Adam Grant ON: Why Discomfort is the Key to Growth and Strategies for Unlocking Your Hidden Potential

Staying in your comfort zone often gives us a sense of control and stability. But when it comes to growth, staying in one spot for a long time doesn’t lead to growth. So how can you comfortably leave your comfort zone and unlock your hidden potential? Today, Jay sits down with organizational psychologist Adam Grant. Adam is a leading expert on how we can find motivation and meaning, rethink assumptions, and live more generous and creative lives. Adam hosts the TED podcasts Re:Thinking and WorkLife, which have been downloaded over 65 million times. Adam’s latest book, Hidden Potential offers a new framework for raising aspirations and exceeding expectations. Adam and I explore why growth is so important in our lives as we dive into the tools to use in order to grow through discomfort. We look deep into facing discomfort, finding your authentic voice, and the true essence of learning. Now, let's talk about something that can sometimes weigh us down – envy. We'll learn how we can turn envy into inspiration, using our role models as a stepping stone to success. In this interview, you'll learn: Why personal growth matters How to deal with discomfort How a life coach can help you How to find your authentic voice How to get out of your comfort zone Truly, this is a journey of self-improvement, self-discovery, and embracing personal growth. With Love and Gratitude, Jay Shetty What We Discuss: 00:00 Intro 03:57 Why Growth Is So Important 06:25 Should You Compare Yourself To Others? 09:01 “I thought I should quit” 10:50 You Need To Study Your Role Models 12:00 How To Face Discomfort 16:07 Are You Being Too Cautious? 17:56 Why You Need to Stick With Things 20:10 What Do You Need To Be Better At? 23:35 How To Know If You’re Doing Well 27:29 The Trick To Gaining Self-Confidence 30:32 How To Deal With Never-Ending Criticism 32:27 Should You Care What Other People Think? 35:40 Myths About How We Learn 39:37 The Truth About How We Learn 43:50 Doubt Can Be Helpful 45:40 Why You Should Get A Coach 52:25 How To Succeed Without Perfection 56:17 Is Self Promotion Bad? 1:00:10 How To Promote Your Work 1:04:45 Adding Value To Others’ Lives 1:08:55 The Secret To Success 1:12:42 How To Enjoy The Struggle 1:16:50 “What one piece of advice has stuck with you?” 1:19:11 Why Choices Are Important 1:23:15 Finding Hidden Potential 1:26:54 How To Optimize Education 1:28:00 Conclusion Episode Resources: Adam Grant | X Adam Grant | Instagram Adam Grant | Facebook Adam Grant | Threads Adam Grant | LinkedIn Adam Grant | Website Adam Grant | Books See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. 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.

• 0:00Jay Shetty?

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• 0:44Jay Shetty?

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• 1:29Jay Shetty?

  AG1 Next Gen is one of those easy habits to keep. It's the clinically-backed, comprehensive daily health drink that supports your gut health, energy production, and foundational nutrition all in one scoop. AG1's ingredients are sourced from quality partners for absorption, potency, and nutrient density to deliver the foundational nutrition your body needs. And alongside a proper diet, AG1 Next Gen meets 94% of nutrient requirements and it's clinically shown to enrich the gut microbiome. For a limited time, save 20% on your first subscription order of AG1 Next Gen or AG1 Pro at drinkag1.com/onpurpose. That's drinkag1.com/onpurpose.

• 2:16Jay Shetty?

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• 3:00Jay Shetty?

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• 3:45Jay Shetty?

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• 4:13Adam Grant?

  I think envy is the thief of joy. Where we run into problems is when we stop admiring those people and we start wanting what they have, or feeling like I should have gotten what they got. Organizational psychologist. Want to bring in bestselling author. Wharton's number one professor. Adam Grant. I think that's people saying, I'm stuck. I feel like my life isn't going anywhere. I feel like I'm squandering my potential. That's a travesty. Growth is, is part of how you feel like you're using your time well. The person you're competing with is your past self and the bar you're raising is for your future self.

• 4:43Jay Shetty?

  Before we jump into this episode, I'd like to invite you to join this community to hear more interviews that will help you become happier, healthier and more healed. All I want you to do is click on the subscribe button. I love your support. It's incredible to see all your comments and we're just getting started. I can't wait to go on this journey with you. Thank you so much for subscribing. It means the world to me.

• 5:05Speaker 02

  The bestselling author and host.

• 5:07Speaker 03

  The number one health and wellness podcast.

• 5:09Speaker 04

  On Purpose with Jay Shetty.

• 5:12Jay Shetty?

  Hey everyone, welcome back to On Purpose, the number one health podcast in the world. Thanks to each and every one of you that come back every week to listen, learn and grow. Now you know that this podcast is all about how we can do better individually, collectively, grow with new ideas, new insights, how we can develop new habits, challenge our mindsets and extend our capacity for goodness and greatness in our lives. And today's guest is truly an expert and someone who's deeply obsessed and studied about these themes and subjects for a long, long time. Someone I love having on the show, I'm so grateful that he's returning on the show today. I'm talking about the one and only Adam Grant, an organizational psychologist at Wharton, where Adam has been the top rated professor for seven straight years.

• 5:57Jay Shetty?

  Adam's books have sold millions of copies and Adam's TED Talks have been viewed more than 30 million times and he hosts the hit podcast, Rethinking. Adam's pioneering research on motivation and meaning has enabled people to reach their aspirations and exceed others' expectations. And his new book is called Hidden Potential, The Science of Achieving Greater Things. I highly recommend you grab a copy of this book. This is what we're diving into today. So if you love this conversation, you'll love the book because it will go so much deeper. Check it out. Adam, thank you so much for joining me.

• 6:31Adam Grant?

  Wow. Thanks for that, Jay. I feel like I should just leave now.

• 6:34Jay Shetty?

  Leave now. This is it.

• 6:36Adam Grant?

  We just peaked right there.

• 6:37Jay Shetty?

  Honestly, though, I was saying to you, it's so nice to meet you in person because I've admired your work. I've read your books. We've had an interview before. You've been so collaborative on offline about different things that come up, ideas, projects, and I I really appreciate that because, you know, it's, we're all busy. We've all got a million things going on and you find a way to be personal and present even in those. So thank you so much. I appreciate it.

• 7:00Adam Grant?

  I wish I could say it was on purpose, but it's it's an accident.

• 7:04Jay Shetty?

  And and I wanted, I mentioned this offline, I'm gonna say it again, like, your book's called Hidden Potential. But I remember on our last conversation, I was kind of saying, you know, I'd love to one day, like, you know, study something deeply, potentially do a masters or a PhD or you know, I love the idea of obsessing over something for a long period of time. And you kind of, as you just said in your words, well, I'll let you say it, you encouraged me and I was like, well, if Adam believes I could do something like this, maybe I can. So you were tapping into my hidden potential years before this book came out.

• 7:35Adam Grant?

  It was only hidden to you.

• 7:38Adam Grant?

  First of all, there's no way that studying behavioral economics or neuroscience or psychology or any of the topics that interest you is anywhere near as hard as becoming a monk. So that that was just the beginning, but I I think you might have, you suggested that I was planting a seed. The seed was already growing. It just needed a little bit of extra water and sunlight, but I'm so I'm so waiting. I'm still waiting for you to apply.

• 7:59Jay Shetty?

  You're waiting, you're waiting. No, I

• 8:00Adam Grant?

  It'll happen.

• 8:01Jay Shetty?

  It will happen. It will happen. I want to talk about, so, you know, the subtitle of the book is The Science of Achieving Greater Things. And it's all about getting better at getting better. Why is getting better important? Like, why is growth important? And I know it sounds, it may sound like a stupid question. It may sound like a A silly thing to talk about, especially on a show like this, but I find that people I talk to sometimes idolize being average. They think it's good enough. Good enough is good. I find that we are wired often to want things to stay exactly the same. We like how they are. Why should we get better? Why should anything get better? We should be satisfied with what we have. And often in the guise of contentment and peace,

• 8:46Jay Shetty?

  there's a sense of lethargy and complacency that, well, we don't need to grow because you're just being greedy. So I'm presenting a spectrum of ideas there. I'm happy for you to dive into any of those. But why does getting better and improving matter at all?

• 9:01Adam Grant?

  This is fascinating. Nobody's ever asked me that before. And frankly, I think I've taken for granted that growth is just intrinsically enjoyable and motivating. I mean, I think you've made a case that maybe some people are not motivated by growth. I think that where I may push back on that is to say, we live in a world that glorifies performance. So, you know, people feel like if they want to be respected or celebrated, they need to win a medal, they need to earn a trophy, they need to get an A plus. And I think what we've lost sight of is that what people actually enjoy is a sense of progress, feeling like they have forward momentum. When I think about, what does it look like to not grow? I don't think for most people that's good enough. I think that's stagnation.

• 9:45Adam Grant?

  I think that's people saying, I'm stuck. I feel like my life isn't going anywhere. I feel like I'm squandering my potential. And I just, I think that's a travesty. And so I think growth is, is part of how you feel like you're using your time well.

• 9:59Jay Shetty?

  Absolutely. I completely agree with you. And I'm glad no one's ever asked you that before because I think I'm like that too. I kind of take for granted that I love growth and I love the idea of being better and improving. And I can't remember, I mean, it's been said a million times. It's a, it's like an age old quote, but it goes, you know, if you're not growing, you're dying. And I think that's the point that we are either moving forward or we're moving backward. We're either getting faster and smarter or we're getting slower and, and not smarter. And I think when you recognize that idea, that there is no staying the same, there is no. We're just gonna stay on this place and platform forever. You start recognizing, oh, I have to move forward and the pace at which I move. How have you guided people with that?

• 10:40Jay Shetty?

  I found like often we compare our pace of growth and our pace of becoming better. And that's the hardest one because you're like, well, they got that body in three months. Or, you know, you've been the top rated professor for seven years. Like, I've only won that once, or whatever it may be. Pace of growth, how have you thought about pace of growth in your work?

• 11:00Adam Grant?

  For a long time, I believed the saying, the mantra that comparison is the thief of joy. I don't believe it anymore. I think envy is the thief of joy. I think social comparison is invaluable. I think we have to look to other people for inspiration. I think we look to other people for learning, you know, not just what am I capable of? But also, how do I get there? I think where we run into problems is when we stop admiring those people and we start wanting what they have. Or feeling like I should have gotten what they got. And I think there, what's probably helpful is to make a different set of comparisons. You know, part of what you could do is not think so much about pace as started, um, maybe focus more on starting points.

• 11:42Adam Grant?

  So maybe somebody who's growing faster than you actually just started with more advantages than you did. And you've traveled a greater distance. I don't think we pay enough attention to that would be one thought. I think obviously comparing to ourselves is helpful too. And I think that, you know, so often when it comes to benchmarking progress, I want to tell people, okay, the person you're competing with is your past self and the bar you're raising is for your future self. And if you can focus on that, it's a little bit easier to realize, all right, yeah, everybody has a different starting point. Everybody has a different pace. But if I could tell, actually, let me, let me say this. I think so many people let their expectations rise with their progress.

• 12:26Adam Grant?

  And so you set a goal today, you achieve it in six months. And then by the time it happens, it's almost a relief.

• 12:34Jay Shetty?

  Yeah.

• 12:35Adam Grant?

  I didn't blow it.

• 12:36Jay Shetty?

  Definitely.

• 12:37Adam Grant?

  There's, there's no joy. There's no sense of meaning and purpose. You, you sort of expected it and you would have been disappointed if it didn't happen. I think the way you avoid that is you get in touch with your past self. And you say, if, you know, if six months ago, me or five years ago, me knew where I would land now, how proud would I have been? How excited would I have been? And if you keep that past self in mind, it's much easier to appreciate the, I guess, the strides that you're making.

• 13:03Jay Shetty?

  I love that distinction you made as well between how comparison versus envy is the thief of joy. I think it's so subtle, but it's so nuanced and so powerful. Because you're so right that I always think of it in the same way, that you either study someone or you envy them. And often the deeper you study someone, the less you'll envy them because you'll actually realize how far they've come and what they had to get through and challenges they had. And you start getting the energy from that study to say, oh, maybe I have that within me too. And maybe I can find that within me too, because I have challenges.

• 13:37Adam Grant?

  I think for me, a really concrete example of that was, I was, I was terrified of public speaking when I decided to become a professor. Maybe it was the wrong profession. It's like, what are you doing here? But I, I remember even being a student and thinking about raising my hand in college and I would start to physically shake. And by the time I got called on, sometimes I would, like, I would forget what I was gonna say or I'd second guess it, or I'd stumble and stammer my way through it. And so the idea that I was now gonna stand in front of a whole classroom or on a big stage was extremely daunting. So what did I do? I went to speakers that I really admired and started studying them, thinking this is gonna help me. And the first one I, I picked was MLK.

• 14:20Jay Shetty?

  Great pick, really.

• 14:21Adam Grant?

  Yeah, I mean, what a great way to get demoralized. So I watched his dream speech. I tried to take notes on, you know, on things I could learn from him. You know, I wanted to know, well, how did he get there? And so I start reading about it. He's 34 years old when he gives that speech. I might as well quit. I cannot believe it's the greatest speech in American history, you know, done by somebody who's, you know, not even close to his prime. And I think if I had stopped there, I would have quit. And it would have been easy to walk away from MLK as just an impossible role model. And let's be clear, he is an impossible role model. I will never, I could work on public speaking for an infinite number of years, every minute of every day and never come close to that.

• 15:03Adam Grant?

  What was helpful, though, was then sort of rewinding and realizing we usually see our role models at their peak. And we don't have the starting point. We don't have the distance they've traveled. So how did MLK get here? And turns out, he started entering public speaking competitions when he was 15 years old. That was two decades of practice. The year he did his dream speech, he gave over 350 talks. And so, you know, if you think about the cumulative progress that was made, that's multiple lifetimes, you know, of effort. So I think that's, that's the kind of sort of analysis that we need to do. And I don't think most of us do that.

• 15:38Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. I can't believe, I can't, I can't remember exactly what it was. I'll have to find it, but it was, I think it was Usain Bolt, who said something like, I've worked for X amount of hours to run 10 seconds or something like that, right? Like the idea of he's practiced for all these hours or months or years to run something in however long he did it. And I forgot the exact number, but it's so interesting what you're saying. And that, that backstory of that journey, that growth, the skills development, the hours, the struggle, 300 that year alone is.

• 16:10Adam Grant?

  Brutal.

• 16:11Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, that's, that's insane. And, and I think it's fascinating. And you talk about this, I mean, I want to, I want to read from the book a bit, if you don't mind. So there are a couple of things that I picked out. So this is page 26 for anyone who's listening or watching right now. Page 26 of Hidden Potential. So, "Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experiences of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, vision cleared, ambition inspired, and success achieved." You're quoting Helen Keller. And then you go on to say that summoning the nerve to face discomfort is a character skill. The way you were writing in this book was so empowering because it was almost like you were pulling from, you know, I know, of course, everything's highly researched,

• 16:54Jay Shetty?

  everything's backed with science, but you were kind of pulling from a bit of a Martin Luther King space there, like the language in there of like summoning the nerve to face discomfort is a character skill. And so you're actually saying what we just talked about with MLK, that doing hard things, doing uncomfortable things, doing difficult things is actually where so much of this ability, hidden potential comes from. But all of us shy away from it. You know, all of us don't want to do it. We're scared of it. You becoming a professor, that's scary if you don't like public speaking. We avoid discomfort, we avoid awkwardness, we avoid challenges. How do we summon the nerve to face discomfort?

• 17:34Adam Grant?

  Well, clearly what I did was I started by thinking, okay, writing this book is going to be uncomfortable. There are going to be a lot of times when I'm going to get stuck, when I'm going to feel like this chapter is not working and then my writing is not working and then I'm not capable of being a writer. Why did I ever think I could become a writer? And then that just spirals out of control. And then the antidote to that is to think, you know what? Jay Shetty needs to be empowered.

• 17:57Jay Shetty?

  I love it.

• 17:57Adam Grant?

  I love this image of you getting empowerment.

• 17:59Jay Shetty?

  I do get empowered.

• 18:00Adam Grant?

  I would never think of you as somebody who is in need of that. You're out empowering lots of other people.

• 18:05Jay Shetty?

  Always in need.

• 18:06Adam Grant?

  I guess for me, one of the things I learned from the research that I didn't know before, I think I always understood intuitively the idea that discomfort is key to growth. What I didn't understand was that actively seeking discomfort and even amplifying it was one of the ways that you could move toward your idea of progress. I kind of saw it as a necessary evil, something that happens, you know, when you're learning and you're struggling and you're tinkering with new skills. And with the, I think what the evidence shows is that people who are actually given the goal to intentionally feel uncomfortable, this is done in some cases, asking people to go on stage to do improv comedy and literally feel awkward on purpose. They end up growing more from that experience because they put

• 18:48Adam Grant?

  themselves in situations that challenge them. And so I think that's what I had to do with public speaking when I was starting to teach is therapists talk about exposure therapy and they often recommend systematic desensitization to say, all right, let's start, you know, little seminar and then get to know a group of students well and then you can kind of build from there. I didn't have time for that. So I went to the opposite extreme of flooding and said, all right, I'm just going to volunteer to give guest lectures in front of huge classrooms of hundreds of students who I've never met before for my friends' classes. I don't know why they let me in.

• 19:21Jay Shetty?

  You have good friends.

• 19:23Adam Grant?

  Yeah, they were overly good friends, maybe. They were sacrificing the whole class for my growth, but extremely uncomfortable for me. And I remember just walking in and feeling like I do not belong here. I'm not qualified. It was a massive case of imposter syndrome. But I think one of the things that happened when I put myself in that uncomfortable situation is I realized it's not really going to go worse than it did today. And reading through the comments, there were lots of suggestions for improvement and lots of criticisms, but there were also little compliments about things people liked. I was like, okay, I can build on that. I can work on this. And I think just coming in with the goal, yeah,

• 20:05Adam Grant?

  I should put myself in a deliberately uncomfortable situation. It opened me to a much steeper learning curve than if I'd done the kind of, let me dip my toe in the shallow end and then sort of take off the floaties and learn to swim one step at a time.

• 20:20Jay Shetty?

  Yeah. And I feel it's really interesting, right? Do you think there are those two approaches? Like, do you think from the research you've done and even your own personal experience, do you feel like it is either or? Like, sometimes you just jump in the deep end and sometimes you should kind of dip your toe in and then walk in? Or do you think it's either or? Or is wisdom knowing which one to try when?

• 20:38Adam Grant?

  That's where I was, I was gonna land. I haven't seen a good comparison of the two and when you should do each, but that's, that's my intuition as well, is I think there's, there's a time and a place for both approaches. And probably most of the time, we want to be somewhere in the middle. But to the point that you made earlier, I think most of us err too far on the side of avoiding discomfort. And so we make these very small incremental steps. And one, it feels like we're not making progress, which is frustrating. And then, two, we often then don't take enough risks or try enough experiments to really stretch ourselves and move up to the next level.

• 21:11Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, definitely. One of the things I find that I always do, if I get curious about something, it could be a sport, it could be a subject, it could be a topic, whatever it may be, I'll kind of cancel everything on the weekend and just obsess about it for a weekend.

• 21:24Adam Grant?

  All in.

• 21:24Jay Shetty?

  Because it gives me a sense of Momentum or growth or a sense of yeah, that's not my thing. And I can very quickly decide whether to invest more time in it. Whereas if I was to have booked a six week course or a program on something, I may find by week three that this isn't something I want to study for six weeks. As opposed to I could have figured that out in 24 hours if I just really obsessed about it. Or if I'll play a sport and I'm thinking, oh, I like this sport. Should I play it more? Let me play it for a whole weekend, every hour of that I'm awake. And see whether it fulfills me or whether it's draining and tiring. And I feel like that's kind of what you're saying works as a better experiment.

• 22:01Adam Grant?

  Yeah, I think that kind of immersion is a really efficient way to figure out is this an area that I want to try to keep growing in. I think the one thing I'd want to be careful about there is there's there's some evidence to suggest that oftentimes we only like things when we become good at them.

• 22:17Jay Shetty?

  That's true.

• 22:18Adam Grant?

  If you spend a weekend on a skill that you're terrible at, you might quit it prematurely because you just haven't built up enough competence.

• 22:24Jay Shetty?

  Goal.

• 22:25Adam Grant?

  I was just gonna say that like the day I spent I spent swinging a golf club, I've never felt so incapable in my life.

• 22:31Jay Shetty?

  Same.

• 22:33Adam Grant?

  Also, golf is not a real sport, so I had no problems walking away from that.

• 22:37Jay Shetty?

  Explain that, explain that.

• 22:38Adam Grant?

  I think I'll offend too many people.

• 22:40Jay Shetty?

  I think so too.

• 22:42Adam Grant?

  No, but I think sometimes you you do have to say, all right, this this could take me a couple of weeks or a couple of months where, you know, I build enough competence to really experience the joy of it. Like I've seen this with, I actually went through this with tennis. I think I took tennis lessons when, you know, when I was four or five. And I really disliked it and, you know, ended up convincing my mom that I should quit. And then when I picked it up again around 11 or 12, I had better hand eye coordination. I'd played a bunch of ping pong and like now I was decent enough at a racket sport. The tennis was actually fun and I think that's probably relevant to many skills.

• 23:15Jay Shetty?

  Absolutely, absolutely. So people always ask me, and I'm sure you get asked this question a million times. Of course you do, you have your own book club too, like. Which you've been kindly featured me in the past and people always ask me, what should I read? And my number one response to that is, well, what are you struggling with? Because I read for what I'm struggling with. That's how I choose. I always say to people, you don't go to the grocery store because your refrigerator is full of milk. You go when you're out of milk or you're out of cheese or you're out of bread and you go and stock up. And so I'll often do an audit of my internal unit and go, well, what am I feeling like I don't have? And I've talked about how a couple of years ago, I was building my team and I realized that being a leader and a recruiter were very different skills and recruitment wasn't a strength that I possessed.

• 24:00Jay Shetty?

  And I almost assumed that because I was good at certain things that I should be good at recruiting. And I, and I wasn't and I studied Daniel Coyle's book, The Culture Code, which I love.

• 24:09Adam Grant?

  Great book.

• 24:09Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, it's fantastic. And I interviewed him on the show too, and looked at his playbook and everything else. And that one book in and of itself made me better at recruitment. And so I always look at it that way, but how do people figure out what they're struggling with or what they're not good at? What they need to get better at is probably the right way to put it because we have so many things we're not good at.

• 24:27Adam Grant?

  Yeah.

• 24:27Jay Shetty?

  What do we know what we need to get better at?

• 24:28Adam Grant?

  This should have been a chapter in Hidden Potential. Where were you, Jay Shetty, while I was writing this book? That would have been really helpful. I, um, maybe, maybe it'll go in the paperback. I think, I mean, my first thought is I always want to look to my Achilles heel. What's the one thing that's holding me back from a goal that I care about or a value that I'm trying to pursue? And then the other is, um, what's an area of passion or curiosity that, you know, I'm excited to spend more time investing in? And sometimes that's for me because I'm excited about it. Other times it's because I want to help somebody else. And I think those are reasonable questions to ask. I think where a lot of people struggle is they, they know the domain already, right? So they've decided, I want to be a better entrepreneur or I want to be a better artist or I'm interested in improving my coding skills, right?

• 25:14Adam Grant?

  And they've, they've kind of already figured out what part of life they're trying to improve at. But then they don't know what to focus on from there. I think the mistake that a lot of us make is we end up asking the people around us that we trust for feedback, which is a perfectly reasonable thing to do, except when you ask for feedback, you get a lot of cheerleaders and critics. The cheerleaders are basically applauding your best self and the critics are attacking your worst self. And the critics leave you often demoralized and the cheerleaders can make you complacent. What you want is a coach. A good coach is somebody who sees your potential and then helps you become a better version of yourself. And so, one of the things I learned through doing research for the book is that instead of asking for feedback, it's often better

• 25:57Adam Grant?

  to seek advice. So, feedback leads people to think about what you did right or wrong yesterday. Advice helps people focus on what you can do better tomorrow. So, the way I would like to, I guess that I apply this personally, is when I'm trying to figure out where I need to grow, every time I get offstage, for example, or every time I finish a podcast interview, I will ask the audience or the host, what's the one thing I can do better?

• 26:17Jay Shetty?

  Wow.

• 26:18Adam Grant?

  Which is enormously helpful, because they start to give concrete suggestions. But I'm not immediately gonna, gonna focus on the first thing that I hear. What I do is, I ask a bunch of different people and then I look for the patterns. And I think that what, what too many people do is, even if they get to the point of asking for advice rather than feedback, they start to hear all these things they need to work on. They're like, whoa, this is, this is overload. It's too much. I can't handle anymore. I can probably only improve one or two things at a time. What I would say to those people is, when you feel a little bit overwhelmed by the number of suggestions you're getting, you should actually seek more of them. Because that will help you find the signal in the noise. That will help you sort of figure out what's one person's idiosyncratic taste,

• 26:58Adam Grant?

  and what is a bunch of people's, you know, quality input. So, I guess that's my favorite way to figure out where you need to grow. Ask a bunch of people for advice and then focus on the common themes.

• 27:10Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, the patterns. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. I'm gonna start doing that. I'm gonna try that out, actually.

• 27:14Adam Grant?

  Try it at your own risk.

• 27:15Jay Shetty?

  Yeah.

• 27:17Jay Shetty?

  I've not practiced it in that way. And, and I like that, again, distinction between advice and feedback. And you're so right. If someone asks me for feedback, you're spot on. My mind goes into right and wrong. And, you know, weaknesses and strengths, as opposed to reflecting on, hey, this could work really well, or I love this style you have, and it could work, you know. I think that's such a, a great way to think about it. And it's hard, too, because we do base so much of where we want to grow on what other people think we need to grow to. And I wonder how we can get better at sitting with our, with ourselves and reflecting on our days. I always loved that statement from Steve Jobs, where he said that every couple of days, I would look in the mirror and ask myself

• 27:59Jay Shetty?

  or reflect on if this was the life I wanted to live. Am I doing with my day what I'd want to do? And if it wasn't, then I knew I needed to make a change. And that self-evaluation, I think, is such an important... Need because at the same time as listening to others, you need both. It's not an either or. How have, how have you done the self evaluation part as well from, from going to someone who was scared of giving talks to being, you know, one of Ted's most prolific popular speakers of all time to obviously now, you know, traveling, book tours, events, everything else. How do you self evaluate now as you were then?

• 28:33Adam Grant?

  That's definitely been a evolution over the years. I think probably the most helpful thing that I learned came from another area where I struggled a lot earlier and probably based on my initial lack of talent should have quit, which was, which was springboard diving.

• 28:47Jay Shetty?

  So. Springboard diving, right?

• 28:50Adam Grant?

  Yeah. I basically ended up diving because I didn't make the middle school basketball team or the high school soccer team. And I saw a lifeguard diving at a pool one day and was just mesmerized. I want to learn how to do that. Unfortunately, I walked like Frankenstein. I couldn't touch my toes without bending my knees. I could hardly jump, very little explosive power or grace. Not, not cut out to be a diver. I was really fortunate to have a coach who, who saw more potential in me than I saw in myself and, and said to me on day one, I will never cut a diver who wants to be here. And, you know, I'll put in as much as, as you want and as much as you put in. And one of the things I really struggled with was knowing when a dive was good and when it was improving.

• 29:32Adam Grant?

  I felt like I needed to always aim for perfect tens. And Eric Best, my coach, one day sat me down and he said, you know, there's no such thing as a perfect ten. Wait, have the, have the Olympic announcers been lying to me? What, what do you mean? The whole point is a, of a tennis perfection? That's the appeal of this sport. And he's like, nope. If you look at the rulebook, a tennis for excellence. So even a dive that gets a quote unquote, perfect score is flawed.

• 29:57Jay Shetty?

  Wow.

• 29:58Adam Grant?

  So then what we started doing was we set targets for each dive. And he said, okay, you know, basic dive, like a back dive, we're going to aim for sixes. And I think that's within your range right now. And then we would level that up over time. As I started to learn harder dives, I remember when I was doing a two and a half somersaults with a full twist, it's like, let's just make the dive. If you don't fail it, if you don't do it for zeros, that'll count. And then, you know, we're aiming for fours. And so we have dive specific goals. What I've done with that sort of post diving career is realized I never had somebody like this in my life. I need a judge, not just a coach. So what I will do is I'll ask people, give me a zero to 10. How did that go? And it's very rare for people to say 10.

• 30:42Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, of course, yeah.

• 30:43Adam Grant?

  So then, you know, whatever they say, whether they give me a three and a half or a six, I just want to know, how can I get closer to 10? That's where I'm really trying to use other people's reactions as a mirror. From there, I'll ask for suggestions. But to your point, I need to make sure I'm also proud of my own progress and I'm focusing on my own principles. And so the last analysis I do after I get the judges' ratings and the advice from anybody who's willing to coach me is to say, okay, let me go back to the version of me that set this goal in the first place. Would that version of me be proud? And if the answer is no, I don't care what score I got.

• 31:20Jay Shetty?

  Yeah.

• 31:20Adam Grant?

  How do you navigate this?

• 31:22Jay Shetty?

  I'd say that I've definitely got it wrong before as well. Like, I've definitely made mistakes in that where, I think when I first started out, I kind of kept things very secret and I kept things very quiet. So I had started working on creating some content online. And for everyone who doesn't know, I'd been making content offline for 10 years before that, speaking to small groups of five to 10 people, colleges, after-school clubs, universities, things like that. And my parents forced me to go to public speaking and drama school when I was 11 years old. So I started learning public speaking because I was a shy kid. I have a very similar public speaking story to you when I was 11 years old.

• 32:04Jay Shetty?

  So I wasn't born with a skill, it was something that was harnessed and developed.

• 32:09Adam Grant?

  Except for the accent.

• 32:10Jay Shetty?

  Except for the accent which I was born with, yes, I can't do anything about that. And funnily enough, and I always like to clarify this, when I see TED speakers with American accents, I prefer it.

• 32:18Adam Grant?

  No.

• 32:19Jay Shetty?

  Yes, because to me, hearing from an authority in America, from like, you know, Wharton or Harvard or, you know,

• 32:26Adam Grant?

  No!

• 32:26Jay Shetty?

  It has magic.

• 32:27Adam Grant?

  No, this is like wanting the Beatles to sing with American accents.

• 32:32Jay Shetty?

  No, that's different.

• 32:33Adam Grant?

  That's terrible. No, no, British people always sound smarter, we know this, go on.

• 32:36Jay Shetty?

  I feel the opposite way, honestly, truth.

• 32:38Adam Grant?

  Wow.

• 32:41Jay Shetty?

  My wife Radhi's cookbook is launching on February 27th. It's called Joyful and will help you cook plant-based dishes effortlessly. I'm so excited for her recipes to be in your hands so you can make them in your home for the people you love the most. And it would mean the world to me if you go to J O Y F U L L book dot com to preorder now for an exclusive video and a daily wellness guide for free made by Radhi. Again, that's Joyful book dot com. J O Y F U L L book dot com. And you get your free daily wellness guide made by Radhi. So I developed a skill that I didn't know what I had use for.

• 33:24Jay Shetty?

  When I met the monks and studied the Gita and Eastern wisdom, I was like, oh, wow. I have a skill set that was ready to be used for this when I'd never used it. I never used public speaking or drama before that for anything meaningful for me at least. And then I'd done that for 10 years and then I made my first piece of content online. So, but I made it in quiet because it's some of these things that you talk about here. And I'm pointing these out because we can go back to it after I answer your question. I was scared of looking stupid. I was, you talk about making more mistakes, theory versus reality in the book. This is page 40. And you talk about looking stupid, feeling shame, being laughed at and experiencing discomfort.

• 34:04Jay Shetty?

  I was scared of all of those things because now it was going beyond my community of people, like five to 10 people who used to come and hear me speak. I had no idea what the online world would bring. I had never done that before. I didn't have any friends who'd ever created any online content. So I couldn't check in with someone. I didn't have a coach. And so I was kind of doing it in quiet. And I think what was beautiful about that is I got to really construct my own voice that was authentic to who I was and was just genuine to who I was. So my earliest videos are half spoken, half spoken word because I loved rap music growing up. So there's, you'll hear lazy rhymes, you'll hear words that cascade together and it's inspired by what I loved as a teenager.

• 34:47Jay Shetty?

  The visuals were, I've always been into art and design. And so that was very easy for me. I love aesthetics. I love visuals. I love feelings and experiences. So I edited all my own videos. Granted, the editing was sloppy because of cuts and sound, which I didn't know well. But it was still what was natural to me. And then when I put out my first piece of video, the first people to react were the people I knew and they were all like, Jay, you talk too fast, the music's too loud. Whoa, we don't think this point is that great. And it was all negative feedback. And I kept going because I was getting some joy from it. So in the beginning, it was that way. And I think I've tried to hold on to that as much as possible because as the scale grew, the plethora of negativity or criticism or judgment got louder as well.

• 35:31Jay Shetty?

  And I started to look at it more seriously because now you're worried about perception and image and how you think people view you and whether people see your truth or they don't. And you can feel defensive. And I think where I've got to now is I still get affected by it. I'm so not beyond getting affected by negative comments or challenging comments or criticisms because my monk training has left me vulnerable at some points because I have created a space in which to always allow advice to come in because that's seen as

• 36:05Adam Grant?

  You're so open.

• 36:05Jay Shetty?

  That's seen as a mark of wanting to improve and wanting to be better. And I've had to learn to balance that with also knowing my intention. So what I've accepted is that the only thing I can control is my intention being aligned and pure to what I believe. Not pure like in a godly way. I mean, pure in what I believe. But the way my action is received will come with advice, feedback and criticism. And all I can keep doing is keep refining my intention and hope that that will channel the effective communication externally. And no matter how perfect ten it is, it will never be perfect. And therefore there will always be criticism,

• 36:49Jay Shetty?

  no matter how phenomenal an idea it is or whatever it may be. So that's me meandering around your question too. That's how I'm dealing with it. I don't think that's a solution or a solve. It's how I'm mentally kind of constructing bridges and walkways to navigate how stressful it is.

• 37:05Adam Grant?

  I think it makes a lot of sense. It also leaves me wondering, like, is there a Jay Shetty rap tour coming?

• 37:12Adam Grant?

  But, but all kidding aside, although I think there would be an audience for that. I think one of the things that that you're making me think about is there's a spectrum of, you know, on one hand, we have the monk ideal of either I'm open to everything, or I'm not going to live in fear of social disapproval.

• 37:33Jay Shetty?

  Correct.

• 37:34Adam Grant?

  On the other, and I guess we have the monkey reaction, just like we are, we are social primates and anything that could lose status could get us excluded. And this is really problematic. I don't think either is really realistic for, for us as humans. I think we're always going to care about what other people think. And I think my goal is to say, I want to care enough about other people's reactions to learn from them, but not so much that I feel pressured to conform to them.

• 38:01Jay Shetty?

  It's powerful. Wow.

• 38:02Adam Grant?

  The way that I've tried to get to that is to say, well, I'm always going to be disappointing somebody, so let me decide whose opinions actually matter to me. And then include myself in that group and say, it's better to let down a bunch of strangers or a bunch of people whose standards are not the same as mine, or whose taste doesn't match mine than it is to let down the people I care about and myself too.

• 38:26Jay Shetty?

  What you inspired for me also with that conformity idea is how I'm willing to be open enough to improve, but not see something as a reflection of my identity. And I think that's where it's, we all struggle, where it's like when someone says, when someone laughs at you, you feel like they're laughing at you, not at that particular event and moment and day or evening or improv or whatever it was, you feel you are someone who should feel shameful as opposed to that was a moment where I made a mistake. And I think that's where I think you struggle when you hear feedback or advice that you start attaching to your identity.

• 39:09Adam Grant?

  I think that's, it's a huge problem. And I think one of the most reassuring bodies of research that I guess speaks to this from the book is, is the overblown implications effect. The idea that when people see you make a mistake. They don't actually attribute that to your incompetence or your lack of character like you think they do. So you know, you, you watch somebody, um, you know, take a really crappy photo and their thumb is in the frame and you don't immediately think that person is incapable of being a decent photographer. Like that was a bad photo, right? It was literally a bad snapshot. Um, and it's a snapshot of a bad snapshot. So it's a meta bad snapshot. You know, I think somebody, you know, is, is trying to cook and they, they burn whatever's in the oven. You don't immediately think they're

• 39:54Adam Grant?

  a bad cook. You think, oh, they, they got distracted or they, you know, didn't have the right recipe or this is the first time they're trying that. And I think we're really good at recognizing that in others. We, we, we don't sort of leap to conclusions that they're inescapably, hopelessly flawed and that their failing makes them a failure. But I think in our own self-talk and our self-assessment, um, we do so much of that. Like I screwed this up. I am a screw up and everyone else is going to know it.

• 40:25Jay Shetty?

  Yeah. So true. And it's, and it gets, it gets really dark. It gets really, really dark. I'm so glad we went there. And thank you for asking me to reflect on that too, because it's, I'm always trying to find better pathways mentally to, to deal with these things that you have to navigate on a daily basis.

• 40:40Adam Grant?

  We, I think we all are, and I don't think you need to thank me for wanting to learn.

• 40:45Jay Shetty?

  Well, let's talk about that. I love this diagram that you put in the book about how we think learning happens versus how it actually happens. And I think that idea of so how we think learning happens, I'll explain that and then you can explain that how learning happens from your words. Uh, Adam shows in the book, this diagram that says knowledge leads to comfort, leads to practice, leads to progress, which is how we think learning happens. And I think so many of our beliefs around learning do come from school and do come from, even for me, learning happens in that I learned something. Now I know it fully and now that rule stands forever. And I think modern day learning isn't that at all. Like I don't know any rules that have completely stood forever.

• 41:27Jay Shetty?

  And apart from obviously certain mathematical or scientific rules, of course, but most- Most rules in business, most rules in marketing, most rules in sales, most rules in even a relationship, they they change, they they mold, they they grow. And so I think that fixed approach is hard to shake because you were always told at the end of it, well, you got the wrong answer. So it was always about the answer and it was always about, well, if you knew the rule, you would have got the right answer. And today we feel I'm not getting the right answer, so I must not know the right rule. But that we're not finding that. So how everyone reflect on that and then guide us through the the principle.

• 42:03Adam Grant?

  You're right, that we have a kind of had this ideal in our heads that I'm going to reach mastery and then I'm done.

• 42:10Jay Shetty?

  Yes.

• 42:11Adam Grant?

  It's a version of what Tal Ben Shihara has called the arrival fallacy. That, you know, I'll hit my destination and then everything will have changed. And the reality is when you reach mastery, you don't freeze at that moment. You have to keep evolving your knowledge and skills as the world around you evolves. And I think what that leads a lot of people to do is to spend far too much time trying to get to the point of mastery before they ever really try something. You know, from the book, I saw this really clearly in examples of language learners. I mean, how many people do you know that just concluded in high school that they're incapable of mastering a foreign language? You?

• 42:46Jay Shetty?

  Yeah.

• 42:47Adam Grant?

  What what languages did you take?

• 42:48Jay Shetty?

  So we did French and German from year seven, so eleven years old till like fourteen. And if we did well at those, I got to do Russian. So I actually studied Russian for a year and I could read, write and speak for a whole year. It was really great learning and then I never got to practice any of those languages. And so they all fell away. And then when I went, by the time I went to college, I had already lost touch with all of them. So French, German and Russian were the ones I studied the most.

• 43:14Adam Grant?

  Yeah. And so it's it sounds like you actually did experience some progress, but then it didn't stick and you weren't able to keep it up.

• 43:20Jay Shetty?

  Yes, exactly.

• 43:22Adam Grant?

  Yeah. So I I think that's pretty common. I think maybe even more common is the like, I don't have the genes for this. Like I'm missing the language, the foreign language gene, or I like I miss my critical window. If only I had, you know, if my parents had raised me bilingual, or if I had started an immersion when I was four, everything would be different. I met two amazing language learners when I was when I was doing research for the book, Sarah Maria Hasbun and Benny Lewis. And they both concluded after high school that they were incapable of learning a foreign language. Sarah Maria could not make it through Spanish and her father speaks fluent Spanish. Benny, I think, just had a disastrous experience with German, also with Irish.

• 44:06Adam Grant?

  And what's amazing about the two of them is that combined, they can speak a dozen languages fluently today.

• 44:11Jay Shetty?

  Wow.

• 44:12Adam Grant?

  A dozen languages fluently, conversationally even more. So they're polyglots. They're people who not only talk, but think in multiple languages. They're effectively self-taught, and they've picked it all up in their twenties, thirties, and beyond.

• 44:26Jay Shetty?

  It's incredible.

• 44:27Adam Grant?

  So what I wanted to know is what can we learn from them, not just about language learning, but about any kind of learning, because they are professional learners. And my biggest takeaway from talking to them and also juxtaposing what they do with the evidence is that language classes are broken in a lot of schools. Because basically what happens is you learn a vocabulary and a bunch of rules of grammar, and then you're taught to more or less just write it down. And very few schools do extensive practice in speaking, which means that you never learn to actually talk in the language, which means you're not using the language. And you don't practice enough to really master it. What Sarah Maria and Benny recommend is start speaking from day one. Literally the first day you're picking

• 45:11Adam Grant?

  up a language, you start talking in it. And what will happen is you do that, is you're going to make lots of mistakes. But through using it, you're going to start to internalize it. And in fact, one of the things we know from the research is, when you make a mistake, you're more likely to remember the correct answer, because it really sticks. You're like, oh, wait, I screwed that up last time. Let me now change it. So I think the broader lesson here is that, to go all the way back to the diagram, I think a lot of people want to wait to use their knowledge until they've acquired it.

• 45:37Jay Shetty?

  Oh, wow.

• 45:38Adam Grant?

  It's not how learning happens. The way learning happens is, you've got to use your knowledge as you're acquiring it. And that's how you build it. And that's a virtuous cycle.

• 45:46Jay Shetty?

  Oh, my God. That, you know, it's so interesting. I don't think I've ever heard that put that way. I feel like I've just, and it's resonated so strongly with me, because as soon as I met Gorongadas, who's the monk that I spent time with, as soon as I met him, I had no qualification, but I went back to college and started telling everyone about what I'd learned. And then I'd go back and spend time with him and go learn more and then come back and just teach whatever I'd learned. And there was no, I didn't have any qualification to teach. I didn't, I didn't understand it fully, but it was like, it was so much more fun that way. And I allowed myself, I gave myself the permission to say, I'm just going to teach what I learned. I'm going to teach what I learned up until now. I don't have to speak beyond my level of

• 46:27Jay Shetty?

  realization or reflection, but, but I'm learning this. I'm fascinated by it. Let me share it.

• 46:32Adam Grant?

  Yeah. I mean, that's, that's a higher level version of, of learning by doing. It's learning by teaching.

• 46:36Jay Shetty?

  Yeah.

• 46:37Adam Grant?

  And so often people like to say, well, those who can't do, teach. And I would, I would edit that and say, no, those who can't do can learn by teaching. Because exactly as you found, uh, when you explain something to someone else, you remember it better. And you also understand it better. And I, I actually think anything you want to learn, um, a lot of people are trying to figure out, what is generative AI? You could, you could go and take a class in it. You could go tinker with it. I would say, go teach a class in it. Or get a group of people together who are also interested in learning it. And each of you take a module to teach to the rest of the group. And that's when you're really going to internalize it and start to master it.

• 47:19Jay Shetty?

  Yeah. I love that. I mean, I'll, I'll butcher it now, trying to say it as well as you did, but.

• 47:24Adam Grant?

  Yeah. Cause you always hurt for eloquence.

• 47:27Jay Shetty?

  No, no, but that idea you put so wonderful.

• 47:29Adam Grant?

  Jay Shetty, bad talker is a, is a common, I, I, that's actually a meme. I don't know if, if it's, if it's made it on your radar, but like, this guy's incoherent. We never understand a word he says. He's just babbling constantly.

• 47:40Jay Shetty?

  No, but that particular statement, I, I, I'd honest, I love that idea of how we're always waiting till we've mastered something till the end of something to feel like we can play, share, do. And, and there's a, so there's a few.

• 47:52Adam Grant?

  That is well put. Yeah. That's exactly right. I'm like, I'm trying to get to the end of the line.

• 47:57Jay Shetty?

  Yeah.

• 47:57Adam Grant?

  And then I'm like, I will have made it. And now I can demo it. And now I can teach it.

• 48:02Jay Shetty?

  Yeah. And, and I think that making something public.

• 48:07Jay Shetty?

  Is so horrifying because the reason why we struggle to go teach a class on AI is because we're scared we're going to be asked questions that we don't know the answer to. And actually, you're spot on. That is exactly the best way to learn because you'll be able to say to all those people, hey, I don't know, but I'll find out for next time, or I'll email you the answer, whatever it may be. And I find that, but we haven't created space for it to be okay to not know.

• 48:34Adam Grant?

  No, I think that's right. And there's actually some work on this in psychology, which shows that when an expert expresses uncertainty, they actually end up becoming more believable. In part because people are surprised and then they listen more carefully and realize, wow, this person does know what they're talking about. I don't think that permission should only be granted to experts.

• 48:53Jay Shetty?

  Correct.

• 48:53Adam Grant?

  I think, in fact, the less you know, the quicker you should be to say, I have no idea. And it's really ironic that only the people who know the most often get to the point of feeling secure in that knowledge to be able to say, yeah, I have no clue, but let me, let me do some research on that and come back to you.

• 49:08Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 49:09Adam Grant?

  And I, I mean, I felt this as a teacher. I felt like, especially in the, you know, the major public speaking anxiety days, early career, I felt like I had to be able to regurgitate a study for every single question that came up.

• 49:21Jay Shetty?

  I can imagine, yeah.

• 49:22Adam Grant?

  Like, I thought that was my job. And I was really missing out on the joy that, that students get and also that I get of saying, I've never seen anyone explore that before. I think that would make a great dissertation. Have you ever thought about coming to a PhD program?

• 49:35Jay Shetty?

  Totally.

• 49:35Adam Grant?

  And I don't know, I think part of the joy of learning is that every answer raises at least nine new questions.

• 49:40Jay Shetty?

  Yeah.

• 49:41Adam Grant?

  And I think that we close that off when, when we expect people to always have an answer.

• 49:46Jay Shetty?

  Yeah. You've mentioned a few times that, and even in your diving example, the need for a coach. You know, I feel like therapy culture has, and it's still slowly penetrating. Like we, I think if you're in the circle, you think of it as like really accessible and easy and it's a big deal.

• 50:02Adam Grant?

  And not stigmatized.

• 50:03Jay Shetty?

  Correct. And the truth is, it isn't across the board. It's getting there. It's slowly becoming de-stigmatized. I think the idea of finding a coach is, is so, unless you're an athlete, it seems so far as an idea or as a thought process of how you approach things. I know there are executive coaches that have definitely kind of got into the zeitgeist, but still finding a coach is quite an alien approach. I find that people have their stigma there, there's confusion there, there's a lack of understanding of what is a coach. How have you thought about it, seeing as you've mentioned it a bunch of times in the book and today?

• 50:36Adam Grant?

  Well, I think, I think we're actually comfortable with it in certain domains, right? So no one would ever hesitate to say, all right, I want my kid to learn the piano. They need a piano teacher. So I think when it comes to hobbies and skills early in life, everybody knows they need a coach to learn the basics and then move toward intermediate and then hopefully figure out if this is something they want to pursue further. I think where it starts to become a little uncomfortable is when you're an adult and you think that you should be able to teach yourself everything, or you want to be self-reliant, not dependent on someone else. And I think that's, that's a broken mental model of a coach. A coach is actually, I think a good coach is trying to work him or herself out of a job

• 51:20Adam Grant?

  and say, obviously, I'm going to give you lots of advice and I'm going to try to help you improve. But at some point, you should internalize the way that I look at your performance, the way that I think about helping you make progress, to the degree that you can, you could figure out, what would I say like after this and then apply that advice? And at that point, you're probably ready for a new coach who has different knowledge and skills to share with you. And I think that's where I would start is I would say, coaches are all around us, you know, going back to the asking for advice idea, right? You ask people for advice, you start to turn them into your coaches. And there's no reason why you can't formalize this. A lot of, and you're familiar with this, a lot of writers have writing groups where somebody is working on a manuscript and then, you know, four or five other writers are basically coaching them and trying to help them improve it.

• 52:03Adam Grant?

  I don't think that should be limited to, you know, it has to be my job or it has to be the hobby I'm trying to improve at. I think anything you want to, you want to get better at, you could just ask for somebody to give you informal coaching and then you learn really quickly. Is this person's perspective helpful to me in this domain?

• 52:19Jay Shetty?

  Absolutely, absolutely. Yeah.

• 52:20Adam Grant?

  Do you have a coach?

• 52:21Jay Shetty?

  I, I'm looking for one right now, funnily enough. That's why I asked you.

• 52:24Adam Grant?

  On what?

• 52:25Jay Shetty?

  I think for me at the moment.

• 52:26Adam Grant?

  Now we know why you were asking, how do I figure out what to grow on?

• 52:29Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, exactly. And I think there's that feeling for me about, I'd say, if I really worded it accurately and clearly, it would be.

• 52:40Jay Shetty?

  I'm reintegrating and re-renewing and refining my values because my life has changed so drastically. And so there were times when I felt like I had kept up with the pace of my external growth. And then all of a sudden, I was like, oh, no, this is way bigger than I thought it was. And this is so different from how I lived just 10 to 15 years ago. And I want to realign and reconnect with that, if that makes sense. It does. And so I think that is something which I've given myself personal time to do regularly,

• 53:21Jay Shetty?

  to refine, to realign, to reconnect, but to do it with someone else who can see beyond and and and maybe has had experience of two very opposite worlds and has has traversed those paths may be really helpful. And so I think that's that's what I would be looking for. And so coaching would be the right modality. This episode is brought to you by Mazda. The best habits are the ones we hardly notice, the ones that quietly shape the way we move through life, giving us the confidence to focus on what really matters. That's Mazda's approach to safety. Every Mazda is designed with proactive safety features that help keep you more aware, more connected and more engaged with your drive. So you can stay present behind the wheel. That commitment

• 54:02Jay Shetty?

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• 54:32Jay Shetty?

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• 55:15Jay Shetty?

  That's indeed.com/podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Need to hire? This is a job for Indeed sponsored jobs. This episode is brought to you by Orange Theory Fitness. One of the best investments you can make is in your own strength. The choices you make today can help shape how you feel for years to come. Orange Theory Fitness provides a one hour workout to build strength, burn fat, and build muscle with an expert coach guiding you every step of the way. Head to orangetheory.com/onpurpose to learn more and get your first class free. Orange Theory Fitness, helping people live longer, more vibrant lives. Terms and conditions apply. See webpage in studio for details.

• 55:56Adam Grant?

  I think it could be. I think it's interesting. There are two levels of that that I think could be fruitful. The first one is exactly the way you framed it, which is, let me take a step back and figure out what my values are and how my core principles in life have changed, should change moving forward.

• 56:13Jay Shetty?

  That's what it is, yeah.

• 56:14Adam Grant?

  But I think the other layer of it is saying, maybe the values are the same, but your opportunity set has evolved. So what does it mean to live your values now, given those opportunities?

• 56:23Jay Shetty?

  Correct, absolutely, absolutely. There we go.

• 56:26Adam Grant?

  I've got a few candidates for you. I'll suggest them offline.

• 56:28Jay Shetty?

  Please, I'd love, I genuinely love that. Yeah, no, and that's, that's definitely been where my head's been at, probably the most, most recently. And it's, and again, I usually sit with something like this and let it simmer and let it clarify. And it's nice in a form like this to be able to vocalize it in an articulate way. And that's another beautiful thing about talking to someone else about it. If you keep going around it in your own head, chances are you won't say it as articulately as you would say to someone else because you want it to make sense to them.

• 56:55Adam Grant?

  That's one of my favorite things about conversation. There was a biographer once, it was E M Forster's biographer. She used this beautiful phrase called inverse charisma, which was the idea, she said Forster had this ability to ask you such insightful questions with such sincere interest that he brought out a more insightful, more charming version of yourself than existed. I'm like, that's part of what a good coach is. I actually think great coaches are filled with inverse charisma. They're not giving the rousing halftime speech all the time, or the pep talk. They're not always necessarily kicking you in the butt

• 57:35Adam Grant?

  to get you to work harder or persist longer. I think what they're doing is posing challenges and ideas for you that bring out a better version of you.

• 57:46Jay Shetty?

  Yes, yes, I couldn't agree more. And I think that is what hidden potential is. I mean, it's, someone is not planting potential. It's not manufactured potential. It's not inception potential. It's hidden potential. It's there and someone's helping ask the question so you can keep revealing and peeling away the layers. And I think that is exactly what a good coach does. A good coach is not telling you who you are, or telling you the answer, or telling you who you could be. It's allowing you to discover that for yourself, which is needed for someone else to do that, because otherwise you're just stuck in your head saying, I'm not that. I remember I had a coach years ago, when I'd left the monastery, I was working at Accenture in London, and he'd always say to me, you're an entrepreneur. Just from watching

• 58:28Jay Shetty?

  you, I can observe that you're an entrepreneur. And I'd be like, no, I'm not an entrepreneur. I don't want to be an entrepreneur. And I said, I would fight and debate that with him. I would give him all the reasons. And he said, Jay, one day you'll see. And now I look back and I think, wow, I was, that is exactly who I was, not in the, in the way that it may be seen in the world, but the autonomy, the wanting of being artistic, being a leader, wanting to create, wanting to produce without, with freedom and without restraint, like all of that quality of an entrepreneur. I think language is so limiting, too.

• 59:00Adam Grant?

  It is.

• 59:00Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, right?

• 59:01Adam Grant?

  Yeah, you're right. If you, if you had defined entrepreneurship back then as, as being someone who sees opportunities, and then creates a vision, and then Builds around that without giving up a ton of freedom. Like, yeah, of course, that's who I am. And instead, you're like, I gotta be.

• 59:16Jay Shetty?

  I don't want to run a startup. Like, that's, that's what in my head, I was like, I don't want to manage people. Like, I don't, you know?

• 59:21Adam Grant?

  Yeah, I gotta be pitching a scrub daddy on Shark Tank.

• 59:24Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's what you, yeah, I don't want to start a business. Like, that's not, you know, that's not what I want to do with my life. And so, yeah, it's fascinating how language limits us. And I was, I was gonna ask you that about that. Like, how do you feel comfortable? And this is chapter three of your book, The Imperfectionist's Finding the Sweet Spot Between Flawed and Flawless. How do you allow yourself to release anything? When you know it's going to be flawed and imperfect? Because I think that that's the challenge, right? With the book especially, with social media, less so. It's, it's short form and short term. So there's, it's easier to get to what you want to get to. But with a book, with a talk, with a, obviously, as a professor, I mean, everything you're teaching,

• 1:00:07Jay Shetty?

  you know, people are gonna practice it for years, potentially. How do you feel comfortable putting something out that's imperfect and incomplete?

• 1:00:15Adam Grant?

  This is a little embarrassing, but I have to say, so I, after writing the book, I said, all right, I want to, I want to use some of the psychometric tools that we were trained in to create a fun quiz for people to identify what their greatest character strength is among those, and then also an area for growth. So I finished the quiz, I sent it out to a bunch of people to pilot it. And then it was time for me to take it. And after writing this whole chapter about what I've learned about being an imperfectionist, my lowest score was imperfectionism. So I am not fully recovered from perfectionism. And it's sometimes hard for me to release things. I think what's helped me is a couple of things. One, the calibration of saying, okay, if it's something as big as a book, I mean, I'm aiming for a nine.

• 1:01:01Adam Grant?

  Like, this, I'm gonna pour a lot of time into it. Hopefully, a lot of people are gonna engage with it. And so I really want it to be as good as I'm capable of doing at that moment in my life. If it's a social media post, like I'm content with a six and some people might get angry at me. Some people might misunderstand me. I'm definitely going to learn something and it's better to put out a bunch of potential sixes and hit some eights than to post once a year. As somebody who cares a lot about both sharing knowledge and learning from other people's reactions to those, you know, those posts. I think that's been really helpful. And I guess what I've realized through that is if you never put anything out into the world, then you're actually limiting your contribution.

• 1:01:42Adam Grant?

  And I think when psychologists study regret, it's pretty clear that in the short run, people are afraid of failing, but in the long run, they're more afraid of failing to try. And that's, that's kind of where I've, I've come down is I'd, I'd rather fail than fail to try at all.

• 1:01:57Jay Shetty?

  It's really fascinating. You said something there which, which I really resonate with is this idea that part of the learning is in the sharing and seeing reactions. And I think we underestimate, like I could honestly sit down and think I know everything about a subject and keep quizzing myself and think I know everything. But the moment I share it with someone else and they ask a question, I'll be like, oh, I should have been, you know, that, that was missing. I didn't think of that. And so sharing it in some form, even if it's not the complete form, but sharing a talk based on one of the chapters or sharing, I often do that with podcasts. Like when I have an idea, I'm like, oh, let me just record a podcast episode about that and see what people have to think about it. And it's a great way of just experimenting and testing and seeing what part of it I didn't consider.

• 1:02:40Adam Grant?

  Yes.

• 1:02:40Jay Shetty?

  Because someone will consider it and we don't, we don't see that as part of the growth process. We see it as separate. We see it as I'm going to make something complete. People are going to have exactly the reaction I want to it and that will be the success of it.

• 1:02:53Adam Grant?

  Yeah, I think that's right. I think the medium also matters. So podcasting is a much more forgiving medium, I think than book writing.

• 1:03:00Jay Shetty?

  A hundred percent.

• 1:03:01Adam Grant?

  Because nobody expects you to have said everything exactly right in the moment. Whereas

• 1:03:05Jay Shetty?

  A book.

• 1:03:06Adam Grant?

  You say something wrong in a book. It's like, well, shouldn't you have done your research? Why didn't you fact check that? One of the things I see a lot of people hold back on when it comes to sharing anything they've created is so many people limit themselves by saying, I don't want to self promote.

• 1:03:23Jay Shetty?

  I'm so glad we're going here. Let's go there.

• 1:03:25Adam Grant?

  This is not about me. I'm like, good. Because there is a huge difference between self-promotion and idea promotion. Promoting yourself is saying, "Look at me. Look at how great I am. I'm special." You're sharing the awards you've won. You're posting a lot of selfies. You're in the spotlight. I think idea promotion is really different, which is to say, "I made something I'm proud of. I hope it's valuable to you. I hope you get some joy out of it." If you don't put that out in the world, you're depriving people of benefiting from what you poured your heart into. And that, to me, seems like a mistake.

• 1:03:59Jay Shetty?

  Yeah. Did you always feel like that? It was something you had to wrap your head around? Because that's something I definitely had to wrap my head around. So I'm intrigued.

• 1:04:06Adam Grant?

  No.

• 1:04:06Jay Shetty?

  Because as a professor, I just don't imagine putting a book out and promoting it. Like, that doesn't come naturally. Like, that doesn't feel like...

• 1:04:12Adam Grant?

  Not at all.

• 1:04:13Jay Shetty?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:13Adam Grant?

  No, I remember a few weeks after I got tenure, a colleague wrote and said, "Hey, I'm thinking about writing a book about motivation. You've done a lot of research in this area. Do you want to co-author it?" Wow! I love, I loved working with this collaborator. Huge admirer of his work. This is a great honor. And I've always wanted to, to figure out if there's a way I could share my ideas more broadly than just with the students I happen to meet in the classroom. I immediately, I had a lab meeting later that day with a group of undergraduates, and I told them I was going to do this. And they had a mutiny. Like, "No, you cannot. You cannot write a book about somebody else's ideas. You need to write your own book." I was like, "Nope, can't do it. I cannot do that. This is like, I don't feel comfortable doing it. I hardly even teach my own research in the classroom.

• 1:04:58Adam Grant?

  I want to, I want to share with you the knowledge that I've found most useful. Like, I don't think my research is like, the most important thing for me to teach you." And they pushed back really hard. And they said, "Look, you have a responsibility, if you've invested a lot of your own time and energy and, you know, in the work that you do, to share that more broadly and get it out there and see what people think of it." And they basically held me hostage. They said, "You're not leaving this lab meeting until you agree you will write your own book before you help somebody else do theirs." And eventually, they logic bullied me into, into agreeing.

• 1:05:36Adam Grant?

  And I kind of came around and said, okay, this is what we do. We don't create knowledge for it to collect us in academic journals, or for it to only be available to students who are lucky enough to get into an Ivy League school. Like, that's not right. I believe in democratizing knowledge. So yeah, I'm gonna do this. Book came out. A little bit beforehand, I sent an email to my network just saying, hey, you know, I wrote this book. If you find it interesting or useful, would be really grateful if you would help spread the word. The responses were so lovely. But I got one email that kind of crushed me in the moment. And it was from an academic colleague who said, Dear Adam, love the book,

• 1:06:15Adam Grant?

  hate the self-promotion. This was my fear. And I thought about it, and I ruminated about it. And then it hit me. This is not self-promotion. It's idea promotion. This is about the knowledge contained in the book. I went out of my way to cite a bunch of, you know, a long list of researchers. Later, I was told too many. I was trying to synthesize a body of knowledge and get it out there. And we have to be, to a certain degree, in the spotlight in order to promote our work. And I think, you know, people want to connect to the author, the narrator. And so there's a, I think, an amount of self-disclosure that's required. But self-promotion, that does not have to happen. And, and I looked at the book, and I said, okay, the main things I've

• 1:06:59Adam Grant?

  shared about myself are mistakes I made, times I failed, and what I learned from those. So I feel okay saying this was idea promotion, not self-promotion. And that's, for me, the litmus test ever since. So that, I guess that's how I landed at that distinction.

• 1:07:12Jay Shetty?

  It's such an interesting thing for any artist, any creative, any academic, any, any person who feels that they've come across something worth sharing. And that's why I've always been a fan of anyone who has anything worth sharing, because there are so many, I think, isn't Ted's, what's Ted's tagline? Or at one point, ideas worth spreading? Ideas worth spreading?

• 1:07:33Adam Grant?

  I like sharing better. I don't want to assume that every idea should be spread, but share it with someone, and let's find out.

• 1:07:39Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, sharing. And I think we all have ideas worth sharing. We have insights worth sharing of some kind. And especially if you're an artist, creator, academic. And I think for me, it was, it was very, very similar journey to yours. And it's so interesting to hear that academic circles and spiritual circles can often have the same habits of behavior. And for me, when I wrote Think Like a Monk, which was my first book, The biggest thing I was trying to do and what I learned in my second book, which if I would have known in my first book, I would have done this, is kind of explain this thought process where I tried to do it intuitively in how I shared it as opposed to explicitly spelled it out. Whereas now I'm much better at explicitly spelling out what I'm doing.

• 1:08:23Jay Shetty?

  I did that to honor all monk traditions. So I studied lots of different monk traditions. I spoke to lots of different monks and so it wasn't just the tradition I studied in. So that was very important to me because I believe that there were traditions beyond mine that would have values to share and important messages to share. The other thing that I tried to do in the book was I definitely have always wanted to make ancient wisdom accessible, practical and relevant. That has always been my mission because I'm trying to speak to the 18-year-old kid that I was in London before I got into spirituality and meditation and mindfulness. I'm not trying to speak to the person I am now or someone who's already learned a ton.

• 1:09:06Jay Shetty?

  And so to me, to make it simple and accessible and relevant was my biggest goal and always has been. And that can often come with the critique of you're watering it down, you're oversimplifying it. This isn't the truth in the way it should be shared. And the other thing was similar to you, and I love that you said that too. I never shared an enlightened experience in the book. All the experiences and mistakes there when meditation went wrong, there me being envious, there me judging people, there me wanting to get what the monks have without having done the work. Like all the stories of the human experience of a kid from London who doesn't have the qualification to be where he is in this space, trying to make sense of it. And so the book was, it wasn't Think Like Me, like that was in the book.

• 1:09:51Jay Shetty?

  It was called Think Like A Monk, like I'm not a monk anymore. And I want to show us how we can think like monks but not live like monks. And I think it was really interesting to me just our, again, it comes from our preconceived notions on ideas, language, having baggage and thoughts where...

• 1:10:08Jay Shetty?

  People were just like, "Oh, but you're not a monk anymore. So how do you teach that? And this isn't your life?" And it was so interesting to me that we couldn't learn from things that, the things I'd learned and gained, as opposed to if you're not exactly that thing anymore, then you can't teach it.

• 1:10:23Adam Grant?

  I, I think there are things you could study that you don't have to share. If you were just really fascinated by painting or rare coins, you could say, "This is a personal interest of mine and it's just, it's my own curiosity." I think you and choosing to be a monk, me and choosing to be a psychologist, we chose to take a deep dive into the mind and human behavior. If we gain knowledge from that, it feels like it's selfish not to share it. Like, why would you keep that to yourself? Why should the wisdom of monks only be accessible to monks? It doesn't seem right.

• 1:10:58Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, it doesn't seem right at all. It feels like taking away. It feels selfish and, and also to honor those people. To me, the book was honoring these amazing people that have done it for their whole lives and studies of people who've meditated for 40 years. And, you know, that's not me. And, and I just found it interesting that, yeah, it's fascinating. And, and there's a great book by Austin Kleon called Show Your Work.

• 1:11:19Adam Grant?

  Yes.

• 1:11:19Jay Shetty?

  And I really like it. And I recommend that to anyone who's struggling with showing their work because it's exact, and I love the way you've differentiated in self-promotion and idea promotion. And I really hope that that stays with people who are listening and watching because if you have an idea that you believe is worth sharing and worth helping people and supporting people, please don't hold on to it. Like, please don't hide it from the world because I worry for us to only be exposed to the same three ideas that everyone's exposed to because we hide away from all these other new ones.

• 1:11:50Adam Grant?

  Sometimes I hear people hold back for another reason, which is they're afraid somebody's going to steal their idea. And Austin Kleon wrote about this in Steal Like an Artist, another book of his that I found very thought provoking. My, my response to that is, you know what? It is possible that somebody will steal your idea. Most of the time, that won't be intentional. But what, what psychologists have sometimes called kleptomnesia, where you misremember an idea as your own and forget the source. That can happen inadvertently. You hear an idea, you know, you don't necessarily track where you learned it. And then, you know, it kind of bubbles up a month later and you think you thought of it. I think that can happen. Ideas can get stolen on purpose. They can get stolen by accident.

• 1:12:33Adam Grant?

  What I always want to say to people who are afraid of their ideas getting stolen is, If you have one big idea and you're afraid of putting it out there because you think someone else is going to steal it, you don't have a lot of ideas. And people who generally succeed with ideas are people who are constantly generating ideas. And so what you should do is you should generate a whole portfolio of ideas. And then you're not identified with any one of them. You don't feel attached to just one of them and then the risk goes way down.

• 1:13:02Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, there's so many blocks that we could talk about, whether it's, and I mean, one's the ego, right? So the self-promotion is almost like an inverse ego. So it's almost like we think we're better because we're not promoting an idea. It's like we're, we're doing, right? There's, yeah, like.

• 1:13:20Adam Grant?

  That is ironic.

• 1:13:21Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, right? Like, it's like, I think I'm better because I'm not monetizing or democratizing or.

• 1:13:28Adam Grant?

  Publicizing.

• 1:13:29Jay Shetty?

  Popularizing and publicizing.

• 1:13:30Adam Grant?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 1:13:31Jay Shetty?

  Yes, yeah. Popularizing or publicizing an idea makes it better to not do that. You talk about the ego differently, but let's talk about in that category first of all. Like, it's, it's interesting how that's seen as a holier-than-thou kind of approach. And I don't think either's holier. I just think that one's compassionate. And, and to me, that's more what it is. Like, I think when someone shares an idea about an experience that I could never have, to me, that's just compassion. It's their compassion to share it with me.

• 1:14:01Adam Grant?

  I mean, there's no reason why people can't have multiple motives behind their behavior.

• 1:14:05Jay Shetty?

  Of course.

• 1:14:06Adam Grant?

  I actually think that's, I mean, almost always do.

• 1:14:08Jay Shetty?

  All of us, yeah. Me, you do, yeah.

• 1:14:09Adam Grant?

  I think it's very rare that people are conscious of all their motives or are willing to admit to all of them. But I, I actually think the most sustainable route to, to unlocking people's hidden potential is to try to align their, you know, their personal aspirations with social good. And I don't think there's anything wrong with saying, yeah, I want to promote this idea, both because I want it to help other people and because I appreciate people respecting my knowledge and considering me a credible source. Like, I actually think it would be problematic if you're like, yep. I care nothing about my own reputation whatsoever. Like, only character matters to me.

• 1:14:48Adam Grant?

  And even if people think I'm an idiot and I'm dishonest and I lack integrity, like, as long as I know I'm a good person, that's good. Like, that's just not functional in the social world. And so I think we should give people, this is another, we need to give people the space to say, yes, like, I do, I do want to be valued and appreciated for things that I think are important, and I want to add value to other people, too.

• 1:15:12Jay Shetty?

  Oh, I'm so glad you went there. Yeah, it's so important. It's so important to allow ourselves that, too. Like, yeah, do I like it when someone leaves me a nice review on the podcast or the book? Of course I do, yeah. I love it, it feels great. And do I do things because they make me feel good? Yes, I do.

• 1:15:28Adam Grant?

  Sure.

• 1:15:28Jay Shetty?

  And, and at the same time, it comes from a place of wanting to do good in the world and wanting to spread ideas that will help people and serve people and support people and hopefully help them transform their own lives. Uh, and it comes from both of those places. I want to do things that make me feel good and do good in the world. Like, I, I think that's, I don't know any other way, actually.

• 1:15:49Adam Grant?

  I don't either.

• 1:15:49Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, and I don't know how to live in a world, if I only tried to do good to others, I would automatically feel good from that anyway. But if I was only to do things that were only good for me, I don't think I'd be satisfied either.

• 1:16:00Adam Grant?

  No, I mean, you'd, you'd lack the purpose that so much of your work concentrates.

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• 1:16:34Jay Shetty?

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• 1:18:04Jay Shetty?

  What was the thing you found most surprising when writing Hidden Potential about hidden potential specifically that kind of you were like, oh, wow, I didn't, I'd never thought I'd find this.

• 1:18:13Adam Grant?

  I think the first one was, was the idea that learning character skills can be more powerful than learning cognitive skills. Assuming that you have a foundation in, you know, in, in thinking skills, um, that like learning to embrace discomfort and become more of a sponge and accept the right imperfections. Like that, that could fuel more growth than, you know, if you're an entrepreneur, like learning finance and marketing, stunning. And that you can learn those skills in your forties and fifties as opposed to thinking that those character skills are set when you're young. That, that I found liberating and encouraging. So that was a surprise. I think that maybe a bigger surprise though, just as I, I think through the insights that I picked up as I was, I was investigating.

• 1:18:55Adam Grant?

  I think I had this image of people who, you know, not just achieve greater things, but achieve the greatest things. I had this image that they just figured out how to make the daily grind. Just tolerable.

• 1:19:08Jay Shetty?

  Hmm.

• 1:19:09Adam Grant?

  I would think about Steph Curry just drilling over and over again to shoot as well as he does. I assumed that he just figured out how to not mind the monotony and the boredom and the exhaustion, and he would just power through it. And he had a superhuman ability to tolerate extreme amounts of discomfort. Lightbulb, while reading the research on deliberate practice, was like, it's not that motivating for a lot of people to just do the same activity repetitively over and over again. If you're Steph Curry, shooting is fun, like doing wind sprints and then trying to make baskets when you can hardly breathe and doing that over and over again, like not anybody's idea, like not my idea of joy. And I don't, I don't think it's Steph's either. And through the, the research I read and through spending time with, with his trainer,

• 1:19:53Adam Grant?

  who designed this set of routines that had really elevated his game, I realized that deliberate play is a huge part of practice and we don't give it enough credit. That, you know, if you're Steph, you play a game to see how many baskets you can make in a minute and a half. And then you've got a target to shoot for and you're competing against yourself or you're competing against a clock. And all of a sudden, that, that supercharges your motivation, especially in the summer when nobody's, you know, when you're not actually playing basketball games that really count. And I looked at that and thought, why do we have to turn the daily grind into such a grind? Like, yes, there are times when we all have to push ourselves, but pushing yourself day after day is not a sustainable routine. And what we want to do is try to figure out how to redesign practice and skill development

• 1:20:38Adam Grant?

  so that there are, you could break skills down into these enjoyable pieces and then make them more playful. You, you mentioned Dan Coyle. I love the Culture Code and one of my favorite ideas that he wrote about was the difference between shallow fun and deep fun.

• 1:20:51Jay Shetty?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:20:52Adam Grant?

  I think shallow fun is gamification. It's tricking people into enjoying practice even though they don't really like it because there's a carrot that's being dangled at the end. I think that deep fun is about saying, we want to actually take the process of learning itself and make it enjoyable. And so, you know, the Steph example is a great one, but it's easy to think about that in basketball. Evelyn Glennie, a percussionist, saying like, let me figure out if I could harmonize Bach on a snare drum. Like what a cool way to make learning percussion playful.

• 1:21:25Adam Grant?

  And I think that that was a big aha for me. I think that I I had come to see play as a reward for finishing my to do list and mastering a skill.

• 1:21:32Jay Shetty?

  Yeah.

• 1:21:33Adam Grant?

  And now I realize it's got to be on the to do list and it's got to be part of learning a skill.

• 1:21:37Jay Shetty?

  That resonates so strongly as well. Again, it's like, yeah, the the process has to be fun, meaningful and fulfilling in and of itself, not just a reward. Trying to think about activity that I've done that with that just felt impossible to do it with. Have you have you what was what was the thought experiment that you did there?

• 1:21:55Adam Grant?

  Well, I was I was wondering, this this had to, I I feel like monks are often misunderstood.

• 1:21:59Jay Shetty?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:22:00Adam Grant?

  As like complete denial of any earthly joy.

• 1:22:03Jay Shetty?

  Yes.

• 1:22:04Adam Grant?

  And I I don't I don't see how a human could ever function in that environment.

• 1:22:08Jay Shetty?

  No, no, no.

• 1:22:08Adam Grant?

  I guess the question is, you had to do a lot of hard stuff.

• 1:22:11Jay Shetty?

  Yeah.

• 1:22:11Adam Grant?

  As as a monk, especially I imagine in training.

• 1:22:14Jay Shetty?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:22:15Adam Grant?

  Like, how did you make that playful?

• 1:22:16Jay Shetty?

  You made it playful by laughing at yourself. Like, it was, it was, right? So I, the thing that came to mind was often we'd walk down a path and we'd be asked to find a new stone. And the goal was to find something and be really present with it and, you know, be aware of it. Its colors, its texture, its shape, everything you'd want to practice through a mindfulness practice. And what the mind would do is I'd find a stone for today and I'd find a stone for tomorrow so that I didn't have to do the same activity tomorrow because we want to make things easier mentally. And we're always trying to cheat the system or or, you know, break the game. So my mind would do that very naturally. I'd find two stones. All right. Saw that one where that is behind that tree. Today I'll pick this one. Tomorrow I found one anyway.

• 1:22:59Jay Shetty?

  And then we'd get to the next day and the teacher would say, all right, today we're trying to find a petal. Like, and they're just switching up on you. And you'd laugh at your own mind, like you'd find it hilarious that your mind was trying to game the system, but the monks were too, you know.

• 1:23:13Adam Grant?

  They already were one step ahead of you.

• 1:23:14Jay Shetty?

  Only one step ahead of you. They already know that.

• 1:23:16Adam Grant?

  Cheat codes are already built in.

• 1:23:17Jay Shetty?

  Exactly. And so I think things like that where learning to laugh at yourself brought play. When you saw the monkey mind, as you mentioned earlier, you laughed at it. You didn't, you weren't harsh on yourself. You didn't, if you saw a monkey, and I've seen monkeys do this in India, steal people's sunglasses, uh, cut back. Bags if you're holding it to grab fruit.

• 1:23:36Adam Grant?

  Diet Coke.

• 1:23:37Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, Diet Coke.

• 1:23:38Adam Grant?

  And then they chug it before you could get it back.

• 1:23:40Jay Shetty?

  Uh, stealing, I've seen them steal credit cards like out of people's hands if they're paying for something. You don't look at it and go, what an idiot, like what's wrong with you? You just think, oh monkeys and you just laugh. And, and that's partly what the mind is like, like it's, it's funny to watch the flawed mind. Uh, and not take it so seriously and recognize that it's just how it's built and how it's, how it acts.

• 1:24:02Adam Grant?

  I, I like that a lot.

• 1:24:03Jay Shetty?

  Yeah.

• 1:24:04Adam Grant?

  It, it seems like.

• 1:24:04Jay Shetty?

  Came to mind.

• 1:24:05Adam Grant?

  Yeah, I mean, I, I think the idea of, you know, of taking your, your goals and your growth seriously, but not yourself and your ego that seriously is obviously powerful there. It also sounds like your teachers really appreciated the importance of, of novelty and variety.

• 1:24:17Jay Shetty?

  Absolutely.

• 1:24:18Adam Grant?

  Saying, all right, like we gotta switch up stones for petals.

• 1:24:21Jay Shetty?

  Yeah.

• 1:24:21Adam Grant?

  Just to keep making this interesting and, and make sure you don't lose your curiosity.

• 1:24:25Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, and just recognizing that you were going to, you know, I remember saying to one of my teachers once, I was like, I was like, oh, you know, I'm just really struggling with my ego. I don't think it's ever gonna go away. It's so big. It's so hard to deal with. I see it come up in so many scenarios. And they're just like, relax, just, you know, it's okay. Like your ego will always be there. Just do your service. Like it wasn't seen with as much like, kind of pain and stress because they understood it's hard. They get that. Like they know what the mind is gonna do. And so why would they react to it with this like very serious and kind of imprisoned undertone? Rather than like, yeah, it's gonna be there. Just do it anyway. I, I like that idea of just, just do it anyway. It's gonna be there. Do it anyway. Like,

• 1:25:08Jay Shetty?

  okay, so you might feel you have too much of an ego to give a, give a talk. Do it anyway and be aware of it, right? Be aware of something and do it anyway. Is far better than wait till you overcome your ego to do something like that. You'll be waiting for the rest of your life. It will never disappear. And that's just ego. It could be anything, obviously, like envy or any of the things you mentioned.

• 1:25:28Adam Grant?

  I don't know that it's realistic to expect it to disappear altogether. I think what you want is for it to be, you want it to be in the rearview mirror. So that it's not your primary focus, but you're checking in on it every once in a while.

• 1:25:39Jay Shetty?

  Exactly. Adam, there are so many things in Hidden Potential. We could talk for hours and hours and I don't, I want people to actually read the book. I want people to pick it up. I want you to go and grab a copy of Hidden Potential, The Science of Achieving Greater Things. As we've talked about today, there's such a need for progress. There's such a need for growth. I think this book breaks it down, makes it simple in a way that I love and I admire. But on top of all of that, it's packed with great stories, case studies, science and research to back it all up. And in Adam's signature style of making it fun, the natural humor that always comes through. But thank you for doing this. And I wanted to ask you, Adam, is there anything you haven't shared, either from the book or that's come in your mind and heart that you're like, Jay, I really want people to know this or share this. And it may not be, but I want to give you the floor.

• 1:26:20Adam Grant?

  That's, well, you're as always too kind. No, I mean, the only thing is I'm second guessing. I'm like, was that the most surprising thing? Should there have been a more surprising thing? I am right now failing my imperfectionist test. It doesn't matter which one I picked because no one knows what the alternatives were, but I am curious. So we talked about deliberate play being, you know, potentially as important or more important than deliberate practice for growth. The other two that I was just starting to think about were that when you get stuck, you often have to move back to move forward. That before people leap in a skill, they have to dip. That was a ha that I did not have before.

• 1:27:00Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, that it's better. You're talking about climbing the mountain, the idea of like, yeah, like that it's better. If you're stuck, not just to stand there, but to walk backwards to kind of.

• 1:27:08Adam Grant?

  And find a new route.

• 1:27:09Jay Shetty?

  Yes, yes, yes.

• 1:27:10Adam Grant?

  Or a better method.

• 1:27:11Jay Shetty?

  Actually, most of us don't move backwards to move forwards. We remain stuck because we're too embarrassed to move backwards. Or we feel too like we've reached somewhere to move backwards. Like there's a comfort.

• 1:27:22Adam Grant?

  I don't want to give up the gains that I made.

• 1:27:24Jay Shetty?

  Yes, yes, that's exactly.

• 1:27:25Adam Grant?

  And so why would I start over when I've already put so much time into getting where I got?

• 1:27:30Jay Shetty?

  That sunk cost bias is, that was huge for me. I remember learning about that in like A level economics, like eighteen years, seventeen, eighteen years old and thinking, what a great concept to understand that. And I kind of gave that up very naturally, but I saw that as I grew older, people who'd studied something, especially some, I had friends who would become lawyers or doctors, but then didn't enjoy it or didn't see that as their path directly even. And having to pivot from that was so hard because you've worked so hard to achieve something that is rare and odd and difficult.

• 1:28:01Adam Grant?

  Yeah, one of, one of the things I, I would like to remind my students of when they, they, they come to office hours and they're in tunnel vision, like I have to do the prescribed thing, like my parents want me to be a doctor, or everyone in my family went to law school. I always want to say to them, listen, I, I understand that you're already down this path, like you've done the pre-med thing, or you're already, like, you know, you're already in the program. But what's worse, realizing that you wasted the last two years, or going on to waste the next 20? It's not a hard calculus. And so I think maybe the antidote to sunk cost is opportunity cost. To say, yeah, you know what? You have already invested a whole bunch in this, but think about

• 1:28:41Adam Grant?

  all the growth and all the joy that you're giving up on if you don't shift gears.

• 1:28:47Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, yeah. I think, I mean, I think about that all the time in my own life. And it's hard because you never know it then. And it's the old Steve Jobs quote of you can't connect the dots moving forward.

• 1:28:56Adam Grant?

  Only backward.

• 1:28:57Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, only backwards. And it's hard to remind people almost as their future self. And I, I think that is the activity. That's what I did. I, I fast forwarded when I was working in the corporate world, I fast forwarded 20 years and I asked myself, would I be happy doing what I see other people doing 20 years ahead of me? And the answer was no. And so I was like, well, then anything will be better than this because if the answer is no, and it's not that they had bad jobs or they weren't happy, it's that I wouldn't be happy doing what they were doing 20 years from then. And so if you're not, then you can't keep following the same path. Adam, I actually have two more questions for you that I just saw in my notes that I, I actually don't want to miss asking these to you. This comes from part three, systems of opportunity,

• 1:29:40Jay Shetty?

  opening doors and windows. And I have these two questions that I think are really interesting. We talked about certain challenges of our school system and what we find wrong, but this was the interesting part for me. Do you believe children should be able to choose what they study? I think that's a really fascinating concept. One of my friends runs. Schools where kids do get to choose, it's private. And I'm always fascinated by this idea of we've gone from living in a world that kids had no choice. We naturally swing to the other side of the pendulum where we want to give kids all choice. What did you discover?

• 1:30:15Adam Grant?

  I think this is really complicated. So the research on the paradox of choice suggests that there is such a thing as too much choice. First of all, there's a lot of debate about how pervasive that is. It's much worse to have no choice than too much. Much worse. So it's easier to manage the problem of too many options than it is to create freedom where it's absent. I think that's clear. The second thing is, we can, we can think about bundling and sort of bucketing choices in a way that maybe gets the best of both worlds. So I think it's potentially helpful for students to have choices within constraints. For example, so you ask, if you're an elementary school teacher, you ask kids to read 30 minutes a night, but they get to pick the book.

• 1:30:58Adam Grant?

  I think that's the kind of choice we're looking for early on. I think later, probably in high school, every kid should take some math, but I don't think everyone needs to take trig. Trigonometry has never been useful in my life. In a heartbeat, I would, I would throw out the trig curriculum and replace it with statistics, which I think actually is useful for how people think and what they do in the world, but not everyone would feel that way.

• 1:31:20Jay Shetty?

  There's no cognitive benefits of doing trig either. Like, are there no, because I often think about things not being as literal and think, oh, wait, is my brain developing by thinking in that ways?

• 1:31:29Adam Grant?

  I have never seen a randomized controlled experiment saying that learning trigonometry will teach you a set of thinking skills that's invaluable. Like, I don't think there's anything about sine and cosine that you would get that you can't get through geometry. Would be my, would be my hunch as a psychologist, but I have not done that experiment or that series of experiments. I think, but what I would say is, like, within, I mean, colleges are much better at this, right? Saying there's a math requirement, but we give you a menu of options and you can choose within that. Nobody wants to go to a restaurant and have a menu with a thousand options. But if they kind of know what they like, they can say, I can look at that category and I can choose within it. And I think that's where I would want choice to land for, for kids at different levels.

• 1:32:08Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, and it's so hard to, you know, hidden potential as a kid and as we grow is so difficult because if I was asked what I liked growing up, now I can easily say that I think I was naturally drawn towards the arts and design and philosophy. And I can see it even more clearly now, but it would have been really hard for someone I don't know, how would you be better at spotting hidden potential in schools and in young people earlier on so that we can kind of overly better guide and coach people as opposed to have them become pre-med or can complete a career and then having to pivot?

• 1:32:42Adam Grant?

  Well, I think the the person who's best suited to see your hidden potential is often the one who knows you best. And I don't think we give teachers enough opportunity to get to know kids. I love the research on looping that I wrote about in the chapter on on what we can learn from countries like Finland and Estonia. But even here in the US, there's strong evidence from multiple states with millions of students in elementary and middle school, that if they just happen to have the same teacher for two years in a row, they achieve more gains in math and reading, which is remarkable. And I know there are tons of parents who are afraid of this idea, like, what if my kid gets stuck with Professor Snape for two years instead of one? That's the end of the world. It turns out that not

• 1:33:26Adam Grant?

  only is it good for kids to have the same teacher for multiple years, but that when kids are struggling and teachers are struggling, they actually benefit more from the extended relationship. And I don't think it's hard to unpack why this is. I think when, you know, when when a teacher moves up with a student, they don't lose all this information in the handoff from one to the next. They understand the student's strengths and opportunities for growth. They also have seen this, the distance that the student has traveled. And so instead of just saying, well, like a new teacher, well, that student didn't shine in math, to say, wow, that student was really behind in math, and now is right on track with the class. I think there's some hidden potential there. I think every school on

• 1:34:08Adam Grant?

  earth should let kids have the same teacher for multiple years. And I think it's not a huge effect in the data, but I think it's a meaningful one.

• 1:34:15Jay Shetty?

  It is one of the biggest. I mean, even in spiritual education and teaching and guidance, it's, that's the only way it works. Like, the the practices that my monk teachers created for me were very different from what they created for other students, because it was all about Specific learning and specific growth. And so some of the practices I did were not normal for others. And some of the practices other people did were not normal for me because you trusted that your teacher was getting to know you better and therefore would create plans where there's some of that included travel. For example, I would be asked to travel back more to London to teach while I was a monk, uh, because they saw that that would be a useful skill set for me. That would be a useful experience for me of me going back to the country I was

• 1:34:59Jay Shetty?

  from and having to connect there. And that wasn't part of everyone else's training. And so I've always been a fan since my training in that way of having the same teacher. And even till this day, I still go back to the same monk teacher who knows me much better. And now he has like so much data on me because he's known me since I was 18 years old. And so he has 18 years of insight of knowing me and many of those years living together where the, his ability to say, oh, my gosh, do you remember when you used to be like this? And this challenge would trip you up and look at you now, like you, and just that context is so useful to hear from a student. Like you're saying, like whether it's, hey, you know, you were struggling with math last year and last year you got a C and this year you got a B. But I actually noticed that, you know,

• 1:35:44Jay Shetty?

  whatever. I, I think it's huge. I actually think it's huge.

• 1:35:48Adam Grant?

  And that, that's a great coda to the earlier point about you want a coach to work themselves out of a job. But then you want to be able to go back to that coach at inflection points for a fresh perspective or for somebody who has that continuity. And so I think over time, the hope is that you don't rely on that person day to day anymore.

• 1:36:05Jay Shetty?

  Of course.

• 1:36:06Adam Grant?

  As a crutch, but they are the person who I guess has the most accurate mirror.

• 1:36:11Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, absolutely. And that's at least from a eastern philosophy point of view, education was always meant to be the guru, as it would have been called at the time and, and a small enough class for the guru to get to know the class well enough in order to spot hidden potential and their psycho physical nature and their Dharma, word for purpose, in order to ignite that spark deeper. And that requires a lot of training for the guru and, and an openness from the students as well. But yeah, you're right. It's not just choice as well. It's not just like, hey, choose what you want. Yeah, it's it's beautiful. Thank you so much, Adam. This has been amazing.

• 1:36:50Adam Grant?

  Thank you.

• 1:36:50Jay Shetty?

  Always a joy. I love how our conversations go from what's wrong with the school system to why we're not idea promoting enough, all the way through to, you know, how do we choose what we need to work on? What is a weakness? What are imperfections? And again, it's all inside this book called Hidden Potential: The Science of Achieving Greater Things. Highly recommend it from Adam. We'll put the link in the comments and the caption for you to get it. Thank you so much, Adam, for doing this. I appreciate you.

• 1:37:16Adam Grant?

  Thank you, Jay. It's been it's been a joy and also a privilege. And I think we've never spoken other than when we're recorded.

• 1:37:23Jay Shetty?

  Yes.

• 1:37:24Adam Grant?

  We we need to do a little bit more of this, I think.

• 1:37:26Jay Shetty?

  I would love that and appreciate and welcome it. Thank you so much.

• 1:37:29Adam Grant?

  Thank you.

• 1:37:30Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, thanks, Adam. If you loved this episode, you'll enjoy my interview with Dr. Daniel Amen on how to change your life by changing your brain.

• 1:37:38Speaker 05

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• 1:38:25Speaker 04

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