How to Pursue Your Goals—Without Suffering (Angela Duckworth, PhD)

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2:04My hope is that these conversations spark moments of resonance and plant tiny seeds of awareness so that we might all collectively learn and grow. Here is today's guest, psychologist Angela Duckworth on the importance of how we situate ourselves. It's just incredibly hard to really resist these forces that are, you know, probably from evolution that we adapt to our circumstances. But once you have that insight, then you realize that you do have to shape your circumstances before they shape you. Angela Duckworth is a psychologist and a professor at the University of Pennsylvania. Many of you will remember her TED Talk and first book, Grit, the power of passion and perseverance, which was a number one New York Times bestseller. I just read Angela's new book, Situated, Find the People in Places that Bring Out Your Best, and I loved it. In many ways, this book picks up where Grit left off, recognizing the Grit while helpful is not always sufficient.

3:05I'm very much a striver and also like many of you, I grew up with the myth of individualism. So Angela's current work about how much were affected by the collective, by our environment, and by our situations really hit home for me. Today, she shares the largely optimistic side of this, which is becoming more conscious of the ways in which situational elements affect us ultimately helps us to choose the best situations for us, or to improve the ones we're in. Throughout our conversation, Angela shares some pretty funny and enlightening psychology findings that help explain why we can be so different across different settings, and why our expectations of ourselves are socially determined. She offers an alternative approach to effortfully pursuing our goals, which does not involve suffering and is actually more effective. And she shares a few personal stories that I loved. Let's die then. I'm thrilled you have another book.

4:11It's obvious that this is the follow-up to Grit, and I love considering what we were talking about before we started recording, that the book is bookended with Victor Frankel, I guess, not Frankel. As we were born. Yeah, neither of us are 100% sure, but... Yes, Victor Frankel. Right, who is often reduced to this idea of endurance through unimaginable suffering so long as you know your why? And your point is, actually, let's not reduce him, he said much more about the situation that we find ourselves and reduce suffering if you can and seek help, right? Yeah, and Frankel said, Frankel or Frankel, I'll say Frankel, because that's how I've been pronouncing the word most of my life. Frankel said that if you can change your situation, then not to do so would be masochistic, and that's his language. And I know he gets reduced to sort of, oh well, just change your attitude, you know, you can't change your situation, so change how you feel about it.

5:14And I don't think that's what Victor Frankel would want us to do. No, right? I mean, it's a beautiful backdrop, which is suffer if you absolutely must, but there are much better paths through, not only are there better paths through, but that survival, thriving life is dependent on the people you are surrounding yourself with, right? And this community, a people with whom he was sharing his why throughout his time in the concentration camps, anyway, it's a community, a lattice of support rather than this individualism that we've all been raised on, which I was raised on to, I very much relate to your story. I'm a striver, right? Try harder. Thank you. Not working, try even harder. Exactly. Yeah, go to bed later. Yeah, but as I was reading situated, I was like, of course, and recognizing in my own situation the way that my environment absolutely shaped what I do and who I am in the same way that it shaped my brother, and there's nothing exceptional about me other than, of course I grew up to be an author.

6:23All I did was read. I was reading that my parents gave us for entertainment and my brother is a book editor and it's not a literary gene. What was it like then? What was your childhood environment like? So I grew up in Missoula, Montana, which is a wonderful university town, a liberal bastion and a conservative state. And yeah, I grew up outside of town with horses in nature and books as companions, no cable TV, friends that were quite far down the road, inaccessible. And so yeah, I grew up reading like Shonda, you know, you write about Shonda and my parents prioritized books. They did not really indulge us outside of books, like enrichment activities, sports, and school. And so it's very clear what the priorities were. Yeah. I was just yesterday corresponding with social scientists collaborators and one of them mentioned just reminded all of us because it's blindingly true in so many data sets that the number of books that a child grows up with

7:37is a stunningly good predictor of life outcomes. And I very briefly mentioned this. Yeah, he's situated when I talk about parenting, but you know, the literature really is very extensive. And of course, you know, people might say, well, I want to random assignment study. I want to see what it's like to grow up in Montana in an exact house like that without the books, but it's such a stunning pattern. And it's so logical that if all you grow up around are places to run and you know, trees to climb and you know, people to talk to and books to read that has to be different from what I see today, which is that kids at the youngest ages are just plugged in. And all their role models, I mean, I was out to dinner last night and I looked around the restaurant dining room. And there's not a single couple. It was mostly adults. There were a couple of families. There was not a single couple that wasn't both on their devices. And I thought, you know, well, it's not what you described anyway.

8:37Yeah. Yeah. And I will say, you know, and I loved that part of the book and but it does give me some sadness that even though my house is stacked with books, my husband works for a shelving company, which we're perfect match. Yeah, you really are that my kids and I model it all the time and they're just not readers and I mean, but it also is. Yeah. Why? Yeah. Why do you? The culture, you know, as you point out, we're just living a culture in which there's so many other distractions. All the other kids. All the other kids. Yeah. All the other kids. It's very hard to parent against culture. And that's also why I love your book because it reasserts this we do not grow up in a vacuum and work entirely informed by what's around us. And the more conscious we are of those inputs, but positive and negative, the more we can actually control the way we respond to the environment versus this, I will succeed no matter what anywhere I am.

9:41It's just I will swim against the current. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Not true. I see this as an academic who's written a book about it as a person. I still find it very difficult to really internalize the message that the situation shapes us. I mean, it is so easy to habituate to your situation to not see what is maybe obvious to outsiders. But sometimes I think for me anyway, when I change my situation, when I get on a plane and arrive in another city and I walk around and I realize within a day or two, I am walking like the other people talking like the other people eating. I remember during the pandemic when I was just beginning writing this book actually, so it's been a long journey. We live in Philadelphia, but we flew to Miami. And when we got off the plane, these are early days during the pandemic, but just when you could travel, we were masking up.

10:41We were doing a lot of things that we would do, like double-mask. And I'm going to tell you Miami was a different culture. Nobody wore masks even in elevators. And at first we were like, oh my gosh, we're masking. By day two, we weren't masking either. It's just incredibly hard to really resist these forces that are probably from evolution that we adapt to our circumstances. But once you have that insight, then you realize that you do have to shape your circumstances before they shape you. 100% and herd mentality as much as we want to believe that we're these completely self-authored autonomous beings, but herd mentality. I mean, this is how you keep yourself safe. Of course it's built into us. And you know, you right, we're built to mimic. And which I feel like is so true, even though we hate it. But it's also, I think, what was so beautiful about your book, and which is honestly very beautiful, but frankle is that there's so much power in the collective when we widen our aperture, right?

11:48I think for a lot of people, there's so much hope in what you describe, which is actually if you can change your lens, if you can find a mentor, if you can redesign your space to align with your goals that there is actually more hope than just relying on a neat talent and opportunity, right? I think this might be ambitious, but let me try to say that I think this is, you know, not just a statement about success and achieving goals, but really about existence. You know, I am Chinese by heritage. My parents immigrated to the United States, to the Philadelphia area in particular from the originally born in China. And when they tell me about the way they were raised, their whole existence was not. Oh, you're an individual. And then you've got, you know, to fight circumstances over that that in an Asian tradition of like they were brought up in the person and their family, their neighbors, their community, their physical environment, they're integrated.

12:56So you don't think of yourself as just having these clear boundaries. It's like you against the world. It's all very deeply interconnected. I know that's like a deep philosophical paradigm shift that maybe is ambitious to talk about in a brief conversation, but I don't think I really understood what my parents were saying because of course I grew up in America. And I was like, whatever, I don't, you know, sounds like, you know, I don't tell from the old country. But as I grow older and comments have been made about our modern condition, you know, some are calling this the anti-social century because we are more and more disconnected from our neighbors, how many people even know their neighbors by name? because the amount of face-to-face eye-to-eye time that a typical American spends is just plummeting. And in that particular era that we live in, you know, the idea that there is another way, there is a way to not be so separated from our situations, to even conceive of ourselves

13:56when we succeed and when we fail, when we have good days and bad days, that we're not just an individual, a loner, dealing with the victories and defeats on our own, but that we could be part of a whole. And I think that is much more important, honestly, than just, oh, then I got to a better school, I have a better job, you know, my CV looks better. All those things will be, you know, better if you harness the situation, but I think it is a deeper, a deeper commentary than that. I agree. And it's that you said the word whole, it's this wider context of why we're even doing what we're doing. And I don't know if you've ever encountered the work of Ian McGullchrist. Did you ever read the Master in his Emissary? His a neuroscientist? A brief part of it. Yeah. It's been a, you know, to read list. Tell me about it. It's a tone. It's a undertaking. And he wrote this book called I think the Matter with Things, which is like 1100 pages, two volumes with end notes, but it is a dork's delight. And essentially he's saying, you know,

15:03there was all this left hemisphere, right hemisphere science that was too reductive in terms of these operating in silos and that there's overlap. And but that ultimately there's a hemisphere difference that's important that one hemisphere can take precedence or suppress the other. And the left hemisphere, which is connected to our right hand is responsible for parts for dissecting, using, managing, grasping that microattention and the right hemisphere, which has no language, but is responsible for the whole and for the context and the macro attention. And his larger thesis is that the right hemisphere is the master and the left hemisphere is the Emissary, but that we have lost our connection that we are so left hemisphere dominant focused on manipulation, grasping, using tools, parts that the absence of the right hemisphere in this larger context and this wholeness is killing our whole culture. And I think you would nerd out on it. It's really

16:07interesting. I kept myself as a dork and a nerd. So it sounds perfect. But it's a beautiful where you're like, Oh, right, I get it. I get why we get so particularly in the west focused on this individual achievement and to the detriment of some of it mattering or being a part of some bigger movement. Yeah, it's a kind of a loose, loose strategy, right? Because if you're really conceiving of yourself as on your own, first of all, you are less likely to succeed. You know, I try to muster the academic research on this, but the message is quite simple. It's like people succeed more when they have a mentor that use co-founders of startups are more successful than solo founders. You're smarter with other people than you could be on your own. I think in some ways that's well, one obvious loss, right? If you're going to try to make it on your own, you're going to be less successful, but it's loose, loose because life, separate research from that shows

17:07definitively, as you know, that the strongest predictor of happiness is not your CV. It's your relationship. So could we, especially in the west, you know, find another way forward? I do think it's a little bit counter-cultural, but I think our culture is ready for it. I see how young adults are kind of fed up with this, you know, atomistic lifestyle that they've grown up in and they want to be more connected. 100%. I'm very hopeful too that we're being taken to the edge so we can choose something different. It's kind of nice to have a few things to get dressed for now after spending the better part of summer and sweats. I actually worked with a personal stylist on putting together some outfits which turned out to be really simple and fun. I went through Daily Look, which is an online personal styling service. I worked with a real human personal stylist who curated a box of clues for me based on what I was looking for, my budget,

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20:17This is why 15 million people choose the smart way, the wise account. Whether you're sending money back home or moving money between your accounts in different countries, count on the exchange rate you'd usually find on Google. No unwelcome surprises. With wise, say goodbye to that, where's my money feeling? Most transfers actually arrive before you can hit refresh in under 20 seconds. Join millions, saving billions on hidden fees. Be smart, get wise, visit wise.com, tease and seize supply. It's interesting at Barker. Was that his last name? Roger Barker. Roger Barker. For example, I'd never heard of him either, not the name of him. The greatest psychologist you've never heard of. Never heard of. That whole, it's a testament to where we are, that that work died on the vine because we're so not that interested in understanding how the collective informs the person rather than the person. Can you talk a bit about that lab? It doesn't exist. Not even as an artifact.

21:23No longer exists. This is a chapter of history that was written quite a while ago and had an ending and didn't really have another chapter. But Roger Barker was a psychologist who's trained at Stanford. He had a girlfriend who he eventually married. She was a marine biologist. And so while he was doing experiments in the laboratory under fluorescent lighting, she would go out to tide pools with a clipboard and just observe how animals and plants and so were in the real world. And he had an idea which is, well, I should just observe people in their native habitat, so to speak, in real life. And this epiphany came not, you know, right away, who's actually several years into his career. But when he did have that epiphany, he decided to start an observatory. He moved to a town in Oscar-Luzza, Kansas. And he said, this is going to be where I observe the everyday lives, particularly of children, is where he started. He taught the

22:24first child development course in psychology at Harvard University. But he had moved back to the Midwest, which is where his roots were. And he started observing little girls and boys. And he would actually, with clipboard, literally with clipboard and stopwatch, so he could, you know, oh, at 122 lifted spoon to mouth, you know, 123, you know, walked out door. He noticed something that really surprised him. And that was that when you really carefully observe people in their native habitats, they are really different across different situations. He had one observation, for example, that these children, that their hands folded and, you know, looking straight forward, okay, well, that's class time. But man, ring that bell and take them out to recess. And you have a totally different kid. And he said, we are influenced by behavior settings. It's a term he made up to say, we think that we are the captain of our fate, you know, the master of our soul. We think that we're just the same person everywhere, but we're so different across settings. And his work at the time, Harold did, is maybe the new direction for psychology. He won all the major awards.

23:29He had massive amounts of funding and attention. And then people lost interest in that work. And I think it's because they couldn't see how it was hopeful. It felt to them, I think, at the time very oppressive, like, oh, if the situation is in charge, that diminishes agency for us. And that wasn't a very appealing story. So the funding dries up. The graduate students stop applying. He stops getting awards. And he eventually had to shutter his observatory. And when he retired, though, his graduate students who had then gone on to their own careers, you know, observed of his work in a kind of a summary reflection that really what Roger Barker was about is, and the quote is dignity through environmentalism. That in fact, there isn't a loss of agency. When you recognize that you're a different person at recess, then you are in the classroom. For some of us, you know, we're a totally different person when we work at home versus in a coffee shop versus

24:30in an office. When you notice those differences, then you can use them to put yourself in the situation where you like yourself most. And I have found that to be extremely powerful as an insight that without changing my DNA and even without changing my mindset or my habits, I can simply spend time with the friends with whom I am a kind person, with whom I laugh and am light-hearted. And not spend time with people who make me into a cranky, you know, intolerant, short-tempered person. And there are both sets of people in my life. And yeah, you know, I should go and hang out with my aunt and uncle. I'm so great when I'm with them, you know, I don't spend enough time with them. And you know, that acquaintance, they don't actually have to be on the high rotation schedule for lunch, because I always end up, you know, in an infernal argument that leaves me short-tempered for the entire rest of the day. So, so it's a profound insight, but, you know, I hadn't heard of Roger Barker

25:34before I started researching this book either. Yeah. And I think it gets to this idea that we just want to believe that it's in us. And it allows us to shift blame right onto the individual, rather than recognizing, is you write like poverty, because poverty, and when, you know, if you're not surrounded, if you're not in a fertile soil as a child, beyond the obvious factors, like not having access to good schools, that that has a, that this isn't a meritocracy. This is a potent stew of, sure, like some genetic capacity, hard work and grit, and situational privilege that can be sought out if it's not born, if you're not born into it, that's a much, much fuller picture. And I love that you wrote about in connection with Barker's research, the Pigmalion effect, right? Which is how influential it is when we, my fair lady people, and, yes, believe in them and invest in them, right?

26:39Yeah, there is a very famous finding in psychology called the Pigmalion effect, and it is the work of Bob Rosenthal. And the research was actually done in collaboration between this Harvard professor, and a elementary school principal, but Bob before meeting this principal had observed that our expectations about the future are very powerful. They can be self-fulfilling prophecies. You know, somebody thinks that they are going to be terrible at math. Then that prophecy comes to pass because they stop trying, they don't ask questions. What's the point of really struggling on this homework problem? And on the flip side of that, if you have a positive expectation, you're like, I think I can learn algebra. Like, why not? I learned how to ride a bike. Why can't I learn algebra? Well, then you raise your hand and you ask questions and you do your homework and you go to your teacher. So he had this belief that expectations about your own future could be self-fulfilling prophecies, but what made Bob's work singularly influential was that he also observed that our expectations of

27:41ourselves are socially determined. When someone says to you, you know what? I've taught a lot of kids, and I'm taking you aside to tell you, I know you can learn algebra. I just wanted to share that with you because you may not know that yourself. That is a socially transmitted message. In other words, oftentimes confidence is borrowed from another person. They project onto us their expectations, and we internalize them. And he took the name of his research program from this myth of pigmalion. There's a, you know, Greek myth, there's a sculptor who sculpts a statue and through his own belief that the statue could come to life with some assistance from the gods that actually comes to pass. So he collaborated with this teacher in California because she too had had that observation as an elementary school principal. She had seen that children's expectations were so powerful and that our teachers' expectations of us, for example, could shape our own expectations. So what they did was this very clever experiment. They told teachers in this elementary school that a certain small number

28:47of children had been identified as gifted, that they were going to be brilliant over the course of the year. But then they told these teachers, well, you know, how do we know this? Well, we gave all the kids an IQ test. They gave it a very, very fancy name. It was like the Harvard test of, you know, inflected reasoning or something. And they said, you know, these kids scored highly, but here's what you should know. They may not appear gifted in September. But as right as rain, they are going to emerge as your best students by the end of the year. Here's a list of their names. In fact, they just pulled those names out of a hat. So it was all made up. But what happened was, especially with the younger students, which is interesting, but overall, you know, what they found was that those prophecies came true. And Bob Rosenthal spent the rest of his career studying the pig million effect. And what he later unearthed was that when someone thinks that you can do well, you internalize that. And what that person does to make you believe that is they treat you differently.

29:50They look you in the eye more. They smile more. They encourage you. They say positive things. And so I think this all reinforces the message that we're much more plastic than we think. Even our own self confidence very often comes from our situation. Yeah. No. And I think it's a powerful reminder. And it's the specificity of it too, right? Connecting it to something real, rather than the platitudes that our kids are so used to now. But this applied, you can do this. It's diminishing, I think, for those of us who are like, I'm just special. And then I think for everyone who never felt seen, it's, oh, well, maybe if I had been watered a little bit more, right? Many psychologists, including Carol Deweck, who's, you know, everyone's got their own rock star role. For me, Carol Deweck is the Taylor Swift of Psychologies. So I take everything she says seriously. But Carol was told when she was young, you're special, you're gifted,

30:52you're smarter than the other kids. And she came to believe that that was as much a curse as a blessing because yes, you have belief in yourself. But it's very fragile because when you come home, you've gotten a C-minus on a test or you get cut from a team and you begin to question that very statement that there's a fragility there. And I think what we want are people around us, our teachers, our parents, our friends, our bosses, to say, not that you're gifted, but that you can do amazing things. I think Carol would give the advice that, of course, we should praise our young people, but not praise them for qualities that we suggest to them are fixed, like your native IQ. But more things that they themselves would already understand to be malleable. Oh, you know, I love how hard you tried on this way. You know, and I love why that color that you put in the right corner of this picture. Wow, that is such a beautiful thing. I think if you watch great coaches, great teachers, and great parents, you see the through lines. That's exactly what they do.

31:58They really are these, you know, infatecable sources of encouragement, but they're not saying things like you're a genius, you know, you're special and the other kids aren't. Right. I loved all the coach stories. There's so many great stories throughout the book. I love coaches. I can tell. But yeah, the coach led doc, led doc. Oh, he goes by coach lad, but it's a lot of sir. He even told me don't worry people don't pronounce it right. But coach lad, you mean the DLSL Spartans? So yes, I loved him. I loved, no, there are so many great and Bob Michael Phelps. Bob Bowman. Bob Bowman. He's gonna pronounce by the way, Bob Bowman. But it's really helpful because if you work with anyone in any capacity, that special blend of challenge and support that's so difficult, right, for us to land on. Did you ever play a sport? At least I didn't. At least I was not. So I maybe I have this, you know, just oh, what a good a shudder fascination with sports coaches. It's not too late. I was actually thinking

33:03of asking Bob and I'm not kidding. So Bob Bowman, I think, is the greatest swim coach in history. Yes, he was Michael Phelps' lifelong coach. But if you could line up all of the world record breakers and Olympic gold medalists who had Bob as their coach because he does coach, you know, he has some of us who come internationally to train with him. He would be like his own country. I was thinking, you know, it's not too late. Maybe Bob could teach me how to take a breath when I swim because I know I haven't figured that out yet. I did swim. I'm not, I was not very good at it. It's not my, I don't really like the water. No, but I was a, yeah, I played a lot. I did, I rode. So I did prove that was my one team sport, but I was a competitive skier. Oh, and I liked individual sports. I played tennis, stuff like that. But I do none of the above. So I'm very, well, I sometimes swim, but I've never, yeah. But every good coach is a great psychologist. Oh, 100%. And rowing in terms of individual strength and being in the right seat, but you are

34:07in unison. It is all about pushing at the same time. So it's kind of a very meditative, very beautiful but you have to get on an irk and man those rowing. Can I tell you about an irk study that I cut from the book because I really, I'm really short. But you will appreciate this as a former rower. So I had a rower, a serious rower, varsity rower who was also a psychology student who's an undergraduate at my university, university of Pennsylvania. Her name was Rebecca Strach and she and I had the idea, which turned out to be wrong. And I'll tell you the idea because I think it's so prevalent. It's very resonant with what we were talking about the beginning of this conversation. We thought, how do we get kids to try harder? Oh, we'll just get them to get on an irk and, you know, row on this irk every day. And it's so hard, right? Because you get on the irk for a few minutes, you want to die. And over time, they will build up their willpower muscle. And then at the end, they'll be stronger. And then they are going to do better in school and their teachers are

35:12going to say they're more emotionally regulated, et cetera, et cetera. So we literally bought irks. We installed them in a local public school in Philadelphia. She went there after school. She got students, she randomly assigned them some, you know, got this erg treatment. Some of them didn't. The kids kept diaries and they wrote in things like, oh, I want to get on the irk for a few minutes. I want to die. And they did row longer and longer. By the way, they got in great shape physically. But our hypothesis did not find any support. We did not find by any measure, including their self-reported grit scale scores, their passion and perseverance for long-term rules. We found not only no changes, but directionally, if anything, a lot of the opposite. And we're like, wow, that was a spectacular failure. And I think to me, putting it together with other things that I subsequently learned is that I think people who do great things do try hard. I think there will never be a substitute for consistent effort. But what I don't think it comes from is forcing

36:14yourself and this feeling of suffering. Even Michael Phelps, you know, yes, he pushed himself, but he loved swimming. He loved swimming. He loved thinking about it. He loved talking about it when Bob and Michael Phelps talked about swimming. It was like sculptors talking about art, right? So this idea that we should get kids to suffer more and then they'll learn to suffer more and other things. To me is a mistaken lesson. Yeah, of course, effort is required. But can we make a world in which when you are effortfully pursuing your goals, you say to yourself, gosh, this is interesting. And it's important. I know I can do it here. Let me try this next. That is a very different internal monologue than just do it. No, 100%. And it's funny just even thinking about rowing and ergs and as the perfect metaphor for what you're talking about, because I hate

37:15arguing to the point where I specifically was like, I don't want to be recruit, don't recruit me for crew because I will row for you for the first semester until you try and... And you put me into the interview. Yeah, train people, but I don't want to spend my life on an erg. And I'm not that strong in comparison to other rowers, but the way that they stumbled boats at the boarding school I went to and we won the Henley-Rigata. We were very fast. I know what that is. Yeah, the women's Henley is not as prestigious as the men's Henley, but you know, they see race you. Yeah, and it's all about this group cohesion and balance that is not determined by ergs and you are just in a flow with other people. It's really about a collective effort with the right boys on the boat. No, now I'm gonna... Oh my gosh, it's really, really good. Yeah. It's a cash turner. It's not a book based on scientific research, but it really describes, I think, you would tell me, you could tell me later, after you read it, you know, this sum is larger than the aggregate of the parts.

38:18100%. And erg.ing is excruciatingly painful, but rowing, even when your flat out in a 2000 meter race is a total high and it's not, they're not comparable events. That was fun. I've now I'm like, I wish I could get on a boat. Over the years, certain aspects of attachment theory, which I find interesting, have confounded me. But this year, I was really taken by how neuroscientist Amir Levine is reframing attachment theory and what it means for our relationships. He has a fascinating class on masterclass about this called the science of connection, rewire relationships to last with attachment theory. I think many of you would be into it too. Also, Amir is just such a delightful person I was lucky to have him on pulling the thread. And I love seeing many other of my favorite podcast guests as masterclass teachers too. With masterclass, you get access to some of the most profound minds in the world and over 200 classes on life's big topics as well as the most

39:22fascinating of niche subjects. The lessons are bite size and digestible and more realistic to fit into our schedules than a lot of other options. And for me, they deliver an actionable takeaways. Masterclass plans start at 10 bucks a month, build annually. Every new membership comes with a 30 day money back guarantee. Masterclass keeps adding new classes, so there's never been a better time to get in. Right now, as a pulling the thread listener, you get at least 15% off any annual membership at masterclass.com slash thread. That's 15% off at masterclass.com slash thread. Head to masterclass.com slash thread to see the latest offer. When I got home the other day, there was a very exciting package waiting for me at the door. The team at Cozy Earth sent me a new pajamas set from their bamboo stretch knit collection, and friends it is so good. I put it on that night before bed and I'm already contemplate getting another pair because now nothing feels as appealing to wear around the house.

40:25There are a bunch of options in the collection, but I chose the long sleeve set. And you can also get it in short sleeves or short sleeve top and pants, you know, lots of variety. I also love the colors, which are generally quite neutral and nice, nothing too shocking or bright. I got the black with white piping this time because it's handsome and classic and elegant. As with everything Cozy Earth does, the fabric is super soft with that silky smooth kind of feel. It's also relatively breathable and light, which is nice if you tend to run warm when you sleep. And I love the relaxed fit. I think that you'll love this set too. Head to CozyEarth.com and use my code thread for up to 20% off home and sleepwear. That's code thread for up to 20% off on home and sleepwear. And if you see a post purchase survey, please be sure to mention that you heard about Cozy Earth right here on Pulling the Thread.

41:26Propel Fitness Water. With Gatorade Electrolites, Zero Sugar and Vitamins, Propel hydrates better than water to help you get the most out of your workout and get back to your best self. What propels you? Propel with Gatorade Electrolites. So going back to situations and how the environment so dramatically shapes how we feel, which I feel like everyone understands, although I think at an intellectual level at least, yeah, yeah. But even when you think about East versus West, like an understanding even of Feng Shui or the atmosphere or the way that a bathroom is designed and took you, just this reverence for space and atmosphere and what it feels like to be in spaces or in a situation, I thought the end was so moving when you wrote about what was it, Bidwell, Manchester Bidwell. Manchester Bidwell. Oh my god. And the way that this program, which is, is it in a

42:27Frank Lloyd Wright building? You know, I'll tell you the story of Manchester Bidwell and I will explain that this, it's a, it's a, some would call it an anti-poverty program because that's what it is, but some would call it an arts program because that is also what it is. And some would say, no, it's really a job training program because that's what it is. And it's even an after-school program for teenagers because that's also what it is. So it's very hard to categorize, but it is housed in a building that was built from the ground up. It was not a repurposed building. It was built by student of Frank Lloyd Wright and very much inspired by a particular Frank Lloyd Wright building that's very famous, probably his most famous building, which is called Falling Water. And this program, Manchester Bidwell, is located in Pittsburgh, which is the largest city close to this beautiful residence called Falling Water. It's a building that Frank Lloyd Wright, the architect, built over a waterfall. So it spans a waterfall. The water flows right through it. I've been to visit it and

43:28it's indeed very beautiful. And I'm not the only one to visit it. So one day there was a visitor who was just a young black kid from Pittsburgh, named Bill Strickland. He was there on a field trip with his teacher, Mr. Frank, and the teacher taught pottery at the local public high school that Bill attended and Bill had struck up a kind of mentor, mentee relationship with this ceramics teacher and ended up spending really all day with him. He would skip his math class and speak super-singlish class, skip history, skip science, because he fell in love with pottery and he found that he felt alive. In so many ways, he felt like he was going nowhere in his life. As he put it, he was a poor black kid going nowhere until he discovered this teacher and discovered ceramics. And on that field trip, he looks at this building that looks nothing like his poor neighborhood in Pittsburgh. I mean, it's surrounded by trees. You can hear the water in whatever room

44:30you're standing in. It is, it's beauty. So he resolves on that day that he will one day build a building as beautiful as falling water for poor people like him, where they can begin to see a future that they would not otherwise be able to imagine. And if you fast forward, he did it. He built this program from scratch. He attracted donors and collaborators and friends from all over. It became not only a remarkably successful arts program for ceramics and painting, but also jazz. So Bill Strickland loves jazz and they have, I think, now five Grammys for music that has been recorded at Manchester Bidwell in their studios. It is unlike any program I've ever been to. You walk through its hallways and you're thinking it's an anti-poverty program. They're going to make every dime count by having Cinder Black walls and just, you know, penny pinching. And instead,

45:32it's filled with art and orchids. There are tapestries hanging from the walls. There's sunlight pouring through the windows. And Bill says, if you want poverty, build a place that looks like poverty. And if you want people to be beautiful people who are striving toward excellence, give them environment that looks like that. And I will just quote Bill Strickland because I feel like his words are more eloquent than mine. He says, environments shape behavior. That is the one philosophy that he has built everything around. Environments shape behavior. And he built a beautiful place for the beautiful people that he knew poor people to be. And I will tell you to this day, I'm like, oh my god, somebody's going to read this book maybe and donate a lot of money to Manchester Bidwell. There are now programs built in its likeness all over the world. And I have to say it was so moving and so inspiring for me just even see a little bit of this happen in the world. And I don't think I'll ever be the same. Yeah. Well, and just it's such a powerful testament to your thesis,

46:36right? That this even some exposure to this situation where the environment is beautiful and there's an investment in spiritual and creative nourishment. You write that 84% of the adults enrolled in the vocational program find jobs upon graduation, five MAs. And the kids who go to this after school arts program unanimously report increase engagement in their classrooms. Just profound knock on effect of a change in a situation, changing someone's entire perspective on their life and what's possible and what they can be exposed to. I mean, it's so beautiful. And very related, I think, to what we were discussing a moment ago about these expectations for the future of the Pignalian effect. I mean, I think he built a place where, you know, apparently, they've never had a cause for calling the police. They've never had a theft. They don't have metal detectors. And if anybody wants to visit, I mean, this is not a Shishi neighborhood. And the idea that nobody graffiti is this building, you know, nobody trashes the fountain

47:41in the front. When you walk through those doors, you are respectful because that is the culture of the place. That is the physical spirit of the place. And it does suggest to you that we can kind of create a positive environment in which we will become our best, you know, obviously it's more than just the bricks and mortar. But yeah, Bill Strickland won a MacArthur Genius Award for his work. He's, you know, he's getting on in years, but I am so struck whenever I get to see him in person that he has a purpose. He's like, yeah, I gotta stay alive because I gotta do the work. And I'm like, yes, sir. So yeah, maybe there's a rich person who will read situated. Yeah. Can I read his quote in the book about? Yes, okay. So he said, many people size me up as an urban do-gooder who has devoted his life to selflessly helping the poor. I'm proud of what I've accomplished along those lines, but you can't really understand me or what my life has been about unless you grasp the fact that

48:42I didn't do any of it out of selflessness. I did it to be myself. I did it to enrich my own life to deepen the quality and meaning of my own experience. I did it because it was a part of what I had to do if I genuinely wanted to be me. Oh, you know, I was writing my chapter about him and I will tell you, as you know, everything that is of worth has been reworked many times. I'm revising the chapter of I'm sending him copies. I'm reading at the same time Victor Frankel and Abraham Maslow, you know, two great psychologists. And where I came to was not where I began. I came to understand Bill Strickland as not just a do-gooder. That's just the beginning of it. I came to understand that he embodied what both Abraham Maslow, Hirek Eve Needs, and Victor Frankel, who wrote Man Search for Meaning. What they both said was the ultimate state of human existence, which is self-transcendence. And I want to say what self-transcendence was. And also just say Bill Strickland

49:47shows you how nuanced and how complex that concept is. Self-transcendence is having a purpose beyond the self. It is transcending your own personal concerns, your CV, your professional objectives. Do I have a boyfriend or a girlfriend? How big is my house to the needs of other people? How's my neighbor doing? You know, that person who I just walk by, they look like they need a smile. Like, how's my husband doing? How are my kids doing? You know, how is this elementary school down the street? Maybe they need, you know, help with that recycling program that doesn't seem to be going very well. Those are self-transcendent motives. But the reason why Bill Strickland was illustrative to me, even while writing the book. In other words, I had not figured things out to the level that I came to understand after really getting to know Bill is that this line between personal motives and pro-social motives becomes very blurry when you really live a life like Bill's. Because when you do something, when you wake up in the morning and you go to work, it's not no two hours for

50:51other people, six hours for me. Oh, no, no, four hours. And like, it's all one. And Bill says that he doesn't feel like an altruist. He doesn't feel like a do-gooder, as you just read. He's doing what he has to do to be the person that he is at his best. And in that doing, it is bound up with being oriented to the needs of other people. But it's less of an either or, and it's much more of a both-and. And I will tell you that I started that chapter thinking I understand Abraham Maslow, I understand Victor Frackle, now I'm going to write the story of Bill Strickland. But at the end of all the writing and interviewing and revising, I came to a deeper understanding and it made me want to live a life like that where I feel like, hey, what if I love psychology and I like writing and I like talking to you and I get to do the things that I love? And what if at the very same time that orientation toward other people could be integrated into it so that it's not either or.

51:54And it's so meta, right? Because what he's doing is essentially saying, the situation matters and I'm going to change the situation in the most pull-back. It's so meta. What is the knock-on effect on our world and all the other people who will go on to change the situation, change the tenor or the texture of their neighborhoods and be mentors and mentee. All of that is what a legacy. And I think we all want that even though it can make it so grasping, manipulated, me, me, me, you know, Shratt Shrive, Shrive. Yeah, comparative, you know, self-conscious, you know, so she's not helpful here, right? You know, you scroll through your feed and you're like, oh, my hair looks terrible. Maybe I should get veneers. You know, my vacation wasn't that great. I didn't eat the perfect salad yesterday. I'm not saying that it's only social media actually don't subscribe to the view that it's just one thing, but I really feel like we need to be more intentional about our situations because the situations of modern life are not anything like you described your childhood.

52:59It's like, let's maybe be focused on what we can do to at least in our own way and in the way that we can, right? I don't think situational agency, though I think it's a thing. I don't think it's unlimited, but what can I do, right? What can I do differently and better? And I think it might depend on the person, you know, just before this conversation, I was with my very good friend and he's a colleague named G-Sung and we're both professors and we have shared with each other the observation that at least for us, you know, we need to get out of the house. Both of us had found that when we work entirely at home and there's never an office to go to, which both of us have done for, you know, parts of our lives, that for us, it's really not a good situation. And so we may not be able to change everything about the universe or the nation, but we can change sometimes small things. He's like, yeah, and I decided I need an office. So now I just borrowed a friend's office because I have to be in New York for this time. So I think it opens up, I think, possibilities that are there, but we may have not been noticing. Yeah, no, 100%. I could talk to you for hours.

54:08I hope this is the first of many conversations. I love situated and I can't wait to listen to all of your conversations about it. Roll it out this fall. Well, I know some people might think, like, situated. What kind of title is that? But I'm like, yeah, well, we got to get situated. So hopefully you'll hear more and I just want to say thank you. This has been such a beautiful conversation and thank you for reading the book, you know, that's a very wonderful thing for me to even know that one person read this. If I could have, I would have kept Angela for hours longer. There are so many interesting parts of this book and again, so many stories. And when she talks about situation, she's really setting it up as the physical environment from neighborhood to the conditions around which you do your work and whether it's full of distractions or it's peaceful

55:10and beautiful or whatever it may be, it's the way that you set yourself up to do what you want to do. It's your peers, which have an enormous influence over both what you feel like you yourself can accomplish and also sort of what's modeled for you and it's mentors. And I wish we'd had time to talk more about mentors because her point is that some people are sort of mentor magnets and part of that is seeking it out, asking questions of people who might have something to teach you either for a reason, a season or a life, I think is the phrasing, but that any mentor, all that a mentor wants is to feel useful in some way. Anyway, thank you for listening. I love this conversation. I will see you next time. If you got something out of today's episode, I would so appreciate your help spreading the word. Please rate and review the episode, follow pulling the thread on your preferred podcast platform and share this episode with a friend who would also

56:14enjoy it. That's how we've grown this thing. It's so helpful. Thank you. If you want more in this world, please sign up for my newsletter at my website, aliselunan.com, ELISE, LOEH, N-E-N, .com, or consider picking up copies of my book, Honour Best Behavior, or its workbook companion Choosing Holdness Over Goodness. Thanks again, friends. On any journey using Uber, it helps to know you're getting into the right car. Pin verification adds an extra step to make sure your ride is your ride. Before the trip begins, your app gives you a unique pin. Just tell it to your driver and they'll enter it in their app before the ride can start. That way you know you're in the right car taking the

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