Robert Biswas-Diener

have instead of what we do. We think things that hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort to make a life worth living. This podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction, how they feed their good wolf. Thanks for joining us. Our guest today is Robert Biswastiner, a psychologist, author,

and instructor at Portland State University. Biswastiner's research focuses on income and happiness, culture and happiness, and positive psychology. Robert has written a number of books, including his latest The Upside of Your Dark Side, Why Being your whole self not just your good self drive, success and fulfillment. The book was co written with Todd Cashton. Here's the interview. Hi, Robert, welcome to the show. Thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate it. I am very excited to get

you on the show. Your book is UM right up the alley of a lot of things that we talked about on the show. One of our i think our second interview ever was UM with a guy named Oliver Berkman who wrote a book called The Antidote Happiness for people who Hate Posity of Thinking. So we've explored a lot of the ideas in your book on this show before, so I'm looking at taking those to a different level.

So our show is called The One You Feed, and it's based on the parable of Two Wolves, where there's a grandfather who's talking with his grandson and he says, in life, there are two wolves inside of us. One is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and bravery and love, and the other is a bad wolf,

which represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And the grandson stops and he thinks for a second, and he looks at his grandfather and he says, well, grandfather, which one wins, and the grandfather says the one you feed. So I'd like to start off by asking you what that parable means to you in your life and in the work that you do. Sure, that's a fantastic way to to open I'm tickled by it. I have to tell you, UM and I think you know the the

overall interpretation of the parable, hopefully it's relatively straightforward. It's speaks to um, people's internal worlds, all of their psychological states, their emotions, their attitudes, their values and so forth, as having a large impact in the world. That is it's uh, you know, the world isn't just luck and circumstance, um, But it has to do with with how you see things, and how you see things is largely the product of your own effort, your own attention, your own self awareness,

and so forth. UM. And I would think that that's the one. The one you feed is whichever one you put the the effort or attention into. UM. And I also like that it's sort of dichotomizes things, you know, good and bad. Um. You know, I know that there aren't just two types of people in the world, UM, But but I do sometimes see the utility and these kind of simplifications, not because they're somehow true, but because

they're a great way to to understand things. And I think that within all of us we we actually UM feed both wolves a tiny bit. I don't think anyone's totally just feeding one or the other. What I find interesting is that your book is called The Upside of Your Dark Side, so you're you're really talking about how we do need to embrace both sides of ourselves as part of UM driving a life that has the most success and fulfillment in it. Yeah. Absolutely, And I think

that's a hard pill to swallow. I mean, especially in the context of the parable you just read, UM, because when you describe the traits of the bad wolf, you know things like greed. Um, those sound really awful, you know, this sort of sound seven deadly sins kind of stuff. Um. And for most people, I think they would say things like hatred, rage, greed. I mean, these these are just such terrible traits and and we would want to avoid

them at all costs, UM. And while I am mostly in agreement with that, I don't know that we always want to avoid every iteration and of the dark side at all costs, and in fact, in certain instances I think they're helpful. What are some of those instances where you think it's it's helpful? So, UM, just to to you know, so that no one kills me, just to reiterate, I am a big fan of positivity. I do think it works for people, and I think it's where we

should spend the majority of our time. UM. And having said that, when I think about sort of the darker aspects of psychology, UM, my co author Todd and I divide them into three separate types, so you could have UM, emotions, of course, thinking or cognition UM. And then we also talk about the social life and all the behaviors that go along with your social relationships. So let's just take the first of those, because I think it's in many

ways the easiest for people to understand. UM. If you think about emotions and your feelings, there are a range of feelings joy, enthusiasm, anticipation, love, that we think of as pleasant or positive, and then a whole slew that we think of as negative. Those would be things like guilt, frustration, boredom, anger, UM. And I think of emotions in general as being a thermometer basically, emotions are we think of them as information. They're just sort of taking the temperature of your day

to day life. You get that last parking spot, you know, close up to the store, and your little emotional thermometer goes up. You have this little burst of joy. Yeah, I got it, Um, You get a flat tire and oh no, you get this this. You know, the thermometer goes down into the frigid reason regions where where you're frustrated. Um.

I want everyone's thermometer to be working. And on the one hand, for the people who take this idea of positivity too far, they say, you know, we should just always be positive all the time, we should never feel guilt, anger as always toxic. It's essentially like saying, hey, let's break our thermometer so that only measures half of the overall degrees. And I I think that that's not a well thought through um approach to to living the full

emotional life. Yeah, that's a really good analogy. One of the things that I ask people on the show a lot. One of our earlier guests Um mentioned in her book, but I'm always sort of asking myself, when is it positive thinking and when is it sort of outright denial of things. And I always think that's such an interesting line to try and walk, because I think you're you're

exactly right. I think if we ignore an entire emotional side of ourselves that seems to always be be problematic, and yet how we think about things tends to affect also how we feel about things in a lot of cases. Oh yeah, they're they're they're absolutely combined. And and emotions in particular part of our evolutionary birthright, I mean, the the entire palette of emotions, Uh, is there is in

existence to help us function. We didn't wind up with anger because you know, it's just this sort of affective poison that exists within us that we have to tiptoe around. We ended up with anger because it has motivational consequences. It helps us defend ourselves. That helps us, um, take on challenges and rise to to risk the occasions, defend those we love. Uh, it actually can work for us.

You know. Guilt is the same way guilt, Um, it's sort of a red flag waving telling you that you've violated your own ethics or values and that you need a course correction. Um. While these are unpleasant, they they are for good purpose, and I think that some of them, the prejudice against them has to do with a few a few misunderstandings about them, and one of them is

that we're going to somehow get stuck in these emotions. Um. You know, I think people especially feel like this about anger, that you're gonna get carried away, swept away, out of control. These are the types of phrases and language that people use around anger, as if you're not you anymore, you become animalistic, um or or that you're just gonna just be you know, the tsunami of emotion is going to

carry you away and you won't have any control at all. Um. And at the most extreme cases, that certainly could be true. But but all of us, me, you, we all have a long history of being angry at things large and small, and and we're not stuck there now, so at least at some point that those feelings eroded into other new feelings like like joy or boredom or eagerness or what have you. I do these many episodes where I just record myself talking. There's clearly our least listen to episodes.

Thanks all you guys out there. Um. Anyway, I did one recently about rumination, right, this idea that this tendency to just circle around the same thing in our head over and over. So I'm somebody who certainly can get stuck. Now we might it sounds like what maybe you're saying is I'm not actually stuck in the feeling at that point, so much is the thinking, Well, it could be, and you're not. I think most importantly, you're not stuck permanently. UM.

I asked people today. It's just a little experiment on Facebook. I just posted when you get angry normal anger, not absolutely enraged, the most angry you've ever been, and not just the tiniest amount of irritation, but whatever you perceive as normal anger. How long do you think it takes for you to recover? And some people wrote five minutes, some people wrote two to three days, which actually sounds like a long time to me. Um, and a lot

of people wrote sort of anywhere between one and four hours. UM. And I think that that that's actually pretty interesting. And I don't know what what the right answer is for you, but it might be interesting to keep track of your own angry episodes, because if it's true that they only last two hours, on average between before you're sort of back to your calm, resting self. It just may not be as bad as as people believe. I mean, two hours of anger is is not the end of the world, right,

It certainly isn't. Um. I think that what I'm what I've wrestled with, and I think I agree. I think what you're you're talking about is people do get worried that they'll get stuck, and some people do have maybe a tendency to be Maybe stuck isn't the right word, but you do certainly see people who are more perpetually in a certain emotion perhaps than other than other people. We think we all know somebody who's kind of perpetually angry at most situations. Um. And I'm sure that's not

at all what you guys are are driving at. Yeah, that's right. And and you're right. I mean, you know there are people that seem, you know, perhaps because of genetic leanings that you know, maybe are you know, their needle is pointed a little bit grumpier than someone else's. So so certainly you'll find individual differences. Um, But you're right. I I we just want people to be able to be psychologically flexible. To be agile and flipping back and

forth between the whole range of things. Because one of the things that people do around things like anxiety, stress, guilt, anger, boredom is they try and avoid it because it feels unpleasant. Um. And there are a few ways to avoid it. You can distract yourself, you can have a beer, you can um you know, in the case of boredom, whip out your smartphone. Um. But one of the most common ways that people do it is they try and suppress it. That is, they tamp it down. And unfortunately, suppression is

a pretty blunt psychological instrument. And what you get when you suppress negative feelings is you also suppress positive feelings. Suppression isn't a surgical life you you can't suppress one without suppressing the other. Um. And we find that people who suppress actually are more likely to become emotionally exhausted, they're more likely to quit their jobs, um, they're more likely to have health consequences as a result of kind

of trying to avoid these negative emotions. Um. And we don't want people to dwell in anger or or guilt, but we want people to to be able to tolerate them, to feel them and to acknowledge them as they come up, which happens to be the minority of the time. You said somewhere in the book that avoidance is the tectonic issue of our times. Yeah. Absolutely, and I think it's it's something that's happening um. More and more. We we

call it uh comfort addiction. Um. And the basic argument goes like this, modern people are more able to achieve comfort than at any time in human history. UM. And I know people, uh, you know, they get a little angry about this, and they say, oh, well, what are you talking about. Is are you know, living standards really going up? And you know, we had this this hard

economic time in two thousand and eight. And while all of that's true, I would point people to the year seventeen oh eight or the year one thousand and eight, and yes, we are far far more comfortable than those people are. Um. You know, we have space age foams that we can make beds with, we have microwave popcorn, we have cars that can take us huge distances. We have you know, incredibly smart phones that can entertain us

at at a whim. Um. We really do have a lot of kind of physical and psychological comforts available to us, and as comfort becomes our new natural resting state, we become a little bit out of practice with discomfort. UM.

And you find this more and more with UM. The idea, for example, of helicopter parenting and parents, you know, trying to take the burden or negotiate life for their children, and what it leads to maybe is is their kids continue to advance, but what their kids don't get to do is contend with disappointment, contend with UM, frustration or confusion or boredom or all of these things that are really implicated in the learning process. I think that comfort

thing is a is a big one. We talk often about that comfort is not the same thing as is happiness or fulfillment. UM. If comfort is the main thing that we're striving for, it's easy for at least for me, my life can shrink really really fast. There's less and less that I'm going to do because everywhere I go, I'm going to be more uncomfortable, and so my life just gets smaller and smaller. One of the things that I think is so interesting about it and comfort addiction.

I wrestle with it as much as anyone else. You know, this isn't me just wagging my finger and saying, and the good old days, everything was wonderful, and look at the kids now. Um. When we want to relax, we really gravitate towards comfort. You know, think lying on the beach, think um, a bubble bath, those types of things. But we when we want to grow and learn, we knowingly

take on discomfort. So think, for example, if you're privileged enough to be able to take an overseas trip, you do that knowing that, um, there's a lot of uncertainty there, that you're gonna have to contend with novelty and unpredictability, that you might get lost, that you'll be confused, um, and you assume that through that challenge you'll find it a very rewarding kind of self growth experience. UM. So even there, I like to to guide people to be

agile and flip back and forth. There's nothing wrong with comfort, um. But but comfort and sort of novelty slash challenge act like a seesaw and you can kind of go back and forth between them. Yeah. I didn't interview a couple

of weeks ago. We haven't released it yet. Um, but where the guests talked about something called cotton candy comfort that the way we similar very similar to what you describe that when we are trying to uh, you know, comfort ourselves in some ways, we tend to do things that are um they you know, it's sort of like cotton candy, right, very sweet at first, but no real lasting effect, and you usually don't feel a lot better afterwards. I can't wait to listen to that interview. It sounds

it sounds good. Although I wouldn't throw out all comfort because I think there is a time and a place to lay on the beach or to take a bubble bath. Um and and you know, we expect those to have short term effects. You don't expect the bubble bath you took last year to make you feel relaxed this year. Um. So, so I think those are okay, you know, I don't think we only have to be steeped and meaning and growth all the time without ever, you know, letting our

hair down. Um But I also wouldn't want to go the other way where we're only relaxed and and never facing hardship or challenge or growing. Right. I think the thing I got from from your book, and it's come up several times that you're talking about is find in that that middle ground, that that makes sense, that that being too far on either of those extremes with that or with indulging or suppressing emotions or all that stuff,

that there's a place that sits in the middle. Yeah. Absolutely, And you know, kind of an interesting if if I could just kind of pull back the curtain on, you know, show you the inner workings of this book as it came about. A few people have reacted to the book sort of like, oh, well, of course what you're making, what you're saying makes sense, but you know, like it has a so what effect, Like, well, of course you should sometimes feel bad and sometimes feel good. Of course

you should sometimes relax and sometimes grow. Um. But I I usually respond by saying, well, you know, in in the creation of this book, we came across not not one person or dozens of people, but you know, literally hundreds of people that strongly prefer one way or the other. Um. We wrote this book and in part to address a real world phenomenon, and that phenomenon is that there are people that that truly believe anger is never appropriate. There

are people who truly believe that comfort is never appropriate. Um. Just as there are people who who believe that UM comfort is always appropriate. UM so right, So it's kind of it's you know, these are real these are real people out in the real world, you know, so I do think they're this doesn't matter, and it's maybe less obvious to some people as it it may at first. So I think it's one of those It's I often think that knowing something is fine, right, it's great, I

know it, but it's can I actually live it? And that's a whole another let jump of complexity and effort. And so yeah, it's obvious, like, yes, we should try not to go to extremes in either of those things.

But boy, day to day that is a lot more challenging. Yeah, that's I'm so glad you brought that up, um and, in fact, because you know, I'm as guilty of that is absolutely any one and one of the places that I've really noticed that's popping up in my own life us just as a parent, um and and there have been times when, for example, my son has been bored or um where I have to disappoint my son something that he desperately wants to do, and you know, my wife and I just have to say no to him. Um.

In the past. I think before writing this book, I had a really hard time with that. UM. And now I almost take a sort of absurd glee in it. Um. You know, you're like, oh, you're bored. That's so great, Like, what an amazing opportunity for you, which drives him crazy of course, But UM, but I really have noticed that in the creation of this book, it has changed my

attitude about occasional negative feelings. Yeah. One of the things that you said about avoidance, and uh, I have a classic avoidance streak in me, give me an opportunity to avoid, and uh, if I'm sort of on autopilot, I will avoid. But you had a line in there that really struck me which said that unfortunately, avoiding problems also means avoiding finding the solutions to them, which I thought was really profound.

Well absolutely, I mean it used the kind of just a modern classic example of someone who has a huge amount of credit card debt, um, and and the way the often people who are burdened with with this you know, fiscal and psychological weight. Um, what they do is they just don't think about it. They don't make minimum payments, they don't make larger than minimum payments. They don't make

any payments. They just kind of wish it would go away. UM. And that avoidant strategy turns out not to be very good, first of all, because you can't avoid what's inside you, which is the feeling, So they end up really continuing to feel bad even while not paying UM. And then of course the problem lingers UM. So so really it's not a great way to head towards a solution in the long term. Yeah, it's it is a seductive one,

at least for me, UM. But I think that's the that's part of like you said, write in the book for you made you aware of a lot of those things, and that's that's what this show does for me, is it keeps me aware of these things so that I just don't sort of drift into my habitual patterns, or at least try to have that happen. You talk in the book about something else that I'm always very intrigued by. UM. I describe it as sort of not really knowing what's

going to make us happy. But you've got a different term for it called emotional time travel errors. Can you talk a little bit more about where you see that fitting into this Sure, so you know I didn't. I didn't create that myself. Um. You know I don't. I want to give credit where credits due. But um, it turns out that, on the one hand, happiness is wonderful.

If you feel positive emotions, You're more likely to get good customer evaluations, better supervisor evaluations, you'll live longer, you'll make more money, I mean, all sorts of benefits. But then there are also a whole bunch of problems with happiness too. Um. And one of these is we've spend a lot of our time making decisions based on predicted

future happiness. You know, I'm going to purchase a relatively expensive ticket to Hawaii based on the idea that a vacation there will yield some kind of happiness dividend for me, That that I would enjoy the beach, that I'll have good food, that I'll enjoy my time with my family, it will be relaxing, and so forth. Um. But but some of those predictions turn out to be wrong, not entirely wrong. I mean, it doesn't turn out that Hawaii

is just awful. I mean, it's pretty great. Um, But we tend to think that that the happiness pay out will last longer than we expect and um, and that it will be more intense. But it turns out, you know, you take that trip to Hawaii just using this example, um and and really you you get a mild burst of happiness, and it's mixed in with a whole bunch of other stuff. Maybe they lose your luggage on the airline, maybe you have about of food poisoning. Maybe it rains

two of the days you're there. Um. You know, so it's not just perfect bliss, but it's pretty good and overall you like it. Um. And then you come back to work, you know, following your one week vacation, and it sort of doesn't linger. You know, you kind of expected it to make you happy for the next two months, and it it basically paid out happiness for about two

days afterwards. Um. So I think that's that's an interesting thing because people are making real world decisions about which job should I take, which person should I marry, where should I retire based on these these kinds of assumptions. Yeah, that that is a very tricky one understanding what will

make us happy. Um, I'm I've I've certainly often found that I think it's this thing I have a tendency to be like, it's this thing out there, and then when when it occurs, I don't really feel all that different,

and um, it's it can be sort of startling. One of the things that you were talking I was I was thinking about you mentioned the weather on the vacation, and I've been working on creating a short course for some of the listeners on a book that I love, the Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, um and and the first part of that book is about being proactive, and it starts to border on that controlling your emotion

state to some degree. The way he describes it is that a proactive person, uh, sort of carries their weather inside of them. And so if there's a if it's a day they plan to go outside and and it's raining, they they are able to um still find a way to make that a positive experience. And I'm curious how you guys describe where's the how do you how do you move from? All? Right? I want to feel what I genuinely feel in my emotions, and yet I don't sort of want to be on the roller coaster of

what the outside world's throwing in me. That's a it's a great question. Um, if I had a perfectly bottled, you know, magical answer for you, I would probably be the smartest person in the world. And then you know, people would be studying me in two thousand years from now. UM So I'll give you a more feeble answer with my apologies. UM. I think that that you acknowledge your

emotional states. So if you're really looking forward to a long walk on the beach and it happens to be, you know, pouring rain, which discounts what you had chosen, it's okay that you feel disappointed. You don't need to kind of in an inauthentic way, say oh, my goodness, I'm absolutely so thrilled that has happened, because it gives me the opportunity to take up jigsaw puzzles at home. UM. Much in the same way that that you find this

around um self growth experiences that follow traumas. Um. While many people grow from traumas, you would never wish a trauma on someone just for the growth they might experiences as a result. UM So I think that that that's a bit disingenuous. UM. You know, to just say, oh, these are the best opportunities ever. Um. It doesn't sit well with me anyway. But I also don't think you need to be mired in the in the emotional experience that disappointment need not linger for four or five hours

because it's a relatively minor emotion. So I think there's something about the duration of the motion that is you acknowledge the emotion and it's legitimacy. I'm disappointed that I didn't get to do what I wanted. I'm gonna kind of feel that I'm not going to try and hide that. I might even complain openly about it. That's an okay thing to do. And then after experiencing it for some small amount of time, I'm going to move on past it. I don't need to get rid of it or anything.

I'm just gonna continue my day, um with new activities, indoor activities, using our that's I had an example very similar to that exact thing today. Something happened. I was disappointed. My initial reaction was to be like, oh, no, it's fine, it's fine, and then I went, all right, you know what, I'm just gonna okay, yep, I'm disappointed by this, and I did even I expressed it, and then um kind of got back to it. I think, and you you

talk about this in the book. I don't. I don't have the words exactly, but it's I think it's the thoughts that we add to that so often, like it's always my luck it rains when I go to the beach. I mean, I have the worst lot. You know, those stories that that then are driving that emotion home in some way, that that are that are not necessarily really based on reality at all. That's right. And and you know, in all honesty, this comes right back to which wolf

do you feed? Um? Because that that story you tell is the is the food um? You know, having the the emotional reaction as natural, that's just your radar system for life. You know, those motions are going to bubble up whether you want them to or not. But do you fuel the fires? Do you stoke them? Or do you let the coals, you know, kind of burned down and go out on their own, leaving room for for new emotional experiences. Yeah, I think that's a great way

to put it. We are getting near the end of the time, but before we do, I wanted to ask a question about something that you guys reference in the book and I've just heard about it a few times now recently, and but I don't know what it is and its m acceptance and commitment therapy. Sure, yeah, UM we we briefly reference it. Uh, it's it's a form

of therapy. And I want to preface this by saying, although I do have a graduate degree in in clinical psychology, I don't work as a therapist, so I'm not going to talk too in depth about it. But UM, it's a relatively new form of therapy and it's part of a whole UM bunch of therapies that are known UM largely as mindfulness based therapies. That is, they have at their core some degree of kind of mindfulness or or

meditative meditation type training where you can acknowledge your emotional experience. UM. It's sort of like watching it up on stage saying yes, there it is, UM, but that that doesn't need that stage play. I'm looking at in front of me, UM, it doesn't need to define me or or the totality of my experience. And skilled act or skilled acceptance and commitment therapists UM have a variety of tools for helping people to tolerate unpleasant states UM and largely through through meditation,

through acceptance and so forth. Yeah, that's one of the very things you guys start with and in the beginning the book and talk a lot about. Is that idea that one of the biggest indicators of success in test after test um in different areas of life is the ability to tolerate some degree of psychological discomfort. Yeah. Absolutely, And that's that's what I would um, that's what I

would kind of wish for your listeners. I mean, I don't want people to go out and have to to suffer in a truly large way, But I don't mind if your listeners can't find a parking spot for a little bit, or if they get stuck in traffic. I don't I don't mind if they're bored while they wait

for the bus. Um. And I think that that learning to tolerate those kind of small stakes, negative um circumstances, I think that's a great way to kind of build up your your psychological muscles so that when the bigger stuff does come around and inevitably will, you're better prepared for it. Great. Well, I think that is a really good spot to wrap up. So thanks so much for being on the show. This has been a really enjoyable Tall Talk and I'll have links on the site to

your your book. And um, thanks for taking the time to talk with us as absolutely my honor. Thank you so much. All right, take care, bye bye bye. You can learn more about Robert biswastein Er. You can learn more about Robert Biswasteiner at one you feed dot net slash Robert bitch was They're like fucking like, I'm gonna remember that. You can learn more about Robert BISWASTI yeah, giggly,

you can learn more about Robert biswastein Er. I don't even honestly know what to say because Robert, I think, has been used right, No, okay, all right. You can learn more about Robert Biswasteiner at one you feed dot net slash Robert