Fully Live Life with Happiness and Sorrow w/ Susan Cain

I think one of the hardest things to do in life is to connect with ALL OF OUR EMOTIONS. Many of us work hard to deny or block out what we perceive to be BAD emotions. What people don’t realize is that EVERY EMOTION serves a purpose, whether SADNESS and SUFFERING or JOY and BLISS. Emotions are often paired…UP AND DOWN are two sides of the same mental makeup. If you struggle and sometimes, you’re OVERWHELMED trying to deal with melancholy feelings or depression, pay close attention to what you’re about to hear. That’s because my guest this week, SUSAN CAIN, is an expert at understanding these intense negative feelings and learning how to better manage emotions, especially those that can undermine our happiness. She is the #1 bestselling author of “Bittersweet: How Sorrow and Longing Make Us Whole” and “Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking” which has been translated into 40 LANGUAGES, spent EIGHT YEARS on The New York Times best-seller list, and was named the #1 best book of the year by Fast Company magazine. Susan’s TED TALKS have been viewed over 40 MILLION TIMES and LinkedIn named her the TOP 6th INFLUENCER IN THE WORLD, just behind Richard Branson and Melinda French Gates, among many other well-deserved accolades. Susan is going to teach you why you should embrace negative emotions and answer an important question of imagining what the world would be like with NO SUFFERING OR SADNESS. She’s also going to help you figure out why the way you MEET THE PAIN in your life defines who you are. We’re also going to explore the role of being MELANCHOLY in our lives and dig into the fine line between being melancholy and DEPRESSED. Those of you who are INTROVERTS (including me!) will be especially interested in what Susan has to say about connecting with others when you’re wired that way. This week is all about making PEACE with yourself. Once you understand how all emotions can best serve you, you’ll clear a lot of the mental junk out of your life so you can find BALANCE and HAPPINESS. And Susan Cain is absolutely the right person to help you do that. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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

• 0:00Ed Mylett?

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• 0:45Ed Mylett?

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• 1:01Speaker 01

  Mr. President, my company, for me, of the explosion on our rig.

• 1:05Speaker 02

  On October 2nd.

• 1:06Speaker 01

  Causing massive water displacement and triggering a tsunami. They all heap the blame on me.

• 1:11Speaker 02

  Tom Cruise is. Digger got us into this mess. And Digger's gonna dig us up. From the director of Birdman and The Revenant.

• 1:18Speaker 03

  What would happen if I stopped drilling? You stop, you freeze to death, that's what.

• 1:22Speaker 02

  With great power comes great deniability.

• 1:25Speaker 01

  I'm not the first nanny.

• 1:27Speaker 02

  Digger. See the trailer online. Only in theaters October 2nd. Rated R. Under 17. Not a minute without parent.

• 1:36Speaker 02

  This is The Ed Mileage Show.

• 1:40Ed Mylett?

  All right, welcome back to the show, everybody. Today is gonna be awesome. And it's, this lady and her work has been inspiring me and affecting me for a very, very long time. As an introvert, her work really resonates with me. And her latest book is called Bittersweet: How Sorrow and Longing Make Us Whole. And I gotta tell you, this book spoke to me. I think you're gonna learn a lot today about your emotions, about what is a good emotion or a bad emotion, and why do we label them that way? And... I think you're going to learn a lot about yourself from many of us today and people that you love and maybe the way they think and operate in different ways. And so I cannot wait to have this conversation. I wish we had five hours with my guest today, Susan Cain. Susan, welcome to the show.

• 2:24Susan Cain?

  And thank you so much. So great to be here with you.

• 2:28Ed Mylett?

  It is awesome to have you and your other book, The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking, really affected me. And I think these topics are somewhat correlated. So let's, let's define some terminology first. Okay. So bittersweet, that's sort of the main title. What is bittersweetness? I know what it is because I read the book, but I want to give the benefit to the audience. So what's bittersweetness?

• 2:49Susan Cain?

  Absolutely. So, you know, we think, we tend to think of bittersweetness as just like a moment in time, right? You know, like you have a bittersweet experience at a child's graduation, let's say, or walking them down the aisle at a wedding or something. And, and that's true. But bittersweetness is also a deeper state of mind. It's a, it's, it's a deep recognition of the way that in this life, joy and sorrow are always paired and that everyone and everyone we know is not here forever. You know, everyone we love best is here for an impermanent moment in time. And that what comes from that recognition, somehow, the more you're tuned into that recognition, the more you feel a kind of

• 3:33Susan Cain?

  connection to creativity and human communion and even to transcendence. There's a kind of deep state of joy at the beauty of the world that, that comes from being in that state of mind.

• 3:46Ed Mylett?

  Amen. And I felt this, I've felt this since I was a little boy and never had it explained or defined to me. And so when I introduced you and I said that your works deeply affected me, I really mean it because it's explained to me, to me in many different ways. In other words, I think my audience knows me so well by now, but I do, I contemplate. The end of life often, and it makes me live more richly in the present, in my opinion. And that contrast causes me to live richly. I love sad music and ironically makes me happy when I listen to sad music or just emotional music. And I think we feel like we're supposed to feel sad when we listen to these kinds of songs or have these kinds of experiences.

• 4:29Ed Mylett?

  But for so many of us, it actually brings us joy. And so it's, uh, it's so wonderful, the way that you explain things in this book. And then we're going to go to some tactics and strategies too, for everybody to help you, you know, better live if the fact that you kind of are wired like Susan and I are. So the other tandem with bittersweetness is this concept that we're all longing for something. And I so deeply believe that this is true. And so let's touch a little bit on longing and how it impacts all the areas of our life.

• 4:58Susan Cain?

  Yeah. Um, and okay, I'm going to talk about longing in one second, but I just have to say that everything you just said, I can't tell you how much it made my day. I literally have goosebumps as I'm saying this because like the thing you said at the beginning of like, oh my gosh, I've been feeling this all my life and never quite understood it. You know, it's like me too. And that's why I wrote this book. I was like trying to figure out what the heck is this? And what's this feeling that I have with sad music? And why does it feel, why does it feel so deep and profound that I can't let it go? It wasn't just like an interesting intellectual question. It was like, I knew there was something really big there. I just didn't know what it was until I started working on this book. So, um, okay. So

• 5:36Ed Mylett?

  Either until you wrote the book.

• 5:37Susan Cain?

  Well, there you go.

• 5:41Susan Cain?

  So longing, I, I believe that you could call it spiritual longing, you could call it existential longing. If you, you know, to use secular terms, doesn't matter. Um, if, you know, whether you're an atheist or believer, not the point. At the core of the human experience is a kind of deep and existential longing for a place that we feel like we belong to, that is more perfect, beautiful, good, true, uh, divine, if you want to call it that, um, than the world that we currently inhabit. And that's like manifest, we see that manifest in all our religions, the longing for the Garden of Eden and Zion and Mecca and the beloved of the soul.

• 6:27Susan Cain?

  And but then we have all these other manifestations, you know, in Homer's Odyssey. It's like the longing for home. That's what sets Ulysses off on his journey. Dorothy, somewhere over the rainbow, she's longing for that place somewhere over the rainbow. There, there's thousands of, of expressions of this fundamental longing. And it's the best part of human nature. It's like, it's, it's our core.

• 6:50Ed Mylett?

  It is. And it's the acknowledgement that you have in the book that makes me feel so peaceful. And so I am a, I, I respect people of all faiths and all religions. Anybody listens to my show knows this. I happen to be a Christian and I, I've always known that on all of us, there's this calling to want to understand our lives and the purpose of it. And to get back to this place that's better than here. And this, I love, this may sound funny to everybody, but it didn't once I read Susan's book, like, I love rainy days. I love it when it's even a little bit, right now it's overcast. I live at the beach. It's an overcast day. And people think I'm strange. Sometimes I go, I actually love the overcast days better than the bright sunny days. And I found that some people think I'm crazy, but the majority of people I meet go, you know what? Me too.

• 7:34Ed Mylett?

  And when I listen to sad music and ironically, the contrast, the duality somehow, the complexity of both emotions. And so why are we starting the show with this? Because I think the overall premise here is that it's okay to embrace these thoughts and these emotions. And it enriches our lives, whereas culture, and I'll let you speak to this. Society sort of tells us to avoid and to suppress these supposedly negative emotions. I write in my new book, The Power of One More, I don't think there are positive or negative emotions. They're just our emotions. I also think maybe the, an overabundance of one or the other can become unhealthy to some extent. And you write about that as well, but just speak to that again about it's okay to embrace these other states of being, to enrich in our, our overall life experience.

• 8:19Susan Cain?

  Yeah, absolutely. I mean, we actually found, you know, from the different research that I did for the book, that this state of mind that you're talking about, you know, the love of rainy days, love of sad music, all these things. It is, it is intrinsically connected to states of creativity. It is connected to a sense of human bonding. It's connected to a sense of transcendence. And yeah, and as you say, yes, we were living. In a culture that is telling us not to go there because we're supposed to be so cheerful and upbeat all the time, you know, to use your metaphor of weather, like you're, you're only supposed to admit to liking sunny days. It's like, as you say, it seems weird to, why

• 9:01Susan Cain?

  would you like an overcast cloudy day? What's wrong with you? And that's cutting us off, not only from the truth of our emotions, but from some of our, the best parts of ourselves, the best parts of ourselves. That's the, that's the crazy part of it.

• 9:16Ed Mylett?

  I agree. And you also talk about, and I've been talking a lot about this myself. I don't know if it's my age or stage of life, but imagine a world, you say in the book, with no sadness, loss or suffering. And what we think we would want in a world like that is, oh, we would just all be happy all the time. But you submit sort of a different belief system about that. If there was never any sadness or loss or suffering, what do you think the world would be like?

• 9:42Susan Cain?

  Well, I have to say, this one's a complicated question because, I mean, no one is giving me this magic wand. But if I had a magic wand and, you know, we're, we're offered the chance to remake the world without sadness, loss or suffering, honestly, I'd probably do it. So my point is not like, yay sadness, yay suffering at all. My point is more that this is the world that we live in. The world that we live in is a world that contains joy and sorrow, you know, sadness and happiness, light and dark, all of it. That's, that's our world. And in that, so first of all, to be able to look at the truth of that world and speak the truth is a huge thing in and of itself. And in that world that we have,

• 10:23Susan Cain?

  it so happens that being attuned to life's fragility has all these other benefits to it, you know, that it, it connects us, first of all, because the fact is we're all in it together, you know, we're all in the same strange state of exile from the Garden of Eden. We just are. And, and the fact that you're in exile and I'm in exile, and so is everybody listening. There's no greater bond than that, really.

• 10:53Ed Mylett?

  And That is, you just nailed it. I love it. That is what bonds us together. And I think that why I think this is so important, why I wanted to cover it early in the conversation was that I feel like people who think if they do experience sadness, or they do experience some form of suffering, or melancholy, or even anxiety, or fear, that somehow now they're disqualified from the other emotions. That I'm not supposed to have any, if I have any pain, or I have any suffering or sadness, that means I also can't be happy, blissful, passionate, or have ecstasy in my life.

• 11:27Susan Cain?

  Right.

• 11:27Ed Mylett?

  That's a great lie. It's absolutely not true, correct?

• 11:31Susan Cain?

  Correct, correct, correct. Yeah, it's like, I actually often think on this topic and on all topics, if everyone could just embrace the idea, both these things are true. Like, two things can be true at the same time. We'd all be so much better off with our politics, with everything. But anyway,

• 11:47Ed Mylett?

  You're so right.

• 11:48Susan Cain?

  We can be and are happy and sad. That's just, that is the nature of life. And some people do, you know, tend more to the cheerful, and some people do tend more to the gloomy, but that doesn't matter. For all humans, we experience it all.

• 12:06Ed Mylett?

  You say that the way we meet our pain defines who we are. And I want you to elaborate on that. I've been saying lately that, you know, on the other side of temporary pain, oftentimes, we get introduced to another self. Napoleon Hill says that in Think and Grow Rich. And I find that when I speak about pain, so when I speak about winning and competing and achievement, I get incredible responses from people. But when I speak about pain and suffering, and even death, and that, you know, that it will come for us at some point. I've been speaking a lot lately about my father's passing, that the depth of emotion, the depth of the energy, the depth of the feeling is maybe 100 times greater when I touch on those topics, than just the good stuff of winning and competing and achievement.

• 12:50Ed Mylett?

  So what do you mean when you say the way we meet our pains defines who, our pain defines who we are?

• 12:55Susan Cain?

  We have a choice with our pain, which comes into every life. And the choice is, we can either try to suppress it and ignore it.

• 13:07Susan Cain?

  And if we do that, inevitably, we are going to end up taking it out on ourselves in the form of depression or something like that, or on the people around us. Or we have the choice of being with it and acknowledging it. And it's not fun. By definition, it's not fun. But there's a way in which we can transform or like try to transform that pain into something else. I mean, I think that's, that's the heart of the creative impulse for most creative people. They're like, looking at something painful in their life. They're looking at their sense of longing and they're trying to turn it into something else and something more beautiful.

• 13:46Ed Mylett?

  Is there a practical thing you can do every day to do that? In other words, when you are feeling these emotions of, I don't know, for me, it's not always pain. Sometimes it's just like melancholy or, I think that's the right word for it for me. Sometimes it's melancholy feeling about things that I enjoy sitting in for a while. I do, but is there a strategy that you use? There is, because there's a bunch in the book. But is there one thing you would say to somebody who says, maybe I'm, maybe I'm ODing on melancholy? And I need to turn it into something powerful?

• 14:19Susan Cain?

  I mean, I guess the question is, are you talking about being in a state of mind where you are enjoying it and grieving on it? In which case, I don't think you need to do anything differently. Like when you're in that state of mind of like, oh, you know, the sky is so overcast and I'm loving this music, that, that's the state in and of itself to cultivate. But if you're talking about, well, I'm in a state where, where the pain is actually really painful, that's different. And a great technique for that is something called expressive writing, which I talk about in the book. And, and it's basically just the sheer act of just writing down what you're feeling without any thought of publishing it or anything like that, quite the opposite. You know, get it out, write it down, rip it up.

• 15:04Susan Cain?

  And this is based on studies from a guy named James Pennebaker at UT Austin. He's done all these crazy studies showing how powerful.

• 15:14Susan Cain?

  The sheer act of writing things down is it improves your health, it literally lowers your blood pressure, improves your success outcomes in life, greater sense of well-being. So it's a way of, it's a way of discharging what you're feeling, but also what you end up doing when you write it down is your sense-making, you're like making sense of what's happening. And you're figuring out how you want to move forward with whatever has just caused you this pain.

• 15:39Ed Mylett?

  The reason I ask you that is because in the book, you sort of state this, this belief system that I agree with that maybe these are the emotional states of creativity.

• 15:47Susan Cain?

  Mm-hmm.

• 15:47Ed Mylett?

  And that when we look at art, oftentimes it is born out of these sort of emotions. When we listen to music that really moves us, it's born out of them. Even comedy, ironically, one of my favorite things. Most comedians are touching on something uncomfortable, painful, or the ironies of life. And so most art, why do I say this to everybody? Because I have the benefit, when I experience these things, I create speeches that I give, or books that I write, or podcasts that I'm gonna do, or content that I create. But a lot of people just sort of sit in these emotions. And you asked earlier, which is it for me? And I think most human beings would say this. It depends on the day. And it depends on how long. And so I want you to talk about this, because I just wanted to ask you this personally. There's a point in time where I'm in these states of contemplating, you know, you say

• 16:32Ed Mylett?

  the fragility of life and how you understand death has a lot to do with how you live. I'd like you to touch on that, give you a long answer here, give you a long runway. So there's that. And I do that a lot. Or, you know, just, just allowing myself to sit in a state of just, it doesn't always have to be 150 degrees of bliss all the time. It's okay to sit on a kind of misty day and just enjoy the gray a little bit. Now, having said that, I think most people who have that proclivity, predisposition or even disposition, which may be all of us. You can then sit in it a little too long, though. And that's what I mean by the abundance of an emotion, right? There's a point where you're going, now I'm not creating out of this state.

• 17:14Ed Mylett?

  Now it's impacting me the other way where it paralyzes me or freezes me or makes me tired. It can even impact your energy level. So what would you say about all that?

• 17:26Susan Cain?

  Yeah, these are amazing questions. So first of all, in terms of the creative idea, one of the things I say in the book is whatever pain you can't get rid of, make that your creative offering. And as you say, there's just so many studies and so many examples that I talk about of the ways in which creators do exactly that. You know, and it's not an accident that so many of our great creatives over time were orphaned before the age of 18. Like an astonishing percentage of them lost one or both parents before age 18 because that's what they're doing. You know, they're figuring out how to take that ultimate longing that they're left with and turn it into something else.

• 18:09Susan Cain?

  But to your other question of like, how do you know? When it's just right or too much? It's a really important point because I, there's a kind of happy and creative state of melancholy that we were just talking about. And then I think farther down that spectrum, you get to something that looks more like clinical depression, where you, it's very difficult to be creative when you're actually depressed. I mean, depression is more about like an emotional numbness and a hopelessness and a sense of disconnection. Whereas the happy melancholy we were talking about, you're feeling intensely connected. So the thing to do is to sort of tune into where you are in that spectrum. Right? And if you feel you're slipping towards something

• 18:53Susan Cain?

  that resembles clinical depression, like that's a, that's a time to get help as opposed to only thinking, well, how can I? You can keep on trying to turn it into something else, but you also might need to be looking to outside resources for help.

• 19:08Ed Mylett?

  What about this Buddha? I think it's a Buddhist practice you talk about in the book. Called Meta, is that what it's called?

• 19:14Susan Cain?

  Oh, yeah, yeah.

• 19:16Ed Mylett?

  What is that? I think this is a tool that could be used by people. It's sort of in all situations, but maybe particularly the one that I'm discussing. If you could just get into that just for a second, because I think it's super powerful.

• 19:27Susan Cain?

  Yeah, absolutely. So Meta is a practice that basically means loving kindness meditation. And, and I'm actually, by the way, I'm creating my own loving kindness meditation, which will be up on my website in the next month or so for people who are interested in doing my version of it. And that's Susan Kane.net if you're curious. But loving kindness meditation, it's basically a form of meditation in which you actively unconsciously wish well-being, peace, you know, good things, love to. Interestingly, classically, you first wish it to yourself. And then after that, you wish it to people who you know very well, to acquaintances.

• 20:11Susan Cain?

  Ultimately, you wish it to the difficult people in your life, in your life. You kind of like move outward from there. What's interesting is for a lot of Americans, they have a lot of trouble beginning with wishing these good things to themselves. So very often people need to turn it upside down and wish it to other people first before they feel comfortable getting around to their own selves. There's no magic, though. You can do it in either direction.

• 20:35Ed Mylett?

  My favorite time in church, I was raised Catholic. My favorite time in church, and when you're a little kid in Catholic church, there's a lot of stand up, sit down, kneel. You know, we're gonna say the Our Fathers, all repetitive nature to the service. And my favorite part of church on Sundays was the one little moment where you get to turn to your neighbor and say, peace be with you.

• 20:56Susan Cain?

  Oh, yeah.

• 20:57Ed Mylett?

  And I loved that part of church. In fact, I miss it because I don't go to that church any longer. And my dad said to me when I was a little guy, and this is even when my dad was drinking, because he was still a really good man. He goes, you know, I do that quietly all the time when I pass strangers. I said, what do you mean, Dad? And he goes, oh, when I pass someone, like I open a door, I'm in an elevator, I'll just quietly say, peace be with you. I wish you peace. And he said, even when people walk by us in restaurants, Eddie, I'll do that. And that's a practice that I've, I've had all my life, because a lot of times with parents, things are caught, not taught, right?

• 21:29Susan Cain?

  Yes.

• 21:30Ed Mylett?

  One of the greatest gifts I give myself. All the time is my quiet prayers. When I see somebody, I'll even see a family at a table and just say, peace be with you. And just that feeling feels so good to connect with someone's soul, who may not even consciously know you're connecting with them. But I have this belief system that subconsciously, spiritually, from an energetic soul perspective, they do feel it. And so I love that you bring that up.

• 21:56Susan Cain?

  I completely agree with you. I have total goosebumps listening to the fact that you do that. And, um, and I think not only from a soul perspective, even if you look at it just from a human evolution perspective, we are designed to pick up on each other's cues and we do it in a thousand ways that we're not even consciously aware of, which is, so I think people would be picking it up, you know, um, from you saying that. And that's exactly what practicing meta does. Like I notice whenever I, I'm not as good as I should be about doing this all the time, but I notice whenever I do practice it, you know, then I go out into the world and I'm just sort of like automatically doing some version of what you just said.

• 22:35Ed Mylett?

  Do you know why it works for someone like you and I and almost everybody listening? Cause it's going to go to the other thing I want to talk about, which is that I'm an introvert. And some people say, don't ever label yourself as an introvert. No, I, I'm introverted and I, I love that I'm introverted. And I wanted to, the reason I share this, whatever you want to call a technique or strategy that my dad taught me, it's just really an act of kindness. It's not really a strategy, but it's also something an introvert can do because you don't have to say anything to give someone a prayer. So it's my, my way of connecting with someone in the unspoken way. And I may never, I mean, there's the truth. I've connected with millions of people this way, probably in my life that I've actually never spoken to. And what I think a much deeper connection than, hi, how are you? Good. Have a great day. I think much deeper connection is to say, peace be with you.

• 23:20Ed Mylett?

  Or, you know, I wish you a beautiful day. I wish you bliss. Like, I love saying that quietly to myself or another person. Don't you agree?

• 23:28Susan Cain?

  Oh my gosh, I absolutely love it. And I am sure you're radiating, radiating something at them when you're doing it.

• 23:34Ed Mylett?

  I feel that way too. I do too.

• 23:37Susan Cain?

  I'll, I'll give you another version of something like that, that I do. It's almost like the flip side of what you just described. So I, I wrote in the book about, um, this video that the Cleveland Clinic put out that went viral. Cleveland Clinic is a hospital and the video was designed to, teach empathy to their caregivers. And so what this video did, it, it like, it takes you through the hallways of the hospital. And you're passing all these random people who you normally wouldn't think one way or another, except in this case, there are these little captions that are underneath each random person as you pass them by. And the captions tell you what the person is going through at that moment. And sometimes it's happy things, like, you know, just found out he's going to be a father for the first time.

• 24:23Susan Cain?

  But more often, because it's a hospital, the captions are things like, you know, under a little girl going to say goodbye to her father for the last time, like, like these heartbreaking things. You cannot watch this video without tearing up. It's impossible. So, once I saw this video, I started to do this practice where I just try to imagine what people's captions are as I pass them by, you know, just in everyday life.

• 24:51Ed Mylett?

  I love it.

• 24:52Susan Cain?

  And I don't know the answers, but there's something about wondering what they are that makes you interact with them completely differently, you know, and care about them in a different way.

• 25:03Ed Mylett?

  I love you. I do that too. And I, I, I, I sometimes, perhaps I'm making it up in my mind. And I'm just gonna say, so I've never said this before. I've never thought about it consciously to you, just said it. But we get, everyone gets to listen to you and I talk about this, which is cool, right? This is no longer a podcast. It's just you and I talking. But oftentimes, oh my gosh, this just confirms what you believe so much more deeply. It just dawned on me. I do do that quietly when I watch people or I'm in a place. And it's harder and harder, the more well-known you are to do it intimately, because someone sees you, then they know you. So that's a, it's a little harder than it used to be for me. But I do do it. And I also ironically, sometimes sense their pain.

• 25:44Ed Mylett?

  And I almost project a story onto them in my mind about what they are insecure, or they feel invisible. Oftentimes, because I think these folks feel so invisible, this is my way of seeing them, even though maybe auditory wise, they don't know it. And so I actually, it makes me really even confirm your work even more, because I don't usually picture them in their most blissful or happy state. I picture them in their pain and their sadness. And that, that just must prove even more deeply. That's how we connect with one another.

• 26:16Susan Cain?

  Yeah, absolutely. I mean, we're designed to do it, right? Like, we, the species wouldn't survive if we couldn't look after helpless children who come into this world as crying infants. Like, that's what we do. And because of that, like, that, that ability radiates outward from there. So,

• 26:36Ed Mylett?

  By the way, if people wonder whether this is true, give them this stat. See, if I'm a business person listening to this, like, okay, what's the business?

• 26:43Susan Cain?

  I'll give you the research.

• 26:44Ed Mylett?

  Yeah, the business application of this is, maybe you should stop always trying to connect with people on their victory and their wins, and what you or your company can do for them, but begin to connect much more deeply with people, which is their pain, and their anxieties, and their fears, and their story, their sadness. I think you'd find you'd connect a whole lot more deeper, even as a busy person. But give us the research, especially the one about the songs on the playlist.

• 27:07Susan Cain?

  Oh, yeah, okay.

• 27:09Ed Mylett?

  Give us both.

• 27:10Susan Cain?

  Okay, so the songs on the playlist, well, there's a lot to say about that. First of all, people whose favorite songs are sad songs, like you, well, we'll start with the other way. People whose favorite songs are their happy upbeat songs, they listen to them about 175 times. People like you, who love the sad songs, 800 times.

• 27:30Ed Mylett?

  Crazy.

• 27:31Susan Cain?

  And we also know that the songs that make people feel, you know, the chills and the goosebumps and the real feels, they're the sad songs. They're always the sad songs. And people will say, this is what makes me feel connected to, you know, to the sublime, to the wondrous, to something outside myself. It's always the sad songs.

• 27:51Ed Mylett?

  I love it. I love it. I want everyone to know that. By the way, you and I both always want to give the caveat, we like sunny days.

• 27:56Susan Cain?

  Yes.

• 27:57Ed Mylett?

  Like happy songs, too. Just we kind of have a tendency towards the other. So you're also going to talk about this research, where I was talking about from a business standpoint, I think you're going to kind of confirm some of that research.

• 28:07Susan Cain?

  Oh, yeah. Well, what I wanted to say about, like, people connecting to each other through their sadness. So, like, there's this amazing psychologist, whose story I tell in the book, his name is Dacher Keltner. And he, he's done all this groundbreaking research, proving what he calls the compassionate instinct in people. And compassion, what it literally means, that word is with sorrow, like with suffering. So it means, you know, you're reacting to somebody else's pain or distress, the way you were just saying. So,

• 28:36Susan Cain?

  He's he's located this in our bodies, basically. Like if you, yeah, just one example, and there's a whole bunch of them, but we have what's called a vagus nerve. It's the biggest bundle of nerves in our bodies. It governs our breathing and our digestion. So it's very fundamental to who we are and to our survival. And also, when you see another being in pain, your vagus nerve becomes very activated.

• 29:04Ed Mylett?

  Interesting.

• 29:04Susan Cain?

  Yeah, so it's like the same nerve that's helping you breathe is also telling you to respond to the pain of the person to whom you have just wished well in the grocery store. Like that, that's how we're designed.

• 29:19Ed Mylett?

  I love it. I just think everyone, maybe this could give you a different perspective on how you interact and view humans and one another. Just this little, I don't think even Susan, you know how big this theory is and that I'm validating as a truth. Cause I think taken to its logical extension would change the way that humanity interacts with one another. How we treat one another, our religious and political differences are, you know, our there's our slight nuances that make us different. This is, this is what would connect people in a much more kind way. It would give leaders of companies and teams and businesses and countries a completely different perspective on how to lead and connect with people and bring them together. So I love, love this work.

• 30:02Ed Mylett?

  I have to share something with you about this connecting with people with their pain. And it'll take me a minute, but my audience knows some of this, but here's how correct your work is. My dad was an alcoholic and a little bit of a drug addict. And the biggest decision of my lifetime was my dad getting sober. And he stayed sober for the rest of his life, like 35 years. But about three weeks ago, I read your book, cause I knew we were gonna do this. And the next night, Susan, I just want to share with you how profound this work is and these thoughts are for everybody. So I read your book, I read it in a sitting and that night I went to bed. Oh, excuse me, the next night when I went to sleep, I had this vivid dream of something I didn't realize that I'm 51 years old. And that is that someone helped my dad and some precious soul stepped forward and helped my father get sober in the darkest moment of his life.

• 30:48Ed Mylett?

  When he was losing his family, maybe losing his life. And some precious human connected with my dad and changed my family forever, changed my great grandchildren. People listening to this, you wouldn't be listening to this. And guess how he connected with my dad? Through their shared pain and suffering, that person was also an alcoholic, also a drug addict. They knew the shame.

• 31:10Susan Cain?

  Yeah.

• 31:10Ed Mylett?

  They knew the fear. They knew the embarrassment. They knew the frustration. They knew the depression that came with the, the patterns of behavior. Had that person connected with my dad through bliss and sunshine and rainbows, or their own perfection, their own lack of pain, but they would have never been able to help my father. They reached my dad through connecting through shared suffering, through shared pain. And then from there said, here's how I can help you. So from every perspective in life, the connecting point is here and then how I can help you. Isn't that a great example?

• 31:41Susan Cain?

  Oh, my God, it's an amazing, amazing, amazing example. Thank you so much for sharing that.

• 31:47Ed Mylett?

  Yeah, and I think I don't have that dream if I don't read your book the day before. I don't because it opens up. That's why art, this podcast, it'll just, I guarantee everybody, there's millions of people listening to this, driving in their car on the treadmill or with their family. They're looking at the person, the next person they see just a little bit differently, looking in the backseat at their babies. And they're looking at someone at the grocery store and they're going to think about their friends differently. And this, this is where change comes from. The other thing though, I have to ask you about.

• 32:12Susan Cain?

  I, I, I just want to say, I totally agree. And I, I have thought this before about like our hopelessly divided politics and culture and religion, everything. That I think what we should be doing is figuring out spaces for people just to be able to share their stories and share the pains that they've gone through without it being connected, at least temporarily, without it being connected to any call for policy change

• 32:39Ed Mylett?

  Yes.

• 32:40Susan Cain?

  or a political agenda or anything like that, just for people from different backgrounds, from red, from blue, from everywhere to just tell their stories.

• 32:47Ed Mylett?

  That's it. I love it. I, I, I've actually believed that, um, no, I get asked sometimes about I would run for office and I, that's highly unlikely. But I do believe that that's where change comes from is just saying, just please hear me and listen to me. And then you can reach your own conclusions. It's when they think that there's a hook coming or a pitch or a close or a, is something we want you to do is when people are turned off. And I think if you just say, just please hear me, you know, whatever you believe about guns or no guns or school security or mental health, whatever the issues are. To hear some of these parents that just had this tragedy happen in Texas and just to hear their pain, just, just hear them. Many of them have differing views themselves on what should be

• 33:30Ed Mylett?

  done about it. But you would reach a more beautiful and correct conclusion if you just listened to people and heard their pain and heard their suffering. Now, I want to talk about being an introvert.

• 33:41Susan Cain?

  Okay.

• 33:42Ed Mylett?

  Because, because I, because it's all linked together for me. Do you think someone is born an introvert, number one, and why is there power in introverted people?

• 33:53Susan Cain?

  Oh, gosh. Um, I think many people are born with a temperament that predisposes them to introversion, but you can't say that for every one person. I mean, what we know is it's one of the more heritable of all the personality traits, but there's no such thing as anything that's all nature or all nurture. But we definitely know that there's a lot of babies who are born into this world with a more sensitive nervous system, which makes them react more to all the different stimuli that come their way. So when those babies are two years old and you put them in a playgroup of kids they've never seen before, they're going to experience that as an overstimulating

• 34:35Susan Cain?

  event. So those kids are going to react like, you know, they're going to, they're going to clam up until they start to process all the different stimuli and feel like, okay, now I can join in. So, yeah, and then there's other kids who are born with a temperament where they don't notice any of that stuff. And so they can just plunge right in right away.

• 34:59Ed Mylett?

  Why'd you call it the power of introverts? That was interesting. My book's called The Power of One More. I'm like, there's a common theme here, but what, why is it the power of introverts?

• 35:08Susan Cain?

  Um, because I, I see introversion just the way I see, you know, bittersweetness as we were just talking about. I see them both as kinds of hidden superpowers, you know, hidden in it because we live in a culture that wants everything to be extroverted and cheerful. Um, but like with introversion, the power is That if you're spending more time in quiet, which you're going to be doing by virtue of your nature, you're by definition going to be spending more time listening because you're not as interested in talking. You want to be listening more. You're going to be spending more time in states of deep focus, or the creative process itself involves

• 35:53Susan Cain?

  solitude. We tend to think of it now as this big fest of collaborative activity, and it is partly that. But we know that creativity actually can't happen without some element of solitude, which if you're an introvert, just comes that much more naturally to you. And then there's also the less expected powers, like even when it comes to leadership, where people really expect introverts would be at a disadvantage. Yet, if you look at the data, introverted leaders deliver outcomes that are as good as, or in some cases, better than extroverts, in part because, well, partly because of that listening tendency, but also

• 36:32Susan Cain?

  because introverts are more likely to be seeking out what the people they lead have to offer, like hearing from them, finding out what those things are, and then running with those ideas. Whereas if you have a personality that's more dominant, more irrepressible, you're going to be running with your own ideas much more, just because that's your nature. It doesn't come from conceit. It just comes from like a, you know, a tendency to put your own stamp on things.

• 37:00Ed Mylett?

  Yeah. Have you made any connection, you're so right, between someone who maybe sits in that state of, I don't know what you want to call it, reflection, sadness, sorrow, whatever that state might be, and being introverted? Do you think there's a connection between those two things at all?

• 37:17Susan Cain?

  Oh, wow. This is so interesting. Okay. So in the Bittersweet book, you saw there's a quiz that you can take, and it's on my website, too, for people who want to just do it quickly. It takes like two minutes. You find out how prone you are to this state of bittersweetness. Okay. So then we took the quiz and saw what the correlations were. And I expected that there would be a high correlation with introversion, and there wasn't. But the high correlation was with a different, related, sort of cousin state to introversion called high sensitivity. Which is a state that Elaine Aaron, the psychologist, discovered. And if you're a highly sensitive person, you basically react that much more intensely to

• 38:02Susan Cain?

  everything that life throws your way. So the beautiful sunsets are going to feel that much more beautiful to you. An upsetting experience with a colleague, a conflict with a colleague is going to probably hurt you that much more or upset you that much more. That's the state of sensitivity and there seems to be a really strong correlation with sensitivity and bittersweetness.

• 38:25Ed Mylett?

  I love it. Why am I talking about this at length so much, guys? I'd like you all just to embrace this part of you, or at least be open to the fact that you may have more of it than you realize. Maybe you've been programmed to just anytime sadness comes, suppress it. Anytime pain comes, suppress it, or frustration, even loss. I mean, and loss can be a loved one, loss can be someone said an unkind word to you. Loss can be you missed a sale today in a business. This is loss. And how you respond, you asked this question in the book and I'd like you to answer it too. What do you do when pain comes?

• 38:58Ed Mylett?

  And that's a powerful question. Everyone should be asking themselves too. But what do you, what should someone do when pain comes? Susan, what would you say? That's a tough, tough question.

• 39:08Susan Cain?

  Yeah, and I mean, I, I think that one really does depend on the nature of the pain and on the person involved. Because everybody responds so differently to these kinds of things, you know? Like, I just went through, I just went through a succession of bereavements, right? During COVID, I lost my father and my brother.

• 39:30Ed Mylett?

  Wow, I'm so sorry.

• 39:31Susan Cain?

  Oh, I mean, thank you.

• 39:34Susan Cain?

  And for me, I was like, partly because I'm an introvert, I guess, but I'm sure it's other things too. Like, I really wanted to process all of that pretty privately. And I turned it into creativity pretty quickly. Like, I start writing things down.

• 39:52Susan Cain?

  But then my literary agent, my very beloved literary agent, he, he lost his wife to ALS not long after. And for him, he's been doing this series, like all his clients have come together and we do, we get together with him for virtual Zoom sessions. It started out as a memorial service, but now we do it like every week or every two weeks. And, and he says a prayer and we talk together. And for him, that's like incredibly sustaining through his pain. So I think it really is a matter of turning into what each individual heart needs and not expecting that there is going to be one cure all way to go.

• 40:30Ed Mylett?

  Yeah. But as it comes to grieving, you actually say in the book, I told you, I read every page over and over, you talk about in grieving that oftentimes it's again, it's the same sort of societal bias against these sorts of emotions. But hey, let it go, you know, right? Like as if sitting with grieving or some pain or discomfort is such a terrible thing. You talk about use those terminology, that terminology, this soon will pass, you know, and you let it go, or these other things with grieving. And you say, well, hold on a minute. What would you say about that?

• 41:01Susan Cain?

  Yeah. So let it go to me, let it go. It's a very complicated concept, really, because I do find a lot of sustenance in it. And at the same time, there's something in that phrase of let it go. That's a kind of like more polite version of move on, you know, get over it, get over it. And I think what we need to do is not get over it until we're ready to get over it. And the great news is for many people, we actually are way more, we know this from research, where most people are way more resilient to grief than we expect we're going to be, although it never goes away completely. And then some

• 41:42Susan Cain?

  people are not. So there's, there's a different formulation that I talk about in the book that I like better than let it go. And this one comes from the writer Nora McInerney. And she talks about the difference between moving on and moving forward. And moving on is kind of like get over it already, you know, just get on with your life. Moving forward is much more the idea that You are gonna go ahead with your life, but you're gonna carry with you forever the person who you've lost. And you're, you're gonna carry that grief with you to some degree forever as well. But your life is gonna go on as you carry that person with you. So you don't, you're, you're not asking yourself ever to have to leave that person behind,

• 42:26Susan Cain?

  or even to leave your grief behind. But there's a way, there's a way of kind of having both, of moving forward, forward with your life while you carry that person with you.

• 42:35Ed Mylett?

  Yeah.

• 42:36Susan Cain?

  And I'll say, yeah, like, this is something I've really, I've noticed this with my father, like, you know, like, in the time, right after I lost him, like, there's, there were just like a million times where I would think, oh, I want to call down and tell him about such and such.

• 42:53Ed Mylett?

  Yeah.

• 42:53Susan Cain?

  And I don't do that as much now, but there is a sense of like carrying him with me, like, he's the one who taught me to love music so much, and I'll listen to music and be with him.

• 43:07Susan Cain?

  It's in a different way, though. It's in a moving forward type of way. But I'm carrying him with me.

• 43:12Ed Mylett?

  I like, I like this moving forward instead of moving on. That's also true in relationships. We grieve a lot of things, not just the passing of people. We can grieve a relationship. And I have a really good girlfriend of mine who all of our friends keep telling me, you need to let it go. Just let him go. Rearview marriage. Drop it. Don't even think about it anymore. You know, that's the typical advice. And so she and I were talking and I go, I don't agree with that. And I said, there's some, there's some beauty in grieving the relationship. There's also some lessons in that grieving that you might need to carry with you. And I said, sister, I've known you a long time. You keep dating the same dude. It's just with a different name. It's the same guy. And that's because from every relationship, you've just moved on.

• 43:57Ed Mylett?

  Well, what she needs to do is move forward and carry some of the lessons of what she's looking for, and maybe more importantly, what she's not looking for in her relationships. And without some grieving and reflection, you don't learn those lessons if you just drop it all together.

• 44:12Susan Cain?

  Yeah. And I, I think that, um, We have such a circumscribed understanding of what grief is. I think this is what you keep getting out with these questions. And psychologists even talk about this and they call it disenfranchised griefs. You know, so we're like, we're, we're, we're pretty much okay with the idea that bereavement, like flat out bereavement is something that's worthy of grieving, though even there, we want it to last for five minutes and then be done. But, um, but when it comes to other kinds of griefs, like the ones you're, you know, breakups or like financial worries, or someone said something mean to you online, or whatever it is, like those are griefs also that we need to be dealing with as such. And yeah, like thinking

• 44:56Susan Cain?

  about your friend, if she could go into an actual morning and figure out what she is, what did, what did she lose before she ever even met the first of those boyfriends?

• 45:07Ed Mylett?

  You're right.

• 45:08Susan Cain?

  What did she lose first? Because that's what she's still trying to reclaim.

• 45:12Ed Mylett?

  Yeah, everything, there's a lesson in it. And if you just move on, or you're just in bliss, and you're just partying and celebrating all the time, perhaps one of the things that robs you from is the lessons in life that can create a much more deeper level of happiness and bliss, a deeper relationship, or a better business, so that we grow from it. So I, I just love this. So, okay, someone runs into you tomorrow, and they said, I heard you on Ed Mylett's show. I cannot believe how profound this work is. I've never heard anything like this before. And I wish you, he would have asked you X, Y, or Z. What did I not ask you today about your work that I should have asked you?

• 45:51Susan Cain?

  Oh, gosh, that's such a hard question.

• 45:53Ed Mylett?

  I know. Well, that's why I'm giving it to you. Because I'm thinking, I've got my part, I pull from the book, the things that I, you know, that I want to learn. But is there a tactic or a strategy in the book, or a thought process about this overall topic that I just did not ask you?

• 46:09Susan Cain?

  Okay, so you know, as soon as we hang up, I'm going to think of the one that I super wanted to tell you. But, but this is a big one that I'm about to say. So.

• 46:21Susan Cain?

  As you know, part of what I did in the book was I really looked at a lot of different wisdom and religious traditions to understand what they had to say about this bittersweet nature of life. And there are so many amazing things, but there's one parable that comes from the Kabbalah, which is the mystical side of Judaism. And knowing this one parable has helped me so much to live with the way in which this world has so much joy and so much suffering. And like, how do you live with those two things together?

• 46:58Susan Cain?

  Okay, so it's like a metaphor. And the idea is that, that all of creation was originally one intact divine vessel, but that the vessel shattered and that the world that we're living in now is the world after the shattering. So it's the broken world. But, but it's not totally, it's not complete gloom, because this world has, we have scattered all around us, the shards from that broken but divine vessel. So there are these shards of light scattered all around us. And we're all going to notice different ones. So you're going

• 47:42Susan Cain?

  to, you're going to spot different ones from the ones that I would. But our job in this life is just to bend down and pick them up wherever we find them. Just bend down and pick them up. And that's it. So it's not to say we're going to get to perfection, because I actually think that the, the expectation of perfection or utopia on this earth is incredibly destructive. So it's putting utopia to the side. It's just saying, there, there are glimpses of it. And train your eyes on them.

• 48:12Ed Mylett?

  Oh my gosh, that's so good, Susan. I think that you are part of that light in the world. You have been for me. Very rarely have I read something or experienced someone's work that so deeply helped me understand myself better and affected me deeply. And I know that this is a different topic than what people are used to hearing on every podcast they're on, and I think it may be one of the most important ones I've ever had because of the ability to connect with yourself differently and also connect with other people. And that just makes you a better person, a better husband, wife, parent, business person, person of your faith. These things really, really matter to you. Susan, I think you're a remarkable woman with such a kind heart. And I love that you're definitely an introvert

• 48:54Ed Mylett?

  as we're connecting here. I connect with you on that level. And you've shown your power because this book is absolutely incredible and so are you. So thank you for today.

• 49:02Susan Cain?

  Oh, my gosh. Thank you so much, Ed. I mean, such a joy to be able to talk to you. And I'm sure all your guests feel this way after they talk to you, but I really do hope we can stay in touch because it's amazing to talk and to connect.

• 49:16Ed Mylett?

  I love that. I would love that. And I give you my word that we'll do that. So, hey, everybody, today is special. And I hope that you have already thought of a person or two that you'd like to share this with, share this episode with, and I'd encourage you to do it right now because I think it'll deeply affect them and help them understand themselves, the world, maybe the both of you together with one another. So please share this. Go get Bittersweet from Susan Cain, How Sorrow and Longing Make Us Whole, and go pick up my book, The Power of One More, which is the number one book in the world right now. Please go pick that up as well.

• 49:47Susan Cain?

  Amazing.

• 49:48Ed Mylett?

  All right. God bless you. You're amazing. Take care, everybody. Max out.