It's an emergent experience and as such, you know, we don't go from you know, zero to sixty. None of us go is from zero to sixty. People keep thinking about like dropping in to flow, like that's not happening. Flow is the merchant. You've got to build up the context.
Hello, and welcome to the Psychology Podcast. Today's episode is sponsored by Unlikely Collaborators. Their mission is to untangle the stories that hold us back as individuals, communities, nations, and humanity at large, using the Perception Box lens. They do this through storytelling, experiences, impact investments, and scientific research. Unlikely
Collaborators the only way forward is inward. Later on in this episode, I'll talk a lot more about the perception box and how it relates to this episode, But right now, let me tell you about today's guest. Today, we welcome Oren Davis to the podcast. Or earned the first doctorate in positive psychology and is a self actualization engineer who enables people to do and be their best. As the principal investigator of the Quality of Life Labor, he conducts
research on flow, creativity, hypnosis, and mentoring. Doctor Davis consults for companies from startups to multinationals on hiring strategies, culture innovation, and employee well being. He's the author of Team Flow, The Psychology of Optimal Collaboration. In this episode, I talked to Oron Davis about the new science of flow. A lot of people are familiar with the concept of flow, but according to Oran, the experience of it is not
very common. We discussed Mihi Chick sent me Hi's work and how Orin is expanding the research of flow by studying it at a group level. He talks about how we can increase the chances of experiencing flow for both individuals and teams. We also touch on the topics of microflow, hypnosis, absorption, positive psychology, and of course, my favorite self actualization. It
was really great fun chatting with Oran. I've known him for quite some time, and the field of psychology for some reason, doesn't have a lot of research on the science of flow. So it's really cool to see Orin doing a lot of really important research on this topic, and hopefully this chat will inspire other researchers to do more research on this really important aspect of human consciousness as well. So, without further ado, I bring you doctor
Orrin Davis Oran. So great to have you on the Psychology Podcast.
Thanks for having me, Scott.
Good times, Yeah, very good times. And we haven't started yet, but I'm sure it'll be good times. You know. I have watched your career with all as you know, I first met you when you were a grad student of Mehai Chick sent me highs at Apa way back in like two thousand and six. What were you working on back then? What was your what was the topic of your dissertation?
So I think it was nine we met okay okay at Apa Nyu. Yeah. Yeah, I was working on microflow at the time, and I think I was starting to get interested in CREA. I was working on creativity, I was working on mentoring. That was all related to Mike's work and jeans also because I mean Mike was my official advisor, but I also was very much like mentored by Ginakamora as well.
Yeah. You so you studied with the legend of flow and I've carried on that torch in really big ways. Can you describe our listeners a little bit about what is the flow experience?
Sure? So, have you ever gotten really engrossed in something that is kind of difficult, that is challenging, it really inspires you to push forward on it. You love just engaging in the act itself, Like whatever the activity is, you're really raring to do it. And when you look back on it afterwards, it feels like this absolute amazing experience, like you were totally zoomed in on it and it felt like you were executing it to the best of
your ability. And that amazing experience is basically flow in a nutshell.
It's a it's considered a peak experience, yes.
One of the peak experiences. Yea, So people think it is the peak experience. I'm not sure it's I'm not sure that all like, not all peak experiences are flow, and not all flow is peak experience.
But I agree with that. I very much agree with that. And then what do you think of his criteria that he put forth in his book Mihai and his book on Flow. He put forth various criteria for how's that stood up scientifically over the years?
Hard to say, because I'll say something funny is that whenever you read Mike's work, it really is only sort of a snapshot of where his mind was at the time, and he's usually light years ahead of whatever piece just came out, so I think, you know, one of the things that we talked about back when I was a grad student was weather flow actually has the nine characteristics
that he said. And the funny thing is I was sort of looking at the nine characteristics and trying to figure out how they go together, and he said to me, or you're being too dogmatic about the theory. I said, wait a minute, it's your theory exactly, so I'm telling you, like, don't be so dogmatic about the theory. It was always like that, and just advising me not to really, you know, hold too tightly to anything any idea, that there's nothing sacred that cannot be questioned in the world, in the
realm of ideas. And it was a lot of fun actually studying with him and questioning everything, including his work and his ideas, and he encouraged me to do it. So the nine characteristics of flow, they nominally hold up, but most of it's been top down models, so it's sort of been like, well, we know that there's this experience, so what can we derive, but what kind of patterns
can we see? But it's hard to find empirical underpinnings for that, And actually a model that I just presented suggests that maybe it's not really nine characteristics, but really that more than anything else, I think that the feedback aspect is important, and the autotellic aspect is important, and then the trance state that is the necessary but not sufficient aspect of flow that usually leads people to think of it as as a state of flow. That flow
is actually some kind of state, it's not. There's something more than that. But the trance like aspect of flow is kind of really where people see that state part of it. And then there's you know, the feedback loops of the activity, the experienced structuring aspects of the activity built on top of it, as well as the intrinsic motivation, the autoteleic nature that makes the activity so enjoyable that you want to just engage in the activity for its own sake, you know. Like for example, I like to
play chess, and you know I play. I play to play. I want to play a good game. You know, I obviously play to win, but you know we're to lose. If I played a good game, and especially if it was a hard game. You know, it feels great afterwards.
Yeah, the trance aspect is really interesting, especially in light of your other research program on hypnosis. I do want to know what the latest state of the science is on hypnosis. How do those two things overlap. Can you hypnotize someone to get into the flow state?
Well, since flows out of state?
No, oh, that's that's a very good point. Well, if it's not a state of consciousness, then what is it?
So what I would say is that it's something more than a state of consciousness, because one of the things that we have not been able to do is actually differentiate between the different experiences of trance. Right, there's this there is this deep absorption that we have in so many different context Right. We have it in mindfulness, we
have it in meditation. We also do have it without necessarily a flow experience, just being really really focused and intent on something, but without let's say, the intrinsic motivation or without something that is that really rewards us so that we feel is necessarily a good use of time. So across all those things there might still be trance states, but not necessarily a greater experience. This this gestalt, this overarching experience that is greater than the sum of its parts.
We have, you know, the trance experience. We have a challenging activity that we're very into that we you know, are doing for its own sake. All that is something over and above the trance like experience that happens. So, you know, one of the things that we can do is we can certainly help people to experience trans more readily. Although I would point out that trance is, you know, very much in everyday phenomenal. We get tranced out by TV, we get transced out by books, we get transd out
in conversations, So this happens all the time. One of the funny things is a bit of a debate in the hypnosis community is whether hypnosis actually requires a trance or whether it is enough to make you know, a committed social contract, and how would we differentiate between those. Some of the neuroscience research is starting to suggest that there is a unique brain state that occurs during hypnosis.
But differentiating you know, the hypnosis brain state from the mindfulness brain state from the flow brain state, assuming we could even find one, we're away from getting to that.
Well, let's talk about the science, the neuroscience a flow. Some people say that we have it all figured out, no way, Uh, but no, but let's let's talk about this for a second, because I've seen some interesting research
on it. It may be not necessarily flow, but it's certainly related on jazz improvisers and poets when they're really improvising and engaging in a spontaneous fashion, and you see a default mode brain network activity, you see a little bit of a reduction of activity in the dorsilateral prefrontal cortex.
You know, So does sort of suggest MIHI was onto something in the sense that when you're in the flow, and I'm scared to use the word state, but when you're when you're in flow, yeah, yeah, okay, okay, I like that. I like that. Yeah, yeah, when you're in the full experience, I like that a lot. Actually, when you're in the full experience, you do tend to have less self critical thoughts there, tends to be less of
a like a second order metacognitive looking down. But the nuance there is that clearly that depends on the activity, right and what you're engaging in the flow. And but I do think that neuroscience is interesting. What are you where are some of your thoughts on it?
I think we're certainly onto something, particularly the work on the default mode network and the work on the executive function and the DLPFC. Yes, I think we're onto something, but I think that just the technology that we have and the information we have about the brain is way too nascent. It's going to be very exciting, but I think we're a long way away from solving this.
One, solving the whole puzzle. Yeah. I saw some really interesting research on the flow as of traits compared to other traits, and I noticed there was a very very load to non existing correlation with IQ. That was very interesting to me because it suggests that regardless of your intelligence I'm putting it in quotes right now, that word yeah, yeah, you know you can, it doesn't really predict the extent to what you're going to get in the flow state in your activities. I think that's interesting.
I think that's absolutely right. I think, especially you know, looking at the cross cultural research on flow, we find that, you know, having flow experiences is possible almost anywhere. It's
cross culturally valid. We see it, you know, regardless of Soki's socioeconomic status, and there's no reason to believe, like when you look at the characteristics of a flow experience, right, a clear goal that you know whether you're achieving correctly, intrinsic motivation, something that's challenging that really drives you to do your best, and probably some kind of translike aspect. I'm not sure what you need intelligence for for any of that.
Great point, a really great point. You know there's flow at the individual level, there's also a flow at the group level. You've done some really seminal work on team flow. In fact, the title of your book is Team Flow, The Psychology of Optimal Collaboration. Maybe I should just ask you straight up, how do you define team flow?
So I've had the pleasure of working with Chef Fons and how it on this and a sort of joke, he's the captain on the co pilot. We were both independently working on this, and then Chicks that May figured that out and introduced us. And the way we came to a definition of team flow is that really it's a group level experience that is comprised in part of individual experiences, a flow while involved that that is derived
from the team and the team's dynamic. So it's not just the individuals all experience flow, but the experience flow as part of the team dynamic. Deriving their flow experience from the activities related to the team and the team's dynamic, and then the team gets also this overarching aspect of flow and an incredible group level experience that also matches stuff that you know. Other researchers like Key Sawyer pointed out.
Maybe that is related to group jazz and provisation. We think so, yes, yeah, oh yeah, and absolutely you're right. Keith Sawyer's great, great work on group creativity. Yes, yes, I highly recommend his book as well Group Creativity. Well. I enjoyed reading this book of yours in preparation for this interview. I like how you take a multi level perspective, and I like how you bridge individual flow and team flow. Are the two naturally bridged? Surely there are moments where
when the group is in flow. Is that always are all the individuals in flow as well? Necessarily?
So it's a great question, and we haven't proven it one way or the other, but that's definitely our theory. Our theory is that the only way for the group to have a flow experience is for each of the individuals to be experiencing it all. So, and again, as related to the team dynamic.
Nice, nice, I've noticed that you discussed the characteristics of team flow. Can you let our listeners know a little about accounted for that you mentioned? Can you describe it a little bit those characteristics.
Truth, I mean, there's a whole bunch and most of them are analogs of the individual flow characteristics. But one of the main things that becomes very important you're trying to go from individual flow to team flow is the collective ambition. So it's really aligning your goals, the team's goals,
making sure that everybody's on the same page. Everybody knows what they need to do, everybody knows, you know, why that's important, why it's important to them, why it's important to the team, and everybody's really you know, bought into
that and a lot of the other things. Then just build from there, you know, division of labor, making sure that people are doing things that are challenging for them, that fit their skills, that they're able to really engage in, you know, autotellically, that they're really willing and autotellopay here, like they're willing to do the activity for its own sake. It's something that means something to them, and if it's
something that's more of a grind. And you know, there's lots of work, especially in the workplace, we have to worry about the grind, and there's a lot of work that is a grind. But it's do we see the grind as worthwhile? Do we see the grind as meaningful? And do we see the grind is contributing to the opportunity to do things or at least get results that we love or that are meaningful to us, or that we're intrinsically motivated.
Yet Yeah, and that's what autotellic means. Right on yourtellic. Today's podcast is sponsored by Unlikely Collaborators. Their mission is to untangle the stories that hold us back as individuals, communities, nations, and humanity at large using the perception box lens. They do this through storytelling, experiences, impact investments, and scientific research. Today's conversation with Arn really illustrates the importance of expanding
the walls of our perception box. The perception box is the invisible mental box that we all live inside, and it can seriously hinder our ability to understand one another and to understand ourselves. In this episode, Orin describes the latest science of the flow experience that trance like state where you are completely absorbed in whatever you are doing and your self critical thinking tends to disappear, at least temporarily.
According to the perception box perspective, we are all affected by the stories we tell ourselves about who we are and what's possible. But the self is just a story, and when we are extremely self focused and feeling anxiety, we may be focusing a bit too much on our own limiting beliefs or stories that are telling us how
to navigate in this world. Expanding our perception box allows for a deeper presence with whatever is coming and going, and allows us to focus non judgmentally on the task at hand, making the faux experience much more likely to find out more about unlike a collaborators and the perception
box go to unlikely collaborators dot com? Is that true that Mihai's original book title wasn't flow, but it was the autotellic personality or something, And then his publisher was like, I think flow is better, So I hear I.
Actually he and I never discussed that one, So I actually don't know.
Yeah, okay, fair enough. You don't know everything about your mentor well, I was hoping you were going to mention some of these characteristics of team FOW because I like them, and I think they are not exactly the same as individual FOLL. Some of them don't make sense in the context of individual flow. So sense of unity, sense of joint progress, mutual trust, mutual I love that one. Love that one, and I also really love this one. Holistic focus.
So a holistic focus. How often in a group are all the members of the group deeply, deeply attuned to each other and what's going on. I mean, it seems like that's quite beautiful when that can happen, right.
We definitely found so yes, And most of those turn out to be much more emergent, so they come out later. And as we build up on the collective ambition, the high skill integration and things along those lines, that's when we start to get the sense of unity, the joint progress, the mutual trust, and that holistic focus, and those come later. And that's part of what makes the team flow experience so profound and so beautiful, and it's you really feel
deeply connected with everybody. It's it's unbelievable experience and something something I hope everybody gets to have a few times at least.
Yeah, me too. The idea of team FOW obviously can also apply to music venues, theater venues where people the whole audience is in group full Right, have you looked at that? I know, I know Keith Sawyer has and uh, I'm just wondering, what have you thought about that?
We haven't looked at that as much. Most of what we've been doing is work teams and sports teams.
Okay, good, that's still a wide swath, that's still a wise swaf Well, what are some surprising findings you found from those two populations.
I think the biggest thing was partly the extent to which an individual has so much influence. I didn't I did think that, you know, the individual could influence the team. But I think I I think when I when I first made my guesses as to how teamflow was going to play out, I think I underestimated the extent to which, you know, having every single person bought in and you know that maybe some people could hold back a little bit and we you know, we'd still be able to
compensate as a team. We found you really can't do that, like you've got you everybody's really got to be all in, and if they're not, it's going to compromise the experience, not just for the individual which is the other thing we didn't catch, at least I didn't, but for everybody that if you don't go all in you're not going to have the good experience either. Yeah, and some people, like you know, you think like, Okay, I can do what I need to do and I get a decent
experience and it'll be fine. But if you want the flow experience, you've got to go all in. And that's true for individual flow, but it's also true on the team flow that you know you can do your best, but you have to do your best and be all in. Wow.
And does that necessarily apply in the individual full level?
We do find it mostly at the individual flow level because once again, you've got to be all in. But the real question was with that multiplied to the team and if you're part of a team and you know you're doing your best, but you're not necessarily all in, or you're you know, not as committed as you know, you're not one hundred percent committed, you know, maybe just reasonably committed, and you figure this will this will get it together. This should make things work, not so much.
What is a surprising finding within the individual flow? Like I want I'm gonna I'm thinking about labeling this discussion to you that the latest science of flow or something like of the full Experience or something like that. So really, you know, you're the leader in this field, I mean, studying it scientifically, can you educate our audience? You're the professor right now, I'm giving you the mic.
Sure, So I think I'm gonna start with I think the most surprising thing is that it's rare. We'd like to think that a flow experience something like this, we think we have it all the time. We actually don't. And I've been finding more and more as I look into the science of flow that it's rare, and it's actually very hard to get And I mean, you know, even even when you know what it is and you know what it's about, it's rare and it's hard to get to because often we don't have the energy for
it and we're often not in the mood. And I think, you know, the thing that was the most surprising for me throughout all my research was the extent to which this is really context dependent, and it's your energy level and mood that really get into this because very often we want to flow experience, but we're too tired. We're not able to put forth the effort. And in some
cases even when the activity is auto atallic. You know, it's something that we love to do and we do it for its own sake and we're driven to do it, but we're still too tired.
It's such a good point. What are some things some specific tips to help people increase the full estate? So that's one is not being tired. What are some others that research shows?
So I think the other thing is to check your mood and find out are what are you in the mood for first of all, But second of all, like the energy level, management is a big thing. It's not just whether you're tired, but it's also setting the challenge level for you and setting the skill level that you're willing to apply, and then creating a goal that fits with your mood and your energy level, and making sure that there are feedback loops that aren't going to drain
you and that are actually going to energize you. As I said, I think that big surprise for me is the extent to which setting up the right feedback loops is critical and that seems to be making more of a difference in flow experiences I find than almost anything else, because if you got the right goal, you got the right challenge level, you're applying the right skill level, you
got the energy to do it. But one of the things that will keep you going is if you get feedback something that basically cheers you on in a sense or moves you forward and says, come on, you're getting there. Come on, you're getting there. And if you can set that up in a way that will actually energize you or at least is appropriate to your energy level, won't demand more than you think you got, that might get you moving toward a flow experience very effectively.
It makes a lot of sense. I find that it takes I have to get It takes me some revn up before I get in the full experience. Like if I go running, it takes you know, maybe like fifteen minutes. If I'm writing, it'll take you know, some time for me of effortful works. It almost seems like I need to have effort full work first to kind of rev it up, and then and then it's like sleep. It just like clicks in you didn't if you couldn't force it.
Yeah, yeah, it's it's an emergent experience. And as such, you know, we don't. We don't go from you know, zero to sixty. None of us goes from zero to sixty. People keep thinking about like dropping in to flow, like that's not happening. Flow is the virgin. You've got to build up the context.
Yeah, yeah, forget about it. Do you do you roll your eyes when you see sometimes seeing the popular media like the ten hacks to get in the flow, or like, you know, like do you see do you ever see things in the popwar media about flow that like that that that you feel like aren't scientifically sound all the.
Time, and guilty is charged. I admit to all those irol.
Holes I see.
Yeah, yeah, sorry, yes I do.
You're a scientist, yeah, yes.
What worries me about it is that people is that these things cheapen the flow experience and they try to democratize it down to a level that makes people unaware of how deep and how profound the flow experience is. And I think that people then experience you know, lower levels of let's say trance or mindfulness in an enjoyable activity and then think that they've gotten that flow experience, and then they you know, by thinking that they have that,
they miss out on what's actually greater. They miss out on, you know, experiencing an activity that they're very deeply driven to do, where you know, there is this merging of action in a awareness where everything that's going on is directly related to that activity and you're really locked in on this one thing. It is pushing you to your limit, and you are you are sweating, you are grunting, you are putting forth more effort maybe than you even knew
was possible. And for the record, in the moment, it's actually probably not a pleasant experience, you know, when you're when you're putting forth your strongest efforts and your greatest efforts, this isn't fun. And yet because you're driven to do the activity, and because you've got feedback loose that are cheering you on, and then you work your way through the activity and you achieve something that is meaningful to
you within the activity. It doesn't even have to be like a wing per se, or or even like you know, if you're climbing, even to get to the top necessarily, but to have pushed yourself to your limits and beyond, you know, in this in this trans state, when you're driven to do it and you've got the feedback, it is an unbelievable It's an ineffable experience. And what I don't like about a lot of this pops is that it brings the ineffable down to this, you know, very
quotitian level, and that worries me. I don't want I don't want people to have that because I do believe, you know, as we discussed, everyone's capable of experiencing flow
and even experiencing flow with some frequency. And I think that for all of us to have the ineffable and to have a taste of the ineffable you know, more often, even if it's not as often as you'd have, you know, using these quotidian hacks, I think that to the extent of which we could have that would still be greater than having something lower level more frequently.
I need to process that, you know. Maslow made the distinction between the peak experience and the plateau experience. That sounds like maybe that's a similar distinction to what you're making. Maslow described the plateaux experience as like lounging in heaven, not but not getting so excited about it and being able to sustain it more during the course of your
day than the one off, sort of grandiose moment. I don't know if you resonate with this at all, but it sort of seems like that's what you're saying to a certain degree.
His usual, Maslow nailed it.
Yes, I think you're gonna say, as usual, you nailed it. Scott said, well you.
Did, you did? You did by calling out the.
I'm teasing, I thought that was where you're going with that. But yeah, yeah, no, you're right, absolutly right. That's why we're we're we're both the great admirers of Maslow. I assume you're an admirer of Mazzo, and and I think that I or Mike would call Mike was a great admirer of Maso as well. Right, Yes, is that fair to say?
Did he really encourage me to read a lot of it?
Oh? Good? Good to so you you and him had a chat about Mazow. You know, we're going to dedicate this episode to his memory. I hope you're okay with that dedication. May he rest in peace. I am very remiss. I never got a chance to have him on my podcast. In a lot of ways, you're his voice right here.
So please let me know if there's anything in particular that that I'm missing, anything that you that you think he would want to say about Flow, about himself, whatever, you know, Please, this is this is your time.
So I think that one of the things that he would say. I think Mike would say that Flow experience is there's something for everyone, and that even though it is this ineffable thing, and it's an ineffable, it's this incredible experience, this you know, astronomically wonderful thing, it's for everybody and everyone should have access to it. And that was something that Mike was always about in general, was
that everyone should have access to the good things. And he wanted to find ways to ensure that everyone had access to the good things and even to the great things and to all the best that life has to offer. And he always he always seemed to argue and contend that, you know, we try to put some of these things out of breach for people, and that's that's not really ethical. The rather, we should make sure that everyone can have these greatest things because they're all in the mind anyway,
and because we all have access to them. And the most amazing thing is that some of us don't realize we have that access. And so show the people, show everyone where their access to these amazing things is, and let's bring flow to the people. And I think that's, you know, part of why he didn't just write scholarly articles to get hidden behind paywalls, written in you know,
scientific language that not everybody can read. He spent a lot of time writing the books because he really wanted everybody to be in.
On this democratizing flow.
Yeah, why not?
Well, as you know, my friend Stephen Cotler has been doing lots and lots of trainings in the general population on this topic. But I think that there's a lot more that can be done to democratize this topic. I believe you've a company, is that right? Aren't you working on this too and helping people tactically, not not just keeping it in the in the journals, tell people about your work on this sure.
So, first of all, I do have to say about Coytler. He's certainly practicing his own version of things. I'm not sure that his work fits in or aligns well with mics. It's his own version and I don't think it devetails with chickset me how has worked very well, but Mike didn't want to argue with people on this. There have been various forms of the cannon out there, but they're
not all the same. I run the Quality of Life Lab, and you know, part of what I'm doing is I'm consulting and helping companies and also individuals finding ways to experience flow, mostly at work, but I'm also looking at something called interstitial time. It's like the time between times. How do we make the most of our time and using our time well? And this I love trains the backster in this. I love trains and I love riding trains. But the funny thing about, you know, riding trains is
that you also have to wait for trains. Waiting for trades is annoying. And you know, when when you're a commuter, when you have to commute, and you know, I grew up outside in New York City. You know, watch my dad commute into the city, my mom sometimes, so you know, you got to sit there and wait for the train, and if the train is late, what do you do
in that time? And so one of the questions that I came to chicks that the hid with as a grad student is, in a very real sense, what's the optimal experience under suboptimal conditions?
Nice? Nice?
So what can we do when we're when we can't necessarily have a full experience? There's some kind of analog of it that we could actually experience? Could we have a microflow experience? And that was something that you know, Mike theorized a long time ago, like back in seventy five. He was talking about it, but nobody ever did anything with it. I picked it up. I was like, this is cool. So I've been looking at like how people can use their time, and particularly use the time that
comes between the major blocks in our day. So the hypothetical I like to give people is, you know, imagine you're going to meet somebody at five o'clock and they text you right at five o'clock to say, I'm running ten minutes late. Now, what's the best way to use those ten minutes? And can I actually do research? Can I actually prove to you that there was some kind of algorithm that you could use to figure out the
best way to use those ten minutes. So I'm spending a lot of time, you know, looking into that and how we manage that. So far, some of the tips that I was pointing out for flow apply just as readily to microflow. You just have to keep in mind you've only got ten minutes.
That's true. Yeah, that that is really a really cool line of inquiry. Micropho microphone. Who coined that sort of expression? Was that you?
That was Mike? Actually, he actually mentioned microflow in Beyond Bord of men Anxiety in nineteen seventy five.
Oh, I see, but she.
Never really touched it since then. And so you know, me as a grad student, you know, picking this up, going, you know, what's this because he didn't really do anything with it. He I think you mentioned it like one more time in two thousand and two in you know, a book chapter somewhere, and that was it. Well, color me curious.
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neurohacker dot com, slash Psych podcast slash Psych fifteen. What are some applications to sparkteamflow?
So there are a few. I think the main thing is, first of all, just getting to know people on the team, like what are they about, what are their motivations? And figuring out like what people have in common, over and above like the goal of the team, like why are we all here? And I find that one of the biggest things is that teams don't actually ask that question why are we here? And often teams also aren't deliberately created.
And I think that one of the things that actually even like, you know, pre team getting together is you know, is the team being deliberately created and are we actually picking people that should be on the team for a reason. It's like if you find yourself brought into the roof of the team and you don't know why you were picked for the team. I mean, you're already off on the wrong foot. So you want to make sure that everybody knows why they're there and everybody believes that they've
been deliberately picked to be there. I think that the ad hoc nature of the way, especially business teams, we see this a lot, like, well, we need warm bodies for this, so we're gonna put all these people in a room, or you know, we need parallel processing, or we need you know, X number of hands, so we're gonna put these people on the team. This is this is a recipe for definitely not teamflow, if not disaster.
Yeah. Yeah, that's a good point.
So I think the biggest hack is making sure that everybody knows was why they're there, and then everybody's actually you know, bought into why they were why they're there, and that they want to be there, because the you know, one of the most destructive things for our team is you know, forcing somebody to be honest that doesn't want to be there.
Yeah, yeah, that is so true. Okay, I think I think we can move on to hypnosis because I'm curious at what point in your career. You got interest in that topic and and I want to know if there is a real science to it. I think that it has some criticism within the field of psychology, so I'd love you to set people straight on this.
Sure. So I think the funniest thing is I got into hypnosis when I was six, not.
Kidding, were you hypnotized?
Some kids get into basketball, some kids get into karate. I saw this hypnosis thing. I was like, this is cool, and believe it or not, you know, Jewish culture does have a very strong emphasis on self actualization, and you know, going to Yeshiva was something that you know, I heard a lot, not always is the term self actualization, but that you know, we're supposed to do our best, to
be our best, to develop ourselves. And I started to notice that hypnosis may be something useful for developing our best selves, that the trance, that the trance state, or at least you know, using using this tool may turn out to be very helpful for us, because I started noticing that under hypnosis, people seemed to be able to do things that they couldn't seem to do otherwise. Now,
I mean, remember I'm six years old. They don't really you know get all this very well, but I'm making these observations that I'm like, okay, once again, color me curious. I want to know what's going on here. And so you know, a lot of fumbling around, a lot of practicing and hypnotizing stuffed animals just to get you know, my my flow down and to you know, learn how
to get this done. I mean, you had to practice on something and you know, thinking about it and you know, coming up with wild, crazy theories for how this all might work, which was which was a lot of fun. And then you know, as I as I got more into research, I got a little more serious about it. But I also found that it was very hard to do research on hypnosis. And I think, you know, as much as I'm a fan of hypnosis and hypnosis research,
there are some critiques in the psychology community. And they're not wrong either.
Like what what are the critiques?
So one of them is that hypnosis is very hard to replicate. So you know, when we're especially in an era when we're talking about your running studies that are replicable, it's often hard to create a hypnosis study that has good generalizability and that actually replicates. And you know, even let's say across hypnotists or across contexts or something that's you know, actually useful and practical. One of the main things that we found hypnosis to be good for is
a relaxation. We found it's good for pain control, and some really neat research like you know, pretty much hot off the presses in the last few years on hypnosis being used for PTSD oh wow, and also for for mitigating some of the diletarious effects of cancer.
That is so interesting. What what is the mechanism of hypnosis?
So this is a good one. And to be honest with you, we don't know. I generally joke that hypnosis is is to even scientists the way a microwave is to most people. Most people don't know how a microwave works. You put in the food, you hit the right buttons, and you you know, you know which buttons to hit, and then you know how to deal with what comes out. Most hypnotists they're just operating a microwave, like they don't
know how it works. But you know what, we're experts at pressing the right buttons, putting you know, the right things in setting them up exactly just so so that we you know, so things will come out in some kind of predictable fashion. Now, what we do know is that there's a great deal of absorption going on, that people are in a very absorbed and I'm gonna I'm gonna say state. I'm just gonna point out there is
some contentions. Some people think it's not a state. The evidence is very quickly mounting towards the state side, especially as we get more neuroscience research done. So I'm gonna say state and put a put an asterisk on it. Some people disagree, but we definitely find that there's a
state going on. We see heightened suggestibility, that is a greater willingness to turn ideas into realities, you know, the sort of details with some of the work that we've been seeing on imagination, the ability to think as real and to you know, actually even experience suggested perceptions. And so I kind of think of hypnosis as an amplifier more than anything else. It helps, It helps you focus, and then it helps amplify whatever it is that you
choose to amplify. I mean, funny little secret, but but hypnotize the word hypnotize is actually not a transitive verb, right, Like the statement I hypnotized you, actually doesn't make any sense whatsoever. We have a rule in hypnosis, and it is all hypnosis is self hypnosis. So if I'm hypnotizing you, I'm not actually like doing something to you. I'm actually
helping you do something to yourself. And as a hypnotist, what that means is that I'm really good at helping people do this and you know, work through this process. You know, just the same as any fitness coach. You know, you're the one doing the exercises. That's as true mentally as it is physically, Like you're the one doing the exercises. I'm guiding you. I'm saying, okay, now try doing this, try doing that, all right, go do this, Go do that. And then you're the one who actually has to do it.
So you don't actually hypnotize other people. You enable or empower other people to go into a state of hypnosis, to experience hypnosis, and then to use it in ways that are effective for them.
Yes, so maybe true that you're the one doing it, but if you don't have a memory of doing it or awareness of doing it, that seems to me like it is kind of operating without your permission. To a certain degree though, just to push back in that a second.
Sure, except that the overwhelming majority of the time people do remember it. Interesting, So, no, people remember it almost all the time, and unless there's unless there's a suggestion or some kind of you know, or some kind of desire not to remember it, by default, people do remember what they did when they were hypnotized. The only reason why people think otherwise is that it makes for a
great plot device. Most of the stuff you see on TV just isn't real, isn't real, and it's just it's just a plot device to make, you know, to make things work, you know, in a cute little pretense. But that's not the reality.
One of my favorite magicians is the mentalist Darren Brown, and a lot of his work relies on what he calls hypnosis. I don't know the full extent to which he has been trained and does it properly, but I've been to one of his shows and he hypnotized half of the audience. But I, you know, he didn't hypnotize me, uh, because I didn't want to be And I wonder what extent you really can resist it? Yeah? How much can you resist it?
Fully? No exceptions?
Well, that's really really interesting and important information. I'm glad I ask you that question. That is so interesting as you As you know, I am also a big fan of the constructive absorption which you mentioned. I've been thinking about writing a book about absorption. It's just a very understudied, very understudied area of psychology that is not exactly the same thing as flow and intelligent deserves. I love giving
credit word to do intelligent. Awtelligent is the one who really put that on the map in the psychological literature. But they're unfortunately not too many studies on that. But the studies that I've done on it has shown it's quite intertwined tightly with creativity and with the with the creative experience. So anyway, I think that's neat. Take that for what for what you will.
Yeah, absolutely, And I mean, Scott, I definitely agree with you on this and Funnel enough when you told me, you know, we've been emailing and told we were going to be writing a book on absorption, I can tell you like I had a kid in a candy store moment. I was so excited because I think you and I
actually came to this conclusion independent. I was like, all right, I'm not so crazy for thinking that absorption is going to be one of the keys to high performance and doing your best and you know, getting the self actualizations. Kind of what got me into hypnosis in the first place is I was like, all right, I feel seen.
Absolutely yeah. Man, it's it's a really dynamite traits that is just not as heavily studied in the field. And even flow is not heavily studied in the field. I mean, there are a handful of psychologists such as yourself and Gene, right, I tell us about Gene's work.
So Ginakamura is doing a lot of work on the personal aspects of flow, like let's say the autotelic personality and whether and the autotolic personality is basically looking at flow pronus, like to what extent are you more or less likely to be the kind of person that experiences
flow either more deeply or more frequently. And I mean Gene is very much a developmental psychologist, so she's looking at that, she's looking at mentoring, she's looking at flow across the lifespan, and to what extent were that positive development may contribute to greater flow pronus or to the extent to which flow may contribute to positive development and well being, especially in adulthood.
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go to sacaching dot o RG. That's s a coaching dot org. I look forward to welcoming you in December. That link to well being is huge and well, then maybe that's a nice segue to the field of a discussion of the field of positive psychology because flow and is a big concept in posit psychology. And was Mike your advisor one of the founders of the field, along with with Martin Sockman.
I always argue that Maslow was more the founder of the field.
I would I agree, I agree, but modern day let's call it modern day positive psychology. It was what's the origin story? Marty Seligman had lunch or dinner a restaurant with Mike in nineteen ninety six or something, and then it was born there they were talking all night or something about it.
I think that Marty and Mike had a lot of great discussions. But Chris Peterson was also a blessed memory, was also very heavily involved in this. And I think that you know it was Marty, Mike and Chris, and I know that you know Marty and Mike did a lot of things, but I mean, these are these are three I don't know if you've met have you ever met Chris Peterson.
A week a week before he died.
Wow, a really great guy. I met him only once or twice, had some discussions with him, and I immediately thought he was awesome. But I think three very different personalities, and so they each added different things to the field.
And I think, you know, as much as so Marty, I think was looking at you know, mess lobby and mess lobby and works and the work of humanistic psychology and realized that we really needed to put as a lot of pun on this, a positive spin on the whole thing, to make it more empirical and to extend it into something that could be more readily researched than you know, a lot of the clinical work that, albeit inspiring and wonderful and very powerful, we like to actually
get some some harder science underpinning it and really exploring what's what's actually going on. And Seligmun I think was really trying to move the fields in that direction and to create you know, more research on that, and so that you know, led to his APA address. But it was something that Chicks sent me. Hig and Peterson both also agreed with, and they started talking about, you know,
what a positive psychology would look like. And I think that, you know, each of them brought different pieces to this field. And I think Seligman absolutely brought the leadership and the vision and you know, really the overarching view of how it would go. But then you know, Chicks Sent Me High. Peterson, I think Chicks at Me High was very much, you know, making sure that this gets distributed not just to scientists but to the people, and also making sure that you know,
everything was founded in solid developmental psych principles. I think, you know, Seligman was more of him an abnormal psychologist cognitive psychologists. Chick Sent Me Hi was a developmental psychologist. So really looking at you know, positive psychology throughout the lifetime. And I admit that I don't recall Peterson's specialty, but it might have been might have been developmental cognitive also some or even clinical something.
Along that one. Yeah, I want to say personality psychologist. I don't know, so m'd be.
Right again, Peterson is the one I knew the least well. So yeah, but I think you know, one of his one of his best lines that I think everybody just keeps quoting Peterson as saying is other people.
Matter, correct, correct, And I think that you.
Really brought a lot into psychology with that.
I agree, I agree, and I love that. What is your criticism of positive psychology?
So per se? I don't have that much criticism of it. What I where I start to have the criticisms is where people take it into pop psychology directions and where people conflate vision, theory and practice. And so when I look at a lot of Selogumn's work, I see it as theory. I don't see it as and I see it mostly as vision like the perma like the perma thing. I don't think that's empirical, and I've looked at it.
That's not so much empirical as much as it is vision. Like, let's look at these six things and let's, you know, get an understanding of how they work, how they may work together. These are clearly going to be important details, So let's do research on them so much as you know, using that as a as a clear metric of well being, I don't think. I don't. I'm not sure that that's
really where it was all supposed to go. As much, you know, I don't think these theories of these visions were meant to come down into like checklists, you know, much in the way I think that self determination theory, know DC and Ryan's work on self determination theory, I don't think it's really meant to be brought down into checklists of like, you know, you got this, got this, got this. Yes, you need autonomy, competence, and relatedness, but don't treat this like a checklist.
Yeah, yeah, I agree that that's a really great point. What's end this interview talking a little bit more generally and broadly about self actualization and transcendence. I know that you're looking into this. I'd love to hear your own conceptualization of the difference between self actualization and transcendence and uh and what the algorithm for for them would be.
What what would be the concrete steps people should take and the questions they should be asking themselves on the route to both of these things.
Sure, so, I think that self actualization is an upward spiral in which we are going through the process of understanding our potential and then fulfilling that potential, which opens up new potential that we then you go around and do again, you know, developing upward and upward, and then through that, I think that we develop a uniqueness and a way to contribute to the world that goes beyond ourselves and lasts beyond ourselves, and that to me is
the self transcendent aspect. And that so to me, you know, self actualization is developing and making your uniqueness real and more effective and you know, applicable to the world. And then you know, you bring it out there, you create something. And I do believe it's definitely related to creativity as Maslow did that that you create something, you put it out in the world, and this thing stays in the world and is outside of you, it goes beyond you.
And I think that that self actualization once again, it's one of those as self transcendence. Rather, it's one of those ineffable things that when we put something out in the world that we know is our unique stamp that lasts, you know, beyond our lifetimes, even that we know that we've achieved something worthwhile. And once again, that's something that everybody can do, and it's something I really do want to see for everyone. And so you know, along those lines,
I am looking for the algorithm to it. Now am I actually going to find it? Good luck? But what I would say is, you know, even if I make some progress in my lifetime, I think that's that's worth something.
And one of the things that I found, you know, early on in my work and I've been developing and trying to understand, is that Socrates was absolutely right in that whole time at nske thing and obviously said it in Greek, which I don't know as well, but know thyself, and we actually don't take the time to get to
know ourselves. And I've been finding over and over and over again in my time as a college professor, as a coach, as a consultant in companies, we really haven't gotten the chance to shake hands with ourselves and have a little sit down. We really don't get to know
ourselves that well. And we spend so much of our time trying to contort ourselves into so that we fit into the world around us that we sometimes don't think about who we are, what we're about, and whether that contortion is a good idea, and you know what, sometimes it is, But we don't always make that a deliberate
choice on our part. And I think we can. I think we should if we're going to if we're going to shift ourselves if we're going to try and mold ourselves to our environment, and in a sense we do have to, right, we can't just we can't just be one hundred percent ourselves and impose ourselves on the world. You know, we interact with the world, the world interacts with us. But I think that we can do it
much more deliberately than we are doing it. And so one of the things that been telling people like, you know, the first thing if you don't know yourself or you're not sure you know yourself, is get to know your preferences. And when I say preferences, I'm talking about in some cases the little things. You know, what's your favorite color?
And just for a funny exercise, it is shocking to me how many people you just go up to them and you say, what's your favorite color, and you get a moment like, you know, Monty Python, the Holy girld boo don't yo or something along those lines. People don't actually know the favorite color. People don't always know their food tastes or their hobbies. Yes, people, what are your hobbies? Uh?
Now they have hobbies, of course they do, but they don't always think about it, and they don't really know what gets them going or what gets them excited, you know, those autotellic activities, the things that they love to do for their own say, they actually don't know what they are sometimes, And so I invite people to get to know themselves to find out, you know, what foods do you like? What colors do you like? What music do
you like? And start looking for some patterns. And I think that that's a great place for anyone to start. And I find it actually somewhat surprising that when I ask people to start on this, they actually struggle with this exercise, like, you know, what music do you like? I don't kind of like everything. You you have certain preferences, you know this or that, And if you have to do a b testing with yourself, like do I like A A or B more? I mean, go ahead and
do that. Go play with your Go play with your playlist and see what's there. What are what are the songs that you know you need at different times? What are the foods that you want at different times? What are the comfort foods? What are you know? What are the interesting foods? What do you like to make? What colors do you like? To see? What art do you like?
To see in the world. What do you like to wear each of these, you know, random little things, and people say, well, then what do you do for one thing? Just start by doing that, and I think that that opens up other doors because then you start to ask yourself questions like why do I like that, you know, why do I like these foods and not those foods? Why do I like this music and not that music?
Why do I like this music at these times? And in the process you start to actually get to know your own psychology, start to see your own motivations, You start to see the values that drive you. And another thing that you can do is sort of ask yourself, like what difference do you want to make in the world? What about the world? Do you either it's one of two things, either what about the world do you love
so much that you want everybody to have it? Or what in the world do you hate so much that you want to get rid of it and you know, keep it away from people nice? And I think through exploring that, I mean, it's it's not going to be a long conversation with yourself, but I think that when we do have that conversation with ourselves, we come to
some really incredible moments, and we understand our values. We start at least to understand our value system, and we understand what kind of trade offs we want to make to make our mark on the world. To find out, like what is our uniqueness? And that's really what a lot of this is going for, is coming up with what our uniqueness is. And then we get to think about, you know, the way the world is and how we want to shape the world, and that's how we want
to use that uniqueness in the world. And then we self transcend and suddenly this universe is a much richer place for the fact of our bit of dust and ashes having been on it.
And well the least planet Earth. As I see the images of the deep universe, I wonder what extent we're impacting any of that. But your point is very well taken, my friend. Thank you so much Oren for being on my podcast say and for the work you've done for the field.
Very much A pleasure, Thank you, Scott.
My pleasure to thanks for listening to this episode of the Psychology Podcast. If you'd like to react in some way to something you heard, I encourage you to join in the discussion at Thusychology Podcast. Dot com or on our YouTube page The Psychology Podcast. We also put up some videos of some episodes on our YouTube page as well, so you'll want to check that out. Thanks for being such a great supporter of the show, and tune in next time for more on the mind, brain, behavior, and creativity.