Psychologist Shows You How to Reset Your Personality and Redefine Yourself | Benjamin Hardy

[music] Everybody, welcome to Impact Theory. I am here with Benjamin Hardy, PhD. Ben, welcome to the show, man. Thanks, Tom. Happy to be with you, man. Awesome. Well, your book, Personality Is Not Permanent, uh I am obsessed with this concept and I think the right place to start is give me a definition of personality as you see it and why you think that you needed to make that statement, that it's not permanent. Yeah, personality as I see it is pretty much quite surface level, actually. A lot of people view it a lot more fundamentally than I do, but it's from my perspective very surface level. I think the general definition in psychology would be your consistent attitudes and behaviors over time. Uh so, that's basically it. It's how you consistently show up in situations, how you respond to situations, and from my perspective there's an enormous amount of factors that lead to how you show up. So, I felt like I wanted to write this book because I come from a huge background of change in my own life, came from a pretty rough background, and I've gone through a lot of psychology, got the PhD, and so I just felt like typical conversations about personality were pretty weak. Just I from my perspective they're just generally a fixed mindset. Personality tests, all of these things are are just kind of a weak view of of what the construct is. And so, I just felt like it was a really good vehicle to explain how things like trauma work, how things like environment work, how things like identity work. I just felt like personality was a really good tool to show people how change was possible. So, when when you talk about the amount of time that goes into writing a book and you think, okay, this this is going to be something that is certainly very important to this person and obviously you think that it brings value to the world. What is it that makes people feel trapped in their identity? Why is it so easy for people to grow up thinking that identity or personality is this fixed thing um that solidifies? Yeah, I think a a of it obviously is your identity. Identity and personality are two separate things. Identity in my opinion is far more fundamental. Identity is basically how you self-define and how you self-describe. It's basically just who you see yourself as, which drives your behavior. It's your story about yourself. So, if I were to ask you, Tom, who are you? You'd start telling me a story. You'd, you know, tell me about your past. You'd give me a narrative. And so, you your identity is basically how you see yourself. And what's interesting about identity is that actually in a lot of ways comes from your goal. You know, So, for example, you building Quest or you building Impact Theory. Whatever your goal is, that's a a big part of what drives your view of your identity. Me going to school, becoming an author, like whatever goal you have for your future, and a lot of people aren't as thoughtful about that. That's the thing that will ultimately drives your identity. And then your identity drives your behavior, and over time that reflects your personality. So, personality, from my perspective, is the offshoot of identity. And identity comes from your view of your own future. So, if I said it in a different way, let me know if this makes sense. So, identity is the narrative that you give yourself, just like you said, and then personality is the way that that manifests in behavior? Yeah, behavior and attitudes. It's how you show up. So, you know, when you change your identity, when you change your script, when you change your story, it and obviously that would be based on a goal you have, a future that you're trying to create, then that's going to change your behavior over time. And if any And a really easy way to actually assess that in people is just compare your your current behavior with your former self's behavior. It's really easy if you just look at a snapshot of yourself maybe 5 10 years ago. The things you were pursuing, the things you described yourself as, the people you were around, those are, you know, even the things you valued. Chances are a lot of that's different from what you value right now and what you're seeking and how you would even see yourself. Yeah, one of the You talk very eloquently about that in the book. One of the things that I found really profound in the book is that your personality is going to change whether you want it to or not. On a long enough timeline, just the the way that life bumps you about and the way that we are meaning-making machines and that that we're always assigning meaning to things. We're always telling ourselves a story. It's it's going to shape you in a certain path and it seems to me that sort of the core thesis of the book is you can take control of that and if you don't, you're going to end up somewhere random and if you do, you can end up where you want to end up. Um tell us a little bit about your background hiding in the comment that you just made that you started out in sort of a rough way is is a pretty robust story and I think that I want to identify where you started so we can talk a little bit about like things like attachment style and and and ultimately I want to understand how malleable you think we are. Is it 100%? We're blank slates or is there some contending with um you know, even even recognizing that it's nature and nurture but is there some things that are sort of locked in in early childhood? Yeah, I definitely don't think we're blank slates. I uh I also don't think that potential is fixed. Just as an example, when you gain new knowledge or new relationships or new attributes, you start from a new starting point than you did before. So your potent- my potential right now is different from my potential 5 years ago cuz I have different knowledge, different characteristics, I'm in a new context, the world's different. So if you're comparing yourself with your former self and assuming that you have the same situation and same attributes, you're actually making it a false comparison. It'd be like with my foster kids um who we adopted, saying that they had the same innate potential in their former environment as they do with me and my wife. They're actually two separate contexts, two separate abilities. So that view of people is not looking at them from an atomic perspective where you're seeing them just solely as an independent attribute. Instead, it's more of a contextual relational ability uh you know, person. So my view is that people do have a lot of potential for change but yeah, there are constraints and we can kind of go back and forth and figure out what we both think about that. But yeah, as far as my own story, I basically, you know, grew up in a pretty healthy normal situation but my parents had a just a really rough divorce which can obviously be kind of a pivot moment for a kid. I'm the oldest of three boys. And ultimately it was just a nasty rough divorce that just didn't turn out well for anyone. And you know, my father ended up becoming a drug addict. It just created a huge amount of depression for him. And it was weird cuz I was the oldest. I My dad had invested the most in me just being the oldest son. He had done a lot of homework with me, went to my baseball games. Like it was weird just seeing a flip, you know, where it's like not only do your parents get divorced, but all of a sudden like your father goes down this deep dive. And my house literally became essentially like a a rough place. Like there were extreme drug drug addicts there. There was drugs all over the place. Like it just became a really weird place. How old are you at this point? Uh you know, they got divorced at 11 and then like you know, it was probably from like 12 on, you know, from like 12 to age 18. And it just got weirder. thinking at this point? I don't know, man. A lot of me was blocking it out. You know, like I played a lot of video games. My friend You know, I'd have friends over and we'd be just in one room playing video games and like weirder and weirder people would come over and they just go behind a closed door and it just it just got really weird, man. Um you know, bright lights in the room. My dad changed his clothing style. Like it was just really interesting and I kind of just blocked it out. I did a lot of skateboarding growing up, a lot of video games and so me and my friends would be there, you know, playing video games. And uh it just it it got really weird. And and I wasn't comfortable really even having the conversations even though I had a lot of friends who had weird backgrounds as well. And and uh it was when I was like 18 that I finally really started opening up about how I felt about it. I had a girlfriend and and like she actually just gave me the space to talk about it and I had huge breakdowns. And eventually got to a point where it was just too rough for me and my younger brothers that we just went and lived with my mom full time. She lived pretty close and so we were going back and forth. And I kind of just pushed it out and I kind of pushed everyone out emotionally through that and just kind of self-preservation. I will say and I do obviously break it down a lot in the book. My dad's not the same guy. I left ultimately left on a church mission when I was 20 years old, left for a few years and right before I left on that experience, I rekindled my relationship with my dad and we went and had lunch together. Uh obviously a big aspect of trauma is how you view your relationship with your parents. They may not be around, but like a lot of that that connection has an impact deep down on who you are. And so I just wanted to fix that. That was something I felt like I should do before I left. And so we started having lunch together and ultimately he began working his way out of his addictions. He ended up even becoming like an addiction recovery help. And so he's now he's not even the same guy remotely as he was before. He's very healthy, overcome his addictions. He's in a great spot. I have a great relationship with him. And so things are quite different than they were like 10 15 years ago. Okay, there there is so much to unpack in there. I want to go back to the girlfriend. She gives you a chance to connect with somebody. You define in the book and you're quoting somebody and I forget unfortunately who you were quoting and what the exact quote was, but the gist was that it isn't the trauma that messes you up. It's what the meaning you assign to something when you don't have a sympathetic listener to like connect with. What was it about One, do you remember the exact quote cuz it's pretty powerful. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The quote comes from Dr. Peter Levine. It's from his book Healing It's called Waking the Tiger Healing Trauma. Very good book. So Peter Levine and the quote is trauma isn't what happens to you, it's what you hold inside in the absence of an empathetic witness. Ah, it's so good. So I'm assuming girlfriend becomes the empathetic witness. Yeah, definitely. She was someone I felt comfortable enough asking me and she knew that my life was so much more messed up than I was putting on. You know, this was like my senior year in high school and you know, I you know, as a high school kid I was just trying to like save face. You know, I just go into school, you know, just pretending like my life was completely normal and you know, she knew it was not. And so she she just took the time to like sit down and just ask me to like unpack what the heck was going on in my life and I just remember just breaking down, you know, and just like you know, I felt safe enough to do that and just totally broke down and just cried and it was just interesting, but I mean that was a very helpful conversation. And then she ultimately was able to just ask me, you know, where do you want to go? What do you want to do, you know? And and it just opened me up. So, in that moment, what what is the catharsis of letting it out? Is it acknowledging what the meaning is? Is it recognizing that you can assign new meaning to it? I mean, the the breakthrough that you end up having it at whatever 20 years old that you you have all this meaning around your dad. You need to like revisit that, restructure that. That's pretty crazy. I mean, I get it sort of post the PhD, but to be doing it at that age, I certainly was not capable of that. So, I'm just curious like is there a tie between the cathartic release? Did you recognize it at that point? Would you have used the word meaning at that point? No way. No, I didn't really I would not have used the word meaning. I do think what I wanted from that conversation was that I wanted to help my dad. I think up to that point I was mad at him. You know, the meaning that I'd given to it even though I wouldn't have used those words is that I'd kind of given up on him. I you know, he used to be my hero and at that point I just thought it's a lost cause like my life sucks. Like I'm just going to move on from that and then I don't know what that means for my future, but I think that conversation kind of cracked the egg I guess a little bit and just opened me up that you know, I actually want to fix my life a little bit. And I'm the oldest not really know how to do that, but part of that is redeveloping a relationship with my dad, seeing if there's anything I can do and obviously that's what he had wanted. He had tried on multiple occasions. I remember him coming to my mom's apartment, knocking on the door and just saying, "Will you guys talk to me?" And we just like shut him out. We're just like go away. Like you're not in our life anymore and he had tried that so many times. And and so you know, I think that that just led me to wanting to fix things a little bit or wanting to do what I could. Maybe me becoming a little bit more compassionate towards his situation. I I I I don't know all the full breakdown and the full psychology of it of my 18-year-old self, but I knew that at that point I started to make wanted to make change. And so, when you decide you want to make change in your life, I assume you quickly identify that there's something in the relationship with dad that needs to be addressed. Now looking back on it with the sort of psychological understanding of trauma, how trauma shapes us, how you talk about in the book how we can actually {quote} change our past, which is one of the more fascinating concepts in the book. So looking back now with your knowledge and understanding now, what were you doing there that ended up being healing and was it healing for just you? Did Did it help your dad? Yeah, [snorts] it definitely helped my dad. I mean, he was, you know, in large part defined by his failure as a father. You know, and so he had he was he was down in the dumps, you know, and so the fact that I was reaching out to him asking for his advice, you know, just the fact that I was reaching out to him, I think gave him more impetus to like really rethink his life, start getting help. And so it was huge for him. And also I was genuinely like, you know, seeking his advice. I was trying to make life decisions, thinking about what I should do and where I should go and he was, you know, ultimately giving me advice and as a father I think that's what he wanted to do was he wanted to like weigh in on my future and stuff like that. So it was you know, it was big but I think a big part of it was is that where I was at and I think that this has a lot to do with trauma and also identity is I had kind of given up on my future. I think that trauma is pretty misunderstood. Most people think that trauma is just so focused on the past. In my opinion, it's what actually trauma does to your future because from my perspective, your view of your own future is the greatest determinant in who you are. You know, your your view of your future is what impacts you but a lot of the research on trauma shows that it shatters your imagination towards your future and your hope in that future. And so And then And then that's the you know, the crucial thing and so when I began kind of moving forward, I began to rethink my future and start to actually commit back to the idea that I could have a future and so that's what ultimately led me to having those types of conversations and even being willing to go through that awkwardness or going through that change process is because I now saw a future that I actually was like, I I want this. I believe that I can actually be something more. And so that led to ultimately more positive behaviors. So trauma is an idea that runs um pretty effectively through the book. You deal with what I consider one of the most like if you were to say, "Hey, design the perfect event to destroy an adult human being." I would say the death of your child that you blame yourself for. And in the book, you give one such case. Dude, it it like really was a gut punch for me just as a guy reading it. I can only imagine. Um, so talk to me about trauma and how we integrate it. I don't remember you using that word in the book. Um, but like what do you do with trauma? Like how do people really move beyond that? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, so that story is crazy. Uh, the story of Melissa Hall. She's someone who my mom introduced me to. She's just an amazing woman. Uh, her son died under her care. You know, she was supposed to be watching her son and he was out playing and fell into a canal and died. And ultimately she blamed herself for that for years. And it was through an empathetic witness that she was able to begin to, you know, reassign the meaning. Ultimately, she had gotten all sorts of condolence letters. And well, you know, if someone had told her that something similar had happened. You know, she got all sorts of letters. And the night before she was the night she was going to kill herself, you know, she read this letter. She had a stack of condolence letters and she read this one from a lady who had a similar situation. You know, this lady, I think named Teresa, who she never actually was able to get back in contact with but tried many times. This lady named Teresa who wrote her letter, she was with her 6-year-old daughter, went inside for a little bit to like grab the phone or something, came back out and her daughter had gotten hit by a car and died during the 2 minutes she was inside. And so what what Teresa had sent to Melissa in the letter was that, "Look, like you're not a bad parent. Like you didn't try to make this happen. This was a freak accident." Teresa was able to say some things in that letter that helped Melissa to actually like have hope again. And it really was that breakdown similar to I think what I had where it was just like, I think you blame yourself a lot for something or you just lose hope in something that you initially wanted. And so that leads you to just kind of losing hope and I think what you need is some form of like a shred of hope and I think that that's what she got. And so, I think that you know, she was kind of giving up on herself. I I was kind of giving up on myself. But I think you kind of have to I mean, in the case of her and even me, a lot of it was just that an external party came and just like actually like saved space or just tried something. Um but I think for someone who more practically is in a dark place and just wants to get out, I think actually seeking help. Um it could be a friend, it could be a therapist, it could be uh an old high school coach, uh it could be an old church leader, whatever it is. I think if you just go up and just talk to someone and just literally open up and just be flat out honest. I think that in general, complete honesty and transparency, there's a concept in Alcoholics Anonymous that you're as sick as your secrets. That has a lot to do with trauma, just burying things, holding things in and so I think from like a a human growth perspective, the moment you just begin opening up about where you're at, how you're feeling, it's kind of like writing things in a journal. Once you have it out, you can actually start to look at it from a different perspective and then you can start reshaping the meaning of it and maybe you can even get the help of smart people to help you start rethinking it and maybe looking at it from a more of a hopeful perspective that you're not a bad person, you're not a loser, um that these are crazy things that happened but you could do something different about it. You can look at it differently and ultimately your your life still has purpose and meaning and you can still do something with it. All right, I want would say be aggressive about be aggressive about seeking that, you know. Yeah, I think that is sage advice, my friend and um all too often people are trying to handle it sort of casually instead of like you said, being aggressive, going and getting sort of structured help, somebody that is trained to provide that help. Um I want to talk about the hope and reframing. So, you talked about giving up on yourself. When you say giving up on yourself, do you mean that you have lost the ability to believe that you can change or that that your situation will be different? I I think giving up on myself just meant giving up on the idea that I could have the life I wanted. You know, I'd given up on my future, essentially. It wasn't so much give I didn't even really think about my idea that I could change. Like that wasn't really how I was thinking about it. I was just I just given up on my idea that my future was going to be any good or that maybe my hopes or expectations were possible. I just kind of assigned my future as I don't really know what's going to happen anymore, but it's going to suck. Like, you know, so I think it's just giving up on your idea of the future. It's not so much You know, and if you've given up on your idea of the future, you probably don't think you can change as a person, you know, cuz your view of your future, I think, determines how much you believe you can change. And so, I think it's mostly just giving up on your idea of the future. Mhm. All right. So, then I think we have to address now the concept in the book about your past does not define your future, which I would say most people feel pretty comfortable with the idea that your past does define your future or certainly is the best indicator of your future. Um why is that not true and does that tie into this notion of being able to reframe your past? Oh, absolutely. Yeah, I would say the past doesn't define the future for two reasons. One is cuz the past from your perspective, at least from a psychology perspective, is just a meaning. Um memory is always changing. It's always flexible. Um and so, the version of your past that you have right now is probably different from the version of the past you had 3 or 4 years ago, even thinking about the same events. And so, the past is is really just a story. It's just a meaning. Yeah, there were objective events that occurred, but you have no ability to actually know what those objective events were because we as a you know, from a psychology perspective, is all we can see is through our perspective. Uh is all we can see is through our subjective lens. And so, when you look, you know, anytime you learn something new, you read a book, you have a new experience, that probably informs your view of everything else. It's like you change a part, you change the whole. And so, kind of breaking memory down in a really simple way, your memory is always constructed in the present. You know, who I am right now, I think about my myself as an 11-year-old boy with my parents getting divorced and my father becoming a drug drug addict. My view of that and the meaning I assigned to it and even all of the context around those memories is completely painted by where I'm at right now as a person. The fact that I have a great relationship with my dad, the fact that I have all this knowledge in psychology, I've got five kids. Like all of that reshapes how I look at and interpret my past. One challenge that people have is is they're not actively approaching their past as a flexible entity and so they they tend to kind of relay the same story over and over, which doesn't necessarily help. But so one reason why the past is flexible is because it's simply just a meaning. It's a story and your memory is always changing anyways and your memory is always constructed in the present. So Brent Slife, he's one of my favorite psychologists, he wrote a book called Time and Psychological Explanation. Freaking deep dive. You would actually love it because I know you like diving deep into like thick stuff. But he basically says that, you know, a lot of people think that the past is causing the present, but the reality from a memory perspective is this is that the present is causing the meaning of the past. Wherever you're at in the present, that's what's determining how you view your past. And so if you learn, if you grow, if you, you know, have achievements, if you just develop healthy relationships, it will alter the meaning and the and the view you have towards your past and that's something you should seek, in my opinion, if you're if you're still viewing the past and former relationships and former experiences the same way you did four or five years ago, that says more about who you are right now than it says about your past. It says that you're not learning, you're not gaining perspective, you're not seeking greater context, you're not asking hard questions. And so for me as an example, I had to go and ask my dad, "Dad, tell me all about your perspective of when you were a drug addict and when me and my brothers left you. Like tell me what that was like. Tell me why you went and had those experiences. Tell me why you had made those decisions. Um tell me what it felt like coming to mom's house and us slamming the door on your face." Like I that's seeking greater context and perspective and obviously the more context you have towards someone you have greater empathy and compassion. And so in hearing his story, I'm like, I can kind of see what I obviously wouldn't justify him doing it, but I can see to some reason why he did that. Um, so that's that's one reason why the past is flexible and we can obviously go into the mechanics of how to do that, but the second reason is because the past isn't what ultimately drives you. It is it it is your future and that's really where the psychology is going. That's what Your vision of the future? Your Yeah, your your view of whatever future you want and your commitment to that future. So, Roy Baumeister, Marty Seligman, um actually have the book right here. [laughter] Um, this is a brand new textbook that just came out by Roy Baumeister, Marty Seligman, etc. And uh, you know, these are some of the most prominent psychologists of the last 50 years. This book's called Homo Prospectus and it's based on a concept called prospection and they're kind of throwing a wrench into all of the research of the last 100 years in saying, you know what? Maybe it's not the past. Maybe it's not the past that's driving you. Maybe it's your view of your own future and maybe the thing that makes us conscious human beings is the fact that we have the ability to imagine uh, an infinite amount of futures. From Roy Baumeister's perspective, it's actually what makes us conscious is is that we can imagine multiple futures and then ultimately dictate our present behavior towards one of those futures. That's what makes us conscious beings is that we can choose a future and commit to it in the present. And so, another reason in my opinion why the past doesn't drive the present or the future is because in my opinion now, it's actually that the future is the thing driving the present more than anything else. All right, that's really interesting and I think going into the mechanics would be really helpful. So, I've just talked to so many people that feel defined by their past. So, I'll let you tell me, are we better off starting with how to reframe the past or we better off starting with how to reframe the future? I think that ultimately you've got to do both and I think that you've got to do both at multiple stages. And so, you know, as for someone like myself who's just on a growth trajectory seeking growth, I kind of I'm just doing both together. Um, probably probably going to the past might be a good place to start for people, you know, in the beginning. And, honestly, it's a good place to start at any time. One thing you talk about in the book was a story of woman who had had a difficult past and as part of reconciling with that or integrating it, reframing it, whatever the right word is, was she would revisit this difficult time in moods of sort of jubilation. So, if things were going well and she felt confident and, you know, let's say she was around friends and she felt secure and understood, she would then retell that story, revisit that. And I thought there was something really interesting about using the neurochemistry that you're in to repaint the emotional feeling that you have in the past. And, you know, from what I know about memory and you probably know a lot more, but you're you reach in, you pull it out, you have it in working memory now, you can think about it, talk about it, recant it. And in that moment, you're also recontextualizing it, which is one of the reasons I think MDMA therapy works for people with intractable depression is you're revisiting something in this like neurochemistry of like everything is love and you feel good about everything and you feel compassionate toward yourself and maybe the perpetrator, you know, that put you in that situation. And then when you put that memory back, it now has that new patina of that feeling on it. Yeah, that story was actually my wife. Oh, really? Yeah, my wife had been in a very abusive marriage before we got married and um yeah, she ultimately, you know, learned that that you you know, you shouldn't talk about your trauma unless you've fully overcome it in a bad state. You know, you want to be in a peaceful place. But yeah, there's a lot of research as well behind the idea that, you know, so there's like the whole idea of beta state, alpha state, stuff like that. Like an alpha state is more of a peaceful, creative state, whereas beta is like the stress state. You're in an Usually a trauma is created in a stress state where like the, I guess you could say the emotion that that's tagged to the memory is stressful. And so, whenever you think of that memory, all of a sudden you recreate a stress state in your body right now. And so, yeah, I think a part of that's when you're in a more of a peaceful environment or having a good experience and you're in a safe spot where you can feel like you can talk about that, then you can integrate aspects of your current context into your former memory, which is like, you know, you've got now the new people, you know, if you're in a great environment and you're talking to people, they that they then become an aspect of that memory because now you've talked to it through them, you've now ultimately reassigned the meaning and now you've kind of retagged the the the emotion to it as maybe more of an alpha or of a peaceful emotion. Yeah, that that's to me is super interesting and it just is the concept of taking control of this whole process. So, okay, we we now are beginning to understand how we go back and recontextualize the past. Now, how do we begin to allow ourselves to, you know, begin to think about a beautiful future, you know, thinking about um Melissa, whose uh son drowned. I I have to imagine there's some part of her that's like, you don't deserve to be happy. And so, how do we begin to break out of that and build this vision for the future? Well, in her case, she had a big reason to commit to her future. So, she actually that night, the night that she almost died, the night that she read the letter, she had another son who was younger and she ultimately created a purpose for herself. You know, Victor Frankl in Man's Search for Meaning, he talked a lot about how it's not necessarily your conditions, but it's it's your view of your future and a sense of purpose that determines your happiness or your ability in the present. And so, for her, she she ultimately created a sense of purpose for herself in the moment. She wrote herself a letter or she wrote her son a letter, her 2-year-old son a letter for 10 years into the future and she just poured her heart out in that letter, which I think is probably cathartic and very inspiring, but she just said, "Look, you know, your brother Devin died. Uh I'm really sorry that this happened. I'm sorry you have to grow up without a brother. Um but I'm freaking committed to being the best mother I can for you and in 10 years from now, I'm going to present you this letter and I promise you I'm going to fulfill this promise and that in 10 years from now, when we're talking, you know, and you're 12 and you can comprehend this a little bit better, I will have fulfilled that promise and I'm and I want to just thank you for giving my life purpose. Thank you for giving me a reason for showing up. And so, I think that you know, for her, she made a pretty powerful pronouncement towards her future self and towards her son, and she ultimately assigned a deep level of meaning, and then made a promise to herself and to her son, and then she fulfilled on that promise. And so, that's what she did. I'm sure that she had plenty of ups and downs along the way, but she she committed to a future self, you know, and to her son, and she had a deep reason for doing it. And so, I think that that's what started her towards moving forward. So, how do people pick a future that is exciting, that is going to be something that is I mean, if if if the homo prospectus is right, and the the very thing that drives us, defines us, is that vision for the future, how do people begin to craft a vision that is wise in the sense that it will create the present that they can actually enjoy? Yeah. So, there's a quote from Dan Sullivan, one of my good buddies, and he says that the only way to make your present better is by making your future bigger, which is essentially a statement of prospection. But, I think that one thing that's really important to realize is that your view of your own future is determined by your current level of awareness and understanding. You know, like what I what futures I imagine are different from the futures I would have imagined three or four years ago, cuz I now am a different person. I see the world differently. I've had a lot of experiences. I've got knowledge I didn't have. I'm in a context. And so, my view, even to imagine or come up with various future scenarios, is fundamentally different than my former self. And my future self will be in the same boat. My future self will imagine different futures than my current self has, because my future self has had experiences and knowledge and awareness that I just don't have. Um but, I think, you know, based on where you're currently at as a person, what do you value most? You know, what is a future worth having? What are things that you value that would ultimately be worth spending your time on? Uh a big aspect of that is just thinking about your future identity, your future self. I think that that's generally the place to start is who do you want to be? What do you want your circumstances to be? What do you want to be doing? What do you value, like where do you want to be in the future? I think just imagining where you want to be, who you want to be, and what you want to be doing that's hopefully valuable, um that's worth working towards or worth creating. I think that that's the first step is ultimately thinking about your future self, the person you want to be, the situation you want to have, and ultimately what you want to be doing that you can't do at this present moment for one reason or another. [snorts] And so, I know you talk a lot about journaling in the book. Um journaling is something that's been transformational for me. Um is that one of the sort of mechanistic things that you recommend that people do, and I know you have prompts that you use yourself. Um is there Jordan Peterson talks about the whole notion of future authoring, you know, writing that script out. Do you have guidance for people that are embarking on that? I think that journaling is a really great place to start. I don't necessarily have like an extreme, you know, like structure. I mostly just write about what I want. But I think thinking about different time horizons is good. Like um I look at, you know, obviously different layers of my future self. You know, like I have a future self in my 80s that's obviously influencing what I do right now, leading me to certain decisions and thoughts, but also like where do I want to be in 3 to 5 years? And so I think thinking about what's your next step? Like if you're what's the thing you want most right now? So like if you're someone who's single that really wants to be married, like well what, you know, what is the ultimate thing you want right now that would reflect your future self at a much higher level than you're at right now? So like for me as an example, when I was in undergrad and I was studying psychology, like my next level future self was me as a PhD student really diving into psychology. Once I got there, like I really, really wanted to be a professional author. And so like I think from a more practical standpoint, like what is the next level future self that like really excites you? You know, like what's, you know, it could be getting married, it could be starting that business, or having your business be successful, or could be getting that book deal. Um could be being in elite shape so that you're doing like those Iron Mans. Whatever it is you want, like what is that next version of you that's the thing that you really, really want? And then ultimately you can create a process to getting to there. But I think just thinking about what's you at that next step, which is obviously maybe a quantum leap or a next level up of your current self and what you really want. All right, let's talk about the gap and the growth. The focus on one or the other because when I think about somebody trying to put them through themselves through this journey, people are going to run into well, I don't believe that about myself. And you made a comment really early about your foster kids that you've now adopted and that what was fundamentally possible for them when, you know, they were in a bad situation is a very different than what's possible for them now, um which is really interesting. But, how do you get people to believe when they're in the bad situation how do you get them to believe that no, no, no, as you go, what you're capable of will continue to grow and expand and every time you add a new piece of information, a new bit of knowledge, new bit of confidence, then like what's capable next gets bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger. But, in that beginning phase, how do they allow themselves to build a future that they're excited about? Is it just like baby steps along the way or do we really aim big and just buy into the process? What does that look like? Yeah, [snorts] super super interesting question. So, just for like the theory behind it, the concept is called the self-expansion model. There's a lot of cool research on the self-expansion model, but basically the idea is is that as human beings, we don't have innate potential or innate efficacy. Our efficacy, which is basically our confidence or our ability to produce results, is not innate, but it's contextual and it's based on the resources you have towards your goals. So, as an example, like my foster kids when they were in a situation, not only did they not imagine probably I mean, they imagined futures. It was probably them sitting and watching TV. You know what I mean? Cuz that's all they did, but they also didn't have very many resources to dictate towards any goals. And so, when you create a new environment or when you even read a new book and get new knowledge or when you have a new relationship, you now have new resources to put towards your goals. And so, So how you expand as a person is by being able to imagine bigger futures and then having the resources to put towards those. But, you know, to answer your question as far as like you know, if someone's in a rough situation and how do they even get themselves out? I do like the gap in the gain um perspective that you provided. I you know, I I'm just quoting your book. That that I don't I don't want any credit for this. This is your your magic. love the concept and so I'll I'll tell the truth, I stole that idea as well from Dan Sullivan. Dan Sullivan is the you know, he's the coach who you know, has all these really cool ideas that I learned, but the gap in the gain is basically an idea that if you're always measuring yourself against your ideal, you're always going to feel this gap between you and where you know, whatever your ideal is and that's going to make you feel unhappy. Whereas if you measure yourself against your former self, where you were before, you'll see progress. You know, there's a quote from Ernest Hemingway. And Ernest Hemingway, the author, the novelist said that nobility is not about being superior to your fellow man. True nobility is about being superior to your former self. So as an example, I have some really good friends of mine. They're in like their 40s. They've got, you know, some kids and stuff and they've had serious financial issues during COVID where he's like lost his job, she's gone through like this identity crisis and they're kind of freaked out cuz they've got kids and they're like, what the heck do we do? And I just asked them, you know, look at where you were like three or four months ago. Like have you made any progress in the last four months towards getting yourself into a better financial situation? Is your relationship with each other better? Like where you at versus your where you were four months ago? And they're like, oh yeah, we're in a much better situation. You know, like we've made big progress and that's that's reflecting on the gain of where you were versus where you're at right now and that gives you a little sense of confidence and mo- movement, you know, so I think that that's a I think it's a good practice wherever you're at. Whether you've made big success or whether you're small is to actually like look at the progress that you've actually made. And I think that that really helps you to feel like that actually increases your hope. So it's it's looking at the good, focusing on the good and saying, what can you do now because of that? Yeah, [snorts] that concept I think is really important for people to understand that, you know, look, it it's probably pretty difficult when you're in real dire straits to believe just how big your future can be, that you could be capable of those things. But that notion that, like, getting better expands how far you can go, expands how far you can go, expands how far you can go. Um and and that to me is pretty intriguing. Now, one thing that I find interesting to you, and the only time you mention it in the book anyway, is almost a disparaging remark, but I I think that this may tie into um some of what has made you so successful, which is that you used to skateboard. Now, I don't know if you took it very seriously, but as somebody who dabbled in skateboarding and did not take it very seriously because I was so afraid of pain, which is something that you will absolutely have to deal with when you're skateboarding, is that ability to believe in your future, that you can get better, that just because doing the trick now, you know, hurts and the skateboard is whacking you in the shin, or you're rolling your ankle, or, you know, you're tagging yourself in even more delicate places, skateboarders have to have this this willingness to suffer through that pain to get to something great. And I wonder, one, was that how you approached skateboarding? And then, two, what lessons can we learn about pushing through adversity to get where we really want? Because imagining a wonderful future is not the same as having the tenacity to execute against it. Yeah, I I I love the question. I love skateboarding still. The reason I like skateboarding is one is you you can imagine it, you can also see it. You know, you you created a skate park, you can model. You can, you know, obviously that's a big aspect of psychology is what we call selective attention. So, like, whatever you're focusing on intensely, like, that's what you're kind of becoming as. You And so, you can watch really good skateboarders. Um as far as like the dealing with pain and the pain tolerance, I think that I had developed an extreme level of that through all that I'd gone through with my family. And so, like, skateboarding didn't seem that risky because, like, my home situation was obviously very risky. Um how I would frame that now is rather than like being able to deal with pain, which obviously you deal with a lot of that in skateboarding or snowboarding or anything, is I now view it more from like a an emotional flexibility or psychological flexibility at standpoint. So like, most the physical pain of of learning is not as intense usually as like the psychological pain of letting go of former beliefs or, you know, actually like going through a growth process. So like, there's a lot of research on deliberate practice. You know, deliberate practice and the idea of first off, you have to have a view of your future self, but then second off, you have to go through the process of learning, which can be quite difficult. And in my opinion, that process is mostly about emotional flexibility or what psychologists call psycho- psychological flexibility, which is trying things that you've never done before, outside your comfort zone, um failing, and getting more and more comfortable with uncertainty. Getting, you know, so if you're trying a new trick as an example on a skateboard, you know, you've never kickflipped off like a five-stair. There's I'm like, you know what I mean? Like, there's a lot not. Yeah, and but you you're trying something new, and so like, part of facing that emotional resistance is like, yeah, I've never done this before, [snorts] and kind of sitting with the emotions, you know what I mean? And and and then becoming more and more comfortable outside of situations of certainty. You know, I I think that it's so fascinating to learn obviously about the brain and about how the brain is ultimately a prediction machine, and that the reason we formulate memories is just so that we can actively predict our future, and the brain goes into kind of crazy mode whenever you're in a situation where you can't actively predict your future. So if you're trying something new on a skateboard, you've never done it before, you know, you're going to get all sorts of emotional floods of like, you know, what if you know, then you're going to obviously go into the state where you're like amplifying the potential failure, you know, like, you know, it's that whole loss aversion thing where we amplify the potential downsides of what could happen or the potential consequences by like five five times. And so, I think it's just learning to handle that, learning to realize that that not going to all fall apart, and and ultimately becoming comfortable with the uncertainty of the outcome. You know, if I try this trick, you know, I don't know what's going to happen, but I'll be okay. And so, I think it's mostly about It's I mean, I think pain tolerance is good, but I think mostly it's about becoming flexible to uncertainty, flexible to your emotions, and ultimately watching yourself do things that you've never done before over and over again, and that's how you build confidence. That's how you build that identity capital is becoming okay with I don't know that what's going to happen here, but I'm going to try it anyways, and and it probably won't be as bad as I think it's going to be. Talk to me more about that idea of flexibility. It's something you go into great detail in the book. I found that in in health and fitness, you talk a lot about metabolic flexibility. That's this big thing about being able to, you know, either burn sugar or burn fat, and the ability to fast effectively um is a really important idea. And when we get into cognitive or psychological flexibility, what what is that, and how do we cultivate it? Yeah, ton of research on it nowadays. It's based on a form of therapy called acceptance and commitment therapy, or ACT. But really what it is is it's it's your ability to process your emotions, to handle them, to reframe them, and it's ultimately about committing to a certain goal, and then just becoming more and more comfortable with ambiguity or uncertainty. It's It's about you ultimately actively moving through your emotions rather than being stopped by them towards a goal. Can you define commitment as you talk about it in the book? I think it will recontextualize what you're saying right now for people, cuz it carries a lot of weight in the book. Yeah, commitment, you know, goal commitment is just whatever you You know, it's committing to an outcome. You know, so as human beings, you know, and especially for me as an author, like I hear a lot of people who say you should ignore the outcome and just focus on the process, but like from a psychological standpoint, that's that's really bad for motivation, and it's just not how humans work. You know, so like there's a concept in philosophy that I love called teleology, and teleology is basically based on the idea that every action we do as a human being is to produce an outcome. You know, like everything we do is goal-driven. Me going to the bathroom is to create an outcome. You know, me going to the grocery store is to create an outcome. Me going home to be with my kids is to create an outcome. And so, the more you just own the outcomes that you want and commit to whatever outcome you want, then then you're First off, it's really good for your identity cuz then you can actually say this is who I am, this is what I want without pretending like you want something else. It actually creates transparency. Um but commitment also just, you know, what I like and it this comes from the book The 15 Commitments of Conscious Leadership, a commitment is basically whatever results you're getting right now. You know, like I just I think that that's pretty freaking humbling, you know, like whatever your circumstances are, that's what you're committed to. Uh and if you really want something different, then you're going to actually have to fundamentally change what you're doing and who you are to have that. Um and so, I I think commitment is kind of the jumping point from courage. You know, however committed you are to something, that's how courageous you could be. And however courageous you can be, that's what ultimately leads you to developing flexibility, developing competencies, trying things you've never done, and that's how confidence is built. And so, I think commitment to a specific outcome is the starting point. I've heard [snorts] you use um a story to illustrate the difference between wanting something and being committed to it. And it was the guy that gets stuck in the snow. Um and I I would love to have you tell that story and especially in the context of your own life within a single 12-month period going from zero children to five children, uh which is a a pretty extraordinary leap. Um yeah, if you can walk us through that, I think it it illustrates what you're talking about with commitment and and how it can affect your ability to get to an outcome. Yeah. Yeah. So, this is a really interesting story I'd heard from like the like he was a an organizational behavioral professor named David Bednar. And basically he told the story of a young man who bought a pickup truck and he wanted to prove to his wife, you know, that it was a worthy investment. So, he went up and he was going to go up to the mountains and ultimately get, you know, get firewood to bring back and they were going to have an amazing fire and stuff like that. He was up in the mountains, it was really snowy, he got stuck in the snow, was trying to peel out and stuff like that. Ultimately was stuck in the situation and was just going to sit there and wait for someone to come by and pull him out, essentially. And people weren't coming, so he got out and he just ultimately started cutting firewood, threw it onto the back of the truck, and hours went by, the truck was completely filled with firewood, it was getting dark, getting cold. I think that this story occurred like in the '70s and so this was like before cell phones and stuff like that. And so he was just out there in the mountains, it was getting dark. And so he got in his car, turned it on, and tried to pull out and to his utter surprise, because of the weight of the wood, he was able to get traction and pull himself out. And and so Bednar's explanation is is that he needed that load, he needed the weight to ultimately give him the traction to move forward and without that weight, he didn't have traction, he was spinning out. And so I've kind of used that analogy for myself. Like basically, when I got home from like that mission experience, that was in 2010, you know, I was 22 years old. I at that point had already decided in my mind that I wanted to be a writer, but I didn't actually know what that meant. And so, you know, 5 years went by, a lot of time went by and I didn't really take that much action on my future self. Um and what once we became foster parents, when I when I was at Clemson doing my PhD, all of a sudden I felt this huge weight of responsibility on me. Like now all of a sudden we had these three kids and I knew that my time was going to zip by. And so all of a sudden I felt this extreme pressure in a good way, you know, it's that whole pressure can either make a diamond or bust a pipe, but I felt this extreme pressure that I needed to get moving because time was going to zip by and I also felt the pressure of like I need to now like provide for these kids. And I was a graduate student making literally $13,000 a year, like as a research assistant, making no money and frustrated and I'm like, I got to get moving. And I think there's a lot of really good ideas behind this. Like Will Durant, he's got one of my favorite quotes. He said that the ability of the average person could be doubled if their situation demanded it. Um, you know, and there's a lot of like philosophy behind the idea that it's not really um it's it's demand that creates like resources, you know? So, I felt demanded to do it. And so, I just freaking stepped up and moved forward. And actually, in psychology, they call that the Pygmalion effect. Just that you're either rising or falling to the demands of your situation. And so, I just I felt that pressure and I want that. You know, I actually seek to put that pressure on myself as a forcing function. I put I put myself in situations where I feel like I have to rise up. It purge it kind of purges out my loss of ambition or it purges out my own my own failings. The situation requires it. And so, I think that that's what happened for me when I when I had the foster kids. Yeah, I love that. And so, now, I've actually not heard of acceptance and commitment therapy, but now that we've got that framework around the intensity with which you mean commit, um what is acceptance and commitment therapy? Yeah, and and sadly, I'm not like the world's expert on that, but really it's about committing to a goal and then just accepting the emotions that you experience along the way. Accepting the failures along the way. Accepting that there will be, you know, ups and downs and ultimately moving forward despite that. Getting the help you need despite that. Reframing despite that. Like, rather than just feeling the pain and being shut down by it, you're committed to the outcome and you accept that you're going to face a lot of crap through that and that you can get through it. And I think that that's how you become flexible. And so, to me, that's why I think commitment is a statement of what is. Whatever your commitment committed to, that's what you get. And so, if you commit to a certain future and you just accept along the way that you're going to have a lot of ups and downs emotions, then you can move through it. And you can get the help you need to get through it. And that's how you ultimately become flexible as a person. Word. Dude, this was amazing. Tell people where they can find you, where they can get your book. Yeah, get the book anywhere you want. It's called Personality Isn't Permanent. It's right here. Um um and uh yeah, Benjamin Hardy's my benjaminhardy.com is my website and just really grateful to be with you, Tom. Awesome, dude. Thank you so much for coming on. I think that the topics that you cover in the book are extraordinarily important for anybody that wants to love their life and achieve something that, you know, they'll be excited by. So, thank you so much for writing it and I highly encourage all of you guys to read the book, to go to his website, to just look at these ideas. I think they are absolutely life-changing. And speaking of life-changing, if you haven't already, be sure to subscribe. And until next time, my friends, be legendary. Take care. I live by two core principles, right? The first is that everything everyone knows they learned. And I don't accept that I'm less intelligent than the next person, which means I can learn it, too, right? Um, the second is that every single excuse I have is valid. But that's still not going to give me the results that I want.