field of organizational psychology before this book. I did. I've always found it a really boring, like kind of like soulless field in a way. and this book has rejuvenated not rejuvenated at all that's not what i mean what's was it was it when it's not rejuvenated but it's just single juvenated that's what i'm saying

15:39The Anxious Achiever: okay is that a word no i don't think it's a word engendered this is what i want to like invent new words to explain exactly what i mean so adjuvenated love it love it my or you know um because it didn't rekindle because I never had it right so it kindled my um my my I was like wow you know like there maybe we could put the soul back in organizational psychology with this book so I'm really that's one of the reasons why I'm really excited about this book is that like I've I've I've suddenly gotten really interested in in in like the business world and organizations and like you know now I pay attention to business I never paid attention to like business books in the bookstores you know like um my i would always be lying towards like the spirituality section just like my vibes that's just my vibes or you know like or like self-help you know but um but now but now i'm suddenly in this world um with this book um leading for tomorrow the book i'm a co-author i have a chapter exactly exactly like our book yeah this is our book um this is this is far more than than my book and um and i'm like wow you know this isn't this is really important stuff you know like yeah being able to talk about um business organizations within like a human context is really interesting so anyway i want to just give you that sort of first of all i love that you said that and you know i hope there's no offended organizational psychologists definitely hope there's no offense yeah but i think you know i think that's kind of the point of this book leading for tomorrow of the work that all the incredible and you have like household names like Amy Edmondson and then you have you know schleppers like me I think that the point is that work is people and work is full of I mean you know work is full of emotion and work is full of mess and interpersonal everything and then work hopefully can be full of transcendence you know And so I think it's so beautiful.

17:41The Anxious Achiever: Like I love this marriage and I think it's the future. It has to be the future. It has to be. You know, I feel like the tech titans are taking over. They're like they're defining man in the image of themselves. That's right. And that's right. That's a little bit of a scary thing, to be honest. it's it's really scary and i also have to say one of the things that's really interesting to me this is a little bit controversial but let's go here is that you know when you get to the neurodivergence discussion you know there's a little bit of a movement and as a former progressive political consultant i you know so read these articles where there's a little bit of in silicon valley and in the ai world a lot of people are autistic and they are very wonderfully proud of their neurodivergence and there's a little bit of a sense of like supremacy and the sense that their brains aren't just different they're better they're superior well they say it they say it point blank i mean there was a uh i forget who it was but a big tech titan um and he just flies the future belongs to the neurodivergent i think it was the ceo of palantir that's who it was yeah and you know i have conflicted views about that as well i'm glad he brought that up as in i mean i'm a life of not lifetime but a long time um activist for neurodiversity and that's kind of my thing but i also want to have a little bit of a nuance here where we still you know have appreciation of the full see what i'm all about is the full appreciation of the diversity of the humans.

19:26Yes. But I'm not trying to have supremacy of any one particular kind of mind. That's the whole point of neurodiversity, in my view, is to not have supremacy of any one kind of mind. To me, that's the whole point.

19:40The Anxious Achiever: No, it literally is the point. And I think also, I think what's so beautiful also is about your sailboat metaphor versus a pyramid is that your sailboat assumes that we all have our own we we may share a sea but we all have our own boat and we have our own journey and we have our own sails to unfurl it's so beautiful versus this very rigid progression of like am I there yet am I there yet am I am I self-actualized yet you know yeah exactly and we never get there we know we never um we never like become self-actualized you know yeah we don't no because there's always there's always more potential within us i mean do we ever get fully used up that's so interesting i mean i'm not an expert on this but i do feel like sometimes we get self-actualized in a very profound way we know who we are we know what our values are we know the coda by which we want to live we feel we wake up and we're our own person not someone else's i don't know i need maybe i need to rethink that i always say that uh it's a view self-actualization as a direction, not a destination.

20:48And, um, you know, it's kind of like, there's like a North star of who we want to be. Um, but I suppose it's possible to fully become who we want to be. Um, and yeah, I suppose it's possible, but it's, I mean, it's, it's, it's, it's rare.

21:03The Anxious Achiever: It's very rare and it's very hard. And then, you know what, life can bite you in the ass and you're starting all over again. So I guess, so to find self-actualize, actually, do you mind? But I also thought I knew who I was. And then I discovered the field of magic and became obsessed in a very like autistic, like special interest area sort of way. And then I'm like, wait, that's now who I am. So I also want to leave room for us to grow and change and find new things to self-actualize. I mean, I guess my point is like, there's no single self. yes and so you're not self-actualization is not where you you just are actualizing one aspect of you i think it's it you get yourself out the self-actualization process never ends because you're constantly discovering new depths of your being well you're meeting new people you're learning new things you're yeah i think yeah i think that's wonderful i mean how would maslow have defined self-actualization what what how would he define it okay he simply equated self-actualization with being fully human he has a footnote in one of his books that i discover where he says i regret ever using the word self-actualization i hate that term i wish i stuck with fully human why why do you hate it because i think for the same reason that i'm uh saying that the self-actualization process it kind of implies there's a single self and that's not you know he's talking about really being a fully vital alive human where you're operating on all of your highest potentialities and there's many that we had so this the idea of self-actualization i think just like is a narrow way of viewing the self.

22:59There's no unitary self.

23:00The Anxious Achiever: And you never, you never finish. I mean, I think that's the other thing probably, right? So then what is transcendence? That's another direction, another destination. You know, you can, because how boring would that, like, let's say you transcended and then like, what do you do the minute after transcendence? Take a nap. Yeah, you're like, I'm done. But then also, you know, there's this, there's this famous expression which I forgot exactly what it is but it's like you can transcend and then you go you go home for family dinner and there's something about your you know your mother that makes you feel like you're like five years old again that's right and like I mean you could be as trans there's there's there's gotta be an Eddie Murphy uh comedy skit about this or something we're like mom I'm transcended and mom's like yeah yeah yeah like you know make sure you do your laundry right first because you always fuck that up you know before you have mr transcendence over here you know but you don't say there's got to be right like or some like the dalai lama comes home and to the parents all right dolly you know mr big time i mean i think i think the thing that keeps these myths are these i mean i think maslow's hierarchy is a little bit of like an apocryphal thing, right?

24:19The Anxious Achiever: It's because it's such an appealing idea for us. It's an appealing idea to think one day the hardship of being human and me will just be over. That's like, what sounds better than that? Yeah. I won't be dead, but it won't be as hard to be me. Well, that's a good point. I do think we can all get to points in our lives where we feel comfortable in our own skin. But I think that the context matters a lot. You know, my friend Angela Duckworth, I don't know if you've ever had her on your podcast. No, but I know her work, of course. Beautiful. You might want to consider inviting her for her new book.

24:57She wrote this book, Rit, and then she realized just how important situational factors matter. And so she has a new book out now on the situation. And I think that like no matter how comfortable we feel in our skin, and this relates to my interest in neurodiversity as well, there are certain contexts you put us in where we feel are like our best is being um drawn out of us but we can absolutely put environments and recently i've been in some environments won't go to great detail where i felt like i i just super awkward like i can't be myself i can't there's not a lot of degrees of freedom to move in the direction of who we really are so i think that no matter what, like we can't leave out the equation of being in the right environment, interacting with feeling comfortable in our own skin.

25:49Yeah.

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30:12The Anxious Achiever: Um, some of my favorite work is, um, you know, the neurodiversity affirming schools movement. Um, there's a book that I love so much that I always talk about, um, by Amanda Morin and Emily Kirchner Morris called neurodiversity affirming schools. And that's such an important point that they bring up, which is that, you know, it's wonderful to help kids feel good about themselves as they should, but we have to create the environment treatments that foster that. You know, Amanda will say almost it's like a garden and in a garden, you have all kinds of beautiful biodiversity, but there are certain conditions that allow that biodiversity to bloom, right?

30:57And I think, yeah, but I think, oh no, go ahead. I think so many neurodivergent people across multiple spectrums, not just autism, but ADHD,

31:07The Anxious Achiever: schizophrenia um which shows self early actually uh um uh bipolar depression feel they just all feel so awkward in k-12 you know and i'm not saying that i mean we all basically feel awkward you know it's like you know but um there's this when you're in people it's not a good scene when people everyone's in a standardized you know situation it's i have a i have a daughter entering middle school in the fall and I just, who boy, if this is my third one to go through middle school. Yeah. And I think, I think the other thing though, to your point, which I think about a lot with my children, with myself is, and this is another thing that, that Amanda and Emily bring up is that, you know, we mask and we camouflage as a way to fit in, as a way to get through, as a way to get power and what we need.

32:07The Anxious Achiever: And that's okay sometimes, you know, if it's our choice. I think that a lot of times we are very un-nuanced about all this stuff. But part of being neurodiversity affirming is also helping people understand that if it's more helpful for them in the moment, like their example with a kid would be like a kid who sort of mimics how the popular kids talk. I mean, God, I used to do this all the time down to their outfits. Like I would study them, you know, fascinating. It's camouflaging, but like that's a survival technique that we employ. It can be exhausting and it can have consequences. But, you know, this interplay, I mean, to me, this is the most human centered conversation we can have because it also happens at work so much.

32:55Yeah. And as adults, it doesn't end there. you there could be a great temptation when you see these popular podcasts whatever on your instagram feed and you like as a reminder that you're not as popular as them and then you're like and then you're thinking like oh well like there's this impulse to want to be more like them that's right and the older i get honestly the more i just keep leaning more and more and more into who i am for better and worse because you know i say better and worse because the more you when you take that path, not everyone's going to be on board, you know, like the more that you just like embrace who you really are, the more you get like the people in your life that you really want in your life, which is great.

33:40But you have to accept the trade off that you'll maybe put off some people who like that's not their cup of tea, you know, and being able to accept that is a beautiful part of the self-actualization journey, I think, is to really surrender to that trade-off, you know?

33:57The Anxious Achiever: Oh, that's beautiful. Well, that's freedom, the freedom to be yourself, you know? And accept that, because there is something really, I think, I'm not saying I'm profound, but there's a point I'm trying to make that I think it just gets to the heart of the self-actualization journey because i think so many people are afraid of self there's a it's called the jonah complex like there's a fear of being yourself of realizing of realizing your destiny so i think most people evade their destiny because they're scared of that trade-off um the people who fully embrace their self-factualization have i think surrendered to that trade-off which is a rule of a rule like you see it everywhere you see the people who do become popular people the more popular get the more hate you start getting it just comes it's like there's a law of the universe you could be then i don't care who you are you see the dalai lama you go in the comment section you know because he's in my head because we mentioned him earlier but like you see the comment section of what a faker or what it's like what the dollar like really like like no matter who you can be the nicest guy in the their woman in the world or whatever and um you know there's kind of a wall there you know and so you have to accept that trade-off you have to accept it that you will be impacting so many more people positively and you also will be getting more people who you're not their cup of tea you know i speaking of a polarizing figure i was just listening, the New York Times had the 30 greatest living songwriters.

35:40The Anxious Achiever: And on the daily podcast, they had an interview with Taylor Swift. And one of the things that she said, I mean, probably one of the most hated figures, one of the most beloved and hated figures of our time is that don't go in the comments. She tells young artists, don't go in the comment section, but a little bit of that criticism you can use for your art. I almost thought of like a piece of sand irritating an oyster into a pearl, you know, that a little bit of, and she uses this in her songs. I think most singer songwriters do, but she, she uses the hatred and criticism thrown at her as a fuel for her art.

36:19The Anxious Achiever: And, you know, I think I spent a lot of time, I'm not comparing myself to an artist or anything, but for me, you know, as someone who has this weird double experience of like, I look very like I fit in the world you know I mean I'm really tall but like I'm very like I have a lot of privilege in how I look and present but inside I'm I'm Helen or Divergent yeah I want to hear more about that I'm masking I am like I'm a freaking weirdo in my brain in the best possible way compared to a lot of normal social situations and have always felt that way but I don't necessarily you know i have i have like a very good mask for the world my kids do as well and it's it's it's something that i've struggled with because i've always been so scared to be me i do you mind if i ask you um yeah of course what what what forms of neurodivergency have you kind of uh identified within yourself i mean well i have bipolar disorder um so i have you know i have a mental illness, but I kind of present in the world like someone with ADHD, to be honest.

37:34The Anxious Achiever: Like I have a lot of characteristics that are very similar, except I don't have executive function disorder. Like I have very good executive function, especially when I'm hypomanic. So yeah, I would say that. I always say the wrong thing. I always blur it. My mind is always going a million miles a minute. I just, it's just, it's just a, I'm not organized. I'm not linear. You're going to have a lot of people really resonating with that, you know, like you're, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're, thank you. Thank you for telling me all this. And by, by saying this, you know, you're going to have a lot of people who feel less alone just by listening to that.

38:16And so I think there's such a great value in people honestly talking about their struggles you know because you really start to empower others to like not feel so awkward um i mean i resonate with everything you just really at the very least oh have you ever sat in a meeting okay i'm gonna give you this one so you go and then i'll go oh no you go you go you're the guest no i was just thinking of of a uh comedy skit um uh from um uh what's his name he's the co he was the co-writer of the chapelle show neil brennan neil brennan um and uh he's he talks about how he is just oh he can't help himself he's always worried about that he said the wrong thing he's he's always like ruminating he's i shouldn't have said that you know and he he has this joke where he's like i'm gonna be in my deathbed and like my last thought is gonna be oh i knew i shouldn't said that to the nurse you know and i really it's such a great skit and and i know neil he was he was on my podcast and we actually talked about trying to diagnose him i i had him go through an autism assessment he really wanted to get by pairing him up with someone but um anyway it's just like i really resonate with that because and it sounds like you do too like i'm constantly just ruminating on like because i feel like everything i say is so weird i just feel like a weirdo yeah just like in my existence and i don't and it's like you talk about masking and it's exhausting it's exhausting trying to mask you who you are um and so now i just like i own it like i'm just like i'm a weirdo it's what i am i mean i wear the shirt i'm literally wearing the shirt different by design right now which uh great conference i I, I, I, you know, that I can't read it.

40:10What does it say? The neurodiversion conference.

40:12The Anxious Achiever: Oh my God. That is on my bucket list to go. I've never been able to do. Let me introduce you to them. I would love to meet them. They would love you. I did a, I did my first ever combo magic show slash keynote at their conference and it went down so well. I had them all, you know, choose a card from a deck and at the very end they all pulled out the same card that I predicted or that actually saw it on the phone predicted. it anyway i was crazy that's okay well that's really impressive i don't i don't have any of those skills no no i mean i think i think that the rumination piece i mean you know anxious achievers the name of the show like that is our life is the post-event processing i had this beautiful retreat with a bunch of colleagues yesterday and spent all of last night in a vulnerability hangover like literally i was nauseous because i thought i was too open nobody else was quite as raw as me.

41:03The Anxious Achiever: I said the wrong things. Like, do they respect me anymore? Do they like me? I was, I could literally, I couldn't eat my dinner. I was so nauseous because I respect these people. I love these people. And I thought, there you go again, Maura, you just can't be normal. Like why, why are you always the one who has to like push the boundary and not in a good way um I don't know I don't know I've been trying my whole life not to be that person but you know what so much of it as this is what I've discovered at least I don't want to speak for you but I discovered so much of it is in my own head and I think that that was a profound realization there's just enough experiences I've gone through now where I've unnecessarily um so this is why I think self-compassion is really important I think I went too many years without enough self-compassion where i would just room like beat myself up over what i perceived as perhaps something i said that maybe i shouldn't have said but then in so many cases it hasn't been bad like i would you know like there's no evidence that i'd it's all it's like in my head that i'm just be and i think that you might be the similar where you cause a lot of suffering at your own hands, really unnecessarily.

42:24You know, whereas you could change your relationship to yourself where you show yourself a little more kindness and forgiveness that other people are giving you, but you don't give yourself.

42:36The Anxious Achiever: Yeah. And so that was a big, I mean, that's been a big part of my journey. Tell us about that. Tell us your aha and tell us how you do it. Do you have a self-compassion practice? Like you're a scientist. How do you do it? Well, I think that you really getting in touch with your intentions is important. I want to give a shout out to my new friend, Raquel Hopkins, who is the capacity expert on Instagram. She's she's blown up. She's really she's really famous now. And we just did a course together on Rise Above. And because of my ADHD, I'm trying to remember what my point was. Self-compassion, self-compassion.

43:16she said to me once yeah she said to me once um because we she was on my podcast and she's she's an african-american woman and you know and um and and i wanted to ask her a question but i didn't want it to be i was like can we have an open-ons conversation about race and like you know race relation and everything and she said you know scott just trust your intentions and i know i've never forgotten what she said to me that one comment like changed my life so if you're hearing that requel you changed my life with that one comment we become such and and i just want to say we ended up in that it was one of my the best podcast episodes i've ever had and we had a just such a raw just honest conversation about what it's like to be a black woman in america what's

43:59The Anxious Achiever: it like to be a white man in america you know who's like who's jewish you know and like gets gets reduced to a single identity that i don't want to be reduced to you know because i don't white man is the farthest thing from my identity you know what i mean but like some people might reduce me to that and that hurts i was like that hurts and she's like i totally get it because it hurts when i get and we bonded so much over a common humanity yeah and it all was because of that one comment where she said trust your intentions and i think that's that that's my point here that's that's what helped me that i am getting there you know to your question is that I think that if we all realize, you know, okay, where are we coming from with this?

44:41And really get in touch with that and don't be so hard on yourself, even if it's not taken in the way you intended because you can't control people. You can't control how everyone's going to perceive you. You can't control how everyone's going to take. But as long as you know, if you're good with God, you're good with the mirror, the man in the mirror, that your intentions were good. because I lead with good intentions. And sometimes it's awkward as fuck, you know, if I can curse, you know, but that's, I've learned to not beat myself up so much when it, even those moments where they are, because I can't like force the other person to perceive exactly the way I wanted them to.

45:24And nor should I, like people are autonomous beings. You're also honoring their autonomy, you know? It's okay not to have complete control over everyone's perceptions but i think the best that's the best you can do is what i'm saying show yourself some love and and trust your intentions um now the opposite of that is like if you know you're a bastard you know like that's important information too like maybe you should get in touch with that more and and change but but if you trust your intentions you know are good and that you're leading with a with a real drive for connection like i did with the recoil you know It often goes well.

46:02It often goes well.

46:03The Anxious Achiever: Do you find each other? Yes. Well, I think also if she weren't such a healed and compassionate person, it sounds like she's also someone who, you know, isn't going to, has evolved on everyone. She's so amazing. I really, I just recommend everyone, like, follow her. Oh, I will. Okay. I want to talk about post-traumatic growth. Great. Great. What do we get wrong when we think about post-traumatic growth? First, can you define it? what it is and you know i think most of us think almost like it's um a burn and then new skin healing after a burn healthy skin well well i like to use the um the metaphor of kinsuchi which is a form of pottery where when something breaks um they put some gold through it and um it it actually ends up looking better than it ever was when it's um you know even though you You can see it's clearly something.

47:02So my grandmother, when she was alive, we used to eat at this restaurant in Philadelphia called Lebec Fin. And a very French restaurant. And whenever I would get an A or something, she'd take me out. And she bought a plate from Lebec Fin right before it went out of business forever. She wrote me this lovely little note, which is really getting hard to read now after so many years. but I did take a picture of it so that I can you know save it even when it disintegrates but I had a maid for lack of a better word I don't know what to put a correct term for maid if there's a different word these days but I had a maid who was helping me kind of clean my room and they dropped the plate and it broke in pieces and the maid obviously felt really bad and I was like oh don't worry about it you know I'll figure this out and so I found a local Kintsugi store and, um, and they remade it for me.

47:58And I think it looks absolutely beautiful.

48:01The Anxious Achiever: Oh, that's so beautiful, Scott. Back in Philadelphia. So I think this is a great metaphor for the post-traumatic growth process, which is that you, you're not ignoring the point here is you're not ignoring what you've been through. Um, I don't want anyone to just shut up or just get over it. That's not the point of my book, Rise Above. rising above is not getting over it but it's it's given what has happened to you I can't it broke you know what am I gonna do it broke yeah I'm not gonna also not gonna yell at this poor mate who felt horrible about it right like you know it broke and given that it happened what are you how can you move how can you move forward with your life with purpose and intention maybe even becoming a better human.

48:49And so, yeah, that's an example I use.

48:53The Anxious Achiever: That's really beautiful. You've written, as Austrian psychiatrist Viktor Frankl put it, when we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves. In recent years, psychologists have begun to understand the psychological processes that turn adversity into advantage. And what is becoming clear is that this psychologically seismic restructuring is actually necessary for growth to occur. It is precisely when the foundational structure of the self is shaken that we are in our best position to pursue new opportunities in our lives. So is that the quote from me? Yeah. I was like, that's pretty good.

49:35The Anxious Achiever: Yeah, you wrote it. I know, isn't that funny? You're like, did I write that? that's pretty good okay that's a funny thing to say about oh i forgot i forgot i wrote that have some self-compassion you're a pretty good writer no i was gonna say you know what sometimes i can i can write pretty good you know not all the time um but uh i think it's often when i really make connection with what i'm writing yeah that pours out of me uh you know um um yeah so So, yeah, that I can't I'm not going to say it any better right now. But I but I feel like also, you know, I worry a little. I know that post-traumatic growth is real and it's been proven.

50:20Well, it's been actually there's a deep there's a hot to beat in the field of whether or not it's real. Oh, gosh, tell me.

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54:38The Anxious Achiever: dollars that's fifty dollars off your first year at monarch.com with code achiever i think like yeah adam grant would argue it's not like i think we've we fought over this there's there's some other well there are other people in the field as well that are starting to um argue so i'll get paul bloom i i argue with all the time about this paul bloom um was like well the research suggests that it's not real growth, it's perceived growth. Because statistically, we went in and we measured and we found that people aren't actually better off after the event than before the event. They're not actually growing, you know, even though they think they are.

55:24It's sort of like a ha gotcha kind of thing. And I'm like -

55:27The Anxious Achiever: Growing in what measures? Like what defines growing? There's connection, creativity. Oh, God. Like, well, we'll measure your creativity before and after, you know, the event. And like, did you actually increase your creativity? Okay. Did you actually get more friends? Did you act? And my argument, and I'm still sticking with this, is that they're really ignoring the value of even self-perceived growth. Like, to me, that's still an important outcome. Like, what is important is your own experience of the world and the meaning that you get from the world. And you have a bunch of these like nerdy scientists that are trying to like strip the humanity from.

56:04The Anxious Achiever: I mean, no offense, measuring creativity is kind of killing creativity in my book. Like, yeah, exactly. Yeah. No, it's a good point. You know, I get the I get their points. But their intentions are good. Whose intentions are good? Well, to our previous conversation, the scientists assume good intent. Oh, yeah, yeah. I agree. I agree. I mean, they care about, you know, data and they care about, you know, is this scientifically evident? first post-traumatic growth but i do think that even if and there are a lot of cases where it is real they're saying it's just not as high prevalence as possible um as as you know it's not as high prevalence of uh change as they as the people who who preach post-traumatic growth make it out to be me it's like seven percent of people actually change as opposed to like we're all changing all the time from trauma um and so look there's a point there as well which i think that is true is like let's not it's not the panacea it's not it's not like like trauma is the panacea to growth you know that's right yeah i think that's an important point so i want to give a you know a head nod to that to that point about that but i also want to say that i do think they ignore the value of self-perceived of of like the internal meaning that we generate in our lives that can't just simply can't be measured on a one to seven Likert scale you know um so I think there's something else valuable there I mean meaning is self-perceived it I agree I agree yeah I mean others can't I mean isn't that we're always telling people others can't make meaning for you you have to find your own meaning and things you know just because you love the cello doesn't mean that I have to become a cellist because that's what a great life is I mean I don't know yeah I I that I agree I agree um and it also well this also touches on um the name of your podcast um I don't view self-actualization as the same thing as achievement and I don't view it as the same thing as happiness either I view self-actualization as its own thing and its own valuable thing in and of itself.

58:13And a lot of these scales, you know, it's like there's a more than and there's a less than, you know, one to seven. Seven is better than one. And so built into all these scales is a hierarchy and a kind of a competition between the one and the two and the seven. And I don't know, it's like I am a quantitative researcher, so I can't like, you know, I say there's no value to that stuff, but I'm also a quantitative, a qualitative reason. I mean, I'm both, you know, and I think both have their purpose, both have their understanding of a person.

58:48The Anxious Achiever: So what does it mean to choose growth? Well, I really liked that Maslow quote. It's about choosing the growth option. You know, what is the decision that you're going to make that, you know, is best for your higher, you know aspirations who of who you want to step into who you want to become uh it's usually not the fear response um the fear or it's not avoidance it's usually um getting outside your comfort zone um risking shame i know you wanted to talk about shame yeah let's talk about shame it's about risking shame i mean it's at the people who don't want to risk shame so they they avoid things at all costs.

59:32Yeah.

59:33The Anxious Achiever: This reminds me of our conversation a little bit about being neurodivergent, which is that I think, you know, I've interviewed many, many neurodivergent professionals and leaders. And, you know, I think shame is almost not a choice.

59:49The Anxious Achiever: And it's, I think, to your point, like, you may sometimes feel like every day every day you are choosing growth by being yourself and saying what you mean and asking for what you need and it feels awkward and shaming and hard like i i don't know i i think about this as I get older too it's like I I do live a life where I feel like I try I really try to be authentic and it doesn't mean that at 50 I feel free of all those like bad feelings about myself yeah maybe it yeah you just change your relationship to those feelings that's right Yeah, it's actually a part of you. We call them your beautiful monsters.

1:00:54I really like that practice by Snoke Thirinpoche, the Tibetan monk, the handshake practice where you greet your beautiful monsters and you're like, I see you and I'm letting you in with some boundaries, maybe only on dark side Sundays, you know, but that's it. You know, like I see you and you're in the light now. And maybe that's what you've changed is that you realize that maybe those feelings are never going to disappear. But you see those beautiful monsters and you acknowledge them and and they're part of you now as opposed to disavowing them as not you. This is why I don't like the idea of the real self.

1:01:37You know, something about it. And then the self-help, you know, spiritual world. I'll just talk about the get in touch with your true self, you know. I don't actually like that way of thinking because I don't think there is a true self. And I think that it can be dangerous to think that your true self is only your best self. You know, I think that when we take responsibility for our whole self in the service of healthy relating and growth, I call it healthy authenticity. And yeah, so that's a term.

1:02:12The Anxious Achiever: That's such a good point, right? I mean, our true self can be kind of an asshole, right? Absolutely. We have to take, I mean, for me, you know, what I realize, and I've interviewed so many, this is the subject of my next book, is that the key is saying, if I hate this part of myself, I hate myself. And I don't want to hate myself. I want to love myself. So I have to figure out this relationship. and I think that there is that sense of radical acceptance of the piece of yourself that is never going to feel easier or you know you're not going to be singing it on stage and it is a core piece of who you are and you want to love all of who you are.

1:03:00Yeah I would say maybe accept all of you you are. I don't think acceptance necessarily means liking uh and well also i also don't think loving necessary meets liking oh god are you kidding

1:03:15The Anxious Achiever: so yeah so having been married for a very long time i mean yes yes yeah i you could absolutely dislike your parts of yourself and you can love yourself yeah yeah um i'm not gonna get into the the husband comment that's a i think it's a whole other can of worms but i am i follow questions about that and my mind is is is going towards that i'm not going to keep that for a well get a drink someday or something yeah but um but yeah no i much you know much respect to you for forced for acknowledging you can um have like what we call being love um being love maslow maslow distinguish between um needing love and unneeding love needing love is like oh my gosh like i need you to love me you know to fulfill some sort of insecurity that i have within my soul but unneeding love is i love you uh because uh i like your being um and i accept your being for all its self and we can have be in love for people we don't like and um saying that we can have being love for sides of ourself that we don't like um it's a deep acceptance and unconditional sort of compassion oh gosh that's so beautiful and how does that tie in with with can that be situational and i'm thinking of of your work on post-traumatic growth you know we we may hate and resent and be so angry at things that happen but do we how do we keep whole in that process well shame is not the answer see uh guilt is is an adaptive emotion psychopaths don't have guilt it's good that we have guilt you know um you don't want to take the brakes off completely that's that's that's not good but shame is not good.

1:05:17Shame is like the one emotion from our gene pool that's like that's pretty unnecessary because with shame you're personalizing everything and you're making it the whole of who you are and you reduce yourself to the one action that you're shameful for and we should never reduce ourselves to any one action or anything, one thing. I mean, another part of my book Rise Above is a point that I'm trying to make comes from the humanistic psychotherapist Irvi Alam, where he says, sooner or later, you have to give up all hope for a better past. And I love that quote, because it really indicates that, you know, we are not that one thing that happened to us when we were three.

1:05:58You know, people, some people are committed to it, to making themselves or reducing themselves to that one thing. And, you know, and I have compassion for those people, because I realized they are nonstop ruminating about it. And even in old age, they still can't stop. But they should remember that they are so much more than that. And yeah, we all contain multitudes. We're all, you know, that's the humanistic psychology approach, the whole human, you know?

1:06:27The Anxious Achiever: As we close, I promised, I want you to talk about your new career as a mentalist. This is so interesting to go from... What I would do is I would do a trick for you, but I don't know that I could just do a mentalism show for you for your probably I would freaking love it I would love it so what is mentalism actually what I did I performed for a bunch of Silicon Guilders at a house party a dinner party a couple months ago and uh Alison Levine And I was like, what the?

1:07:03She was going crazy. That's awesome. It's always Rita McGrath. Oh, my God, I bet. Oh, that's fabulous. Rita was more subdued than her. She was like, what is happening? People have different reactions, you know. But, yeah, so, no, I mean, I just got hit by the bug. A lot of people who are into magic, they will say it feels like you just get, it's like an addiction you know i don't know like i got hit by the bug because i said well i saw a show in in dallas the mentalist jerry mccambridge and it's inspired he called me up and and he uh he says they were inspiring to me and he guessed you know my deepest insecurity and i was like wow you know like i can really emotionally impact people and um in that way i always loved darren brown the british mentalist and i used to shove his videos in my NYU class before I realized they were all bullshit.

1:07:58Now I feel a bit bad that I showed his videos illustrating the perception, cognitive science, you know, real principles when now I know how he does it. It ain't real. It ain't real. But anyway, we live and learn. But I decided to go down that rabbit hole. And I love it. I love it. I perform. I moonlight as a mentalist. I did a birthday party a couple of days ago. I get rave reviews on gig salad. Oh my God.

1:08:29The Anxious Achiever: Oh my God. The amazing Dr. Scott made my daughter's birthday party, you know, like, and I'm like, Oh, you know, I love it. I'm yeah. Then I'm the amazing Dr. Scott. You can find, follow me on Instagram. I have clips. What is it? What is it? What does it do for you? Like, I feel like it's like your brain goes, what is it? What is it about this, this, this work that your brain just like yes well my whole um my whole career is like i've been interested in creativity and wonder and all and this is more of like a direct approach you know like i after i'm kind of over publishing scientific papers and um i left my you know i'm not a this might have my last week as a professor for now um uh and i'm taking i'm taking a year off because i want to i get more excitement now just like directly creating all in wonder you know then ran peer-reviewed journal articles about the science of all in wonder and you know three people read your papers you know um yeah i think we all in this world right now could use more transcendent experiences that connect us um and transcend our differences in a pain in politics and um ideologies and religion and all we're such a divisive country right now and i you know i just love to bring people together and for us all to have a collective that's this is my vehicle for a collective transcendent experience but you know musicians have a different vehicle right like comedians have a different vehicle um but for now this is my vehicle and um yeah just for people to just like have an altered state of cautiousness in a world, you know, where there's so much suffering, you know, even if it's for a few minutes is I think a win.

1:10:17Yeah.

1:10:17The Anxious Achiever: I love it. I love it. Well, Scott, thank you so much. This was such a joy. Thank you. Yeah. I love always love talking to you. Thank you.

1:10:29The Anxious Achiever: That's it for this week's show. If you like the show, follow us and tell your friends, And please leave us a review. It really helps the anxious achiever get found by people just waiting for our content. I'm your host, Maura Aarons-Mele. Lots more to come in the next episode.