this is a very serious podcast Drew I can I can tell already Yes How can you tell well the jacket you're wearing I figured a blazer today I figured somebody needs to take this seriously around here Okay So uh it's you know we're doing values today It's a very deep philosophical topic It's a new podcast You know somebody's got to be a professional in the building I know you just woke up like 20 minutes ago I did Uh you know ran a a comb through your hair second You didn't even do that Uh you just a barbarian over here Well I'm glad you're keeping it classy for us You're welcome Yeah the inaugural episode of the Solve podcast My god we've been working on this thing for so freaking Seems like a very long time at this point while still doing the other podcast I know I know It's almost like six months of prep for this It's here It's here It is here No I'm excited for this episode It's in many ways this subject this podcast that we're about to record uh is feels long overdue Like I I don't think maybe not everybody realizes but you know the thing that I'm best known for is the book The Subtle Art and Not Giving a [ __ ] And that book did spectacularly well It was a huge bestseller all over the world And I think obviously you know people will flippantly kind of make comments of like oh it's because of the title It's because of the F-word First of all that's not why it did so well because many of the translations did not have the f- word in the title But I really think the reason that book resonated so much is because it was a little bit of a Trojan horse for the subject of values which is like essentially when you ask yourself what is worth giving a [ __ ] about what is worth caring about what is worth worrying and stressing and staying up late at night being anxious about that's essentially a question of what's worth valuing like what am I going to make important in my life and what am I going to prioritize and I really do think in this day and age in the 21st century that question is harder to answer than ever There's kind of like a a sick psychological side effect of living in such an abundant world and that when you have all these opportunities when you have all these options when you have all this information in front of you it becomes that much more difficult to distinguish what is worth pursuing and what's not what is worth listening to and what's not what's worth caring about and what's not and that book kind of started to tackle that question I think it at least identified the problem correctly and maybe pointed people in the right direction of like what they should be thinking about but in many ways it it never dove deep into the topic and it never got super prescriptive on the topic And I think those are two things that we're going to do today Um our goal with this is to be exhaustive on the subject That's kind of the whole basis of this podcast is the whole point of Solved is to give you everything you possibly need on each episode's topic so that you will never have to listen to another podcast about that topic ever again So we are going to go super deep We're going to get very philosophical We're going to go through probably half a dozen different psychological frameworks I also think that values is is a little bit tricky I I almost feel like we're starting on hard mode because it's such a slippery and abstract concept Like everybody kind of intuitively knows what it is but when you actually really start to try to define it it gets super broad and and abstract very quickly But all that said I think this is in many ways arguably the most important topic that we might cover on this podcast at least for a long time And the reason for that is that ultimately when you do look at psychological outcomes psychological well-being life satisfaction metrics like that living in accordance to one's values is arguably the most important thing you can possibly do It is the driver of so many positive outcomes in your life It orients you towards so many good things that can potentially happen I mean just within the body of research that we went through in preparation for this episode Um we found data showing that it lowers stress brings more peace and clarity into your life It creates more emotional resilience and stability Uh it makes people feel that their lives are more meaningful They experience more day-to-day happiness not just hedonic pleasure but like an actual long-term life satisfaction It helps with decision- making It helps with prioritization Uh it generates healthier more honest long-term relationships with more stability and less drama Uh and it also generates more motivation and drive in people Values it is not just a nice fun fluffy idea It is it is in many ways the cornerstone of modern day mental health and uh uh and well-being and um and honestly they're just drastically underd discussed It's it's funny because when you you know if you I don't know if you get on uh uh Tik Tok or if you watch cable news or if you listen to other podcasts like current events podcasts like with political topics or whatever you read read the news the headlines values are imbued in every single thing you're reading and listening to yet they are never discussed and in many cases I think a lot of what passes as like social issues or controversies or cultural problems s are really just two groups of people with diametrically opposed values who are arguing past each other They are both correct locally within their group of people of similar values but globally because they're misaligned with other groups of people they are basically arguing in in an empty vacuum you know just a little bit of an echo chamber So that's everything we have in store Is there anything you want to add before we dive into this well right alongside that what you just mentioned I think um you know there is the problem of there's so many options and so many things out there to give a [ __ ] about right to value um right now that we have a hard time with it There's also I think since the book came out this has gotten worse as well What you were just talking about was there's a lot of people trying to tell you what you should value Yes Um and it's kind of like the water that we all live in that we don't notice right we're like fish in water a little bit and there's values swimming all around us and we don't notice them to your point that you just made a lot of the whatever it is political discussions or big headlines controversies of the day are about values and we're not explicitly saying that and so I think just raising that awareness there and and realizing that there are just a lot of people now and everybody's got a platform to try to you know push their values onto you and being aware of that I think is going to be really important going through all of this I definitely want to come back to that because I think there is a much broader conversation to have around that around religion culture institutions whatnot We'll definitely get into that Yeah I agree It's It is I think that's part of the problem of confusion is what I'm talking about Absolutely And yeah I I agree with you Not only is it the water that we swim in but it it is like so much of the content that we consume is subtly pushing their values onto us without us necessarily explicitly realizing and and then we wonder why we're confused about our own values Yeah Yeah Yeah Totally Okay So th this is a long episode and I just want to lay out a little bit of a road map for the listener so that they'll be oriented uh as they go through the episode Now the first half of the episode we're going to talk about the theory behind values We're going to talk about what they are how we adopt our values in our lives where our values came from how they affect our relationships how they affect our decision-making how they affect our our happiness and our well-being And then in the back half of the episode we're going to get into all of the takeaways and prescriptive advice for the listener So we'll start out with some exercises on how to determine what your core values are We're going to talk about how to decide whether your values are harming you or helping you From there we'll talk about how to actually go about changing a value in your life There are a few different methods and they're probably not what you would expect And finally we're going to finish on this idea of practical wisdom or the idea of balancing your values throughout your life to maintain the most stable form of well-being that you can We'll finish the episode with our personal lessons and takeaways and of course we'll point the listeners to resources where they can learn more Just a reminder for the audience that uh there is a full PDF guide of this episode Uh if you go to solvedpodcast.comvalues you can download it All of the main points and principles are present in that summary uh as well as some of the the stories and anecdotes If you are concerned with like the fundamental points you want to review them later or as we go through the episode or if you want to look up all the citations check our work look at the research yourself look up the papers yourself they're all there as well So go to solvepodcast.com/values and on with the episode All right let's uh let's let's get into the nitty-gritty a little bit of like what is a value how do we define these things what do they look like how are they different yeah let's make it concrete Yeah How how is it different from like a need or a preference or u something you like you know what exactly is a value so modern value theory within psychology is primarily kind of the godfather of it is a Israeli researcher named Scholom Schwarz and he's written a few books on values He's written tons of papers He's the originator of pretty much all the major value surveys that are used in the field today And he defined it as quote beliefs about trans situational goals varying in importance that serve as guiding principles in the life of a person or a group That's a mouthful Sounds like a psychologist definition Yeah exactly Break that down for us Okay So there are really six key characteristics of a value that I think separate it from maybe other things that you might think or feel throughout your life So the first one is that they're linked with emotion Values are inherently very emotional things because by definition they are the things that you consider them to be the most important in your life If you think about I don't know protesters right protesters are never really chill Like they're there's a lot of emotion going on at a protest Or if you think about somebody who who has wronged you in some way like obviously your your emotional reaction is an intense amount of anger That's because a value of yours has just been violated by somebody So that's first one linked with strong emotion Second one is that they motivate action Generally they are not only the thing that define what you want to pursue in your life but they also drive the energy behind that pursuit as well So if you value uh status and a claim not only will it help decide what the goals are that you want to pursue in your life are but it will help get you up in the morning get you excited about the opportunities and the potential that you can experience The third one is is that they apply across context So Schwarz actually has a great term that I really like Uh he calls them trans situational Uh which means that basically they maintain their importance and relevance across contexts So if you value honesty it means you value honesty at work you value honesty in your relationships you value honesty with your friendships you value honesty with your family There's no situation where you're like "Oh well no I don't really care about honesty here." Like if it's a value it's a value No matter where you are what you're doing who you're with The fourth characteristic of of your values is that they are often the standards by which you make moral judgments So it's not just that we become emotional about our values We tend to use them as like the yard stick that we measure other people and we measure ourselves Right so if if I have a very strong value for say personal freedom uh I will judge I will measure myself by that value I will measure myself I if I have a lot of freedom in my life I will feel good about myself If I have no freedom in my life I will feel bad about myself And similarly I'll look at you and I'll say "Man Drew has all this fre freedom in his life That guy's killing it." Or I'll say "Man Drew has no freedom going He can't do anything What a loser." Right it becomes the the yard stick by which we measure progress self-worth worth of others etc etc So fifth characteristic they tend to be ranked We all have value hierarchies going on in our heads and in many ways it kind of defines who we are as a person and what we care about and why we make the decisions we make And then finally number six they involve trade-offs To care deeply about one thing you have to by definition not care about other things or devalue say the contradiction of the thing that you care about So if I care deeply about personal freedom then I'm probably going to care less about things like stability consistency routine um maybe commitments because all of those things are constraints on personal freedom in certain contexts And so if personal freedom is my highest value then I'm probably going to devalue those other things They're going to be lower on my value hierarchy Basically values answer the question what matters what is worth pursuing and what kind of person do I want to become these are really fundamental questions right really really fundamental I mean we're we're like beyond the bounds of personal development At this point we're like into philosophy Uh like what is my life here for what makes you you yeah Exactly like why are how are we separate people and what what is what is the distinction that separates us a couple important clarifications just just for clarity as we go forward There is such a thing as psychological need Um needs are different though from values in that they are a universal right like we all have the same psychological needs in different proportions Um and then secondly they are survival based right so a need for food is like the most obvious example Like if I don't get food I'm gonna die Everybody needs food Certain people like other certain foods more than others but like ultimately food is a need and there's like no negotiation about that There's no argument about it There's no like it doesn't shift over time And it's the same with psychological needs And so there are a handful of psychological needs There are a few different models and frameworks but like a super common one is just like social connection right everybody needs social connection Um everybody needs to feel a sense of belonging Uh that's non-negotiable What changes is like the strategy in which we go about fulfilling that psychological need And this is kind of an insight that I had and it's also it is part of the basis of of where Schwarz developed his framework is that values are in a sense strategies to meet our needs Some people meet their need for connection and and belonging through benevolence through helping others charity giving being generous showing up when they when people need you other people fulfill their need for belonging through you know group affiliation status markers um loyalty and hard work being part of the tribe whatever So it's like different values are different approaches to satisfying the same itches that we all have going on inside of our brains The difference is that psychological needs are permanent over time but values shift and change throughout our lives So chances are you have different values than you did when you were 20 And when you were 20 you had different values than you did when you were eight years old Very much so Yeah Values can change because of things that happen to us right life circumstances change Maybe there's a trauma or tragedy that happens We're going to talk about that a little bit later But we can also proactively shift and change our values as well through our behavior and the things that we focus on reflections that we have about ourselves and whatnot Yeah Finally there's kind of a pedantic difference between values and and preferences Preferences are essentially uh non-impactful tastes uh between things that you don't have a strong emotional attachment to uh that don't reflect on your identity that don't particularly motivate you in any significant way Like you know we can go to a restaurant and my preference is for steak over chicken That's not a value Like I'm not getting out of bed in the morning thinking about the steak I'm going to have tonight right it's it's just like it's choosing between apples and oranges It it doesn't really matter And so there are plenty of things that are are preferencebased Um preferences are are only exist within specific context Values exist crossontext and then needs are permanent and universal So that's the differentiation between those three Yeah I think um going back to the characteristics that that you outlined from Schwarz too uh I think I I hope people are starting to already get a sense of you know the first one on there was they're linked to emotions right it's an emotional thing that people have So you can't really try to change somebody's values especially based on like reason or rationale Yeah And not only that but there's so many different emotions that people can experience at any given time that people are going to be pulled in all sorts of different directions And hopefully you can just kind of step back a little bit and be like "Oh they're operating through their values at an emotional level." And it's not something like it I don't for me anyway that kind of takes away some of the judgment of these values Um when you're looking at other people maybe somebody is obsessed with success right and making money or or having all these outward uh markers of success So but the underlying emotion for that is that belonging right is that they they they have a deep value of belonging to a group or belonging to um other people that they respect And so that kind of takes a little bit of the judgment and the edge off of it for me Anyway I I agree with that I I've got marked somewhere in my notes for this episode uh to talk about empathy Yeah Um h how understanding these frameworks can increase empathy because you understand where people are coming from Even if they have a diametrically opposed value to you you can understand that like that is a life strategy that they developed to fulfill their needs and particularly based on the the culture and the environment that that they grew up in I do think it is helpful to view things that way I also think the the point you made about emotion is super important and probably important for the listener to think about too as we go through this episode Values inherently stoke emotion So that means not only does it stoke emotion when you are out there living out your values but it also means it's going to stoke emotion if something causes you to question your values So there might be a moment in this episode where you and I are talking about something and it causes the listener to question something that they value And as soon as that happens there's going to be a discomfort There might be a sadness There might be an anger There might be an anger towards us Yeah Uh it it is it's not an easy subject to wade through Like this isn't we're not talking about like time boxing your calendar here Like this is very this is as core to who you are as a person uh as you can really get psychologically speaking And so it's it's very I can't overstate like how sensitive some of these topics can be Not in the sense of like oh we might say something offensive but just like questioning one of your own values is one of the most deeply uncomfortable and and unsettling things that you can do I mean it that is essentially like what the work of the the best therapy and the best interventions is trying to do It's trying to get you to look at something that you care about and get you to question whether you should continue car caring about it or not Mhm And we'll talk about this more later but like all of my therapist friends say that one of the most common issues that that occurs when somebody comes in is there's a conflict between two values going We'll get more into that later but just to to to flag that for now Oh yeah there will be plenty of value conflict The other the other point you made um though in this section was about how values are a way to get our needs met M um and so maybe to just make that a little bit more concrete I think I have an example of this where um in my life anyway you know we all have you already mentioned this we all have a need for belonging um and for connection social connection with other people And I think I definitely you know I knew that early on I had this very strong need for belonging Everybody does I think to some extent but the way we go about getting that need met is very different That over the years translated into a value for me of of like friendships and and connection You know we've talked before a lot about like how I do value friendship and you're a much better friend than I am right we we've got to ask you how do you get your need for belonging met more is it is it by um making YouTube videos and podcasts and writing books and no I honestly believe that psychological needs are kind of like I was just going to say macros but that's a horrible analogy That's actually doesn't make any sense at all I see the thread there I see the thread Yeah The the idea is I think like everybody's born with a different amount that they need and and I definitely and whether it's it's genetics or just you know growing up feeling very isolated in childhood like I I I have a very low need for connection I do need it but like I I have noticed throughout my life that I am perfectly fine spending a lot more time alone than most people But there are other things that like I have a very high need for I have a very high need for novelty and and stimulation It's like constant experience Yeah Yeah I think everybody's like that Everybody and some people have a very high need for security and stability Some people have a very high need for um you know status and growth and development developing skill sets It it it's like everybody's a little bit different Yeah Yeah Yeah Is that Are you satisfied i see Yeah That's planting some seeds I think Planting some seeds Okay you're you're going to come back at me here in like 20 minutes I can tell Okay so we're gonna go through you know again because values it's such a abstract topic Um we're going to go through like four or five frameworks here um to help people like really get a handle on this And um hopefully by the time we get through all of them the listener is going to have like a really clear idea of kind of like okay I I can see myself in each of those I now I understand like why I care about these things and I don't care about those things or now I understand why I'm having this issue in my life So the first one I want to talk about it comes from Schwarz himself comes from the man himself So to give a little bit of background this so the first thing we're going to cover is Schwarz's values wheel and this is the result of dozens and dozens of massive cross-cultural surveys across more than 70 different countries And so this was unlike many things in psychology This is this has been replicated across many many cultures Um and it has been found it has indeed been found to be quite universal Um and essentially Schwarz narrowed the core human values down to 10 of them And these are universal So it's important to know that we all have all of these What changes is the proportion And he mapped these out in a wheel And we'll talk about why he put them in a wheel in a second So the first two are he called them the self-enhancement values First one is achievement which is self-explanatory Second one is power Then there's the conservation values He has tradition security and conformity And then there's the self-trcendence values One is universalism which is basically kind of feeling at one with everybody around you And then the second one is benevolence which you could think of as charity being helpful altruism things like that Then he has the openness to change values which is stimulation and self-direction You could think of self-direction as personal freedom or autonomy And then finally the 10th is of course hedenism which is I think it's interesting that I guess at some point he probably recognized he's like well yeah clearly people value pleasure right otherwise they wouldn't be sacrificing all these other things for it so you have to throw that in there right it's a category of its own but yeah exactly he placed these 10 values in a wheel because what he noticed is that certain groups of values are have an inherent internal tension with each other So for example the openness to change values of stimulation and self-direction have an inherent tension with the conservation values tradition security conformity And if you think about it think about think about a person in your life who most embodies somebody who's open to change and values stimulation and personal freedom You're probably imagining some hippie- dippy person who's like always traveling around and going to festivals and partying and you know just living life going with the flow with everything What is the complete and utter opposite of that it's somebody who's like super uptight very traditional demands conformity security all the time Uh and so like basically it's no matter where you are on the the values wheel there's something across from you that is there's an inherent tension with that right self-trcendence the craving to to identify with the group around you to help others to be supportive of others to give yourself up for others is diametrically opposed to the values of self-enhancement which is the achievement of status growth of power um the dominance o over yourself and others So all of these values exist within us And if you're watching on YouTube we're going to have the values wheel up on screen while I'm talking about it Um if you're listening you can we've got the values wheel It's in the PDF guide if you go to solvepodcast.com/values You can get it there Um not only do values across from each other on the wheel uh are at odds with each other but values that are next to each other they harmonize well with one another So you know universalism and benevolence will harmonize with one another The um self-direction harmonizes with hedonism stimulation same thing So everybody gets gets the idea Now I think the brilliant insight here is that Schwarz identified two inherent tensions that are always at play within each of us all the time So the first one is openness to change versus conservation The second one is self-enhancement versus self-trcendence Pop quiz Can you think of any framework that reflects these same two dimensions i mean it sounds very political to me So is there a political science framework or something that does this or Good guess Drew Bernie Okay So so a lot of people online have probably seen a thing called the political compass and there's two so there's the x-axis which is like left and right or it's really it's like group oriented versus individual oriented and then there's the y-axis which is libertarian versus authoritarian So it's it's like rigid controls and um uh personal liberty and freedom So chances are if you've been on the internet since the 2000s like old people like us uh you've taken a quiz at some point that's mapped you to this political compass And interestingly this I couldn't find any any information that like explicitly said that this political compass was based on Schwarz's research But I do find it absolutely fascinating that the two dimensions by which we measure people's political beliefs are also the same two spectrums that Schwarz found for people's fundamental values We're going to come back to this again as well This is not the first time we've heard of these two dimensions Right so I think it's it's hugely important to understand these inherent tensions in our values because for one it just normalizes internal conflict I can't tell you how many times I've gotten emails from readers and listeners over the years who they'll kind of go through like some problem in their life and really when you boil it down it's just that like they care about a thing caring about it is hard and it it's stressful and they feel really anxious and maybe upset over something like the price of caring about that thing and then they email me like asking how they can make the the struggle or the sacrifice go away I just think that like the thing that gets lost so often is that to care about anything deeply you are going to experience proportional internal conflict to caring about that thing right like the more you sacrifice for anything in your life the more difficult it's going to make other areas of your life Like because the more you're going to have to give up and the more you're going to have to compromise and the more you're going to have to let go of opportunities I think this the other reason this is super important is is that it it it helps us navigate difficult choices in our lives right like it it can clarify what the pros and cons of choosing a certain path might be if you've got a difficult decision in front of you and two different choices that both look good If you kind of think about like what are the values being represented by each of those choices um and which of those two values are you willing to compromise on or give up and which ones are you not can help you make that decision So if you're somebody who who is upset over a lost opportunity or something that happened in your past that you know you wish you could go back and change or you sometimes wonder about um understanding your values can help you look at that situation and and really come to terms with with being okay with that loss being okay with what you gave up because it was ultimately for something you cared about Now the second framework I want to bring up and we'll we we'll spend a little bit less time on this one comes from a researcher in the 70s named Milton Roichi Uh and he had this idea that I really like uh it's called instrumental values and terminal values Terminal values are the actual values that you are pursuing ultimately like it's the the it's terminal because it's the last value It's the last thing There's no there's nothing past it It's you're not using it to get something else You value it because you value it Exact That's it Is just inherent and unconditional Instrumental values on the other hand you value because they actually lead you towards a terminal value I think this is a really useful distinction and I imagine this is going to come up a lot in our discussions Um simply because I think a lot of people don't have clarity around that like they think an instrumental value is is the real value whereas they don't realize what the terminal value is that it's driving towards Yeah And I think when you confuse those instrumental values for the values themselves obviously like you're saying that gets you into a lot of trouble too Another I think common one too is people uh like making money right that's another one like they look around and like okay people are making money I should make money too Um and then they don't connect it to the terminal value at all Why are you making that money yeah And so it just seems like then you get a few years into it and you're like what am I I don't even know what I'm doing here I don't like what I'm doing Why am I doing this whereas if you have a why behind that you have a terminal value you know whether it's for your family or whatever almost any job could could be valuable to you right that instrumental value of that job serving the terminal value of your family or whatever it is actually takes on a completely different meaning once you connect those two And this framework is the second time that we kind of run into this idea that there are there's a hierarchy to our values that that there's this idea of like there are certain values that we're willing to give up or that are conditional that we're only taking on that we're only caring about because they lead us to some other deeper more important value So there's some super important values at the top of the pyramid and there's all these other values near the bottom of the pyramid that we're kind of just adopting because they get us closer to the ones at the top We're going to return this idea again and again with different frameworks and different perspectives but just want to seed that again for the listener because it is super important and uh we are going to come back to it Yeah Yeah I I just wanted to talk to just real quick go back to Schwarz's wheel right he he has this one pie in the wheel piece of pie in the wheel uh called benevolence right yes Uh so generally being good to other people helping out helpfulness that sort of thing That's one of that's a pretty high value of mine Another one though too is like there is kind of an achievement uh value that I have too Those are often times intension with one another right and I've seen this I see this play out all the time in my life because I do I really want to help people and then it always butts up against the ah but I need to get this other thing done that's going to benefit me as well Then there's another tension like as long as I'm doing well for myself then I can help more people too So there's there's kind of a benevolent tension between the two too right this is what people have to navigate a lot and this is what I think you find out when you get more explicit about your values You you are there is this hierarchy that starts to form and there's going to be times where you have to choose one or o over the other I think you made a point too about people would just want this to be pure I'm always going to um value this value over another one or I'm always going to put the importance on this value over the other one And that's just not how it works either Yeah Like there's going to be times you have to trade them off um at in different context different context different place Like obviously you don't want to be like focused on achievement in your marriage Like that's going to be a disaster right you want to you really want to bring benevolence to the forefront in your marriage whereas like you know maybe you don't want to be focused on benevolence in some other content like if you're at war right so it's it is it's not the values themselves uh are cross context but like you want to you can lean into them in different circumstances I'm curious have you taken Schwarz's value survey no I didn't I haven't did you I did you did you okay I do want to guess what my top three are um yes I do you probably will nail Hedenism No Um wait Power Power And uh yeah stimulation There we go Those are your top three I'm No Okay I'm going to guess Let's see Um Oh I'm coming up for a raise pretty soon I think So you you're very benevolent Mark You're an extremely benevolent person Um I I would say self-direction like the creativity freedom That's pretty high on yours Definitely autonomy is one of your top three I would say Yep Um I'm going to also say probably achievement That's got to be in your top three Yeah Yeah Okay And then the last one I got I'm going between the stimulation and between universalism Interesting Let me see I'm going to go with I'll go with universalism Neither Neither Okay What's What's your third one the third one actually is benevolence Oh it is benevolence Okay Oh okay Yeah Which kind of surprised me I thought stimulation might make it in there because I am just an ADHD dopamine junkie But but it's funny because I think what the survey caught is that I don't value the stimulation in my life I have a lot of stimulation in my life but it's like oh interesting I actually feel ambivalent about it I go through these phases where I like detox and I meditate and I try to get away from stuff Um so I thought that was interesting that that it came up that way But yeah I was I was self-direction achievement and benevolence I I I've found something similar too I mean I didn't go through Schwarzes I didn't go through any of them because I've been through value surveys before and they're always like they're always different Everybody kind of has a little bit they'll they'll use Schwarz on basically all of them but all of them kind of have a different configuration and I've taken them and they don't seem to But mine were or unless you want to guess I'll just tell you mine cuz I don't want you to guess Okay Okay What do you think about her uh definitely benevolence Yeah that was is up there I would say benevolence and achievement are like the two easy ones I would say uh I would go either universalism or self-direction Self-direction Yeah self-direction Okay Universalism was my fourth one Yeah Gotcha Yeah that was Yeah we're not hedenist Drew No No Not anymore at least Yeah that's true That's true I I found something similar though too because I do I like novelty in my life as well And I don't know if it's just because I'm I'm getting older now or just dep prioritizing it or whatever it is But yeah it just there I experience a lot of novelty still too Not as much as you probably or not I don't think I seek it out quite as much as you but um it's just not a value of mine even though it's in my life a lot And so that really made me think like oh okay Yeah I I definitely think if 15 10 15 years ago um novelty or stimulation would have absolutely been one of my top ones because I I I and I very consciously built a life around stimulation around novel experience and doing new things living new places you know proof that values do evolve and change Yeah Um and and it's funny because it's like everything else happens downstream of that value change Just that shift of like stimula like stim stimulation going from being you know probably my first or second down to fourth fifth or sixth is like a dramatic manifestation in my life in terms of like what I spend my time doing what my day-to-day life is like who I am friends with who I spend time with what sort of things I care about it's it's it is pretty remarkable honestly we can save some of that too for later when we talk about how values change so yeah Okay cool I'm actually curious before we move on The benevolence is the highest value Where does that create tension in your life m um everywhere Everywhere All the things all at once What what's the saying um it it creates tension when I want to help people Um I'm bad at saying no Mhm That's I think the primary one Yeah There's a tension between the benevolence the helping others and and I guess kind of taking care of yourself in a way too So whether it is achievement or mastery I think is another one of mine like environmental mastery is one of my values where I want to be a competent person We'll get into that one Yeah Yeah So there's there's a lot of tension around that I guess Does that make sense yeah totally And I mean also just you know working with you for over 10 years like that tracks Yeah Like you definitely don't say no enough or I want to take I want to do everything I want to do what's been really hard too like with as the business has grown and more people have come on and I just have to ignore parts of the business that I I've never had to do that before with you because we've always done it with a small team and now I'm just like I don't know what's going on over there and it's driving me nuts Yeah that's funny Yeah I definitely feel tension You know I my highest two these days I would say are self-directedness and achievement Yeah And it's funny because I think my value for benevolence like really gets fulfilled through my work Like so much of just what we do is driven by helping people and being useful to people Not to say that I'm not charitable to my friends and family but it's just like that doesn't I don't scratch that itch there right um or I don't scratch it as much But it is funny because it it is I would say connection community um social relationships like that that that's definitely been the the falling out that's been the sacrifice over the the last five or six years I would say is um it's almost like this is dramatic but I'm just imagine it's like you like sacrifice another value at the altar of the value that you are prioritizing You kind of do It kind of feels like that feels that way sometimes And I I I really like when I look at the last 10 years of my life or actually what am I saying my entire adult life because I was a nomad for eight years Uh yeah social community social connections Um it it like that's really been the thing that I give up consistently for other things Mh Uh and it's usually that's usually where my I'm like stressed or frustrated or you know feel like I'm not operating at like a right like like Schwarz showed and said we have all of these values you know but we can't optimize for all of them at the same time Yes And that's where all of that kind of mental anguish comes in Again like my therapist friends say people come in all the time with a values conflict That's usually what brings them in And sometimes it takes a few sessions for them to figure out what's even going on and get underneath all of that But as simple as like a student comes in and say you know I'm really they're uh they're they're high in like a social justice They they they want to make a difference and they want to contribute in that way but they also want to achieve in their classes as well And uh you know maybe they have to skip class to go participate in some of these things And it causes a lot of tension And especially when you're younger those things can uh really cause a lot of mental anguish I mean it makes sense right like it's easy to give up things that you don't care about It's hard It's hard when you have two things that you care about and they are directly contradictory to each other Like you you they oppose each other and they they demand the sacrifice of one another Like that that is where difficult adult decisions come in Yeah That's Schwarz's framework That's the wheel Everything's a tension Everything's a trade-off We're we're going to keep hitting on the trade-off thing but I think it'd be interesting to discuss another framework of values uh that doesn't integrate the trade-offs that really just aims to find the best values possible that pay the most dividends in terms of happiness mental health well-being physical health all those things And that brings us to to Carol Riff's framework Okay so Carol Riff she basically asked the question you know what makes a value a good value all right She was doing research like in the 80s and up to that point in the psychological u research literature researchers have basically defined um good values or good what is well-being as happiness as that hydonic uh what feels good Do you feel good more than you feel bad that was an indication of how happy you were X - Y equals happiness She wanted to come up with a more uh I guess uh developed um idea of well-being Um and she came up with this idea of psychological well-being right she drew from some of the big names in the early 20th century people like Abraham Maslo Carl Young Carl Rogers uh Marie Jehood and she went and she found kind of the common threads that all of them talked about and she came up with these six different dimensions of psychological well-being So each one of these dimensions contributed to what she called psychological well-being or human flourishing basically Um what set us up to um basically achieve our potential Okay Yeah So what are what are her six dimensions um the first one was autonomy Okay So people who score higher in autonomy they typically will like resist social pressure to conform So um they're very aware of their values and they live them out based on their own autonomous will It's the people who don't give a [ __ ] It's the people who don't give a [ __ ] to to put it in Mark Manson's language Yes On the other side you have the low scores who they rely on others opinions They probably just look around to see what to do and they do it Mhm Um and so they don't have a very strong sense of auton autonomy and they probably don't even know it as well Okay so that's the first one Uh environmental m mastery is the second one Okay so things like competence If if you score high on this you you feel like you're competent You're you can manage daily life um very well You adapt to a lot of different environments um to get your needs met So you feel competent basically That's skillful you know how to get around things You're street smart maybe Yeah Common sense Low scores though they feel more powerless There's kind of a um there's a little bit of a um um internal uh versus external locus of control element to this as well Like you think you have some control over your environment Um and if you do that's more psychologically healthy than if you don't So other people uh who don't who score low on this they feel powerless They're they feel like they can't improve their circumstances Right Okay Third one personal growth People who score high on this dimension value kind of growth and learning in their life long-term lifelong learning even They're continually continually evolving open to new experiences around um growth They are they they strive for self-awareness in some degree um and again skill building as well that they're they're more uh attuned to that route in life Whereas low scores they're not really interested in learning or or evolving in any way It's interesting because I it's the environmental mastery I'm hearing a little bit of like the self-efficacy measurement uh which is like belief in oneself right belief in one's capabilities And then in the um the self-improvement I'm hearing like Carol Dwek's growth mindset right exactly Yeah Exactly Yeah Yeah So each one of these has kind of been as almost his own little area in psychology since then Carol Riff though was like she was the founder She's the OG Yeah Everything that came out like the positive psychology movement really drew on her a lot of her work and have everything since then basically is drawn on any area of human flourishing or well-being is really comes back to Carol for sure Yeah Next one would be positive relations with others So your social connections people who score high in this you know they they're social They're they have trusting bonds with other people they can uh form bonds fairly well with other people Um and they understand that relationships are a like a give and take right it's not a power struggle Um they see relationships as the end in themselves not the means right not an instrumental value Not an instrumental value It's a it's a sake I guess one way to think about all six of these dimensions is that they are the terminal values right 100% Yes Yes Definitely Or they should be Yes That's definitely how she formulated this And um you know the people who score low on the relational um scale will feel more isolated Uh it's difficult for them to connect And so you can see already that like that this is a huge one Yeah Um where if you people who don't value those sorts of things obviously tend to struggle a lot more than others especially as they later on in life Totally Uh number five purpose in life This is a big one for us Some big one we harp on quite a bit as well And the people who score high on this they generally set pretty clear goals or at least have a direction in their life uh a sense of direction in their life a strong sense And um they see meaning in both the past and the present Whereas low scores they seem to kind of just be drifting aimlessly They don't have a lot of direction a lot of purpose so on and so forth Last one is self-acceptance And this is a huge one too um high scores are they they have a a positive attitude towards themselves for the most part or very forgiving at least of themselves as too uh um they're very forgiving of themselves too They um but they're not delusional either I think that's an important point to make too They're actually very realistic They own their flaws Right Self-acceptance is not self-indulgence Exactly Exactly Or you know and self forgiveness is not self-indulgence either you don't lose Right Right Whereas the low scores they have a lot of regrets a lot of dissatisfaction with their past decisions current decisions Um they're just lot in life and they're very self-critical as well So if you put those six together and if you look at them as each kind of a positive value that contributes to um kind of psychological well-being as as Riff is defining it here with all six of these if you put those together and get the right mix of them you have what she says is a a mindset that's primed for human flourishing Yeah It's funny because when I think about Schwarz's values Yeah I can easily imagine contexts where I'd be willing to give one up right like security I can think of a million situations that I'd be willing security up benevolence I can think of situations I'd be willing to give it up with these with the the these psychological dimensions Like I I struggle to imagine context where I'm like "Oh I would give that up." Right Yeah Like it is really remarkable how hard to argue with these are Like you would think if you were if you're going to do a [ __ ] 4hour podcast on values Yeah Like we are and we're going to spend all this time talking about all these frameworks and dozens and dozens of different possible values that you can have Ideally the strongest values would end up being the hardest ones to argue against They'd be the ones that it'd be hard to think of counterfactuals Yeah Or exceptions to where they'd be useful And like I think out of all the frameworks that we talk about in this episode hers is like the most difficult one Like I can think of situations that I would give up autonomy I can think of situations that I would give up um you know say personal growth or development Um but it's really hard Like I have to like really reach and and get creative and imagine like a [ __ ] terrible scenario Yeah Yeah And you would only temporarily suspend them probably too You'd go right back to them as soon as you could Totally Yeah Totally Yeah This is this is definitely one of those where it's it's not easy And it um I I think she she wanted again this was kind of a basis for positive psychology that that came in the 90s and 2000s after this And um I think her real goal was creating this idea or or or creating the a good definition for psychological well-being because it had been so neglected for so long Yeah Right Everybody thought it was okay it's happiness All it is is positive emotions minus negative emotions That's how that's a an indication of how well you're doing And it's like well that is so naive and immature really when you think about it And she was like "Look Aristotle had it this this whole time If you want to put it in psychological terms here's here's a good little framework for you with six uh psychological uh components that'll make it well-being for you." So yeah And all six are worth sacrificing for All six are worth struggling for All six are you know difficult to give up Things that you would fight for uh and things that you obviously want to optimize It's funny Out of the six I think the one that most people have trouble with is probably self-acceptance Yes Which is really interesting Mhm Well it's it's so hard It's incredibly hard Going back to you just asked me you know what the tension and the values and one of those So when I when I did let this person when somebody asked me to do something for them I think I did a half-ass job for it and I let them down I just felt awful about it And so I thought about I was like "Okay this is a value of mine I'm going to like because we're going through this and I'm over inellectualizing all of it I just I get to the point where I'm like okay I want I don't want to feel like this anymore So how do I reconcile all this how do I resolve this tension this terrible feeling?" I finally got to the end of it I said "I think I just have to feel this way I think it's I'm going to feel this way because I it's it's a reflection of my value." Right Right And when you fail a value it's made very very clear to you through these terrible feelings Feeling bad about it is part of and I had to just accept that And I got to tell you it hasn't gotten any better So so it's really hard that self-acceptance is the hardest part of this You're absolutely right And it's I people don't want to do that especially in a culture like you know here in the United States where it's like no you can there's something you can always do about it You have control over this or that or the other thing Sometimes you don't have control over the way you feel especially when it's tied to a deeply embedded value that you that you um want to live out The irony too is that I feel like people who struggle with the other ones it likely is rooted in a lack of self self-acceptance right like when I when I think because there's a lot of people who you know say people who don't have a growth mindset people who don't think they can learn and get better whatever When you talk to those people it's really just like they kind of think they're a piece of [ __ ] and nothing's going to change right it's it's a lack of self-acceptance Similarly with you know people who struggle with autonomy you know like they feel like they don't deserve to to have control over their own lives or have make their own choices have freedom and uh disappoint people or do things that other people don't like So I'm sure we're going to do a episode on self-acceptance at some point because it is another super deep topic and it touches We'll talk about it more in this episode as well So many things Yeah Yeah Are is there one of these though the one of these six that you gravitate to more than others the autonomy one maybe I mean autonomy is obviously huge Uh growth is huge for me Yeah Even though I think we need all of them and we see them all as positive I still think we gravitate towards one or the other There's again there's that emotional pull towards one or the other Yeah you definitely prioritize you know getting the hierarchy right like pretty close to the top of my hierarchy is probably autonomy and personal growth which I think maps pretty well to uh Schwarz's self-directedness and achievement Yeah All of these actually map pretty well to Schwarz in some way or another Yeah Like the environmental mastery part too um was like there's a competence um component to that that I really gravitate to that I didn't realize um was such a high value for me I knew I valued that but it was a it was a higher value than I thought I don't like the name of that one environmental mastery Yeah Just it's bad Like she needs a brand consultant Mo most most university psychology departments do not have the budget Yeah No Oh my god Drew This is a this is a billion dollar business waiting to happen What's wrong with environmental mastery i I don't Well first of all I I I when I hear the word environment I just immediately start thinking like you know climate stuff Oh yeah And you hate that You hate the environment I that's I forgot you just you cut all the trees down Stop slandering me Drew This is We're This is being recorded No I just I I I associate that word with just an a completely different subject entirely I understand And then like mastery I mean I would almost even just call it mastery Just mastery Okay Yeah Yeah Green book mastery Yeah just like the developing being skillful right like um developing being good at things Yeah Yeah I don't know It is such an abstract concept I Yeah I don't I just I gravitate towards it because I do I like I like being I like learning about a lot of different things and I like getting good at them like very different things too You know everything from you know podcasting to whatever working with my hands or whatever Super handy like you are you can tell that you like you really enjoy using your hands and building things and fixing things and arranging things and organizing things and I am like so in my head and just I'm like in La La Land half the time So yeah that that's probably my lowest value out of those six Interesting Honestly I mean unless you considered writing like a form of environmental mastery but I I don't know Yeah I don't know about that Yeah I don't know Ah the last framework that I want to present I want to go back to the granddaddy of them all which is Aristotle and I don't want to get into his virtues He actually had a lot of virtues Uh I counted 17 and the Nikomakian ethics and uh there's debate as to whether he had more in other places What I like about his framework and what I think is true or useful for us to discuss is that he defined a virtue as not maximizing a certain thing as much as possible He defined it as a golden mean between two vices So Aristotle had this like a very novel approach to what a value was Like if you look at Carol Rift's framework or or Shalom Schwarz's framework it's like you either have a lot of benevolence or a little benevolence You either have a lot of autonomy or little autonomy Aristotle saw the virtue as being halfway between two extremes So Aristotle would say too much autonomy means that you're disconnected and isolated from the world and too little autonomy means you're enslaved And so the proper amount of autonomy is a golden mean or a happy medium between the two extremes Uh another example is too much courage means that you're reckless and irresponsible Not enough courage means that you're a coward and not able to stand up for the things that you care about Uh and so the proper amount of courage is actually the happy medium the golden mean You could go down the line uh not only with all of his virtues that he listed but you could kind of do this with anything Like take honesty right too much honesty you're just an [ __ ] right but obviously not enough honesty and you're a liar Generosity You can be too generous right like if you're just always giving things away you can be actually be very wasteful and you can enable all sorts of bad habits and behaviors in people Uh but obviously if you're not generous at all then you're you know a stingy Scrooge McDuck I I really like this idea and I wanted to include this idea in this episode because I actually kind of think maybe it applies to a lot of this stuff One of the three fundamental problems that people have is that they overindex on one value So you can overindex on any of this stuff And yes there will be tension and trade-offs with other values And but ultimately it's like you can take any good thing too far right too much self-acceptance just becomes narcissism Too much social connection becomes codependence Um too much achievement becomes just I don't know You're what's the word for somebody who tries to achieve too much try hard You Yeah you could be tryh hard You could you could be there's also a narcissism to that though as well I mean you could be a status [ __ ] That's I think that's I believe that's that's a technical ter that's the that's the research term status [ __ ] Um we'll have to look up the literature on that Uh well not only not only does it um kind of to takes care of that problem of overinvesting in one but it also helps a little bit anyway getting to this problem we keep coming back to where the tension between two values sometimes is because if there you do want to be uh what was it like um generosity um versus um what would be the opposite value of generosity or so the opposite of benevolence would be like achievement or something like frugality Frugality there Yeah there you go Um obviously you know that creates a little bit there's a tension there or you could find yourself in some tension there and you'll be like "Oh actually there's virtue in both of these." So that helps a little bit sometimes Yeah I I just kind of the conclusion I came to you know when you you look at all of these frameworks together it's ultimately values function in a kind of a network They're they they're like interlocked and interrelated And ultimately no single value is valuable in and of itself It is valuable in relationship to other values that you may have Right so it's like if the only value you have is courage then you have nothing to be courageous for If you if you're if the only value you have is generosity then you have nothing to give to because you don't care about anything else uh it's if you have if your only value is achievement you have no reason to achieve anything because nothing else is important right so it's like all all of these values only have significance and meaning because they interlock and interrelate and kind of like a a system Yeah And I think Aristotle was also aware of kind of the systemic nature of virtues because he he made an argument We'll come back to this towards the end of the episode but he made the argument that ultimately wisdom was the understanding Wisdom was the most important virtue because it was the virtue that had a broad understanding of that system of virtues of all the other virtues all the other virtues and and when they were out of balance when you were being too reckless or too benevolent or uh too achievementoriented and to like pull yourself back into balance So what about like whenever I hear these arguments for balance I always think there there's always isn't there always a risk of like watering it down you know like people say "Oh find work life balance." And it's like well then you just end up kind of blah in the middle right yes And what's the difference here i mean I I think you made a a good point earlier that uh even values that are intent in tension with one another can enhance each other right like the more power you accumulate personally the more benevolent you can be to more people right so I think that's a big one people miss sometimes Absolutely Oh I don't like Yeah The more money you have the more you can give away right it's great And like the more personal freedom you have the more people you can build social relationships with So it it's like they are synergistic even when they are in tension with one another and like they feel compromising I I do think there is a kind of just overall uh compounding effect that happens to the virtues right it's like the more of the more of any virtue you accumulate the more of other virtues you can you can begin to accumulate And uh and I think the question about balance I think that's it's a very individual thing You know a lot of it is is personality based right like what feels imbalance to me is probably going to feel out of balance to other people and same for you And so I think a lot of this comes back to self-standing and self-acceptance like understanding that you know like I said earlier like my need for connection I think is lower in most people's and uh my my need for you know novelty or stimulation is higher in most people So like what's going to feel in balance for me is going to feel off for a lot of other people And it's and it is similar for you similar to everybody listening to this And and I think just understanding the what your needs are what level your needs exist at and then also like what your primary values are and what proportion that you want to invest into those values is is useful and important Yeah But it it's like I guess the balanced equation like everybody's network is going to look a little bit different People's central nodes are going to be slightly different The emphasis is going to be different But like ultimately like you do need system of interlocking values that reinforce each other or support each other or counterbalance each other Yeah Right Like keep each other honest essentially Yeah I had thought about it that way That's Yeah that's very interesting where you the the interlocking values don't exist in a vacuum and that that's a big thing like within yourself but also with other people as well Yeah So I actually think this is a perfect segue I coincidentally I've got a friend in town Had dinner with him last night and he had been dating this girl for a while Last time I saw him was a few months ago and he was like super excited about her and everything and he had an interesting story which coincidentally dovetales perfectly with values and all the things that we've been talking about So let me set the stage for you and then I'm going to ask for a prediction Okay So he's been dating this girl for 3ish four-ish months They decided to take a trip together It's first trip Ah real test Yeah Real test And just to give you some background this friend of mine uh intellectual guy very bookish um loves to travel but like loves to travel in the like likes to find some obscure museum and spend the afternoon like reading about 13th century architecture or whatever Like very kind of nerdy travel guy Yeah a little bit uh hippie-ish like very low-key You know his idea of a a a great Saturday night is like a beer and a movie and going to bed at 9:30 uh with a with a good novel or something Girl he's been dating owns eight Hermes bags wears like a $20,000 Rolex watch um spends half of her summer in St Barts in San Trope okay partying and they decide to do this trip together to Paris and she asks if she can book everything and choose everything Oh and by the way the guy very frugal very tight with money I want you to guess how long it took how many hours it took for for the first flight I wonder where this is going Yeah exactly How many hours do you think it took for the first fight to start okay Can I have a hint were they off the plane yet within arriving I'm going to say that was one to two days really started The first dinner Yeah Okay They had they started having a fight about money All right She's also very traditional right like grew up in a very religious family Okay Man is supposed to pay Man's supposed to take care of everything He's super liberal He's atheist He's very like you know split the check type of guy She's booking these like Michelin star restaurants 500 euros for a prefix menu He's like "What the [ __ ] dude i just want a beer and a novel in a museum Like this is not what I signed up for." And yeah Uh second question How long do you think it took for them to break up um well I hope they made it back home at least They did not Oh wow Really oh that's rough They broke up on the trip That is rough Okay They broke up on day three Oh Of like a weekl long trip or what was it yeah Okay Right in the middle of it He like he had to get a separate hotel room Oh no He had to spend money on a separate hotel room Oh god But then he told me he was like he was like "Yeah it really sucked the the first night but then it was great cuz I could just go to whatever museum I wanted." I'm sorry By the way if if this friend is listening I apologize that we're laughing on But I I actually I like you know I was at dinner with him last night I was like I have I have to bring this up on the podcast because it was really interesting talking to him about it I started to ask him I'm like clearly there are red flags dude Did you see this one coming yeah Like how how did you not see this coming and he was like "You know I have this really bad tendency in past relationships for being too judgmental and like like shutting off relationships too quickly over like small pedantic things." And he said that uh he's like "You know I I I really decided with this one like I'm I'm not going to judge you know if we have different interests or different preferences like I'm not going to like judge it too quickly you know because you can compromise on things." Sounds reasonable And I told him I was like "Yeah but the problem is is that these are not simply different interests These are different values and you can't compromise on different values." Like if she really cares about having expensive jewelry and Hermes bags and like going to the nicest restaurant and you like saving money like you're not going to negotiate that Yeah That's not a difference in interests Yes That's that's that is a fundamental difference in values the how they manifest is different obviously but it's a it's a difference in values Yeah And same thing with the traditional thing and you know her being very like old school religious and him being kind of liberal and atheist like I I I think uh I remember I was talking to a friend once and he said he was this is totally just a theory that kind of halfbaked theory by a smart friend of mine He said um he's been happily married for like 20 years and he said he was like I think there are really five categories that uh couples fight about like most fights in relationships happen over like value differences The first one was cleanliness Mhm Mhm Second one was religion Third one was politics Fourth one was raising kids and family And then the fifth one was money Mhm And he said "You can get away with being misaligned on one of those maybe even two if you communicate extremely well and like adapt well to each other but and his theory was if you're misaligned on more than two of those then you're probably fucked." Yeah Yeah Like you just can't come back from right i don't know if that's true or not but I thought it was interesting to think about And I do think you know when I think about values differences of values in relationships I think it's most of what attracts us to each other And I also think it's most of what drives couples apart Like if they break up it's usually because of a values difference Assuming like trust wasn't broken If couples grow apart it's usually because their values have shifted and they no longer see eye to eye or care about the same things or or find the same things important in their life Would you think values like differences in values attract us is that is that what you said or No no no I said I I think we're attracted by similar values Oh okay I got you Okay And then and then we're pulled apart by different values Okay Correct Yeah Okay Makes sense Um I will say this like I don't think you necessarily have to have all the same values as your partner Definitely Yeah I think you have to have complimentary values as your partner right like you you either have to have similar values that like resonate well with one another that harmonize or you need to have like counterbalancing values that make each of you a little bit better Like we were talking earlier about how it's easy for people to go overboard in a particular value in their life right like if you are uh uh way too self-sufficient or way too tight with money it can be actually be good to be with somebody who's like maybe a little bit more communal to counterbalance you and like uh uh make up for the downside of of how overindexed you are on a certain value I think a lot of what we experience as like a good relationship is that complimentary set of values It's like some people are making up for some of our deficiencies or some of the trade-offs that we make by by caring about what we care about Um by having a partner who cares about the opposite thing and and being able to get along with them we can kind of have the best of both worlds Yeah Yeah Yeah I think another way to put that is you shared values don't necessarily mean they're identical values right you can have a set of shared values together that aren't necessarily reflective of each one of your individual values but if they work together in a way you know it's not necessarily like do you agree on things but can we support each other's values right Yeah Yeah Yeah Yeah Which I I mean that is um I I think especially with like modern dating and dating apps and everything like that and I won't go on too much of a diet tribe here but um the they do try to match you more on what they think or call interests I think rather than values values and and I think it primes us to start looking oh this person likes whatever hiking or sports or you whatever it is and it's like there's no value necessarily behind that which you end up in a situation like my friend because I guarantee you what brought them together uhhu is that they both love travel so I have a shared interest in travel but they the value system underlying that travel the the desire and motivation to travel is completely different completely opposite not only opposite but like I think compatible Yes I think they like disgusted each other a little bit Ah yeah Yeah Yeah You ever been in that situation you ever been in the middle of a trip and I have That's happened to me before Rule Mexico even was even worse So yeah I have not that has not happened to me on a trip I I've been very fortunate and that the the trips that I've taken with girlfriends uh have generally gone well Um I it's a great way to test out the relationship and see your values because it is all those values that your your smart friend mentioned the cleanliness the everything it kind of happens on shows up all in a compressed condensed time and place and Yeah Yeah It's you can't get away from each other Yeah That's Yeah Yeah Yeah Also too I think what um values and relationships too when you argue with each other that comes out It's what values are what you actually arguing about So it's not about these other things It's not about the interest or it's not about you know you left the toilet seat up or it's not about what restaurant you booked dinner at or what hotel you're staying in It's it is the value underneath that It's the value underneath of that And so um arguments are a good way to bring out those values and figure out what's going on And going back to that like can you work with that are you able to you know this is one of the problems I have with uh a lot of people who are in the kind of attachment world you know they say "Oh find somebody who's secure enough right?" Well usually somebody who's avoidant say right they they value their independence or you know their autonomy maybe a little too much and maybe there's a little bit of whatever going on underneath that but they say well you should find somebody who's who's more secure in their relationships and doesn't value autonomy as much or whatever It's like no can you work with somebody's autonomy just like can you work with somebody's anxiety too somebody might value I value emotional availability right and if you're not emotionally available for them well obviously that's going to be a problem Without getting on too much of a tangent and maybe we do an episode one day on attachment I feel like attachment theory is it's a great descriptive model It's great at describing why certain people's relationships function or don't function I think it's a poor prescriptive model Yes And I think that's gotten confused this day and age especially on like Tik Tok and Instagram Like everybody's like "Oh you're anxious You should be doing this." And it's like I I don't know about that Like it's it's more complicated I do want to go back to what you said though about like the argument is not about the thing it's about the value underneath the thing And I think that like this is why this episode is this topic is so important Like because it talking to my friend last night he didn't understand that it was actually a value difference that like people will have an argument with a partner over a restaurant that was booked or uh a trip that was planned or um you know there's like they're squeezing the toothpaste tube on the wrong end or whatever And and they don't realize that it's the argument is not actually about the restaurant It's not actually about the toothpaste tooth Like there's a there's an underlying value underneath that that's in conflict If you're just arguing about the thing you're you're missing the real negotiation that needs to happen between the two value systems Uh and I I just think most people are unaware of that And if you're unaware of that then you're you're not going to be able to solve it very well No you escalate You're going to escalate right you're going to think it's it's about the restaurant And so it's um and it's funny too because you know my friend was telling me he's like they they went through this whole process where it was like "Okay well why don't we alternate like I'll go to we'll go to a fancy place for lunch and then we'll go to like a dive bar for dinner which just meant that they were both miserable right but they were just like dulling out the misery in equal proportions where it's like no there's like you have to address the underlying value of of like okay well why why does she care so much about this what what's like the the the itch that's being scratched by like booking uh spending all this money uh is it a need for status is it a need to feel important is it a need to um experience luxury you know enjoy your vacation to its fullest like what is the underlying value or or motivation and then see if you can address that in a in a way that that meets both people's needs And it's hard It's like those aren't easy First of all both people need to be self-aware enough to understand like what's motivating themselves And then second of all both people need to be mature enough to actually communicate those things to each other Uh and both of those things are rare So condolences to my friend although I think he's it's they're both better off It sounds like I think they both dodged a bullet honestly Yeah I also think relationships are an interesting mechanism for revealing your values Yes Right Yeah Like I look at an experience like my friends or maybe like yours in rural Mexico it reveals things about yourself that maybe you didn't know uh and that you didn't have a ton of clarity on Um right like I remember my girlfriend in my 20s we had a very overall I would say it was a good relationship but it was like very up and down Like it was kind of rocky A lot of like drama and fights and stuff And uh at the time I mean she was a huge party girl and I was a big party guy and so I think most we mostly bonded over that Yeah But it was interesting after being with her for a year or two there was like a self-destructiveness to her that was like a big turnoff to me and I used to try to communicate that to her and then she would look at me and she's like you're doing all the same drugs and drinking just as much Like what are you talking about you [ __ ] hypocrite yeah Yeah And I was like "Yeah but it's not the same." Like there's like the motivation is different I think the thing that the value that was underlying the experiences uh was was driven by different things And what do you think that was i think in my case it was kind of this compulsive need for novelty and excitement And I think in and I think in her case there was a lot of that as well I think her she had a real self-destructive streak that I didn't I I always kind of had this awareness in my mind that like this is a phase This is like I'm 23 This is the I'm doing this because I'm 23 and probably in a year or two I'm not I'm not going to do this anymore Like I don't want to be doing this in a year or year or two more And I definitely don't want to be doing this when I'm like 30 or 35 And I I detected no sense of that in her Like in her it was just like "No man We're just gonna have fun." Like this is just life Like we're just going to go hard and all gas no breaks Yeah And that's fun for a night It's fun for a weekend It's fun for a month But like after a year or two being around that person you know it's like h this is this is there's there's a darkness here there's like a self-destructiveness here that like worries me and I don't want to take part in And ultimately I think that was a big part of ending that relationship It was a big part of like why I wanted to get out of that relationship And I didn't have the maturity to fully understand that or communicate that at the time But in hindsight it's very clear to me And I think at the time too it was clarifying for me because I think going into the relationship I kind of had the same attitude of just like "Yeah [ __ ] it All gas no break let's go You know and through the course of the relationship I I noticed that I started becoming uncomfortable with certain situations or certain decisions that were being made And uh and it was clarifying for me It was like it showed me this isn't who you are Like you're a tourist in this lifestyle You're not right You're not you're not a resident right so make sure you don't get trapped here Make sure you don't get stuck So that that's one experience that I've had but I mean there there have been quite a few I think your relationships force you to confront your most deeply held beliefs and assumptions and motivations Uh and you know ultimately that's it comes down to what you care about Like what do you find important because it's like when you try to imagine a future with somebody that future needs to be compatible with what you find important in your life like what you're optimizing for in your life And so if there's an incompatibility there right it's like if my future is you know I really don't want to I I really want to stop partying and stop doing drugs and get my [ __ ] together and build a business and be more ambitious and uh and I can't imagine my partner in that world then it becomes hard to stay with that partner Yeah Have you experienced that yeah definitely Um I I think too going back to like the revealed preferences I think is what like a a relationship will do Mhm to you Um you know if I value honesty and yet I don't I'm not honest in my relationship or I just I don't um communicate honestly with the other person like do I actually value honesty and so you're right It brings it to that But I I think the ones um the relationships where I've had value clashes it was the same thing where I I I thought it was like an interest thing or just a preferences thing when it came down to it but it was actually values And then what I've also noticed though too going back to what we talked about um where like can you work with somebody else's values i think that I've gotten better at that as well because I think before especially like my 20s and early 30s I was very much valued autonomy and independence and wanted that somehow in a relationship too but I wanted it way too extreme right and so that can clash that can show this clash of of values in a relationship as well and um basically like when when anything would go wrong in a relationship I would just be like well you know I'm independent and autonomous anyway so it doesn't matter and whatever just screw What I've come to get better at I think is to stop and slow down and look at what values are are driving anybody's behavior or motivation in that situation So yeah Yeah Yeah Any any grimy stories oh god Drama juicy drama Give us drama Drew Well I I mean give us the Drew Bernie show I mean I I've had um just like instances where I can I can point back to relationships and like that's the moment they fell apart Um and it's because I didn't I I was just I put my values above the relationship really too that I think that's another one Um somebody snaps at me in a certain way or something like that and I'm just like that you're violating my autonomy You're trying to get me to change who I am I'm done you know um where now it's like I step back I'm like "Oh okay They're not getting their need for emotional connection right now." That's what they value an emotional connection and I'm being very distant and that's why they're upset Yeah Um that's that's a that's been a common one for me I mean I just I don't know throughout my really throughout my adult life I've it's always been I have I have placed a value uh that is probably a a value that's to me higher than the relationship itself and I think if you want to be in a relationship you have to put some value on the relationship uh that will that can sustain you through those differences and those arguments and those fights and stuff like that and I just wasn't willing to do that for a long Yeah it brings up the question is what what is worth compromising on like we kind of said earlier like you can't really compromise on values You can a little bit I don't think you can compromise a lot or wholesale like there there comes a point in relationships that if you're compromising too much of your values you're literally losing who you are and what you stand for And so you're you are figuratively and psychologically kind of killing your own identity to plate your partner which is incredibly unhealthy and not sustainable But at the same time I I do think it is impossible to be in a long-term relationship without compromising on something or at least like deciding to let certain things go Deciding being like you know what this this is very important to me but I'm willing to back off a little bit for the sake of the harmony in my relationship I I think it comes back to that idea of like a values being like a network system And when you're in a committed long-term relationship or you could even say with like family relationships or with kids like they kind of become part of that network And if I'm you know if my wife holds a value super strongly that I don't uh I do need to find ways to accommodate that value Mhm And maybe it's not giving up my own values wholesale but it maybe it's just like turning the volume knob down a little bit on a couple things and ah okay Yeah You know instead of instead of being like a nine out of 10 on autonomy I'm a seven out of 10 on autonomy and you you start to realize that you can be very healthy and happy that way We're actually going to talk later in the episode about how to change your values uh and how to do it in a way that like feels congruent and not like you're you're forcing yourself or murdering yourself Um so I do think some of that comes into this but it is an interesting question of just like how much compromise is too much compromise like what is a bridge too far yeah Yeah I think I I think one too about changing your values within relationships as well The I I I think a lot of people you and me included when you're younger you do kind of value novelty and excitement and fun and all of that and you want that in a relationship And then as you go through some relationships and you see how that can also blow up the excitement and the the novelty and the fun and you know oh I have such a strong connection with the person right away And usually that means okay things are going to get you know there's going to be some fireworks not not in a good way necessarily Um and over time you change more towards oh okay I I realize that valuing that is kind of it's a little bit counterproductive to the relationship at a certain point And so you start to value actually I value more stability in my relationships Um I think that's where I've like it took me a while to get there but I started you know because especially in my 20s I was just like no like novelty fun date around you know and you get a little bit addicted to that and then all of a sudden you wake up and you're like oh this is there's such a diminishing return to this Yeah So I don't know maybe we can save a little bit of that for the changing values too But that's we'll definitely come back to it I I think what you you the example you raised there is is very pertinent I think it's to have a healthy long-term relationship period You I think both people need to value stability and consistency to a certain extent which means you know stability and consistency is intention with personal autonomy novelty of experience stimulation I think there is an inherent trade-off there that that is probably just fundamental to relationships itself I do want to touch really quick before we move on uh about how relationships fit into the value hierarchy because I I do think there's something uniquely interesting about whether you want to call it romantic relationships love or just a a specific relationship in general But it basically for whatever reason if you make a relationship or your relationships the top of your value hierarchy it actually undermines the relationship Ah yes like there's something very subtle about if you make a a another person the most important thing in your life it actually is counterproductive for that person in the relationship with that person And I think it comes back to you're compromising too much right like if I'm giving up too much of myself to make my wife happy then I stop being the same person that she fell in love with I become this like half empty caricature of the man that she fell in love with And so I think this is where you see that that strange dynamic where like not compromising occasionally makes a relationship better like refusing to to be different or change like keeps the intimacy alive because you you are maintaining a certain amount of healthy autonomy and and individuality that that sparked the attraction to each other in the first place Anyway I feel like we could do an entire episode 100% Yeah Just on values and relationships I'm sure we're going to do many relationship episodes uh over the course of this podcast's life Um so we will come back to this at some point So wait what what would you recommend to your friend then going forward for looking for a new uh relationship so this is I I'll tell you the advice I gave him Okay I said uh the first thing I said was what I said earlier about interests versus values or preferences versus values I I said dude like it's this is not a preference for nice restaurants Like this is a difference in in values and you need to ask yourself like what's driving that and by the way dude like the fact that she showed up to your first date with like a $30,000 watch might have been a tip off of like this is who you're getting involved with It it just I love you man But it's uh I mean there are signals there There are clues People are sending out clues of who they are all the time I I I I think I actually uh I wrote in my dating book models years and years ago that the true self is always shining through like you you it is impossible for a person to hide who they are because if they're trying to hide who they are that says something about who they are Right Right Right So what I encouraged him is I said "Look obviously you want to know a person's preferences and interests and the things that you know that they like uh pretty early on in a relationship first couple days." I said "Move these values-based questions up to the front as soon as possible." Because one of the things that came up is when they had that first fight on their trip that was the first time he'd been dating her for almost 4 months That was the first time that they actually talked about the fact that she thought men should pay for everything Oh wow And I was like how do you get that far like you have to you have to have these conversations sooner You have to filter for these things really early on And I understand you don't want to bombard somebody with a bunch of philosophical questions and like asking them like what the meaning of their life is on the first date I don't or maybe you do I don't know But like I would definitely say within the first month you should have clarity around those big categories right like you should you should definitely learn what is their their attitude towards money Like how do they see money uh what are they motivated by like what what do they find most important what are what are the how are they getting their needs met what what do they think about religion what do they think about family how do they spend their free time not only like where do they travel on their vacations but like why do they travel like what's the motivation behind it just get a like start to get a clearer sense of of what they care about and what they find important and what they hope for themselves in 5 or 10 years and see if that's compatible with what you hope for yourself And I get why people don't do it because when you have a beautiful stranger across the table from you and it's going well you don't want to [ __ ] it up Yeah But this is my last chance Oh no But at the same time you know you're you're just kicking the can down the road Like it's going to be more painful You'd rather break up with this person on on week three than year three Right Right If you can spare yourself that pain And you want to find out as soon as possible Yeah Well I I think too though is I it's not necessarily too that they have the right answers to those questions too but like how easily can you talk to them about it and how easily can you navigate that interaction with them so if it's is something you're like oh you you travel and you like to spend extravagantly why is that and if you can have an honest conversation with them and like kind of come to like oh a mutual understanding Um like you've said before it's not like respect is actually kind of the foundation of all this And if you can respect their values even if you don't necessarily share them or agree with them that can go a long ways too You can have again that goes back to the interacting uh values that you might have that actually are compatible with each other even if they're not the same I would actually Yeah I think respect you know earlier we were using the word shared values I would say it it would be respected values Respect for values Yeah And and I think what broke down in his case it wasn't that they didn't share the same values It was that they didn't respect each other's values M and because they didn't respect each other's values they weren't willing to compromise Right Right That applies to any relationship Yeah Yeah Absolutely Oh and before we move on from the relationship topic so you can buy these decks of cards that are have questions that are designed to help you know people who are dating for the first time to to get to know each other quickly and understand each other's values and understand if they're compatible or not Uh so I've never used one of them because I'm an old married man but you should You should try it out Yeah it could be fun It could be actually So I did a I did an event uh I think with I did I did an event with School of Life So School of Life has one of these decks and they gave me one they gave me the deck as a as a gift and um I brought it home This was maybe like six seven years ago and uh Fernando and I did a bunch of the cards and it it's funny cuz it's we it was like we already knew each other's answers right yeah Yeah Okay There's no mystery left in your marriage whatsoever anymore huh you're It's just all not I mean kind of It feels that way but in a good way In a good way It's funny actually So the other night uh or maybe like a month or two ago we were with we were at a dinner party with a bunch of other couples and all the other couples were either engaged or uh just recently married Like they'd all been together for like three four five years Uh and Fernand and I have been together for 13 going on 14 years And uh they they wanted to play this game I I don't remember what it's called but it's basically like you draw a card um and it will it'll say something like favorite breakfast and all the husbands have to answer guess what the the wife It's It's like um what's that old game show uh oh yeah Oh god I'm gonna mic on it too dude What is that old game show uh newlyweds Newly wed It's the newlywed game So it's exactly the newlywed game and it's but it's like a card game and it's you bring it out at dinner party So we're playing the newlywed game and uh it felt like it felt like FA and I had cheat codes Like it was so unfair because like all these couples have been together for like three years They had just gotten engaged and like I will say this there's a certain point that you hit I I I would say that when you adapt enough to each other's values uh like even though my wife and I like we don't share all the same values I think we're so well adapted and and now balanced in each other's values that um there is a a like there's a stability that you can't really find on your own I would say um and and a comfort like a security that comes that I I've never experienced on my own but um it's it's like extremely gratifying and uh profound and uh and it you you can kick ass at the new league game Yeah Yeah That's awesome Yeah So all right So let's do a quick section on where do values come from Um I don't want to dwell too much on this It's funny we kind of fell into a research rabbit hole on this one Oh very much got in the weeds Yeah cuz there's a there's actually a lot of interesting backstory and research on this Um I don't want to stay in it too long if we can help it just because I do want to get to the actual advice for people Um so this this whole idea that uh values vary widely across people and across cultures Uh it's a relatively new idea Um if you look back at like the colonial period it was I guess you would say not very pluralistic You know it was very much like Europeans showing up to other parts of the world and being like these people are savages We need to give them our values It really wasn't until the 20th century So in 1925 a young anthropology student named Margaret me went to a Samoan village to study a local tribe there And really the thing at the time you know obviously like female academics were a rarity Um it's there wasn't I I don't think there was as much wide traveled you know to the South Pacific and all these indigenous cultures uh back then as there is now And so what she was doing she was she was already a bit of a a an outlier in just in terms of who she was in her program And then she was also studying something in a way that was also a bit of an outlier So she goes to the Samoan village She starts observing the people and one of the first things that she notices is that the teenagers are a way less inhibited than European and North American teenagers and b they seem way happier They're like chilling enjoying themselves There's there's not they're not rebelling against their parents They're not uh getting angry and going out and drinking and like hurting themselves and getting in the fights with each other Um and the other thing that she noticed was that ironically they were way more sexually expressive and that sexual expression was seen as okay Like they weren't judged or shamed for it particularly the young girls And you didn't see as much you know teenage pregnancy or uh out of wedlock relationships like everything just seemed much emotionally healthier to her And this was a little bit shocking at the time Like if you imagine 1920s they were pretty buttoned up and strict in their morals and uh they weren't very open-minded especially around things like sex and uh young women being sexual right victorian hangover still Yeah a little bit A little bit So she came back to America She wrote a book called Coming of Age in Samoa where she essentially argued that uh most of our values uh around cultural norms propriety society sexual moors all this stuff all these sacred cows that the West believes very strongly And she argued that these were relative that they weren't absolute values that if anybody in the United States if they grew up on Samoa they would grow up with these other values and they actually might even be better off Now as you can imagine this set off an absolute firestorm like huge lightning rod for controversy What's impressive about me though is that she didn't back down She actually got back on a plane and then she went to New Guinea and she spent I think at the time people criticized her They said well this is just one tribe and like who knows maybe it was just the families that you hung out with like you can't really generalize this to wider populations So she went to New Guinea and she was like [ __ ] you all I I'll show you Mhm So she followed three tribes in New Guinea And not only did she find that all three varied drastically from American values and and morals all three varied drastically between each other So one was super aggressive and very violent One was very passive and very chilled out One was matriarchal which is uh basically like women had all the power in the tribe One was extremely patriarchal So again this informs her theory that ultimately most human values are culturally relative that we absorb our values from society around us and that most of what we believe to be important is simply the result of where we grew up and who we grew up around So all the controversy aside and all the arguments aside of you know Margaret me's research process and how scientific it was or what not I do think the takeaway from her that is extremely important is that there is a certain percentage of our values that are chosen by us that we kind of seek out ourselves and determine for ourselves through reflection and experience But there's also a large percentage of our values that we simply inherited right whether from our parents from the school we went to the neighborhoods that we grew up in the socioeconomic status that we had when we were young the values were handed to us They weren't necessarily built or or discovered for ourselves And and I do think that realization and just understanding what is what understanding like what you inherited versus what you've chosen Yeah I do think it's it's very important on an individual level And I also think it's it's it's a very tricky thing to figure out as a young person I know for me you know spending so much time abroad was extremely illuminating uh for myself because it really showed me I think it showed me a lot of values that I was flexible on and most importantly it showed me some values that I'm not very flexible on Like there was it didn't matter how much time I spent in other countries or how many places I went to Like there were there were a handful things where I'm like I don't [ __ ] care Like this is the way it should be and this is the way I always want it Give me a cold drink please I value cold drinks Like [ __ ] ice I need some [ __ ] ice in this drink Yeah Yes Or public trash cans Holy [ __ ] Right Right Uh no the the one the one thing I noticed around that was punctuality Like I I can't get over that one either Oh my god I live I understand it I get it You have a different cultural norm around it But my god I lived four years in Latin America I lived for over a year in Southeast Asia I get it You're on island time Life's easy Go with the flow yada yada Dude just like [ __ ] send a bus on time Like just just be within 15 minutes and I can I can deal with it right i think that sort of self-discovery is is very useful And I I think you know in the old podcast we did a couple episodes on travel and the value of travel and and for me like ultimately that was the value of travel is that it it clarifies for you what seems to really be deep inside of you like what are the values that are kind of non-negotiable for you and what are the values that that shift quite a bit when you alter your environment when you go to a new place and surround yourself by new people with different values like what naturally starts to change within yourself So what were some examples of that for you what what do you what did you find that could change more easily depending on where you were that's a good question Um I'll say this I think living abroad made me much more politically fluid Yeah it you know when I was young when I started traveling in my early 20s you know I was pretty far-left like most young 20somes of our generation And what's interesting is that you you go to all these countries and places and they have completely different systems and they have completely different political spectrums and they have completely different laws and and initially you know in week one there's a lot of things that just kind of upset you or you find distasteful but you spend a few months there and you realize like wow like yeah people get along fine here It's societies can work in many circumstances and under many systems and with many types of incentives So that's not to say that I don't hold strong political views I do But like I I do think that period being nomadic and living in a number of different countries I think it's made me much more politically fluid than most Americans Uh just because I realize how negotiable a lot of this stuff is Um and context dependent and location dependent they are too Right Absolutely And and and honestly that's been uh such a blessing over the last 10 years because it's like I watch everybody in the United States is like running around like their hair is on fire Uh both on the left and the right and um I I just kind of feel like this weirdo who's looking around and I'm like "Guys it's not that bad." Like you've been to Venezuela like it could get so much worse Yeah Yeah I I flew into Guatemala one time and three days later they arrested the president So it was like nothing There you go What about yourself well um I mean when I think about it this I I usually go back too because I grew up in a small town conservative area and I realize how much of that has influenced me that how much of that culture has really influenced me So it was a place where uh self-sufficiency was valued very highly Um and again that's contexting and location dependent there It's a small town There's not a lot of resources around you have to be self-sufficient Um and so they are going to lean more towards you know that kind of bootstrap mentality that you have out there and they're going to value things that support that And then you know I've lived in bigger cities and in other countries as well where that's not the case and you can be a little bit more hey we all need to get along a little bit better and help each other out a little bit more and contribute a little bit more Yeah In a collective sense So I I've had very similar experiences as well as when I'm navigating different cultures Yeah you definitely if once you embed yourself in those you're right You actually start to see why they do the things they do rather than just looking from the outside saying "That's stupid." You know that's dumb Why would you do that So yeah it is it is uh recognizing the water that you swim in I guess you could call it Yeah Um and understanding like what you've chosen and what's been chosen for you essentially Yeah Yeah For sure Um it was interesting because kind of the successor to Margaret me was another woman named Mary Douglas and um she really built on Margaret Me's research and work and um and she really tried to map out what cultural values there were and kind of place different cultures on that map or that grid And she came up with a uh twodimension framework that guess what it's gonna sound extremely familiar because it's almost the exact same two-dimension framework that we've discussed throughout the entire episode right so she called it the grid group framework So there's high grid cultures and low grid cultures High- grid cultures is very rigid rules-based um they prioritize order and authority um and respect for authority and low grid cultures are very libertarian independent individualistic individualistic And then you have the group framework So there's high collectivist societies you know where it's just very communal and you sacrifice yourself for the larger group And then there's high individualistic societies Individualism Yeah And guess what maps perfectly well onto the political compass that we talked about earlier um also maps extremely well onto Schwarz's two dimension tension of between the self-trcendence and self-improvement versus openness to experience and uh conservatism on the other on the other axis So so there there does seem to be these two inherent tensions just within the human mind period uh between the things that we value and they seem to show up fractally across all sorts of different things whether you're looking at an individual psychology which is Schwarz's value framework You're looking at a politics within a society which is the political compass or you're looking at cultural values across societies which is Mary Douglas's greatgroup framework So if listeners are interested in the grid group framework we've written a bit more in the PDF guide You can go to solpodcast.com/values and download it there U we've got some nice little charts and graphs and you can really nerd out on it You can you can nerd out on it All the citations are there as well So I think ultimately you know Mary Douglas's points are like individuals each cultural type chooses its own values and its own trade-offs and um these values become the norms and taboss of that society Right so you know within a individual you kind of have tastes and distaste I think within a society you have norms and customs on the one hand those are things that we are reflections of the things that we value and then you have taboos uh which are the reflections of the things we don't value right and I think just as with individuals we have a natural tendency to see cultures and societies with conflicting values to ours as immoral or wrong ultimately the fundamental point of cultural relativism is that there isn't any like absolute right or wrong But I do want to make a caveat here because the primary criticism of cultural relativism is like you know stuff like uh what about societies that have slaves or uh do human sacrifices or you know women can't leave the house or whatever It turns you an an apologist pretty quickly Yeah Yes Um what's interesting and I I didn't realize this but Margaret me was very aware of this issue and like struggled with it a lot Of course you did Yeah And to my knowledge I didn't read all of her stuff but like to my knowledge she didn't really find a satisfying answer to that question I read a little bit beyond this too and we won't get into this but like uh you know uh Sam Harris wrote a book on on morality right and um he he thinks that if we can find a more objective way to measure morality we would be able to then objectively compare cultures And and his was well-being much like Carol Riff like how do we increase well-being and does a culture or society increase the well-being of its individuals and its groups and all of that that's debatable though even too Yeah Right You know my intuition on this is that cultural values are very similar to what Schwarz talks about which is that you can overindex on a value Yeah Right And when you overindex on a single value it harms the other areas the other values Right And that's true within an individual We've already talked about I think that's true within a society as well Like if you overindex on order and authority like you are going to sacrifice a lot of other valuable things right similarly if you overindex on freedom and autonomy you're going to sacrifice a lot of other valuable things chaotic yeah so I almost see it as again to come back to my main man Aristotle like the virtue is the golden mean right the the optimal amount of freedom in a society is is it's not total and complete but it's also not lacking either right there's no there should be no enslavement or coercion or um oppression but there also just can't be like you know chains off run wild and free you know do whatever the [ __ ] you want consequences be damned Like you can't have that either So like again even within a culture like you have to make trade-offs between the things that you value You have to give up maybe a little bit of freedom in this domain to promote more social cohesion and harmony in this domain And I think as long as you're not going to any extremes on any dimension uh you're probably within the realms of morality which interestingly Aristotle is the only framework that we've talked about that like he did see this as a moral question He did see excess as a a failure of morality That becomes a little bit more apparent when you look at it on this like social scale Yeah I think another example you and I have talked about this before is like a lot of Latin American and Asian cultures put family as a very high value in their systems right whereas more individualistic cultures like the United States and Western Europe we don't as much And from the outside looking in a lot of us are like "Oh we wish we you know valued family more." And you get into those and you can see when it's taken to extreme right that you start uh maybe sacrificing things that you maybe would benefit you if you didn't sacrifice them for your family or you see this all the time especially in Latin America like there's corruption charges somewhere and what do they say well I was doing it for my family right dude it it took me so many years to to connect those two dots and and when I did it was like just such a mind-blowing moment But like if you look at those family oriented cultures and you look at corruption scales like they are pretty strongly correlated and and it wasn't until I lived in Brazil for a long time that I started to realize I remember actually having a conversation with a number of Brazilian friends and I was like if your brother killed somebody and the police came and knocked on your door and asked where your brother was would you tell him where he is and every single one of them was like no he's my brother right and of course as an American I'm like yeah he's right there like arrest the [ __ ] Yeah Yeah Yeah And it was so interesting because uh and I remember reading I I remember I forget where but I remember reading a book on corruption and it and it was it's exactly what you said It's like everybody who commits corruption they justify it by saying like well I'm just going to skim a little bit off the top here to like send my kid to college Well you know I'm going to skim a little bit over here because uh my aunt has cancer and she's going to have a lot of hospital bills Oh well you know I'm going to take a little bribe over here because uh you know my cousin just broke his leg and he can't work anymore You know like there's always a justification that feels very morally righteous and feels correct to them And when you scale that across millions of people and over a very large system across a population uh you you get a system that that just breaks down and and completely fails And uh so yeah it's that's a perfect example of how these value networks exist in a very tenuous balance and not just on the individual level but also on the social level and um so we would be remiss to talk about where values come from without talking about we've talked about the nurture side right it's like the environment you grow up in the people you grow up around We would be remiss to not talk about the nature side right how much is there a genetic component to what you value uh what you find important what you find moral and immoral It turns out there probably is right yeah Yeah This comes from Jonathan Height uh and his moral foundations theory Now obviously now he's moved on to social media Yeah Trying to save the kids Saving the kids from social media Um but he started out in moral psychology actually Um and he came up with this whole framework called the moral foundations theory Mh And essentially what he says is that we have evolved a set of moral foundations that are kind of like taste buds They're kind of like tastes for different moral configurations if you will And he came up with well there's six but they he said there's at least six basically and I'll just list them off real quick They are care fairness loyalty authority sanctity and liberty Okay Um the moral foundations theory basically posits that we each we all have these values those values okay those six values in some way It's just that we prioritize them differently And he said these these proclivities these foundations they evolved for specific purposes right like so care the the care foundation evolved so we would care for children right and then it got co-opted into a value system right same thing with like fairness and cheating If we're going to live in groups we need to be able to spot cheaters and um have have some sort of cheating detection mechanism and punish them if we uh if we find them cheating Authority we need to have group order all that kind of stuff Okay so essentially these helped us uh cooperate and live in groups uh survive thrive reproduce propagate the species right everybody has these It's just they come in different configurations that can be influenced by culture like we just talked about Um but there probably is some genetic component to it as well Um if we're we're talking about this from a political um standpoint then what he's found the multiple tests this has been replicated many many many times is that liberals tend to um prioritize the care it's the care versus harm foundation is what he calls it as well as uh somewhat the fairness and cheating foundation Okay Conservatives interestingly kind of use the whole pallet all five or six of these right they they do prioritize care and fairness like liberals do but they also prioritize these other ones So like loyalty to your ingroup or loyalty in general but mostly that's an ingroup type of thing Loyalty versus betrayal authority versus subversion sanctity versus degradation That's a big one for the conservatives as well It's kind of purity Yeah Um value And then liberty Interesting because I I feel like the last 10 years the left has been big on purity It's a different form of purity though isn't it yeah Yeah It's like a thought purity Yeah There's more thought purity or um Well there's always kind of been purity around like what do you eat right that's that's kind of a left thing too You shouldn't be eating these processed foods and stuff like that But but it's but more like big picture they're more concerned about care and harm Yeah Um conservatives more loyalty Loyalty sanity authority Yeah Liberty oppression What's interesting too I think the these are the these are all based in like an emotional reaction You have an emotional this is people argue about politics and they're always arguing about the facts and the ideas behind it But all of this is incredibly well the point the very good point that I'd love to hear an argument about a fact The very good point that it's been a long time that Hype makes is that he he has this analogy of the the elephant and the writer So he he wrote about this in the book called The Righteous Mind It came out in like 2012 I think All right And he thought "Oh my god political polarization is crazy." And we were all like "Hold my beer." Like this is going to get worse right dude I have such a good segue coming up in five minutes Keep going Okay But he he said um he has this analogy with the writer and the elephant He's like "Look the elephant is in charge." You've made similar similar analogies like this The elephant is in charge The writer what he calls the writer on top of the elephant comes along after the fact and justifies whatever the elephant is doing Right Right So the elephant really pulls us The writer is just there as a kind of our lawyer to be like "Well this is why I'm doing it." Obviously it's always after the fact though Okay And so these moral foundations are all emotionally based and emotionally tugging us in different directions What I kind of thought about was like okay if conservatives are using the whole pallet of these uh moral foundations it makes sense that they are conservative that they want to conserve and not change because they feel that pull in all these different directions Whereas liberals kind of just have this uh emphasis on care and harm That's kind of like their their main um their main moral foundation Then they're okay changing everything in order to optimize for care and harm Whereas liberals are like "No care and harm is important but so is you know liberty So so is being loyal to the people around you and and having a community and a group that can support you." And so they don't want to mess up that balance as much because they feel that emotional pull So I think that was that was kind of an unlock for me where it was like "Oh okay the there's this really deep-seated emotional um basis for these values and it's obviously because you know they've evolved over hundreds of thousands if not millions of years Uh and so you can't really reason with someone you can't reason them out of their values You can't convince somebody to stop caring for people they care about Right Or Exactly Exactly Or you can't you can't convince them to uh you know not want freedom not want freedom or not want fairness in in a system Yeah Yeah There's really no argument there's no logical argument against those things There's an interesting little thing too about the the fairness uh foundation as well Um he found that liberals are unsurprisingly they see fairness as equality Right they think a system is fair if it comes to roughly equal outcomes for people not necessarily outcomes but even opportunity as well Whereas conservatives are more concerned with fairness uh as it pertains to proportionality Okay So um if somebody contributes more well a conservative would think well they deserve more then you know that whereas a liberal will be like well yes I I get that but also at the same time too there's all these systematic disadvantages that they have and so there should be some equalizing mechanism there too So there's there's a butting head It's not that conservatives don't care about fairness It's just they have a different idea of what fairness means There's different definitions which both are totally justified and valid like 100% valid Yeah Yeah It is It's so funny that these like these contradictory and intention value systems like the more we talk about this the more it's it's so clear that these are baked in as a as a feature not a bug Like this is you are supposed to feel torn as a human right like that is I I almost think about it as like we all have like committees in our brain right like let's imagine that uh you know whichever values framework you want to pick here it could be nine people it could be six people it could be five people whatever are sitting in your brain and they're like arguing about each decision and sometimes every once in a while you'll get like a unanimous decision right it's like there's a six to zero vote it's like oh that's an easy that's a no-brainer decision this is the right thing to do but most big decisions it's like 3 to two or four to six or uh five to four or something and you just feel like so torn you're like this doesn't really feel fair but it's also good for the people I care about but it's like not really aligned with these other things I care about And and like you just kind of agonize over it It's super most decisions or most most situations Yeah it's most decisions Um so my my banger segue here Um the rider and the elephant Mhm There that's a fimile of of something that Plato talked about which was the writer in the chariot which which Jonathan Hay also mentioned in the happiness hypothesis So Plato allow me to nerd out a little bit here Um one of the if you read Plato's Republic one of the most interesting things about the Republic I mean there are there are all sorts of interesting political points that he makes uh and it it is kind of considered the foundational text of western political philosophy But what's fascinating about the Republic is that there's kind of this alternating uh organization to the to the book which is that each each chapter or technically each book within the book each chapter is like one will be about the individual and like what is right and wrong and how decisions are made and what are the what are what's virtuous and what's you know a vice and then the next chapter will address kind of the same topic but it'll it'll address it at the societal level And throughout the whole book Plato like you can tell he's bending backwards and pretzeling himself to keep this metaphor alive through the whole thing that like what is personal is also social and what is social is also personal So like towards the end of the the book like he sets up this whole framework of uh how our individual psychology functions and he he kind of talks about this of like you know he talks about the the writer and the chariot and how like we have these like competing um drives and and motivations and and how we have to like balance them properly with each other and if they get out of balance then we start making poor poor decisions and it's like very damaging and harmful for our individual And then the very next chapter is about the same thing for society and how we have all these conflicting interests in society and how we need to find mechanisms and systems to balance them properly and if anything gets out of balance then we're going to make bad decisions and it's going to be harmful for society So it's funny I I I was like kind of amused by this especially as an author I was like "This is a really interesting." Like he's really holding on to this very hard And then I started researching this episode Yeah And I was like "Motherfucking Plato man." Like it is really impossible to ignore the parallels and the fractal nature of how values exist within the individual and also within the society And you know obviously I don't think Plato's framework was perfect I don't think like his prescriptions were perfect but like he clearly was tapping into something very fundamental and and uh very true And it's interesting because I remember reading it I think I read it in like 2018 or something I found it absolutely fascinating Plato and Aristotle like you can really never go wrong going back and reading them again But I didn't take it super seriously and I didn't think about it on a day-to-day basis But like prepping for this episode and especially now that we're recording it and talking out all this stuff that you and I have been researching for months it it really is it's become it's kind of become impossible for me to not see you know the the the same way we talked about how like a healthy individual has a well- balanced network of values and opposing values that are counterbalancing each other effectively and other values that are harmonizing each other um it's impossible to kind of not see that play out within a society itself or across societies And I almost think you could kind of look at history as a series of societies getting out of balance or overindexing on one particular value it having dramatically negative consequences and then the corrective to that that out of balance right so you could almost you could look at uh you know sorry it's the internet we're going to get there eventually It's Hitler You know you could look at the Nazis right you could look at the Nazis as like just a insane overindexing on certain values that we all have within us And then there had to be like an intense corrective measure to counterbalance that to bring it to to bring balance back to the force as as Star Wars would say I think it can also work in a positive direction And so it's just like it's a very interesting thing I guess philosophically It's it's super interesting that that I feel like I can kind of see the matrix in terms of like how all this stuff functions and uh and it's super cool I mean we're going to the the in a minute we're going to start getting into like the the applications and you know how to change your values how to figure out your values and change them and work with them and alter them and all that stuff Um so we're wrapping up kind of the the philosophical and the theoretical portion of this episode but um I do have to say that like I feel like I've I've I've like reached a point on this subject that I feel like Neo I see the ones and zeros Yeah Yeah Well I I actually I'm dodging bullets True In slow-mo Yeah Um I I I I have an example of this actually too that illustrates this on a little bit smaller level but still illustrates this So um can I tell you my story about when I almost got in a fist fight at a taco truck yes Yeah Okay Yes This is what we're here for This is what we're here for This is where the values really play out is that the taco trucks Okay The taco trucks I mean there there's some truth to this as you'll see I think um it was years ago I was with a was with an old girlfriend of mine at the time and we went to this taco truck we go to although it wasn't too far from where we were living and um go to this taco truck We order our food We go sit down at the picnic table There's a guy sitting down at this picnic table already There's only one picnic table We sit down next to him He strikes up a little bit of just small talk with us It becomes clear very quickly that he's not um he he has some mental disabilities Yeah Okay And he's not all there Really nice guy He's being really sweet though Uh eventually he asked us he's like "Hey I just spent all my money at the taco truck and I'm trying to catch a bus You guys got any money for bus fair?" I'm like "Oh sorry man We're we're out of cash We don't have any cash Apologies." You know didn't think anything of it Few minutes later he gets up There's another guy ordering at the taco truck This guy gets up and goes up to to the um window and he reaches into the tip jar I think what happened was he tipped He realized he didn't have any money He went to go get his tip back so he could get on the bus That's what I think That's what I saw From my point of view that's what happened Yeah But the guy ordering just saw him reach into the tip jar and he lost it on this guy Just lost it Just started screaming at him cursing at him you know and obviously I don't he hadn't interacted with him at all to that point So he didn't know he was mentally disabled in some way And so I went up there to try to diffuse the situation Um told the guys like "Hey buddy I think you just need to leave You know we'll get you some money somewhere else or whatever." Then the other guy um pulled some money out of his pocket and threw it in his face Like pulled a couple bills Wow And I lost it right there Okay that's when I lost it And then my girlfriend's sitting over here like "Don't." She's like "Stop Drew Sit down What are just stop?" Okay And me and this guy get into a shouting match The guy who threw the money at this other guy Me and him get into a shouting match I call him an [ __ ] He calls me a lot of different names We're going back and forth He's getting physically threatening with me I'm like "Oh this is going to happen Here we go." you know boy Um and so it it was we we deescalated eventually He and I shook hands We parted ways I've thought a lot about that since then This was years ago but I've thought a lot about that since then And it really did play out with these values And actually the ones that that Jonathan Height played out here right he was he was violating my sense of care and harm He was like I I had an interaction with this guy I realized he was mentally disabled and probably needed a little extra you know leeway He didn't see that Obviously what he saw was the cheating the the unfairness and the cheating going on That um really set him off And then my girlfriend sitting back here she was more like I need peace and calm and order right now She came from a very hectic background and stuff like that so she really valued more order in her life Yeah Um and so all of these these values were competing at this and it all came to a head and none of us were necessarily wrong We were just all operating on different values at that point um because of what had happened in our perspective right i can look at it now from a more detached um uh point of view But at the time I mean I it was a very emotionally charged situation obviously Yeah And it was because of these value triggers these these innate kind of foundations that that Height outlined here They've been violated for each one of us in that situation And I don't know I just thought it was interesting But now I can look back at a detachment like "Oh okay This guy wasn't actually an asshole." Yeah He just saw that somebody was cheating the system and he didn't like cheaters Like okay that makes sense to me He didn't see that I had already seen this guy had probably needed a little extra care and a little extra tending to and and he violated that when I saw him treating him poorly and then my girlfriend was like "Okay this is just stupid basically." And she was probably right honestly at the time Yeah Your girlfriend was the wise one Yeah So I don't know I to me that is kind of a microcosm of I think of what goes on all the time People get into fights or they get into arguments and they think they're so right because one of their values has been violated or triggered in some way and they don't see that somebody else's has also been at the same time So I don't know I just thought that was yeah kind of interesting You know Plato called this the allegory of the taco truck He did Yeah that's true He's got the allegory of the taco truck Yeah that was that was in the the the the cut chapter of the Republicans That's actually what the chariot was It's actually a taco truck The writer in the taco truck Yeah New book idea The writer in the taco truck The allegory of the taco truck That's my taco truck story Um I thought you were going to say uh and this was all a metaphor for uh Trump administration 2.0 Well I mean you could go there Yeah Yeah Um yeah all all the conspiracy bros are going to be dissecting that story for the next three months on Twitter Yeah basically Uh Drew I've come to a realization Okay The blazer was a bad idea Yeah cuz we're in hour three or four here and uh I'm sweating like a [ __ ] pig What I've discovered is that my value for professionalism is not very high on my heart Okay lesson learned Lesson learned You will change your behavior going forward Now I definitely value my own comfort That's good And uh lack of sweatiness a little bit more than You could shed it if you want to I think that's okay if you want Oh man Okay Keep it keep it classy How how how are we going to be credible if not neither of us is wearing a blazer i'm not going to help your cause at all That's for sure What are we talking about Mark what are we at now where are we going to So okay we've talked quite a bit about what are our values what do they do why are they important uh where do they come from it's finally time to get into the application like how do we figure out what our values are how do we change our values and how can we adapt to our values moving forward So from here on out we're getting into the nuts and bolts the takeaways the applications starting with actually determining your core values Yeah Figuring them out Yeah Because it's very ambiguous and and unclear And you know we've up to this point we've had a ton of these conversations We've had a bunch of little anecdotes and like oh yeah when I was young I used to feel this way And it's it's really hard to get actual clarity on like what are your values roughly what order that do they come in And so I I think it's probably useful to kind of go through a few exercises um to help people clarify doing that And I should mention too that like we're going to go through a few exercises here but we have a full 30-day program based around this episode of values that help people break down their values discover their values act on their values change their values Uh it's in the momentum community So if people are interested in that they can get help with this They can learn to apply all these things They can get a bunch of useful exercises and journaling prompts and accountability Uh so just go to findmomentum.com/values Uh you can find more info there We're going to start with something called the desert island visualization One of the things that I find is really clarifying for people is that like a lot of people you know we talked earlier about how there's like a murky line between what our values are and what the people's values around us are And how do we know that we're actually doing something for ourselves versus just doing something to please other people and so I think one of the one of kind of the initial useful exercises is simply practicing a thought experiment of like removing those social pressures So the simple version of this is that imagine you're on a desert island and the desert island is absolutely abundant So it's everything you could ever want materially is there any like video games you enjoy or hobbies you might have or uh different foods that you might want like hypothetically you are capable of doing anything on this island that you can do off of the island Okay but you're alone on the island And so the question is what do you spend your time doing oh are you reading are you watching TV are you painting are you making music are you learning a new skill are you studying a language are you like What are you doing Right What would you do um I the when you said reading I was like "Oh I'd definitely bring a bunch of books because I just I I love that." I think I would I still think I would work out I actually think I would Even though I think I started working out to to look good for other people but I I still think I would because I feel so good about it Yeah So I think I would definitely still work on my health Um because even if you're alone there's a lot of value with that Yeah And yeah I would explore all sorts of creative stuff too Just anything and everything If nothing mattered if if nobody there was no social pressure around to judge my work or anything like that I think I would go nuts with that Yeah In an ideal world those are the top of mind for me anyway What what comes to mind for you first it's funny because I don't think my life would be that different Oh Oh Mark Wow That's a total Yeah that's a huge flex I I should say that in a lot of these exercises Yeah that is kind of the ideal response Right Right Yeah it's like if I was alone on a desert island I would probably spend most of my time reading and writing and playing video games which is basically what I uh and running on the beach which I also do now So so that's the goal That's the goal is that you if there is a large discrepancy if like all the things you would do on the island have nothing to do with what you're doing in your day-to-day life that's a sign Okay that's a sign that a lot of what you're prioritizing in your life is are not actually your values It's the values of the people around you Okay Uh another useful exercise is to imagine your funeral This is almost kind of the opposite of the desert island exercise because this is this kind of reintroduces the social pressure but it's also asking yourself what do you want to be known to other people for like it removes you from it It removes yourself from Exactly So the second exercise is imagine yourself at your funeral and what do you wish people would say for your eulogy what do you wish that people would say about you if you died yeah mine is I I hope they say he gave more than he took That's um I think I've heard that some that sounds like a Gary Vee thing or something I don't know But um that really rings true to me I hope everybody says "Yeah he he gave more than he took." That's like the core of benevolence Yeah Yeah Like all the way through That was an easy one for me Like that one came to me right away and I was like "Okay I hope I'm living that out too." And I feel like I am So there again I think I'm in in alignment with that which is good It's funny I'm trying to think I'm actually kind of having a hard time with this one Yeah I was about to make a joke of like I I don't have friends or I don't like people Um I don't want you like anyone Yeah I don't want you at my funeral Don't come You're not invited everyone go home I think what I would want people to say is that I was um authentic and I stood up for what I believed in and ultimately I was a net positive force in the world Right Right That I gave a [ __ ] essentially Right So what's that what's that underlying value then uh like a contribution or um um I think there's some benevolence I think there's some benevolence in there Authenticity is definitely that's kind of the first thing that came to mind Um a little bit of self-directed you know it's like I did it my way right right Like I it was I wasn't afraid to like strike out on my own path and try things differently Um that feels important to me And then yeah the contribution feels important as well like you know leaving some sort of legacy or So okay what if somebody has the answer to that i think I'm borrowing from something you wrote one time like uh he [ __ ] like a wild the beast and I don't had the best golf swing I've ever seen Yeah Right Got the word in two every time Yeah Yeah Yeah Well unless you're Tiger Woods Like I I I doubt that's that's realistic Um so that's a mainstay of the social media account Uh it's it goes uh nobody's going to stand up at your funeral and say he [ __ ] like a wilderbeast and had the best golf swing I've ever seen I I think the point there is that ultimately when you're dead you don't really care about impressing people anymore So what's the value you're really leaving behind like what's the statement you're leaving behind what's the legacy you're leaving behind i I think it's a useful thing to think about I do think ultimately the things we care about they should be greater than ourselves in some sense Like I think our highest values like the top of the pyramid are really things that we should put above ourselves Yeah Right like that there's the that everything we know from the philosophy and psychology kind of states that like that that is the optimal arrangement is that the self is high on the pyramid but it's not at the top Right Right Yeah So I think if you are like if for whatever reason I don't think very many people would think that like oh this is what I want people to say you know I [ __ ] like oil to be had the best golf swinger ever If th those kind kinds of things are coming to mind maybe reevaluate that a little bit Yeah it's a sign that you're looking for a lot of validation Yeah Yeah What's another one um this one was very clarifying for me Look to frustration in your life as clues to your values as well What what sets you off what what what's your pet peeve that you have one that comes up over and over and over again Like for me it was just I see incompetence in the world and it just oh it drives me [ __ ] insane right this goes back to my mastery Like I I want environmental mastery or competence in the work you do I I like I I value competent people I value competence in myself I I expect that in myself and in people around me And when I when I don't get it when it's around me when incompetence is in my environment oh just it drives me insane But it was like when I when I thought of this exercise like that one like went straight to it I was like yes that one You know what the first thing that came to my mind is it's actually kind of funny It this is similar to this is like my version of the allegory of the taco truck Okay Uh I hate line cutters Like yes that's another thing We We get it right in the United States Oh my god Everywhere else Come on you guys Like literally if you the the like if you if you add it up every time I've almost gotten in a fist fight like 80% of them are because somebody cut in line Yeah I I [ __ ] hate it Especially when you're at like a concert or something and you're like waiting in line for an hour and somebody just walks right in front of you lose my [ __ ] Absolutely lose my [ __ ] I'm always that guy who's like "No no no no no no no Back." Yeah Yeah Back You back Go back It's the fairness right absolutely comes down And fairness is a huge thing for me Fairness and and fairness justice integrity is like a big thing for me But it's um I do think for me it's fairness more it's less about equality and it's more about uh integrity Yeah Like integrity honesty and integrity are like huge things for me The rest of us stood in line You have to too Exactly That's that's how it works Exactly And and like the way this plays out in in my career is that like I just I mean as you know there's a lot of [ __ ] in this industry There's a lot of shortcuts There's a lot of things you can say to to get get some audience or get some money like a bunch of you know little hacks and stuff right shortcuts Yeah I can't do it Yeah I [ __ ] I can't do it because it's it's if it's not if I don't honestly believe it's helpful to people like I just can't bring myself to say it So that's a huge one for me Okay Yeah Yeah It's no taco truck but it's it's the best I got What else um Okay Ranking and prioritizing If you uh would just put two values up that you're trying to decide between I like this choice This is like Yeah Yeah What's the What's that movie Sophie's Choice you know where it's like I don't think I've seen that movie Oh it's it's I think it's about a mother who has to choose between two of her kids Like one she like has to decide which of her two kids dies Okay Um sounds great I should I should really check that movie Just a bundle of fun Take the whole family So I kind of imagine like a Sophie's choice arrangement here with like you put two values you know maybe uh in the gallows and like put a noose around their head getting a little sick here But and then you have to like pick one right so it's like you have to live the rest of So let's go with like honesty and competency Okay So like honesty and competence Oh yeah Gun to your head You you have to live the rest of your life without one of them Which one do you pick i'm going with honesty You That was a gut reaction You get rid of honesty No no no I would I would choose it I would choose Yeah Yeah I would get rid of competency I think And it would drive me insane Yes And I would hate it But I would rather live in an honest world that with a bunch of uh incompetent morons than like a bunch of lying [ __ ] who are highly competent Yes I totally You know what I just did there i just made all that up after the fact too Yeah I I did the whole This is the whole John Height thing right that was the writer Uh um your writer was justifying justifying my elephant there My gut reaction was honesty and then I made up a reason for why Yeah I'm with you though And actually I would you I think you could actually argue that dishonest competency is is like oh that's that's it's the definition of evil It's malignant Yeah Right Like that is that's like Darth Vader right like that's that's uh Yeah Yeah Of course in the real world we don't have to make those choices luckily I mean sometimes maybe or Yeah Yeah We could be in the Matrix once again I mean have you seen the recent elections good point Good fair point Fair point Typically we don't have to choose between those but yeah Yeah No that it is an interesting thought experiment of I mean you can get yourself in some really ugly situations right like uh if you think about um I don't know like uh uh community versus uh career achievement right gun in your head you can only have one Which one do you take i would probably take career achievement which is not the quote unquote Yeah correct answer but if I'm being honest that's what I would take That's a tough one for me I don't know if I don't know I might lean towards moral community on that one just because well I'm just I'm making up another reason for it I think it's the thing you can't think too much about I I think you're you're right that it's like the the gut there's a gut reaction there It's the gut reaction It's like the first thing that just seems right You just go with it because that is ultimately like these values exist at a very deep emotional level This brings up a question I wanted to ask in this section too was how much ho how how dispositional do you think values are versus aspirational right because I I think a lot of these like when you when I came down to it and when I was going through like okay really decide my values and I do this every couple of years like what am I valuing right now and this and that it's a gut thing it seems like such a gut thing to me but I don't know how much of that is like you know there probably is some mix of genetics and and culture and socializing and all of that I how much how much of these are dispositional versus aspirational and we'll get to the change part I guess changing of value too but um can you aspire to change a value I don't know I think you can yeah you think I mean there's there's some personality component to it though right there is because like for instance my mom and my sister were both social workers and they're like both of them like business just thinking about business kind of drives them nuts they're just like whatever you know and they're just both of them have hearts of gold and social work makes sense for somebody who's like more achievement based I was going to look at that like why would you be a social worker that's insane yeah right it's like well there's probably a very dispositional factor that went into there is I so I think you can be aspirational at the margins right okay I don't think you can wholesale so let's use the example I think achievement and community in my life is like a really good example of this right so uh I even if I [ __ ] you and said community here because that's the thing that you're supposed to say and you know whatever Uh it does not take a rocket scientist to look at my life over the last 10 years and be like clearly you value achievement more because you've like just worked like an insane person and designed your life around it Yeah Right And like foregone community and connection repeatedly through your choices That's part of it But that being said I can look at my life like understanding what everything I know about psychology and well-being and human flourishing and whatnot It's very clear to me that it's like yeah I could use more community in my life Like that would make me a more balanced better functional person if I like maybe de-indexed on achievement just a little Like maybe bring the volume knob down from 10 to a nine and then dial the community up from like a four to a six Okay Like if that if I can manage that trade-off that's probably overall a beneficial trade-off in my life But it's hard right so So I would say in that sense you value can be aspirational but I don't think you can go from like I'm trying to think of something like I genuinely just don't [ __ ] care So like uh formality or propri like we're making the jokes about blazers and stuff right if there's anything I just genuinely do give zero [ __ ] about it is it is like formalities propri like impropriety social like social like I do care about social norms but like uh you know stuff like your uh you know when you go to this sort of event you're supposed to wear your tuxedo like this and always touch this fork first Like I don't [ __ ] care Don't care Never will I'm with you on that dude I don't care whose princess you are Um I'm gonna eat with my job titles I'm from Texas I'm gonna eat with my hands I don't care So I don't think I can aspire to start caring about like it ultimately if I do aspire to start caring about that it's probably because it it's becoming an instrumental value in something else I'll give you an example about that So we were joking about Tiger Woods Woods earlier Yeah I almost had the ch I I had the chance to play golf with Tiger Woods Oh okay And I didn't st like unintentionally I didn't The the hilarious part about this is that I hate golf Just gonna say so the story behind this I was doing Will Smith's book and Will is a good friend of Tigers and Will loves golf He's like [ __ ] obsessed with golf And uh I was hanging out with him in Miami and um and we were like having dinner or whatever and Will just like very casually was like "Hey do you want to play golf tomorrow?" And I was like "No I don't really play." He's like "Oh okay cool." And then like Will's manager came over and he's like "Hey man I think you should go to golf with him tomorrow." And I was like "Dude I don't play I'm going to be and like I know enough about golf to know that if you don't play golf you're going to embarrass yourself and you are going to slow everybody down like you just you drag the whole game Like it just it makes everybody miserable And so I was like "No no no no I'm like it's it's not going to go well." Uh and and he was like he looked at me and he was like "You should really go to this golf game." And I was like "Uh I'm tired I I don't know." I was like "This is kind of weird This is a lot of pressure." I was like "No no no I'll just catch up with him after." Anyway come to find out the golf game was with Tiger Okay And uh the next day I found like I saw Will and he like comes in He's like "Man just had a great golf game man We were playing with Tiger Woods You should have come out." And I was just like "What the [ __ ] what the actual fuck?" And so I went through this minute phase in my life where I had this realization which is like "Okay uh really rich and successful people love golf right and uh I just I could have I I just passed up on like four hours of intimate facetime with Tiger Woods and Will Smith that if I just knew how to swing a [ __ ] golf club I would have had that right and then I started thinking I'm like how many other people are there in the world that if I knew how to swing a golf club I could have that sort of facetime and have that access and man like you're just out on this golf course by yourselves and like nothing else to do So you're just chatting and like you get to know each other and like you really build a relationship and all this stuff And I'm like "Wow knowing how to play golf like now I get it Now I get why all those [ __ ] corporate douchebags and CEOs and stuff play golf all the time cuz it's like the best networking activity there is period." So I was like "Okay I got to pick up golf." And so I went through this phase for like four months where I'm like I got to learn golf I got to like start liking golf And so I went to a driving range with a friend I was [ __ ] terrible And then I went to another friend's bachelor party and we played golf with a bunch of guys I got through like 10 holes and I was like I hate my life I want to go home And then uh I went I went home uh visited my parents My dad's obsessed with golf So I was like I told my dad I'm like you got to take me out play golf with you Like teach me how to play this game Teach me how I like this thing Anyway long story short after like a few months of this I'm like I [ __ ] hate this game Like what there's absolutely nothing redeeming about this for me There's nothing I like about it I'm absolutely terrible at it Uh and I realized I'm like what am I doing like this is not I don't actually value this game Yeah I value what this game gets me Mhm This is my achievement value at work right like the only reason I care about this is because I think it's going to like get me an end with people that I might want to have an end with I'm like that's stupid Like there's so many better ways to to meet people or like have an in with somebody right instead of trying to make yourself a hate playing So anyway that's my golf career Nobody will be standing up at my funeral and talking about my golf swing for sure Yeah I [ __ ] I hate golf too So I'm I don't know I I got nothing to add there because I've tried as well Yeah Yeah Any other uh fun exercises to discover values no there you know there's a lot of these you can kind of even come up with it on your own There's also you can go out and you can take these online tests for the values We kind of already mentioned that a little bit which you you can do that That's fine Shorts value survey That's I believe there's another one I think it's called the PVQ There's tons There's tons out there I found these exercises to be way more valuable for me though because it gets a little too analytical when you start okay what's my score on this values test and this and that and it's like oh these are real examples from my life that I immediately and emotionally connect with Like I was just saying you have these like immediate reactions when you do these thought experiments And those are way more clarifying than any test Yeah You get these and you're like you're like 42 on this and 33 on this And I'm just like what does that even mean it can be super abstract I mean I do think I I like these thought experiments better and and and kind of giving yourself time to debrief them a little bit So since this is the first episode I'm going to explain something really quickly which is these are very long episodes and there's a lot of content in them and there's a lot of takeaways And as we were putting these together we kind of realized this is this is potentially a little bit overwhelming for the listener And it would be nice if we could package everything that we're talking about in each episode and break it down into like daily chunks or weekly chunks and then just give the listener a progression system of like how to move through all this stuff So it's like if you let's say you've decided that uh values is a huge issue in your life and you really need to get this stuff figured out and you would love to spend say the next 3 weeks like just 15 20 minutes a day working on this part of your life and really trying to get it solved once and for all So we've created that track for people and what we're doing is we're doing this for every single episode and we're putting everything in a community so that people can do it together and that people can keep each other accountable So the people who are if you want to work on your values you can connect with the thousands of other listeners who also want to work on their values and are also going through these exercises and are also like coming up with all sorts of questions and you know stumbling through things and want to ask me something or whatever And we're putting this together in a community and we're calling that community momentum And the idea behind momentum is that real life change it doesn't happen in a weekend It doesn't happen in an epiphany It doesn't happen you know cuz like some guru like told you to meditate for 10 minutes or something Real change happens slowly and gradually over a long period of time It compounds It's it is a bunch of small actions that slowly compound over the course of multiple months or or even years And so the community is built around that concept It's built around giving people momentum giving people little bite-sized things to work on every single day to implement all the stuff that they're learning on the podcast and then hold each other accountable build relationships meet like-minded people etc etc So if you are interested in that you can go to findmomentum.com/values That's where you'll find the the values track We have dozens of prompts and exercises similar to the ones that Drew and I just went through uh as well as plenty of supplementary content uh there And not only will you be able to do this month's podcast episode and work on all the stuff that Drew and I are talking about today but you'll be able to do it every single month with every episode So go to findmomentum.com/values So before we move on I I actually I'd like to return to the value hierarchy idea a little bit and dig into it a little bit more We've referenced it throughout the episode at this point and I think it's one of those concepts that people intuitively understand like you hear that like yeah okay we all kind of prioritize our values and there's like a ladder right there's like my top value and there's values underneath it but I think it's worth considering a little bit more deeply uh what the significance of it is I also think this is really where the central message of subtle art comes in because if you think about the whole concept of not giving a [ __ ] like The the point that I make in the first chapter of that book is that there's no such thing as not giving a [ __ ] Really all there is is prioritizing things that deserve to be prioritized above the things that don't deserve to be prioritized Like generally when people are like "Wow I really I really wish I didn't give a [ __ ] about this." What they're saying is "I wish I didn't care about this as much as I do." Right like like you're always going to care about what other people think of you You're always going to care about uh obnoxious people hating on you on the internet You're always going to care about uh I don't know like whether your shoes are cool or not It's a very human thing That's not going to go away What does change or what does go away is your prioritization of that And it and if it's not properly prioritized on your value hierarchy if your highest value is something that is actually very superficial and unimportant then you're going to suffer pretty intensely because of it So really the value hierarchy is kind of the basis of the not give a [ __ ] framework And in the book you know I really tried to kind of outline what I saw as good values You know I I I said like you should value things that are ultimately within your control that are uh not tenuous or short-term or superficial that you should really focus on like long-term abstract principles Uh but it's it's one thing to just say that It's another thing to actually do it And I I do think to me the most important maybe the most important message of my career that I really stand by is is this idea of choosing your struggle because I think one thing we haven't really discussed yet is that uh generally speaking when people think about what's important to them and what they want in their life you're always thinking in terms of what you gain you're never thinking in terms of what you give up And ultimately I think that is actually what defines what where something is on your value hierarchy Like the thing at the top of your value hierarchy is not at the top because it's the thing you want the most It's the thing that you're willing to give up everything else for And if you want to nudge something further up your prioritization further up your value hierarchy the way to nudge it up higher is not by wanting it more it's by giving up more in the process Does that make sense yeah Yeah it does And it it's it's also no matter there's a cost to all of this Right Right It's the trade-off It's the trade-offs And it's it's what you are uh whatever pain you're going through now It's because of whatever value you have been prioritizing Exactly Right And you might not be aware of that You're like why am I why am I suffering this way i don't get it I don't understand it It's because of whatever you're choosing to value So if you value uh you know autonomy over uh comfort well get ready for some instability right and like you're like "Why is my life so crazy?" Well because you you value autonomy and freedom and refuse to compromise any of your own impulses Yeah So I love this idea that real value change actually comes from what you're willing to give up And I think it's not a coincidence that generally speaking the largest changes in people's lives occur not after a euphoric or great moment but actually after either a trauma or tragedy We see this over and over again So I'm I I'm curious Drew like what is it about these intense negative events in our lives that actually do open us up so much to change yeah Yeah There's this whole field in psychology uh this whole theory around it called post-traumatic growth theory Um it's been around for a few decades now There's lots of research backing it up Essentially um what the research finds is that somewhere between like 80 and 90% of people after they experience some sort of traumatic event a loss in their life and it can be big T trauma it can be little T trauma even too after they experience these traumatic events Somewhere between 80 and 90% of people report experiencing at least one positive change in their life Now this is not to romanticize trauma at all Okay this is not You don't need trauma to change Okay this you should not seek out trauma Do not seek out trauma Trust me life will come and give you some trauma It will deliver on its on that promise for sure That said trauma is incredibly common too I I think that's another point to drive home is that we all experience some degree of trauma Some people get it worse than others Yes And I want to acknowledge that absolutely But it's an inevitable part of life And um the the wild thing about humans is is not not only can we bounce back from trauma not only can we um endure these traumas but we actually can thrive and grow after these traumas It's a that's a very common thing too So not only is the trauma itself common but growing from that trauma is is an incredibly common thing There's there's five areas five domains that researchers have identified for areas of growth that people experience after a trauma Um you have improved relationships with others discovering new possibilities in life um increased personal strength a greater appreciation of life and spiritual or existential development You can see already those are like valuel laden domains of life right relationships and new possibilities and personal strength All of these are very very uh valuaden areas Yeah And what happens what what they think happens there's this kind of process that people go through You experience a trauma um and there's all these factors It depends on your personality depends on your coping strategies depends on your social network around you right but um what happens generally is you have this traumatic event and it it shakes up your worldview in some way or another right think of like an earthquake that happens or or like the fires in Los Angeles recently Like it's something like that happens Everybody kind of has this sense of oh something's different Something has changed My what I believed before no longer applies Yeah And so it forces you into this space of uh re-evaluating priorities in your life Um you ruminate on the event trying to figure it out trying to make sense of it That's our brains are just trying to make sense of the world all the time So it's trying to make sense of this trauma Um and what happens through that you go out to your social network you start talking to people you engage you try to come up with new a new worldview basically And through that your values change or at least they're rep prioritized right yeah The way the way I've always liked to think about this is that a trauma a traumatic event or a tragic event it is part of what makes it so painful is the experience of a value failing you Yes It's like you used to really care about this thing or you used to really believe this thing was true about yourself or the world and suddenly it that belief or that value fails you catastrophically and it leaves this like void right leaves a vacuum that needs to be filled inside you with some other value or some other belief And that process of like finding the new value or finding a new belief it it's difficult and uncomfortable but ultimately that vacuum is the opportunity for change and growth Right Right Yeah Like a classic example is um you know someone gets a terminal illness cancer or something like that um at some point in their life and all of a sudden they're thrown why am I spending so much time at work why am I so obsessed with status why am I so obsessed with validation from other people when I have my family right here that I've been neglecting or is something along those lines right a lower value value for a higher value Again it it puts that into stark contrast for you Now again I want to go back and just reiterate that you might have these positive changes or these these value changes that are in the right direction right alongside all the bad things about trauma too The they happen simultaneously So again not romanti romanticizing it or or saying there's only good things that will come out of this That's not what I mean at all It's one of those situations where like you have to hold the positive and negative in your mind at the same time Like I remember seeing a survey data that found that like cancer survivors something like 70 or 80% of them reported feeling more gratitude and and satisfaction with their lives in general after surviving the cancer And it's funny cuz I think the stupidest way to interpret that data is be like "Oh we should all go get cancer now." like it's like no no no you still don't want cancer but if you do get cancer and you manage and you're fortunate enough to survive uh chances are you're going to you're you're actually going to develop a lot of gratitude and and uh satisfaction for the for the people and things in your life What we're talking about is value change though and like it's undeniable that some traumatic events can change your values Now it depends again like on some personality traits that you have your coping strategies the event itself If it's like really horrible then it's less likely actually to have more positive effects than than not Um so there's all sorts of factors that go into that but there are some personality traits People who are generally optimistic um over pessimistic will experience this more Being open to new experiences too that that helps your coping styles like actively There's this thing in PTG in post traumat post-traumatic growth um called active rumination So you know a traumatic event happens and it's just natural for you to ruminate on it Right Right If you actively engage in that rumination though like the rumination is going to happen but if you actively engage in kind of cognitive reappraisal of it like okay this happened What value is it call calling into question in my life yeah Um how can I respond to this in a positive way um all of those sorts of things will will help increase the likelihood of some sort of growth I think one of the biggest ones and this comes up over and over again in all the studies I've read on post-traumatic growth which is your your social group um and which fits into the larger culture as well though So if if you are in a culture that's a little bit more um they're they're not open to the reinterpretation of the trauma or they don't want to hear you know it's more of a closed off keep that to yourself type supportive not supportive obviously that's not going to help but the social group in general has been shown to be one of the key factors in pro postraumatic growth and and to be clear not just social I mean it could be family partners like support network relationships essential relationships yeah you remember how like hipsters would always brag about how like they were their favorite band was one you never heard of right until you heard of them Yeah Yeah So my favorite psychologist might be the psychologist nobody's ever heard of This is my hipster psychology Okay So I'm a huge fan There was a guy named uh Casemir Drowski Oh which you know I know because of you I've written about you told me about Yeah Uh I I I've written about him multiple times But huge fan of Kazmir Drosski So nobody It's actually really fascinating I I love this dichotomy that happened during the cold war So cold war happens and western psychology pretty quickly by like the 1960s is really focusing on self-esteem and happiness and positive effect and self-actualization self-actualization And it's like everything's just like let's be great like how do we how do we be as happy and wonderful and great as possible and meanwhile in Eastern Europe Casemir Drowski who's Polish uh I believe he was working out of Warsaw they were in he was working in the aftermath of not only World War II but the Holocaust uh and and also working under Soviet occupation And so what did he decide to to study and and and work on tragedy Yeah And the effects of tragedy And to my knowledge he was actually the first researcher to actually find the case So he actually studied Holocaust survivors and Polish World War II veterans To my knowledge he was the first one to find this this idea of post-traumatic growth Because what he started to notice was that you know obviously in the immediate aftermath of the war and the Holocaust people were traumatized They were despondent They were there was despair They like didn't know where they're going to get their next meal Like a lot of people didn't have a place to live But as he kept following up with people pretty soon within a few years he noticed something really strange which is that a significant percentage of the survivors started to say that they had actually become better people And they would describe themselves pre-war as being ungrateful self-centered um untrustworthy uh not liking themselves not ambitious And then after the war they had actually felt like they really grew as a person They had become very grateful for the people in their life and they really valued their relationships with people and they like actually wanted to work hard and maximize their potential And so Droski actually called this positive disintegration and he meant it in actually like a very literal term because he meant disintegration as in like the disintegration of the ego He saw trauma and tragedy as like a way of your ego literally being destroyed Like all the things that you thought were true about yourself and true about the world become violated They they they have like been proven utterly and completely wrong And that ego destruction is like causes an extremely stressful and emotional response in people But if the ego is destroyed and that vacuum is then filled with more positive things if the lessons that the person takes from it are are more adaptive and more psychologically healthy then that becomes a positive disintegration And uh the fascinating thing about Drowski is that he did all of this work in the 1950s and then it just sat behind the Iron Curtain for like 50 years and nobody knew about it And it wasn't until like some like PhD students in Canada came across him revital translated his work revitalized it and then published some of his work in the early 2000s And then it's like that's the that's the only reason we even know any of this exists But it's like um you know Drowski was uh you know was was my favorite band that you've never heard of And uh I knew him before he was cool And um you're welcome So you're so cool You're the coolest nerd Mark that's all I Drew This is all I've ever wanted to hear from you This is this is this is all this podcast all the studio everything That's all I ever wanted to hear I'm the coolest nerd All right Um I have a story in my life about death and tragedy that has been ultimately been a very positive influence I'm curious if you have any story like that Yeah Well um I not as dramatic as the one you had definitely but there's been some I've recently I think my family has become more central to my value system um because of a few things around that Several years ago and I've talked about this before I guess but several years ago my uncle passed away and I was pretty close to with him He didn't have any kids and he treated all of his nieces and nephews kind of like his extended children basically you know extended family of children He was just a really good generous guy was somebody you really look up to I was actually the one who ended up calling the the ambulance for him Um and then the next day he passed away in the hospital And that was kind of a a wakeup call for me around like oh I haven't like I hadn't spent a lot of time with him the the previous couple of years even though he was like a big part of raising me and and a big part of my life And he's helped a lot of other people in my family and a lot of other people in his community as well And to me I was just like oh that brought into very stark uh contrast like the way I was living that I always said "Yeah I value my family and yes you know whatever." But it wasn't up until that point I was like "Oh we're all living on borrowed time a little bit and I need if I'm going to say that I I value family I need to start acting like it." So that was that was one for me anyway that was um you know that's not a huge like to me it's not a huge trauma per se to my my well-being necessarily but it did definitely shake things up So that's yeah I feel like death in general just it's a it's a slap in the face It's like dude this [ __ ] is precious and scarce and you have been taking it for granted and I I almost feel like it's almost impossible as a human to like not take people for granted to a certain extent It's very hard to remind yourself You know this is this is why the Stoics were all about momento mori Like it it's you have to actively try to remind yourself about your own death and the death of family members that are impending uh to stoke that gratitude Yeah Right It's uh Yeah Because we're so good at avoiding it Yeah Yeah Yeah What was yours then well it's in the book Oh okay Yeah Yeah Yeah It's it's in the book and I've talked about it uh quite a few times So I I'll go over it briefly but it's you know for people who are curious it's it's the last chapter of Subtle Art but um when I was 19 u a good friend of mine uh drowned at a party a lake party and um And you were there i was there And it was just like utterly honestly I think I just went in the shock Yeah When you're 19 and something like that happens what that's the only reaction really i think I spent about 24 hours in shock And um to this day kind of the deepest the the next couple months was like kind of the deepest depression that I've ever been in And uh but it's wild man Like I that rumination too Like I just remember my brain could not get off of it Like it kept trying to make sense of it And that's the thing about death is like there's no way to make sense of it It's just right There's no you try you keep trying to find like deeper meaning or reasons or purpose or like could I have done this or could this person have done that or like you know why did they deserve it and there's no answer to any of it like it's it's all just an open loop that never shuts but the the end effect of that I eventually kind of came out of that funk and um it was a real wakeup call especially you know when you're that young I mean first of all I was at 19 I was totally an entitled [ __ ] I like took no responsibility for anything in my life I smoked pot all the time I was like you know I was a a basically a failed music student Um and didn't really care Um sounds like every 19-year-old male I know but yeah go on But um no it it was a wakeup call It really kind of it was it was a it was a positive disintegration Like it was a shock treatment It was it was like a dude this could end at any moment and like what the [ __ ] are you doing like this is you are literally wasting your life And I was smart enough too to understand that I was I was so young and that my choices then were going to compound throughout my life right so it was I pretty quickly noticed that you know correcting my trajectory every year that I corrected my trajectory sooner was going to have like an outsized effect on everything else So it really changed my attitude towards a lot of things I quit smoking pot I started studying for my classes I uh got dropped out of music school and like went to a real university and started taking everything seriously basically taking myself seriously taking life seriously and and it's you know it's still a very sad uh experience in my life and obviously like I don't recommend it but um I can honestly say it's like one of the single most positive instigators of change in my entire life right like it it is the that single experience was worth reading 300 books and attending 20 seminars Yeah You know um again I don't recommend it but yeah no no an interesting little fact that I found in the research as well that I'll tack on here Um there's some there's cultural influences We've ted on it a little bit already but um what you find in more individualistic cultures like the United States Western Europe um you will typically find so the the five areas I listed before right you will typically find that people in those cultures when they experience a traumatic event will end up uh re-evaluating and revaluing things that are more achievement focused kind of individual focused Whereas in more collectivist cultures they'll they tend to uh value things like moral duty and family and society and stuff like that I just thought that was kind of interesting So um it it really does depend again it goes back to that whole socialization around you and the culture around you how this kind of shapes what you end up revaluing or re-evaluating as you go through this too So like in your case you know you being an American from Texas no less right you kind of doubled down like on the okay I need to the achievement and the like not taking life for granted and this is the one life we have and you know that sort of thing So I don't just thought it was interesting You know what's funny though i distinctly remember like a huge motivator for me at that time I had this very so my friend who died his name was Josh I had a very palpable sense that like I morally owed Josh Oh the duty of living well Yeah And and I mean part of it was the way he died because it was literally just I mean there was everybody there was drunk Bunch of people were on drugs Everybody was swimming in the same lake You know it it could have happened to anybody Like it it's the coroner said that his legs cramped up Yeah and he just went under and it was dark and nobody could see him and he just went under Right So it it was literally a situation It could have been any of us It it was very random and I think part of the randomness and and and part of the struggle with that was like the realization of like that could have easily been me Yeah Survivor guilt kind of Yeah Yeah Totally And so there there I'm I remember just feeling a strong sense of moral obligation of like I owe him a living well Yeah Right Like if I just sit on my couch and smoke pot for the next 5 years like I'm kind of doing him a disservice right that may be completely irrational but it it's what I needed to believe in at the time And that's part of the cognitive reevaluation that you did So there there's active rumination and that's the conclusion you came to That's the sort of thing that the the psychologists in this area would call like cognitive re-evaluation Yes And and you put a a positive spin on it in a way where you it could easily go the other way Well he died It was random Life is meaningless Right That's that's the other interpretation that you could have went down I'm glad you brought up the cognitive re-evaluation because there's an associated experience with any cognitive reevaluation which is popularly known as cognitive dissonance Yeah And I think as we were doing research for this I I kind of came to the realization that like I don't think you can really change your values without experiencing some cognitive dissonance Like I do think there is a requirement to change a value whether it is to just simply lose the value have it fail you through tragedy or trauma or to deprioritize it through sacrificing or giving something up Mhm you're g you are going to have to go through a period of cognitive dissonance where the actions and experiences in the world around you do not match up your prior beliefs And so I think it's worth digging into what cognitive dissonance is and kind of talking through what the experience is and like how people tend to respond to it because it's actually there's some funny stories fascinating around around how people respond to cognitive dissonance Uh but it's it's uh I think it's really important to touch on because I think anybody listening to this who's going to challenge themselves to change their values you're going to have to confront this at some point or cognitive dissonance is a concept uh invented by the psychologist Leon Festinger Is it Festinger or Festinger i've always said Festinger but I've always ever seen it written I guess so I don't know Okay Well let us know internet whether whether we're pronouncing this wrong Uh Leon Fessinger he he worked in the 1950s at the University of Minnesota And like I feel like most popular psychological theories you know they have like a little origin story Uh and some of them are cool some are kind of lame The cognitive dissonance origin story is [ __ ] awesome I love it I love it so much So Fessinger and his and his colleagues were uh they're working at University of Minnesota and one day they open the newspaper and they find a news story about a local cult And the cult was run by a woman who called herself Marian Keech And she believed that she was communicating telepathically with aliens who were going to come take over the world and uh and it was only through her group her cult and her uh I believe it was prayer um that they were going to prevent the world from being taken over by these aliens So this was uh this was a thing that was going on around Mini Minneapolis and uh Fessenger was like this is so interesting And so what they did which part of me thinks like this would never fly these days So part of what they did is they actually infiltrated the cult They actually like pretended to be cult members and pretended that they like believed all this [ __ ] because they actually wanted to observe because oh important detail Marian Kee she there was a apparently there was a specific date that the aliens were going to come and the world was going to end of course right like most good cult leaders right she sets up an end date um so the researchers were fascinated by this like let's join the cult let's pretend to do all their weird [ __ ] and then when the date comes let's watch what happens and let's like let's see let's just observe and see if we can learn anything So sure enough the date comes and goes No aliens invade Nothing happens And the psychologist's expectation was that you know once once the date came and went all the cult members would be like "What the fuck?" You know like I guess we can go home now Like clearly this was all a bunch of [ __ ] right actually the opposite happened The cult members became even more fervent because they believed that they had saved the world and they believed that there were going to be more dangers and threats to the world and they were the only ones that could save it So nobody left the cult nobody stopped believing in Marian Kee and she just kept going on like her merry way with zero problems And this absolutely fascinated the researchers that what Vesser went on to kind of explain is that when we're exposed to a contradiction in the world to our worldview right we believe the world is one way and then an experience goes the other way contradicts that we experience a certain amount of dissonance in our minds It creates discomfort and that discomfort can't exist for very long And so the only way to relieve that dissonance is to either deny reality and pretend it doesn't exist or it's to change the belief And generally speaking changing a belief is uncomfortable because it requires you to lose something It requires you to to lose something Something you used to think was important Now you have to lose it and and reorganize all your frameworks Reorganize your value hierarchy and now some of your needs go unmet right like so if you think about those individual cult members right this kind of comes back to the whole thing about like values are strategies to meet our needs When you ask yourself like who joins a cult and who like buys into this [ __ ] well the they're probably motivated to join a cult and buy into the ideas because it's meeting some fundamental need that's like not being met in another way First and foremost when you when you read anything about the type of people who join cults uh they tend to be very lonely individuals Like they lack a community They they don't feel like they're part of something right so a cult immediately you're given a sense of community You're given a sense of purpose and you're given a sense of importance right like oh my god we're the only ones who can save the world Holy [ __ ] like aliens are going to come I'm so lucky I found this guru Like she's so amazing She's so in touch with all this stuff So it it really is fulfilling a number of psychological needs And if you're somebody who's not who has historically cons and consistently not met those needs in other areas of your life then the cult's going to feel like a big upgrade The problem is though is that to break out of the cult you're going to have to break all of the values and belief systems that are not that are fulfilling your needs So you're going to have to like downgrade the things that you care about You're going to feel isolated again You're going to feel unimportant again And you're going to feel lack of purpose again And a lot of people the thought of that is just too painful And so they they don't want to go back to that And so when they're presented in a when they're presented a situation with cognitive dissonance they just double down on the belief But the reason I bring this up is for two reasons One is just a so that the listener understands kind of like what's going on in their brain when a value fails them or when a contradictory experience intersects with something that they believe or find important But B I think this is something that you can actually leverage to change a value And the way you leverage it is to actually like let's say I'll give a really simple example and it's it's kind of piggybacks on the example you just gave Let's say that I want to value my family more right like I have this realiz maybe somebody dies or maybe something happens and I I have this realization of like you know I've really taken my family for granted I've not been close with them I've not kept in touch with them My parents are getting older My aunts and uncles are getting older I don't know how much longer they're going to be around Like I should really take advantage of the time I have left and like really commit and and and you know put the time in Let's say I've decided that yet my my actions are still completely contradictory to that Like I don't call home I don't go home I don't do anything So let's say that I've intellectually decided that but like ultimately my actions don't reflect the values right like it's it's I've clearly not making them them a priority I can incite cognitive dissonance in myself by like simply taking action on a value as if it's much higher in my value hierarchy than it actually is Right so it's again it comes back to what are you willing to give up so before it's like I wasn't willing to take time off work to fly home and visit family or I wasn't willing to uh spend an extra holiday with my family or I wasn't willing to I don't know like call my dad every weekend or whatever You simply make the commitment to the action The action will feel like a waste at first It will feel like a waste of time It will feel like you're sacrificing something more important for it But and that will cause cognitive dissonance But if you proceed with the action eventually your mind will adjust itself and you'll start valuing the thing that you're doing proportionally to how much you're doing it Right i guess the the moral of the story here is that your values follow your actions And if you want to prioritize something higher on on your value hierarchy if you want to care about something more or care about something less it's literally just a matter of how much focus and energy you put into it and understand that it will feel weird at first It will feel like you are poorly investing your time and energy But eventually you'll start experiencing the benefits of the new value and then your belief systems will adjust themselves to relieve the cognitive dissonance and then your value hierarchy will shift Right Yeah So the super short version is like values follow your actions Right Yeah I think you also have to be very aware of of which value that you are addressing with those actions and that cognitive dissonance too right let's let's go back to the cult example The reason that these people double down is because they value the community right it's because they value uh that uh the social relationships and all the purpose and everything like that that you explained People from the outside look at it and say "Well they're wrong They don't value truth." No they don't They they value the community around it And so of course they're going to bend over backwards to to defend that right that's that's like such an interesting definition of a cult is that a cult is basically people who value community over truth Yeah Yeah Absolutely And this applies to like less extreme examples too If you um you know you know we talked a little bit about politics If you're having a a conversation with somebody about politics and this happens a lot where you try to induce cognitive dissonance in them by pointing out the contradictions in their beliefs Usually what you're doing is you're not you're reinforcing the belief you're reinforcing the belief because you're you're not targeting the correct value Like let's take a a a fairly common example abortion right so people liberals will point to conservatives and say "Well you guys you say you value life so much that you're against abortion and yet you're pro- death penalty too That that makes no sense There should be cognitive dissonance there." No those are two different values you're talking about So it makes perfect sense to somebody who believes that because on the one hand they value sanctity that that sanctity value of preserving life and then on the other they value fairness and authority and order on the other hand when it comes to like the death penalty So you're talking about two completely different values So turn that back on yourself if you're trying to use this cognitive dissonance framework for that Make sure you're like targeting the right value Yeah And it is interesting because the liberal in that situation those two things are are actually the same value for them right It's the it's the harm care right on both sides right on both sides right whereas for the conservative it's actually two different values that are that they're that's a that's that is a really interesting way And it it is so hard to remember that like if you're ever in an argument with somebody and you start using facts right you come up with all these facts It's like it's not about the facts it's about the values It's funny too because like the the biggest gripe that everybody has about political discourse or the news or whatever it's like oh it's not factual enough But it it is like no it's you're not understanding everybody's values is what is happening and yes there is misinformation and and a lot of [ __ ] out there but like all of that comes after the fact right like if so take the mainstream news right for the past 10 20 years um like CNN for instance or the New York Times is probably a better example like the New York Times has actually pretty consistently not gotten things factually wrong it is that they are only presenting facts that are reflective of certain values and not others right and so you're you are still getting a very biased perspective on a story but not it's not biased because the facts are wrong or that the facts have been fudged or that the statistics are not you know accurate or the study isn't referenced correctly It's biased because it's it's facts The framing of the story and the framing of the facts is only through the lens of a single value right that is reflective of one political leaning and not the other right so but that's such a hard thing to communicate right and you know and for years and years and years I would hear conservatives complain about the New York Times and I'm like what are you talking about it's like the most fact check publication in the country And eventually I started to get it I'm like oh yeah they're they're just hammering on like the same two or three values over and over again Um and it comes back to a healthy society has a diversity of values and they are allowed to counterbalance and counteract each other Mhm So the the researcher who came up with instrumental and terminal values Milton Roich he actually had he had this other concept called self-confrontation And he actually spent a number of years researching whether he could get people to change their values themselves just through reflection and and kind of interrogating their own reasoning and their own thoughts And he was actually successful at it in in a couple circumstances And the way he was successful at it is actually exactly what you're saying So what he did this was during he was doing this work during the uh civil rights era in the late 60s And he took people from both sides um you know the lefties who valued equality and then like the people on the right who valued uh uh fairness and autonomy and freedom And what he would do is he'd have them do a written exercise where they uh you know they chose between freedom and equality And then he would have them like write a short essay on like why they believe so strongly in it And then he would ask them a question that would essentially frame their value in terms of the other values So to give you an example he took like the the people the the right-leaning people who uh chose freedom They would write their essay on like why freedom was so important and why you know the the civil rights movement was potentially jeopardizing you know some of the freedom Well then he would give them a prompt that would basically say,"Well what if you have you ever considered that the civil rights activists are actually uh protesting in in in favor of freedom?" That actually the they're using the word equality but they're but their word of equality can actually also be understood in terms of of freedom And when he like and then he would have them make that argument and when he had them make that argument they would change their minds Yeah Yeah And it was it's exactly what you're saying is it's like if you can take your argument and package it in the other person's values they'll start believing it I guess this is like kind of at the root of persuasion Maybe we should do an episode on persuasion Oh that'd be a good one Yeah And we'll just persuade the audience to do things for us The other thing I want to touch on before we move on from this this and this this comes to this ties in a little bit with the cognitive dissonance Uh so I'm a huge fan of Charlie Munger you know the legendary investor Charlie both Charlie Munger and Warren So Charlie for people who don't know Charlie Munger was Warren Buffett's business partner And both Charlie and Warren are like almost philosophers like investment They're investors but they're also like philosophers And and both of them just have like so many amazing quotes and ideas and frameworks and mental models and stuff But Charlie has this uh great saying that I think about all the time which is "Show me the incentive and I'll show you the behavior." And you know we just talked about how cognitive dissonance teaches us that ultimately if you lead with the behavior even if it doesn't feel right your feelings will follow right so if you just act out the value you want to have then you'll start eventually feeling aligned with that action because your your mind will prevent the cognitive dissonance Well there's kind of another string in that chain is that if you can set up an incentive for action then your action will naturally just gravitate that direction as well because like another aspect of humans is that we tend to do the things that we're incentivized to do right and um so I I like the idea of kind of stretching this out Again like let's say I want to prioritize my family more and I just I I've been saying that for years and I don't do it One way to do it is to just I don't know book a bunch of flights and schedule calls or whatever you know with family members or whatever Another way is to incentivize myself in some way right like reward myself make an agreement with myself of like you know I'm not allowed to take another trip You know I I'm only allowed one trip somewhere else for every trip I take back home to see my my parents or something Basically create like rewards or punishments for myself that nudge myself in the direction of the value that I want to have The most obvious example here is is around like fitness and nutrition Um most people want to value health much more than they do right uh much a lot of people try to do the actions that embody the value of health and failed to do those actions And and in my own health journey one of the only things that I ever found was actually generating incentives for myself to do the healthy actions and actually uh uh you know follow through with them because then it's like you create the incentives to to nudge yourself towards the healthy actions So you sign up for classes and you do things with a friend and you um gamify things and track and keep scores and then that nudges you into the behaviors and then as you're doing the behaviors you start to experience the benefits and you start you stop like whining and complaining that you're wasting so much time like getting ready ready for the gym every morning and then your values start to align And because you're giving up the other things for your health to resolve the cognitive dissonance your mind starts to believe that health is actually more important And now that you actually believe that your health is more important it is much easier to do all the things that you want to do And goes back to your values are what you're willing to give up Yep Right Goes straight back to that Yep Yeah What are you willing to give up mhm All right So as we round this episode out I think I'd like to kind of get into like a summary of takeaways for the listener And I would actually like to frame this around Aristotle had this idea of practical wisdom And he argued that of all the virtues the most important was wisdom because wisdom was the one that allowed you to calibrate all the other virtues to know when you were overindexed on one and underindexed on the other and when when you should give something up and when you should take something on And so he he believed that if you didn't have wisdom you couldn't really maintain or or manage all the other all the other virtues So what what I'd like to do is go through these four elements of practical wisdom and just break down piece by piece what they are how people can practice them how people can get better at them and why they're so important and effective when it comes to uh discovering your values and also living out your values And I I'll start with self-awareness which is pretty self-explanatory I think so much of this episode probably 70 80% of this episode is really just been helping the listener around their self-awareness around their own values I mean the importance is pretty logical right like if you aren't aware of what you value then you can't adapt or change what you value So the first step to managing your own values is to simply get clarity and and awareness around your own values And like I said earlier we've got a whole 30-day track in the momentum community around doing this This whole episode is around doing this But there's all sorts I mean you can journaling is effective for this I think ultimately a lot of the work that is done in therapy is around helping the patient understand what they're valuing and what they're prioritizing and maybe they should be prioritizing something else I also believe that meditation is useful for this as well that um you know by sitting and noticing your own thoughts and proclivities and and what you're focusing on u you start to develop a sense of um what you're valuing and what you're prioritizing in your life Yeah Um and then the next one to emotional regulation aligning your emotions with your values keeping those emotions aligned with the values so you can act in a way in accordance with your values Right There's also there was a psychologist Albert Ellis um who came up with this idea that between an event happening and your reaction is the interpretation Right and he has this there was the ABCs of what he developed this uh whole therapeutic model called rational emotive behavioral therapy Right He's got the ABCs here RBT RBT Yeah Uh ABC's was that there's the activating event Uh the B is the beliefs and C is the consequences of those Okay Yeah So I think as you as you navigate your own values and your your life and you have your values kind of front and center after being more aware of them you'll start to run into this quite a bit I think I I know I have anyway in relationships You know benevolence is a big value of mine right um and I would I looking back I think there have definitely been times where I haven't acted benev benevolently in situations people in my life Um close relationships in particular Those you know start pushing on your emotional buttons a little bit And what I noticed is like okay if I'm going to value benevolence then I need to act benevolently at some point Right But the thing is is that in the moment when your when your emotions are running high that's really hard Yes Right Yeah So uh uh learning how emotional regulation you mentioned meditation already That's one way to kind of um learn how your your your mind works in accordance with your emotions in certain situations This for me though I have been able to use this kind of ABC method here When I have a triggering event and an emotion pops up I've learned to like catch myself right there like okay I'm going to I'm going to act on this emotion or should I act on this emotion yeah and how is that reflecting my values or uh this situation this relationship right now it's it's hard to do and it takes a lot of practice and this is really a I mean therapy helps and it is a skill and I know we're already planning on doing a full episode on emotions and emotional regulation Three things come to mind like listening to you talk about this Three three ways I can see kind of emotions hijacking this process of living living out your values The first one you already mentioned is that being triggered by some lower value that inadvertently causes you to sacrifice you know a higher level value uh that you later regret or feel bad about That's one way Uh a second way is that when you are prioritizing a value say you are when you're trying to move something up the value hierarchy it means you're giving up other values which there there's going to be negative emotional reactions when you give those things up right like if if I am if I start taking time off work to spend more time with my friends and family I'm going to have negative emotions around having to give up time at work like I'm going to question it I'm going to feel guilty about it I'm going to feel stupid about it I'm going to you know whatever Um and so you have to be prepared for those emotions and and those those side effects and whatever Now this popped into my head when you were talking about the relationship thing because it's our values are not only the metrics by which we measure ourselves they're they're they're also the metrics by which we measure other people And so if you have a very strong value around say benevolence and you're dating somebody who very much is not being benevolent that will also probably trigger you Yes Yeah You'll be like what the [ __ ] is wrong with you like I can't believe I'm with this person right now And so you could see it pop up in relationships as well right like it's it's like if if my wife does something that like really goes against my values you can bet your ass we're going to have a fight about it So it's something else to be like very cognizant of because if your values are way out of alignment or you are prioritizing something that's like very stupid and not not serving you that's also going to show up in your relationships and you're going to start judging your partner for all these all the dumb stuff that you care about or your your best friend or your brother or sister or whatever like it's going to it will manifest in your relationships in not the same way it manifests in your own life but like probably in like uh symmetrical ways that it manifests in your own life Yeah Also with the social relationships you can leverage them as well to help you stay in line with your values So not only yeah are you judging the people around you um based on your own values but you can also choose those circles right of the values that you want to associate with Right It it's yeah your relationships almost like amplify your what's already there right reveal a lot of things reveal and yeah reveal and amplify yeah third one is relationships and I again I think a huge component of this is like you don't necessarily need the people in your life to have the same values as you you simply need to respect each other's values and trust each other to act on on your values and it's you actually kind of want a diversity of values in the people around you because it's going bring out the best of each other and you're going to counterbalance each other You're going to offer each other different perspectives like you know the fact that we have different values It's like we can compensate for each other's weaknesses and keeps us from running too far in one direction Exactly Exactly So it it is when when we talk about strong relationships it's you don't want to just find a bunch of many me and yesmen around you Like you want to find people who are different from you but you respect them and you respect those differences and you can have honest conversations around those differences Like that that's really what the key is Yeah Yeah For sure Yeah And then the last component of practical wisdom the the self-acceptance part that you already talked about the the non-judgment Um this one one of my favorite psychologists Mark who this is not as cool as yours but Carl Rogers he's much more wellknown He said the curious paradox is that when I accept myself just as I am then I can change Yeah Okay So accepting your ch self as you are without trying to change yourself allows you to change yourself It's it's one of those neat little paradox Yeah Love right um but it it's pretty hard So we we've talked about you know these other three three or four principles here of practical wisdom And you know yeah when you trade a lower value for a higher value or you're acting out one of your values that's in tension with another one of your values there is that uncomfortable feeling You do kind of just have to accept that that's what that is This this happened to me recently I already kind of alluded to it when I was I it was a benevolent thing I was doing but it caused a lot of uh issues with because I needed to get some stuff done and it ran up against my value of accomplishment and and achievement Yeah And it just it felt bad Just felt bad And and I was like "Okay how do I stop feeling bad?" That's immediately where I went How do I stop this feeling i don't want to stop this feeling And I kind of came to the conclusion "Oh wait I just have to accept that this is how I'm going to feel sometimes." It it's funny because self-acceptance I feel like out of all of the values that we've talked about at this point and at this point I think we're probably up at 25 or 30 different values in this episode of all the different values on this episode self-acceptance is probably the simplest and also the most difficult in many ways because it really is just what you said It's like being okay with feeling bad sometimes Like the fact that you you feel bad that you didn't achieve as much as you could have or you feel bad that you weren't as benevolent as you could have been with this person you care about or you feel bad that you wasted some time on something that didn't matter The fact that you feel bad about that and want that feeling to go away is the opposite of self-acceptance The self-acceptance is like I'm human I'm flawed I'm going to care about some of the wrong things at times I'm going to care about some of the right things at times And even the right things I'm going to care about I'm going to have to give up a bunch of stuff for those right things And it's going to be unpleasant and it's going to be intention And there's probably going to be uncertainty and there's going to be periods where like I don't even know if I'm doing the right thing or not That's all part of it That's all part of it And it's so hard to remind ourselves of that Yeah Just be like "This is this is what you signed up for man This is this is the human experience Yeah But there is that it does help when you realize that you're doing it for a value right it's instead of just this I feel bad and I don't know why That's what drives people crazy Yes And that's what I had to come to I'm just like I feel bad I don't like this Why and then I realized oh it's because I had to prioritize this value over another one And in a strange way of just accepting that I was going to feel bad I maybe feel a little bit better about it You know in a way it didn't relieve it I still feel you know I'm still like you know I still have a little bit of shame and guilt around it But I'm like "Okay that's the price I have to pay for this." So yeah Yeah I'm just trying to think like where people probably run into this the most Like I'm I'm just thinking about like the lack of self-acceptance I I'd say to me the the two areas that I see it the most Yeah I would say is like work and romantic relationships On the work side you see it a lot with workaholics who like they strive and they achieve and they achieve and they achieve and they achieve and it's never enough It's never good enough They've they could have always done more It could have it could have been better And they're just they drive themselves like they literally make themselves miserable and and there's all sorts of like really famous successful people that have done this and I've seen it a number of times among my friends I've fallen prey to it myself a number of times It's just really interesting that like I think we have this ideal sometimes that it's like if I work as hard as I can and if I do the best job and I get the best work out of myself then I I'll be satisfied and and and then when you're not you feel like something's wrong right and and that you there's something else you could be optimizing to do it better And and then I think when I see it with rel in regard to relationships I see it in regard to like there's just kind of this there's I would call it like the Disney delusion right like people's expectation of what a relationship is is just like not very realistic They kind of assume that if they fall in love that they're just going to live happily ever after Like you're not going to fight You're not going to there's not going to be any uncertainty and nobody's ever going to like you know get sad or depressed or angry at each other or you know you're never going to question the relationship Like these are all actually very normal things Like every long-term relationship goes through periods of struggle and stress and questioning and you know sometimes you grow a little bit distance and then you come back together and um sometimes you question whether you really want to be with the other person and then you like are reassured that yeah you do and it's like it's this organic process that like in uncertainty and and a certain amount of dissatisfaction is just kind of inherent to it and um again I think a lot of people It's the refusal to accept that that makes it so much worse Yeah Yeah Yeah Take take love as a as a value right if you're going to value that you also have to just accept that there's going to be some heartbreak along with that like you were just saying Like that's it's not that you can diminish it It's not that you can avoid it It's it's that it's just part and parcel of that value is that you have to put yourself out there and be vulnerable and you will get hurt Yes At some point And there's just no way around it No It reminds me of uh of something that a a brilliant man and philosopher and a hero of a human being once said Uh his name was uh wait let me look Oh Mark Manson Um he once said he once said a wise man once said um uh what you value determines what your problems are and what your problems are determines what your life is Oh I thought that was Aristotle Oh okay It was same thing right basically the same guy Um but seriously it's you know the quality of your values determines the quality of your problems and the quality of your problems determines the quality of your life Notice implicit in there that you never get rid of the problems The problems are always there And it's like if you the really the like the only benefit of choosing one better value over another is that you get better problems It's better to ask yourself if you could have been more benevolent than to ask yourself if you could like have cooler more expensive shoes or something you know it's that's a better problem to have So you chose that problem It's a better life Yeah And you just have to accept it Yeah All right So to wrap things up Drew um you and I we want to finish all these episodes with the what we call the 8020 of whatever we're talking about because God knows at this point we're so many hours in We've covered so much material that it's easy to get lost and it's easy to get you know lose track of what actually moves the needle So we're going to finish this off by talking about the 8020 of values This is for people not familiar the 8020 principle is that it's usually the 20% of the things you do generate 80% of your results And uh and so this section is just very much focused on like what's the 20% that's going to give you 80% of the result What should you be focusing on as you leave this episode and so I I'll start us off I'll just say you know the crux of all of this is just getting clarity on what your values are Whether that's doing some of the exercises that we talked about earlier in the episode whether it's uh thinking through your life and a lot of the major decisions that you've made um thinking through some of the the more uncomfortable experiences the tragedies or the the pet peeves um and and asking yourself what values are those reflective of and then just trying to get a little bit of clarity on you know what you care about and why you care about it and why it's important to you and whether it should be important to you Like I I just think these are all very very useful questions that we should all be asking ourselves and and if you're not in the habit of asking yourself about it um you know this is a great opportunity to sit down and and do that Yeah Yeah The self-awareness around your values I think is huge that that'll put you in front of 80% of other people I think is if you just know what you value because most people like we've talked about over and over again in this episode They're going through life and they're either absorbing the values of the other people around them or they're just not aware at all of what's going on And I think too the paying attention to the discomfort and the pain and the uh kind of you know the frustrations in your life that really was what points you to a lot of your values not the aspirational oh I want to I aspire to this and that No look at look at what's like what are your problems in your life we all want the same good stuff You know we all want to be rich and liked and have great sex and you know be king of the world and whatever Like it's values are found in the pain They're found in the problems that you have and like we already mentioned too the whatever problems you're having in your life right now are a reflection of the values you've chosen whether you are aware of it or not So just the awareness around it is key here So maybe that's actually the 8020 of clarifying your own values is looking at what what are like the three biggest problems in your life and then asking yourself what are those the results of the trade-offs for right like I already talked I talked earlier in the episode about how you know there's I've definitely felt like a lack of community and and connection in in my life over the last 5 or 10 years and it is not very hard for me to see the trade-off that caused that right and that is very much linked to my valuing of achievement and self-directedness So it's generally speaking whatever you're suffering from is on the opposite end of the the seessaw of whatever you're deciding is important Yeah Okay And related to that too looking at friction points in your relationships like where you're arguing say with your significant other or your family or friends or whatever it is looking at those and really uh kind of like okay what what is the value at work on my end what is the value on their end as well and we have that whole section on relationships right so identifying those values and and asking yourself can you respect those values or is there some sort of reconciliation you can do around these values can you at least respect them i think is the main question there Yeah Fernandez says "I fart too much." Okay So what's the value here flatulence Flatulence is the value I'm deeply passionate about my flatulence Maybe she values um you thinking about her a little bit I'm pretty sure she values her breathing Um cuz that's what she always tells me She says "I can't breathe." That's usually the manifestation of the conflict is I'm laughing uncontrollably and then she's telling me she can't breathe Okay maybe you should respect your values there Mark I think as an extension of that of of understanding your values is is also distinguishing between your higher values and your lower values right once you start to get a little bit of clarity on like what you care about in your life start pitting those those things against each other like in a Well that'll happen naturally It's like like in a Mortal Kombat tournament you know of like do I care more about uh community or or achievement do I care more about family or um you know taking care of myself right so it it's I think it's useful to ask yourself where the sacrifices currently are being made And again if you're not aware of your values then you're probably making sacrifices in places that you wish you were not making sacrifices And then once you have clarity around your values then you can start deciding where the sacrifices should be made right like which values should you be giving up or deprioritizing in order to prioritize something else right it goes back to the lower and the higher values Identify your lower values identify your higher values choose the higher value more often than not Yes Right And and recognize too that you're going to be pulled to your lower values that like that's the inertia that's out there being human Yeah That's that's very much a part of that Yeah Yeah Okay So all the values hierarchy stuff we we covered Um and we talked about that in Aristotle's the balance of all of your values keep that in mind when you are feeling bad and you just have to accept that you're going to have to feel bad about something That's because you're trading a lower value for a higher value and there's going to be some friction there for sure Yeah So we talked about developing practical wisdom which uh you know aside from kind of the nuts and bolts of self-awareness and emotional regulation and everything it really what it is is just developing once you've developed this awareness of what your network of values is being able to monitor it and and ask the right questions and notice in the right moments like oh I think I'm overindexing on this value or I think I've been like going way too hard in this area of my life for the last six months and starting to pay a price for that Just like ultimately that is what wisdom is is it's it's a an awareness and an understanding of of where you need to maybe dial the volume knob up in your life and where you need to dial it down in your life One of the things I've written before and I'm just going to wing this I'm probably going to [ __ ] this quote up Uh is that knowledge is knowing how to get something Wisdom is knowing what's worth getting Ah right Right Yeah And I think really as a virtue wisdom is just understanding like are your values properly aligned or not when is it time to push something up your value hierarchy push it down the value hierarchy right um it it's things happen in life you know career changes you move to new cities relationships end people die and as circumstances change it's going to make sense to adapt your values accordingly right like it's it's a if you are a a married parent of three small children your value hierarchy should look completely different than it did when you were like 25 and single and you know spending a year abroad Like that hierarchy should change It shouldn't be permanent It should be fluid based on what's going on in your life at the time And you know just as in 10 or 20 years when your kids are grown and have moved out of the house and you're thinking about retirement that hierarchy should shift again So the the hierarchy is always in flux It's always in motion And the skill here is the wisdom really is just getting adept at that at that flux in motion and and and learning how to maneuver it um throughout your life And I know that's super abstract and philosophical but really that is the basis of just everything we're talking about in this episode Yeah Yeah And part of the practical wisdom too we talked about was uh the emotional regulation right um uh at least emotional awareness around when you are acting out of your emotions and not in align with your values Yes that's a big one too So um you being aware of what triggers an emotion uh you have the consequence but in between you have the interpretation and that's I that's part of the practical wisdom too is developing that and that that comes with time and practice and experience and I've definitely noticed in my life and we can get to it a little bit more here in a second with how it um plays out But that's a huge one is just getting a handle on on those emotions and how they uh how how they're reflected in your values and the way you act Yeah Yeah the emotional regulation is it's key because any violated value whether high or low is going to trigger an emotional response And when you're triggered in that emotional response if it's a lower value you can easily sacrifice your higher values Give up honesty give up charity give up family for something stupid right um so it's important in that moment I would also say on kind of a if you zoom out in more of a macro way um emotional regulation is important because as you go through those periods of flux and life changes and tragedies happen and different unexpected challenges arise there is going to be emotional fallout to dropping and adding in new values like that It is a it is an emotionally stressful process of like rearranging your value hierarchy throughout your life and it's accompanied by a lot of self-doubt It's accompanied with uh a certain amount of uncertainty It can be sad at times because you you like grieve your lost value the thing that you used to care about and that used to really define you and now it doesn't anymore Um in some cases there's uh a lot of anxiety about a value that you're taking on You know it's like you just had your first child and you're not sure if you're ready to be a parent but it's like the most important thing to you now but you're not sure if you're ready for it to be the most important thing Like it could be [ __ ] terrifying So there's this emotional roller coaster that kind of accompanies the shifting and the flux of the value system And I think just the self-acceptance piece that we talked about is the understanding that that is part of the game Like there is there is a certain amount of that emotional stress and emotional turmoil that is going to be everpresent There's not really and I'm sure we're going to get into this very deeply when we do our episode on emotions Uh but the key is not to get rid of the emotion The key is to manage the emotion And it's like what you said with it's it's the key is to interpret the emotion positively and usefully in a productive direction or accepting it too just at the end of the day like I feel bad about this but that's because I've chosen this value because a lot of times what we do is we'll you know if you have the value of say I I have I want to be healthy right and instead you end up just staying on the couch what you're doing is you're kind of avoiding that negative emotion that's associated with getting up going to the gym it's uncomfortable I have to be selfconious ious about certain things all of that you're avoiding all of that right And so there's just there's more practical wisdom in just accepting that you're going to feel bad about that and be that's be directly because of the value you've chosen Yes Yeah Yeah Yeah A huge component of emotional regulation uh is our relationships right and our dark moments It's often the people around us who support us and help us through it Sometimes the people around us cause our dark moments So being very conscious of who you surround yourself with and the values of those people that you surround yourself with I will say you know I maybe we undersold it a little bit in this episode but like I I will say the consequences of having people close to you with awful values is significant right is very significant I think people underestimate how much the values of the people around them rub off onto them or influence them and their choices and their own value system Like ultimately our value systems are kind ofworked with the value systems of people around us And if we're surrounded with people with shitty values then it's going to kind of reset our baseline and our standards for ourselves Yeah Another one of those things you have to be very honest with yourself about right because it's easy to say well yeah they're like that but that doesn't affect me There's so many instances of this in every different parts of our lives and behavioral change and everything like that Like well that doesn't affect me It does Be honest with yourself You know you can't keep junk food in the fridge because you're going to eat it You also can't have a bunch of [ __ ] around you and not think that you're not going to be an [ __ ] at some point too So yeah I think it normalizes things right it's like think about it It's like if all your friends are drug addicts and alcoholics and you're and you're sober like you it's easy to be like "Well I'm I'm not doing drugs I'm not I'm not drunk all the time but it's like they they normalize it and they set a baseline expectation that uh they just put the bar extremely low Right Right And uh and so it it's even if you're not participating or doing the the the bad behaviors that they're doing you you are accepting the standards that they have set and you're setting that same standard for yourself Because again it comes back to like remember like you the way you measure yourself is the way you measure others and the way you measure others is the way you measure yourself So if you if you're accommodating uh a bunch of bad behavior and bad values in the people around you then you are unconsciously accommodating that in yourself or you're being tolerant of that in yourself as well I I think there's one thing too you want to be careful about is not to go too far the other way There's there's a self- sorting that goes on too that we just sort ourselves into people who have have our exact values And like we've said repeatedly throughout this is it's not necessarily uh like shared values aren't necessarily having the same values It's more a respect for values that you have for other people and that itself is a value like being able to tolerate and respect other other values um that complement each other within you know reason anyway Yeah If you yeah if you go the other direction and your standards are just so absurdly high that nobody can meet them then yeah you're going to be a miserable [ __ ] by yourself for a long time And a diversity of values is a great thing to have in any any group or even person Yeah And then the last thing uh we talked about cognitive dissonance and how ultimately our values and our belief systems follow action Um they are not action does not follow our values That values follow our actions And so the best way to rep prioritize your value hierarchy is to take action on the hierarchy that you want or force yourself into a situation whether it's through constraints or incentives to take the action that you want and understanding that it's going to be uncomfortable and difficult and maybe even unpleasant at first and that there's going to be all this self-doubt and associated guilt and sadness and anxiety and icky icky feelings But if you push through that then ultimately your your brain will resolve the cognitive dissonance by adopting the new value reassessing the hierarchy and then basing that hierarchy off of the way you're acting in the world Yeah Yeah This is I think I have a good salient example of this too If you're in a relationship with someone let's say it's your romantic partner um and you've been fighting a lot right and you say you value this relationship right but when you get into fights what you do is you just want to win the fight right yeah This is everybody has this This is you want to win the fight You actually value being right more than you value the relationship So next time you have an argument instead of like trying to be right with someone just stop and say "Okay what's really going on here?" Right and say "I'm sorry." First of all maybe just apologize right out of the gate even if you don't know what you're sorry for And try to understand the other person And this that that's a good like the action the value follows the action there because once you stop and then that other person their guard goes down You can sit here and it's okay we're we're we're both prioritizing the relationship now over being right over winning an argument which is stupid to begin with And the funny thing is is that like probably at least 50% of the time that is what the argument is about is just the the lack of prioritization of the relationship Like again it's it's not about the toothpaste tube It's it's about the thing underlying the toothpaste tube you know So yeah that makes sense This was one area I mean I had a lot of cognitive dissendence in my life that I never really resolved because with most people in my life I was benevolent and I was understanding and everything like that And then in closer relationships you know the ones that can really poke at your buttons more I was not And so there was that gap I had that values gap there And I had to realize at some point I was like "Okay do I value being right and like protecting myself and or whatever it was that I was prioritizing over a relationship." I was like "Actually no This relationship was way more important to me than winning a stupid argument." Yeah 99% of which I don't even remember from the past that have like derailed relationship I remember all the all the arguments I've I won Right because you can count them on one hand or what that was it was funny because when you were talking about like saying sorry even if you don't know what you're saying sorry for in my head I was like every husband is nodding along right now What it is is so many times you do you have you know partnered in I mean seriously there's been so many I've like you try to you get defensive you know you get defensive and you're like I'm not I like look I'm right I'm not trying to hurt you I'm not and it's that is completely besides I think any married person can relate to like you know just not like I don't know what I did wrong but I'm just going to say I'm sorry because and that's going to set the tone and you know you're going to be able to move on way quicker Yeah totally I think it it is uh interesting that for s like arguably the most philosophical topic in psychology uh ultimately I think that the the most efficient or highest leveraged solution around this is the simplest which is taking action and yet so many people struggle so often with taking action on the things that they want to take action on and I think a lot of It comes down to this is because the thing they want to take action on it's a thing they want to value but they don't value yet Yeah And that friction or that that distance between the wanting to value something and not valuing something and and summoning the motivation and the willpower to actually take action on it Uh I think it's it's like one of the most prevalent struggles and issues that everybody goes through and I think everybody's constantly going through Like I I speak for myself but I think every single person no matter how disciplined how much motivation willpower they have there's some area of your life that you're like "Oh yeah I wish I was doing a little bit better on that." Right so next episode and we're going to try to do this thing where each episode leads into the next episode So next episode is going to be about this question of like how do you take action on things that you don't necessarily feel like taking action on the next episode of Solved is going to be about procrastination and that'll be dropping on June 1st and it's a doozy It's a fun one Last question Drew What did you learn prepping for this episode and recording it yeah Yeah So I think one of the big takeaway the self-awareness thing really it was a big one for me I I have an I have had an idea of my values for a while and there is every few years I kind of like sit down and I'm like "Okay what is you know the value shift or whatever." What surprised me is how much my values have shifted over time honestly So going from some of these lower values you know when you're a little bit younger um you prioritize different things and as you age all of those things it becomes apparent that they're not important Yeah You know having fun and excitement and novelty and all of that going to just simpler values or maybe more the higher values really that was big for me So this the self-awareness piece around this I don't think it can be understated I really do think that if you are just aware and cleareyed about your values that's not the fix It's not going to change so much But especially for people who just haven't done this before Yeah It's a clarifying It's so clarifying and it can direct so many of your decisions going forward and you just understand like the you understand why you feel so bad about certain things Like I said I've I've just been able to accept that oh I'm just going to feel bad about this sometimes and that's okay And it's a side effect of you caring about it Yeah Exactly Exactly It's like "Oh this is actually a good sign right that I'm Yeah that I'm feeling bad about this because I value this relationship so much or this this value in my life." Yeah Yeah That's So I think self-awareness um I I I hesitate to like put that one up front because it I it's not the whole picture It's not the the fix all for everything but it will get you a long long way Yeah Um so right off the bat yeah the the self-awareness around my values and how much they've changed that was a big that was a big one for me Priority Priorities too Um I knew benevolence was pretty high in mine but I just didn't realize how just how central it was and just how much it butts up against the other values that I have too and trying to rec reconcile those Yeah So for me you know as you know I've been writing about values for like 10 plus years For me the I think the biggest the biggest aha uh prepping for this episode was really getting that broader understanding of like I guess the kind of the network of values like how values kind of interlace with one another And I guess the the potential danger of overindexing on one single value because I I I think my approach through most of my career was very much it was a little simplistic It was like find the thing that you care most about and go all in on it And I think on a surface level I think that's a good advice I I certainly think that's way better than just not knowing what you value at all So like if you take somebody who has no idea what their values are and are like feel pulled in 20 different directions and you tell them to like find the one thing and go all in on it I think that's going to be a significant improvement I think going back and and prepping for this episode and doing a bunch of the research and especially reading some of the the older philosophy around this like it really gave me an appreciation of of that actually going all in on one thing for too long uh can be problematic And it was interesting because it actually caused me to look at some of the decisions I've made uh over the last 10 or 15 years Like I definitely think that's an issue I have I have a tendency to go all in on one thing and there are a lot of benefits to that You you whatever that thing is it tends you get very very good at it and you get outsides benefits but it definitely harms other areas of your life So like I I've I've probably I've spent most of my life being a pretty unbalanced person in that sense Like I'm just like very overindexed on one thing So yeah for me it was gaining the understanding of like of like hey you you need to have a a small diversity of values You know it's probably optimal to have three or four things that you're all in on quote unquote that can harmonize together and counterbalance each other and rest on each other And that way you're a little diversified like kind of like a stock portfolio like you know if if one thing that you care about just suddenly goes south terribly you have a few other things to fall back on you're not putting all your self-esteem or self-worth in like a single basket Uh so so that was the biggest thing for me and then you know kind of that rediscovery uh of talked about in Plato's Republic of just kind of like the you know the individual is the social and vice versa like how that plays out on a social level as well like you don't want a society that's all in on one thing because you're going to pay the price for that you you really do want a a society that has a diversity of values and um and those values can harmonize and but also be in tension with each other and and also just the fact that some of that tension is is a feature It's not a bug It's that that tension is evidence that it matters and you're you you're care about it and you're taking care of it Yeah Yeah Yeah And along those lines too I guess another realization I had was um when you are in tension with other people's values or whatever it is if make sure you're talking on the same level right like are you having an intellect in intellectual conversation or is it actually about values or is one of you uh like on the intellectual level and the other one is talking on values like and I I feel like I've been pretty good about this most of the time but like um allowing people to kind of just have their own values and like be okay with it and not judging them for that A lot of times we just oh this person's stupid because of whatever view they hold or or thing they're doing or value they hold and it's really just comes down to they just have a different set of values So like you know the whole Jonathan height thing the moral foundations theory knowing that we all value kind of the same things but just in different proportions right that was a real that's if you need a more intellectual framework for that to like understand other people and their values that was that was helpful for me anyway Yeah And I like thinking of it in those terms as well because I I do think there is a tendency especially in like political conflicts like to to have this assumption that there are right and wrong values that there are there are certain values that like you should have or shouldn't have I like the understanding that most values are shared by everybody What changes is the proportionality and the emphasis Yeah Right And so when you look at maybe say tension between different cultures or different places on the political spectrum it's not that they value different things it's that they prioritize different things right and this this group of people over here sees you know harm and care as more important than say fairness And this group over here sees fairness and freedom as more important than harm and care So it's just that they have a different hierarchy and it's playing out in across the political world Right Right And it's it's the elephant Right Yeah It's an emotional tug It's an emotional world that you're dealing with And so you know when when you are trying to reason with people you need to speak to their values too And even if you're going to agree to disagree you need to understand someone on the the level of their values Yeah Yeah All right I'm excited because I'm gonna get the [ __ ] out of this blazer I'm never going to do this again Lesson learned Lesson learned Enjoy it audience while you have it Any epiphanies change behaviors anything you're going to go home and do differently next week or are you just going to sleep because you're tired i I mean the sleep I do need to value some sleep I think after this But um no I I mean like I was saying I knew that benevolence was like a core value of mine I just uh I didn't realize just how core it was and and how many times it bumps up against the others So I've really been thinking on that lately and I'm going to continue to think on that Yeah Cool Well if listeners of the show if you want to think on these things as well discover your own values spend the entire month working through everything that we've been talking about piece by piece exercise by exercise Then we have a 30-day values track in the momentum community Ultimately what momentum is about is the idea that it's a series of small changes in your life that create momentum that get you pointed in the right direction And the reason we're building a community around this is because ultimately taking action is about accountability So if you want to check that out if you want to implement everything you've heard in this episode if you're still [ __ ] if anybody's listening still if you're still here I assume you care enough to to want to implement this into your life So if you if you want a framework and a and a guide to help you implement it into your life and then you also want the accountability on the back end to make sure you're actually doing it check out findmomentum.com/values All the information is there And like I said we're going to do this for every single episode every month That's right And so it it doesn't end with values When we do procrastination next month we're going to have a 30-day track for procrastination Help you solve procrastination in your life And then when we do the episode after that same thing on and on and on So please join us there I'm really excited about it I'll be dropping into the community here and there answering questions doing live webinars So um it'll be a great place to uh to connect and uh actually do [ __ ] Yes Do this stuff Yeah Like take some action Like stop talking about it and listening to it and like go [ __ ] do it So I'm excited for that Anything else Drew before we sign off i I think we did it You want to go home i think we did it Okay I want to go home Let's go home Thank you everybody Be sure to like and subscribe on every platform If you enjoyed the show please leave a review Let us know what you thought And uh please check out the newsletter If you want to like be up todate on other stuff that I'm launching whether it's YouTube videos articles books go to markmanson.net/newsletter You can get all the updates there We also announce all the new episodes there as well Once again solvedodcast.com/values for the free PDF guide that goes along with this episode if you want to review everything or check our citations or whatever And we will be seeing you next month