Scott Barry Kaufman On The Science of Transcendence

In today’s episode, psychologist Scott Barry Kaufman joins Rich to discuss the science of self-actualization and transcendence. Scott is a cognitive scientist and humanistic psychologist who has taught at Columbia, Yale, NYU, and Penn. He received his Ph. D. in cognitive psychology from Yale, a M. Phil in experimental psychology from the University of Cambridge and a B. S. in psychology and human computer interaction from Carnegie Mellon. He is the founder and director of the Center for the Science of Human Potential and hosts the #1 psychology podcast, The Psychology Podcast. His latest book is entitled Transcend: The New Science of Self-Actualization. The video version of this episode is available HERE. Rich’s new book, Voicing Change, Vol. II is available HERE. Full show notes & additional information on this episode is available HERE. Peace + Plants, Rich Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Rich Roll?

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• 1:05Speaker 01

  Do you have any goal at all of growing as a human being, of being a better person? Is that at all a goal for you? Do you ever feel like there are things pulling you in different directions with inside of you that you want to harmonize in any way? Feeling comfortable within your own self and not feeling you have constantly proved something? In coaching, we have something called powerful questions, right? So what are powerful questions that you can ask to help transform a person? I think a really powerful question in asking all of us is, are there inner conflicts within you that if they were resolved, this big, grandiose motivation you have would be quelled? Because I do think, for most of us, yes, they would. We often find there are a lot of grandiose narcissistic dreams and goals we had at one

• 1:48Speaker 01

  point, which we just totally don't have anymore because we've done inner work. I would also ask, as a powerful question, if you get what you want, you get your goal, do the thought experiment, how will you actually feel any different inside, internally? So these kinds of questions where you really try to help, and you work, starting from within, as opposed to from without.

• 2:20Rich Roll?

  Hey people, good to be with you here today. Welcome to the podcast where today, we're going to explore the roadmap for finding more purpose, more fulfillment through the psychology of self-actualization and transcendence, and what a good one it is. Our guide for this examination is Scott Barry Kaufman. Scott is a cognitive scientist and humanistic psychologist who has taught at Columbia University, Yale, NYU, the University of Pennsylvania, and elsewhere. He received his PhD in cognitive psychology from Yale, a master's in experimental psychology

• 3:01Rich Roll?

  from the University of Cambridge, and a BS in psychology and human computer interaction from Carnegie Mellon. Currently, Scott is the founder and director of the Center for the Science of Human Potential, and an honorary principal fellow at the University of Melbourne's Centre for Wellbeing Science. He hosts the number one psychology podcast in the world, The Psychology Podcast, and in 2015 was named by Business Insider as one of 50 groundbreaking scientists who are changing the way we see the world. Dr. Kaufman's writing has appeared in The Atlantic, Scientific American, Psychology Today, and Harvard Business Review, and he is the author and editor of nine books, the

• 3:45Rich Roll?

  latest of which, and a focal point for today's discussion, is entitled "Transcend: The New Science of Self-Actualization," wherein he presents this really elegant new hierarchy of human needs for the 21st century, one that allows for the fulfillment of individual potential as well as the actualization of transcendent purpose and peak experiences. As always, a couple more things to add before we engage the Vulcan mind meld, but first.

• 4:24Rich Roll?

  Okay, so this one is fun, and we cover quite a bit of diverse ground here, including Scott's extrapolation of Abraham Maslow's hierarchy of needs, and what it means to engage a growth trajectory, to self-actualize and live a transcendent life. We discuss the importance of self-worth, connection, purpose, and peak experiences. We talk about the malleability, or lack thereof, of personality, and the problematic nature of defining authenticity. In addition, we talk about late bloomers in the context of reimagining education. We discuss modeling healthy masculinity,

• 5:09Rich Roll?

  the psychology that is driving so-called heterodox gurus in various culture war battles, and many other very interesting topics. I found Scott to be really engaging, frank, vulnerable, like I said, fun. I really enjoyed talking to him. So this is me and Dr. Scott Barry Coffin coming at you in three, two, one, go.

• 5:37Rich Roll?

  Well, Scott, I'm so happy to meet you. This has been a long time coming.

• 5:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, it really has, and it's a real, real honor for me.

• 5:44Rich Roll?

  It's an honor for me. There's so many things that I want to talk to you about. You have written extensively on subject matter that is dear to me personally, that I'm excited to explore with you today. Of course, self-actualization and transcendence, which you explore beautifully, by extension of the work of Abraham Maslow, who we were just chatting about before the podcast, and how meaningful he's been in your life by dint of this fantastic book that you've put out recently, Transcend. But prefatory to that, I think it would be really interesting, and also to help contextualize your background a little bit,

• 6:27Rich Roll?

  to talk about being a late bloomer. Because that's something that I'm familiar with. We have different versions of late bloomer stories, but I think your story and the work that you've done around late bloomers kind of helps set the stage for talking about these other things.

• 6:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, sure. I'm really interested in potential and studied things from prodigies, you know, these kids who really start really, really young and you're like, how the heck did they able to play a complete piano sonata without ever taking any lessons, you know, to savants, to all sorts of things. And so there's different ways of thinking about late bloomers. In my specific case, I was in special education very young because I was essentially deaf the first three years of my life. It made it very hard for me to process things in real time and teachers took that as an education that I was stupid. Not just teachers, but like bullies and everyone, well, everyone. And my mom believed in me, though. My parents believed in me.

• 7:24Rich Roll?

  That's important.

• 7:25Speaker 01

  Yeah. That is super important. So I repeated third grade, so a late bloomer in that sense as well. So I was delayed there and I was kept in special education with, it's a very heterogeneous group in special education. So I was with problem kids, you know, who like the most, you know, acting out, you know, kids in the school so that they would like bully me in special ed. And it's like, why did he put me with my bullies in the same room? Thank you. Thank you, school. But to, you know, autism spectrum, you know, there's such a wide range of people that were put in there. And I was kept there all the way till ninth grade, but always did feel as though I was capable of more. I really

• 8:10Speaker 01

  was confused that on the one hand, the way I was kind of treated by the school, but on the other hand, I knew my inner life, I had a rich inner life. I just loved fantasy and imagination and I would like act out like soap opera plotlines in my head where I was like the leading man and I would be to be continued every day. And then the next day I would pick up in my head, it's all in my head. You know, I would write great stories and novels and things. So there was really this duality within me that was really frustrating and confusing because I was like, well, can I question the authorities at all? You know, like, you know, they, everyone thinks I'm dumb. But I do feel like there is greater potential within me. And it really, it really took, you know, feel free to stop me anytime, but.

• 8:49Rich Roll?

  Yeah, no, no, no. I mean, I, you know, at some point, you, you have this teacher in ninth grade who believes in you and that becomes kind of a lever for you to break out of this paradigm. But what I find interesting about this, and I haven't heard you talk about, is The origin of that belief in self that persisted despite all this kind of external input that was trying to tell you that there was something wrong with you?

• 9:15Speaker 01

  I think about that a lot. I've had some great conversations with like Angela Duckworth, who wrote a phenomenal book called Grit about this, because my office was right next door to hers when I was at Penn.

• 9:26Rich Roll?

  Oh, wow.

• 9:26Speaker 01

  I was running the Imagination Institute while she was running the Character Lab. So we were like, oh, we should like team up and like see what the conjunction of imagination and grit would be, sort of thing. But we would have lots of like walk home talks as we'd walk home from after a long day of work, try to just understand what was it that was really going on with me in my personal life. I think grit is a big part of the story. I think I'd be remiss not to say there was this confluence of passion and perseverance within me. And it's the confluence of the two that I think is really important. Any one without the other is, you know, if you just have perseverance without passion, that's just like duty. You know, if you just have passion without perseverance, what is that? That's just excitement.

• 10:07Rich Roll?

  Right. But then the question becomes, are those, you know, inbred traits that you just had coming out of the womb? Or was there something about the resistance that you were meeting in your world that, you know, emboldened them or strengthened them?

• 10:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think that it got unlocked, you know, to use a bad scientific metaphor. It's not like a key that gets unlocked. But there was a point in my life where this special teacher took me aside in ninth grade after class and she asked me, what are you still doing here? She was the first one to really just even ask me that question. You know, we talk, like in the coaching world, we talk about powerful questions, right? Questions that really cause you to have huge self-transformation. We'll talk about a powerful question in my life. This woman, all she asked me, she's like, What are you still doing here in special ed? And I thought to myself, what am I still doing here? Processed what she said and I said, yeah, what the fuck am I still doing here?

• 11:03Speaker 01

  And it and something really got unleashed in me like in that moment, something I had been building up for many, many years. It's almost like I just needed some catalyst or someone to just even question that I maybe I had more potential. And I just like from there, like it was wildfire, like I just, I called my mom, I ran to the payphone, called my mom and I said, hey, I'm not, I'm not going to special ed anymore. I'm out. And she's like screaming, she's like, what did they do to you over there? But I, I set up a meeting with the school psychologists, the administrators, the special ed teachers, and they had nothing in the rulebooks of our school system for that to be the case for us, a special ed student to break out by themselves.

• 11:42Rich Roll?

  Hmm. So you had to like litigate this.

• 11:45Speaker 01

  It was the first time they had nothing, they were like looking through the, what do we do with this situation? And so what they decided on is they were gonna let me out on a trial basis. So I was like, thanks for the vote of confidence, guys. They said, we're gonna let you out. You can take mainstream classes, even I know you want to take honors classes, fine, we'll let you take some honors classes, but if you fail, you know, you're coming right back in. But, but in that moment, I will tell you, my attitude was, oh, I'm gonna prove them.

• 12:09Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 12:10Speaker 01

  Like, you know, I think a big part of my twenties and from high school, from that point up to maybe the end of my twenties, was really driven by the underdog motivation, which is a phenomenon I'm really fascinated about and I write about and I'm actually working on an article, a bigger article about it right now, but I think it's huge.

• 12:27Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I mean, I can certainly relate to that. You know, I was wondering, as you're telling that story, then looking at all of these higher degrees that you've accumulated and, you know, you just, you just, you publish with a band in, you're just very prolific in your writing, how much of that is motivated? How much of your motivation can be tracked back to still trying to prove those kids wrong, you know, in that classroom?

• 12:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, a big part of it, another part of it is I really discovered I loved learning. And I felt like I had a lot to catch up on. You know, there was a real feeling of, well, okay, here's the deal. At that point, when I got out, I was like, okay, Scott, here's the deal. You're not college bound right now. What is it going to have to take for you even, a college to even look at you? I mean, I had to catch, think about this situation. I was in ninth grade. I was, you know, I got out of special ed. I was not on a college track. And so I was like, I'm going to do this. And in order to do something like that, you know, I had to pull all the stops. I signed up for everything, as many courses as I could for the summer school classes, you know, to like, catch up. I signed up for like honors classes and I was in remedial classes. So I didn't even want to take standard. I was like, let's just go, let's just go for it.

• 13:37Speaker 01

  So I signed up for like honors Latin and ended up being a Latin scholar. I ended up like, I mean, I wasn't good at everything. I like, I tried a lot of things that like, I'm remiss that I tried. Like, not remiss, but like West Side Story. I was like, can't do this dancing. I dropped out of West Side Story in community theater.

• 13:54Rich Roll?

  But you tried.

• 13:55Speaker 01

  I did, I did try. I did sign up for like everything and I was like, I'm going all in on this. And I just had this voracious passion to learn as well. I mean, I think part of the story is also to prove people wrong. But I think there was also, like, that's not a sustainable motivation by itself.

• 14:14Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 14:14Speaker 01

  I think when you pair that, you know, that kind of passion, passion to prove people wrong, is that still a passion? That's a passion. But I combined it with a real love of learning and just voraciously wanting to catch up. I felt I was so behind, I just wanted to catch up.

• 14:31Rich Roll?

  So you go on to, you know, basically pursue this very successful career. And, you know, looking back in retrospect, it's helped form these interesting ideas that you have about education. You've got this manifesto on your website about. You know, change, you know, kind of altering the paradigm of education is something that I think a lot about as a parent of a bunch of kids and seeing what they go through and how it could be better. And also just this idea of what it means to be a late bloomer and how we judge people too quickly, early in their development, that has, you know, damaging implications for how they think about themselves and ultimately, you know, pursue their lives in the world.

• 15:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. I think we have it all wrong about what the markers of potential are, especially in a K through 12 system. This notion that it's, okay, the kids, we got to get, make sure they're getting perfect SAT scores, we have to make sure they're getting into the right college, we have to make... That's going the wrong direction, you know. Basically, what you're saying is we need to find the kids who are really good at conformity. We need to find the kids that don't, aren't in detention, you know. We got, I mean, we've really got it backwards.

• 15:43Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it's completely backwards. It's reminiscent, a little bit, of David Epstein's book, Range.

• 15:49Speaker 01

  I love him.

• 15:50Rich Roll?

  Which I talk about all the time.

• 15:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 15:52Rich Roll?

  I mean, your ideas and his ideas kind of overlap in that Venn diagram. You know, the idea of trying to instill in young people curiosity and at least enough gumption or courage to try lots of different things and kind of hold them lightly so that you're like yourself, like trying lots of stuff as a young person, that all ends up kind of congealing in the soup of, you know, creating a person who becomes ultimately, if they, you know, are embracing this hierarchical model of meeting their needs, creates a situation in which they're perfectly suited for what they end up doing in the world.

• 16:28Speaker 01

  And that's self-actualization.

• 16:30Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 16:31Speaker 01

  That's a really good, quick definition of what Maslow meant by self-actualization.

• 16:34Rich Roll?

  Yeah, so let's talk about that. Self-actualization, transcendence, my favorite subjects.

• 16:40Speaker 01

  Let me take a sip of this.

• 16:41Rich Roll?

  Yeah, of course. Maslow's hierarchy of needs, which most people are familiar with. So why don't we start with kind of defining our terms before we launch into this? Because you have, you know, have definitions of these things that I think are different from what people might expect.

• 17:01Speaker 01

  Absolutely. So Abraham Maslow is a humanistic psychologist, one of the founders of the field of humanistic psychology, big in the 1560s, had this notion of self-actualization. Earlier on in his career, he viewed self-actualization as becoming all that you're capable of becoming uniquely. Like, what is your creative potential? What is your highest creative potential? You can differentiate that from the lower needs that we have, which are needs we share in common with other people. So we all have the needs for safety, the needs for connection to a certain degree. We don't like loneliness, for instance. Need for respect, to a certain degree, a need for self-esteem. These are things we all share with others. They don't

• 17:41Speaker 01

  make you particularly unique by saying, "Oh, you know, I really want friends," you know? But if you can play a violin concerto like no one else in the world can play it, you know, okay, now we're talking. You know, there's something really unique seed, or you can do anything like that really, really is, gets to the core of your own unique being. Then we start talking about self-actualization. But I want to say there was like a pre-phase in Maslow and a later phase, which is what I've been trying to kind of carry the baton in a certain way, to make clear that towards the end of his life, especially after he had his heart attack, and he survived the heart attack, his whole worldview changed. And it changed quite dramatically. And he started to see self-actualization a little

• 18:23Speaker 01

  bit differently than he used to see it. He started to see it really as just a bridge to transcendence. He says, at one point, he says, "Well, it seems like the function of self-actualization is actually to erase itself." So when done right, we self-actualize our unique creative potentials in such a way where we are giving it out to the world, where our being is so in synchrony with the world, and it's synergy, is the word he used, synergy with the world, that what is automatically good for me is good for others. That what I, you know, my being and the things I'm doing in the world, like your podcast. You love doing your podcast, but it's so much in synergy with what other people want to hear. People, you know, you're, you're, you're really helping the world by doing something you love.

• 19:08Speaker 01

  Is that, does it feel like you're self-actualizing every day or are you transcending? I would argue you're more transcending.

• 19:14Rich Roll?

  So the idea being that self-actualization is aligned with a more individualistic pursuit of self-betterment, right? It's focused on the self, whereas transcendence, which is an outgrowth of self-actualization, becomes more outward looking in terms of like what you're contributing to the betterment of humanity.

• 19:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 19:35Rich Roll?

  Or, or aligning the actions or your behavior that are the result of self-actualization with that mission of global betterment or the betterment of humanity. Is that accurate?

• 19:50Speaker 01

  Yes, and I don't, I want to be clear that I don't necessarily mean in some, like your life of failure, if it hasn't happened in some hugely like economically impactful way or like, like a quantitative way, you know, that the goal is always to help a billion people on the planet or help a million people have huge businesses. I think there are people who do in quieter ways. I, I talked a little about this light triad and I don't know if we want to like double cook that yet, but there's a certain way of being that I think is underappreciated and I think that gives back to the world in beautiful ways every day. I mean, you can have someone who has a company, runs a company and is, you know, is bragging about how many people they're impacting, but they're an asshole to people in their

• 20:34Speaker 01

  in their life, every single day of their lives. Well, that counts too. I'm sorry, that counts. You know, I think a lot of my work is really about being more than doing. And I think doing is very important, don't get me wrong. I think like actually changing the world, but I think we underestimate the extent to which your being can change the world, if that makes sense.

• 20:54Rich Roll?

  The Maslow's hierarchy of needs is commonly understood as this pyramid. And I want to talk about how that's not the case. And you have this sailboat analogy that much better encapsulates what he was getting at. But I am interested, I do want to spend a little time on that difference between doing and being. Because that pyramid paradigm sort of connotes like an active verb relationship with these needs. You're working your way through all of these things in lockstep. Whereas being is more of a letting go and allowing process, which is ephemeral. And I think difficult to kind of wrap our brains around how that actually operates.

• 21:39Speaker 01

  So the distinction between being and doing, yeah? Well, I'm also a personality psychologist. So a lot of being is just a fancy spiritual way of saying personality. What are our patterns of behaviors that have maybe become habits to a certain degree? That they've become so ingrained in us that they're like automatic reflexes now when we encounter certain things. So for instance, when I wrote my book Wired to Create, a lot of that book was about how to have creativity as part of your being. Now, that doesn't mean you're not doing things in the world. It means that you have certain habits of mind, certain habits of ways of acting

• 22:20Speaker 01

  and responding to the world that consistently moves you in the direction of greater creativity. Like openness to experience is a way of being. That phrase, by the way, a way of being, was big among the humanistic psychologists. But it's not a phrase that many people use these days. And you don't see many biohackers use the term way of being when they're selling their products. They're like, "We'll improve your performance." But they're not like, "We'll improve your way of being." But I think it should, it should be part of it, for sure, yeah. So a lot of it, I'm talking about personality structure. I'm talking about worldviews, ways of processing the world and ways of being in the world and interaction and in relation to others.

• 23:01Rich Roll?

  So let's get to the hierarchy specifically and the differences between what we understand commonly as a pyramid versus like this sailboat version of understanding it.

• 23:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, so many people are probably familiar with Maslow's hierarchy of needs is depicted as a pyramid. Have you seen the pyramid?

• 23:21Rich Roll?

  Sure.

• 23:22Speaker 01

  Everyone's seen the pyramid. If you have one of those things where you can like put in the interview like a picture of something, but.

• 23:29Rich Roll?

  We could find that.

• 23:30Speaker 01

  You know, so at the bottom, you have like the basic need of like safety and then belonging above that and self-esteem above that and then self-actualization above that as though life is some sort of linear sort of trek up some mountain or something and you reach some basic level of a certain need like need for connection and then there's some voice from above like, "Congrats, you've unlocked, you know, self-esteem, you know, or family."

• 23:57Rich Roll?

  Right, moving on to the next stage of the video game.

• 24:00Speaker 01

  Next stage of the video game. Yeah, well, first of all, Maslow never drew a pyramid in any of his writings. As I'm going through, and I, trust me, I think I read like everything he's ever written, including his like 2,000-page, two-volume journal, personal journals. He never drew a pyramid. So I was like, "Where's the pyramid?" And he never thought about life as a video game either. So that's a misunderstanding of his theory of motivation. It's much better to think of life as a two-step-forward, one-step-back dynamic. You know, we have to choose the growth option over and over again and consciously make those choices. But there's lots of forces, subconscious forces within us as well as lots of forces outside of us that we can't control. And luck also plays a big factor in this that

• 24:43Speaker 01

  is pulling us in directions that are not for our full growth. So I thought a sailboat would be a better metaphor for that kind of way of life. So the thing with the sailboat metaphor is what's important is the integration of the whole unit, first of all. It's not, you're not like climbing a mountain. It's like, how do all the parts of the sailboat work together? And are they harmoniously working together? Are you fighting this like civil war with inside yourself? That's a phrase Maslow used, you know? Does it feel like you're constantly like wanting to do this, but then some, another side is you pulling you in another direction? But also with an integrated sailboat metaphor, you have the boat itself, which represents the needs.

• 25:20Speaker 01

  The basic needs. If you have too many holes in the boat, you're not going anywhere. Right? You're going to be focusing all your energies on getting the water the heck out of the boat. Right? It's similarly, if you're hungry, right? You're not able to focus on much else. If you're really chronically hungry. If you're lonely, you know, we know how much that affects your whole cognition, your ability to self actualize. If you're very, very low and you feel like everything you do, you're not getting respect. Right? And that's not just narcissists who want respect, by the way. It's a really fundamental human motive. I think we overuse the term narcissist these days, by the way. Like, everyone's a narcissist, except you, right? It's like, oh, my ex, my ex-husband, he's a narcissist. Or, oh, that,

• 26:02Speaker 01

  my boss, you know, it's like, we don't look within. But I think the, the person who is chronically lacking the ability to enact their plans in life, over and over again, that creates a toll. And, and that's a really human thing. If you're really constantly coming up against those walls, to focus all your energies on that. But again, that's going to get in the way of your growth. So that's the boat. But eventually, if you can get to a certain level, not level, I shouldn't even use the word level, but you get to, in your life, you get to a place where there really aren't these significant holes in your boat, and you really feel you can move, you're moving. You eventually need to open up that sail. And the opening up the sail, that's, that's where the growth happens. Because

• 26:47Speaker 01

  once you open up that sail, you're going to be vulnerable to the winds, to the waves. There's a vast unknown of the sea. The waves can come crashing down on all of us at once. And then we, we thought we were going in our own direction, and then we realized, well, we're all in the sea together. Or we thought we're going in a direction, and then we'll have to change direction, you know, like so many of us had to do with COVID, right? But opening up that sail, that's, that's where the growth happens.

• 27:11Rich Roll?

  Yeah. What I like about that is it acknowledges all of the many things over which we have no control, that at any moment could capsize us, right? And put us back at the very bottom of that hierarchy. But at the same time, there's kind of an elevated notion here as well, because when you raise the sail, if the seas are calm, and the wind is blowing in your direction, You actually don't have to do anything. The wind carries you, right? There's this kind of invisible spiritual alignment when you are self-actualizing in the manner in which you are designed to, where, and I say this all the time, like, the universe will conspire to support you in mysterious ways. And that can all go terribly wrong an hour later.

• 27:54Rich Roll?

  But, you know, there are those heightened moments that I've experienced in my life. And I love that the analogy kind of contemplates that.

• 28:03Speaker 01

  For sure. And that's, those are transcendent, I would call those transcendent moments. Yeah, or I'm sure you've, you know a lot about the full state in your personal life. You certainly know a lot about the full state. And that is just such a, it feels magical. You get in the full state with humans, fellow humans too, right? Like, you do probably all the time on your podcast.

• 28:22Rich Roll?

  Yeah, for sure. Or you finish and you're like, well, that was three hours. And they're like, what?

• 28:26Speaker 01

  Exactly, exactly.

• 28:28Rich Roll?

  I always aspire to achieve that. But I look at this as, you know, a mental model for making sense of the world and a means by which to take control over, you know, kind of how you're thinking about how you're pursuing your life. And I can't help but think of it in comparison to 12-step, which is a model that, you know, is kind of like a default mode in my mind for how I try to understand the world. And, you know, there are kind of active things that you do within 12-step, the amends and the daily inventory and spiritual practices. But there's also this notion of acceptance and surrender.

• 29:11Rich Roll?

  And when you were talking about Maslow's heart attack, what was interesting about that was that you would think that that would put him lower on the hierarchy because suddenly his security is being threatened because he's being confronted with his mortality. And yet, it has the opposite impact on him, which he found sort of interesting and confusing at the time. But what I see in that is, is kind of an embrace of these things that we don't have control over that allow us to reach a higher state of appreciation and gratitude and presence.

• 29:48Speaker 01

  Absolutely, but there's also like a whole paradox that we can go down this whole rabbit hole, which is really a big mystery I tried to solve in my book. And that's this. How come there are some people, when they experience these moments of near-death experiences in life or threats to their mortality, they feel transcendence, like Maslow did, but there are those that have this mortality salience all the time, and they're constantly stuck in the deficiency realm of human existence. So that was a big question I tried to resolve, and I only got to it in the last chapter. So I don't know if you want me to do a spoiler alert of like, I had to get, sort through a lot of the literature to get to this, to explain this and to understand it.

• 30:29Rich Roll?

  No, I want to hear it.

• 30:30Speaker 01

  Okay, I'll just go right to it. But just for people to know this-

• 30:33Rich Roll?

  I mean, it's not like a thriller, you know, or it's like, how's it gonna end?

• 30:37Speaker 01

  I wrote it kind of like a thriller.

• 30:40Rich Roll?

  It is a story, but as I said to you before the podcast, it's a love letter also.

• 30:45Speaker 01

  It is, yeah, for sure. The way I resolved it, because in one way, I do want people to read the book and like, for things to build on each other, like really bit by bit. But I think that what I realized after sorting through all this literature is that there's a certain privilege that Maslow had by having a near-death experience, but having his security needs met when he had that. And I think that's key to being able to experience transcendence. Because there are people who live under really impoverished conditions, where every day of their life, they don't know if they're gonna survive. And it's not like they are experiencing transcendence every day, right? They really are focused, their attention, on surviving.

• 31:27Speaker 01

  So I think it's one of those things where if you can harmoniously integrate lots of these lower needs in your life and satisfy them in a certain degree, they're no longer part of your consciousness, and you can have a near-death experience. You really can have some of the highest heights of transcendence imaginable. But I don't think that it's necessarily the case for everyone. And so a big part of what I tried to do in this book as well is to understand, you know, what are the conditions upon which we really can have some of the most magical states of consciousness in the world? But I'd be remiss if I didn't really point out that that isn't the case for everyone. And not everyone even has the opportunity for experiencing those highest heights of transcendence.

• 32:17Rich Roll?

  Let's walk through just the process of self-actualization as you understand it. I think everybody wants to self-actualize, but I don't know that people have the necessary tools to understand what that framework is and a methodology for approaching their life in a kind of conscious and intentional way to achieve that. Like lockstep through what people should be thinking about in terms of the decisions that they're making about where to invest their time and energy.

• 32:47Speaker 01

  That is a great practical question. That is really important. This aligns with, I'm trying to start a form of coaching, I'm calling it self-actualization coaching, where the purpose of the coaching process to help the client find a life that works best for them. Find a life that is not something they feel like they need to, or they should be a certain way because of societal pressures, because everyone's telling them to do certain things, but really getting in touch with your, these potentialities within you that which, when realized, make you feel most alive in life, make you feel most inspired, make you feel just a great, great sense of calling or purpose.

• 33:27Speaker 01

  So as far as I'm concerned, living a self-actualized life is a constant direction, but it's not a designation you ever achieve. Same with transcendence, you know, that would suck if like it was a designation, you get there, then what do you do the moment after you transcend it? It's like, what do I do with the rest of my life?

• 33:43Rich Roll?

  Well, there's that adage, you know, before enlightenment, you know, chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment, chop wood, carry water.

• 33:51Speaker 01

  Exactly, exactly. So it's a constantly process of like choosing growth, but what does it mean to choose growth? What do I mean by choosing growth? I mean, what does it mean to choose the option that is moving you in directions that you really, truly want to move in? But also, it's a whole process of getting in touch with, well, what is that? What are those most alive centers of yourself? Because I think there's lots of internal forces that pull you away from that. Of course, there are external forces, but I'm actually really, to extent, more interested in the internal forces. There are so many ways we hold ourselves back. We don't even- Realize it in throughout the course of our lives and like self destructive things we do. And so much of like choosing the growth, it's not just so easy. Just choose, just choose the growth option, you'll be fine.

• 34:35Speaker 01

  No, there are so many parts of ourselves that don't want us to choose the growth option. Again, it could come down like guilt for or shame, shame's a big one. Shame is such a big one, you know, how to live a fully actualized life. You know, so much of us have even a fear of succeeding. It's called the Maslow called it the Jonah complex, you know, the fear of growth. A lot of people have that, a lot of people don't, you know, they really want to do great things, but they are very scared of what would happen if they were put in a position to do it. What if they suddenly had that microphone? What if they had all these people listening and suddenly that's when, you know, all the trolls come running? They come running, you know, and so there's lots of, there's lots of aspects of the self action process that can be worked on.

• 35:21Speaker 01

  I think like there should exist a coaching program that is along those lines.

• 35:25Rich Roll?

  Yeah, a hundred percent. I mean, I feel like that should be built into young people's curriculum.

• 35:30Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 35:30Rich Roll?

  As a means of better understanding themselves. How can we make better, better decisions about what we want to do if we're completely? I think disconnection from self is epidemic. Most people are disconnected from self. They don't understand what their impulses are telling them. They have low self-worth, they're just, you know, the external forces distract us from ourself, right? But then we have all these internal mechanisms, as you mentioned, like I don't, I'm not worthy, or I don't deserve that, or I'm just trying to pay the bills, or you don't understand how difficult my life is. All these barriers and obstacles that we erect that insulate us from feeling compelled

• 36:13Rich Roll?

  to do that internal excavation, to, you know, kind of parse what makes you tick and what it is that. Makes you wake up in the morning and get excited about anything like the common thing that I'm sure you hear all the time is, I don't know what my passion is. I don't know. What's my purpose? How do you begin to unpack that in an individual so that they can start making tiny actions in the direction of exploring that?

• 36:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, I very much view it from like a Viktor Frankl lens of it's more about calling than purpose. The thing with purpose is it sounds like something so internal, like I gotta find-

• 36:49Rich Roll?

  Or grandiose.

• 36:50Speaker 01

  Grandiose. I gotta find that thing that I can only I, you know, can. Well, actually, if you listen and talk to people and just open your eyes, you'll see there are a billion callings all around you that you could pick, just pick one. What I say to my students when I was teaching at Columbia, just, you know, because students all the time would say like, how do I know what my purpose is? It's like, calm down. First of all, you're 20 years old. You're 20 years old.

• 37:12Rich Roll?

  Right, but it's not their fault because all of the external forces are telling them that they need to have-

• 37:17Speaker 01

  I agree.

• 37:18Rich Roll?

  -an understanding of their life at that age.

• 37:20Speaker 01

  I agree. But it's also heartbreaking when you see how stressed they are that they haven't found their purpose yet. It's like, first of all, calm down. There's 50 year olds that still are freaking out. They don't have found their purpose. Like, but the thing is, there are so many things that you can just pick, you know, like, look outside of yourself to what are needs that are being unmet in others. It's not all about your own unmet needs. It's what are the unmet needs of others that you can help fulfill? And that only you, that you do have like a unique skill set to do so, and does make you feel like you come alive. Certainly, I'm not suggesting that you pick anything, but there are so many callings that, potential callings, if you're really truly listening, if you're really truly getting outside of yourself, if you're, you know, just read

• 38:04Speaker 01

  the news. Read the news. You could help, just give some aid to people right now in the Ukraine, you know, like, that's, could be your calling. And that's, that's, that's all I mean by purpose. I think we, we put way too much pressure on people to find the purpose within themselves and far less pressure to be able to find a purpose outside of yourself that you can contribute to.

• 38:26Rich Roll?

  Well, an important distinction there is this difference between finding your purpose in this self-serving manner, right? Like, that is- Responsive to our culture, which is accumulate, materialism, like how can I get mine and power and money and luxury and comfort and all of that versus this service component, which is a true driver of happiness, right, but is counterintuitive to the Western mindset, which is looking to gird their own loins and not looking out from a perspective of how can I contribute.

• 39:04Speaker 01

  Maslow had this phrase, he called dichotomy transcendence. I love it. I'm trying to bring it back.

• 39:11Rich Roll?

  Dichotomy transcendence?

• 39:13Speaker 01

  I say bring it back, it's not like it was ever part of the societal lexicon.

• 39:17Rich Roll?

  Right, yeah. It had a, well, it had a moment.

• 39:19Speaker 01

  I know, that's what I'm saying.

• 39:20Rich Roll?

  In 1966.

• 39:21Speaker 01

  I don't think it ever did, even that, there are so many nerdy things in Maslow's rings that only a true nerd like myself would appreciate. But dichotomy transcendence is something I think is so important in the world right now. And what that is, is we put so many things as opposites of each other. We're seeing the political warfares, we're seeing in religious, but we do in other ways, just like male, female, evil, good, selfish, unselfish. I wanted to encourage people to, to think about the fact that there are lots of parts of humanity that there's a larger whole, that we can actually rise above and go to a higher state of consciousness where we view all these things more objectively. I don't think anything is good or bad by itself.

• 40:06Speaker 01

  You know, aggression can be integrated in a really beautiful way to help you change the world for the good, right? Like, it's not like, you're not going to curb your aggression, right? No, it's about the integration. So, the reason why I bring this up with what you just said, is I actually don't like to think of the word selfishness as bad, necessarily bad. And I wrote a paper, a scientific paper, where I created two scales to really investigate this scientifically, where I made the case that we need a construct called healthy selfishness, and we need to do more research on pathological altruism. And so, the title of my paper was "Two Forms of Paradoxical Selfishness," because I wanted the field to kind of look at this in a different way. And I created this scale, and I found out that paradoxically, the more you have a healthy

• 40:49Speaker 01

  form of selfishness, where you take care of yourself, where you, what you're doing in your, in your life, yeah, it's benefiting you, but it also just happens to benefit others at the same time, you know, just spontaneously, but... The people who have higher forms of healthy selfishness actually have more higher genuine motives for helping others, real genuine motives for helping others. They love to see other people grow, they love to see other people succeed. It's not all about themselves. Even though they scored higher on this, some of these kinds of items can be viewed selfish, but they're really healthy forms of selfishness. Vice versa, I think we kind of act in our society like, there's so much pressure, like, "Give, give, give" all the time. There's all this pressure to like, you know, "Sacrifice yourself." And I call BS on that.

• 41:34Speaker 01

  And I think it's problematic when we live in a culture where there's too much pressure to sacrifice yourself. That can lead to all sorts of really, like, significant psychopathologies. You find people that scored high on our pathological altruism scale, like, have items like, "I need to be needed," like, "I help all the time, like, 24/7 helping people." "Aren't I such a good person, I'm helping?" And we found that scale was correlated with depression, that scale was correlated with narcissism. That's the paradoxical part of it. You know, seemingly altruistic items were actually correlated quite strongly with a form of narcissism I've been studying called vulnerable narcissism, which is different from grandiose narcissism.

• 42:16Speaker 01

  So I just wanted to look at this in a different way, you know, if that makes sense.

• 42:20Rich Roll?

  Right, but the constant in that is ego and a sort of inflated sense of self-importance, right? If I'm not this martyr and I'm giving everything that I have, that the world will stop spinning on its axis.

• 42:32Speaker 01

  Correct. That's unhealthy selfishness. But I think we can differentiate that kind of unhealthy selfishness from a healthy form of selfishness. So selfishness need not be bad, or be egoistic.

• 42:44Rich Roll?

  Well, we need a different word then, because selfish is so negatively connotated, like, you need a different word for that. I mean, self-care, right? Like, you can't be the best servant unless you're first looking after yourself, right?

• 42:57Speaker 01

  Good point.

• 42:58Rich Roll?

  And that does feel indulgent for some people.

• 42:59Speaker 01

  Trying to redefine the dictionary. No, good point, good point.

• 43:03Rich Roll?

  I think for a lot of people, it's like, well, you know, like, let's pick a single mom who's working three jobs and has a bunch of young kids at home, right? Like, "I don't feel I have the time, or the bandwidth, or it doesn't feel right to me to take care of myself because so many other people are dependent on me and I have to go out and do all this other stuff."

• 43:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, that's totally fair. There is this egoistic, excessive self-focus, excessive self-focus that is very much related to narcissism. But I'm very interested in this kind of vulnerable form of narcissism. It's something that really fascinates me and I've been trying to do more research on because it's not what we typically think of when we think of narcissism. And it can be covert. Actually, in the 50s and 60s, the psychoanalysts called it covert narcissism. Grandiose narcissism is what we're obviously seeing a lot of in the media, right? We're seeing the chest thumping, sort of like, "I'm the best, I'm gonna invade a whole country because I'm the best." That's grandiose narcissism. And that has its own problems, for sure. But there are some of these other forms that are very much, there's the ones, a lot of them end up

• 44:10Speaker 01

  on this clinician's couch. I want to have empathy for it, you know? I mean, because that's just a bad thing for us to have empathy for people who score high in narcissism because they're being so self-destructive in their own self-actualization goals. If my goal is to help everyone self-actualize, we need to look very non-judgmentally and with unconditional positive regard at people who are having all sorts of things they're just getting in their own way internally. I see vulnerable narcissism and grandiose narcissism, as well as things that are really, people are just getting in their own way, you know? Things are not gonna turn out well for Putin, you know? I don't know if we can, like, bring in current events, in what we're talking about.

• 44:46Rich Roll?

  Yeah, sure.

• 44:47Speaker 01

  But things are not gonna turn out well. And there's gonna be a lot of destruction along the way, a lot of unnecessary deaths. And I just think that we need to, if we could just sit down, if I could just sit down with Putin and I'd be like, "Dude, do you wanna live a life of meaning, of like, growth, of satisfaction at all in your life?" You know, like, you're not making the growth-oriented choices.

• 45:14Rich Roll?

  Yeah, and how do you, like, if you had to clinically diagnose him and his motivations and what's driving him to make these-

• 45:22Speaker 01

  There's a rule against us doing that by the APA. There's a rule-

• 45:24Rich Roll?

  Really?

• 45:25Speaker 01

  -that psychologists, yeah, they like, they bring like, the FBI to your room if you do.

• 45:28Rich Roll?

  Oh, wow.

• 45:29Speaker 01

  And I'm joking about that part. But there is a rule. There is like, an ethical standard that if you're a psychologist, you're not supposed to diagnose public figures. With that said.

• 45:40Rich Roll?

  Yeah, can you theorize?

• 45:41Speaker 01

  With that said, I wrote, before Trump was elected, I wrote an article for Scientific American, trying to explain to everyone, like, look, this is exactly how he thinks, this is exactly what's gonna happen if you elect him as president. I was right, I was right. It was that narcissistic of me to say that, but, you know, I think it's very important, without putting specific psychiatric labels on people we haven't formally diagnosed as psychologists. We still absolutely, you can see the wrangs on the wall with the way, the certain pattern, the ways of being, again, it comes back to ways of being. There's a certain way of being that Putin has, a certain way of being that Trump has,

• 46:24Speaker 01

  or some way of being, well, everyone, and Biden has, I don't mean to just pick on, you know, one thing, like, or one sort of political venue, because there's a lot of problems every which way you look with ways of being on the political spectrum. But I think that there, there's a certain megalomaniac sort of way of worldview, of way of seeing the world, that is just so destructive, but it's also so self-destructive. You know, it's, it's not doing good for anything.

• 46:53Rich Roll?

  Right, and what's interesting is that, is the lack of self-awareness around that, right?

• 46:59Speaker 01

  Total lack.

• 47:00Rich Roll?

  It's evident to someone like yourself how this is gonna play out, because that way of being is fairly accurate in terms of behavior prediction, and the actions he's gonna take next, and yet, whether his advisors are pointing this out to him or not, he's unable to see it for himself, or if it is pointed out to him, he refuses to acknowledge it, or to act on that information. And I'm sure it's more complicated than, you know, I wish your mother loved you better.

• 47:30Rich Roll?

  You know, whatever hot takes are happening on the internet, but it is fascinating.

• 47:35Speaker 01

  I saw that video too, by the way.

• 47:37Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I know. That poor woman was maligned. The internet ganged up on her pretty severely for that. But if you could, are you allowed to say, like, if you could sit down with him and say, "Look, man, here's what you need to think about right now," what would you say?

• 47:53Speaker 01

  I mean, I think, like, what if I was his coach? What if I was a self-actualization coach? You know, really to understand, well, what are your goals? And what I try to do in a very nonjudgmental way with whatever client, what are your goals? And if there are goals that things I personally wouldn't agree with or wouldn't really like, they're not gonna, I'm still trying to be nonjudgmental, you know? So like, if I had him as a client, I would be, and he was like, "My goal is to rule the world." It's like, okay, okay. Not in unconditional positive regard, I'm not gonna judge that. But like, what are the best things you could be doing to, along those lines?

• 48:33Speaker 01

  I feel as though, you know, he made a huge error by so robustly and dramatically attacking a whole, all the world to see. There was, there was no strategy there. You know, for someone who's supposed to be such a good chess player, I think he, at one point, he says he's like the grandmaster of thinking about strategy of war and stuff. This wasn't very good strategy, you know? Like, I would probably sit down with him. Now, I wouldn't wanna like, you know, like, be like, help him with the strategy, but, but help him really just think through, based on your goals, you know, do you have any goal at all of growing as a human being, of being a better person? Is that at all a goal for you? You know, like, do you have any goal? Do you want to like, have, do you wanna, do you probably feel every day, really,

• 49:19Speaker 01

  and he probably feels a lot of inner conflicts, right? Or maybe not. Again, I'd be curious to know. Do you ever feel like there are things pulling you in different directions with, inside of you that you want to harmonize in any way? You know, and the process of, of inner feeling comfortable within your own self and not feeling you have constantly proved something. You know, in coaching, we have something called powerful questions, right? So what are powerful questions that you can ask to help transform a person? I think a really powerful question, you know, in asking all of us, you know, is, are there... Inner conflicts within you that if they were resolved, this big, grandiose motivation you have would be quelled. Because I do think in, for most of us, yes, they would.

• 50:01Speaker 01

  We often find there are a lot of grandiose narcissistic dreams and goals we had at one point, which we just totally don't have anymore because we've done inner work. We haven't invaded a country to solve that problem. I would also ask him as a powerful question, if you get what you want, you get your goal, do the thought experiment, how will you actually feel any different inside, internally? So these kinds of questions where you really try to help and you work starting from within as opposed to from without.

• 50:29Rich Roll?

  I don't feel like humans are very good at predicting how they're going to feel when they get the thing that is driving them.

• 50:36Speaker 01

  That's true.

• 50:37Rich Roll?

  Because we all think that that is going to satisfy a certain need and it's only upon arrival that we realize it doesn't. And then we just double down and keep climbing that ladder, you know, ad infinitum.

• 50:49Speaker 01

  Daniel Gilbert has done great work on that, you know, effective forecasting. We're terrible effective forecasters.

• 50:58Rich Roll?

  Connection's a big piece here too, right? Like when you're talking about Putin, I'm wondering, what are his relationships really like, right? And connection being integral in this hierarchy. You use, you know, Icaria as an example, the centenarians who are so inextricably wed to each other and how that creates a level of contentment and purpose in their lives that is like a life force, right? That spills over into every positive emotion that we all want to experience. And you think of someone like Putin, isolated, you know, probably keeps, you know, whoever he's exposed to at a minimum. And he's just an example. It can be, you know, think of your own life and what your relationships are like.

• 51:43Rich Roll?

  And I've done a lot of work around this recently because, you know, I've realized that I haven't been as good a friend as I could to, you know, my friends out there because I have kids in this work and this is, my social life is sort of doing what we're doing right now. And I feel that missing in my life. Like that's an incongruity that, that I know I need to resolve in order to continue on this, you know, self-actualization, you know, trajectory.

• 52:12Speaker 01

  That's amazing that you have that awareness though. And I mean, you've made that understanding, you have that understanding, that's something you need to work on. Yeah, I mean, if we ever stop finding things to work on, that's a boring life. You know, like, I think that I

• 52:24Rich Roll?

  It never ends.

• 52:25Speaker 01

  It never ends. And I don't understand what some people come in with the goal that it will end. Like, some clients, right, like, or it's just, people have this notion, again, like, it's like a hierarchy, a pyramid.

• 52:36Rich Roll?

  I need to, I need to check a few boxes.

• 52:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's always good to have something that you, that's good, that you're working on.

• 52:43Rich Roll?

  The other thing in thinking about the hierarchy and reading your book and reflecting on, on my own path that I found interesting was that I made certain decisions that probably should have come later on this evolutionary arc, but out of pain and necessity was trying to kind of expedite it. Like, I was in a situation where some fundamental needs were not being met. Like, we're having a really hard time just paying the bills. And logic would dictate, like, hey, you should maybe go back to a law firm and get a stable paycheck. And yet I made the choice to pursue these creative things as a different way out

• 53:23Rich Roll?

  that ended up taking a lot longer and were very precarious and, and risky at the time. And luckily, like, everything worked out fine. But it wasn't like a kind of lockstep rational model for, you know, progressing through these various stages.

• 53:41Speaker 01

  But you definitely chose the growth option, though. And again, like, self-actualization, I don't think I made this point yet, but self-actualization is not the same thing as achievement. Self-actualization is not the same thing as making money. In fact, I, I watched an interview with Maslow's wife, Bertha, after Maslow died. And Bertha said something very interesting. She said, Maslow always, when I asked him, who's the most self-actualized person you, you think exists in this world? He would always say my mom. So Bertha's mom, and then she, and she described her mom as just the most loving person, the most like, like, really comfortable in her own skin, you know, just always like lit up a room, you know, but like, not, very unassuming as well, not having, not achieved a lot, right?

• 54:22Speaker 01

  Maslow could have, like, chosen anyone, you know, like, as, as, and he chose, like, he, he mentioned Bertha's mom. Is a great example of a self actualized person. I think a lot of that comes down to what you yourself really wanna do in your life. How will you feel most alive? How you feel most creative? How will you contribute the most? But part of that self action process doing that, despite the pressures, societal pressures for money, despite the societal pressures to achieve, to have more Twitter following, to be an influencer on Instagram. That's a big thing these days. You know, is all that pressure, you know, you could kind of feel like a loser if you go on Instagram and like, you have like, you get like five likes for saying something, but you see someone who says the same exact thing you said, and they have like 500,000 likes.

• 55:05Speaker 01

  You could feel like a loser in life, but that doesn't mean that you're not self actualizing. It doesn't mean that other person has self actualized. I can't tell you the amount of people that I've talked to, just like people I'm in awe of, people I think they've accomplished so much, and I talk to them and I get a beer with them or whatever, and whatever the choice of drink is, and they, they're like, I'm depressed. I'm like, how the heck are you depressed? They're not, they, you know, there's still things they're doing in their life, they're not actually self actualizing. So I think we need to do that right away. We need to divorce self actualization from these other constructs we have that we have made in our society to be out like that success.

• 55:43Rich Roll?

  When I reflect on the people that I know that are pretty advanced on the self actualization scale and, and you know, perhaps, you know, living a, a transcendent life, there's a certain energy, like when they're in the room, like you know it, right? You feel it, like this is a person who knows who they are. They're confident but not arrogant. They have healthy boundaries, but they're also incredibly gracious and curious and loving. They just, they know who they are and they exude a certain kind of energy. That's this mix of like love, gratitude, presence, appreciation.

• 56:21Rich Roll?

  Like I said, confidence. And it's almost as if there's something in the human brain that is calibrated to recognize and appreciate that.

• 56:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 56:31Rich Roll?

  And you're like, I want to be like that.

• 56:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 56:33Rich Roll?

  Right?

• 56:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 56:34Rich Roll?

  What is that?

• 56:35Speaker 01

  They're comfortable in their own skin and scientifically, I can break down with that.

• 56:40Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 56:40Speaker 01

  I mean, they're not fighting a civil war within themselves. They're not fighting, they're not parts themselves that are going in so many different directions. I mean, you can take the converse of what you just said and you kind of like when someone walks in a room who like is fighting this internal war.

• 56:56Rich Roll?

  Oh, yeah.

• 56:56Speaker 01

  You're like, holy moly.

• 56:57Rich Roll?

  I need to get away from that person.

• 56:59Speaker 01

  It's like, you know, and those people actually tend to be the ones that tend to be very manipulative. They tend to be the ones that like are like constantly scheming, you know? But I do find it an interesting phenomenon that those who are very, very comfortable in their own skin, don't feel as much a need to manipulate others to satisfy their, it's because they're not coming from a place of deficiency. They're coming from a place of growth. Maslow made this distinction between deficiency realm of existence and the being realm or the growth realm of human existence. So many people are stuck in this deficiency realm where all their motivations are being driven by their deficiencies. And that's, that's, that's what I'm talking about with the person who's not comfortable

• 57:41Speaker 01

  in their own skin because they, you know, they'll come in a room, but their ways are focused on like, I need, they know they need something, so then they're searching for who can give them what they need.

• 57:51Rich Roll?

  Everything is transactional.

• 57:52Speaker 01

  Well, you're talking about the kind of people walk in a room, they just want to grow. They want to play, they want to explore, you know? I love people like that.

• 57:59Rich Roll?

  Right. And they will be equally interested in other people, right? That curiosity. And that's very different from the person who's pretending to be interested in you because they're trying to extract something out of you.

• 58:12Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 58:13Rich Roll?

  And even if the words are exactly the same, the energy is completely different and you know it immediately.

• 58:17Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

• 58:19Rich Roll?

  That that kind of dovetails into some interesting ideas that you have around authenticity. Like authenticity is sort of this catchphrase that has

• 58:28Speaker 01

  That topic.

• 58:28Rich Roll?

  Yeah, Ben, you know, sort of, I don't know, commodified, I suppose. We're all aspiring to be authentic and there's a high premium for people who are authentic online. So what does that actually mean? And there's some interesting science that you've written about about perhaps, you know, authenticity kind of all being an improper rubric or perhaps just a complete fallacy.

• 58:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think there are a lot of things we use the phrase authenticity for that aren't really authenticity, you know, so there's the idea that if you just say whatever on your mind at any point in time, like, oh, I'm just being authentic. No, you're being asshole. No, that's the term for that is asshole, not authentic. Or this idea that if you realize all your darkest impulses all the time, you know, like you're really being authentic, you know. I view authenticity like I view everything else. So I said earlier that I don't think anything is really good and bad by itself. I think there's a healthy flavor to it and there's a deficiency motivated flavor. We could say a growth oriented flavor and a deficiency motivated flavor. I think authenticity is the same. So in what I tried to talk about is the construct of healthy authenticity, which is how can

• 59:40Speaker 01

  you realize your potentialities in a way that you're really truthful, but is helping you learn and grow, helping people around you grow. So authentic relationships, I think, are ones that are very honest, but there are ones that are honest, you're not just having an authentic relationship when you just say like, like, hey, man, you're ugly, you know, like, I'm just telling the truth, I'm being your friend, tough love. No, I think like authentic relationships, truthfulness is a part of it, but I think there's a flavor of healthy authenticity where there's a genuine spirit and motivation that we're both here to help each other grow, you know, and I want to, and you want to grow as a person. So sometimes that means that the authentic choice in my definition is having self-control

• 1:00:20Speaker 01

  over certain of your urges, regulating certain things you say, you know, do you have this, like really thinking through, if I say this on Twitter right now, is that really me being authentic or is that, is that a healthy form of authenticity, you know? Is it a way that it's going to signal to the others and is it going to help anyone? Is it going to make the world a better place? Is it going to make me grow in any way if I say it? Then don't say it. You know, so I think like healthy authenticity has a different flavor than deprivation motivated.

• 1:00:50Rich Roll?

  Right. Well, motivation is important, right? What is the motivation behind that behavior or that action?

• 1:00:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:00:57Rich Roll?

  And in order to develop self-awareness around that, you have to do enough internal work where you get a better understanding of what your presets are and your motivations and your deficiencies and your character defects and the like, right? Like, if you're operating impulsively or reactively to the world, you're not really in touch with your interior, the interior space that is compelling these behaviors. So how does one like, you have to, that's the work, right? Like, you gotta, you gotta be able to excavate your own self to understand all of that. And again, I go back to 12-step because that's the model that I've used to, you know, we call them character defects and trying to understand what's behind them.

• 1:01:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, so I have like various components of healthy authenticity. Two of them are ones you basically just touched on. Self-honesty and self-awareness are two huge ones. You can just work on those two to start with. Not just you in particular, but everyone. Not saying you need to work on those.

• 1:01:59Rich Roll?

  I have plenty I need to work on.

• 1:02:01Speaker 01

  Me too, me too. But I just, just be clear. If anyone can start working on those on a path to healthy authenticity, I think those are good phases. There's more to healthy authenticity than those two. But if you, how many of us are really self-honest? You know, I did something a bit cheeky in my book, which you rarely see in a self-help space, which are like, I'm here, take this test of narcissism. Take this test of psychopathy. Are you a psychopath? Maybe you are. Maybe you're like, be really, really piercingly honest with yourself. I feel like I am constantly honest with myself and I do it with a sense of humor and love, though. Like, you know, it's really good, I think, to laugh at yourself.

• 1:02:40Speaker 01

  I think that people, people who score real, really high on psychopathy, lack self-humor. And there's, this is a, well, the correlation is almost perfect.

• 1:02:50Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:51Speaker 01

  Can you think of anyone in your head like who is a big public figure who is like severe lack of empathy, it's so obvious they have a severe lack, and they ever laugh at themselves? You never see that, you know? So I think a big part of that is self-honesty, self-awareness, and having and cultivating relationships that are grounded in truth, but grounded in truth in a way that has a direction to it. And this, by the way, some people might disagree with that. There's, I get disagreements sometimes with my heterodox friends, intellectual friends.

• 1:03:25Rich Roll?

  Right, put a pin in that because we're going to talk about that, but go ahead.

• 1:03:28Speaker 01

  The idea of truth at all costs, you know, we can talk about that because I actually disagree with that. I think truth, I'm not saying lying is good, but we don't have to say everything. We don't have to do everything. I think cultivating a real authentic relationship where you genuinely care and are listening to the other person divorced from your own real felt needs, right? So it's not like you're, it's not you're always trying to get something out of the other person, you're actually with wonder and curiosity witnessing a friend, I think is a big part of an authentic relationship.

• 1:03:58Rich Roll?

  And in your experience, how malleable are these traits? Curiosity, empathy, like these things, you know, we come with our presets, obviously, and there are things that we can do to cultivate or breed them, but you know, somebody who is pathologically narcissistic and lacks any kind of empathy, is it possible for that person to become more empathetic? Or how do we cultivate these traits that can, you know, elevate us on this self-actualization path?

• 1:04:25Speaker 01

  Well, that's a billion dollar question. If I had the magic sauce and if we could put it in the water supply, you know, for everyone to have, but I think a lot of it does come down to a matter of perspective. It comes down to a matter of frame of reference. There are self-transcendent states we get and there are self-transcendent practices that allow us to glimpse moments of what that could look like. Eated or uneated by drugs, you know, I'm not anti-drugs by any stretch of the imagination. There's some really exciting research coming out about psychedelics, the extent to which it can change our frame of reference. But I think an even more interesting question is how can we get those states of consciousness without having to take, you know? Whatever your psychedelic drug of choice is.

• 1:05:09Speaker 01

  And I think there are things that we can do. I'm really interested in the emotion and psychological phenomenon of awe. AWE. It's a concept I've scientifically studied with people like Dr. Keltner and David Yaden, trying to create a scale and having people report on their experiences of awe. So we did a large scale study where we had people just free form. Tell us about your greatest moments of awe and try to collate and find the commonalities. And we create a scale, the All Experienced Questionnaire, based on that had six facets to it. But the point here is that when you look at these descriptions of the awe state, you find that they're infused with other, with getting outside yourself. They're infused with ideas of a complete shift in perspective.

• 1:05:54Speaker 01

  In some cases, a quite profound shift in perspective, like things like, wow, my whole life I thought that like this was my path, or I thought that the world only worked in this way. And then I discovered or witnessed something that was so beyond my comprehension, so outside of myself, that I realized I had been so self-focused this whole time. So I think we can, we can get these moments. Some people, religious people, may find it in prayer. Meditation practices show a lot of promise in it. There are a whole wide range of, you call them spiritual practices or transcendent practices. I like to secularize it, you know? But pairing it with, sometimes even pairing it with psychedelics has been found to show

• 1:06:37Speaker 01

  huge, huge positive effects, right?

• 1:06:40Rich Roll?

  The psychedelics will deliver you a guaranteed response, right? That you're going to have to reckon with. But there are all these other modalities for tapping into that. I mean, you, you know, the Grand Canyon, right? You talk about these different, various peak experiences that we can have. I've experienced them as an athlete. I've experienced them in meditation and in other contexts in my life. But also is not like connection to other human beings, back to the connection piece, like being in communion with other human beings, the ultimate breeder of empathy. Because the more people you're connected to, or the more cultures and also travel and exposure to different things is gonna, is gonna, you know, make you a more empathetic

• 1:07:23Rich Roll?

  human, the broader you can develop your understanding of the human condition.

• 1:07:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, empathy and compassion are different things. And I think that is an important distinction. A lot of people call themselves, have you heard people who call themselves, they self-identify as empaths?

• 1:07:39Rich Roll?

  Yes.

• 1:07:41Speaker 01

  We did a study on that, you're gonna love this. We found actually that's core with narcissism.

• 1:07:47Rich Roll?

  Well, that's the whole, the spiritual narcissism thing that you've written about, which is a super interesting topic. Because I'm, you know, I'm kind of part of that, you know, I'm tangential to that world. I'm very familiar with the condition that you're talking about.

• 1:08:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, and I also want to make clear before I get hate mail from empaths, which is funny, and that idea is funny in itself, that I would get hate mail from empaths. But I'm not talking about a perfect correlation, I'm not talking about, oh, everyone who self-identifies as empaths is really narcissist, I'm not saying that, so calm down, empaths. You can't, there are people who are generally have an abundance of empathy, they immediately feel what other people feel like, and they, it can be overwhelming for them, because they are constantly have very little boundaries between self and others, and that's, that can really exist. But there are, you know, there are those who self-identify as empaths that have this notion that like, they're really special in some really like narcissistic way, like, I'm a real healer, but no, you know, I'm, by the way, you find that the higher proportion

• 1:08:45Speaker 01

  of this among those who call themselves healers, again, not all, but there's this idea that like, I and only I can save you, right? And then there's a kind of grandiosity there that may not take into account the real felt needs of another person. But I think compassion is a little bit different. With compassion, you might, you don't have to feel what another person is feeling to want to alleviate their suffering, because you see the suffering right in front of your eyes, you can be more in tune with the real felt needs of others. There are a lot of people who, in a narcissistic way, view themselves as healers or helpers, but they're actually causing destruction in the person they're helping because they're not paying real attention to whether or not what they're giving the other person is actually what the person needs.

• 1:09:27Speaker 01

  It's actually more, it's correlated with intrusive ways of, intrusive helping. There's that whole concept in psychology called intrusive helping. My mom does this sometimes, I love her so much, but she'll be like, she'll like mail me like all these food, like all this stuff, she'll like, "See what I did? I gave you all this." I was like, "I don't even want half of this." You know, it's like, I mean, God bless her, right? Like, she's wonderful, but like, just to give you an example, like, like sometimes we do things for, to make ourselves feel good, but we need to actually ask, is that really what is really in best for someone else? I think compassion is really being able to look at the real felt needs of others and to really try to alleviate their suffering in a way that, even if you don't feel what they're feeling.

• 1:10:11Speaker 01

  Because sometimes we get in all sorts of trouble by thinking that we know exactly what someone else is feeling. We're presuming that, well, we just get exactly what someone needs because we feel what they feel, you know? And we're not really doing them the best good for themselves.

• 1:10:26Rich Roll?

  Or we're approaching it from a perspective of trying to meet our own needs. Like, you can tell yourself that you're trying to help your friend, but really what you're trying to do is make yourself like, "Oh, if I solve this person's problem, then I've fulfilled some need within, inside myself."

• 1:10:42Speaker 01

  It's deficiency motivation.

• 1:10:43Rich Roll?

  That has nothing to do with that person's need, right?

• 1:10:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's like a deficiency motivation. Absolutely, absolutely, yeah.

• 1:10:56Rich Roll?

  How does trauma play into all of this? I mean, humanistic psychology is really about the elevated states of, of the human condition. How do we, you know, sort of ascend as opposed to looking at, you know, clinical deficiencies in humans per se, but I feel like... We live in these loops that are calcified when we're young and these stories that we tell ourselves about who we are. And we're unconsciously aware that so much of our worldview and behaviors originate from something that happened to us before we were complete, you know, our brains were fully formed, et cetera.

• 1:11:36Rich Roll?

  So when you're thinking about these elevated states, like, do you not have to still rely upon, you know, different modalities of psychology to help people, you know, unpack those things in a more traditional mode to get to that place? I didn't say that very elegantly, but do you know what I mean?

• 1:11:56Speaker 01

  There's just a lot there in what you just said. Like, there's a lot there, a lot to unpack. Different modalities. Yeah, because-

• 1:12:03Rich Roll?

  You mean like CBT? Like, you know what I'm saying?

• 1:12:05Speaker 01

  I do. And it's just such a complicated, complex question because, believe it or not, we haven't all figured this out in psychology. There are, like, it's, believe it or not-

• 1:12:17Rich Roll?

  You'd be out of a job.

• 1:12:18Speaker 01

  We don't have our shit together. We'd be, I'd be very hubristic to say, "Okay, here's the answer." Because there are different factions in psychology. There are those, there are different, you know, some people think like, this approach is the best, some people to trauma, some people, "This approach is the best." I'll tell you what I like, I'll tell you what I like, in the most modest way, in the sense that it's not necessarily going to work for everyone. But I really like Stephen Hayes and his ACT approach. The ACT approach is grounded in the idea that we need to stop avoiding our experiences that we're scared of. Avoiding, you know, a lot of people with trauma, what they'll do is they'll run from any trigger, right? They're scared of being triggered, right? That's a word, triggered, right?

• 1:13:03Speaker 01

  And even you see that on college campuses with like, trigger warnings, and research shows that backfires.

• 1:13:09Speaker 01

  The best available evidence on this suggests that if you even set up that expectation beforehand, that like, just so you know, what I'm just about to say to you, what I'm about to say to you is gonna trigger you, that already sets, that's already like, gonna set your expectations in a way. It's basically saying you can't handle it, you know?

• 1:13:27Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:13:27Speaker 01

  What we wanna do more, I think, is build deep reserves of resilience in people where they, they're like, "I can handle it, you know, I've been through a lot, and because I've been through a lot, it has strengthened me, so therefore, who cares about a couple of words that might trigger me, I can handle that," you know? We want, we want people to have more resiliency. So I really like the ACT approach because it's moving in a, in a, in a approach-oriented way towards, in line with your values. So value is a big part of the ACT approach. So you're still saying, and as long as you're moving with your values, you don't avoid, you don't avoid these things.

• 1:14:02Rich Roll?

  Right. This is consistent with Susan David's approach, right? Emotional agility.

• 1:14:06Speaker 01

  As well, yeah.

• 1:14:07Rich Roll?

  You have to expose yourself to these things to, it's just, it's like exercise. You have to use your muscles to get stronger.

• 1:14:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, there's, there's a lot of confluence between Susan's approach and the ACT approach. I really like, well, both of them are my friends. I like, I like both of them, and I like the approach very much. But this whole idea of experiential avoidance is, is a psychological construct and has just been shown in hundreds and hundreds of studies now, that it's, in almost every context imaginable, that it's just not good.

• 1:14:37Rich Roll?

  Yeah. I'm thinking of people in my own life that, that practice that and, and what that's reaped in their lives, and it isn't good.

• 1:14:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's really, it's, it's correlated with depression, it's correlated, it's just, you're constantly reinforcing the wound as opposed to healing it. But post-traumatic growth is a whole different field than post-traumatic overcoming just post-traumatic stress, because I think there's more that we can do to just, to just go from negative 10 to 0, you know? Some people will go to a clinician and their goal, their stated goal, be like, "I just wanna stop having ruminations about the events, the trauma, I wanna just stop feeling so shitty all the time." But I think we can do better than you're cured when you just stop those things. I think we can go to the positive 10, positive 20, and actually grow from those experiences

• 1:15:30Speaker 01

  in really profound ways, like seeing a real fundamental reordering, reshaping of your priorities in life. Feeling greater sense of connection to others and a greater sense of love for humanity, creative growth. You know, you find lots of different areas. People can grow from these traumas in really profound ways.

• 1:15:48Rich Roll?

  Shame is a big issue in terms of getting people to confront this stuff, right?

• 1:15:55Speaker 01

  For everything.

• 1:15:57Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:57Speaker 01

  Can I just, can I double click on shame for a second?

• 1:15:59Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:59Speaker 01

  I, I think it is the one thing that's in common, or at least neurotic, the personality trait neuroticism has, but shame is very strongly correlated with neuroticism. It's the one thread that runs through every form of diagnosis in the DSM.

• 1:16:14Rich Roll?

  Uh huh.

• 1:16:16Speaker 01

  If you had to find one thing to unravel, we're all, you know, shame, neuroticism, you know, negative emotions. But shame is such a big one because the moment you start to accept real radical self-acceptance for, for a part of yourself you don't like, it doesn't become an issue anymore.

• 1:16:32Rich Roll?

  Right. That's one of the most powerful things about being in 12-step. When you sit in these rooms and you see people get up in front of groups of people, large and small, and tell these insane stories about stuff that they've done, and they laugh about it, and they, you know, inject it with all kinds of color and drama, and you just cannot believe that this person is so comfortable telling this chapter of their life that would be horrifically shameful and embarrassing to anyone else. And what it does is it gives you the permission to look at your own relationship with shame and your past behaviors and own

• 1:17:16Rich Roll?

  it in a way such that it no longer holds power over you. And when you share that with other human beings, it's, it's a very attractive, infectious thing that I think is very powerful in helping other people confront their own shame.

• 1:17:32Speaker 01

  I completely agree. Can I stand up for one second?

• 1:17:34Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:34Speaker 01

  My butt hurts.

• 1:17:35Rich Roll?

  No problem. Isn't that super comfortable chair that I got you?

• 1:17:38Speaker 01

  It is.

• 1:17:39Rich Roll?

  You need to go to the bathroom or anything? We take a quick break.

• 1:17:41Speaker 01

  No, I just want to like, you can capture this.

• 1:17:43Rich Roll?

  Yeah, there you go. You're being filmed, Scott.

• 1:17:48Speaker 01

  All right, Scott had to shake his booty.

• 1:17:50Rich Roll?

  Where were we? What were we talking about?

• 1:17:52Speaker 01

  Self-acceptance.

• 1:17:52Rich Roll?

  Oh, it was about, you know, owning your behavior in a way that basically dissipates shame.

• 1:17:58Speaker 01

  Man, shame is, it plays a role in so much of the work I do in my life. Like, I'm really interested in like neurodiversity, for instance. I really want to champion people who brains are, whose brains are wired in all sorts of different ways, from like autism spectrum to like bipolar disorder, to dyslexia, schizophrenia. Like, having self-acceptance for having a uniquely wired brain is a game changer for these individuals, right? I think you're also seeing this play out more controversially in the sort of trans movement, you know? A lot of these individuals who have gender identities that are extraordinarily mismatched to their physical bodies.

• 1:18:39Speaker 01

  And that, by the way, that is a real scientific thing that can happen for your psychological gender to differ so dramatically from your physical genitalia that you, that experience is disorienting for people. Question, and what's controversial is what do you do with that? Do you call yourself a different gender, or do you deal with it in other ways? And that's open for discussion and I think debate. But nevertheless, if you can have self-acceptance over the fact that you are out there, you know, on a bell curve, in an extreme way, and you can get self-acceptance for that, that's a huge game changer for them as well. I mean, that's what, isn't that what we're all craving in a way?

• 1:19:20Speaker 01

  There's a sort of a common humanity there, I'm trying to, even though I'm bringing up these disparate examples of these diverse examples, we're all human at the end of the day. And whenever we have any sort of extreme trait or something that puts us out on a bell curve, to have self-acceptance for that and to not have shame over it is going to be a huge part of that self-actualization process.

• 1:19:41Rich Roll?

  Well, the self-acceptance provides the basis for esteem, right? And you need that esteem in order to create a rounded sense of self and healthy boundaries. Yeah. Um, one of the things you talk about, let's talk, I want to talk about love and this difference between D-love and B-love.

• 1:20:02Speaker 01

  I love that, I love that topic.

• 1:20:04Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:20:05Speaker 01

  I love that topic. Well, um, when I was looking into the writings of Maslow, I saw, I came across a concept called being love. And what, what does it mean to be love, you know, day in and day out? And he distinguished that from unneeding love. So he distinguished needing love from unneeding love. So when you have needing love, that's more like a need for connection. Like you need to connect with people all the time. You need to constantly have that sort of, um, uh, find people with similar values, similar ideas. But I think B-love is a higher form of spiritual love where you can love people even if you don't connect with them. You know? Like you can be with someone even, it's the opposite.

• 1:20:49Speaker 01

  Like they have a, they're on the complete opposite end of a political spectrum from you. It seems unheard of these days that you could potentially, that you could love someone who has a complete opposite of his political spectrum, but you can. There's no rule. There's no like God, you know, like thou shalt not.

• 1:21:05Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:21:06Speaker 01

  Love thy neighbor who disagrees with you on this dimension of politics. No, you can. And I think that, um, that's why it's a way of being, it's an attitude, it's a verb, right? You know, like it's not necessarily a feeling. Yes, you may not feel love for that person, but you can be loving toward that person. Um, you can, um, I think a big part of, of, uh, B-love is what's called a quiet ego, is lowering your ego just enough where you can actually listen to another person's perspective. Cause when our ego is in full force and that volume is turned up all the way, we're not listening at all to what the other person is saying. We're already right and they're wrong.

• 1:21:48Rich Roll?

  Most people are looking at love as something they're trying to extract from another human being. They're trying to get it. They're trying to fill some hole or some need that they have.

• 1:22:00Speaker 01

  The boat has a lot of holes in it.

• 1:22:01Rich Roll?

  Yeah, and the idea being like, I will be complete when you complete me. Like, when I meet that perfect mate and we're together, then everything is going to be great. As opposed to this idea of be-love where you're exuding it, you're looking to contribute love. And I just know for myself, when I descend into self-obsession, or I'm picking my fingernails and gnawing my teeth on whatever is frustrating me in the moment, or why this isn't working out, or whatever, like, I have to practice the habit of like, how can I contribute? How can I exude my next encounter with something positive for

• 1:22:45Rich Roll?

  that person? And the more that I practice that, which is not, this is not my default state, Scott, like, I'm a curmudgeon. No, not at all. I just know that I feel better, the other person feels better, everything's better, and that self-obsession begins to wane. But it's a practice. It's just like a muscle, it's a habit that I have to cultivate. And more often than not, I don't think about it, or I resist doing it, or I don't want to do it.

• 1:23:16Speaker 01

  I think, how can you integrate it more, though, into your being? Because I think there's probably really positive aspects of that curmudgeonly guy. Like, you've asked me some really critical questions today, like, even just coming back with me some stuff. I wouldn't call it curmudgeonly at all, that's not what I'm saying, but that side of you seeps through sometimes today. And I view it as like, A real positive, you know, because it's like, you know, there's maybe it's a more critical side of you or more like thoughtful. So I guess just like, how can it be integrated? Is my question.

• 1:23:48Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I mean, I think what I'm, what I'm getting at more is, you know, as somebody who is devoted to, you know, trying to self-actualize on some level, I'm, I'm constantly, daily, hourly reminded of these default sets that I have, which is to not be grateful, but to be resentful, or, you know, to be irritated by other human beings. Like, you know, it's like petty shit, right? But no matter how much devotion I have to personal growth, like this, this is like, these are weeds that continue to grow up and probably will for the rest of my life, no matter what I do.

• 1:24:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:24:26Rich Roll?

  But the only solution is to persistently like double down on these habits or these little practices that I know keep those negative behaviors and emotions at bay and, you know, kind of present, you know, a better version of myself. And it's sort of an act as if thing, like

• 1:24:44Speaker 01

  Good on you, man.

• 1:24:45Rich Roll?

  You fake it until you make it kind of stuff. And that's a whole other sticky wicket. But that seems to work for me. But I guess my question is like, does it, do you ever get to a point where that practice becomes second nature and that default position is no longer the default? Like in your practice of working with lots of people over the years, have you seen that?

• 1:25:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, sometimes I do see it, sort of an entire way of being is replaced over time through habit change. But not always necessarily, like you're, you're saying to me that no matter how many podcast interviews you've done, how much you've exercised that way of being, it's still not your default. Is that what you're saying?

• 1:25:26Rich Roll?

  Correct.

• 1:25:28Speaker 01

  That's fascinating.

• 1:25:29Rich Roll?

  But it's also similar to, listen, if I want to be a good runner, I gotta go out and run and train. Like, you know, I'll never just wake up one day and be good at that thing unless I'm consistently practicing it.

• 1:25:42Speaker 01

  I guess there's a philosophical question here, which no one can answer, which is, at what point have you changed the habits of your personality structure so much that it has now become your new personality?

• 1:25:56Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:25:58Speaker 01

  I mean, I'm interested-

• 1:25:59Rich Roll?

  That's a broader subject of like, personality malleability overall.

• 1:26:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, and I've written a bit about the science of that. And there are limits, but we can quite profoundly change. But there are biological temperaments, and I think this is what you're hinting at, that that may be your, that you consider your default. People, I have friends, people who, they say, "Biologically, I'm an introvert, but, you know, in terms of my actions in the world, I'm very extroverted." Right? Because there are people, I would assume they're extroverted, but they're explaining to me their inner experiences. Biologically, I'm an introvert. And that might not be something that ever goes away, right? But, but, but when you're acting extroverted, and you're doing those things, is it, is it you or not you? I mean, that's the philosophical question there.

• 1:26:47Speaker 01

  And I would argue that it's still a part of, it's still part of you. It's still an authentic part of you. You're not faking it. It's just that there are certain default biological temperaments that also exist. But those only influence the sort of probabilities that you will be in a certain mode of being. But it's not saying those other modes of being aren't you. So this gets a little philosophical.

• 1:27:14Rich Roll?

  Yeah, yeah, I guess an extreme example of that, or a thought experiment, would be to take somebody who is on one far end of the political spectrum, like an AOC or a Bernie Sanders-type individual. And that person saying, "Okay, I'm going to now behave as if I'm the person on the complete opposite end of the political spectrum. And everything that comes out of my mouth, and all the content that I consume, and all the interactions I'm going to have, I am going to mimic that person on the other end of the spectrum." If they do that long enough, do they ultimately-

• 1:27:49Speaker 01

  Become-

• 1:27:49Rich Roll?

  -become that person? Do they, do they shift? Or will they rubber band back to being that person that they were prior?

• 1:27:59Speaker 01

  The scientists in MIA are saying, "Well, we have to do that experiment."

• 1:28:04Speaker 01

  We had to do that experiment, but I do think there are ways we can change and grow profoundly. But I think at the end of the day, we have to still be in line with a certain core set of values, or else it won't feel authentic. I wrote about this exact, I pondered this exact question. I wrote a couple of articles for The Atlantic about this. Can you change your personality was one, but the other one was, I forget the title of the other one, but it was really much along that exact, answering that question, looking at the research. And the research shows that you have people who, even if they're acting in a different way, if it's not in line with their values, they still feel authentic. There still has to be a reason for why you're doing the personality change.

• 1:28:47Speaker 01

  And often, the reasons for the personality change are still grounded in your biology. Do you know what I'm saying?

• 1:28:52Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:28:53Speaker 01

  Like, yeah, like for me, if I, let's say I set out a goal tomorrow, I want to be a huge asshole. That's my goal. I want to completely change. I'm tired of people pleasing. I'm tired of having to smile all the time when I meet someone. It's exhausting. I want to just become the biggest asshole. And so then I just like, I look up, you know, who's the biggest asshole in the world? And I mimic them all the time. Would there ever be a point where that will become authentic? And probably not. Probably not. There probably is, you know, you have to change for a reason, right? And some of that does come back to who you actually biologically are to a certain degree.

• 1:29:28Rich Roll?

  Hmm, that's so interesting.

• 1:29:30Speaker 01

  It's a fascinating topic, isn't it? Now, I do think I could use to be like 25% more asshole and like 25% less people pleaser. That I, so I think to certain degrees.

• 1:29:39Rich Roll?

  And if you're so exhausted by having to smile all the time, then isn't your true self, somebody who shouldn't be smiling all the time?

• 1:29:46Speaker 01

  Well, I mean, I was joking about that, actually. I love smiling, but I was just doing a thought experiment. Yeah, but you're right. You're absolutely right.

• 1:29:52Rich Roll?

  Like, what is authen, and it goes back to that question of like, is authenticity a real thing? And what does that mean specifically?

• 1:29:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, I don't think there's a real self. I mean, people in the spiritual world, they all, they can touch, you listen to meditation things. I disagree with some of the things people say in these meditation apps. Like, am I allowed to disagree with it? Like, they close your eyes, you are enough as it is. It's like, no, you're not. And they'll say things like, you know, you, you know, your real self is all you need. It's like, no, it's not. I don't know, there, I don't know. I think, I think we let people off the hook too easily sometimes in a spiritual space. And we don't encourage growth, you know? But I do believe in growth as well, but I don't think there is that real self. I think there are just multitude of selves, right? And we are constantly shifting between them. We have evolutionary evolved selves, you know, like the kind of self that becomes triggered in a mating context, right?

• 1:30:42Speaker 01

  And like, that has an evolutionary foundation going way back. Is that not your true, you know, no, that's a part of you. But I think we have other sides of ourselves. I think we have probably higher, we do probably have higher selves. That probably is a coherent construct, not real self.

• 1:30:55Rich Roll?

  You would have to believe in that if you believe in Maslow.

• 1:30:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:30:59Rich Roll?

  I mean, this is your whole thing.

• 1:31:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, but the idea that the higher self is your real self, I don't agree with that. I think that there are lots of real, real parts of the organism.

• 1:31:08Rich Roll?

  Right, but we all walk around with this delta between the person we actually are and the person we aspire to be.

• 1:31:15Speaker 01

  We aspire to be.

• 1:31:16Rich Roll?

  Or, and, and maybe there's an additional delta in there between the person we are, the person we think we are, which is usually, puts a positive spin on who you actually are and the person we aspire to be, right? So, the person we aspire to be, being that higher self, that we're all, you know, consciously and unconsciously trying to work towards to reduce that delta.

• 1:31:38Speaker 01

  And then people who have really grandiose ambitions and think that they're capable, because there's something deeper there. It's not just who you want to be, it's who you think you're capable of becoming and you want to be. And it's interesting because, you know, would that be a great tragedy to think in your head that you are capable, that you are, you could be this person? And then find out on your deathbed, like, no, you just, that wasn't possible.

• 1:32:02Rich Roll?

  Was never.

• 1:32:02Speaker 01

  That really wasn't you, or possible to be you. And then does it feel like you've wasted so much of your life? You know, I mean, there, these are, these are really deep, profound questions that get at the heart of, of human existence and what it means to have a human existence. Yeah, but anyway.

• 1:32:17Rich Roll?

  Well, that also works in the opposite direction, right? Like, if you have some success, then your sense of personal possibility expands.

• 1:32:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, it does. It really does. I mean, I'm into the growth mindset. I'm not like a fixed mindset guy.

• 1:32:36Rich Roll?

  You're on long walks with Angela Duckworth. I mean, come on.

• 1:32:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. No, we're down with Carl Dweck's work. It makes sense, but it's constantly calibrating.

• 1:32:48Rich Roll?

  Carol Dweck, sorry, I misspoke there.

• 1:32:50Speaker 01

  Oh, no problem, no problem. No, but Angela talks a lot about growth mindset. So that was apt as well. But the constant calibration process is key. Constantly grounding yourself in the reality of who you are in your pursuit of who you want to become. Because I think we can get, especially if we get power, and you see that. You see that power intoxicates, you know, people. Makes them start to think that they're capable of becoming all sorts of things. That makes them have decisions that actually do the exact opposite. You know, it can be, you can fool you into thinking you could accomplish all sorts of things that you get into this kind of mania state.

• 1:33:33Speaker 01

  So I think, look, I think it's tricky because we want to absolutely encourage people to dream and to have high ambitions. But we should also have them constantly calibrate who they are right now and who they really, truly, you know, are capable of becoming. Because in the long run, being in line with that reality will lead to a better outcome, won't it? If you're actually in line with who you could become.

• 1:33:56Rich Roll?

  Yeah, yeah. Back to that point that you were making about self-help and meditation apps and your, you know, sort of reaction to some of those statements. There is something interesting about the inherent tension between or the paradoxical kind of relationship between this idea that

• 1:34:20Rich Roll?

  Expansion, self-actualization, it's actually a lot of work. Like, you know, you're not, you don't just get it, right? Like, you have to actually work towards it. And it's something you have to apply consistently over extremely long periods of time. Versus this notion that we already have everything we need, right? And we just have to expand our conscious awareness and recognize it. And that is more of the ephemeral allowing kind of thing, right? So how do those two things like coexist for you? It sounds like you're more on the former, less on the latter.

• 1:34:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's true. And I talk about this in the book, Transcend, in the book Transcend. Maslow's students at Broken College, he said they had this notion of self-actualization that it was impulsivity. It was just acting under whims, just do what you want. It was easy, you know, if you just were in line with yourself. And he made it very, very clear that self-actualization requires commitment and requires a lot of hard work. Because it's tough choosing the growth option day in and day out. You said, you know, you told me, you're, thank you for being vulnerable, by the way. You told me your own personal struggles with that, with your default versus, you know, the person you know you're capable of. And you are capable of it, right?

• 1:35:38Speaker 01

  You're, right now, this guy in front of me is this incredibly non-keremogony, thoughtful, kind human being, right? So it takes a lot, but it takes a lot of work. And were you asking, though, in my own personal life? Like, were you asking me personally how that plays out?

• 1:35:54Rich Roll?

  No, it was less just, more, more just like theoretically, like, how you think about psychology in general.

• 1:36:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, theoretically, absolutely. I think there's a difference between spontaneous and impulsive. I think self-actualization is, is there's a certain, there is a certain spontaneity there. There's a certain sort of playfulness and exploration and curiosity. But it's, that's different than a kind of impulsive, not seeing the bigger picture or the long term, or working very, very hard at something that might not pay off for 10, 20 years. Self-actualization process, in a lot of ways, is being able to have that foresight and being able to work really hard towards that future vision.

• 1:36:35Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I think the impulsivity thing is a really important point. The way I think about that is... Someone who is saying, "I am acting in alignment with my highest nature because my intuition is telling me X." But if they've short-circuited the hard work, how can they trust their intuition or their instincts because they are disconnected? And this plays out in the recovery context when people are new and they've stopped drinking or using and suddenly they're just a live wire of emotions and they have no way of controlling it. Their instincts are unreliable, they're trying to solve their problems with the mind that

• 1:37:16Rich Roll?

  got them there in the first place, and they're taught, were taught, I was taught, to abdicate making big decisions and making sure that you run them by, you know, other people because your instincts are unreliable. Like, you have to do enough internal work before you can have a trusted relationship with whatever those impulses are telling you. And I think there's a lot of people out there who believe that they are on this path towards self-actualization when instead they're really just reacting to unconscious impulses that have been driving them all along. Does that make sense? Does that, like, feel right to you?

• 1:37:57Speaker 01

  Oh, spot on. Yeah, spot on. I'd love to double-click on that moment of real sheer vulnerability where you stop doing the drug, or you stop drinking, and you're raw, you're emotional, and it's craving this other side of you that you so consciously desperately don't want to become that person. Can we double-click on that experience? What is that experience like? What is it? How does, what are the strategies that people are taught in the program to be with those emotions and to overcome it? And not give in? Not give in? Because there's a huge payoff for not giving in. I mean, people who can resist it and go through that torture and come out on the other side

• 1:38:41Speaker 01

  feel, report such an increased sense of meaning in their life. There's a meaning-making that can happen from that resistance.

• 1:38:48Rich Roll?

  Sure, but unfortunately, that payoff is long-term. And the immediate payoff of indulging the addiction is guaranteed.

• 1:38:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, oh, totally.

• 1:38:59Rich Roll?

  So, it's very difficult, you know, to get people to wrap their heads around the long-term benefits of... Of sobriety when they're just trying to get through the day. So it's all about what are you doing in this very moment? And creating community and accountability around that individual and providing them with some pretty basic tools to just help them get through those intense periods of craving, so that they begin to understand that those feelings are not facts and that they will shift over time. And if you can weather that intense moment of craving, then it provides you with some confidence that you could do it again and you just start to stack those experiences.

• 1:39:44Rich Roll?

  But relapse is a big part of recovery. And I think relapse is often looked at as failure, but sometimes it's just really good information about what your triggers are and what kind of interior emotional experiences lead you to indulge that behavior.

• 1:40:03Speaker 01

  Well, I mean, everything you're saying, I agree with so much that I'm like, I have nothing to add to that. No, I think that's exactly right. Addiction is its own special topic, right? Within psychology, that's a whole different

• 1:40:13Rich Roll?

  Sure.

• 1:40:14Speaker 01

  Thing. And addiction is absolutely a big inhibitor of self-actualization. For the same reason that having a severe deprivation of any of your needs is significantly inhibiting who you could become.

• 1:40:28Rich Roll?

  Well, it's all consuming. I mean, you can't think about anything else. So there's no room for any kind of personal development when that is active.

• 1:40:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, whenever there's any, well, we can actually generalize this to, Raul May had this idea of the demonic. Always liked this concept, never understood why it didn't catch on more in the general public. But we can have like the demonic, but that's not what he's talking about. He's saying there's a side of ourself, whatever is within us, they can overtake the whole person. He calls it the demonic, D-A-I-M-O-N-I-C.

• 1:41:02Speaker 01

  And it's not necessarily bad. It could entirely take over and cause self destruction and destruction of others, or it can be channeled in a way that can lead to creativity like you've never seen. So many people take their pain, their suffering, and they take their demons and they use it as fuel for being able to think more longer term about how they're gonna just use it as fuel. Use it as fuel for the work they do, the field they do to help others who have been addicted, to help others who are in a similar situation themselves. Whatever it is, they just, they integrate in such a way that it's, the demonic becomes their creative fuel.

• 1:41:42Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it's interesting. I question how sustainable that fuel source is, because pain is akin to other base emotions that tend to be unhealthy in terms of being primary motivators. But I do like this subject of, of pain being a lever for growth. And I think when I was on your podcast, I believe we talked about this, like, change is always accessible for us. We always, in every moment, have the opportunity to make a better choice about something about us, right? But we generally don't do it. Pain can actually put us in that place to confront that thing we don't like about ourselves and make the better choice.

• 1:42:27Rich Roll?

  And I just know, I know for myself that pain has really been the true motivator in getting me to do anything different than I have historically. So how does that work in terms of this self-actualization process or, or cycle? Because it is very powerful when you can channel it in a positive direction. And I'm very reluctant to intervene in someone's life who's, who's having a painful experience because I recognize that although it looks bad, and as a compassionate human being, you wanna ameliorate that in your, in the, in somebody you care about.

• 1:43:07Rich Roll?

  But also, you don't want to rob them of that experience because it might just be their greatest teacher.

• 1:43:14Speaker 01

  It really might, yeah, yeah. So there's different ways of like getting into that question. One is, well, as a therapist or as a coach, and you're working with someone directly and you want to help them grow, who is experiencing that, I think that that's quite right, is you want to, you don't want to tell them how to live their lives. It's very important to not give people exact steps that they need to follow to curb something, but to help them be with things and help them get more in touch with their values. Again, that's, we go back to the ACT approach to therapy, which I really like, is it's a constant reorienting towards these higher values.

• 1:43:56Speaker 01

  And sometimes it's a matter of shift, of increasing that in your attentional field, like writing it out on a piece of paper, whatever, make it your freaking screensaver of your phone. Every time you open your phone, it's like, I'm, oh, that's what I'm doing in my life. Because we can so easily forget, there are so many inner forces within us.

• 1:44:15Speaker 01

  I mean, I, this happens to me all the time, like, I'm human too. I'll get down, I'll be on Twitter and I'll find myself down some rabbit hole, fighting with some anonymous person with no name and no picture about the most minute thing. And I'm like, wait, Scott, wait a minute.

• 1:44:32Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:44:33Speaker 01

  I'm, that's not what I'm on earth to do. And then I, and then I recalibrate. And then, and sometimes when I get in those moments, I will say, it energizes me to go back to my mission in a way even before I've, you know, it's like, oh, because I know what it feels like when I'm working on my mission, when I'm working on the things that are in value, I can differentiate the different feelings. So also, it's helping people, if like, if you're in a kind of a healing helper role with someone who is suffering or going through this, it's also getting them in different states and having them explore and have the self-awareness and understanding of how these different states feel. What kind of states do you want to be in? What, who do you want to become? A lot of that is really nonjudgmental and non-advice giving,

• 1:45:15Speaker 01

  but helping explore the full depths of human experience with that person and being there with them, supporting them in their journey of that.

• 1:45:25Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I mean, just from my own non-clinical kind of modality of dealing with that, I just try to be... Present and loving and express to them like, I'm here for you and I believe in you. Like, that's, that's it. Like, I'm not, I'm not gonna solve your problem. I understand that you're in a painful moment and that that's difficult and I can empathize with that.

• 1:45:51Speaker 01

  Do you know why I'm laughing?

• 1:45:51Rich Roll?

  Ultimately, yeah, why?

• 1:45:53Speaker 01

  Cause my butt hurts right now.

• 1:45:54Rich Roll?

  Oh, really? In the chair again?

• 1:45:55Speaker 01

  I feel like you're there.

• 1:45:56Rich Roll?

  You're the only guest that's had a problem with the chair.

• 1:45:58Speaker 01

  You're with me on this journey.

• 1:46:02Rich Roll?

  You need to adjust it?

• 1:46:04Speaker 01

  I'm the first, because the thing is, I'm sure it's like objectively a really like profoundly comfortable chair that like everyone loves. This is why I'm weird. I'm so weird.

• 1:46:11Rich Roll?

  It's not ergonomically fit to you. Do we have one of the, um?

• 1:46:14Speaker 01

  No, no, that'd be ridiculous.

• 1:46:15Rich Roll?

  We have the stool. Do we have one of those stools? Uh, or do we have? Let me have a couple of these chairs.

• 1:46:22Speaker 01

  I was laughing cause I was like cheekily thinking as you're talking to me about being one with someone who's in pain.

• 1:46:26Rich Roll?

  Your butt's hurting?

• 1:46:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's okay. I was, I'm just being a little cheat. I'm just injecting a little humor into our conversation.

• 1:46:32Rich Roll?

  No, it's good. Yeah, try this. That one goes up. That might be better.

• 1:46:37Speaker 01

  Are we really changing the chair?

• 1:46:38Rich Roll?

  Yeah. I want you to be comfortable.

• 1:46:42Speaker 01

  Okay, okay.

• 1:46:43Rich Roll?

  And it goes up and down. Is that better? Or is it worse?

• 1:46:50Speaker 01

  Let's try it. Let's try it. Let's try it. Let's try it.

• 1:46:52Rich Roll?

  You're not sold.

• 1:46:53Speaker 01

  Let's try it.

• 1:46:54Rich Roll?

  Don't they just have normal chairs? What's wrong with these people?

• 1:46:59Speaker 01

  I'm, I'm being, this was healthy authenticity on my part, though.

• 1:47:02Rich Roll?

  I appreciate it.

• 1:47:03Speaker 01

  Okay, good. I took a risk.

• 1:47:05Rich Roll?

  No, this is, this is good. Like, let's dissect this. This, I would much rather you say like, I got a problem with this chair than like, sit there like, clenched jawed, you know?

• 1:47:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:47:16Rich Roll?

  Feeling like you can't tell me what's going on.

• 1:47:18Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 1:47:19Rich Roll?

  So this is a healthy.

• 1:47:20Speaker 01

  Thank you. Good, good, good, good.

• 1:47:22Rich Roll?

  What were we talking about? Are we talking about?

• 1:47:24Speaker 01

  We were talking about being with someone who's in pain.

• 1:47:25Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:47:26Speaker 01

  And how do you interact with them? How do you help them and guide them in their journey? And that's the point is you just guide, you guide people in their journey and, and you they have to figure out for themselves what they, how they can, resiliency is something you can only like build that muscle within yourself. Like you can't like force someone to build those muscles.

• 1:47:46Rich Roll?

  I want to shift gears a little bit. You mentioned getting into Twitter spats. Can we talk, spend a few minutes talking about the psychology of the quote unquote culture war right now that is transpiring on social media at least and spilling out into the world with real life consequences. It does feel, I spent a lot of time thinking about this and I find myself fascinated and captivated by the sort of ecosystem of secular gurus online right now.

• 1:48:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:48:20Rich Roll?

  And how that plays into the root causes of what is currently dividing us, you know, how we can heal as a nation and trying to understand it better. And I'm concerned about the incentives that are at play online and this appeal of heterodox thinking and thinkers that appear to dominate certain issues and which a lot of people find very powerless to resist. So whether it's politics or health, nutrition, vaccines, there seems to be this allure, like a tractor beam to this manner of issue dissection that lures, for better

• 1:49:01Rich Roll?

  or worse, many people into thought bubbles that become calcified. And I'm not necessarily interested in parsing the validity of various ideas, but I'm more interested in, in the kind of psychological drivers behind all of this and the binary nature of all of it. Because it seems to be breeding a level of acrimony that is extremely unhealthy. And even yourself, who is so studied in all of this, you know, find yourself getting into spats with people online. And I know because I follow you on Twitter and I see the engagements that you have. And I know that you're very aware of kind of the dynamics that are playing out right now.

• 1:49:44Speaker 01

  I am very aware. And, and what's, what's crazy is I'm getting in spats with My friends, like people that, my colleagues, people I've, I've long known and published with, they've gotten a really big presence and I'll disagree with something and then now it all of a sudden becomes a war. Like, what, why is disagreement a war all of a sudden? You know, and, and, and a big part of it is in-group disagreeing. If you, if you just, if you just disagree a little bit or you critique something from your in-group, you're somehow appear, you come across as disloyal to your in-group, which I don't view it that way at all. It's like,

• 1:50:26Speaker 01

  oh, we're just having a conversation. I mean, do you think you're perfect? Like, I don't think I'm perfect. Like, feel free to like criticize something I do. But there's such an us versus them mentality that is driving this. Psychologically, of course, you know, tribalism is nothing new, right? It's in the human species, it's deeply ingrained and you can explain it evolutionarily. When you go all the way back, you know, in small bands, we had to have a very tribal mindset to survive, right? But that tribal, that same tribal mindset to survive is, it's not necessary to, what's the word that's used a lot now? Destroyed. Ben Shapiro destroys the libs. Destroyed. Everyone's trying to destroy each other, but we're not trying to learn from each other.

• 1:51:07Rich Roll?

  To tie it back to Maslow, I feel like identification with certain groups online has almost superseded the importance of our connection to groups in the analog world, right? So the messaging that occurs on places like Twitter is all about placement or, or kind of where, where you sit with respect to your identification with a certain group, which makes the whole thing very treacherous, right? And I think drives that binary nature of it. Like, are you a member of this group or are you not? And before you say that, you better think about how this might reflect upon whether you're, you know, a member in good standing of, of community X.

• 1:51:51Speaker 01

  That's right. There's, the system is so, the incentive structure, everything is so guided towards taking a side and being transparently.

• 1:51:59Speaker 01

  A particular identity or a particular ideology that people like me and there are others. I don't think I'm the only one, but we're trying so hard to be integrative and nuanced. And there's no reward structure for that right now.

• 1:52:14Rich Roll?

  No. Well, first of all, you need like, you know, a 20 tweet thread.

• 1:52:18Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:52:19Rich Roll?

  To even begin to broach any kind of nuanced take on anything. And the incentive structures are such that it doesn't reward that. It rewards the hot take.

• 1:52:27Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 1:52:28Rich Roll?

  The tweet that's going to travel, the outrageous perspective in the clickbait title.

• 1:52:33Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 1:52:33Rich Roll?

  And it's all being driven by audience capture, which further calcifies these respective camps and drives us apart. And psychologically, like, this is not good for us. It's not good for humanity. And it's causing some pretty severe real world problems. And there are good actors, but there's a lot of bad actors out there right now. Smart people that I think are behaving incredibly irresponsibly.

• 1:53:00Speaker 01

  I agree. I absolutely agree. The big one right now that makes my head explode is the woke anti-woke cultural war. You know, if you, I didn't know if you wanted to be a name or something.

• 1:53:11Rich Roll?

  That woke-ism caused Putin to invade Ukraine? I mean, it's insane.

• 1:53:15Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah. And but then like, you know, there's this, there's this whole anti-woke crowd that, and the thing is, they make some legitimate criticisms, but legitimate criticisms, it shouldn't be like, I think there's a healthy, again, I'm going to just be on brand here because I'm talking about healthy versus unhealthy motivations. I wish there was more healthy criticism in a way that caused groups to talk to each other. Right? Like, I think there's a lot of, on the so-called woke side, there's a lot of people who feel in their lives, they are experiencing a lot of racial discrimination. Right? Like, see it from their perspective, like, their own personal life, they are experiencing

• 1:53:54Speaker 01

  day in and day out, a lot of discrimination that is really dehumanizing and inhibiting their own self-actualization. You have people on the other side, they're like, "Why are those people always complaining about race? I don't see race at all. I'm race blind, you know? Why can't they just shut up about race all the time? Why does everything have to be about race?" Okay, look, maybe there's some valid critique on this side, that like, okay, we shouldn't view everything through the lens of race. But there should also be a compassion and a extending of graciousness to at least acknowledge that, yes, while your whole personal life doesn't surround around race, that race is not a, doesn't play a big issue in your own life, there are people in their lives for which race does, their race does play a role in how

• 1:54:38Speaker 01

  people treat them in their own daily lives. So, I would like to see more an extending of graciousness on both sides. Does that make sense?

• 1:54:46Rich Roll?

  Yeah, 100%. I mean, compassion.

• 1:54:50Speaker 01

  Compassion!

• 1:54:51Rich Roll?

  Empathy, like, basic.

• 1:54:52Speaker 01

  In a way that, like, allows them to talk, because right now, there are people that are just not talking to each other whatsoever, right? And there are, like, some valid critiques on all sides. I mean, it seems mind-boggling to think, could we ever get people together to actually just listen to each other on both of these sides of the cultural ward? I should be like, "Hmm, like, okay, well, fair enough, but I'm just gonna give you this little critique here," and then for the other person to just be like, "Hmm, you're right, maybe I have been a little too race-obsessed, because I haven't thought about your point." And the other person says, "Huh, you know what, actually, I can see how, because I'm white, I actually don't have any of these issues that you actually legitimately probably do have." That's a fair point. The thing is, isn't that just a mature-

• 1:55:36Rich Roll?

  I'm not, I'm not very Sengwin, that that can transpire.

• 1:55:39Speaker 01

  Well, that should be a mature way of-

• 1:55:40Rich Roll?

  I know, it seems super basic, but the way you describe it feels like it's a South Park episode. Something that would never happen.

• 1:55:47Speaker 01

  It'd be a parody, it'd be a parody!

• 1:55:49Rich Roll?

  Right? I think behind it, you know, is this growing distrust of institutions, and there's good reasons for that, right? Like, there's a breakdown in our trust in, you know, in, in, in government, in politics, and, you know, the way that the media communicates with us, and we can have arguments about the validity or lack thereof, of all of that, but I think that's a real thing. And I think behind the scenes, that's a real driver of, like, quote-unquote- Heterodoxy, right, which has become this big thing of having a contrary take on everything. And packed into that is this idea that I think is misplaced, which is

• 1:56:33Rich Roll?

  that the heterodox take is always the right one. And it's this purview of the free-thinking rebel who's wailing against censorship versus those who side with the more conventional take that's supported by the quote unquote "experts" who are then maligned as sheeple who are being duped by the previously mentioned corrupt institutions that are hell-bent on controlling your mind.

• 1:57:02Speaker 01

  I completely agree. I like to think I'm just a free thinker. I'm not a free-thinking rebel. The second you put in rebel, then that puts too much pressure on yourself. Now that means every single thing, like you free-think something, but what if it's not rebellious?

• 1:57:15Rich Roll?

  Right. The only take that travels online is the heterodox take. And with that, there's this belief that the heterodox take is always correct. And in fact, sometimes it is, but most of the time it's not. Because there's all these people behind the scenes who are working really hard on these problems, who are not going on podcasts and are not on Twitter, who actually study subject X for a living and have a pretty good take on it. And chances are, they're probably more trustworthy than pontificator Y over here, who's got a big following on Twitter, but is just basically a bloviating mouthpiece.

• 1:57:54Speaker 01

  Yeah. Sometimes the truth is boring, right? And if you're a true free thinker, if you're like a true free thinker, you sign me up and you're all in to be a free thinker, you have to say boring things sometimes. Like, if you're a real truth seeker as well, that's not just a free thinker, but truth seeker, you'll be balanced. You'll say like, "Okay, well, that's true on that side. That's true too." You're looking for the truth. You're not looking for the fight.

• 1:58:20Rich Roll?

  Your ego is not tied up in a particular position.

• 1:58:25Speaker 01

  Which puts me in a tough position sometimes, Rich Roll, because sometimes I say something that doesn't please anyone. No side gets what they want to hear from what I said. And so it's like, "Fuck you, Scott." It's like, "Well, no, are we all in this for the truth? Or are we all in this to fight? Are you in this?" And I think that reveals biases sometimes.

• 1:58:48Rich Roll?

  Yeah, well, it reveals who's a good faith actor and who's acting in bad faith.

• 1:58:53Speaker 01

  That's true.

• 1:58:54Rich Roll?

  But from a psychological perspective and trying to understand this, I feel like there is a characterological distinction between certain camps. Like, on the one hand, you have people who are very concerned about freedom and liberty and, you know, the kind of more libertarian perspective. And that's really like a prime driver and focus for those people. And on the other hand, you have people who are thinking about collective responsibility and empathy. And I think these are individuals who are, who just have very different dispositions and worldviews and probably, you know, are, you know, good people in their own rights

• 1:59:36Rich Roll?

  or whatever, in terms of like how, they're just wired differently. And so that's informing a different kind of siloed perspective.

• 1:59:43Speaker 01

  There's a common humanity there that I'd like to just call out for a second. So it's usually the case, like, you care about the vulnerable, because the collective one you mentioned, I would say a lot of that is about caring for the vulnerable, caring for those who are marginalized in some way. You often find you care more about those issues when you yourself have been marginalized. I will say those who seem to be on the other side, the second that they, like, let's say they get canceled and they become marginalized, suddenly they care about marginalization. So I would say there's a real common humanity here to the extent to which if an issue is not affecting you personally, you tend to not be as concerned with that issue. When I would want to make the case for living in a civilized, I would argue a civilized

• 2:00:26Speaker 01

  society is one where you care about real issues that are happening to other people, even if it's not happening to you personally. Because I would say that, like, you know, even people on the right, you know, they get quite angry and they feel like victims. They can be prone to victimization just as much as people on the left when they feel that they've been victimized. And then suddenly, they do care about the vulnerable, the vulnerable, those who have experienced something that they have had. You know, the definition, the specifics of the vulnerability differ. Whereas on the left, it may be racism, it may be other things. On the right, it may be those who have been canceled and they're fighting for their felt people who have been canceled. But still fundamentally, there's a basic human thing on both sides there, which is you're fighting for someone who's been wronged or someone who's been vulnerable in some way, you know?

• 2:01:11Speaker 01

  Once you look beneath the surface there.

• 2:01:13Rich Roll?

  Right. And you being this bridge between the two, trying to broker a peace. Like, I just, I sort of see you doing that and I don't know how well that's going.

• 2:01:22Speaker 01

  I try and so hard, brother. I'm trying.

• 2:01:26Rich Roll?

  What is the, how do you see? Because you actually know a lot of these people, too.

• 2:01:30Speaker 01

  I do.

• 2:01:31Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 2:01:31Speaker 01

  I'm in a weird position where I feel like I am really good friends with people who wouldn't talk to them, who they themselves wouldn't talk to each other, but they're friends with me. You know, I could-

• 2:01:43Rich Roll?

  You're a safe harbor for-

• 2:01:45Speaker 01

  I'm like a safe space for the right and the left in a lot of ways. Yeah, I mean, it's, that's one of my goals, actually, is to get people talking to each other who wouldn't ordinarily talk to each other because they have a common friend in someone else. I think we need more of that, you know? We need, we need more of that. But it's tough. It is really tough. There's, there's constant pressures every day to take a side. Constant pressures to take a side in a way that you, that you alienate the other side. Thing is, I'll take a side, I'll take a stand. I'm not like, I'm not a pushover, sir. I'm not, I'm not trying to make the case that I'm not-

• 2:02:25Rich Roll?

  No, I know.

• 2:02:26Speaker 01

  I'm not a pushover, and I think there's a difference between that. I will, I will state my, what I really believe to be true, and I will do so passionately. But often what I believe to be true has nuance, and that's not what gets rewarded today. I will be passionate in saying, like, no, I don't think that's correct, but the things that I'm pointing out that have the nuance are not the things, that are not the kinds of stances of what I believe to be true that get incentivized very strongly. Like amongst, you know, there are, there are people out there, though, that like nuance and care about that sort of-

• 2:02:59Rich Roll?

  No, there are, and we were talking about this before the- Podcasts, I feel like there's a new ecosystem that's slowly percolating up that is, you know, trying to make sense of all of this stuff and, and, you know, guide well intentioned people in a better way. But it's a difficult problem and I just see it metastasizing and it just gets hijacked by whatever the issue is of the day and everybody kind of falls in line. And, you know, here we are. And this is what we're fighting and yelling about today.

• 2:03:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, you know, I've, I've decided that a much better route for me is to kind of stay in my lane to a certain degree, because the more that I can help people self actualize and, and teach these principles of self action transcendence that are apolitical, that are a, I'm not, I'm not convinced that getting into the political muck is really in line with, with my highest self.

• 2:03:51Rich Roll?

  No, I don't think it is.

• 2:03:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, you agree. You agree. And I think about that more and more.

• 2:03:56Rich Roll?

  And you don't have to have a take.

• 2:03:58Speaker 01

  That's right. You don't need to take on everything.

• 2:03:59Rich Roll?

  I look at it and I'm like, do I need to weigh in on this? No. You know, the world will continue to spin. I don't have to participate.

• 2:04:08Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 2:04:08Rich Roll?

  And it's just pain when you do anyway.

• 2:04:11Speaker 01

  I feel like, I feel a bit cheekiness, but I also feel real in a lot of my vows and delight when I get Instagram, like private messages from people saying, oh, your book really touched me and helped me in life. And then I look at their profiles like Trump supporter, right? I'm like, no, that actually, that actually makes me feel good that like I can get people who are so, you know, disparate, who would hate each other, but I can still reach them in a way that helps them be a better person, in a way that helps them be a better, you know, live a life of meaning. That makes me feel really good. It makes them, that's what really makes me feel most authentic and alive than getting stuck in this muck.

• 2:04:47Rich Roll?

  Yeah, that's something that I wrestle with because like yourself, I want to cast a wide net. I'm here to be of service and help as many people. As I'm capable of helping irrespective of your political affiliation, God forbid. And how does that measure up to, you know, the idea that if you have a platform, you have a responsibility to kind of speak your truth, right? And that truth might be divisive and alienate certain people who would otherwise be happy to listen to you or, you know, talk about things that are quote unquote more in your lane.

• 2:05:22Speaker 01

  Well, this is another big source of the issue is that we now treat experts as experts in everything.

• 2:05:30Rich Roll?

  The galaxy brain.

• 2:05:31Speaker 01

  You get Jordan Pearson on, by the way, you know, Jordan's a friend and colleague, but so not, no, no shade, but you get him on Rogan and Rogan's asking about like climate change.

• 2:05:39Rich Roll?

  They're talking about climate change. It's the galaxy brain.

• 2:05:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, correct.

• 2:05:42Rich Roll?

  Like, oh, I've been celebrated in this one field, so suddenly I'm a genius about every subject.

• 2:05:46Speaker 01

  Why would that mean you know everything? And it didn't, I don't feel like things used to be that way. I think something has changed. Like, I remember the days when I would be on podcasts and they'd ask me about what I damn know about. Now, people, you know, it's like everything. Suddenly, if you're an expert in something, then they're like, oh, what are your thoughts on race relations? It's like, do I need to be an expert on race relations? I didn't study that.

• 2:06:08Rich Roll?

  Yeah. I think there is some relationship between that and our dissolving confidence in institutions, right? Like, the idea that, well, the people, you know, who are quote unquote qualified to speak to that have been proven unreliable or liars or whatever. So now we have to look to these people that we, we deem to be intelligent and we grace them with much more leeway and bandwidth than they're deserving of.

• 2:06:38Speaker 01

  And that cycle creates, in their minds, the idea that then therefore they are experts in all those things.

• 2:06:44Rich Roll?

  Sure, yeah, it builds upon itself.

• 2:06:45Speaker 01

  That's the cycle I'm seeing.

• 2:06:46Rich Roll?

  And then the power narcissism and all of that starts to accelerate. And that's really, I think, what you're seeing in this secular guru space right now.

• 2:06:55Speaker 01

  Because a lot of these secular gurus, as you put it, will start to think, oh, maybe I am an expert on COVID vaccines. No, you're still not an expert on COVID vaccines just because your followers tell you you are. Like, there's something it means to be an expert on that and you're not it.

• 2:07:11Rich Roll?

  Right, right. The psychology professor who is now an expert on nutrition.

• 2:07:17Speaker 01

  Right.

• 2:07:18Rich Roll?

  I mean, it's crazy, man.

• 2:07:20Speaker 01

  I'm not at my best when I go so out of my lane. I'm really not at my best because, and there's a reason for that. It's because I've put my heart and soul and studied something that I know pretty well. And, and, and the other things I don't know as well. Like, it's not rocket science why I'm not at my best when I go outside my lane.

• 2:07:37Rich Roll?

  But you understand human behavior and human motivation.

• 2:07:40Speaker 01

  That castle wide net.

• 2:07:41Rich Roll?

  Yeah. Which, which makes it understandable why you are on Twitter so much.

• 2:07:48Speaker 01

  I'm trying to understand what is going on.

• 2:07:50Rich Roll?

  Good luck with that.

• 2:07:51Speaker 01

  What is happening?

• 2:07:52Rich Roll?

  This massive human experiment that's being conducted right now.

• 2:07:55Speaker 01

  What is going on?

• 2:07:56Rich Roll?

  Where all these brains are colliding with each other in ways productive and not so much.

• 2:08:02Speaker 01

  I mean, I can say the most innocuous, seemingly innocuous statement to try to bring love and joy and peace, and all people respond, "Stop virtue signaling simp." I mean, it happened the other day and I was like, what is, like, I want to understand this. I'm not actually hurt by that. I'm more curious. Like, I want to understand the psychology of someone who reads a tweet of something that's like, "Let's just have more leg, let's peace, love," you know, be like, "Stop virtue signaling simp." Like, what causes, what is it within you that causes you to, like, interpret through that lens? It's just, it's, isn't it fascinating?

• 2:08:37Rich Roll?

  Well, you're the psychologist.

• 2:08:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, it's a deprivation motivation, for sure. But it's, you know, it's one that's becoming increasingly common on social media where we're now being so cynical that, that anyone's attempt to improve the world is some cynical political power move. And that's what worries me because I see a lot of genuine attempts. I mean, I, I still see the good in people. I'm sorry, like, I don't know why I have to fight. I have to fight to tell people they're still good in humans. And that seems like a fight that should, that I should never have to have.

• 2:09:09Rich Roll?

  It's very strange.

• 2:09:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:09:11Rich Roll?

  Yeah. I don't know, man. Well, we can't end this podcast on that note, right? Like, let's, let's get back to-

• 2:09:17Speaker 01

  Well, I did say there's good in humans, so that's a good thing.

• 2:09:19Rich Roll?

  What's that? Yeah, there, there, listen, humans, the humans, I believe in the goodness of humans too, but there is something about this, this, you know, specific dynamic that brings the worst out.

• 2:09:29Speaker 01

  Cynicism. Cynicism that, that none of us have that goodness.

• 2:09:34Rich Roll?

  All right, well, let's, let's, let's switch back to a little bit of transcendence and self-actualization.

• 2:09:41Speaker 01

  Better to end on transcendence.

• 2:09:43Rich Roll?

  You know, I always try to end these things by putting myself in the, in the, in the seat of, of the listener, or the viewer, or the person who is, who is perhaps struggling with, with meeting some of the baser, you know, needs along the hierarchy. Like, I'm just, like, just trying to be a little bit better. I'm living an average life. I work a normal job. I don't have that much free time or that much expendable income. How can I begin the process of just trying to, you know, you know, ascend this hierarchy a little bit and build a little bit more meaning and purpose into my life? I mean, you referenced, you know, earlier in the podcast, some simple things that, that can be done to kind of initiate this process, but let's, let's kind of continue on that thought.

• 2:10:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, I, I have in the book, a bunch of exercises to help get you more in the B realm of human existence. I think that a big part of it is becoming aware of when you are becoming deficiency motivated and really becoming self-aware of that and seeing how it really feels in your body and realigning yourself with, constantly, constantly choosing the growth option, constantly aligning yourself with your values, but also seeking out beauty more in your life, seeking out people that are beautiful. And I'm not just talking physical beauty, you know, there are people who are beautiful. Surround yourself with those people. There, there's so much muck and ugliness on Twitter. There's so much, they can, they can start to make you think as though that's all there is to the world. So I think a lot of it is really your attention.

• 2:11:12Speaker 01

  Where do you put your attention? Where you put your attention is where you put your life. And I think that so much derives from that. That knowledge of that fact. You know, some of the greatest lessons I learned from these mindfulness gurus, like people I, friends I have who are expert meditators, is that you can have the pain, you know, you can have this thing that annoys you, you know, and if you're focused on it or annoy you, it annoys you so much. But if your attention is just focused on the good and the beauty in the world, you know, you start to just like, forget these other things exist to a certain extent. Now, it's also true that if you have pain, the more you focus just on the pain, the more it subsides as well. So this stuff is nuanced.

• 2:11:52Speaker 01

  But I will say that, you know, I just want us to not forget that there is a higher nature to humans, and this is, this is where Maslow really wanted to go with all, I read his unpublished essays.

• 2:12:06Rich Roll?

  Right, his work was not done, right? And a big part of the book is you extrapolating on where he was heading and trying to, you know, reinterpret and reimagine where that might land.

• 2:12:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, and a big part of it was that there is an innate, intrinsic, higher nature to humans that is just as real as our lower nature. But it takes more work to transcend all of the forces, internal and external, that are really keeping us away from being able to see it.

• 2:12:39Rich Roll?

  But there are things we can do.

• 2:12:42Speaker 01

  There really are.

• 2:12:43Rich Roll?

  And I think it really is about simple choices that you start to make, and there's a momentum that takes place over time when you begin to practice those things with some regularity.

• 2:12:54Speaker 01

  I'll tell you one thing, when, a surprising intervention in clinical psychology for someone who is feeling depressed, someone who is feeling, they're saying, "I always have these obsessive ruminations over and over again, help me." Here's the hack for that: stop thinking about yourself so much.

• 2:13:14Rich Roll?

  Come on, easier said than done.

• 2:13:16Speaker 01

  Well, but one of the interventions that has been scientifically studied is something called moral elevation. So this is a concept that my colleague Jonathan Haidt studied, moral elevation. So, research shows that a better way to help people with these kinds of issues than to keep obsessively talking about these issues, and to talk about their feelings and how they always feel negative emotions, is to get them in touch with role models, with examples of moral humans that are doing incredibly inspiring things, that can elevate your whole emotional system. So, there really is something to helping people get more into transcendent states of

• 2:13:57Speaker 01

  being, getting you outside of yourselves, and to not be so neurotic, because neurotic is a form of narcissism. You're so self-focused, and some of the best ways of overcoming this is just shifting your attention outside of yourself.

• 2:14:11Rich Roll?

  Yeah, in 12-Step, the sort of simple tool for getting out of your self-obsession is to immediately go help somebody else who needs help.

• 2:14:24Speaker 01

  There you go.

• 2:14:25Rich Roll?

  Like, pick up the phone and just call somebody.

• 2:14:27Speaker 01

  They had it all right, didn't they? We don't even need psychology.

• 2:14:29Rich Roll?

  It's divinely inspired. It's, you know, an incredibly profound text and rulebook for living that feels so ahead of its time in certain ways.

• 2:14:41Speaker 01

  So true. When I'm around someone who's a morally elevating individual, I just like, forget about a lot of my problems, you know? I just like, I'm just like, how do I want, how do I be more of that guy? Or girl, or woman, whatever your gender is. How can I be more of that?

• 2:14:55Rich Roll?

  Yeah, but another person who's perhaps struggling a little bit more might look at that person and just be resentful and angry.

• 2:15:02Speaker 01

  And that happens to me sometimes. I mean, like I said, I get these comments, you never would expect such a comment, right? Like, you write something positive, inspirational, and it goes like, fuck off.

• 2:15:14Rich Roll?

  Right. Well, because being earnest is somehow a threat.

• 2:15:18Speaker 01

  Yeah. I haven't really fully figured that one out. Like, what is it that is a threat? What is it the threat to people when you're being positive, or when you're trying to...

• 2:15:28Rich Roll?

  You're a weak beta.

• 2:15:31Speaker 01

  It's a sort of a beta thing. So, strength is this sort of notion of masculinity as not showing empathy, or not showing emotion. How can we make compassion cool? Like, I almost want to say again, but I don't think it's ever been really cool. But how can we make compassion just as cool as like, standing up and owning someone?

• 2:15:50Rich Roll?

  I'm trying to do that. You know, I think the way that you do it is you model it in an aspirational way. And you find a way to channel it through a certain type of masculinity that's attractive to that wayward young man who's looking for a mentor or some kind of guidance. But you do it without the toxic aspects of what it means to be masculine, right? So that's why I think athletes hold a special place in the public discourse. Because for a certain type of young man, like that type of physical prowess means something. It's demonstrative in an active way.

• 2:16:35Rich Roll?

  And I think it's incumbent upon athletes to understand that and take responsibility for that in a way that can be positively impactful for younger people who are looking up to them. It's an opportunity to model masculinity in a way that provides space for compassion and empathy. And, you know, I do it through, you know, veganism is a good way of doing it. Like, if I can be fit and physically active, but also be like a voice for the animals, which is, you know, considered to be kind of a beta thing, right? But recast it in an aspira... I mean, do we have three hours to talk about that?

• 2:17:19Speaker 01

  I mean, I wrote an article-

• 2:17:19Rich Roll?

  The role of masculinity in food choice is like a whole strange psychological sticky wicket.

• 2:17:26Speaker 01

  So like, paleo is like manly.

• 2:17:27Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 2:17:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, because you're eating-

• 2:17:29Rich Roll?

  It appeals to a certain type of person who's looking for an identity. Like, the role of identity in the nutrition world is like a super interesting thing.

• 2:17:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, and I know that that is a topic for another day, but I wrote an article called Myth of the Alpha Male, because I think that young men who are trying to figure out how to have more women in their, you know, women in their life, they need to look more along the lines of what the science says about what women actually want, not what men think women want.

• 2:17:59Rich Roll?

  Imagine that.

• 2:18:01Speaker 01

  Because men have it wrong.

• 2:18:02Rich Roll?

  Let's start there.

• 2:18:03Speaker 01

  Men actually have it wrong.

• 2:18:08Speaker 01

  A real man to a woman tends to be a little bit different than what a real man is when it terms to male-to-male competition.

• 2:18:15Rich Roll?

  Right, like what a man would think a real man would be to a woman versus what a woman is actually looking for.

• 2:18:22Speaker 01

  And what a woman really considers a real man.

• 2:18:24Rich Roll?

  Yeah, yeah. Well, I feel like those normative definitions are in flux right now, you know, in a positive way.

• 2:18:33Speaker 01

  In a largely positive way.

• 2:18:34Rich Roll?

  I don't know. What do I know? Not much, Scott.

• 2:18:38Speaker 01

  Not as much as you. That's definitely not true. It depends on the topic.

• 2:18:43Rich Roll?

  It depends on the topic.

• 2:18:45Rich Roll?

  Cool, man. Well, I think we did it. How do you feel?

• 2:18:47Speaker 01

  I feel my butt feels good.

• 2:18:49Rich Roll?

  You feel good? Do you like that chair better?

• 2:18:50Speaker 01

  I like this chair much better.

• 2:18:52Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 2:18:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, I feel very good.

• 2:18:53Rich Roll?

  Did we cover all the stuff?

• 2:18:55Speaker 01

  We covered a lot of good ground, but like, let's keep up the conversation.

• 2:18:59Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I'd like to have you back. Yeah, we can pull on, we can pull on some more threads.

• 2:19:03Speaker 01

  We're similar spaces, and I really like your way of being a lot.

• 2:19:07Rich Roll?

  Thank you.

• 2:19:08Speaker 01

  A lot.

• 2:19:08Rich Roll?

  I appreciate that likewise. If people want to learn more about you, of course, please pick up Scott's latest book, Transcend: The New Science of Self-Actualization, which you can find on his website, which I'll link up in the show notes, or on Amazon, or wherever you buy books. Also, tell me a little bit about this new, I mean, you moved from the East Coast, you're no longer, you know, captured by the Ivy League institutions. You're free on the left coast here to fly your freak flag, and you've got this, like, you opened up this institute, right?

• 2:19:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, I started the Center for the Science of Human Potential. And we do courses like we did, we're doing an eight week transcend course to help people. We're working on all sorts of collaborations and working on collaboration with Second City Improv to do like improv for self-actualization. I'm working on a self-actualization coaching certification program that can be used in different sectors of society, including education. I'd love for teachers to start to rethink their role in the classroom. We're self-actualization coaches. Yeah, I really feel like I'm living my values, the things I want to do to help people realize their potential. And, you know, I get to like, you know, do a lot of edibles on the beach. So that's good.

• 2:20:27Speaker 01

  Am I allowed to say that?

• 2:20:28Rich Roll?

  Good for you. Hey, listen, I could, I would if I could, you know? I'll just leave it at that. Awesome. Well, let's do this again sometime soon. You can learn more about Scott at his, what's your website? Scott Barry Kaufman? Here, I have the hyperlink.

• 2:20:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's scottbarrykaufman.com. But I have a book coming out this year called Choose Growth that I just, I think it'll help a lot of people. It'll be, it's the workbook companion to transcend. Transcend was published during the start of a global pandemic. Would not wish that anyone publishing a book. This one with a little more forethought, planning, we actually have a book that can help people grow from the pandemic itself. So what I did is I used the situation and I made lemon out of lemonades, right? I published a book that like, of course no one read because it came out the day the pandemic started. And I used it as a way of like, you know what? I'm going to work next couple of years on a book that I'm going to get ahead of this. I'm going to get ahead of this and really help people specifically who had some sort

• 2:21:28Speaker 01

  of setback during the pandemic, you know, as I did with this, you know, with lots of things and we all had. So I think we can really grow. So, yeah, it's called Choose Growth.

• 2:21:38Rich Roll?

  Cool, man. When's that coming out?

• 2:21:40Speaker 01

  That's coming out September of this year. I co-wrote it with Jordan Feingold, who's the founder of a field called Positive Medicine. And she was also a former undergraduate student of mine at Penn. She came into my office as an undergrad, telling me that she wants to go to med school and loves positive psychology. And I was like, you should start a field of positive medicine. And she's like, really? I was like, yeah. Here we are almost 10 years later. She has her MD and she is the leader of the field of positive medicine. Couldn't be more proud of her. So we teamed up on this book to really figure out how we can help people not just body, not just mind, but body as well.

• 2:22:13Rich Roll?

  Cool, man. Well, when that comes out, come back and we can talk about that. Thank you. All right, man. Peace. Peace.

• 2:22:25Rich Roll?

  That's it for today. Thank you for listening. I truly hope you enjoyed the conversation. To learn more about today's guests, including links and resources related to everything discussed today, visit the episode page at richroll.com where you can find the entire podcast archive, as well as podcast merch, my books, Finding Ultra, Voicing Change, and The Plant Power Way, as well as The Plant Power Meal Planner at meals.richroll.com. If you'd like to support the podcast, the easiest and most impactful thing you can do is to subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, and on YouTube, and leave a review

• 2:23:08Rich Roll?

  and/or comment. Supporting the sponsors who support the show is also important and appreciated. And sharing the show or your favorite episode with friends or on social media is, of course, awesome and very helpful. And finally, for podcast updates, special offers on books, The Meal Planner, and other subjects, please subscribe to our newsletter, which you can find on the footer of any page at richroll.com. Today's show was produced and engineered by Jason Camiolo, with additional audio engineering by Cale Curtis. The video edition of the podcast was created by Blake Curtis, with assistance by our creative director, Dan Drake. Portraits by Davy Greenberg and Grayson

• 2:23:49Rich Roll?

  Wilder. Graphic and social media assets courtesy of Jessica Miranda, Daniel Solis, Dan Drake, and A.J. Akpodioti. Thank you, Georgia Whaley, for copywriting and website management. And of course, our theme music was created by Tyler Pyatt, Trapper Pyatt, and Harry Mathis. Appreciate the love, love the support. See you back here soon. Peace. Pointe. Namaste.

• 2:24:32Speaker 01

  My butt hurts. (laughing)