0:00

This is hidden

0:02

brain. I'm Shankar Vedanta. Religion

0:06

tell us they have the key to our best

0:08

lives. Advise columnist

0:10

tell us how to solve problems in our

0:12

relationships. And airport

0:14

bookstores are stuffed with tolls

0:17

on how to grow rich manage our time

0:19

better and build effective habits.

0:23

All these sources of council can teach

0:25

us valuable skills such as planning,

0:27

patience, and perseverance. These

0:29

can be vitally important to success.

0:33

But in a world overflowing with useful

0:35

advice, why do so many us

0:37

feel stuck. How does it even

0:40

the very successful? Often feel like

0:42

there is something missing from their lives? Why

0:45

do so many people spend years? Wistfully

0:47

thinking about choices they might

0:49

have made. One

0:53

answer to that problem, Many

0:55

of us are leading lives that are

0:57

misaligned with our own deepest

0:59

values and preferences. This

1:04

week on hidden brain, what psychology

1:06

can teach us about living

1:09

our most authentic lives.

1:27

When you're a kid, grown ups

1:29

ask you what you want to do when you are an

1:31

adult. When you're a teenager,

1:33

college counselors ask you what you want

1:35

to study. Once you join the

1:37

workforce, managers ask you

1:40

what your goals are for the next few years?

1:43

At every stage, we are really

1:45

being asked the same question. What

1:47

do you want to do with your life?

1:50

At the University of Missouri, psychologist

1:53

Ken Sheldon studies the science of

1:55

knowing what to want, how

1:57

to set your sights on targets, that

2:00

will actually make you happy if you achieve

2:02

them. Ken Sheldon, welcome

2:04

to HiddenBrain. Hey, I'm happy

2:06

to be here. I want to take you back

2:08

to eighty one, Ken. You

2:10

just finished college and moved to Seattle.

2:13

You wanted to become a musician. You

2:15

started a

2:15

band. How did it go?

2:18

Rock musicians can

2:20

be kind of flaky and unreliable, and

2:23

we were all in our twenties and

2:26

everybody had different goals. Everybody

2:28

was kind of self centered and

2:30

they might not have been committed the way we thought

2:32

that that they were or maybe the

2:35

guitarist slept with the singer

2:37

unexpectedly. And, you know,

2:39

there's a lot of things that can just get

2:41

in the way of having a

2:43

smoothly functioning unit.

2:45

Uh-huh. We just weren't able

2:48

to make the agreements

2:50

and follow through with them that we would have needed

2:52

to make real progress. I

2:54

understand that at one point you were recording

2:57

songs for a radio song contest

2:59

and things didn't quite go smoothly.

3:02

Yeah. I had recorded my tracks

3:04

on the song that we were going to submit to

3:06

this contest. And I left for a

3:08

weekend hiking trip expecting

3:11

that the manmates would put their tracks

3:13

down so we could send in the song of

3:15

the next Monday. And I got back

3:17

and nobody had done anything. And

3:20

it was very disappointing. I remember walking

3:22

in the rain. It was Seattle, wondering

3:25

what to do next and coming to

3:27

the decision that this is probably not gonna

3:29

give me a way to make a living and

3:31

that music or at least this particular

3:34

band episode was not

3:36

gonna work out. And that

3:38

I to get serious about

3:41

maybe something else. What

3:45

happened to Ken, of course, has happened to millions

3:48

of people. Maybe it's happening

3:50

to you right now. You set

3:52

your heart on something and then find

3:54

the thing you wanted doesn't look

3:56

anything like the thing you thought

3:58

you wanted. So Ken

4:00

did what lots of us do. He flailed

4:02

around looking for something new. He

4:05

signed up for a master's program. Yeah.

4:07

It was a program at Seattle University,

4:10

an existential phenomenological psychotherapy.

4:14

Wow. That's a lot of

4:16

syllables, but it is a

4:18

certain tradition within

4:20

existential philosophy and counseling

4:23

psychology. It's a it's a a

4:25

legitimate approach to

4:27

helping people. And I was very

4:29

interested in that program, not so much because

4:31

I wanted to become a therapist, but

4:34

more because I've always just been very

4:36

theoretically oriented. And these were

4:38

new ideas that I didn't understand that

4:41

seemed like they might be very relevant to

4:44

the search for clarity, the

4:46

search for what to do with with

4:48

myself. Again,

4:52

Ken was doing what lots of us do. We

4:54

look to the outside world to give us

4:56

answers to questions about what we

4:58

should do with our lives. Kans

5:00

foray into existential phenomenological

5:03

psychotherapy was short lived.

5:05

The answers he was looking for were

5:08

not forthcoming. I really

5:10

enjoyed the year. My

5:13

fellow classmates, we formed

5:15

a tight cohort. We did

5:17

things together. I learned a

5:19

lot. And the main thing I

5:21

learned was that didn't think the

5:23

answers I was looking for were gonna come

5:25

from that area of knowledge.

5:28

So what did you do? Well,

5:30

I once again stopped

5:32

doing that. I I dropped out after the

5:34

first year. And

5:36

in the end, I was felt kind of stuck.

5:38

I was living in Seattle. The

5:41

jobs I was working were not very

5:43

well paying, very high status, but

5:45

here I was a Duke graduate,

5:47

you know, maybe I should be doing better

5:49

than that. So I was in a

5:51

sort of period of really, really

5:53

not knowing what to do next. In

6:01

addition to not knowing what to do next, Ken

6:03

felt like he was not measuring up.

6:06

He sensed the world expected more from him

6:08

and his impressive college degree. He

6:10

expected more from himself. He

6:12

felt lost. Still looking

6:14

for answers, he signed up for a workshop

6:17

that was all the rage in the nineteen seventies

6:19

and early eighties. It was

6:21

called the Airhard Seminar's training

6:23

or EST training. Yeah.

6:26

The EST training was created by

6:29

Warner Air Heart. He's not a spiritual

6:31

guru. He was actually a salesman who

6:33

read a lot about optimal

6:35

performance and communication and

6:37

what is the mind and mind

6:40

training classes he tried them

6:42

all, and then he created his own version

6:44

called the s training and

6:46

it wasn't a spiritual thing. It was actually designed

6:49

to train you to

6:51

understand your own mind and

6:53

to control it better. I

6:58

I understand that at one point you had

7:00

this training with a sixty hour

7:02

course spread across two weekends.

7:05

What to describe the course to me, what what

7:07

happened and what what what what what you learned and

7:09

how it ended? Yeah. Well, the the way

7:11

the training was set up, you'd be

7:14

seated in a ballroom. They'd rent the hotel

7:16

ballroom, and they'd have chairs lined up, and

7:18

so there would be two or three hundred of you

7:20

lined up in your chairs. And

7:22

then the trainer would come out and there would

7:24

be volunteers would bring microphones

7:26

to people to speak into when they

7:29

wanted to say something. And the

7:31

trainer led us to a a variety

7:33

of explorations, processes,

7:36

activities designed

7:38

to show us how our minds

7:41

work and how they are currently not

7:44

working and training us

7:46

to work them better. I

7:48

understand the course guaranteed enlightenment at

7:50

the end of the second weekend. That's

7:53

right. That was actually the thing that attracted

7:55

my me to it most. I wasn't

7:57

sure that I needed a self help

7:59

training, but that promise

8:02

of guaranteed enlightenment, I'd fascinated

8:04

to find out what that was gonna be.

8:08

And so what happened the second weekend? Well,

8:11

so we're on day four at Sunday of the

8:13

second weekend and it's

8:15

sort of building and building and

8:18

you're getting closer and closer to the material

8:20

that they really wanna hit you with at the

8:22

end. And the moment

8:24

of enlightenment was being told

8:26

that this is

8:28

it. You're already enlightened. There's only

8:31

the present moment. This is it.

8:35

Imagine this must have been something of a

8:37

letdown for the two hundred people in

8:39

the hall. Yeah. I mean, it sounds like

8:41

a a bait and switch almost.

8:43

So after the trainer told us

8:45

this, people were

8:47

like, What do you mean? This is

8:49

it. This isn't it.

8:55

So it's interesting. So in the spirit of

8:57

your life, can I think you go you went through what

8:59

a lot of young people go through. You know, you've

9:01

just graduated college, you're trying your hand

9:03

at different things, you're throwing

9:05

darts at the

9:05

wall, nothing's really sticking. There

9:07

must have been appeared in your life when it felt it

9:09

must have felt quite discouraging. Did did

9:11

that did thoughts of self doubt

9:13

go through your mind at this time in your

9:15

life? Oh, yeah.

9:18

Yeah. I would say that I've had a lot of

9:20

self doubt that I've struggled with. But,

9:24

you know, a big part of the self doubt

9:26

involves the knowledge that

9:28

it's only you who was

9:30

making the choices in your life.

9:32

And that's kind of scary.

9:34

It's all up to me. And

9:36

I wasn't sure that I was good enough to

9:38

do what maybe I was capable

9:40

of doing. Adrift

9:47

and uncertain. Ken asked himself what he

9:49

wanted from life. The ban hadn't

9:51

worked out. The Masters

9:53

program in existential phenomenological

9:56

psychotherapy turned out to be a bad

9:57

fit. The est workshops were

10:00

a let down. Ken

10:02

had always enjoyed science and

10:04

big ideas. He decided to

10:06

enroll in a PhD program in

10:08

psychology. At first,

10:11

this seemed like another mistake.

10:14

But

10:14

several years into the program, a

10:17

teacher came along who changed the

10:19

way Ken thought about the question of

10:21

what he should do with his

10:22

life. This wasn't

10:25

probably till my fourth year that Robert

10:27

Evans arrived, and I was a little bit

10:29

adrift up to that point. But

10:31

once Bob showed up. I

10:33

recognized that the research

10:35

he was doing was fascinating when I

10:37

really wanted to learn about it. And

10:39

so what he was doing was a

10:41

new approach to studying personality,

10:43

where instead of giving people

10:45

a trait questionnaire, how extroverted

10:47

are you, and how agreeable

10:49

and so forth. He gave people

10:51

a blank sheet of paper. And

10:54

he said, tell me what you're striving to

10:56

do. And so there'd be say fifteen

10:58

blank lines and the participant would

11:00

write down, you know, ten,

11:02

fifteen as many as they wanted, things that

11:04

they are striving to do in their life.

11:07

And that really

11:09

intrigued me because it's

11:11

what I had been trying to do

11:13

my whole life was figure out what to

11:15

strive for. Observing

11:21

how other people write down the things they were

11:23

striving for gave Ken a

11:25

crucial insight. Yeah.

11:27

There's a blank piece of paper and

11:30

people write things down.

11:32

And if you think about it, how do

11:34

we know or how do they know they're

11:36

writing good stuff down? You know,

11:38

maybe they're just writing down what

11:41

what their mom told them or their friend told

11:43

them or what society has told

11:45

them. And so it was

11:47

only thinking later about you know,

11:49

what is the meaning of these goals statements people

11:51

are giving us that I started

11:53

to wondered, what if they're writing

11:55

down the wrong things? The

12:01

hard question Ken realized wasn't

12:03

figuring out how to get where you were

12:05

going. It was in figuring out

12:07

where you wanted to go.

12:11

When we come back, how to find the

12:13

answer to that difficult question?

12:15

You're listening to Hidden Brain. I'm

12:17

Shankar Vedanta.

12:29

This is Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar

12:31

Vedanta. Psychologists can

12:33

sheldon studies how we choose goals for

12:35

ourselves. His researchers

12:37

found that we often select the

12:39

wrong goals. That is we

12:41

point ourselves in directions that

12:44

don't ultimately lead to lasting

12:46

happiness. An important

12:48

reason for this era is that people don't

12:50

have a good sense of what will make

12:52

them

12:52

happy. One of the main things we find

12:54

is that people are not very good

12:56

at all. At knowing how achieving

12:58

their goals will affect them.

13:00

They can have a

13:02

completely off base feeling

13:05

that this goal, if I finally get

13:07

it, is gonna make all the difference for

13:09

me. But then when we actually come

13:11

back and measure, their happiness

13:13

later on to see how it's been affected or

13:15

not affected. We

13:17

often find no change.

13:20

So one of the biggest reasons that you

13:22

and others have found that people come up

13:24

with the wrong goals is that we

13:26

blindly follow voices in our

13:28

society that tell us what we

13:30

ought to want. I want to play you a

13:32

famous clip from the nineteen eighty seven movie

13:34

Wall Street Michael Douglas

13:36

plays Gordon

13:36

Gekko, a wealthy corporate trader

13:39

who has some strong views

13:41

about greed. The point is, ladies

13:43

and gentlemen, that

13:45

greed for lack of a

13:47

better word is

13:48

good. Greed is

13:51

right. Greed

13:53

works. Green

13:54

clarifies, cuts through

13:57

and captures. The s of

13:59

the evolutionary spirit,

14:02

greed in all of its forms,

14:04

greed for life, for

14:06

money, love, knowledge,

14:08

has marked an upward surge of

14:10

mankind and

14:11

greed. You mark

14:14

my words.

14:15

We'll not only save held

14:17

our paper, but that other malfunctioning

14:19

corporation called the USA.

14:21

Thank you very much. So

14:27

can today we might say that Gordon Gekko

14:29

goes too far, but even if we are not willing

14:31

to be as explicit as

14:32

this, can you talk about some of the subtler

14:34

ways in which society tells us that

14:36

money and power and status are

14:38

the ultimate barometers of a successful

14:40

life? Yeah. Well, there's many ways we're all

14:43

immersed in a material consumer

14:45

culture, which is trying to get us

14:47

to buy things, click things,

14:49

make more money so we can

14:52

acquire status symbols. Not

14:54

all that's fall for this. It depends a

14:56

lot on the support and and relations

14:59

and connections that we have. But

15:01

if you're not sure what to do

15:03

and so many of these

15:05

broader cultural messages are telling

15:07

you to be

15:08

greedy, you're pretty

15:10

prone to at least give that a try to

15:12

see if it works. Howard Bauchner:

15:14

Yeah, and I suppose another major way

15:16

that many of might end up pursuing the wrong things

15:18

is that we choose goals set for

15:20

us by other people in our lives. And and

15:22

very often, these might be people whom we love. You know,

15:24

our parents, our teachers, our friends,

15:27

people who say they want the best

15:29

for us, but people who might not actually

15:31

know what will make us happy. Do you

15:33

hear that from your students as well,

15:34

Ken? Yeah, that's a very

15:37

common complaint. College students

15:39

are still trying to figure out what

15:41

they want, perhaps independently

15:43

of their parents. It's their first real

15:45

opportunity to get away from their parents

15:47

and explore on their own.

15:49

And parents often have very

15:51

firm ideas about what they want

15:53

their children to do. And it's

15:55

not a bad thing. In many cases,

15:57

they are good ideas, but ultimately

16:00

parents are not in

16:02

even as good a position as we are to

16:04

experiment and find what we really

16:06

want. Parents have

16:08

goals of their own. They want to acquire the

16:10

status of having a

16:12

doctor as a child. And they

16:14

sometimes can't separate that

16:16

out from their love and concern

16:18

for us. So

16:22

some years ago, you were approached by a law

16:24

professor at Florida State University, and

16:26

Lawrence Kreger wanted to discuss a

16:28

problem he seeing among some of

16:30

his law

16:30

students. What what did he tell you,

16:32

Ken? In his view, you

16:35

know, in law schools, there's intense

16:38

competition. There's grading on a

16:40

curve so that even if you learn

16:42

almost all the material, you might still only get

16:44

a c You're trying to

16:46

get the the prestigious positions.

16:48

You might end up accepting a job

16:50

because it's the highest paying even

16:52

though once upon a time, you might have

16:54

thought you would have hated doing that

16:56

type of job. So it can be

16:58

really confusing for students and

17:01

Larry was trying to humanize legal education.

17:03

I understand the two of you went on to

17:05

coauthor a number of studies involving law

17:07

students and practicing lawyers. So

17:10

tell me some of what those studies

17:11

found. Howard Bauchner:

17:11

Yeah, we've published several studies.

17:14

Our first came out in two thousand

17:16

and four we were able

17:18

to track a sample of law students

17:20

over their entire three year

17:22

career to see what changes

17:24

occurred in their well-being and

17:26

in their met estate. And

17:28

the first thing we found was something that had

17:30

been shown before that

17:33

their sense of well-being really

17:35

committed quite dramatically and that levels of

17:37

depression went up quite

17:39

a a bit over the course of the legal

17:42

career in in ways that are

17:44

are more extreme and more

17:46

concerning than in other professional

17:49

education. Another

17:51

thing we found was that

17:53

is this paradoxical thing

17:56

where the students who began

17:58

with the most idealistic motivation

18:01

tended to do well. They got good

18:03

grades in their first year of

18:05

law school. But that had

18:07

a a sort of corrupting effect

18:09

where they being the highest,

18:11

greatest, they became the

18:13

highest debt of students, and

18:15

their their values shifted in the

18:17

direction of looking

18:19

good, having status instead

18:21

of helping others. And

18:23

so their idealistic motivation

18:26

turned into much more self

18:28

centered motivation over time.

18:34

Here was a set of ideas to

18:37

explain why people found it hard, why

18:39

Ken himself had found it hard,

18:41

to figure out what to do with his

18:43

life. By the time a

18:45

person is in their early twenties and

18:47

is making important decisions about careers

18:49

and relationships, they've had a

18:51

good two decades of indoctrination.

18:54

Indoctrination from the culture, which

18:56

tells them what's what's striving for

18:58

and what is not. Indoctrination

19:00

from parents and well wishers who have

19:02

told them what is high status and what

19:04

is not. An indoctrination from

19:07

schools that often take passion

19:09

and enthusiasm for a subject and

19:11

turn it into a race for grades,

19:14

certificates, and academic

19:16

honors. The irony is,

19:18

the better one does at each stage,

19:20

the harder it becomes to ask if

19:22

you're actually doing what it

19:24

is you want to do.

19:27

Soon, the systems of carrots and sticks that

19:29

guides us through adolescence and

19:31

youth is now driving us through our

19:33

careers. In one study

19:35

of six thousand practicing

19:37

lawyers can found that many of these

19:39

professionals prioritize things

19:41

that the world had decided should make them

19:44

Often at the expense of things that

19:46

actually made them

19:47

happy. Yeah. We were

19:50

looking at everything about lawyers

19:52

that we could think of that might affect their

19:55

well-being that most people

19:57

would think are most important like how much

19:59

money do they make how high

20:01

status is their job or or did

20:03

they make partner, but we

20:05

also included these more psychological

20:07

variables that we thought would be

20:09

more important like, do they

20:11

enjoy and believe in what they're

20:13

doing? Do they feel like they're making a

20:15

contribution to the world in what

20:17

they're

20:17

doing?

20:17

And what we found was that,

20:19

yes, in fact, income correlated

20:22

with happiness, but it was a pretty small

20:24

effect, a surprisingly small effect. A

20:26

much larger effect

20:29

was their motivation for doing

20:31

the job. Was it something they wanna to

20:33

do. They believed in it. They felt like they

20:35

were contributing to the world by doing

20:37

it. And that was a

20:39

much larger determinant of how

20:41

happy a person they were.

20:44

So you said that unhappy

20:46

lawyers might represent an especially

20:48

striking example widespread

20:51

phenomenon, which is that these people are

20:53

privileging extrinsic motivations

20:55

over intrinsic motivations. What do

20:57

you mean by those terms again?

21:00

Intrinsic motivation is

21:02

just doing something because you like

21:04

to do it. It's rewarding. It's

21:07

interesting. Doing it is its

21:09

own reward. Extrinsic

21:12

motivation is when you don't

21:14

really like it. You don't like doing it,

21:16

but you like what you get from

21:18

doing it. So you're trying to get a

21:20

reward from the behavior. So it'll only

21:22

come after you're

21:24

finished. I understand that you have

21:26

done work with EDC who conducted

21:28

some of the earlier studies into the

21:30

nature of intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. Tell

21:32

me about what you did Ed was

21:34

one of the first people to show that

21:36

not only is intrinsic motivation

21:39

real, it really matters to

21:41

be engaged and interested in what

21:43

you're doing He also showed

21:45

that intrinsic motivation is kind of

21:47

fragile. It can be spoiled

21:49

pretty easily, and he'd

21:51

called that the undermining of

21:53

intrinsic motivation. Ed

21:55

DC found that these two kinds

21:57

of motivation had different sources

21:59

of nourishment. Intrinsic motivation

22:02

springs up from the inside. It's

22:04

often shaped by interest and

22:07

curiosity. Extensive motivation comes from the

22:09

outside. Of course, by the

22:11

time professionals have embarked on a

22:13

career, they've had twenty or

22:15

thirty years of carats and sticks

22:17

thrown at them by

22:18

family, by teachers, and by

22:20

the world. The experiments

22:22

that Ed DC ran show that

22:24

even when people started doing an activity

22:27

because of interest and curiosity. Adding

22:30

external rewards and

22:32

punishments had the paradoxical effect

22:34

of destroying intrinsic

22:35

motivation. And

22:36

so we did these

22:39

classic experiments showing

22:41

that when you pay people to

22:43

do something, it makes

22:45

them not wanna do it anymore. So if you're

22:48

solving what should be a fun

22:50

puzzle that almost everybody likes

22:52

to do, but you're doing get

22:54

a dollar for each correct

22:56

solution. And then you're left alone in the

22:58

room for a five minute

23:00

period and you can either more puzzles where you can pick

23:02

up a magazine. In

23:04

that condition, you pick up the magazine

23:06

or today you bring out

23:08

your cell phone. On the other

23:11

hand, the the participants in his studies who

23:13

were just told, hey, check out these

23:15

puzzles, see if you like them. There's

23:17

no mention of money. When

23:19

they were left alone in that room, they kept on trying

23:21

to do new puzzles. They

23:24

retained their intrinsic motivation.

23:26

And and this has huge implications

23:29

for how we get people to do things.

23:31

Do we try to sort of bribe

23:33

and coerce them using external

23:36

rewards I mean, sometimes that's necessary, but

23:38

it's also very powerful medicine

23:40

that can spoil an

23:43

activity, maybe for life, for

23:45

a person. Your child

23:47

starts to take piano lessons and

23:49

you increase their allowance when

23:51

they practice a

23:53

certain amount. That may keep them

23:55

practicing for a while. But in the long

23:57

run, they're probably gonna lose interest

23:59

because they've lost touch

24:01

with the inherently enjoyable

24:03

part of of playing the piano.

24:12

You you conducted a real world

24:14

study that had some

24:16

remarkable findings. You're working, of

24:18

course, at the University of Missouri, which is

24:20

a very sensitive athletic program, some student

24:22

athletes at the school are recruits whose

24:24

tuition and expenses are paid for by

24:26

athletic scholarships Others

24:28

are walk ons who play just for the fun

24:30

of it. So one group has a bunch of external

24:32

incentives to play. The other primarily

24:34

has internal incentives. Now you

24:36

studied these two groups of athletes and their long term

24:39

involvement with an enthusiasm

24:41

for their

24:41

sport. What do you fight, Ken? What

24:44

we

24:44

were trying to do was show intrinsic

24:47

motivation undermining that

24:49

lasts for decades, not

24:51

just a few minutes. Right? So

24:53

DC's early studies showed, you

24:55

know, in that five minute period, you wouldn't pick

24:57

up the puzzle. What we wanted to

24:59

see was during that four year

25:01

period of college when you were getting,

25:03

you know, everything paid

25:05

for, did that ruin

25:07

that sport for the rest of

25:09

your life? what we found was that

25:11

the Varsity athletes

25:14

up to thirty, forty

25:16

years later, were much

25:18

less interested in playing the

25:20

sport in the present day

25:22

or even paying attention to what

25:24

was happening in the sport.

25:26

In in the colleges or the professional leagues.

25:29

Whereas the students who

25:31

only participated as walk

25:33

ons originally retained their

25:35

interest in this board. I mean, that's

25:37

such a paradoxical finding, isn't it?

25:39

Because, of course, the students who

25:41

are who are the varsity players

25:43

are are being rewarded. They're being told, we

25:45

love how you play. We're gonna give you these

25:48

incentives to keep playing. It's really

25:50

strange that these internal incentives seem to

25:52

damage people's internal drive

25:54

or love for the

25:54

sport? Yes,

25:56

it is strange. You would think

25:59

that They're so good at the sport.

26:01

They've spent so much time practicing it. They

26:03

were able to earn a scholarship. They should

26:05

be the ones who really continue

26:07

to like it. The reason that they don't

26:10

comes down to the fact that they felt

26:12

very controlled during their

26:15

college years. They felt like they had to

26:17

do it they'd lose their

26:19

scholarship if they didn't. People were

26:21

talking about them on the discussion boards. The

26:23

fans were criticizing them. The coaches

26:25

were bossing them

26:27

around. And so when people feel controlled

26:29

by their environment or their situation,

26:31

that really tends to

26:33

undermine their intrinsic motivation.

26:36

And so as soon as it appears that

26:38

it's okay to stop doing it,

26:40

they're prone to go ahead

26:43

and stop. So I wanna

26:45

summarize where we are. You know, if we

26:47

want to know what to do with our lives, we

26:49

we need to examine our inclinations

26:52

and propensity. We should try and hold and obey the

26:54

signals we get from the outside world

26:56

about what's truly important. But it turns

26:58

out that doing these things may not

27:00

be enough. In some maybe we should go

27:02

back to the days after you graduated from

27:04

college. You know, I think you were following

27:06

your inclinations and propensity when you

27:08

decided to become a musician. You

27:10

are dictates of, you know, money and power

27:12

and status. Some of your research has

27:14

focused on what may be the trickiest problem

27:17

of all. Which is we fail to

27:19

understand ourselves because when we look

27:21

inward, we can only see one

27:23

aspect of our own minds. How

27:25

so can? Yeah.

27:27

I think this might be one of those profound

27:30

problems that we

27:32

human beings face. The

27:34

fact that we are kind of

27:36

stuck in a psychological

27:39

world that is sort of a

27:41

simulation of what's going

27:43

on underneath we can only

27:45

be conscious of a limited amount at

27:47

any moment. And

27:49

the things that we think and are conscious

27:52

of can be very influenced by outside

27:54

forces and pressures as

27:56

we've discussed. And so it

27:58

takes quite a bit of time and

28:01

work to figure out what you

28:03

really want to do.

28:09

Some of this

28:12

has to do with the fact that when most

28:14

of us think about our own minds, we think

28:16

that Our minds adjust our

28:18

conscious minds, but some of your work has

28:20

looked at the idea that a

28:22

significant portion of our minds in fact are

28:24

hidden away from conscious introspection?

28:27

Yeah. There's AAA

28:29

large tradition in in motivation research

28:32

and in other areas of

28:34

psychology. That sort of revived

28:36

the idea of of the unconscious mind,

28:38

not saying that it's

28:40

Freud's idea of the place where the

28:42

nasty stuff is hidden.

28:45

Instead, it's the place where

28:47

we have habitual inclinations,

28:50

emerging intuitions, motives

28:53

that we kind of go

28:55

after, maybe even without our own awareness.

28:57

And so it's pretty

29:00

important to learn to hook

29:02

up the two mines as much as

29:04

we can. To get our conscious

29:06

selves to accurately reflect

29:09

what's going on in there at a

29:11

deeper level. When

29:14

we come

29:18

back, how to figure out what's

29:20

inside? Well, your

29:22

hidden brain. You're listening to

29:24

hidden brain. I'm Shankar Vedanta.

29:31

This is

29:35

Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedanta.

29:38

Psychologists can share them studies how we

29:40

come up with the goals that animate our lives.

29:42

He is the author of freely

29:44

determined what the new psychology of the

29:46

self teaches us about how

29:48

to live. Kense

29:50

research has found that happiness comes when we

29:52

bring together the propensity and intonations

29:54

we are aware of with deeper

29:57

preferences that lie in our unconscious minds.

29:59

Can you have a name for this process

30:01

of successfully matching our goals

30:04

to our conscious and non conscious ink

30:06

conditions and propensity. You call

30:08

this self concordance. What do

30:10

you mean by this term? Self

30:13

concordance is simultaneously

30:16

a simple and a

30:19

complex concept People

30:22

pursuing nonconcordant goals are

30:24

often doing something mainly

30:26

because somebody else wants them to, somebody

30:28

who's important to them.

30:31

Could be parents, it could be a

30:33

spouse. Other times, they

30:35

are trying to be something

30:37

that they themselves think they should be.

30:39

They've got this idea maybe that goes

30:41

way back in their lives of what kind

30:43

of person they are and

30:46

what they need to do to be that kind

30:48

of person. And the the

30:50

problem with both of these types of

30:52

motivations is it makes it

30:54

difficult to hear more

30:56

subtle signals that are coming up

30:58

from our unconscious minds that

31:00

might help us to realize that this

31:03

isn't quite it yet. So, of

31:06

course, the things that are in our minds that

31:08

are not consciously accessible to

31:10

us are, by definition, you

31:12

know, not consciously accessible to us.

31:14

So merely asking ourselves what our

31:16

non conscious minds are up to will not give

31:18

us the answers. So your research has found that

31:20

one way to get at what's happening in our non

31:22

conscious minds is to follow a path that

31:24

artists, designers, and

31:26

inventors take as they

31:28

engage in the process of

31:30

discovery. What are the steps in this

31:32

process, Ken? Yeah. This

31:34

was a very interesting

31:36

connect that occurred to me at one point because I used

31:38

to study creativity. It was my

31:41

dissertation research topic. And

31:43

there's an important idea in creativity

31:46

theory of the four stages of

31:48

creativity that you start

31:50

by asking yourself a question You

31:52

don't know the answer. You want the solution to the

31:55

scientific problem or the

31:57

new approach to

31:59

painting that seems to be in there

32:01

something intriguing is calling to

32:03

you. So you ask yourself this question

32:05

and you don't know the answer. And so then there

32:07

needs to be an incubation period.

32:09

Where you go and think about something else.

32:13

What happens is that

32:15

your non conscious mind keeps working

32:19

on the problem while you're thinking about

32:21

something else just because you

32:23

sort of consciously posed that question

32:25

to yourself. And then you went away, and

32:27

now it's working on it. And so hopefully

32:30

along comes a moment of

32:33

inspiration and aha moment

32:35

where some stray thought

32:37

or idea or image

32:39

pops up and you recognize,

32:42

whoa, that's interesting. What's

32:44

that about? And you start to

32:46

work with that ID and you realize that it's the

32:48

solution to the problem. So this

32:50

this is a very common sort of

32:52

creative sequence And

32:54

my idea was that maybe

32:57

discovering what we really want

32:59

is a creative activity. And

33:02

maybe we can self prompt this

33:04

activity. We don't just have to wait

33:06

for insights out of the

33:08

blue. We can consciously

33:10

ask ourselves question like

33:12

Why am I so unhappy? What do I really want?

33:14

What's bothering me? What's

33:17

happening inside of me? And when

33:19

we ask those questions, we don't know the answer right

33:21

away, but very often we begin

33:23

to get hints. So

33:29

partly what I hear you saying is

33:31

that this process of preparation is really

33:33

important. It's important to actually try and grapple

33:35

with the problem consciously even

33:37

if it turns out that the answer

33:39

lies in our non conscious minds because by grappling

33:41

with something

33:42

consciously, you're setting the stage, if

33:44

you will, to to have a conversation with

33:47

your non just mine and to allow something

33:49

to bubble

33:49

up. That's exactly right. And

33:52

a colleague and I now are writing

33:54

a review article where we're

33:57

trying to make a firm

33:59

connection between the

34:02

phenomenology of conscious choice

34:04

of asking one's mind

34:06

questions and neuroscience, you know, what's happening

34:08

in these brain networks when we do

34:10

that. And we're finding some really

34:12

striking points of connection supporting

34:15

the idea that when we

34:17

ask ourselves a question, it puts

34:19

our brains to work in ways that we

34:21

don't know about. But that can do an

34:23

amazing job of of helping

34:25

us. So once a

34:27

period of preparation has led to

34:29

a moment of illumination, We

34:31

then have to proceed to the stage you call

34:33

verification. Is that right? Not every

34:36

revelation we have will

34:38

pan out. That's true.

34:40

Not every AHA experience

34:42

is the best or final

34:44

AHA experience. And so

34:46

life is an experiment, and then we

34:48

need to test the idea once we become aware of

34:50

it. And we might realize

34:52

that, no, we don't want to quit

34:54

everything and move to Mexico and

34:56

lay on

34:58

a beach. That's not really gonna be as fulfilling

35:00

as we think. Let's keep

35:02

thinking and maybe a better

35:04

choice will

35:06

come. In order

35:10

to know what we really want, we need

35:12

to get better at attending to subtle

35:16

thoughts and feelings that many of us have spent

35:18

lifetimes suppressing. Like many

35:20

other skills, the ability to

35:23

listen to yourself can be

35:25

improved through deliberate practice. Ken says,

35:28

there are

35:29

techniques that can help. One

35:32

of them is to use mindfulness

35:36

meditation where you're just trying to

35:38

do nothing. You're just being

35:40

a blank conscious screen and you're trying to watch what

35:42

pops up and you're trying to

35:44

stay present and

35:46

not be sort

35:48

of sucked away by the next thought or the next fear

35:51

or emotion. And the the

35:53

usefulness of mindfulness for discovering what

35:55

you really want is

35:58

that you're learning how to notice these subtle

36:00

signals that might be lurking

36:02

on the fringe of

36:04

consciousness. You

36:06

might not recognize those until you develop

36:08

this skill of really kind

36:10

of picking up on these subtle

36:14

things that are happening if you'll

36:16

just shut up

36:18

and listen. Ken

36:23

in your book are freely determined, are you right about a

36:25

character you call Amy? She's not a real

36:27

person, but an amalgamation of many

36:29

people you've worked with, and

36:31

you use Amy's story to illustrate your

36:34

technique of getting to self

36:35

concordance. Set things up for me. Who is

36:38

Amy and what is the challenge

36:40

she faces? As a

36:42

college

36:42

student, Amy was very

36:45

influenced by a

36:47

friend who encouraged Amy's interest

36:49

in in the environment. And

36:52

influenced Amy to join

36:54

groups with her and work

36:56

for the environment. So that was a

36:58

big part of Amy's life

37:00

in college. But then she went

37:02

to law school and did very

37:04

well, but she fell

37:06

prey to this problem I described

37:08

earlier that the high performing law

37:10

students tend to become sort of corrupted by their success.

37:13

And she ended up as a

37:15

wealthy partner, extremely

37:18

successful by

37:20

conventional standards, lawyer working in a

37:22

big firm in a big city, but

37:25

she was miserable. And

37:28

she had no idea why at that

37:30

point. One weekend, she

37:32

talked to her brother at a

37:35

family gathering and brother asked some difficult questions. Well,

37:37

if you're so miserable, why are you still doing

37:40

this? And that caused

37:41

her to start thinking in the way I've

37:43

described, it set her

37:46

unconscious mind in

37:47

commotion. And

37:48

the the first effects of

37:51

that process was when The

37:54

thought of the woman that she knew back in

37:56

college popped into her head one day

37:58

at work, and it had

38:00

been twenty

38:02

five years why was she thinking ever now? And

38:04

she finally got to a point where

38:06

she googled that person, discovered

38:08

that they

38:09

ran their own consulting firm for

38:12

environmental issues. And

38:14

it took a while for Amy to

38:17

go from this knowledge to saying, well, maybe

38:19

I'll reach out to her and

38:21

see, you know, I'll email her, see

38:23

how she's doing.

38:24

But when she finally got to that last

38:26

point, The friend was very

38:28

glad to hear from Amy, thought that

38:30

Amy had skills that she needed and

38:32

invited Amy to come work with

38:35

her.

38:35

And so

38:35

Amy changed her job. She

38:38

took a fifty percent cut in

38:40

salary. She moved to a

38:42

different city. But she's way happier now than she

38:44

was before because she has gotten

38:46

back to those

38:48

early adult

38:50

interest in making a difference in the

38:52

world. So

38:59

in terms of the specific techniques

39:02

that you mentioned a second ago,

39:04

the idea of preparation,

39:06

illumination, and

39:08

verification How does Amy Stoney represent those stages can?

39:11

Nothing happened until

39:12

she started to ask herself, what's the

39:14

problem? What do I really want?

39:18

And then nothing happened after that for quite

39:20

some time because it was a big problem. And

39:22

it took a while for

39:24

her non conscious mind to

39:26

process it. that

39:28

mind found ways to

39:31

bring to her attention

39:33

this relevant image

39:35

from her past. But she

39:37

still needed to recognize the aha moment

39:40

and then she still needed to elaborate

39:42

it and follow

39:44

it through and contact her friend and so forth. But

39:47

the whole sequence fits this

39:49

model that we've discussed

39:51

quite well. You know, it's so interesting when you think about it.

39:54

So few of us actually ask

39:56

ourselves those big questions, and those of

39:58

us who

40:00

do often don't listen to the voice of illumination that might pop

40:02

up, and then those of us who do that

40:04

might not actually stop to verify

40:07

or elaborated. And it really is several different

40:10

steps, and each of them is actually

40:12

quite important.

40:13

Yes, it is too. They're all important,

40:16

and they process can

40:18

be stalled anywhere along the

40:20

way. One of the biggest problems

40:22

Amy had was when she

40:24

had this invitation to join her friends

40:26

company was making the

40:28

cut from her old job because she

40:30

knew that her old colleagues would

40:33

see it as a step down, you know, working

40:35

for so much less, so much

40:37

less status. And so she needed

40:39

to muster

40:41

the courage to go ahead and

40:43

take a step anyway. Howard Bauchner: One of the

40:46

subtle traps that

40:48

you have I've

40:50

studied is the idea that once we make

40:52

choices, our minds are very good at

40:54

coming up with reasons why those choices

40:56

are in fact the correct choices. It

40:58

becomes very difficult to actually

41:00

evaluate the the choice,

41:02

you know, really on its own merits. Can you

41:04

talk about that idea that there is a commitment

41:06

that happens inside our minds once we've decided to go down path

41:08

a rather than path

41:09

b. Yes, Peter Goitzer

41:12

in his great research

41:14

has shown that at some

41:16

point we cross a Rubicon of

41:19

decision. And what that means

41:21

is we make up our minds. We're no longer thinking

41:23

about what we might want. We've now

41:25

made a choice, and we're gonna go

41:27

ahead with it. And what

41:30

his research shows is that once we

41:32

cross that Rubicon from

41:34

deliberation to

41:36

implementation, our minds operate very differently.

41:38

We're no longer questioning what we're thinking.

41:40

Instead, we're trying to make plans, we're

41:44

trying to preserve

41:46

the goal. We want to we don't wanna

41:48

wimp out on

41:48

it. We wanna take the next step. We don't

41:51

wanna have to go back to

41:54

that uncomfortable position of

41:56

wondering what we want.

41:58

And in some ways, we become almost,

42:00

you know, prosecutors. We're basically

42:03

amassing evidence for a conclusion that we've already reached instead of

42:05

having an open mind.

42:06

That's exactly right.

42:09

We don't want

42:11

to think that I chose the wrong thing.

42:13

That creates dissonance. It's uncomfortable. And so we

42:16

protect ourselves from

42:18

that thought. And

42:20

many times that's a good thing. We

42:22

don't want to let ourselves worry too much. We

42:24

want to get on with things. But

42:26

sometimes that dissonance can be

42:28

a valuable signal as we've been talking about with Amy

42:30

that can let us know that maybe it is

42:32

time to go back to the

42:34

deliberation phase.

42:36

Once we take

42:39

the time to really look inward

42:41

and listen to the quiet voices

42:43

within us, there is

42:46

still an important hurdle to overcome.

42:48

Just because Amy discovered what felt

42:50

like her true calling doesn't mean

42:52

that the rest of her life is going to be

42:54

a bed of roses. Getting to self

42:56

concordance is a great way to harness

42:59

the power of intrinsic motivation and

43:01

to start to live your life in accordance with your

43:03

deepest values. But changing course

43:05

and making plans for

43:07

a new life isn't enough.

43:10

As boxing heavyweight champion

43:12

and part time psychologist Mike Tyson

43:15

once said, everyone has a

43:17

plan until they get punched in the mouth.

43:20

I played CannaClip from the movie

43:22

wild. It's based on a memoir

43:24

by Cheryl strayed recounting

43:26

her experiences hiking the

43:28

Pacific Crest Trail. In the

43:30

clip, Cheryl, played by Reese Witherspoon,

43:34

is hiking. She's carrying a very heavy backpack starting

43:36

to regret her choices.

43:39

Tell you are

43:42

hiking, Cheryl. Like

43:44

to sit on a real

43:47

toilet. This is blush. Food. Eat

43:52

food with other people.

43:54

People, that's another thing I like.

43:56

I was talking to

44:00

people. Looking at the people. I guess,

44:02

having one. I had any laws that I

44:06

had. Until I

44:08

decided to walk on my own

44:10

to go

44:12

there. So

44:14

the Pacific Crest train that we hear about in the movie can run

44:16

some twenty six hundred miles from Mexico

44:19

to Canada used study the

44:21

motivations of people who successfully complete the

44:24

trail in a single spring

44:26

summer season. What do you find happens

44:28

to their intrinsic motivation as the

44:30

trail unfolds?

44:32

Yeah,

44:32

this was a really interesting data.

44:34

The most dramatic thing

44:37

that happened was that their intrinsic motivation to do

44:39

the hike plummeted over the

44:42

course of the summer. It no

44:44

longer seems so interesting and

44:46

challenging and

44:48

fun at the

44:49

end. Instead, it was much more of a kind

44:51

of a slog for most people who who

44:53

were able to go that

44:56

far. You found

44:56

that when intrinsic motivation wins in this way,

44:59

it can actually be replaced by something

45:01

else. A different reason

45:03

for pushing forward but one

45:05

that is still positive. It's called identified motivation.

45:08

What is this, Ken?

45:10

Yeah. Identified

45:12

motivation is the kind

45:14

where it's not that you're doing it

45:16

because it's fun and interesting.

45:18

Instead, if you're doing it because

45:20

It's meaningful. It expresses your values and it's

45:23

important to you. And so even

45:25

when intrinsic motivation fails,

45:30

identified motivation can still

45:33

keep going because it

45:35

believes in in the

45:36

journey, even if the journey is becoming

45:38

more and more painful. You know, it's so interesting

45:40

a lot of this research I think speaks

45:42

to the importance of mindfulness of

45:46

being willing to listen and pay attention to where you are and

45:48

how you might really feel. I'm not quite

45:50

sure and goes all the way back to that s seminar

45:52

that you did in your in your

45:56

twenties, but But to some extent, some of it is about, you know, really paying

45:58

attention to where you

46:00

are. It's

46:00

true. And that is something that

46:04

we all a need to know how to do better. It's something

46:06

that our schools don't teach us. Our

46:08

parents don't teach us.

46:11

We're self programming organisms.

46:14

We are creating our lives

46:16

via our choices, but

46:18

we are not taught how to do

46:20

it

46:21

well, not taught how to Ask

46:23

ourselves the questions that will get us

46:25

the answers that

46:28

we need. Psychologist

46:32

Ken Sheldon works at the University of Missouri. He is the

46:35

author of freely determined, won the new

46:37

psychology of the self, teaches

46:40

us about how to live. Thank you so much for joining me

46:42

today on Hidden

46:43

Brake. Thank

46:44

you and thank you for inviting me. I've had a great

46:46

time. Hidden brain

46:51

is produced

46:54

by hidden brain media. Our audio

46:57

production team includes Bridget McCarthy, Annie Murphy

46:59

Paul, Christian Wong, Laura Quirrell,

47:02

Ryan Katz, Autumn Barnes and

47:04

Andrew

47:05

Chadwick. Tara Boyle is our executive producer. I'm

47:08

Hidden Brain's executive editor.

47:11

Our unsung hero this week

47:13

comes from our sister podcast Mayan

47:15

Song Hero. In nineteen ninety

47:18

seven, Azim Sherif was a

47:20

tenth grader at a high school

47:22

in Vancouver. He had an

47:24

English teacher named Darryl

47:25

Wickham. He took on this kind

47:28

of father role for a

47:30

lot of kids who were at

47:32

the time in sort of bad

47:34

straits, me included it

47:36

was a tough time for me

47:40

Personally, had some family stuff going on, was in

47:42

a bad mental health position.

47:46

He noticed that

47:48

and kinda swooped in at

47:50

a time when I really needed somebody

47:53

to do

47:53

so. And I remember

47:56

him saying, I know you don't think you're important enough for somebody to care about

47:58

this, but you are.

47:59

You are important

48:00

enough. And

48:01

it was just

48:03

such a reassuring thing for somebody

48:05

who's, you know, reeling at the

48:07

age of fifteen. Daryl introduced a

48:09

beam to psychology and sparked

48:11

an intellectual curiosity in him. Eventually, Azim became a

48:14

teacher himself, a psychology

48:16

professor. In

48:19

my intro psych

48:20

class. The last class is

48:22

always a class on positive psychology.

48:25

And I always leave the students

48:27

with these three tasks which have been empirically

48:29

demonstrated to actually improve people's happiness for

48:31

several months. And one of them is this thing called

48:33

the gratitude visit.

48:36

Basically, what you do is you pick an unsung hero and

48:38

you write three hundred and fifty words,

48:40

thanking them. And then if you can see

48:42

them in person, you go up to them and you read this.

48:45

And it turns out to be this extremely

48:48

powerful visit, this extremely

48:50

powerful moment for both

48:52

people involved. And every

48:54

year, I would think of the same guy, this English

48:56

teacher from way back in the day.

48:58

But every year, even though I

49:00

was asking my students to do this, I

49:02

was a big hypocrite because I never did

49:05

the gratitude visit for

49:05

him. In twenty eighteen, Azim

49:08

moved back

49:10

to Vancouver. And one day, he decided to go to the

49:12

beach. And it is a clothing optional

49:13

beach.

49:14

It's a great beach. Got such a

49:17

lively culture there.

49:19

I was down there,

49:22

closed. And so there he

49:24

was completely naked, throwing

49:26

a frisbee, and I thought now is my chance and

49:28

my chance is coming when he has no clothes

49:30

on and this is

49:32

very awkward. Because

49:34

usually

49:34

you don't see your tenth grade English teacher

49:36

completely naked. And when you do, it's

49:38

awkward to approach it. And so then I kind of

49:41

I thought, should I go? Should I go talk to him

49:44

now? And the awkwardness was too

49:46

much. So I didn't talk to

49:48

him. Until

49:50

Later, he put on a song because that's what people seem to wear

49:52

on the speech and was walking by. And I

49:54

said, hey, Daryl. And he recognized

49:57

me. He remembered me. And

50:00

I gave him what I had been preparing my head

50:02

for years, which is this three fifty

50:05

word statement of gratitude.

50:08

Which was about the

50:10

inspiration that teachers and

50:12

students who eventually become teachers

50:14

pass down to each other. That

50:18

I now got to play

50:20

a similar role for my

50:22

students that he played for me it

50:25

gives some sort of meaning to the struggles

50:27

that I had. I I

50:29

don't like to romanticize what

50:31

I went through too much, but the ability to

50:34

potentially help some people

50:36

make all of that

50:38

worth it And I think it was the same thing

50:40

for him. He he was able to

50:42

channel his own struggles into

50:44

something which made it

50:46

worth

50:46

it. By helping

50:48

other people. It's a paying

50:50

it back thing. Right? Azim

50:56

Sharif. He's a psychology professor at the University of British

50:59

Columbia and a former guest on

51:01

Hidden Brain. You can hear him

51:03

in our episode titled, creating

51:06

God. We reached out to

51:08

Daryl to ask for his thoughts on

51:10

Azim. He tells us that Azim was one

51:12

of the brightest minds he ever

51:14

worked with in nearly forty years of teaching. And he says

51:16

Azim's thank you at the beach that day

51:18

made him remember why he became

51:20

a teacher in the

51:22

first place. If

51:24

you like this episode

51:26

and would like us to

51:29

produce more shows like this, please

51:31

consider supporting our work. Go to

51:34

support dot hidden brain

51:36

dot org. Again, if

51:38

you find our work to be useful in your

51:40

life, Do your part

51:42

to help us thrive. Go

51:44

to support dot hidden brain dot

51:48

org. I'm Shankar Vedanta, See

51:50

you soon.