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Almost everything we want is on the other side of fear. The spotlight effect is one of the cognitive biases that suggests that we imagine that the world is paying a lot more attention to us than they actually are. People really don't care. All right, let's kick off today's show. Today, we're talking to Dr. Adam Dorsey about what it means to be super psyched about life and career. Dr. Adam Dorsey is a licensed psychologist and certified executive coach.
He works with high achieving professionals, including tech executives, entrepreneurs, and professional athletes. He's also the author of Super Psyched, Unleash the Power of the Four Types of Connection, and Live the Life You Love. Adam shares his feed framework to reignite passion in your life to find purpose, discover why failure isn't just data, it's tuition for your next breakthrough. He also shares the drive-away test, which reveals which relationships actually energize versus drain you.
how micro doses of connection can save you when you're drowning in notifications, and why bird singing matters more than meditation for your mental health. Welcome to the show, Adam. It's great to have you. Hey, Jay and John. So glad to be with you.
We are super psyched to discuss your book today. And of course, that is the title. What does it mean to be super psyched? That's a great question. It doesn't mean happy all the time, like some type of toxic positivity. It means super connected to our psyches. We'd love people to be super psyched and to be able to say, hey, John and AJ, I'm feeling super psyched to be on the show. And I am. But sometimes it means super connected to my psyche when I'm grieving, when I'm.
experiencing something hard. So that was what I went for my nickname in high school. I was actually given this in my garage band where I played bass, the drummer called me enthusiasm. I kind of came out of the womb that way. I didn't mean to But Sonia Lubomirsky talks about sometimes, you know, we have a genetic baseline towards, you know, a particular way I was born on the happy side of the bed. And doesn't mean I haven't faced my own depression doesn't mean I haven't had my own anxiety, but
I have noticed that over the years that if I'm connected to my psyche and really allow it to inform me and figure out what to do with that information, it's been very helpful. And that's what I've been looking for with this book. What are some signs that we are connected to our psyche? Because I feel so many of us are disconnected and maybe not even realizing it. One of the things that will happen is if you say something that's patently untrue, you can, in most cases.
exert less energy. So let's say you were benching your max. And you said something that was entirely true. You know, I am one of the hosts of Art of Charm. It's true. It's irrefutable. versus I'm the host of another podcast, insert name. You would exert less energy. Now, a lot of us go through life pretending we're something that we're not or signing on to a thing that is not really true.
carrying that cognitive dissonance. We walk through life as if we're walking through life with rocks in our shoes or a thumbtack in our back pocket, which would not be really good to sit down on. No. And that nagging feeling of understanding that maybe you are following other people's wants and needs, desires over your own or faking it. You know, we we hear so often fake it till you make it.
Many of our clients come to us with frustrations around imposter syndrome. So that inner turmoil around psyche, connecting with it and being authentic is confronting so many of us every single day. So there are two things. First of all, fake it till you make it or fake it till you become it, however you like to hold it in your mind, can actually be helpful for certain things. Like let's say I'm painfully shy.
And my therapist tells me, here's what you do. When you're checking out at Trader Joe's, pretend that you are the world's most confident person and talk to the checkout counter person. Ask them what their favorite. thing in the store is something i might have missed fake it till you become it can work in certain situations but when where it doesn't work is pretending that you are absolutely in love with being an accountant when you're not
and doing it just because you're good at it. That's not enough. If you've seen the whole idea of the Ikigai, this Japanese four overlapping circles, I love it. You're nodding. I'm guessing you have. It's what we're good at. what the world needs, what we can get paid for, and what we love. If all four of those things come together, we've got ourselves a super psyched winner, so to speak. We will be connected to ourselves, others, the world, and beyond. That's kind of what I talk about.
in some cases you can fake it till you become it maybe you might be able to find a particular aspect of accounting that you love but in most cases if we are just doing this because of other people's feedback mirroring
of who we are. Yeah, you're good at math, you should become an accountant. And they pass the exams, but hate it. Yeah, they're gonna an eight hour workday is gonna feel like 32 hours. And if we love what we're doing, and we're super connected to it, eight hours will feel more like two hours.
Looking at those four concentric circles that you bring up, I'm curious if we're feeling completely disconnected and we're feeling lost around what our internal psyche is, what other people want or expect of us.
what we're good at and how to give value to the world, is there a starting point that you recommend for us to at least complete one of the four circles? I would say that the first and primary circle is connecting to self, and that informs all of the other connections. It informs how we connect to others. the world and something greater. One of the ways that we can identify a good connection point for ourselves is often looking at something that we absolutely loved but gave up.
Like for some people, it's bringing that old dusty guitar out of the attic and saying, you know what, instead of just doom scrolling over the weekend, I'm going to work on playing guitar. Maybe in fact, I'm going to become a flamenco guitarist because that would be super rad. Exhuming something from its dusty crypt that we know we have a good track record with that for some reason we gave up. That's probably the first pile of things to look at.
The second is trying new things all the time. I mean, the idea of try it, you might like it, which all of our moms told us when we were kids is true. Sometimes it's a dud, but it doesn't hurt to try new things. to try to expand and see, is this true for me here? I did improv for two years. I was terrified of doing improv. I thought you had to be funny. And I was very quickly disabused of that idea. It turns out you have to be in the moment.
and go with whatever is thrown your way. And if I hadn't had the prodding of my buddy Paul to do it, I wouldn't have done it. And I can tell you without a question. it has informed my life it's made me a better father it's made me a better psychologist it's informed my presentations has been it's informing me now dancing with your questions aj what i think is so interesting about that is
So often the things that we need the most are the things that we internally fight against. And yet others can see, Hey, take the leap. Jump into that improv class, even if you're feeling internally like, oh, my God, I'm not funny. I'm not going to know what to say. People are going to look at me weird. They're not going to laugh at my jokes. And then coming out the other side, it's so informative to go through that experience of facing that inner.
turmoil or doubt about yourself going through the experience with others enjoying it and then recognizing wow i can do podcasts now and i can get on stage and i can nail that job interview Exactly. I mean, imposter syndrome follows us through all of these things. And at some point, when you do it enough, and you feel good enough about it, it's like, oh, yes, I am a podcaster.
Oftentimes, imposter syndrome companies, people who are really good at doing a thing, oftentimes it accompanies somebody who's learning and feels like, oh, my gosh, who am I kidding? I mean.
I'm guessing that John has had that experience when he was a burgeoning guitarist. I'm guessing there was a time when you were playing a song in a band. You're like, who am I kidding? Like, this isn't for real. And then it became real after a certain number of reps. It's like, oh, and at some point, you know.
as you were ascending your learning curve, it was just like, I could do this in my sleep. I'll do this anytime, anywhere without thinking. The interesting thing with improv, and this is why we had used it in all of our trainings, because we deal with highly. analytical professionals. So the things that they're coming for us to get help with is to be more in the moment, to be able to hone in on the emotional.
and contextual pieces of the conversations so that they can carry it a lot more and make those connections. And the minute you bring up improv, they all freeze in fright because. All of their fears are in that art form. But with that and all of the prodding that we do to get them through it, they all experience such... great growth and understanding of the tools that they're working on and how to get better at them in that practice. It's remarkable.
Totally. What's funny, John, is I work with highly successful men of Silicon Valley. And when they show up, they're often super well educated, they've ascended the ladder, they're at the C-suite. And when I ask them a simple question of what do you want? They're so used to doing things according to the coach on the sideline. The coach on the sideline could be their parents. It could be their peers. It could be anybody that they don't have an answer. I have no idea what I want.
And that's not something that they've really given much thought to. What do I want? It kind of gets lost in the shuffle between raising children, trying to kick ass at work. All of those things come to the fore and they have absolutely.
condition themselves to not even know what they want now what's interesting to me is that hearing who you work with and going through the book and recognizing all these amazing people that have been next to you in your office talking through these issues outside looking in we see them as incredibly successful we see them as connected we admire them we look up to them and yet so many of them struggle with disconnection
What's going on and why is the pursuit of society's view of success often lead us down a path of disconnection? In the book, I refer to them as distractors. We are in possession of these brains that are only here. for our survival and energy conservation we don't really think about much else this idea called connection yeah i have thousands of connections on linkedin
Is that what connection really means when people talk about connection? Connection keeps showing up in the zeitgeist. They might have connections with people. They might be able to get you a meeting with so-and-so and it really, really hallowed ground. but are they connected with themselves in a deep way are they able to look at their lives and say wow this is authentically me rather it's almost like a song that was created by a corporation
rather than the song that you wrote from the bottom of your heart in your basement. Like that's what I'm looking for, for people to live their lives. Sometimes you have to play the corporate song. That's fine. But not at the expense of playing the song that you've written. That is entirely true. We need some context for that. And those outside successes are so fleeting in their long-term value to us. So I was working with a client recently who had a major exit.
And it was seminal in his life. But immediately after the exit, he started getting invited to parties with billionaires and people who want to invest in the next thing. And he was coming to me saying, I'm in this room and I feel shame, embarrassment.
I don't feel that I'm successful. I don't feel that that exit is even valuable because I'm not working on anything right now. I don't know what the next thing is. I don't even know what I want that facing that self-doubt and then feeling everyone in the room is now judging him around it.
And then when you share with them, well, everyone in the room is feeling that exact same thing as as outwardly successful as they look. It really is is mind warping when so many of us are striving for those outward successes. those moments those exits those peers patting us on the back the promotions the title um but as we know after 24 hours 48 hours you change your linkedin post the press release goes out and
Are you really feeling successful? There's an emptiness that follows that many of us aren't ready for because we're so disconnected. 100%. So when we wake up in the morning, we are chasing our why. And each of us has a different why. And for many of us, it's to make a particular number. So we get up, we take the shower, we get ready for work. And we are thinking almost like Viktor Frankl's book, Man's Search for Meaning that has become.
inextricably connected to our sense of meaning and it's the wrong thing on our deathbeds we're not going to look back and say somebody bring me all my awards somebody bring me my bank statements to show me how much I kicked ass. What we want at the end of life is knowing that we lived while we were alive, that we loved and that we gave love. One of the biggest regrets people experience on their deathbed.
is love left on the table. The other one you probably know about is chances not taken, but those are the two bigs. And if we live with the end game in mind of like, how much love can I give and receive? How many chances can I take that are meaningful chances? And how much can I stretch? I mean, a hallmark of psychological well-being is something called cognitive flexibility, which runs opposite to cognitive rigidity.
What happens to us after we turn, let's say, 35? Most of us are pretty much cooked. Our learning curve is going to just drop significantly. I am who I am. I've got the haircut I've got. I got the style of clothes that I got. I listen to the music that I listen to. I read the types of books and see the types of news on TV and shows themselves. I stick within a genre. Whereas we've got another option. My father and I will toot his horn because he's amazing. He's 85 years old.
He hadn't played the piano since he was nine years old. He started playing in his 80s upon retirement from work. He was very blessed. He got to retire at 59. He said to me, how do I learn Spanish? Because he knew I know how to learn Spanish. I speak a couple languages. And I told him how. And he's got no ear for language. One of the things I told him.
Hire Señor Davis, my high school Spanish teacher. He will teach you every week and your Spanish will rock. Now, his Spanish is intelligible. It's not gorgeous. But after 26 years of weekly practice, his Spanish is decent and decent enough. to work. He's hitting it hard. He's not giving up. One of the things that we need to do is constantly hit it and learn more about what what our maximums are in various areas. We don't have to compare ourselves to other people.
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First of all, let's define connection, this word that keeps showing up. And you both hear it all the time. It seems to be what we're all chasing. But if you look it up in the dictionary, it's kind of lackluster, the definition.
It's basically the connection between two things, ideas, or even feelings. If you look it up in the American Psychological Association, there is no definition for connection. If you look up on Psych Central, there's a slightly better definition. But my book aimed to look at...
What is connection? And I had 10 licensed mental health practitioners join with me to create a working definition for what connection even is to begin with. And the bottom line is it's life force. It's the stuff we talked about. In Star Wars, it's the force, so to speak. It's feeling vital. It's feeling alive. So how do we look for it? Well, each of us has different things. And I guess I'm going to ask each of you, is there a thing that you do that on the other side of doing it?
Afterwards, you say to yourself, that was time unbelievably well spent. Can you each just give me an example of that? Yeah, for me, coaching and cooking. When it comes to the coaching part, just being able to help others achieve their goals is so inspiring in my own life and so fulfilling. And then the flip side in leaving science, we talked a little bit about this before the show started.
um that ability to be a scientist in the kitchen to lose myself in a recipe and perfecting it uh are those two moments for me that that definitely give me life force can you imagine how sucky it would be if you didn't get to do those two things on the regular
Yeah, it's pretty awful when I don't get a chance to do that. Even when we do trips, I'm like, I have to find a place in the kitchen. I have to cook. And my clients will joke, you're talking to me on a trip. And I'm like, yeah, this lights me up. This inspires me. if aj is not cooking he's definitely looking at the restaurants and seeing what they have and then going to investigate to see if these are recipes or ideas that he can incorporate into his own diets um for myself
I've always said I get to do my favorite things at a high level. And of course, one of those is coaching. AJ and I have spent close to 20 years doing this now, and we plan on doing it for another 20. But I understand. of the music bit and so for myself i like i will spend hours especially on a friday or saturday night just doing music dives and searching and going through obscure music all over the world, looking for things that will, will move me in some.
And a lot of times those evenings are, there's no treasure at the bottom of the hole. But when I do strike treasure, when I am moved, I can be consumed. by it and that feeling of being consumed by a song and then it changes at least for me and my mind my my physiology
And there are moments where I don't even feel to be in a human presence. I'm now in a transcendent state. And so those are the... the chases that I go on in and to me worth the hours that I spend looking for the for that music I'm gonna say AJ you are the Sherlock Holmes of cooking and my man John when you hear music that really hits you. It's almost like the movie Inception. It takes you right in.
I'm not familiar with Inception, but yeah, sure. Okay, fair enough. But it just draws you in a million percent. Like it's a full body experience and that you have, I'm going to call you, by the way, John, a super sensor. is one of the terms that I like. Two people hear the same song, you being one of them. I imagine that if we could hook you up to an EEG or some other brain imaging, we would see.
parts of your brain light up that might surprise the uh the clinician like it really really hits you hard the question is how much time since life is a pie chart i mean How much time are we allocating to the stuff that really, really lights us up? And for many people, it's not a lot. And then finally, the weekend rolls around and they're tired from the week. They hit it hard. They left it on the field.
and what ends up happening is we just do the easy stuff we don't do the stuff that has maybe a little bit more activation energy required Like going out on a bike ride, like going out and saying, you know what, I need to buy some ingredients to get this stuff, like really go on and hunt for the good music or whatever it is, or going to the music festival, which is two hours away. You know, I don't really feel like it. It's activation energy.
If we live our lives with kind of this limp handshake lifestyle, it's almost like we're dying while we're alive. We got to do those things that we know. will turn us on. And there's often a chasm between what we know and what we do. There's just a huge chasm. Common sense is not common practice. Everyone will give you the right answer. But are they actually doing those things? And the answer is no. And the book addresses this. We have these 35,000 year olds.
artifacts between our ears they may are these they're called the brain they may even be the same model as was used a hundred thousand years ago and yet our external realities have changed so dramatically just in the last little bit, but let alone last a few millennia, we need to override various cognitive biases, the negativity bias, which we talk about a lot, the
loss aversion bias, the social comparison that we engage in. One of the things that I love talking about is we can't help it, we will engage in social comparison. I will roll up in my new car and I will see the other cars around me. And notice that other people on the block have better cars. It's my job to double down on what I've got. Love the one I'm with and say, I love this car. And it's not a lie. What we appreciate appreciates. We know this for sure.
and that's one of the ways of overriding such a cognitive bias as social comparison so we need to be cognizant of the bugs in our brain not let them dictate and rule the day, but instead find a way to hit control alt delete and override those system defaults and say, you know what cognitive bias is?
I'm not going to listen to you. You do not inform me. I'm going to go do something else. I'm not going to go for what's easy. I'm going to do the hard thing that on the other side of it gives me energy. I was working with this guy. biologist at the highest level, a PhD in biology, and he hated his job. He described himself as having the dad bod of dad bods. And he smoked weed and watched like 1970 TV and go to sleep and wake up a little bit.
heavier and a little bit hungover and get through his eight hour workday and come home and do the same. And what I asked him was, what really feeds you? And I used an acronym of F E E D. What gives you flow? We know that flow. is, you know, the two of you know what flow is. It's that experience of total immersion, being challenged. It's what Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi talks about in his book, Flow, and it's what allowed Michael Jordan to play the entire time during the flu game.
it was challenging it was meaningful the second e stands for energize what takes energy from you but gives energy back the third is edify i wanted to use the word edify but my editor made me use educate so what is educational for you what moves the needle along in your learning for each of you the whether it's coaching or listening to music or cooking
You are constantly learning. And for this guy as well. And D, what is depth? We are not just homo. We're not just homo sapiens. We're homo symbolicus. We are meaning. chasing creatures that hold victor franco idea what has depth what has meaning can you find something that meets all four criteria if you can find something that meets all four criteria you've got a winner and in this case for the biologist it was gardening
So what did he do? He woke up early in the morning. He would attend to the garden. He'd be reading about gardening. He'd be inviting people over. He would be working out so that he could lift heavier weights so that he could. deal with the gardening and so now he didn't have the dad bod of dad bods he just had a dad bod um because he was working out and it had all four he'd find himself in flow he'd wake up extra early
Instead of hitting the bong and watching 1970s TV, he was reading about gardening and how to do it better. Like that became his lane. And so he was able to keep his job. didn't have to leave his job his job actually became something that allowed him to have his avocation and so suddenly his job even had greater meaning so if you can find the thing that feeds you f-e-e-d that's
Pretty much the central theme of the book as it relates to connecting to ourselves, others, the world and something greater. What's interesting to me about the examples that Johnny and I shared with you. I think so many of us when we think about these things that light us up, we're just thinking about ourselves. But I know Johnny in his deep dive in music, the one thing that lights him up even more is when he can share that hidden gem that he found with someone else and they're like,
oh my God, I love this too. I mean, I've sat in Johnny's house apartment and listened to tunes that I never would have found because not only was his search so meaningful to him, but then the sharing and having that moment where there's the shared emotional state from that tune.
Just like for me with cooking, it's like, yeah, I love cooking for myself, but it's even better when I can have friends or family say, oh, my God, this is the best dish I've ever had. What went into this or how did you learn to do this? That is the most inspiring. So as we talk about those concentric circles, looking at ourself, you know, what lights us up, then moving to others and being in service of others and obviously with coaching.
It comes back to the client's achievement, not our own achievement or accolades of number of clients worked with. But but what are they able to accomplish by overcoming limiting beliefs, by putting new skills into practice and seeing a different side of themselves that they could share with the world?
You know, that's for us. It's so true in the through line of what we shared with you. I want to point that out to our listeners because oftentimes we'll think about gardening on our own. But I guarantee you, your client.
was so enthused to show his friends and family what he was able to grow doing all that research and spending all those sleepless nights going down rabbit holes around how to feed orchids or how to grow the largest pumpkin. Yes. One thing I forgot to mention is he would have these massive. barbecues in his backyard and people will be tripping hard on his gorgeous work and so this really became like an antidepressant for him an anti-anxiety agent it gave his life so much more meaning
And he's now known as that guy with the most awesome garden. Gardening is pretty awesome. The one thing I want to mention with that, though, and... Gardening is one of those things. Certainly cooking, playing music and experiencing music is one of those paths. It is incredibly important for people to pick those paths where. Everything else in their world stops because they're now focused on this thing. Now I'm Gen X. AJ is a millennial. So I.
The world I grew up in was slightly a little bit more analog than AJ's, but he certainly got to experience a little bit of that before things took off. But for our younger generation, Z's and the alphas, they're growing up and are completely surrounded in all of this technology. Now, we were working with our workshop with our clients last night, and we were discussing.
which is just one of the many tools that is speeding up our worlds all around us. And there are physiological effects to that speeding up. No one is going to be able to keep up with any of that. Having one of those paths, again, allows your mental physiology to change. to slow everything down around you and actually enjoy wholeheartedly with all of your attention to what is in front of you while telling the rest of the world that they can go F themselves, right?
which is incredibly important. How else are you going to have a connection with yourself if you're unable to do that? Otherwise, you're going to be consumed with trying to keep pace with the world around you. which some would say is architected. So you do not have that connection. Spot on, John. So first off.
Create more, consume less. That's one of the things that we have to do. We become consumers and boy, do the companies love that we're consuming. Yes, they do. So whether it's whether it's writing music, or creating a show like what you have. We all have creators within us. That is one of the best things that humans can do is create something. One of the things I also know, and I got this one from Julian Treasure. I don't know if you know this guy, but he wrote a book called How to Listen.
And he said that with deforestation, we have less birdsong and we need birdsong for our mental health. We need to go out to nature. And birdsong signals to us that we are safe. We have so many pings coming from 24 hour news. We have it from social media. We have it from every direction saying we are not safe. You know, the sky is falling. You're screwed.
blah, blah, blah, really incurring learned helplessness over time, which is a hallmark of depression. One of my favorite people, Jody Wellman on your show, and she's talked about that vacation is
correlated with longevity. We need those vacations. And one of the things that we lie on is like, hey, man, I don't need to take vacations. I don't need to sleep. All of these things that are actually going to shorten our life. It's almost like saying, hey, man, I smoke three packs of cigarettes a day. Screw it. I don't care about the data.
and somehow thinking that we're exceptional. And we all think we're exceptional, particularly as it relates to death. But to date, I've not heard of anybody avoiding it. So I guess what I'd have to get at is, can you identify a few things?
that you need to do over the course of the day, the week, the month that will give you a ton of energy. I call it the drive away test, whether it's hanging out with a friend, like I'm sure that you've both experienced this, like going out for coffee, going out for beers, going out for dinner with a friend. And you've had one of a variety, but I'm going to make it two experiences.
One where you're sharing something and they just take the ball and they say, oh yeah, I've been to Japan too. You're talking about your trip to Japan. And they go on a 20 minute diatribe about Japan. And everything goes back to self, back to self. And you get no time to really be heard. You don't feel heard. You get in your car as you're driving away. You feel exhausted. Versus.
Somebody with whom you have a really good back and forth, a good upload download ratio. And the two of you are just completely vibing, sharing the airtime. And. One of my colleagues shared me a quote from Donald Winnicott, a British psychoanalyst. Apparently, he said something like, true mental health is exhibited when you're able to share yourself with another and take in the experience of another.
You go away from that end exchange and you feel taller. You feel happier. You're thinking to yourself, that time went by so quickly. I can't wait to hang with this person next. The driveway test from anything could be at the end of this episode. After you're talking to me, you'll have a felt sense of what it was like to be with me. Like, was it positive? Was it negative? We have that with all the things that we do, whether it's gardening, listening to music, cooking.
coaching session. We all have a drive away test from a thing. And we need to pay attention to that because that informs us. Is that something we want to continue doing or maybe not? Now, looking at this connection to self, starting to understand what those moments are where you're immersed, you feel alive. Now moving to connection with others, sharing the music, the recipe, the meal, the garden.
Let's move further down connection because I think that's where most of us mentally stop of like, OK, I just I need more friends. I need connection with other. But there's even greater meaning in the connection that you're discussing and you describe in the book that's so important for us, our listeners, to unlock to really feel alive.
Absolutely. So yeah, as we go out through the concentric circles, we start with self, others. We know that the greatest happiness or misery comes from our primary relationships. perhaps are married to or consider a significant romantic other or the people with whom we work, we're going to be spending about 90,000 hours at work. We're going to be spending more time with the people.
we work with, then we actually will our spouses, our family and our friends combined. And then as so others is a really important thing. It really dictates how we're doing. And there really weren't classes in school.
to describe like how do you connect with yourself how do you connect with others um and just one little tooting of the horn for connecting with self it's not a selfish thing in fact it's one of the least selfish things we can do because if i'm not connected myself i have a lot less to give to others Others can, by the way, include pets. I decided to include pets as significant others in our lives. There's been so much data to suggest that people who are pet people.
We'll have better lives, more oxytocin flowing through the system, more serotonin, more dopamine. I cannot tell you how much my pets have given me. When we go outside the third realm, it's connection to the world. World includes art. It includes work. It includes nature. It even includes our ancestry. Maya Angelou, who is the source of so many quotable quotes, once said,
You don't know where you're going if you don't know where you're from. And ancestry is a really important thing. One of the things I really endorse in the book is doing video biographies with older people in our lives, getting those securely recorded. so that future generations can hear the words of their ancestors and not just see photos of them at weddings, dressing in a way that they've never dressed before. And the fourth circle is something greater.
Something greater for a religious person. And I know you, AJ, go to church. That would be one of the ways of expressing it. And for the most orthodox atheist, it might be going to Joshua Tree and saying, wow. It might be going to the Grand Canyon and saying, wow. When we say the word wow, it's an indicator that we are in a state of awe, A-W-E. And when we experience awe.
It's as if we've taken psilocybin because actually neuroimaging studies show that the brain that is on looks like the brain on psilocybin without having had to take any psilocybin at all. Just go back to 2017 when we had that solar eclipse up in Oregon and strangers are hugging strangers and they're just tripping so hard, except they've taken nothing. They're just left self-focused. They are more others focused. They are connecting to something greater.
And I guess last but not least, as it relates to connecting to something greater, Martin Buber once said that we can engage in life as if we are talking to a thou or we are talking to an it. And the way the two of you are engaging me right now, we're having an I and thou.
conversation versus us just talking as if we are you know atms and or or large language models we're talking to each other the way people who hold each other in high regard talk to each other so that is even in that moment uh that is even connecting to something greater because the power of the three of us is greater than the sum of our parts and we're leveraging that right now what i find fascinating
all of this in this journey to success and i know many of our clients struggle with it i at times have struggled with it when you start to focus on okay connecting to self finding those talents and leaning into your strengths and those strengths then become externally rewarded people take notice you get promoted you make more money and all of a sudden you're on this path where failure and the stakes of failure internally become so high that you avoid it at all costs.
So that thought of going to improv, picking up a guitar, learning to garden, getting in a cooking class where you don't know how to chop an onion, all of that now, that fear of failure you're facing keeps you in this state of disconnection. And our clients come to us starting to realize like, OK, this fear is holding me back in areas that I didn't know or in areas where other people are pointing it out to me.
where I should be doing the improv class, I should be taking the cooking class, but I'm so afraid of that failure. How can we start to reframe that failure in a way that allows us to find this greater connection that you talk about? Because we see that as such a barrier for so many of our clients, especially getting beyond the connection to self.
Almost everything we want is on the other side of fear, on the other side of growth, which hurts. The spotlight effect is one of the cognitive biases that suggests that we imagine that the world is paying a lot more attention. to us than they actually are. And that's good and bad. But in this case, it's very good because people really don't care. They don't care if you're struggling. They might find it funny, but we're all afraid that people are going to point and laugh at us in a bad way.
But here are five good thought leaders weighing in on failure. Dory Clark says that failure is merely data. My friend Bonnie Burnell says that it's tuition. Matt Abraham says that mistakes are merely missed takes. And oh, yes, Guy Kawasaki. He said, don't focus on making the right decision. Focus on making the decision right. So even if you completely screw up. get back up make it right and then sean hayes of smartless fame and will and grace of course he says that
our failures make the best stories later on. So if we can hold that in mind, like we imagine that people are looking at us, and that failure is just data, maybe you come rate stories at some point. it'll allow us to ascend through the four stages of learning. The first stage, if you've ever learned how to drive a car. Before you got into the car, you didn't really know what the gas pedal was, the brake pedal, you didn't know what that little thing that helped shift things, or the...
blinkers and how to use the mirrors properly and how to adjust it all. You were unconsciously incompetent at that stage. You didn't know what you didn't know. And then suddenly when you sit in the car, you suddenly become consciously incompetent. Oh my God, there's a lot I don't know.
And most people have a lot of trouble going to the next stage, which is after doing the consciously incompetent stuff for a number of tries, you will get to a place of conscious competence. You can drive the car, but it's going to use all of your RAM space in your head to do it.
Don't talk to me. I'm just trying to learn this damn thing. At some point, doing enough reps of it, you become unconsciously competent. You're able to do it in your sleep, as I was talking about earlier. I'm not suggesting that you do, but you could eat a burger while you're driving. And because you just know it that well. So most of us are not willing to look like idiots. The only reason I speak Spanish and Japanese well is because I was willing to look like an idiot for a long time.
I remember I took the course of Japanese at, I was at Pitzer College, but I took it at Pomona. And there were 120 of us who began and 12 of us who finished year two. I think that when you think about Carol Dweck and mindset, I think that. it went against their self-concept that they were smart. I was willing to be stupid for two years, ridiculously stupid, make an ass out of myself because I wanted to learn it so badly. It wasn't about intelligence.
It was about having meaning attributed to learning this thing. It was going to be very meaningful for me to be able to go to Japan and live in a culture that was like 180 degrees away from my own reality. it was totally worth the price of admission. But most of us are so scared of the failure and so scared of looking stupid. And I'm certainly one of them.
During those four years in college, I wasn't willing to ride on my bicycle. I talk about it in my book because I was afraid that I'd look dumb on a bike. I cannot even begin to imagine if I could go back in time what I'd whisper in my ear.
to my younger self ride the damn bike take more chances do the things that people say you shouldn't do be willing to face rejection rejection by the way hurts us like physical pain hurts us it shows up in our brain in very similar ways um but tolerate rejection well because if you don't you're not trying hard enough so these are the things that will allow us to experience a sense of connection in this world
Well, I know our audience loves formulas and efficiency. And so much of what we talked about is a struggle right now in this always-on environment where we're being bombarded with notifications over birdsong. where the thought of getting out in nature is so hard when we have to be in Slack and Zoom rooms and be working through the weekend. So is there a formula to this connection that feels so fleeting to us? And what can we do in our life to make it more efficient?
when we feel so time-starved so i'd say the best roi is going to be derived from micro doses of connection if you can't get macro doses at least get micro doses between clients put on that song that reminds you of who you are. I used to watch certain scenes from Silicon Valley. I particularly liked watching Ehrlich Bachman and Jin Yang fighting. That just made me laugh so hard. It reminds me of who I am.
When I listen to something really funny, if I have a 10 minute break, it's going on. I'm going to remind myself of who I am in that way. Might put on a song in the MLB. Everyone has a walk on song. Why? because we need a walk-on song i mean quite true did it really hilariously in the office but we all actually need a walk-on song that is a micro dose of connection it reminds you of who you are when you're coming up to bat if it works for the guys in the mlb and they wouldn't do it
if it didn't work for the guys in the mlb because they care about those stats and they're looking to see what do i what happens when we play the walk-on song and what happens when we don't play the walk-on song so what i would ask is how can you microdose How can you have a moment of radical amazement as described by Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, who was one of the earlier.
They are proponents of awe. Like, can we look outside the window and see the gray sky? I'm seeing a gray sky and I'm seeing an orange tree. Can we actually take that in? Can I notice something amazing about my children or my wife? or my home that I'm so fortunate to live in and not take that for granted? Can I experience gratitude in a new way? These are microdoses of connection that we all have access to. We just need a moment.
And maybe just to do one round of, I'm sure you both know a lot about box breathing and, you know, various forms of 374 breathing, whatever style you like, doing just a couple of rounds of that and doing a microdose of connection, that would be my prescription. And that would be a very efficient way to stay in touch with who you are while you're doing all the things. It's one of the reasons why we encourage our clients to create ritual throughout their day and their habits.
to recenter themselves, to come back to themselves so they can have a fresh start for whatever the next task, the next mission is. Go ahead and play your walk-on song. We all need the palate cleanser, right? That's so true. We need an amuse-bouche, as they say in the bougie restaurants. We need a palate cleanser.
You see me drinking water, by the way, all the time. One of the ways I stay connected is I know that being on podcasts or being a psychologist is a dehydrating sport. And if I want to give the best of me.
for either one you're gonna see me drink and sometimes spilling on myself throughout the thing uh i i hydrate or die for me um so yeah uh exactly john is all i can say invite others in So not just focusing on the self-connection, but share the song, share the trip to the farmer's market, share the meal, invite someone to the workout.
You know, so much of what we talk about in this disconnection state in the state of loneliness is, you know, it's hard to schedule time in advance to meet people. There's so many other distractions going on. But so much of our daily lives and the things that we have to do anyways that keep us connected to self, if you were to invite someone else to do and allow them to connect to themselves and you at the same time.
We're adding efficiency to that farmer's market trip. We're adding efficiency to that going to the concert or going out to explore a new part of town or an area or a market or a museum that you haven't been to before. But I feel that so much of what we talked about earlier, the fear of failure, the fear of rejection, is we've turned inward in so many ways that have created this loneliness epidemic where it's like, well, it's just easier, more efficient for me to go do that on my own.
I can just knock out the workout alone. I can go to the farmer's market alone. I could be that lone wolf that's gotten me so far. And as you go down that path, you might not feel the disconnection in the moment because you're doing something that fulfills the self-connection. But over time, as we talk about regret, we talk about a fulfilling life. The things that stand the test of time are the relationships that we've built with others. It's not the focus. It's not the PR and the bench press.
not the number of meals that you've cooked at home, but it's the moments that you shared with others and that connection to others that's so impactful on our mental, physical, and emotional health. Bro, I couldn't agree more. I was watching a documentary on Scotch. took place in scotland and everybody was describing you know what scotch means to them and one of the aficionados said the best scotch he ever had was a crappy bottle of scotch on a really cold day on a boat with his
best friend and the conversation. And that was his best scotch moment. And you you just said it perfectly. We need to share stuff with people. That's why we do all that stuff on social media sharing these things hoping we'll get likes but as laurie santos out of yale and the happiness ab reminded me these are like basically saccharine, or I think she called it NutraSweet versions of what we're really looking for in IRL. We're looking for sharing something, whether it's a workout, a song.
So when Barbara Streisand sings, people who need people are the luckiest people in the world, I'd say partially tracked. It's the people who recognize that they need people who are the luckiest people in the world. Because doing this lone wolf thing is not going to suit, is not going to work for us.
And we all have different feeding schedules. My friend and colleague, Brett Frank, said that some people need to see friends all the time. And they have feeding schedules like hummingbirds. Hummingbirds, I see some literally right now.
outside my door. They feed all the time. Where we fall on the introversion versus extroversion scale matters. Even the most introverted of people definitely need some people time. They might need one-on-one uh i was i was i one of my podcast guests recently was sahil bloom who said that he hates sitting at long tables of people
uh you'd much rather do a one-on-one type of thing and you know are you a one-on-one or are you a social type how frequently do you need to hang out how long is long enough um getting to know those things about yourself without any judgment saying that you are
You should be something else. It's really important to know who you are and to feed yourself accordingly. Well, the last impactful concept in the book that I want to share, because when we talk about relating to others, connecting with others, one of the roadblocks that so many of us feel is. The dreaded small talk and how much we just hate exchanging pleasantries, talking about things that aren't really meaningful to either one of us.
And in turn, we tend to avoid those situations where we can connect to others because we just feel that there's this inevitable roadblock that's not worth bashing through. On the other end of that is big talk. And you talk about the importance of this.
I'd love to end this episode for our audience to not only share this concept of Big Talk, but to give them some prompts that they can use to really stretch themselves to connect to others because that connection is just so impactful. We do want more substantial conversations, but... Most of us have not been educated on how to do that. We stay with what's easy, sports, tech, politics. Okay, can we go beyond that? Some people don't want to go beyond that.
But I see it as something akin to dogs smelling each other at the dog park. Can the dogs end up playing? I would say that dogs playing together after they sniffed each other is a sign of big talk. And that's what we need. But we do, of course, need to.
do the bit gentle things we're not going to start things off by asking a big talk question like one of clean his biggest ones is what do you want to do before you die you know if i was just to say that to either of you when we were first meeting each other rather than hey man how's it going how are the fires you know how's how's it being how's it being a new dad those types of things and by the way those are not small talk questions now i think of it weather is small talk you know
other things but we need those generally to see is there can we can we go a little bit further but it's important that we do go further one of my favorite prompts is a kitchen table prompt and it's used by the boy scouts It's the rose, bud, and thorn question. And you can do this even with your friends. A rose is something that was good that happened today. And you talk about what was good that happened and why was it good. The bud is something that you learned today.
shows, particularly for children, to see that their well-educated parents who seem to know everything are still hitting it hard and learning. I'm still learning every day. And the third is... the thorn what hurt today and that really helps all three actually help with uh emotional intelligence in incredible ways but it also becomes the jumping block i mean suddenly
the conversations become much bigger just by using, to use one of John's ideas of a ritual, just knowing that that ritual will occur and coming perhaps loaded and ready. for the dinner discussion with the rosebud and thorn thought about in advance often extemporaneously is fine too um but knowing that
it ends up becoming like hyperlinks to deeper conversations. Having a structure like that, that you know that you're going to be doing a rosebud and thorn, that would be my top tip for having big talk. Well, thank you so much for joining us and sharing all this great knowledge with our audience. Where can they find out more about the book, your podcast, and all the great work you do in your practice?
Thanks, AJ. It's dradamdorsay.com. D-R-A-D-A-M-D-O-R-S-A-Y is my website. My two TEDx talks, one on men and emotions. That one's called Emotions the Data Men Miss. It's available on YouTube as is my friendship and adulthood talk. My podcast is called Super Psyched. It's had people like Steve Curran and Temple Grant and a lot of really interesting people just talking about.
psychology and things that bring me alive and bring them alive. So we're really talking about fiction there. And the book is available at Amazon, of course, Barnes and Noble. I'd love to hear what you all think about it. So feel free to hit me up. I am responsive. I'm on LinkedIn and all the places. Well, thank you so much for stopping by. This is a great conversation. AJ and John, I've been looking forward to this and the two of you are fantastic. You're doing great stuff. We appreciate it.
What a fantastic interview. I hope you enjoyed it. And now comes a part of the show where we showcase one of our X-Factor Accelerator members. Take it away, Daniel. My name is Daniel and I'm a manufacturing engineer. My overall experience with the X Factor Accelerator program has been excellent due to effective teaching and a supportive community of like-minded individuals. Since joining...
I've cultivated deeper connections with my friends, family, and colleagues by implementing the conversational techniques learned in the program. These deeper connections have made my life more fulfilling, both personally and professionally. I would recommend joining the X Factor Accelerator program because the excellent teaching and consistent accountability ensure that you will grow into the person that you want to become.
Thank you, Daniel. It was a pleasure working with you, too. And good luck to all of your future endeavors. If you've gotten value out of this or any of our podcasts, head on over to your favorite podcast player and rate and review the show. It means the world to us and it helps others find the show. And before we head out, a huge thank you to our producers, Michael Harold and Eric Montgomery. Until next week, go out there and network and make some awesome new friends. Cheers.