Deep Dive
Shownotes Transcript
When we give our minds the space to wonder, what we're doing is allowing us to experience psychological richina ness were inviting and interesting experience into our minds. And our minds are equally well suited to deliver interesting experiences as they are to deliver achievement or to achieve things.
Well, the curious minds at work on your host, gale Allen, we need pleasure in our lives. We also need meaning. Pleasure gives us joy and delight.
Meaning gives us purpose and a set of goals to work toward. But have the river been times in your life when you've experienced meaning and pleasure? IT felt something was missing.
Turns out you're not alone. What's missing, according to recent research, is something called psychological richness. Think of IT as mental stimulation, a combination of curiosity and wonder. The rain best r writes about this in her book the art of the interesting what we miss in our pursuit of the good life and how to cultivate SHE also shares, which SHE in her research colleagues have learned about how to get IT.
This is a book that takes something we know we need, mental chAllenge and stimulation, and calls IT out as a key component for living a good life. Before we start one quick ask, if you like the podcast, please take a moment to live rating on itunes. And whatever you subscribe, your feedbacks sends a strong signal to people looking for their next podcast.
And now here's my interview with the rain bessel. The rain besser. Welcome to the podcast. IT is great to have you on.
Thank you again, and really happy to be here.
Interesting is a word that means different things to different people. How are you defining IT?
I am defining IT in terms of the kinds of experiences that we have. And so I think that when we have experiences, what's happening is we are in kind of engaging and we're bringing something in our minds to an activity, and there's every experience is unique in that way. And the interesting describes how those experiences fuel, so how experiences of a robust form of cognitive engagement feel on the inside. So the way I use IT is a little precise, but IT does capture the sense that we're using when we talk about things being interesting, right? When we think there's an interesting book, if we think seriously about what we're saying, what we're saying is not that like the book is interesting, but we're saying is that it's interesting to read, is an interesting .
experience to read IT. So in your book, you place an emphasis on interesting, but you also use this term, psychological richness, and you equate the to, and that this, this idea of psychological richness IT comes from recent research findings. And it's a study that you were part of. Tell us about this study and this minding and why is so important .
is a new term at and we're tracking research that has really just uncovered and identified to be valuable a certain set of experiences. So we call these experiences psychologically rich. And there are set of experiences that are often chAllenging, often complex, and they're distinct of because of their impact on the mind.
What they do is stimulate the mind to engage, to have new thoughts, new emotions. And often we walk away from these kinds of experiences with the with a little bit of a shift in our perspective. And originally, we set out, I was part of a team, i'm a philosopher, but I was part of the a team with psychologist LED by doctor SHE gay oc.
And oh, I have to get credit for this instinct. So here's this instinct that what we've been studying, both from a philosophical point of view and from a psychological point of view, had really been focusing very heavily on trying to understand happiness on the one side, and also trying to understand what makes for a meaningful life. Yet in all of this research, in all of this discs we have about these areas of the good life, oh, is suspected that there is something really that we are missing out on.
And so we developed this team to try to identify what IT is that that gets kind of left out by meaning happiness, yet still hasn't impact on people's lives, right? That still contributes to the good life. So the first right set of studies, we're trying to isolate psychologically rich experiences as a distinct group of experiences that are imperative, distinct from happiness and meaning.
And so we set out to do that empirical by developing resolved scale of psychological richness, which would identify the features that we took to be distinctive to this experience. So for example, part of the scale was thinking about, like the extent to which one's life has had unique, unusual experiences, the extent to which people have experienced a full range of emotions, and the the even something as basic as you know, whether not someone has a lot of personal stories to tell about their life. We did find that this idea of psychological c original is covered a distinct set of the experiences.
And so we take that to be that IT is separate from happiness and meaning. Of course, some experiences can overlap. So experiences can be psychologically rich and happy. And of course, some experiences can be psychologically read and deliver this kind of meaning. Yet really important to wrap your heads around this, and what I think is a really helpful way, is to understand the areas in which these these really don't overlap and why that really show the differences between this set of experiences and happiness and meaning. So one thing about psychologically rich experiences is that they can feel painful and so they can um be we can have psychological rich experiences even when we are experiencing complex, difficult emotions.
And so that's a good example of of why we're talking about a separate category than happiness because as we know, happiness is really focused on positive emotions and on the flip side, when we look at meaningful experiences, right and by this, I mean, the kinds of experiences that we're like striving for, we're using our minds to achieve, to find purpose, to get somewhere to accomplish. And what we found in in, again, even in this basic scale studies, is that psychological rich experience could be had, and often are had in the absence of any context of meaning. So often psychologically experience, psychologically rich experiences are are isolated experiences that are independent of our pursuits.
And and I think that the differences between psychological rich experiences and meaningful experiences are perhaps most significant, uh, meaningful experiences, as i've just describe them. They tend to invoke this this you activities of the mind but its a very like rational structured engagement of the mind, psychologically rich experiences, they also stimulate the mine. That's what's making them distinctive but they're stimulating the mind in an unstructured way, right? And in a way that's in voted, they're stimulating the mind in an unstructured way, in a way that's really inviting a free flowing uh, engagement of thoughts and emotions.
And really, they are very much characterized by their free flowing nature. And I think IT taps into part of our minds that is really that we haven't really paid much attention to uncertainty in context of of discussions of the good life, and that's just our capacity to have unstructured engagement. Well.
we're gona do a deeper dive on all of these so that we can continue to unpack them because I think what you're sharing is just so game changing. IT definitely gave me quite in a harm moment. So let me go a little deeper into a couple of these.
Or as you say, sort of the three legs of the stool. One, talk a little bit more about happiness. As you mentioned in your book, a happiness is something we definitely fix IT on um as you write to the point where we can actually work against our own happiness, and you talk about several ways that we do that.
What of the ways that we do that is we try to outsmart IT. And you provide a great quote from jd rock fella on this quote, I can imagine nothing less pleasant than a life full of pleasure. Talk about this. This may see very counter intuitive. T to many of us, say a bit more about that.
Yeah thank you. I love that quote. Um and I think it's accurate. I think that a life fall of constant pleasure would be negative for a couple of reasons.
And you know the first thing is I would be really boring, right? So when we're having when we're experiencing pleasure, when we're experiencing positive emotions, those are highly correlated with conditions of safety, security, comfort. And so they really track a very narrow way in which we can exist in this world.
And so the more we tether ourselves to these positive emotions that are distinct t to happiness, the more we narrow our our very existence and the less we experience. So I think we live in a very impoverish when we try to just fix IT unhappiness. And the second reason I think is is also really important, which is that is just not possible to live a life full of constant positive emotions. A pleasure is designed as a physiological response to rewards.
And so IT works by going away, right? So we, we, you, we're hungry, we eat. We feel good about IT.
And that feeling of goodness, that feeling of positivity, has got to disappear. Others SE, we'd never eat again. And so it's just a fix. It's just a feature of these positive emotions that they aren't sustainable.
And so I think we often get caught in these cycles where we think this is the ultimate, the pleasure and positive emotions are the ultimate, and yet we really struggle in our individual lives to attain that for no reason of our own fault, right? We really struggle to obtain this, this, this goal that we're after. And then I think we're often taught that we should be after IT is just a very impossible goal for us to attain.
And so I think for the ordinary individual, the experience is much more of um you know we we experiences happiness and then IT fades. And so this triggers within us this kind of wanting more. And you know the aspect you started with with with the point about we think we out smart pleasure, right? We're always trying to beat IT, right? Like we're always trying to like make IT Better and think that we can make IT last longer and that we have this capacity to do that.
And I think we see this in many areas of life. But but throughout this, we just don't to write somewhat held to our physiological system is. And so it's very natural for us to you know want IT to and to want more of IT and to try to think that we can outsmart IT and um find a way to beat our physiological systems. But we just can't to and part of what I think is really important about this research is to say, well, happiness has a very important role in our life, but it's limited and uh, recognizing that can allow us to move away from this frustrated pursuit of happiness and towards opening up ourselves s to other experiences that that are feasible and h that that can really enrich our lives.
So the other one that we read and hear about so much today is that we should go after fulfilment, meaning, purpose, very important and IT. Certainly, another aspect of what you talk about is the good life that we should prioritize. And as you mentioned earlier, it's an area of our lives that we typically associate with achievement, with rationality and school, our jobs, our personal lives. Yet our achievements can result in something called the arrival false. What does this mean?
As you said, you know, we are trained and and many of us are self self stimulated to believe that fulfillment is is the most important aspect uh of our lives and the concern with that kind of attitude in granting full film at this really central role within our good lives is largely wrapped up in the fact that fulfillment is actually very elusive right?
So the phenomenon of effective forecasting so this types the research um that dan gilbert is very well known for. And so this happened to research that shows that what we predict we will feel upon accomplishing things really doesn't pan out to be the case. So we can work very hard on a project in on a pursuit and or to achieve something.
We get that thing yet IT often leaves us feeling very flat. I think that's a common experience. And the research certainly shows that it's wrapped up in the difficulties that we have really predicting how we think something will make us feel.
So this recentness focus on happiness and meaning IT takes up a lot of our mental band with IT doesn't give our minds space to wonder, to engage in unstructured inking, which, as you explained earlier, as part of getting in touch with what's interesting. So we're told again and again though that this is how we should live. It's a very much societal convention. Yet our attention to happiness and meaning to the exclusion of all else can result in what you call this flats ness. We say more about that.
Each of us is on our our own journey towards the good life, and each of us has been influence in many different ways. But when IT comes to fulfilment, I think there is a definite societal focus on prioritising the side of us and holding IT to be the most important thing.
The search for fulfilment taps into uh, a rational striving part of our mind, which is super important, right? That's how we survive and it's a super important part of our mind. But IT also has this tendency to take over and to demand priority.
I think I know I have often had the experience of being very engaged with the project and working on IT very heavily and letting IT dominate my life for periods of time. And then when it's over you, I do notice, even when I accomplish something, you know, I don't feel that much fulfillment. But what I do feel is very much like my life has been in poverty.
And sometimes I question whether it's worth IT. Sometimes did IT right. Sometimes our good life spans years. And so sometimes, you know, exclusive pursuit might be, might be worth IT, right? But thinking it's worth IT because it's going to deliver some kind of feelings of fulfillment is is very much as guided and uh, for many reasons, right?
We've talked about the problem with the effective forecasting, but there's this is also this issue that that I think is ingrained in society that IT leads us just to prioritize one side of us so that rational part of our minds is really important. In this, for a long time, philosopher have argued that the distinctive capacity of human nature that makes us really special, and so ought to be prioritized. But I think the reality is that just tracks one ways or one thing that our minds can do.
IT tracks one part of us, but doesn't fulfill, or in rich are very beings, which contains so much more than this rational capacity. And I think IT really, when comparing the search fulfilment with psychological ritz, we see these differences pretty partly. Uh, psychological richness is richness often involve this kind of allowing your mind to wonder.
And that's something that I think many people, you know, even if they hear that might have a kind of aversive reaction to that. Uh, we often tend to think that while letting your mind wander is just going to be like a wasted space and you're not productive and you got to like get that back back in line with with your rational side. Uh, but um I think that you know when we give our minds the space to wonder what we're doing is allowing us to experience psychological richness were inviting an interesting experience into our minds and our minds are equally well suited to deliver interesting experience chances as they are to deliver achievement or to achieve things.
And you know our minds they do start, they are curious. They like to wonder, right, if we give IT the space to actually to engage without structure and to and to allow our minds to just play a little bit, uh, it'll take off, right? Our curiosity will kick in, will start to have more thoughts.
And as long as you know we're allowing our minds to do this, we'll be able to enrich our our time and we will be able to have valuable experience. And and I would want to say that you know, at this point, one thing that's really important about the research that we're seeing on psychological richness is that its benefits really add up over time. There's a cumulative impact to these different, perhaps very isolated instances in which we let our minds wander.
So if we're letting ourselves have an interesting experience, for example, while we, you know, walking across town to work, if we allow our minds to wonder a little bit, even during that brief, isolated walk to work, IT will pay off through this cumulative effect that IT has under very sense of self in the way, is that we engage with the world. The research shows, the latest research is showing that there is over the lifetime, right over the cumulative impact of psychologically rich experiences that IT generates this greater, more expensive sense of self, by which I don't mean like the ego or anything like that. But but what I just mean like more expanded in our own spaces, in our own environments.
I think what's interesting to is that there's a connection to the emotion. So often we think of the compartmentalise ation, right? If were engaging something intellectual or cognitively, it's hard to believe that there could be that emotional connection. But the pairing of the two here is very strong and very important.
Yes, absolutely. And and I think that is one of the most important things about this, about this research and about this new way of thinking about the good life. So part of life is is having complex emotions. We know that to right? They're unavoidable. And I really worry that, you know, certainly, the more we're thinking about happiness or feeling like we want to be happy all the time, anytime we're experiencing complex emotions, we either just feel really frustrated because we're not happy and and we're frustrated because we're not like living a good life, or we think our chances for the good life have been sunk by the existence of these complicated emotions and the chAllenging experiences that we have that .
stimulate complex emotions. In this interview, marine best explains why we need to place novelty on equal footing with meaning and pleasure that we need lives that extend beyond the ambition. If you'd like to learn more about how others are rethinking ambition, check out episode two forty two with rainsford stop auther of the book all the gold stars, by sharing stories of people who are chAllenging traditional use of SHE offers a fresh perspective.
Adopting a goal larger than yourself is something that researchers pointed to that makes an actual difference in this convey belt of achievement, in feeling like we're never gonna good if we don't keep producing our achieving.
Now let's get back to my interview with the rain bessel. So the rain, if I know, if I wake up tomorrow and I say, I want to dip my toe in psychological richness, what am I gna do that might be different from the previous states of my life?
So the biggest correlations for psychological originals are chAllenge, complexity and novelty. So what that means is that the more we talent ourselves, the more we engage in in complex situations, whether that's a um a chAllenging problem we're trying to engage with, whether that's just you know traveling somewhere where we're getting so much different input and we really have like mixed emotions about what we're getting, uh, all different ways in which we can kind of find complexity or create complexity.
And and also I think really important is novelty, and that's the one i'd tell you to do right now. So novelty is correlated, ted, highly correlated with psychological richness. Ss, you know, because what are we do and we say something new, our minds are forced to engage.
We try to figure IT out to and what we can do there. If we approach novelty with with an open mind and hold space for interesting experiences to arise, they just happen naturally. So the thing you can do today is either find or create novelty in your life. I think we can find novelty even. You know, i'm sitting here speaking to you from my office.
I've had the same office for thirteen years now and very little shifting of things but um but I guarantee you if if I looked around and and allowed myself to notice things in my environment, I would find something new and that would trigger my that would that will trigger to have an interesting experience as long as I let that happen. So we can notice by noticing a lot of things around this. This is what I call the book mindful this two point.
Oh right. This capacity to bring this non evaluated perspective that we take when we're thinking about mindfulness in its ordinary in its origin, uh, that we can take this kind of mindful approach, which is to our environments, which is where we we kind of look out and we notice things without evaluation, because this soon as we start to evaluate things, we then we trigger that other side of our minds. But if we just look out and try to notice things without evaluation, then we will find something.
And and and if we let IT, it'll stimulate our minds. The other things we can do is just create novelty within our lives. We can take a different walk to work. We can um wear something that we never wear and just, you know, something that will notice that we're wearing. And however, now we're bringing in non the value of framework to this, right? So so what we're doing is, is just trying to make little shifts in our day to day that, that will present opportunities for us, for our minds to engage.
Yeah and and I really like how you are encouraging, of course, caused the theme of the podcast geri's get curies about the tani's tiny st things IT doesn't have to be big IT doesn't have to be splashy IT could be.
But if you can't travel or if you can't do some of those things right now, you can get curious, maybe even about the people you work with through the people that you interact without a daily basis, could you get curious about them in a different way? And the other one that I thought was really important, because I don't think about something we run toward, is give yourself some alone time. In other words, spend some time with yourself and find out kind of. What Sparks your brain? Give yourself some solitude.
Yeah I I think sode solitude skills are really helpful in this context and and it's exactly what you're talking about, right? It's intentionally setting some time for yourself to have whatever experience you you are interested in having. And the great thing about interesting experiences is that they they are located within our minds.
And so interactions are all, you know with people are are crucial in many ways to stimulate interesting experiences. But the fact that they just happen in our minds means that IT is something that we can learn to do on our owns. And if we develop, you IT IT takes some comfort to develop comfort with solitude.
But if if we are able to develop some skills around prioritising solid in our life, recognizing when we have an opportunity to to enrich our lives while we're a loan, and then just really to to cease on that to to you know bring some of the of the research that we're talking about to find something novel to allow yourself just to have this interesting experience. Uh that will just do wonders, I think um not only for times and we are intentionally setting ourselves some solitude time, but also for times that we just find ourselves you know stuck waiting in the doctor's office. I feel there are so many areas of our life that we just view as empty, wasted time. And the skills that i'm talking about harnessing here, of really training and allowing your mind to have interesting experiences, are ones that can enrich all of this time that really otherwise just gets wasted.
You've been using a word quite frequently in relation to this makes a lot of sense, which is novel. And when you write about novelty and the power of novelty, you also talk to us about that in opposition to sensation, that sensation can be a trap. Help us see the difference between the two and why we should pay attention to and build on the alert regarding sensation.
Yeah, thank you. This is this is a great question. So when we're seeking out novelty, you know i've been talking we've been talking about signing in in our ordinary lives and uh that that's definitely possible is also possible, of course, to go out and seek novelty by you going on a trip or by engaging in a new experience.
And for some individuals, right, uh, depending on where where are where we lie on our own comfort zones, for some individuals they might go straight to thinking, okay, well, what can I do that something new. I can jump out of an airplane and I can, you know, go on this extreme track or something like that. And when we get in that mindset are really kind of like pushing novelty.
We we end up really in this kind of zone where we're coming very close to sensation seeking and maybe even our sensation seeking by sensation seeking I mean is the pursuit of sensations right of these dorf ins ah the endorphin rush that is know that that attaches to these experienced of things that are really risky and perhaps dangerous and sensation seeking um is widely known in research to be you know really a negative thing right to. So the more that we're sensation seeking, you know, the more is correlated with risky behaviors in general and have a detrimental impact to your well being. And so when I when we're thinking about the kind of novelty that will generate psychological richness ness, what we're thinking about is things that stimulate the mind. We're not looking necessarily for we are not looking for endorphin rushes or some some kinds of extreme sensations, but what we're looking forward, something to engage our minds. And I think by paying attention to that difference of of what IT is that were after and also about being aware when we're experiencing something of what is delivering, we can really learn to to seek novelty in this very healthy way that will enrich our lives without without, you know, crossing this line where we're doing too much is taking and really seeking the sensations rather than new engagements of the mind.
You had mentioned as well that in addition to novelty, the complexity, the chAllenge that those things can be important, positive features of psychological richness of what's interesting to us. And yet we can see them even as something as smaller, standing in a line as obstacles, right? They get in our way. And so we we miss out, we miss out on the ways that obstacles can actually contribute two psychological richness, especially if we see them differently, or Operate within them, or use them to a different purpose. Talk a little bit about that, how the things they get our way, we can actually rethink them, reframe them and use them in a way that maybe if we approach them with more openness, we can put that to a Better purpose.
So obstacles, you know, our whether IT is waiting in too long of the line of the girls es, or or, or in a severe obstacle on your aspirations, obstacles are just going to happen. And I believe that what make something an obstacle is, is how you see IT as impacting yourself.
And so when we're seeing something as an obstacle, we're in that evaluate of mode where we're back to that evaluation of everything that life there is at us and so far as how IT lets us get to the next stage. So when we're in the girl, she's you are waiting in line and you know something happens and just becomes slogger, maybe you lose your beggars. Something yeah, something happens and I just takes way too long.
Uh, that becomes an obstacle only when we think i've got ta get home and make dinner or i've got to be somewhere. If we don't engage that evaluated part of our minds, then there's nothing there to make. IT an obstacle is just an experience. And if we allow ourselves to bring this open mind to IT and buy an open mind, what I really mean is one that not only takes in the teachers of our environment but does that without evaluating them, then we're just looking at something very different. Ah so then we're looking at this line and we're just kind of wondering um about whatever IT was that triggered the length and we're wondering about how fast we can bag something or we're being curious to learn to our situation.
You talk about the power of friends and friendship when he comes to psychological richness. How can friends help us to tap into this more?
Yeah I I love thinking about this issue. I think that you know friends and I mining here very broadly any kind of deep connection. You know friends play such an important role on our psychological experiences and and that's what I think is really encouraging here.
So we know through um you know the fact that we all have empathy allows us to engage with one another on an emotional level. And when we're sharing our emotions with friends, IT really allows us to feel them more robustly. So we talk we've been talking a lot about like opening up our minds and holding space.
Well, friends can help do that too, right? Friends can help just sit with your emotions. And by sharing them with you, they allow us to feel them more fully and robustly. And even if they're complicated, right, it's just Better to feel our feelings that, that arrive. They really present an opportunity to help us lean into the other the perspective in a way that can actually contribute to our good lives when we share or connected to somebody. Part of what we're doing there is, is, is being open to seeing things from their point of view or or to considering what they are perspective is on things. And simply by offering a different perspective, that is going to allow us to shift at those complex emotions and just a way by seeing something new, right? So just by having a different perspective, just by making even just a little shift by by looking at IT from how your your partners looking at IT, that's gona help us sit with the complex emotions and and it's going to help us ideally not to judge them later and not to not to let them really take us down, but to just try to sit with them and and allow them to influence our thoughts in in a very non evaluate of open way.
And there are two questions that I always ask guests on the pod as we wrapped up. The first one is, what are you most curious about today?
Yeah well, you know, going back to this idea of just looking out into at my office, so and and noticing something I am noticing on my window, I have three plants and one of them is very as big fat leaves and they're dropping.
And i'm really wondering what kind of I wondering why are jumping hit? And i'm wondering if IT, is that all feasible for the stems of which they have, which are so tiny, are able to hold up these big leaves? And i'm really wondering how how IT is little plans able to thrive or succeed with such like heavy things on a narrow stem?
And the last one is there is so much in your book, we don't have time to cover at all. Is there anything I haven't asked that you'd like to speak to or you know something you would like to leave the listeners with?
Yeah you know, I think that one of the really important aspects here we touched on ten gently, but is with the fact that recognizing the role that psychological business and endorsing experiences contribute to your life really delivers a sense of control and agency that we can have over the shape of our lives.
I the fact that interesting experiences are things that we can create on our own gives us this opportunity and this skill to enhance our life, even when everything else is going stray, we can make alive more interesting. And by understanding that happiness plays a limited role, by understanding the limits of kinds, fulfillment and why I can be really fulfilling, that's also empowering, right? So so that means it's not it's not our fault when these things don't go Better for us. So what I really hoped to deliver within within the research within this book is, is an empower ing perspective on on how we can take control of our good lives and make them Better without having to change your fix things, without having out happiness. Uh, we can we can live Better lives and and we all have the capacity within us.
I often say this to the authors I speak with who talking about topics like yourself, you're giving us permission to engage in the world in a different way. We have these cultural Morris and norms that kind of slauson in into certain ways of behaving.
And I feel that this opens up a very new space that some of us maories engaging and not realize how important IT is, and therefore lean harder into IT, and others may not realize it's there for the taking. So I can't thank you enough. IT has been so great to speak with you.
Thank you so much. Gale curious mize at work is made possible through a partnership with the innovator circle, an executive coaching firm for innovation readers. A special thank you to producer in editor romana belly for leading the amazing behind the scenes team that makes IT all happen.
Each episode we give a shout tout to something that feeding our curiosity. This week is possibly ever its novel, James, a retelling of adventures of huckaby, thin from jim's perspective. This is a pointed book with a surprising twist. We've been waiting a long time to hear from jim, and abbott's book reveals it's been worked. The weight.