Step Three: Cultivating Curiosity with Dr. Todd Kashdan

This episode is step three in the 10-Step Toolkit to Having Critical Conversations and features Dr. Todd B. Kashdan, a Professor of Psychology at George Mason University, and a leading authority on well-being, curiosity, courage, and resilience. He has published over 200 scientific articles, his work has been cited over 35,000 times, and he received the American Psychological Association's Award for Distinguished Scientific Early Career Contributions to Psychology. His books The Art of Insubordination,  Curious? and The Upside of Your Dark Side have been translated into over 15 languages. His writing has appeared in the Harvard Business Review, National Geographic, and other publications, and his research is featured regularly in media outlets such as The New York Times, The Atlantic, Fast Company, and Time Magazine. 

 In this episode, we:

• define curiosity
• identify ways to become more "psychologically flexible"
• discuss why curiosity is key to conversation
• provide tangible tools to cultivate curiosity

If you have any questions or comments you would like addressed in the  Q&A with Dr. Kashdan, please email whatsjustpod@gmail.com. Don't forget to follow Whatsjust on Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn and subscribe to the weekly newsletter to get details on where and when the Live Q&A is happening! 

And, as always, please review, subscribe, and share with everyone you know :)

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Timestamps:
(00:00) Intro

(02:39) The Journey from Panic Attacks to Curiosity

(08:35) Curiosity as a Tool for Personal Growth

(12:22) Cultivating Curiosity: Strategies and Insights

(17:13) Curiosity in Relationships and Social Dynamics

(24:27) Curiosity as a Lifelong Learning Skill

(29:22) Innovative Decision-Making Processes

(30:09) Exploring Psychological Flexibility

(35:54) The Power of Self-Distancing

(40:20) Curiosity as a Tool for Critical Conversations

(51:47) The Role of Curiosity in Understanding and Inclusion

(55:07) Three Captivating Things 

Transcript

  And here's the thing about curiosity. It does. It's not always a positive state.  So when you, when you query the monster within,  you're not going to necessarily feel good, but you're going to feel potentially more knowledgeable and more wise. And we have to like widen the palette of possible outcomes beyond just wellbeing. 

Please listen carefully. 

Welcome to critical conversations. A podcast for lifelong learners who like to get deep. I'm Abbie Henson, a qualitative criminologist searching for ideas on how to become a more cohesive, healthy, and compassionate society. If you found yourself wanting to have thought provoking, deep, and sometimes difficult conversations but just didn't feel well equipped, this podcast is for you.

This season provides a 10 step toolkit for having critical conversations guided by my interviews with neuroscientists, psychologists, sociologists, and more. Let's learn together.  Welcome to step three of the 10 step toolkit to having a critical conversation. Episode one taught us how to become self aware.

Episode two taught us how to address our personal biases, and now we get to become curious.  

Today, we get to learn from Dr. Todd B. Kashdan, a professor of psychology at George Mason University and a leading authority on well being, curiosity, courage, and resilience. He's published over 200 scientific articles, with his work cited over 35, 000 times.

His books Curious and The Upside of Your Dark Side have been translated into over 15 languages. His writing has appeared in the Harvard Business Review, National Geographic, and other publications, and his research is regularly featured in media outlets such as the New York Times, the Atlantic, Fast Company, and Time Magazine.

I was so  Energized by this conversation. It was fun. The ideas were exciting and I feel like now I just have more questions, which I guess is a sign I'm becoming more curious. So I hope that you find this episode as impactful on you as it clearly is on me. So let's get into it.  


So I'm Todd Kashdan. And for the past 24 years I've been working with the Wellbeing Laboratory that I founded, and I've been interested in the things everyone wants to talk about at parties. So curiosity, love, passion, flow, happiness, meaning and purpose in life, principled rebellions against dysfunctional social norms,  friendships, and I really got into this From the back end where I went to grad school to study how do people develop panic attacks and why and we would put this Hannibal Lecter mask on people and induce them with 35 percent CO2 and about 15 percent of people develop panic attacks right in front of me.

And then I'd be there with my clipboard and ask them a bunch of questions and this is what I wrote down in my first year of grad school residual unsatisfied curiosity. And that was is that when these people were experiencing panic attacks, their heart was racing, their galvanic skin response was active, they were sweating, their lungs felt like it was capsizing, and I wondered, what were they not exploring and doing in terms of their interests?

Because of the concern of having a panic attack or being in the midst of a panic attack.  And so, okay, I have a lot to get into on that, but before what got you interested in panic attacks in general?  Like what led you to that research? Yeah. I mean, I had public speaking anxiety when I was in grade school and then I worked on the floor of the New York, New York, well, New York stock exchange and wall street. 

And it's intense. I mean, if there's an earnings report by Apple, there's a lot of frenetic activity going on the floor and you can get panicky if you feel like you don't have the skills. And I was very intrigued of like, what happens to you physiologically? Like what's, what is the evolutionary value of you sort of blowing up mentally for a five to 15 minute period?

And so that's what made me want to understand, understand it and then help people prevent it. Yeah. I remember, so I got my two wisdom teeth out.  And this was maybe 10 years ago and they gave me nitrous oxide. They gave me laughing gas. And I remember that either the doctor or the nurse who gave it to me said, at some point, this might feel really intense.

I want you to just ride the wave and I remember At the moment where the intensity kind of ramped up. I was like, oh shit, you know, like and then I remembered Okay, actually, let me just ride the wave and kind of approach this with curiosity rather than the fact Fear in the, the, because when you have that fear, I think you said something in the book about how curiosity is the antidote to defensiveness.

And in my opinion, defensiveness is the child of fear and anxiety, right? It's this child of insecurity in a lot of ways in my, I like that. Yeah. And so. That fear and insecurity is then defending me against well, what is this thing and putting this wall up where if I could dissolve the wall and just approach with curiosity and ride the wave it makes it so much easier and  Yeah, I mean, that's, there's a book that I read when I was in college called The Tibetan Book of the Dead and it was the idea of if you're going to take nitrous oxide or any substance or really any adventurous activity is you need someone there who's going to be your guide.

Who's not doing it, who's doing exactly what you experienced the dental office and saying is that this is going to be an unusual experience. Know that I'm here. I am basically base in a world of tag. So you can always come back to me if you feel it. And then I'll be watching you and I'm going to be telling you how awesome you're doing, how amazing this is.

And I'm going to write down what the experience is for you. And I think a lot of times we miss these characters in our lives because we don't know how to intentionally pursue  someone to be a guide in your lives. We pursue stimulating people, interesting people, complimentary people, people that are like us.

But maybe it's worthwhile thinking about what roles are we looking for, for characters in our lives, which would take us in a different direction about intentionally pursuing your social network.  That's so interesting. What would be the characteristics of a guide?  Well, to me, it's, they are emitting stability.

So their goal is not to make you laugh or entertain you. Their goal is to basically be a receptor for whatever it is that you're experiencing. And a lot of people are trying really hard to kind of be entertaining and they want their value to be. I don't know,  rewarded in some ways for them. And the guide is a background character, but it's only momentarily for particular experiences. 

So is it, would it be like an altruistic person then, where it's self interest isn't necessarily the guiding force, but  the intention of being a guide? Like, does a guide have to want to be a guide?  No, these are great questions. So I think of this as a personality trait state situation here. Where we're talking about personality states momentarily, there is someone who is invested enough in your wellbeing or flourishing that they will take a moment out of their lives to be there specifically for you.

So altruistic moments. And in some ways I view this as a father of three daughters is when I go out with my, with my kids and they've never had this experience before their first concert, their first ball game, first time traveling to new city, My primary interest is being their guide that they have the best experience possible because I have more moments of traveling under my belt.

Right. Right. Yeah. Okay. 

So  let's, before anything, how do you define curiosity?  

So there's two ways of doing this. There is your Oxford English Dictionary approach, and that's where we can get simple. We should start that way. So it's the desire to seek out new information and experiences.  And it's really like this preference for novelty and this willingness to seek out this novelty.

Now, if you go into the psychological world.  And you synthesize what have we learned over the past 60, 70 years, you find that it's a little bit more complicated,  and that the simple way of me taking all of this research into two questions that humans ask ourselves, and if we say yes as an answer to these two questions, that means that we are experiencing curiosity.

So one of them we know, one of them gets ignored. And this changes the whole conversation about curiosity. So just as a caveat, these aren't things we think about reflectively. They're automatic, they're fast, and they're often implicit, not explicit. So the first question is, so I'm coming in to have a conversation with Abigail, and I've never met you before.

So one of the questions that I'll ask myself is, is this experience going to be new, interesting, mysterious, uncertain, uh, ambiguous? Is there going to be a conflict between avoiding and approaching any of those things that I say yes to? I'm on the path to being curious. And that's the dictionary definition.

But the second question is, do I believe I can handle the anxiety of confronting the new?  And if you don't say yes to that, you're not going to be experiencing curiosity. That's where you get that residual, unsatisfied curiosity of someone in the midst of a panic attack, where I see it. There's novelty. I see this potential for growth of talking to Abigail.

I have no idea what she's going to say next, but I don't know if I could handle this and then this way. I'm not fully present. I'm not really in exploratory mode. I'm more in protective mode. In the moment. So it's, so here's where it gets interesting. It's the perceived ability that you could handle the anxiety and the new.

So you don't even actually have to have the skill. So actually you hit the exact right term, right? Efficacious means like, I think I can handle the situation that I'm in. And so a kid can be highly efficacious, but be really low in terms of their ability. And that's okay for this thing called curiosity.

Now for talking about being the pilot of a plane, we're talking about a medical surgeon. We don't just want efficacy. We want pure skill. Yeah. So, okay. When I was reading your book, The Art of Insubordination, one of the things that kept coming up were the recipes and kind of the steps that you're giving in terms of  these are the things that you can ask yourself and these are, like, it was all these really great tangible steps and one of the questions that kept coming up for me is like there has to be  Or there has to be a step that precedes it that incentivizes an individual to want to ask those questions or leads them.

I guess maybe the lead is your book, right? Like if there's someone who is willing to read this book, then they may be, The person who's willing to ask these questions of themselves or to incentivize themselves to ask questions of themselves. But there's, there's something that I'm trying to get at in terms of cultivating curiosity.

Like how do you cultivate curiosity?  So there are a number of interventions that, I mean, I'm obviously as a scientist, very interested in what do we have evidence for? So ones.  There's this female Polish psychologist from the, I think the 1950s, and she doesn't get that much attention. They call it the Bligernik effect.

In honor of her, and that's that when we are interrupted in the middle of doing something or we finish something  before we're actually done. So Hemingway talks about the way that he wrote was he was always end his writing session in the middle of a sentence because he had something to start the next day.

Love it. It's such a great piece of advice.  But think of the same way for conversations. You're hanging out with someone in person or on the phone. The idea of finishing midway through something. And there's a teaser of like, okay, I need, I must, I crave coming back to you because we have unfinished business to take care of.

Now, even just thinking about that, you start to realize like, oh yeah, yeah. That's how like, That's movie teasers. You watch a two minute teaser and then  you want to go see the movie. Now a mistake that a lot of film directors have kind of done is the teasers are too long. And so you've already filled my interest.

I, I am, I've reached closure. I don't need to see the movie anymore. So they were better when they were shorter. Less is more. interrupt in the middle of things, and you are more engaged. And here's the beauty of the Bligernik effect.  You think about it subconsciously between what you just finished and the next time you re engage.

And so you've got your wheels turning about  how you perform. What else can you do? What else is out there? What else is Abigail thinking about? Oh my God, I got to go through the archives of her podcast. If this is what it's like talking to her and start to hear her voice. And so the intrigue happens. By you not bringing things to premature closure.

Yeah. Whenever I'm with my dad and we're trying to choose a movie, we'll watch the trailer. And after a minute, he's like, stop it, stop it. Yeah. Let's just watch it. I can't, I can't engage anymore. So I definitely get that. And that, that piece of advice, I did not know the name, but, and I didn't even know it was established, but I, in my own writing, I've been really trying to be conscious of that.

Cause whenever I, and. end a writing session in a bad way. Like if ever I'm like that didn't feel great then I feel disincentivized to like to re engage in the writing after that. So I always try if I'm like in a flow I'm like all right stop it even though I feel like oh but I want to get it out I try and  be really mindful of stopping in that flow so that then I feel excited the next time so that resonates.

Yeah. And also think about this. It's something where I have a little bit of dislike for Ted Talks. They are too prepared. They're too organized. They're, it's got from beginning to end. You, you can feel that it's, it is designed to be a package with a beginning, middle and end. So when I teach or when I'm giving a talk to an organization, I like to end on a provocation.

And so the very first class that I just finished, as we're talking now, it's the beginning of my semester, I ended the first class with, here's a thought for you to hold on to as we go into the next class, which is, if you were to rank order yourself of all the students at the university, what percentile would you put yourself in terms of your sense of humor? 

And everyone started about to answer, and I was like, no, no, no, no, you don't answer. Just hold that, we'll start the next class with that. And that's going to be our segue into talking about the science of well being. Just a playful provocation. And what's going to happen? A few things. Well, I'm, I'm anticipating this is what's going to happen.

One people will be thinking about it. One people will be talking about it to other people. One people will be repeating the question and asking other people about it. And then fourth is I may have forged the initial beginning of a few friendships in that class as they walk out like, Hey, what percentile do you think you are that goes in there?

And all of that was planned by me by the very simple thing of this Bligernic effect. Mmm. I love that. I'm going to do that in my next class, just end on a question every time. Do you continue that or is that just a first class  activity? Oh, no, no, no. Like I have a sub stack called provoked because I always end with provocation.

I don't end with like, here's everything that we know about money and happiness. It's always a question that. I don't know what your answer is going to be. So it's, it's like the choose your own adventure. It's interacting between me and the audience. Yeah, I love that. 

I want to get back into this idea of curiosity as the antidote to defensiveness.

Cause this is something I'm finding in my relation, my romantic relationship. This is something I'm finding in my work and in conversation with people who have Differing opinions. I remember, and this is also how I feel like I've tied it back to the idea of fear and anxiety is I remember I was walking on it.

I was in Philly, walking on a treadmill, looking out the window at a park,  listening to a Michael Pollan podcast episode interview. And he was talking about And I'm sure people are familiar with this, but he was talking about the NYU study where those who had been diagnosed with terminal cancer were given LSD trials, and they were guided, so they had the guides.

And, uh, This one woman had, I believe it was stomach cancer.  And in her trip, in her acid trip, she saw a monster inside of her.  And she was immediately fearful.  And the doctor or the guide, whoever it was, told her, rather than running away from the monster, Ask why it's there,  ask what it knows and what it can tell you.

And I remember hearing that and being like,  okay,  like everything in my life just approach with curiosity rather than fear. Because fear is often in the unknown, right? Like we We fear the unknown. We fear the anticipatory stress that you described of. I don't know if I'll be able to handle this. That's anticipatory.

We don't actually know that. And so a lot of this is fear of the unknown. And so yes, it takes that level of confidence that you described of like, I think I can handle this, but also  even approaching that question, can I handle this or not with curiosity of being like, what would it be like? If I couldn't handle it or what would it be like if I could handle it?

And how amazing would it be if I could surprise myself that I could handle it, even if I thought I couldn't.  Yeah. So that, I mean, since cancer runs in my family, that's a very powerful example. The idea of like approach and here's the thing about curiosity. It does. It's not always a positive state.  So when you, when you query the monster within. 

you're not going to necessarily feel good, but you're going to feel potentially more knowledgeable and more wise. And we have to like widen the palette of possible outcomes beyond just well being as like high versus low, because it could be all over the place.  So when I think about curiosity as the antidote for defensiveness, you think about like some of the moral and political divides in the country and in the world.

And one of the trends, societal trends that's been bothersome to me is I didn't name this is like victimhood narcissism, and it's the idea of identifying as being offended and upset by other people, but not taking that step that you're describing, which is querying. Hey, I'm just curious, like, what was your motivation and saying that and your tone of voice?

Is almost more important than what you, what your verbal attitude is in that situation. And so,  if you approach someone that bothers you with what they said from a place of curiosity, the first thing that happens is their defenses come down and they might, and the first response you might get is like, oh my god, I had no idea.

Like, you don't know what their motivation is necessarily, even if they have a track record. Of being aggressive, quarrelsome, annoying, troll like, with you in particular. You don't necessarily know, and so it's worthwhile to potentially open up the portal to having a conversation. The best case scenario, you improve the interaction in your relationship.

The worst case scenario, you end up being the Desmond Tutu or the Mandela in that situation in terms of you took the high road. And later you can talk about how they were problematic  in that moment to give away agency and to give away a sense of empowerment, to be upset when you don't know, because as you said before, there's always like a little girl, little boy inside every one of us.

And so you don't know if that's the one that's leading or if it's someone that really, truly. despises you, the group that you're a part of, demographic you're a part of, the beliefs that you care about. And it's a simple antidote. I don't want to oversimplify and say it's easy to get there. It may require you,  depending on who you are and your background and your experience, to actually, Take that deep breath, realize a lot of emotions are swirling right now, and it might be hard for you to phrase it that way, but you just have to squeak out that one question and you might transform the nature of the interaction.

Totally. I, one of the things that you gave in the book were the, I think there were four kinds of questions that you can ask. There was the topic switch, the mirroring, the rhetorical. But these different kinds of questions that can be asked in those moments to cultivate curiosity, but also to perpetuate a conversation.

Oh, and to heighten your like social like ability.  Yeah, this is Julia Minson's work, and it's really powerful because We do a lot of mirroring  where, like, I'm not that into sports, but I'm a guy who looks like they do sports because I work out. And so my entire life, I've been treated like I'm a bro when I'm a nerdy guy who likes statistics and psychology.

And so I've learned to be very good at mirroring, but really it's, It's branching, extending, and really topic switching  is really an important element of asking questions. I mean, one of the things that I've loved in my adult life is watching people who are extremely good at doing 90 degree switches in the conversation of, Listen, I've loved that we've been talking about psychology.

Can I take us in a different direction? And when they ask that question, If you say no, it's like, why are you even there with another human being? So I started, I started copying that strategy because it's really beautiful in terms of, it's also in terms of you're inducing the movie trailer of like, where are you? 

Like here, here's my hand, wherever you want to go, I'm going to go because it's just a conversation that goes there. And if you think about this as a listener, this doesn't happen that often. And so it's really like a beautiful high level social skill that we don't take advantage of. Yeah, totally. I love that.

I was thinking about.  One of the things that again of this like inducing curiosity or cultivating curiosity  and I was just thinking one of the things you say in the book that like really struck me was that creativity is not an innate gift it's a way of thinking and I think that often we think of these things of curiosity or creativity as these innate gifts that people have that you're just a you're innately curious person, or you're an innately creative person.

And what I'm realizing in this very moment as we're speaking is that  what you're kind of saying with the guide, I think of also the concept of an expander, right? Someone who exposes you. to these ideas to then open your mind to, oh, that's possible. Oh, that's a way of doing things, right? There has to be some level of exposure prior to engagement to know what to do or how to do it.

I think there are certain people who are, of course, It's innately talented in certain things, but I do think that for most of us and for most things there has to be a guide in a way, right? Like that's why we go to school, like we need to be taught certain things. And I don't think, like, one of the things I say in my classes is,  Man, I don't care if you know names or dates or, Facts coming out of here.

All I want you to do is be able to be a critical thinker by knowing how to ask questions. Like that is the only real skill that I want you to walk out of here. Knowing is how to ask questions of others and yourself because that, and I think that.  You know, in some ways I can  serve as an expander for that, but I do think, like, it's important for listeners to recognize that, like, if you're, if you don't feel like curiosity is a skill that you have, it is something you can hone, right?

It is something you can learn and something you can get better at. It's not just, you know, Yes or no, I'm curious or not. Yes or no, I'm creative or not.  Yeah, I remember reviewing the science of curiosity because many of the books that exist, they talk about when you were a toddler or preschooler, you asked thousands of questions per day and then it just winnowed down to now it's as an adult, like asking 25 to 50 questions per day.

There's no science for this. All of the science points out is that curiosity is relatively stable until about the age of 65, where we tend to have A little bit of a drop on average in the population in terms of being open minded and curious, but it tends to be quite high. And as you're describing, it's a series of habits and behaviors.

It's just like going to the gym. Everyone has an innate ability to build a bicep, a tricep and have some cardiovascular activity there. You can run for a quarter of a mile and chase someone that stole your wallet. But you have to build that skill and show up in the gym on a regular basis and in the same way for curiosity.

It's really just a mindset that you enter into, and we can talk about all the specifics of how to do that, but you captured a few of them right there. One of the things is if you were at a workplace meeting  and everybody talks about diversity and how many perspectives are in the room, and you have newcomers, you have people that have been there for 20 years.

But if no one opens a forum to allow those new voices to offer  partially developed in co hate ideas in the room, it doesn't matter what you say. There's no guide. There's basically, there's someone that's telling you, this is what we care about. But there's not some, there's not someone's opening the door and saying, this is what I want us to do right here now in the meeting.

And most people are not in workplace meetings where someone's saying, what, I don't feel like we've gotten the newcomer's voice before we make this decision.  I don't feel as if we've heard from people, except for the same three people who eat up 80 percent of the air in the room.  I haven't been in those meetings.

I haven't facilitated meetings where those existed in the aftermath. And I think  we spend so much time talking about what we care about. But we don't get into the mindset of actually doing it when we are in an actual situation. For the workplace one, there's a relatively simple strategy that's actually been out there for a while in terms of you should be collecting everyone in the room's ideas about the topic or the decision.

Maybe you're deciding to make a merger. Maybe you're deciding to basically increase the number of people that you hire, get everyone's opinions ahead of time. Anonymized. So you don't know who said what you get those ideas in the room. 

They're on pieces of paper. Everybody gets a word document. And then everybody talks about which ideas that they liked, which ones that they want to build on.

And then only later do you reveal who is the messenger as opposed to the message. And in this way,  seniority doesn't matter. Prestige doesn't matter. Your gender and race doesn't matter it's basically just the quality that you later and then afterwards towards the end you start giving credit where credit's due in terms of who initiated the idea who built on the idea and then so you have all the benefits of making sure the best decision making process is enabled.

And everybody gets credit, but not in the wrong order. Yeah, the order. That's interesting.  

One of the things that you spoke about that I think was helpful was the idea of the psychological flexibility  and this idea of escaping pain or hunting meaning.  And I'm wondering if you can speak to the listeners a bit about that.

Yeah, this is. This is the psychological flexibility dashboard is really four questions to help you navigate a challenge, a difficulty or obstacle in your life. And that could be, you might be at an impasse in your relationship with your partner because maybe you've been together for over seven years. We know that tends to be a little bit of a dip and maybe that your, your kids have aged out from being cute and loving.

And now they're like annoying 12 year olds to 17 year olds. No experience there whatsoever by me.  Or maybe you're just, you're just bored at work, you've been there for 20 years, you make a good income, and you've accomplished a lot of things, and now you're just treading water. 

So, here are the four questions.

They're prompts in order. The first one is to figure out an inventory about what capabilities, strengths, and abilities are inside you. What do you value? What do you care for? Who are you doing this for? And it may be just about you, but most likely you're probably trying to make somebody proud. Maybe it's your primary caregivers.

Maybe it's your sibling. Maybe it's, maybe it's a social group that you, you feel like you are barely hanging on and you really want to be a member of this group, whatever it is, it's for you. So you write that down. And what strengths do you have? What's what's in your arsenal? That makes you special compared to other people.

This is where I talk about,  I think narcissism gets a bad rap  is that  I often have this provocation when I give talks or workshops, which is what would your life be like if you had zero on a, on a hundred point scale of narcissism, zero narcissism, like not the slightest iota, nothing there. And the conversation tends to lead to is that.

I would be not writing the book that I want to write. I wouldn't be saying the things that I want to say. I definitely wouldn't be saying it if I was around people who I thought were socially attractive, really physically attractive, who I thought were cool. You want to have about 15%, 20 percent on a narcissism scale.

And it just means that you're basically walking through the world saying, I've got a lot of strengths, I work hard at them, I'm ready to deploy them, they should be shared with the world. Kobe Bryant was like this,  Sandra Bullock's like this, Michael Jordan was like this. So that's question one. What's in your arsenal?

What do you value? Who are you doing this for?  The second question is, Basically, what's getting in the way, like what's popping up inside you that's interfering with your ability to make forward progress. And this is where you have to be honest with yourself, um, in terms of self defeating thoughts, what are they?

Sensations, maybe when your heart races, you really pull back. Maybe when, um, you're the last person that walks into a room,  that you feel really self conscious about it and it gets in the way of things. Thanks. The third question is, what are you doing to get rid of those unwanted thoughts, feelings, and sensations that are interfering with you pursuing these aspirational goals?

Now, this is where it gets interesting. There tends to be a superficial list of what's good and what's bad. So on the bad list superficially, we have alcohol, we have excessive eating, we have being verbally aggressive towards people, self injurious behavior, and then on the good side, we have a workout, sexual activity, uh, playing video games, and the thing is form Of what you do doesn't matter if it serves the function of avoiding contact with those unwanted thoughts, feelings, sensations, things that are seemingly good can be problematic going for a run and going for workout could be a way for you to escape the thoughts that you don't like about yourself.

Socialize with other people could be a way of. I just don't want quiet. I just don't want solitude. So be careful  on this list of think really carefully of like, what are you doing to cope and escape? Even if other people are telling you, God, you look so good and healthy and you have such a good social life.

How can I be like you?  You yourself know whether those things people are envious of is just because they see the outsides and not the insides of the experience. So that's the third one is basically what's your list of coping strategies. And then the fourth one is what can you do differently to chase your values to work in a way in the world where you are doing things to seek out aspirational goals, promote the best that's inside you as opposed to. 

Trying to prevent errors, mistakes and failures. So you're going promotion focused as opposed to prevention focused. How can you change your habits?  And that tends to be the hard list. You don't get to question four until you work your way around of one, the inventory of what's, what's, what's in your psychological and social arsenal to what's interfering with you.

Three, how are you coping with those things that are interfering? And then after What are some alternative habits you're willing to experiment with and explore with? Mmm, I love that. 

Do you feel like, so, later, you talk about this concept of self distancing, which is kind of putting yourself in a third person and kind of identifying the difficulties that you're having with I don't know if you necessarily say this, but the way I perceived it is like with an empathetic tone and I'm wondering, do you see, because you don't necessarily speak of them in the same section, but do you think that doing the dashboard in a self distanced way, like in a third person of being like, what are Abby's  strengths?

And then what are the things keeping Abby from, do you feel like that could be helpful or is it? a more internal, eye focused exercise?  Oh, no. I mean, Abigail, you, you hit it. So  self immersion  would be under question three. What are you doing right now to cope and maybe not as effectively with these unwanted thoughts of feeling sensations?

We do need to be very self immersed, which is, God, Todd, you talk way too much when you're on these podcasts. Damn, you're always trying to make it playful and funny and sometimes it's serious topics. I mean, Abigail brought up cancer and you were actually playfully and smiling. So I'm like self immersed and it's very self denigrating.

It's like there's something wrong with me. Whereas if I switch to what you said, question four, what can you do differently? It will be self distance. Is Todd, why are you always being playful in when you're talking about serious topics? Just the idea that I've actually created some space is that there's me, the person, and there's me, the person.

And there's these thoughts, thoughts and words that pop out of me because there's some distance there. I can look at those thoughts. I can look at those words. I can look at my style for how I interact. And if I don't like it, I'm not attacking me. I'm just attacking output that comes out of me. And really sort of, it's more of like, what am I doing versus the doer is messed up, screwed up, anxious, problematic, neurotic, and aggressive.

I'm focused on the things I do might be. Anxiety provoking, aggressive, but it's not me because there's a part of me that can look at it,  thinker, and the thoughts, because I can do that, I create some space where I can make some really good progress, that self distancing strategy. I was just thinking about an argument that I've had in the past where someone has said like, you're acting like a dick.

And the person's hearing, you're a dick. And, and the difference there of like the identity and the action and taking that on as like a total  self criticism. When, how can we distinguish ourselves from our behaviors? And I think it's really hard to do that.  Yeah. And, and I don't want to skip to higher, more complicated things because this is something that is a lifelong mission.

I was watching Survivor with my 11 year old daughter, Violet, yesterday, and the woman got booted out her, her, whatever it was that her fire got snuffed out. She got, she got booted from the tribe. And then she like got pissed off and she like smashed the bushes and like threw, like threw something into the air.

And she's like, dad, that's what you would do. Like, you would be like, Really aggressive. If you got booted out of the tribe  and I complimented her and I said, I love that because you didn't say like, just to go to your point, you didn't say like, God, you're such an angry person. You would do it. She's like, that behavior is like what you would do.

And so because she used a distancing strategy to describe me. I'm not defensive. I'm like, yeah, that's what I'm probably do. And they probably pick me to be on the show because they would love to have the happiness researcher throws a, you know, a pissy fit, like on public television, like they would love that happens there.

But then even my kids are picking it up where. Not only are they getting better at describing themselves in a way of, it's not me, it's my behavior. They're doing it on me. And this is how you break the gridlock of seemingly intractable problems between people that think differently.  Yeah.  

So, okay, you say that you were working on Wall Street and you were experiencing some anxieties and this led you to want to explore these things. 

What is it about you  that led, like, that you chose that path to explore it. Why, how did you cultivate a level of curiosity in yourself  to then be like, yeah, I want to know the research. I want to know what is happening here.  Well, it's interesting. So. Let's do the longer version of like, why, why choose science versus being a journalist or an author right away.

So I picked up a book when I was working on wall street that was by John Lilly. It was, it was his autobiography called the scientist and anyone who's experienced a flotation tank. Um, that was designed by John Lilly in the 1960s, and he basically injected himself with ketamine long before it became popular, um, and he developed a chart from studying himself in terms of what leads to a K hole, where you experience this complete disillusion of the self, and you can observe yourself completely independently, versus you go too far and it ends up an obliteration of an, even the ability to even think about the self.

And he had this study where he did, it's such a great study, it's worth repeating, even though it takes some tangent, where he hired this Swedish model to live with a dolphin for a year and wanted to know, can a dolphin and a human form a cohabitating relationship?  Dolphins form lifelong friendships.

They're one of the few species that do this. And it went terrible because dolphins are very hyper sexual creatures. They were living in a house that was about one and a half feet of water. And so she developed like gangrene on her legs after living there for a year. And then the dolphin was constantly like rubbing up against her.

And it was this terrible, amazing, but horrible experiment. And I was reading this and I'm like, Oh my God, being assigned. This is not what they talked about in grade school. You can do this and like collect data and write about this. And, and I was like, yeah, I want to be a scientist. So that was, that was like part of my,  the operation of my head of like, you can study anything and you have this ethical review board to make sure that you don't do what John Lilly did.

So Lily, Lily was your expander. Yeah, he was, he was, I mean, he's still my, he's still my hero. I mean, I, I mean, even though, you know, he, At that period of time, there weren't institutional review boards in terms of like evaluating ethics, but I mean, it was, it was an interesting exploration and I wish we could still do studies like this.

I mean, Jane Goodall couldn't do what she did in terms of living with chimpanzees. Um, because she invaded their, uh, sort of hierarchies as a human. Right. 

So why do you think this whole season?  is about critical conversations, how to have a critical conversation. 

An integral component of having a critical conversation with someone.  Because most of the time we skip a stage, we go to perspective taking.  So you as a woman, if we're at the gym separately at one o'clock in the morning for 24 seven gym, we have different experiences. I need to take your perspective of like.

As opposed to thinking, it's the same thing. You just pick out what body parts you work out. You've got, there's dangers that go on there that maybe I might not be thinking, experiencing, and that can go with every person that's not like you, different gender, um, different sexual orientation, different part of the world that you grew up in with parents, without parents adopted, not adopted.

So we skip perspective getting, and we jumped to perspective taking. And curiosity takes us, goes back to more to the origin story of like, listen, I can't assume I know what your perspective is until I sufficiently explore where you're coming from. And so if you say, Todd, listen, I am totally not a fan of the idea of trying to bring everyone into the room to speak at a meeting because then meetings will take forever. 

So that's your, I've taken your perspective, but I didn't get your perspective. So if I, I'm like, so I can explore more openly.  Of hey, I bet Abigail is a really smart critical thinking woman. She's teaching critical thinking to students. I bet you there's a really deep motivation. She hasn't unearthed yet in words and try to get that there in there.

That's the magical sauce in terms of there is a strategy to do something that I don't know yet. And so if we can Mhm. Get perspectives and then only then go to take perspectives. We can find out that there is, there is more commonalities and more differences among all of us. And there's beauty in both of them.

And we shouldn't be leaning towards, I want us all to feel like we're all similar.  That's a problem. I want to only focus on differences. Well, now it's hard to form coalitions that happens there. It's really like having this dialectical mindset of to truly leverage your strengths and make the group smarter and wiser.

I need to understand what is your profile. Like you're going to have a unique platform. You have spoken to people I'll never speak to. You have your, the books that you've read, the movies that you've watched, the things that your parents have taught you over the years, what your experiences were being excluded and included over the course of all those mandatory years of schooling, you have a perspective.

to offer that is unlike anyone else on earth. And I think we just assume way too quickly that we got someone down because we can get a couple of personality traits, right? You're high on extroversion. You tend to be agreeable. You're in the middle of terms of neuroticism. Like I got you down. No. You don't and that's true.

Curiosity allows us to have a more holistic approach about people and thus we can create and bridge things that didn't even seem possible before you get those perspectives.  So  the. Animalistic, natural, innate, evolutionary need to stereotype, right? The need to put people in a box quickly in order for us to gauge whether they're a threat or whether they're So there's this like underlying fear that is then kind of to go back to what we were talking about at the very beginning there's this like underlying fear that's then leading us to have that perception right to think okay i know who this person is in order to for me then to feel safe right i get you yeah i know what you are so now i know how to approach you and so again that the need to stereotype in that way is almost an act of defensiveness because you're defending the underlying  animalistic evolutionary fear of uncertainty, right?

I don't know if this person is going to kill me or going to hug me, right? And so I need to figure out very quickly, who they are, what their intentions are, based on what I've seen in the past, what I've internalized from the media, all these things. And so again, going into your statement of curiosity as the antidote to defensiveness, it's breaking down that evolutionary need and, and again, necessitating some level potentially of confidence to know, even if they might try to kill me, I might have the skills.

To defend myself, but I'm not seeing a knife in their hand right now, so let me Let me lean in a little, right? And so I think there, there,  there has to be, I think what you're describing is exactly what you're saying of curiosity as the antidote to defensiveness in gathering information rather than projecting things.

An assumption.  I love that this entire podcast is on this one single phrase. No, it's, it's great because it,  so one is the evolutionary mechanism of finding friend or foe. And then the supplement to that is, are you part of my group? Or could you be part of my group? Or are you part of the out group? And thus.

don't belong there. And this is where you get this black sheep phenomena, is the most despised person is someone in your group that questions the group in terms of what you're doing, what you're thinking, and what your objectives are. People hate this so called disloyal member of the group. And one of the things that I've been really interested in is The black sheep are, they are, they are basically the progenitors of innovation.

The reason that groups last the test of time and evolve over time is the world shifts is because of the black sheep who said, you know what, like, maybe we should be a little bit more open to allowing people that are religious and conservative, because. Where are they supposed to go if very highly liberal universities and colleges are saying we don't like this political belief system, but where are they supposed to challenge their beliefs?

Where are they supposed to learn new belief systems if not in educational systems? So this has been like an incidental mission of mine in terms of how can we be more allowing of  I don't want them to be radicalized outside of these places that happen there. And this is a conversation that still is not sufficiently had.

And it's because of lack of openness and curiosity towards the other, this othering that happens there. And go back a few years, and it was women. Go back a few years before that, and it's people of different races. And not that this is all happening simultaneously, but I really think it's, worthwhile to ask in group settings what,  what subgroup, what faction Are we showing unnecessary bias or prejudice towards, and if you are a school, if you are a park, if you are an athletic team, it really should be, unless they are intentionally malicious towards other people, and you really have high levels of psychopathy, you really should be open to anyone that's willing to be a potentially good group member.

So this is where curiosity becomes. to actually opening these doors and having  more permeable boundaries of who's allowed and in and who you're excluding. Yeah, I think I would need like a whole nother hour to get into that because I think that there's so much nuance there and so much important  unpacking in terms of yeah, like, especially thinking about the radicalization component and when we exclude what that does and then but also how to hold accountability in those spaces as well in a way that is not demonizing but is productive. 

So for the listeners we kind of have given some or you've given some great tangible tools and I just kind of want to jot it out let it be super simple so  paths to curiosity.  What are some of the tangible things? that our listeners can do. We had, we spoke about the self distancing. We spoke about the dashboard.

Um, is there any other kind of tangible skill? We had the Zeigarnik effect, the under, underappreciated women in science. I mean, one of the other ones is the first woman to get tenure at Harvard university. Ellen Langer had this really underappreciated study in the 1980s. Where she wanted to know how kids could be more inclusive, not her language back then, with children with, who were handicapped.

And the way she did that was, they had, it was like a decathlon of events. It was like skeet shooting and darts and lawn, lawn bowling. And one group was just given the list of activities and saying, and you were asked, who do you want to choose? Everybody has to do at least two of these sports. And the other group was told. 

There might be hidden strengths that you're not aware of, of every member in the group that you might not know by looking at them, so you have to choose, everyone has to do at least two sports. That second group, just one pager, and just said, there might be hidden strengths that you don't know by looking at someone, they would ask, Those kids who are blind, deaf, in a wheelchair.

Hey, here's a list of things, like, what do you think you could do? And guess, guess who is the best person for spin, pin the tail, pin the tail on the donkey? Yeah, who, I mean, which kid is the best person? Someone that's blind.  Their whole lives, they basically navigating the physical world without sight. Why would you ever pick someone who's loud and athletic versus someone that's blind?

It's not even close to, but the only way you think about that is you have to break. The confines of how you think athleticism looks like  insert your favorite Serena Williams, Caitlin Clark, you know, you had these iconic characters, none of them show a disability. But once you open the door of like, what does a disability buy you that you hear you are coping through the world with a loss of a sensory modality. 

So I just want to  say that one of the paths. To being curious is to ask yourself constantly, like, what am I not getting by only focusing on the veneer or surface level of a person, thing, or idea? Yeah. And also then  that allows for probably greater common finding of commonality too. Oh yeah. Somewhere.  I love that.

Okay. Rounding it out. 

What are the three things outside of curiosity? that are, are, what are you curious about, I guess. But what are the three things keeping your attention right now in the world? Either a book, a show, a podcast, some activity, something that's keeping your attention.  Oh, it's a great question.

So one is I'm working on my first children's book. So I am now obsessed with reading children's books with my 11 year old. I just thought that during COVID we started of just generating ideas and it's now it's now out with publishers right now in terms of shipping around, but, um, I'm interested in. 

After all these years of studying well being, let me go a little bit earlier. So now I'm interested in elementary school level kids of creating books where through stories, it's kind of like Ayn Rand with philosophy. You don't have to like Ayn Rand. I know people hate Ayn Rand, but she did have a love story to showcase her objectivism philosophy.

And I thought, what if I created really cool, fun stories where adults could like it just like kids, kind of like the Simpsons, but in child. Children's book form because most children's books are incredibly uninteresting and then each book would have a psychological concept that I'd be teaching to children.

So that's, that's something that's been huge. Um, the second one for me  is I'm obsessed with purpose in life. So I'm really interested in the strange. off the beaten track ways that people find purpose. You know, the guy in India who's riding a rickshaw and that's his purpose is basically to afford candy for his children.

And then on the surface level, you think it's riding the rickshaw, but it's really of, this is a very simple path where I can get afford candy for my kids on a daily basis. And then the third one is I'm sort of obsessed with suits, but bear with me for a second, which I know almost every guy is when it showed up on Netflix.

I just started watching it because I am constantly intrigued of how people automatically assume someone is a bro. This is both men and women. And when, what that means when you box someone into this category and what that means in terms of  what are the avenues that you have to disprove that you're a bro, like, is there, is there even a way out of this?

boxing that occurs there. Like I described before is that because I work out, I look like one. And if, if this was a, if there was a video, you would see that I look like a bro, but I hate talking sports. I don't like hanging out with people to drink and I don't go to breweries and I tend to be like a very nice guy who loves big, deep conversations.

And so like, what's, what are the pathways to get out of this?  Do you just redefine the bro to include those characteristics?  Yeah, I mean, bro has a purpose because it does characterize a very clear person that you meet on spring break, um, when you're in high school and college. So I do want to keep the category, but I think it's been broadened and I don't know if there are sufficient escape hatches.

Okay.  Well, we'll hope that you find one. Well, thank you so much for speaking with me. This was really great. I would love a hundred more hours.  Oh, you, listen, your knowledge of evolutionary psychology, like your inserts about the human mind, like I could talk to you for days.  Cool. Well, thanks again. We'll end there.

But yeah, this was so enjoyable. I really appreciate it so much. 

Thank you so much for joining me in my critical conversation with Dr. Todd Kashtan. This was step three in this season's 10 step toolkit to having a critical conversation, and I hope that you loved this episode as much as I did. There's going to be a live Q& A with Todd following the release of this episode, so follow What's Just on all social platforms to stay up to date on when that's going to be taking place so you can get your questions and comments in the mix.

Links to all socials can be found in the show notes. And please don't forget to Subscribe, share, leave a review, and we'll be back in two weeks with step four, how to create a safe space. So stay critical, stay connected, and I'll see you next time.