Friends—

I wanted to let you know about this internship opportunity hosted by Harvard-Westlake School in Los Angeles this Summer, June 15-July 2. I am teaming up with the astrophysicist Dr. Sarah Rugheimer to teach critical thinking and the search for truth in L.A. for high school students. Spaces are limited and will fill up fast! If you know of any high school students in the L.A. area who may be interested in this internship, have them register an application asap: hwleadership.campbrainregistration.com/Landing.

(Once you signup at HW, click on “Registration for Leadership and Entrepreneurship 2026” and then click on “3 Week Internship: The Search for Truth in the Digital World” to register.)

See the attached flyer for more info, and feel free to pass this along to any other friends who might be interested!

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My friend and longtime collaborator Charlene Li has just published a really important book called "Winning with AI: The 90-Day Blueprint for Success (co-authored with Dr. Katia Walsh), and I couldn’t resist asking her a few questions. I think you’ll find her answers as energizing as I did. This is a very important topic for our rapidly changing times!

SBK: Your book makes a counterintuitive claim: That organizations don’t need an AI strategy; they need AI to serve their existing strategy. But if AI is as transformative as everyone says, doesn’t it reshape strategy itself? How do you hold those two ideas together?

CL: It’s a real tension, and I hold it by thinking about what never changes. The mission of an organization — why it exists, who it serves, what value it creates — that doesn’t change because of AI. What AI changes is your ability to execute on that mission faster, at greater scale, with more precision than was ever possible before. So when I talk to CEOs, I’m not asking them to rethink their purpose. I’m asking them to look at their top strategic priorities and ask: where is AI the accelerant? That reframing alone changes everything about how they approach implementation.

SBK: I’m fascinated by your concept of the “superhuman” — people who combine AI’s cognitive infrastructure with what’s irreducibly human: empathy, intuition, judgment, wisdom. Maslow would have recognized this. But developing those capacities takes time and inner work. How do you reconcile that with your argument that speed is the new competitive moat?

CL: What I’ve seen in the research — and in practice with leaders across industries — is that speed and wisdom aren’t actually in conflict. They’re in conflict only when leaders treat AI as a decision-maker rather than a thinking partner. The leaders who move fastest with the best outcomes are the ones who use AI to compress information-gathering so that their human judgment — which is irreplaceable — can operate on better inputs, faster. Jeff Maggioncalda at Coursera called this “cognitive bootstrapping”: he’d form his own perspective first, then use AI to pressure-test it, surface blind spots, and accelerate the vetting process. The judgment is still entirely his. The speed comes from how he gets there.

SBK: The human capacity for self-reflection — noticing patterns in yourself, choosing to change based on what matters to you — is something you can’t automate. And yet the AI conversation often centers on productivity and efficiency. Is there a deeper argument in your book about what’s at stake for human identity when we hand over cognitive tasks?

CL: Yes, and it’s the part I care most deeply about. There’s a real risk that organizations use AI purely to drive efficiency — which is fine as far as it goes — and miss the more profound opportunity: AI offloading routine cognitive work could free humans to be more human. More empathetic. More reflective. More creative. More purposeful. I call the people who realize that potential “superhumans” — not because they’re superhuman in some sci-fi sense, but because they’re finally able to express the full depth of what makes us human, which we couldn’t access when rote tasks cognitively depleted us. But it doesn’t happen automatically. Leaders have to choose to design for it. That’s the leadership question that’s most underasked right now.

SBK: What’s the one question you wish every leader reading your book would sit with before they start implementing?

CL: “What are you trying to accomplish — and for whom?” Not “what can AI do?” Not “what are our competitors doing?” Just: what is this organization actually here to do, and who does winning serve? Leaders who start there end up making much better decisions about where to deploy AI and how to measure success. The ones who start with the technology almost always get lost.

Charlene Li and Dr. Katia Walsh’s Winning with AI: The 90-Day Blueprint for Success is available now at winningwithaibook.com.

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Eric Zimmer is the host of one of my favorite podcasts “The One You Feed”. He is such a wise guy and a friend. Which is why I was excited to see his new book “How a Little Becomes a Lot: The Art of Small Changes For a More Meaningful Life”. I appreciate that he took the time to do a little interview with me!

SBK: How do you honor the real reasons you are the way you are without letting those reasons become your identity?

EZ: I think this is one of the central challenges to being human. We all have explanations for why we are the way we are. It could be temperament, family, trauma, culture, biology. Each of us gives those different factors different weights, but most of us know we are a combination of those things.

But an explanation is not destiny. The real danger is when those explanations turn into self-concepts. I’m an anxious person. I’m broken. I’m a hopeless addict.

One of the key ideas that runs through my book is that change happens when self-understanding and self-responsibility meet.

It’s not one or the other. We usually need both. Understanding drives compassion, which is important in our ability to change. Responsibility drives action, which is equally critical.

These questions are often hard to discern alone, which is why having trusted people in our lives that we can talk to is so valuable.

SBK: A lot of people have insight into why they struggle, but still don’t change. Why doesn’t understanding ourselves automatically lead to transformation?

EZ: Insight is important, but it is vastly overrated.

If you were watching the movie of my life, the pivotal scene would show a dingy yellow room in what was once a tuberculosis hospital in Columbus, Ohio, in the winter of 1994. A counselor would be talking to a young man slumped in exhaustion, looking equal parts frightened and lost. Me.

I weighed one hundred pounds, my skin jaundiced from hepatitis C, with the shadow of fifty years in prison hanging over me. I was a homeless heroin addict at the end of his road, and even I could smell the despair on my own skin.

“Eric, you need to go to long-term treatment,” the counselor told me.

“No, thank you,” I said, summoning what little dignity I supposed I had left. Then I dragged myself up and slouched down the hall like the wounded animal I was.

Back in my room, I had what they call a “moment of clarity”—that moment of insight—as I looked out my clouded window at cold gray skies. It was a few days before Christmas. I realized with sudden, terrifying lucidity that my current path led only to death or prison. Dope sick, shaky, and afraid, I turned, walked back down the hall to that yellow room, and opened my mouth before I could change my mind. “Okay,” I said, “I’ll go to your treatment.”

That would be the high-drama, dark-night-of-the-soul turning point in the movie of my life. And it was an important moment—but it’s also anything but the full story. In getting from that wounded place to where I am today, that scene is not as monumental as it may seem. Deciding to enter treatment would be nothing without the countless tiny decisions I made day after day, year after year afterward: deciding not to take the route past that bar, calling my sponsor instead of my dealer, showing up to a meeting when every cell in my body wanted to stay home and hide.

When we think about life-changing events, we tend to think in the singular. The epiphany. The miracle. The watershed choice that will put us on a new trajectory for good.

But that’s not how real change happens for most people, most of the time. It happens little bit by little bit, with a thousand chances to do A or B, each choice a thread woven into the fabric of who we become.

The story of me getting sober in the movie would be a classic recovery montage—gritted teeth, a couple of shaky smiles at a support meeting, a swelling soundtrack as I turn down a dealer’s offer. A few quick scenes and suddenly I’d be transformed.

But the reality can’t be abbreviated, because it is what happened in the long stretches of time the camera would never capture that turns out to make all the difference.

We need insight, but we also need the slow, steady accumulation of actions over time to make the insight into reality.

SBK: What’s the difference between self-awareness and self-preoccupation—and how do we know when we’ve crossed that line?

EZ: This is really tricky, and it’s a common trap. We do need self-awareness, and often that takes priority for a while.

There is a question that I use often in this, and it’s asking myself: “Is what I’m thinking about useful?”

There is a point where yes, I am gaining self-awareness. I am thinking of different strategies to handle the situation. I’m coming up with alternative approaches. I’m having new insights.

If I’m thinking about myself in a way that leads to better choices, more compassion, more honesty—great.

But then there comes a point where nothing new is happening. I’m just looping, rehearsing, analyzing, and staying stuck. I feel myself getting smaller and more contracted.

And at those moments the most healing thing isn’t more introspection—it’s doing the next right thing. It’s taking an action. It’s getting up and going outside. It’s reaching out to a friend for a new perspective.

This is really hard because thoughts get caught in loops and become obsessive.

But it’s a really important first step to start recognizing when it’s gone from useful to not useful. From there you can develop better strategies to move on from them.

SBK: You write a lot about small change. Why do people so often dismiss small actions when, in practice, they’re usually what actually change us?

EZ: Because who wants a lot of steps in a long process of change when you could have fifteen years of therapy compressed into one hour, which is the new thing I see on Instagram all the time? 😂

We want things faster and we want them easier. I think that is true for all of us.

I know those claims are ridiculous, and yet I feel myself drawn to them.

But the reality is, for most people most of the time, change happens one little bit at a time. The good news is that that dramatic change is indeed possible. Let me tell you what I mean.

I had been sober for about a week. I had been in detox and come home for Christmas. The game was over, the jig was up — I had told my parents and the people in my life I was an addict, and I was convinced that I wanted to be clean. As short a time as a week sounds, those first seven days are a big deal for any recovering addict, and that night I believed that it had been the first week of the rest of my clean and sober life. I went to a recovery meeting and came home. And then things took a small, disastrous turn.

There in the mail was a gift from my grandfather. Twenty-five dollars. At that time twenty-five dollars was the magic number (for a shot of heroin).

Instantly I felt an overwhelming craving to use. I didn’t want to, and at the same time I did. To this day I don’t know of a worse feeling than that sensation of being torn in two. One part of me screaming, “Don’t do it!” and another part screaming, “I have to do it!”

I paged my dealer, and he agreed to meet me in one of our five or so shitty regular spots around Columbus.

I remember driving there. It was snowing, and I was sobbing in the car. “Dream On” by Aerosmith was playing on the stereo. With every turn signal a fresh wave of shame broke over me, and yet it felt like an invisible, malevolent hand was steering the car down the road.

We can leave that particular story there. You know how it ends.

Now here’s the other side. Twenty-five years later, I was picking up opiates from the pharmacy and delivering them to my mother week after week. Oxycontin, to be specific. The good stuff. Once upon a time I might have robbed you at gunpoint for them, and now they had no more emotional significance to me than a loaf of bread.

I don’t tell those two stories to brag. I tell them to show just how different we can become, and how something that seems impossible now can become second nature down the line if we commit to the long process of change.

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This Wednesday, join me for a special FREE event online:

“ASK ME ANYTHING ABOUT HUMAN FLOURISHING with Dr. Scott Barry Kaufman and Rosie von Lila”

Weds April 1, 1pm-2pm ET on Zoom

REGISTER HERE FOR FREE:

https://www.vonlila.com/event-details/ask-me-anything-about-human-flourishing

DETAILS:

Get a little wild (and magical!) with Dr. Scott Barry Kaufman and Rosie von Lila in this anything-goes AMA on creativity, self-actualization, and the peculiar art of being human. Bring your curiosity, your questions, and even your existential dilemmas. Smart, playful, and just the right amount of joy for this era of global transformation.

DR. SCOTT BARRY KAUFMAN: Dr. Scott Barry Kaufman is a cognitive scientist and humanistic psychologist whose work explores creativity, intelligence, and the full spectrum of human potential. His books include Rise Above and the bestselling Transcend: The New Science of Self-Actualization. Dr. Scott is a popular professor, podcaster, and speaker who helps people apply cutting-edge psychology to live more creative, meaningful, and self-actualized lives.

ROSIE VON LILA: A multi-disciplinary creative, Rosie von Lila uses arts and technologies to bring people together around human flourishing and what academic research teaches us about the subject. Rosie founded FLORIS — the adventure club for people who are into flourishing. She co-authored The Practical Flourishing Assessment (TPFA), and is a published essayist. Through her creative culture and participatory culture expertise, Rosie was featured in Steven Kotler and Jamie Wheal’s bestseller Stealing Fire.

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Most self-help is so freaking mind-numbingly boring.

No disrespect to all the self-help gurus out there (don’t want to hurt your egos!) but so much of what I see is targeted toward neurotypical people and I aint that (to the grammar police in my comments section: yes I said aint, deal with it).

I dunno, I just find myself really craving more self-help gurus that acknowledge neurodiversity and the many quirky and unique pathways people can take to self-actualization. So much of what I see is so vanilla and straight and narrow and says so many obvious things that neurotypical people love to hear (“being in a stable marriage is the key to well-being”, “connection is important”, “happiness requires being of service”, “the more you give, the more you get back”, etc. etc., blah blah yea we get it.)

I think the problem is that so much of self-help tries to sell this one-size-fits-all approach to growth and development. If you take this protocol, you will look like me and be as successful as me— often with the self-help guru held up as the pinnacle of human potential.

But that’s just not how self-actualization works. You’ve got to find your own path, and quite frankly, for most neurodivergent folk, the path looks anything but normal!!!

I’d love to see self-help that really truly acknowledges the many paths to self-actualization. That acknowledges the fact that you can be on the autism spectrum and maybe your path is an obsessive mastery of something and being extremely selective about who your friends are because that’s not actually your top priority. Or maybe self-help that acknowledges that you can have ADHD and that your path may involve jumping into a million different interests and being totally scattered and a freaking mess but still loving your life— and THAT’S TOTALLY FREAKING OK. Or maybe self-help that acknowledges that you can be a highly sensitive person and your path may look like reducing as much stimulation as possible and seeking out environments where people are equally as sensitive and creating something really weird and wonderful together. Or self-help for people who have schizotypy (a mild form of schizophrenia that is just a cool personality trait associated with creativity) that acknowledges the path of self-actualization may involve talking and dressing really weird and different and having a rich imagination and saying bizarre things that are totally awkward in a neurotypical context but in just the right context can be transformed into awesome art.

In essence, I think we need more self-help that is neurodivergent-friendly. Or heck, at least more self-help that doesn’t just repeat the same things over and over and over again about how we’re all supposed to live our lives. Because, well, the truth is that you are allowed to live the life that is best for you. And that just won’t look the same for everyone.

Who is with me on this one?

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Previously this article was under a paywall, but I decided to make it free to everyone since whole love is so important in the world today. Enjoy!

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When I wrote Transcend, I had so much I wanted to say about love— especially romantic love— from a humanistic psychology perspective. However, I ran out of space. In this post I have put together my extensive science-backed thoughts on the topic and am offering it to my paid subscribers as a token of my appreciation. I put a lot of work into this and hope it helps you all lead a more fulfilling love life!

“We must understand love; we must be able to teach it, to create it, to predict it, or else the world is lost to hostility and to suspicion.” – Abraham Maslow, The Psychology of Being

In his article “Why You Will Marry the Wrong Person“, the philosopher Alain de Botton noted that “choosing whom to commit ourselves to is merely a case of identifying which particular variety of suffering we would most like to sacrifice ourselves for”. There is surely some truth here. Due to the narratives and unrealistic expectations our society holds about romantic love, we enter relationships with ideas that are destined to lead to disappointment and resentment. We believe there is one right person out there for us, and we expect that partner to be our everything— we expect them to satiate our insatiable sex drive, satisfy our need for belonging, and quell our deepest existential feelings of despair. de Botton is quite right that romantic love doesn’t have to be perfect. By forgiving our own foibles as well as accommodating those of our partner, we connect with our common humanity and foster growth in ourselves and our partner.

Even so, certainly we strive for more than choosing how we would most like to suffer in our loving relationships! We strive toward a richer, deeper, more meaningful, and more transcendent experience of love. In Motivation and Personality, the humanistic psychologist Abraham Maslow has a chapter titled “Love in Self-Actualizing People”, in which he notes that “self-actualizing love shows many of the characteristics of self-actualization in general.” Using that chapter as a spring board, I will draw on the latest scientific findings on love and attachment to outline ten features of what I refer to as whole love. I define whole love as an enduring loving relationship that is continually in a state of growth, health, and development.

Note that this is the template of an ideal. I personally do not know anyone who shows all of these characteristics! Nevertheless, I think this template for whole love offers a realistic— yet still transcendent— north star in which to point the love compass. Also, while the focus here is on romantic relationships (as well as the integration of sex and love), many of these characteristics could apply equally to any loving relationship that one has in their lives. I fully acknowledge that some people have multiple intimate romantic relationships (polyamory), and that some people embrace the single life.

Therefore, I’d like to emphasize that it’s not the status of being in a romantic relationship that signifies whole love, it’s the quality of the connection that is the critical variable. I hope that the principles in this humanistic guide can help you in your journey to have more health, growth, and developing all of your loving relationships in your life.

1. Openness to Love

“It is true of our self-actualizing people that they now love and are loved… they have the power to love and the ability to be loved.” – Abraham Maslow

The most essential aspect of whole love is being open to love.

Whole love is open, receptive, and good-natured. Both giving and receiving love are equally as important in whole love. Of course, being open to love doesn’t guarantee that love will be received, but it does help to create the possibility. As Rollo May notes in his book Love & Will, “We cannot will love, but we can will to open ourselves to the chance, we can conceive of the possibility—which… sets the wheels in motion.”

Two central drivers of openness to love are trust and a lack of cynicism. The opposite of openness to love is avoidance of love. Research shows that those with an avoidant attachment style lack trust, and are extremely cynical about love. Julie Rothbart and Philip Shaver summarize the attachment view by noting that“it would be expected that secure adults view others as trustworthy and dependable… Avoidant adults would be expected to view others as generally untrustworthy and undependable … and relationships as either threatening to one’s sense of control, not worth the effort, or both.”

In one study, securely attached individuals scored highest on trust in loving relationships, whereas avoidants displayed fear of closeness and intimacy. Securely attached lovers were most likely to agree that “in some relationships romantic love never fades”, whereas avoidant lovers were most likely to say that “the kind of head-over-heels romantic love depicted in novels and movies does not exist in real life, romantic love seldom lasts, and it is rare to find a person one can really fall in love with.”

In another study, avoidant participants were found to not only view potential partners as untrustworthy, but were also generally suspicious of human nature and motives in general. Securely attached individuals showed the opposite pattern, and were more likely to view people as generally well-intentioned and good-hearted .

It may very well be that the avoidance of love is an evolutionary strategy, nature’s rational response to the unavailability of trusted others in one’s environment. Indeed, there is evidence that the drive for sex without love emerges in unstable reproductive environments, where there is little assurance that the partner will stick around, or even survive due to environmental instability and/or violence.

Even so, our patterns, regardless of the triggers, need not define us. We can be more than our evolutionary instincts, and in our loving relationships we can willfully transcend the urge for avoidance. Anyone can gain the riches of whole love by leaning in to love. By opening ourselves to the sorrows and pains of romantic love, we also open ourselves to the joys and opportunities for growth.

2. Love is the Center

“No description, no words can ever communicate the full quality of the love experience to one who has himself never felt it. It consists primarily of a feeling of tenderness and affection with great enjoyment, happiness, satisfaction, elation, and even ecstasy in experiencing this feeling (if all is going well). There is a tendency to want to get closer, to come into more intimacy contact, to touch and embrace the loved person, to yearn for [them]… Quite characteristic is the feeling of generosity, of wanting to give and to please.” – Abraham Maslow

The center of whole love is love.

Without love, whole love disintegrates, for the essential feature of love, is care. In his book Love & Will, Rollo May defines care as a “state in which something does matter; care is the opposite of apathy. Care is the necessary source of eros, the source of human tenderness.”

Likewise, in The Art of Loving, the humanistic psychologist Erich Fromm writes that “genuine love is an expression of productiveness and implies care, respect, responsibility, and knowledge. It is not an ‘affect’ in the sense of being affected by somebody, but an active striving for the growth and happiness of the loved person, rooted in one’s own capacity for love.”

With love and care, whole love grows. Love is the center upon which the rest of the elements orbit, and contribute to the growth of the relationship. To be sure, the other elements of romantic love—attachment, caretaking, lust, and romantic passion— often attempt to bend love to its will, for they each have their own biological goals.

However, love is best when free to grow. Insecure attachment, manic romanticism, hyper-lust, and extreme sensitivity to rejection all warp whole love. Whole love is at its best when the rest of the elements help grow love, rather than the other elements desperately clinging to, or avoiding, love.

This central feature of romantic love is also a central feature of humanity. In a study of 37 societies, men and woman ranked love, or mutual attraction, as the first criterion for choosing a spouse. Without this mutuality of caring, without a stance in one direction to the exclusion of a stance in another direction, one cannot grow love, because there is no movement. As Rollo May notes in Love & Will, “[t]end means a tendency, an inclination, a throwing of one’s weight on a given side, a movement; and also to mind, to attend, to await, to show solicitude for. In this sense, it is the source of both love and will.”

3. Greater Taste and Perceptiveness

“The perception of healthy people are more efficient, more acute when in love than when not. Love may make it possible to see qualities in the loved person of which others are completely oblivious.” – Abraham Maslow

When it comes to attraction in romantic relationships, especially in the early stages, the passion and lust systems can lead to all sorts of distortions in perception. Whenever there is a narrowing of attention, it is more difficult to see the totality of a person, and to see the reality of their being. For instance, when the lust system is overactivated, we may focus on superficial aspects of a person, ignoring the whole person.

Whole love is involve a widening of attention, and a greater efficiency in seeing the reality of the partner more clearly. Attraction in whole love is typically based on deeper aspects of the person, such as kindness, courage, honesty, and sincerity, rather than more superficial aspects of the person, such as physical beauty. This does not mean that physical attraction is absent; on the contrary, witnessing the positive qualities of the other person often leads to an increase in physical attraction.

Additionally, diversity is embraced in whole love. Strangeness is not threatening, and there is a greater openness to being attracted to those who are very different. This may include different income, social status, education, religion, appearance, etc. Maslow writes,

“Thus physical imperfections, as well as economic, educational, and social shortcomings, are far less important to healthy people than are character defects. As a consequence, it is easily possible for self-actualizing people to fall deeply in love with homely partners. This is called blindness by others, but it might much better be called good taste or perceptiveness.”

4. Love as End Experience

“There is too much talk in the psychological literature of rewards and purposes, of reinforcement and gratifications, and not nearly enough of what we may call the end experience (as contrasted with the means experience) or awe before the beautiful that is its own reward.” – Abraham Maslow

“Love seeks no cause beyond itself and no limit; it is its own fruit, its own enjoyment. I love because I love; I love in order that I may love…”  – St. Bernard of Clairvaux

A key characteristic of whole love is a lack of striving, a “spontaneous admiration”. As Maslow notes, “admiration asks for nothing and gets nothing. It is purposeless and useless.”

Nevertheless, admiration frequently leads to pleasure, naturally and spontaneously. Maslow compared this experience to the “eager passivity with which we allow ourselves to be tumbled by waves just for the fun that is in it; or perhaps better, to the impersonal interest and awed, unprojecting appreciation of the slowly changing sunset. There is little we can inject into a sunset.”

Maslow was clearly influenced by Eastern philosophy. In a brief, unpublished essay written in July, 1954, Maslow explicitly notes his reading of the Hindu philosopher Jiddu Krishnamurti, and applies the Buddhist notion of “choiceness awareness” to acceptance of the beloved, “without desiring to change or manipulate the person”.

This idea also dovetails nicely with Carl Rogers’ notion of unconditional positive regard, in which a person does not attempt to change another person, but instead beholds that person in their totality. Continuing the sun metaphor (which apparently was a popular one among humanistic psychologists), Carl Rogers notes,

“People are just as wonderful as sunsets if you let them be. When I look at a sunset, I don’t find myself saying, ‘Soften the orange a bit on the right hand corner.’ I don’t try to control a sunset. I watch with awe as it unfolds.”

A key to unconditional positive regard is listening. Rogers offered his clients an “active-listening approach”, which involves creating a climate of listening that involves equality, freedom, permissiveness, understanding, acceptance, and warmth. As Maslow notes, “You can’t really perceive the truth and be aware of reality as it is unless you put aside all your hopes, ideals, and standards—and just listen wholeheartedly… [The] thing to do is to let both things and people happen.”

5. Admiration of Virtue

The sort of admiration and acceptance the humanistic psychologists were discussing is related to Aristotle’s third type of friendship— virtue. In his seminal book, Nichomachean Ethics, Aristotle distinguishes between three different types of friendship: utility, pleasure, and virtue.

In their book, Happy Together: Using the Science of Positive Psychology to Build Love That Lasts, Suzann Pawelski and James Pawelski– a married couple who are both experts and leaders on the methods and techniques of positive psychology– extended Aristotle’s ideas to the realm of romantic relationships. Consistent with love as an end experience, they argue that the highest, most transcendent loving relationships are those that are “not motivated by what each person can get from the relationship, but rather by the goodness each person sees in the other.” In other words, instead of expecting a relationship to make you whole, you engage in a romantic relationship so that each partner can help each other grow in a healthy direction.

Drawing on Jonathan Haidt’s work on the emotion of “elevation”, the Pawelskis’ argue that “when we are uplifted or elevated, our hearts are open and our thoughts are more focused on others than on ourselves. We seek ways to make positive changes to enhance our relationships and we experience moral growth and heightened positive relations like hope, and ultimately love.” According to the Pawelski’s, “Aristotelian love” is characterized by three interrelated elements:

1. Partners love the good they see in each other. This does not mean that we expect our partner(s) to always be perfect, or that we turn a blind eye to our partners’ flaws. Instead, this involves an active, willful attempt to spot the strengths of the partner, and see potential that they don’t even see themselves.

2. All partners are committed to supporting each other’s growth and health precisely because they see the positive potentialities in the other person. This doesn’t mean forcing or expecting the other person to be a particular way, but merely providing the secure base and support to help the partner “do their own growing”.

3. A wonderful side effect of helping another person grow is typically inspiring yourself to become a better person. By watching the process of development and growth unfold, you realize that change is possible, but also that change requires effort and patience. Being loving, admiring, and patient with others often has the effect of making us more loving, admiring, and patient with ourselves, creating an upward spiral of growth, health, and development.

If we can cultivate more gratitude, character strengths, and virtue in our loving relationships, we can have more whole love in our lives.

6. Self-Expansion

“One important aspect of a good love relationship is what may be called need identification, or the pooling of the hierarchies of basic needs in two persons into a single hierarchy. The effect of this is that one person feels another’s needs as if they were [their] own and for that matter also feels [their] own needs to some extent as if they belonged to the other. An ego now expands to cover two people, and to some extent the two people have become for psychological purposes a single unit, a single person, a single ego.” – Abraham Maslow

In whole love, the needs of one person are the needs of the other. This is grounded in a basic loving orientation toward others, as well as recognition of our common humanity. In Love & Will, Rollo May takes up this notion of caring:

“It is a state composed of the recognition of another, a fellow human being like one’s self; of identification of one’s self with the pain or joy of the other; of guilt, pity, and the awareness that we all stand on the base of a common humanity from which we all stem.”

Psychological studies support the notion that this “pooling of needs” (as Maslow put it) is a central feature of mature, healthy relationships. According to the self-expansion theory of love put forward by Arthur and Elaine Aron, a fundamental motivation in humans is self-expansion. One way (out of many ways) we fulfill this fundamental motivation is through romantic relationships, in which each partner incorporates aspects of the loved one’s self into one’s own self.

The self-expansion that occurs in romantic relationships often results in personal growth, since including a romantic partner in one’s self offers the opportunity to gain greater support, resources, perspectives, skills, and knowledge, and this all increases the capacity to reach one’s highest goals more easily. As Arthur Aron and his colleagues put it, “close relationships constantly and deeply shape, create, and recreate the self.”

Since self-expansion is pleasurable, engagement in self-expansion creates an upward spiral in which even more self-expansion is sought in the relationship. Self-expansion typically accelerates at a fast pace in the beginning stages of relationships, when partners know little about each other, and the joy of self-expansion typically slows down as the relationship continues, and couples become more familiar with each other.

Nevertheless, this need not be the case, as couples can continue finding new ways of experiencing the joys of self-expansion. For instance, research shows that couples can overcome boredom and stagnancy of passion in relationships by engaging in joint participation of self-expanding activities that are novel, arousing, and exciting, and that provide new information and experiences.

Another way of continually expanding the self in relationships is through self-disclosure, in which both partners feel that their innermost self is validated, understood, and cared for by the other.  As Maslow notes, “Very common is the desire for a fuller knowledge of one another, a yearning for a kind of psychological intimacy and psychological proximity and of being fully known to each other. Special delight in sharing secrets is common.” Maslow believed that self-actualizing relationships involved a dropping of defenses, and an increase in spontaneity and honesty. Indeed, it is through the act of mutual self-disclosure, we can connect to our common humanity.

In a classic study, Arthur Aron and colleagues sought out to test whether this process of accelerating self-disclosure could have an effect on feelings of closeness among strangers in only a very brief amount of time. They brought pairs of strangers into the laboratory and gave them a series of personal questions to ask each other, which required increasing vulnerability and self-disclosure.

The questions, which were divided into three sets, ranged from “Given the choice of anyone in the world, whom would you want as a dinner guest?” (Set I), to “What is the greatest accomplishment of your life”? (Set II), to “Share with your partner an embarrassing moment in your life” (Set III), to “If you were to die this evening with no opportunity to communicate with anyone, what would you most regret not having told someone? Why haven’t you told them? (Set III)”

After only a 45-minute period, the relationship of the strangers was rated as highly as the average relationship in their lives, and many participants even sought out the stranger after the experiment. In fact, after the 45 minutes of interaction, the relationship was rated as closer than the closest, deepest, most involved, and most intimate relationship of 30% of similar college students at the same university!

It may be that pooling of needs, self-expansion, and mutual self-disclosure is the greatest protection humans have from the profound emptiness and anxiety that can arise from the awareness of our inevitable existential isolation. After all, at the end of the day, we remain isolated from each other, separated by the physical boundaries of our bodies, and we can never truly know another person as well as we know ourselves.

As Maslow notes, “of all such efforts that we know anything about, the healthy love relationship is the most effective way of bridging the unbridgeable gap between two separate human beings.” Likewise, in The Art of Loving, Fromm notes that “love is the only sane and satisfactory answer to the problem of human existence.”

7. Harmonious Integration

Through self-expansion, we certainly change, but that doesn’t mean we have to neglect other areas of our “old self” that also gave us resources, meaning and support. The key is how one integrates the loving relationship into the core of their identity. As we saw earlier, Robert Vallerand argues that not all forms of passion are equally as growth-enhancing.

Harmonious passion, according to Vallerand, stems from a sense of freedom, and a healthy integration of a loved activity into a person’s identity. The passion is in harmony with other areas of the person’s life. In contrast, obsessive passion stems from a sense of an uncontrollable urge to engage in a loved activity. With the obsessive passion, the activity takes up a very large space in one’s life and can lead to neglecting other loved activities, creating inner and outer conflict and discord in one’s life.

Applying these two forms of passion to romantic relationships, Vallerand and colleagues found that self-expansion can certainly lead to personal growth, but it can also come at a cost. Across a number of studies, the researchers found that harmonious passion in a relationship promoted personal growth and also allowed the person to remain engaged in other areas of one’s life, such as maintaining relationships with friends and family, as well as maintaining interests and activities outside the relationship. In contrast, those who were obsessively passionate in their romantic relationships did not display as much personal growth, and often disengaged with other areas of their life.

This often has the consequence of limiting growth, considering that distancing oneself from close family and friends can increase loneliness and decrease support in one’s life. As the researchers note, “individuals who withdraw from their friends and relatives when they are in a romantic relationship would appear to cut themselves off from people who could help them maintain a strong and thriving romantic relationship.”

What can be done to increase one’s harmonious passion in a romantic relationship? Vallerand suggests that one way to increase your harmonious passion in a relationship would be to consciously reflect on the ways in which this romantic relationship is personally meaningful to you, and to remind yourself (or at least reflect on whether) your decision to stay committed to the growth of the relationship was freely chosen, and is in harmony with your most cherished values. If upon reflection you realize that this relationship is too obsessive, and too far from being enhancing and growth-oriented, you might want to rethink your choice of current partner!

8. Love and Eros

“Sex and love can be and most often are more perfectly fused with each other in [self-actualizing] people.” – Abraham Maslow

A critical distinction, which has been made many times throughout human history, is between eros and sexuality. The mere physical act of sexual intercourse can be driven by many potential needs, whereas eros has a very specific function: to grow and express the depths of one’s love. Sexuality is about stimulation and release, whereas eros is about imagination and possibility. As Rollo May notes in Love & Will, “the essence of eros is that it draws us from ahead, whereas sex pushes us from behind.” Similarly, Maslow noted that sexuality among self-actualizing lovers is “used as a foundation stone upon which higher things are built.”

It is noteworthy that Maslow never defined sex as a need, especially considering that in the strict evolutionary sense, sex is very much a need, being a main mechanism for propagating the genes into the next generation. However, in terms of the whole self, we don’t need sex as much as we need love. When we go through a dry spell sexually, it may not be pleasant, but it rarely reaches the level of catastrophic depression we feel if we go through a long enough period deprived of love and affection. Nevertheless, since sex is such a powerful propagator of our species, it would make sense that the need would be powerfully attached to a wide variety of psychological needs to encourage us to have more sex. As self-help writer Mark Manson insightfully puts it, “Sex is a strategy we use to meet our psychological needs and not a need itself.”

Indeed, research shows that while there are many reasons why we have sex, they can be mapped onto to various. human needs. Cindy Meston and David Buss identified 237 distinct reasons why humans have sex, from the drive for simple stress reduction and increase in pleasure, to the motivation to increase power and social status, to the drive to increase self-esteem, to the drive for obtaining secure resources, to enacting revenge, to the exploratory drive of seeking a varied experiences, to the expression of love and commitment.

Not all sexual motives are equally conducive to sexual satisfaction, however, and our attachment system can interfere substantially with our sexual satisfaction. Those with the lowest levels of attachment anxiety and attachment avoidance (i.e., those who are most securely attached in their relationships) report the highest levels of sexual satisfaction.

Why is this the case? It has to do with the motives for having sex. Research shows that those high in attachment avoidance tend have sex for reasons others than expressing love, such as avoiding negative relational consequences, or increasing one’s status and prestige among friends— for instance, by impressing them with dramatic sexual exploits. In turn, these motives for having sex, along with their lower sensitivity to their partner’s needs in times of distress, are associated with lower sexual satisfaction.

Those high in attachment anxiety tend to have sex in order to please their partner(s) and reduce their uncomfortable feelings of relationship insecurity. While those high in attachment anxiety tend to report that they are more sensitive to their partner’s needs, in actuality they tend to show less sensitivity toward their partner’s real needs, are more controlling of the direction of the relationship, and are less likely to use sexuality as a way to value their partner. These behaviors, in turn, are associated with lower levels of sexual satisfaction. As one pair of researchers put it,

“These [anxiously attached] individuals appear to be lacking in their ability to recognize the actual needs and cues of distress in their partners, possibly because of being preoccupied with their own self-centered worries and internal self-doubts. Such chronic worries would tax their internal resources and prevent them from fully and genuinely attending to their partner’s own emotional experiences and needs… and this would perhaps explain their lower tendency to use sex to value their partner.”

Along these lines, research shows that people with elevated levels of social anxiety report less satisfying sexual experiences—reporting experiencing less pleasure and feelings of connectedness when sexually intimate compared those who are not socially anxious. When you are preoccupied by self-evaluation or relationship insecurity, it’s difficult to fully enjoy sexual activity.

The antidote? Add more love into the sex. Since eros involves a focus on growth rather than outcome, it is better suited for actually enjoying the experience. Anik Debrot and colleagues found across multiple studies that affection explained the link between sex and well-being. Tender moments during sex included “moments of love and security” and “affectionate or thoughtful signs from my partner.”

The more of these moments during sexual intercourse, the greater the levels of life satisfaction and positive emotions during the day, even having effects on the person’s positive mood the next morning. What’s more, drawing positive emotions from sexual intercourse was a protective factor for relationship decline, leading to greater relationship satisfaction over time. Consistent with Maslow’s notion of pooling of needs discussed earlier, the greater one partner’s positive emotions from sex, the greater the other partner’s relationship satisfaction over time.

Another study conducted by Todd Kashdan and colleagues found that higher reported sexual pleasure and intimacy leads to not only boosts in positive mood, but also to increases in a sense of meaning in life. The closer the sexual partner, the more pronounced the effects on mood and meaning, even lasting the next day. The reverse was not the case, however: increases in happiness and meaning did not lead to next-day sexual activity, pleasure, or intimacy.

Of course, whole love does not require a single partner, as alternative sexual arrangements, such as polygamy, are becoming increasingly popular. The key is that all of the sexual activities in one’s life are integrated and harmonious with each other, creating minimal conflict with other areas of the relationship and with other activities in one’s life.

Regardless of one’s erotic appetites or consensual arrangements, the more that one’s sexual relationship(s) can afford time, imagination, caring, and trust, the more satisfying the experience is likely to become. As Rollo May notes, “The untamed eros fights against all concept and confines of time…. Love grows in depth by virtue of the lovers experiencing encounter with each other, conflict and growth, all over a period of time.”

Just like life, growth often takes time, and eros can be an important path to growth.

9. Security vs. Exploration

“It seems quite clear that even the strictly sensual and physical satisfactions can be improved by familiarity with the partner rather than by novelty in healthy people. Of course, there is little doubt that love in the sexual partner is very exciting and attractive for many people, but our data make it very unwise to make any generalization about this, and certainly not for self-actualizing people.” – Abraham Maslow

When it comes to romantic love, we often think of passion and excitement as being at odds with security and comfort. To be sure, when it comes to romantic relationships, the human drive for exploration does often conflict with our drive for stability and security. In her insightful book, Mating in Captivity, Esther Perel notes,

“We seek a steady, reliable anchor in our partner. Yet at the same time we expect love to offer a transcendent experience that will allow us to soar beyond our ordinary lives. The challenge for modern couples lies in reconciling the need for what’s safe and predictable with the wish to pursue what’s exciting, mysterious, and awe-inspiring.”

While this is a common given dilemma of existence, Maslow argues that “in self-actualizing people the quality of the love satisfactions and the sex satisfactions may both improve with the length of the relationship.” How do self-actualizing lovers maintain the excitement, mystery, and unpredictability of the relationship while still maintaining great affection and closeness? I asked Sharon Salzberg, author of Real Love, what she thought, and she told me the following:

“Obviously, romantic relationships are extremely complex, but from a meditative point of view, it’s also interesting just to look at the simple role of attention. How often do we stop paying attention to our partner? You know, any amount of complacency, or taking someone for granted, mystery doesn’t necessarily only come from that sense of excitement, it doesn’t only come from the unknown, it also comes from discovery sometimes, as we discover each other.”

I love this answer, and it reminds me of the important distinction between wanting and liking. As Oscar Wilde once wrote, “In this world there are only two tragedies. One is getting what one wants, and other is not getting it.” Can we ever want what we already have? As Ester Perel points out, we can too easily operate under the false illusion that we ever have our partner, as if they are a possession of ours in the sense that we own a new smart phone, or shiny, new car. With material possessions, we often obsess over a product and all the possibilities of how we will use it, only to find us not caring or wanting it anymore after we finally purchase the item.

However, this reasoning makes no sense when it comes to human beings, who are constantly growing and developing. The moment we take our partner(s) for granted, and assume that we have them forever, is the moment we stop discovering and admiring the depths of their full humanity. It’s no wonder that a common cause of eros declining in a relationship is the taking of each other’s existence for granted.

Another route to resolving the security/exploration dilemma in relationships is by unlocking what Perel refers to as “erotic intelligence”—willfully and deliberately creating conditions in a relationship for moments of mystery, playfulness, distance, and erotic excitement. Precisely because love and caring is the center of whole love, a fuller exploration of one’s sexuality and eroticism can be expressed.

Maslow noted that among self-actualizing lovers, there is a freer, more open discussions about sex, and even a greater interest in unconventional sexual practices. With trust and intimacy at its base, one can explore many expressions of sexuality, including those that may satisfy our other needs, such as power and curiosity.

Maslow notes that self-actualizing lovers can be both active and passive lovers, exchanging and experimenting with power dynamics, and are comfortable teasing and being teased. He goes on to note that this

“can go pretty far, almost to the point of reminding us of sadism and masochism. There can be a joy in being used, in subjection and passivity, even in accepting pain, in being exploited. Also, there can be an active and positive pleasure in squeezing and hugging and biting and in being violent and even in inflicting and receiving pain, so long as this does not go beyond a certain point.”

The eros of whole love– with care and consensuality at its root– affords many possibilities to drive excitement, novelty, and mystery. The sustainability of eros in a relationship is only limited by the imagination of the partners, and the commitment to creating safe spaces for the full exploration and growth of each other’s sexuality, and the many needs that can be fulfilled through sexual intercourse. This is why enduring, whole love relationships are so conducive to eros. As Rollo May noted, “Eros takes time: time for the significance of the event to sink in, time for the imagination to work, and if not ‘time to think,’ at least time to experience and to anticipate.”

10. Detachment and Individuality

“The fact is that self-actualizing people are simultaneously the most individualistic and the most altruistic and social and loving of all human beings. The fact that we have in our culture put these qualities at opposite ends of a single continuum is apparently a mistake that must now be corrected. These qualities go together and the dichotomy is resolved in self-actualizing people.” – Abraham Maslow

Maslow points out yet another paradox, noting that “self-actualizing people maintain a degree of individuality, of detachment, and autonomy that seems at first glance to be incompatible with the kind of identification and love that I have been describing.”

Indeed, most of us fear that by becoming too close to another person, we will lose our individuality and sense of self, and there is an entire literature on the potential for “role engulfment” when entering a relationship, in which a person’s identity becomes based on the role as a good relationship partner, causing detachment from other roles, goals, and priorities in life (“role abandonment”).

Nevertheless, Maslow notes that this is only an “apparent paradox”, and that detachment and need identification can coexist harmoniously. As we saw earlier, role engulfment is most likely to exist among those who are obsessively passionate about their relationship. Those who are harmoniously passionate about their relationships show greater personal growth, and maintain friendships, interests, and activities outside the romantic relationship.

Another way that individuality and self-expansion can coexist is by maintaining a certain degree of  “healthy selfishness” in a relationship, which Maslow describes as “a great self-respect, a disinclination to make sacrifices without good reason.” Maslow notes that self-actualizing lovers demonstrate “a fusion of great ability to love and at the same time great respect for the other and great respect for oneself.”  The notion of healthy selfishness is also an essential feature of Erich Fromm’s notion of a “productive orientation” towards life. Becoming a whole person requires setting appropriate boundaries, and balancing one’s own needs with the needs of others.

But perhaps the clearest way this paradox is resolved is by acknowledging that both partners can be interested in helping each other grow in their own direction. As Maslow notes, this requires not needing each other:

“They can be extremely close together and yet go apart when necessary without collapsing. They do not cling to each other or have hooks or anchors of any kind… Throughout the most intense and ecstatic love affairs, these people remain themselves and remain ultimately masters of themselves as well, living by their own standards even though enjoying each other intensely.”

As we’ve already seen, anxiously attached individuals have a desperate need to merge with the other, whereas avoidant individuals have a desperate need to maintain their individuality. The loving person does not cling or push away, but witnesses, admires, and helps the other person grow. There is nothing incompatible between that and keeping your own sense of self.

This has hints of the Buddhist notion of “nonattachment”. On first blush, it may seem as though this is at odds with attachment theory. However, as Baljinder Sahdra and Phillip Shaver point out, both attachment theory and Buddhist psychology “highlight the importance of giving and receiving love and of minimizing anxious clinging or avoidant aloofness and suppression of unwanted mental experiences.”

They developed a scale to measure Buddhist notions of nonattachment, which included items such as “I can accept the flow of events in my life without hanging onto them or pushing them away”, and “I have a hard time appreciating others’ successes when they outperform me”, and “I can enjoy pleasant experiences without needing them to last forever.”. They found that nonattachment was associated with lower levels of both anxious and avoidant attachment, with the negative relationship with anxious attachment being particularly pronounced.

While the Buddhist notion of nonattachment is not the same as secure attachment (nonattachment in the Buddhist sense is broader than attachment to a caregiver), they are clearly related. The more we can be present in our relationships, and not try to make the moment meet our prior expectations, the more we can help our partner grow as an individual. As Maslow notes,

“To be fully aware—as close to complete awareness as possible—means to focus wholly on the experience: to concentrate utterly, to pour one’s whole self into it, and to be unaware of everything else in the entire world and in all of time. This state necessarily includes a nonawareness of one’s own ego. Just as one knows that one has really listened to music because self-awareness disappeared (which also occurs during true creating and absorbed reading), so also is complete love marked by forgetting the self.”

Temporarily forgetting the self, however, does not mean that we lose our individuality. On the contrary, as Maslow notes:

“[W]e have customarily defined [falling in love] in terms of a complete merging of egos and a loss of separateness, a giving up of individuality rather than a strengthening of it. While this is true, the fact appears to be at this moment that the individuality is strengthened, that the ego is in one sense merged with another, but yet in another sense remains separate and strong as always. The two tendencies, to transcend individuality and to sharpen and strengthen it, must be seen as partners and not as contradictories. Furthermore, it is implied that the best way to transcend the ego is via having a strong identity.”

This observation is backed up by our research: we’ve found over and over again that both a genuinely loving orientation toward others and a quieting of the ego is strongly correlated with having a strong, not weak, sense of self. In whole love, this apparent paradox fades away as two self-actualizing individuals find a love that is in a state of constant growth and development.

For more on how to become a whole person, see Transcend: The New Science of Self-Actualization

References

Alain de Botton, Why You Will Marry the Wrong Person

Abraham Maslow, Motivation and Personality

Rollo May, Love & Will

David Schmitt (2005). Is Short-term Mating the Maladaptive Result of Insecure Attachment? A Test of Competing Evolutionary Perspectives.

Julie Rothbard and Phillip Shaver (1994). Continuity of attachment across the life span.

Cindy Hazan and Phillip Shaver (1987). Romantic Love Conceptualized as an Attachment Process.

Nancy Collins and Stephen Read (1990). Adult Attachment, Working Models, and Relationship Quality in Dating Couples.

Jay Belsky, Lawrence Steinberg, and Patricia Draper (1991). Childhood Experience, Interpersonal Development, and Reproductive Strategy: An Evolutionary Theory of Socialization.

James Chisholm (1996). The evolutionary ecology of attachment organization.

David Buss (2003). The Evolution of Desire: Strategies of Human Mating.

Scott Barry Kaufman (2014). Is Kindness Physically Attractive?

Carl Rogers and Richard Farson (1957). Active Listening.

Abraham Maslow (1954), Acceptance of the Beloved in Being-Love.

Sara Algoe and Jonathan Haidt (2008). Witnessing excellence in action: the ‘other-praising’ emotions of elevation, gratitude, and admiration.

Arthur Aron and Elaine Aron (1997). Self-expansion motivation and including other in the self.

Arthr Aron, Elaine Aron, and Christina Norman (2004). Self-expansion Model of Motivation and Cognition in Close Relationships and Beyond.

Arthur Aron et al. (2000). Couples’ Shared Participation in Novel and Arousing Activities and Experienced Relationship Quality.

Charlotte Reissman et al. (1993). Shared Activities and Marital Satisfaction: Causal Direction and Self-Expansion versus Boredom.

Arthur Aron and Elaine Aron (1986). Love and the expansion of self: Understanding attraction and satisfaction.

Arthur Aron et al. (1997). The Experimental Generation of Interpersonal Closeness: A Procedure and Some Preliminary Findings.

Daniel Jones, The 36 Questions That Lead to Love

Irving Yalom, Existential Psychotherapy.

Catherine Raelle et al. (2012). Passion in the romantic sphere: A look at relational outcomes.

Mark Manson, Sex and Our Psychological Needs

Cindy Meston and David Buss, Why Humans Have Sex

Helen Fisher, Why We Love: The Nature and Chemistry of Romantic Love.

Katherine Péloquin et al. (2013). Integrating the Attachment, Caregiving, and Sexual Systems Into the Understanding of Sexual Satisfaction.

Emily Impett et al. (2008). Attachment and daily sexual goals: A study of dating couples.

Dory Schachner and Phillip Shaver, Attachment dimensions and sexual motives.

Todd Kashdan et al. (2011). Effects of social anxiety and depressive symptoms on the frequency and quality of sexual activity: A daily process approach.

Anik Debrot and Nathalie Meuwly (2017). More than Just Sex: Affection Mediates the Association between Sexual Activity and Well-Being.

Todd Kashdan et al. (2017). Sexuality Leads to Boosts in Mood and Meaning in Life With No Evidence for the Reverse Direction: A Daily Diary Investigation.

Scott Barry Kaufman, The Science of Passionate Sex

Frederick Phillipe et al. (2016). Understanding the Cognitive and Motivational Underpinnings of Sexual Passion From a Dualistic Model.

Baljinder Sahdra and Phillip Shaver (2013). Comparing Attachment Theory and Buddhist Psychology.

Baljinder Sahdra et al. (2010). A Scale to Measure Nonattachment: A Buddhist Complement to Western Research on Attachment and Adaptive Functioning.

Esther Perel (2006). Mating in Captivity.

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Ever since I announced a few days ago that I’m temporarily making my newsletter free to everyone, it felt like a huge weight was lifted off my shoulders. I suddenly felt a surge of intrinsic motivation to write again. There is so much research suggesting that when we do things for external rewards, our mind starts to convince itself that the reason why we are doing that thing is for that reward, even if we loved what we were doing before the rewards.

I am working on changing my relationship to money. I live a very intrinsically motivated existence and have never quite squared that away with the need to well, pay my rent (which is a constant concern). But for now, at least, the deep within me love of writing is starting to come back and I’m excited about that!

Something I feel more inspired to write about is the Highly Sensitive Person (HSP). I think this trait is so misunderstood. It’s one of those IF YOU KNOW YOU KNOW traits. If you’re in the approximately 15% to 30% of people who is an HSP, you certainly don’t need me to tell you that you are HSP. You live it every damn second of your life! But if you’re far, far away from that trait, it might be hard for you to comprehend what the inner experience of an HSP is like.

Something I’ve been thinking a lot about is the link between being an HSP and self-belief. I think being an HSP can really do a number on your self-esteem. Because HSPs tend to be really attune to the perspectives and emotions of other people, and are in such deep touch with their own emotional lives, I think it’s really easy for HSPs to have a constantly in flux sense of self-belief.

Self-belief is an interesting thing. I went to middle school and high school with Kobe Bryant (may he RIP) and was fascinated with his unflappable self-belief. He just knew he was destined for greatness, or at least acted as if he was enough that others started to believe him. What is that inner experience like?

Don’t get me wrong, I have a lot of self-belief, and I needed a heaping dose of it to fight my way out of special education and show my school that I was highly capable. So it’s definitely possible to be both an HSP and have high self-belief. But I still think there are unique challenges for the HSP in this regard.

I can feel really good about myself and confident and excited, but if I express myself fully and authentically and the person doesn’t like what I’m offering or has a very neutral response (“Whatevs”), it can really affect me. I wish I could just say “haters gonna hate” or let it just brush off my shoulder, but I think part of the issue is that I care (too much, arguably) why the person didn’t receive me in the way I intended or hoped. It’s kinda like a puzzle for me to figure out. I just really want to understand everything. It’s in my DNA. That’s part of being an HSP.

Also, because I am really good at perspective taking, it can be super difficult separating my mind from the mind of another person. I can feel super confident and excited to express myself and if someone is wholly unimpressed, for a moment I automatically become unimpressed with myself. Again, it’s something just wired into my DNA, because I can just go into their head and see the world from their perspective. But it sometimes makes me lose my own perspective, and thus, my own internal sense of self-belief.

I’ve been working on this for decades and have come a long way. I’m not quite at the “haters gonna hate” level (and I’m not even sure that level is healthy and most conducive to growth in the long-run anyway) but I try to just stay super mindful and ACCEPT that not everyone will receive me as I intended or hoped. I have slowly transformed myself into harnessing a greater level of acceptance. You can honor your people (you know who your people are) and also honor that someone else can experience the world fundamentally different from you and have different preferences and filters on the world, and that’s OK. That’s what makes humans so beautiful.

So I think doing this “self-anchoring” work is extremely important for HSPs. It’s not a course that is taught in high school or college. HSPs have to figure this stuff out on their own in a world that is so noisy and judgmental and quite frankly, insensitive. My dear friend Susan Cain wrote a beautiful book about being an introvert in a world where people won't stop talking. I would add that it’s also tough being a sensitive person in a highly insensitive world.

Hopefully posts like these can help. Drop me a comment below if this post resonated with you. Where are my beautiful HSPs at?

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Hello dear friends and followers,

This newsletter entry comes from my heart.

First and foremost, I hope everyone is safe and doing well. I know these are tumultuous times. Things are rapidly changing beneath our feet and it’s hard to know what’s up and what’s down, who to support, and what tomorrow will bring.

Second of all, thanks to all of you for supporting this newsletter from the start. I am continually touched and grateful beyond measure for your ongoing support and thoughtful comments. I say all the time that I have the best followers in the world. True transcenders!

For months now, I have had sleepless nights feeling immense guilt that I have paid subscribers and I’m not writing articles with great frequency. I keep telling myself “this week I’ll write an epic piece” but then life gets in my way and I don’t do it. Then I feel guilty again. Because the truth is, I want to offer you all the best value for your money and don’t take it lightly that some of you paid to be a subscriber.

Truth is, I am going through a huge transition in my life right now. I am phasing out of academia completely and am cooking up a few things (some I’ll say here and some I’ll keep secret for now!).

For one, I’m working on a dream magic/mentalism show (that’s right, a magic show!) that combines my passions for psychology, magic, mentalism, and perhaps even Opera (we’ll see about that part!). In recent years, I’ve really gone down the rabbit hole of mentalism and even have a stage name “The Amazing Dr. Scott” (see Big Think article here for my vision of what mentalism could be). I have been trying to figure out a way to create more awe and wonder in people’s lives (a strong value of mine) and have all sorts of ideas entering my head at all times of the day and night of how I could create a truly profound psychological experience for people that leaves people feeling inspired to embrace the mysteries of human existence and also to realize their fuller potential. I am in touch with some potential producers and I am looking for venues in NYC or L.A. to do my show, so if anyone has any ideas of where could be a great place to do this, please let me know!!! I’m all ears!!!

Also, I have also been thinking a lot lately about how I can make a bigger impact on the education system— a long time dream of mine. My book Ungifted: Intelligence Redefined, which came out in 2013, will always be my baby. I know it impacted a lot of people— especially parents and reachers— but it didn’t become a best-seller. Some say it was the title (“too negative”). Some (very kind friends) say I was ahead of my time. All I know is that after a recent re-airing on NPR of my personal story and mission to redefine intelligence (see Hidden Brain episode), I’ve been receiving an outpouring of emails from people from all over the world who have been overlooked because of their neurodiversity or because their unique intelligence doesn’t let them fit into one of the many standardized boxes that society (and educators) like to put on people. I know deep in my soul that I was put on this earth to help the oddballs like me find their special place in this world, and I want to go after that more.

Third, I am really getting into my self-actualization coaching training program. Right now we have another cohort of incredible experienced coaches from all over the world. Big shout-out to Jordana Cole (watch her TEDx talk right now!!) and Sophie Hamisch who are leading the charge on this with me. It already feels like one big family of transcenders who are committed to helping people become all that they can truly become. I’ve long had a dream of bringing self-actualization coaching to entire school districts and have been thinking a lot lately what that could look like and how I could go about making that a reality.

So I decided to make space to go after these dreams while I’m going through this major life transition and I don’t feel comfortable charging people if i’m not writing here consistently. Therefore, I decided to pause all paid subscriptions for now and make this newsletter completely free. I am not in this for the money (although I do have to afford my rent!!!). I genuinely want to help people self-actualize and connect with their most alive, unique, creative center of being.

Don’t worry, you’ll still be hearing from me (lol). I’ll still use this newsletter to make announcements from time to time about upcoming courses I’m doing and I will also still write new articles from time to time.

But for the time being, Beautiful Minds will be free to everyone.

Sincerely,

Scott

p.s.: I’m trying to figure out a way to add an option for people who would like to donate to my dreams if they feel called to do so. I’m in touch with Substack support about how to only have that option instead of subscriber options, so we’ll see if I can do that!

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My Hidden Brain Episode re-aired on NPR a few days ago and I am so touched by all the emails from people all over the world who have been emailing me with similar stories in childhood of being “overlooked” or being neurodivergent and not feeling like they fit in. Listen to the full episode here and let me know what you think! This remains one of my all-time favorite podcast/radio appearances:

https://www.hiddenbrain.org/podcast/why-youre-smarter-than-you-think/

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Want to break free from emotional and mental traps? I’m partnering with the capacity expert RaQuel Hopkins to bring you RISE ABOVE, a 6-week psychological experience about learning how to lead yourself instead of managing yourself. Instead of managing thoughts, managing emotions, managing reactions — you’ll develop an internal steadiness that makes your self-leadership feel natural.

We begin March 25th at 6:00 PM CST. Live sessions take place every Wednesday.
Each session is 90 minutes and there will be time for Q &A. Also, all videos will be available for on demand access if you can’t attend any of the sessions.

Over six weeks, you won’t just learn things — you’ll start relating to yourself differently.

It’s a shift in how you move through life.

You’ll Think More Authentically — Without Overthinking

You’ll learn how to catch mental traps as they’re happening instead of after the fact.
Not by arguing with your thoughts — but by understanding which ones deserve your attention and which ones don’t.

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Doors are open, and I have an early bird special just for my subscribers. You won’t find this offer anywhere else, so jump on it now before it expires on March 1st.

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In each field of human endeavor, only a small number of people reach the highest echelons of performance. All around the world, gifted education programs, college admissions committees, and elite training institutions aim to select the top early performers and then seek to further accelerate their performance through intensified training within their area of talent. This may help produce young high achievers, but is it identifying potential for eventual adult greatness? A new large analysis suggests that we may have to rethink all of these assumptions about the development of adult elite performance.

Sports scientist Arne Güllich and his colleagues looked at evidence from 19 datasets including 34,839 adult international top performers in different domains— from world-class athletes to Nobel laureates in the sciences, to the world’s best chess players, to the most renowned classical musical composers. They compared this data against 66 representative studies conducted among young and sub-elite performers.

What did they find? Let’s start with their sports analysis. Their large-scale analysis examined performance data over time from more than 50,000 athletes, including 3,375 international medalists, across every sport played at the Olympic Games. In their own words:

“The findings revealed that elite youth athletes and later elite adult athletes are rarely the same individuals at both time points— that is, they are largely two discrete populations.”

Holy cow! The vast majority— nearly 90%!— of junior and later senior international-level performers are different athletes. When examining the top performers within this already elite group, junior and senior international medalists were also nearly 90% different athletes.

Chess? Same pattern. The world’s top 10 at under-14 age and later top 10 adult chess players across time were nearly 90% different players. Academia? Same. About 90% of the top secondary and later top university students are different people across time.

As they note, it’s more difficult to look at the same metrics across other fields because there are little to no exceptional youth fighter pilots, brain surgeons, stock market traders, or world-class mathematicians. So the researchers used top cognitive and academic performance and later adult yearnings as proxies. While I find these proxies dubious, it doesn’t matter because even using these proxies of so-called “lifelong potential”, early and later exceptional performers are by and large different people. From the researchers:

“The top 1% of childhood cognitive performers and later top 5% of earners are 99% different people. The top graduates from high selective elite schools and later top 5% of earners are 92% different people; and the top graduates from highly selective elite universities and later top 5% of earners are 85% different people.”

This data is consistent with prior research in the domain of classical music that suggests that child prodigies rarely become top adult top musicians. Taken together, the analysis of this enormous dataset consistently paints the picture that most early top performers do not become top performers at peak age and most top performers at peak age were not early top performers.

Performance Trajectories of Elite Performers

This figure shows the performance trajectories of the careers of world-class athletes and scientists compared to the trajectories of high performing but not elite performers within the same domains:

As you can see, in both athletics and science, the best performers at peak performance age— compared to their less-performing counterparts— showed lower performance in their early years. Put another way, eventual peak performance is negatively correlated with early performance.

Higher-performing junior athletes tended to start their respective main sport at younger ages, entered talent promotion programs at younger ages, and reached performance “milestones” at younger ages. In contrast, senior world-class athletes tended to start their main sport at older ages, enter talent promotion programs at older ages, and reached performance “milestone” at older ages.

Multidisciplinary Practice is Key

The same pattern was found when it comes to types and amounts of practice. Higher-performing junior athletes (compared with lower-performing junior athletes) racked up greater amount of practice in their main sport, but less practice in other sports. In contrast, senior world-class athletes (compared with lower-performing senior national-class athletes) racked up smaller amounts of practice in their main sports but greater amounts of practice in other sports.

On average, senior world-class athletes engaged in two other sports over the course of 9 years during childhood and adolescence. These findings were found across all types of Olympic sports. A similar pattern was found in other domains such as chess, academic, and music. For example, Noble laureates in the sciences had slower progress in terms of publication impact during their early years than Nobel nominees. Nobel laureates were also less likely to obtain a scholarship and took longer to earn their first professorship than the highest National-level awardees. Also, Nobel laureates in the sciences (compared with national-level awardees) engaged in more multidisciplinary activities in terms of study, practice, and working experiences, both within science and outside of science (e.g., arts, music, etc.).

These findings dovetail nicely with Dean Simonton’s classic finding that the success of composers’ operas was negatively correlated with the number of genre-specific operas they had previously composed but was positively correlated with the number of previous compositions across all genres. This suggests that the previous diverse experiences of composers was a better predictor of their success than their specialization within a single genre. Similarly, Lu Liu and colleagues looked at “hot streaks” across multiple years and across artistic, cultural, and scientific careers and found that hot streaks were often preceded by a multiyear period of work in other disciplines, genres, or artistic styles. Also, these findings are consistent with the central thesis of David Epstein’s excellent book “Range”, which is that generalists triumph in a specialized world (the subtitle of his book).

To be clear, these findings don’t contradict the fact that across domains, many adult world-class performers engaged in considerable amounts of discipline-specific practice. Nevertheless, while early acceleration of performance was frequent among early exceptional performers, it was infrequent among adult world-class performers. The thing that much better characterized adult world-class performers was multidisciplinary practice.

Also, this finding doesn’t contradict the fact that early exceptional performers are more likely to become adult exceptional performers compared with the remainder of the population in a domain. For one, the number of young people who are not early top performers is much larger than those who are. For example, in sports, those who reach international junior championships (compared with the rest of the population) are 49 more times as likely to go on to reach international senior championships. However, the number of young athletes who do not reach international junior championships is much larger (greater than 99% of all athletes) than those who do not reach international junior championships (less than 1%). The majority of adult athletes who reach international senior championships (more than 70%) come from the group who do not reach international junior championships.

Big Implications

I think these findings have big implications for how we measure potential and nurture talent in young people. In a way, these findings are a validation of the central thesis of my 2013 book “Ungifted: Intelligence Redefined”, which is that we have it all wrong when it comes to identifying the best markers of “lifelong potential” in young people. I attempted to challenge the conventional wisdom about the childhood predictors of adult success and argued that we need to do a better job in appreciating neurodiversity and the importance of passion-related factors.

Along those lines, consider the developmental model of world-class expertise I proposed with Angela Duckworth in 2015. We argued that a more accurate understanding of how world-class expertise develops must take into account not just factors relating to “early talent” but also factors that influence cumulative effort over time— such as optimism, passion, inspiration, curiosity, goal commitment, need for achievement, self-efficacy, growth mindset, self-regulation, grit, self-discipline, self-control, conscientiousness, and grit. We argue that over time, these factors multiply and end up carrying much more weight than early indicators of talent.

Also, I agree with Arne Güllich and colleagues that an important step for those who are attempting to identify young people who possess the potential to achieve world-class performance in the long term is to consider indicators that go beyond early top performance. Above-average, but not top, early performance together with discipline-specific practice and considerable multidisciplinary practice are indicators of long-term exceptional potential. This may even require limiting the amount of discipline-specific practice while increasing multiyear multidisciplinary practice. For instance, gifted education teachers who select a gifted young physicist in their program may encourage their students to also enroll in other programs such as computer science, philosophy, literature, or dare I say— art history!

I am reminded of the famous story of the cellist Yo-Yo Ma who decided to go to Harvard and study several liberal arts subjects than take a conservatory approach. This allowed him to limit his musical performance for the time and focus on courses in everything from anthropology to German literature during his undergraduate years.

At the very least, people in charge of gifted education programs and elite training programs for youth should be aware that when selecting the top early performers for admission, their selected group only includes a minority of the future adult top achievers, while the majority of future top achievers are outside the selected group. This is why I’m a fan of global screening procedures (not just relying on nominations) and expanded criteria for selection.

Clearly, different factors predict early exceptional “promise” than what predicts exceptional adult peak performance. In fact, the factors may not only be different but may actually be at odds with each other. It’s time for our talent development programs to change in light of the abundance of evidence that contradicts their standard assumptions about who reaches the highest levels of performance.

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I'm excited to announce our new book "Leading for Tomorrow: Unlocking Human Potential in the Era of Continuous Change and Endless Possibility"! Edited with the amazing Chris Shipley, we gathered a group of accomplished executives, leadership experts, and academics from the Silicon Guild and Thinkers50 to deliver a collection of persuasive, insightful solutions to common and difficult workplace problems. This compilation of essays charts a pathway to an understanding of what it takes to lead people effectively in the modern era.

The book comes out July 8, 2026, and, of course, you can reserve your copy by placing a pre-order now.

In this book you’ll explore the latest leadership styles and strategies, learning how to lead yourself, lead others, and lead organizations. You’ll also discover how to harness the principles of self-actualization, manage mental health challenges in yourself and others, and identify the qualities that help you get and stay motivated at work.

Inside the book:

- Strategies for dealing with fear and anxiety and overcoming the limitations they impose
- Explorations of the impact and importance of stability, as well as how to create it in your organization
- Tactics for dealing with significant disagreement in the workplace and how to de-escalate and resolve conflict

Perfect for managers, executives, and other business leaders, Leading for Tomorrow is a can’t-miss guide for anyone seeking to improve their ability to lead, inspire, and motivate others.

With deep gratitude to our dream team of contributors: Peter Sims, Rita McGrath, Tom Kelley, Scott D. Anthony, Jacqueline Novogratz, Lisa Kay Solomon, Chris Yeh, Jean Oelwang, Sanyin Siang, Nancy Duarte, Chip Conley, Brian Solis, Whitney Johnson, Jonathan Haidt, Caroline Webb, Amy Edmondson, Zeynep Ton, April Rinne, Hal Gregersen, Sophie Hamilton, Jennifer Aaker, John Hagel, Morra Aarons-Mele, Safi Bahcall, Frans Johansson, Des Dearlove

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***Registration for our 6-month full certification program ends this Friday! The program starts Friday, February 13, 2025 and there are only a few slots left.***

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WANT TO TAKE YOUR COACHING PRACTICE TO THE NEXT LEVEL?

                                                      ***Earn 40 ICF CCES!***

We are excited to announce that our full self-actualization coaching certification program is back by popular demand! This one of a kind coaching certification program includes a supervised practicum where you’ll be paired with a nonprofit leader as a coaching client.

Our full 6-month certification program— starting February 15, 2026— will give you the opportunity to take a deep dive into the principles behind self-actualization coaching, provide you with more tools and exercises to integrate into your current coaching practice, provide you with more peer-to-peer practice time, and give you more experience using the tools as a self-actualization coach. The program is targeted to experienced coaches who already have strong coaching skills and want tools and research-backed insights to take their clients to the next level of self-actualization— way beyond just “getting stuff done”.

Save Your Spot

You will get a lot of time with me and my co-instructor Jordana Cole and the program is ICF-accredited (you can earn a whopping 40 ICF CCES)! Also, very excitedly, we will have a practicum component built-in where you will be coaching a non-profit leader matched specifically to you and you will receive feedback and support from our faculty along the way. This built-in practicum is a great, one of a kind opportunity to work with a not-for-profit leader as part of the certification process and practice the new tools and knowledge you have learned.

This program will also allow you to call yourself a “Certified Self-Actualization Coach”— as certified by the Center for Human Potential— and be listed on the center website as an official self-actualization coach so that we can help you get more clients.

Grounded in the foundational principles of humanistic psychology, Self-Actualization Coaching also draws from the latest psychological science, including the fields of positive psychology, coaching psychology, developmental psychology, personality psychology, neuroscience, talent development, and the science of creativity.

Don’t miss out on this unique opportunity! Join us and take your coaching practice to the next level!

All we’re asking for right now is a $1000 deposit to secure your spot (with a generous payment plan for the remaining cost once the course starts). There are only a few slots available in the program so if you’re interested we suggest securing your spot today.

I became a scientist with the goal of being able to help people realize their potential. After nearly two decades I have come to believe that coaching is a powerful vehicle for this, and I think now is the time to apply the science of human potential to coaching to help people grow. We look forward to welcoming you in February!

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In my 2025 article “ADHD is not a trauma response”, I made the case that the development of ADHD does not require trauma, and that there is a large and substantial genetic component to ADHD. However, I didn’t ignore the role of the environment, noting the complex interplay between genetic predispositions and our environment:

“Chaotic and stressful early family environments can exacerbate ADHD-related traits. ADHD-related traits existing in unsupportive environments or without resources and help can certainly be a traumatic experience. But this is not the same thing as saying that ADHD-related traits are primarily the result of trauma in childhood. Just because trauma can cause lasting problems in our lives does not mean that ADHD (or any mental health problem) is caused by childhood trauma. For those with a different genetic proclivity, trauma may affect them differently. You tend to break in ways that you’re genetically prone to break.”

Since I wrote that article, I’ve been going down the rabbit hole looking at studies on the link between early childhood adversity and ADHD and I have to say: there really is a significant effect. While it’s well known that adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) such as household dysfunction, abuse, exposure to violence, emotional neglect, and maltreatment can put someone at risk of developing many disorders as an adult, there is growing evidence that early environmental adversity does contribute specifically to the persistence or severity of ADHD symptoms such as impulsivity, inattention, and hyperactivity into adulthood despite ADHD being a neurodevelopment disorder with strong genetic roots (see here, here, here, and here).

Importantly, it seems that the link between childhood adversity and adulthood ADHD symptoms is especially pronounced among those with emotional dysregulation difficulties and the absence of early interventions. Indeed, the field of emotion regulation is one of the fastest growing areas of psychology and one set of researchers argued that emotion dysregulation is a core symptom of ADHD.

While cumulative exposure to early adversity negatively affects brain regions responsible for executive functioning, emotional regulation, and the ability to focus attention, there are protective factors that make it more likely that the adversity will not have such a strong effect. People with neurodevelopmental conditions such as ADHD often are less likely to use adaptive emotion regulation strategies such as cognitive reappraisal or problem solving to cope with a difficult situation due to their greater impulsivity and inattention. Instead, they tend to use more maladaptive strategies such as rumination, avoidance, or emotional suppression, often making things worse. These difficulties are often seen across multiple areas of their life, such as at work, in peer relationships, in family relationships, and in terms of academic success.

Another factor that seems to serve as a protective factor is self-compassion. Self-compassion is the practice of being kind toward oneself during difficult times, recognizing our shared human experiences, and maintaining a balanced awareness of painful thoughts and feelings. It consists of three elements: self-kindness, common humanity, and mindfulness.

While emotion regulation is about how we manage our emotions, self-compassion is about how we relate to ourselves during challenging situations. Research shows that higher self-compassion is associated with a greater use of adaptive emotion regulation strategies.

Self-compassion has also been shown to promote resilience and well-being specifically for those who have faced adversity. Since ACEs tend to increase the risk for greater self-criticism and shame, self-compassion helps to have a gentler attitude toward oneself that is more nurturing and constructive. People high in self-compassion are less likely to engage in self-criticism and negative self-talk, which can lead to feelings of shame, guilt, and inadequacy. Self-compassion allows for the ability to reframe stressful experience and respond with equanimity. It’s becoming quite clear that self-compassion is an important factor in the mental health of adults with ADHD.

Tying all of this research together in a new study, Fikriye Karacul and Gökmen Arslan examined the protective roles of self-compassion and emotional regulation, looking at the link between ACEs and young adult ADHD symptoms. Their sample consisted of 442 young adults aged between 18 and 29 years of age from a public university in Türkiye. A benefit of this sample is that it included a non-Western population (most prior research on the link between early childhood adversity and ADHD have come from Western populations). What did they find?

Consistent with prior research, they found that adverse childhood experiences significantly predicted ADHD symptoms. The researchers also found that emotion regulation accounted for the adverse impact of ACEs on ADHD symptoms. Put the other way, people with strong emotion regulation skills were less likely to experience ADHD symptoms despite adverse childhood experience.

Finally, the findings indicated that adverse childhood experiences were associated with emotional regulation and ADHD symptoms through self-compassion. Self-compassion not only directly explained the relationship between ACEs and ADHD symptoms, but also indirectly enhanced emotion regulation.

Therefore, it seems that cultivating self-compassion not only addresses emotion regulation difficulties but can also provide a foundational resource for young adults managing ADHD symptoms, especially those with histories of adversity. Self-compassion can help ease the burden for these individuals.

Programs such as mindfulness-based self-compassion and emotion regulation training could be tailored to address the specific needs of people who have experienced childhood adversity. Additionally, trauma-informed approaches in educational settings could help identify and support students at risk for ADHD symptoms resulting from early childhood adversity, which could significantly increase their health and well-being.

Something that I think is really important to distinguish in this line of research is between PTSD and ADHD. The study I just mentioned did not examine PTSD specifically but focused on ADHD symptoms. While people with PTSD often display a lot of ADHD-related traits, such as hyper-vigilance, intrusive thoughts, and avoidance behaviors, the underlying mechanism differs between PTSD and ADHD: PTSD-related inattention tends to be trauma-driven whereas inattentive symptoms in ADHD tend to stem from neurodevelopment deficits in executive functioning.

What does this all mean? Well, for most people, ADHD is not the result of trauma. ADHD doesn’t require trauma to develop. With that said, exposure to childhood adversity is a significant environmental risk factor for the development and persistence of ADHD symptoms across the lifespan, especially for those who already have a genetic predisposition toward ADHD-related symptoms.

The promising news is that interventions that target emotion regulation strategies and self-compassion can significantly reduce the impact of early childhood adversity on the exacerbation of ADHD-related symptoms that can cause a significant disruption in a person’s life.

This stuff sure is complex! Which is why you should always be skeptical when you hear any extreme claims about ADHD in the media. There is never one and only one pathway to ADHD-related traits, and ADHD doesn’t require adversity. Many people develop ADHD-related symptoms in a wonderfully supportive environment. But for those with a predisposition for ADHD living a challenging life, there is also hope that they can overcome and live the life they truly want to live.

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Happy New Year! Are you an experienced coach who wants to take your coaching to the next level? Are you in financial need? We still have a few scholarship spots available. To apply for a scholarship, please fill out the application below by January 8, 2026 (the sooner the better though):

Fill out Scholarship Application

Awardees will be notified via email by January 15, 2026. For more information about the self-actualization coaching full certification program with built-in internship with non-profit leaders, please visit the following site:

More Info on Full Certification Program

We look forward to reviewing your scholarship applications! Or if you know someone who may benefit from this information, please forward it on to them. Many blessings to everyone and may 2026 be a wondrous year for you!

Scott

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Happy New Year Everyone. Small wins, big changes. Let’s go!

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What is a good life? The ultimate aim of psychological insight is not just to fix problems but to orient life toward growth, meaning, and connection. What do you think is a good life? Leave a comment below! Thanks so much for your support of the podcast over the years, it means so much to me.

From “End of an Era— Reflections on 11 Years of The Psychology Podcast”

Listen to the full episode here:

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In the season finale of “This Might Get Awkward”, social psychologist Dr. Kurt Gray explains why outrage feels so constant in modern politics, and why it’s more real, more human, and more fear-based than we often assume.

Author of the book "Outraged", Kurt breaks down the steps to quell outrage and find moral ground. He describes why our brains are wired to fixate on harm and the role of social media in creating stress levels that mirror PTSD. He brings in findings from his research to explore why outrage can push people away from productive action.

The episode ends with an improv game where Kurt playfully reimagines how famous stories might had gone differently if people had actually tried to understand each other.

00:00 We live in the age of outrage
05:10 Is outrage real or performative?
09:45 How social media amplifies fear
14:30 Why our brains fixate on harm
18:55 What we’re really protecting
23:40 Villains, victims, and false binaries
28:30 How to meet people where they are
34:10 Why stories change minds more than data
40:05 Using humor to lower the temperature
47:30 Improv game: Rewriting famous conflicts

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