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Coming up next on Passion Struck.
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We make decisions not just how we interact with people, but who we interact with at all based on these superficial cues.
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And so we don t really have the opportunity to engage with as many people in as deep a way as we might for those reasons.
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And that s really a hard thing to overcome because all the evidence points to just the strong tribal nature of human beings.
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The nature of the groups shift around all the time, so there s nothing inherent in the groups, it s just that we tend to think in terms of groups and behave accordingly.
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Welcome to Passion Struck.
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Hi, I m your host, Jon R. Miles, and on the show, we decipher the secrets, tips, and guidance of the world s most inspiring people and turn their wisdom into practical advice for you and those around you.
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Our mission is to help you unlock the power of intentionality so that you can become the best version of yourself.
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If you re new to the show, I offer advice and answer listener questions on Fridays.
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We have long-form interviews the rest of the week with guests ranging from astronauts to authors, CEOs, creators, innovators, scientists, military leaders, visionaries, and athletes.
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Now, let s go out there and become passionstruck.
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Hello everyone and welcome back to episode 330 of Passion Struck.
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Consistently ranked by Apple as one of the top 10 most popular health podcasts and the number one alternative health podcast.
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And thank you to all who come back weekly to listen and learn how to live better, be better, and impact the world.
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Passion Struck is now on syndicated radio on the AMFM 247 national broadcast and you can catch us on your evening commute Monday and Friday from
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5 to 6 p.m.
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Eastern Time.
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Links will be in the show notes.
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If you re new to the show, thank you so much for being here, or you simply want to introduce this to a friend or a family member, we now have Episode Starter Packs, which are collections of our fans  favorite episodes that we organize into convenient topics to give any new listener a great way to get acclimated to everything we do here on the show.
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Either go to spotify or passionstruck.com slash starter packs to get started.
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In case you missed it, earlier in the week, I interviewed mental health expert and neuroscientist, Dr. Caroline Leaf, who is known for her science-backed mind management techniques.
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We discussed her brand new book, How to Help Your Child Clean Up with Mental Mess.
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Now, let s talk about today s episode.
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Amidst the vastness of our experiences, there s perhaps nothing more intimately familiar and yet enigmatic than ourselves.
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From the very inception of our existence, we have been in constant companionship with our own being, traversing the intricacies of each waking moment.
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Yet despite this unwavering presence, the question persists.
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Who, or more fundamentally, what truly defines our essence?
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In this profound exploration of selfhood, my guest, social psychologist and Stanford professor Brian Lowry and I embark on a quest to unravel the mysteries that lie within.
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With each passing day, we navigate the labyrinth of our thoughts, emotions, and actions seeking a deeper understanding of our authentic nature.
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We grapple with the intricacies of identity, contemplating the intricate tapestry that forms the essence of our being.
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While we may be inclined to perceive ourselves as discrete individuals separate from the world around us,
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this journey of self-discovery challenges such notions.
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It beckons us to recognize the inseparable interplay between our existence and the greater cosmos that envelops us.
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It implores us to question the boundaries we have constructed, urging us to transcend the confines of conventional definitions.
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In the interview, we discuss Ryan s new book, Selfless, a social creation of you, and delve into the depths of introspection.
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We peel back the layers of conditioning, societal expectation, and self-imposed limitations, allowing our authentic selves to emerge from the shadows.
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We confront the complexities that arise.
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We come face to face with the fluidity of our identities, a kaleidoscope of roles we inhabit, and the multifaceted dimensions of our existence.
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For in daring to ask the profound question of who or what am I, we embark on a transformative journey towards the boundless
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stealths of self-understanding.
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Brian Lowry is the Walter Kenneth Kilpatrick Professor of Organizational Behavior and Senior Associate Dean for Academic Affairs at the Stanford Graduate School of Business.
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Social psychologist by training, he studies how individuals perceive inequality and the steps they take, if any, to reduce it.
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As a professor, Brian likes to shine a light on how people function in the world, in business and beyond.
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Self-reflection is a key component of that discovery.
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His classes are experimental by design and encouraging people to understand and reflect on how they show up, how they behave, and what that means.
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What an incredible episode I have for you today.
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Thank you for choosing Passionstruck and choosing me to be your host and guide on your journey to creating an intentional life.
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Now, let that journey begin.
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I am so excited today to welcome Brian Lowry to Passionstruck.
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Welcome, Brian.
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Nice to be here, John.
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Thanks for having me.
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As I was researching your background, some of the courses that you teach at Stanford really caught my eye, and one specifically I thought is needed for all future leaders.
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I wish I could have taken this earlier in my career, and it s called Leadership for Society, Big Arguments, Courageous Leadership.
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Can you tell me about that course?
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Yes, it s a new program actually.
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It s only been around for a couple years and it s designed to give students the opportunity and space to explore a project they re passionate about that affects society.
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It s two parts.
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One is the course to help them with their project, to connect them to the right people, to provide them resources.
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And the other one, the Daring Dialogues,
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is a combination of a webinar that I do on a theme, and I talk to important guests, people who have thoughts and experiences in particular areas in society.
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So the last one, for example, focused on climate and the new kind of digital era.
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And one of the people I talked to was Eric Schmidt, for example.
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And then students who listen to that webinar then get together in small groups and have discussions about the topic of the day.
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And so it s a space for people to really lean into differences of opinion and try to understand different ways of thinking about really important issues that face society right now.
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A couple of the people that I ve had on the podcast have been Don Moore, Max Bazerman, Peter Singer, who are all peers of yours, and they re really looking at the consequences of our ethic behaviors.
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One of the things that caught my eye about what you guys are teaching is courageous leadership.
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And having been myself, a C-level in Fortune 50 environments, it s difficult to be courageous.
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And I don t think people understand what it truly means to be a courageous leader.
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It s something that I was fortunate enough to learn from being in the military.
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But can you discuss just a little bit more about what you try to teach people about being a courageous leader?
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Yeah.
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Part of it is understanding yourself, right?
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So what s motivating you?
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So when you re in leadership positions, there are a lot of pressures.
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What are those, how are those pressures affecting you?
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And then also being really clear about what matters to you.
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What do you value?
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And there are situations where people won t agree with you.
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There s situations where people have good faith.
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don t agree with you.
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How do you engage that effectively?
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How do you stand up for what you believe, but also be open to other perspectives so you can grow as well?
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So I think a big part of courage is not just
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persevering in the face of adversity, right, that s part of it, or overcoming anxiety or fear, but it s also being willing to admit the need to grow and learn, that you don t have all the answers, being willing to demonstrate some degree of vulnerability or humility, right, because that allows for growth.
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And as a leader, I hope everyone out there that s leading is
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also looking to grow as a way to support their team or the people that follow them.
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That s a big part of what it is.
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How do you engage with multiple perspectives while maintaining your own moral compass?
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I think that is so important for any person to learn regardless of where you are in your leadership journey because
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Along it and over time, you are going to be faced with different circumstances that will test you.
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And so having that core underpinning of self is so important.
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And before we get into talking about self, Brian, I was introduced to you by Katie Milkman, and I wanted to ask you about their behavioral change for good initiative, because I think it is doing a lot of good in bringing real life application of behavioral change to the world.
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I was hoping I could get your perspective on it.
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Yeah, I love the work they re doing and looking at data and really large sets of data to mine that for ways for people to improve their lives, to make better decisions, I think is incredibly important and innovative.
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We ve gotten to this place now where so much data available and most of it I think is used to sell people stuff.
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It s mine to figure out how to better convince this consumer to buy this product or that product or how to squeeze a little bit more profit out of people.
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I don t think we ve yet used that data effectively to improve people s lives, not just in terms of materialized by getting people to buy more things and make the economy run, but how to improve people s health, how to improve people s
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the quality of people s relationships.
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And I really, the kind of work that Katie and others are doing is really important on that front.
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So I applaud the work and the effort.
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Well, today we re going to be discussing the important work that you ve been doing for over 25 years.
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And we re going to be discussing your great new book.
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I m going to put it up here.
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It s called Selfless, The Social Creation of You.
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And we ll put a big splash on YouTube as well.
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But in the book, and I m going to start out with this, you write that you are you, a bundle of experiences, wants and needs, actions taken and avoided, all made coherent because they flow from a single source, you.
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And I found that such a fascinating perspective and I wanted to ask you through the lens of that quote, I think it would be ideal for the audience if you could introduce this concept of self and how it gives us coherence to the world around us.
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I think what I was describing there is what most people experience the self as, right?
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They experience it as a sense of
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clarity about themselves.
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I don t know what else to say.
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So it s funny to talk about the self because it s so inextricable from my experience that it s tough to even put the language around it to try to step back and talk about it sometimes.
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This sense of coherence is what most people experience of the self.
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The sense of I m having this experience and this experience connects to experience I had in the past and it helps me understand this interaction I m having right now and I can use it to predict how I ll behave in the future.
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All these things cohere together in a way that gives the sense of I am me.
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And what I push against a little bit in the book is that feeling might not be completely accurate, right?
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Not that there isn t a self, but it might not be the same thing that it seems to be, or it may not be what it feels like.
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And by that sense of I m me, for most people, is experiences inside them.
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It s a little person in their head.
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And what I m saying is, no, maybe that s not right.
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Maybe it s constructed in community.
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It s constructed in the relationships you have, that it s not emanating from inside you, but that it s being constructed with you outside of you.
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With that as a backdrop, and we re going to be discussing a lot more about those relationships, what function does self serve and why do we even need self?
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Oh, that s a great question.
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I love this question.
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It s hard to say if we need self the way we experience it now or not.
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One of the things I talk about in the book is some historians of like classic societies, or you think of like ancient Greeks and Romans, some people argue that the self as we experience it today, the way you experience yourself, didn t exist in the same way then as it does now.
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So is it necessary in terms of the way we experience it now?
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I don t know.
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But I think it s really useful in terms of situating you in the world.
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The sense that having a self allows you to understand what others expect of you,
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It allows you to make decisions about whether you want pie or cake, or whether you want potato chips or broccoli.
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All these decisions that you make, your preferences, your responses to the way people engage with you, all of these things are made coherent by your sense of self or by the self.
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But that s different from part of your question, which is as I experience it, is that, the thing that I experience, is that necessary?
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Oh, no, maybe not.
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Well, I know there was a time in my career, and it s been about a decade ago, where I really started to take a closer look at the idea of the self inside of me.
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And I have to admit, cracks started to emerge.
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I found that I was, instead of being what I would have thought my authentic self, in some ways I was hiding behind a mask of what I was being led to believe by society as opposed to who I truly was inside.
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And do you think that is something that impacts most people?
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I m a professor, so I like to ask questions when people ask me questions.
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That s fine.
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Let s do it.
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So it s possible that it s masks all the way down.
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That makes sense.
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By that, I simply mean that when you say you have a mask on, I think what you probably mean, and you can correct me if I m wrong, is that you presented a self to people as a part based on what you thought people wanted you to be or what you were supposed to be.
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And there was a sense that that wasn t real.
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And then behind that mask, there was something else.
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But it could be that what was behind that mask was just a different version of you, and maybe you felt for whatever reason more comfortable in that, but you could argue that also was just a mask.
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By that I mean there is nothing but masks, if what you mean is
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a mask is something that is constructed in engagements with other people, right?
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So if I am right now with you, I m being, I don t know, my podcast self.
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And is this my real self?
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I don t know.
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People who met me in the world, would I behave this way?
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Would I talk in the way I talk now?
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Would I answer questions the same way?
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I don t know.
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Probably not.
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But is that
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any less real than how I would behave if they did see me in the bar?
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I don t know.
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Be different for sure, probably.
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But both those things would be real.
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And if you saw me, if you were in a class of mine and you were sitting in the class and I m teaching, would that be real?
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I don t know what that means, but it d be real at that moment.
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And so all these things as we go through life are
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You could argue our masks, right?
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So I think Shakespeare, it s all the world s a stage and we re all players.
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I m sure I m butchering it, but everybody gets the idea, right?
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They were always playing some role.
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You mean Rushton come up with that line?
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I m joking.
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Well, I have to tell you, one of the questions that I detest, and I m sure everyone has gotten it, is someone walks up to you, starts having a conversation, and says either, who are you or what do you do?
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And the fact, as you re explaining, is we all have multiple selves.
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So as I m asked that question, I m always thinking, well, I m someone s child.
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I m a parent.
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I ve been a senior executive in the past.
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I love to sail.
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I love the boat.
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I m an athlete.
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I m a writer.
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I m a podcaster.
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I m a YouTuber.
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And, you know, what determines which one
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really depends on the given situation that I find myself in.
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Do you think that s true?
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100 percent.
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It s a big part of the book.
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What I m saying is it s a big part of where you are and the biggest part of that is who you re with.
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I mean that broadly, right?
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So a number of the things you pointed out are relational, like you re like, I m a son, I m a dad, right?
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Even being a sailor at Sigmund Park, you do it in a competitive team sport way, in which case other people are involved in that identity as well.
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And so many of our identities, and I d argue most of them, depend on other people.
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You cannot be a dad if someone doesn t have a son or daughter, if you don t have a child, right?
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and saying you can t be someone s brother if you don t have a sibling.
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These things depend on other people.
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And that s one way to see what I m saying, that who you are is embedded in and created by relationships and interactions.
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Someone said this, and I thought it was really apt.
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It s like, whenever you say I, maybe you should really be saying we.
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As I told you before we got on today, Thursday is one of my race days for sailing and you re absolutely right when you walk on that boat.
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No one gives a hell what you do outside of whether you can perform or not on that boat.
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It s so interesting because you rarely get that question.
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Everything is questions about your sailing experience, what position you like best on the boat, what boats you ve sailed on, what you re most comfortable with, etc.
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So this situational
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aspect of self, as you said, is so important.
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But getting back to your question about the mask, for me, a fundamental discovery was reading Susan Cain s book, Quiet, because going to the Naval Academy, then being in the military, then being in big four consulting, and then the Fortune 500 world,
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Being an extrovert is what is really rewarded and I always struggled with it because I felt like I was a fish out of water and it wasn t until I read Quiet that I really understood that I was an introvert and the reason I was so exhausted by the time I came home at night is because I was trying to be something that I wasn t because that s what every
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everyone else around me was.
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And so that s part of the mask that I was talking about.
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And part of the reason I shifted to doing what I m doing now, because I m more comfortable doing it and don t have to deal with 100% of those extroverted interactions that I used to have to deal with.
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It s interesting being an introvert and doing podcasting, by the way.
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There s an introvert s choice, but I wonder how that feels to you because you re on stage and you push it out.
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I m curious how you think about it.
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Well, I tell you, I dread looking at the original videos or listening to the original podcast because I was definitely not comfortable in my own shoes, but I think
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Parts of it that I love is the research and the writing aspect that I get to do.
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So having an opportunity to read all these books, do the research that I do on the guests and then my solo episodes, I find really fulfilling.
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And then over time, I ve just gotten more comfortable now that I m a few hundred into these interviews of interviewing people and knowing how to connect.
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But if I had to do five, six, seven of these a day, I think it would get very tiresome.
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Yeah, I think it would be really tough.
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And I m curious how, when you connect, like how is it, how do you do it?
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What are your techniques to connect?
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The most important thing for me is I don t want to give the listener the same interview that they re going to get from someone else.
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And one way I differentiate that is through the lens that I do the show.
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But more importantly, I try to do research on the guest so that I m asking different questions than other people are going to elicit.
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And then I also read every author s book.
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So I try to pick
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quotes out of it I did with you or other things because I think you learn a lot about a person by reading their books.
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And I think by doing that, it brings me closer to the author.
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It s in my way of showing the author respect because
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Having a book coming out myself, I understand how many years and the effort that goes behind creating these.
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So to me, it s a bit of respect to the authors for the works that they re producing.
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Yeah, well, I ll say I really appreciate that.
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And one of the things that I love about that answer is part of what you re describing is a co-creation of the author and you in the interaction.
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So right now you ve read my book, you brought up my quote, you re asking me questions other people don t ask me.
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So we are having a really unique interaction, but in that I get to be a unique person and you get to be a unique person in those interactions and in this interaction, other interactions you have with authors.
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Part of what I try to point out to people in the book is every interaction has that possibility.
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And every person is a whole world, which is amazing, right?
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So you read the book, but even if I hadn t written a book, there would still be all those experiences in there.
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And what a joy to be able to engage with people, like to be able to engage with you and hear about your sailing and your process and how you came to do this.
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It changes me and being able to interact with you.
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And that s one of the things I think people miss when they think of themselves as singular islands, as opposed to people that are being
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constructed in their interactions and their relationships and their conversations.
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Well, I have to tell you last week when I went sailing, I hit like an hour worth of traffic.
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I didn t have my podcast all complete for the day.
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And I get on the boat.
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I don t belong to the club.
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So I have to park about a half a mile away.
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So I m late for the boat.
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I m running to get there, I get on the boat, my mind is everywhere but on the boat.
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And then we start doing the race.
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And it was as if I had never even sailed before in my entire life.
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When I ve been doing it for 30 years, I felt so bad.
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But it is interesting.
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I use that as an example because our self really does fluctuate given the circumstances.
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One of the things I found interesting in your introduction was that
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You wrote that our felt experience of the world differs from what research may show us.
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And I thought it was interesting how you brought up some of the different researchers over history.
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And I was hoping you could explain that a little bit.
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I ll give one example that I like to talk about.
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It s called this enfacement effect.
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So in this effect, you re looking at someone else.
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They re sitting across from you at the desk, let s say, and you feel somebody stroke your cheek lightly.
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And in one of the conditions, you see someone else, the person you re sitting across from, you see their cheek get stroked at the exact same time in the same way.
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In the other condition, you get your face stroked, but you don t see anyone else s face getting stroked, the person that s sitting next to you.
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Okay, so then they do this thing where they show you photos.
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So there s a photo of you and a photo of the person you were looking at.
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And then they morph the photos.
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So there s everything from 100% you to 100% them and 50-50 and a lot in between.
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And they show you the photos sequentially.
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So they just show a photo and you re like, all right, the question is only, is that photo mostly you?
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or mostly the person you were looking at.
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And obviously when it s 100% what s you, you re not confused about what you look like.
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I assume people know what they look like.
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But what s interesting is when it gets to be close to 50-50.
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So let s say it s 52% the other person and 48% you.
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then it s a little harder.
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And what you find is people who felt their face getting stroked and saw the other person s face getting stroked at the same time, they tend to think a face that s a little bit more the other person is mostly them.
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But people who didn t have that simultaneous stroking, don t make that mistake.
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And what in essence is happening is you re starting to see that person s face as a part of you.
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And I find that really interesting because it suggests that you don t just know who you are.
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You don t just know your face.
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You know your face because of the experiences you re having with it.
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And that s probably not how it feels.
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It feels like me.
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I know me.
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I would never confuse anyone else with me.
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But this study suggests, and you can connect a number of other studies too, that point in the same direction that
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Turns out, you can probably confuse yourself with other people.
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That almost certainly is happening to some extent, and you just don t notice it.
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There are also studies, for example, that can produce out-of-body experiences.
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So you feel like you re in your body, and that s the only way it could be, but you can systematically get people to feel as if their self is outside of their body.
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So these things just challenge the feeling that we have day to day of how things work or how things must be and suggest that no, it s not, it just feels that way.
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It might not be a reflection of some reality, right?
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It s not objective truth.
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It s just the way it feels.
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And there s all sorts of stuff, all kinds of studies, things like,
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If I tell you that someone who was in your same room didn t get their towels washed every day, you re less likely to get your towels washed every day than if I tell you that a good environmentalist doesn t wash their towels every day.
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That s strange.
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It s just strange that you re more influenced by being told about someone in your room did than being told about what the environmentalist does.
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So there s all these, there s tons of studies in social psychology which provide evidence that
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The way you think the world is, is probably not actually how it is.
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I m going to just jump on that.
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It got me to thinking of this interview I just released with Dacher Keltner, who you might know at Berkeley.
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And Dacher just wrote this great book called Awe.
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And one of the things that was so shocking to me when I read his research
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was I think of awe historically as being out in nature and seeing something like the Grand Canyon or the birth of a child or being at a wedding or perhaps being at a funeral or someone who s close to dying.
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He found that people experience it most during moments of what he calls moral beauty.
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which is ourself seeing others perform an act of kindness towards someone else.
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And I thought it was really beautiful.
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And it is an interesting way to perceive yourself through the acts of others.
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I don t know if you ve ever thought about that.
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Yeah, I haven t thought about that in particular.
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I mean, I think there s a degree of identification with other people.
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And I can imagine that when you identify with someone who s engaging in behaviors like that, that it has a deep effect on you for sure.
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But I think about it, I really love that description.
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I know Dakar, he s a great guy, but I haven t had yet the chance to read the book.
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But I ll check it out.
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But I really like that description of Henry
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response to this kind of moral behavior, moral law.
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It s really nice.
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Yeah, that s what I felt.
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I felt it was really an interesting way that people can start viewing the world differently and find awe more frequently, because oftentimes it s so elusive to find it.
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You wrote that how we see another person is in some ways influenced by what we have been unconsciously, in many ways, taught to see through the people that we see.
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And it s interesting, and I m just going to use an example of this.
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Last year, I ended up interviewing a Pro Bowl cornerback named Sean Springs.
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And prior to interviewing him, and I had never met him prior to that, I think of this tough football player who played for the Seahawks and the Washington Redskins.
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And I was preparing myself
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to meet someone who I thought would be similar to many other professional football players that I had met.
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And when I actually met him, he came across completely different.
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He was extremely vulnerable, very empathetic, open about some of the struggles that he had faced in his life.
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But
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thing I wanted to ask you is, how do we see people in a way that we have been taught to see them and not as how we should see them?
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Not sure if I m asking it the right way, but hopefully you get
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Yeah, I get what you re saying.
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So I talk about this and I think everyone has this experience.
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If you go, I don t know, go to a bar or to a coffee shop or just somewhere where you might go by yourself and sit down and other people are around, maybe even sit close to other people.
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you have a sense of who they are because of the groups they appear to belong to.
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That could be age, it could be ethnicity, it could be if you have a sense of what their profession is, right?
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All these things influence who we think the person is because we are tribal beings, we belong to groups, we put other people in groups, and then we assign people attributes as a function of those groups.
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And so
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We make decisions, not just how we interact with people, but who we interact with at all based on these kind of superficial cues.
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And so we don t really have the opportunity to engage with as many people in as deep a way as we might for those reasons.
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And that s really a hard thing to overcome because, again, all the evidence points to just the strong tribal nature of human beings.
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The nature of the groups shift around all the time, so there s nothing inherent in the groups.
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It s just that we tend to think in terms of groups and behave accordingly.
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Well, one of the things you bring up about those groups is the impact of structure and how it fills an existential need.
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And when I think of structure, I think of religions that people belong to, it could be beliefs, it could be social clubs, things like that.
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How does structure impact ourself?
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Oh, I would say the self is a structure.
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So remember, we opened by talking about the sense of coherence, like that is structure, right?
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You have a sense that who you were a week ago is who you are now, because it all gets fit together in this structure.
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I think you just have this sense that the world
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is orderly, when it probably is not orderly at all.
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But we impose that, right?
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Religions do this in a very explicit way, but we all are looking for and seeing structure in the world as a way to navigate it, as a way to make it
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more understandable, to make it safer.
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So this is just, again, a part of human nature.
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There are studies that show if you are in a state of, say, let s call it anxiety, I ll simplify, and you re shown, say, white noise, static, you re more likely to see something in that static than if you re already in a calmer state that people seek out.
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When there s uncertainty, people seek out structure, and they impose it even when it doesn t exist.
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In terms of self, my claim is not that structure doesn t exist.
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It s just that we internalize it in a way that allows for us to think in terms of a coherent self that is, in many people s minds, mostly invariant over time.
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We feel like we re the same.
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People say, no, I m different, but they don t really mean it.
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What they mean is I have learned, but they don t mean that I am not the same me I was usually.
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But I d argue maybe.
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The self is fluid in ways that we don t acknowledge.
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Well, I m going to switch directions here.
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I have been trying to do a number of episodes on the topics of the epidemics of loneliness and hopelessness that are impacting so many people s version of self.
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And I have seen through many of these discussions the impact that the digital environment is having on our lives, both positively and negatively.
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And I recently had on Seton Hall Professor Gaia Bernstein, who had a book called Unwired and also had your peer down the road, Gloria Mark on about her research on attention span.
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And where I wanted to focus is you wrote a research paper in 2022 on the implications of digital environments on self.
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And I was hoping you could discuss some of your findings.
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This is in collaboration with a colleague of mine who s now a professor in London, Anas Talifair.
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What we basically argue is that technologies we currently use, it might be hindering the development of self.
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When I said earlier that the self changes, it s fluid, even people don t really completely accept that.
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They do expect the self to evolve.
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So by that, for example, most people don t want to think about their middle school selves as who they are today.
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If you re an adult now, you might cringe, but most people look back like, wow, happy I made it through.
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Maybe I m projecting.
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Maybe that s just me.
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But part of that is because our relationships evolve, like we have new friends, obviously we have new experiences, but memories fade, right?
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You remember middle school a little bit different, which allows you to evolve.
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Or some of the things that were painful, you don t have to be confronted with every day.
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And now it s as if history never goes away.
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There s footprints everywhere.
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So that s one thing we point to, the increased difficulty of forgetting.
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because of the digital world now.
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And we also point to the use of algorithms that tells you what you should like.
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And I get why people like it because they re efficient and often they re right.
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If they put something in front of you that you should like, there s a good chance you will like it.
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But it also reduces the possibility of serendipity, of finding something that you didn t think you would like and liking it.
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or find something you quote-unquote should not like but actually enjoy.
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That becomes harder to do when you allow algorithms based on your past experiences and experiences of people like you to dictate the choices that are presented to you.
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And so when you start thinking about that, everything from music to the books we read, so if you re doing dating apps so that people you might date
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what options being shown to you are being curated based on who you were, on people like you, and which makes it difficult to become a different you.
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Those are a couple things that we talk about in that article.
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Well, I think the other thing that s interesting is these influencers that so many people are following and who are influencing the way people are living their lives,
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as you and I were just talking, when we re on a podcast, we re a different self than we re in a different situation.
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So it was interesting because when you think of these mommy bloggers, for instance, that is just their persona when they re influencing someone.
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It s not who they are in real life.
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And yet these personas that people put on are actually influencing culture in many ways.
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and in some ways to a very negative realm because especially for women, I think more influencers are females than males.
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And I just look at the repercussions that it had even on my own daughter of seeing herself and her own body image through what other people are trying to project and not the fact that everyone is beautiful and who they are within themselves.
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It is tough.
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Yeah, it s really tough.
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I think it s certainly the case that influencers are
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part of the culture and as such, they re influencing the culture, not just, I don t know, a few thousands or a few million even people who engage with their content.
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And this is, again, something that is important to keep in mind that I think people know, but maybe don t engage with as deeply as they should, which is, it s hard to be outside of the culture you re in and everyone is influencing it.
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So you don t have to engage with the content of an influencer to be affected by it.
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And how does that happen?
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It happens because people who do engage with that content are interacting with you at the coffee shop or at the library or at the grocery store.
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And they are influencing you in ways that you sometimes can see and sometimes can t, that we are all connected as a part of the communities that we re in.
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And these lines of influence flow through these interactions and relationships.
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It doesn t require direct contact with, say, an influence to be affected by them because we re also interconnected and those connections are changing who we are.
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They re changing the way we see the world.
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And I think if we take that seriously, we can maybe engage with it more effectively.
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One of the key points that you bring up throughout the book is that society is an intricate social game.
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And
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What are the give and takes of how others create us and how we create them?
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When I interact with you and accept you as a podcaster, I am in some sense demanding that you be a podcaster.
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At least this interaction, right?
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You talked about sailing, but in this interaction, you re not a sailor, really, right?
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And it d be hard to be a sailor in this interaction.
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In that sense, I am affecting who you are in this moment and who you can be.
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Even though you re the host and I m the guest, it s still a co-creation, right?
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And I am a book author and I am a respondent to your questions.
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And that only allows me so much range in this interaction.
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And that s how all of our interactions go.
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They re all like that.
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We are giving people a certain amount of leeway, and they are in return affecting what we can be.
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That s the give and take.
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For example, we have an agreement about who we each are.
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We didn t talk about it.
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It s just a part of the interaction that evolved in the context of the conversation and the situation as it was set up.
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And again, that s how all of our interactions go.
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And I think it can feel confining, but it also is necessary and for many people comforting because it helps me understand
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how to be in this interaction and what a successful interaction would look like.
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And it feels good to have a smooth, interesting conversation with you, right?
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And the price I pay for that is, the extent that it s a price is, I am limited in what I can be to make this work.
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Well, I hope you re not limiting it too much.
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And it seems to think it s fine.
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I think this is a book.
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In the book, there s a, the center of the book is a fundamental tension between freedom and self.
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So the claim is that the self is a construction of relationships.
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Right now, you re participating in constructing who I am.
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And any definition, any construction requires limits, right?
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If there are no boundaries, then it s unclear who I am.
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And so even though there s a, in terms of freedom, there s also a huge benefit in terms of clarity, in terms of a sense of self in this moment.
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And that often is,
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not just comforting, but rewarding.
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It feels good.
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It feels good to have clarity about who you are.
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And you cannot have that without other people.
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I m glad you went there because I was going to ask you, what does it mean to have freedom?
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So you just nailed it.
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Freedom is a really interesting thing from my perspective, and it s getting more attention lately, but mostly because of our current politics.
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I think it s a concept that really is worth thinking about, because it s this word that has all these positive connotations in our society.
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Like, I ve written, like, freedom gives this patina of virtue to everything it touches, right?
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Like, more freedom is better.
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Like, freedom of speech, academic freedom, parental freedom.
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You just put freedom next to it, and it all of a sudden sounds like good and
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worthy.
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But the reality is, freedom is also terrifying.
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And most people, I d argue, don t really want full freedom.
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Not because they re weak or anything like that, but because you would be lost.
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You would be untethered.
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What would it mean to not be a father, not be a son, not be a sailor, not be a pie caster?
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SPEAKER_01
To have the things that you described as who you are, to have all those go away, that would not be a better life, I wouldn t argue.
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SPEAKER_00
Well it is different when you think about it that way, that in some ways freedom could cause us to have conflict within ourselves and by having these identities it creates a sense of self that in some ways grounds us and protects us.
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What is it?
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Yeah, and you write in the book that the contents of our identities can also sometimes be in conflict.
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Do you think that can be impacted by the freedom that we have or that we don t have?
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If there was no such thing as gender, right, then all the conflicts that arise as a function of gender would cease to be conflicts, but you d have given up all the benefits associated with the idea of gender.
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So this is the kind of trade-off.
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So I think most people, I ll just say with gender, see gender as a big part of how they understand themselves.
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Like in our world, it s organized in that way.
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When you go shopping for clothes, you know what stores you should go into and the kind of clothes you should buy generally based on your gender.
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Now, obviously there s nothing about written in stone and there are people who have different views about what makes them comfortable and what they should do, and that s fine.
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But this concept of gender serves a huge organizing role.
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Here, I just want to be clear that I m not saying that gender should exist the way it exists right now or that it has to.
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It can exist in all sorts of ways, but I think, again, it s a good example of a limitation that most people accept because it provides a degree of clarity and a degree of grounding and feeling tethered to the world.
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And in fact,
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When people s conception of gender doesn t meet other people s conceptions, it can be really painful because gender is so important in terms of organizing society.
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When you feel like your sense of gender doesn t match society s, there s going to be a lot of discomfort associated with that, I would assume.
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So that s, again, an example of if you got rid of it, would there be more freedom?
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Yes.
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Would the world be better?
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I don t know.
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Maybe not.
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But I think this unexamined elevation of the concept of freedom is probably a mistake.
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Well, I can t have you on the show without talking about purpose and meaning and passion.
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And in the book, you write that to live life as you would like requires knowing what you want in the first place.
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What is the link between self and having meaning or purpose?
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You might have had people on here that talked about this already.
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In psychology, there s research on meaning in life or the experience of meaning in life.
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And in that research, people talk about three, and people use different language, but here I ll just give the three maybe most common components that are necessary to have the experience of meaning in life.
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So one is coherence, right?
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You have to be coherent.
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The world has to feel coherent.
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That s one coherence.
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The other one is purpose.
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So you have to get up and there has to be something that you want to do.
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Like these are generally thought of as goals, right?
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Like you get up and there s something to do.
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There s some reason to get up in the morning.
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Get out of bed.
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The third one is significance, which means that there s something more than the present moment that matters, right?
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That you matter in some way.
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So people call significance, some people call it mattering.
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So those are the three things.
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So it s coherence, it s purpose, and then it s significance.
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And again, you can think of significance as mattering.
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Those are the three things.
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So what does that have to do with the self?
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So I think the self is
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a primary importance for two of those.
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So first, coherence.
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Without a self, there cannot be the experience of meaning because that meaning has to attach to you, right?
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You want your life to feel meaningful.
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There s a you at the center of that.
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So you have to have a self for that part.
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So that s the easiest one.
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Then purpose, I don t, that one is like the least tightly tied to self, but I think this one is, we haven t talked about yet, that I find really interesting.
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Significance to me is about time.
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Meaning, do you matter?
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Will you matter when you re gone, even?
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And the self is interesting in that it can kind of function like a time machine.
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So when you have a self, you can project back into the future by your feeling of connection to, I don t know, your grandparents or your great-grandparents or the land your ancestors were from, right?
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People have this sense of connection to a history that quite predated them.
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That s interesting, right?
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So you can feel connected to the past, but you can also project yourself into the future, maybe the most
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A common way to think about that right now is the country you re from.
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So people want to feel like they re contributing to their nation in some way.
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Or they feel, not everyone, but a lot of people feel deeply connected to their nation.
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And you can think about that connection as a way to outlive your physical self.
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Because when you die, your nation will still be here.
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So anything you contributed to the nation will continue to live.
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And so the self, by allowing you to project into the future, allows you to have a feeling of significance.
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It makes you feel like you matter.
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I matter, this thing I did mattered.
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And not mattered just right now, but mattered in some bigger way.
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And so without that sense of self, and being able to connect to something bigger than you, it d be hard to have a sense of significance or matter, and it d be hard to have meaning in life.
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So I think the self is like a time machine, which is, I don t know, it s something about that I love, right?
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Like you, yourself can continue to live even after you re gone.
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And there s also actually research on this that suggests that when you re afraid of death, you try to hold on tightly to identities that allow you to live beyond your death, like connections to your country, for example.
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Well, an interesting interview I did was with Benjamin Hardy, and he has a book on the science of future self, but he also has one he wrote with Dan Sullivan called The Gap and the Gain, and it s a really interesting concept because what they re saying is that when we measure ourselves, so often we re doing it in the gap, and that is
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we re trying to compare ourselves to other people that we see versus the gain is when we compare ourselves to our past self and the gains that we ve made between the two.
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But I think, and I m just as guilty as it is anyone, it s hard not to compare yourself to others.
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It s hard for me not to want to compare myself to Jay Shetty because he s killing it.
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But when you do that, you re comparing yourself to a false expectation of someone who has been doing something longer than you as a completely different approach, different identity themselves.
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So it is a risky thing to do.
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Yeah, this is another way of us knowing ourselves.
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We may not be the most healthy, but even that imaginary relationship, you re making sense of yourself.
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And I think this is why it s hard to do it, right?
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There s this constant desire to try to situate yourself in the social world.
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Well, Brian, I have two questions left for you, and one of them piqued my interest.
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You said in the book that when we define ourself, we re describing limits that make us.
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Can you explain what you meant by that?
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Yeah.
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Often when we think about definitions, we think of describing what is, but definitions also require you to say what isn t.
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It s a drawing a circle around the thing, like a tree is not grass, a tree is not a bush.
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When you say what a tree is, you re either implicitly or explicitly saying what it is not.
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And the same thing is true of us.
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Like when you say I am a thing, there s all these things that are being left unsaid of what you are not.
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but that are implied.
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So when you define the self, you are drawing a boundary around yourself, which has to exclude certain things.
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And I think the boundaries we draw are probably wrong, right?
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We re excluding things that probably shouldn t be a part of what we re defining.
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Absolutely, because the way others see us is different than we perceive ourselves.
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And they even perceive our strengths and weaknesses differently than we see them ourselves.
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And my last question for you, and it s one that I love to ask authors is, if someone picked up your book, what would be a core thing that you would want them to get from it?
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Oh, I appreciate that question because I have a very clear idea of what I want people to get from it.
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Let me start by saying what I don t want people to get from it.
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The book is not designed to be prescriptive.
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If you read the book, you ve noticed this, that I don t tell people what they should do, in part because people s lives are so complex that who am I to say how they should live their life?
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That s tough.
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But what I hope people do when they read the book is to let it wash over them and to really consider the possibilities that are implied or explicitly stated in the book.
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And what I hope people walk away with is a sense of awe about what s possible in life and who they are and how big they are and how big they could be.
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I hope they walk away with that same feeling of awe about every person they bump into, who those people are, who they could be, and what it means to interact with other human beings.
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The profound nature of human connection and the construction of each other in those connections and the responsibility that that implies and the gift that it is.
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So that s what I hope people get, a simpler level,
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What I hope happens is that it raises questions for people, that it expands their view of the world, that the world becomes a bigger, more interesting place, mostly through the quality of the questions that the book raises for them.
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That s what I hope.
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Well, that s one of the better answers I ve ever gotten.
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So I loved it.
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Thank you.
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Thank you.
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I appreciate that.
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So if the audience wants to learn more about Brian Lowry, where s the best place for them to do that at?
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That s great.
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So I have a podcast called Know What K-N-O-W What and the website knowwhat.com, which has the podcast episodes.
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I also have a webinar that is the class you asked about is available to the public.
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So people can see past interviews and they ll see, they can see the upcoming course if they like.
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that generally runs in the wintertime.
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And writings are up on the website as well.
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And obviously, I hope people buy the book, Selfless, The Social Construction of You.
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And yeah, any updates will be available on the website.
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Know what to come.
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Well, Brian, thank you so much for giving us the honor of being here today on Passion Struck.
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I really enjoyed it.
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Thank you so much for having me.
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It was a fun conversation.
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I thoroughly enjoyed that interview with Dr. Brian Lowry, and I wanted to thank Brian and Katie Milkman for the honor and privilege of having them appear here on the show.
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Links to all things Brian will be in the show notes at passionstruck.com.
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Please use their website links if you purchase any of the books from the guests that we feature here on the show.
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All proceeds go to supporting the show.
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Advertiser deals and discount codes are in one convenient place at passionstruck.com slash deals.
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You can find us also on our YouTube channels at both John R. Miles, as well as Passionstruck Clips.
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I am also now on syndicated radio on the AM-FM 247 national broadcast.
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Catch us on your evening commute Monday and Friday from 5 to 6 p.m.
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Eastern Time.
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Links will be in the show notes.
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And my book, Passionstruck, which releases in February, is now available for pre-order.
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Links will also be in the show notes.
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You can catch me on LinkedIn, where you can also sign up for my newsletter, or you can find me at John R. Miles on all the different social platforms where I post daily.
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Please go and check it out.
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You re about to hear a preview of the Passion Struck Podcast interview I did with Rebecca Rosen, who is a psychic medium and author of the new book, What Is Heaven?
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Rebecca serves as a mediator between two realms, the physical world, which entails everyday problems, and the spiritual world, where she has gained insight, revealing that every individual is born
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the unique mission.
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And it is our responsibility to fulfill it in this earth school.
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You re making choices in the frequency of shadow, in ego.
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You re disconnected.
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And it s a very limited place.
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It s a very fear-based place.
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And that s what creates our depression, our struggle, our frustration, our anxiety.
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And that is a definition of a living hell.
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But it doesn t have to be that way.
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It s not supposed to be that way.
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When you plug in every day to your higher self, to your team and spirit, to your source, whatever you call it, and it becomes a collaboration or co-creation with this divine energy, you then show up and connect into those frequencies of light.
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And you make choices from light, which is that aligned place, the place that connects to love and compassion.
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Remember,
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We rise by lifting others.
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So share this show with those that you love and care about.
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And if you found today s episode useful and you know someone who wants to learn more about how to become selfless, then please share this episode with them.
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In the meantime, do your best to apply what you hear on the show so that you can live what you listen.
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And until next time, go out there and be passion struck.