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There's many, many ways in which these emotions show up.
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And one of the things that psychologists talk about is this phenomenon that they call disenfranchised grief, which basically means that there's a thousand and one versions of these griefs and these separations that are not socially acceptable to mourn.
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And so we don't mourn them.
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We don't even name them to ourselves as something that requires mourning.
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Um cuz we don't think of them that way.
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Hey everyone, welcome back to On Purpose, the number one health podcast in the world, thanks to each and every single one of you that come back every week to listen, learn, and grow.
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Now, you know how much I like research, how much I like psychology, how much I like the mind, and how much I love learning from people who deeply take the time to understand complexities, challenges, life situations that we all go through.
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And sometimes we don't really have deep insight on some of the biggest emotional challenges of the journey of our lives.
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And today's guest is someone who does just that.
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And I've been wanting to have her on the podcast for a long, long time, probably a couple of years in the making, and we're finally doing that.
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So I'm very, very grateful.
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Today, our guest is none other than Susan Cain, the author of Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking, which spent seven years on the New York Times bestseller and has been translated into over 40 languages.
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It was named the number one best book of the year by Fast Company, which also named her as one of its most creative people in business.
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Her writing has appeared in the New York Times, The Atlantic, The Wall Street Journal, and many other publications.
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And her record-smashing TED Talk, which was where I first discovered her, has been viewed over 30 million times on ted.
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com and YouTube combined and was named by Bill Gates as one of his all-time favorite talks.
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Now, her most recent book that I highly recommend you go and order right away and you're going to want to especially during and after this conversation is called bittersweet how sorrow and longing make us whole.
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Please welcome to the show Susan Cain.
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Susan, thank you so much for being here.
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Uh really grateful, really excited to learn from you today and these are actually my favorite conversations on the podcast sitting with someone who has studied and deeply absorbed a theme transition of life that is often not spoken about enough. So, thank you so much.
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Well, thank you so much Jay for being here.
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It's it's just such a joy.
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I've been a fan for a long time.
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Well, the feeling is very mutual.
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Let's let's dive right in because I think you know, the work that you've done up until now on on being an introvert and being quiet and stillness is is really powerful, but this new book bittersweet what I find really interesting about this is I find that as humans and I'm I'm speaking on my behalf and I think a lot of my community feels this way as well is that we've never been taught about what to do with pain.
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Uh we've never really been taught about what to do with the feeling of loss or sorrow.
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We don't really know what to do with it and the generic advice we get with is well, it will heal with time or it will go away naturally.
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And and I wanted to ask you like where did you start on this journey of figuring out what to do with pain?
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And when you started that journey, what surprised you the most?
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I had had experiences in my own life and the generations of my family before I even entered into this world had had experiences in their lives that I think um kind of set me up to be thinking about these kinds of questions.
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This particular journey really started for me when I noticed that I was draw I mean I love music of all kinds.
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I love happy upbeat dance music, but I found myself drawn especially to minor key kind of longing yearning music.
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I started to notice that that music had this effect on me that wasn't about sadness.
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The only word I could use is love actually.
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I mean look the music would give me a sense of uplift and I realized that the uplift came from love and it was because the musician composing music like that, they are expressing the pain that all humans experience at one time or another and they're basically saying we all feel this some of the time.
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And I'm letting you know that I I the musician who felt that way, everybody else listening to to this has felt this way and and the music is then going to take this extra step of turning the pain into something beautiful which I think is is kind of the call that we all have in this world.
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And and so anyway, it was really trying to understand like what that music was all about that got me started on this inquiry of what bittersweetness is and I started looking at all these different traditions from all over the world and
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across time and they're all telling us that the willingness to accept the fact that life is a mix of joy and sorrow is one of the great bonding agents we have because we all are humans who are in that same state of being. So it's a great bonding agent and it's
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So it's a great bonding agent and it's the source of our creativity and it's the source of transcendence.
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Um but it all started it all started with music and it probably started before that, you know, with various family experiences that had primed me to be thinking in these ways.
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And do you believe that it's a avoidance of that idea that life is both bitter sweet and that life is both joy and sorrow?
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Is it the avoidance that causes us more pain or causes us more stress and pressure?
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And And is that's why we need acceptance?
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Is acceptance the right word?
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How How are you constructing that thought process for us?
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I would say acceptance is the first step.
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We We We do have to accept.
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And acceptance, by the way, looks like many different things, you know, it doesn't only look like kind of sitting calmly and letting things wash over us.
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It's It's also um understanding that some of the time we're going to feel overwhelmed or angry or whatever it is in response to an adverse event um and being okay with all of those kind of chaotic emotions that come up.
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But all of that, that's only step one.
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Um there's a guy named Steven Hayes who's developed this thing called acceptance and commitment therapy, and it breaks down this process.
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Acceptance is stage one, commitment is stage two.
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What commitment looks like is it's identifying the source of your pain and realizing that the only reason you feel pain in the first place is because something has happened in an area that matters to you.
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So, to use it as a kind of sign post of this is what matters to me.
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You know, maybe you've just had a breakup um or a bereavement or whatever it is, and you realize, "Wow, like this thing that I've lost, this matters."
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So, now you want to like commit yourself to that area of life because now you know how how much it matters.
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Um and we see people doing this in different ways all the time.
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They're just not always aware of it.
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Just as examples, after 9/11, suddenly in the United States, there was a huge rush of people signing up to become firefighters.
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And in the wake of the pandemic, there's a rush of people signing up for medical school and for nursing school.
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And you could say both of these decisions, they're they're kind of counterintuitive.
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It's kind of like people are signing up to be, you know, closer to the source of the thing that has brought us pain.
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Um but what humans want to do, ultimately, is humans want to create meaning.
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So, like if we can accept, but then also take that extra step of making meaning out of out of the thing that has caused us pain, um or making a kind of human connection out of it, that's really what brings us closer to wholeness.
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Uh that's such a beautiful answer, and and I love hearing that from you, especially because you've spent so much time in this space.
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It's almost like acceptance with meaning that turns into action, like some sort of, as you said, the examples of uh the firefighters and and the healthcare workers of people opting to take action because of some meaning that they've gained.
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I I think often we're scared of transforming sorrow or loss or or pain into acceptance or meaning because it means we have to spend more time with it. Right?
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Like it's when when you open up the wound, you have to spend more time with the wound, and so it's often easier.
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How do we is it courage that's needed to look at a painful area?
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And I love what you said about ultimately, if something causes you pain, it's because it matters to you.
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What is required to take a closer look at what matters to you that's caused you pain? Is it courage? Is it curiosity? Like what is that?
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What have you seen that gives people the resilience required, or is it resilience that's required to actually assess that?
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I mean, I suppose it's all those things, but I think one of the one of the biggest factors that we overlook all the time is connection.
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There's no pain that exists that many other people haven't been through or or that people who have been through it could still gather around together.
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Um but you know, there's a reason for example like with Alcoholics Anonymous. Like what do you do?
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You people gather around together to lift each other up.
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They they don't do it by themselves.
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Um or I think of of someone who I talked about um or who I quoted really in Bittersweet.
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She was describing the funeral of her grandfather and she was describing how she had never before seen her father cry.
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It was her father's father who had passed away.
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Um and she said it you know, it was incredibly sad and and group of friends gathered together and they they were like a barbershop chorus and they sang this beautiful tribute in honor of her grandfather and the tears were streaming down her father's face and she says what she remembers of that moment most was actually not the pain.
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It was what she calls the union between souls that happened at that moment.
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And there is something about these painful moments that can open us up to that union between souls.
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And I think we need to look for that everywhere we can.
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And you see it everywhere around you once you're once you become aware of it.
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Um this is one of the reasons that I think it's such a problem that in our culture we don't like to talk about stuff like this.
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We we see it as kind of distasteful or maybe a little bit weak or something like that.
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Um but God knows we need more of a union between souls right now.
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We have nothing but division.
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This is actually one of the things that most opens us up and most joins us.
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Yeah, that's such a great reminder and you're so right that we I feel a lot of us including myself at times in my life I've had the feeling that no one understands me and only I'm going through this.
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Like only I'm struggling.
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And I think today, if we take a look at it through the angle of social media or the idea of yeah, anything from Instagram through the TikTok through the Facebook or whatever it may be, and people are looking at that going, "Well, my life doesn't look like that.
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My life's a lot worse than that."
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And that comparison or that judgment constantly makes us feel like we're more alone in our experience of pain.
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How do Is that unhealthy to feel that our pain is unique, or is it useful to feel that your pain is unique to you?
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I'm I'm I'm fascinated by the uniqueness of of pain, especially when you're talking about the idea that actually pain is what connects us and and but often our experience of pain is, "Well, no, no, no, my my pain's different."
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Or sometimes it's my pain's worse than yours.
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Or sometimes people gain perspective by thinking, "Well, someone else has it worse off."
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And so I'm intrigued by is pain healthier to see it when you see it as unique or when you see it as connecting? Oh, that's interesting.
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I mean, so I would always say every single person's life story is unique and and of course there are some pains that are more difficult than other pains, for sure.
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But yeah, at the end of the day, understanding the connection is the most healing of all. It really is.
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Um there's there's a a Japanese Buddhist poet who I I talk about in Bittersweet.
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His name is Issa, I I S S A.
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He's one of the great um famous poets of Japan.
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And he had this ex- life experience where he kept he he married late and he and his wife kept giving birth to children who didn't live.
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Um they they would die like a stillbirth.
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And then and then finally they had this daughter, Sato.
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And she was healthy and beautiful and beloved.
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And then she too, like at the age of two or three, she dies of smallpox.
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And he's utterly heartbroken.
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And he's also trained as a Buddhist monk.
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And so he's trained like in the idea of impermanence, you know, in the idea of accepting impermanence.
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And so he writes this poem after his baby's death, he writes this poem where he's basically saying, I I get it.
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I This world of dew is just a world of dew, you know, meaning just dew drops. I get it.
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Everything's impermanent.
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And then he says, but even so, but even so.
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And he's basically saying, you know, like even I who's trained in impermanence, even I am going to say this hurts, you know, for for my baby daughter to have died this way. This really hurts.
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And you have to ask like, well, why are we Why First of all, why did he write that poem?
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And second, why are we reading it 200 years later?
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And the answer is that he wrote it because he knows that everybody has trouble with that idea of impermanence. No one fully accepts it. Everybody grieves.
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Um and we read it 200 years later because our lives are completely different from his and yet they're exactly the same.
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We would grieve, too, in in the exact same situation.
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And 200 years later, we'll still read it.
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And that's one of the great sources of uplift that we have.
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Um it's one of the great truths, you know, that we're we're all in this kind of like amazing state of like constant love and loss that go together as humans.
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That is That That's our situation and we're in that together.
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And there's something incredibly beautiful about that.
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That's why we listen to music.
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It's why Or if like one reason One big reason we listen One big reason we consume art is because we're kind of allowing our artists and musicians and theologians and everyone else to tell us these truths on behalf of all of us and join us together that way.
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way. Yeah, that that truly is I'm I'm really glad I asked you that question because uh hearing you deepen that understanding for us around what we're looking for in that connection and and transitioning to music, I I realized that a few years ago when you know, you're traveling all across the world and I know you do, too, and
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you're speaking or you're doing events or you're meeting people and you realize that everyone's playing the same music in every single country often and I know every country has its own traditional uh music as well, of course, which is beautiful, but I also find that often you find that music just, you know, crosses language, crosses boundaries, crosses barriers. But I think one of the interesting that
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But I think one of the interesting that you that you bring up is that normally people would think that we listen to happy music to feel happy and sad music when we're sad.
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But you talk about how sad music can transform into something beautiful that can uplift someone and bring them closer to a feeling of joy.
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Walk us through that concept.
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Yeah, I mean, so we know this that um like the music that reliably gives people, you know, shivers and chills and goosebumps, it's this it's the sad music. It's the sad slow music.
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Um and people will tell researchers that when they listen to sad music, they feel like connected to states of wonder and awe and transcendence.
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Um and you know, sad music is incredibly uplifting.
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It lifts the mood, it lifts the spirits.
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Um I'm sorry, I meant happy music.
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I'm not sure what I just said.
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But anyway, but it's the sad music that makes us feel like, you know, we're we're we're touching touching something higher.
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And I think this is because as humans, we all enter this world.
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It's it's like part of our emotional DNA to feel that we belong in another, more perfect and more beautiful state.
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Um, you know, whether you use religious terms to express that of like that we belong with with the divine or we belong in the Garden of Eden or in Zion or in Mecca or whatever it is, there's this feeling of we belong somewhere else.
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And um, you know, The Wizard of Oz, we belong somewhere over the rainbow.
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That's just that's a state that human beings feel on a fundamental level.
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Sad music, minor key music puts us in touch with this state.
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So, instead of making us feel sad, it's making us feel connected with the more perfect and beautiful world to which we feel we belong.
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Um, and you you know, you're talking about different cultures, you you can see this in music all across the world.
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You know, there's like like in in Portugal and Brazil, well, Portugal is the music of fado and um, Portugal and Brazil, they both have the idea of saudade, you know, the idea of like the the longing for uh, like a lost love that you may never have experienced in the first place.
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And this is embodied in the music.
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Um, and as I understand it, um, in Hinduism, there's an idea of viraha, which is the same idea of kind of like longing for a lost love.
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And and the idea there is that music the legend has it that music and poetry like began with that sense of loss.
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And there's like a a tale of a a bird that is weeping because its lover was killed by a hunter's bow.
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Um, and and that moment of the bird's weeping is said to be the the start of all uh, of all art and poetry.
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So, there's something very deep in us that feels these things.
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Um, but is uplifted by them because we're together in that state of exile and we're together in that state of longing for a better world that we're always reaching for.
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Yeah, what is the that's so interesting and and I I agree with you and and you're spot on that especially in the Bhakti tradition, uh, there's a statement similar to Viraha.
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It's called Vipralambha Bhava, which means service in separation or love in separation.
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And love in separation or longing is seen as higher than love in connection because there's a deeper longing, there's a deeper sense of connection and intimacy that is experienced in wanting to be reunited with a loved one, whether that be the divine in certain traditions or whether that be a person.
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But what I find really interesting is how some of these concepts can be so easily misconstrued or swayed.
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Like the idea that I think a lot of people would feel that longing for a better life actually causes a lot of pain as opposed to the idea that you're really putting forward is longing of knowing that there is more.
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And I'm just trying to really get into that subtlety of like longing for a better life actually causes us more pain and stress sometimes.
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Whereas what I think you're saying, and I'd love to clarify that more deeply, is longing knowing that there is more, there is meaning, there is purpose to this experience.
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Could you Does that help?
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Is that And I'm really allowing my mind to like connect random dots right now.
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I'm not following my my notes or my questions at all because I I just feel like there's so much depth here to uncover.
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I hope you don't mind me doing that.
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By the way, Susan, I apologize. Oh, are you kidding? Oh my gosh, I love that. No, no, no.
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Um I think it's a spot-on question, and I think that what you might be getting at is the difference between longing for, you know, material things or that kind of thing versus a kind of more existential longing for, you know, that which is beautiful, good, true.
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Um longing for like perfect love, longing for the divine.
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Those are very different kinds of longings for, you know, like I'm longing for a a nicer car.
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That maybe we're using the same word to describe two very different states of being.
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Yeah, no, no, that that that clarifies it.
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I think that's a great great thought that affects that.
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And for me, I think what I love about what you're saying in this in this book is that you know, artists and musicians most of the time get their inspiration from sadness, darker emotions and experiences, and it's often a really painful, traumatic transition in their life that creates their greatest art form.
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You gave the example of the bird a just a few moments ago.
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And do you think that the opportunity to transform pain into something creative like music or art or poetry is possible for everyone or is the right way for everyone when a lot of people would say, "Well, I'm not poetic or I'm not artistic or I'm not creative."
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Is that still what you've found and discovered to be a really healthy form of healing? Oh, yeah, absolutely.
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I'm so glad that you asked that question because I used to When when I talk about this and I do say, you know, whatever pain you can't get rid of, make that your creative offering.
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Um, but I'm using that word creative in in a very loose sense.
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It like it doesn't have to be, you know, the the painting hanging on the wall.
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It It could be like the the cake you bake or the organization you found or, you know, the time you reach out to the friend who really needed to hear the thing that you just said at that exact moment.
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You know, there's there's a lot of different kinds of creative acts.
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Um, the real creativity is the transformation of of pain into beauty.
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And beauty can take endless different forms.
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In the book I talk about a lot of different people who do things like this, you know, like the mother whose whose child is killed by a drunk person on a highway and starts Mothers Against Drunk Driving.
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You know, there there's a thousand examples like this.
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So, I was hesitating, as you could see, even to give that example because I I also wouldn't want people to feel like, well, it necessitates, you know, starting some gigantic, famous organization.
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It doesn't take anything like that.
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It just takes some kind of act.
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It could be an act of extremely modest and private transformation.
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But I think the transformation is the key.
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Yeah, I I I love that as a solution.
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I I think what I notice in my work is that often for people to get started, even when things are somewhat more stable, starting is so difficult.
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And the idea of starting anything when you're in trauma or pain, and you are right that when you look at some of even the greatest careers of musicians or actors, often what they create is to heal their trauma, but they don't necessarily heal their trauma in that journey.
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What do you think's the difference?
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There's two questions here.
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Let's start first I got I'm I'm I'm really getting excited about this topic.
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Uh let's start first with how does someone start simply when they're in so much pain, they've gone through a really tough, difficult situation, they're not Buddhist monk trained, they're not exposed to the feeling that they're naturally creative in what the world considers to be creative.
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I agree with you, this could be a business, it could be a it could be a painting, it could be a room in your home that you redesign.
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Like, it doesn't need to be an entity or a huge charity.
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But how does someone just start when they're actually like, how do you how can I start?
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I'm just so stuck in my pain.
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Well, I mean, the first place to start, remember at the beginning we were talking about before there's commitment to the thing that you value, first there's acceptance.
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And um and acceptance includes kind of like sitting with the wash of pain.
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So, it may be that you're not really ready to do any kind of like grand act or modest act of of transformation for quite a long time.
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Um and and that's okay, you know, and to accept that also.
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To the extent you start to feel like open and ready to it, connection really is the key, you know, and maybe it's one other person who you're connecting with, and maybe it's a person you don't ever meet in real life, and it's just somebody you're you're connecting with over the internet.
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You know, I here I'm like coming from my introvert's background of knowing that people have very different wishes and how they want to connect, and you should be honoring your own wishes, you know, some people will want to be in a room full of of friends or strangers, and some people really don't want that, and all that's fine.
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But, I do think that connection of one kind or another is always going to be the key.
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It's what It's what humans want most of all.
25:55
I'm just thinking of somebody who I am who I talked to a lot for the book, and I I wrote about her.
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This is my a good friend of mine. Her name is Lois.
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She's my sister's mother-in-law.
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And um and she she lost her daughter, Wendy, um to ovarian cancer.
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Um and they were like incredibly close.
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And and Lois is an incredibly upbeat, cheerful person by nature.
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Um she's not a bittersweet type at all.
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Um but, you know, she kind of went into a time of really dark despair.
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And it was something like 2 years, you know, that she was like in her house and hardly coming out, and um she said just kind of like creating a shrine to her lost daughter all over the house.
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She said like she was hanging pictures of her like up at all these crazy angles all over the house.
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Like she didn't even have the wherewithal to hang them straight or in any way that made sense.
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Um she was really in an altered reality.
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Um what started to bring her out was realizing that she still loved her husband deeply, um loves her other children deeply, her grandchildren deeply, and feeling that the message that she was sending to them was that maybe they shouldn't be moving forward with their lives or maybe they didn't matter so much because she was so lost in the love for her one daughter.
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And it was that that was one of the things that most pulled her out.
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And it doesn't mean that her grief has gone away at all.
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Um but there's this incredible way of putting it that comes from uh the writer Nora McInerny.
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The difference between moving on versus moving forward.
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You know, the message we get in this culture is you know, eventually you should move on. Like get over it.
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That's that's the message we're getting one way or another.
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And instead we can move forward, which means you do go on with your life, but you're carrying the lost person with you always.
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You don't ever have to leave them behind.
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Um they they have shaped you, they will shape you forever, they will always be a part of you.
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You're carrying them with you even as you move forward.
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And I think that's a much healthier and more manageable way for people to deal with their lost beloveds.
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And and with all of that I I think connection is at the heart of all of these ideas.
28:20
Were there any specific examples you saw of how people carry someone with them long-term in a way that becomes healthier and healthier for them as opposed to more and more debilitating for them.
28:33
Were there What were some of those examples?
28:34
I'm intrigued as to how someone who's at a really like you said like you were talking about people who've lost, you know, children or people who've lost partners or of course parents.
28:44
Like what was the healthiest way or methods that you saw people keep people in their lives uh without it impacting their current relationships and their current outlook as well?
28:57
Well, with Lois who I just told you about, who who lost her daughter, um she often talks about how she really wants to still be talking about her daughter all the time.
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And, you know, she said people around her would very, understandably, often like not talk about her daughter cuz they were afraid to like remind her and upset her.
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Um but of course, you know, someone in that situation doesn't need any reminding.
29:20
They haven't forgotten anyway.
29:20
Um but but much more to the point than that, they want the person still to be part of their lives.
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So, they want them to They want to be able to talk about them in everyday life and just bring bring up their name naturally.
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Um now, I'm not saying every single person feels that way.
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And if like if you know someone like this in your life, it's probably a good idea to to ask them what their preference is. But but I do that way.
29:46
Um And then another example is from Nora McInerny who who has this idea of moving on versus moving forward.
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And her situation was that she had lost her husband when she was still quite young.
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And um and she did end up remarrying.
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But she says that the marriage she has now and the relationship she has now with her new husband is the way it is because of her lost husband.
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You know, she is the person who she is and she is the wife and partner that she is because of the experiences that she had with her lost husband.
30:21
And so, he's still present with them and a part of her and and it and and it's all integrated.
30:28
It's not like there doesn't have to be this stark delineation, you know, between that which was and that which is.
30:34
It's more like it's all one continuous flow.
30:39
How do we need to adapt as a society, do you think, to allow for this kind of healing, this kind of life?
30:43
Because as you said, most often we don't want to talk about it.
30:47
If someone does talk about someone they've lost in their life, it can be quite unsettling and uncomfortable.
30:52
A, because I think people are not used to talk about these themes as we discussed previously, but also because people are scared of saying the right thing or the wrong thing and they'd rather not.
31:03
And then ultimately it's about, well, you know, when is it right to talk about it?
31:08
I think there's a lot of aspects of this that make it complicated.
31:11
What are you seeing uh good progress?
31:14
Did you even come across any communities or any tribes or societies or places in the world or or people that you found were having healthier conversations around loss? Do those even exist?
31:25
Yeah, there's actually and I I I don't know if I'll be able to give you um you know, names at my fingertips, but it's actually fascinating.
31:32
There there I would say there's a movement now that has sprung up to talk more about death and grief and loss and all of It's a broader movement with many different subgroups to it.
31:43
I think we kind of reached a tipping point.
31:46
You know, it's like in the early um it was around the early 20th century that we started moving loss and death and all of it, you know, completely offstage.
31:56
It was like seen as being completely non-appropriate.
31:58
Don't talk about it ever.
32:00
Um this was a period where it also became like out of fashion even to talk about bad weather.
32:04
Like you weren't supposed to notice anything negative at all.
32:08
Um and I think there's a reclamation process that's going on right now with people realizing we will actually be more whole if we can integrate all of this into our daily lives.
32:22
It's It's not about a love of the macabre or the morbid or it It's nothing like that.
32:27
It's just like tell the truth about being alive. Like integrate it all.
32:32
Um And so, yeah, the the these movements are springing up and um And then I think you see it in other ways, too, you know, like I don't know, the last 10 or 20 years, it's become it's become increasingly common to talk about things like compassionate leadership.
32:49
And what does compassion mean?
32:49
We We think it means yeah, be nice.
32:54
The word compassion, it literally means to suffer with someone. That's what it means.
33:01
And so this movement for compassion is really talking about making a place for people to be able to bring their joys and their pains and for other people to and colleagues to be there with them.
33:16
Um and of course it's uncomfortable and messy and no one has the answer yet of exactly like how to do business with all our lives and all our emotions out there, too.
33:23
Um it's complicated, but I do think we're starting to wrestle with it. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely.
33:28
And And I think that at least being able to have honest, transparent, non-judgmental spaces seems to be a good beginning point. Yeah.
33:39
Uh and and I think that requires a lot of openness because often there's a judgment on how we want to be treated about our loss.
33:50
And then there's a judgment from the people on the outside of how you should be reacting to your loss.
33:55
And so there's this mishmash of expectation based on judgment, which seems really uncomfortable.
34:01
Like if you've just gone through a loss, but then you're expecting that people should deal with you a certain way, that's really tough because chances are most people are not equipped with the tools to know how to interact with you, but then those people are also expecting you to get over it, as you said, or move on instead of move forward.
34:19
And so I find that there's often this Yeah, this this tension between these uh two sets of expectations that ends up causing a bit more stress.
34:29
So, it really requires a lot of openness and judgement non-judgement from everyone.
34:34
One of the most moving moments I've ever seen at a conference came when the organizer of the conference asked everybody to write down on a piece of paper just something that they had been through recently or were going through, you know, some like life trial.
34:53
And and people wrote these things on their pieces of paper and put them in a hat and they all went up to the front of the room and and then the the organizer sat and on the stage and he just started pulling these pieces of paper out of the hat and reading them aloud.
35:07
reading them aloud. And it was so profound because it was like, you know, one person was going through like a terrible divorce and another was dealing with an illness and you know, it was just like one thing after another and you realize
35:19
if you had looked around at these people all of them cheerfully milling around the conference and you know, like happily shaking each other's hands you'd have no idea of what their true stories are because we don't present that particular face to the world. That's not what we do. That's not what we do.
35:35
And so just the moment of being reminded of all our complexities that are existing behind our smiling faces. That was very profound.
35:43
And I think there's probably a lot of different ways that we could do that, you know, like at at in schools they sometimes have what's called a parking lot of like a a whiteboard where the kids could write down what they're experiencing or feeling or thinking or whatever and they don't they don't have to put their names.
35:59
You look at the whiteboard and you suddenly see like a picture of the emotional and experiential state of of the class.
36:07
And I think we could be looking for more and more ways to do that with each other.
36:11
So that so that even if we're not so skilled yet at dealing one-on-one with how do I you know, how do I talk to you about what you personally are experiencing collectively we can under we can see each other a little more clearly.
36:25
Yeah, did you did you find a difference in approach Susan to people who lost someone to death I you passing away etc.
36:34
passing away etc. or losing someone who is still alive who may even still be in your life to some degree who who may be maybe they're geographically distant but they're still present they still have their own life you may be aware through friends or through social media of what was the was there a difference in approach to dealing with those two types
36:55
of loss did you see different ways of emotionally regulating or reacting to the different types of loss I think what we've been talking about now especially with the examples you've shared have been very much you know losing a child or or losing in that sense but what about like losing a partner or losing a long-term friend or or someone in that capacity. Yeah and it's funny that
37:16
capacity. Yeah and it's funny that actually or not funny but that we went in the direction of bereavement because um I mean I talk about bereavement in the book but that's not really the focus the focus is much more on just like in general the fact of
37:29
of uh you know this human condition of there being a pain of separation and a desire for a reunion that that animates us in so many ways um so yeah to your question of course it depends on each individual circumstance but but people do go
37:45
through quite profound losses and separations there's many many many many ways in which these emotions show up and one of the things that psychologists talk about is this phenomenon that they call disenfranchised grief which basically means that there's
38:04
there's like a thousand and one versions of these these griefs and these separations that are not socially acceptable to mourn and so we don't mourn them we don't even name them to ourselves as something that requires mourning um cuz we don't think of them that way. You know, if you broke
38:21
You know, if you broke up with somebody Yeah, everybody knows that you know, you might have a few tissue boxes out for for a few days or something, but nobody thinks of it as a subject of mourning.
38:31
Um And other people aren't primed to react that way.
38:37
You know, your colleagues aren't primed to to support you in the way that they would if you were having a classic bereavement.
38:43
So, I think the real difference has to do much more with our expectations for ourselves and what we expect of each other um, in terms of how we process all this.
38:55
Yeah, I think what as I'm as I'm talking to you and I'm listening and and thinking about some of the areas I saw in the book, what I'm always fascinated by is the balance of how do we encourage people and ourselves to talk about our pain, to discuss it as we're encouraging here, and to and to be more transparent about it.
39:13
What is the balance that allows you to use that to then turn it into something creative or action-based or meaning or moving on and becomes like a form of self-expression, and when does it actually limit you?
39:28
Because I I think we experience both, right?
39:30
Like so, you see people build empires out of their pain, and no one knows they're going through anything.
39:40
So, so they can build something really phenomenal coming from a place of lack during their childhood or their pain or whatever it may be, and no one even knows and no one's unaware.
39:48
And we've seen that play out in unhealthy ways.
39:53
But, you also see the opposite where or you see two other ways where someone is expressing their pain, but they're constantly in their pain.
40:00
They they don't they can't find a way out of the cycle.
40:04
What is the balance between expressing, accepting, finding meaning, and discussing your pain on a daily basis versus being able to transform it as you're encouraging into me now?
40:14
What have you seen is that difference maker?
40:17
Because I think we are encouraging people to share more and that's massively needed, but I guess what is that what creates momentum towards a a shift and like you're saying, there's this tyranny of positivity, right?
40:34
It's not about just well, we should just be positive or you should look at the bright side.
40:38
Like that's that we know that that's out of date and that should not be amplified across the world, but what is the balance?
40:44
I think it's a common concern.
40:47
It's like, well, if we let this in, maybe it'll take up all the oxygen, you know, maybe there won't be space for anything else.
40:53
Maybe maybe I'll kind of like never come out of it again.
40:58
And um and I guess that's where I think that the the bittersweet view of life is so helpful because it's say the bittersweet view of life is saying life will include pain, life will include sorrow, but it also will always include joy and beauty.
41:15
And so the you know, the job is to like never forsake one for the other.
41:20
You know, so if if you have if things happen to be going amazingly for you, don't forsake the the fact of the tragedies in the world that exist now and may one day exist for you, but by the same token, if things aren't going well, don't forsake the miracle of this world.
41:38
Don't forsake that either.
41:38
And I think that that's really useful.
41:40
And I'll tell you this one parable that I came across that I found so helpful for framing all this.
41:50
Um this one comes from the the Kabbalah, which is the mystical side of Judaism, and and the parable is that all of creation was originally an intact and divine vessel that then shattered and that the world that we're living in now is the world after the breakage.
42:08
So it's a broken world, but it's also a world in which scattered all around us are the shards of light from this vessel.
42:19
And the job for all of us is to bend down and pick them up.
42:21
And like And you're going to notice different shards of light from the ones that I notice, but we each have the capacity, you know, to be aware of the breakage and to turn in the in the direction of beauty.
42:35
Like those those two things always can and must coexist.
42:38
Um you know, and and the idea of this parable is is to kind of like bring bring more of the divinity into into this kind of lower realm in which we live.
42:52
Um and you know, whether one takes that in literal religious terms or as a metaphor, I think makes no difference in terms of its how helpful it can be and how to live.
43:02
Yeah, and and that that is the hardest part I find that from people I speak to when they look at what's happening in the news and happening around us and and happening all across the world, I mean, it just feels bitter bitter bitter bitter bitter.
43:14
Like there's there's not really much sweetness or the sweetness feels very fleeting or the sweetness feels very short-lived.
43:23
And the sweetness is more ephemeral than the bitter and the bitter feels so bold and large and big that it just overshadows.
43:31
I'm sure you have the same conversations.
43:35
And and and I found that getting to that balance of seeing both and recognizing that like it's it's it's tough.
43:40
It's I I find that it's tough for people to understand that.
43:44
And and that's just a reflection based on what you were just saying.
43:47
I I I I agree that the balance is useful and powerful and recognizing where we can support and help.
43:53
To me, that's always been the the greatest lesson I think I love learned was, you know, in times of uncertainty, don't look for certainty, look for service.
44:04
Like look for meaning, look for purpose, because you will always find meaning and service and purpose in life.
44:12
You will not always find pleasure and happiness and joy, which are are not, you know, possible.
44:20
And when I looked at I think the work of Edith Eger in her book The Gift or Victor Frankl in Man's Search for Meaning, and you know, two people who lived through incredible atrocities, like they turned towards finding meaning.
44:37
Uh and and finding purpose.
44:37
And so, I loved what you said at the beginning.
44:40
And so, to me, that's that's always been what creates the balance is you can't just look for joy.
44:44
I think looking for joy or expecting pain are both really tough places to live.
44:50
Because if you look for joy, you may not always find it.
44:54
And if you live in pain, that's really difficult.
44:56
And so, looking for meaning, service, and purpose seem to be paths forward to me, at least. I I agree with that.
45:05
And And And I would say to each individual person listening to use the word and the ideal that speaks most to you.
45:11
You could speak of of truth, you could speak of beauty, you could speak of love, but but basically it's talking about like look for the higher ideals, because those kind of like transcend whether you happen to be in a state of of joy or sorrow at any given moment.
45:26
They're still the higher ideals on top of all of that for which we can live.
45:29
And I'll tell you, like just for me personally, one exercise I found myself doing over these last few years, um and I I just kind of stumbled into it, but I start or I I try to start most of my days, especially my work days, with an act of beauty.
45:42
So, like I I look at a lot of art on social media, and almost every day I share art on my social media feed.
45:51
And it's like one of the first things I do when I start working that morning.
45:54
And it's attracted all these other people who love that, too.
45:58
And it's become a a of community based around that shared ideal.
46:03
And it's a small act, you know, it's like here's a piece of beauty to start our day with.
46:10
It's not going to save the world, but there's something about stepping in that direction that I think is is just incredibly helpful and uplifting. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely.
46:20
How how do you think we can I I what I love about this book is that you're obviously talking about the individual, but you're also talking about organizations and companies and and and systems and one of the things that fascinates me is this idea that you bring up about How do you think we can end the, you know, the whole winners and losers idea?
46:36
And and tell us a bit about that.
46:39
I thought that was really interesting.
46:40
You know, people say, "Well, why do we have this whole toxic positivity thing in the first place?"
46:46
And and I kind of went back and looked at our history and I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that around the 19th century when things became very focused on on business, like people started asking the question, if somebody is a success or failure at business, is it because of good luck or bad luck, or is it because of something in the person?
47:07
And increasingly the answer became it's because of something inside the person.
47:12
And so and we started looking at people and characterizing people as either winners or losers.
47:17
And over time the the use of the word loser has increased astronomically over time.
47:23
And if you think about it, if we're all afraid to be losers and don't want to be associated with being a loser, then of course we're going to avoid any discussion of anything that has to do with loss or pain or, you know, sorrow or longing or like anything that we're talking about.
47:40
You You would want nothing to do with it.
47:42
It Basically what it's meant is we're existing in this false dichotomy.
47:46
So, we have to get to a place where collectively in in our organizations, we can just kind of be more comfortable with integrating all of these things together.
47:57
And that's so tough, Susan, because like and I I worked in the corporate world for a for a few years and I've I felt that they were really trying to develop that culture and investing in it and they they did a pretty good job and that was around 9 years ago now where they were doing a good job which I'm sure it's improved even since then.
48:15
But I think that it's tough because like you said, when you're chasing promotions and pay rises and career growth turning around saying, "Hey, I'm really struggling at home."
48:32
It's very hard for an untrained manager or leader to recognize that those things can be connected but also disconnected.
48:41
I I have a team today and I know that I have team members that could be going through something at home but actually being at work is what lets them get away from that and channel channel their pain into work.
48:55
So, what they're doing what you're saying which is they have a painful environment, whatever that it may be, but they're fueling their work with that passion and momentum to say, "I'm going to be more creative. I'm going to love this."
49:07
So, it's not necessarily that because they have a troublesome home that they're going to perform less at work, but I think that that requires a lot of emotional maturity from leaders and managers to recognize that work performance is not directly correlated with home situation uh and and that it's a lot more complex than that.
49:29
So, is there something that leaders and managers and people who lead people, even if it's two people or one person, like even if it's leading your family, you know, it's like how do how do you how do we help people develop that emotional maturity because most of us and and I I know I would say that if I told my boss that I you know, even if you told your boss like, "Oh, I'm feeling like I've got a headache this morning."
49:55
That would feel like, "Oh, no, no, I can't say that to them because if they think I have a headache, then they won't challenge me or they won't think I'm reliable or they won't think that I'm someone they can trust because they're worried about me." Does that make sense?
50:08
Yeah, I mean, it makes perfect sense.
50:10
You remind me I I used to be a corporate lawyer before I became a writer and I remember so much this feeling of like, I mean, I did this in the 1990s. I stopped in 2001.
50:18
It was actually really before anyone was talking about this stuff.
50:23
Um but I so remember the feeling of walking into work and feeling like I had to put on a kind of emotional superhero costume.
50:32
Like, you know, everything had to seem like completely together all the time.
50:36
And there was a way in which that would make you feel really good in the short term cuz you cuz you were wearing this the superhero costume and that feels good.
50:46
Um but in the long term, you get kind of burned out from it.
50:49
Um so, what can leaders do?
50:53
As with everything, it's so helpful when leaders go first.
50:54
You know, like for leaders to model being able to talk about something that's going on with them at the same time that they're equally committed to their work.
51:04
Um that's opening the door.
51:07
It Let's showing other people how to do it and that it can be done.
51:09
And and I do want to say, and again, this is me wearing my introvert hat here.
51:13
I I want to say like a lot of people don't want to show up to work and divulge everything that's going on in their private lives.
51:21
So, I'm not talking about some kind of expectation or obligation to be able to do that, but rather for all of this to just become a more matter-of-fact, no big deal way in which we relate to each other on a daily basis.
51:38
You wouldn't hesitate because why would you any more than you would hesitate to say that you're, you know, moving from one house to another.
51:46
Like a There's no real reason that so much that that these topics have to be so loaded.
51:52
Yeah, I I I really feel what you're encouraging is really healthy and powerful, and I when in my own subjective experience, uh you know, when I when I trained to be a coach many years ago, and today I I do a lot of coaching, whether it's
52:08
uh private clients or exact coaching or corporate coaching, and I find that the greatest skill that I gained through my monk time and and in my coaching work is the ability to hear someone's experience without projecting my own value onto it. So, the challenge with the human mind is
52:28
So, the challenge with the human mind is when you hear someone has a headache, you think, "Well, when do I have headaches?
52:35
How does that affect my performance? Oh, not good.
52:39
That means their performance won't be good."
52:41
Or even in a positive sense, if we feel we are trustworthy people, when someone says something that sounds trustworthy in our vocabulary, we project that they are trustworthy.
52:51
And so, it works both ways.
52:54
Like, we we give people benefit of the doubt because of our projected self evaluation, and then we also project our negativity or flaws onto other people as well, that if we would lie in a situation, we're more likely to think someone else is lying in that situation as well.
53:13
And so, there's this projection mechanism that's going back and forth.
53:18
And so, it really requires so much emotional stillness to hear someone's experience and to truly believe that that is just what they're going through, and that we need to almost be investigators, not interrogators, curiously of what that means for them.
53:37
And and I think that's that balance that I'm trying to do as a coach, but but even through the monk tradition was like I think often in the corporate space especially there's an interrogation versus a uh intrigue around someone's current experience.
53:55
So, you know, it's say if someone's not performing well, we interrogate them.
53:59
Why are you not performing well? What's going wrong?
54:00
Like, why haven't you shown up?
54:02
Like, what why are your numbers down? Right?
54:04
Like, there's that interrogation but because we are thinking, well, oh, if if I was performing badly, then there must be something wrong.
54:11
Rather than the intrigue of like well, is there something happening?
54:16
Like, is there some way we can help you or or do you want to talk about anything, which is far more of that intrigue versus interrogation.
54:23
So, but I but that requires a lot.
54:26
Like, it's so easy to slip into interrogator mode, isn't it?
54:31
Yeah, I think this is one place where culture can really help.
54:33
Um and here I'm thinking of one organization um that I looked at in the book.
54:40
It was a University of Michigan case study uh by Jane Dutton and others.
54:44
And uh and it looked at this organization called Midwest Billings.
54:51
And Midwest Billings was basically um they were bill collectors for a hospital.
54:56
So, so their job was to collect the unpaid bills of people who had been in the hospital.
55:01
Um so, this is not a fun job. No one likes this job.
55:06
The turnover in the industry is really high cuz no one wants to do it.
55:08
But at Midwest Billings, they somehow developed this culture of compassion where everybody just like got really into helping each other like in this joyful way.
55:21
And, you know, so if somebody showed up with a cold, like they they were running to CVS to get the box of tissues, you know, and if somebody um was going through domestic violence, they were like, you know, gathering around to support them.
55:34
Um there's this one amazing quote from a woman who had lived all her life with her mother.
55:41
Her mother was her best friend, her everything.
55:43
And then her mother had died unexpectedly, and it was like the worst, you know, the worst time of her life.
55:50
And she says she remembers how, um, she felt like when this happened, she's like, I have to get back to the office.
55:58
I have to get back to the office.
56:00
And and she said it was partly because she knew it would take her mind off things.
56:05
But she said, she's like, to this day I'll never forget the look of love on Leticia's face.
56:11
Leticia was her colleague.
56:12
And she's like, you don't expect that from your co-workers.
56:15
I will never forget that love.
56:18
And this unit their turnover was something like 2%.
56:20
It was like nothing compared to the rest of the industry.
56:24
They got their bills collected in record time.
56:28
Um, and it was because they had this culture where it was like pro it was proactive compassion.
56:33
It was like they were all looking for the chance to do it.
56:36
So, as opposed to the the attitude you were talking about of an attitude of interrogation and inquiry, it was more like yay, when do we get the chance to be helpful to each other?
56:47
Um, and that's just it's a very different emotional starting place.
56:52
Yeah, I mean, that's that's beautiful.
56:54
That's that's beautiful, and I can only hope and wish that more and more we can move towards that.
56:59
And I think the best thing you've just said now as well is that it's something we have to create in our families, in our communities, in our towns.
57:05
It's it's not something we can expect from leaders or decision-makers.
57:08
It's something we're going to have to bring to the spaces where we have influence.
57:13
where we have influence. Susan, I could I could speak to you for hours and hours because I feel like the work that you do and the way you write and and even this conversation, like I feel like you've really given me
57:23
permission to kind of really reflectively have a conversation with you rather than, you know, systematically interview you, and I appreciate you for that and and being able to go there as well, but we end every podcast and on purpose episode with a final five. So, I'm going to ask
57:37
So, I'm going to ask you a final five and this is called a fast five where we answer every question in one word to one sentence maximum.
57:43
Um well I'm terrible at, but okay. No no problems.
57:49
I'm terrible at sticking to it myself, but let's try.
57:53
Uh so, the first question is uh what is the best thing you can say to someone who's going through something painful? I love you. That's beautiful.
58:03
What is the worst thing you can say to someone that's going through something difficult?
58:07
Get over it or you know, or some variation or or anything that you do that that signals that.
58:13
What uh third thing, what's the first thing you do every morning and the last thing you do every night?
58:20
I'm laughing at myself because the I want to say the first thing that I do every morning is listen to music, but honestly the first thing I do every morning is look at my phone and I'm really trying to get out of that.
58:28
Um What what what what music would you do What music would you like to wake up to? I like that answer. That's beautiful.
58:35
Oh, I you know, I I just kind of like go to my playlist.
58:37
I I should say by the way, I have this bittersweet playlist that I created.
58:41
It's on Spotify and it's on Apple Music if people want to go there.
58:45
Um so, lately I've been going to that. bittersweet? Yeah.
58:49
Yeah, like if you Google my or look in Spotify under Susan Cain and bittersweet, you'll find it. I love that. That's so cool.
58:55
I hope everyone goes and downloads the playlist. That's that's great. I love that. All right.
58:59
Well, question number four, how would you define your current purpose?
59:04
Yeah, telling the truth of what it's like to be alive, you know, like hopefully like and talk talking about the things that people don't feel like you can chit-chat about at the grocery store, but the things that matter the most. That's beautiful. I love that.
59:19
And fifth and final question, if you could create one law that everyone in the world had to follow, what would it be?
59:25
I don't know what to say because I'll tell you the very first thing that I thought of is be kind, but I'm really I'm resisting that only because I think that when you start mandating or regulating kindness, that's often like the road to hell.
59:38
Um so, it is my highest value, but I don't like to associate it with law or you know, or compulsion.
59:50
It has to come from a different source than that. Absolutely. Absolutely.
59:52
Well, Susan, thank you so much for your time, your energy, your presence in this conversation, your your vulnerability.
1:00:01
And for everyone who's been listening and watching, I hope you go and grab a copy of Bittersweet: How Sorrow and Longing Make Us Whole.
1:00:08
We will put the link to this in the caption, in the comments.
1:00:12
Please, please, please go and grab a copy of the book if you enjoyed today's conversation.
1:00:15
If you want to learn more about how to deal with loss, how to deal with sorrow, how to deal with pain in the workplace, in your life, when you're seeing it all around you.
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And the book evolves into the conversation we actually started with, which is also dealing with death and loss in that way.
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So, I really hope that you enjoyed this conversation.
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Susan and I would love to see what resonated with you, what connected with you.
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So, please do tag us on Instagram, on Twitter, on Facebook, on whatever platform you use.
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Please do let us know what were the insights that you're going to practice or remember.
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What's going to change the way you think about something?
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And I'm hoping that this episode makes you reach out to someone and say, "How are you doing?
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How are you doing, really?
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What What is it that I don't know about you?
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What is something that we haven't spoken about in a while?"
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So, please do share this conversation with a loved one as well.
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Susan, any last words or anything you'd like to share with our community?
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No, I mean, thank you so much for having me.
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So wonderful and unique to talk to you.
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And um I don't know, to the community, I guess I would I'm I'll repeat something I said from the very beginning, but it really is to me one of the biggest takeaways of this whole quest that I've been on for these past 7 years of writing this book is the idea of that whatever pain you can't get rid of, make that your creative offering.
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Um, yeah, and I hope that we can stay in touch through social media and I have a newsletter which is seasoncain. net. You can find it.
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Um, but yeah, this is it's just been wonderful to spend this time. So, thank you. Yeah, and I love that.
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I'm so glad you ended on that, Susan.
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I think that's such a beautiful, beautiful, beautiful uh practical, actionable takeaway for all of us is any pain we're going through, turn it into something creative, turn it into something beautiful, turn it into something transformative for yourself and others.
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So, Susan, thank you so much for your time.
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Thank you so much for being here and for everyone who's been listening and watching, I appreciate you.
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I'm grateful to you and I hope you'll pass this on to someone else as well. Thank you so much.
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If you want even more videos just like this one, make sure you subscribe and click on the boxes over here.
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I'm also excited to let you know that you can now get my book Think Like a Monk from thinklikeamonkbook. com.
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Check below in the description to make sure you order today.