Susan Cain on Transforming Pain, Building Your Emotional Resilience, Exploring Sufi Wisdom, and More

1. 0:00 – 0:15

   Intro

   1. TFTim Ferriss0:00

      [upbeat music]

2. 0:15 – 1:38

   Welcome and Susan Cain’s background (from Quiet to Bittersweet)

   1. TFTim Ferriss0:15

      Hello, boys and girls, ladies and germs. This is Tim Ferriss, and welcome to another episode of The Tim Ferriss Show. Welcome, friends. My guest today is Susan Cain. That's C-A-I-N. You can find her on Twitter @SusanCain. Susan is the author of Quiet Journal, Quiet Power: The Secret Strength of Introverts, and Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking, which spent eight years on The New York Times Best Seller list and has been translated into 40 languages. Susan's TED Talk has been viewed more than 40 million times and was named by Bill Gates as one of his all-time favorite talks. LinkedIn named her the top sixth influencer in the world, just behind Richard Branson and Melinda Gates. Susan partners with Malcolm Gladwell, Adam Grant, and Dan Pink, all good people, to curate The Next Big Idea Book Club. They donate all of their proceeds to children's literacy programs. For my first conversation with Susan on the podcast, you can go to tim.blog/susancain. Her newest book, which she's been working on for some time, and I know because we talked about it last time-

   2. SCSusan Cain1:14

      [laughs]

   3. TFTim Ferriss1:15

      ... Bittersweet, subtitle How Sorrow and Longing Make Us Whole. And I am very excited to dig into this. We'll provide links to all the social in the show notes, but you can find everything Susan Cain at, you guessed it, susancain.net. Susan, welcome back to the show. Nice to see you.

   4. SCSusan Cain1:35

      It is so great to see you, Tim. Thanks for having me.

3. 1:38 – 2:27

   Dark chocolate, daily rituals, and small joys

   1. TFTim Ferriss1:38

      And I thought I would start with this title, Bittersweet, which is interesting and also funny to me on a couple of levels. Am I making it up, or was there a point in your life that you had dark chocolate at least once a day? Am I inventing that?

   2. SCSusan Cain1:53

      [laughs]

   3. TFTim Ferriss1:53

      Am I just making it up whole cloth?

   4. SCSusan Cain1:55

      No, the funny thing is that you're, you're casting that in the past tense, when in fact it's just a-

   5. TFTim Ferriss2:00

      [laughs]

   6. SCSusan Cain2:00

      ... like a constant ongoing present. [laughs]

   7. TFTim Ferriss2:03

      [laughs]

   8. SCSusan Cain2:04

      I don't think there's ever been a day in my life that I haven't had dark chocolate.

   9. TFTim Ferriss2:07

      What's your daily driver? A- and then what are your indulgences when it comes to chocolate? Do you have any, do you have any favorites or go-tos?

   10. SCSusan Cain2:14

       I like luxury chocolates and all that stuff, but I don't even really need that. I just really love little semi-sweet chocolate chips that I stick in my yogurt, and I'm happy as a clam.

   11. TFTim Ferriss2:24

       [laughs] It is the little things.

   12. SCSusan Cain2:27

       [laughs]

4. 2:27 – 4:08

   How Susan writes: protecting “deep love” and building a book from notes

   1. TFTim Ferriss2:27

      It is the little things. So I'd like to start on the sort of creative process side with respect to the new book, uh, because I enjoy chatting about that stuff.

   2. SCSusan Cain2:40

      Yeah.

   3. TFTim Ferriss2:40

      And I'm thinking a lot about creative process these days for myself. So where I thought we could go, and I'm gonna do a little retrospective, just like you said, you're treating things in past tense, but maybe they are present tense. That's gonna be really my, my first question. If we look back at Quiet, s- it took seven years to write, if I'm remembering correctly. You had two kids during that time. And, you know, your ph- your philosophy about writing is that it's deep love that has to be protected at all costs. Y- by the way, you can reserve the right to revise any of these.

   4. SCSusan Cain3:14

      Sure.

   5. TFTim Ferriss3:14

      But this is from the last conversation. Because of that, I don't care how much time it takes. And then asking about how you're writing, this is, this is what I remember/am reading from the last time. So you take whatever thesis you're working on, then you spend a year or two just walking around the world, looking at everything through the lens of that thesis. And then, and I wanna know what, what has changed, if anything, asking how you organize your notes. So you stick everything in this monstrous Word doc. It's like 700, 800 pages by the time you're done. Then you separate out things by topic, putting them into eight or nine loose-leaf binders. [laughs] Then you organize them and try to take advantage of emotional states as they come up during the organization. So all of this is super cool to me. If we apply this to the new project, just as, like, a rough scattering of concepts, how did you come up with the thesis for the new book, and then what did the creative process look like after that?

5. 4:08 – 8:16

   From “funeral music” to a life quest: why bittersweet feelings matter

   1. SCSusan Cain4:08

      So those are two really different questions, so let's do one at a time.

   2. TFTim Ferriss4:12

      Let's do it.

   3. SCSusan Cain4:13

      How did I come up with a thesis for the new book? I feel like the only point of writing, really, at least to me, is telling the truth of what it's like to be alive. You know, like, telling truths that people don't really talk about in everyday life, because if they talked about it in everyday life, you could just get it just from chatting with your friends or your colleagues or whomever.

   4. TFTim Ferriss4:36

      Mm-hmm.

   5. SCSusan Cain4:36

      But there's something about writing and art in general where, I don't know, people are just, like, really digging deep. And, and to me, the best moments in life are also when I'm reading a book or hearing music or whatever, where I feel like, oh my gosh, you know, that person just articulated something that I have experienced, and I never really thought about it that way, and I know exactly that person's heart and mind. Like, I know them, and maybe they lived-

   6. TFTim Ferriss5:02

      Hmm

   7. SCSusan Cain5:02

      ... 2,000 years ago, and I still know them. With this book, Bittersweet, I have been feeling for my entire life, and there was an event that happened 25 or 30 years ago where I really felt it. I've been, I've been feeling my whole life when I would hear bittersweet minor key music, you know, music that expresses a kind of longing for some state that is forever elusive to us, I'd hear music like that, and it's supposedly sad, right? Minor key music is sad music. But I didn't feel sad. I, I love that kind of music. And what I felt when I heard it, what I still feel when I hear it, is, is joy and uplift and goosebumps and a kind of love and communion and, like, a gratitude to the musician that they were able to transform pain that all of us have in one way or another, to transform pain into beauty. And, and what happened is, like 25 years ago [laughs] I, I, you know, I used to be a lawyer. Like, that was a whole, um, detour in my life. [laughs]

   8. TFTim Ferriss6:10

      Oh, I remember. I remember.

   9. SCSusan Cain6:11

      Yeah, yeah.

   10. TFTim Ferriss6:12

       [laughs]

   11. SCSusan Cain6:12

       And so I was in law school, and I was, and I was listening to music like this in my dorm, and some friends came-

   12. TFTim Ferriss6:17

       [laughs]

   13. SCSusan Cain6:18

       ... came to my dorm, and I was like blasting it out on my stereo speakers. You know, and the friends came to pick me up for class, and, and they thought it was the weirdest thing, and one of them was like, "Why are you listening to this funeral music?"

   14. TFTim Ferriss6:29

       [laughs]

   15. SCSusan Cain6:32

       Yeah, and I had that reaction like you. I thought it was really funny, and then I went to class, and that was the end of the story. Except I could not stop thinking about it. Like, why am I so drawn to this music? And then I started looking and finding that turns out that people listen to the happy songs on their playlist 175 times, and they listen to the sad songs 800 times.

   16. TFTim Ferriss6:55

       Hmm.

   17. SCSusan Cain6:56

       And it's the sad songs that give them chills and make us feel connected and c- sublime. And, and so I went off [laughs] and... Okay, this might sound at first blush like a kind of small question. You know [laughs] what is it about sad music that could be so moving?

   18. TFTim Ferriss7:11

       Mm-hmm.

   19. SCSusan Cain7:11

       But it became a much bigger quest for me. Like, I went off into this five- or six- or seven-year quest of reading art and literature and exploring all the wisdom traditions, talking to psychologists and neuroscientists to figure out what is this power of a bittersweet and even melancholic way of being. And what I've learned is that this bittersweet tradition, it's been with us for centuries, and what it teaches us is that we are creatures who are born to transform pain into beauty.

   20. TFTim Ferriss7:46

       Hmm.

   21. SCSusan Cain7:47

       And that's something our culture will never tell us.

   22. TFTim Ferriss7:50

       I, as expected, have a number of follow-up questions.

   23. SCSusan Cain7:53

       Of course you do. [laughs]

   24. TFTim Ferriss7:54

       So the first, you might hate this, 'cause it's just like, Jesus, Ferris, can we get away from the-

   25. SCSusan Cain7:59

       [laughs]

   26. TFTim Ferriss7:59

       ... nitty-gritty, prescriptive, uh, autobiographical stuff. As far as minor key music goes or music or musicians who utilize minor key well, do you have any suggestions for people who might want to do a taste test?

6. 8:16 – 10:18

   Leonard Cohen and the “crack where the light gets in” (Kabbalah and broken beauty)

   1. SCSusan Cain8:16

      Oh, gosh, yes. Um, [laughs] and in fact, I put together a bittersweet playlist. You'll be able to find it. But [laughs] um, but I've been obsessed my whole life. I've, I've had this deep and crazy love my whole life for the music of Leonard Cohen.

   2. TFTim Ferriss8:29

      Hmm.

   3. SCSusan Cain8:30

      Like, I, I mean, I love him. And I had never actually really paid attention before to why I love him so much. I just loved him. But, uh, w- when I was researching this book, I came to understand exactly what it was, 'cause it's like his whole life philosophy that's embodied in all his music is exactly what I have believed viscerally before I had words to articulate it. I could tell you-

   4. TFTim Ferriss8:52

      Hmm

   5. SCSusan Cain8:52

      ... I could tell you now what it is, or we could save it.

   6. TFTim Ferriss8:55

      Let's jump in. I will, uh, I'll bookmark and come back to some other questions that I have, but take it away. This is free form.

   7. SCSusan Cain9:01

      He has so many different songs, but there's one line that people quote again and again for a good reason, and, and the line is, "There is a crack in everything. That's where the light gets in."

   8. TFTim Ferriss9:15

      Mm-hmm.

   9. SCSusan Cain9:15

      And, and it's like this idea everything's broken, everything's beautiful simultaneously. That's the nature of life. And there's such a truth and there's such a relief in being able to express that this is actually what life is. And he, in turn, I found out, was drawing from this tradition of, of, uh, the mystical side of Judaism, the, the Kabbalah.

   10. TFTim Ferriss9:40

       Yeah.

   11. SCSusan Cain9:41

       And the idea there is that all of creation, all of being, was originally one vessel of divine light that then shattered, and we're living now in the world after the shattering, but the divine shards of light are still all around us.

   12. TFTim Ferriss9:59

       Hmm.

   13. SCSusan Cain9:59

       And so, like, they're buried all around us, and, and the goal is to just be discovering the shards and picking them up wherever we can. And-

   14. TFTim Ferriss10:06

       Hmm

   15. SCSusan Cain10:07

       ... and the amazing thing is that you are gonna pick up comple- and notice completely different ones from the ones I would notice, you know? Like-

   16. TFTim Ferriss10:14

       Mm-hmm

   17. SCSusan Cain10:14

       ... to me, it would look like a lump of coal, and you're gonna see, like, this gleaming thing.

7. 10:18 – 13:03

   Rumi’s “Love Dogs”: longing as the return message (and beyond atheist vs believer)

   1. TFTim Ferriss10:18

      The Leonard Cohen line also makes me think of, and I think I'm getting the attribution right, but poetry from Rumi, in fact.

   2. SCSusan Cain10:27

      [laughs]

   3. TFTim Ferriss10:27

      I don't know if it's, I don't know if it's the crack. It may be the wound where the light enters us. Uh, I- and I want to come back to that sort of in, in an adjacent way a little bit later, 'cause I wanna ask you about Sufism specifically, 'cause I believe you had some exposure in the process of doing research for this book, and I wanna ask why that's the case. But before we get there-

   4. SCSusan Cain10:50

      Very much so.

   5. TFTim Ferriss10:51

      Yeah.

   6. SCSusan Cain10:51

      And I'm just gonna interrupt to say, like, so much so-

   7. TFTim Ferriss10:53

      [laughs]

   8. SCSusan Cain10:53

      ... that I actually have a Rumi poem, like, sitting within hand's length.

   9. TFTim Ferriss10:56

      Oh, wow.

   10. SCSusan Cain10:57

       So here it is.

   11. TFTim Ferriss10:57

       Oh, wow.

   12. SCSusan Cain10:57

       We can talk about that.

   13. TFTim Ferriss10:58

       Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Okay.

   14. SCSusan Cain10:59

       [laughs]

   15. TFTim Ferriss10:59

       So now I have to snap at the fly lure on the water.

   16. SCSusan Cain11:02

       [laughs]

   17. TFTim Ferriss11:02

       Can you read the quote, please? Would you be willing to share the poem that you have?

   18. SCSusan Cain11:06

       Absolutely. The quote is, like, an excerpt from a poem, so I just wanna-

   19. TFTim Ferriss11:10

       Mm-hmm

   20. SCSusan Cain11:10

       ... set up the story of the poem, 'cause it, it's this poem called Love Dogs, and it's about a man who is praying to Allah, and then a cynical person comes along and says to him, "Why are you bothering to do this? Have you ever gotten an answer back?" And the guy is like, "No." You know, he thinks about it. "I have never gotten the answer back." And he stops praying, and he falls asleep into a kind of fitful sleep, and then Hidir, who is the guide of souls, comes along while he's sleeping and says, "Why did you stop praying?" And he says, "Well, I never got the answer. I never, I never heard anything back, so it's pointless." And okay, and this is what Hidir says to him, and this is the part I have-

   21. TFTim Ferriss11:55

       Hmm

   22. SCSusan Cain11:55

       ... inches away from me every day when I work. It says, "This longing you express is the return message. The grief you cry out from draws you toward union." Your pure sadness that wants help is the secret cup

   23. TFTim Ferriss12:11

       Ooh, that's good

   24. SCSusan Cain12:12

       Yeah. And I've been a deep agnostic/atheist my whole life, and I ... One of the biggest things I learned from this whole Bittersweet project is that it's such a false dichotomy, this difference between atheists and believers, and like we all feel this longing

   25. TFTim Ferriss12:28

       Yeah

   26. SCSusan Cain12:29

       And the longing we feel is the return message for everyone

   27. TFTim Ferriss12:32

       Yeah, for sure. And also a lot of the sort of, uh, let's call it rational materialists might abhor faith as it manifests in what they consider religion, but a- almost all of our lives and many of our beliefs and a lot of our behaviors are completely predicated on faith. [laughs] Uh, that's a broader topic that is probably for another conversation. But let's, let's talk about music for a second because the

8. 13:03 – 20:16

   Why minor keys move us: no resolution, Eden myths, and defining “bittersweet”

   1. TFTim Ferriss13:03

      ... Just the existence of music and the fact that these kind of vibrations of sound in different organization can have different effects on animals and humans and plants is mind-boggling to begin with. But why is it, do you think, that minor key music elicits what some would consider sadness? Is it just social conditioning because we are taught early on by other people that that is the case? Or is there more to it neurologically or otherwise?

   2. SCSusan Cain13:39

      So people debate this question. I do not believe it's the product of social conditioning. I, I believe it's the structure of the music itself. You know, like the nature of minor key music is that you don't have resolution.

   3. TFTim Ferriss13:52

      Mm-hmm.

   4. SCSusan Cain13:52

      And, and I think that's the nature of being. It's actually hard to get away from the religion question because what I really think is that-

   5. TFTim Ferriss13:59

      Oh, I'm open to the religion question.

   6. SCSusan Cain14:00

      [laughs]

   7. TFTim Ferriss14:01

      Yeah. My views have become much more, not flexible, but accepting of many facets of religion in the last five to 10 years. So I'm happy to dive right in.

   8. SCSusan Cain14:11

      Mine too, and I've completely sensed that in you. I mean, heard it-

   9. TFTim Ferriss14:15

      Mm

   10. SCSusan Cain14:15

       ... from you and sensed it also. I believe that the fundamental heart of humanity, of being alive, is the sense that there is a perfect and beautiful world out there somewhere, and we're not in it, and we've been banished from it. I mean, that's why the central myth of Western culture is, you know, the banishment from the Garden of Eden. But you see this kind of longing for a different world or the longing for the beloved of the soul in the Sufi tradition. You see manifestations of this in any tradition that you look at. And what minor key music is really doing is expressing that. That's really all it's doing. It's, it's saying we love beauty, we love truth, we love love, and we can't completely have it right now, but there's something about the fact that we're all stuck in this condition together [laughs] of not having it, but also united in the desire to reach for it and, you know, these beautiful acts that very deeply flawed hu- humans sometimes take in order to try to get closer to that garden. Like, that's-

   11. TFTim Ferriss15:20

       Mm

   12. SCSusan Cain15:20

       ... that's the best part of humanity, and that's what the music is saying.

   13. TFTim Ferriss15:24

       Yeah. I've been very fascinated in exploring music that historically I've had almost no exposure to for the emotions and the gradation of emotions that they can elicit. And specifically, and I'm no musician so people feel free to correct me [laughs] on the internet afterwards-

   14. SCSusan Cain15:47

       [laughs]

   15. TFTim Ferriss15:47

       ... I'm sure you will. But unequal temperament music. So let's say as examples Turkish music, Persian music, what we might consider Arab or Arabic music-

   16. SCSusan Cain16:00

       Mm-hmm

   17. TFTim Ferriss16:00

       ... have a, a range and a level of resolution in a sense, not resolution in the sense of finality or answers, but of fidelity that is unlike anything I've ever heard. So it's, it's produced in me, I think, emotions that are very hard to trigger using, uh, let's just call it modern equal temperament music. So not to, not to dwell on the music side, but I do think that it is such a simple way to get root access to the brain or to the emotional self. [laughs] It's, it's really incredible. I will say though, on the minor key side, so there is minor key music I love, and for the life of me, I can't figure out why minor key piano music specifically is just generally speaking punishing to me-

   18. SCSusan Cain16:57

       Hmm

   19. TFTim Ferriss16:57

       ... whereas what we might consider stringed instruments, right-

   20. SCSusan Cain17:00

       Mm-hmm

   21. TFTim Ferriss17:00

       ... cello, et cetera-

   22. SCSusan Cain17:01

       Mm-hmm

   23. TFTim Ferriss17:01

       ... I find more, uh, nourishing in some sense. I have no idea why that's the case-

   24. SCSusan Cain17:08

       Oh

   25. TFTim Ferriss17:08

       ... but that is the case for me. I have trouble with the ... I get sad, and I wanna ask you to sort of talk about the definition of terms, right?

   26. SCSusan Cain17:18

       Yeah. Yeah.

   27. TFTim Ferriss17:18

       Because I, I would imagine people are, are dep- th- there are people who feel grief, say, with the death of a loved one, then there are people who feel kind of depressed or despondent, and these are distinct. They seem to be distinct things.

   28. SCSusan Cain17:34

       Mm-hmm.

   29. TFTim Ferriss17:35

       Perhaps we could just start there. Would you like to just define or put a microscope on what you were aiming to explore emotionally in Bittersweet?

   30. SCSusan Cain17:46

       Bittersweetness itself I define as the state in which you know, you accept, and you truly in- inhabit the idea that life is always simultaneously joy and sorrow. It's light and dark. There's an amazing Arabic expression, "Days of honey, days of onions."
9. 20:16 – 25:15

   What’s the payoff? Creativity, connection, and the body’s empathy response

   1. TFTim Ferriss20:16

      So let me get personal for a second.

   2. SCSusan Cain20:19

      Sure.

   3. TFTim Ferriss20:19

      Uh, that's sort of directing the arrow back at myself, and then I would love to, to hear your thoughts. So as someone personally who has struggled with depression throughout my entire life, I think I have conflated those two myself.

   4. SCSusan Cain20:33

      Mm-hmm.

   5. TFTim Ferriss20:34

      And if I see the onset or feel the onset of anything resembling melancholy, with the exception of this unequal temperament music, which is interesting-

   6. SCSusan Cain20:45

      Yeah

   7. TFTim Ferriss20:45

      ... I tend to have a panic response 'cause I'm like, "Okay, I'm walking along a narrow path on the edge of," I wouldn't say a cliff, but a very steep incline, and if I start to slip, there's the potential that I fall and then tumble and then off I go. Right? So I have this panic response. So the qu- the question then is: what is the value? I'm just gonna stand in for the listener, right?

   8. SCSusan Cain21:13

      Mm-hmm, sure.

   9. TFTim Ferriss21:13

      Like why should someone explore this?

   10. SCSusan Cain21:17

       So first of all, I hear you, and, and it may be, I don't know that we really know, but it may be that these states are a difference of degree as opposed to a difference in kind. And I feel like-

   11. TFTim Ferriss21:28

       Right

   12. SCSusan Cain21:28

       ... your, your reaction is suggesting that it's a difference in degree, and you're then afraid of-

   13. TFTim Ferriss21:33

       I'm not saying it's irrational response. It's just a kind of knee-jerk fear reaction.

   14. SCSusan Cain21:38

       Yeah, and it makes total sense. But the value in these states of being, and I'm sure you've experienced it when you hear that music that, that happens to speak to you, like that we all have different triggers. But the value is it's the root of our creative impulse. The word longing [laughs] like we think of it in our culture as being a kind of passive and helpless state. Like, you know, you're like mired in longing you would think. But the etymology of that word is to reach for something. You know, you're like long, you're literally getting longer as you reach for something.

   15. TFTim Ferriss22:12

       Hmm.

   16. SCSusan Cain22:12

       So that's, that's what creative people are doing.

   17. TFTim Ferriss22:15

       I like that.

   18. SCSusan Cain22:15

       Yeah. I mean, creative people, what's motivating them, they may not be conscious of it. They're like, they know that there's something more shining and beautiful over there, and they want to bring it over here by bringing-

   19. TFTim Ferriss22:27

       Hmm

   20. SCSusan Cain22:27

       ... something into being. So one thing that's in it for you, you could say is, um [laughs]

   21. TFTim Ferriss22:32

       [laughs]

   22. SCSusan Cain22:32

       ... is, is creativity. And then-

   23. TFTim Ferriss22:34

       What's the payoff, Susan? Goddammit.

   24. SCSusan Cain22:36

       [laughs]

   25. TFTim Ferriss22:37

       Sorry, I'm kidding. Kidding.

   26. SCSusan Cain22:38

       No, it's good. It's good for you to ask the questions that people are-

   27. TFTim Ferriss22:41

       Yeah

   28. SCSusan Cain22:41

       ... skeptically thinking to themselves. And then another one is it, it's one of the best pathways that we have towards love and connection, especially now when everything is so divisive. To shut ourselves off from one of the strongest pathways we have I think is a real mistake.

   29. TFTim Ferriss23:00

       Yeah.

   30. SCSusan Cain23:01

       I talk about this in the book, and I don't know, I don't wanna go in too much of a detour, but, um, like that-
10. 25:15 – 32:21

    Emotional inoculation, Sufism’s heartache, and longing in everyday relationships

    1. TFTim Ferriss25:15

       You know, I was also thinking as you were talking that part of the reason I have, have started listening to this music, right? Because you might ask, "Well, if you're so afraid of slipping, why are you listening to this music?" [laughs]

    2. SCSusan Cain25:25

       Yeah, that is a good question.

    3. TFTim Ferriss25:26

       And, and, and the answer is, I feel like having had some exposure to it and having not slipped-

    4. SCSusan Cain25:34

       Hmm

    5. TFTim Ferriss25:34

       ... that ... And this is not gonna be the best comparison or phrasing to use, but there's this expression, you know, the more you sweat in training, the less you bleed in combat.

    6. SCSusan Cain25:45

       Mm-hmm.

    7. TFTim Ferriss25:46

       And I also feel that in this instance, if you're afraid of slipping, if you're going to have a panic response when you encounter certain emotions, for me at least, I am trying to almost like iocane powder in The Princess Bride, like to expose myself little by little so that when it happens, and of course it's gonna happen. You're human. Like, people are gonna die. Tragedies will occur. Love will be lost. Things will happen. That I'll be more resilient in the face of those inevitable times by inoculating myself, in a sense. And then pursuing it in that way, I ended up enjoying a lot of this music, which I did not expect. And that's kinda how I ended up where I am. I would, I would love to talk about or have you describe the research a bit and explain where Sufism comes into it. And my, my understanding, which is very, very minimal, but ... Or I should say my attraction to Sufism and other, let's just call it like mystic or mystical traditions, is that for me at least, it describes more of a direct experience of what they might term the divine as opposed to an intermediated kind of religious structure that is predicated on certain power dynamics within like a human organization, right? So the direct experience. And I just would love to know how on earth Sufism came into the picture and what other things came into the picture.

    8. SCSusan Cain27:27

       I like your description of mystical traditions in general. I, I ... and I think they appeal to people who, for whatever reason, are allergic to dogma, tend to be skeptics or whatever it is. Like, you know, people who aren't just gonna accept something because it's written down. Um, you're like y- you wanna think for yourself. You wanna experience it for yourself. So there's that aspect of Su- ... And, and I am that type of person. I drive my husband crazy sometimes as I say, 'cause like, you know, I'm the person where if you say X, I'm thinking, "Well, what about Y?" You know? And, and that's just how my brain goes. But that wasn't really ... That aspect really did get me interested in mysticism in general, but Sufism in particular, I guess what happened was ... I mean, first I met some Sufis, and then as I started to learn about it, this one Sufi teacher, his name is Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee, whose videos you can find all over the internet-

    9. TFTim Ferriss28:23

       It's an amazing name

    10. SCSusan Cain28:24

        ... it's an amazing name.

    11. TFTim Ferriss28:25

        Love that name.

    12. SCSusan Cain28:25

        And he speaks in just the gentlest, l- most lilting, Welsh inflected accent. Uh, like he's just mesmerizing to listen to. And somehow I found his videos, because when I met these Sufis, I got really interested in this question of Sufism and longing and, you know, and longing is the thing that I've been feeling all my life that I couldn't explain. And, and anyway, he, he says, "Sufism was at first heartache. Only later was it something to talk about."

    13. TFTim Ferriss28:58

        Huh. Say more about that, please. And just for those people wondering, Llewellyn, I'm not even gonna try to spell. Just throw W- two Ls, E-W. The Vaughan-Lee is, I thought it was V-O-N. It's V-A-U-G-H-A-N-L-E-E. So could you say more about what you just said, just to expand on that a bit?

    14. SCSusan Cain29:21

        You find the following idea in all the mystical traditions that longing carries you closer to the divine. So the heartache that you feel, Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee would say we often mistake as depression. We mistake our sorrow sometimes as depression when what it really is is a longing for whatever you wanna call it. You know, he would call it the beloved of the soul, but I call it the perfect and beautiful world. Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz calls it somewhere over the rainbow, but we all have that. And, and, and there are a thousand different words for it. Like, I, in every culture you find it, and I, I, I talk about a lot of them in the book. But we all come in with this kind of fundamental heartache that we mistake.

    15. TFTim Ferriss30:12

        Yeah.

    16. SCSusan Cain30:13

        I don't mean to say that people who are experiencing depression, that it's not real. I'm not, I'm not saying that at all. I'm just saying there's this other dimension- Of our experience

    17. TFTim Ferriss30:24

        I was also just thinking, you know what you're saying could be g- general in the sense of Somewhere Over the Rainbow or longing for the beloved of the soul. And we mistakenly label that as depression, right? Which can have many causes, depression. Biochemical, could be event-based, any number of things. But also you could have a longing for, I was just thinking, like connection with close friends-

    18. SCSusan Cain30:49

        Yes

    19. TFTim Ferriss30:50

        ... and feel the symptoms of that deficit and then mistakenly label it as this internally generated isolated depression, whereas in fact you're just longing for something that is deeply treasured or nourishing to you, whether you realize it or not.

    20. SCSusan Cain31:07

        I think that's right, and I think because our culture doesn't really... We, we don't have a language for longing even though in the Christian tradition, the most quoted line from St. Augustine is, "Our heart is restless till it rests in thee."

    21. TFTim Ferriss31:22

        Hmm.

    22. SCSusan Cain31:23

        So as I say, you find this in every single tradition. This is a deep aspect of being human. But because we just have no language or concept for it in contemporary culture, it actually ends up causing a problem in our love relationships because the same longing that we have for perfect and unconditional love from our loved ones and our friends, that's just a different manifestation of this fundamental longing that all humans come into the world with. And so when we get frustrated with our partners or our friends because they have this foible or that one or they're not understanding this thing about us or that thing, yes, there's concrete issues to work through, but sort of underneath it, there's also this feeling of like, you know, "I thought you were [laughs] gonna be the Garden of Eden, and you're not."

    23. TFTim Ferriss32:13

        [laughs]

    24. SCSusan Cain32:14

        And so understanding this aspect of ourselves is, can be very illuminating for our daily lives too.

11. 32:21 – 35:50

    When sorrow fuels art: studies, the ‘in-between’ state, and Cohen’s transcendence machine

    1. TFTim Ferriss32:21

       You mentioned earlier in this conversation the relationship between this longing or even sorrow and creativity. Could you elaborate on that? Just flesh out why you believe that to be the case, any examples that come to mind. Just speak a little bit more about how creativity could be the product or byproduct of these things.

    2. SCSusan Cain32:54

       With creativity, there, there's a long kind of intellectual tradition of thinking about... Of, of, of sort of noticing the association between creativity and a kind of sorrow. You know, there have been studies done that have shown that many highly creative people, like a, a wildly disproportionate number of creative people were once orphans, were orphaned when they were children. Then there's another study [laughs] where they, they took a group of volunteers, and they had these volunteers give speeches, and half the people gave speeches to audiences who were told in advance that they should smile and clap and, and applaud. And then the other half gave speeches to frowning audiences who seemed incredibly disapproving. [laughs] And, and after it was done, you know, just as you would predict, the people who had given the speeches to the disapproving audience, they said they were in a bad mood. [laughs]

    3. TFTim Ferriss33:49

       [laughs]

    4. SCSusan Cain33:50

       And the other ones, the other ones were feeling kind of pumped up. And then they asked these people who had given the speeches to make collages, which they had professional artists rate for creativity later on. And they found that the people who had given the speeches to the disapproving audiences created more creative, you know, better rated collages. And that this was especially true for people who came in with a kind of hormonal profile that seemed to predispose them to emotionally vulnerable states. So you know, there, there's a lot of these different kinds of, of studies that we can look at. And at the same time, you know, there, there's also data showing if you're, if you're truly depressed, you're actually much less likely to be creative 'cause depression-

    5. TFTim Ferriss34:36

       Yeah

    6. SCSusan Cain34:36

       ... is such an emotional black hole that sucks up everything. But I think there's something about that in-between state where you're not depressed so you're still... You're, you're functional, but you're acutely aware of the gap between the desired world and the one that we inhabit. And the desire to fill that gap, that's really the creative impulse. Um, you know [laughs] and if you look at my, my favorite, Leonard Cohen, like he would talk explicitly about that being what drove him. And his son Adam Cohen talks about how his whole idea was that this world is, it's beautiful and it's broken, and what he was doing with all his songs, that they were a kind of transcendence delivery machine. Like just the way cigarette is, uh, cigarettes are a way of delivering nicotine, in this case it, it's music delivering transcendence to people who are inherently broken and beautiful. [laughs]

    7. TFTim Ferriss35:34

       So I am going to ask you, not yet-

    8. SCSusan Cain35:36

       Okay

    9. TFTim Ferriss35:36

       ... but I'm gonna let this gestate for a minute or two. So I'm gonna ask you about what methods or tools or resources people can use if they want to explore some of those in-between states.

    10. SCSusan Cain35:49

        Mm-hmm.

12. 35:50 – 47:38

    A song as a portal: Idan Raichel, love-as-divine metaphor, and words for longing across cultures

    1. TFTim Ferriss35:50

       And since you mentioned music, I want to bring up a specific piece of music, and I'd like to ask you about it. And probably the first thing I'm gonna need to ask is how on earth you pronounce these names. [laughs]

    2. SCSusan Cain36:02

       [laughs]

    3. TFTim Ferriss36:03

       But let me... You're gonna love this butchering, and then I'll let you fix it.

    4. SCSusan Cain36:06

       [laughs] If I know how.

    5. TFTim Ferriss36:08

       So the song is called Hinach Yafah-

    6. SCSusan Cain36:11

       Oh, yeah, yeah

    7. TFTim Ferriss36:12

       ... by Idan Raichel.

    8. SCSusan Cain36:15

       Idan Raichel. Uh-huh. [laughs]

    9. TFTim Ferriss36:17

       [laughs] Okay. So there we go.

    10. SCSusan Cain36:19

        [laughs]

    11. TFTim Ferriss36:20

        So I wanna know how you found this. I wanna know why it had an impact and how it had an impact, and then use that as a segue into- Approaches people can take, tools, experiments, anything at all for exploring some of these in-between states.

    12. SCSusan Cain36:38

        Okay. That was a whole lot of questions, so I'll do one by one.

    13. TFTim Ferriss36:40

        It was.

    14. SCSusan Cain36:41

        Okay.

    15. TFTim Ferriss36:41

        So the first part is this particular song, just tell me all about it.

    16. SCSusan Cain36:46

        Okay.

    17. TFTim Ferriss36:46

        And then after that, what might people do if they want to explore these states?

    18. SCSusan Cain36:50

        Sure. Okay, so this particular song... You know, so [laughs] I'm in my 50s, so I was living in New York City back in the day when there was still, you know, those Virgin Megastore music-

    19. TFTim Ferriss37:02

        Yeah

    20. SCSusan Cain37:02

        ... places. And you would go into them, and I've always loved what they called world music, you know, like music-

    21. TFTim Ferriss37:08

        Mm

    22. SCSusan Cain37:08

        ... from all over the place, and it was always at the back of the store. And I would go to the back of the store, and they had these listening stations, and I would just go from one to the other and-

    23. TFTim Ferriss37:17

        Mm-hmm

    24. SCSusan Cain37:17

        ... find stuff. And, and I found him that way. I found Idan that way. And somehow we-

    25. TFTim Ferriss37:22

        Idan. Idan.

    26. SCSusan Cain37:23

        Idan. Idan.

    27. TFTim Ferriss37:23

        How do you say the last name? Do you know?

    28. SCSusan Cain37:25

        I believe it's Raichel.

    29. TFTim Ferriss37:27

        Okay. I-

    30. SCSusan Cain37:27

        In fact, he-
13. 47:38 – 58:09

    Practices for accessing bittersweet states: beauty, ‘captions,’ and emotional honesty at work

    1. SCSusan Cain47:38

       So there's a few things that you can do. If you think about the way that looking at the cherry blossoms or really looking at anything that's beautiful can make you cry from a sense of being moved, the reason that we're crying usually is because deep down it's triggering u- in us this sense of like, "Oh my God, this thing is so beautiful," but this world that we live in actually is not really that except for brief moments. So just this, the state of being immersed in beauty is one of the best things that you can do. And I, I will tell you, I actually had an experience like this myself during the pandemic. So at the [laughs] at the start of the pandemic, I was very much in the habit of waking up and doomscrolling on Twitter.

    2. TFTim Ferriss48:22

       [laughs]

    3. SCSusan Cain48:23

       And, and I also, I lost my father and my brother to COVID, uh, also-

    4. TFTim Ferriss48:29

       Oh, I'm so sorry. I didn't know that

    5. SCSusan Cain48:30

       ... quite early on in the pandemic, so all this stuff was happening. And I decided that I was gonna... It wasn't even... I don't know why I did this. It wasn't like I had a programmatic reason to do it, but all of a sudden I decided I was gonna start following art accounts on Twitter, and I just, like, tweeted and said, "What should I follow?" And the next thing I knew, like [laughs] my whole feed was full of art. And then from there, I started posting art almost every day now on my social media. I start my day by posting favorite art and together with, like, an idea that I'm thinking about or a quote or whatever, and it's become a just amazing daily practice that I'm sharing with people all over the world, which is so cool. Which is a long way of saying one thing you can do is immerse yourself consciously into a state of beauty.

    6. TFTim Ferriss49:18

       Haven't you done that also when writing? Finding locations that are beautiful or attractive. Have, hasn't that also at some point, maybe it still is, been part of your writing process?

    7. SCSusan Cain49:31

       Yeah. Wow, I can't believe you remember that. [laughs]

    8. TFTim Ferriss49:34

       [laughs]

    9. SCSusan Cain49:35

       So, so yeah. I mean, pre-COVID it used to be in cafes because I love so much cafe energy. It's just like my happiest place in the world, and I don't do it so much now. So now, like, I'm here in my office.

    10. TFTim Ferriss49:48

        It's a pretty good-looking office-

    11. SCSusan Cain49:49

        Yeah [laughs]

    12. TFTim Ferriss49:49

        ... nonetheless.

    13. SCSusan Cain49:49

        Yeah, and so I've created this other thing. Like, I have... So I have my candle, and that's the first thing I do when I come in in the morning. I light that. I always have my latte, 'cause that's magic for me. And then I have this thing [laughs] I will show you. This is a whole story in and of itself, but when I first met my husband, I had just stopped practicing law, and I wanted to be a writer, and he had just come from, he had spent the '90s working for the UN, doing peacekeeping in, like, the world's worst war zones of the '90s, and he had published this memoir about it that was, like, amazing. And at the time [laughs] all I had really done with my writing, I, I was writing this memoir in sonnet form, 'cause that's what I was doing. And, uh-

    14. TFTim Ferriss50:39

        Wow, that sounds hard. [laughs]

    15. SCSusan Cain50:42

        [laughs] Yeah, and I, and like I show, and I told him about it. I showed up at our second date and I handed him some poems that I was working on, and then that night he went home and he sent me this email which I now have printed out in my office. So I'm gonna hold it up, but I'll read it in case people are listening. But-

    16. TFTim Ferriss51:00

        All right

    17. SCSusan Cain51:01

        ... okay. [laughs]

    18. TFTim Ferriss51:01

        Oh, [laughs] I hope people are listening. [laughs]

    19. SCSusan Cain51:03

        [laughs] Oh, I mean, like, in case people can't see the video.

    20. TFTim Ferriss51:05

        Oh. [laughs]

    21. SCSusan Cain51:05

        That's what I meant.

    22. TFTim Ferriss51:06

        [laughs] I was just...

    23. SCSusan Cain51:07

        [laughs] Wait, I'm actually thinking this isn't even gonna come through on the video-

    24. TFTim Ferriss51:11

        It-

    25. SCSusan Cain51:12

        ... that well-

    26. TFTim Ferriss51:12

        It's gonna-

    27. SCSusan Cain51:12

        ... so I'll just read it

    28. TFTim Ferriss51:13

        ... oh, that's funny. I can only, I can only see a little bit.

    29. SCSusan Cain51:16

        [laughs]

    30. TFTim Ferriss51:16

        It actually looks great. I can, I can f- piece it together Memento style, but why don't you read it-
14. 58:09 – 1:11:11

    Inherited grief and ancestral shockwaves: research, reframing, and the ‘wounded healer’ path

    1. TFTim Ferriss58:09

       Huh. This might be a good segue for talking about sort of kids, what kids are feeling, and then of course as kids age they turn into these things called grownups. And sometimes grownups have kids. [laughs] This is going somewhere. Don't worry. I know you have written about in some respects inheriting the grief or griefs of our parents-

    2. SCSusan Cain58:34

       Mm-hmm

    3. TFTim Ferriss58:34

       ... and ancestors.

    4. SCSusan Cain58:36

       Mm-hmm.

    5. TFTim Ferriss58:36

       Could you speak to that and also mention if there's anything to be done, right? Or is it just like having, you know, genetics for like small calves and you're like, "Well, you know, I can go to the gym but they're always gonna be pretty small," or is there something that we can do with whatever we have accumulated through our bloodline?

    6. SCSusan Cain58:59

       I went down this whole path of looking at inherited grief and I ended up devoting a whole chapter of the book to it because originally it was just because I went to this seminar for bereavement counselors 'cause I was just curious to learn more about that. And what I found was we were each asked to tell a story of loss that we had experienced. I really didn't wanna tell my story 'cause I felt like it wasn't as bad as some of the other stories that I, I heard that day, and I felt wrong to be talking about it. But I felt like I had to 'cause it seemed ungenerous, you know, not to tell my story. And then when I did, I found myself crying much more than anybody else had. And, and the seminar was run by this incredibly skillful guy named Simcha Raphael. It was at the New York Open Center. And I forget how he came to it, but he basically said to me that I seem to be carrying a grief that was like apart from what I personally had experienced, that I, that I was carrying a deeper grief than that, and that it was a kind of grief of the ancestors. And, and I started realizing that... Well, I mean, I, I, I come from this family that's kind of mired in loss really, you know? On, on both sides, on my mother's side and my father's side, we lost almost all of our relatives in the Holocaust. And although those weren't people who I knew directly, there's kind of a, a shockwave that reverberates through. When he said that, I realized that I had always had this kind of tendency to, even when I was a kid, to cry at any kind of moment where it was like that which once was will never be again.

    7. TFTim Ferriss1:00:50

       Hmm.

    8. SCSusan Cain1:00:50

       Even though at that point I had not really experienced any loss in my life and I had a happy life, I still had this intense reaction. And once he opened up that idea, I started researching the whole area of inherited grief. It's like, it's absolutely fascinating. You know, like there's all this research that finds that, that the children of Holocaust survivors have particular biomarkers that you wouldn't find in a- another control group population. Um, and you can find this in animals too. It's a pretty, it's a pretty new area of research, but the results are incredibly compelling.

    9. TFTim Ferriss1:01:29

       Hmm.

    10. SCSusan Cain1:01:30

        There seems to be this, this idea, this thing that we can inherit from the people that came before us. And, you know, in a way, the question of whether it comes to us biologically or because of what we learn from our parents culturally, it almost doesn't matter. We're inheriting it somehow. And then to your question of what can you do about it, I have found it incredibly empowering to know this because there's a way in which you can get to the insight of, "I'm gonna love those ancestors, and I'm gonna feel empathy for that which they experienced," at the same time that you're holding the idea that their story is not my story. And I don't think we take the time to realize that you can do, you can hold both those truths at the same time. Their story is not my story, and yet I love them, these people I've never met before. I guess 'cause music has been our theme here, there's this amazing song also by Dara Williams. It's called After All, and she... It, it's a masterpiece of a song, and it describes how she had been beset by a kind of mysterious depression. And to come out of it, she traveled down what she calls the whispering well of talking to her parents about her family history and realizing all the different things that she was carrying from the people who had come before her, and how that process of excavating all of that and understanding it and loving it, that was what freed her. And then she comes out into a kind of like shining light on the other side, and it, it helps her with her depression. So, you know, whether we're doing that through some kind of formal therapy or through our own sort of ad hoc process of traveling down the whispering well, there are ways to do it.

    11. TFTim Ferriss1:03:14

        We don't have to take this [laughs] right turn because it could really un- uncork Pandora's box, but this is part of one facet of exploration in looking at psychedelic-assisted therapies-

    12. SCSusan Cain1:03:31

        Mm-hmm

    13. TFTim Ferriss1:03:31

        ... is multi-generational trauma or ancestral grief. And I also wanted to mention, lest anyone listening think, "Who are these wackadoodles?"

    14. SCSusan Cain1:03:47

        [laughs]

    15. TFTim Ferriss1:03:47

        "This sounds like some new agey bullshit."

    16. SCSusan Cain1:03:49

        Right.

    17. TFTim Ferriss1:03:50

        I did a quick search just to pull it up because I know it exists. Ex- here's an example, and this is in Scientific American. "Fearful memories passed down to mouse descendants. Genetic imprint from a traumatic experiences carries through at least two generations."

    18. SCSusan Cain1:04:04

        Exactly.

    19. TFTim Ferriss1:04:05

        And then this is from Nature magazine, which is also a very respectable, esteemed publication, and there are, in other words, animal models and scientific studies and peer-reviewed literature that supports this, uh, in various species of animal-

    20. SCSusan Cain1:04:27

        Right

    21. TFTim Ferriss1:04:27

        ... including mice. And the authors suggest a similar phenomenon could influence anxiety and addiction in humans. Now, there, there's a lot of skepticism. I'm just gonna-

    22. SCSusan Cain1:04:36

        Mm-hmm

    23. TFTim Ferriss1:04:37

        ... just gonna read a little bit of this very quickly. Some researchers are skeptical of the findings because the biological mechanism that explains the phenomenon has, has not been identified. I'm kind of skeptical of such skeptics because we all use, for instance, microwaves every day, but very few of us understand how microwaves or refrigerators, if you don't like microwaves-

    24. SCSusan Cain1:04:54

        [laughs]

    25. TFTim Ferriss1:04:55

        ... how they work, right? [laughs] So in the absence of a mechanism, this is also true for a lot of commonly prescribed medications. We still don't actually understand how they work. But putting that aside, so according to convention, this is going back to the article, "Genetic sequences contained in DNA are the only way to transmit biological information across generations. Random DNA mutations, when beneficial, enable organizations to adapt to changing conditions, but this process typically occurs slowly over many generations. Yet some studies have hinted that environmental factors can influence biology more rapidly through epigenetic modifications-

    26. SCSusan Cain1:05:25

        Right

    27. TFTim Ferriss1:05:25

        ... which alter the expression of genes." And it goes into many more examples and so on, but there are a lot of scientists, very credible scientists, including looks like many quoted in this, Kerry Ressler, a neurobiologist and psychiatrist at Emory University, who have studied this in animals. And I want to say, someone could call BS on this, but I want to say that it's even tr- like this biological material can sometime be transferable from one animal to another, even if they're not direct descendants. So if you use, say, electrical shocks to produce a state of acute anxiety and learned helplessness in mice when you turn off the lights, that there is some way of transferring genetic material from that animal to an unrelated but same species animal that will induce a similar fear of the dark, even though it has not been learned. So there is, in other words, a biological basis. There seems to be a biological basis for what, exactly what you're talking about, right? 'Cause the Holocaust, in the grand scheme of things as, as the example you used, not that long ago.

    28. SCSusan Cain1:06:37

        Right.

    29. TFTim Ferriss1:06:37

        Really just not that long ago. So...

    30. SCSusan Cain1:06:41

        I wanna offer two other ideas of ways to cope with that.
15. 1:11:11 – 1:36:37

    What Bittersweet is (and isn’t): the ‘main road’ frame, favorite quotes, and Tim’s turn toward feeling

    1. TFTim Ferriss1:11:11

       ... where credit's due. Yeah, give her her shout-out. And you may have already answered this, I apologize if you have, but it's a lot of work to do a book. It's a lot of work to do any book, and as we've already covered, you take your time, you really immerse yourself, saturate yourself in exploration and travel far and wide. It's a lot to sign up for. Why do that with this book?

    2. SCSusan Cain1:11:39

       I do it because I would not rather be doing anything else.

    3. TFTim Ferriss1:11:42

       [laughs] That's, that's a very good answer.

    4. SCSusan Cain1:11:45

       [laughs]

    5. TFTim Ferriss1:11:45

       Yeah.

    6. SCSusan Cain1:11:45

       I love doing it. I, you know, I'm usually, like, drawn by some question that I'm driven to answer, and I've noticed, I, I didn't actually set out to do the following thing when I was writing this book, but I realized in the end that there was a similarity to what I had done with Quiet, which is it's a kind of the identification of a hidden superpower that our culture doesn't normally talk about.

    7. TFTim Ferriss1:12:11

       Hmm.

    8. SCSusan Cain1:12:11

       But, you know, the superpower of being in touch with the simultaneous joy and sorrow of life. I believe it's one of the deepest superpowers we have. When do you ever get to talk about it? So that motivates me.

    9. TFTim Ferriss1:12:25

       Hmm.

    10. SCSusan Cain1:12:25

        And I think just the act of creating something beautiful, whether you pull it off or not almost doesn't matter. Just the attempt to do it, I don't really know any better state of life than that.

    11. TFTim Ferriss1:12:38

        Hear, hear. And I just wanna point out, this happens a lot. You're not gonna be able to see it if you're just listening to this, but so I just mentioned my dog Molly, and she-

    12. SCSusan Cain1:12:47

        I thought you were petting your dog

    13. TFTim Ferriss1:12:49

        ... and she-

    14. SCSusan Cain1:12:49

        Yeah. [laughs]

    15. TFTim Ferriss1:12:49

        She just came down after the mention to say hello. So.

    16. SCSusan Cain1:12:54

        She's a love.

    17. TFTim Ferriss1:12:57

        She's got a good radar. My external nervous system, as I often joke, although it's not really a joke. [laughs] We may have touched on this in the last conversation, but if not, and even if we did, we can always State it again. Books that you have gifted most to other people. Anything come to mind?

    18. SCSusan Cain1:13:15

        There's one that I actually gifted to you that I especially love.

    19. TFTim Ferriss1:13:19

        Ah, I- I-

    20. SCSusan Cain1:13:20

        What the Heck Was It Called?

    21. TFTim Ferriss1:13:20

        ... have it at home

    22. SCSusan Cain1:13:21

        It was like, art is the highest form of hope.

    23. TFTim Ferriss1:13:24

        Yes.

    24. SCSusan Cain1:13:24

        Love that book. And-

    25. TFTim Ferriss1:13:25

        That's exactly right. That's a Phaidon book, I think, if I'm pronouncing that correctly.

    26. SCSusan Cain1:13:29

        I think so.

    27. TFTim Ferriss1:13:29

        It's- it's, yeah, beautifully made. I have that on my coffee table in Austin.

    28. SCSusan Cain1:13:35

        Yeah, and it's basically, for those listening, it's basically just this book of- of quotes from various artists.

    29. TFTim Ferriss1:13:41

        Art is the highest form of hope.

    30. SCSusan Cain1:13:43

        Yeah. I- I don't know if there's any quote that sticks in your mind from that book. I don't wanna put you on the spot, but-
16. 1:36:37 – 1:42:04

    Mutual reflections and closing invitation

    1. SCSusan Cain1:36:37

       Well, I mean, oh my gosh. So thank you so much for sharing all that.

    2. TFTim Ferriss1:36:43

       Yeah, my pleasure.

    3. SCSusan Cain1:36:45

       If I could say two things that I... I mean, there are so many things that one could say after everything that you just shared. One is that it's really interesting that you went to that place of, like, all the different people who you've met along the way who are so successful on the outside, and then you find what's really driving them. And I actually thought about this this morning as I was going through that list of questions that you ask of, like, what would you tell yourself, your 30-year-old self or whatever.

    4. TFTim Ferriss1:37:15

       Yeah.

    5. SCSusan Cain1:37:16

       And I had a few things, but one of them was to understand that all these people who you meet who seem like they have it so together, they, they're so successful, like, that, that they're all just humans. And, uh, like, I feel like one of the, one of the great privileges of having written a book that turned into a bestseller is that you get to meet all these people, and especially if it's a book like the kind that I write, people tell you the truth about what they really feel. And so now I've heard all these stories and, uh, like have just become aware of, of all these dynamics that you're describing. And the second thing I was struck by is when you talk about that kind of moral obligation, 'cause I have to say, like I, you know, we don't get to talk to each other that much, but I have a sense of what you're doing through the things you put into the world, and it really feels like you're driven by that. And one of the things I talk about in the book is how, you know, we go through pain and then there's kind of like a crossroads of what are you gonna do with it. If you don't acknowledge it and turn it into something else, you're invariably gonna take it out, as you said, on yourself or on other people. Or there's this other crossroads that you can walk down of turning it into something else, and I feel like that's what I've been watching you do for years.

    6. TFTim Ferriss1:38:30

       Oh, thank you. I really appreciate that. Yeah. It's ... I mean, I feel like in a lot of respects, I mean, you're, you're, you're doing similar work. I mean, uh, through your books. I mean, you're conveying truth of human experience in a way that resonates with people who might struggle otherwise to identify, let alone express and describe what their internal experience is. And by doing that, I think you are not just providing a salve to people that they don't know they needed, but you're providing a ... You're providing language, which is incredibly powerful, right? I mean, we, we [laughs] I'll save that for another podcast, but you're providing language kind of like, like it's like Wittgenstein, right? Like, the limits of my language are the limits of my world. I mean, I really believe that.

    7. SCSusan Cain1:39:28

       Mm. Mm-hmm.

    8. TFTim Ferriss1:39:29

       So giving someone language is no small thing. To label and interact with and convey and on some level integrate their experience, and then you're giving them also empathy through the stories that tell them they are not alone. You're doing a lot of things with your books that I, I respect tremendously, and it's, uh, I respect it not just because it is valuable in the world and sorely needed, but because it is fucking difficult to do. [laughs]

    9. SCSusan Cain1:40:03

       [laughs]

    10. TFTim Ferriss1:40:03

        So, [laughs] so I really appreciate the work that, that you do and that you put out in the world also.

    11. SCSusan Cain1:40:12

        Thank you so much.

    12. TFTim Ferriss1:40:13

        Yeah. Susan, is there anything else that you would like to, to add before we come to a close? Anything you'd like to ask of my audience? Anything else?

    13. SCSusan Cain1:40:24

        For anybody who is listening today who feels moved by what we were talking about or feels like, oh, this is me, I guess I just hope that you will connect with me one way or another on social or through my book or whatever so that we can stay in touch. That's all I would say.

    14. TFTim Ferriss1:40:42

        Perfect. And I will just say again, the new book is Bittersweet: How Sorrow and Longing Make Us Whole, where you will get to revisit mono no aware and all sorts of good things.

    15. SCSusan Cain1:40:54

        [laughs]

    16. TFTim Ferriss1:40:55

        And I really, really believe in the building of one's emotional vocabulary and range. I think it not only gives you a richer experience of life, but it, it creates a certain anti-fragility, I think, that to life's inevitable ups and downs. So I, I do think-

    17. SCSusan Cain1:41:19

        Yeah

    18. TFTim Ferriss1:41:19

        ... this is an important book. So Bittersweet is the book. People can find you Susan Cain, C-A-I-N, .net, susancain.net.

    19. SCSusan Cain1:41:27

        Mm-hmm.

    20. TFTim Ferriss1:41:27

        On Twitter, @susancain. Facebook, author Susan Cain. LinkedIn, Susan Cain. Instagram, Susan Cain author. We'll link to everything, including this amazing playlist that I must get my hands on. So we will also put the playlist in the show notes, tim.blog/podcast. Just search Susan and it will pop right up. And I would say to everyone listening, till next time, be a little kinder than you think necessary, both to yourself and to others. And thank you so much for tuning in.

Episode duration: 1:42:26