Radical Acceptance

Last week, we looked at the hidden beliefs that can leave us feeling stuck in life. This week, in the second part of our conversation with behavioral scientist Dave Evans, we talk about radical acceptance. Dave shares why accepting reality as it is can be so difficult — and why it's an essential first step in building a meaningful life. Then, in the latest installment of Your Questions Answered, psychologist Sarah Schnitker returns to answer listeners' questions about patience.

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

• 0:00Shankar Vedantam?

  This is Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam. In the 3rd century B.C., China's first emperor, Qin Shi Huang, made a bold proclamation. His dynasty would last 10,000 generations.

• 0:17Shankar Vedantam?

  He launched an obsessive quest for immortality. He ordered expeditions to the Eastern Sea, demanded his subjects search for an elixir of life, and even welcomed mystics into his court.

• 0:29Shankar Vedantam?

  His obsession came at a cost, putting him at odds with Confucian scholars at the time.

• 0:38Shankar Vedantam?

  Historians have pieced together parts of Qin Shi Huang's story from thousands of wooden strips unearthed in Hunan Province. The strips documented his correspondence. These writings included responses from the emperor's minions, who were too afraid to tell their boss what they really thought. According to the BBC, the notes featured, quote, "assorted awkward replies from regional governments who had failed to find the key to eternal life." Qin Shi Huang did achieve extraordinary things during his lifetime. He unified China, standardized currency and measures, built roads and canals, and linked fortresses into what became the Great Wall.

• 1:21Shankar Vedantam?

  But he never found the key to immortality. He died in 210 B.C. at the age of 49.

• 1:31Shankar Vedantam?

  Even in death, he refused to believe death was the end. His monumental mausoleum, guarded by thousands of Terracotta Soldiers, was designed to protect him on his journey into the afterlife.

• 1:44Shankar Vedantam?

  What could cause such desperation, such obsession, such refusal to face the inevitable? And is it possible that all of us share something in common with the great Chinese emperor?

• 2:00Shankar Vedantam?

  This is the second part of our exploration into how design thinking can help you lead a more meaningful life. If you missed the first story, you can find it in our podcast feed or at hiddenbrain.org. It's the episode titled "Designing a Life That Matters."

• 2:17Shankar Vedantam?

  How we seek to avoid the truth and the costs of not facing reality. This week on Hidden Brain.

• 2:32Shankar Vedantam?

  Support for Hidden Brain comes from Farmers Insurance. At Farmers, they believe insurance should be in terms you can understand. Like with coverage on a page, you get a clear view of what is and isn't covered in your policy in plain, simple language, so you're not left with any surprises. Does your insurance do that? Check them out at farmers.com. Underwritten by Farmers Truck or Fire Insurance Exchanges or Affilia. Products not available in every state. Support for Hidden Brain comes from Mazda. Being safer on the road starts with the person behind the wheel. That's Mazda's philosophy when designing every vehicle. Their proactive safety features help keep you more aware, connected, and engaged during

• 3:15Shankar Vedantam?

  every drive, which means your car does more than help protect you. It helps make you a safer driver, which helps protect everyone. That's why Mazda has been named Consumer Reports' safest new car brand. To learn more, visit mazdausa.com. Consumer Reports does not endorse products or services. Support for Hidden Brain comes from Planet Visionaries. Professional climber and environmental advocate Alex Honnold hosts Planet Visionaries, a podcast spotlighting the people tackling climate challenges with real, hopeful solutions. Throughout season six, Alex brings together extraordinary change makers for powerful conversations about grit, determination, and the power of hope to fuel our fight for a better future.

• 3:58Shankar Vedantam?

  In partnership with the Rolex Perpetual Planet Initiative, this is Planet Visionaries. Listen or watch wherever you get your podcasts. Life isn't easy. There are times of joy, times of sorrow, and times of uncertainty. Along the way, we inevitably face setbacks, obstacles, and disappointment. At Stanford University, Dave Evans says that one way we cope with these challenges is by telling ourselves stories, narratives that help us make sense of what's happening to us. Dave Evans, welcome to Hidden Brain.

• 4:32Speaker 01

  Shankar, good to be with you again.

• 4:35Shankar Vedantam?

  Dave, you had a friend named Gary. How did the two of you meet and get to know each other?

• 4:40Speaker 01

  Well, our kids were of similar age, and we frequented the same church. We lived in the same town, so we were neighbors.

• 4:47Shankar Vedantam?

  One day Gary came to you with a problem. Tell me what he told you.

• 4:53Speaker 01

  Well, his problem was he was having strokes. And it turned out he came from a long line of people who have strokes. He was a technical writer in Silicon Valley. We were in Silicon Valley and he was having a good career. And his problem was, how could he get back to working full time? He'd had to take a stop out. The way his stroke had hit him was getting in the way of his ability to work. And he was wondering if I could help him figure out a way to get his skills back to where he could get back on the job.

• 5:23Shankar Vedantam?

  So his problem was, he said, I have a job that I like. I'm doing what I want to do, but I have this pesky little thing, which is my, my body is not allowing me to do what I want to do. And I want you to get my body out of the way so I can go back to doing what I want to do.

• 5:38Speaker 01

  Right. He said, well, you know, this, I mean, the problem is, you know, my, my father died of a stroke. My brother died of a stroke in his late 50s. He was about 52 at the time, something like that. He said, so I don't want to be that guy. Why is this happening? Everything's got to happen for a reason. So it must be that there's something I'm supposed to learn. So if I were, if I could learn what it is that this malady is trying to teach me, then maybe it can stop and I can get my life back. So what I really need to do is figure out why I need to learn something from this and what is it? Can you help me with that?

• 6:15Shankar Vedantam?

  I'm wondering how you responded to this request of his to help him understand what his body was trying to tell him? The message it was trying to give him?

• 6:24Speaker 01

  I was stuck a little bit because I thought, oh my God. I don't think that's what's going on. And here's this guy who's a lovely guy. And, and the truth is he's dying. The truth is he's got a severe medical threat and it's not going well. And he's counting on me to help him get someplace I don't think he can go. So what I was really struggling with is how do I deliver the bad news that? Gary, I think you're asking the wrong question.

• 6:51Shankar Vedantam?

  I'm wondering whether Gary was getting feedback from other people that was trying to answer the question that he wanted answered, even if it wasn't the right question.

• 7:00Speaker 01

  Well, yes, unfortunately, he was surrounded with well-meaning cheerful people who wanted him to feel better. And so there were a group of guys he regularly had lunch with, and they were encouraging like, "You can do this, Gary." And he goes, "I'm gonna try to get back to where..." They go, "That's great. You keep going, buddy." So they all were trying to cheerlead. And unfortunately, they were cheerleading him down to what I thought was a dead end that was gonna end very, very badly. So there's the old phrase, "The road to hell is paved with good intention." There's a lot of good intention surrounding him, but frankly, I think it was going a terrible place.

• 7:41Shankar Vedantam?

  It must have placed you in a very difficult situation, Dave, because a friend is coming to you with this very serious problem. You feel like your friend is not looking at reality for what it is. Other friends are basically encouraging Gary in his delusion. What did you do?

• 7:58Speaker 01

  Well, keep in mind, I met Gary at church, which means he was a person of faith, and that was a big part of the story. And so it wasn't just, "What's the lesson that my body's trying to teach me?" But what is God trying to tell me? It says, "Because I'm pretty sure this must be a lesson God is giving me that if I can persevere through and learn the lesson, then I'd get to get out of jail." And I didn't think that was likely to happen because despite the fact that I too happen to believe in God, God doesn't fix every problem. God doesn't instruct Himself and miraculously fix everything. That's a whole different understanding. And it's nice to think that's what's coming your way, but you're not in charge of that. You may not be the miracle child. And so I asked him point blank note, "Gary, why is it you believe this?"

• 8:43Speaker 01

  And he said, well, what else could it possibly be? There's got to be a reason for this. I said, well, let's look at what the other reasons might be. Could we just do that? And he said, well, okay. He said, what do you mean? I said, well, maybe the reason you're having strokes, Gary, isn't because God is going to use you as the demonstration of a miracle, but maybe you're having strokes because you've got really crappy DNA and brain chemistry that breaks down at about 50 to 55 years old. Because, you know, we live in a broken world, and some of that brokenness falls on everybody. We're all gonna die, by the way. All we're talking about is timing. And I told him the story of the head of the gerontology department at Harvard Medical School,

• 9:25Speaker 01

  who I got stuck on the ground during an ice storm in Chicago with years ago, who reminded me, almost nobody dies of old age. They die of disease, or starvation, or an accident. I said, so Gary, you're not gonna die of old age. You're gonna die of something else, and maybe you're gonna die of a stroke. So maybe what's going on is, how do you live well through being a person who comes from a long line of guys with bad stroke DNA? And he just stared at me. He said, do you think that might be it? I said, well, Gary, lots of people die in their 50s. You might be one of them. He said, well, if that's what's going on, what do I do? I said, well, you do this as well as you can.

• 10:10Speaker 01

  So we had a long conversation about that.

• 10:14Shankar Vedantam?

  It must have been very difficult for you to say what you said to him, Dave, but also very difficult for him to listen to it. This is not the kind of thing that a friend is supposed to tell you.

• 10:24Speaker 01

  Well, this is where I make the distinction between nice and loving. You know, are you trying to be nice to somebody? You're trying to love them. And sometimes that love, I don't mean tough love, and you have to beat them up. I wasn't trying to be unkind. But if it's true...

• 10:39Speaker 01

  That he's gonna die of a stroke, which he did, about four strokes later. Then either he's gonna do that and be blindsided by it and terrified at the moment of death and leave his family in some despair about his final days, or he's got a little more time to do this well. So what's the kindest thing I can do? The kindest thing I can do is give him a shot at the invitation to actually find the meaning and the joy that is available. I'm not in charge of his fixing his brain, but I might be able to give him an invitation

• 11:14Speaker 01

  to a little more life-giving experience than he's currently having.

• 11:25Shankar Vedantam?

  I'm wondering how Gary took your advice and what he did with it.

• 11:31Speaker 01

  Well, we had that conversation and he received it reasonably well, but I mean, it was, it was really hard and it was pretty quiet. And his wife Kathy was in the kitchen and over here, you know, and was kind of gave us some space. And I didn't really know what was going on. I bumped into his wife in the supermarket about three weeks later and she walks up to me, she goes, "What was it you said, Gary?" And I thought, "Oh, man, this is gonna go badly." And I said, "Well, this is, this is what I said." And she said, "Well, it made all the difference in the world. He's a changed man. He's finally at peace. It was amazing. Thank you." And she burst into tears.

• 12:12Speaker 01

  So phew, you know, dodged that bullet, but you know, it's kind of hitting me again. This life stuff, you know, it's pretty serious, but it's the best thing we've got. And so the invitation is, would you like to participate? And he died well.

• 12:36Shankar Vedantam?

  When we come back, why the most important thing might not be figuring out where you want to go, but accepting where it is you are. You're listening to Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam.

• 12:59Shankar Vedantam?

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• 13:38Shankar Vedantam?

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• 14:20Shankar Vedantam?

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• 14:27Shankar Vedantam?

  This is Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam. At Stanford University, Dave Evans studies a concept called design thinking. He says that the same principles that engineers and innovators use to solve complex problems can also be applied to designing our lives, making them more meaningful, joyful, and fulfilling.

• 14:48Shankar Vedantam?

  Dave, we talked about your friend Gary, who was in denial about the seriousness of his strokes. You told him he had two options, to die well or to go out kicking and screaming. I want to go back to early March of 2020. The COVID pandemic had just broken and worries about illness were on all of our minds. Paint a picture for me of what was happening in your life at the time.

• 15:13Speaker 01

  Well, at the end of February, we were reeling from the fact that these things might be coming, just the news coming out of China was happening. And then on March 8th, you know, I took my wife Claudia to the local little walk-in clinic because she'd gotten her Christmas cold in New York in late December. We often go to New York between Christmas and New Year's for fun. And she always comes home with a Christmas cold. But it had held on and held on, and it lasted through January. And she was coughing all the time. I said, Honey, this is not okay. So we went in to the clinic. And the clinic said, oh, there's more going on here. You need to go to the ER. We went to the ER. And then they pumped out a liter and a half of fluid from her lungs and said, we need to test this.

• 15:57Speaker 01

  And so we're going to send it over to the lab to test. And we're going to send it back to Stanford. And so then a couple of weeks after the tests were all done, we got to go on March 8th to Stanford to hear the news. And the news was that she had terminal cancer. She was already metastasized four times and she had six to 24 months to live.

• 16:14Shankar Vedantam?

  I cannot imagine how this news must have struck you, Dave. How did you and Claudia react?

• 16:20Speaker 01

  Well, we knew things weren't good when they pumped all that junk out of her lungs, but we didn't know it was fatal. And so jumping from you've got a really bad bronchitis to you're dying was quite a leap. It hit us very hard, but it just hit us. And we said, oh, what do we do with this? Well, the first thing we said, we've got to receive this. So we didn't tell anybody. We sat on it privately for about eight days, with the idea being let it sink in and then decide, what's the story? What are we doing here? We have all these people. And at the end of that week, we conclude, in fact, Claudia concluded. She says, here it is.

• 17:00Speaker 01

  The one liner is, "I'm dying." It's sad, but not tragic. She was 69 at the time, had lived a very full life. There was really nothing left on our bucket list, nothing we needed to do, lots we wanted to do, hadn't even begun to be retired people, but nonetheless, no regrets. And so, she chose to live into her final months, saying, "Sooner than I had in mind, but, let's be honest, this is just sad, not tragic. Let's make the most of the time." And that's what we announced to our family and friends, and that begat, what turned out to be nine months, she got nine months. She died in December, she died five years ago this Thursday.

• 17:42Speaker 01

  And that was probably one of the most intense, and actually, one of the most wonderful years of my life.

• 17:58Shankar Vedantam?

  It's strange that you say that it was a wonderful year of your life, Dave. Many people would say, "You know, I went through the whole year with a sense of dread, and a sense of grief, and a sense that, 'Oh my God, why is this happening to me?'" How come those things didn't happen to you?

• 18:13Speaker 01

  Well, there was that incredible year of her dying, and then there was the year after she died, and I often tell people, "The best year of my marriage was the year after my wife died, because I learned so much about her." The reason it was different for us, was simply this acceptance. We really do believe that reality is the only place anything can possibly happen. And so, we deferred all that, "What's next and why me?", because frankly, none of that matters. What was true, was she was gonna die. So, our choices were to be present to that, or to be absent of that. And, you know, we lived very publicly, we have a lot of people, we wrote about it, and a lot of people walked alongside us. So, we kept hearing people saying, "Gosh, you're doing such a noble job."

• 18:58Speaker 01

  Well, thank you, and I'm honored that people think that, and technically, it was true. My vet, who's a good friend of mine, said, "Man, I don't know anybody going through this the way you guys are doing this." And I said, "Well, Dave," his name is Dave Tuch, "Thanks for seeing that, but I gotta be honest with you, we're just trying to take the easiest path we can." Most people who are in denial and resistance just make it harder and more painful. We're just trying to do this thing as easily as we possibly can.

• 19:33Shankar Vedantam?

  You know, Dave, we've talked about the five stages of grief that have been in the popular culture for a very long time. And in some ways, it's not a very good accounting of the story of grief because the original work was done with patients who had terminal diagnoses. And the research was looking at how they responded to the news of their own impending death. But it talks about going through these phases of denial and anger and bargaining and depression before getting to acceptance. What you and Claudia did was cut out those first four steps and just get to the last one.

• 20:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, we had really worked on being good acceptors for a long time. You know, we were a second marriage. We had both been through failed marriages and we understood the finitude of relationship. And we were thrilled to be happily married to somebody. They were not horrible marriages, but marriages that didn't last. And we were thrilled that we had a second shot. One of our kids is bipolar and drags a heavy bag behind him. He's now happily married with two kids, has a wonderful life. But it didn't come easy. You know, and these are not things you can negotiate easily with. You can't tell a bipolar brain, why don't you just behave better? So we had already been around a lot of things not of our choosing. You know, my father killed himself when I was nine.

• 20:47Speaker 01

  So reality was something that we had been in school with before. And that allowed us to go to acceptance first. The long, slow path to it doesn't look attractive to me.

• 21:03Shankar Vedantam?

  Can you talk about how this idea of not just acceptance, but radical acceptance is at the heart of design thinking? Before we can figure out where we want to go, we have to fully accept where we are.

• 21:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, acceptance is step zero. Before you can even begin formally, the first step in design is empathy, deeply understanding what's going on. But before you even do that deep understanding, you have to be willing to accept. And that is what is in fact true. Because reality is the only place things actually work. Radical acceptance is literally as best you possibly can to eliminate any vestige of resistance that this is in fact exactly the way things currently are.

• 21:47Shankar Vedantam?

  So as people are designing their lives or asking to design their lives, they're often asking, you know, where I want to go. And they're often upset or angry with their present circumstances in some way. They basically say, it's not fair. You know, I did all the things I should have done, but I'm not where I should be in my career. Or I, you know, I've done everything that I should, but I'm not in a happy relationship and I should be in a happy relationship. And so they have a sense of fairness, a sense of anger. Talk about how in some ways these get in the way of seeing reality accurately.

• 22:18Speaker 01

  It's all about this what I had in mind thing. You know, let's go back to Alison. We talked about it in the previous episode. You know, here's, I'm talking to a group of accountants and here's this lovely middle aged woman and she's reasonably happily married and got two reasonably decent kids and a reasonably paid off car, a small business, working with a lot of other small businesses, except she's a little bit bored to tears and mostly just not feeling it. And what did I do wrong?

• 22:44Speaker 01

  Well, she didn't do anything wrong. I said, look, why did you pick accounting? Well, you know, because it's predictable and I really like having the right answer. I like knowing I've done the right thing well. I go, great, so you're in a very uncreative business because you like stability. And why did you pick small businesses, you know, as your clients? Well, you know, they're, they're cash operated businesses and they pay in cash and I don't want to be in debt and, and I understand their business because they're kind of like me. So I think I understand them. They, you know, that's something I can really handle pretty well. I said, oh, so you don't want to go outside your comfort zone because you really like being in your comfort zone? That's great. You know, and so we ended up describing that she got exactly what she wanted. Which came with predictability and stability. It looks like stasis and it's not very creative and it's not very exciting.

• 23:29Speaker 01

  It's not very scary either. So she got exactly what she wanted. There's no surprise here whatsoever. And so what you sort of forgot to accept, Alison, is that that stability is not the same as a high learning curve. And that small business is not going to make you rich because you're operating on a cash basis. You're not, you know, working 80 hours a week to try to get founder stock in some venture capital based firm. So these things are exactly what you wanted all along. They just come with consequences. So can we accept the fact that you got exactly what you wanted? And now how do you make the most of what that is? So very often, we simply aren't telling ourselves enough truth.

• 24:18Shankar Vedantam?

  I want to look at some of the ways in which we do not live in reality because the ways in which we dodge reality are sometimes subtle. You once knew a high powered corporate executive who worked in tech. He was very successful and he was presented with an ambitious problem that he desperately wanted to solve. Can you tell me his story, Dave?

• 24:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, we'll call him George. And he was working at high tech and he was doing well, you know, but he was also a caring guy and he was involved in his local church and in his community. And came along the idea of fair trade and working with organizations, particularly in West Africa, where we're putting villagers to work and trying to help them engage in the capitalistic world by going through fair trade companies. And he got this notion that what he needed to do was start a fair trade company that would create these craft companies in West Africa. And he not only decided that that was something that he thought was really interesting, but that was really what God wanted him to do, that that was going to make the world a better place. He was going to lift people out of poverty and he was going to do this noble thing.

• 25:23Speaker 01

  And off he went and he left his home country in Europe and flew to the, moved his family, went through all this incredible effort, you know, which was a very noble idea, but it didn't work out the way he had in mind.

• 25:37Shankar Vedantam?

  What happened? Why did it not work out?

• 25:40Speaker 01

  Well, this is one of those situations where, you know, how committed to reality are you versus how committed to what you're aspiring towards? It's lovely to have an aspiration, but is that aspiration getting in the way of reality? And so he starts this company, off it goes. Of course, it's a very slow beginning, you know, and it reaches a certain degree of success. And he then wants to grow to the next stage. And in fact, not only does it not go to the next stage, it starts to falter. And so this thing begins to fail a little bit. And then he tries to shoulder it up again with his own labor and a little bit of his own money. And he keeps putting good money after bad and year after year. And he does this for a period of about five years. And finally, had to set the company down.

• 26:23Speaker 01

  The company so failed, you know, that his investors and supporters said, look, it's too much. You've got to give up. But he went bitter because for a couple of years after that, he just couldn't, you know, God's punishing me. And I said, George, look, I mean, you tried real hard. You gave it the old college try and it didn't work out. You know, God's right next to you saying, shoot, George, I wish it had worked too. You didn't do anything wrong, but you're making up a story about the way things deserve to be, which is not how they are. So radical acceptance precedes any real meaning making.

• 27:11Shankar Vedantam?

  I want to drill down on the idea that accepting reality is not the same thing as endorsing reality. You're not saying that we have to accept that we are stuck in reality. There may be things that we can do to get ourselves unstuck. But the starting point of any design exercise is to clearly see where we are. Can you talk about this idea? Because some of the problems that people have in their lives involve things that are genuinely upsetting. You know, a cancer diagnosis is genuinely upsetting. It's unfair. Or we might be struggling with some kind of problem involving a social injustice. And you're not basically saying, accepting reality for what it is means that you have to endorse reality for what it is.

• 27:52Speaker 01

  I'm really glad you asked the question. It comes up all the time and it's a crucial question and it's one that some people really, really struggle with, particularly around, you know, moral issues or social issues. In fact, I'll give you a very real example. A lovely young woman that I've been mentioning for over 20 years, she's my chosen daughter, you know, found herself once again working for a ridiculously horrible boss. I mean, this is a bona fide bad boss. I said, "You've got to accept that this guy is a raging nasty person and it's not going to get any better." She goes, "But I can't accept that. That means I'm going to be oppressed forever." And I said, "Wait, wait, wait. You can't be effective unless you can accept this. You've got to accept that nothing you're going to do is going to change his mind. Nothing you're going to do is going to make him happy. He's always going to be unhappy.

• 28:37Speaker 01

  He's always going to treat you badly. But what you can do is you can minimize the damage. What you can do is you can get the heck out of there eventually," which he did. And the reason that's always empowering is that it gives you the capacity to actually do what can be effectively done, rather than find yourself simply standing outside of reality, like you're locked outside. Well, standing outside and banging on the door of reality and complaining doesn't change a thing, but getting inside reality and acting effectively can. So that distinction between endorsing it and accepting is a really important distinction, particularly if you're ever going to get in any difficult, you know, gray versus black

• 29:20Speaker 01

  and white situation, you've got to keep endorsement and acceptance distinct.

• 29:36Shankar Vedantam?

  We talked earlier about the story of your friend Gary, Dave. When he was dealing with his very serious health conditions, he was initially in denial about them. You contrast Gary's story with the story of a man named Arnie, an artist in Atlanta. Paint me a picture of Arnie's life and tell me what you learned from him.

• 29:59Speaker 01

  Well, Arnie is quite a guy. In fact, I talked to him just recently. We actually had the privilege of taking him to his 90th birthday dinner about a year ago. He's pushing 91. It turns out, the lesson that probably most formatively impacted Arnie Young in his life to become a good accepter of reality was he was trying to become an artist. He was a fine artist. And he decided he wanted to do that as a living, not on the side. He knew he could be an amateur artist, and make a good living doing other kinds of things. But no, he wanted to walk his talk and do his rather avant-garde kind of art. And he was struggling and having a hard time. And then he said an interesting thing. He said, "And suddenly, I realized something that made all the difference."

• 30:41Speaker 01

  I said, "Well, Arnie, what's that?" He said, "I realize, if I'm going to be an artist, I just have to accept that I'm going to be poor for the rest of my life." He said, "And once I accepted that, it was really quite easy." And I said, "Well, how old are you?" He said, "Oh, early 30s." I said, "Whoa." So now, so he's got some precedent there. He made a big realization, and it became easy. I mean, you know, hand to mouth and struggling and all kinds of things, but easy in that he's not fighting it. So now, you know, he lives in an artist's installation. Many years ago, a group of

• 31:22Speaker 01

  artists got together with a patron and founded a warehouse, and some of the other warehouse into studio apartments. And he's been there for decades, you know, living in very Spartan digs, sitting in his wheelchair, barely able to move. He sleeps about 17 hours a day now because his body is failing. But when you walk into the room and see him, and go, "Arnie, how's it going?" He goes, "Oh, have you ever read Balzac? He's amazing. Come over here." And he's been reading Balzac. And so he's reading, and he's writing his memoir. He's using a big magnifying glass so that he can see the keyboard. What he's doing is leaning all the way in, being fully available to the life that is in front of him, and wasting

• 32:07Speaker 01

  no energy whatsoever mourning what's been lost. It's stunning.

• 32:21Shankar Vedantam?

  Radical acceptance is the foundation for all the pursuits that make life meaningful. It is not about settling, or being less ambitious, or giving up. Rather, it is about approaching life with clear eyes. When we stop fighting what we cannot change, it opens up avenues for real change. You're listening to Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam.

• 32:54Speaker 02

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• 33:23Speaker 03

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• 33:38Shankar Vedantam?

  This is Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam. Do you have questions or comments about how to live a more meaningful life? Have you ever felt stuck and then found a way forward? If you have a personal story you'd be willing to share with the Hidden Brain audience, please find a very quiet room and record a voice memo on your phone. Two or three minutes is plenty. Email the audio file to us using the email address [email protected]. Use the subject line "Stuck." Again, that email address is [email protected].

• 34:15Shankar Vedantam?

  Purpose, connection, meaning, resilience. These qualities don't always come easily. At Stanford University, Dave Evans studies design thinking. He says that thinking like a designer can help us cultivate those qualities. But before we can figure out how to implement principles of design thinking in our lives, we need to radically accept our lives as they actually are. Along with Bill Burnett, Dave is co-author of How to Live a Meaningful Life: Using Design Thinking to Unlock Purpose, Joy, and Flow Every Day. Dave, we've talked about how radical acceptance is the foundation of design thinking. I want to talk now about some of the techniques that can help us design our lives. Many years ago, you were driving up from Santa Cruz to San Francisco.

• 34:59Shankar Vedantam?

  It was an ordinary Thursday afternoon, but something happened that day that was most unusual. Tell me what happened.

• 35:06Speaker 01

  Well, the sun went down. And of course, we think that happens most days, but some days it happens differently. And this was one of those sunsets. I'm driving along Highway 1, the famous California coastal highway, near Half Moon Bay. And the sun was going down, and it was drop-dead, knock-your-eyes-out gorgeous in a stunningly cosmic way. I've seen so many gorgeous sunsets. My home in Santa Cruz is actually on the water. I get to see the sunset almost every day. But this one was really blow-your-brains-out amazing, so much so that I had to stop the car. I stopped the car, I got out of the car, and then everybody else, the entire highway, stopped.

• 35:49Speaker 01

  All these people lined up on the side of the road, standing there, gawking at the sunset for about seven minutes until it slipped below the waves. And then, literally, a moment after that last little bit of light went below the horizon, you heard this cry, this "whoa." I mean, the sudden, you know, community of sunset appreciators all start looking at each other, hooping and hollering, you know, and the couple about 50 yards north of me come running down because you have to have a shared experience. You can't do this by yourself, like, "Oh, my God, oh, my God." Did you see that? Like, oh, yes, I totally saw that. We actually like exchanged names and phone numbers. And once a year, we're gonna call each other back and remember the day.

• 36:32Speaker 01

  You know, it was literally this, you know, astonishing thing. You know, then you get back in the car and like, whoa, what was that? So, yeah, that was a pretty cool sunset.

• 36:51Shankar Vedantam?

  You say that radical acceptance is a prerequisite to finding wonder in our lives. How so, Dave?

• 36:59Speaker 01

  You know, wonder comes from curiosity and mystery. The apex of the curious experience is to apply curiosity to something we can't fully understand, of which there are many. Even if we later will understand the science behind it, that doesn't take all the quality away, even on a sunset. I mean, I can, I can go to, you know, a light specialist in the physics department. He'll explain to me exactly why a sunset works the way it does. Or as the old Noel Stuckey song says, you know, a scientist may tell you how night turns into day, but it can never take the wonder away. So if I allow the wonder of something to get to me, and I let my curiosity follow into it without suddenly trying to diagnose and, you know, deconstruct the thing technically,

• 37:44Speaker 01

  I allow myself to have this deeper experience of wonder, of awe. What does that really mean? It means there's something bigger than me going on. What Maslow finally realized was a higher experience than self-actualization, which is self-transcendency. What was going on in that amazing sunset was a whole bunch of people were having a transcendent moment, and as it was shared, we became even more human with one another. So that's what wonder does. It really leans us fully into our humanness.

• 38:28Shankar Vedantam?

  And of course, that sunset was amazing. It was beautiful. It was so beautiful that everyone jumped out of their cars. But the truth is that there are probably amazing and beautiful things happening all the time that we're just passing by without noticing. In fact, all sunsets are beautiful and all sunrises are beautiful. In fact, every day is beautiful if we stop to admire the beauty.

• 38:50Speaker 01

  It really is about paying attention. You know, a philosopher will tell you that the mere fact that anything exists at all is actually kind of stunning. We're just so used to it. You know, I'm sitting here at my desk and I have a couple of pieces of paper, you know, and that paper, oh my God, I mean, that's, that used to be a tree and that tree used to be a seed and I'm like, holy cow. I mean, everything is amazing if you just haven't forgotten it. So we'll live in an enchanted reality, but we've just gotten so accustomed to it, we've turned the enchantment off.

• 39:26Shankar Vedantam?

  Tell me about a student of yours whom you called Stina, who was trying to fit two parts of her life that were not coming together.

• 39:35Speaker 01

  So we offer office hours to our students because of course, there's always a conversation going on about what do I do with my life? And that's true of my clients and true for everybody. And Stina came and she started describing a problem that I thought I'd heard before. She said, I've gone through the university and I majored in chemistry and I got all As like my parents wanted me to, and I've got admitted to both Yale and Harvard medical schools, except I don't want to go to medical school. I said, what's the problem? She said, well, I'm also a pianist and I love music and my parents didn't want me to study music because it's not an important enough thing, but I care about it. So I didn't major in music while I was here to honor my parents, but I kept my music going.

• 40:19Speaker 01

  And little do they know that I also applied to Juilliard School of Music and I've been admitted to get a master's of arts in piano performance. And so I've got a problem. And I said, oh, so your problem is how do you tell your parents you don't want to be a doctor? She says, no, no, no, that's not my problem.

• 40:39Speaker 01

  Well, what's your problem? Well, my problem is, how do I tell my boyfriend? I know what the piano requires. And it requires everything I've got. I don't think I can be in love with a piano and a man at the same time. So I'm going to break up with my boyfriend, and I don't think he's going to understand. And I went, oh, that's a different problem. So here we had a person who really had three things going on. I've got the doctor and my parents' expectations. I've got the artist and my relationship with the piano. And then I've got the, is my piano psyche and my romantic psyche able to co-reside?

• 41:20Shankar Vedantam?

  What did she choose to do?

• 41:22Speaker 01

  To my knowledge, she went to Juilliard, and she told me she was going to break up with the boyfriend. How that went, I don't know. And whether or not she eventually got to the place where she believed that she could both be in relationship with a piano and a person, I didn't learn. But I've always been incredibly respectful of Stephen's story, because the honesty she had with herself, I rarely find.

• 41:53Shankar Vedantam?

  Now, we often see this in the lives of some people. You worked with Steve Jobs at Apple. And famously, his personal life was nothing to write home about. But in some ways, perhaps that was the price that he and the people around him were paying for him to accomplish what he did at work. Talk about the idea that in some ways, a well-designed life has a certain direction to it. It feels cohesive.

• 42:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, we call it coherency. It's one of the places you can experience meaning-making. And we describe coherence, a coherent person, as one for whom who I am, what I'm doing, and what I believe in are lined up and interconnected. So one of the first steps in becoming a coherent person is articulating what those things actually mean to you. And we have an exercise in that called the compass exercise that helps people get a handle on that. And living more coherently is pretty much a prerequisite to living meaningfully. Because if I'm not coherent, if I'm not really acting like Dave, if you're really not acting like Shankar, then nothing's going to work.

• 42:58Shankar Vedantam?

  I'm wondering if you can talk a little bit about this compass exercise that you mentioned just now, Dave. How can we get our lives so that who I am, what I do, all of these things are aligned?

• 43:08Speaker 01

  Well, we have you write three short little pieces of work. We look at it real high, pretty high and down to the ground. We just got three levels of pretty much the same thing. So the life view is a page, a page and a half of your answer to the questions. What are your thoughts? What are your ideas about the most important things? I mean, what is life for? What does it mean to be a person? Is there really love? Is there a God? Whatever you think the most important questions that define reality are, what are your thoughts about that? That's your life view, or what used to be called your worldview. Next, we have your work view. Now, for most people, the overwhelmingly largest expression of their human energy

• 43:51Speaker 01

  is what we call work, whether it's what you do for money or a living, but your particular engagement, your role in the human adventure, how you're spending your time during the day. That is the largest single chunk of the lived experience. You spend more time doing that than cooking and eating, more time doing that than raising kids, more time doing that than, you know, making love to your spouse. Whatever it is, the work thing is the big dog, always has been, probably always will be, AI notwithstanding. So we say, what's your work view? Meaning, what do you believe work is for? Is it to just keep you busy? Is it to make a living? Is it to make your world a better place? Is it the place where community can be experienced as we collaborate? What are your thoughts about what good work really means to you? So what does life mean to you? What does work mean to you?

• 44:34Speaker 01

  Then the last question is just, what's your current story? If you've just got an elevator ride, you've got a minute or two to tell somebody, what's currently going on with you? What's the current caption, the long caption of your story? So when you take these three little narratives, my view of life, my view of work, my view of my present experience of being me, in those three things, you've provided a surprisingly good description of who you currently are. And then we can take those three things and probably we can reverse engineer what we call your compass values. Like, if I read these three things, there's no more than three pages, what values are emerging is most important to you. So those three documents and a little list of the core values that are hiding in there is a real good starting place.

• 45:18Shankar Vedantam?

  I want to talk about another component to designing a meaningful life, and that's the concept of flow. We've talked about this concept on the show before, but can you describe what psychologists mean by the term?

• 45:30Speaker 01

  Well, Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience was the book written over 20 years ago now by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, the well-known psychologist of flow, who in collaboration with Martin Seligman from Pennsylvania, started the whole positive psychology movement about 20 years ago. Good people doing good work. And he defines flow as the experience of full and deep engagement, where time stands still and so on, that can occur when you're operating in the flow channel. And the flow channel is a place of experience where the task you are currently involved in and your skills to perform that task are in approximate balance. You're neither over talented, so you're bored,

• 46:14Speaker 01

  nor under talented, so you're anxious and nervous you might fail. But you're really right at the edge of your capability, which means this task is demanding your full attention. That's the flow zone, the flow channel. And in that flow channel, you might, not necessarily, you might drop into the flow experience of suddenly finding yourself fully, deeply engaged, time stands still, and when it's over, the whole thing seems very satisfying. It's a really wonderful experience, sometimes called getting in the zone. Now, our thoughts on that, by the way, are that's a great starting place. But unfortunately, the way people think of flow is they think of it at this very high level of engagement, which we refer to as apex flow, which is great.

• 46:58Speaker 01

  You know, like when you're having that incredible performance or writing that beautiful sonnet, that's an experience of that kind. I was in flow watching that sunset. These are apex experiences. And too many people think that's the minimum requirement for being in flow. And we're going to make a suggestion that simple flow is available much more of the time to many more people, and we all need to access it to have more meaning.

• 47:23Shankar Vedantam?

  What is simple flow, Dave? And how is this contrasted with the world of transactional thinking that we are so often engaged in?

• 47:32Speaker 01

  Well, one of the things that's true when I'm in flow is I have to be in the present moment. I'm engaged enough. And again, the traditional definition of flow, which you've really done, is you've said, "I need to find a task that demands so much of me, it will suck all of my attention and in so doing, prevent me from being distracted by other things, and that will allow me to fully engage the present moment." So what I've really done is I've outsourced my attention to the challenge of my task, and that can work. But what we're seeing is, look, you're an autonomous being. You've got some free will here. You've got some power. You can actually make some choices to expand the flow channel and make it what we call the simple flow channel.

• 48:15Speaker 01

  So let's say I'm doing a task that frankly doesn't require everything I can do. I'm just chopping onions to prepare for soup. I'm making soup for dinner. I'm chopping an onion. Not that hard. I'm a little bored doing it, but hey, I can still be fully present to that task. So what I can do is I can choose not to let boredom come in. I can really enjoy the sharpness of the knife. I can feel the crispness of the onion pushing back. I can allow myself by choice to fully engage that experience for five or 10 minutes, and I can drop into flow by choice. I can make it more available. And anytime I'm in flow, I'm in the present moment, and that's a good place to be.

• 48:56Shankar Vedantam?

  And of course, in contrast with the transactional world, in a flow state, you're not only thinking about the end goal. You're not thinking about this destination disease that you talked about earlier, where you're always asking, "What is this going to be in the future?" You're actually in the present.

• 49:11Speaker 01

  Yes, as it turns out, transactional thinking and the transactional world that we spend a lot of our time in, almost invariably is future-oriented, about the outcome that has yet to be realized. And so, one of the reasons flow is an antidote to transactionality is I have to be... As soon as I start thinking about the other thing, I fall out of flow.

• 49:33Shankar Vedantam?

  In some ways, I'm hearing echoes of this idea in what meditation can be like, Dave. You know, people talk about meditation. Of course, you can sit cross-legged in a quiet room with your eyes closed, but people also talk about how you can have walking meditation, or talking meditation, or in your case, chopping an onion meditation, where you bring your full self to the work that you're doing. You're fully present. And in some ways, that's not different than sitting cross-legged in a quiet room with your eyes closed.

• 49:59Speaker 01

  Yes, when we talk about this reframing of there's really two worlds out there. In fact, we actually know from neurological research, especially the research done by Lisa Miller at Columbia, that these two halves of your brain are fundamentally wired differently. There's what she calls the achieving brain, and there's the awakened brain, and they're quite different. The achieving brain is always working in a system, has always got a closed-end outcome, and it's going for those results. And the achieving brain is getting an awful lot of stimulation these days. The awakened brain is present to that present moment. And so the mindfulness movement, you know, these various practices, one of the things we're reminding people is, don't turn those into transactions too.

• 50:42Speaker 01

  We watch a lot of people turn their practice into yet another transaction. I had a really good sit this morning. I nailed my yoga practice. I had a personal best in yoga today. Okay, you just turned a practice into a performance. As opposed to realizing, while you're walking along, yes, you can have a walking meditation, you can have a chopping meditation, you can have a driving meditation, you can actually be more present to the world you're in all the time, is not taking a little time out and stocking up to go back to the real world of getting things done, it's actually living in the real world that's currently happening.

• 51:31Shankar Vedantam?

  We talked in the last episode about this curse of always living in the future, and how many of us, in some ways, live so much in the future that when we finally reach the end of our lives, we discover that we have never lived in the present. I'm wondering if you have taken this idea to heart yourself, Dave. Have you actually tried to embrace the present, to embrace the becoming that you yourself always are?

• 51:55Speaker 01

  It really is what I'm working on right now. What I had to admit was, one of the shifts in life we talk about late in life is moving from role to soul. I'm no longer really identified in, you know, I'm a Stanford instructing, book writing guy. That's my role in the institution of, you know, the book publishing industry or in the academic world, as opposed to simply, you know, I'm Dave Evans, the grandfather of 11 delightful young people, trying to show up and be present to what's currently happening. So, moving out of a role-based life into more of a soul-based life means I'm trying to drop all that production-based identity. And I gotta be honest with you, it's so much harder than I thought.

• 52:40Speaker 01

  This growing up thing, we'd never get it done.

• 52:56Shankar Vedantam?

  The concept of radical acceptance is radical. The reason so many of us get defensive about our situation, or beat ourselves up over our failures, is because acceptance can be really painful. It's awful to realize we are not as far along in our careers as we would like to be. It's painful to acknowledge our relationships are not in a good place. It can be demoralizing to contemplate a health problem that just will not go away. That's where patience comes in. If moving forward requires us to first accept where we are, it's patience that allows us to take that first crucial step.

• 53:40Shankar Vedantam?

  The psychologist Sarah Schnitker once told me a story about a time her patience was sorely tested. Sarah is Christian, and she loves singing in church, but some time ago, she got some unwelcome feedback.

• 53:54Speaker 04

  The church I was going to at the time, they had done kind of an all-church survey, I think, just to get data on kind of how the church was meeting the needs of its congregants and ways they could improve. And I assumed that someone must have complained about my singing voice being loud and distracting. And so the pastor of this church had met and asked me, hey, would you be willing to sing more quietly? And at the time, I said, hey, I don't actually think that's a fair thing to ask me. And they kept telling me that I should just be quiet for the sake of others, that singing was kind of this freedom I should give up.

• 54:37Speaker 04

  And it was very emotional. I was crying. I was very deeply hurt. This is like, one of my most vulnerable things I do is come and try to express how much I'm grateful for the blessings in life. And the pastor basically told me, you're not welcome here, as you are. And this was so incredibly painful.

• 55:08Shankar Vedantam?

  Sarah experienced this feedback as a deep existential crisis. She felt rejected by a group that was supposed to embrace her with acceptance. Angry thoughts bubbled up inside her. If someone had a problem with her singing, maybe they should attend a different service. Wasn't the whole point of church to celebrate faith? How could her pastor be telling her to turn down the volume of her worship?

• 55:34Shankar Vedantam?

  But rather than act with haste, she decided to practice what her own research into the value of patience had taught her. She asked herself what her faith meant to her. She pondered why she felt so hurt. She gave herself time to think, to feel, to sit.

• 55:55Speaker 04

  I just took the time to really heal from that experience, kind of tried to practice my patience, let myself heal. But then decided, you know what? I'm going to go find a different faith community to be a part of. And went to a different type of church that had a different style of worship. But to this day, sing very loudly. And I'm very glad I gave myself the time to be patient with my own healing from that experience instead of rushing back in because it's such a rich source of meaning and support that knowing God loves me and also that other people in my church community also love me and love my singing is really,

• 56:40Speaker 04

  really important.

• 56:47Shankar Vedantam?

  We all have moments in our lives when we know we need to exercise patience. But knowing something and actually doing it are two different things.

• 56:59Shankar Vedantam?

  When we come back, Sarah Schnitker shares what she has learned about putting patience into practice.

• 57:07Shankar Vedantam?

  You're listening to Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam.

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• 57:35Speaker 05

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• 58:12Shankar Vedantam?

  This is Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam. At Baylor University, psychologist Sarah Schnitker studies patience, its benefits, its costs, and how to harness this important skill. She recently joined us for a conversation titled "The Practice of Patience." Today, she's back to respond to your questions and stories in our popular segment, "Your Questions Answered." Sarah Schnitker, welcome to Hidden Brain.

• 58:39Speaker 04

  Hi Shankar. Thanks for having me back.

• 58:43Shankar Vedantam?

  Sarah, I'd like to start by asking you to share a story that's set in a place where a lot of people can find their patience is tested. I understand that when you got married, you and your husband bought annual passes to Disneyland. But when you got to the "happiest place on earth", you noticed something quite different than what you expected. Tell me what you saw.

• 59:04Speaker 04

  Yes, we love Disneyland and, like many, do feel it's one of the happiest places you can be in the world. But we got there and quickly noticed lots of people were not happy. Children in particular were often crying and whining. You saw other couples maybe getting frustrated with each other and with the wait. And really, it struck me that Disneyland and other amusement parks are just an exercise in patience. You're waiting a ton of time in line for a very short experience. Maybe that only lasts a couple of minutes.

• 59:44Shankar Vedantam?

  I wonder if it's harder to practice patience in Disneyland because our expectations are that a visit is going to be nonstop fun. And it's hard for reality to compete with that vision. Talk for a moment about how our expectations can influence our ability to practice patience, Sarah.

• 1:00:02Speaker 04

  Yes, that's a great question. And I think expectations are critical. When you find that your wait is longer than you had anticipated, or even the fact that you have to wait at all, or have sore feet toward the end of the day as you're walking around the amusement park, this can start to violate your expectations and you start to feel this impatient emotion that things should be different. And I find this objectionable because it's different than what I hoped. And so we see that in those circumstances. That's when impatience starts to become a struggle and when we really need to practice our patience.

• 1:00:43Shankar Vedantam?

  You say there are different types of patience. One has to do with patience in our personal relationships. I'd like to share a message we received about that from a listener named Lindsay.

• 1:00:53Speaker 06

  I find that in my role in my job as a pediatric physical therapist, I have an exceptional amount of patience. I work with a lot of young children who have developmental disabilities and find it easier or just part of my job to be patient as I work with them on various skills and activities. But when I come home, sometimes I have very, very limited patience when I'm interacting with my husband or my dog when messes have been left out and it seems like it could have been attended to by my husband. But I end up taking on that responsibility.

• 1:01:36Speaker 06

  I have very limited patience when it comes to my relationships with other people.

• 1:01:42Shankar Vedantam?

  This is such an acute observation, Sarah. Lots of us are called to practice patience in our professional lives and we deliver. But then when we come home, we don't extend the same grace to the people in our personal lives. Why do you think this is?

• 1:01:57Speaker 04

  Yes, I think Lindsay really picks up such an interesting tension for many of us. I think part of this has to do with the expectations that we have that when we go to work, we expect it will feel like work and could be difficult. And that especially if you're working with children, that we have expectations that they won't be able to do everything quickly. But then when it comes to our own families, when we get home, I think there's two things working against us. First, we are tired at the end of the day, right? We've been practicing our patience and are starting to lose our motivation to continue.

• 1:02:38Speaker 04

  But then the second thing is that we might have higher expectations for our family members. And when we get home, we also expect it should be time to relax, that now I can stop having to feel like I'm working and instead move into the relaxation portion of my day. But that's often not the case. It can be when maybe the second shift begins and there's a lot of new work to do.

• 1:03:03Shankar Vedantam?

  So Lindsay's comment also reminds me of a second type of patience that you talk about, and this is the patience required to deal with mundane problems. So chores and traffic jams and lost phones. And I'm wondering whether these moments become especially tedious because of the sheer number of them that we have to deal with on a daily basis?

• 1:03:22Speaker 04

  I think that definitely would be the case. I think it's a really interesting question of whether it gets more and more difficult as we encounter more and more of these daily hassles. But I think what we know from other research studies on self-regulation and emotion regulation is that when the pressures accumulate, we don't always have the resources available to meet those pressures. And so there might be an optimal level of daily frustrations that will help us build patience, but not fall prey to impatience. And it might be, once we get past that optimal level, we start to just kind of deteriorate

• 1:04:05Speaker 04

  into impatience and just struggle to get out of it.

• 1:04:10Shankar Vedantam?

  You also highlight a third type of patience. It has to do with setbacks that we face at work, in our relationships, or with our health. A listener named Vic wrote in with this note. "I was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 2019. Since then, I've seen myself become a shadow of what I used to be. I was approaching a black belt in the martial art I loved. I used to bike 20 miles on a whim. I had an extensive vocabulary. These days, I have tremors on my right side, need to think of every step I take. I also have balance issues." Vic has a question for you, Sarah. "I considered myself to be a very patient person. Is it possible to become even more patient than you were before?

• 1:04:55Shankar Vedantam?

  And what recommendations do you have for those who go through a drastic, uninvited change? What would you say, Sarah?"

• 1:05:04Speaker 04

  Well, I think the first thing I would say is, my heart goes out to Vic. It sounds like this has been a really challenging diagnosis and that Vic is just dealing with a lot of changes and losses. I think it is possible to grow more and more patient. Many of us experience growth in patience over time. Not always, but sometimes. And we do have data showing that people can grow in their patience over the course of years, not just months. But I also am struck by the challenges that a diagnosis like MS can bring to a person's life. And it seems to me

• 1:05:46Speaker 04

  that part of the ability to maintain patience in this kind of circumstance would also be really selecting well, goals that are still important, and optimizing towards those goals. And that by homing in on what is really critical, it allows you to keep your patience and not to become so dysregulated by all the things that are really challenging, but to be able to focus in. And I think finding that key purpose and really selecting what it is you care about and what you're going to try to do

• 1:06:28Speaker 04

  with your more limited resources as a human is really essential for helping that patience to grow.

• 1:06:39Shankar Vedantam?

  When we come back, how to know when you are being patient or being passive. You're listening to Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam.

• 1:06:56Speaker 03

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• 1:07:44Shankar Vedantam?

  This is Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam. In our hectic world, patience can seem like a rarity.

• 1:07:53Shankar Vedantam?

  In certain situations, we might even see someone who's patient as passive or unambitious.

• 1:08:01Shankar Vedantam?

  At Baylor University, Sarah Schnitker argues that patience is an underestimated strength in our busy, overscheduled lives.

• 1:08:11Shankar Vedantam?

  Sarah, we talked in our initial conversation about Martin Luther King Jr. and his struggle to find patience in practicing civil disobedience. We heard from a listener named Simon. Simon is a bassist, he's also Asian American, and the founder of an all Asian American rock band called The Slants.

• 1:08:31Speaker 07

  A number of years ago, I tried to file a trademark for my band's name. It was denied. The USPTO, or US Patent and Trademark Office, said that it was disparaging to persons of Asian descent, members of my community. This was for an all-Asian band. I appealed. I appealed. I got thousands and thousands of people to weigh in, experts, community leaders, et cetera. And it just didn't seem to move the needle. Long story short, it took over eight years from start to finish before we finally made it to the Supreme Court of the United States, and we won in a unanimous victory. It both kind of reiterated the fact that we needed patience and we also had urgency. That is our legal process.

• 1:09:16Speaker 07

  Our legal system is a bunch of hurrying up and waiting. You rush to file. You rush to get support. You need to make these critical deadlines. But then you have to wait. You have to wait for the government to respond. You have to wait for courts to decide. You have to wait sometimes for hearts to change, as it needed to happen in our case. So, thank you for sharing a great episode with tons of great insights on it.

• 1:09:42Shankar Vedantam?

  So that's an amazing story, Sarah. What I find fascinating about it is that Simon is pointing out there are times we need to act really quickly and times we need to be really patient and we need to have both those capacities in us.

• 1:09:55Speaker 04

  Yes, Simon's story is really astounding in many ways. And I think it's such a great illustration of how patience and courage work in tandem, right? He describes these moments where they had to hustle, where they had to get paperwork filed, where they had to move very, very quickly and probably have some sleepless nights to get things done. But then there were other times in this eight-year journey where they had to just wait and probably weren't getting no news and could easily become frustrated and...

• 1:10:29Speaker 04

  So disheartened that others would have given up and said, oh, we'll just stop this fight. But I think he really exemplifies that patience and courage work well together and that sometimes we really do have to be fast. And so patience does not mean we're always slow, but that we have the wisdom to move slowly when it's necessary and to move quickly when it's not and to just be properly oriented to the speed at which things need to move.

• 1:11:04Shankar Vedantam?

  Simon's comment also highlights the unique challenge of exercising patience when you're dealing with a bureaucracy or a set of institutions where you have little to no control over the outcome. I'm wondering if you have insights for listeners who may be waiting to hear back about, you know, a job they applied for or for their insurance company to approve a medical procedure that they need when it feels like they're up against, you know, a huge faceless bureaucracy?

• 1:11:33Speaker 04

  Yes, I think this is common that people describe struggles with bureaucracies as more challenging than just with other individuals. We are beginning to study parents of adolescents with disabilities and they report this as well, that they're okay being patient with their own child, but they get really upset and really struggle when it comes to navigating all the systems that are supposed to support their child and their family. I know I experienced this struggle when I dealt with my own health issues during grad school. And it's, I think, very helpful to have a specific plan of how you're going to move forward. So you don't

• 1:12:18Speaker 04

  have to be ruminating on it. So I know for myself, I was trying to get a certain procedure to figure out what I was sick with back when I was throwing up all the time in grad school before I got my cyclic vomiting diagnosis. And what I did is I said, okay, I'm going to set my timer every day for 8:03 a.m. and 4:455 p.m. and I will just call with a friendly voice and see if they can get me in because that's when they would know if they had cancellations overnight or throughout the day. And this gave me a sense of control because I had a plan and I would follow through on it. I felt like this also gave me a sense of a human connection because

• 1:13:03Speaker 04

  I'd actually talked to someone and even sometimes they would express empathy, which helped. And I mean, that's a very specific instance, but I think what our research shows us is that making particular plans that tie to cues in your environment, like setting an alarm and doing something at that time can really help us to not only achieve our goals, but to be less stressed as we're doing it.

• 1:13:30Shankar Vedantam?

  I remember the famous psychologist Amos Tversky once said something along the lines of, "We lose years because we're not willing to lose hours," or words to that effect. His point was that in trying to rush something, we can sometimes slow ourselves down even further. One of our listeners named Ryder had a story along these lines. Some months ago, he suffered a concussion. What should have taken about a month tops to fully recover from has now been something I've been dealing with for five months because of my lack of patience. There were multiple instances where I was just like, you know, I probably shouldn't do this,

• 1:14:12Shankar Vedantam?

  like trying to play video games or get work done or just trying to get back into the gym and being active. And each time I did so, it would exacerbate my symptoms and set me back further. I feel I can relate to Ryder, Sarah. Talk about this idea that rushing around can sometimes slow us down.

• 1:14:35Speaker 04

  Yeah, I resonate with Ryder many times in my life and still to this day, as I cope with my own health problems of when to push, when to not push. You know, when he was speaking, I was just thinking of, I think it's in the military, they have the phrase, "Slow is smooth, smooth is fast," that allowing things to take the time they really need and not pushing is just so essential in nature and in our bodies and that

• 1:15:09Speaker 04

  We often lose sight of the big picture goal and get caught up in the moment, which is what I heard coming through from Ryder just a little bit is, I really just want to do this now.

• 1:15:22Speaker 04

  But patience does draw on this kind of core capacity for delay of gratification. And that if I can wait, I'll have the benefits in one month of being well, instead of having to wait five months to still not be where I really want to be in my health. And I think it's such a temptation that we humans deal with in so many scenarios. And I think our culture so often likes a quick comeback. And it's good to love comeback stories, but I think the quick comeback is what we really celebrate instead of the slow comeback that takes the time it needs.

• 1:16:03Shankar Vedantam?

  A listener named Dave talked about an experience where he was called upon to demonstrate patience, not with himself, but with a stranger. He had just started a new job and needed to get gas on the way to an important meeting. When I pulled into the gas station, an elderly woman had just pulled in in front of me and stopped in the middle of the islands. She was confused on where to go or what to do. And I lost my patience, zoomed around her to a pump, got out and started pumping gas. She eventually pulled up to a pump, got out and started walking over to me. I thought she was going to admonish me for zooming around her.

• 1:16:46Shankar Vedantam?

  But instead, with tears in her eyes, told me that she didn't know what to do. She had just lost her husband and had never pumped gas in her life.

• 1:16:58Shankar Vedantam?

  My heart instantly melted.

• 1:17:01Shankar Vedantam?

  And I turned to her and told her I understood because I had lost my wife a year prior. I had all the patience and time in the world and walked her through the process of how to get gas.

• 1:17:14Shankar Vedantam?

  I walked away feeling very bad about losing my patience. And ever since have focused on trying to understand and be empathetic to other people before losing my patience. This is such a beautiful story, Sarah. So much of the time when we are impatient with other people, it's because we don't fully understand their situation or their constraints.

• 1:17:37Speaker 04

  What an amazing story from Dave. And but I think this story just tells us that for true human connection, we often have to practice a bit of patience and that just how much we can miss in the lives of others when we're rushing and going so quickly. And I think it's just profound how Dave was still, even though he started out impatient. When that bid for connection came from this woman who had lost her husband recently, Dave was able to turn around and say, oh, wait a minute. There's much more at stake here than the few minutes it might take me to get this woman

• 1:18:22Speaker 04

  sorted and help her out. And I think so often, kind of in our polarized society and in our disconnected and highly lonely society, I wonder how much is really not a lack of empathy, but a lack of patience with each other that prevents us from making those true connections that are so important for our own well being and that of others in our community.

• 1:18:49Shankar Vedantam?

  The thing that strikes me, Sarah, about Dave's account is the moment when he pulls up to the gas station and finds this elderly lady blocking his way and he sort of zooms around her. In that moment, in some ways, he's come up with a fleshed out story about why it is she's in his way and, you know, that she's incompetent in dealing with a gas station or is taking her time and is not considerate of other people. And so often, I think, when we find ourselves impatient with other people, we come up with a story in our own heads about why they're behaving the way they do. And of course, most of us don't get the opportunity that Dave got, which is to have his story set right.

• 1:19:30Speaker 04

  Hmm, I think that is such a great point, Shankar, that we're always making stories in our heads about other people. And I'm often disappointed in myself that I, my story doesn't give the other person the benefit of the doubt.

• 1:19:46Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:19:47Speaker 04

  And it's not always a compassionate story or a story that helps me think about this person as kind of a human being with dignity, how easy it is to go with a negative story. And I think one of the ways that we often train for patience is to engage in cognitive reappraisal or training ourselves to think differently about things. And I think this brings up a great opportunity when we find ourselves impatient to say, what might be a different story than the one, to recognize the story I have in the moment

• 1:20:29Speaker 04

  and to just ask myself the question, what would be a different story that would make me understand this scenario from a different perspective? And partly that brings a curious orientation, which can help with patience. But I think in my experience, when I've taken the time to go deeper to the different story and actually ask the person, there are some deep backstories that just make so much more sense and help us to recognize we're all human beings with limitations and with griefs and with sadness and that the world is a better place if we actually practice patience with each other.

• 1:21:18Shankar Vedantam?

  When we come back, how to build a skill of exercising patience. You're listening to Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam.

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• 1:23:00Shankar Vedantam?

  This is Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam. At Baylor University, psychologist Sarah Schnitker studies how we can train ourselves to become more patient. Sarah, as we discussed, there are many situations in which staying patient is not easy. Here's a message we received on that front from listener Lauren. I just listened to the episode about patience, and it was very eye opening, but also kind of hard for me to hear. I just turned 50 recently, and I'm also divorced recently. My career isn't going well at all.

• 1:23:42Shankar Vedantam?

  And as time has been going by, things just don't seem to be getting better. And I keep being told, oh, Be patient, things will be better. Be patient, things will work out. And I guess at my age, I feel like there's this clock over my head. And that I'm running out of time for things to get better. I feel like I only have so many productive years less. How could I possibly see solutions or fix all this and have it be worth it? How can I possibly be patient now?

• 1:24:25Shankar Vedantam?

  Sarah, I really feel for Lauren. Sometimes we feel we are not just rushing against deadlines, but against time itself.

• 1:24:33Speaker 04

  I also feel for Lauren and my heart goes out to her and just this is not an uncommon experience, especially for people in midlife when they're facing transitions and I I I think that what Lauren is expressing here is also just this existential question that we all have limited time on this earth and that we all will die someday and that I don't think there's any easy answers here. I think there are a couple of things that could be helpful and one thing is to focus on kind of reevaluating our bigger purpose in life

• 1:25:15Speaker 04

  when we come to such a juncture where we start to question where we're at and if we have enough time to get where we want to be. That really thinking about what is my ultimate purpose and what do I want to accomplish for myself and also give back to my community in the days I have left on this earth. The second thing that I I think might be helpful is to consider a lot of the wisdom that comes from different cultures and traditions across time and place that many communities you see deal with this question of our mortality and the fact that we don't live forever.

• 1:25:56Speaker 04

  And a variety of ways that may or may not be helpful to a particular individual, but are worth considering. For example, a lot of indigenous communities really focus on the seven generations principle of considering not just my own generation and what I do here and now, but the seven generations of my family that will come after and that I'm part of a long string of my family and not just here and now. Likewise, a lot of your kind of traditional Judeo-Christian traditions and religious contexts focus on afterlife and that this life is not all there is and there's more to come.

• 1:26:37Speaker 04

  And this helps us to think about patience differently when taking that kind of perspective. And so I feel for Lauren. I think this is not an easy question she's bringing up, but I hope she might be able to explore some of the ways folks have answered this from a lot of our wisdom traditions over time and be able to kind of reevaluate her big purpose right now and see how that process might make her journey of patience be a little bit different.

• 1:27:07Shankar Vedantam?

  We received a voice memo from a listener named Ross who talked about how patience can sometimes be a form of courage. To be patient with pain is much the same as being courageous about your pain. Here he is. I've experienced five major abdominal surgeries, the recovery from which in a hospital, one could legitimately say is brutal. And it takes time. You can't just lay there and feel sorry for yourself. You gotta get up and with the tree of pipes and wires and walk. That's how you get out of the hospital. You walk out.

• 1:27:49Shankar Vedantam?

  So this is an example of being patient with the discomfort and the time that it's going to take to recover, but having the courage to keep moving until you do. Talk about this idea, Sarah, the idea of being patient with your own discomfort.

• 1:28:10Speaker 04

  I can feel some of that discomfort in Ross's voice as he's describing this and just how brutal sometimes physical recovery can be. I think this is a really interesting example because we often, in this cultural context in particular, in the United States, but I think in other places as well, we just want to escape discomfort and we will do anything to do that. And so, learning that I can enter into discomfort and do something like walking, which is a real challenge when you're recovering from surgery,

• 1:28:52Speaker 04

  that I have the bravery to get up and walk and then knowing that it's going to hurt and I'm going to have to be patient with that pain as I continue this activity because it's a necessary pain to achieve my larger goal of healing and getting out of this hospital. And so I think this is just a great example of how courage and patience play out in real time and that if we try to escape or rush through pain, we won't actually achieve our goals, but that pain is sometimes, sometimes a signal that we need to stop. But sometimes we have to be patient with pain and persist through it because it's necessary.

• 1:29:37Speaker 04

  And I'm thinking of childbirth,

• 1:29:41Speaker 04

  just how many women who have gone through the labor process would know this acutely, that there are some forms of pain that are good and need to be worked through, but that doesn't make it any easier to wait it out and continue moving forward during that process.

• 1:30:02Shankar Vedantam?

  You're an academic, Sarah. You teach students all the time. And I'm thinking about the role of patience in learning. There's so much about learning that does involve sitting with the discomfort of your own ignorance or the discomfort of your not being able to understand something. And I think so many of us, many students certainly, but really everyone, even people who are not in college or school, try and take shortcuts and basically say, let's cut out this discomfort that I'm feeling about not understanding how a quadratic equation works or how the history of this movement connects with the history of this other movement. Talk about the value of patience when it comes to learning.

• 1:30:43Speaker 04

  Yes. You know, patience is essential for learning. And I do see students often want to rush to get there. And instead of saying, oh, this is taking time, this is something that's difficult or this is something that must be really worthwhile because it's taking me so much time to understand it. I think some of their first responses, this is taking me time, means either it's not worth the learning or something's wrong with me.

• 1:31:16Shankar Vedantam?

  Right.

• 1:31:17Speaker 04

  And I should be able to learn this quickly, especially some of my brightest students. They can struggle with this the most. And so I do a lot of conversations, especially with my PhD students, the best and the brightest, who have been able to learn so much already, to just normalize that learning anything difficult is going to take you so much more time than you realize it will. Especially if we're learning a skill like writing or advanced mathematics or really any skill that really requires expertise, it's going to take you a while to get there. And that is not a signal that you don't have what it takes. It's a signal that this is something worthwhile.

• 1:32:04Shankar Vedantam?

  As we wrap up our conversation, Sarah, I'm reminded of something one of my heroes once said. Mahatma Gandhi said that violence often was a form of impatience. So we see something we don't like, we want to change it quickly, we find we cannot change it quickly, and so we resort to force. What do you think of this idea, Sarah?

• 1:32:23Speaker 04

  This is a fantastic idea. I am also a huge fan of Gandhi and his work and all the other amazing work it inspired around the world. I think he's right, that violence is most often caused by impatience, that we want things to happen in a certain way and in a certain timeframe. And human beings can't always be put on a clock, and especially not our own clock in the way we would like things to happen. And as societies over kind of history, when we look back, when they've resorted to violence, it's often begotten

• 1:33:05Speaker 04

  more violence. And that instead, the really significant and long-lasting movements that lead to peace and prosperity for all members of a society have recognized that impatience is not the answer, and that instead, we need to really consider the rights and desires of other human beings as equal to our own, and that we need to take routes of persuasion and nonviolent protest and nonviolent action, that this is when we actually see a society that is peaceful, that respects the rights of all people, and that really is typified

• 1:33:50Speaker 04

  by love and by justice, and is what many of us would want to live in, what we would call a society that allows people to live the good life. And so I know in my own life, I often feel the temptation to push people and to enact my own will, even not with physical violence, but with other forms of kind of pushing. And when each of us can recognize

• 1:34:18Speaker 04

  Patience is a gift we give. And it's a gift that comes back and benefits us in our relationships and in our society. I think it really can lead to the kind of flourishing society, flourishing life all of us desire.

• 1:34:35Speaker 04

  What we see is that we are patient with those we love. And we begin to love those to whom we are patient. That patience is sometimes the first step. And when we allow the person, the space, to be who they are, we actually can start to appreciate who they are and begin to feel compassion and love. Especially when we're talking about people who disagree with us, who we might consider our enemies, patience can help to cultivate a stance towards others that allows us to remember they are human beings as well and not just our enemies, our opponents, but

• 1:35:16Speaker 04

  part of our society and valuable contributors, even if we disagree with them.

• 1:35:28Shankar Vedantam?

  Sarah Schnitker is a psychologist at Baylor University. She is the director of the Baylor Research and Growth and Human Thriving Science Center. Sarah, thank you so much for joining me today on Hidden Brain.

• 1:35:40Speaker 04

  Thank you for having me, Shankar. It's been a real pleasure.

• 1:35:47Shankar Vedantam?

  Hidden Brain is produced by Hidden Brain Media. Our audio production team includes Annie Murphy-Paul, Kristin Wong, Laura Kwerel, Ryan Katz, Autumn Barnes, Andrew Chadwick, and Nick Woodbury. Tara Boyle is our executive producer. I'm Hidden Brain's executive editor. If you enjoyed today's conversation, please share it with a few friends, family members, or coworkers. If they don't listen right away, channel your inner Sarah Schnitker and be patient. You can show them again next week. I'm Shankar Vedantam. See you soon.

• 1:36:26Shankar Vedantam?

  Having lots of choices sounds like it would be great. Who doesn't want more flavors of ice cream? It turns out, the answer is us. Too many choices can make us anxious, overwhelmed. I'm Shankar Vedantam, host of the Hidden Brain Podcast and YouTube channel. Each week, Hidden Brain brings you fascinating, science-backed insights about human behavior. So the next time you have to choose, choose Hidden Brain on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, YouTube, or hiddenbrain.org. Hi, I'm Angie Hicks, co-founder of Angie. From roof repair to emergency plumbing and more, when you use Angie for your home projects, you know all your jobs will be done well. Angie, the one you trust to find the ones you trust.

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