Self-improvement is a multi-billion dollar industry, but despite its ubiquity and cultural influence, you may have never thought about the deeper underpinnings of self improvement. In this episode, Dr. Anna Schaffner and I discuss how the idea of selfimprovement, far from being a recent Western phenomenon, traces back to antiquity and can be found across cultures. We discuss how self-help reflects what a culture values and changes based on a culture s conception of selfhood, agency, and the relationship between individual and society.
00:22:04.700So, anciently, how did they think you could control the self?
00:22:09.300And how have you come to look at this area of self-improvement?
00:22:13.600Yeah, I think self-control was really, really important in the ancient models,
00:22:19.460partly because of the value of temperance and, you know, the idea of the golden mean, avoiding extremes.
00:22:26.360And I think the idea of controlling our animal nature was also really, really strong.
00:22:32.240So, there was a core assumption that we have to be able to exercise control over our minds, emotions, bodies, and drives.
00:22:39.760And that makes us less animal and more human.
00:22:42.340And I think the idea of self-control also just came into focus because of this eternal conflict between the needs and desires of the individual and that of the community.
00:22:55.060That's always a very precarious and difficult balancing act.
00:22:59.640And, of course, you know, the ancient Stoics talked a lot about self-control.
00:23:04.660And in their books, it was mainly about mind control, controlling our emotions by controlling our thoughts and our judgments and our assessments of external factors.
00:23:15.220And I think many of the ancient Stoic models have huge benefits.
00:23:18.960So, for example, the circle of control idea, you know, that we always should differentiate what is and what is not in our control.
00:23:27.160And they very much advocated that we focus on what we can control.
00:23:31.780And they were very strict about it and said what we can control is only our inner lives and more precisely our judgments and assessments of external events.
00:23:41.180And these assessments and judgments in turn determine our emotions.
00:23:45.700And that assumption is still core to cognitive behavior or therapy.
00:23:49.880And it has a lot of merits, I would say.
00:23:52.320But it also has limitations because we're, of course, not just rational beings.
00:23:56.860You know, we're also messy, creative, spiritual, emotional.
00:24:02.920And I think, you know, this extreme idea of Stoic self-control also costs a lot of energy because, you know, if we constantly have to reason ourselves out of bad states, this is where our energy goes.
00:24:19.880And I think sometimes it is more helpful to accept negative emotional states rather than trying at all times to change them.
00:24:27.160It depends, you know, it depends on what kind of emotion we're talking about.
00:24:31.140But I'm generally speaking a big fan of acceptance and commitment therapy, which is a sort of third wave behavioral cognitive model that addresses this question.
00:24:42.920You know, that it takes a lot of energy constantly to try and control our minds.
00:24:47.380And sometimes acceptance is the answer rather than control.
00:25:05.040And I would describe ACT, you know, acceptance and commitment therapy as a combination of cognitive behavioral therapy models plus Eastern ideas about acceptance, letting go, and gratitude, and mindfulness.
00:25:21.940And that's why I think it's a very powerful therapeutic model because it brings that in and it doesn't just assume that we're purely rational creatures and can be purely rational at all times.
00:25:34.000And acceptance and commitment therapy is based on this idea that we can create a gap between the observing self and, you know, our true essence.
00:25:46.880So it's all about recognizing that our thoughts, our emotions come and go and they can be helpful or less helpful.
00:25:57.040And they're like clouds passing on the sky, but, you know, they're not permanent and we don't have to always take them at face value.
00:26:05.720You know, we can question them, we can look at them with a bit of distance.
00:26:09.380And I think this idea of defusing from our thoughts can be a really, really powerful one in daily life, you know.
00:26:16.960So, for example, when we have negative ideas about ourselves in our head, like, you know, I'm a loser or nobody likes me, a very powerful acceptance and commitment therapy technology is to say, I think that I'm a loser or my mind tells me that nobody likes me.
00:26:35.040And that already creates a really, really beneficial distance between ourselves and that thought.
00:26:42.360And that can help us to look at it as a mere thought rather than reality.
00:26:46.720And that can be really, really powerful in terms of not being swayed too much, you know, by our inner critic, by automatic negative thinking, by, you know, unhelpful self-narratives.
00:26:59.380We can look at them as thoughts, as narratives, as, you know, recurring patterns, but we don't have to identify with them.
00:27:07.560We don't fuse with them, you know, we actually just observe them with detachment and nuts.
00:27:14.100Yeah, I think for me, one of the most powerful techniques I have come across in my research.
00:27:19.580So, another thing that self-improvement writers have spilt a lot of ink on is how to become a good person, a virtuous person.
00:27:29.400And you looked at this, how this has changed over time and across cultures.
00:27:33.380Let's start with the Eastern approach.
00:27:34.580Like, what was the Eastern approach on becoming a virtuous or good person?
00:27:40.400Yeah, I think, you know, virtual ethics were very, very important in the ancient models.
00:27:47.540And I think probably the most neglected virtue in our age is altruism.
00:27:57.320I think altruism is really one that has massively fallen from favor and that we only begin to see, again, in self-help now.
00:28:08.300And that has actually disappeared for a very, very long period.
00:28:12.420So, I think becoming virtuous was about embracing the idea of humility.
00:28:20.080It was about embracing the idea of altruism.
00:28:23.660And it was about recognizing our place in a bigger whole, you know, understanding our place in a broader, wider order of things.
00:28:32.980And I think that humility and altruism are interestingly two virtues that are experiencing a revival right now.
00:28:44.060And I think that in terms of improving our virtues, you know, we talked a little bit before about temperance and self-control and mind control.
00:28:55.040But in terms of the social virtues, I think there is a lot of emphasis on not taking ourselves too seriously, on recognizing that we're part of larger structures, you know, that we're always part of other teams, you know, big and small.
00:29:11.840And that it is also about, you know, looking at our own bubble and understanding ourselves as members of a community, a particular historical moment, or, you know, even about understanding ourselves as a profoundly flawed species.
00:29:30.460So, I think humility in particular is related to gratitude as well, you know, to appreciating on what we have rather than focusing on what we lack.
00:29:40.320And humility is also about recognizing just how much we don't know and acknowledging our blind spots.
00:29:49.280And the confusion form of humility is profoundly pro-social in spirit.
00:29:54.640You know, it's about valuing the social good more highly than the satisfaction of our personal aspirations and ambitions.
00:30:02.060But humility is also a core value in Christianity where it takes the form of, you know, self-renunciation and complete submission to God.
00:30:09.420And that's perhaps a mode of humility that is no longer that attractive nowadays.
00:30:15.640Something that stood out to me when you talked about approaches to becoming a good person, a virtuous person, is you see both anciently in the East and in the West, particularly in Confucian philosophy, in Aristotelian virtue ethics.
00:30:30.280You know, Confucius thought the goal, like you wanted to become the kind of person who would do the right thing in the right situation because it's just, you've naturally developed yourself to become that person.
00:30:44.600And he thought, well, the way you developed to become that kind of person where you just sort of naturally do the good and virtuous thing is he had these strict rituals you had to follow, right?
00:30:54.140You follow the ritual and you will shape yourself into a good person who will eventually just naturally just do the right thing in the right moment.
00:31:03.260And then you say, you argue, like you see this in Aristotelian virtue ethics in the West.
00:31:08.680Aristotle had the same idea that the goal was to become like this virtuous person, but you wanted to become the kind of person who just did the right thing at the right time for the right reason because you're just naturally a good person.
00:31:24.540And so, he thought the way you did that is you developed these habits of virtue, so you just kind of practiced the skill until you shaped yourself into that person.
00:31:32.320I thought that was interesting that two different cultures came up with the same idea of how to shape a virtuous person.
00:31:40.260Yeah, absolutely. And that's a really interesting parallel you draw there because I think in Confucian ritual, the idea wasn't just that you bow down to your elders, but the idea was also that by bowing down, you actually genuinely experience that emotion of deference and humility and respect.
00:32:03.740And that it's not just, you know, like a theatrical gesture, but by performing it, you actually experience it.
00:32:10.220And I think in Aristotle's framework, at the heart of it really is this, as you say, this emphasis is on us becoming habitually good.
00:32:20.280You know, this idea that we need to aim for a long-term transformation of our personalities and to cultivate specific virtues in such a way that we want to be virtuous rather than forcing ourselves to be virtuous.
00:32:37.000And he very much believed that in order to be good, we have to internalize virtues and assimilate them into firm habits so that we voluntarily and automatically wish to perform good actions at all times.
00:32:51.600And I think that's very different from, you know, and he has this interesting distinction between the continent and the incontinent person.
00:32:59.140So the incontinent person would like to be virtuous, but they're constantly overridden by their passions and they can't quite manage to, they would like to, but they can't.
00:33:08.640And then the continent person wants to be virtuous, but has to force themselves to be virtuous, you know, so they're not automatically and naturally virtuous, but it's an effort.
00:33:21.900It's a constant moral and cognitive effort to be virtuous.
00:33:28.180I mean, he rates it more highly than being incontinent, but it's not the aim of his kind of philosophy of virtual ethics, which is all about wanting to perform virtuous deeds.
00:33:39.900So you don't have to even force yourself to do it.
00:33:43.820And I guess the idea is very much to establish firm habits and to perform good acts and to want to perform them too.
00:33:54.780So that they become a natural and an automatic habit that we don't even think about.
00:34:01.180So we've been talking a lot about improving the inner self, but as we touched on before, a lot of self-improvement advice is about improving our relationships with other people.
00:34:14.060In your research, what did this interrelational advice look like both anciently and in more modern times?
00:34:21.260Yeah, so I think, you know, in the Confucian framework, it was all about respect for existing hierarchies, right?
00:34:29.600And about doing your duty and, you know, seeing yourself as defined by your relations with others, never questioning your position in these hierarchies and so on.
00:34:40.980An interesting new perspective regarding our relationships, I think, comes with Machiavelli, who advocated that we always need to understand the other's fears and desires and then use this knowledge to manipulate them.
00:34:57.400So he, you know, in The Prince, he talked about talking the talk and paying lip service to the values and sensibilities of the day, but being utterly ruthless and power-focused behind the scenes in order to get what you want.
00:35:12.100And, of course, that's not a very positive model of human relationships and it's a very kind of power-driven and effect-oriented way of looking them.
00:35:24.360One of my favorite modern writers on this topic is surprisingly Dale Carnegie.
00:35:29.700You know, I would say Dale Carnegie's book, How to Win Friends and Influence People, which was published in 1936 in the, you know, Great Depression, it was the one book that surprised me most because I, you know, it was written for salespeople and I thought it would be quite cheesy and cringeworthy.
00:35:49.440But in fact, it is full of sound advice, you know, that really has survived the test of time because Carnegie also talks about mentalizing, like Machiavelli, you know, he thinks we, in order to establish good relations and effective relationships with other people, we need to mentalize, we need to step in their shoes and understand what they want and what they fear.
00:36:11.120But there's also a nicer side to his model in that he advocates giving true attention and recognition.
00:36:19.660So I would say that, you know, Carnegie really argues that we need to see the world from other people's point of view if we want to communicate with them in an effective way.
00:36:31.320And very few of us master this art because it requires the ability to imagine what lies beyond our own cognitive maps.
00:36:38.180And he ultimately thought that human beings are very easy to read and he argued that we have an unquenchable thirst for attention, sympathy and respect.
00:36:49.960And if we want others to like us, we simply have to give them that, you know, we have to find ways of giving attention, sympathy and respect.
00:36:57.580And like Machiavelli, Carnegie actually has an astonishingly low opinion of other human beings and he thought they were quite self-obsessed and needy.
00:37:07.800And ultimately, he believed that in order to establish positive relations, we need to make others feel appreciated and we can thereby render them more compliant with our own agendas.
00:37:20.300But it sounds very manipulative, but I think in his worldview, it was a kind of win-win situation because what others want above all is to feel important and to be praised.
00:37:32.400And, you know, by giving that praise and by making others feel important, we can establish good relationships.
00:37:38.820So, he has some fantastic lines in his book, such as, you know, a person's name is to that person the sweetest and most important sound in any language.
00:37:49.240And he also estimates that we spend 95% of our time thinking about ourselves.
00:37:54.960And he also wrote that we should remember that the people we are talking to are a hundred times more interested in themselves and their wants and problems than they are in ourselves and our problems.
00:38:08.620And he came up with a few simple ways of making people like us.
00:38:13.600So, he says we need to be genuinely interested in the other person, smile, remember their first name and use it often, be a good listener and encourage others simply to talk about themselves.
00:38:24.960And we should also talk about the other person's interests and make them feel important.
00:38:30.160And he has a lot of other little tricks, but they aren't really as manipulative as they sound, I think, because ultimately they are about giving attention, you know, and attention is a gift.
00:38:43.600And by giving it and by being genuinely interested in another person, I think that that is a very good basis for establishing relationships.
00:38:52.000Okay, so Dale Carnegie, he's the nice Machiavelli.
00:39:18.300I mean, there is something transactional about his model and I won't deny it, but I think if we take the transactional side out of the picture, we're left with something more positive.
00:39:30.680You know, we're left with, you know, giving attention and sympathy and being genuinely curious about the other person.
00:39:40.480I mean, a philosopher who talked about the importance of attention in a relationship, Simone Weiss, talked a lot about that.
00:39:48.080Love is just basically paying attention to another person.
00:39:52.260And I think what you're saying is that Carnegie's advice are principles to apply to give attention to people.
00:39:59.440Yeah, I mean, I think we can, you know, we can see, we can see him in a slightly darker light in the sense that it is about ultimately, you know, establishing relationships for a certain purpose.
00:40:14.140But I suppose many of our interactions have a purpose, you know, and he articulates that.
00:40:22.800But, and of course, in the sense that we, I think the deeper relationships we engage in, you know, the kind of genuinely meaningful ones, the ones that are about love and giving and, you know, appreciating and celebrating the other person, they would not be the place to try any of these, you know.
00:40:44.160They have to be based on authentic and non-purpose-driven desires and interactions.
00:40:58.780I think writing this book and doing all this research has changed me in one way above all.
00:41:06.000And that was that when I read all the theory, I developed a really strong desire to get engaged with the practice.
00:41:13.000So I actually trained as a coach and I have been coaching and helping clients to grow for more than two years now.
00:41:21.280And I really love it because I feel like I've discovered so many exciting ideas and techniques and, you know, philosophical and psychological frameworks that I really wanted to see how I can help other people apply them.
00:41:36.400You know, because reading a book is one thing, but I think in order truly to change ourselves, we sometimes need other people, you know, to help us see ourselves slightly differently, to question us, to challenge us, to act as a mirror.
00:41:49.580And in my coaching, I try to integrate ancient and evidence-based scientific approaches.
00:41:55.640And, you know, as I mentioned before, I really love ACT, acceptance and commitment therapy, which in its own right does that integration.
00:42:04.220And I think that in my own life, what has changed most dramatically is that I've become more interested in the practice than in the theory.
00:42:13.400Well, you've read hundreds of self-improvement books to write this book.
00:42:19.040Do you have like your top three self-improvements that you would recommend people pick up?
00:42:28.440But if I have to, if I have to limit myself to just three, I would say Marcus Aurelius' Meditations.
00:42:36.600So it's by the Roman emperor and stoic philosopher Marcus Aurelius.
00:42:40.920And it basically is a beautifully written journal that really illustrates and explains in theoretical terms, but also gives lots and lots of practical examples.
00:42:53.820And it illustrates this idea that suffering is caused not by external events, but by our own reactions to these events, you know, by faulty judgments and unrealistic expectations.
00:43:05.760And Aurelius argues that it's pointless to worry about external events that are beyond our control.
00:43:11.600And we should focus all our attention on what we can control.
00:43:15.560And there's a beautiful line in the book, one of my favorites ever, and that is only a madman looks for figs in winter.
00:43:22.000So it's the idea that we have to adjust our expectations.
00:43:26.000And my other second favorite book is Russ Harris' The Happiness Trap.
00:43:30.280And that is based on acceptance and commitment therapy.
00:43:34.020It's a beautiful, simple, very engaging and relatable explanation of the basic premises of ACT and how we can apply it in our own lives.
00:43:45.100And my third choice would be Viktor Frankl's Man's Search for Meaning, you know, old classic.
00:43:52.560And that has to be on my list because it has to be on my list because it's all about purpose and meaning and how, you know, powerful why that drives us, you know, can help us tolerate almost any how.
00:44:07.880And if I can mention the fourth one, I mentioned Eckhart Tolle's The Power of Now, which is a bit too esoteric for my taste in lots of ways, but I think has a very, very powerful message about living in the present and why we should and how we can do so.
00:44:25.940Well, Anna, this has been a great conversation.
00:44:27.940Where can people go to learn more about the book and your work?
00:44:30.340So you can always go to my website and I'm also really interested in building bridges between, you know, the theory and practice.
00:44:41.360So I'm online at theexhaustioncoach.com and I, you know, I'm very happy to offer coaching sessions based on very specific ideas and philosophical frameworks.
00:44:50.760And I think there's probably something that appeals to different people.
00:44:55.240You know, some people like to work on their imagination.
00:44:57.640Some people want to work on their mentalizing.
00:44:59.520Some people want to work on how to be more present.
00:45:02.760Some people want to work on self-knowledge or mind control.
00:45:05.700And that's something I'd be very happy to help with.