This is the ten percent happier podcast dan down herons greetings, my fellow suffering beings, the human animal does not love paradox. We love a clue. Simple story us versus them good versus evil. But life is rarely like that. This is especially true when we're wrestling with a reckoning with history. My guest today calls it the patriots dilemma

How do you love your country, while also acknowledging the painful and horrifying stuff that has happened in the past? Dolly chug is a professor at new york, university's, stern school of business, where she teaches m b, a courses in leadership and management. This is her second time on the show. The last time she came on, she taught me about a concept called good ish. One of the reasons we get defensive when people criticize us is that we feel like it's a threat to our precious notion of being a good person. At least that's true for me, but as daly says, if you have a good ish mindset, then there's always room to grow. Her new book, which is called a more just future, basically encourage us to do the whole good ish thing for america, and this conversation we talked about. Why dolly was scared to write this book? What the home team bias is and how it shows up when we think about our past

if only as a nation, what belief grief is the long time ago illusion and what dolly calls being a gritty patriot, a few quick notes. There are some brief mentions of slavery and violence here, there's also a conversation about Barbara Walters, my former colleague the great a b c news anchor that conversation took place before Barbara passed away. So you'll hear us reference her as if she's still alive, which sadly she is not before we get started with today's episode, Give you a heads up about one of the most helpful resources over on the ten percent happier app and why you might want to know more about it. Now, here in the united states, daylight saving time starts on march twelve. The whole sprang forward thing, which means you get to sleep an extra hour. If that is you, don't have a young children or overly insistent pets? I say all this, because things can go a little bit haywire when your sleep rhythms, or must we,

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When you hear the word, Cambodia, you probably think that's us must be good for me. Isn't it and it is, what did you know that most computers have something like five tablespoons of added sherbert, however, Humm kombucha has zero sugar, low sugar and no sugar added options, so you always know what you're getting and it's absurdly tasty. The good folks from hum recently sent me a case of the stuff tab. I and many members of my family tried it and it was very, very delayed,

We sipped everything from strawberry lemonade to peach tee to blueberry meant. If you want to check it out, go to palm computer dot com and get twenty five percent off a six or eight pact, try it out. That's hum with two ends: kombucha dot com and use the code happier to get a deal and sipped for yourself dolly jug work back to the show. It is so good to be back in its pleasure you have said you were scared to write this book. Why ah gashed in yeah? Well, I really of my country and in this book is love.

letter to a country. I love that sometimes I dont like everything and I fear that people will misinterpret that. They will not see my love of country and only see my desire to see certain things change and I'm too much of a people pleaser for really bothers me that people might think that the book spin. For a little bit. Have your fears come true at all? Not yet not at all. In fact, quite the opposite. I had certainly hoped and intended this book would find people grappling with. similar kind of desires as me, but guess I didn't realize how much people were looking for it or maybe looking for it the wrong word, but I think people, I'm gonna, compare myself to the the danny ready for this here this, but to the iphone. I don't even use an iphone, but I've heard steve jobs. Talk about lake people, did it

oh- they needed the iphone until they had the iphone and it filled a certain need, and while this is not like that in scale, I think there's so a similar role. This book is playing, whereas there is a lot of content out there that offers historical knowledge. My book does not offer that it just offers tools. grappling with that knowledge, and I think that's something people maybe didn't realize they need it. How did the become about Well, it came about because I need to because I know it's a research- me search situation where, if I had to pick a point when I was having a rather smug parenting year back. Maybe decade ago and my kids were kind of kindergarten first grade ish and I was reading to them

every night and they were old enough to start reading themselves, but I was like now: I'm gonna keep going with the reading every night and we read the whole little house on the prairie book series, which is like eight books of two under pages each took a full year and they were so into these box, like I think they Really thought laura ingalls wilder, who wrote the books about her own family and the eighteen hundreds was like their sister. She would show up in there I think drawings like draw your family and laura would be in there and my husband and I even decided we would go to south dakota and minnesota and spend a whole week over the summer having the kids around, showing them the historical sites, and we were so smog. We're like this is educational. This is, but friendly. This is patriotic. I do remember literally standing on a prairie with my kids in Peru. He dresses which they wore all week because tunis- and

I remember standing there and having this thought: oh wait. A minute whose land was this before the eighteen, hundreds women goals family built their little house I immediately shut down that line. thought I was like why I don't know how to think about that. I don't know how to think about the year. I've spent feeding my kids that narrative that didn't include that part of the history. So I just shut it down on- and I didn't talk about it with my kids and in the decade since then, I've wondered why I didn't and why I didn't think about it myself and talk about it with my kids and then one thing after another has come up. That sort of evoked similar emotions and responses for me june thirteenth tulsa massacre the The common theme of me not knowing something or thinking I know, knew it and then

not knowing how to kind of unlearn what I thought I knew so in the book. You ve come up with seven strategies and I thought maybe we should have a romp through all seventy ready outlets rob get. The first is see the problem, which will be familiar to anybody, who's, gonna, a or looked at meditation yeah absolutely and then, when I was thinking about this interview today, I would also like kind of just reviewing the chapters in mind you I spent a few years immersed in this topic. Writing the book. It's suddenly jumped out at me for the first time like how meditation principles. Seem to be woven through especially the first three chapters, beginning with seeing the problem- and I think particularly at seeing the problem without judging it, just seeing it for

what it is and the problem that I am describing is what I call the patriots dilemma. This idea that in some ways that more deeply we, of our country. The more intensely we love our country, the harder it is some sort of work towards and understand and acknowledge and notice what would make our country stronger going forward and so that patriots d something that I'm thinking a lot about and the sort of kicker on it isn't a stout is such a great Drug and we see it in the music in the fashion in the travel sites like nostalgia, we and dollar industry, because we really are drawn to it and sometimes seeing the problem kind of puts us at odds with some of the new statute narratives. We love so much if and establishes a kind of bias. There's another bias which, at home team bias. Yeah

lots of research by psychologists, I'm a psychologist, to be clear, not a historic, and I am not the one you should come to for any sort of expertise in that domain. But what I can share is things like the home team bias This was a study where there is a very intense football game. with lots of claims of bad sportsmanship and foul play by both sides and psychologists afterwards got fans from both sides and they should them video of the game and the like here is the video tell us based on what you see what happened and people were very adamant that it was their team that was wrong, and so this home team bias literally affects what we see. We can see the same thing but interpreted differently. They this sort of harmless and a football game. It kind of escalates, though, when we think about our emotional relationship with our country

past, because our own perspective and our own family, our own community, your own racial identity. That perspective is going to affect how we understand what's come before us, Where did you net out at the end of the day about how we can see the problem again? Step number one in seven steps, given the biases that do exist quite naturally, Yeah, absolutely I mean worry net out this sort of with this idea that we want to be a little bit in our mind, said like historiographer sisters. Geographers are historians who study how we study history, edwin, horror story, aquifers do as they take stock, of whose perspective is coming from or what might be left out of this story, and sometimes it staring us right in the phase- is like celebrated July. Fourth, my whole life, red white and blue and all the joys of that day, in what it honours in our country.

and I, literally until a few years ago it didn't john on me that July for seventeen. Seventy six was not a day. When everybody became free and so the historiographer approaches to sort of take this line and of what am I a sort of not seeing and what's right in front of me so any time a rules around or there's a big news story where we get into an argument about painful history, to put the goggles honour historiographer, what is the narrative I've been served and who served it to me Yeah exactly an uneasy thought. Experiment is to think about anything. That's happened in your family and if you were to go round and ask everyone who would have some knowledge of that incident, what happened? you get the same story from your uncle from your parents, from your siblings everybody tell the same story in almost every family. The answer is no. There would be some big variants in that story,

me- and the same is true for history. Just another story: how do we find alternative sources? Because most of us aren't spending a ton of time there steeped in history, so it seems like it would take some work to get a different point of view on a major historical event. Yeah. I think, right now, it's actually become much easier than it was just a few years ago, so they easiest approach. I've offered a people is, whatever media you liked to consume or whatever content, podcast movies, video games books whatever it is, look at the last five to ten that you consumed and see how much similarity there is in perspective between the creators and the voices that are centred between them when you and them, and then see if you can just make you know, what's your number ten percent more, very in the content you're getting in the voices that are represented there

alone will start adding different perspectives about lived experience and where that lived. Experience comes from historically emmy. History doesn't have to be like textbooks and documentaries. When we talk about history all the time right, we're always referring to sort of. things that came before us and our grandparents and holidays. Those are all examples of history and historical narratives. Yes from here, you correct your recommending something that I have recommended a lot to people is try to very your media diet and try to expose yourself on the regular two ideas you may not like. I love that I'm just thinking back to that moment, review standing on the prairie and remembering oh yeah. This land belong to indigenous people before little house on the prairie started, cracking up their cameras and pump out families. Payment you did not want to see it in the moment, and that is so common. We don't want to see it. So, even if we ve decided camera think like an historian, refer

I'm gonna start diversifying my media died. I am committed to seeing things clearly. There is just this resistance, that's pretty deep Have you been able to overcome that in? What do you recommend for others lemming that actually set us up for the next tool, in the book, the next chapter, which is dressing for the weather, and I do think I've made some progress myself on this, which is dressing for the weather, refers to do you know it's like when you go for an outing and you don't look at the forecast or you're surprised by some rainfall, and you don't have enough layers, you don't have an umbrella or you don't have some black and it really messes with the day and that kind of anticipation of what's coming, can be really useful here and so dressing for the whether by that I mean to expect that there will be some emotions that feel like they might feel like this. Lee for anger, shame or guilt- and this is another place rifle

It reminded me of what I ve been learning as a very beginner to meditation, but the piece about regulating emotions like how a lot of what we're doing is just allowing emotions to come up but not be owned by them and know that they will pass that we don't have to sort of view them as permanent in the experience were having in so part of dressing, for the weather is thinking about where those emotions are coming from and you I talk in the book about social identity, which is distinctive for my indifferent identity, my individual identity, is that I dolly chug might feel defensive if somebody as I am not a good mother, I'm not a good teacher or something like that, my soul identity is more about the groups I belong to. So I might isn't that somebody sets me directly about me, but they might say: well mothers who

work or not good parents like that? That feels like, even though their not saying it specifically about me. It feels like its specifically about me and so our social life and it is sometimes get threatened when we are learning about a holiday like things get, in hearing that it wasn't actually quite as congenial and warm and example us. Solidarity, as we thought we might feel threatened. Like that's a critique of me or it's, a critique of grew by associate with, in terms of my family, sis, free dressing for the weather means just knowing that's going to come up like history is complicated, people are complicated, emotions are going to come up. You have a term, you use belief, grief. What is that yeah, but if grief, covers remote like a really personal place for me of lake, when I would sort of learn something about my country and

like wow. I didn't know that I didn't know that the g I bill was basically for white veterans, not black veterans. My whole life. I thought that was for all veterans. so that bump me out that I was so out of touch and so that feeling the words of really what's it just felt like grief to me of a very particular sort of really feeling the loss of something that felt true and real. For me, I felt like I needed a word for it, so I called it belief grief it's interesting, because it's got two sides: europe serve grieving You thought america was better than that on some level. On the other hand, your serve grieving, because you realize that you are out of touch and you believed in something without questioning it. Yes, oh my god that such a great point in actually that second part of it. The one about I'm also grieving by my belief that I am in touching informed and like I would have thought

would have known that, but it turns out by the way most americans dont know. I wrote about it and my first book and I in a lot of talks, I gave back when we did more in person talks. I would and ass for a show of hands of how many people knew it and the majority of people did it. At least this was twenty eighteen, twenty nineteen and that included in rooms of educators. So it says to me this isn't about individuals knowing you're, not knowing something it's about kind of our systems where we just haven't brought this knowledge forward in a way that people could easily no it just to reset for folks, we are on the second of seven tools for dealing with america's painful history, and the second is dress for the whether you ve got a number of tenets, some which we ve covered. The next few we haven't yet avoid denial. Is one of them say more about that yeah? Absolutely so the way to do that is through returning to our values. Returning to the things that sort of

sit as very true as consistently deeply true for us, like, I might have a value around equality. I may have a value around liberty and returning to that time and time again to the things we care about, has been shown in research to help people ride through things at me. Then want to shut down, which is what denial is, and this has been done in research with first year students, were worried about whether they belong in the college there and when they have, the right about their values and a sort of short exercise rethink about their values. They seem spray. Sense of belonging and a greater academic performance even months later, because there's something that unconsciously sort of comes ingrained in us will mean we can get out of that light. I believe this. I don't believe this. I deny this makes me

feel bad emotions, emotions and go back to just these are the things I believe in another principle you talk about is flexing yourself, yeah yeah and that's very much tied to what I just described that that sort of technical term there is values. Affirmation is the research I was describing. What we're doing there is basically filling ourselves like if you think of instead of like glass, half empty, have full think of a self half empty, half full were kind of filling up our self without values, and so I called that flexing yourself system and gives yet some juice with that affirmation of your values, any more to say, undress you for the way before we move on to the third, which is possibly my favorite. Oh, let's go to your favorite. Well, you talk about embracing paradox and I think this is just one of the muscles that in our culture right now,

as atrophied witches were in either or moment were on one side of the tribal divide or the other and just firing shots at each other across that too, Instead of understanding that it is undeniable that two things can be true at the same time, as exactly that. Paradox is real that people are complicated. The world is complicated, that it's actually rarely true, that things are simple and clear cut, and so in this chapter I talk about embracing paradox and I rely heavily on research. That's really helped me from wendy smith and marion louis and others where they ve shown that, first of all, our brains do like consistency and coherence, which is the opposite of paradox. Our brains, sort of want the puzzle, peace to fit,

right and to straighten the crooked picture on the wall? That's a natural reflex. At the same time, our brains are robust enough, that we can tell our brains, sometimes two conflicting statements can both be true. So, for example, our forefathers did extraordinary. Things like a defeated extraordinary odds and building this country had extraordinary vision, road, extraordinary documents, undeniably true and many of our forefathers enslaved other humans. While they were doing it, they tortured those humans. If they tried to escape if they tried to protect their families and the did all this at the same time that they were writing about liberty, justice and equality

it's saying that I like a little bit like like. I almost want to fact check myself was like, am, I sure, that's true. It is true, there's no ambiguity about it in the factual record, and so we've got two conflicting statements that are both true that create a paradox for us, and so with the research says is when there is a paradox. We can tell our brains that its possible for a paradox to exist and when we do, that, we're activating a paradox mindset and it actually really lie to since up our mine. The research shows that we become more creative and how we look for solutions we become more resilient and sort of writing out things that are difficult emotionally and I think that's the key.

It's a sort of engaging with our emotional relationship with our country. Is that, as you said, we don't feel like we have to pick it's either. This is true, or that is true. We simply allow both to be true. I'm picking up there- and you do say this in the book- that the paradox mindset is useful, not just in dealing with painful history, but also dealing with lots of problems we may have in our day to day life yes, I know I mean as apparent. I feel like it's a very daily thing that my children, and be so loving and they can be such pains and both can be true? I can feel like I'm killing is apparent, an feel completely inadequate on a daily basis like there is so many paradoxes that I feel like just so through our lives, and I ve been

when my kids were little, we once we're on a plane that got struck by lightning and, of course we were all very freaked out. We were totally fine, nothing happened, but it was just a little startling and in the moment we were all freaking out and I think it was. if I remember right does either my kids first or second plain. However, we have like waited a pretty long time to take him on planes. And so I remember saying to them like: oh, we just got an adventure point and sort of coming up with that on the fly that like oh, this is a good thing that we just got struck by lightning. Let's see how many adventure points we're going to get on this trip, and that kind of led to this idea of paradox points. That, let's see how many just like trips never go exactly as planned. Paradox is all around us and of our brain is seeking consistency. It's gonna continually be frustrated, but if it seeking paradox, we gonna be reckoned up the points and that I think, allows us to sort of sea

things more as they are as opposed to how we wish the picture was straight on the wall. Is it just about racking up points, or is it about seeing situations more clearly, so that they're more pliable than they may seem at first? I well you talking to the one who is motivated to meditate by her meditation streak so racking up the points helps me see the things, but there are probably more evolved listeners. You don't need that Can you say more, though, about how ok I'm dealing with difficult colleague or difficult child? How the paradox mindset can help me there and look what wiser steps it might lead me to sure yeah. Let's play So let's say I have a difficult colleague, and this is somebody who you're my I come home and I say I got there- is such a jerk. There are so unresponsive, they don't respect me like all the things in that. That's the story, I'm telling myself. But what? If it's also true

oh that that person has done a lot to old my organism shan or support the team or invested a lot of themselves in the work both of those things can simultaneously be true. There could be friction in my relationship with them and they could be deeply invested and something I am deeply invested in if I allow both of those things to be true, rather than viewing this as and interpersonal problem or someone, I need to sort of distance myself from. Maybe I can see one thing we share in common about our commitment to this work or our commitment to this team and I'll see a different way to engage with them as opposed to light you know, if I see them come down the hall, I'm in a kind of duck into the conference room just driving is very useful in terms of interacting with difficult colleague. It can be

very useful, even in my own head, as I'm thinking about what I and the right or the wrong in that situation, and its often just not that binary, and that just makes fur bomb year, whether internally and better behaviour externally, I when I can remember to do it. I know when we can remember to do it. That's the thing, that's why it's fun to get points, because our lizard brains will keep looking for him coming up, dolly choke on connecting the historical die the long time ago illusion and all the ways in which the past is still with us. That's after this album bombas, we make socks, underwear and t shirts that feel good.

You get the feel good because they're designed with the softest materials and comfort innovations they do good because for every item you purchase, we donate another item to someone who needs it. So far we have bombas have donated over seventy five million items and your purchases add to that impact. Go to bombas dot com, slash wondering use code wondering for twenty percent off your first purchase, that's b, o m b, a s dot com, slash, wonder he unused code, wonder e at checkout! Think your job stinks just wait till you hear what it was like to be a funeral clown long before all of human knowledge was on devising your package, people at some pretty presented professions locally. Do you don't have to come and go tat with a sin, eat her or marbre surgeon. Now, but you're about to find out what it's like to get surgery with an afternoon shared from wondering this job his history is a new podcast hosted by me, Chris porno each week will invite actual people from the actual pass to work, the strangest and most unexpected jobs.

at the time on this job is history. We delve into these quirky and absurd jobs where AL bestow brilliant interview, questions that will keep our guests on their historical hot seat can get weird with us guess comedians from the groundlings, and you see be act out. These old fashioned gigs from another time. You'll be glad you're, gardens council didn't recommend any of these careers clock in and follow them java history, wherever you get your you uk, listen ad free on the amazon, music or wondering at the next psychological tool is connecting the dots. What do you mean by connecting the dots in the context of reckoning with history yeah? So this is the idea that things in the past seem like they were a long time ago, and so a lot of times- and I know I feel this reaction- sometimes of lake Why do you even like what

The matter you don't. Why are they talking about red lining or why they talk like that? Ok, that happens, but what does it have to do with today? There is enough to deal with today. Why do we need to like unpack all this stuff from the pass? It's such a long time ago, but as I was, writing this book, one of the things they became more and more apparent to me is that is a bit of an illusion that things are a long time ago, that our brains play a trick on us there's what psychologists eugene caruso and others refer to as wrinkles in time and asymmetry and how We view things that has already happened in the past versus things. It could happen in the future so far. Example, our brains view the past more thoroughly, then the future which is, counter intuitive to me, because the past is already happened, so it be more vivid in my brain, then something that Hasn't happened yet which

be blurry here, but in fact it's exactly the opposite and how our brain process set. So there's something about our brain when things have already happened, that it kind of just wants to buy, put it to rest, and I think that's what contributes to what I've been calling the long time ago illusion, and we have the kind of work against that, because. The past is living in the present when people say to me, oh, I guess she wrote this book because you know history are doomed to repeat itself but but but and I'm like that may be true. I mean that seems like a reasonable thing, but actually I think it's not so much about the future and about the present. Like I looked around the president, I dont understand half of what's going on in the world and it turns out things it feel a long time ago. That really were a long time ago. Help us understand today forget even tomorrow, I

a thing on social media the other day, and as you know, everything on social media is true, so I was sure this one was, but I did fact check it out. It was so I am going to quote it though I dont know whose original source it said that, if an frank and doctor Martin Luther king Jr were alive. Today they would be the same age as barber walter's, and I said that cannot be true, I looked it up and they were all born in nineteen, twenty nine, and it's like what the holocaust seems like such a long time ago. The civil rights, when seems such a long time ago. You don't. This is an example of what we have to work against: to connect the dots and then what I do in this chapter is offer a few examples of ways in which the dots connect everything from how research that shows how our thoughts,

from the past, get passed on generation to generation how our speech gets passed on and carries attitudes generation to generation how systems like laws and housing systems. How theres many people who believe that their ancestors are still with them, that they can sort of speak to them. Where there's a spiritual connections or that's another way. Some people see connections between the past and lastly, there is fascinating research about how trauma passes on, and this is from the field of epic genetics. In these studies. They show, for example, in studies with mice that so there were mice that they gave mild shocks to in the presence of a cherry blossom, sent.

Then that mouse, when anne was bred to create more mice them new mice, never met the father. The father was the one that was exposed to the terrible. the new mice, the ones that came from the mice are exposed to the cherry blossom, with the shock show in a verse of reaction to cherry blossom sense and the idea here is that we think of the gino type is what passes on not the fino type, the expression of the gene, but what epigenetic researchers are fine finding is that there is some lived experience that can actually be passed on from generation to generation, as in this cherry blossom study, so that's an example of how trauma can also carry on through generation. So the idea Here is what we try to connect the dots. To recap. Our brains are working against us. They make things, looked blurry there,

leaders to blame the victim more and yet there's all these ways in which the past is living in the present and if we don't connect the dots we overlook vital dynamics, yeah, and actually we we don't just overlook it. I mean this is where when people say well, it's hard or it's boring, or I don't really want to do it. What I'm realizing is somebody who's pretty recently. in this way in the last few years is it's actually

liberating unexhilarating and clarifying like the world just makes more sense, like conflicts that appear silly appear a little less silly like that, there's some route or cause to it just the sort of patterns we see in society. All the disparities on like racial disparities, on every meaningful outcome there is in the united states. There is a racial disparity that really makes no sense. If you don't understand the dots and how they can act like it's hard to come up with a good explanation for wine, twenty twenty two that still happening But when you look at the historical dots, it actually starts to make a lot more sense. When you start to think about generational trauma and also structural bigotry that may arise not exist now, but certainly existed, not long ago and can't but leave noxious residue exactly well said

dolly chug on the danger of racial fables, the concept of basking in reflective glory- and she takes us through the three final psychological tools for wrestling with our past. Keep it here. Ehrenberg, The founding father, who fought valiantly in the revolution, would later become the highest ranking american official ever charged with treason. American history tellers is a podcast from wandering that explores the events and people who shaped our collective history. Their newest season looks at the insurrection of aaron burr nearly two hundred years after his death aaron burr's legacy remains hotly debated by historians. After all, he was a hero. The revolutionary war served as a united states senator and even vice president. However, bird had his fair share of controversy, killing alexander hamilton

dual for example, and also conspiring to take america's western front as his own to rule over. Like an emperor on american history tellers, you will learn more about burs desperate power grab, how it was thwarted by president thomas Jefferson and how our fledgling democracy endured its first great stress test. I didn't actually know about the whole western fronting until it Reading this promo, so listen. The show follow american history tellers wherever you get your pack ass, you can listen ad free on the air. Music or wondering at our rights odin We're five on your list of seven psychological tools is to reject racial fables. What does that mean yeah, so ok, so maybe I'll tell a racial, feeble and that'll illustrate what one is so until the store We have Louise mccauley. She was forty two year old the african american activist being an activist

and her day job she had to work in a day job, but she spent her things in her weekends volunteering within doubly cp. This is in the nineteen fifties. She'd been doing this her entire adult life and it came from even when she was a kid. Her family worried about her, lack of deference to the norms of society you were with, for example, on the sidewalk. The black person had to move off the sidewalk. If a white person was come the other way and she was do that in fact they worried so much that she would get hurt that they moved to a different home where she can walk to school in a way that they felt safer for her. Given her rebellious streak, she made many attempts to be registered to vote. At a time when there were very onerous tests that were required to register to vote, and only three percent of black people in the south were eligible to vote because of these tests?

if she kept going back and back and back until she finally got registered so the point being. She was an activist she was rebellious, and so it's probably not a huge surprise that one day she was seated in a seat in a public place that was expected to be given up. If a white person wanted her seat and she wouldn't get up, and so the person in charge said you have to get up, she said not getting up, they called the police, the police came, they said, got to get up she said I'm not getting up, and she added. Why do you always push us around and one thing led to another? She was arrested. Doktor martin Luther king got wind of this came to town in front. This moment on a bus where Rosa Louise mc caully parks would not get up. The Montgomery bus boycott was born and, of course, the parks as a name that we all know a story. We think we all know, but the fact that I just

shared about her life that are very well documented, are not the story. We usually here we usually here, is a racial fable in which an elderly woman. She was forty two was tired. She has said on the record. She was not particularly tired that day she was ass. She said just tired of giving an accidently became an activist that day when she wouldn't give up her seat. That's the story we here and that she raised this issue and doktor king came and amplified the issue, and the vast majority of americans, especially white americans, were like oh, my gosh. Yes, of course, let's fix that and it was fixed and that's the civil rights movement and that's our victory that took place a long time ago. That's the fable we here in the question is: why is that?

fable so much more attractive to us. Then the reality, which was she and many others, had made many attempts. Just like this one in the past that had been unsuccessful, that she was not deference. She was actually quite vocal, and rebellious. She would be the kind of person who might annoying people with her conviction, why's that fable so much more seductive to us in what I offer as an explanation is that we all. love stories. Human beings are story telling animals and the simplicity going back to sort of our minds desire for that. Simplicity leads us to a feeble that feels neat.

And controllable, and in which we can look back with pride at sort of what we assume. The role we would have played in that situation that we would have been sort of applauding rosa parks in fact, the vast majority of americans were not in support of what was happening. The vast majority of white americans felt, even if they agreed with the change it was happening to fast. Martin Luther king was viewed as radical at the time, and so the danger of these fables are that they lead us to think that what We think happened in the past, which was linear and neat and admirable is what work To see in the present, when we're trying to push for change and when we we look at the effort

It's to make change and we go well that didn't work or those protests aren't doing anything or you know, I don't like the approach that's being taken and we don't realize that. That's exactly what has happened in previous occasions instead of the racial fable, we believe right. So we might look at current protests on any. Number of issues and say well they're not producing immediate change? Climate change is still a real crisis, so these folks are no rosa parks exactly exactly. But I just want to say, though, that I assume you're not telling us. We can't critique some of the methods that today's aspiring changemakers might use, because there are times when I watch young protesters and think amazing, and there are times where I think- and I don't know

Is it never right to raise questions about certain protests? Tactics? No, absolutely! No! I'm not! I mean yes, it is if I dont disagree with raising questions. That said, I think it's helpful for us to know what we are expecting to see what we think effective change looks like and if we think effective change looks like the rose a park story, then I think our critiques are just gonna, be not useful tourists. This fable is clouding our judgment of what's happening right now in the air. All of the foregoing reminds me of something you said at the beginning of this discussion, which is about the sort of the danger of nostalgia. As said, In an era, rotten just remind me of our capacity to sugarcoat the past, whether we lived it or not, how every summer, at summer camp, when I was a kid, the other kids would say: oh yeah, the summer is great, but it's not as good as less than that

something the mind seems to do, and this is yet another of these seven psychological tools. That seems a play. Oh well, beyond the issue at hand, which is reckoning with history, yeah, that's a really good point. I think that's right to be able to understand that we have this tendency to sugar coat the past to get sucked in by nostalgia to think area it was amazing in high school, for example, or anti then devalue right now, but just on this nostalgia thing for a second visit lay something else I wanted to ask you about, which is you certainly earlier, which is this? It's a cousin of nostalgia is it has to do with how we think about the past. We want things that happen a while ago to be wrapped up. We don't want to deal with it anymore. You were saying- and I think that's true not only of history but also

I don't know family feuds or a fight, you might with your wife or whatever it is. We just want to keep it moving, and you know I mentioned this to you when we were out socially the other night that I seeing a little bit in my own mind, but more in my audience. Among my friends, who are most of my friends are like the type of bee, who have you met him in the nineties. You have considered the to be annoyingly, liberal right and even these oh I'm, fine here, like I'm just done, I'm just done with talking about this stuff and budget, wondering what. Why do you think that is and how do we deal with it individually or collectively, yeah? Absolutely why? I think the reason for it varies from person to person. I think sometimes it's feeling lay the work

done, I think sometimes feeling like the work is never done. I think sometimes it's feeling like there's other things to worry about. Let's move onto the next thing, I think sometimes it's feeling like they don't gry with the way the issues being approached, so I think I can see it coming from a range of places. So actually I don't dad. I actually don't know if I've ever told you this so I editor. My book editor had been asking me for a while to start a newsletter and I had been resisting it. This is for at least a year back like four years ago. and I just kept saying I dunno I dunno. What am I going to say what am I gonna say or whatever and then may twenty twenty happens? George Floyd was murdered and we saw this. sudden global activation on issues that are part of my Billy life because of the work I do it

I and box blew up at my phone is ringing, and everyone wants to talk and suddenly I was like. I have something to say: I need everyone to calm down and even though I asking you all to pay attention to for a really long time I now need everyone to take a breath and think about the approach are taking, and I decided this is what my newsletter was. Gonna start with was the june twenty. Twenty issue would be the first one, and I would try to send this message and what I wanted them to do is rather than try to do everything, All at once at a thousand percent pays. I wanted them to take the dan harris approach of just ten percent, but can we do ten per cent? more than we were before, and allow compounding to sort of do its work overtime because will sustain ten percent and a more effective way,

and so you have a little call out in my very first newsletter. I think that the bottom sort of shouts you out for the ten percent idea of the ten percent more rule is if we're neutral and issue a ten percent. More means be ten percent more mortified mortified it. What you're learning about the world around you or what you're learning about what's inside you and that means stay and learning mode. You dont need to learn everything all at once, but ten percent more than you did before. If you're too, earlier with an issue, and you know you ve hashtag, do you ve donated you haven't unaware of an issue than ten percent. More means ten percent more terrified, and here the idea is: can we take some more risks. You know if we are in a meeting and we hear something problematic and we say something instead of just sort of going home and telling a roommate about it. So terrified is about putting more skin in the game and then, finally, if we're exhausted because were fighting this fight every day, this is some

it's, maybe because our lived identity or maybe because of sort of just the choices we made and what we focus on we're very exhausted ten percent. or it might mean, I'm gonna put an air quotes, satisfied air quotes not that the work is done or there's nothing left to do, but that you can take a break from it, and maybe some of your friends need a break from it you can come back in so you're, not like leaving the game you're. Just you know, you're coming out someone's going in and then you'll be back in the game soon in this ten percent more rule I have found for myself and for people. I've talked to his really helped them engage in a more says, Dana way that you don't have the nowhere

great thing, if you're new to the issue or risk everything, if you're sort of trying to engage more with the issue or do everything. If you do this all the time, you can simply focus on ten percent more than you did before in a way that you can continue over time. I, like that. A lot, but just have not let myself off the hook. I think what you just said, sort of assumes the best. I also think it's possible that for me and for some of the people, I've heard voice exhaustion, I'm not validating the exhaustion, but the people I'm hearing from our all white right, and so I'm wondering, if now can invoke a very tricky ring term for people who struggle with political correctness. But I wonder if there is some fragility at play here as well. That's fair, I think, that's fairer. So then the question to be asked in that field

exhaustion is how exhausted what I feel, let's say, I'm wide and I'm exhausted. The question asked myself is how exhausted do. I think I would feel if I was not why If I was black, if I was brown in dealing with these issues, not just intellectually but emotionally practically how exhausted what I feel yes and to remember some people can't take a break. No, I know exactly exactly and that's why the ten percent more satisfied air quotes is meant specifically for people who can't take a break that, even though you can't take wait- you dont, have to fight the fight every day. You can't take a break from your lived experiencing a lift identity, but you don't necessarily have to carry it on a collective level for everybody all the time. So this all leads nicely. I think, to psychological tool. Number six, which is take responsibility. Can you hold forth on that one? Yes, it! This really builds off of work by isabel.

Carson and her book cast where she offers the metaphor of an old house. you don't want we move into a house in it own that house. We accept that there's gonna be stuff, that's gonna happen, there's gonna be some unexpected leak in the basement, and we are going to be the ones that are going to have to deal with the leak in the basement, not because we cause the leak in the basement, but because we now on the house, and we benefit from the great son it gets in the morning in the kitchen and we benefit from the lovely neighbours. So we also have to own the things we dont like like the leak in the basement and this metaphor of the old house. I think captures sort of the mindset of taking responsibility, a lot of us wonderful, like there's enough here Right now to deal with, why do I have to be responsible for things that happened ten years ago? Fifty years ago, a hundred years ago

five hundred years ago. Why is it my responsibility to even know about it. Let alone do anything about it. It's not my fault. It's not my responsibility, and I guess what I like about the old house metaphor. Is that it's not about the blame of who caused the leak? It's just about. What are we going to do about the leak and the league is going to affect us whether we take responsibility for it or not?

like it's happening in the basement and you can choose never to go down to the basement and you just gonna pay for it later. It's just going to get worse, and so I think taking responsibility is about. Can we think about our country and a collective, this country that so many of us love think about it in the collective way that some of the difficult, complicated, late, brutal parts of our history that are living in our present? That's the basement and we gotta go in the basement. I've heard it argued before by some on the right. I do by the way, spent quite a bit of time listening to folks across the idiot, logical

from this one area where I'm not a complete hypocrite seasons and I've heard votes on the right make the case a yet look. Neither me nor my relatives had anything to do with slavery, but that seems to overlook the fact that you are living in a society where people who look like you benefit from the system that was set up and built on the backs of people who don't look like you, and that strikes me as it's not just enough to say, yeah well, there's a leak, we should fix it. I think you have to go a little such a step further to say yeah. Well, even if it's not your fault per se, you are benefiting from the inequities and inequities perpetuated centuries ago or even just decades ago, I think that's right and there's also like. If it wasn't, you your family, that engaged in the institution of slavery. you and your family that was on the mayflower, was

when your family, that was one of our forefathers, but we take a lot of pride in those things like were willing to accept the pride part, and it seems to me like, if were willing, to accept that, if a willing to do it, I call just Robert shall dini calls basking in reflected glory. You know when our favorite team wins and we feel good. We actually feel like we did something. We feel a sense of pride afterwards there's an element of that and how we feel about the good things our country has done, and so, if we're gonna celebrate what happened two hundred years ago, even though, No one in our family was involved. It seems to me reasonable, even though its psychologically assertive natural thing to do. It does seem like an a reasonable thing to accept that we would be willing to consider the bad things as well. Final tool is building grit, yeah, ok, so building grey,

is about what we do in so many parts of our lives in so many parts of our lives. We show what Angela Duckworth psychologist describes as passion and persevere parents in pursuit of a meaningful, long term goal? That's what she calls grit in her best selling book in her research in her ted talk and grit is something that makes us better at our jobs this year than we were last year. Maybe it makes us better parents, better partners, because we're willing to keep working Something were willing to. You know, keep going when things get hard. It's something that matters to us that we view is worth the passion and perseverance. The idea of grit is something apply to so many other parts of our lives, but rarely there are relationship with our country and this heard to me when I was interviewing george decay, who many no from the original cast of star trek, who has remained

arguably relevance as a celebrity for the past fifty years including now in his work as an activist trying to make people aware of what his family and a hundred twenty thousand other japanese americans experienced in world war. Two. When do an executive order. By present roosevelt, they were taken from their homes forced to go to what were called internment camps that were basically incarceration. They were coming It is with barbed wire that they were allowed to leave soldiers with guns stopping them from leaving and he as a young boy around the age of four and his family, as well as one hundred and twenty thousand. Other japanese americans had not been accused of any crime. They were put in internment camps because they might commit a crime someday, and so this internment of japanese

americans, at his family experience that when they were finally released years later left his family jobless homeless, they had lost everything. He spoke of this in its becomes something really important to him that he make us aware of. What's happened in our again not very long time ago, history. I interviewed him for my book had opportunity to speak to him on the phone when he was speaking about the united states. It was with such love and such patriotism and. Also speaking with the conviction of a man who will, for the rest of his life, tell the story of what happened to his family. At the hands of the government of the country he loves, so I I'm like again paradox. I'm, like I don't understand like how is he speaking love of country and also such condemnation of what his country did to him, not a subtle way.

In a very overt way, are you can tell by the emotion, expresses even now- and I believe is in his eightys- it still the emotions still there from his childhood, and so I was thinking about it. I realized what I'm seeing in him is grit m, seeing that he doesn't expect there to be an easy love of country. He doesn't expect that he's entitled to love of country. He expects that he has to work for his love of country, he has to work to improve his country, and so this passion and perseverance in pursuit of a meaningful, long term goal makes him what I've been calling a gritty patriot and my conclusion here. He was like gosh if he can still speak with such love of country. Goodness knows the rest of us can like it's just a matter of adopting that mindset of gritty patriotism. You can love your country, warts and all yes and then take on the responsibility.

of working to make it better. Is there anything I should have asked but fail to ask? Oh, that's a good question. Ten harris, I think I'll just end by saying, but I'm hearing from readers that makes me feel really good. Is that my intention They leave this book, feeling hopeful and resilient and like there's a path forward that that's what they're receiving you know. This book is grounded in science and story telling, but it's also fuelled by of country, and I wanted them to come away with that sense, that they could feel hopeful and resilient and the path forward about their country's future, and I think that's what many people are experiencing, I'm experiencing it. So so, oh I'm so glad I called out to win before. Let you go, can you

Please remind us again of the name of the book, the name of your news letter, the name of the book europa for this book anything, but that one of the proposal that we should be check it out absolutely will first and foremost temper. And happier is a book by Dan heresy cell need at the audio, because, especially my website is dollar each dot com. That's d, o o y c h. U g, h, dot com. My new book is called a more just future. My first book was called the person you mean to be, and both of those books are available wherever you buy books and my free newsletter, if you'd like to start with something shorter and freer, is called dear good people. That's on my website, dolly chug dot com. All the past issues are there for free as well, including the ten percent more rule that we talked about. From june twenty twenty minutes of more of kind of his eye, Guiseppe it's fun, but with a sort of start fun, but

We end up landing on actionable tipp about how to be more inclusive, and it's just once a month in your inbox. Dolly. Thank you so much for doing this, I'm thrilled to be here. Thank you down for all you do thanks again to dolly chug, thanks to you for listening. If you have time to go, your podcast player and give us a rating and or a review that would be really helpful, takes a second ten percent happier is produced by Gabriel's ackerman, dj cashmere, jesting, davy, Lauren smith and terror. Anderson are supervising produced is mercer, schneider men and can regular is our managing producer scoring and mixing by peter bonaventure of

four violet audio and nick thorburn of the ban islands wrote our theme. Was you on friday for a bonus? A primary You can listen to ten percent happier early and ad free on amazon music down. The amazon music cap today or you can listen early and ad free with one plus in apple pie cas before you go to a solid and tell us all about yourself by completing a short survey at wondering. Dot com, slash servant.