The Art of Manliness - July 13, 2022


The Philosophy of Self-Improvement

Topics
self-improvement history self-help literature changes Bildung virtue ethics attention
Hosted by
Brett McKay
Guests
Anna Schaffner
Mentioned
Dale Carnegie Bildung Jordan Peterson Machiavelli Influence People Viktor Frankl Simone Weiss Russ Harris Confucius Aristotle Aurelius Seneca Stoics
Life Lessons From the World's Greatest Negotiator What Made JFK So Compelling？

Episode Stats


Length

46 minutes

Words per minute

161.58

Word count

7,589

Sentence count

454

Harmful content

Hate speech

2

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

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.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
Topics generated with Qwen2.5-3B-Instruct.
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.000 Brett McKay here, and welcome to another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast.
00:00:10.820 There are thousands of books, podcasts, and social media posts about how to be more productive,
00:00:15.400 strengthen your relationships, find your purpose, and be your all-around best self.
00:00:19.080 And there are legions of programs and seminars out there designed to help improve your life.
00:00:23.080 Altogether, self-help represents a multi-billion dollar industry. But despite its ubiquity and
00:00:27.980 cultural influence, you may have never thought about the deeper underpinnings of self-improvement.
00:00:31.860 My guest has. In fact, her research led her to add being a life coach to her academic work as a
00:00:37.340 professor of cultural history, surely creating one of the most unique career combinations. Her name
00:00:42.020 is Anna Schaffner, and she's the author of The Art of Self-Improvement, 10 Timeless Truths.
00:00:46.540 Anna and I begin our conversation with how the idea of self-improvement, far from being a recent
00:00:50.860 Western phenomenon, traces back to antiquity and can be found across cultures. We discuss how
00:00:55.400 self-help reflects what a culture values and changes based on a culture's conception of selfhood,
00:01:00.280 agency, and the relationship between the individual and society. From there, we turn
00:01:04.300 to a few of the timeless principles of self-improvement, self-control, being virtuous,
00:01:08.320 and building positive relationships, looking both at how they were tackled anciently,
00:01:11.900 as well as more modern angles that could be helpful. We discuss the downside of taking a
00:01:15.720 strictly stoic approach to life, the idea of making virtue a habit, and how Dale Carnegie can be seen
00:01:20.680 as a modern Machiavelli, in a good way. We end our conversation with Anna's four favorite
00:01:24.980 self-improvement books. After the show's over, check out our show notes at awim.is slash self-improvement.
00:01:43.200 All right, Anna Schaffner, welcome to the show.
00:01:47.460 Thank you so much for having me. It's a pleasure.
00:01:49.420 So, we had you on a few years ago to discuss your book on the cultural history of exhaustion.
00:01:55.980 You got another book of cultural history out, and this time it's about self-improvement.
00:02:02.140 What led you to take a deep dive into the cultural history of self-improvement?
00:02:06.840 Yeah, in lots of ways, it seemed a very natural follow-on from my previous book,
00:02:11.620 Exhaustion of History. So, I think of this book as the positive counterpart to it. It's very much about
00:02:17.540 how we can manage to care for and project our energy outwards. And I've always been really
00:02:23.260 interested in psychology and personal development. And I have also read my fair share of self-help over
00:02:29.780 the years. You know, I'm an extreme introvert, and I often feel socially quite awkward. I have a lot of
00:02:35.480 inner noise going on, you know, a very harsh, unkind super ego. And I've somehow always been
00:02:41.620 looking for cures for these conditions. And I also grew up with a really strong internalized belief
00:02:47.080 that we can and always must improve ourselves. So, you know, I've internalized this fairly Protestant 0.50
00:02:52.400 work ethic extended to the self. And so, I read a lot of self-help, but because I'm a cultural historian
00:02:58.040 and a literature scholar by training, I, you know, at some point read these texts much more critically.
00:03:03.040 And I realized that most of our self-help is really very ideological in spirit. It's not just harmless
00:03:09.400 advice literature, you know. And it's also a hugely influential genre, if we think about it. It very
00:03:15.400 powerfully and directly seeks to shape our aspirations and our values and behaviors. And it really does so
00:03:23.100 at scale. So, self-help is a massive industry, you know, worth almost 40 billion dollars worldwide.
00:03:29.460 And I think, at the same time, this imperative that we constantly have to improve ourselves, that we have to
00:03:35.140 work on ourselves, is a really, really strong cultural expectation in our times. And many of us have
00:03:41.500 internalized it quite unquestioningly, and including myself. And at some point, I wondered, where did it come
00:03:48.620 from, you know, and has it always been like this? And if we drill down deeper, what does self-improvement
00:03:54.200 actually mean? So, what is our current understanding of the self? You know, what counts as improvement and
00:04:00.140 why? So, for example, why should it be considered an improvement to become more extroverted, you know,
00:04:06.340 when we might be naturally quite introverted? And these were the kinds of questions that motivated me to
00:04:12.000 write my book. And of course, as a cultural historian, I'm also really interested in what changes and what
00:04:17.380 remains the same. And especially when it comes to self-improvement advice. And I discovered that
00:04:22.020 self-improvement has a hugely long history, and that there's really a lot that we can learn from
00:04:28.100 our ancestors and from other cultures. So, when you started researching, going back in the history
00:04:33.400 of self-improvement, like, how far does this idea of self-improvement go? And do we see it across
00:04:38.980 cultures? Yeah, I mean, that's the fascinating thing, Brett. It's really, it goes back all the way to
00:04:45.660 ancient China, you know, to the earliest recorded texts that people have written. And I do think that
00:04:52.420 self-improvement really is a ubiquitous and timeless desire, and that it can be traced all the way back
00:05:00.440 to the ancient civilizations. And really, it is for millennia that philosophers, sages, and theologians
00:05:06.780 have reflected on the good life and devised strategies on how to achieve it. So, I really do see
00:05:12.300 self-improvement as a timeless human desire. And I see it very intricately related to learning and to
00:05:18.840 self-knowledge and to growth. And of course, there are, you know, quite a lot of academics who critique
00:05:25.020 self-help, and they see, you know, this constant imperative to self-optimize as a, you know, perfidious
00:05:32.200 neoliberal creature, which is designed to put all responsibility for our well-being on our own
00:05:38.060 shoulders. And, you know, they argue that self-help distracts us from the structural forces that may
00:05:43.520 be making us ill. But I really do think that whilst there is self-help of that kind out there, the
00:05:50.340 imperative and the desire to self-improve is really a huge part of what makes us human. And it has been
00:05:57.340 a feature of human experience from the very start. And I do think that self-help is actually
00:06:04.800 a specific genre that emerged in the 19th century, when the first self-help text, as we know it, you
00:06:11.240 know, written for autodidacts who want to improve themselves without the help of others, you know,
00:06:17.640 want a kind of how-to manual, and that doesn't require the involvement of any other third parties.
00:06:24.100 So, that's a fairly new genre. But ancient advice literature that is aimed at helping us to improve,
00:06:30.860 to grow, to learn, to sharpen our self-understanding and self-knowledge really can be found in ancient
00:06:37.820 China, in ancient Greece, and it has a really long tradition. And I think that tradition is usually 0.96
00:06:45.580 interesting to explore because many of the modern self-help texts actually hark back into these ancient
00:06:52.180 practices and they repackage, rebrand, relabel older ideas. And it's really interesting to trace
00:06:59.020 these back to their original sources. Yeah, that's an interesting point you make in the book is that
00:07:03.600 today self-help or self-improvement literature is written by self-help authors. And these people are
00:07:09.140 typically maybe sometimes psychologists, other times they're just people who decide, you know,
00:07:15.380 I was successful, here's what worked for me. But if you go back anciently, self-improvement literature
00:07:21.300 were, it was a completely different group of people. It was theologians, it was religious sages,
00:07:26.860 or it was philosophers who were writing self-improvement literature.
00:07:30.580 Yeah, that's definitely true. I think, you know, the purpose and mission of philosophy has changed
00:07:36.760 very dramatically. And I think in the past, it was quite accepted that philosophy should give counsel,
00:07:44.000 should give practical advice, and should really help people define their values, their goals,
00:07:50.240 and basically guide them. There's a beautiful quotation by Seneca, who defines the purpose
00:07:56.040 of philosophy as basically giving that kind of advice. He writes something about the task of
00:08:04.540 philosophy really being to shape our personality, to provide structure and moral guidelines for our
00:08:10.080 behavior, and generally to sit at the helm and keep us on the correct course as we are tossed about
00:08:17.020 in parallel seas. And modern philosophers have, to a large extent, abandoned that project,
00:08:22.740 which is a great shame. And I think analytical philosophy, you know, has done huge damage with
00:08:27.280 its focus on logic and propositions, very dry, very sterile, very abstract. But I do think some
00:08:34.460 practical philosophers are making a comeback. And there's clearly a hunger and a desire out there for,
00:08:41.120 you know, intelligent, deep self-help that is also, you know, reflecting on the bigger question,
00:08:46.240 reflecting on the social, reflecting on, you know, broader philosophical debate.
00:08:51.960 So, you mentioned earlier that something about self-improvement literature that we often overlook
00:08:55.960 is that it can tell us something about a culture in a particular historical moment. And I hope as we
00:09:03.700 discuss some of these self-improvement concepts you found across cultures, we can talk about how it's
00:09:08.200 changed based on history. But big picture, like, I mean, what can self-improvement literature teach us
00:09:13.480 about a particular culture in a particular moment in history?
00:09:17.580 Yeah, I think that's a really interesting question. I think self-help is, you know, I mean,
00:09:21.900 we have to, if we look at it philosophically, we need to, first of all, ask, what is the self?
00:09:26.840 What conceptions of selfhood are at play here? What counts as help? And what form can that kind of
00:09:31.720 help take? But I would say that self-help literature in general is always based on very specific
00:09:36.620 conceptions of selfhood. And it also entails conceptions of purpose, agency, responsibility,
00:09:43.540 and about the relationship between the individual and society and, you know, mind, body, and the
00:09:48.960 social. So, if you take Jordan Peterson's 12 Rules for Life, An Antidote to Chaos, for example,
00:09:54.740 that's a text that isn't just a self-help text, you know, it's very much a culture war text.
00:10:00.840 I mean, it's much more about philosophical and political assumptions about human nature
00:10:05.000 than it is about imparting, you know, practical self-improvement advice. And Peterson is very,
00:10:09.940 very explicit about that. But I do think this is true for most self-help texts, you know, they just
00:10:15.440 do it under the surface. And I think he states his assumptions very clearly and explicitly and
00:10:21.840 provocatively. But in a lot of other self-help texts, they are less explicitly stated. They're just
00:10:27.240 kind of taken for granted. But I think self-help always tells us a lot about a particular culture's
00:10:33.500 values, about our aspirations, also about our fears and anxieties. So, I really see self-help as a
00:10:40.440 barometer for all sorts of deeper questions. And it really can tell us very precious insights about
00:10:47.860 a culture's conceptions of the self and the connections between the mind, the body, and the
00:10:51.680 social.
00:10:52.000 So, yeah, with self-help, there are these timeless principles that you see pop up in every age. But
00:10:58.120 how they're framed or, you know, what principles get emphasized and, you know, which ones get
00:11:03.340 downplayed, it really depends on the particular time and culture. So, like in ancient Greece, you know,
00:11:09.260 the values they emphasize. I mean, I think you can make the case that, you know, Aristotle's
00:11:13.560 Nicomachean ethics could be described as a self-help text. And, you know, the values that he
00:11:18.900 emphasized are those he saw that he thought were important in being a citizen in a city-state in
00:11:25.280 ancient Greece. And so, self-help anciently was really for a certain class. You fast forward to today
00:11:32.520 and, you know, the self-help literature is geared towards the average person, you know, and everyone
00:11:37.540 in our modern era has this expectation that they can rise in the world. So, it's geared towards, you
00:11:42.820 know, making money, you know, improving your career, being more productive, being liked, because that's
00:11:48.880 what's most important to people these days. So, the themes of self-help change according to what's
00:11:53.720 important to a particular culture, and it tells us what's important to that culture.
00:11:58.940 Yeah, absolutely. So, you have, you know, values at stake there. And I think what we can see is a
00:12:05.660 shift, you know, from kind of character values, virtues, and virtue ethics towards a kind of personality
00:12:14.360 cult. So, a lot of 20s and even early 21st century self-help is very much about skills, you know, how to
00:12:22.140 become more extroverted, how to become better communicators, better salespeople, how to become
00:12:27.280 more effective and efficient and productive. Whereas in the ancient texts, you have a huge emphasis
00:12:33.320 on the virtues and on, you know, sustainable character work on virtues that have fallen from
00:12:39.880 grace, such as temperance, humility, altruism, and so on, in a sense that reflects where we're at,
00:12:47.200 culturally speaking, more generally. You know, we've moved very much from a relational culture
00:12:51.980 in which the social and communities and structures had an enormously important place and were very much
00:12:59.920 part of the mind metaphors that people were using. They were integrated into that. And we've moved
00:13:04.360 from that to a kind of atomistic and very isolated individualist society in which completely different
00:13:10.200 values are of importance right now. So, as you explored self-improvement throughout time and
00:13:16.520 throughout across cultures, you came across, I mean, there are noble and good ways to do self-improvement
00:13:21.680 or an approach to it. And you think it's captured by this German word, which I really like,
00:13:26.080 it's Bildung. Is that my pronunciation? Bildung?
00:13:28.220 Yeah, Bildung. Super. Excellent.
00:13:30.360 Yeah. So, what does that word mean? And why do you think that's a good way to describe
00:13:33.440 noble and enriching self-improvement?
00:13:37.240 Yeah, because I think Bildung is really a really important core concept for me. Bildung
00:13:43.540 refers to a form of holistic education and one that, you know, very crucially encompasses our inner
00:13:50.600 lives and aesthetic sense, our moral sensibilities, and also social learning. So, Bildung is not just about,
00:13:57.800 you know, acquiring knowledge and information, but it's really also about an education of our
00:14:02.580 emotions, sensitivities, and it's about finding a place in societies and, you know, ways in which we
00:14:08.880 can contribute to our communities. And Bildung was first theorized by the German philosopher Wilhelm von
00:14:14.900 Humboldt in the 19th century. And for me, it encapsulates the essence and the purpose of self-improvement
00:14:21.520 because I do see self-improvement as a form of learning. I see it as a process of learning about
00:14:27.820 our inner lives, our patterns, preferences, strengths, and weaknesses, but also very crucially
00:14:33.400 about how we can direct our energies outwards. So, I think positive self-improvement is visible in us
00:14:40.860 being able to give to other people and to projects we care about. So, it's really not just about,
00:14:47.480 you know, enhancing ourselves so that we can be more effective and efficient and productive. I think
00:14:52.540 it's so that we can also find our place in the social fabric. And self-improvement for me is very
00:14:59.240 much about not being a slave to our shadows. It's very much about pulling as much as we can into the
00:15:05.280 realm of consciousness. And by that, to avoid wasting our energies in endless inner psychological
00:15:12.720 battles. So, I think ultimately, the sign of positive self-improvement is that we can give
00:15:17.640 and engage better, that we can focus our attention outwards. And so, I therefore really disagree with,
00:15:23.720 you know, lots of academic critiques of self-help and self-improvement as the selfish and narcissistic,
00:15:30.000 you know, a kind of neoliberal project. Because finding our own unique ways of being relational
00:15:36.020 and social, I think, is for me the ultimate sign of positive self-improvement.
00:15:40.460 And the way I grabbed, you know, understood that is bildung. It seemed it was a good way,
00:15:45.060 a good analogy or metaphor. And this is, you talk about metaphors a lot with your work
00:15:49.380 and how they can shape the way we think about ideas. Bildung for me is about, it's almost like
00:15:54.300 a farming or a garden metaphor. It's like you're trying to use the environment you're in,
00:15:59.860 grow it slowly, nurture the world around you while you're nurturing yourself. So, it's sort of
00:16:06.080 interconnected. I think a lot of modern self-help, the metaphor is like you're building a skyscraper
00:16:11.800 and you can just bulldoze through and you just put up whatever you want. You can restructure
00:16:17.340 yourself however you want. I think that's the modern idea of it, at least. I think bildung
00:16:21.540 captures more of a, it reminds me of like you're on a organic farm and you're trying to just grow the
00:16:27.740 best self possible.
00:16:28.740 Yeah, that's beautiful, Brett. I fully agree. I think, you know, the ancient models and metaphors
00:16:34.420 are really about cultivating, you know, cultivating the self. And cultivation is a kind of
00:16:40.160 biological agrarian metaphor, as you say. And I think nowadays there are quite a lot of harmful
00:16:45.900 and very problematic metaphors around. So, you mentioned some, but there's also the kind of brain
00:16:51.040 as computer metaphor, which is really ubiquitous. So, a lot of self-help texts talk about reprogramming
00:16:57.960 ourselves, you know, upgrading, fine-tuning, rewiring, cognitive overload, switching off,
00:17:04.440 you know, getting rid of psychological malware and eliminating behavioral glitches and so on.
00:17:10.040 And I do think these are really damaging metaphors because metaphors matter. Metaphors are really
00:17:14.900 important because they shape how we imagine and experience our inner lives. Yeah, I guess the,
00:17:20.440 you know, the computer metaphor is for me a very damaging one because we're complex organisms.
00:17:25.740 You know, we interact dynamically with our environments. We're in no ways like machines.
00:17:30.020 You know, we're messy and needy. We have desires. We have histories that shape us. We're embedded
00:17:35.720 and cultured and embodied, you know. And to model our self-help technologies on machine-like entities,
00:17:40.980 I think, is really damaging. All right. So, something you do in the book is you highlight
00:17:44.860 themes of self-improvement that you've seen across time and across cultures. And one area you see
00:17:51.100 is this idea of self-knowledge. But before we explore self-knowledge and how it's manifested
00:17:58.260 itself across time and across cultures, I think it's important to understand humanity's varying
00:18:04.020 conceptions of the self. Because that's going to change how you think you can gain self-knowledge.
00:18:08.800 So, you know, how have humans thought about the self across cultures and time, you know,
00:18:13.220 and how has it changed across, you know, in the East or in the West?
00:18:16.680 That's a really fascinating topic because we don't often think about how we think about the self.
00:18:24.100 But when we look at the history of self-narratives and selfhood conceptions,
00:18:29.220 we can see some really exciting and interesting changes and also really dramatic changes between
00:18:34.700 and differences between Western societies and Asian societies.
00:18:37.640 So, I would say that in Western societies nowadays, we see the self as autonomous and isolated
00:18:44.260 and as potentially having quite a lot of agency to shape the external environment.
00:18:49.940 Whereas in the past and in many Asian societies, self was very much understood as essentially relational.
00:18:56.640 And our dominant narrative nowadays is the individualist narrative of the self, you know,
00:19:01.200 that casts us as independent agents in control of ourselves and our environment, you know,
00:19:07.400 with a relatively fixed identity.
00:19:09.940 But other conceptions of selfhood are more fluid and they place an emphasis on context,
00:19:14.640 on interrelatedness and interbeing.
00:19:17.280 And I would say that generally speaking, Asian conceptions of the self are more contextual.
00:19:22.340 They assume less of a steady essence and more of a changing, interacting, relational self
00:19:27.460 that is very different in different contexts.
00:19:29.880 So, you know, they kind of assume we show up differently depending on whom we meet,
00:19:34.200 which I agree with.
00:19:35.300 That's probably very true.
00:19:37.080 And also, I think there's an assumption that we have less power to control our environments
00:19:41.400 and that our characters are less fixed and, you know, and our personality traits aren't
00:19:46.480 quite as deeply cemented, but more malleable.
00:19:50.040 And I think related questions are, do we think of the self as good or bad in essence, you know,
00:19:55.420 and philosophers are very divided on that question.
00:19:57.820 Do we see ourselves primarily as rational or emotional creatures?
00:20:02.480 Do we think of ourselves as powerful agents who are able to exercise free will?
00:20:06.840 Or do we see ourselves as shaped by internal or external forces?
00:20:11.020 Do we think of ourselves as material or spiritual beings?
00:20:15.240 Or lone warriors out there in hostile territories to secure our own advantages?
00:20:20.220 Or, you know, embedded parts of communities or specific ecosystems or nature as a whole?
00:20:25.880 And all of these narratives about the self really matter because they shape how we see ourselves.
00:20:31.720 They also shape our therapeutics.
00:20:34.040 They shape the models we devise to improve ourselves.
00:20:38.120 So, you're absolutely right.
00:20:39.460 I think we need to understand those base narratives first before we can even talk about self-improvement.
00:20:44.160 So, just to summarize, the modern Western conception of the self is, I'm in control of who I am, basically.
00:20:51.300 And others in this culture around me doesn't influence me.
00:20:54.900 I'm the master of my fate.
00:20:57.220 And then, anciently and still today in Eastern cultures, they would say,
00:21:00.880 Well, no, the social context that you're embedded in is going to influence the self as well.
00:21:08.720 Absolutely.
00:21:09.420 Yeah.
00:21:09.960 And, you know, with this idea of mastery comes great responsibility.
00:21:14.380 And also, feelings of guilt and shame if we don't manage it.
00:21:18.940 We're going to take a quick break for your words from our sponsors.
00:21:20.920 And now, back to the show.
00:21:24.480 Okay.
00:21:24.760 So, I think we've got a good general background now on the philosophy of self-improvement.
00:21:30.160 And what you do with this book is you not only give the background of the philosophy of self-improvement,
00:21:36.380 but go through specific principles that have been common themes in self-help throughout time and throughout cultures.
00:21:42.640 And you first talk about their ancient antecedents.
00:21:45.760 And then, you also offer some modern angles that you think could be helpful based on your research.
00:21:51.760 So, what I'd like to do with the rest of this conversation is talk about a few of these principles in your book.
00:21:57.040 And let's start out with something you see discussed a lot in a lot of self-improvement books.
00:22:02.320 And that is self-control.
00:22:04.700 So, anciently, how did they think you could control the self?
00:22:09.300 And how have you come to look at this area of self-improvement?
00:22:13.600 Yeah, I think self-control was really, really important in the ancient models,
00:22:19.460 partly because of the value of temperance and, you know, the idea of the golden mean, avoiding extremes.
00:22:26.360 And I think the idea of controlling our animal nature was also really, really strong.
00:22:32.240 So, there was a core assumption that we have to be able to exercise control over our minds, emotions, bodies, and drives.
00:22:39.760 And that makes us less animal and more human.
00:22:42.340 And 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.
00:22:55.060 That's always a very precarious and difficult balancing act.
00:22:59.640 And, of course, you know, the ancient Stoics talked a lot about self-control.
00:23:04.660 And 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.
00:23:15.220 And I think many of the ancient Stoic models have huge benefits.
00:23:18.960 So, for example, the circle of control idea, you know, that we always should differentiate what is and what is not in our control.
00:23:27.160 And they very much advocated that we focus on what we can control.
00:23:31.780 And 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.
00:23:41.180 And these assessments and judgments in turn determine our emotions.
00:23:45.700 And that assumption is still core to cognitive behavior or therapy.
00:23:49.880 And it has a lot of merits, I would say.
00:23:52.320 But it also has limitations because we're, of course, not just rational beings.
00:23:56.860 You know, we're also messy, creative, spiritual, emotional.
00:24:01.160 We're not just creatures of reason.
00:24:02.920 And 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.
00:24:16.120 This is counterintuitive to many.
00:24:19.880 And I think sometimes it is more helpful to accept negative emotional states rather than trying at all times to change them.
00:24:27.160 It depends, you know, it depends on what kind of emotion we're talking about.
00:24:31.140 But 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.
00:24:42.920 You know, that it takes a lot of energy constantly to try and control our minds.
00:24:47.380 And sometimes acceptance is the answer rather than control.
00:24:51.340 That's a very Eastern idea, correct?
00:24:54.800 Yes, absolutely.
00:24:56.160 Right, so you accept it and you don't try to change it, but by doing that, you somehow diffuse the emotion.
00:25:03.980 Yeah, absolutely.
00:25:05.040 And 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.
00:25:21.940 And 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.
00:25:34.000 And 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.
00:25:46.880 So it's all about recognizing that our thoughts, our emotions come and go and they can be helpful or less helpful.
00:25:57.040 And 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.
00:26:05.720 You know, we can question them, we can look at them with a bit of distance.
00:26:09.380 And I think this idea of defusing from our thoughts can be a really, really powerful one in daily life, you know.
00:26:16.960 So, 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.
00:26:35.040 And that already creates a really, really beneficial distance between ourselves and that thought.
00:26:42.360 And that can help us to look at it as a mere thought rather than reality.
00:26:46.720 And 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.
00:26:59.380 We can look at them as thoughts, as narratives, as, you know, recurring patterns, but we don't have to identify with them.
00:27:07.560 We don't fuse with them, you know, we actually just observe them with detachment and nuts.
00:27:14.100 Yeah, I think for me, one of the most powerful techniques I have come across in my research.
00:27:19.580 So, another thing that self-improvement writers have spilt a lot of ink on is how to become a good person, a virtuous person.
00:27:29.400 And you looked at this, how this has changed over time and across cultures.
00:27:33.380 Let's start with the Eastern approach.
00:27:34.580 Like, what was the Eastern approach on becoming a virtuous or good person?
00:27:40.400 Yeah, I think, you know, virtual ethics were very, very important in the ancient models.
00:27:47.540 And I think probably the most neglected virtue in our age is altruism.
00:27:57.320 I think altruism is really one that has massively fallen from favor and that we only begin to see, again, in self-help now.
00:28:08.300 And that has actually disappeared for a very, very long period.
00:28:12.420 So, I think becoming virtuous was about embracing the idea of humility.
00:28:20.080 It was about embracing the idea of altruism.
00:28:23.660 And it was about recognizing our place in a bigger whole, you know, understanding our place in a broader, wider order of things.
00:28:32.980 And I think that humility and altruism are interestingly two virtues that are experiencing a revival right now.
00:28:44.060 And 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.
00:28:55.040 But 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.
00:29:11.840 And 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.
00:29:30.460 So, 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.
00:29:40.320 And humility is also about recognizing just how much we don't know and acknowledging our blind spots.
00:29:49.280 And the confusion form of humility is profoundly pro-social in spirit.
00:29:54.640 You know, it's about valuing the social good more highly than the satisfaction of our personal aspirations and ambitions.
00:30:02.060 But humility is also a core value in Christianity where it takes the form of, you know, self-renunciation and complete submission to God.
00:30:09.420 And that's perhaps a mode of humility that is no longer that attractive nowadays.
00:30:15.640 Something 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.
00:30:30.280 You 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.
00:30:44.600 And 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?
00:30:54.140 You 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.
00:31:03.260 And then you say, you argue, like you see this in Aristotelian virtue ethics in the West.
00:31:08.680 Aristotle 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.
00:31:24.540 And 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.
00:31:32.320 I thought that was interesting that two different cultures came up with the same idea of how to shape a virtuous person.
00:31:40.260 Yeah, 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.
00:32:03.740 And that it's not just, you know, like a theatrical gesture, but by performing it, you actually experience it.
00:32:10.220 And 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.
00:32:20.280 You 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.
00:32:37.000 And 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.
00:32:51.600 And I think that's very different from, you know, and he has this interesting distinction between the continent and the incontinent person.
00:32:59.140 So 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.
00:33:08.640 And 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.
00:33:21.900 It's a constant moral and cognitive effort to be virtuous.
00:33:25.800 And he doesn't rate that very highly.
00:33:28.180 I 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.
00:33:39.900 So you don't have to even force yourself to do it.
00:33:43.820 And I guess the idea is very much to establish firm habits and to perform good acts and to want to perform them too.
00:33:54.780 So that they become a natural and an automatic habit that we don't even think about.
00:34:01.020 Okay.
00:34:01.180 So 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.
00:34:12.540 So I want to dig more into that.
00:34:14.060 In your research, what did this interrelational advice look like both anciently and in more modern times?
00:34:21.260 Yeah, so I think, you know, in the Confucian framework, it was all about respect for existing hierarchies, right?
00:34:29.600 And 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.
00:34:40.980 An 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.
00:34:57.400 So 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.
00:35:12.100 And, 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.
00:35:24.360 One of my favorite modern writers on this topic is surprisingly Dale Carnegie.
00:35:29.700 You 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.
00:35:49.440 But 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.
00:36:11.120 But there's also a nicer side to his model in that he advocates giving true attention and recognition.
00:36:19.660 So 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.
00:36:31.320 And very few of us master this art because it requires the ability to imagine what lies beyond our own cognitive maps.
00:36:38.180 And 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.
00:36:49.960 And 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.
00:36:57.580 And like Machiavelli, Carnegie actually has an astonishingly low opinion of other human beings and he thought they were quite self-obsessed and needy.
00:37:07.800 And 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.
00:37:20.300 But 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.
00:37:32.400 And, you know, by giving that praise and by making others feel important, we can establish good relationships.
00:37:38.820 So, 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.
00:37:49.240 And he also estimates that we spend 95% of our time thinking about ourselves.
00:37:54.960 And 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.
00:38:08.620 And he came up with a few simple ways of making people like us.
00:38:13.600 So, 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.
00:38:24.960 And we should also talk about the other person's interests and make them feel important.
00:38:30.160 And 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.
00:38:41.040 Attention is what we all want.
00:38:43.600 And by giving it and by being genuinely interested in another person, I think that that is a very good basis for establishing relationships.
00:38:52.000 Okay, so Dale Carnegie, he's the nice Machiavelli.
00:38:56.200 Yes, that's a good way of putting it.
00:38:58.840 But you point out, okay, these things are good, they work, but Carnegie's idea to relationships, you are nice because you want something.
00:39:08.680 It's like, it's almost transactional.
00:39:10.100 That's kind of like the underlying assumption.
00:39:12.800 This was written to help salespeople land sales.
00:39:16.280 Yeah, that's true.
00:39:18.300 I 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.
00:39:30.680 You know, we're left with, you know, giving attention and sympathy and being genuinely curious about the other person.
00:39:37.980 No, I think that's great.
00:39:40.480 I mean, a philosopher who talked about the importance of attention in a relationship, Simone Weiss, talked a lot about that.
00:39:48.080 Love is just basically paying attention to another person.
00:39:52.260 And I think what you're saying is that Carnegie's advice are principles to apply to give attention to people.
00:39:59.440 Yeah, 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.
00:40:14.140 But I suppose many of our interactions have a purpose, you know, and he articulates that.
00:40:22.800 But, 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.
00:40:44.160 They have to be based on authentic and non-purpose-driven desires and interactions.
00:40:51.200 Absolutely.
00:40:51.520 How has your research into self-improvement changed the way you approach your own self-improvement?
00:40:57.980 Yes.
00:40:58.780 I think writing this book and doing all this research has changed me in one way above all.
00:41:06.000 And that was that when I read all the theory, I developed a really strong desire to get engaged with the practice.
00:41:13.000 So I actually trained as a coach and I have been coaching and helping clients to grow for more than two years now.
00:41:21.280 And 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.
00:41:36.400 You 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.
00:41:49.580 And in my coaching, I try to integrate ancient and evidence-based scientific approaches.
00:41:55.640 And, you know, as I mentioned before, I really love ACT, acceptance and commitment therapy, which in its own right does that integration.
00:42:04.220 And 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.
00:42:13.400 Well, you've read hundreds of self-improvement books to write this book.
00:42:19.040 Do you have like your top three self-improvements that you would recommend people pick up?
00:42:23.960 Oh, top three is really tricky.
00:42:26.420 There's so many books I love.
00:42:28.440 But if I have to, if I have to limit myself to just three, I would say Marcus Aurelius' Meditations.
00:42:36.600 So it's by the Roman emperor and stoic philosopher Marcus Aurelius.
00:42:40.920 And it basically is a beautifully written journal that really illustrates and explains in theoretical terms, but also gives lots and lots of practical examples.
00:42:53.820 And 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.
00:43:05.760 And Aurelius argues that it's pointless to worry about external events that are beyond our control.
00:43:11.600 And we should focus all our attention on what we can control.
00:43:15.560 And there's a beautiful line in the book, one of my favorites ever, and that is only a madman looks for figs in winter.
00:43:22.000 So it's the idea that we have to adjust our expectations.
00:43:26.000 And my other second favorite book is Russ Harris' The Happiness Trap.
00:43:30.280 And that is based on acceptance and commitment therapy.
00:43:34.020 It'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.
00:43:45.100 And my third choice would be Viktor Frankl's Man's Search for Meaning, you know, old classic.
00:43:52.560 And 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.
00:44:07.880 And 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.
00:44:25.940 Well, Anna, this has been a great conversation.
00:44:27.940 Where can people go to learn more about the book and your work?
00:44:30.340 So you can always go to my website and I'm also really interested in building bridges between, you know, the theory and practice.
00:44:39.620 They can just find me online.
00:44:41.360 So 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.
00:44:50.760 And I think there's probably something that appeals to different people.
00:44:55.240 You know, some people like to work on their imagination.
00:44:57.640 Some people want to work on their mentalizing.
00:44:59.520 Some people want to work on how to be more present.
00:45:02.760 Some people want to work on self-knowledge or mind control.
00:45:05.700 And that's something I'd be very happy to help with.
00:45:08.900 Fantastic.
00:45:09.340 Well, Anna Schaffner, thanks for your time.
00:45:10.480 It's been a pleasure.
00:45:11.780 Thank you very much for having me, Brett.
00:45:14.120 My guest today is Anna Schaffner.
00:45:15.260 She's the author of the book, The Art of Self-Improvement.
00:45:17.540 It's available on Amazon.com and bookstores everywhere.
00:45:19.780 You can find more information about her work at her coaching website, the-exhaustion-coach.com.
00:45:25.120 Also check out our show notes at aom.is slash self-improvement.
00:45:28.160 Where you can find links to resources and we delve deeper into this topic.
00:45:30.600 Well, that wraps up another edition of the AOM podcast.
00:45:40.600 Make sure to check out our website at artofmanless.com where you find our podcast archives as well
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00:46:11.480 Until next time, it's Brett McKay.
00:46:12.700 Remind you on the list of the AOM podcast, but put what you've heard into action.
00:46:29.660 We'll see you next time.
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