World Leading Psychologist ON Why You’re FAILING and Why Discomfort Will UNLOCK Success | Adam Grant

1. 0:00 – 1:00

   Intro

   1. AGAdam Grant0:00

      I think envy is the thief of joy. Where we run into problems is when we stop admiring those people and we start wanting what they have or feeling like, "I should've gotten what they got."

   2. SPSpeaker0:09

      Organizational psychologist- Want to bring in best-selling author- Wharton's number one professor- Adam Grant

   3. AGAdam Grant0:14

      I think that's people saying, "I'm stuck. I feel like my life isn't going anywhere. I feel like I'm squandering my potential." That's a travesty. Growth is, is part of how you feel like you're using your time well. The person you're competing with is your past self, and the bar you're raising is for your future self.

   4. JSJay Shetty0:30

      Before we jump into this episode, I'd like to invite you to join this community to hear more interviews that will help you become happier, healthier, and more healed. All I want you to do is click on the subscribe button. I love your support. It's incredible to see all your comments, and we're just getting started. I can't wait to go on this journey with you. Thank you so much for subscribing. It means the world to me.

   5. SPSpeaker0:52

      The best-selling author and host-

   6. JSJay Shetty0:53

      The number one health and wellness podcast- On Purpose with Jay Shetty. Why is

2. 1:00 – 3:26

   Why Growth Is So Important

   1. JSJay Shetty1:00

      getting better important? Like, why is growth important? And I know it sounds, it may sound like a stupid question. It may sound like a, a silly thing to talk about, especially on a show like this, but I find that people I talk to sometimes idolize being average. They think it's good enough. Good enough is good. I find that we are wired often to want things to stay exactly the same. We like how they are. Why should we get better? Why should anything get better? We should be satisfied with what we have. And often in the guise of contentment and peace, there's a sense of lethargy and complacency that, well, we don't need to grow because you're just being greedy. So I'm presenting a spectrum of ideas there. I'm happy for you to dive into any of those, but why does getting better and improving matter at all?

   2. AGAdam Grant1:49

      This is fascinating. Nobody's ever asked me that before, and I, frankly, I think I've taken for granted that growth is just intrinsically enjoyable and motivating. I mean, I think you've made a case that maybe some people are not motivated by growth. I think that where I might push back on that is to say we live in a world that glorifies performance. So, you know, people feel like if they want to be respected or celebrated, they need to win a medal, they need to earn a trophy, uh, they need to get an A+. And I think what we've lost sight of is that what people actually enjoy is a sense of progress, feeling like they have forward m- momentum. When I think about what does it look like to not grow, I don't think for most people that's good enough. I think that's stagnation.

   3. JSJay Shetty2:33

      Mm.

   4. AGAdam Grant2:33

      I think that's people saying, "I'm stuck. I feel like my life isn't going anywhere. I feel like I'm squandering my potential." And I just, I think that's a travesty, and so I think growth is, is part of how you feel like you're using your time well.

   5. JSJay Shetty2:47

      Absolutely. I, I completely agree with you, and I'm glad no one's ever asked you that before because I think I'm like that too. I kind of take for granted that I love growth and I love the idea of being better and improving, and I can't remember ... I mean, it's been said a million times. It's a, it's like an age-old quote, but it goes, you know, "If you're not growing, you're dying," and I think that's the point, that we are either moving forward or we're moving backward. We're either getting faster and smarter or we're getting slower and, and not smarter. And I think when you recognize that idea that there is no staying the same, there is no we're just gonna stay on this place and platform forever, you start recognizing, oh, I have to move forward, and the pace at which I move.

3. 3:26 – 6:01

   Should You Compare Yourself To Others?

   1. JSJay Shetty3:26

      How, how have you guided people with that? I find, like, often we compare our pace of growth and our pace of becoming better, and that's the hardest one because you're like, "Well, they got that body in three months," or, you know, "You've been the top-rated professor for seven years. Like, I've only won that once," or whatever it may be. Pace of growth, how, how have you thought about pace of growth in your work?

   2. AGAdam Grant3:48

      For a long time, I, I believed the, the saying, the mantra that comparison is the thief of joy.

   3. JSJay Shetty3:54

      Mm.

   4. AGAdam Grant3:54

      I don't believe it anymore. I think envy is the thief of joy.

   5. JSJay Shetty3:58

      Mm.

   6. AGAdam Grant3:59

      I think social comparison is invaluable. I think we have to look to other people for inspiration. I think we look to on- other people for learning, you know, not just what am I capable of, but also how do I get there. I think where we run into problems is when we stop admiring those people and we start wanting what they have or feeling like, "I should've gotten what they got." And I think there what's probably helpful is to make a different set of comparisons. You know, part of what you could do is not think so much about pace as start, um, maybe focus more on starting points.

   7. JSJay Shetty4:29

      Mm.

   8. AGAdam Grant4:30

      So maybe somebody who's growing faster than you actually just started with more advantages than you did, and you've traveled a greater distance. Um, I don't think we pay enough attention to that, would be one thought. I think obviously comparing to ourselves is helpful, too, and I think that, you know, so often when it comes to benchmarking progress, I want to tell people, okay, the person you're competing with is your past self, and the bar you're raising is for your future self.

   9. JSJay Shetty4:56

      Mm.

   10. AGAdam Grant4:57

       And if you can focus on that, it's a little bit easier to, to realize, all right, yeah, everybody has a different starting point. Everybody has a different pace. But if I could tell ... Actually, let me, let me say this. I think so many people let their expectations rise with their progress.

   11. JSJay Shetty5:14

       Mm.

   12. AGAdam Grant5:14

       And so you set a goal today, you achieve it in six months, and then by the time it happens, it's almost a relief. [laughs]

   13. JSJay Shetty5:22

       [laughs] Yeah.

   14. AGAdam Grant5:23

       Phew. I didn't blow it.

   15. JSJay Shetty5:24

       Definitely.

   16. AGAdam Grant5:25

       Uh, there's, there's no joy. There's no sense of meaning and purpose. Um, you, you sort of expected it, and you would've been disappointed if it didn't happen. I think the way you avoid that is you get in touch with your past self, and you say if, you know, if six months ago me or five years ago me knew where I would land now, how proud would I have been? How excited would I have been?

   17. JSJay Shetty5:45

       Mm.

   18. AGAdam Grant5:46

       And if you keep that past self in mind, it's much easier to appreciate the, I guess, the strides that you're making.

   19. JSJay Shetty5:51

       I love that distinction you made as well between how comparison versus envy is the thief of joy. I think it's so subtle, but it's so nuanced and so powerful

4. 6:01 – 7:50

   “I thought I should quit”

   1. JSJay Shetty6:01

      because you're so right that I always think of it in the same way, that you either study someone or you envy them. And often the deeper you study someone, the less you'll envy them because you'll actually realize how far they've come and what they had to get through and challenges they had, and you start getting the energy from that study to say, "Oh, maybe I have that within me, too, and maybe I can find that within me, too, because I have challenges."

   2. AGAdam Grant6:25

      I think for me a really concrete example of that was, um, I was, I was terrified of public speaking when I decided to become a professor. Like, maybe it was the wrong profession. [laughs]

   3. JSJay Shetty6:33

      [laughs]

   4. AGAdam Grant6:33

      It's like, "What are you doing here?" Um, but I, I remember even being a student and thinking about raising my hand in college and I would start to physically shake.

   5. JSJay Shetty6:41

      Mm.

   6. AGAdam Grant6:42

      And by the time I got called on sometimes I would, like I would forget what I was gonna say or I'd second guess it or I'd stumble and stammer my way through it. And so the idea that I was now gonna stand in front of a, a whole classroom or on a big stage was extremely daunting. So what did I do? I went to speakers that I really admired and started studying them, thinking this is gonna help me. And the first one I, I picked was MLK.

   7. JSJay Shetty7:06

      [laughs] Great pick. Really, really.

   8. AGAdam Grant7:09

      Yeah. I mean, what a great way to get demoralized.

   9. JSJay Shetty7:11

      Yeah, yeah. [laughs]

   10. AGAdam Grant7:11

       So I watched his d- dream speech. I tried to take notes on, you know, on things I could learn from him. You know, I wanted to know, well, how did he get there? And so I start reading about it. He's 34 years old when he gives that speech. Like, I might as well quit.

   11. JSJay Shetty7:24

       [laughs]

   12. AGAdam Grant7:24

       Like, I, I cannot believe it's the greatest speech in American history, you know, done by somebody who's, you know, not even close-

   13. JSJay Shetty7:32

       Mm

   14. AGAdam Grant7:32

       ... to his prime. And I think if I had stopped there I would've quit.

   15. JSJay Shetty7:35

       Mm.

   16. AGAdam Grant7:36

       And it would've been easy to walk away from MLK as just an impossible role model. And let's be clear, he is an impossible role model. I will never-- I could work on public speaking for an infinite number of years every minute of every day-

   17. JSJay Shetty7:48

       [laughs]

   18. AGAdam Grant7:48

       ... and never come close to that.

5. 7:50 – 9:00

   You Need To Study Your Role Models

   1. AGAdam Grant7:51

      What was helpful though was then sort of rewinding and realizing we, we usually see our role models at their peak.

   2. JSJay Shetty7:57

      Mm-hmm.

   3. AGAdam Grant7:58

      And we don't have the starting point. We don't have the distance they've traveled.

   4. JSJay Shetty8:01

      Mm-hmm.

   5. AGAdam Grant8:01

      So how did MLK get here? And turns out he started entering public speaking competitions when he was 15 years old.

   6. JSJay Shetty8:07

      Mm.

   7. AGAdam Grant8:07

      That was two decades of practice. The year he did his dream speech he gave over 350 talks. And so, you know, if you think about the, the cumulative progress that was made, that's multiple lifetimes-

   8. JSJay Shetty8:19

      Mm

   9. AGAdam Grant8:19

      ... you know, of effort. So I think that's, that's the kind of [laughs] sort of analysis that we need to do and I don't think most of us do that.

   10. JSJay Shetty8:26

       Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. I can't believe-- I can't, I can't remember exactly what it was. I'll have to find it, but it was-- I think it was Usain Bolt who said something like, "I've worked for X amount of hours to run 10 seconds" or something like that, right? Like the idea of he's practiced for all these hours or months or years to run something in however long he did it in. I forgot the exact number. But it's so interesting what you're saying and that, that backstory of that journey, that growth, the skills development, the hours, the struggle. 300 that year alone is-

   11. AGAdam Grant8:58

       Brutal. [laughs]

   12. JSJay Shetty8:58

       You know, is-- Yeah. That's, that's

6. 9:00 – 13:07

   How To Face Discomfort

   1. JSJay Shetty9:00

      insane and, and I think it's fascinating. And you talk about this. I mean, I wanna, I wanna read from the book a bit if you don't mind. So there are a couple of things that I picked out. So this is page 26 for anyone who's, uh, listening or watching right now. Page 26 of Hidden Potential. So, "Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experiences of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, vision cleared, ambition inspired, and success achieved." You're quoting Helen Keller. And then you go on to say that, "Summoning the nerve to face discomfort is a character skill." The way you were writing in this book was so empowering because it was almost like you were pulling from, you know, I know-- Of course everything's highly researched, everything's backed with science, but you were kind of pulling from a bit of a Martin Luther King space there. [laughs] Like the language in there of like, "Summoning the nerve to face discomfort is a character skill." And so you're actually saying what we just talked about with MLK, that doing hard things, doing uncomfortable things, doing difficult things is actually where so much of this ability, hidden potential comes from. But all of us shy away from it. You know, all of us don't want to do it. We're scared of it. You becoming a professor, that's scary if you don't like public speaking. We avoid discomfort. We avoid awkwardness. We avoid challenges. How do we summon the nerve to face discomfort?

   2. AGAdam Grant10:22

      Well, clearly what I did was I started by thinking, "Okay, writing this book is gonna be uncomfortable."

   3. JSJay Shetty10:27

      [laughs]

   4. AGAdam Grant10:27

      There are gonna be a lot of times when I'm gonna get stuck, when I'm gonna feel like this chapter is not working and then my writing is not working and then I'm not capable of being a writer. Why did I ever think I could become a writer?

   5. JSJay Shetty10:37

      [laughs]

   6. AGAdam Grant10:38

      And then that just spirals out of control. And then the antidote to that is to think, "You know what? Jay Shetty needs to be empowered." And als-

   7. JSJay Shetty10:44

      [laughs] I love it

   8. AGAdam Grant10:45

      ... I love this image of you getting empowerment.

   9. JSJay Shetty10:47

      I do get empowered. It is-

   10. AGAdam Grant10:48

       I would never think of you as somebody who, who is in need of that. Like, you're out empowering lots of other people.

   11. JSJay Shetty10:53

       Always in need.

   12. AGAdam Grant10:54

       I guess for me one of the things I learned from the research that I didn't know before, I, I think I always understood intuitively the idea that discomfort is key to growth.

   13. JSJay Shetty11:03

       Mm.

   14. AGAdam Grant11:04

       What I didn't understand was that actively seeking discomfort and even amplifying it was one of the ways that you could move toward your idea of progress. I kind of saw it as a necessary evil, something that happens, you know, when you're learning and you're struggling and you're tinkering with new skills. And what the-- I think what the evidence shows is that people who are actually given the goal to intentionally feel uncomfortable, um, this is done in some cases asking people to go on stage to do improv comedy and literally feel awkward on purpose. Um, they, they end up growing more from that experience because they put themselves in situations that challenge them. And so I think that's what I had to do with public speaking when I was starting to teach is, therapists talk about exposure therapy and they often recommend systematic desensitization to say, "All right, let's start, you know, little seminar and then, you know, get to know a group of students well and then you can kind of build from there." I didn't have time for that so I went to the opposite extreme of flooding and said, "All right. I'm just gonna volunteer to give guest lectures in front of huge classrooms of hundreds of students, um, who I've never met before for my friends' classes." I don't know why they let me in. [laughs] I don't know why they, I, I just volunteered.

   15. JSJay Shetty12:11

       They're good friends. Yeah.

   16. AGAdam Grant12:11

       Yeah, they were overly good friends maybe.

   17. JSJay Shetty12:13

       Yeah.

   18. AGAdam Grant12:13

       Uh, they were sacrificing the whole class for, for my growth, but extremely uncomfortable for me, and I remember, you know, just walking in and feeling like I do not belong here. I'm not qualified. Uh, it was a, a massive case of imposter syndrome. But I think one of the things that happened when I put myself in that uncomfortable situation is I realized it's not really gonna go worse [laughs] than it did today. And reading through the, you know, the comments, there were lots of suggestions for improvement and lots of criticisms, but there were also, you know, little compliments about things people liked. I was like, "Okay, I can build on that. I can work on this." And, um, I think, you know, just coming in with the goal, yeah, I should put myself in a deliberately uncomfortable situation, um, it opened me to a much steeper learning curve than if I'd done the kind of let me dip my toe in the shallow end and then sort of take off the, the floaties and learn to swim

7. 13:07 – 14:56

   Are You Being Too Cautious?

   1. AGAdam Grant13:07

      one step at a time.

   2. JSJay Shetty13:08

      Yeah, and I feel it's really interesting, right? Do you think there are those two approaches? Like, do you think from the research you've done and even your own personal experience, do you feel like it is either/or? Like, sometimes you just jump in the deep end and sometimes you should kind of dip your toe in and then walk in, or do you think it's, it's either/or? Like, or, or is wisdom knowing which one to try when?

   3. AGAdam Grant13:26

      I, that, that's where I was, I was gonna land. I haven't seen a good comparison of the two and when you should do each, but that's, that's my intuition as well is I think there's, there's a time and a place for both approaches, and probably most of the time we want to be somewhere in the middle. But to the point that you made earlier, I think most of us err too far on the side of avoiding discomfort.

   4. JSJay Shetty13:43

      Mm.

   5. AGAdam Grant13:43

      And so we make these very small incremental steps and, one, it feels like we're not making progress, which is frustrating.

   6. JSJay Shetty13:51

      Mm-hmm.

   7. AGAdam Grant13:51

      And then, two, we often then don't take enough risks or try enough experiments to really stretch ourselves-

   8. JSJay Shetty13:57

      Yes

   9. AGAdam Grant13:57

      ... and move up to the next level.

   10. JSJay Shetty13:59

       Yeah, definitely. One of the things I find that I always do, if I get curious about something, it could be a sport, it could be a subject, it could be a topic, whatever it may be, I'll kind of cancel everything on the weekend and just obsess about it for a weekend.

   11. AGAdam Grant14:12

       All in.

   12. JSJay Shetty14:12

       Because it gives me a sense of momentum or growth or a sense of, yeah, that's not my thing, and I can very quickly decide whether to invest more time in it, whereas if I was to have booked a six-week course or a program on something, I may find by week three that this isn't something I want to study for six weeks as opposed to I could have figured that out in 24 hours if I just really obsessed about it. Or if I'll play a sport and I'm thinking, "Oh, I like this sport. Should I play it more? Let me play it for a whole weekend, every hour of, uh, that I'm awake, and see whether it fulfills me or whether it's draining and tiring." And I feel like that's kind of what you're saying works as a better experiment.

   13. AGAdam Grant14:49

       Yeah, I think that kind of immersion is a really efficient way to figure out is, is this an area that I want to try to keep growing in. I think the

8. 14:56 – 17:10

   Why You Need to Stick With Things

   1. AGAdam Grant14:56

      one thing I'd want to be careful about there-

   2. JSJay Shetty14:57

      Please

   3. AGAdam Grant14:57

      ... is there's, um, there's some evidence to suggest that oftentimes we only like things when we become good at them.

   4. JSJay Shetty15:04

      [laughs]

   5. AGAdam Grant15:04

      [laughs] If you, if you-

   6. JSJay Shetty15:06

      That's true. That's true

   7. AGAdam Grant15:06

      ... if you spend a weekend on a skill that you're terrible at, you might quit it prematurely 'cause you just haven't built up enough competence-

   8. JSJay Shetty15:12

      Golf

   9. AGAdam Grant15:13

      ... to start to... I was just gonna say.

   10. JSJay Shetty15:14

       Yeah. [laughs]

   11. AGAdam Grant15:14

       That, like, the, the day I spent, I spent swinging a golf club, I, I've never felt so incapable in my life.

   12. JSJay Shetty15:19

       Same. [laughs]

   13. AGAdam Grant15:20

       Um, also golf is not a real sport, so I had no problems walking away from that one.

   14. JSJay Shetty15:24

       Oh, oh, explain that. Explain that.

   15. AGAdam Grant15:26

       I, I think I'll offend too many people.

   16. JSJay Shetty15:27

       [laughs] I think so too.

   17. AGAdam Grant15:29

       Uh-

   18. JSJay Shetty15:29

       That's hilarious.

   19. AGAdam Grant15:30

       No, but I think sometimes you, you do have to say, "All right, this, this could take me a couple weeks or a couple months where, you know, I build enough competence to really experience the joy of it." Like, I, I've seen this with, um, I actually went through this with tennis.

   20. JSJay Shetty15:41

       Mm.

   21. AGAdam Grant15:41

       Um, I think I took tennis lessons when, you know, when I was four or five, and I really disliked it and, you know, ended up convincing my mom that I should quit.

   22. JSJay Shetty15:50

       Mm-hmm.

   23. AGAdam Grant15:51

       And then when I picked it up again around 11 or 12, I had better hand-eye coordination. I'd played a bunch of ping pong, and, like, now I was decent enough at a racket sport that tennis was actually fun, and I think that's probably relevant to many skills.

   24. JSJay Shetty16:03

       Absolutely. Absolutely. So people always ask me, and I'm sure you get asked this question a million times. Of course you do. You have your own book club too, like, which you've been kindly featured me in the past, and people always ask me, "What should I read?" And my number one response to that is, "Well, what are you struggling with?" Because I read for what I'm struggling with. That's how I choose. I always say to people, "You don't go to the grocery store because your refrigerator is full of milk. You go when you're out of milk, or you're out of cheese, or you're out of bread, and you go and stock up." And so I'll often do an audit of my internal unit and go, "Well, what am I feeling like I don't have?" And I've talked about how a couple of years ago I was building my team and I realized that being a leader and a recruiter were very different skills, and recruitment wasn't a strength that I possessed, and I almost assumed that because I was good at certain things that I should be good at recruiting, and I, and I wasn't. And I studied, uh, Daniel Coyle's book, The Culture Code, which I love.

   25. AGAdam Grant16:57

       Great book.

   26. JSJay Shetty16:58

       Yeah, it's fantastic, and I interviewed him on the show too and looked at his playbook and everything else, and that one book in and of itself made me better at recruitment. And so I always look at it that way, but how do people figure out what they're struggling with

9. 17:10 – 20:35

   What Do You Need To Be Better At?

   1. JSJay Shetty17:10

      or what they're not good at or what they need to get better at is probably the right way to put it because we have so many things we're not good at.

   2. AGAdam Grant17:15

      Yeah.

   3. JSJay Shetty17:15

      What do we know what we need to get better at?

   4. AGAdam Grant17:16

      It should've been a chapter in Hidden Potential. [laughs]

   5. JSJay Shetty17:18

      [laughs] Sorry.

   6. AGAdam Grant17:19

      Where were, where were you, Jay Shetty, while I was writing this book?

   7. JSJay Shetty17:21

      [laughs]

   8. AGAdam Grant17:21

      That would've been really helpful. I, um, maybe, maybe it'll go in the paperback. I think, I mean, my first thought is I always want to look to my Achilles heel. What's the one thing that's holding me back from a goal that I care about or a value that I'm trying to pursue? And then the other is, um, what's an area of passion or curiosity that, you know, I'm excited to spend more time investing in?

   9. JSJay Shetty17:41

      Mm.

   10. AGAdam Grant17:42

       And sometimes that's for me 'cause I'm excited about it. Other times it's 'cause I want to help somebody else, and I think those are reasonable questions to ask. I think where a lot of people struggle is they, they know the domain already, right? So they've decided, like, I want to be a better entrepreneur, or I want to be, um, a better artist, or I'm interested in improving my coding skills, right? And they've, they've kind of already figured out what part of life they're trying to improve at, but then they don't know what to focus on from there.

   11. JSJay Shetty18:07

       Mm.

   12. AGAdam Grant18:07

       I think the mistake that a lot of us make is we end up asking the people around us that we trust for feedback. Which is a, a perfectly reasonable thing to do, except when you ask for feedback, you get a lot of cheerleaders and critics.

   13. JSJay Shetty18:20

       Mm.

   14. AGAdam Grant18:20

       The cheerleaders are basically applauding your best self, and the critics are attacking your worst self.

   15. JSJay Shetty18:25

       Mm.

   16. AGAdam Grant18:26

       And the critics leave you often demoralized, and the cheerleaders can make you complacent. What you want is a coach. A good coach is somebody who sees your potential and then helps you become a better version of yourself.

   17. JSJay Shetty18:38

       Mm.

   18. AGAdam Grant18:38

       And so one of the things I learned through, uh, doing research for the book is that instead of asking for feedback, it's often better to seek advice. So feedback leads people to think about what you did right or wrong yesterday. Advice helps people focus on what you can do better tomorrow. So the way I would like to-- I guess that I apply this personally is when I'm trying to figure out where I need to grow, every time I get offstage, for example, or every time I finish a, a podcast interview, I will ask the audience or the host, "What's the one thing I can do better?"

   19. JSJay Shetty19:05

       Wow.

   20. AGAdam Grant19:06

       Which is enormously helpful because they start to give concrete suggestions. But I'm not immediately gonna, gonna focus on the, the first thing that I hear. What I do is I ask a bunch of different people, and then I look for the patterns.

   21. JSJay Shetty19:17

       Mm.

   22. AGAdam Grant19:18

       And I think that what, what too many people do is even if they get to the point of asking for advice rather than feedback, they start to hear all these things they need to work on. They're like, "Whoa, this is, this is overload. It's too much. I, I can't handle any more. Um, I can probably only improve one or two things at a time." What I would say to those people is, when you feel a little bit overwhelmed by the number of suggestions you're getting, you should actually seek more of them.

   23. JSJay Shetty19:38

       Mm.

   24. AGAdam Grant19:39

       Because that will help you find the signal in the noise. That will help you sort of figure out what's one person's idiosyncratic taste and what is a bunch of people's, you know, quality-

   25. JSJay Shetty19:49

       Mm. Mm

   26. AGAdam Grant19:49

       ... um, input. So I guess that's my favorite way to figure out where you need to grow. Ask a bunch of people for advice and then focus on the common themes.

   27. JSJay Shetty19:58

       Yeah, the patterns. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. I'm gonna start doing that. I'm gonna try that out, actually. I've-

   28. AGAdam Grant20:02

       Try it at your own risk.

   29. JSJay Shetty20:03

       Yeah. [laughs]

   30. AGAdam Grant20:04

       We'll see how it goes.
10. 20:35 – 24:29

    How To Know If You’re Doing Well

    1. JSJay Shetty20:35

       And I wonder how we can get better at sitting with our, with ourselves and reflecting on our days. I always loved that statement from Steve Jobs where he said that every couple of days I would look in the mirror and ask myself or reflect on if this was the life I wanted to live. Am I doing with my day what I'd want to do? And if it wasn't, then I knew I needed to make a change. And that self-evaluation I think is such an important need bec- at the same time as listening to others. You need both. It's not an either/or. How have, how have you done the self-evaluation part as well from, from going to someone who was scared of giving talks to being, you know, one of TED's most prolific, popular speakers of all time to obviously now, you know, traveling, book tours, events, everything else? How do you self-evaluate now as you were then?

    2. AGAdam Grant21:21

       That's definitely been a [laughs] evolution over the years. I think probably the most helpful thing that I learned came from, uh, another area where I struggled a lot earlier a- and probably based on my initial lack of talent should have quit-

    3. JSJay Shetty21:33

       [laughs]

    4. AGAdam Grant21:33

       ... which was, uh, which was springboard diving. So-

    5. JSJay Shetty21:36

       Springboard diving, right.

    6. AGAdam Grant21:38

       Yeah. I, I basically ended up diving because I didn't make the middle school basketball team or the high school soccer team, and I saw a lifeguard diving at a pool one day and was just mesmerized. I was like, "I wanna learn how to do that." Unfortunately, I walked like Frankenstein. I couldn't touch my toes without bending my knees. I could hardly jump. Uh, very little explosive power or grace. [laughs]

    7. JSJay Shetty21:58

       [laughs]

    8. AGAdam Grant21:59

       Like, not, not cut out to be a diver. I was really fortunate to have a coach who, who saw more potential in me than I saw in myself and, and said to me on day one, "I will never cut a diver who wants to be here."

    9. JSJay Shetty22:09

       Mm.

    10. AGAdam Grant22:09

        "And, you know, I'll put in as much as, as you want and as much as you put in." And one of the things I really struggled with was knowing when a dive was good and when it was improving. I felt like I needed to always aim for perfect 10s. And Eric Best, my coach, one day sat me down and he said, "You know there's no such thing as a perfect 10." Wait, have the, have the Olympic announcers been lying to me? [laughs]

    11. JSJay Shetty22:32

        [laughs]

    12. AGAdam Grant22:32

        Like, what, what, what do you mean? The whole point is a 10-- of a 10 is perfection. That's the appeal of this sport. And he's like, "Nope. If you look at the rule book, um, a 10 is for excellence." So even a dive that gets a quote unquote perfect score is flawed.

    13. JSJay Shetty22:46

        Wow.

    14. AGAdam Grant22:46

        So then what we started doing was we set targets for each dive. And he said, "Okay, you know, basic dive like a, a back dive, um, we're gonna aim for sixes, and I think that's within your range right now."

    15. JSJay Shetty22:57

        Mm.

    16. AGAdam Grant22:58

        And then we would level that up over time. As I started to learn harder dives, I remember when I was doing a two and a half somersault with a full twist, um, I was like, [laughs] "Let's just make the dive." [laughs] Like-

    17. JSJay Shetty23:07

        Yeah

    18. AGAdam Grant23:07

        ... if you don't fail it, if you don't do it for zeros, that'll count. And then, you know, we're aiming for fours, and so we have dive specific goals. What I've done with that sort of post diving career is realize I never had somebody like this in my life. I need a judge, not just a coach.

    19. JSJay Shetty23:21

        Mm.

    20. AGAdam Grant23:22

        So what I will do is I'll ask people, "Give me a zero to 10. How did that go?" And it's very rare for people to say 10.

    21. JSJay Shetty23:30

        Yeah, of course. Yeah.

    22. AGAdam Grant23:31

        Uh, so then, you know, whatever they say, whether they give me a three and a half or a, a six, I just wanna know, how can I get closer to 10?

    23. JSJay Shetty23:38

        Mm.

    24. AGAdam Grant23:39

        That's where I'm, I'm really trying to use other people's reactions as a mirror.

    25. JSJay Shetty23:42

        Mm-hmm.

    26. AGAdam Grant23:43

        From there I'll ask for suggestions. But to your point, I need to make sure I'm also proud of my own progress and I'm focusing on my own principles. And so the, the last analysis that I do after I get the judges' ratings and the advice from anybody who's willing to coach me is to say, "Okay, let me go back to the version of me that set this goal in the first place."

    27. JSJay Shetty24:02

        Mm.

    28. AGAdam Grant24:03

        Would that version of me be proud? And if the answer is no, I don't care what score I got.

    29. JSJay Shetty24:08

        Yeah.

    30. AGAdam Grant24:08

        How do you navigate this?
11. 24:29 – 29:27

    The Trick To Gaining Self-Confidence

    1. JSJay Shetty24:29

       and for everyone who doesn't know, I'd been making content offline for 10 years before that, speaking to small groups of five to 10 people, colleges, uh, after school clubs, universities, things like that. And my parents forced me to go to public speaking and drama school when I was 11 years old. So I started learning public speaking because I was a shy kid. I have a very similar public speaking story to you when I was 11 years old. So I wasn't born with a skill. It was something that was harnessed and developed.

    2. AGAdam Grant24:57

       Except for the accent.

    3. JSJay Shetty24:58

       Except for the accent, which I was born with. Yes, I can't do anything about that. And funnily enough, and I always like to clarify this, when I see TED speakers with American accents, I prefer it.

    4. AGAdam Grant25:06

       No.

    5. JSJay Shetty25:07

       Yes, because to me-

    6. AGAdam Grant25:08

       No

    7. JSJay Shetty25:08

       ... hearing from an authority in America from like, you know, Wharton or Harvard or, you know, it, it-

    8. AGAdam Grant25:14

       No

    9. JSJay Shetty25:14

       ... it has magic. It's always-

    10. AGAdam Grant25:15

        No. This, this-

    11. JSJay Shetty25:16

        [laughs]

    12. AGAdam Grant25:16

        ... this is like-

    13. JSJay Shetty25:17

        I'm, I'm just-

    14. AGAdam Grant25:17

        ... wanting The Beatles to sing with American accents.

    15. JSJay Shetty25:20

        No, that's different. That's different.

    16. AGAdam Grant25:21

        That's terrible.

    17. JSJay Shetty25:21

        Yeah. [laughs]

    18. AGAdam Grant25:21

        No, no. You-- Br- British people always sound smarter. We know this. Go on.

    19. JSJay Shetty25:24

        I, I feel the opposite way, honestly. True.

    20. AGAdam Grant25:26

        Wow.

    21. JSJay Shetty25:27

        True. Uh, so-

    22. AGAdam Grant25:28

        That's a shame.

    23. JSJay Shetty25:29

        So I'd, I'd spent, [laughs] I'd spent all these years-- So I developed a skill that I didn't know what I had use for. When I met the monks and studied the Gita and Eastern wisdom, I was like, oh, wow, I have a skill set that was ready to be used for this when I'd never used it. I never used public speaking or drama before that for anything meaningful, for me at least. And then I'd done that for 10 years, and then I made my first piece of content e- if online. So I-- but I made it in quiet because it's some of these things that you talk about here, and I'm pointing this out because we can go back to it after I answer your question. I was scared of looking stupid. I was sc-- You talk about making more mistakes, theory versus reality in the book. This is page 40. And you talk about looking stupid, feeling shame, being laughed at, and experiencing discomfort. I was scared of all of those things because now it was going beyond my community of people, like five to 10 people who used to come and hear me speak. I had no idea what the online world would bring. I had never done that before. I didn't have any friends who'd ever created any online content, so I couldn't check in with someone. I didn't have a coach. And so I was kind of doing it in quiet, and I think what was beautiful about that is I got to really construct my own voice that was authentic to who I was and was just genuine to who I was. So my earliest videos are half spoken, half spoken word because I loved rap music growing up. So there's-- you'll hear lazy rhymes. You'll hear words that cascade together, and it's inspired by what I loved as a teenager. Uh, the visuals were-- I've always been into art and design, and so that was very easy for me. I love aesthetics. I love visuals. I love feelings and experiences, so I edited all my own videos. Granted, the editing was sloppy because of cuts and sound, which I didn't know well, but it was still what was natural to me. And then when I put out my first piece of video, the first people to react were the people I knew, and they were all like, "Jay, you talk too fast. The music's too loud. Well, we don't think this point is that great." And it was all negative feedback, and I kept going because I was getting some joy from it. So in the beginning, it was that way. I-- and I think I've tried to hold on to that as much as possible because as the scale grew, the plethora of negativity or criticism or judgment got louder as well, and I started to look at it more seriously because now you're worried about perception and image and how you think people view you and whether people see your truth or they don't, and you can feel defensive. And I think where I've got to now is I still get affected by it. I'm, I'm so not beyond getting affected by negative comments or challenging comments or criticisms because my monk training has left me vulnerable at some points because I have created a space in which to always allow advice to come in because that's seen as a-

    24. AGAdam Grant28:15

        You're so open

    25. JSJay Shetty28:16

        ... that's seen as a mark of-

    26. AGAdam Grant28:17

        Yeah

    27. JSJay Shetty28:17

        ... wanting to improve and wanting to be better, and I've had to learn to balance that with also knowing my intention. So what I've accepted is that the only thing I can control is my intention being aligned and pure to what I believe. Not pure like, uh, in a godly way. I mean pure in what I believe. But the way my action is received will come with advice, feedback, and criticism, and all I can keep doing is keep refining my intention and hope that that will channel the effective communication externally. And no matter how perfect 10 it is, it will never be perfect, and therefore, there will always be criticism, no matter how phenomenal an idea it is or whatever it may be. So that's me meandering around your question to that's how I'm dealing with it. I don't think that's a solution or a, or a solve. It's how I'm mentally kind of constructing bridges and walkways to navigate how stressful it is.

    28. AGAdam Grant29:16

        I think it makes a lot of sense. It, it also leaves me wondering, like, is there a Jay Shetty rap tour coming?

    29. JSJay Shetty29:20

        [laughs]

    30. AGAdam Grant29:22

        But, but all kidding aside, although I, I think there would be an audience for

12. 29:27 – 32:40

    Should You Care What Other People Think?

    1. AGAdam Grant29:27

       that.

    2. JSJay Shetty29:27

       [laughs]

    3. AGAdam Grant29:27

       Uh, I think one of, one of the things that, that you're making me think about is there's a spectrum of, you know, on one hand, we have the monk ideal of either I'm open to everything or I'm not gonna live in fear of social disapproval.

    4. JSJay Shetty29:44

       Correct.

    5. AGAdam Grant29:44

       On the other hand, I guess we have the monkey [laughs] reaction-

    6. JSJay Shetty29:47

       Yeah

    7. AGAdam Grant29:47

       ... just like we are, we are social primates, and, uh, anything that could lose status could get us excluded and-

    8. JSJay Shetty29:54

       Yes

    9. AGAdam Grant29:54

       ... this is really problematic. I don't think either is really realistic for, for us as humans. I think we're always gonna care about what other people think, and I think my goal is to say I wanna care enough about other people's reactions to learn from them but not so much that I feel pressured to conform to them.

    10. JSJay Shetty30:11

        It's powerful. Wow.

    11. AGAdam Grant30:13

        The way that I've tried to get to that is to say, well, I'm always gonna be disappointing somebody.

    12. JSJay Shetty30:17

        Yeah.

    13. AGAdam Grant30:18

        So let me decide whose opinions actually matter to me.

    14. JSJay Shetty30:21

        Mm-hmm.

    15. AGAdam Grant30:21

        And then Include myself in that group and say it's better to let down a bunch of strangers or a bunch of people whose standards are not the same as mine or whose taste doesn't match mine than it is to let down the people I care about and myself too.

    16. JSJay Shetty30:36

        Mm-hmm. What you inspired for me also with that conformity idea is how I'm willing to be open enough to improve, but not see something as a reflection of my identity.

    17. AGAdam Grant30:49

        Yes.

    18. JSJay Shetty30:50

        And I think that's where it's we all struggle, where it's like when someone says-- when someone laughs at you, you feel like they're laughing at you, not at that particular event and moment and day or evening or improv or whatever it was. You feel you are someone who should feel shameful as opposed to that was a moment where I made a mistake. And I think that's where I think you struggle when you hear feedback or advice that you start attaching to your identity.

    19. AGAdam Grant31:19

        I think that's, it's a huge problem, and I think one of the most reassuring bodies of research that I guess speaks to this from the book is, um, is the overblown implications effect.

    20. JSJay Shetty31:29

        Mm.

    21. AGAdam Grant31:29

        The idea that when people see you make a mistake, they don't actually attribute that to your incompetence or your lack of character like you think they do. So, you know, you, you watch somebody, um, you know, take a really crappy photo and their thumb is in the frame, and you don't immediately think, "That person is incapable of being a decent photographer." [laughs] Like, that was a bad photo, right? It was literally a bad snapshot.

    22. JSJay Shetty31:54

        Yeah.

    23. AGAdam Grant31:54

        Um, and it's a snapshot of a bad snapshot, so it's a meta bad snapshot.

    24. JSJay Shetty31:57

        [laughs]

    25. AGAdam Grant31:58

        You know, I think if somebody, you know, is, is trying to cook and they, they burn whatever's in the oven. You don't immediately think they're a bad cook. You think, "Oh, they, they got distracted," or they, you know, didn't have the right recipe or th- this is the first time they're trying that. And I think we're really good at recognizing that in others.

    26. JSJay Shetty32:17

        Mm-hmm.

    27. AGAdam Grant32:17

        [laughs] We, we d- we don't sort of leap to conclusions that they're inescapably, hopelessly flawed and that their failing makes them a failure. But I think in our own self-talk and our self-assessment, um, we do so much of that. Like, "I screwed this up. I am a screw-up, and everyone else is gonna know it."

    28. JSJay Shetty32:36

        That, yeah, so true, and it's-- and it gets, it gets really dark. It gets really, really

13. 32:40 – 36:37

    Myths About How We Learn

    1. JSJay Shetty32:40

       dark. I'm so glad we went then. Thank you for asking me to reflect on that too because it's-- I'm always trying to find better pathways mentally to, to deal with these things that you have to navigate on a daily basis.

    2. AGAdam Grant32:50

       We, I think we all are, and I don't think you need to thank me for wanting to learn.

    3. JSJay Shetty32:54

       [laughs] Well, let's talk about that. I love this diagram that you put in the book about how we think learning happens versus how it actually happens. And I think that idea of so how we think learning happens, I'll explain that, and then you can explain the how learning happens from your words. Uh, Adam shows in the book this diagram that says knowledge leads to comfort, leads to practice, leads to progress, which is how we think learning happens. And I think so many of our beliefs around learning do come from school and do come from-- Even for me, learning happens in that I learn something, now I know it fully, and now that rule stands forever. And I think modern-day learning isn't that at all. Like, I don't know any rules that have completely stood forever, and apart from obviously certain mathematical or scientific rules, of course. But most rules in business, most rules in marketing, most rules in sales, most rules in even a relationship, they, they change. They, they mold. They, they grow. And so I think that fixed approach is hard to shake because you were always told at the end of it, "Well, you got the wrong answer." So it was always about the answer, and it was always about, "Well, if you knew the rule, you would've got the right answer." And today we feel, "I'm not getting the right answer, so I must not know the right rule." But that, we're not finding that. So how-- I mean, reflect on that and then guide us through the, the principle.

    4. AGAdam Grant34:13

       You're right. The-- We have a, kinda have this ideal in our heads that I'm gonna reach mastery, and then I'm done.

    5. JSJay Shetty34:20

       Yes.

    6. AGAdam Grant34:21

       It's a version of what Tal Ben-Shahar has called the arrival fallacy.

    7. JSJay Shetty34:24

       Mm.

    8. AGAdam Grant34:25

       Uh, that, you know, I'll hit my destination, and then everything will have changed. And the reality is when you reach mastery, you don't freeze at that moment. You have to keep evolving your knowledge and skills as the world around you evolves. And I think what that leads a lot of people to do is to spend far too much time trying to get to the point of mastery before they ever really try something.

    9. JSJay Shetty34:45

       Mm.

    10. AGAdam Grant34:45

        You know from the book, I saw this really clearly in examples of language learners. I mean, how many people do you know that just concluded in high school that they're incapable of mastering a foreign language? You?

    11. JSJay Shetty34:57

        Yeah.

    12. AGAdam Grant34:57

        What, what languages did you take?

    13. JSJay Shetty34:59

        So we did, uh, French and German from year seven, so 11 years old till, like, 14. And if we did well at those, I got to do Russian, so I actually studied Russian for a year, and where I could read, write, and speak for a whole year. It was really great learning. And then I never got to practice any of those languages, and so they all fell away. And then when I went-- by the time I went to college, I had already lost touch with all of them.

    14. AGAdam Grant35:22

        Wow.

    15. JSJay Shetty35:22

        So French, German, and Russian were the ones I studied the most.

    16. AGAdam Grant35:25

        Yeah. And so it, it sounds like you actually did experience some progress, but then it didn't stick, and you weren't able to keep it up.

    17. JSJay Shetty35:31

        Yes, exactly.

    18. AGAdam Grant35:32

        Yeah. So I, I think that's pretty common. I think maybe even more common is the, like, "I don't have the genes for this."

    19. JSJay Shetty35:37

        Oh, yeah.

    20. AGAdam Grant35:37

        Like, I'm missing the langua- the foreign language gene, or I, like, I missed my critical window. Like, if only I had, you know, if my parents had raised me bilingual or if I had started an immersion when I was four, everything would be different.

    21. JSJay Shetty35:49

        Mm.

    22. AGAdam Grant35:50

        I, I met two amazing language learners when I was, uh, when I was doing research for the book, Sarah Maria Hasboun and Benny Lewis, and they both concluded after high school that they were incapable of learning a foreign language. Um, Sarah Maria could not make it through Spanish, um, and her father speaks fluent Spanish. Benny, I think, uh, just had a disastrous experience with German, also with Irish. And what's amazing about the two of them is that combined they can speak a dozen languages fluently today.

    23. JSJay Shetty36:22

        Wow.

    24. AGAdam Grant36:22

        A dozen languages fluently. Conversationally, even more. Um, so they're polyglots. They're people who not only talk but think in multiple languages. They're effectively self-taught, and they've picked it all up in their 20s, 30s-

    25. JSJay Shetty36:35

        That's incredible

    26. AGAdam Grant36:36

        ... and beyond. It's amazing.

    27. JSJay Shetty36:36

        Incredible.

14. 36:37 – 37:32

    The Truth About How We Learn

    1. AGAdam Grant36:37

       So what I wanted to know is what can we learn from them, not just about language learning 'cause-- but about any kind of learning 'cause they are professional learners. And my biggest takeaway from, you know, talking to them and also juxtaposing what they do with the evidence is that language classes are broken in a lot of schools because basically what happens is, um, you, you learn a vocabulary, um, and a bunch of, you know, rules of grammar, and then you're taught to more or less just write it down. And very few schools do extensive practice in speaking.

    2. JSJay Shetty37:07

       Mm-hmm.

    3. AGAdam Grant37:08

       Which means that you never learn to actually talk in the language, which means you're not using the language.

    4. JSJay Shetty37:13

       Mm-hmm.

    5. AGAdam Grant37:14

       And you don't practice enough to really master it. What Sarah Marie and Benny recommend is start speaking from day one. Literally the first day you're picking up a language-

    6. JSJay Shetty37:22

       Yeah

    7. AGAdam Grant37:22

       ... you start talking in it. And what will happen as you do that is you're gonna make lots of mistakes, but through using it, you're gonna start to internalize it. And in fact, one of the things we know from the research is when you

15. 37:32 – 40:50

    How To Deal With Never-Ending Criticism

    1. AGAdam Grant37:32

       make a mistake, you're more likely to remember the correct answer-

    2. JSJay Shetty37:34

       Hmm

    3. AGAdam Grant37:34

       ... because it really sticks.

    4. JSJay Shetty37:35

       Hmm.

    5. AGAdam Grant37:36

       You're like, "Oh, wait, I screwed that up last time. Let me now change it." So I think the, the broader lesson here is that, to go b- all the way back to the diagram, I think a lot of people wanna wait to use their knowledge until they've acquired it.

    6. JSJay Shetty37:48

       Oh, wow.

    7. AGAdam Grant37:48

       It's not how learning happens.

    8. JSJay Shetty37:49

       Yeah.

    9. AGAdam Grant37:49

       The way learning happens is you gotta use your knowledge as you're acquiring it, and that's how you build it, and that's a, that's a virtuous cycle.

    10. JSJay Shetty37:57

        Oh my God. That-- You know, it's so interesting. I don't think I've ever heard that put that way. I, I feel like I've just-- And it's resonated so strongly with me because as soon as I met Gurungadas, who's the monk that I spent time with, as soon as I met him, I had no qualification, but I went back to college and started telling everyone about what I'd learned. And then I'd go back and spend time with him and go learn more and then come back and just teach whatever I'd learned. And there was no-- I didn't have any qualification to teach. I didn't, I didn't understand it fully. But it was like it was so much more fun that way, and I allowed myself or gave myself the permission to say, "I'm just gonna teach what I learn. I'm gonna teach what I learned up until now. I don't have to speak beyond my level of realization or reflection, but, but I'm learning this. I'm fascinated by it. Let me share it."

    11. AGAdam Grant38:42

        Yeah. I mean, that's-

    12. JSJay Shetty38:43

        Yeah. Wow

    13. AGAdam Grant38:43

        ... that's a higher level version of, you know, of learning by doing. It's learning by teaching.

    14. JSJay Shetty38:47

        Yeah.

    15. AGAdam Grant38:47

        And so often people like to say, "Well, those who can't do, teach."

    16. JSJay Shetty38:51

        Hmm.

    17. AGAdam Grant38:52

        And I would, I would edit that and say, "No, those who can't do can learn by teaching."

    18. JSJay Shetty38:57

        Hmm.

    19. AGAdam Grant38:57

        Because exactly as you found, uh, when you explain something to someone else, you remember it better-

    20. JSJay Shetty39:03

        Mm-hmm

    21. AGAdam Grant39:03

        ... and you also understand it better.

    22. JSJay Shetty39:05

        Hmm.

    23. AGAdam Grant39:06

        And I, I actually think anything you wanna learn, um, a, a lot of people are trying to figure out, like, what is generative AI?

    24. JSJay Shetty39:12

        Mm-hmm. Yeah. [laughs]

    25. AGAdam Grant39:13

        Like you c- you could go and take a class in it. You could go tinker with it. I would say go teach a class in it.

    26. JSJay Shetty39:20

        Hmm.

    27. AGAdam Grant39:20

        Or get a group of people together who are also interested in learning it, and each of you take a module to teach to the rest of the group. And that's when you're really gonna internalize it and start to master it.

    28. JSJay Shetty39:29

        Yeah. You s- I love that. I mean, I'll n- I'll butcher it now trying to say it as well as you did, but when-

    29. AGAdam Grant39:34

        Yeah, 'cause you always hurt for eloquence.

    30. JSJay Shetty39:36

        [laughs] No. No, no, but that idea you put so wonderfully-
16. 40:50 – 42:40

    Doubt Can Be Helpful

    1. AGAdam Grant40:50

       uncertainty, they actually end up becoming more believable.

    2. JSJay Shetty40:53

       Hmm.

    3. AGAdam Grant40:53

       Um, in part because people are surprised, and then they listen more carefully, uh, and realize, "Wow, this person does know what they're talking about." I don't think that permission should only be granted to experts.

    4. JSJay Shetty41:03

       Correct.

    5. AGAdam Grant41:04

       I think, in fact, the less you know, the quicker you should be to say, "I have no idea." And it's really ironic that only the people who know the most often get to the point of feeling secure in that knowledge to be able to say, "Yeah, I have no clue, but let me, let me do some research on that and come back to you."

    6. JSJay Shetty41:19

       Yeah. Yeah.

    7. AGAdam Grant41:19

       And I, I mean, I felt this as a teacher. I felt like, especially in the, you know, the major public speaking anxiety da- days, early career, I, I felt like I had to be able to regurgitate a study for every single question that came up.

    8. JSJay Shetty41:31

       I can imagine, yeah.

    9. AGAdam Grant41:32

       I, I like, I thought that was my job. And I, I was really missing out on the joy that, that students get and also that I get of saying, "I've never seen anyone explore that before. I think that would make a great dissertation. Have you ever thought about coming to a PhD program?"

    10. JSJay Shetty41:45

        Totally.

    11. AGAdam Grant41:46

        Um, and I don't know. I think part of the joy of learning is that every answer raises at least nine new questions.

    12. JSJay Shetty41:51

        Yeah.

    13. AGAdam Grant41:51

        Um, and I think that we close that off when, when we expect people to always have an answer.

    14. JSJay Shetty41:56

        Yeah. You've mentioned a few times the, and even in your diving example, the need for a coach. You know, I feel like therapy culture has and is still slowly penetrating. Like we-- I think if you're in the circle, you think of it as like really accessible and easy, and it's a big deal, and the truth is-

    15. AGAdam Grant42:12

        And not stigmatized.

    16. JSJay Shetty42:13

        Correct. And the truth is it isn't across the board. It's getting there. It's slowly becoming destigmatized. I think the idea of finding a coach is, is so, unless you're an athlete, it seems so far as an idea or as a thought process of how you approach things. I know exec- there are executive coaches that have definitely kind of got into the zeitgeist, but still finding a coach is quite an alien approach I find that people have- There's stigma there, there's confusion there, there's a, a lack of understanding

17. 42:40 – 49:25

    Why You Should Get A Coach

    1. JSJay Shetty42:40

       of what is a coach. How do, how have you thought about it, seeing as you've mentioned it a bunch of times in-

    2. AGAdam Grant42:45

       Yeah

    3. JSJay Shetty42:45

       ... in the book and today?

    4. AGAdam Grant42:46

       Well, I think, I think we're actually comfortable with it in certain domains, right? So no one would ever hesitate to say, "All right, like, I want my kid to learn the piano." They need a piano teacher.

    5. JSJay Shetty42:56

       Mm.

    6. AGAdam Grant42:57

       So I think when it comes to, you know, to hobbies and, you know, kind of skills early in life, um, everybody knows they need a coach to learn the basics and then move toward intermediate, and then hopefully, you know, figure out if, if this is something they want to pursue further. I think where it starts to become a little uncomfortable is when you're an adult and you think that you should be able to teach yourself everything.

    7. JSJay Shetty43:19

       Mm.

    8. AGAdam Grant43:19

       Or you want to be self-reliant, not dependent on someone else. And I think that's, that's a broken mental model of a coach. Um, a coach is actually-- I think a good coach is trying to work him or herself out of a job.

    9. JSJay Shetty43:30

       Mm.

    10. AGAdam Grant43:30

        And say, "Obviously, I'm gonna give you lots of advice and I'm gonna try to help you improve, but at some point you should internalize the way that I look at your performance, the way that I think about helping you make progress to the degree that you can, you could figure out what would I say, like, after this, and then apply that advice. And at that point you're probably ready for a new coach who has different knowledge and skills to share with you." And I think that's where I would start, is I would say coaches are all around us. You know, going back to the, the asking for advice idea, right? You ask people for advice, you start to turn them into your coaches, and there's no reason why you can't formalize this. Um, a lot of-- and, uh, you're familiar with this, a lot of writers have writing groups where somebody's working on a manuscript and then, you know, four or five other writers are basically coaching them and trying to help them improve it. Um, I don't think that should be limited to, you know, it has to be my job or it has to be the hobby I'm trying to improve at. I think anything you wanna, you wanna get better at, you could just ask for somebody to give you informal coaching and then you learn really quickly, is this person's perspective helpful to me in this domain?

    11. JSJay Shetty44:29

        Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. I remember-

    12. AGAdam Grant44:30

        Do you have a coach?

    13. JSJay Shetty44:31

        I, I'm looking for one right now, funnily enough. That's why I asked you. Uh, and I've got a-

    14. AGAdam Grant44:35

        On what?

    15. JSJay Shetty44:35

        I think for me at the moment it's-

    16. AGAdam Grant44:37

        Now we know why you were asking how do I figure out what to grow on.

    17. JSJay Shetty44:40

        Yeah, exactly. And, uh, I think there's that feeling for me about-- I'd say if I really worded it accurately and clearly, it would be I'm reintegrating and re- renewing and refining my values because my life has changed so drastically. And so there were times when I felt like I had kept up with the pace of my external growth, and then all of a sudden I was like, "Oh no, this is way bigger than I thought it was, and this is so different from how I lived just 10 to 15 years ago, and I wanna realign and reconnect with that," if that makes sense.

    18. AGAdam Grant45:25

        It does.

    19. JSJay Shetty45:26

        And so I think that is something, uh, which I've given myself personal time to do regularly, to refine, to realign, to reconnect, but to do it with someone else who can see beyond and, and, and maybe has had experience of two very opposite worlds and has, has traversed those parts may be really helpful. And so I think that's, that's what I would be looking for, and so coaching would be the right modality for that.

    20. AGAdam Grant45:50

        I, I think it could be. I think i- it's interesting, there are two levels of that that I, I think could be fruitful. The first one is exactly the way you framed it, which is, uh, let me take a step back and figure out what my values are and how my core principles in life have changed, should change moving forward.

    21. JSJay Shetty46:06

        That's what it is, yeah.

    22. AGAdam Grant46:07

        But I think the other layer of it is saying maybe the values are the same, but your opportunity set has evolved. So what does it mean to live your values now given those opportunities?

    23. JSJay Shetty46:16

        Correct. Absolutely. Absolutely. There we go. Get it.

    24. AGAdam Grant46:19

        I've, I've got a few candidates for you. I'll, uh, I'll suggest them offline.

    25. JSJay Shetty46:22

        Please. I'd love-- I'd genuinely love that. Yeah, no, and that's, that's definitely been where my head's been at probably the most, most recently, and it's-- and, and it-- again, I usually sit with something like this and let it simmer and let it clarify, and it's nice in a forum like this to be able to vocalize it in an articulate way, and that's another beautiful thing about talking to someone else about it. If you keep going around it in your own head, chances are you won't say it as articulately as you would say it to someone else because you want it to make sense to them.

    26. AGAdam Grant46:49

        That's one of my favorite things about conversation. Uh, there was a, a biographer once, um, it was E.M. Forster's biographer. She used this beautiful phrase called inverse charisma, which was the idea-- she said Forster had, had this ability to ask you such insightful questions with such sincere interest that he brought out a more insightful, more charming version of yourself-

    27. JSJay Shetty47:14

        Mm-hmm

    28. AGAdam Grant47:14

        ... than existed.

    29. JSJay Shetty47:15

        [laughs]

    30. AGAdam Grant47:16

        I'm like, that's part of what a good coach is. I actually think great coaches are filled with inverse charisma. They're not giving the rousing halftime speech all the time or the pep talk. Um, they're not always necessarily kicking you in the butt to try to [laughs] you know, to get you to-
18. 49:25 – 53:17

    How To Succeed Without Perfection

    1. JSJay Shetty49:25

       limits us, and I was, I was gonna ask you that, a- about that. Like, how do you feel comfortable, and this is chapter three of your book, The Impact- Imperfectionists, Finding the Sweet Spot Between Flawed and Flawless. How do you allow yourself to release anything when you know it's going to be flawed and imperfect? Because I think that that's the challenge, right? With a book especially, with social media less so, it's, it's short form and short term, so there's, it's easier to get to what you want to get to. But with a book, with a talk, with a, obviously as a professor, I mean, everything you're teaching, you know, people are gonna practice it for years potentially. How do you feel comfortable putting something out that's imperfect and incomplete?

    2. AGAdam Grant50:08

       This is a little embarrassing, but I, I have to say, so I, after writing the book, I said, "All right, I wanna, I wanna use some of the, the psychometric tools that we were trained in to create a, a fun quiz for people to identify what their greatest character strength is among those, and then also an area for growth." So I finish the quiz, I send it out to a bunch of people to pilot it, and then it was time for me to take it. And after writing this whole chapter about what I've learned about being an imperfectionist, my lowest score [laughs] was imperfectionism.

    3. JSJay Shetty50:39

       [laughs]

    4. AGAdam Grant50:40

       So I am not fully recovered from perfectionism.

    5. JSJay Shetty50:42

       Yeah.

    6. AGAdam Grant50:42

       And it's h- sometimes hard for me to release things. I think what's helped me is a couple things. One, the calibration of saying, "Okay, if it's something as big as a book, I mean, I'm, I'm aiming for a nine. Like, this, I'm gonna pour a lot of time into it. Hopefully, a lot of people are gonna engage with it, and so I really want it to be as good as I'm capable of doing at that moment in my life." If it's a, a social media post, like, I'm content with a six, and some people might get angry at me, some people might misunderstand me. I'm definitely gonna learn something, and it's better to put out a bunch of potential sixes and, and hit some eights than to post once a year as somebody who cares a lot about both sharing knowledge and learning from other people's reactions to those, you know, those posts. I think that's been really helpful, and I guess what I've realized through that is if you never put anything out into the world, then you're actually limiting your contribution.

    7. JSJay Shetty51:34

       Mm-hmm.

    8. AGAdam Grant51:35

       And I think when, when psychologists study regret, it's pretty clear that in the short run people are afraid of failing, but in the long run they're more afraid of failing to try.

    9. JSJay Shetty51:45

       Mm.

    10. AGAdam Grant51:45

        And that's, that's kind of where I've, [laughs] I've come down-

    11. JSJay Shetty51:48

        Yeah

    12. AGAdam Grant51:48

        ... is I'd, I'd rather fail than fail to try at all.

    13. JSJay Shetty51:50

        It's really fascinating. You said something there which, which I really resonate with, is this idea that part of the learning is in the sharing and seeing reactions, and I think we underestimate... Like, I could honestly sit down and think I know everything about a subject and keep quizzing myself and think I know everything, but the moment I share it with someone else and they ask a question, I'll be like, "Oh wow, I should've incl- like, you know, that, that was missing. I didn't think of that." And so sharing it in some form, even if it's not the complete form, but sharing a talk based on one of the chapters or sharing a p- I often do that with podcasts. Like, when I have an idea I'm like, "Oh, let me just record a podcast episode about that and see what people have to think about it." And it's a great way of just experimenting and testing and seeing what part of it I didn't consider.

    14. AGAdam Grant52:33

        Yes.

    15. JSJay Shetty52:34

        Because someone will consider it, and we don't, we don't see that as part of the growth process. We see it as separate. We see it as, I'm gonna make something complete. People are gonna have exactly the reaction I want to it, and that will be the success of it.

    16. AGAdam Grant52:46

        Yeah, I think that's right. I think, um, the medium also matters. So podcasting is a much more forgiving medium-

    17. JSJay Shetty52:52

        Yeah

    18. AGAdam Grant52:52

        ... I think, than book writing.

    19. JSJay Shetty52:53

        100%.

    20. AGAdam Grant52:54

        Um, because nobody expects you to have said everything exactly right in the moment, whereas-

    21. JSJay Shetty52:58

        A book

    22. AGAdam Grant52:59

        ... the b- yeah. If you, you say something wrong in a book, it's like, well, shouldn't you have done your research?

    23. JSJay Shetty53:03

        Yes, yes.

    24. AGAdam Grant53:03

        Like, why didn't you fact check that?

    25. JSJay Shetty53:05

        Yeah.

    26. AGAdam Grant53:05

        One of the things I see a lot of people hold back on when it comes to sharing anything they've created is so many people limit themselves by saying, "I don't want to self-promote."

    27. JSJay Shetty53:15

        Mm, mm. I'm

19. 53:17 – 57:10

    Is Self Promotion Bad?

    1. JSJay Shetty53:17

       so glad we're going here. Let's go there. This is good.

    2. AGAdam Grant53:18

       This is not about me.

    3. JSJay Shetty53:19

       Mm.

    4. AGAdam Grant53:20

       I'm like, good, because there is a huge difference between self-promotion and idea promotion. Promoting yourself is saying, "Look at me. Look at how great I am. I'm special." Uh, you're sharing the awards you've won. You're posting a lot of selfies. [laughs] You're, you're in the spotlight. I think idea promotion is really different, which is to say, "I made something I'm proud of. I hope it's valuable to you. I hope you get some joy out of it." If you don't put that out in the world, you're depriving people-

    5. JSJay Shetty53:46

       Mm

    6. AGAdam Grant53:46

       ... of benefiting from what you poured your heart into, and that, that to me seems like a mistake.

    7. JSJay Shetty53:53

       Yeah. Did you always feel like that, or was something you had to wrap your head around? Because that's something I definitely had to wrap my head around, so I'm intrigued.

    8. AGAdam Grant53:59

       No, I, the-

    9. JSJay Shetty54:00

       Because as a professor, I just don't imagine putting a book out and promoting it, like, that doesn't come naturally. Like, that doesn't feel-

    10. AGAdam Grant54:05

        Not at all.

    11. JSJay Shetty54:06

        Yeah.

    12. AGAdam Grant54:06

        No. I remember a few weeks after I got tenure, a colleague wrote and, and said, "Hey, I'm thinking about writing a book about motivation. You've done a lot of research in this area. Do you want to co-author it?" I said, "Wow, I love, I loved working with this collaborator, um, huge admirer of his work. This is a great honor, and I've always wanted to, to figure out if there's a way I could share my ideas more broadly than just with the students I happen to meet m- in the classroom." I immediately, I had a lab meeting later that day with a, a group of, um, of undergraduates, and I told them I was gonna do this, and they had a mutiny. They're like, "No, you cannot. You cannot write a book about somebody else's ideas. You need to write your own book." I was like, "Nope, can't do it." I cannot do that. This is like, I don't feel comfortable doing it. I, I hardly even teach my own research in the classroom. [laughs] I wanna, I wanna share with you the knowledge that I've found most useful. Like, I don't think my research is, like, the most important thing for me to teach you. And they pushed back really hard, and they said, "Look, you have a responsibility if you've invested a lot of, of your own time and energy and, you know, in the work that you do-

    13. JSJay Shetty55:10

        Mm-hmm

    14. AGAdam Grant55:10

        ... um, to share that more broadly and get it out there and see what people think of it." And they basically held me hostage. [laughs] They said, "You're not leaving this lab meeting until you agree you will write your own book before you help somebody else do theirs." And eventually they logic bullied me into, [laughs] into, into agreeing, and I, I kinda came around and said, "Okay, this is what we do. We don't create knowledge for it to collect dust in academic journals or for it to only be available to students who are lucky enough to get into an Ivy League school. Like, that, that's not right. Um, I believe in democratizing knowledge, so yeah, I'm gonna do this." Book came out. A little bit beforehand, I sent an email to my network just saying, "Hey, you know, I, I wrote this book. If you find it interesting or useful, would be really grateful if you would help spread the word." The responses were so lovely, but I got one email that kinda crushed me in the moment, and it was from an academic colleague who said, "Dear Adam, love the book, hate the self-promotion."

    15. JSJay Shetty56:12

        Mm.

    16. AGAdam Grant56:12

        This was my fear. And I thought about it, and I ruminated about it, and then it hit me. This is not self-promotion. It's idea promotion. This is about the knowledge contained in the book. I went out of my way to cite a bunch of, um, you know, a long list of researchers. Later I was told too many. I was trying to synthesize a body of knowledge and get it out there, and we have to be, to a certain degree, in the spotlight in order to promote our work.

    17. JSJay Shetty56:38

        Mm-hmm.

    18. AGAdam Grant56:38

        And I think, you know, people wanna connect to the, the author, the narrator. Um, and so there's a, I think, an amount of self-disclosure that's required.

    19. JSJay Shetty56:47

        Mm.

    20. AGAdam Grant56:47

        But self-promotion, that does not have to happen. And, and I looked at the book and I said, "Okay, the main things I've shared about myself are mistakes I made-

    21. JSJay Shetty56:55

        Yeah

    22. AGAdam Grant56:55

        ... times I failed, and what I learned from those. So I feel okay saying this was idea promotion, not self-promotion. And that's, for me, the litmus test ever since. So that, I guess that's how I landed at that distinction.

    23. JSJay Shetty57:06

        It's such a interesting thing for any artist, any creative, any

20. 57:10 – 1:01:45

    How To Promote Your Work

    1. JSJay Shetty57:10

       academic, any, any person who feels that they've come across something worth sharing. And that's why I've always been a fan of anyone who has anything worth sharing because there are so many, I think, isn't TED's-- What's TED's, uh, tagline? Or at one point it was-

    2. AGAdam Grant57:24

       Ideas worth spreading

    3. JSJay Shetty57:25

       ... ideas worth spreading.

    4. AGAdam Grant57:25

       Yep.

    5. JSJay Shetty57:26

       Ideas worth spreading. Like-

    6. AGAdam Grant57:27

       I like sharing better.

    7. JSJay Shetty57:28

       Okay. Yeah. [laughs]

    8. AGAdam Grant57:28

       I, I don't want to assume that every idea should be spread-

    9. JSJay Shetty57:30

       Spread, yeah

    10. AGAdam Grant57:31

        ... but share it with someone, and let's find out.

    11. JSJay Shetty57:32

        Yeah, sharing. And, and I think we all have ideas worth sharing. We have insights worth sharing of some kind, and especially if you're an artist, creator, academic. And I think for me it was, it was very, very similar journey to yours, and it's so interesting to hear that academic circles and spiritual circles can often have the same habits of behavior. And for me, when I wrote Think Like a Monk, which was my first book, the biggest thing I was trying to do and what I learned in my second book, which I, if I would've known in my first book I would've done this, is kind of explain this thought process where I tried to do it intuitively in how I shared it as opposed to explicitly spelled it out, whereas now I'm much better at explicitly spelling out what I'm doing. I did that to honor all monk traditions. So I studied lots of different monk traditions. I spoke to lots of different monks. And so it wasn't just the tradition I studied in. So that was very important to me because I believe that there were traditions beyond mine that would have values to share and important messages to share. The other thing that I tried to do in the book was I definitely have always wanted to make ancient wisdom accessible, practical, and relevant. That has always been my mission because I'm trying to speak to the 18-year-old kid that I was in London before I got into spirituality and meditation and mindfulness. I'm not trying to speak to the person I am now or someone who's already learned a ton. And so to me, to make it simple and accessible and relevant was my biggest goal and always has been, and that can often come with the critique of you're watering it down. You're oversimplifying it. This isn't the truth, um, in the way it should be shared. And the other thing was similar to you, and I love that you said that, too, I never shared an enlightened experience in the book. All the experiences are mistakes. They're when meditation went wrong. They're me being envious. They're me judging people. They're me wanting to get what the monks have without having done the work. Like, all the stories are the, the, the human experience of a kid from London who doesn't have the qualification to be where he is in this space trying to make sense of it. And, and, and so the book was... It wasn't think like me. Like, that was in the book. It was called Think Like a Monk. Like, I'm not a monk anymore, and I, I wanna show us how we can think like monks but not live like monks. And I think it was really interesting to me just our-- Again, it comes from our preconceived notions on ideas, language having baggage, and thoughts where people are just like, "Oh, but you're not a monk anymore, so how do you teach that? And y- this isn't your life." And it was so interesting to me that we couldn't learn from things that were things I'd learned and gained, as opposed to if you're not exactly that thing anymore, then you can't teach it.

    12. AGAdam Grant1:00:17

        I, I think there are things you could study that you don't have to share. If you were just really fascinated by, um, painting or rare coins, um, you could say, "This is a personal interest of mine-

    13. JSJay Shetty1:00:30

        Yeah

    14. AGAdam Grant1:00:30

        ... and it's just, it's my own curiosity." I think [laughs] you in choosing to be a monk, me in choosing to be a psychologist, we chose to take a deep dive into the mind and human behavior. If we gain knowledge from that, it feels like it's selfish not to share it. Like, why would you keep that to yourself? Why should the wisdom of monks only be accessible to monks?

    15. JSJay Shetty1:00:50

        Absolutely.

    16. AGAdam Grant1:00:50

        It doesn't seem right.

    17. JSJay Shetty1:00:51

        Yeah, it doesn't seem right at all. It feels like taking away. Uh, it feels selfish. And, and also to honor those people. To me, the book was honoring these amazing people that have done it for their whole lives, and studies of people who've meditated for 40 years, and, you know, that's not me. And, and I just found it interesting that... Yeah, it's fascinating. And, and there's a great book by Austin Kleon called Show Your Work.

    18. AGAdam Grant1:01:12

        Yes.

    19. JSJay Shetty1:01:13

        And I really like it, and I recommend that to anyone who's struggling with showing their work because it's exact- And I love the way you've differentiated between self-promotion and idea promotion, and I really hope that that stays with people who are listening and watching. Because if you have an idea that you believe is worth sharing and worth helping people and supporting people, please don't hold onto it. Like, please don't hide it from the world because I worry for us to only be exposed to the same three ideas that everyone's [chuckles] exposed to because we hide away from all these other new ones.

    20. AGAdam Grant1:01:43

        Sometimes I hear people

21. 1:01:45 – 1:05:55

    Adding Value To Others’ Lives

    1. AGAdam Grant1:01:45

       hold back for another reason, which is they're afraid somebody's gonna steal their idea.

    2. JSJay Shetty1:01:48

       Hmm.

    3. AGAdam Grant1:01:49

       And Austin Kleon wrote about this [chuckles] in Steal Like an Artist-

    4. JSJay Shetty1:01:51

       Yeah, yeah. Another book of his that I found very thought-provoking. My, my response to that is, you know what? It is possible that somebody will steal your idea. Most of the time that won't be intentional. Mm.

    5. AGAdam Grant1:02:02

       Um, but what, what psychologists have sometimes called kleptomnesia, where you misremember an idea as your own and forget the source-

    6. JSJay Shetty1:02:11

       Mm

    7. AGAdam Grant1:02:11

       ... um, that can happen inadvertently. You hear an idea, um, you know, you don't necessarily track where you learned it, um, and then, you know, it kind of bubbles up a month later and you think you thought of it. I think that can happen. Ideas can get stolen on purpose. They can get stolen by accident. What I always want to say to people who are afraid of their ideas getting stolen is, if you have one big idea and you're afraid of putting it out there 'cause you think someone else is gonna steal it, you don't have a lot of ideas. [chuckles] And people who generally succeed with ideas are people who are constantly generating ideas. And so what you should do is you should generate a whole portfolio of ideas-

    8. JSJay Shetty1:02:49

       Mm

    9. AGAdam Grant1:02:49

       ... and then you, you're not identified with any one of them.

    10. JSJay Shetty1:02:52

        Mm.

    11. AGAdam Grant1:02:52

        You don't feel attached to just one of them, and then the risk goes way down.

    12. JSJay Shetty1:02:56

        Yeah. There's, there's so many blocks that we could talk about, whether it's... And, uh, y- I mean, one's the ego, right? So the, the self-promotion is almost like an inverse ego. So it's almost like we think we're better because we're not promoting an idea. It's like we're, we're, we're doing th- right? There's-- Yeah. Like, like-

    13. AGAdam Grant1:03:14

        That is ironic.

    14. JSJay Shetty1:03:15

        Yeah, right? Like, it's like I think I'm better because I'm not monetizing or democratizing or-

    15. AGAdam Grant1:03:22

        Publicizing

    16. JSJay Shetty1:03:22

        ... popularizing and publicizing.

    17. AGAdam Grant1:03:24

        Yeah, exactly.

    18. JSJay Shetty1:03:24

        Yes, yeah. Popularizing or publicizing an idea makes it better to not do that. You talk about the ego differently, but let's talk about in that category first of all. Like, it's, it's interesting how that's seen as a holier than thou kind of approach, and I don't think either is holier. I, I just think that one's compassionate, and, and to me, that's more what it is. Like, I think when someone shares an idea about an experience that I could never have, to me, that's just compassion. It's their compassion to share it with me.

    19. AGAdam Grant1:03:55

        I mean, there's no reason why people can't have multiple motives behind their behavior.

    20. JSJay Shetty1:03:58

        Of course.

    21. AGAdam Grant1:03:59

        And I, I actually think that's-

    22. JSJay Shetty1:04:00

        Probably do

    23. AGAdam Grant1:04:00

        ... I mean, almost always do.

    24. JSJay Shetty1:04:01

        All of us. Yeah, me included. Yeah.

    25. AGAdam Grant1:04:03

        I think it's very rare that people are conscious of all their motives, uh, or willing to admit to all of them. But I, I actually think the most sustainable route to, to unlocking people's hidden potential is to try to align their, you know, their personal aspirations, um, with social good.

    26. JSJay Shetty1:04:20

        Mm-hmm.

    27. AGAdam Grant1:04:20

        And I don't think there's anything wrong with saying, "Yeah, I wanna promote this idea both because I want it to help other people and because I appreciate people respecting my knowledge and considering me a credible source." Like [chuckles] I, I actually think it would be problematic if you were like, "Yep, I care nothing about my own reputation [chuckles] whatsoever. Like, only character matters to me, and even if people think I'm an idiot and I'm dishonest and I lack integrity, like, as long as I know I'm a good person, that's good."

    28. JSJay Shetty1:04:51

        Of course.

    29. AGAdam Grant1:04:51

        Like, that's just not functional as-

    30. JSJay Shetty1:04:51

        Yeah, that's not functional
22. 1:05:55 – 1:09:42

    The Secret To Success

    1. AGAdam Grant1:05:55

       the purpose that so much of your work concentrates on.

    2. JSJay Shetty1:05:58

       What was the thing you found most surprising when writing Hidden Potential about hidden potential specifically that kind of you were like, "Oh, wow, I didn't-- I never thought I'd find this"?

    3. AGAdam Grant1:06:07

       I think the first one was, was the idea that learning character skills can be more powerful than learning cognitive skills.

    4. JSJay Shetty1:06:13

       Hmm.

    5. AGAdam Grant1:06:13

       Assuming that you have a foundation in, you know, in, in thinking skills, um, that like learning to embrace discomfort and become more of a sponge and accept the right imperfections, like that that could fuel more growth than, you know, if you're an entrepreneur, like, learning finance and marketing. Stunning.

    6. JSJay Shetty1:06:30

       Mm.

    7. AGAdam Grant1:06:30

       And that you can learn those skills in your 40s and 50s, as opposed to thinking that those character skills are set when you're young, um, that, that I found liberating, um, and encouraging. So that was a surprise. I think that maybe a bigger surprise, though, just as I, I think through the insights that I picked up as I was, I was investigating, I think I had this image of people who, you know, not just achieve greater things, but achieve the greatest things. I had this image that they just figured out how to make the daily grind Just tolerable.

    8. JSJay Shetty1:07:02

       Mm.

    9. AGAdam Grant1:07:03

       I would think about Steph Curry just-

    10. JSJay Shetty1:07:05

        Yeah

    11. AGAdam Grant1:07:05

        ... you know, drilling over and over again to shoot as well as he does. I assumed that he just figured out how to not mind the monotony and the boredom and the exhaustion, and he would just power through it, and he had a, a superhuman ability to tolerate extreme amounts of discomfort. Light bulb, um, while reading the research on deliberate practice was, like, it's not that motivating for a lot of people to just do the same activity repetitively over and over again. If you're Steph Curry, shooting is fun. Like, doing wind sprints and then trying to make baskets when you can hardly breathe and doing that over and over again, like, not anybody's i- jo- [laughs] like, not my idea of joy, and I don't, I don't think it's Steph's either. And through the, the research I read and through spending time with, um, with his trainer who designed this set of routines that had really elevated his game, I realized that deliberate play is a huge part of practice, and we don't give it enough credit, that, you know, if you're Steph, like, you play a game to see how many baskets you can make in a minute and a half.

    12. JSJay Shetty1:08:03

        Mm.

    13. AGAdam Grant1:08:03

        And then you've got a target to shoot for, and you're competing against yourself, or you're competing against a clock. And all of a sudden, that, that supercharges your motivation, especially in the summer when nobody's, you know, when you're not actually playing basketball games that really count. And I looked at that and thought, "Why do we have to turn the daily grind into such a grind?" Like, yes, there are times when we all have to push ourselves, but pushing yourself day after day is not a sustainable routine. And what we wanna do is try to figure out how to redesign practice and skill development-

    14. JSJay Shetty1:08:32

        Mm

    15. AGAdam Grant1:08:32

        ... so that there are-- you could break skills down into these enjoyable pieces and then make them more playful. You, you mentioned Dan Coyle. Um, I love The Culture Code, and one of my favorite ideas that he wrote about was the difference between shallow fun and deep fun.

    16. JSJay Shetty1:08:45

        Mm-hmm.

    17. AGAdam Grant1:08:46

        I think shallow fun is gamification. It's tricking people into enjoying practice even though they don't really like it because there's a carrot that's being dangled at the end. I think the deep fun is about saying, "We wanna actually take the process of learning itself and make it enjoyable." And so, you know, the Steph example is a great one. Um, but it's easy to think about that in basketball. Evelyn Glennie, uh, a percussionist, saying, like, "Let me figure out if I could harmonize Bach on a snare drum." Like, what a cool way to make learning-

    18. JSJay Shetty1:09:17

        Mm

    19. AGAdam Grant1:09:17

        ... percussion playful. And I think that, that was a big aha for me. I think that I, I had come to see play as a reward for finishing my to-do list and mastering a skill.

    20. JSJay Shetty1:09:27

        Yeah.

    21. AGAdam Grant1:09:27

        And now I realize it's gotta be on the to-do list, and it's gotta be part of learning a skill.

    22. JSJay Shetty1:09:32

        That resonates so strongly as well. Again, it's like, yeah, the, the process has to be fun, meaningful, and fulfilling in and of itself, not just the reward.

23. 1:09:42 – 1:13:50

    How To Enjoy The Struggle

    1. JSJay Shetty1:09:42

       Trying to think of an activity that I've done that with that just felt impossible to do it with. Have you, have you-- What, what was, what was the thought experiment that you did there? Was there-

    2. AGAdam Grant1:09:49

       Well, I w- I was wondering-

    3. JSJay Shetty1:09:50

       Yeah

    4. AGAdam Grant1:09:50

       ... this, this had to-- I, I feel like monks are often misunderstood-

    5. JSJay Shetty1:09:54

       Oh, yeah, for sure

    6. AGAdam Grant1:09:54

       ... as, like, complete denial of any earthly joy.

    7. JSJay Shetty1:09:58

       Yes. Yes.

    8. AGAdam Grant1:09:58

       And I, I don't, I don't see how a human could ever function in that environment.

    9. JSJay Shetty1:10:02

       No, no.

    10. AGAdam Grant1:10:03

        So I guess question is, you had to do a lot of hard stuff-

    11. JSJay Shetty1:10:05

        Yeah

    12. AGAdam Grant1:10:05

        ... as, as a monk, especially I imagine in training.

    13. JSJay Shetty1:10:08

        Mm-hmm.

    14. AGAdam Grant1:10:09

        Like, how did you make that playful?

    15. JSJay Shetty1:10:11

        You made it playful by laughing at yourself. Like, it was [laughs] it was v- right? So, uh, the thing that came to mind was often we'd walk down a path, and we'd be asked to find a new stone, and the goal was to find something and be really present with it and, you know, be aware of it, its colors, its texture, its shape, everything you'd want to practice through a mindfulness practice. And what the mind would do is I'd find a stone for today, and I'd find a stone for tomorrow so that I didn't have to do the same activity tomorrow because we wanna make things easier mentally, and we're always trying to cheat the system or, or, you know, break the game. So my mind would do that very naturally. I would find two stones and be like, "All right, saw that one where that is behind that tree. T- today I'll pick this one. Tomorrow I found one anyway." And then we'd get to the next day, and the teacher would say, "All right, today we're trying to find a petal," like, [laughs] and they, they'd just switch it up on you. And you'd laugh at your own mind. Like, you'd find it hilarious that your mind was trying to game the system, but the monks were too, you know-

    16. AGAdam Grant1:11:07

        They already were one step ahead of you

    17. JSJay Shetty1:11:08

        ... yeah, they're already one step ahead of you. They already know that-

    18. AGAdam Grant1:11:10

        The cheat codes are already built in.

    19. JSJay Shetty1:11:11

        Yeah. Exactly. And so I think things like that where learning to laugh at yourself brought play. When you saw the monkey mind, as you mentioned earlier, you laughed at it. You didn't-- You went harsh on yourself. You didn't-- If you saw a monkey, and I've seen monkeys do this in India, steal people's sunglasses, uh, cut bags if you're holding it to grab fruit-

    20. AGAdam Grant1:11:31

        Diet Coke

    21. JSJay Shetty1:11:31

        ... yeah, Diet Coke, whatever.

    22. AGAdam Grant1:11:32

        And then they chug it before you can get it back.

    23. JSJay Shetty1:11:34

        Yeah, chug it, yeah. Uh, stealing. I've seen them steal credit cards, like, out of people's hands if they're paying for something. You don't look at that and go, "What an idiot." Like, "What's wrong with you?" You just think-

    24. AGAdam Grant1:11:43

        [laughs]

    25. JSJay Shetty1:11:43

        ... "Oh, monkeys," and you just laugh. And, and that's partly what the mind is like. Like, it's, it's funny to watch the flawed mind, uh, and not take it so seriously and recognize that it's just how it's built and how it's, how it acts.

    26. AGAdam Grant1:11:56

        I, I like that a lot.

    27. JSJay Shetty1:11:58

        Yeah.

    28. AGAdam Grant1:11:58

        It, it seems like-

    29. JSJay Shetty1:11:58

        That's what came to mind.

    30. AGAdam Grant1:11:59

        Yeah. I mean, I, I think the idea of, you know, of taking your, your goals and your growth seriously but not yourself and your ego that seriously is obviously powerful there. It also sounds like your teachers really appreciated the importance of, of novelty and variety-
24. 1:13:50 – 1:16:11

    “What one piece of advice has stuck with you?”

    1. JSJay Shetty1:13:50

       breaks it down, makes it simple in a way that I love and I admire. But on top of all of that, it's packed with great stories, case studies, science, and research to back it all up, and in Adam's signature style of making it fun, uh, the, the natural humor that always comes through. But thank you for doing this. And I wanted to ask you, Adam, is there anything you haven't shared either from the book or that's come in your mind and heart that you're like, "Jay, I really want people to know this or share this"? And there may not be, but I want to give you the floor.

    2. AGAdam Grant1:14:15

       Ah, that's-- Well, you're, as always, too kind. Um, no. I mean, I-- W- the only thing is I'm second guessing. I'm like, "Was that the most surprising thing? Should there have been a more surprising thing?" I am right now failing my imperfectionist test. [laughs]

    3. JSJay Shetty1:14:28

       [laughs]

    4. AGAdam Grant1:14:28

       Like, it doesn't matter which one I picked because-

    5. JSJay Shetty1:14:31

       Yeah

    6. AGAdam Grant1:14:31

       ... no one knows what the alternatives were. But I am curious. Uh, so we talked about deliberate play being, you know, potentially as important or more important than deliberate practice for growth. The other two that I was just starting to think about were, um, that when you get stuck, you often have to move back to move forward.

    7. JSJay Shetty1:14:49

       Mm. Mm-hmm.

    8. AGAdam Grant1:14:49

       That before people leap in a scale, they, they have to dip. That, that was an aha that I did not have before.

    9. JSJay Shetty1:14:54

       Yeah, that it's better-- You were talking about climbing the mountain. The idea of-

    10. AGAdam Grant1:14:57

        Yes

    11. JSJay Shetty1:14:57

        ... like, yeah, like that it's better if you're stuck not just to stand there, but to walk backwards to kind of get a be-

    12. AGAdam Grant1:15:03

        And find a new route.

    13. JSJay Shetty1:15:03

        Yeah, yes. Yes, yes, yes. Yeah.

    14. AGAdam Grant1:15:04

        Yeah, or a, a better method.

    15. JSJay Shetty1:15:06

        Actually, most of us don't move backwards to move forwards. We remain stuck because we're too embarrassed to move backwards, or we feel too-- like we've reached somewhere to move backwards. Like, there's a comfort-

    16. AGAdam Grant1:15:16

        Yeah. I don't want to give up the gains that I made.

    17. JSJay Shetty1:15:18

        Co- Yes, yes. That's exactly it.

    18. AGAdam Grant1:15:19

        And so, like, why would I start over when I've already put so much time into to getting where I got?

    19. JSJay Shetty1:15:24

        That sunk cost bias is, uh, that was huge for me. I remember learning about that in, like, A-level economics, like 18 years, 17, 18 years old, and thinking what a great concept to understand that. And I kind of gave that up very naturally. But I saw that as I grew older, people who'd studied something, especially some... I had friends who would become lawyers or doctors but then didn't enjoy it or didn't see that as their path directly even, and having to pivot from that was so hard because-

    20. AGAdam Grant1:15:51

        Brutal

    21. JSJay Shetty1:15:51

        ... you've worked so hard to achieve something that is rare and hard and difficult.

    22. AGAdam Grant1:15:55

        Yeah. One of, one of the things I, I like to remind my students of when they, they, like, they come to office hours and they're in tunnel vision, like, "I have to do the prescribed thing. Like, my parents want me to be a doctor," or, "Everyone in my family went to law school," I always want to say to them, "Listen, I, I understand

25. 1:16:11 – 1:20:15

    Why Choices Are Important

    1. AGAdam Grant1:16:11

       that you're already down this path. Like, you've done the pre-med thing or you're already, like, you know, you're already in the program. But what's worse, realizing that you wasted the last two years or going on to waste the next 20?"

    2. JSJay Shetty1:16:22

       Mm.

    3. AGAdam Grant1:16:23

       It's not a hard calculus. And so I think maybe the antidote to sunk cost is opportunity cost.

    4. JSJay Shetty1:16:30

       Mm.

    5. AGAdam Grant1:16:30

       To say, "Yeah, you know what? You have already invested a whole bunch in this, but think about all the growth and all the joy that you're giving up on if you don't shift gears."

    6. JSJay Shetty1:16:41

       Yeah, yeah. I think-- I mean, I think about that all the time in my own life, and it's hard 'cause you never know it then. And it's the old Steve Jobs quote of, "You can't connect the dots moving forward. You only can when-

    7. AGAdam Grant1:16:51

       Only backward.

    8. JSJay Shetty1:16:51

       Yeah, only backwards. And it's hard to remind people almost as their future self. And I, I think that is the activity. That's what I did. I, I fast-forwarded when I was working in the corporate world. I fast-forwarded 20 years and I asked myself, "Would I be happy doing what I see other people doing 20 years ahead of me?" And the answer was no. And so I was like, "Well, then anything will be better than this," because if the answer is no-- And it's not that they had bad jobs, so they weren't happy. It's that I wouldn't be happy doing what they were doing 20 years from then. And so if you're not, then you can't keep following the same path. Uh, Adam, I actually have two more questions from you that I just saw in my notes that I, I actually don't want to miss asking these to you. This comes from part three, Systems of Opportunity: Opening Doors and Windows. And I have these two questions that I think are really interesting. We talked about s- certain challenges of our school system and what we find wrong, but this was the interesting part for me. Do you believe children should be able to choose what they study? Um, I think that's a really fascinating concept. One of my friends runs schools where kids do get to choose. Uh, it's private. And, uh, I'm always fascinated by this idea of we've gone from living in a world that kids had no choice. We naturally swing to the other side of the pendulum where we want to give kids all choice. What, what did you discover?

    9. AGAdam Grant1:18:09

       I think this is really complicated. So the, the research on the paradox of choice suggests that there is such a thing as too much choice. First of all, there's a lot of debate about how pervasive that is. Um, it's much worse to have no choice than too much.

    10. JSJay Shetty1:18:22

        Mm.

    11. AGAdam Grant1:18:23

        Much worse.

    12. JSJay Shetty1:18:23

        Mm.

    13. AGAdam Grant1:18:24

        Uh, so it's easier to manage the problem of too many options than it is to create freedom where it's absent. I think that's clear. The second thing is we can, we can think about bundling and sort of bucketing choices in a way that, um, maybe gets the best of both worlds. So, um, I think it's potentially helpful for students to have choices within constraints.

    14. JSJay Shetty1:18:44

        Mm.

    15. AGAdam Grant1:18:44

        Um, for example, so you ask-- If you're an elementary school teacher, you ask kids to read 30 minutes a night, but they get to pick the book.

    16. JSJay Shetty1:18:52

        Mm.

    17. AGAdam Grant1:18:53

        I think that's the kind of choice we're looking for early on. I think later, probably in high school, every kid should take some math. But I- I don't think everyone needs to take trig.

    18. JSJay Shetty1:19:02

        Mm-hmm.

    19. AGAdam Grant1:19:03

        Like trigonometry has never been useful in my life. In a heartbeat, I would, I would throw out the trig curriculum and replace it with, uh, statistics, which I think actually is useful for how people think and what they do in the world, but not everyone feels that way.

    20. JSJay Shetty1:19:14

        And there, there's no cognitive benefits of doing trig either. Like are there no ... Because I often think about things not being as literal and think, "Oh, wait, is my brain developing by thinking in that ways?"

    21. AGAdam Grant1:19:24

        I have never seen a randomized controlled experiment saying that learning trigonometry-

    22. JSJay Shetty1:19:27

        Yeah

    23. AGAdam Grant1:19:28

        ... will teach you a set of thinking skills that's invaluable. Like, I don't think there's anything about sine and cosine that you would get that you can't get through geometry.

    24. JSJay Shetty1:19:34

        Got it. Right. Yeah.

    25. AGAdam Grant1:19:35

        Would be my, would be my hunch as a psychologist, but I have not done that experiment-

    26. JSJay Shetty1:19:38

        Yeah

    27. AGAdam Grant1:19:38

        ... uh, or that series of experiments. I think, but what I would say is, like, within ... I mean, colleges are much better at this, right? Saying, "There's a math requirement, but we give you a menu of options, and you can choose within that." Um, nobody wants to go to a restaurant and have a menu with a thousand options.

    28. JSJay Shetty1:19:52

        Mm-hmm.

    29. AGAdam Grant1:19:53

        Um, but if they kinda know what they like, they can say, "I can look at that category, and I can choose within it." And I think that's where I would want choice to land for, um, for kids at different levels.

    30. JSJay Shetty1:20:02

        Yeah, and it's so hard to ... You know, hidden potential as a kid and as we grow is so difficult because if I was asked what I liked growing up, now I can easily say that I think I was naturally drawn towards the arts and design

26. 1:20:15 – 1:23:54

    Finding Hidden Potential

    1. JSJay Shetty1:20:15

       and philosophy, and I can see it even more clearly now. But it would've been really hard for someone ... I don't know. How, how would you be better at spotting hidden potential in schools and in young people earlier on so that we can kind of hopefully better guide and coach people as opposed to have them become pre-meds or, or con- complete a career and then having to pivot?

    2. AGAdam Grant1:20:36

       Well, I think the, the person who's best suited to see your hidden potential is often the one who knows you best.

    3. JSJay Shetty1:20:42

       Mm.

    4. AGAdam Grant1:20:43

       And I don't think we give teachers enough opportunity to get to know kids. I love the research, um, on looping that I wrote about, uh, in the chapter on, um, on what we can learn from countries like Finland and Estonia. But even here in the US, um, there's strong evidence from multiple states with millions of students in elementary and middle school that if they just happen to have the same teacher for two years in a row, they achieve more gains in math and reading.

    5. JSJay Shetty1:21:07

       Mm.

    6. AGAdam Grant1:21:07

       Which is remarkable.

    7. JSJay Shetty1:21:08

       Mm-hmm.

    8. AGAdam Grant1:21:09

       And I know there are tons of parents who are afraid of this idea. Like, what if my kid gets stuck with Professor Snape for two years instead of one?

    9. JSJay Shetty1:21:17

       [laughs]

    10. AGAdam Grant1:21:18

        Like, that's the end of the world.

    11. JSJay Shetty1:21:19

        Yeah.

    12. AGAdam Grant1:21:20

        It turns out that not only is it good for kids to have the same teacher for multiple years, but that when kids are struggling and teachers are struggling, they actually benefit more from the extended relationship. And I don't think it's hard to unpack why this is. I think when, you know, when, when a, a teacher moves up with a student, they don't lose all this information in the handoff-

    13. JSJay Shetty1:21:37

        Mm

    14. AGAdam Grant1:21:37

        ... from one to the next. Um, they understand the student's strengths and opportunities for growth. They also have seen this, the distance that the student has traveled.

    15. JSJay Shetty1:21:47

        Mm-hmm.

    16. AGAdam Grant1:21:47

        And so instead of just saying, well, like a new teacher, "Well, that student didn't shine in math," to say, "Wow, that student was really behind in math-

    17. JSJay Shetty1:21:56

        Mm

    18. AGAdam Grant1:21:56

        ... and now is right on track with the class," I think there's some hidden potential there. I think every school on Earth should let kids have the same teacher for multiple years, and, um, I think it's not a huge effect in the data, but I think it's a meaningful one.

    19. JSJay Shetty1:22:09

        It is one of the biggest. I mean, even in spiritual education and, and teaching and guidance, it's ... That's the only way it works. Like, the, the practices that my monk teachers created for me were very different from what they created for other students because it was all about specific learning and specific growth. And so some of the practices I did were not normal for others, and some of the practices other people did were not normal for me because you trusted that your teacher was getting to know you better and therefore would create plans, whether some of that included travel. For example, I would be asked to travel back more to London to teach while I was a monk, uh, because they saw that that would be a useful skill set for me. That would be a useful experience for me of me going back to the country I was from and having to connect there, and that wasn't part of everyone else's training. And so i- I've always been a fan since my training in that way of having the same teacher, and even till this day, I still go back to the same monk teacher who knows me much better. And now he has, like, so much data on me 'cause he's known me since I was 18 years old.

    20. AGAdam Grant1:23:14

        Yes.

    21. JSJay Shetty1:23:14

        And so he has 18 years of insight of knowing me, and many of those years living together, where the ... His ability to say, "Oh my gosh, do you remember when you used to be like this and this challenge would trip you up? And look at you now. Like, you're," you know. And just that context is so useful to hear from a student. Uh, like you're saying, like whether it's, "Hey, you know, you were struggling with math last year, and last year you got a C, and this year you got a B, but I actually noticed that," you know, whatever. I, I think it's huge. I actually think it's huge.

    22. AGAdam Grant1:23:42

        And that, that's a great coda to the earlier point about you want a coach to work themself out of a job.

    23. JSJay Shetty1:23:47

        Yeah.

    24. AGAdam Grant1:23:47

        But then you wanna be able to go back to that coach at inflection points-

    25. JSJay Shetty1:23:51

        Yes

    26. AGAdam Grant1:23:51

        ... for a fresh perspective or for somebody who

27. 1:23:54 – 1:25:00

    How To Optimize Education

    1. AGAdam Grant1:23:54

       has that continuity.

    2. JSJay Shetty1:23:55

       Yeah.

    3. AGAdam Grant1:23:55

       And so I think over time, the hope is that you don't rely on that person day to day anymore-

    4. JSJay Shetty1:23:59

       Of course

    5. AGAdam Grant1:24:00

       ... um, as a crutch. But they are the person who, I guess, has the most accurate mirror.

    6. JSJay Shetty1:24:05

       Yeah, absolutely. And that's, at least from a Eastern philosophy point of view, education was always meant to be the, the guru, a- as it would've been called at the time, and, and a small enough class for the guru to get to know the class well enough in order to spot hidden potential and their psychophysical nature and their dharma, word for purpose, in order to ignite that spark deeper. And that requires a lot of training for the guru and, and an openness from the students as well. But yeah, you're right. It's not just choice as well. It's not just like, "Hey, choose what you want." Yeah. It's, it's beautiful. Thank you so much, Adam. This has been amazing. It's-

    7. AGAdam Grant1:24:44

       Thank you

    8. JSJay Shetty1:24:45

       ... always a joy. I love how our conversations go from what's wrong with the school system to why we're not idea promoting enough, all the way through to, you know, how do we choose what we need to work on, what is a weakness, what are imperfections. And again, it's all inside this book

28. 1:25:00 – 1:25:49

    Conclusion

    1. JSJay Shetty1:25:00

       called Hidden Potential: Uh, The Science of Achieving Greater Things. Highly recommend it from Adam. We'll put the link in the comments and the caption for you to get it. Uh, thank you so much, Adam, for doing this. I appreciate you.

    2. AGAdam Grant1:25:10

       Thank you, Jay. It's been, uh, it's been a joy and also a privilege, and I think we've never spoken other than when we're recorded. [laughs]

    3. JSJay Shetty1:25:18

       Yes. Yeah.

    4. AGAdam Grant1:25:18

       So we, uh, we need to do a little bit more of this, I think.

    5. JSJay Shetty1:25:21

       I would love that and appreciate and welcome it. Thank you so much.

    6. AGAdam Grant1:25:23

       Thank you.

    7. JSJay Shetty1:25:24

       Yeah. Thanks, Adam. If you loved this episode, you'll enjoy my interview with Dr. Daniel Amen on how to change your life by changing your brain.

    8. SPSpeaker1:25:33

       If we want a healthy mind, it actually starts with a healthy brain. You know, I've had the blessing or the curse to scan over 1,000 convicted felons and over 100 murderers, and their brains are very damaged

Episode duration: 1:25:49