154 Why Anger, Guilt, and Fear Cultivate Success (and the Art of Emotional Agility) with Todd Kashdan

"When we share our pain, we grow closer than at any other point in our lives." - Todd Kashdan If you enjoyed this episode, check out show notes and more at www.lewishowes.com/154. Get more from Lewis! Get my New York Times Bestselling book, Make Money Easy! Get The Greatness Mindset audiobook on SpotifyText Lewis AIYouTubeInstagramWebsiteTiktokFacebookX

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

• 0:00Lewis Howes?

  This is episode number 154 with Todd Kashdan.

• 0:07Lewis Howes?

  Welcome to the School of Greatness. My name is Lewis Howes, former pro athlete turned lifestyle entrepreneur. And each week, we bring you an inspiring person or message to help you discover how to unlock your inner greatness. Thanks for spending some time with me today. Now let the class begin.

• 0:33Lewis Howes?

  Welcome everyone to the episode today. Thank you so much for joining us. Very excited about today's guest. His name is Todd Kashdan, and he is a PhD, Professor of Psychology and Senior Scientist at the Centre for the Advancement of Wellbeing at George Mason University and at the Institute for Positive Psychology and Education at Australian Catholic University. He's a recognised authority on personality, wellbeing and social relationships. Now, I had a fascinating time with Todd on this interview because he's talking about something that most of us don't talk about, and it's the dark side that fuels us. Now, positive emotions can indeed take us far,

• 1:16Lewis Howes?

  but it turns out that we need the emotions that make us uncomfortable. Anger makes us creative, selfishness makes us brave, and guilt is a highly effective motivator. And we dive into all these different emotions and really some of the keys to happiness. And it's probably a lot different than what you may think. We cover mindfulness, we cover all the emotions, and we talk about what it really means to be emotionally agile. And he's an expert in emotional agility. So for those of you who are, maybe think you have a lot of anger, or a lot of sadness, or self doubt, or resentment, or all these other things, and you think it's bad.

• 1:56Lewis Howes?

  Think again, because he's going to unveil some of the, the good qualities that can come from that and the good that does come from that. Fascinating conversation again. Hope you guys enjoy this episode. Make sure to check out lewishouse.com/154. We're gonna have a lot of links back there. So make sure to go to lewishouse.com/154 for all the tips and notes from today's episode. Also, make sure to subscribe to the podcast back at lewishouse.com. Sign up for my free newsletter because I share some incredible tips on business and health and relationships and all the other goodies behind the scenes that we don't share

• 2:37Lewis Howes?

  here on the podcast. So make sure to subscribe to the free newsletter if you haven't yet. Also, if you listen to this episode and you have yet to subscribe to the podcast, make sure to subscribe on iTunes, on SoundCloud, on TuneIn, on Stitcher, and all the other places online. Subscribe, leave us a review. Would mean a lot to me. Thank you guys so much. So let's go ahead and dive into this episode with the one and only Todd Cashden.

• 3:07Lewis Howes?

  Welcome everyone back to the School of Greatness Podcast. I've got a new guest on today. His name is Todd Kashdan. How's it going, Todd?

• 3:15Speaker 01

  It's great to be here.

• 3:16Lewis Howes?

  I'm excited and we've been trying to make this happen for a while now. And this is actually something I've been actually personally excited about having you on because your book, which is called The Upside of Your Dark Side, Why Being Your Whole Self, Not Just Your Good Self, Drives Success and Fulfillment. Since I saw this book on my desk, got it in the mail, I was like intrigued because you're talking about something pretty much opposite of what a lot of people like to talk about. And it's about kind of the other side, the dark side that drives you to being successful. So I'd love to dive in about this and first kind of hear how you got into this topic in the first place and why you wanted to research and write about this topic.

• 4:01Speaker 01

  Sure, well, my career started, I was working on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange for quite a number of years. And during that time, um, this is when Wall Street was on and Gordon Gekko was yelling about greed is good. And, and I was making a lot of money, watching how people become successful on Wall Street. And at the same time, was bored senselessly because basically I was working for one of those firms where we're paying attention to one eighth, one quarter of a change in a stock and trying to make millions off of that. And during this time, I was reading some books on the psychology of creativity and happiness and meaning in life. And so I dived into a field of psychology and I started studying what makes people happy?

• 4:46Speaker 01

  How do people find meaning and purpose in life? And for about 10 years, uh, my colleagues and I had been studying, um, the importance of being kind, the importance of being grateful, the importance of close relationships. And as we're doing workshops around the country and talking to people, and I was thinking about my own life. I realized that all of this discussion about the secrets of being happy and happy and the science behind it. What they miss is when you're in the real world and, and Lewis, you know, you being an athlete and I'm sure a lot of your listeners are athletes or people in business is the world is pretty complicated. You're around a lot of obnoxious people, you're annoying people on the highways. You often you fight with your romantic partners, raising kids can be incredibly stressful and annoying.

• 5:31Speaker 01

  They're the perfect hostage negotiators because two and a half year olds never stop fighting for what they want. And, and none of these discussions about happiness were telling you, how do you deal with the natural thing about being anxious? When you first meet new people, anxious about whether you pick the right person for a long-term relationship? Un- being uncomfortable in your skin, having the butterflies before you go out on a tennis court or the basketball courts? And just being around people you don't like, but you have to work with. And that's, that became the, the tenet of, of spending two to three years of what does the science have to say about the other sides of your personality? That are beneficial to living a good life and that led to the realizing that sometimes

• 6:15Speaker 01

  being positive is bad and sometimes being negative is good.

• 6:18Lewis Howes?

  Hmm. So you're saying that always being positive and always finding the the joy out of every journey and looking at the bright side isn't always the best way to go.

• 6:32Speaker 01

  There's no question. You know, you had an interview with a really interesting guy. I think his name was Paul Roberts, the strongest man in the world.

• 6:39Lewis Howes?

  A.J. Roberts, yep.

• 6:41Speaker 01

  A.J. Roberts, sorry. And I was listening to it. He's he's a perfect example. Here he's talking about a 10 year plan to become the strongest man in the world. And the impetus for it, right, was because he was too short to be on the national team in England for basketball. And if you listen to him talk about it in the past tense, like listening to you talk about your football career, you hear the enthusiasm as you're talking, you hear about, you know, these great highlights, these great relationships. But anyone who spends 10 years to become the strongest man in the world, and anyone that's watched Pumping Iron with Arnold Schwarzenegger knows that those you do not just have joy. You've got not you're not just putting in sweat equity. You're talking about, I don't want to wake

• 7:25Speaker 01

  up at 5:30 in the morning and I don't want to pass up on a night going out to a restaurant with my friends and going out on dates. And I don't want to be doing three a day workouts just because we're, you know, we're have a competition on Saturday and everybody else is laying around, kind of going to see the next Stanley Kubrick film. You do it not for joy. You do it because of a sense of meaning in your life. And we often oscillate between doing things for pleasure and doing things for the longer, the broader picture in our lives. And if we're not able to recognize the importance of delaying gratification, we're going to lose out on wisdom, maturity, personal growth, developing a business, and developing healthy relationships for the long term.

• 8:08Lewis Howes?

  Sure. This is perfect timing because I'm a pretty positive guy for the most part and but in my past, I've, you know, even though I was positive, I had a lot of resentment and anger and, uh, you know, all these different mixed feelings that would come up from time to time, based on if I was feeling attacked in certain ways or defensive in any part of my life, sports or relationships. But this weekend is a perfect example of this and I'd love you to walk me through this if you can. Um, for the last five years, I had a dream to have a chance to go, uh, play in the Olympics and I moved to New York City about four and a half years ago to learn a new sport called team handball.

• 8:50Lewis Howes?

  And I had a dream to make the USA national team, which I did in a year. And then for the last four years, I've been training since the last Olympics, 2012. I've been training for the chance to make on, stay on the team and then qualify for the Olympics. And this past weekend, the USA team played against Uruguay in what was called a last chance tournament. So basically we had to play two games against them. And if we beat them, then we would qualify for what's called the Pan American Games, which is basically the Olympics of North and South America. If we win that tournament, we qualify the Olympics. So for four years, I've been waiting for one tournament to happen, the Pan American Games, to give myself a chance and see what's possible.

• 9:34Lewis Howes?

  And I've gone through three pulled groins, where I had to basically be on crutches for a few weeks and just rehab for a lot of it. I've gotten, you know, basically an elbow to the throat where I was bleeding internally and spitting up blood for a week and, you know, couldn't really eat anything. I've gone through, uh, you know, a lot. I had to drain fluid from my elbow three different times, like constant injuries, pain, suffering, you know, flying all over the world, spending money out of my own pocket, all these different things, right? And then, and then what happens is I didn't get picked up to play in this tournament specifically, and they lost. So our team lost and we did not qualify for the Pan American Games,

• 10:16Lewis Howes?

  which means we have no chance in the world of qualifying for the Olympics. And it happened on Saturday night. I'll tell you what, I wasn't happy. I was fricking mean. I was nasty to people all weekend. I'm not proud of it, but I was just like in a funk. And I was upset and I was trying to be like, well, been to look at the bright side, but really I didn't want to look at the bright side. I was fricking mad. And what do you say about that? Is, should we be mad or frustrated? Or, or should we look at the, you know, the bright side and just like be happy and be like, well, those four years, it's all down the drain, but you know, look at the lessons I learned. But what should we be experiencing when something so disappointing or upsetting happens in our lives?

• 10:56Speaker 01

  First of all, I feel so sedentary every time I hear you tell a story about what you do, post-college and still were going through three groin injuries and still pushing yourself off crutches and back onto the field again. Of course you should be angry and of course you should be pissed and of course you should be upset. And here, and the thing about this is your fellow teammates, I'm sure, are the, are the, the last people on the planet that would tell you, listen, look at the bright side. You should be happy. You still have a great friends and you've got a great romantic partner and you have awesome pecks and you know, and you've got such a good life and look, you got a podcast you can return to. And I mean, they're not, they're not, none of them are going to say that.

• 11:40Speaker 01

  It's going to be a non-athlete that tells you that of, you know, with this, you know, you're, that anger, that distress, that sadness, you know, that's in there as well. All of that, part of what that does is it lets, it's the signal that this mattered to you. I mean, if you weren't distraught over failing at things that you work a great deal of effort towards, you've got to ask yourself like, what are you doing? Like, what is your internal compass for making decisions about how you spend your days, your nights and your weekends? And the other thing is when we experience pain with other people. Um. We become closer to them than any other positive situation that we could find ourselves in.

• 12:23Speaker 01

  And this is why athletic teams haze members when they come in. This is why fraternities and sororities do hazing. And, you know, despite all the horrific stories that have come out in the media over the past decade, the, the reason that these things are there, and, and a lot of business organizations do this as well. They take the, you know, um, you know, Enron being as horrible as it was, one of the things that they did that was right was they went to exotic locations in Tanzania and Thailand and they would take everyone out there. And they would learn about each other by on this really kind of exciting adventures, you know, with kind of living like Neanderthals on, on the plains in Africa. And by doing that and you come back to work and you just feel confident and a sense of trust that you wouldn't

• 13:07Speaker 01

  if you went to through an accountant, accounting webinar with the person in the booth next to you. You know, if you see someone, how they respond to a cougar or a bunch of cheetahs and you're looking at a beautiful sunrise like alone and you've just been eating curd for three days. You have a greater sense of trust and when you experience the distraught of losing a game that matters so much to you guys. I mean, you guys, I suspect in thirty years, you guys will see each other and you will drop whoever you're socializing with, hug each other and be talking for three to four hours straight, thirty years from now.

• 13:41Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 13:41Speaker 01

  I mean, so there's, there's a, there's a, this interesting paradox of that I often think it's lost especially in the culture of men, which is that when we share our pain, we grow closer than at any other point in our lives.

• 13:54Lewis Howes?

  Why is that? Over, over our biggest pleasure is what you're saying.

• 13:59Speaker 01

  Yeah. Well, so our pleasures, so I'm just, I mean, just think back to when we're twenty years old, right? I mean, you go out with your friends, you go to a party, everybody hooks up, you go to the diner in the morning and you swap stories. Of course you're going to bond over that. Um, and it's a great story, but the relationship might not change. You just have this cool memory that you share. But when you go through a painful experience together, the relationship changes. And the reason is, I mean, it's got its evolutionary roots. I mean, you think about, you know, a million years ago, living in the African Sahara are, are, you know, are great ancestors. Um, the only way you're going to survive is have some tribe that you can work with. So if I'm sick, I know that people will gather meat and gather some, you know, some herbs and some berries

• 14:43Speaker 01

  to make sure that I survive another day. And when they're sick. I'll take I'll take their load and make sure I take care of them. If you couldn't develop those those relationships outside of family, you weren't going to survive a week out there in the caves and out there in the woods in the wild. And so we we still had that. We have, you know, our brains are just old software in modern bodies.

• 15:05Lewis Howes?

  Mm hmm. Yeah, I like in your book also, you talk about the biggest piece of advice you give to people for a life well lived is the ability to tolerate pain. And that's something that I've been always believing in is like the more pain that I can experience and move through, uh, whether it be emotionally or physically or whatever it may be, delayed gratification. Um, I feel like my life just gets better and better. The more I'm able to tolerate pain and experience it. So why is that? And what and is this a muscle you need to work out?

• 15:41Speaker 01

  Absolutely. And it's trainable. Just, I mean, and but just, just like not everybody could make the professional, a professional sports league, whether, you know, you name the sport volleyball from volleyball to golf. Um, we have a certain threat, we have a certain range to which we are able to get to based on our, you know, God given talents gifts and kind of, you know, physiology that we have. I mean, I was not going to be in professional football league like you, no matter how many hours that I trained and how many hours I put in the gym. It just wasn't going to happen. Um, so it's trainable and we don't know what the limits are. And so there's no reason to suggest limits about how much pain that we can tolerate

• 16:25Speaker 01

  because of that. And and probably you can think of players that on every team that you've been in since you were in middle school, um, that there they were probably not the best players, but everybody respected them because um, they never rolled like a fish. They always, they always were the last person to finish a drill, not because they were slow, because they wouldn't stop fighting. Um, they just, they just kept running, kept pushing. Um, sweat didn't bother them, tears didn't bother them, cuts didn't bother them, bruises didn't bother them. And there are plenty of great athletes who wish that they could, they could have that ability to tolerate pain. Um, and emotionally. I mean, I know for myself, when I'm always asked of like, you know, who is your your greatest heroes in your life?

• 17:10Speaker 01

  Um, there's a couple physicists and scientists that I mentioned, but also I mentioned stand up comedians. Because these are people to uh to handle the pain of having to tell jokes such in such a way that you have to try to get laughter and smiles every fifteen seconds. For a forty five minute set, it's just terrifying to think about, because it's so hard to connect with someone, but to make someone laugh. It's just a whole nother level and consistently for a forty five minute stint. And so the courage to get up there and do that, knowing that you have no idea what people's sense of humor are. Humor is when you walk out there, day in, day out, and then constantly trying to experiment with new material.

• 17:50Speaker 01

  Um, that's bravery, that's that's emotional, that's emotional agility, and that's the that's the ability to tolerate pain. And if you are unable to sit in front of a room full of people and flounder and not and not land jokes in front of them, you'll never make it as a comedian.

• 18:09Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 18:09Speaker 01

  I mean, you have to be willing to fail. And I think, you know, one of the, and this is something we can, we have control over. One of the big predictors of whether people are successful in life is not how well they did in the school. Not what they scored on the SAT or the GRE or the MCAT or any achievement test. It's whether you can tolerate pain and control your emotions so that you can get through a difficult situation.

• 18:35Lewis Howes?

  Why, why is it that reason? Why is the ability to tolerate pain um the key to living a great life though? Like, why is? You know, I'm just curious.

• 18:45Speaker 01

  Well, the building blocks for a meaningful, happy life are moments. And in order to get A greater frequency of joy and a greater frequency of love and a greater frequency of connecting intimately with another person and a greater frequency of feeling as if you've done something where you've got a legacy that's gonna live longer than the few years you're gonna be on this planet. You've gotta learn how to work for the long haul, which means, you know, sitting and reading books. It means, um, reading people, learning about people. It means going into the gym. It means going into classes. It means listening to people that are smarter than you, um, being around people that intimidates you.

• 19:30Speaker 01

  So you can kind of acquire, what about them, what can I learn from them to bring to myself? To have all those distressing emotions where you're just a rookie and all those distressing emotions, recognizing there's a gap between my knowledge and my skills and where I am now. There's a gap between that and where I wanna be. That causes pain. So if you can't, if you, if you aren't willing to learn, if you're not, if you aren't willing to grow, you're not gonna evolve as a person, you're not gonna reach those aspirational goals you're shooting for. And the key feature of that is being able to tolerate the distress that goes along with the learning curve.

• 20:06Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 20:07Speaker 01

  I mean, you spent, you spent a lot of time talking about how difficult school was, but yet here, here you are now talking to some of, you know, the smartest, brightest, intelligent, wise characters, you know, for years.

• 20:17Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, yeah. I mean, for me, I'm always about learning and growing and there's always discomfort. I'm picking up a new sport or a new hobby or something every year because I feel like I like the challenge. I like the struggle. I like the pain that associates with it because it's a reward once I get through it. And for me, that's like this amazing joy. I feel more confident and I feel more connected to people. I feel like I have more tools in my tool belt. What are, what are some of the things? You know, and one of the thing I tell I tell people this all the time that I coach, I say, you know, do something every day that's painful. And for me, the easiest thing to do is to push yourself in a workout. You know, you could spend 30 minutes doing a workout and just push yourself a little bit harder

• 21:03Lewis Howes?

  in some areas so that it hurts. For me, that's a good step. But do you have any other daily rituals or practices that can help people keep this muscle sharp of tolerating pain? And I guess a healthy way, because I'm not talking about, you know, beating yourself up or like stabbing yourself, stabbing yourself or shooting yourself in the foot. Yeah. What are some healthy ways to build this pain threshold?

• 21:27Speaker 01

  Yeah. No, it's a great question. And I'm glad you bring up exercise. I often think that we, we hear, we hear the import of exercising physically so often that I think a lot of people tune this out. And so I'm just going to underline and bold and italicize what you just said. Is because a lot of people just don't define themselves as being athletes. And I think this isn't about being athletic. It's about interval training in the gym. What you do to your body affects how you mentally perceive yourself, other people in the world. And by the beauty of interval training, I'm just going to hit this really first is so just as an example, if I'm on elliptical machine, real simple, because any one of your listeners, no matter what their physical status can go in an elliptical machine.

• 22:13Speaker 01

  Bad knees, bad calves, anything. One and a half minutes, full speed, as fast as you could possibly go, as much as you need to rest to catch your breath. And then one and a half minutes, full speed and doing this about, you know, whatever. You could start with three, three intervals at full speed. You can work up to seven times in 30 minutes where you have one and a half minutes where you're going full speed. What you're training your body is to deal with many traumas.

• 22:41Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 22:41Speaker 01

  To your many traumas to your tissues, to your cardiovascular system. And when you do that. It mimics what happens when all of a sudden you're in a board meeting and the person who's supposed to give the pitch to a huge firm about with your advertising firm is sick and didn't or didn't show up. And your boss turns to you and says, you know what? You've got to do it. And your heart beats out of your chest and your hands are sweaty and your your toes are all crinkled up into a into a almost a fist in your sneaker and no one can see it. That physiological reaction, when you do interval training in the gym, it trains you such that that that physical sensation of worry and pain and distress and panic.

• 23:25Speaker 01

  It doesn't bother you as much. So there's a there's a connection between the mind and body that's really important. So that'd be number, just wanted to double down on what you said. Sure. Another thing that's important is socially, you know, in, I mean, this is a different world than when you and I were in high school where, you know, everyone's got a thousand friends plus in social media. And you still only have, you know, three to 10 core friends who you can be effortlessly yourself and talk anything about. And I think it's really easy to find the exact people that think like us, look like us and act like us in the world. And you think about, you know, people that watch MSNBC, they've got their own tribe and you've got people that watch Fox, that's their tribe and, you know, every everyone stays with their tribe.

• 24:10Speaker 01

  And what I would suggest to build up your tolerance of pain is to start intentionally hang out with people that don't have your worldview, that don't look like you. And and purposely look for people that have a complete different perspective on life. It's not just the surface. So this isn't about hanging out with people of a different race or gender or sexual orientation. It's about a different perspective on life. Um, I can think of, I was just in Madrid, um, speaking out there and just talking to a, there's just a bunch of of people that were playing soccer and I jumped into a game. And and a few of them ended up being, you know, blue collar workers and they they worked on the metro and this is not my tribe.

• 24:50Speaker 01

  I mean, I mean, I work at a, I work at a university and I'm always around other, you know, scientists and philosophers, but I get along great with these characters. Cause intelligence is then and being, you know. Trying to say something thoughtful is not their currency. Now, being witty and being able to, you know, having someone take the piss out of you and you be able to do the same thing without you being defensive, that's their currency, right? That's how you win favor in this group. And when I'm around them, right, it kind of, it reminds me of, oh, like, I so miss that jocular conversation with friends in high school who would make up horrible nicknames for me and flick, and flick my ear in the hallway and pass notes to a girl and saying that I wrote them when I

• 25:32Speaker 01

  didn't write, you know, I kind of miss that kind of, you lose that in adulthood and having that again, having that kind of weird playful inappropriate interactions with a bunch of metro drivers in Madrid, it kind of raises my tolerance a little bit of, God, there's so many people that I could hang out with. Like, as you were saying, walking out of the gym, I can walk out of the interaction of feeling confident that I can have a conversation for forty-five minutes with anyone, anyplace. And so you, you can build that really easily in your life.

• 26:03Lewis Howes?

  I like that. Yeah, that's interesting. I mean, I love when guests come on here and confirm things that I've already done. And I'm like, yes, I think I'm doing something right. Because my, in high school, a couple of examples, I think one of the things that you can do to add to what you're saying here is to work towards overcoming and facing your fears is a good way to build your pain and experience pain more often. Because when I was in high school, I was like terrified to talk to girls. And I remember being like fifteen or something in the summer. And I was like, okay, enough is enough. Enough is enough. I'm not gonna be like scared of girls anymore. So what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna challenge myself. I'm gonna create a game out of this. I'm gonna go up to one girl every single day in the summer when I went back home in Ohio. And I

• 26:48Lewis Howes?

  was like, I'm gonna ask them for their number. Because that was the most terrifying thing was rejection for me. And it was so painful to experience at that time. And so every day, like wherever I went, if I, like, the most beautiful girl, I had to go up. If I felt butterflies, I had to go up and say hi to her. And I'll tell you what, by the end of the summer, I was like, I was feeling pretty good, you know, I didn't care anymore if people rejected me. Or I was able to be creative and like, just at least have fun conversation. It wasn't about the rejection. And then, you know, I've done lots of things like that where it's like, just going, creating a game for myself with my fears, the things that are most, most painful for me. And I feel like that's helped a lot as well.

• 27:27Speaker 01

  I'm so glad that you used that terminology of gamifying everything. I mean, that's how to make this work. I mean, there's a mantra that that that Robert and I hold, which is life is a game except for close family and friends. And close friends can include a lot of people. Um, but I think we forget that, you know, we're all of us are trying to persuade and influence people. I mean, you know, talking to girls, you know, girls talking to hot guys. I mean, you're trying to persuade them that you're attractive enough and worthy of their attention and physical affection and it's worthy to give you to take off someone to take for them to take off their clothes and you get access to them. And this is, I mean, this is, this is the first, you know, age, age thirteen through twenty four. I mean, this is, this is your life. I mean, what you're focusing on.

• 28:10Lewis Howes?

  That's the goal.

• 28:11Speaker 01

  That's, that's, that's your life. I mean, to deny that is just not to acknowledge like what it's like to be, you know, a guy growing up in modern, the modern world.

• 28:19Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 28:19Speaker 01

  Um, that we, I think we forget that child playfulness as we get older and we start becoming very seriously overly attached to our successes and our failures. We get very, very attached to someone that leaves kind of a troll that leaves some, you know, obnoxious remark after we write something online. And we get really upset when like, you know, when, when someone, someone takes our seat in a restaurant and we've been waiting there for five minutes. And they were waiting there, you know, they came in two minutes after us. Um, these things are not a big deal, you know, like it's like as if it's like an honor society and we want to grab a gun and shoot them because our, our pride and respect has been crushed in front of whoever we're going to, whoever we're going out to dinner with.

• 29:03Speaker 01

  Uh, we need to learn how to diffuse some of these thoughts and feelings that we have that are a little bit more uncomfortable. And it's not about getting rid of fear and it's not about getting rid of anger. It's not about getting rid of envy or jealousy. It's about learning how to sit with it, learning how to play with it and sometimes purposely channeling it. You know, one of the cool things about writing this book. Which is that we interviewed snipers, we interviewed Navy SEALs, we interviewed congressmen, we interviewed a lot of people in the intelligence community, some mixed martial arts. Matt Serra, he was the welterweight champion for MMA. He was, he went to high school with me and I remember in my, in my year.

• 29:48Speaker 01

  And I saw him on the Ultimate Fighter Challenge and so, you know, talking to him about the notion of being emotionally agile, about not trying to get rid of fear, but actually like you use it. And athletes, athletes are very intuitive about it. So when you talk to all these people, snipers, military, mixed martial artists, chess champions, congressmen, you know, they're often described by the media as being fearless. And they would be the first ones to tell you it's so wrong to describe anyone of that because you're, you're missing their strengths. They're, they, they experience tons of fear. They know when it's coming.

• 30:29Speaker 01

  They recognize it's an important cue that they have to, they have to be laser focused on the situation and something is potentially awry, but they're not exactly sure what it is. They're with a stranger and they're not, that stranger might not be saying anything to them that's disconcerting, but they're getting the chills on their arms and there's a little, their heartbeat increases by 10 beats per minute. It's a signal, that fear, that something they're not paying attention to is potentially iffy here. And the best people in the field, in the military, in the government and organizations, they welcome that and they're proud, they're happy to have those signals because they're able to sit back for a second, like, you know what? Let me, let me wait before I make a decision on whether we should be doing business together.

• 31:14Speaker 01

  Let me wait before I bring you over to my house. Let me wait for a second before I decide to, to, to listen to what your plans are. Your skeptic, your skeptical radar is up and that's a good thing. You want these emotions.

• 31:28Lewis Howes?

  Yeah. Now, there's a big movement on mindfulness right now and everyone's talking about it. You know, I've brought a lot of people on to talk about it. What has fueled this mindfulness movement in your opinion?

• 31:41Speaker 01

  Well, it's an amazing higher state of consciousness. You're talking about in an era where we are deluded with, not deluded, deluged with information. This data dump on us every second of the day. I mean, every day when I see the amount of podcasts that pop into my iPhone in terms of for this week and the amount of blog posts and, and books that are coming to me. It's just, I can't keep track of it. I mean, I have to talk to people. I have to socialize just to get to be caught up to date of like, what are the new innovative ideas? And, and, and life hacking tips I'm supposed to be on top of right now. Um, so mindfulness, to be in this state where we are calm centered and in the present moment,

• 32:25Speaker 01

  and we are open, receptive and not judging, but just assessing, discerning what we should or shouldn't do, what looks healthy or unhealthy for us, but no judgment. It's a profound state to be in. I think we're people, and there's, there's a lot of research to support that if you engage in six weeks of mindfulness, you will actually be, if you were injected with a, with a, a virus injected in your body, um, you're less likely to develop the flu, you're less likely to develop pneumonia. I mean, your immunological functioning improves. You could see in six weeks with mindfulness that you're the white matter of your brain in your prefrontal cortex. It actually grows. So you're actually becoming better at making decisions in six weeks.

• 33:10Speaker 01

  We could see this, we could see your brain grow, even if you're a 30 year old man. Um, so it's an amazing, the problem is it's a little bit tyrannical. You know, the, the idea that we could enter or we're supposed to be in a mindful state at all moments in our lives is not only absurd because you can't do it. You don't want to be mindful all the time. You don't want to be non judgmental all the time and you don't always want to be in the present moment. I mean, The reason that entrepreneurs are successful is because they're dreamers. You know, they they sit and they their mind wanders about like, ah, you know what would be great? Maybe we should stop having meetings all together for three months. And so we know what we want to do. We have the plan.

• 33:55Speaker 01

  Um, let's just implement it and stop talking to each other all the time. And so you're in the middle of a meeting, having this fantasy of what if we had no meetings? That's not a bad thing. I wouldn't say slap our fingers to bring them into this into the present moment. I would say, hey, um, do you have any awesome ideas you're fantasizing about now about about right now? That could make the situation better. I want that juice like I want. I want that mindless wandering. And if you think about just going back to athletics are always great metaphors. You think about a baseball player who's in left field of how do you catch a fly ball? And you look and you think about all the variables there, right?

• 34:34Speaker 01

  You have um, the pitcher in terms of how high their leg, how their high their leg kick was and the wind velocity, the speed of the ball and how the hips are positioned of the batter and and the angle that the ball hits the bat and kind of the speed and the torque, the torque motion of the batter's hips. No baseball player takes all these these variables into consideration. They're not mindfully attending to everything I just described. The best baseball players or any good baseball or or any baseball player simply tries to keep their gaze on the ball constantly as they run. So keep the angle the same between your eyes and the ball the whole time. And it tells you whether you run faster or slower. So the angle is the same.

• 35:19Speaker 01

  Super simple, mindless trick. And that's how you catch a fly ball. And we can use and that's true. I mean, if we had to be mindful every time we drove a car, the amount of things that you, how many seconds should I wait before I look through the rearview mirror? Um, you know, you would, you wouldn't be able to have a conversation, wouldn't be able to listen to music. I mean, you'd be you'd be in a ditch somewhere off of Route 90.

• 35:40Lewis Howes?

  Right. So do so do you suggest that mindfulness, positivity and happiness are not good ways of living? Or is it like a balance?

• 35:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's this is so this is a really important differentiator. Um, so I'm arguing that the science would suggest that being emotionally agile far trumps being a positive, optimistic, cheerful person.

• 36:07Lewis Howes?

  Okay.

• 36:07Speaker 01

  And this is about being situationally aware. I mean, if if you're work, if you're, if you're working on a business deal with some people from Russia or Japan, and you're a cheerful, optimistic, joyous, happy-go-lucky, you know, typical American, um, they won't trust you.

• 36:25Lewis Howes?

  Mm hmm.

• 36:25Speaker 01

  They're gonna be, they're, they're not only gonna be skeptical, they're gonna be cynical of like, listen, this is supposed to be like a, you know, a respectful, serious, sober, yeah, situation. So you have to be aware when you walk in that room of what's the emotional tenor of this room? And how can I match it James Bond style? So there's a, there's a little bit of gammanship there.

• 36:45Lewis Howes?

  Mm hmm. I like that. Do you, do you think we all have a dark side?

• 36:50Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, absolutely.

• 36:52Lewis Howes?

  What's, what's your dark side then?

• 36:55Speaker 01

  For me, I mean, I, I mean, I am eternally a seventeen-year-old rebellious, Fugazi-loving, Iron Maiden-loving, um, you know, slight little pervert. I mean, that's, I mean, that's, you know, that's, I mean, I'm supposed to wear, you know, my, my, you know, my suit and tie, and I'm supposed to be the serious, appropriate scientist. I'm gonna use big, huge, eight-letter words every time I make a sentence. And the fact is, is I'm a profanity-laden, um, lover of the human body. I love women, I love conversation, I love music, um, I love Iggy Pop. I thought I'd outgrow it, what does I get older? But I'm still listening to Raw Power at the age of forty, and it's not gonna change.

• 37:39Speaker 01

  And, um, that impulsive, reckless, rebellious, authority-hating seventeen-year-old is eternally part of me. And I, and because I honor that, I don't have to fight it all the time.

• 37:52Lewis Howes?

  Hmm, that's cool. Question about this, let's say an Olympian has a chance to go to the Olympics and let's say it's a sprinter and he's sprinting in the 100 and there's two different results that could happen. One, he wins the gold medal and you know, becomes a hero and his country and it's the greatest moment of his life. Or he trips and falls and he doesn't even place and it's an extremely negative result for him. Would the negative event have a stronger impact than the positive event? Yes or no? And why?

• 38:34Speaker 01

  Yes, and it's one of the unfortunate byproducts of evolution is that I'm gonna come back to the exact example you gave. I mean, if you, if you walk through your day and have 15 amazing, seductive, interesting, funny, playful conversations and one person that you wanted to have a conversation with ignores you or scowls at you and walks away from you. I mean, what are you gonna remember when you go home? And you, you know, you shut down for the day. I mean, you're gonna remember the one interaction, like, what did I do wrong with that person? Like, like, what's like, what, how did I screw up this relationship? Am I at fault? And what am I missing? And you will ruminate on that and you will forget

• 39:16Speaker 01

  the 15 amazing conversations, interactions. And it's so, it's so annoying. Like, it's such an annoying part of our

• 39:22Lewis Howes?

  Why is that?

• 39:22Speaker 01

  human brain. It's because our brains are not designed to be happy. Our, unless it's going to attract friends and attract mates so we could pass on our genes and have great sex. That's all. Our brains are designed to survive and live another day and make, and make sure that we could pass on our genes. We are still, you know, it's, it's gonna be a few million years before that neural architecture is altered. It's happiness is only there as a byproduct of trying to form alliances, trying to find mates, and trying to gain status and respect around our tribe. That's, I mean, the byproduct is we try to be happy. That's how our brains are designed. And if we understand that, we can understand why

• 40:07Speaker 01

  it's so difficult to make our life objective to be happy and why it's actually a pretty problematic life objective.

• 40:14Speaker 01

  And so you you don't want to try to be happy. You want to live a meaningful life and work towards the goals that are important to you and catch happiness along the way, maybe, maybe not. That's the way to live your life. I mean, this this has been said by, you know, Thoreau, Picasso, Emerson, T S Eliot, much smarter people than me, hundreds of times smarter.

• 40:34Lewis Howes?

  Wow, interesting.

• 40:35Speaker 01

  To go back to your example, the Olympic example, unfortunately, the negative event is going to have more of an impact. But it might not lead to, it's going to change them, but it's not necessarily going to lead to healthy changes, right? Some of those athletes, when they fail, they're going to fall apart at the seams. They're going to end up, you know, having kind of big downward spiral into kind of, you know, sex, drugs, infidelities, being a bad father or mother, you know, all of those things. And other people are going to go back to the drawing board of like, okay, I've got to get some more trainers. I've got to train myself better. I've got to work on my my mental ability as well as my physical ability. And the the the better question is, what leads people in the aftermath of failure

• 41:18Speaker 01

  to bounce back even stronger as opposed to fall into pieces?

• 41:22Lewis Howes?

  Hmm. Yeah, it's interesting. It's either going to drive them in a downward spiral or drive them upward, it sounds like, and.

• 41:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's probably, it's probably, I mean, I'm I'm assuming this is probably a lot of the work that you do with organizations.

• 41:35Lewis Howes?

  Mm hmm. Yeah. Man, this stuff is fascinating to me. So what I'm hearing you say is we're pessimistic by nature.

• 41:43Speaker 01

  We we're not pessimistic by nature. We're have a few, we don't have one personality. I promise you this won't get too complicated. We we we have a few sides to our personality. And I think in particularly in American culture, we honor the positivity, the optimism, the go getter. And what we don't honor is the side of our personality that's the night watchman, right, who's weary. I'm not not weary, but wary, like wary of of meeting strangers and wary of being out in the dark and wary of people that don't think like them or look like them and and wary of.

• 42:25Speaker 01

  Transactions, you know, giving our money to people that we never met before. And that's we, you think about going on a vacation. We always honor the person that goes online, a virtual tourist and finds, you know, what are the amazing underground tapas bars that I have to hit? What are the amazing museum, you know, museums that I need to go to? What are the, what are the, what are the caverns that I could be visiting and hiking or spelunking in or rappelling in? What we don't honor sufficiently is the other person that goes on the trip that's remembers to bring enough sunscreen, remembers to check to whether the passports are actually stamped, whether they're actually, whether it haven't expired and checks online to see, do you need a worker's visa when you enter the country that you're going to?

• 43:10Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 43:11Speaker 01

  But holy crap, is that person important to make sure that vacation goes right?

• 43:15Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 43:15Speaker 01

  That's the night watchman and that's the anxious pessimistic side of our personality. So we don't want to become, I'm not suggesting that we become anxious pessimistic people. I'm saying that we should honor when that side of our personality is activated, there's probably usually a good reason for it. And let's work with it and channel it to figure out what's problem am I not asking right now?

• 43:39Lewis Howes?

  Hmm.

• 43:39Speaker 01

  Or am I not seeing right now?

• 43:40Lewis Howes?

  That's good. I like that. You talk about, uh, that there are three dreaded emotions. Can you speak on to what those three dreaded emotions are?

• 43:50Speaker 01

  Well, you hit one of them when you talked about your handball experience and it fits with, you know, in two years of, of doing this, of, of talking about doing talks and workshops on this. Surprisingly, anger has been the emotion that I found most people have problems with.

• 44:07Lewis Howes?

  Hmm.

• 44:07Speaker 01

  There, there, there's unwilling to be able to manage the fact that there's an angry side to their personality and. And the thing, and you know, anger, we think that when we get angry, we're gonna turn into Lou Ferrigno. Right? And we're gonna become the Hulk and I'm gonna like rip my computer screen off my table and like throw it at the person who's like, you know, two stories below me and I'm gonna start punching random people that look like kids that bullied me when I was third grade, you know, it's, you know, we think like the anger equals rage and that's just not true, right? Cause there's, you've got frustration is anger and being pissy is anger and um, you know, just being, just being upset is often anger. So you don't have to go into rage mode. Um, the thing about anger is when you're having,

• 44:53Speaker 01

  actually, let me give, let me give a really good example. You know, so like I'm raising three daughters right now between the ages of two and eight. So I've become automatically to think about women a lot now.

• 45:02Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 45:02Speaker 01

  And, and so, so when I think about women making less than men for the same job, and you know, you, you can't control the culture. You can't control the fact that um, we live in a patriarchal society. That's not gonna change for quite some time. There's one thing that women can control that men are much better at, much better at than, than women. There's a lot of science to support this. Is that men are more likely to go into their boss's office on a random Tuesday at four o'clock and say, listen, why the hell is Joe making more money than me when you know that I've had more accounts, have brought more money into this business? And basically more customers are talking about the quality of my service than they are of his. Convince me why I should be making thirteen percent less than Joe.

• 45:46Speaker 01

  And women are less likely to make that assertive, bold, angry move. It's, it's spawned by anger. And that's a, and that's a good thing. The question is not how do we get rid of anger? It's how do we use it effectively to get the best possible outcome in situations? You know, if you're with your family and you're at a restaurant. And it's there's no smoking there and somebody lights up, um, you know, huge cigars. This huge cloud of smoke is on top of you and your family. So you can barely even see each other.

• 46:18Lewis Howes?

  I'll get angry.

• 46:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, get angry. And the question is, how do you approach those characters to get the best possible outcome? Which doesn't mean getting everything you want. It means also not getting into a fistfight.

• 46:29Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 46:30Speaker 01

  You know, in the restaurant the same way.

• 46:32Lewis Howes?

  Yeah. And what I like to talk about there is like, where can you create a win win situation? So how can you use that anger to inspire you to move forward and have a healthy conversation? You know, it's probably better to have a healthy conversation with them and say, hey, this, and is there anything we can do to, you know, or would you be willing to not smoke right now while my children are here or this and that? Um, or, you know, figure out a win win move, whatever it may be, if it's not going to, if they're not going to shift. But as opposed to blowing up in them in their face, like you said, that's probably not going to get the best win win experience from there.

• 47:04Speaker 01

  Exactly. Best possible outcome is, um, if you go, if you go at them with your, if anyone, when you're angry at somebody or something, um, the key is to focus on the behavior that bothers you and not the person, right? If I, if I walk over and then say, listen, you bunch of hillbillies, like, why, are you unable to read the sign that says there's no smoking? I've just, I've just hit them as human beings.

• 47:28Lewis Howes?

  They're going to get angry and defensive and attack you back. Yeah.

• 47:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. That cigar is going out on my arm, like most likely at some point during that conversation. And so, but if I focus on like, listen, I'm going to be honest with you. You, you have me at my worst right now. You, I look at the cloud on top of my freaking kids right now, who are three years old, who are coughing. Take a look with me and look at that cloud over those kids. Tell me how you would feel if your kids were sitting in that cloud right now. See, expressing your anger in that kind of way, would that be, I'm focusing on the behavior. And what I might, before I even go there, I might start by saying, listen, I want you to know it is so uncomfortable coming up to a stranger just to ask them to do anything.

• 48:09Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 48:09Speaker 01

  Um, and so, uh, I just want you to know, this is not the situation I want to be in. And when I do that and express my anxiety.

• 48:17Lewis Howes?

  You're giving me vulnerability too.

• 48:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, I bring their, I bring their defenses down. And so all of a sudden, they're like, hey, like, what's up? What's bothering you? We're just a bunch of guys like smoking cigars. And at that point, I'll say, listen, look at that freaking cloud that's sitting over my table right now. And when they look, I'm focusing on the behavior. The other one is my anger has to be proportional to the problem. So it's not the end of the world. Cause like you said, one of the options is I could just move to another table. And not even get into a conversation at all. The problem is, the more you start to do that in life, the more you start your, your default response to problems is avoiding things.

• 48:54Lewis Howes?

  It's not confrontation, yeah.

• 48:55Speaker 01

  Yeah. So it's, I mean, it's fine like here and there to avoid a problem, but once you get into a pattern, um, very quickly, your life starts to look very different from how you want it to be.

• 49:04Lewis Howes?

  You're very passive in living, as opposed to, yeah, of course.

• 49:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 49:08Lewis Howes?

  I like that. I like, I mean, I love this whole talk about emotional agility and being able to access our full range of emotions. But using it in a way that moves us forward, not spirals us downward. Um, that's cool. Okay.

• 49:23Speaker 01

  Yeah. I was, I was just gonna say, Louis, just, just look at you. Like within the first five minutes of us talking, you're talking about how you were angry, pissed and sad because of, you know, what happened in this tournament. And I think that people that are comfortable with expressing that vulnerability, I mean, that's, that's attracts people to you. I mean, that makes you of like, wow, this guy's like comfortable being uncomfortable. Like, that's the kind of guy I want to be around. That's the kind of guy I could talk to. That's the kind of guy I want on my team. That's the kind of guy I want on the front line with me if I'm going to war. And that's, and we forget that part of strength is being vulnerable.

• 49:59Lewis Howes?

  Exactly. Definitely. And I think it's the most powerful thing you can do and powerful way to connect with someone is vulnerability.

• 50:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 50:06Lewis Howes?

  So, okay, so we got anger. What are the other two emotion, the two dreaded emotions?

• 50:12Speaker 01

  So the other one is guilt and being a little Jew boy growing up in a Jewish household. I mean, this is, this is part of my, my entire childhood existence. This notion of this like that we feel this despair because we did something that upset someone else. And I'm sure every single person's got a story of a romantic relationship partner they have to apologize to if they ever see again, who'll ever take their phone call again in terms of something they did wrong as they were just kind of learning the ropes of how to be a, how to be in a romantic partner. And, you know, guilt is the, is the dread we feel because we feel that we screwed up some way. And that could happen in, you know, in the business world, it could happen on an athletic team, relationships. I mean, you

• 50:54Speaker 01

  know, you name it. It could happen when nobody, nobody could even see us and we could feel guilty in terms of just wasting our entire Saturday and Sunday away watching, you know, 16 hours of NCAA tournament games, which is going to come for, which is going to come to everyone real soon.

• 51:07Lewis Howes?

  I'll be watching that.

• 51:09Speaker 01

  And then you might feel guilty, you know, just like being so, you know, after like the fifth bag of, you know, chips and sausage, you might feel guilty. That emotion is incredibly healthy. If you didn't feel guilty, you would never, yeah, you'd never repair relationships. You'd never, you would never work, work on improving and enhancing your life. And, you know, if you look at prisoners that feel guilty and are, and are actually trained to get in touch with their guilt about what they did to their victims in prison, those that feel guilty, they're less likely to have recidivism, which means that they're less likely to get, get out of jail and then, and then once they realize they don't fit into the community at large.

• 51:51Speaker 01

  Go back to criminal behavior and end up right back through the revolving door back in prison again.

• 51:55Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 51:56Speaker 01

  So guilt works well and it the importance of the take home message that I want to give to your listeners is when we often want to induce guilt in someone, we often end up making them feel ashamed as opposed to guilty. And we don't want to do that. And so if you think about, you know, if someone screws up um at work in terms of not holding, you know, not holding their share of the share of the the burden of working on a project. And you publicly denounce them and say, you know, listen, everyone raised their hand for how many hours? Who put in three hours? Who put in four hours? And you and you point to the guy that only did one hour and say, you know what? You're the reason that this project fell through. They're not going to feel guilty. They're going to feel ashamed.

• 52:39Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 52:39Speaker 01

  And when you feel ashamed, you want to retreat from the world. You don't say, I screwed up. I did something wrong. You say, I'm a screw up. And I don't belong with this team and I'm not, I shouldn't, I shouldn't be around. And this doesn't make them do better at the next project. It makes them avoid raising their hand. It makes them, it makes them avoid revealing their ideas when you're having a brainstorming session. And it makes sure that they're not going to tell you when they think that they have a question that you're doing something. There's a better way of doing something. You're not going to get those ideas the next time. Because they're so worried about being embarrassed and ashamed again.

• 53:16Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 53:16Speaker 01

  So you want, you want people to feel guilty that they did something wrong. You don't want them to feel that they're broken. They're stupid. Um, they're not valuable and they should be ashamed.

• 53:28Lewis Howes?

  Right, right. Those are good, good distinctions. Now, you talk about in the book that there are some positive outcomes from negative emotions. And I don't know if you have them all in front of you, if you have them all memorized or not, but you talk about ang- anger, embarrassment, guilt, self doubt, selfishness and mindlessness. They all lead to something. Can you, can you speak into some of those?

• 53:51Speaker 01

  Sure, yeah. I mean, we'll just, let's just take like a when I say sad, we're not talking about being depressed, right? Which is like a clinical problem. But just being downtrodden or just kind of not feeling like you're comfortable in your skin today. We all wake up with, where we have like we're just in a sad mood for the day. When we're sad, we are Better at soliciting support and care from other people. We are better at detecting lies and deception by other people. We are more likely to be caring and generous with our money and with our time. When we're in a sad mood as opposed to a happy mood. We're more likely to be humble and modest where we don't take credit for things that we didn't do.

• 54:34Speaker 01

  On projects, you know, household chores. And we're more likely to, and this is one of the most important things about being a little bit less than happy. When we're sad, we are better able to remember what happened accurately in provocative situations. And so, so it's not that sadness is better than happiness. It depends what you want. When you're, if you're in a happy mood, you tend to be more creative. When you're in a sad mood, you tend to be more detail oriented. So if you think about this, like, think about this as a leader. Which one do you want? Are you looking for creative, creative thinking? Are you looking for detail oriented thinking?

• 55:14Speaker 01

  When you're, in terms of your vacation, you know, planning for it, for finding flights, for finding hotels. Right, detail oriented or creative? And so it's about being emotionally agile. What are you looking for? And from that, we could figure what's the best emotional state of mind for people to be in. So that's sadness. Envy, which I know a lot of people list as like the worst emotion to experience. You know, this is the, the green eyed monster. You know, I, I guess, like I think of you, like, I'll, like, right, like, as I've listened to you and heard your story, kind of, you know, listened to your podcast before coming on. You know, there's like, and I listened to Tim Ferriss as well, and I get, I experienced like, like little tinges of envy.

• 55:55Speaker 01

  And one of the benefits of reading this book and working on this is you start to really get in touch of, alright, envy is a sign that you have something that I wish I had. That's envy, and I feel distressed because of it. And so, you know, your poise, your confidence, Tim Ferriss, like, his intellect, like, his experimentation, he's constantly experimenting, like, how can I improve my life? When I look at like, like people like you two guys, and I feel this tinge of envy. Instead of just feeling distressed, I tap into that. I sit with it. I'm like, okay, what is it about Lewis that I would like to have in my own life? How can I deconstruct how he talks, how he holds himself,

• 56:37Speaker 01

  and steal it like an artist and use it when I talk to other people? Right? So I using that, I'm not trying to get rid of envy. I'm like, all right, I'm feeling this, so I'm gonna use this. Yeah. I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna take you, take everything from you. I'm gonna copy you. I'm gonna start stealing little things and kind of put it into my toolkit. And that's what, so envy is a really useful emotion to have, despite that it's not comfortable. And you probably, if you had, if you had to put money on it, you'd probably say, I'd rather feel joy. I'd rather feel love. But I'm not saying let's not feel envy more than love. When it pops up, sit with it, work with it.

• 57:14Lewis Howes?

  I like that because a lot of people say, you know, don't be envious or jealous or any of these other things of other people, but really, I don't think it's, like you said, use it, you know, a couple percent of the time to move you forward, not to spiral you downward and create a negative result, but use it for a positive result.

• 57:32Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah. And if, and if you think about this, right? We're all, we couldn't avoid these negative emotions if we wanted to. And so the question is, do you follow those happiness consultants? And those happiness books that are saying, let's get rid of negativity? Or does it make more sense um to say, I want to be an agile person. I want to be able to bounce with whatever life offers me, whatever situation I'm in. I'm gonna use whatever tools work best for that scenario. And that's kind of the angle that I'm suggesting here.

• 58:06Lewis Howes?

  I like that. What is, uh, what is self doubt enhance?

• 58:10Speaker 01

  Well, self doubt is great. So just thinking about, and I'm sure you've had this, everyone who's a public speaker has this, the imposter syndrome, right? This kind of like, like, who am I to talk to, you know, Arnold, Arnold Schwarzenegger on a podcast or, you know, like, who am I to like, have like, have like Obama's ear for a half an hour to talk, not that either one of us did, but, you know, have this, have his ear for a half an hour. Like you have this like doubt of like, you know what? Maybe I should give that time to somebody else who's worthy. Um, self doubt, we're not gonna banish it, you know. I I can think of so many people that I've met who are like, ah, Todd, if I had a PhD like you, I would write a book also. Like, I'm gonna wait for, I'm gonna wait till I'm anointed with the PhD or I'm gonna wait until I'm only like twenty five years old. Like, I'm not wise enough to write a book or get in front of an audience.

• 58:55Speaker 01

  And I always, this is the self doubt. And so self doubt arises because we think we should know more than we should. We think we should be better than we should. And when you experience this, the motivation is I should be acquiring something else to make me bigger, stronger, faster, better. And so again, the emotion, the emotion motivates you to retreat for a little bit and then replenish your knowledge supply, your energy supply, your strength in your body and your mind. And so that's a good thing. Teachers that have self doubt in the beginning of the year, their kids perform better in terms of their grades,

• 59:35Speaker 01

  their engagement, their attendance, and how the well they do on um achievement tests. And the reason is the best teachers are the ones that recognize they don't know everything. And those teachers, we learn the most from because we recognize of, okay, so you're not saying I'm supposed to be exactly like you because you're still asking questions. And that's part of the most important, it's one of the most important lessons in learning is not about finding answers, but how to ask the right questions. So when someone models that, that's self doubt. It makes them a better teacher and those those they're trying to teach become better. So it's not, again, it's not something to avoid. It's another tool that's useful if we're willing to sit with it and work with it.

• 1:00:17Lewis Howes?

  Right. Man, this stuff is fascinating. Um, and I know you have a lot more examples of what these kind of like uh emotions can fuel or can increase or enhance in the book. So I'll let people go get that to to see more of that. I got a couple of questions left for you, though, and I feel like I could go for another hour with you because this is fascinating to me.

• 1:00:37Speaker 01

  Oh, you, well, you asked awesome questions, so feel free to take your time.

• 1:00:41Lewis Howes?

  Uh, can you tell me what the Teddy effect is? You talk about this in the book. Can you tell me a little bit about what that is?

• 1:00:46Speaker 01

  Ah, so glad you're gonna go here. Everyone, everyone always avoids this because they're uncomfortable about it. So Teddy Roosevelt is one of my heroes besides um. Stand-up comedians and Richard Feyman. You could not have Teddy Roosevelt as a president in an era, in an era where people have blogs and there's social media. I mean, this is a guy who swam naked in the Potomac River right behind the White House. I mean, this is a guy, when, when the senators wouldn't agree with him, he would just say, screw you guys, I'm gonna go to Nebraska and go hunt a boar. And I'll come back, I'll come back when you guys get your crap together. I mean, this is a guy who won the Medal of Honor for being, being in the Spanish-American War. So clearly, the guy can fight, and then he has the Nobel Prize for diplomatic relations.

• 1:01:30Speaker 01

  I mean, nobody has that repertoire, like you're talking about social agility. You want war, you got Teddy. You want peace, you got Teddy. You want, and this was a guy who was narcissistic and had, and for, his biographers will tell you that Teddy would probably be a psychopath if he didn't choose, find the right profession for him. He would have been your next, your next Dexter, right? Could have been an awesome serial killer. And so what, so the Teddy effect is that there are parts of our personality that aren't not, besides being uncomfortable, are completely socially inappropriate to talk about and acknowledge that you have.

• 1:02:10Speaker 01

  If I was to come on here and tell you that I'm narcissistic, I'm Machiavellian and selfish, and I have psychopathic features, who's gonna, who's gonna wanna form, you know, have a, meet with me afterwards for a couple of drinks of bourbon, you know, and say like, hey, listen, I want to introduce you to my sister. I think you guys will be like really great friends, and maybe you guys will hit it off further. Right? But we, there, so I'm not saying, let's be a narcissist or a psychopath. I'm saying that there are behaviors that people like Teddy Roosevelt engage in that we can add to our repertoire that will be useful when we are in certain situations. And I'm gonna give you a good example.

• 1:02:51Speaker 01

  Um, so on the LA Lakers, right, you've got two players that that exemplify the dark side. Uh, let me change that, the healthy side and the unhealthy side of narcissism. So you've got Kobe Bryant and Metta and uh, Ron Artest, who's now Met, who changed his name to Metta World Peace. Right. So both these guys are on the Lakers. They're both incredibly narcissistic, both of them, and a lot of NBA players are narcissistic. But Kobe Bryant has the healthy side of narcissism, and I'm gonna call that narcissistic admiration. And this is that you strive to be unique. You have, you have grandiose fantasies, that you're amazing, you have great strengths, that people should admire you,

• 1:03:36Speaker 01

  that you're entitled to better treatment than other human beings, you're better than a lot of other people. When you have this, these attributes, it makes you want to work better to show that other people, why people should admire you. It's like you're holding up a sign that says, other people should be, other people should be admiring me. It doesn't make Kobe sit, sit on his, on a bench and kind of just um, like just savor and kind of, you know, kind of sit with all this admiration and adulation. It makes him work harder. I need to prove every single day why I am deserving of being admired because of my amazing talents. And he doesn't just do that for himself.

• 1:04:18Speaker 01

  Because of, because of his work ethic, it makes him a better leader. It gives him the social potency that people listen to him on the Lakers. It's why he's a leader on the team. But he's a narcissistic and extremely narcissistic guy. So that's, that's the healthy side of narcissism. Mm hmm. And, and there, there, there are dark patches in there, but in general, to strive to, to be unique and live up to the high, amazing view you have of yourself. If you put in the effort, what's wrong with that?

• 1:04:48Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 1:04:49Speaker 01

  Um, and there's a lot of evidence to show that it makes great leaders and Teddy Roosevelt was also hot in this quality. Now Ron Artest, now known as Metta World Peace, who was on six teams, six different NBA teams in 14 years. He had a lot of on-court altercations, fighting with other players. He's got a whole bunch of domestic violence situations. He's got the dark side of narcissism, which is called narcissistic rivalry. And his sign that or slogan would be, nobody's going to tear me down. And so his sense of entitlement, his sense of grandiosity, his sense of superiority, it motivates him not to be unique and amazing, but to to show how much worse

• 1:05:34Speaker 01

  everyone else is in the NBA. So devaluing his rivals, it makes him aggressive and it makes him fight with all, all sorts of other people. So he's spending, while Kobe's spending all this energy to become, you know, better in five languages, to become the best, to become the best dribbler ever to be on a basketball court, Metta World Peace's energy is being spent showing how he's better than other people on the court, talking smack to them, um, spending his energy taunting them, spending his energy talking to reporters about them, um, spinning his wheels of trying to make sure that his foot is stomped on anyone that tries to show that they're his equal.

• 1:06:16Speaker 01

  And all that energy is not being put to becoming a better player. So as opposed to saying narcissism is bad, I would say there's a healthy side narcissism to learn from and we can use in certain situations. And an unhealthy side of obsessing over rivals and where you stand in the rankings against every other player is a bad way to manage your energy.

• 1:06:39Lewis Howes?

  Right, right. I love that. So it's, it's actually good to be narcissistic if you're going to use it for good, I guess, and bring inspiration and leadership out of others. There's a healthy side of what you're saying.

• 1:06:53Speaker 01

  Yeah. And, and, and so what? So you think you're the best person on the planet? You think you're more intelligent, wise and stronger than every other person here? If you're going to lead our team to greatness and our group to greatness, and you're not going to try to step on me on my, on my head as I try to showcase my strengths, all the power to you.

• 1:07:11Lewis Howes?

  Right. That's great. What do you think is the formula for pleasure versus meaning in life?

• 1:07:18Speaker 01

  So the key is, I like to think of it as like a physical stance, that if you were standing, the ideal stance is having one foot in the present moment, savoring what you have, savoring what you've experienced, being grateful for how you got here, who helped you get there, and who's in your life, and one foot in the future, constantly thinking of, how can I improve the world and make it a better place than before I came here? And what can I do to make myself wiser in the one life that I have? So you've got one foot stretched to the future, focusing on meaning-making, and one foot grounded and rooted in the present, savoring and grateful for what you have.

• 1:07:59Lewis Howes?

  That's good. I like that. Yeah, somewhere in the book, you'd have the information about how there was collected, the definition of, I don't know if you guys did this or if you found this somewhere, but the definition of happiness in thirty countries, and in twenty-four of them, happiness was deemed to be strongly related to fate, fortune, or luck. And in the US, it's viewed as a controllable or attainable state of mind. Why do you think the differences in other places in the world compared to the US?

• 1:08:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, I've been, I've been, I've been kind of like flicking the US culture for a little bit in this, in this forty-five minutes. And, you know, there's, there's, there's a lot of, you know, I think we often, in our patriotism, we forget that there are some problems and we can learn a lot from other cultures. We have, you know, we, you know, we are a country of entrepreneurs that came here to make better lives themselves from other countries. So the gene pool in the US is of a bunch of entrepreneurs, like people that are willing to travel across the sea, knowing that there was probably a thirty percent chance of survival. And so those, we have a, we're very independent, we're very self-reliant, we're very optimistic, we're big go-getters, we think that we can control our emotions.

• 1:09:14Speaker 01

  And the thing is, is that's, that belief can be extremely problematic, because there are so many things we can't control about happiness. And just, just as a quick list, the temperature affects your mood. Other people affect your mood and you can you can control you can control how you respond to other people, but you can't control what other people do. Your circadian rhythm affects your mood, the time of the day. Um, and then your hormones affect your mood. And so the idea that you are in full conscious control and I can make myself tranquil and I can make myself happy and I can make this anger dissipate just because I have incredible mindfulness skills is an illusion that gets in the way of living the life that we should be living or that we can be living is probably a better way of describing it.

• 1:09:59Lewis Howes?

  So you're saying, but you would agree that you can change your state or your mental moments or your feelings, even if everything's throwing at you, your hormones and the weather and it's miserable outside, you could still find calm in the crazy.

• 1:10:15Speaker 01

  Yes, you you can learn to tweak your mindset in a number of ways to increase the likelihood that you will bounce back from setbacks.

• 1:10:25Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 1:10:26Speaker 01

  And that you'll have um, the attitude that you expect positive things to happen to you in the future, even though you're bracing for bad things that could happen.

• 1:10:34Lewis Howes?

  Gotcha.

• 1:10:35Speaker 01

  So we could we could tweak our mind, but we cannot moment to moment control our mood. There's no dial like on an equalizer where I could all of a sudden just be like, I'm gonna be, yeah, I'm gonna, because I mean, just just think about, think about how many times you've been in an audience from a huge audience of people and someone backstage said, hey, Lewis, listen, dude, why are you so anxious? Why just do just chill, get in front of there and just just be chill. And you look at them and you're like, do you not, do you think that I do that, sir? Like, do you really think that that strategy didn't cross my mind if I had the ability to say chill and all of a sudden all of my anxiety disappears? I mean, like, come on, thank you for the incredibly brilliant innovative idea.

• 1:11:15Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, that's right.

• 1:11:18Lewis Howes?

  Very cool. All right. Well, there's I have a bunch of questions left for you, but I want to save it for another time. Or I want to just let people get the book. It's called The Upside of Your Dark Side. Why being your whole self, not just your good self, drives success and fulfillment. And for me, you know, I bring out a lot of different authors, a lot of different books on here. And for me, this was very fascinating because it kind of is a contrast to a lot of the things I've been bringing on to the podcast. So I think you guys will actually get a lot out of this. Highly recommend it. Todd Kashdan, I acknowledge you for the gift that you've had, the inspiration you've had to really research this and bring it forth. And I'm sure I can only imagine the amount of

• 1:12:01Lewis Howes?

  emotions you've had in your life from the childhood stuff you've gone through from, you know, basically losing both parents and having to experience that. So I really acknowledge you for the amount of emotions you've had to experience in order to create this book. You've really used your negative emotions, quote unquote, your dark side to fuel you in creating this. And it's a masterpiece. So I appreciate you for all the hard work you do to serve others. It's amazing.

• 1:12:29Speaker 01

  Thanks, man. I appreciate that a lot. Nice way to end my Wednesday.

• 1:12:33Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, a couple of questions left for you. And I'll have all the tips and the points linked up on the show notes here. I'll give you guys the link for that here at the end. I want a couple of questions for you that I ask everyone at the end. What are you most grateful for in your life recently is the first one?

• 1:12:51Speaker 01

  Oh, that's my family easily. I mean,

• 1:12:55Speaker 01

  real quickly is my mom passed away when I was a kid. My dad walked out when I was when I was two years old and I am so grateful to have a loving wife and I have three daughters between two and eight.

• 1:13:06Lewis Howes?

  Very cool. Final question. What's your definition of greatness?

• 1:13:10Speaker 01

  Greatness to me is when you are willing and able to be comfortable with every different side of your personality, such that whatever pops up, whatever situation, you can embrace it, you can accept it, and you can honor that in some ways you are unique from any other human being possible. And you're willing to bring that those strengths and those those different weird awkward sides of yourself to light.

• 1:13:35Lewis Howes?

  Todd Cashden, thanks so much for coming on, my man. I really enjoyed this.

• 1:13:38Speaker 01

  Oh, this is this is great. Thank you.

• 1:13:43Lewis Howes?

  And there you have it guys. I hope you enjoyed this episode. I loved it and I would love to dive in even more about this topic because I feel like these are the great conversations that I like to have that really helped me learn and helped me learn more about myself and really helped me learn how to handle my emotions in certain ways. And you know, very, it's very good to hear from someone who has, you know, done a lot of the research and done a lot of the science behind these emotions and who can really share these details with us in a way that's effective. So I appreciate Todd for coming on. If you enjoyed this, make sure to subscribe to the podcast and leave us a review over at iTunes.com/SchoolOfGreatness.

• 1:14:27Lewis Howes?

  You can subscribe there, get all the episodes coming up. Also, check out some of the previous episodes. We've had some incredible guests on lately and we have some incredible guests coming for the rest of this year. So if you're going to want to make sure you subscribe, I'm putting a ton of time and energy and love into this podcast for all of you. And it's because of you guys where I'm able to bring on these incredible experts and brilliant minds to share this information. It's 100% free. So thank you guys for spreading the message over on Twitter and Facebook. And I see all your photos over on Instagram. Thank you for tagging me where you're listening to it. And keep posting to promote the show because the larger the community gets, the more incredible individuals I'm able to bring

• 1:15:09Lewis Howes?

  on. So again, go back to the show notes and get all the tips and resources from today's episode at LewisHowes.com/154. Thank you all so much for being a part of this community. I love you all. You know what time it is. It's time to go out there and do something great.