The New Science Of Self Actualisation | Scott Barry Kaufman | Modern Wisdom Podcast 156

Scott Barry Kaufman is a Psychologist at the Columbia University, a writer and podcaster. The world has quantifiable metrics of success, our objective measures of wealth or status and even happiness. So why are so many people feeling disconnected and unfulfilled? Scott takes us through a new way to look at transcending our nature and going beyond our potential to fully actualise our life. Get Surfshark VPN - https://surfshark.deals/MODERNWISDOM (Enter Promo Code MODERNWISDOM for 83% off & One Extra Month Free) Extra Stuff: Buy Scott's book Transcend - https://amzn.to/2UxEx58 Check out Scott's Podcast - https://scottbarrykaufman.com/podcast/ Follow Scott on Twitter - https://twitter.com/sbkaufman Check out everything I recommend from books to products - https://www.amazon.co.uk/shop/modernwisdom #psychology #selfcare #maslow - Listen to all episodes online. Search "Modern Wisdom" on any Podcast App or click here: iTunes: https://apple.co/2MNqIgw Spotify: https://spoti.fi/2LSimPn Stitcher: https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/modern-wisdom - Get in touch in the comments below or head to... Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chriswillx Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/chriswillx Email: [email protected]

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

• 0:00Speaker 00

  If you find yourself becoming egoistic, arrogant, conceited, or puffed up, think of mortality, or think of other arrogant and conceited people and see how they look. Do you want to look like that? Do you want to take yourself that seriously, to be that unhumorous? I really like that.

• 0:21Chris Williamson?

  Scott, welcome to the show.

• 0:23Speaker 00

  Thanks, Chris. So great to chat with you today.

• 0:25Chris Williamson?

  Really exciting to speak to you today. So we're talking about transcend. We're going to be speaking about self-actualization. Kind of, at the moment, I suppose, the way that people view their own lives and what they can do with them is probably a pretty timely topic at the moment, right?

• 0:42Speaker 00

  I would say so. I think people are struggling in a lot of ways that they are perhaps losing sight of the self-actualization that's possible within them. It can be very easy to lose sight of the greater possibilities for yourself and for your fellow humans when you're pitched in a state of insecurity.

• 1:06Chris Williamson?

  So I know that you're a big fan of Maslow and you base a lot of what you do on top of some of his work, I guess.

• 1:14Speaker 00

  He's okay.

• 1:15Chris Williamson?

  He's all right. He's pretty, he's pretty cool. I'm going to guess that at a time like this, where people are very concerned about some real basics, the bottom of the pyramid, who worried about the health, the family's health, you know, there's food and water shortages. You see these images of Costco and everyone's ripping shit off the shelves and stuff like that. Like, does that-

• 1:35Speaker 00

  I know, and toilet paper, they're ripping the toilet paper, you know?

• 1:37Chris Williamson?

  The toilet paper is the maddest thing because it doesn't, it doesn't affect your digestion, but that's, we could go on forever about that. How does that relate, do you think, to the way that people are seeing their lives at the moment? The fact that their more immediate primal needs are kind of brought to the forefront?

• 1:53Speaker 00

  So what is the question exactly? How do I, like, how do I perceive the situation?

• 1:57Chris Williamson?

  So at the moment, we're talking, we're going to be talking about self-actualization and transcending. Is there an upper bound that's being placed on that by the immediacy of people's concerns at the moment?

• 2:08Speaker 00

  I see what you're saying. Well, there's, there certainly is. And, and that's the, the great tragedy of, of falling prey to insecurity and uncertainty. What I mean by fallen prey is there, there's always going to be uncertainty in our lives. We're in this, it's funny, people are just, are acting as though this situation is like the first time in their life that there is great uncertainty. I mean, there's, there's, there's equally probabilities, actually greater probabilities of things when you cross the street every day in your life. You don't, you don't think about all these things, you know? But here, there, there's a, there's a thing we could see on the media. There's a thing we can see on TV where, you know, people are talking about it every day is this

• 2:52Speaker 00

  is the thing. But it turns out, and I hate to break it, break the news, you hear breaking news, Scott Baer Kaufman, breaking news. You know how CNN is like breaking?

• 3:01Chris Williamson?

  That's why we're here.

• 3:02Speaker 00

  So Scott, yeah, breaking news. Uh, you have lots and lots of things, shit that can go wrong in your, your, your day.

• 3:12Chris Williamson?

  Tell it like it is, Scott.

• 3:14Speaker 00

  In my terms of my priorities of things that can go wrong, the COVID-19 is, is, is, is prevalent, but I wouldn't say that's my number one thing I'm concerned about in my day. I'm just trying to be mentally good through the day. So, look, there are lots of things. And I think the, the managing uncertainty is a lifelong skill. And if there's any silver lining to the moment we're in right now is that maybe we can, maybe now's, now's the time to practice, you know, hopefully all, all the listeners and, and people around the world will, um, will make it through this healthy, uh, and safe. I, I certainly have that wish for everyone. But if there's any silver lining, once we

• 3:58Speaker 00

  all get through to the other side, it's that maybe this is a great opportunity to learn some of those important uncertainty management skills that we probably should have been learning throughout the rest of our lives, not, not just in this moment.

• 4:11Chris Williamson?

  I couldn't agree more. There's this great example about uncertainty that Rory Sutherland, my friend from Ogilvy Advertising, told me. He was talking about London Heathrow, and he was saying that the wait times at London Heathrow to get through the security scan section were just causing abhorrent amounts of complaints. It was taking too long, people getting irritated. Um, so originally they went to London Heathrow and they said, What have you tried? What have you been looking at doing? And because of the sort of people that run an airport logistics, operations, optimization stuff. So they'd looked at, can we rotate the staff in a different way to make sure that they can move quicker? Where can we, can we condense the lanes down so we can fit more lanes of people in? Can we do? They looked

• 4:56Chris Williamson?

  at it as a logistical optimization problem. And they brought, I can't remember if it was Rory or one of his friends in. And they said, right, before you do that, before you spend several million pounds on new staff and new equipment, let's just try one thing. And along the queue, where you waited to get into the security scanning area, they just placed little posters that said 45 minute wait from here, 30 minute wait from here, 15 minute wait from here.

• 5:26Speaker 00

  Like Disneyland.

• 5:28Chris Williamson?

  Yeah. And the number of complaints dropped by like a factor of 10. They're just completely annihilated it because people don't mind waiting. They don't mind being in discomfort. They just want to know when it's going to end. And that is, that's the uncertainty, right? We don't know when this is going to end.

• 5:45Speaker 00

  That's exactly, that's exactly right. And it's particularly stressful for those who score high on a personality trait called neuroticism. So people who score high in neuroticism would prefer the devil they know to the devil they don't know. So I imagine there are some that maybe they wouldn't admit it in play company, but they're almost like, give me the fucking virus already, you know, like, like, let me get over with it, over with it, because it's actually more painful to my mental health to, to not know when it's coming, because they say it's coming. They say there's an 80% chance that, you know, that you're, you're going to get it probably, you know, um, not that you're going to die from it, maybe, maybe let me be clear, but that you'll even, you know, it'll, you, you might not even be symptomatic, but

• 6:28Speaker 00

  you'll get it, you know, um, that some people are probably like secretly being like, just give it to me already. By the way, am I allowed to curse in your podcast?

• 6:35Chris Williamson?

  You can curse away all you want, Scott.

• 6:38Speaker 00

  Thank you. Thank you.

• 6:39Chris Williamson?

  So let's, let's, let's get into it. What is, how do you define self-actualization? What is it? I've heard people speaking about it, but I don't know what it is.

• 6:47Speaker 00

  Um, should I say it one more time?

• 6:48Chris Williamson?

  What is self-actualization? How do you?

• 6:50Speaker 00

  Good question.

• 6:52Chris Williamson?

  That's the question.

• 6:54Speaker 00

  Well, people have misrepresented Maslow's ideas of self-actualization. And for instance, David Brooks, who's a New York Times columnist, really was hating on Maslow a couple of years ago and wrote something about how Maslow's ideas of self-actualization are the cause of the self-esteem movement we had in America where people could be like, "Oh, I can be anything I want because, you know, I'm good, good enough and doggone it, people like me." You know, that's the, that was the skit from Saturday Night Live. I don't know if you're familiar with that skit, but it turns out it's, it's not true. I mean, that's not fair. And when I read that, I was like, "Oh, hell no." You know, like, and actually I got Brooks on my podcast and I said, "Oh,

• 7:38Speaker 00

  hell no" to him, you know? Anyway, it was a little awkward, but whatever. Um, I, I still have great respect for him, but I was just being SBK, being SBK. Uh, but, um, you know, this is the thing is like, he, uh, Maslow really made it clear that to fully self-actualize, we have to eventually transcend ourselves. That self-actualization is really only a bridge to transcendence. You can't reach your full potential if you, you're not helping to reach the full potential of others. Like, you're, you're, you're not reaching your full potential. You know, people talk about reaching their full potential as though like they develop, that, that it stops when you develop your talents to its full capacity. And there's a lot of people in the self-help space, people, you know, you're, you're probably very familiar with this, you know, um, that, that have that

• 8:23Speaker 00

  conceptualization, like their high level, highest level goal is like greatness. That's it. And then, then you're done. As though greatness defined by them might only mean

• 8:38Speaker 00

  outachieving everyone. But that's not full greatness. You know, that's not the fullest potential. Maslow really tried to show people a vision of what humans really could be, what our, what our highest ceilings of human nature really could be, kind of point the way forward for that. And that's what I tried to do in this book as well, in that same spirit, and show that full self-actualization is not just an individualistic pursuit. It's becoming all you're capable of becoming. That is true. We can, we can define self-actualization as quite simply as becoming all that you're capable of becoming, but that all you're capable of becoming part. Actually requires uplifting other people, if that makes sense.

• 9:20Chris Williamson?

  So that's what's greater than greatness. Greater than greatness is you making other people great as well.

• 9:25Speaker 00

  Transcendence. Greater than greatness is transcendence. Yeah.

• 9:29Chris Williamson?

  I like it. So past Modern Wisdom guest Aubrey Marcus has this really beautiful quote, where he talks about how in order to serve, you have to be fit for service. And he says, you don't serve other people from your cup, you serve them from the saucer that overflows around your cup. And what I'm wondering here is, we've talked about the peak of greatness, the transcendence above self-actualization, being raising others up as well. Can you raise others before you've raised yourself? Or do you have to conquer your own mountain before you move on to them?

• 10:07Speaker 00

  Great question. I think that you do have to conquer your own mountain. You really have to do a lot of the inner work first. What I try to do in this book is show that in order to transcend yourself, you need a self that's transcended. You don't need to sacrifice yourself. There are some people who are trying to transcend and have a sense of self-sacrifice, where they almost feel guilty to first be great, you know? And I don't, I don't think that's, that's, that's the best way to help the world is to, is to squander your own talents in any way. I don't, I don't see these things as mutually

• 10:50Speaker 00

  exclusive. I think the best thing is for a transcendence, the best thing for, for transcendence to be most effective is when there's a seamlessness between yourself and the world. Because yourself that you've developed, or your talents and capacities and strengths have been developed to such a degree, that your being, just by being in the world, helps uplift others. So there's a seamlessness between self and world. That's the greatest thing, is when there's a harmonious integration between self and world. Not when you've made a self-sacrifice to such a degree where you're, where you feel as though you, you don't matter, and the only thing that matters is other people. That, I don't, I wouldn't say that's the healthiest thing.

• 11:35Chris Williamson?

  I think some people as well, they fall prey to being

• 11:41Chris Williamson?

  They sacrifice their own progress, or they perhaps recount trying to have objective measures of success. And they do that in order to avoid having to play the game of success and prove themselves. I was wondering, I asked Aubrey the same question of how many people that follow an ascetic tradition now, you know, modern day, I'm not bothered about money, man. I'm not bothered about possessions, man. Do it simply because they don't want to have to get down to brass tacks of doing some hard work. And it's very easy to signal that you're being very charitable and altruistic and helping other people. But all the while, having never conquered your own mountain, you know?

• 12:25Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's it's true. I phrase it as pseudo transcendence or pseudo growth. There are a lot of people that are trying to, you like that? There are a lot of people that are trying to grow on a faulty foundation. And we all know what happens when you try to build anything on a faulty foundation. You get the Trump Tower. No, I'm joking. I'm joking. I'm joking. Don't, don't, don't put

• 12:52Chris Williamson?

  No one cares. No one cares over here. I mean, 50% of the audience is in America, but no one cares over here. You've got no enemies in the UK.

• 12:58Speaker 00

  Okay, I was gonna say, edit that out, edit that out. But, but, you know, when you, when you build anything on a faulty foundation, where there's where it's being, and what I mean by that, is that the higher levels are being fueled by deficiencies that haven't been taken care of. Maybe it's a incessant quest for glory, or an incessant quest for, to be liked, or for connection, or, or safety. When transcendence is being fueled by those deficiencies, it's not a well-integrated unit. You know what I'm saying? Really, the most effective forms of of growth and transcendence, we call real growth,

• 13:39Speaker 00

  is one that is not motivated anymore by the deficiencies of our basic needs, but is motivated by exploration and love for uh for the love in the sense of humanitarian love for all of humankind to help uplift the species, not just yourself. And and and they have very different flavors to them, these two forms of growth.

• 14:05Chris Williamson?

  So how do we get started? I think, right, Scott, this sounds great. I'm gonna get me some of that self-actualization. I'm gonna help raise everybody up. Where do I start?

• 14:21Speaker 00

  It's it's interesting. I think that you need to do a real honest assessment of where you're at. Because, you know, you're asking me, where do you start? But there's such individual differences in where people are starting at, you know, who are listening to this podcast. You could have some people starting at the point where their basic safety needs are the most pressing at the moment. And and that's very fair, considering the state of the world right now. This, you know, to date, I'm looking at my calendar, March 18th, 2020, I couldn't even remember the year. I've been I've been holed up in this in this place for so long, you know, with, you know, scared to, you know, to to to leave that I don't

• 15:06Speaker 00

  even know what the day is or year, but yeah, yeah. But people start, you have to really have an honest, real honest assessment of where you are. And I do my website, I try to I have free personality, self-actualization personality test to help you figure to kind of assess what I have a self-actualization test of 10 different dimensions. You can see which of the dimensions are you most efficient in at the moment, and what you want to work on. Because this path of self-actualization is so unique to each individual. So I I stay away from From advice of like, you need to start here because I want to know where really do you need to start from. So that would I say, Seth, which of your needs is it? Is it the safety one?

• 15:50Speaker 00

  Is it your connection that's holding you back from self actualizing it? Uh, maybe you feeling lonely these days. You should listen to that. You know, I think a lot of people pseudo grow or become pseudo great, pseudo great. It sounds even funnier, doesn't it?

• 16:05Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, pseudo everything. I want some pseudo cake and pseudo toothpaste.

• 16:11Speaker 00

  It sounds funny, actually, to be your only pseudo great.

• 16:15Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, it's like, it's like a put down, yeah. Like a rap battle put down.

• 16:20Speaker 00

  It's like a rap battle. Yeah, exactly. Um, but the first time I ever used that phrase, but I'm saying like, you may think you've achieved greatness and people might tell you you you're great, but maybe you're suffering with with profound loneliness and and that's important. That's an important signal. I would say you need to start there. Don't start with how great you you think you are. Start with, start with the loneliness part. Um, or maybe, maybe you actually struggle with the with esteem issues, self esteem issues. And maybe that's, that's where you need to start. Maybe you're, you're getting your validation from

• 17:01Speaker 00

  others too much and you're not feel, you feel like, who am I anymore? Apart from my likes on Twitter, you know, maybe, maybe that's confusing you. And so you should start there. So I think that there are lots of places, a lot of entry ways. That's what I'm saying. Depending, depending on where you're at right now.

• 17:19Chris Williamson?

  I wonder how many people that are listening are feeling a little bit of a pang there as we go through some of the common, the common issues that you've got the safety, perhaps talking about financial worries, you know, money worries, future worries, basic stuff, or connection, did an episode with Lydia Denworth, who's just written a book called Friendship, talking about this loneliness epidemic, which is apparently sweeping America, you know, this lack of connection that we've got and how online friendships don't supplement for real world ones. Or then on top of that layer on, on again, about this potential lack of self esteem. We're using likes and likability online as a proxy for the way that

• 18:00Chris Williamson?

  we feel, you know, for our, our actual self esteem. So yeah, I think, um, there's probably a few people now that are feeling that pang inside. So I want to, um,

• 18:10Speaker 00

  A lot of people, more than a few.

• 18:12Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, for sure. Um, I want to talk about peak experiences. Can you tell us about what you looked at to do with that in the book?

• 18:22Speaker 00

  That's a, that's a phrase Maslow used to talk about what are the most wondrous moments of our lives that make life worth living?

• 18:33Speaker 00

  No big deal, NBD.

• 18:35Chris Williamson?

  Sounds, sounds like I want more of them.

• 18:37Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah. And, and, and he really set all, I set out to discover what are all the different ways people can satisfy, that can have peak experiences? And they could take a lot of different forms. Interestingly enough, he found a lot of women reported childbirth as being their greatest peak experience. And how do you have one eyebrow go up and the other one stay put?

• 19:02Chris Williamson?

  That was from when I was in school and I really, really wanted to be Dwayne The Rock Johnson. And I practiced and practiced and practiced, but I can only do it on one side.

• 19:12Speaker 00

  It's amazing. Now, does testosterone predict whether you can do that? Because I can't do that.

• 19:18Chris Williamson?

  I don't, I think it's got nothing to do with testosterone. I think it's got everything to do with me being a closet WWE nerd throughout most of, throughout most of my secondary school. And that being like the one, didn't learn to do the DDT or the German suplex, but I could raise, I could do the people's eyebrow. And now, now it just comes out when I'm slightly intrigued. Like, oh, interesting. So I'm intrigued. So go on.

• 19:42Speaker 00

  That was impressive. Well, do you remember what I actually said that caused that, that eyebrow to go up?

• 19:47Chris Williamson?

  No.

• 19:49Speaker 00

  We lost it, lost the thread.

• 19:51Chris Williamson?

  We've lost the thread. In my, in my defense, I'm dealing with coronavirus.

• 19:56Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, I know, I know. Um, so we were talking about.

• 19:59Speaker 00

  Like, I'm gonna knock on wood because that might not be true, right? You haven't, it might just be a cold.

• 20:03Chris Williamson?

  I've just got some virus at the moment. Yeah. I mean, if I've got a virus and I'm, I'm self-isolating and it's not COVID-19, I'm gonna be so pissed off. Because I'm just at home for.

• 20:13Speaker 00

  What a waste.

• 20:14Chris Williamson?

  I know.

• 20:15Speaker 00

  What a waste.

• 20:15Chris Williamson?

  During this time. And also it's the trendy virus that everyone wants at the moment, right? You know, I don't want, I don't want last year's virus. I want this year's virus.

• 20:21Speaker 00

  Do you watch, do you watch Curb Your Enthusiasm?

• 20:23Chris Williamson?

  Yes, bits and bobs. I've not seen all of it.

• 20:26Speaker 00

  Yeah, that, this is something Larry David would do is to, to, as using an excuse whenever people are like, hey, why are you, why are you being such a chance to be like, I got, I got the Corona.

• 20:35Chris Williamson?

  Sniffles and a fever, who'd have thought of that?

• 20:44Speaker 00

  Yeah, like, you know, like being really awkward on a first date, you know, and like, and they're like, and the lady, girl's like, why are you, the lady is like, why are you speaking so awkward? Like, I got Corona. And they're like, oh!

• 20:53Chris Williamson?

  Ah, thank you. Yeah, it's a get out of jail free card. Peak experiences, childbirth, that was it.

• 20:59Speaker 00

  Oh, peak experiences childbirth, wow, what a tangent that was.

• 21:02Chris Williamson?

  And the guy, the guy with coronavirus brings it home. Let's get it.

• 21:05Speaker 00

  Well, the tangent that was, well, I've been known, this is what I've known for, is, is my legacy is tangents. Yeah, so there are lots of different things from, from childbirth to, to watching a sunset, to overcoming a great challenge, to coming up with a, having insight, an idea, you know, I'm sure Albert Einstein had moments of peak experiences on his desk, you know, not on his, at his desk, you know. So, you know, these sorts of very varied things can, can, can be triggers of peak experiences and, and, and yet, Mazel realized the last year, last year and a half of his life, that maybe

• 21:49Speaker 00

  peak experiences weren't the most profound moments of transcendence we could have as a species. He started to discover what he called plateau experiences, which a lot of people don't know about in his writing. And plateau experiences, he described as like lounging in heaven, not getting so excited about it.

• 22:10Speaker 00

  It's basically being able to cultivate a mild form of peak experiences throughout your whole day,

• 22:18Speaker 00

  where you have, you cultivate more sustainably a sense of wonder and a sense of gratitude and, and, and awe for, for things in your, in your, in your moment to moment experience, not these one-off profound peak experiences. And he only discovered that when he confronted his mortality, when he confronted his...

• 22:44Speaker 00

  A potential for a heart attack that he could have at any time because he had one and survived it. And he said that living this postmortem life is what he called it turned out to be the biggest trigger of transcendence than I ever realized in all my theories. So I think that peak experiences are very important and can really help open us up to greater possibilities for ourselves and others. But I think ultimately the wisdom there that Mazel was talking about and which a lot of Buddhist practitioners talk about. He drew a lot on the Buddhist and Indian traditions as well. His colleague, Yue Ansari, actually

• 23:26Speaker 00

  is the one who really brought to prominence the idea of the plateau experience. He just co-opted the term from his East Indian colleague. But these are things that we can cultivate in our moment to moment experience because this is all we got is the moment. That's it.

• 23:45Chris Williamson?

  Shy of childbirth, shy of me having to get myself pregnant, which there's a number of hurdles for me to overcome there. How

• 23:53Speaker 00

  Your voice is way too deep.

• 23:55Chris Williamson?

  Ah, well, that's another one. I hadn't even thought of that. How can I have more

• 24:00Speaker 00

  To, to, you see what I'm saying? To be, to, yeah, okay.

• 24:03Chris Williamson?

  I understand. How can I have more transcendent experiences in my day to day life? I don't want to have to jump off a skyscraper. I don't want to have to give birth every day.

• 24:13Speaker 00

  Well, some of the most, what are, what is your, what are, let me ask you, what are some of the triggers that you can think of that you've noticed in your past have have been a trigger for a peak experience? What are some of the themes?

• 24:28Chris Williamson?

  So visual beauty, certainly. I like to travel. I like to go, I like to go places. Recently went to Bali in Indonesia and there's a tiny little island called Gili Te, which has just the most phenomenal sunsets you've ever seen out in the middle of the ocean. That was, that was just outrageous. Certainly some of the conversations that I have, you know, when I get to podcasts or when I'm in full Flow when I don't look at the clock, when I don't think about anything else. Um, you know, I'm just, I'm fully engrossed in what I'm talking about this flow between me and the guest. Uh, during a workout.

• 25:04Speaker 00

  That's a big one for me.

• 25:05Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, yeah, I, I, I really do a pity people who don't have that outlet in their life. You know, that don't have the outlet for a genuine, um, deep, rigorous conversation. Because there's so, it's the freest thing you're ever going to get. You just need you and a, and a buddy. Um, and yeah, it really can be unbelievably, unbelievably fulfilling. Um, workouts, a hard workout, um, in a class with my, with my friends again as well, maybe, or, or, you know, doing awards somewhere.

• 25:40Chris Williamson?

  Reading sometimes as well, like reading a book at the moment, The Moral Animal by Robert Wright. I just can't put the thing down.

• 25:47Speaker 00

  I talked to him yesterday.

• 25:48Chris Williamson?

  No way.

• 25:49Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah.

• 25:50Chris Williamson?

  He's a G. Um, I, I've, I've got told to read it for ages, reading, reading a book. Oh my God, that's so cool. Oh my God, that's so, and you just keep on going, keep on going, chewing it up, chewing it up. Seven Eves by Neil Stephenson as well. That was a sci fi book that I read. And that just, I was staying up until two in the morning to read a book. I haven't done that since I was, well, I don't know if I've ever done that before, you know, like stuff like that. So there's, there's some of mine.

• 26:16Speaker 00

  Beautiful. So trying to, I'm trying to think of the common theme among all those, all those things that you just mentioned.

• 26:24Chris Williamson?

  So the first one that comes to mind for me is presence.

• 26:28Speaker 00

  Oh, for sure, for sure. Yeah, that's, that's undeniable aspect. And that's a common characteristic of, of anyone in, in the, in the throes of the peak experience, so to speak. I mean, the modern, there's a modern day term that is used a lot, which is flow, uh, that Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi has talked about. But the flow concept has been tied so much to performance. And that wasn't really the spirit of Maslow's notion of peak experiences. If anything, the peak experience is when you're not trying to perform at all. Right? You're really being, he called it, he called it moments of pure being is what he referred to. That sounds a little woo woo. But what does that mean? Can we unpack the, the notion of pure being?

• 27:14Speaker 00

  You know, and, and you're kind of bringing your whole self to the table and all of your powers to the table. And you're not being self critical of it. You're, you're, you have a lot, you have as many degrees of freedom as possible in the moment. Because you're not being inhibited by your fears and by your anxieties. And my grandma would say, oh, you're a mischigano.

• 27:40Chris Williamson?

  He was totally unencumbered, right? And I, I get it as well. The, um, the flow dynamic that always did sit slightly askew for me. I'm not trying to do something which is both challenging and worthwhile at the limits of my performance when I watch a sunset. I'm not trying to watch the sunset.

• 27:59Speaker 00

  Yeah, I've said those exact words before.

• 28:01Chris Williamson?

  Scott, we are, we are brothers in mind, my friend.

• 28:06Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, I'm not, I'm not trying to watch the sunset better than last time, watch the sunset better than the person next to me. Um, you could definitely use it as a meditative experience and be like, right, okay, well, I want to be as present as I can be. I don't think that that's, that's trying to push it too far. But yeah, there's, there's no, there's no top leaderboard of who watched the sunset the best.

• 28:28Speaker 00

  That's exactly right. And it also doesn't explain why people report their greatest peak experiences. When they're in tune with another human being. And you mentioned that as one of your triggers. It's a, it's a great trigger for me too. When there's a great synchronicity between you and another person. And it usually happens when you're not trying to change the, the person at all. I mean, Carl Rogers does have a beautiful quote about that. Carl Rogers is a humanistic psychotherapist. And he, he's like, when you're looking at sunset, you're not like, oh, I wish I could just change that corner a little bit, move it up a little.

• 29:08Speaker 00

  You just admire it for what it is and treating humans like that as well is is gonna make it increase the likelihood that you'll have a peak experience with that person. There's no challenge there. Like the concept of flow doesn't seem to to apply in in so many experiences that we could call peak experiences.

• 29:30Chris Williamson?

  I think you're right. So how do we move from the peak experiences to the peak plateau? How do I make the sunset last all day?

• 29:40Speaker 00

  Well, I don't know if the goal is to make the sunset last all day, but I think the goal is more, how can we make the moment last while the sunset is still there? That might be subtle, subtle difference. Because part of this highest state of consciousness that Mazel was talking about in in the plateau experience is your ability to simultaneously be present in the moment, but also be aware of the impermanence of the moment. It's actually this juxtaposition that allows us to have that sense of transcendence. He would have

• 30:23Speaker 00

  exercises where he would say, you know, talk to someone and imagine while you're talking to them that this is the last time that you'll ever talk to that person forevermore. How does that change your your your presence with this person, you know? And I think that actually he came came up with a whole list of these activities of pure being, which I have in the book.

• 30:47Chris Williamson?

  Hit us, hit us with some. I want to know some of them, Scott.

• 30:50Speaker 00

  Yeah, this is how, living in the realm of pure being.

• 30:58Speaker 00

  Perceive the eternal intrinsic laws of the cosmos. No big deal.

• 31:02Chris Williamson?

  Easy one, easy one. I do that. Sometimes I do that before breakfast.

• 31:06Speaker 00

  Yeah, me too. To accept or even love these laws is Taoistic in the essence of a good citizen of the universe. Embrace your past and embrace your guilt rather than running from it. Be compassionate with yourself, be understanding, accepting, forgiving, and perhaps even loving about your your, I don't even know how to pronounce the word, foibles, foibles, F O I B L E S, as expressions of human nature. Foibles, foibles, there we go, foibles, as expressions of human nature. Enjoy and smile at yourself. Ask yourself, how would this situation look to a child, to the innocent, to a very old person who is beyond personal ambition and competition? Try to recover the sense of the miraculous about life. For example, a baby is a miracle.

• 31:49Speaker 00

  Think for that baby now, anything could happen and the sky is the limit. Cultivate the sense of infinite possibility, the sense of admiration, awe, respect and wonder. May I'll just give you one more, one of my favorites.

• 32:02Chris Williamson?

  Hit it.

• 32:03Speaker 00

  Uh, I, I really like this one. If you find yourself, and I, I actually practice this one, I try. If you find yourself becoming egoistic, arrogant, conceited or puffed up, think of mortality. Or think of other arrogant and conceited people and see how they look. Do you want to look like that? Do you want to take yourself that seriously to be that unhumorous? I really like that.

• 32:27Chris Williamson?

  That third party perspective is, it's so powerful.

• 32:31Speaker 00

  Do you do? I'm sorry, go on.

• 32:34Chris Williamson?

  Just the ability to look, to look at yourself as if you were a friend, you know, as if you're a friend looking at you, watching your actions. Um, because you just strip away all the biases, all of the attachments and you go, yeah, that, if I saw my friend do that, that would be, that'd be kinda, that'd be kinda weird.

• 32:51Speaker 00

  Absolutely. And I think that I, I often know who I wanna be by seeing great examples of people I don't wanna be. Do you, do you ever, you know, do you ever just like see someone and you're like, that's not, that's not my, that wouldn't be my best self.

• 33:12Chris Williamson?

  Man, I, I learn from other people's failures more than other people's successes, I think.

• 33:17Speaker 00

  Boom. Well, drop the mic on that one.

• 33:19Chris Williamson?

  Uh, I love it. I love a mic trap, man. That's what I'm here for. Um, but yeah, I, I honestly, I do. Um, what's that quote? I can't remember the guy. It might be Peter Thiel. Does he say, um, any idiot can learn from their own experience. I prefer to learn from the experiences of others.

• 33:34Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah. I mean, and there's so much. That's why great literature stands the test of time. Some of the greatest literature are great stories that transcend the ages of people failing in all sorts of ways. And yeah, there's not, there's not, not a lot of examples of great literature there about do to do a story of a person who had it all great, lived their life great.

• 33:57Chris Williamson?

  And it was fine.

• 33:59Speaker 00

  Yeah, it was all good. You know, we, we, we were in, you know, we passed down from generations to generations, archetypes of failures that we can all resonate with and learn from.

• 34:09Chris Williamson?

  I want to talk about familiarization and, and fresh experiences and how this relates to transcendence. Can you talk, can you talk to us about that?

• 34:20Speaker 00

  Yes. So psychology, I can, I can talk about different levels of nerdiness. Pick a level from one to five.

• 34:27Chris Williamson?

  I want.

• 34:27Speaker 00

  Five being super nerdy.

• 34:29Chris Williamson?

  I want five, please. Thank you.

• 34:32Speaker 00

  Oh, you want, okay. All right. Well, you chose it.

• 34:35Chris Williamson?

  Throw us in at the deep end. Come on, Scott.

• 34:38Speaker 00

  Psychologists have studied a, a concept called latent inhibition, which is a biological gating mechanism that we share with other animals that automatically tags our experience as relevant or irrelevant to a goal that we have in our mind. Our, our brain does it at a very subconscious and automatic level. It turns out that people who are very creative tend to have a very low latent inhibition. They're very unlikely to tag any experience automatically as, as irrelevant and, and inhibit the experience or idea or, or things

• 35:19Speaker 00

  coming into their visual field as, as irrelevant and, and, and mark it away and, and, and, and take it away from the experience. So. People who are creative, and another way of saying that is that they treat experiences that they may have experienced before as irrelevant, they experience it as fresh every time that they see it. You know, this lead inhibition mechanism that we evolved from other, and which we share with other animals, is important so that we don't, as the existential philosopher Soren Kierkegaard said, so we don't drown in possibility. You know, it's important to have some sort of gating mechanism.

• 36:04Speaker 00

  But it's also important not to have too much. You know, it's important, yes, it's true to learn from the past what is relevant and what's irrelevant, and to tag things as irrelevant if we experience them again in a particular context. But for creative people, often what seemed irrelevant becomes a great insight eventually, becomes relevant someday. You have to be open to the fact that what was once irrelevant may become relevant. I had an example of that on Twitter just yesterday, where an idea I was obsessed about

• 36:44Speaker 00

  during my dissertation for five years, I wrote, I published the paper, no one cared about the paper. A whole decade later, you know, feel like, you know, a failure for my dissertation. I saw its relevance of the study to the world we live in today, and I tweeted it out, and it went viral. It went viral amongst nerdy scientists, but that's still, that's something, that's still something. And, and I, it's suddenly relevant. So you have to constantly have that faith as a creative human being that things that... You believe in or things that are meaningful to you, that they'll matter.

• 37:26Speaker 00

  And but also it's important to have a newness of appreciation of things constantly. You know, it's great to have gratitude for new things in your life that are good. But it's even better to have gratitude for the things that that have become stale to others. That makes sense.

• 37:43Chris Williamson?

  Absolutely. Yeah, there's a million, a million doorways that I've got open at the moment. So I'm going to guess this relates to the learner's brain or the learner's mind in a way where

• 37:54Speaker 00

  Yeah, the beginner's mind.

• 37:55Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, the beginner's beginner's mindset where the first time that you see something, you kind of take more of it in. I had Laura Vanderkam, who wrote Off the Clock on last year. And she was talking about how one of the best examples of a beginner's learner's mindset is when you go on holiday. And it's, for instance, I can't tell you anything about my drive to work from the last six months. But I can tell you the type of shoes and the book that the guy that walked us to our boat in Africa two years ago was wearing. And I know the exact color of the book. I know how it looked in his hand. I know the way that he walked. I know the color of his jacket. Why? And her argument, you may be able to tell us, her argument was that when your brain

• 38:39Chris Williamson?

  gets exposed to new, novel experiences, it doesn't know what it'll need to remember. Therefore, it kind of opens up and tends to sponge in more. I also guess that just generally, when you're somewhere new, your desire to be present, you're not distracted, you're not looking at your phone, you're not thinking about something else. You're like, holy fuck, I'm in Africa. Look at this, look at this guy, look at his book, look at his shoes.

• 38:59Speaker 00

  That's, that's true for sure. Also, the emotional experience, the, the valence of the emotional experience matters. I wrote an article for Scientific American, which your, your audience might be interested in.

• 39:13Chris Williamson?

  Let's see if I can Show notes below, link will be in show notes below.

• 39:16Speaker 00

  Oh, thank you. Oh, cool. Let me see if I can find the actual title of it so I don't make up the title on here on the spot.

• 39:23Chris Williamson?

  Title of your own, of your own article up, Scott, that would be a bad look.

• 39:27Speaker 00

  Exactly, that'd be, that would be a bad look. Let's see, I try to avoid bad looks. Okay, emotionally extreme experiences, not just positive or negative experiences, are more meaningful in life. So what this relates actually to the peak experiences thing. Peak experiences are tend to be the most memorable moments in our lives. And It's not just, you know, it's not just the positive or negative aspect of it. So that also applies to to negative aspects of our lives. They still become the most meaningful moments in our lives. Not saying we don't, we wouldn't rather not have some of those negative moments. But it's really the the emotional valence of it, just how much it impacts us.

• 40:10Speaker 00

  That it touches us at an emotional level that that is a source of meaning for us, not just whether it was positive or negative.

• 40:20Chris Williamson?

  I've been thinking about this a little bit recently, actually, as I was talking about living on the edge. And everybody that's listening, plus yourself, will have some friends who tend to shy away from the bottom 25 and the top 25% of extremeness within experience, both good and bad. Right. They like to live in that interquartile range. They like to live in that middle 50%. And it does feel quite comfortable, but there's a reason that edges are there, right? Edges wouldn't be there if they weren't there for you to stand on them. And there's nothing more exciting than staring over the edge of a building. And I really, I really do think that as we start to push ourselves out towards, obviously,

• 41:03Chris Williamson?

  you need to do it safely, like I am not your doctor, every disclaimer under the sun. But you need to allow yourself to go out and experience. And I wonder as well, whether in a world where we have more, so much more convenience, I can get my Uber to the store to deliver my gourmet burger back to the house where I watch my Netflix and I then get, you know, Amazon Prime my next outfit through the door. I wonder whether we are nerfing the edges of the extremeness and the intensity of experience in the modern world.

• 41:37Speaker 00

  Yeah, we are. And what we, like, like, people like to fear monger because fear mongering sells. When I say people, I mean marketers.

• 41:52Speaker 00

  By people, I mean douchebags. Okay, do you know what I mean? Like, that's what they do, whatever sells, they'll do it. So, you know, right now, you know, the coronavirus scare, you see on Facebook, everyone is selling, like, oh, I have the best P95 face mask, N95 face mask out of everyone else. Fear mongering. Well.

• 42:16Speaker 00

  What actually is better for growth is to be excited by, by the challenge, you know, as opposed to fear it and avoid it. There's a, a form of psychotherapy called ACT, acceptance commitment therapy. You know, if you've heard of it, where it, it shows that experiential avoidance is one of the greatest sources of mental illness. And that the reverse of that, which, which, which psychologists call psychological flexibility. Um, or Maslow would actually refer to that, refer to that as, uh, well, I would, I would, Scott Baer Koffin would refer to that as exploration.

• 43:01Chris Williamson?

  Yep.

• 43:02Speaker 00

  You know?

• 43:02Chris Williamson?

  Got you.

• 43:02Speaker 00

  Like the, the spirit of exploration allows us to even, to be actually excited by things that most people would fear as a challenge to overcome.

• 43:15Chris Williamson?

  Life is not lived from the comfort of your couch, man. Like it, it, it really isn't. And the more that I spend time, um, being able to do what I want, I, I remain business. I have a wonderful amount of, of freedom and liberty in my day to day life. And I have to check myself to make sure that I'm not taking the path of least resistance because it can become painfully convenient. Does that, does that make sense?

• 43:42Speaker 00

  Oh, yes.

• 43:43Chris Williamson?

  It becomes destructively convenient. So I need to consistently try and find novelty, intensity, um, new people, new things to do. Um, but I also think it, it can also, it totally identifies why we might have a crisis of meaninglessness and existential dread and all this sort of stuff. Because when you're not fighting the lion at the door who's trying to eat half your family or worrying about where your next meal comes from, well, why should you really bother about anything? I can just get Amazon delivered through the door. I, you know, I can, everything's chill. It's fine. But that does lead to the crisis because you're so, the bottom of Maslow's hierarchy of needs is so well serviced that

• 44:24Chris Williamson?

  we now have to actually make a decision about what to do to get to the top. And in a meritocracy, if the people who fail, if the people who succeed are worthy of their own success and the people who fail are worthy of their own failures. And I think that that, that means that people can get real, real scared. That's not my idea. That is the idea of Alan de Botton, but thank you, Alan, for that one.

• 44:45Speaker 00

  Yeah, no, it's quite right. And I I know that Alan has written about Maslow's hierarchy of needs as well. And no, no, that was that was well said.

• 44:55Chris Williamson?

  Can we do contemplate your life from a historian's point of view? That sounds really cool.

• 45:00Speaker 00

  Well, that that's one of the exercises, the the the exercises of pure being. I was I was running down the list

• 45:08Speaker 00

  of the things. Yeah, if you view yourself from a historian's perspective, you know, what what is this time period and putting it in context of prior context, you know, in a lot of ways, the world is the best it's ever been in in terms of poverty, in terms of

• 45:30Speaker 00

  almost any metric you look at Steven Pink has written about that, you know? And I know that our day to day, that's called comfort for our day to day living. And what may seem like a catastrophe, but it's certainly better, you know, from a historian's perspective, certainly better to live in two thousand twenty with a virus than nineteen eighteen, you know, with the influenza pandemic, or I think it was called Spanish flu or something like that. You know, the the kind of technologies we have and and progress we've made. This is probably the best time in human history to have such a pandemic. Right? So I think the historian's perspective one is putting things in a certain perspective of

• 46:15Speaker 00

  the rest of humanity and the rest of human history and also thinking about a hundred, two hundred years from now, how will people view the actions we made? As well as is is important to to think about when we take certain actions.

• 46:31Chris Williamson?

  Should we be scared or

• 46:36Chris Williamson?

  frightful or worried about the fact that realistically, in seventy five years' time, no one will remember our name or what we did?

• 46:47Speaker 00

  The only, the only part of you that's scared of that is your ego.

• 46:53Speaker 00

  And if you can transcend the ego, then that just won't be a concern for you anymore. That, that, that question won't, won't matter.

• 47:05Speaker 00

  And it's not easy transcending the ego. Because it's so powerful. It seems like such a, a driving force for, for so many of us. But you look at those who've managed to transcend their fear of death as well. And, and some, some, some of, some of that comes from just taking one good LSD trip. Quite frankly, and, and, and, and seeing what it, what it means to, to be egoless. And you can enjoy, then if you could find it's sort of like a relief for these people who can reach those moments. And, and, and people reach it not just through LSD route, I should say, you know,

• 47:45Speaker 00

  mindfulness meditation through a lot of inner, inner work on integration and, and, and getting outside yourself and helping others. And you realize that it, it doesn't really matter, uh, what really, you know, it, it, it, it matters what you, what you do in, in your day to day life to

• 48:07Speaker 00

  to help other human existence, but it doesn't always have to be this grandiose. You know, you start, I started a nonprofit and a humanitarian nonprofit, you know, the stereotypical, I have a humanitarian nonprofit person, you know, and they're always talking about how they have a humanitarian nonprofit. They won't shut up about it, but like, but there, I say this in a cheeky way because I don't think we appreciate the person who just by their being in the world every day, they're uplifting others. They're not going on Twitter immediately and announcing it, but they're giving a smile to a stranger on the street. Well, that counts. I mean, there, you know, they, there are so many things throughout the course of the day that count in terms of your existence.

• 48:48Speaker 00

  You just maximize your existence on a day to day basis. I think that's good enough.

• 48:53Chris Williamson?

  It's like the stereotypical great mom, isn't it? Shout out, shout out my mom, Kathy, who'll be listening. Thank you for, uh, for smiling at strangers in the street and doing stuff like that.

• 49:06Speaker 00

  Yeah, no, that's exactly right. In fact, Abraham Maslow

• 49:11Speaker 00

  thought that his wife's, his wife Bertha's mom was more self-actualized than he was.

• 49:18Chris Williamson?

  So funny that some woman who probably can't even, didn't even know, wasn't really that bothered. Abraham, stop talking about work at the dinner table, like all that stuff. And then, then she's somehow managed to achieve what he, like more than he did.

• 49:32Speaker 00

  Yeah, I mean, Abraham Maslow hated his mom, but he really was quite fond of his wife's mom. Which is interesting. And, and he really did resent his own mom. That was, that's a whole other story. Cause she was superstitious and stuff. But yeah, but he really thought that his wife Bertha's mom was, was really self-actualized. And, and she was not, um, high achieving. So it's very clear. He didn't equate self-actualization with achievement. He really equated it with, with this, what he called being love. Literally being love, you know, and that's not doing, there's so many, a lot of people that, that do love in, in this kind of grandiose virtue signaling sort of way, you know, but are just assholes to everyone in their daily life.

• 50:17Speaker 00

  And that's not being love, you know?

• 50:21Chris Williamson?

  It's the same. It goes back to what we were talking about before to do with the, the aesthetic who's recounted all worldly possessions. But it's just a signal. And I had Robin Hanson on a year and a bit ago, and you know, he's, he's the man for signals. The elephant, the elephant in the brain, right? And, um,

• 50:39Chris Williamson?

  Paul Bloom had this great quote as well. When I spoke to him where he said, uh, there is no such thing as not giving a shit. There is only seeming like you're not giving a shit. It's like everybody's signaling all the time. It's the people for whom, like I don't think that my mom is. I don't think that my mom will go and do something nice for one of the ladies at work. Like take her some flowers in for her birthday or do whatever. I don't think she's doing it. So other people see her taking those in, you know?

• 51:09Speaker 00

  That's right. That's exactly right. Yeah. At the end of the day. Maslow's whole project of self actualization, many people don't realize this, he started off, just take, he started what he called the good human being notebook. And he just took examples of people he saw that he thought were good human beings. He didn't start off like with even the concept self actualization and start off with just, I want to study the greatest specimens of good human beings. And he really believed that by studying them, he could, he could like understand human potential.

• 51:44Speaker 00

  You know, he really believed, but we should study the growing tip of humanity, which is what he called it. You know, all trees have a point of their growth where they grow the most at the top. He calls the growing tip. There's a lot, there are a lot of parts of the trees that do not grow anymore, you know? So he wanted to study the growing tip of humanity to see what we're all capable of. And, and that was really about, about the good human being. It wasn't about the, the, the one who dominated all the competition, you know, or who had their face on the cover of Time the most amount of times, you know?

• 52:20Chris Williamson?

  How do we, we've touched on Robert Wright earlier on, and because I've got Eve Psych in the back of my mind all the time at the moment, I want to, I want to kind of touch on that. We spoke about this transcending of the ego, bypassing some of the mechanisms which exist, or they were created because we needed them. We needed to do, play the game of hierarchy, dominance game. I am, look at me, I am here, I am better than this person because it was all relative and we lived in a band of 50 people. We needed to have a fear of death because it was fitness enhancing. We needed to X, Y, Z all the way along. Just what does this mean for the future? What does this mean for us as we move forward now as a race, as a species? What are the humans of the future going to be like?

• 53:05Chris Williamson?

  Is the hope that we're all just going to become these kind of bonobo, super chill, free love man kind of animals? Do you think that that's ever achievable?

• 53:19Speaker 00

  I feel like you're asking a really quite profound question. Could you, could you maybe ask it again?

• 53:24Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, sure. Essentially, my question is, can we transcend our nature? That's the, that's, that's the question.

• 53:30Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's, it's a question I, I wrestle with. And, and not only do I think we can, so yes, the answer is I do think we can.

• 53:40Speaker 00

  I, I, this is the, the spirit of the book. This is the spirit of the book transcend is that I think that in order to transcend ourselves, we have to become greater than the sum of our parts. We have to ultimately realize that human beings are not just a, a combination of all of our evolutionary modules. That we can actually become integrated and a whole unit that works towards a conscious purpose of some sort. And that really makes us different than other animals. A lot of evolutionary psychologists get a great glee from pointing out how similar, similar

• 54:21Speaker 00

  we are to other animals. Like, look, we have the same mating patterns as the gorilla. But whilst, and I say whilst because you're in England, that may be true. They're not wrong. I think there are so many aspects of humans that, that make us, is, that make us human. And that was the spirit of Maslow and the humanist psychologists, and I'm trying to bring that spirit back.

• 54:46Chris Williamson?

  Man, I love it. There's a, my final quote that I've got is from a guy called Daniel Schmachtenberger. Do you know him from Civilization Emerging?

• 54:55Speaker 00

  He's a good friend of mine.

• 54:56Chris Williamson?

  No way. So I was supposed to speak to him. I was supposed to speak to him on Sunday, but we, we got the time, we got the times wrong. And he's got from that, um, uh, talk on emergence that he gave on YouTube. And in that he has this brilliant quote, which is that as human beings, because of our level of consciousness and the fact that we can interject into the way that we're programmed from nature, we're not just passengers, we're the captains of the ship. And that distinction between the two, between being a passenger and being the captain, that's, it would appear that that's kind of what we're talking about here.

• 55:33Speaker 00

  For sure. Dan and I had some good conversations about just that topic strolling along San Diego's streets.

• 55:41Chris Williamson?

  You should have recorded that. I tell you what, if you'd recorded that, I would have listened.

• 55:45Speaker 00

  Well, well, actually, you can listen to me and him talking on his podcast.

• 55:51Speaker 00

  A couple of years ago, he had me on his podcast and we had a great chat about self actualization.

• 55:56Chris Williamson?

  That's awesome. Look, Scott, I'm conscious that I've taken up a bunch of your time and

• 56:02Speaker 00

  Thank you.

• 56:03Chris Williamson?

  I need to, I need to let you get back because you've got to evade a coronavirus out there. So transcend, it is out 7th of April. So link will be in the show notes below to preorder. And if people want to hassle you online, where should they go?

• 56:19Speaker 00

  Oh, I'd really like it if people could check out the psychology podcast, which is my own podcast. Scott Barry Kaufman.com has all the episodes as well as a free self actualization personality tests they can take. So at Scott Barry Kaufman.com and then also on Twitter, I'm very active on Twitter. If you want to see my half baked ramblings, go on Twitter.

• 56:43Chris Williamson?

  I want to watch you go viral with a bunch of, a bunch of psychology nerds. That's what I want to see.

• 56:48Speaker 00

  Oh, well, yes. My most recent tweet did pretty well showing that IQ is different, arguing and a study I did in my dissertation, my doctoral dissertation, that IQ is not the same thing as the motivation for truth seeking. They're different things.

• 57:03Chris Williamson?

  Now that, if ever I've heard a title that is Daniel Schmachtenberger, it is that one.

• 57:09Speaker 00

  Wonderful. Yeah.

• 57:10Chris Williamson?

  You know what I mean?

• 57:11Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure.

• 57:13Chris Williamson?

  Scott, man, thank you so much for your time. Links to everything that we've spoken about will be in the show notes below. Of course, transcend, new science of self actualization will be in there. Psychology podcast, scottbarrykaufman.com. All that good stuff. You know what to do. Like, share and subscribe. If you've got any questions, feel free to get in touch with me. But for now, Scott, thanks, man.

• 57:32Speaker 00

  Thank you, Chris. It was a great chat.

• 57:51Speaker 02

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• 57:54Speaker 03

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  I'm not the first there.

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