Transcript of The New Science of Living Longer & How to Master the Fear of Being Judged - SYSK Choice

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Today on Something You Should Know, some wonderful words of hope and inspiration from Mr. Rogers, just in time for the holidays. Then the latest in the fight against aging, including the power of exercise.

Exercise seems to be across the board beneficial. In fact, if you take an exercise mouse and you take blood plasma from that mouse and give it to a sedentary mouse, the sedentary mouse is much healthier and has better cognitive function.

All also the top five traits employers are looking for in new hires, and the damage done by the fear of what other people will think.

Most of us really understand what it feels like to not go for it, to play it safe, and in return, play it small, so that you're not rejected, and so much so that I think it's one of the greatest constrictors of our potential.

All this today on Something You Should Know.

Of the Regency era. You might know it as the time when Bridgerton takes place, or as the time when Jane Austen wrote her books. The Regency era was also an explosive time of social change, sex scandals, and maybe the worst king in British history. Vulgar History's new season is all about the Regency era, the balls, the gowns, and all the scandal. Listen to Vulgar History Regency era, wherever you get podcasts. Something You Should Know. Fascinating intel, the world's top experts, and practical advice you can use in your life. Today, Something You Should Know with Mike Caruthers.

Hello. Welcome to something you should know. This is the time of year when we speak of hope for the new year and helping others. So let me share some great words of hope and caring from the beloved Mr. Rogers, from the world according to Mr. Rogers. He said, It takes strength to face our sadness and to grieve and to let our grief and our anger flow in tears when they need to. He also said, Most of us, I believe, admire strength. It's something we tend to respect in others, desire for ourselves, and wish for our children. The really important great things are never center stage of life's traumas. They're always in the wings. He He said, When I was very young, most of my childhood heroes wore capes, flew through the air, or picked up buildings with one arm. They were spectacular and got a lot of attention. But as I grew, my heroes changed, so that now I can honestly say that anyone who does anything to help a child is a hero to me. We live in a world in which we need to share responsibility. It's easy to say, It's not my child, not my community, not my world, not my problem.

Then there are those who see the need and respond. I consider those people my heroes. Those are the words of Mr. Rogers, and that is something you should know.

Can you really significantly make it so that you live a lot longer than you would otherwise?

In other words, is all this talk of diet and exercise and what seems like sacrifice really going to dramatically lengthen your life and keep you healthy? In short, is it all worth it? And if so, what should we be doing to get the most bang for our buck? Well, here to discuss and reveal the very latest research on aging is Colleen Murphy. She is a professor at Princeton University, Director of Princeton's Glenn Foundation for Research on Aging, and author of the book, How We Age: The Science of Longevity. Hi, Colleen. Welcome. Glad to have you on something you should know.

Hi, Mike.

Right now, people live... Well, I don't know. How long on average do people live today?

Well, Americans live into their 70s and early 80s. Different countries have higher life expectancy like Japan. But we already know that people could be living longer if they were a little bit healthier. I think it's a question of, are we talking about the people who are already doing everything to live as long as they possibly can versus median or mean life expectancy, where there are a lot of people in the country who, for various reasons, perhaps they are obese, maybe they have some metabolic disorders, cardiovascular diseases. So we could raise the average lifespan as well. I think those are two different questions, maximizing the lifespan versus getting everybody a little bit healthier.

Yeah, but there is In some sense, I think, whether right or wrong, that people have is when your number's up, your number's up, that you could live a pretty healthy life and die sooner than somebody who doesn't. So it can't all be up to your lifestyle, and it's got to be other things. Plus, you could get hit by a bus. Absolutely. You never know.

Actually, one of the reasons when I get asked what I do, I never say because I am very worried about getting hit I bust the day after I say something like that. But your point is well taken. There's lots of stuff that we can do to improve lifestyle, but absolutely, there's a huge genetic component to how long we're going to live. Of course, there are people who are centenarians. Those people have won the genetic lottery, and a lot of them don't do any of the things that we would consider to be following a healthy lifestyle. There is a disconnect there. One of the points of doing work on longevity, not to just use the things that we already know now, but actually to push that further and to ask, Well, if you tweaked this genetic pathway or that one, could you maximize a little further, even despite having not won the genetic lottery? Could we push that to a better limit?

So when we talk about aging, getting older, that aging is a natural result of getting older, right?

Right. Inevitable.

But I think when people often think about aging or talk about aging, they're talking about appearance rather than something else, which is not what you talk about necessarily. But can you really slow that down? People talk about slowing down the aging process. Is that a thing or is that just a way to shorthand describe something?

In the lab, we use what's called a model system. That is, we don't do experiments on humans. What we try to do is take a small... In our case, what we're using is this little worm. It's a millimeter long nematode. The The reason we use that is because we know a ton about it at the genetic and morphological level. We use that to try to design experiments where we can understand better, can we do exactly what you're saying, slow down aging? We definitely have pathways that we study where aging has been slowed.

When you say that you took this little worm and slowed down the aging process, what does that mean? Because time didn't slow down. What makes you When you say that the aging process slowed down?

All right, so I wish I could show you a movie, but this was observed back in 1993. Cynthia Kenyan at UCSF found that a single mutation, so just one nucleotide change in the entire worm's genome resulted in the worm being much healthier, crawling around, basically acting like a young worm for much longer, and it lived twice as long. That's the base on which a lot of our work is set because we've been able to use that mutation. That worm was called a DAF2 Mutant. We've been using that Mutant and probing into all the ways that it's better. My lab found that those worms have better memory They also slow down their oocyte aging so they can reproduce twice as long. And so this has been a great tool. So in fact, that animal does have slower aging because all the hallmarks of aging that we can measure, or at least, I think most of them, everything that we've seen, shows that they actually act like younger animals and live twice as long.

Well, that's pretty cool.

It is cool. It's my favorite thing.

How do you know it improves their memory? Do you give them little memory tests? And how do you get them to hold the pencil to take the test?

Yeah, so that was actually what I started my lab doing, was trying to figure out, can we actually test memory in a worm? So this is much like what you would do with a dog. So we asked, what does a worm like? And it turns out the only thing they like is food, and they eat bacteria. So we developed a very simple assay, just like Pavlov's dog, instead of ringing a bell and having steak and this dog salivating, instead, now we take worms and we starve them for a little while. And then when we feed them again, We put on the lid of the plate, because they live in little agar dishes, we put on the lid of the plate just drops of an odorant called butanone. This chemical is volatile. That means it can evaporate, and so the worm can smell We already knew that the worms could smell this odor, butanone, but they don't care about it. To them, it's neutral. That was really key for our assay because what we wanted to do is ask them, Okay, now when they smell this odor, while they're eating, when they were hungry, will they make an association between that smell and food?

The next time, we can let them sit with this, carry out this learning process. Then after an hour of doing that, we take the worms off the plate and then we put them on a new plate with no food, but a little drop of butanol at one end and ethanol at the other end. And we ask them, okay, how much do they like the butanol? And so they will crawl to the butanol spot. Whereas before they didn't care about it, now they all go to that butanol spot. So we know that they've learned that association. And so if we just put the warms back onto a plate with food so they can forget, then we do that same test over and over again, we can assay their memory.

Fundamentally, what is Well, scientifically, from your perspective, what is aging? Because I think most of us think of aging as, as time passes, things wear out, things get old, things don't work as well as they used to. That's aging. To me, that's aging.

Well, I think we share that viewpoint because at a biological level, what's happening, I mean, this is why the aging field is so big and there's so many great questions to ask, but there's everything at once, right? So you have Cells that normally would be dividing. They divide nicely when we're young. When we get old, they do that less well. Finally, they get tired of dividing and they don't divide anymore. That's why some of our tissues can't be renewed. Then we have other She was like, We have some cells in our body that don't turn over. We never get new ones. Inside those cells, it's really important for all the proteins and all the jobs that are going on inside that cell to keep continuing. But with time, those stop working as well. You have break It's a breakdown at all kinds of levels, inside the cell and then cells making up whole tissues and cells not replacing themselves anymore. So you're not wrong. It's basically a lot of damage that normally our bodies do a lot of work to repair and replace and And now they can't do that as well.

Yeah, which is called living life and getting older, and that's the big plan. And so not to get too philosophical here, but in some ways, it almost Well, it's not that it's creepy, but there's this plan that you're born, you live as you live, you get older. These processes that you're talking about slow down, things don't work as well, and then you die. It sounds almost artificial. I don't know how to describe it, but you're messing with the big plan here, and should you be? Do you know what I mean?

I do know what you mean. Okay, so I think there's a couple There are different ways to address that. For example, most of the diseases that people have are actually age-related diseases. You probably wouldn't tell somebody, Well, I think it's wrong to cure cancer, even though that's one of the most prevalent For many cancers, aging is the biggest risk factor. Same for diabetes and cardiovascular disease. I think people just don't think of aging as the same way they think of these age-related diseases when in fact aging is the reason that they get many of these things. I think there's that perspective. Then what do you say about all modern medicine? Back a century ago, we didn't live this long. So at what point do you slow that? I think it only gets creepy when you really think about if you're only going to help a few people in the world that have a lot of money, I think that's when it gets creepy or when... I can But I think for the most part, helping people live higher quality lives may or may not extend their lifespan, but it will help them be happier and healthier, better.

We're talking about longevity and all the research going on right now to help extend life and to keep us healthy. And my guest is Colleen Murphy. She is author of the book, How We Age: The Science of Longevity. If Bravo drama, pop culture chaos, and honest takes are your love language, you'll want All About Terry H. Podcast in your feed. Hosted by Roxanne and Shantel, this show breaks down Real Housewives' Reality TV and the moments everyone's group chat is arguing about.

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The Wolves fought for freedom, but they failed, leaving countless corpses in their wake.

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Search for Scott Sigler, S-I-G-L-E-R, wherever you get your podcasts.

So, Kaleen, how far away are we in doing some of these experiments and some of these treatments that might actually do something for humans?

That's a great question. I was really happy. We developed that assay. I told you about that experiment to test worm memory. So we got a collaborator of ours at UCSF, Saldeida. They did an experiment where they took the same protein that we had found to be really important for extending memory in these old worms They put it into old mice and got the exact same effect. So these old mice had better memory. To me, that was such a gratifying moment because it suggested that, Okay, now we really have it. We know something where we can extend mouse memory. Because that is so well conserved with humans, there's a chance that if we use this then as a target to develop a drug, that that could be something that would help older people maintain their memory. The mice that we were using were two years old, which is estimated to be about a 70 or 80-year-old person. You can imagine you might take a drug that would help if you're starting to notice that you're losing your memory. That would be a good thing. I think that's where our work is headed, and that research is being done by a lot of different people in the field.

Are we decades away, centuries away, years away?

Less than decades. I think that there's an important point to make as well that it's the reverse. We've done all this work on aging, and we know what slowing age-related declines would be. But there's also something really important about these drugs that are being used to treat obesity and diabetes. Those are, it turns out they're really great for treating cardiovascular disease. My suspicion is that those are going to be the first, some of the early lifespan drugs, because I imagine all the people who really were having trouble keeping their weight down and suffered from cardiovascular disease are going to live longer than if They had never taken those.

But because they're lifespan drugs or because they lost weight and their health improved and now they're living longer.

Well, okay. Here's the thing. The things that are considered lifespan drugs are all going to do something to affect some system or disease in the body, right? And obesity, cardiovascular disease, metabolic diseases, those are all things that are really critical in determining lifespan. So it's all the same thing. I think it's almost like a false dichotomy to say this is a lifespan drug, and these over here are obesity drugs. I think they're all going to blend into one another at some point.

Do you look at, I remember doing an interview not that long ago about how there are creatures roaming the planet that live a lot longer than we do. And one of the things they seem to have in common is that they live slower than we do. Turtles go very Is that something research looks at or not?

Yeah, no, people have looked at those. So in particular, I think, examples like the Greenland shark, right? So that lives in these cold waters and lives about 500 years and clams and things there. There are some organisms that seem to have a long lifespan, perhaps tied to their slower metabolism. But there's also mammals. They don't have a slower metabolism necessarily than we do. There's all different types of ways to live longer that people are looking at.

But it does seem like we all have our own factory installed equipment. We are who we are. I mean, you could try to extend the life of a fly that lives a week or two, but how much longer? I mean, a fly is a fly. You can only do so much. And we're human, you probably only do so much, it would seem. Or is this an open-ended, someday we're hoping we'll all live to be a thousand years old?

I I really want to fight against the latter idea. We're not really trying to develop drugs to help people live to be a thousand. The idea, and you're right, so worms, they live 2-3 weeks, and we have mutants that double life span There's even when you add some of the pathways together, it's record-breaking of living like six times as long. But as you move up the evolutionary scale, those same pathways have a smaller and smaller proportional effect. I think the goal here is to maintain function longer. I don't think it's achievable, and it's also not desirable to aim to make someone live 500 years. The real point is to not suffer from age-related diseases. I think this disconnect, because I know there are people out there who are saying things about living incredibly long. I think it's a turn off for most of us. Even centenarians, if you listen to them, some of them are happy and others miss everybody who grew up with them. They know that they're in a weird place living super long. So I think you don't want to be the one who lives super long. You want to make sure that you live long, along with your friends and your family, and that you live in a healthy way so you can enjoy being with them.

Can you comment on, and I'm not sure if this is your area, but the things that people hear about that they're supposed to do to live healthier and longer that really work or don't work, like intermittent fasting or the vegetarian diet, whatever it is. Are there things that either are myths or are in the culture that maybe aren't true or are true? Can you straighten any of that out?

On the plus side, things like dietary restriction, and there's all kinds of different styles of dietary restriction, they have been shown in model systems to both slow aging and reduce age-related disease. Now, I think in humans, there's this extra component that hasn't been discussed enough, which is the psychological component of starving yourself I, myself, I'm not a big fan of dietary restriction, even though I know, probably if I got certain forms of cancer, I'd probably start doing that. All the things that people are doing with intermittent fasting and caloric restriction, I That's fine. They can do that. It's not really... And there is some evidence for it. I think in the end, what's going to happen is we're going to find better ways to help people. Things like drugs that actually mimic the effects of dietary restriction, that would be great. Now, for exercise, Exercise. It's almost hard to argue against exercise. Exercise seems to be across the board beneficial. I don't know if there are any studies saying that exercise is not worth doing. In fact, this friend of mine I already mentioned Solveida, who his work, they showed that if you take an exercise mouse, and so these are voluntary, these are mice that voluntarily run on a running wheel, and you take blood plasma from that mouse and give it to a sedentary mouse, the sedentary mouse is much healthier and has better cognitive function.

That tells us there's something that happens at the physiological level, and they showed it's from something that happens in the liver, secretes a protein, that is really beneficial. And so I think the one thing that people are less excited about doing sometimes, but is really truly beneficial is exercise.

Well, there is that attitude element. You hear people talk about your age is just a number and you're as young as you feel. But when you look back over the last several generations, people seem to fight becoming an old person in the sense that they don't assume the role so quickly, '60s, the new '40, or whatever the numbers are, but that people hold on to their youth longer and don't just give in. And that that seems to be a pretty effective strategy.

Yeah, and I would say that's a healthy shift. For the most part, people are doing this by staying healthy longer.

Yeah. Well, I guess that's the goal, right? Is to stay healthy as long as you can, then get sick and die quick.

Exactly. Which is called the compression of more and actually is a well-known phenomenon that the field is actually aiming for because we'd all like to live as long as possible, but not stretch out that frail part of life. We'd like to compress that.

Well, from listening to you talk, it seems the whole process of aging is perhaps more complicated than people think, and there's a lot of different fronts on which to fight the fight to turn back the clock. I've been talking to Colleen Murphy. She is a professor at Princeton University and author of the book How We Age. The Science of Longevity. There's a link to that book in the show notes. Great, Colleen. Thanks for being here.

No problem, Mike. It was fun to talk to you.

Hi, I'm Adam Gidwitz, host of Grim, Grimmer, Grimmest. On every episode, we tell a grim fairy tale.

Not the cute, sweet versions of the fairy tales that your children have heard so many times.

No, we tell the real grim fairy tales. They're funny, they're weird. Sometimes they're a little bit scary. But don't worry, we rate every episode, Grim, Grimmer, or Grimist. So you, your child, your family, can choose the episode that's the right level of scary for you. Tune in to Grim, Grimmer, Grimist, and our new season, available now. How many times in your life have you not done something? Not applied for that job, or asked that person out on a date, or not spoken up in a meeting, not done who knows what, something important to you that you didn't do because you were concerned what other people would think, especially if you failed. There probably isn't anyone who can't relate. And yet often, you hear people say things like, Well, I don't care what other people think. But clearly, we do. And maybe we care a little too much about that. Here to discuss the problem, and what you can do about it, is Michael Gervais. He is a high-performance psychologist. He's host of the podcast Finding Mastery, and author of the book, The First Rule of Mastery: Stop Worrying About What People Think of You. Hi, Michael.

Welcome to Something You Should Know.

Thank you for having me.

What is this fear of what other people think? Why does it have such a strong hold on people? And how strong a hold does it have?

I think that it is a hidden epidemic that we don't talk about enough, but I think most of us really intimately understand understand what it feels like to not go for it, to play it safe, and in return, play it small so that you're not rejected, so that you maybe have a better chance of being accepted by other people. And so much so that I think it's one of the greatest constricters of our potential.

Where does that worry, that fear of other people's thinking, where does it come from? Is it just part of being human or is it a learn thing?

Well, to our best abilities, when we think about how our brain works, it is optimized for survival. When I talk about the brain, I'm talking about the 3. 2 pounds of tissue that sits inside your skull, the mass that is chemical and electrical and has tissue and a relationship that gives us our sense of how to navigate the world. I'm not talking about the mind yet. The mind is the software that runs the hardware. But if our software is not optimized, if it's not upgraded to meet modern challenges or to work in a way that is aligned with purpose, the hardware is going to run the show, the hardware meaning the brain. And go back a couple of hundred thousand years ago, and if you and I in the tribe, and we were in the tribe and we were knuckleheads, and we would show up and we'd be sloppy with the way that we would handle our business, or we were constantly saying stupid things, or we were letting other people down on timeliness or performance standards, or if we went hunting or we had to go gather firewood or whatever we were doing, and it was substandard of an output, the elders of the tribe at some point would be like, Mike, I'm so sorry, but you guys got to go.

So that rejection, that kicking out, being kicked out of the tribe was something that was a near death sentence. And that was a couple of hundred thousand years ago. And now, rejection is not a near death sentence, but we haven't changed that programming. So the brain still responds to the potential of rejection as if it is one of the most dangerous things that could happen. And that is one of the more unexamined 200,000-year-ago programming that we're still experiencing in modern times, but we haven't really brought it to the surface. And the last couple of years of mine has been to really examine what is this process and how do we work with it, and how can we find some relief and some optimization by better understanding this deeply ingrained programming to fit in, to belong, because at the deepest level, belonging is safety. At the cost of it is that we end up living life on their terms, not ours.

That's why you didn't ask that girl out in high school and always wonder what would have happened if How did you know?

Did you know her, too? Yeah. Same thing. Yes, yes, yes, yes, of course.

But in high school, there was that guy, Mr. Confident guy, who had no problem asking her out and got a date with her.

Yes, of course. Confidence is a trainable skill. Now, that doesn't mean that everybody that is authentically confident trained it. They could have had great teachers, and those teachers could have been parents, uncles, aunts, coaches, fill in the blank. But it is a trainable skill. Most people don't know how to train confidence, and they just look at other people that are confident and want to label them as being arrogant, maybe, and/or think that they're just lucky. But that's something for them, not for me. But come to find out, confidence is a trainable skill as well.

It does serve a purpose sometimes to be careful what you say or do because other people's opinions do matter. I mean, sometimes they really do matter. And so, what, would you agree with that?

I would a thousand % agree. I think that some people's opinions hold great power. It would be quite callous to think that the opinions of others are just an opinion and don't actually influence the way and the direction of our future. Your supervisor, the coach that you're playing for. There's so many people in our lives that have incredible power from their opinion. So yes.

How do you determine when it's okay to not worry about other people's opinions and when you do, or is it usually fairly apparent?

No, I don't think it is apparent. Unfortunately, I'm going to give you a piece of research that is not... People don't like to hear this. When I say it, You might go, Oh, gosh, that's terrible. Or you might say, Yeah, I know that's true to me, too. But some of our closest people in our lives, they have an opinion about who we could become, about the choices that we make, the behaviors that we take, and they don't necessarily want the best for us. What they want is to feel comfortable. They want us to be in our station in life. They want us to be exactly who we are now, not exponentially better, not going from $100,000 a year to $100 million, because we might leave them behind. We might create an environment where they don't feel as good about themselves because they're doing pretty good relative to you. Sometimes, the people that we think ought to be the opinions that matter are actually the ones that are keeping us stuck. The deepest way to think about whose opinions matter is to have at least two criteria. I think about it like a roundtable. My roundtable is not very big.

It's got eight chairs on it. It's the people who care, who have invested in my well-being, who have demonstrated that my growth arc, independent of their growth arc, matters to them. It's those people who really care, who have put time under tension with me to get to know me, to get to understand my unique challenges in life, my pain points, my traumas, and my wonderfully, ambitious vision of who I want to become and how I want to contribute to the world. They've spent the time to know that. The second criteria is that they've been in the arena. They have tested themselves. They know what it's like to work from a place of pressure, where stress is real in their environment, too. So they understand that intersection. And those are the opinions of others that matter to me.

And so what is your take? What is your advice on when you're faced with something and the thing that's stopping you is, what if I look like an idiot? What are these people going to think if I fail? How do you push through that?

The first order business is awareness, how your thoughts and emotions work together to influence your behaviors, how your thoughts and emotions and behaviors behaviors work together to influence your performance, the way you're expressing your ideas, emotions, and behaviors. And so that's where we need to start is increasing awareness of how we work from the inside out. So there's three best practices. Those best practices that hold up in the laboratory of research, as well as on the frontier of high stakes, high-pressured environments: mindfulness, journaling, and conversations with people of wisdom. Those three are the best practices that we know that those hold up the best when it comes to increasing awareness. From that, once you are aware, then you've got some decisions to make. The question that you're asking is, how do we push through it? I don't think we push through, we work with. So we become aware of the triggers. We become aware of the triggers, we become aware of our reflexive response, and then we decide from that place, once we're aware, it's like, now we realize there's a fork in the road. And which direction am I going to move forward with?

And so that's the difference between reflective reactions versus contemplative responses. It's just that nanosecond of awareness that gives you a path in the direction that is closer aligned to the person that you want to be.

So can you give me an example either from your life or from your research, or just how this works.

I'll give you... Actually, instead of me being analytical, I'll tell you exactly how it shows up for me. We're in the holiday season right now, and there is such a thing for me and for others called pre-party anxiety. So you're going to a place where you're going to see some people that you know and some people that you don't know, and you can feel that sense of anxiousness just walking into that environment. So there's also a parallel path that you could take where you're walking in and you're excited and you're feeling generative and you're curious about catching up with people. So let's call it path A and path B. Path B is that generative excitement, and path A is that nervousness. Well, that begins in your closet, and it begins well before that, but we'll just start at the closet. When you're going and picking out your clothes and you're making some decisions about what are you going to feel comfortable in, path B, as opposed to how will Susie or Alexander or Johnny like the clothes that I'm wearing? Am I going to show up in my best because it's going to look a certain way?

And am I going to wear that watch because it's my best watch? Or am I going to wear the watch that feels comfortable to me? Those are path A, path B. And path A is really about a performance-based identity, is that you have to look a certain way and you have to perform in a certain way relative to other people to be okay. And as long as I outperform somebody else, then I'm okay. But if I'm underperformed or I'm not showing up in the right way and they are judging me or potentially rejecting me or they're accepting me, then I'm okay. I'm in the right slipstream, but it's contingent on them. And so I shapeshift to be okay in front of them. Call that again, Path A. Back in my closet, and I'm choosing clothes that feel comfortable, that feel celebratory, that whatever, whatever, whatever. And I'm walking into that party and I'm saying to myself, Oh, I can't wait to catch up with. I can't wait to see how Roger is thinking about this new venture that he's doing or whatever. So it's a whole different way of going. And that is purpose-based identity.

So the from to here is from a performance-based identity. And Mike, most of us in the Western world have a performance-based identity. It makes perfect sense because we live in a outcome and performance-obsessed world. It makes perfect sense that from a young age, we start to figure out who we are is really how well we're able to do something. That is why public speaking is one of the great dangers and great fears in the Western world is because it's all about how you perform, as opposed to an environment that is more purpose-based. A purpose is like it's something far greater than you. It's not a reflection of you. It's that you're contributing to something in a meaningful way. And all of the greats, all of the historical greats, and I'm not talking about the high performers in the NBA or NFL. I'm talking about the real changers across the planet that have made a difference. Most of them are purpose-based, that they are fundamentally committed to a purpose larger than them. Think about Mother Teresa, Mandela, Gandhi, Jesus, Buddha, Confucia, Dr. King. Keep going down the list and you'll say, I see the common thread there.

I think people have heard this thing about the spotlight effect that we worry about what other people think when oftentimes they're not thinking anything. They're not paying attention. They're more worried about what you think of them than they are about what they think of you. Talk about that.

Cornell Professor Thomas Gilovich and his colleagues, they devised a social experiment, and this was back in early 2000s. It was to see whether people are really observing and judging us at every turn. And so what he did is he gathered 100 college students, and he entered them and just put them in a room. And then he had a handful of folks that he gave in a separate room these really ugly T-shirts. And it was a photo of the pop singer, Barry Manilow, that was on the front of it. And the students that were wearing that Barry Manilow shirt were like, Oh, God, you want me to walk in there with this? And yes, And then they just went through a series of experimental questions saying, How many people do you think in the room of your friends, the room of 100 people, are going to notice? And then they asked the people in the room, How many of you actually noticed what the shirt was the person that walked in the room was? Come to find out, is that we overpredict how many people pay attention to what we're actually wearing and doing and thinking by the order of about 50 %.

And so the takeaway, what he dubbed the spotlight effect, is that we walk around thinking that they are looking at our hair, that they're looking at our clothing, that they're focusing on what we're doing and saying. When in return, they're actually focusing on their hair and their clothes and what they're about to say. And so we are walking around with our own spotlight because we are, again, go back to almost the first point, is that our brain's mechanism is designed for survival. Our survival, not the survival of our friends necessarily. So that's where the spotlight effect comes from. We're these selfish, self-focused, a bit narcissistic, and I say that in a non-clinical way, but self-absorbed approach, trying to figure out how to be okay in social settings. The fun takeaway is that most people are not paying attention to you. Grandma had this right, is that they're focusing on themselves. So maybe just drop the whole drama here. Know that you're okay.

You've mentioned it a few times. I'd like to really drill down and make sure people understand the distinction between between a performance-based identity and a purpose-based identity?

A performance-based identity, the definition is I am what I do and how well I do it relative to you. A purpose Purpose-based identity is completely different. It is focused on what is my reason for being here and how well am I able to contribute to that? How do you crosswalk the two? Again, it begins with awareness. If you think about the things that scare you, the things that threaten you, the things that create anxiety, is it that your purpose is going to be compromised or is that you're going to look a certain way and that you're going to get kicked out of the tribe or you're going to get fired or thought less of? If you are on that performance-based side, which is what I just described, then it begins with pushing your chair back from the table and taking a couple of deep breaths, literally, but figuratively as well, and just thinking, What am I doing with my time here? That's a very big question. That is a rite of passage to modern-day adulthood. What is my purpose? What am I doing here? Now, there is a science underneath of it. For purpose to be true, purpose needs to have three factors.

The first is that it has to matter to you. Nobody can give you purpose. Purpose. It's something that is uniquely special to you. So that's purpose, the first part. The second part is that it's bigger than you. It's something that you can't solve on your own. It's something that extends beyond your capabilities alone. So it's big, it matters. And the third leg is that there's a future orientation, meaning that you can't solve it today. It's something that takes time, time under tension, even. Those are the three. If that feels too big, oh, my God, I've been thinking about that question my whole life, and I'm not going to do that. I don't know where to start. You can start by thin-slicing this practice. You would thin-slice it by saying, Well, what is my purpose today? And you wake up in the morning and you just say, What is my purpose today? And then as you get better at that for, I don't know, a couple of weeks, you then extend it out. What is my purpose for this month? What is my purpose for this next quarter, for the next six months, for the next year?

And then you start to just practice it. And over time, it does get a little bit more simple and a little bit more clear. I come from the world of sport in high-performing sport. What I just described is how we practice every skill. We start in a calm, controlled, simple environment, and then we layer on top of it more more speed or more accuracy or more pressure. We go from a calm, controlled environment to something that is open and wild and has high stakes or pressure. We practice that, that ladder effect, and we realize, it starts to break down. Let's say it's a scale of one to seven, seven being the most stressful, the most consequential or pressure-packed. Our ability to be proficient breaks down at condition three. Calm is one, A little bit more intense is two. Three, we start to see some inconsistencies. Oh, okay, well, now we break that down. What is happening? What do I need to specifically get better at so that I can be great at that skill? It's the same here in purpose, which is start in a calm environment and then start to practice being connected to that purpose throughout your day.

You'll find the days that you're tired or the days that you have a little extra stress or the days that you didn't find Find a way to be connected to your purpose that there are some common culprits that hang out there. That's where the conversation with people of wisdom and journaling and mindfulness can also pay dividends to be more clear. This is a practice, Mike.

Well, this is such an important topic, especially this time of year, as we wrap up one year and look into a new year and new goals, new opportunities. I think your comments in this discussion help remove one of the roadblocks to people's success in achieving those goals, which is worrying about what other people think. I've been talking with Michael Gervais. He is a high-performance psychologist. He is host of a podcast called Finding Mastery, and author of the book, The First Rule of Mastery: Stop Worrying About What People Think of You. There's a link to that book in the show notes. Thank you for sharing this, Michael.

Yeah, thank you.

With a new year coming soon, maybe you're thinking about a new job or a career change. If so, Forbes magazine has a list of the top five personality traits employers hire most. At the top of the list is professionalism. Do your research, dress the part, and act professional. High energy gets hired next. Don't overdo the energy. Just be sure you're enthusiastic and know stuff. Confidence is a must. Your potential employer will notice, for example, how you enter a room, how you extend your hand and make eye contact. Self monitoring is a sought-after trait. You'll need to show what you've accomplished and learned on both your resume and during a face-to-face interview. Intellectual curiosity is another big personality plus. Show your passion for learning new things and be prepared for some interesting questions. And that is something you should know. A reminder, as you're doing things around the holidays and need some company, we have a whole big catalog of back episodes of this podcast that I know you would enjoy listening to. So please take a look at all the back episodes. I'm sure you'll find some you'll find really fascinating and give them a listen.

I'm Mike Kerruthers. Thanks for listening today to Something You Should Know. The The Infinite Monkey cage returns. Imminently, I am Robert Ince, and I'm sat next to Brian Cox, who has so much to tell you about what's on the new series.

Primarily Eels.

And what else?

It was fascinating, the Eels.

But we're not just doing Eels, are we?

We're doing a bit with brain computer interfaces, timekeeping, fusion, monkey business, cloud, science of the North Pole, and Eels. Did I mention the Eels?

Is this ever since you bought that timeshare underneath the Sagasso sea?

Listen on BBC. Com or wherever you get your podcast.