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TED Audio Collective. I'm Chris Duffy, and you're listening to How to Be a Better Human. So at the end of every interview that I do for this show, I always ask our guests how they personally are trying to be a better human. And I have to say, it is probably my favorite part of getting to do this job that I get to ask them that question. It's such an honor and a joy to get to talk to these incredible geniuses about their advice and their insights into what you and I should do to be better humans every day. That's incredible.
But it's also really kind of amazing to get to hear firsthand how they themselves are still working on this, that it's a process and that they're not like up on some pedestal high above us looking down from their state of perfection. I really, really love that because to be honest, my biggest fear when Ted asked me to host a podcast called How to Be a Better Human was that people would somehow think that I thought that I had the answers to that question. How do you be a better human? Because I really don't.
I mean, I want to be a better human, but I certainly am no expert. And it has been an immense relief and honestly eye opening to me to see that even the experts who we do have on the show, that they don't have all the answers either. But they do always remind me that working on yourself isn't something you just do for you. It's something that you do for the good of your relationships and your family and your community and everything beyond that.
One of the biggest trends that has come up when guests say what they're working on is patience. Here's what sleep scientist Wendy Troxell told me when I asked her how she's trying to be a better human. I am trying to practice patience. It is not a skill I come by naturally. I'm trying to practice patience with myself, with my children, with my coworkers and other family members, and really recognize that sort of being willing to
engage and participate in the process, whatever that process might be, and not rushing to the outcome. I tend to be sort of very much, you know, task oriented and let's get it done and focus on efficiency in sort of all things in life. But recognizing that sometimes just letting things be and letting things sort of transpire as they do somewhat organically is
is necessary and you learn things by practicing such patience. And it also teaches you tolerance for other people. And that's really important. Okay. This is something that I am definitely having to work on myself too. I find that maybe because I work in a creative field, it's often a real challenge because so much of what I want to do depends on other people also liking an idea or giving it the thumbs up or giving me a green light. So I'm
it can be really challenging to have patience. And actually, Hollywood executive and movie producer Franklin Leonard, he's also trying to work on a similar scale. I'm trying to have more patience with people. I'm trying to be better at recognizing that the world is on fire, figuratively and literally, and that everybody's going through a lot, and that moments when I feel the need to judge or the feel the need to cast disapproval on people
I need to take a moment and realize that there may be other explanations than that, which I would assume. Yeah, I really feel that desire in other people and in myself, too, to be done with the problems of the past few years. I so want to move on from pandemic and lockdowns and catastrophes, but we're not done. And that's OK. I think that the more that we accept that and are aware of where we're all at, the more that we can have that level of compassion and patience for other people that Franklin is talking about.
But that is hard. It's really hard. Here's another way of approaching these ideas. Australian relationship expert George Blair West had this brilliant insight to share about patience. I'm trying to be more patient. After 30 years, my wife will still point out to me, George, can't you be a bit more patient right now? You're being really irritable with me. And, you know, often I'll say, well, that's because you come and ask me about, you want me to deal with this while I'm doing something else right now. And can you give me a bit of a heads up?
If you love somebody and you think you love them to death and you really care about them, but you're impatient with them when they interact with you, when they want something from you, if children come to you and you're always irritable with them, it doesn't matter squat how much you love them because that's the interface in which the relationship will play out. And that's why patience, I believe, is the most important thing we can bring to a relationship and still something I need to work on.
That idea has really stuck with me. I think that I can sometimes get so focused on trying to fix things or respond in the right way or set things up correctly that I forget that just being there with a person, just being present and patient, that alone does so much. I have really thought about that a lot since this episode and since our conversation.
We are going to have more on Patience right after this short break. And you better stick around because the irony of not being able to finish an episode on Patience is just too much for me to bear. So you gotta be here. We'll be right back.
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I'm so excited to share the stage with all the amazing speakers of the TED Next conference, and I hope you'll come and experience it with me. Visit go.ted.com slash TED Next to get your pass today. And we are back. Our next clip comes from therapist Guy Winch. And Guy is a person who is constantly helping others to improve himself. So what does he do when it comes to becoming a better human?
It's also interesting to me to note that a lot of topics we've covered on this podcast are about how to be a better human for others or how to improve the world. But when we've had therapists on the show, they have always very correctly pointed out that it's also important to be a better human for yourself. Here's what Guy had to say. The constant self-improvement projects going on when you're in that environment and you hear so many good ideas, you feel like, oh, I should do that one. Well, I'll do that. I'll try that next month. That's a new habit I should really get into this month.
But right now, I think for me, I am, this is counterintuitive, but I'm trying to sit more with the difficult feelings. I'm trying to
really this message of that we tend to run away from difficult emotions or feel like we can't cope with them because we're not used to sitting with them, it can be very damaging and can make you avoid confronting things you really should confront or doing things you should do. So when I'm having difficult feelings, I'm trying to just sit with them for a bit, think about them, try and derive from them useful tips or information about what my needs or feelings might be at a deeper level.
and then kind of let them go in a meditative way. So I think you could say, you know, trying to kind of sit with difficult feelings and feel like that's an important and normative thing to do. Like Guy, Megan O'Reilly is also a therapist. And Megan focuses mainly on working with college students. So she typically works with very highly driven people, high achievers who are used to checking boxes and exceeding expectations and working very hard.
And yet, as Megan said so beautifully in her talk and in our interview, that kind of striving can often leave us feeling empty inside, even when we have accomplished so much of what we thought we were trying to do. So Megan is leading this push to redefine ourselves and to see ourselves in a way that is better than our profession and just what we do. And I know that for me, I really need a reminder of that quite frequently to take a step back and define myself by who I am, not what I do.
Here's what Megan said she is trying to do to improve herself. Oh, Chris, yes. I'm working on permission, granting myself permission for a lot of things. But it really showed up just a couple months ago in October. I took the whole month of October off.
As a therapist and as a Black woman, I felt really at this intersection of both these pandemics, COVID and racism. And then I was holding all these other people's vicarious trauma. And it got to a point where I felt myself as a container getting a little warped.
And so I took the month off. I was like, can I financially do this? Can I emotionally? And I just took it. So I granted myself permission to do some of the things I'm saying now, to be still, to attend to just myself, to get my eating and working out on board. And so I'm really grateful that I gave that to myself. So I think being a better human to others really starts with ourselves. One of our primary relationships is the relationship with self.
And if you think you're worth it and valuable enough, then you can give that to others. Sometimes I like to say we can't give to others what we don't give to ourselves. Right. And so I gave myself that time. I gave myself that grace. I poured into myself as a valuable person that needed it. And I feel like my therapy since coming back has been more intentional and informed and gracious. And so I gave myself permission.
I don't know about you, but I really feel like I'm learning so much from these answers. I hope you are too. I'm so grateful for how vulnerable and open our guests have been about their own personal journeys. We're going to have even more insights and thoughts on cultivating and growing patience in just a minute. So be patient and we will be right back.
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Here's what Michael is doing to try and improve himself. I have been obsessed with this idea of people in your life who point out that your narrative of yourself is not quite right, but they do it in a way that allows for growth. For me, this is, and you can think of people in your life who, it could be a mentor, could be family, could be friends, could be your spouse or partner. There are people who, you know, you think you're this, and then they say, well, actually,
and they show you yourself in a way that you hadn't thought of, those people are the greatest people to have in life because they do it in a way that says, you're awesome. Let me just show you yourself a little bit and see what you think about that. And those moments and those people are incredible. So I look for those people and I treasure them when I find them. For one of our other guests, David Korens, he turned to his kids for the answer to this question. I think looking at...
the world through the lens of younger, smaller people who you really care deeply about unconditionally allows you to attach closer to that voice and that inner child inside of you. And I think part of joy and learning
and growing is about seeing things from other people's points of views and having empathy and sympathy for what they're going through and how they see things. And there's just like that childlike, I mean, I know it's a cliche, that childlike innocence, but as people learn something for the first time or they see it with that wonder,
If you can attach that emotionally, you just are a better person. You've grown more, you've experienced more, and it's such a beautiful thing. So having them in my life has been just an incredible growth experience for me. I am trying to, every day, take time and be in the present. I think it's more and more and more challenging during this pandemic deal
You always talk about like how many lives have we've lost or how bad this can still get or all of these like horrific, like in the past, near past, um,
or present or future. To me, I'm trying to stay present. I'm trying to add a bit of discipline to my day in which I have been writing a lot in the morning. I've tried to create some kind of ritual with regard to like exercise and writing and connectivity to myself to just try and, I know it sounds crazy,
cheesy, but like to just to be here now, to not worry about what has just happened or what might happen, to not project onto other scenarios what I think might happen or, oh, I know this person is thinking that, but just to be here, just to be present, just to be open to all possibilities and to show up with like a beginner's mindset and with courage and curiosity.
I am your host, Chris Duffy, and this has been How to Be a Better Human. On the TED side, this show is brought to you by Abimanyu Das, Daniela Balarezo, Frederica Elizabeth Yosefov, Ann Powers, and Kara Newman, who are all calmly waiting at this very moment. And from PRX Productions, How to Be a Better Human is brought to you by the unflappable, extremely patient trio of Jocelyn Gonzalez, Pedro Rafael Rosado, and Sandra Lopez-Monsalve. Wait for it. Be patient. And there it is. That's the end of the show.
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