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well today we're I just figured I'd write some fun questions for both you for both of you and we can just go through them in episode 100 we kind of had some fun personal questions of dr. Lyle so I figured in the same vein we can do something similar and get a little more personal with dr. Jenn Hawk mm-hmm and then and just keep going with dr. Lyle so dr. Hawk this question is for you the first one right out of the gate and that is what are some of your favorite foods or favorite dishes funny question well you know i'm i'm mostly whole food plant-based so I do I really do try to do a good job with that so I my the the answer to that question is not as exciting as it might otherwise be hey but yeah I don't know I'm a sucker for a really good hummus I I like I yeah hard to say what a strange question but this is not what I expected at all like a really good oh yeah no no I make I was gonna say think hard because for the rest of your career you're going to be on this is true oh my god this is the equivalent I've dug and carrot cake isn't it I need to really be careful here what I say giving me hummus for the rest yeah I like to experiment a lot with sort of just you know mixing a whole food plant-based kind of combos together so I do a lot of experimental stuff with different grains and different beans including different veggie burgers and different bowls and different things so it's kind of basic but I like to play around with different things and I have a little bit of a hot sauce habit so I like to experiment with crazy hot sauces and salsas and so I suppose that's as interesting as it gets but yeah if I think of something more interesting later in the episode I well I will volunteer it but it's not too exciting and a culinary do you still it Dylan Holmes hot sauce I know I have I don't have it on hand it's very delicious but I don't I don't actually have it here and I yes Dylan should send me if he's listening Dylan from for those of you who don't know Dylan Holmes he runs a YouTube channel called well your wold and it's just got some really great videos he's got some interviews with dr. Hawk dr. Lisle both of them together I did want to interview with him and he's kind of been he's got certain you know I think 30,000 subscribers on YouTube is kind of last time I checked mmm it's probably more now but he he has a line of salt oil and sugar-free sauces and drink there is it sauces yet sauces and sat he's working on salad dressings and yeah he is a he's a wizard in this regard and I've tasted them I've tasted a wide variety of them but I don't have any of them on hand which I am deeply ashamed to admit because I really should so thank you you know I got a couple of these and I have him here at fasting escape but but I don't have them anymore because everybody ate them like very quickly yeah so they're really excellent so for those people who are trying to get some sauces in their lives the well your world is the place to go well dr. Hawk the reason I was asking you is is because it has to do with dr. Lyle actually so in dr. Lyle since you've released your perfect personality DVD everybody's found out just how much you left carrot cake and just how much dr. Goldhamer loves judging you for eating the carrot cake so yeah I can imagine that perhaps maybe you don't love carrot cake as much anymore so I'm curious if there's anything else that you like besides carrot cake yeah careful dag we've walked right into a terrible tale we need to just abort the mission now I see where this is going yeah right right this is one of these things where your lawyer just says no no you don't the no I just had some carrot cake very recently here in the last few days it was it was once again excellent so you know I can't I also like almond milk hot chocolate he does that's another one she's she's watching she has first percent evidence all right well that's enough of the trappy questions I was just here on one so alright this is a little more serious question and this is for for dr. Lyle first and then we want to hear doctor dr. Hawks take as well and and that is what makes a good psychologist hmm boy that's a that's a it's has such a broad question I I would say that partially I don't know the answer and the so I think that's the first the first thing that I would say is that I couldn't I couldn't put my finger on it I've met some people now mostly young people that are that are interested in in getting into this field just because they've heard me and they maybe heard me do some quote therapy on the radio and they are intrigued by evolutionary psychology and they're interested in making it a career and of the people that I've talked to most of them what I call have what it takes in other words they're if they're this interested in psychological phenomena and in order to make as much of a study at us they have when I when I've spoken with I'm thinking about about a half a dozen young people that there it takes a certain thing that we might that I call psychological mindedness and that's an old term for my grad school days and that's sort of people differ in how naturally sort of sensitive generally insightful about about being able to infer motives pretty accurately that that's sort of just interpersonal skill in other words that that you can talk reasonably easily with people that you're reasonably comfortable you don't have to be extroverted at all to be a psychologist you know in fact I don't I don't think that that's any advantage at all in this field I think what's if you're someone who who likes to have one-on-one conversations about things that are meaningful as opposed to superficial posturing of some kind if you're just someone who likes to talk real about real things and and essentially try to analyze understand and then improve that's kind of your approach towards life and interpersonal relationships in general then then this is something that you're that you have an affinity for so certainly a perk to be a good psychologist you need to be pretty high intelligence there's in order to learn what's what's necessary to understand in this field you you're going to need to be able to grasp evolutionary psychology and you're going to need to grasp some fairly fairly complicated things now it's not super complicated so you don't have to be a star student and you don't have to be exceptionally intelligent at all but you need to be you need to be pretty sharp you know you need to be a sort of a B+ a-minus University student because you're going to be dealing with problems of people that are sometimes smarter than you are and yet are stumped and so what's going to make it for you is you need to be bright enough to grasp what it is that they're going through and then competent enough through what you've learned in order to filter through those details and and work with them towards a solution out of a essentially a problem-solving matrix that is logical and makes sense that problem-solving matrix that's logical and makes sense is is now far superior the potentials for that are now far superior than they have ever been and that's because we now have a greater understanding of human nature and the inherent struggles and difficulties and competitive challenges that are giving rise to people's struggles than we've ever had before but that's new and so you it requires a pretty high level of intelligence to do that the the final thing that I would say is that and this is I remember John McDougall talking to me many times he said to me do you love the water and I said no okay and he said well then you're not going to be a windsurfer and john mcdougall was a just a fanatical wind surfer in his life and he surfed in Hawaii that's where he learned it and then he surfed in Bodega Bay where it's freezing cold and full of great white sharks didn't care okay yeah and that's because he loves it and psychology to be a psychologist it's not it's not sort of an average thing to be doing it's not just it's something that you're kind of born with that you kind of love this type of a process and and so that's probably the most important thing requires some some recently high intelligence it requires a a comfort with one-on-one deep conversation and more than anything it requires a a fascination in and magnetism towards these kinds of issues and that's that's what it really is absolutely dr. Hawk what okay dr. Lisle oh yeah I mentioned something else that when I met Jen she's obviously knee-deep in a PhD in political science and yet she was a total natural and this she this she had all of the things that I just talked about and had them all in spades and so all of the the raw materials were there all that was was needed was whether or not she wanted to do this and so it turned out that she was interested and she was she was inherently interested in the material whether or not she was ever gonna do anything with it other than for her her own understanding was just sort of up to fate but it's turned out that that she inherently is these things she and she is a psychologist absolutely by genetic nature and so and all of these things that I'm talking about you know apply to her well I appreciate that that's very very kind of you to say I think I miss channeled it for years into my New Age career which is sort of like what what I was going to add to it because I think everything that that you said is it's true as far as an innate curiosity about people and comfort with the one-on-one interaction and kind of holding the big the big picture in mind and incorporating all of the observations you're making about the person and sort of you know able to hold that objective and subjective place at the same time and that drew me into a lot of other a lot of other types of work that were adjacent to psychology type work including journalism including astrology and including yeah sort of deep deep research for my dissertation that required a lot of interview work like all of these sorts of things were related and and called on the same kind of skill set which has always been what I'm what I've just been most interested in I've also been always really super interested just in my understanding my own motivations in my own process and I think that's probably the number one sign of somebody who's who's gonna do well with this is somebody who's just relentlessly curious about why they do the things they do which those of us who have that sort of relentless self curiosity it's surprising when you realize that not everybody has it not everybody is is you know maintaining this kind of meta analysis position on their own life and their own their own actions and their own outcomes in the same way that I just always very naturally have and I know that Doug has too so yeah I think all of those things are really important I think to be is to be a successful psychologist who doesn't burn yourself out it's really important to be grounded in in the matrix of true understanding of human nature rather than some psycho dynamic pair where you are struggling to walk people back through the their childhood history and their childhood issues and traumas which is exhausting for both the practitioner and for the client in a way that's really not sustainable over the long term so we we get to just like just like some of the plant-based doctors say that they're the luckiest doctors in the world their patients get well we we are the luckiest psychologists in the world because we actually have a matrix of solutions that work clinically for fixing the real issues that people are facing in their lives where most psychologists or coaches or therapists of any kind are completely lost in the psychodynamic weeds on that so we're very lucky there for sure mm-hmm and we are you know the listeners I consider myself I know I'm the host but I actually consider myself a listener as that we're actually really lucky that we get to hear all this wine did wind out everything you know day in day out and we do the shows so the question I have for this is for dr. Hawk first is is that in the last few years that you started learning about evolutionary psychology you've been curious about it is there something new that you've found out about that you actually didn't expect I didn't yeah I think once you sort of have the overarching there's that there's a saturation point that comes with it so I I don't remember exactly where that was or when that happened where it's sort of clicked into place at a level where I really sort of understood the nature of the machine but you you get saturated with the basic rules of of how it all works and you get really truly grounded in the evolutionary Concilium sub at all and so you just automatically are running any kind of idea through does this does this make evolutionary sense or not not that everything is necessarily adaptive in a really positive way but it's it's still got to be grounded in that conciliate notion so I think whenever that happened which was fairly early on because it was all it was all could chunking into place really really clearly for me then nothing has been particularly surprising after that there were a lot of surprises on the way up that learning curve where you know the ego trap was surprising they like when I really dropped the ego trap in own life it helped me understand I actually Facebook memories reminded me of this recently where I sometime in like 2015 I read about the ego trap in a footnote in the pleasure trap and I announced to my friends on Facebook like oh my god I've seen the light I suddenly understand like all of my procrastination and all of my issues and why I haven't finished the dissertation and all of like everything suddenly kind of came together for me when I when I understood that so I was I was surprised by that and then of course there were other things along the way that sort of I was taken taken aback by but you know once you sort of get your mind around the idea you you see how it all works it's all it all it's like the one idea just builds upon another idea builds upon another idea and everything fits so beautifully and can in in Concilium that yeah I don't remember the last time I was super surprised by anything I've super delighted to sort of discover things but I hadn't thought about in a particular way before but not surprised by them if that if that difference makes sense yeah that makes perfect sense in dr. Lisle what about you yeah I I would say I've had exactly the same experience and that is that that that yes I'm not I'm not surprised I am delighted I'm so I continue to be delighted with with the increasing increasingly fine detail that it comes to light as we continue to work and think and and as Jen and I do a great deal of talking and as both of us work with people and and anytime that you get stumped with an individual that's struggling with something and you can't quite figure out what the stumbling block is occasionally those are the richest thing that happens because it forces your mind to look at all angles around the problem looking for the dynamics that you don't understand to try to figure it out and so yeah I what has been surprising to me I think I think maybe one thing that has been a bit of a surprise to me is that that in it was just in the last couple three years maybe no more than that I don't think where it dawned on me that that personality was fixed and so this was this was not I can remember reading any number of intelligent reviews you know Miller Pinker the the moral animal if you're if you read Judith rich Harris any anybody that you read and personality that is knowledgeable is is basically saying okay 50/50 60/40 whatever it is in other words the genes are the the biggest source of variance but there's a lot of variance left over this is you know these are the three laws of behavior genetics as we were outlined by Eric Turk heimer God knows in 1990 probably the and it turns out that along the way sometime probably might have been 2015 16 17 might have been might have been a pretty recent gen might have been here floral print came back Laurent we might have been talking I think we were what's that yeah I think that was after we came across it was it was a little before plumb and that we started to kind of really settle into the idea and then plumbin really like you know confirmed it for us and that that only came out in 28 yeah I think this yeah I think this is probably only two and a half hours heading south and so I was I was puzzled by something and that is the the the the correlation called coefficients on studies that I was aware of for IQ with Manos dhadak twins were very high and we're the personalities correlation coefficients were quite a bit less and still very substantial and yeah I had been giving that lecture for you know if you go back to the perfect personality I think I talk about bad in the perfect personality and you know 2006 so this is a this is a very old observation in behavior genetics and finally one day it dawned on me after giving that lecture for a hundred and fifteen times I'm staring at the board probably a true north and thinking well why is that why would it be true that certain neural tissue would be super high in correlation coefficient and a whole bunch of other neural tissue wouldn't be what why would some of it be so much more flexible and subject to environmental influence than the rest of it and it occurred to me that's bogus it doesn't make any sense at all but it from the standpoint of biology yes and it suddenly dawned on me hey it's the test and I had thought about it many times I'd even talked about it I talked about how the personality tests on on mmpi for example the same person doing an MMPI a year later correlates about the same with two MZ twins taken it today on the same day and so I had looked at that and so the all these these disparate little problems were rattling around in my skull and finally one day I decided wait a minute it's bogus and if the IQs are super high and they're clearly what we're looking at there is just some random variation in in test accuracy quite frankly with with the IQ tests you know correlating over 0.84 monozygotic twins and the fact that two IQ tests taken by the same individuals same 25 individuals take two IQ tests the IQ test scores themselves of the same individual within subject only correlate 0.7 so there is no magic place to know what your IQ score is you have a score that you will get consistently on an individual specific test and so I'm looking at that thinking oh my god it's it's completely genetically fixed it's not correlation coefficient of 0.8 something it's just a slight individual variation of life experiences are giving rise to slightly different scores if a pair of MZ twins on an IQ test and now when we start talking about personality the in subtle differences interpretation of quests on questions on a personality test just leads to greater error variance and I remember thinking I'm pretty sure that the whole damn thing is fixed and so and then Robert Plomin arrives Robert Plomin arrives on the pad yeah he's been there the whole time he was there and I and Jen they never forget me because I wouldn't stop reading and I would let her get that he's like oh let's read this look at the same time and like we got our copies at the same time and then he's like oh yeah so I finished chapter two and it's really interesting in here let me tell you about it I'm like dude give me a chance I've got to work time to sit down and read we eventually eventually literally got on the same page with Plomin and we've both reread it several times and you know read a lot of his supporting documentation and other I mean this is this is blueprint is not the only thing that Robert Plomin has ever done this is the Summa of a long career he's one of the original twin researchers and really kind of founded the whole idea and and yeah and then of course you're also applying it to your your clinical history and watching people over time and your own your own experiences and it's like oh my god people really are who they are this is not changing this is really not changing so that has to become just the cornerstone of any kind of meaningful clinical practice because if it's not your what are you doing you're completely misguided if you're not realizing that personality is immutable which is which is winds up being one of the most revolutionary insights in history and one of the most most important insights for for human beings in taking a prescription about how to live their lives because essentially and contrast this with with typical modern psychotherapy that says well if you're a neurotic anxious nutcase well it happened because of stuff that happened in your childhood and we got to go back and talk about the traumas and then we're gonna work you through this it's dead that is that's 27 years of a total waste of time and neurotic anxious nutcase somehow if we can just get this right if you come in every week on on Friday at this time and we talk about your childhood one of these days you're gonna walk out of here a nice stable no a nutcase human and it's just like this is not doesn't happen doesn't work that way yeah yes it doesn't work that way and so the the beauty then is that what we do is we look at look at the situation and realize that if I have an anxious cat that's inherently anxious then what I'm gonna do is I want to put it in really benign circumstances so we wind up understanding that the that what we have control over is we have control over environment environmental choices we don't have control over our reactions and so that's that winds up being an enormous ly important prescription and as a clinician also it gives you peace of mind that you're not somehow taking out a ball-peen hammer and trying to hammer this person's personality into something that's a more attractive or more functional shape it's not what you're doing what you're trying to do is try to understand who it is that they really are understand what their opportunities and and their goals and their threats are and they're their strengths and weaknesses and you were trying to maneuver them into a clearer understanding and then distorted understanding both themselves in their environment and then look for the yellow brick road to the best opportunities for the most benign circumstances to live their lives that's the that's what clinical psychology actually is and literally that insight is revolutionary that insight is entirely different than psychotherapy as it is now understood and so that's so that's the surprise to me if you asked for my biggest surprise probably so just to to use the cleaver so that people can understand that psychology is broken into two major arms one of them is general psychology this is the equivalent of the liver and the kidneys and the cardiopulmonary system and the eyeballs and your ears and the five senses in other words that those are things that everybody has so those are the generic systems of life for humans and deer and everything else under the Sun okay so in other words there are parts and the the nature of human biology is the nature of how the human heart and the aorta and you know where this fits there and where that fits there and the different chambers of the heart and the kidneys and the liver and the what it can do and what it can't do and what's poisonous and what isn't poisonous for this animal and so this is that that's general that is that is Grey's Anatomy and so to be and cosmides when they set out to understand psychology their goal was to understand the Grey's Anatomy of the mind in other words what are the nature of the neural circuits in other words that the meditational goals and the the preferences the natural preferences that give rise to human nature but there is a second very important question and it's it's a vastly simpler question it's so much simpler that TV and cosmides were really not interested in it and that's the question of individual differences and so their attitude was hey okay so what so some people's kidneys are different than other people's kidneys I guess that's interesting can you hear me yeah I can hear you what's that yeah I said oh yeah they basically they'll get there big deal bell curves who cares like it's it's just right who cares and so that's just isn't their interest in yet the individual differences in personality wind up being where all of the action is when it comes to making choices about who you love who you don't like you know what you would like to do in this life where would you like to live how do you want to spend your leisure time what career do you want it's like these are not questions of general psychology these are questions of personality and so so personality has an enormous it's an enormous clinical question and yet it's one that that I you know I understood pretty well and I thought I had a pretty good handle on it until just here recently the last couple of years and so the the biggest surprise I have had and the thing that that is stunning to me and that I'm pleasantly relaxed about now and very comfortable in my understanding is that that oh my god this enormous Lee major variable is actually a constant it's actually fixed and so it's like oh my god the math of the problem about how to deal with this just got way simpler and so this this is a massive insight and of course it's along with a lot of stuff that Gen Hawk will write about and talk about in the future the the gen Hawks work will be reminiscent in our future of people that have read the blank slate and have and understand the depth of Steven Pinker's scholarship and his incredible frustration with academia in in sticking their heads in the sand and vigorously denying in particularly denying the general psychology insights of tooby and cosmides the that's one thing but now we're going to I'm a little lost Jen I just wandered off course I can't have to do with that yeah yeah but then there's also denying there's the differences among people and how that contributes to such profound yeah not only individual outcomes that vary but also social outcomes that you can drink back to these individual differences which are genetic in text and yeah there's there's a lot to say about that that could get us pretty far afield for sure but yeah it has been a huge I'll say oh the thing I think would go ahead no no go ahead we're like Seattle drivers no really you go yeah I was just gonna say I I stand astonished and and I guess I shouldn't be but I'm somewhat flabbergasted at the fact that for all time humans have been climbing a mountain to try to understand individual differences and it's been it's been achieved it's like guess what folks it's been achieved and and it has incredibly important clinical implications and yet for those that will remain ignorant willfully or otherwise and do not understand what has been achieved will not be able to use it and will essentially waste people's time energy and happiness clinically because they will not be applying accuracy to the analysis of people's problems right there's the ditch and so you know that that hopefully we will do our small part to try to mitigate but that's a that's a sociological that that's a social sociological fascinating mess and it's it's equivalent to me to the belief in communism as an economic system in other words that it's such an unbelievably brutal expensive murderous horrendous mistake that human beings made and this one isn't murderous but it is it is similarly unbelievably horrendous and and yet I believe that that evidence will eventually overwhelm it and and you know 100 years from now or 50 years from now or 75 years from now psychotherapy won't even remotely look like what it is that we see today really it feels like the analogy that comes to mind is the traditional therapy it's really it's no different than if you're an alcoholic you're going to traditional therapy and your therapist is trying to figure out not only why you drink and all the issues that happen to you that you drive you in this direction but also how can we figure out how to make you a more moderate drinker you know how can we how can we just really really make this happen and how can we work with your thoughts and rewrite your thoughts and do all this kind of kind of thinking that traditional therapy psychodynamic therapy is going to do instead of controlling your environment to get alcohol out of it by realizing you have alcoholic genes and you are an alcoholic and it's it has just as much implications for people's happiness when they understand the core features of their personality if you are a hyper conscientious nutcase you you are signing yourself up for a lifetime of misery if you're working for a micromanaging boss in the same way that an alcoholic trying to work a job at a bar is a really bad idea so it's like these very practical ways of understanding what your personality is and really accepting that it is it is not moving it is not changing that you can't manage it you can't you can't learn to stretch it in different ways to make it more comfortable for your environment that you really have to get your environment right just like you would if you were dealing with some sort of addiction process it's the same kind of thing and this is this is revolutionary for clinical practice evolutionary psychology has been described as a superpower and in my life I consider you dr. Hawk and dr. Lyle to be my superheroes so so uh so the question I have is is more about personal personality traits and this is for for both of you so I guess just randomly speaking dr. wily can go first but question is is what would you consider to be mmm the personality trait that has gotten you where you are the most and maybe also gotten you in the most trouble that's interesting that's a really great question and I can I can point to it I can I can think back on my history and see where I got in the most trouble I almost got thrown out of grad school and and the reason was is that I was uncompromising about the truth and and I made I made the the psychodynamic fools that were teaching some of the clinical classes extremely uncomfortable as a result of my sort of relentless prosecution of their position and and their basic anti anti scientific proceedings and so that got me into some serious hot water and and I would say that yeah my personality is I think that the the thing that has that nothing particularly I don't see anything spectacular really about my personality that has led to an unusual understanding of clinical psychology at this point I really don't see myself that much different than a recently curious engineer and in some ways I feel like I'm kind of misplaced in this field to some degree I think I just didn't happen to like or be interested in the mechanical workings of machines or you know anything like that I just didn't happen to and mm-hmm and yet that approach of why does it work the way it works and why isn't working better that that approach is sort of native to me my dad was a mathematician and computer programmer and so the I mean this I come by that kind of sort of logical analysis real honestly as do many people and so it but it's not often that you will happen to find those characteristics plopped in the middle of a clinical psychology you know PhD that's just not something that often goes together or what usually goes together are people that are sort of maybe maybe more open more open-minded and also I don't know maybe a little bit less stable and possibly some degree III got a you know a disagreeable chip in me that that is intolerant of contradictions and I don't like it and I I'm not I'm not pleasant about it and so yeah and so I can I can remember exhilaration reading Dawkins and and yet I don't think you know not that many other people did and certainly not in psychology but to me it was like oh my god there's a logical system right down to the level of the the codons it's like oh this is how this is gonna work and that was that was fabulous for me because I felt like finally there was a place for me to set a lever to move somebody's world and without that I felt like we were floating around arguing with them telling them what was logical or reasonable bullying them into some interpretation not that not that I would necessarily do such a thing because I wouldn't but Sigmund Freud did okay and and so this is that that my personality kind of a an engineering based combination of some disagreeable and some sort of logical mathematical high conscientiousness that those those things not not so open-minded so those things that's the direction by which got here and and I actually look look back over my shoulder and I can't believe there weren't like 9,000 of us it's hard to believe and it should have taken over clinical psychology it should have cannibalized this field in the last 30 years easily but it didn't and it's just one of those things where where you this isn't my personality is I should have been a McCain a mechanical engineering program somewhere and I just got dropped in the wrong you know the sorting has put me in and and just threw one chip at a time one step at a time of being determined to understand more clearly this is we march our way here and we've got something that's really useful for people thank you dr. Lao so dr. hawk same question to you what what would you consider some of the personality traits that have gotten you to where you are today and maybe have alternatively may have gotten you in the most trouble I think my openness is it gets all the credit and the blame for everything in my life I mean I'm very very high open and I it has it took me down some crazy paths you know I've talked a little bit about it and a lot of people out there know that I've I have sort of what Doug is talking about the same sort of there's a there's a relentless it's less of a you know his is a little more logical and a little it's like he's scanning for inconsistency and and it's a little more left-brain oriented approach to the problem i I have always been just a capital-t truth seeker I've always just wanted to know what is what is all mean what is thought what's the purpose what's the whole thing so you know kind of ready-made to go attach myself to some kind of cults the kind of personality that I that I have and so I grew up and I immediately started kind of looking for my cults and I wandered around and I found a lot of different ones and and I've talked about this elsewhere but I just never felt the the true residents of a true cults it just never quite fit so the openness kept taking me down these paths and also kept getting me into some trouble where I would you know get myself attached to world views or to communities or relationships or whatever whatever it was also interacting with addict jeans and everything else to contribute to very colorful a couple of decades and my misspent youth and but the openness also it's it's stayin open to the fact that if it's not all lining up but you got to move on that's not a you found some truth but it's not capital-t truth so the openness was keeping me driven in a slightly different way in the Dougs talking about but still still like having that awareness of inconsistencies in any kind of dogma and any kind of thinking about the world and just like not resting until I found something that lined up and clicked into place and that that was the concilium some evolutionary psychology nothing else nothing nothing else did it until I encountered that matrix and so that the openness brought me there and the openness got me out of out of situations where other people might find themselves stuck for a really long time kind of you know accepting a mediocre cults as their existence I just wasn't ever gonna tolerate that well I guess I guess it's true they say and the truth shall set you free because some people think that this is limiting you know cynical I've been told from close people in my life that this is kind of a very cynical approach to life I don't understand it I don't understand that but but what you're saying makes makes the most sense to me so yeah it's very liberal right well we're ready to understand how it all actually works and to not be engaged in a game of self-deception and deceiving others all the time which is what everything else basically is and so it's it's it's profoundly profoundly inspiring and liberating I think it is anyway so it's my favorite cult that I thought I think I think so all right well let's take one more question here and the question may have a long answer so we're gonna start actually dr. hawk I'd like to hear your answer first and then dr. Lisle and the question is if you were going to create an environment where motivation and Happiness can actually thrive what would be some of the first things that you would try to do in the create in that environment oh my god it's a huge question and that question requires a book I mean is this is this for me or you looking for sort of general advice about like what you would do in general for people I'm sort of like it's such in general we know that that your your work which we'll hear in the future has to do with creating resilience and and and in setting up and dr. Lisle we've learned from the show and and from all of the talks that you've had that that your work is centered around human motivation and Happiness and one thing that we hear very consistently throughout every you know throughout you and dr. dr. Hawks points is that look at the environment create an environment and so what I'm curious about is what are some things that go into a good environment with the first thing that or maybe some some important things to make an environment conducive to good motivation happiness etc yeah I mean III think oh this is such a encompassing question that we really could go on at tremendous length about it but I think the short answer is that it's it's completely individual to someone's to someone's personality going back to the personality point that we're talking about so you can't really understand what somebody needs in their environment until you understand who they really are and so the first step is is know thyself know thyself and accept thyself you know so don't don't sort of set up New Year's resolutions to motivate you that you're gonna suddenly become a morning person and you're gonna you're gonna create your environment to maximize your productivity in specific kinds of ways and you're gonna you know transform your life and all of these these different prescriptions that you've come up with for yourself and if you can just get more disciplined and form a habit this is a big big piece of thinking that exists out there that it's all about habit building and all this kind of thinking where instead of realizing that you're never going to this is not an optimal kind of environment for the the animal that you are to thrive and achieve greatest creativity and greatest space for for what whatever it is that you have to contribute and whatever form you want to contribute that in so some people are are much more linear and what they want to do and what they want to create and what they with what productivity and success looks like to them and other people are have completely different goals and it's just a completely different structure and all of that is getting filtered through the personality so motivation is always just going to be a combination of how how inspired people are to make a particular change based on their prediction of how you know what what kind of shift in their relative status their competitive success that that kind of shift might make for them and then their perceived probability of success of accomplishing that goal so those two things are you know really shaping what motivation looks like for any human no matter what the actual goal is in the process to get there but that is completely variant among that you know there's there are as many prescriptions for that as there are humans on the planet and the fundamentals remain the same you know you you you want to get yourself in a process where you are making making systematic progress toward an important goal that makes a difference for your competitive success in life but that's that's a very individual process so I said it was gonna be a short answer that was pretty long answer but that's that's no that's great it was a very general question and I really appreciate you givin as complete of answer as possible dr. Lisle what about you what's a year yeah it'll probably sound similar that there's a the the general theory of mind is that there's the people all want essentially the same things so they want other people in their lives for mates and for friends and to trade with and who those people are and being able to effectively compete to obtain those relationships is is you know critical in other words that you're you're wanting to put yourself in a position to do the very best you can so that you can enjoy those relationships so the you want to have your income-earning actions be as optimum as possible for your personality and your potential and the the other goals you have in life and there's physical parameters to your existence literally you know the exercise that you can do or would do in the environment the aesthetics of the environment for you the social potential in the environment so all of these things have to be filtered through a recognition of your personality so there are people that are city people and people that are suburb people and some people that are rural and that's the those those parameters you know what's ideal for those individuals those are going to be filtered through so when you start talking about the the environment or what situations would you set up it's sort of it's sort of valued by value and has its own has its own environmental circumstances that are involved and those values can all be in conflict so you have you're trying to maximize for example exposure to possible mates but you're an introvert so there's inherent potential you know trade-offs that have to be worked out inside of every nervous system the but what what Jen was getting towards or talking about some is that a key component of setting anything up for positive change in your life and it's set up your you're essentially psychological environment is to look for look for an adventure and achievement where where you you understand and are not intimidated by the fact that that anything that you're trying to achieve no matter how grand is just nothing other than a bunch of little tiny achievements that there are no huge achievements all there are is conglomerations of little tiny achievements and little ty of any achievements or nothing other than just the you know the focus of attention and effort on trying to improve and get better at some what is actually and at the end of the day are probably a relatively simple fundamental and so that what will stop us are going to be various traps where we we lose our way behind the ego trap or we for example have goals that we're seeking and we don't know enough about the fundamentals so we don't have enough expert help or enough knowledge to know what fundamentals we should be working on and we start looking for shortcuts and we start trying to skip steps and then that gets us into trouble so an understanding of the nature of the challenges that people actually face that the nature of the challenges are that that other people in your competitors that are having things that you want or they're having successes that you would like to duplicate those people don't have secret sauce that they have that they have the very same type of competitive processes that they need to go through as you do and that the the process is to not skip steps identify fundamentals find out how you can possibly get measurable feedback mechanisms by which you can see whether or not the your improvements in a given area are actually resulting in any improvement in performance and if you can if you can get get that process of achievement going in any domain of your life then you can feel a low-grade excitement that is self-esteem and self-confidence those are two independent different psychological phenomena but they are but they are interrelated and they're their core to the nature of human life satisfaction and so that's the that's what you want to set up so if you're no matter where you're beginning if you're trying to open a coffee shop or you're trying to become a surgeon or you're trying to become an ice skater whatever it is that you're trying to display or do the issue is can this be you know we have to understand we know it can be broken down into component parts do you know enough about those component parts or do you need help and then then do you care enough about what this goal is and the improvements that you could be making that you're willing to put in the diligent effort and if you do when you put in the diligent effort and the results are too meager and too small maybe it's not worth it to you and that's fine there's nothing in the world wrong with attempting something and then walking away from it it's not it's not being a quitter but what we want to do so she talked about how do you set up an environment for success you set up the internal environment of understanding about the nature of the adventure of achievement and we are we sensitize ourselves to what it is that we what the most important currency of life is the self-esteem that comes with knowing that we have that we've done an excellent job of trying to do this well and then the self confidence that comes with seeing our improvements that's that's the most of what the best of life is we have a quite a bit of control over that and when we when we when we look for shortcuts and look for magic that's where we get seduced into making excuses these this is where human beings lose their way and they lose out on a great deal of the potential life satisfaction that's possible for us
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