Pod Insights Something You Should Know The Amazing Things Your Heart Does & The Power You Have to Change Lives About this episode I am sure you know people who love to offer unsolicited advice. And if you think back to the last time someone offered it to you – you likely didn’t follow it. No one does. This episode starts by revealing why people hate unsolicited advice and what works so much better if you want to get someone to do something. https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/do-the-right-thing/201407/giving-people-advice-rarely-works-does
We have known for a long time that the human heart is not really involved with emotions. You can’t really love someone with all your heart – that’s not what the heart does. Still, we talk about love and the heart as being connected. Why? That’s just one of the things I discuss with my guest Dr. Vincent Figueredo. He is a practicing cardiologist, professor of medicine and author of the book, The Curious History of the Heart: A Cultural and Scientific Journey (https://amzn.to/4hlJQfa). Listen as he also reveals just how amazing your heart is, what it does and what it is like to hold a beating human heart in his hands!
We can all help people make real positive changes in their lives by taking some very small actions. That’s according to important research conducted by my guest Greg Walton, PhD. He is the co-director of the Dweck-Walton Lab and a professor of psychology at Stanford University. Listen as he explains what he calls “Ordinary Magic” – small steps that can be very influential in keeping people on track and help them become the people they want to be. Greg is author of book called Ordinary Magic: The Science of How We Can Achieve Big Change with Small Acts (https://amzn.to/4ihZlGa)
Do you know what the difference is between a habit and an addiction? While they seem similar, there is an important distinction. Listen as I explain the difference. Source: Charles DuHigg author of The Power of Habit (https://amzn.to/41D7JJd)
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Transcript Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
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1:28 Mike Carruthers? Today on Something You Should Know, why giving people unsolicited advice is a colossal waste of everyone's time. Then, a cardiologist reveals fascinating things about your heart you never knew.
1:42 Speaker 01 Actually holding a heart in my hand, it felt like a super-strong tennis ball. This is not a floppy organ. This thing is solid. And when you're holding a beating heart in your hand, the strength that you feel is just mind-boggling.
1:58 Mike Carruthers? Also, what's the difference between a habit and an addiction? And how anyone can have a huge impact on someone else's life?
2:07 Speaker 02 One of the founders of Head Start, Uri Bronfenbrenner, said, "Every child needs at least one adult who has an irrational attachment to them." And I think Bronfenbrenner understated the case that every person needs at least somebody else who has an irrational attachment to them.
2:22 Mike Carruthers? All this today on Something You Should Know.
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4:23 Mike Carruthers? So I could give you some advice, but it probably wouldn't do any good, so I won't. Hi, welcome to Something You Should Know. In our desire to help people, it's just natural to offer them advice. Trouble is, people don't usually take it. And you know this because people probably tell you how to eat, or drink, or vote, or dress, or whatever, and you don't listen to them either. So why doesn't offering unsolicited advice work? Research indicates that whenever someone tells us what to do and how to do it, we get defensive, because we want to maximize our personal freedom in decision-making. It's just human nature.
5:07 Mike Carruthers? So what does work? Research on observational learning suggests that while people will resist unsolicited advice, they will follow the behaviors of others, especially when there appear to be good and reinforcing outcomes from those behaviors. So instead of telling people what they should do, model the behavior and just stay quiet. Of course, I just told you what to do, so telling you this completely contradicts what I told you to do, but you get the point. And that is something you should know. So you know what your heart is, right?
5:48 Mike Carruthers? It's that pump in the middle of your chest that's pumping blood all the time. And you want that, because when it stops pumping blood, well, that's a big problem. But the heart is unlike any other organ in the body, because it is somehow all wrapped up with love and emotions. We write and sing songs about the heart. People get their hearts broken. Love makes the heart grow fonder. Love makes the heart beat faster. No other organ, I mean, your spleen doesn't conjure up any particular emotions, most likely, nor does your liver, but the heart, well, that's something special. And here to tell you things about your heart you never knew, about how it really works,
6:32 Mike Carruthers? and how it all got mixed up with emotion, is Dr. Vincent Figueredo. He is a practicing cardiologist, scientist, and professor of medicine, and he's author of a book called The Curious History of the Heart: A Cultural and Scientific Journey. Doctor, welcome to Something You Should Know.
6:51 Speaker 01 Thank you very much.
6:52 Mike Carruthers? So this is such an interesting topic because I've often wondered, and I'm sure many other people have, how the heart got mixed up with love in the first place, why we associate love with the heart, and why we still do even though we now know that the heart really doesn't have anything to do with love, but we still write the songs and the poems and say the words that make it sound as if we still believe the heart and love go together. So how did this all begin?
7:28 Speaker 01 Well, you know, if you go back to millennia ago, you know, ancient ancestors, for them, they understood that that beating heart meant life. It would beat faster with fear and love, and when someone died, it would beat no more, and the body would cool. So they thought, well, this beating organ in the middle of our body, it's our furnace, it's what supplies our heat, and it must be where our emotions are, because if we're angry, or scared, or if we're in love, or excited, our heart responds to us. And so that must be where our emotions
8:09 Speaker 01 are, and where our being or our soul is. And that held true for millennia, right up until the Renaissance.
8:18 Mike Carruthers? And even though we know now that it's not really true, the mythology lingers. I mean, we still write songs and tell stories and talk about, "My heart yearns for you." But your heart doesn't yearn for anything.
8:33 Speaker 01 Yeah, basically, since the Renaissance, you're right, we just view the heart physiologically as a blood pump and nothing more. And yet, metaphorically, we continue to use it when we talk about our emotions, our love, our memory. It's interesting, you know, think about the grandmother sees her grandchild running to her. Where does she cross her arms over her heart? Where do you point to on your body when you say "me"? You point to your chest. When we're on emails and doing texting, we use heart emojis. There's 41 heart emojis, there's only one brain emoji.
9:15 Speaker 01 When we're on Instagram or X, if we like something, we push the heart. If we're at the restaurant, we look for the heart symbol for heart-healthy food. So the symbolic heart is pervasive in our society. And, you know, if you ask people, you know, "Where's your love of family and your love of God?" They're gonna say in their heart. And yet, if you ask them, "What does the heart do?", they say, "Well, it just pumps blood."
9:42 Mike Carruthers? Right. Isn't that weird? And nobody says, "Oh, my pancreas yearns for you." I mean, nobody says that. But I think what you said in the beginning, though, is so true, that because we can hear the heart, you can't hear your pancreas or your lungs, I mean, your lungs work, but it's a very deliberate thing you do with them. But your heart makes this noise that reflects emotions, so that's what must be where the emotions are.
10:13 Speaker 01 And in fact, there's a term for that. It's called interoception. And that's feeling things within your body. And the most common one would be the heartbeat. And that can have positive ramifications and negative ramifications. You know, when people feel irregular rhythms in their body, it induces panic and, you know, panic attacks and anxiety. But when they feel that nice, harmonious, regular, coherent beat, it calms them. And the heart actually sends signals to the brain to calm yourself.
10:45 Mike Carruthers? Can you, in layman's terms, explain, you know, how the heart works? Like, is it really, really complicated? Or is it basically just a pump?
10:56 Speaker 01 It's a spectacular pump. It has special muscle cells that, besides being able to conduct an electrical signal, are spread out in three different orientations. So they're horizontal, vertical, and at an angle. And so when a heart pumps, it's not like a balloon deflating. It's more like you're twisting a wet rag to get all of the fluid out of it. And what's amazing is it's pumping one and a half gallons every minute, over 2,000 gallons every day, and over 58 million gallons over a regular life. And that's equivalent to turning on a kitchen sink full blast for 45 years.
11:37 Mike Carruthers? What's one thing about the heart that you suspect most people don't know that's really fascinating to you?
11:45 Speaker 01 So, a couple fascinating things about the heart that I've learned over the years was, one, actually holding a heart in my hand. It felt like a super-strong tennis ball. This is not a floppy organ. This thing is solid. And when you're holding a beating heart in your hand, the strength that you feel is just mind-boggling. A heart in an athlete can increase seven times its baseline output. So, if the heart is beating one and a half gallons a minute, a sprinter could increase that seven times to get muscles,
12:28 Speaker 01 to get blood to the muscles, for instance, in the legs.
12:32 Mike Carruthers? Why is it so hard, when someone dies and their heart stops beating, why is it so hard to start it back up again?
12:39 Speaker 01 It depends on how much time takes place. So, if a heart stops within a minute, you have a very good chance of getting that heart going again. But the longer it takes before someone tries to start it, the more likely it will not come back. And that's, again, not getting into the science, but electrolyte shifts within the membranes of the heart that just won't allow you to start the heart beating again.
13:08 Mike Carruthers? When we hear someone has heart failure... What does that mean?
13:12 Speaker 01 It means that the the heart pump is not functioning normally. And there's generally two types of heart failure. One is a poor pump, so the pump is no longer working well. That's systolic heart failure. Or the pump has become too stiff and can't relax. That's called diastolic heart failure. Both are dangerous. Both need to be treated, or people will not survive. Sometimes they can be temporary. It could be due to an infection or some toxic substance. And we can reverse a lot of those. Sometimes it's due to coronary artery disease with poor blood flow. And after, say, bypass surgery, we can get some return of heart function.
13:57 Speaker 01 But basically, it's heart failure means the pump is not working. The result is fluid accumulates in the body, in the lungs, in the legs, in the belly. And if that progresses, eventually, a person won't survive.
14:12 Mike Carruthers? So we've heard for many years that heart failure or heart disease is the number one killer. And that I've I'm and I remember hearing, and it's always stuck with me, that a common first symptom of heart disease is sudden death. Is it really that, like, out of the blue?
14:31 Speaker 01 Unfortunately, yes, it is. Heart disease has basically been the number one killer, especially in the US, since pretty much 1900, with the exception of the years of the Spanish flu. And it really peaked around the 1950s and 60s, when everybody was smoking. With education, treatment of blood pressure, cholesterol, and a decrease in prevalence of smoking, heart disease has gone down. Yet it still remains the number one killer worldwide of both men and women. When someone has a heart attack or begins to have a heart attack, up to half of them can experience sudden death. And that can happen long before a person reaches the the emergency room.
15:14 Speaker 01 So obviously, the the point is, let's not get to that point. Let's not have the heart attack. Let's prevent it.
15:21 Mike Carruthers? We're discussing some extraordinary things about the heart with my guest, cardiologist Dr. Vincent Figueroa. He's author of the book, "The Curious History of the Heart: A Cultural and Scientific Journey." This episode is sponsored by Vinted. You know, I remember interviewing an organizing expert who offered this really clever trick for figuring out which clothes you should get rid of. You go to your closet and you look at the clothes hanging there. And chances are, the ones toward the middle are the clothes you wear most often. But the clothes pushed way over to the left or the right, some of those you probably haven't worn in years, and yet there they hang, taking up space.
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18:09 Mike Carruthers? 50% off during Beam's Cyber Sale. Only available while flavors are in stock. With this incredible discount, that means you'll pay just 83 cents per night for the best sleep of your life. So seriously, think about it. I mean, how much would you pay for a truly great night of sleep? Beam is just 83 cents per night. So go to shopbeam.com/sysk now. That's shopbeam.com/sysk. So Vincent, I'm curious, when people have heart disease and sudden death is the first symptom, is it really so out of the blue? Is it really that Bob was fine yesterday
18:53 Mike Carruthers? and today, we don't know why, but boom, he's just dead?
18:58 Speaker 01 No, Bob probably hasn't been fine since he was a teenager. As, if you look at autopsy studies of, for instance, young soldiers during the Vietnam and Korean Wars, it's remarkable how much coronary artery disease, cholesterol plaque, they have already built up. This starts with just these cholesterol fatty streaks as early as our teens and continues to build through our life, such that there's cholesterol plaque buildup and calcification of our coronary arteries by the time, you know, Bob is 60 years old. On top of that, you have other risk factors such as high blood pressure known as the silent
19:43 Speaker 01 killer because you don't feel it until it causes you to have a heart attack or stroke. And high cholesterol, a lot of people go through life not going to the doctor and not having these things treated. And so, you know, it really isn't a surprise that Bob suddenly fell dead yesterday.
20:00 Mike Carruthers? What about people who, you know, well, there's a family history of heart disease, you know, his grandfather died at 50 and his father died at 55. So it seems like you're doomed. Is it that powerful?
20:15 Speaker 01 Yes, it is. Family history is extremely important. We generally ask about first degree relatives, mother, father, sister, brother, whether the men had heart disease before 55 or the women had heart disease before 65. And if, you know, if they weren't smokers and they did have heart events, then that definitely needs to be taken into account when we risk stratified patients. So we'll be more attentive to their cholesterol levels, their blood pressure levels. We can now order tests like a coronary calcium score, which is a quick CAT scan, to see if they already do have cholesterol buildup in their arteries
20:57 Speaker 01 that that they weren't aware of, and then we would treat them more vigorously.
21:01 Mike Carruthers? If you live long enough, are you, is it kind of, I've heard this about prostate cancer, that men who live long enough are, they're going to get prostate cancer, doesn't mean they'll die from it, but they'll get it. Is the same true of heart disease?
21:15 Speaker 01 No, there are people in their 90s and hundreds whose coronary arteries are completely clean.
21:21 Mike Carruthers? Really?
21:22 Speaker 01 We always say good, good family genes. But yeah, there, there are people that go into their 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s, hundreds without significant coronary artery disease.
21:37 Speaker 01 Generally, those people led a very healthy life and they had a good family history.
21:42 Mike Carruthers? What about this advice that has seems to come and go about taking a low dose aspirin every day?
21:50 Speaker 01 People who are at risk should be on low dose aspirin. And those are people who have evidence of coronary artery disease, have had events such as a heart attack or unstable angina that led to, you know, a stent being placed in or bypass surgery. Someone with a lot of risk factors, a smoker with diabetes and high cholesterol, I would recommend that they be on a baby aspirin. But in general, we don't recommend it for healthy people without a lot of risk factors or evidence of coronary artery disease.
22:26 Mike Carruthers? Because what does that aspirin do?
22:30 Speaker 01 Well, the good part is the aspirin keeps the blood from clotting, keeps the platelets from causing a blood clot. When a person has cholesterol plaque buildup in their coronary arteries, those plaques can crack open and when they do, the platelets attack because it's a rupture, it's an opening and they want to prevent it from opening further and that leads to a blood clot and aspirin prevents that from happening. The downside is aspirin can irritate the lining of the stomach and can result in GI bleeds.
23:11 Mike Carruthers? I've heard it said though, that I've heard it recommended by heart doctors that there's nothing wrong with everybody taking a low dose aspirin because there's very little harm that it could do and if you have heart trouble, it could help.
23:26 Speaker 01 We used to say that in the past, more recent studies have suggested that the risk can outweigh the benefit in people who do not have high risk for heart disease.
23:37 Mike Carruthers? Can people die from a broken heart?
23:39 Speaker 01 Yes, people can die from a broken heart. There's two examples of that. One is something that we call broken heart syndrome. It's also called stress-induced cardiomyopathy. What happens is there's a sudden overwhelming event, an emotional event. Say you see your child playing soccer and they are hit and they're unconscious. Or you see someone get hit by a car. Or you're informed that your sister died. And this sudden emotional event causes a huge surge in epinephrine or adrenaline in your body.
24:24 Speaker 01 And it can actually damage the bottom of the heart and induce what looks like a heart attack, even though the person's coronary arteries are perfectly fine. We call this broken heart syndrome. People do die from it. I'll tell you another example. If your soccer team loses a penalty shootout in the World Cup final or in the Super Bowl, your team loses on a last-second pass. A lot of those people can develop a broken heart syndrome or stress-induced cardiomyopathy. Fortunately, most of them recover, but some do die. The second example is more chronic.
25:10 Speaker 01 Good example is the couple, the 85-year-old couple that's been married since they were, you know, 16 years old. And one of them passes away. It's amazing how most of the spouses of those people pass away within the year. And it's probably due to the depression and the sadness of missing that lifelong partner. And we typically see those people go into hospice within months after the other has passed away. And then they pass on as well.
25:46 Mike Carruthers? Where's the technology with heart transplants? And, you know, where's heart science going?
25:55 Speaker 01 It's advancing rapidly. You know, at the beginning of the 20th century, we finally figured out what a heart attack was, but the only treatment was morphine, bedrest, and a priest. By the end of the 20th century, you know, we're doing bypass surgeries, coronary stents, pacemakers. We can now repair and insert new heart valves with a catheter instead of open-heart surgery. We're implanting artificial heart assist devices in people with broken hearts to bridge them to transplant or to allow their heart to heal. We're replacing broken hearts with a completely artificial robotic heart. We have one person who's lived over seven years with an artificial heart.
26:41 Speaker 01 Soon, we're going to be doing xenotransplantations. That's transplanting the heart of another animal into a human. Many animal hearts have been tried, probably the most likely. And it makes me laugh is the pig heart is most closely associated with the human heart. And in fact, a recent recipient lived several months with a gene-modified pig heart. So, given the shortage of human donor hearts around the world, I can see in 10 years xenotransplantation occurring. We're now starting to grow heart muscle to replace lost heart cells.
27:22 Speaker 01 We're not salamanders. We can't reproduce heart cells in our body. But with stem cell studies, we're learning how to rebuild lost heart muscle. Maybe someday we'll be able to rebuild a whole heart.
27:37 Speaker 01 We're developing vaccines to prevent future heart disease, looking at people's genetic makeup and determining whether they should get that vaccine early in life. We're using 3D printing to create, for instance, a perfect heart valve matched to a patient. Someday, maybe we'll be, do a 3D printing of an actual whole heart to replace someone's broken heart.
28:04 Mike Carruthers? Well, I really like how you've approached this topic of the heart, really through two lenses. The medical lens of what the heart really is and what it does, but also the cultural part of it, of how we tie the heart with emotions. This was really fun. I've been talking to Dr. Vincent Figueredo. He is a practicing cardiologist, and he is author of the book, "The Curious History of the Heart: A Cultural and Scientific Journey." And there's a link to that book at Amazon in the show notes. Thank you so much, Vincent. This was great. Hiring the wrong person is expensive, but it's also exhausting because now you haven't solved your problem, you've created a new one.
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30:22 Mike Carruthers? Every important situation you find yourself in can cause you to question things. Questions like, can I do this? Do I belong here? What will people think of me? How you come to the answers to those questions can have a significant impact on you. It's probably something you haven't thought about a lot, but you're going to find this really enlightening. I want you to listen to my guest, Greg Walton. He's co-director of the Dweck-Walton Lab and a professor of psychology at Stanford University. His work has been covered in major media outlets, including The New York Times, The Harvard Business Review, The Wall Street Journal, and many
31:04 Mike Carruthers? others. He's author of a book called Ordinary Magic: The Science of How We Can Achieve Big Changes With Small Acts. Hi Greg, welcome to Something You Should Know.
31:16 Speaker 02 Thanks for having me.
31:18 Mike Carruthers? So, explain in more detail what this ordinary magic is and how it works.
31:24 Speaker 02 The big picture is that all the time in life, we're walking into situations where we face what I call existential or defining questions. Questions like, who am I? Can I do it? Do I belong in the spaces that matter to me? In a relationship context, it might be, do you love me? Can I trust you? And those questions are pejorative, they're often negatively valenced. And when they pop up in our lives, when the situation puts them on the table for us, we tend to see the world through that pejorative lens and we tend to see the negative. And that makes us spiral down.
32:09 Speaker 02 And so interventions like this, this kind of ordinary magic, it's a way to, when you can see that question, it's a way to begin to help people to develop better answers to that question so they can set it aside and come to develop their belonging in a space, come to become the kind of person that they're trying to become.
32:28 Mike Carruthers? So, give me an example of that in action, in real life.
32:32 Speaker 02 The single best example that I can think of is one from our work on lifting the bar. This was an intervention that is in a very particular problem space, and so it might seem kind of removed from people's lives, but I think it's actually really important and applicable. This was an exercise that we developed to help kids as they come back to school from juvenile detention and to succeed in that process of reentry. And basically, what it is, is that we ask young people who are in this circumstance to tell us about who they are as a person, the values that they have, like to be a good role model for a younger brother or sister, to make their parents proud.
33:17 Speaker 02 And then at the end, this is about a 45-minute experience soon in that transition, we give kids a platform. We ask them, who's an adult in school who isn't yet but could be an important source of support for you? And what would you like that person to know about who you are as a person, your values, your goals and challenges you face that that adult could help with? And then we take that content and we put it into a letter to that adult. It's a one-page letter, but what that letter says is, "All kids need strong relationships with adults to succeed. This child has chosen you. Here's what they would like you to know about them. Please help them in their transition, help them in their experience. Thank you very much for your work."
34:02 Speaker 02 And we found in a initial randomized controlled trial that this actually reduced the rate at which kids recidivated back to juvenile detention by 40 percentage points from 69% to 29%.
34:15 Mike Carruthers? Wow.
34:15 Speaker 02 And yeah, and just, just as important is that it completely shifts the experience for the adults. So this is really an intervention that's designed to unleash the best possible self of an adult. Imagine you're teaching, you know, English 10th grade, for example, and you get told by the assistant principal that you've got some kid coming back to school, coming back to your class from juvenile detention. And what are the thoughts that might course through your mind? Like, it's very easy to see, like, you might think, what problems is this kid gonna cause? Is he gonna cause me difficulties? Is he gonna disrupt my class? Maybe he might even be violent. And those are not the thoughts that a teacher needs to have when they're interacting with a kid who's in a difficult circumstance.
34:57 Speaker 02 And so this is a way to give a kid a platform and say, here's who I really am, who, here's who I want to be, here's who I want to become. And then the two people can work together to begin to chart a path of growth towards that, that person. So it's a one-page letter, but it transforms the relationship, how both people see each other, and it ultimately transforms the young person's life.
35:20 Mike Carruthers? But this whole idea applies not only to kids in the juvenile justice system, but this applies to everybody in life, right?
35:30 Speaker 02 Yeah, so one of the founders of Head Start, a man who is one of my intellectual heroes, Uri Bronfenbrenner, said, every child needs at least one adult who has an irrational attachment to them. And I think Bronfenbrenner understated the case, that every person needs at least somebody else who has an irrational attachment to them. So one of the things that we see in close relationship contexts, like romantic relationships, marriages, dating relationships, is that the course of these relationships
36:00 Speaker 02 Can vary greatly depending on whether or not the partners really have an idealistic image of each other. In the very best relationships, your partner has this image of you as this, you know, wonderful person, funnier, kinder, more attractive than anybody else has, even than you have. And also, that image is fitting for you. It's fitting for who you want to be. And in a relationship, in a very good relationship, you have that image also for your partner, and you're each kind of trying to become that wonderful person together. That's the theme in the movie Jerry Maguire.
36:41 Speaker 02 In the beginning, Jerry Maguire, played by Tom Cruise, is a sports agent, and he decides to leave the company that he built, the sports agency that he built. He sees it as a godforsaken business. He walks out, and he wants to build something honest and true, and he invites anybody who'd like to join him to join him, and only one person joins him. That's the character played by Renee Zellweger. And their story is a love story, but it's a story of kind of love in becoming. So Renee Zellweger's character says to her sister at one point, "I love him. I love him for the man he almost is. I love him for the man he can become."
37:26 Speaker 02 I'm paraphrasing. And then at the iconic climax of the movie, he says to her, "I love you. You complete me." And that's when the relationship fully coheres. And it's this, this dynamic in which he's trying to become a better person. He's trying to become a good person. And she sees that trajectory in him. She sees that image of who he could become. And her having that image allows him to realize that. And it's the same thing in the juvenile justice context. If both people start with mistrust and conflict, they're not having a good image of each other. But what our intervention does, what that ordinary magic is, is it is an opportunity
38:10 Speaker 02 for a kid to begin to show that image of the good and successful person they hope to become. The teacher can then hold that image and hold it up for the young person as they're going through the challenges of school. So, for example, in one little detail from that work, we asked teachers, well, imagine that you were in this circumstance and the kid acted out, like, not in a big way, but they just fell asleep in class and they refused to do their work. What would you do? And we find that when teachers get that lifting-the-barred letter, they're more likely to say things like, I would remind the student of his goals, of the kind of person he's trying to become. So you have this kind of image between the two people that is a wonderful and beautiful
38:54 Speaker 02 image, or is a terrible and nasty image. And part of ordinary magic is helping people construct that image that's positive, that can help them become the kinds of people individually and together that they want to be.
39:06 Mike Carruthers? Do you think most of us have had an ordinary magic kind of moment on the receiving end of it? Like you said, everybody needs one of these irrational people, but have we all experienced it, do you suppose?
39:22 Speaker 02 Well, let me ask you this. I mean, when you were a younger person, when you were thinking about who you wanted to become, was there an adult in your life who had a vision of the kind of person you could become before you even had that, maybe at a time when you were struggling or weren't there yet?
39:42 Mike Carruthers? Yeah, I mean, I think my parents filled that role pretty well.
39:46 Speaker 02 I hope everybody has that experience, and that experience at the right time and in the right way for them. I think it is something that a lot of people have, but I also think it's something that some people don't get and don't get at the right time. And I think that the juvenile justice example is one example of a particularly terrible circumstance where that's difficult to have.
40:11 Mike Carruthers? What do we do with this? I mean, this is really interesting, and I think it makes people kind of reflect on their relationships and how they've dealt with people and how they've been dealt with. But is this then a philosophy by which to live by, or is this something to just notice when you see it? Or what do we do with this?
40:31 Speaker 02 Yeah, I think there's a lot of different kinds of things we can do with this. One thing to say is that often when we have experiences of self doubt, when we ask ourselves icky questions like, maybe you failed at a, maybe somebody said, oh, that's the score you got on that test, and you have this shiver of ickiness in your spine, or when you're feeling like, maybe I don't have any friends here, maybe I don't belong in a workspace or a community space or a school space that is important to me. I think the first thing to say is that those questions are typically reasonable. They're normal.
41:13 Speaker 02 They don't need to mean that there's something wrong with you. At the same time, those questions need not necessarily be true. And sometimes by accepting that you have that question and that it's a reasonable question, you can put it on the table, and then you can decide what it really means, how you really want to think about it.
41:35 Mike Carruthers? What are some likely times in life that this might pop up? That this is, you know, the more you're aware of it, the maybe, the more you could engage with it. But like, when would be a good time to do that?
41:51 Speaker 02 Yeah, so one is definitely challenges. Like, you fail a test, and then you think, maybe I can't do this. You get excluded, and you think, maybe people like me don't belong here. Another time is transitions. So you're going into a new space, like you're going back to school, or you're starting a new job, for example. When you're in transitions, you're thinking, what is this place? What is valued here? Who am I here? How will I be received here? Will I be able to do what I want to do and be who I want to be in this space? And then the third has to do with identities and the way that stereotypes can predefine people in different kinds of identity groups and create these anxieties.
42:33 Speaker 02 So in the juvenile justice context, these kids are almost all boys. They are... Largely African American or other students of color. And they've literally all been incarcerated. That's an intersection of stereotypes that is very palpable in our society. And it creates this image up there in the, in the world, in the air about, that defines who you are and how you might be seen by other people. And so, you know, when people are, have stereotypes, when the stereotypes are on the table, when people are going through transitions, when there's challenges, these are particularly, particularly kind of fraught moments.
43:15 Mike Carruthers? And when I'm in one of those fraught moments of, you know, do I belong here? Can I succeed here? Then what? What do I do with that?
43:25 Speaker 02 Yeah, I think the first thing to do is, is accept the question. Don't, don't try to suppress it. Suppressing it's not going to help. Accept that you're having the question and presume that that question is a normal and reasonable question. And presume that probably other people experience that question maybe more than you think. And then start to think about like, what would it mean for me to have growth in addressing this question over time? So for example, how could I build my belonging in this space?
43:55 Mike Carruthers? And when you do that, what tends to happen?
43:59 Speaker 02 So often in our culture, we have the phrase spiraling down, but we can also spiral up. So if you can think about, for example, building your belonging in a space, then you can ask yourself, what would be communities in this environment that I'd like to get to know better? What would be relationships I would like to build? I'll try this. In a, in a close relationship context, if you're asking the question, does my partner truly love me? Am I respected by my partner? And then you go into a conflict conversation. If those are the questions on your, on your mind, that conflict conversation is going
44:39 Speaker 02 to be difficult to have. Your partner says something, you might react with, in a negative way, you might lash out, you might withdraw. But if you're able to get back to a feeling of basic security about, about that relationship, you can be more pragmatic in addressing the challenges that have come up in the relationship. So, for example, one lovely study by a woman named Denise Marigold, who is at the University of Waterloo, had couples in dating relationships think about a compliment their partner had given them immediately before having a conflict conversation. And the conversations went vastly better. The people were more productive
45:20 Speaker 02 and constructive. There was more love, more humor, less of those kinds of really toxic things that can happen.
45:27 Mike Carruthers? Just by giving a compliment first?
45:30 Speaker 02 Not giving a compliment. So each member of the couple reflected on a compliment that their partner had previously given them.
45:37 Mike Carruthers? Oh, at any time?
45:38 Speaker 02 It was just like a little, yeah, at any time. It was just like a, it was just like a timeout, like a way to take a breath before the conversation, to get back to the basic security of the relationship and feel that security. So that when you go into the conflict conversation, you don't have in the back of your mind, even at an implicit level, some little voice saying, maybe, maybe this person doesn't truly love me. Maybe this person doesn't truly respect me. Maybe this person is taking advantage of me, or whatever it might be. So you can get back to a base level of security. And once you have that base security, you can say something like, hey, Mike, you're always late. Like, it really bothers me that you're late all the time. Can we talk about how to work through
46:20 Speaker 02 that? And it's not, it's not a blaming conversation. It's a, it's a productive, constructive, like, let's work, let's work this out kind of conversation.
46:29 Mike Carruthers? Just reflecting on, on that compliment just sets that tone.
46:34 Speaker 02 Yeah, yeah. But, but at the right time, right? Right at the right time, in that case, right before the conflict conversation.
46:39 Mike Carruthers? A lot of this seems to have to do with prejudging, prejudging situations, prejudging other people, prejudging ourselves in those situations.
46:49 Mike Carruthers? That we don't walk into a situation with a clean slate.
46:54 Speaker 02 Yeah, and I think that that happens a lot for everybody. There is one study, for example, where a colleague approached Asian American students on a college campus and asked them a single question. That question was, do you speak English? And then she subsequently gave them a questionnaire in which she asked them how many American TV shows from the 80s they could remember. And what she found was that when she asked that question, the Asian American students listed a whole bunch more US TV shows. It's like they're saying, you think I'm not an American when you ask that question, but I'm an American.
47:39 Speaker 02 And so I think all the time we're walking around, sometimes we're more aware of it, sometimes we're less aware of it, where there are these images that exist about us that predefine us, that might be, might be negative, or might be, might put us in a box, and people are trying to contend with that.
47:59 Mike Carruthers? And so the takeaway from this is, what is it you want people to get from this? It's really fascinating and something no one really thinks much about, but when the dust all settles, what should I do with it?
48:12 Speaker 02 Yeah, I mean, I think that these existential questions, like literally define the course of our lives, like questions like, who am I and how am I seen? Am I going to be able to do what I want to do? Am I going to be able to belong in the spaces that are going to matter for who I want to be? Am I going to be able to have the kinds of relationships that I want to have? And if we can be honest and direct in recognizing those questions when they come up, not to suppress them, but to understand that they come from the context, then that equips us to say, how do we want to think about this? What's going to be a productive way to think about this question that I can use to become the person I want to be? I think that can make our individual lives better.
48:56 Speaker 02 I think it can make our community stronger and healthier, and I think it can ultimately bring us together more as a society.
49:04 Mike Carruthers? Well, as I said in the beginning, this isn't the kind of thing you think about a lot, but after hearing you talk, I can think about people that I've spoken with, situations I've been in where this kind of ordinary magic could have really come in handy. I've been speaking with Greg Walton. He's co-director of the Dweck-Walton Lab and a professor of psychology at Stanford. The name of his book is Ordinary Magic: The Science of How We Can Achieve Big Change With Small Acts, and there's a link to his book in the show notes. Greg, thank you. Appreciate you coming on. Thank you, Mike. I wish you all the best.
49:44 Mike Carruthers? A question that has come up from time to time on this podcast is, what is the difference between a habit and an addiction? A habit is not the same thing as an addiction, but it can be just as hard to stop. Well, Charles Duhigg, who is author of a very popular book called The Power of Habit, says cigarette smoking is the perfect example. We know from research that nicotine addiction lasts 100 hours after your last cigarette. After that, you are no longer truly addicted, but plenty of smokers quit for longer than 100 hours and still go back to smoking. Why?
50:24 Mike Carruthers? Because smoking becomes a habit, and a habit consists of three parts: triggers, the behavior, and reward. For many smokers, the triggers are things like drinking with friends, or that mid-morning cup of coffee, or watching TV. Doing those things triggers the desire for cigarettes. If you avoid the triggers, it makes quitting much easier. Charles Duhigg says, once you develop a habit, you can never really destroy it. The best thing you can do is replace it with something else. In fact, the research shows that if you just try to stop a habit without replacing it, you are far more likely to fail. And that is something you should know.
51:06 Mike Carruthers? If you will write a review of this podcast and post it on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Castbox, wherever, I'll read it, we'll all read it, and your reviews really help us make a better show. So please, post a review and give us a rating. Five stars would be the most appreciated. I'm Mike Carruthers. Thanks for listening today to Something You Should Know.
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