#108： The Upside of Your Dark Side With Dr. Todd Kashdan
Episode Stats
Summary
Todd Cashton is the author of The Upside of Your Dark Side: Why Being Your Whole Self, and Not Just Your Good Self, Drives Success and Fulfillment. In the book, he and his co-authors highlight psychological research that shows the benefits of getting depressed, and the downsides of seeing things with rose-colored glasses all the time.
Transcript
00:00:00.000
Brett McKay here and welcome to another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast.
00:00:20.220
Anywhere you go today, there seems like there's a book or a magazine article or a blog post
00:00:24.980
on 10 ways to be happy, the benefits of happiness, why you need to be mindful, why you need to
00:00:32.520
It means basically an article of faith in 21st century America that you need to be happy
00:00:38.880
Well, our guest today wrote a book along with a few other guys who say that's not necessarily
00:00:43.540
true, that there could be some downsides to positivity all the time and there's downsides
00:00:51.160
He is the author of the book, The Upside of Your Dark Side, Why Being Your Whole Self and
00:00:55.520
Not Just Your Good Self Drives Success and Fulfillment.
00:00:58.340
In the book, him and his co-authors highlight psychological research that shows the benefits
00:01:02.800
of getting depressed, the benefits of getting angry and the downsides of seeing things with
00:01:07.100
rose-colored glasses all the time and being positive and upbeat all the time.
00:01:12.700
It dovetails nicely with the series we've been doing on depression on the site these past
00:01:17.200
A lot of great insights and research that we highlight.
00:01:21.360
Teddy Roosevelt comes up and Todd calls something that Teddy had the Teddy Effect.
00:01:25.740
And it's psychological traits that we often associate with bad guys, but Teddy had them
00:01:31.760
in spades, but he's able to use those to do a lot of good.
00:01:45.160
So your book is The Upside of Your Dark Side, Why Being Your Whole Self and Not Just Your Good
00:01:53.260
So the reason I love this book and it stuck out to me is that it's a contrarian book because
00:01:58.700
like right now, it seems like we're having this sort of positivity renaissance or I don't
00:02:05.100
There's all these books and magazine articles and blog articles about the happiness project
00:02:14.060
Um, so my question is in this sort of this positivity culture we live in, what made you research the
00:02:21.280
downside of happiness and the upside of, you know, anger and depression?
00:02:28.240
Well, my co-author and I are both researchers in the field of well-being.
00:02:32.660
So we've written books and we've written, we've conducted the research on the benefits
00:02:37.560
of happiness, positive social interactions for a decade.
00:02:41.640
And we've read the books you mentioned and we despise, particularly this is an American
00:02:47.040
cultural phenomenon, this obsession with happiness.
00:02:49.680
And what we've noticed is it doesn't resonate with how we interacted with the real world when
00:02:56.340
we went to corporations, with parenting our kids, with dealing with our romantic partners,
00:03:02.100
with friends that are annoying and friends that we love.
00:03:04.620
And those often oscillate between, we often dislike and like our friends depending on the
00:03:10.240
And there are lots of obnoxious, annoying people at work, on the road with you, on the highway
00:03:16.340
that you see in stores that are in line with you, that yell at the stewardesses or bartenders
00:03:23.440
And we realized that these books on positivity, while they're, they're uplifting and they're
00:03:29.580
enjoyable and they're hopeful, they're not realistic in terms of what we face in terms
00:03:37.620
So we want to create a book that wasn't about that happiness is bad because nobody should
00:03:46.060
It's just that we need to be more agile, which is there's a time and place to be friendly
00:03:52.000
And that should be our default when we first meet a stranger.
00:03:55.340
But as you know, this is, this is the show of the art of manliness where there's a time
00:04:00.540
and place after a certain number of attempts to being kind, where you have to switch gears
00:04:05.860
into your psychological toolkit and show some dominance and aggression to, to get the best
00:04:16.060
But if somebody messes with your romantic partner or somebody messes with your kids in a very
00:04:21.320
inappropriate way, you better have more tools in your toolkit or you're going to have
00:04:33.160
You know, we, we talk about in the book is, and a mantra we live by, which is attempt two
00:04:43.020
And after that, you get to be more flexible in how you respond to somebody and you get to,
00:04:47.700
and you get to remind them, listen, I tried two times to be friendly with you right now.
00:04:54.180
Um, we've got some talking to do and you shift gears.
00:04:58.540
So I love, yeah, I love that idea of emotional and mental agility.
00:05:02.480
And we'll talk a little bit more about that later on.
00:05:04.860
Um, so I know you said you don't want to emphasize that you're, you're saying that happiness is
00:05:09.060
bad, but you did say that this, it, this tendency in our, in our American culture to emphasize
00:05:15.360
happiness and positivity does have some downsides.
00:05:19.540
You know, for example, you know, everyone wants to be happy, right?
00:05:21.840
It's like in the declaration of independence, you know, we want to be, our goal as Americans
00:05:25.200
is to pursue happiness, but you, uh, highlight some research that says that we're not actually
00:05:31.440
very good at attaining happiness, even though we want it so bad.
00:05:40.960
It's so we all want, I mean, we all want our kids to be happy and we all want to be happy.
00:05:45.280
The, there's a sort of paradox here, which is when you, when you try to emphasize happiness
00:05:51.660
as the fundamental objective of your life, if I ask you, you know, why are you trying
00:05:57.700
Why do you want to, um, to enter into a long-term relationship with this guy or gal?
00:06:03.280
Um, you know, why do you want to move to this place?
00:06:05.820
You'll probably say happiness, but if you're every decision, the determinant is, will it make
00:06:16.660
You will never work up, work up the effort and, um, the, the sweat equity in a workplace
00:06:24.980
You're not going to get an increase in pay unless by some random way that all of a sudden
00:06:30.280
everybody's going to get, um, you know, a 3% or 4% buff in salary.
00:06:34.420
You're not going to have a healthy long-term relationship because you need to argue, but learn
00:06:39.580
You're definitely not going to be able to take care of kids because kids are the ultimate hostage
00:06:44.040
negotiators because they never stopped fighting and coming back at you.
00:06:53.040
You're going to, on a typical day, see people that are more physically attractive than your romantic
00:06:59.560
partner and more interesting than your friends.
00:07:02.700
And you have to sometimes resist these temptations.
00:07:05.860
It's really what you're committing to you when you're saying you're in a monogamous relationship.
00:07:10.220
It's not that you're going to have, not have temptations.
00:07:15.400
Can you, can you do something that's hard in the gym for the next three months because
00:07:21.660
you want your body to be in a particular place so you can do a triathlon or do the Spartan
00:07:27.980
You don't enjoy going to the gym at five 30 in the morning.
00:07:36.420
And when we speak about positivity is the be all and end all, we miss maturity, wisdom,
00:07:43.980
personal growth, healthy relationships, and most of the things that people want in life.
00:07:49.400
I loved how you talked about the time traveler problem where we think we, we think we know
00:07:56.720
it's going to make us happy, but then when we get there, it doesn't make us as happy as
00:08:03.000
Cause I, that's this problem with like goals for me, right?
00:08:06.980
And I think once I obtained that, like I'll be happy, but then when you achieve it, you're
00:08:11.360
just sort of like, meh, I mean, what's going on there?
00:08:13.820
Is it because like, am I, I'm a different person or what's going on there?
00:08:19.580
I remember, um, reading about, um, this guy, Roberts, I forgot his first name.
00:08:27.880
So Roberts had at some point that was the strongest man in the world.
00:08:31.920
And when you combine deadlift, bench press, and squat, he had over 3,800 pounds.
00:08:39.380
So just for everyone listening, just put that into your head in terms of his bench press
00:08:46.580
So this guy, this guy spent 10 years of his life.
00:08:50.820
He was too short to make the, um, the national basketball team.
00:08:55.340
And then he was deciding, well, what do I want to do?
00:08:57.260
I always wanted to be a professional basketball player.
00:08:59.600
And then someone, he was in the gym working out and someone said, you know what?
00:09:08.760
And he said, he said, I'll take you under my wing.
00:09:11.400
This, this athletics coach, this strength trainer.
00:09:14.340
They said, if you can tell me what your goal is.
00:09:16.400
And he said, his goal was to be the strongest man in the world.
00:09:25.160
There's, there's moments of excitement and joy, but as anyone who's really intensely working
00:09:30.160
on running or strength training or agility training, or even just increasing the amount
00:09:35.580
of books they read, there's a lot of non-joy, but a lot of meaning that comes there.
00:09:39.680
At the end of 10 years, when he broke the record to be the strongest man alive, the next day,
00:09:45.380
he was in a depressive spiral because at that point, what do you exactly, what do you do
00:09:52.180
And he got himself together in one week and said, you know what?
00:09:56.360
I'm going to teach these skills that I use of that discipline and bring it into the educational
00:10:06.420
Now, for a lot of people, you know, you think of astronauts that have been on the moon,
00:10:11.020
every one of them had a mental, had a mental breakdown when they came back, because what
00:10:15.660
do you do after you've been on, you've actually physically stood on another planet.
00:10:20.700
And then all of a sudden you're taking out the garbage on Tuesdays and Thursdays.
00:10:29.340
So I thought that was interesting too, you know, a lot of this, the positive psychology research
00:10:34.320
emphasizes all these benefits of, of being happy, right?
00:10:39.860
You recognize opportunities more often than maybe people with a depressive outlook on life.
00:10:44.880
But then you highlight research in the book saying there are some downsides to happiness
00:10:52.500
What are some of those downsides that can kind of get us get in the way of living a meaningful
00:11:00.700
And, and I really want everyone to kind of really think about this.
00:11:04.680
So when they're in a really happy mood, you are much poorer at detecting cheaters.
00:11:10.660
You're much more susceptible to deception, right?
00:11:14.220
So if you, if you end up going to Las Ramblas in Barcelona and you're in an extremely happy
00:11:19.360
mood and you're partying and you're drinking and you don't notice the tricks of the trade
00:11:25.040
of some of these deceitful characters in the street, where one person distracts you with
00:11:29.220
an attractive guy or woman, and then someone else is picking your wallet out of your back
00:11:35.500
When you have a little bit of anxiety, or a little bit of, I'm not talking about despair
00:11:42.560
When you're a little bit skeptical at the same time enjoying yourself, well, you have your,
00:11:47.980
you have your self-protective self that's still available there.
00:11:51.340
Um, we tend to be more self-focused and more selfish when we're in a happy mood.
00:11:55.680
And this has been shown in, in tons of research studies in Australia, when you're given an
00:12:00.840
opportunity to split a windfall of money or resources that comes your way with other people
00:12:08.660
and they can't see what you're doing, you're much more likely to take a bigger piece of the
00:12:13.120
pie for yourself than when you're in a sad mood or a guilty mood or a little bit of an irritable
00:12:19.020
mood, um, you're less likely to remember details of emotionally provocative situations.
00:12:25.360
So think about being an offender vendor, thinking about, um, um, having a disagreement with, uh,
00:12:32.460
with someone, with a professor or, um, or with your romantic partner about, you know, whether
00:12:38.540
you're doing, you're holding your share of the chores at home.
00:12:41.840
When you're in a good mood, you're less likely to remember the details, which makes it problematic
00:12:46.100
because often those conversations don't go well.
00:12:49.560
And the second conversation afterwards, the next day, when you're making your mea culpas,
00:12:56.020
um, the more that you remember about the interaction, the more you can build off of it and have a
00:13:00.980
constructive conversation about why you're not contributing to the chores or why you should
00:13:05.280
be contributing more to the chores and apologizing for not doing so, of hearing their side of the
00:13:12.500
And when you're in a positive mood, you're more distractible.
00:13:16.080
And basically there's a reason for this, which is when we feel good, we love the status quo.
00:13:22.640
We don't want to exert ourself a hundred percent in the gym or in a joyous mood.
00:13:26.880
We don't want to run, um, an interval training where we're running at full speed for a minute
00:13:31.560
and a half and then slowing down for a minute and a half and then going back to full speed.
00:13:39.120
We're not looking to shake the boat and when it's a little bit of a distress and a little
00:13:44.260
bit of skepticism in our system, we're much more open to listening to other people, thinking
00:13:49.760
of what can I do to tweak myself, other people, and the environment to improve things for myself.
00:13:56.480
And so when you hear this, it's not that positive moods are better than negative moods.
00:14:00.860
It depends what, what's your challenge that you're facing.
00:14:04.280
If the goal is to live in the moment right now, go for a positive mood.
00:14:08.760
If the goal is to pay attention to explicit details and remember things, being a little
00:14:14.100
bit more downtrodden or anxious is actually better for you.
00:14:18.840
Again, it's going back to that, uh, emotional agility kind of.
00:14:24.200
And so here's another section in your book that really resonated with me.
00:14:27.440
And I think will resonate with art of manliness readers and listeners, um, is this idea that,
00:14:32.340
uh, the pursuit of comfort and luxury, uh, paradoxically makes us, could make us more
00:14:42.160
We're saying, you know, comfort can make us miserable.
00:14:50.440
And there's a term that Catherine Warner came up with, which I love, which is called emotional
00:14:55.600
safeguarding, which is about parents that just want their kids to be happy.
00:15:00.240
I've got three daughters and I want my kids to be happy, but there's a very interesting
00:15:04.040
thing that happens with particularly middle-class parents, which is they want their kids to
00:15:11.220
They want them to take in all of the advanced courses.
00:15:15.720
They want them to be on, um, the Khan Academy, the website.
00:15:19.100
They want to hire tutors and they want the best teachers that will, that will really push
00:15:25.940
And yet when it comes to their social life or their emotional life, we really try to
00:15:31.780
We plan play dates so they're with the right people that we've already pre-selected in
00:15:37.260
They have a good parent, they've got good stock, they're good kids.
00:15:50.220
It's like, there's this blind spot where the typical American parent recognizes they
00:15:55.820
need to be intellectually challenged in the class, but socially, I want to put all, it's
00:16:00.140
like, you know, when you have your, your five-year-old bowling and all of a sudden you have those,
00:16:04.560
those bumpers that appear so that they can't actually have a, um, I forgot the term.
00:16:13.600
We set up these guardrails so that they, they will only socialize with really good kids.
00:16:20.420
Once you leave the nest, when you're 12 years old or 13 years old, even, and you start hanging
00:16:26.220
out with kids from other schools, or you start meeting kids at the mall or, you know, wherever
00:16:31.300
kids hang out on the streets, you don't, they don't, they're not choosing who they're hanging
00:16:37.240
They need to be able to, how can I read people to know whether I can trust them or mistrust
00:16:43.460
You know, I always think about, I've been thinking about writing a parenting book and the whole premise
00:16:47.700
of it would be this very simple idea because I'm from New York City, which is if I was
00:16:52.940
to take your kid and drop them off blindfolded in Grand Central Station with $2, could they
00:16:58.720
make their self, could they make their way back to your house?
00:17:01.780
Would they have the practical intelligence skills, the ability to tolerate distress, the
00:17:08.040
ability to read and understand people that can leverage them to get their way home?
00:17:15.700
And that's kind of how I think about that when we train our kids to be comfortable, they
00:17:19.980
don't develop the practical intelligence because they don't have any hoops or challenges that
00:17:30.180
Our grandparents in the Great Depression era were amazing at this.
00:17:34.060
And so we're not, I mean, of course we don't want the creature comforts.
00:17:46.900
What I'm saying is if you don't challenge yourselves regularly, you become psychologically
00:17:54.700
There's a great quote from King Cyrus, the Persian Kings.
00:17:58.480
It's like soft lands make soft people or something like that.
00:18:03.920
And I love that idea of helping your kids develop practical intelligence.
00:18:08.360
It's sounds very much that whole grand station thing sounds very much like that
00:18:11.760
free lane, free range parenting lady where, yeah, I think she just recently got in
00:18:17.240
Like the family services like investigated her because people reported that she was
00:18:26.460
30 miles away from my house because her kids were in a playground, seven to nine
00:18:30.440
year old by themselves in a playground and people freaked out and called 911.
00:18:35.980
Well, that's kids are supposed to be on a playground.
00:18:39.900
So we've, we've talked about some of the downsides of happiness.
00:18:44.200
And it kind of bugs me a lot because everyone's always talking about mindfulness, right?
00:18:50.960
There's books about mindfulness and don't get me wrong.
00:18:53.300
Like I'm a big, big believer in meditation and mindfulness meditation.
00:18:58.500
Um, but yeah, sometimes it just sort of irritating when you just see it all the time.
00:19:04.020
And once you become mindful, then your life will become wonderful.
00:19:06.940
But you make the case that there's actually a benefit to mindlessness.
00:19:14.220
And this is exactly why you, your disdain is why we called our chapter, the tyranny of
00:19:24.460
So I've been experiencing this for 15 years now, the tyranny of mindfulness in my house.
00:19:29.120
I mean, just, just think, let me just give the example of, of, uh, of an outfielder on
00:19:34.260
a baseball team and think about them trying to catch a fly ball.
00:19:38.500
Think about how far they are from the batter's box and think of all of the variables if they
00:19:44.780
were to be mindful, to pay attention to in terms of where do I need to be, how fast do
00:19:51.280
I have to pay attention to wind pressure, barometric pressure, the stance of the batter,
00:19:57.040
the speed of the ball, um, their torque motion, how quickly they turn their hips when they
00:20:02.380
actually hit the ball, the angle that the ball hits the, hits the bat, um, where the
00:20:08.160
We can't mindfully attend to all of this information.
00:20:12.660
One of the things that separates human beings from other, from other creatures and other
00:20:17.380
animals is not that we can become mindful and reach this higher state of consciousness.
00:20:21.780
It's that so many things that we do is amazingly happens at an unconscious gut level.
00:20:29.260
And so how does it, how does an outfielder on a baseball or softball team catch a ball?
00:20:35.680
One simple shortcut, which is I keep, when I run my eye contact with the ball, the angle
00:20:45.680
And if I keep the angle the same, I will get to that ball.
00:20:51.380
Sometimes I have to actually back up and back up for a little bit.
00:20:54.740
And we don't even constantly think about that, that gaze shortcut, gaze to the ball is all
00:21:02.580
And if we, if you had a baseball player listen to this and pay attention to all of those variables
00:21:09.500
to calculate where they should be, they will be completely paralyzed and will never catch
00:21:15.680
And it's when people choke, when people choke, I don't know if you remember like Mackie Sasser
00:21:20.800
from the Nets in the late eighties, where, where, you know, here was a guy who was, you
00:21:26.980
know, hitting a nice two 80, two 90 batting average, and he couldn't throw the ball back
00:21:39.420
And all of these psychologists were working with him, which was, listen, be mindful about,
00:21:44.720
you know, the ball in your hands and the, and what it feels like to be in a crouching
00:21:49.360
situation, a crouching stance as a catcher and standing back up again, when you throw the
00:21:56.260
And finally, someone trains him is you have to get back into the robotic automatic movements
00:22:02.560
that you've been doing since you were nine years old.
00:22:04.980
And only by getting, becoming mindless about it, was he able to throw the ball back to
00:22:12.660
Didn't the, in the movie major league two, they kind of spoofed that.
00:22:18.000
They're like, yeah, like the catcher, like he, he all of a sudden couldn't throw the ball
00:22:23.380
back to the pitcher, you know, instead of throwing it back, he'd run to the pitcher and
00:22:28.360
But the way he overcame it was the, uh, the coach had him recite, um, cause he, he read
00:22:35.340
playboy and he read like the descriptions of the models, like what, what Sheila likes
00:22:41.420
And he would just recite that when he's throwing the ball back to the pitcher.
00:22:44.460
And that's how he got over his, uh, his choking, throwing back to the pitcher.
00:22:51.560
No, that's, that's so awesome because that's exactly what I'm talking about.
00:22:54.860
So by distracting himself, he's going into, so we have two modes of thinking, right?
00:23:01.960
So if he's thinking about playboy centerfolds and all of their interests, he's not thinking
00:23:06.820
about the ball, the sweat that's dripping down his face or the, or a stand of 30,000
00:23:12.580
He's doing it mindfully, reflexively and automatically.
00:23:16.340
Mindful is become, become very reflective and become very thoughtful about what we're
00:23:21.980
And there's a time to, you know, there's, uh, you hear people talk all the time about
00:23:27.220
their gut instincts about, you know, I don't want to do, I don't want to do a sign to sign
00:23:36.020
I have this gut instinct that this guy does not have my best interest at heart.
00:23:39.880
Those gut instincts underneath them is all of the years you've been collecting information
00:23:46.500
Millions of years of evolution have developed such that we have these quick signals of whether
00:23:51.780
to trust someone or mistrust someone, you know, we get to chill sometimes or with somebody
00:23:56.040
in the elevator or we have the goosebumps when we just are walking next to somebody and we
00:24:00.840
look and we realize there's some sort of chemistry there.
00:24:03.420
There's some fear known that's happening between the two of us.
00:24:06.020
Now I'm not saying always believe your gut instincts, but what I would say is what we're
00:24:11.040
doing now is we're discounting that your gut instincts is really your intelligence on speed
00:24:18.100
and that we should first pay attention to that before we think about, I want to try to be
00:24:26.700
You talked about how, uh, presidents doodle, like most of the presidents doodle during meetings.
00:24:31.400
And that's sort of a mindless activity that actually helped them pay attention more.
00:24:36.780
There's, there's a big thing that we know about creativity, which is, and almost every
00:24:43.320
You know, what normally happens is you grab 15 people, you bring them into the large oval
00:24:50.860
So extemporaneously you're sharing all these ideas together.
00:24:55.100
Well, that's actually not how creativity works effectively.
00:24:58.600
People need to hear what the problem is, give them a couple of constraints about what they
00:25:04.160
can or can't do based on whoever the consumer is or whoever's pulling the purse strings, right?
00:25:13.440
Um, it's got to involve, um, it's gotta be for, we're looking for 20 to 35 year old women
00:25:22.920
But those constraints have them think about some ideas, but then have, give them some
00:25:28.180
time to do something totally distracting that has nothing to do with the project, whether
00:25:33.200
it's going for a bike ride, going for a nap, going in the shower, having sex, whatever it
00:25:40.020
And when you're in that incubation period of doing something else, your brain is actively
00:25:47.180
So it's like a smoothie, it's blending ideas that are no longer being edited by you.
00:25:52.020
And that's where, that's part of the magical process of creativity, that incubation period
00:25:57.140
of doing something else other than the activity you're trying to be creative in.
00:26:03.260
So, uh, I think you've, you've touched on it a little bit, uh, in your discussion about
00:26:09.920
Um, but explicitly, what are some of the upsides of like depression, right?
00:26:15.060
Like right now, you know, we're doing a series about depression on our, our site and feel
00:26:20.060
like in America, particularly, cause we have this emphasis on happiness that if you're sad
00:26:24.720
or you're feeling down, um, you're broken, right?
00:26:29.840
Um, but you highlight research that there's actually some possible benefits to being in a
00:26:40.300
So one is, it's very difficult because the norm, the appropriate norms for men of expressing
00:26:48.340
It's like, you're weak, you're broken, exactly how you describe it.
00:26:51.660
So it's particularly hard for men to acknowledge that sadness has a benefit.
00:26:58.360
Depression has its own term, which is really a psychological problem.
00:27:01.620
So we're really talking about sadness, just the feeling of being sad.
00:27:05.540
Um, there is no quicker way to solicit help and cooperation and support from other people
00:27:15.140
And we often don't know what it feels like of whether we actually look sad to other people.
00:27:19.880
Um, if you look in the mirror, you can do this.
00:27:21.920
I mean, method actors do this like De Niro all the time.
00:27:26.480
People will just say like, oh, you look kind of sad today.
00:27:28.540
Now, the typical male response, including myself over my entire lifetime is, no, I'm fine.
00:27:39.400
It looks like you're a little bit sad today because they're right now in that moment.
00:27:43.180
They saw that expression and they want to do something for you.
00:27:46.700
And so what I would say is your body, that emotion, that's something to get rid of.
00:27:51.580
And that's an emotion to, we have to allow ourselves to recognize that part of being
00:27:57.700
really psychologically strong, mentally strong is allowing ourselves to be vulnerable.
00:28:03.820
Um, you can't, we can't do everything ourselves.
00:28:06.260
And the reason that baseball teams and basketball teams and football teams are great metaphors
00:28:10.740
is because you're leveraging the strengths of a number of different people together.
00:28:14.860
And that's the only way that these teams make it through the rankings and end up in
00:28:18.980
whatever the final championship games tend to be.
00:28:23.760
It's because of the supporting cast that does all these small little details that work with
00:28:29.420
One person can't get the game and it goes with that way in everything in life and parenting.
00:28:34.180
I mean, if you, if you're unwilling to accept support because you're not feeling yourself,
00:28:39.640
you're a little bit out of your body for some reason.
00:28:42.680
You're going to be, you're going to yell more at your kids.
00:28:48.580
You're not going to have as much fun with them.
00:28:50.240
And these will lead to the memories of what childhood was like for them.
00:28:53.360
A lot of us, you know, will be a tough dad as you go back a generation.
00:28:59.280
And so we have this, we have these ideas that part of being a man is never showing that
00:29:04.000
you're fearful, never showing that you're sad and never showing that you feel guilty.
00:29:07.940
And that's a problematic idea because we can't, we left it up because all of these emotions
00:29:13.680
have a use, you know, guilt, guilt is this really beautiful emotion.
00:29:18.920
It feels bad, but it's a reminder that I need to, it's a motivate, it's a motivator.
00:29:25.120
It's telling us we should do something else to something to repair our relationship because
00:29:29.900
we did something that pissed somebody off or upset somebody.
00:29:33.060
And that's a good emotion and prisoners that feel guilty when they're in prison are less
00:29:38.920
likely to go through the revolving door and engage in another crime and end up back in
00:29:45.960
I mean, that's something else that's often directed towards men that like you, you got
00:29:49.680
to get a control of your anger and you can't be angry.
00:29:56.120
Oh, anger is so doing, it's been two years of interviewing people for this book, writing
00:30:04.460
And now I've been running around talking about no emotion.
00:30:15.020
And part of the, for anger is what you just described, which is this idea that we have to
00:30:20.400
keep these neanderthal attitudes, these frat, like 20 something angry impulses to ourselves.
00:30:28.520
You know, we're not allowed to be angry now that we're adults.
00:30:30.580
We're supposed to be mature enough that we can handle all difficult situations.
00:30:35.220
Well, anger is the emotion that appears when we feel as if the goals that we care about
00:30:42.000
are being obstructed by somebody else or something else.
00:30:46.120
It's the idea that our, our moral code has been demolished by somebody.
00:30:51.940
And so we feel angry, you know, ends up being, if you're with your family and you're having
00:30:55.820
dinner at a restaurant and someone smokes a cigarette and blows it right over your table,
00:31:01.840
If someone, if you're waiting patiently in a parking lot for a parking spot and someone
00:31:05.540
grabs it right before you, even though you've been sitting there for two minutes, you get
00:31:09.940
Now, this is a, this is not an emotion to hide.
00:31:12.080
This is an emotion of, of it's, it's telling you something important.
00:31:16.640
And then the question you asked, which is so important, which is how do you effectively
00:31:19.840
display this in a healthy way to get the best possible outcome?
00:31:25.660
One is, and we talked about this in the book, which is the idea of having a caveat before
00:31:35.580
Think about if your boss pissed you off, there's a power imbalance.
00:31:38.900
So it's, so a lot of people say is it's easy to be, for you to say anger is good because
00:31:44.360
you have tenure and you can't get fired from the university unless you, you know, have sex
00:31:50.260
But for, in any workplace, if you feel that your boss is being disrespectful to you, if
00:31:56.980
you feel as if someone's harassing you, there's a way to communicate this.
00:32:01.320
When you, when you, when you schedule an appointment to meet with your boss, you don't start off by
00:32:05.640
right away screaming and saying that you feel disrespected and respectfully, particularly
00:32:12.600
You tell them, listen, I'm really uncomfortable about something I want to tell you, but it's
00:32:17.780
important to me because, um, I can't give you the best possible work I can unless we have
00:32:24.860
Now, what that does is when said softly is it brings his, his or her defenses down a little
00:32:30.240
bit so that he or she is ready to listen to you with that.
00:32:35.700
You're probably going to be uncomfortable having the conversation.
00:32:39.680
Once you have that caveat out of the way, there's a couple of things.
00:32:43.140
One is your anger, your expression has to be proportional to the problem that you're
00:32:49.040
So if your boss was just trying to be funny and ended up talking about making, talking
00:32:54.820
some smack about you in front of a bunch of people, well, you can't grab a red pipe and
00:33:01.540
That's, that's not proportional to the problem.
00:33:04.340
You can raise your voice, but it's not worth, profanity probably is even too extreme for that
00:33:12.780
Um, and by you sitting up in your chair and you looking them right in the eye and saying
00:33:17.060
that, listen, the way that you spoke about me in front of that room full of people was
00:33:24.080
And I saw you laughing, which made me even more upset.
00:33:26.900
And what made me particularly, particularly perturbed about this, which is why I felt so
00:33:31.660
compelled to talk to you is you didn't do it one-on-one with me.
00:33:36.060
You expressed some of the problems you had in front of a room full of people.
00:33:40.340
Now, what you're inducing is you're being very clear that they're not, that the anger
00:33:48.720
And that's really important for expressing anger effectively.
00:33:51.600
I'm not going to say, listen, you're an asshole.
00:33:57.180
Um, you are a hypocrite with the values that you say you have anything in that nature.
00:34:04.060
Everything that you say is not going to be heard.
00:34:06.060
But when I talk about the exact behavior and the specifics of you chose to say that in
00:34:11.300
front of a room full of people, they can listen to that.
00:34:14.400
And that's something they can actually acknowledge and apologize.
00:34:17.560
Um, the other part of anger to make it effective is you need to be clear and be able to look
00:34:24.720
at somebody and stand your ground throughout the expression of what was bothering you.
00:34:29.500
A lot of people, they express their anger, what bothered them in the beginning, and then
00:34:33.420
they kind of shy off and their voice gets a little bit softer in pitch and a little bit
00:34:39.880
So it's as if you're not really fully standing up for yourself.
00:34:43.040
Um, and then the final piece of expressing anger effectively is you have to allow the
00:34:51.100
person to have an out, which is, I don't expect you to respond right now to what I just told
00:34:58.220
Um, but when you're ready, if it's a day from now or two days from now, um, you can come
00:35:02.460
back to me and, um, you know, just how to tell you how I'm feeling because they might
00:35:06.520
be defensive and they might not give the response you want to.
00:35:10.060
But I know for me, for, you know, I've got 40 people that work for me.
00:35:12.780
A lot of times people tell me that they're pissed off about something I've done.
00:35:16.200
Immediately, you know, I respond and kind of in a witty way, which is saying of somehow
00:35:22.900
And then 24 hours later, I ended up apologizing to them saying they were absolutely right.
00:35:29.420
I'm glad you were sort of, I'm glad we have a good enough relationship where you could
00:35:39.240
It won't always go that way, but it's important.
00:35:42.200
And to develop the pattern of standing up for yourself.
00:35:49.800
He's like the patron saint of the art of manliness.
00:35:51.960
Um, so I was really tickled that you had a whole chapter called the Teddy effect, uh,
00:35:58.000
dedicated about Teddy Roosevelt and his sort of the dark side of his personality that made
00:36:04.280
Uh, can you talk about what the Teddy effect is?
00:36:10.400
Anyone that has Teddy Roosevelt, I've got a bobblehead of Teddy Roosevelt that's on both
00:36:18.020
I'm not going to be a huge fan of your show now.
00:36:19.940
Um, Teddy Roosevelt is whatever president should be and should aspire to become.
00:36:26.000
Unfortunately, in today's world, there's no way you can have that with Teddy Roosevelt
00:36:29.480
with the blogosphere and people having smartphones everywhere.
00:36:32.820
I mean, here's a guy who would swim naked in the Potomac river, right behind the white
00:36:39.320
Here's a guy who would leave in the middle of all Senate and the Senate is in session
00:36:43.520
and just go hunting for bears in North Dakota because he didn't want to listen to what they
00:36:48.800
had to say until they actually could solve something on their own.
00:36:52.220
Um, you know, here's the guy who was in the middle of giving a speech.
00:36:56.120
Uh, he had notes in his pocket and was shot and the bullet, the bullet did not pass
00:37:03.920
He took the notes out, looked at the bullet, put it down and kept on giving his speech.
00:37:08.980
Um, Teddy Roosevelt had a lot of the characteristics that are similar to what we would call psychopaths,
00:37:15.060
which is, you know, Dexter, the HBO show is a great example of a psychopath.
00:37:20.540
Um, where this is, this, if he was in, fell into the wrong peer group, this is a guy who
00:37:30.380
Um, the leader of the leader of a gang in inner city, Chicago, and an amazing drug dealer.
00:37:35.260
And he happened to just have his leadership skills.
00:37:37.440
He found a place in politics before, before he was in government.
00:37:41.400
He was actually, uh, you know, took the police in, in, in New York city.
00:37:45.280
Um, and he actually, and this is a guy who has, he's a selfish guy.
00:37:51.180
Um, he recognized that he wanted his legacy, he wanted his legacy to be as amazing.
00:37:56.960
And he was willing to put himself ahead of a lot of people over the course of his career.
00:38:01.740
He had a strong inner circle all the time that was considered part of, it's part of him.
00:38:13.620
Now, when we talk about narcissism, um, most people don't realize that there's, there's
00:38:19.280
a healthy side of narcissism and an unhealthy side.
00:38:22.040
And Teddy had a real good batch of the healthy side of narcissism.
00:38:25.580
And so if you, if you, if you don't mind, I'll explain these two sides to your viewers.
00:38:31.880
So I think of, there's one, so the unhealthy side, another, an example of the unhealthy side
00:38:37.200
would be, um, meta world peace for the Lakers, which we can call narcissistic
00:38:43.200
rivalry and narcissistic rivalry is when it's almost as if you're holding a sign that says,
00:38:48.740
I will never let any of my rivals get what they deserve.
00:38:56.540
So your, your focus, your obsession is I have these amazing strengths.
00:39:02.300
Um, and I'm going to make sure that nobody holds me down.
00:39:05.940
And you're, you're obsessed about where your rivals are, where your ranking is.
00:39:09.960
And so all of your time and effort is not focused on achievement.
00:39:16.440
It's focused on being better than the other people that you're competing with and taken
00:39:21.620
to its extreme of a sense of entitlement, a feeling that you're better than everybody
00:39:25.740
else, and then focusing on, um, passively, aggressively blocking your rivals from getting
00:39:33.940
the ball, um, preventing your, preventing your colleagues from getting, from being acknowledged
00:39:39.340
that they were part of the reason that this, that this transaction was successful.
00:39:52.380
This guy had a ton of domestic abuse problems, didn't get along with the other LA Lakers
00:39:57.400
on his basketball team, um, changed his name because he wanted the spotlight on him and
00:40:02.980
he would not pass the ball to certain people on the team.
00:40:05.600
If he, if they thought that they spoke badly about him in the media, which you just gotta,
00:40:10.180
you just don't do as a colleague, you can dislike someone when it comes to tournament
00:40:16.280
Um, you got to put that aside now on the flip side, on the healthy side, narcissism,
00:40:27.560
It's as if you're holding a sign that says, I have amazing strength that people still don't
00:40:35.540
If you talk to any player in the NBA, they will say he's the most, one of the most annoying
00:40:50.320
Before games actually start with the LA Lakers, same team is better world peace.
00:40:55.380
All the players practice on one side of the court when they're just shooting around.
00:40:59.780
And Colby feels he needs to be by himself to get in the Zen zone.
00:41:04.640
And he's on the other side shooting by himself.
00:41:14.140
The guy's one of the best players in the NBA in terms of his ball handling skills.
00:41:18.040
Um, he screams at other players, but he does it because he, he believes he's capable of
00:41:26.240
doing amazing things and he's pushing everyone, including himself to be the best possible person.
00:41:33.880
Um, you know, he's famous for punching Steve care in the face during practice because, um,
00:41:48.040
And in that moment, um, he gained the most respect for Michael Jordan and they became
00:41:57.000
More even, even him and, and Scotty Pippitt, Steve current and Michael Jordan were closer
00:42:02.140
than him and Pippitt, um, because he recognized this guy wanted to be the best possible.
00:42:07.380
And a punch was not about to enter that relationship.
00:42:10.180
And that punch was not going to interfere with him wanting to be the best.
00:42:24.360
They love this and it just makes them work harder.
00:42:27.860
And Teddy Roosevelt emulated narcissistic admiration.
00:42:30.960
This was a guy who thought he was the best president that was ever put into power.
00:42:37.720
But because of that, he felt the necessity to live up that expectation that he had for
00:42:45.580
And he worked hard as hard or harder than any other president that is out there.
00:42:49.860
He, he's the only person who, uh, he petitioned for the medal of honor.
00:42:54.180
Like he thought he deserved the medal of honor after, um, the, the chart with the rough
00:43:02.180
And he got back and he was hoping for a medal of honor nomination and no one got it.
00:43:08.040
And he actually petitioned for it, which is sort of like a faux pas.
00:43:10.220
You're not supposed to like ask for the medal of honor.
00:43:13.180
So I guess there's an example of his narcissism.
00:43:15.040
He finally got it, but it was like after he was dead.
00:43:17.220
Um, but yeah, I guess that's another example of his narcissism.
00:43:22.400
And to keep with that in terms of medals, I mean, this is the only guy ever who had the
00:43:28.700
So one medal is for war and one medal is for diplomatic negotiations.
00:43:39.800
Um, it ends up being that we need to figure out how to, how to figure out our differences
00:43:47.420
And that's, as opposed to you, you look at how people are spoken about now in politics,
00:43:58.980
I know that I want that for friends, for my friendships.
00:44:01.780
I want that for my colleagues and what the, and that also entails that they're going to
00:44:06.360
piss me off sometimes, but I want the best of the best and the best people is can bring
00:44:11.560
every dimension of their personality to the plate when it's beneficial.
00:44:16.140
And not prematurely discard it because it's not appropriate to be narcissistic.
00:44:21.780
It's not appropriate to be Machiavellian and selfish.
00:44:24.360
The best people appreciate every single side of their personality and bring it to bear.
00:44:29.520
Would you have any advice for folks who maybe aren't naturally Machiavellian or narcissistic
00:44:38.340
Because yeah, this research shows that these types of people with these sort of like the
00:44:42.160
dark triad often do well in leadership position.
00:44:47.240
Um, so I mean, what do you tell for the guy who's just like, his temperament is just to
00:44:52.420
be sort of humble and not, uh, not rock the boat.
00:44:56.700
I mean, what can they do to embrace the Teddy effect?
00:45:02.280
I mean, actually as a mentor at working in a university, I give this kind of feedback all
00:45:07.380
the time that for people that are kind, that say, this is your virtue, you're kind, you're
00:45:11.960
generous, you're compassionate, but there's a tipping point where it can actually interfere
00:45:21.340
And a perfect example of this is if you're in my group to work on a project, I need you
00:45:27.660
Sometimes I need you to take the devil's advocate position, even if you don't believe
00:45:32.280
it, because I need to think of, we need to think of what regulations, what, what are
00:45:40.260
Have we not thought about as we get super excited about this product that we're interested
00:45:46.560
I need, I, I, so I train people in our culture that I seek dissidence.
00:45:52.940
When you disagree with me, you'll gain more, more equity in my mind than if you agree with
00:46:00.320
Um, the advice that I give to people is essentially is don't think the goal is not to be a narcissist
00:46:08.580
The goal is to think about, we can learn from these people like Teddy Roosevelt and Kobe Bryant
00:46:14.640
and Michael, Michael Jordan, uh, who have these qualities and say, there are behaviors that
00:46:20.680
they engage in that we just want to add every once in a while.
00:46:24.160
And so if you're in a group setting and everybody's agreeing about an issue, you can actually gain
00:46:31.800
great amount of leverage by trying to really intentionally, what are people not thinking
00:46:36.780
about or even raising the question of, um, I realize everybody's excited and I don't want
00:46:41.980
to be a buzz kill, but I'm wondering if we should, I think we need to have a conversation
00:46:46.300
about what have we not considered because we're falling in love with their ideas too much.
00:46:50.960
If that kind of statement gets static or a negative response, that's even, that's even a
00:46:59.920
greater kind of, you know, a smoke alarm alert that there's a problem with the group, right?
00:47:04.740
This has happened to Cuban Missile Crisis, which is nobody would disagree with JFK.
00:47:08.380
Nobody could, everybody was so in love with him and so in love with their ideas that nobody
00:47:13.140
said, listen, let's take 15 minutes and talk about what are we getting wrong?
00:47:18.460
Because there's always something you're not considering there.
00:47:21.020
So that's one thing that it's, it's been a group setting.
00:47:25.500
The other one, and I strongly suggest this for, you know, the dads, moms, parents, um, who
00:47:31.400
are listening is you need to start being selfish.
00:47:34.880
If you worry about whether or not you're, you're parenting your kids, right, your kids
00:47:39.960
are going to be fine because you're thinking about it.
00:47:46.140
What I suggest is if you don't recharge your own batteries, if you don't spend time with
00:47:50.980
your friends, if you don't work on your body, if you don't spend time reading books that
00:47:55.600
you like to read and take some time away from parenting, you're going to be a worse parent.
00:48:07.500
Um, you're going to actually be less engaged in checking your smartphone more often.
00:48:11.700
And so take time, build in time just for yourself and be selfish.
00:48:17.260
And it's the diametrical opposite of what people speak of.
00:48:23.800
The parent that doesn't take care of themselves is by definition an inferior parent because
00:48:28.540
you're a bad role model for your kids of how they should live their lives when they're
00:48:37.000
Um, and for the relationship part of it is you need to know what your values are.
00:48:42.460
You should, if you don't know the answer to what are the values that you're not willing
00:48:48.600
to move on that are fundamental to your decisions, you just sit, you need to spend some time and
00:48:54.440
Like I know for myself, the idea of first putting my own personal signature on my work
00:48:59.040
and not being, um, replicating what other people do is a fundamental value that I have.
00:49:05.000
And one of my fundamental values is, um, making sure that kind of ancient Greek style, take
00:49:11.180
And that's the way I'm going to every single day of my life.
00:49:13.720
I'm going to spend at least one hour on my mind by reading books that aren't related to
00:49:20.000
And I make that almost like, like a, like a monk in a Tibetan monastery.
00:49:24.360
That is, I don't, the day is not finished until I spend time.
00:49:30.920
You need to know what you value or else you're running around aimlessly.
00:49:34.720
And the reason you need to know this is because when your values are compromised, that's when
00:49:43.060
It's time to, um, be willing to be angry, be willing to disagree with people.
00:49:47.960
And so part of it, you know, I suggest people clarify their values and be willing to step
00:49:53.700
into a discomfort zone when someone does something that goes against what you value.
00:49:59.700
Well, this has been a fascinating conversation before we, uh, end it, where can people find
00:50:07.260
So if you just put Todd Cashton in Google, K-A-S-H-D-A-N, you'll find my website.
00:50:14.500
And I give away a ton of articles are available for free off of my website at ToddCashton.com.
00:50:21.900
Well, this has been a fascinating conversation.
00:50:26.640
And anyone that loves Teddy, he's automatically sent him off.
00:50:31.960
He's one of the co-writers and authors on the book, The Upside of Your Dark Side.
00:50:39.740
You can also find out more information about his work at ToddCashton.com.
00:50:48.540
Well, that wraps up another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast.
00:50:51.920
For more manly tips and advice, make sure to check out the Art of Manliness website at theartofmanliness.com.
00:50:57.160
And if you enjoy this podcast, I'd really appreciate it if you give us a review on Stitcher or iTunes,
00:51:07.080
That'd be the best compliment you can give me is recommending the podcast to a friend.
00:51:11.700
Until next time, this is Brett McKay telling you to stay manly.