Don't miss out on the ngos everyday walking meditation pack over on the ten percent happier up its available for free until august twentieth, if you haven't tried meditation on the app before I highly recommend you check it out. Here is, one user had to say I'm quoting here, I'm in my six the year with ten percent. I start and end my day with it. I like their walking meditations to use when I'm out exercising or walking the dog. The longer I the more I learn, nuances and subtleties and refinements of the process is life. Changing that's awesome here down the ten percent happier after day, wherever you get your apps and get started for free,

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we're talking with another eminent scientists about how you believe about yourself or about the world, can become a self fulfilling prophecy. So, for example, if you believe the world is a cold and unforgiving place, it actually can become that way for you and if you believe you have limited capacities for kindness, you can in fact make it. So, of course, the reverse is true as well. If you have positive beliefs about the world, europe for yourself you can in many ways change yourself and the world. My guest is Jamil Zaki, who is making his second appearance here on the show. Jamil is a professor of psychology at stanford, university and the actor of these stanford social neuroscience lab

As a leading expert on empathy and the author of an excellent book called the war for kindness today, he's going to talk to us about three levels of kindness, there's kindness toward ourselves, kindness in our close relationships and kindness in the broader community, he's going to argue that starting with yourself is critical. In fact, he'll make a counter intuitive case. For reversing the golden rule, but also that the kinder we can make our communities the kinder we will be to ourselves and the more we reorient ourselves to focus on the positive, the more we can create a self fulfilling prophecy of kindness. Anyway. Trust me. He explains this better than I do. This is the second episode in our ted lasso series, which were doing here on the pot cast its runs through this week and next, it's all about the scientific benefits of kindness, compassion, niceness, etc. I know that being nice, some of you may sound trickly. It certainly did to me for many years

However, as long time listeners to the show will know, we hear at th love thing more than rescuing a cliche from gooey oblivion and turning it into something that can help us do life better I should also note that the reason why we are calling this the TED lasso series is that it's a collaboration with the hit show on apple tv plus, called lasso season to it out right now, definitely worth a watch. If you have the time important, however, that if you haven't watch the show or don't plan to watch the show, it's it's totally fine you'll you'll be able to listen to these episodes. No problem. We provide plenty of cotton He also we're not only doing this series of specialists, so it's here on the show, we're gonna launch a special ted lasso challenge over on the ten percent happier app, so you can learn how to practice

everything you're learning here on the pod cast starting today, you can sign up and join me for free on the ted, lesser challenge which kicks off on september. Seventh, again, it's over on the ten percent happier Here's how the challenge works every day. I will share a brief video. We're all play a little bit of a clip from ted, lasso, show and and provide some context, and then, after the video you'll, do a quick but powerful, guided meditation from a teacher law. Some until we love these challenges and and we're gonna be do more and more of them in and really believe that there are great way to kick start reboot or strengthen your meditation practice. Don't just take it from me. Take it from this podcast listener who told us the following about one of our recent challenges. I'm just gonna quickly read a quote here. I did the challenge and at last I am experiencing the benefits of regular met,

patient something. I've never been able to do on my own and the videos that precede most sessions are informative and enjoyable. So there you go, you can sign up to join us in the ted lasso challenge today, just download the ten percent happier app. Wherever you get your and I thought of me he would go now with gmail, zackie professors. male zackie. Welcome back to the show great to be here. You are telling me before we start rolling that you probably wouldn't have watched head lazarev. What? If we didn't, dare ask you to your beg, you do it's true, you do not for lack of interest, I'm just not a big binge. What sure and man it hooked me. I have to say I owe you all. At a gratitude and turning the onto this show, because it presents a type of character that I think we don't see often and don't see enough, which is somebody who trusts

not because they are gullible or naive, but because they believe in people s being fictional still shows us that sometimes we believe in people that can ever powerful positively done them. What? How does that rhyme with your research enormously, I mean, I think, that my research for the last couple years has been focused on self fulfilling prophecies. That is, in particular what we believe bout, I selves and each other can change how we act towards ourselves into its other people and that can then change the experiences we of which then go into our beliefs at an if you can see the cycle here, but in essence, what happens is that the way that we believe the world to be can sometimes come true in my lab we ve studied about

You have examples of where that goes wrong, cynical and mistrusting beliefs, corrosive beliefs that can hurt us and the people around us. But I think whenever you study the dark side of something, the light side is right there, underneath it okay. So It would make sense, then, for me to believe that most people are basically good and to trust people Is that what you're saying and could there be a dark sides that were some people are dead? Don't have good intentions and I could get burke, of course, I'd think that blind trust totally uninformed optimism, that has no basis in any evidence, can be the dangerous thing whenever we trust we take a risk, but I think that increasingly, our culture suffers from the opposite problem, which

Blind cynicism that without knowing anything about a person I assume the worst about them so, for instance, in nineteen, seventy two forty five percent of americans agreed with the statement. Most people can be trusted by twenty eighteen that had fallen to about thirty percent. Likewise, at the same time, we lost much of our faith in institutions in news media in governmental organizations, but most of all in each other, social trust has really eroded, and I think what that means is that we're making many of us making decisions about people and about the social world absent any evidence we're we're, not trusting entrusting and getting burned is a really obvious problem right that's. Why we dont do it we don't hand off our kids

you people, we don't know we don't loan tons of money to people we ve never met because we want to get burned, but blindly mistrusting people can also cause us to lose lots of opportunities, for instance, opportunities to learn from them opportunities to connect and to build relationships, and I think that risk is one that we don't see as much, but he is just as important are. You were in favour of a ronald reagan, s trust but verify. I think that phrase is a useful one. I would say there is this old, work in evolutionary theory and economics, where the question is, if your meeting some buddy and interacting with them. For this time and you're going to interact a bunch of times. That's part of it is well you're sort of building a relationship. What's the optimal approach, what's the way that you can balance the risk of having someone ticket

interview with the risk of losing out any chance to cooperate and build a strong relationship that benefits both of you and the outcome of that was. This is run with all these computer simulations and they had names for the different approaches that are computer agent could take to this. So you could be a punisher or you could be a trust her or you could be a reciprocate. Her in the winning strategy turned out to be something called generous tit for tat, and I suppose this particular way reagan. Ask strategy that generously. for tat takes. Is that you start out trusting you start out, assuming that the other person has good will and good intent and will do the right thing and if you're right, then you get all the benefits of a positive relationship with. Prison? If you're wrong, you update you, stop trusting them for a while, but now

wherever you occasionally give them chances again where the work of Adam granted. Oh, yes, in his book, give and take in iraq are we able to cite chapter and verse, but there were some quite long passages about mentoring where people were good mentors, just sort of damn the evidence, damn the torpedoes. I am choosing to believe that there is something excellent in you. And I'm gonna invest, and I actually did up until reading that book did not do that and I found. Actually that the more I do do that with people on mentoring, D, better things go there seemed to fall in line with what you're talking about oh told, yeah. I mean I've learned so much from Adam is have so many people and not one of those messages that really trusting someone takes risk it takes.

being vulnerable to them. Handing over your success, even your safety you're stability to another person, and that can be No art, especially if you ve, worked really hard to get where you are to get in the position where you mentoring, someone. I think the thing that a lot of people to realise is how powerful, in effect, trusting or not trusting somebody has on them. We think so much about the risk that it is to me. If I trust this prison, I could lose. We dont think of trust as a gift, and I think we should- and we don't think of mistrust as harm think in some cases it is. I give you a couple of different examples. One comes from my own home town of boston so into that one. There is a new fire chief who took over the boss. I department any noticed that fire fighters who, until that time had had unlimited sixties

we're taking more thick days on mondays and fridays than any other day of the week, and he decided man, I've got a bunch of cheaters working for me, a bunch of melinda arose people regaining the system, and so he put a tight cap of fifteen six days a year on all firefighters and said: if you go above their kapital doc, your pay. What what do you think happened? Well, the policy went into effect in early december and it backfired spectacularly so that christmas and new year is ten times as Any firefighters took those days off, as had the previous year and in two thousand to the year after the policy was enacted, sick is overall rose by more than a hundred percent about. Seven thousand additional cities were taken, in other words the fire. She sent a message to his people saying you are selfish.

You are self serving, and so I'm going to limit the amount of self serving this you can take, but most firefighters, weren't. Taking that many sectors. If at all, they were driven not by selfishness but by honourable the desire to protect other people even at great risk to themselves, and so they took it personally and they said what shoot if you're not gonna, give me any credit for the hard work that I do to protect others. If you're gonna treat me like, I'm selfish I'll play the part s really interesting, and it just gets me to a question I ve been thinking about. Since you first started to advance this thesis about ten minutes ago, which is this notion of a self fulfilling prophecy that what you believe the world around you can go the form to those core beliefs. How do we get ourselves to believe something? You know what, if I have had a really difficult traumatizing life, how am I supposed to believe that most people are good or that the world is fun,

mentally a friendly if the evidence of my entire existence is screaming. To the contrary, it's a real challenge, but it's not an insurmountable one. I think one of the places start is with intellectual and even emotional humility. I think we sometimes take our experiences of the world and paste them onto our futures or onto other people's lives. We assume that ok, I've experienced this in the past and therefore every one that I encounter from now on will be like the people I've known in the past or will treat me like. The people in my past have treated me and, first of all that is it. totally legitimate and valid experience to have I completely understand where that comes from. It can also be limiting, and I think that one of the first things that I talk about with my students when I discuss what do we-

and from psychology is. I think we learned that we don't know as much as we think. We know that we take our experiences and construct a whole world out of them, but we can actually be more curious about other people and, in this case, give them more of a chance three things I would say is that most of us and again I want to make clear that people who have come through trauma in their past. Their experiences are incredibly important and incredibly difficult, but most of us have access all sorts of evidence that people are bad and all sorts of evidence that people are good, but we tend to pay more attention to the bad stuff, and that makes sense from an evolutionary perspective right. It's oftentimes really important for us as animals to look out for

rats to be really attuned to threat and not as much to the good stuff, but sometimes they can warp our view. So, in my lab in this work and lots of other labs to this effect as well, we find that people, when you present them friends with stories about somebody who does one bad thing in one good thing will assume that the person is mostly bad, whereas if you present them with stories of people. Who do want. Extroverted thing in one introverted thing: they dont think the prison is mostly introverted when it comes to moral judgments. When it comes to moral impressions, we overweight, the bad stuff and again that serves a purpose. But I think that if you want to go on a journey of trying to trust more one thing to do is just to try to What is more of the positive things that people are probably doing all around you all the time they just kind of fly under the reader? Don't we tend to

right more negative stories in our minds about people, if they're, not in our tribe absolutely so. This is one place where experiences with a single person conjecture. Lies really quickly right. So we have a negative experience with one person and that prison is different from us along some identity dimension right there from a different generation or a different gender or ethnicity or nationality. It becomes extremely easy for us to then extrapolate out from that. One negative experience to bear stereotype about that entire group and stereotypes are, in many cases, extremely nickel perceptions not just have one person but of entire categories of people and again there there not just harmful to others,

for they certainly are. It hurts other people when we stereotyped them but their harmful to ourselves, because they make us lose out on all of these chances. To have real of human connections with other people that can benefit everyone. Are there other practices that might help us have more positive, underlying assumptions about the world, which would turn into positive a self fulfilling prophecy. I think there's a couple of ways of cultivating this again. One is to focus on and try to basically rebalancing scale of paying attention to negative races. Positive another is to cultivate this type of humility to hit the pause button. If you feel yourself rushing to judgment, I think that there are,

many cases in which we have reactions to something that somebody else does we're we're not actually responding to what they ve done were responding to its effect on us and its effect on us may have to do with a lot of things, including our past and whether we're hangry right now or not, and which is also stuff- that's happening in our mind and body, and I think sometimes, if we have a reaction to somebody like. Oh, this person's a jerk they're, you know they're, trying to take advantage of me, definitely pay attention to those these senses definitely don't be gullible or naive, but also interrogate them and say where's. This evidence coming from. What's the actual reason that I think this end, if I looked at it dispassionately, might there be another explanation, basic

to take a close look at our reactions and assumptions. As I know you talk about this with a lot of people and I think that having contemplative mindset is a really great way of doing that, and then I guess a third thing that I would say pretends to what in clinical psychology we called behavioral activation. So if you depressed you know, you're sitting on the couch, you're feeling add you can try to feel better or you can just get off the couch and walk around and that might actually make you feel better. Sometimes when it comes to trust or try to cultivate positive impressions of other people. A leap of faith can matter a lot. You know Ernest Hemingway said the best way to find out. If you can trust them one is to trust them. Obviously we want to take care of ourselves and be safe, but sometimes taking those risks can be really powerful. First step couple of other

it's one on the nose, the other not at all, but to some of the has surfaced in my mind with my dad used to say, the best stretching for running is running if only obliquely fits here and then there's a, I think it's from that movie lean on me from the eighties or something about a school principal who says something the effect of students rise to the level of expectation. That's right, that's right, and so that was once called the pygmalion effect as well. You know and the ideas that again, you know the boston fight chief, showed his firefighters, what he thought of them and they lowered to his expectation in a way but oftentimes. We can do the exact opposite right. We can make the choice to believe in somebody again, not blindly, but we can find parts of that person to believe in and

when we notice those parts of them and show them that were noticing that we open up all sorts of possibilities for them. There's a term for this in behavioral science is called trust, responsiveness. So, there's all these studies will play an economic game to people who don't know each other at all and never meet, and one of them decides how much money to send to another one and then that money has tripled so that the first phase of the trust her. So the trust her sends money to a trusty that money has tripled into the trusty consent back whatever they want. So they can cheat the person they can play fairly, in which case both people profit, and so the trust her is asked. What do you think the trusty will give back.

and in some cases the trusty, is shown what the trust her thought they would do in other cases there not, and it turns out that when you trust me if I also know that you expect me to reciprocate that trust that you expect me to do the right thing. If I know that that's expectation, I'm way more likely to act fairly towards you am whim were likely to step up because you ve put faith in me, and I think you see this in mentorship. You see this in friendship is

This is in the best of cases in dialogue, even between people who disagree right that when I can not just take that leap of faith of believing hey, you know what I bet that this person is not evil. I bet that they have something in them. That is striving to do the right thing and then show that version of a prison to themselves through my belief in them, then the likelihood that fill tried to live up to that increases enormously. It seems in some ways to be the opposite of stereotypes threat while you're not a year at I'll. Let you describe it and tell me if I'm one something here. Oh no, I had not made the connection before, but I really like it were stereotypes. That, of course, is where your reminded of how some part of your identity is not supposed to do well in some context straight.

So for me, as a man, if you remind me of my gender, for instance before I do an empathy test, I might do worse than than a woman, because I would say man, I'm a guy, we're not so sensitive we're not supposed to dwell on this. I think that this is a term known as stereotyped lived, where some part of your identity is supposed to be good at something. So you are good at it and and again there is ever from my own world empathy, research, where women who are reminded that something is an empathy test and are reminded of their gender before they do. It actually do better because they say, oh, I am supposed to be sensitive in this way. Stereotype threat and lyft have to do with groups that you belong to, but then I think that what you're pointing out is that putting faith in someone showing them that we trust

im actually is like a more individualized version of stereotype. Leave it saying yes, the person you are I've, seen you and I think, you're capable of doing something really good. Ever we see it throughout ted lasso. This is a series inspired by gelato, but I don't want to dwell too much on it just because there may be people listening who have never watched the show and are never going to watch the show, but just just to give you some context. There's a problematic player on the team, who, I think is actually very funny and well acted, his name. The character name is jamie, tart and ted lasso who continues to watch Jamie behave in a bomb, Annabelle ways and never signals that. I don't like you or I see you as thoroughgoing lee bad. It continues to just kind of kill him with kindness really and instead of stereotypes threat. It's true in just four people have watched. The show AL also add that what ted does with joy.

Me, is not being gullible and naive. He sees what Jamie's doing he sees you. Jamie in this case is being really egotistical, sabotaging smoothed he made sometimes and placid exaction right. So, for instance, he praises jamie for being really a good soccer player, but then says, but you know what could make you great is if you were more of a team player. So he presents a criticism, but he presents it as an opportunity, a potential for growth that Jamie has instead of criticizing him and saying you're good at soccer, but you're bad at this saying, you're good at soccer- and you know what would make you better is to

act in this way. He also by the way benches them at some point. So he is willing to, I guess in a raven s way, trust event and then update also, but I think that one of the things that sometimes even criticism, even punishment can be given in ways that show belief in a person. I give you an example of former student in my department at Stanford. Now, professor, you see berkeley jason, a kind of. Why has done incredible work on discipline in schools, and so what he finds is that, first of all, black and brown and poor students are much more likely to get suspended and there much more likely to then get expelled from school. He then ran in intervention in bunches schools, the bay area. We ass teachers, as they were disciplining students to do so emphatically, almost in a ted lasso s way.

to say, okay or do something that's gone wrong. You know you've done something in class. I have to punish you. You have to go to detention. I can't not do that, but I want to talk about why this happened, and I want to urge you to see that you can do better and it's sort of very personalized very empathic way again of delivering punishments. Are you not be naive, you're not failing to discipline you showing a person that hid something's gone wrong, but also that you have the potential to do better and jason found that that type of empathic discipline cut down suspension rates enormously, especially among kids, who tend to be suspended. The most strengths are sometimes even when we're being totally up with someone we can do so in a way that shows opportunity rather than judgment. I have a bunch of areas from the show that I'd love to talk about just things, I'd like to talk about, would you generally, but as an empathy researcher. Why

What else did you see in the show that you're bursting at the seams to discuss? I think that one thing that I love about the show is that it presents empathy as a positive thing. you know one time just for fun. When my colleagues, sylvia Morelli and I just did a pole, we have five hundred people complete the following sentence: I feel empathy when someone else feels blank and we found that people. responded with negative words, I think if memory serves form

three times more often than with positive words. In other words, the cultural stereotype that we have for empathy is that it's a response to suffering, and in fact that's not true. Empathy is a resonance in a response to people's emotions, positive or negative. I believe there is a term d and please correct me if I'm wrong here, moody to which actually pertains to vicarious joy. Is that right, yes, as a buddhist term, sometimes translate a sympathetic joy at the opposite of schadenfreude, the opposite of enjoying somebody suffering its enjoying another person, success which is very hard to do especially competitive environments like that, you know professional sports. Yes, yes, that's right, but it's a key part of empathy I mean so Sylvia has done other work where she asks people on a day to day basis what empathic experiences there.

Having and in fact many many of our regular empathic experiences are a form of vicarious or a sympathetic joy. You know you're right, that is hard to have in competitive settings, but the times we around our friends and family and people we love and sharing their positive experiences is huge part of what empathy means in sight. I like that in the show These portrayed, not just as sobbing alongside somebody really celebrating people, and and celebrating their joy, their happiness. What lessons about teamwork shine through to you? I think that teamwork is a skill, that is not something that always comes naturally again. You know as to bring the character of Jamie. This is Madonna player, who really wants to basically school one hundred percent of the team skulls and one of the strategy.

That they employ is for him to be a decoy and instead to pass it to another player which could then make the team succeed much more efficiently and he's just really reticent to do that, and it's a real growth experience for him to learn that sometimes you win you succeed by being the team succeed. You know it actually reminded me. There's this guy bill bradley. He played further nineteen. Seventy three championship: mix the antidote or I dunno. If you're a knicks fan, are you a knicks fan, I dunno about sports, but bill bradley went on to become a senator and ran for president, and so I know him through that and he's very, very tall yeah. Well as a many nba players are yet he played for this team. It was the last next year. That ever wanted championship. Didn't eighteen, seventy three! So that

not good news for your new york based listeners, but he wrote a book about it and I love a certain thing that he describes in the book. He says the seventy three knicks won the n b a championship, but they didn't have a single superstar. They didn't have one person who rose above in scoring fifty points again, and he says it was a team championship, and so the thing about that type of championship is that it exposes the limits of self reliance, selfishness it and irresponsibility because- and I hope I'm getting this raises. The success of the team assures the success of the individual, but not the other way around and that always struck me so profound. There is so many parts of our life, not just in sports, but in general, where we have this instinct to focus on ourselves as individuals

and how we can outshine the people around us and how we can be the best theories and anything our culture promotes that we are a pretty individualistic culture. But there is some in the cases where, in fact, if we as individuals wanted to succeed, the best thing that we could do is to become part of something greater than ourselves and to contribute to that culture. Back to self fulfilling prophecies second, one thing that shines through to me in the show is how tat this very kind in Visual comes in and shift the culture, not only in the locker room, but within the entire organization. You can see that cultural norm at the beginning of the season is not spoiling it in any significant way, but the cultural norm at the beginning of the season is be me, the locker room assistant, the water boy, nate ted shifts that

I won't give any more details, because I don't want to run the risk of people be mad at me for spoiling it. But what does that tell you about culture and especially about how you believe a certain thing about a culture you are likely to just acted out. I mean, what can you say we are a herd. Species we can form. We conform to the culture that we see around us because we want to fit in, and I think that what that means is that often times people act in ways in a group that they would not have acted in that way if they were alone, anything that can be super hurtful. So, as you say, in the beginning of the show, this is extremely. ironical culture, where people who are low on the total, polar abused and mistreated, and so People in that locker room, some people in your workplace, some people in your school or town might not want to act in a rule away in a prejudicial way, but if they see the people around them,

so if are more likely to do themselves like social norms No, what's normal around us is almost a gravity. We can jump away from it, but it tends to pull us back in and I think that's really harmful, but there is good news here as well, because the times. There's a lot of good being done around us. There's a lot of people acting kindly and a lot of people helping each other, and when we can focus on that we can change a culture. So I'll give you an example, my lab did some work ITALY, with middle schools in the bay area, seventh graters, who are by age extremely conformist, like some, the most conformists people. On the planet by age, and I mean which I sympathize with him. I would have done anything in seventh grade to fit in, and so we went to these schools and we asked students to report on why they valued empathy. What do you like about empathy- and they told us

and so then we correlated all their responses so that when they came back to school we could give them a brochure of all their friends in class It's saying why they valued embassy, in essence, we're alerting these kids to a social norms that they might not have been paying attention to, but was there all along the quiet majority that prefers kindness, togetherness and connection, and we found that the students who saw that for me, about their peers, reported more motivation to be empathic and that in turn predicted the likelihood of them acting kindly towards their peers even a month later right. So in essence, if we can get people to realise- and again this gets back to noticing as well. If we can get people too

otis positivity around them, it's not just good for them. Feeling good about others are trusting. Others, it's good for teaching them about a norm that they might want to belong to. The issue again is that bad tends to be more noticeable than good you'd. Think about what gets put on the front page of a newspaper or who we tend to pay attention to you, no one toxic colleague among ten, really friendly ones or private, more attention, one really extreme person until there will get more attention. Maybe then a centrist attention tends to gravitate towards most outrageous extreme and in harmful attitudes the people around us have so we can confuse those with the majority setting one thing. This important in any culture, especially for leaders, is too recently that perception to highlight that,

if there's a lot of good being done here, not just because that makes us feel good, but because that can make it more contagious, can give it more gravity, much more of my conversation with Jamil zaki right after this Hi, I'm lindsey, graham the host of wonders, podcast american scandal we bring to I saw the biggest controversies in: u S, history events that shaped who we are ass, a country and they continue to define the american experience American scanned. it tells marquee stories about american politics, like the break in at the Watergate hotel, an event that led to the downfall of a president and raise questions about the future of the and democracy we go behind the scenes. Looking devastating financial crimes like the fraud committed, it ends and Bernie made offs. Pansies came and we stories of complicated public figures like edward Snowden and monica lewinsky people who found themselves thrust into the spotlight and whose spurred debate about the future of the country,

follow american scandal, wherever you get your podcasts, you can listen ad free the amazon, music or wondering app academy is a new scripted podcast, the fellows aver richards, a brilliant scholarships student. Tending bishop grey economy, the countries most exclusive boarding school academy X, you into the world of a cut throat, private school, where power, money and sex collide in a game of life and death, binge alternative the academy early and ad free on wondering, plus one of your primary points that you make all the time it's a central thesis for you,

is that empathy and and or kindnesses skill? How important? When exercising the skill? Is it to learn how to be kind to yourself its fundamental and it's really hard to do for many people, one of the self fulfilling prophecies that my lab is studied recently is about self compassion. So when my students, Christina too, will if she was an undergraduate at the time at stanford, really terrific student and also really strong practitioner of self compassion, and she noticed that her peers at Stanford. Many of them super high, achieving but really hard on themselves, and one thing at some high achieving places is that people confuse self compassion and self kindness with complacency.

or weakness or self indulgence and so christina, and I, along with patricia changes, had to study. This would basically ask people. What do you think self compassion is think that it will weaken you. Do you think that its selfish? Do you think that it will make you self indulgent and people who believe that

are less willing to act self compassionately, and so when they actually face a problem, I mean dinner. You ve talked with lots of folks about self compassion. I loved you interview with Christopher grimmer, for instance, and I think that one of the tough things is that when you're, not self compassionate, you try to escape or avoid problems, because they're just too painful to deal with and so self compassion. Far from being a weakness can help us cope effectively with difficult times in our lives. But if people believe that self compassion is indulgent, they don't use it and then it doesn't help them. We in that same work, decide to change what people believe, so he had them read essays that emphasised in a soft compassion is extremely power.

it's a strength, it's a way of being strong in the face of our difficulties, and we found that reading that shifted people's beliefs, just a little bit made them more willing to engage with self compassion, and in that case, more able to cope effectively, I mean in essence, we told people, self compassion was useful, they used it and it became useful. Yet I think that happened with me. I fought it for so long for a bunch of reasons, including sort of as I've caught two in public for this kind of culturally imbibed. You know sexism that it seemed soft and the pejorative and then once I just had enough conversations with really smart people and saw the science I was like. Oh okay, I'm just going to screw it, I'm just going to do it and then it works and now a man, but you just said something before about

self compassion being foundational en route to kindness to other people? But you know, I think we can all think of people who are mean to themselves, but incredibly generous and kind to other people doesn't seem accurate to call it a prerequisite. No, I don't think it's a prerequisite. Necessarily. I think that self compassion might be most important though it to being sustainably kind right? I think a lot of times there are martyrs out. There are people out there who throw them it was on the grenade to protect others, and it's a really noble way to be. I think that it also can burn us out really quickly. Lord knows that during the pandemic, many of us have shifted to caregiving roles where we're trying to do much more for our loved ones who are vulnerable than we would before, and that's good, that's necessary. I think that if you don't mix in some self kindness and self compassion that can become really

all encompassing and exhausting, but one way of thinking about it is again and it's a little bit of a reversal of the bill. Bradley quote, I suppose, is that if you want to do the most good for other people, it's kind of like what do you do? If you want to run the furthest ray, you don't just go fast as you can then not drink any water right in order to accomplish something, you need to take care of what for the apparatuses that you're using to accomplish that, whether that's your knees or for your brain in the case of being compassionate and kind, and I think that self compassion you can think of it as oiling the machine as giving yourself more capacity to be there for others. I want to talk about in this back half of energy some of your strategies for building empathy- and I think the first one that I'm gonna reference year takes up right on what you are talking about, which is reversing the golden rule.

Yeah exactly mean that really is about self compassion, tat with lots of people about so did you for building this, and I think that your own story is a really great. When were you basically saw the evidence for itself compassion and moved from there? And, of course, that's what christine and I tried to do it well sometimes, though more than evidence is just shifting people's perspective. So reversing. The golden rule is just basically saying well you know, the golden rule holds that we should treat others as we would like to be treated. But many people have a much easier time kind to others then to themselves, and that's especially in the face of failures. I dunno, if you've ever had this experience, where someone makes a mistake, they screw up somehow and they are beating themselves up about it. And you say honestly, oh my goodness that says nothing at all about you, and that was the situation that you were in and any of us to do this. This does not who you are you're better than that in your bounced. Back from this no problem.

And then you make the exact same mistake and all of a sudden, no that's a life defined event: you'll, never be any better. It's so easy to basically give up ourselves more than we would other people, and so the idea of reversing the golden rule, which again it is really just another way of talking about very common self compassion practice is when you're going through a difficulty. Ask yourself what what would you say to somebody you loved who is going through these same thing: how would you treat them and what would you think about them and basically trying to shine that warm light that we give to others back on ourselves a little bit? Another of your precepts here is spend kindly yeah and again. This is a simple practice sort of like behavioral activation like that, but faith that we were talking about earlier or how the best stuff

for running is running, and in this case I think a lot of people have misperceptions of what it will mean to help somebody else. So in some of our work, we find, for instance, that there's some people out there who happiness is zero sum. So anything that I do for you to make you happy you will have to come at the cost of my own and if you have Zero some believe it turns out from our research you're less likely to give to other people you're also less likely to end up happy, probably because you're missing out on a key ingredient of well being, which is being there for others, and so one of the things that I teach my students is even if you are assuming that helping them

what else will exhaust you were that spending money on someone else will make you feel broke or spending time on. Someone else will make you feel stressed, just try it. You know it doesn't have to be super high stakes. Just do it, but then pay very close attention to the way that it makes. You feel, because you might realize that it's the opposite of what you thought it would be in my students have this all the time, the report to me that they're nervous, because you ve got a calculus problem, said, do the next days at how could they possibly go and attend to their friends play to support? and they end up ninety minutes later back in the same room, doing their same calculus set. But much more filled and much more energized than they were before, and so sometimes again, just taking that step just doing the thing for someone those that were wondering whether we should do is a great step to learning the power of kindness, Adam Gratis, instructive again here, because back to his books,

cutting earlier give and take really explores the benefits of generosity specifically in the workplace, but I think it's probably scalable to all of life. He shows that givers tend to do really well be the most successful but they're both the most successful in the least successful, the different is: are you a wise giver or as a strategic give her or not? If you in a way that makes sense. That is enjoyable to you that doesnt depletes you then. Yes, you are likely to be happier, have more social support and rise to the top. If Europe selfless giver in a way that is unwise, not strategic and self depleting, then you likely did not do well, and so yes, I take it, makes sense to go see your friends play, we really do have the time on the other end, to do the calculus set in my I found that, in part, in consultation with Adam theres, many asks that come in to me What are the ones that I really want to do turns out its mentoring? I like talking to people about their careers its,

genuinely enjoyable to me, and I tend to employ the strategy that Adam recommends cold, chunky, your chunky, nor altogether, a time words can be it from me. So after dinner is good or like right after my son falls asleep or other weekends fer a little bit. So I it's not adding a bunch of friction into my life. It's actually just a fun thing that I look forward to so anyway. It's not just me, you should be more giving its How you do it too, is the point in trying to make our totally you wanna be efficient with your giving I love Adams idea of checking by the way I will also add Adam is the most walked. The talk person I think I've ever met. He is truly, is such a chicken whose guy and also rights in speaks on that topic? So you really lives the values that he writes about which I was really admire. I think you want to be efficient with giving you wanted. monitor and see in a truly what type of giving is most meaningful to you and what type of giving actually does depletes. You yeah me.

In the same way, there are certain ways of being there for other people that I think are really fulfilling for me and also I happened to be better at than others ethic, often as you feel obligated to just be kind in every way possible to everyone. I guess that's a little bit of what are we let the tundra these into of tat last go even Well, what are we going to spoil a word you? We include this in the show, just ass, a minute or two without spoil If anything, I think that's what season two of ted lasso starts to get into. Is this idea of toxic positivity you know of in essence being so so defined by a sense of yourself, ass kind in giving that you just do everything

for everyone in every way, even if it harms yourself even of arms other people, there is a big difference between being kind and being a slave to kindness being a slave to whatever people request of you at any time. One thing that I just quickly add is that in work. Places during the pandemic is rightly been allowed, a focus on the voting time to self care like self care days in workplaces. I would like to advocate other care days at workplaces. His this again gets back to the idea of checking that you just brought up and efficiency in me, to just give people a day every month, whatever rhythm works, for you to just go and helps them the else in whatever way they see fit, to give people space to access that meaning in their life. That is just something. They hope that more people can start to implement. Let me just keep working down this list that I got have some strategies for you for exercising your empathy,

this suppose the third of the five items on this list you, I know, you're, not a practising buddhist busy, very buddhist to have a list and restructuring shows round. There is buddhist lists. The third here is disagree better. Yes, in this again gets back to self fulfilling prophecy use. I think times, especially when we are in conflict with others, it's extremely easy, taken, uncharitable view of where they're coming from you know. Somebody doesn't just disagree with us

They are also a bad person and they have helped to us is the fact that there is stupid or evil or both re only just its wrapped up so much. I think we ve seen this, of course, in our culture politically. This is what political scientists call an effective polarization. We no longer just disagree. We dislike the people we disagree with, and that is just a dead end. In my opinion, I think that just makes things worse and I think it changes what we think is possible in disagreement. So in our lab one of my students, Louisa santos, has explored. Do people think it's worth sympathising with trying to understand folks on the other side and she finally when people believe that empathy is a weakness very similar to self compassion work. When people think empathy in politics is a weakness, they avoid it and they even avoid getting to know. People on the other side, for instance,

to hang out only with people that they agree with. So we tend to cut off our ability to connect with people with different from us at the knees in this way, the good news is that we don't have to obvious lee and so disagreeing better is again attacked a kind of drawn from political science. In from the idea of deep canvassing, I don't know, then, if you ve ever heard of the debt, yet so deep canvassing where you go in the old days door to door and instead of giving someone statistics and sniping at them. If they disagree with you, you ask them for their store And then you share as the conversation your stories and you try to find a we have in common and experience you have in common, and you use that as a fulcrum as a kind of archimedes point to find more and more common ground until you can get to the issue that you were there to talk about. It's almost like a like across

tween canvassing in therapy in a way and is really powerful, and so when I say disagree better. The challenge here is to find someone. You disagree within try to do some deep canvassing with them. Instead of talking about what Opinions are and fighting about them try to talk about how you can To have your opinion in the first place and how the other person did so to find it stories. Underneath the opinions and oftentimes there, you can find some surprising common ground kind tech. What do you mean by kind tech? This is idea that I think, if you read wired from two thousand ten, there is others breathless thinking about had the internet and social media were going to create this public worldwide community, and I think many of us feel that has done the exact opposite. I think those within a technological lives. There is the capacity to

brought in our kindness and also obviously to broaden our cruelty. The fact that we do the second doesn't mean that we can also do the first, so engaging in kind. Tec is just an exercise. You on a given day try to be more intentional about what we do when we're online, so, for instance, instead of lurking maybe sending a message or note of positive reinforcement to somebody if they post about life event were reaching out personally to somebody who is struggling or posting publicly about something kinds, Somebody did again sort of elevating and making that type of positive behaviour more visible in the culture. I love that I get a phenomenal amount of nice, tweets, megaton nasty ones or some constructive criticism to, but I do siege

in part because I'm in the happiness business, I do see a lot of people serve using twitter in a nice way, and then, of course, when I flip over to my main feed. Instead of my at replies, I see people just sniping each other non, stop so annie. I am intrigued by the notion of using social media to be a vector of positivity, rather than taking random pictures of my life. Or self in front of private jets that say hashtag blast or play about my neighbors, who I disagree with politically anyway. Good point final. One here is be a culture builder yet, and this again gets back to what we already talked about her and social norms and the fact that sort of like the locker room culture that we were talking about earlier in ted lasso, which is that we, are conformists rate at don't mean that, in a pejorative where the conformity is just part of who we are- and we are a social creatures

always will travel together more than we do alone and that means that social forces work on us right. So what we see around us, will change who we are and how we behave, but is also important number that you are part of somebody else's social environment you creating the norms that they respond to, and I think you know the more power privilege and status. You have the more that this is an opportunity and responsibility for you, but whatever megaphone, you have what you do with it creates the social reality of the people around you and influences who they become, and so I think that when I say be a culture builder, you know the simple way to do it is to intentionally at some moment, take time to either called out in a positive way,

somebody who's acting empathic leaned kind make it really in a visible that that they're doing that without embarrassing, but but you know just making it making it clear elevating that highly that behaviour for them and the people around them or challenging p. When they act in a way, that's not so kind. You know like the original locker room and at last at the beginning of the series right, so I think that those little I suppose, social nudges, recognising and elevating, positivity and also standing up to and challenging negativity and cruelty are those little things that each of us do that together can develop more positive cultures, whether those are microclimate scene over just in italy a room in a classroom in a family in a cup then he or whether they are macro climates. I think both matter aloud. I would call somebody out unfortunate

not around in alive anymore, to hear it, but do something you said about how we use language got me thinking about the lesson that was taught to me by somebody who's way younger than me when she was alive. Her name is grace. She was a former employee of ten percent happier. She was at my assistant on a book that I'm still writing and unfortunately she didn't get to see it come out into the world because it still hasn't come out, but she was really key player in that I the system, one of the things she was really interested in based on some hard experiences in her life, is shared. How people in general talk about food and body which- and she noticed that I had a way of certain flippin elise herself deprecating lean in and- and I thought it was funny- and maybe sometimes it was but probably not worth it- Saying oh yeah, I had so much. I feels like sick or I will eat so much. I need to wear

eggs now or whatever and any can be funny. But our point was that is useless speech. The buddhas have a term for this sum up. A lotta just almost lying on a man pick in its beauty than theirs is useless. Garbage talk that we do in this case that can be kind of noxious in that It's you know, you're, just spreading this unexamined assumption that your body needs to look a certain way that certain foods are sinful you're talking about foods in a more realistic way that can create a sort of disordered relationship to food. and since you really got me paying attention that my sort of off hand comments that were creating, I was not doing culture building or I was building the wrong kind of culture either through my megaphone were through it. Reach a lot of people or in my various microclimate. So anyway, that just came to mind based on everything. You said: it's a really powerful example, and I think you re a lot of us talk in ways that we don't

monitor very much and- and I think it's important to realize the power that that can have. I think, of the people are this as being to our minds like the air that we breathe and food that we are to our bodies, and so we monitor that stuff right We try to not live next to a giant call factory with a bunch of smokestacks coming out of it. We tried it healthy when we can in whatever ways we can. We don't monitor enough what we're taking in socially, So when I go on social media, for instance, do the mental equivalent of smoke a pack of cigarettes simultaneously, sometimes feel you know, and I think it simple that we monitor. What we're taking into our minds the same way that we do our bodies but also remember that we are environment, that other people I taking in and be conscious of in, and this is not to say, you know too much. everything that you would say and not be yourself, but rather just to be.

intentional and mindful about the fact that whatever you're, saying there are other people around to our hearing it. I mean I've not experience that any more than now having little kids? You know. I notice that if I'm in a bad mood, if I'm sort of in a stopping around the house, they act differently. They seem nervous end. It breaks my heart. did I act in a way that they would make them feel that way, but to me, was the scene with dismay all tiny thing that no one would notice, but it affects them, and I think that that's true of so many people around us and to be aware of that. You know again not to force, I said, of the end in a box herself in budgets to be mindful, I think, is so important. I have a hard time. Picturing you stop. It on the house or anywhere, but I don't know, I want to leave people with a simple fact, which is that you might know less than you think, but have more

How're than you think you do, you might not know as much about this new person that you just met, as you think you do. You might not know as much about yourself as you think you do but what you think will have power over who they and you become, and so I think it's critical for us to own that power and to realize that we don't need to be pollyannas. We don't need to believe that everything is great all the time. It's not. There are real problems, but part of addressing those problems is to try to find hope and to try to believe in ourselves in another people when we can before or let you go, can you just blatantly plug your book and anything else that you got going on that we should know about yeah thanks. Then my book is the war for kindness building empathy in a fractured world

the challenges that we ve talked about. If people want to try them out, there is some videos that I've recorded that walk you through how to do them in their at war. For kindness, dot, com, slash challenges and I've got new projects on everything that we ve been talking about and cynicism what it does to us and how to escape it coming up so stay tuned. In a number of months or years for from on that from me pleasure to talk you. Thank you again, yeah thank you. Did. Thanks again to Jimmy, I do want to add that, if you're interested in what you mean has to say, he just just drafting new ted talk and you can check it out at ted dot com and get some key pieces of jewels wisdom on kindness, distilled into a bite sized video before we had out. Let me just plug again the ted lasso challenge in which we will teach you how to practise kindness in your life. The challenge starts on tuesday september seventh, over

the ten percent happier app download the ep wherever you get your efforts to join the show is made by samuel johns Gabrielle sacrament, DJ cashmere, just in davey maria, where tell and gen plant, with audio engineering from ultraviolet audio. As always, a big shout out to my apc news, comrades, ryan, kesler and Josh cohen- will see you all on friday for a bonus, annotation from sharon's elsewhere a prime members, you can listen to ten percent happier early and ad free on amazon, music downloading amazon, music tat today or you can listen early, an ad free with wondering, plus in apple pie cas before you go. Do us a salad, tell us all about yourself by completing a short survey at wondering: dot com, slash servant.